Mental Education
Sum: A new class is added to the kid's schooling, and it makes them face their biggest (kind of) fear.
"No, that would just be a disaster," Ms. Magister said.
Principal Benes waved his hand dismissively. "It'll be fiiiine. A little PE never hurt anyone, including the type of students you handle."
The fairy stared at her boss and shook her head. "Yeah, you don't know my students. It'll be awful. Why are you even doing this all of a sudden? It's the Scanlan parents, isn't it? Go tell then at their sons won't be all that benefited by it."
"Don't go around blaming the taxpayers, we can't afford to be sued. Those kids are doing PE whether you like it or not."
Ms. Magister crossed her arms. "Fine. But it'll end terribly."
"See what I meant." Principal Benes floated beside Ms. Magister staring at the mess the five made in the gym. Both Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda somehow got stuck in the soccer nets, despite the day's activity being basketball. Maria had found the water fridge, so she was writing a note on the floor with the bottles, but it was incredibly hard to read. Both Dillan and Blaine where nowhere to be seen.
"What happened? Couldn't you have fixed this? We give you a lot of magic, you know."
"What happened was I tried to do your stupid physical education. And I did fix it. Three times. I can't use my magic on anti-fairies too many times a day or it could hurt them, so they're stuck like this for a while. The elf just really hates sports and screamed loudly at the thought of it, which made Blaine cry. Speaking of Blaine, Blaine Scanlan by the way, since he couldn't see the ball he accidentally hit himself with it, so he and his brother went to the nurse's office." As she thought, the only part of her explanation that her boss seemed to care about was the kid getting injured. If the Scanlan's were going to sue over something as stupid as not having PE, their child getting hurt could definitely get lawyers called.
Benes sighed in defeat. "Okay," he said, "no PE. We'll get something else."
The next day, the students all came back to school dreading the idea of PE again. Sure, they were all magically saved from what happened the day before, but it still wasn't a pleasant experience. Luckily, they didn't have PE anymore; they had something that could arguably be worse.
"Okay, I finally knocked some sense into the school, but certain leprechauns are still picky, so a compromise of sorts was reached." Ms. Magister said. "Instead of physical education, we're doing mental education."
Anti-Cosmo raised a skeptical eyebrow. "How is that even related to PE? It's closer to, dare I say, the exact opposite."
"You know what, it makes the Scanlans happy, and I won't have to teach it. That's a win-win in my book, so it's good enough for you. Now say hello to your new M.E. teacher, Mrs. Ganem"
The teacher took out a brass candle holder and rubbed it. Out came an impressive cloud of purple smoke, fogging up the whole room.
Anti-Cosmo groaned. "It's a genie, isn't it. I hate genies."
A new, feminine voice laughed. "Why yes, I am a genie." The cloud cleared, showing the voice's owner floating beside Ms. Magister. She had fairly tan skin and short, bobbed black hair. She had a purple headband and eyes, as well as a purple wispy tail where her legs should be. The rest of her wore a loose, dark brown shirt. "But don't worry," she continued, "I'm not one of those mean, lying, deceiving genies."
"Oh, okay then. I hate you even more."
Anti-Wanda looked at her friend. "She's a genie? My sister doesn't want me to talk to those."
"What do your parents say?" Ms. Magister asked.
Anti-Wanda shugged. "They don't talk about it"
"Well your sister doesn't pay taxes, so enjoy your new class." The fairy poofed away, leaving the kids alone with the genie. They stared blankly at her, having no idea what mental education entailed.
"So," the genie said, "as your usual teacher said, I'm Mrs. Ganem, but you can call me Robyn. Today, I have a very special first day planned. The real world is big and scary, especially for kids like you, so we're going to work on bravery. How brave are you all?"
Blaine smiled. "I'd say that I'm pretty brave."
"I'm not brave, but that's only because I'm not scared of anything," Anti-Cosmo said. "Just like a good future leader of Anti-Fairy World should be."
