Rosati-Kain--Part 2
By: Axisor
The wanted part 2 of Rosati-Kain, the "sequel" to "Kuusou." Oh-- and an FYI for anyone who cares, The Village is going to stay up but the reason the next part wasn't up on schedule was because I didn't have it finished being thought through, let alone written, or typed for that matter.
Oh-- and I think that the boys' first day has turned into a snow-schedule day (for lack of a better explanation as to why there is such a long period of time before homeroom).
I own nothing. Don't sue. I'm already going broke because of X-Mas. The school does exist, but it's not mine either (just one that I'm attending)
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The meeting with Sister Joan went about as well as could be expected. (That would be the meeting to figure out the what and how's of what had happened and the same of what _will_ happen to deal with that.) Actually, when you consider what could have happened and what should have happened, it probably turned out better than could be expected, or realistically hoped for, depending on who you are. Wufei most definitely would disagree, but ya' know what? That's probably just him.
The decision made was that the boys would attend Rosati until another school could be found to take them-- er... transfer them to and the money and records were transferred over and all of the other happy stuff that goes along the same line. We now join our heroes as they journeyed into the unknown territory of their new all-girl (with five very special, very unique, and (most likely) very temporary exceptions) school.
They trudged down the hall, took a left then a right, went past the café (a.k.a. the cafeteria) and into the gym. They went straight into the locker room where their newly assigned lockers were located separate from everyone else, until Mr. Kelly, the school's handyman, had the opportunity to move the lockers somewhere else, the R-Kade or the convent, for example.
"They're joking, right? About the whole convent thing?" Duo asked as they put, or in his case chucked, the last of their stuff into the lockers and locked them (in accordance with the school's policy). "Not that I have anything against the religious, but a convent? I just don't want to have to go to a nunnery full of old nuns every time I need something." He added quickly as they left.
"Well I don't want to be in a school full of pacifists," Heero said in a level voice (the level it would be at would read as "ANGER") and shooting an on-target, patented DeathGlare at Wufei.
"Like I want to be in a school full of weak onnas?!" Wufei's voice echoed through the gym.
"You can't blame that on us," Trowa said as they past the café hall. Some girls were sitting there by their lockers looked up in surprise. Duo lagged behind to... ah... "explain the situation" to the girls as the rest of the group walked on.
"I didn't know it was ALL girls!" Wufei protested. "The modular schedule they have here is perfect for our 'after school' job."
"How do you figure that?"
"It's obvious, Barton, if you would look at your schedule." Wufei practically sneered. "See all those mods marked 'unscheduled'? That means we have no classes and no specific places we _have_ to be at those times. We can easily sneak out, do some Preventer's work, and then sneak back in without anyone knowing. Look around at their lack of security. _We_ can easily sneak out and back in. The most we'd ever have to do is hop a fence, and we don't really have to do that!"
"Yeah... I'm sure that's all you had on your mind, Wufei. I bet Sally Po's transfer here had nothing to do with your decision at all." Quatre remarked casually.
Wufei tried to look indignant and give a corresponding remark, but Trowa spoke up. "Do you _really_ believe five boys would be allowed to go wherever and do whatever unsupervised in an all _girls_ school."
"I DIDN'T know it was at the time," Wufei cried in outburst but quickly regained control. "Look-- here comes Maxwell." Subtle change of topic, right?
"Hey guys-- I was thinkin'--"
It was too open--too tempting-- and someone just had to rise to the challenge. It was Wufei who stepped forward and made the smart-ass comment "Wait, let me record this momentous occasion in my agenda."
"Oh great Wufei! You made me forget what I was thinking."
"Well, that was a short lived occasion," Wufei said as he put his agenda and pen away.
BBBRRRRIIIIIIIIII--
"Is that their bell?!" Quatre yelled over the unnaturally loud sound and the flood of girls pushing past them while he ducked the flying pen.
--IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII--
"Shut off already!" Heero said, not too calmly. The bell was beginning to sound way too much like a base's security breach alarm for his tastes.
--IIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG!!!!!!!
"Guess we should find our homerooms, too," Trowa said as he brought up his packet of papers (which he at least thought enough in advance to not lock them in the locker).
"Nah-- we don't have to," Duo drawled as the group started down the hall. "Don't you remember? We have to go to, like, room 38-- or maybe it was 39, for some announcement thingy or something like that."
