A/N: here's a glimpse into Zaph and Misto's life between "From Alley To House" and "Friends and Lovers." This is their first experience with going to class! We get to see a little bit of Zaph and Misto trying to blend in with student life, and getting used to each other and a public life. At this point Zaph is still living with Erin and Katie. I know, thought I forgot about them didn't ya?

The students walking across the quad wondered why on earth they called this the spring semester. The ground was frosty, the trees were bare of leaves, the wind was blowing so hard you had to huddle inside your coat to keep warm... Nothing about it said spring except for the class schedules. Oh well. They all bundled up as best they could and made their way to the first classes of the semester, all of them grumbling.

Except for two new students. They were laughing, talking fast and excitedly, looking about them as if not believing their eyes. They were both wearing enormous hooded coats so that you could tell very little about them…except that they were both rather short for college students.

Standing between two buildings, they pushed back their hoods somewhat so that they could steal a quick kiss before going to class. Suddenly, those around them stopped and stared - not at the kiss, which was quite tame compared to other quad PDA's, but at the two involved in it. They weren't just pale, they were bright white, and had strange black markings on their mouth, the undersides of their noses, and around their eyes. What had assumedly been black hair looked more like short black fur, surmounted by feline ears pushed flat by the hoods of the coats.

One of them giggled. "People are staring, Misto. We should go to class."

The other one didn't speak, just smiled and rubbed noses with his companion. Then they walked inside, their progress marked by how low people's jaws were dropped in the hallways.

Settling themselves down in one of the larger lecture halls, they took of their coats, revealing long tails to complete their feline look. The female's was all black, the male's black tipped with white. As they sat waiting for class to begin, the tails twitched back and forth with excitement. They were definitely glad to be here, a fact that made them seem even more out of place. Mistoffelees laughed as his companion fussed over her notebooks, pens and pencils, trying to figure out how best to arrange them for effective note taking.

"Relax, Zaph, they're not going to kick you out of the lecture for not taking perfect notes."

Zaphia just smiled at him. "I know that. But I'm just so glad they let us enroll…I want to do my best." She had been wandering around campus since she had decided to enroll, meeting with Profs and faculty, seeing what she wanted to do and generally doing all she could to make her college dream happen smoothly. She had even attended a few classes as an observer to make sure she wanted to do this (they'd been gauging professor/student reaction) and taken an eight week course for the last part of the fall semester. Now, however, she was a real student and she was thrilled about it.

The tomcat seemed about to say something else but, at that point, the professor walked in the room and they fell silent out of respect, unlike many of the other students. With over 500 students in a room, the odds of everyone quieting up at the same time are slim to none.

"Morning, class. Glad to see you saw it fit to put forth the effort to show up at eight am." As the class grumbled, he continued. "You may be wondering if I will make the class easier since it meets so early. I will not. Anyone who honestly expected such behavior doesn't belong at a university. Now I know you probably won't understand half of what I say, since I'm used to teaching grad students, but those of you who can follow me will get a lot more bang for your buck. Since you paid to be here and I'm getting paid as well as forced to teach you freshmen, lets begin…"

Zaphia looked somewhat alarmed at this start to the class, her gray eyes opened very wide. Shaking her head somewhat, she began frantically scribbling down everything the professor said, occasionally looking over at Misto in concern as if asking, "Do you understand a word he's saying?"

Although he was writing notes, Mistoffelees sighed, expecting his grades in this class to be less than he had hoped. He was going to go to class and take notes, but would probably understand neither if this first day was any indication.

Mid-ramble, the professor stopped dead and stared at the two cats. They shifted uncomfortably in their chairs. With a cocked eyebrow, the professor asked, "Who are you two? Usually, the class clowns do not show up in costume." While the class laughed, he stood there awaiting their answer.

"I'm Zaphia."

"I'm Mistoffelees."

The professor smirked. "Ah, yes, now I remember. The chancellor warned us about you two. Something about 'unusual students' who might 'pose a challenge' for their professors. Are you here to challenge me?"