Robyn waved her arm dismissively. "Everybody is scared of something, and facing your fears is the first step to not being affected by them. That's what today's lesson is all about. Are you ready to face one of your fears?"
"What do we have to gain by doing this?" Anti-Cosmo asked.
"Well, you will improve yourself as a person by following along," Robyn said. She saw the skeptical look on the young anti-fairy's face and continued, "I can also give you a cookie."
Maria's eyes lit up with that statement. "Cookie! Cookie! Does Maria want a cookie? Let her get a cookie please."
"Okay then, it looks like we're all ready to go in. I'll be there the whole time to make sure you're all alright." The genie held her arms out, which made the kids be surrounded with purple smoke. It was way too thick to see through, so none of them could tell that their surroundings completely changed until the smoke dissipated. Now, instead of their classroom, they stood in a completely white room with nothing in it but a nobless door.
"Where are we?" Anti-Wanda asked.
"Probably a blank slate room where our fears will manifest. None of this is real. I'm pretty sure that we're all just in a dream-like state so that this stupid 'lesson' could work," Anti-Cosmo explained.
"Huh?"
"We're in a fear room."
"Oh, okay," Anti-Wanda said. "So where's the fear?"
As she asked this, an ant crawled out of the ceiling. It was definitely huge for an ant, but not that big compared to everything else. "Oh! That's an earth creature, right! I love Earth things," Anti-Wanda cooed.
Anti-Cosmo scoffed. "Only an idiot would be scared of an ant?" he said judgmentally.
Maria looked at him, then walked up and stomped on the ant. That made the door creak open. "Maria isn't scared of ants, she's not an idiot," she said. "Ants don't really steal cookies."
Anti-Cosmo shrugged and started floated to the door. "That was fast. This is going to be easy. What's next?"
Once all five kids were inside, the door behind them closed, trapping them in a new white room. "So what is-" Anti-Wanda started to ask, but a loud boom interrupted her.
A pink cloud started exploding as a voice roared "Puny Anti-Fairy!"
The two puny anti-fairies started screaming in response. Anti-Wanda immediately looked to Anti-Cosmo, whose first instinct was raising his wand, so she did too. Both him and Anti-Wanda kept trying to poof away, but their rattles weren't working. Jorgen was just standing there threateningly as the young anti-fairies frantically tried to get away. As Blaine listened to them fruitlessly try and open the door in desperation to escape he rolled his eyes. "I think you need to face the fear, not run from it," he mumbled.
"I think you need to shut up," Anti-Cosmo growled. Regardless, he stopped using the useless nonexistent knob and turned back to the fairy. "I mean, I guess there's nothing to be scared of since a genie could never get the real Jorgen. I could do this," he threw his wand at it, and it hit only because of how large the target was, "And there would be no negative repercussions."
The fake-Jorgen pointed its giant wand at Anti-Cosmo. "You, no matter how annoying you may be, are not what I'm here for."
"Oh, okay. Anti-Wanda, throw your wand at this imposter so we can get these all over with. And stop trying to eat the door."
She was still trying to open the door by gnawing through it, but she stopped at her friend's command. "But Anti-Cosmo," she said, clearly still scared, "Mom, Dad, and Anti-Blonda all have told me how bad that fairy is. He finds young, helpless anti-fairies and does really bad things."
"If he were real wouldn't he do those bad things already?" Anti-Cosmo asked
His friend shrugged. "I don't know. But throwing my wand would make him super mad and badder." The giant wand glowed, seemingly confirming Anti-Wanda's fears. She started trying to poof away again.
Anti-Cosmo sighed. "You understand that this is all fake, right?"
She shook her head. "I haven't understood anything all day really."
"Well," Anti-Cosmo thought for a second. "You trust me, don't you? You think that I won't lie or betray you." He added the definition of trust for good measure.
Anti-Wanda put her wand down. "Of course."
"Then believe it when I say it'll be fine. You can, and should, attack him."
