Disclaimer: I own the ouchie I got from running into the bathroom door this afternoon. And Ashley. And some other random stuff, but none of that really pertains to this story in the slightest. God, I wish I owned Jonny Was...

A/N: I know you all love this story, and whatnot, and I would just like to apologize in advance for the lack of updates. It's not just this fic, but rather everything fanfiction related that I have shut my mind to. The reasoning behind this is fairly simple - I'm doing really poorly in school right now. And I mean REALLY poorly. I basically attribute this to spending way too much time writing fanfiction and way not enough time studying and the like. So, I apologize, but school has to come first. On to the story! (Not that any of you actually read this entire thing anyway...)

Chapter 3

Considering the fact that Ashley, Celia, and Kerri's next class was just across the hall from their last one, they managed to arrive pretty much on time. Well, at least, originally they did. Their stuff was strewn over their desks at the correct time, and everything, but they just weren't there physically. This can be attributed to one thing - Ashley's freakishly small bladder.

Yes, the three of them were in the process of making a customary trip to the bathroom when the second bell rang. They didn't care all that much. After all, they were late all the time for history, and their teacher never seemed to care. What they forgot was that Mr. Scudder wasn't their teacher that day, as Kerri so ingeniously pointed out on the way back down the hallway.

"Hey, guys, we're late."

Celia and Ashley stared at her.

"Yeah... And your point is...?"

"We're really late."

Celia and Ashley exchanged meaningful looks.

"Again, your point is...?"

"We're gonna get in trouble."

"No, we're not. Wormtail and I are late to every class on a daily basis. Scudder never cares."

"But Scudder's not the teacher today, now is he?"

Both regular third period girls stopped dead in their tracks, frozen in shock.

"Oh shit..." Ashley muttered. After all, we all know how bitchy substitutes can be compared to the regular, nice, laid back, easy going teachers.

"Mm..." Celia murmured worriedly. "We're screwed, aren't we?"

"If Cragen's the teacher, which I'm relatively sure he is," Ashley said, eyes wide, "Then yeah. We're screwed."

With that, Ashley and Celia took off at record speed down the hall, leaving poor Kerri standing there momentarily. It wasn't long before they all came to a screeching halt in the doorway of their classroom. Why did they stop in the hallway? Why, good question. That would be because the door was closed. And locked. Can't forget about locked.

Ashley stared at the locked handle forlornly.

"I feel very unloved right about now..." she muttered dejectedly.

"Quite," Celia concurred.

Kerri was in the process of trying very hard to bite back some snide comment about how she was right and they should have listened to her in the first place when she told them they were going to be late. That was shot when she sighted Cragen inside the room, standing at the board, writing something on it.

"See?" she exclaimed, close to hysterics, "He's already started class and probably won't let us in now! I blame you!" She pointed at Ashley, who looked scandalized.

"Me?" Ashley cried loudly, "How is this my fault? I can't help it if I have a small bladder!"

Before Celia could smartly point out that the little bathroom trip may have been avoidable if Ashley hadn't ingested an entire large cup of coffee from Starbucks that morning, Cragen noticed the girls standing outside, bickering. He very calmly walked over to the door and stood there, making no move to unlock it and let the girls come in. Instead, he just stared at them in a disappointed manner, making them feel very crummy about themselves indeed.

Eventually, he got tired of doing that, since he got enough practice having to employ the technique on Elliot when the detective started going a bit neurotic. He opened the door from the inside, allowing the girls in. They jumped on the opportunity to enter and sit, since they were very lazy people.

Once they had taken their seats, Cragen resumed the disappointed staring. Ashley and Celia exchanged "shoot me now" looks before simultaneously sighing deeply. Kerri hit them both hard over the head with a particularly heavy textbook that just happened to be sitting on her desk. Ashley and Celia took the opportunity to nurse their new wounds as Cragen finally spoke.

"What are your names?"

All three girls exchanged looks before responding shyly.

"Kerri Bailey."

"Ashley Whitworth."

"Celia Snape." It took a sharp glare from the other two for Celia to realize her mistake. "Allen." she remanded quickly.

"I see." Cragen said in a rather condescending manner. Then he said something else, but Kerri and Ashley were both too busy trying to recall a moment on the show when Cragen had ever been condescending. Apparently, it wasn't all that important, since the rest of the class had begun zoning out. The girls tuned back in just in time to hear him say, "Are we clear?"

Ashley and Kerri risked quick glances before responding with a slightly cynical, "Yes, sir."

"Good," Cragen said, "Now, on to more important matters..."

