"Factoid! Which US president was in power when we entered the Second World War?" Mr McCoy strolled up and down the front of the classroom with one arm behind his back. His hand, armed with his glasses, was poised to pick a raised hand. "Anna!"
"Um -" The answer was at the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't quite remember which three-letter president it was. "JFK!"
Mr McCoy tapped the arm of his glasses against his lower lip and smiled. She could hear her classmates 'oh' and groan.
"Wait! Everyone shut up, I know this!" Anna rapped her knuckles on her book. "FDR!"
"That's it! For extra points, can you list what other major event he was in power for during our history?"
"The Great Depression!"
"And so great, or should I say, not so great, it was. Well done, Anna!" McCoy tossed her a box of raisins, which she caught with an open palm.
"Teacher's pet…" Anna heard from Tyran Smith from across the classroom. Anna turned in her chair and made a jerk-off motion with her hand.
There was a knock at the door that gave the classroom pause. Mr McCoy was already walking in its direction when the door creaked open and another teacher appeared, whom she recognized as Mr Joe, her algebra teacher. The two men whispered something between them for a long enough time that she heard her peers around her begin to talk.
"It's on the news right now!" She heard Mr Joe say in a strangled whisper to her teacher.
Mr McCoy held a hand to the man's chest, "I understand -"
Mr Joe pushed past McCoy and sought out the TV remote resting on the lip of the whiteboard. He clicked the TV on that was mounted in the top right corner of the classroom, and flipped though inputs on a bright blue screen till eventually a cable feed popped up.
"Joe," McCoy stood between the man and the TV, "I don't think this is appropriate -"
The other man punched in the numbers 43 into the remote and swapped the channel from a show about endangered animals to a network news station.
"Approximately 40 injured and counting says police on scene at the Atlas production plant," Says a woman in a bright red power suit and matching lipstick. "Proceeding the power reactors' meltdown, it's said that the private militia stormed in through the loading dock. Witnesses testify that the attackers were swift, well-organized, and demonstrated extraordinary abilities similar to those witnessed in Bayville, New York, just weeks prior."
Anna felt her stomach fall through the floor as the camera flipped from the anchor at the station to an on-site correspondent.
"We have Rebecca Chambers at the Facility. Good morning, Rebecca."
There was a slight pause before Rebecca answered. "Good morning, Jannice. I'm here with a security officer who was present at last night's attack." The camera zoomed out just enough for a man in a gray cap reading 'ATLAS' and matching jacket to enter frame. His eyes squinted against the sun, and his lips were without color. "Mr Munroe, you're a security expert here at the building, correct?" She pointed the microphone towards the man's mouth.
"I don't know about - uh - expert." He paused. A gust of wind slapped the ID card fastened to his breast pocket against his chest. "I cover the night shift. There are about six of us and we work in pairs. It was me and another guy last night."
"And what happened to your partner?"
"Well…" the man looked somewhere where the viewer couldn't see beyond the cameraman's shoulder, like the answer to the anchor's question was in the building next door. "I was on the feeds, feeds is what we call the camera room. You see, someone needs to be on the feeds at all times. So I was on the feeds, and Andre was on patrol. I picked up this strange… raddle or squeak… something metal sounding in the docks. I told him to check it out…"
"What happened to Andre, Mr Munroe?"
"He… got crushed against a wall when… when the doors blew open." The man barely finished the sentence before having to stop to rub the broadside of his mouth with the length of his hand.
"And what happened after that?"
"There was… a group of em. No one uniform or anything. But they started pouring in once the doors opened. I didn't see much till this guy with this weird helmet destroyed the camera I was watchin though."
"What followed after?"
"It all happened so fast. I heard noises… then there was this loud explosion right before everything went dark." The man covered his mouth again. He looked directly at the camera before averting his eyes. "All I could do was lock the door… like a damn coward."
The feed cut to a circling view of a long building where half of it was buried in a crater and smoldering. Emergency vehicles, from ambulances to police cars to unmarked black vans, all circled the site.
"No one is calling you a coward, Mr Monroe." Said the correspondent.
