Disclaimer – Not mine.
A/N – This comes from a late-night chat with Shadow Diva. And … that's about all there is to it, really. All I have to say in my defence is: it could've happened! And I can't be the only one snickering at the name 'Jim' here (ref. Jimmy Saville on a search engine for the uninitiated).
Continuity – Pre-to-mid-Season One. Mostly
Precedent
© Scribbler, July 2005.
1.
He walks the corridors with less reverence than perhaps he should. Students chat in open doorways, and from somewhere he can hear music, a heavy-thumping blues-rock tune that fills the vacuum as he passes. They really are just schoolchildren. It seems shocking what they're destined for.
Unbelievably, some of them chose this for themselves. He feels sorriest for those expected to carry on some legacy. They either last because they have to (because failure really isn't an option), or they fail and disappear in the night. Some even go voluntarily.
He stops outside Room 69, checks his paper, knocks. There is the sound of complicated footsteps, as if someone is dancing to the door instead of walking. When it opens it is flung, not cracked a little. No sliver of face here, but an open canvas painted with rosy cheeks and overconfidence.
"Hey, Teach."
"Jinx," he replies evenly. "I believe there's some trouble with your roommate?"
There is a girl trussed in shredded bedsheets in the corner. Her eyes are wide, scared, and painted with make-up like a sad clown.
"Yeah. I need a new one."
2.
"And this will be your room."
The dark girl rakes her eyes over everything. She doesn't seem impressed.
"You serious? I thought there'd be, like, luxury an' junk. That headmistress chick promised me cool digs an' new stuff if I agreed to bunk here an' do the whole 'education' thing. I want my luxury, dude."
He raises an eyebrow. He's tried luxury – champagne, chandeliers and parties with sixteen forks and conversations about politics. It didn't fill the void after Sarah died. "Everything here has been chosen and arranged for maximum chi resonance, so you'll get the best flow of energies to help with your work and sleep."
She curls her lip. "You actually believe that Feng Schoo-ee crap?"
"You don't?"
"Man, I don't need to keep put a pot plant in some special 'zone' to get good luck. I make my own luck, y'heard?"
"You sound confident in your abilities."
She smiles, showing gleaming white teeth. "Man, I am the shizz-ay. There ain't nowhere I can't break into if I want in." Suddenly she is the size of a pin and buzzing around his face.
She is competent, but she is brassy and a show-off. He will have to watch for that. With the personalities already swimming around here it could be trouble.
3.
As expected, Jinx does not like Bumblebee. By corollary, neither do Mammoth or Gizmo. They would never admit it, but she leads them by their noses – or slightly lower down. He watches them bristle at each other across the training arena.
Advanced mechanics, the timetable says. Most of the class are whispering about the dormitory smack-down of the previous night. Jinx's eye is still swollen. It does nothing to dampen her glare.
He's been working up to this lesson. In a way, it is an exam for them. Jinx and her cohorts failed their last one, and lost the academy a potent ally. It was a kind of litmus test. As well as those three being in disgrace, now the whole class won't be sent out into the field for some while, but the kid gloves come off this time.
He doesn't tell them to get into teams, doesn't tell them to work individually. He doesn't even say good morning. He just presses the button and unleashes the giant robot. It strides into the arena with more grace than something that size should.
Of course, Bumblebee immediately tries to disrupt the wiring in its head. Smart girl, but a textbook approach for her. The electronic pulse shields repel her tiny form. One or two students hit it with raw force, energy blasts and fists. He has compensated for this. He watched them all year. He knows their strengths and weaknesses. This will not be easy. It's a little disappointing they don't cotton on to this sooner – though less so that they still think brute strength is the best option.
Jinx runs to Mammoth, screaming instructions. While Gizmo flies around the robot's head, distracting it, Mammoth picks her up and hurls her into the air. She strafes the ground around the robot with hexes, collapsing its stability. It tips sideways. It clanks.
It fixes her with a red diode eye that discharges a powerful laser.
Gizmo powers into Jinx, knocking her out of the blast's path. As expected. Mammoth catches her. As expected.
He is proud of this robot. It took many weeks to build and much careful observation to programme.
He gets a chance to see it up close one last time when Jinx and Bumblebee quarrel mid-attack, their powers rupturing Gizmo's battery pack, and the explosion makes it fall on him.
4.
"What the hell have you done to yourself?"
"I am repaired."
"You look like a freak of nature."
He surveys his mechanical arm, leg and torso. The skull plating needs some work, as does the digital-implant eyeball, but he is relatively pleased. It beats sitting around in a wheelchair, relegated to the sidelines while his students are given to someone else – someone second-rate. Teaching has been his life since Sarah died. His preternatural intelligence and gift for robotics brought him here, marked him for this place, but he will always be a teacher at heart.
"I am no less a man than I was," he defends.
