03x20: Falling into a Fiery Pit

Austin dishes out a new gimmick regarding a Dalai Lama test, discovering some petty truths about some of his friends. Also, things take a turn for the worse for Compostela Valley.

FALLING INTO A FIERY PIT

 

     The victory yesterday was now general knowledge around the island. Sunday was all Mass and celebration.

     Monday was a pretty interesting day. Aside from being the start of Quarterly Test Week, Ernst watched a few scenes from Tropic Thunder and he and Austin had their little in-jokes now about lead farmers and Les Grossman.

     Austin also wrote an extended announcement on the board about their victory, adding Owen to the team. Sr. Geck re-congratulated them while expressing no surprise whatsoever at Austin putting Owen’s name on the list since it was a pretty routine act by now.

     During Recess, Austin’s hatred of secrets between friends resurfaced.

     “Hey guys! Anything interesting to tell me?” Austin said, chilling in the DDN room.

     “Well… sorta…” Ernst said.

     “Ernst, let Janella tell it,” Nica said.

     “What is it?”

     “Never mind. How was your morning?” she said.

     “Come on, tell me,” Austin said, frustrated.

     “Come on, tell him. It won’t hurt,” Bianca said.

     As predicted, Austin didn’t hear the story. This was becoming a real problem since he loved her but she couldn’t even be honest with him.

     Between Science Time and English time, Austin dished out a questionnaire he picked up over the internet last Friday. It was something from the Dalai Lama. He gave Marise a paper and a pencil and gave her the test (he memorized the questionnaire)

     “Write down the first answer that comes to your mind. Don’t even think, okay? Order these animals from favorite to least favorite. Cow, Pig, Horse, Sheep, Tiger.”

     She thought about it for a sec then wrote it down.

     “Next, describe the following things in one word. Again, first that comes to mind. Dog, Cat, Mouse, Coffee, Sea.”

     “Okay,” she said, writing down her answers.

     “Lastly, put the name of the first person that comes to mind when you see the following colors: Yellow, Orange, Red, White, and Green.”

     She took a while but finally wrote down the answers.

     “Okay, what is this about?” she asked.

     “Let’s see the first one. These animals represent your future priorities. Your first one, sheep, means love. The second one, Tiger, means pride. Third one, Cow, means career. Fourth, Pig, means money. Lastly, Horse, means family.”

     “Oh, interesting…”

     “The second one is infinitely more interesting. Your description of dog, in this case, nice, is your subconscious description of yourself. For cat, in this case, cute, is your description of your lover. For mouse, you put small, is your description of your enemies. Then we come to the coffee, you answered hot…”

     “What’s wrong with coffee?”
     “I’m gonna be straightforward… It’s the subject’s description of sex…”
     There was a split second awkward silence before they burst into silent laughter.

     “We gotta let other people take this test,” Marise said.

     “Oh but we will. Moving on from that, somewhat awkward… Moving on… Your description of sea, which is salty, is your description of your life. I cannot interpret that so let’s move on.”

     “Haha… salty. Hmm…”

     “I’m stumped on that. Anyway, the last column. Yellow means a person you will never forget. In this case, you’ll never forget Owen.”

     “That’s for sure!”

     “Won’t we all? Anyway, Orange is the person you consider your true friend, Clutch?”
     “He’s awesome.”

     “I agree. Red is the person you truly love… Pat?”

     They awkwardly glanced at Pat at the side who was minding her own business before bursting into laughter. This was funny due to the amount of satirical contempt their conversations involving her contained.

     “White is the person you consider your twin soul. Jasvir?!”

     “I can’t explain that either. What about green?”

     “This is a person you will remember for the rest of your life. Sir Jojo, eh? Well, I’m pretty sure all of us will remember him for a very, very, long time.”

     “Anyway, this is cool. We should let other people answer it. Wait a minute, what about your answers?”

     “Fine, I put cow first then tiger, horse, pig, then sheep in that order.”

     “I guess you really wanna be a director.”

     “I guess. I described dog as scary, haha. Cat as innocent, so true.”

     “Isn’t that sweet?”

     “Yes… yes it is… Anyway… mice are mischievous to me.”

