[SSBM] Melee Academy of Higher Learning for Boys: Year Two [Chapter Six]

[themartikaminna]

Title: "Melee Academy of Higher Learning for Boys: Year Two
Author: sailorvfan10
Summary: Melee Academy is like any other all boys' school. Marth, Roy, and Link are three friends who go there, and though their principal fell off his rocker and can't quite get back up, it's as normal as can be. At least, they think it is.
Word Count: 6571 words
Fandom: Super Smash Brothers Melee
Pairing(s): Marth/Roy, Marth/Sheeda
Genre(s): General/Romance
Fic Type: Work in Progress
Warning(s): Marth and Roy neck and make out. There's also some not-described gropage. And they shared a bed.
Disclaimer: I do not own Super Smash Brothers Melee. It belongs to Hal Laboratories/Nintendo. I do not own the Nintendo DS, that belongs to Nintendo. I don't own the songs "Cry for the Dream", “Spiritualize”, "Ending in Tradegy", "Perfect Situation", or “Dreams Come True”. They belong to Hikaru Midorikawa, New Found Glory, Weezer, and S.E.S., respectively. No profit is being made from this story, it's just for fun. Stephen Alvarez, Nicholas Ryan Pickel/Nicholas Leon Redfield, and Gary Stu Wesker are original characters created by me for this story. Kweenetra belongs to my good friend, Quikil. Elice (Marth's sister) belongs to Nintendo.
Notes: This took two days and two drafts. The second draft it what you saw before (the unfinished version, yes). The first one was nothing like this.

Link's cell phone alarm went off, playing "Everytime We Touch" at a low volume, signifying Link needed to get his rear in motion for the school day. When he picked the small and grey phone to turn his alarm off, he saw it went off five minutes late. Kicking the dark green covers aside, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and ran down the hall to the laundry room to see if his clothes were washed from when he put them in last night. Seeing as they were clean, he popped them into the dryer and put it on its quick cycle.

Marth, meanwhile, was sleeping soundly in his bed and turned onto his side, wrapping his arm around the figure next to him in his bed, who cuddled up to him in turn. Just as his alarm went off, the door to the bedroom he and Roy shared violently swung open, and on the other side of it was Link, wearing pajama bottoms and a semi-ironed dressed shirt, surveying the yellow-painted room and saw Marth sit up--or attempt to--so he could turn his alarm off. Marth, who was just disentangling himself from the person by his side, noticed the blond standing in his doorway.

"...I was gonna wake you up," Link said, holding what looked like a milk bottle in his hand, "but it looks like you took care of that for me."
Marth hit the snooze button on his alarm and felt around for his tiara on the nightstand, rubbing his face as he did so.
"Don't you ever knock?" Marth said as he placed the bejeweled headpiece into his hair.
Link stared at Marth.
"...Am I supposed to?" the blond asked. "No one in Kokiri Forest said you had to knock before entering."
Marth simply sighed and left his bed so he could get dressed.

"Whose clothes are those on the floor?" Link asked, leaning against the wall next to the doorway.
"Mine," Marth said, scooping his pajama pants off the floor. He walked over to the laundry basket, dropped his clothes into it, and walked over to his desk chair to retrieve his pants.
Link raised an eyebrow.
"Unless you normally wear two pairs of undergarments and pants and shirts, I don't think so."
Marth sighed and threw on his shirt.
"...Where's Roy, anyway?"

Marth blushed and buttoned the cuffs of his shirt.
"Sleeping, still," Marth answered, bending over to tie his shoelaces.
Link chugged his milk and wiped the milk mustache off with his sleeve.
"But his bed is emp...ty. Oh. I see." Marth's cheeks flushed more and he sat on the edge of his bed.
"There's snow and ice outside," Young Link said, poking his head into Marth and Roy's room.
"That's nice, Little Link," Link replied in an "I don't care" voice. Young Link stuck his tongue out.
"Yeah well, we have no school today, so it sucks for you!" the younger Link said and ran off before Link could hit him with his hat.

