11:45 AM. It was still morning in Gotham City, and there was no respite in sight for the beleaguered students of Gotham High. The students were lined up neatly in their desks, staring with crushing apathy at their teacher, Mr. Murdock. A young man with scruffy brown hair, thick-framed eyeglasses, and a suit too fancy to be teaching this rabble in. He was up at the whiteboard, speaking with youthful enthusiasm as he described today's assignment.
"All right kids," he said, ignorant to the irony of referring to his juniors by about seven years as kids. "it took a lot of string pulling, a lot of convincing, and a little more work than I care to remember, but this class is going to be your last today!"
A loud chorus of cheers erupted from the class, tossing pencils and papers into the air with deliberately exaggerated enthusiasm.
"You'll be spending the rest of the school day participating in the project I've cooked up!"
The cheering died. A yowling cat caught beneath a falling tree wouldn't have been so abrupt in shutting up. Ice cold glares pierced Murdock's skin.
At the back of class, Barbara's face was half-buried in her arms, only her eyes free enough to show her blatant lack of enthusiasm. When a day is all but guaranteed to be the time of your life as soon as you finish one stupid chore, it's pretty easy to start hating that chore beyond rational sense. And right now? School was one hell of a chore.
"Now, now," Murdock said, making calming motions with his hands. "I know that sounds pretty… awful, but this is gonna be fun, I swear! We're gonna make this project a game, with a prize for the winner!"
"Last time somebody said that, I got shot!" retorted one Bruce Wayne, lounging in the corner of the room. A moment of stunned silence came, as courtesy dictated, before his classmates finally lost it. They all bent over, laughing out every puff of air they had in their lungs.
Gordon glanced over at her friend, and disapproved with nothing more than a simple glare; that was plenty to get her point across. He responded with a cheesy smile and a slight blush, just enough to admit guilt without actually feeling guilty. She rolled her eyes and directed her attention back to Mr. Murdock, who had written everyone's names on the board in clusters of three.
"See, what I've set up today is… a mystery!"
The lights shut off in the room, startling a few of the jumpier students. A flashlight their teacher was clutching switched on, to a vacant spot on the floor. He began to narrate the hypothetical situation.
"In this test of your problem-solving skills, you'll be challenged with the most heinous of crimes: murder!"
A silhouette entered the room, moaning in faked pain as he clutched his chest. Barbara looked with the others, and had to clamp a hand over her mouth to stifle laughter. It was Professor Doll, with a fake hatchet lodged in his chest and copious amounts of stage blood dripping down his clothes. He looked as thoroughly displeased with this project as the students, hamming it up as he approached. He laid down on his back and froze with a face crossed between "death throe" and "going to commit some murders of his own". His eyes were fixed squarely on Mr. Murdock, who by now was almost laughing along with his students.
"When you came to class this morning," Murdock told them. "you discovered your teacher collapsed in a bloody heap, an axe in his chest. You'll be split up into teams of three, and will be searching for clues in this room and through all the hallways on the first floor, to try and learn what happened. And when your group thinks they've found the answer, they'll come back and tell me:"
He stopped to throw on a replica policeman's cap.
"Officer Murdock!"
Barbara shrugged to herself. It wouldn't be the worst way to spend the day, at least. The only question was who she'd get stuck with. Murdock was already busy listing off names. J had been placed with that strange, bald kid with the shades, and some other redhead that she had yet to introduce herself to. Pam, was it? This was the only class they shared, so there wasn't much time—or reason—to get to know one another.
"Group number four: Bruce Wayne, Nora Tess, and… Eric Needham."
Barbara's face dropped, disappointed. So much for fun. Unless she was mistaken, the only others left besides her were—
"Group number five: Edward Nashton, Weylon Jones, and Barbara Gordon! And that's everyone!"
Great. Juuuust great. The stalker nerd, and the dumb jock. She cast an envious glare towards Bruce, and the semi-passable group he'd gotten. Particularly at Nora. She recognized that name, all right. A cheerleader. Vapid, shallow airheads with nothing better to do than shake their butts in front of a live audience. As the other girl happened to glance her way, Gordon made fully sure that she got a good look at the death glare she was getting. Short, bobbed blond hair, glimmering blue eyes and a winning smile. Barbara supposed idiots like that needed to be compensated somehow. Speaking of idiots…
"I guess it's your lucky day, eh Babs?"