"Doesn't make me stop feeling like one! Men and women shouted in the hallways, and all I did was hide! I - I had a duty to them! To protect them!"
"Do you believe these are the acts of mutants, Mr Munroe?"
"It's hard to tell," the man said through a throat of flem. "It felt like it happened so fast and yet like it took its time all the same. I checked my watch later, but it'd stopped, so I don't know…" There was a shuffling sound, but the camera hadn't flipped back to the reporter on the scene yet, so the viewer was unable to see exactly what was going on. There was only a muffled, "I'm sorry, I just -" from the man. When the camera returned to her, the man was gone.
"Rebecca?" Asked the original anchor woman who was now splitting the screen with her. "Where did Mr Munroe go?"
Rebecca looked behind her and back to the camera, "Some… EMTs wanted to look Mr Munroe over again. I'm afraid he had to go.
"Very well," The screen wiped away the onsite camera and left only the anchor at the studio. "We will certainly keep you, the viewer, abreast of the situation as it continues to unfold -"
The screen went dark, and the class was left with only their reflection staring back at them in the black glass. When Anna looked down, she saw that McCoy had snapped the remote from the other teacher, and that teacher was staring back at him with a pointed stare.
Tyran Smith stood in her seat with her hands planted on her desk. "It's the mutants again! They're on the loose! We should go into lockdown or something!" Her energy rolled across the classroom, and other students stood to share her sentiment.
"Class," remote still in hand, McCoy raised in palms. "It's obvious this happened sometime late last night, and that facility isn't even near our zip code. There is no reason to raise a panic."
"Maybe there is." Anna heard Mr. Joe mumble in McCoy's ear.
"If it could happen there," said one student, a couple of rows back from Anna, "Why couldn't it happen here at the school? It already happened downtown!"
Anna turned in her seat to face the boy, "No, it couldn't."
"Why -"
"Do you see any rampaging lunatics around here? Is a school some sort of fancy hi-tech facility? NO! It's a bin full of push-up bras, fear sweat, hormones, and dumbasses!"
"What are you trying to say?"
"I'm SAYING, mutants would have the same impulse to come here as you would to read a book, Jeremy. Which is none!"
Mr McCoy knocked a knuckle on her desk. "Thank you, Miss Marie, but I don't need your input right now." McCoy pushed the remote into Mr Joe's chest in passing and addressed the class. "Students, your safety is our top priority as members of the faculty. If you are not in a safe environment to learn, then I have failed you as a teacher, and in my life, I have worked hard to mitigate failure. We have been briefed on the situation at the Atlas plant and have been reassured by authorities that there is no threat to any school in our district. Should that change, Principal Darkholme would make it a top priority to get you somewhere safe immediately. As it stands currently, there is no threat."
"I didn't get a brief-" McCoy pushed Mr Joe out of the room.
"Thank you for updating me, sir. We can exchange notes if further action is needed in the teacher's lounge!" With that, he slammed the door on the other teacher's face. "Now," McCoy clapped his hands together, "for a factoid, who wants to answer for me who was the Prime Minister of England at the beginning of the Second World War?"
"You guys saw it too?" Evan said at lunch later that day.
"Yeah," Kurt sat next to him with his hands wadded together on the table before them. Between his fists and his body was enough room for his lunch to sit, but he'd yet to touch it.
"That poor guy." Scott kept making the same circle in his ketchup with the same fry he'd picked up at the beginning of the lunch period. "Watched his pal get flattened by Magneto…"
"We don't know for certain if it was Magneto," Kurt said, staring at his hands.
"Who else would it be, Kurt?" Evan threw his hands in the air, "Who else can throw metal around and has a posse full of psychos?"
Kurt clenched his fists tight enough that his knuckles turned white. "He was also the same guy who saved our lives, Evan."
"Only because my Aunt had to hold us back! I could have wiped the floor with the thing!"
Anna felt something in the back of her head snap. "Could you have, Evan? Why are you so confident that you could have taken on that giant robot? When have we ever fought something like that in real life?"
"Because I know I could have!"