"Think they called it?" Link asked, leaning against the doorway still, milk glass in his hand. Marth shrugged.
"Go check on the website," the prince said, crawling onto his bed.
"Roy," Marth said, whispering into the boy's ear. "It's time to wake up."
Roy groaned and attempted to turn over when he realised he couldn't.
"Marth..."
The red head opened his eyes and stared at the blue headed swordsman sleepily.
"...Where are my clothes?"
Marth, forgetting Link was in the room, ran a hand under the covers and onto Roy's leg.
"Who cares about clothes?" he whispered. Roy, whose hands were underneath the covers as well, grabbed the prince's hand so Marth wouldn't move it up any further. Marth smirked and captured Roy's lips in a kiss.
"We have company," Roy hissed against Marth's mouth, and sat up, pulling away from Marth in the process. Marth sighed.
"You know I wouldn't do anything while Link was in the room, anyway."

Link clicked "refresh" on the web browser repeatedly in hopes that the website would change every time. Unfortunately for him, the status for "Melee Academy of Higher Learning for Boys" was set to "Regular".
"Looks like we have school today," Link said disappointedly. Roy groaned and Marth shooed Link out of their room so Roy could get dressed.

- - -

"We all sound good enough to sing for the Talent Show," Link remarked, looking over the notes he scribbled during everyone's performances.
"We'd better," Roy said, shifting his book bag so it wasn't digging into his shoulder. "We've been practising for, oh, two weeks. We should have everything down pat by now."
"Which means," the blond continued on with the conversation, "unless you absolutely hate the song you sing--and you should've had it changed by now, in that case--there can't be any last minute changes." He looked at the set list and scribbled more notes on it in pencil.
"Dammit!" the Hylian screamed at his smudged writing. "This is why I hate pencils!"
Roy discreetly handed Link a pen so he wouldn't have an upset. Link was funny like that.

"Which brings me to finalising everything," Link said, rewriting what was there previous that had smudged. "You're all right with the stuff you're doing, Roy?"
Roy thought for a moment.
"Well yeah...I guess so." Link put all checks by Roy's material and then circled a bunch of foreign characters Roy couldn't read.
"What about you, Marth?" the hero of Hyrule asked, rolling his left sleeve up some so no pen ink would get on it. Marth shrugged.
"I...I don't mind what I'm doing..." Marth didn't sound very convincing.
"Well," Link said, "d'you wanna change it or something? As long as you know what you're doing and you give me a CD of the songs, it's... well, manageable."

Marth shrugged once again and fixed his shirt collar.
"I want something happy," the prince of Altea said, arms crossed.
"Marth," Roy said, "there are tons of songs about happiness and unicorns and bunnies prancing through fields of flowers."
Marth gave him a look that said, "I know."
"D'you have something in mind?" Link asked, ignoring Roy and the look he was getting from Marth.
"Something in English would be nice."
Link deadpanned.
"What?" Marth asked, raising an eyebrow at Link's sudden seriousness.
"You're still singing 'Cry for the Dream'," Link remarked, checking it off. "And nothing you say is getting you out of it."

Marth sighed.
"At this point, I really don't care. But I want something that's cheerful, too. And in English. Or one of the two. I don't know."
Link grinned like the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland and flipped through his list.
"I have a song here," Link said, sidling over to Marth and pointing at a title with his pen, nearly elbowing Marth in the ribs as he did so.
"...'Spiritualized'?" Marth asked, watching Link's left elbow so he wouldn't get smacked with it again. "...Why does that sound familiar?"
Link snickered.
"Don't tell me," Marth said, sighing. "I already know." Link wrote it down on the clipboard.
"Which song is this replacing?" Link asked. "'Ending in Tragedy' or 'Perfect Situation'?"
Marth shrugged.
"Stop shrugging and say something," Link said. "I'm not good at reading your body language, you know."
Marth resisted the urge to shrug and said, "Either or. I'm going to change those two, anyway, so pick."
Link scribbled down, in typical left-hand scrawl, 'Spiritualized' and messily crossed out 'Ending in Tragedy'.

"...You do realise that song's not about happiness and rainbows and stuff, right?" Roy asked, playing with his tie. Marth nodded.
"It's not like I care. It's in English."
"With one stanza in Japanese," Link added to Marth's statement, pointing his pen at the blue headed swordsman.
It was Marth's turn to deadpan.
"...Don't give me that blank stare," Link said, writing something down in Hylian. "You should've known that."

