You Got Schooled! (JOB)

Rosewood Academy! A perfectly prestigeous model of what digital education should be. It seems they even hired children on. Thank Jesmon for the Digital World's lack of understanding of human maturation and child labor laws. That is how a certain preteen found himself in the situation that was about to unfold.

Two things David loves are school and helping people. Due to some turmoil in his home life due to a sudden cross-country move, he hadn't actually been in school in far too long now. So he was eager to get back to it. This assignment probably wouldn't be anything like his previous elementary experiences, however. In fact, it could be said that the only common ground they shared was the word "school." But David would not be deterred. He would help these Digimon learn all about the wonders of science and chemistry with a good ol' fashioned human breakthrough.

Assuming that Rei and Musimon weren't too lost in thought or music, they could hear the rapidly approaching footfall of a way-too-excited-to-be-at-school child as he ran streaking towards the school gate. No. Not just running. With his back arched forward and arms hanging loosely by his sides, this was unmistakable. David was Naruto running, but with bad form.

Should the musical pair turn to look upon the approaching boy, they would notice that his outfit is just obnoxious. Where does one even FIND scrubs and a lab coat that saturated in red? And not just any red. It was the purest and most offensive RED that one could possibly find. Who would even produce this? Not only that, but that lab coat was at least two sizes too big. This made it look more like a scientist's duster that proper lab coat, with the bottom scraping across the ground and sleeves coming down just past his fingertips, fluttering a bit as he ran.

Despite his speed and lack of grace while approaching, he did stop and be very careful with the gate. One must take care when dealing with the property of other people, of course. Once on the other side, David turned towards Rei and gave a friendly smile. "See you in class."

Turning back towards the main building David leaned forward and began his awkward run at the doors once more. "NEYYYYUUMMMMM!"

"Are the airplane noises really necessary?" A ModokiBetamon sat perched upon the boy's head, partially obscured by the mess of dark spikey hair.

"Of course! Don't you know anything about SCIENCE?." Flawless logic. Ziggy found himself unable to argue.

Everyone is searching for a world where they belong. A place of light, free of falsehood.

David's stride broke as soon as he entered the building itself. 'No running in the halls' was a common enough rule in human schools, so it probably applied here as well. And there was exactly a zero percent chance that he would be a rule-breaker on his first day as Professor Doctor Copeland, not that you were actually going to be teaching anyone anything.

No. Today David had the specific job of using Rosewood University's new science lab as a testing ground so a breakthrough could be found. What sort of breakthrough? The job description was somewhat vague. It could be anything as long as digimon didn't yet know about it. But what did digimon know and not know? David wasn't sure, but that was why he had Ziggy with him.

I can't waste time doing what you already know. So what things do you know?" Of course this seemed like the easiest path. If David knew what all digimon knew, he could just not do those things and find something else. Of course, this had its inherent problems.

"You know I'm not a repository of the collective of the knowledge of all digimon, right?" No one was, and trying to explain everything Ziggy did know would simply take too much time.

David just blinked quizzically at his partner. There were a couple big words in there that he didn't know, but he thinks he gets the gist of it. "Ok, then what don't you know? I will answer all your questions using the power of SCIENCE."

That, too, was not ideal. "Why don't you just experiment with whatever they have, and I'll let you know if you discover something I'm not aware of?"

As their discussion continued in a similar fashion, the reached the door to their destination: a simple door like all the others with a plaque that simply stated 'lab'. The pair would enter ane be greeted with what could only be described as My First Chemistry Set, but giant. The whole room was filled with temperature-controlled glass cases that contained a large variety of chemicals and solutions in properly labeled vials. In the center were two large tables set up with beakers and bunsen burners and graduated cylinders of various sizes and measurements. One of the walls was covered in cabinets and drawers with more supplies. Even a real scientist would be hard-pressed to find anything lacking in this lab.

"Now," David declared while examining one of the glass cases, tracing his finger along the glass as he read the names of some of the solutions contained within. "Where to begin?"

Everyone is searching for a world where they belong. A place of light, free of falsehood.

"HOLD IT!!"

Two forceful words made both David and Ziggy tense up and jump up. Ziggy leaped off David's head and took up a defensive stance in front of him, only to be admonished and scolded by the young girl who was worried they might blow themselves up.

"Oh, come on. It can't be dangerous. Some of these only have one letter on them," David said pointing at a vial of potassium simply labeled 'K'. This was just the sort of logic one can assume someone his age had. If something was dangerous, it'd say so. "Besides, they wouldn't let kids do this if it was dangerous. Right?" Right?

"Oh, I'm David. You must be my lab partner." The boy extended a handshake to Rei, though there was no hand visible. The oversized sleeve of his lab coat draped over the hand, covering it completely.

"And I'm Ziggy, David's partner." Ziggy always had to introduce himself, it seemed. He knew David wasn't being malicious by always forgetting, but it did make the boy seem all the more selfish for it.

When Musimon hopped up onto the table, Ziggy thought to join him. Since the ModokiBetamon lacked arms or knees or really anything that made high jumps possible, he climbed up David, pulling himself upwards until he was high enough to jump over onto the table and join Musimon in looking at everything on display, hoping that inspiration strikes.

"We're supposed to make some sort of breakthrough, but we aren't really sure where to begin. I think we need a focus soon or David really will just start mixing random stuff together." It seems that the digimon was the brains of this partnership. He makes a good doting mother type.

When Musimon suggested a concoction that forced digivolution, David's attention suddenly diverted and his eyes lit up. "YES!" He suddenly and sharply shifted towards Musimon, now keenly interested in this plan. With one smooth motion, David swept Ziggy off the table into his arms and hugged the frog close, despite Ziggy's physical protests.

