A/n; if you see any out of place i's, me's, we's, please comment on the paragraph and I'll fix it. I write certain parts in first person because I find writing In first easier than third, but I go back and edit it to third because I know it's more popular.
Jungkook wiggles helplessly in the arms of the trio as he is being carried towards one of the bathroom stalls. Inside, he knows there is no getting out of the mess that he's gotten himself into, but that doesn't stop him from trying...even it is making the boys frustrated. When he hears one of the stall's doors being kicked open, yelling for help seems like it would be a viable option - whatever they were planning on doing to him in there certainly wasn't gonna be pretty - but being his stubborn self, Jungkook keeps his mouth shut. From experience, he always knew bullies loved getting rises out of their victims, and the last thing he wants to do is give them what they wanted.
Before Jungkook knows it, he's being shoved down onto the bathroom's dirty floor, and his arms are being held behind his back. On his knees, he sits silently in front of the toilet, staring forward at the wall with a blank expression. Over the years, he had learned the ability to conceal any hint of fear or anger in his eyes, so his enemies could never have the satisfaction of knowing what he was feeling inside. He knows it wouldn't help him out of whatever situation he was in, though - it was more of a pride thing.
"The new kid is looking a little warm, don't ya think boys?" Ethan says, and Tom and Trent both nod their heads. Ethan leans down to Jungkook's height to get a look at his face, but he turns his head away from him.
"Yeah, I think a nice dip should do the job." Trent says while grabbing onto the back of Jungkook's head, forcing him to face the toilet.
"That should cool him off." Tom chimes in, but Jungkook's only response is silence.
The boys spend the next few moments uttering snide remarks to Jungkook, but he lets their words go in one ear and out the other - he didn't need to hear them to know it was probably stuff he's already heard a million times before...they weren't the most original of bullies.
"Hey, are you listening to us??" Ethan says, taking Jungkook's face by his chin and forcing him to look at him.
"Oh no, I'm sorry. Can you repeat that?" Jungkook says with the most sarcastic voice he could manage.
"Listen man, we didn't want to do this, but ya forced us!" Tom says.
"Yeah, you gotta learn how to respect the Trent Man!" Trent says and Jungkook winces as he pulls back on his hair. He glances over at Ethan who shoots him a dirty look. "Oh, and ya know...these guys too."
"Why should I respect you, if you aren't gonna respect me? I did nothing to you, and neither did Algie." Jungkook says through gritted teeth.
"You have a lot to learn, kid. Freshman don't EVER stand up to their superiors, EVER!" Ethan says.
"Can't you figure out something better to do with your life than to pick on kids who are just minding their own businesses??"
"You weren't minding your own business. If you had never barged in and tried being superman, you wouldn't be in this position, now would you??" Trent says.
"It's called being a decent human being. If you let me go, maybe I could give you some pointers." Jungkook says.
"Psh, just dunk him, Trent." Ethan says.
"Wait, I wanna have a little more fun with him." Trent says, snickering. "If you can give me three good reasons why I shouldn't dunk you, maybe just maybe I'll let you go."
"What?! No way!" Ethan says, but immediately retracts his statement upon seeing the wink Trent gives him.
"I think it would be fair of us, considering he's new and all." Trent says, and Ethan is silent for a moment before responding.
"Yeah, yeah okay fine." Ethan says.
"Well, get to beg- I mean, convincing." Trent says, and the three boys lower down closer around Jungkook.
Great...I just want this to be over with. Jungkook thinks, rolling his eyes.
~
Algie comes running out of the bathroom when he spots his friend down the hall, putting some of his books away in his locker. "Cornelius!" He calls out, and the boy glances over in his direction. The boy starts to give him a wave, but he slowly lowers his hand down after noticing the look of pure panic on Algie's face. Plus, Algie was running. Algie never runs. "Cornelius - help!"
"Oh, salutations Algie." Cornelius says. He has a distinctive, high-pitched squeaky voice. He turns to face Algie, who has stopped in front of him. Algie is hunkered over with his hands on his kness, breathing heavily. "Did you lose your character sheets again?" Cornelius asks.
"No, no it's even worse this time!!" Algie says, taking a moment to regain his breath and composure before continuing. He speaks so fast, Cornelius can barely understand him and is forced to repeat himself - taking up even more precious time. "Jungkook....*gasp* Trent and his friends have a hold of Jungkook!" He manages to say.
"Jungkook? Who's that?" Cornelius says. "Ohhh, wait...that's the new kid, isn't it? Yeah, I think I heard someone talking about him earlier." He says, putting his finger up to his chin. "What a poor, poor fool....well, I hope he makes it out alive." He concludes, shaking his head back and fourth. He's about to go on his way, but Algie grabs a hold of his green sweater, preventing him.
