Groovy

   Emma and I are alone in the mansion – the rest of the team are all out at Harry's for the evening. At this precise moment, Emma is lying next to me in our bed, completely nude, resting the fingers of her right hand on my naked chest and kissing me on the mouth enthusiastically. Me? I'm just going with the flow, my left hand cupping her jaw and stroking her long golden hair gently.

   That was fun, Drake, Emma tells me as we kiss, her nimble tongue tracing my lips and touching my own tongue with surprising gentleness. Why don't we try it again?

   I break the kiss and look Emma right in the eye. "Again? Man, Emma, you're a machine. Don't you ever get tired?"

   Emma chuckles, and kisses my chest playfully. "All right, monkey, I'll go easy on you. This time." She winks at me, before snuggling up to me and letting me put an arm around her. "But next time I fully expect you to be able to keep up."

   "All right," I agree, laughing. "You have yourself a deal." Reaching for the remote control that lies on my bedside table, I flick on my small TV, much to Emma's surprise. "Hey," I tell her, "it's nearly time for Xena: Warrior Princess. You remember how much I like that show, don't you?"

   "Yes, Bobby, I do. I certainly remember you telling me many times how much you liked the sight of Lucy Lawless in leather," Emma sighs, tapping me on the nose with a fingertip and rolling her eyes. "And here I thought you only had eyes for me."

   "I do, sweetness, I do!" I insist. "You can be my 'mighty princess, forged in the heat of battle' any day of the week. I don't need no stinkin' Lucy Lawless when I've got you."

   Emma raises an eyebrow. "Nice recovery, Bobby. Do you want to open your mouth a little wider? I think you might be able to fit your other foot in there, too." She pulls the sheets up over her chest and sits up, prompting me to sit up with her, and then slips her hand into mine, kissing me on the shoulder. For a moment, it seems like our night in is going to be quiet (well, until Xena finishes, anyway)… and then there is a massive crack of thunder outside, which sounds almost as if Storm is having a hissy fit or Thor is suffering from a migraine. It's so loud it makes both Emma and me almost jump out of our skins, and when it has faded, I can hear somebody pounding on the front door like they're being chased by a pack of demons.

   "Somebody's at the door, Emma," I say, pretty redundantly. "We'd better go see who it is… wouldn't want them to be stuck out there all by themselves, right?"

   Emma frowns and tilts her head to one side for a second or two, squinting slightly. From the way she is concentrating, I can tell she's trying to discover the identity of the person who's at the front door. She wrinkles her nose in disgust after a second or two, and throws her hands up, exasperated. "The hell with it," she snaps, irritated. "I suppose we'd better go and see who wants to disturb us, hadn't we?"

   It takes us a few minutes to get dressed properly – and we have to do it while the person downstairs keeps hammering on the door like there's no tomorrow. By the time I've dragged myself into a pair of good jeans and a t-shirt, I'm beginning to feel a headache coming on. In Emma's case, she takes her sweet time to get dressed into her sharp white suit and blouse – I guess because she wants the person downstairs to suffer as much as possible. The wind outside out window seems to get stronger all the time, and I can feel Emma smiling at the thought of whoever is down there getting blown away… literally. Emma notices that I'm receiving her thoughts without her consciously sending them to me, and she brushes my cheek apologetically. "Sorry, darling," she says, trying to sound less irritated than she is. "I just don't like having my snuggle time interrupted, you know?" She winks. "Never mind. You can make it up to me later, sweetums." She gestures to the door. "Shall we go? I don't want to keep whoever this is waiting any longer than we have to, do you?"

   "Emma… you're a really lousy liar, you know that?" I tell her, touching her hand with my own. "Come on. Let's go see who this is…"

   My room is only a short walk away from the front door, along the corridor and down the front staircase. Next door to Casa Del Bobby is Kurt's room, and along a little bit further is Logan's pit of a bedroom. Man, do I hate walking past there when he's having his morning cigar. Fortunately, like I said, he's out at the moment and I don't have to smell the stink of burning tobacco. Still, that doesn't stop me from holding my breath when I walk past, simply out of habit. Emma notices my chest tightening, and chuckles. "Bobby, one of these days I'm going to have to educate you on the virtues of a good cigar."

