[AN: Since I'm posting this the same night as the first one, there's nothing to add or explain. Here's chapter two enjoy!]
It was the end of November. It had been almost a month since Kerri had come to the mansion, and she still had no friends. In fact, some of the kids picked on her. Thinking she was a genius seven year old, or something, so make fun they did. She was sure it didn't help that she didn't talk to anyone and mostly sat through class reading books, answering correctly when called on, and skewing the bell curve in general.
Kerri was sitting outside this day, reading, as usual, when a group of students surrounded her, teasing, laughing. She ignored them, used to HE walked past.
Kerri looked over at him, Kurt Wagner. She'd seen him around. He was nice looking, not "hot" or anything, but nice. There was something... wrong... with him, though. Something that didn't quite fit, within or without, she wasn't sure, but wrong it was.
She'd been trying to figure it out for a while now.
Kurt was walking by with Kitty and Piotr when Kitty pointed out the new girl, Kerri? "Isn't that awful? Don't you remember that, Kurt?"
He looked over at the scene, as Professor Remy would call it in the drama class; She was a little six or seven year old, with baggy clothes that looked like they were barely hanging on even with a belt. Her sandy strawberry-blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail and almost reached the ground.
She was also looking at him fish-eyed with one blue-green eye. She noticed him looking at her and quickly looked back to her book.
"I'd hate to be the new kid again." Kitty was saying.
"She's kinda vierd, she stares at me ven I go past." Kurt told them.
"More than just her stare at you Kurt." They'd stopped walking and were standing there.
"But not ven I have my hologram on. And she just sits zhere and takes all zhe teasing." As they talked the kids teasing Kerri had taken the book she was reading and were playing keep away with it.
"Well look at her, Kurt, she's only a little girl, maybe she's waiting for her big handsome prince to come and save her. What did you do when they teased you?"
Kurt looked over, "Notzhing, but I can stop zhis." He started over to the "scene".
Kerri quickly looked back at her book only to have the five ten to thirteen year olds teasing her to become bored with her non responsiveness at their teasing, and grab the book she was reading. She was horrified when they started throwing it through the air. Just as she was getting fed up and about to ask them what their biggest fear was, someone came up and took the book from them.
"Zhat's enough, you all vere new at some point." Kurt. Kurt Wagner. The boy with something wrong. Something she couldn't see.
The kids wandered off and he handed her the book. "Here you go little girl, here's your book back." He tried to smile warmly even if he felt a little creeped out by her.
"I'm not a little girl." she said taking the book.
"Ja, ok." Kurt said and turned back to find Kitty and Piotr, but found that they had gone on with out him. Probably to make out. It was a quiet area over here, after all, and he could see almost noone else around.
"So..." She looked at him, unsure how to ask a mutant what was wrong with him without offending.
Kurt turned back around, "My name is Kurt." he said trying to smile warmly again and figure out a way to leave without being rude.
"Kerri." She told him. She reached her hand forward and he shook it.
Her eyebrows raised and he knew he had a problem, had to leave.
He tried to go but she grabbed for him. He grabbed her arm to keep her from grabbing his tail where it was around his waist.
Kerri stared at his hand. She saw five fingers around her arm, keeping her from taking hold of anything, but she FELT only three pressures on her arm. And they didn't match what she was looking at.
She looked at her other hand and made the Vulcan sign from Star Trek. She looked back to her arm as she grabbed hold of it. It felt the same.
She looked from her hand to his, then up at him. "I see."
Kurt was a little more freaked out now, she had made the shape of his hand and told him "she saw", but saw what?
He pulled her a little closer to the building where they'd have even less chance of being seen.
"That's why you look funny. What do you have on?" Kurt thought it was funny that she'd say he looked funny with his hologram ON, but, then, she didn't know what he looked like without it.
"What do you have on?" she asked again.
"It's a hologram. Vhy do you Vant to know?"
"I could tell that something was up with you. What do you look like under it?" Curiosity was rising in her, and maybe he looked hideous under the hologram, but she'd seen some pretty hideous things, heck even BEEN some pretty hideous things. She could probably handle this.
"I don't vant to scare you, little girl." Kurt tried to let go and walk away, but she grabbed his arm and was surprisingly strong.
