Chapter 5: Battle at the Beach House
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Disclaimer: I definitely don't own Bully or any other series represented in this fic.
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As the sun started to set, a lone Hipster watched the lighthouse hideout where Jimmy and the others were currently cooped up, waiting for their food to come. He watched as Zoe walked down the stairs and to the small clubhouse along the beach, holding bags of food.
"How pathetic," he mumbled under his breath, glancing at the group. "So… mainstream…"
He knew that the Punks were most likely on their way to the clubhouse. However, he didn't care about that. He knew that even if the Punks lost, the Hipsters were going to go a different route since a group of them were in the process of beating up a kid with sensitive information that would help them bypass Connor and go straight for Horatio instead. The Hipster didn't even know why most of the school went after the blond in the first place other than for his sensitive computer program. Horatio was the real mastermind behind that.
A few minutes after the red-haired girl arrived with the food, he noticed the Punks heading towards the beach house, ready to strike.
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Jimmy glanced out the window at just the right time to see a group of Punks headed their way. "Oh, great…"
"Don't tell me they're coming? I thought they didn't know where we were!" Connor said worriedly, panicking.
"Calm down, man! Yeah, they shouldn't know where we are unless the person who told them that we were in Dragon's Wing comics told them about all my hideouts," the King of the School responded. Thankfully most of the kids had already finished eating most of their meals and were just finishing up. Jimmy grimaced at the thought of already facing the group of Punks especially since there were nine of them and only seven of them.
"Alright, everyone to battle stations!" Melvin called out to the rest of the nerds.
"Okay, get ready," the King of the School said, preparing his spud gun. The rest were preparing theirs as well except for Zoe who had a bottle-rocket launcher and Connor who simply had the old slingshot that he was using for target-practice.
They waited as the door opened and they fired. Gwyneth was the first one they took out, dropping an airsoft pistol in the process. At the same time, Cletus tossed some armed firecrackers before he was knocked out by the barrage of potatoes and bottle rockets, causing the squad to jump out of the way just in time for them to go off.
That was about the time that everyone else piled in, ready to fire.
"Well, look at that, I was right that we would find them here," Ellone remarked with a smile, holding her airsoft gun at Connor. "Hello, Connor, what a pleasant surprise to meet the school's traitor."
"Ugh, why do you always see me like that? All I was trying to do was make the school a better place," he replied, annoyed by the girl in front of him.
"Hah! So, using the school's cameras to spy on people is making the school a better place, huh?" she asked mockingly. Then she dodged a blast from a bottle rocket which immediately blew up in front of her, throwing her back. The culprit: Zoe.
"Hey, guess what? I don't care what he was doing back at his old school," the red-haired girl said, getting up along with the others. They were all injured slightly in various ways but were still ready to fight. Zoe's example made them fire their weapons, taking out most of the Punks in a matter of a few seconds. All that remained were Butch, whose martial-arts experience had given him fast enough reflexes to dodge whatever his enemies threw at him
So, now there they were, two against a group of seven. Still, they were the most dangerous of the Punks. They were leading them for a reason, after all.
Butch immediately pulled out his own personal weapon, an airsoft gun, and aimed it straight at Ray, causing him pain in several areas of his body before he struck with a few chops, knocking out the obese boy. Then he aimed at Melvin who at least managed to hit the other boy with a few shots from his slingshot before finding himself knocked to the ground after a couple of punches. Then the second-in-command of the Punks received a blow to the head from Jimmy that caused him to fall to the ground, out cold.
Ellone, on the other hand, had to go face-to-face with Zoe, who managed to dodge each other the other girl's strikes while landing a few of her own. A jab here, a strike there, she succeeded in landing a few punches before the girl in front of her clawed at her, drawing a small amount of blood on her arm. Zoe recoiled a bit before Ellone got hit by the spud gun, looking toward the perpetrator in disdain and anger. The kid who shot her was Fatty, who was prepared to launch another volley from the spud gun as the leader of the Punks headed straight for him, only to be punched in the gut by Zoe, causing her to fall to the ground.
