Figures that the chapter that wasn't in the original plan would end up being the longest one yet...

Chapter 6: Evidence

Navigating his way through the waves of students exiting the building as quickly as they could, Lancer took his time moving from one hallway to the next. He carefully protected the pages of notes in his arms as he was jostled by the raucous teenagers surrounding him.

He knew, of course, that he would need to arrive at Principal Ishayama's office in a timely manner unless he wanted to be reprimanded in the tone with which she had been railing against nearly every student in the school for the past several days. And he had no desire to face her wrath any more than he was already in for. He knew, too, that every minute he lingered in the halls was another minute he lost in his battle to convince the other staff members that their problem was real.

So he made an effort to fight against the current of students wanting to leave, edging his way further and further into the building until the crowds thinned out and he could easily finish his trek through the school.

Short, balding Mr. Falluca came panting down the other hall to meet him near the door.

The science teacher was muttering, "Craziness, craziness," under his breath until they met. Lancer turned the handle and pulled the Principal's door open, waving a hand to usher his colleague inside.

"Thank you," the man managed before hurrying into the office suite.

They both went past the now empty secretary's desk and moved into Ishayama's actual office, which had been rearranged to accommodate as many of the teachers as she could convince to come to this meeting. The seldom used conference table had a smattering of metal folding chairs interspersed between the few plus swivel ones that normally stayed in the room. Most of them had been filled at this point.

Apparently, Lancer was the last to arrive and was therefore left the most squeaky and uneven of uncomfortable chairs in the bunch.

Ishayama presided over the gathering from her desk at the end of the room. She stood in front of it with folded arms as she watched the last two teachers take their places. Then she cleared her throat to get everyone's attention even though it wasn't quite necessary. Most of the teachers were staring at her already, wanting an explanation for the craziness that had exploded across the school in the past week now that she had promised to provide one for them, and a solution to their problem of unruly students. The ones that weren't already giving her their undivided attention looked too exhausted to make small talk among themselves and seemed in danger of falling asleep before the discussion had even started.

As Lancer tottered awkwardly in his chair, Ishayama stepped forward to address her fellow workers.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she said, "I assume you all know why we are gathered here in my office today?"

One light brown haired woman slid down in her seat until she caught herself and jerked awake. Everyone else muttered under their breath because yes, it was kind of hard to have missed the school's transformation from a normal bastion of education to the madhouse it had been of late.

And no one was under the impression that it was anyone's fault but Lancer's.

Every single head in the room swiveled his way before the principal claimed their attention again for long enough to officially pass the baton.

"So," she continued with a sickly sweet smile, as if she liked having her school turned upsidedown, "now we'll all hear from Lancer's own perspective just what he's done with our school and how to reverse the damage."

She stared pointedly at him until he rose from his seat, papers still clutched to his chest. Ishayama leaned back against her desk and watching him prepare his presentation, laying out his folder on a free edge of the conference table and flipping through it until he'd found the sheets with his shorthand notes.

Under the hostile stare of every teacher in the school, it took longer than was comfortable for him to then find a vantage point from which he could address his colleagues without turning his back on his boss. It struck him for the first time that Ishayama was not the only one who blamed him for what had been going on in the school. As he looked around the circle of faces, he saw clearly the derision with which each teacher held him. The extent to which they thought he had completely cracked and left the realm of sanity and classroom leadership behind.

Well, then. He straightened up and held up the outline that his students had made for him. He knew that he was in the right. He knew that things had been coming through the school walls and it was only a matter of time before they switched from crashing desks together into targeting students. His classroom knew the danger that they were in and they behaved admirably.

They were not the problem. Their attitude was the solution to ensuring the safety of every student in the school.

The only thing he needed to do was convince the stolid, worn out skeptics in front of him that the threat was real. From there, everything would simply fall into place.

But this was going to be a challenge, he saw, as every person in the room, while claiming to want to know what was going on and why the school had flipped upside down, refused to believe the explanation he'd submitted for the past week. Without considering that the fact that he might not be completely crazy, they would never understand the mania that had gripped the student body. Or how to manage it.

Lancer narrowed his eyes, meeting the skeptic glares of his audience.

"I know you all think that I have gone out past left field here," he said, and they all agreed with him under his breath. He clenched his jaw together for a moment to collect himself before firmly stating, "Well, I haven't. I'm not crazy. Not hallucinating. And not making things up because I've finally had my fill of teaching and want the school to close down."

