Whatever are we to do with these guys?
Shego and Kim were meeting with principal of Jayden’s school. For once, they had gotten a call and it was not because she was in trouble. It was a little too early in the school year for trouble in their opinions, but they knew that would not stop Jayden and her merry band of miscreants. Instead of the usual trouble, they had gotten called up there for something positive. It was also something that they knew. The principal had called them up there because thanks to a test that they gave to every student in the school from first grade up to assess the students. The principal thought that she had some astounding news for the couple. The test informed them that Jayden was a genius. The principal was surprised by their lack of reaction when she told them.
They lived with Jayden every day from when she was born; of course they were not surprised to find out the kid was a genius. There was the fact that Jayden loved it when Kim explained her work to the child that clued them in, among plenty of other things. Sure, there were parts of the work that Jayden did not understand, but she got the gist of it. She also got a kick out of reading her Mom’s books, the harder the better in her opinion. They would be more surprised to find out that Jayden was not good at standardized tests and it said that she was normal or something like that.
The meeting was about what they should do with Jayden. The school thought it would be ridiculous to leave her in a regular first grade class. It was a good thing that Kim and Shego brought Jayden because they would like her input, especially when the suggestion of skipping her ahead came up.
“Oh, can I go to class with Bo and Mayah?” Jayden asked curiously and with great hope in her voice. She bet that school would be a lot better if she could be with Bokuden and Mayah, well if Raziya was going to be with them too anyway.
“But, they’re just a class ahead of you,” Shego pointed out. The aforementioned pair of maniacs was in the second grade. They were in a gifted class since their parents was very much against raising any fools and made sure their kids did plenty of reading and other educational activities, but the point of the matter was that they were still only a class ahead of Jayden.
“But, I wanna be with them,” Jayden answered, whining slightly and sounding very much like her redheaded mother.
“Kimmie.” Shego turned to her spouse, hoping that her wife would be able to talk some sense into their daughter.
“You know, skipping a bunch of grades isn’t as great as you might think it is. It might be best that she just skip a grade or something if that’s what she wants. I mean, I didn’t like skipping a bunch of grades really. I didn’t have any peers. I didn’t spend as much time with my friends as I would have liked. I got teased a lot, which wasn’t much fun. So, maybe we should just let her skip the one grade for now. It’s what she wants to do,” Kim replied.
“Are you sure? Won’t she get bored or something?” Shego inquired. The last thing that they needed was Jayden sitting in class with nothing to do and Mayah and Bokuden were around.
“This is Jade we’re talking about. She’d get bored if there was a lion eating her arm,” Kim pointed out while motioning to their daughter with a sweep of her hand. The child was sitting between them.
“No, I wouldn’t,” Jayden objected while kicking her feet back and forth in her chair. She then took a moment to imagine a lion eating her arm. She figured that she would totally kick a lion’s ass for doing such a thing.
“It’s always possible to supplement her education. You have to remember that school isn’t just about education. It’s about socializing and that’s something Jade really needs. Or do you want her to turn into me?” Kim teased with a grin.
Shego laughed a bit. “Okay, we’ll look at alternatives for her education. Felix and Mo are probably going through this too, so we can collaborate on things with them,” she suggested.
“Good idea. Felix’ll probably know a bit on the subject since his mother home-schooled him for a while and he had tutors,” Kim stated.
Shego nodded and they eventually left. They were right about Felix and Monique going through the same thing considering the fact that Raziya took the same test as Jayden. They had both achieved perfect scores on the test, which was amazing considering Jayden fell asleep during the thing and Raziya got distracted by a cloud out of the window that she swore looked like a detailed image of a woman in a fancy dress.
Monique and Felix had not thought to ask Raziya what she wanted to do like Shego and Kim had done with Jayden. But, when they found out what the martial artists had done, they decided to go with that idea. So, it would seem that Raziya and Jayden were going to the second grade to be with Mayah and Bokuden. But, their parents were still going to have to find ways to supplement their education to continue to nurture their girls’ deep minds.
