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Mr. Galloway was a sadist. A cruel, merciless, malevolent, cold-hearted sadist. He took pleasure in making people suffer, and boy did they suffer.
Okay, so maybe that was tiny bit unfair.
Maybe he was just a love-struck English teacher trying his best to get through to a class of unruly teenagers - but goddamn it, they'd been studying Romeo & Juliet for months now, and Pete couldn't stand it anymore.
With a drawn-out sigh, he closed the book and lay his head on the scratched wooden table.
Pete wasn't someone who got bored easily, but at that moment he was so bored he felt like sobbing.
It was his free study period, and he would've much preferred to be accompanying his boyfriend in whatever reckless thing he decided he wanted to do today - but Gary was in class. All his friends were in class, because of the stupid way their classes were timetabled.
So, Pete was stuck with nothing better to do than sit in the library and agonize over passages upon passages of ye olde English for, what? The fifth time now? He'd honestly lost count.
He secretly hoped Ms. Phillips would just leave the man already.
Thoughts like that were unbecoming of him, but he was feeling hopelessly cranky.
That lanky nerd boy Cornelius was in the library too, and Pete considered going and asking him for help translating. The two of them were friendly enough, and he knew that Cornelius was a big fan of the theatre and was probably well-versed on Shakespeare - but Pete wasn't sure he had the mental strength to even think about the play for any longer without bursting into tears.
So instead, he entertained himself by listening in on the nerds' conversation.
"Bucky didn't honour the character sheets at all! As if a lawful neutral warlock would ever use black magic!" Melvin complained, so loudly that the librarian had to shush him.
"If a man cannot understand the nuances of morality, how can he say he possesses any intelligence at all?" Cornelius mused, rhythmically as if he were quoting something.
Quote or not, by all accounts he was being pretty bitchy, which amused Pete to no end.
The two nerds kept discussing morality for a while, which was starting to intrigue him. They weren't being particularly philosophical, and it was evident that all they were talking about was based around Grottos & Gremlins, but it was interesting nonetheless.
They kept using phrases like "lawful" and "chaotic" and talking about the "moral alignment" - and while Pete could guess what these phrases meant on their own, the conversation still baffled him.
So he walked over to their table in search of answers. He really was that bored.
"Oh, hi Pete!" Cornelius waved as he came over. He always seemed eager to talk to Pete, and Gary had joked that the boy had a crush on him - sometimes it seemed like he wasn't wrong.
"What do you need?"
"Nothing, I just overheard you guys talking and wanted to know what it was about."
"Interested in becoming a role player?" Melvin wiggled his eyebrows.
They'd asked him before if he wanted to join in on their G&G campaign, but he politely declined. Somehow it didn't sound like his kind of thing.
"Uh- nah, I'm just bored I guess." He shrugged, hoping he wasn't coming off as rude. He didn't need Earnest targeting him with high-tech weaponry.
Cornelius looked somewhat disappointed.
"What's the moral alignment?" Pete asked, and Cornelius' eyes lit up again at the chance to explain.
And his explanation was so thorough it made Pete regret asking. Hell, at least it killed the time.
He explained that there were nine alignments, based on two scales of good to evil, lawful to chaotic, with 'neutral' in the middle of each of them.
He went on to talk about how a character's alignment is made up of two parts - one from the first scale and one from the second.
Pete learned that this alignment could tell you how a character would react to a given situation, based on their morals.
"So, a chaotic good character would be something of a rebel. They'd do whatever it takes to do what they think is right, even if it means breaking rules or disrupting order."
Pete thought that sounded just like Jimmy, which made him wonder...
"Does this only work for G&G characters? Or can you apply it to real life people too?"
"Well, you could..." Melvin snorted "But why would you be interested in real life people?"
Thankfully for Pete, he was saved by the bell for lunch. Its not that he disliked the nerds, just that he'd much rather be with his actual friends.
"Ah, I gotta go. Thanks guys."
"Farewell, Peter!" Cornelius called out to him as he walked toward the door.
The gang always met at lunch in the cafeteria, where they'd have their daily debate on whether or not they were hungry enough to choke down Edna's cooking, and recount to each other the gossip they'd heard throughout the morning.
Pete usually hurried over, but today he was too distracted by his thoughts.
