The dubious looks bore into the back of her skull. She looked at the professor for any signs of confirmation. "Professor?" She managed to muster.
"How can you be Charles' daughter?" Kitty cocked her head. She simply couldn't comprehend the idea.
"So you did do it with Raven! Professor X you dog!" Bobby Drake joked. Erik looked at him with one eyebrow raised, then glanced over at Charles who didn't seem to be able to comprehend the current situation.
"She tellin' the truth, Prof?" Logan pulled a cigar from his pocket and lit it with a rusty zippo lighter. The smell was overbearing, causing Eris to wince and attempt to fan away the smoky odor.
"You," The professor spoke up. "Must leave. Now." Eris frowned. She just arrived and was already being turned away. "I have absolutely nothing to offer you." Though he was deliberately turning her away, Eris's eyes lit up out of sheer excitement from his long prompted response.
"Please, Professor, I just need to know." She took a few step towards him. Her voice lowered to merely a murmur, "I came all this way to find out who I really am, and you are the missing piece in all of this." Her fists clenched determinedly as she spoke. The professor eyed her semi-aggressive stance. His grip tightened around the arm of his chair and he turned himself around, receding to his bedroom. Eris's face finally fell in discouragement.
"Professor Xavier, wait!—" her sudden movements to dash into the room evoked an unexpected attack from Bobby Drake. She barely managed to jump away in time to avoid the chilly mist that would have surely ended her search then and there. Her heart was pumping fast.
"Hey, so how did you even get in here?" Bobby asked, more perplexed than angry, now that Charles was out of the room. He continued to chase her with the trail of freezing fog emitting from his hand before she disappeared from sight into thin air. He stopped and crossed his arms frustratedly.
"Yeah, what makes you think you can just barge into a building full of mutants and make it out alive?" Wolverine snarled, his metal claws drawing out from his knuckles. She reappeared and ran towards the front of the room.
"I'm not leaving this place until I get some answers." She stated firmly. Her raised eyebrows signaled a challenge.
"We'll see about that." Wolverine cracked his neck and made a mad dash towards the girl. She disappeared, expecting to evade his attack. Instead, he made an unexpected left turn at the last minute and rammed her straight through the front doors. She fell to the ground outside, reappearing again and struggling to get out of his grip. He was just as strong as he looked. "Come on. Show us what you've really got." He provoked her back. She kneed him in the side and twisted him off of her, then faded into the air as she flipped backwards. "Well that isn't very fair." He raised his eyebrows. "Storm?"
"Got it." The white haired woman replied cooly. Her eyes shifted to a piercing white. Masses of rain clouds were summoned and surrounded the building within seconds. She realized what they were doing once the raindrops began making contact with her skin. Wolverine ran at her once more and she managed to just barely dodge his claws.
"That's better." Wolverine snarled. Though he couldn't see her physically, her figure was being outlined by the rain. "Let's go at it for real now."
"Fine," She shrugged, letting herself come back into vision. "I guess circumstances aren't going to be very much in my favor." She dashed at him and threw a punch in which he dodged. She barely ducked out of two of his own before bending her knees and going for a kick to his abdomen. He grabbed her foot and pulled her straight to the floor, slamming her once again into the concrete. His menacing eyes shot through her as she lay on the wet bricks. He raised his thick metal claws above her and she winced as he stabbed them deep into the ground beside her.
"Done already?" He smirked. Shivers ran up her spine. "What should I do now?" He pulled out one of his knuckles and ran a single blade lightly on her neck. She flickered her eyes towards her feet where she was slowly getting into position to flip him onto his back.
"Government planes!" Storm's voice bellowed suddenly. Eris and Logan's heads simultaneously whipped towards her in attentiveness. In a swift movement, Eris clenched the man's forearm and pushed her body against his to get them closer to Storm. She tackled both of them down to the ground, and all three of them camouflaged invisibly into the bricks. Her heart pounded as she waited for the sound of the helicopter wings to pass over. The pounding of the rain only made her grip onto their clothing tighter.
"Nice way to test her morals there, Storm." Wolverine stood up and offered a hand to the woman. Eris looked confused.
