#also i could NOT resist putting in that piece of sky pirate girlfriends. that video is so funny

[randomwriteronline]

@magicalgirlmascot

Krakua had survived almost up to the end of November.

This was not as obvious of an outcome as it could have sounded - not because of the kids: they were obnoxious, but his constant noise absorption made them more than tollerable, and besides he would have taken their rockus over total quiet any day.

It's just that between Tahu's very loud instinctual thoughts of mauling him whenever they were in the same room, Kopaka's incredible discomfort almost prompting him to stab him with a pen several times, and a variety of occasions in which his sudden perfectly silent appearance had nearly gotten his head bludgeoned in, everything had implied he would have ended up at least hospitalized once.

So it was nice that it hadn't happened!

Yet.

There was still December.

But he had slightly higher hopes than on his first day!

Caught up in his thoughts as he was, he nearly smacked directly into someone else.

'Oh! It's Krakua,' he felt.

Oh! It's Pohatu, then, he reasoned in his head still with Pohatu's voice, as it tended to happen whenever he thought something too soon after reading somebody's mind.

He blinked hastily while a waterfall of apologies babbled out of his mouth, the other teacher's soothing voice reassuring him everything was fine with a slight laugh in his voice. With a noticeable lag he comprehended some kind of joke about him "not seeing too well right now" and properly saw first his hands, then his neck, then his mouth, and then the gigantic dark splotch of a bruise stretching somewhere between his left ear and right eyebrow.

Krakua stared for a couple seconds.

"That must have hurt!" he stated a little too enthusiastically, almost jabbing his finger into the offended eye.

Pohatu jerked his head back just in time: "Yeah, a baseball bat to the face will do that," he chuckled. He applied the packet of ice back to his face - so that had been the weird shape the music teacher had vaguely recognized - and shrugged: "You know how kids are."

The image of a recorder flying out the window came to mind: "Hm," the younger man nodded, "They can get pretty wild."

'Thank God Kopaka's got cold enough hands to replace this,' he felt while the other fumbled with the bag with a slight grimace: 'A frozen steak would be more pleasant...'

"How's your boyfriend?" Krakua decided to inquire, since he was already thinking about him and from what he had managed to figure out in his years of somewhat successful social interactions it seemed like a normal subject for some small talk.

His good grade in Normal Person shattered like a thousand years old porcelain vase as Pohatu gave him a strange look: "My who?"

Oh, right!

He had not told him about his boyfriend, who worked here and whom he thought about incessantly!

Any questions regarding him would have been weird for Krakua to ask, since he didn't have that information and lacked any means to find out about it, such as telepathy!

He would have liked to blow up right about now!

"What?" he smiled.

"You said something about my boyfriend?" the other repeated.

"No, I don't think so!" he lied very cheerfully, trying not to sound shrill. "I asked about your friend, Kopaka, the science teacher?"

"You mean my boyfriend?"

"OH is he? I didn't know that!"

"Yeah, he prefers to keep quiet about it."

Ok, he was definitely going to get stabbed with a ballpoint pen now that he had officially acquired the news in an unsuspiscious manner. Goodbye world, it'd be fun until the ink poisoning hit.

Before he could vibrate hard enough to dissipate from reality all together, a door opened onto the hallway.

Vakama turned left and right as if searching for something.

He then raised a cautious finger into the air, looked again at both opposite ends of the corridor, and pointed at the two younger men, asking rather concerned: "Did you hear that?"

Pohatu glanced at Krakua.

'Ominous,' he thought.

Did he hear me?, the other teacher wondered worriedly.

"What do you mean by that, exactly?" Pohatu inquired.

"That sound," Vakama explained, furrowing his brows hard: "It was like twenty trucks in a pile up."

Krakua felt himself sweating.

Pohatu clicked his tongue: "I did not in fact hear that," he replied. "Are you sure that was what it sounded like? Because I don't think that sort of thing would be very easy to miss."

"I am certain, I could hear it from my office," the principal snapped.

'And now the buzzing is back,' he bemoaned to himself as he massaged his temple.

"I do hear a buzzing," Krakua intervened hurriedly to try and mask the actual sound, since it was rising from him even louder with his mounting panic. "A bit from everywhere around the school - various rooms and places and stuff... I, I thought it might've been the lights, you know, but I don't... Really... Know... This stuff..."

To their mutual relief, Vakama gave a long sigh: "Oh, thank goodness you heard that too. I really don't need auditory hallucinations... I'll have Gahdok and Cahdok look into this."

"Neat!" the music teacher squeaked.

Squeaked.

Like a mouse.

He took in a big breath, big enough to keep him from focusing on the other two's thoughts as he automatically read their minds.

Then he released it with a big smile: "I'm leaving!" he announced without any fanfare, fully ready to disappear all the way home and slam his head on his drumset, "See you tomorrow!"

'Tomorrow is Saturday,' Pohatu thought.

'Tomorrow is Saturday,' Vakama thought.

TOMORROW IS SATURDAY, Krakua wailed at himself.

"Tomorrow is Saturday," he corrected. "See you the day after that!" then, after a moment, feeling sanity slip out of his ear like a worm on a string: "NOPE, that's Sunday!"

"We got it. Go catch up on that sleep, man," Pohatu reassured him.

Eternally grateful for the easy way out offered, Krakua grinned at him, said way too loud: "Thank you! Bugs bite!" and hurried out of the corridor as fast as he could in the hopes that his failed attempt at saying 'goodnight' would not catch up to him.

The other two watched him vanish behind a corner.

Once they were fairly sure he couldn't hear them, the Toa of Stone clicked his tongue: "Have you had any visions, recently?"

"Just hearing things," the Turaga groaned. "About what, anyways?"

Pohatu shrugged, jostling the now barely cold bag of ice in his hand with the motion, head nodding towards where the newest member of personell had left.

Vakama lifted a brow, somewhere between sarcastic and puzzled.

"You think him an agent of Makuta?"

"I was leaning towards... Toa? Maybe?"

"And why would that be?"

"The rest of us are. And he seems like he's got something weird going on - aside from his whole awkward je-ne-se-quois that makes you feel like you're on a very unpleasant tea cup ride sometimes."

"This school can have average people for a change, you know. Besides, excuse me-" and he tilted his head in a rather baffled expression "-Your metric for how likely a person could be a Toa is how weird and-or off-putting they seem to you?"

The Toa tightened his shoulders, smirking: "Well, would you call any of us distinguished, normal, functioning members of society?"

Vakama pursed his lips, trying to find a comeback or an argument.

In the time it took him not to succeed in his fruitless endeavor, a clacson went off outside.

It then continued to go off.

Looking out the window in the already dark November evening, they both nonetheless caught sight of Krakua sitting at his car, pressing his head hard on the center of the wheel, unmoving.

Much like the Plagues had rolled out remorseless and unstoppable across Egypt, the "bugs bite" had caught up to him.

They observed him for a while as he moved not an inch.

His clacson continued to wail for him.

"Maybe I should go check on him," Pohatu proposed.

"I think that would just kill him, actually." the principal replied.