Important Author's Note: Okay, so chapter 3 was turning out super-huge so I cut off the last third of chapter two and added to the beginning third of chapter three to make another chapter which means we'll now have four chapters instead of the intended three. Got that? Capiche? Si? Excellent. ONWARDS!

Disclaimer: All characters are recycled from the Marvel Universe. I only reinvent them :)


Part the Second: Tea Time Trials and Tribulations

Emma clicked her tongue as she peeked into the room that had been assigned to Lorna at the end of the hall in the girl's dormitories.

"Why is she clicking?" Lorna whispered to Betsy, "What deems clicking?"

Betsy placed Lorna's suitcases back on the floor and squeezed past Emma to look at the room and bit her lip. The ceiling was falling in from water damage, the bed beneath it was soaked and sagging and the carpet smelled of mildew which tickled Betsy's sensitive nose.

"Yeah, there's got to be some mistake," Betsy agreed to Emma's clicking, "There's no way you're going to be able to stay—stay—"

Another sneeze ripped out of the psychic's aching throat.

go cannonball, I'll be there in no—didn't mean anything rude by calling her—oh so totally going to be late for first period for the fourth—hairline fracture in the femur so we'll need—you done done me and you bet I felt—subbasements one through four are clear—hope I'm not making a bad impression—check on Scott when the first opportunity—

"Bless you," Emma and Lorna said at more or less the same time. Betsy nodded her thanks and blew her nose, her head pounding, as Lorna leaned her surfboard against the wall.

She peeked inside under Emma's arm, squeezing between Betsy's torso and the doorframe. "Eeeeewww. Are all the rooms like this?" she asked, pinching her nose.

"Just the ones located under Iceman's room," Emma clarified, glaring up at the dripping ceiling. "We have to relocate him every few months to clean up his messes"

Unsure of the mansion's rooming capacity, Betsy turned to Emma, "So where is she going to stay, then?"

"No idea," Emma replied as she turned to diamond and picked up three of Lorna's heaviest bags, "but there's a storage room at the end of the hall on the boys floor where we can keep her things until we sort this out"

Show off, Betsy shot at Emma telepathically as she grabbed a rolling duffel bag in one hand and lifted two more suitcases with her telekinesis. Her muscles were way too achy and sore to lift much else.

Jealous, Emma replied simply as Lorna gawked at Emma's diamond skin and the two suitcases now glowing purple at Betsy's sides.

"What?" Emma asked as she noticed Lorna's expression.

"You guys can just, 'poof!' use your powers like that?" she asked in surprise.

"Yeah…" Betsy replied, shrugging at Lorna's tone, "it's kind of the perks of being a mutant"

"But I thought you only used them to, you know, save the world and fight evil and stuff"

"And move furniture, and fix light bulbs, and cut down trees and save on phone bills," Emma added, shifting one of the bags to pick up a fourth. Betsy glared. Now she was just bragging. "Xavier teaches us to be comfortable with our powers and use them as much as humanly possible"

Betsy glanced over at the new mutant and, feeling like it was something a mentor should do (and Jean had done on a few occasions), she placed one of the floating bags down and said, "Here, why don't you try, Lorna?"

Lorna picked up her surfboard and tucked it under her arm securely with a nervous glance at the suitcase. "I don't know…last time I used my powers was kind of disastrous…"

"Lorna, believe me when I say the mansion can take it," was Emma's casual response as Lorna made a face, turning towards the fabric suitcase.

Betsy backed against the opposite wall to give Lorna more space. "Okay, now just concentrate on where you want the bag to—"

But before Betsy could even finish her instructions, Alex Summers turned the corner and came barreling down the hallway and almost right into the three girls.

"Whoops!" he exclaimed as he reacted just in time to side-step Emma and barely duck under the surfboard blocking the other half of the hallway, only to end up tripping on the suitcase in the middle and falling on his face.

Betsy had pressed herself up against the wall as a reflex and only eased off once she realized the biggest threat was her own paranoia. Groaning, she lifted Lorna's suitcase back up and out of the way as Alex sprung back on his feet and dusted himself off.

"Yeah, I'm cool. Totally fine. No worries," he assured them with false bravado, trying to play it off as if he hadn't just totally eaten it in front of three beautiful women. "Guess it's true you can't escape a traffic jam anywhere in this city"

Lorna giggled and applauded lightly as Emma commented dryly, "Happy to see we're still living up to our codenames, Havok"

He turned back to the three of them, replying, "Well at least some of us have code—"

But he stopped himself as he caught sight of Lorna, who grinned and waved at him with the one hand that wasn't supporting her surfboard. "Hi. I'm Lorna. Dane. New student. Nice wipeout"

"Alex. Masters. Summers now, actually," he corrected, not really paying attention. His eyes were glued to Lorna's surf board. "Hey, that wouldn't happen to be a Local Motion board, would it?"

