A&A&A Boarding School

Authoresses' Note: Sorry 'bout the long absence. Rukuelle is complaining that Lydia has too many fics going on. So we'd appreciate it if you wouldn't mind that update periods stretch a bit longer.

We watched Ocean's Twelve yesterday, and are now infatuated with the whole idea.

So…callouts, as we have learnt they are called.

Asha Ice: Angry man song! Malfoy isn't vampiric. That's a reserved honour. Oh, and you just mightn't like this chapter very much, dear. Do restrain yourself with the needles.

Silver Sniper

Tsuki Yume: We do recommend New Zealand greatly. Except don't climb Mt. Doom unless you really appreciate being blown off the top by a 90-kmph wind into a metre-deep snowbed. And Mordor was supposed to hot.

Elenhin: Hmm…that's Bassanio's line, Act 1 Scene 1, lines 115 – 118. There you go.

Lee: We're a bit overly mean to Helen – to Cosette too, we realise. It's just that damsels-in-distress really don't click with us. We'll try not to antagonize them too much.

Mefi: We were making Legolas so hardworking because we feel sorry for him. Because of what happens to him in this chapter. Meep.

Joou Himeko Dah

Elebriwien

Blu-white-red: You're a nice senior-of-Lydia's-friend. We hope you enjoy the Phantom of the Opera: A&A&A style – and the Masquerade! Wheep!

Hotdogfish: Don't think they got much of a chance to really look at the school. Poor things.

Cerse Liminara: Yeah, it was a bit rushed. We were panicking 'cos it was getting so long. Sorry.

Not yet 13: Carl is from Van Helsing: the Movie. No more Legolas/Paris fighting for the moment. Our dear elf, let us just say, has been temporarily – put out of action.

Capricornus152

Kryah: We don't support Artemis/Hermione, unfortunately. Our opinion is that Artemis belongs with nobody – probably would refuse to put up with anybody with a lesser intellect. Which is about everyone else. Hermione is intelligent, but Artemis would never abmit that.

A warning: Legolas fans may not like this. Too bad.

17. Bacteriology and Bashing

The Company of Heroines must have been indefatigible, because immediately after Physical Ed., they took a quick coffee break and were back outside again with their favourite hobby together – climbing trees. As if the Obstacle Course hadn't given them enough climbing to do already.

The A&A&A field was a very large one. It sprawled between the surrounding blocks, a more or less quadilateral shape of neat green grass (kept trimmed by Commander Root's countless detentioners), dotted with trees of all shapes and sizes. Of late, a new mallorn tree had appeared behind the firing range. The first-year class was quite aware of where that had come from.

The Company didn't climb the mallorn, out of respect, even though it looked an excellent tree for climbing. Instead, they moved off deep into the field, where there was a grove of small elms. Those weren't so bad either.

Anna was the best climber among them. Already she was lost in the leafy crown above them – they could only follow her voice. Elizabeth, who only climbed for the view, settled in a high-enough nook which swayed as she rocked it, watching the people and blocks in the distance. Holly, despite her size, could hold her own fairly well when it came to climbing, and was scrambling ahead of Eponine onto one of the higher branches.

And so they were climbing, when there came an intruding voice into their presence.

"So you took it."

Holly's automatic reaction to that voice was her worst scowl. Then after careful consideration, she wiped that off and replaced it with her best grin. With this decided expression on her face, she clambered down and dropped to her feet in front of Legolas.

"So I did," she answered coolly.

The expression Legolas was wearing was definitely not his best grin. Beneath his blank countenance, he was struggling to control his furious frustration. Holly saw that shrewdly and grinned even more.

"Whatcha grinning at, fairy girl?" snapped Legolas.

Holly ignored the question. "You should have known better," she said in a reproachful manner. "Did you really think I would humiliate myself so you wouldn't burn my precious homework?"

Legolas glared. "You should have known better," he snarled, "than to offend me."

Holly's fists instantly curled into hard balls at his tone. Legolas saw that, and dropped into a fighting stance. "Last time you took me by surprise."

"Last time you underestimated me," added Holly nonchalantly.

"So I did. I won't do that again."

"I'm sure you won't."

Both Legolas and Holly turned with some surprise to Éowyn, who had just dropped out of the tree. The shieldmaiden picked herself up and strolled casually over to them. Anna and Elizabeth landed and followed her. "Oh, is someone looking for a fight now?"

To give Legolas credit, he was brave enough to stand his ground despite the warning frequencies shivering in the air. "It will be dishonourable," he told Holly carefully as he eyed the other girls, "if you fight me with their help."

"Mon oeuil," retorted Eponine as she slid onto Anna's right. "Bah for dishonour."