As Duo was saying that, everyone else began to remember those instructions. So they took a left in the R-Kade then took the stairs which came up on their right all the way up to third floor, following some struggling panting freshman and seniors alike. As the boys traveled, they discovered their new classmates were concentrating on "making it to third floor" than who was around them and began to talk amongst themselves again.
"Duo, you didn't have to be so adamant about us going here," Heero said, actually _starting_ the conversation.
"Why Heero, whatever do you mean?" Duo asked with a "Southern Belle" accent while trying to play innocent.
Quatre didn't get the joke, however. "I believe he was talking about your 'we have to go to school because it's against the law not to and since we're enrolled here, we need to go to school here' speech."
Duo rolled his eyes at Quatre, let out an annoyed/amused sigh and said, "I knew what he meant. Give me some credit! It's just like when you guys weren't giving me credit for thinking of how they mistook our names for girl names-- HEY! That's it!"
"What's 'it'?" Trowa said with actual signs of surprise in his voice.
"That's what I had thought of earlier, BEFORE Wufei so rudely interrupted me." Duo said crossing his arms and glaring at Wufei. "I couldn't see how they could have mistaken our names to be female and then I figured it out and was _going_ to share it with you."
"Well, spit it out already," Wufei said as they just made it onto the second landing, almost to third floor.
"Fine, but just because you asked so sweetly." I don't think anyone would have been surprised if Duo HAD stuck his tongue out at Wufei with the face he was making. "Around here, boys mainly use the 'generic' names of Brian, Tim, and Steve. Since our names are nothing like that there _really_ isn't anything that could honestly pin them down to either gender, and you consider that there are girls here that with first names like Thao, Mallory, and Vihba, maybe our names didn't seem all that unusual, or masculine. Plus, Quatre is a Winner and the odds he'd be the one male child in that family was 1 to 30, if they even made the connection, probably didn't help much. Right?"
The other boys were stunned, and worried. Wufei grabbed Duo's shoulders and said, "Who are you and what did those onnas do with the real Duo?"
"Nope. They didn't do anything to me--" he seemed a little sad at that "--I'm still the same old Shingami."
"Good." Heero said, and Wufei let him go. "Oh, and something else to think about: 'How will Hilde react when she finds out you're going to an all _girl_ school?' You sure she isn't going to come storming down here and accuse you of being a player?"
That caused Duo to face fault. He frowned a little. Then, with a wry grin, said: "And how do you think Relena is going to react?"
Heero glared briefly at Duo then turned away, crossed his arms, and said, "There is nothing going on between us. Now we better get to 39 for whatever they need us for," which he proceeded to do at a very brisk walk, leaving the other four to silently snicker in his wake.
There were only a few people left in the hall as the boys walked down it with Trowa in the lead of the boys a bit of a distance behind Heero. All around them girls were yelling from one part of the hall to another, pushing and yanking things into lockers, slamming lockers shut, jamming locks locked, and rushing off to various rooms.
BBRRIINNGG!!
The second bell, the bell to signal the start of homeroom, rang short and sweet just as the last girl stepped into a room. Around them the sounds of a morning prayer were heard. Ahead of them, Heero signaled that he had found 39 and proceeded to enter. The prayer ended and two girls could be heard all around the boys saying, "Good mor-morning Rosati!"
Then one voice took charge over the other and said, "Before we start the normal announcements, we have a special announcement from Sr. Joan. Sister?"
They were just outside the doorway when they heard, "Do to an unusual turn of events," Trowa entered the room and ran into Heero standing stock-still. "We have five new temporary students. As soon as they get here I'll--" the other three boys showed up "--Look, here they are now."
Suddenly, the next thing they knew the five boys were looking straight into a video camera's lens. "Why don't you introduce yourselves and tell us a little about your pasts?"
The air pressure in the building suddenly changed as every student swiftly gasped. "Oh... ah... a camera...." The very intelligent remark came from a very wide-eyed Duo. The other boys, minus Trowa, made quiet grunts of agreement.
The air pressure changed again. Squeals and joyful shrieks could be heard coming down and echoing throughout the halls of the building. The two senior announcers were heard be all to say, "So the rumors are true!!" and "YES! We're going co-ed!" Then they slapped hands and Sister Joan said something about how they were only _temporary_ students.
