A Day at Michael's and May's!

Failure at Testing!

May rolled lazily out of bed. Ordinarily she would've stayed in bed for another hour or so, but due to the test tomorrow she needed all the time she could get. An extra hour or so and she would get a good grade. Of course, she would pass no matter how little time she put into studying...but she wanted to get a good grade...no, she wanted to get the best grade. While she openly recognized the fact that it was near impossible, what with all the eggheads in their class and all, but her goal was to do her very best and her very best should be THE best!

She sighed as she went to start her day off with a shower. Of course, she could count herself lucky...Ash and Melody accidentally got paired up with idiots...Michael wasn't an egghead, but he wasn't dumb either...he would get an 83 out of 100 on the test as always, it was almost a curse actually...Michael had a habit of getting an 83 on all the tests regardless of how long he studied...eventually Michael just kind of gave up on studying. May let out another sigh as she exited the bathroom with one towel wrapped around her body and another keeping her hair up.

May god changed relatively quickly. She already had her outfit planned out last night, she was determined to spend all of today studying just for the test, so she last night she decided to stay up and extra half an hour just to make sure that her outfit was ready. Once that was done she was on her way to Michael's.

Most Meister and Weapons lived together in Death City, but May's parents were over-protective of their darling girl and when they found out that she had partnered with a male...well, things didn't go over so well. They demanded that they get separate apartments. Since they just met each other neither Michael nor May cared so they got separate apartments as a matter of fact they both believed it to be the best idea out there. Its not like they lived far away either, it was a good five minute walk in between the two's apartment, hardly even noticeable.

May arrived at Michael's apartment soon enough. There was a light yellow sticky note attached to the door. 'I'll be at the gym - Michael'. May shrugged it off and headed down to the gym, no doubt Michael was probably down there practicing with a bow and arrow. He's probably been there for the last couple of hours...Michael had always been an early riser, but its gotten worse ever since he lost his body. May wasn't even sure how much Michael had been sleeping since he lost his body or even if he slept at all...after all his body doesn't need sleep, but a soul requires sleep right?

May soon arrived at the gym. The school had several gyms, but only one of them had an archery range built into it, it was also the closest, so it stood to reason that Michael would be there. May walked into the archery range...it was empty. May looked around the archery range, but she still didn't see him. It didn't make any sense...for all students it was required that they took both a mental and physical tests. Most kids freak out about the mental tests as they are trained in physical standards by doing tasks like hunting Kishin eggs along with other normal student activities like gym class. Of course for ranged attackers like Michael they have to pass a shooting test as well as basic physical examinations, but they were also graded far more easily on terms of physical abilities then a close-up fighter would be...which only made the fact that Michael wasn't here even more weird.

May made another look around the archery range to see if she didn't just miss him by a few extra seconds as he left, but there was nothing that suggested that he was actually here. The targets were all clear there wasn't an arrow in there, so Michael wasn't just taking a break. She took a glance at the floor. It was clean...she guessed the janitors or the working students must have cleaned it up last night and Michael did not come in here to shoot...then where was he?

May left the shooting range and entered the normal gym. Every time she saw the size of this gym and remembered that they had so many more she was amazed that Lord Death had such wealth. Not to mention the fact that they had one archery range, several swimming pools, multiple apartments, and the school was several stories tall. Lord Death didn't exactly seem like the man to store money away and invest it in order to make money...so it was questionable as to how he made so much money. She was starting to think of Lord Death's past days and how he got the money when she finally saw Michael.

Instead of practicing his aim Michael was jogging around the gym."Hey, Michael," shouted May trying to attract his attention. Michael stopped and jogged over to her. "What exactly is it that you are doing? We both know that we are going to pass the exercise section of the test with ease! I mean we ran all over the temple and we beat a witch...sort of..."

"We think that..." said Michael as he looked down upon his legs, "but...I think something is wrong with my leg. During the last mission my leg felt out of place...its felt like that ever since...you know...the incident...so I figured I'd come out here and test my time..." Michael motioned to watch he was wearing, "so far I am running a whole half a minute slower then I used to."

May recalled the hunting of Spectra and the running away from the wild boar that had occurred in the temple. As she thought about it the more she seemed to remember Michael was moving a little slower...it wasn't that big of a difference and not even enough of a difference to matter and that's what she told Michael.

"Its half a minute," said Michael as he sat down on the ground, "a whole half a minute...its kind of a big deal when something changes...especially when it changes for the worst." Michael grabbed his left leg and checked the mechanics in it once more.

May didn't quite follow it to the point, but the whole idea was incredibly well-thought out and it was true. If something is going right and then it all of a sudden takes a dive it does kind of mean trouble. May sighed, "okay. I guess I understand...you are just going to stay here and work-out? Try to rebuild some musc..." May quickly caught on and stopped herself. Michael couldn't exactly rebuild muscles...

"Yeah..." said Michael as he took a quick stretch, mainly due to routine than reason. With that he was off running around the gym once more. May sighed and slumped into a nearby seat. She cracked open her notes and began studying for the upcoming test.

(-The Next Day, at the Testing Room-)

Over 50 students had poured into the testing room. They were all gathered around with a piece of paper in front of them, ready to begin the rigorous written test. At the front of the room stood Rochelle. Originally Clare was signed on to hand out the tests, but she was gone with Quill for the time being, on a secret mission that was not discussed in front of the students. Not even Michael, May, Melody, Shi, Ash, or Xander were told about the mission, despite their activeness in the last mission with them and Marburg.

