A Fresh Look at History

[Evelyn Cato]

She had been allowed an unassuming classroom that suited her needs quite well, and Evelyn Cato found herself looking forward to the first of many classes that she was to teach here at Cullen's.

She had no required books or texts for what she planned to teach, as indeed there were none that dealt specifically with what she had in mind. But, that was only a minor hindrance at best. She had no plans to use any sort of textbook for her first class, as she would rather get to know the students that she would be teaching, and to see how much material had already been covered.

Evelyn had been given a class roster, but she had put it into one of the drawers of her desk, preferring for the students themselves to give her their names rather than a piece of paper.

And so she settled back in her seat, eyes turned to the doorway to watch those who would inevitably be trickling in soon.

[Nuro Alston]

Step after step set Noru down the hall. He floated down the hall, his hand pocketed as the other was occupied with keeping his messenger bag/backpack from getting to uncomfortable. Another quick visit to the gym during his break between classes had called for a second visit to the showers, but he didn't mind.

New classes meant new faces, and a first impression could be lasting. No one wants to smell like they rolled and played patty-cake with a pig when they first meet somebody...Well, unless your meeting Piglet or Miss Piggy or something...

One glance at his schedule and the door number kept his gait unwavered. The door flung open with a nice pull, and he slided in. Silent as ever, he crept to his target: a seat. Noru didn't even notice the professor at the head of the class until he leaned back and dropped his bag.

"Ooo! Ay'!" He chuckled, with a sense of surprise. Instinct told him to search for her name on the board, but his search was to no avail.

"Uh...wheres y'name?"

[Damien E. Dervish]

The bell for classes wouldn't ring for another five minutes. Yet the impish mutant known as Damien Dervish found himself walking towards the classroom. Despite his shortened attention span, Damien was punctual enough to show up for class on time. Nevermind that he would spend have of it only half-heartedly paying attention, doodling as he was taking notes, often creating indecipherable drawings and sketches that would only serve as notes to those capable of reading ancient cunieform, Egyptian Old Kingdom hieroglyphs, and chicken scratch. His tail tossed back and forth, patting up and down a hackeysack, while he moved forward. Most could barely juggle it with their feet, let alone behind their back, on their tail, without even looking or really paying attention to it. Such was the blessing, and the curse, of Damien's ADHD.

The black furred mutant entered the classroom, passing by the European woman, and the Haitian male student, hackeysack still bouncing back and forth. Damien found himself a seat in the back of the class, and tossed his bookbag onto the seat of the desk, and perched himself atop the desk in a flip, tossing the hackeysack into the air. He landed with a thump. Meanwhile, the hackeysack landed on the tips of Damien's fingers, tapped back and forth, before being rolled up the length of one arm, across the shoulders, and down the other, a slight tap launching it just enough height for Damien's diminuitive, prehensile tail to continue the flow, tapping the 'bag back and forth.

Most likely, Damien would be ignored for sitting upon the desk. At three feet six inches, he would barely clear the desk designed for the larger, normal sized humans. He felt a slight itch atop his scalp, and scratched at it with a single claw, just behind his right horn. His concentration, or lack thereof, still didn't break on the hackey-sack, the rhythmic pat resounding quietly through the somewhat empty room.

[Taya Robbins]

While Taya Robbins's mutation had enhanced most of her senses to catlike accuity, her sense of direction was just as bad as ever. And after having suffered the profound misfortune of slinking into Professor Bertrand's class nearly ten minutes late, she had decided she'd better leave herself a healthy buffer when finding her way to new classrooms in the future.

Plus, she'd heard from Freight Train that this new teacher rocked beyond reasonable belief. And knowing the petite girl's opinion of the school in general, she must have made one heck of an impression.

She wasn't honestly sure what to expect - it seemed a little irregular to be starting up a class mid-semester. But Taya had been a late arrival herself, and this was a chance to pick up a class from the beginning, and, now that she was doing independent study with Miss Florence, her schedule was a lot more flexible.

The cat-shaped mutant turned a corner, stared uncertainly at the crooked wall sign (<116-108 ^101-107), and hung a left. "One-ten, one-ten, one-ten," she muttered. "Aha!"

She pushed open the door, heard the rhythmic piff of a hackeysack, and grinned at Damien. Sketchbook in one arm, bookbag in the other, Taya sashayed to the back of the room and slid into the desk beside him, expertly curling her tail through the gap under the seat back.

