A/N: I know that most of you just want the fight between Team Sonic + Schnieders to happen already, but this interlude was really kinda fun for me to write. It should be nothing compared to the next one, but I'll let you all judge on that.
Chapter 8: Green Thumb
The bell rang at promptly eight o'clock, but the usual anger management students seemed to wash lazily into the tower room like calm morning waves on the beach. It was most likely because of the announcement that morning stating that Mr. Schnieders would not be in.
"Hey, that means we can go to the library!" Andy cheered when the teacher's replacement read the morning news.
"No you don't," replied the man reading the computer screen. "I'm gonna fill in for all of Dave's classes, and that includes anger management." Several resounding groans could be heard, but the seats gradually filled nonetheless. "Good morning, class!" greeted the substitute in his loud, gravelly voice. "My name is Mr. Gaczko, and I'll be your teacher while Mr. Schnieders is gone."
"Is Mr. Schnieders still fighting Eggman?" Alex asked.
"Fighting who?" inquired a thin girl with short brown hair. "Wait – Mr. Schnieders… fighting?"
"Yeah!" James shouted excitedly. "Sonic was here, and Knuckles left with him and Tails, and Schnieders went, too!"
"Hey, let's keep the run-on sentences to a minimum, huh?" Amanda suggested. James nodded.
"Sammie, how did you get in this class?" Mandy asked in her slight Southern voice.
"I'm in here 'cause of Nathan…" the shorthaired girl replied sulkily.
/O\
Sammie ambled to a table in the cafeteria, her mind occupied with classes, prom, and chores to do at the house that afternoon. The day had been a bit hectic; Preston was being his usual annoying self in math, and Jake hadn't been very helpful in horticulture. To top that off, Luke and Daugherty disrupted history class until Dr. Mathews actually yelled, and they repeated the process with Jordan's help in English with Mrs. Durst. All of this had boiled down to Sammie getting immense amounts of homework from Mrs. Squire, Dr. Mathews, and Mrs. Durst, and she was not happy about it. She took the seat between Nathan and Dylan, hoping that some lunchtime humor would cheer her up.
"Who's that?" asked Nathan, a tall boy with very short, dark hair. He was the one who caused a lot of the trouble at the lunch table, but he was still a nice guy.
"It's me," Sammie answered. Both of them were blind, but most people at ISBVI learned to recognize their friends by their voices.
"Oh, hey Sammie," put in Dylan, another boy who preferred his hair short. Dylan liked to make references to a lot of things that Sammie had never heard of, but he wasn't without his own charm. Usually, he could be seen with Britney, as they were practically dating, but that didn't stop the two from being social with others.
"Hey, Dylan!" returned Sammie happily. "What do we have for lunch, you guys?"
"I don't know…" said a tall girl from across the table. She had long dirty-blonde hair, and her voice was a clear alto. She passed a bowl of nondescript substance to an albino boy on her right, and he passed it to Nathan.
"Holy dead babies, why are we having beef stew for lunch?!" Nathan shouted, shoving the bowl to the middle of the table.
"Nathan Noble!" Sammie shrieked in disgust. She turned to glare at him, but her eyes drifted up toward the lighted ceiling.
"Shut up, Sammie…" retorted Nathan, rocking back and forth slightly as he did so.
"I will not shut up, Nathan! You always say the most inappropriate things!" yelled Sammie. She hit him in the arm slightly, and he responded by pushing her out of her chair. Sammie simply got up, found Nathan's chair, and kicked him in the side.
"All right, that's it Sammie!" Nathan bellowed, leaping out of his chair and striking a menacing pose. Sammie balled her hands into fists and put them up to cover her face and Nathan charged forward. The tension could have cut with a knife at that moment.
That is… until Nathan ran right past Sammie and hit a table.
"That's enough!" boomed a commanding voice from the middle of the room as Nathan recovered and prepared to charge again. The owner of that voice grabbed the tall total by the shirt and pulled him over to Sammie. "What's going on, you two?" asked the daytime counselor, Dr. St. John.
"Sammie attacked me!" Nathan cried, not quite pulling off the right impression of one who is wronged.
"Somehow, I think it went a little differently than that…" the doctor said sternly. "Regardless, I want both of you to be at Mr. Schnieders' anger management class first thing tomorrow morning. I'll send your teachers an email telling them that you'll be gone every Tuesday and Friday for the next six weeks."
\O/
"Well, that's a little unfair!" commented a stocky boy with longish brown hair.
"Shut up, Sexton," Andy said simply.
