First, I'm gonna need some intel. I hate to bring up "The Art of War" again, but if it got me into this mess, it's gonna take me out, and not in the dating way. Maybe in a shoot-on-the-back-of-the-head way. I am a stranger in a strange land, and the only way to beat this hedonistic fuckfest of a school is to know it inside out. Hindsight is 20/20. Could've used a tour of the place. While everything is pretty much the same structure-wise, nothing is where it's supposed to be. English is on the Computer lab, Computer lab is on a broom closet upstairs, and the brooms are strewn about the yard in a weird art-nouveau exhibit.

See, the Art of War puts it best: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles." And I sure as hell know myself like the back of my hand, which is mine, because I am me. If I am to survive, I need to tap into the veins of Cliff Basin Sierra Plateau, and there is only one person here that can help me with that. Lucky for me, I know the place I can find them.

After a few minutes of popping in and out of rooms like a handsome whack-a-mole, I find the biology lab under the bleachers of the gym. A handful of students are fucking around with their phones while a man whose eyes are devout of any life drones on and on about a subject or another with the same onnus a hospital receptions would tell you to plase wait while you bleed your arm out thanks to that freaky lacrosse incident nobody wants to speak about, because doing so would break the inherent silent pact between your friends, for doing so would destroy that thin line, that whispered secret, that haunts them all. There is also a bunch of science shit around.

"Ah, you must be the new student," says the teacher, which I'm kinda thinking might be an animatronic by the stiff way he moves and the monotone memevoice he uses. You know the one in the videos where a machine reads reddit stories and gets a shitton of money doing the content equivalent of crunchy air. "Class, may I present to you Mr. Ayden Gomez? He is a recent transfer from Hill Valley Mountain Woods High. Let's give him a Trojan welcome. God, please spare me from this life."

That does spark the attention of the rest of the peanut gallery, mumbling amongst each other. Some people mumble a little bit more than others. You know the ones.

"Oh my god!" yells a girl dressed in a simple, yet stylish sort of way, with short blonde hair and a can-do attitude that would fit as a spunky protagonist of a self-insert Harry Styles story. I can smell the chaste virginity waiting to be played by a love triangle. "Is that the rumored new bad boy? My horoscope told me I would meet a tall, dark, and handsome stranger, but I thought it was a Venti macchiato! Lol, I'm so random!" Let's call her... Lila. I don't really care about any of these characters to know their name.

"I heard he was expelled because he punched a guy so hard, he reverted back to middle school," says another guy who looks exactly like Leeland, but with a thin moustache. Let's call him Senor Leelando. "He can punch me back to pre-school and take care of me as my new daddy ugh."

Thirsty twinks, like war, never change.

"I heard he has a micropenis," whispers Lila. "Perfect for my first time."

"Yum yum Tic-tac goes in me tummy-yummy," whispers Senor Leelando back. See, no matter what I say, I get sexualized. Let's try someone new.

"Hey, I'm Ayden," I say with my signature, limited-edition Paco Rabane smile, "I got a huge penis. A big beepis. A magnum dong, like two babies fighting over an apple. Like, not even a python can swallow this shmeat. It floats when I go to the pool, is all I'm trying to say."

By the both horrified and intrigued looks of the two rotten apples, I seem to have shut them down, at least from now.

"If we can move on from the buoyancy of Mr. Gomez' schlong," says the teacher in his monotone voice, "we can begin today's experiment. People are paired up, but we can find you a partner in the meantime. Let's see..."

Ah, cliche, my old friend. I can always lean on you to do the most obvious shit possible. And for once, I will use it in my favor. For you see, there, in the back, is the person that will help me dodge a bullet today. I see him, with his glassy eyes, goofy smile, painfully average looks and simp vibes. Yes, he's gonna do nicely. Time to use those powers

I walk towards the back, much to the paper-thin protest of the teacher. There is my savior, sitting next to a person so unremarkable and not bearing on the story that I will not waste my precious word count trying to describe he who amounts to a white wall. "Hey, you, rando. You're in my seat."

"Uh, what?" says the rando, still in my mother-respecting seat.

"You deaf, boy? I said, git!" I say, slamming my binder on the table.

The rando jumps out of the seat while grabbing his shit and running for the hills, not to be seen again, ever. I sit where he sat, still warm from his fear farts. "Yo, teach, I got a partner now."

The teacher honestly looks like he doesn't give two fucks, mostly because I know he can't afford it on his salary. Libertarians are notably stingy employers. "I suppose that's fine. Well, today, we shall do the fabled Rainbow flame experiment. I told your esteemed director that this experiment is highly dangerous and that the state board has asked us not to perform it, but he said that the state can go fuck itself, this is a free country and stated to quote Ayn Rand at me, and honestly, I don't get paid enough to fight him. Hopefully, we will not have a repeat of last year's disaster. Rest in peace, Jeremy."