Link came to a halt right before the "tunnel" connecting the third floor of the new building to the stairwell leading to the third floor of the old one.
"Is it just me," Link said, "or are we like, the only ones here?"
Roy looked back into the hallway they were in and then looked outside. No one was there except them and Kweenetra, who was outside chatting on her cellphone.
"Either we got here earlier than we usually do," Roy said, "or everyone else is late."
"Extremely late," Marth added, pointing to his wrist watch.
"I didn't know you wore a watch," Link remarked, staring at the navy blue object strapped to Marth's wrist.
"There are a lot of things you don't know about me," the prince replied, and resumed walking through the "tunnel" connecting new building with old.

- - -

"So!" Link said, going over the song list still. "You'll never guess what I found out."
"Zelda's dating Ganon?" Roy offered, looking up from his Nintendo DS as he sat on the floor. Link gave him a distressed look.
"What?!"
Marth pushed Roy so the red head toppled over and cleared his throat.
"Ow!"
"Zelda's not dating anyone," Marth corrected. "Don't listen to him."
Link calmed down and chucked his pencil at Roy.
"Anyway!" Link said, changing the topic. "Apparently the website was...err... not correct."

Marth gave Link a look he couldn't read.
"You mean to tell me we don't have school?" Roy said, sitting up, rubbing his aching shoulder.
"No, no, no," Link said, waving his hands around and nearly clobbering Kweenetra in the head with his clipboard. "We have school. We just have a delayed opening."
Roy sighed and went back to plowing his field in Rune Factory; Marth just sat there slumped against the lockers behind him.
"I could've slept an extra hour," Marth complained, rubbing his temple. Link laughed nervously.
"Well, you can't blame me," the blond said. "I checked the website and Zelda even called the hotline and it said we had a regular day."

There was, apparently, no justice in the world. At least, that's what Marth thought.

"So what about your third song, Marthy?" Link asked, holding up the green clipboard with the mint green stationery.
Marth was watching Roy harvest radishes.
"Hmm?" Marth asked, not hearing what Link said. "What did you say?"
Link repeated his question.
"Um...well... I really don't know."
Link sighed.
"Do you need to look at the list again?"
Marth made a gesture for Link to give him the list; Link removed the scribbled on and it-looks-like-it-went-through-Hell-and-back song list and handed it to him.

"Hmm," the prince said, flipping through the pages. "Not that one..."
Link took out his Nintenpod and flipped through his song list.
"I have all of the songs on that list on my N-pod," Link said, placing the earbud in his ear. "In case you see anything interesting and you want to hear it or something."
Link has way too much time on his hands, Marth thought as he flipped through more pages.
"'Dreams Come True'?" Marth questioned, pointing to the aforementioned song on the page.
"What about it?" Link asked, still sifting through his song list.
"It sounds interesting," Marth remarked, flipping the list back to the first page, and held it out to the blond. Link took it and attached it back to his clipboard.
"Let me find it," he said, "so you can listen to it."

Link sat down onto the cleaned-twice-a-year floor to the left of Marth and pressed "play" on his Nintenpod. The music was loud enough that Marth didn't need headphones to hear the music at all--Marth figured it was louder than it honestly should.
"Let's go with that," Marth said, drawing his legs up to his chest. "It sounds fine, albeit a bit sappy."
Link switched the song to something else and wrote Marth's song choice onto the paper with all the information on it. He then scribbled the previous song choice out until it was nothing but blue ink scribbles.
"Just to finalise," Link said, "You're singing 'Cry for the Dream', 'Spiritualized', and 'Dreams Come True', yes?" Marth nodded and Link checked it all off and circled things.

"And all of my crap is final," Link said, marking everything up and then writing a big "C" over it.
"So. Nothing can be changed now, you're shit out of luck, etc. etc."
Roy was hacking up monsters with his hoe.
"Christmas's coming up," Roy said. "Anyone doing anything special?"
Link shrugged.
"I'll probably spend it with Zelda, that is, if she's going home or wherever."
"What about you, Marth?" Roy asked, swinging his DS around in time with his hoe-slinging. "Where're you going?"
Marth sighed.
"As of now, I'm not sure. I got an e-mail from Sheeda and she wants to spend it with her parents, so..."