"Okay, students," began Rochelle as she started to lecture the class on the proper testing etiquette. "Please remember to answer all questions to the best of your ability. If you are unsure of the answer, skip it. You have an hour and a half for the entire test, more than enough time. Finally I don't believe that I will need to state this, but please remember...Do not cheat. Cheating will be severaly punished. I am sure you have heard of the stories...and I am telling you the honest truth when I say...they are all true." With that there was a quick murmur from the students as they recalled the many, many, many stories of students who were brutally hung in front of the class or the story of the student who hid the answers in his clothing and was forced to strip nearly naked in front of the class.

"Quiet. Calm down," continued Rochelle, "As stated you have an hour and a half for the test! Begin!" The test began. The 50 or so students quickly began scribbling out on their tests, admittedly some of them were working harder and faster than the others. Ash was off to a strong start, he was working his way through the mathematics and even all of the sciences. Melody jumped straight to the English and took a couple of science questions while she was it. Michael and May were jumping from question to question in an effort to get more answered correctly. Shi, on the other hand, was busy drawing a wolf man and a sword-wielding fish attacking a giant golem.

Xander began applying pressure to his pencil as he worked harder focusing on his test. Suddenly his pencil snapped and the lead of the pencil came flying off and landed squarely on Ash's test. The lead rolled around smearing its dust all around upon Ash's test. "XANDER!" shouted Ash at the top of his voice. This attracted the entire classes attention.

Rochelle sighed. "Ash...please remain quiet...another outburst like that and I am afraid I'm going to have to fail you and give you a mandatory retest...okay? From now on despite how much Xander irritates you, you mustn't shout," reiterated Rochelle. She didn't want to fail Ash, after all he was a bright student, but the rules are the rules.

"Don't worry about it..." said Ash as he bowed his head, "it won't happen again." Ash glared over at Xander. He took out one cube eraser and began to frantically erase the pencil marks that Xander had caused.

"Hey, Ash," said Xander as he prodded at Ash's ribs as Rochelle looked away. Ash kept his eyes away from Xander, he had to guess that Xander was going to ask him some stupid question or even ask him to help him out on his test. "Hey, Ash, I really need a pencil. Can you let me borrow one?" Ash shook his head as he began to focus on the test. Ash put his pencil done as he realized he made a slight mistake. He bent back down and got his eraser out again.

Meanwhile Xander was sitting in his chair, scouring the ground for a pencil that was unfortunately dropped onto the ground. The first pencil Xander noticed was a light pink pencil with red hearts on it. His pride wouldn't allow him to pick up the pencil and use it, finally out of pure luck he noticed a pencil perfectly placed between him and Ash. He bent down, picked it up, and set back to work.

Ash had just finished correcting his mistake...he was missing his pencil. He paused as he looked back down at his desk. Finally, after he slowly calmed down he realized he must've slipped the pencil into his pocket, after a thorough examination of his pockets he found he was wrong. It must've rolled off and fell to the floor. Ash looked down at the floor...there was only a very girly pink pencil on the ground...Ash ignored it and began to search for his pencil...it was nowhere. He brought his head back up and calmed down, giving up on finding it. He noticed Xander holding onto a pencil...HIS pencil.

"Hey, Xander," whispered Ash when Rochelle looked away. Xander ignored him. "Hey, Xander," whispered Ash even louder, making it just quiet enough to make sure Rochelle didn't hear him, "is that my pencil?" No response again. "Xander...Xander...Xander."

"Miss Rochelle!" called out Xander. Rochelle turned around and faced him, "Ash is pestering me and I can no longer focus on my own test." Ash glared at Xander.

"Ash," said Rochelle upset that once again Ash had spoken up...she thought she heard some chattering in the background she just couldn't fathom why Ash was talking. "I'm sorry, but you are going to have to leave and...I am going to have to fail you."

"What!" shouted Ash standing up from his seat. "I didn't do anything wrong! I just lost my..." Rochelle stopped him and pointed out of the door, she hated disciplining her students, but she had to. Ash's head slumped as he left the room.

Sadly, one thing Xander forgot to calculate into his mocking of Ash was the simple fact that they were scored in pairs. A Meister and Weapon pair who failed to get over 140 in a total score had to take a mandatory make-up lesson...sadly, one person could only get a score of 100. Ash was getting a score of 0, so Xander was also being roped into the mandatory make-up lesson.

Well, that's the test. With Ash failing, Xander messing with Ash, and the rest of the crew making it out with no worries. For those of you who are thinking 'I wonder who the scores worked out', here is the list! (Notice: This is out of 100).

1) Evalyn Meyrs: 99

2) Semper Ais: 97

3) Melody White: 92

4- 12) ?

13) May Spears: 86

14) Michael: 83

15-36) ?

37) Xander: 67

38-47) ?

48) Shi: 3

49) ?

50) Ash: 0

Also, if anyone has any ideas on what pronoun I can use for Shi...can you please tell me? I feel very, very, very bad constantly referring to Shi as an it...but if I call Shi him or her it gets confusing. However, I have no idea on what the correct term is...So, any suggestions?