<!Midonna: The Awakening>

<!By StrangeAtaru, strangerataru@mail.com>

<!A normal Japanese girl gets pushed too far…and awakens a gammazon within>

In the year 1945, the nuclear era was ushered in with the unleashing of two atomic bombs, "Fat Man" and "Little Boy", by United States forces on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While debatable on whether or not this was needed to end the war for the Americans, the shockwaves of the bombs were felt around the entire world, particularly in Japan. The attack annihilated thousands of lives in a matter of seconds...but to some, they were considered the lucky ones. Thousands of others who survived the attacks had to endure the effects of a high dosage of radiation that they came in contact with at the moment of the explosion. Ailments such as cancer and various internal bodily damages emerged from within them over the years, showing that the impact of those bombs continue to have their effects decades after their initial detonation. However, even with all of the damage and destruction, both physically and emotionally due to those days in 1945, the most mysterious of these effects is about to make its impact on the modern world.....

"Miharu? Miharu, its time to get up!"

The Yoshimune household reverberated with the sounds of yelling early that bright and sunny morning. It was one of those days full of potential...and Aoko Yoshimune saw her daughter as wasting it by laying around in bed early on a school day. Sure she knew that Miharu liked school: if she didn't, than she must have been complaining over all of the high marks she had been getting in and out of the classroom. But when it came to getting her up and out of the door, it was as if she was the mouse trying to move the elephant. Apparently the daughter and the first child of the Yoshimune household seemed to like dreaming her life away instead of studying. But that's what mothers were for.

"Can't you wake Akira up first?," a cute, but groggy voice grumbled from a locked up room up the stairwell in the household.

But before she could answer that question, a door slammed nearby to answer it for her. Akira was one of those boys who looked liked he was always looking for mischief: his hair was always messing around on top of his head like he never met a comb in his life, he always wore a silly T-shirt that showed itself underneath his white dressy uniform shirt for school, and his glasses were always tipped to the side as if he was making them crooked on purpose. Even though the mother vocally tried to wake up her daughter, it was always Akira who found a way of getting Miharu to get out of bed and out towards the school. And today's plan was going to be a doozy! Akira jumped up and ran to the door of his older sister's room, which was covered with cute little pictures of kittens and a sign with her name in kanji written on it. Sneaking to the very point where his mouth almost touched the door, the silly teenage boy began to speak in an official voice similar to those on TV:

"Attention, miss Yoshimune! This is your conscious at work. Now I hate school as much as..."

"I like school..." grumbled the voice from the other side of the door.

"I didn't get a chance to finish," Akira's voice continued. His train of thought was off so he said the first things that came to his head: "I meant to say that I hated school as much as the next person, but those who don't go will have their ears grow to the size of Volkswagens, their nose turn into corn, their feet into manjyuu, and their..."

"OK, I get it, I'm up..." Miharu said from the other side of the door. Anything to shut Akira up before he got even more absurd.

A few minutes later (Akira had finished his breakfast by then and was licking his bowl of cereal clean), a cute girl emerged in the downstairs part of the house. Her face had this "cute" look to her whether it was intentional or not: it had a roundness that is usually seen in little girls, but worked well for her. Her eyes were a nice shade of brown, piercing through the slits that allowed her to view into the world. She had a nice little nose and small pouting lips, all of which were accented by the pail whiteness of her face and topped off with short black bangs hanging down to about the top of her neck. Just by face alone her mother often commented that she would have made a great geisha in another life, but that usually embarrassed Miharu. What also embarrassed her was her thin physical appearance: while nature was kind with her face, she never really had the looks that were flaunted in all those media tabloids or "testosterone" mags. Her body seemed somewhat like a bamboo shoot on the side, including a pair of arms that slung down towards her waist, a pair of legs that barely helped her up to her younger brother's chin, and a pair of boobs that seemed more pre-adolescent. In fact, she actually had to put some tissue paper into a B-cup bra to make it seem like she had more "model-like" qualities! (she didn't know why she did it, but she wanted something on her body to compliment her face) She was wearing a typical "sailor suit" uniform today, complete with a white blouse which was too big for her (thus her usual "stuffing the bra" maneuvers), a green ribbon tied on top and a brown miniskirt as was typically worn for a summer day...mostly so when she wore her brown nylons it would seem more uniform. Even though she had never lived in Japan, she always dressed for school like she did due to her parent's discipline.

"And so the princess has finally felt the pea in her bed," Akira commented with a couple of cereal puffs in his mouth.

"I doubt the pea would be talking about turning into a Volkswagen, wouldn't he?" the older sister complained to her younger brother.

"Well if mom wasn't going to get you up, someone was," Akira quickly commented back. The cereal crunched around as several drops of milk spilled out "Even Rip Van Winkle eventually work up, but if he had your periods..."

Miharu pounded on the table, nearly throwing out some of the puffs in her cereal. "What do you mean "my periods"?" A bit of anger was building up inside of her..."Men don't have to worry about it since they make it voluntarily!"

Just before any more tempers flared, Aoko stared sternly at both Miharu and Akira. "No more crap like that this morning," the mother commented to both of them. "If you want to keep fighting like this, wait until after you leave this house. Remember the rules..."

Both Miharu and Akira repeated them together: "No fighting in the house if we don't want to stir the spirits." It was considered pretty much mantra to the two of them.

A couple minutes later, things were back to normal, as normal as you could consider this, in this house. But Akira got the last word in quietly speaking to himself as he watched his sister eat her cereal: "We'll see who the monster is in a couple weeks."

Enrico Fermi High School was not very far away from the Yoshimune household, which made it advantageous to Mr. and Mrs. Yoshimune when they moved to this city from Japan several years before the birth of their first child. Ataru Yoshimune, the breadwinner of the household, had come to America with his new wife because of the promotion he was given to assistant manager of the overseas branch operations of Akagane Bank, more for his excellent English skills instead of for how well he ran things. In the last several years, he was laid off from this bank due to the various overseas cutbacks Akagane was making, but he quickly found employment as the manager of the local branch of Hamilton Bank, preventing any movement that would disorient anyone in the family. The money they made allowed for a nice, simple middle-class lifestyle as well as plenty of saving for his and his wife's retirement fund. But just because they were in another country didn't mean that the Japanese ethic was lost from their beloved children. Aoko had taught Miharu and Akira Japanese from the moment they were born and tried to take their children to Japan every year to reflect both on their "home" and to expose them to various aspects of their culture. Strangely, both children reflected their "Americaness" and their "Japaneseness" in different ways. Miharu mostly had a quiet, studious personality and usually wore the traditional Japanese clothing such as school uniforms, but embraced American cultural things such as classic rock and freedom of artistic expression. Akira, on the other hand, seemed to be more of the "loud American" in a Japanese boy's body: always trying to make himself heard and independent....yet he had a weakness for Japanese anime and manga. (so much so that he tapes shows off satellite in the wee hours of the morning...when it is prime time in Japan!) However as Japanese as they were, both found themselves Americans first...mostly due to the requirements of the life in this country.

Fermi High was considered by many to be that of a typical inner-city public high school at the dawn of the 21st century. Considering all of the budget cuts and troubles the place had, it was tough for some to realize that the place was actually doing really well even with all of its troubles. Outside of a few "minor" sports and a cutback of buying new textbooks from every other year to about every 5 years, the school was sort of getting by with what the city and state was giving them, not to mention the occasional fundraising drive run by several of the teachers. As was typical of many inner-city schools, students of various ethnic groups, education levels and backgrounds came to this school for one reason or another, whether because of a special program the school offered or because this was the main school of their district. At the top of the heap were those enrolled in the "magnet" program: a special school offered as both part and separate of Fermi where some of the smartest students of the city (usually those who either were rejected or chose not to go to Kepler High for the Gifted) come together for an intensive four-year education program, especially focused in the various maths and sciences, yet also lead many to also partake in the Advanced Placement classes offered by the school and usually lead to some of the best colleges in the country. Although you didn't have to be a magnet student to take those classes, it was usually those students that ended up there. (both Miharu and Akira were members of this program, but it was a lot easier for Akira to enter due to his obsession with math...) Other programs in this school included a business school for potential entrepreneurs, a communications school for those who wanted to get into broadcasting (or for some, show business), a general "lower level" science program, and of course a liberal arts program which had a little of everything....not to mention every kind of student from underachievers to hoodlums.

As was typical on a nice sunny morning at Fermi High, the whole schoolyard was abuzz with activity all around. At the front of the school as the Japanese duo entered the school, several of the black boys were blasting their hip-hop music at full blast where everyone could hear the messages of the latest poet of the streets. (Miharu usually held her ears when she passed this, but Akira found himself getting into the groove if something that didn't involve an intense base or sampling was being played) Along the faded red-brick walls, a couple of scraggly boys in ski caps (even if it was too warm for that sort of thing) were tossing around a bean bag with their worn-out sneakers. Although they wanted to create their own rhythm, those boys found themselves following along with the rhythm and blues of the front of the school. Not too far down from them, a couple of other students were taking in a last stab of nicotine before the start of the school day. Near the hill several Hispanic kids were talking about the latest events, while not too far away a few Korean girls were gossiping over the latest fashion tips. (Koreans were the main "East Asian" group at Fermi High in a school that also had large populations of Chinese, Philippine and a few Vietemese and Cambodian students. For all they knew, Miharu and Akira were the only Japanese kids in the school) At the bottom of the hill, several Indian boys were slapping each other "hi" and hugging each other while a couple of other Indo-Pak girls look on, nodding over how goofy they looked. Nearby, Miharu saw Akira running off to another group of Asian boys about his age with one of them playing some portable game system. Nearby, a couple of black Muslim girls arrived in the other gate to the school, covered in black veils that covered them up for their God's judgment. Yep, even if this place wasn't perfect, it was a picture that seemed to come out of a "politically correct" article found in certain magazines.

Amidst all of the hustle and bustle of the early school day, Miharu found herself heading towards the same direction of Akira, but stopped when she reached a slender, thin boy lounging on the hill near the Hispanics. He was a sloppily dressed white male wearing a black T-shirt featuring Woodstock from the Peanuts strip singing on a tree, as if the little yellow bird was barely hanging on. His jeans weren't any better: they barely were hanging on to his body since he never really liked wearing a belt. His face was being covered up by a book bag, as if he was taking the last of his forty winks before the start of another school day...in fact he probably was. He didn't seem sound asleep since his breathing wasn't that heavy, but he did seem like he was trying to get a bit too comfortable a little to close to the first bell. The Japanese girl sort of knew the boy was like this, mostly because he relaxed like this every day, but she needed a little something from him this morning. Gently, she tugged on the taught handle of the navy-blue book bag in order to introduce him to the light. As it went upwards, it unveiled an unkempt clod of dark-brown hair and a pair of gray aviator glasses covering up two closed, but semi-alert eyes. As the light of the sun started shining on the thin boy's eyelids, several murmurs began to emerge from his mouth...sure he knew it was inevitable this would happen, but he did want a little more sleep after getting up really early to get ready for school.

"Rumplesarkan...who dares awaken the great Professor Tomoe...", the boy mumbled as he raised himself to sit up. His eyes opened to reveal deep brown irises similar to the color of his hair. The white boy was still drowsy, but at least he was up...

"You know, sometimes I wonder who's worse: you or my brother," Miharu responded back to him. Not that she hated anime or anything, but she did think it was a bit too overvalued for an outsider's view of Japanese culture.

"Oh, its you," the sloppy boy responded back. He rubbed his eyes to remove a little of the gunk in them, then continued. "You know you should have called last night if you wanted to get ready for the test. We could have studied together."

"Don't blame me for it slipping my mind, Darren," the Japanese girl responded. "I don't really mind studying on my own. I just need to look at your math notes, that's all." While Miharu was one of the top students in the class, she did realize that this boy was a lot better organized when it comes to taking notes than she was.

