One Day

Thanks/Dedications: This is dedicated to Oldprydefan, as it's her (belated) birthday gift. And many, many thanks to Sue Penkivech who beta'd this all the way from rough crack!fic status.

Notes: This takes place BEFORE X1. Everyone is alive, and there is no Rogue or Logan.

Today was not Bobby Drake's day.

Really, between the schoolwork he'd been assigned to do that day and someone dying his hair blue, it had been trying. And he'd only been awake for, maybe, six hours. It was only lunchtime. And, if the grin on Jubilee's face was any indication, it was only going to get worse.

"Hey Bobster!" Jubilee greeted excitedly. "Nice hair!"

Because of course, with his luck, it's not as though someone wouldn't notice. Not that he was sure of what he'd been expecting. His hair was blue. And who had done that anyway? Pranks were anything but infrequent, but his shampoo? Whoever the person was they would've had to get into his room and into the locked drawers underneath his bed (hey, he hadn't lived at Mutant Manor for two years for nothing – dye in the shampoo was an old trick, one he thought he'd been prepared for).

"Very sexy," Jubes was saying in her usual speedy manner. "It, like, totally and completely goes with the whole 'ice' thing, man!"

"Glad you like it," Bobby told her, rolling his eyes as he took his spoon to his mound of mashed potatoes. They would be punished, those potatoes, for the suffering he'd endured that day.

Die potatoes, die.

"And, like, it contrasts with, like, your eyes and junk…" She was still going. "And it's totally sweet. I mean, dying your hair to try and be a rebel…"

"Wait a minute," Bobby interrupted, holding up a hand to stop the girl next to him. "I didn't do this on purpose! Someone pranked me!"

"Pranked you what?" St. John Allerdyce, Bobby's roommate, asked, sliding into a seat across the table. The second he saw Bobby's hair, he burst out laughing. "Man," he got out between guffaws, "what the fuck is up with your head?!"

"Shut up," Bobby muttered, stabbing the non-existent life out of his mashed potatoes again.

"Aww…did somebody play a wittle joke on wittle Bobby-baby?" St. John drawled, smirking. "You should keep it," he added. "Warns the rest of the world that you're saddled with permanent brain-freeze."

"At least I've got one to freeze, jackass," Bobby retorted.

"Amazing the love between two roommates, isn't it?" Kitty Pryde asked, coming up behind St. John, Piotr Rasputin just steps behind her. She took a seat next to St. John, Piotr taking the one on her other side, as she took in Bobby's new hair statement.

"Bold," she commented, her face serious but her voice anything but. "Very interesting statement. Is that a proclamation for your love of bubblegum or of cotton candy?"

The table howled.

Unable to help himself, Bobby stuck his tongue out at her. He had to find out who had done this to him. That person would pay.

Nobody pulled a prank on Bobby Drake and got away with it.

"You look like you're having a good day," Kitty observed, taking a seat next to Bobby on the edge of the fountain. He'd been quiet and mopey all through their afternoon classes. Like it was some sort of big deal that someone had dyed his hair blue.

She thought it pretty funny, herself.

"Oh, yeah," Bobby snorted, his voice dry. "It's been peachy keen. I woke up to find my hair the same color as blue kool-aid and then all the teachers decided that the best day to give homework was the one on which I needed to investigate."

He met her eyes as he swore, "I'm gonna get this person back."

"Oh you are, are you?" Kitty sounded amused.

"What, you think I can't?!" Bobby's voice was indignant. "I've been pulling pranks on people since before any of you guys even got here!"

Kitty shrugged with perfectly executed nonchalance. "I'd like to point out, bad-prankster-boy, that you don't even know who did it."

Kitty knew she was right. He didn't know, or he would've done something to the offending prankster by then. But if she knew him, and she was pretty sure she did, he wouldn't turn down the challenge. Not if he wanted to keep his title as the Requisite House Prank Master.

"I'll just prank everyone, then," He decided with a bright and decidedly impish grin. A very cute grin, Kitty thought in passing. "Every student and every teacher."

Kitty rolled her eyes. "And how many days of this do you think it's going to take them to figure out who's doing it."

"Well, then…I won't give them more than one day. I'll get it all done by dinner tonight!" he declared. Kitty looked unconvinced. "I will," he swore. "If I don't you can….shave my head."

Now that there were stakes, the brunette sitting by him looked intrigued.

"Wait, what exactly are the terms of this bet?" she asked, her grin sly.

"If I can't prank everyone by dinner, including whoever got me with the hair, I'll let you….dress me. For a week. I mean, you're always complaining about how sloppy I am."

Kitty grinned. Visions of Bobby in leather micro-minis and fishnets danced in her head. "I accept."

