The next day, after having breakfast with his family and training for hours in Serendell, Jacob took a shower and drove his Camaro to school.
As he drove, he thought, 'System, sign in.'
[Daily Sign-In Successful. Rewards Obtained:
- 5,000 coins
- Funyuns Snack Bag x50 – Original Onion Flavored
- Teletubbies Plush Toys Set]
Jacob read the list and smiled. 'Great. I love Funyuns. As for the Teletubbies… I'll just give them to the girls if they want them.'
He pulled out a bag of Funyuns and started eating while driving.
Soon, he arrived at school, parked, and headed inside. In the hallway by the lockers, he found Allison, Lydia, and Malia talking with Erica. Scott stood nearby, glaring at Stiles with undisguised annoyance.
Stiles spotted the Funyuns in Jacob's hand and extended his own. "Give me some."
Jacob handed over the half-empty bag and pulled a fresh one from his pocket dimension. He popped a few in his mouth. "What's wrong with Scott?"
Stiles winced. "I was supposed to meet him last night—we were gonna watch Jackson together. But after that… blessed hour in Erica's chest, I got a little too excited. I took her to my place, and we… uh, lost ourselves in each other. Totally forgot about Scott."
Jacob's gaze went distant, a blissful smile spreading across his face. "Indeed. That was a blessed hour."
Scott overheard them and marched over. "What did you two do yesterday?"
Jacob's smile didn't fade. "We were in a beautiful ravine, surrounded by soft, fluffy mountains. One of the best hours of my entire life."
Stiles nodded dreamily. "Yeah. So soft. And it smelled amazing. I wish I could live there."
Malia walked up, kissed Jacob, and stole the Funyuns from his hand. She started eating as she looked at Scott. "Forget about these two idiots. Why were you watching Jackson?"
Scott explained about Jackson being the Kanima and his plan to save him.
As they talked, Coach suddenly appeared and snatched the Funyuns from Stiles's hand. "Stiles! You're not allowed to eat in the hallways. I'm taking these."
"Hey!" Stiles protested. "Why aren't you taking Malia's too?"
Coach shrugged. "She can eat if she wants. I just said you can't."
"That's not fair!"
"Sue me." Coach turned and walked away, already munching on the stolen snacks.
Stiles glared after him. "Stupid Coach."
Just then, Jackson walked past them. Scott followed him toward class.
Jacob was about to head to class himself when he heard the distinct click of a camera shutter. He turned and spotted Matt in the corner, taking pictures of Allison.
Jacob didn't get angry. He smiled—a slow, unsettling smile—and with a subtle gesture, used his telekinesis to crush the camera into pieces.
Matt froze as his camera cracked and shattered in his hands. He looked at Allison, but she was still talking with her friends, oblivious. Then his gaze shifted to Jacob.
Jacob was staring right at him, that unnerving smirk still in place.
Matt spun around and tried to hurry away.
Jacob flicked his fingers. Matt tripped and slammed face-first into the floor.
He scrambled up, nose bleeding, still not daring to look back. He tried to leave again.
Jacob made another gesture. Matt's pants and underwear dropped to his ankles. He tripped again—harder this time.
The hallway erupted in laughter. Students pointed, phones raised, capturing every moment.
Jacob wasn't done. He clenched his fist.
Matt's eyes bulged. A strangled, high-pitched scream tore from his throat as his hands flew to his crotch. He collapsed, writhing in agony, before going completely still—unconscious.
The laughter died. Students stared in shock at the naked, bleeding boy on the floor.
Jacob smirked. 'That'll teach you to stalk my wife.' He turned and walked calmly toward class.
Allison, Lydia, and Malia had noticed Matt taking pictures earlier but hadn't bothered with him. They'd also noticed what Jacob just did. They exchanged glances, shook their heads with small smiles, and followed him—Erica trailing behind them.
Stiles, however, ran to the unconscious Matt. He looked at the ruined crotch, and whistled low. "That's gotta hurt."
Coach heard the commotion and stepped out of a nearby classroom. He walked over, looked down at Matt, then at Stiles. "What's wrong with him?"
Stiles shrugged. "I dunno. He tripped. Took his pants off. Then crushed his own balls. Maybe his girlfriend dumped him?"