Lorna propped the surfboard up for him to see. Betsy hadn't really paid attention to it (surfing wasn't really her thing) but she did have to admit it had a very cool and personalized design. It was a basic white board but with a double green stripe down the middle and play/pause symbol, both the same shade as Lorna's hair. It couldn't have been anyone else's board.

"You better believe it," she replied, smiling broadly, "Tri Quad, straight from Down Under. Birthday, Christmas, and graduation present"

Alex stared at it for a few more seconds before finally looking Lorna in the face and, unexpectedly, dropping to one knee and pleading, "Marry me. Right now"

Emma rolled her eyes as Betsy, who had no idea what Lorna had just said to warrant a proposal, tried to keep the grin off her face at Lorna's expression: though laughing good-heartedly, her face had flushed scarlet, standing out poignantly against the green hair.

"Flattered as I am," she said, curtseying slightly, "it hasn't been doing me much good with the swells we're getting out in LA this time of year"

"A Cali girl, huh?" he replied, picking himself up off the floor, "Well, you should try heading to Hawaii this summer for the Women's Pipeline Semi-Pro. Try your luck with some of the seven and eight footers we get out there. Heads up, though. It's not for the faint of heart," he added, a tease trailing along with his words.

Lorna scoffed, leaning casually on her surfboard. "Please, bra, I can do a pipeline in my sleep"

"I can do a pipeline too"

Laura had appeared as suddenly as if she had teleported in the room. Such was the fact that Betsy, Alex and Lorna all jumped at the sudden sound of her voice. Emma, once again, seemed to be immune.

Lorna looked X-23 up and down nervously, whatever charm she'd summoned for Alex crawling back into its hiding place, as Laura came to stand next to Alex and deliberately intertwined their hands. Alex looked a little sheepish at being caught flirting with another girl in the presence of his girlfriend.

Betsy could suddenly cut the tension with a knife and wished, not for the first time, that she were somewhere else.

"You, ah, you surf?" Lorna asked, trying to sound serious but looking as if she seriously didn't believe it for a second.

"No. I can kill you five different ways in the constrictions of an underground pipeline," X-23 replied, glaring at Lorna and squeezing Alex's hand with a bit more force than was necessary—

Crack!

Alex gave a shout as he whipped his broken hand out of Laura's grip. Betsy winced and stifled a gasp—the sound was awful. Laura, on the other hand, only appeared vaguely surprised as her boyfriend clutched at his wounded hand, jumping a little in pain.

She addressed him calmly as she grabbed his arm and lead him towards the stairs, still eyeing Lorna out of the corner of her eye, "C'mon Alex, we should get you to the hospital wing"

Laura looked to Emma once and added, "Your necklace looks like it's trying to eat your breast"

At the words 'hospital wing', Betsy remembered that giving Lorna the tour wasn't her only job that day. She apparently also had a relationship to maintain besides.

"Hey, um, could you two save us the trouble and check on Scott while you're down there?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Betsy caught Emma fingering her giant red gem necklace again and shooting her a glare to melt steel as Alex glanced over his shoulder and asked, "What—ow!—what happened to Scott?"

X-23 gave him a shove. "Moot point. Move"

As the two younger students left, Betsy turned back to her 'tour group' just as Emma threw her arm around Lorna who was watching the retreating figures of Alex and X-23 with something that looked a little less like confusion and a little more like envy.

"Trust me, girl. It's not even worth it," Emma informed their guest. "The Summers brothers have this thing about fidelity," she continued, emphasizing the last word as if it disgusted her. Betsy tried not to show exactly how humorous she found the comment as she turned to pick up the last of Lorna's bags with her telekinesis and began heading for the storage closet.

"Still," Betsy heard Emma mutter, "nice try"

This time Betsy couldn't help but laugh which only made Lorna give her a suspicious look. She sobered up as fast as she could, figuring that she'd have to explain the Summers/Grey/Frost love triangle to their new student eventually, preferably when the 'Frost' portion was elsewhere.

And preferably before the Summers/X-23/Dane love triangle gained too much popularity.


After shoving Lorna's things into the already jam-packed storage closet (it took all three of them to finally get the door to close again) and giving her the boring (in Betsy's opinion) upstairs tour, the three women spent an awkward trip down to the sub-basement in one of the mansion's elevators.

