HELL HIGH

We do not own Avatar the last Air Bender. In addition, we don't own our school. However, we do own the OCs we have made and their personalities.

We know that there are many AU high school fics out there (including many great ones), so we feel obliged to explain why ours is different.

It's simple. We're out on a Vendetta.

Against whom you ask?

Simple, against our old High School.

Therefore this fic is not your regular, freshman, sophomore romances between pretty cheerleaders and gorgeous jocks. It's a story of survival.

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First, we have to give you an insight into our old school before you can read the actual story. Only then will you come to appreciate the hell we have been through for years of our lives.

When we are finished, you will come to see how appropriate the name of this fic is.

First, let us start with what happens when you enter the school.

Just as you enter through the gates, you have to go through a screening process, where the prefects scrutinize your uniform, hair, shoes and nails. The only thing they don't examine is your underwear though there was a rumor that the prefects were given X-ray goggles. This rumor has neither been confirmed nor refuted.

If you are late, you have to give the nearest Prefect you SRB (Student Record Book) and she/he will mark in a small 'L' (for Late) no matter if you are 1 second or 1 hour late. Three L's and you are suspended for a week. If you survive the preliminary checkup, boys have to go on the left of the yellow line that runs along the school dividing the stairs, grounds and everything else, the girls have to stick to the right. The headmaster even tried to divide the classes but backed off due to universal disapproval.

Let us introduce the Prefects. They are the singularly most infuriating people you will ever have the misfortune to meet. They are mean, abusive, bulling ass holes who have more power than they deserve due to an administrative mistake. They can give out 'black marks' to people if and when they feel like it. Some poor students have got black marks for having mud stained shoes on rainy days and spiking their hair with gel. Beware these evil minions of management and their black marks. Don't ever make the mistake of thinking that the prefects run out of them, for each one of these young brutes is equipped with a whole set black marks in the form of a checkbook.

The Prefects are loved and adored by almost all teachers except the mentally impaired and the truly evil ones. There is only one thing to do when you meet a Prefect, run; no one has ever survived one unscathed.

Then the next people you will come to hate are the disciplinarians. They are simply that, disciplinarians. They prowl the six floors searching for prey; if they find a student without a hall pass, they will catch him/her. The ironic thing is the teachers sometimes lose their hall passes and allow the students out in the halls anyway. When these hapless students get cornered by a Nazgul (nickname for the disciplinarians), they have no defense expect call the teacher careless. No one in his or her sane mind would do that. So they get detention etc.

The disciplinarians are the most evil of all people excluding the teachers, headmaster and the Prefects. They are mostly people who have been in the army, or have had a very bad family life. Also in some cases, they are physically deformed and/or mentally deranged.

The disciplinarians walk around the school like vultures searching for the weak, the foolish and the plain dumb.

Their job is to keep discipline (obviously), but they do much more. They make regular visits to classrooms and search through students' bags. This routine is carried out atleast twice a week. On a special day like Valentine's Day, they go through the bags and the boys are given a full body search. All gifts, cards and anything pink or with hearts on it is confiscated. They have considered strip-searching but concluded that it might be considered as sexual harassment.

If they find any love letters, CD's, walkman's, phones or anything else that might be considered 'abominations against the RULES', it will be confiscated and the wrongdoer will be doomed to detention or worse, suspension.

Many look forward to suspension as they have a week free of this horrid law abiding school. No one and let me say, NO ONE ever looks forward to detention.

Because in detention you don't sit around in a classroom doing nothing; Instead you sit in a classroom and write essays while a sick, sex deprived male disciplinarian breathes down your neck.

Now that we've dealt with the disciplinarians lets move on to the Head Prefects. They are under more pressure than us normal students as they themselves are subject to 24/7 scrutiny. If they make a wrong move, or a small mistake they are reprimanded and the mistake is recorded for future gloating. The Head Prefects have the worst time of all, as the eyes of many follow them and they have to take care of the demands of the lesser but more popular Prefects.

Many have tried to bring in 'stuff' and break the rules without giving a whiff to the Prefects of the deed but they never have passed the gate without being caught. If you want to know if you can breathe just look up rule #1001 in the 1000 page rule book. The thing about the rulebook is that you have to bring it to school. If you do something wrong, that is your conscience. You can never try to say 'I didn't know' because the rulebook is just behind your back. Also the school forbids you from saying the words 'I didn't know', as the rule #1991 states that: You shall not under any circumstance utter the words 'I didn't know' as you are supposed to know and must know the rule book by heart.