"Now you kids need to pipe down, okay?" Mr. Gaczko cut in. "It's time for me to start teaching, anyway. Today, we're going to the greenhouse to work with Mrs. Garvey's class." There were several groans.
"It's not that bad," Charlie consoled.
"Yeah, it'll be a great way to help with our anger…" Shadow mumbled. Those students who could see (and some who couldn't) turned to face the black hedgehog.
"You're back in here, Shadow?" asked Kane. "What'd you do now?"
"It's a long story that involves psychology, Chaos Emeralds, and one very disturbed individual…" explained Shadow. "But that's a tale for another day."
"He's right," agreed Gaczko. "We've got to get going, or Mrs. Garvey might lock us out."
xxx
"Good morning, everyone!" sang a cheerful voice as the class arrived at the greenhouse. The place was of a good size for a school greenhouse, but it seemed as though two whole classes would be a little cramped inside. The woman greeting the populous was a slight woman with a thin face and dirty-blonde hair.
"Good morning, Mrs. Garvey," several of the human students returned.
"Well, I see there are some familiar faces here!" Mrs. Garvey said happily. She turned to her class, a group of about ten students, and started to explain. "Mr. Schnieders' anger management class has agreed to come work with us on some greenhouse jobs today, class!"
"I like the black hedgehog…" said a tall boy with short tan hair.
"Good, 'cause I hate you…" Shadow retorted in the same mellow timbre.
"Don't be mean to Shane!" Amanda scolded. Shadow merely shrugged and grunted.
"Why don't you all introduce yourselves?" Mrs. Garvey suggested, gesturing to the two groups. The anger management class stepped forward and recited their names.
"Shadow."
"Mayhem."
"Alex."
"Sammie."
"Rylie."
"Kane."
"Andrew."
"Amanda."
"Mandy."
"Jake."
"Preston."
"Josh."
"Jimmy."
"Nathan."
"Charlie."
"James."
Mrs. Garvey's class greeted them with several hellos and other random salutations, and they stepped forward to introduce themselves.
"Shane," said the boy who had commented at Shadow.
"Uh… uh… uh… Jacob…" an ugly boy said as a thick river of drool spluttered from his mouth.
"I'm ready for horticulture…" announced a short girl with wavy dark hair.
"No, Steffanie, your name…" advised Mrs. Garvey.
"Oh. Steffanie Cabral!" the girl shouted.
"I am Hyuuga Hinata," a girl of about medium height said with a bow.
"I'm Tony," a student with short blonde hair said.
"Tara…" a short girl with long brown hair informed sleepily.
"I didn't know you were in here, Tara!" shrieked a girl with pixie-cut blonde hair excitedly. "Oh, and I'm Lexi, by the way."
"They call me Britney Lynn," introduced a girl with shoulder-length blonde hair.
"You don't wanna know my name…" said a tall dark boy.
"Don't be silly, Donald," Mrs. Garvey. "Introduce yourself like everyone else."
"Fine… I'm Donald…" he consented.
"SMC. Sienna Morgan Craig," recited a tall girl who kept waggling her head left and right.
"Well, now that we all know each other, let's go inside and get some work done!" Mrs. Garvey encouraged. "There's a lot that needs doing before the plant sale, you know!" She and Mr. Gaczko herded the huge class inside of the greenhouse. The process took a few minutes, considering that some of the students needed to be guided in. The inside of the facility was divided into several parts. On one end there was a table filled with soil. Continuing down the length of the greenhouse, one could see a table and chairs, a sink for washing hands, and three rows of benches filled with all kinds of plants. "All right, everyone, let's get into five groups, and I'll give each group a task," announced the cheerful instructor. "First group is… Shadow, Lexi, Sienna, Shane, and… Jake." The five students assembled in front of Mrs. Garvey. "I think I'll have you guys working on mixing up some soil, so why don't Shadow and Jake get the bales onto the dolly, while Lexi, Sienna, and Shane can start on the soil that's already on the soil bench?" The group split up immediately.
"Why do we have to do the soil-carrying?" Shadow grumbled as he and the one called Sexton made their way to the back of the greenhouse.
"It's not that bad, Shadow," assured Jake. "You get to use a trowel and cut things open." A large grin creased Shadow's muzzle.
"Maybe that Shane kid…"
"As funny as that would be, we can't afford to have you spending your whole life in anger management," Jake chided. Shadow merely grunted. They arrived at the back door of the greenhouse, and Jake showed Shadow a rolling device and several square packages marked PRO-MIX.
