00094. First day of school.

Monday September 4th 2000

Theo's first day of school was something he was looking forward to. He was so excited about it that he had a hard time sleeping the night before. It would be the first time he ever truly went to school after all in either life. Which was part of the reason he was having trouble sleeping. He was thinking about his first life.

Theo shook his head to clear it before he glanced over at his alarm clock. He still had a couple hours before he needed to wake up. He let out a sigh, flipped his pillow over to the colder side before he closed his eyes. Somehow Theo fell into a restless sleep after a while.

Theo awoke to his alarm hours later and rolled out of his bed after a few minutes. He first moved to his closet and pulled out the clothes he would wear to school. It consisted of a plaid blue button up shirt and black pants. He wanted to look nice on his first day of school, impressions mattered after all. It was one of the few button up shirts he owned, everything else was t-shirts with cartoon type logos.

After he dressed, Theo went up stairs to wake up Milly. But was surprised when he found her already awake, she was seated on her bed looking at some of her clothes. As Theo entered the room she glanced up with a frown. Then her eyes lit up and she smiled as she said, "Te-o, I don't know what to wear. Help me."

Theo walked over to her bed and asked, "How are you even awake? You normally sleep like a log."

"Mom woke me up."

Theo smiled slightly, before he nodded in understanding as he glanced at the clothes on Milly's bed. He quickly picked out a pair of blue jeans, a purple shirt that had cupcakes printed on it and some purple colored socks. Once finished he handed them to Milly as he said, "That should work. Now get dressed and clean up your clothes. Don't leave a mess for mom to clean up."

"Thanks, Te-o." Milly said as she started to gather up her other clothes to put them away. Well she was stuffing them all in a single drawer… But it was better than having them all over the place. Theo thought as he left the room.

As Theo moved down the hallway his parents door opened and Jacob walked out. He saw Theo and smiled as he asked, "Ready for your first day of school?"

Theo glanced at his dad as he said, "I hope so."

Jacob placed a hand on Theo's head and rubbed his short hair into a mess as he said, "Don't worry, you'll be fine. School is easy."

"Says the guy who dropped out."

Jacob and Theo turned to see Daniel holding Isaac as she smirked at her husband. Jacob grinned back as he said, "I dropped out because there was nothing left for me to learn in school."

Theo looked up innocently at his parents as he asked, "So I can drop out if school has nothing to teach me?"

Both his parents froze as they shared a concerned look with each other. Before Daniel shot a glare at Jacob. Jacob rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment as he said, "We can talk about that when you're older."

Jacob then gave his patented smirk at Theo as he asked, "How about when you turn eighteen?"

Theo smiled back at his dad as he said, "Okay."

Jacob winked back at Daniel as he said, "Let's head downstairs and I'll start making breakfast."

The next hour or so was spent with his family as they all enjoyed breakfast. As they finished up, Jacob pulled out two lunch pails from the fridge. He handed a purple one to Milly and a blue one to Theo.

Milly looked at it in confusion as she asked, "What's this for?"

"Inside is the lunch I made for both of you. You can eat it later when you're at school."

Milly opened up the lunch pail to look inside. Her eyes instantly lit up as she asked, "This is lunch? Can I eat it now?"

"You just ate breakfast. You shouldn't be hungry."

Milly shook her head as she said, "Milly always has room for sweets."

Jacob patted her head before he closed the lunch pail as he said, "Well you can only eat that cookie during your lunch break. If you don't, no more sweets for a whole week."

Jacob looked over to Theo as he said, "If she eats it before lunch, let me know."

Theo nodded which made Milly frown. She then puffed out her cheeks and looked away from Theo and her dad. Which caused everyone else to laugh. Afterwards Jacob finished cleaning up the kitchen as Daniel double checked to make sure they had everything.

Then they moved into the living room so their parents could take some pictures of them. Once they were done, they headed outside and met Peter along with his parents. They stopped to get a few more pictures of all of us together. Then we walked over to May and Ben's house.

Aunt May gave each of us a hug before we left with uncle Ben. They planned to walk us to school since it was only a few blocks away. It was actually to the north east side of the neighborhood, while their parents work was directly north. Their plan was to drop all of us off at school and then head to the warehouse afterwards. A slight change in their normal routine, but it only added ten minutes to their normal walk.

When they arrived at school, Daniel and Mary took the kids inside as Ben and their fathers left to go to work. After they were checked in and registered, Daniel and Mary told them they would pick them up after school ended. With that they were shown to their class room by one of the school's staff. Luckily they were all placed in the same class.

