Picture the room now, clad in educational posters and tacky carpet, white paint upon the walls, expansive windows betraying a vista of a forbidden car park, and students barricading themselves behind wooden tables as they filmed the slowly spinning Mr. Dense.

“I do believe I am about to vomit,” said Mr. Dense, going green.

Gunhilda crossed her arms. “You will do no such thing. I expect my teachers to conduct themselves professionally, even in emergencies.”

Mr. Dense shut up, because opening his mouth just wasn't worth the risk.

“This is the emergency services,” screeched Morris's phone. “What is the nature of your emergency?”

“Good question,” said Morris. “Class, what do you think? Is our present crisis ontological or epistemological in nature?”

The sheer amount of syllables caused half of the class to reflexively duck behind their folders.

“It's ontological,” bawled Violet, who had ducked into the corner and whose face was now covered in a mixture of snot and tears.

“Shut up, Violet,” said Morris.

Gunhilda yanked Morris to one side with her wrought-iron arm. “This isn't the time for theatrics, Morris. Do you think Mr. Dense would stop his class from leaving the building during a fire because he wanted to show them a chemical reaction?”

“No,” said Morris. “But Mr. Dense would stop off at the kitchenette.”

“Do you require police, firefighters, or ambulance?” said the phone.

“Police,” said Morris. “Because they solve mysteries.”

“Firefighters,” said Gunhilda. “Because they get people out of stuck places.”

“Ambulance,” said Mr. Dense, because he had just vomited over Gunhilda's shoes.

“Mr. Dense!” Gunhilda raised an arm to admonish him, but upon seeing him gag, quickly leapt to the side as he sprayed more stomach matter onto the carpet.

“Wheeeeeey,” chorused the students.

“Well?” barked the phone. “Which one is it?”

“Hell, send them all, thank you,” said Morris. “Shit is going down in a major way over here.”

“Language, Morris,” said Gunhilda.

Mr. Dense's pointy nose just narrowly avoided the vomit as he span. An unfortunate side effect of his inertia was that with every twist, his trousers were sliding a little bit further down his waist. The only thing keeping everybody from getting an eyeful of his My Little Pony boxers was his sizeable stomach.

“You're getting the police,” said the phone. “Because if this is a prank call--”

Morris hung up. A petite maths teacher crept into the room with Alfie Jr., wearing about a million cardigans while retaining a cleavage deep enough to persuade teenage boys to actually study maths. Morris resented her, both because she had a bigger fanclub, and because nobody was accusing her of being a paedophile.

Gunhilda's mouth contorted into the angriest smile ever seen on a woman. “Sapphire! I do hope you're going to prove more useful than these two gentlemen.”

“We can do anything if we put our minds to it and work as a team,” said Sapphire, fiddling with her daisy chain necklace.

“Um, yeah,” said Morris, envisioning a diorama where she ended up in the same spinning predicament as Mr. Dense while the students filmed her. It would end up on a bloody snuff site. “How about we wait until the police get here?”

“Oh, okay, but I had an idea.” Sapphire pouted and randomly squished her boobs together with her forearms.

“Go on, Sapphire,” said Gunhilda. “Teaching is after all a woman's job. Can't expect a man to get it right.”

“Sexual harassment!” spat Morris. “We'll see what human resources thinks about that.” Though, he wasn't about to argue with Gunhilda's muscles in such a confined space.

“Morris gets it right all the time,” said Violet, quivering.

“Alfie Jr.,” said Morris, “Would you kindly take Miss Violet to go and get herself cleaned up, and then maybe stop her from ever coming back again? Thanks.”

Alfie Jr. led the wailing Violet out the room, but not before he gave Sapphire a right ogling.

“So what we often do in maths is work back from the solution,” explained Sapphire, somewhat seductively. “So let's not even think about the problem. Let's just solve it.”

She picked another pen up from the desk and laid it exactly underneath the pen that had been suspended in mid air, bending over extra far for the benefit of the students and their cameras. The two pens began to glow, and then, with a ping, the one in the air disappeared. The pen on the floor burst into a wave of heat, crashing through the carpet as it melted. Debris rained upon the English class below. The teenagers, especially the ones that identified as male, erupted into applause.

Sapphire clapped once. “There we go, all sorted.”

“Excellent work, Sapphire,” said Gunhilda. “You see, Morris? It's not discrimination if it's just plain true.”

Morris felt the Nobel Prize crumbling between his fingers as Sapphire strutted away. Her daisy chain had disintegrated.

Mr. Dense's eyes widened to the size of jaffa cakes. “Is that, erm, is that the only way to get something to stop floating like that?”

Sapphire shrugged. “Well, if you're just trying to link Event A to Event B, then all you need to do is make Event B happen. Dunno what all that heat was about, though.”

“Fucking showoff,” muttered Morris. “I could've thought of that.”

“Right, it's just--” Mr Dense covered his eyes to save the bother of trying to not look down her top when his head was bumping against the ceiling. “How are you going to get another version of me to put on the floor? I don't want to explode!”

His trousers had very nearly cleared the peak of his substantial stomach. Morris sighed and tried to pull them up, but no matter what he did to try and move them, they kept on slipping down. Gunhilda stared at them, blushing but not looking away, transfixed by the bizarre nature of this strip-show.

Fortnite dabbed into the room and walked up to Gunhilda.

“Miss, um,” he squawked, “We tried to reach the nurse's office, but we can't get out any of the doors.”

