Welcome to Gaia! ::

Ronan's eyes widened a little as Atomica stomped over, coughing as he choked a little on a hastily swallowed meatball.

*hack hack cough* "uh... Atomica.." Did she have any volume that wasn't ear shattering? He winced and tried to mop spilled soup off his text book.

"I uh.. feelings?" He looked baffled, then shook his head, he never understood most of what the robotic ghoul was on about. He decided she was more than likely suffering some sort of glitch again, but when did she ever function reliably?

She was right though, he was wasting time eating when important presentations loomed.

"You are correct, of course. We should go over our notes."

He wasn't certain he could trust this robot ghoul not to go off on an irrelevant tangent or otherwise sabotage his chance at a decent grade. But perhaps a little last minute preparation could stem the worst of the ghoul's malfunctioning madness.

Besides, Ronan found he no longer had much appetite.

"Of course!" Atomica agreed with Ronan gravely. It was worse than she had suspected. He was practically her willing love slave, so sad! Atomica felt deep sympathy for his lovestruck affliction, but she simply HAD to keep him focused on their project. As the two of them stepped into the classroom early, she rattled off the calculations they'd put together for their energy project. Hydro propulsion was a very exacting science, and any miscalculation would result in a lot of water all over the floor. And in Ronan's current, utterly lovestruck state, Atomica knew everything relied on her to keep their project working swimmingly.

"HPMC squared minus the trajectory, T, multiplied by the current, C, divided by the resistance of the motor engine equals our energy input. Did you remember to reposition the rudders on our tank's motor?" Atomica asked Ronan, tentatively. She was certain he hadn't...probably too busy scribbling romantic fangfiction of the two of them in the margins of his notebooks.

Darn her mystique and allure!

"Absotively posilutely!" Glen proceeded to help Rory extract his half of the project while his own floated in the air behind him in a briefcase (which if you knew Glen, you'd know had been magically razzle dazzle'd so it'd be larger on the inside than the outside.

Glen then kicked his skateboard up under his arm and matched his 'cuz' stride for stride.

"Kai's pop gave me the idea about combining Mad Science with sorcery! It's what I plan to do after school! We have our engine finished, now all we need to do is hook it up to the 'energy source'. And to do that... we just hafta step through that portal I ripped open in the Mad Science classroom!"

Glen cast Rory a glance and shrugged, "I mean, it's been open for over a year! It was my mid-term project last year so something hasta be powering it!"

Glen leaned over at the desk and whispered to his cousin, "Psst! Rory! Do you think if we summoned Hagetha she'd have to give us the answers?"

He waited for his cousin's reaction then smiled, "KIDDING!"

'Oy!" Mr. Hack bellowed and Glen quickly averted his gaze and got on with the written test!

Nero hummed to himself as he tuned the strings on his violin. Advanced Boosic Theory was the one mid-term he was actually looking forward too. His project was a practical demonstration of harmonic synthesis by combining two seemingly disparate pieces, neither of which were originally written for the violin. If he'd stop to think about it, he might have drawn a link between his new ability to juggle multiple pieces of music as once and his knuckling down on complex math.

Since he was still trying to work out the last kink in merging Unchained Melodie with Smells Like Teen Spirits, he wasn't thinking about anything except doing good by the Bite-eous Brothers. If he got an A he would upload this to BooTube.

"Carry the flat and turn the C into an A, I can multiply the sound by hitting these two strings..." he muttered to himself.

BooTube was Nero's latest obsession. He'd started setting up a camera in the studio when he and Bony G started freestyling warm ups and the response was positive. His last video went viral around Little Zombie Town, he just needed to translate that to un-undead views.

Maybe he would take the camera along on the bro'ad trip, to capture some of the truly epic action.

"TIME'S UP! PENCILS DOWN!"

