C'est La Vie

Antiques for Sale

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers or X-Men.

Chapter One – Antiques for Sale

'Could the clock go any slower?' A young girl with long, wavy, red hair thought as her bright golden eyes watched the second hand of the clock slowly tick along. Her name was Corona Summers and she was currently in the last stretch of her eleventh-grade history class. There were only a few minutes left in class but it seemed the teacher wished to continue on with the genealogy presentations that he had assigned to the class over a month ago. If she were being perfectly honest, Corona did not enjoy the project one bit, just like every other teenager in her class. However, she disliked it, not because she had to do it or that it was hard, but because there was no one she found all that interesting in her gene pool except for a few. Of course, of those few that Corona did find interesting, most of them would only reveal things about herself that she needed to keep quiet about. Thankfully, she had at least one "normal" person in her family tree she could talk about without raising any unwanted questions.

"Miss Summers, time is not going to go any faster, no matter how much you stare at that clock," the teacher said, snapping the girl out of her daze. Snickers could be heard from around the room, much to her embarrassment. The whispers she heard did not help either.

A small blush dusted her smooth, pale cheeks as she gave a sheepish smile to the teacher. "Of course, Mr. Hosney," she replied though she disagreed with the man wholeheartedly.

Mr. Hosney shook his head with a sigh before calling up the next person to do their report. "Okay, Mr. Witwicky, you're up." A boy with short brown hair and dark eyes stood up from two seats away from her and made his way to the front of the class with his backpack and papers. Corona couldn't say that she and her cousin Sam Witwicky were the best of friends or anything but in the time since she moved in with her aunt's family over a year prior, the two had grown rather close. Even if it did take him a while to get used to her...uniqueness.

"Sorry," Sam apologized as he stumbled to the front and began to dump everything he was carrying with him onto the table in front of him. "I have a lot of stuff." Once he got his belonging rearranged, he started to talk once more. "For my genealogy report," he began before he was cut off by a yellow rubber band hitting him in the neck. Corona winced slightly as a shred of guilt passed through her. She could have easily stopped the offending piece of material before it hit the poor boy but that could have – would have - put her in a bad position. Especially since there were several in her school who were less than fond of her kind. Thankfully, she and Sam had discussed this before and he understood her position as best he could. Though it didn't stop the guilt and the slight self-loathing she sometimes felt.

"Who did...Who did that?" the teacher huffed in annoyance at the immaturity of the adolescents gathered in his classroom. "People! Responsibility!" Corona quirked an eyebrow at the teacher's statement. 'Seriously? That's all he has to say? Responsibility?' Corona glanced over at her cousin with a curious and worried gaze. 'Are you alright?'

To his credit, Sam didn't react how most people do when they suddenly hear another voice in their head as rubbed his neck for a few seconds where the rubber band had hit. Sam simply glanced up to meet her gaze and gave a slight smile before once again trying to start his presentation. Corona gave a smile of her own as she casually propped her head into the palm of her hand as she listened to her cousin begin to talk about his paternal great-great-grandfather. "Okay...Um....So for my family genealogy report, I decided to do it on my great-great-grandfather, who was a famous man, Captain Archibald Witwicky. Very famous explorer," Sam reached out to grab a map that he had brought with him. "In fact, he was one of the first to explore the Arctic Circle, which is a big deal. In 1897, he took 41 brave sailors straight into the Arctic Shelf. So that's the story, right?" Sam folds the map and places it to the side before moving to show some of the items he had previously dumped out onto the table before him. "And here we have some of the basic instruments and tools used by 19th-century seamen." The class laughed at the last word in Sam's sentence. The teacher said nothing though he threw up a small stop sign in an attempt to quiet the students. Sam, however, was not deterred as he continued speaking. 'Don't do it, Sam,' Corona warned the boy, knowing exactly what he was about to do. "This here is a quadrant, which you can get for eighty bucks. It's all for sale, by the way." 'And you did it,' she huffed as Sam held up another item. 'Shut up', came his quick reply while he carried on with attempting to auction off the old navigation equipment. "Like the, uh, sextant here. Fifty dollars for this, which is a bargain." Next, Sam held up a pair of glasses that appeared to have the lenses cracked. "These are pretty cool. These are my grandfather's glasses. I haven't quite gotten them appraised yet, but they've seen many cool things."