"Why? Because we fought a fake kraken on a pirate ship this weekend? In a place that's totally monitored and safe? We're in the real world, Evan! You have no idea how a real fight against that thing could have gone down!"
"I'm sorry," Evan looked between Kurt and Anna, "are we actually defending this asshole now?" He glares at Scott. "Are you with them?"
"No one is with anybody, Ev." Scott took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes. "We're just trying to piece things together."
"Room for one more?" Anna looked up and spoted Jean holding a bag lunch.
"Oh, hey!" She scooted over, "Don't you normally have… what was it?"
"I have student council once a week during lunch, and the rest is for accelerated learning." The taller girl rested her bag on the table and sat.
"Yeah, that."
"Extracurriculars have been canceled for today -"
"Because of Magneto's attack," Evan added.
"Because of the attack on the Atlas facility, correct." Jean finished and took her sandwich out of her paper bag. "The faculty are a little spooked and would prefer to get the student home as soon as possible after school."
Anna ran a hand down her throat and looked in the direction of the principal's office across the courtyard. A principle, if her time just after mount Silo served correctly, proved to her that Darkholme was in the Brotherhood's pocket. "That's interesting…"
"Jean," Evan rested a flat hand on the table, "you know Magneto is a bad guy, right? Because - apparently - that's up for debate."
"I think," Jean dabbed her lip with a napkin, "the world is rarely black and white."
"Come on, not you too! The guy blew up a freaking building and killed people! What else do you need?"
Jean pulled out her phone and tapped the screen, "This article was updated as of an hour ago," she prefaced and read, "'While there were multiple casualties at the Atlas facility attack, there so far have been no deaths and all injured are expected to make full recoveries, according to Tomas Mathason the lead pracitioner at Saint Mary's. Most injuries vary from burns to minor concussions, with some hearing damage. While the attack is still unconfirmed to be mutant in nature, if it is, it is to be considered less catastrophic than the Bayville incident several weeks ago."
Kurt dipped his head. "Doesn't sound like a deranged killer to me."
"That proves nothing!" Evan pushed back from the table. "He attacked a building full of people! For what?"
Jean, chewing on another bite of her sandwich, scrolled through her phone. "Atlas International was founded by Grant Zimmerman in the 90s originally as a prosthetics manufacturer. Around the mid-00's, they made a switch to researching robots and the advancement of what they call 'physical' technology." Jean flipped her phone around and showed the group pictures on the Atlas website of prototypes varying from robots that resembled dogs, to complicated cyborg arms, and finally with fully fledge looking human robots.
"Wait," Scott looked closely at the last photo. "Don't tell me this doesn't look familiar."
Anna took the phone out of Jean's hand and looked closer. The human robot's face looked just like the face beneath the armor of the Sentinel. "What the hell?"
Kurt took the phone from Anna. "Didn't Kitty take a bunch of pictures of the robot?"
"Yeah… I'll have to see if she can send them over…"
When the group was done passing the phone around, Jean took her phone back, following the last bite of her sandwich. "With all that in mind, Ev, do you think Magneto is still a crazed murderer on the loose?"
Evan clenched his teeth and flexed and unflexed his hand. "Well, Jean, I guess it's hard to paint things as black and white, isn't it?"
"Still," Scott finally let go of the french fry he'd been stirring his ketchup with for up to this point. "If this was some sort of retaliatory attack on our behalf… I don't know if I would have asked for it."
Jean reached over and plucked one of Scott's fries off his tray. "I don't think the man was going to wait for our permission." She mouthed the fry, "If anything, I think it was just the excuse he needed."
Anna ran her hand across her mouth in a way reminiscent of a man she'd recently seen on TV. "To set off the fireworks..."
Jean nodded and looked at her, "Like I said, it was the excuse he needed."
** AUTHOR'S NOTE
Hey there! I wanted to let you know that I've decided to publish the entire backlog of Rogue Evolution on my website, artoflupin.com. There, you will be A CHAPTER AHEAD and still be on the same upload schedule you've gotten used to here!
If you'd prefer to wait for uploads here, no worries, uploads will continue here as scheduled.
Thanks! **