     “And coffee?”
     “The big one eh? I put tasty.”

     They laughed at this once more.

     “I guess a lot of people will be entertained once I explain what coffee means, won’t they?”
     “I agree.”

     “I describe sea as mysterious. True that!

     “For yellow, I put Ernst. Orange, I put Kyle.”

     “Looks like you are real close with the audition judges.”

     “Funny you should say that, for red, I put none other than Janella. Seriously, red is my favorite color, she’s my favorite person, it just clicked.”
     “Aww… that’s just sweet.”

     “Mo-on happens to be my twin soul and Ivan Chan will be remembered in my life ‘til the end.”

     “Haha, what do you say we let Pat take the test?”

     “Okay.”
     So Pat took the test and for the mind of someone in their position at that certain point in time, the only interesting ones were their description of Coffee and the person on Red. Pat described Coffee as bitter and put Jethro, her current flame, on red.

     Jasvir also describe coffee as tasty. He also put Clutch on orange. Kenneth Baltazar from SK was on his Red (much to their amusement) and Owen was his twin soul, Dimple Star indeed.

     Aika described Coffee as “delicious”, which caused them to laugh pretty hard. She also put Clutch on orange.

     “What is up with Clutch and orange?” Austin asked.

     “That’s his favorite color,” Marise said.

     “True that,” Jasvir added.

     Before Lunch, Owen took the test. He described the dog as “bullshit”, hilarious. His description of coffee was the best so far, putting a simple word in there, “yum”.

     He placed Kenneth Baltazar on red as well and listed Jasvir as his twin soul. They really were twins. He also placed Austin on orange, much to his amazement.

     Jib also took the test, describing the cat as “furry” to which he reacted violently when he found out what it meant.

     He described coffee as “bitter” which was relatively out of character for him.

     He placed Joven on red and Basti on White. Partially true, really.

     Lunch was pretty awkward since Austin was still pissed off. This was all resolved in the library.

     Austin remained quiet and Nica noticed this.

     “Fine, if you won’t tell him, I will.”

     “Nica, don’t! Well, it’s up to you.”

     “Okay. So during math time, Sr. Edmond asked a question. Janella and Lanz were raising their hands. Sr. Edmond approached Janella but turned his head at the last second and called Lanz. They both stood up at the exact same time and answered correctly in unison. Sr. Edmond gave his infamous teasing smile and said, ‘So it’s you two now, eh?’ Cue screech tease from the super awesome DDN.”

     “That’s it?!”

     “Ask Mr. Wingman here,’ Bianca said, pointing at Ernst.

     Austin simply glanced at him.

     “Okay, I give in! On the way to the AVR, I teased Janella about Lanz. She then replied, ‘Nope, Still Austin.’”

     Austin involuntarily smiled. It was at this moment that he knew that Janella would never betray him.

     “React,” Nica said, nudging Janella.

     “Yup, they said it all. It’s true.”
     “Thanks for telling me guys,” Austin said. He then turned to Janella. “As for you. No doubt about it, it’s still you. It always will be.”

     “Did I just say that?!” Austin said to himself.

     The rest of the day was pretty uninteresting. Marise got Mo-on to answer the questionnaire. He put two choices on cat, “p***y” and “cute”. He described coffee as “hot”. He listed Rica on red and Austin on white (looks like they really were twins). He would also remember Ernst for the rest of his life.

     Later that day, DDN and DOR were taken to the Mall of Asia for the World Teachers Day event since they won the cleanest classroom award a few weeks back.

     Everyone else was prohibited from showing up there via teleportation. It was as if they were preventing Austin from actually seeing them.

     When Austin got home, he called Ernst on his cellphone.

     “Dude, what’s up?”

     “Fill me in on what’s happening there?”

     “Just some singing. Ms. Laurice totally rocked the entire mall with her performance!”

     “BRO! WHAT’S UP?!” Bianca said.

     “What else is happening?”

     “Umm… nothing much. Bianca, stop that!”

     “What’s she doing to you?”
     “She’s making a balloon here extra bouncy and bouncing it off of my head. The recoil is amazingly painful.”
     “Good for you.”

     “Holy crap! HAHAHA!”

     “What? What’s happening?!”