Heero and Wufei swallowed-- hard, when they heard that very same conversation with the very same voices from the hall behind them. They were being taped on a live feed to every room in the building. The situation was one that they had been caught completely unprepared for.
When his four companions didn't make any move to react to what Sister Joan had asked them to do, Trowa sighed and said, taking the unexpectedly offered microphone, "People call me 'Trowa Barton.' I'm 18 and we're all enrolled as juniors here." (I know that probably sounds screwy, but it'll make life easier on me to have Trowa have started school "a year late" than deal with figuring out a senior class schedule too. Oh-- BTW, if you haven't figured it out yet, this is after EW.)
Trowa pressed the mic into Heero's hands. Heero's face paled and he looked like a little lost child. His voice squeaked as he spoke into the thing saying, "Nani?" Trowa reminded him to speak English, "Gomen-- I go by 'Heero Yuy' and that's all you need to know."
Trowa took the mic back from Heero and almost gave it to Wufei but realized at the last moment that Wufei was mumbling near-nonsense in Chinese so Duo received it instead. He just stared at the microphone until Trowa nudged him and muttered "Name and about yourself."
Duo's mind kicked into gear and he said, "My name is Duo Maxwell and I may run high but I'll never tell a lie" automatically and without thinking it through. Trowa didn't think about the drug implications of that statement until it was too late. The typical goofy grin of Duo probably didn't help much either.
Duo numbly handed the mic backwards to Quatre, who said, "My name... is... uh... Quatre Winner." As soon as he said his last name, all of his father's "CEO training" kicked in and he overcame his case of camera-fright which all the boys but Trowa (who had preformed for things like that before with the circus, a benefit the other boys lacked and didn't get anytime before the camera unexpectedly turned on them to try and prepare for) were suffering from. Quatre's voice gained a sudden confidence and he figured out what was going on and exactly what _not_ to say to keep their identities a secret. "I'm from the L-4 space colony and am happy to have this opportunity to learn here, no matter how short that time may be."
Trowa signaled Quatre with a slight tilt of his head the Wufei still needed to go. Quatre immediately saw the Chinese boy was having the worst case of this fright of all the boys so he put his hand on the other boy's shoulder and said, "This is my friend Change Wufei, but you can just call him Wufei. He's one of the few remaining members of the L-5 space colony, which was an all-Chinese colony for all intents and purposes, do if he does or says anything thoroughly rude, please ignore it. He had some trouble adjusting to other cultures due to lack of exposure to them." Then Quatre flashed one of his award-winning smiles and the freshman of 34 and 37 could be heard either sighing or squealing.
Quatre handed the microphone to Trowa who handed it back to the announcer. One of the two seniors flashed this huge flirty grin at Trowa hoping he would give her a similar one back. When she didn't receive one, or any smile at all, she gave a little pout, decided to try again, and asked in a sugary-sweet, tooth-decaying voice, "So you two are from the space colonies? Are you all from there?" while giving Trowa "the eye."
Before Quatre, or any of the other boys, could say anything, Trowa put on his stern, impassive face and stepped in front of his friends. He assumed a 'big brother" role and said, "Don't you have to get back to your _normal_ routine? You mentioned other announcements earlier. Besides, we are supposed to be treated like normal students, _nothing_special_." With a sad, almost puppy-dog like face on, she turned to Sister Joan who glared just as sternly at the girl and agreed with Trowa. Begrudgingly she turned around to her chair and sat down stubbornly. She handed the microphone to her partner and the camera turned away from the boys as the girls started the announcements.
As soon as the camera was off of them, the boys returned to normal. Trowa relaxed his guard and moved to lean against the doorpost. Heero regained his emotionless mask to give the girls and cameraman, Mr. O'Keeffe, a DeathGlare. Duo let out a laugh at their fear and rolled his shoulders some to start relaxing his body again. Wufei detestfully removed Quatre's hand from his shoulder and said, "Keep your hands off of me, _Blondie_." Quatre, for his part, smiled a little less, relaxing those overly tense muscles and collapsed in the rolly chair behind him.
After the announcements, the girls returned to "interviewing" the boys who had relocated themselves to being gathered around the counter/peninsula thing, which worked as a divider between rooms 38 and 39. The girls were doing more flirting than interviewing and came up with more questions then answers for their trouble. Wufei ended up with sore ribs while Duo and Quatre developed sore left and right elbows.
