Disclaimer: I don't own Marvel. Or DC. Or anything or anyone else mentioned in this story. Though I'd sort of like some chocolate chip cookies!

Author's Note: This story is part of a series titled the Xavier Institute Chronicles, that takes place before X-1. Other writers will be writing in this series as well; if you're interested, drop one of us a note to discuss the parameters and chronology. Also, special thanks to Mi-chan17 and Oldprydefan for beta-ing my first attempt at Movieverse fic!

And as always, please Read and Review!

Sulking, Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Things
That Go Boom in the Kitchen

Sighing, Bobby tossed the Batman comic he'd been flipping through at a pile of similar discards that was threatening to overrun the bottom of his bed, and rolled over to stare up at the ceiling.

This wasn't working. Reading, never one of his favorite pastimes, just wasn't sufficient distraction from the previous week's events. Especially not after four days of it. Unfortunately, he wasn't altogether sure he wanted to tackle the alternative and actually go out and get to know the other students, either.

It wasn't they didn't seem like nice enough people, he reminded himself. Funny, even — the girl with the red hair had been teasing the tall blond guy through most of dinner the previous evening, much to the amusement of the rest of the people at the table. He just…

Well, he didn't want to be there. Though he didn't particularly want to be anywhere else, either.

Home was out. His parents had reacted just as badly to the news that he was a mutant as he'd always expected they would, and the circumstances surrounding the revelation hadn't exactly helped matters any. While the Professor had erased their memories of the whole thing (a process that he didn't like to think about too much, as it gave him a sort of sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach), he still remembered their expressions, the way his mother's face had turned pale and the way his father had stared first at him and then at the Professor in turn, as if unable to believe that something like this could happen in his family.

Bobby's mouth quirked up on one side in a wry sort of half smile. If William Drake could still remember anything other than that his son had been selected to go to a private school for the gifted, he'd probably be blaming it all on the Bass side of the family as usual. Since he couldn't…well, it was just great that their underachiever son had done so well on those imaginary standardized tests, wasn't it? A great opportunity for him.

It didn't feel like such a great opportunity. Or a gift, as tight-assed Mr. Summers had insisted when he'd picked him up the following day to bring him here.

He wondered absently whether or not Ronny had seized the opportunity to grab his room yet, but couldn't quite summon up the enthusiasm to call home and find out.

There was a knock at the door, and he turned toward it just in time to see the head and shoulders of a rather cute dark haired girl with glasses pop through.

"Hey, what's up?" the head asked cheerfully as his mouth dropped open and he blinked twice, rapidly. Yep, she was still there. Or…part of her was. But the part that was there was now grinning at him with maybe just a trace of embarrassment.

"Sorry, I forget you're not used to me doing that yet," she said sheepishly. "Can I come the rest of the way in?"

Bobby managed to gather the rest of his wits back together and half smiled. "Well, I wouldn't want you to get stuck like that. So yeah, come on in."

The girl's eyes rolled and she came through the door. "Right, like I'm going to get stuck in a door. Gimme a break. You're Bobby, right?" she asked as she walked toward him and extended her hand. "I'm Kitty Pryde." She grinned, then schooled her face into one of those "greeting committee approved expressions" that are saved for just such occasions. "Welcome to Mutant High."

Bobby rolled over to bring his legs over the side of the bed and pushed himself upright, ignoring the collapse of the tower of comics as he took her hand in his. "Thanks. Are you the official welcoming committee?"

Her carefully crafted expression cracked and her grin returned full force. "Well, closest thing we've got to one," she admitted as she gave his hand a squeeze, then dropped it. "Sorry I haven't been around sooner, but Dr. Grey said she thought you might like a few days to get settled in." She glanced around the room and raised her eyebrows at the half unpacked suitcases, the CD pack that had been unceremoniously plopped on the desk, and the comics-strewn floor. "Need some help with that, maybe?"

Bobby shrugged awkwardly. "I just…well, I couldn't seem to get motivated," he explained, well aware that in four days he should've at least managed to unpack.

Just, he sucked at unpacking. And it had seemed like way, way too much work.

Much to his surprise, since she sort of looked like the type to lecture about the importance of having things folded and in drawers, Kitty just grimaced and nodded. "Yeah, I hear you. Bit of a shock, isn't it? At least you've got the room to yourself for a while. Terry — she's my roommate — she and I arrived the same day, and we were both totally lost. And got totally lost," she added with an amused, sort of nostalgic expression. "I think we spent most of the first day trying to find our room, because we refused to ask anyone. Though maybe that was easier," she added vaguely, her face getting a sort of dreamy look as she considered it, then nodded as if she'd come to some sort of conclusion.

"Come on, you need the grand tour," she informed him, and snatched out to grab his hand.

Bobby pulled his back, but not in time to avoid her capturing it. "I had the grand tour," he pointed out. "When I got here. The Professor gave me the welcome spiel and handed me over to the big furry guy."