"N-No, we can't just leave him! We have to help him!" Algie says.
"Why's that?" Cornelius asks, adjusting the glasses on his nose. "I haven't even met him. For all I know, he can just be as big of a bully as Trent and the others. If he can get defeated early on..." He taps his chin, "...that would be one less bully that we'd have to worry about. Gotta think strategically!"
"No, Jungkook is not even close to being a bully." Algie says. "I can assure you - he's a hero! In fact, he sacrificed himself for me!"
"He...did?" Cornelius asks, his interest suddenly peeked, but he still remains hesitant. To say it was rare that someone would ever care to stand up for the nerds is an understatement - and it was even rarer for just anyone to seek their help, well, if it didn't have anything to do with math or science homework, anyways.
Algie nods. "Yes, and he's about to be *gulp* dunked! In fact, that would have been me in there getting dunked, but Jungkook stood up for me! For someone to stand up for me....someone that isn't my friend...I can't just leave him to the bullies, but I can't do anything about it by myself."
Algie says, slumping his head down. "I'm too weak, and the prefects don't ever take me seriously - no one does."
"Hmm...this sounds like quite the predicament, indeed..." Cornelius says as he rubs his chin, suddenly having a change of heart.
"I know...and it's all my fault." Algie says. "That's why I came to you - I knew if anyone could figure out what to do, it'd be you!"
"Okay, let's stay calm here. So he's in the bathroom, correct?" Cornelius asks, and he listens intently as Algie runs through everything that had transpired, just a few moments ago. "The bathroom..." Cornelius says. "Lots of tights spaces...this is gonna be tricky."
"It is...it really, really is.."
Cornelius looks left and right, keeping his eyes out for anything he can use to their advantage. That's when his eyes land on a boy walking down the hall, smacking a yard stick down into the palm of his hand. He is wearing the same green astronomy vest that Cornelius and Algie are. Cornelius puts his finger up into the air. "A-HA! I believe I have found just the person to help us, my friend!" He says, then cups his hands around his mouth. "Thad!!"
The boy looks over his shoulder in the two's direction, lifting his hand up that isn't accompanied by the yard stick and waves. "Hey, Corneliuth! Need thumthin'?" He calls back. He has a very noticeable lisp.
"Indeed, we do!" Cornelius says, holding his hand out. "Would you care to partake in an unpremeditated quest?" He asks, and Thad - visibly interested - turns to face them."Thure, whatcha need?" Thad says.
"A small army," Cornelius points down at the yardstick that Thad was now holding to his side, "and a few more of those should suffice nicely." He says, and Thad looks down at his yardstick, then back up at the boys curiously.
~
Taehyung and Pete are walking through the school courtyard, when Taehyung glances over at Pete who is walking closely beside him. "The thing is, Pete...some people are born to be leaders, and some people are born to be followers....you, my friend, fall in the follower category."
"But...that doesn't explain why everyone always makes fun of me.."
"Actually, it does." Taehyung says, folding his arms behind his back. "People don't respect followers. Leaders, like me, are the ones that people look up to."
"You....a leader? But, Taehyung, I hate to break it to you, but...everyone kind of hates you." Pete says, sheepishly looking over at him.
Taehyung extends his arm out across Pete, and the two of them stop in their tracks. "Excuse me? How can you say something like that? How can anyone hate me?"
"Well....um...you're kind of scary, Taehyung...and you can come off as really mean." Pete says, fiddling with his fingers.
"Psh, mean? Pete, you think everyone is mean to you. You need to toughen up and quit being so sensitive." Taehyung says, crossing his arms over his chest. "It's kind of sickening being around you sometimes."
As the two boys were standing there bickering back and fourth, they catch wind of a couple of girl's conversation, who had stopped in front of the wishing well several feet away from them, clutching onto textbooks. "Hey...did you hear how Kim Taehyung was playing with a dead rat in biology..?" One of the friends say.
"Yeah...that's, like, totally gross. He's such a freak, like, who even does that?!" The other replies, and Taehyung raises an eyebrow as he peeks over his shoulder at them.
"I saw on one of those killer shows my mom watches that that's how serial killers start out." The girl says.
"They play with dead rats???"
"Yeah! And, like, all different kinds of animals! Like one time, this boy strung a squirrel up by it's tail and left it hanging from a tree! When he grew up, he started stringing PEOPLE to trees!"
"*GASP* That's, like, so icky!!!! I could totally see Taehyung doing something like that!!"
"Yeah and there was a boy next to him who was LAUGHING! How sick is that?! And get this...I think he was the new kid, too!"
"Wait a second...does that mean that we have TWO serial killers at our school!?"
"YES! So we have to be SUPER careful around them, okay, Pinky?!"
"You don't have to worry about me, my daddy got me this cute little pink bottle of mace. If they come anywhere near me, I'll just spray their serial killer eyeballs."