   I roll my eyes. "Thanks, doll, but no thanks. I like my chest healthy."

   "Spoilsport," Emma says, pouting. "Oh well… it's your loss."

   The door rattles again suddenly, as the person on the other side of it gets even more impatient. Hopping down the stairs two at a time, I shout "I'm coming, I'm coming! Don't leave!" Running past the paintings that line the front hallway (while Emma simply sashays down the stairs without a care in the world), I manage to grab the handle of the door mid-thump, and open it breathlessly. "Hi there," I gasp. "Welcome to Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning. How can I help you?"

   The person that greets me is a tall, statuesque woman with jet-black hair and almost superhumanly-pale skin. Her hair is tied up into a tight French plait with two long bangs hanging either side of her face, which is decorated with two angular tattoos across her cheeks, and she is dressed in skin-tight black leather underneath a long leather coat. Her hands are gloved and she is wearing a pair of dark sunglasses that hide her eyes. "I wish to speak with Charles Xavier," the woman says, in a businesslike tone. "My name is Tessa, but you may call me Sage."

   When Emma reaches me, she sees our guest, and her eyes narrow to slits. "What is she doing here?" she demands, icily.

   Tessa – or Sage, as I guess she wants me to call her – just looks at Emma like she's something that just got scraped off the bottom of her shoe. "I could ask the same thing of you, Emma." She pauses and then looks at me again for a moment or so. "Although now that I think about it, the answer seems obvious. Much like yourself." She turns back to me and says again "I wish to speak with Charles Xavier. I have come to the conclusion that my service in the Hellfire Club is no longer required, and I wish to offer my services to Professor Xavier. I feel that he would be well-advised to hear my terms."

   "Well, I'm sure he would, um… Sage… but he ain't here right now – it's just me and Emma. He'll be back later if you want to catch up with him then, okay?" I gesture down the corridor at the rec. room. "You can stay and chill here if you like. Watch some TV, have a couple beers… whatever you want, I bet we could find it for you."

   Sage raises her right eyebrow above the rim of her glasses, before removing the shades and showing me her dark eyes for the first time. "Very well… that seems acceptable." She gestures at Emma. "Please do not ask me to share a room with her."

   "The feeling's mutual, I assure you," Emma snarls, before she storms off in the opposite direction towards the lift to the Danger Room.

   "Wait here," I tell Sage before running after Emma and grabbing her arm. "Emma, wait up," I ask her urgently. "Come on, Em, I need your help here. I can't deal with Seven-of-Nine back there by myself. What's her deal?"

   Emma laughs coldly. "Tessa is – or was – Sebastian's chief aide in the Hellfire Club. She was his personal servant, and would deal with his enemies whenever he needed her to. I'm sure the angel and his wife could tell you about the time they were telepathically knocked unconscious and then undressed and re-clothed by her. She's nothing but low-class trash, and now that the Club has cut her loose, she's come here to be a servant all over again. How predictable." She snorts in disgust. "Her power is supposedly to catalogue knowledge and alter mutant powers, and her psionic abilities mean she has an innate resistance to telepathy – which is precisely why I couldn't sense her from upstairs. Shaw used to describe her to me as his personal 'living computer'."

   "Oh… kay. Anything else I should know about her?" I ask, cautiously. Emma shrugs.

   "Not unless you want to know how many sexual positions she knows. She was a very… popular girl, if you catch my meaning – Donald used to beg Sebastian to let him borrow her for the evening. He wanted to find out how well she would stand up to his bionic parts." She smirks, running her tongue down one of her canines for a moment or two, like a lioness after a kill. "Her psychic abilities weren't quite as popular as mine, though. That's why I was White Queen, and she was Sebastian's chew toy."

