Arc Interlude: School’s Final Year
“School starts tomorrow, Ash! Oh, you'll be a senior! You'll have fun!”
“I don't want to go back to school yet. I mean, it's only August! Jefferson High didn't start classes until like September twelfth!”
“Ash, it's not like it's a life or death situation!”
“...Yeah, I guess you're right. I'll get my shit together.”
“Ash, we don't use language like that in this house.”
I went up to my room. It's odd, but the last two weeks have been a blur. Literally all I remember was paying a lot of TF2. I checked my phone again and read past discussions I had with Isaac. We talked about school and Fallout a lot, and that’s it. I set my phone down along a bunch of artifacts we somehow had. A thick locked book, two things that looked like blasters, a number of random items we either found or bought. I'd worry about it later; I just wanted to play games today seeing how they'll lock us up in school for the next hundred days or so.
RED had done a fine job of protecting Mann Co. for quite a while now. Five waves of robots down, and only one to go. Another horde of Scout robots poured over the Coal Town hill and began running up the streets, a bomb in tow. They were stopped all particularly early by a pair of mercenaries: a pyro and an engineer. Further up along was a medic and a heavy keeping any escaping robots at bay, and a demoman and soldier made rounds destroying anything else they found. There seemed to be no stopping them, until...
“A Sentry Buster has entered the area!”
A blue mine on legs ran over the hill and began charging at the sentry sitting up on a roof. The pyro quickly stepped in and fired compressed air at the Sentry Buster to slow it down, attracting the attention of the heavy and medic. The medic flipped a switch on his medigun and red electricity flowed from the barrel into the heavy. His minigun glowed red. “Now go!” the medic shouted as the heavy closed the gap.
Within only a few seconds, the Sentry Buster exploded, throwing money around the area. The pyro mumbled something (it was hard to hear what under their thick mask) and gave a thumbs up. The heavy adjusted his hat and ran off to find some ammo.
“So did you ever find out what happened at New Infinity?”
“What happened?”
“Just one day the whole tone you had with the place changed.”
“Did it?”
“See, there you go again! Are you alright?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what happened?”
“I don't know.”
“Just forget it.”
Suddenly, a loud, low sound erupted through the battlefield, shaking the gravel in front of the old, boarded up coal mine. A tank, a large vehicle with no offense but a heavy defense, crashed through the boards and slowly began to drive towards the giant bomb hatch Mann Co. installed for some reason (their owner, Mr. hale, explained it was to be used to quickly dispose of the building should they need to, but with the building serving as the world’s largest coal museum, it seemed absurd). The pyro, who was lounging in front of a dispenser refilling the propane tank on their flamethrower, suddenly ran towards the machine. They reached for a canteen on their belt, featuring a blue lightning pattern, and poured it into a small hole on the flamethrower. It suddenly began to glow and shot out large, red flames, engulfing the tank in fire. This went on for five scant seconds, before the flamethrower returned to normal. That was the last of those Crit Canteens pyro had, since they were so expensive. They would have to make due with regular flames.
Meanwhile, a soldier wearing a Mann Co. baseball cap had begun loading rockets into his rocket launcher. The launcher itself wasn't very appealing to look at; it was a garish, ugly mess of sewer pipe, hangers and dented tin cans. He finished loading the third rocket as he jumped down off of a roof on the central building in Coal Town and fired the three rockets in rapid succession. The tank burst apart, sending scrap metal and wads of money everywhere. “Victory!”
Each team member was awarded an item for their work. The demoman got a new grenade launcher, the medic got a statue of Hippocrates, the engineer got a sleek new Shotgun, the heavy was awarded a hat, and soldier got a large sign to beat his enemies with.
But the pyro was different. They had fought through five other missions like this to save their company, and were awarded for their courage appropriately. They received a flamethrower with a bloodied robot head chained to the front. The pyro was overwhelmed with emotion. Not many people have received this sort of thing. Usually mercenaries got a rusted robot head, but not pyro. It was rare, and likely would make up for the tickets they spent to help out the team. They celebrated with the rest of the team as they all left Coal Town.
