Ch. 10- Rainy Day Monday

It was raining on Monday morning. The drip drip drip of the little raindrops woke Shanks up from his deep slumber and for that, he was extremely unhappy.

Most of the other crewmates were unhappy about the rain, too. The five pirates that worked in different places would have to walk to their jobs in the rain. The ones that stayed on the ship would either have to deal with doing their jobs out in the rain or be crammed into the ship while listening to the raindrop shitting the deck above.

Nobody was talking during breakfast. All their attention was focused on the loud, quick raindrops, cooking, eating, and getting ready to leave. No other sound was heard and because of that, breakfast lasted only twenty minutes before Shanks found himself walking down the docks.

The slight rain got heavier when Shanks got to the halfway point of the school. It turned to pouring by the time he got to his destination. His hair and clothes were soaked by the time he got to Morning Glory High and so were the many students inside the building although they were beginning to dry off.

Lynn and her little clique were dressed in close to matching skimpy pink tops and black skirts and heels despite the fact that it was freezing outside. They stared at Shanks for a moment before giggling and turning away.

Water rolled down Shanks' skin and hair and dripped onto the floor when he entered the teacher's lounge to confirm that he came to work. A towel was given to him although it didn't help much, and the man headed to the top floor.

Loud music was blasting out of the room even though the door was closed. Through the window on the door, Shanks peeked inside. All the desks were moved so a large circle was made. In the middle of the circle of desks were Maura and Victoria dancing to the beat of the music that came from the radio in the back. Kyler was standing by the windows on the left walls with his fingers running over the strings to a guitar. Kurt was standing in front of a black box closer to the front, staring at it. Elie was next to him, but rather than staring at the black box, she was watching the two other girls that were dancing. Johnny and Larry were by the back, standing on two desks, messing with a gray box on the ceiling. Another visitor was there, too, lying in a tiny carrier on Shanks' desk.

Shanks then saw Maura motion for Elie to join her and Victoria. The small girl reluctantly agreed and walked into the circle. She was having some problems at first, but when Maura stopped her and showed her some new steps, she was able to do them. She must have been having at least a little bit of fun with the dancing even though Maura was stopping her many times. If she wasn't, Elie would have easily beaten up Maura.

The way everybody was moving around, they looked like they were having fun. Or at least the girls and Kyler looked like they were having fun. Kurt looked pretty neutral standing in front of the black box. Johnny and Larry simply looked busy doing whatever they were doing with the box on the ceiling.

Shanks opened the door to the room and stepped inside. A blast of cold air hit him though he had no clue where it was coming from. He let out some of his breath and it came out in smoke. It was freezing inside that one room, which seemed unusual as the hallways in the lower floors and the teacher's lounge was actually a whole lot warmer. He said nothing to the students in the room as he walked around the circle of desks and to the radio in the back. A quick examination showed him the knob under the word "on/off". A line on the knob was pointing at the "on" part, so a quick move to the "off" part caused the radio to turn off.

The girls and Kyler stopped what they were doing and stared at Shanks. Kyler and Maura had annoyance on their faces while Victoria and Elie just simply looked neutral. "Hey, what the hell was that for?" Kyler asked.

"Okay, what the hell are you all doing and why are the desks moved around?" Shanks commanded.

"We needed space to dance." Maura answered, "So we just moved the desks around."

"And why did you move the desks?"

"Mr. Shanks, it's really cold in here. We're just dancing until we can get the heater fixed." Victoria explained.

Shanks was still not quite getting it. "The 'heater' is broken and you're just dancing?" He didn't really know what a heater was honestly. He hadn't seen one yet and the purpose was unknown. The dancing part was still a little confusing. So far, these kids seemed to not care about any types of religion except for possibly some rituals where they asked gods for something. Of course, it seemed like probably only Kurt and Elie would be the only ones to be trying that out since they seemed to probably have the most problems and needed the most help.