"I'm not a little girl. Why don't you show people your true form?"
"If you're not a little girl, zhen vhy don't you show people your true form?" He shot back, she was kinda disturbing. Too calm, she didn't sound like a little kid should in his mind. Too small for her attitude. Or personality. Or something.
"I'll show you mine if you show me yours." she told him with a small smirk and a blink.
"Vhat? Zhat sounds dirty! I don't vant to see you, even if you say you're not a little girl, you look like one! How vould zhat look to people going past?!"
"Then I'll just try to look through your hologram, at the only area level to me... How's that going to look to passersby?" She stared pointedly.
Kurt stared at her. She was crazy, that was it. She was a crazy, creepy little girl, who was trying to black mail him into showing her what he really looked like. And he was going to have to show her. He didn't want everyone walking by to think he was a pervert or anything, and even though there weren't a lot of people around, if this little girl stuck her face in his crotch to try and see through his hologram, he was pretty sure those guys over there wouldn't stop to ask questions before they came to pound him into the ground.
"Ok." He said defeated. He took a breath then closed his eyes, waiting for the screaming to start when he turned off his piece of tech.
There was a flash, then a kind of fuzzle, then there he stood; tall due to her perspective, blue, a little furry if you looked close, he had two toes on his feet, two fingers and a thumb on the hand she was holding, longish hair somewhere between indigo and black, pointed ears, and a tail. A cute tail. Kerri felt her cheeks go warm. She almost gasped out loud. But then she'd have to kill herself for being so cliched. And super lame.
She couldn't stop staring at him, and she thought it'd been bad before. Yellow eyes she added to the list as he opened them to look at her. She could see a sort of pupil in the middle, that's how she knew he was looking at her. "Fangs" were added to the list as well, as he spoke.
"You- you're not scared?" his voice was hesitant even to his own ears, but Kurt was surprised. This little girl was looking right at him, her face looked a little flushed but she wasn't yelling. She was very strange, he reminded himself.
"No." It took Kerri a moment to recover. "Well, you showed me yours... I guess I'll show you mine..." She took a breath. She was going to show her real self to him. Of course she had planned to show him some other imaginary body, but with her cheeks burning and her heart unknowingly going into "crush zone" it felt like the right thing to do. The only thing to do. She undid her belt, hoping the extra baggy pants and shirt she wore would still fit her after.
Kurt's eyes widened as she unbuckled her belt, and he almost got a no out before his knees gave out.
She had grabbed him around the middle, sitting in his lap. She pressed herself tight against him and he had another second of panic to go before he felt something.
More pressure. Against his chest. And his lap. Kurt felt her form growing out, her head was against his shoulder, her legs were on the ground, her hair, still a sandy strawberry-blond was still so long it touched the ground. She was sitting in his lap, her breasts were pressed into his side/chest, and his hand which had come up to hold her at some point of this was on her side, feeling her bare skin.
That thought struck him again, as it had apparently not done the job the first time. BARE SKIN.
He jumped back, and saw the same large blue-green eyes staring at him through the frames of black lashes, although they seemed to fit better in this face, with enough age for the intelligence, her lips were darker against her pale face, and her hair fell down to frame it all just right.
He was speechless. Had no idea what to say, if he could find his voice to say it anyway.
She was sitting on his lap, looking right at him. Her face flushed again. "Told you I'm not a little girl."
It took her a second to continue, but she stood and Kurt could see that the baggy pants had become shorts, skin tight, and she'd had to unbutton them to give herself a little more room, the shirt had ridden up on her frame as it had grown, and now it was trying to bust across her chest, and only went down to her ribs, severe crop top style, the socks she pulled off and the shoes she'd kicked off long ago.
"There, now you've seen me, and I've seen you." Kerri took a few steps back, "you should keep that thing off. Way cuter." With that she turned and walked off quickly, blushing, 'Why?' she thought, 'I had to say that?'
Kurt looked up from his position on the ground, watched her almost jog off, those guys far away watching her as she ran past, and called out dazed, "Ja, Sie auch."
Kerri went past the library as she tried to find Ororo.
She'd stay as herself for a while, at least, let Kurt have the chance to get to know her, after she had gone through all this trouble.
