“OI BEEELLLLLLLL”

Shit this isn’t good, That all too familiar voice plagued my peaceful morning once again, I turn swiftly towards the direction of the commotion, holding up my left arm as if it were the only appropriate reaction and preparing to snatch whatever object was flying towards me out of the air. There was two… no, three small rectangular objects flying towards me, not good, only one of them was en-route for my left hand, the other two veering towards the right side of my body, I can get my other hand up in time for the object flying furthest to the right, but the middle one had a dangerous trajectory. There was only one option left in this situation, I open my jaw and anticipate the impact aiming to snap my mouth close to secure the UFO flying towards me. Before I can even adjust my arms I feel my left hand make contact and grasp whatever had made impact with it, the right follows suit. Now then just the midd… CLUNK. My thoughts were interrupted by the bar of chocolate that had just clocked me in the forehead. All my intensive thoughts were suddenly interspersed… I was temporarily stunned. A second later, when I came to, I spotted the perpetrator bending over in hysterics, another second passed, the easing of my confusing allowed me to hear the echoing bellow they were emitting and the friendly giggles of my surrounding classmates. The teacher at the front of the room walked over to the girl who had humiliated me in front of the class. Yes! Give her an earful, avenge me! The teacher stuck out his hand in a fist, woah hold on that is going too far. The breathless girl recovered enough to stick her fist out in response.

Huh? No way.

A fist bump. The teacher gave her a fist bump. Truly there is no one left in the God forsaken world I can trust.

“HEY, BEL”

The witch’s voice assaulted my ears once again. This time with a shortness of breath.

“Happy Birthday”

Her voice had calmed down and an uncharacteristically kind smile crept across her face. She seemed to be trying to convey that this whole event was just her way of being nice… or she just got tired of yelling.

I looked down to what I had caught in my hands, chocolate bars. Unfortunately, the one in my right hand was pulverized by my grip and the one that landed on the floor had shattered. Well one for three wasn’t the worst outcome, smashed or not I was going to eat the shit out of this caramel chocolate, homemade straight from the food house down the road. At least she remembered my favourite.

I sat down in defeat, content with snacking on the chocolate used to assault me as the classes usual morning chatter simmered down in respect for the teacher as he begun to half ass the roll call, He insisted on doing it every morning even though by the end of it he was pretty much just bumbling to himself, no one in the class would reply and we had no reason too, there was only 12 of us, spanning all different ages we all stand out far too much to be missed at a glance. This is the only school in our small town so rather than separating by age groups they are split into three levels, judged by academic skills, your average for all subjects would determine which homeroom you were in, but some of the younger classmates would visit the two lower classes for certain subjects due to them being below their average. As one of the older students I’m in all the top classes by default, along with a handful of others we act as spare teachers time to time assisting the younger kids with their studies… as well as certain older students that don’t pay attention in class.

“HA, you should’ve seen your face, you thought you were so cool catching the first two then WHAM right in the middle of the eyes, I knew three was the perfect amount”

“Only took you a couple of months to figure out how to get past my supreme defences, you better believe ill be catching all three next time”

“Oh hoho I’d like to see you try, next time it’ll be three rocks”

“Oh yeah, as if you could even throw three rocks”

“I could”

“Prove it”

“No…”

“All right! Quiet now!”

The Teacher interjected as Olivia, the girl who assaulted me with dairy, moved over to me and coaxed me into joining her in disrupting the peace the class had only just achieved. She sat down next to me in a surprisingly graceful manner, she tucked her long, jet black ponytail behind her chair and laid her bottle of cola on the desk. Judging from her actions this morning cola wasn’t the only thing in that bottle.

“Hey Oli, If you keep taking it too far, I wont be able to save you every time” Olivia’s eyes met with mine and she realised what I was talking about.

“I know, I’m sorry, Ill only have enough to make school a bit more interesting, Since its your birthday ill let you have some”

“Don’t pepper me up, you’d let me have some any day just so you could mess with me”

“Touché”

In truth the only reason I didn’t want any is because it frustrated me how it made her act sometimes, On multiple occasions she’d start acting erratically, mumbling nonsense and spouting some surprisingly touching poetry, I’d have to cover for her in class and take her home on the pretence that she wasn’t feeling well. In my opinion it was a warped idea of making school ‘interesting’. But I wouldn’t tell her that, the opinions of others hold little weight for that strange girl. Instead I would just remind her that if we both managed to get in such a state there would be no such saving grace, we’d be goners.

“Alright, Alright but have some with me sometime soon okay” She replied playfully with a genuine smile but I could tell she was a little disappointed, Behind that smile was a woman who wanted to pull all kind of stunts on me while I was intoxicated.

“Hey, hey” An unsubtle voice threatened to give us away from behind. “Can I have some of that Oli?”

“Do you have any money?”