It was now Elie the healer/chemist's turn to explain about the dancing. "We are doing dancing as part of an exercise. When you exercise, your body heats up and since it's cold here, we were dancing to keep ourselves warm." She replied emotionlessly.

Shanks nodded. What the girls were doing finally made sense. They weren't doing any type of ritual. They were just trying to keep warm. "Kyler, what were you doing?"

"I needed to get better at the guitar, so I was just doing some practicing." Kyler explained.

"Okay, I think I almost got it. Now, to reconnect these wires…there." Johnny muttered in English from his spot under the large grey box.

Larry sighed, "Okay, good. I'll close it up." Johnny obeyed him and hopped off the desk. Within thirty seconds, Larry picked up a wrench and a few screws and screwed the open part of the box. He moved his fingers to the knobs on the side of the box and flipped the switch to the right a little bit. A little breath of heat came from the box.

"Oh, thank God…heat." Maura gasped.

Slowly but surely, the room was beginning to warm up, kicking out the cold air that was originally in the room and clearly unwanted. Larry and Johnny were busy fixing the heater just to make sure the room wasn't cold anymore.

From the box in front of Kurt came the sounds of two women having a little spat:

"You're nothing but a stupid whore!"

"Shut the hell up, bitch!"

Shanks turned to the box and saw two extremely overweight women in skimpy outfits that left lots of fat roll from under the clothes, showing the skin. They were fighting over the stick-figure of a man with no shirt on and a smirk pasted onto his face, clearly showing that he was enjoying the two women fighting over him.

"How the hell could you watch that damn Jerry Springer show? It's all nothing but acting." Elie asked Kurt with partial disgust in her voice.

"Yeah." Larry agreed. He then picked up a pen lying on the floor and lifted it close to his lips to make it look like a microphone. He walked over to Elie and said in a half happy-half serious voice, "Welcome back to the Larry Springer Show. Today's topic: My Lover is My Brother. We're here with Elie, who's got a secret."

Elie rolled her eyes but played along anyway with a smirk on her face. "Hey Larry."

"So, what do you have to tell us?"

"Well, for the past six months, I've been sleeping with my sister's husband."

A few fake gasps came from Kyler and Maura.

"And does your sister know about this?" Larry continued.

"Nope."

"Well, she does now. Audience members, welcome Elie's sister, Victoria."

Victoria looked surprised…mainly due to the fact that she was called to play as an angry woman, something she was not used to doing. Maura could do it and so could Elie and Lynn, but she couldn't. It just…wasn't her. However, like Elie, she chose to play along. She walked over to Elie and began screaming, "You bitch! I'll kill you!"

"I'd like to see you try!" Elie screamed back. That caused Victoria to fake-lunge at the smaller girl.

Kyler jumped behind Victoria and began to pull the girl away from Elie. He dodged each and every one of her flailing arms.

Maura raised her hand and Larry walked up to her. "I just came here for my 'Larry beads'!" she said. With that, she grabbed the bottom of her shirt and began to lift it up. In a way, this seemed like a bad thing. She was basically stripping while inside the little building and as far as Shanks knew, stripping was pretty much against the rules in this school. However, she wasn't exactly stripping. Underneath the shirt was…another shirt, an emerald green one that stuck to her skin, making her look thinner than she already was and her breasts bigger.

Larry did not walk over to Maura or the other girls. Instead, he spoke into his little "microphone" again, "You know, we've dealt with betrayal, infidelity, and family affairs, but that doesn't mean that it's right. Just because someone in your family, whether it be somebody that you may or may not get along with, is with somebody you love, does not mean that you should try to destroy your family by having sex with that person. The same goes for the husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend. When coming with a dilemma like that, you should think about who you could be hurting both mentally and physically before you make your big decision because we all know, love is stronger than lust. Until then, take care of yourself…and each other."

"And just what is going on in here?!?" A loud, deep voice echoed through the little room at the top of the school.

