This story is a sequel to my X-Men comic short story series, Shadowed Pryde. You don't really have to read the first three stories to understand this, since the plot is kind of separate, but in order to understand the characters, I would recommend that you take a look at them.

This is set in July of 2014.

Thanks!

Previously:

When Scott and some of the others got called out on a retrieval mission, my senses started tingling, and I almost felt kind of relieved. I was aching for some action, some adventure, some anything to break the mundane cycle that we were currently living in.

And later, when they returned, I discovered that that something was the girl. She was either my age or a little bit older who was currently clinging to Jean like she was a life line. There was another unfamiliar mutant with her, but she was the key to whatever was coming next.

I walked over to stand in front of her and stuck my hand out in greeting. She immediately shied away, as if she were afraid of me.

I spoke to her gently, "I'm Kitty. What's your name?"

There was a brief silence while we all stood in the corridor waiting for her to speak. I could tell from the way that she was shuffling her feet that she was looking at her companion, as if asking for permission. Apparently whatever silent signal he gave her told her that telling me her name would be alright.

"I'm Rogue."

"It's nice to meet you." I replied.

Seconds after telling my her name, her companion collapsed. I held her back as all the adults hauled him up and rushed him to the medbay. She was shaking in my arms as I heard them board the elevator.

"Hey," I told her softly, "He'll be okay."

"Can you honestly promise that?"

"No. But I can promise that Hank will do his best."

She seemed to be okay with that answer. I hugged her closer to me as I sensed, more than heard, Professor Xavier wheeling up behind us. For an unexplained reason I felt apprehensive about him being close to her.

"Hello girls," he said in that deep voice of his, " Kitty, I heard that Scott and the others brought back two people. Where is the other?"

"You're a little late to the party Xavier," I joked, "He collapsed, and the others took the man downstairs. I'll check on him later." He nodded. "For now, sir, where can we put Rouge?"

"Well...You don't have a roommate yet, Kitty."

It was true. I didn't. All the new recruits were just a tad to immature to stand me for long before requesting a room change. I guess they didn't like my sparkling personality. I wasn't complaining.

"Sure. And while I'm making up a bed for you, you can use my shower and borrow some of my clothes." The last statement, of course, was directed at Rouge and not at Xavier. My clothes would never fit him.

"Ummmm..." She hesitated, and I patted her hand in an effort to comfort her. "Do you have any gloves?" Her quiet question threw me off a bit, I have to admit. It was the middle of July, and she wanted to wear gloves?

"Yeah," I said slowly, "I do. You like wearing gloves?"

"No."

Her reply confused me. She wants them, but doesn't like them? Being the genius that I am, I decided to ask why. "Then why do you want some?" I asked.

"The ones I'm wearing are dirty and I need a new pair."

It was clear that she wasn't going to give me any answer beyond what she had already told me, so I let sleeping dogs lie, and bid the Professor goodbye. Grasping her arm, I led her up the stairs and to my room.

"Alright, I'm going to go grab a cot for you for tonight, and we'll see about having the guys set up a more permanent bed for you in the morning. Sound good?" I took her silence as an affirmative, and went digging through my closet for something that would fit her. "You can go hop into the shower if you want, it's that door over there."

"You've got a nice room, you know." She said as she stepped towards the bathroom.

"I know. Kurt designed it." I smiled a bit, remember that day two years ago when I first moved into the mansion.

My brother had done a good job.

After showing her the shower and giving her some clean clothes, I went to bug Piotr for help with one of the spare cots.

"Piotrrrrrrrrrr!" I called out in a sing-song tone. Reaching his door, I stuck my head through it.

I heard a muffled Russian curse before he walked over to the door and opened it. The second nothing was seperating us, I pulled him down (way down considering he was over a foot taller than me) for a quick kiss.

"What is it that you need, Katya?" he asked as I pulled away.

"The new girl is moving in with me. I need some help getting a cot set up for her."

Being the nice guy that he is, he lifted one of the more comfortable ones off of the top shelf in the large supply closet for me.

Being the nice girl that I am, I thanked him with another kiss before ditching my guy for the timid girl in my bedroom.

The minute I opened my door in order to push the cot into the room she was there in front of me, helping me by pulling on the other end. Between the two of us, we got it set up in a few minutes.

"Well," I said with a slight huff, "There's that. Anything you need, you let me know. You're welcome to anything in the room, except my computer and books, since they're password protected and designed for people like me, specifically."

"People like you?" she asked me curiously. I turned my gaze to her, an incredulous expression taking over my features.

Did she seriously not know?

"Yeah," I said, "I'm blind. My books are either in braille or on a special eReader and my computer was custom built to work for me."

"Seriously" She cried, "But you seem so..." she trailed off, and I could tell that she was scared of offending me.

I sat down on my bed and patted the space next to me. It took a minute, but she took my invitation.

"I seem so normal?" I finished for her. She nodded. "It's okay, I get that a lot. I'm just so used to this place and everybody in it, that I don't have a problem getting around without any kind of aid. And for me, being blind is normal. I was born this way, so it's all I know."

"I think that's kind of cool," she admitted.

"Thanks Rouge." I patted her hand gently. "I do too."

"So, what is this place anyway?"

"Well, it's official name is Xavier's School for the Gifted."

"So what, you're all really smart or talented?"

I laughed slightly. "Well, some of us are smart. And we all are talented in our own way. But that's not why we are students here."

"What do you mean?" I was clearly confusing her with my vague answers. I decided to put an end to her misery.

"Rouge, several of our teachers brought you in. Surely you've got to know that they are mutants." I said exasperatedly.