“No I don’t”

“Then piss off”

God how fast does this woman change tone. The poor victim of Olivia’s verbal abuse was Ant, he was in the same boat as us, An older kid in all the top classes by default, or he would be if he didn’t manage to plunge himself into the middle grade for English. This crass achievement earned him the nickname Ant which is unfortunately short for antonym. The choosing of his nickname was the result of a whole class discussion, including the teacher. Ants real name is William and seeing as we had been previously reading Shakespeare, we decided that his abilities were anything but, hence antonym. Being in a lower class during English he truly had no idea about the origins of his nickname, and truth be told he would probably never catch on.

“Hey alright hear me out, Me. You. Leaders bet at lunch If I win you give me a bottle yeah?” He was playing a dangerous game here crossing Olivia.

“Ha, you’re walking yourself into a trap, Ill make the punishment extra bad just for you Ant” An evil glint shone in her eyes. Poor Ant, his misplaced confidence and stupendous persistence would be the end of him, He had lived a good life.

“Hey, Bel you’re going to help me out right” He looked over at me with such confidence as if we were best pals bound by some sort of blood pact.

“Ah… Yeah… Sure”

With the three of us talking, a quarter of the class was distracted, and the teacher could no longer ignore our chatter. With a stern look the three of us were silenced for the rest of the class.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

It was lunchtime and I found myself standing next to Olivia facing a pale Ant across a small unkept field which spanned about 30 metres long.

“Hey uh Bel, Y-you’re on my side right”

“Sorry Man, I kinda gotta get home early tonight”

“Hey, Wait, you’re acting like I’ve already lost”

Lunchtime proved even more chaotic than class, naturally. The entire school consisting of 32 kids had decided to run various games and challenges during lunches that would vary from Sports to Card and Board game tournaments and served as the way to dish out cleaning duties after school. Today was special, it was a ‘leaders bet’. Just like usual the losing team would all have to stay to clean up after school, however, in a ‘leaders bet’ the team leaders would be pre-determined and there would be a second forfeit for the losing leader. It can be used to settle beef or in Ants case battle over possession of items. The forfeit could be anything within the opponents capabilities the only boundaries being your opponent’s moral compass, which Olivia severely lacked in a situation like this. Ants forfeit was clear, but Olivia hadn’t revealed hers yet, there was only one thing that was certain, the match was already decided.

“Since I get Bel, Ill let you pick not only the game, but your first five teammates”

“Wait hold on a seco-“

“HA, getting cocky are you, You’ll regret that, Ill choose dodgeball and Ill take Jones, Markus, Matt, Lisa and Tina”

Despite my attempt to interject he took full benefit of the ridiculous advantage Olivia had presented him with. He chose a physically challenging game and grabbed the five most physically fit players, while Olivia had good physical abilities and I myself could be in the running for top of the school, we still stood no chance against the army Ant had amassed, and the selection we had left wouldn’t be enough. I was losing faith in my decision to back Olivia, her tendency to challenge herself could be our downfall.

The Teams were decided and we took our positions, The teacher walk out onto the field and half-assedly spouted the rules.

“Alrighty then all the balls start in the middle, the whole body is fair game but please don’t hurt each other I cant be bothered explaining this to someone parents. If you catch the ball then a member of your team gets to come back in the order in which they got out, if there’s no one left to return to the court then the person who threw the ball is out. You can’t pass the middle line but I’m not really watching so you could probably cheat. Also, if your team leader goes out then you automatically lose. Good luck I guess”

With a blow of his whistle the game had started and we were already at a disadvantage, Ants five main cronies formed a V-shape protecting him from harm as his smug face peeked over their shoulders. Those five weren’t going for balls but rather were waiting for balls to come to them, the rest of his team desperately scrambled for the Ten balls laid out in the middle of the field with lack of direction. His plan obviously only extended to the five bodyguards he had selected. Our team harboured another clear disadvantage, one of our best players was the leader and if we wanted to make a dint in them she’d have to go on the offensive, putting the whole team at risk. However, I had come up with a plan and everything needed to go perfectly.

At first our attackers didn’t go for the middle balls but rather let their bumbling team get there first, preparing to catch any easy projectiles. Then rather than running to their deaths, our younger teammates sat behind our offensive line and gathered the stray balls carelessly tossed by the opponents unorganised platoon and delivered them to our front line troops creating a frequent supply to our more potent attackers. As predicted, most of the kids under twelve threw sloppy balls and we caught three of them, since no one on our team had gotten out the three kids were benched. With the battle in our favour the front line returned fire managing to hit another two less athletic kids, quickly bringing the score to 16-11. Surprisingly, Ants facial expression went unfazed, he seemed to have placed tantamount trust in his garrison.

“Hey, Is it time for us to go in yet I want to destroy that smug basta- DUCK”

Olivia interrupted herself midsentence and the two of us went to ground as a ball sliced past our heads at incredible speed. Looking towards its trajectory, I spotted a lone ball gatherer, he was helpless and oh so young. Distracted by a ball he was happily picking up off the ground, he had no hope of escaping his fate.

CLONK

He went to ground his body limp and lifeless… What had we done, in dodging the ball we had sacrificed one of our own, a child nonetheless.

“H-hey snap out of it” Olivia dragged me back into reality. Although her voice faltered, clearly affected by what she had just witnessed, she was now donning a fierce expressions with eyes full of anger.