*

“What do you mean you can’t get out of any doors? You went through this one alright didn’t you?”

“Yes miss, but um, this door wasn’t closed.”

Just as Gunhilda was thinking of a way to both scold Fortnite and come up with a solution, a loud cry emanated from the floor below. The non-spinning and non-floating teachers went to look down the hole created by the fallen pen. Mr Dense tried to catch a glimpse on his spin round that half of the classroom.

“Why! What in tarnation happened to my papers? THEY WEREN’T EVEN MARKED YET!”

The overworked English teacher was wailing at the sight of his destroyed classroom. The teachers on the floor above watched as he scrabbled around to find any surviving remains of his poetry brought to life display. Finally the man looked up at the ceiling.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!” he screamed before fainting on a pile of torn short story anthologies.

“Paul, no!” Sapphire shouted.

Gunhilda looked over to the carpark. The emergency services hadn’t arrived yet.

“Morris, please check that they’re sending an ambulance soon,” she said.

Morris tried to ignore the fact that Sapphire actually had an emotion besides pouting at boys and dialed a number he deemed appropriate. A voice on the other side asked him what he was wearing tonight so he changed tact and dialed the generic emergency number. This time he was greeted with a brusk voice that asked what was wrong since his number was already on record for an emergency two minutes ago.

“Uh,” he said, “Our floor has exploded and the English teacher fainted. Can we have an ambulance quickly?”

Morris wondered if he’d sounded too casual: nothing more was said and he heard the click that meant he’d been hung up on.

He looked at Gunhilda.

“Perhaps we should just evacuate the kids?” he suggested.

“We’re not kids!” shouted the kids with the least self-esteem, which was most of them.

“I don’t think that is of importance right now,” boomed Gunhilda. “You’re right Morris, let’s get them away from here. Sapphire, lead the way.”

The maths teacher waved the teenagers over, but she didn’t have to because they were ogling her chest. If she stepped further away they made up the distance.

But Fortnite was not interested in her chest in the slightest. He had his baseball cap as protection for sure, but he was still standing resolutely in the classroom’s doorway.

“We can’t evacuate, uh, miss,” he said, quivering at the eye contact he’d made with Sapphire. “The other doors won’t open.”

“Are you stupid?” asked Morris. “They’re pull doors, not push! Can you even read? No wonder you always fail the written exams!”

A tear formed in one of the boy’s eyes and he tried to wipe it away.

“No, s-sir… I pulled them, then I pushed them because I thought I had it wrong but they didn’t even wobble,” he said. “Please believe me.”

“Now, now, Morris, no need to make them cry,” said Gunhilda. “Why don’t you let the adults try, Tolliver.” If her life hadn’t depended on never getting a lawsuit, she would have patted him on the head or something.

“Go on Sapphire, I’m sure you know how to open a door.”

“Paul will be alright, won’t he?” asked Sapphire. “The ambulance will come?”

“I’m sure it will. Just get the little ones out of here.”

“Okay,” said Sapphire, and left the room with all 30 kids in tow.

Morris thought he heard Violet protesting in the hallway, but it could have been his imagination.

“Mr Dense, how are you feeling?” asked Gunhilda.

Mr Dense’s figure rotated slowly on its axis.

“Oh dear. I see your trousers didn’t make it either,” she commented as Rainbow Dash’s stretched face made itself visible. “Gracious.”

Morris found a blanket behind his desk for those evenings where he did an excessive amount of overtime, enough to match a university student, and placed it over the mass of flesh hanging in mid air. The blanket promptly fell off as Mr Dense rotated further, this time revealing Pinkie Pie to the world wearing a strapon. Morris wondered how on earth he’d been the one with the harassment scandals instead of this weirdo.

“Close the door, Gunhilda. Just in case one of them comes back.”

Gunhilda almost slammed the door into Sapphire’s face. The students she was leading whispered in the hallway while distracted with her rear.

“Why are you back?” asked Gunhilda.

“Well, that Fortnite kid was right. The doors won’t actually open.”

“Right. Well according to my handbook our only option is to have them evacuate via the windows. Good thing this is only the first floor.”

Sapphire frowned. “Does that mean we have to jump?”

“Do you see a ladder in here?”

“No…”

“Then your conclusion should be pretty much, yes. As a teacher you should have read the instruction for the safety procedure when exiting through windows, so I will expect you to be coaching each child as they make their way out. It’s probably best if you show them first and wait to catch them down below. You can do this much can’t you?”

Although she knew she could do this on a normal day, Sapphire knew that today’s choice to wear a tight pencil skirt would hamper their progress outside. Whichever way she tried to look at it, it ended in a group of students - some of whom she taught herself - seeing her underwear.

“Probably,” said Sapphire.

“It’s a yes or no question,” said Gunhilda. “Please don’t tell me you have never read your handbook.”

“Of course I have,” said Sapphire. “It’s just a bit-”

“A bit what?”

“I’m not wearing trousers,” Sapphire whimpered. She felt like she was about to cry. She wouldn’t get away with actually flashing her underwear.

“That’s allowed in our dress code, dear, it’s not a problem.”

Sapphire suppressed her tears. If Gunhilda didn’t realise or care, then maybe neither would anyone else. She’d just have to jump down quickly.

“Okay, Gunhilda. I’ll try.”

“There’s a good girl. Morris, stand over there with that blanket in front of Mr Dense. We can’t have them being distracted by rogue ponies while they’re jumping.”