"No, sir," the kittens chorused.

"Glad to hear it. I, however, am going to challenge you. You see class," the professor turned from the two uncomfortable students to face the class at large, "among other things in this class we shall see that expectations, both consumer and otherwise, have a great impact on the market. These two," the prof pointed at Zaphia and Mistoffelees, "are expecting me to treat them with special attention since they are something of, shall we say 'exceptional' students? Now remember class, although expectations shape the market, that doesn't mean that the market would have worked that way without such expectations. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy." The professor again smirked. "So in a way I will fulfill these two's expectations. They will be singled out, but not because I shall favor them above the rest of you who had to work for your entry into the school and couldn't get by on a sympathy campaign." Turning to the cats, he said, "They will be singled out by virtue of their own inferiority as compared to the rest of you."

The cats looked shocked.

The class stifled its snickering in order to go back to frantically scribbling notes until class ended, but Zaphia and Mistoffelees were unable to concentrate.

Misto could hear Zaphia taking in deep breaths too quickly and knew she was close to tears.

As soon as class was dismissed, they grabbed their coats and got outside as quickly as possible. Beside the brick building they stopped, leaning against the wall and each other. Soon they saw the professor come out of the class, and Zaphia ran up to him.

"Why did you start off the semester by being so cruel to us?" she asked, eyes shiny. "We just want to learn. Isn't that what school is supposed to be about?"

The professor smirked at her again. "I'm not just here to teach economics. I'm supposed to teach all the freshman something about life and college in general so that they can decide if they can handle it or not. I'm going to make sure that you two realize that just because you are different does not mean you are special. Sometimes, it means you are inferior." And with that, he walked away.

Zaphia just stood there, speechless. Slowly, she raised her hands to her face, covering it, head lowering.

Misto came up behind her, holding her as she started to cry.

As she turned and nuzzled against him, she could see the downcast look in his eyes and, even in her sadness, wanted to comfort him.

"He wants us to drop his class and give up, prove we can't handle it, that we really did get in despite being unfit students. We can't give him that satisfaction, right?" she asked. "We can prove him wrong, right?"

"Right." The tomcat looked unconvinced.

Holding hands, the two of them wandered off to their other classes, wondering if they had made the right decision in coming here.

"This professor is so unfair! He gives us bad marks on all our papers and tests, even though they're better than other people's who get A's! He always singles us out for examples in class to embarrass us…" The kitten was unburdening herself to her friends as they ate together in the girls apartment.

"What do you mean?" Erin asked.

"Like… You know how they do that whole 'so and so has something so and so wants to buy, so he sells it, then sells it to someone else for more money…' thing using class members as examples? He uses us in those types of things, but when he comes to us he has to make some crack like 'Of course these two would be too busy licking themselves to take advantage of the higher prices they could gain, and would lose the opportunity to make money.' Then the whole class laughs and laughs…"

"Can you talk to him? Maybe he just thinks he's being funny and doesn't know how he's hurting you," Katie suggested.

At this, Mistoffelees shook his head. "No, he made it quite clear after class the first day that he considers us inferior, that we didn't get into the university based on merit, and that he's going to try and teach us that we are inferior as part of class."

"Getting back to your professor troubles… Don't worry about him. There are always jerks that pick on some students. Your other classes are going fine, right?"

"Yes…but it's making college seem…" The cats sat there, pondering.

Katie and Erin grinned at each other.

"You need to see more of the slacker side of college life," Erin said. "You're focusing too much on classes. Wanna play Frisbee on the quad with us? It's warmed up enough lately that we can do it."

"Sure!"

"Nice catch!"

They'd been playing Frisbee for about half an hour, and people were quite impressed by Zaphia and Mistoffelees. They were very fast, and able to leap up to catch the Frisbee and come back down without any appearance of effort. They joked that this was probably the first time catlike reflexes had been used in Frisbee, a traditionally dog-dominated sport.

