Some Teacher

(1.2) Cleaning time!

Ms. Hanji was a brilliant and energetic woman who resembled nothing so much as a cockatiel. She occupied a trial position of 'faculty assistant', which the school was testing to see if it was worth it to have an extra set of hands around to help teachers when they needed it. They'd been testing it for nearly six years and still not officiated anything, despite the fact that it was obviously beneficial. 

Nagisa passed around brooms, buckets of cleaning solution, wash rags, sponges, dustpans, fresh towels, and metal scrapers to get gum off the desks. 

"Alright everyone, let's get to work," he said with a smile, and promptly began scrubbing marker off a desk with a damp, soapy cloth. 

The class followed suit, sighs, groans, and grumbling bouncing from student to student like an irritated echo. 

Just before lunch break, while cleaning the desk behind Nagisa, Fuyu saw his opportunity, he signaled his twin sister Natsu, and they put their devilish plan into action. He flicked open the switchblade he carried with him and aimed it at the back of Nagisa-sensei's neck. 

Nagisa sensed it, swung his arm around, grabbed Fuyu's hand, and twisted it until he dropped his blade and it clattered to the floor. 

For a fraction of a second, when Nagisa moved, Fuyu felt an unexplainable, but overwhelming sense of fear. He was a field-mouse trapped in the gaze of a viper. Then it was gone, as quickly as it had come.

The moment the knife fell, Natsu jumped on Nagisa from the other side, and wrapped her arms around his neck in a choke hold, but Nagisa used the toe of his shoe to toss the knife back into the air like a hacky-sack, and caught it, aiming it at her forehead once he had done so. 

She felt that same instant of fear that her brother had, and immediately released her teacher.

Thwarted, the Ryouma twins stood next to each other, heads bowed, sure they'd be in trouble. Despite being different genders, they were identical, from their fiery red hair, to their shoe size. If not for the fact that they dressed differently, it would be quite difficult to tell the two apart. 

The whole class held their breath, waiting for the twins to be yelled at, ready to laugh or console, but they didn't get the chance.

"Well done, you two," Nagisa-sensei praised with a smile, much to the surprise and bafflement of every student present. 

They had been so certain that the assassination thing was some kind of trap, to trick them into getting themselves expelled or something. But now it seemed that Nagisa-sensei's offer may have been absolutely genuine.

"That was excellent team-work. Keep practicing and that will be a major advantage. I think in the future, we should start using fake knives, though. I'll be sure to supply you all with some by next week." He handed Fuyu's switch blade back to him. "Now let's get back to work."

"Yes Nagisa-sensei!" the students chorused and returned to their work. They would never get used to their teacher's strange methods. Encouraging assassination was one thing, but the fact that he encouraged them was in some ways even stranger and more foreign to this particular group. 

"Hey, Nagisa-sensei?" Kirasaya asked as she scraped at wads of dried up chewing gum. 

"Yes Kirasaya?" 

"Where'd you learn to fight like that?"

"Like what?" He was trying to avoid the question, and she knew it.

"You know." She glared, having no intention of letting him play dumb. "Hand-to-hand, close quarters, martial arts. That thing you did with Fuyu's knife. You weren't even fazed by Natsu's choke hold."

"Well, neither of them are very experienced," Nagisa pointed out. "Natsu's hold was hardly blocking my windpipe at all."

"That doesn't answer my question," she persisted, increasingly annoyed, still not letting him evade. "Where. Did. You. Learn. It."

"Oh, you know," he said vaguely. "Here and there, movies, friends, odd acquaintances. Practice makes perfect."

"Thaaaanks." Kirasaya's words dripped with sarcasm. "I love it when people answer without answering. What a great teacher, you are, refusing to share information your students ask for. How am I ever supposed to learn anything under such conditions?"

"Well perhaps, Kirasaya," he said beginning to grow irritated. "If you asked for information about something other than my personal life, I would be more inclined to share it with you. Alas! If only you showed as much interest in calculus as you did in poking your nose in where it doesn't belong."

He tapped her nose gently with his finger, and moved on to scrubbing the next desk. 

Huffing in exasperation, she went back to work, knowing she wouldn't get a better answer than that any time soon.

About an hour after the end of school came around, the room was beautifully clean. The desks were scrubbed and straightened in neat rows. The lockers in the back of the room had been hammered back into the correct shape, and closed properly. The floor had been mopped, the bulletin board had been organized, and all old flyers thrown out, and the chalkboard had been washed so it shone as black as the day it was made. 

Everything was still old and worn-out, but now it was clean, and orderly, and the classroom didn't feel like a place fit only for rejects and lost-causes anymore. 

As reluctant as they had been to clean in the first place, not one of the students could honestly say they weren't pleased with the work they'd accomplished, as well as the result. And when Nagisa-sensei released them from the prison that was Paradise, each of them left the classroom grudgingly satisfied.

[No major changes in this chapter, but I added some details, and I altered Ms. Hanji's title since Japanese schools don't have custodians. Love y'all.

<3 Raaor!]