It was 7:30. Just half an hour more until the girls showed up. Gumball was sitting on the couch with Darwin.
"So…almost feels like a double date, huh?" Gumball asked.
"Not really, since for a double date to happen, there has to be two couples. And you and Penny aren't a couple!" he replied innocently.
"Well, not yet. But what about you and Carrie? You two seemed to hit it off at the Halloween party…" Gumball asked, trying to convince Darwin to give him and Penny some alone time.
"Yeah…but the next day she told me to 'never try and kiss me again'…" Darwin said glumly.
"Oh…" Guess I won't get to hang out with Penny alone tonight, then… he thought.
They sat in silence until the doorbell rang. The two of them stood up and went to greet the girls.
"Hi Gumball, hi Darwin!" they said cheerily. They were dressed like they normally were – Carrie, with her skull bow, and Penny with her sneakers and wristbands. Gumball and Darwin, on the other hand…
Gumball wore a fancy black tuxedo over a white dress shirt, topped with a matching black bow tie and matching black formal pants. Darwin wore a similar outfit, custom fit to look almost normal despite his long legs and lack of a body.
The two groups looked stunned at each other's appearance.
"Um…you guys know we're just going to the school concert, right?"
Gumball didn't know that. But he certainly didn't show it.
"O-oh yeah. You know, I just like getting dressed up sometimes…" he lied.
"Where'd you get those anyway? They look expensive!" Carrie commented.
"Dad has this magic plastic card that we can use to buy things!" Darwin said cheerfully.
Carrie and Penny just stared at them. It was a wonder they hadn't gone bankrupt, yet.
"Well, shall we start walking?" Gumball finally asked.
With that, the foursome walked out the door and towards the school.
The school looked the same as ever on the outside. On the inside it looked…as though the decorator was on a tight budget…
The tables scarcely had food; the "punch bowl" was a garbage can that was washed, and instead of punch, there was water. The chips were cheapo knock-off brands like "Way's", and "Duffles", which basically tasted like cardboard. And the sculpture was a disfigured clay statue that some sixth grader probably made in art class…
They had hoped at least the performing band would be good, but…
"Hey, everyone! I'm Razor, and this is my band, the Death Skull Deathfaces!" the guitarist/lead vocalist said as his band finished setting up. Gumball recognized him – it was the guy Clayton made up and used as a scapegoat when he destroyed the locker room. Razor, despite his cool name, was a scrawny green and purple kid with long, black, greasy hair and a pink sweater. His voice sounded totally lame, and it was obvious their music was going to be even lamer. The only reason Gumball didn't up and leave is because of the girl who invited him here. Speaking of whom…
"Sorry the concert turned out lame, Gumball…" Penny said.
"Eh…it could be worse…I could be here alone, for example."
Penny blushed. Suddenly, they heard a gruff voice. "Hey. If you're lookin' for some real fun…" It was the bomb guy that Gumball met in detention – Bon, his name was? He looked like he was up to no good.
"Oh, you." Gumball said contemptuously. "Sorry, man, but your personality is way too explosive."
"Ha-ha, 'cause I'm a bomb, right? You think yer funny, kid? Huh? Do ya?"
He started flicking Gumball on the head. Gumball was on the verge of exploding himself, but Penny grabbed Bon's hand. "I think you should leave. Now."
Bon yanked his hand out of her grip – it was surprisingly hard! "Hmph. Lucky your girlfriend is there to hold your hand. As soon as she's gone…" he made a hissing sound to imitate him lighting his fuse, then made a mock exploding sound. He walked away.
"Thanks, Penny. For the record, though, I could've taken him…"
Penny giggled. "Now, didn't he say I was holding your hand?" she said, extending hers.
Gumball did the same, and they held hands. Penny blushed as a goofy smile plastered itself on Gumball's face.
"Hello, kids. Glad to see you're enjoying the concert!" a silky voice behind them said – Mrs. Walters, Gumball was easily able to identify.
"Hi, Mrs. Walters!" they said in unison.
