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A/N: Enjoy this while it lasts. no more updates for a while hahahahahaha!!
"Nao, you woke up!"
I WAS NEVER SLEEPING.
"Excuse me, but we're starting class. So, pardon my language, but who are you?"
My angry retort to Nao stopped and reversed towards the person now speaking. A girl of immensely small form was walking towards us. As in, I was surprised she wasn't in pre-school. Of course, I expected that of Nao too, but this one had the build for it. She was looking at us with a stern expression, as if she was trying to mock a sixth-grade teacher. Well, that doesn't intimidate me anymore, being in seventh grade. I looked her back in the eye and mentally dared her to do something. She didn't. Instead, her glasses, very similar to the receptionist, sparkled devilishly.
"I asked who you are."
"Yes, I heard the first time."
She glared at me and then turned away with a bounce of her ponytail. Ooo, that frustrated me the most! Females thinking that a bit of hair mobility added to the insult! WELL IT DID!
Nao was now standing next to a guy who was avidly scribbling in a notebook. I looked around the area again and wondered if this meadow was actually a class. Maybe P.E. or "The Lectures of Nature's Good Points". Which, as far as I had experienced, didn't exist in the real world. Having nothing else to do and not wanting to chase after the rude girl with glasses, I calmly shuffled over towards the two, trying to hold an air of one who is merely glancing at others. If I was going to be shoved into a world with no rules, I'd at least hold some dignity.
On the paper, a wonderful splash of grays and whites built up into the contrasting black background. In the same style as the painting, I saw a vast doorway that extended far too high for even NBA players to reach. Adding to my total revelations, I came with the notion that this was the Mumururu that Nao had been talking about. Looking around again to make sure no one was paying attention, I gave the artist a bit more of a check-up. He was really good at his work. Small details came in fast slashes that worked their way at a snail's pace to form a picture. The larger, vaguer formats came in wide and beautiful arcs that raced along the paper like a cat chases a mouse. It was as if he was following a dot-the-points assignment. He was talented.
"So, you're Mumururu, right?" I said, not quite anticipating his reaction at knowing his name. He might speak out against the name, meaning I got it wrong and that he was instead, the worst enemy of Mumururu or at least his rival. I was also expecting him to say yes and fully glorify in pride and attitude towards his recognition. But what I got instead was a furious crash of the pencil, a dramatic show of graphite being snapped, and his standing up to his full height of...let's see...maybe a bit over four and a half feet. I cowered, not because of his fearsome aura, which wasn't the least bit frightening, but because of his facial expression. It was the sort of snobbish stare that came from the popular, yet dumb preppy girls.
"YO man! Only the chicks can call me that. MEN can call me Mumo," he said in a choppy manner, smoothing back his spiked hair. IT wasn't really spiked. More like he took some gel or something and made about five really long and thick strands to hang on his scalp like antennaes. My face must've been in one of those post-nuclear expressions. Like AUGHAAA. You know, with the aging wrinkles, balding eyebrows, and twisted mouth.
"Naoo, this is Mumururu see!" introduced Nao, poking the mirror image of FAILED DRAG QUEEN in the shoulder. He grinned, probably thinking he had some kind of super sparkly grin. Actually, it would have been rather clean and white, but there was a large chunk of something green on the surface of his enamel. I couldn't tell if it was gum, play-doh, or radioactive goo gone wrong.
"Who are you to try and bask in my glory?" Mumo accused, pointing at me with a long, creaky finger. I stared at the polished fingernails and grimaced. This was a disgusting way to degrade a normal human-being. I was about to strike the finger down when suddenly, Nao pointed her finger at ME.
"Nao! Who are you to try and bask in his glory?" she echoed. I blinked. So she could speak good English. That was a surprise. I was interuppted from my attack once more by another finger, that came from behind me. By this time, I was rather irritated at all the human limbs being put in my eyesight, so as an instinct...I used my beastly weapons.
Naturally, I bit the finger.
"OW!!" the stern girl wailed, stamping on my foot. Immediately, I let go and bit my tongue at the same time as the wave of pain traveled up my crushed joints and up into my nervous system. Cursing and swearing, I tried to strangle the girl, but she sidestepped me and bit MY FINGER.
"SCHABABABABAHGBAALALLAGO!!" I shouted, muffling my outrage with my shirt as I tried to wave her off. Instead of letting go like I had done, she kept her teeth CLAMPED. Thus, even as my hand started making rapid arcs, and her tiny body was lifted into the air, the indents were getting closer and closer to bone. With a ferocious burst, I grabbed her by the head, squeezed her jaws apart, and then threw her as far as I could. She went down with a big slur of colorful words. Thankfully, she went about 50 feet away. Not bad for a throw.
