Dash blinked.
He slowly looked over to his left, then to his right.
He blinked again.
'whoa...what happened?' the blonde thought. The last thing he remembered was putting the finishing touches on his haunted locker room, so that he could beat Fen-turd at their contest and force him to eat his old underwear. But then out of nowhere, some guy wearing purple tin-can armor suddenly appeared and swung his sword at him...
And now Dash found himself back at school. In math class, to be exact.
But this wasn't the class he was usually in. His math class consisted mostly of other football players, and a teacher that didn't really care whether or not they learned anything. After all, as long as he and his teammates scored touchdowns, it made no difference whether or not they could take a derivative, right?
This class, though... Dash was fairly certain that he'd shoved every single member of this class into their lockers at least twice.
This week.
Not to mention the fact that only a small percentage of the symbols on the board were actual numbers. But, as Dash spent more time looking at what was written on the blackboard, he found that most of what was there made sense to him. He didn't know how he understood the meanings of most of the symbols, never having seen them before in his life, but all of a sudden he just knew what they meant. He looked down at the notebook on his desk and noticed that, in handwriting far neater than his own, someone had copied down everything on the board, and even written another few lines of equation underneath. Dash watched as the teacher wrote a series of symbols on the blackboard that were identical to the ones in the notebook, and realized that he must've answered the question before even the teacher had.
Before he could ponder this any further, though ,the bell rang, and Dash made to put the notebook into a backpack that he noticed leaning against his chair. He opened the backpack and put the notebook inside, and saw a deck of cards sitting inconspicuously at the bottom of the pack.
'what the heck?' Dash picked up the cards and flipped through them, taking note of the mutated...things...the cards all seemed to feature. 'ew, nerd poker!' he thought disgustedly.
"Hey, are you finally going to trade it?" A thin voice asked from over his shoulder. Dash turned around and saw red hair and glasses leaning over him, looking at the deck of cards in his hands intently.
"...trade?" Dash asked, in a voice that seemed too high-pitched to be his own.
"Yeah, you wanna trade the Green Eyes or what? I'm telling you, it's definitely worth my Pumpkin Mage!" Dash looked down and, indeed, the card on top of the deck read "Green Eyes Gray Dragon" and was decorated with an illustration of a ferocious silver lizard.
"No, Mikey, go away," the blonde said, and made to shove the cards into his pack. Again, he was surprised how frail he sounded.
"Good going, Dash, you could definitely use my Vampire Slayer way more effectively than his mage," commented Nathan, who had appeared next to Dash's other shoulder. By now Dash was getting seriously ticked off.
'why are these geeks even talking to me, anyway? And what the heck is up with my voice?
"Don't you guys have, like, class, or something?" The two shot each other glances, then burst out laughing.
"Your attempt to distract us with your a-list imitations, though admirable, will ultimately prove to be futile," said Nathan.
"Besides, it's time for lunch," added Mikey.
'Thank god," Dash thought, relieved, and attempted to get away before the nerds followed him. If any of his teammates saw him in such company...he shuddered to think of the consequences. Unfortunately, though, luck was not on his side as they flanked him once he left the classroom, and the three of them began their trek to the cafeteria.
A couple minutes later, Nathan shot the other two a sidelong glance.
"What?" Dash asked, annoyed at his nerdy leeches.
"Entering hostile territory," Mikey answered,
"Hostile terr...what are you two talking about?" The three turned a corner, and Dash immediately understood.
This section of the hallway belonged exclusively to the football team and the cheerleading squad. Dash sighed with relief.
'Finally...I'm safe." He waked over to his buddy, Kwan.
"Hey, dude, you won't believe the day I've been having-" he began, but yelped when he was suddenly dangling several feet above the ground. He looked down in shock at his 'friend', who now had his hand clenched around the front of his shirt.
"Why would I care about your day, geek? Go talk to your mathlete buddies, or something," Kwan said derisively, and put Dash back onto solid ground and shoved him into Mikey.
"You two be sure to keep him in his place, unless you want an up-close and personal view of the inside of my locker, okay?" Kwan addressed Mikey and Nathan.
"Yes, sir," Nate replied quickly, and Kwan nodded and walked away. As soon as he left, Mikey pushed Dash up against a locker.
"What in the seven rings of slithgar were you thinking?" He asked angrily. "Wasn't it you who said we should just wait it out, and have the last laugh when they're pumping our gas for a living? Why would you all of a sudden go do something like that?"
"Yeah, what's gotten into you?" Nathan echoed.
But Dash wasn't listening to them. Dash had noticed that the locker next to the one against which he was pinned had a mirror in it, and his reflection was very different from what he looked like earlier in the day. Greasy blonde hair, glasses, and acne looked back at him through the silvery glass.
'I'm...a nerd...noooo! I don't do puny! What happened to me!' before he could ponder this, though, he was broken out of his reverie.
"Aw, are the nerds having a little scuffle?" Asked a voice Dash knew all too well.
"None of your business," Dash snapped without even bothering to turn around and look at the voice's owner. "Get out of here, Fen-turkey."
Everyone paused.
Suddenly, a hand grabbed Dash's shoulder roughly and spun him around. The blonde was now face-to-face with a six-foot-three, one hundred eight-five pound, quarterback wearing what Dash knew to be his letterman jacket. Danny's blue eyes flashed dangerously as he fisted the front of Dash's shirt.
"What did you call me?" he hissed. Dash squeaked.
The blow came insanely quickly, and Dash had already slammed his head against the locker by the time he registered that he'd been hit. The entire left side of his face was numb as Danny yanked him up and held him a good foot and a half above the floor.
"Don't you dare disrespect your superiors again, Baxter. Or next time I won't be nearly as merciful." The raven-haired quarterback strode over to the locker Dash had noticed before, and roughly shoved him in, leaving the blonde surrounded by darkness.