"Yeah, but nobody else in there does," he grunted. "'specially not yer pal Summers....."

"Well, no, but you can hardly blame them," Annie pointed out reasonably. "Just because you never tried to throw ME off the Statue of Liberty doesn't mean it doesn't still bother THEM."

"Yeah, well... I did say I wouldn't do it again," he said a bit defensively.

"I don't think Mr Logan believes you." Annie sighed, giving him an adorably serious look. "Not everybody knows you like I do, you know."

"Yeah." Creed smiled, reaching out to ruffle her soft blonde curls. "You KNOW not to believe me."

"Yup." She grinned at him. "Except you wouldn't toss me. 'cause if you try it with me I'll rip your damn arm off, y'know that."

"That's my girl," he said fondly.

"Hi!" A little streak of purple hair and blue overall zipped down the steps and latched onto Annie like a limpet. "I missed you."

Annie smiled, patting the younger girl's head as if she was a friendly puppy. "Everyone misses me when I'm not there," she said cheerfully. "Only some people LIKE to miss me. It means I'm not there."

Creed and Clarice both snickered at that. She had a point. Annie was as powerfully *present* as anyone either of them had ever met, and it could be something of a relief to get out of the way of all that forcefulness. "I didn't like missing you, though," Clarice confided. "I like it when you're here."

"Well, good." Annie gave her father a hopeful look. "Can I keep her? Lookit, she's so cute....."

Creed looked dubious. "I dunno...."

Annie pouted. "Please? If I can't have a kitten or an anaconda, can't I keep a Clarice?"

"Well, I guess the school can't say no to this one..." Scott Summers had forcefully vetoed the anaconda. Not even a python, he'd insisted. Not even a grass snake. Annie had sulked for nearly twenty minutes, an all-time record.

Clarice looked hopeful. "I'm housebroken," she offered.

Annie giggled. "See? And she won't try to chew your fingers off, either."

Creed smiled reluctantly. Annie really seemed to like the little monkey..... and he'd heard that every child needed a pet. "Oh, okay. You can keep her." He scowled a little. "But only as long as both of ya behave real good."

Annie nodded. "Of course!" She hugged him quickly, kissing his cheek. "I'll look after her, I promise. She won't be any bother."

Creed swallowed, trying not to melt into a putty-willed wussy-man at the slightly damp, childish kiss. "She better not," he said weakly.

"I'll be really good." And Clarice hugged him too, rather shyly.

Startled, he hugged back, more or less automatically. It wasn't anything like hugging Annie, who was all sleek muscle and feline scent. Clarice was small and a bit bony, smelling of girl-child and the candy she loved so much. He was surprised to discover that it was quite nice. "You'd better," he said a bit gruffly, fending her off gently. "Now you two scoot. You both got classes this morning."

Annie nodded, grabbing her backpack, and the two girls scampered off. He looked after them for a moment, smiling a tiny bit. They were so cute and trusting.... it was almost a shame that they wouldn't stay that way.

There was a rustle behind him. Creed didn't bother to turn around. "Sneakin' around in the bushes?"

Logan grunted, slipping out of cover with what would have seemed to a normal person to be preternatural silence. "Was out having a smoke when I heard the bike."

"Ah." Creed was finding himself in a state he never remembered feeling before..... acute embarrassment. He'd just been caught hugging not only his own child, which might be explained away, but another one that he hardly even knew. "Got you house-trained, have they? No smokin' yer nasty cigars in the nice house?" He said it as nastily as he could, but his heart wasn't in it.

Logan shrugged, looking a little embarrassed. "Just wanted some peace and quiet, without all them damn kids around," he explained.

Creed nodded.

They gazed at each other for a long, embarrassed moment. Their tough, manliness had been irreparably damaged. Creed had been caught hugging a child not his own and..... far worse.... Logan had been caught having to go outside to smoke. Testosterone dribbled humiliatingly away, and they found themselves coughing and staring at random trees.

Carefully, they inched off in opposite directions, until Creed could gun the bike and Logan could wander back into the woods without either of them having to admit to noticing that the other had gone.

* * *

Marie looked up, and squeaked in surprise. "Logan, what on earth happened to you?!" She jumped to her feet, reaching out to him.

He was standing in her bedroom doorway, swaying slightly on his feet. His clothes were shredded, he was covered in mud and blood and what smelled like whiskey, and there were fading cuts and bruises covering every inch of skin that she could see. He was grinning weakly. "Hi, kid. Got in a bit of a scrap."