"We're going to turn you into a...uh..." His physical grip loosened as his mind trailed off, allowing Ziggy to escape back onto the table. Ziggy had yet to evolve, and they hadn't come across anything yet that gave any clues as to what he would become. The only thing that popped to mind was Amelie and the cosmic horror that she had become. "Well, I'm sure it'll be better than her."

Turning towards Musimon, David got that keen look of determination in his eyes. "So, how do we begin. Teach me."

Ziggy just sighed. Wasn't this the opposite of what was supposed to be happening here?

Everyone is searching for a world where they belong. A place of light, free of falsehood.

"Yeah, he can be a bit of a handful sometimes," Ziggy replied, as a red flush came over his face and a claw moved to rub the back of his head. He knew it was supposed to be a compliment, but it was still a bit embarassing to have such things pointed out so directly.

Suddenly, Rei declared knowing what needed to happen. She had some kind of epiphany, or at the very least, a hypothesis. Oh thank Jesmon, the smart one is taking the lead. A sigh of relief escaped Ziggy as he turned to face Rei, willing to help with whatever it was that would keep David from doing whatever he wanted.

"Y-yes, ma'am." David pivoted around and stood up straight at Rei at her sudden declaration. He listened attentively as she listed off ingredients he needed to acquire. "Ok, yes. Got it."

With earnest haste, David went over to the cabinets and began to search through them for whatever Rei needed. He only got as far as moving a box of sodium bicarbonate out of the way before his partner digimon called out to him. "Eh, David? I don't think you'll find those here. You'll have to try the kitchen."

This took David by surprise. If they were supposed to do science, wouldn't everything they needed be in the Science Lab? Why would she need things from the kitchen? The notion caused him to pause for a bit while the gears in his head turned to try and understand the reasoning. That probably didn't matter, though. David had no reason to distrust any of his partners, so he went along with it. Besides, if Power Rangers had taught him anything it was that certain traits could be extracted from mundane objects and mixed up with enough science. Maybe Rei was going to create something new that he couldn't think of. That had to be it.

"Be back soon." With that, he rushed out the door to gather everything.

When he was sure David was out of earshot, Ziggy spoke up, wanting to know about the real plan. "So, what are we baking?"

Everyone is searching for a world where they belong. A place of light, free of falsehood.

A kitchen left ransacked. There was no mess. Nothing was spilled or left out or anything of the sort. However, every cabinet was left opened and nothing was left in its original spot. It seems that since David didn't know how they organized anything in here, he simply looked everywhere for the ingredients needed. In the end, he got everything he needed and left a confusing inconvenience for whoever actually worked here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~BACK IN THE LAB~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ziggy was ecstatic. This was a good way to mitigate the situation and keep things less explodey than they were probably headed without Rei's intervention. And, somewhat selfishly, he just wanted to enjoy a cake. Evolving would be cool, too, but he somewhat doubted it could be done with sweets alone. In this effort, he would help out however he could to get ready for when David came back with all the ingredients, guided by Rei.

Soon, there was a knocking at the door. "I'll get it." Ziggy waddled his way over to the door and opened it by pulling at it with a claw between the door and floor. Thankfully this sort of place was built without doorknobs or handles since many like the ModokiBetamon had no hands or opposable digits. As expected, it was David, though with a milk crate full of stuff. Hurriedly, he went over to an unoccupied table and spread out the contents on it.

"I didn't know which kinds of things you needed, so I got a lot." Strewn across the table were two 2-liter bottles of both a generic lemon-lime soda and off-brand cola; several dozen different kinds of flowers, at least two of each; six cartons of eggs; and two pints of vanilla ice cream. Baking soda (pop), flower, eggs, and vanilla. At least he got one out of four right.

"I don't thi-" "What do you think this does?" David wasn't about to hear any objections. Not because he was prideful or anything, but because he had found a very interesting device. He had taken one of each of the bottles of soda and taken them over to a tabletop centrifuge. With a careful and steady hand, he poured some of each into the little vials, spilling only about fifty percent of what came out of the bottles.

So what does happen when you put soda in a centrifuge? We're about to find out.

Everyone is searching for a world where they belong. A place of light, free of falsehood.

Thanks to Musimon's help, all the ingredients were set inside the centrifuge. Cracking a whole egg into one of those small vials wasn't an easy task, but between careful precision and sheer determination, they were able to get one in on the eleventh try.

With one button press, the machine spun up, and the four tubes secured to arms began to rapidly orbit the center. While it did its thing, David went over to one of the sinks. Mushing all the egg, ice cream, flower petals, and soda into vials had left his gloved hands very sticky and gross. You can't do science with gross hands, so he needed to wash and change latex gloves.

Meanwhile, Ziggy looked on from a safe distance with Rei. "Well, I think that machine just spins stuff around really fast? I don't think it'll be that-" But just then his sentence was cut off by the power of science. He was correct, for the most part. When agitated most things the pair had put in the centrifuge wouldn't react. However, one of the things was soda and, more particularly, the CO2 within.

While spinning, the carbon dioxide that gave the cola its fizzy nature would begin to react and expand, thus increasing the pressure inside the sealed vial. When pressure builds up, it wants to escape from the path of least resistance and, being well sealed, there was not an easy path for it to take. Eventually, there was a very faint click of the vial coming loose. Ziggy was too far away to hear it, and the water David was running overshadowed it to him.

Almost immediately after the click, and only about ten seconds after the centrifuge had started up, the vial with soda came loose and rocketed off, flying a good fifteen feet before clattering down to the floor, leaving a sticky mess of flat soda in a straight line along its flight path.

The FIZZ sound, followed by the clanking of plastic on the floor caused David to turn around just in time to miss everything that happened. "Did it work? Did science happen?"

Everyone is searching for a world where they belong. A place of light, free of falsehood.