A/N: Glad to see that everyone likes the change. I was worried about the reception of the new Laura (well not really worried but I wondered if people would like her being a bit OC). But she's not, really...while she talks differently (a bit), she still has the same base personality. I didn't suddenly make her the world's authority on living. TGIF!! This chapter answers a few more of your questions, Laura K. Howlett ;-)


Chapter 31: x names the clone


"Guys…our newest teammate. Our newest teammate…guys." Keller pulled Laura down beside him on the bench, giving her
no choice to bolt. "Her name's Laura Kinney. Isn't she hot? I—"

"Be quiet," Laura hissed, sliding her claw a tiny bit into his leg.

"Jesus Christ!" Keller grabbed her hand under the table. "Sorry, she's having trouble controlling her strange mutant powers."
Before she could protest, he slapped her clawed hand on the table for all to see.

"Since when do you have a ring tan?" Laura asked, surprised. On Keller's ring finger was a slightly lighter band of skin, as if
he had worn a ring for an extended period of time, through a season at least.

"What? I do not." He examined his hand. "Huh…must've been something I was wearing. Maybe a class ring I forgot."

"Weird! Let me see! And hi, Laura," a girl with silver skin and red hair said, grabbing Keller's hand. "I'm Cessily. My codename
is Mercury. How are you liking the school so far?"

"It's terrible," Laura said blandly. "I hate it here. I hate everyone, including all of you. I want to go home."

"I don't want a kill-joy like that on the team!" the big pile of rocks to Keller's right said angrily. "She's a party killer! What's
wrong with you, Keller? Talk to Frost, right now, and arrange her to be transferred away."

"Shut up, Santo," Keller said. Under the table again, his hand found Laura's. She tried to jerk it out of reach, but then noticed his
eyes were gazing over the silver girl's shoulder at the tall slim longhaired girl, Sofia. For some reason, she let it stay, and found
that his hand wasn't all that unpleasant. It wasn't cold and clammy like most boy's (and men's) hands were; it was dry, and soft,
and warm…and strong. Oh, fuck me, she thought, alarmed. I sound like a trashy novel. I'm enjoying it.

He squeezed her hand. "You need a codename," he said.

"I know! Ohmigod, best name ever. CLAWS!" Santo said in his usual manner of intended stupidity. "Or how 'bout Wolverine?
Wait, maybe it's taken."

"Shut up, Santo," Cessily said. It seemed to be the thing to say. "Talon?" the silver skinned girl added.

"Huntress," Keller grinned. Laura wanted to pull a karate move she'd learned that would allow her to flip him over her shoulder
by pinning his elbow down on her leg, but she controlled the impulse.

"Kevin? Any suggestions?" Cessily asked, looking hopefully at a pale boy in a trench coat towards the end of the table.

"I dunno. I'm not much for the school names." Laura liked him already.

"Nail?" the dark-skinned boy from a few weeks ago suggested. This was followed by some silent laughter from all the boys.

"Pounce…" Keller continued to taunt her with their secret. "How about Maul?"

"Sooraya? Want to comment?" Cessily asked, to a girl dressed in a full niqab and burqa. Laura instantly recognized her to be Sunni.

She did not know how.

"I…I do not know. I am not the best person to ask." Sooraya looked down.

"How about you, Laura? Any suggestions?"

Laura looked at the table. "If I have to have a different name…I would prefer it to relate to something I'm interested in." She studied her
hand on the table. "The human DNA has 46 chromosomes, when combined. I am half that…I am just the same number replicated. I have 23
chromosomes repeated. Maybe I'll call myself 23."

Keller scoffed. "That's gay. You can't call yourself a number."

"Wasn't there one guy called 8-ball or something?" Santo asked.

"Still had a word in it," Keller rubbed his chin. "Hah. How about X-23?"

"What is the purpose of the X?" Laura asked coolly. She'd tensed up when she'd heard the name, put together like that, feeling that,
somehow, it was familiar.

"It…I dunno, it sounds cool," Keller said. "Um, everything here is X, just like everything Batman is Bat. Doesn't X stand for the mutant
chromosome? Wouldn't it be like saying you have 23 mutant chromosome-things?"

"Actually, it's the female gene. The male gene is Y." Laura sneered at him. "You failed Biology, didn't you?" she asked derisively.

"I'm in it right now," he mumbled.

"But you look like you're nineteen or so," Laura said, surprised that she was wrong.

He nodded. "Nineteen and a quarter. I…had some home interference and I took a break from school. Two years behind."

Laura felt like crying 'this isn't fair!'. This meant he would be in her classes.

"Why don't we have an X-mobile?" Santo asked. "That'd be so cool! And we could have little X-shaped throwing stars…"

"We don't need them," Keller said flatly. "Santo…we have powers. Besides, we do have a jet called the X-wing."

"I want a cape," Santo grunted.

Laura finished her dinner in silence, her fingers crossed that she wouldn't have to share more than meal-time with Keller.


Sure enough, she'd just entered the empty classroom, the first to arrive, when Keller came running after her, like a puppy with a short lead.
"HI!" he yelled in her ear, wrapping his arms around her waist and squeezing so she could feel exactly what was pressing against her back.

"Miss me?"

"Oh my god, get it away from me!" she said, pushing him away with one hand and rubbing her aching ear with the other. She'd known he
was coming, but not would he would do; and once a loud sound was out there was no way to stop the pain associated with it.

"Thought we could, I dunno, be study partners," he grinned, holding up his stack of books. "You can be the person I get to talk to if I miss a class.
Or if I get lonely. Something like that." He breathed in her ear.

"Pervert," she said, whacking him away with her Biology volume. She didn't know which disturbed her more—Keller being near her, or her body
responding by involuntarily breaking out in shivers.

