Sara woke up at her usual time, namely whenever her eyes opened, and swore loudly enough to wake up CyberSix when she saw that it was almost 8:30, which gave her less than half an hour to get ready before she had to tear off to the High School for her interview. Getting up, she rushed through her routine, managing to get clean, dressed for business, and have breakfast in record time. Hearing CyberSix thump down the stairs with the cane, Sara looked at her friend, inhaled lightly, and grinned.

"You really need a shower. After breakfast, you are hereby ordered to get clean before I get back from my interview. How are your injuries?"

"Well, I think they’re in pretty good condition, considering." Six smiled as she sat down at the breakfast table, filling a bowl full of cereal before tucking into her meal. As CyberSix was eating, Sara checked the wounds, unsurprised that the abrasions were gone. She also probed at the spots where CyberSix’s bones had been broken, and after deeming the ribs sufficiently healed, Sara neatly yanked the tape off, prompting a howl of outrage and pain from her patient.

"OW! DAMMIT! That hurt! Remind me to never let you near me with duct tape again." CyberSix examined the reddening welts left by the tape’s sudden and painful removal, and shrugged, thinking about what the alternative would have been. Standing up, CyberSix walked into the kitchen with her dishes, and started cleaning them. "Well, at least you know that I won’t toast your house while you’re out suffering through the job interrogation. I’ll try not to burn the place down."

Sara grinned as she brought her own dishes into the kitchen, placing them into the sink for CyberSix to clean before she did anything else. "Yeah. Sure you won’t. I’ll believe that when I see it." Ignoring CyberSix’s protest of innocence, Sara walked into the foyer and put her boots on before grabbing her coat. "I’ll be back at about one, and I don’t want to find ashes instead of a house. Take care."

Sara walked into the garage after putting her coat on, and, fishing the keys out of one of the dozen pockets hidden in the coat, she had started her bike and opened the garage door in a minute. Driving to the edge of the road, Sara pulled out a second remote and closed the garage door by pressing a button. She drove to the school in a bit under half an hour, keeping the time firmly noted on her watch as she drove through several scenic roads, enjoying the ambiance of the city. Soon, she parked her bike in the school’s parking lot, and, smiling politely, she activated her bike’s theft-deterrence unit after turning off the engine and getting at least three feet away from the big machine.

Sara walked into the school, thankful that the air was fairly cool, giving her the excuse of wearing her coat. Looking around, she saw the small plaque denoting where the main office was in the school, which looked like it had once served double duty as a library. Entering the small and stuffy room, Sara walked over to a young woman, sitting behind a desk and chain smoking cigarettes, and leaned against the edge of the desk. Five minutes later, tired of having smoke rings floating about her head, Sara reached out slowly and crushed the fresh cigarette the secretary was just about to light up.

"Ah, now that I have your attention, and can breathe properly, I would like to talk to the principal of this school. Also, may I remind you that it is illegal to smoke on school property?" Sara smiled sweetly as she wiped the rolled tobacco off of her hand, sweeping the crushed remains of the cancer stick into a nearby trash can.

"Yeah, sure, whatever. They tried to stop my habit less than a week ago. Ended up having a nervous breakdown. Anyhow, your name is..." The secretary pulled another cigarette out of the packet she had open in front of her, and lit up, puffing a smoke ring towards the ceiling as she got a pencil ready.

"Sara D’Arnise." Sara kept a straight face as the secretary struggled with the spelling of her name, but did not bother to help out. Eventually the secretary got it right, and Sara smiled again, looking more like a hungry wolf staring at a wounded deer.

"Okay, Miss D’Arnise, sit down, let me puff some more smoke rings in your general direction, and the principal will be out in a few minutes. He’s currently reviewing your files." Sara grimaced, as she hated smoke in almost all its forms, but merely relaxed and sat down, shooting an evil eye at the secretary, which was ignored. Five minutes and a half-dozen smoke rings later, the door to the principal’s office opened and a short, wide, and mustachioed man waddled into the office. Pausing to confer with the secretary in low tones, Sara caught a negligent wave towards her with a cigarette-festooned hand and stood up, suddenly amazed at how short the man was, even though he was probably twice her age. He turned to her, and Sara noticed with some distaste that the corners of his moustache were wet, as if he had been chewing on it.

"Ah. Good day Miss D’Arnise. Please excuse this reception given to you, she is a rookie. Anyhow, come into my office so we can talk. I am quite curious about your past history." Sara smiled, ignored every derogatory statement she could possibly say that was rattling around inside her brain, shook the offered hand, and walked into the office.