“Well, I think if we give them packets to do in school while the other kids are doing their school work, that should work out,” Felix suggested. He and the mothers were sitting around the table in Shego and Kim’s kitchen.
The girls were in the living room, coloring like normal little girls. Well, almost like normal little girls. Raziya was in an artistic stage where she liked to blend colors now, so she did that almost all of the time, whether she was drawing her own pictures or coloring in a coloring book. Being around Raziya doing such things got her friends to try coloring in different ways and Jayden was trying that at the moment. Jayden went for more pressure on pictures than she used to, liking the richer look of a deeper color. She still did not have much talent for drawing, but she could color with the best of them and she prided herself on that.
“So, it’s more like we home school them, but they do the homework at school?” Kim asked Felix.
“Yeah, something like that. It should work and we all have time to do it,” he pointed out.
“He’s right. We all do have time to do it,” Shego concurred.
“Yeah, so that was easy,” Felix commented with a laugh.
“We should probably do more for them than just that,” Monique said. Their little girls were geniuses for crying out loud. They needed to do something really outstanding for them.
“This is true. I mean, Jayden and Raziya are really smart. Maybe we should sign them up for some college courses,” Kim suggested.
“They’d never sit still for them,” Shego pointed out. Jayden and Raziya drifted in and out of the real world at their own leisure, probably due to boredom and an abundance of energy. They needed to be active. There was no way that they would sit still in a college classroom for an hour or more. There was also the fact that they would not be able to see over the desks in a lecture hall.
“Let’s take this slow, guys. Not every genius kid needs a college degree by the time they’re ten. I mean, Kim, you didn’t get one until you were seventeen,” Felix stated.
“Hey, I had two,” Kim commented, holding up two fingers to emphasize what she had.
“How many do you have now?” he inquired, teasing her a bit. He had been labeled a “genius” by people and he had not had a college degree until he was twenty, so he did not think that a degree was necessary for their girls just because the pair were brilliant.
Kim made a face and scratched her forehead. “That is a good question,” she replied. She would need a moment to calculate that one. “Are we counting PhDs?” she asked, quite serious.
“Okay, let’s get back on topic with the girls. We probably should take this slow,” Shego said.
“Are you sure?” Monique asked.
“Look, we’ve got them this far by doing what we’ve been doing, so let’s not push them. They’re only six. I mean, yeah, they’re geniuses, but they’re still very much six-year-old nuts,” Shego pointed out. Their daughters were little six-year-olds despite their knowledge and reading level; they liked to color, pet dogs, watch cartoons, and ask their parents to check the closet or under the bed for monsters.
“Yeah, we’ve been doing pretty good with them,” Felix agreed with a nod.
“So, let’s just keep it up and go with the home schooling idea,” Kim said.
“Sounds good. Now, we just have to worry about them being in the same class as Bo and Mayah,” Monique commented with a laugh.
They all looked at each other. They suddenly felt a great deal of pity for the second grade teacher. Well, it was probably going to be the most exciting school year ever for that class. They were all pretty sure that they were probably going to have to inform the school that they could all come up for each other’s children if something happened. There was just going to be no way for them all to be able to come up there when it was necessary now that the brat pack was together.
(New day)
“Bets, where you going?” Shego asked as the boss walked by her desk. She was now set up in a little area next to Betty’s office because they were still working on all of the details with the expending of the department. She could not wait for it all to be over, even though it meant that she would no longer be a full-time field agent anymore. Still, the process was just irksome and tiring.
“Goddamn Mayah,” Betty replied, as if that made any sense while continuing on her way. Her response did make sense to Shego since it was becoming sort of a catch phrase for Betty. It meant that Mayah did something wacky in school and the one-eyed woman had to go up there.
“Wait for me,” Shego said with a sigh.
“What?” Betty was confused because it did not look like her employee was going anywhere when she walked by and now all of a sudden the pale woman was implying that she was coming.
“Come on,” the pale woman said and then her phone rang. She looked at the phone and Betty nodded, understanding. Shego answered the phone and informed Jayden’s school that she was on her way; the school was calling her in regards to Jayden, which was what she had anticipated ever since Betty muttered her catch phrase about her daughter.