"With who!? An entire hockey team?!" she demanded, checking automatically that her gloves were on and her sleeves rolled down, then tugging his arm over her shoulder.

He leaned gratefully against her. "Nah. One overgrown kittycat." He chuckled a bit dopily. "Was kinda fun."

Marie rolled her eyes. Men. "So why come here?"

"Do' wan' Jean and Scottertron finding out. They'll get all snotty about it." He swayed a bit more. "Got a bandaid?"

Rogue giggled helplessly, towing him over to the spacious ensuite that was one of the few benefits of her mutant powers. "Scottertron?"

"Long, long story." Actually, he didn't remember where that'd come from... he'd been a little drunk at the time, and in the middle of pounding Creed's head into the bar.

"Ah. Of course." She pushed him down to sit on the edge of the bath, and opened up the tiny cabinet over the sink. "Is any of the bar still standing?"

Logan managed to look a little ashamed of himself. "Most of it," he said evasively. "All the really important walls..."

"LO-gan!" Marie gave him an adorably reproachful look, pulling out a roll of bandage. "I thought you said you weren't going to fight anymore!"

"F'r money. Said I wouldn't fight f'r money." Logan waved an unsteady finger. He'd drunk a lot, then gotten into a rather demanding fight, then drunk some more. He didn't remember the last time he'd been this schickered. "This was just for fun."

"Oh, and that's supposed to make it better?" She sighed, wrapping a deep cut on his arm. The wounds did heal better if they were held closed by something. "I take it that by 'overgrown kittycat' you mean Sabretooth?"

He nodded. "It wasn't a serious fight," he said reassuringly. "Just..... I dunno... seein' who'd win."

She gave him a look of feminine disgust. "Who won?"

"Dunno. We both got too drunk to keep fightin', so we postponed it." Logan burped happily.

"Oh, that reeks...." Marie said, making a face and fanning a hand pointedly. "You're just disgusting...."

"Yeah? So?" Logan sighed, leaning back against the tile. "He ain't quite as bad as I thought."

Marie nodded, using bandaids to tape the deeper cuts closed. "Annie sure seems to think so."

He looked at her, with that brooding look that still made her heart pound a bit. "You.... got them in yer head too?" he said tentatively. They'd never talked about it before - her powers, or their effects.

Marie shook her head, leaning back on her heels and nibbling thoughtfully on her lip. "Annie.... I dunno how.... she fixed it so I only absorbed power from him. I got all the memories and stuff from her." Her lips quirked softly. "It faded real fast..."

His shaggy eyebrows raised. "Thought they... I dunno.... stuck around for a while."

Marie nodded. "You did. So did Magneto. Even David. But... it depends on the personality. You and Magneto are really intense, focused kindsa people, you know?" She shook her head, fingering the white lock absently. "Annie.... she's sorta vague. There's a whole lotta stuff going on in her head, but really fast. After a couple hours, all there was left in *my* head was a sorta bouncy, cheery feeling and an urge to go 'ooh, shiny'."

Logan nodded, seeming to relax a bit. "No nightmares or nothin'?"

Marie shook her head. "Nope. Worst thing that happened was when I was wondering how a caterpillar tasted...."

Logan choked quietly. "No kiddin'?"

Marie giggled. "Annie caught me looking and told me that the stripy kind aren't any good to eat."

Logan chuckled softly. "She's a nice kid," he said, smiling a little.

Marie nodded, and wrinkled her nose. "And when SHE wanders into my room late at night, at least she's clean."

* * *

Annie lay on her stomach, inspecting a small dandelion. "I like yellow," she said thoughtfully.

Clarice looked at the flower. "I like pink," she said, resting her chin on her small fist. "It's pretty."

"Yellow is brighter," Annie objected, pointing to the flower as if to submit it for evidence.

"Pink is softer," Clarice pointed out, holding out a fold of her t-shirt. It had a little round pink animal on it that Marie said was a Pokemon. Annie thought it looked like a marshmallow with eyes. Clarice thought it was cute.

"I like green best," Marie said, without bothering to open her eyes. She was lying on her back on the grass, enjoying the spring sunshine.

"Green's nice too," Annie conceded. "But I like yellow best."

"That's okay," Marie said patiently. "Everyone has different favourite colours."

"They do?" Annie digested this for a long moment. "What are they?"

"You'll have to ask yourself. I'm enjoying the sunshine," Marie said firmly.

"Okay!" Annie jumped to her feet and scampered off. "Hey, John! Bobby! Do you have favourite colours?"

