Little Tails Junior High, New Mouse City
Thursday - March 20, 2014
0804 hours
It was the first day of spring for year 2014. The snow had melted, the trees and grass in the city were once again green as they should be and the flowers had bloomed in the gardens of my estate and everywhere else in the city. The sun shone over the buildings and fields, and the warm rays gave everyone a sense of relief after enduring a harsh winter.
And...I forgot to introduce myself again. My name is Danial Arif, a 14-year-old cyborg orphan, Malaysian multibillionaire, former junior iOS software designer, video games developer, full-time Interpol Junior Special Agent, and a junior special correspondent for New Mouse City's famouse newspaper, The Rodent's Gazette. I'm also the first human to ever reside in the city. What makes me a cyborg is that there's a microchip implanted in my brain that lets me control electronics remotely by changing brain signals to radio signals. And it used to aid me use the Force. (Did I ever tell you that I was a Jedi?)
At the moment, I walked down the hallway of the school after taking a ride in one of my autonomous cars, passing by lockers and other students as I carried a woodland camouflaged-saddlebag on the way to my locker, which neighbored to the lockers of my best friends, Benjamin and Pandora.
(Record scratch) What am I doing at school, you ask? Okay, here's how it went. I realized that I needed a form of certification to prove that I am educated when I grow up, and the only way to get it was to go back to school and earn a diploma, which is a few years from now. I registered myself to attend the school where my two best friends go to, Little Tails Junior High. (In Geronimo's books, it's called Little Tails Academy.) This automatically makes me the first human to go to that school. I started going to school somewhere in February, and the past several weeks have been good. Just a few minor setbacks like the school bully, Punk Rat bothering Benjamin, but I will be the one to fend them off. Plus, I was sitting in the same grade as Benjamin and Pandora, eighth grade.
As I was saying, I made a left with a squeak emitting from the sole of my Converse sneakers, and saw my two friends at their lockers on the left, with Pandora gathering her books for science class and Benjamin leaning against a red locker with an open book in his paw, biting on a pen and looking concentrated. They noticed me enter the hall and waved hello, and so I raised my hand up and waved back. A little fact, they've grown a bit taller now and started to look like true teenagers, and so was I. Each of them are now as tall as my eyes, and I was now 5 feet 4 inches.
"Pandora! Benjamin!" I called out from along the hall as I made my way to them.
"Danny! How're you doing?" Benjamin greeted. By then, I already got to them. He was still on his green book.
"Just fine," I answered. I peeked at his book. "Is that the science homework from yesterday?"
"Yeah..." he squeaked, continuing to bite on his pen. "There's one more question to answer. What do you think will oxygen do to a glowing splinter?"
Easily thought out, I helped him answered the question. "Well, essentially, oxygen helps in combustion. So I'd say that the glowing splinter would ignite on fire."
"Huh, didn't thought of that before. Thanks!" he said. He proceeded to write down what I had explained.
Meanwhile, Pandora had just finished gathering her books and closed up her locker. I assumed that she noticed my new style. "Hey! you buttoned your shirt! It makes you look slim," she complemented. It was true, I had never buttoned my plaid shirts after what happened to my family in 2011.
"Really? Thanks, but this isn't new. I used to where like this when I was twelve," I explained.
"You still look cool, though," Benjamin added.
I was flattered that my new style was well accepted by them, and hoped that other classmates did too. Then a single tickle in my throat made me let out a small cough. I needed water, and spotted the drinking fountain at the corner of the hall from which I came. "Hey, I'm gonna head to the fountain for a bit, my throat's dry," I said to the two.
"We won't go anywhere," replied Pandora.
I walked with big steps, and drank out of the fountain as soon as I got to it.
Out of nowhere, Punk Rat comes into the hallways looking as bad and frightening as ever. In fact, he's been in all sorts of trouble as the years pass by. He's not just a troublemaker, he's now a delinquent. He was caught vandalizing, pulling dangerous pranks, and even performed a wedgie on most of the schools unpopular kids. Not on Benjamin though, he knows that I'll be there to protect him. And the consequences if he does something bad to him.
His eyes were locked on one of his usual target, Benjamin. But unluckily, the distance between them and the water fountain were yards away and I was unaware of the situation, so I wasn't there to help him out of this mess.
Yet.
He got closer to the two teenage mice. "Well, well...if isn't Benjamin Stilton," he began, getting in on Benjamin's face.
"What do you want from me, Punk Rat?" Benjamin rhetorically asked, shooting a frowned and cold stare at his enemy, eye to eye.
"What are you doing with my girlfriend?" he asked back, referring to Pandora. You see, Punk Rat has has a crush on her just like Benjamin does, but he claims that they're both in a relationship when they're actually not.
"I was NEVER your girlfriend, Punk Rat," Pandora rejected the statement. "Yuck..."
"I know you don't mean that, babe," he said. "Step aside, short stuff!" Punk Rat shoved the orange-furred mouse away like a group of eraser shavings.
