Questions and Answers
The Ero-Sennin
Shitposter no more
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We've made it to the end of the run. Thanks all who have for reading this story of mine and leave a like and comment.
By sunrise, a construction crew had descended upon the former Vanderhoff residence–much to the curiosity of the young man with a walking stick who stepped up to the gate being replaced. Staring quietly at the construction workers installing the new solid steel gate replacing the old fancy wrought iron gate that had been cut to pieces, the man responsible for the damage walked past the contractors and the parked Vanderhoff SUV.
Gabe glanced into the hole in the wall leading into the backyard on his trek, then hustled up to the smashed down door also in the process of being replaced. The carpenters fashioning a new doorway paid him no mind as he walked into the house and found it devoid of almost all furniture and equipment as renovators worked on transforming the home.
"The hell happened here…?" Gabe asked as he entered the living room and found Reiko speaking with the foreman in charge of the renovation.
"… We're not gutting the entire house, just make sure that everything that hasn't been marked for repossession is outside in the driveway by noon–that's when the first movers are coming."
"What about the truck?" The foreman said of the SUV.
Reiko noticed Gabe but kept talking to the foreman. "I've already contacted the dealership and a repo crew is on their way to pick it up, they should be here any moment, now."
The foreman noticed Gabe. "Hey, are you one of the temps we contracted?"
Gabe shook his head. "Nah, I'm a… I had prior business with the folks that live here."
Reiko's eyes lit with recognition, and she dismissed the foreman. "You can get back to it. I'll speak with the gentleman."
She walked over to him as the foreman headed out into the backyard through the still broken windows. "You said you had business with the former owners?"
Gabe's eyebrows rose. "Oh word, they skipped town?"
Eyeing him up and down, Reiko nodded. "That's right. Don't expect them to be in contact with you in the future; they moved far, far away."
His free hand came up to his chin and he rubbed it.
"Hmm… you wouldn't know what happened to 'em, would you?"
Reiko nodded. "Yes, as a matter of fact. When you had visited Mr. Pines and his friends Saturday, that whole group decided to put a permanent end to the conflict that you took part in."
Gabe was given pause.
"African American male, late teens, possibly even early twenties. Has a walking stick that in fact is a modified shirasaya, right?"
And Gabe's eyebrows rose even higher. Humming again, he glanced at his walking stick then back at the woman.
She raised her finger. "Going forward: most of the affected parties have decided to let your participation in the transgressions pass. You were a hired blade, so it's as personal as you want it to be."
"I notice you said most."
"Stay away from Marco Diaz, Jackie Lynn Thomas, and Star Butterfly." Reiko gestured to him. "In general, stay away from Echo Creek–unless you want to make yourself useful, of course."
That was good enough. "Nah, I'm good. Only reason I pulled up in this whole thing was to see who got that dog in 'em–and make some cash on the side doing it. Just a hired blade, right?"
Reiko nodded. "Is there anything else, or will you be leaving?"
"I'm movin', peace," Gabe said as he turned to head back out the door the way he came.
Watching him go, Reiko pulled out her phone and began sending a message to Misao.
"They will want to know that he's already on his feet again…"
As he stepped out of the house and to the garage, he noticed two men walking up to the SUV and speaking to a man in a black suit and sunglasses Gabe realized he hadn't noticed when he came in. Both men, African Americans like himself, were trying to look natural in the confrontation.
The slightly younger and shorter, but better built of the men–wearing a dark blue shirt over a white long sleeve, black jeans with tan boots, and having a painfully average haircut–addressed the guard. "Hey, we're from Premium Deluxe Motorsport? To pick up the Lincoln Navigator y'all are returning?"
The guard looked back and forth between the two men, as the one who spoke handed the folded-up papers. "Shit, we got the papers right here."
Looking at the documents, the guard nodded and pulled out the car's keyfob. "All yours, gentlemen. Drive safe."
Taking the keys, the young man unlocked the doors as the guard turned and walked up and away past Gabe to return to the house.
The taller and slightly thinner of the two, wearing a green shirt over a black sweater with the sleeves rolled up to proudly display numerous tattoos referencing affiliation to the Crips. "Man, they been putting down five grand a week on this bitch. Now they gettin' all they shit repoed."
The other young man climbed into the driver seat. "You remember them dumbasses when they came through. Their Dad didn't even look at the contract, he just signed that shit, and they were gone. They were not good with money."
His passenger seemed annoyed by that. "I ain't even see that commission, either."
"What commission? We're repo, not sales."
"Ya boy was the one who told 'em to grab the Navigator, they wanted the biggest ride in the shop."
The driver was exasperated as he started the engine. "Man, fuck you, a blind man coulda sold this shit to them fools."
"And he would've gotten a commission," his passenger emphasized before he looked out the window at the cleaning up and out of the home.
"Still, what you think happened?"
"In this town? Probably fucked around with the wrong motherfuckers and found out," the driver said as he put the SUV in drive and drove out of the open gate.
Gabe huffed in amusement as he headed for the same gate. He had places to be, and to the chagrin of that woman and his former adversaries… those places would be in Echo Creek for a while.
"Y'all don't know shit about the wrong motherfuckers…"
Thanks to Star using her magic to repair the school after Shego's rampage and the monster fight, school was back in session at Echo Creek Academy without interruption. Quietly lamenting this, Heather drove into the student parking lot, where found a puzzling sight. Brittney stepped out of her G-Wagen, accompanied by Dudley–who looked at least fifteen years younger and absolutely pleased to hold open the door for her and Sabrina as they climbed out.
Parking her car a few spots from the G-Wagen, Heather climbed out and walked over to the two girls and the butler. "Hey Brittney, hey Sabrina… and Dudley?"
Dudley shut the door and greeted Heather with a tipping of his hat and a grandfatherly sparkle in his eye. "Good morning, Master Heather."
Brittney cut straight to the point. "Oh, those idiots cut him loose last night and my father hired him just this morning."
She turned to Dudley. "Thank you, Dudley, I'll call you if I need anything."
"Of course, Master Brittney. You and Master Sabrina have a good day of school."
Sabrina timidly waved to him. "Thank you…"
Heather had a new concern. "Why did the Vanderhoffs fire him?"
The nastiest smile appeared on Brittney's face. "You don't know?"
"… What should I know?"
Brittney looked positively ecstatic that she was going to be the first to tell her. Though, as a matter of course, it was still hard to differentiate from her usual expression.
"They went bust last night. All their money, the junk they owned, and everything that they used in place of a personality–gone."
Heather's mouth dropped open, and she stood there frozen for a good second. "Holy shit, really?"
Brittney nodded. "Trip and Van got pulled out of school and sent up to some group home in Oregon." With joy in her heart, she added. "They're never coming back."
There was no way this could be true. "Bullshit. What happened? How'd they go broke?"
Brittney, with a knowing look. "You already know. They were involved with Señor Senior Junior and Shego kidnapping Misao–and her parents were not cool with that."
Letting out a long breath she didn't realize she was holding, Heather was shaken. "Wow… she really cooked them."
"Well done inside, extra crispy outside," Sabrina said.
With that in mind, Heather visibly relaxed. "Awesome! That's a few less things me, Drew, or Dipper have to worry about."
But then a new realization came to her. "Oh no, what about Zoom…? I gotta talk to Roland."
"That comic book shop? It's probably fine, I heard that everything they had was redistributed around town. So, the shop might even be Nano's, now."
"I hope so; I'm gonna go find Roland and bug him about it just in case. See you in Calc."
Before Heather could take off, Sabrina called after her. "H-hey, um… Heather?"
She stopped and turned back. "What's up?"
Sabrina took a deep breath and after Brittney's harsh glare of encouragement boosted her resolve. "Are… you and Drew… a thing?"
Taken by surprise, Heather shook her head. "Um… we're not? We hang out, but we're not dating."
Sabrina shrank a bit, the next question being harder to ask. "… Are you… interested?"
In that instant, Heather saw where this was going. "Um… if you want to ask Drew out? Go for it, like… absolutely go for it! You two would be so cute together."
Brittney lifted an eyebrow as she cast a suspicious look at the blonde, while Sabrina was almost incandescent. "Really?"
"I'm rooting for you," Heather said without an ounce of hesitation.
Taking Heather's hands in her own, Sabrina shook them gratefully and rapidly. "Ohhh! Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!"
Heather giggled. "It's nothing… Drew's a good friend, and I like that girls are starting to see his good sides."
"They certainly are," Brittney said, acutely aware of the girls besides Sabrina entering Andrew McCormick's orbit recently.
Pulling away, Heather waved farewell and headed off to the cafeteria. As soon as she left, Brittney turned to Sabrina.
"So, when are you going to make a move?"
Sabrina turned to her, beaming. "As soon as I recover from this nervous breakdown!"
With that, Sabrina gently laid on the ground, and curled up into a ball as all of her anxieties suppressed came flooded out–along with a bunch of new anxieties that came with this her aspirations. Sighing, Brittney stood over her so she could recover from her anxiety attack in the presence of a safe person.
Unfortunately for Sabrina and her nervous aspirations, Drew was cutting class today–because he had to see it for himself. Stepping through the portal created by Star's scissors, he entered the sitting room of Hillhurst Mansion with Jackie, Marco, Janna, and Dipper–all carrying bags of comic books. After hearing it he couldn't believe it.
And after seeing it he still couldn't believe it.
"Okay, okay… we've watched a bunch of them so I gotta know," Mums asked through the haze of that good zaza. "Friday the 13th… or Halloween?"
Fangula blew out a long stream of smoke, adding to the haze as he pondered that question with a long hum. "Hmmm… Friday the 13th. Jason is motivated by both a bond with his mother, and a hatred for promiscuous and negligent teenagers. I find myself relating deeply with that."
Mums nodded. "Hates teens and loves his Mom. Yeah, that's something I can get behind. Michael Myers is just all over the place."
Frankenbeans, completely gone, added. "Nightmare on Elm Street bad."
"Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious' monster," Fangula said before shooting Mums a dark look. "And don't you ever compare me to that creep again. I do not want to do that to children, I just want to drink blood!"
Drew was doing his damnedest not to laugh and breathe in the intensely powerful smoke hanging in the air. "Oh my God, this is real."
The monsters all stopped and turned to look at them.
"Oh, hey, it's the blue one!" Mums held up a pipe. "Wanna blaze? None of us touched it, we just packed the bowl."
Andrew McCormick took a moment to really appreciate the absurdity of being offered the chance to smoke up with a three-millennia old mummy, a vampire, and a Frankenstein knockoff.
"I don't really do cannabis, but thank you?"
Mums shrugged his shoulders. "All right. More for us."
"Save some for when I get out of class, dude," Jackie requested.
Fangula looked over. "Why not start now?"
Dipper, partly amused by the same absurdity Drew appreciated–and already feeling a contact high–let out a laugh. "We're going down to set up more defenses for the base. So, we don't get people like that idiot from before showing up."
"Or the feds," Janna added.
Mums almost looked touched. "You brats are already making this arrangement better by the day. Make sure the new defenses leave a body, so Fangy here can have whatever's left, all right?"
"Nothing too noxious, please," Fangula chimed in.
Dipper laughed again. "I'll see what we can do?"
Drew coughed a bit. "Can we go? The colors are getting sharper."
Janna patted him on the small of his back as she walked past him to the organ. "You'll learn to like it."
The false wall the Organ sat against opened, revealing Flabber on the other side, happy to see his human guests. "Hey, kiddos! Welcome back!"
He zipped over to Drew. "And look at you, Drew! You're–as the kids like to say–"
Quickly Flabber transformed into a leaking faucet. "Dripped out."
Drew laughed. "Heh… you should've seen me on Saturday. I had a nice suit and everything."
Flabber pouted. "You at least got pictures?"
Drew held up his phone for emphasis. "Sure did."
Poofing back into his normal shape, Flabber clapped his hands excitedly–then zoomed over to appear next to Dipper in the shape of a blue-skinned, big-nosed office lady with a pompadour in the front and a hair bun in the back. "What's on the agenda today, Dipper?"
Dipper did not look directly at Flabber so he would not have to burn the image from his mind later. "Setting up defenses, keeping an eye out for Magnavore activity, and scanning a lot of comic books."
Flabber adjusted a pair of sharp office lady glasses. "If you like, I can help! What do you need to scan the comics for?"
"The monsters we've fought so far have been pretty much exactly like in the comics, just with different personalities. I figure we can create a database of the monsters and be ready to take them down easier when they show up."
Drew indicated the bags they brought with them. "And I have basically my whole collection of comics that I could bring."
"You have so many of these," Janna said.
"It's almost twenty-five years' worth of comics… though most of them are rereleases."
Flabber popped back to normal, excited. "Flab Out! Knowing the enemy is practically half the battle, with the rest being red lasers, blue lasers, and Snake Eyes!" As Dipper, Drew, and Marco chuckled, he continued. "I would really like to sit down and read some, too, while we're at it. I just love the Beetleborgs. Both the comic and the real ones. Y'see, they're pretty great."
Drew accepted the confidence with grace. "Thanks, Flabber."
Marco and Jackie exchanged looks, before the latter asked Flabber. "Hey, we're going to head back to class, but when school's out can you help Jackie and I explore the house?"
Flabber looked back at him and Jackie. "What's up?"
"There's a door we found Saturday that I want to try to find again; Wolfy's."
"Wolfy?" Drew repeated.
Flabber nearly fell over and turned to look at Marco. "Hold your camel there, Marco Polo. Did you say Wolfy's room? You found it?!"
Marco nodded. "I'm pretty sure I almost got it to open, too."