"Speaking of Sheeda," Link interrupted, "Does she know about...you and Red?"
It took Marth a second or two to realise who "Red" was, and wished Link would stop giving them nicknames that were cliché.
"Yes, she does," Marth answered simply.
"And?" Link pressed, crawling over to the middle of the hallway so he faced Marth. He leaned closer, clearly after "breaking news" he could spread all over the school--which was why Marth dubbed him "Mr. Gossip" in the first place.
"'And' what?" Marth asked nonchalantly, picking lint off his pant leg as he did so. Link almost fell into Marth's lap.
"What did she say?" Link asked, his face inches away from Marth's. Roy butted in at that point, putting his hand in the gap between the blond's and the bluenette's faces.
"Marth needs his personal space," Roy said, looking at Link from the corner of his eye.

Link backed off and crossed his arms.
"I'm just curious," Link said, imaginary cat tail swishing from side to side.
"You don't need to practically kiss him to get any info out of him," Roy commented, moving his hand so it was out of Marth's face.
"If you say so," Link commented back. "So what did Sheeda say?"
Marth crossed his arms and closed his eyes.
"Basically," he began, "she said it was fine so long as 'it's not with another woman'."
Link sat back on his knees and rubbed the back of his neck.
"...I'm guessing if it were another woman she'd think you were trying to say something?"
Marth nodded and opened his eyes again.
"She'd think she wasn't putting out enough or something," Marth said, shifting in his spot on the floor, and left it at that.

- - -

"Hey, did you notice Sensei's been in the bathroom for like, twenty minutes?"
Marth and Roy both didn't care about Mewtwo's bathroom habits, and thought it was slightly creepy that Link actually cared. Roy traded in his DS for the book in his bag (after making sure his DS was tucked perfectly into its traveling case--Marth must have rubbed off on him), and was too busy reading it to care about what Mewtwo was even doing in the bathroom. He drew his knees up and supported the book with them, arms resting on his stomach. Marth was leaning against Roy's shoulder half asleep, listening to the occasional page turning.
"No, Link," Marth said sarcastically, "we didn't notice Mewtwo's being in the bathroom for twenty minutes."

Link sniffed the air and noticed a foul odour permeating from the Mens' Faculty bathroom and decided that, since it was a single stall bathroom, it had to be coming from Mewtwo.
"I think Sensei laid one," Link remarked, covering his nose and mouth with his green hat. Marth sighed.
"You sure it wasn't you?" Roy asked before Marth could respond.
"No, I'm sure," Link said. "You would've known it was me."
After finding out more about Link than they cared to know, Marth drifted off to sleep and Roy managed to get half-way through the novel he was reading.

"Why are there only like, three people here?" Stephen asked as he and Nicholas walked through the nearly-deserted hallway.
"Because it's a delayed opening?" Nicholas answered, adjusting the straps of his bag. They stopped by Stephen's locker, which wasn't far from the Fire Emblem boys and Link.
"Yeah, but it's three minutes to nine," Stephen said, entering the combination to his lock in.
"You spelled the word wrong," Nicholas said, pointing the typo out.
"I did that on purpose," Stephen replied, yanking on letter combo lock so it would unhook. "So even if they know what the word is, they'll spell it the right way and still be locked out." He opened his locker and several textbooks, a sweater, and a half full bottle of iced tea fell out. The brunette watched as Stephen moved away from the sea of books and picked some up.
"I seriously think we need to clean our locker out one of these days," Nicholas said, placing the books wherever they would fit. Stephen kicked some aside and retrieved the books needed until lunch.
"Nah," Stephen replied. "Everything's fine. Just gotta...shove everything back in, you know?" Stephen shoved everything back into the locker and hastily kicked the door closed.

"...Stephen, are you alright?"
Stephen said nothing, due to the fact that the contents of the locker they shared covered him completely. The door had swung back open from the weight of all the crap in the locker and spilled out, hitting Stephen with everything.
"Steph?"

Gary passed by them and felt compelled to help, but he ignored it and continued on his merry way. What would his father say if he ever found out he helped Nicholas? Their fathers were sworn enemies, after all. His father's word was law.