Ellone got up and faced her enemies. Now it was five on one. The odds were definitely not in her favor. She found herself looking down the barrels of a pair of spud-guns as well as a couple of slingshots and, much to her surprise, an airsoft gun that was taken from one of the other Punks by none other than Connor himself.
Jimmy was the one who spoke, though. "Who's the baddest, huh? We are! And if you or any more of your stupid Punks come after us then we're coming after you, okay?" he proclaimed in an over-the-top manner, earning a glare from the girl.
She laughed in his face. "What? Is that the case, huh?" she asked, smiling. "Well, if it isn't Connor, hiding behind his stupid friends instead of actually fighting us himself."
Connor looked at her with a determined look as Zoe came and pushed her up against the wall.
"Listen, lady, we don't have time for your stupid tricks, okay?" the red-haired girl told her. "If you come after us ever again or if you tell anybody else in your stupid school about Connor being here, then we are going to come over to your precious little hideout or school and beat the ever living crap out of you, understand?"
"And you better hurry, because we called the cops on you," Connor told the leader of the Punks, causing her fear of what was to come. "They're bound to hear about what your little underlings did to Zack Owens and when they do, any Punks that are here in Bullworth will get arrested."
The girl looked at her underlings and ran out of the beach house only to come face to face with a squad of cops who all had weapons drawn on her. She immediately put her hands up as they came and frisked her before going for the others inside the beach house.
The Punks clique was no more.
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"Van Buren High School: 0, Bullworth: 1!" Jimmy exclaimed as they entered into the dorms. "I don't know about all you guys, but that was pretty awesome!"
"Too bad we couldn't spend the night in that awesome beach house of yours," Algie complained.
"Meh, it's probably better this way," Connor remarked. "At least the Punks are out of the way." He plopped down on the couch inside of the dorm's rec room and closed his eyes for a second. He realized, though, that he had a long way to go before he could be certain that nobody else would find him. Then again, if only the Punks and the Safety Patrol knew where they were, then the others weren't bound to find out unless they were monitoring the Punks themselves.
He shivered at the notion as he turned on the TV, finding some sort of swimming completion on. He quickly turned the channel to cartoons before he could see any more dudes in speedos.
"So, that means they won't come after us anymore, right?" Fatty asked.
"They're most likely going to Juvenile Hall for performing an armed robbery on the comic-book store," Melvin remarked, putting ice on his forehead. Ray was doing the same thing, though he had been shot in other, more unpleasant areas with those airsoft pellets.
Connor shuddered at the sight of them. These people all got pretty banged up and it was all because of me. All because they wanted to protect me even though I've only known them for four days at most. He thought about how it seemed like all his friends had abandoned him at the end of the previous school year and yet these haven't, even though they had most likely heard what Ellone said about what he had done.
"So, Connor, can we talk in my room privately for a minute?" Jimmy requested and the blond acquiesced, following the fellow blond into his dorm room. At once he saw how heavily decorated the room was.
"Wow, you really decorated this place to death, didn't you?" the newcomer asked.
"Yeah, no kidding. So, I guess we can start: what is it that Ellone said about you? That you tried to use the cameras to spy on people?" Jimmy's voice wasn't confrontational.
"What it was we did was design a system using the yearbooks and some open-source facial recognition system to try and stop the bullying in our school," Connor explained. "The cameras were only in the hallways and outside the school. There weren't any in the bathrooms or locker rooms, so we weren't violating their rights or going all 1984 on them."
"Nineteen eighty-what?" the King of the School asked, confused about the reference.
"A novel by George Orwell about a dystopian police state that had a lot of cameras and no privacy," the protégé told him rapidly and nervously. "We just used it to crack down on bullying and theft, both of which are serious problems at Van Buren High. The facial recognition software just helped identify bullying better as well as which people aren't usually at lockers getting broken into, that sort of thing."
Jimmy nodded. "Okay, makes sense. So, how far did you guys get, anyway?"
"We showed it to the new principal, expecting it to be enacted. Then a couple of days later, half the school is against us and the Safety Patrol was officially disbanded." Connor shook his head as he paced around Jimmy's room. "My friends all kicked me out of our little group. Then most of the other students started harassing me and Horatio to the point where we started getting death threats. When our parents saw that, they called the cops and put us in a witness protection program so that we'd get transferred to other schools, specifically boarding schools like this one, under assumed names. My parents didn't want me too far away and my uncle recommended this one for some reason so they sent me here."
