Disclaimer: Pumpkin, I don't need to own Naruto to write fanfiction.
Penname: LiveLoveLaugh
Fanfiction Story: Teenage Rhapsody
Summary: AU She was new at Konoha High. But she didn't have a dark secret. She wasn't social. She wasn't very attractive. She wasn't very popular or very geeky. Hell, she was always alone. Now that Sakura became a senior, things start to mix up a bit.
AN: I always liked the television show Mythbusters, so I decided to dedicate this chapter to the Mythbusters Adam and Jamie by writing an inspirational chapter about their episodes in their experiments. You guys rock! This chapter is just from my experience with television and a certain classroom accident but you should all read into this. SIXTH UPDATE! ALL HAIL! Uh, well, enjoy.
Chapter Six
Exploding Jawbreaker
Just after lunch, just right after Naruto had been one-handedly pissed off both his friend Kiba (and his mutt) and the notorious Temari in a childhood game, and had also excited the entire cafeteria and grass field to watch in a cheering audience, the clichés aside, to see him being run down in a wild cat and mouse chase while eating his chocolate pudding. Yes, it was sight for sore eyes, though some people wonder how you could see through 'sore eyes' and it indeed took the new girl's caretaker and the dean, Tsunade to run amok and whack the poor blonde across the face for punishment for making people sneeze out milk from their nostrils before the Sabaku girl could wring her neatly polished nails on his pretty neck. And those two had detention after school which caused Temari to be aghast and had made a bored Naruto to shrug. And when Kiba tried walking away from trouble, Tsunade had spotted Akamaru in his backpack. (Dogs aren't allowed in school)
And he had detention.
Fifth Period, when the bell rang, was History where Sarutobi Asuma was teaching. He was a tall bulky man with a beard and dressed in a thick suit had taught about the most boring class in the entire school. Though the man wasn't clearly boring, but the subject was. And since a teacher was supposed to make his or her class fun, he had escalated to a great deal to do so. For beginners, his class was always cold because he liked to smoke his cancer sticks in his room when he's grading homework, so keeping the windows open to clear out that awful-smelling foul air the students were always shivering and chattering their teeth. Textbooks weren't dusty, so when opening up the books the dusty layer of powder wouldn't make a student sneeze, watery-eyed, and most importantly, them falling asleep and that would actually make them pay attention.
"Takahana Teruki," he called out, right after he explained something.
"Y-Yes?" the poor kid in the middle row had snapped out of his trance.
"What's the answer to number thirty-four?" Asuma barked.
The Teruki boy looked at his textbook and came back with an incredulous look, "Uh-I—"
"Wrong, twenty points off," Asuma scribbled in his grade book, the boy was mortified.
And in one of his most entertaining daily routines, he would call on any random student to answer any question and if they were get it wrong, he take away (what every straight 'A' student dreads) about half of their participation grade (even though some of the students weren't participating) and then select another unwilling student to answer. And only Nara Shikamaru was able to wake up from sleeping in his class and answer the rash questions correctly. Rumored by many students, when Asuma had come to two very close percentages of grades in a student's grades, he would grade lower than he's supposed to, then smile like a maniac when his students tried to study harder and harder to keep up in his class.
Trying not to get on his blacklist, Sakura rubbed her tired eyes on her first night after school, trying to read the second sentence of the history book, but always revert her attention to the first sentence, then be frustrated and read the second line again but later woke up with her head on her desktop, drool on her pink lips and her hair in a disarray around her ski cap.
Sixth Period was Science, the last class, taught by the newest teacher in the homely Konoha High, Shizume-sensei after the last educator was fired by the school board after being caught inhaling some good white pony behind the teacher's parking lot. And since she was the new teacher, the students of the homely Konoha High decided to show her what it means to be teaching in a classroom full of retards.
The many mentioned people in the last chapter, with more of the other students, were crammed into a single large classroom where they sat around in laboratory tables, complete with sinks, a container full of sharpened number two pencils, a stack of binder paper, clipboards, heavy-duty textbooks, a small microwave at the corner, and test tubes on trays, and many, many more of these confusing science stuff. The four rectangular walls were blindingly white with beige draped windows, large black chalkboards, gray metal cabinets, posters, and pictures of students in lab coats and goggles. And with these, almost the entire white room was cornered by steel counters which microscopes, more sinks, and other bells and whistles were placed neatly.
