DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of the Marvel characters
Tell me what you think! :D
When Natasha walked through the front doors of the school the first person she saw was Tony Stark. He was leaning against a wall talking with a group of giggling girls. Everyone knew who Tony Stark was, his dad, Howard Stark was practically a billionaire, a weapons designer for the military.
She sighed, who would have guessed that this was the school the Stark kid went to? There was nothing special about it, it was just another school.
As she walked by, she noticed all the girls glancing at her, taking another look and glaring. She didn't really know what their problem was. If they thought she was competition for Tony Stark, they were wrong. She almost laughed thinking about it. Stark was so not her type.
When she got to her locker, she opened the door and put her stuff in, then, shutting it, she took a careful look around the hall.
There wasn't much to see. A strawberry blonde girl was standing across the hall texting, occasionally stealing a glance toward Stark, and a group of boys were standing in the middle of the hall laughing and talking about football.
She'd arrived earlier than most people did because she wanted to get used to her surroundings; she wanted to meet everyone in the school without having to talk to them. And it was easier than it sounded; all she had to do was observe people and figure out what they were like.
She had a mission to accomplish and she wanted to get it done as quickly as possible so she could drop out.
Natasha was wary—what if something went horribly wrong? She had to get to know everyone before they got to know her, or she had a bad feeling she'd be leaving at a run. The problem was she didn't know who she was looking for.
She glanced at her watch. It was just now 7:00, the usual time of arrival for the majority of students. The first class started at 7:30. Natasha glanced toward the front lobby, wondering who else went to this school.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Stark looked really annoyed, and was trying to get the girls to leave him alone. She also saw that he kept glancing at the strawberry blonde, who was still on her phone.
Natasha walked over to the group.
The girls looked her up and down, wearing expressions of varying degrees of irritation.
"Judging by what you're wearing, you're probably only in the middle class. Tony Stark is way out of your league. He's a billionaire; you really think he's going to like you?"
Natasha smiled, "Actually, we're friends," She saw Tony roll his eyes, "So if you think you have a chance, then you'd better rethink it. You aren't his type."
The girls looked a little infuriated, but they'd started to back off.
"Go talk to those football players up the hall, they kept looking over at you girls anyway. You have a better chance with them," Natasha added.
Reluctantly, they moved off.
Tony raised an eyebrow, "I'm sorry, do I know you? Because I really don't think I do."
Natasha grinned, "No, sorry about that. But I could tell they were irritating you." She turned to look at the girl standing down the hall, "Go talk to the girl you really like, she looks a bit lonely," She started walking away, smirking at the look of shock Stark gave her.
"Um, thanks." He walked down the hall toward the girl.
Kids had started to come in while Natasha had been talking to Stark, and she turned to see who they were.
When she turned there was a guy right in front of her, a little too close.
"Hey! I'm the football team's quarterback, who are you? Are you new? You must be; I haven't seen you before. My name is Blaze Kimberly."
"Uh, hi. Nice to meet you, I…really should go to my first class."
"It doesn't start for thirty minutes."
"Sure, but I should go anyway, I like to be early. See you around. Bye!" She said brusquely, then turned and walked back to her locker. She wasn't impressed that he was the quarterback for the football team, and she really didn't care if she saw him around or not.
She took her schedule for her classes out of her locker and tried to memorize it. She'd already memorized it, but she wanted to make sure she wouldn't forget. Her schedule was such that she had almost every senior in at least one of her classes.
She sighed as she read the classes again History, Trigonometry, English, Art Appreciation, Anatomy and physiology, and PE. She put the schedule in her backpack and started moving down the hall toward her History class.
The hall was pretty full now, and Natasha caught every detail of everyone that she possibly could, but none of these people fit the part.
When she got to her class, no one else was there yet, so she sat down at a desk toward the back. She then pulled out her phone and called her boss.
Rasputin Vladimir picked up almost instantly. "Da?" (Yes?) he asked in Russian.
"Uh, hey. I'm at school."
"Eto khorosho. Yest' li u vas podozrevayemykh?" (That's good. Do you have any suspects?)
She hesitated. Could Stark be a suspect? It was possible, but it did seem a little unlikely, "No suspects yet. I mean, come on, it's the first day, before the first class. Don't worry. I'll figure out who it is."
"Ne zabyvayte, vashe imya." (Do not forget your name.)
"Why would I forget my name?"