Flabber gasped with such dramatic flair that there was even a musical sting. "You opened it?!"
"No, that Goblin dude interrupted," Jackie said, Marco nodding with her.
Drew folded his arms, curious. "Is this room a big deal?"
"Is it a big deal? I can't even find Wolfy's room, and this is my house!" Flabber explained.
Marco continued from that point. "That's the thing. The Universal Pictures Cinematic Monsterverse explained that only certain people can even find Wolfy's door, let alone open it."
Janna turned to Flabber. "Is that true?"
Flabber quickly nodded. "Sure is, and I can't open it, either."
Dipper and Drew both did double takes, asking in unison. "Why did it open for you?"
Janna hummed. "Hey Flabber, got some insight?"
Flabber cringed. "I wish I did; most of what I remember about the old days was way after the guys were already living here, and the Doc didn't want to tell me why–just that they had to, and I had to watch over them."
He hung his head in contrition. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it," Marco assured him.
It was too much for Dipper to resist. "Yeah. This just means we get to solve another mystery. We should have all the comics scanned by last bell, so I'll join in."
Drew couldn't help his interest either. "Yeah, I'm in, too."
As they reached the Beetle Battle Base proper, Marco asked. "Hey, what's Wolfy like?"
Flabber seemed almost honored to speak of the hitherto absent monster. "Oh gee, guys, Wolfy is entirely different from any of the monsters you've met here!"
"What, is he actually not a man-eating monster?" Jackie asked.
"That and more!" Flabber replied. "In fact, I'd say he's the most human monster you'll ever meet."
The kids all looked at one another, curious. None more curious than Marco.
Mr. Geike made his way down the hall, his presence causing a wide berth to spread. The Calculus Teacher's dark eyes scanned the students, and he took no small satisfaction at some of the disgruntled or dreadful looks some gave him–or how the members of the football team didn't even bother to make eye contact. Despite the chaos yesterday, school was back in session, and he was here to make an impression.
One burned into the brains of each of these carefree, entitled brats.
"Mr. Geike!" Principal Skeeves called to him from behind, much to the displeasure that Geike suppressed. "I'm glad I caught you before you went in. Can I have a quick word with you?"
Rolling his eyes, Mr. Geike turned to the rotund man. "What is it, Mr. Skeeves?"
"Yes, I wanted to ask you about your class with Miss Darlian. How has that been?"
Mr. Geike noticed a hint of anxiety in the Principal's tone when he mentioned her. "Class was… not particularly difficult. We had a small disagreement at the start, but she shaped up very quickly. There may just be hope for her."
Principal Skeeves nodded. "Excellent, just… in the future… try to be less…"
Mr. Geike narrowed his eyes. "Less what?"
"Less…" Principal Skeeves sought the lightest, most diplomatic term he could. "… Difficult. I understand you have a very particular teaching method, but could you avoid driving her from your class?"
Of course. "Principal Skeeves. I have Miss Wong in my class, and she quickly got with the program without throwing a fit. If how strict I am with Miss Darlian is going to be a problem for you, just concede like you have with Miss Wong–problem solved."
He raised a finger, his expression darkening. "I am not afraid of any of those kids, and I have no reason to be. If Miss Darlian takes exception, then her throwing a tantrum says more about her."
Principal Skeeves cleared his throat. "It's not a matter of her complaining about you. At this point, no one has said anything about–"
"If no one has said anything, then there's no issue. Look, Skeevy, I don't tell you how to do your job–for all the terrible things it has brought to this school. So, unless you want me to start loudly complaining about how you take money from parents and run this school ignoring every rule and reg in the state of California? You're not getting on me about my coping mechanisms."
That did the trick, and whatever concerns Principal Skeeves had about Mr. Geike's professionalism melted away in the heat of self-preservation and paranoia. Sweating from that very furnace, Skeeves physically backed away from Mr. Geike.
"You make a very good point. I will… ahem… pretend this conversation never happened… andkeepmymouthshutifthisexplodesinyourface."
Mr. Geike openly rolled his eyes this time. "Good."
Turning away from the Principal, he walked on to his classroom. It amused him a little that Principal Skeeves claimed she had not complained, and yet there he was talking exactly like she had, and was trying to be diplomatic.
Misao Darlian was a billionaire but in the end, she was just another spoiled brat throwing her money around to get what she wanted. No different than the Vanderhoff boys and Brittney Wong.
Students like them, students who thought they were entitled to the world because of money, or looks, or who their parents were, or anything but their effort and hard work? And got everyone to worship them like they were Gods of popularity? He hated those kids the most.
With a spiteful spring in his step, he made a direct line to his class, and pushed open the door to step inside. He had an almost full classroom–and his students looked as unhappy as they could ever be, with a day off from school robbed of them by the menace in Skullnick's class.
The less he thought about her the better.
"Don't look at me like that," he said, "Blame your precious magical princess for fixing the school up instead of leaving it to Miss Wong's people."
He looked at Brittney with that and noticed that Misao's seat was empty. "Speaking of Princesses, I see our newest one is absent. Where is she?"
Heather raised her hand. "Um… I saw her in the library last."
The teacher hummed in surprise. Only one day and she'd given up?
"Hm. That's anticlimactic, I expected her to last the whole week, at least." He shrugged his shoulders as the bell rang. "Oh well, open your books, we're getting started."
As he turned to start writing, however, the door opened and Misao walked in. In addition to her other books, she carried under her arm a book picked up from the library.
"Oh! I am so sorry, Herr Geike! I thought I had more time!" She said quickly as she hurried to her desk.
He turned back and glowered at her. "I have a zero-tolerance policy towards tardiness."
Misao set her books down. "Oh, I know, and again I am very sorry. It is just that I had to get a book, because I wanted to show you something."
Mr. Geike folded his arms, unamused. "Is it a real excuse for why you're not in before the bell?"
"It is very good–ja? You see, I thought a lot about what you said yesterday."
And now the teacher lifted an eyebrow. What was this girl getting at?
"What did I say that you thought about?"
Misao flashed him a big smile. "About what matters in your classroom! How logical and critical thinking and hard work are what this golden age of technology needs and should be what matters there and in this class!"
Heather looked past Misao at Brittney, who met her confused look with a shrug as she watched Misao's impromptu presentation.
"And I thought about how you mentioned hypersonic jets; those are very miraculous, yes."
Mr. Geike gestured to her. "Your point?"
"I mean, the ability to create an air-breathing aircraft that can travel at 8 times the speed of sound and mitigate fuselage heat damage, atmospheric damage, and sonic boom effects? That requires very much hard work, study of physics, engineering, and–most importantly–mathematical formulas!"
Picking up the book, Misao walked over to the teacher's desk and set it down. When he looked at it, his eyebrows rose. It was a scientific journal, for the year 2007.
He scrutinized the book, then looked up at Misao.
"That's obvious. It's probably the only good thing Hyuuga Heavy Industries has done in the last decade–making high speed, efficient, and safe hypersonic flight a reality by publishing its findings to the public and distributing it for anyone who wanted to develop it."
He gestured to her again. "I still don't see your point."
Misao, still smiling, opened the book. "Please, Herr Geike, I wanted you to take a look at the second author on that published paper."
The students all began murmuring quietly as Mr. Geike looked down at the book. A look of surprised disbelief appeared on his face as he picked up the book and turned a page–then he went completely wide-eyed as he turned several pages and stared at different parts of each successive page.
His head snapped up to stare at Misao. "… Bullshit."
Gasps rose from the class, Heather covering her mouth as Brittney just leaned onto her desk and smirked in malicious amusement.
Misao tilted her head, smiling innocently. "What do you mean?"
"This is…" He shook his head. "You photoshopped this book."
"Oh no, this is straight from the library."
Heather stood up. "Misao? What is it?"
Misao gestured to the man's shirt pocket. "You can check the review in Nature if you don't believe it."
Mr. Geike looked back down at the book. Then pulled out his phone and spoke into it.
"Siri, who are the published Authors on the paper 'Achieving Economic Hypersonic Flight' published in Nature in October 2007?"
There was a brief pause before the phone answered in a woman's computerized voice.
"Achieving Economic Hypersonic Flight, published in 2007, was a paper authored and penned by an international team funded by Hyuuga Heavy Industries. The paper is notable for its youngest author, Misao Darlian, who was nine years old at the time of publication."
The class's attention focused on its newest student, as a swirl of murmuring spread.
Brittney rolled her eyes briefly, before keeping them on Misao to see what she did next.
Misao kept smiling as she took the book and held it up for the class to see, showing a picture of herself as a younger girl standing for a group photograph with an entire team of researchers.
"The ability to think logically, think critically, and do the work. We live in a golden age of technology and discovery," she said, repeating Mr. Geike's speech. "Everything from hologram projectors in phones, to hypersonic business jets, to liquid batteries have all come from the scientific brilliance of the world's greatest thinkers. Their work, and humanity's benefit of it, comes from classes like these."
She set the book down, her smile disappearing and replaced with a much colder sneer as her friendly gaze darkened.
"George Bernard Shaw said in his 1905 play Man and Superman: 'those who can, do; those who cannot, teach.'"
She pointed at his face, wrath burning in her eyes. "Herr Geek, you're not even qualified to do that."
Mr. Geike stared at Misao, his face pale, but slowly turning red as the girl glared back in defiance, her gaze commanding he take those same words he used to demean her and eat them in front of the entire classroom.
The atmosphere he created, the presence he projected, the power he held… it had all shattered in an instant. Leaving him subject to the stunned and ridiculing looks of the students he despised.
Placing his trembling hands on the book, he closed it, and then pushed it back to her. "Take this book back to the library and stay there–if you're so smart."
Misao's smile returned. "Would you care to join me? I noticed a few inaccuracies in your problems during the last class, and we can go back over them to make sure you understand the material, if you like."
No one had ever seen the teacher get so mad that his face started to turn purple. Fists clenched, teeth bared, Mr. Geike took an angry deep breath and walked to the door. "When I get back here, I do not want to see you in this classroom, Miss Darlian."
As soon as he left, slamming the door behind him, the classroom began talking excitedly among themselves.
"Whoa, The Geek ragequit."
"Serves him right, the douche."
"Justice for Jackie!"
"The Vanderhoffs are gone, and now the Geek got turned into the Wuss."
As Misao sat down Heather turned to Misao. "Wait, did you really publish that paper?"
"Ja!" Misao confirmed. "One of my favorite things is aerospace. I had such a passion for it that I studied maths by the bookload when I was very little, and that eventually turned into me contributing to that paper."
Brittney rested her elbow on the desk and her cheek on her upheld palm as she looked at her. "You just got done destroying the Vanderhoffs, and you're already picking a fight with a teacher?"
Misao answered bluntly. "I really like calculus and would have liked going to this class with Jackie."
Letting out a huff, Brittney shrugged her shoulders. She could respect that. "You know what? I'm going to take a page out of your book and see if I can get him removed from the school. We don't have to tolerate the Vanderhoffs–we don't need to tolerate teachers who only became teachers to bully kids."
Misao did a double take. "That is his damage?!"
Brittney nodded as Heather confirmed it. "He said it himself. That the only reason he became a teacher was so he could 'bully kids like the ones who bullied him.'"
Making a foul face, the exchange student shook her head. "No, absolutely not, that is completely deranged."
"You don't need to have a lot of money to go on a power trip," Brittney replied as she leaned back in her seat, "You just have to have any power at all."
Heather let out a small laugh. "There are too many people on power trips, who think they can get away with everything. It'd be nice if they could all just disappear like the Vanderhoffs, forever."
As Misao and Brittney agreed with Heather, Misao noticed the edges of her vision blur. In the next moment, the blurriness swept across the whole of her vision and for the briefest instant everything became brighter and sharper… before fading back to normal.
"… Huh?" Misao looked around. "What?"
Both Brittney and Heather stared at her in confusion.
"What?" The former asked.
Misao looked around for another moment, as just as quickly as she noticed it, it slipped from her memory. "Did you… what were we talking about, just now?"
Heather tilted her head. "We were talking about how it'd be nice if jerks like the Vanderhoffs disappeared."
Brittney nodded. "Yeah."
That… didn't seem right, there was something more, but she couldn't remember it suddenly. Whatever she had just seen, it wasn't the strangest thing she'd experienced since she got here.
Whatever it was, she thought, It is probably not even worth remembering.
The door opened and a Latina teacher in her early 30s, wearing khaki shorts and a red polo shirt walked in. Right away the class devoted their full attention to her as she went to the board.
"Hello, class, sorry for being late," she greeted. "I guess my mind just blanked for a minute there."
"Hello, Ms. Espinoza," the students all answered.
The woman smiled and turned to the chalkboard. "Okay, open up your books to Section 3, we're going to pick up where we left off yesterday." She looked back. "Didn't think you'd be back so soon, huh?"
Misao smiled. "We can thank Star for that, ja?"
Brittney shrugged her shoulders. "It's nice that she's actually cleaning up the messes now. Saves my parents some money."
Ms. Espinoza's calculus class laughed, as the students picked up where they left off yesterday like nothing had happened.
By sunrise, a construction crew had descended upon the former Vanderhoff residence—much to the curiosity of the young man with a walking stick who stepped up to the gate being replaced.
Staring quietly at the construction workers installing the new solid steel gate replacing the old fancy wrought iron gate that had been cut to pieces, the man responsible for the damage walked past the contractors and the parked Vanderhoff SUV.
Gabe glanced into the hole in the wall leading into the backyard on his trek, then hustled up to the smashed down door also in the process of being replaced. The carpenters fashioning a new doorway paid him no mind as he walked into the house and found it devoid of almost all furniture and equipment as renovators worked on transforming the home.
