Survival Of The Fittest

(Jerry Fury: Round 1, fight!)

The period right before lunch... yeah, that was always the worst one. So of course, as some sort of sick joke, somebody decided they were going to schedule a trigonometry class at that exact period, and have Jerry sit in it. That had to be what happened, right? These things didn't just happen on accident.

Four rows back and two files away from the door, Jerry Fury sat, surrounded by his classmates. His head slumped forward, cheeks pushed up in sharp creases by his hands in a desperate bid to keep it from crashing down onto his desk. Every so often he'd tug at one of the curls of his hair. He found the little twinge of pain kept him awake, but he wasn't sure how long he could rely on that trick over and over again before he started pulling his hair out.

"So... very... boring..." he mouthed at just under a whisper, his eyes wandering just about anywhere except what was on the whiteboard. Mrs. Brown seemed awfully focused on the vague squiggles and shapes she was drawing with those dry-erase markers. In fact, she seemed focused enough that Jerry was sure she wouldn't notice if he just slipped his hand into his backpack, which was tucked messily under his desk.

He felt around until he felt the tell-tale glossy feel of a soft cover, and pulled his hand out carefully to retrieve a comic book he pilfered from his brother's place. Tucking the cover and the first few pages of filler behind the rest of the book, Jerry rested the comic on his lap and began to read, tucking his chin to read a few panels, glance at the board like he was waking up from one of his sleep-struggles... then tuck his chin down again. As long as he could manage to look up every once in a while, Mrs. Brown shouldn't care.

In theory, anyway.

((Alice Baker continued from Rain, Rain, Go Away))

Alice did not enjoy math. It was frustratingly regulated, formulaic (in the most literal of ways) and unappealing to an artistic mind. She didn't have a head for the formulas and methods and rules, and there was little else to it that she could rely on to pull herself up. Plus, Mrs. Brown's lessons were terribly dry and uninteresting, which made it hard to focus. So it was little surprise that she found herself doodling a flower when she was supposed to be taking notes.

With a gentle stroke of Alice's fingers, the stem of the rose was complete, leaving just the petals to work on. Alice bit her lower lip thoughtfully, and then began the process of sketching in the front most petal, using stunted and wobbly lines to give it a feel of organic material rather than plastic. She slid her pencil around in a loop, completing the outside petal.

Glancing up from her sketchpad, Alice looked around the classroom. She couldn't help but notice the distinct lack of attentive students, most of whom seemed to be losing interest in Mrs. Brown's lesson like Alice. Jerry, sitting nearby Alice, even seemed to be reading a comic book under his desk. Alice stifled an amused chuckle and smirked. Then she went back to drawing.

Cosine. Sin. Tan. Cosintan. Kind of reminds me of Constantine. I should reaaaaaaaaaally pick that up.

Jerry flipped between looking at the utterly incomprehensible gobbledygook up on the board and the slightly less nonsensical events going on in his issue of Suicide Squad. Even then it was only slightly. It took a moment for him to realize that it was perhaps because some of the 'boring filler stuff' going on in the first two or three pages he skipped was probably relevant to the plot. Well, too late to look back now; the turning of the pages would no doubt alert Mrs. Brown.

Then Jerry got a brilliant idea. What if he waited for somebody to turn the page of their math book? Yeah, that made sense. Wait for somebody to have to turn the page for something or other, then he could turn the pages of the comic in his lap without it being suspicious.

Mr. Fury, you've done it again!

Jerry waited... and waited... and waited. It had to have been an agonizing fifteen to twenty seconds he waited, and nobody had time to wait any longer than that. Thinking of a positively brilliant backup plan, Jerry raised his hand. After a second or two of Mrs. Brown not seeing it, he cleared his throat to get her attention.

"Yes, Jeremiah?"

Jerry opened his mouth and froze. Shit, what was he supposed to say at this part? In the mental draft of his plan, he was going to say something really witty here about how the problems on the board, weren't they like another problem somewhere else, and what page it was on. Trouble was, he flickered his eyes between his teacher and the board trying to gain some bearing as to what they were learning and he came up totally dry.