The sloppy boy, a little more energetic than the lethargic form he showed earlier, took back his book bag which was on the ground after Miharu took it off of him. Unzipping along the radius of his backpack, he took out a semi-worn out blue notebook with his name on it in some strange script (Miharu thought that maybe he had seen Lord of the Rings one too many times) and with the holes tearing out from the metal spiral holding it together. The Japanese girl's delicate fingers seemed to grab it from his hand...even if she was modest she needed to look them over before their second-period test. Opening it up, she entered a world of functions and cosines that would delight Lewis Carroll...or Darren Christopher Weiss at least. As Miharu got comfortable with looking over the math notes, Darren rezipped up his book bag and laid his head on top of it, knowing that she wouldn't ask him anything since it was just a breezeover before classes.

"Thanks again for letting me do this, Darren," Miharu told him as she got herself stressingly comfortable on the nearby grass. "As for last night, I will remember next time to try and contact you before I forget the promises that I made."

"No problem," the whiskered teen responded back. "I say invest in a PDA, but then again I don't have my own so that wouldn't help. But your dad could probably get you one of those...or maybe a little notebook from a dollar store. How about one of those memory-implant devices?"

"Maybe you should get one of those," Miharu responded. "After messing up that Mac Beth speech you were supposed to memorize, you would do a lot better with one of those implants."

"How was I supposed to know that life was 'a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing?' With all the other dour things he was saying, the speech should have ended earlier," the male responded.

"But then it wouldn't have had the impact that it is supposed to." The studious female was trying to read the notes and talk to her compadre at the same time. "Shakespeare was trying to say..."

"Well if I were Shakespeare I wouldn't have had written this so Polanski would put in all those naked hags. I say send him forward in time, show him Rosemary's Baby and then poof, A+ for me," Darren retorted. He was closing his eyes again mostly to block the sun, since he knew classes were about to begin anyway.

By this point the girl wasn't listening, focusing instead on the notes for her test. All of the stress seemed to be building up with every word he was saying anyway at that moment, so much so that a little drop of sweat beaded down her geisha-like face.

As all of this was going on, the duo was being watched with a little interest. Closer to the gate of the school, several females watched Miharu's and Darren's antics with hawk eyes, plotting the beginning of a strange little scheme...

Once the bell finally rang on the start of another school day, the duo separated into the "trout streams" for the start of another school day. While they did have several classes together, the first one was not one of them. Miharu's first period class was American History, while Darren went to a computer class that emphasized programming. The sailor-suited girl briefly saw Akira in the crowds, but since the din of movement was so loud she couldn't get a chance to speak out to her annoying/cute little brother. Moving through the Fermi halls, she finally reached her first classroom: a brightly lit affair with pictures of some of the great people to live within the middle of the three great states of North America. Several students had already sat down in their "brightly orange desk seats" when Miss Yoshimune arrived in the room. She sat down around front row center, the perfect place to stay aware if she wanted to get all the notes that she took for this class. Nothing really would have happened normally while waiting for the teacher to show up...except that one of the girls from the earlier "group" emerged into the room and heading right towards her. She was a Nordic-looking blonde girl who definitely looked like your typical definition of "beauty standards" in this society. For starters, she had the kind of large "poofy" hair that looked like it was stolen from Farrah Fawcett. One of the strands flowed it way down the left of her two piercing green eyes, trying to hide the mysteries of a semi-obvious girl. Then there was the pink halter-top with the off-color flower on it that seemed to be pointing towards her large, bouncy melons. Some people in the school rumored that she had run off to get silicone implants in some third-world country over one summer, but she kept claiming that puberty had treated her well. Her lower half didn't make things any better: she wore extremely tight blue jeans mostly to show her tight butt off and hide away her long, slender legs. In other words, outside of any genetic disorders that could show up later, she was the kind of girl that all females wanted to be and all males wanted to put to bed...

Clomping along in a pair of new designer sneakers, the "slut/goddess" went along the dirty Fermi tiles like they were the runways of Paris. Normally she would had just slided over to the back of the classroom and placed herself in one of the corners where she would have just taken her notes while gossiping to whoever was around her. But this day she passed by the first aisle she should have headed towards and walked down the front until she reached the middle aisle where the short-haired Japanese girl was sitting with both her history and math notes standing side by side. Miharu was reading the math notes trying to come to grips with derivatives when she noticed the green eyes peering down towards her. Turning upwards, she stared directly into the other girl's eyes, looking beyond the hair strands and looking at her and trying to understand what she wanted. The blond had never gone directly to her before, so she knew something was going to happen.

"I don't get you," the blond said in a brash, but quiet voice. "What makes you so good? Here you are, getting all of these great grades and yet you need someone else's notes when it come to taking a test."

"I'm not perfect," Miharu calmly responded back to her. "I do well in studying, but I admit that I am not as adept with numbers as other people such as Darren. I rather use his notes to my own. But what about..."

"I don't really need it to succeed," the blond responded back. "It just comes to me anyway...how else would I get into such advance classes without much effort?"

"Money," Miharu said with a little bit of sarcasm. She then added "Well OK, this is a public school and all, but your parents probably had to pay a few more tax dollars...unless you were the one behind the windfall Fermi gets."

This remark caused a few people already in the classroom to start chuckling...except for one black boy in the center of the room that started guffawing at the comment. The blond remained calm, but she did seem to have a bit of aggravation appearing in her eyes.

"Speak for yourself, Nip!" she retorted back. "Your parents probably pay the same amount of taxes, but you don't have to worry about getting in because you are all geniuses! Stealing all of our jobs due to your cheaper labor and bigger brains! You're here to take over our country and turn us into our slaves!"

"Is it just me or are you starting with those 80's clichés again," Miharu said back. She felt really offended by everything the busty blond said at that moment, but had to keep her calm because it was her nature. She continued. "For one thing I have been an American all my life and will probably work here too eventually. For another, Japan has been through many booms and recessions just like this country. We're just as bright and as lazy as you no matter what language you speak or how much money you have in your account. So take back your stereotypes and..."

The fight probably would have continued if the teacher had not come in at that very moment. A little red in the face, the blond returned to the back of the classroom where she would stew over her own thoughts. Miharu immediately put away the math notes and prepared for another normal lesson. But before it started, she breathed to herself, "If she's bringing up clichés, maybe she should look in a mirror."

Not much really happened during the first period after the big fight, outside of the scheduled study on Reconstruction America and the carpetbaggers. But as the class ended 55 minutes later, the blond stared once again at Miharu with viciousness in her eyes. The sailor-suited girl stayed behind a couple minutes to wait before heading off to math class, mostly since both were heading in the same direction.

Outside of one class, both Miss Yoshimune and the snobbish Nordic girl pretty much shared the entire schedule of high level classes, both being some of the brightest females of Fermi High. (the only class the two didn't share was the final period: Miharu was taking a composition class and the blonde was in AP Spanish due to taking it starting in middle school) But until this day there really wasn't any reason for either of them to speak to each other, either inside or out of the classroom. Miharu usually kept to herself most of the time unless she had to study for certain things she needed help with while the other girl kept within her clique of "cheerleading geniuses", a group that proved that beauty, brains and high kicks can mesh together into a viscous, but strong fluid. The black-haired East Asian girl found herself going home after school unless there was an occasional study group or a meeting of the National Honors Society; the blonde stuffed responsibilities not only for cheering everything from football to badminton, but she was lining up her position to eventually become the assistant editor to the school yearbook once she got around to her senior year, not to mention honor stuff as well. Miharu thought and thought as she wandered towards the impending math test, not about figures that would show up, but the figure of that blonde standing over her, the Aphrodite to her own Athena; the Reese Witherspoon to her....well, the closest she could think of was Margaret Cho, but she would do for now. Why her? Why today? And why get offended over a math test? Miharu knew it wasn't going to get better as she got closer to the test room when she heard the voice of Darren speak out from down the hall. (he was a bit loud)

"Listen, you have to get things straight, Barbie." (yes, the blonde's name was actually Barbara Midge Kenneth, but considering her looks everyone called her the shorter name...for obvious reasons) "You claimed a few days ago that you and your girls would handle the studying on your own. I promised Miharu the notes and she had first rights to them."

"Well sometimes I have to check my notes with someone outside of them," Barbie spoke similarly loud as it echoed from the halls. "I do have a standard to keep up with."

"But if you wanted to look at the notes, you should have asked a few days ago and I would have arranged something," Darren said as Miharu got closer to the classroom. "Miharu asked first and I..."

"Miharu, Miharu, always with that girl," the blond said. "Why don't you just give her an engagement ring already?"

It was about this point that the Japanese girl entered the room where she saw Darren, sitting in the second seat from the right in the front row of the classroom in a bright blue desk connected to a plastic chair. Barbie was sitting right next to him on the end, a little red in the face with what she was saying and leaning over as if she was trying to use her cleavage to win the duel. Darren then responded "Listen, its not like I even know her very well. She asks to study with me days before a test and I help her out. Its been that way since we both started here and it will probably be this way until we both have diplomas and go our separate ways to different colleges. If you want my help, you should arrange something..."

"Well how do you think I feel?" Barbie interrupted brashly. She plopped right onto the desk where Darren stared at the lacy bra she was wearing. She continued, "Do you think maybe I would want to talk to the math wizard of this school before I get started on the test?"

"Well Kim Cho Pang takes math at the university so I have to go with you," the blonde responded.

It was about here that Miharu sat down again at front-row center and prepared to give back Darren's math notes. But as she adjusted her self to prepare for the upcoming test, Barbie extended her slenderous arm across the scruffy boy's desk and right towards the sailor-suited girl. She then stared again with her vicious green eyes and bursted out "It's your fault! He likes you more than me and that’s why he won't give me those notes! I'm telling you this isn't over yet Nip!" And with one final glare Barbie stood up as best as her tight blue jeans could get her to and strided in her designer sneakers all the way back to the back of the class. A couple of other students stared at the whole sordid affair, but many of them were in the midst of cramming the final nodules of information into their synapses to pay attention.

With all of this over, Darren quickly turned to Miharu, adjusted his glasses and softly said: "Sorry this crap got all 90210 over here. Something happened this morning before you showed up and Babs got all demented. I'll tell you a little later."

"Like I really want to know," the pale-faced Japanese girl said as she took out the messy notebook to return to him. Considering all the abuse she took earlier from the Nordic girl, she didn't want to make things even messier. Besides, all that crap had to be wiped from her mind if she wanted to concentrate on the math test that really mattered.

Yet again not much really happened that is relevant to this story during this period. The pre-calculus test was given and Miharu did her hardest to cope with the stress of all she had to put up with, both in personal means and in her calculations. Barbie was on her mind so much that she triple-checked her equations to make sure she did them well. As for Darren, he finished the test about halfway through the period and pulled out a copy of Fahrenheit 451 which he had to look over for English later. Barbie, not surprisingly, finished a couple minutes later. Miharu was in the middle of quintuple checking when time ran out...even though she did pretty much get them all.

"Now tell me: what is Bradbury's purpose of the usage of 'The Seashell' in his novel?"

"In order to show the artificiality of nature as accepted by the people of this society who would rather have simulation over reality," a small black girl answered.

"Well actually I thought it was Bradbury's insight that predicted the overtechnological reliance of our future society in that we rather listen to our walkmans and take part in interactive events without any connections to the reality that we are forced to live in," further added an Asian boy.

"I was thinking mostly of the first answer, but the second one would do fine as well," the teacher responded.

Third period for the majority of the students in this group usually meant English class...which by this point in time began to further emphasize various works of English literature not only to prepare for future testing and critical composition writing but, if all went according to plan, should instill a lifelong passion for reading within everyone in the class. However, one of the main differences of this class to some of the others was the informal structure of everything: while they still read a lot of books and had to do the occasional essay test, they didn't have really much homework outside of the reading. Another, more obvious, difference in class structure was that this teacher, a gray-haired plump woman, chose to have the class meet in a round circle so that all would be able to both give and receive the input being made. Yet again, Miharu and Darren found themselves sitting near each other, but not because they had to. The Japanese girl always found herself sitting along the "9 O’clock" position in the classroom, which was to the side of the teacher but far from the door to the class. Darren usually sat at "12 O’clock" behind the teacher, mostly due to his dislike of English even if it was easy this year. But because he wanted to get something out that he couldn't say before the test in math, he decided to spend this day sitting next to his "target". Barbie was also in this class, sitting around "5 O’clock" near a red-haired pigtailed girl that was usually seen in her little group. Occasionally during this class too she stared in the direction of Miharu, still obviously upset over something, as if she was the soulless robotic dog aiming for its target.