But it was almost December, and she was not going to get by on tiny clothes for long, she was almost freezing as it was just walking to Ororo's office.
Hank looked out the doorway and recognized the clothes, if not the body, that walked past, "Finally." He said. Someone else had gotten through. She was a stick stuck in a popsicle, and it was going to take more than just him blowing on her to get her to melt free, that was for sure. He chuckled at his metaphor and went to tell his buddy Charles the good news.
"There you go, Kerri." Ororo said as she handed some clothes to the now appropriately bodied girl. "So, why the change? See someone you'd like to impress?"
Kerri stared at her wide eyed. "Can I change in here?" Happy that there happened to be a bra that fit here.
"Of course." Ororo turned and made sure the door was completely closed. "Maybe you should eat lunch in the lunchroom. There's more of a chance that you'd run into that person again."
"What makes you think there's someone, and not that I'd just like to turn some heads for once?"
Ororo turned to look at her and saw her in a t-shirt with a snappy saying, pair of jeans she had rolled up to her knee, and pulling on one of the boots that went up to meet the end of the rolled up jeans. "I find it hard to believe that you've never turned heads before." She told the girl.
"Nah, the town that I grew up in, you went to school with the same people all the way through, new people coming in from the other middle schools and stuff. Pretty stable population, I guess. I did turn heads last year, but that's just because my appearance kept spazing and I grew a tail every other day. And it wasn't good attention."
Ororo wondered if she was telling falsehoods, but it had a ring of truth. "So you feel normal here?"
"Professor, I don't think anyone feels normal here." Kerri put one foot on the desk and tested the stretchiness of the jeans.
Ororo changed the subject, "Why don't you talk to people more? You might find a friend."
"I haven't found anyone with anything interesting to say."
"You should give them a chance."
"Do you have something like gymnastic equipment at this school?" Kerri asked, effectively avoiding the speech that she thought was coming.
"Yes, it's in the gym, but you can't go in there unsupervised. I can introduce you to Logan though, he's usually lifting weights in there."
As they walked into the gym Logan looked up, smoke in his mouth, heavy weight in his hand, and bottle on the floor.
"Logan, Kerri's interested in using the gymnastic equipment." Ororo told him, ignoring the supposedly banned items.
"Sounds fine." He went back to lifting weights.
With the parting words and a jabbing glance at Logan; "You'll be ok, as long as you follow the rules he chooses to enforce." Ororo left her there alone with the large hairy man.
Kerri looked around at all the different things to use. "You know how to use any of them?" Logan's gruff voice pierced the air somehow more potently than a normal voice would.
"A little. I didn't get far, but I did get some basics."
"Just don't make me have to come save your ass from any of the equipment." He continued not to look at her as he lifted the weights again.
She couldn't help herself from smiling and laughing almost out loud while she went to investigate. Defiantly needed to start with stretching, since she hadn't even been able to do that in a while.
Logan watched the girl sit down and start stretching out. Points for at least doing that, he'd had to pick so many students up after they strained themselves from not stretching.
Kerri did a couple somersaults and cartwheels then moved to getting on the balance beam. At first she just got on and off, but then she started jumping onto one foot then jumping back off in the same motion. By the end of two hours she was jumping on and off.
"Hey, quit fucking around over there." Logan suddenly called, but it didn't send her slipping or reeling off like he thought it might. Good concentration. Another point.
"I'm not fucking around." came her reply as she sat on the beam and hung up side down.
"Hey, kids aren't allowed to talk like that around here." He scolded.
"I was only quoting." Logan had to add a point for spunk. He did like her. She was a rebel, like him, but he couldn't tell what she was rebelling against.
The rest of the time until dinner went by in silence. When it was time he turned his head toward her, "Time to eat, kid."
"Ok." Kerri walked past him and he locked the door.
"Gym opens up again after classes tomorrow." She nodded and walked to the cafeteria.
Edit- Sophie had a thought about what Hank is saying about Kerri being a popsicle stick not being appropriate for a teacher to say about a student. First, let me explain; EEEP! I didn't mean to insinuate anything there... lol. He meant that she was very closed off and that he was going to need help to get her to open up, since she really only talks to him. Him blowing on her is just him trying to be her friend and "melt her frozen exterior" so she'll open up, and he's glad that she's talking to someone else.