Rico sat down at his desk and checked his watch; five minutes to noon. He wrote his name on the paper in front of him and began the math test. The room was filled with a busy quiet of two dozen pencils scratching out calculations, the sound interrupted only occasionally by a stray cough.
As the noon bell tolled outside the classroom windows he casually stood, as if to stretch, and sauntered to the front of the room. In one fluid motion he leapt onto the front desk, pulled a rifle from out of his coat, and fired two shots into the ceiling. Two dozen heads snapped to attention, and Rico watched with curiosity the terrorized expressions on their faces, through the dust and debris drifting down from the holes in the ceiling. They were all dimly aware of a girl screaming somewhere in the room. Then a silence fell over them, and they all knew at that exact moment that math class would never be the same again.
Something snapped in the congregation; it suddenly occurred to them to flee, and they did, but only into the corners of the room, for Rico stood between them and safety. More shots could be heard echoing down the hallways outside. A particularly bold individual chose to keep his dignity, and spoke up.
"I guess you think you're pretty hot stuff, huh?" Rico cocked his head to one side, interested. "This is because you think you're a victim, huh? No friends? Go to hell, man. We get picked on too and you don't see us dressed up in all black and trenchcoats, killing each other. Get over it, freak. Think you're tough now, like those Trenchcoat Mafia losers at Columbine?"
Rico stood blinking for a few minutes before breaking into honest, bemused laughter.
"Well, you bought that story easily enough," Rico shot back. "The Trenchcoat Mafia is not to be taken lightly. It's too large and powerful to be confined to a mere backwater cesspool of a suburban town. Do you really think this is all about you?" He chuckled again. "Social maladjustment and revenge were just red herring." He lifted the rifle and leaned it against his shoulder to focus his full attention on the boy who had spoken. "Gun control and social reform are convenient diversions. Well, maybe not the latter. Look at you, the all-American youth, the football hero and socialite, with your brand name pants and bright, fancy shirts. Capitalist swine!"
A girl piped up from somewhere in the crowd. "Ah hah! So it is political! You're a card-carrying Communist!"
Rico smirked. "Comrade Bush has been very successful in diverting the nation's attention away from our tactics. By denouncing them as 'cowardly' nobody would ever suspect his guilt, and between his bombing raids and tax policies the ignorant bourgeois American public is completely oblivious to the subversion happening all around it. Why do you think there's been a recent spike in the adoption of Russian children?"
"What does Russia have to do with anything? The Soviet Union collapsed a while ago!"
"Yes, that's what we wanted you to think. Yet even now our indoctrinated youth is replacing you." Rico narrowed his eyes. "But now you know too much." He again lowered the rifle to aim at the cowering crowd.
An unexpected blast sent Rico and students alike tumbling to the floor under a shower of plaster and concrete.
"What happen?" someone said.
"Somebody set up us the bomb," Rico growled.
"Someone coming!"
"What!"
All eyes turned to the new hole in the classroom wall. It was filled with another black-clad figure. Rico's eyes grew wide at the sight.
"Cats," he breathed. "It's you!!"
"How are you gentlemen!!" Cats shouted. "All your school are belong to us. You are on the way to destruction."
"What you say!!"
"You have no chance to survive make your time." Cats laughed.
Rico turned to one of the girls. "Take off every zig!!" She answered with a look of utter shock and confusion. Rico pressed on. "You know what you doing. Move zig. For great justice." The girl continued the stare; she would not move from the spot, not even a single zig.
Cats spoke again. "I couldn't help but overhear your conversation. Well I'm here to say that I am maladjusted, I am vengeful, and you can eat hot lead, pink menace!" He raised his own firearm and aimed at Rico. Escape had slipped from everyone's mind as the drama unfolded. None of them had any chance to survive make their time when the explosives hidden in the building blew out the first floor's walls, and left the structure to collapse in on itself.
Many federal officials drank heavily from the vodka bottle that night, and both the survivors and the families of the deceased wrote books and sold merchandise before the bodies were even cold in the ground. When the survivors watched the news broadcasts, they would think back and try to make sense of the incident. They concluded nothing, but it bothered them that they never did learn their grades for their assignments that day.