Chapter Text
Susie had always loved fire. She wasn’t sure why, but it always spoke to her on some level. Maybe it was something to do with how despite its mesmerizing beauty it’s still incredibly dangerous, or how it has the power both to heal and to destroy with ease, or some other deep metaphor bullshit. Or maybe she was just a little bit of a pyromaniac. Who knows? Definitely not her, that’s for damn sure.
What she WAS sure about though was how fucking bored she was. It was about 3 hours into the school day and Kris was currently dead asleep. She had been entertaining herself so far by doodling crass things onto her desk, but you can only scribble a crude penis so many times before that becomes boring too. With hours before lunch came and nothing else better to do, Susie decided to try paying attention to class.
The lesson was something to do with chemistry, judging by the big cryptic symbols on the board. “Combustion,” continued Alphys, “is a specific form of oxidization that happens extremely quickly and releases a lot of heat. Uh, it’s basically the scientific term for burning, or fire. We would’ve had an in-class demonstration of it today, but we had a lot of lawsuits in previous years… The school board has decided to cancel any demos that could be made ‘dangerous’ or ‘destructive’. S-sorry about that.” She continued under her breath, just barely loud enough to hear, “Wish they’d at least clean out the old stuff from the closets though.”
At that moment, Susie had an idea. An awful idea. A horrible, awful idea. A WONDERFUL, horrible, awful idea.
…
“Are you sure about this?” Kris was hesitant. “This seems really dangerous, like more than usual for our kinda schtick.”
“It’ll be FINE, dude, I promise,” replied Susie, “it’s not like – FUCK this is heavy – not like the school was gonna USE these anyway.” Behind her she was pulling along a red metal wagon filled with bottles upon bottles of stolen chemicals, plus some other school supplies she thought they wouldn't miss.
“That’s not what I meant and you know it. I mean, normally the most we do is play with matches ’n stuff. This is like, WAY past that.”
“Don’t be such a scaredy-cat, man! I mean, a little bonfire never hurt anyone!”
“What about yesterday in the dark world when you almost got 3rd degree burns cuz your jacket caught fire?”
“ALMOST got 3rd degree burns. ALMOST. And how was I supposed to know that my clothes were that goddamn flammable? It’s not like they had any labels on em sayin they were made of fuckin, lighter fluid or whatever.”
“Well what about that time in the OTHER dark world when you got your eyebrows singed off cuz you kept ogling the flames that ‘definitely weren’t close enough to hurt anyone I swear guys’?”
“I’M FINE, aren’t I? I mean like, I just drew ’em back on with a sharpie, and YOU didn’t notice, did ya?”
“I was wondering how they grew back so fast… Well, what about–”
“LISTEN, if anything bad happens we can just haul ass back to the dark world and Ralsei can heal us. Easy fix. And if we do this it’ll be LEGENDARY, dude, trust me.” They felt fairly convinced. They did love troublemaking, and this did seem really fuckin cool , and that was a solid backup plan…
They both stopped, they had arrived at a small clearing in the woods, roughly circular and with a tree stump in the middle. Perfect.
“Alright, fine, I’m in,” Kris said, “ Now, uh, what exactly ARE we gonna do with this stuff? We just gonna, like, burn it all at once?”
“Well,” said Susie, “the current idea is that we just mix some chemicals at random and see if we get rocket fuel ’r something. Then we mix up a BUNCHA that and whatever other flammable shit we find and burn all this stuff from school. It’s FOOLPROOF. Plus, there’s still a bunch of chemicals for later still at school cuz I couldn't fit ’em in the cart.”
“Okay I know I just said i was on board but that’s basically suicidal. We need a better plan than that.”
“Come on we can try all sortsa shit, we’re SURE to hit something! Like, ummmmm–” Susie looked through the wagon of chemicals frantically, before holding up a white jug– “BLEACH! And uhh–” she looked some more before grabbing a bottle of a clear blue substance– “Ammonia! Yea that’ll make something!”
“Susie, that’s the recipe for mustard gas.”
“SHIT. Okay, I see your point.” She set down the containers. “We’re gonna need advice from, like, a chemistry nerd. Someone who knows what will and won’t make a fuckin chemical weapon.”
“Yeah. How about Catti? She loves that stuff, says it like helps her with alchemy or something”
“GOD no. She hates my guts, remember?”
“Right, right. Berdly?”
“No way, he’s fucking insufferable, plus he’s been acting really weird around me since we saved him from Queen.”
“Well that only really leaves Noelle.”
“Oh…” Susie felt her heart skip a beat (Why? Noelle and her were just friends. None of her other friends really made her feel like that. Weird.) as she considered this. “Arright. Cool I guess. She’s cool. Cool cool cool cool cool. This is cool.”
“You’re blushing.”
“What!? No I’m not! SHUT UP!”
“Yea you are! you’re blushing a little!” Kris laughed and pointed at her while taking on a sing-songy voice. “SUSIE’S GOT A GIRLFRIEND!”
“SHUT UP BEFORE I MAKE MUSTARD GAS FOR REAL I SWEAR TO GOD.”
“Alright, alright, jeez,” Kris laughed, “I was just teasing you. So we’ll need Noelle’s help, but like, how? I don’t think she’d really be down for helping to start a chemical fire.”
“I think I have an idea.”