     “Sr. Jojo’s dancing in the middle of the mall!”

     “Dude, that does it! I am going there!”

     “It’s forbidden. Trust me, it isn’t fun at all OH MY GO�" BWAHAHAHA!!!”

     “That’s not what it sounds like.”
     “Dude, tough luck. We’re leaving. See ya later.”

     Austin couldn’t resist and after a while, finally gave in. he called Janella.

     “Hey! How are you?”

     “Fine. How was MOA?”

     “It was okay. Kind of awkward for some of us, eh?”
     She said this because Austin told him last year about a certain incident two years ago. They had to pick up Nica from MoA so they flew there. The guards caught them using their powers and it just turned ugly. In the end, MoA was reduced to a crumbling mess.

     “Well, see you later then.”
     “Actually, I’m going straight to Woodridge.”

     “Oh. In that case… take care!”

     “Bye.”

     “Bye.”

    

The next day was pretty uninteresting. The most notable thing that happened was Austin writing a quotation from a movie on the upper left corner of the board. “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

     He sat down and turned to Marise.

     “Like it?”

     “Yeah, sure! You planning do this every day?”

     “I might consider that. Sort of a… quote of the day?”

     “Yeah.”

     During Science time, Sr. Jojo announced that they would be having their long test on Monday since they had quarterly tests from tomorrow until Friday. All they had to do was bring their Codon Wheel (their lesson was protein synthesis.)

     He also replied to the “quote of the day” with “Come what may”. Austin was happy that Sr. Jojo knew what he was talking about.

     During TLE time, they were passing around a letter that happened to be from a freshman. The letter was the said freshman (presumably female) professing their love for Micherenz.

     It was later revealed to be a fake but the culprit was never revealed.

     During Lunch, Austin administered the Dalai Lama test to Ernst. He described Coffee as bitter, cats as defaced, put Jack Bungag on white for the sake of offensive irony but left red blank. Unfortunately, he whispered Maan’s name when Austin said the word red and that was considered the final answer.

     Finally, Austin gave Janella the test.

     She answered it in order until her link with Austin came to cause disadvantages.

     “What are you telling me about coffee and sex?” she asked, disgusted.

     “What? I’m not telling you anything about that?”

     She walked off, Austin followed.

     “Hey, I’m sorry.”

     “I’m not mad. It’s 1:50.”

     “Can you at least answer the last part?”

     She thought about it for a while.

     “Sure.”

     “First person that comes into your mind.”
     She wrote down Angel for yellow. “buhok” for orange (it was a little secret between the Patola members and their affiliates), but for red…

     “Hey, red’s your favorite color, right?”

     “Yeah.”

     She wrote his name down.

     “Wait! That’s also Nica’s color.”
     She began to erase his name.

     “Wait, it’s supposed to be the first person that comes into your mind so, yeah, don’t change it.”

     “Okay then… White, hmm…”

     “She wrote Ernst on White and Daniella on Green.”

     “Let me interpret the last part. Yellow is someone you will never forget.”
     She nodded.

     “Orange is a person you consider to be your true friend.”

     They both laughed at this.

     “And red… is the person you truly love.”

     She had a shocked look on her face for a split second before looking at Austin.

     “So that’s why you didn’t want me to change it.”
     “Hey, I pointed out that it should be the first person that comes into your mind. And in case you’re curious, I put you on red.”
     She slightly smiled at this as Austin continued.

     “White is the person you consider to be your twin soul.”
     “Ernst?!”

     “I know right? And finally, green is a person you will remember for the rest of your life.”
     Austin bid farewell and went back to the classroom.

     They continued to tease Micherenz about the letter as Sr. Geck reviewed them for a quiz.

     For some reason, Sr. Geck was speaking in a thick foreign accent that sounded like the stereotypical vampire accent. He claimed that it was an Indian accent.

     They took the quiz and, after a while, Sr. Geck decided to check papers early.

     He went to the back right part of the room and asked if Austin was done. He said yes and he checked his paper, 28/30.

     He then asked if Basti was done, he nodded and he checked the paper. After finishing, he pointed his finger at Austin and teased him in the Indian/Vampiric accent.

     “Haha, He’s higher by one point.”

