~Reflection~ Disclaimer: Three words: Digimon's not mine. A/N: Okay, I don't know what Ken's school is like, so I'm basing this on my elementary school experiences. *shudders* Basically, I had one teacher for all my classes except for math, which I had to take from another teacher next door. Oh, by the way, I apologize in advance if anyone shares the same name as the extra characters in this chapter and/or is offended that I used them; G pulled them out of a hat for me. (G: Did no-- *gets five layers of duct tape slapped over her mouth*) *** Chapter 8 "Hey look, it's Ken 'the genius' Ichijouji. Maybe I should ask him for help on my history homework," snickered one of Ken's classmates as the aforementioned boy walked through the door of his Advanced Trigonometry class. A round of giggles ensued. "Don't pay any attention to them, Ken," Wormmon softly consoled the Digidestined of Kindness from his bookbag. Taking a little comfort from his partner's words, the dark-haired boy just pretended he didn't hear that sarcastic, not-so-quiet whisper and slowly trudged over to his desk. Only the best of Tamachi's gifted students were allowed the privilege of attending this accelerated math course while still in elementary school, and Ken was one of the two dozen that were handpicked for the class. In fact, before the Dark Spore was deactivated, Ken had easily become the top student, whereas his classmates had struggled just to stay above passing. However, that was a thing of the past. Nowadays, Ken was the one who toiled along, barely keeping his head above water, while his jealous peers simply jeered at the former child prodigy every chance they got. "Settle down, class, settle down," instructed the teacher, Mr. Morita, while putting his heavy briefcase on the desk. "Today, we're going to start off with a little pop quiz on the material covered in yesterday's lecture." A wave of groans swept across the classroom at this announcement. 'A pop quiz!' Ken inwardly panicked. 'Shoot! I forgot to review my notes from yesterday, and I was only half awake the other day.' "Put all calculators and notes away--only pencils and erasers allowed," Mr. Morita commanded as he pulled out a stack of papers. Ken nervously did as he was told, accidentally knocking his pencil off the desk in the process. This raised another quiet round of giggles all around him, but he managed to pick up the fallen writing utensil before his teacher slapped the three-page "quiz" facedown on his desk. After making sure he had handed out all the exams, Mr. Morita looked at the clock and nonchalantly announced, "You may begin." The sounds of two dozen rustling papers were heard immediately afterwards, as was the long silence of students pausing to think about how to do the first problem. Ken, too, stared speechlessly at the first problem. 'Oh my God, what do I do first? What do I do first?' He chanted this distressed thought over and over like a mantra in his head, fear of another failure rising in the back of his mind. 'What will my parents say this time? I'm going to disappoint them miserably again; I just know it!' Suddenly the indigo irises of his eyes contracted, and something seemed to click in his brain. 'Wait a minute…What if I do this?' Not wasting a second, Ken began to scribble out some equations and calculations quickly but neatly onto his paper. 'There, finished with the first one,' the boy thought proudly soon after. 'Now for the second.' So intent was Ken on his work that he didn't notice a few of his classmates gawking at the way he swiftly wrote down an answer to each problem and noisily flipped each page. After about five minutes, the boy genius gathered up his quiz and walked to the front of the room to turn it in. Twenty-three pairs of wide eyes were now focused on him. Some of his classmates hadn't even written anything on their papers yet. "H-he's just doing this to intimidate us. Th-that's gotta be it; he's bluffing," whispered one student to another. "Quiet! No talking!" Mr. Morita called as he glanced up slightly from the new manga he was reading. Not long after he had lowered his gaze to go back to his reading, his head shot up in surprise, his mind just registering the indigo-haired boy waiting patiently by his desk. "Oh! Ken! Do you have a question about the quiz?" he asked, hurriedly putting his manga away. "No, Mr. Morita," Ken replied, his cool gaze momentarily alighting on the comic book before looking his teacher straight in the eye. "Actually, I came over to hand in my exam. I apologize if correcting it cuts into your precious reading time." "Oh, uh, um, no, of-of course not…" the math teacher stuttered. "But are you sure you don't at least want to check it?" "I already have, four times, and I've even calculated the sines and cotangents to the nearest thousandth, if you don't mind." "Uh, not at all, though you didn't really have to do that since you don't get to use a calculator." "I know. I was bored." With that, Ken turned on his heel and casually strode down the aisle back to his desk. For the rest of the period, the young boy sat quietly in his seat with his eyes closed in meditation while his dazed classmates continued to labor through their quizzes. When the bell rang to signal the end of class, Mr. Morita stated, "Pencils down, everyone--time to turn in your quizzes. Results will be posted in the hallway after school." A few students hastily tried to add in last-minute answers, and some simply gave up and turned their papers in. Ken, on the other hand, merely picked up his bag, in which he could hear his digimon sleeping soundly, and exited the classroom. "Foolish insects," he muttered under his breath as he left. ~~~ For the rest of the day, Ken breezed through his classes easily, if not more easily than he had in his math class. During the physics lesson, Ken took up half an hour debating quantum theories with his teacher and even presented a few that he had come up with on his own. When it was time for Japanese, everyone was captivated by the graded impromptu speech Ken gave, which perfectly filled up the five minutes given to him to the last millisecond. For P. E., he and his classmates had played a "friendly" game of basketball. No one was really surprised