The scandal continues: see the beginning for all disclaimers.
~ * Part Two: A Little Game of Kiss and Tell (But Who's Telling?) * ~
"World Class Medafighter is Screwing Around!"
So shrieked the headline on the special edition bulletin Erika had put out dealing with what she had witnessed. It had taken almost the entire night, plus coming in early that morning in order to get everything printed out, but it didn't matter.
In fact, nothing seemed to matter. Erika studied the bold headline with an oddly devoid of emotion expression on her face, brown eyes empty. She felt… nothing at that moment. Like she'd cried out all her anger and betrayed feelings and sorrow last night, and simply was too worn out to feel anything other than exhaustion for the time being.
Some little part of her in the very back of her mind, however, noted that this wasn't likely to last. Surely later on it would dawn on her again, and all the pain and tears would start up once she was somewhere private.
Not here, though. Not in school, surrounded by her peers. For now, best to play the role of the unaffected journalist reporting the latest scoop. Neutrality, even faked, was the ticket. Neutrality…
(Yeah. Right…)
~ * ~
Ikki Tenryou was not having a good day.
Actually, to be a bit more accurate, he hadn't been having a good day since the previous afternoon. By the time he'd snapped out of his 'Oh-my-God-did-Samantha-really-just-KISS-me!?' stupor, the sun had sunk too low for him to have any hope of getting back home before dark. To his credit, he'd made a valiant effort despite the fact that the waning light and ever-vanishing sun was against him.
His mother and Metabee had been waiting for him. Chidori greeted him with gentle admonishments about staying out late and worrying her so; Metabee greeted him with screams and a Seeker Missile that only a frantic dash to his bedroom had prevented from lodging itself up the boy's rear. Both had been concerned about his safety, but expressed it in very different manners.
It hadn't helped in the slightest that for some strange reason, all Ikki could think about as he laid in bed and attempted to sleep was Samantha and that kiss. Well, that and how pretty she looked standing in front of the lake… her long chestnut hair shimmering in the fading sunlight…
It took several minutes of banging his head repeatedly against the wall for him to finally reach a state of relative unconsciousness.
Then, sometime that night, once he'd slipped into blissful slumber despite the aching bumps on his forehead, he'd dreamed. Not of robattling his way to the number one slot or winning some grand tournament, either.
No, his subconscious had decided it was against him as well, and speculated on what it might have been like had he returned the kiss instead of just standing there like a complete idiot.
His dream self had proven to be very receptive to the kiss, indeed: his arms had wrapped around the smaller, slighter girl, pulling her closer until he could feel her heartbeat against his chest, trapping her mouth with his… Feeling a smug sense of victory as he saw her intense aquamarine eyes widen with surprise, then light with pleasure and delight as she hugged him a bit tighter…
Opening his eyes to find them inches away from a pair of very shocked and pissed off bright green eyes had not been pleasant at all.
On the plus side, untangling himself from the furious Metabee and racing to get out of the house before he got killed over the little misunderstanding ensured he was going to be at school on time.
But that didn't help Ikki's mood much as he trudged toward the front gates, resigned to another boring day at school. Hopefully the time would pass quickly and he'd be able to focus on the really important things, like robattling or wooing Karin… not the stupid stuff he was forced to do instead in class.
That wasn't likely, of course. But, he could always dream… With a heavy sigh, Ikki rounded the corner and walked into the schoolyard.
And found himself face-to-face with a mob of students.
"Wha…"
Before Ikki had a chance to finish his surprised exclamation, the crowd had surrounded him, and the poor boy found himself pelted with questions, comments, and suggestions from every side. It was all he could do to look around wildly in a futile attempt to see everyone who was talking to him, throwing out unwanted advice, observations, praise and demands.
"Man, what was it like?"
"Does she bite?"
"You know what I think? I think…"
"What's it taste like?"
"Did you go French or just normal?"
"What the heck do you see in her?"
"How'd you snag her like that?"
"Was it a dare? Or did you lose a bet with somebody?"
"What a prize…! You beat her in a robattle to make her do that?"
"Is she any good? Are you any good?"
