TITLE: A Day at the Mall

AUTHOR: Jamie August

RATING: Let's go with G

SUMMARY: The Brotherhood trapped in the mall after hours. Lance and Kitty stuck in an elevator. Bath & Body Works. Bubble-bath fights. Cash register throwing. Victoria's Secret. Mayhem and destruction. And the theft of chili-dogs!

DISCLAIMER: These characters aren't mine, that we already knew/ They belong to Marvel, and I hope they don't sue. Um, nanu nanu!

FEEDBACK: What you do when your back is hungry. Mine is! augustdragon81@netscape.net

A/N: I like shrubs! *giggle*



A Day At The Mall



It was the weekend, and the mall was jammed with the typical weekend crowd. Or rather, it had been. It was now Sunday evening, and the mall closed early on Sundays. Despite this little fact, the mall was still filled with groups of people.

A pack of teenage girls from Bayville High walked by the Bath & Body Works on their way to the exit. As they passed the store, one of the girls suddenly shrieked and lurched forward as something hit her from behind. She grabbed the back of her neck, where she'd felt the impact. Her hand came away covered in slime. She and her friends started to turn to see who had slimed them, but they never got the chance. Before they could turn all the way around, a wind blew up around them. Their shopping bags were knocked from their hands and scattered on the floor around their feet.

That was it. The girls were spooked. They grabbed their bags and fled toward the exit at top speed. The events they experienced at the 'haunted mall' would be their main topic of conversation for many days to come.

The manager of Bath & Body Works looked up when she heard the shrieking. She blinked when she saw the two boys standing in the doorway. A moment ago, hadn't there been only one boy slouching against the wall? Where had his twitchy friend come from? Oh, well. No matter. They were both obviously troublemakers. Glaring, she began walking in their direction. If there was one thing she wouldn't tolerate in her shop, it was troublemakers!

"Hey! Hey, you boys!"

"Uh-oh." Toad glanced over his shoulder at the advancing manager. "Time to get outta here, yo."

"Whoa, yeah. Ha-ha, see ya suckers!" Pietro exclaimed and tore out of the shop in a blur.

"Hey, no fair! Wait up, man!" Toad cast another glance at the manager, who was bearing down on him at a furious pace. "Uh-oh," he repeated. He gathered himself up and leapt out of the store a split second before the manager's hand would have landed on his shoulder.

The manager stared at her empty hand, dumbfounded. How had she missed grabbing the boy? She leaned out the door and yelled after him, "And stay out!"

Toad paused long enough to turn and stick his tongue out at her, then took off down the hall again. Luckily, Pietro had stopped to wait for him by the fountain. As he hopped up to join him on the low ledge surrounding the water, he saw Pietro's hand blur. A second later, it was dripping wet and filled with coins.

"Ooh, ripping off pennies from the wishing well. Big time, yo."

Pietro shoved the change into his pocket and wiped his wet hand on the back of Toad's shirt. "You wanna see big time? I'll show you big time."

"What, didja steal candy from some babies, too?" Toad ducked as Pietro's hand came flying at his head. "Hey, that was close! What's the idea?"

"Check this out." Pietro reached into another pocket and drew out a wad of bills. He flapped the stack of tens and twenties under Toad's nose. "How's that for big time, huh?"

"No way! Where'd you get that?"

"Zipped into the bookstore on the way over here. Grabbed the cash while the register was open. Man, those little bookworm geeks never saw it comin."

"Cool! Hey, we oughtta go the CD place next! How much can you carry?"

"Nah, forget that." Pietro shook his head and glared down the hall toward Bath & Body Works. "I'm gonna go back there. Nobody tries to kick me out of a store!"

Toad rolled his eyes. Not again, he thought. "Yo, where'd Lance and Fred go?"

"The Blob's at the food court. I think several employees ran away screaming when they saw him coming. I'm not sure where Lance is now, but he saw Kitty a few minutes ago and started following her. So, wherever she went, that's probably where he is."

"She's here?"

"Yeah."

"Alone?"

"Yeah. Why?"

Toad shrugged. "I just thought the X-geeks always traveled in packs or sumthin."

Pietro ignored him and continued to glare at the front of Bath & Body Works. "I'm goin back in. You comin?"

"Well -" Before he could answer, Pietro took off. Toad sighed and started after him. "Man, I hate it when he does that!"



X X X



On the second floor of the mall, Kitty leaned over the railing and surveyed the level below. For the last several minutes she'd had the feeling she was being followed, but she had yet to catch the stalker. Not that she didn't have a pretty good idea who it was; she just hadn't been able to catch him yet.