The class had just begun as they were led inside the room. About fifteen kids were seated at five different tables. Theo noticed Jean and MJ seated together at one of the tables as they moved to the front of the room. The kids were still chatting with each other until the teacher spoke up and said, "Alright quiet down everyone, we have three new students joining us today."

The woman glanced at each of them for a moment before she said, "I'll be your teacher this year, you can call me Ms. Forest. Now before we get you seated, how about each of you introduce yourself to the class."

She then pointed at Peter as she said, "You can go first."

Peter seemed shy and anxious as he said, "I'm Peter. Peter Parker."

Ms. Forest pointed at Milly next who had a massive grin on her face as she said, "I'm Milly!" Milly excitedly pointed at Theo as she said, "And this is my big brother Te-o."

Milly was about to say more as Ms. Forest smiled before interrupting her and said, "Oh, you seem to have a lot of energy. But how about we let your brother introduce himself, Milly."

"Oh, sorry."

Ms.Forest smiled again as he said, "It's okay sweetie." She then pointed at Theo and said, "You can go ahead."

Theo nodded lightly as he said, "My name is Theodore Mercer, it's a pleasure to meet you all. I will be in your care from now on."

Ms. Forest smiled as she said, "Well aren't you polite. It's nice to meet all of you, isn't it class?"

After a round of greetings came from the other kids, Ms. Forest said. "Now let's get all of you seated."

She looked around the room for a few moments before she pointed at an empty spot and said, "Milly I would like you to go sit at that table over there."

Milly glanced up at her teacher and asked, "I can't sit with my brothers?"

Ms. Forest had a gentle smile as she said, "It's only for a little while. Once a week everyone will change seats. It's so you can make friends with everyone in the class."

Milly looked downcast as she made her way to her seat. But within moments was chatting with her new table mates. Ms. Forest smiled before she pointed out where Peter and Theo could sit. The next hour went by quickly as Ms. Forest had them do counting exercises and very basic math games. One plus one is two types of stuff.

When the first recess came, all the kids were let out for a half an hour break to play in the school yard. Theo moved with his sister who had made a few new friends, along with Peter, Jean and MJ. They moved over to a massive jungle gym and decided to play tag. Theo didn't mind and even volunteered to be it first.

Theo was told to stay on the ground as everyone moved up into the jungle gym away from him. After Theo counted down he said, "Ready or not, here I come!"

Theo looked over the jungle gym for a few moments before he spotted a target. One of the boys in the group was near the top and seemed to be hiding next to a slide. Theo moved around the jungle gym till he was next to the slide. Then he ran up the slide quickly and tagged the kid who had a surprised look on his face. Theo had used chakra control on the bottom of his shoes to easily run up the slide.

After touching the kid Theo slid back down the slide and ran to another section of the jungle gym and quickly scaled it like a monkey. The kid himself was in a daze and didn't move till Theo was already gone. The rest of the game Theo moved around too quickly to get touched. He thought about letting Milly catch him when she was it. But she was pretty fast herself and easily caught another kid pretty quickly.

After recess, they moved back into class and had story time. Ms. Forest would read a simple story to everyone with the help of a projector. While she did that, she would point out each word and slowly pronounce it. While most of the kids were paying attention, Theo found himself bored with the learning aspect of the class. 

He didn't want to disrupt the class so he spent his time thinking about his mystic studies. He focused on different ways he could improve his spell casting. While he couldn't cast the spells in class, he could practice them in his mind with mental exercises. It was one of the ways students practiced at Kamar-Taj. So while everyone was focused on the class itself, Theo was going over complex spell formulas in his head.

Their next break was lunch. Milly seemed to be the most excited, since she was able to eat her cookie. Theo was also given a cookie, which he ended up giving to Milly after she finished the rest of her lunch. It was a good thing their father made smaller snack type cookies for them.

Lunch was followed by some more interactive learning. They would play simple games as a group that helped them learn how to spell words. Theo zoned out again for this lesson, but was able to answer when needed. After that was another recess followed by some PE which they ended up playing kickball for the last part of the day. It was probably the highlight of the day for Theo, kickball was a lot of fun.

As school let out, Daniel and Mary were there to meet the kids. They took them back to work with them and Theo spent the next couple hours helping out in the shop. Milly and Peter also helped out a little, but they quickly tired out and took a nap.

Later that night after they had dinner, Milly told her parents all about her first day of school. She also explained how awesome Theo was at tag and that no one was able to catch him all day. When she finished her parents turned to ask Theo how his first day of school was.

Theo thought about it for a few moments before he said, "It was fun, the class portion was boring. But recess and PE were a lot of fun."