"The hell happened here…?" Gabe asked as he entered the living room and found Reiko speaking with the foreman in charge of the renovation.
"… We're not gutting the entire house, just make sure that everything that hasn't been marked for repossession is outside in the driveway by noon—that's when the first movers are coming."
"What about the truck?" The foreman said of the SUV.
Reiko noticed Gabe but kept talking to the foreman. "I've already contacted the dealership and a repo crew is on their way to pick it up, they should be here any moment now."
The foreman noticed Gabe. "Hey, are you one of the temps we contracted?"
Gabe shook his head. "Nah, I'm a… I had prior business with the folks that live here."
Reiko's eyes lit with recognition, and she dismissed the foreman. "You can get back to it. I'll speak with the gentleman."
She walked over to him as the foreman headed out into the backyard through the still broken windows. "You said you had business with the former owners?"
Gabe's eyebrows rose. "Oh word, they skipped town?"
Eyeing him up and down, Reiko nodded. "That's right. Don't expect them to be in contact with you in the future; they moved far, far away."
His free hand came up to his chin and he rubbed it.
"Hmm… you wouldn't know what happened to 'em, would you?"
Reiko nodded. "Yes, as a matter of fact. When you had visited Mr. Pines and his friends Saturday, that whole group decided to put a permanent end to the conflict that you took part in."
Gabe was given pause.
"African American male, late teens, possibly even early twenties. Has a walking stick that in fact is a modified shirasaya, right?"
And Gabe's eyebrows rose even higher. Humming again, he glanced at his walking stick then back at the woman.
She raised her finger. "Going forward: "Most of them have chosen to let your part slide. You were a hired blade, so it's as personal as you want it to be. I personally wouldn't test their generosity twice."
"I notice you said most."
"Stay away from Marco Diaz, Jackie Lynn Thomas, and Star Butterfly." Reiko gestured to him. "In general, stay away from Echo Creek—unless you want to make yourself useful, of course."
That was good enough. "Nah, I'm good. Only reason I pulled up in this whole thing was to see who got that dog in 'em—and make some cash on the side doing it. Just a hired blade, right?"
Reiko nodded. "Is there anything else, or will you be leaving?"
"I'm movin', peace," Gabe said as he turned to head back out the door the way he came.
Watching him go, Reiko pulled out her phone and began sending a message to Misao.
"They will want to know that he's already on his feet again…"
As he stepped out of the house and to the garage, he noticed two men walking up to the SUV and speaking to a man in a black suit and sunglasses Gabe realized he hadn't noticed when he came in. Both men, African Americans like himself, were trying to look natural in the confrontation.
The slightly younger and shorter, but better built of the men—wearing a dark blue shirt over a white long sleeve, black jeans with tan boots, and having a painfully average haircut—addressed the guard.
"Hey, we're from Premium Deluxe Motorsport? To pick up the Lincoln Navigator y'all are returning?"
The guard looked back and forth between the two men, as the one who spoke handed the folded-up papers. "Shit, we got the papers right here."
Looking at the documents, the guard nodded and pulled out the car's keyfob. "All yours, gentlemen. Drive safe."
Taking the keys, the younger man unlocked the doors as the guard turned and walked up and away past Gabe to return to the house.
The taller and slightly thinner of the two, wearing a green shirt over a black sweater with the sleeves rolled up to proudly display numerous tattoos referencing affiliation to the Crips. "How the flexin' have fallen. Whole family out here actin' like they some movie stars or some shit, now look at 'em. Repo man takin' they shit in broad daylight.."
The younger man climbed into the driver seat. "You remember them dumbasses when they came through. Their Dad didn't even look at the contract and threw five grand a week at this ride like it was pocket change. That's not flexin', that's stupidity."
His passenger seemed annoyed by that. "I ain't even see that commission, either…"
"What commission? We're repo, not sales."
"Ya boy LD told 'em to hit up the Navigator!"
The driver was exasperated as he started the engine. "Man, fuck you, a blind man coulda sold this shit to them fools."
"And he would've gotten a commission," his passenger griped before he looked out the window at the cleaning up and out of the home.
The driver rolled his eyes, there was no arguing with this fool.
"Still, what you think happened to 'em, Frank?" His friend asked.
"In this town? Probably fucked around with the wrong motherfuckers and found out," the driver said as he put the SUV in drive and drove out of the open gate.
Gabe huffed in amusement as he headed for the same gate. He had places to be, and to the chagrin of that woman and his former adversaries… those places would be around Echo Creek for a little bit.
"Y'all don't know shit about the wrong motherfuckers…"
Thanks to Star using her magic to repair the school after Shego's rampage and the monster fight, school was back in session at Echo Creek Academy without interruption. Quietly lamenting this, Heather drove into the student parking lot, where found a puzzling sight.
Brittney stepped out of her G-Wagen, accompanied by Dudley—who looked at least fifteen years younger and absolutely pleased to hold open the door for her and Sabrina as they climbed out.
Parking her car a few spots from the G-Wagen, Heather climbed out and walked over to the two girls and the butler. "Hey Brittney, hey Sabrina… and Dudley?"
Dudley shut the door and greeted Heather with a tipping of his hat and a grandfatherly sparkle in his eye. "Good morning, Master Heather."
Brittney cut straight to the point. "Oh, those idiots cut him loose last night and my father hired him just this morning."
She turned to Dudley. "Thank you, Dudley, I'll call you if I need anything."
"Of course, Master Brittney. You and Master Sabrina have a good day of school."
Sabrina timidly waved to him. "Thank you…"
Heather had a new concern. "Why did the Vanderhoffs fire him?"
The nastiest smile appeared on Brittney's face. "You don't know?"
"… What should I know?"
Brittney looked positively ecstatic that she was going to be the first to tell her. Though, as a matter of course, it was still hard to differentiate from her usual expression.
"They went bust last night. All their money, the junk they owned, and everything that they used in place of a personality—gone."
Heather's mouth dropped open, and she stood there frozen for a good second. "Holy shit, really?"
Brittney nodded. "Trip and Van got pulled out of school and sent up to some group home in Oregon." With joy in her heart, she added. "They're never coming back."
There was no way this could be true. "Bullshit. What happened? How'd they go broke?"
Brittney, with a knowing look. "You already know. They were involved with Señor Senior Junior and Shego kidnapping Misao—and her parents were not cool with that."
Letting out a long breath she didn't realize she was holding, Heather was shaken. "Wow… she really cooked them."
"Well done inside, extra crispy outside," Sabrina said.
With that in mind, Heather visibly relaxed. "Awesome! That's a few less things me, Drew, or Dipper have to worry about."
But then a new realization came to her. "Oh no, what about Zoom…? I gotta talk to Roland."
"That comic book shop? It's probably fine, I heard that everything they had was redistributed around town. So, the shop might even be Nano's, now."
"I hope so; I'm gonna go find Roland and bug him about it just in case. See you in Calc."
Before Heather could take off, Sabrina called after her. "H-hey, um… Heather?"
She stopped and turned back. "What's up?"
Sabrina took a deep breath and after Brittney's harsh glare of encouragement boosted her resolve. "Are… you and Drew… a thing?"
Taken by surprise, Heather shook her head. "Um… we're not? We hang out, but we're not dating."
Sabrina shrank a bit, the next question being harder to ask. "… Are you… interested?"
In that instant, Heather saw where this was going. "Um… if you want to ask Drew out? Go for it, like… absolutely go for it! You two would be so cute together."
Brittney lifted an eyebrow as she cast a suspicious look at the blonde, while Sabrina was almost incandescent. "Really?"
"I'm rooting for you," Heather said without an ounce of hesitation.
Taking Heather's hands in her own, Sabrina shook them gratefully and rapidly. "Ohhh! Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!"
Heather giggled. "It's nothing… Drew's a good friend, and I like that girls are starting to see his good sides."
"They certainly are," Brittney said, acutely aware of the girls besides Sabrina entering Andrew McCormick's orbit recently.
Pulling away, Heather waved farewell and headed off to the cafeteria. As soon as she left, Brittney turned to Sabrina.
"So, when are you going to make a move?"
Sabrina turned to her, beaming. "As soon as I recover from this nervous breakdown!"
With that, Sabrina gently lay down and curled into a ball, all her suppressed anxieties flooding out—along with brand-new ones sparked by her sudden aspirations.
Sighing, Brittney sat beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder, wordlessly grounding her until the storm of panic passed
Unfortunately for Sabrina and her nervous aspirations, Drew was cutting class today—because he had to see it for himself.
Stepping through the portal created by Star's scissors, he entered the sitting room of Hillhurst Mansion with Jackie, Marco, Janna, and Dipper—all carrying bags of comic books. After hearing it he couldn't believe it.
And after seeing it he still couldn't believe it.
"Okay, okay… we've watched a bunch of them so I gotta know," Mums asked through the haze of that good zaza. "Friday the 13th… or Halloween?"
Fangula blew out a long stream of smoke, adding to the haze as he pondered that question with a long hum. "Hmmm… Friday the 13th. Jason is motivated by both a bond with his mother, and a hatred for promiscuous and negligent teenagers. I find myself relating deeply with that."
Mums nodded. "Hates teens and loves his Mom. Yeah, that's something I can get behind. Michael Myers is just all over the place."
Frankenbeans, completely gone, added. "Nightmare on Elm Street… bad."
Fangula groaned. "Thank you, Captain Obvious' monster."
Turning, he shot Mums a dark look. "And don't you ever compare me to that creep again. I do not want to do that to children, I just want to drink blood!"
Drew was doing his damnedest not to laugh and breathe in the intensely powerful smoke hanging in the air. "Oh my God. I'm actually in a hotbox with Dracula, a mummy, and Frankenstein's cousin."
The monsters all stopped and turned to look at them.
"Oh, hey, it's the blue one!" Mums held up a pipe. "Wanna blaze? None of us touched it, we just packed the bowl."
Andrew McCormick took a moment to really appreciate the absurdity of being offered the chance to smoke up with a three-millennia old mummy, a vampire, and a Frankenstein knockoff.
"I don't really do cannabis, but thank you?"
Mums shrugged his shoulders. "All right. More for us."
"Save some for when I get out of class, dude," Jackie requested.
Fangula looked over. "Why not start now?"
Dipper, partly amused by the same absurdity Drew appreciated—and already feeling a contact high—let out a laugh. "We're going down to set up more defenses for the base. So, we don't get people like that idiot from before showing up."
"Or the feds," Janna added.
Mums almost looked touched. "You brats are already making this arrangement better by the day. Make sure the new defenses leave a body, so Fangy here can have whatever's left, all right?"
"Nothing too noxious, please," Fangula chimed in.
Dipper laughed again. "I'll see what we can do?"
Drew coughed a bit. "Can we go? The colors are getting sharper."
Janna patted him on the small of his back as she walked past him to the organ. "You'll learn to like it."
The false wall the Organ sat against opened, revealing Flabber on the other side, happy to see his human guests. "Hey, kiddos! Welcome back!"
He zipped over to Drew. "And look at you, Drew! You're—as the kids like to say–"
Quickly Flabber transformed into a leaking faucet. "Dripped out."
Drew laughed. "Heh… you should've seen me on Saturday. I had a nice suit and everything."
Flabber pouted. "You at least got pictures?"
Drew held up his phone for emphasis. "Sure did."
Poofing back into his normal shape, Flabber clapped his hands excitedly—then zoomed over to appear next to Dipper in the shape of a blue-skinned, big-nosed office lady with a pompadour in the front and a hair bun in the back.
"What's on the agenda today, Dipper?" He asked, eyelashes fluttering.
Dipper did not look directly at Flabber so he would not have to burn the image from his mind later. "Setting up defenses, keeping an eye out for Magnavore activity, and scanning a lot of comic books."
Flabber adjusted a pair of sharp office lady glasses. "If you like, I can help! What do you need to scan the comics for?"
"The monsters we've fought so far have been pretty much exactly like in the comics, just with different personalities. I figure we can create a database of the monsters and be ready to take them down easier when they show up."
Drew indicated the bags they brought with them. "And I have basically my whole collection of comics that I could bring."
"You have so many of these," Janna said.
"It's almost twenty-five years' worth of comics… though most of them are rereleases."
Flabber popped back to normal, excited. "Flab Out! Knowing the enemy is practically half the battle, with the rest being red lasers, blue lasers, and Snake Eyes!"
As Dipper, Drew, and Marco chuckled, he continued. "I would really like to sit down and read some, too, while we're at it. I just love the Beetleborgs. Both the comic and the real ones. Y'see, they're pretty great."
Drew accepted the compliment with grace. "Thanks, Flabber."
Marco and Jackie exchanged looks, before the latter asked Flabber. "Hey, we're going to head back to class, but when school's out can you help Jackie and I explore the house?"
Flabber looked back at him and Jackie. "What's up?"
"There's a door we found Saturday that I want to try to find again; Wolfy's."
"Wolfy?" Drew repeated.
Flabber nearly fell over and turned to look at Marco. "Hold your camel there, Marco Polo. Did you say Wolfy's room? You found it?!"
Marco nodded. "I'm pretty sure I almost got it to open, too."
Flabber gasped with such dramatic flair that there was even a musical sting. "You opened it?!"
"No, that Goblin dude interrupted," Jackie said, Marco nodding with her.
Drew folded his arms, curious. "Is this room a big deal?"
"Is it a big deal? I can't even find Wolfy's room, and this is my house!" Flabber explained.