Anti-Wanda looked at her friend, then her wand. With only a little hesitation, she closed her eyes and threw it at fake-Jorgen. The rattle completely phased through the imposter, making it vanish, revealing the door on the other side to be open.
"See? This'll be easy." Anti-Cosmo said as he floated to the next room.
"Yeah, that was easy!" Anti-Wanda agreed. The two grabbed their wands off of the floor as they left.
Blaine crossed his arms as he followed his brother to the new room. "Weren't you two just screaming," he mumbled quiet enough that they couldn't hear.
The next room was longer than the last two, and narrower as well. Once again, the door closed after all of them entered this new room, but this time all of the light immediately left when the door slammed. "Scared of the dark. Gosh, I wonder who of those remaining would have that fear"
"Stop it," Blaine said. He grabbed his brother's hands they started moving very slowly toward the door together.
Anti-Fairies, kind of like cats, have night vision, although it's pretty limited. Still, Anti-Cosmo could make out the basic shapes of people and see how slowly the two where going. "Come on. While we do technically have all day, we don't have all day." Blaine ignored him, so he continued. "You know if you leprechauns were as evolutionarily advanced as us anti-fairies we might not be in this situation. We can see in the dark."
"We can?" Anti-Wanda asked, genuinely surprised. "Is that why there's always red outlines?"
Anti-Cosmo nodded. "Yeah. It's dark, isn't it? And you can see."
"That's so cool."
Anti-Cosmo sort of forgot what he was doing before and just started talking to Anti-Wanda. It actually wasn't before the door opened, filling the room with light. "Two more rooms left," Anti-Cosmo said as he flew into the next one. "As long as someone," he glanced at Blaine, "doesn't take so long, we'll be done with this easily." Blaine gave the anti-fairy a dirty look but decided not to say anything.
Once all five were in, the door closed, but nothing appeared. There was already something in the room, however. A small wooden sign saying 'Your fear's in this room. Confess to it' was in the middle of the room.
"What's this supposed to be?" Anti-Cosmo asked. "Is it a note? The genie knows that none of us can read, right?"
As if the genie suddenly realised which class she was teaching, the sign automatically changed from words to braille. "Ooo," cooed Anti-Wanda, "The letters are all bumpy now."
Anti-Cosmo started rubbing it. "It must be braille then. My brother got me a stupid braille book for some reason, but I was bored so I listened to it anyway." he turned away from the sign to Blaine. "It says 'Your fear's in this room. Confess to it'. That doesn't apply to me so it's you I assume."
Blaine looked at Anti-Cosmo in confusion, until a thought popped up. He started shaking his head. "No, that's just not fair," he whined. "This will affect me outside of this weird vision too."
"Why? It won't go away like the others?" Anti-Wanda asked.
Anti-Cosmo smiled evilly. "He must be scared of someone in this room. It's your brother, isn't it? You fear for your mortal life as you stand beside him. I don't blame him, I'd kill my brother if he wasn't immortal. I would kill a lot of things if I could. So with why and who figured out, the question of how remains. Is it true that twins have psychically connected brains? You can confess that way." Anti-Cosmo knew that wasn't true, but he was bored.
"That's cool," Anti-Wanda said. "I wish I was a twin. Our brain would be so big that it'll float into space, and that'll be fun."
Anti-Cosmo was going to correct his friend, but there were so many things wrong with what she just said that he didn't know what to correct first. Blaine interjected before he could say anything. "I'm not scared of my brother."
"Then who?"
Blaine, since they didn't let go of each other after the last room, squeezed Dillan's hand as he looked down. "I've never liked anti-fairies because of all of the bad luck they bring, and you're by far the worst anti-fairy I've ever met. Bad luck radiates off of you, and your evil, and, I guess you could say that you scare me. The thought of you possibly ruling a world that's so close to mine is frightening, so luckily you won't ever be able to win a fight against a world leader."
Anti-Cosmo laughed. "That's got to be the most pathetic fear of all." The door creaked open as he talked, so he flew through it. "Just because I have a lot of bad luck? And how many anti-fairies do you even know? Two? This is stupid."