A tall white skeleton, with a bony smile for a mouth, stood on a stand in the front of the room where the teacher sat near by her clean swept desk. When students began to file in, they had taken in the picture of a tall elegant woman—"Why does our school have so many hot teachers who we can't date?" Haku asked thoughtfully—with short raven hair and round black eyes hidden behind her rectangular wire spectacles, and adorned in a long sweeping white lab coat over her professional indigo suit outfit and was writing on the board with a piece of long chalk.
One the first day of school when Shizume-sensei had spotted her favorite girl walk in, she smiled at the hat-wearing female who widened her eyes at the sight at one of her caretakers. Sakura quickly walked to her instead of her seat where Naruto had saved for her, and clutched her books closer to her chest.
"You're one of my teachers?" the new girl voiced quietly, Shizume stood stilly with a small smile, "Wouldn't that be weird?" she asked embarrassingly.
The raven-haired woman glanced her nonchalantly, "Well, if its any weirder being gossiped about by many of the student body."
"Huh? What do you mean by that?" Sakura blinked.
"Well, isn't it obvious?" Shizume smirked, gesturing behind her back, "You're talking to a teacher."
And when the green-eyed girl turned around, she had seen more than half of the class looked at her with confused looks. Then they again turned to each other in hushed voices, their eyes still on her, but the science teacher was right all along. Sakura bit her lip and walked tersely to a table surrounded by the blond boy and his friends.
But the third day of school, after the Rock Paper Scissors lunch hour and Asuma's mind-numbingly difficult class, Sakura was able to survive without having to look away from other students and having to clung closely to her childhood friend Naruto for security, but instead she and Hinata had been invited by Yamanaka Ino to sit with her and Temari. Though some of the more nameless girls were a little envious by their good luck, the poor girl Hinata was absolutely overjoyed when Uzumaki Naruto-kun, Kiba, and Haku sat with them while gibbering nonstop about the old commercial cartoons. Tenten had situated herself with Rock Lee and Neji in a lab table next to Aburame Shino, Zaku Abumi and the two school reporters Kin Tsuchi and Dosu Kinuta. Uchiha Sasuke had sat himself with some of the basketball players Yakushi Kabuto, Kimimaro, and Kidoumaru, the identical twins Ukon and Sakon who were listening to the punk Tayuya, who was swearing off about Jiroubou, who wasn't in the class. Nara Shikamaru and Akimichi Chouji had sat with Akadou Yoroi, Sigure, Sabaku Kankuro and his younger brooding brother Gaara. Then many other tables of other students had surrounded the entire white classroom, all who were chattering about what happened at lunch, in the mall, about another kid's girlfriend, or what the teacher had planned for today.
"Okay, class," Shizume placed the piece of chalk on the chalkboard holder, looking up with a warm smile, "Yesterday, I had mentioned before class had ended to everyone that since it's the last semester grading period before the seniors are let out—"
"WOO! THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!" Naruto cheered and whooped, with his fist pumping into the air. Many of the students continued to be celebrating after that, bringing a bigger smile on the raven-haired woman's face.
"Yes, and I had decided that instead of giving out end-of-the-year exams for every student," everyone's voices were hushed, "I want everyone to put on an experiment—", then after that, a full blow of exhilarated groans and moans went around. Ino slammed her head on the table while Kiba's pencil snapped in his fingers, "—which would expand over the next months, that would challenge everyone into becoming scientists themselves. One project per month, and everyone only has three more months left. So everyone must turn in three projects. You have to present it each orally with your selected team in front of the class and your entire research is to be typed in a five page report handed to me separately."
It was a complete silence, until the first to crack was Naruto.
"WHAT!" he screamed, his anime eyes were wide and round.
"We have to work with other people!" Tayuya barked, "I'm not working with no dumbasses!"
"O-Orally…? I-In front o-of o-other p-p-people…?" Hinata whispered, absolutely devastated.
"WHAT!" Naruto yelled again.
"What about the school play!" Kankuro shout incredulously.
"But we have the plan for the Senior Prom!" one girl cried, who was a coordinator for the school dances.
"But I don't want to do it!"
"I have to get my driver's permit!"
"The Konoha Burning Leaves beach festival is in four weeks!"
"I have a job!" Kin bawled.
"Me too!" Dosu's cry had followed by.
"The girl's basketball team!" Tenten yelled, "I'm the captain this year!"