"You know sometimes I think the teacher is getting too much out of this," Darren said as she responded to the two previous comments made about Fahrenheit 451. He leaned his head on top of his right arm, trying to think and relax at the same time. He continued by saying "While science-fiction is usually used in a constructive manner to comment about the society that one is presently living within, many would probably consider their content to be either too idealistic or too nihilistic..."

"So then why do you read them," Miharu asked back to her compadre.

"Because of their unique perspective on the world," he responded. "Anime is similar in that it is like a long novel, usually science fiction, yet uses the visual and the oral to create a great story in 13 to 26 chapters...well, outside the long ones."

"Tell me about it," the Asian girl said as she leaned her head in depression. Not only was Barbie's insanities and the math test getting to her, but she couldn't help but compare Darren at this moment to Akira: both of them were really smart, but seemed one-note when it came to her own culture. Then again Darren probably had little else to work with outside the visual medium, so it wasn't like she could never forgive him for such repetitive chatter.

Darren then turned his head towards his female counterpart, smiled a strangely mischievous grin similar to certain serial killers and said, "So I guess you want to know about Barbie now, huh?"

"Not really, but you're going to blab it anyway so I'm stuck. So make it quick before Mrs. Percy calls on either of us to answer."

"OK. I guess this whole thing started at the end of the school day yesterday. It was just after the end of the school day, not too long after the final bell. I was starting to head home to get some homework done after crashing from a day of filling up my gray matter. All was alright, nothing seemed out of alignment. When I first saw the blonde with her friends, I didn't really notice them. They were in their own little world and I was in mine...and trust me, unless she was Sailor Venus I wouldn't normally notice a blonde outside of typical outside encounters. Not really my type of female outside those "dirty blondes"...don't ask me why. But then, just after seeing them huddle up for a couple of seconds, Barbie separated from her group and seductively walked towards me in that way that's supposed to drive men wild. Then..."

"Mr. Weiss! How does this talk about Miss Kenneth to Miss Yoshimune pertain to Fahrenheit 451 and the meanings in this novel?" Apparently Darren had talked a bit too loudly in his little story and attracted the attention of Mrs. Percy and several students in the classroom. Barbie let out a little chuckle at the buffoonery of the whiskered male before returning to talking to her pigtailed friend.

Darren then said the first thing that came to his mind to get things back on track: "Why is it that Beatty said that comic books and certain magazines were kept in this society that disallowed reading? I know plenty of people who learned how to read from comic books in the first place, so shouldn't they be banned in this society too. And there are probably some people out there who read Playboy for the articles."

Mrs. Percy almost answered this, but the short black girl from before stepped in first. "Beatty's conversation with Montag was trying to emphasize a future where humanity has lost the ability to critically think and would like having all of their answers and ideas handed to them instantaneously. Thus, with the elimination of things such as books and magazines, they would be able to abide both to the political correctness of this world and remove the need of thinking when someone is thrown the visual input. Assumedly, these comic books and pornographic magazines are also without words, but since they already rely on the visual without need for words, they were able to be kept in Bradbury's 'thoughtless future'.

"Well I always thought comics was full of convoluted conversations but this is ridiculous." Darren concluded.

With all of the strangeness of the first three periods of class, the fourth period was at least a little bit of respite amidst the chaos of the Fermi day. For many of those in the advanced classes in this grade, not to mention assorted others dependant on their schedule, the fourth period was lunchtime, the refueling station between the weary beginning and the anticipatory ending of the school day. As usual, the black and white-tiled cafeteria was crawling with all sorts of students, each of which were finding seats all over the place with the designated group that they chose to be with: it was similar to the hubbub of the start of the school day, but a lot less crowded. As was typical on a day where she wasn't studying for a later-period assignment or test, Miharu found herself sitting by herself, even as she ate a slender peanut-butter sandwich at an empty end of a table that found an entire group of Indo-Pak students chowing down at the other end. Considering that she didn't bring any trouble or problems with her, they didn't mind her sitting near their group.

As she bit through another sticky piece of the nutty bread, she contemplated everything that had happened on this day: her brother Akira waking her up, her mother's pressures, the math test, the general pressures of being a student, and especially the sudden discomtempt of Barbie towards her due to something between her and Darren. With each bite, another thought of her personal problems entered her mind, swirling around and making itself the biggest problem in her life until the next bite was made. The Japanese girl's mind became more and more stressed, like a balloon that was building up with the gases of the world. And when her stress really got to her, she knew that it would affect her physically as well. With too much on her mind, her heart rate would increase the blood flow around her body and her muscles would usually tense up, making it difficult to do anything Miharu knew that she needed a release. A way for all of these stresses to just melt away into nothingness and allowing her to return to her normal, everyday existence. And to her, the best way of releasing all of it was just by talking to someone. But whom? It wasn't like she wanted it to be Darren: he was part of the problem in the first place and had his history class at this very moment. She wished it could have been her little brother there to talk to, but he had one of the earliest lunches in the school (2nd period) and she probably wouldn't see him again until they both headed back home. Maybe the Indo-Pak kids? One of them, a big, short male with a beard, was sort of in several of her classes already but it wasn't like they were friendly either...although he did occasionally come to her for history tutoring. She turned with another gulp of peanut-butter in her mouth and looked around to see the multitudes. Hundreds of students of all races, religions, sexes and such crowded together in a giant stage that is a microcosm for humanity. And amongst the multitudes, there really existed hundreds of little egotists, each one looking out for themselves while trying to fit in with the situations that they found themselves in. With all of these people looking out for themselves, who would want to listen to the stresses of one of their own? Perhaps...

"Hey, Yoshimune! I need you for a moment!"

Miharu turned to her side to search for the echo that could have made her finally stand out. But what she saw was actually one of Barbie's "cheerleader geniuses": the red-headed pigtailed girl that sat next to the blonde in the English class. She was dressed a bit more modestly than miss "show them off": wearing a nice top that hid any potential curves and hidden a bit more by a flannel shirt she wore over it. (while she didn't mind her looks, she really didn't want to flaunt them off) She also had a tight pair of jeans, but wore an immense belt hanging over her like a black leather hula hoop that gave unneeded attention to her slim waist. Her two pigtails arched from her the sides of her head and came down to her shoulders, trying to make her look more juvenile than she let on. Her face was cute as well, with two black eyes, a small nose, and strangely capped off by a pair of metal braces that were trying to straighten her teeth. If this girl wasn't associated with Barbie's group, she could have made a better life as a model for the grunge generation. Yet considering everything that happened today, Miharu didn't need any more trouble from the "cheerleaders" as well as from their "ringleader".

"What is it Lynne?" the Japanese girl said with a muffled up mouth. She had to respond quickly and forgot for a moment about the sandwich she was eating. (as it sometimes happened when in the midst of contemplation)

"I really don't understand much of what's going through Barbie's mind right now, but you've better watch what you are doing," the fire-haired girl said. As she said this, she was picking some of the food particles stuck inside her braces so she wouldn't have to worry about them. There seemed to be a bit more innocence in her eyes than in the malice that the busty blonde had shown this day. Lynne continued. "When there is something that she wants, Barbie will stop at nothing, and I do mean that, to get it."

"So what else is new?", Miharu coyly said. She had finally finished off the peanut-butter and was sitting with a juicy golden-delicious apple rolling in her hand, preparing to eat it after she was done speaking with the pigtailed brunette. She didn't know whether to trust what she was saying or not, so she just kept her mouth shut as Lynne continued onwards.

"Trust me, if you don't want anything happening to you or Darren, you've better find some sort of way of getting back on her good side before its too late. Babs may have something planned because of this whole thing and I don't want anyone to get hurt, especially you."

The pale-skinned Japanese girl was trying to listen to what Lynne had to say to her, but it was Barbie once again that stole her attention. Her mechanical dog eyes of green were coldly looking at the both of them as she munched down on the remains of a salad that she had for her own lunch. Sitting right by her were several other girls that she and the pigtailed girl associated with in their clique, including another blonde with shorter hair than the vampish leader similar to Miharu's, a chocolate-skinned black girl with hair that resembled a puffed-up sea urchin, another brunette with glasses and waist-length hair, and an Asian girl that seemed to be wearing a purple wig with sparkles all over them. While she wasn't quite sure all of them were on the cheerleading squad with Barbie, Miharu had seen several of them in the same classes as herself...and never really talked to any of them outside of certain contexts before today. Both the short-hair blonde and the other brunette seemed to be looking similar to their leader with their cold, uncaring looks. The black and Asian girls were looking too, but seemed to have their minds elsewhere than the problems at hand.

"I'm just wondering, but has Barbie or any of those other girls put you up to warning me for whatever is about to occur," the sailor-suited girl asked her flannel-shirt audience. "Or are you somehow actually concerned over what you've seen so far?"
"I already know my own consequences for this action," Lynne responded. "Just because Babs is my friend doesn't mean that I agree with everything that she does. As long as you don't bother her, she won't bother you. I just wonder how smart either of us are for doing something like this."

"Maybe ignorance is the worst fear of them all," Miharu quietly responded.

On that note, Lynne turned around and went back to her table while Miharu returned to her own contemplations of all that was occurring. As she stared out into the vacant space, she felt a bit discouraged that she forgot to ask the brunette exactly why her leader was so angry at her today. While she did say some good things, it didn't ease anything within her mind...if it only just made her a bit more stressed. What she saw next didn't help her case: as she watched on, she saw Lynne return to the table with most of the girls turning away from her for speaking with the "enemy". Then, to her own shock, she saw Barbie get up from her lunching spot and start tugging on Lynne's right pigtail with her own right hand while slapping her on her left cheek with her left hand! Whatever she had just learned was forbidden information and Miharu now realized that. She just hoped this wasn't a premonition for something even worse as predicted....

Not really that much happened in the next semester that didn't already occur earlier in the day. Physics class down in the basement annex of the school (a yellow trailer-like structure that extends out towards the yard and used by many students to get in who knew that it was pretty much unlocked long before school started) went off with all that had already happened. Miharu tried to pay attention to the lesson of the kinetics of atomic particles in response to its temperature, but every time she turned around she saw Barbie staring looking at the notes the bald teacher was putting up on the board and the other eye on her. Instead of a dog, the Japanese girl thought that maybe she would have been a chameleon (like one from Madagascar, not one of those little anoles from the southern United States) staring in two different directions at the same time. Occasionally the stare would turn towards Darren, who for this class was actually in the top-center of the middle row going vertically, but Barbie noticed that for some reason the venom didn't seem to reach out towards him as much as it had to her. Instead of contemplating the energy expended by a molecule of water at 15 degrees Kelvin, she wondered the comments that Lynne had made during lunch: what if she was getting too deep into all of this? What if there was more to this jealousy than meets the eye? Unfortunately, her priorities as a student came before any hell she was going through and she had to do a molar conversion before figuring this equation out.

