They seemed like Giants compared to my size. They were practically yelling at Angel to give them a gem she had supposedly stolen from them. I didn't know if I wanted to believe these two tyrants as I tapped one of the girls on the shoulder. I asked her,

  "What are you doing to that poor girl over there?"

  "And who might you be??! If you're so inclined to wonder, we were just interrogating this girl over here. She stole one of my friend'/ rings. Isn't that right girl!?" One of the girls responded. The other girl nodded her head in agreement. I looked from one girl to another, a hint of danger seeping into my gut.

  I knew these two were lying, yet I couldn't prove it. So, instead, I weighed my options.

  Either I could fight them and be beaten up into a pulp, or accuse them of just plainly bullying someone which would result in me being beaten up into a pulp. Or...

  "Oh well, that makes sense. She stole that from her, I mean just look at her! I'm George by the way, what's your name?" I asked in a quickened pace, extending my hand way too quickly. Fortunately, they were only weirded out by my approach rather than raising their suspicions.

  "Uhm, Marissa. And this is my friend Canri." Marissa said.

  She was taken aback by my sudden change of view while Angel looked like she got stabbed in the heart by what I just said. I felt horrible, but if I wanted to protect her and myself. Then this plan I was working with on the spot had to work.

  "What fancy ass names, no offense. But say, I heard you were looking for some gems. I think I found them in this classroom if you're so interested. I mean, of course, it does seem like Ang—"

  "AHEM! This girl stole your gems. But because I don't see any gems over here, it seems like maybe she doesn't have them anymore and threw 'em in the classroom?" I stated questionably, pointing at the now empty bag that they dumped out on the floor.

  "OH SWEET! Can you give them to us??" Canri stated, completely ignoring Angel which was what I wanted in the first place.

  "Yes, please!?" Marissa also stated. Her eyes seemed to be full of obstreperous fury that neither her parents nor anyone else for that matter could contain.

  I knew if I messed up here, which I already had as I told them about phony gems in the classroom. Then I would be dead by next Tuesday.

  "Pfft sure, go into the classroom and I'll be right with you!" I exclaimed, trying to play along with this little game that I've created.

  As they walked towards the classroom, turning their backs to Angel and I. I pivoted my attention to a girl I had met only a few hours beforehand. I knelt down, saying to her,

  "Hey Angel, are you okay? I saw you getting hurt there and I sorta had to intervene—"

  Before I could finish my sentence, though. Angel hugged me and whispered in my ears with a raspy voice,

  "Thank you... you're a lifesaver. Those girls, I don't know what they want from me! I tried running away but they chased me down and... and..."

  Angel began to tear up. I wiped her tears away with my thumbs and said in an elevated tone,

  "Hey, don't worry, you're safe now. Oh, and by the way. Do you by chance happen to have pepper spray?"

  "Yeah, why do you ask?" Angel asked me. I was a little surprised that she first of all had pepper spray and didn't bother to use it against those girls.

  "Give it to me real quick," I said, still on my toes about those girls still waiting for me in the classroom. As Angel handed me the pepper spray, I asked her,

  "Is this your homeroom?"

  "Uhm, yeah." She whispered back.

  "Alright, go with Steve then. He's over there at the corner waiting for us to come back. I need you to go with him and tell him to go back to our homeroom and bring you along with him. Do you understand?"

  I might've not made much sense there, but I was in a rush to get the hell inside the classroom. Angel nodded softly as she picked up her stuff and placed it in her backpack. I walked over to the classroom and closed the door behind me. I looked around and noticed that it was only us in the homeroom.

  Great.

  "So, where's the gems?" Marissa asked me.

  I double-checked the surrounding area in the classroom, saw that again no one was there, and leaned down on the ground. I took a deep breath, pulled out the pepper spray, and let it rip.

  "Oh! I got your gems right HERE!" I yelled.

  I have to admit, violently pepper-spraying people who deserved it, especially these girls, was sooo much better than I'd ever expected.

  I aimed the spray towards their spiteful faze, making sure I covered my eyes and nose while doing so with my free left arm.

  The girls screamed in agony and actively panicked for their lives. I heard footsteps stepping towards the classroom from the opposite side of the closed door. My gut told me that it was a teacher.

  I peeked out from one of my eyes as I kept spraying the two girls and saw one of the girls falling with their hands wide open. I swiftly threw the pepper spray can onto the girl's open hand.

  I sidestepped towards the side of the doorway and opened the door just a crack so it looked like I had just walked in.

