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It was a lovely Saturday morning in Destiny City. Most of the students of Hillworth were enjoying their temporary reprieve from the crushing authoritative fist of the militant administration -- unless, of course, you were Parker Colvin Damhnait. If you were, then you were knee-deep in manure in one of the sparse flowerbeds of Hillworth Grammar School, trying to work off a debt from some crime that you didn't even commit and can't even remember what it was in the first place. Sigh. He would've complained, but it was simply a waste of breath. In his four years at this place, Parker had never once had a Saturday morning free. From his very first day, he had been punished for things he didn't do -- forced to toil in the sun. Despite the fast approach of autumn, the air boiled underneath the fresh rays, blotting out any relief the cool n** of breeze could have afforded. The only peace of mind he felt was at the thought of his graduation -- and of the colleges he hoped to attend.

It was nearing the end of the landscape duty shift, and the original group had been split off into sections. Parker, of course, had been assigned the dreaded task of laying down manure. He always was. Double sigh.

Marching off in the direction of another bag of sickly-stinking cow crap, Parker didn't bother to listen to who else had been assigned to his station. If he was ever assigned to the task with someone else, then they typically were given the role of smoothing out the manure with the hoe, while Parker was left to actually lift and empty the bags. His blue cotton tee shirt was drenched with sweat already, and while many of the other boys took theirs off, Parker kept his on. What little muscle definition he had was nothing compared to some of the other boys, and the dark-haired boy liked to avoid humiliation whenever possible.

Hoisting a bag over his head, Parker huffed and puffed, tossing it into the grass with a heaving breath. His hair was tied back in a low ponytail, but clumps of matted black strands clung to his neck like creeping vines. After an entire morning of working outside, he felt relieved to finally be on the last task, but it didn't make the job ahead of him any easier. Popping two fists at each side, he eyed the bag of manure for a moment, caught his breath, and then dropped to his knees to rip it open, all the while promising himself a trip to his favorite cafe in the park after all was said and done.

It was impossible to attend Hillworth Grammar School and not know who Howl Wickham was. Even if you didn't know his name, you knew the pretty boy or the hot chick or the teal-haired ladyboy. Parker had regarded him with the same attention and respect that he gave all his classmates, which was, of course, none at all. He didn't really have many assumptions about the boy -- other than believing that he was probably gay -- and was fairly indifferent to spending time with him at all. From the polished looks, Parker assumed that he might be a bit of a whiner. Sometimes, Parker got saddled with underclassmen who were stuck working their very first Saturday landscape shift. It typically ended with him simply doing all the work to avoid having to deal with the blabbering of an annoyed 14-year-old.

At Howl's approach, Parker paused for a moment, crouching beside the bag of manure. He picked up a small hand shovel and stabbed it a bit too enthusiastically into the sewn plastic bag. He sighed under his breath, chewing at the words in his mouth. When his own failed him, he popped out with a quote and said, "'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.'" He didn't say who it was, but the quote was rather famous -- one by Aristotle. Of course, when Parker said the words, sarcasm and derision dripped into the cracks of each syllable. "I am a professional at dealing with s**t," he added, mouth puckered and sweat streaming down his temples.

Despite the gloves, it was hard to avoid getting manure on his hands. They only reached to Parker's wrist and there was a hole in the left palm. Ignoring this, Parker dug his hands in, drawing out a large handful of manure. He dropped it in the flowerbed with a grunt, methodically repeating the process as he continued to speak with Howl. "I don't precisely enjoy manual labor, Howl. I'm not a pack horse." Even if I feel like it at times. It wasn't in Parker's nature to be particularly friendly, and Howl was no exception. Under the hot sun and the constant frustration of his Saturday-morning punishment, Parker could not summon an ounce of pleasantry -- even for a boy who appeared to be in his exact situation.

Parker could appreciate a nice, controlled personality. He believed that it showed strength of character, specifically in terms of the ability to hold one's tongue. He also could appreciate a hard worker. When Howl knelt into the dirt and manure beside him, Parker felt a bubble of pleasant surprise. He wasn't sure what he had expected from the teal-haired boy. It was something along the lines of a tiny speck of manure landing on Howl's wrist, his eyes going wide and lip trembling in horror, and then some kind of trumpeting of screaming and shrieking would accompany the boy as he sprinted off toward the horizon. Yep. Along those lines. So to see Howl handle the cow s**t as if he were making his bed... it was certainly a bit of a surprise.

At first, Parker said nothing, waiting for Howl's hands to clear the opening in the bag so that his own could dart inside. Each handful brought another wave of moist air wafting upward. When Howl spoke again, Parker felt a prickle of annoyance, but held it under his tongue. Perhaps Howl was not a terrible waste of air like most of humanity. Maybe. "They keep us down by forcing us into the role of the slave. We are dependent on them for food, shelter, and instruction. So they can treat us however they please. It's not like most of us have a family to scamper off to complain about it -- not like a Crystal Academy princess." Many of the boys of Hillworth had been sent to the school as a punishment, but just as many simply came from terrible backgrounds -- students like Parker. He sunk his hands into the manure once more, drizzling it around the fledgling flowers in a series of light thuds.