It was time for me to enter the battlefield, I couldn’t just standby and watch anymore. Returning my gaze towards the enemies ranks Ant was clearly making his strategy up as he went because his remaining forces outside of the big five were now delivering balls to the burly guy in the front of Ant’s Fortress. Markus, also known as ‘Mach 10 Markus’ for his extremely bulky right arm that had the power to launch objects at incredible speeds. Some people still wondered why he decided to only train his right arm, but he wouldn’t tell us.

Looking around, more of our troops had fallen to his onslaught. At the current time I counted nine troops on their side and twelve on ours. It was time to enact our final plan, the last remaining ball gatherer scrambled around tirelessly and scooping up all our balls, handing them out to each troop.

“Alright then Ant” I shouted across the field. “We’ve got all the balls, surrender now and ill tell Olivia to go easy on you” We  had formed a frontier and were slowly approached the middle line in an attempt to look cooler than we actually were, even Olivia had joined us for this risk free pelting.

“Y-You can’t win this dude, my mobile fortress is impenetrable” His voiced cracked, he was out of ideas.

“Wrong choice of words insect!” Olivia chimed in, now she was the one with a smug look on her face. I couldn’t tell who the bad guy in this situation was.

The fortress wheeled back to the very edge of the court as we lined up at the middle of the court.  “READYYY, FIREEEE!” All ten balls were let loose at the six barricades, some aiming low, some high. It was the perfect plan; the weaker enemies were deliberately targeted first so that if they managed to catch some of the balls it wouldn’t increase their teams’ power by much. Also, if any of the big five got hit they would have to wait behind a line of useless units and if they tried to dodge, they risked the life of their leader and therefore the game. It was flawless… right.

Our unstoppable barrage made contact with their immovable barricade. As predicted, they caught the first couple of balls but the next couple were sure to hit. All of a sudden Ant appeared on top of Jones’ shoulders, the largest student in the school, also known as ‘Junk food Jones’ or just Junk for short, that name is fairly self-explanatory. With Ant on his shoulders they had suddenly created a cavalry unit, and it allowed the others to dodge the remaining balls without worrying about who they would hit.

“It… IT DIDN’T WORK… RETREAT!” Our organised forces dispersed instantly into a chaotic mess as if live grenade was dropped into the middle of a crowd.

“HA. HA. HA. YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD DEFEAT ME! I AM THE INDOMITABLE ANT” Despite his pathetic declaration, the smug bastard now atop of Jones raised his arm like some sort of warlord, who did he think he was.

Tina and Matt spilt off from the sides of the formation, as the fastest runners in the school they covered the distance of the small field in seconds. I grabbed Olivia desperately and dragged her away from the war that had begun, our troops had no chance, the surprise rush had rendered us a disorderly mess, our side of the battle field fell one by one as hellfire rained from above.

“EVERYONE AIM FOR THEIR LEADER” Ants puny yell threw his troops into action; the tides had turned.

I spun around to see ten balls tossed at us without hesitation, at a last second attempt I spear tackled Olivia out of the way and took the entire force of the balls on my back.

Seconds later I opened my eyes, I was on the ground covered in dirt and out of breath, but most importantly, Olivia was alive. She slowly stood up in the wake of the attack, all ten balls were on our side. Even then there was nothing she could do, almost the entire enemy team had returned to the field and were ready to protect their leader.

But the look on Olivia’s face didn’t change, she still had a massive grin spanning to her dirt covered cheeks.

“I never told you what my forfeit was, did I” She exclaimed as she trudged over the bodies of our fallen comrades, brandishing a bright yellow dodgeball in each hand “I never told you that if I won then you, and you ALONE would have to clean up the entire school”

Suddenly the teacher perked up, previously oblivious to the slaughter his students were partaking in, he now shot into action after hearing something he didn’t like the sound of “Now hold on you know some poor teacher has to wait bac-“

His protest was drowned out by the intrigued chatter of the enemy team, the fallen troops on our side started brushing themselves off. I looked over to Ant, his eyes now wide with fear, darting around, assessing his teammates expressions. They had realised it too, if they lose this match then they wouldn’t have to be subject to hard labour after school. Additionally, purposefully losing bared incredible merit, it would be very, very funny. The five goons that Ant had previously used without restraint had now come to a silent pact. As Olivia walked towards the middle, her eyes seemed to turn from hazel to a deep scarlet, full of bloodlust. Ant frantically looked around like a lost lamb, but his team had parted from his side, Jones who had once been his steed grabbed him from behind.

“Don’t… I want to see him run” A terrifying hint of overwhelming joy was present in Olivia’s voice.

Allowing Olivia to have her fun Jones let Ant go and as if on cue he sprinted away out of panic, Olivia slowly lined up her shot. The ball flew through air, ten… no, twenty metres in a terrific arc. The terrified Ant continued to run in a straight line and the ball nailed him in the back of the head, he fell limp to the ground and the entire school erupted into cheers. They had banded together to defeat the cocky dictator, and poor Ant sat in disbelief, after having the entire school unite against him.