–Meridiana High School, 11:27 AM–

Sara walked out of the office, happy as a cat that had found a barrel full of fish, and with a huge grin on her face. "Thank you Mr. Tilman! I think that I’ll be a welcome addition to the faculty of this school. Oh yeah, before I forget, I’m looking for someone."

"Oh? Who is it?" Mr. Tilman smiled at Sara, his eyes roaming all over the area as Sara deliberately made him sweat due to her choice of attire, namely a fairly tight pantsuit that accentuated all the curves that normally would have been hidden by Sara’s baggy shirts and cargos.

Sara thought for a second, glancing up at a buzzing flourescent light before remembering the name CyberSix told her. "His name’s Lucas Amato. One of his friends asked me to tell him something, and I do feel obligated to help the friend." Sara noticed Tilman’s mind beginning to wander, so she put her coat on to hide much of her body from his piggy little eyes, and gently waved her left hand in front of his face, bringing him back to reality.

Snapping out of his mental wishes, Tilman thought for a second or three, much to Sara’s discomfort as he seemed to be mentally undressing her instead of seriously listening to her. "Well, right now, he’s in room 221, finishing a Biology class. It’s just up the stairs, and about halfway down the hall. Oh, yeah. I’ll be assigning you to cover the junior classes in biology for the first semester, and then we can let you cover all the biology classes during the second semester."

Sara nodded, covered her mouth in order to hide a smirk as Tilman’s mind began to catch up to him, making him excuse himself and hurriedly hustle his short and fat frame into his office. Smiling at the secretary, who was just lighting up another smoke, Sara left the main office and headed to the stairwell. Going up the stairs to the biology wing, she heard the lunch bell ring and immiediately flattened herself against the wall, seconds before an avalanche of students poured down the stairwell. After the main crush had passed her, leaving only a few stragglers who were not fast or strong enough to maintain their lead , Sara continued to go up the stairs, occasionally having to shove through several clumps of stragglers that seemed to congregate around every accident scene of a junior student having been flattened by the main body of students. Eventually, she got to room 221, and hearing loud shouts coming through the oak door, she decided to look in the window.

Managing to look through the grime-covered window was a feat unto itself because of the dust, dirt and grease covering the glass, but what she saw nearly gave her a coronary. Inside the room, two girls trying to help a large man with blond hair fight off a very angry and energetic reticulated python, while being forced to also fight off a very angry monkey. Seeing that the python was about to throttle the poor man, Sara opened the door, distracting the monkey with the noise, kicked the door closed right before she vaulted two desks, skidded under a third, and hopped to her feet just in time to grab the snake just behind the head. Sara noticed that the man’s face was turning a deep shade of purple, telling her that she’d better do something before the snake had a meal that would be much too big for the poor reptile. Shifting her hand around to a nerve junction between the spine and the skull of the snake, Sara squeezed the snake’s head just hard enough to make the nerves misfire and relax the powerful muscles that were slowly crushing the life out of its current victim. Instead of finishing the job, however, the snake just went limp and lay on top of the man, who was obviously quite happy to breathe.

After helping the three people stuff the snake back into its cage, and managing to get a restraining collar on the monkey before it started throwing shit at them, Sara leaned against the cleanest desk and threw a lopsided grin at the three. "Well, that was an interesting meeting. Are all your classes like this? By the way, my name’s Sara." The big guy, obviously still sore from the squeezing he suffered through, straightened up and rubbed his neck, where the snake had almost managed to end his life.

Looking at Sara, he then enthusiastically shook her hand, nearly crushing the bones, and sat down on his desk. "Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle!"

Sara instantly replied to the statement silently, but her expression made the two girls collapse into a fit of giggles as they realized what Sara wasn’t saying.*Yeah, his resemblance to a gorilla is uncanny.*

"If it isn’t the toothpick herself! Lori, Erin, I want you to meet one of my friends and classmates back when I was an exchange student at the U. of T. Ironically enough, she helped me with my studies so I could get my master’s degree in biology." Sara nodded, slightly embarrassed, and shook hands with both girls, letting her mind run a mile a minute before remembering something the principal had told her.