"YOU SICKO!" Mumo roared in contempt."WOMEN ARE NOT FOOTBALLS!"
"That one was."
"Even the smallest and most insignificant of the female gender vastly outdo any male," was the reply. Then, as if defying all logic, Mumo stroke a disco pose. The finger pointing to the sky, the locks of hair flying like the fur of the Beatles..it surprised me as everything so far had done. He shifted his hips right and left, as if he was moving to a beat.
"Two hundred degrees that's why they call me Mr. Fahrenheit!" he wailed, twisting into various...incredibly corny...and disgusting stances, trying to look like a male stripper. The bad thing about it was that my gender was male and even the girls weren't taking the bait. He kept on like this for a few more minutes, trying in vain to have someone look at what he probably thought was an overproportioned ass.
This was indeed the most shameful exhibition ever given by a man, and there were plenty that had happened in the years before. Like the vice president's "accidental" shootout. Or maybe further back to the invention of the drinking and dancing like a baboon. Of course, maybe women invented that to relieve themselves from men's continuous bickering, in which case I'll excuse the incident.
As a sidenote, no, I am not a feminist. Actually, as you can see by my handling of the females I have already met, I am quite brutal against women. It's merely because I find my mother to be the only women needed in this world, since I would rather go to hell then get married, have to live a life of debt, stay in pits called "apartments", and become like my father in raising a child. Thus, I found most other women to be fairly unsightly and an obstacle.
But I would rather have been married and become doomed to a five decade long showdown against my spouse then continue watching Mumo TRY to dance. Nao seemed to be mesmerized, god forbid, so I inched away from the two and decided it would be better for me to wander off on my own. Much better for my health.
I had scarcely gone more than one of my paces when suddenly, out of the horizon, a dust cloud started to form. IT was huge. Streaming like the smoke from one of those faulty tailpipes, a figure began to rise from it. As I turned around to inspect closer, the lines grew clearer, the haziness from the sun blew away, and I saw something roughly human-like. Well, actually, it was human-like. It was the stern girl.
"HOLY SHIT! Must be in track," I thought to myself. She was rushing over here with an angry expression. Perhaps she remembered the toss still? Who was I kidding. Of course she did, since the said event happened just a little while ago.
MOVE. OH GOD MOVE!
I couldn't. She was just too fast. Again, the scene felt like something out of the Matrix. Except, it only lasted for a second. And in that second, I saw her pull up to me, grab something from her bag, AND BOOM!
"Ooo...home run naoo..." Nao said in awe as she saw me bounce across the field. JESUS CHRIST THAT HURT! It was as if some panda on steroids had slammed into me during halftime at a football game. Embarrassing and painful.
Luckily for me, the embarrassing moment continued as instead of a spectacular shot five miles away, I flopped five miles straight into the sky and slammed down right in front of her. By this time, I had noticed her unusual weapon.
It was a pencil. A pencil that was roughly her height, width, and weight. It looked menacing under her hands.
"What the HELL is that!" I screamed as she started rubbing the eraser into my torso.
"SHUT UP! I'm trying to erase you from existence!" she said determinedly. Her hands were a blur as the friction started to tear at my clothes. Obviously she thought that erasers didn't work by friction rubbing on graphite. She probably suspected they had magical powers that reverse the black into white. Lady, no matter how many times you rub me with that pink thing, I'm not gonna disappear for a while. That's the thought that was running through my head, but pretty soon, I noticed that she was moving unnaturally fast with her hands, already giving me a few first-degree burns on my stomach.
"AHH! THAT BURNS!" I hissed, jolting back from her. She yelled a dramatic war cry and lunged forward. With a miraculous leap, Nao came to my rescue
"NAOOOO!! Karen stop!!"
"GET OFF ME NAO! I have BUSINESS TO TAKE CARE OF!"
"Nao nao nao!!"
I couldn't help smiling as the midget woman stared swinging Nao around and around like some kind of rope with a knotted end. That made things worse I think, as in the next moment, she had launched my tour guide right into my solarplex. OOPH! Ten points!
"Nao...sorry...uhm..."
Nao looked at me quizzically and then bent close to my face. It was unnerving, mostly because from close up, I could see that she hadn't brushed her teeth today. They looked almost as bad as Mumo's. What did they eat around here!?
"Nao...what's your name?" she asked me. You're asking me in this situation!? I did not want to tell her, but I had my courtesies to think of.
"Well, even though this is a really really bad time for me to say," I started, looking carefully at the raging girl, who was now rampaging over the field."I'll never tell you my real name, but people usually call me-."
"Why?"
"It's obvious why." Wait, I didn't even say my name yet.
"Nao...me call you Dabo."
"My name is not...yeah. sure. Why not." It could be worse.
"Arf!"