Holly looked Legolas in the eye. "Last time you called me dishonourable. I think I might as well live up to that title."

The Company of Heroines formed a solid barrier confronting Legolas. Each girl had her fists clenched and her eyes blazing.

"You should have known better," said Holly softly, "than to offend us."

The field was very large. No one heard the screams.

"Sit down, class," said Gandalf. "For Biology today, we will be doing……" He paused, and his eyebrows arched ferociously as he scowled at Legolas's empty seat. "Where is Mr. Greenleaf?"

Helen blinked. "I don't know," she answered truthfully.

Eponine clutched her mouth to stifle a giggle. Cosette cast an uneasy glance at her.

"Perhaps he forgot we had class here and didn't come up," offered Paris.

Gandalf scowled further. "He had better hope he isn't late, for his own sake." He strode back to the front of the class. "Anyway, back to the lesson. For Biology today, we will be doing a study of common bacteria – observing them through microscope slides. Put on your rubber gloves, everybody. Mr. Sparrow, stop drinking the alcoholic sanitiser. Just because ethanol smells like rum, doesn't mean it leaves your stomach lining alone."

Jack put down the ethanol bottle. "Ain't good quality anyway."

"Now, what you do with the alcohol is to spray it on the table to sterilise it. I don't want to catch anyone drinking it." He glared at the errant pirate. "Have you all got your labcoats on?"

"Yeah," muttered Lili, prodding the white layered lining of her coat. "These make me look fat."

Gandalf chose to ignore her, as everyone else did. "One person from each bench, come up front and collect a bacteria tray."

The bacteria trays were round Petri dishes filled with sickly yellow jelly. The jelly gave off an exceedingly unpleasant stench. Amidst the jelly were several even more sickly looking patches of what could only be bacteria.

"Yuck," muttered Pippin, holding the bacteria tray away from him.

"Please ignore," went on Gandalf, who was drawing random squiggles on the board, "the confluent growths – the ones that look like this." He pointed at one of the irregular shapes. "Concentrate on the colonies – the ones that look like nice little circles. Each person choose a favourite colony and take notes on it."

"What do you say about those dotty things?" muttered Holly as Gandalf turned his back to rearrange some of the stuff on the table. "They all look round, yellow, bumpy – all the same."

"Actually," began Artemis, "bacteria colonies can be anything but similar. If you would compare the one there and the one there, I might point out that……ow."

"Shut up, Mud Boy."

After that, Gandalf taught them how to prepare bacteria-on-slides.

"Now, after you have scraped the bacteria onto the slide, you use the tongs to hold it…" he used his staff to light the bunser burner, "... in the flame. That would bind the bacteria to the plastic."

Cosette gulped as the flames licked merrily at the plastic with the bacteria smears on it. "But…but…" she gasped, "they are…were…alive! They could have been – " she sought desperately for an example, " – taking tea!"

Eponine rolled her eyes to illustrate exactly what she thought of that statement. Gandalf frowned and removed the slide from the bunsen burner. Marius escorted the trembling Cosette back to their seat.

Then there followed the usual long and messy gauntlet of scientific experimentation.

"Harry, get the Violet Crystal ready," ordered Hermione. She turned to Ron, who was roasting the bacteria in the bunsen burner flame with a little too much enthusiasm. "Take them out, Ron."

"Not yet," protested Ron, "they're not even browned yet."

"You can't see them. Boys," she added in exasperation, snatching the tongs from him and dunking the poor bacteria into the violet crystal bath.

"Sorry," muttered Malfoy as he handed Haldir a tissue to clean off the splash of brown iodine.

Haldir only glared and dabbed at the stain on his arm. "It's iodine," he pointed out morosely. "Iodine is probably corrosive. It's probably already eating into my arm. I might die."

"Really?" asked Lili breathlessly.

Haldir shot her another glare. "No. I was kidding."

Malfoy shook his head crossly and returned to adding iodine to the slide.

Work goes on and on.

Half a saffranin-red-and-ethanol-soaked hour later, most of the class had finished their slides of tormented bacteria.

"D'you want to see?" offered Eponine maliciously, eyeing Cosette, who was edging away from the microscope. Cosette had participated as minimally as possible in the slaughter of the bacteria. She said it was Cruelty to Animals.

To that Marius had pointed out: "Bacteria don't count as animals."

Which had hurt Cosette's feelings, to Eponine's delight.

Now Marius said: "Cosette, they don't look half-bad. Besides, Gandalf said we've got to look."

Cosette was naturally averse to anything Eponine suggested, but since this was Marius's contribution, she nodded nervously and got up to look.

Carefully, she brushed a strand of chestnut hair away from her sightline and put one eye to the lens tunnel. She nearly fainted at the sight.