Still pretending to be fascinated by something on the lower level, she waited until she felt the eyes on her again. Taking a deep breath, she spun around as quickly as possible and caught a glimpse of a dark-haired boy ducking into Victoria's Secret.

"Caught you, Lance," she muttered and ran over to the shop. "Why are you following me?" she demanded.

"Huh?" Lance jerked backward, startled at having been caught. He hastily pulled away from the display he'd run into. Several lacy things he had no names for stuck to his arm and he tried to brush them off without calling too much attention to himself.

Kitty struggled not to laugh. "I said, like, why are you following me?"

"I'm not following you! Why would I be following you? I was just, uh . . ." he glanced around the store and felt like kicking himself. Of all the stores to hide in! ". . . shopping," he finished lamely.

"Oh, really?" Despite her anger, Kitty was finding it hard to keep a straight face. "Shopping for who?"

"Um . . . Mystique?"

"Well, I hope you find something she'll like." She rolled her eyes. "But just stop following me, okay? I mean it! If I wanted to come to the mall with you, I would have." With that, she turned and stomped away.

"I wasn't following you!" he called after her. Several people in the store stared at him. Blushing, he brushed the last lacy thing from his arm and ran from the shop. Well, so what if he had been following her? It was a free country, and besides, the X-Men didn't own the place! If he wanted to follow Kitty around the mall, who could stop him?

Lance stopped abruptly and spun around in the direction Kitty had gone. That's right, who was gonna stop him? He'd follow her if he wanted to! And if she turned around and spotted him, he sure wasn't gonna hide in a ladies' underwear shop again!

A few feet ahead, Kitty was waiting for the elevator. She turned when he came up behind her. "Lance, I told you to leave me alone!"

"What? Can't a guy use the elevator?"

"Why don't you take the stairs?" She stepped into the glass elevator cage and turned her back on him.

He followed her in and waited for the door to close. They were the only two people inside. "What, you're too good to ride in an elevator with me?"

Kitty sighed and didn't answer. She stared out at the mall as the cage descended, wishing the elevator would move a little faster.

Suddenly the elevator lurched and shuddered to a stop between levels. Oh, great, Kitty thought. Lance was about the last person she wanted to be stuck in an elevator with! She whirled around and began pressing buttons frantically, first the button for the first level, then all of them at once.

Lance watched in amusement. "If you wanna get away from me so bad, why don't you just phase through the floor?"

"Like, we're too high up. Besides, I can't use my powers in public!"

"Says who, that professor of yours?" Lance rolled his eyes. "Fine, then. I'll get this thing rockin' and rollin' again."

When Kitty realized what he was getting ready to do, she shrieked and grabbed his arm. "Don't! Are you crazy or something? You'll kill us both!"

He relaxed. "Then I guess you're stuck here with me."

She stared at him for a moment, then turned and began beating her fists on the glass walls. "Hey!" she yelled to the people below. "Hey, let us out of here!"



X X X



"Wow, you two smell . . . girly."

Toad glared at Fred. "Yeah, we got attacked by an outta-control perfume sprayer, yo."

"Which is a vast improvement over his usual smell, but in my case . . ." Pietro shed his jacket and shook it out. ". . . hey, I already smelled great. Now I just smell like . . ."

"Sunflowers?" Fred suggested, swallowing the last half of his chili-dog.

Toad threw himself into a chair at the next table and sniffed himself. "And vanilla." Sniff. "And poppies." Sniff, sniff. "And cinnamon."

"Wow," Fred repeated. He glanced around the food court. "Where's Lance? The mall's gonna close in a few minutes."

"I don't know." Pietro shrugged. "I'm gonna go back to Bath & Body Works. Nobody sprays perfume on me without my permission!"

"Oh, no, here we go again." Toad thumped his head on the table. "I don't wanna get attacked by that crazed perfume girl again, yo!"

"You won't. She'll never see us coming. Then we'll hide and launch a sneak attack on that old manager hag. Then we'll raid the cash register! Yeah, ha-ha, then we'll raid the whole store!" He paused when he noticed the other two staring at him. "What?

Fred looked confused. "What would we want to steal from Bath & Body Works?"

Pietro crossed his arms across his chest and gave him a superior look. "Well, you and Toad could use some soap."

"Hey, I'm not the one who smells like sunflowers!"