Finally, as the atomic clocks approached 9:27 and the end of homeroom (which normally would have been 8:27, but they _were_ on snow schedule after all) the boys thought it might be smart to figure out where their schedules said they should be. Wufei took one real good look at the three pages of computer printout and shoved it away in disgust and confusion to proclaim quietly through clenched teeth, "This is an unjust schedule. I refuse to waste my time figuring it out if I'm barely going to be here to live through it. I'm going home."
"I don't get it either," Duo practically whined. He was trying to figure out what to do with all the stuff he had gotten that morning but he just couldn't figure it out. "There are computer codes easier to crack!!" He proclaimed as his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. "But I'm not going to give up like a weak little..." 'Woman' would have been the next word, but between Wufei's growling and glaring and looking about ready to throw him to the ground... again, he reconsidered finishing the sentence.
One of the sophomores entering 38 for American History heard him, giggled some, and came over. She took his papers, agenda and a blank schedule, shuffled them a little then arranged them on the counter.
"Here's an explanation of our schedule," she said with a small smile and pointed to the following passage in the agenda:
THE MODULAR SCHEDULE:
Rosati-Kain High School follows a flexible schedule which offers students a combination of structured and unstructured time. Each day is divided into 26 fifteen-minute modules. Every six days of the cycle repeats itself. Emphasis is placed upon increased student-teacher contact. The advantage of a flexible... (BLAH BLAH BLAH-- I don't want to bore you by quoting any more)
"Since there are 26 mods in a day and letters in the alphabet," Wufei muttered something like 'In YOUR alphabet!' "So all our mods are lettered A-Z. The letters on the printout match up with the letters on the blank schedule. You fill out this blank schedule, matching them up Day by day, and you follow it. This column tells you where you classes are and this one who your teacher is." She said as she pointed to what she was talking about for Duo. The other boys "casually" watched her explanation. Only Duo and Wufei were the ones willing to admit their problems, though, and Wufei only begrudgingly at that.
"Next, to figure out when you classes start," another sophomore said as she came over. Wufei almost rolled his eyes at them, but (as much as he would hate to admit it) they were telling him exactly what he needed to know. Duo was enjoying the attention and thinking of playing stupid a little more often. "You look at the times next to the letters and they tell you when the mod starts. You get the three minutes before that time to be in the halls to get where you need to go. Today follow this schedule over on the right, our shortened school day schedule, but add an hour to it to get our snow schedule."
"Really?" The other girl asked. "I didn't know that. So snow schedule is just 1:42 with an hour delay?"
"Yeah," one of the seniors said, annoyed at being ignored by the hot guys. "Sophomores... almost as bad as freshman." She maneuvered herself so that she was blocking the two sophomores (who Wufei and Duo liked better than the senior because they were ACTUALLY trying to help, not hit on them, although Wufei still considered them weak) and asked, "Is there anything else you need?"
"Could you tell us what 'day' were suppose to follow?" Quatre asked cheerfully.
The senior looked down at Quatre, flipped her head of hair, and said, "Yeah, it's a day 1." Then flipped her head back and looked right at Wufei, "Anything I can do for you?"
"NO." He said abruptly and gathered his things. He led the rest of the guys out. Duo and Quatre lingered a little to apologize for their friends and thank the girls for helping them.
Now a new adventure was about to begin. The boys were going to adventure into the world of classes at this school.
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Hmmmm... I got a little long winded there at that last part, didn't I? Sorry about that, but we have a very different schedule from most schools (At least around here where block-schedules are the norm (AG! GAG! If RK ever does that then we all will seriously complain. We love our schedules, even if it gets a little confusing.))
So, how am I doing? Like it? Hate it? Come on! Tell me peeps! Feedback is greatly appreciated! Give me class suggestions (they're all going to have Morality (Religion) because that's going to be HILARIOUS!!!!) and tell me how you think they should do in it. I'll see what I can do, but we have no home-ec type course so don't suggest that (I wouldn't know how that course would go anyway.
"Thank you" to everyone who helped me with the last question of the previous fic. Now you just got the question for this time (he-he... this is a fun fic!)
Thanx, Axisor
:þ
OH-- and I'd like to thank my fabulous beta-reader Sailor_Silver_Moon and all those people at Rosati who have kept on my back for more of this story.
