A/N- Inconsistent posting much? My bad… Way too much other stuff on these days honestly, I don't get on here very often anymore. I'd still like to finish off the stories I've started though and have a couple more in the pipeline. Currently got the first few chapters and some solid ideas down for a next gen/new team original for Alpha Force and also one for my favourite new TV series Person Of Interest.
Yes I am still working on my stories for my other fandoms, so those other fans can expect something there in time.
Further more, those who have questions for me or want my input on anything go ahead and ask, you'll get what time I've got. Em's construction of a help forum on the site is great idea and I'll happily answer any questions you post in there to the best of my ability.
Cheers.
-Grey.
Barely two steps in the classroom door, Alex felt like he was wide out in the open and exposed. Before him sat at least two dozen students; all staring at the two latecomers, as if they were expected to start their own dance routine.
The red-faced and balding teacher, Mr Greenaway, glared at the tardy students and seemed to be awaiting some sort of response. He was an ugly unkempt specimen, at forty something, with a cruel sneer for a mouth and a lumpy nose that looked like it had been broken several times. Lean as a whip and mean looking as one too, described the man well. A cheap pair of round glasses sat askew on the deformed nose and were fogged up in anger, but he refused to remove them to clear it away.
The chameleon part of Alex wanted to disappear into the wall or blend anonymously into the crowd of seated teenagers. A gillie suit crafted from the tacky wall paper of the older classroom seemed more attractive by the moment.
Being the new and temporary student, Alex hesitated in responding and Hex instead took charge of the situation.
"Detention? No fair, we are only five minutes late!" He exclaimed indignantly.
Alex cringed at his friend's response, thinking that the other teen was just digging the hole deeper for them.
This was reinforced by the narrowing of the eyes on their already aggravated teacher.
"Mr. Johnston, need I remind you again to watch your tongue in my class. Late is late and therefore detention." The balding teacher snapped at his student, before noticing Alex.
"For both of you.." He finished.
"Come on man, It's his first day," Hex argued, earning another dark look from the teacher.
"Who's the new kid?" He demanded flicking his head in Alex's direction.
"My name is Alex. Alex Craig." He introduced himself before quickly adding "Sir."
Greenaway studied his new student for a moment.
"Alex Craig huh?" He pondered, checking his class role with a long narrow finger and giving a grunt of acknowledgement as he found his name.
"Find an empty seat and be quick about it," The teacher ordered Alex, before including Hex in the command.
"Both of you.." He added in an irritated tone, his dislike of the hacker obvious.
The boys looked downcast and found two seats together at the back of the class.
"Told you he was a bit of a numpty," Hex grumbled nodding towards the teacher, who was now busy writing something on the board.
Alex concurred with a nod and a wry grin; every school had at least one.
"You weren't wrong," He agreed sullenly.
"I very rarely am," Hex smugly replied.
Alex grinned at his comment, there was no way he could let that pass without having a crack at his mate's expense.
"I think Amber would be inclined to disagree." He slyly riposted, baiting his trap and awaiting a bite from the hacker.
Hex's lips seemed to tighten at the comment and he pointedly kept staring straight ahead.
"So it is a good thing she isn't here," He muttered out of the corner of his mouth, still apparently engrossed in the lesson.
"I guess I just have to give you shit in her place then." Alex deviously decided.
"This is going to be a lonnnng month…" Hex hissed derisively.
As any hated class does, the lesson seemed to drag on for several hours rather then the standard single one. Despite the earliness of the day, both Hex and Alex left the room feeling worn out and tried.
Eager to leave, but dragging their heels with early onset fatigue, the boys hastily fled the presence of the nasty teacher who had just given them both detentions.
On the first day too! Alex thought in bitter outrage.
It was probably due to their lowered level of attention that the pair was caught up in the ambush that followed.
Trudging down the halls, they spoke very little, still fully absorbing the events of the morning. It was there that they were attacked.
A blur of movement exploded out from a gap between the lockers. The boys had no time to take in any details before they were set upon by the assailant.
Out of the corner of his eye Alex caught a snatch of a quick punch being thrown at Hex, before he was set upon himself. He heard Hex give a yelp of surprise at the suddenness of the attack.