  As the teacher walked in, I was surprised to see Mrs. Foyager. Yet before I could process why she was here, or even why she was so important in the first place. She was screaming at the top of her lungs,

  "OH MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS! WHAT IN THE ANCIENT UNDERWORLDLY GOD HAPPENED HERE!?!"

  I then said, in a calm but ratcheted voice,

  "Why, I have no idea what happened! I just walked in and there they were lying down crying! But, I see a pepper spray can on one of their hands. Maybe it has something to do with that?" I barely held in a cough while saying that.

  When I pointed out the pepper spray can on the girl's hand, it made Mrs. Foyager believe that they had in fact, pepper sprayed themselves. Which in retrospect, sounded EXTREMELY stupid. Then I said,

  "Y'know, if it was me, I'd believe they pepper sprayed themselves as a prank. Tsk, tsk, tsk, pretty immature if you ask me."

  It still didn't sound any better. But surprisingly enough, she believed it.

  "Alright, sweetie. I want you to get out of this foul room. I'm going to deal with these two." She said.

  I was glad she said that because I couldn't deal with the fact that my throat was burning up. As I walked out of the classroom and to the corner where Angel and Steve were no longer there. I coughed up a storm.

  I looked out of the corner of my eye to Mrs. Foyager taking the two of them by force to the nurse's office where they would be treated. Then hopefully, sent straight to the principal's office where they would be punished.

  Of course, that was a hope rather than a guarantee. Who knows what they can do to avoid punishment?

  Jack then finally, and when I say finally, I mean FINALLY got out of the bathroom breathing a huge sigh of relief.

  He looked at me, then at the two girls being escorted away, then back at me. He began uttering a question, but I cut him short.

  "Don't ask. It's a long ass story. Let's go back to our homeroom, we have about two minutes left before we're late." Jack didn't question it and we ran through the third-floor hallway, down the staircase, and right to the second floor where we finally got to our homeroom.

  That's when I saw Steve and a bruised-up Angel standing right next to the end of the staircase. Jack looked thunderstruck and walked over to Angel.

  Jack and Steve made sure Angel was okay, which she mostly was apart from two bruises on her chest and one on her neck. Those bastards did a number on her.

  Before I could focus on that, though, I knew that we needed to get inside our homeroom. So, we entered the classroom and walked past a sea of desks to the back of the room.

  Angel could be more easily hidden here behind a plethora of students because technically speaking, she wasn't supposed to be here. Angel whispered to me as we sat down,

  "Thank you."

  "Seriously, it's no big deal. Even though I just met you a couple of hours ago, I still trust you enough that you didn't steal that gem. And based on the fact that it wasn't anywhere on you or in your bag, I'd say I'm right in that assumption." I said with a wink.

  She nodded back gratefully and focused on her Scruplot. Jack and Steve had somehow devolved their conversation into a heated debate about whether or not it was okay to piss for three minutes straight.

  As time passed, more and more people came into the homeroom. However, there was no sign of the teacher—robotic or not—at all. So, being bored and all, I tapped Jack's shoulder and asked him,

  "What's Emily's homeroom?"

  "You want to save her already? Come on! Give her a few more minutes and she'll be just fine."

  "No, I don't want to save her from Veronica. Though, that would be a good thing, but still. I gotta talk to her about something." I stated.

  "Alright, sure. The teacher isn't here anyway and I would bet Emily needs someone to calm herself down before she suffers cardiac arrest. Go to the second floor of the B building and take a right then a left. The homeroom should be labeled 'channel C'." He stated. I nodded, got up from my desk, and quietly went off to the B building.

  Now, you would think that because every student needed to go to a classroom. That meant that the school would automatically have teachers or guards patrolling the area just in case anyone wanted to not go to their homeroom and instead do quite literally anything else.

  However, when I walked down the purple-painted concrete staircase to the first floor of the A building. I saw only one teacher scarcely guarding the entrance. So, I walked through the back entrance where I instantly spotted a camera.

  Shit.

  I think I know why they didn't bother to deploy any teachers. They have cameras here that could easily spot people trying to leave the damn building. I needed to think of something quick and as I caught sight of a hardly open window right outside the camera's view, I knew what I needed to do.

  I opened the window carefully and overstepped past the window's lower golden sill to the other side where I planted my feet on fake grass.

  How did I know it was fake? Because no grass that's been mowed down doesn't have a good smell. And there was no smell coming from this fake grass.

  But that's besides the plot.

