Diary of a Shrimpy Kid

Chapter 3: Reluctant Rumble

Chad left Home Ec class in a better mood than he had been in the morning when he first arrived at Harbored High. He thought back on how his first day of school had gone so far. He had successfully finished his first class, impressing his teacher and earning an invitation to the culinary club. He had also made a friend, Goldie...and accidentally scalped said friend, but nonetheless they had a friendship pact. His dream was coming true. He had also met a girl. Shellby. Her name turned over in his little shrimp mind. Shellby. Shellby. Shellby.

He walked into the cafeteria, his eyes swiveling as he scanned the crowded room for her. He saw no sign of her, not her blonde hair, not her long, muscular legs, not her shimmering eyes, nothing. He sighed quietly and looked around for Goldie instead. He found him sitting at a table near the back windows.

"Hey, Shrimpy," Goldie said, gesturing for Chad to take a seat at the table bench opposite him.

"Hey, baldie," Chad said, smirking.

Goldie rolled his eyes but couldn't hold back his laughter, "You got me there, but you also got me there if you get my drift." They both laughed and Goldie went in for a fist bump, but Chad pulled back, afraid of the power coursing through his dactyl clubs, the appendages that gave him his powerful punches. He looked down at them, a feeling of shame pulling him down like a riptide. "Learn how to control those things, freak!" A remembered voice was screaming at him.

"Chad?" Goldie's voice swam to the forefront of his mind, pulling him back to the shore of reality.

He was about to respond to Goldie's worried look before he felt a presence behind him. Goldie had shifted his glance to just behind Chad's shoulder, a look of fear glossing his features. Chad turned his eyes to see what, or who, had so quickly changed Goldie's usually carefree, happy demeanor into a quiet, frozen shell. He saw a disgruntled looking marlin fish standing upright on his two back fins.

Marvin the Marlin was a bully, plain and simple. Standing four feet long, his nose reached skyward in a perpetual snooty snarl, and he was absolutely certain that he was the next best thing since sliced bread. He came from money, and was more than a little disdainful toward the people he considered "beneath" him as a result. He didn't regard anyone in the pathetic school he was forced to attend as a friend, and tended to resort to violence to intimidate the people who served as his underlings. Unfortunately, his supposed radiance was constantly being undermined by the fact that no one could get his name right.

Chad gave Marlin the Marvin a single, unimpressed glance then turned away. He was an unoriginal, unimportant, insubstantial, insecure, cliché bully and Chad was hungry--so he left Mervin the Merlin to his marlin-ing. Or that is what Chad wished would've happened as, before his eyes had completely averted, Mercy McDuck shot toward him with an expression implying less than friendly intent.

"You! Shrimp!" Memphis called. "You wanna fight?!"

"I want food," Chad replied, trying again to retreat.

"Oh, you think you're cute? Do you know who I am? I'm Marvin the Marlin, punk" Murky the Malevolent stomped over. He stopped in Chad's path. Several nearby students had turned their attention to them.

"Listen," Chad said, "One of us really doesn't want to fight."

The threat went completely over Murphy the Melodramatic's head. "You scared, huh?" he boasted. If he had arms to flex, Chad was sure he would've flexed them.

Chad gestured to his dactyl clubs. "The only thing I'm scared for is the future well-being of your structural integrity." Mother's Milk was taken aback by Chad's confidence. In an effort to display his raw male power, he took a tray full of food from a short, nerdy kid's hands and sliced it in half with his sword nose.