"Nice going on your part too. I think we've got a decent idea of her physical abilities now. Though, I'm not sure it was intentional." Storm took his hand as he pulled her up. "You can stay with us, Eris." She turned to look at the grey-head. "At least you don't seem to want to kill us." The pair each extended a hand out to the girl still lying on the damp bricks. She grabbed both of them as they hauled her up.
"…Thanks." She rubbed her nose and made an attempt to brush off the wet dirt coating the front of her clothes. The trio headed back into the building, where the doors were still wide open and the entire scene had been spectated.
"Agility was good. You managed to dodge all my shots. Could use a little work on combat skills, though. Logan destroyed you." Bobby patted the girl on the back as she walked past him. Kitty smiled confirmingly.
"It'd be kinda cool to have someone closer to my age here. We're sort of lacking in the female element too, if you know what I mean." Logan gave her a knowing eyebrow raise and said nothing.
Storm nodded at her. "Maybe we can get you started on some training tomorrow. It doesn't look like you've had too much skill practice. You're probably just used to running away from authorities your whole life, right? You're pretty fast."
"What mutant isn't on the run nowadays?" Eris shrugged. Logan rolled his eyes over to the females and an overly excited Bobby.
"We've been needing someone like you. It's not that easy to sneak into security protected buildings anymore, with all this new technology. We're able to do it, but still, we'd rather take a more private approach over the more… abrasive tactics." Storm looked back at Logan and he scoffed.
"Hey, it gets the job done."
"I'll help with what I can if I'm allowed to stay." Eris replied, nodding her head lowly. "But," everyone looked up, "in return, I need you all to help me find Mystique." All heads fell towards the floor as the name rung about the room. Eris looked up to see the tops of everyone's heads, nervously waiting for someone else to pluck up the courage to say something. "I know it's asking a lot…" She murmured. Still silence. Kitty shuffled her feet uncomfortably. The atmosphere had taken a strange shift and Eris wasn't quite sure why.
Finally Storm stepped in to salvage the situation. "I'll show you to your room for tonight. I hope you don't mind sleeping with Kitty and I… Hm. "
Kitty smiled sheepishly at the grey haired girl and joined the duo as they headed into the large, empty room they called their "bedroom". Eris could feel the tension in the air lessen as she fell out of sight of the main group. It seemed no one would be giving her answers today. But, at least they were treating her with some sense of hospitality. It'd been a long day, and she decided not to push anything until she could really dig her feet into what sort of relationship she'd have with these people. It'd been a long day.
The night time was cold. It may have been the cracked windows, or the sheer vastness of the empty room, or even the cold stone tiles that perhaps all somewhat attributed to the chill that wouldn't seem to leave Eris's body. She tossed and turned in her small bed, entangling herself in the sheets and further adding to the frustration of the insomnia. She finally threw everything off the futon and swung her feet onto the cold stone floor. Pushing herself up from the bed, she made sure to carefully tip toe around the sleeping bodies as to not wake either of them up. As she got to the doorway, she could hear a faint noise echoing through the walls that sounded oddly inviting. The creak of the door could not have been more obnoxious and she winced as she tried to slip out. Once in the clear, Eris followed the noise and noticed it became louder and louder as she approached the room at the end of the hall. Though she was well aware of the risk in her actions, especially on the first night with them, the noise was just so attractive, and she could not stand to let the curiosity eat away at her. She eased the door open and thankfully the creak went unnoticed by the sleeping body only meters away.
It was beautiful. The old 40's record spun unevenly in the dim moonlight. She could feel her hips begin to sway to the sound of the trumpets and saxophone. It was a ballad; one that she couldn't recognize but wished that she could listen to a hundred times over. Her waist moved naturally, but her arms felt awkward without a partner. She grabbed her face in wonderment and went closer to the player to see if she could savage what the album title was. It was illegible. The record must have been actual vintage. Who could've had such a thing in possession after all these years?