Atomica was jolted out of Rest Mode by Mr. Hack cackling at the students to finish up their tests. She, of course, had been the first one in the class to finish. Outputting data onto a test was mere calculator play to Atomica. Barring any bad data input or software glitch, she always aced written hexams.

She only hoped that poor Ronan, distracted by her loveliness as he was, managed to muddle through the test all right. It had to be incredibly difficult sitting next to such an atomic age wonder as herself, basking in her dazzling beauty while trying to concentrate on chemical formulas.

Atomica glanced one LED-illuminated eye over at Ronan. He looked about the same as always; glum, grouchy, possibly slightly hungry. SO good at masking the tumultuous feelings no doubt writhing inside of him! Atomica gave him a dazzling, reassuring grin as his reward for making it through the hexam.

"Not much longer now!" She reassured him. "Soon, everyone will see our brilliant project! I wouldn't be surprised if they all just give up and accept Fs after seeing ours! In fact, I think we should volunteer to present first!"

"Servo and Aalto, you're first on the chopping block!" Mr. Hack bellowed as the two of them hauled their project down to the floor and set it up in front of his desk. "And remember - PRESENTATION COUNTS!"

Mr. Hack seated himself in the first row of the students, a wicked gleam in his eyes and his pen at the ready to score their project. Atomica glanced over at Ronan. He didn't look excited, or happy, or even head-over-heels in love with her at this exact moment. He looked scared and possibly even a little sick.

Atomica made a buzzing sound that was the equivalent of her clearing her throat. Ronan was supposed to start their presentation, but instead he just sort of stood there, like a seal that had beached itself with no idea how to get back into the ocean.

Mr. Hack raised one eyebrow, and then started scribbling on his notepad.

"ENERGY!" Atomica shouted, making everyone in the classroom jump. What else could she do?! "Everything needs it! Robots need it! iCoffins need it! Even meat creatures need energy, even if the way they process it is extremely inefficient and leaves behind all kinds of nasty waste."

There was a long pause. Atomica continued.

"Finding new sources of energy is important for all of monster-kind, mechanical and meat alike. And so, with that in mind, Ronan and I decided to put our cranial cases together and find a way to generate energy using my mechanical know-how and Ronan's understanding of water currents to create - "

Atomica reached over and pulled the cloth off of their invention.

"This! The Hydrowave-Inducement-Motor-Atomic-Converter! Or, HIMAC for short."

The large water tank featured a fiendish-looking metallic device floating in the middle of it, with tentacle-like rotors floating lazily in the water. Two sensors glowed from the center, giving it the impression of being a strange, stubby metallic octopus.

Some of the students started buzzing over the almost cute-looking device. Mr. Hack, however, simply sat there stone-faced with his arms crossed. Atomica looked at Ronan to see if he'd loosened up at all. She'd just done all of his part of the grimtroduction.

Ronan gaped a little, opening and closing his mouth a few times as words failed to come. He looked a little like a landed fish gasping for air.
Moments ticked by, Automica nudged him a little.

"Yes so uh.." He shook his head, trying hard to fight the stage fright as he began to babble about what the machine actually DID and how. He'd decided if he stared at a spot just a little before his own feet, he could just about get through this.
Stumbling a little over his words, he moved to the blackboard and drew a crude but clear diagram to illustrate the device, along with a string of equations he then proceeded to explain in a manner few of the students seemed to follow.

"Uh... " He caught a glimpse of Automica, arms folded, foot tapping, and hastily added.
"So in layman's terms... the rotors churn the water, which in turn creates current... that current turns these wheels here, which generate electricity, which is stored in the battery compartment here." He pointed to each item.
"A small fraction of that energy can then be recycled to start the process again, but the resultant energy gain outweighs the energy loss." Another equation. "so effectively, we have a perpetual generator."

He risked another glance at Automica, her expression was difficult to read.

"We um... should turn it on yes?"

Now they had to hope it all worked as it should. The theory was sound, but they'd had little chance to really bug test the device itself.