Marie chuckled softly. "That'll keep her busy for a while."

Clarice giggled too. She was more at ease now with Marie, who treated both younger girls like sometimes pesky little sisters. "She's easy to distract, isn't she?"

"Thank god for that. The only thing keeping the world safe from her is the thirty-second attention span." Marie stretched her arms above her head, soaking up the warm sun. She was wearing short sleeves and short gloves today... Annie and Clarice could be trusted to be careful, and she did love the feel of spring sunshine.

"Well, hello there."

Marie opened her eyes in surprise. The new kid, Roberto something or other, was gazing down at her with a speculative smile. She groaned inwardly. "Hi," she said, as neutrally as she could.

"I'm Roberto," he said smoothly. "Don't think I've had the pleasure." He smiled, and she muffled a whimper. He was devastatingly cute, charming as all get out, and obviously looking for the status of having a girlfriend a little older than he was. Yuck.

"Rogue," she said coolly. Clarice was looking intimidated, and she patted the small shoulder. "Nice to meet you."

"I hope so." He smiled again. Rogue was torn between an urge to run like hell (that was the trauma talking) and an urge to kick him somewhere painful (that, she suspected, was the remains of Logan's persona).

"Yeah, well..... it was nice, but I gotta go," she said, scrambling to her feet. "C'mon, Clarrie. Let's go see if Logan's figured out your training schedule." She hustled the younger girl off to sit with Logan. For some reason, guys never came over when a girl was sitting with Logan.

Behind her, he scowled, sulking back to one of the groups of boys. Behind him, Annie looked around sharply at him, pointed ears twitching.

* * *

Scott blinked. He'd just been down the road to the store, picking up odds and ends that for one reason or another hadn't been included in the weekly shopping. Some toothpaste for sensitive gums, a few cans of tuna, a jar of dried rosemary... stuff like that. It was a trip he made nearly every week.

Jean didn't usually wait on the steps for him to return.

"Is something wrong?" He slid out of the car, giving her a concerned look behind the glasses as he noted her clasped hands and furrowed brow.

She nodded, reaching out to rest a hand on his arm. "I'm glad you're back," she said quietly. "There's been a fight."

Scott raised an eyebrow quizzically. "There are fights all the time. Why.... oh." He frowned. "Annie?"

Jean nodded. "Annie, pitted against Piotr, Fred, and that new student, Roberto. I haven't been able to get any details out of them as to how it started, but Piotr is badly concussed, Fred has a broken leg, and I'm worried that Roberto might lose a couple of fingers. They're all badly bruised and scratched, too, and Roberto's lost quite a bit of blood."

Scott abandoned the shopping, taking Jean's arm and hustling towards the infirmary. "Nothing potentially fatal?"

"No. And Logan's pretty insistent that she *could* have killed all three of them if that was what she'd been trying to do. Scott, the whole fight lasted less than a minute and a half. She did all that damage in seventy-eight seconds."

Scott made a soft, unhappy sound, walking a little faster. "How did the fight get broken up?"

Jean bit her lip. "It happened very fast, but from what I could see, Logan grabbed her and threw her into a wall, then Rogue jumped on her before she could go for him. She stopped fighting then, so as not to hurt Rogue."

"When you say threw-"

"The wall was twenty yards away. Annie hit it hard enough to scar the paintwork." Jean sighed. "It DID stop her, though, and he seemed to think it was necessary..."

Scott growled quietly. HE could have stopped the fight without throwing little girls around. "Where is she?"

Jean stopped in the middle of the hall, pulling him to a halt as well. "You're not going to like it, but-"

He read the proffered thought and scowled. "You put her in the *cells*?!"

"Just until we figure out what happened!" she said defensively. "I thought you could talk to her-"

Scott stalked away, not trusting himself to speak. God, he loved her, loved her with all his heart, but sometimes....

Annie was sitting on the floor in the middle of one of the cells, knees tucked up under her chin and a furious scowl on her small face. She looked up at the sound of his footsteps, and her face seemed to soften a little as she saw him. "I was in a fight," she told him unhappily. "And I got pushed in here. I don't like being locked up."

"I know." Scott punched in the code to disable the energy-screen that served as a door to the cell, and sat down beside her, reaching out to take one small hand in his. There was blood caked over her knuckles and under her claws. "What happened?"

She looked at the open door and relaxed slightly, letting her fingers curl around his. "We were all outside," she explained. "And that new guy was trying to flirt with Rogue. And Rogue didn't like it, so she went away and sat with Mr Logan. So then Roberto started saying nasty things about Rogue." She paused, looking thoughtful. "I think they were nasty, anyway. I didn't know all of them."