"So…" Lorna hedged, glancing over at Betsy's hair again, "I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that you're 'Violet'"

Emma answered in Betsy's place, never turning her gaze from the elevator door. "Logan gives everyone his own set of nicknames, separate from our codenames. I believe it's supposed to be a form of endearment"

"Oh," Lorna replied, looking to Emma now. "What's he call you?"

"'Barbie'," Betsy supplied happily, also not turning her gaze away from the elevator door.

Betsy could have sworn she saw Emma's skin prickle out of the corner of her eye. "His choices aren't always so…fitting"

"But sometimes they are," Betsy countered, trying to keep the grin off her face.

Emma shot Betsy a warning look. Betsy decided to lay low on the cracks for a while as she was already on thin ice with her roommate for the Scott deviation earlier. It was going to be difficult to complete the tour if Emma was trying to kill her.

"So you're the other telekimetic?" Lorna asked, facing Betsy now.

"'Telekinetic'," Betsy corrected, looking at Lorna now, "and yeah. Jean —the red head who came in with you— and I are the only two"

The Cali girl looked confused. "I thought she was telepathic?"

"That too," Emma supplied, "So am I, so is the Professor and so is Elizabeth"

"Telepaths, psis in general, usually come with secondary mutations," Betsy explained. Then she added, in hopes of being reassuring, "We're all eagerly waiting to see what yours will be"

"Oh," Lorna replied, looking sheepish and nervous, "Right. Sure"

She turned from Betsy to Emma and continued the conversation as if Betsy's comment hadn't even been said. "So, uh, what's yours? Exactly?"

"Well," Emma began, sending Betsy another of her annoyed looks, "if you ask some of my teammates, they'd tell you it's being a mega-cow"

Betsy held her hands up in surrender, palms out. "Hey, you said it, not me"

"But as you saw," she continued, "I can turn my skin into indestructible diamond. Nifty when Colossus is away in Russia"

"And you can you do it anytime? Like now?"

"If you want us to plummet straight into the fourth subbasement then yes," Emma replied, to which Lorna shook her head quickly 'no'.

"We're not really the experts on this," Betsy admitted, just as the elevator reached the danger room floor. "Doctor McCoy's the one you want to talk to if you want more answers"

"He's the large blue ape who carried the handsome young man in the sunglasses from the kitchen," Emma clarified. "He can give you more information, if you're still curious"

As Emma and Lorna stepped out from the elevator, the rush of air from the opening doors caused Betsy to sneeze again.

"ATCHOO!" —won't hes-i-tate no more, no—RIP EACH AND EVERY VERTABRAE OUT WITH MY TEETH—developing a secondary! I thought one was—told Ms. Psycho Perfect not to give Logan the—LOST THE DAMN THING! OUT OF EVERYTHING HE'S—dead, completely and utterlydead if she doesn't stop—

"Okay," Betsy commented as she wiped her nose again and followed the two other mutants to the door of the Danger Room, "that was weird-er than usual"

No sooner had Emma finished punching in her access code and been greeted by the Danger Room systems, that the doors opened to the scene of Sage nearly drowning Forge in a bucket of water in the middle of the Danger Room floor.

"Sage?!" Betsy called out, running over to the pair and forcing Sage to pull Forge's face out of the bucket, "Tess, what in bloody hell are you doing?!"

"I'M SOBER! I'M SOBER! I'M SOBER!" Forge yelled, coughing up water as Sage released him.

"Have you gone crazy, girl?" Betsy asked, glancing down into the miniscule bucket of ice water as Emma jogged over with a frightened Lorna.

"No, not really, no," Sage replied sardonically, throwing Forge into a chair and turning to Betsy. "Forge here just thought it was a great idea to get wasted last night and can't remember if he invented a remote for our space/time enabler or where he put the space/time enabler itself. But," she added with the choleric tone of the hysterical as she tossed a 6" by 6" box in Betsy's direction which she caught with her TK, "he did build this amazing contraption though he can't remember what it DOES!"

Tessa then proceeded to smack her boyfriend across the face and grab the front of his shirt to yell, "THAT ENABLER COULD WIPE OUR PLANE OF REALITY FROM EXISTANCE, YOU MORON!! WHERE DID YOU PUT IT?!?!"

"I told you!" Forge spat as he gulped for air, his eyes wide in terror, "I couldn't remember my name after the last round!"

"Tessa, think logically, now," Emma said, intervening at last and coming to place a hand on Sage's shoulder as she dropped Forge again. "Drowning Forge isn't going to help us find this enabler, nor is it going to solve anything. If it did, we would've had many more corpses by now"

Lorna came forward to stand by Betsy's side and whispered in fear, "Could it really wipe our plane of existence from reality?"