The headmaster arches one grey eyebrow. Obviously not convinced. The sheer brilliance of it all escapes him – at least for now. The idea that robots could be programmed to do fine surgery, to reconstruct and remodel damaged human tissue, it doesn't resonate with him. He sees the world in terms of power and control – that is how he toppled the previous headmistress and took over her job in the same day, of course. There are the powerful, the controllers, and there are those to be dominated. If he ever grasps the genius of robotics it will surely be only in terms of what it can do for him.
While he … he feels stronger than he ever has before. Some part of him thinks he should feel the loss of his limbs more, but the metal replacing them is sufficient. More than sufficient. It's resilient. It's strong. He will not be hurt again like this.
Something tickles the back of his mind. It makes him want to itch the inside of his skull, which is ridiculous, since brain matter can't feel pain that way. "I'll be able to reassume my duties within the week. I just thought you should know."
The headmaster looks surprised, though not at the immediacy of his return. He thinks he can see a red afterglow in the older man's eyes, but then he blinks and it's gone.
"Yes, well … very good. Just don't go getting yourself crushed by any more of your creations, understand?"
When he leaves the office he nearly trips over someone sitting in the corridor. She scrambles to her feet, anxious not to look like she was anything but nonchalant.
"Bumblebee?" The word comes out softer than he expected. His throat was damaged, and his new vocal chords are experimental. He will have to tweak them a little if he doesn't want to speak in a low monotone for the rest of his days.
Bumblebee can't stop herself from staring. "Uh," she mutters, wings twitching. "Hey, dawg. Didn't expect to see you sent to the big guy's office. You stick a note to his back, too?"
He tips his head. What he sees with his real eye and what he gets from the implant create an interesting contrast of expectations. He notes the tiny flutters of her wings' membrane, the tiny clicks of her heels on the floor, and the way she is blinking a little fast.
Eventually his silence makes her bow her head. "Look … I'm sorry about what happened. I know it sounds stupid – what am I sayin'? It is stupid. I mean, if I hadn't ragged on Jinx so much … I just … I never meant for anyone to get hurt, y'know? I didn't - "
"I think you may not be right for this place, Bumblebee."
"Say what?" She looks aghast. "You sniffin' sumthin'? I got it primo here, dude." Then she claps a hand over her mouth, embarrassed at insulting the man whose appearance is due to her own personal feud. "I mean, uh - "
But he cuts her off. He is conscious of the office door behind him. "You have a good heart. I will forgive you only if you don't squander it."
Weeks later, when she slips out in the night to places unknown, and sneaks in a boy with white pupils on black irises to do nothing but talk, he doesn't report her.
5.
He cannot stay any longer. The students do not look at him with respect anymore. They do not even look at him with pity, as they did when he was first injured and returned. They have watched his steady progression into a newer, stronger body with indisputable disgust, staring at each new implant and plate and diode. He wears a robe to cover his beautiful form, a relic from when he still felt embarrassment – still felt – but still they stare at his face, seeing but not looking.
He is no more than a curiosity to them. He cannot teach them. They don't listen. They won't learn. They're too busy staring. It hurts for a long time, the loss as incisive as when Sarah …
The final blow comes when the headmaster enters his private quarters without knocking, stands over his latest tinkerings and says, "I think you've seen this coming, Jim. Your current teaching post in HIVE is rescinded, but you may stay on in another role. Your usefulness has … renewed itself in another quarter." He smiles. It doesn't reach his eyes. "I just thought you should know."
And he felt … fear. A drab shadow, almost like an echo, but he felt it. His new optical implants read the dangerous burning in the headmaster's eyes, the lust for power, and he knew he couldn't stay. He is no longer fully human, but he will be nobody's tool.
HIVE is far-reaching. Pupils wish to prove themselves – or lessen previous disgraces. Past pupils owe the headmaster favours, which are cashed in trying to hunt him down.
So he hides. He hides amongst the refuse of the city, cowering like something less beautiful, and he remodels himself until he can no longer feel fear, or recognise shame. He builds companions that flutter around his ankles because they remind him of when he first became a teacher, when Sarah was still alive and kept their wedding picture beside their bed. They don't help, but it seems appropriate to have them around.
He stays in the dark, in the garbage, until thoughts of not being there are too ridiculous to contemplate. He forgets his own name. One day he thinks of the word 'Sarah' and nothing rises to the surface of his mind, and he can't even feel sad about it. HIVE stops looking – they must – be he ceases to care. He spends his time making things from what the city has thrown away, building and fixing and adding to his collection of companions. When they break, he fixes them, eventually dubbing himself 'Fixit' as his students once did.
Until, eventually, the memory of how his name came to be also fades.
And he sits in the dark, working and waiting, the shell of a life he can barely remember, and which the world has already forgotten.
FINIS.