During lunch, it was a chore to stop herself from totally unloading her anger and ire on the clique of blond-headed beach bimbos who insisted that their "guys" were better than all the other "guys" in school.
They had boyfriends. Big whoop! Disruptor had power rings, and she could vibrate anyway. Wasn't like she NEEDED a boyfriend. In fact, some of her girlfriends thought they didn't much need boyfriends after spending some time with her.
Disruptor smirked at herself, and then dug around in her pack for her lunch. Her mother always managed to make something good and stick it into a brown paper bag for her, before going to work or more likely before going to bed the night before. This lunch was awesome - lox and bagels! Really good fish, too, smoked just right. When Disruptor first had this delicious food she was hooked. It was a somewhat expensive habit though, so she'd have to thank her mother for the treat when she got home from work.
She popped open a Fizz! Soda can, gotten from the little kiosk around the admin building. It was time for her to patrol the campus, before heading to fifth period. There was always something going on during lunch. Some jerk off guy railing on a little dweeb, someone getting pantsed, no one dared to cross most of the lines of good taste, but they certainly did have a way of stringing up underwear on the flagpoles now and again.
Today was a little odd. It was sort of tense, but Disruptor didn't really understand why. She chastised herself for losing two of her tennis matches - after the fact she realized that she really should have been able to aim the little yellow ball better. She was normally quite skilled at hitting things at other things.
One of the girls pulled a small object from her lunch bag, and examined it. "Olives. Disgusting. Oh! Say, look girls. Olives - they come in green and black, and they're disgusting!" She flicked the piece of olive at Disruptor, lodging it on her shoulder's furry edge. It clung there to the delight of the trio of girls. They laughed, good and hard.
"Laugh while you can, butterball girls," Disruptor said, and they gasped - they weren't FAT! Well, they weren't THAT fat! "Because at least I'm going to have a future protecting the innocent and guarding the city. You'll have to start eating more olives and less cocojokos - especially if you want your acne to clear up. Anytime in the next decade."
That said, she slithered past, and while she did so she flicked the olive off her own shoulder and into the big blond locks of the leader of the trio. Pleased with her newfound aim and confidence, Disruptor headed back to class.
Well, it was nice to head OFF campus for a change. That was one of the perks of the Superhero business: it was all held off campus! She trotted away to the gleaming Up Up and Away center, half a block south. The big rooms and the wide hallways suited those who flew, or who had extra wide or long bodies to work with. It would be a chore getting all the different biologies of the superheroics class in one small typical classroom after all.
Though she usually participated willingly in practice for the superhero class, Disruptor felt something was a bit odd. For one thing, professor El'bis wasn't there. The big tentacular being had mysteriously gone missing, apparently, earlier in the day. Perhaps one of the aliens got him. That was the theory of the afternoon anyway. The students looked toward the head of the class as their substitute came in. She was a handsome woman, dark skinned and had big white wings on her back, and streaks of grey in her black afro. She introduced herself as Lenelle Horace, or Darkwing.
"Some jerk piped up with, "your wings are white, why're you called dark wing?" And naturally someone else said something about her being black, and then the substitute teacher held her hands up and got them to shut up.
"It's because of my other powers, sweet thing," she said, and aimed her fingers at the corner of the room, where a stream of black obsidian-tar like stuff came out and solidified on the wall. It turned from a sticky substance into a clear resin in moments. Horace turned to the class, and they all got to it.
"I think you're all wondering the same thing, where's El'bis. Well, apparently El'bis had left the building," Someone groaned and someone else provided a rimshot, "and he just never came back. The portals would explain it, but it's a matter of not even knowing where the next one will open or where it leads anyway." She looked on and caught Disruptor's eye, "he could be anywhere."
"Anywhere?" Someone said, and Darkwing repeated, "anywhere."
One of the more mysterious Freshmen, Tamra Talisman, raised her hand. "Ma'am, will we get extra credit if we find him?"
Lenelle didn't hesitate, "of course dear. Now, today we were meant to be studying the effects of plasticity on wearing standard uniforms. Anyone have an experience with this?"
Sadly, one shy boy in the back raised his hand and was urged to relate his tale of woe as he expandoed out of his jeans and right out where everyone could see. "At least he was" -- someone shut that rude comment down quickly.