If there was any weaknesses that Miharu truly had in her entire schedule at Fermi High, 6th period brought them all out. For those within her group (herself included), this was the time of gym classes every day (outside of lab periods on Mondays for physics). Now there was one usual reason why Miss Yoshimune never really liked this class, and while it wasn't one legitimate enough to get out of it, it wasn't like she would not do the class and get an instant failing grade. This was how she was never any good when it came to sports or various physical activities. Sure she did some physical activity to get out, including walking to and from school every day and an occasional walk around the block several times dependant on the weather. But in a class that required running around a track one day, playing games such as soccer or basketball the next, and all of the various physical activities they tested her on from rope climbing to pull ups to sit ups and jumping across a sandy pit, a girl who was nothing but basically skin and bones, with maybe a couple ligaments and muscles keeping her from being a gelatinous blob, would probably cough up both her lungs and figuratively apply tons of pain-killers after everything she had to do in this class. Of course since gym class was graded on participation instead of being athletic, it was sort of an easy A to achieve. But there was another reason behind her disdain for the class, especially apparent today of all days. All students were required to wear a t-shirt with the Fermi name on it, most likely the gray one with the logo and the words "Fermi Hurricanes" on top (someone made that their mascot due to how well they thought "Hurricane" rhymed with Fermi...but everyone just usually calls their teams the "Fermi Hurris") as well as gym shorts in the school colors of red, black and/or white. While she was quite adept at hiding her "bamboo shoot" frame from everyone normally through the usage of her bra-stuffing and the skirt of her sailor-suit, Miharu's obvious physical deficiencies made themselves present whenever 6th period rolled around. And with this grudge that Barbie suddenly had towards her, she didn't want to add any more fuel to the fire. As she changed into the uniform for class, she made sure to stay within her normal bra instead of switching into the sports variety. Sure it felt really uncomfortable, but it was a tactic for diversion.

After getting into her "uniform", the Japanese girl followed a line of other girls, magnet and otherwise, out a pair of big green doors that obviously looked like they were painted recently to the outdoors. Staring outwards towards a couple of grated windows put up by the door, she noticed the sky was a light blue, but there were several stringy clouds floating overhead creating a deceptive feel that the sun could be blocked out at any moment. Heading down the gray concrete pathway through a field of "brownish-green" grass, all of the girls (at least she thought it was all of them) walked in a monotonous line-up with what seemed to be rhythm, but was just ironic considering all of the girls were probably walking in their own pace. Walking past most of the fields, the lineup walked right into a nearby stadium which was pretty much the football field surrounded by a reddish-brown racing track for running. The males already were inside the stadium as they had been lead out about a minute or two ago, thrown about all around with several stretching themselves on the football field and others joking around by running mock races backwards. Miharu didn't mean to look around mostly because looking around meant was usually a premonition to more trouble coming up. But there, not too far away on the edge between the track and the field, Darren was seemingly having, um, some sort of conversation with a giant of a boy who was yelling right back at him. His large body dwarfed Darren's with a complex combination of fat and muscle being hidden under his shirt, although his thighs were large enough to crush anyone out there. What made it even weirder was that the sun had hit the two speakers perfectly so that Darren's glasses were reflecting themselves right off the arched, seemingly shaved bald head that gleamed with the yellow rays of our nearby star. While she couldn't make it out too well from the line, she did hear some of what was being spoken even from this far away due to the loud nature of both combatants.

"...admit it! She's way too above you and would never want a freaky hairy weirdo like you!"

"Well I would except that I have to consider the circumstances. She only wanted my math notes!"

"Not from what she told me! She claimed that you asked her out using it as an excuse to practice for the math test!"

"Well I don't see it that way. She asked me for the math notes long after I promised them to someone else for today's test! I was hoping to use them last night so I couldn't release them at my will without any guarantees."

The huge bald man boy snorted out several puffs of angers, with a couple drops of snot becoming the steam of his release. He seemed to stare out at the whiskered male with a huge sense of aggravation, like a bulldog staring down a wire-haired dachshund for control of a certain tree. Darren was truly shaking in his boots...well, sneakers actually, but he was quite frightened of the immense figure that was watching him with the same evil stare that Barbie had given towards Miharu all this day. His thin frame shrunk into an black ant, threatened to be squished by the foot below without any means of defending himself like his red counterparts. But a whistle, emerging from the direction of the lineup of girls, brought an end to the standoff at this very moment. The bald monster, realizing that he didn't want any more detention than he already had this year, looked at his sparring partner one last time where he simply said: "You, me, after school...this will finally end." And with that statement, he stomped away as if he was a rhinoceros walking away after charging to protect his land from an invading predator towards the "liberal-arts" group also having gym at this moment. His bald head seemed to align with the sun in the high western sky, like it would be eclipsed by it at twilight.

After the confrontation, the boys immediately lined up right beside the girls in two separate lines: a masculine outside with a creamy feminine filling. They were all lined up by their own height at this very moment, which meant that Miharu was towards the front of one of the female lines while Darren was about somewhere not quite in the middle, but not quite in the back to accommodate those such as the immense guy whom he just spoke with. The monster of a man found himself conveniently placed right near Barbie, who was near the back of the female end of the opposite lines since she had quite a height difference compared to others of her own sex. Someone noticed the two of them somehow talking to one another during this whole lineup waiting for the teacher's first orders, but no one could really verify anything at this time. The other "cheerleading geniuses" were also throughout the lineup, with Miharu standing right behind the cute black girl from English class but right in front of the sea-urchin haired black who was staring at her similarly to many of the other cheerleaders. The short haired blond was in the other female line around the middle, while the glasses-wearing brunette was slightly in front of Darren prospectively in the same line. (he slightly blushed looking at her for some reason) The pigtailed Lynne was also in Miharu's line, but around the same place as the short-haired blonde in the other line. Finally, the purple-haired Asian was at the very front of the same line with Barbie, keeping on her artificial locks even with all of the sweat and dirt that was potentially about to cover it up.

Not too long after the line formations were formalized, both teachers for the gym class appeared in front of both lines to lead them for another gym of running around in circles. The male was a slightly large black male with a boxy shaved haircut and a thick mustache covering the top of his lip like shrubbery. His build seemed to suggest that he used to play football once upon a time. The female was a middle-aged female who looked sort of emaciated, but in pretty good shape for a person of her age. She obviously had signs of wear and tear even from her wrinkled face, but covered up any of her potential problems with a school-colored sweat suit of red and black.

The black man, slightly straightening a little of his jacket from the creases and wrinkles in it, stared out towards the mostly attentive class (the large boy was cleaning out his ear and didn't want any distraction) and with a booming voice began giving out the instructions for the day.

"All right. I know all of you are ready to go out and kick some butt out there, but you might as well save your strength this time. We're working on endurance today, and what better way to test that out than to run around laps at your own pace for the entire class!"

Most of the class sighed from relief over the announcement of the day of laps. Some of them were relaxed that the teachers didn't want them to do anything more while others, mostly those who hated running or physical activities, were a bit upset that it was pretty much a class of constant movement, leaving them winded after everything they would be through. Miharu didn't like the idea of running the entire class either, but since she was pretty much going to take a brisk walk instead of flat out bolting, it wasn't going to be that bad.

After a couple of quick stretches lead by the middle-aged woman to limber up their legs for the run, everyone lined up in similar lines to how they were in front of their teachers. Then, with the sharp metallic blast of wind from a whistle around the black teacher's neck, everyone dispersed like atoms separating as a gaseous structure, remaining the same structure yet thinning out across a larger space. As the swarm of red, white and black started making their way along the spongy reddish-brown material, the stragglers (Miharu included) began to gather together in a small lump towards the back of the mass movement, moving at their own leisurely pace, yet fast enough to qualify them in their teacher's opinion. They were a mixed bag of the liberal-arts and magnet students in this grade, some of them thin and scraggly as the Japanese girl, others were quite larger but weren't usually that physically active as they were outside this class. One of them was actually a large Indian boy that some people claimed was on the school wrestling team, but considering his bulky upper body wasn't really made for running, he at least had a reason for not blasting the rest of the little atoms.

After about a few minutes, the distance of certain runners quickly became evident. While the cluster who didn't really move that quickly was about halfway around the track, some of the fastest students were already beginning their second even at their slower endurance speeds. The middle-age woman, watching them at the line where everyone started holding up a pitch-black stopwatch, kept telling everyone to not go too fast or else they will wear out their muscles while coughing up a possible lung. The black man was just watching them pass by on a disgusting green lawn chair that belong to the school, using this "endurance training" as a little bit of a personal day off for some silly reason. They didn't care about anyone passing since they were dulled out working stiffs similar to the dulled-out feeling among many of the students at this moment. They just wanted constant movement from the start of the class until several minutes before the end when everyone had to return to their locker room. It was as if they were having as bad of a day as the students and really didn't want to teach or officiate anything.

Miharu kept at a pretty moderate pace, so much so that she was about the middle of the "slow runners" on the track. She could have been close to the front actually, but her continuing doubts about everything that had happened this day kept holding her back physically as well as mentally. In particular, it had to do with Darren's conversation with that big bald manboy that was bugging her. While she didn't really keep very good track of his name, she did recall that he was on the football team in one of the defensive positions...but which one she didn't really know. But from how it sounded, he was angry because someone had an interest in Darren...most likely a female since he sort of heard stories about the occasional girls he hit upon.

SWOOSH....in the blink of an eye one of the fastest members of the class, a tall black haired boy, passed the slaggers. The lapping had begun.

Where was she....oh yeah, it was a female that caused this situation between baldie and Darren, but which one? Then again, there was something else that the Japanese girl realized at this moment. Darren wasn't really interested in any females in Fermi. Sure he interacted with them but...

SWOOSH...a medium sized girl now passed by.

...lost her place again. Was it about Darren and females? Yes it was. Well Darren wasn't gay, as Miharu knew from the outset of this whole thing. If Darren was gay, why would he keep the picture of Asuka Langely Sohryu in a pocket of...

SWOOSH...now it was a couple of the black boys, followed by a short brown-haired girl...

...in a pocket of what? Well it couldn't be his pants since he probably would have risked washing it by now and since its on cardboard or plastic he can't do that. It would wrinkle all up and get all mushy. Oh yeah, it was his book bag. Anyway, it was about a girl somehow...was it Barbie again? With all the coincidental hell she had been causing today she wouldn't be surprised if the blonde pulled something else just to try and peeve her off. Make her think that she even cared about a good source of math notes. Well sure she did care about Darren but it wasn't like that. She cared about a lot of the people at Fermi since...

BAM! Something that felt like a semi-tough hit smashed right into Miharu's left shoulder. Trying to somehow hold the pain in, she looked ahead...it was that short-haired blonde from Barbie's entourage. The pain wasn't that bad...at least not enough to stop running.

...well maybe Barbie was planning something...but why would Darren be so crucial to it? Its not like she wanted anything outside of...

BAM! A strange feeling brushed right against her leg braising it...the black spiky-haired girl from Barbie's group ran out of the pack as she looked outward...she had to keep going...

...what was Barbie's relation to Darren? What did it have to do with the bald football star? And why does this have to do with why she was treated so badly all day? Barbie and the football guy...Barbie and the football...

SWOOSH...Barbie and two more members of her group pass along by, Lynne and the girl with the glasses. The malicious blonde continued staring behind her looking back at the pack she left behind...particularly that certain Japanese girl. Lynne ran right beside with a strange look of concern as if she knew something was really going to happen. The glasses girl was a little bit behind, but not too much so to have her longer hair tickle the nose of Miharu as she passed.

...that football player was connected to Barbie a lot more than she had thought! She recalled seeing someone who looked just like him once hanging out with those cheerleaders. The old "cheerleaders get the football player" cliché! A cliché that was severly outdated but relevant towards what was going on. So if those two really were something then that meant that his argument with Darren was about...

BAM! Just like an earthquake a force drove right into her feet and tumbled her down along the track and towards the brown-greenish grass. Several of the back-runners, including the large Indian wrestler, immediately run off the track and come to her aid. A couple of the other "slouchers" picked up another girl who had fallen down in the whole incident: another Asian girl with sparkly purple hair. A couple seconds later the middle-aged female gym instructor ran out across the track and towards her fallen students, frustrated a little that her peaceful, easy gym period had to have an accident. As she turned down towards the downed girls, Miharu somehow got up from the trouble with nothing but the bruises she obtained from the swipe-bys earlier. Her usually pale skin seemed a little redder from the blood somehow rushing through her, but everything else otherwise was alright. She returned to the track and walked the remainder of the period, watching as everyone pretty much passed her by, including Barbie's group and Darren, to whom she wanted to talk to and finally end this insanity, but not at this instant. The Asian girl also eventually got back up, but didn't return to running until she picked up a few glittery stars that had fallen out of her wig. Amazingly, it had remained on her head somehow with only a slight movement to reveal the black hair prevalent in East Asian societies.

