In her secluded office, principal Melania sits at her desk twirling papers between her fingers. She believes the assembly will go terribly wrong, it's simply inevitable. That perfect orderly peace broken by delinquent brats. Regardless, her heart races at the thought of the device the cops are to introduce, although it did take some convincing from the enthused cops to get her onboard the new technology. She takes a long sip from her teacup, her breath smelling bitter.
— — —
The faucet drips to silence. Despite three girls inside, the bathroom awfully quiet. There is the pair inspecting themselves and doing their makeup at the sinks, who've been out of class for a good twenty minutes, and the third girl sitting quietly in a stall, waiting for the two to leave.
The brunette applying her mascara breaks the silence. "God, Mr. Werner is such a pain in the ass."
"Hah. Tell me about it." Her friend, who is also a brunette, uncaps her lip balm. "The freaking assembly is in twenty minutes and he's still on about history." The girl leans closer to the mirror checking for pores. "I hope he gets a heart attack in the middle of talking."
The first girl snorts while lowering her mascara, "hmph, Urthel," her head jerks in the direction of the occupied stall.
"Or in the middle of pooping." Urthel snorts.
She swipes the tint of steamy gloss across her lips. "God, I love this lip balm. Doesn't red look so good on me, Kimme?" She caps it. "Anyone else would look downright disgusting." The girls cackle. Satisfied, they take their leave, all while eyeing those unmistakable boots beneath the stall door.
The girl on the toilet doesn't move, her knees bolted. Despite finally being alone now, she wants nothing more than to claw the skin off her arms. Urthel and Kimme. Such pathetic girls. But who's more pathetic, them or the loser who can't fight back? If only they were worthless cops out in the open world, where she reigned and couldn't be caught. Then, they would be kneeling and begging for her mercy, and she would have the last laugh.
Eventually, the girl makes it to the sink, scrubbing everything off her face. She puts her mask back on, a comforting accessory that hides her plain face. Instead of going back to class, she opts for a walk around the corridors, instead.
— — —
A loud bump comes from the floor. Everyone in the classroom looks to their shoes, bewildered.
"Did a bomb go off?" A confused student asks.
"No, dummy." The smart student muses, "that was more like a metal helmet of spaghetti hitting the ceiling from below."
"What?"
"It's the cops beating everyone up. I mean, those idiots downstairs were bound to piss them off," a talkative student says.
"I heard that someone was disabling the straitguards. What if they actually figured it out?"
"Seriously, it feels like a violation of our rights that they put straitguards on literally everything."
A murmur of agreement washes over the class, but before a full on debate ensues the teacher stops the discussion with an abrupt cough. "Ahem. This classroom does not concern itself with whatever goes on outside of it. Now, as I was saying," the man flips through his textbook, ignoring the students' groans, "Ahem. Ivrent was only just recently legalized." The man drawls, emphasizing each word. "Most of your parents won't even know how to use it." He looks at every child slowly. "Which is why you cannot go around all willy-nilly in this school. Straitguards are made to protect you children from yoursel–" A chime from within the teacher's desk interrupts his lecturing. The students exclaim with oohs and ahhs at the disturbance. He sighs as he unlocks the drawer, "if only you children could be so enthusiastic about history. It's probably nothing but ivrent dissipating."
With the latch undone, the old man pulls out a chirping bell. "hah. I'd forgotten Melania had given me this." He slides his spectacle up from his nose. "I wonder…"
"Mr. Werner, what is that?" The confused student asks.
"Are you dumb? It's obviously a bell." The smart student answers.
"Idiot, I meant what's the ringing for."
"An alarm for his prescription drugs. A death alert. A sale over fifty percent on all retail stores just dropped." The talkative student throws out his guesses.
"Or, could it be a bomb?"
The students look expectantly at Mr. Werner, so he responds by ringing the bell. Suddenly, the children's mouths zip up and their backs straighten. The teacher scratches his forehead.
As he places the bell gently on his desk, a pair of rowdy girls enter the silent classroom. Confused and alert to the atmosphere, they shut up and take their seats. "Hmm. As I was saying," taking the quiet as a stroke of a miracle, Mr. Werner continues his lesson, "for hundreds of years, ivrent was viewed as the devil's work, a curse on humanity, but after its legalization ag–" Mr. Werner is again disrupted, this time by the intercom announcing that the first years are to gather in the auditorium.
— — —
"You. In the back," Temin points to a familiar figure, "masked girl, why don't you come up and demonstrate for the audience?"
He points to the girl who has just poked her head through the back doors of the auditorium, trying to sneak in from the shadows.
She mentally curses herself for not staying in the bathroom. She'll just walk away, then. The cops are too far away to catch her anyway and she's under no obligation to go on stage. Despite her rapid thinking, her feet stay rooted to the ground. Everyone has turned to look at her with their emotionless stares. Even the portraits high above are watching her with their emotionless eyes. The teacher manning the doorway grabs her and pushes her inside. A mind numbing sweat creeps up on her. Urthel and Kimme. She sees them, and everyone, staring and laughing at her with those face holes of theirs. Her legs betray her and carry her through the aisle towards the stage. She needs to save herself from the agony of embarrassment, of being seen, but she has been caught as surely as a mouse beneath a surly cat. In fact, an actual cat hisses at her now. In the arms of a cop, rests the five legged creature she tried to examine the previous day.
"Don't worry. It's not like I'll leave you completely defenseless." The cop says as she reaches the stage. This is the very same cop she detained just yesterday. Look at him today, talking like he's anything. Does he not remember her? "I'll remove the restrictions around your ivrent." He holds out a rectangular device she's never seen. It has buttons. "With this device."
"But first, I would like to know your name." The man waits for her response, but the girl has all but frozen over. "What's the matter, cat got your tongue?" Temin turns to the audience. "Well?"
Not a single person speaks up.
"Does she not have friends?" Devon, ever the brilliant man, speaks from center stage. That gets the crowd laughing. Melania along with the higher ups sit in the front row, unamused by the performance. The girl looks about ready to cry.
A boy sitting on the upper deck of the auditorium sighs. Everyone here's an idiot. Rile up the beast more and we're all dead. He takes out the bell he had swiped from Ms. Erett, about to ring it right then and there despite his crude knowledge of its use, but he is stopped by a single glance. Even from two hundred meters away, he can recognize the cold hard eyes of the principal boring into him, as though sensing what he is about to do. But what is it that he is about to do? Even he isn't sure.
"Fine, no name. I'll show you how this works." Temin holds up the device. "See these buttons? They allow me to use ivrent remotely." The crowd gasps at the proclamation. Using ivrent without physical contact? Simply absurd. "I know the school limits your use with crude and archaic methods, but this rivals any invention you've ever seen because you see," he raises his arms wide with cheer, "this is a remote controller!"