Disruptor snorted back a laugh, but then she wasn't laughing AT the guy, only at the situation he'd gotten into. There were lots of easily available super-stretchy things. Disruptor was glad she didn't have that problem. She merely had to make sure that anything she wore was nonconductive, and could handle being vibrated a lot... Thus the fur. No one took her fur seriously. In fact, some people kept getting riled because it was REAL fur - but she couldn't wear fake stuff, because that made her skin break out and it was really REALLY warm. And it didn't brush the same way as real fur. And besides, she only used rabbit fur, stuff that came from fur and meat farms. It wasn't like she was hunting down rare exotic animals - green and black ones at that?
Disruptor let her mind drift while they talked about molecules and flexible structure. She found her doodle of the dragon thing again, and smiled. Wouldn't it be cool to have a dragon? Heck, there were a couple people on campus who qualified AS dragons, they wouldn't mind company. She would be able to fly around, she'd never be late to class again! And then, when she graduated, she'd be able to --
The class bell rang and jolted Disruptor out of her reverie. Never be late to class, huh? That'd help getting back to the far-freakin-end of the campus again, for the Practical Anatomy class. Crazy Doc Sanger usually was pretty cool about late arrivals, especially when he knew they had to get from somewhere way the heck across the road.
Today, it didn't much seem to matter. Because when she got to class, Sanger was sitting casually across his desk (not an unusual thing really) but he was talking to a guy who looked just like him only a bit ... greener. "I told you, yes, your mother IS here, but she's ... not your mother yet. Isn't that making any sense?" He was saying. The tall guy (even taller than the Doc, that was saying something) shook his head and wore a bit of a frown. "She won't be coming in here. She doesn't even have any classes with me."
:That's a relief, I do not know what I would do if faced with her..." The guy said, and then as the class bell rang he nearly jumped out of his skin.
"Simon, relax..." Sanger said, and indicated one of the comfy chairs beyond the students desks for him to sit. "I've got to work out the paradox of it all before I tell her no, Simon. Obviously if I don't sign her contract you won't be born, and if that happens you won't come back to tell me about it. So I'll sign the contract, and you'll be born." He gave off a beaming grin, "I hate paradox. I don't like thinking about it. Let's carve up some corpses, shall we?"
The class went on rather oddly, because at any given loud sound the poor guy Simon would nearly leap to the ceiling. Then something outside made a noise, and he turned to ... to calm it? It was a white dragon. Outside. In fact it was sitting next to a brown, starry-winged one. Simon-guy got up and scratched the white's neck, while the other one looked on.
At last the seventh period bell rang, and - with distractions aplenty - Disruptor made it to the math building and her Business course. That was the worst. She apparently forgot that there was a pop quiz today and though she knew the answers to most of the questions, she couldn't get the dragon out of her mind. Dark skinned Miranda Varnhagen gathered up the papers and let the class slack off, since it was obvious that by this time in the day everyone had been somehow affected by the portals and rifts. It appeared that at least two other teachers had gone missing, in addition to El'bis. The admin building people were scrambling around trying to find replacements but at this point in the day, they gave up and made an announcement on the PA that informed everyone that if their last class' teacher was not present, they could go home.
There was a bit of cheering but in general, it seemed like the school was on a big downer. El'bis was popular - and so were Urd and Zoop Argle. Argle was Disruptor's 8th period teacher, so she knew that she could just go home after Math. But something told her not to.
Instead, Disruptor walked the campus, and it was eerily subdued. One of the Portal things obviously opened up - that was nothing really unusual on Twoarth anyway, but to have something go all swoshy-wide like a sucking wound in the sky, right above campus, that was pretty weird. Several of the campus staff and teachers decided that it was time to call it a day anyway. They let the classes out, most of them, and kids scooted on home pretty quick.
Normally things in Carramba High airspace were shot down or absorbed by the Caffetorium's intake jets. But this time, the portal thing stayed. Disruptor found herself standing looking right up into some big planet or other. It was pretty, but it was also scary as heck.
She made ready to aim one of her disintegration ring blasts at it, in case it started an invasion or something.
"That's it?" Sanger said, startling Disruptor. She clung to a wall near the Student Union building. It was a good thing this portal hadn't opened right over the Unleaded Security Tower, because it probably would have been zapped right away. Disruptor looked on as Sanger and Simon, his son apparently, watched the portal.
"Yes, that is it." He spoke with a strange accent. Disruptor saw his dragon walking with the other brown one, and she wondered whose that was.
I am Dominique's bond, said a voice in Disruptor's mind. She was startled, but then looked at the dragon.
... NEXT...