"Good! Wait, are you allowed to carry mace on school property?"
"Uh....I don't know. But who cares - if I get into trouble, daddy can just pay to get me out of it."
"Oh yeah, you're totally right. I should ask my daddy too."
As the two walk by, Taehyung steps behind the stone wall and watches with narrow eyes as they walk down the stairs towards the school building.
"See what I mean..?" Pete says as he, too, peeks around the stone wall. "Your reputation might be worse than mine.."
"Oh, shut up. Pinky and Christy have the lowest IQ in school...hell, they probably have the lowest IQ in the country." Taehyung says, rolling his eyes. "Besides, morons' opinions don't matter to me - how many times do I have to tell you?"
"Alright, Taehyung...let's just go. I'm starting to worry about Jungkook.."
"When don't you worry, Pete?"
. . .
"I'm giving you one last chance to give me a reason to let you go, or else your face is going for a swim in the toilet!" Trent says, but stubborn Jungkook keeps his mouth shut.
Trent's grip on the back of Jungkook's head suddenly gets noticeably stronger, and his heart starts racing when Trent starts pushing his head down with ease. He's just mere inches away from getting his head dunked into the toilet - a toilet that looks like it hadn't been washed in awhile, Jungkook would add, and a feeling of disgust and panic start to overwhelm him. Jungkook has had a lot of things done to him in the past, nasty things, but...this would have to be the worst.
Just before Jungkook's worst nightmare is about to come to fruition, he suddenly hears what sounds like yelling growing closer. It doesn't sound like angry, or scared yelling - it sounds almost like what someone might refer to as a battle cry.
"CHARRRRRRRGE!"
Tom, Ethan and Trent all look over at each other after hearing footsteps suddenly crowding the bathroom, and Tom, who is standing in the doorway of the stall, looks behind him to see what all the commotion is. While Ethan and Trent's guard are down, Jungkook's takes the opportunity to jab his elbow back as hard and fast as he could - nailing one of them in the gut. Jungkook couldn't see exactly who he had hit, but by the sound of the groan, it sounds like Trent.
"OW!!! WHAT THE HELL!!" Jungkook hears, and when he feels that Ethan and Trent had finally released their grip on him, he stands up and flips around in and instant. He had fully expected to be greeted with a toilet bowl full of water right about now, but what he ultimately ends up seeing is nothing that he could have ever expected - 4 lanky teenage boys, even smaller than him, beating the crap out of his new-found enemies with......yardsticks? Jungkook is taken slightly aback by their weapons of choice.
"TAKE THIS!" One of them yells, smacking Tom over the head with a yardstick, to which Tom grabs his head in pain and lets out a painful-sounding groan.
"AND THAT!" The other one yells, hitting Ethan over the back so hard that his yardstick snaps in half with a shocking amount of ease.
Jungkook's brain is still trying to process everything that is happening before him, but he tries not to question it and he takes the opportunity to do his part - first giving Ethan a nice kick in the behind, then Trent - sending them flying out of the stalls.
"I HOPE YOU LIKE ROTTEN EGGS, JERKWADS!! TAKE COVER, COMRADES!" A heavy set boy standing in the bathroom doorway says, tossing a green bottle at the feet of the three hunched over bullies.
The bottles smash against the tile and a thick, green mist quickly surrounds the bathroom. The pungent smell it emits nearly brings Jungkook to his knees - it is quite possibly the worse smell he has ever smelled in his life - but he manages to cover his nose and haul out of there in time before getting sick to his stomach, followed by the rest of the boys who all scramble out behind him.
"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!!!!" A prefect that is running around the corner yells, trying to catch the boys who are scattering in all different directions, but he can't catch a single one of them. He brings his walky talky out to get back up, but they wouldn't arrive in time.
~
"Oh God, what's that horrible smell...? It smells like eggs!" Pete says as him and Taehyung come walking up the hall towards the bathroom.
"Whoa, what the heck happened?" Taehyung says, turning his head as he watches the boys running down the hall past him. He tries grabbing one of the boys as they run past him to get some answers, but the boy only yanks his arm away and races down the hall without saying a word. Soon after, a somewhat dazed-looking Ethan comes running down the hall after him.
"Oh, hey look - there's Jungkook!" Pete says, lifting his arm up to wave at Jungkook, who is coming around the corner, still covering his nose.
"What's going on here?" Taehyung asks, wrinkling up nose as he gets a whiff of Jungkook, who had the misfortune of walking through the toxic smelling gas. "Did you crap yourself?"
"No, it's a long story." Jungkook mumbles, and Algie comes walking up behind him with Cornelius at his side.
"Did Algie crap himself?"
"No." Algie says, shooting a glare over at Taehyung, but quickly redirected his attention onto Jungkook. "You made it out in one piece!!" Algie says, and Jungkook looks over his shoulder at him.
