Chapter 7: School Days, School Days
The Higurashi family spent the rest of the weekend in the past, training and learning to hone their abilities. Although it had only been two days Damien and Erika felt like they had learned a lot. Erika was now able to swing the Gunsen without destroying something or someone and Damien had learned a few moves from his father. He couldn't wait to show Jake.
"Hey Jake." Damien said, walking up to Jake's locker in the morning. "You'll never guess what I did on the weekend." He said enthusiastically.
"Let's see…by the look on your face I can guess…you were abducted by aliens, probed in many different orifices and, now your wondering why you enjoyed it so much."
"Nice try but…no. You and I both know that aliens aren't real." Damien said in reply to Jake's astounding accusation.
"Yeah, just like demons aren't real eh, Damien?" Jake said with a move towards his hat.
"HEY! There is no kidding about the hat!" Damien said in an almost too serious a voice for this conversation.
"So, are you going to tell me or not?" Jake said impatiently.
The story, extremely condensed since Damien left out all the juicy parts about Naraku and Kagura, took the rest of the walk from Jake's locker to first period.
"So…time travel you say?" Jake said mischievously, "Did you see the pyramids be built? Did aliens help them? What really happened to Moses and the plaques?"
All Damien could think to say to this was: "Aliens are not real!"
He might have said this too loud because, as they were walking in the room their first period teacher looked at them very strictly and said, "We do not care about your outlook on aliens or other intelligent life, we only care about the scientific explanation of those, that of which you can't comprehend."
Looking smug at his insult, Mr. Fukaro waited for the class to started laughing at my expense. When they didn't his smug look turned to indignancy.
Mr. Fukaro's wild accusation of Damien's stupidity was highly overrated. In fact, Damien had the highest mark in the class, if not, the school and everyone knew that. Therefore, if anyone was going to get any student's opinion on any scientific reasoning…it would most likely be Damien's.
Mr. Fukaro took that option to pick fun at Damien for the plan fact that he was one of the smartest kids in the school however he slacked off. Damien would not pay attention, doodle or sleep or, on the odd chance, play a practical joke on him. Some teachers, like Mr. Fukaro, try to make it hard for Damien to get the marks he does by sometimes giving him harder tests as a "punishment". However, no matter how hard the test is, Damien still seems to get, at least, in the top 3 percentile of the students who have the much easier tests.
Damien thinks its because some of the teachers (i.e. Mr. Fukaro) aren't really that bright and had to struggle to get their teachers degree and, when they see a "no good nick" like Damien getting all the good marks they get jealous and take out their jealousy on him.
Nevertheless, this show of jealousy did not faze him in the least because Damien took his seat next to the window and daydreamed about battling demons and saving the world from the undead army of Kagura. Life was good.
The bell rung on only his third imagination of how he was going to slaughter Kagura. Leaving his thoughts and dreams behind he packed up his books and headed straight for the gym.
When he got there, however, the gym doors were locker and on the door there was a notice saying: Presentation in process meet in room 153.
Room 153 was the regular room for non-gym related gym. They called this the health part of health and fitness. It was all bogus. It was just a way to kick us out so that they could use the gym for more "efficient" purposes. Damien was not too upset, not like the rest of his classmates. He had only taken this class because he was forced to, unlike the rest of his jock classmates who couldn't wait to get out there and show everyone what their made of.
He walked in the classroom and found his classmates running amuck. The restless jocks who were supposed to be learning how to better their running and how to tone their muscles properly were stuck in this little room with nothing better to do but make paper airplanes and chat non-stop. This, of course, was not part of today's lesson plan but nobody felt like writing down notes from the 20 year old text books that were provided. Damien was never one to stray too far from the rest if it meant less work and more him time.
Damien found a nice little desk in the corner by a window. He liked the breeze. He like the feel of the cold air flowing on his face. It reminded him of Eri and how he used to take him up on the mountains near their house and train him. How he used to make him sit under waterfalls and meditate. Unlike first period, Damien spent this period reminiscing about Eri, his great Chi Wang master.
As well as first period, second period flew by with no time at all. It had only seemed like 10 minutes and already he was at lunch.
He walked down the stairs and then to his locker. Without even thinking he opened his locker, deposited his book and closed his locker. He was about to lock it when he realized something. His mess, his glorious mess, was askew. Something was wrong with it. It wasn't as he had left it. Like someone had…disturbed it
Nobody knew his combination, not even Jake. However stupid it may seem, he didn't want people rummaging through his stuff, especially Jake, even though he was his best friend,
What others may see as just a junk pile, Damien saw as his life. This was the one thing that was his and no one could take from him or change. All his stuff was misplaced. His banana peels, his crumpled up pieces of paper, his two year old binders that he hadn't used for, well, two years. And, wait, no it couldn't be. His Stop, Koala Crossing Between 5 and 6 p.m. sign was missing. That was his pride and joy.
All of a sudden he stopped worrying. He smelled something. He couldn't put his finger on it. It was different. Odd. Not…human. He looked around. Left. Right. Behind him.
When he turned back towards his locker he saw something out of the corner of his eyes. About to unleash one of the attacks his father had taught him he saw that it was only Erika. He kind of chuckled to himself. She was quite not human. He went to turn back towards his locker when something popped out in front of him. Damien was so spooked that he almost jumped up and hit the ceiling.
