X-Men Evolution: Rogue Evolution

Cat's Shadow 5.4

The next day at school was all the same boring nonsensical crap until Anna made it to her U.S. History class where it was loud boring, nonsensical, crap. McCoy's voice boomed and vibrated the air like the blast from a mortar, and the tosses of his little boxed raisin rewards from his 'factoids' soared through the air like cannon balls. She desperately wished she could fall asleep on her desk as she had in all her other classes, but the rebounding energy from McCoy and his room of worshipers made it completely impossible. So instead she had to sit there like a zombie, staring at the whiteboard while McCoy occasionally chicken-scratched fuzzy hieroglyphics into it. Her hazy stare was finally broken when she felt the whoosh of air from a paper getting slapped on her desk by a passerby. She blinked the crust out of her eyes, looked down at the stapled loose-leaf, and spotted a giant red 'F' staring back at her with the words 'Let's talk after class' written below in the same fat red ink.

The sharp clanging of the bell roused Anna further out of her stupor. She heard the squeal of chairs as the students around her made for the door, and McCoy shouting just over them as they all funneled out. Threading the straps of her bag over her shoulders, she made to follow the others when she heard -

"Miss Marie. Could you collect your test and join me for just a moment, please?"

Anna watched the part between the classroom door and its frame slowly shut then tilted her head back and sucked in a breath through her nose. She turned, threaded her thumbs through the straps of her bag, and ambled towards McCoy's desk.

"Um, your test?"

She stopped, blinked, looked back at her desktop, and spotted the paper. She snapped it up - nearly ripping a page - and stood before McCoy's modest desk. "Yeah?"

He gestured at one of the scattered chairs behind her. "Why don't you grab a seat."

She tilted her head back again, made a show of grabbing one of the spindly metal chairs, and dragged it to the side of his desk where she plopped down. "Yeah?" She repeated with an even more exhausted dismissiveness.

McCoy turned his swivel chair in her direction and folded one leg neatly over the other. His red-striped polo shirt was buttoned all the way to the top where his powerful collarbone strained at the fabric. "Anna... I'm concerned about your grades in this class. To be honest, it seems like you're not even trying. You don't do the homework, you leave tests and quizzes half-finished -" He nodded toward her paper. "For your multiple choice test, you selected the letters 'A-C-D-C' in repeating order, and that's a test you managed to complete."

Anna sniffed. "I heard somewhere that if you do that, you'll get more answers right than wrong."

McCoy snickered. "Well, at least there's more to it than you just telling me how much you like band from the 70s." He uncrossed his legs and rested his elbows on his knees. "Anna, like it or not, you need to pass this course to graduate. If you fail my class, you'll only have to take it again through the online curriculum. And believe me, if you think the way I teach is boring, that stuff is way more dry." He held his hands together. "So tell me, what's going on, Anna? How can I help you with this class?"

She shook her head gently back and forth. "I don't have time for school. Listen, I've got stuff going on that is way more important than what a bunch of dead white guys did a million years ago. And the thing is, even if I were to tell you what that stuff was, I doubt you'd even believe me."

"You can try me."

Something tingled from the base of Anna's skull and down her spine. For just a fraction of a second, she was back with Logan all those many weeks ago at the flea-infested motel her mothers had her stowed away at. She was watching Logan work on the Gremlin when he revealed to her the truth behind a secret world she never knew existed. She felt as if the air was meeting her lungs for the first time since entering that classroom. Her eyes narrowed. "What did you say?"