Chapter 3: The Dilemmas of Being a Staff Member

Miss Jen had decided that caffeine was a very good thing.

It had been three nights since she had gotten a decent night's sleep. There were just too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. She had to sort applications, hire her staff, write up class schedules, keep the Minis in line, and various other things, but several bottles of caffeinated soda had seen that she managed it all.

Now the caffeine was quickly wearing off, and she was having a hard time resisting the urge to pass out on the table.

A two-foot-tall Dullahan poked her leg with the hilt of its sword.

"Go away, Issac. I'm busy."

If Issac the Mini-Dullahan had a face, or even a head for that matter, he most likely would have frowned. Since he had neither, he instead poked her again.

"Issac, can't you see I'm tired? Shoo." She waved a hand at him.

"Overworked and underpaid as usual, I see."

She glanced up. "Oh. Felix. Hi."

Felix shook his head as he watched her. "You're wearing yourself out. You need to get some rest."

"I know." She let out a yawn. "I know. But there's still so much more to do."

"You leave that to Isaac and I. We're the heads of faculty; we'll take care of everything."

"I hear Saturos is starting his class early?" Miss Jen raised an eyebrow, resting her head on the table before her. The table itself was still covered in paperwork.

Felix chuckled. "You'd best believe it. Five o' clock sharp on Thursday morning."

"Villainy 101 will be an amusing class to teach, I imagine," Miss Jen said. "And you? How are your preparations going?"

Felix made a face at this. "Those . . . those 'fanfictions' you wanted me to read . . ."

"Felix, I'm sorry, but in order to know what to teach, you have to know what needs repair."

His eye twitched slightly. "I think my students don't know the difference between angst and whining."

"Well, that's what you're there for, isn't it?" Miss Jen felt another poke at her leg. "Issac, if you don't stop that, you won't get to Formina Sage any of the students."

The Mini-Dullahan sheathed his sword and crept away.

Felix watched him go. "If he had a mouth, he'd be performing an innocent whistle right about now."

"Either that, or cursing me out." Miss Jen's head still rested on the table. "Well, he's the leader of the Minis, while I'm the surrogate leader of this university, so I guess it's only fitting that he volunteered to be my bodyguard. And how is Fekix doing?"

The Mini at Felix's side raised its sword into the air. Felix looked down at it and grinned.

"I may not have as many lusters as Isaac or Picard, but the ones I do have will soon regret attempting to glomp me."

Miss Jen finally raised her head from the table. "Well, that's what the Minis are here for. The students need to suffer at the hands of their own misspellings."

"Believe me, I understand what you mean." Felix looked at a paper on Miss Jen's desk and winced. "Looks like I will have more lusters than I expected."

"Unfortunately for you, yes." Miss Jen straightened in her chair. "Are the students headed to housing?"

"Yes. The Generic Townspeople are taking them." The GT's were all the townspeople who had never been graced with names or character profiles in the games. There was quite a crowd of them, and since Miss Jen had recently required that they carry weapons at all times, she had little doubt that they could handle the students. And if things got out of hand, there were always the Mini-Dullahans.

The Mini-Dullahans were a curiosity of their own. In all Fanfiction Universities, the Mini-creatures would take on the names of characters whose names had been misspelled. At OFUW, however, the madness didn't end there. Miss Jen had taken the liberty of coming up with various other misspelling problems, especially ones for the names of misspelled locations and even weapons. Psynergy misspellings and item misspellings were rarer, but still frequent enough to warrant a special punishment for those who couldn't spell correctly. Miss Jen imagined combat training would be most amusing when watching someone use Kijimonchi—the weapon had such low power that it was more worthless than the Wooden Stick that Jenna carried around at the first of Golden Sun, not to mention that it inflicted various status ailments on the user. And the location misspellings . . . Miss Jen grinned as she pictured someone lost in the nonexistent plane of Lamarkan Desert.

The Minis themselves did come in handy, however. Though none of the students had seen one yet, Miss Jen suspected that the Minis would be happily ushering late students into Saturos's Villainy course come Thursday. Most members of the staff, including the teachers, kept a Mini with them at all times to serve as a bodyguard. Even a miniature Formina Sage could prove to be useful against a crowd of fangirls or angry authors.

