~POV switch to Vlad! OooooOOooOOOo! Bad guy!~
Vlad masters grumbled complaints as he shuffled through the long hallways of the grocery store. He picked up a couple of things for his household then wandered over to the cooking section. "Why oil?" He questioned, then shook his head and grabbed the most expensive vegetable oil he could see. He paused to think of the answer. "We are baking after all." He shrugged it off and headed towards the line, waiting as patiently as he could.
Elevator-like music played in the background. Vlad had a couple of thoughts about this 'cake' thing, like whether it would actually work or not. Nonetheless, he would be the ultimate ruler of the world. He just needed to play along until the cake was done. As he waited for the clerk to scan the items he suddenly sneezed. "Oh, I hope this is just someone badmouthing me." He muttered, putting on a smile when the clerk said hello and welcome. The monotonous beeping of the various cooking utensils and oil being added to the total gave Vlad a sense of calm. Maybe even the calm before a storm.
"That'll, uh, be, um... $500 please!" The teenage clerk grabbed Vlad's attention and he brought out a card. "Credit or debit?"
"Debit." He responded.
"What are you going to make?" The beanie-wearing teen asked as he sloppily clicked the buttons, "I mean, you have all this cooking stuff."
"Oh not much, just a cake for a friend's welcome back party."
"Are they coming back from college or something?"
Vlad took a second to question the teen's tone, like that of a drunken person. "Hmm, more like he's been out of town for a while."
"That's cool." The teen handed Vlad's card back to him. "Have a nice day."
Vlad took the card slowly, inspecting the teenager. He felt like he should be weary of the kid. However, the line behind him was already growing and the teen's name tag was missing. "...You too." He replied, taking his card back, then the bags off the counter and made his way to the door.
~POV switch to Randy, a day later!~
By the time it was Friday, Randy had forgotten about the seriousness of the conversation in Jake's basement. Nothing new had happened that was substantial, so it was only natural for him to not care. Besides, Bash had ignored Randy so far, which was a good day in his book.
Randy slouched even more - if that was even possible. Mr. Rotwood had guaranteed that the class could work on their mythology project then proceeded to talk for 30 minutes, and counting. He glanced to his left as Danny gave him a nudge. The purple-haired teen sat up and looked at the paper that Danny gestured to. He resisted a laugh. It was a crude drawing of Rotwood as a talking chair. It was bizarre, but hilarious at the same time. Randy glanced between Danny, Rotwood, and his pencil.
An artist in disguise, Randy sketched Rotwood's toupee on the top left stile. He then drew a mini dragon Jake sitting in the chair, putting a "Dragons exist! I just haven't seen one yet!" Speech bubble next to what was presumingly Rotwood's mouth. Of course, Randy was nonchalant about the entire thing, but Danny couldn't help a snicker. The two looked away from the page as Rotwood called a name, then Randy added a second bubble, "I am a total shoob!"
"Pfff!" Danny let out another giggle.
"ANYTHING HILARIOUS OVER THERE BOYS?!" The two shut up and shook their heads to Rotwood's turn-and-yell maneuver.
"Idiot" Danny wrote on the page when Rotwood turned around.
"Ha!" Randy almost exclaimed. He had no idea what the word actually meant, but from what he heard in the halls, an idiot was basically a shoob.
"Okay Mr. Funnyman." Mr. Rotwood stomped towards the boys, reaching to snatch the page off of the table.
Before Rotwood could take it, Randy reached over and shredded it.
"Why did you rip it? If it weren't anything bad you wouldn't rip it!"
"Well... If I were to show you your head would have exploded, thus, I saved your life. You're welcome." Randy began, putting his left arm on the table, facing the teacher. His tone was the same he used for the talent shows.
"Well that is bogus!"
"As bogus as dragons?"
"Dragons aren't bogus!"
"No? Then this isn't bogus either."
"B-uh-beu-"
"Unless dragons are bogus." Randy gave Rotwood an eyebrow rise.
