"And this line right here is sine and this one is cosine, so this line right here is one. And from that, you see that sine squared plus cosine squared equals one," Navier explained, pointing to each line with the eraser of his pencil.
Joan and Navier were seated on his bed after yet another gruesome day of school. The Liu brothers had avoided her gaze and kept to themselves the whole day. It seemed their behavior was out of the ordinary, and people looked at them curiously, wondering what the sudden switch in behavior was caused by.
Oh, boy. If only they knew.
Joan frowned as she stared at the squiggly triangle sitting in the deformed circle. Her memories were limited, and as such, she had no memories of her previous high school schooling.
The Superhuman Division had taught her basic algebra but had been more focused on practical skills she could use on the field.
So with her limited foundation in math, she had no idea was Navier was talking about.
"What's sine?" she asked.
Navier looked up at her. The pencil slipped from his hands, clattering softly on the paper workbook. "You don't know what sine is? What do you know?"
"I don't know," Joan shamefully confessed.
"Do you know the Pythagorean theorem?"
"Pee the what theorem?"
Joan looked up from the shapes to see Navier's face lose color. His lips parted, and he bewilderedly stared at her. His jaw went slack, and his eyebrows raised.
"Have you never paid attention in class?"
Quite frankly, Joan didn't know whether she had ever paid attention in class. "I don't know," she confessed truthfully.
Navier groaned and rubbed his temples. His eyes squeezed shut. His hero seemed a little lame right now. "You'll be lucky if you pass this midterm. We only have a week left, and you still have 4 other subjects to study for."
"That's fine. I can ace anything that relies on pure memorization," Joan said proudly.
"Are you sure? You have to memorize the biology content, English vocabulary, and history."
Joan vigorously nodded her head. This was her strong suit: pure memorization. She was superhuman for a reason and could memorize anything she wanted to with just one read.
The trait had been especially essential in information-dense missions where lots of information was required to succeed. She would have never imagined she'd have to use it to pass some silly high school midterm.
Ah, but the 200 dollars made it worthwhile. Motivations and new determination flooded Joan as she thought about her 200 dollars.
For the next week, Navier sacrificed his spare time to tutor Joan in math. Although she lacked almost all the prerequisite knowledge needed for the midterm, she flew through the material at an alarming pace, practically coving a year's worth of material in a day.
Her immediate understanding startled Navier, who'd always thought of himself as a genius compared to his classmates. But in front of her, he was no more than average.
Ah, his hero was superb~ She could really do anything.
The result of Joan's academic brilliance only made Navier idolize her even more. He worshipped her and would admiringly stare at her back during class. She was really a goddess descended to Earth.
Not only could she fight well, but she was a genius, gifted in all subjects.
On the day of midterms, Joan's pencil rigorously scratched against her paper. She regurgitated all the knowledge Navier had taught her on a tiny scantron filled with As, Bs, Cs, and Ds. Her pencil would tap on her desk as she did mental gymnastics in her head.
When Joan's test scores came back, Navier nearly fainted in surprise. He had known she was smart, but he didn't expect her to be this smart. As he looked at her report card, his glasses slid down the bridge of his nose, and he had rub his eyes to make sure he was seeing things correctly.
In one week, she had gone from clueless to genius. Five 100's lined report card. She had tied Navier for the top seat in the school.
"Wow, she's really smart," one girl whispered to her group of three friends.
"Yeah! And did you see the clothes she was wearing on her first day?" another girl gasped. "They were so trendy! She must be from a rich family. What's she doing here?"
"No one has ever tied with Navier, or even come close to him! How did she do it? She must have cheated?" the third girl blabbered, sending a side-eye to Joan.
As Joan stared at her report card, a not-so-subtle grin pulled back the corners of her mouth.
[Mini-Mission 2 Complete]
[Reward: 200 Dollars Transferred to Bank]
"You know, you could've just asked me for help. I'm connected to the internet." PK, for the first time, mentioned this feature to her.
Internally, Joan groaned. Everything would have been so much easier if PK had just mentioned this to her a week before.
Scoffing, she said, "Who needs your help? I'm plenty capable of doing things on my own."
"Ha! Don't ever ask me for help then!"
***
A few days later, gossip broke out amongst the seniors in classroom 3-1.
"Yo! Mad Dog! Have you heard it yet?" Black Dog spoke. He was abnormally tall and was at least a head taller over all his peers. Long muscles clung to his lanky body as he leaned back in his chair.
Mad Dog sat right behind Black Dog and had his feet propped up on his desk. The sound of his teeth grinding against his gum resounded throughout the room, and he looked disinterested in what Black Dog had to say. "Heard what?"
"The Grimm bros got pummeled the other day!" Black Dog lowered his voice to a whisper. His sharp features containing a sense of amusement.
Jackal, who pulled his chair up to the side of Mad Dog's desk, cackled. His pupils were feline-like, and his sharp glare was enough to make anyone turn away in fear. "The juniors are getting a new hierarchy? Which bastards beat them up?"
Mad Dog sat at the top of M High School with Jackal and Black Dog as his left and right hand. They were infamous for tormenting their juniors and relentlessly bullying students, even to the point of suicide.
The trio was far from an innocent little friend group in high school. They made up something much bigger, something much more terrifying.
"Some little kid named Navier. Some of my guys say they saw him go into the bathroom with the Grimm bros. When they came out, Viktor was trashed!"
Mad Dog remained disinterested in the juniors' drama and instead picked at his long-overgrown nails. Moons of dried blood sat beneath his fingernails. The blood was a mixture of his blood and his victims'. Mad Dog swiped his long thumbnail under each of his nails, digging out the crusted blood and wiping it on his desk.
"Mad Dog. Hey, Mad Dog." Jackal lopsidedly grinned at his friend. "What do you say we give this kid a greeting, huh? Don't you think that would be fun?"
At the suggestion of a fight, Mad Dog raised his eyes. A psychotic grin curled his angled eyes into moons, and he spat out his gum, placing it under his desk with his forefinger.
"Let's initiate him, yeah?"