"And vanilla and poppies and cinnamon," Toad added.

"Yeah, now that you mention it, I do smell the vanilla! Mmm, vanilla . . ." Fred licked his lips and leaned over to sniff Toad.

"Hey! What're you doin?!" He jerked away and leapt onto the railing surrounding the food court. "C'mon, man, no lickin the Toad!"

Pietro ignored the exchange, still seething over his unnecessary perfume-shower. "It's not our fault. Down with the perfume girl!"

"Okay, let's go." Fred pushed his chair back and stood up.

"Whoa, where are you going?" Pietro asked.

Fred frowned, confused again. "I'm going with you. You know, to help?"

"No, you're not. We're sneaking in under the radar."

"Yeah, and you ain't exactly inconspicuous, yo."

"So what am I supposed to do while you two are in the store?"

Toad and Pietro glanced at each other. Pietro hopped from foot to foot and sighed impatiently. "I dunno, just wait for us."

"But the mall's closing in a few minutes!"

"So wait outside! I don't care! We'll find you!" Pietro grabbed Toad and they took off down the hall, leaving Fred in the proverbial dust.



When they reached the doorway to Bath & Body Works, Pietro motioned Toad to wait outside. Then he sped into the shop and crouched behind a display of little seashell-shaped soaps. He poked his head around one side of the display and waited for the manager to turn her back. When she did, he waved Toad in. With one giant leap, Toad landed beside him.

The two boys crouched behind the display, peeking around it every few seconds. After a minute or two had gone by, Toad whispered, "What're we waitin for, yo?"

"A customer or something. I need her to open that cash register. Hey, I know! Why don't you go buy something? Then I can rip off the cash!"

"No way! She's already thrown us outta here twice. I ain't walkin up there and givin her a shot at me a third time!"

"All right, all right, calm down. Uh-oh, look!" Pietro pointed. "It's the perfume girl!"

They watched as the perfume-spritzer girl made her way to the front of the store. In one hand she held a black zippered bag; in the other, a huge bottle of perfume. As she passed their hiding place, Toad lashed out with his tongue, aiming for the hand holding the perfume bottle.

The girl never saw what caused it, but suddenly her hand flew back and spilled the bottle of perfume down the front of her shirt. She spun around, trying to figure out what had just happened. Not seeing the boys hiding behind the display, she finally shrugged and continued up to the manager's register.

Pietro peered around the display and pointed to the black bag she was carrying. "Money pouch," he whispered.

Toad nodded. As they watched, the perfume girl handed the pouch to the manager and set the perfume bottle on the counter. That done, she left. The manager produced an identical black bag from under the counter and gathered the two together in her hand. She glanced around the store once and began walking toward the front, out of the boys' line of sight.

"What's she doin now?" Toad whispered.

"I dunno."

A second later, the lights went out, plunging the store into darkness except for the dim lights the store left on overnight.

"Hey, wait a minute, yo!" Toad's eyes widened in alarm. "She's locking us in!"

In fact, she had already exited the shop and locked the glass double-doors. She was now locking the metal security gate across the outside of the doors.

"Hey! Let us outta here!" Pietro and Toad leapt out from the display and ran to the doors. Unfortunately, the manager had finished locking the gate and was walking away from them, down the hall and toward the mall exit. She gave no indication that she'd heard them.

The boys stared at each other in bewilderment. Toad turned in a full circle, lamenting his bad luck. "We're . . . locked . . . in," he said slowly and sadly.

Pietro nodded as he performed his own assessment of the situation. Gazing around the store, his eyes lit upon the cash registers and all the other potential targets for destruction. He began to grin as he realized the extent of the damage they could do with nobody around to stop them. His eyes shone as he looked at Toad. "Yeah! We're . . . locked . . . in!"



X X X



The mall was dark and empty. And silent. Someone had apparently flipped the switch that stopped the Muzak blaring through the mall. That, at least, was a plus, if there was one good thing about this whole lousy situation. On top of being trapped with Lance, of all people, if she had to listen to one more minute of elevator music, Kitty really thought she might scream.

"I can't believe we're stuck in here," she complained, sliding to a sitting position. "I mean, didn't anyone notice the elevator wasn't working? Didn't anyone, like, look up and see us trapped in here?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, are you actually speaking to me now?" Lance leaned back and stared at the ceiling. This wasn't going quite the way he'd hoped when they first got stuck. Not that he really wanted to be trapped in an elevator, but he'd figured he could take the opportunity to try and convince Kitty he wasn't really such a creep. So far it wasn't working too well. Of course, that might have something to do with the fact that he'd stalked her through the mall and then followed her into the elevator after she told him not to . . . .