Jimmy shook his head. "Sounds rough, man. And I got sent here because I had been expelled seven times and nobody else would take me."
"Yeah? That sucks," Connor remarked. "I guess there was an opening here because some dude named Gary Smith got expelled."
"Yeah, that's because he caused a ton of chaos at this school. It was on the front page of Bullworth Times," Jimmy told his friend.
Connor smiled. "At least you saved the school."
"No kidding. Who knows, maybe we can save yours too. It sounds like some sort of conspiracy is going down there," the King of the School said. "Maybe whoever it was that blew the whistle on your little plan spied on the meeting you had with the principal." Jimmy stood up to think. "So, your name's not actually Connor?"
"No, it's Connor alright," he told his friend. "My last name isn't Robertson, though. But, I'm not actually supposed to tell anybody that."
Jimmy chuckled. "Alright, that works. Now, what's the next step of our little plan to save your school?"
The other blond shrugged. "Don't know. We might have to go into the city one of these days and it's too dangerous for me to go to my house but my uncle and his wife'll let us stay with them, maybe."
"Sounds like you've been thinking about this," Jimmy remarked before opening the door. The nerds were all watching Laser Vikings in the middle of the dorm, much to the chagrin of anyone else in there.
"This is my favorite episode," Ray declared with glee.
"Mine too!" Fatty exclaimed.
It was going to be a fun night.
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The next morning, Brad Parnassus made his way into the chambers for the Van Buren High School Student Counsel where the leaders of most of the cliques were situated with the exception of Ellone, the leader of the Punks. Brad was a thin blond of medium height who had this haughty demeanor about him. Somehow, though, he managed to get the support of most of the school's political parties.
And as for the leaders of the cliques being on the student counsel, technically they were all given positions for supporting the president's election campaign. And he bribed them with cold, hard cash.
He sat down at the head of the table, flanked by his massive, dumb-looking and red-haired attaché on his side. Honing in on Ellone's vacant seat, the first words that came out of his mouth were: "Where's the leader of the Punks?"
"Ellone got arrested on charges of robbery with the rest of the Punks," Eddy, the leader of the Hipsters commented. "Serves her right!"
"That is curious," Parnassus remarked. "And where were they and what were they doing?"
"I hear they robbed a comic-book store. In Bullworth," Robert Patterson, leader of the Pretty Boys remarked. He was also captain of the swim team and was tall, blond and pale, not to mention extremely skinny.
"What the heck were they doing in Bullworth?" Ebony Gillespie, leader of the Goths asked in derision. She had a really ornate outfit consisting of long black hair with red tips, far too much make-up and piercing red eyes that are only that way because of color contacts. Not to mention, there was her mini skirt, her fishnet stockings and obviously fake fangs.
"Apparently buying comics," Patterson joked.
"Or they found either of the targets," Parnassus said angrily, annoyed that they didn't tell him.
"Yeah, well we found Horatio Vallejo by beating the crap out of his brother," Eddy of the Hipsters informed everyone. "He's at some boarding school in Maine. It's about a four-hour drive. The other idiot at Bullworth's got friends there, though, so I wouldn't try going after them before getting rid of them first. We've been watching the Punks."
"You beat up his brother to get info on where he's at?" Dwight Hobson asked. He was black and the leader of the Hoodies.
"Beating him up to get information? We could have done that and more," Vincent Salvatore, leader of the Mobsters, commented. He was wearing a pinstripe suit and tie and was holding an airsoft gun that looked suspiciously like a tommy gun.
Parnassus rolled his eyes. "You beat him up? What were you thinking? You could lead them to us!"
"Hey, we all had ski masks on!" Eddy exclaimed.
"And because you beat up his brother for that information, they could have him transfer schools because of it," the blond president told them, annoyed. "That means that we have to set this plan into action before anything else. Now!"
"Okay, I'm definitely going!" the leader of the hipsters proclaimed, grinning widely.