My curiosity was still getting the better of me, So I looked through the stuff on my desk. The book was adorned with a twisted looking emblem, and barely readable text. I could make out the word Infinity on it. The two guns both had a slot on them, and the tablet item fit neatly into those slots, but I wasn't sure what to do next. There was also a smaller tablet with a keyboard on the side, and a slip of paper with the number 63946346489 scrawled on it. I didn't know what any of this was, so I decided to test. I pressed a button on the smaller tablet and it suddenly filled with code. I didn't know what it all meant so I quickly shut it off. Next, I decided to try putting the larger tablet onto one of the guns. Suddenly, the screen lit up and contained many boxes. From the looks of it, it would display stats on whatever it was pointed it. I detached the tablet and put it on the other gun. The screen simply listed a number of conditions, each lined up with a box for a checkmark, and nothing more. That was all I knew. There were some other items, such as a box and a sort of plate, but I did not know what they did. Maybe Felix would know what they were for. I'd figure it out tomorrow.
It was a quick walk from my house to New Infinity High School, and at 7:00 in the morning, the town looked very nice. Neighbors were already out watering their lawns or tending to gardens. Cars sat idle waiting for work to start at 8:00. As much as I don't really like having to move here, and as odd as it has seemed, it looks fantastic. I walked to my first class, English.
I sat down at a desk and eventually more people showed up. At 7:30, the teacher walked in, closed the door and wrote his name on the board. Mister Brewer. “Alright, class. I'm Mr. Brewer, I'm teaching Senior Reading and Writing. Now, since this the first day, we're doing the thing. The one where you go tell people things; that one. Look, I don't like it, you don't like it, but hey... your next spouse, coworker and/or murder victim might be in this room?”
Literally, that's all we did for the first ten minutes. You tell someone your name, where you are from, and one important thing. A Dan from New York told me about the band he started. Chris from Chicago has published a book. Sam from Toronto does oil paintings. Just from these few slightly interesting moments did anything unusual arise. One kid I talked to seemed different. He had grayish hair he dyed a pale blue, a white jacket, and a thin-rimmed pair of glasses. “I'm Twitch from... From...” and that is when he pushed me aside.
“Look, I'm Twitch Fredrickson, I have some dire news about the town, we-- we need to get out!”
“What?” I said to him, “Why do we need to get out of New Infinity? It's not perfect, but it's not like it’s some broken-down wasteland!”
“But... look, I've done the research, and New Infinity is actua--”
“You're really off your rocker. Look, it’s not as bad--”
“Why won't anyone UNDERSTAND?!”
“Alright,” Mr. Brewer said, “Enough bonding. Time to destroy your life. You're getting the most frustrating, difficult assignment I can think of... write about your summer. That's all. I lied about the assignment. Whether you spent it in New Infinity or you were somewhere else, just write. At least 200 words.”
“Can it be about a game we played?” Dan asked.
“Did you play it over the summer?”
“Yes. So we can?”
“Go right ahead. I don’t care.”
Now, I hated writing. It wasn't something I did a lot of, but this was my English class, so I guess I'd have to get used to it. He did say we can write about a game, right?
I've been wandering the wasteland for days. It hasn't been rough; I've actually been thriving off of my lifestyle. I've looted from nearly every building in the Capital Wasteland, taking basically anything not nailed down. I look down at my Pip Boy and tune into Galaxy News Radio. They've been around forever and play music over 200 years old, my people with weird names like Cole Porter and Sid Philips. The sheer fact that their work still survives today is a testament to how protective we are of our lifestyle. I set down my pack to take out a bottled water when I heard a familiar noise. Stomping, scraping, shouting... it had to be a behemoth. A 12-foot tall monstrosity of a beast, carrying a long pipe with a fire hydrant at the end as a hammer, ripped right through a nearby bus and swung. I quickly grabbed a weapon out of my bag, an assault rifle, and fired at the thing while keeping distance. It didn't give up at any time. I was backed against a wall firing when it happened. 'click click'... out of ammo. The behemoth had taken over 200 bullets without stopping. There really wasn't much more I could do. I made some distance, keeping about 50 feet between us. By the time the behemoth had begun to catch up I was prepared with a makeshift launcher ready to fling a nuclear bomb at the thing. The nuke flew through the air and crashed into its target, leaving a massive mushroom cloud in its wake. For many people this would have been a highlight of their life. This was simply just another day in the wasteland.