Another lull of silence pervaded the small space. Parker contemplated letting it remain, but something prompted him to continue their brief interlude, at least for the duration of the end of these chores. "What did you do to end up on landscape duty?" he asked, brushing one gloved hand on his thigh before going in for another handful. Most of the minor offenders were assigned trash duty, but Parker hadn't heard of Howl being a troublemaker at Hillworth (not that he was actively seeking out that information). And as a boy who was always in trouble, Parker was fairly familiar with the rap sheets of the real delinquents at Hillworth -- of which Parker's name could be found near the top of the list.

Any reservation that Howl might have had over Parker's vocalized thoughts went largely unnoticed by the dark-haired boy. His comments about why he was knee-deep in cow s**t on a Saturday morning, however, registered like two rocketing flares shot right in front of Parker's face. "Volunteered?" Parker said, voice low and incredulous. Was this kid a sadist? Was he trying to impress someone? Was he particularly fond of manure? It was impossible that he did this out of some kind of altruism, and Parker wanted to know just why. "What are you trying to get out of this -- forgiveness of your record?" Many Hillworth boys attempted to "atone" for their previous indigressions. Parker didn't waste his time. He couldn't exactly atone for having a dead mother and drug-addicted father. All the other issues he'd encountered since enrolling here, namely the punishment for all the crimes he didn't commit, seemed like an impossible thing to erase.

After a moment's pause, Parker resumed what he was doing with the manure. Conversation or not, he still wanted to be done with this before the mid-afternoon. Perhaps he'd even be able to go visit the downtown library. It had been several weeks since he'd been able to slip away, and a stack of books in his bedroom were in desperate need of return. His eyes flickered briefly to Howl's face before returning to the handful of manure he held.

As Parker reached for the next handful, he rubbed his thumb over a matted clump, smushing it into several smaller chunks, before tossing it into the flowerbed too. He noted Howl's light blush, but didn't say anything. He wasn't one to pry, and he was fairly certain there would be an uninteresting explanation behind it anyway. "They are always short on drones for exploitation," he said with a hard sigh. Leaning forward, Parker quickly moved one hand over the already laid manure, offering a far less meticulous version of what Howl was doing. "Perhaps Franz should of deigned to come do this work himself then, if he cares so much about the betterment of the school." It was true that Parker knew of Franz St. Germaine. He knew far more than he actually cared to know, in fact.

In Parker's opinion, Franz was merely suckling at the teat of the Hillworth Hellhound. Who would want to be the captain of this sinking ship? The staff was composed of lunatics and sociopaths who were more concerned with encouraging conformity than learning. The only notch in the blond-boy's favor was his The Hillworth Sound. Parker considered most of its musings pendantic and not well-supported enough, but as a fellow conspiracy blogger, he could appreciate what Franz was trying to do, trying being the operative word. Most of it was failed rambling, the kind of idiocy that Parker would never even think to put up on his blog. In his mind, The Hillworth Sound was the retarded second cousin of his blog, The Proletariat Provost. In fact, there had once been a rumor that Franz was the mind behind TheProlevost, and Parker nearly lost his s**t over it. Thankfully, it had faded back into oblivion after a month or so of heated circulation. Good.

Though Howl's voluntary participation in the work day did take some of the load of him, Parker did not thank him for it. Howl hadn't done it for him, after all, even if the consequences of his decision happened to be of benefit. Shoveling another load of manure, Parker stopped to note the movements of Howl's hands. "Do you do this a lot? You seem to have a knack for this, the manure-laying." To Parker's knowledge, Howl had never served on this particular assignment for landscaping duty -- at least not since Parker had been assigned to it.

There was no sign of annoyance in Parker as Howl defended Franz because, simply put, there was nothing annoying about it. Howl had just as much right to his opinion as Parker did, and since the boy certainly knew Franz quite a bit more, perhaps he was right. Perhaps. Dropping another handful of manure into the flowerbed, Parker lifted his pale eyes up for a moment to regard Howl and said, "He is attempting to move the school in a direction that appeases him. It is his design, and that does not necessarily mean that it is the best, regardless of good intentions. I'm sure he makes plenty of genuine effort toward achieving his personal goals." And that's exactly what it was: his personal goals. Parker was certain that whatever Franz did he did largely for himself. If it happened to benefit his peers, then that was good too. There was no hint of judgment or anger in the boy's words; he simply stated his viewpoint. If Howl really wanted to debate the reality of "selfless" pursuits, then Parker was not opposed to that either.

A mosquito landed on Parker's bare wrist, and he dropped his latest handful to swat at it. The thing bit him before he could crush it, and then it flew away moments before he made contact, leaving only the smear of cow manure across his olive-toned wrist. Wonderful. Parker made a displeased sound in the back of his throat, and then went back to work. Another handful of manure punctuated the space between the two boys, and Parker paused to wipe at the sweat that poured across his temples with the back of his forearm. Howl's compliment went unappreciated, and his embarrassment at all of this self-disclosure went ignored. Parker could care less about the things that Howl liked to do, or what that might say about him. He wasn't terribly set in gender roles, and the only groups that tended to get flamed by his total bias were Crystal Academy students and the rich and elite of society. Otherwise, he saw most people as normal meat machines chugging along through their days. And this number included Howl.

