Zel was approaching the southern gate of Slayers HS when he heard it. The high-pitched scream that judging from the change in tone was heading right in his direction. He stepped aside and some projectile flew by him and into a lamp post. Unfortunately, the lamp post didn't quite withstand such a force slamming into it and promptly broke.
Eastern Principal Fibs lay there completely out of it with more than a few burns and bruises.
"What happened to him?"
Zel cursed the fates and looked at the source of his recent mishaps. Lina Inverse was poking at the kid principal.
"Aren't you expelled?"
Lina made an expression that was a mix of a grin and a grimace. It looked very odd. "No. I'm still going here but hopefully I'll no longer be in the same building as you."
"Thank you," Zelgadiss heartily blessed the gods above.
"Hey there Zelgadiss! Long time no see."
A tall handsome man with long silver hair wearing a bright blue polo shirt, gray vest, and black jeans and boots walked up.
"Good morning, Principal Dynast."
Lina blinked and pointed. "That's a principal?"
"Don't point," Zel scowled at her. "He's the principal for Northern."
"Pretty young don't you think?"
"Don't get started."
"Is this the minx that blew up Eastern?" Dynast bent down to look at Lina. "Doesn't look like much."
Lina's eyebrow twitched and she drew back an arm. "Not...much?"
"Lina!" Zel caught her arm. "You just can't go around blasting everything that ticks you off!"
"Why not?"
"Why not she says," Zel groaned. "Um, Principal Dynast, why are you this far south?"
"It's for him." Dynast nudged Fibs' prone body with the toe of his black boot. "The school superintendent came by this morning to have a little 'chat' with him about the destruction of Eastern."
Lina raised an incredulous eyebrow. Chat? This looked more like an all out beating. "Ummmm, the school superintendent wouldn't want to talk to me as well would he?"
"She," Dynast corrected absently as he picked up Fibs and slung him over his shoulder. "You wouldn't have any chance to get out of it if she does. But shouldn't you two go and find out where you've been reassigned before the bell rings? Oh, and Zel? I think you can let go of her hand now."
Zel looked at his hand as if it was a totally different entity. And immediately let go, his face a suspicious tint of pick. Lina, however, didn't notice because of the death glares she was getting from passing female students. She assumed they were members of the Zelgadiss fan club.
Lina figured this was going to be a very long school year even though it was only her second day and this school year was soon ending anyway. Now where to find out which high school she was in? She looked around and found a huge group of students standing before a very, very, very, very long board of names.
She sweatdropped.
Looking over the students, she saw that everyone wore similar uniforms but they were of different colors. All of the now displaced Eastern students wore black with white trimming uniforms. Some students had white uniforms, others blue, and the last wore brown. And they were all milling in front of what Lina assumed were the new room and school assignments.
"What's everyone doing here if only Eastern was destroyed?" Lina grumbled.
"That's because all of Eastern's students needed to be distributed and the class composition had to be redone."
Lina nearly shrieked at the voice speaking next to her ear. She jabbed her elbow backwards to hit whoever it was in the gut. Her elbow hit empty air.
"My my. Aren't you tense. How about a little massage after classes?"
This time the voice came from right next to her. Lina glared at the speaker, a young man with straight cut purple hair wearing a beige dress shirt, brown patterned vest, loose red tie, brown slacks, and a smile that just screamed 'don't trust me'.
"Aren't teacher student relationships still forbidden?" Lina asked suspiciously.
"What people don't know won't hurt them right?" smirked the teacher, leaning much too close to Lina for her comfort.
"At least one foot distance, buster," Lina growled, slamming a hand in his face.
"How cold," he moaned, fake tears streaming like rivers down his face.
"If you want to help then tell me what class I'm in and where."
"Can't you read it for yourself?" he asked innocently.
"Like I can see over these people!" Lina snarled, waving a hand at all of the students in front of her.
"Well...I can lift you up so you can," he smiled lecherously.
Lina smashed his head into the ground and stomped on it repeatedly. "Of all the perverted, lecherous, disgusting-"
"What poor soul are you beating up now?" asked that bored, indifferent, arrogant voice.
"None of your business," Lina snapped at Zelgadiss. However, during her pause, the teacher crawled over and latched onto Zelgadiss's leg.
"Oh you really care for me," purred the teacher as he rubbed against Zelgadiss's leg.
Several nerves popped, not all of them Zel's.
"LET GO YOU HENTAI FREAK!!" Zelgadiss screamed. "Flare Lance!!"
"Wait a minute, Zelgadiss!!" Lina jumped onto Zelgadiss, trying to keep him from killing the teacher.
"Let go! I'm going to kill you for real this time, Xelloss!!"
"I love it when you talk like that."
"He isn't kidding so stop baiting him!" Lina yelled at the teacher still glomping onto Zelgadiss's leg.
None of them were noticing what kind of scene they were making. Xelloss, a grown man, was on the ground holding tight to the leg of a male student, Zelgadiss. Then there was Lina who was on Zelgadiss trying to keep him from running the thing on his leg through with the red lance in his hand. Isn't there a social conduct officer anywhere?
"Come on, Zel. Calm down!"
Zel replied with such language that was highly inappropriate for school.
