BB says: I am adopting this from another author, one Happy Cheerio who hasn't the time to do it herself. I salute thee, my ebullient greeting! This is the adoption of Tell Me You Still Love Me.
Rating: Teen
Disclaimer: I do not own Generator Rex. I could try to go buy it, but I think MOA would laugh in my face…
Boring.
Boring.
Boring.
Because the word held only two syllables, two highly predictable stepping stones, it did nothing to soothe the monotonous droning of the man in front of the white board. Perhaps it even made it worse, accusing him of a crime that so many high school teachers allowed themselves to commit. For how can one expect to teach –truly teach, their knowledge sticking in the minds of the young- if they themselves find the lessons tedious? How can one promote what is despised?
Perhaps not every professor in the high school has such distaste for the subject they had chosen to lecture. But this particular man on this particular day was slowly but surely killing Emily Tybalt.
She was a good student (in her own right). Prone to accidents, procrastination, and naps, but a good girl all the same. In her mind only delinquents and slackers fell asleep in class, and yet her eye lids were slowly growing so heavy she could hardly stand it. The doodles on the corners of her English notes proved useless against the onslaught of a night spent drawing when she should have been sleeping, another character taking form from the depths of her imagination and demanding she use her resting hours to bring it to life.
The only class she wouldn't drift off in on a day like this was art. And she didn't have that for another hour.
Why did things seem so slow today? Surely it couldn't just be her lack of sleep? Emily stifled a yawn in her throat, nearly groaning when the teacher mentioned something about their papers on Of Mice and Men. English was so not her subject. Eyes repelled, her gaze fell upon a red ribbon strung over the doorway.
The girl promptly winced.
Valentine's Day.
The day of lovers and likers and swooners. When greeting cards and chalky candies were worshipped as fading gods and teenage love was granted the eternal state of stone. At least to its participants. It wasn't that the girl hated Valentine's Day, or anything. That would be too much like a lonely spinster, bitter because she had never been wed. It was just that the love and caring of the all too mushy day never really sang true in her. Even as a young child passing out mass produced treats her mother had carefully packed for her, she could not see the point of it.
Who cared? Was there really someone out there for her, anyway? And why the Hell would he show her affection through over-priced chocolates (although she loved free candy. So no offense to chocolate)?
And besides, she didn't consider herself pretty enough for something as romantic as a Valentine anyway. Thick glasses, boyish figure, select scars bolding proclaiming the battle with acne from which she had once suffered. Although Emily was cute in the mind of many of her peers, she refused to see herself as anything but plain. It was one of those situations where the high school reunion would be full of surprising confessions.
"I had such a crush on you! But I was too nervous!"
"You were so cute! I was surprised you weren't taken!"
But seeing as that was over a decade in the future and much too far for this story to extend, we shall embrace the fact that the girl suffered from the great disease known only as Ugly Duckling Syndrome.
Sighing, chocolate brown eyes turned to the window, her only redemption for a time, hoping to perhaps catch sight of two birds fighting or a car catching fire or something to hold her attention (for anything was better than fallacies and similes and whatever else the horribly uninteresting man was trying to teach her. She had just started tenth grade and had forgotten his name). The only thing that could come to the girl's mind, watching the hulking shape barrel towards her classroom, was that wishing was a bitch.
Why else would one have to be careful when using it?
It came too fast and she was too surprised to say anything, the glass shattering and a large piece of stone cracking her in the skull before she could even realize that the teacher had stopped talking. Or her best friend, Edgar, screaming for her to "watch out!" It was much too late for such things.
The evo crashed through the window with all the force of a cannonball, shrieking and screaming like the bird of prey it had once been. The students scattered, the teacher ushering them all out the door as the monster proceeded to rampage through their classroom and kick up debris like a bird trapped in a cage. It upturned desks and books in its frenzy, large razor wings flapping aggressively as a beak sharpened mouth clacked around a pink tongue.