"That'd be Hank," Kitty explained with an impish smile. A really cute one, Bobby noticed, but just waited for her to continue. "Well, Mr. McCoy, but he hates when we call him that. Did he keep it down to words of three syllables?"

"Not so much, no," Bobby admitted with a trace of a grin. Actually, he wasn't entirely sure he'd understood a third of what the guy had said, but he'd liked him anyway. "But I think I got the gist of it anyway."

"Well...there's more to the tour than the faculty approved parts. If you're interested," she said leadingly, and for the first time in days, Bobby's interest was piqued.

"What kind of more?" he asked curiously, his imagination supplying sub-basements full of dungeons and torture chambers and other odd bits and pieces from horror movies he'd seen take place in boarding schools over the years.

Kitty's grin broadened. "Lots more. Come on!" she insisted, giving his hand a tug, and Bobby scrambled to his feet. She was taller than he was, he noticed with no real surprise. It seemed lately as if everyone was, something Rocky Beasley had taken great pleasure in pointing out whenever possible. But there wasn't more than an inch or so difference in their heights, which wasn't too bad.

Before he could give much thought to why that would bother him anyway, considering that they'd only just met and nothing had really been making much of an impression on him in days, he realized that she was smirking at him.

"Express elevator, going down!" she announced, and before he could ask what she meant they were heading down.

Through the floor.

"A little warning next time?" he requested shakily, still clinging to her hand with both of his once they'd finally landed (a little hard, but not too bad) in what was obviously the basement of the manor.

Kitty had the decency to try and look embarrassed, but it was sort of nullified by the grin that kept teasing at her lips. "Sorry. But it's the fastest way down here," she pointed out. "Come on, now you'll get the real tour of the place," she informed him.

Without any thoughts about anything other than just what it was she was planning to show him, Bobby followed.

"Right. So, there he was," Bobby was saying a few hours later. "One of his friends grabbed me, and Rocky goes after Judy, talking shit about how he's a real guy and she can do better, all that crap. You know how it goes, right?"

Kitty nodded. "Yeah, been there, heard that. What'd she do?"

Tour finished, they were sitting at the Institute's kitchen table, waiting for the oven's timer to buzz so they could pull out the cookies they'd decided to bake. He was feeling far better than he had in days, mostly because whenever he started feeling sorry for himself, Kitty would insist on filling him in on some juicy bit of gossip, or on showing him something called a Danger Room that you could program to play any of the Star Wars movies with full holograms, or on making funny faces at him until he had to crack a smile. And somehow, over the process of opening up and dividing pre-sliced chocolate chip cookie dough, she'd gotten him talking.

And now, with only a few pangs of embarrassment now and then, he was pouring out the whole story to a girl who should really count as a total stranger, but strangely didn't.

"Well, she kept inching back toward the wall," he continued, propping his feet up on the unoccupied chair beside his. "Judy's not the bravest girl on the face of the Earth, you know? I mean, it's not like she's a total wimp or anything, but…well, okay, maybe she is," he admitted. "So she's got her mouth open, but nothing's coming out, and I can see the tears pouring down her face from where I'm standing. I guess she was kinda scared."

"Probably," Kitty confirmed with a roll of her eyes, softened a moment later by a smile and a shrug. "I would've been, anyway. So go on…"

"Well," he paused for a moment, trying to decide what to say next. Kitty seemed so…at ease with her powers, something he definitely wasn't yet. But…hers were cool, and useful, and pretty nondestructive.

"Well?" she asked leadingly, making a gesture with her hand indicating he should get on with it.

He let out a nervous chuckle. It wasn't as if she weren't going to know sooner or later anyway. He'd might as well get it over with. "Well, I…it's not like I did it on purpose," he hedged. "But I was kinda scared too, and mad, and I pointed at him. And the next thing I knew he was in this huge block of ice. I mean, like a six foot block of ice. They thawed him out later, though," he observed awkwardly, skipping ahead in the story just to assure her that he hadn't killed the guy or anything.

"That's so cool!" Kitty said with enthusiasm, then grimaced. "Okay, bad pun. And I don't mean freezing the guy — I realize that was an accident. But seriously, what a way to find out what you can do. You must've been scared to death."

Bobby shrugged and felt his face grow warm. "Well…I already knew," he admitted. "I mean, not that I could do that, but…I'd sort of frozen things before. Little things, like the sheets on the bed, or the water in the pipes at home. They blew up," he added with a grimace. "My dad figured the pipes just froze — it was pretty cold out. But, well, I knew."

He watched as Kitty paused a long moment, then reached out to touch his hand with her fingertips. "That couldn't have been easy," she said softly. "My parents found out pretty much when I did — I mean, I phased through the ceiling in my sleep, landed on the living room couch right on top of them. They were surprised, but they were pretty cool about it." She grimaced and shook her head. "I can't imagine what it would've felt like to know and not have anyone else know."