"Whoops, can't chat!" she said, eyeing Banana Joe throwing peels all over the dance floor. "Banana Joe, stop that this instant!"
Gumball and Penny just shrugged at each other.
Before long, the concert started, and it surprisingly wasn't that bad. Darwin bobbed his head to the beat; Carrie did the same nearby as she worked up the courage to ask him to dance.
Gumball couldn't dance, and he knew it. But when Penny asked him to…
"Hey Gumball. Wanna dance…?" she asked shyly as the band played a slow song.
Gumball wanted to say no, but the way she looked at him twisted up his vocal chords.
"Hazdf wjasdf asldfj asdfs…" he mumbled incoherently.
"Wha?"
"What, are you kidding? I thought you'd never ask! I'm the best dancer in all of Elmore!" he blurted out, silently cursing himself.
"Well, great!" she put her hand on his shoulder; he put his on her waist. Nervously, he raised his left hand out and bent it upwards for her to grab.
Please don't mess this up…PLEASE don't mess this up… he whispered to himself over and over.
The two of them stood, close together. Penny was synchronizing herself with the beat; Gumball pretended to do the same. Eyes closed, Penny spoke. "Ready?" she asked.
"Ready as I'll ever be…" Gumball replied quietly.
With that, Penny lurched backwards, gracefully performing the first step of the waltz. Gumball, who had no idea what the waltz was, let alone how to dance it, stumbled clumsily after her. Penny still had her eyes closed as she flew across the ground in perfect harmony with the music. Gumball continued to stumble after her. After a while, though, he started learning the flow of it.
Whatever Penny's doing, just do the opposite, he observed.
And so whenever Penny took a step back and to the left, he took a step forward and to the right; whenever she stepped forward and to the right, he stepped backward and to the left. His movements were robotic, formulaic, stepping forward and backwards, forward and backwards, never daring to do more.
"Close your eyes…" Penny whispered, apparently aware of Gumball's terrible dancing the entire time. "Just let the music guide you…"
Gumball did as she said; at first, he went back to stumbling. He couldn't see where he was going, after all. But soon, he did feel the music, and it guided him, just as Penny said it would. The whole world faded away, and he was left in an empty white room with the only thing that mattered at that moment: Penny. The cheesy love song the middle school band played was gone; what replaced it was an angelic choir. Together, Gumball and Penny flew around the room. Gumball could no longer feel his legs – they had disappeared. He was literally floating, flying, zooming across, still keeping in time with the music.
He looked into his lover's eyes; she did the same. They both leaned in for a kiss, but…
BOOM!
An explosion rocked the school building. The band stopped playing, but the music kept going. Everyone gasped.
"Lip singers!" someone shouted, and they were booed off the stage.
"Huh, I was wondering how a guy with that kind of voice could've sung rock." Darwin commented.
Gumball was more curious about the explosion. As the crowd continued to boo, flames crept into the room – fire!
"FIRE!" someone shouted. "FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!"
"FIRE!" everyone panicked and started running for the nearest exit.
"FIRE!" in the confusion, Gumball had lost Penny. He looked around, but finding her was impossible with this much confusion. Someone shoved him to the ground.
"FIRE!" It was like that was the only word anyone there knew.
"Gumball!" Penny cried weakly. Gumball honed in on the sound of the voice. "Over here!"
Gumball ran over to her, wondering why she wasn't running out the door. To his utter horror, he found out why.
One of Penny's legs was pinned under one of the speakers. Try as she might, she just couldn't shove it off. Gumball tried to help push it off, but even combined, their strength wasn't enough. The flames crept up closer to them.
"Help! Somebody, help!" Gumball cried, hoping one of the stragglers would stop and help her. None did, and soon, it was just the two of them in the auditorium.
"Gumball…" Penny said, coughing from thick smoke enveloping them.
"Don't worry, Penny! I'll get you out!"
"Gumball…just go…I'll be fine…" she said weakly.
"No way, I'm not leaving you here!" he shouted. He continued pushing against the stereo as hard as he could, but it refused to budge.