Marco continued from that point. "That's the thing. The Universal Monsterverse explained that only certain people can even find Wolfy's door, let alone open it."
Janna turned to Flabber. "Is that true?"
Flabber quickly nodded. "Sure is, and I can't open it, either."
Dipper and Drew both did double takes, asking Marco in unison. "Why did it open for you?"
"That's what I want to know!" He snapped back.
Janna hummed. "Hey Flabber, got some insight?"
Flabber cringed. "I wish I did; most of what I remember about the old days was way after the guys were already living here, and the Doc didn't want to tell me why—just that they had to, and I had to watch over them."
He hung his head in contrition. "Sorry, guys. Even magical Phasms have limits.."
"Don't worry about it," Marco assured him.
It was too much for Dipper to resist. "Yeah. This just means we get to solve another mystery. We should have all the comics we have scanned by last bell, so I'll join in."
Drew couldn't help his interest either. "Yeah, I'm in, too."
As they reached the Beetle Battle Base proper, Marco asked. "Hey, what's Wolfy like?"
"What if he's the goodest boy?" Janna quipped.
Flabber seemed almost honored to speak of the hitherto absent monster. "Oh gee, guys, Wolfy is entirely different from any of the monsters you've met here!"
"What, is he actually not a man-eating monster?" Jackie asked.
"That and more!" Flabber replied. "In fact, I'd say he's the most human monster you'll ever meet."
The kids all looked at one another, curious. None more curious than Marco.
Mr. Geike made his way down the hall, his presence causing a wide berth to spread. The Calculus Teacher's dark eyes scanned the students, and he took no small satisfaction at some of the disgruntled or dreadful looks some gave him—or how the members of the football team didn't even bother to make eye contact.
Despite the chaos yesterday, school was back in session, and he was here to make an impression.
One burned into the brains of each of these carefree, entitled brats.
"Mr. Geike!" Principal Skeeves called to him from behind, much to the displeasure that Geike suppressed. "I'm glad I caught you before you went in. Can I have a quick word with you?"
Rolling his eyes, Mr. Geike turned to the rotund man. "What is it, Mr. Skeeves?"
"Yes, I wanted to ask you about your class with Miss Darlian. How has that been?"
Mr. Geike noticed a hint of anxiety in the Principal's tone when he mentioned her. "Class was… not particularly difficult. We had a small disagreement at the start, but she shaped up very quickly. There may just be hope for her."
Principal Skeeves nodded. "Excellent, just… in the future… try to be less…"
Mr. Geike narrowed his eyes. "Less what?"
"Less…" Principal Skeeves sought the lightest, most diplomatic term he could. "… Difficult. I understand you have a very particular teaching method, but could you avoid driving her from your class?"
Of course. "Principal Skeeves. I have Miss Wong in my class, and she quickly got with the program without throwing a fit. If how strict I am with Miss Darlian is going to be a problem for you, just concede like you have with Miss Wong—problem solved."
He raised a finger, his expression darkening. "I am not afraid of any of those kids, and I have no reason to be. If Miss Darlian takes exception, then her throwing a tantrum says more about her."
Principal Skeeves cleared his throat. "It's not a matter of her complaining about you. At this point, no one has said anything about–"
"If no one has said anything, then there's no issue. Look, Skeevy, I don't tell you how to do your job—for all the terrible things it has brought to this school. So, unless you want me to start loudly complaining about how you take money from parents and run this school ignoring every rule and reg in the state of California? You're not getting on me about my coping mechanisms."
That did the trick, and whatever concerns Principal Skeeves had about Mr. Geike's professionalism melted away in the heat of self-preservation and paranoia. Sweating from that very furnace, Skeeves physically backed away from Mr. Geike.
"You make a very good point. I will… ahem… pretend this conversation never happened… andkeepmymouthshutifthisexplodesinyourface."
Mr. Geike openly rolled his eyes this time. "Good."
Turning away from the Principal, he walked on to his classroom. It amused him a little that Principal Skeeves claimed she had not complained, and yet there he was talking exactly like she had, and was trying to be diplomatic.
Misao Darlian was a billionaire, but in the end, she was just another spoiled brat throwing her money around to get what she wanted. No different than the Vanderhoff boys and Brittney Wong.
Students like them, students who thought they were entitled to the world because of money, or looks, or who their parents were, or anything but their effort and hard work? And got everyone to worship them like they were Gods of popularity? He hated those kids the most.
With a spiteful spring in his step, he made a direct line to his class, and pushed open the door to step inside. He had an almost full classroom—and his students looked as unhappy as they could ever be with a day off from school robbed of them by the menace in Skullnick's class.
The less he thought about her the better.
"Don't look at me like that," he said, "Blame your precious magical princess for fixing the school up instead of leaving it to Miss Wong's people."
He looked at Brittney with that and noticed that Misao's seat was empty. "Speaking of Princesses, I see our newest one is absent. Where is she?"
Heather raised her hand. "Um… I saw her in the library last."
The teacher hummed in surprise. Only one day and she'd given up?
"Hm. That's anticlimactic, I expected her to last the whole week, at least." He shrugged his shoulders as the bell rang. "Oh well, open your books, we're getting started."
As he turned to start writing, however, the door slammed open as Misao hurried in, clutching her books and a thick journal under her arm.
"Oh! I am so sorry, Herr Geike!" she blurted, her accent cutting through the silence. "I thought I had more time!"
Geike turned, his glare sharp enough to slice glass. "I have a zero-tolerance policy for tardiness."
Whispers rippled through the classroom. Brittney smirked, Heather winced. Misao just set her books down—smiling.
"I know. And again, I am very sorry. But I had to get a book, because… I wanted to show you something."
Mr. Geike folded his arms, unamused. "Is it a real excuse for why you're not in before the bell?"
"Nein, nein, it is very good—ja? You see, I thought a lot about what you said yesterday."
And now the teacher lifted an eyebrow. What was this girl getting at?
"What did I say that you thought about?"
Misao flashed him a big smile. "About what matters in your classroom! How logical and critical thinking and hard work are what this golden age of technology needs and should be what matters there and in this class!"
Heather looked past Misao at Brittney, who met her confused look with a shrug as she watched Misao's impromptu presentation.
"And I thought about how you mentioned hypersonic jets; those are very miraculous, yes."
Mr. Geike gestured to her. "Your point?"
"I mean, the ability to create an air-breathing aircraft that can travel at 8 times the speed of sound and mitigate fuselage heat damage, atmospheric damage, and sonic boom effects? That requires very much hard work, study of physics, engineering, and—most importantly—mathematical formulas!"
Picking up the book, Misao walked over to the teacher's desk and set it down. When he looked at it, his eyebrows rose. It was a scientific journal, for the year 2007.
He scrutinized the book, then looked up at Misao.
"That's obvious. It's probably the only good thing Hyuuga Heavy Industries has done in the last decade—publishing its findings to the public and distributing it for anyone who wanted to develop it."
He gestured to her again. "But I still don't see your point."
Misao, still smiling, opened the book. "Please, Herr Geike, I wanted you to take a look at the second author on that published paper."
The teacher flipped the page, casually at first—then froze. His eyes flicked from the name on the paper… back to Misao… back to the page. Faster now, he turned pages, searching, confirming, sweating.
Geike looked up at her, his voice cracking as he spoke.
"…Bullshit."
Gasps spread across the room. Heather's hands shot to her mouth. A malicious grin tugged at Brittney's lips.
Misao tilted her head, looking sweet as sugar. "What do you mean?"
"This is…" He shook his head. "You photoshopped this book."
"Oh no, this is straight from the library."
Misao gestured to the phone in the man's shirt pocket. "You can ask Siri if you don't believe it."
Mr. Geike looked back down at the book. Then pulled out his phone and spoke into it.
"Siri, who are the published Authors on the paper 'Achieving Economic Hypersonic Flight' published in Nature in October 2007?"
There was a brief pause before the phone answered in a woman's computerized voice.
"Achieving Economic Hypersonic Flight, published in 2007, was a paper authored and penned by an international team funded by Hyuuga Heavy Industries. The paper is notable for its youngest author, Misao Darlian, who was nine years old at the time of publication."
The class's attention focused on its newest student, as a swirl of murmuring spread.
"Wait, what?!"
"She was nine?!"
"No way! Is she like a super genius?!"
Brittney rolled her eyes, her smirk deepening.
Misao kept smiling as she took the book and held it up for the class to see, showing a picture of herself as a younger girl standing for a group photograph with an entire team of researchers.
"The ability to think logically, think critically, and do the work. We live in a golden age of technology and discovery," she said, repeating Mr. Geike's speech word for word.
"Everything from hologram projectors in phones, to hypersonic business jets, to liquid batteries have all come from the scientific brilliance of the world's greatest thinkers. Their work, and humanity's benefit of it, comes from classes like these."
She set the book down, her smile disappearing and replaced with a much colder sneer as her friendly gaze darkened.
"George Bernard Shaw said in his 1905 play Man and Superman: 'those who can, do; those who cannot, teach.'"
She pointed at his face, wrath burning in her eyes. "Herr Geek, you're not even qualified to do that."
Mr. Geike stared at Misao, his face pale, but slowly turning red as the girl glared back in defiance, her gaze commanding he take those same words he used to demean her and eat them in front of the entire classroom.
The atmosphere he created, the presence he projected, the power he held… it had all shattered in an instant. Leaving him subject to the stunned and ridiculing looks of the students he despised.
Placing his trembling hands on the book, he closed it, and then pushed it back to her. "Take this book back to the library and stay there—if you're so smart."
Misao's smile returned. "Would you care to join me? Maybe I can tutor you, Herr Geek. I noticed some mistakes in your problems yesterday."
No one had ever seen the teacher get so mad that his face started to turn purple. Fists clenched, teeth bared, Mr. Geike took an angry deep breath and walked to the door.
"When I get back—don't be here."
As soon as he left, slamming the door behind him, the classroom began talking excitedly among themselves.
"Whoa, The Geek ragequit."
"Serves him right, the douche."
"She cooked him alive!"
"Justice for Jackie!"
"The Vanderhoffs are gone, and now the Geek got GOT."
As Misao sat down Heather turned to Misao. "Wait, did you really publish that paper?"
"Ja!" Misao confirmed, as though nothing had just happened. "One of my favorite things is aerospace. I had such a passion for it that I studied maths by the bookload when I was very little, and that eventually turned into me contributing to that paper."
Brittney rested her elbow on the desk and her cheek on her upheld palm as she looked at her. "You just got done destroying the Vanderhoffs, and you're already picking a fight with a teacher?"
Misao answered bluntly. "I really like calculus and would have liked going to this class with Jackie."
Letting out a huff, Brittney shrugged her shoulders. She could respect that.
"You know what? I'm going to take a page out of your book and see if I can get him removed from the school. We don't have to tolerate the Vanderhoffs—we don't need to tolerate teachers who only became teachers to bully kids."
Misao did a double take. "That is his damage?!"
Brittney nodded as Heather confirmed it. "He said it himself when we first started class: That the only reason he became a teacher was so he could 'bully kids like the ones who bullied him.'"
Making a foul face, the exchange student shook her head. "No, absolutely not, that is completely deranged."
"You don't need to have a lot of money to go on a power trip," Brittney replied as she leaned back in her seat, "You just have to have any power at all."
Heather let out a small laugh. "There are too many people on power trips, who think they can get away with everything. It'd be nice if they could all just disappear like the Vanderhoffs, forever."
As Misao and Brittney agreed with Heather, Misao noticed the edges of her vision blur. In the next moment, the blurriness swept across the whole of her vision and for the briefest instant everything became brighter and sharper… before fading back to normal.
Misao blinked hard, her vision warping like heat waves. For an instant everything was sharper, too sharp—and then it was gone.
Both Brittney and Heather stared at her in confusion.
"What?" The former asked.
Misao looked around for another moment, as just as quickly as she noticed it, it slipped from her memory. "Did you… what were we talking about, just now?"
Heather tilted her head. "We were talking about how it'd be nice if jerks like the Vanderhoffs disappeared."
Brittney nodded. "Yeah."
That… didn't seem right, there was something more, but she couldn't remember it suddenly. Whatever she had just seen, it wasn't the strangest thing she'd experienced since she got here.
Whatever it was, it wasn't worth remembering.
The door opened and a Latina teacher in her early 30s, wearing khaki shorts and a red polo shirt walked in. Right away the class devoted their full attention to her as she went to the board.
"Hello, class, sorry for being late," she greeted. "I guess my mind just blanked for a minute there, and then I went 'Oh my goodness, I'm late!'"
"Hello, Ms. Espinoza," the students all answered, amused at their pleasant teacher's scatterbrainedness.
The woman smiled and turned to the chalkboard. "Okay, open up your books to Section 3, we're going to pick up where we left off yesterday."
She looked back. "Didn't think you'd be back so soon, huh?"
Misao smiled. "We can thank Star for that, ja?"
Brittney shrugged her shoulders. "It's nice that she's actually cleaning up the messes now. Saves my parents some money."
Ms. Espinoza's calculus class laughed again, as the students picked up where they left off yesterday like nothing had happened.
And with this, we end Volume 7 of Legends, the feud with the Vanderhoff Brothers, and begin looking forward towards new conflicts, new mysteries, and a story that will spread out beyond the peaceful streets of Echo Creek and through the annals of history.