By: Axisor
The wanted part 2 of Rosati-Kain, the "sequel" to "Kuusou." Oh-- and an FYI for anyone who cares, The Village is going to stay up but the reason the next part wasn't up on schedule was because I didn't have it finished being thought through, let alone written, or typed for that matter.
Oh-- and I think that the boys' first day has turned into a snow-schedule day (for lack of a better explanation as to why there is such a long period of time before homeroom).
I own nothing. Don't sue. I'm already going broke because of X-Mas. The school does exist, but it's not mine either (just one that I'm attending)
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The meeting with Sister Joan went about as well as could be expected. (That would be the meeting to figure out the what and how's of what had happened and the same of what _will_ happen to deal with that.) Actually, when you consider what could have happened and what should have happened, it probably turned out better than could be expected, or realistically hoped for, depending on who you are. Wufei most definitely would disagree, but ya' know what? That's probably just him.
The decision made was that the boys would attend Rosati until another school could be found to take them-- er... transfer them to and the money and records were transferred over and all of the other happy stuff that goes along the same line. We now join our heroes as they journeyed into the unknown territory of their new all-girl (with five very special, very unique, and (most likely) very temporary exceptions) school.
They trudged down the hall, took a left then a right, went past the café (a.k.a. the cafeteria) and into the gym. They went straight into the locker room where their newly assigned lockers were located separate from everyone else, until Mr. Kelly, the school's handyman, had the opportunity to move the lockers somewhere else, the R-Kade or the convent, for example.
"They're joking, right? About the whole convent thing?" Duo asked as they put, or in his case chucked, the last of their stuff into the lockers and locked them (in accordance with the school's policy). "Not that I have anything against the religious, but a convent? I just don't want to have to go to a nunnery full of old nuns every time I need something." He added quickly as they left.
"Well I don't want to be in a school full of pacifists," Heero said in a level voice (the level it would be at would read as "ANGER") and shooting an on-target, patented DeathGlare at Wufei.
"Like I want to be in a school full of weak onnas?!" Wufei's voice echoed through the gym.
"You can't blame that on us," Trowa said as they past the café hall. Some girls were sitting there by their lockers looked up in surprise. Duo lagged behind to... ah... "explain the situation" to the girls as the rest of the group walked on.
"I didn't know it was ALL girls!" Wufei protested. "The modular schedule they have here is perfect for our 'after school' job."
"How do you figure that?"
"It's obvious, Barton, if you would look at your schedule." Wufei practically sneered. "See all those mods marked 'unscheduled'? That means we have no classes and no specific places we _have_ to be at those times. We can easily sneak out, do some Preventer's work, and then sneak back in without anyone knowing. Look around at their lack of security. _We_ can easily sneak out and back in. The most we'd ever have to do is hop a fence, and we don't really have to do that!"
"Yeah... I'm sure that's all you had on your mind, Wufei. I bet Sally Po's transfer here had nothing to do with your decision at all." Quatre remarked casually.
Wufei tried to look indignant and give a corresponding remark, but Trowa spoke up. "Do you _really_ believe five boys would be allowed to go wherever and do whatever unsupervised in an all _girls_ school."
"I DIDN'T know it was at the time," Wufei cried in outburst but quickly regained control. "Look-- here comes Maxwell." Subtle change of topic, right?
"Hey guys-- I was thinkin'--"
It was too open--too tempting-- and someone just had to rise to the challenge. It was Wufei who stepped forward and made the smart-ass comment "Wait, let me record this momentous occasion in my agenda."
"Oh great Wufei! You made me forget what I was thinking."
"Well, that was a short lived occasion," Wufei said as he put his agenda and pen away.
BBBRRRRIIIIIIIIII--
"Is that their bell?!" Quatre yelled over the unnaturally loud sound and the flood of girls pushing past them while he ducked the flying pen.
--IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII--
"Shut off already!" Heero said, not too calmly. The bell was beginning to sound way too much like a base's security breach alarm for his tastes.
--IIIIIINNNNNNGGGGG!!!!!!!
"Guess we should find our homerooms, too," Trowa said as he brought up his packet of papers (which he at least thought enough in advance to not lock them in the locker).
"Nah-- we don't have to," Duo drawled as the group started down the hall. "Don't you remember? We have to go to, like, room 38-- or maybe it was 39, for some announcement thingy or something like that."