Blaine ignored him again and walked into the last room with everybody else.
The final door closed behind the five. "Alright," Anti-Cosmo said. "Process of elimination. I'm next. I'm sure you couldn't find anything. You should just let us out of here by now."
Robyn appeared in the center of the room. "Well now, Anti-Cosmo, everybody has their fears."
"I'm not scared of you."
"I know, but this is a special double lesson for you. Think about empathy while you go through with this." She placed a plate on the floor, making a clattering sound, and disappeared.
Maria laughed as everybody else looked at it skeptically. "Is that a plate? That's your grand fear?" Blaine questioned.
"No. I like plates, they could make good weapons. Did you know that if-..." Anti-Cosmo started to say, but then he saw something materialized on the plate that makes him shut up. The kids looked away from the suddenly frozen anti-fairy and back to the plate. The only difference seemed to be that now it had multiple strips of bacon on it.
Anti-Wanda's eyes lit up. "I love bacon!" she exclaimed. She tried to grab a strip with her foot, but the plate moved. "What? Why'd it move?" She asked Anti-Cosmo. He didn't answer. Instead, he was slowly floating away from the plate
"Anti-Cosmo bacon, not for other people," Maria responded for him.
Blain laughed. "Is it really just bacon? Come on, and you made fun of us? This is the only thing that literally nobody is scared of."
At that time, Anti-Cosmo was in the highest corner, farthest from the plate, and still, he seemed to be trying to get farther away. Saying that Cosmo adored bacon would be an understatement, so the sheer passion the fairy had transformed into such a pure form of hatred that it became a fear to his counterpart. Nothing seemed to matter besides the object of his demise that stayed in the middle of the room.
All of the kids stared at him in silence for a bit. For someone who was previously so impatient, he was quickly approaching taking the longest of all of them and showed no signs of wanting to change that. It became obvious to the four of them, even Anti-Wanda to some extent, that they needed to do something if they wanted to get out anytime soon.
Coming up with a plan, Dillan grabbed his brother's arm and pointed it toward Anti-Wanda. Blaine had a good idea of what he was now pointing at from remembering where voices were. "Anti-Wanda?" He made an incomprehensible sound in reply that Blaine seemed to recognize as a yes. The blind leprechaun looked to the mostly clueless anti-fairy. "Hey, Anti-Wanda, I'm pretty sure you're the only one who can get your friend back down here."
"Me? Why me?"
"Because he hates all of us."
"Oh, I guess that makes sense," Anti-Wanda was about to fly to her friend, but she thought of something. "Wait, what should I do?"
Both Blaine and Dillan shrugged. "How am I supposed to know? You're the friend."
"Anti-Wanda do what would Anti-Cosmo do, so Anti-Cosmo do what we do," Maria suggested.
Despite the broken English, or maybe because of it, Anti-Wanda understood exactly what the elf was trying to say. "Oh, okay, I'll just do what Anti-Cosmo did." She flew all the way to her friend. "Throw your wand at the scary thing and it'll go away and not be scary anymore."
Anti-Cosmo's eyes flicked away from the bacon to Anti-Wanda for a second, but only a second. His green eyes were soon fixated on the plate again. "Th-that won't work this time," he mumbled.
"Why not?"
"Trust me. I… I'll h-have to eat that, but I-I won't."
"Why not?"
Anti-Cosmo didn't respond to that. This lead Anti-Wanda to think 'Okay, what did Anti-Cosmo do next? He brought up that trust thingy, right?' she nodded to herself. 'Then that's what I'll do.' "You trust me, bacon is good, and not bad, and we're that word you always say, in fort-le or something, so you'll be fine. Oh, and if you eat the bacon we can get out of these bright rooms and play together with cookies! Fun times!"
"Anti-Wanda, I know what you're doing, but this is… it's just different. Don't ask why."
"Why?" Anti-Wanda asked. "You said it was all fake. This would be too, wouldn't it?"