"Hey there, fuzzball," she said with a grin. She glanced toward the exotic-looking woman at the front of the room. "What do you think we're in for?"

[Ethan Evans]

Ethan was the next to arrive, smiling politely at the professor as he came through the classroom door. In contrast to his usual straight-from-the-gym appearance, he was wearing a well-pressed polo shirt, slacks and slip-on Vans. The sun had bleached his hair and tanned his skin, and even in the company of cat-people and demons, he looked every bit the normal high-school student. With the class yet to begin session, he took out a ring-bound notebook and flicked through the pages to find a clean sheet.

[Damien E. Dervish]

Damien smiled, and waved as Taya came into the classroom. All the while, the hackeysack kept bouncing back and forth, and did so until the bell rang, and class formally began. As it did, Damien batted it with his tail. It sailed into the air, smacking against the wall with a smack, before ricocheting against a desk, and into the black-furred mutant's waiting hand. He rolled it into one of the many pouches on the outside of his backpack, before pulling out his History textbook and his notepad/sketchpad. He instantly began taking notes, not of the content of history, but of the people in the classroom. He wrote that Ethan and Taya were there. Mr. Perfectly Pompous and the CatChica are here.

Suddenly, his train of thought was yet again broken by another thought, this one of the episode of Family Guy he fell asleep watching. He began a quick sketch, and finished a penciled Peter Griffin, swinging his shirt around his head, a bubble from his mouth forming a cheer, comic-style. It said: "BOO LOIS! YAY BEER!

Damien smirked, and finished just as his train of thought was broken, this time by the outside source of Taya leaning in.


"Hey there, fuzzball. What do you think we're in for?"

Damien grinned, sharp teeth gleaming like a Chesire cat.

"Dunno. Maybe a throwback to Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?"

[Evelyn Cato]

She sat and watched as students, one by one, began to filter in. Even as she was asked her name by the first one who'd walked in the door, Evelyn only gave a slight shake of her head to indicate that she wasn't quite ready to introduce herself. She was content to watch and observe those who she was to teach. They were a varied bunch, some whose mutations were outwardly manifested in the most - to her at least - delightful fashion.

The diminutive impish boy and his antics made her smirk, and the way he deftly managed his attention between the small kicktoy and his normal functions was impressive. She gave him a curious look at his choice to sit upon the desktop, but it made sense when taking into consideration his small stature.

But, it was the feline girl who very nearly took her breath away when she'd walked in. Her gait was agile and lithe, and reminded Evelyn of someone that she still missed to this very day. Her eyes followed the girl's movements, and it took her a moment to recollect her thoughts. The nature of the mutation gave her such a likeness to...

Evelyn leaned back in her seat and let out a long, low breath that she hadn't realized that she'd held in. Suddenly she remembered something Freight Train had said, about a cat girl; she'd not given the statement much thought at the time, and found herself quite taken aback now that she was faced with that one and the same 'cat girl'.

The rest of the classroom had filled itself out quite well, and while there were still a few empty seats by the time the bell rang, Evelyn found herself leaning forward in a motion that brought her to her feet.

"I know that many of you are coming to me from Professor Bertrand's history class, and that from now on I will be teaching history here at Cullen's.

"What I don't know however, is where exactly it was that he left off. Can anyone enlighten me?"

[Nuro Alston]

The class was overrun with a varied bunch, but what could you expect from such an institute. Some of the earlier faces seemed a bit more familiar. However, there were a few he hadn't come across before. Noru wasn't too certain if most of the class were newcommers like himself, or students who had aged in the grand halls of Cullen. There wasn't some badge, or barcode on their head with a date to verify so he went with his naked eye.

It was good to hear that he wasn't the lone new face. The professor had come and taken a role he was all too interested in, as well. Certainly she had made a decent impression so far, because Noru could hear the whispers around the class at the students arrivals.

Yet, in response to her question most of the words stop, as though reaching into their memory banks for some stored information, before dusting it off for a quick answer. History for Noru was a subject of intrigue, and although he had only visited Bertrand's class only once, he could recall enough to give her a good answer.

Familiar with the college system, he skipped the hand-in-the-air crap, and opened his mouth. The accent becoming apparant from his very first words.

"Yo, I 'memba 'em goin' ovah...like all the stuff in Latin America Civilizations," he shrugged with an innocent grin. "Idunno what we was gunna do next tho...'