An enormous patch of monstrous-looking bacteria, dyed a violent purplish-blue with tints of bloody red. It was a nightmarish picture, the bacteria contorted into ghastly, flattened forms. They looked as if they had expired in terrible agony.

Cosette sat down hard on a laboratory stool, panting slightly with one hand delicately at her mouth.

Score, thought Eponine merrily.

When it came to dismissal time, Gandalf had a hard time parting Pippin from the bacteria. It seemd he had grown 'attached' to them. He had even given them names.

"No!" wailed Pippin. "Don't take Bandobras!"

Gandalf rolled his eyes. "They are just bacteria. What's so special about them, anyway? You'll see a lot more in the next Biology class."

"But……we like these. They're ours. And they're cute."

"CUTE!"

"Yep. We want to keep them as pets."

Gandalf blanched. "Idiot. Did you know that bacteria can – mutate? They'd become a biohazard and kill people – and they wouldn't be cute then."

"No," agreed Pippin.

Gandalf sighed with relief and held out his hand for the bacteria. But Pippin wasn't finished yet.

"They wouldn't be cute. They'd be cuter."

Gandalf groaned, and snatched the dish away with one bony hand. He flung the bacteria into the incinerator.

"NO!" howled Pippin as the instant flames conflagrated his precious pets. "Bandobras! Chub-Chub!"

"You are dismissed," pointed out Gandalf curtly, pushing Pippin rather ungently out of the door. Supported by Merry, who was muttering words of comfort, Pippin left the class nearly in tears.

In varied degrees of silence, the class trooped to the Aesthetics Block for their next lesson. The Short Alliance, in respect to the recently-passed on bacteria, were silent.

As she rounded the corner, Holly gave a sharp intake of breath and ducked back against the wall. "They're here!" she mouthed to the Company of Heroines.

"Who?" asked Anna curiously and stuck her head around the corner. She was confronted by the sight of Javert, exceedingly red in the face, and Root, who was even redder, marching down the corridor. As she watched, Root stopped Artemis Fowl and shoved some sheets of paper at him. "Have you seen any of these girls?"

Anna saw with great shock that the paper was similar to a wanted poster, with Holly's passport photo blown up on it. The next one had her own photo.

"Holly?" mused Artemis. "I'm not sure. Perhaps they're still in the Science classroom – you could go check."

"Thank you," boomed Javert curtly. Anna did not wait to hear anymore; she hastily flattened herself against the wall as they approached.

"Merde!" hissed Eponine softly under her breath. "Coppers!"

Éowyn, ever resourceful, took note of the surroundings and flung open the door of a deserted classroom. "Get in," she said urgently.

They scrambled in. Éowyn shut the door quietly and threw herself clear of the glass window as the two discipline masters strode into view. Despite the fact that they were on the other side of the wall, and the Company was flat out on the floor, they could hear the two strident voices quite clearly.

"……really, it's never been so bad," Root was saying.

"There was Bruce Banner."

"I'm talking about girls. This is the second time Short has beaten someone up."

Javert snorted. "I knew those five were bound to be trouble. I saw it coming, Commander; I knew it all along."

They could hear the unspoken complaint in Root's mind: If you had seen it coming, you should have prevented it, d'Arvit.

Root, however, did not offend his colleague. "Girls, what's more. I'd swear, the girls are getting worse than the boys."

"Oh, oui. Remember Lara Croft."

"Ah. A troublemaker, that one. And last year…"

"…the Merry Murderess gang. Terrible morbid, that name."

"Yeah. Velma Kelly's forever breaking rules – and that clique of hers just follow blindly."

"Insupportable. Did you know they smoke?"

"So? That's a lesser evil."

Obviously Root saw nothing wrong with smoking, but Javert apparently had enormous objections to the activity.

"It's a sin, Commander, I tell you, it's a sin."

"Beating up guys is worse."

"Oh, bien sur. Of course. Wait till we catch them."

Underneath a desk, Holly felt a tingle of dread run down her spine.

"They can't elude us forever. And when we find them…"

The teachers' voices faded as they turned a corner. Slowly, Holly crept out of her hiding place. Her eyes met the others', set in faces pale as death.

"I'm sorry I had to bring you into all this," muttered Holly.

Éowyn drew herself into a sitting position. "You didn't bring us. We came."

"We'll face it, don't worry," said Elizabeth comfortingly. "What's a little detention?"

Holly nodded eventually. The Company of Heroines flashed each other smiles. And then, like thieves, they sneaked out the classroom and flew down the corridor to Design and Technology class like the very devil was on their heels.

On second thought, you could put it that way.

End of Chapter

Next chapter coming…Scrollsaws and Sharp Acrylic