With all of the potential sweat, blood and tears drained from the students of the 6th period gym class, Miharu headed off down the hall towards her final class of the day....thank goodness for her. After all of the reading, running and high-level 'rithmatic she had done for the day, not to mention ruminations, rudeness and rowdy behavior, the Japanese girl was lucky that her last subject of the day was one of her favorites: creative writing. Although she was one of the top 20 students at Fermi High (she never really wanted to know her own ranking due to her own measures to prevent herself from comparing herself to anyone else, especially those cheerleaders), Miharu prided her own imagination as one of her few bright spots within her own psyche. And through the power of several overlapping nerve synapses pushing around a stick filled with graphite to create the symbols of the native language of her home country, she was able to unleash realistic fantasy, fantastic reality, or whatever just came to mind. And with all that was on her mind this day, she really needed to let it all loose in the most convenient way possible.

The creative writing classroom was similar pretty much to many of the other Fermi classrooms: a white room that seemed to be made of concrete brick painted to deceptively look like a type of plastic. The chairs surrounding the room were the kind with two dark-green slabs bolted onto a bent metallic frame, looking as if they were barely holding up the pieces even though they were built a lot better than everyone claimed they were. Several bulletin boards surrounded the classroom covered in various newspapers, each one holding the contents of a different section and updated whenever the teacher felt like taking things down and putting up new ones. At the front of the room stood a green chalkboard a little lighter in color compared to the green desks in the class, with this surrounded by the portraits of several of the great writers of the 20th Century, both of page and of stage. The desk for the teacher was found on the far left-hand side of the class near pictures of Faulkner and Ellison (which were ironic since Mr. Anthony Murray, or "Giles" as he was called by certain students due to an uncanny resemblance to a certain character from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", liked all of the authors and just put his desk there in order to have a better perspective on the entire class), cluttered up with various assignments from a couple of previous English classes that he taught before relaxing with his special creative writing group at the end of the day. Mr. Murray was out of the classroom for the moment, but he had a specific assignment already up on the greenish chalkboard for those who wanted to get a head start on things:

Write a story from your own imagination that reflects a different point of view of the world.

Sitting down in her typical spot in the classroom (about front-row center), Miharu took out a three-subject semi-ragged notebook (not as ragged as Darren's calculus one though) that she mostly used for this class, but occasionally needed for spare paper in case she forgot a notebook at home. The Japanese girl didn't know if she wanted to listen to Mr. Murray's assignment this time around. She had too much on her mind and needed to get them all out in order to protect her own state of mind. Quickly breezing through several pages filled with all sorts of topics and writings, she got to the first page of tablet that she could find and put her pen to the paper:

What is life...what the hell does it all mean...is any of the hell that we go through from day to day worth it in order to face one humiliation after another...as much as I love him I couldn't stand Akira this morning...why does he have to act like such a pesky little brother when I'm not feeling right...mother, mother get out of my business mother, I want to fight sometimes mother...why do I even have to take calculus in the first place...I don't mind math but this has no implications on my future...you can screw those derivations and the square root of the sine of 45 degrees, it all just status and statistics unless you are an engineer...Darren why can't I be forgetful, huh...I know I had to study last night but my mind is not a perfect machine don't expect my faults to bring me to success...I can't stand you Barbie..you and your perfect face and your perfect hair and your perfectly big boobs and the way your perfect unfrayed jeans complement your perfect genes and allows you to shake your perfect butt in front of those oblivious boys and those closeted lesbians...but what I hate the most is that how you happen to be perfect looking as well as those dang perfect grades and those perfect connections and that perfect family with their dream job...if she's the culmination of what a person can go for with the American dream then I might as well be Canadian...maybe I can find some unknown thread that will lead me to Vancouver and a Japanese community that probably won't even know I exist since I am too American for them...maybe that's just too much of an external thing but I happen to like relaxing to Springsteen and the Beatles instead of to some koto music in the middle of a blasted bamboo forest...what is the purpose of education anyway beyond a certain grade outside of class and stature it wasn't like this once but those darn higher-ups make us keep going until we are too exhausted and our brains collapse...the world is just screwing itself anyway like Bradbury wrote...obsessed with our imaginary worlds and our personal egos with no care of the poverty and the war and the criminal ideas...lets throw it all away cause we're all bored...one of these days the dog is going to come and bite us all in the butt and the bombs will drop as we all die our meaningless worthless deaths...the bomb doesn't discriminate between me or Barbie or Darren or those annoying brats of Barbie or that Indian boy who sat near me at lunch or the poor or the wicked or the wise or the high-ups or the low-downs or the middle-managers or the Christians or the Muslims or the Buddhists or the Jews or the Shinto or the atheists...all it knows is pure clean annihilation...annihilation that cleans the world of all but the cockroaches...a universal Hiroshima that will bring pure peace to the world...

Miharu couldn't bring herself to continue what she was writing. Was her anger over this trivial day really bad enough to desire the annihilation of everything? It was just venting, she though. Venting that she needed to get out of the way to finally bring this hell of a day to an end.

When Mr. Murray did finally return to the classroom, he looked at the prose written by Miss Yoshimune with a strange shiver lurching over his jacket. He didn't say how effective or well the passage was, but he did whisper something about a Virgina Woolf vibe as he walked along from her desk to another one.

With the smashing of the hammer into the bell, the signal went out which signified the end of another school day at Fermi High. The streams that had entered the school early that morning were now crowding together in another molecular stream, filing themselves out of the doors that let them in earlier and many of them dispersing like a gas through the gates towards their after-school destination. With many of the molecules flowing outwards, several little atoms remained behind for one reason or another somewhere in and around the school. Several students flowed in an alternate stream from the school towards the gates of the athletic fields: Fermi was taking on a rival school in soccer at home today and there were always a few people at the games dependant on whether they knew someone on the team or just that they liked "football". (there were a few boys who actually went because of the appearance of the Fermi cheerleaders showing up as spiritual motivators...and with Barbie and her group part of the team of course they would always have some guys show up to amuse) Other stragglers were similar to some of the people that hung out earlier when the school day started: several smokers hung out by the gates to feed on their nicotine addiction and destroy their lungs in the process; a few of the ski-cap boys were back to tossing around the bean-bag, with one of them relaxing while he wasn't playing pulling out something that looked like a joint; several of the Indian boys joining up with each other preparing some plans that they had for the day, and other assorted characters found within an inner-city school.

Just as it was before the school day was, the Japanese girl found herself standing solitarily in the middle of the concrete as the student streams dispersed on their way to who knows where. The clouds overhead were just as fluffy as they were before and were blocking the sun out for the time being, casting a little bit of a shadow that extended out from her body. Her reasons were pretty simple: she was just waiting for Akira to get out of the school so the two of them would trade battle scars over the day. While both of them could just simply walk home from the moment they left school and meet each other at home, Miharu and Akira chose to go home together just so their mother wouldn't worry about one being missing while the other had survived somewhat intact. It was just the sisterly thing to do: not only was Akira her little brother, but she was perhaps the best friend she had in this entire place. She dusted a little bit of the dust that had gathered on her school uniform as she waited: while it wasn't like it would be that noticeable in an outfit of brown and white, the crowds she waded through just to get to this obvious waiting space did get her a bit flustered in the wardrobe department. A couple minutes passed...then five...Miharu turned her head to look around and look for something familiar. The smokers were still there as were the bean-baggers and...something heading her way quickly from the direction of the athletic fields! It seemed at first like a frantic blur moving at what could have been the speed of light, but it was wearing a certain black Woodstock T-shirt that flowed in a way to make him look faster. He looked like he couldn't run any faster because he was panting really heavily as if all of the oxygen in his chest was vacuuming right out of his nose and mouth. His gray aviator glasses also looked as if they were falling off, but at the same time the glistening sweat looked like they were fusing them right onto his face.

"You've got to help me!", the boy yelled out all around the school yard. The bean-bag boys didn't really notice what was going on, but Miharu immediately turned towards his direction. She had a stern feeling in her eyes and a sick feeling in her gut that this had to do with all of the hell both Darren and she had been through all day. Looking at her face, Darren headed right into the pale-faced girl's direction, which was probably the last thing she wanted at this moment. The shaggy-faced boy, seeing who it was he was heading towards, simply just exclaimed one line: "Oh, I am fortune's fool!"

"Well at least you could remember Romeo's murdering line right!" Miharu blurted out the moment he said that. She really didn't think that was the best thing to say for the moment, considering for all she knew, Darren was running from Tybault himself!

Darren seemed extremely shaken, like he had been through similar trauma to what Miharu had this very day. He was shaking right out of his jeans and probably would have if they weren't being held up so well by his hands. The sweat flowed like blood down his cheek and he was coughing like he had mucus stuck inside his lungs. He slightly adjusted his downed glasses to make sure they didn't fall down. Then he started to speak in a soft dour way that Miharu had never heard from his mouth before:

"Listen, I am sorry for everything that has happened today and for everything that may about to happen to me. And I would like you to know that you are completely innocent from all of the scorns and arrows that you have gotten today from Barbie and everyone. If anything, it is me that is getting all of the scorn from her and you are just the means by which she is doing so. But please..."

"What does this all mean?" the Japanese girl questioned. "Barbie was scorning me, the cheerleaders were scorning me! They were..."

"Barbie was jealous of you!", Darren said in his saddened manner. "She was jealous of my loyalties to you! It was all a ridiculous bet involving me and her! Someone bet her that she could make me, the most ignorant heterosexual male towards her on campus, fall for her."

Miharu gasped. What sick and twisted mind would make a horrible bet just to try and win over the hearts and minds of the Fermi males, she thought. Then it fully came into view: Barbie was one of the top students of the school, if not #1. She could have easily aced the calculus test with one arm behind her back and blindfolded, without Braille even! If she didn't know anything then one of her girlfriends could have helped her out. She didn't want to study with Darren to prove how little she knew on the subject for the test. Barbie wanted to give the ultimate test of masculine libido…to prove that she could get any guy anytime anywhere no matter how resistance they were to her sexual outgoing nature. But then again, why did Darren resist? Darren immediately answered her questions:

"There's more: even though she didn't get through to me, she had already told one of the many boys who wanted her that she was 'with me now' even before the first meeting with myself! That was..."

"...that football player," Miharu answered with. It did make sense that the argument earlier was one of sexual tensions between the alpha male and one of the other males in the pack, just like a lion pride or a wolf pack. Several did hear the argument between the bald bully and the whiskered wiry male and could tell even without knowing about anything that they were somehow or another fighting over the same woman. As Miharu looked, Darren continued to shrink from her view behind her, crunching himself into a weird little ball that had a blue backpack protruding outside his body. It was clear he was hiding himself and trying to get away. And it wasn't too long before what he was getting away from emerged into the scene. The bald football player from before came out from around the corner near the athletic fields with a fist clutched right inside the palm of his other hand. His wrinkled brow clearly showed the aggravation that he had at this very moment, most likely continuing to build since the confrontation earlier during gym class. He was being followed by several other males, most of them large in nature like they were the entire defensive lines for the Hurri’s football team. (though it wasn't like either of the other two knew who they were since they didn't really encounter them in any of their classes) Most of them were white, with a few black specks and even a couple Hispanics mixed in to this angry mob of monsters. Each one of them seemed to express something similar to their bald leader, as if all of them were outraged by whatever Barbie was planning to pull off with Darren, even if it was all her own ploy. All of them had their head in different directions looking off towards where their prey had headed off to, but the bald leader sort of knew where to go, heading right towards the Japanese girl from the moment he had arrived on the scene. He literally smelled the fear of the moment and nosed his way to the area where his shadow easily covered the smaller Miharu. His semi-vacant look stared right into her eyes, a meek little kitten scoping out an immense rabid Labrador before it sends out its attack.