Suddenly, a flame licked his tail. He jumped up and shouted in pain; despair washed over him as he looked to see how close the flames were. Two steps away was a huge wave of fire, ready to wash over the two of them. He panicked and resumed pushing.
Maybe it was the sense of urgency, or maybe it was the stakes, but Gumball was actually able to budge the stereo an inch. His mouth widened when he saw what he had done. "C'mon, Penny! It's actually moving now!" he called, but to his utter despair, Penny was unconscious, likely from a combination of extreme pain and inhaling smoke. With renewed vigor and panic, he continuously slammed his shoulder at the obstacle. As soon as it was off of her, Gumball lifted her up and ran as fast as he could out the door.
As he emerged, Darwin and Carrie greeted them with excited expressions.
"There you guys are!" Darwin yelled out. He noticed that Penny was unconscious. "What happened to Penny?!"
Gumball coughed because of the smoke he had inhaled. "She…she got stuck…" he wheezed.
Darwin helped him gently lay Penny on the ground.
They stood there, wordlessly, until the paramedics came.
Gumball watched silently as the ambulance drove off with Penny. There was still mass confusion around him – people talking about what caused the fire, or who.
"Maybe the band was gonna use fireworks in the show?"
"Probably an electrical failure. School wasn't meant to be active at night."
"An accident at the chemistry lab, perhaps?"
Gumball didn't care; as Darwin chatted with Carrie about something, he slipped off into the night.
As he walked around the empty school campus, a gruff voice filled his ears.
"So…how was the dance?" it asked sarcastically – it was Bon, the bomb guy. Bon Bomb. He was leaning against the wall, shadows covering half of his face and most of his body.
"Wouldn't you like to know…" Gumball replied, annoyed, as he continued walking.
"Oh, I would." Bon stepped out in front of him, obviously looking for trouble.
Gumball just scoffed and began to turn around when he noticed something…off about the bomb guy.
His fuse was gone, and smoke poured out of his head; not only that, but his head was a lot smaller than usual. That could only mean one thing…
"You…you caused the fire!"
"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't." he said nonchalantly. "You know me and my explosive personality, right?"
He laughed. He laughed the laugh of a villain, knowing full well of what he had done; he may not have actually known he sent Penny to the emergency room, but he sure laughed like it.
The laugh is probably what did it. The vile, despicable, evil laugh.
Something snapped inside of Gumball. He charged at Bon, unsheathed his claws, and swung. His first hit clean missed, but the second slashed his shoulder. Bon just smiled and swung a fist out at Gumball, hitting him square in the jaw. The boys continued to swing and slash and punch at each other for a full minute when a voice called out to them.
"Gumball? Gumball, where are you?" It was Darwin.
Bon knew a 2 on 1 fight wouldn't work out so well for him, so he strategically withdrew himself from the battle as Gumball searched for his friend.
"Darwin! I'm over here!" Gumball cried out. Suddenly, he remembered he was still in a fight. But when he turned around, Bon was nowhere to be found.
"Gumball, there you are!" Darwin said, turning the corner. Carrie followed nearby. He noticed his bruised and swollen face. "Whoa, what happened?" he asked.
Gumball spat out a tooth. "Bon. I got into a fight with him. He's the one who started the fire…"
…And sent Penny to the hospital, he thought to himself.
Darwin seemed to read his mind. "Dude, he's not worth it."
Gumball remained silent. Suddenly, a car turned around the corner. Gumball expected it to continue down the road, but it stopped. The door opened, and Mrs. Walters stepped out.
"Kids? Gumball, what happened?!" she exclaimed.
"I…got into a fight." he stated bluntly.
She sighed. "Hop in. I've got medicine in my apartment."
The drive was two minutes long. The kids stepped into Mrs. Walters's apartment. It was quite small – it was a studio apartment. There were only two rooms: the combined living room/bedroom/kitchen, and the bathroom.
"You can have a seat on the sofa, if you want." Mrs. Walters said as she headed to the bathroom in search of her first aid kit. The kids took a seat on her elegant white sofa.