     Austin wasn’t offended since he knew that this was just Sr. Geck having fun while also motivating Austin to do better. He was basically annoying Sr. Geck since he recited a bit too much.

     During AP, they had to report. Unfortunately, Austin had no control over the slides. He was also terribly bored in AP classes these days due to Sr. Leo doing nothing but asking the groups to report.

     It was unfortunate that he had no control over the slides because they used Google Translate to translate Wikipedia articles into Tagalog. It was a very funny albeit humiliating experience.

     In the waiting area, Austin was just so in love with Janella that he offered to buy her ice cream. She refused. Not that he didn’t ask before but he has always been painfully refused.

 

Wednesday featured the usual English and CCF tests. The quote of the day (featured in a box for the first time) was “Keep your friends close, your enemies closer” as popularized by The Godfather Part II. Justin erased this, however, before the first test even started, much to Austin’s dismay. Also, Clutch invented a new way of communicating with Micherenz better. It was deemed, “Slow- Mo”.

     “Hey… Aus… tin… do you… know how… to talk… to Micherenz? This… is how… you talk… to Micherenz… You have… to talk… this slow… If you… talk… any… faster… he … won’t… un… der… stand…”

     “Thanks for the info, Clutch. Hey… Renz! Is… it… true… that...”

     “Shut Up.”

     “Okay… Mi… Che… Renz…”

 

Thursday’s quote was “He who makes a beast out of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” From Hunter S. Thompson’s “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”.

     This wasn’t erased though for some reason.

 

Friday was infinitely more eventful than the previous two days. That day’s quote was “Without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterday's” from the French film Le Fabuleaux destin d’Amelie Poulain.

     He visited DDN in the morning where a cat or some other animal made the bottom of the blackboard a toilet. They accused Ernst of defecating there, as usual.

     The test part of the day was not interesting at all. What was interesting was after classes. DDN had to make up for their absence in P.E. during their recollection. The boys had to have their softball practical test while the girls had volleyball.

     Austin and Mo-on waited by playing Frisbee with a few other people. There was a “no power clause” and Austin actually had a bit of fun.

     They went inside the canteen to continue playing as Austin saw Janella and Nica buying pancakes. Austin decided to approach them.

     “Hey, pancakes eh? The ultimate comfort food… or just the ultimate err… food.”

     “Austin, Janella wants you to buy her a pancake," Nica said.

     “Sure.”
     “No!”

     “No really, it’s okay. My pleasure.”
     “Austin, if you buy that pancake, I won’t talk to you.”
     “Fine, sheesh.”

     Austin bought two pancakes on his own as they sat down in the gym lobby, watching Mo-on play Frisbee.

     Ernst soon caught up with them.

     Nica was talking to Bianca on the phone when she suddenly cracked up. She said goodbye to Bianca.

     “Why’d you laugh out loud?” Austin asked.

     Nica smiled at Janella mischievously.

     “Nica, please, don’t…”

     “You saw that, didn’t you?”

     “I didn’t. What happened?” he asked.

     “Oh nothing, Janella just accidentally spat out some chewed up pancake.”

     “Nica!”

     “Oh, come on. That’s alright,” Austin said. “Everyone does that sometime.”

     “That’s it. I’m never going to eat a pancake ever again.”

     “Why not?! You’ll be missing out on, like, 90% of your life if you never eat pancakes ever again. Pancake House will lose its purpose in your life.”
     “OH MY ***!” Nica said.

     Austin looked behind him and someone got knocked unconscious due to a flying Frisbee.

     Austin, Janella, Nica, Mo-on, and Ernst marched to the waiting are where Patrick caught up with them.

     “Hey, Pat, what’s up?”

     “Nothing. Hey, best friend in the whole wide world!”

     “Hi… Patrick…” Ernst said.

     They walked Janella and Ernst to the bus area where they said goodbye.

     Nica went on her separate way as Austin invited Mo-on to his suite.

     “It’ll be fun.”

     “Sure, what’re we gonna do? Watch a movie?”
     “Of course.”
     “Great!”

     They walked to his suite and Austin loaded in Kill Bill Vol. 1.