"You really are nothing to worry about," the immense bald male said, his head reflecting whatever light was trying to shine its way down to the Earth. "To the luminance that is Miss Kenneth, you are but a 40-watt bulb."

"Well its not like looks ever really mattered for me," Miharu tried to say with a little confidence, but it just added to the fear in her gut and her heart. Why would a girl who stuffs her bra say something like that? She continued meekly, "W...well...well...what really matters is the inside, not the outside. I be..be..bet that you are a little thing looking for a little love yourself before.."

"My love has and will always come from my Barbie!", the monstrous football player yelled out, forcing even the semi-confident Miharu to start cringing in her place, revealing the place of Darren right in front of him. The other football players started to surround both the whiskery male and the pale-faced female...their shadows cutting off all light in and around the area outside of the shining head. Darren, poking his head out from the side of the now cowering girl, felt something inside of him start emerging once again: a messy gooey combination of fear and false bravado. His running had stopped and he had to do something to save whatever respect he had left within himself. Miharu had tried to save him in her own way and even she failed, so it was time to show his own metal. Slowly getting up with shaky knees and the sweat trickling down his nervous face, he stared right into the face of the bald football player and forced his unconfident brown eyes right into the soulless irises of his enemy. With a small little noise emerging from his throat that sounded slightly horse without even opening his mouth, Darren then began to speak.

“Go…go…goodafternoonTybaulthow’sBarbie?” The voice coming from Darren’s mouth sounded strange and inhuman, speaking so fast that all of the words emerged as one big blur. His breathing started to pick up quickly as the darkness blackened the entire area around him, watching as the monsters closed in on their kill.

“You know, I was going to ask you the same question myself,” the Hurri’s player said back at him, moving one of his enormous fists right towards his other hand, cupping them together as a muffled cracking noise emerged from his digits. “In case you haven’t noticed, Barbie still hasn’t talked to me since the last we saw each other.”

“The last you saw each other was gym class, dummy,” Miharu said to herself in her own mind as her pale brown eyes tried to stare up at the confrontation between the two idiots. She knew that she was probably in the way in this battle between men, but she was just too full of fear to do anything at this moment. Confrontations, either physical or emotional, were never one of her strong points.

Darren continued trying to stare his fears in the eyes, watching as the sun continued to beat down on the shiny head, reflecting its rays right into his glasses and continuing to add more and more anguish into his mind and body. His pant-legs revealed a bit of a tremble and sweat continued to trickle its way down his neck towards his back and the black T-shirt he was wearing. Even his goatee felt like it was standing on end as he and Tybault continued their confrontation, albeit a silent one at this moment. The football player kept his hawk-like gaze right on top of the eyes of the geeky student, making sure that he knew his place in the school was the tiny, caked wad of gum that stuck right to his white cleats. Darren knew he had to say something to stop the silence, but didn’t want to screw it up for him…and especially for the poor Japanese girl that was cringing right in front of him. His body started to become more confident, drawing power from the feeling that he could protect Miharu if he couldn’t protect himself. Although he was still nervous, he had to say something in response.

“So Barbie hasn’t talked to you, too bad. Maybe she’s finally realized that football players are just so overrated compared to us otaku.” Darren sort of sensed that these weren’t the words that he should be saying at this moment, but he decided to stick with it since he really didn’t have any other direction to go in. “I mean, we male otaku encounter so many females and so much fan service in the shows and books we watch that, heck, we know exactly the ins and outs of both what to do and what not to do with a beauty such as her. I mean, there are just as many gentlemen in many of the shows I watch than there are the perverts and lechers and who knows what else! But then again, with bodies like what they have…and of course, with what we‘re given with Barbie, wherever she is, its easy to put two and two together.”

Miharu didn’t quite comprehend what Darren was saying at this moment, but one thing was certain: anime was probably the last thing she really want to hear about right now. She kept her eyes away from any part of this conversation, hoping that it would soon be over and the two of them would be out of danger. But she continued to think about this situation and how it probably would turn out in the end. And if his tiny mental capacity had anything to do with it, Tybault probably didn’t want to hear it either. He was here on a mission and listening to some false prophet about cartoons from her nation she drew her heritage was not the way to ease it.

With Darren’s side of the argument complete, the Hurris continued their staring effect right in the direction of the poor geek boy. Although Tybault was the de-facto leader of this group, each and every one of these menacing football players were placing their own eyes, heavily shadowed by the effects of the light, right in the poor, unfortunate direction of Darren. Who knows what each and every one of these individual football players were thinking of when they placed their eyes right near him. Some of them had the same mental stream as their leader: take down Darren and all of their problems would be over and done with. A couple of them probably wanted Barbie for their own needs…if not were already one of the many boys that she had flirted or dated in this school. Some thought that what Tybault was doing had gone completely out of control and that Darren was guilty for doing completely nothing...but really couldn’t tell him that for fear they would be kicked off the team. And then there were a few that weren’t actually thinking of anything to do with Tybault, Darren or this situation at all. Their minds were elsewhere in the cosmos, thinking about their families, their homework, the girl they could be watching cheering at the soccer game right now, or even what was on TV tonight.

But even with many different minds going in many different directions, every last one of them continued to stare directly towards Darren...and indirectly at Miharu. Darren’s mind processed this as a complete attack on him. But to the Japanese girl’s mind, all that was happening was that they were all tools being manipulated by Barbie in order to get her own way in this situation. It mattered not whether there was one of them or a hundred of them: they all were gathered together in the name of a bratty girl who chose to use her brains, emotions and sexuality to punish those that she didn’t see fit! And while Darren was their main target towards whom they were preparing to attack, this was also an indirect attack towards Miharu. Somehow Barbie saw the geek’s loyalty to the small Japanese girl an attack on her complete domination of the opposite sex in this school! And even though she probably could have just had her football goons go after her, Barbie chose instead to go after Darren! As bratty as the blonde was, even she had her pride.

About a couple minutes after the last word was said by the lanky geek, a small hush went through the air of the school as the showdown continued silently. Neither the attackers or the prey chose to make any remarks or comments as they stared back at each other as the wind continued to blow around them. Some of the other students, including the bean-bag players, left the two sides alone to their conflicts, not wanting to get involved in it themselves. The entire front of Fermi High was like a concrete desert where several students stood around waiting for the eventual showdown. Suddenly, the silence was broken by one of the other members of the Hurri’s football team: a black male that was standing along one of Tybault’s sides.

“Isn’t every anime just some battle about fighting over something, with the winner either being the strongest or the one with the greatest will for victory?”

“Well…” Darren felt in his element talking about anime, but still felt frightened as heck with every word being inserted to the ears of the enemy and processed as they saw best. “Well…while not every story that comes out of Japan is similar to those types of stories, many of the most popular anime and manga usually are just about that. While usually made for boys and young teens, many of all age groups watch these stories, making them one of the most popular genres in Japan.”

“Did we have to keep going with anime?” Miharu said to herself. She quietly moved her eyes away from the crowd of football players towards her brown skirt and pantyhose as her legs felt like they were losing their circulation. She squirmed them a little bit so that she could get that fuzzy feeling out of her black dress shoes and maybe feel a bit more comfortable. If only the topic would be a bit more comfortable as well.

“So, you want to fight for Barbie you say?” the bald football player said the moment after Darren had completed his last comment. It was as if he had ignored everything prior to his teammate the moment the word “fight” was said. His brow lightened up and a huge smirk began to emerge on the massive body as the grip of his own hand towards his other began to loosen up with the delight. “Is that how you want to settle this?”

“No, you didn’t understand a word I was just saying! Not all anime are like that!” Darren exclaimed as the courage he had gathered over the last minute or so evaporated away in the heat of the moment. His t-shirt lowered with his downbeat shoulders and his legs began to shake even further from the fear of what Tybault was thinking. Miharu swore that she felt the cowardice fall through the pavement and right up into her own scared, fragile body. But with her hairs standing close to an edge and the sweat pouring down from her forehead around her pale face, she had her own worries to think about.

“But if you want to figure this out through something you two understand, why not just fight?” a blonde-haired player spoke with his head barely poking above one of Tybault’s shoulders from behind. “Whoever is the last one standing keeps Barbie while the other just writhes around in agony for a few hours before the ambulances come to pick them up.”

“Please don’t say yes…please don’t say yes…” Miharu said under her breath as she tried to keep her emotions and her body still in thinking she was out of the conversation.

“I still don’t think fighting is the right way to get anything done, but I guess if it resolves this thing…” Darren slowly stepped away from Miharu and tried to give himself a little bit of space between him and the bald football player. It looked more like a retreat by him instead of a preparation for a showdown, but the surrounding football players kept him from moving anywhere outside the closed circle of large bodies. He straightened out his shirt before starting to speak again. “We can fight as long as Miss Yoshimune can make her way out of this. I don’t want anyone else involved that needs to be.”

It was these words that redirected Tybault’s eyes back from his potential opponent and once again towards the small Japanese girl sitting there in the middle of things. Her pale face seemed slightly blank from the comment just made by Darren, but also showed a small twinge of the confusion of having been mentioned in the same breath as this stupid battle the two of them were going to undertake! Tybault and some of the other players started to lower their heads down towards the girl: her legs still slightly asleep, but her feet feeling fuzzy as the blood started making their way back into them; her brown mini-skirt and white blouse dusted up from being on the concrete; her short black bangs feeling moist from the humidity of the moment. She looked extremely helpless in this position, regardless of how wise she was or her reputation at Fermi High. Sure she may have been one of the reasons behind Barbie’s hired thugs being here, but at least they knew to make this a battle between men. With a simple turn of Tybault’s head and a nod in the right direction, a couple of the surrounding football players open up a small passageway for the Japanese girl to make her way out of. Without saying a word to either Darren or Tybault, Miharu slowly stood up, ignoring the fuzzy feeling her foot still felt, and quietly made her way out of the radius of the large bodies back out into the free outside of the school’s exterior. As she looked around, she saw that no one else was around outside the ones that were about to fight. But as she continued to get a good view of the lawn and the high school to make sure it was still standing, the wall of uniforms slowly closed their gap once again, making sure it was no one inside except for Tybault and Darren.

“That’s the only request I’m gonna grant for you, dorkwad!” Miharu could hear the football player rant once again as she stared out at the impenetrable wall of muscle nearby. “We’ll let Barbie deal with her later!”

“Like I want anything to do with any of this crap,” Miharu said to herself as she dusted herself off from her previous predicament. Now that she had escaped from the center of hell, she no longer had a “deer struck by headlights syndrome” and was slowly regaining the confident, thoughtful form she usually had. And this form realized that even with Darren about to receive the beating of his life, she had more important things to worry about. Akira had not shown up and she was worried where her brother was at this moment. Plus she had plenty of homework and other school things that she had to get to the moment she got home. Sure Darren didn’t deserve any of the crap Barbie or Tybault was putting him through, but they did agree to a fight. And a fight between men didn’t need anyone, especially the girl behind it, getting involved. The Japanese girl turned away from the crowd and started making her way somewhere else…anywhere that didn’t involve a testosterone conflict.

It was then, as Miharu started lifting one of her feet up in the air to begin heading towards whatever direction would be best, that she heard the first blow of the confrontation. It was an unearthly sound, like the cry of a shrieking animal as it is struck by the high velocity of a bullet. The noise was too high to be coming from Tybault…if he was struck by the first blow, who knows what Darren would have done. Wait, was that the noise of Darren? Did the first blow of the fight really do that to him…if that was him? What the heck was going on there after all? It was after this initial, shocking noise that she started hearing more from the vicinity of the bullies and the idiot geek.

“Well that takes care of that pencil-neck geek!”

“Yeah, he went down too easily! Just as expected!”

“But…but…can’t you let me have a chance to hit you or…”

Another deafening sound emerged from the direction of the football players. It reflected on Miharu’s ears just as the first call had gone, but this scream was louder and more painful than the first! This sound wasn’t just a noise anymore, but also carried the distinct tone that Darren carried whenever he spoke in class. But this noise was much louder and more high-pitched than anything he would normally do!