"Razve ya ne govoril vam? Ya zaregistriroval vas kak Katrina Ross, a ne Natasha Romanoff, tak chto vy budete prisposobit'sya, i poetomu nikto ne stanovitsya podozritel'nym." (Didn't I tell you? I registered you as Katrina Ross, not Natasha Romanoff, so that you'll fit in, and so no one becomes suspicious)
"Suspicious of what? My name? That doesn't really make sense. Good thing I called you, or when they go to take roll call I never would have replied to my name."
"Akh. Nu, Kat, pozvoni mne, kogda u vas yest' poleznaya informatsiya, i bud'te ostorozhny. Ne delayte nikogo podozritel'nogo vas. U menya yest' otlichnoye predystoriyu dlya vas, chto ya dam tebe pozzhe; ne otvechayte na lichnyye voprosy, prezhde chem my pogovorim ob etom. Skazhi mne, yesli chto-nibud' neobychnoye proiskhodit." (Ah. Well, Kat, call me when you have useful information, and be careful. Do not make anyone suspicious of you. I have an excellent backstory for you that I'll give you later; do not answer any personal questions until we talk about it. Tell me if anything unusual happens.)
"Wait, did you just call me 'Kat?'"
"Da, eto sokrashcheniye ot 'Katrina.' Do svidaniya." (Yes, it is short for 'Katrina.' Goodbye.)
She heard the click as he hung up on her. Natasha turned her phone off and slipped it into her backpack. Great, so now she had more lies to memorize. Her name was Katrina Ross in this school, she needed to remember that.
Almost twenty minutes later when the teacher came in, Natasha was lost in her thoughts, and was paying no attention to anything around her.
The teacher walked over to her desk. "Are you Katrina Ross?" she asked.
Natasha didn't reply, still spacing out.
"Sweetheart?" the teacher asked, slightly worried.
Natasha looked up, "Yes?"
"You're Katrina Ross, right?"
"Oh, yes, sorry."
"It's quite alright. I'm Mrs. Barr, glad to meet you."
Just then more students started coming in, and Mrs. Barr returned to her desk, getting her things ready to start class.
Mrs. Barr started by talking about World War II. She certainly had a lot to say about it. One of the kids in the class knew every answer to every question she asked. Mrs. Barr called him 'Mr. Rogers.' A lot of other kids also raised their hands to answer questions, but quite a few students didn't raise their hands ever, even if they did know the answers.
Trigonometry class was really boring, and the old man teaching it had a lisp, and stuttered a lot. Sometimes he would explain how to do a problem incorrectly, and then, realizing he'd done it wrong he'd tell you not to do a certain step the way he had, or something like that. He was extremely confusing and most everyone in there didn't have any clue what he was talking about.
Her English teacher was quite a bit better. She started off by going over all the comma rules and explaining how different types of papers were unacceptable in her class. She told everyone that she really liked large vocabulary words in papers, but that she wanted it to make sense, otherwise they wouldn't get a good grade.
"I've read tons of papers in which students jammed so many vocabulary words into one sentence that it makes your brain hurt, and the information they're trying to communicate goes way over the reader's head. Also, some students tend to contradict themselves two or three times in one paragraph when trying to use 'big words' because they don't actually know what the words mean.
"Trust me. You will not sound smart using words you don't really understand the meaning of if the person you're talking to does understand the meaning. It will only make you sound like you don't know what you're talking about. The point of writing a paper is to explain something to someone else, not to assume everyone has an amazing vocabulary, and will easily be able to follow all of the twelve letter words you are throwing at them."
Mrs. Winston continued by saying how she wanted students to do their best with vocabulary, and how to keep a reader interested in your writing.
Over all, Mrs. Winston's class was the best class before lunch.
Art Appreciation was just a lecture about a bunch of famous artists' paintings. The teacher was convinced that the Mona Lisa was a women morning over the husband she'd lost in war. He tried to get the students to debate it with him, finally even flat-out asking them to, but what he didn't seem to understand was that really, nobody cared.
At lunch Natasha sat at a table that was barely occupied, well away from the few people who were sitting there: two brunette girls, and a guy on a laptop, but the three didn't really appear to be friends; they were all sitting separately, and were not talking to each other.
One of the girls got up and went to sit by Natasha. "Hey, I'm Jane. You must be one of the transfer students?"
"Um, yes, I'm Na—Katrina—Ross ha ha, sorry, I guess I'm a bit nervous."
"You were in my English class, right?" Jane asked.
"Yes, I think so," Natasha replied, "You were sitting closer to the door with some blonde guy, right?"