   I roll my eyes. "Are you done scoring points off her, Em? Because we gotta figure out what to do with her before the others get back, or we'll never hear the end of it."

   Emma puts her hand to her chin for a second or two, looking like she's thinking deeply about the situation. Then she looks back up at me, as if she's found a solution. "I know," she begins, "we could set her to looking after the angel's children. I suspect she'd be perfect for changing diapers and listening to that little girl go on and on about how wonderful Sam Guthrie is. Either that or we could set her loose in the Danger Room and let the silly red-eyed tramp beat her to a pulp." She chuckles, a nasty look crossing her face for a second or two. "Either way ought to be fun, don't you think?"

   "You know, Emma… sometimes I don't like you very much," I say, sourly. "Just so you know, I think Rebecca's a nice kid. If you can't find anything nice to say about anybody, then shut up. Just… shut up." I turn around and walk away from Emma – who, if I know her as well as I think I do, is probably standing behind me with her hands on her hips, looking like she's been slapped in the face with a wet fish. I know, I know, it was pretty mean to say what I did, but Emma gets on my nerves like that from time to time. I love her, I really do, but she can be really hard to get along with when she gets like this. Funny thing, though – I can put up with her making sexy jokes all the time, burping in bed (although if you asked her about it, she'd never admit to anything), and all of her other faults, but sometimes the way she thinks about certain other people really annoys me.

   Drake, she says in my head suddenly. I'm… I'm sorry.

   "It's not me you should be apologising to, Emma," I say shortly, not looking back at her. "Now are you going to help me with our houseguest, or what?"

   All right, Bobby, she says, after a long pause. Just don't expect too much – ask me to serve her tea, and I swear by all that's holy I'll pull your brain out through your nose.

   That makes me laugh almost against my will, and finally turn around. "All right, Emma. I won't ask you to serve her tea, okay?"

   "Good," Emma says aloud, before she closes the gap between us and slips her arms hopefully about my waist, putting on her "innocent Catholic schoolgirl" look for me, her blue eyes going almost as big as saucers. "Forgive me?"

   "I guess so, yeah," I say (Okay, okay, I know I'm putty in her hands. At least I'm completely aware of the fact that she's manipulating me, unlike so many other people…). "Do you promise to behave?"

   Emma laughs naughtily. "Drake, you should know me well enough by now to know that I never promise anything. I'll do my best, though."

   We make our way back to the rec. room, where Tessa is sitting in one of the comfortable chairs and reading one of Hank's copies of American Poetry Review. Hank often leaves them down here so that we can all read them – well, that's what he says, anyway. Most of the time, he just forgets to take them back to his and Trish's room when he's done with them, and they sit in here until somebody (usually Jean, because she hates any kind of mess) moves them. There's a huge stack of the things in the corner, right next to the bundles of old TV guides I keep meaning to recycle, and the lesbian magazines Jenny subscribes to. When Sage sees Emma and me come in, she stands almost instantly, her eyes turning to narrow slits.

   I hold my hands up before either woman can speak, to try and keep things calm right from the get-go. I can't deal with another bitching contest, that's for sure… "Relax, kiddo, no need to get antsy… is there, Emma?"

   Emma smirks, folding her arms across her chest. "Absolutely not," she says, flashing an acidic smile at Tessa. "Wouldn't want any trouble, would we… Tessa?"

   "No," Sage replies, shortly, crossing her legs. "None whatsoever."

   Well, this is a good start, I think, feeling like somebody who's just stuck his head out for the executioner's axe. "So… uh, you girls wanna play Halo?" I say, knowing almost as soon as I open my mouth what the answer will be.

   "No, thank you," Sage replies, putting her sunglasses back on so that I can't see her eyes. From the way she's looking in my direction, though, with her black-painted lips pursed and her eyebrows raised, I can tell she's not exactly thinking of me in the highest terms right now. "It would not be a fair contest for you." She brushes her coat aside to show me the holsters slung low on her hips, which carry pretty big pistols (complete with laser sights and several hundred extra rounds of ammunition, or so it seems from the belts encircling Sage's waist).