There will be a few another omake scene in the near future, but look forward to Volume 8 appearing here starting in early 2024 if not by Christmas. In the meantime, more Senpai: A Story of Good Friends is coming soon.
|Questions and Answers|
By sunrise, a construction crew had descended upon the former Vanderhoff residence–much to the curiosity of the young man with a walking stick who stepped up to the gate being replaced. Staring quietly at the construction workers installing the new solid steel gate replacing the old fancy wrought iron gate that had been cut to pieces, the man responsible for the damage walked past the contractors and the parked Vanderhoff SUV.
Gabe glanced into the hole in the wall leading into the backyard on his trek, then hustled up to the smashed down door also in the process of being replaced. The carpenters fashioning a new doorway paid him no mind as he walked into the house and found it devoid of almost all furniture and equipment as renovators worked on transforming the home.
"The hell happened here…?" Gabe asked as he entered the living room and found Reiko speaking with the foreman in charge of the renovation.
"… We're not gutting the entire house, just make sure that everything that hasn't been marked for repossession is outside in the driveway by noon–that's when the first movers are coming."
"What about the truck?" The foreman said of the SUV.
Reiko noticed Gabe but kept talking to the foreman. "I've already contacted the dealership and a repo crew is on their way to pick it up, they should be here any moment, now."
The foreman noticed Gabe. "Hey, are you one of the temps we contracted?"
Gabe shook his head. "Nah, I'm a… I had prior business with the folks that live here."
Reiko's eyes lit with recognition, and she dismissed the foreman. "You can get back to it. I'll speak with the gentleman."
She walked over to him as the foreman headed out into the backyard through the still broken windows. "You said you had business with the former owners?"
Gabe's eyebrows rose. "Oh word, they skipped town?"
Eyeing him up and down, Reiko nodded. "That's right. Don't expect them to be in contact with you in the future; they moved far, far away."
His free hand came up to his chin and he rubbed it.
"Hmm… you wouldn't know what happened to 'em, would you?"
Reiko nodded. "Yes, as a matter of fact. When you had visited Mr. Pines and his friends Saturday, that whole group decided to put a permanent end to the conflict that you took part in."
Gabe was given pause.
"African American male, late teens, possibly even early twenties. Has a walking stick that in fact is a modified shirasaya, right?"
And Gabe's eyebrows rose even higher. Humming again, he glanced at his walking stick then back at the woman.
She raised her finger. "Going forward: most of the affected parties have decided to let your participation in the transgressions pass. You were a hired blade, so it's as personal as you want it to be."
"I notice you said most."
"Stay away from Marco Diaz, Jackie Lynn Thomas, and Star Butterfly." Reiko gestured to him. "In general, stay away from Echo Creek–unless you want to make yourself useful, of course."
That was good enough. "Nah, I'm good. Only reason I pulled up in this whole thing was to see who got that dog in 'em–and make some cash on the side doing it. Just a hired blade, right?"
Reiko nodded. "Is there anything else, or will you be leaving?"
"I'm movin', peace," Gabe said as he turned to head back out the door the way he came.
Watching him go, Reiko pulled out her phone and began sending a message to Misao.
"They will want to know that he's already on his feet again…"
As he stepped out of the house and to the garage, he noticed two men walking up to the SUV and speaking to a man in a black suit and sunglasses Gabe realized he hadn't noticed when he came in. Both men, African Americans like himself, were trying to look natural in the confrontation.
The slightly younger and shorter, but better built of the men–wearing a dark blue shirt over a white long sleeve, black jeans with tan boots, and having a painfully average haircut–addressed the guard. "Hey, we're from Premium Deluxe Motorsport? To pick up the Lincoln Navigator y'all are returning?"
The guard looked back and forth between the two men, as the one who spoke handed the folded-up papers. "Shit, we got the papers right here."
Looking at the documents, the guard nodded and pulled out the car's keyfob. "All yours, gentlemen. Drive safe."
Taking the keys, the young man unlocked the doors as the guard turned and walked up and away past Gabe to return to the house.
The taller and slightly thinner of the two, wearing a green shirt over a black sweater with the sleeves rolled up to proudly display numerous tattoos referencing affiliation to the Crips. "Man, they been putting down five grand a week on this bitch. Now they gettin' all they shit repoed."
The other young man climbed into the driver seat. "You remember them dumbasses when they came through. Their Dad didn't even look at the contract, he just signed that shit, and they were gone. They were not good with money."
His passenger seemed annoyed by that. "I ain't even see that commission, either."
"What commission? We're repo, not sales."
"Ya boy was the one who told 'em to grab the Navigator, they wanted the biggest ride in the shop."
The driver was exasperated as he started the engine. "Man, fuck you, a blind man coulda sold this shit to them fools."
"And he would've gotten a commission," his passenger emphasized before he looked out the window at the cleaning up and out of the home.
"Still, what you think happened?"
"In this town? Probably fucked around with the wrong motherfuckers and found out," the driver said as he put the SUV in drive and drove out of the open gate.
Gabe huffed in amusement as he headed for the same gate. He had places to be, and to the chagrin of that woman and his former adversaries… those places would be in Echo Creek for a while.
"Y'all don't know shit about the wrong motherfuckers…"
@@@@@
Thanks to Star using her magic to repair the school after Shego's rampage and the monster fight, school was back in session at Echo Creek Academy without interruption. Quietly lamenting this, Heather drove into the student parking lot, where found a puzzling sight. Brittney stepped out of her G-Wagen, accompanied by Dudley–who looked at least fifteen years younger and absolutely pleased to hold open the door for her and Sabrina as they climbed out.
Parking her car a few spots from the G-Wagen, Heather climbed out and walked over to the two girls and the butler. "Hey Brittney, hey Sabrina… and Dudley?"
Dudley shut the door and greeted Heather with a tipping of his hat and a grandfatherly sparkle in his eye. "Good morning, Master Heather."
Brittney cut straight to the point. "Oh, those idiots cut him loose last night and my father hired him just this morning."
She turned to Dudley. "Thank you, Dudley, I'll call you if I need anything."
"Of course, Master Brittney. You and Master Sabrina have a good day of school."
Sabrina timidly waved to him. "Thank you…"
Heather had a new concern. "Why did the Vanderhoffs fire him?"
The nastiest smile appeared on Brittney's face. "You don't know?"
"… What should I know?"
Brittney looked positively ecstatic that she was going to be the first to tell her. Though, as a matter of course, it was still hard to differentiate from her usual expression.
"They went bust last night. All their money, the junk they owned, and everything that they used in place of a personality–gone."
Heather's mouth dropped open, and she stood there frozen for a good second. "Holy shit, really?"
Brittney nodded. "Trip and Van got pulled out of school and sent up to some group home in Oregon." With joy in her heart, she added. "They're never coming back."
There was no way this could be true. "Bullshit. What happened? How'd they go broke?"
Brittney, with a knowing look. "You already know. They were involved with Señor Senior Junior and Shego kidnapping Misao–and her parents were not cool with that."
Letting out a long breath she didn't realize she was holding, Heather was shaken. "Wow… she really cooked them."
"Well done inside, extra crispy outside," Sabrina said.
With that in mind, Heather visibly relaxed. "Awesome! That's a few less things me, Drew, or Dipper have to worry about."
But then a new realization came to her. "Oh no, what about Zoom…? I gotta talk to Roland."
"That comic book shop? It's probably fine, I heard that everything they had was redistributed around town. So, the shop might even be Nano's, now."
"I hope so; I'm gonna go find Roland and bug him about it just in case. See you in Calc."
Before Heather could take off, Sabrina called after her. "H-hey, um… Heather?"
She stopped and turned back. "What's up?"
Sabrina took a deep breath and after Brittney's harsh glare of encouragement boosted her resolve. "Are… you and Drew… a thing?"
Taken by surprise, Heather shook her head. "Um… we're not? We hang out, but we're not dating."
Sabrina shrank a bit, the next question being harder to ask. "… Are you… interested?"
In that instant, Heather saw where this was going. "Um… if you want to ask Drew out? Go for it, like… absolutely go for it! You two would be so cute together."
Brittney lifted an eyebrow as she cast a suspicious look at the blonde, while Sabrina was almost incandescent. "Really?"
"I'm rooting for you," Heather said without an ounce of hesitation.
Taking Heather's hands in her own, Sabrina shook them gratefully and rapidly. "Ohhh! Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!"
Heather giggled. "It's nothing… Drew's a good friend, and I like that girls are starting to see his good sides."
"They certainly are," Brittney said, acutely aware of the girls besides Sabrina entering Andrew McCormick's orbit recently.
Pulling away, Heather waved farewell and headed off to the cafeteria. As soon as she left, Brittney turned to Sabrina.
"So, when are you going to make a move?"
Sabrina turned to her, beaming. "As soon as I recover from this nervous breakdown!"
With that, Sabrina gently laid on the ground, and curled up into a ball as all of her anxieties suppressed came flooded out–along with a bunch of new anxieties that came with this her aspirations. Sighing, Brittney stood over her so she could recover from her anxiety attack in the presence of a safe person.
@@@@@
Unfortunately for Sabrina and her nervous aspirations, Drew was cutting class today–because he had to see it for himself. Stepping through the portal created by Star's scissors, he entered the sitting room of Hillhurst Mansion with Jackie, Marco, Janna, and Dipper–all carrying bags of comic books. After hearing it he couldn't believe it.
And after seeing it he still couldn't believe it.
"Okay, okay… we've watched a bunch of them so I gotta know," Mums asked through the haze of that good zaza. "Friday the 13th… or Halloween?"
Fangula blew out a long stream of smoke, adding to the haze as he pondered that question with a long hum. "Hmmm… Friday the 13th. Jason is motivated by both a bond with his mother, and a hatred for promiscuous and negligent teenagers. I find myself relating deeply with that."
Mums nodded. "Hates teens and loves his Mom. Yeah, that's something I can get behind. Michael Myers is just all over the place."
Frankenbeans, completely gone, added. "Nightmare on Elm Street bad."
"Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious' monster," Fangula said before shooting Mums a dark look. "And don't you ever compare me to that creep again. I do not want to do that to children, I just want to drink blood!"
Drew was doing his damnedest not to laugh and breathe in the intensely powerful smoke hanging in the air. "Oh my God, this is real."
The monsters all stopped and turned to look at them.
"Oh, hey, it's the blue one!" Mums held up a pipe. "Wanna blaze? None of us touched it, we just packed the bowl."
Andrew McCormick took a moment to really appreciate the absurdity of being offered the chance to smoke up with a three-millennia old mummy, a vampire, and a Frankenstein knockoff.
"I don't really do cannabis, but thank you?"
Mums shrugged his shoulders. "All right. More for us."
"Save some for when I get out of class, dude," Jackie requested.
Fangula looked over. "Why not start now?"
Dipper, partly amused by the same absurdity Drew appreciated–and already feeling a contact high–let out a laugh. "We're going down to set up more defenses for the base. So, we don't get people like that idiot from before showing up."
"Or the feds," Janna added.
Mums almost looked touched. "You brats are already making this arrangement better by the day. Make sure the new defenses leave a body, so Fangy here can have whatever's left, all right?"
"Nothing too noxious, please," Fangula chimed in.
Dipper laughed again. "I'll see what we can do?"
Drew coughed a bit. "Can we go? The colors are getting sharper."
Janna patted him on the small of his back as she walked past him to the organ. "You'll learn to like it."
The false wall the Organ sat against opened, revealing Flabber on the other side, happy to see his human guests. "Hey, kiddos! Welcome back!"
He zipped over to Drew. "And look at you, Drew! You're–as the kids like to say–"
Quickly Flabber transformed into a leaking faucet. "Dripped out."
Drew laughed. "Heh… you should've seen me on Saturday. I had a nice suit and everything."
Flabber pouted. "You at least got pictures?"
Drew held up his phone for emphasis. "Sure did."
Poofing back into his normal shape, Flabber clapped his hands excitedly–then zoomed over to appear next to Dipper in the shape of a blue-skinned, big-nosed office lady with a pompadour in the front and a hair bun in the back. "What's on the agenda today, Dipper?"
Dipper did not look directly at Flabber so he would not have to burn the image from his mind later. "Setting up defenses, keeping an eye out for Magnavore activity, and scanning a lot of comic books."
Flabber adjusted a pair of sharp office lady glasses. "If you like, I can help! What do you need to scan the comics for?"
"The monsters we've fought so far have been pretty much exactly like in the comics, just with different personalities. I figure we can create a database of the monsters and be ready to take them down easier when they show up."
Drew indicated the bags they brought with them. "And I have basically my whole collection of comics that I could bring."
"You have so many of these," Janna said.
"It's almost twenty-five years' worth of comics… though most of them are rereleases."
Flabber popped back to normal, excited. "Flab Out! Knowing the enemy is practically half the battle, with the rest being red lasers, blue lasers, and Snake Eyes!" As Dipper, Drew, and Marco chuckled, he continued. "I would really like to sit down and read some, too, while we're at it. I just love the Beetleborgs. Both the comic and the real ones. Y'see, they're pretty great."
Drew accepted the confidence with grace. "Thanks, Flabber."
Marco and Jackie exchanged looks, before the latter asked Flabber. "Hey, we're going to head back to class, but when school's out can you help Jackie and I explore the house?"
Flabber looked back at him and Jackie. "What's up?"
"There's a door we found Saturday that I want to try to find again; Wolfy's."
"Wolfy?" Drew repeated.
Flabber nearly fell over and turned to look at Marco. "Hold your camel there, Marco Polo. Did you say Wolfy's room? You found it?!"
Marco nodded. "I'm pretty sure I almost got it to open, too."
Flabber gasped with such dramatic flair that there was even a musical sting. "You opened it?!"
"No, that Goblin dude interrupted," Jackie said, Marco nodding with her.
