Hashim Kamal was bored.
Every class there was something new to do. Toon finished any assignment within minutes, Toon worked on projects that were far outside of the class's normal scope, Toon answered questions without even raising his head, Xavier took over on walks through the halls, walking half a foot above the ground as he moved among the students, making their already intimidating height even more imposing, Regus guided their growing fanbase, each day creeping closer to fanatics, or Jake spent the nights exercising their body and carefully curating select pathways in their brain to help them share memories more effectively.
Yet still, Hashim was bored. Even the internal fights with Xavier began to seem monotonous, lacking excitement. He didn't face another actual assessment, and any upperclassmen stayed out of his way. That was probably a good thing. He didn't have the patience for them.
Hashim just wanted to be doing something. Regus's plans were deliberately mysterious and vague to the rest of them, and they were mostly unable to interact with him anyway. Him being able to invoke Toon on that first day was apparently some sort of miracle. Or at least, it was rare. Hashim, Xavier, Jake, Toon, and probably Corpse, though he hardly talked at all anyway, vanished when Regus or Anguis or Gensa took over. Not that Gensa took over often.
Each of the three fusions was a carefully created amalgamation of certain traits designed to perform different functions in the perfect corporation. Regus the head, Gensa the analyst and, Anguis the public relations officer.
But without them, when it was just the base five, it was boring.
Miscellaneous Experiences didn't have anything incredibly interesting. Most of it was some skill or other. They'd done javelin throwing, letter writing, two separate methods of persuasion, and basic pick-pocketing. Regus and the other fusions were never up at that point, so Jake and Hashim managed them. It was the most stressful part of their day for Hashim. But it wasn't interesting. It was the same stress over and over again, and nothing ever came of it.
Inspired Logistics was rather simple. Regus basically embodied the ideal of the pinnacle of that class, especially with Gensa in his ear, though Gensa's mind only about awoke halfway through it. The box in the center of the room was some sort of device that could be made to display certain pre-made images through the use of the Professor's ability, which had been returned to the small man when Anguis had "dropped" the orb down his neck, where it dissolved instantly upon contact with his skin. His name was Professor Scrub.
Botany was a much quieter affair. Miss Rose looked at them repeatedly, but it was never more than a quick flick when she was feeling self-conscious. Her frankly incredible demonstrations were as experimental as they were impressive to people who didn't have Toon in their ear telling them exactly how she had done it with Xavier's increasingly large repertoire of plant-based knowledge, so nearly a third of the demonstrations didn't at all do what she had thought that they would. And for those, Toon was always able to tell them exactly what had went wrong and why.
This was exactly the reason why Regus always made sure that they never failed at anything. Any crack in the armor was a flaw. But when Miss Rose messed up, it just made the students feel like they could relate to her. Xavier said that from what he had observed, along with Corpse's cryptic explanations of some near-mythical plants, after the first couple of days the students knew about as many of the facts about plants as she did (if they could remember them, that was). She spent her time exploring botany with the students rather than just explaining it to them. The curriculum always changed, so though it was technically a first-year level class, many more senior students had been in it every year they had been at the Academy so far.
The first field session he had was better than Botany because he often came out, but he rarely did much more than cede control to Regus. He didn't want all of the attention that came to them during that class. It was far too much.
But what they did...
Well, it was a bit more interesting.