   "Holy crap," I gulp. "You planning to shoot any elephants today, lady?"

   "Not really," Sage says, hiding the guns under her coat again. "It's often necessary to protect oneself as a single woman in New York. One look at these and muggers tend to look the other way." She shrugs. "It's quite fun watching their faces, actually."

   Damn. This girl's got some serious learning to do about what "fun" means, I think, trying to keep the thoughts as indistinct as I can (as I've found out far too often, with four telepaths in the mansion, you have to be really careful what you think, or you can get into big trouble before you know you've done anything wrong). She and Bishop'd get on like a house on fire, I bet… "I… guess it must be," I say, slowly. The conversation seems to be dying on its feet, so I try a different approach. "Um… so what made you decide to leave the Hellfire Club?"

   Sage frowns. "Sebastian's recent actions to date have proved to me that he no longer needs an assistant," she says, flatly. "All I was to him, it seems, was an accessory that made him look good to his peers." She sighs. "'Fetch this, Tessa', he would tell me, or 'Accompany that man for the evening, Tessa.' By the time I made the decision to leave, I was so tired of being his very own living, breathing bargaining chip. I wanted my mutant powers to be valued as much as Shaw evidently valued my body – I am not a cheap, stupid dancing girl who bares her breasts and trades flashes of her thighs for dollar bills." She jabs a thumb at her chest angrily with one of her gloved hands. "I am Sage, and I am worth far more than that. Hopefully Charles Xavier will see what Shaw could not."

   Just then, I can hear the front door opening from down the hall, and the rest of the X-Men start bundling into the mansion, filling the place with noise again. Thank God, I think, relief seeming to lift the weight of the situation off my shoulders instantly. Maybe now I can get some professional help for what this has done to me…

*

   It takes about half an hour for the Professor to listen to Sage's story, and another half an hour before he has finished talking with Cyclops and Storm about whether or not he should let her stay, on the basis of what she's told him. When he announces to the rest of the team that he's decided to let her live with us, it doesn't go down well with everyone – and when we're alone in our room again, Emma lets me know just exactly how she feels.

   "Stupid low-class bitch," she mutters, pacing like a tiger. "She doesn't belong here…"

   I clear my throat, knowing I'm throwing myself to lions. "You know, Emma, some of the team said pretty much the same thing about you the first time the Professor asked you to look after the Massachusetts Academy for him," I say, cautiously.

   Emma looks at me with narrowed eyes. "Is that so?" she snaps, angrily. "Well, I had precedent for doing what I did – not much, I know, but I had precedent. What precedent does she have? None, that's how much."

   "Emma… one of the things we X-Men have always tried to do is put people back on the right track," I say, slowly. "Rogue was a real bad seed when she came here – or so we thought. Look at her now. I'd put my life on the line next to her any day of the week." I walk over to Emma and cup her cheek in my palm, turning her perfect cheekbones and ice-blue eyes towards me. "Isn't it right for you to do the same with Tessa?"

   Emma's face twists into a sour grimace. "I'm not an X-Man, Drake. I don't have to conform to your standards."

   "Is that right?" I ask, matter-of-factly. "Well, if that's what you think, why aren't you teaching Generation X to do what you want them to do, instead of what the Professor wants them to do?" Emma opens her mouth to speak right at that moment, but then shuts it again, scowling in defeat. I grin. "See? You're more like us than you want to admit. Rogue got another chance. Don't you want to give Tessa another chance, too?"

   "All right, Drake," Emma says after a long pause. "But like I said… don't ask me to be her best friend."

   That makes me grin, and I gather Emma in my arms and kiss her for a moment or two, tangling my fingers in her platinum-blonde hair. "That's my girl. Don't ever change…"