"Well, I was cool with it," Bobby lied with a grin too casual to be entirely trustworthy. "I mean, it wasn't like I —" he broke off abruptly as his brain processed something he'd been smelling for a while. Something burning…

"Oh shit, we forgot the cookies!" Laughing, he scrambled up from his chair, upsetting the one he'd been using as a footrest. Sure enough, a cloud of smoke was billowing forth from the oven door. Snagging the oven mitt off the counter, he approached it cautiously, waving Kitty back.

"Hello? I'm the one who's intangible, remember?" she pointed out.

Ouch. Yeah, she was. He grinned sheepishly and tossed her the oven mitt, then watched as she warily crept forward and opened the oven door.

And jumped back as flames shot out the door and through her. Okay, maybe not the cookies.

"Are you okay?" he asked frantically.

"Yeah — grab the fire extinguisher?" she replied as she made a hasty retreat toward the sink.

Glancing around, he caught sight of a fire extinguisher near the door. He pulled the pin, took aim, and squeezed the handle.

Nothing happened.

"It's not working!" he shouted.

"You have to squeeze the handle!" Kitty shouted back.

"I am squeezing the handle!" he replied, panic growing as the fire leapt toward them. Giving up on the extinguisher, he threw it at the stove, where it exploded on impact and shot a poof of white dust into the air to mingle with the acrid grayish-black smoke.

The fire burned on unabated.

"Well, that didn't help!" she shouted, trying to wave away the extinguisher's contents or the smoke, he wasn't sure which.

"I'd noticed!" he shot back, then burst out laughing at the sight of a whatever-it-was coated Kitty. "You look like a ghost!"

"Oh great, just what I needed to know!" she called out, swiping at her face with her hand and only succeeding in smearing the white stuff around more. "Fire here, though?"

"Oh yeah," he replied, and turned back to the stove. "I'm gonna try something…" His fingers tingled, and he took aim at the stove and fired…

Just as the smoke alarm blared to life. Startled, Bobby's aim went wild. The ice missed the stove and struck the cabinets…and spread as he panicked, until it had coated the refrigerator, countertops, and a good portion of the ceiling.

In fact, pretty much everything on that side of the kitchen. Except the stove. Which, unsurprisingly, was still burning. At least, he thought numbly, it'd probably melt the ice pretty quickly. Probably just before it took the rest of the building out…

"Hold it, fire can't burn without air, right?" Kitty asked, and before he could point out that they wouldn't be able to breathe without it either, she'd rushed forward and re-closed the oven door. And had done…something that made the door look as if it didn't fit quite like it had before.

"I phased it shut!" she announced, turning around and walking toward him. "Hopefully, that should smother it —"

"I don't think it's working," Bobby said, grabbing her arm and pointing to where smoke continued to billow out through the vent in the stovetop.

"What happened? Is everything okay in here — what the...? Out!" a very panicked-looking Mr. Summers demanded as he rushed into the room, bringing himself up short as he took in the smoky, powdery, frozen mess the formerly clean kitchen had turned into.

Neither of them needed to be told twice, but Bobby paused as they walked past the instructor, who seemed to be grinding his teeth.

"Your fire extinguisher doesn't work," he offered with a grin, then followed Kitty's example and made a hasty retreat into the hall.

"So, feeling better?" Kitty asked softly sometime later as they sat on the couch in the rec room.

They were watching The Justice League on Cartoon Network and munching on handfuls of microwave popcorn, while they awaited what Kitty'd described as "Mr. Summers' 'Why I'm Disappointed In You' lecture of the day." Surprisingly, they'd seen one whole episode already and hadn't seen any sign of Mr. Summers. Bobby hoped that didn't mean the teacher had gone up in flames with the kitchen.

Bobby looked over at her and smiled. She still had dots of white powder from the fire extinguisher in her hair, and a streak of dirt angled from her cheekbone up into her hair from where she'd adjusted her glasses. In his opinion, it looked absolutely adorable.

"Who said there was anything wrong?" he asked in lieu of an actual reply.

She poked him in the ribs, and he laughed.

"Oh no, I bet you always hide out in your room for days for the fun of it, right?" she countered with a roll of her eyes.

Bobby grinned. "Maybe?" he offered, then shrugged and handed her the bag of popcorn. The ache was still there, and probably would be for a while, but...it was ignorable. And pretty much had been ever since she'd hauled him out of his room. "Yeah, pretty much okay," he decided aloud. "Did I say thank you for that?"

"Not yet," she replied, then tapped her fingers on her chin for a moment. "But y'know, nothing says thank you quite like ice cream."

Bobby looked around the room. There was a fridge along the wall, from which they'd pulled a couple of sodas earlier, but it didn't have a freezer. "And we get that from…where?" he asked curiously. Given what he'd seen during his tour, he half expected her to reveal that the back wall of the room flipped up to reveal a full ice cream parlor.

"Haagen Daas," she said seriously, then grinned and helped herself to another handful of popcorn. "But don't worry. I'll let you pay me back tomorrow. Right after we get you unpacked."

Bobby laughed and propped his feet up on the coffee table. Maybe the Institute wasn't going to be so bad, after all.