"You say 'institute' -- like an insane asylum? That's the most accurate reference to Hillworth I've heard yet." Parker felt like a round peg forced into a square hole at Hillworth Grammar School. It was no secret that he was miserable about having to attend there, or that he was miserable about most things in general. "Was it a garden like this?" he said, gesturing to the crumpled pale yellow flowers and low bushes. Nothing too lovely, all very cheap and easy to grow plants. It was a wonder Hillworth even bothered to have the gardens at all if they only saw fit to stock them with scrub plants.

Hm. Parker would have liked Howl better if he had meant institute in the way that he had assumed. Regardless of the correction, he preferred to consider that on an unconscious level Howl had meant precisely what he had said in the first place. The fact that he apologized was even more peculiar. Why should Howl say sorry for Parker's misunderstanding? In fact, why should anyone apologize at all? Words do nothing to correct a misstep once it has been made, no matter how much people would like to believe it does. "You are very polite for someone at Hillworth," he said, largely ignoring the comments on the garden. Flowers weren't of particular interest to Parker.

What was of interest, however, was that someone with good manners and a previous home life that included a personal garden was stuck at Hillworth too. Most of the boys were poor, orphaned, or otherwise unable to be with their parents, and the rest were shipped off to Hillworth for some grievance committed at another -- to use Howl's word -- institute. So what category did Howl fall under? "What exactly did you do to end up here?" he said, eyes narrowing nonagressively. "Burn down a building?" Was this another stab at Franz? Hm. It was unclear.

Parker rarely inquired as to the reasons that a particular student had been subjected to the terrible misfortune of attending Hillworth Grammar School. It welcomed too much self-disclosure, too much sharing, and it always came with the danger of someone redirecting the inquiry right back to him. Here, kneeling in cow s**t with Howl, he felt too interested and released the words before he could reel them back in. Howl wasn't just an anomaly at Hillworth physically; perhaps he was a bird of another color altogether. Just like Parker! Parker did not feel any comraderie brimming over the thought, but he would certainly hold a higher opinion of Howl if he deemed the teal-haired boy just as misplaced in this school as he felt certain he was. In the meantime, he would keep laying out the manure in the slowly-filling flowerbed.

Parker didn't need the metaphor explained, but he recognized why Howl did it. Of course, he was a tad insulted, but he only reflected it in the slight twitching of one brow. Most of the time, Parker purposely did not explain the quotes and metaphors that he used. And why should he? The degradation of language for the unintelligent masses was one of the reasons that society had sunk into the cesspool of filth that boiled and festered like the acne-riddled skin of a eleven year old sociopath with scabbed knees blotted red from years of bottom-feeding and teat-sucking, all the while the rich fat cats with their swollen bellies and grotesque -- wait, where was he going with this? Had Howl said something else?

Tuning back in to the conversation, Parker reminded himself not to touch at the sweaty hair clinging to his neck. He'd made that mistake before and ended up with a collar of manure. Leaning forward, he ran his hands over the uneven flowerbed, flattening the places where Howl's hands had missed. "You don't have to tell me," he said, ignoring the joke. It wasn't like Parker would tell him either. Well... at least not the truth.

And Howl had parents. Hm. Parents. Plural. Parents that cared enough about him to tell him to not disclose his reasons for attending Hillworth. His life must be so dreadful. The teen's mood quickly shifted from mild curiosity to 90-year-old curmudgeon who has just been told the store is out of Lowry's Seasoning Salt and prunes. Annoyance read across Parker's face, hanging mostly in his brow line, but he said nothing about it. Probably better to change the subject. "Have you thought about applying to Barren Pines?" he asked, veering the conversation in another direction. Just that week, Parker had sent in an application, but he wouldn't hear about it for a while. It seemed like a wonderful place -- free like Hillworth, but dedicated to learning! It had been around forever, hadn't it? Parker had scolded himself for never applying before the entire time he filled out the paperwork. He had taken the time to apply (and been rejected from) various other boarding schools across the country. How had he missed the one in Destiny City?

Chalking it up to the cruel misfortune that plagued his world, Parker was simply happy to have found Barren Pines before he graduated. Seriously, even spending part of his senior year out of this place would be a wonderful gift from above. Scooping up more manure, he quietly wondered how someone as reserved and polite as Howl could possibly manage to flourish at Hillworth. Parker felt certain that he was bound to go insane from it one day. With a quiet thud, he tossed the manure down, missing by an arm's length. It scattered out onto the sparse grass. Getting to his feet with a groan, he crossed to the other side of the flowerbed and slowly began to pick up the scattered pieces, moving them little by little to the proper place.


(( Let's just get a little bit of that metaplot juiciness squeezed right on in here... ))