Coach squinted. "He's not on the team, right?"
"He is. But he doesn't play."
Coach bit into another Funyun. "That's good. I was scared there for a second." He raised his voice. "Alright, nothing to see here! Just a nutjob who didn't want his nuts anymore. Get to class! Someone call 911!"
Stiles raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you supposed to call 911? You're a teacher."
Coach waved him off. "Fine, fine. I'll do it. Now go to class."
Stiles hurried to class and slid into the seat next to Jacob. He leaned over and whispered, "Was it you who did it?"
Jacob gave him an innocent look. "Did what?"
"You know. What just happened in the hallway. The thing with Matt?"
"Oh, that." Jacob shrugged. "Maybe it was me. Maybe it wasn't."
"Why?"
"I don't like him. He feels evil. And he was taking pictures of my Allison." Jacob's voice dropped, cold and flat. "He's lucky he's still alive."
Jacob glanced at Allison and gave her a wink. His eyes then drifted to Boyd and Isaac, who had also been in the hallway and had witnessed Matt's… tragic accident. They'd clearly overheard the conversation between him and Stiles, because both quickly looked away, not daring to meet Jacob's gaze.
Jacob shook his head with a small smirk and started absently spinning his pencil between his fingers.
---
Thirty minutes passed. Most students were diligently working through their polynomial equations—or at least pretending to.
Jacob and Stiles were not pretending to do anything except argue.
"It's a lion, Stiles. End of discussion." Jacob didn't even look up from his paper, his pencil moving steadily through problems.
Stiles swiveled in his seat, genuinely offended. "A tiger is literally bigger. Stronger. More muscular. They're solitary, which means they have to be tougher because they don't have a pride to back them up. Lion vs. tiger? Tiger wins eight times out of ten."
"Lions have experience fighting things that fight back," Jacob countered. "Male lions spend their whole lives fighting other male lions. Tigers hunt deer. There's a difference between a warrior and a hunter."
"A warrior who runs away from honey badgers," Stiles muttered.
"Don't bring the honey badger into this. That thing is unkillable."
Ms. Fleming, the math teacher, glanced up from her desk but said nothing—yet.
"Okay, fine," Stiles whispered, leaning closer. "Tiger vs. lion is whatever. Here's the real question: lion vs. gorilla."
Jacob finally looked up. "Go on. I'm listening."
"Gorilla has opposable thumbs. Intelligence. Grip strength that could crush a coconut into coconut milk instantly." Stiles counted on his fingers. "Lion has claws, teeth, and pure predator instinct. So who wins?"
"One on one?" Jacob considered. "I think the gorilla wins. Lions kill things that run away. But a silverback gorilla doesn't run. It charges. A lion sees something big and hairy screaming and pounding its chest? I think that lion tucks its tail between its legs and runs back to its harem to hide."
Stiles considered this. "Aren't lions your favorite animals?"
"Sure. But let's be honest—I don't think a lion can win against a silverback. Those things are freakishly strong. The only way a lion wins is if it brings its whole pride and a few of its brothers."
Ms. Fleming cleared her throat loudly. They ignored her.
"Alright," Jacob said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "let's talk about something bigger. Jurassic Park III. The big fight. T-rex vs. Spinosaurus. You've seen it. What do you think?"
"That was cinematic terrorism," Stiles hissed, stabbing his pencil into his notebook. "The Spinosaurus won because the script said so. That's it. That's the only reason. In what world does a dinosaur built like a sailboat with legs beat the literal tyrant lizard king? Huh? The T-rex has the strongest bite force of any land animal ever. The Spinosaurus has a mouth designed for catching fish. FISH, Jacob!"
"Tell that to the T-rex's neck in the movie," Jacob said, a small smirk playing on his lips as he deliberately provoked Stiles.
"THAT SHOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED!" Stiles's voice cracked, drawing stares from the three rows ahead.
Allison whispered to Lydia, "I don't know why those two idiots even bother coming to class."
Lydia smirked. "Right? Every time they get here, they just won't shut up. They don't even talk this much at home."
Stiles noticed the stares and lowered his voice to a furious whisper. "The Spinosaurus breaks the T-rex's neck by twisting. Do you know how much force it takes to break a T-rex's neck? Do you know how thick those vertebrae are? The Spinosaurus would have snapped its own spinosaurus spine trying!"