Suddenly, as the orange plastic disk went spinning directly at Misto's head, it stopped midair. Everyone gasped as the disk sat there, hovering. With a shy smile the tomcat plucked the disk out of the air before tossing it over to Erin to begin the game again.

Katie and Erin exchanged a brief look, but didn't say anything. Zaphia had mentioned her boyfriend had…extra abilities. But the little tom always seemed shy to talk about it.

The queen looked at Mistoffelees with a bit of a sly grin. "Misto, I just had an idea…"

Katie came up to Zaphia and Misto as they napped in a sunny spot on the quad, her laughter waking the cats up.

Yawning, Zaphia looked up at her friend, then leaned back against her feline companion. "What is so funny?"

"Your econ professor. I just saw him come running out of the building with a stack of papers. He looked downright frantic!"

Zaphia grinned. "That was Misto's idea. He made his day-planner disappear. He didn't know where he was supposed to be for days! It just reappeared on his desk, so that he read '10:15- meeting with the dean' at approximately…10:23."

Misto started to laugh. "The entry is a bogus one!" he added. "Zaphia's idea. She wrote it in there. He'll arrive all apologetic for being late to a meeting that doesn't exist. They'll think he's insane!"

"What else have you guys been doing to this guy?"

"Well… The classes papers disappeared and reappeared marked with A's…And rather than admit something was going on, he gave them back with the A's instead of scratching out the grades and arousing questions!"

"Oh, that's great!"

"Yeah, it was Erin's idea."

"Good idea. Did you leave the voodoo stuff in his office?"

"Yep. He made some stupid point about false beliefs in lecture… used voodoo as his example. He's going on this whole 'magic doesn't exist' tirade… I think he's trying to reach out to whoever 'cursed' him to give it up because its futile."

"Will you give up?"

"Not until our big finish before spring break."

"Which is…?"

"Come and see!"

"Now class, notice how our esteemed feline friends are late today."

They actually weren't. The professor had started before the bell rang. They weren't the only one's trailing in, as he spoke.

"This is what I mean when we talk about productivity not being a constant. If these two were in your company, you wouldn't be able to count on them getting stuff done in a timely manner… They might happen across some yarn and become distracted or something like that."

As the kittens sat down, Zaphia spoke out. "You are really being rather unprofessional, you do realize that don't you?"

"Beg pardon?"

"Picking on your students, who are trying their best to learn and fit in. A rather unfair abuse of power."

The professor laughed at her. "I think my actions are perfectly valid, given your general incompetence in this class…" as he spoke the pen he was holding burst, spilling a fountain of ink all over his shirt. While rifling through the podium for tissues to wipe the mess up with, a small trashcan suddenly was between his feet. With a grunt he tripped, falling over. No one could say that the can wasn't there to begin with…except the professor.

Red faced he stood back up, slamming his binder of notes onto the surface of the podium. With a loud crack the spine snapped, papers bursting into the air.

The professor looked long and hard at the two felines as the papers fluttered down around him. Trembling, he dismissed the class early.

Smiling, the kittens left, their friends who were sitting in the back of the class leaving as well and meeting them outside.

"That was hilarious!"

"That professor is such a jerk…"

"The rest of the class seemed to enjoy it as well."

Suddenly, they all stopped talking as the disconcerted professor himself came up. Zaphia and Mistoffelees turned to meet him.

"Given recent events, I wish to apologize to you. My behavior was inexcusable. If I swear to treat you differently for the remainder of the semester, might all of these mystical torments stop?"

Zaphia smiled sweetly. "I appreciate your apology. But what are you coming to us for? We're just incompetent animals who could never have done something like that. And magic doesn't exist."

Bowing slightly, Misto smirked at the professor. "Have a nice spring break, sir."

The professor just walked to his car, visibly shaken.

Misto offered Zaphia his arm, and together they walked off. "I don't think I should pull too many stunts like that…" Mistoffelees whispered in her ear. Zaphia nodded.

"But once in awhile…it helps even the odds. So thanks" she whispered back, and he laughed.