"Rest in peace," everybody said in unison.

I ignore the obvious red flag/foreshadowing and turn my attention towards my new lab mate. "Hey, I recognize those hollow eyes and smug face. You're an Exposito, aren't you?"

His eyes lit up, getting so smug that one would think he had a direct line from ass to nose to smell his own farts, giving me that weird lopsided grin only a newly met childhood friend can give. "And you look like my new best friend! Give it here, partner! My name is Lizzy. Actually, it is Relish. My mom is named Mayonnaise, and thought it funny to keep the tradition up. You met my cousin Scooter, right? Man, such a badass name. Don't quite like Lizzy to be honest, but hey! Better than being a delicious condiment. Excellent pick-up line, though. I just walk up and say 'Hey, want some Relish on that weiner?' Hasn't worked yet, but... why are you giving me $20 bucks?"

"To shut your piehole and listen to me," I say.

He takes the money and slips it down his pants like a stripper. "You're funny, new best friend!"

"Atomic electrons at higher energy levels lose energy, dropping down to a lower energy level," says the teacher with practiced ease, almost as if he ripped it straight from Wikipedia. "Electrons moves from one allowed energy state to another. The lost energy can be carried away in the form of heat (vibrational energy) or in the form of light—when the electron reverts to a lower energy state, a photon of light is produced. The photon produced will have an energy equal to the difference between the electron's initial high energy state and the later lower-energy state. For visible light, we perceive these differences in photon energy as differences in the color of the light. Red light, yellow light, and so on. Because different types of atoms have different gaps between their energy levels, they make light of different colors when their electrons lose energy."

Lila lifts her hand to catch the attention of the elderly teacher, which looks deflated after that wall of text. "So, when my main girl Atom gets depressed and fails a vibe-check, she dyes her hair to show how broken she is."

The teacher looks at her with pure, unadulterated contempt before ignoring her completely. I can almost see something inside him snap like a twig. "Okay, I'll take a ten minutes smoke break. Try not to die while I'm gone."

Honestly, same.

"Look," I say to condiment boy, "if I know something about you Expositos is that you know your way around."

"We were snitches during the second world war," he say. "Dunno to which side, but information is our trade."

Excellent. Thank you, Fortuna, you drunk, if predictable bitch. "How does one get in detention over here?"

"Why would one want to get detention?" he says, leaning forward with an even bigger smirk.

"Let's say that's nonya."

"Nonya?"

"Nonya business. Now, cough up. What's the do's and don'ts of this hell-hole?" I say. Dick move? Yeah. But I don't have time to not be a dick. Besides, being a dick is my God-given right as a bad boy. WHat kind of bad boy can't get detention on day 1 of class?

"Hmmm, you're funny," says Lizzy. "Want some Relish on that thick hog of yours?"

"Want to eat a knuckle sandwich instead?" I reply.

And with that, he backs up. "Aight, I'm a gentleman. A no is a no. Right, detention is pretty rare here since management couldn't give two fucks about what we do. They believe that the market regulates itself, the market being us. If you wanna get detention, you have either have to kill and/or maim somebody, which will most likely land you in jail before detention, or just be such a public nuisance that they have no choice but to put you in time out."

Okay, being a public nuisance, got it. Easy enough. Being a bad boy, I'm a public nuisance wherever I go. But when it comes to school nuisance, there's one place better than the rest to cause the perfect amount of mayhem without it being an actual crime.

"Hey, where you going, best friend?" he asks as I stand up to leave. "We are in the middle of class!"

"So what?" I say, grabbing my trusty binder. "Nobody cares. The teacher is smoking outside, we are under the bleachers, and nothing matters."

"Oh, cool. Can I come with you?"

"No."

"Aw, dicks."

Cafeterias are sometimes referred to as the watering hole of high school, where popular kids, nerds, jocks, goths, and that weird kid who thinks he's in an anime chill in the same room and so something all people do: stuff their mouths with high fructose garbage that the American school system calls food, and that leads to shitty, which, as I said before, is the great equalizer.

This cafeteria looked more like the real-life watering hole, because it is pure chaos. There are kids playing Magic on a table, right next to the basketball players, adjacent to a math class being taught by a guy barely out of college. Not to mention what I believe is a seance being held in a corner. That, or a very metal prayer circle.

And yet, there is not enough chaos. One could even save there is a delicate harmony in all the madness. Well, call me the Fire Nation, 'cuz imma wreck this shit. I make a direct line towards the food line - yeah, I didn't thought that through - which was mostly empty, because it's like 8:15 in the morning. Lucky for me, it's open all day because, again, free market shit.

"Hey, sugar," says the lunch lady, very lunch lady-like. "Today's special is kiwi pizza."