"Lori Anderson, right?" Sara pointed at the shorter redhead who looked like she had flounced right out of a sleaze video. "The principal said that you and Erin are the top hellraisers here. Well, when I start work on Monday, you two are going to be stripped of that title." Sara glanced at Erin, who was sitting quietly on a stool near the door, and marvelled at how someone who looked to be so capable and energetic could also look so demure and shy, despite the horror story told to her about the three problem students in the school. Sara then looked back at Lucas, mentally re-appraised him to make sure that he was human, and spoke again, this time to him. "Actually, I have a message for you, so your twin cronies here can disappear for a couple of minutes, though I’d like to talk to them later."

Lori and Erin walked out of the room, whispering to each other about something that produced a laugh, but they left Sara and Lucas alone inside the room. Pausing to look at Lucas, Sara gave him a written copy of CyberSix’s message, along with her address and phone number. After reading the message several times, Lucas grinned like a little kid and thanked her profusely, gripping her right hand with both of his and shaking a few times. Sara’s response was a howl of pain as she felt several bones dislodge themselves from their normal locations, rendering her hand useless.

Cursing him out for being a clumsy clod, Sara carefully took a few minutes to shift the bones back into their proper locations, accompanied by several painful sounding pops, cracks and grinding noises. Soon, Sara’s hand was back to normal, which she proved by wiggling her fingers repeatedly, resulting in a wince from Lucas as he noticed the slowly swelling bruises in the shape of his hand covering the back of Sara’s much smaller hand. Sara looked at the damage to her hand, sighed, and decided to help clean up the classroom as she looked at the damage that had been done by the snake.

Lucas looked at Sara oddly during the cleanup, wondering if he could talk to her after he nearly flattened her hand, but he finally mustered enough courage to speak his mind.

"Hey, toothpick." Sara looked up from where she had just placed a pile of books, and glared at Lucas.

"The name is Sara, not toothpick. I think I have a better shape than a stick of wood."

Lucas grinned, nodded, and earned himself a slap that turned his head almost ninety degrees to the right. After recovering and rubbing his jaw, he continued speaking. "I’m wondering how you managed to stun that snake. If you hadn’t, I would probably be turning into a plank about now, and the school would need a new teacher." Sara grinned, then coughed as Lucas raised a cloud of dust when he ‘accidentally’ dropped an old book in front of her.

"You’re welcome, by the way. You were there when I was finishing up my studies on virology and osteo-pathology. As a result, I know exactly where to exert pressure in order to shut down a nervous system temporarily. Think of it as the real-world Vulcan nerve pinch. Do you remember the name of the frat house you boarded at?" Lucas shook his head and Sara lapsed into nostalgia. "The best part of you being at the U. of T. was when you tied up a third of that house with duct tape, and used fifteen cans of whipped cream in a strange and nauseating way."

Lucas suddenly decided that a spot on the far wall was quite interesting, and proceeded to avoid eye contact with Sara for a few minutes. "Hah! I knew you did it because the members you strung up were the ones who had hazed you the day before. I was the one who had to cut them down from the rafters because I was the most flexible person on campus, and boy did they scream like little girls when I yanked the tape off."

Lucas chuckled and looked at Sara shortly. "Yeah, I remember that. It was a hell of a time getting them up to the rafters, but the results were worth it. Also, before you kick me, I’m not going to ask how you got that campus title.Well, I need to get back to work, and I’ll try drop by on the weekend. If not, I’ll have probably been eaten by that snake, or be dying from some jungle fever that our little friend has in his slobber." he waved in the direction of the now-calm monkey.

Sara chuckled at that, and opened the door. "Well, I need to get home anyhow. After all, on Monday I get to keep you alive, despite your own stupidity." Sara grinned, ignored the glare she got thrown at her, and closed the door behind her. Looking around, she called out "So, didja have fun listening in? C’mon, I won’t bite." Lori and Erin’s heads popped out from behind an open locker and they both swore at being discovered so easily. The two girls walked over to Sara and looked at her quietly, wondering what she was going to do next. Sara smiled as she remembered when she was as innocent looking as them, and the resultant havoc she could wreak, but then pushed it out of her mind.

"I have a quick question for you two, but I also need to get home soon, so would you mind walking with me?" Lori and Erin looked at each other, nodded, and when Sara started walking towards the stairs, they followed, listening to Sara as she partially turned to keep the two within her eyesight until they caught up to her. "Well, I know that the gorilla you call a biology teacher has been here for at least five years, but other than his love of jokes, pranks, and the total lack of a survival instinct, I know almost nothing about him. Care to fill me in about some of the gaps?"