“Take your car?” Betty proposed.
“Might as well. I knew this was going to be Hell in school,” Shego replied with a laugh.
Betty could only nod in agreement. The four kids had only been in class together a week and they had been called up there three times already. They were starting to learn that Jayden and Raziya might possibly need more than their home-schooling work and they probably needed their seats moved from right next to Mayah, who liked to egg Jayden on when she started doing crazy things, like forcing a kid to eat paper because he was making fun of Bo’s art project.
“Do you think it was a mistake to teach them martial arts so early on in life?” Betty wondered a loud as they climbed into the car. Mayah had actually been getting into tussles before Jayden and Raziya came around, but they were obviously not going to get any better around each other.
“I think it was a mistake to introduce them in the first place,” Shego answered with a laugh.
“Yeah, that might have been a mistake. Damn our third generation Director-Gooding connection,” the one-eyed woman said.
“It could be worse.”
“How so?”
“Aztek could be with them and Mayah could be feeding him glue again while Jade holds him down and Razi cheers them all and Bo acts as the lookout to make sure no one’s coming,” Shego explained.
Betty could not argue that since that was true. The last thing that they all needed was Aztek in the mix and Mayah would lose whatever mind that she had left now that Jayden and Raziya were with her. And, Jayden was going to lose whatever she had, although they were all certain that she did not have a mind to lose anymore. Raziya would just root them on and Bokuden would watch with interest before getting involved himself. And to think, they had agreed to put them altogether. It was a disaster, but at least the kids were happy about it.
(New day)
“Hey, Jade, what do you got for lunch?” Bokuden asked curiously. The four friends were sitting at a table in the cafeteria. He had plans to trade her because he had an onigiri (1) with salmon for lunch and he really would like what he knew Jayden had, namely a tuna fish sandwich.
“Tuna!” Jayden declared with a grin as she put her Care Bear lunch box up on the table. Like her big brother, her favorite type of sandwich was tuna, with mayonnaise and tomatoes usually, but she would eat tuna prepared in many different ways.
“You always have tuna,” Raziya commented.
“Tuna is fucking great,” Jayden said and then she opened her lunch box. A small frog leaped out the container, surprising her and her three friends.
“Why do you have a frog?” Raziya inquired, even though she should have expected as much with Jayden.
“Catch him!” Jayden called to her friends. She actually had not known that she had that frog in her lunch box. She considered that she might have placed him there by accident.
The friends all went after the frog, as they knew that all of the animals that came from the Possible-Gooding home were wanted and loved. They made a scene, of course. The frog was rather small and agile, so it could get into tight, little spots, but they went after it anyway.
“Move it, asshole!” Mayah ordered while pushing a larger kid out of the way; he was probably a third grader since grades one through three all had lunch at the same time. She flung him to side with great ease, though.
“Get him!” Jayden dived under the table since Mayah cleared the way.
“He’s coming out the other side,” Raziya called to Bokuden. There was no way that she was going to jump over the table for the thing, but Bokuden was up for it. He had no problem with going over the table and almost landing on Jayden as they both went for the frog.
The teachers noticed the spectacle and sighed. One went to call the parents of the usual suspects while the others went to round up the usual suspects. Through all of the confusion, they found out that there was a frog on the loose; that information was gathered from several girls screaming about it. Once more students knew that there was a frog on the loose, chaos erupted.
“Don’t step on Octavian!” Jayden shouted, pushing several students out of the way to make sure that they did not harm her frog.
By the time Jayden and her friends corralled the tiny frog, the whole lunch room was a madhouse. They stood back and wondered what was going on, which was when a teacher got them. They all looked at the teacher and then at the frenzy in the cafeteria.
“Saying we didn’t do it wouldn’t help any, would it?” Mayah asked the teacher curiously. Her answer was a head shake and an escort to the principal’s office with her friends. They wondered which parents were going to make the trip to hear what they had done now. They hoped that the fact that it was an accident helped. They only wanted to catch the frog after all. That would not be the last time an animal popped out of something of Jayden’s either.
