The X-Project

A typical study hall for the New Mutants. Math is hard, Julian is lazy, Nick is quiet, Catseye is smug, Nico prefers magic and Fred is sleepy. Untypically, Meggan is cranky and standoffish.



Study hall at Xavier's was generally a lot more relaxed arrangement than most schools. No supervision, no insistence on silence, the students were expected to monitor themselves and know when things were getting out of hand. Besides, when your headmaster was one of the most powerful telepaths on the planet and your math teacher could Read your homework to see if you'd cheated, there was a limit of how much the students could actually get away with. This particular study hall period, in a former class room with the desks rearranged to something better for communicating with each other, was no different, a low hum of conversation filling the air as those less inclined to focus on their homework indulged in random chat.

Yvette had been working on her math homework, but as always, it was giving her trouble. At last she sat up with a sigh, putting down the large-sized novelty pencil she found easier to grip. "Miss Frost is trying to make the torture," she complained out loud.


The purple cat curled up on the top of the next desk raised her head to look over at Yvette. Catseye had been practicing writing with her tail, just for fun, and because she didn't want to work on her biology homework. She rose from her desk, jumped over to Yvette's, studied Yvette's work with unblinking purple eyes, then brought the pencil in her tail onto her friend's sheet and wrote "x=1" with it. Math wasn't so hard, once you knew the rules. Numbers had nice, easy rules. Not like science. Science had confusing theories and when it did have rules they were always getting replaced by other rules as soon as people did more experiments! It was even harder to understand than english literature!

Nick leaned back in his chair, moving his eyes up from the story assigned by Professor Sefton. He had already read over it several times, but when your teacher is your newly adopted father, you feel a little more pressure in the class. But all of that seemed to fall out of his mind as he saw Catseye move to Yvette's desk as an unconscious smile appeared on his face. He coughed slightly to try to gain her attention. "I think Yvette may want to learn a little more about how you got that answer Cats."

"It's always, show your work with her," Julian yawned, leaning back in his chair. His laptop was on the desk in front of him, open to facebook. "Math is hard enough without having to show how you got an answer." With a sigh and a shake of his head, Julian dropped all four legs of his seat back onto the floor with an audible 'thunk.' Shutting down the social networking site he began to work on a paper that was due the next day- nothing like putting it off to the last second, after all.

Doreen, for her part, was horrible at math. She looked her paper over while chewing absently on a ruler. She had to chew on occasion, or her front teeth started to hurt, "Yeah, but you still have to get it done. ...I hope I finish it before work tonight," she muttered and glanced over at Julian's desk, "...Isn't that due tomorrow...?"

"Today, tomorrow," Julian shrugged, "something like that." He stretched theatrically, pushing himself back in his chair on two legs to the point he was nearly falling backwards. "I work best at the last minute. Keeps the mind sharp, ya know?"

"So, in other words, you're totally going to remember that it's due tomorrow morning and spend all of breakfast frantically filling in the answers, right?" Angel chimed in from where she'd taken up two desks for her work. She'd already finished her math homework but she'd been flipping through pamphlets for colleges and their applications for the last little while. Leaning back, she flicked a little fireball back and forth between her hands, treating it as if it were a stress ball instead of fire. "Who here wants to take bets on that?"

Klara had been almost silently working on her schoolwork. Although she was getting more comfortable with everyone, she was still rather quiet and preferred to work uninterrupted. She was good at math, but she doubted she would be able to be much help to Yvette. Klara was one of the younger New Mutants, and given her background, she still had some catching up to do. Getting caught up in math and English had been the easiest. Science still eluded her on occasion but she was improving. She was also considerably more competent at using a computer than she'd been in the past, but she still continued to write all rough drafts out by hand before making revisions and typing out assignments.

"I don't bet," she piped in. "Well, not with money." With a small smile, she added, "I would be willing to bet in baked goods, though."

"Baked goods? I'm in, girl", spoke a pile of old looking books next to Julian. For the best of the last hour, Nico had been literally buried on books, most of which didn't have a thing to do with maths. Oh no, she was working on her own particular subject, which has kept her more or less absent from the conversation so far. Looking up with tired eyes, she couldn't help but yawn. "I honestly hope you don't pretend me to help you in said morning of frantic filling of answers, because I'm halfway my regular homework, and I'm really expecting my math homework to do itself while I'm not looking." She knew that wasn't going to happen anytime soon, and she also knew she would end up helping him, but that wasn't the point. "I'm starting to reconsider my no-coffee policy."

"You know what happens when you drink caffeine, Nico," Julian snarked. "And I'm touched at the amount of confidence you all have in me," he scoffed and turned his full attention back to the computer, clacking away on the keys with renewed intention.

Angel snorted indelicately as she tossed some wrapped up chocolates towards Yvette, Catseye and Sooraya. Former and current roommates got first dips on tasty treats though she'd hand out the rest soon enough.