Noru still wondered about her name.

[Ethan Evans]

Ethan leafed back a couple of pages in his notebook and, having found what he was looking for, spoke up with a confident voice.

"I think we were working towards discussing the Aztec Empire, ma'am. Professor Bertrand's last lecture was on... the formation of the Aztec Triple Alliance."

[Taya Robbins]

Taya opened her notebook and her sketchbook in tandem on her desk; during class, her pencil danced freely from one to the other. She flipped a few pages back to an unfinished but epic rendering of Quetzalcoatl, whose feathery coils spilled off the sketchbook and into her notes when she lined the papers up just so.

She winked at Damien and then began sketching in the new teacher with a bullwhip and a fedora trying to tame the mythic beast.

[Damien E. Dervish]

Damien found himself spending less time on his notes, and more time looking at Taya, watching her take notes and sketch on her pad. He saw a drawing of a bird of sorts enveloped in lightning, and believed it to be some ancient Aztec god. Quetzacotl maybe? Damien smiled. It was an excellent rendition. But off to the side was some woman, her likeness almost exact to the woman teaching the class, trying to tame the bird with a whip, wearing a hat strikingly similar to Indiana Jones'. He almost laughed aloud, the laugh coming out into a muffled snort.

Then, as if to keep the attention off of himself, he began to diligently take notes, only looking up slightly to glance at Taya's tail, watching it swish back and forth.

[Evelyn Cato]

Evelyn thought about the answers she'd been given, and finally nodded.

"I see."

Turning around, she took up a dry erase marker and began writing on the whiteboard in smooth, flowing lines:

Cato

She replaced the marker and faced the students once more.

"My name is Cato; don't bother with the Ms., it's unecessary and I'm not fond of such social formalities as it is. Now," a gesture to the textbook that the imp had pulled out, and the various notes and other writings that many had jotted down while still in Henri's class, "... the textbooks you can return to Professor Bertrand, and the notes that you've taken so far... "

Evelyn thought for a moment, then gave a dismissive wave of her hand. "- the notes you can throw out. You won't need them."

[Nuro Alston]

"Psssh! ....You aint say nothin butta word..."

No delay was given, and with her word he threw his notepad across the room with a stupid grin. A few of his neighbors ducked angrily, while others were surprised as the notepad swept overhead. One, strong, definitive thud echoed through the suddenly silent room before his hands folded innocently upon his desk.

A child-like snicker shook his body as he unravel into a recline. The time had come to chill. Finally, he was given a teacher he could be slacker with. It was a once in a life time ordeal, and he couldn't be happier.

Hands folded behind his head, he tangled with his extremely curly hair before finding a nice knot to hold onto as he watched time transpire. With how everything was going so far he wouldn't be surprised if she let them out early.

Cato was sounding pretty cool so far.

"So wha' we gunna learn withoutta lil' book to not pay attention to?" He asked with a confident smirk.

[Taya Robbins]

Taya's ears flattened - sudden noises tended to bother her more now that her hearing had improved by three or four times. She laid a paw across her own illuminated notes as if she were afraid someone would do the same to them.

[Damien E. Dervish]

Damien laughed aloud at the sight of the Haitian kid tossing the book across the room. He almost did the same, were it not for his love of books. Instead, he merely slid his back into his waiting bookbag, and pulled out another small sack. It was filled with leftover cheeseburgers from a local fast food joint that he had just frequented not fifteen minutes ago. Seeing that this was going to be a laid back class, at least in the aspect of, in some cases literally, tossing aside the notes and textbooks, Damien figured it'd be alright for him to finish his meal of several double cheeseburgers plain. He almost flipped out, until the small mutant found his packets of ranch. Now the world was right again. He fished out a cheeseburger and then pulled another one out, holding it toward Taya.

"Want one?"

[Evelyn Cato]

A smirk that showed her words had been misunderstood spread across Evelyn's lips.

"I don't recall saying that you wouldn't need to take notes, or that you wouldn't need a book... "

She set the dry erase marker on her desk and looked at the group over the tops of her eyes; it was easy to see that the reaction to what she'd said had amused her.

"... I only said that you would not need those particular notes, or that particular book."

[Nuro Alston]

A plain frown sled across his lips as his head lowered. The book was probably in shambles a long the wall, and his impulse had put it in such a condition. It was evident and clear that he had captured the magnitude of his move. An undecipherable murmur escaped his lips before he swallowed and shook his head.

