The Stronghold 3: Mikachi

West, East, Fox, Beast

Mrs Michaels stormed into my lesson about five minutes later. I couldn't calm the class down and more party poppers had been set off. Music was playing from somewhere and somehow my first lesson had become one big, gay party.

"Mr Shaade!" she bellowed. The music died down and people hurriedly collected streamers. I had blue on my nose, streamers in my hair and chalk dust all over my shoulders. My lip was still cut and my elbow a peculiar shape, my hair ruffled and my jacket who-knows-where.

"You do not speak to me like that!" she yelled. "You do not talk like that in front of students! If you wish to keep your job then you will keep your mouth shut!"

I looked at her calmly, not saying a word.

"Say something, you useless man!" she screeched. I pointed to my mouth and then to her, making a 'chatting' movement with my hand. Mrs Michaels took a deep breath and counted to ten.

"You can talk," she said through gritted teeth.

"Oh good," I said. "Because I have quite a lot to say. For one, shouting is scaring my pupils and, quite frankly, scaring me. Secondly, pushing your beliefs onto impressionable children isn't morally correct and as a deputy headmistress I would have thought you would want to make sure your pupils were good, morally sound people, not homophobic a-... ants. I was definitely going to say ants. Thirdly, what was that about me having another teacher in here? I wasn't told anything about that."

Mrs Michaels stared at me wildly for a second and then stormed out of the room. I watched her go with a cross frown on my face.

"Rude," I muttered.

"Sir, you gotta be the bravest person in this entire school," one pupil said to me. "Mrs Michaels is hella scary."

"Thanks," I said. "Now, can we stop the party please?" The music was silenced completely and people stopped exploding party poppers. "Thank you. I think we should play a game. Work on your drama skills. So, here's the mission: you're all secret agents only some of you are good and some of you are bad. The top half of that list, down to Susannah, are good. The rest of you are bad. I'm hunting you all and you've got to hide from me around the school. However I'm going to get lost so I'll need one of you to be my evil minion.

'How does this work on your drama skills? You need to stay in character the entire time. When you find another agent you need to interrogate them. If you get found you need to pretend you're on the same side. Take your hostages back here and put them in jail. When you return there will be two bean bag jails, I'll sort that out with my evil minion.

'Whichever team has the most enemy agents in their jail wins. But if I find you then you're out and you have to help me hunt down everyone else. Any questions?"

A few hands were raised. I picked a boy at the front but before he spoke I asked his name.

"Dan. Can we use weapons?"

"You can't physically hurt people but you could use a pen as a pretend gun. You can't emotionally blackmail people either. This is only a game." I chose another pupil. Most of the hands had gone down after the weapons question.

"Susannah, sir. What do we do when the lesson ends?"

"Listen out for the bell and go to break or whatever you have next. Anything else?" There were no other hands up and so I looked down at my watch. "You have... fifty minutes. Stay behind if you want to be my minion. Go go go!"

The room cleared within seconds with only a few people lingering behind. I did wonder if anyone would help but then I saw that Dmitri was leaning against the door.