"I heard he absolutely obliterated him! There's also no trace of the club anymore. Ooh, it's so exciting!"
As the day dragged on, I noticed that while hushed rumors about Midnight, our principal, supposedly harming Malus after we were released from the facility were being spoken less, the story was beginning to be more and more exaggerated. I had started manually purging the conversations and instead focusing on the hours that lay ahead of me, but it somehow stuck around.
"Feste!" I allowed my train of thought to be interrupted and looked around. It wasn't as if I needed to, however.
"Boingo." By the look on his face, he was going to offer a tidbit of news.
"Did you hear? Everyone's talking about what Midnight did last night!"
I knew he was going to comment on that. I nodded. "Yes. Can they stop making such a big deal out of it?" I momentarily broke eyes contact with Boingo to look around. "I mean... This thing has probably happened before, right?"
Boingo's attitude became more factual and serious. "Sometimes it happens, but that's usually just something that can be quickly taken care of by the principal." He stared into my eyes, still sharing information. "That was very uncommon. I can't believe that he got away with taking all of you and working you senseless."
"It wasn't exactly senseless, though..." I stopped myself, deciding that I wouldn't trust myself into the rabbit hole of defending Malus. Sure, he squeezed in many days of knowledge into such a short span, but the methods that he used to accomplish it and the hostile threats and brutality that occured in other parts of the trip were undoubtably things that would stick in my mind for a long time. "No, never mind. I suppose he did deserve it. He even threw one student down onto the concrete floor. All of my limbs are sore from overworking."
Boingo hopped up onto my shoulder, which proceeded to sting. He then leaned up against my head in an act of consolation, straying away from resting on my hard horns. I sharply inhaled from both the surprise and the pain, but I let Boingo have his moment and perhaps lift some of my spirits. "I hope you get better."
Quickly, I urged Boingo to jump off of me. "Maybe not right now. We still have a class to get to."
"Oh, yeah!" The small creature began to sprint down the congested hallway. "I wonder if he's going to introduce it today!"
I followed Boingo, my mind silently thinking his comment over. What was he talking about?
"Good morning, class," our elderly teacher greeted. He stumbled towards his pedestal and overlooked everyone. "It's very good to see you all again, and with smiles spread across your faces, too."
While he seemed to be fairly old, our teacher still had a sharp mind. On other days, he would sometimes sternly tell off the misbehaving students to the point where he could spark some fear in anyone's heart. Still, he would crack the occasional joke about once every class. It definitely put us at ease, distracting us from the typical serious stereotype applied to schools everywhere.
"Perhaps," our teacher went on, "could you all have known about the assignment today? I will be honest, it is fairly exciting!"
"Yes!" Boingo almost caught the attention of the teacher. I was a member of the small group of creatures that had no idea what was unfolding. Still, we sat and desperately absorbed the information.
"Hrm," our teacher peered over all of us, glancing extra hard at people that shared the same expression I was wearing. "It seems like some of you need an introduction. You see, we will be going on a field trip. This is the only one we could have during our history block, but it is definitely a large one.
"You see, I have some locations that every one of you will be staying at temporarily for a few days. It isn't all for fun, however. You will be expected to actively learn the culture there, then answer the questions that are on my preprepared sheets of paper. From there, each one of you will write an essay about what you have learned during your trips."
I hadn't noticed my faint smile until after my teacher had stopped talking. However, I still had suspicions about it all. I shook my head. I convinced myself that I was paranoid from my recently botched club trip. The more I shook off that fear, the more excited I felt. Soon enough, I shared the same amount of energy as Boingo. Nearly. I knew I couldn't match the level of hyperactivity he had.
The teacher cleared his throat and we all quickly stopped talking. With shaky hands, he pulled opened a drawer and straightened a thick stack of papers. Boingo was now practically on the edge of his seat as he sifted through all of them, separating them into a total of seven piles, laying them out on a series of desks that I mentally dismissed at the start of the class. With a sigh, he stepped back a fair amount. "Alright, everyone may collect their sheets. At the top is the location that you will be studying, and remember that while you are out, you are expected to collect enough information to construct your essay."
I held myself back from leaping up and running to the front of the class, something that many students seemed to do. Instead, I waited until the crowd had started to diffuse before slowly standing up. Looking over at everyone else, it seemed like a dozen of us had the same idea. Still, it was better than the tens of students that decided that the early bird got the worm. Clearly, they didn't have a second thought about the potential small riots that would spawn from the numerous conflicts.
Approaching the desks, there seemed to be one pile of papers completely taken. The ones that were left were either already half gone or almost untouched in the case of one location: Grey Colosseum. I scanned over the other locations that were presented: Magaba the Urban Paradise, Frigid Exoplanet, Luna the Moon, Arid Desert and Crystalline Underground. I quickly debated within myself the pros and cons of visiting each location, my heart pounding inside my chest.
With a swipe and a sense of instant regret, I picked a sheet. I sighed and looked at it. Out if the few seconds that I had looked at each paper, Crystalline Underground seemed like the best place to go to. Since it didn't have many papers taken off of it, I thought that it would be easier on myself if not many other students were crowding around me all the time. Of course, if I cared only about the number of students that were around me, I would have gone with the Grey Colosseum. I started to make my way back to my seat. Besides, I have never seen a crystal that hadn't been artificially extracted and cut into a neat shape. Seeing them naturally would definitely be a sight to behold.