StV: Student Discipline

Sarah hadn't come to break up a fight, but apparently this particular Friday morning had other ideas; the crashing, smashing sounds were unmistakable. The students had backed away from the confrontation, and one of them -- Chance -- nodded as she passed. "It's okay, Ms. Delacorte. Sphere's got 'em contained."

She nodded an acknowledgment but continued forward. Sphere -- whose real name was Henry Ritter -- would keep the fighting separate from the rest of the students, but she still needed to break it up. "Who is it?" she asked, touching another student on the shoulder. 

This one was Jacques Darrieux -- Star -- who frowned as he stepped aside. "Titan finally managed to insult Catapult, so now she's playing pinball with him while he's playing Whack-A-Mole with her."

That was going to be a problem. Titan was inhumanly strong and resistant to damage. Catapult wasn't, but her ability to control momentum and her skill at using it put them on a pretty level playing field. Sarah sighed. Likely she'd have students watching the video of this fight for some of her classes later on, but right now she needed to put a stop to it. Which was a problem, since she wasn't nearly strong enough to lay Titan out, and she couldn't talk Catapult down until the idiot quit swinging at her.

I shouldn't think of my student as an idiot, Sarah reminded herself. Even when he gets into a fight like this.

She reached the edge of the sphere just in time to see Titan move in for another punch at Catapult, who met it with a counter-punch that shuddered the sphere a couple of feet back behind her. Titan's impact on the far side immediately shuddered it forward again, and the floor underneath them dropped by a full foot as the damage tore up the floor, ceiling, and likely some load-bearing walls on the next floor down. 

"Sphere!" she shouted, looking around until she found Henry looking back at her. 

Drop it? he signed. 

She signed back. Drop it now.

The invisible sphere surrounding the two combatants disappeared, and the floor gave up and collapsed in on itself, taking both of them down with it. Damn it. Sarah leapt into the pit, landed on Titan's head with both feet, and kicked off again as Catapult swept up a barrage of debris and began pelting the larger student with it. "Knock it off!" 

Catapult took three steps back, then ceased her assault. Titan was still on his feet, but he was swaying and looked like he was about to collapse. On the edge of the cafeteria floor above, the new boy was watching raptly. 

She'd half-expected to find him at the middle of this, but no. He was just... studying it. She turned her attention back to the students who'd been fighting. "James, Paula, both of you sit down now." She didn't usually pull out her Teacher Voice, the one she'd perfected on unruly second-graders in an earlier job that now seemed like another life. This time, though, it did the trick perfectly: they both sat, and suddenly the fight was over. "All right," she said slowly. "Somebody explain to me why there's a hole in the cafeteria floor."