"No," Tessa corrected, having overheard her. She took a deep breath and pinched her brow. "It could wipe our plane of reality from existence. Argh! I'm just so mad I could—!"

She paused and turned to Lorna. "How old are you?"

"Eighteen. Uh, why?"

Sage then proceeded to shout a string of curses and profanities in fifteen of the languages available in her mental database. For her part, Betsy was so impressed, she applauded.

"Got that out of your system?" Emma asked, reassuringly.

"No," Sage moaned. "Those were only half of the languages I'm fluent in"

"Even so, baby," Forge commented as he sat up in his chair, "that's pretty impre—"

"DON'T TURN ME INTO A TAXIDERMIST, FORGE!!" his girlfriend shot back. "REMEMBER OR SHUT UP!!"

"Shouldn't we be sounding an alarm of some kind?" Lorna asked, panic seeping into her voice. "Letting the government know about this or…or something?"

Tessa and Emma both rolled their eyes even as Betsy was considering the same question. "Let's not be hasty, young grasshopper," Emma said as she went around to Forge's chair where he was hacking up some more water. "I'll just check Forge's mind to see where he put it"

"'Hasty'?" Lorna asked Betsy in shock as Emma closed her eyes to concentrate. Betsy could do no more than shrug and pretend to be very interested in the odd box she had been tossed. There was, after all, no fair argument against lunacy.

"You're not going to get anything," Sage said impatiently tapping her foot. "Xavier was down here with us all morning trying to find the same information"

Emma sighed. "As much as I hate to admit it, you're right," she replied at last, opening her eyes. "His memory blacks out four drinks in"

Tessa kicked the closest thing to her, Forge's chair leg. "Argh!"

"Now do we alert the proper authorities?" Betsy asked for both her and Lorna's sake.

"And tell them what, Elizabeth? 'Police, a mutant inventor invented and then misplaced a space/time gizmo that might destroy everything as we know it'?" she mimicked, coming back around to stand with Tessa. "You should know better by now. We're lucky if they listen past 'mutant'"

Nervously, Lorna glanced among the gathered women. "So what are we going to do?"

For his part, Forge looked equally shocked. "Really? Only four drinks in? I thought I—"

Sage grabbed the remaining water and dumped it on Forge, cutting him off.

"I'M SOBER!"

Betsy struggled to keep a straight face as Sage tossed the bucket off into a corner without even looking back at the dripping Forge.

"Go check upstairs," she instructed. "If we're lucky (which we're not) I might be able to track it from—"

Her words were interrupted by a deafening, earth-rattling explosion that shook the Danger Room to its core. Losing her balance, Betsy pushed her TK out as far as she could to balance herself upright against the closest wall. Lorna stumbled but caught onto Betsy. Forge fell out of his chair and both Sage and Emma braced themselves against the now empty seat.

When the tremors subsided, the six mutants glanced at one another.

"So, uh, what does the sound of existence wiping out sound like?"


Betsy was almost completely out of breath as she emerged from the stairs leading to all the subbasements. The explosion had knocked out the elevator so what was a leisure one minute trip down took them a full five minutes of climbing to get back to ground level.

She moved out of the way so that Sage and Emma (already in diamond form) could pass her, running towards the living room commotion. As she passed, Lorna stopped and placed a hand on Betsy's shoulder.

"Hey, are you—?"

"I'm fine," Betsy replied immediately. "Just a little…out of breath…nose is stuffed…stuffed up…go with…Emma and Tess…be right—"

Another explosion shook the house, this time followed by a crumbling noise and several shouts. Lorna helped Betsy keep her balance and heard Forge cry out from the stairs behind them as he lost his balance and fell down a flight.

The second she found her feet again, Betsy had almost enough breath and adrenaline to feel ready to kick some butt. Almost.

Today was not her day.

"Come on!" she instructed to Lorna, grabbing the younger mutant's hand and jogging towards the living room. "Welcome to the crash course for Life as an X-Man 101. Hope you survive long enough for 201," Betsy added in a mutter that wasn't as low as she thought it was.

Lorna's face paled. "Survive?" she squeaked.

End Part Two


Less Important Author's Note: If you're deathly curious as to whose thoughts were whose during Betsy's sneezes, send a PM and I'll send you the list since I already had to write it up for koolkame :P

NEXT:

"Surrender, mutants," the robot intoned, quickly recovering from the hit. "We know you are hiding it"

"This place has more secrets than you have shades of pink," Sage informed the robot, dodging another of its lasers. "You're going to have to be way more specific than that"