A good
fifteen minutes later, the doors to the classroom finally slammed open,
and a tall, middle-aged woman who looked much younger than her years tottered
into the room on thin spiked heels. Her poofy red hair and air of cheap
perfume instantly made Wufei shudder. It made Heero confused, when he realized
that his bomb instructor was what appeared to be a housewife, before he
considered the idea that this was all just a very clever disguise. A very
clever disguise, indeed, Heero decided, as he watched the red-haired teacher
take a lazy puff of the cigarette in her hand.
"Hi,
kids," the teacher called out brightly. "I'm Mrs. Bundy, and I will be
your teacher for this...this...whatever this class is supposed to be."
A short black kid with plaid pants pulled up
to his nipples by red suspenders and huge wire-rimmed glasses called out
smartly, "It's called Home Economics, Mrs. Bundy. You're supposed to teach
us how to cook and clean."
Mrs. Bundy looked appalled by the very thought
of doing just that. A funny, tense smile guiltily crossed her features,
as she tee heed out, "Well, we'll just see about that."
Meanwhile, way over in Room 3.00, Trowa was seated stiffly in his seat, waiting for the Speech and Drama teacher to make his dramatic entrance. The students lounging around the room were chattering animatedly, apparently none strangers to either speech or drama, gesturing energetically while they spoke. They reminded Trowa of Duo...a room full of male and female versions of Duo. Long-haired and short-haired, pale-skinned and dark-skinned, blonde and brunette, tall and short...Yeah. If he just squinted one eye a little, and left the one underneath his massive shock of bronze-colored bangs alone, Trowa mused, all of his classmates would look just like Duo--even the girls.
Just
then, the lights of the room snapped off with a start, plunging the entire
classroom in darkness. As the students murmured out their protests, heavy
metal music started playing, and the distinctive silhouette of a person
could be seen, outlined in the doorframe. The figure turned around as the
music continued to play, and the lights went back on. Despite having half
his face covered by his hair, Trowa's vision was still perfectly fine,
and with that perfectly fine vision the former pilot of Heavyarms could
see a rugged, muscular man in his late twenties, with long, dark blonde
hair and a scrag of a beard, wearing an open silver shirt over very, very
shiny black pants. However, Trowa was Trowa and not Duo, and thus did not
get distracted by the shiny object. Instead, he turned his attention to
the muscular blonde teacher of Speech and Drama as said teacher turned
off the little handheld tape recorder which had dramatically played his
entrance music, and whipped out a microphone from behind his back.
"All
right, juniors, welcome to Speech and Drama is Jericho!" he began in an
arrogant voice that just sounded plain mean to Trowa's ears. "My name is
Mr. Jericho, and if you little assclowns would please SHUT THE HELL UP,
then I can get this Speech and Drama course started, right here, right
now, in the middle of this ring--I mean, classroom!"
Trowa blinked. It was going to be a long--not
to mention both insulting and noisy--class that lied ahead of him.
On the east side of Infinity Academy where the Health and Family Life classrooms were located, Duo Maxwell was bouncing around in his seat like a hyperactive, braided howler monkey, nearly pulling his hair out in anticipation as he eagerly awaited for Sex Education to start. Much to the American ex-pilot's disappointment, however, the man who would be teaching Sex Ed. apparently wasn't planning on coming out anytime soon, as Duo glanced impatiently at his watch and frowned, noticing that after thirty seconds it would mark the forty-fifth minute anniversary of his Sex Ed. teacher and the bathroom.
Finally,
Duo heard a loud flushing sound, and the teacher came out with a newspaper
tucked under one arm, an average-looking, somewhat stooped middle-aged
man with thinning dark brown hair. Duo's hand almost instinctively went
to his nose, as he noted with displeasure that his Sex Ed. teacher reeked.
And extreme foot odor was a major turn-off for pretty much everyone--and
that included Duo. Either way, foot odor and reek-ness, Duo was going to
have to cope with that, as his teacher introduced himself.
"All
right, class," he began, as he started walking down the aisles and handing
down bananas to all the students. "My name is Mr. Bundy, and for some reason
I'll never understand, I'll be your Sex Education teacher for the next
one-hundred-and-seventy-nine days."
A hand shot up.
"What
is it?" Mr. Bundy asked irritably, continuing to hand out bananas.
"Yeah,
Mr. Bundy? My name's Duo, Duo Maxwell," Duo began. "I was just wondering...will
you just be teaching us about sex, or will you be bringing in special guests
to demonstrate how it's done?"