She'd gone back to ignoring him. He sighed. "Well, there's no one around now. You can just go ahead and slide outta here if you're really so desperate to get away from me."

"I told you earlier, we're too high up!" She glared out the glass wall at the floor of the mall, twenty-five feet below. No, she wasn't going to try dropping that far. She glanced over at Lance, who still had his head tipped back. As people usually do when someone else is looking up, she tilted her own head back to follow his gaze. Nothing too interesting up there. Through the clear ceiling of the elevator, she could see the upper level of the mall about five feet above. As she looked at the upper level and the two tracks the elevator traveled on, the solution suddenly hit her. "Lance, you're a genius!"

"I am?" He blinked. "Oh, well, yeah. I mean, it's about time you started appreciating me. Uh, what did I do?"

She jumped to her feet. "Like, I've been looking at this all wrong! I won't drop through the floor; I'll go through the ceiling and climb up to the second level. Give me a boost!"

"Okay." Lance started to lace his hands together, then paused. "Wait a second. You are gonna pull me outta here too, right?"

Kitty hesitated. "Yeah, of course. Come on, boost me up!"

He looked at her uncertainly, but held his hands down for her. "You better pull me out. I mean, you have to, right? Isn't it a rule in the goody-goody X-Men code of ethics or something?"

She sighed and put her right foot into the stirrup created by his hands. Bouncing up and down on her left foot, she grabbed at his head for balance.

"Ow, my eye!"

"Oops." Kitty removed her thumb from his eye and braced her hands on his shoulders instead. "Okay, lift me up."

"Oops? You practically blind me and all you can say is 'oops'?!"

"I'm sorry, okay? It was an accident! Besides, you deserved it. So, would you please, like, lift me up now?"

"I'd like to know what I did to deserve getting my eye poked out," Lance grumbled as he boosted her over his head.

"You mean besides trying to kill me on, like, several occasions?"

"Hey, it's not personal!"

Choosing not to respond to that ridiculous statement, Kitty reached up and passed her hands through the ceiling. She placed her left foot on Lance's shoulder and boosted herself up and through the ceiling.

"Ow! Hey, you kicked me in the head!"

Kitty shivered. Passing through glass always made her feel cold. From her crouching position, she looked down at Lance, who was scowling and rubbing the side of his head. "Sorry," she called.

"Yeah, yeah, sure," he muttered, then raised his voice to be heard through the thick glass. "All right, so get me outta here now!"

"Hmm." Kitty considered for a moment. "You know, I don't think I like your tone of voice, Lance. Plus, you've been a real jerk today. I think I'm going to leave you in there. Bye!"

"Hey, you can't leave me here! C'mon, Kitty!"

She ignored him and turned to the elevator tracks. After a quick survey of foot- and hand-holds, she began climbing.

"You can't do this, Kitty!"

"Yes, I can. I am," she called down to him. As she reached the second level and hopped up to the floor, everything began to shake. She cautiously peered over the railing and saw Lance with his eyes rolled back and a strained looked on his face. He was doing his Avalanche thing again, either to try to dislodge the elevator, or to make her fall; she couldn't be sure which.

"Oh, no," Kitty muttered, then yelled, "Lance! Knock it off! You're gonna make the elevator fall and like kill yourself!"

Lance reluctantly backed off and the ground stopped quaking. As much as he hated to admit it, she was right. If he'd held out any longer, the elevator would have fallen and shattered with him inside. He looked up and watched as Kitty walked to the stairs and began descending. Okay, so maybe she did have the right to be upset with him. But she wasn't really leaving him there, was she?

He pounded his fists on the wall. "Kitty, I'm sorry, okay? Come back! Let me out of here! Hey!"

Suddenly he realized something. He started hopping up and down and beating on the walls more frantically.

"I'm serious, Kitty, let me out! I need to go to the bathroom!"



X X X



"Ha-ha-ha, take that!"

Toad ducked as a stream of lilac-scented bubble-bath shot his way. He popped up from behind the counter long enough to grab his own bottle of bubble-bath. One hard squeeze of the bottle sent an arc of pink suds in Pietro's direction. In a blur, he moved out of the way and the bubble-bath splashed harmlessly on the wall. Faster than Toad could track him, he appeared right in front of him and shot a soapy stream into Toad's face.