However, before he did so, he realized it was only Jake. "Jesus Christ Jake, you scared the shit out of me."
All he could do is laugh at me the rest of the lunch which proved not to be as much fun as it first seemed. Anyways, with Jake in the constant doubled over state lunch Damien pretty much spent the whole lunch time alone, with a laughing Jake. Damien spent much of the time daydreaming about Eri and killing Kagura. He even imagined killing Kagura with Eri. Times were good, at least, in his head they were.
The bell rang for third and Damien and Jake went to his locker, then Jake's, then third period. Jake, still having the giggles didn't feel like paying attention that much (if you could even call what he usually does paying attention).
Math, like science, just came to Damien. He could not pay attention all the way to a master's class in the most elite university of all the world and still get through with an 80. However, this simple grade 11 class was far too easy to get an 80 in. He would not settle for anything less than a 95. His mom always tells him to apply himself and he could get 100. Damien didn't care much about school. He always thought he had a higher calling, that he wasn't born the way he was born just to go to school, get an education, have a good career, then die. He wasn't quite sure it was that he was supposed to do, but he was starting to have a pretty good idea of what it was.
"Damien?" said a far off voice, "Damien, what is the answer?"
Oh shit, he thought. The teacher was talking to him. He had no idea. He scanned the board. Just simple equations. Find the root, what's X equal stuff. Bo-ring!
"Uh," Damien said calculating it in his head, "26?" he said taking a blind guess with his half fast calculations.
"You see, how he got that, class?" the teacher said, "you all could learn a thing or two from Damien."
His math teacher, unlike his science teacher was, obviously, bright while growing up, much like Damien, and can relate to him easier. His math teacher noted his brilliance but also noted his lack of motivation. He keeps on telling his parents that they should push him more. Try and get him to give a rat's ass. Not that they haven't tried (his father didn't at all, he believed that what Damien got is what he got and there was nothing that he could to do affect that. Also, the fact that his father had only, probably, a 3rd grade education on today's scale so any talk of numbers or parabolas were complete beyond him).
The bell rung before the teacher could finish explaining to all the stupid kids in his class how Damien had got the answer to the problem in less than a minute.
Not having time to ponder the idiocracy of his fellow classmates, Damien packed up and was out of the room before any of them, with only a little help of his supernatural demon powers.
Damien rushed as fast as he could to his fourth period classroom, English. English, his favorite class. He wasn't as good in English as he was in math and science but he had a general love for English. Poets, authors, all of that stuff. He loved how some could easier string together such lovely phrases that had such deep meanings. He could not wait to get to his the class because over the weekend, before he had been transported to the past, he had found a most interesting poem. One that he had special attachment to, even though he had just found it. This one particular poem seemed to catch all that was Damien.
To much disappointment, when he got their Mr. Bankotsu was already talking to a student. A student who was upset with the mark he had gotten on the last writing assignment he had gotten. An assignment that he, himself, had gotten an A on.
"You have no depth, no umpa," explained Mr. Bankotsu, "it's completely linear, no dimensions. It's just boring."
Not ever one to interrupt his favorite teacher ripping on a student, Damien went to his seat in the front of the class to wait. This was the one class that he wasn't in the back, and for one reason: he didn't want to sleep/day dream in this class, he actually wanted to pay attention and get a further knowledge of the written word.
Mr. Bankotsu had earlier in the year assigned each student a classic novel to read and this class was devoted to reading it. He had given strict orders to the class not to disturbed. Damien knew exactly what this was about. Damien understood that Mr. Bankotsu had been inspired by something and needed to write it down. Mr. Bankotsu had three novels published and he was working on the fourth. It was a serious. A very good serious if Damien said so himself.
Anyways, Damien had chosen to read the book 1984 by George Orwell. He was just getting to the good part when Winston and Julia were about to be captured when his phone started vibrating. During school hours he put it to vibrate so that nobody heard it if it rang. He took it out of his pocket and opened it. There was a text message that said: come home immediately, no straggling. Don't bother using the bus, running is faster. Dad.
When he checked the time it was a few second before the bell rang and then…RIIIIIIIIIIING. He picked up his stuff and took off super quick. However much he would have loved to converse with Mr. Bankotsu, his duty called.
He quickly got to his locker, got his stuff and took off, not even waiting to say goodbye to Jake. Running at top speed he got home in under 5 minutes whereas the bus takes at least 15 on a good day.
He quickly ran inside expecting to see his mom dead on the floor or something else horrific but instead, there was his father standing there with a stopwatch. As Damien opened the door his dad stopped it.
"5 minutes, 10 seconds, 3 milliseconds. Not bad, although it could be better."
His father said.
Damien couldn't believe it, all he wanted was to time his running speed. No emergency. No nothing!
"We've found a group of demons you and your sister could practice on. We better go fast, these demons usually don't stay in one place for too long."
Perturbed, Damien still followed instructions. He didn't like the idea of not being able to talk to his favorite teacher but fighting in a life or death battle against real live dangerous demons seemed to take his mind off of it.
He got everything he needed, his fighting scrubs, his Sais and his weed, because the last time they stayed for a weekend and he desperately needed it.