Had I really written that? Was I really going to turn in Fallout 3 fanfiction as my first assignment? I guess so, as shortly after I put down my pencil Mr. Brewer picked up my paper. He sat at his desk reading through some of the first few. “So someone spent their summer visiting the hometown of H.P. Lovecraft... this person went to Florida... and... alright, that's on video games, video games...”
And he read it. There wasn't any going back. He had read it, and it was probably so bad that it will stay with him forever. I can just imagine his gravestone. “Mister Brewer: I once had to read Fallout 3 fanfic as part of my job.”
After a few minutes, the rest of the class finished, and he quickly filed through the papers. “Alright, if you seriously wrote any sort of action sequence and passed it off as your summer, that's pretty rad. Gold stars, ten outta ten. Now, as a general note, I get that you think that your papers all sucked. They did. They sucked in their own special way. And that's why we're here. To get better. By the time the semester is over you'll be the writer that writers want to be. Also there’s reading, but we’re required to have the reading and to be honest the writing is easily the better part. Now then, we'll regroup tomorrow.”
The bell rang and I was off to my next class, math, and then physics. Simple stuff (practically the same class given how much math goes into physics and how little anyone can actually use due to air resistance not being accounted for in the math). After that I headed off to lunch. I grabbed a salad, paid for it, and tried to find a table. I eventually did, and sat down. As soon as I did, a couple students noticed and joined me. The first was a short, pale kid with white hair clutching a deck of Pokémon cards. “Hi, I’m George, sophomore.”
“Ash.”
Following him was another student, tall, darker complexion and black hair with some yellow streaks in it, carrying a bunch of foreign books. “Franklin, senior.”
“Hey, mind if I sit over here?” A spindly senior with glasses asked holding a laptop.
“Well sure! Say, Nathan, what are you working on?” Franklin asked.
“Another screenplay. I think this one has potential! It’s about two families that despise each other but have to put aside their differences in a civil war!”
“I do see what you mean. But what if this wasn’t just two families, but it was so much deeper than that? Two affluent families that hold major, rivalling businesses, per se? It can go farther. Just keep it out of the cliché, you know?”
“Already on it. Anyway, you said you were Ash?”
“Yeah. I play video games.”
“Who doesn’t?” Nathan replied. “I’ve been trying to play Fallout 2, since I got it back when it was on sale, but I’m not sure where to go next.”
“Where are you?”
“Oh, here,” he said as he opened his laptop and showed me where he was. I showed him who to talk to next and soon enough he was back on track to exploring the New California Republic again. “Thanks. What other games do you play?”
“A lot of Team Fortress 2, some other games and such. I just bought The Binding of Isaac the other day. That game is so tough.”
They continued their works. “So does anyone else have strange things in their house?” I asked.
“Like what?” George asked.
“An exotic lamp?” Franklin replied.
“Dead body?” Nathan commented.
“No, like a book. It’s all locked up and has an ominous cover.”
“The Necronomicon?”
“No, it’s not like covered in skin or anything. It’s just… got a symbol on it, some hard to read words, and looks really odd. And then there’s these little tablet things and some other weird things I found. Nobody has anything like this?”
“No, not that I’m aware of. Care to bring them in tomorrow? Maybe we could all take a look!”
“That’d be fine,” I replied as the bell rang.
They were all pretty good people; much better than the sorts of people I had just met. There wasn’t much to say about my next class, but the one interesting one we had was simply a class labeled “New Infinity”. Now, you probably just said ‘Why?’, and to be honest I thought the exact same thing. As I stepped into class, Felix was standing at the board writing his name. No, not Mr. Felix or Felix with a last name. Just Felix. As the class started he turned around and welcomed the class in a very… er, Felix manner. “Well hello class! I’m Felix, and welcome to your first day! Now, I know all you by now and hopefully you’ve all met each other by now. But in case you haven’t we’ll just go around and introduce each other. How about we start with… oh, Ash!”
