Chapter Text
Since it was the new semester and one of the teachers last term was fired for unknown reasons, the school had to quickly find replacement teachers, so the classes were all mixed up and people from in the year level that he didn’t even recognise the names of were getting put in his classes. Luckily for him he didn’t get put in any of the PJ pests’ classes but at the same time he also had nobody he recognised in his class either. Not even Luna! Which means that he would have to go out and socialise wow. To make it all, somehow, worse the new teacher he was assigned for physical education was the one most known around the school for making his students run laps around the field for misbehaviour.
‘Seriously, why!? What did I do to deserve this torture’ he thought looking up at the sky as if God would get a sign and send down a miracle to free him from this class (buddy we ALL know why you are getting this and also too bad for you go ‘meet’ your future husband >:p)
For their first lesson with the new teacher, they were given a relatively easy class. All they needed to do was play dodge ball for 50 minutes straight, brilliant. ‘I shouldn’t be too bad at this’ Romeo thought ‘I deal with Night Ninja and his sticky splats all the time so surely I can’t mess up that badly’.
Although admittedly most of the times he had to go against Night Ninja he was caught in the sticky substance and would later have to spend hours trying to remove it from himself and whatever other inventions he made that Night Ninja decided to mess with, eugh!
Looking around, he didn’t see many familiar faces, there were some kids that he recognised from his other classes, but he never really talked to anybody who wasn’t Luna. Besides he was already known as the strange kid from engineering whose machine prototype sent a student to the hospital, so NOBODY wanted to talk to him. Also, for the record, that incident was entirely not his fault he warned the other fella not to get too close he just didn’t listen (sure buddy).
Anyway, the point is he has no friends and is stuck awkwardly standing by himself while everybody else is introducing themselves! The teacher was taking FOREVER, technically that’s a good thing for him so then he has less time to do physical education, but he hates being made to wait. It’s just that he feels this is an incredibly big waste of time when he could be doing better things like planning his next evil scheme to combat those PJ pests, although tonight he might have to lay low and go on the defensive out of fear of Luna’s wrath and what that may incur.
Just as Romeo was lost in thought wondering about the precautions he should take against Luna, the teacher finally showed up! He was huffing and apologising for being late as he took attendance, but all Romeo could think about was how absolutely screwed he was.
The first thing that the man did after he finished dilly dallying with his explanations was to explain the rules of dodgeball as if this class of highschoolers have never played it in their lives even though it was one of the most common games played for when your teacher didn’t feel like planning an actual class. Eventually the dude finally stopped explaining the rules and brought them inside the gymnasium to play. The gymnasium at this school was relatively new as it had been renovated the previous year, so the floor wasn’t all that scratched and the walls didn’t look like they had years of dirt built up on them. The students quickly set up the field clearly eager to get started after all that waiting, even Romeo was starting to get bored of not moving around. The teacher announced that they were going to have two captains for each team who would each get to take turns picking someone for their team.
Simple, this is how it always goes.
However, the problem was that nobody in the class recognised anyone, so when it was time for the captains the choose, they had to pause for about 5 seconds to try and remember a name before giving up and just pointing. All the choices made were based solely on appearances of who looked the most athletic so you could imagine how Romeo ended up being one of the last kids to get chosen.
Eventually the class was divided into two even teams, Romeo was attempting to learn the names of the people on his team, but his attempts at conversation proved fruitless as nobody wanted to talk to the ‘nerdy’ looking person (fair point). Romeo did know some of the people in the class, albeit not very well, and he was fairly certain that he was placed on a team with the ‘athletic’ students. Hopefully.
When the teacher blew the whistle to indicate the start of the game, everyone collectively tried to rush towards the soft balls in the middle. This strategy proved to be quite stupid as anyone on the opposing side basically had a free shot right at you, granted there were a small amount of people who stayed behind. Romeo was one of them. He didn’t care much for his grades in this class, and these childish games they were playing would hardly be very fun when he already knew how to dodge incoming projectiles decently (he is actually meh at dodging from a villain standpoint but better than the average person for sure). Because of the whole rush down that occurred in the centre at least half of each team had been gotten out, leaving only a few of the students who didn’t immediately rush in to try and fend for their team. There were some students who managed to make it out of the chaos that occurred unscathed, but those were the incredibly try hard students who were actually good at sports.