Noru's head lifted back up, warning the teacher with a smile. He had to be positive, espeically on the first day of class, in spite the...hiccups.

"Darn," He whispered to himself, before folding his hands over the desk like a little school boy.

[Taya Robbins]

Taya reluctantly turned the page in her notes - Quetzalcoatl would have to wait. Maybe she'd start on Mictlantecuhtli... locked in combat with zombie conquistadors.

She was startled by the smell of greasey meat and cheese, and it made her stomach rumble. But she shook her head sheepishly. "Can't do the cheese," she whispered ruefully. "Too much lactose."

[Damien E. Dervish]

Damien frowned as he leaned in, whispering.

"No cheese? God is cruel. That bein' the case, you'll just have to go with me later, and we'll have the best cheese-free fast food we can rustle up."

The minute mutant found himself smiling, his gleaming white teeth contrasting starkly with his fur. His red-hued orbs gleamed, giving his devilish visage a somehow charming, harmless or well-intentioned aura to the diminuitive Damien.

"Whaddya say?"

[Ethan Evans]

Ethan shifted in his chair, watching Damien's antics with a faint frown. Apparently, something about the class was making him uncomfortable.

“Is there another book we're going to need, Pro-” he hesitated, “Cato.”

[Taya Robbins]

Taya was trying to split her attention between Damien and the new teacher, but then Damien pulled a trump card. Was he asking her out?

In the middle of class, no less?

There was no stopping it - she grinned back, showing an impressive bit of fang. "You're on."

[Nuro Alston]

Always observant, he listened to the class as it rustled with activity. Something about the back-end of the class had an excitable feel to it, but he withheld the instinct to run back there to find a better seat. Stuck in the front, he took a gander about.

Twin mutants sat off to the side where his book was staring ahead, blinking intensely as though sending some undecipherable message to one another. If there was anything Noru had learned since he had transferred was that anything was possible. Everybody just seemed to feed his imagination with their awkward skills, and abstract thoughts. Certainly, the place was much like a normal school...socially, but not so much personally.

A sigh escaped him once more as he leaned back into his seat and placed his hands into his unkept hair once more. The curly knots of dangling brown hair trapped his hands as he began to drift in thought, mumbling a few words.

"Maybe I should cut this thing...hmm..hmmm," he mused as Ethan spoke up off to the side about the course. If it wasn't for Ethan, Noru would have forgot he was in class.

[Evelyn Cato]

Thoroughly amused at what was happening between Taya and Damien, Evelyn slowly sat back down behind her desk, almost completely missing the most recent question that'd been put to her.

She focused briefly on Ethan, blinking at him, then curled her lips into a smile as her gaze went back to Taya; she too had picked up on the undertones in Damien's offer. Raising her voice only a small bit so as to catch the attention of those in the back, she spoke.

"I suppose that if we're to select a new textbook, we could always choose something that promotes and outlines ettiquette for dating."

[Ethan Evans]

“Dating?”

Ethan glanced around at his classmates. Each of them seemed to be caught up in some personal conversation. It was more like being in a common room than a lecture. He wouldn't have minded too much – history wasn't his favourite subject after all – but some part of him was still hard-wired towards getting good grades.

“What does that have to do with the Aztec Empire?”

[Taya Robbins]

Taya said nothing, but she turned front with a sheepish smile as the interior of her ears burned bright red.

[Nuro Alston]

Still in his own world, Noru drifted along, watching outside. A boy and a girl were tussling over a ball. One flared with fire, while the other spat a waterfall. The little scrimmage was enough to amuse the boy, but as qquick as he smiled, he turned away. He got bored quite easily.

In search for some more fun to watch, he found the teacher. She was cute...

"...So were doin' historical dat'n in 'ere?"

[Damien E. Dervish]

Damien, seeing that the attention and the spotlight was ultimately falling on his.....friendliness, decided to do exactly what Damien did best: perform in it.

"Well, the dating.....system is quite important and integral to the survival of our society..."

Damien stood up on his desk.

"....nay, our species. Without the friendly, going-out-for-fast-food, no matter what the context of fast food is, type of dating, man would not survive. After all, no dating equals no social interaction. And as social creatures, we must strive and hone down our skills, until they are as sharp as the utencils that birthed us via C-section. Not to mention, typically speaking, no dating equals no mating, and with our population suddenly taking a hit, how can we live on?"