"Hey, no fair, yo!" Toad sputtered.

"Ha-ha! You snooze, you lose, man!"

Snoozing was about the last thing the boys had been doing. Within half an hour, they had managed to destroy most of the shop. Displays were knocked over; glass and ceramics were broken; fancy little soaps were ground to dust on the floor. They had started the soap-fight by pelting each other with bath beads, which had burst and leaked bath oil everywhere. From there, they progressed to the bubble-bath. Every surface in the store dripped with slippery scented suds. If the place had smelled unbearably flowery and girly before, it was ten times worse now.

While Pietro went off in search of a new bottle of bubble-bath, Toad wiped soap from his eyes and turned his attention to the cash register. He knew there still had to be some money in it. Curling his fingers around the sides, he tried to pry the cash drawer open. When that didn't work, he pulled the register off the counter and began jumping up and down on it.

Pietro ran up behind him. "What're you doing? You can't get it open like that."

"Huh?" Toad jerked around in the middle of a jump. One of his feet slipped in the soapy mess covering the register, and he landed on his back in a raspberry-scented puddle. "Ow!" He clutched his head and tried to sit up in the slippery goo. It took several attempts before he got enough traction to pull himself up. He glared at Pietro, who had started laughing at his predicament. "So go get me a screwdriver or sumthin to pry this open with, yo!"

Pietro tore around the shop and returned with a couple of objects in his hands. "No screwdrivers. You can have a nailfile or a pair of manicure scissors."

"What? Man, that's no good!" Toad stared in disgust at the implements and went back to jumping on the register.

"Well, that's not gonna do it, either."

Toad stopped jumping. He slid in the goop on the floor, but managed to remain on his feet. "You're right. This ain't workin." He crouched down, picked up the register, and threw it across the room. It crashed into the wall and fell to the floor, where it popped open and spilled bills out into the sticky mess on the floor.

The two boys exchanged a look. Pietro's eyes lit up and he ran deeper into the store. A second later, there was the sound of another cash register hitting the wall. "Aw, it didn't open!"

"That's 'cuz the Toad has the magic touch! Want me to come jump on it?"

In response came the sound of the register hitting the wall a second time. On the heels of that, there was the crashing noise of glass breaking and Pietro screaming, "Open! Open! Open!"

Toad raised his eyebrows. "Whoa, Quickie's losin it, yo," he muttered, and made his way over to the rear counter. When he saw what the other boy was doing, he snorted. "Well, that ain't gonna open it."

The cash register, which stubbornly remained unopened, was on the floor under a huge dent in the wall, surrounded by broken glass. Pietro paused while holding a giant candle-holder over his head. "Maybe not, but it's sure making me feel better." He chucked the candle-holder at the register, where it promptly shattered into a thousand pieces. "See? I feel better already!"

"Uh-huh." Toad shook his head and went to rescue the cash register from its bed of glass. As he straightened up with the register in his arms, he peered at the dent in the wall. "Hey, I can see through to the next store!"

"So what's your point?"

The look on Pietro's face was all it took to convince Toad he'd better keep his mouth shut. He shrugged and launched the cash register toward the opposite wall. It popped open immediately. "See, I told ya! Magic touch, yo!"

Pietro glared at him and reached for a long wooden back-scrubber. He held it over his head and advanced toward Toad, who shrieked and leapt for the front of the store. "I'll show you the magic touch! That register was mine! Get back here! You can't run from Quicksilver!"

"I can try!" Toad yelled back, but Pietro was already in front of him. He came to a grinding halt and held his hands up in surrender. "Hey, at least we got the money, right?"

Pietro didn't answer, but swung the back-scrubber in a hard arc toward Toad's head.

He shrieked again and threw himself out of the way, jumping onto the front counter. From this position, he could see into the mall. More importantly, he could see the person passing by Bath & Body Works. He jumped off the counter and plastered himself to the glass doors. "Hey, yo, Kitty! Get me outta here! Pietro's gone crazy or sumthin!"

Kitty stopped in front of the doors and stared into the store in disbelief. As she watched, Pietro's foot slipped in a puddle of soap suds and he slid on his back toward the rear of the shop. Toad turned to watch, then continued pounding on the doors and yelling for her to let him out.

Taking in the damage the boys had done to the shop, she sighed and shook her head. Let Toad out? To walk away unpunished? No way!

She glanced around, debating what to do. After all, she couldn't just leave them in there, could she? Of course not. For one thing, it really did look as if Pietro had gone stark raving mad. On the other hand, she couldn't just let them out, either. She bit her lip uncertainly.