"Well," she said slowly, "The white haired lady made the snow move around, and that guy with the headgear shot a laser out of his eye to get me out of the car...but I figured that was just them."

I couldn't help myself, I outright laughed at her descriptions of Scott and Storm.

"Sooooo,"she continued, "I know that they are mutants, but I don't know if anybody else here knows."

"Oh," I reassured her, "We all know that they're mutants."

"But," she said hesitantly, "isn't that dangerous? What if someone in the school is against mutants?"

"Then they would be against themselves." I said dryly.

"I don't understand what you are getting at, Kitty." Rouge finally snapped.

Ooooh, so she can get angry. I smirked.

"On the outside, we are a school for gifted kids. That's what the public sees anyhow. The sign just doesn't specify what kind of gifted. Everyone here, student, teacher, it doesn't matter, is a mutant."

Her silence was overwhelming. Literally. She stopped breathing audibly, and while I could tell she was thinking she was also clearly gaping, unable to put those thoughts into words.

She didn't move.

Dang it, I broke her!

I waved my hand in front of her face slightly, hoping for some sort of response. I could feel her twitch slightly, and I let out a sigh of relief.

Well, at least I haven't killed her...yet.

I started to shake her, and would have continued to do so until she acknowledged me, if it hadn't been for the school alarms going off at that exact moment. I recognized the sequence instantly. It was easy, considering that I had designed most of them.

That particular alarm only went off when someone decided to break out of the medbay before Hank or Jean released them. Which meant that the man who had accompanied Rouge was currently making a break for it, since he was the only one occupying that sector at the moment.

Why do we have such an alarm? I blame Logan. Healing factor or no, he is no longer allowed to leave until one of our doctors checks him out.

And seconds later, I felt the Professor telepathically brushing my mind, asking for permission to enter. I gently let him in, long enough for him to speak to me.

Kitty, our guest has found himself trapped in the Danger Room, which has locked itself down. Kurt doesn't dare teleport into there with the defense mechanism on, so would you be so kind as to help our guest out?

I sighed again, more heavily this time.

Sure thing Professor. You might want to send somebody up to watch the girl while I'm busy. Finding out that we are all mutants seems to have given her a bit of a shock.

How big of a shock?

She hasn't spoken since I told her a few minutes ago.

He paused. I see. Well, you handle her companion and I will send Storm upstairs to take care of her.

Will do.

I cut the connection the minute we were through talking. I hated it when anyone was in my head.

I explained to Rogue that I was going to be gone for a little while, and that a friend of mine would be staying with her until I came back. She nodded her head, which gave me a slight hope that I didn't completely break her, and then I left, dropping through the floor as if it wasn't even there. The gasp that I heard before my head went down let me know that I had startled Rogue even more, and I winced a little.

Well, I thought, that went well.

Thankfully, thanks to the structure of the mansion, the Danger room was only a few stories directly below me. All I had to do was drop down. And, thanks to my mutation, accomplishing that task was relatively easy. And quick. It only took a few seconds for me to drop through the floors to the lower level.

Now, the Danger Room, the medbay, the Jet Hanger, and all of the X-Men paraphernalia are kept in the lower levels away from the rest of the school. It's all kept a secret from the majority of the students. And in the words of the great Albus Dumblodore, "Therefore, naturally, the whole school knows."

Many of the older children go down there to train at least once a week, or more than once a week if they have to make a trip to the medbay. Which, for most of the boys at least, happens a lot. But for the most part, it is an unspoken rule that anyone who is not a member of the team stays out of the lower levels unless they are told to be there for some reason.

The second I felt myself slip into the control room for the DR systems, I switched off my mutation. Since I was the computer genius in the group, ever since I had arrived I was the one in charge of all the holograms and mechanics that we had built into the training sequences. Once I was completely solid, I nearly gagged on on the scent of fried machinery.

Somehow this mutant had managed to completely short out of our systems, and by the sounds coming from the training area below, had thrown himself through the window in order to escape and now found himself trapped fighting our equipment. I sighed, knowing that it would take me and Hank weeks to fix it all.

Looks like we're doing hand-to-hand combat for a while.

Now, normally, if this had happened then we would all be stuck fighting against the holograms until we managed to break all of the projectors and robots. That's how it was when I first came here anyway. But, replacing all of the stuff constantly had been getting expensive, so I created a device that let out a pulse of electricity that had been tuned to just the right frequency to shut down all of the Danger Room devices, and nothing else.

It had taken us over two months to do it, but it was worth it.

I threw the switch, and listened as the sounds of fighting slowly died as the machines shorted and the holos disappeared. Down below me, the man was floundering in confusion, clearly wondering why all of the things he had been fighting were slowly disappearing. I decided not to keep him in that state for long.

"Ya know," I shouted, "You really ought to be more careful around here. No telling what you might stumble into."

"Ya try wakin' up strapped to a bed with a red-head standin' over you with some weird gadgets in her hands and not freak out, petite." His Cajun accent made me giggle slightly, and I jumped down to stand next to him.

I thought back for a brief instant, remembering back to the day the exact same thing had happened to me, the very first time I had ever met all of the X-Men.

"Been there, done that." I told him. He ignored me though. I figured I knew why.

"Where's the girl?" He asked hurriedly.

"Rogue? She's in my room."

"She safe?"

"Yeah." I nodded. "Little shocked, but she's fine."

"Good."

"So," I asked curiously, "You got a name for me, Bayou Boy?"

I could practically feel him grin. "My name is Remy, petite. But you can call me Gambit."

I love this story. And now that Rogue and Gambit are here, things are going to get interesting.