Fic: Alex Rider: The Report. GEN
Notes: M’kay, so this isn’t the Due Consideration sequel that I promised, but that’s definitely in the works, promise. :) This is a little ficlet I wrote as a present for Pygmymeese halfway through February, because she was busy and stressed and there was nothing else I could do, stuck on the wrong side of the Atlantic! This is the first published fic from The Rider Family ‘Verse, which is the product of the combined madness of our heads sometime in late January. I’m so glad she liked it!
She also beta’d her own present, whilst she was so busy, so doubly thank you - your beta skills put ninjas to shame and leave me in awe every time!
The biggest thank you shoutout ever to nuclearxsquid , who looked this over and told me that she didn’t know what I was talking about when I said it was awful, despite being mostly out of this particular fandom. And who posted this for me on Fanfiction.net when I couldn’t, and sat patiently on the other end of the MSN connection whilst I changed my mind about summaries. The compass is for you, darling.
Summary: A teacher's thoughts about her most unconventional pupil: Alex Rider's son.
Disclaimer: Not mine, never has been mine, never will be mine.
*
Miss Smith loved her job, she really did. There was something so rewarding about seeing the children’s faces as they left her classroom at the end of the day, clutching the masterpieces that they’d created during craft hour, still sticky from the glue or the paint. They’re all such darlings, she thought to herself, smiling down at the reports she was writing. So innocent.
Her smile slowly faded to a frown as she paused over one report. It was the last one, the one she’d left until last because it was the hardest to write. She would have to pick her words carefully.
She sighed and picked up her pen.
Joshua Benjamin Rider she carefully printed in the ‘name’ box.
Joshua’s attendance has been exemplary throughout the year…
It was Miss Smith’s first day in her new job, and she was, understandably, a little nervous. But the tables were all laid out neatly with jam jars filled with pencils, and laminated name cards placed in front of each little seat. Her register was on the desk, and she’d memorised the placements of each name, even if she didn’t have pictures to remember the faces as well. It was all ready.
She was so lost in thought, trying to think of anything that she had forgotten that she almost missed the first knock on the door. It was the first of the parents, a mother whose harried expression clearly said ‘my au-pair has the day off and I have no idea what to do with my child.’ She rapidly settled little Clarissa, helping her to read her name plate and showing her where to sit.
More children poured in until the twenty seats were nearly filled. Seeing just one left, Miss Smith’s eyes flickered to the register. Joshua Rider. I wonder where he is…
There was a tentative knock on the door, which opened to her soft ‘Come in.’ A little boy with floppy blonde hair and bright blue eyes poked his head around the door and swiftly glanced around the room.
“Is this Miss Smith’s classroom?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yes, that’s right,” she replied gently.
He nodded decisively and stuck a thin hand out. “Josh Rider. Mummy says sorry I’m late.”
Joshua was late that day, but it was the only day he had been late to school since.
*
Joshua is an enthusiastic, if occasionally disruptive participant in class discussions, and is always ready to debate key issues with the class. His reading and writing skills are surprisingly developed for his age…
Miss Smith was speechless. Truly speechless. She had felt that the homework assignment (find out three interesting facts about the Spanish Armada) was rather a hard task for a class of five-year-olds, and she was certain that they would have needed help from their parents. She was not expecting Joshua Rider to hand in a three page essay on the social and political effects of the failing of the Spanish Armada, all written neatly in his childish scrawl, including a thorough list of resources at the bottom. There were facts there that she didn’t know, although her search for information hadn’t exactly been exhaustive. It was possible that his parents did it for him - that would be the simple answer, of course - but Miss Smith had met his mother and didn’t think that she was the type to do her child’s homework for him.
Really, she wasn’t surprised that he was disruptive. The poor kid must be bored.
