Scene 1: Kirihara, Kamio; a dungeon in the depths of their detentions

"You stay in here. You don't speak, you don't move, you don't make noise."

Behind her, Kirihara was mouthing the words to Mrs. Shiosake's mini-speech that both of them had memorized. Kamio fought a smile. The way she abused them had really almost become amusing in a way.

"Funny, is it?" Her temper instantly flared at the look on Kamio's face.

"No, ma'am," said Kamio. Then he changed his mind. "Actually, yeah it kind of is."

"What?" squawked the woman, blanching. "You dare speak to me like—"

"Leave him alone, Hag." Kirihara brought the attention to himself.

She spluttered and turned now to face Kirihara who was observing her nonchalantly, comfortably reclined.

"You boys are really in for it now!"

"What are you going to do? Give us detention?" asked Kamio. Both he and Kirihara burst into laughter.

The woman didn't know who to shout at first. She chose Kamio. "I understand that brat behaving this way!" she yelled, jerking her thumb at Kirihara, "but what has possessed you, Kamio, to behave so badly?"

"Mostly the realization that there's nothing more you can take from me."

"More like do for me," said Kirihara, who rather enjoyed being on detention with Kamio.

"You boys don't—"

"Know what we've gotten ourselves into," chorused Kamio and Kirihara together.

"We know." said Kirihara. "Why don't you go tell the principal on us now?"

The woman screamed and ran out of the room. Quick as lightning, Kirihara raced to the door and slammed it behind her, bolting it from the inside so that she couldn't get back in. "Brilliant, Akira!" he said hoarsely, spinning back around.

But Kamio was staring at his desk in shock and didn't notice the use of the first name. "I can't believe I did that," he said. "I've never talked to a teacher like that before."

"It's a good thing." Kirihara assured him. "Since the first day I met you, I've known that with your guts and a little training, you could be a master of the Badass Arts."

"What the hell are we going to do now?" Kamio started to panic. "She's probably gone to get the principal or something!"

"Yeah, that's where I sent her," Kirihara replied calmly, strolling to the other side of the room. "We should probably break out of here or something."

"Break out? How?"

"Maybe through here." Kirihara stopped and looked up at the ceiling, examining the large tiles with educated interest as he rubbed his chin. "If we can get rid of this tile, we can probably climb out through the ventilation shaft. That way, if and when she comes back in, we'll be gone and since no other teachers will have seen us leaving the room, the principal won't even believe her that we were ever here! They'll all think she made up the whole story! We just open the ceiling, climb through, replace the tile, and leave no marks as to where we disappeared to!"

Kamio stared at him. "You're crazy!"

"Have you met Mrs. Shiosake?"

Kamio considered this for a moment and realized that Kirihara had a point. "Fine then, how do we get out?"

Kirihara was way ahead of him. He hurriedly lifted and balanced chair on top of a desk and precariously climbed on top. He stood still for a minute to gather his balance, then straightened up. Directly below the tile in question, he reached up and cautiously wiggled it out of place, pushing it up and out to reveal a gaping hole in the ceiling.

"I can't believe that actually worked," Kamio watched in surprise.

"I'll go up first to make sure it's alright. Then you come," Kirihara ordered. He stuck his arms into the ceiling up to his elbows and managed to hoist himself up and out of sight.

"OH GOD!" he screamed, once up there.

"What!? What is it? Is there something up there?" shouted Kamio, worried.

Kirihara poked his head down, beaming. "No, I was just kidding, there's nothing up here. You can come."

Kamio threw his backpack at Kirihara's face, though the latter managed to catch it and retreated inside without it.

"Just a minute!" called Kamio. "If we're supposed to be leaving this room without a trace, then what are we going to do about the chair on the desk?"

"Put it back on the floor and come up without it."

"I can't reach then!" Kamio shouted, though he moved the chair back to the floor and stood on the desk.

"I'll get you."

Kirihara stuck his long arms out and seized Kamio around the waist.

"What the hell are you doing? Get off!"

"I've got you, Kamio dearest."

"What's wrong with you?"

Kirihara hoisted Kamio into the ceiling in his strange manner. "Sorry, but it was a desperate situation. If you want extra, you'll have to meet me later when I have time," said Kirihara, replacing the tile.

Kamio scratched at his violated waist, while angrily watching the tile job.

"What now?" he demanded?

"Now?" Once Kirihara had replaced the tile, it was pretty dark in the shaft. "Now we follow our senses."