Miss Jen imagined a random luster writhing under the True Collide of a Mini, and her face twisted into a sadistic smile.

"I see you're already having fantasies." Felix sighed. "I hate to interrupt them and all, but I wanted to speak to you about something."

"Oh? What is it?"

"Well, you see, Isaac and I were talking about how many of the students here have made Mary Sues in their writing careers. And we were trying to figure out a way to take care of it besides just talking about it in class—"

A loud siren cut him off. Miss Jen glanced at the alarm against the wall and scowled, slamming her palms onto the table as she stood up. "Already?! This is ridiculous! Where are all the Minis when you need them . . . Issac! Garete! Merandi! Come!"

The three Minis were at her side in an instant, all raising their swords.

"Follow me." Miss Jen turned to Felix and offered him a smile. "I'll have to talk to you about that later, Felix. I'm dreadfully sorry."

"No, no, it's not a problem at all." Felix gave her a nervous grin and waved a hand. "If duty calls, there's really nothing I can do about it, is there?"

Miss Jen shook her head and grabbed her jacket off the back of her chair. "Who do you think the victim is?"

"Well, I know that Isaac's up in his room, preparing for his class, so it can't be him. I'd guess that it's our Lemurian friend." Felix toyed with his ponytail. "Heaven knows there are enough of his obsessors at the school."

"What if it's not a guy, though? There are a lot of male students here as well." Miss Jen grabbed a clipboard off her desk, checking her jacket pocket to make sure she had some pencils and pens.

Felix rubbed his chin. "Mia."

"Her or Jenna," Miss Jen said. She gave Felix a quick nod. "I'll see you later." With that, she turned and walked out of the room at a rather brisk pace. Issac, Garete, and Merandi all followed her.

Felix turned and walked back over to the chessboard he had abandoned Saturos at. The Proxan was drumming his fingers on the tabletop as he watched Felix.

"So?" Saturos raised his eyebrows. "What's the news?"

"I didn't get a chance to explain PEST to her. The alarm went off before I got that far." Felix sighed and sat down, surveying the board. He grabbed his knight and moved it. "Check."

"Well, if PEST is to be of any use at all you need to bring it up soon, Felix. Otherwise we can't properly schedule it. You know that."

"Yes, I suppose I do."

"All the same, though, when duty calls . . ." Saturos moved one of his own pieces. "I'm guessing it's a Jenna-induced stampede."

"My money's on the Lemurian."

"You mean Picard? You make a good point. His ship is docked in the closest river, after all, and heaven knows how far fangirls will go for a simple glomp."

Felix winced. "A simple glomp? Saturos, have you read any of the so-called fanfics that our students have written?"

"Yes, and I know perfectly well what you're worried about. Quit fretting. If it is Picard, he can take care of himself. He's a big, tough man, after all."

There was a stretch of silence for a few minutes. The chess game continued.

"Do you think it'll really work, Saturos? I mean, I'm sick to death of being written out-of-character. Not to mention that the few lemons I have starred in have been less-than-pleasant."

"All we can do, Felix, is hope," Saturos replied. He moved another piece on the chessboard. "Checkmate."

Felix sighed. "I hope it does work, Saturos. Heaven knows I'm not getting near the beating some of the others are. Picard, for example, has starred in more lemons than the years I've been alive. So many fangirls here, and so many of them after him . . . And Alex, too! For such a manipulative fellow, he's rather well-liked."

"I heard that, Felix." Alex appeared out of nowhere and took a seat at the table. "But you're right. And I don't want to know what all these angry students will do to the Wise One. Of course, I'd like to do a little something to him as well, but that's another matter entirely. And Master Kraden probably won't be able to keep his class under control, since they all think he talks too much anyway."

They watched as one of the Minis, this one dubbed Sautros, walked by.

"At the very least, we do have a lot of students with who passionately dislike Dullahan," Felix said. "So they, at least, should defer to the Minis without much of a struggle."

"In theory, anyway," Alex added. "But things that work well in theory often don't turn out to be nearly as clear-cut in reality."

"You make a good point, sadly enough," Saturos said.

A few more Mini-Dullahans passed them.