He maintained strong eye contact with everyone around the table and tried to put as much conviction behind his words as possible. This was important. The teachers needed to believe him.

"I know that the things I have said sound bizarre. Impossible, even. Certainly highly irrational. I grant you all of the above. Nothing like this has ever happened before to me or to anyone in any of my classes. But it is happening now," he stressed. "Something is going on and it is happening here. In our hallways, in our classrooms," he pointed out beyond the door they'd all come through. "To our school."

"Yeah," Falluca piped up from his perch at the end of the table. "I'll tell you what's going on around here," he said in a voice scratchy and squeaky with overuse. "The kids are running wild and doing whatever they want! They don't listen to me," he said, wiping a handkerchief across his forehead and glancing across the room to look for support. "They don't listen to anyone!"

"It's a madhouse out there!" Tetslaff boomed from her end of the table. "They won't even listen to me. We've got the Presidential Fitness test coming up in just a few weeks and at the rate we're going, the only thing these kids might pass is a new national record for roughhousing. I can't even use dodge ball as a fall back because they all just pelt me!" she added, and suddenly the black eye she sported made more sense.

"Alright," Lancer began again, "I understand that things have gotten a little out of control around the school."

More than one person around the room coughed suspiciously and Falluca opened his mouth to interrupt the meeting again. Frustrated, Lancer kept talking to avoid losing the podium, so to speak. He hadn't come prepared to this conference only to be talked over. Everyone already knew what the problems were so it didn't do anyone good to hash them over from everyone's personal position.

"You're all more than familiar with what's been happening so I'll spare you going back over those details."

"Yeah, we know what's going on in the school," the brown haired teacher said, no longer looking like she was about to fall asleep. "But do you? Do you know what you've done? Do you realize how much you've thrown the rest of the school off? How every single class is going down the drain?"

Ishamaya stood up from her perch on the desk, hands out. "Please, settle down, we're all adults here…"

"Twelve Angry Men, people," Lancer said over the principal, his patience wearing thin with the teachers that should know better than to act like the children they were complaining about. "I know full well what has been happening throughout the school. You do too. But I know what to do about it. So if you'll all just settle down, we can talk about this like rational people and be able to get something figured out."

He was breathing hard as he looked at his colleagues again, staring them down to erase any desire to interrupt him again.

"Almost everyone in the school is going crazy and you need to know what to do about it. My students have been just fine. Exemplary, even, and if you want to know why—like you keep saying you do—then you should sit down, be quiet, and listen to what they have to say."

Tetslaff leaned forward on the table, making it creak beneath the weight of her massive muscled arms. "William," she said, "I've always looked up to you as a teacher but so help me if you say that there was a zombie walking through the hallways, I will walk out of this room and put a beefsteak on my eye for the rest of the night instead of sitting here listening to nonsense."

Murmurs of agreement travelled around the table.

Lancer refrained from smacking his forehead. "It's not zombies," he sighed.

"And no ghosts, either, Lancer. This is ridiculous."

He sighed, then leaned forward with his hands on the table. "Look," he said forcefully, catching everyone's eye in turn. "You all want to know what's been going on and I have the answer. That's why we're all here. So that I can tell you and you can listen. Whether or not you take my advice is up to you but at least I'll have tried to help. Now you may not like what I have to say and you may not even believe it but it's the only thing that you're going to hear from me because it's the truth."

Slapping his folder full of notes onto the table, he forcefully flipped it open. "So all I ask is that you hear me out start to finish without interruptions and then you can debate anything you want afterward."

The teachers were leaning back in their seats, seemingly chastised for the moment. Taking heart, Lancer got ready to begin. "Good," he breathed, nodding. "Good."

A chill began to seep through the room and it pulled him back to the entire purpose of this meeting. He had to tell them all what was really happening in the school. He needed to prepare them so that they could properly defend the students who had been placed under their care.

"It's ghosts," he said, and the entire room erupted in chaos.

"Now just listen to me!" he shouted as his colleagues reacted by throwing up their hands or shouting at him or pushing up from the table to leave the meeting.

"I'm being serious!" he said, even though no one was paying attention to him any longer. "And it's a dangerous situation," he acknowledged as he scrambled after pages that were nearly scattered to the floor when one of the math professors brushed by him. "But if we establish protocol, we should be able to come up with a system to…"

The principal stepped in front of the door to block anyone from leaving. "Quiet!" she shouted, and everyone in the room listened to her. "Everyone sit down," she ordered. Soon most of the seats were filled.