As Duo was saying that, everyone else began to remember those instructions. So they took a left in the R-Kade then took the stairs which came up on their right all the way up to third floor, following some struggling panting freshman and seniors alike. As the boys traveled, they discovered their new classmates were concentrating on "making it to third floor" than who was around them and began to talk amongst themselves again.
"Duo, you didn't have to be so adamant about us going here," Heero said, actually _starting_ the conversation.
"Why Heero, whatever do you mean?" Duo asked with a "Southern Belle" accent while trying to play innocent.
Quatre didn't get the joke, however. "I believe he was talking about your 'we have to go to school because it's against the law not to and since we're enrolled here, we need to go to school here' speech."
Duo rolled his eyes at Quatre, let out an annoyed/amused sigh and said, "I knew what he meant. Give me some credit! It's just like when you guys weren't giving me credit for thinking of how they mistook our names for girl names-- HEY! That's it!"
"What's 'it'?" Trowa said with actual signs of surprise in his voice.
"That's what I had thought of earlier, BEFORE Wufei so rudely interrupted me." Duo said crossing his arms and glaring at Wufei. "I couldn't see how they could have mistaken our names to be female and then I figured it out and was _going_ to share it with you."
"Well, spit it out already," Wufei said as they just made it onto the second landing, almost to third floor.
"Fine, but just because you asked so sweetly." I don't think anyone would have been surprised if Duo HAD stuck his tongue out at Wufei with the face he was making. "Around here, boys mainly use the 'generic' names of Brian, Tim, and Steve. Since our names are nothing like that there _really_ isn't anything that could honestly pin them down to either gender, and you consider that there are girls here that with first names like Thao, Mallory, and Vihba, maybe our names didn't seem all that unusual, or masculine. Plus, Quatre is a Winner and the odds he'd be the one male child in that family was 1 to 30, if they even made the connection, probably didn't help much. Right?"
The other boys were stunned, and worried. Wufei grabbed Duo's shoulders and said, "Who are you and what did those onnas do with the real Duo?"
"Nope. They didn't do anything to me--" he seemed a little sad at that "--I'm still the same old Shingami."
"Good." Heero said, and Wufei let him go. "Oh, and something else to think about: 'How will Hilde react when she finds out you're going to an all _girl_ school?' You sure she isn't going to come storming down here and accuse you of being a player?"
That caused Duo to face fault. He frowned a little. Then, with a wry grin, said: "And how do you think Relena is going to react?"
Heero glared briefly at Duo then turned away, crossed his arms, and said, "There is nothing going on between us. Now we better get to 39 for whatever they need us for," which he proceeded to do at a very brisk walk, leaving the other four to silently snicker in his wake.
There were only a few people left in the hall as the boys walked down it with Trowa in the lead of the boys a bit of a distance behind Heero. All around them girls were yelling from one part of the hall to another, pushing and yanking things into lockers, slamming lockers shut, jamming locks locked, and rushing off to various rooms.
BBRRIINNGG!!
The second bell, the bell to signal the start of homeroom, rang short and sweet just as the last girl stepped into a room. Around them the sounds of a morning prayer were heard. Ahead of them, Heero signaled that he had found 39 and proceeded to enter. The prayer ended and two girls could be heard all around the boys saying, "Good mor-morning Rosati!"
Then one voice took charge over the other and said, "Before we start the normal announcements, we have a special announcement from Sr. Joan. Sister?"
They were just outside the doorway when they heard, "Do to an unusual turn of events," Trowa entered the room and ran into Heero standing stock-still. "We have five new temporary students. As soon as they get here I'll--" the other three boys showed up "--Look, here they are now."
Suddenly, the next thing they knew the five boys were looking straight into a video camera's lens. "Why don't you introduce yourselves and tell us a little about your pasts?"
The air pressure in the building suddenly changed as every student swiftly gasped. "Oh... ah... a camera...." The very intelligent remark came from a very wide-eyed Duo. The other boys, minus Trowa, made quiet grunts of agreement.
The air pressure changed again. Squeals and joyful shrieks could be heard coming down and echoing throughout the halls of the building. The two senior announcers were heard be all to say, "So the rumors are true!!" and "YES! We're going co-ed!" Then they slapped hands and Sister Joan said something about how they were only _temporary_ students.