"No, this is different." Anti-Wanda believed him, the bacon must have been real, but what difference would that make? The exact words the Anti-Cosmo said popped into her head suddenly.
"You trust me, don't you?"
"No." Anti-Cosmo responded without hesitation. It took his fear clouded brain a second to realize what he said. "Um, well, perhaps? F-feasibly? Conceivably?" Anti-Cosmo mentally scolded himself for a stupid response like that. 'Stop saying synonyms for maybe and just say yes. I trust my best friend, don't I?...'
"Oh…" Anti-Wanda responded. Her voice sounded disappointed. "I don't know what I should do next. I said yes, was I supposed to say no?"
Anti-Cosmo moved his eyes back to his friend, but this time they stayed there. "No, Anti-Wanda, I didn't mean to say that. I trust you, I promise." As she stared back at him, he couldn't help but think that it didn't look like she believed him. He didn't blame her; could he even believe himself?
"Okay, then," Anti-Wanda thought for a second. Clearly repeating what she remembered, she said "then believe me when I say it's fine. You can throw your wand at it. Or maybe eat it. I guess it would make more sense to eat bacon."
Anti-Cosmo floated in silent thought. He noticed that his hands were shaking. It could have been out of fear, but then again, there was so much more happening. 'You're such a horrible person,' he thought. 'She's trying so hard to do the same thing you did, but you can't do what she did? What kind of leader of Anti-Fairy World would you be? What kind of friend? A horrible one. How would you have liked it if she just said 'no' and kept trying to escape?' Anti-Cosmo put an end to their eye contact and closed his eyes. Slowly, he started descending to the ground. Anti-Wanda followed. "I trust you, I promise," he repeatedly mumbled while getting closer to the fear. Eventually, he was close enough to blindly grab a piece, and he did. "And I also promise to become the best, most fearless leader of Anti-Fairy World for you. You believe me, right?"
"Of course."
With that, eyes still closed, Anti-Cosmo put the bacon into his mouth. Thankfully, it didn't taste like anything. Anti-Wanda was right: it was fake like everything else.
The final door's creak echoed followed by three pairs of footsteps. "Could you be any more dramatic?" Blaine sarcastically mumbled before leaving.
Anti-Cosmo ignored the leprechaun and opened his eyes. Anti-Wanda was smiling at him. "Did you like it? I love bacon." He nodded, deciding not to mention how it was tasteless fake genie-magic. "Awesome! Now let's go get our cookies!"
They did just that. The kids all spend the rest of the school day, which was still a lot of time, doing what they typically did, only a bit quieter. Robyn and Ms. Magister watched them from one side of the room. "So, how'd it go?"
"Good," Robyn said. "Fears is always my favorite subject to teach. You can really see the student's relationships with each other. Plus, it makes them better people, and who wouldn't want that?"
"Relationships huh? Let me guess: if it were to place them around this room based on their relationships it would be like this, right?"
In the room, Anti-Cosmo and Anti-Wanda were right beside each other with Blaine and Dillan together on the exact opposite side. Maria was by herself, but sitting closer to the anti-fairies.
Robyn sighed. "Yeah, it would. Kids are pretty predictable, aren't they? By the way, how long before you think Anti-Cosmo will give up on the whole Anti-Fairy World domination?"
"I'd say five years at most. He'd be more mature by then. Anti-Binky should be gone."
"You mean from his mind, right?"
Ms. Magister shrugged. "Sure." It didn't sound enthusiastic at all.
"Alright… same time in ten days?"
"Yeah."
With that, Robyn went back into her candle handle.
Sorry for the long pause. The stories might get 'heavier' as Anti-Cosmo has to get taught lessons the hard way before becoming the next leader. Regardless, review your thoughts on this chapter or any ideas for future chapters. Also, the candleholder was supposed to be a pun on lamp, but since there was no electricity in that time, so no lamps, so it seemed like the closest thing. Also, sorry if the pacing seems weird, I wrote this out of order. Until next time~ (which will probably be sooner than before)