Mewtwo finally came out of the bathroom, trying to discreetly spray some air freshener into the bathroom. Link, of course, saw Mewtwo's action, and wrote down all about it for the "Academian", the school's newspaper he was Editor of. He even had his own column in the paper, aptly titled, "Mr. Gossip's Gossip!".
"The bell should be ringing at any moment," Marth said, waking up from his very brief nap. Roy marked the page he was on and closed the book with a muted slam, placed it in his book bag, and waited for the bell to go off. Link grinned like the Cheshire Cat once again, and the Fire Emblem boys knew Link was up to no good.

Mewtwo's reputation was about to die.

- - -

"I feel I must talk to all of you about a disturbing trend I'm seeing from the Second Year class."
When Mewtwo would float back and forth and start with the whole, "I feel I must talk to you all" spiel, it was not a good sign. It was a sign that you should ask to use the restroom and stay there for most of the class period, or to pretend you were listening even though you were, in reality, daydreaming about dinner or sports or headless chickens or even a certain blue haired, tiara wearing prince's behind.

Why was it such a bad thing? It meant the inevitable lecture. Mewtwo was notorious for wasting most of the class period lecturing about stuff no one cared about--things like a fundraising committee, for instance--or things he felt were important that really weren't. So Mewtwo stopped in front of his desk and took his pointer stick from the chalk ledge, twirled it around, and began.
"I have noticed a decline in homework reception."
Do we really care? Kweenetra thought bitterly, her head balanced in her hands.
Mewtwo saw the blank stares on his students' faces.
"Only two people consistently hand in their homework," Mewtwo said, floating back and forth, still twirling the pointer stick.
"They are the only two getting A pluses in my class. The rest of you are..."

Mewtwo stopped in front of Link's desk.
"Failing," Mewtwo finished. Link pretended he was paying attention and nodded his head.
"Failing?" Gary Stu Wesker asked, the only one in the class actually paying attention.
"Yes," Mewtwo said. "Failing. Or in danger of."

It was at that moment that everyone, including Gary, stopped paying attention, because Mewtwo went off to a topic that somehow related to world domination and how one plans it. Of course, no one cared, and it had nothing to do with Japanese class.

After there was only ten more minutes of class left, Stephen raised his hand and waved it around slightly.
"Yes, Stephen?"
"We were supposed to have a Kanji test today," the boy reminded, and caused all of the class to turn and look at him.
"Shut up, Stephen," Nicholas said, elbowing the blond in the ribs. "You're not supposed to remind him."
Mewtwo had already gotten the loose leaf paper out and was in the process of passing it out to the class.
"The usual heading, please," Mewtwo said. "We're having our Yookosoo Chapter One kuizu." Mewtwo wrote the proper heading on the board, and underneath that he drew three columns.
"The first column," he said, gesturing to the board, "will contain the Kanji character or characters of the word I give you." He then pointed to the second column.
"The second column will contain the Hiragana, that is, the word I give you. So you won't forget, or if you forget the Kanji, you can not lose some points."
"What about the last one?" Gary asked, pointing to the final column on the board. Everyone else was dividing their papers into three and labeling each.
"You put the English in it," Mewtwo replied.

Mewtwo started off easy, giving them words like nihongo and mokuyoubi and gradually got harder, giving them things like denwa and taikokan. Link was having a hard time drawing the figures, not because he didn't know how to, but because it was difficult due to the fact that he was not, in fact, right handed. As a result, his writing was barely legible and the Kanji looked like three year old scribble doodles. He cursed inwardly and tried to glance at Gary's paper, but Gary had nothing filled in.
"Knew I should've taken that Hylian language course instead," Link muttered. "I would've gotten an A plus in that course."
Marth and Roy, however, were having little to no problems with the quiz, and when Mewtwo said to hand in their papers, they were the only ones who had everything filled in.

"This is quite disappointing," Mewtwo said, flipping through the papers and briefly glancing at them. "Link, I have no idea what the hell your paper says, and Gary didn't even put something down. I am disappointed. Very much so." And so, Mewtwo launched into another lecture, went through the bell, and ranted to no one in particular as the First Year class walked in one by one.

- - -

"The schedule for today is as follows," the man over the intercom said, clearing his throat. "Period two, period three, period seven, and period eight. All periods are shortened down to a half hour. School is dismissed at one o'clock this afternoon, and all help periods are canceled. Thank you."
Of course the stupid administration decided it would be a good idea to announce what the schedule was like while people were walking to their next class. It wasn't like it was a travesty, but it was an inconvenience. You could barely hear the announcement, anyway, and figured the teachers probably received a memo with the schedule on it.
At least, Marth hoped so. He liked to know when classes started and ended so he could budget his time on various assignments.