Lori, by consensus of the sharp nudge applied by Erin, started talking soon afterwards. "Well, almost every day he goes to a café down the street with the English Literature teacher. I swear, Mr. Adrian Seidelman is just totally dreamy. You just have to meet him. Actually, he’s been gone from the school since yesterday. I wonder where he went?" Sara noticed that Lori was about to fall down the stairs, so she waved her hand in front of Lori’s face just before she walked off the edge of the landing, and therefore was saved from what could have been a painful tumble.

"Woah! Thanks. Anyhow, Lucas usually talks to Adrian during the lunch hour, but they also spend a lot of time at the café. Oh yeah, Adrian told me this, though I don’t know why, but Lucas is not only a bottomless pit all the time, but he’s a total sports nut. Well, we have to leave your presence before lunch is over, as I have some... a-heh, profit acquisitions to oversee, and ... oh my giddy aunt!" Sara had reached her bike, and after checking the bike for vandalism, thankfully, there was none, otherwise there would be a distinctive scorch mark on the ground where someone would land after dealing with the bike’s response. Sara turned back to the two girls, thanked them for the information, then waved them back to avoid being pelted by loose rocks seconds before she tore out of the parking lot at about Mach one.

Lori turned to Erin as soon as Sara had smoked a wheelie around a corner, passing out of sight, and exclaimed "Damn, she is a monster on that machine. I bet that she’s ex-military at least."

Erin snorted in disgust before replying "Yeah, sure. You can believe that. I saw her résumé. It says that she has no military training, and with her academic track record, I’m inclined to believe her. But, when I looked into her eyes, they seemed to be haunted by something recent and painful. She’s seen too many things that we wouldn’t want to, and I doubt that anyone would go to Yugoslavia in the middle of a civil war in order to study the animals there." Lori, justifiably wondering about the origins of Sara, didn’t reply and the two teens went back into the school when the bell rang a few minutes later.

Unknown to any of the students, the entire conversation had been monitored, and the thin man crouching underneath the nearby tree smiled thinly. Standing up, he turned off the camcorder in his hand, and placed it in his suitcase before walking away, talking to himself. "Hmm. So the woman may be trying to foster a friendship with those two? I need to report this to José. He will be interested in that."

Sara, meanwhile, was ecstatic at getting the job, so she drove around the city for almost half an hour before deciding that terrorizing the citizens wasn’t all that good a thing to do and headed back to home. After parking her bike in the garage, she went inside her house. Seeing that the TV was on, Sara walked into the room, and saw that CyberSix was watching a cooking show while taking notes. Smiling, Sara walked into the kitchen before her friend noticed her, and grimaced at the knowledge that she was going to have to paint over several scorch marks on the ceiling, but when she mooched from a plateful of cookies, she noticed that CyberSix’s cooking skills were much improved.

Walking back to the TV room with a few cookies in hand, she looked at CyberSix, who was focussed on the show, and writing down a recipe for honey-glazed chicken. After she was finished, Sara looked at her, grinned, and broke the news. "I finally managed to get a good job!" she then broke into a corrupted version of the "Red Dwarf shuffle" around the room, much to the amusement of both women, then hugged Six. Sara’s happiness and enthusiasm made CyberSix laugh, and after dancing round for about twenty minutes, Sara collapsed into her favourite chair. Wearing a huge grin, she looked at CyberSix for a minute, then became slightly more serious.

"These cookies are good, y’know. Just wondering, but are they store bought?"

CyberSix laughed at that and replied. "Nope, they’re all home-made. However, when I tried to make quesadillas the blasts of flame were too much. Sorry about the scorch marks, but I did manage to avoid destroying the kitchen."

Sara smiled and shook her head. "I really don’t mind if the kitchen is cooked, so long as you remain alive. After all, you are still a patient. How’s the leg?" Six shrugged, but when she got up, Sara saw that she was limping.

"Sit your ass back down! If you put much more strain on that break, you’ll end up back where you started: with another busted bone." Sara got up, went over to the kitchen and got Six a glass of milk. After Six drank it because Sara nagged at her for about ten minutes, they nearly cracked when Sara groaned about turning into her own mother. Soon enough, Sara had grabbed a large, plush pillow and proceeded to start an entertaining fight with her friend, which ended up with several busted pillows and a cloud of feathers floating around the living room.

"Well, that was fun." Sara looked like a deranged puffball holding an empty pillowcase, while Six had been covered with enough feathers to have the appearance of about fifty swans sitting on her.