Mr. Bundy looked at his extroverted student as
if he were nuts, before shrugging and muttering, "How should I know; I
always try to avoid doing it whenever I can."
"But
surely you must teach us about something--" Duo persisted. Mr. Bundy placed
down a banana on his desk.
"Actually,
I will," he murmured, and headed off to the front of the classroom. Duo,
meanwhile, had failed to hear what he'd said, as he peered at the banana
greedily. Yum, he thought to himself, I haven't had a classroom
snack since I was just a little bitty Shinigami in kindergarten!
While
Duo peeled open the banana, Mr. Bundy took out a small paper packet, but
before he could do anything, a very familiar called out innocently, "But
Mr. Bundy, what will we need moist towelettes for?", taking notice of said
paper packet. Mr. Bundy again gave Duo that What-are-you-crazy? look, before
shrugging it off and turning to face the class.
"Now,"
he began, tearing open the little paper packet with the 'moist towelette'
in it and holding up the stick of banana, "The way you put on a--"
Mr. Bundy was promptly interrupted by loud chomping
sounds, as he and the rest of the class turned around as one to see Duo
greedily finishing off his banana. The braided American must have sensed
something was up, because he looked innocently at all the staring eyes
fixed on him. Cheeks stuffed with mushed bananas, Duo mumbled through a
mouthful of banana paste, "What? What did I do?"
Mr. Bundy wearily raked a hand through his thin
brown hair.
"Well
apparently, you've just eaten the chance you've got at populating the Earth
with little Duos," he muttered grumpily.
Toward the center of the school lied the Gym, which had just been remodeled earlier that year, and which now housed a class of youths clad in ash gray sweatshirts over white Infinity T-shirts and matching sweatpants. Quatre sat in the middle of the group, tensely plucking at his tacky gray sweatpants and waiting for the coach of the wrestling team to arrive. Unlike his unluckier fellow G-boys, however, the blonde Arabian didn't have to wait for long, as the wrestling coach promptly made his grand appearance inside the gym as soon as the bell rang. He was a muscular, dark-haired man in his early thirties, with sky-blue eyes and a goofy smile on his face. Decked out in a navy-blue Olympic sweatsuit and with an array of gold medals hanging proudly around his neck, the wrestling teacher chirped brightly, "Hi! My name's Coach Angle, and I'm going to be teaching you how to wrestle! It's true, it's true"
Quatre
watched his wrestling coach nervously, but for the moment Coach Angle appeared
perfectly content to just talk.
"And
before any of you say anything," the coach was rambling, "No, wrestling
isn't just grown men in their underwear faking punches at each other. That's
professional wrestling, anyway. What I'm going to be teaching you is amateur
wrestling, and believe me, it won't include flying all over the ring and
hitting each other with steel chairs. Oh, it's true, it's true..."
Quatre sighed. Make that rant endlessly, he silently
corrected himself, as he fought to keep from tuning out Coach Angle's words.
"Now,
as you may all have noticed, I am wearing genuine gold medals around my
neck," the coach was saying. "One of these is an Olympic gold medal I won
in freestyle wrestling about five years ago. It's true, it's true. It was
a tough job, but with my three I's--Intensity, Integrity, and Intelligence--I
managed to make my dreams come true and become an Olympic champion. And
it wasn't easy to do. Oh, no, I had to wrestle all over the world to get
more practice. In fact, there was this one time when I flew to Russia..."
Fifty Minutes Later...
"...And
that is how I won my Olympic gold medal, despite my broken neck, it's true,
it's true." Coach Angle finally seemed to have finished his rant. He then
glanced around at his trainees--most of which had fallen asleep or were
on the verge of doing so. Irritated, the coach blew sharply on his whistle,
waking up all of his pupils.
"All
right, boys," he began. "Let's begin your first day of wrestling!"
Quatre got up, somewhat at ease. Despite his
tendency to ramble, Coach Angle had come off as a rather nice, somewhat
naive man, and he didn't feel quite as intimidated as he did at the beginning
of the class.
"Now,
I want your first wrestling experience to be the same as that of my overwhelming
Olympic medal victory," Coach Angle was saying. He then suddenly whipped
out a sledgehammer, and pointed at Quatre and another boy. "Why don't you
two come on up here so that I can break both your necks and you can begin
wrestling each other for this fake gold medal?"