Why.
“I’m Ash, I just moved here a couple months ago.”
And really every last introduction was like that. Some highlights of the venture included Randy, who screwed up his name and said Randa, followed by an “Oh shit, not again!”, a Jeffrey who once had to kill a crocodile in self-defense, and Franklin, who apparently got two books published and makes over $75,000 a year, even as a Senior. After all 24 people had shared, Felix spoke up. “Now, this isn’t some class about why this town is perfect or anything. We are actually going to discuss things together as a group. This is basically an open forum of discussion.”
A student, Sydney, raised her hand and asked, “Why are we even here? What does this class do that music or calc couldn’t? And why does this even take up a class slot?”
“Well, to answer your question ma’am, this is more of a place for you to discuss things with your peers and I. Whether it be questions about the town or whatever, go ahead. This is more… Social skills, I guess, then anything. We do go on trips and everything; you guys will have fun!”
“Does this class count towards college credit?” Franklin asked as he took out a notebook.
“No, not really…” Felix responded, “if anything, it counts a place where you can be yourself!”
“But the colleges don’t really care about whether I was myself, you, The Rock, or Arin Hanson. They care about my grades and skills, monetary investment aside.”
“Oh… well, apparently having one less grade is a more pressing concern than I thought it would be with you kids. Here’s what I can do. You can sign up for another class and complete that work here and get additional credits, and—“
“How many classes can we sign up for?” Franklin quickly asked, looking up from his notebook.
“As many as you want. Just don’t work yourself too hard!”
“Ah, wonderful! So I can actually finish up Calculus and AP French this year! Perfect!”
“Felix, did you run this class last year?” I asked.
“Actually, funny you mention that. This was just a study hall last year. Most students were upset that they weren’t doing anything so I stepped in and made it into a class where students can reach for what they want. If they want to solve a problem with their friends or, like your friend in the corner, pursue their academics, then that is perfectly fine by me!”
The ambient chatter in the room died there and we were all left with unending silence. After a few seconds, Felix attempted to rectify this. “So… anyone read any good books?”
“I finished Fast Food Nation earlier today,” Randy mentioned.
“Oh yes,” Felix said, “that book! Aren’t you glad we don’t have any of those sorts of places out here? I personally have sat in and made sure each fast food joint in town is a quality establishment.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you are whiter than sliced bread?” a senior named Alec said.
“Well I don't really have a dark past. I grew up right here, or in this area, I guess, went to school a lot and became good at running and managing things, got a few permits and hired some folks to build this whole place from the ground up! Though, I do have hobbies. I love writing and have started doing some work with sewing. I just can’t seem to keep consistent tabs on these suits; none of the suppliers seem to have them!”
“Why name it New Infinity?” a student named Francisco questioned.
“Because I believe that this town could exist forever in some form or another! Now I don’t think that I’ll run it that long but we’re a pretty self-sufficient society!”
“No no no, why ‘New’ Infinity?”
“Well there was an Old Infinity, well, not old Infinity, but…”
Felix quickly glanced down real fast, looked back up, and as soon as he did the bell rung. That’s odd, I thought, that class wasn’t even 30 minutes long. Well, whatever. I headed home. As I opened to door, I set headed to my room. “How was your first day of school?” my mother asked.
“Fine. Not much happened. Some kid forgot his name and the physics teacher almost caught the school on fire.”
“That’s nice,” my mother half-heartedly replied.
I personally think she doesn’t care and just rather would like to see me home at the end of the day as opposed to going out and doing drugs or whatever. I logged into Steam and booted up Team Fortress 2.