I petted her rather reluctantly, a little disturbed at the way Nao was on her hindlegs, holding her hands near her chest level and sticking her tongue out as far as it could go. Not having a tail, she waggled her bottom, which should've been hard in her position. She stood completely still, smiling with her tongue still out, as I tried to lift my hands away from her...rather...thick and wiry hair.
"OH YEAH!" came a shout from a bit too close for comfort. I edged away a little, taking care to keep Nao distracted. One look behind me had seen some really really bad images.
Mumo was still gyrating his body to a silent beat. I spared a second to throw Nao at him, and then ran for it. He came at me with the force of a bull. Yeah. I was having fun. After a week in the wild with no one to really talk to except for one much-to-friendly squirrel, it wasn't surprising that I was having the time of my life fooling around. After all, that's a kid's pastime right? I finally got Mumo off me and right after, Nao collided into me and started hugging me for all its worth. She seemed to think that my repeated attempts to throw her were efforts towards attractive baiting.
Suddenly, the whole area turned dark. A man was standing in the middle of the field, a spotlight turned on him like on one of those prison break clips. He had a black tailcoat on with a tophat: the image of suave. This man was Windle Pindle, as I would later learn. He winked at us and then took out a conductor's stick or whatever. Maybe it was a BDSM tool. Or a cheerleader baton. I never found the intelligence to ask.
"ATTENTION STUDENTS! Your choir class has been delayed for the first-of-semester skit," the man said, bowing gently. People around us went pachi pachi politely. It was the beginning of a semester?! Coincidence?! I think not. And...HOW THE HELL WAS THIS CHOIR CLASS?
"HOW THE HELL IS THIS CHOIR CLASS!" I said outraged. Karen came back at my shout and whacked me hard. I fell like a ton of bricks.
"Haven't you noticed everything here is made of MUSIC SHEETS?!"
I looked around and touched my hand to the grass. Felt like grass. Being curious, I ripped off a strand and was surprised to feel it crumble in my fingers easily. It really was paper! Colored...flashy...skillfully designed paper. I must have looked rather astonished because Karen cleared her throat and looked at me impressively.
"Choir class here is a bit normal..." she groaned exasperately. What part of this was NORMAL?"Since our teacher follows the district's Choir class laws, Jimmy K. likes to spend his free time making these little paper things out of used music sheets."
"Who...is...Jimmy K?" I asked, trying to keep my bewilderment and obviously stunned expression in check.
"Over there," Karen said, pointing out a ecstatic looking boy, who was chained to what I had thought was an irregularly-shaped rock, but now seemed painfully apparent as a desk and chair.
"Err...yeah...but who is he?"
"He's the kid with the lowest grade in Choir."
You got graded in Choir?
"It's mostly because he doesn't have a good singing voice...I mean...he spends all his time drawing and stuff...he's better than Mumo...so you can't expect him to sing so well."
Sure...whatever you say...
"Wait..why the heck does he have so much free time then? Shouldn't he go to study hall or something?"
"You don't get it do you?" Karen said disdainfully. She was looking at me like I was a worm. Well hell, I could look like that too."I said that our teacher complies to the district's Choir class laws."
"So?"
"The law here is that until you can pass his class, or the teacher gets tired of you, you are stuck in the room."
FREEZE!
Excuse me...did you just say stuck in the room until you PASS? FUCK THAT! How the hell were they going to keep adolescents down?
"If you haven't noticed yet, look up."
I followed her outstretched finger and felt my jaw slacken. There was a rip in the sky. About thirty feet in length and ten feet in width, the crack was way too high to reach normally, even if you used the slide. I blinked and shuddered as scraps of paper started falling like rain. It wasn't a rip after all. No, it was music...tons and tons of music...covering a large opening with a diameter of about...200 METERS!!
"Jesus Christ..."
"So...yeah...you understand now?"
I don't know what Karen expected. Maybe a simple yes or no. Probably she expected me to bow and say thanks for the information or something cheap like that. Nah, that wouldn't have been enough. So instead, I reached over gently and wrenched the gargatuan pencil out of her fingers and ran. Yep. I ran like a bitch.
"Oh EM GEE! YOU STOLE MY PENCIL!"
"SHOVE OFF LADY! I'M NOT GOING DOWN WITHOUT A FUCKING FIGHT! LIKE HELL I'LL STAY IN CHOIR CLASS FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE!!"
The thing was, while I was pretty good at some things, I was a piece of shit in singing, especially the melodic harmonies of Choir. So, here I was, running again for my life, except this time, I was running from a class and not a fat business man. I should've known it was too good to last.
"HALT!"
I stopped right on my heels at the cry. I was pretty surprised because I thought I had run far enough so that no one was around. Apparently, I was dead wrong. Standing in front of me was a...biomechanical man fixed with three hydrogear gyros, five supermiligatic entree missiles, two severeclimagnaticcompasses...oh forget it. It was a freaking robot. A silvery shiny robot.