(New day)
“Hey, you guys wanna see the new boa we got?” Jayden asked her friends. They were in class. Their desks were all pushed together because the class was set up to where four desks were put together into a square. It was supposed to promote peer help and group work, which worked with their little crew, even though Jayden and Raziya did not do the same work as Bokuden and Mayah. But, it also made it easier for them to plot, scheme, and cause further insanity.
“New boa?” Bokuden echoed in an intrigued voice. He was all for seeing a new snake.
“You got a new snake?” Mayah asked.
“Yeah. It’s huge. Mom just got it yesterday. I brought it to show you guys since you’re not gonna be at my house until Wednesday,” Jayden explained. It was Monday at the moment and Wednesday was too far off in her opinion. They needed to see the snake now.
“I dunno if I wanna see a huge snake,” Raziya replied with an apprehensive look. She knew that a big snake could hurt them while Jayden did not seem to think that any cold-blooded creature was dangerous at all. Mayah was the same when it came to dogs and Bokuden was like that when it came to rodents. Raziya was a bit more cautious around animals, especially if her friends were handling them.
“Show us,” Bokuden urged Jayden. He loved it when she had new snakes, new animals altogether actually. He wished that he could have a new animal almost every week. Instead, they always just had Rufus at his house and while Rufus was admittedly awesome, he was no snake.
Jayden nodded and she grabbed her book bag, which was hanging on the back of her chair. She opened it and pulled out a large clear plastic container that had holes in it for air. She popped the top off of it and began pulling out a ten-foot-long boa. Mayah and Bokuden looked amazed while Raziya’s expression a mix of horror and awe. It was like the blue-eyed girl knew that things were going to go awry, but she was still pleasantly stunned by the size of the serpent.
“Mom named him Attila. She found him yesterday in Costa Rica,” Jayden explained.
“He’s a monster,” Mayah commented, although they had seen much bigger snakes and other critters in the “pet room” at Jayden’s house. The “pet room” was just the place that Kim stored her animals until she was forced to let them go.
“Lemme hold him,” Bokuden requested.
“Okay,” Jayden said and she carefully passed the snake along to her friend.
Bokuden was careful with the snake; he knew how to handle the creatures for the most part. No child that liked animals could hang out at Jayden’s house and not learn how to handle the critters in the house. Just like no one could go to Mayah’s house and not learn how to properly take care of a dog.
Bokuden was all right with everything until a girl came out of nowhere as far as they were concerned. She was going to ask him to borrow some construction paper, but when he turned around, she saw that he was holding a serpent and that frightened her beyond measure. She screamed at the very sight of the snake, which actually startled the serpent and it started trying to coil around Bokuden’s arm.
“Oh, no!” the blonde boy hollered, knowing that the snake trying to constrict his arm was not a good thing.
“Damn it!” Jayden huffed as she leaned over her desk and went for Attila since she knew what the snake was doing.
“You fucking idiot!” Mayah hollered at the girl since she was the freaked the snake out. Her outburst just frightened the girl more.
“What’s going on back there?” the teacher called.
“Nothing!” all four friends replied.
Raziya and Mayah went to block the teacher’s view while Jayden and Bokuden tried getting the serpent off of him. The teacher had to walk over to the desk to see what was going on and she was not even surprised by what she saw. The teacher had come to the point where nothing that they did shocked her.
“Jade, what did your mothers say about bringing animals to school?” the teacher huffed while bending down to try to help get the snake off of Bokuden. She knew that they were lucky that the snake was not particularly thick.
“They said no more frogs. This is a snake,” Jayden pointed out. No one ever said anything about not bringing snakes to school.
“I know what it is,” the teacher snorted in anger. She did not think that there was a clause in her work contract that said anything about having to do animal rescues.
“Damn it, Attila, let ‘im go,” Jayden growled as she tried to pry the serpent off of her friend.
