For Want of Change

C4: A Break

Rilen sighed as he cracked as many of the joints as he could before he got to class. It was a test day so he moved down the halls to his locker to put his stuff away before moving to his first-period class. The class gave him weird looks as he walked in, but they did that every time he showed up on a test day so he just left it alone. He made it to his seat and plopped down, laying his head down as he went. He'd been up for three days dealing with the rouge problem, and that had only been the ones from this week. He had been on this assignment for a month now and the Crimson Pack had so understated their problem that Rilen had to bring in his partner and second in command, Lexand, codename Moonshine. Rilen seriously wondered why no one else had reported a problem if CP, who were kind of the leaders of the Tetrad but not really, are dealing with this many rouges. He got why none of them were messing with his pack, as they had the highest military power in the Tetrad, and the most adept stealth units, it was why they were known as the Left Hand of the Tetrad. He also kind of understood why they weren't going full-throttle on the Faith Pack, as they were the Right Hand, but the Harlend Pack were pretty low on warriors, as they were kind of the brains of the Tetrad, the control where the other two were the power. Attacking the Crimson first wouldn't really help them if they were united as they all thought, and if this really was their plan, it should be pretty easy to get rid of them.

" Mr. Morse! Please refrain from coming to my class every once in a blue moon only to go to sleep, we have things to do and tests to complete!"

Rilen sat up and stretched out some more before grabbing one of the test packets and handing the stack back as he was supposed to. The test started and Rilen took his time going over them one by one, answering to the best of his abilities. Rilen was by no means a genius. He was barely passing science and had little hope of passing that test later today, he was terrible at algebra, the test he was taking now, and only knew he would pass this test because Lex had helped him study, and Lex was a great teacher. He was only passing french because Merlin took it upon himself to tutor his friends in his first language so he'd have someone other than his father to talk to. History was his best subject, and he really didn't study for that class, he was just a history nerd. ELA was his second-best subject so he wasn't too worried about that test either. His electives weren't doing tests until next week so he didn't have to worry about them today and could go home early. With his schedule in order and his thoughts emptied he began to do his work.

Once the bell rung to signal the end of class, Rilen sighed as he stretched and considered ditching to switch shifts with the DEU that was currently handling the border patrol while his team finished what they needed to for the day. Sadly he would have to report to Alpha if he had to do that so decided to forgo that plan. He was still a little upset about the extra work he had to do in order to accommodate for the influx of rouges.

School trudged on at its normal snail's pace, making him restless and anxious. After he had accepted his position in their packs military he had developed a bad habit of getting anxious when he was out of the field for too long, it was worse when he was doing something he knew he didn't need to be doing. He could tolerate it when he was out with his friends, relationships were important after all, but it was terrible when he was at school. It was one of the reasons he had stopped coming to school. He only came to school about twice a week, using it as stealth training to give himself the illusion of doing something useful, almost every other day though he picked up Sophia and dropped her off before heading into the woods to do some actual training. Though nowadays he used it to get in some extra rouge hunting. He could still leave though, so he texted Sophia that she would have to catch a ride home with her brother today unless she wanted to ditch with him. She declined and wished him a good day so he hoisted his back pack up onto his shoulders before starting off down the hall and out to the parking lot.