"Yeah…that guy is kind of odd. We have a lot of transfer students this year. Are you a senior?"
"Yes."
"Oh cool, I'm a junior."
"That's cool," Natasha said, not really wanting to continue the conversation. She was looking around the lunch room, knowing that someone in here was working for S.H.I.E.L.D., and that she had to find out whom.
He or she must be clever if he or she could get in and out of the underground offices without being caught, or seen. She didn't know how her Rasputin Vladimir had figured out that it was a student that went to this school, but he had, and now she had to find whoever it was, before anyone discovered who she really was.
Technically, she was a junior like Jane, was but Vladimir had skipped her up a grade, pretending she was a senior so she could meet the seniors here. There was no evidence saying that the S.H.I.E.L.D agent was a senior, but Vladimir thought that it was ridiculous that S.H.I.E.L.D would have a high school kid working for them, so the high school kid had to be a senior, or it really didn't make sense. Of course, he didn't seem to be considering the fact that he had a high school aged kid working for him.
So far Natasha had had no luck in finding anyone who seemed suspicious in any way.
"Where are you from?" Jane asked, curious.
"I'm from Pennsylvania," Natasha lied turning her eyes back to Jane.
"Have you met anyone here yet?" Jane asked, "The kid with the computer is Bruce Banner, he doesn't talk to many people," Jane turned toward the other Brunette girl, "Hey Betty, come introduce yourself."
Betty looked at them shyly and after a moment came down to join them, "Hi," She said quietly, "I'm Betty Ross."
"Oh…we have the same last name," Natasha realized.
"Really? That's cool," Betty smiled, "Bruce; you're the only one who's being anti-social, come talk with us."
Bruce looked up as if he just remembered that anyone else was in the room with him, "I'm trying to reprogram this video game so that the pixilation's are smaller."
He then looked back down at the screen.
"I'll be right back," Natasha said, "I'm going to get a glass of milk."
As she walked away from the lunch table she looked around at everyone else. Her eyes wondered to the farthest corner from the door where a table was with only one person sitting at it. He had short blonde hair and was kind of far away so she couldn't see him very well but she could tell that they'd made eye contact. She had a weird feeling that he could see her a lot better then she could see him.
Natasha turned to a girl who was walking by behind her, "Who's the kid sitting by himself?" She asked.
"Barton?" The girl glanced toward the corner, "Yeah, that's his favorite seat. No one likes that table cause its way back against the wall and the furthest from the door, so he sits there by himself, he's kind of weird."
After lunch period was over Natasha went to her Science class. Both Betty and Jane were in that class so they sat close by each other and talked a little before the class started. The teacher just passed out textbooks and told everyone to read the first chapter while he sat at his desk and played Galaga on his computer.
When the class ended she went to PE, her final class and was surprised when Barton wasn't there. Rasputin had made sure she shared a class with all the seniors, or he was pretty sure he had, and she didn't even have one class with Barton.
The PE teacher was a little late for the class.
"Hey guys," He said when he came in, "I'm Phil Coulson, your substitute PE teacher. Your other teacher had a motorcycle wreck last week and is still recovering."
Coulson took a suggestion from Tony Stark, who was in the class, to play dodge ball; he separated the class into two teams.
When the game finished it had been pretty close Natasha had been the last person on her team who hadn't gotten out against five guys. She'd gotten four of them out before she decided to let the last guy get her out. She didn't want too much attention on herself, and she could have dodged all of the dodge balls quicker then she had.
Almost everyone wanted to play again. One of the girls said Coulson should play, but he said that wouldn't really be fair.
"You could be a one man team against all of us," Stark suggested jokingly.
Coulson grinned, "Well…I suppose I could try."
So that's what they ended up doing. Natasha let herself get out when only eight people on her team were left and she stood on the sidelines watching as Coulson picked off the members of her team one by one, avoiding every dodge ball.
Coulson won just as the bell was ringing, "Well," He said, "That was fun, see you guys tomorrow unless your teachers better, I think he has a broken leg or something."
Natasha followed Coulson out the door of the gym and watched as he went across the hall into the principal's office.
If anyone here worked for S.H.I.E.L.D, it was probably him. But he wasn't a student so she wasn't sure if he was a valid suspect or not.
Her phone rang and she picked up almost instantly, "Yeah?"
It was Rasputin.
"Nick Fury is the principle of the school!" He blurted out in English.
"So? Who's he?"
"The director of S.H.I.E.L.D!"