Lesson One - A Monster School Fic

Chapter Thirty One - Math Class

Cray's hand shot up, and Herobrine stopped, pausing to call on him. "Yes, Cray?"

"What if you had a pizza that was four hundred blocks big?" Cray demanded. Herobrine stared at him for a moment, collecting his thoughts.

"Well," he finally began. "The same formula would apply. If the diameter was four hundred blocks, that would make the radius two hundred blocks. Two hundred squared would be forty thousand, multiplied by pi, which can be simplified to 3.14-" As he spoke, the equation appeared on the blackboard. "-making the area of our hypothetical pizza one hundred and twenty-five thousand, six hundred blocks." He shot Cray a little smirk. "That's a lot of pizza." Cray nodded enthusiastically, and you hid a grin behind your hand.

It was Monday morning, meaning math class, and today you were going over how to calculate the area of a circle. You had gone over this during your last year of schooling, so you could just about breeze through it. Some of the other students looked very comfortable with the idea as well, namely Kai and Azara, while some of the others still looked pretty confused. Also, the new students were here.

The classroom had been very slightly restructured to accommodate for three new students. All of the desks had been nudged to the right to make room for another column of three on the left side of the room, and Jace had been moved from his previous spot in the middle row to the new farthest back left. Fenn was seated in the far-left middle position, with Zephyr in front of him, and Nightshade in Jace's old seat.

They had each been provided with a uniform, as well, which were just as neat and professional as the ones that you and your fellow students had gotten at the beginning of the semester. Did your teacher make them himself? How else would he be able to get three tailored uniforms in the span of a single day? Although, you could make that argument for the food that showed up every day, as well.

You hadn't seen Fenn and his sisters at all, yesterday, and they hadn't shown up at breakfast today either, so you figured they were taking the time to get settled in. They hadn't contributed to class at all, and it didn't really look like they were paying attention, but you couldn't blame them. It wasn't like they had any idea how school worked. Hopefully they would be able to figure it out by watching the rest of you.

Herobrine's brother Steve had stayed the night too, though you hadn't seen any sign of him yet today. You were pretty sure he hadn't left- usually your guests said goodbye before they did so. Maybe he was just resting after the excitement from your camping trip.

"Alright, are we all fairly comfortable with the equation?" Herobrine's gaze swept over the classroom, noting the few murmurs of confirmation, then he nodded and swept a hand over the board to clear it. "We're going to play a little game. I'm going to divide the class in two, then I'm going to put an equation on the board, and whoever solves it correctly first, their team gets a point. Alright?" There was a buzz of excited chatter from your competitive classmates, and you sighed, leaning back in your chair. How was he going to divide you evenly when you had an odd number of students?

As it turned out, the answer to that question was that he just didn't. The three newcomers were excluded from the game, allowed to watch instead. It kind of made sense, you reasoned idly as you tried to do long-form multiplication as fast as you could. After all, they weren't even here to learn, they were just here because they needed someplace to stay, right?

It didn't come as a surprise to you that Kai's team ended up winning the math game. She was smart and had probably learned this a long time ago. What did surprise you was that Azara, on the other team, had dominated the first few rounds, getting the correct answer before you'd had a chance to assemble your equation. After the first three rounds, however, she seemed to fall off, working much more slowly and giving Kai a chance to come back with the victory. Since you were on Kai's team, you were glad, but Azara's behavior was definitely weird.