"Screw that!" smirked Shadow, waving his hand at the dolly. "I've got a much better idea." He turned to the bales of soil, closed his eyes, and shouted, "Chaos… BLAST!" A small explosion ensued, causing the packages to soar through the air toward the soil bench. The students who hadn't been grouped yet screamed and ran in all different directions. One of the huge cubes looked like it was on a crash course right for Tara's head, but it came to a skidding, sliding halt before it could hit her. Another flew right into the front wall, which seemed to be comprised entirely of corrugated cardboard. The wall resisted for a moment, and then it gave in to the pushing bale of soil. The last bundle cruised through the air, bounced off of the middle bench and knocked over several flats of plants, and landed right in the soil bench. The resulting spray of potting material covered all three of the students in flecks of dirt, while the rest of the wave landed on the floor. Jake and Shadow laughed hysterically as Mrs. Garvey rushed over to the distraught students.
"Oh, now look what happened…" she lamented.
"It's just dirt…" said Lexi, scratching her head.
"Oh, no, no, no!" Mrs. Garvey corrected. "It's only dirt when it hits the ground. Until then, it's clean, sterile soil. See how nice it feels?" The odd teacher ran her hands through the white-flecked substance. Shane repeated the maneuver absent-mindedly.
"I like it. It's cute!" the strange boy gushed.
"I wish I was in OM today…" Sienna muttered. "I prefer OM to this…"
"Sienna, what in the world is OM?" Mrs. Garvey inquired, giving the young girl a sidelong glance.
"It's what I call O & M," she replied. "Do you think I'll get to listen to the radio today?"
"Who knows?" wondered Lexi. Quietly, she walked over to the radio and flipped it on. A soft rock song began to play.
"Okay, let's get you all into groups," continued Mrs. Garvey. "Next I'll have… Rylie, Andy, Steffanie, and Jacob join me at the table here, and we're going to transplant some wandering Jew into hanging baskets." Rylie, Andy, and Jacob immediately found the table, but Steffanie just stood there.
"Come on, Stephanie Mills!" Jacob coaxed in a slightly higher voice than before. He had a ridiculous tone to his voice that sounded a lot like he was talking down to her.
"I'm coming, Jacob Lynch!" the short girl assured him. "Okay, Steff, go to the table…"
"Don't talk to yourself and just walk over here," Andy instructed. Steffanie walked slowly to the work area and sat down in a chair. On the table were several baskets of thick vine-like plants.
"Okay, now what we're going to do is take the ends of these stems, and we're going to just snap them off like this," the teacher said. She took hold of one of the leafy ends of the wandering Jew, and she bent it back with a quick snap. Each student took a basket and began working.
"Ew, this is so nasty!" Rylie laughed as she wiped the slimy sap from the plants onto the table.
"Ah, get over it, Rylie," Andy said.
"Shut up, Andy," retorted the blonde girl. She took one of the stem cuttings, reached up, and shoved it in the giant's face.
"Hey!" Steffanie scolded in a surprisingly sharp tone. "There is no fighting in horticulture class!" Rylie and Andy simply laughed.
"I can be your villain, baby…" sang Jacob, taking a slobbery breath. "I'll accentuate your pain…" The ungraded boy began slapping his legs in slow rhythm with the song.
"Hey, Jacob," Andy said. There was no answer. "Jacob." This cry for attention was still ignored, though it was a little louder. "Jacob! Listen to me you f – " There was a sudden burst of sound from somewhere near the back of the greenhouse that sounded like someone saying the letter "F" very loudly. " – king sped!"
"What do you want, Andy?" answered Jacob with a ridiculous attempt at a Western twang. He started to laugh stupidly.
"Ew…" Rylie groaned as Jacob started singing again.
"It's time to play the quiet game," commanded Andy. Jacob immediately shut his mouth and stopped singing.
"I think I want… Donald, Charlie, Nathan, Hinata, and James to work on trimming shrubs outside," Mrs. Garvey announced. The five students followed her outside. "Okay, here are the burning bushes that I want you guys to trim down," continued the teacher. "Just take about a foot off of each branch, okay?" With that, she left. Charlie and Hinata picked up pairs of shears and started cutting, but James, Donald, and Nathan just sat down. James took a laptop from a bag at his side and started surfing the Internet.
"James, why aren't you helping?" Charlie asked, his face getting a little red with irritation. "Mrs. Garvey expects us to get this done, and Hinata and I can't do it alone."
"Hold on, I'm just reading some fan-fiction…" the hippie mumbled, clicking a link that marked a story about Naruto and Sonic being in a romantic relationship.
"How are you getting wireless out here?" wondered Donald as he eyed the laptop greedily.