The impressive thing about the rulebook is that every year they somehow manage to push in another rule and decrease the chances of students ever running afoul. This is the latest rule: From 1/1/06, all students going to (name edited) college will be under surveillance 24/7 to keep them in their best behavior. We will monitor your every move and we will not tolerate any gatherings, which are outside the school premises,(For example in your homes, night clubs, restaurants etc) . We will break up any parties, clubs, groups and such in order to minimize incidences that might tarnish the School name. This rule applies even if the party, group, club has parental concession or not. We will expel or suspend any students who are seen at the scene, and other punishments may be given as well.

This rule got so much disapproval that a practical joker hung a painting of a donkey standing next to the headmaster holding a board which said "I'M WITH ASS" with an arrow pointing at the headmaster.

All sorts of torture and interrogation were used to find the student who did this but to no avail, so the headmaster went very low and offered a full scholarship to anyone who would sell their friends to the management. This tactic didn't work either.

Then a group of brave parents wrote in to complain that the 1st graders were turning into hunch backs due to the heavy rule book they have to carry to school everyday. This caused the headmaster to making another rule saying that primary school children don't have to bring their rulebooks to class anymore.

That was a great victory for us, even though we as senior students were turning into hunch backs, we had at least saved the innocent youngsters.

Ok on to the materialistic things. A lift was bought after a teacher died from a heart attack from climbing 96 steps to the sixth floor. First, only the teachers were allowed to use the lift as they were old and frail. Then a very convincing report from the Head Boy made the headmaster extend the use of the lift to the Prefects as well. This turned out to be chaos as the lift was always full of sweaty Prefects who cram into the elevator making the teachers wait for the return trip. The prefects even went as far as to grant free elevator rides to their best mates. Predictably, the teachers and management turned a blind eye.

All this happened while the poor normal students looked at the lift longingly and walked up the 96 steps while carrying their 10-ton bags.

Finally, we come to the teachers. They are the most respect demanding teachers you will ever meet. When they come to class, you have to get up and greet them with gusto, otherwise they won't sit down, and if they don't sit down you can't sit either.

They are mean, lean, spoon-feeding machines! Actually, they're quite fat but that's not the point. The teachers have a say in everything. If you want to be a Prefect, you have to suck up to them. There is one teacher in particular whom we fear with every fiber in our bodies. She is a woman who was once an International Examiner. She taught English Literature.

Now that's a boring subject, but you have to sit up straight and have to look like you're interested. She, according to our headmaster was a 'great asset' to our school. She hated everyone and everyone hated her. It was so irritating that just because she was an ex- International Examiner we should give her control of the school. That's just dumb. But that's how it went, if she liked you, you would be on your way to becoming head girl/boy.

People started to hate her so much that they got together with other teachers and plotted her immediate demise. Guess the outcome of that. It didn't work. She got to know the plot and that some teachers were in it too. She became more evil if that was possible. She used words as weapons to bring even full-grown men to their knees. One day she screamed at a senior boy for yawning in class. These were her words: "You despicable misfit. I would like to roll you down six flights of stairs straight to the principal's office. But I think detention would be better, don't you think?" Of course, detention was the worst punishment and she knew it.

From that day on, she was known by a simple yet effective name: Medusa.

That's not all…This school was so screwed up that the Managing director was married to the Principal. I guess they had a great time in the bedroom plotting our demise. Oops, we forgot to talk about the Principal. Well for one, she was a great actress. She had perfected the art of appearing caring, loving, nurturing etc when it was she, who came up with the more diabolical plans of student torture. Thus the managing director and the principal had the best good cop/bad cop routine known to Law Enforcement types everywhere.

Enough said. This is a school bent on making robot students. We did as they said and we got to graduate. If we crossed the line, we got kicked out without a leaving certificate and had to walk the streets as no other school wanted expelled students.

But all in all the education was excellent. Without sex, drugs and everything else to cloud our brains we had nothing to do but study. And study we did.

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This is a beginning of a very interesting, humorous and angst-filled story. We just wanted you to know about our school as the story that is to come after this, is based on our traumatic experiences.

However, the characters of Avatar will be the students and the teachers. Everyone is in character, yet they are normal people. No one can bend nor do they speak in 'Avatar language'. They are in every sense of the word normal.

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We hope you will enjoy this tale. Second Chapter will be on this Monday.

Feed back is always welcome.

Cheers.

La Femme & Lord Baal