Strong arms wound themselves around his chest and crushed the air out of his lungs in an instant. A breathless Alex tried to free his arms to fight back and he struggled in the grip for an instant before he stopped.
The vice like hug was loosening off and his attacker stepping back with a huge smarmy grin accompanied by a friendly greeting.
"Hey Alex!"
"Dammit Li," Hex cursed the short oriental girl, while massaging the spot on his shoulder where she had affectionately hit him.
"Good morning to you too Hex," She brightly replied, ignoring the peeved look he wore.
"I didn't know you attended school here.." Alex mentioned in mild confusion.
"Yeah, just when my parents are in London." Li explained, usually she travelled with them and did her study through correspondence.
"So sadly they must be here now," Hex mused sardonically.
Li rolled her eyes at him.
"What's bugging Hex?" she asked Alex as the hacker, taking advantage of the stop, casually leaned against a locker to check his palmtop.
"Some punks tried to jump us on the tube this morning," Alex complained, realising now why he felt knackered so early in the day.
"Seriously?" Li blanched in disbelief and stopping in front of the boys to stare at them.
Now that she looked closely, she noticed Hex was slightly cradling one arm and that Alex looked like he had run a marathon. Small nicks and scratches littered one side of Hex's face from when the bottle had broke on his arm, tiny slivers of glass were still embedded in his faded grey hoodie. Li reached up to brush a few of the sparkling shards loose.
"What happened?" She hissed, lowering her voice to barely a whisper so other passing students wouldn't hear.
Alex was even more safety conscious then that and insisted they duck into a nearby empty classroom rather then discuss it in public.
Conscious of the five minutes in between periods, the trio slipped into a disused social studies class.
Hex immediately sunk to a slouching seat nonchalantly on one of the desks, letting his legs swing on their own accord. His eyes had barely seemed to leave his palmtop as the pair had led him into the room. Alex copied him to sit on a desk also, but one where he could see the door.
Li swung a chair around backwards to sit with her arms resting eagerly on the backrest, she then balanced her head on her arms to look thoughtfully at the boys.
Alex wasted no time recounting what happened on the train, in all its grisly details.
Li's mouth was quickly wide in shock at what she heard, but she kept her silence until Alex had finished anyway.
"So this guy who attacked Hex with the bottle he-?" Li was cut off from her first question by the faint sound of music.
The opening strumming of Placebo's 'Every Me Every You' was issuing from Hex's pocket.
The Hacker jumped at the sudden noise, but quickly discarded his palmtop on the table in his haste to retrieve the cellphone from the pocket of his dark worn jeans.
Just as quickly he was finding his feet and hurrying to the adjoining empty teacher's office to take the phone call without having to talk in front of Alex and Li.
Alex noticed one look at the caller ID was all it had taken and suddenly Hex had wanted to answer the call in private.
"Hey," The Hacker simply answered with a tone of trepidation, striding for the door.
Alex shared a knowing grin with Li as they could hear a familiar female voice accosting Hex through the small speaker, before he was able to make it to the relative privacy of the office.
"Wonder who that was?" Alex smirked, his voice laden with sarcasm.
"Tell Amber we say hi," Li loudly called after Hex, with a smarmy grin.
The two remaining teenagers chuckled at their friend's unnecessary secretiveness. They both had no doubt who was on the other end of the line.
Remembering what she had been about to ask before, Li turned back to Alex.
"So did the guy with the broken bottle in his throat, did he die?" She quietly asked, her voice was light as if it was treading carefully around a taboo topic.
Alex had been wondering that for the last hour and was a big reason why he hadn't been able to focus on his English lesson. That and the teacher was shit.
"I don't know much about medicine like Paulo," He confessed.
"But I have to think that the amount of blood he lost could well have been fatal." Alex finished slowly, remembering the growing crimson puddle he had to leap when they were fleeing the train.
"The whole having broken glass in your trachea can't help with the continuing to breath thing either, right?" Li morbidly noted.
"Nope," Alex agreed.
Li grimaced at the mental image but the thought was broken by the shrill ringing of the bell.
It was time for their next class.
"Not a great way to start your month staying with Hex." Li remarked, sending her seat back into place with a push of her foot.