Now, Romeo might have good aim with his gadgets, and you would think that it would transfer over and apply to his throwing aim, but truth be told while he could avoid the incoming soft balls, sending them back was an entirely different story.
Before he knew it the people on both sides began dropping like flies, one after the other being knocked out. Up until now Romeo had been able to avoid the incoming softballs, but when he attempted to throw… Let’s just say he didn’t do so well resulting in him getting absolutely pummelled. Now there were only a handful of people left. The team he had been placed on was doing surprisingly well; they outnumbered the opposition 4-2 meaning if they just hit the remaining opponents then they could win and finally be done with the school day. Everyone could go home and Romeo would get to keep working on that invention he had been thinking of this whole time, but of course nothing really goes his way does it.
(ITS FOR PLOT)
Everything was going so well, they had knocked out one of the players on the opposition leaving only one person remaining. Romeo wasn’t sexist or anything (he isn’t), but he was pretty sure this would be incredibly easy. The last girl on the other side was skinny and frail, she seemed to be one of those shy girls that was too nervous to talk because she hadn’t said a single word since Romeo had first seen her. ‘I’m anti-social too, but not THAT nervous’ he thought. Romeo had tried to greet her earlier during his attempt at socialising before the teacher arrived, key word TRIED. She was super surprised when he walked up to her and ran off in a panic.
Seriously nothing ever goes his way.
Anyway, what was he saying again? Oh right, this would be easy (no it won’t ;p). All four of his teammates aimed directly at her and when they decided to throw, Romeo was sure it was all over for her. Now, of course it was possible to dodge when a singular ball maybe two were being hurled at you, but when four are coming at you all at once you’re basically screwed an- “DID SHE JUST BACKFLIP OUT OF THE WAY!” Romeo realised that he might have just yelled that out loud and his face flushed red with embarrassment, though it didn’t really matter because the rest of the class was freaking out as well. What the hell. She then proceeded to hurl each of the balls back and strike each of Romeo’s teammates square in the face before landing gracefully back on her feet. ‘Genuinely what is going on anymore’ Romeo thought with his jaw dropped to the floor.
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[Time skip to after school and everyone is at home (it’s not night YET)]
They are on a call :P
“Sooo~, Romeo how was P.E?” Luna snickered as she already knew the answer. It was obvious this was his least favourite subject, and he would always complain to her for at least half on hour each time he finished a lesson.
“AWFUL!” Romeo yelled, already tired and definitely not in the mood to be teased. “Some crazy girl decided to do a backflip in the middle of dodgeball!” He then proceeded to go on and on about how absurd it all was emphasizing the fact that she was a total try hard.
Luna just sighed as she listened to his ramblings, fully intending to tease him about getting humbled by the shy girl. Based on his description of her appearance being that “she has light coloured hair, blue eyes and is concerningly pale” there really wasn’t anyone else in their grade who best matched the description than Nori.
Nori was a strange kid. She never talked to anybody not even the teachers, Luna was beginning to suspect she was mute. The only reason anybody new her name was because once a teacher called her that when handing out reports. The people in the class who had heard it were the only people with proof of her name, so all other opinions from there were second hand accounts and could entirely be inaccurate. Now, Luna was a semi popular individual, so she did know a lot of people in the school, which is how she found out Nori’s name. But Romeo definitely wasn’t, so I suppose it made sense for him to be unaware. Although she has to say, she never could have expected that Nori would be good at sports. She just seemed too fragile like a porcelain doll, she looked the part as well.
“Lunaaa, Luna, LUNA ARE YOU LISTENING?!” Romeo screeched not exactly keen on being ignored.
Luna realised that she had zoned out in the middle of their call and would now have to listen Romeo’s whole spiel about etiquette and how “It was a waste of both of their time if she didn’t listen properly” Blah blah blah.
“Hey, no I was listening!” Luna defended even though she knew she wasn’t. “It just sounds to me like you got humbled and your being pissy about it!”
“WUH, I DID NOT GET HUMBLED!” Romeo yelled clearly flustered at the slight remark. God, this was so humiliating, he could just dig a hole and die right now.