Maura's first shirt came back onto her body and covered the tighter one. Victoria, Kyler, and Johnny stopped moving. Kurt flipped the switch from the box to the off position. Shanks slowly turned only to find Manson standing in the doorway with a partially shocked and angry Lynn behind him.

"Well…" Shanks started. His mind suddenly went blank and he could not think of what believable excuse he could make without him looking like an idiot.

Johnny took over, "We were only doing some practicing before we start the play we're going to perform."

"A play?" Manson asked him.

"Yeah, it's called The Saviour in Blue. We're going to perform it at the end of the year."

Victoria froze. The excuse of the play was one thing, but choosing this particular one was a whole different story. It was a real play, though not exactly a popular one. She knew. She was the one that wrote it.

Manson bought Johnny's excuse without thinking about asking who made it. As long as the excuse was believable, which this one was, he didn't care. "Well, then good luck with your practicing." He left the room and Lynn walked in.

"Johnny, how could you? Making the play excuse is one thing, but why did you have to choose my middle school play? We don't even have enough people in this class to be all the characters." Victoria cried.

"Tuh'd funno, Victoria. I can find a way to get the drama club to volunteer to be the ones in the play." Johnny explained, "Besides, the play was performed back in middle school and it was a huge hit."

"Besides, all we need to do about the other parts is just hire some random students to be in it. No big deal." Maura added.

Shanks placed a hand on his forehead. Another plan was made without him having any say in the situation. Things couldn't get any worse, right? Wrong.

A sharp cry from the top of the teacher's desk interrupted the play talk. That sound caused Shanks to point at the owner of the noise, a baby laying in its carrier, and asked over the cried, "Who's kid is this and what is it doing here?!?"

"That's my baby, Daulton. Remember? You fainted after he was born on this desk." Lynn answered sweetly.

Shanks sweat dropped at the memory. How could he forget it? It happened in the first hour of the first day he came here to teach. "And what is he dong here?" Shanks shouted.

"Well, my parents were gone and I needed someone to watch over him so I brought him here." Lynn explained, "Don't worry. I'll be here too."

"Well, shut him up!" Lynn was ordered.

Lynn blinked and asked stupidly as she twirled a lock of her blonde hair around her perfectly manicured fingers. "How am I supposed to do that?"

"You're kidding, right? You held what's his name…Daulton, for nine months, gave birth to him ON MY DESK, and had to take care of him all weekend, yet you don't know how to shut up him up?" Shanks asked in shock.

"Like I told you before, my parents and our servants took care of him. Whenever he cried, they took care of him." Lynn explained.

"Come on, Lynn. Shut him up. We can't really do anything until he stops crying." Johnny shouted.

Lynn let out a frustrated grunt and rolled her eyes before heading to the carrier. Normally, a mother would pick up her crying child to help calm him down. Lynn was different. She did not pick her baby up. Instead, she grabbed a pacifier lying by his feet and stuffed it in his wide open mouth, hoping that he would stop crying. He didn't. The pacifier was spit out of the baby's mouth and the screams only got louder.

"Lynn!" Shanks shouted.

Lynn shrugged, "I tried. There isn't anything I can do to shut him up. I don't know what he wants."

A strong smell filled the air. Whatever it was, it smelled like feces of some sort…and it was coming from Daulton's carrier.

"Lynn, I think Daulton needs to be changed." Victoria said as she wrinkled her nose a bit.

Lynn paled. "I can't do that! I don't care if he is my child. I won't do it. Victoria, you have little brothers and sisters and I know you changed their diapers before. Can't you do it?" Victoria shook her head. "Larry, what about you? You have kids." Larry shook his head. Lynn turned her head towards Kyler and put a puppy-dog look on her face and said in a baby voice, "Kyler, will you do it for me? Please?" Kyler, like the others shook his head. That pissed Lynn off.

Her puppy-dog look was replaced with the look of that of a child that was denied something they wanted. Her face began to redden and she headed for a black duffel bag leaning against the desk. "Fine, you babies! I'll do it!" she screamed. A diaper and a bag of wipes were pulled out of the bag and, while ignoring the protests of Shanks, Lynn began to change her child on the same place she brought him into the world.

