And that went on for another half hour, while Tory tried to break into the tablets to no avail. The desk screen didn’t even work, so there was no point in that. Finally the class ended, or something, and the other kids got up and started getting together into groups again and talking with each other, most looking at her, most seemed to be asking questions to each other in their backwards sounding language, but not  approaching her.

One student wasn’t curious at all though, giving her a look that Tory recognized. His look was hostile and he was tall, but couldn’t have been any older than her based on his baby face. He met her gaze with a glare, and started stalking towards her. He was clearly the biggest kid in class, and probably the class bully by the way the others looked at him, moved back in his wake.  Oh, Tory had seen his like before.  And was already kind of getting ready for the sort of thing that had repeatedly got her suspended.

“I am Yvengi,” he stated, pointing at his chest. “What are you doing here?”

His English was a little better than his teacher’s, but not much.

Tory stood up. The boy towered over her, not quite as tall as Gurminder or the guard who brought her here, but still pretty tall.  She’s faced bigger back home, though.  That snob, Arla for one.

“I’m Tory,” she said, getting up to cut down on his height advantage, not feeling like she needed to answer his question.

Standing didn’t help much, he still loomed way over her.

“What do you want here, tiny?” he repeated a bit more belligerently, “What do you think you are doing with the bornhere? We don’t want you. Go back to your blue ball.”

 “It’s a blue marble,” she corrected. “And I don’t want to be here either. I’ll be going home as soon as I get out of this… crater.”

“Maybe I should help you,” he snarled stepping right up into her personal space, looming over her in an attempt to intimidate her like bullies always did.

Tory didn’t step back, just looked up to meet his glare. She’s really had enough. Around them the other kid’s had suddenly gathered. This was fast. Had the teacher told him to pick a fight with her? She didn’t think that would be a good idea. Nobody here knew it, but Tory had had lessons in self-defense. That had started the third time a bully had singled her out. And she was from Earth, a world with three times the gravity that Mars had.

Yvengi stuck out his hand to knock her back but his telegraphed his move so clearly she was able to step to the side and let the boy stumble over instead, totally losing his balance. His fall was funny, a slow motion collapse.  She had to giggle at how it looked, like something from a cartoon.

Unhurt, but face reddened and twisted into a glower, he jumped right back up ready for more.

Tory glanced towards the teacher, but the woman’s eyes were fixed on the spreader she had out in front where she sat now, some kind of document scrolling across the flexible screen. Yeah, she’d certainly put him up to this. Wouldn’t be the first teacher Tory’d had who thought she needed to be taught a lesson.

The boy tried again. She just got out of the way. The move was so much easier in one Mars gravity. Back on earth a kid his size would have caught her by now.

Damn Gurminder, though. He’d left her to fend for herself in a school of psycho Martian kids! Even if it wasn’t exactly hard the idea made her mad. Frick would he get it when she saw him again. Tory was pretty sure what ‘frick’ meant to these people by now.

 “Stand still!” Yvengi raged and took another swing at her.