Marth arrived in the gymnasium and sat in Section P of the bleachers with his other classmates. It would be a waste of time to have the students change, only to have fifteen minutes left of the period to do anything. So they decided it would be best for them to just not change and to sit there and do nothing. It didn't bother Marth in the least.
It was very loud in the gym, and you could barely hear yourself think over the noise, but Marth was good at blocking things that annoyed him out. He scrounged around in his book bag for his copy of "Catcher in the Rye", and when he found it, opened it and began to read. Mr. Falcon looked around on the bleachers, saw that half of the class was missing, marked the ones who were there "in class", and walked away to chat with Ms. Aran, possibly ask her out on a date.

It was then that Marth felt a little odd. It wasn't that he felt faint, or that he felt like he was about to vomit, he just felt rather odd, like something was missing...
Marth, out of habit, reached for his headpiece so he could have something to mess with whilst he read.
It wasn't in his hair.
With a cry, he laid the contents of his book bag onto his lap--books, notebooks, a comb, keys to his room and the Manse, his cellphone, and a bottle of hand sanitiser--and analysed it to see if it was among the items. When he realised that his tiara was not, in fact, among the items in his bag, he dumped them back into his bag and let out another cry of alarm.

If Elice found out, Marth was a dead prince.

Meanwhile, Roy handed Ms. Toadstool his transfer slip with his and his father's signatures on it. Ms. Toadstool smiled, signed and dated it, and filed it away.
"I'll give this to your counselor when I see him next," she said, and Roy walked back over to his seat and sat down.
"So you're transferring out?" Link whispered, ignoring the worksheet he was supposed to be completing. Roy nodded.
"Yeah, I am."
"Did you need your father's advice on this one?" Link joked, and rubbed his head from the smack Roy gave him in response.
"I asked for his advice on my classes once, alright?"

Link poked Roy in between the shoulder blades with the eraser of his pencil.
"I thought you were supposed to be not-violent," the blond said, leaning forward in his seat.
"I'm am," Roy replied. "I could hit you harder if I really wanted to, but I don't want you slamming your head into the desk and getting a concussion. I'm not that mean."
Link took Roy's word for it and went back to his problems about Proving Triangles Congruent.
"Link," Ms. Toadstool said in a sing-song sort of way, "I need your transfer slip so you can be moved to Algebra One." Link went through the pockets on his blazer, shirt, and pants before pulling out the lint-covered piece of paper, which was crumbled and ripped at the edges.
"Do you have it signed?"
Link sighed.
"I don't have parents, and my guardian has no arms."
Ms. Toadstool took it anyway and filed it away.
"It's quite all right, Link," she said, and Link went dejectedly back to his seat.

"She had to bring up the Great Deku Tree," Link said, depressed. Roy said nothing in reply and worked on his problems.

- - -

Roy and Link walked to the gym in silence. Roy opened the door and nearly got knocked over by one of the seniors running out through the very same door, and Link tripped over his shoelace and pushed Roy through the door and onto the floor.
"Help me, I'm being molested!" Roy shouted from the ground, not realising it was Link who was on top of him.
"Roy, you dolt!" Link said, his voice muffled from Roy's hair. "It's me."
It didn't make Roy feel any better. He managed to push Link off of him and pick himself off the ground, helped Link up off the nasty gym floor, and continued to walk to Section O, which was right next to Mr. Falcon's class.

"Hey Roy," Link said, grabbing Roy's arm so he wouldn't walk any further, "what's that thing over in Section P? It's kind of shiny."
Roy sighed and looked in the direction of Section P. Link and his attraction to shiny objects often got them into trouble with Marth or some muscular male who looked like a prison inmate.
"It's probably nothing," Roy reasoned, continuing to walk up the bleachers. Link, who was a curious person by nature, walked over to Mr. Falcon's class section and investigated the matter.
"This looks like..." Link picked the object up and examined it closely to make sure nothing was wrong with it. After it passed with flying colours, he carefully made his way up to where Roy was in Section O.