Drew folded his arms, curious. "Is this room a big deal?"
"Is it a big deal? I can't even find Wolfy's room, and this is my house!" Flabber explained.
Marco continued from that point. "That's the thing. The Universal Pictures Cinematic Monsterverse explained that only certain people can even find Wolfy's door, let alone open it."
Janna turned to Flabber. "Is that true?"
Flabber quickly nodded. "Sure is, and I can't open it, either."
Dipper and Drew both did double takes, asking in unison. "Why did it open for you?"
Janna hummed. "Hey Flabber, got some insight?"
Flabber cringed. "I wish I did; most of what I remember about the old days was way after the guys were already living here, and the Doc didn't want to tell me why–just that they had to, and I had to watch over them."
He hung his head in contrition. "Sorry."
"Don't worry about it," Marco assured him.
It was too much for Dipper to resist. "Yeah. This just means we get to solve another mystery. We should have all the comics scanned by last bell, so I'll join in."
Drew couldn't help his interest either. "Yeah, I'm in, too."
As they reached the Beetle Battle Base proper, Marco asked. "Hey, what's Wolfy like?"
Flabber seemed almost honored to speak of the hitherto absent monster. "Oh gee, guys, Wolfy is entirely different from any of the monsters you've met here!"
"What, is he actually not a man-eating monster?" Jackie asked.
"That and more!" Flabber replied. "In fact, I'd say he's the most human monster you'll ever meet."
The kids all looked at one another, curious. None more curious than Marco.
@@@@@
Mr. Geike made his way down the hall, his presence causing a wide berth to spread. The Calculus Teacher's dark eyes scanned the students, and he took no small satisfaction at some of the disgruntled or dreadful looks some gave him–or how the members of the football team didn't even bother to make eye contact. Despite the chaos yesterday, school was back in session, and he was here to make an impression.
One burned into the brains of each of these carefree, entitled brats.
"Mr. Geike!" Principal Skeeves called to him from behind, much to the displeasure that Geike suppressed. "I'm glad I caught you before you went in. Can I have a quick word with you?"
Rolling his eyes, Mr. Geike turned to the rotund man. "What is it, Mr. Skeeves?"
"Yes, I wanted to ask you about your class with Miss Darlian. How has that been?"
Mr. Geike noticed a hint of anxiety in the Principal's tone when he mentioned her. "Class was… not particularly difficult. We had a small disagreement at the start, but she shaped up very quickly. There may just be hope for her."
Principal Skeeves nodded. "Excellent, just… in the future… try to be less…"
Mr. Geike narrowed his eyes. "Less what?"
"Less…" Principal Skeeves sought the lightest, most diplomatic term he could. "… Difficult. I understand you have a very particular teaching method, but could you avoid driving her from your class?"
Of course. "Principal Skeeves. I have Miss Wong in my class, and she quickly got with the program without throwing a fit. If how strict I am with Miss Darlian is going to be a problem for you, just concede like you have with Miss Wong–problem solved."
He raised a finger, his expression darkening. "I am not afraid of any of those kids, and I have no reason to be. If Miss Darlian takes exception, then her throwing a tantrum says more about her."
Principal Skeeves cleared his throat. "It's not a matter of her complaining about you. At this point, no one has said anything about–"
"If no one has said anything, then there's no issue. Look, Skeevy, I don't tell you how to do your job–for all the terrible things it has brought to this school. So, unless you want me to start loudly complaining about how you take money from parents and run this school ignoring every rule and reg in the state of California? You're not getting on me about my coping mechanisms."
That did the trick, and whatever concerns Principal Skeeves had about Mr. Geike's professionalism melted away in the heat of self-preservation and paranoia. Sweating from that very furnace, Skeeves physically backed away from Mr. Geike.
"You make a very good point. I will… ahem… pretend this conversation never happened… andkeepmymouthshutifthisexplodesinyourface."
Mr. Geike openly rolled his eyes this time. "Good."
Turning away from the Principal, he walked on to his classroom. It amused him a little that Principal Skeeves claimed she had not complained, and yet there he was talking exactly like she had, and was trying to be diplomatic.
Misao Darlian was a billionaire but in the end, she was just another spoiled brat throwing her money around to get what she wanted. No different than the Vanderhoff boys and Brittney Wong.
Students like them, students who thought they were entitled to the world because of money, or looks, or who their parents were, or anything but their effort and hard work? And got everyone to worship them like they were Gods of popularity? He hated those kids the most.
With a spiteful spring in his step, he made a direct line to his class, and pushed open the door to step inside. He had an almost full classroom–and his students looked as unhappy as they could ever be, with a day off from school robbed of them by the menace in Skullnick's class.
The less he thought about her the better.
"Don't look at me like that," he said, "Blame your precious magical princess for fixing the school up instead of leaving it to Miss Wong's people."
He looked at Brittney with that and noticed that Misao's seat was empty. "Speaking of Princesses, I see our newest one is absent. Where is she?"
Heather raised her hand. "Um… I saw her in the library last."
The teacher hummed in surprise. Only one day and she'd given up?
"Hm. That's anticlimactic, I expected her to last the whole week, at least." He shrugged his shoulders as the bell rang. "Oh well, open your books, we're getting started."
As he turned to start writing, however, the door opened and Misao walked in. In addition to her other books, she carried under her arm a book picked up from the library.
"Oh! I am so sorry, Herr Geike! I thought I had more time!" She said quickly as she hurried to her desk.
He turned back and glowered at her. "I have a zero-tolerance policy towards tardiness."
Misao set her books down. "Oh, I know, and again I am very sorry. It is just that I had to get a book, because I wanted to show you something."
Mr. Geike folded his arms, unamused. "Is it a real excuse for why you're not in before the bell?"
"It is very good–ja? You see, I thought a lot about what you said yesterday."
And now the teacher lifted an eyebrow. What was this girl getting at?
"What did I say that you thought about?"
Misao flashed him a big smile. "About what matters in your classroom! How logical and critical thinking and hard work are what this golden age of technology needs and should be what matters there and in this class!"
Heather looked past Misao at Brittney, who met her confused look with a shrug as she watched Misao's impromptu presentation.
"And I thought about how you mentioned hypersonic jets; those are very miraculous, yes."
Mr. Geike gestured to her. "Your point?"
"I mean, the ability to create an air-breathing aircraft that can travel at 8 times the speed of sound and mitigate fuselage heat damage, atmospheric damage, and sonic boom effects? That requires very much hard work, study of physics, engineering, and–most importantly–mathematical formulas!"
Picking up the book, Misao walked over to the teacher's desk and set it down. When he looked at it, his eyebrows rose. It was a scientific journal, for the year 2007.
He scrutinized the book, then looked up at Misao.
"That's obvious. It's probably the only good thing Hyuuga Heavy Industries has done in the last decade–making high speed, efficient, and safe hypersonic flight a reality by publishing its findings to the public and distributing it for anyone who wanted to develop it."
He gestured to her again. "I still don't see your point."
Misao, still smiling, opened the book. "Please, Herr Geike, I wanted you to take a look at the second author on that published paper."
The students all began murmuring quietly as Mr. Geike looked down at the book. A look of surprised disbelief appeared on his face as he picked up the book and turned a page–then he went completely wide-eyed as he turned several pages and stared at different parts of each successive page.
His head snapped up to stare at Misao. "… Bullshit."
Gasps rose from the class, Heather covering her mouth as Brittney just leaned onto her desk and smirked in malicious amusement.
Misao tilted her head, smiling innocently. "What do you mean?"
"This is…" He shook his head. "You photoshopped this book."
"Oh no, this is straight from the library."
Heather stood up. "Misao? What is it?"
Misao gestured to the man's shirt pocket. "You can check the review in Nature if you don't believe it."
Mr. Geike looked back down at the book. Then pulled out his phone and spoke into it.
"Siri, who are the published Authors on the paper 'Achieving Economic Hypersonic Flight' published in Nature in October 2007?"
There was a brief pause before the phone answered in a woman's computerized voice.
"Achieving Economic Hypersonic Flight, published in 2007, was a paper authored and penned by an international team funded by Hyuuga Heavy Industries. The paper is notable for its youngest author, Misao Darlian, who was nine years old at the time of publication."
The class's attention focused on its newest student, as a swirl of murmuring spread.
Brittney rolled her eyes briefly, before keeping them on Misao to see what she did next.
Misao kept smiling as she took the book and held it up for the class to see, showing a picture of herself as a younger girl standing for a group photograph with an entire team of researchers.
"The ability to think logically, think critically, and do the work. We live in a golden age of technology and discovery," she said, repeating Mr. Geike's speech. "Everything from hologram projectors in phones, to hypersonic business jets, to liquid batteries have all come from the scientific brilliance of the world's greatest thinkers. Their work, and humanity's benefit of it, comes from classes like these."
She set the book down, her smile disappearing and replaced with a much colder sneer as her friendly gaze darkened.
"George Bernard Shaw said in his 1905 play Man and Superman: 'those who can, do; those who cannot, teach.'"
She pointed at his face, wrath burning in her eyes. "Herr Geek, you're not even qualified to do that."
Mr. Geike stared at Misao, his face pale, but slowly turning red as the girl glared back in defiance, her gaze commanding he take those same words he used to demean her and eat them in front of the entire classroom.
The atmosphere he created, the presence he projected, the power he held… it had all shattered in an instant. Leaving him subject to the stunned and ridiculing looks of the students he despised.
Placing his trembling hands on the book, he closed it, and then pushed it back to her. "Take this book back to the library and stay there–if you're so smart."
Misao's smile returned. "Would you care to join me? I noticed a few inaccuracies in your problems during the last class, and we can go back over them to make sure you understand the material, if you like."
No one had ever seen the teacher get so mad that his face started to turn purple. Fists clenched, teeth bared, Mr. Geike took an angry deep breath and walked to the door. "When I get back here, I do not want to see you in this classroom, Miss Darlian."
As soon as he left, slamming the door behind him, the classroom began talking excitedly among themselves.
"Whoa, The Geek ragequit."
"Serves him right, the douche."
"Justice for Jackie!"
"The Vanderhoffs are gone, and now the Geek got turned into the Wuss."
As Misao sat down Heather turned to Misao. "Wait, did you really publish that paper?"
"Ja!" Misao confirmed. "One of my favorite things is aerospace. I had such a passion for it that I studied maths by the bookload when I was very little, and that eventually turned into me contributing to that paper."
Brittney rested her elbow on the desk and her cheek on her upheld palm as she looked at her. "You just got done destroying the Vanderhoffs, and you're already picking a fight with a teacher?"
Misao answered bluntly. "I really like calculus and would have liked going to this class with Jackie."
Letting out a huff, Brittney shrugged her shoulders. She could respect that. "You know what? I'm going to take a page out of your book and see if I can get him removed from the school. We don't have to tolerate the Vanderhoffs–we don't need to tolerate teachers who only became teachers to bully kids."
Misao did a double take. "That is his damage?!"
Brittney nodded as Heather confirmed it. "He said it himself. That the only reason he became a teacher was so he could 'bully kids like the ones who bullied him.'"
Making a foul face, the exchange student shook her head. "No, absolutely not, that is completely deranged."
"You don't need to have a lot of money to go on a power trip," Brittney replied as she leaned back in her seat, "You just have to have any power at all."
Heather let out a small laugh. "There are too many people on power trips, who think they can get away with everything. It'd be nice if they could all just disappear like the Vanderhoffs, forever."
As Misao and Brittney agreed with Heather, Misao noticed the edges of her vision blur. In the next moment, the blurriness swept across the whole of her vision and for the briefest instant everything became brighter and sharper… before fading back to normal.
"… Huh?" Misao looked around. "What?"
Both Brittney and Heather stared at her in confusion.
"What?" The former asked.
Misao looked around for another moment, as just as quickly as she noticed it, it slipped from her memory. "Did you… what were we talking about, just now?"
Heather tilted her head. "We were talking about how it'd be nice if jerks like the Vanderhoffs disappeared."
Brittney nodded. "Yeah."
That… didn't seem right, there was something more, but she couldn't remember it suddenly. Whatever she had just seen, it wasn't the strangest thing she'd experienced since she got here.
Whatever it was, she thought, It is probably not even worth remembering.
The door opened and a Latina teacher in her early 30s, wearing khaki shorts and a red polo shirt walked in. Right away the class devoted their full attention to her as she went to the board.
"Hello, class, sorry for being late," she greeted. "I guess my mind just blanked for a minute there."
"Hello, Ms. Espinoza," the students all answered.
The woman smiled and turned to the chalkboard. "Okay, open up your books to Section 3, we're going to pick up where we left off yesterday." She looked back. "Didn't think you'd be back so soon, huh?"
Misao smiled. "We can thank Star for that, ja?"
Brittney shrugged her shoulders. "It's nice that she's actually cleaning up the messes now. Saves my parents some money."
Ms. Espinoza's calculus class laughed, as the students picked up where they left off yesterday like nothing had happened.
= - = 7-7 = - =
|Questions and Answers|
|Questions and Answers|
By sunrise, a construction crew had descended upon the former Vanderhoff residence—much to the curiosity of the young man with a walking stick who stepped up to the gate being replaced.
Staring quietly at the construction workers installing the new solid steel gate replacing the old fancy wrought iron gate that had been cut to pieces, the man responsible for the damage walked past the contractors and the parked Vanderhoff SUV.
Gabe glanced into the hole in the wall leading into the backyard on his trek, then hustled up to the smashed down door also in the process of being replaced. The carpenters fashioning a new doorway paid him no mind as he walked into the house and found it devoid of almost all furniture and equipment as renovators worked on transforming the home.