"…Yeah, Eddie. Lucky me."
Eddie slid into the chair next to her, practically giddy with excitement. With Bruce gone the last month of class, there weren't many people left for Barbara to talk with. That had left Eddie as the closest thing she had to a best friend. She was able to forgive many things, she assured herself. It just so happened that arrogance was not one of them. Eddie had taken his crushing defeat at the talent show in stride, and opted instead of divert his efforts to showing off his intelligence. She also noted that, ever since said talent show, he had worn the suit J gave him whenever possible. It gave the appearance of someone with far more confidence that competence.
"I mean, really, you should be thankful; I've already got this little mystery, this… enigma, I suppose as good as wrapped up! You're pretty much getting a free grade."
She had learned to decipher his stuck-up mannerisms that he'd gained. Or, as Barbara referred to it in private company, his douche-anese. This meant that he was going to solve the whole thing all on himself, in a desperate attempt to impress Barbara so that she would go out with him.
She wasn't completely callous to the kid. He was sweet, or at least he was capable of being sweet, after being separated from J for a minimum of one week. But he wasn't her type; and his attempts to become her type weren't doing him any favors.
She didn't progress much further before the second member of her little troupe joined them. A tall, broad-shouldered kid, even bigger than Bruce in a letterman jacket. In size, not musculature, Barbara was certain. His dark skin glistened, sweating uncomfortably in the heat of the room. He sat down in the seat in front of her, twisting himself around to look back at Eddie and her. He flashed a friendly sort of smile, clearly uncomfortable with talking to them; it was true, she and the big lug had never communicated. Bruce seemed to talk with him a lot, but it all seemed like shallow, bro-talk stuff to Barbara.
"Hey; uh, name's Weylon. Pleasure workin' with ya." He extended a hand to each of them, and they both shook as was expected. Barbara nodded and smiled pleasantly.
"Nice to meet you too; I'm Barbara."
"Eddie." The smallest of their group stated. "Eddie Nashton; say, your name was Weylon Jones, right?"
"Uh, yeah, that's right." Weylon confirmed in his ludicrously deep, baritone voice.
"So then, would that make your dad the Marlon 'Bourbon' Jones, star quarterback of the '82 Gotham Great Horns?"
Weylon chuckled, wiping a beat of sweat off his brow with the back of his hand. "Heh, yeah, that'd be my daddy, all right. Wearin' his jacket, in fact." He gestured at the thing, and true to his word it looked a lot older than he did. Barbara glanced over at Eddie, curious.
"I didn't know you knew sports stuff."
Eddie flashed a proud grin at her, adjusting his glasses as his teeth shone in the dim classroom. "I know a lot of things!"
"Now that you're all divided up," Murdock informed them. "You'll have the rest of the day to carry out your investigations. My fellow teachers on this floor all have a role to play, so remember to find out just how they're involved in this! Feel free to stop for lunch, and remember: bonus prize goes to the group that gets the right answer first!"
That was one heck of an incentive, and the groups began buzzing about frantically. J dragged his group out the door, convinced that the answer to their mystery had little, if anything, to do with the corpse. The bald boy he took with him took a moment to look longingly at the girl in Bruce's group as he was dragged away. To the redhead's surprise, she returned the gaze with a smile and a little wave.
A third group, down a man since Oswald Cobblepot never went to class, followed J out the door to try and track down their third companion to get some work done.
Bruce's, naturally, took the logical route and crouched down around the body to get some work done. As the last one bantered amongst themselves, Barbara stood up, the other two following her example. She really wished right then that she had a deer stalker hat to wear, to fit the detective look a bit more closely.
"All right boys," she said with a sigh. She pulled down the brim of her imaginary hat as she approached the body. "let's get sleuthing."
Call it practice. She told herself. A fake mystery, so you'll be ready to start solving real ones.