Heero and Wufei swallowed-- hard, when they heard that very same conversation with the very same voices from the hall behind them. They were being taped on a live feed to every room in the building. The situation was one that they had been caught completely unprepared for.
When his four companions didn't make any move to react to what Sister Joan had asked them to do, Trowa sighed and said, taking the unexpectedly offered microphone, "People call me 'Trowa Barton.' I'm 18 and we're all enrolled as juniors here." (I know that probably sounds screwy, but it'll make life easier on me to have Trowa have started school "a year late" than deal with figuring out a senior class schedule too. Oh-- BTW, if you haven't figured it out yet, this is after EW.)
Trowa pressed the mic into Heero's hands. Heero's face paled and he looked like a little lost child. His voice squeaked as he spoke into the thing saying, "Nani?" Trowa reminded him to speak English, "Gomen-- I go by 'Heero Yuy' and that's all you need to know."
Trowa took the mic back from Heero and almost gave it to Wufei but realized at the last moment that Wufei was mumbling near-nonsense in Chinese so Duo received it instead. He just stared at the microphone until Trowa nudged him and muttered "Name and about yourself."
Duo's mind kicked into gear and he said, "My name is Duo Maxwell and I may run high but I'll never tell a lie" automatically and without thinking it through. Trowa didn't think about the drug implications of that statement until it was too late. The typical goofy grin of Duo probably didn't help much either.
Duo numbly handed the mic backwards to Quatre, who said, "My name... is... uh... Quatre Winner." As soon as he said his last name, all of his father's "CEO training" kicked in and he overcame his case of camera-fright which all the boys but Trowa (who had preformed for things like that before with the circus, a benefit the other boys lacked and didn't get anytime before the camera unexpectedly turned on them to try and prepare for) were suffering from. Quatre's voice gained a sudden confidence and he figured out what was going on and exactly what _not_ to say to keep their identities a secret. "I'm from the L-4 space colony and am happy to have this opportunity to learn here, no matter how short that time may be."
Trowa signaled Quatre with a slight tilt of his head the Wufei still needed to go. Quatre immediately saw the Chinese boy was having the worst case of this fright of all the boys so he put his hand on the other boy's shoulder and said, "This is my friend Change Wufei, but you can just call him Wufei. He's one of the few remaining members of the L-5 space colony, which was an all-Chinese colony for all intents and purposes, do if he does or says anything thoroughly rude, please ignore it. He had some trouble adjusting to other cultures due to lack of exposure to them." Then Quatre flashed one of his award-winning smiles and the freshman of 34 and 37 could be heard either sighing or squealing.
Quatre handed the microphone to Trowa who handed it back to the announcer. One of the two seniors flashed this huge flirty grin at Trowa hoping he would give her a similar one back. When she didn't receive one, or any smile at all, she gave a little pout, decided to try again, and asked in a sugary-sweet, tooth-decaying voice, "So you two are from the space colonies? Are you all from there?" while giving Trowa "the eye."
Before Quatre, or any of the other boys, could say anything, Trowa put on his stern, impassive face and stepped in front of his friends. He assumed a 'big brother" role and said, "Don't you have to get back to your _normal_ routine? You mentioned other announcements earlier. Besides, we are supposed to be treated like normal students, _nothing_special_." With a sad, almost puppy-dog like face on, she turned to Sister Joan who glared just as sternly at the girl and agreed with Trowa. Begrudgingly she turned around to her chair and sat down stubbornly. She handed the microphone to her partner and the camera turned away from the boys as the girls started the announcements.
As soon as the camera was off of them, the boys returned to normal. Trowa relaxed his guard and moved to lean against the doorpost. Heero regained his emotionless mask to give the girls and cameraman, Mr. O'Keeffe, a DeathGlare. Duo let out a laugh at their fear and rolled his shoulders some to start relaxing his body again. Wufei detestfully removed Quatre's hand from his shoulder and said, "Keep your hands off of me, _Blondie_." Quatre, for his part, smiled a little less, relaxing those overly tense muscles and collapsed in the rolly chair behind him.
After the announcements, the girls returned to "interviewing" the boys who had relocated themselves to being gathered around the counter/peninsula thing, which worked as a divider between rooms 38 and 39. The girls were doing more flirting than interviewing and came up with more questions then answers for their trouble. Wufei ended up with sore ribs while Duo and Quatre developed sore left and right elbows.