Scott nodded as calmly as he could. "What exactly did he say?"

Annie's sweet, slightly husky voice deepened and smoothed to exactly mimic Roberto's. "What's wrong with her? I was just trying to be friendly." Then the voice shifted again to mimic Piotr's slightly stilted English. "There is nothing wrong with Rogue, Roberto. She simply does not wish to flirt." And back to Roberto's voice, sneering a little. "I noticed. Damn ice-queen... a guy'd probably get frostbite, anyway."

Scott nodded, jaw hardening grimly. "I see."

Annie nodded. "There was more. He didn't think I could hear, but I could, so I went over there and told him to stop it. He gave me that funny look..." she imitated Roberto's lord-of-the-manor-condescending-to-the-lowly-peon expression perfectly. It was one he used a lot with the younger students. "And he asked me why. I told him 'cause it wasn't nice."

"That sounds very reasonable of you," Scott said cautiously.

Annie nodded. "I *was* being reasonable. I didn't growl or nothin'."

"Anything," he corrected automatically.

"I didn't growl or *anything*," Annie repeated obediently. "And then he asked me who was going to make him, and I said me, and he laughed, and I kicked him in the stomach. And he punched me, an' he was using his powers so it hit really hard." She scowled. "I got mad."

"And that was when the fight started?" he asked gently.

Annie nodded and sighed. "I didn't mean to smack Piotr's head into the concrete like that," she said regretfully. "But he grabbed my arms, and I shoved him off before I knew who it was."

"What about Fred?" Scott asked, rubbing the small, cold hand gently between both of his.

"I didn't kick him on purpose. He got too close."

Scott nodded and sighed. "Annie, I know you didn't hurt anyone on purpose.... except for Roberto... but you know fighting isn't allowed. Especially not for you."

Annie grumbled quietly. "He deserved it."

"Maybe. But you shouldn't have tried to deal with it yourself." A deep and personal dislike of snobbery prompted him to add "You should have told Mr Logan, and let him handle it."

"I guess." Annie sighed, giving him a mournful look. "I'm in trouble, aren't I?"

Scott nodded. "Yes, Annie, you are," he said seriously. "I know you were angry, and Roberto shouldn't have hit you, but you know you're not supposed to hurt the other students."

She hung her head. "I din't kill anyone," she mumbled. "Or even hurt 'em bad."

"I know." He rubbed the small back gently, feeling solid muscle under his hand. Somehow, it felt as if he was talking to a much younger child, trying to explain to her why she shouldn't hit the other kids in the sandbox. "But you're very highly trained, and that means you have to be extra careful."

She nodded penitently. "I'll try not to get mad at people," she promised.

"I know you will." He hugged her gently, the gesture coming oddly naturally. "And you're going to apologize to the boys, aren't you?"

She pouted, snuggling against his shoulder. "Even Roberto?"

"Especially Roberto," he said firmly.

"Oh, okay." She heaved a long sigh. "An' I'm gonna be punished, too, aren't I?"

"You're lucky you're not going to be expelled," Scott said a little reprovingly. Which she wouldn't.... she couldn't help the way she was, and if Xavier didn't see that then Scott would explain it to him, over and over again if necessary, until his resistance broke. "You may consider yourself grounded until furthur notice. No tv, no games, no dessert, and no weekend trips."

"But-" She saw his expression and sighed again. "Oh, all right..."

"Good. Now I want you to go to your room and think about what you did, and why it was wrong. And I don't want any references to chaos theory. I'd suggest referring to the Tao." He patted her arm. "You can tell me what you came up with tomorrow."

Annie nodded, brightening at the thought of the proffered intellectual exercise. "Okay!"

Scott nodded. He really didn't know why some people had trouble keeping her busy. "Someone will bring your dinner up to you."

Annie nodded. "Okay." She headed off to her room, a bit less scamper in her step than there usually was.

Scott sighed. There was going to be trouble over this.

* * *

"Did you talk to her?"

Scott nodded, slipping around their bedroom door and giving Jean a half-hearted smile. He was still a little mad at her for putting Annie in the cells, but he supposed he could see her point. "We talked, and she's in her room."

Jean frowned a little. "Are you sure that's wise?" The sheer, frenzied violence of Annie's attack on her classmate had shaken her badly. Just what kind of child were they harbouring?

"She knows that restriction to her room includes the treebranch outside." Scott sat down on the bed to unlace his shoes. "It makes her a lot less nervous than being locked in, and I don't think either of us wants her any jumpier."