"What's that you're holding?" Roy asked, pointing to the object in the blond's hands. "It looks like--"
"It is," Link interrupted, finishing Roy's sentence.
"...What was it doing on the floor?" Roy wondered aloud, shrugging the strap of his bag off his shoulder.
"From the looks of where it was laying and the position it was in," Link said, sounding like a police detective, "I'd deduce that someone knocked it off."
Roy scoffed.
"He practically has it glued to his head."
Link shrugged.
"I'm only telling you what I know, 'kay? Don't go spoutin' off nonsense."
Roy had no idea what Link was talking about, decided it was best to not ask, and left it at that.
"We don't have fourth period today," Link said. "Otherwise we could give it to him then."
Roy pondered for a minute.
"He usually goes to his locker before eighth period," Roy said slowly, still thinking.
"Yeah, but his locker's all the way in the new building, and our eighth period's on the fourth floor.

Roy sighed.
"Our seventh period's a floor under his locker. We can go up there and wait for him to come, then go up to eighth period afterwords," Roy said, explaining everything with elaborate hand gestures. Link just stared.
"Or," Link said, "we could wait until after eighth period."
Roy glared at him.
"I don't trust you with it. With our luck, you'd trip and crack it in half or something."
Link offered it to Roy by shoving it in his face.
"Then you take it."

Carefully, Roy took the object, wrapped it in one of his spare book socks, and placed it in a part of his book bag where he knew it wouldn't break.
"I hope he won't be too pissed or anything," Link said.
"Why would he be pissed off at us?" Roy asked. "It's not like we knocked it off. He has what's-his-face in his class who absolutely hates him."
"Shawn?"
"Yeah," Roy said. "That guy. He could've knocked it off while he wasn't paying attention and didn't notice until the period ended or something and there was no time to look for it."

Whatever the case was, they didn't know. They were just lucky a kleptomaniac didn't decide it was nice and shiny and expensive and pick it up off the bleacher floor and sell it for about three hundred thousand dollars.

Maybe Marth wasn't going to be dead after all.

- - -

Seventh period was a bore, Roy thought as he walked up the less-traveled-on stairwell to the third floor of the new building. He clutched his copy of "Silas Marner" under his arm as he pulled the door open and was greeted by a blast of cold air. Walking as quickly as possible, he went over to the locker he and Marth shared, unshackled it, and jammed all his books onto his designated shelf, stowing "Silas Marner" to the side of the book pile so he wouldn't lose it. After he did that, he retrieved his Biology textbook and notebook from the top of the pile, shoved them into his bag, and waited for his blue headed companion to show up.

After waiting about thirty seconds, Marth had appeared through the throng of people, flustered beyond belief. After neatly placing his books onto the bottom shelf of the locker, Roy decided it was as good time as any to give Marth the object he and Link found in the gym.
"Here, Marth," Roy said, deftly removing the book cover-wrapped object from his bag, and handed it to the Altean.
"What's this?" Marth asked, staring at it.
"Open it and see," Roy said, glanced at the clock in the hallway, and added quickly, "I have to go or I'll be late. See you in thirty minutes!"

Marth had never seen Roy run so fast in his life, half from his going to be late and the fact that a hall monitor was chasing after him for speeding in a walking zone. Marth closed the locker, shackled the lock, and walked to his eighth period class down the hall, wondering what it was Roy gave to him.

He entered the Band room and took his usual seat in between Kelly the flutist (who used to play Clarinet but decided he hated it and that there were too many and switched to flute) and Kevin the saxophonist.
"We're just practising for the concert," Kelly said, going through his manuscript book to find the music he needed to play. "There's not enough time to really learn anything new."
So Marth dropped his bag to the floor and opened the book sock-covered "gift". His jaw dropped when he saw what was inside.
"I'm not going to be killed!" Marth said cheerfully, removing the royal headpiece from the cloth, and examined it.
"And not one scratch or chip, either."

After placing it back into his hair, he got up, retrieved his flute from his cubbie hole, sat down, and played Christmas songs until one of the other band members gagged from being sick of hearing them.
"Hmm," the boy said, "I don't remember having carrots..."
Marth gagged and Kelly turned green. Kevin, who had a weak stomach, ran to the nearest trash can and proceeded to follow the other kid's lead.
"...I'm glad I didn't have breakfast," Marth said, and went back to playing his flute.