Meggan was quietly doing her own math homework in the back of the class. She had been resisting the urge to just rip it up and ditch study hall...skip school entirely, and do whatever it was she wanted to do...but had managed to fight it at the last second. The desire was overwhelming, and she briefly glared at the clock. Perhaps it was a lack of an uneventful night of sleep. In the moments when she was more herself, she tried to pretend mood swings were nothing. She caught herself starting to doodle something awful on the homework, and hastily erased it.

Catseye took the shiny-wrapped chocolate in her teeth and zoomed off Yvette's desk and out the door of the classroom, as if not hiding it instantly would result in the shiny being taken away from her. She returned several moments later, in girlform, and sat on Nick's desk. "I have confidence in you Julian," she answered with a nod, inching closer and closer towards Nick's lap, hoping he wouldn't notice if she suddenly climbed into it. "Confidence you will do exactly what Angel says and not do your homework until breakfast tomorrow."

Nick smiled. He wouldn't dare say anything about Julian's homework himself, the bad blood between the two still was very fresh. But it did good for him to see that others were giving Keller a bit of a hard time. Leaning back in his own chair he noticed Meggan having a difficult time focusing. He still felt awkward slightly around her, almost eating someone when you're a brainwashed mutant wolf tends to do that. But they were part of the same family now, so he thought he would at least make an effort. "Having fun back there?' He tried his best to force a nervous grin.

If Meggan were more herself, she would have hastened to put Nick at ease. For reasons she couldn’t begin to understand, she just didn’t particularly care about his feelings today. She simply gave him a strange smile that didn’t entirely reach her eyes, before whispering back in a slightly grim tone, “Oh, yes." She shrugged, adding, "Math can be a pain.”

Nick shrugged back. He knew when he shouldn't push anyone further, and it seemed like the math haze had possibly claimed the sanity and happiness of another victim. This coupled with the fact that he still felt he had to walk on eggshells around his new family made him all the more hesitant as he turned back towards the group at large.

Catseye jumped down from Nick's desk with a frown and went over to Meggan's desk, studying her homework, and her face, without speaking.

Meggan ignored Catseye for a few moments, forcing herself to work on the next equation. She was nearing the end, at last. She blinked when she thought she heard something she couldn't quite make out, before ignoring it. She concluded she was probably just wanting an excuse to take a break from math. She finally glanced up at Catseye with a raised eyebrow, before sighing and resuming her work.

"Huh." Nico had been eyeing the purple cat, her homework left to oblivion already -she was going to do it later anyway!- her interest picked at Meggan; she wasn't the girl's closest friend, but from the time they had been around, she had struck her as a way nicer person; maybe she was having a bad day? Nico knew of those very well, so she didn't say anything. Sighing in defeat, the girl pushed aside the magic book she was reading and placed her math homework in front of her. "I can almost hear it laughing at me."

"Me also," Yvette replied with a wry smile. Now Nico had put away the magic books, she was more comfortable about responding to her. The girl's obsession with witchcraft and magic and all of that tended to make the Albanian girl ill-at-ease. "Is there anyone who is not having the problems with the math here?"

"Uh...I'm not doin' too terribly shabby in it...uh, I don't guess..." Fred came in through the nearest door to the outside, still smelling of smoke. He'd only recently begun leaving the garage and trying to interact with people at large, and as such was trying to relearn things like scheduling, "Sorry about bein' late. I, uh...kinda lost track of time..."

"Fred!" Yvette beamed. "Welcome to the, how you say? Land of the living?"

Klara smiled briefly up in Fred's direction before quietly remarking "I am not having any problems with the math, but I am doing easier math, I think."

Megan woke up with a start. "You guys are giving me nightmares about solving for x," she complained with a sigh. She hadn't actually brought any math homework with her today. But she had her chemistry book, and chemistry was pretty much math only weirder.

Nico grinned at Megan. "We are having nightmares without sleeping." Which was entirely true. Sighing, the goth tried to put some attention on her homework. "Alright...nope, not happening." She closed the book again, defeated in seconds. "We seriously need someone who knows this stuff very well and it's not a teacher."

"Who wants to bribe Bobby into giving us a hand?" Angel asked, having put aside anything important in favor of sending a text to a friend outside the school. "I bet he's way more bribable - that's a word, right? - than anyone else who could do math who isn't us."

"Yah could just do what I do," Fred said simply as he propped his feet up on the table and pulled his cap over his eyes, "Study at night, don' care too terribly much, and set yah sights low on college. I was thinking somewhere in New Jersey, myself..."

Fred would feel the wrath of a rubber eraser hitting his nose soon after; that wasn't supposed to hurt him anyway. "Dude, set your aims low somewhere without people trying to get good grades." She could have sounded a lot more pissed about his words, but she decided otherwise; she was trying to study -or she still kept deceiving herself she was, indeed-. But her attention went to Angel then. "I can, and I'm sure I want to try that." After all Bobby and her had shared some time, and the guy was nice enough. "What should we bribe him with?"

Angel grinned. "Oh, Bobby's easy. Let's make a list of things to bribe him with - I'm sure it'll be better than sitting around, doing actual work."