That whole morality thing was food for thought. What motivated his friends? What motivated him?
It was obvious that Jimmy was chaotic good, but what about the others?
Pete supposed that he'd be lawful good himself... but then again, he'd been known to break the rules a fair few times in his life without even feeling that bad about it. Usually he'd been coerced into it by other people, namely Gary, but it's not like he ever really stopped anyone else from breaking rules.
That said, he couldn't be chaotic either - he still held some respect for order.
As much as he hated prefects, he understood that they were necessary.
Without rules and order, people like him wouldn't survive.
They'd get murdered. To death.
So it wasn't in his principles to defy authority. He wouldn't echo Zoe's "fuck cops" sentiments.
He couldn't see himself as anything other than 'good' though. He always tried to do what was right, that was just how his mom raised him.
Neutral good would do for him. It sounded plain, but he didn't mind being plain as long as he was good - morals make the man.
His first thought of Lola was that she might be neutral evil. He liked her, very much; the girl had a natural charm about her that was impossible to deny. He wasn't sure he'd ever met someone so confident, and she was sure as hell fun to be around.
But she didn't seem to have any qualms about hurting people. She seemed to make boys fall in love with her just to prove that she could, not caring when she broke their hearts.
Was their misery really her motivation, though?
A lot of the time it was so they'd do things for her - homework, chores, gifts. It seemed she had a lot to gain, so maybe she was neutral.
And, come to think of it, she did seem to get excited at the chance to break rules...
Chaotic neutral then, he supposed.
Gord was most definitely chaotic neutral. He was the most hedonistic person Pete knew, entirely driven by his id. He was chaotic in all senses of the word - despite being in a clique for so long he was always the one to break their unspoken little rules. Rules like don't you dare disrespect Derby.
He'd delighted in breaking that one.
He defied conventions too - of course, he followed fashion, but he was the one who decided what was in and what was out of season.
It wouldn't surprise Pete in the slightest if Gord turned up to class one day wearing a dress and just told everyone to suck it.
Zoe was pretty similar to Jimmy, but Pete wasn't sure if she really was as motivated by justice as her boyfriend was.
She seemed to enjoy anarchy for the sake of anarchy, fights for the sake of fights, and pushing Mr. Burton down a hill in a port-a-potty for the sweet revenge.
The party animal she was, she seemed to be simply motivated by the idea of a good time.
God, was she chaotic neutral too?
Gary was the hardest to pin down. The Gary that tried to take over the school was a typical, archetypal villain. Somewhere bordering chaotic evil.
But nowadays? He was softer, kinder.
To Pete, anyway - and to some extent, he had a soft spot for the rest of their friends too.
He had no idea what motivated the boy, and he could hardly confine him to an 'evil' label when he couldn't help but look at him through rose-tinted glasses.
When Pete finally sat down at the table, he raised the question.
"What's the motivation behind all the things you do?"
Gary looked at him like he was growing another head.
"You thinking of becoming my new shrink, femme-boy?"
Pete explained to Gary what he'd been trying to figure out, and he just laughed and put his arm around the boy.
"You should stop thinking so hard, it'll give you wrinkles." He grinned.
"I just wanted a little insight." Pete shrugged.
"Well I'll let you in on a secret. Don't tell anyone." Gary leaned in closer and cupped a hand over his mouth, pretending to whisper but speaking at pretty much full volume.
"I do the things I do because I can and I want to."
He gave the smaller boy a quick kiss on the cheek before leaning back and watching what the rest of their friends were doing.
Pete was glad of the fact his answer was that and not "to watch the world burn", at least.
He decided that his friends were all pretty hard to define, and gave up.
But then he watched as Jimmy produced a bottle of hot sauce out of nowhere, poured it out over his math book and snorted it, all just to win a bet with Gord - meanwhile Zoe had struck a match on her teeth, let Lola light a cigarette on it right there in the middle of cafeteria, and dumped the smoldering match in Gary's soda... Which Gary then dumped over her side of the table, causing Gord to attract the attention of everyone in the cafeteria by shrieking as it spilled over his pants.
Pete just put his head in his hands in embarrassment.
One thing he could conclude for certain was that all of his friends were fucking chaotic.
Was it too late to make friends with the nerds?