Jacob nodded slowly. "Calm down. The veins in your forehead are about to pop. And for the record… I agree with you."
Stiles blinked. "Wait. You agree?"
"Of course I agree. The T-rex should have won. That fight was disappointing. That T-rex got killed by the new guy just to make him look scary? Bad writing."
Stiles sighed in relief. "Yeah, that fight was terrible… but the movie was still better than the second one."
"Agreed. The second Jurassic Park movie was trash."
"THAT IS ENOUGH!" Ms. Fleming's voice thundered through the classroom. She stood at her desk, hands on her hips, glaring at them. "Jacob. Stiles. Out. NOW."
"But Ms. Fleming..." Stiles started.
"I have listened to thirty-five minutes of animal fighting, dinosaur slander, and whatever that gorilla conversation was. I don't care if you're both passing my class. I don't care if you finished the worksheet in ten minutes. You are disrupting my classroom. Detention. Both of you. Effective immediately. Pack your things and go."
The class fell silent, thoroughly enjoying the show.
Jacob and Stiles exchanged a look, then gathered their things with practiced theatricality. They headed for the door.
As they passed the whiteboard, Jacob's eyes caught something. Ms. Fleming had been working through a complex quadratic equation, demonstrating a method for the class. In the third line, she had made a small error—a negative sign where a positive should be, throwing off the entire solution.
Jacob stopped walking.
"Hold on," he said, placing a hand on Stiles's chest.
Stiles froze. "What now? Detention waits for no man, Jacob."
Jacob walked to the board, picked up a marker, and calmly erased the incorrect sign. He replaced it with the right one, fixed the following two steps that had unraveled as a result, and wrote the correct solution at the bottom. He capped the marker, set it down, and walked back to Stiles, slinging an arm around his shoulder.
"Now," Jacob said, steering them both toward the door, "new question. One hundred men versus one gorilla. Who wins?"
Stiles's eyes lit up. "Okay, so the gorilla has the strength advantage, but a hundred men is a lot of men. Are they armed? Unarmed? Are they coordinated or just a mob?"
Ms. Fleming stared, her mouth opening and closing silently. The problem she'd written had a deliberate, tricky sign change. She'd left it there as a challenge for her top students to notice.
"On second thought," she said, her voice faint with surprise, "since you just fixed my error… I'll let you two stay this time."
They didn't pause. They kept walking.
"No thanks," Jacob said simply.
"Yeah," Stiles added, already deep in thought. "We have serious discussions to have in detention. One hundred men, Jacob. That's a lot of men. But a gorilla could take out five or six with one swing…"
The door swung shut behind them.
Ms. Fleming stood frozen, staring at the closed door. The silence in the classroom stretched for exactly three seconds before the first student laughed. Then another. Then the whole room dissolved into chuckles and whispers.
Ms. Fleming blinked once, twice. Then, to her own astonishment, she let out a small, reluctant laugh.
"Alright, alright, settle down," she said, shaking her head. "Now I need volunteers at the board."
She looked around the room as a few students raised their hands. "Alright, Lydia, Danny, Malia—to the board."
Malia's head snapped up. "I didn't volunteer."
"You do now. To the board."
Malia groaned. "Can I just go to detention too?"
Ms. Fleming's eye twitched. "Solve the problem on the board first. Then you can go to detention."
Malia's face brightened. "Great!" She sent a telepathic message to Allison: [Allison, help me.]
Allison smiled and replied, [Sure.]
Malia walked to the board and, with Allison's telepathic guidance, solved the problem seconds after Lydia finished hers.
Ms. Fleming nodded. "Excellent, Lydia. Excellent, Malia."
They returned to their seats. Malia immediately gathered her things and headed for the door.
Ms. Fleming blinked. "Wait, Malia—where are you going?"
"You said I could go to detention after solving the problem."
"I did say that, but—"
"Okay. I'm off. See you!" Malia walked out, leaving the teacher stunned.
Malia made her way to the classroom Jacob had unofficially claimed as their personal gaming room. She opened the door to find Jacob and Stiles already deep in a heated game of Mario Kart 7.
She grinned and grabbed a controller. "Move over. I'm playing Yoshi."
To be continued… 😊