Then she spotted the fire alarm.

Perfect! Kitty grinned and reached for the lever. The alarm immediately began blaring throughout the mall.

Inside Bath & Body Works, Toad slapped his hands over his ears and gaped at Kitty. "What're you doin, yo?!"

Even Pietro stopped his attack on Toad. He dropped the back-scrubber and covered his ears. "What's she doing?"

Kitty smiled innocently and wiggled her fingers at the boys. Raising her voice to be heard over the alarm and through the door, she called, "The fire department should be here in a few minutes. Don't worry, I'm sure they'll let you out. Until then, do you think you boys can, like, play nice?"

Pietro dashed to the doors and joined Toad in pounding on them. "C'mon, let us out of here!"

Kitty just shook her head and started walking away. Suddenly she snapped her fingers and whirled back around. "Oh, yeah! When the fire department gets here, be sure to tell them Lance is trapped in the elevator, okay? See ya!"

The boys watched as she disappeared through a wall, then they turned to each other. Both wore identical expressions of disbelief. "Man, I hate those goody-good X-Men," Toad complained.

"Yeah." Pietro grabbed his back-scrubber again and took up a stance on one side of the doors. "Grab a weapon, man! We'll be ready for those firemen! Ha-ha, they won't know what hit 'em!"

Toad picked up a wrought-iron candle stand and stood on the other side of the doors. "Hey, Pietro?"

"Yeah?"

"What do you think she did to Lance?"

"How should I know?" Pietro scowled for a moment, then his expression cleared. "But she's gonna pay for it. Right after we get the firemen! Then we'll get the rest of the X-losers, then the manager of this place, and mall security, and the perfume girl, and . . ."

Toad sighed and shook his head. It was going to be a long wait . . . .





X X X

EPILOGUE

The Next Morning



It was breakfast time at the Xavier Institute. Most of the X-Men were already seated around the table when Scott walked into the room waving the morning newspaper. "Hey, have you guys seen this yet?"

He held the paper out so the others could see the front page. There in big bold letters the headline read, DESTRUCTION AT BAYVILLE MALL! POLICE BAFFLED!

"Weren't you at the mall last night, Kitty?" Jean asked.

"Uh, yeah." Kitty slid lower in her seat and hoped nobody would ask her any more questions about it.

"Well, what happened?" Evan asked Scott.

Scott quickly scanned the story, then began reading it out loud. "A little after eight o'clock last night, firefighters responded to a tripped fire alarm at the Bayville Mall. Upon arrival they found no fire, but plenty of destruction. The doors at the south end were bashed in. Witnesses say it looked as if a wrecking ball had gone through them. The west elevator was mangled and barely clinging to its tracks. The elevator doors also seemed to have been beaten in. Also included in the damage was the popular store, Bath & Body Works, located at the south end of the mall, not far from what police are calling the entry point of the vandals. The metal security gate which locks across the front of Bath & Body Works was ripped away from the doors. Mall Security officers claim no human could possibly have the strength to do this, and say the vandals must have brought equipment with them.

"Inside the store, the destruction reached its peak. More than ninety percent of merchandise was broken or damaged beyond repair. The vandals also forced open two cash registers and absconded with close to four hundred dollars. The police are baffled as to how the vandals could have accomplished so much from the time they broke in to the time it took Mall Security to respond to the tripped alarm at the south entrance. Police are also confused as to who pulled the fire alarm and why.

"On a strange final note, the food court was also broken into. The manager of Chili On Everything reports that his entire stock of chili-dogs is missing."

Scott stopped reading and set the paper on the table. "Weird, huh?"

"Sounds like Lance and his buddies," Rogue commented. "The Blob could have bashed through all those doors."

"Yes." The Professor picked up the paper and skimmed through the article. "But I do wonder how the fire alarm was tripped."

"Hey, Kitty!" Kurt exclaimed. "You didn't get home last night until an hour after the mall closed. Where were you? Did you see what happened?"

Kitty nearly choked on her orange juice. Coughing, she set her glass down and picked up her backpack. "Wow, like, look at the time! I've got to get to school!"

Scott raised his eyebrows behind his shades and watched as the girl ran from the room. "Wow, I don't think I've ever seen Kitty in that much of a hurry to get to school before."

"Nor have I," Professor Xavier said thoughtfully. He tapped his fingers on the table and gazed down at the paper again. "I wonder . . . ."







~The End~