"Oh, I've got a special card that allows me to pick up Wi-Fi anywhere," James answered proudly. A worried look suddenly crossed his face. "Hey, can you watch my stuff while I go to the bathroom, Donald?" Donald nodded, and James ran off.
"N-N-Nathan, could y-you pile up th-th-th-those cuttings, please?" Hinata suggested politely. Nathan sighed, got up, and starting putting the severed branches in a heap. While they were all working, Donald quickly withdrew his own laptop from his backpack, put James' computer in its place, and set his own on the ground.
xxx
"Okay, Shadow. All you have to do is cut off this little piece right here…" Jake instructed as he sliced open a bale of soil. The stuff stayed in one dry, solid block. The ebon hedgehog picked up a sharp shining trowel and began hacking away at the soil. "That's the spirit!" said Jake in a dramatic bass. He, too, picked up a tool and started cutting through the pot filler.
"I like you…" Shane said, sliding toward Lexi. He reached toward her arm and starting rubbing it absent-mindedly. This did not go on for very long before a sizable chunk of soil flew into his face from Jake's direction. Lexi let out a burst of loud bubbly laughter as Jake and Shadow high-fived.
"Our next group will be planting some sapphire impatience, and that group will be…" announced Mrs. Garvey. "Sammie, Mayhem, Mandy, and Josh." The humans and fox followed her to the back area, where they gathered around the middle bench. On it were several flats filled with soil, and one giant grid of small plants. Mrs. Garvey left to take care of the last group, and the foursome got to work.
"I'd much prefer these if they were black and spotted with red…" Mayhem grumbled.
"That would be so gross!" squealed Sammie.
"Honey, you gotta learn to just tolerate stuff, ya know?" Mandy said, not unkindly.
"Yeah, Amanda would know about that," commented Josh. "She deals with Charlie's smell all the time." He started to laugh, but a fist came into contact with the side of his head before he could really enjoy the moment.
"Serves him right for being so blatantly rude…" the black fox sneered.
"Whah, thank you, Mayhem!" cried Mandy, going to embrace the three-tailed vulpine.
"I'm not a very huggy person…" advised Mayhem. She nodded and returned to her plants.
"That was so mean of you, Amanda!" Sammie scolded. "How could you punch Josh like that? I bet he's got a concussion now!"
"I can check for that," Mayhem volunteered. He knelt down to where Josh lay and turned the redhead's cranium to look at the spot where he'd been punched. "Nah, his lights are just out." Sammie gave a sigh of relief. A bout of arguing suddenly blasted from the soil bench, where Sienna and Shane were fighting over a small block of soil.
"You have to let me cut it up!" whined Sienna.
"But it's cute!" Shane pleaded. "I wanna sniff it!" Another dirt clod sailed through the air and hit Shane.
"Nice one, Lexi!" Jake cheered, hugging her. The grin on the blonde's face could easily never diminish. Meanwhile, Shadow was keeping himself busy by using a combination of Chaos Blast and Chaos Control to separate the soil very efficiently. In the middle of one of these maneuvers, Jake poked the black rodent in the arm, causing the blast to be lopsided. The soil sprayed in a concentrated beam that hit Jacob square in the back of the head. This resulted in a resounding explosion of laughter from Andy. Jacob simply continued singing his slow love song and drooling, but Steffanie joined in with the enormous teenager's mirth with her own snorting giggles.
"What are you talking about?" the blind girl laughed. "I'm always ready for horticulture!"
xxx
"Okay, I'm back!" James said with an air of relief as he sat back down to finish his reading. "Where'd Donald go?"
"He said he had a pass to go back to his first hour class…" answered Nathan dully as he picked up an armful of cuttings. "Hey, do you think we could roast babies with these if they were sharpened?"
"Th-that's terrible!" Hinata boomed. "How c-c-could you talk about r-r-r-roasting babies?!"
"Same way I can talk about putting 'em in blenders," Nathan grinned. The pale-eyed girl turned on him, reached into her pocket, and threw a sharp star-shaped object. The shuriken whizzed past Nathan's head and landed in the dirt just two inches away from James' leg.
"Dude, that is not cool!" complained the hippie.
"I'm so s-s-sorry!" Hinata cried. James looked up at her in surprise.
"Why, what'd you do?" he asked. "I wasn't paying attention, 'cause I was so mad about losing my Wi-Fi signal. Hey… come to think of it… this isn't my laptop!"
xxx
Donald crept into the greenhouse, his eyes shifting from one group to another. Realizing that Charlie had left his own laptop inside, the young thief made his way sneakily to the abandoned bag and placed the stolen computer inside. It was a snug fit, but it worked. As quickly as he had come, Donald was gone.
