[As my friend Knuckles pointed out, the previous chapter was rather dark. Well, here we go: "School Bells, Part Two," or, "How Alan and Finn Nearly Got Themselves Killed for Math."
Finn awoke one fine Saturday at about noon, but not of his own accord. He was awoken by the boombox that was placed next to him and was blaring disco. He rubbed his eyes and saw Alan by the bed, wearing blue denim shorts, black sneakers, and a T-shirt which read "Bageler to the Stars." That's right, people, the silly T's are back, baby! He appeared to be exercising.
"Wha...What are you doing, man?"
"Squat-thrusts!"
"No, I mean," Finn turned off the boombox, "What are you doing here?"
"Well, I looked at your grades, and I thought I'd help you learn. Your way."
"Whatcha mean?"
"Well, I told the entire army of the Robot Kingdom that their collective parents were garage-sale blenders. They're on their way. Say, quick quiz: They're about 150 miles away, and they'll be here in about thirty seconds. How fast are they going?"
"Uh..." Finn thought for about twenty-nine seconds, "thirty miles a minute?"
At that moment, Alan grabbed Finn, jumped out the window with him, and told him to start running. "Nope! 300 miles a minute! You were off by a decimal place! Now run!"
The robots were gaining, but Finn and Jake were powered by pure adrenaline. They wound some horses and took off toward the Mountain Kingdom before the robots eventually lost interest. Alan then turned them toward a cliff, where they stopped. "Yo Finn!"
"Yeah?" Finn panted.
"If we jumped here, and there was no air resistance, how fast would we be going when we hit the ground? Just for the record, this cliff is about 270 meters high."
"I dunno."
"Well, let's figure it out!" Alan said, before shouting "Craicinn Bhuitreach!" grabbing Finn, and leaping off the cliff.
"Dude! Why would you do that!?"
"The formula is √(2gd), where g is the gravity of Earth, 9.80 meters per square second, and d is the distance in meters!"
"You are INSANE!" Finn shouted.
"Answer and we teleport away, safe and sound!"
"I dunno, uh...seventy-two!"
"Label your units!" Alan shouted. Mind you, they were speaking very quickly, as this was only a medium-tall cliff.
"Seventy-two meters a second!"
"BINGO! Tharaingt Asal!"
The two found themselves on the ground at the base of the cliff, unharmed. For all of you nerds there that will complain that momentum was not conserved, Alan used the kinetic energy to partially power the spell, so hush.
Alan then held out his fist. "Nice job, man! You did that all in your head!"
"I used a lot of guesstimating."
"And...?"
"Prime factoring..."
"And...?"
"And multiplication!"
"See! When life is on the line, math is easy!"
"Is that how you got so good?"
"Nah. I'm just a nerd. Now. Hey, canyon monsters! You all wear pink frilly undies!"
"Come on, man!"
"Alright, watch. My shield can take about 50 kN of combined force. Each monster's gonna have fists that travel at about twenty meters per second. I want you to count how many times the shield is hit before it shatters and figure out the average mass of their fists, assuming no overflow."
At that moment, a bunch of big, burly trolls came out and got ready to whomp Alan, who had placed a shield dome over himself. The trolls struck a grand total of thirty-eight times before Alan's shield gave out. Alan then transported them to a nearby beach. Finn picked up a stick and started doing math in the sand. First, he divided 50,000 N (50 kN in Newtons) by 38, giving each strike a total force of about 1300 N. He then divided 1300 (kg*m)/(s*s) (aka Newtons) by 20 m/(s*s). This came out to 65 kg, the average mass of each troll's fist. This, in Imperial units, means that each fist weighed a whopping 143 pounds. They were big trolls.
"Wait...This can't be right...only 65 kilograms?"
"No, that's right. It's a lot more than it sounds like. Metric units are funny that way."
"I never got metric units." Finn said, sitting in the sand and relaxing for a moment, "I mean, gimme a third of a meter."
"Gimme a tenth of a foot."
"Touché."
"Okay, here's a little statistics. Say this bag of gemarbles," Alan produced a small bag, "Has twenty-five marbles. Five of them are explosive. What are the chances of taking an explosive marble out of the bag? Keep in mind, if you get this wrong, I will make you try it."
"Easy, man! 1/5!"
"Okay, now, if I split this into five groups, each with one explosive marble, what are the chances of pulling the explosive marble out of each group?"
"Huh. Okay, I have a one in five chance of pulling one out of one group, so I should have the same chance pulling 5 out of five groups!"
"BZZT! Wrongo! You don't add these probabilities together; you multiply 'em! so it's not 1:(5*5), but 1:(5^5), or 1:3125. So pull a marble from each group. And don't worry. The explosion won't be dangerous unless you get all five."
"Dude, you're nuts."
"Okay, if you do this, and we don't get blown to Hell, I'll wear a disco suit for a week."
"Deal. But first, where's Hell?"
"It's like the Nightosphere, but more layer-cakey, at least according to Dante." Alan shrugged. Finn reached into the bags, which had split from the original bag. He pulled out a marble with a skull. He pulled out another. And another. And another. He had four skull marbles. One more, and they would both be badly burned at the least. He reached in, and pulled out a marble with...an American flag in the center.
"God bless America!" Alan said.
"Phew. Looks like you're stuck with disco suits."
"Joke's on you. I look great in those!"
At that moment, the robots, the trolls, and just random people who had been having a bad morning and were in the mood for an angry mob finally found Alan and Finn.
"Oh Sh-"
"GET THEM!" the mob shouted, drowning Alan out.
"RUN!" Finn shouted. He probably could have beaten them all, but it simply wouldn't have been practical.
The two ran for the rest of the day, eventually just running their pursuers to exhaustion. They finally came to a stop on a hill, where Alan turned, pointed, laughed, and said, "Ha! That's what you get for chasing members of a species with some of the greatest natural endurance and distance running ability in the animal kingdom, JACKWAGONS!" He then wheezed, sat down, and took off his shoes.
"So, what was the whole point of this again?" Finn asked.
"14 times 12."
"168."
"There ya go. Ya see, the brain is a powerful computer, but it's very tricky. You have to know just how to work it. It turns out, you learn best in high-risk situations, so I thought that the best way to tutor you would be to nearly kill you. Repeatedly."
"That's...That sound kinda psycho."
"Yeah, but it worked, dinnit?"
"...Whoa. Mind. Blown."
"That's what I thought. So, I hope you do well on your test."
"Test?"
"Oops. Well, I'm off to get some disco suits. Bye!"
Finn watched as Alan walked into the distance.
Finn came into school rather nervous on Monday, as he was not looking forward to the surprise test that he had accidentally been tipped off to. When the test was placed in front of him, it looked as nonsensical as always, until Finn thought about the events of Saturday. He then got hit with a stroke of genius and went straight to work on the test.
The rest of the day flew by as Finn went through his classes, wondering about his grade on the test. He entered physics, where the students were muttering something about Professor Sanders and his "new look."
The murmurs had subsided moments before Alan entered the room in a white disco suit with a bottle-green tie and silver buttons. He wore a gold medallion on an equally golden chain, and he actually did look pretty good. "Alright class, today, we'll begin by shooting things out of this here air cannon," Alan grunted as he lifted a very large compressed air cannon out from behind his table.
Finn was putting his things away, when Alan asked him to stay after class, to the amusement of the rest of the class.
"What's up, Professor Sanders?"
"Go ahead and call me Alan, bro. It's after school. Just wanted to tell you that you passed your test."
"What?"
"Yep. C+."
"Sweet! I gotta tell Jake!"
"Have fun, dude!"