"The hell happened here…?" Gabe asked as he entered the living room and found Reiko speaking with the foreman in charge of the renovation.
"… We're not gutting the entire house, just make sure that everything that hasn't been marked for repossession is outside in the driveway by noon—that's when the first movers are coming."
"What about the truck?" The foreman said of the SUV.
Reiko noticed Gabe but kept talking to the foreman. "I've already contacted the dealership and a repo crew is on their way to pick it up, they should be here any moment now."
The foreman noticed Gabe. "Hey, are you one of the temps we contracted?"
Gabe shook his head. "Nah, I'm a… I had prior business with the folks that live here."
Reiko's eyes lit with recognition, and she dismissed the foreman. "You can get back to it. I'll speak with the gentleman."
She walked over to him as the foreman headed out into the backyard through the still broken windows. "You said you had business with the former owners?"
Gabe's eyebrows rose. "Oh word, they skipped town?"
Eyeing him up and down, Reiko nodded. "That's right. Don't expect them to be in contact with you in the future; they moved far, far away."
His free hand came up to his chin and he rubbed it.
"Hmm… you wouldn't know what happened to 'em, would you?"
Reiko nodded. "Yes, as a matter of fact. When you had visited Mr. Pines and his friends Saturday, that whole group decided to put a permanent end to the conflict that you took part in."
Gabe was given pause.
"African American male, late teens, possibly even early twenties. Has a walking stick that in fact is a modified shirasaya, right?"
And Gabe's eyebrows rose even higher. Humming again, he glanced at his walking stick then back at the woman.
She raised her finger. "Going forward: "Most of them have chosen to let your part slide. You were a hired blade, so it's as personal as you want it to be. I personally wouldn't test their generosity twice."
"I notice you said most."
"Stay away from Marco Diaz, Jackie Lynn Thomas, and Star Butterfly." Reiko gestured to him. "In general, stay away from Echo Creek—unless you want to make yourself useful, of course."
That was good enough. "Nah, I'm good. Only reason I pulled up in this whole thing was to see who got that dog in 'em—and make some cash on the side doing it. Just a hired blade, right?"
Reiko nodded. "Is there anything else, or will you be leaving?"
"I'm movin', peace," Gabe said as he turned to head back out the door the way he came.
Watching him go, Reiko pulled out her phone and began sending a message to Misao.
"They will want to know that he's already on his feet again…"
As he stepped out of the house and to the garage, he noticed two men walking up to the SUV and speaking to a man in a black suit and sunglasses Gabe realized he hadn't noticed when he came in. Both men, African Americans like himself, were trying to look natural in the confrontation.
The slightly younger and shorter, but better built of the men—wearing a dark blue shirt over a white long sleeve, black jeans with tan boots, and having a painfully average haircut—addressed the guard.
"Hey, we're from Premium Deluxe Motorsport? To pick up the Lincoln Navigator y'all are returning?"
The guard looked back and forth between the two men, as the one who spoke handed the folded-up papers. "Shit, we got the papers right here."
Looking at the documents, the guard nodded and pulled out the car's keyfob. "All yours, gentlemen. Drive safe."
Taking the keys, the younger man unlocked the doors as the guard turned and walked up and away past Gabe to return to the house.
The taller and slightly thinner of the two, wearing a green shirt over a black sweater with the sleeves rolled up to proudly display numerous tattoos referencing affiliation to the Crips. "How the flexin' have fallen. Whole family out here actin' like they some movie stars or some shit, now look at 'em. Repo man takin' they shit in broad daylight.."
The younger man climbed into the driver seat. "You remember them dumbasses when they came through. Their Dad didn't even look at the contract and threw five grand a week at this ride like it was pocket change. That's not flexin', that's stupidity."
His passenger seemed annoyed by that. "I ain't even see that commission, either…"
"What commission? We're repo, not sales."
"Ya boy LD told 'em to hit up the Navigator!"
The driver was exasperated as he started the engine. "Man, fuck you, a blind man coulda sold this shit to them fools."
"And he would've gotten a commission," his passenger griped before he looked out the window at the cleaning up and out of the home.
The driver rolled his eyes, there was no arguing with this fool.
"Still, what you think happened to 'em, Frank?" His friend asked.
"In this town? Probably fucked around with the wrong motherfuckers and found out," the driver said as he put the SUV in drive and drove out of the open gate.
Gabe huffed in amusement as he headed for the same gate. He had places to be, and to the chagrin of that woman and his former adversaries… those places would be around Echo Creek for a little bit.
"Y'all don't know shit about the wrong motherfuckers…"
@@@@@
Thanks to Star using her magic to repair the school after Shego's rampage and the monster fight, school was back in session at Echo Creek Academy without interruption. Quietly lamenting this, Heather drove into the student parking lot, where found a puzzling sight.
Brittney stepped out of her G-Wagen, accompanied by Dudley—who looked at least fifteen years younger and absolutely pleased to hold open the door for her and Sabrina as they climbed out.
Parking her car a few spots from the G-Wagen, Heather climbed out and walked over to the two girls and the butler. "Hey Brittney, hey Sabrina… and Dudley?"
Dudley shut the door and greeted Heather with a tipping of his hat and a grandfatherly sparkle in his eye. "Good morning, Master Heather."
Brittney cut straight to the point. "Oh, those idiots cut him loose last night and my father hired him just this morning."
She turned to Dudley. "Thank you, Dudley, I'll call you if I need anything."
"Of course, Master Brittney. You and Master Sabrina have a good day of school."
Sabrina timidly waved to him. "Thank you…"
Heather had a new concern. "Why did the Vanderhoffs fire him?"
The nastiest smile appeared on Brittney's face. "You don't know?"
"… What should I know?"
Brittney looked positively ecstatic that she was going to be the first to tell her. Though, as a matter of course, it was still hard to differentiate from her usual expression.
"They went bust last night. All their money, the junk they owned, and everything that they used in place of a personality—gone."
Heather's mouth dropped open, and she stood there frozen for a good second. "Holy shit, really?"
Brittney nodded. "Trip and Van got pulled out of school and sent up to some group home in Oregon." With joy in her heart, she added. "They're never coming back."
There was no way this could be true. "Bullshit. What happened? How'd they go broke?"
Brittney, with a knowing look. "You already know. They were involved with Señor Senior Junior and Shego kidnapping Misao—and her parents were not cool with that."
Letting out a long breath she didn't realize she was holding, Heather was shaken. "Wow… she really cooked them."
"Well done inside, extra crispy outside," Sabrina said.
With that in mind, Heather visibly relaxed. "Awesome! That's a few less things me, Drew, or Dipper have to worry about."
But then a new realization came to her. "Oh no, what about Zoom…? I gotta talk to Roland."
"That comic book shop? It's probably fine, I heard that everything they had was redistributed around town. So, the shop might even be Nano's, now."
"I hope so; I'm gonna go find Roland and bug him about it just in case. See you in Calc."
Before Heather could take off, Sabrina called after her. "H-hey, um… Heather?"
She stopped and turned back. "What's up?"
Sabrina took a deep breath and after Brittney's harsh glare of encouragement boosted her resolve. "Are… you and Drew… a thing?"
Taken by surprise, Heather shook her head. "Um… we're not? We hang out, but we're not dating."
Sabrina shrank a bit, the next question being harder to ask. "… Are you… interested?"
In that instant, Heather saw where this was going. "Um… if you want to ask Drew out? Go for it, like… absolutely go for it! You two would be so cute together."
Brittney lifted an eyebrow as she cast a suspicious look at the blonde, while Sabrina was almost incandescent. "Really?"
"I'm rooting for you," Heather said without an ounce of hesitation.
Taking Heather's hands in her own, Sabrina shook them gratefully and rapidly. "Ohhh! Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!"
Heather giggled. "It's nothing… Drew's a good friend, and I like that girls are starting to see his good sides."
"They certainly are," Brittney said, acutely aware of the girls besides Sabrina entering Andrew McCormick's orbit recently.
Pulling away, Heather waved farewell and headed off to the cafeteria. As soon as she left, Brittney turned to Sabrina.
"So, when are you going to make a move?"
Sabrina turned to her, beaming. "As soon as I recover from this nervous breakdown!"
With that, Sabrina gently lay down and curled into a ball, all her suppressed anxieties flooding out—along with brand-new ones sparked by her sudden aspirations.
Sighing, Brittney sat beside her and rested a hand on her shoulder, wordlessly grounding her until the storm of panic passed
@@@@@
Unfortunately for Sabrina and her nervous aspirations, Drew was cutting class today—because he had to see it for himself.
Stepping through the portal created by Star's scissors, he entered the sitting room of Hillhurst Mansion with Jackie, Marco, Janna, and Dipper—all carrying bags of comic books. After hearing it he couldn't believe it.
And after seeing it he still couldn't believe it.
"Okay, okay… we've watched a bunch of them so I gotta know," Mums asked through the haze of that good zaza. "Friday the 13th… or Halloween?"
Fangula blew out a long stream of smoke, adding to the haze as he pondered that question with a long hum. "Hmmm… Friday the 13th. Jason is motivated by both a bond with his mother, and a hatred for promiscuous and negligent teenagers. I find myself relating deeply with that."
Mums nodded. "Hates teens and loves his Mom. Yeah, that's something I can get behind. Michael Myers is just all over the place."
Frankenbeans, completely gone, added. "Nightmare on Elm Street… bad."
Fangula groaned. "Thank you, Captain Obvious' monster."
Turning, he shot Mums a dark look. "And don't you ever compare me to that creep again. I do not want to do that to children, I just want to drink blood!"
Drew was doing his damnedest not to laugh and breathe in the intensely powerful smoke hanging in the air. "Oh my God. I'm actually in a hotbox with Dracula, a mummy, and Frankenstein's cousin."
The monsters all stopped and turned to look at them.
"Oh, hey, it's the blue one!" Mums held up a pipe. "Wanna blaze? None of us touched it, we just packed the bowl."
Andrew McCormick took a moment to really appreciate the absurdity of being offered the chance to smoke up with a three-millennia old mummy, a vampire, and a Frankenstein knockoff.
"I don't really do cannabis, but thank you?"
Mums shrugged his shoulders. "All right. More for us."
"Save some for when I get out of class, dude," Jackie requested.
Fangula looked over. "Why not start now?"
Dipper, partly amused by the same absurdity Drew appreciated—and already feeling a contact high—let out a laugh. "We're going down to set up more defenses for the base. So, we don't get people like that idiot from before showing up."
"Or the feds," Janna added.
Mums almost looked touched. "You brats are already making this arrangement better by the day. Make sure the new defenses leave a body, so Fangy here can have whatever's left, all right?"
"Nothing too noxious, please," Fangula chimed in.
Dipper laughed again. "I'll see what we can do?"
Drew coughed a bit. "Can we go? The colors are getting sharper."
Janna patted him on the small of his back as she walked past him to the organ. "You'll learn to like it."
The false wall the Organ sat against opened, revealing Flabber on the other side, happy to see his human guests. "Hey, kiddos! Welcome back!"
He zipped over to Drew. "And look at you, Drew! You're—as the kids like to say–"
Quickly Flabber transformed into a leaking faucet. "Dripped out."
Drew laughed. "Heh… you should've seen me on Saturday. I had a nice suit and everything."
Flabber pouted. "You at least got pictures?"
Drew held up his phone for emphasis. "Sure did."
Poofing back into his normal shape, Flabber clapped his hands excitedly—then zoomed over to appear next to Dipper in the shape of a blue-skinned, big-nosed office lady with a pompadour in the front and a hair bun in the back.
"What's on the agenda today, Dipper?" He asked, eyelashes fluttering.
Dipper did not look directly at Flabber so he would not have to burn the image from his mind later. "Setting up defenses, keeping an eye out for Magnavore activity, and scanning a lot of comic books."
Flabber adjusted a pair of sharp office lady glasses. "If you like, I can help! What do you need to scan the comics for?"
"The monsters we've fought so far have been pretty much exactly like in the comics, just with different personalities. I figure we can create a database of the monsters and be ready to take them down easier when they show up."
Drew indicated the bags they brought with them. "And I have basically my whole collection of comics that I could bring."
"You have so many of these," Janna said.
"It's almost twenty-five years' worth of comics… though most of them are rereleases."
Flabber popped back to normal, excited. "Flab Out! Knowing the enemy is practically half the battle, with the rest being red lasers, blue lasers, and Snake Eyes!"
As Dipper, Drew, and Marco chuckled, he continued. "I would really like to sit down and read some, too, while we're at it. I just love the Beetleborgs. Both the comic and the real ones. Y'see, they're pretty great."
Drew accepted the compliment with grace. "Thanks, Flabber."
Marco and Jackie exchanged looks, before the latter asked Flabber. "Hey, we're going to head back to class, but when school's out can you help Jackie and I explore the house?"
Flabber looked back at him and Jackie. "What's up?"
"There's a door we found Saturday that I want to try to find again; Wolfy's."
"Wolfy?" Drew repeated.
Flabber nearly fell over and turned to look at Marco. "Hold your camel there, Marco Polo. Did you say Wolfy's room? You found it?!"
Marco nodded. "I'm pretty sure I almost got it to open, too."
Flabber gasped with such dramatic flair that there was even a musical sting. "You opened it?!"
"No, that Goblin dude interrupted," Jackie said, Marco nodding with her.
Drew folded his arms, curious. "Is this room a big deal?"
"Is it a big deal? I can't even find Wolfy's room, and this is my house!" Flabber explained.
