The class

Normal 8th graders would noisily settle down but not class 1(class A) students; when their teacher came in, the noise ceased like a music player that suddenly stopped.

The teacher waited patiently for them to settle down which did not take up to 30 seconds. Once they were finally seated, they all greeted in unison, "good morning, Mr Fedrick!"

Mr Fedrick was a tall, bald middle aged man, he had a pair of glasses resting on his nose. He was their maths teacher. He stared at the class for 2 seconds before saying, "good morning, class. Today we will be learning "algebraic equations". I believe most of you have studied it before today, you're not in class A for nothing."

"..."

He then wrote an equation on the white board with a blue marker, turned to the class and asked, "who can solve this?"

Algebra is a branch of maths that helps in the representation of problems in the form of mathematical expression. It involves variables like x,y and z.

Nobody's hand was up which was highly unusual especially in class A. The most shocking thing was that Creston the "math Lord" was also absent minded today. He was just looking forward, he wasn't looking at anything in particular, his mind had drifted off.

Creston was a boy, a twelve year old, it was said that boys his age liked exploring even if they couldn't explore physically, they'd explore mentally, their minds were always in the clouds but many students, like Creston also knew when it was time to focus in class.

Mr Fedrick noticed Creston's unusual behavior so he called him, "Creston, come and solve it." His voice was firm, he wasn't taking "no" for an answer. Creston was about to make up an excuse that he wasn't in the right state of mind to solve anything but Mr Fedrick's attitude killed his plan.

Creston took a deep breath, stood up and walked up to the board but instead of writing, he just stood there doing nothing which made Mr Fedrick quite displeased. A girl raised her hand.

"Ah, Darbie, please." With a smile on her face, Darbie walked up to Creston and snatched the marker from him and solved the equation but surprisingly, nobody cared, not even a sound clap. This made Darbie confused.

Darbie's character didn't bother Creston, he never even noticed her. He went back to his seat.

Darbie had always wanted to be the saludatorian but Creston always beat her to it. While Darbie studied day and night, Creston made it look so easy. She always looks for a way to look better than Creston or at least beat him at something, anything but whenever she does, her discouraging classmates make her feel dumb.

"what's wrong with the class today?! Darbie solved the problem and none of you applauded her!"

Everyone snapped out of their transe and applauded Darbie. Darbie's head was going to explode.

"Honestly, what is wrong with the class?"

Levi raised his hand, as class representative, he was going to speak for the class.

"Forgive us, Mr Fedrick, we are not normally like this, our minds are just preoccupied with the thought of demons and how we're going to fight them."

Mr Fedrick shook his head.

"Don't tell me you believe such nonsense. Demons in our world, 8th graders on training?! Rubbish. If there were really demons, the government would put in effort in training the soldiers not children."

What Mr Fedrick said made absolute sense, children shouldn't risk their lives and waste their strength on something the grown ups could take care of and logically speaking, it is wrong for the government to involve children in such a serious matter. But Mr Fedrick's brilliant idea was countered by Creston.

He said, "sir, I'm sure the government is putting in a lot of effort to increase their warfare but training young ones like us, in my understanding is not a bad idea. We are not too young to depend on ourselves for protection and we certainly cannot depend only on the grown ups."

Mr Fedrick was intrigued by Creston's words but he didn't show it, he only scoffed and said, "how primitive. Back to maths."

"Excuse me sir but aren't you suppose to

enlighten us on what Miss Stan(principal Stan)

"I don't know anything about your training and I don't want to get involved. I'm sure other teachers will tell you. Back to maths."

After 35 long minutes, Mr Fedrick left the class.