Title: United

Fandom: X-Men: Evolution (hopefully, I'm not at all sure I've got all of the facts down right...)

Author: Dendey (I still don't believe it...Kitty is just too good in persuading me to do things I normally don't! Like writing Reviews to her fabulous stories...or a short-story of my own...)

Reason: My own challenge! Oh my! What has the world become if one needs to answer one's own challenges!

Disclaimer: Anything you recognize doesn't belong to me, but Marvel and various others. I don't make any profit with this one, if you don't consider laughing to be a valuable currency!

Author's Note: HAVE FUN! That's an order! rofl

Chapter 1

The Joke or Check-up's are no fun at all!

The forest was dark and the snow covering everything up, cloaking it from his inquisitive eyes, was wet and cold. Nothing as cold as the wind, but in comparison to the Canadian mountains, where he'd lived so long, it was laughable.

So that's what he did. Standing in the middle of a clearing, his head angled back so that he could face the stars that were merrily twinkling down upon him, Victor Creed stood laughing. About what? He didn't really know that himself, neither did he care for the reason. He was just glad that he could still laugh.

It had been years since he'd laughed for the last time, but just a week ago, he'd been so close to crack up that he'd nearly killed the runt. Nothing he truly wanted to do, but one had to keep up appearances, right? Right. So he tried to keep them up to the best of his abilities, but Magneto wasn't dumb. At least not as much so as Victor had thought upon first sight of him. His mask was cracking and he knew it. Magneto had noticed that his strength outweighed Wolverine's by quite a lot, even if his agility didn't match his, mostly because of his much taller frame, which evened the scales out again, or so he'd always thought. That didn't appease Magneto's skepticism of course, so it puzzled him that he hadn't managed to kill him already. But that was just the point of it. Victor didn't want to kill the runt! Hurt him, that wasn't even an asked question between them anymore, they tended to hurt each other anyway, no matter how hard they tried no to. So yeah okay, he did like the game they played, maybe a little bit too much, but it was still just a game! Or had he forgotten that too?

Suddenly he snapped his head back down to face the path ahead of him. He'd heard a rustle in the snow covered leaves of a nearby bush. At least he thought he'd heard a rustle, he couldn't be sure until he'd investigated the matter at hand. As he turned to the left, the direction of the supposed rustle, to do just that, a shadow ahead of him caught his attention. Stepping out of the underbrush on the left side of the path to stop in the middle of the muddy little path, crossing his arms in front of his chest in the process, stood the Wolverine.


He was seething! He was so mad! He didn't even have enough words in his vocabulary to vocalize just how mad he truly was!

The Danger Room session had been a total fiasco since the beginning. After Scott's misjudged eye-blast at Amara and Jean's resulting temper tantrum, the session had went down-hill from bad to worse very quickly. In the end he had to break up a fight between the whole team. Their supposed leader, Scott, hadn't been of any help. On the contrary he'd been the worst of them all! He'd back mouthed him constantly, ignored his authority repeatedly and in general had just pissed the Wolverine off until he'd lost sight of him. Well, after slamming the door to Scott's room into one-eye's face, more precisely.

Xavier hadn't been proud of him, no really he hadn't been amused at all...

And why had all of that even been possible? He didn't know, but Scott had babbled some non-sense about not being able to take a good aim because he'd been hard pressed not to laugh about one of Kurt's jokes. Really! As if the Elf was disruptive enough to smash a whole Danger Room session with just a joke! One he hadn't heard non the less! He wanted to hear that joke! NOW!

So he stalked up to the boy's room to talk to him, but as luck would have it, he'd been intercepted by Beast, for his X-Check-up...He hated his X-Check-up! No really he did! And with a passion at that that was astounding! In the end he'd done the best thing that came to mind: jump outta the window an' run fer ya life!

That simple action, considering he'd only been on the third floor of the mansion, had given him the opportunity he'd needed to get a head-start on the good Doctor McCoy. Another one who hadn't been amused by the peoples actions that day.


Bobby had already tried and succeeded to run from his X-Check-up, after eating all of Hank's cherished Twinkies none the less! Needless to tell Beast had been in so much of a grumpy mood after even Logan ran from him that he'd decided to hole himself up in his lab and not open the door until he could smell the Twinkies that were secretly stored above the fridge. Considering his sense of smell was heightened at least five times compared to a normal human and considering the fact that his lab was at least five stories underneath the kitchen, at his highest point, which happened to be two stories overhead of Hank's favorite lab. The conclusion he drew out of that was a very promising one. Translated that meant that the rest of the mansion probably wouldn't get a glimpse of him for at the very least a month or two. After all, smell's lingered, but they didn't exactly travel fast. Of course the air-condition of the mansion was another help to prolong Hank's lab-time, because it was also part of the heating system. And as it so happened that it was just the winter-break for the students, snow was already littering the grounds in big piles and continuing to fall, making the students curl up before the fireplaces in their free time so they wouldn't freeze. Charles Xavier cared for his students so much, he wasn't at all inclined to turn the heater off anytime soon, no matter how many warm and cozy fireplaces the mansion possessed.


Today really hadn't been his day. He'd known it the second he'd gotten out of bed, just to land on his nose because he'd tangled nearly his whole frame in the blankets. Thankfully his tail had helped him to untangle himself from his own mess without too much effort, but his nose still stung!

He'd managed to go about his daily routine almost without any further incidents, well that was until the big, blue furred Henry turned up. Oh no! Not the friendly Hank or even Beast! They were both dear friends of his, he just didn't like the last part of his friends personality...at least not twice a year...the two dreaded days you never knew beforehand...the days of your X-Check-up's!

Well, not knowing didn't help, not one little bit, so in the end Kurt had been dragged down to the med-lab, just two hours after breakfast, to be thoroughly checked through by any means medically possible.

Just before the Danger Room session Beast had assured him that his nose thankfully wasn't cracked in any way, but it still stung like hell! All the time he'd tried to lighten his gloomy mood with carefully conjured up cheerfulness, a strategy that hadn't worked all that well...

Really it had been just a tiny little joke! Like he told them everyday, nothing major, but enough to push Scott over the edge apparently. He'd nearly roasted Amanda with his blast. Poor Magma had to be teleported down to the med-lab for treatment and Nightcrawler had nearly tripped over his own tail when Doctor Henry McCoy had seen her. That look on his friends face had been so scary that he'd decided to run for it then and there!

Kurt was really feeling down for irritating his team like that, so he for once just followed the urge to climb under his covers and wait...hopefully he'd wake up tomorrow to find today had never happened. It was just a bad dream! That had to be it...no?