Finally, as the atomic clocks approached 9:27 and the end of homeroom (which normally would have been 8:27, but they _were_ on snow schedule after all) the boys thought it might be smart to figure out where their schedules said they should be. Wufei took one real good look at the three pages of computer printout and shoved it away in disgust and confusion to proclaim quietly through clenched teeth, "This is an unjust schedule. I refuse to waste my time figuring it out if I'm barely going to be here to live through it. I'm going home."
"I don't get it either," Duo practically whined. He was trying to figure out what to do with all the stuff he had gotten that morning but he just couldn't figure it out. "There are computer codes easier to crack!!" He proclaimed as his tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. "But I'm not going to give up like a weak little..." 'Woman' would have been the next word, but between Wufei's growling and glaring and looking about ready to throw him to the ground... again, he reconsidered finishing the sentence.
One of the sophomores entering 38 for American History heard him, giggled some, and came over. She took his papers, agenda and a blank schedule, shuffled them a little then arranged them on the counter.
"Here's an explanation of our schedule," she said with a small smile and pointed to the following passage in the agenda:
THE MODULAR SCHEDULE:
Rosati-Kain High School follows a flexible schedule which offers students a combination of structured and unstructured time. Each day is divided into 26 fifteen-minute modules. Every six days of the cycle repeats itself. Emphasis is placed upon increased student-teacher contact. The advantage of a flexible... (BLAH BLAH BLAH-- I don't want to bore you by quoting any more)
"Since there are 26 mods in a day and letters in the alphabet," Wufei muttered something like 'In YOUR alphabet!' "So all our mods are lettered A-Z. The letters on the printout match up with the letters on the blank schedule. You fill out this blank schedule, matching them up Day by day, and you follow it. This column tells you where you classes are and this one who your teacher is." She said as she pointed to what she was talking about for Duo. The other boys "casually" watched her explanation. Only Duo and Wufei were the ones willing to admit their problems, though, and Wufei only begrudgingly at that.
"Next, to figure out when you classes start," another sophomore said as she came over. Wufei almost rolled his eyes at them, but (as much as he would hate to admit it) they were telling him exactly what he needed to know. Duo was enjoying the attention and thinking of playing stupid a little more often. "You look at the times next to the letters and they tell you when the mod starts. You get the three minutes before that time to be in the halls to get where you need to go. Today follow this schedule over on the right, our shortened school day schedule, but add an hour to it to get our snow schedule."
"Really?" The other girl asked. "I didn't know that. So snow schedule is just 1:42 with an hour delay?"
"Yeah," one of the seniors said, annoyed at being ignored by the hot guys. "Sophomores... almost as bad as freshman." She maneuvered herself so that she was blocking the two sophomores (who Wufei and Duo liked better than the senior because they were ACTUALLY trying to help, not hit on them, although Wufei still considered them weak) and asked, "Is there anything else you need?"
"Could you tell us what 'day' were suppose to follow?" Quatre asked cheerfully.
The senior looked down at Quatre, flipped her head of hair, and said, "Yeah, it's a day 1." Then flipped her head back and looked right at Wufei, "Anything I can do for you?"
"NO." He said abruptly and gathered his things. He led the rest of the guys out. Duo and Quatre lingered a little to apologize for their friends and thank the girls for helping them.
Now a new adventure was about to begin. The boys were going to adventure into the world of classes at this school.
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Hmmmm... I got a little long winded there at that last part, didn't I? Sorry about that, but we have a very different schedule from most schools (At least around here where block-schedules are the norm (AG! GAG! If RK ever does that then we all will seriously complain. We love our schedules, even if it gets a little confusing.))
So, how am I doing? Like it? Hate it? Come on! Tell me peeps! Feedback is greatly appreciated! Give me class suggestions (they're all going to have Morality (Religion) because that's going to be HILARIOUS!!!!) and tell me how you think they should do in it. I'll see what I can do, but we have no home-ec type course so don't suggest that (I wouldn't know how that course would go anyway.
"Thank you" to everyone who helped me with the last question of the previous fic. Now you just got the question for this time (he-he... this is a fun fic!)
Thanx, Axisor
:þ
OH-- and I'd like to thank my fabulous beta-reader Sailor_Silver_Moon and all those people at Rosati who have kept on my back for more of this story.