Marco continued from that point. "That's the thing. The Universal Monsterverse explained that only certain people can even find Wolfy's door, let alone open it."
Janna turned to Flabber. "Is that true?"
Flabber quickly nodded. "Sure is, and I can't open it, either."
Dipper and Drew both did double takes, asking Marco in unison. "Why did it open for you?"
"That's what I want to know!" He snapped back.
Janna hummed. "Hey Flabber, got some insight?"
Flabber cringed. "I wish I did; most of what I remember about the old days was way after the guys were already living here, and the Doc didn't want to tell me why—just that they had to, and I had to watch over them."
He hung his head in contrition. "Sorry, guys. Even magical Phasms have limits.."
"Don't worry about it," Marco assured him.
It was too much for Dipper to resist. "Yeah. This just means we get to solve another mystery. We should have all the comics we have scanned by last bell, so I'll join in."
Drew couldn't help his interest either. "Yeah, I'm in, too."
As they reached the Beetle Battle Base proper, Marco asked. "Hey, what's Wolfy like?"
"What if he's the goodest boy?" Janna quipped.
Flabber seemed almost honored to speak of the hitherto absent monster. "Oh gee, guys, Wolfy is entirely different from any of the monsters you've met here!"
"What, is he actually not a man-eating monster?" Jackie asked.
"That and more!" Flabber replied. "In fact, I'd say he's the most human monster you'll ever meet."
The kids all looked at one another, curious. None more curious than Marco.
@@@@@
Mr. Geike made his way down the hall, his presence causing a wide berth to spread. The Calculus Teacher's dark eyes scanned the students, and he took no small satisfaction at some of the disgruntled or dreadful looks some gave him—or how the members of the football team didn't even bother to make eye contact.
Despite the chaos yesterday, school was back in session, and he was here to make an impression.
One burned into the brains of each of these carefree, entitled brats.
"Mr. Geike!" Principal Skeeves called to him from behind, much to the displeasure that Geike suppressed. "I'm glad I caught you before you went in. Can I have a quick word with you?"
Rolling his eyes, Mr. Geike turned to the rotund man. "What is it, Mr. Skeeves?"
"Yes, I wanted to ask you about your class with Miss Darlian. How has that been?"
Mr. Geike noticed a hint of anxiety in the Principal's tone when he mentioned her. "Class was… not particularly difficult. We had a small disagreement at the start, but she shaped up very quickly. There may just be hope for her."
Principal Skeeves nodded. "Excellent, just… in the future… try to be less…"
Mr. Geike narrowed his eyes. "Less what?"
"Less…" Principal Skeeves sought the lightest, most diplomatic term he could. "… Difficult. I understand you have a very particular teaching method, but could you avoid driving her from your class?"
Of course. "Principal Skeeves. I have Miss Wong in my class, and she quickly got with the program without throwing a fit. If how strict I am with Miss Darlian is going to be a problem for you, just concede like you have with Miss Wong—problem solved."
He raised a finger, his expression darkening. "I am not afraid of any of those kids, and I have no reason to be. If Miss Darlian takes exception, then her throwing a tantrum says more about her."
Principal Skeeves cleared his throat. "It's not a matter of her complaining about you. At this point, no one has said anything about–"
"If no one has said anything, then there's no issue. Look, Skeevy, I don't tell you how to do your job—for all the terrible things it has brought to this school. So, unless you want me to start loudly complaining about how you take money from parents and run this school ignoring every rule and reg in the state of California? You're not getting on me about my coping mechanisms."
That did the trick, and whatever concerns Principal Skeeves had about Mr. Geike's professionalism melted away in the heat of self-preservation and paranoia. Sweating from that very furnace, Skeeves physically backed away from Mr. Geike.
"You make a very good point. I will… ahem… pretend this conversation never happened… andkeepmymouthshutifthisexplodesinyourface."
Mr. Geike openly rolled his eyes this time. "Good."
Turning away from the Principal, he walked on to his classroom. It amused him a little that Principal Skeeves claimed she had not complained, and yet there he was talking exactly like she had, and was trying to be diplomatic.
Misao Darlian was a billionaire, but in the end, she was just another spoiled brat throwing her money around to get what she wanted. No different than the Vanderhoff boys and Brittney Wong.
Students like them, students who thought they were entitled to the world because of money, or looks, or who their parents were, or anything but their effort and hard work? And got everyone to worship them like they were Gods of popularity? He hated those kids the most.
With a spiteful spring in his step, he made a direct line to his class, and pushed open the door to step inside. He had an almost full classroom—and his students looked as unhappy as they could ever be with a day off from school robbed of them by the menace in Skullnick's class.
The less he thought about her the better.
"Don't look at me like that," he said, "Blame your precious magical princess for fixing the school up instead of leaving it to Miss Wong's people."
He looked at Brittney with that and noticed that Misao's seat was empty. "Speaking of Princesses, I see our newest one is absent. Where is she?"
Heather raised her hand. "Um… I saw her in the library last."
The teacher hummed in surprise. Only one day and she'd given up?
"Hm. That's anticlimactic, I expected her to last the whole week, at least." He shrugged his shoulders as the bell rang. "Oh well, open your books, we're getting started."
As he turned to start writing, however, the door slammed open as Misao hurried in, clutching her books and a thick journal under her arm.
"Oh! I am so sorry, Herr Geike!" she blurted, her accent cutting through the silence. "I thought I had more time!"
Geike turned, his glare sharp enough to slice glass. "I have a zero-tolerance policy for tardiness."
Whispers rippled through the classroom. Brittney smirked, Heather winced. Misao just set her books down—smiling.
"I know. And again, I am very sorry. But I had to get a book, because… I wanted to show you something."
Mr. Geike folded his arms, unamused. "Is it a real excuse for why you're not in before the bell?"
"Nein, nein, it is very good—ja? You see, I thought a lot about what you said yesterday."
And now the teacher lifted an eyebrow. What was this girl getting at?
"What did I say that you thought about?"
Misao flashed him a big smile. "About what matters in your classroom! How logical and critical thinking and hard work are what this golden age of technology needs and should be what matters there and in this class!"
Heather looked past Misao at Brittney, who met her confused look with a shrug as she watched Misao's impromptu presentation.
"And I thought about how you mentioned hypersonic jets; those are very miraculous, yes."
Mr. Geike gestured to her. "Your point?"
"I mean, the ability to create an air-breathing aircraft that can travel at 8 times the speed of sound and mitigate fuselage heat damage, atmospheric damage, and sonic boom effects? That requires very much hard work, study of physics, engineering, and—most importantly—mathematical formulas!"
Picking up the book, Misao walked over to the teacher's desk and set it down. When he looked at it, his eyebrows rose. It was a scientific journal, for the year 2007.
He scrutinized the book, then looked up at Misao.
"That's obvious. It's probably the only good thing Hyuuga Heavy Industries has done in the last decade—publishing its findings to the public and distributing it for anyone who wanted to develop it."
He gestured to her again. "But I still don't see your point."
Misao, still smiling, opened the book. "Please, Herr Geike, I wanted you to take a look at the second author on that published paper."
The teacher flipped the page, casually at first—then froze. His eyes flicked from the name on the paper… back to Misao… back to the page. Faster now, he turned pages, searching, confirming, sweating.
Geike looked up at her, his voice cracking as he spoke.
"…Bullshit."
Gasps spread across the room. Heather's hands shot to her mouth. A malicious grin tugged at Brittney's lips.
Misao tilted her head, looking sweet as sugar. "What do you mean?"
"This is…" He shook his head. "You photoshopped this book."
"Oh no, this is straight from the library."
Misao gestured to the phone in the man's shirt pocket. "You can ask Siri if you don't believe it."
Mr. Geike looked back down at the book. Then pulled out his phone and spoke into it.
"Siri, who are the published Authors on the paper 'Achieving Economic Hypersonic Flight' published in Nature in October 2007?"
There was a brief pause before the phone answered in a woman's computerized voice.
"Achieving Economic Hypersonic Flight, published in 2007, was a paper authored and penned by an international team funded by Hyuuga Heavy Industries. The paper is notable for its youngest author, Misao Darlian, who was nine years old at the time of publication."
The class's attention focused on its newest student, as a swirl of murmuring spread.
"Wait, what?!"
"She was nine?!"
"No way! Is she like a super genius?!"
Brittney rolled her eyes, her smirk deepening.
Misao kept smiling as she took the book and held it up for the class to see, showing a picture of herself as a younger girl standing for a group photograph with an entire team of researchers.
"The ability to think logically, think critically, and do the work. We live in a golden age of technology and discovery," she said, repeating Mr. Geike's speech word for word.
"Everything from hologram projectors in phones, to hypersonic business jets, to liquid batteries have all come from the scientific brilliance of the world's greatest thinkers. Their work, and humanity's benefit of it, comes from classes like these."
She set the book down, her smile disappearing and replaced with a much colder sneer as her friendly gaze darkened.
"George Bernard Shaw said in his 1905 play Man and Superman: 'those who can, do; those who cannot, teach.'"
She pointed at his face, wrath burning in her eyes. "Herr Geek, you're not even qualified to do that."
Mr. Geike stared at Misao, his face pale, but slowly turning red as the girl glared back in defiance, her gaze commanding he take those same words he used to demean her and eat them in front of the entire classroom.
The atmosphere he created, the presence he projected, the power he held… it had all shattered in an instant. Leaving him subject to the stunned and ridiculing looks of the students he despised.
Placing his trembling hands on the book, he closed it, and then pushed it back to her. "Take this book back to the library and stay there—if you're so smart."
Misao's smile returned. "Would you care to join me? Maybe I can tutor you, Herr Geek. I noticed some mistakes in your problems yesterday."
No one had ever seen the teacher get so mad that his face started to turn purple. Fists clenched, teeth bared, Mr. Geike took an angry deep breath and walked to the door.
"When I get back—don't be here."
As soon as he left, slamming the door behind him, the classroom began talking excitedly among themselves.
"Whoa, The Geek ragequit."
"Serves him right, the douche."
"She cooked him alive!"
"Justice for Jackie!"
"The Vanderhoffs are gone, and now the Geek got GOT."
As Misao sat down Heather turned to Misao. "Wait, did you really publish that paper?"
"Ja!" Misao confirmed, as though nothing had just happened. "One of my favorite things is aerospace. I had such a passion for it that I studied maths by the bookload when I was very little, and that eventually turned into me contributing to that paper."
Brittney rested her elbow on the desk and her cheek on her upheld palm as she looked at her. "You just got done destroying the Vanderhoffs, and you're already picking a fight with a teacher?"
Misao answered bluntly. "I really like calculus and would have liked going to this class with Jackie."
Letting out a huff, Brittney shrugged her shoulders. She could respect that.
"You know what? I'm going to take a page out of your book and see if I can get him removed from the school. We don't have to tolerate the Vanderhoffs—we don't need to tolerate teachers who only became teachers to bully kids."
Misao did a double take. "That is his damage?!"
Brittney nodded as Heather confirmed it. "He said it himself when we first started class: That the only reason he became a teacher was so he could 'bully kids like the ones who bullied him.'"
Making a foul face, the exchange student shook her head. "No, absolutely not, that is completely deranged."
"You don't need to have a lot of money to go on a power trip," Brittney replied as she leaned back in her seat, "You just have to have any power at all."
Heather let out a small laugh. "There are too many people on power trips, who think they can get away with everything. It'd be nice if they could all just disappear like the Vanderhoffs, forever."
As Misao and Brittney agreed with Heather, Misao noticed the edges of her vision blur. In the next moment, the blurriness swept across the whole of her vision and for the briefest instant everything became brighter and sharper… before fading back to normal.
Misao blinked hard, her vision warping like heat waves. For an instant everything was sharper, too sharp—and then it was gone.
Both Brittney and Heather stared at her in confusion.
"What?" The former asked.
Misao looked around for another moment, as just as quickly as she noticed it, it slipped from her memory. "Did you… what were we talking about, just now?"
Heather tilted her head. "We were talking about how it'd be nice if jerks like the Vanderhoffs disappeared."
Brittney nodded. "Yeah."
That… didn't seem right, there was something more, but she couldn't remember it suddenly. Whatever she had just seen, it wasn't the strangest thing she'd experienced since she got here.
Whatever it was, it wasn't worth remembering.
The door opened and a Latina teacher in her early 30s, wearing khaki shorts and a red polo shirt walked in. Right away the class devoted their full attention to her as she went to the board.
"Hello, class, sorry for being late," she greeted. "I guess my mind just blanked for a minute there, and then I went 'Oh my goodness, I'm late!'"
"Hello, Ms. Espinoza," the students all answered, amused at their pleasant teacher's scatterbrainedness.
The woman smiled and turned to the chalkboard. "Okay, open up your books to Section 3, we're going to pick up where we left off yesterday."
She looked back. "Didn't think you'd be back so soon, huh?"
Misao smiled. "We can thank Star for that, ja?"
Brittney shrugged her shoulders. "It's nice that she's actually cleaning up the messes now. Saves my parents some money."
Ms. Espinoza's calculus class laughed again, as the students picked up where they left off yesterday like nothing had happened.
= - = 7-7 = - =
And with this, we end Volume 7 of Legends, the feud with the Vanderhoff Brothers, and begin looking forward towards new conflicts, new mysteries, and a story that will spread out beyond the peaceful streets of Echo Creek and through the annals of history.
There will be a few another omake scene in the near future, but look forward to Volume 8 appearing here starting in early 2024 if not by Christmas. In the meantime, more Senpai: A Story of Good Friends is coming soon.
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