"No, you idiot, I'm sending Vincent Salvatore and his mobsters. Go find him! And as for everyone else, do as much research on Bullworth Academy as you possibly can."
"I can tell you one thing," Eddy added just as everyone was about to get up.
"What is it, McGee?" Parnassus snapped.
"Connor's friends are nerds with the exception of one named Jimmy Hopkins who apparently defaced Bullworth City Hall last spring," the heavy hipster informed him.
"Hopkins? What?" the president remarked with a bit of surprise before getting up. "Do your research on Jimmy Hopkins and find out who he is and if he has any major enemies."
"Gotcha!"
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Parnassus walked into the principal's office to report. "Hello, Principal, I believe we may have had a breakthrough in locating both of the conspirators."
"Good," the principal said, facing the window away from the president of the school. "What have you found so far?"
"Well, we've found out that Horatio Vallejo is currently at Polk Academy in northern Maine. The other is at Bullworth Academy, a mere thirty miles away and he has allies including someone named Jimmy Hopkins."
That caught the attention of the principal, making his eyes widen. "Is that so?"
"Oh yes, it is," Parnassus remarked. "Now, I have to make my exit. I have a Latin test this morning."
With that, the President of Van Buren High School made his exit. The principal pondered on the revelation.
And then he smiled as he came up with a new plan.
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Fillmore listened in on the meeting with the clique leaders, but he didn't hear the meeting with the principal. This wasn't looking good for Vallejo. The black boy knew that they were going to go after him right after school. He knew he had to do something, so he grabbed his smart phone and sent Jimmy Hopkins a text.
He hoped that since they were closer they'd get a head start. The remaining members of the Safety Patrol didn't have the manpower to take on all fifteen mobsters. They would follow them after school, but they had to be careful not to be seen.
Fillmore had just put his smartphone away when he received a tap on the shoulders from Parnassus. "Hello, Fillmore, I see you're enjoying retirement, I presume," the haughty blond remarked as they walked into their Trigonometry class.
"Not really. I feel like I have too much free time," the black boy remarked. "I feel like I have no idea what's going on anymore. Did you notice a lack of mohawks?"
"Yes, I am afraid the Punks all got arrested for armed robbery," the President responded, acting like it was no big deal. "A shame, Ellone was one of the few council members that actually did her job."
"What was her job?" Fillmore asked, feigning ignorance.
"Well, she was the Secretary of Defense, believe it or not," the President remarked. Fillmore noticed some kid getting bullied for lunch money by a Hoodie.
"I could take that job," he joked.
"And have you turn the school into a dictatorship? I don't think so," Parnassus said, sitting down and going over his Latin verb charts. "I would lose reelection for sure!"
Fillmore gave him a smirk, glad that he was getting something done.
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Jimmy was working on Algebra when his phone vibrated, looking forward to the weekend. He glanced at the message, careful not to draw the teacher's attention as he read the text, stifling a gasp as he did so. He had to read it a second time to get the sense of it.
From: Cornelius Fillmore To: Jimmy Hopkins
Horatio Vallejo is in grave danger. Mobsters will be headed to his school this afternoon. He is at Polk Academy.
What followed was the address as well as a Saint Bernard bus route that would go through that town itself from Bullworth that afternoon, about a half-an-hour after school ended.
Jimmy was going to have to tell Connor and gather a team. He had an idea of who to bring and he was willing to use some of the money he stashed aside for it from the previous year running paper routes and mowing lawns.
Thus began the weekend from hell.
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A/N: There goes the first arc. Tell me what you think. Good, bad, indifferent?
Yeah, so, I've just been lazy and with college starting up again, I haven't had tons of free time, though there's not nearly as much homework as last semester. In the meantime, I've made progress on my game. Switching game engines helped. The new one came with a character generator which should make things a lot easier. Plus, there's the face generator, though none of the characters really look like themselves (for one thing, Crabblesnitch looks way creepier than he did in the game. Then there's the time I tried making a face for a character whose name would be a spoiler. It did not come out good. There aren't any commands for curly hair. I gotta change that.)
In the meantime, the next two chapters are typed out. They just need editing. I was thinking of posting one a week.