"Nope, I kinda wish I'd went with my parents to Canada after all." Alex flatly confessed, slinging his bag once more over a shoulder.
"And help your folks clean up some dank old cabin that used to belong to your hermit uncle? Nah this has got to be way more fun." Li goaded him.
"Tomorrow we are walking to school is all I'm going to say." Alex muttered.
"How are you ever on time with Casanova here, slowing you up?" Li joked, jerking her head towards the room Hex was finally emerging from.
A dark cloud seemed to hover over the dark haired teen, as he growled at her on the way past.
"Shut it, Li!" He shrugged past the waiting pair, scooped up his palmtop from the table and strode out into the corridor once more.
"Oooh cranky this morning aren't we!" Li noted in bubbly amusement.
She broke into an energetic skip to catch up to the sullen Hacker, Alex stuck with a dignified long stride.
"Did Amber ban you from computer games for a week?" Li mocked Hex, tugging at his palmtop pouch playfully.
It was a sure fire way to rile up the possessive teen and his hand clamped down over top the protective cover. Hex stopped midstep and whirling on his friend, sent her the most withering glare he could muster. There were only two real topics he hated being hassled about and she had, as usual stomped on both.
"She says….." Hex caught himself mid snarl and paused to breath.
"She says Hi," He lied weakly, clutching his palmtop tighter and starting into a brisk stride again.
Alex broke the awkward silence by asking the logical question.
"So where are we going? What class have we got now?" He aimed the question at Hex, whose timetable he had been placed on for the sake of ease.
"Gym," Hex grunted with a nod towards the large sports gymnasium they were approaching.
"Phys Ed," Li clarified, cracking her knuckles in anticipation, sparks seemed to crackle behind her eyes at the prospect.
"Cool PE," Alex nodded his approval; sport and exercise was something he could handle.
"Well let's pick an activity then," Li suggested walking up the large whiteboard with the listed activities to choose from.
"Football?" Alex suggested, eying the large list of names that had already signed up for the sport.
"Meh too soft," Li complained.
"Pack of prancing pansies," Hex concurred.
Alex hid his disappointment; he quite liked the occasional game of footy.
"Hockey then?" Alex tried again.
"I'm not welcome on the Hockey turf anymore," Li confessed to Alex with a twisted grin; it was part shame, part pride and a serious dose of amusement.
Hex snorted with barely contained laughter. He quickly remembered he was supposed to be sulking and darkened his expression once more.
"You broke that guy's leg Li, I'm not surprised." He breezily commented.
Alex cocked an eyebrow in surprise, but made no comment. Knowing his friends he would hear the rest of the story at some stage soon.
"Rugby! Finally a proper sport." Li crowed in victory, spying the sign in sheet for the mornings sport.
She dug through her bag for a pen and hastily scrawled her name down. Alex noticed with little surprise that she was the only girl who was interested in playing rugby.
"I thought you'd be more interested in the rock climbing?" Alex pointed out, gesturing to another half empty sheet of paper beside the rugby one.
"Na it is just on the shitty old school climbing wall in the gym, amateurs stuff." She dismissed it before shifting uneasily.
"Besides, haven't been climbing on school ropes since one of them snapped on me the other week." She shuddered at the memory.
"Seriously?" Alex asked incredulously, hastily removing his pen from the sign up sheet.
Hex confirmed the story with a dark nod.
"If Hex hadn't caught me, things could have gone pretty sour." Li admitted grimly.
"That's a noble way of describing how you used me as a landing pad, you almost broke my neck." Hex grumbled with a scowl.
Alex turned away to hide his smirk and spotted another room off to aside with the door half open.
It was a large weights room filled with gym machines and multiple free weights of varying sizes. It was virtually empty and in Alex's mind, looked pretty damn inviting.
"What do ya say to a quick workout Hex?" He floated the idea to his friend, gesturing to the gym with a cock of his head.
"Yeah okay," Hex slowly agreed, slowly he began to warm to the idea as an alternative to rugby.
"I've had enough rough housing for today, could use a decent blow out of the cobwebs and a stretch." He decided.
"Suit yourselves," Li shrugged happily, heading for the female changing rooms.
"Try not to make any of the boys cry this time," Hex called after her.