     Mo-on cringed and screamed at all the carnage and graphic violence but got used to it about three-fourths of the way in. In the end, he was shell shocked.

     Austin convinced him to come again for Vol. 2 some time and he reluctantly agreed.

    

He started formulating a plan that weekend for the strike on the Mastermind’s base. He wanted it to be simple, but effective.

     Sr. Edmond also sent Austin a math problem. He correctly solved it and told him not to tell it to Nica.

    

Monday finally came once more and very little interesting things happened. The quote for that day came from Kill Bill Vol. 1 and it was, “Revenge is never a straight line. It's a forest, and like a forest it's easy to lose your way … to get lost … to forget where you came in.”

     Sr. Geck was also missing for the entire first hour of their school day.

     During recess, Austin begged Austin for the answer to the problem to which he replied using a quote from Fight Club.

     “I'm not supposed to speak any such information to you nor would I even if I had said information you wanted at this juncture be able.”

     Nica just stared at him in disbelief for a full minute before finally speaking.

     “Excuse me?!”

     “Exactly... Goodbye.”

    

Things took a turn for the worse during Science time.

     Sr. Jojo checked on who had brought their codon wheel. Long story short, a lot of people failed to bring their wheel. Sr. Jojo was calm at first, handing out the questionnaires telling those without codon wheels to not answer that part of the test, giving them a score of zero in those items.

     He then began to walk around asking people if they have their wheel. When he got to Justine, he was incredibly disappointed and began to yell.

     “THAT’S IT! PASS YOUR TESTS FORWARD!”

     They did as told and Sr. Jojo recklessly collected the papers and threw them to a corner.

     He began his sermon as everyone in CV just sank lower and lower and lower into their seats with shame. This moment was the lowest point in the year so far.

     The rest of the day, everyone from CV wallowed in depression. This was not helped by Bianca breaking the news that Ernst got a perfect score in his Biology QT.

     Later in the library, he decided to sit in Ibarra and Sang Woo’s table.

     “So… Ibarra… do you know about gay cells?”
     “No.”
     “Well, not all gay people carry them. Only Ernst and people who have been infected by him. It’s a slow spreading virus. A single cell could contaminate your entire body.”

     Note that at this point, Austin had not seen John Carpenters’ The Thing yet.

     “It begins from the point of contact, slowly infecting your other cells. Once a cell is infected, it will start to act all man’s-perception-of-women-like. Now that is a very significant fact.

     “The way women act and the way a man thinks women act can be two very different ways of acting. That’s why girls who act like guys who act like how they think girls act piss me off. “

     “You lost me there but keep on going, this is very exciting.”

     He said this because Ernst just sat beside him.

     “Some girls don’t know how to be girl and instead act like the stereotypical caricature of a gay guy played for laughs instead of drama. It’s a natural intuition for us to know whether a person is acting like a girl or a caricature of one since the latter one is so obviously fake. Anyway, back on topic, if Ernst touches you in your Johnson, the virus will eat away at it until it has transformed into a fully fledged�"“

     RING!!!!!

     “I hope I have been of help. This was only a way to cope with my depression. Cheerio.”

     Austin stood as Ibarra, Sang Woo, and Ernst’s expressions remained as one of shock.

     He also began practicing American Sign Language, communicating with Mo-on, Ibarra, and Sean in this way.

     “Okay, Sean, this is your final test. Interpret this:”
     Austin spelled out “**** You” with sign language and Sean successfully deciphered it.

     “You know, there is a faster way to do that.”

     Sean raised his middle finger for a split second.

     “I know. It’s just more suspenseful to do it the other way.”

     Sr. Leo finally arrived and the rest of the day played out as usual.

     Later in the waiting area, Austin once again attempted offer Janella ice cream. Once again, she refused.

     He said goodbye and went back to his suite. He found a note on his bed.

 

Austin,

 

     Meet me at the Power Plant Mall in Makati on Sunday, October 17, 2010. I’ll give you the info you need. The others don’t know about this. Just in case you don’t trust me enough, feel free to bring your friends. It should save time on briefing.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Erika

    

     Austin still didn’t know whether to trust Erika at this point but it was a risk worth taking. But still, he was going to ask for the others’ opinions.