Diary of a High School Rebel: Day 1, Part 2
1 p.m.
Intrigued by what Bully Girl had said, we decided to investigate, stumbling onto Liar Girl as we turned around the southern corner of the school.
She obviously knew something about the recent accidents.
Naturally, it didn't take me long to expose what she was hiding.
Ha! I showed her!
Armed by the knowledge of Liar Girl's secret, I felt my savvy temporarily increase. Now I only needed to find out who could be using the school at night...
2 p.m.
Thanks to all my exploits, I boosted my popularity a bit. Which meant, now I could get away with even more mischievous deeds!
I thought it was the ideal moment for a gang powwow, given all the information we had already collected.
- Powwows are mostly used for plot advancement: they let your gang discuss what course of action they should undertake next. When in the powwow mode, you can choose which girl you want to parley with at a given moment; different girls have different personalities and can react to a situation differently!
Jean suggested confronting the school nurse. That would require considerable resolve, since the nurse wasn't exactly pleasant to be dealt with...
Obviously, I had a better idea. It would be more logical and realistic to check on the school's new maintenance man: after all, he was supposed to be responsible for school repairs and had access to the building at night.
Recalling the incident that Liar Girl had been trying to hide, Jean supported the course of action I suggested.
And I decided to throw some more wood on the fire of this mystery by telling the girls the maintenance man was new to our town...
Astonished, Hazel and Helen too immediately supported my idea. Just as intended.
The next step I suggested was bluffing a hall pass from the secretary that would make it possible to enter the school basement, an area normally off-limits to students.
Hazel and Helen remained silent. Too scared, probably. But I knew I could always count on dear Jean.
Having recapped everything we had learned, off to Secretary Primly we went.
Avoiding the passage leading to Nurse Nacht's infirmary, we knocked at Secretary Primly's door.
I let Hazel, being a popular girl at the school, do the bluffing.
"We've done nothing wrong."
> "We're here for maintenance."
"Massage?"
> "Looking for something."
- (Now I regret I didn't try picking the "Massage?" option.)
Hazel pretended we had left something in the basement.
Primly was a tough one, though. He was playing his own little game with us, and wanted us to play along.
Jean obliged...
...by exposing his dirty fears! Teehee.
You wicked old secretary, you!
We tricked the secretary and, most importantly, the hall pass was ours. Phew, that felt like one long hour.
3 p.m.
It was but a one-day pass, though, so we hurried off to the campus basement.
- ("I could use you young things", oh my.)
The maintenance man was scary and saying obscenities to us; the girls wanted to run away immediately -- but not I, no no. I felt like exposing the shit out of him instead!
Turned out Maximilian wasn't just a random maintenance man, and had his own reason for moving to the school. Interesting. I wondered who that woman of his dreams could be...
The nurse perhaps? It was difficult to imagine someone could be attracted to Nurse Nacht, physically or otherwise.
Taking advantage of the moment, I flashed the hall pass before his eyes. Ha, I bet he wasn't expecting our visit to be officially sanctioned!
I felt my knowledge of the school's secrets rise again! It was a warm fuzzy feeling.
Maximilian had to back off a bit. It was time for some parleying.
I decided to start out by learning what I could about Maximilian's backstory.
Then I veered the topic off to the recent accidents. Don't think I failed to notice that worried look, you geek!
And what about those "improvement" you made?
He claimed he had replaced the school's old equipment all by himself... Either he was very good, or...
Unfortunately, I couldn't get any more info out of him.
The mad Max quickly got away. After interviewing him, I decided to closely investigate his work on campus.
4 p.m.
It definitely was the right time for another clique powwow.
I wasn't the only one who noticed there was something suspicious about what Maximilian had told us.
Hazel was trying to act as our gang's voice of reason. True, the maintenance man could've been innocent alright. But... he was a man. Never trust those. And we already knew he had at least one secret. There could be more.
I suggested we poke around the school. Discreetly or not, I didn't really care; getting to
expose the truth and use it to my advantage was the only thing that mattered.
Our sensitive Helen got worried there for a moment...
...but the pragmatic Jean reined her in. Still, we
could flirt with some boys, maybe. It could be to the gang's advantage to get a couple of boyfriends for the girls. We could always use additional cannon fodder.
- (In this game, boyfriends basically act as meatshields and attribute boosts. Not only does a boyfriend lend his strongest attribute to the girl, but he also sacrifices himself whenever a girl gets penalized for losing a fight. And he doesn't even demand anything in return! The ideal kind of boyfriend, isn't it?)
The school was already closed for the night, so we could only poke around the campus.
The playground kids were ideal for learning some new powerful insults. Kids, duh. Jean was the only one willing to try her hand at taunting the brats.
The snake taunt was too weak to had any effect on them as they already had a retort ready.
It was their turn to trade insults now; Jean lost that one.
Still, it remained to see if the kids knew the correct reply to their own taunt...
They did.
We lost an hour and the opportunity to get more experience, but that was intentional: I hoped new retorts would sometime come in handy. Our arsenal had been just too poor. Sometimes, even losing can work to our advantage.
We also learned the maintenance man was really helpful towards kids. The more you know.
5 p.m.
It was gradually getting late, and I decided to see if there were any boys around that I could grab for my girls. To strengthen the flanks, so to speak.
We met Rebel Boy on the north sidewalk, a shovel in his hand. I decided we didn't really need one who digs too much in our gang and told Jean to shove him off.
Jean accomplished that splendidly. No boyfriends this time, though.
Things were getting boring...
...and then we came across Mildred, as always trying to preach those surrounding her into her vision of the future. I just couldn't pass on such a wonderful chance to have some fun!
So I ordered Jean to go full ahead.
We all started ascending on the bleachers.
That just couldn't but end in fun, couldn't it?
What happened next entirely made my day.
Making my best not to laugh silly, I observed Mildred fall to the ground.
Still, that had me thinking. What just happened had been another in the series of accidents we'd been hearing about. So that was what the summer repairs had amounted to, eh? Talk about a rush job... or was it something else entirely, eh, Maximilian?..
Just as I had expected, it was the new planks that had broken. The matter looked highly suspicious.
Mildred's fiery speeches had stirred rebellion in the hearts of my girls. We could use that sentiment, I thought.
And all along, we were taking notes...
Next time: join me, and we can tell each other what looks best!