Flicker. Flicker. Flicker. Nope, still dry, and now his eyes were getting tired.

"Um... I was wondering..." he started sheepishly, looking around for help. None came. "You know, the thing... that wiggly thing-"

"The sine wave, Jeremiah?"

"Yeah, uh, that thing. How did we get... to that part with the stuff again?"

Jerry sank down in his seat, imagining that every pair of eyes in the class must be boring holes into his skull right now but he dared not look to see if it was true. So what if he wasn't paying attention? It wasn't like anybody else was, and you didn't see them doing anything about it! Yeah, that's right. They don't have any fuckin' ground to stand on making fun of me. Wait. Shit. Why didn't I just flip the pages of my own book!? Why didn't I think of that!? FUUUUUUUUUU

"Never mind!" Jerry practically shouted to a strongly confused Mrs. Brown. "Found it!" He flipped the pages of his math book in earnest despite having already apparently found the solution to his imagined problem, and waited for Mrs. Brown to turn back to the board, his face reddened.

Think Jerry, think. No, wait, you wouldn't have to think if this class weren't so. FUCKING. BORING!

((Kimiko Kao, start))

If there was one thing Kimiko had always wanted to set the record straight on, it was the whole Asians are good at math stereotype. East Asians to be specific, so in most people's eyes that was the Japanese and the Chinese. A group she unfortunately fell into due to being from Taiwan. Specifically Chinese, something she hated and didn't like being called, she identified herself as Taiwanese and wanted to be called that. But she was getting off her point; the stereotype was annoying and incorrect, like most stereotypes. It was just a cultural difference putting greater importance on achievement in school that made it seem like East Asians were magically all good at math without putting work in. Ignoring the fact they studied hard to be good at their classes.

For her part Kimiko was not good at math. It wasn't her favorite subject and she had to put major work into it to maintain her grade. It annoyed her when people assumed she just walked into class every day and already knew everything. For example trigonometry, most people tended to just zone out and forget that there was only a set answer things could be. All the interior angles of a triangle added up to 180 degrees, so once you got two it was basic subtraction to get the third. The functions were just ways to get you there.

Regardless Kimiko was "good" at math. That was why she had no choice but to face palm when Jerry spoke up in front of her. Jerry was alright but he was loud and obnoxious quite often. The issue wasn't that he was asking a question. She wasn't that bitchy. It was how pointless it was. He didn't actually ask a question...and did he have a comic on his lap. That was more interesting than Mrs. Brown's class. Now she just had to see what it was. It was more awkward for her since she couldn't actually speak. Instead Kimiko had to resort to that age old trick of ripping a corner of your paper off. Crumpling it into a ball she aimed at the back of Jerry's head and threw, hoping her time playing basketball growing up wouldn't let her down.

Alice had just glanced up from her notebook drawings when she noticed Jerry asking a question. Something about a squiggly line and how to get to it. He seemed very confused, which, given his apparent distractions was unsurprising. If he was going to read during class, he ought to be prepared for this kind of thing happening, especially if he was going to draw attention to himself.

Still, Alice shouldn't judge. She wasn't exactly the most focused student either, given her lovely rose drawing. Hardly mathematical.

Suddenly, a rapid movement through the air caught Alice's eye, and her head instinctively whipped over just in time to see a small sphere of crumpled paper fly through the air at Jerry. Alice scanned the room for the thrower, but amongst the sudden reaction of the other students she couldn't pick out who threw it.

She hoped Mrs. Brown couldn't, either. This was not going to end well for them.

((Wayne Cox: Pregame Start))

His pencil scratched on paper.

YO, what're you doing? that was really obvious, you know

Wayne faked stretching, then lobbed his own paper ball aimed at Kimiko's desk when he felt no one was paying attention to him. Especially Mrs. Brown - he made extra, super sure in her case. This was the worst class to be doing this in, if he was being honest with himself. Mrs. Brown was strict as hell when she wanted to be. Which was always.

Anyway, the throw was sideways, no technique, which is probably why the ball missed where it was supposed to go. Missed really wide, actually. While he winced internally, it bounced once or twice on some quiet girl's desk before finally rolling to a stop. She was a junior, he was pretty sure. That only served to further remind him that as one of the seniors in the class, he was pretty terrible at math.