"Halt!" it repeated again, as it watched me run past. Yes yes, I spared no pleasantries towards the mech. I mean, I was running wasn't I?
"HALT AND DESIST OR BE DECIMATED!" the robot droned. Blah blah blah...geez, it was like my mother. I gave the damn thing the finger and then...oh what luck I have! I tripped over a paper rock.
"I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED!!" I screamed, falling once again, onto my face. It seemed that I had quite a lack of hand eye coordination. Anyways, having fallen after such a short run, it'll probably satisfy your curiosity to say that the robot caught up with me easily.
"You have halted," said the robot, bending creakily over. It gave me a good look in the eye and then looked back at the crowd gathering several feet away."Listen up."
I was all ears.
"I've been here for thirty years in this suit," said the robot, looking depressed. Of course, it's hard to believe that robots can get depressed, but hey, I was talking to one, especially one that was thirty years old. Considering we don't even have working robots in the real world yet. But then again, this seemed to be an actual "prestigious" school.
"Go on," I said, mildly interested.
"Shhh. Shut up. Ok..look...this isn't a real robot. It's just an automatic suit I wear." Sounds like a damn robot to me. A botched one with a human prisoner. I see no disadvantages.
"Why the hell are you in there anyways?" I couldn't help asking. It's such an innocent question anyways.
"Well...they offered me 400,000 yen for getting in this."
"A nice even sum, eh? Let me guess. The thirty-year stranding in the suit wasn't something you saw in the contract."
"Bingo. Run. Get out of here as fast as you can. You don't know what this place is like...it's...it's...NOT NORMAL!" he finishes, dramatically. Again, was this really choir class? I keep feeling like I was in some kind of soap opera. Too bad there was no music. It's good stuff.
Ok Buddy. I'll take your word for it and run. Just don't hinder me.
"Sorry, can't do that. This suit is motion-sensitive."
Great.
"But, if you walk very slowly, you'll keep this short lead you have right now."
Ingenious. Let me try it.
"Nho?" Nao asked, chewing ruefully on a sock. I stared at her with some disgust. I mean seriously...I felt bad for the sock. Who wouldn't be? Getting the saliva of a complete idiot all over you. Ugh.
"Yes. I'm back. Make merry and have beer."
Damn it. So close. Why the HELL did they make robots this smart?
Karen chose this time to wrench the pencil back from my grasp and whack me about another two hundred feet up again. After the first twenty, I felt a little light-headed and much more relaxed than I had been the rest of the day. Sadly, the plummet came all too quickly to me, and WAM! There was pain all over my poor shattered body in a matter of seconds.
"Please...someone...find a doctor..."
"Ok, everyone! Get to your seats! Class is going to start soon," shouted Karen, holding her hands around her mouth. Of course. Ignore me. After all, it wasn't like you were the one who caused thsi inexpicably painful trauma that's spreading through my lower back.
"That's what you get for rubbing in my limelight," said Mumururu. I swear, I should've just stood up and gotten that pencil back. But I didn't. It wasn't worth my time. But then again, the very sentence he uttered was an injury to what dignity I had left as a man.
"Oi. Dabo. Get in your seat." Dabo. Dabo. Daaaaabo. Yep. No matter how I say it, the name sounds really stupid.
"Where is my seat, oh great queen of the choir class?" I asked, gingerly testing my limbs. She didn't even bother to answer. She just pointed somewhere randomly and walked off, no doubt to harrass more people. I could see the charming points of Karen. Yes, they were very similar to a bitch.
"Nao, where do I sit?" Not that I was scared of Karen. But it's better to err on the safe side.
"Nho? Tohre," she says, pointing again, at what seemed to be somewhere random. I take this as a sign and walk over next to her. Everyone else is standing, so I don't sit yet. I mean...I was feeling rebellious so I stood up, my feet straight, my chest out, and my chin up. Oh how the Military would be proud of me.
And suddenly, the whole room went quiet. Windle Pindle here was twirling the baton rather expertly; I had to admit, it got my attention for a few seconds, but then, I started to stare at this piece of paper dust in front of me. Very interesting...how it sways from side to side. Then, Windle Pindle went down onto his knee and signalled to the ground. All at once, the entire floor gave way.
Wow. You'd think I'd feel a little more surprised. But, I was still in a rather defeated move after being outplayed by a bumbling idiot, outforced by a bitch, and outwitted by a robot. Still, my heart was giving tiny secret beats of cool uneasiness as I fell into this strange black hole.
"OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! WE'RE FALLING! NONONONONONONONNONNOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!"
Yeah. Perfectly calm. Picturesque in my opinion.