His fiance nodded reluctantly. "That's true." She looked down at the scatter of papers on her desk. "Roberto still might lose his little finger on the left hand, but the others seem to be all right. It's just a matter of time."

"Good." Scott pulled off his shoes and socks and sprawled back on the bed, wriggling his toes in the cool air. Going shoeless was a secret, passionate vice for Scott Summers; in the orphanage, children had always worn shoes except to sleep, and neither an X-Man or a teacher could wander around shoeless. So he did it sometimes to relax, and Jean had learned that if she could see the bent nail on his pinky toe, he was tense.

"What are we going to do with her?" she asked, sitting down on the bed beside him and twining her fingers with his. "Annie, I mean."

"It's pretty much dealt with," he said tiredly, lifting his glasses for one careful moment to rub his closed eyes. "She promised not to do it again, and she'll apologize."

Jean blinked at him. "And that's *it*?"

Scott nodded. "She won't be doing it again."

"But.... Scott, I know it sounds harsh, but we can't just let her get away with this. The other students need to understand that we won't permit fighting-"

Scott waved his free hand. "Oh, I grounded her too. No tv, no games, no dessert, and no weekend visits with Sabretooth."

Jean blinked again. She took a deep, calming breath. "Scott, that... that little menace nearly chewed three of Roberto's fingers off. He's covered in scratches, many of them deep enough to leave scars, he's traumatized and in shock..... and Annie is *grounded*?!"

Scott nodded, sitting up and squeezing her hand gently. "Jean... We have to make allowances. She doesn't know that what she did was wrong, any more than a toddler would. I've explained it to her that it was, and she's thinking about it, but... she's very young."

"She's not that young! Scott, she has to learn to take responsibility for her actions." Jean bit her lip. "I tried to reach into her mind when she first attacked.... all I could sense was a furious, all-consuming rage, a desire to lash out.... she wanted to hurt him, Scott. Badly."

Scott nodded, making his rueful face. "I pretty much suspected as much. But... do you remember when you were very, very young? When nobody understood you when you tried to talk, and nobody listened to you, and they talked as if you weren't there?"

Jean nodded, brow furrowing a little.

Scott played with her fingers gently, frowning a little himself as he tried to explain. "I remember one incident, when I was very, very young... Alex was only a baby... I can't remember what happened exactly, just that my father was too busy taking care of Alex to do something that he'd promised to do with me. I was so angry that I honestly would have tried to chew his hand off, if I could have reached it." He smiled a little. "As I recall it, I kicked him in the ankle and hid under the stairs."

Jean smiled, squeezing his hand. "I'm not sure of the relevance, Scott...."

"The point is that little kids can sometimes get very, very angry. They have little or no self-control, so they don't try to control it or contain it the way someone older would - they just lash out. Annie's been treated as a mental defective for most of her life, held to the social and emotional level of a child of about three years old."

Jean blinked slowly. "You think that's why she behaves the way she does?" she said slowly. "Because she's still a child?"

Scott nodded. "In some ways, she's breathtakingly intelligent, and that makes it harder to see," he explained quietly. "But she's never, until now, been required to act her age, and it's hard for her. She's very literal-minded, and very simplistic, and complex moral issues are entirely beyond her. In a lot of ways, she's a very small child, and getting angry at her for it won't help that."

"But she has to know that what she did was wrong," Jean said firmly.

"She does. I told her so." Scott shrugged. "We'll have to watch her closely, of course, but other than that..." he smiled ruefully. "There's never yet been a way to hurry a child's developement safely. She just has to mature at her own speed."

His fiancee nodded, conceding the point with a soft kiss. "She just makes me nervous, that's all. Did you know that even the professor can't read her properly?"

Scott blinked, lips quirking a little. "I can read her."

Jean poked him in the stomach. "You're a telepath, now?" she asked, grinning.

"No..." He chucked, capturing her hand and kissing the fingers. "But when it comes to body-language, Annie's a walking, talking megaphone. Don't let this-" he kissed her temple, "-make you forget how these work." He kissed her eyelids softly.

"I stand corrected." Jean smiled, snuggling into his arms. "Wait, what was that you just said? I've had a momentary flash of amnesia." She lifted her face to his, smiling. "You'll have to demonstrate again."

* * *

When Creed pulled up, Annie wasn't waiting on the steps like she usually was. Instead, the prim, straight-backed Cyclops was standing there, arms folded and what he probably thought was a scowl on his face. "We need to talk," he said calmly.