  I closed the window gently once again and crouched under the wall until I carefully stepped away from the view of the camera. I sprinted under an overhanging roof where the two buildings breathed onto one another.

  As soon as I ran up to a glass door that was severely unguarded. My eyes fell upon another camera on the other side of the doorway.

  Crap.

  What am I supposed to do now?! There wasn't any lucky window I could open and I knew that the main entrance to the B building was probably being guarded by a singular teacher.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  But then I saw it. Something that could get me to Emily before she probably beat the ever-living hell out of Veronica.

  A downspout!

  Hopefully I wouldn't suffer the same fate as one little spider.

  My adrenaline was pumping exceedingly high as soon as I climbed up onto the second floor's ledge. I didn't realize that the second floor also didn't have any other windows open. I had to tip-toe my shaky feet along a centimeter wide block of unstable concrete.

  I desperately did not want to break my leg on the first day by falling.

  As soon as I reached for one of the classroom's closed windows, I gasped out loud. I ducked low and crouched, making sure a peep of noise didn't emit from my voice.

  A robotic teacher was right fuckin' there!

  Yet, before I retreated back down the downspout and made sure to never do a plan as stupid as this ever again. I saw that the door labeled 'channel C' was straight beyond this classroom.

  Now if only I could get someone to open the window.

  But I knew I wouldn't be that lucky. So, I had to make up my own luck.

  I picked up a rock that was on the ledge of the building beside me and threw it gently onto the window. It bounced off of its stainless glass, causing a loud—

  THUNK!

  The robotic teacher opened the window by just a crack. It stared with its cold gaze straight ahead without looking left or right, or in other words, where I hid. The robotic teacher placed its cold hand on the window to close it.

  But just before it could do that, I wedged my hand into the windowsill. I quickly jumped inside just in the nick of time as the teacher sat down, looking back at the window in contemplating suspicion.

  It instructed the class through the new robotic program that I couldn't bear to hear about.

  I crawled, literally inch by inch through the classroom's floorboard. I made sure that I was lying down at the back of the class.

  I was crawling past disgusting gum wrappers, chewed fingernails, and dusty shoes. Right when I was about to get to the front door, someone raised their hand to go to the bathroom.

  I knew this was my chance.

  As soon as they opened the door, I used my finger to pry it open by just a hair. Once the robotic teacher's blind eyesight wasn't looking, I stepped out of the classroom and quickly closed the door behind me.

  Looking back, I don't know how or why none of the students in that classroom didn't scream that a student was crawling through the floor. But I didn't care.

  I continued through the hallway until I got to Emily's door where I heard a large-

  CRASH!

  -followed by footsteps rushing towards the closed steel door.

  CRAP!

  I had to think fast, so I leapt into the hallway and scrambled up to the lockers. Great thinking past me!

  The door swung open and slammed shut behind whoever exited.

  "Keep it together, Emily! It's just a year! What's nothing more than a year of school with that BASTARD!?" She then smashed the locker right next to me. I screamed and leaped up from the punch.

  "George!? What are you doing here?"

  "I wanted to get you out of there, but I see that you've already done that for yourself. Thank god!" I exclaimed, getting up and fixing my pants.

  "Hmph. Yeah. Veronica's giving me a hard time in there." She said.

  "Then why don't we go on a little adventure somewhere?" I asked her.

  "Pfft, and where might that possibly be?" She asked me.

  "I don't know... maybe to that basement in the D Building we were talking about earlier?" I asked her.

  "Wha..? B-But you know we can't go there, right?!" She asked me.

  "Wait a minute! Is little 'Troublemaker' afraid of causing trouble now!? Wow, what did Veronica do to you back there?" I asked her. Her face got all puffy as she grabbed my hand. We rushed over to one of the cleaner windows of the building.

  "Alright then. Because you just challenged me to cause trouble, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna get off the first floor through one of the windows. I know how to open them since I threw a chair out of my classroom."

  "From there, we're gonna grab the chair I threw and carry it with us to the D building. Smash the back window. Get to the basement door as quickly as possible. And then, we'll be home free!" She exclaimed. We walked down to the first floor where I asked her,

  "But isn't the basement going to be locked or something? Won't we need a key?"

  "Yeah, you're right. You'll grab the key for me then. And then we'll be Scott-free!" She stated, opening the window and getting out first. I didn't like this plan, but if it meant that Emily was finally going to be joyful at least once throughout this entire day, then so be it!

  We ran through the fields between the side of the building and the front of the building where we saw the chair just lying there on the ground, all scratched up.