"…Know what I think? I think…"
Flustered, confused by the rapid-fire questioning, and just wondering what the heck everyone was so excited about, Ikki squirmed nervously until he finally located an opening and made a break for it, rushing toward the school building with the majority of the mob behind him. Somehow, he managed to make it inside, and burst through the doors, panting hard.
After catching his breath, the first thing Ikki noticed when he opened his eyes was a school newspaper somebody had dropped on the floor. For a few minutes, he just gazed down at it in silence while gasping for breath, letting blood flow back to his brain again.
Once he recovered from his sprint, the exact subject of the cover article slapped him full in the face, and the boy face-faulted, then sprang back up, gripping the paper with white-knuckled hands. His blue irises were mere dots in his saucer-sized eyes as they scanned over the front page.
"World Class Medafighter is Screwing Around!"
Just underneath that, a full color photograph of him. With Samantha. Standing in front of the lake. Lip-locked.
"…Oh, KUSO!"
"Ten-ryouuu!"
The already horrified Ikki felt his pounded heart lurch violently at the enraged yell, then drop deep into the pit of his stomach. Although his mind shrieked 'RUN LIKE HELL', his body, ever defiant and acting against all survival instincts, slowly swung around. His head tilted back and Ikki forced a very weak smile as he stared up at the towering bulk of Coach Mountain.
"Tenryou! Don't you know I don't appreciate hearing those words on school grounds?" the muscular fitness freak grated. His glare shifted down to the paper his trembling victim was holding, and his frown deepened as he added, "I'm not exactly one for PDAs, either."
"P…PDAs, sir…?"
"Public Displays of Affection!" bellowed Coach Mountain, emphasizing each word.
"…O-oh… Bu-but that happened outside of the school, Coach," Ikki heard himself say.
(My God! I must have a death wish! Even my own mouth's against me!)
Coach Mountain's face darkened, and Ikki could almost see tiny thunderbolts crackling across his forehead as the growing storm churned. The worst part was that his stubborn legs still refused to work, leaving the poor boy stranded and defenseless in front of this trembling mountain of rage.
"Tennn-ryouuu…"
(If I'd have known I was going to die today, I would have gone ahead and returned that kiss Samantha gave me… Wait a second, where did THAT come from?!)
"Is there a problem here?"
Ikki nearly cried with joy. Salvation! In the form of a squat, balding bespectacled man in a dark suit that just happened to be the Principal.
…Okay, so Salvation wasn't in its most physically appealing right now. That didn't mean that Ikki didn't feel like he could almost kiss the man for showing up right then.
Almost.
"Nothing's the matter, sir!" Coach Mountain insisted, fixing Ikki with a steady glare in an attempt to keep the boy from slipping away. "I was just in the process of disciplining this troublemaker…"
"Really?" the Principal smiled kindly at Ikki, giving the student the distinct impression that he had winked at him behind those thick glasses. "Really now, Coach, I hardly think that Tenryou's extra-curricular activities are of any concern to us…"
(Extra…curricular? Oh no, please tell me he doesn't mean…)
Bending over a bit so that he was on better eye level with the sweating student, the Principal kept smiling warmly as he stage-whispered, "Just try to keep those youthful passions reined in as best you can on school grounds. Best try not to make us older folks jealous, right…?"
(…Oh, KUSO!)
"…Ye-yes sir," he stammered, cheeks blazing a bright crimson to match his shirt.
The Principal grinned, nodded, then straightened up and led a protesting and sputtering Coach Mountain away. Thanks to his timely intervention, Ikki had just been spared another one of the stern drillmaster's long and grueling penalty exercise detentions.
Now he was seriously wondering if he might have actually preferred suffering through that instead.
~ * ~
"Hey. Have you taken a look at Erika's newest story?"
Spyke looked over at his fellow Screw and nodded slowly, turning around the paper he was holding to reveal the scandalous headline and picture plastered on the front. The taller boy's expression still held hints of the utter shock he'd felt the instant he laid eyes on the cover, but gradually he seemed to be regaining some thought processes.
"What do you make of it?" asked Sloan, shaking his head slowly, looking stuck somewhere between disbelief and slow acceptance. "I'd have figured she'd made it using editing, if I didn't know that she went off to meet…"
"…Her secret admirer," finished Spyke, wide-eyed. "Her secret admirer is… Ikki?"