"Dragons are not bogus!" Rotwood stammered the phrase again.
"Alright then."
Confused, Rotwood returned to the front of the room.
Randy turned to Danny, who had a bewildered look on his face. "What?" he whispered to the ghost.
"I didn't know you were that good at lying."
"I wasn't lying, just skewing the truth." He gestured to the torn up page, "Rotwood doesn't know about dragons. If he saw this sketch then his insta-drag-ar would go off and he'd explode into questions of which we couldn't answer and he'd-"
Danny motioned for him to calm down. "I underestimated you."
"...Thanks?"
~Switch to Danny~
Danny was still confused about Randy's hidden potential. he was a really smart kid, why he didn't use that smarts to get good grade? Danny had no idea. Then again, Randy was a ninja. Danny shook his head, turning to Jake.
"So... Do your friends accept me again?" Jake looked worried.
"What? Yeah dude. It took a little bit of convincing, but it's all okay now." To be honest Danny hadn't fully shaken off Jake's betrayal. He knew the reason behind it, but he still had problems with how he did it. The meeting with his friends was more of Tuck trying to convince Danny that Jake is still a friend than the other way around.
"So, then, this dude was all like 'for a friend's return party' and I donno, it seemed kind of sketchy. So I just told him to have a good day. And he left... just like mom's lasagna." Danny and Jake's attention was drawn to a familiar voice.
"Oh," a click of the tongue, "Spusters, chill. People have friends."
"But I'm telling you Trixie." The beanie-wearing kid tossed his hands into the air. "He had this weird vibe, and he bought so many cooking utensils... so... many... cooking... things!"
"What's up guys?" Jake walked over to his two friends, Danny in tow.
"Oh, not much." Trixie said.
"This creepy dude bought cooking stuff from the store I work at!" Spud was still freaking out.
"Cooking stuff? That's not that big of a deal." Danny said, joining.
"Wait, what about class you two?" Trixie shot the boys a look, making sure they could join without any negative comebacks.
"Oh, this is Danny's next class and I have English, which is just over..." Jake looked down the hallway, "there."
"Spud, don't worry about it." Danny reassured the stressed-out teen. "Maybe he was having a baking party and all of his friends were making cake with him."
"...I guess so." Spud rubbed the back of his neck.
"Chill." Trixie offered one more word of comfort before the bell rang.
"Oh- class time." Jake grinned and dashed off, "Cya in third period Danny!"
"Cya!' Danny called back, gave a nod to Trixie and Spud, then walked into his English class.
Today's english class consisted of a socratic seminar about the book Macbeth that the class was reading together. Danny's english teacher was pretty chill, but he wasn't as prepared as he could have been. Saying he only read the first couple of chapters, a few random pages, and the last page. Then again, what teenager actually likes Shakespeare?
The bell rang for the passing period and Danny got out of his chair, relieved that the teacher hadn't noticed his lack of talking. That, or she was going to make him talk twice as much tomorrow. He shook it off and headed towards math class. The Secret Trio all had math together, but that was the only class they had together. Sure, Danny had Mythology with Randy and Music with Jake, but Math was all three of them.
"Yo." Danny looked up and spotted Jake and Randy.
"Sup?" Jake set his bag down next to Danny.
"Not much, how about you?" Randy replied, setting his bag on the other side of Danny's space.
A pair of kids gave the ninja and dragon some dirty looks. They weren't assigned these seats, they kinda just took them.
'Yeah, not much. Say, do you guys have the homework done?" Jake asked.
"Yup!" Randy was already laying out the homework from the night before- all three pages of it.
Another surprise to Danny- Randy was good at math. Each friend had a specialty. Randy's was math, Danny's was english, and Jake's was history. So the three of them had the main subjects covered. Music and PE were both easy to bs. But none of them understood mythology just because of Rotwood's skewed and downright incorrect facts.