Sudden jerking from the corner of her eyes triggered the girl's invisibility. She had almost forgotten that another person was also occupying the room. She watched as his body thrashed in the bed; his pillows and blankets being tossed all over the floor. Cautiously, Eris snuck closer to the bed. Who is this? She was still unable to tell. It was too big to be the ice boy, and too young to be the other man. The sound of sheathing metal confirmed her assumption. Wolverine.
He was a true beauty when he slept. Not aesthetically exactly, but there was something nurturing in the way that the beast slept. The way his eyebrows still furrowed, even unconsciously, made a strange smile tug at the corner of her crooked lips. She leaned in closer to him, allowing his musky, cigar smell to fill her with the warmth she had been craving all night.
"— !" She gasped, as one of his claws came slicing across her right arm. She fell to the floor, writhing with pain and keeping herself from whining . She dragged herself off the floor and stumbled to her feet, running out of the room as quickly as her lean legs could take her. She took visible form once again as she neared her bedroom. Her left hand wrapped around the bleeding arm tightly. Fuck, fuck! Where do they keep supplies? Do these people even know what first aid is?
A shadowy figure stood at the door when she arrived. Eris let out a scream, but her mouth was quickly covered by a delicate hand that smelled a lot like rain.
"First night and you're already out to kill us in our sleep?"
"No, that's not what I was doing…I heard something." Eris murmured. "I swear I would never even…How could I even take him on? He's… No I wasn't trying to hurt anyone." She stuttered. "I really didn't mean—" Storm interrupted her by holding up a bandage roll.
"Let's get you wrapped up first."
Eris nodded shamefully and followed her back into the room. Once the door was closed behind them, she could no longer hear the music. "How did you know I was—"
"I'm a light sleeper." Storm replied.
"I'm sorry for waking you." Eris squeezed her eyes shut as the woman wrapped the bandages tighter. Logan's face kept flashing back into her mind. It wasn't frightening, but it worried her. "Does he uh… do that a lot?"
"You mean freak out in his sleep? Yeah. He's got PTSD. He's been like that for as long as we've all known him." Storm took a pin and secured the ace bandage onto the girl's arm. "There. I'm assuming this wont take too long to heal."
"Actually I don't have healing abilities." Eris replied, running her hand across the binding. "My mutation doesn't come with them."
"That's a shame." Storm looked down.
"Yeah well I've never really been at risk of being sliced to pieces before." The corner of her mouth curved up. Storm rested one arm on the windowsill and cocked her head at Eris. Her eyes sent a perplexed gaze towards the girl, who in return pretended not to see.
"I would never betray people who have been so kind to me."
"Kind?"
"Well you haven't killed me yet." Eris shrugged. "Figured you would already if you really wanted to."
Storm let out a playful chuckle at the morbid joke. Then she turned around to put the bandages back into the metal box they came from. It looked dusty, like it hadn't been used in years. "You shouldn't try to involve yourself with Logan too much," She said, clicking the container shut. "He's sort of the anti-hero. Well, I guess we all are. But, you're not going to get what you want out of him." She stood up and placed the container back onto the shelf it had been rotting away on.
"I'm not sure I know what you mean." Eris's lips went into a curious purse. Her eyes were particularly glowy that night, which only put emphasis on the curiosity she was trying so desperately to mask. She drew anxious circles in the dust on the windowsill, and tapped her foot rhythmically. The noise made Kitty shuffle around in her sleep, and for a second Eris thought she had ruined a good night's sleep for the both of them. She soon simmered down and fell back asleep.
"Well," Storm waved at her. "Nevermind. We really should be getting to sleep."
"Right." Eris agreed, climbing back into her assigned bed. "Thank you," She said under her breath.
"Mm," Storm replied, pulling the heavy covers over her shoulders.
It didn't take long before Eris was fast asleep; The feeling of coldness had disappeared.
Hello Hello~
This is probably closer to what the chapter lengths will be, I hope it's alright!
Also I hope y'all are lookin foward to some fluffy fluff in the next few chapters heheh ~
By the way , this all takes place in some dodgy building they had to escape to because the school was shut down and the world went to poop so they had to go hiding, sort of like in DOFP. Just imagine some abandoned stone building in the middle of nowhere.
Reviews are very appreciated!