At this point, as was to be expected with children with abnormally short attention spans, the girls stopped paying attention. Instead, they turned to Celia and asked, "What was he talking about just then?"

Celia racked her memory for the event that had taken place so very long ago. Her look was blank for a moment while this was going on, but shortly thereafter changed to one of knowledge.

"Something about how disappointed he was and how we should be not happy with ourselves, and if one of his guys ever tried to pull that they would be put on a desk and how it should never happen again. Or something like that."

Ashley and Kerri looked enlightened.

"Ooooooooh!" Ashley said sarcastically, "And here I was thinking it was something of relative importance. Stupid me."

They sat there in silence for a while, half listening to what Cragen was saying (not that they would have been able to repeat any of it back later), half spacing out. Of course, what they were spacing out on was a different matter entirely, but we won't go into that. Then suddenly, and completely randomly, something happened.

Of course, this is no ordinary type of something, since nothing is in cases such as this. No, this something was something quite different than past somethings any of our characters had ever experienced. And I shall tell you why. This something was such a different something because someone who doesn't even go to that school suddenly and rather randomly went sprinting down the hallway, arms flailing in the air, screaming something about how the chickens want to take his soul and eat it for dinner. Told you it wasn't a normal something.

Ashley leaned forward in her chair to get a better look at the scene in the hallway, as did the majority of the rest of the class. As if anticipating that people would want a second look, the eccentric figure went by a second time. This time, Ashley was able to put a name to the screaming and flailing.

"Hey, is that Matt?" she asked, looked both amused and confounded at the same time.

The other girls shrugged. After all, they would have no way of knowing, since they had never met this 'Matt'. Cragen, against his better judgment, decided to inquire as to who this 'Matt' person was.

"Who is this 'Matt' person of which you speak?" he asked in a very unCragen-ish manner.

Ashley barely spared him a glance before responding with a smirk as the figure went by again.

"Matt's my bassist. Why he's in our school when he lives in Windsor Locks is way beyond me." She snickered as the door to Huang's classroom swung open and hit Matt in the face as he was running by. He didn't seem to be hurt, though, since he got right back up and almost started running and flailing again. The reason he didn't, however, was this - Ashley had since jumped up from her seat, pushed the door to her classroom open, leaned out the door, and asked, "Hey Matt, what cha doin'?"

Matt turned to her with a cheeky grin.

"Running down the hallway flailing my arms and screaming that a chicken is going to steal my soul and eat it for dinner."

Ashley shrugged.

"Ah. As long as there's a good explanation. Hey, your face isn't, like, broken or anything, is it?"

Matt shook his head cheerily.

"Nope."

"Good. Cuz I might just have to kill you if you couldn't play bass anymore. Then I'd have to revive you and kill you again."

Matt winked roguishly before continuing on his way. Ashley turned back to the class and strode back to her seat, where the majority of the class was staring at her. She ignored them and turned to Kerri and Celia.

"That was Matt, by the way." she stated happily.

"Yeah, got that." Celia pointed out.

"Good," Ashley said with a smirk. "That's what I thought. So, where were we in the whole learning thing?"

Cragen didn't respond for a moment, partially because he wasn't aware that the question had been directed toward him, mostly because he was too preoccupied attempting to determine why these people were still allowed to roam free in the public. Eventually he gave up since his head hurt from all the thinking and responded.

"Ah, yes, the learning. We were just about to discuss the..." Something else came after that, but abnormally short attention spans only allow for so much on one topic. The girls spaced out on their respective topics while Cragen droned on about God-knows-what until the bell rang. Then they perked up.

"What's next?" Kerri asked Ashley and Celia, since it was their schedule they were following, after all.

"Um... good question." Ashley said, thinking hard. Celia was kind enough to provide the answer for her.

"Gym."

All three girls looked rather put out for a moment at the prospect of being forced to endure a rather painful amount of torture for the next forty minutes. Ashley typically liked gym, but was definitely not a fan of running the mile week after week. Kerri perked up when a thought came to her.

"But we probably don't have to really do anything, since the regular teachers aren't there."

Celia and Ashley had to admit that she had made a highly valid point. Then they promptly skip/sprinted down the stairs to the gym, where their next class waited.

Sorry about the rather OOCness. I wasn't really focused when I wrote this, which explains the whole thing with Matt. That, and I told him I would. Cuz he rocks. Anyway, sorry about the lack of real Cragen-ness, but he got a lot in the previous chapter, and we can't have one character getting more screen-time than the others, now can we/waits for Elliot's class where she'll be proved the biggest hypocrite ever/