"Ah, but wait, we're not done," Bobby smiled. "When I win…"

"Cocky much?" His companion teased.

"When I win," he continued, as though nothing had been said, "I get to…dye your hair blue. With month-long dye."

Kitty paused for thought. She was not especially keen on the idea of Bobby dying her hair any color at all, really. But, honestly, what was the chance of him pranking everyone at the mansion by dinner?

"Deal."

They shook on it.

Twenty minutes later Jubilation Lee stopped into her room for a chance to freshen up. She was going to go meet Piotr for a study session, and even if she didn't like him that way, she still wanted to look her best. After she ran a quick brush through her hair and checked her make-up, she headed into the bathroom to brush her teeth. Guys appreciated good breath, after all.

Jubilee wet her toothbrush and squeezed the toothpaste onto it. Top teeth, bottom teeth, back, sides, tongue…

Something was off. Something tasted off.

Her delicate nose was wrinkled as she pulled the brush from her mouth to see what it was. She stopped dead as she looked into the mirror.

Paint. Green paint.

"BOBBY!"

Across the mansion, in the boys' wing, Piotr Nikoliavich Rasputin was putting his books away before he was to meet with Jubilee. She had promised to bring all the books they would need. He wasn't entirely sure what had possessed him to agree to this study session, in all honesty. Jubilee wasn't known for her great study habits and, though he himself did decently in all of his classes, it wasn't as though he were any great shakes at biology. That was more Kitty's thing. Why didn't Jubilee just ask her?

Piotr shook his head. Women were simply a mystery. Like artwork, some things were better being appreciated without trying to be understood.

Besides, it would drive a man mad.

The Russian mutant pulled off his shirt to exchange it for a fresh one. He may have just come from a workout session with Cyclops, but he didn't need to smell like it. Piotr grabbed his deodorant and slid it over his skin, following the refresher up with his shirt.

He was about to leave when…things started to itch. His whole chest, it felt like. And back, and sides. Piotr went to rip his shirt off, but the piece of cloth stuck to where ever his deodorant had been like…

Super glue.

He had been plagued by super glue. And itching powder.

"BOBBY!"

Piotr ran into the hallway to find several people, obviously victims like himself, running about, looking for something to fix things. A kid ran by with green skin as another ran by who had feathers glued to large portions of his body – and how Bobby had managed that one, Piotr would never know.

"I am going to kill him," he muttered. Why was it that every time Bobby took it into his head to do this (and that was about once a month or so, on average) he always got the worst of things? Rather than pondering women, that was what Piotr chose to ponder as he wandered the halls in search of the other boy…and scratched himself.

St. John had noted the growing number of students with thinly veiled amusement. And by thinly veiled, he meant no veil at all. This was fucking funny, to him, and he'd made several comments regarding how lovely everyone looked now.

If lovely now meant stupid and retarded, anyway.

He sauntered into the room and went to grab the lighter he'd left on the desk (Mr. Summers had forbidden him from taking it to classes). But…it was gone. St. John quickly ripped through the room. But the lighter was nowhere to be found.

"Hey, St. John."

St. John looked up to see Neal Sharra in his doorway. "Yeah?"

"You might want to come see this," Neil told him. St. John followed the other boy down to the boy's bathroom. There was his lighter, in the shower, along with every pair of underwear he owned.

Enclosed in a six-foot thick block of ice.

"BOBBY!"

Kitty towel-dried her hair as she climbed out of the shower. She loved hot showers, and that one had been long enough that her mirror was most satisfactorily clouded.

She pulled a brush through her hair without the fogged mirror's assistance, finished dressing and went down to dinner where chaos reigned. Kids were running around with brightly colored skin, teeth, and things glued to them that really weren't supposed to be there. Kitty slid into a seat across from Bobby.

"Impressive," she conceded, gesturing vaguely around the room. "But you didn't win the bet."

"Oh?" Bobby asked, raising an eyebrow in a way that was both cocky and endearing.

"Nope, you said you'd get back the person who pranked you. For the hair. But you didn't."

"Oh, didn't I?" Bobby asked, not sounding at all concerned about it and smiling impishly. Something about him was way too happy, Kitty decided.

"Well, you didn't prank me," and now it was Kitty's turn to sound triumphant. But the shock she expected to see on his face wasn't there. In fact, if she knew him as well as she thought he did he was…smug? He handed her a mirror and she pulled it up to her face.

Hair.

Blue hair.

Son of a bitch.

"BOBBY!"

But that wasn't Kitty's voice. It was older, more adult and more masculine.

Mr. Summers.

"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!"

Bobby and Kitty pointed at one another in unison as Bobby asked sotto voce, "Escape together?"

"Oh yeah."

And they fled.

THE END.

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