"There's no fucking way this is going to work."

"Yes, a little leap of faith; that's what I like about you…"

The two started to crawl uncertainly in the dark.

XxXxXxXxX

Scene II: Choutarou, Hiyoshi, Katsuo, Kachirou, Yuuta, Shinji, Touji, Mori, Ichiuma, Ichirou; sitting around in dorm lounge

"For God's sake, don't we have something better to do?!" Touji finally snapped as he watched Ichiuma finish to cut all the toenails on his left foot and make a neat little pile on the coffee table.

"We're supposed to be doing our homework, Touji," Choutarou pointed out earnestly, looking up from his biology book. "We have a test tomorrow—"

"Screw tomorrow!" Touji shouted, flailing his arms and standing up. "This is so stupid! I might as well have stayed at Fudomine for this! Why aren't more important things going on?"

"What could be more important than ribosomes?" Choutarou asked reasonably.

"Like…talking about things that normal teenage boys talk about!" Touji cried, his enthusiasm flailing. "Like getting laid!"

"Laid?" Ichirou echoed.

"Lain," Touji shrugged.

"Lied," Choutarou suggested.

"Lay? Now you've got me all confused!" Touji snapped. "Who cares? The point is, this is supposed to be what we care about! I say we make a pact: at the end of this year, we'll all lose our virginity. We've got to--we've been waiting for this since we hit puberty!"

"That was two weeks ago," Ichiuma reminded him.

"If everyone will excuse me, I just have a theoretical question for the general public," Mori suddenly interrupted, causing everyone to look at him. "And it's just a purely theoretical question, by the way. So don't take it non-theoretically, because that would be wrong. It would be the opposite of right."

"For the love of God, what is it!?" everyone snapped.

"How does one get into the market of buying harems?" Mori asked.

"Buying harems?" they all looked at him like he was crazy. "Are you nuts?"

"I told you I meant theoretically. How do you think it could be done?"

"Well, you'd have to have loads of cash," said Shinji after a very long silence in the room. "The first step is to get a job. And that's never going to happen."

"Why say that?" Mori frowned.

"Well, just judging from the fact that in your last job you were employed as a cupboard—"

"Dude!" Mori snapped, blushing furiously. "You said you wouldn't tell anyone about that!"

"You worked as a cupboard?" Ichiuma asked in disbelief.

"It was a summer job," Mori said defensively.

"But how do you get employed as cupboard? What are your responsibilities? Do I even want to know…?" Touji asked himself.

Fortunately however, Mori was spared having to answer because at that moment everyone was distracted by the occurrence of two people falling through the ceiling of the lounge.

"Holy Suzuki!" Touji screamed through the crashing, scuffling, and shouting noises that filled the room as two dirty figures lay crumpled on the floor.

When the dust settled down, the two figures rose, griping and brushing themselves off. Kamio was repeating "can't believe I did that, can't believe I did that" over and over again.

"Kamio? Kirihara?" Choutarou cried in amazement. "Are you guys all right?!"

They exchanged looks. "Yeah, we're dandy," said Kirihara.

"That looked like a pretty nasty fall," said Ichiuma. "And I can't find my toenails anymore."

"Do you guys need first aid or something?" Shinji asked calmly. "I have a kit and all that just in the next room—"

"Isn't anyone going to ask us why we were in the fucking CEILING?" Kamio finally shouted, overwhelmed by the density, or perhaps just utter lack of curiosity of his friends.

"Oh yeah. Why were you in the ceiling?" Shinji asked casually.

"Because I'm now going to be in the hugest trouble in the history of the world!" Kamio screamed. The adrenaline was wearing off and he had gone back into freak-out mode.

"I guess that answers the next question on my list," Choutarou said softly, looking down.

"Wait, I don't get it still; what happened to you guys?" Touji asked, totally bewilderment.

"We escaped detention," Kirihara said plainly.

I took a moment for the meaning of these words to fully enter the brains of everyone in the room. When they did, it took another moment for them to find their tongues.

"You…what?" Hiyoshi finally asked on behalf of everybody.

"Ran away! We ran away!" Kamio supplied semi-hysterically, rubbing furiously at his gray hair and causing a cloud of dust to shower down. "And something tells me that we're completely screwed now, so if you'll let me go kill myself in peace…" he trailed off and strode out of the room, presumably to go commit suicide or take a shower. We're not sure which.

