Lina awoke to her alarm clock--as opposed to a knock on her door--the next morning. Luckily, she woke up with no fright, no sense of inanition, and no vague dream lingering over her thoughts. Waking up wasn't as hard as it had been the day before, though emotionally she had no consolation from the morning numb. Only one thing was set in her mind at that moment--to handle her class like an official instructor and to do it well.
Hurriedly, she dressed, snatched up her lesson plans, and headed to the classroom to set up. When the students and Quistis came rumbling in after the subtle Garden bell, Lina was sitting on her desk, smiling and nodding at each student as he or she passed. The students all seemed less interested than they had the day before. That was a bit of a let down for her. She tried to somehow get their attention, find something interesting in order to captivate their attention and keep it.
"Come on now, guys. I know you're probably all not accustomed to waking up so early, but it's only day two! Time doesn't matter when you're young," she smiled. A few people chuckled--the irony being that she was younger than them. She caught Seifer give her his trademark smirk. Typical. Zell, however, paid no attention, leaning over onto his desk with his head resting on clenched fists. "Alright. What information could you find on Sorceress Ultimecia?" No hands were raised. "Okay, we can play this game. Gerni! What'd you learn?"
Some scrawny kid in the back of the room twitched at his name and sat up suddenly, "Uh... Well uh... I learned that uh... you can kill a comp poundin' the keys hard." A few students chuckled. Lina smiled, then shook her head at his pathetic attempt to disguise the fact that he in fact had no material prepared from the night before. Lina knew all the tricks--she'd been a student too. There was no pulling anything over her.
"You're a good kid Gerni. Now get out," she said plainly. The laughter stopped, the students looked up from their desks. "I want two laps around Garden now, and when you're done report to me." He stood up, hesitant, but jogged out of the classroom obediently. Maybe he understood that Lina was trying to make her authority known among the students--maybe he was just flat out scared. For that fact, word of Sadie's pitiful defeat outside of the front gate had gotten out and was quickly circulating through the network of students. "How about you, Almasy? What do you have to say about Ultimecia?"
"She was some sorceress and was, or is, or whatever from the future. Some dumbass SeeDs were sent to stop her and blah. They won. Those bastards," he muttered. Lina looked fairly disgruntled by his apathetic response. Seifer felt indignant. They were talking about the sorceress who had set him in a trance, the very woman who had enraptured his overall sense of attraction and seduced him into his romantic fantasy of being a sorceress's knight.
"Why don't you at least pretend to be a little more enthusiastic," Lina said curtly. "Go ahead and take five laps. Don't come back until you're done." Seifer kicked his feet up onto his desk, crossed his arms and settled down comfortably in his seat. "Don't make me force you out, Almasy."
"I'd like to see you try," Seifer spat. Lina frowned. The entire class and Quistis were all concentrating on this little classroom drama. Lina could feel inside of her jerk, some kind of nervous mechanism and for some reason she felt angry, a hot rage rushing through her. Her outline flashed white similar to what it had done on the Ragnarok only the day before and Seifer was suddenly lifted into the air and tossed out the open window. "WHAT THE HELL!?" He called as he was swung out the window into the Quad.
"RUN!" Lina yelled at him from the window. Seifer, previously frozen with what any other person would call fear, but what he labeled mental break, forced his legs to move and ran as if he were racing the wind. Lina froze, an aching burn enveloping her forehead. She turned around quick and looked towards Quistis who was turning paler by the second. For the remainder of class, every student was afraid to upset their new teacher. They went out of their way to make sure she was satisfied with their answers.
As the bell rang and the students hurriedly left, Lina slouched into her chair, nearly in tears. What happened? What had she done to scare her students so much?
"It's very strict. I like it," Quistis said. Lina looked up and to her relief saw a smiling Quistis. She sighed out the stress and nodded her thanks although she barely felt like she deserved it. "Hey, don't worry about it. I'm sure it was probably just some kind of weird thing. You know, things like that happen around here, you just have to get used to the idea of it.
"So I... three Seifer out of the window? Was that me though? I barely remember it," Lina said. Quistis shrugged it off, catching Lina's frustrated glance as she looked away from her empty brown eyes. There wasn't anything that could make her look straight at Lina without putting tears in her eyes.