Emily dizzily sat up, blood running from where she had suffered her blow to the head, her vision fuzzy even with her glasses on her face. She wasn't registering reality very well, or surely she would have reacted much stronger to the beast before her and the fact that it had tossed Ed across the room. He was the last one remaining, there only to save her, it would appear, as the messages sent from her brain weren't quite making it to her legs.
Such distorted, wrong things evos were, horrible plays on nature. They twisted and mutated the laws of physics and beauty with their very existence, refusing to play by the unspoken rules of life and balance as they continued to crawl upon the earth. They were chaotic and abstract in a way outside of reasonable means, independent of laws that Emily herself had learned to adhere to when she first reached for her first sketchbook. They set her belly aflame.
She really didn't like the monsters.
As though sensing her animosity, the evo glanced down, noticing the frozen girl for the first time. Although she had been the closest one to the window when it had burst in, she had been knocked across the room and onto her bottom by the impact, now sitting with her glasses askew and her mouth agape. Hissing, the mutated animal stopped the beating of its wings in favor of alighting in the ruins of the windowsill, watching her predatorily. Some aspect of its old life as a nocturnal hunter must have remained, as it patiently waited for the little mouse to make a move before cornering it. It was her fear that was, ironically saving the girl's life; because the great animal was only going to strike if she made to run. She was doomed either way, really. It would catch her before she made it to the door or snatch her up now.
Whether Emily recognized this or not was of little consequence. She wasn't going to move either way (couldn't, actually) so she did the only thing she could in such a situation.
She screamed.
"You rang?" The voice came from nowhere, the evo suddenly yanked back from whence it came and tossed, unceremoniously, across the school courtyard. Emily felt her eyes roll to the back of her skull and was quite certain she was about to faint.
If she had even been inclined to such things. But her pride wouldn't allow that.
As it was, she rolled them right back into their original position and shook her way to her feet, watching the new predator.
He was most certainly not a student here. Surely she would have noticed this boy before.
Wearing a bright orange jacket and matching goggles was a scream for attention whilst walking the halls, whether one wanted it to be or not. His hair was spiked and gelled like many boys boasted, and his cocky grin set beneath dark brown eyes. Emily recognized him from the news broadcasts. Rex, an agent for Providence.
Who was also very much an evo.
Realizing his rescued damsel was still staring in wide eyed fright, Rex felt his smile falter. He glanced over his shoulder, wondering if that bird was back. Nope. It was on the ground, gauging in battle with Six and Bobo. He should probably get to that. But first he had to know; why did the chick look so spooked?
"Hey. You're safe now." She winced as the boy spoke, looking like she very much wanted to sink back to the ground. The dark brown braids lining her skull clacked their beads together as she jerked her chin up, a spark of vicious spirit in her eyes as she looked at him. She would not cave, would not.
"So?" Rex blinked in confusion at the girl's accusatory way of speaking, the malice in her words. "So? You're welcome. You should be fleeing the scene, right?"
Emily was not one for rudeness. Not at all! She had actually been raised to be very polite. But looking at him, gazing at her like at any moment he wouldn't distort his body and ruin the artistic value of his appearance. Like he wouldn't completely throw away the graceful build of his arms and legs in return for those hideous appendages that lie just below the surface. The boy was guilty of a high crime; a destroyer of art!
She turned her back on him, a grimace on her face. "Yeah. Thanks." It wasn't all that sincere. Rex heard the note of distaste. "Hey! I just saved your life, ya know!" The girl jumped as he raised his voice and the young evo realized that she hadn't spoken out of anger.
But out of fear. Her cover for fear was anger.
That quelled his frustration rather fast, replacing it with an awkward since of sadness.
"And I said thanks! What more do you want?" The boy's eyes hooded themselves as the young woman ran over to the only other occupant of the room. It was a boy that lay upon the ruined remains of the teacher's desk, sitting up and moaning.
Shaking his head, Rex turned to leave. He had other battles to fight.
"Nothing, I guess."