"Ah, he'll come around," said Kirihara proudly. "He's just nervous; it's his first time breaking out and running and all that."

"Well, what do you guys plan to do about it?" Shinji pressed. "I mean, Mrs. Shiosake will definitely come after you, won't she?"

"It's Miss," said Kirihara.

"Ah," said Shinji. "That makes sense."

"Yeah. And anyway, it'll be okay; I've got a plan."

"What is it?" Touji asked.

"Check this:" Kirihara smiled triumphantly, looking like he was about to say something sharp. "Nothing."

A pause.

"…nothing?" Choutarou clarified, wondering if he had missed something.

"Nothing!" said Kirihara. "We'll do nothing! Just act like it didn't happen at all! It works wonders; I'm telling you!"

They exchanged skeptical looks, wondering if doing nothing could really be a solution to a problem like this.

"Haven't you noticed yet that we don't do anything in this story?" Kirihara pointed out. "I mean, we don't actually ever take care of things? If there's a problem we just wait until a bigger problem comes along and makes the first problem seem small in comparison! That's how we deal with our issues!"

"It's kind of true…." Choutarou admitted, thinking about how the chaos at orientation had been interrupted by the earthquake and the whole problem with the first set of detentions had been ignored after everyone got drunk and kidnapped an adult.

"Well, if that's all, I'm going to go take a shower now," Kirihara said, brushing off his dusty sleeves one last time. Then he suddenly frowned and reached into his hair.

He groped for a moment through his curls and pulled a few things out. Ichiuma gulped.

"Hey, whose toenails are these?" Kirihara asked.

But once again Ichiuma was spared because the door to the lounge opened and everyone jumped back in alarm. For the first time that year, the principal entered, looking a little disgruntled.

"Okay…" he said while everyone looked on in shock. "Where are Kirihara and Kamio?"

Kirihara tried inching towards the exit, hoping his dusty exterior would camoflauge him, but the principal spied him.

"YOU! I've gotten word from Ms. Shiosake that you…" he paused and took out a piece of paper. "Threw a fit and behaved abnormally rude," he read in a mechanical voice.

"I—what?" Kirihara asked in feigned innocence, while Touji, Ichiuma and Ichirou stuffed their fists in their mouths to keep from laughing. "That's ridiculous! We weren't even on detention today! She must be crazy."

"Mrs. Shiosake came to the office, Son," the principal said seriously. "Do you really expect me to take your word over hers?"

"But...Mr. Principal-sir," said Kirihara, since he had never learned the principal's name. "Go to the classroom, really! It'll be locked, like all classrooms are on Monday afternoons! And you can ask my friends here; they all vouch that I've been in the dorm all morning!"

At this point, Touji fell out of his seat shaking with silent laughter, but the principal just figured that he was having a seizure and so he didn't bother to do anything about it. He thought over what Kirihara had said.

"Hmmm…." The principal, rubbed his chin pensively while Kirihara crossed his fingers and looked triumphantly at the others in the room. "You're sure about this?" the principal clarified.

"As sure as I am that Echizen's a closet queer," Kirihara said.

"And your friends vouch you were here."

"We do!" Katsuo and Kachirou interjected enthusiastically, hoping this would make them more popular with the upperclassmen.

There was another pause.

"You may have a point," the principal said finally. "Perhaps Mrs. Shiosake is a little under the weather. I'll look into this point more carefully later. Until then, you're off the hook."

"Thank you sir," said Kirihara, barely containing his own laughter as the principal turned to leave the room and most of his friends were now gaping in disbelief. Who would have thought that Kirihara was such a master of deception?

Kirihara started doing a victory dance behind the principals back, but just before the principal left the room, he suddenly stopped and whipped around quickly. Kirihara stopped dancing.

"Hey, wait a minute!" the principal shouted sharply, as if a something important had suddenly occurred to him.

"What?" said Kirihara nervously, taking a step back. Had the principal realized that his story was all bullshit?

"Why is there a hole in the ceiling!?" the principal cried, pointing to the hole directly over Kirihara's head.

"Oh…that? It's…um…" Kirihara couldn't think of anything fast enough.

"That's damage to brand new school property, young man!" the principal shouted, wagging his finger as the rest of the boys in the room really started laughing. "You're coming to my office! NOW!"

"Awwwww…." Kirihara groaned as the principal grabbed him by the ear and steered him out of the room, leaving all the rest of the boys within besides themselves with laughter.

ooo

ah, the irony of rules

yay for random conversations