Dropped 4 feet away, the brave and enraged Benjamin tried to get to his best friend by trying to push Punk Rat away. But his efforts were in vain as the bully was a lot heavier, and he didn't have the strength. Punk Rat just held him by the head as he got Pandora cornered against the lockers.
"STAY AWAY FROM HER!" Benjamin warned, struggling to get to Pandora.
I heard the shout, and noticed that the two were in trouble again. I stopped drinking, wiped away the excess water on my lip, and hurried to the scene. For the record, this was the eighth time I fend him off this month.
Ignoring his victim, Punk Rat pretended to be all suave and dived in slowly to Pandora's snout. "Now, where were we, babe?" he said the lines of "sweet and romantic".
"GET AWAY FROM ME YOU CREEP!" she shouted, backing up against the lockers.
Ignoring her demands, Punk Rat started to pucker up his lips, getting ready for a kiss. Pandora shifted her eyes left and right, trying but failed to find a loophole to escape through. She turned her head to the side and unwillingly prepared for the worst. Benjamin was struggling as hard as ever to get past Punk Rat's giant paws.
I saw the situation intensifying and taking a wrong turn. Every mouse in the hall just watching what was going on, standing still as they were too feared to interfere. But not me. "HEY!" I yelled, instantly stopping and catching Punk Rat's attention.
"You again?!" Punk Rat reacted upon sight of me.
"When a girl wants you to back off, you back off," I stated, sounding defensive.
He left Benjamin and Pandora so he could face me. Meanwhile, Benjamin went to check on his dear friend to see if the bully had done something to her.
"Who're to to tell me what to do?! She ain't your girlfriend!" he disputed.
"She ain't yours either," I replied. "Now I kindly advise you step off from my friends and walk away."
"And I advise you to shut up before I smash your face!" he threatened, bashing his fist with the palm of his paw.
"You want a piece of this? Well, come at me, bro!" I said, giving my chest a hard pat. "That is, if you even have the balls to do it."
He felt challenged. I saw his veins throb at the corner of his forehead, getting agitated by every word I said. The place was starting to heat up at the halls, because something big was about to happen. "I've been wanting to do this ever since you came, filthy human..." he insulted.
He came charging at me like an angry bull with a long and loud battle cry. But I stood tall and strong, not a single feeling of intimidation entered my brain. He continued to run while charging a fist so he could land a punch. Instead, when the timing got perfect, I took a step to the left to avoid the fist, caught his arm with my right hand, his hair with my left when he went by me, pulled him so he'd turn and slammed his snout to the lockers with a bang. Next, I put the arm I grabbed on his back and pushed against it, and held his head against the wall.
"Not so tough now, are ya?" I taunted, whispering into his ear with a scary voice. "Now you listen to me. If I catch you bothering my friends or hearing them tell me that you bothered them, I will make sure that I return the favor by giving you a black eye and a broken tail. Got that?!"
Beginning to grow scared, he nodded as he was shaken by my capabilities. "And one more thing. Remember that we three are full-time Interpol Junior Special Agents, so if pull that stupid stunt off one more time to any girl and especially Pandora, I'm gonna have you sent to juvy for harassing a girl."
He nodded again. "Stop pushing my arm, your hurting me!" he pleaded.
"Don't like that, do ya? Huh?!" I said, pushing his arm up. "How about this, huh?! Don't like that?!" I flicked his ear with my finger. "What about this?!" I gave him a minor shock by electrocuting him with a finger's worth of Force Lightning...
Wait...Force Lightning? As a Jedi, I wasn't supposed to have Force Lightning.
I was unaware that both Benjamin and Pandora witnessed me use the power from the Dark Side of The Force. They kept gazing at me with raised eyebrows and exchanged worried looks. Yes, they knew that I was a Jedi if that's what you're asking.
"When I let go of you, you run. Never look back," I told him. He responded with a nod. I set him free, seeing him take off in a fright and disappeared to another hall of the school.
I readjusted my collar before I turned back to the stunned mice, approaching them with my hands in my pockets. "You're welcome," I began, fixing a enigmatic smile. They gave no response but look at each other wide-eyed. The next thing I knew, they pulled me to an unlocked janitor's closet next to our block of lockers.
"Whoa! Guys! What's going on?" I asked them.
"Dude, you just used a Force power in public!" Benjamin explained, whispering.
I frowned. "I did?!" I said in disbelief, trying to recall.
"Even worse, you used Force Lightning," Pandora added.
In my mind with the power of the microchip in my brain, I played back the memories that I recorded with my eyes. Then there it was, me using Force Lightning on Punk Rat when I got him pinned.
I returned to reality, panicking. "Oh, God... What's happening to me?!"
"I don't know, but you should go back to California and see Professor Philips. Maybe he knows what's going on," Benjamin suggested. Professor Graham Philips was the British-born genius who co-invented the microchip, and he's also my Jedi master. He lives in Los Angeles and works at Caltech as a lecturer and a researcher in biotechnology.
"Good idea," I agreed.
We ended our conversation and left the janitor's closet for our science class as the morning bell rang.
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