“OK, I know I am wrong for anything I did,” the Darren-like voice whimpered. A few coughs were interlaced with the dialogue he was trying to give. “I don’t deserve Barbie…I never deserved Barbie! I never even wanted Barbie! She just…”

“Unacceptable!” Tybault yelled as the sound of another scream made its way out of the circle and into the vicinity around the front of the school. The screams this time were of a more constant pattern, as if Darren was getting hit over and over in the same place by a constant force. Tybault kept talking as he continued dishing the hits. “This isn’t about you anymore, geek! This is for all you weirdoes that don’t realize who the real power of this school is! You and all your kind don’t do anything to enhance the stature of Fermi High! You don’t compete in any competitions, you don’t go to any football games, and you don’t respect the ones that actually do something to make our school great! And yet your kind goes on ahead to try and take our pure virgins for yourselves as if all of us come from the back end of a dog!” With each and every line that he lists, another scream comes from the direction of the football players, each just as horrific and blood curdling as the last!

It was at this moment that something snapped inside Miharu. As she heard scream after horrible scream being yelled out by Darren, her mind suddenly realized how selfish she was! How she was thinking only for herself and her own safety as someone she actually tolerates was going through one of the worst times of his life. She remembered everything she had thought about earlier involving how every person in this school was an individualist, an ego only looking out for themselves. When something conflicted with how they felt or what they were going through, they would just ignore it and let it go on. But only if it affected them directly did they even try to take a handle on it! And yet here she was, with Darren in the beating of his life against Tybault, fighting for what could be his life…and all she was thinking about was getting out of the school and going home! Darren was the boy that was one of the few people outside her family she even spoke with. The same boy that she had borrowed her math homework from earlier…which lead to everything spiraling out of control at this moment. Darren was less like a boyfriend….and more like a silly, annoying, caring brother she never knew she had. And yet here she was, Miharu Yoshimune, standing there in the middle of the school grounds witnessing the horrors indirectly with every blow…and she wanted nothing to do with it.

“Am I really that horrible?” she thought to herself as the screaming continued to echo through her ears. “Is this really hurting Darren just as much as the bullies? Does this make me a bully?” Tears started to flow from her eyes unbeknownst to her as the thoughts started to come to her mind. “And what does this mean for me…for all of us? No one else notices when someone else is in trouble because we’re all in our own little worlds. And with one deaf cry ignored, they can make their way to the next one and the one after that…until all their critics are silenced. If they can get their way with Darren, then Barbie and those bullies pretty much rule this school! I can’t let them keep going like this any longer!”

With new determination, and a little bit of fear for potential failure, the Japanese girl did something she never thought she would do: she turned right back around to face the crowd in their fury! As she stared at them, it looked like several more members of the football team had joined in to the fray in order to teach Darren their lesson. Her eyes burned with a passion as tears continued to stream down her pail face towards the green ribbon in the middle of her blouse. With courageous determination, Miharu then started to run as fast as her small legs could carry her back towards Tybault and his armada! She didn’t care about her plans or her schoolwork or even her brother’s whereabouts anymore. All she wanted was to save Darren just like he saved her by getting her out. A small, determined scream emerged from her lips as she ran right towards the humps of mass, which had closed in as Darren had gotten further and further pummeled. In one of her small hands, a fist was forming that she knew wouldn’t be enough, but maybe the passion of the moment would do something! With little force, she made her way through a small groove in the group and right back into the center of the action.

As she finally re-entered the circle, she saw everything that was happening first-hand. Right in front of her, in a recognizable mass on the ground, writhed a lanky, wiggling boy that looked larger than he should have been. His shirt was still clinging to his body, but torn with several holes going right through showing his weak pale flesh. The Woodstock picture nearly gone, with some encrusted blood and sweat right on top of where the bird once was. His jeans had a couple holes near the bottom, but were mostly covered in the dirt and blood that was flowing over the rest of the body. Several bumps and bruises were apparent on Darren’s face, with blood oozing out of one on his cheek and another just below one of his eyelids. His other eye looked black and blue from being pushed in and several other bumps looked like they could have been sights of breaks or dislocations. Even his gray aviator glasses, which peered the courage in his eyes as Darren forced Miharu away from the fight, were shattered on the ground right by his body, the frames twisted into two with the lens of plastic and glass smashed into little bits and pieces. As Darren laid there in his small, defenseless form, Tybault kept smashing one of his immense cleats right into a spot around his midsection, with each and every hit causing one slowly weakening sound after another to come out of the voice of the nearly unconscious boy. He was purely on the winning end of this fight, but Tybault didn’t want to show any mercy if only to drive his point right into Darren’s heart!

It was as he lifted his foot for another set of spikes to be hammered into the geek’s bloody body that the bald football player felt his chin getting hit by something much lighter than it was intended to be! The blow made his neck jerk his head upwards for a moment as he nearly lost his balance, which was the only thing the poor punch could really do towards the brute. Tybault placed his foot on the ground as he turned his predator eyes in the direction that it came from. He saw the fist emerging from the blouse-covered arm of Miharu, who’s eyes were still filled with tears as she stared at her enemy on the verge of sobbing! Looking at the pitiful Japanese girl trying to hurt him at his moment of glory, Tybault slowly turned away from his former victim and looked straight in the eye of the female. Miharu tried to turn her head away from him, but the little he saw of her eyes showed the fear that she held over what she had just accomplished.

“I thought I told you to get the hell out of here, Jap!” Tybault screamed right at Miharu without any care for political correctness.

“Darren didn’t do anything, you brainless slime!” Miharu yelled back without even thinking of it. She was letting the rage of the moment speak for her. “Why not think for yourself instead of doing what your told by your bimbo! For all I care, she can just go to hell!”

These words were the last things Miharu could have said…or even at one point desired to say. Sure she knew Barbie was a manipulative bimbo, but as long as she kept those words away from anyone that could use it against her, she was fine. But while these words for the moment did nothing to Miharu’s mind, it immediately enflamed even more anger through Tybault. His teeth started to grind together and his eyes enflamed with a passionate fury as the sun continued to beat down on his bald head! Without thinking of anything that could have stopped him, not even that his opponent was a girl, a fist formed in Tybault’s right hand and started to fly across the distance separating him and Miharu, smashing her right on her left, rubbery cheek! Redness began to swell over the Japanese girl’s pale skin as the impact made her fly all the way out of Tybault’s direction, past the crowd of football players around him and made her head smash right into a red brick wall near the front of Fermi High! Her body showed no movement as it took the blow, first from the bully’s fist, then from smashing into the wall! It laid there, lifeless on the ground, as her head found a resting place on the concrete near the impact where her short black hair began to caress the pavement. Her slants closed with the immediate impact and her mind slowly started to lose consciousness as she heard one last set of words emerging from the loud, boastful mouth of Tybault:

“You’re just like that geek! You deserve no respect if you mess with me or my Barbie! All you Nips deserve is what’s coming to you!….”

Miharu slowly regained consciousness in a strange dark place unlike anything known to the conscious mind. She couldn’t use any other motions or senses in her body but her sight, and even that wasn’t something she could trust! She didn’t know where she was, what she was doing, even who she was at this time! She couldn’t even tell if her eyes were open or shut. All that was around her was pitch-black darkness. There was darkness to the left, darkness to the right, darkness above, darkness below. Darkness both behind her and in front of her. She was in an empty pool of nothingness. A world without feeling. A world without pain. This was the darkness. Time began to pass right before her…or was there time at all? She stared out in the room for what could feel like moments, but to her mind could have been a day, a year, maybe even a millennium! Time had no meaning in the vast, shapeless darkness.

Eventually, another sense within Miharu’s psyche suddenly started to notice something. It was something that approached her and entered into her mind. A collection of electromagnetic energy that had gathered from somewhere and somehow started to collect to a place where she could hear it. Was this approaching from the outside or within? Was this sound coming to her ears, or memories locked inside her own brain? Whatever it was, there was so much of it flooding her all at once. All sorts of comments and words that Miharu knew she heard somewhere. She continued staring out into the darkness as she listened, making out a few things she knew she had heard before.

Rumplesarkan...who dares awaken the great Professor Tomoe...What makes you so good? Here you are, getting all of these great grades and yet…humanity has lost the ability to critically think and would like having all of their answers and ideas handed to them instantaneously…She's way too above you and would never want a freaky hairy weirdo like you!…when there is something that she wants, Barbie will stop at nothing, and I do mean that, to get it…Barbie was jealous of you!…You're here to take over our country and turn us into our slaves!…without any connections to the reality that we are forced to live in…We'll see who the monster is in a couple weeks…

Slowly, all of these words, as well as many, many more swarmed from somewhere to somewhere in an audial vortex within the darkness. Miharu tried to catch each one of them, trying to figure out where they all came from and where they were all going! Perhaps one of them would help her remember what’s going on and why she’s here. But the voices became more and more, growing louder and more numerous by each reaching moment. The voices were growing into a deafening din, crowding out any chance of rational thought by the lone being! Miharu needed something to hold on to that blocked out every other voice except for itself! Then suddenly, just when she thought she was about to drown in the waves, it all stopped! Every sound within this darkness just vanished into thin air! Miharu was alone again within the void, hoping to concentrate to find her own voice and her own means to escape.

It was after a moment or two, which could have been a second, a minute, a lifetime, that a voice did emerge in the darkness. A lone, solitary voice that Miharu knew she had heard somewhere:

One of these days the dog is going to come and bite us all in the butt and the bombs will drop as we all die our meaningless worthless deaths...the bomb doesn't discriminate between me or Barbie or Darren or those annoying brats of Barbie or that Indian boy who sat near me at lunch or the poor or the wicked or the wise or the high-ups or the low-downs or the middle-managers or the Christians or the Muslims or the Buddhists or the Jews or the Shinto or the atheists...all it knows is pure clean annihilation...annihilation that cleans the world of all but the cockroaches...a universal Hiroshima that will bring pure peace to the world...

These words scared Miharu: was that really her own voice…and did she ever say those words? But from this fear emerged a new sensation, the first feeling that she had within this darkness. It was a feeling of nil…of this world which these words were talking about. This was a world of ultimate nothingness, and yet of ultimate peace. A world where the bombs had fallen where only she had made it through to utopia. The last words continued to repeat over and over again within her mind as she realized the point where she was at:

As these words continued to repeat over and over, a small light began to emerge from within the darkness. It was a tiny star at first, barely twinkling in order to survive. But the words kept coming and the light kept growing, becoming larger and larger by the second. The emergence of light in this world of darkness scared Miharu at first, nearly blinding her as she emerged from the cave. But the further she stared at the light, the more importance she gained towards the beam It was a magnificent jade luminescence, more powerful and beautiful than anything she had ever seen before. And it was these words from her own head that made it grow to such power!

“This is no ordinary light,” Miharu thought to herself, “this was the light of Hiroshima, the light of annihilation. The light would be able to create harmony in this world!”

Continuing to stare straight out, Miharu let the jade brilliance surround her, allowing it to engulf her entire form from head to toe. She was no longer in need of the darkness. She had found the light…and was ready to awaken to it.

“Come on, geek! I know you have more left in you! Stop quitting and start squealing!”

It had been several minutes since Tybault’s immense force knocked out the petite Miharu. With the only person that even respected Darren out cold, the massive football player had returned to smashing his weight around his victim’s body. From the time that he had returned to beating his original victim up, the boy on the ground’s voice became more and more faint as the abuse he had taken was making his own mind become as unconscious as Miharu’s. Many of Tybault’s buddies from the team were continuing to watch the massacre as it occurred, cheering him on whether he deserved it or not as he made sure that Darren was completely punished…but as long as he wasn’t dead or anything. As much as Tybault could get away with at this school for being on the football team, he at least knew that killing someone would be a huge strike against getting a potential scholarship to a football college.