Shanks let out a groan and decided to ignore what was going on his desk. There was nothing he could do once it started. At least when Lynn started changing Daulton, he stopped crying. "Okay everyone. Sit in your desks. It's time for us to start a lesson were supposed to begin last week. Johnny, get up here and teach us some of that 'Al Bhed' language you keep on speaking so I don't have to worry about wondering what the hell you're saying when you speak it around me."

Johnny happily agreed and walked up to the blackboard while Shanks stood against the wall so he could watch without actually having to sit down. Johnny picked up one of the short, almost worn down pieces of while chalk the class was given and wrote in messy letters 'AL BHED'. An explanation was given before any of the words or letters of the language was actually taught. "Al Bhed is a language that is very unique. It is a language that holds no nationality to any country in the world. It only works if you happen to magically go to the world of Spira, which does not exist, therefore, there is no way for anybody to go to the place where the language is said to have existed. Learning the language is not very difficult as all the letters in the same language are the same as the ones in our language. The Al Bhed words are just jumbles of letters. The only words that cannot be translated into Al Bhed are Sin, machina, fiend, or a person's name. In other words, if somebody was trying to say my name, it would not be translated into anything. It would still be Johnny just like Victoria would be Victoria and Larry would be Larry."

Johnny turned around again and wrote the word "oui" on the board.

Lynn looked up from where she was carefully placing the dirty diaper Daulton ruined in a plastic bag with a grossed out look on her face. Her eyes suddenly brightened as she shouted, "I know what that means! Oui means yes!"

Johnny shook his head and turned to Lynn. "If I was teaching French, you would be right, but I'm not so you're wrong. Oui actually means you." Johnny explained. Underneath the word he wrote down yes. "Each letter in the word translates into another letter unlike any other language here. The 'o' translates to 'y'. The 'u' translates to 'e'. The 'i' translates to 's'. There is no exception where the letters change into a different letter." Lynn snorted and tossed the bag into the garbage can by the door.

Johnny continued his lesson of the Al Bhed language. The lesson all together lasted probably about fifteen minutes. The English vowels translated to Al Bhed and a few English letters were taught to the class despite the fact that everyone else was completely uninterested in the lesson…everyone, that is, except for Victoria. Once the lesson was finished, he sat in the seat next to Victoria and placed a hand under his chin. By that time, Lynn was seated in another desk after placing Daulton and his carrier on another desk.

Shanks made his way towards the storage closet and opened it up. The class had finally quieted down so it was time for another assignment, an art assignment that would hopefully go better than the first one did. Eight pieces of paper was taken out along with eight sharpened pencils of different colors. He walked around in a circle, placing a blank paper and pencil on the desks of his eight students and picking up the papers they wrote on Howl's Moving Castle. "The assignment," he announced, "is for you to draw the one thing you hate the most in the world." When he was done, he made his way back to his desk to take a look at all the papers.

Shanks look at the eight papers in front of him while the eight of his students sat in the circle of desks with the paper and pencils in their hands. Some, those being Victoria, Johnny, Maura, and Kyler, looked deeply entranced in their assignments. The rest were just sitting there without doing anything.

Kurt, Elie, Johnny, and Larry's papers had improved since their papers on the Harry Potter book they had to read. All four were full paragraph papers with no money signs on them and written completely in English. Kyler, Maura, and Victoria showed no signs of improvement. Kyler and Maura's were still close to unreadable due to the fact that their penmanship and spelling still sucked. Victoria's still had random drawings all over the paper. Lynn's paper was neatly written, but got off-topic extremely quickly:

Howl's Moving Castle is about a poor girl named Sophie, who works part time in a hat shop and as a whore. She is plain but gets ugly after a witch curses her because her hats are ugly. It was her fault for getting cursed because that's what happens to all poor people. They are all stupid, ugly, and make the wrong decisions. They all deserve to be humiliated and they have to obey the ground the rich and respected walk on. In fact…

"Uhhh…Lynn…were you actually paying attention to the book?" Shanks asked Lynn with a touch of uneasiness in his voice.