"Har, har. You get the hoover. After all, I made you cookies, and dealt with your nagging." Six sat up, displacing half the feathers and a shredded pillowcase onto the floor, and wagged a finger at Sara. ‘This time, it was your fault. I still have to deal with the fact that you soaked me yesterday." Sara chuckled, stood up, got the hoover, and cleaned up the mess. The two traded jokes, horror stories, and talked until the sun had long fallen behind the horizon.

When she noticed that it was almost 9 at night, Sara excused herself, and going into her room, she cleared a large, open space in the middle of the room. Kicking off her shoes, Sara stripped down to her undergarments before going through the differing stances and fighting forms of Pentjak Silat. After completing the unique contortions required to finish the snake kata, much of which involved being so low to the ground as to be almost hugging it, she proceeded through the tiger and dragon forms as well, which were much more upright. When she finished the last form, Sara was not surprised to have the feeling of being watched, and turned around fast enough to see Six leaning against the doorframe. "So, did you get an eyeful?" Sara smiled as she walked past, getting a towel from the bathroom, which she used to wipe the sweat off of her face and neck.

"Sorry Sara, but I heard you moving furniture around up here and wondered what you were doing. That was a practice from one of the martial arts, right?" Sara grinned at Six’s discomfort and got dressed in her usual jeans and long shirt.

"Well, you’re right in that it’s a practice form, but it’s from Silat. And, before you ask, I’m not telling where I learned it, and you aren’t being taught it." Six grimaced at that because she actually wanted to learn, but Sara shook her head when she tried to talk her into it. "Sorry, but you are in no condition, and even if you were fine, I’d still say no. I’m not qualified to train anyone in this, and I studied it for almost two years. Now, if you could devote two years to nothing but training in secluded and dangerous areas, I’d at least reference you to some people who might help you, but I think that’s an impossibility, considering your unique physiology.

"Besides, You’d probably pick up much of the tricks to the art just by watching me fight, though you’d also pick up a lot of Karate and Aikido as well. By the way, the ‘Bambi Eyes’ trick is only effective when you’re under the age of ten, so please stop that." Sara had noticed that Six was looking at her with eyes the size of toonies, and she had squeezed some tears out of the corners of her eyes. Six gave up after a few minutes, and went back downstairs. Sara rearranged her room back to the way it was, then followed, wiping at her face for the stray trickle of sweat that made a path from her hairline to the tip of her nose.

She saw Six in the living room, curled up in the large chair, and, deeming that it was going to take about half an hour before Six decided to talk to her, Sara went into the kitchen and created something she had read in an old book on biological warfare: a triple fried egg sandwich with chili sauce and chutney. One of her friends had referenced her to the book, and she had a good laugh, but Sara had always kept the recipe near her, as it seemed to be a staple of her diet.

Six had to wonder what Sara was doing in the kitchen, but when she saw the monstrosity that Sara brought into the living room, she nearly killed herself laughing. "Thanks, Six. I really needed that opinion of my cooking. The thing is, one of my friends claimed that this sandwich is ‘A cross between food, and bowel surgery.’ Personally, I think he liked it." Sara sat down on the couch, and after placing the plate on the coffee table in front of the TV, she waved her hand in front of Six’s face. "Helloo... Earth to CyberSix, we need a transmission here." After getting no response, Sara folded her arms and pretended to act like a grump. "Fine, be that way. Are you still ticked off at the eye thing?" Sara paused long enough to see Six begin to smirk at the utter weirdness of her statement, then continued. "Okay, I apologise for the Bambi eyes quote, but what’s eating you? Something like my sandwich going through that plate, for example? OH SHIT!"

Sara launched herself out of her seat and grabbed the large sandwich before it totally ate a hole through the plate, and after looking at the damage done, she shrugged and ate the thing, much to her friend’s concern, mixed with disgust. "Umm, are you sure that can be eaten without totally destroying your internals?"

Sara chuckled and nodded. "Yep. In university, I survived on these almost constantly. Scared the crap out of half my roommates too, because it always seemed to move towards them when they weren’t looking. Anyhow, it’s getting late, and I want to actually get some sleep. Have fun, but you still can’t go roof-hopping until I say so." Six groused for a few seconds at the limitations being imposed upon her, but shrugged and smiled a few seconds later. Sara grinned back, finished her sandwich, and stood up. Exhausted, she glanced back at Six before walking up to her bed, where she stayed standing and conscious enough to change into her nightclothes and crawl under the blanket. Sara fell asleep almost as soon as her head hit the pillow.

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