With all of the eyes continuing to focus on Darren’s punishment, no one in the vicinity had noticed that there was a slight stirring going on around the unconscious Miharu. The pale Japanese girl, practically left for dead after getting knocked out by a combination of Tybault’s fist and the front wall of Fermi High, was starting to show a little bit of life in her body. She was still breathing and her heart was still beating when she left the reality of the school, but within the last minute both vital organs had been getting heavier and heavier, as if she was preparing to awaken from a terrible nightmare or a long peaceful dream. Her head, resting comfortably along the wall she was smashed to with her hair between both, started to stir at a similar rate to her increasing pulse. Suddenly, without any warning, Miharu’s small slanted eyelids jumped right open like waking from a nightmare! But there was something different already about the Japanese girl: her irises had mysteriously changed color! What was once a beautiful shade of brown had changed into a mysterious jade green color, similar to the jade luminescence that she had stepped into before. Her pupils had changed as well, going from a normal black color into an unearthly silver shade. If anyone had seen her at this very moment, they could have known instantly that something just wasn’t right!

Compelled by some sort of new power starting to awaken within her, the Japanese girl started to rise up off of the ground into some sort of standing position. She didn’t know what was going on or what was compelling her, but she had to stand in order to embrace this surge racing through her. Her voice started a small, soft moan that luckily no one had heard, but she knew that somehow it meant something. As she got up, small little sparks green in color emit in the air around her, either releasing or reflecting the strange energy that she had just begun to control. Physically, she looked practically exactly like she had before she was knocked out, except there was something different about her. For starters, her beautiful pale white skin did not seem as pale as it was. While it still looked very pale, it looked like it was starting to take a bit of color…particularly the color green! While not as magnificent as the jade color her eyes had taken, the skin was starting to take to the new pigmentation as was willing to take more! Meanwhile, her hair on her head had unknowingly started an unusual growth spurt that Miharu couldn’t expect as much as the changing of her skin color! While it was still really short as neat as she usually kept it, it had started to crawl down her neck as she started to stand upwards, having grown about a couple centimeters already in the time she had awakened! Her black locks also seemed to be taking more color on as well, as a small hint of a dark forest green began to barely reflect off the sun. Similar to her body, her hair was also releasing the new static, a premonition of her growing power.

But the most subtle changes at this moment had come in Miharu’s small stature. Although she was still sort-of petite in size, there was something about her in her clothes that just didn’t seem very right at this moment. As she stood, the pantyhose she was wearing seemed a bit more taught than it had been prior to this time. While they were supposed to be tight to shield off and protect her legs, the rubbery material was starting to feel like it was being pushed upwards and outwards by some strange force. Somehow, she had gained at least an inch in height from how she normally was, but that wasn’t all. The pantyhose was also feeling the cramping of development around Miharu’s thighs and calves, something that her stick-like legs never experienced before! A sharp pain was starting to surge as her muscles started to tighten, extend and grow, adding new shape to what was nothing below. Unknowingly to any eyes, her non-existent behind was starting to gain tone, becoming a fine set of glutes even in this early stage. Even her black shoes, as well as they easily fit for the moment, just didn’t seem to fit perfectly anymore as internal changes made them start becoming more snug within the leather interior.

The Asian girl’s torso also seemed a bit larger as she started to stand up in this manner. Her normally loose white blouse just didn’t look quite right even at this early stage. For starters, her small hands seemed like they were starting to grow a bit larger than they should be as her palm began to increase in size and her fingers began to grow longer and more feminine. Just like the skin apparent on her face, her hands too were starting to show a strange greenish glow to them as they were taking their new form. Her arms were also starting to seem a bit longer as a little more appeared bit by bit through her small cuffs illuminated by the changing skin color. Her arms weren’t just getting longer: her upper arms began to show a bit more developments as sharp pain began to reveal how they were tightening up with the development of new muscle. The beginnings of a small bicep and a long tricep were starting to increase the mass of her sleeve, making it already seem a bit tighter. Miharu’s shoulders were also expanding in size and mass, starting to grow in bulk as it began to expand the contents of her back. And at the same time, the Japanese girl’s chest, which normally seemed padded to make it look like she had a bust, was starting to feel a little bit of strain as a real chest with real breasts was starting to emerge right in front of her. She felt a little ticklish as her blossoming bosom started to reach the paper she stuffed to make her barely a B-cup, but somehow she knew that this was merely the beginnings of her new power! Her mind desired more and she was not going to be denied!

Just within short view, the new changes that were starting to emerge around Miharu were not going completely unnoticed. One of the Hispanic members of the Hurris’ football team had gotten sick of just watching Tybault as he finished his job with Darren. He really didn’t care one way or another whether Darren did or did not seduce Barbie, but he did know that his sister was about to get out of school and needed her big brother to be home to watch over her. He merely turned around from the crowd to start heading his way to the locker room when he noticed that something just didn’t seem right with what he was looking at! He rubbed his eyes for a moment to make sure it was an illusion, but what he saw was still the same! It was that girl that was supposed to be knocked out…and she was standing…and sparking…and…growing…The Hispanic player didn’t really know what he had to do…his eyes were deceiving him and his heart felt like it was already going to stop either from fear or joy. But he had to say something or else something bad was going to happen to all of them!

“Um…um…um…” the boy stuttered for a moment as he tried to find the words to say, “remember that girl we took care of? Well…”

“That girl?” a blonde teammate said as he turned his head towards the short-haired Hispanic. “Yeah, we should take her to a doctor once Tybault gets out of here…I think she is starting to look green.” The blonde sort of saw her out of the side of his eye, but really didn’t get the whole story.

“Well..um…I don’t think she needs a doctor,” the Hispanic replied, “I think…I think she needs a scientist to look at her!”

The blonde player turned around as well as a couple other players that had overheard the comment. And as each one stared out in the direction where Miharu was supposed to be knocked out, each one felt their heart fall down into the pit of their stomachs! Not only was that Japanese girl standing up once again, but she seemed somewhat different than she did several minutes earlier! Whether it was the strange cute moan that she was humming or the jade color of her eyes along with the hints of green in her skin or the sparks that were emerging from her body or even the how her clothes didn‘t seem to look right, those who saw her knew that something was completely wrong!

“What the heck is happening to that Jap!?” a rounder black-haired player said as he looked out. “Is this some sort of secret martial art technique she’s trying to use?”

“That girl probably doesn’t know martial arts from martial law,” a tall black player responded. “She’s probably just sick to her stomach from how green she is.”

“But…but..but..what about her clothes?” the Hispanic responded once again. “Would being sick result in bumps appearing all over her body? And those electric sparks…”

“Well whatever she is, she’s not gonna be that way for much longer,” said the black-haired player as he jumped out right in front of the others staring at her instead of Tybault. He placed both of his hands in fists and put both of them on the ground as if he was preparing for a rushing blitz. He looked around to see if anyone else was going to join him, but with no one else in the area and with plenty of space to go, he knew his maneuvers were ready.

“I don’t care what she is and how she’s getting that power,” the player said as he turned his head through his legs to get one last look at the rest of his team, “But one little push will just knock her over like the last time! If Tybault can knock her out, than so can the rest of us!”

Then, with his legs raring to go, the defensive player started bolting right in the direction of Miharu, showing amazing quickness for a player of his size and build! He cocked his head at a full 90 degrees from his legs, preparing to merely ram her into the ground regardless of the danger! A couple other players that were still watching Tybault devotedly turned away towards this sprint as they were curious to see what was going on. Miharu seemed completely oblivious to the attempt on her as she continued to embrace her new power without noticing the rest of the world. But then, as the player got within several feet between him and the Japanese girl, a long, powerful green bolt of lightning, similar to the static that were crackling around Miharu, zapped right out of her body and instantly struck the player through the closest point between the two of them, which was his skull! At the moment the jade spark emerged from her body, the player froze in place like he had hit an invisible force field and jerked around as every part of his body felt the amazing blast! Then, just as easily as the blast had emerged, the player was thrown all the way back in the direction where he came, which was right near the on looking teammates, completely unconscious from his desperate attempt!

“Well that didn’t go as planned,” the blonde player said as he saw his round teammate unexpectedly return so soon. “Anyone else have any bright ideas to handle her?” The rest of the onlookers just nodded their head as they were forced to become mere spectators to the occasion.

Although knocking a defensive end away with an unknown power should have been enough to make someone notice what’s going on, Miharu was completely oblivious to the interactions of the outside! All she knew of was that this amazing power was emerging at a phenomenal rate and that she had to take in every last bit of it! She wanted this power…she needed this power, she kept thinking to herself silently. And with each iota of each cell allowing the power to emerge within her, her body reflected each little bit that was coming out for her disposal. The pace of the growth of her legs and torso made her height shoot up much faster than it did earlier on, easily making her past the 6 foot mark with no end in sight! The paleness in her skin had continued to shift into a light green shade, which was pretty as it was but still becoming darker to match the color that her new strength desired. Her hair had also continued to grow at an amazing rate, lengthening and thickening in texture to keep up with her newfound height. It had already made its way past the bottom of her neck and was starting to creep downwards along her spinal ladder. The green in her hair was also more obvious than it had been at first, shifting in pigmentation towards a beautiful forest green color to contrast with her eyes and her skin. While her face and eyes kept the same beautiful geisha-like mystery of the Japanese girl, her lips did seem to become fuller and more womanly, changing from a pale shade to a darker jade color. These fuller lips highlighted the soft, sensual, yet slowly more womanly moans that she was experiencing with each and every moment!

At the lowest extremes of her body, her legs and feet were starting to reach a terrible, but glorious bursting point! The formerly small, dainty feet that Miharu normally had had become much longer and wider with each passing second since her changes had started. In order to try and hold on to her shoes, her toes and heel kept a forceful grip on the ground, making them further cramp up with each passing moment. Her toes were slowly pushing outwards against the leather material on both shoes, as the leather tried to hold on just a little bit longer! Seams along the shoe were fraying apart as they tried to accommodate the new length and width without trying to make the shoe burst. But then, with silent resolve, the largest of her toes on one of her feet finally broke through the prison into the light! Just like the rest of her skin, this toe was green in color with a longer, more sensual nail poking its way out. The other big toe on the other foot followed soon after, with the smaller toes further pushing through to try and break out themselves. Sparks continued to emerge from the extremities as they appeared out of the confines of the black shoe. Meanwhile, the seams that were ripping apart started to reveal more of the jade foot as it continued to grow without any control from Miharu.

Further upwards around her legs and butt, other articles of clothing that formerly fit the Japanese girl were also showing signs to giving in towards the transformation. The pantyhose that she was wearing to protect her legs was already being pushed towards its limits as it couldn’t find any compromise with their growth. With the rate of growth being experienced within her bones, the legs were taking most of the blame for the rapid increase in height Miharu was experiencing. But while they could have been just more sticklike as she normally was, her thighs and calves were keeping up with the pace of the lengthening with both of them growing longer, thicker, and shapelier by the moment. What was merely a small little calf when it started to emerged had become longer, leaner and shapelier similar to that of a runner or an amateur bodybuilder. Her thighs too were gaining muscle like the growth of a tree trunk, becoming thicker and more powerful with time. Thanks to this growth, the threads had no other option but to burst from the pressure, creating several holes in the material that became larger by the moment! Jade skin peaked through each one of these holes just as it was through the rest of her body. Miharu’s panties were also feeling rather chafing as well as her expanding thighs, not to mention her lengthening and strengthening midsection, was making them feel smaller and smaller.

But while the rest of her body was obviously feeling the changes from this beautifully deadly power, none of it was more obvious to a casual viewer than around the slowly shrinking blouse she was wearing! Similar to the fast development of her legs, her arms had grown longer and much, much stronger than they had been even a minute or so ago! What were once merely small balls at the top of Miharu’s arms at the start of the transformation had become an increasingly large bicep structure, growing in size as it further extended her poor constricted sleeve! Not to be outdone, her triceps were also lengthening and increasing in size, adding more lower mass to the vicinity. Meanwhile, her shoulders were increasing in width and mass making her arms appear more triangular with power. All of these combined with a little more len