Meanwhile, in Link and Roy's Biology class, Mr. Watch decided that, since the periods were shortened, they would watch a documentary on Meiosis, which was what they were currently learning in class. Most of the class was asleep or half-way there, and Roy was struggling to not scream and knock himself out by slamming his head into his desk top. Link was blankly staring at the television before his head collided with his desk and he fell asleep. Roy swore Link was snoring, but it was hard to tell since everyone else just about was. So Roy, being a rather bright and intelligent person, decided to keep himself from going insane by writing a story about samurai chickens going up against the ninja cows and submit it to the literature magazine the Academy had called "Lux". He named the head chicken "Mars" and the head cow "Rink" and have them duke it out with nunchaku and katana.

Gary, who had to retake Biology due to "undisclosed reasons", shrieked because he thought a spider was infected by the T-Virus and promptly fell backwards in his chair and landed smack dab on the floor, unconscious. Mr. Watch, who was asleep, did nothing except grunt in response. At least they thought Mr. Watch grunted. It was more of a "BOOP" than a grunt, really.

Mars the head chicken samurai had managed to decapitate Rink the head cow ninja in a battle of wits and sparkly sword maneuvers. Roy snickered to himself and wondered whether or not to show Marth the story.

No one paid any attention to the boring old documentary. Not even the teacher, which was, to put it lightly, sad and pathetic.

- - -

"Hey guys!" Link said cheerfully as he rounded the corner of the hallway where Marth's locker was. "Did everything go al--holy shit!"
Marth had Roy's arms pined above his head against the locker with one hand, the other had pulled the red head as close as humanly possible to the prince. Roy pulled at Marth's bottom lip slightly, and Marth took that as a hint that Roy wanted more than just a peck on the mouth.
All the while, everyone else was trying not to stare at the quite oblivious Fire Emblem boys, whilst Link was opening staring at the two and wanted to know where Marth's decency standards had gone. (He had an idea, though, and it involved a window, a steam roller, and a parade float.) Link cleared his throat and pushed through the ring of people surrounding the passionately-kissing-and-groping couple and shouted, "Where has your decency gone?!"

Marth moved to Roy's neck, oblivious to Link's shouting, and gently sucked on the flesh there. Roy, whose hands were still above his head, moved his arms higher to try to regain some sort of circulation. He opened his eyes, saw the crowd of people, and freed his arms from Marth's grasp.
"M-Mar...th," Roy said in between gasps, "there are...there are p-people wat-ching."
Marth heard "people watching" and immediately pulled away from Roy.
"Alright, nothing to see here," Link said, taking the hint from the very flushed couple. "Move along, move along. You can read about it and see pictures of it in the 'Academian'. Run along..."

Link swore Marth's face was redder than Roy's hair, and Roy's hair was as red as red could get without being blinding. So now Marth's hair completely clashed with his face, and that was the least of his problems.

- - -

"Can't you wait until we're home before you start slobbering all over each other?" Link asked as they walked down Devon Street towards Nintendo Road. "I mean really. I'm completely shocked at you both. Especially you, Marth."
Marth cleared his throat.
"It was Roy's idea."
Link spun around on his heel and nearly caused the prince and the general to bump into him.
"I don't care whose idea it was."
Roy backed away from Link.
"Link, you're sounding like my father," the red head remarked, "whenever I do something terribly wrong."
Link crossed his arms and faced forward again. The others continued walking.

"This makes all three of us look bad," Link said. "It makes me, class president and editor to 'Academian', look bad, it makes Marth look bad, and it completely flushes your reputation down the drain, mister Fence Club President."
Roy sighed.
"In our defence," Roy said, "the hallway was completely deserted when we started, and we were only kissing."
"Yeah," Marth said. "The groping came in later."
Link fell back and wrapped an arm around their shoulders.
"If you do that again," Link said, "I will totally smite thee."
Roy snorted and Marth tried hard to not laugh.
"...What?"
"You used the word 'smite'!" Roy said, barely coherent. "No one uses that word anymore!"
Link smirked and playfully shoved Roy, who in turn shoved back. Link bumped into Marth, who almost lost his footing, and he pushed Link back. This continued all the way home, and Link was nearly shoved through the window of the Manse.

The Hands wouldn't like it if that happened.