  "Did you fight a tiger or something?"

  She ignored my remark and grabbed the chair. She ran through the field to the back of the D building which was half a mile away from the B Building.

  As she ran as if she was in a marathon, she ran up to the back of the D building. I was still strolling my way towards the building, enjoying the scenic view until it was brutally interrupted. This interruption was the glass smashing inside the building.

  Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea after all...

  Eh, screw it. I was already neck-deep into this, let's just do this.

  I went to the back of the building, carefully maneuvered through the broken window, and heard footsteps rushing downstairs. I presumed this was Emily. I looked around for one thing and one thing only though. Keys.

  I looked through the room where we smashed the window. There was only a small desk with a couple of papers here and there so I went outside of the room and saw that there was a bulletin board. On that bulletin board was an absurd amount of keys.

  "Oh, what the fuck." I stated. Grabbing as many keys as I could and stashing them in my pockets, I ran downstairs and closed the door behind me just in time as a robotic teacher was scanning the area for a disturbance. The disturbance? Me and Emily making the stupidest decision of our lives up to this point.

  "Here, I got some keys. I'll try one then you can..."

  The door was already smashed inward. Emily had somehow gotten through a mixture of iron and another substance that was like titanium. She had somehow smashed through something stronger than titanium. Just... wow.

  "Is there anything in there?" I asked her from the doorway. I have to admit, I got a little impatient so I ran in and looked into the basement. And...

  There was nothing. Well, no riches or anything of the sort. Instead, all I saw was Emily crouched over something in the far distance of an extremely white-colored basement. So, I walked over to her and looked over her shoulder. That's when I saw it in her hands. A...

  "A GUN!?" I screamed out. I backed away from Emily as she pointed the gun at me.

  "Don't be such a wimp." She said

  "W-W-WHAT DO YOU MEAN A WIMP!?! YOU'RE AIMING A GUN AT ME!" I screamed again.

  "For one, shut up! You're gonna get us caught. Second of all, this is a water gun." She said, demonstrating it by pressing the trigger and spraying me with water on my face.

  "And third of all, I got this from a box over here. Come, take a look." She said. I walked over to her where I saw a small box containing a book, a CD, and a note that read,

  ?????????????? ?????????? ???????? ????????, ??????????????????????????????! ??????'???? ?????????? ?????? ???????????? ???????????????? ???? ???????? ??????????????. ?????? ????????????, ?????? ?????? ???? ????????.

  "Nice, we got nothing," I stated.

  "What do you mean nothing!? We found a basement hidden by an infamous Redwood! Plus, we got this sick-looking water gun, a random book about birds, and a CD that looks like something from the 2020s! That's ancient dude!"

  "Yeah but here's the thing, though. I'm not angry because we didn't find any treasure or any magical tool to turn us into a teacher for a day. Although that would've been sorta cool,"

  "I'm angry because we found a basement of a Redwood." I said, grabbing the small box with one hand while with my other hand, I helped Emily up.

  "I guess that would make any person understandably angry. But still! If we could do this, just imagine what else we could do!" She exclaimed, spurting out water from the water gun as she yelped in excitement. I smiled weakly as we heard the basement door suddenly swing open.

  CREAK!!

  I immediately grabbed Emily and pushed her to the far side of the basement. Just a reminder that the basement was COMPLETELY EMPTY!

  Meaning that all it would take was for this person or people to just glance to their left and we would be caught. As we held our breaths in horror of being caught, I heard a familiar voice followed by another girl's voice.

  "So you said that this place was impenetrable, huh? Then why in the fuck is the door WIDE OPEN!?!" We heard the girl scream out.

  "I-I'm sorry! I thought that after we moved all of that golden junk, that stupid chalk, and when we made security improvements. It would be impossible for someone to enter here!"

  "And yet..!?" The girl snarled back as she snapped her fingers. Three more footsteps ran down the stairs and I looked in astonishment. It was the two girls who had bullied Angel beforehand.

  "And you know what the best part about this is!? I still haven't found my ruby yet. And I'm getting just a tad bit impatient over you doing absolutely NOTHING to help me get it!" She scolded them as if they were her dogs.

  "I'm going to try, I swear! I think I already have a lead on a girl that possibly has it if you just give me more time—"

  "MORE TIME!? HA!"

  "It's as if I didn't give you and your family enough time to prepare my basement, Veronica!" She yelled at her now.

  In the distance, we peeked at the two girls looking through the basement. I noticed that one of the girls began to eye in our direction. So, without hesitation, I aimed the water gun that Emily was holding upwards and pressed the trigger.