"Excuse me, that sounds awful," I say. God, I miss Hayden's food. Never have to buy lunch with him around.. "I want three slices, and give them a whirl in the blender."

The lady didn't even bat an eye, grabbing three slices and blending them with an ease that told me it wasn;t the first time she did it. This place is a nightmare. "Want a straw with that?"

I want to say yes, but somehow, Brayden's voice pierces my brain telling me to save the turtles, or some weird shit like that. "No, thank you. Just a cup. Not actually gonna drink it."

"I don't care what you do with that. It's 6 bucks."

I pay for the damn thing, saying sorry to the gods of pizza, Papa Margaritto, for what I'm about to do. I crank my arm back and yeet it directly at the math teacher, hoping it makes the biggest impact. And what an impact it is, hitting him square in the face.

"Food fight!" I yell, ducking down one of the tables to avoid the unavoidable war about to happen. I wait, and continue to wait, until... nothing happens, and nothing continues to happen as a result. No soda grenades, nor peas Ak-47s, not even porridge RPGs. Nada.

I stand up to see everyone and their mother looking at me with contempt and distaste. Something tells me I fucked up. That something is McKenzie.

"Yo, bro, what the hey!" he says. "That was hella rude!"

My eye wanders at the teacher, the poor kid, now crying in a corner. Whoops. But I'm a bad boy, and bad boys don't say sorry, right?

"Food fight?" I say. To the surprise of nobody, it doesn't work.

"Dude, you know that one in six kids live in food insecure households in America? Some can't literally afford to eat anything, and rely on school-provided meals to survive. And you come with your yee-yee ass haircut and waste food? Not cool man, not cool."

Damn, he killed me with facts and logic. I want to be in detention, not feel like shit.

"Back so soon, best friend?" says Lizzy as soon as I walk back under the bleachers like a dog with its tail between the legs.

"Yeah, didn't work," I say. "Teach still not back?"

Of course, the teacher enters the bleachers as soon as I open my mouth, carrying back a waft of smoke and regret with him. "Have you ever watched a fireworks show and wondered how all the different colors are made? The color that a firework makes depends on what chemicals are in the firework. These chemicals are various metal compounds that burn when the firework goes off, and burning the compounds is what makes the colors. you will use a procedure that is similar to flame photometry or a flame test to observe the color of light produced when various metal compounds are burned. In front of you is a kit with beakers full of different metals and ethanol. Please place a few drops of ethanol in them and light them on fire to see the pretty colors. This is useless knowledge, but it looks pretty, and honestly, I have a headache. Don't do an Aiden."

An Aiden? What?

"Yo, what's the deal with Aiden again?" I ask.

"Well, he was kind of a dick that liked to get people in trouble to get his sick kicks. He gave Principal Dickhole a trick box for his that lights up a fire and singes your eyebrows. A real work of art, that is. Kid could be a scientist if he wanted, if he were to use it for good."

"So, he singed his eyebrows?"

"More than that," he says. "Principal Dickwad waited to be in his car to open the box, one thing led to another, and no more car, no more hair."

"And what about the pet monkey he told me he had?" I ask.

Lizzy leans forward, looking right to left with a serious expression. "We don't talk about the monkey."

Okay, fair enough. Still, it gives me another idea. Not so criminal as Aiden, but one that will surely get me in trouble. I never thought I had to make this big a mess to get in trouble.

I grab all the metal powders in front of me and put it in one of the beakers, and the sad BIC lighter that is supposed to light the Bunsen burner. A cut to my cotton shirt gives me the perfect wick, dunking it on the ethanol. With some elbow grease, I Frankenstein my creation into existence.

I call it... the pride Molotov.

Time to do crimes. Don't do this at home, kids.

I stroll into the cafeteria like a fat cat in heat, pride Molotov in hand, ready to cause mayhem. Lucky for me, the principal is already there, comforting the crying teacher.

"Hey, Dickwad," I yell, raising my Molotov and lighting the piece of cloth. "Your Fursonas suck, and they look like cereal mascots."

The pride Molotov flies through the air in a perfect arc, and man, am I in my game today. It hits the poster of a furry lion hanging on a tree branch saying "Hang in there." Of course, being a furry, the lion has big fucking balls. Huge milkers. Lots of pee in there.

It explodes like fireworks of all different colors of the rainbow, sizzling and sparkling in a beautiful display for all to see. Everyone makes a collective "ohh" as the impromptu celebration comes to a spluttering end. Hu. I thought it was gonna do-

Oh, no, wait. It now caught on fire. Jesus, was it made with oil colors? The poster is burned to a crisp faster than you can say "No! Please, not Don Fluffymane!" I know because Principal Dickcheese is the one to yell it.

"You, Ayden Gomes! You... detention!"

Hell yeah.