*
Josh is always ready with an interesting and engaging story in Show and Tell. His speaking and listening skills have improved over the year; he is often less than hesitant about sharing the stories behind the objects he brings to talk about…
It was far enough into the term that Miss Smith probably shouldn’t have been surprised by Joshua Rider’s contribution to Show and Tell. Last week, it was an army-issue rations pack, and the story had included something that sounded horribly like survival training:
“...and then they gave us our rucksacks, and Uncle Ben and Daddy left us there! But it was all okay, ‘cause Zach was there.”
Zach, it transpired, was “Uncle Ben’s” eighteen-year-old son. Miss Smith had been a little worried when she heard the story, but when she confronted Josh’s mother about it, she had laughed a little nervously and explained that ‘the adults were camping… ah… on the other side of the campsite. Josh just wanted to share a tent with Zach for the night. Pretend to be independent, you know.’
This week, she wasn’t quite sure whether she wanted to know what he had brought. It was quite small, but he’d carefully wrapped it in …something, so it was impossible to guess what it was.
The children sat in a circle around her and came up one by one to show their object to the class and tell the story behind it. Miss Smith grew tenser and tenser as Joshua’s turn came closer and closer. What would he show to the class today?
After Sarah proudly displayed her new Barbie doll, Josh came up to the front of the class, carefully unwrapping the …object. It glinted in the fluorescent lighting, and when Miss Smith leaned closer, she could see it was a compass. She relaxed. It looked relatively harmless.
“Where did you get that, Josh?”
“I went to work with Daddy on Saturday for a while, ‘cause Mummy and Marianne went to dance class, and Mr. Smithers gave it to me. He makes really neat gadgets for Daddy; he showed me some of them! He’s really old, but really clever.”
Miss Smith supposed that Mr. Smithers was some sort of technical support wherever Mr. Rider worked. That would only make sense.
“Compasses are supposed to point North, right? Daddy said so. But this one doesn’t. It points towards this.” Josh produces a pound coin from his pocket and shows it to them. And, indeed, the needle that normally points North is pointing South-West, towards the coin in Josh’s hand. It follows the coin when he moves it.
“If you look through this part, right, an’ put your thumb underneath it, it’s really close up. Me and Mummy looked at a leaf under it, an’ she said we could see the cells. Uncle Ben said you can see your molly-cules, but Mummy smacked him, so I reckon he was joking. An’ if you get a light and shine it through this bit onto some paper, the paper lights on fire! I showed it t’ my Uncle Wolf when he came over to my house on Monday, an’ he said that the compass is a very good compass a bit like the ones he uses in the army an' he’d have to ask Daddy where he got it, an’ I told him that Mr. Smithers gave it to me and he was surprised, but I dunno know why. Mr. Smithers is nice.”
Miss Smith wonders, not for the first time, exactly what Josh’s father and his friends teach Josh at the weekends.
*
His enjoyment of art and colouring time is very apparent and his pictures are definitely unique.
Normally, Miss Smith prided herself on being able to decipher her children’s drawings accurately. She could, for example, take a look at Melanie’s paper and deduce that she was drawing a puppy and a kitten in a garden, and that next to her, Sam was industriously colouring in a train that looked suspiciously like Thomas the Tank Engine. She could not, however, make out what Josh was drawing. Whatever it was, it involved a lot of red felt tip pen and black smudges.
“What are you drawing, dear?”
Josh looked up. He had a smudge of red pen on his cheek.
“It’s Daddy defeating the baddies, see?” He pointed at a particularly large black smudge. “That’s Daddy, an’ those are the ninjas, an’ those are the guns, an’ that’s a dead ninja with lots of blood comin’ out of him, an’ that’s one that Daddy made unconscious, an’ that one just has broken legs…”
Miss Smith noted with faint horror that quite a large amount of the page was red.
“…An’ that one has his guts hanging out from where Daddy used that knife on him…”
Her eyebrows rose. I know children can idolise their parents, but surely this is a bit far?
*
His ICT skills are certainly above average for his age group.
Miss Smith was annoyed. While the children were chattering quietly, happily getting on with their Numeracy, her computer was repeatedly switching itself off and on again, the screen was flickering and was generally behaving very peculiarly. Annoyed, she pressed Ctrl-Alt-Delete, only to have the computer screen freeze. Again.