He laughed and sat down in the front, then patted the stool next to his. "Your butt. Right here. I think your butt's hot, by the way. Any chance you like anal?"

"I can't sit there, there'd be a creep impeding my learning if I did," Laura said, plunking her books down on the table in front of the farthest seat away
from him, in the opposite corner of the room. "Hey—wait! What're you doing?!"

Her books were surrounded by the same green that had made her tingle on the floor, and they gracefully soared to the table beside Keller's. "You next.
Ooh, we could screw on the table here, we've still got half an hour. I'm normally not such a big dork that I show up early for schoolin's but I saw you leave
and figured what the hell."

"Put me down!" Laura said as he repeated the same process with her person, landing her in his lap. "Oh, hi. What brings you here, spitfire?"

Laura was about to jam her claws into his crotch when the door opened, and their teacher, Dr. McCoy, entered. "Oh, dear me. Should I leave the room
and give you two a moment to get decent?" he asked.

"Nah, we're done here," Keller grinned. To Laura's absolute horror he leaned forward and kissed her, tongue and all. She pushed him off the chair.

"That was gross," she said.

"I think you may have vomited a little in my mouth," he laughed. "Hot. I swallowed. Do you swallow?"

"Children, please. A teacher is present. Don't make me send you to Ms. Frost for counseling…I don't think you would recover."

Keller got to his feet, looking serious now. "Uh, okay sir. Sorry. Just having a little fun. We'll be serious now." He winked at Laura, and she put her face
in her hands. "Still…spitfire…that's my seat."

"Mine now." Laura opened his notebook, to find Sofia's name scribbled all over it, and little sketches of her that were surprisingly accurate. And there,
in a corner, one of her—smiling. She was immediately freaked out—she'd never smiled in his presence; how did he know what she looked like with that expression?

"You wanna know what's really freaky?"

Despite herself, Laura asked. "What?"

"I drew that before I even saw you," Keller professed.

Laura slammed the book shut. "Okay, so you're a pre-cognitive," she said after a second of shuddering in repulsion. "Big deal. I have claws and a healing factor."

"I'm not a pre-cog," Keller mumbled. "Just a TK. I was tested for all sorts of mental powers. I just have a really strong brain." "

"You've brought new meaning to the term 'all brawn and no brain'," Laura said, looking away.


Keller committed himself to claiming a seat beside Laura in every class they shared—four in total—even going as far as to scare another kid off to get it.

Time and time again, he told her, even volunteered, the fact that he was not after her. He had eyes only for Sofia, he said. His declarations and statements
did not explain to her what his game was; during class he'd be scribbling notes in his scrambled left-handed script, but he'd slip his shoe off, and the top of
his foot would brush against Laura's calf every so often. She found it hard to concentrate—she couldn't quite fight him off, as he did it at the oddest moments;
perhaps the strangest was when, during one break, he leaned back in his seat, closed his eyes—and suddenly she realized just what he was thinking about.
She barely kept quiet, and she had to stay behind the rest of the class to wipe her chair down when they were done for the day. She was furious with herself
for not protesting—it had been possibly the best physical sensation of her life, which made it impossible to resist—but she was still furious. Every time class
was over, she swore she'd move to a seat as far away from him as she could possibly find; but every time he started touching her in whatever method he
chose, she forgot all about it.

She was worried she was becoming addicted to something entirely new—that she hated.


Julian rubbed his face sleepily. He'd just been having the greatest dream—Sofia, in Tahiti. They'd just been about to move beyond foreplay
when a knocking sound had broken the dream. He'd rolled out of bed sleepily, still in the dream, and tripped on his own blanket.

"What? It's two thirty in the morning and I have class tomorrow. Go 'way." He opened his eyes and started.

"Fine," Laura said, turning away.

"Nonono, get over here," he said, yanking her into his room and shutting the door. He was suddenly happy to be woken up—real-boobs
were always better than dream-boobs. And Laura's were quite fantastic.

He backed her up against the closed door. "Sorry, I was having a good dream—er, I mean a bad one. Wanna make me feel better?"

"Not really," Laura said, looking down. "You weren't kidding, were you?"

"It was a good dream," he said, pressing up against her. "It was about you."

"Bull shit, you were moaning Sofia's name," Laura said angrily. "And I wasn't talking about your dream. I meant the picture."

He stopped. "Uh, no…I wasn't. I did that about a month before you came here. And how the hell did you hear me? Do I have a little stalker?"

Laura looked down, wanting to preserve her secret long as possible. But the idea of Keller thinking she would bother stalking him… "Fine. I
have…enhanced hearing, like Wolverine."

Julian paused, but he decided he didn't care. He hadn't said anything that mattered too near her, anyways. He touched her neck, and noticed
she wasn't pulling away from his slight pressure. "Laura…are you going to stay?"

"Can I…can I just sleep with you?" she asked, flooring him. "Only sleep…I don't want anything else. I don't know why I even want this."

He put his hands on her shoulders, and marveled at the fact that she did not move away. As his thumbs ran over the tops of her breasts, he
realized Sofia was now the furthest thing from his mind.

"Are you sure? Nothing else?" he asked.

"Yes," Laura said firmly.


It disturbed him that she felt so familiar. She curled against him, her head in the crook of his elbow, her stomach fitting his arm perfectly like
they'd slept together for a long time, or they'd been custom-made, or something like that. And it disturbed him that he'd barely formed this
thought when he began to drift off into a relaxed, peaceful sleep. He never slept with girls—he never could feel that comfortable.

In the morning, he awoke to a knock at the door. It was Sofia, yelling that she needed to talk to him. He bolted up, his first thought of
Laura—but she was already gone, leaving the faintest imprint on the bed to suggest she had been there. Damn, he thought, realizing
he was more upset than relieved.