Creed frowned. "Why?"

"Annie's been grounded," the boy said in his prissy little voice. "Welcome to your first parent/teacher conference."

Creed blinked. There was no way *this* was a good thing.

Ten minutes later, he was experiencing the stomach-churning nervousness of sitting on the wrong side of a teacher's desk. "So what'd she do? Set fire t' somethin'?"

Scott shook his head. "Fighting."

"Oh." Creed thought about it. "Did she win?"

The boy actually grinned wryly. "Oh, she won all right. Not only did she get the guy she was fighting, she took down one kid who was trying to stop the fight and another one who was standing too close."

Creed beamed. "That's my girl."

"The boy who started the fight may lose a finger."

Creed frowned. "Just a finger?"

Scott smiled ruefully. "Well, Logan grabbed her by the head and tossed her into a wall before she could really get going."

"It *did* work, mind you," Scott felt impelled to point out.

"Yeah, well, it *does* work... but I'm still gonna beat his head in with a Chrysler," Creed said. From him, it was positively forgiving.

"Want me to find you one? I think there's one in the garage."

The blonde man snorted, grinning a feral grin. "Not bad, kid."

"I don't like him any more than you do." The boy grinned lopsidedly. "Anyway... Annie's not going to be expelled, but she *is* grounded... which means no weekend visit."

Creed scowled. "We got an agreement. I don't burn the place to the ground, kill everyone, and take her with me, and you let me see her every weekend."

"Well, yes..." Scott was in a small room with an increasingly angry Sabretooth. He prayed for inspiration. "But for the sake of the other students, a strong authoritative front must be maintained..." Some benificent god answered his prayers, and he smiled weakly. "Which isn't to say that you can't see HER. You may, of course, visit her here. You just can't take her away."

Creed blinked. Scott waited patiently for him to change mental gears.

"What would we do HERE?" Creed asked, a bit uncertainly. Given that the weekend's agenda had included some impromptu training, a demonstration of bar-fighting with special focus on broken-bottle technique, and a lot of pizza, he considered this a valid question.

"Uhm." Scott looked blank for a long moment. "Uh..." He had never considered himself to be a favourite of the gods, given the events of his life up until now, but if inspiration kept raining down on him like this.... "Why don't you get her to give you the tour? You know.... show you her room and stuff."

Creed blinked, and had to shift mental gears again. "Oh." That was... well, he supposed it was a normal thing to do. Seeing where his little girl went to school.

Scott nodded, scrabbling gratefully onto firmer ground. "I'm sure she'd enjoy showing you the... the labs and so forth. She's putting together quite a science project."

The bushy eyebrows quirked together in a puzzled expression. "She is?"

He nodded, feeling a little hard done by. "I'm still not entirely certain that a functional robot is a good idea, but she says she wants to figure out how bug legs *really* work."

"She's building a *robot*?" Creed blinked helplessly. He couldn't even build a beer-can pyramid more than five cans tall without it falling down.

"Yes, she is." Scott sighed, rubbing his temple. "Mr Creed... Annie is, to put it bluntly, a genius. She could probably build a functional spaceship, if someone gave her a lot of raw materials and a how-to manual."

"No she couldn't," Creed objected uneasily. "She'd see a butterfly go past and she'd drop everything to try and figure out how its wings are attached."

"Well.... yes, there is that..." Scott privately thanked whatever benevolent gods there were that this was so. The havoc Annie could wreak if she aimed her ferocious intellect at anything for more than a few minutes...

"She is smart, though," Creed said, with a sort of forlorn pride. He knew he wasn't smart, and he'd probably never understand above half of what Annie talked about... but she was smart.

"She is." Scott nodded, shuffling the papers on his desk. "Anyway..... if you'd like to go out in the lobby and wait quietly, I'll get her to come down." He smiled ruefully, holding out a piece of paper. "Here's the list of things she's not allowed to do."

Creed frowned. "Whaddya mean...." He trailed off, looking at the list.

1. No jumping off the roof.
2. No swinging from the upstairs balcony.
3. No spontaneous yodelling in the middle of the night.
4. The ornamental carp are not for eating.
5. No picking other students up and swinging them around by their ankles.

He blinked.

6. The plane is not a toy.
7. No climbing inside the enclosures at the zoo.
8. Religion is not an appropriate topic for spontaneous debate.

"The list. Right."

Scott nodded. "There's room at the bottom of the third page, if you'd like to put some things in," he suggested helpfully. "Do you have a pen?"