"Looks like it." Sloan suddenly cracked a half-smirk as he added, "Well, not so secret now, I suppose…"
"Sloan! Do you realize what this means?!"
"Um… Ikki and Samantha are sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I…"
"No!" Spyke shook his head violently, then paused and relented, "Well, maybe… But that's not what I meant!"
"…So what do you mean…?"
"Don't you get it! Boss is in love!"
"…Love…? With Ikki…?"
"Yes!"
"…Whatever. She can do better than that," Sloan muttered, crossing his arms.
"Yeah, I know. But this means… no more worrying about somebody like Nathan showing up again!"
Sloan blinked. The amount of venom he'd heard in Spyke's tone as he mentioned the soccer player's name was rather surprising considering who it was coming from.
"…Come again?"
"Wasn't Nathan," and again Spyke's inflection of that name was oddly hateful, "the reason Boss nearly gave up on medabots before? He… changed her! He made Boss act all weird and not like herself!"
Sloan nodded slowly, recalling that entire debacle. He was beginning to see where Spyke was trying to go with this, even though the taller boy wasn't exactly known for his reasoning skills.
"So you think… if she's with Ikki… he won't change her like that? How can you be sure?"
"Sloan," Spyke gave his friend a strange look, "Ikki hangs with Erika all the time."
Sloan blinked again, then caught on. He nodded, slowly: for once, Spyke had a very valid point.
"Ahh… Gotcha."
Spyke nodded, smirking at his own admittedly sound (for once) logic. However, his smile quickly faded, replaced by concern and disappointment.
"Still… I wish Boss'd told us 'bout this sooner, 'stead of letting us find out with everybody else…"
"She probably wanted to keep it a secret," shrugged Sloan, not appearing too fazed.
Although he was actually just as surprised and saddened as his fellow Screw that they hadn't learned about this sooner, he tended to be better at masking his emotions and appearing more laid-back. Besides, Samantha was the Boss: whatever she said or did – or didn't say or do – went as law for the gang. If she had chosen not to fill them in on all the details right after they occurred, there had to be a perfectly good reason for it.
Pity Sloan was having such difficulty thinking of one right now.
"We can always ask her about it now," he mentioned, shrugging lightly again.
"That's right!" Spyke suddenly agreed, mood swinging from mopey to upbeat in a heartbeat. "Hey, where is Boss, anyway? Let's go find her and…"
The warning bell rang out clearly in the halls, letting everybody still milling around talking about the big news know it was time to move on to other matters for the time being.
"…Maybe after class," Sloan corrected him lowly, before the two Screws hurried off to their first hour classes.
~ * ~
Samantha trudged to her first hour class, dropped her books unceremoniously on the ground, and then leveled a frosty glare around her. The vast majority of her classmates, having stared at the girl from the moment she entered the room, hastily averted their eyes to the front of the room. Only a few of her peers remained staring at her for a few moments longer before they, too, withered under the force of her powerful glare.
In his own seat, Ikki squirmed uncomfortably, trying to ignore the fact that the other half of the couple that was suddenly the talk of all of Riverview Junior High. Naturally, he failed utterly: the attempt only drew more attention to him, and the furtive glances he ended up aiming at the Screw leader caused more hushed whispers to spring up among his classmates.
Spyke and Sloan were among the whisperers, sharing quick, meaningful glances between themselves as they studied their leader and tried to figure out how to approach her. Both ached to find out more, but both knew from experience it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to try and get anything from her she didn't want to give. Not without a fight, at least, something neither wanted at all…
Samantha aimed an especially harsh and cold stare at her supposed boyfriend, then grabbed one of her textbooks and propped it up in front of her, pretending to read.
Erika looked between the two subjects of her latest big story, deep chocolate eyes hardened into stone, revealing nothing of the raging emotions just beneath her calm exterior.
Ikki just sighed again and slumped down in his seat, trying to make himself as tiny as possible. He buried his head behind his crossed arms, peering out at everyone and knowing they were talking about him and his girlfriend…
This promised to be a very long day…