"WHAT!" was Naruto, yes.
"That's unbelievable!" Temari bellowed, "I have to bring up my grades in other classes!"
"One for each month! That'll be three projects!" one exclaimed.
"The entire research! Five pages!"
"This is even harder than exams!"
"WHAT!" Naruto cried, but Kiba bonked him hard on the head.
"Goddamn it! SHUT UP!" the dog boy yelled.
"A project…?" Kimimaro grimaced, "What about the regionals? That would have to shorten our training and—"
"I'm sorry, but everyone has to do this," Shizume looked skeptically around the classroom, "It doesn't matter whether you're in a sports team or have a job, or have to plan any school event, or even has an incapacity of teamwork," she looked at a muttering Tayuya, "That does not grant anyone any special favors. I will choose your teams tomorrow, and you're to be acquainted with one another, then on Friday I'll hand your paperwork and how to start on it. So please grant me the time of day right now to give everyone an example of what kind of projects you're be doing. And this whole process will be repeated in the next two months."
The entire class watched her walk into her back room, through the large gray door, and brought out a large box with stacks of printed newspaper clippings, scientific tools, glass containers, folded aprons, oven mitts, latex gloves, more goggles, and what seemed to be like a giant plastic bag of giant jawbreakers, all in different colors but the same sizable spheres. Shizume propped all the junk on her desktop, swiping a clump of bangs from her face and looked confidently at the class.
"I know I'm being unfair to everyone about the projects," the young woman heard murmured agreements around the classroom, almost everyone's eyes were reverted away, "I know some of you would be thinking how boring it would be if I had everyone research about bugs—" Shino frowned slightly, "—so I decided to give you this subject of the month's experiment."
She picked up the bag of jawbreakers in her hand, the clutching of plastic was heard throughout the room, "Candy."
"Candy?" everyone voiced out, confusion marred their faces.
"Candy," Shizume confirmed, smiling, "In this project, you have to find ways to experiment with candy. I had read on the news—well, I'm sure you all did—that several case scenarios had involved around broken jaws and cavities, with candy. I know it may sound ridiculous, but I want everyone to experiment with candy. So with some tools, and several jawbreakers per table I'd like everyone to wear the proper lab clothing and split open a jawbreaker so we may see the colorful layers of sugar coating. Then I'll explain everything next. So two people from each table, please stand up and get the needed equipment."
"Wait, Shizume-sensei," Haku raised his/her hand.
"Yes, Haku?"
"Are we allowed to eat the jawbreakers?"
Shizume looked at him/her weirdly, "…um, sure…but after class, you may." Haku pumped his/her fist.
When Ino left to get their crap, Temari aggravatingly snorted causing her good looks to mix with fury and rage.
"I cannot believe I have to do this!" the older blonde clapped her hands on her bare thighs, "I'm already in deep shit with Ebisu-sensei and Kurenai-sensei is already on my ass about the progress of my test grades! I have detention for the week! And the cheerleading squad had picked me as the new co-captain! I can't deal with so much pressure!" She buried her face in her open text book.
"O-Oh…" Hinata murmured, feeling sympathetic for her and made a future note to herself not to tell Temari about her excellent grades.
Kiba had on a predatory grin, "Kurenai-sensei, eh? She's one live hotwire."
Sakura blushed, upon hearing that.
"Eww," Haku kissed his/her teeth, "You actually have wet dreams about her?"
"I never said that!" Kiba cried, Akamaru barked cutely.
Naruto laughed, "You actually have the Closet Pervert as your teacher? Man, Konohamaru had told me so many stories—"
"The freshman?" Temari grimaced, "I didn't think any senior hung out with a freshman."
"Well, we used to be like them didn't we?" the Uzumaki opened up one of his notebooks, and began to scribble in it, "We were stupid, dumb, and retarded. I'm sure we were also needy and always trying to impress the teachers and the older kids. We have to deal with hormones and sex—unless, you know, we already had sex—and then bigger bullies come along and pull Freshman Friday on them—" he choked in his laughter, "—now that was fun!" He high-five with Kiba, who grinned too.
Temari rolled her cerulean eyes at them, "Morons."
Haku tapped his/her mechanic pencil against the table, "I don't know…" everyone at the table turned to him/her, "…right now, I'll be worrying about this project shit…I mean, who are we going to be grouped up with? I don't even want to come two feet next to Nara Shikamaru, he'll make you do everything despite whether or not he's a genius."