"Now, I'm going to have the rest of you go back to D Dorm, where we'll sow some seeds for the plant sale," Mrs. Garvey informed. "Mr. Gaczko will take you all back, while I stay here and check up on our other groups." Alex, Kane, Amanda, Preston, Jimmy, Tony, Tara, and Britney followed the substitute teacher out of the greenhouse. At the soil bench, most of the group watched as Jake used two matching trowels to expertly slice and dice a large chunk of the dry soil. As he worked, the slightly sharp tools flew through the air and flashed in the diffused sunlight.
"Who do you think you are, Sir Gawain?" mumbled Shadow.
"Sometimes I'd like to think so…" Jake answered, flicking one of the trowels and chopping three blocks of potting material into a fine consistency.
"So how is it that you can do all these fancy tricks with sharp objects, but you can't see well enough to know when I've stopped walking in the halls?" asked Lexi sardonically.
"That's not fair…" complained Jake as he dropped the trowels. Lexi merely smiled and took his hand in hers. At the transplanting table, Andy and Rylie had finished several baskets apiece, while Steffanie and Jacob couldn't have a complete one if they combined all of their total work.
"You need to get some work done, Steffanie," Andy said gently.
"Come on, Steff, get to work…" she replied slowly.
"And, uh… Michaels is givin' me a country-western quiz over Spring Break…" said Jacob to no one in particular. "I heard he's also gonna stick some Van Halen questions in there…" The last statement caused him to giggle girlishly for some reason.
"You lose," scolded Andy. Jacob took no notice and continued rambling something about Preston and being late.
xxx
"Pricilla, you were supposed to sow the bell pepper seeds!" Amanda yelled as Preston continued sprinkling bright yellow seeds into a pot.
"What?" asked the smelly student. "Sorry, I wasn't paying attention…" All the rest of the students were working busily in D Dorm, and several dozen pots were already germinating on the heat pads in the lab. In each room, the TVs broadcasted the news of Eggman's latest scheme. In the main room, Jimmy, Tara, and Alex sat watching (or listening, in Alex's case) to the program.
"And so, it seems the Egg-sterminator's course has come to a halt for now," said the baritone newscaster. "I'm Tom Tucker, and this is Channel 6 News."
"Does this mean they've won?" Tara asked. Jimmy shook his head.
"I highly doubt it, given Robotnik's usual plans," the redhead answered. "He may have stopped bombing Indianapolis, but he's got something else up his sleeve." Just then, Donald rushed through the building toward the quad.
"Where do you think you're going?" asked Tara playfully.
"I'm going to… uh… the Health Center!" Donald said, holding his stomach in a bad impression of being sick. He continued his mad dash to the door.
"This just in," said a female voice from the TV. "It appears that the control tower of the Egg-sterminator has begun to collapse. We were finally able to get our Channel 6 copters up to the site, and it looks like the day has been saved by Team Sonic."
"Hey, they're forgetting Mr. Schnieders!" yelled Alex.
"I'm getting reports now that Team Sonic has been accompanied by what appears to be a man of middle age or higher," the reporter announced. "Unfortunately, we cannot reach them for comment, but our eyes in the sky are telling us that he looks like one of the teachers at the local blind school. This is Diane Simmons, Channel 6 News." Just then, the PA system made its familiar trilling call for attention.
"Could Donald Montgomery and Charlie Johnson please report to Mr. Wilson's office?" said the mellow voice of the announcer. "Donald Montgomery and Charlie Johnson to Mr. Wilson's office, please."
xxx
"How could this happen?!" Mrs. Garvey cried. "I hadn't anticipated that such a horrible thing could occur in my classroom…"
"That's what you get for having Donald here," said Andy bluntly.
"I guess all we can do now is go back to D Dorm and wait for this to be sorted out…" Rylie suggested. Everyone agreed, and the whole troop (minus Charlie and James, who had gone to see Mr. Wilson) headed back into the main school building.
xxx
"Hey, Shadow," Kane greeted as the Ultimate Lifeform stepped through the art room door into the horticulture area. "Can you tell us that story now?"
"I suppose there's nothing better to do…" consented the hedgehog. All of the students and staff gathered around. "Well, it all started about five days ago…"
Sorry for the almost-late update… I've been super freakin' busy, so story updates aren't first in my head. I do hope you liked this doozy of a chappie, though.
Next Chapter: Last Chapter: Part 2