Eventually, they did get the snake off of Bokuden and back into the container. The teacher called Kim immediately, knowing that she was the “animal parent.” Kim took custody of Attila the snake and scolded Jayden about taking him from the room in the house. Jayden got the chance to explain herself and Kim could understand her enthusiasm for snakes and wanting to show her friends, but she told Jayden that she could not keep bringing animals to school, especially when they were bigger than she was.
“Besides, you don’t have snake handling credentials,” Kim teased her daughter.
“I can damn well get some,” Jayden replied with a wide grin.
“When you get older. Right now, you can’t keep bringing animals into school. It’s not very healthy for you to keep snakes and things in your book bag anyway. Attila could’ve easily overheated,” the redhead pointed out, making sure to keep her tone gentle so that she did not come across as discouraging the child.
“Sorry, Mom. I wasn’t thinking about that. I just wanted them to see,” Jayden explained while rubbing her head a little bit. She did not want to hurt any of the animals, especially her mother’s creatures, but she wanted so badly for her friends to see the marvelous serpent.
“I know, sweetie, but you have to be more patient about things. They can see the animals at home,” Kim reminded the girl.
“I know, but damn it, Wednesday is so far away!” Jayden whined.
“I know, but you have to wait next time,” Kim said.
Jayden nodded to show that she understood, but that was not the end of things thanks to the snake incident. It turned out that the girl that Bokuden had accidentally scared with the snake had an older brother and she told him about the incident. It would seem that he had to be the hero after hearing the story.
The brother approached Bokuden on the school playground after his sister pointed the blonde boy out to him. Bokuden was busying himself by pushing Raziya on the swings; he was always the one that pushed the girls because he did not particularly like swings himself. Their other two cohorts were not around them at the moment. The boy caught Bokuden by surprise, charging him and knocking him to the ground. He stood over Bokuden like a menacing scarecrow.
“You think you can just scare my sister and get away with it,” the boy growled down at Bokuden.
“Excuse me?” the half-Jewish boy asked in a confused tone. He was not hurt from the push or anything and only ended up on the safety rubber-covered ground because he was caught unaware.
Raziya noticed what was happening and guessed that Bokuden was about to get into a fight, which she did not think was good. After all, Bokuden was the last one among them to fight, verbally or physically. She hopped off of her swing and whistled rather loudly, which the boy harassing Bokuden did not think too much of.
“I’ll beat you bloody for scaring my sister,” the boy declared while leaning down and punching Bokuden several times in the arm. The half-Japanese boy was more puzzled than anything because he did not see the reason that he was being attacked.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Jayden commented, coming up behind the boy. “But then again, I’m not a fucking moron.”
“What?” the boy asked, turning his attention to the newcomer.
“He’s a damn ninja, you know. He could seriously fuck you up if he wanted to,” Jayden explained. She did not see why Bokuden did not just beat the kid up and move on with his life, honestly. But, she supposed that it all right that he was the pacifist amongst them because they were there for him.
“He don’t look like no ninja to me,” the boy said while glancing down at Bokuden, who was starting to pick himself up from what he guessed was supposed to be the start of a sound beating. His little brother hit harder than that, though.
“Yeah, he’s got a secret jutsu and every fucking thing,” Jayden said with a devilish smile on her face. If the boy was smart, he probably would have run from her expression alone.
“Oh, yeah, like what?” the boy demanded to know.
“Like that.” Jayden pointed to her right.
The boy turned to look and the last thing he saw was the side end of a thick rubber swing hitting him in the face. Jayden could not help laughing, nor could the two girls that swung the schoolyard weapon, Mayah and Raziya. Bokuden looked at the girls and smiled slightly at them. He did not agree with the method entirely, especially since the wailing that he received was so wimpy, but he had to appreciate the help.
“Wow, he can’t take a fucking hit at all,” Jayden remarked while examining their handiwork.
“Really,” Mayah agreed with a laugh as she came over to see what they had done. It was a pretty clean hit, she thought. They might have broken his nose, she considered from the looks of it; all of the blood was a good indication of that.