Sakura widened her eyes, "A genius? But I thought he was some lazy—"
"A lazy genius," Temari whispered, grunting with a smirk.
Naruto nodded, "I hate to be teamed up with Thickbrows…I mean he'd be cheering you off like a crazy freak if you're a little behind, then boost up your confidence by talking about how great Gai-sensei is and how youth is with all kinds of other rainbow crap."
"Ouch, that's harsh," Kiba whispered, straightening up his posture, "Eh, I can tell you I wouldn't like to work with Uchiha Sasuke, I mean that bastard is one jackass—"
"Wait, how can he be both a bastard and a jackass?" Haku asked, his/her green-nailed finger tapping on his/her chin.
Everyone sweatdropped, except for Sakura who was clearly confused.
"Who's Uchiha Sasuke?" she asked innocently, causing everyone to snap their eyes on her.
"Who's Uchiha Sasuke…?" Temari repeated, blinking, "I thought you knew."
"I knew what?" Sakura replied back, her brows knitting together.
"Now that's the question of the century," Kiba snickered.
Naruto wiped a sweat from his brow, "Aw, man, if Ino heard that one."
"If I heard what?" Ino questioned, dropping all the equipment on the lab table, "Here's the stuff. What were you guys talking about?"
"Nothing…" Haku trailed on, leaving the platinum blonde to snort.
Ino glared slightly, looking at everyone suspiciously at the table, "No, come on, tell me what I won't want to hear."
"That cheerleaders were stupid empty-headed idiots who play no real role in life," Haku spoke before anyone could stop him/her.
"What!" both Temari and Ino exclaimed outrageously, "That's not true!"
"That's why you won't want to hear it," Ino's mouth popped open, Haku picked up the giant round candy balls into his/her palm, "Aw cool! Jawbreakers! I haven't seen them this big since I was five when I accidentally broke a tooth trying to eat one this big, even when my dad told me it was too big, but I did it anyway because of my childish inferiors. And I had to stop biting into them because I became interested in trying to find out how many licks it takes to get to the tootsie center of a Tootsie Pop. But this is huge!" The signature brown eyes had sparkled.
His/her tablemates looked at him with heads dotted with sweat drops bigger than the jawbreakers.
During the next fifteen minutes when everyone had to put on their lab clothing, making Sakura look ridiculous when she pulled the goggle straps over the back of her ski cap and fix the dark yellow plastic cover over her eyes, which Kiba had said that it had made her green eyes look a florescent turquoise, then being complimented by people from other tables for her colorful eyes even though she never thought of them as very pretty or attractive. She then had spotted the redhead Tayuya looking at her with mean eyes, and cringed at the sight of her analytical brown eyes.
Ino complained jokily how the goggles kept cutting into around her face like a gingerbread man cookie cutter. Sakura slipped into the apron and overheard Haku asking Temari if the gray apron made him/her look fat. Hinata blushed infinitely when Naruto asked her to tie up the ribbons of his apron, her fingers brushed ever so slightly against his lean back when she tried to tie it but couldn't really when her fingers kept shaking. Then the poor girl had almost fainted when Naruto wanted her to be his partner for the jawbreaker experiment. Across the room, Tenten had joked about the transparent lens of the goggles that Lee wore made his eyebrows and eyes look bigger, larger, darker, and rounder.
Everyone was in a good mood and begun to heat up the jawbreakers in the small microwave at a certain amount of short minutes, making the sugars soft enough to cut through. Ino and Sakura measured the soft candy, finding the right spot to cut through for the perfect halves. Temari, who worked alone and preferred it that way, had sliced her candy in perfection with a smirk on her face seeing two halves of colorful slightly hard layers of sweet concoctions. Naruto had accidentally and unconsciously sometimes brushed his gloved fingers over Hinata's hand to get something across the table without him noticing, causing Hinata to heat up like the microwave jawbreaker.
Now at the table, while Shizume was talking to another table and nobody was really paying attention to those two, Haku and Kiba were the last to use the microwave. They placed a giant white jawbreaker angularly on a circular glass plate, inserting them in the golden light of the radiation box. They took them out and poked at them.
"Hmm…" Kiba took off his oven mittens, "I don't think the candy is soft enough."