Just like how there are markets about that people meet at, the world of Team Fortress has its own markets. They meet, quite often in fact, to exchange goods and services. A RED pyro showed up with a few of their wares to sell. A rocket launcher, a shotgun, and a few hats from other worlds. Some folks were selling some of their own guns. Some had keys. Some were making their way around selling little trinkets like gift-sending catapults or trading cards. The pyro posted their advertisement for their items. “Selling a Strange Original and Killstreak Shotgun! Also selling hats!” their ad read as they walked out of their base. As soon as they stepped out, they immediately shot a flare across the trading lobby, hitting a Soldier retreating from battle.
AshLand97 has killed Daniel Saix with Flare Gun.
The pyro jumped over a planter and noticed another pyror\ standing in the door to BLU’s base. They shot a flare of their own and charged out. This pyro was a tad different from the RED one. It had made their fire-resistant suit into what resembled a suit jacket, with a tie and beige undershirt. The RED Pyro shot the flare back with a blast of compressed air, took out their axe (rather, a giant hammer) and swung.
AshLand97 has killed E3kHatena with The Powerjack.
At this time, the Pyro had received a notification that someone wanted to trade with them. They accepted to the trade and begun negotiation.
“Hello?” I typed.
“I want to buy the original,” the other person, Coldblood, responded.
“That will be 5 keys.”
Mann Co. had been giving out crates for years, and with them came special keys. The only way to get a key was to buy it off of them. Well, that or trade for them. Their price had gone up in recent days in the trading community, reaching of 9 refined metal before people started claiming that was too much. Regardless, they continued to rise in price to over a dozen, and fluctuated around there. The underground trading market of the Badlands was a strange force, indeed.
“ok. Hold on.” Coldblood typed.
As he rummaged through his inventory, I looked over at the strange items on the table once more. The one thing I was most interested in was the book. I had no idea what it was or where it was from, but it was held shut by a piece of metal with a lock driven through it. There was no keyhole, so I didn’t have a way to get it open. I looked back to see that Coldblood was holding his end of the bargain up, I accepted his offer and walked out of there with a hefty profit.
TheMaskedMan has joined the game.
Oh dear.
It appeared a soldier new to the trading game had just arrives, but without much to sell or buy. It was common for these trading places to be common locations for random gunfights. Both teams had respawners to resurrect their vanquished mercs, so it was more friendly competition than anything.
E3kHatena has killed TheMaskedMan with Flame Thrower.
E3kHatena’s Diamond Botkiller Flame Thrower Mk. I has reached a new rank: Server Clearing!
“Oh hey Ash,” Isaac typed.
“Wassup,” I replied.
“I just got a new launcher! Thank you for hooking me up with Scout stuff, I want to try more Soldier now.”
“Have fun.”
TheMaskedMan has killed Lemon_Grenade with Black Box.
“So we started school today,” I said.
“Oh yeah? Is it better than here?”
“A bit. Bigger classes at any rate.”
TheMaskedMan has killed Tad Strange with Black Box.
“I think I’m getting the hang of this!”
“Would seem that way.”
AshLand97 has killed Tad Strange with Flare Gun.
AshLand97’s Flare Gun has reached a new rank: Uncharitable!
“Well, I got what I came for. I’m leaving,” I typed.
“Bye.”
I disconnected, closed the game and headed downstairs for dinner. Mom had made a pizza and Alex had brought his laptop downstairs. “Oh hey,” he said glancing up from what appeared to be a heated game of Dota, “I started freelance web design today. I got a client, and I should be making $200 from this.”
“From that, eh?" I joked, "Whatever. Good for you. Anything new, Mom?”
“Work in the office is going great! I might actually get a promotion this month!”
“Sounds like things are going well!”
“Better than they were this time a decade ago, at least.”
I ignored that statement (All I know was that was when my father left, and we then moved a few times) and took a couple slices back to my room. I had some Game Grumps catching up to do, and knowing the conversations they have, it’d be best to keep that in the confines of my room. It was at this time that I got an email. “Hello, this is Felix!” the letter began, “I am planning a handful of Summer events to end the season, and I’ll also be out in a couple months to figure out what we all want to do for Halloween! Stay safe, have fun! Thanks for staying in New Infinity!”
What a dork.
To be Continued
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