Awkward on all counts.

Wayne went back to staring at the board. Sure, the distraction was welcome. But he had the uncomfortable feeling that he should be taking notes and passing the class instead of taking the class and passing notes.

It was all Jerry could do to keep the heat building up on his cheeks down to a reasonable level. Once Mrs. Brown had turned back to the board, he finangled with the pages of the comic until he turned back to what he was sure was the first page. Turns out it was just just filler stuff after all.

Well, wait, then that means this opening is still confusing as-

Something light but irritating struck the back of his neck, tickling and bothering and moving down underneath the collar of his shirt. Giving a sharp gasp, he flung his hand up to smack at whatever had just landed on him, fingers blindly groping and reaching as whatever it was nearly made an escape down the back of his shirt. As his fingertips closed around it, Jerry pulled his hand out and around to in front of him, and it was only at this time that it occurred to him that, hey, maybe he was grabbing a bee.

Good news, not a bee. Bad... well, less good news, it was a crumpled ball of paper.

Well whaddindafuck!?

Mrs. Brown and her math lesson forgotten for the moment, Jerry cranked his neck around to see Kikkiman or Kiniku or whatever the fuck her name was, he just usually called her Kimmy. Pretty sure she was Chinese or Japanese or something, he had never bothered to ask. Given her eyes were focused pretty much directly at him and not on the board, either she was intrigued by his frantic dance to catch the 'bug' that had assaulted his neck, or she was the one that threw it. He was taking a shot in the dark and guessing the latter.

Resisting the urge to call out his befuddlement, Jerry settled for gesturing a 'what gives!?' with his hand. What did she want? Obviously it wasn't to copy off of his homework; first thing first, Jerry was horrible at math and second, Kimmy was typically good at it. Of course she was. Stereotypes were stereotypes for a reason. She was probably kick-ass at DDR too, but this wasn't the time or the place to ask.

Then, of course, somebody ELSE had to go and throw a piece of paper. At fist Jerry though it was coming for him and he flinched wildly, jerking so hard that his seat, and the desk it was attached to, shifted with a loud squeak. Fucking idiot, the HELL!? Jerry mentally shouted, twisting around to face the board before their teacher inevitably got pissed. He swore, if a paper fight broke out...

Who am I kidding? I can fight back with the rest of them. Juuuuuuust wait.

The plan had been going fine, she had gotten Jerry's attention and he'd turned round. But then someone else threw some paper because of reasons and he turned back around. It was annoying and one of the times Kimiko really wished she could speak. It would have been so much easier to just whisper to him and ask what he was reading. She didn't have that option though. Instead she had to jump through a load of extra hoops just to ask a simple question. She frowned and rested her head on her hand as she went back to watching the board.

Mrs Brown had turned around at the sound of Jerry moving but was back to writing about Trigonometry. Kimiko sighed. There was no way she could get Jerry's attention again without there being an issue. Mrs Brown also wasn't a teacher you wanted thinking you were messing around. She was the strictest teacher in the school bar none. If she thought you were messing around you were gone. So it was better for Kimiko in the long run to just give up.

She was still interested in what Jerry was reading though which left her in the awkward spot of occasionally glancing down to see if she could get a peak. It just made it seem like she was looking at his ass. Not something she wanted anything to do with. It looked like DC, since it seemed to be in their more weighty art style, but the style of the art wasn't a reliable way of telling unless it was unique to a certain series. That was due to the way artists seemed to be shuffled on and off books by the big companies. Kimiko sighed again. She wished she had a comic she could read.

Alice wasn't fond of what happened next.

An object flew through the air and bounced off Alice's desk, startling her and knocking her pencil onto the ground. Looking around, Alice came to the conclusion that another paper ball had been thrown, and that it had been thrown by Wayne, a senior a few seats over. Alice reached out to grab her pencil back, but it was a little out of reach. She looked over at Mrs. Brown, who seemed focused on the lesson, and stood up to pick up her pencil.