Lancer began to thank her for restoring order when she pierced him with a glare. "You too," she seethed.

He sat down obediently, chair tilting back and forth to rattle against the floor. One of the feet must have been missing its plastic cover.

Ishayama smoothed her hair back and glared at every face in the room. "Well," she began icily. "I can understand why you are incapable of controlling your classes if this is how you behave in what should be a very professional meeting of the school staff," she admonished. A few heads drooped while others stared defiantly back at her second in command as if his speech was explanation enough for their behavior.

Lancer slid back against the cold metal of his chair and tried not to get angry back at them. It wouldn't help his case. He needed to set an example. That was what his class was supposed to be to them. They knew how to handle the ghosts and what to do whenever the temperature…

Dropped.

The temperature had dropped and he'd been so caught up in the meeting that he hadn't been paying attention to the signs. Yes, he could nearly see his breath now. How much time had gone by? How much time was left?

Paradise Lost of all the times…!

"Ishayama…" he said, but she whirled around to face him.

"And you!" she said, face contorted as she was barely controlling her anger. "You were supposed to actually take this seriously. You were supposed to explain how to control the students, not spread rumors and insanity to the rest of the staff!"

"Yes, but…" he stood from his seat, eyes searching the room for something he could use as a weapon. Didn't have fire extinguishers in here…

"Coming," he said, looking beyond her as if she wasn't there. "It's coming."

"Have you honestly lost your mind?" she demanded, somehow towering over him with her hands on her hips.

He turned around and picked up his chair, testing it. The rest of the room stared at the scene playing out before them. They'd heard reports of how the Vice Principal had lost it, of course, but this was the first time actually seeing it for themselves.

Lancer wasn't paying any attention to them, though, but was scanning the walls as if he could see through them to tell which direction the thing might come from.

There was an eerie silence for a few moments during which everyone seemed to realize that it was cold. A couple teachers seemed to think this was odd, given that their staff meetings were normally conducted in a cozy setting, and pulled their blazers closer around them.

No one was ready for the glowing green shape to materialize out of the wall behind Ishayama's desk.

Everyone blinked at it as the thing eased through the cinderblocks, floating octopus like tentacles smoking into existence before their very eyes. When reality finally caught up with the teachers and they realized that they were in fact seeing something very large and menacing and not at all natural looking or computer generated, they panicked.

Falluca and the brunette teacher screamed, catching the figure's attention. The ghost jerked its red eyes toward them and everyone tried to dive safely out of its reach beneath the table or under the desk.

Lancer gripped the rickety metal folding chair tightly in his hands and stood his ground at the front of the table between the ghost and his co-workers.

The ghost floated closer, and he could see the long, sharp fangs shining in its open mouth. He rocked back and forth on his feet, waiting for it to come in range before he attacked and alerted it to his pitiful lack of an arsenal. Long seconds stretched by and Lancer longed to be anywhere else in the world but in a haunted school. But he realized that he was the only one standing up, the only one able to keep a cool enough head to know what to do.

He was barely breathing as the shadowy green figure came closer…. closer… there.

Closing his eyes for a brief moment, he hoped that this would work and that they wouldn't all die here and he swung with all the strength he could muster.

There was a shriek and a thud as the chair made contact with something solid. He tried to pull it back for a second swing in case it was needed but found that he couldn't budge the metal in his hands even an inch.

When Lancer once again opened his eyes to assess the situation, he saw no ghost in sight. It had gone, but the chair he'd hit it with was now embedded halfway through the wall of the principal's office.

He gazed at it, mouth open in surprise. It looked like one of those modern minimalistic found-object art sculptures.

But the room had already noticeably warmed, so he took the time to blink at the new addition to the decor and catch his breath. In a minute his heart would stop pounding so loudly and he would actually be able to hear again. The scuffles on the carpet as his colleagues decided that it was safe to come out of hiding. The panting as they recovered from having their first paranormal encounter of their lives.

Lancer turned to see the faces now peering at him in shock and new understanding. Ishayama looked particularly abashed as she came out from behind her desk and smoothed her suit skirt. Tucked a strand of loose hair behind her ear. Walked up to him slowly.

"So, William," she said. Stopped. Cleared her throat. "Ghosts…"

At least it was just an ectopus. And now the teachers are all on board with the whole "ghost" thing.

There isn't a canonical first name for Lancer. The two biggest schools of thought in the phandom are Edward and William and, well, as you can see, I went with William. :)