Xelloss smiled. "Ne, Zelgadiss-chan. Maybe we should switch positions. I would just love to have her hanging on to me like that."
"PERVERT!!" screamed two people turning a magnificent shade of red.
"By the way, Lina-chan, though your light blue underwear looks nice, would you mind wearing a pair of black lace ones tomorrow?"
"Gray Bomb!!" The ground beneath them exploded.
"Honestly," sniffed the school nurse, pulling out another roll of bandage. "Haven't you learned to ignore him by now?"
Zelgadiss simply snorted. Thanks to his stone skin, he had suffered significantly less injuries than the other two. The same could not be said about his uniform jacket which was too far beyond repair to be fixed.
"You owe me a new jacket."
Lina stuck out her tongue.
"Hold still," reprimanded the nurse whose name seemed to be Filia. Lina wondered whether she was an elf with those pointed ears. "Where did you get all of these bruises? They're not from that spell."
"I fell down the stairs."
Filia gave her a look.
"Would you believe a lot of stairs?"
"They're probably from sword practice yesterday," Zelgadiss informed the nurse through the curtain behind which Filia was treating Lina's injuries.
"I can tell the difference. Thank you very much," Filia said sharply. "For example this one."
"You do remember that I can't see through the curtain."
"You'd better not," Lina snapped. "One pervert is enough. Especially when it's a perverted teacher."
"Ahem. As I was saying, this bruise looks more like the ones the girls get in field hockey except I usually see them on the shin and not on the back."
"You were getting hit on the back with a field hockey puck?"
"Whose fault do you think that was? It's all because those girls hate me just because I sit next to you."
Filia could feel the start of a migraine. "I'm beginning to get it now.
"In fact," Lina added. "All of my problems link back to you."
"Oh yeah? How?"
"The fight at the gate."
"You attacked me first."
"All of the girls in school gunning for me because I just happen to sit next to you."
"Hey, I had nothing to do with that."
"So the destruction of Eastern is all your fault."
"What? You're the one who cast the spell!"
"And just whose fault is it that I was being attacked?"
"Why don't you just grow up and admit you have a problem controlling your temper?"
"I have a problem controlling my temper? And exactly who was going to kill a teacher in the courtyard this morning?"
"He had that coming to him!"
"I should have figured that the reason you throw away all of those love letters from girls is because you're gay!"
"I am NOT! And not all of those letters are from girls."
"Hah! See? How would you know unless you read them?"
"Because some of them sign their names on the envelopes!"
"So you do read them!"
"I sometimes see what's written on the envelope but I don't read any of those letters!"
"That's enough!" Filia yelled, silencing them both. "You both are to return to your classroom now. And if either of you run into Xelloss again, just ignore him! He's simply an immature, childish, perverted man with a twisted sense of humor."
"Yes ma'am," they both chimed.
Lina put her blouse back on and picked up her school bag. When she heard the office door close, she knew Zelgadiss had already left. That was good. In all of the fuss, she still hadn't learned where her new class was so she had to go back down to the bulletin board to find out. She didn't need him around to rub it in.
"What took you so long?"
Lina nearly tripped over her feet. Zelgadiss was leaning against the wall outside of the nurse's office.
"Wh-Wh-What are you still doing here?"
"Going to class of course," he grunted. "Let's go."
A long sweatdrop slid down her head.
"Go?"
"Yes, go," he answered irritably. "You still don't know your way around here so just follow me to class."
"Wait up!" Lina jogged up to him, trying to match his faster pace. "How do you know which class I'm in?"
"Because we're in the same class. Again."
"Wha - How did you know that?!"
"Because your name followed mine on the roster."
Lina didn't have anything to say to that she shut her mouth. Instead, she concentrated on following him through the twisting corridors and stairs. She was also concentrating on Zelgadiss's back. Wearing only the white dress shirt now, she could see the dark gray splotches that were on his face also on his back. Lina poked one of them.
"Hey!" Zelgadiss came to stop and glared at her. "Just what are you doing?"
"So you have those gray splotches all over?"
Zel blushed. "That's none of your business!"
Lina poked his shoulder.
"Would you quit that!"
"Stone? Your skin is entirely made up of stone?"
"Just stop touching me!"
"Is it only your skin or does it extend to your internal organs as well? Wait, if some of your organs were stone they wouldn't function. Of course, then there is the question of whether you'd grow at all. It's unlikely that you'll age, not from normal reasons."
"Leave me alone," Zel growled. She was talking about him as if he wasn't even standing here! "Here's class."
Zel jerked open the door and unceremoniously shoved her in, disrupting her monologue about the effects of stone skin on growth.
"Watch it!"
"Oh so sorry. Mind the first step."
"You did that on purpose!"
"You two!"
Zelgadiss and Lina stopped their bickering to look at their new homeroom teacher who was pointing a finger at them.
"You're the ones that caused that explosion this morning in the courtyard."
Lina and Zel sweatdropped. Uh oh.
"And you're that girl that almost got expelled yesterday because of blowing up the top floor of the Eastern building."
Lina would have backed away out the door but Zelgadiss was already standing there.
Their teacher clapped his hands together. "Right. You two will be our class representatives in Swords & Sorcery."
"What?!"