There was a slight rustle as Joshua Rider came to stand by her chair, exercise book in hand.
“I’ve finished my sums, Miss. Hey, is your computer broken?” Miss Smith sighed.
“I’m afraid so, Josh. It looks broken, doesn’t it?”
“Can I look at it?”
Miss Smith hesitated, but moved her chair back a little, to make room for him. What more damage could he do? Josh looked at the flickering, flashing screen, fiddled with the mouse for a bit, and then pronounced gravely,
“The computer looks like it’s ill.” Miss Smith was startled. She had expected him to glance at it and then get bored quickly when nothing happened; she had certainly lost interest after a few minutes of frustrated tinkering.
“Ill?”
“Yeah, it’s got a v- v- like Marianne had last week. She was all sniffly and cried a lot. Like a cold.”
“Your sister had a virus?”
“Yeah! A virus. I know what to do. Can I try and fix it? Daddy showed me how the other day.”
“Your Daddy showed you how to destroy a virus?”
“Well, first he showed me how to make one, but then he said I had to know how to get rid of them before I started infecting things, or Mummy will be upset.”
Miss Smith watched in growing concern and astonishment as Josh brought a complicated programme onto the screen and tapped a few lines of what looked suspiciously like gibberish into it. A screen came up, loading something, and then went blank. Josh stepped back.
“Can you turn it off and on again, Miss? Daddy said that that should do it for little viruses like Marianne, and if it doesn’t, then it’s a big virus like Daddy and I should call him to get rid of it instead.”
Disbelievingly, she did as he said. The login screen came up quickly and looked completely normal.
“How did you do that, Josh?” Josh shrugged.
“I told you. Daddy taught me. It isn’t that hard. We didn’t even need a steth’scope.”
*
I look forward to seeing you at Parents Evening, where we will be able to discuss Joshua’s progress in more detail and I can answer any questions you might have on the subject.
“...And maybe get some answers in return.” Miss Smith thought back to the only time she had met Joshua’s father. Josh had been the last one waiting to be picked up that day. It was almost four o’clock and she had taken pity on the child and given him some paper and crayons to draw with almost half an hour ago.
Finally, hasty footsteps echoed through the corridor and the door opened quickly. The man who entered was a stranger to her, but Josh’s excited ‘Daddy!’ told her what she needed to know.
Mr. Rider expertly caught Josh as he ran to him and settled him on his hip with a grin. He scanned the room automatically, the same way Josh did. Miss Smith had wondered where Josh had got that particular habit.
“Hey, buddy! I’m so sorry I’m late. That meeting with Mr. Cameron took longer than I thought it would. How was your day today?”
“It was great! Miss Smith taught us all about Russia, an’ I told her all about Animal Farm!”
The man laughed. “I bet you did. Poor Miss Smith. Why don’t you go and get your bag while I talk to her for a bit, okay?” The man carefully set Josh back on the ground and came forward to shake her hand.
“Miss Smith, I presume? I’m Alex Rider.” His handshake was firm. As she looked more closely, Miss Smith could see the resemblance to Josh in his brown eyes, the set of his jaw. Alex Rider was astonishingly attractive, and it was clear that one day, Josh would be the same.
“I’m so sorry I’m late. There was a bit of a crisis at work, and I couldn’t get away. Hopefully, it won’t happen again.” He smiled, and Miss Smith shook herself out of her daze.
“Quite understandable, I’m sure. We’re all slaves to our work occasionally.”
A light laugh. “Some more than others, I’m afraid.”
Josh came up to her desk at the front of the room to take his father’s hand. Mr. Rider glanced down at him.
“Time to go, eh? Mummy will be waiting for us to get home so that she can put Daddy in the doghouse for not picking you up on time. It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Smith.”
And as they turned towards the door, Miss Smith couldn’t help but smile at the tall father and tiny son walking hand in hand, ready to go home at the end of another long day.