Categories > Cartoons > X-Men: Evolution > That Stupid School Project

First Impressions - September 2nd

by IWCT 2 reviews

Powerless AU. A new school year is starting, and Marie Alder already has to worry about the end of term English project. Worse, she has to worry about it with an insane Australian exchange student ...

Category: X-Men: Evolution - Rating: PG-13 - Genres: Angst, Drama, Humor - Characters: Avalanche, Blob, Colossus, Cyclops, Jean, Mr. Sinister, Mystique, Nightcrawler, Professor Xavier, Quicksilver, Rogue, Shadowcat, Spyke, Storm, Toad, Wolverine - Warnings: [!!] [?] - Published: 2006-05-21 - Updated: 2006-05-21 - 1463 words

0Unrated
Disclaimer: Although this is one of my most popular works on FF.N I still don't own X-men: Evolution. Thanks to Kids WB and Marvel for not suing me.

Warning: Although this is over 23 chapters in length and counting, I have not finished it, and I seem to have aquired writter's block for this particular work. Reviews tend to unshake me from the grip of writter's block, and flames are always good for a laugh, so I invite one and all to drop me a line.

Also, thanks to Goldylokz on FF.N for saying that she wanted me to continue with this after nearly a year of not updating on my part. Although my FF.N account is no longer accessible on my computer (it's really old and crashes when pop ups like those found on FF.N appear) I am going to republish it here.

Without further ado let the story commence.



Year of (ex)Change-- also entitled: Stupid School Project
by The Rogue and John Allerdyce


The sky was a clear and uncompromising blue. Light wisps of clouds darted across it. There was a cool, crisp smell to the air. The sound of laughing children came from behind the high walls of the local elementary school.

Cars filled the parking lot of the high school. It was eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning in September. In this sleepy little town just off Long Island Sound this meant that everyone was getting to work, going to school, and wishing that it was yesterday because they hadn't gotten enough rest on Labor Day.

Mayor Kelly sat in his office reading reports and memos. Principal Darkholme was looking out the window at the mass of students ready to start another fun filled school day after their three day week-end. Professor Xavier was sifting through the mountains of applications to his private school. In a bar somewhere on the outskirts of town a man known only as Logan was happily drinking away his liver. In front of the imposing doors of Bayville High School everyone was quickly separating into cliques.

A group that sat in the shadow of the steps turned on a boom box and listened with depressed looks in their faces as heavy metal flooded over them. They sneered at the group of jocks that walked past laughing about try-outs.

The group of cheerleaders that floated by stopped to look at the overly made up and darkly outfitted group. One of the perky girls whispered something to her friends. The girls broke out into a simultaneous giggle. They moved on to catch up with the jocks, stopping along the way to pose for a yearbook photographer.

Several skateboarders weaved through the crowds, laughing with each other. They started an impromptu contest. The winner was decided when one of the boarders grinded down the hand rail for the school steps and stole a soccer star's orange juice.

The star just rolled her eyes and continued her conversation with her teammates. Several of the football players walked up and joined in the joke that the soccer player was telling about her victory at last night's unofficial game with Center Island's high school.

No one noticed the glare that they were getting from the crowd that was interested in cars. The glares were being divided evenly between Bayville's quarter back and the Russian exchange student, who was chatting up the perky idol of the computer classes. The auto body division of the high school was divided on who was prettier, Katherine Pryde, amateur hacker, or Jean Grey, soccer super star.

One of the members of the track team jogged past Katherine and quickly tweaked her pony tail, staying only long enough on the scene for the computer genius to recognize him. She glared at him and her tall and chunky side of Russian growled deep in his throat. The track member gave an unrepentant smirk, and with a cocky wave he vanished into the crowd.

He ran past the Goths only stopping long enough to ask the obvious leader of the outcast group what color she was going to be dying her hair today. She snarled at him, flipped her white dyed bangs out of her face, and turned the heavy metal up louder.

Her glare magnified itself by three hundred and focused on the black haired boy chatting with an orange haired boy who was writing something down in a notebook. Some people get everything handed to them on a silver platter. The black haired boy was one of them. He had it all, a loving mother, friends who weren't constantly waiting for him to show a sign of weakness, and good grades.

Him and Jean Grey. Two of the perfect little students at Xavier's Academy for Gifted Students. It was basically a place for the geek crowd to hang out. They went to school with the other mortals, but they got a step up on the academic ladder. They could get into any programs they wanted. They were all rich bastards.

She knew that this guy was the principal's own son and she couldn't do anything to him without receiving a monumental detention. Not to mention the flak she'd get from her adoptive mother, Irene, about how she should treat her little brother with respect.

"Hey, sheila, couldn't help noticing that you were staring at us. Well, glaring at us. Hopefully more at me than my little buddy, who, hey where'd he run off to?" the guy with the notebook who the raven haired boy had been talking to looked around wildly. He had a thick Australian accent and the Goth girl remembered she had heard something about some guy from Sydney coming to Bayville on an exchange program. He was supposedly staying with the Xavier prodigies.

"Buzz off, crocodile hunter. We don' lahk yahr kind ovah here," she sneered.

"Hey, not my problem skunk head, you were the one who was staring," he was still writing stuff down in his note book while looking around for his vanished companion. The Goths didn't bother to tell him that it was doubtful that any of Xavier's people would come within ten yards of one of them. This stranger would learn soon enough.

The bell rung sharply and everyone made their way into the school building. They tried to stay in their cliques, but classes forced them together.

The Goth leader noticed that the Australian was following her into class. Damn.

She looked at the cards on all of the desks. Her English teacher believed in assigned seats and had arranged them so that they were in alphabetical order by last name. Alder, Alder, where was Alder? She had found Allerdyce, funny name and not one that she knew. Ah, here was Alder, Marie, right in front of Allerdyce, St. John.

She slid into her seat and prepared to be bored. This teacher believed in Shakespeare, among other things. He also was interested in end of year creative projects. Those Marie didn't mind so much, she like to get her feelings down on paper, but she didn't like sharing them with the class.

An eraser tapped her in the back of her neck and she swung around to glare at the grinning visage of Allerdyce, St. John. Oh shit, not that stupid Australian. That was it, fate was conspiring against her.

Jonathan leaned over her shoulder and read her card before she had time to stop him.

"So, you're a Marie. Funny, I thought that a sheila like you would have a name with more X's and Z's than that. You know something like Xena, or Zelda."

"Eat shit an' dyah."

Marie stared straight ahead until the English teacher, Mr. McCoy, came in. The guy was the teaching equivalent to a Jack of all trades, he taught a bit of history, English, Latin, chemistry, and subbed for the gym teachers.

He started off with quoting Shakespeare, everything was normal. They spent the rest of the class dissecting a poem by Oscar Wilde, /The Portrait of Dorian Grey/. Marie grudgingly admitted that St. John, what ever else he was, had a real talent for English.

Fifteen minutes before class ended Mr. McCoy told everyone that they would be doing an end of term project. The difference this year from other years was that they would be doing it with a partner. The he told everyone in the front and third rows to be partners with the person sitting directly behind them.

Marie felt like hitting herself with her history text book, easily the heaviest thing in her back pack, as she looked at John's grinning face. Her final grade for the year depended on this loon?



Challenge: Identify all of the references to cannon Evo characters.
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