"I have to say," Quistis chuckled. "It was pretty nice seeing someone finally defacing that smartass." Lina chuckled. It was all in good spirits--her comments. "Come on, let's go grab some lunch and forget about it." Quistis patted her on the back and they headed down to the cafeteria for some food. There, they met up with Irvine, Selphie, and Rinoa at a table that would soon become familiar to Lina over the course of the next few days or so.
"The best things here are the hot dogs," Selphie explained. "But they're really, really hard to get! I mean like REALLY hard! Everyone crowds around in a huge line at the beginning of lunch and forms like an angry mob. I swear it's SCARY!! But you get the gist of the point of the matterish!! You come late and you won't get any of them. Then if you come too early, the lunch lady shoos you away to the back of the line! It's the most unfair thing in the world. I swear the only way to get one of those darn hot dogs is to have some kind of private connections with the people there!"
"Ya, in the first five minutes... POOF... they're gone!" Irvine waved with his arms. "Hey, hey, hey! Remember when you tried to get one, Lina? Holy shit that was hilarious! You almost got pushed into the dumpster and we had to come and fish you ou--OUCH! WHAT WAS THAT FOR!?" Selphie had stiffly elbowed him in his side. She kicked him in the shin from under the table and smashed his face into his bowl of pudding.
"No what!? Tried to get a what? A hotdog? What are you talking about?" Lina hurriedly questioned, but the moment had passed. Irvine had pulled his face from the bowl and had commenced in licking off the mess that was smothered against his cheeks and forehead.
"My mistake, my mistake. Must have been someone else," Irvine said. He licked what he could get off of his face before Selphie rushed towards him and attacked him with napkins. Lina laughed, no matter how unnerving the comment had been. Soon enough, Squall, Zell, and Sadie came along to join them.
"Hey there," Quistis greeted them as they pulled up their chairs by instinct and sat down.
"Whatever..." Squall muttered. Lina couldn't help but grin at him somewhat. He responded with his trademark nod--not a smirk, not a frown, but something in between that only emphasized the idea that he didn't really care about anything. She looked away and kind of smiled subconsciously. Not even Squall saw her replying smile, but in a spur of the moment glance, Zell caught it and mistook it for nothing less.
The lot of them sat around, nibbling on salads and chicken wings. Lina, however, paid no attention to what little salad she had before her. She was watching her friends at work, observing their causal behavior with admiration. Never before had she met people who were so lively and free-spirited around each other. Once in a while Irvine would sneak a little peck from Selphie or give a wink in her direction which only made things all the more interesting. Could relationships really be taken to the table so casually? Lina could see Rinoa giving Squall a few suggestive smiles that said, "Honey, you're gorgeous today", but coming towards Zell and Sadie, there was only negative reaction if any at all.
She'd lean her side into his arm and smile up widely at him, but he'd have his face turned in the opposite direction, almost as if purposely ignoring her futile attempts to attract his attention. After a while, Sadie pretty much gave up and flounced away to get a drink from the cafeteria lady.
"Do you like it when she does it?" Lina asked. Zell looked up, quite unaware that Lina was addressing him. "When she like... you know." Lina beckoned with her head as if leaning into someone's shoulder like Sadie had been doing. Zell shook his head, then the two of them laughed--why it was so funny was a mystery, but the fact was, that question and that response were so random and surprising to the both of them that they couldn't help but laugh out the awkwardness.
Sadie, meanwhile, had just gotten her drink, a coke bottle in her hand. She'd turned around to go back to the table, but saw nothing else besides Zell and Lina sharing an innocent chuckle together. She could see Lina bow her head to laugh and that was nothing she could point any finger at, but had the right mind to do so anyways. Zell however, laughing as he was, still had his eyes fixed on Lina. Suddenly she felt an immense rage--how dare Lina even think about seducing her boyfriend. As if Sadie knew what was really going on.
Sadie sat back down next to Zell, her eyes flashing with fury in Lina's direction, but Lina didn't notice; instead, she smiled a friendly smile and continued to poke fun at the salad she was pretending to eat.