“Score one for the good guys,” Raziya cheered. It was only later that she found out that they were not the “good guys.” Their parents were contacted and they got in trouble for beating up a fellow student. They did not really understand why they were getting in trouble since the boy had been trying to beat up Bokuden, who even had the bruises on his arm to prove it. He could not believe that he had bruises when it felt like he had been getting hit with a feather.
“Guys, guys, guys,” Kim said to the group. They were in the living room of her house. She had been the one to pick them up from school that day and listen to how they clocked a boy with a swing in person. Everyone else had “situations” that needed their attention and that was why she was left to handle it alone for the moment.
“Mom, he was fucking kicking Bo’s ass,” Jayden argued, knowing that they were about to get reprimanded about the so-called fight that they had. A one-hit knock out was hardly a fight in their opinions.
“He was not!” Bokuden objected. “It didn’t even hurt! I got up right after he stopped and I woulda taken him if I needed to!” He might be the last to fight among them, but he still had his pride for crying out loud.
“That swing took care of him pretty good,” Mayah remarked and Raziya gave her a high-five in agreement.
“Guys, that was not cool. I think it’s great that you all try to stand up for each other and everything, but you have to understand there’s a limit to what you can do,” Kim tried to explain.
“We only hit him once,” Raziya pointed out since the redhead used the word “limit.” They had limited themselves to that one hit.
Kim sighed and tried to explain to them why that one hit was going over the limit. They did not seem to get it and even when the other parents showed up and joined in on the explanation, they still did not seem to quite get it. Were they supposed to let Bokuden get beaten up, which he insisted was not going to happen? The parents told them, of course not; they were supposed to stand up for each other. So, the kids needed to know what the problem was in hitting the boy with the swing if they were supposed to look out for each other. It was very confusing to the kids, which the parents were starting to comprehend, so they ended up just telling the kids to try not to use weapons when they were defending each other and to try to talk things out before resorting to hitting anyone.
Mayah and Jayden rolled their eyes to the instructions. Bokuden understood it for the most part since he did try to talk things out. Raziya supposed that it made some sense, but it certainly was fun when they hit that kid with that swing after he was picking on Bokuden for no reason. No reason that they could tell anyway.
(New day)
The kids were full of surprises and trouble. They tried their best not to get into fights. But, they also tried their best to keep things interesting, having Raziya around helped greatly, especially when Bokuden came up with the idea to build a catapult one day in the schoolyard. Building things were certainly Raziya’s specialty and Bokuden seemed to have a knack for suggesting cool things to build.
They set the launch pad on the little merry-go-round thing in the center of the playground. Mayah brought the ammunition, which were balloons full of lotion. They figured it would be good ammo for them to see how on-target the catapult was, although Raziya insisted that everything that she made was on point.
“That’s only with Knex,” Mayah argued about Raziya being on point. Toys and real life were two different things as far as Mayah was concerned and right now they were testing something that was real life.
“Hey, knex happen to be a very accurate building tool,” the blue-eyed girl countered.
“Like hell they do,” Mayah replied.
“Will you two shut the fuck up and get everything together,” Jayden said to both of them.
“You shut the fuck up,” Mayah said in a tone that showed that she disliked being told to “shut the fuck up,” even though Jayden spoke in a friendly manner for the most part.
“Fucking make me,” Jayden snorted. She wished that Mayah would try to make her shut up.
“Guys, the catapult,” Bokuden reminded them, knowing that his friends were walking that thin line toward a fight.
The girls immediately turned their attention back to getting the rather well-put together catapult up. They set the thing up and Mayah loaded it while Raziya picked a target. Once Raziya found something that she thought was a good distance away to show how great her catapult was, she had Bokuden and Jayden twirl the merry-go-round in the right direction. They aimed, they fired, and before they knew it they were in the very familiar principal’s office waiting for their parents. Damn it.
1: onigiri: a rice ball that’s like the Japanese version of a sandwich.
Next time: jump to the fourth grade and the kids join the scouts. The kids versus the scouts, who will win?