"Alice?" The quizzical voice of Mrs. Brown caught Alice's attention, just as she got onto her knees and reached for her pencil, which seemed to have rolled under the teacher's desk. Alice looked up, and like a deer in headlights froze at the sudden attention being drawn to her. Her face blushed.

"I..." she said, trying to justify herself. It really wasn't a big deal, but she found herself painfully tongue-tied. "What are you doing?" Mrs. Brown asked as Alice stood up with pencil in hand and brushed some dust off her blouse. "Did you drop something?"

"Yes." Alice said, glad she didn't have to do all the talking. She sat down in her seat again. Mrs. Brown returned to the lesson, but Alice now had a bone to pick. Sort of. She wanted to confront the boy who threw the paper ball at her; after all, she hadn't done anything to him, so why throw something at her?

On the other hand, Alice didn't want to go and start something with him; he was bigger and older, and she wasn't exactly confident in her ability to stand up to him if she tried to talk to him. She was too shy for that. So she settled for shooting him a quick glare before returning to her notes, trying to reorient herself to understanding the information on the board.

Wayne stared at the back of the girl's head for a moment, his expression unchanged.

It wasn't as if he'd been trying to make a mess out of her desk. Hell, she hadn't read the note. That would have probably at least explained it. Maybe. Probably not. He shifted, then slouched slightly lower in his seat.

It didn't matter. Everyone would forget about this soon enough, anyway.

He glanced over at Kimiko, partly out of boredom, partly to distract himself, and noticed that she seemed to be checking Jerry out. That surprised him. While Jerry might have a nice butt - Wayne didn't particularly care for the line of thought - Mrs. Brown's class was a mood-killer like nothing else. Yeah, okay, it was still something to do other than pay attention to trig, but surely Kimiko had better options than Jerry. He supposed he could consider muscles other than the brain; in that case, Jerry was actually pretty well put together-

Forget it. He wasn't even going to ask.

His eyes wandered back to the board, then to the back of the junior girl's head again.

Wayne hesitated. Then he scribbled something on a loose scrap of paper, waited a moment, and, beginning to regret the idea already, raised his hand.

"Can I go to the bathroom?"

Christ, that face. That wasn't at me, was it?

Some random underclassmen girl (her name was called at the beginning of every class because attendance was a thing, but fuck all if he could remember what it was) had been crawling around and junk off to the side for like, an hour. Or maybe it was around ten seconds, time tended to get all distorted like that when inside a boring classroom. Now that she was back in her seat, she slung a look in what appeared to be Jerry's direction. He wished he hadn't been looking at the time, but it was kind of hard not to with all the previous distractions and crap.

Then Wayne spoke up, saying what Jerry had wished he thought of ten seconds ago.

"Oh oh, actually I need to go too-"

"Wayne's first, Mr. Fury. There's one girl's pass and there's one boy's pass." The words made Jerry's heart sink. If only it would sink hard enough to strike his bladder, that'd show his freaking teacher. Seemed like there'd be no escaping this hell for at least another...

He looked at the clock.

Ten minutes. Oh, oh thank sweet Jesus, we can survive ten minutes.

He still had his comic book, after all, and he hadn't even really gotten into it. Surely that could keep his attention, given there was nothing else to do in this damned class. Well, besides pay attention to what was going on the board and actually learning. Then again, Jerry had decided long ago that avenue just hadn't worked out for him. He'd simply pester somebody else later to give him some one-on-one help with the homework, and that'd be enough for him to pull a passing test grade out of his ass. Worked every time.

Oh. Right. What the hell did she want?

While Wayne was getting himself situated, Jerry craned his neck around, deciding to get it another ol' college try.

"Yeah?" He whispered.

Kimiko had lost track of what was going on. One of the underclassmen was picking up her pencil off the floor and had made a scene of it. Then Wayne got up to go to the toilet, normal things but for some reason they happened so close together. It was almost interesting. It was definitely more interesting than trigonometry. No one was ever going to confuse Mrs Brown for an interesting teacher.

As Wayne was moving though Jerry turned round and asked her what she wanted. Kimiko's first reaction was to start signing but she caught herself. Jerry probably didn't know sign language; in fact she would have been very surprised if he did. Instead she picked up her pen and quickly scribbled down a crude note, really not the stealthiest way to pass a message on.