"So..." Gumball whispered to Darwin as his teacher shuffled through the bathroom cabinet. "how did things with you and Carrie go?"
"We both agreed to just stay friends," Darwin replied.
He looked over at Carrie and smiled. She smiled back.
Heh, friend zoned... Gumball thought.
Before they could say anything else, Francine stepped out of the bathroom with a white box. With great care and delicateness, she cleaned and treated Gumball's wounds.
"Okay, now just hold this bag of ice over your eye." she said as she finished. Gumball did as he was told.
"So this house is pretty small for a married couple…" Carrie commented.
"Oh, I live alone." Mrs. Walters replied, pouring herself a drink.
"Oh. Huh." So where's Mr. Walters, then? Carrie thought but didn't ask.
"Would any of you like some juice?" Mrs. Walters asked, holding up a pitcher of apple juice.
"Sure!" the kids replied enthusiastically.
As Mrs. Walters came back to the sofa with the tray of drinks, Gumball asked a question that's been on his mind. "So is Penny going to be all right?"
"Yes, I believe the hospital said she woke up by the time she was admitted." Mrs. Walters explained. "She's just going to need a few days of rest."
Gumball heaved a sigh of relief.
They sipped their drinks in silence for a while. Darwin was the first to speak.
"So…some first two days this has been, huh?" he asked.
"Yeah…" everyone said wistfully.
Mrs. Walters raised her glass. "To the new year?"
"To the new year!" the kids responded, and they clinked glasses and drank.
Ahhh, this chapter turned out dark, or attempting to be dark anyway. I'm hoping next chapter I'll be back to the cheery school life. Anyway, thanks for reading! Any and all reviews would be much appreciated, as always!
Oh, and I just figured I'd take a few moments to sort of briefly review the characters I made up. I'm not too big on OC's, I mostly just add them when the story calls for one. Like Mrs. Walters, for example. Having Miss Simian as the homeroom teacher would've sorta restricted me to keeping her as in character as I could. Which would've made it harder to write for Anais's introduction to eighth grade. Or, for me, anyway.
Anyway, here're the characters you probably wouldn't be familiar with from the TV show:
Mrs. Francine Walters: the main English/History teacher at Elmore Junior High. I basically based her off of Francine from Animal Crossing lol. Mrs. Walters is a white bunny with blonde hair that usually wears a blue jacket with a white polka-dotted hood and a skyblue checkered vest and matching skirt over a white top. She's very smart, having graduated from the University of London with a Master's in Education. She cares a lot for her students, being willing to help them anytime, anywhere.
Mr. Doctor Professor: the main Math/Science teacher at Elmore Junior High. Doctor Professor is, by far, the smartest person in the entire school. Having Ph.D's in subjects like Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, he's probably more than qualified to dethrone Principal Brown. The only thing stopping him is his love of teaching.
I had the scrapped teacher (meaning, the teacher that was originally going to be on the actual show, but they removed him) "The Professor" in mind when designing this character. I also sort of added some of my favorite professor's personalities, too lol.
Brain: a literal floating brain and brain stem. He's a smart kid, a bit boring, and a bit overconfident in his abilities sometimes. Oh, and he's neutral on most arguments. I had those brain guys from that one Jimmy Neutron movie in mind when describing this guy. He's also a sort of reference to Brain from Arthur :p. He probably won't show up that often. I just used him as a background character in Anais's classes.
Bon: the bomb guy from The Lesson. He's bad to the bone, having broken out of detention several times. This year, he seems eager to bring his misdeeds to the next level... I was originally going to name him "Bob" because y'know, "Bob Bomb" or "Bob Omb" from Mario. But Bob doesn't seem like a very threatening name, so I used Bon instead. Bon Bomb, like Bon Bons! Also, he's not really my character, he was actually on the show. I just sort of gave him a name.
Frank and Beans: the two eggheads. They're pretty much the same guys from the show - I just gave them names so I didn't have to keep referring to them as "the eggheads". James Lamont (writer of the show) said that this was their name on his formspring, but it's not official, since he might've been joking.