"Are you telling me that I made a bad paper?" Lynn asked in her usual snotty voice.

"I'm telling you that I'm pretty sure that there weren't any whores in the little part of the book we read and your paper is ranting about how bad you think the poor are. D."

"W-what?" Lynn stammered.

"You heard me. D for going off topic and not paying enough attention."

"But…but…" Lynn began to cry.

"Sorry, but the grade sticks. Deal with it."

Lynn's pale face quickly reddened. It was official. She was pissed off again. No teacher in this school gave her a grade like what she had just gotten and spoke to her in a manner that Shanks had used. "How dare you…" Lynn started. She took a deep breath before screaming the rest of what she was going to say, "YOU HAVE NO RIGHT SPEAKING TO ME LIKE THAT!" Following her screams was the sharp cry of her child, who grew frightened because of the voice.

The rest of the class let out a series of groans and the shouts of "Lynn!"

Lynn showed no signs of calming down. She had two choices for what to do about the situation: shut her mouth and calm down Daulton or do something destructive and make his crying worse. She chose to do that latter. She basically went psycho and decided to do something to show her anger so she could try and convince Shanks to change her grade.

A wrench that Johnny was using earlier to fix the heater was only about three feet to her right. It was a good sized wrench, one that could tighten large sized bolts without breaking. To show her anger, Lynn took the wrench and tossed it at the window.

CRASH! Johnny's wrench went through the window, forming a large hole in the window. The warm air Johnny and Larry worked so hard on getting escaped from the room. A gust of wind and rain came into the room. Daulton's screams got much worse.

The mixture of cold and screams was almost too much for Shanks to handle and he could handle a lot. What made the situation a lot worse was the fact that Lynn did not show any signs of calming down. She was acting worse than Victoria when she first announced that she ate the Kaze Kaze no Mi. At least then, Victoria claimed it was an accident and tried her hardest to control her emotions. Lynn wasn't even showing a single sign of trying.

"Okay, that's it!" Shanks shouted after five minutes when he finally discovered that no matter what, the noise and cold was not going to get any better, only worse. With his one single hand, Shanks gripped Lynn's left arm and ripped her out of her desk. He ignored all of her whines as he pulled her onto her feet. "Lynn, I want you to take that kid out of my classroom. I'm not going to sit here and listen to the cries of the child of a spoiled little bitch that I have to baby-sit. I want you out of this classroom and I don't want to see Daulton in here ever again. I don't care if you don't have a baby-sitter for him. I want him out of here and I don't want to see him back. Now get out!" Lynn gaped then gave him the puppy-dog eyes as if that would make anything better. It didn't. "NOW!"

For once Lynn didn't need to be told twice. Without saying anything, she grabbed the carrier and Daulton's bag before running out of the room while miraculously not falling or injuring the baby in any way. No tears were rolling down her face and the look of regret was not present on her face. In fact, she looked moderately grateful to leave the room and kept the look on her face as she walked down the stairs of the building.

"Okay, guys. Stop what you're doing. It's time for me to teach you something useful. Kicking ass is usually very easy to do if you know what you're doing. Sure you guys think you can fight, but the truth is you don't. You may be strong but you leave yourselves open for any attack. I see it every time I see you guys fight. In order for you to be strong, you need three things: self discipline, clear mind, and knowledge for what's around you." Shanks announced to the class.

All the students except for Victoria gave a little snort, stating that they did not believe a word he said about them not knowing how to kick any ass. Most of them had already done it, so why was this one-armed guy telling them that they couldn't?

"Oh, you don't believe me? Fine. I want you to prove that you can. Without using any tools or weapons, I want you guys to break one of the empty desks." Shanks ordered.