Wat U Reading?

Yep grammar had gone out the window, but Kimiko was favouring speed. She kept the note low in the hope Mrs Brown wouldn't see. It would be such a stupid thing to get caught for. Really wasn't worth the effort but she had committed to the plan now. Either everything went off without a hitch (unlikely) or she and Jerry got caught (likely). Kimiko was hoping for option one but you could never really be too sure. Regardless as soon as she was happy Jerry had read the note, she didn't wait very long it was one and two thirds words. She crumpled it up and slid it into her bag, disguising the movement as retrieving a bottle of water. So very subtle of her.

Alice went back to drawing, looking up every few minutes to try and keep up, but the information was just going in one ear and out the other. She just didn't get it. Hopefully there wasn't any homework, or Alice would be totally screwed.

After a few minutes, Alice had the rough sketch of a flower drawn out on her sketchpad. It was pretty, but kind of generic; there wasn't much appeal to a nice drawing of a rose when everyone ever had probably drawn one or attempted to do so at some stage or other. While technically speaking the sketch looked nice, there wasn't much else going for it. No soul.

Alice ripped the sheet out of her sketchpad, crumpled it up and tossed it into the garbage can. Or tried to, since it bounced off the wall above the can and fell onto the floor. Darn. That would bug her for a little while.

He hadn't really thought this all the way through. Still, he had permission to go to the bathroom, and everyone had heard him ask, so he couldn't very well back out now.

Wayne took a moment to straighten out his notebook as he got up, casually scooping the scrap of paper he'd written on into his hand as he did so. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jerry muttering something to Kimiko. Interesting. Maybe there was something going on between them after all. Too bad he had his own stuff to not screw up at the moment.

His hands in his pockets, Wayne beelined for the door. Stopped short. Took a few steps to the side, so that he just so happened to be in front of that junior girl's desk. Alice was her name, he realized, just before he leaned down and put his hands on her desk.

"Hey," he said in a low voice. "I don't really know you, but I might be gone for a while, so can I catch the notes from you after class?" He didn't bother waiting for a response. She was probably still pissed. "Thanks."

Whether she would end up giving him her notes or not, he made sure she received his, letting it peel away from his palm as he lifted his hands from her desk again.

sorry. missed my throw. Next to the words, he'd drawn a stick figure shrugging, with a sheepish grin on its face.

Then he made his way to the door, and grabbed the hall pass, and left.

He was free, in more ways than one.

((Wayne Cox continued in I Know What My Fortune Is))

Huh. Is that it?

Kim wanting to know about the comic made a lot of sense. The only query Jerry could have thought of was that she'd want to know something about the scribbles and runes on the whiteboard, and he was about 99.99% sure she was a lot better at math than he was. So, one question answered and one aspect of unease abated.

It then occurred to Jerry that if Kimikuluha or whatever her full name was could tell he was reading a comic, then others could potentially figure it out, and either Mrs. Brown could probably spot him too... or somebody nearby would rat him out. It was a horrible thought, a 'shitty' thought he would say, and Jerry decided he wasn't going to risk getting his comic book taken away by some disgruntled faculty member. He slid the comic off his lap and back into his bag.

I'll suffer through the last... I'unno, ten minutes. Who cares?

Picking up the bright pink mechanical pencil on his desk, Jerry scawled 'Suicide Squad' at the top of the page in what he deemed to be large lettering, then picked up the notebook  and held it up in front of him as if to admire his handiwork... while giving the girl behind him a nice, clear look at what he'd just written in his less-than-impressive handwriting. Why she couldn't have just whispered her question was beyond him - she never seemed to talk all that much. Actually, the more Jerry thought back about it, he couldn't even remember what her voice sounded like. Weird.

Setting the notebook back down, Jerry settled himself in his seat and hoped that Kim's curiosity had been fully sated. He stared at the board and the magic Mrs. Brown was conjuring on it. Not a single minute in and with his eyebrows drooping, he suddenly wished she had ALL the questions for him.

Kill me. Oh god, kill me, I need this class to END!