  This flickered the lights and shut them off straight above where we hid, making us invisible to the naked eye.

  "Hmph." One of the girls hummed, searching around the room. Emily and I held our breaths until the two girls finally left the room.

  "It looks like the intruders didn't take anything important apart from your box, Ruby," One of the girls stated. Emily stifled a gasp.

  "Of course, they took my box. They probably thought that stupid legend about that idiotic landlord was true and just took the next best thing."

  "Ugh, Jesus Christ, Veronica. I told you to do ONE JOB, and you failed me faster than lightning." Ruby stated in extreme disappointment.

  "Well, I tried my best. And I will find your ruby, Ruby. I promise." She stated. After a brief pause, likely to contemplate whether or not Veronica was indispensable.

  "Fine. Fix this mess first thing tomorrow morning and make sure that no one can get in here again."

  "YOU GOT IT!?!" She yelled out.

  The two girls and Veronica agreed simultaneously and as they all left, the lights then shut down inside the basement.

  It was pitch black. Nothing to see and nothing to discover here. Other than Emily and I breathing in and out in silent terror.

  Emily and I sighed in relief. We walked over to the basement's staircase where there was a dim light emitting from the top of the prolonged stairs.

  "W-What was that?" She asked me.

  "Something more is going on with this school, Emily. I'm just not sure what, but something's up. We better be more careful next time."

  I looked down at the small box where the book and CD were. Just what were they going to try to hide in here? At a school of all places?

  "Let's just get out of here. I don't want to even look at Veronica after this." She said, getting out of the basement door was easy enough as we passed through the hallway to the broken window.

  We carefully stepped out of the window and I soon realized something that I should've known beforehand. The water gun Emily was holding looked specifically like a real gun. So, I told her,

  "Hide that thing, idiot."

  "Huh? Oh, my bad," She looked embarrassed, hiding the water gun in her back pocket.

  "No, you..! Ugh, just put it in the box."

  She obliged and put the gun in the box as I sealed it up tight and held it under my right armpit. We stepped through the window still open on the B building. Stepping up the staircase, we walked back to Emily's homeroom. I stated to her,

  "Hey. Don't lose your temper to that loser. You don't know what she could do to you out of spite."

  She nodded and fist-bumped me. As she entered back into her homeroom, I then walked out of the B building the same way I came in, and walked silently to the A building where I realized the approximately fifth idiotic thing I had done today.

  I had shut the window.

  "Damn it."

  I knew that my homeroom was right next to a window that faced a plethora of trees. So, I ran to the side of the building that only looked like where my homeroom was, climbed up on the building's downspout once again, and nearly tripped over the ledge as I rapidly knocked on the window.

  I held onto the building and ledge for dear life, seeing out of the corner of my eye one familiar face.

  Angel was staring back at me in pure stupefaction and rushed over to the window.

  She opened the latch keeping the window sealed shut. I fell inside and quickly got up, brushing myself from the dust my clothes had accumulated. Steve and Jack also looked at me as if I was crazy—which truth be told I likely was. I placed the box down at my table and sat down on my chair.

  "Dude, what happened to you!?" Steve asked me. Angel sat down next to me.

  "Uhm, I was going out for some fresh air and got locked outside." I know lying is bad. But I didn't want them to get panicked about what the Redwoods were truly doing here. I had to keep that as a secret for now.

  "That doesn't explain the box, though," Jack stated, pointing at the box on the desk.

  "Ah, well I found the box in the woods and I thought it looked cool! Sooo, I brought it in with me. It has a water gun, a CD, and a book." I stated, showing them all three items inside the box. I had hidden the note that we found inside of the box in my pocket.

  "Alright, then. Just don't get stuck outside like that again, dumbass." Emily said. I chuckled a bit at her words.

  Suddenly, Steve gasped. I slowly turned to him, his eyes stared at someone at the far front of the classroom.

  His face lit up in automatic glee, a spectacular sparkle of wonder and joy coming from each static movement of his body. It was as if his heart and soul was burning with each twinge of his muscles, a desire that kept escaping from his mind onto his every action.

  "Yo George! You see the girl over there?" He whispered.

  "Yeah, what about her Steve?" I replied.

  The girl he was oozing over had on a usual school uniform. Her caramel hair waved across her head, a package of swirly strands of hair displayed across her forehead. Makeup wasn't excluded in the school's dress code. Everything else just about was.

  "That's the girl I like!"

  Here we go again.