Damien ended it with a flourish, a wide gesture of sweeping arms.

"HOW CAN WE GO ON?! I'll tell ya how. Let's....learn more about the Aztec Triple Play.....duh, I mean Alliance!"

With nothing more to say, Damien went to sit. But something in him told himself to end it completely.

"That is all."

Without further ado, the black furred mutant plopped himself back down on the desktop, all grins and smiles, teeth gleaming. In his head, just before he was distracted by the water/fire fight in front of the class, a thought came to mind. Wonder what my next punishment's gonna be. Clappin' chalky erasers? Nah, they use Marks-a-Lot boards now. Hmmm, maybe realphabetize the history books.

[Nuro Alston]

Still keeping his senses outside the window at the little mutant scrimmage between water and fire, he watched as the little imp jumped on his desk to deal with the mass attention on his affair in the back-end of the class. A light chuckle was all he could give him after he sat back down, before returning to the teacher at the front-end, hoping she would be light on him.

The little guy was pretty funny.

[Evelyn Cato]

Well then!

It seemed that the imp had a rather extensive tongue on him, and Evelyn found herself grinning at his grand speech.

"Well, if that is what interests you, then by all means you may look into that sort of thing."

Now that she had attentions focused on her, Evelyn folded her hands together and set them on the smooth desk surface.

"I do not expect perfect grades or the like," she started, " but what I do expect is effort and a willingness to learn about the past. Everyone at this school is a part of something far larger than they may think, and I wish to open your eyes to what that larger part is.

"Every two weeks I want you all to choose - as a group - whatever previous historical civilization that comes to your fancy, whether it be Egypt," she looked pointedly at Taya when she spoke of the people of the Nile, "... Rome, the Dark Ages, the Vikings, or even those who came before such times. You will study and read about what and who you have chosen. After those two weeks are up, you will choose another group of peoples to learn about."

Leaning forward just a bit, she let her eyes wander the faces in her classroom.

"There is no set course, and I expect no one to feel as though this is a chore. What you study in my class will be what you wish to study, as long as it is in keeping with the ancients. I will provide further information of course, and if you have questions I will answer them to the best of my ability.

"Are there any questions?"

[Nuro Alston]

The imp wasn't the only person that wasn't shy in the class.

Without a hand raised, he leaped into the conversation with a humble smile. Polite, respectful, but also marred with a voice from Brooklyn, he was a mix of city slickness and hippie love from word to word.

"Well I don' see whys we can't talk bout d'mutants of today...can we?"

[Taya Robbins]

The red across Taya's ears deepened, but so did her grin - in fact, it was a concerted effort not to crack up during Damien's passionate oration.

Which was good, because otherwise she would have felt really really embarrassed.

But she felt something else when Cato's eyes turned her way again - and even though she couldn't put a finger on it, she knew the fur on the back of her neck was prickling. And quite suddenly she thought she really wanted to know more about Egypt.

Noru bumped her back into the present. "Mutants of today? But--"

She cut herself off, realizing she had just spoken out of turn. But now eyes were on her. She sunk slightly in her seat.

"But if we're studying ancient history, we're not studying mutants... I mean, there weren't any mutants until, like, a hundred years ago. Right?"

[Damien E. Dervish]

amien shook his head at Taya's remark, and spoke aloud.

"Nah. Chances are, mutants've been 'round since man came into existence. After all, we're just adaptations of homo-sapiens sapien, the modern day man. Of course, as the population grew, so would cases of the X-gene, but that's normal. And I'm sure that our use and creation of gene-alterin' and nuclear technology has helped in the further increase in X-gene cases. Right, Miss Cato?"

His red eyes, larger than most normal humanoid eyes, gazed almost knowingly to the front of the class, at Cato.

[Evelyn Cato]

It seemed that Damien had more than a simple wildly clever streak in him, and Evelyn gave him a conspiratorial grin.

"You do have a point. History is replete with tall tales, legends, and adventures that at first glance would seem to be the flight of fancy of normal, if not highly imaginative men.

"And that," her eyes went to Noru, "... is why we are not studying the mutants of today's society."

She gave the Haitian boy a grin. "This is a class about history. Current world affairs are taught in other classes."

[Nuro Alston]

Nuro frowned slightly. The young one knew he could rationalize his request, but he reserved his tongue for a more interesting prosposal.

"Can we study the history of...Haiti?"