"Really? Maybe we should heat it up again…"
And the two boys slipped onto their oven mittens and pushed the glass plate of the jawbreaker into the microwave, and record the time up to two minutes. After it was done, they stared at the candy.
"Nope, it doesn't look like it molten even a little," Haku poked at it.
"Alright, let's do it again," Kiba slipped back the jawbreaker into the microwave.
And three minutes later, the glass plate was hot but the white jawbreaker was still the same.
"Hmm," Kiba looked at the jawbreaker from all around, "Still the same."
"Fine, put it back in," Haku pushed the container back into the microwave, putting it up on five more minutes.
And after that, when the two boys had looked off into space and instead looked at other projects and experiments, the microwave that held their white jawbreaker had exploded, erupting out their sugar chemicals, and fired up the outlet near the counter, destroying two other plug-ins and causing sparks to rain near a couple of the classmates' sleeves. Girls screamed and ran to another lab table, boys had freaked out and pushed against other people in the classroom. The first microwave had jumped and crashed down on the table top, burning the outside of the door and the jawbreaker within the gray box had lit up into fire and was literally blazing up the entire microwave. Hinata coughed and wheezed at the smell of smoke while Temari and Sakura had screamed with the other girls, Ino had pulled everyone back, Naruto tried to pour water from his plastic canteen on top but caused more sparks and the fire disastrously grew, and Haku and Kiba hurriedly blew off the flames with their breaths and puffs of warm air.
Shizume had rashly rushed up and sprayed off the fire extinguisher on the burning mass of electricity. When the kids in her class were still screaming and smoke still surrounded the room, the students had filed out of the laboratory with their loud voices awakening other teachers on the floor to run out and see the thick smoke peek from the new teacher's class, and to find Shizume walk out angrily in her lab coat and red extinguisher in one hand, pulling off her goggles in front of the mass of her students.
"Who in the world left their jawbreaker in the microwave for TEN minutes?" Shizume barked at the trembling students.
The occupants at the burning table had made facial smudges of smoke aftermaths and Hinata was still wheezing quite badly, who then was quickly escorted by Ino and Temari to the nurse's office. Naruto looked very worried and could have run after her but was held back by Sakura, when the female blondes had told her too for many reasons. Some of the girls from the classroom were frightened and tearing up. The guys grunted and were practically pissed off. Shizume had looked upon Haku and Kiba who were coughing themselves and quickly wiping off the dark smudges from their face.
"You two are very lucky that jawbreaker didn't explode into your faces," the raven-haired woman replied, her brows were increasingly low, "That would have caused fatal wounds from the chemical burns. Didn't you two listen AT ALL to my instructions to set the timer to two minutes besides complaining about your hair—" Haku gulped, "—or talking endlessly about one of the students being a 'jerk?'"
"It's, um, 'jackass' but we're go with your word…" Kiba whispered, his tail between his legs.
"We didn't think it molten enough for it to be cut in half," Haku murmured apologetically.
"The outside is suppose to be hard, but once you cut it you can see the insides had slightly melted. Why didn't you two ask me?"
"Because you were busy with other students," Kiba muttered.
"You two should have waited, I had to help other students."
"…we're still very sorry…" both the boys whispered.
Shizume was exhausted, "I hate doing this, but you two have detention. I'm sorry, but you should have listened to me."
The two guys had nodded, their eyes were looking down on the linoleum floor. The rest of students followed the movements of Shizume's body when she turned to all of them, "And that goes for every one of you. No matter how much you hate it, but when you're doing an experiment or any activity in my class, you have to listen to me. That's why I'm here. I'm here to do my job, to teach everyone about science, as well as keeping everyone safe, is that understood?"
"Yes…" they all murmured, Sakura looked sadly when everyone went back to the classroom.
This Story Teenage Rhapsody is being discontinued
To my very loyal readers, and my very upset reviewers and flamers, through my years as a teenager and fanfiction enthusiast, I have been very dishonest to myself. It seems I had forced myself to do things I never wanted to do, and I am sure I am being very unfair to all the high school stories other people had written by doing one myself. This story had reached great lengths for me, and all I ever wanted was to write a story about ordinary people by mixing it with the fictional life of anime characters. But so far, it has not work as well I hoped. So I decided to take a new route. That being said, I am sorry to say I was just kidding and no, the story will not be discontinued because the author just wants everyone to hate her guts for pulling such a terrible and devastating prank on her readers.