"I wonder if Miss Jen's calling them. Could the stampede be that bad?" Felix tapped his fingers against the armrest of his chair.

At this point, a large crowd of Minis walked past the door, their swords out. The three watched them walk by, and Felix turned to Alex and Saturos with raised eyebrows.

Saturos shrugged and waved a hand in the air. "She'll handle it," he said. "With all those Minis, how could she not? Care for another game, Felix?"

Alex sighed and rested his chin on one hand, watching the two play another game of chess.

A few minutes later, Miss Jen stormed back into the staff room, soaking wet and followed by a long line of Mini-Dullahans, who were comparing the memorabilia they had gotten from their first stampede oppression. Among the memorabilia were several pieces of fangirl clothing and a good number of fried hairs.

"Quite a few of the students have now met the Minis!" Miss Jen said, grinning. "But just to ensure that this magnitude of a stampede doesn't happen again, would one of you talk to Picard when he wakes up? Tell him he's not allowed to go swimming in the river anymore unless he talks to me about it first and takes a Mini with him?" She motioned to the Minis, who carried the unconscious Lemurian into the room and set him on the floor. His chest was bare; all the man wore was a tight-fitting pair of navy leggings.

"Um, yes, I'll talk to him about that," Felix said. "It was that bad, was it?"

Miss Jen scowled. "We have so many OBHL here that I could scream at him for just thinking of something stupid like that."

"Would it be improper to ask how he got knocked out?" Alex asked, fiddling with a lock of his hair.

"Well, the fact that so many fangirls were swarming him at once didn't help much. They must have somehow pushed him under the surface of the river for long enough that he passed out. I'm sure he'll be fine though. He'll probably come around in a half-hour, maybe more. When he does, give him my message. Oh, also, tell him to stay in the staff wing for the rest of the day. I have to go change." Miss Jen whirled around. Her cloak, under normal circumstances, might have done something dramatic like fly out into the air and give the impression that she was Powerful, Intimidating and Very Important. Under the circumstances, though, all the drenched cloak did was make an odd splatting sound as it smacked against her legs.

Soon she was gone.

"Well, I think it's safe to say that I'll wait until she's in a better mood to talk to her about PEST," Felix said. "The first day of orientation week—not even classes, but orientation week—and we have a stampede. I guess that's bound to make anyone upset."

Alex sighed and looked down at Picard. "Sadly, this is going to be only the first of the problems we're going to have to deal with." He looked up. "May Fate have mercy on us all."

"Amen," Felix and Saturos chorused. Felix glanced down at the chessboard and sighed.

"We can only hope that at some points, the students will understand that we're only trying to help them."

"So, Felix, what's this pest you keep mentioning?" Alex asked.

"P-E-S-T. It's a program Isaac and I came up with to help control the creation of Mary Sues and Gary Stues. Saturos helped with some of the aspects of it."

"What good am I as a villain if I can't be a little maniacal every now and again?" Saturos grinned.

"Anyway, the whole basis of it is that there's a large number of students who have written Mary Sues, and . . ."

Picard groaned and sat up, rubbing his head.

"That was sooner than expected," Saturos said. "Miss Jen didn't expect you up for at least another fifteen minutes."

"I'm different from most people, remember," Picard replied. He rubbed his head with one hand. "I should have known better. The instant I step into the river, fangirls came out of nowhere! They materialized from the very trees! They rose from the ground like zombies!"

The other three staff members exchanged glances. "You're exaggerating, Picard. I believe we all would if we had an experience like yours," Alex said. "Oh, and Miss Jen said that you're not permitted to swim outdoors anymore without talking to her first. And she wants you to stay in the staff wing for the rest of the day."

"It's not like I'd go out there again of my own accord," Picard said. "Not before getting some clothes on, anyway." He rubbed his arms. "I'll talk to you later. I think I have a suggestion for your Villainy 101, Saturos."

"Delighted to hear it. Just come talk to me anytime."

Picard got up and walked out, Felix and Saturos returned their attention to their chess game, and Alex shrugged and vanished into thin air.

Author's Notes

--I had to decide on what to call the Lemurian, and since most applicants marked Picard as their preferred name, that is what I'll call him in narration from now on. Unless I write a POV chapter, in which he'll be referred to as whichever name that character prefers.