Maura backed away from the challenge, claiming that she didn't want to end up breaking or bruising her body when she attacked the thick, wooden desks that were placed around the classroom. Victoria also turned the challenge down. Her excuse was that she did not like fighting and did not want her powers to get out of hand again. Besides, her powers would most likely be counted as cheating and wouldn't count. Elie and the guys were the only ones that accepted the challenge to prove that they were strong and could break the desks.

By the time the five were ready to attack a desk, a nice little pile of daggers, guns, a hammer, drill, and many different wrench sizes was placed on the shelf that Shanks caught Elie sleeping on the night Shanks choked her for stealing the Kaze Kaze no Mi. It seemed the students were going to listen to him and take up the challenge.

Kurt went first. As strong and tough as he looked and was, he could not break the desk. He pelted the desk with punches with his bare fists and kicks with his heavy boots but it still would not break.

Elie followed his actions and began to release her anger on the empty desk next to the one Kurt was desperately trying to break. No luck. She was a strong girl, especially for one as small as she was, and could easily kick Shanks through a wooden door as proved on the first day the two "met," but she was not as strong as Kurt and the desk would not break.

Larry took a desk in the back, the one to the left of where Johnny stood when he was fixing the heater earlier in the morning. He had muscles, big muscles. Unfortunately, as often as he lifted weights to make his muscles stronger, the desk turned out to be the victor.

Kyler and Johnny had another idea of how to break a desk. They chose one by the window Lynn broke and, at the same time, began hurling punches and kicks along with a few dirty insults at the desk. Kyler even stood on top of the desk and jumped up and down on it while Johnny continued to punch and kick the desk with all the strength he had. Nothing happened. None of the desks in the classroom even had cracks in them. The only thing that happened was that the room was filled with bangs and insults and they were loud.

Shanks finally held up his one hand and shouted over the noise, "Okay. Stop." Amazingly, he was obeyed. "I was right. You all, even Maura and Victoria, have proven to me that you really don't know how to fight correctly. Just because you are strong and have injured the weaker people does not mean that you can fight. It just means that you are a bully and know how to freak people out. Being a bully and a warrior are two very different things. A bully is someone that fights and gains nothing; not respect, friends, or even the glory of knowing that you can be victorious in fighting because sooner or later, your victims will retaliate and you will lose. A warrior is someone that fights and gains respect, friends and allies, and the glory of knowing that you can be victorious in fighting even if you lose a small battle for you can get better in the next fight. So far, all of you are considered bullies. Everyone, that is, except for Victoria."

"Me? What am I considered?" Victoria asked, "I did not fight and neither did Maura, so why is she a bully when I am not?"

"Easy. Maura only thinks she's strong and claims that she can kick anybody's ass and since she backed out of my challenge, she proved that she can't. You, however, have claimed that you don't like to fight and I believe it because the only times you fought was by a sudden accident and a small little act of revenge that is not counted as a fight by my standards. You are what I like to call, a Peacemaker." Shanks explained.

"So, you're saying that you can break the desk while the rest of us can't?" Kyler asked. Shanks nodded.

"Bullshit! I was able to kick you through a door the first day I saw you and I couldn't break the desk. What makes you think you can when I can't?" Elie shouted.

"I'll prove it. Watch." Shanks said. He turned to an empty desk in the front of the room and raised his one hand up in the air. His hand balled up into a fist and down it fell on top of the wooden desk. Unlike the other desks, this one broke in half sending small splinters of wood flying everywhere and leaving the students with wide eyes and mouths.

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A/N: Okay, that's what I got so far. Sorry it took me a long time to update this story, but stuff came up and I really could use some suggestions on what to happen next. I already have ideas of what to have happen in the story and I'm going to do my best to make the next chapters more interesting and don't worry, in the next chapter, I will make a part about Shanks teaching the class how to fight better instead of just skipping it. Here's the Al Bhed translation I used:

Tuh'd funno – Don't worry