Lloyd to the rescue :)
Mild bit of swearing, mild schoolyard violence and no spoilers.
Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of Symphonia.
Lloyd was very very angry. He was trying to explain to a teacher who didn't seem interested in listening that he hadn't started a fight and that neither he nor Colette should get the blame for it.
After the day when they'd shared lunch together Lloyd and Colette had become close friends. Lloyd had been pleased to see that when he was around the bullies left Colette alone. And Lloyd was around a lot, where you found Colette you found Lloyd more often than not. None of the bullies was brave enough to try and start a fight with Colette when they knew Lloyd would step in to protect her.
However one day one of the girls who had sat next to Lloyd at lunch before he'd spent his lunchtimes with Colette had gotten jealous. She was used to always getting what she wanted, being a spoiled brat, and didn't like seeing the girl she perceived as being the geeky little drab klutz hanging around with Lloyd.
So she'd gone to see one of the older boys whom she could wrap around her little finger with a bit of eyelash fluttering and cute posing and suggested something to him.
He'd gone away from the conversation believing that if he turned Colette back into the scared little mouse she'd once been he'd get a date with the brat girl. She had no intention of holding up her end of the bargain of course, but he didn't know that.
Colette and Lloyd had decided to have lunch outside that day as the weather was nice. Colette was sitting in a spot of shade under a tree, watching a butterfly flutter lazily past and waiting for Lloyd to return from the main school building when a large shadow loomed over her. She looked up just as the great hulk of a boy had kicked a bunch of dirt at her.
Lloyd walked out of the school building and turned to where he and Colette had been sitting and saw a circle of students, which usually signified a fight. He frantically looked around for Colette and got a horrid sinking feeling in his gut when he couldn't see her. She hated fights, and stayed as far away from them as she could when they broke out in the school yard. The fact that he couldn't see her could only mean one thing.
He leapt into the crowd and pushed and shoved his way through. When he got close to the centre he began to yell "leave her alone!"
The students around him sensed that his presence would make the fight more interesting, and they moved to let him through.
He was furious when he saw what was happening at the centre of the clump of students. A large boy was kicking Colette, who was curled up in a small ball, whimpering in pain and, from the looks of it, barely conscious.
"LEAVE HER ALONE!" Lloyd screamed furiously at the boy. The bully landed one last kick on Colette before turning around slowly to face Lloyd, who felt sick as he saw Colette's small form crumple. She'd totally lost consciousness it seemed.
"Whadda ya want?" the boy drawled.
"What the HELL did you do that for?" Lloyd screamed. The boy didn't answer with words, he simply spat at Colette's small, limp body.
Lloyd yelled a blood-curdling war cry, grabbed a stick that was lying on the ground nearby and proceeded to swipe at the bully with it. He actually had no intention of fighting the boy while Colette was in her current state. He simply wanted the boy to leave for now, so that he could get Colette inside and get her some medical attention.
The boy, however, was in a mood for a fight.
He threw a punch at Lloyd which the smaller boy dodged with ease. This angered the bully and he continued to strike out at Lloyd more and more wildly and Lloyd kept dodging.
Suddenly Lloyd felt himself being lifted off the ground by someone who'd grabbed the back of his shirt. He dropped the stick he'd been holding and concentrated on trying not to get chocked. As he was swung around to face whoever had picked him up he vaguely noticed the crowd seemed to have dispersed and the bully was making a run for it.
Lloyd sighed with relief when he saw it was a teacher.
"Colette!" he pointed at her as the teacher put him down.
"I'm very disappointed with you Irving," the teacher said as he lifted Colette up and slung her over his shoulder.
It took Lloyd a few moments to realise the meaning of the words as he was busy rubbing his sore neck and feeling sick with worry for Colette who looked like a little rag doll when she was thrown over the teacher's shoulder.
A bleeding rag doll he noticed, wincing in sympathy at a particularly nasty looking wound.
"My office, NOW!" the teacher yelled."Hey! Wait! This isn't my fault! I didn't start this!" Lloyd said as he walked towards the school building. But his pleas fell on deaf ears.
It had taken ages for the teacher to finally listen properly and decide to let Lloyd go with a warning not to fight again and a couple of days detention.
Lloyd didn't care about what he would normally have considered an unfair punishment, he just wanted to make sure Colette was OK.
He skidded into the medical room, his boots squeaking loudly on the floor.
"Don't disturb her," the nurse said glaring at Lloyd before she left to attend to something elsewhere.
He pulled up a chair next to the bed Colette was laid out on and grabbed hold of one of her hands. She was still unconscious, and she looked smaller than usual in the plain white bed.
Lloyd ignored the bell signifying the end of lunch and the start of the next lesson, there was no way he could concentrate with Colette like this.
He wasn't sure how much time passed, but he was greatly relieved when Colette finally began to wake up.
She uttered a swear word Lloyd didn't know she knew.
"What happened?" she asked groggily. Lloyd leapt up from the chair and hugged her, being careful to be gentle and not to hit any of the nasty looking bruises that were appearing on her.
"Some sod beat you up" he said angrily, too enraged to care about his language. Collette swore again, and Lloyd hoped that he wasn't being a bad influence on her language.
"I assume they didn't catch who it was?" she asked. Lloyd sadly shook his head.
"Decided they'd give me a couple of detentions though," he sighed.
"Oh Lloyd," Colette frowned and hugged him.
"I don't get it, if you're the Chosen and everything why don't the teachers do more to protect you?" Lloyd asked.
"Exactly that," Colette answered, and received a puzzled look from Lloyd.
"It's because I'm the Chosen they let it happen, they figure it's good for me because it'll help prepare me for the world regeneration journey," Colette sighed heavily. "Sometimes I wish I was just an ordinary, no, that's selfish," she frowned.
"Harsh!" a small voice sounded from across the room. Lloyd and Colette both jumped, neither had known anyone else was in the room.
"That's really bad you have to put up with that," the owner of the voice, a small, silver haired boy, strolled across the room to Colette's bed. He nodded at them.
"I'm Genis. I'll be coming to school here soon," he said. A look of recognition crossed Colette's face.
"Genis Sage?" she asked. The boy nodded. "You're the little brother of the new teacher who's starting here next term right?" she asked, and received another nod.
"So," Genis said, hopping up onto the end of Colette's bed. "What's it like here?"
"Well for one thing you'll be wanting to bring your own lunch," Lloyd said. "The cafeteria food here's AWFUL!"