that Ken's team won; rather, they were more astonished at how Ken managed to make baskets from half court in their large gymnasium and led his team to a hundred-point lead victory. Later, his teacher was having second thoughts about giving Ken the grade he got on his last history test when the indigo-haired boy took over the lecture and went into much greater detail than he or the book had about the shoguns of Japan. After lunch, during which Ken had fed Wormmon his entire meal (miraculously without letting the little digimon know it), he once again astounded students and teacher alike in the foreign language lesson by fluidly reading off difficult passages from British and Spanish literature and instantly translating them. At the end of the day, Ken immediately headed down the winding corridors towards the exit of Tamachi Elementary. It was a good thing that soccer season hadn't started yet; otherwise he wouldn't have been able to meet his friends until much later that afternoon--and he wanted to see them again as soon as possible. Ken suddenly felt an eager squirming coming from his bookbag, and he pulled it up to his chest just in time to see a gasping, green head pop out from it. "Ken, I'm suffocating in here!" whined the little digimon. "Wormmon!" Ken quietly scolded, looking around too make sure no one had seen him. "Get back in there. I'm not out of school yet. Just wait a bit longer!" Ken was in the process of roughly returning the rookie-level digimon to his temporary place of confinement when he happened to pass through the hall where the math scores were posted. "Man, Ken totally aced that pop quiz." "Looks like the genius is back." "Maybe I should ask for his help after all." "I bet he cheated somehow." The gray-clad boy's disapproving frown immediately turned into a smug smile. That was all Ken Ichijouji needed to hear from the astonished crowd of his classmates to know that his suspicions about that pathetic excuse for a quiz had been correct. The boy swelled up with pride. It was about time those nitwits gave him the respect he deserved. "Ken, are they saying mean things about you again?" whispered Wormmon, poking his head slightly through the half-closed bookbag. "No, Wormmon," Ken hissed, turning his back to the huddled group of students and pushing the insect-like digimon down into the bag. "They're just drooling over the A I got on my quiz this morning, that's all." "You got an A!" chirped the green digimon, popping his head back out for the third time with a happy shimmer in his blue eyes. "That's wonderful. I knew you could do it, Ken!" "Hey, Ken!" yelled one of the female students from his math class. "Get down already! Do you know how much they would ridicule me if they found out I brought my digimon to school?" hurriedly whispered the indigo-haired boy, shoving Wormmon back into the bag none-too-gently. Ken didn't need to turn around to recognize who was calling him; he knew this girl well. Nami Kitto. Sure, she might act innocent and sweet to everyone, especially to the teachers, but Ken knew that whenever he wasn't around, this green-eyed she-devil made fun of him to no end, particularly about his friendship with "those brats in Odaiba." Nami ran up behind him and laid an unwelcome hand on Ken's shoulder in feigned amiability. "Hey! Did you see the results of the trig quiz?" she asked excitedly. Without waiting for an answer, the ebony-haired girl blurted out the only thing that was worth seeing. "You got a perfect score! Wow, did you, like, study all night or something? I can't believe that you did it so fast, too. It almost seemed like old times when you used to polish off a huge test in, like, less than ten minutes. You know, I scored the third highest in the class, but I was nowhere close to you. I only got a C+, but then again, I didn't review or anything for--." Here, Ken was starting to bore of her inane chatter, so he turned around to face her and placed his index finger lightly on her lips, quieting her in half a second. Then, flashing her the complacent smile he used to give the reporters, he coolly said, "My, my, third in the class, eh? And you say you didn't review the material beforehand?" The wide-eyed girl stiffly nodded and remained in shocked silence. "Well, neither did I, so that could only mean that our scores must have come from a difference in fortuitous retention more than anything else." Ken lifted his finger off her lips and walked past her before suavely continuing. "Maybe you should actually try looking over the material for once in your life. Then perhaps you could be the second highest student in the class--second next to me, of course. Now if you'll excuse me," Ken said as he started strolling away from her, "I need to go play with some friends in Odaiba that have reserved my valuable time in advance." With that, he carelessly waved a hand in farewell to the slack-jawed girl standing alone in the hallway. Slowly, a smirk spread across the child prodigy's face. 'Pride down, only one more to go.' *** Gwen: Only one more what to go? G: *eyes beaming hopefully* Chapter? Gaia: *slaps the back of G's head* You wish! *turns to Gwen* Only one more dark emotion to go, of course. Haven't you been keeping up with the story? Gwen: But I'm just the-- Gaia and G: WE KNOW! (in a dull sing-song voice)You're just the grammar check… Gwen: Exactly. G: Can't we give her another job? Gaia: Hmmm…*sly grin appears* Oh, I think I can think of something. Gwen: O_O!!! A/N: Okay, listen up, folks. (Gwen: Don't you mean "attention; read the following, folks"? *gets thrown out the window*) On a more serious note, now that school's starting, I'm going to have less time to work on this story. What does that mean? Basically chapters out less frequently, a story cut off shorter than I'd like, and maybe worse writing. (G: Like it could get any worse. *sees Gaia stand up and sighs* I know, I know. *throws herself out the window*) But don't worry; I'm bound and determined to give my story at least a decent ending, which should still be quite a few chapters ahead. Until my next update (which I'm aiming for to be in two weeks at the latest), take care, y'all, and my condolences to those who have lost someone in the recent tragedy.