O_O Bizarre. Tell me what you think?

Slayers ain't mine. Dammit.



Owards!



EXTENDED DETENTION



No one could pretend that Zelgadis was the best of students. Despite his natural, raptor-quick intelligence, he only scored above the median and never greater.

Perhaps it was his pride that refused him the leisure of being simply average. Oh, that would have been sweet, he decided finally, the seventeen- year-old sprawled over his bed. His hair, dyed a particularly fine shade of blue(to his eye) flopped back over his face as he lay on his back and contemplated the ceiling from a bed-top vantage point.

God knew he didn't care for school.

All those nincompoops crawling over the walls and desks there. Idiots, slackjaws, meatheads and morons all of them. It was (and he truly shuddered to think of this possibility in the neat, orderly bedroom where the sheets had hospital corners and no posters hung on the wall to ruin the paintjob), well, the school was *dirty*.

Capsulated within the four blank walls of his cool room only lit by a hesitant sun from the windows, Zelgadis shuddered quite realistically. Humanity just *had* to be so filthy. He even entertained the idea that it was directly to spite him, but shoved that thought from his mind as quickly as possible.

It wouldn't do to go mad, now would it?

The walls seemed to murmur in agreement. No, it wouldn't do at all.

That was when he realised that he hadn't blinked for several minutes now. A fly was creeping over the flesh on the back of his hand. He didn't bother to swat it.



*



Lina snarled and dealt the unworthy and uncooperative beast a truly vicious blow across its unblinking face. It fell to the floor in a jumbled heap and moved no more. She exhaled heavily and swiped her fiery red bangs from ruby eyes.

"God damn 'puters,"

Gourry looked up from the other side of the room where he was seated at a rickety card table, a styrofoam pot of instant noodles cradled protectively within the crook of his arm lest Lina make a move for them. The room's peeling paint and dilapidated floors seemed to whistle as the wind gusted outside in the dark. "It can't fight back, Lina. That's not really fair."

"You. . .you. . .YOGURT BRAIN!" She exploded at the blonde football player with all the tempestry of a Hawaiian volcano and gave a swift kick to a wayward keyboard. It sailed through the air, narrowly missing the other teen's head as he ducked. "Computers aren't PEOPLE! It doesn't matter if it's FAIR or not! Jeeze!"

"Sorry, Lina," he wheedled, and mentally shook his head as the hacker stormed around her tiny apartment in a cloud of unfocused aggression. People may say that he got the raw end of the deal by being her best friend, but Gourry disagreed. What would Lina do without him?

Well, she would be sad.

Gourry gulped his noodles quickly, trying never to think of such a thing. Make Lina sad? He'd punt the loser who tried that across the field!

She needed him.



*



Xelloss wiggled his eyebrows at the strange blue-haired kid who sat across the row from him, and was rewarded with a deep set scowl and a view of the other boy's shoulders as he turned away. Xelloss shrugged, and went back to doodling a picture in the margin of his Biology notes.

"Mr. Metallium!"

Languidly he raised his violet eyes, as if deigning to answer the teacher's 'request'. She pursed her lips at the front of the class. The overhead projector's light gave her puckered features a ghoulish cast as she spoke.

"Sir, you will pay attention! Am I clear?"

"Crystal clear," he responded, adding a sharp nod into the deal. And then, a moment later, added to himself. "Clearly a bony old nag."

*snap!*

He flicked his notebook closed as he sensed rather than saw foreign eyes from across the row on his paper. He glanced over, surprised to see the blue-haired boy looking chagrined and sinking back into his desk. Interesting, though, that one almost seemed to be grinning in a particularly wicked manner as if he enjoyed what he had seen.

Xelloss' own lips stretched back across his teeth in a knife-slash grin of satisfaction. Evidently the other boy could be something like himself. It would be interesting to have a partner-in-business to raise Hell with.

He shrugged faintly and went back to his art.

In the margin of Xelloss Metallium the boy delinquint, trouble maker and resident school badass' paper was a detailed and realistic reindition of the cranky old Bio prof being dissected alive by the lab animals. A vole held her heart.

Mrs. Stewerd, the aforementioned 'hag', took in the slit-eyed expression of the boy in the third row back as he scribbled something in his binder and decided not to call on him again.

He gave her such a chill.

Him and that other boy both.



*



"Now!" cried Amelia as she clapped her hands in front of her chest and took in the students whose names had been called to help on the student council. Their job was to budget paint for the new lockers installed in the English- slash-Humanities wing. No one paid her the slightest attention.

A melancholy boy with vampire-pale flesh hunched off to the side, head bowed to show the few hairs with natural remaining color on the nape of his neck.

An angry redhead who was speaking animatedly with a thick-set blonde near the front. She had the poor boy by the shirtfront, and was shaking him. His head lolled back and forth, neck seemingly made of jelly.

"N-N-Now L-L-Li-n-n-n-A!"

'Lina' ignored his protests and continued on with the abuse.

The fourth child, a Xellos Metallium, simply smirked at the entire scene of uncontrolled chaos and gave her a jaunty wave when her gaze swallowed him.

Why had she, Amelia Philionel, been chosen for this hellish duty? Why? Did the justice in her heart not shine bright enough? Had she done something to offend daddy, the school Principal?

She nervously bit down on her nails and yelped in pain. They had been nibbled down the quick. Deep breaths, she thought, and followed her own advice by imagining a smooth blue coastline.

"Everyone.. . ." she started. She could see clearly the back of Lina's head, the blur of Gourry's, the side of Xelloss' and the top of Zelgadis'. She took a breath. "EVERYONE!"

Amelia smiled sweetly in the newest silence and picked up the chalk. "Shall we begin?"

A few heads bobbed with gaping mouths in agreement.

She would shine with justice!



-fini-



To be continued..?