"Quick, we all need to get out of here before the prefects start asking questions!" Cornelius says, and motions the boys along. Pete and Taehyung look over at each other with confused expressions on their faces, and they shrug their shoulders - following the three boys out one of the exits.
. . . . .
"Thanks, I really appreciate you coming to my rescue." Jungkook says, rubbing the back of his neck as he stands in front of Algie and Cornelius - Pete and Taehyung standing a couple feet behind, covering their noses.
"Oh, no need to thank me! A friend of Algie is a friend 'O mine!" Cornelius says in a joyful tone.
The side of Jungkook's mouth curls up into a small smile and he looks over at Algie. "I thought for sure you were gonna ditch me and never look back."
"Well...to be honest...I probably would have if it was anyone else...but," Algie glances over at Cornelius, then back over at Jungkook, "I couldn't just leave you. Not many people can stand up to Trent and his friends and live to tell the tale...and, well...what you did for me was really brave. You're like a knight in shining armor!"
"Nah, I was just doing what anyone would have done. I think your friends are the ones that deserve that title, though. Who would have ever thought stink bombs and yardsticks could be so...menacing.."
"Yeahh, well...speaking of stink bombs, dude...you gotta chance your clothes before you go to class." Pete chimes in. "If the prefects are looking for you, your smell is going to give you away."
Cornelius, Algie and Jungkook all look down at themselves and their noses wrinkle up. "Yeah, you're right..." Jungkook says. "But...I don't have an extra school uniform."
"Ugh...what a pain you are..." Taehyung says, stepping up to Jungkook. "I have an extra uniform you can use, come on."
"D-do you have an extra one I could use, Taehyung?" Algie asks.
Taehyung glances over at Algie, and his eyes travel up and down the shorter one. "You're joking right? You wouldn't even be able to get one of my uniforms passed your big head." He says, causing Algie to look down at the ground, to which Cornelius puts his hand on his back to comfort him.
Before the three boys take off, Jungkook clears his throat and gives Cornelius and Algie a wave. "Thanks again, you two. I'll see you around." He says, and Algie's head immediately pops up."B-Bye Jungkook!! Thanks so much for saving me! We're best buds now!" Algie says and waves back happily.
"Uh...sure.." Jungkook calls out.
"So long!" Cornelius says, returning a small wave.
"Hey, wait a second.." Pete says as him, Taehyung and Jungkook are walking towards the dorms. "I WON THE BET!"
After getting no response from Taehyung, Pete tugs on the sleeve of his shirt. "Hello?? Did you hear me? You ACTUALLY lost!" Pete says, letting out laugh. "This is, like, the first time in history! Pay up, dude!" Pete says, holding his hand out.
"Oh, let me grab that for you." Taehyung says, pretending to reach into his pocket, but as soon as they come walking up to a trash can, Taehyung reaches out and gives Pete a harsh shove into it.
"HEY!!" Taehyung hears, and him and Jungkook look over their shoulders at Pete, who's butt his stuck inside of the trash can.
"Sayonara!" Taehyung says, giving Pete a salute them him and Jungkook continue on down the path - leaving him squirming behind.
"...that wasn't very cool, dude." Jungkook says.
"Oh, boo-hoo. I'll pay him later. Just can't let him get a big head." Taehyung says, and looks over at Jungkook. "What, you look at me like I'm some sort of monster or something. It's all in good fun...besides, he's used to it."
"Whatever you say.."
. . . .
The moment Taehyung and Jungkook step into Taehyung's room, Taehyung swiftly flips around to face the younger. Jungkook stands in front of the doorway, staring back at Taehyung who faces him with his arms crossed over his chest. Confused, Jungkook looks left to right as he waits for Taehyung to say something - the look and stance the older is giving him, for some odd reason, reminded him of his mother whenever she was angry, and it makes him increasingly uncomfortable.
"So, uh...the bells gonna ring soon...you said you had an extra uniform for me..?" Jungkook says, but Taehyung doesn't speak a word.
"Um.......is....something wrong?" Jungkook asks, half-expecting him to start lecturing him at any minute.
"Yes, as a matter of fact there is." Taehyung says, tapping his foot on the ground.
"O...kay. What's up..?" Jungkook asks, though he doesn't really care to know the answer.
"Sit and we'll talk about it." Taehyung says, holding his hand out towards the bed.
"Nah, I think I'm good.." Jungkook says.
"I said SIT." Taehyung reiterates, throwing his hand out towards the bed.
"Geez...alright, alright...mom."Jungkook mumbles under his breath, relunctantly stepping over towards the bed. Before sitting down, he glances over his shoulder at Taehyung who is still standing there, staring at him with narrowed eyes.
What could this be about..?