AN:
anon: Thanks for the review! Here's more.
She was blowing in the wind, blowing free, nothing but molecules vibrating with nature's breath.
Past the reeds, closer inland, and she was floating home, her golden molecules of dust swirled around in the air like cinnamon, then she was settled, filling in the crevices of the land, surrounded by sand, she was home.
Her mother called out to her, voice distant, carried in the wind like way ward dust.
From somewhere, her voice croaked, disembodied, and the sound of rushing sand particles filled her ears, then she was tiny and many again, going downwards towards the dark chambers of a man's screaming throat, the black tunnel swallowing her.
His screams echoed throughout her as she whittled through him, then all was black again and she was floating in space, the wind had carried her up and away, far from her mother and she was just a molecule of stardust in space, passing through asteroids and swirling colorful gas that created red dwarf stars.
Her mother's voice echoed and faded through space.
Sooraya woke with a start, sweating lightly, and breathing erratic.
*SNIKT*
She gasped, and Laura, who was reclined in the bed next to her in her pajamas, was curling her fist towards herself, adamantium claws out to polish. She looked over at Sooraya, "Bad dreams? They happen a lot at first, especially if you're growing into your mutations. Also happens when you have foreign elements in your body and you're not used to them yet. Like my bones for a while at first."
Sooraya, still stirred by her dream, asked, "What happened with you?"
Laura looked up in the dark room for a moment, thinking.
FLASH.
A black haired little girl in a monitored white room with her mother. She is torn away and strapped down to an operating table.
A strange and cold voice announces that there is no anesthesia available.
Then the vivid pain commences, and she is shrieking in pain, biting down on her tongue, blood filing her mouth.
The awful neon green radiation she's been subjected to since birth is heating her up, her skin feels hot enough to blister.
She sees nothing but pain, neon green burning, ripping through her flesh, she is so small and weak compared to the hands operating on her.
Her hands, are cut open, bones extracted. Something hot, something burning, searing.
Strange metallic clicking noises, a bubbling sound ruptures somewhere above her.
She wishes she were dead, she is 8 years old and she wishes she were never born.
Bones are jammed back into her hands, they feel heavy and foreign, her skin is stitched back up, it hurts.
It is not over. Her feet. The same procedure is done and her feet are sliced open, her mutant claws extracted, coated in adamantium and then sewed back into her feet.
FLASH
She is healed over and back in the cell, numbly hugging a cold tiled wall.
They introduce her to the smell. That smell that drives her, that controls her, that addiction to her senses.
It makes her want to kill, it makes her want blood.
It makes her claws pop out and that hurts, but she learns to like it.
FLASH.
She is crouched over her mother's dead body, her claws out and dripping blood, slashes in her mother who is bleeding out on the floor.
The smell had driven her into a blind killing rage. Someone had turned on her trigger, the smell.
She smells the scent every morning she wakes up for a second and it makes her nervous. She smells it mixed with her mother's blood. It seems no matter how much she polishes her claws, her mother's blood will never be washed off.
Snarling her lips into a smile, Laura finally said, "Nothing I couldn't get over. You too, whatever you did, this place will help you get over it and control your powers."
Sooraya shyly admitted, "I killed someone with my mutation. The thing is, I think I'm already half way over that part."
Laura helpfully replied, "That makes the two of us. We're not the only ones here with that sort of background, but we're fewer. You sleep without your burqa thing?"
Sooraya smiled tolerantly, "It's a niquab, and no...I don't find any reason to sleep with a head covering."
Squinting in the dark with her acute senses, X23 looked at her, brows softening, "You're very pretty if you don't mind me saying. Why do you have to keep your face covered in public?"
Tying her long black hair into a high pony tail, Sooraya rubbed her eyes, turning onto her elbow to face Laura, in her baggy t-shirt. "I want to do it, I choose to wear a niqab because there are boys and men who look crudely at the female body and I just don't like the sorts of looks and thoughts they might have. Some women choose to show their bodies off, and don't mind it, but I personally prefer not to let them see my form. They don't deserve to."
Light flooded the room as Logan sprang in, his claws out. Sooraya looked back between the older man who had been in Afghanistan with her, and her roommate, "What is with you two and your claws?"
Laura hollered out, "Learn to knock Wolvie!"
Logan asked, "Was there trouble? I thought I heard something, sensed fear here..."
"Go to sleep you crazy over-bearing paranoid old coot," Laura shot out.
Sooraya quickly put her garment back on, as other students woke up, hearing Logan, and came out to their room.
A blue haired girl in a tiny tank top and ridiculously revealing low slung sweat pants peeked in, "What's up Laura! Oh, is that the new girl?!"
Hellion looked in and waved, "Hello!"
Laura responded, "Surge go away!"
Surge commented, "Are you seriously wearing that? Burqas make you subservient to males."
Smoky and inky black eyes rolled from the window of her head covering, and Sooraya corrected again, "No, it is out of modesty, there are boys and men on this campus and it isn't right for me to expose my flesh and show it off to them."
Crossing her arms, Surge said, "Are you saying I show too much skin?"
"No, I'm not trying to judge the way you dress and I wish you would do the same for me."
Leaving, Surge concluded, "No, you are judging me, well I don't need to be lectured by someone whose setting women back fifty years."
Logan called out, "Everybody back to bed nothing to see here!"
He hunched over and bow leggedly walked back to his room.
Getting under her sheets, and turning her back on Laura, Sooraya shut her eyes in the dark, here she was supposed to finally feel accepted as a mutant, yet she was still feeling as much an outcast as ever.
The sun blinked in the sky, birds chirped and green filled Sooraya's vision as she looked around the campus of Xavier's.
She followed a class of her fellow new mutants out behind Logan who had them all changed into training uniforms. Sooraya wore a more flexible material niqab.
Planting a flag in the grass, Wolverine instructed, "Alright, I'm picking partners for you all, and each set has a turn to try and disable me using your powers. Don't be afraid to go full force if you have to, I'm not gonna play it easy, I need a live demonstration of your powers. Starting with Sooraya, who I have to assess first. Nori, team up with her."
Surge AKA Nori, the leader of the New Mutants, stepped up defiantly, casting the new girl a look, "I'm not sure she's on my level yet cap'."
Wolverine growled, "Now."
Wearing her X-branded booty shorts and navel bearing X-uniform, Nori walked up towards Logan with Sooraya and said, "Take my lead, I'll go basic for you to keep up to."
Sneering at Wolverine with a defiant glint, she cast off the gauntlets Beast had made her to control her powers and contain her from absorbing too much energy which also resulted in her mental overloads.
Logan gaped, "NO!"
Nori smirked, then her limbs and head began to jiggle and electrify, static snapping about her, as she vibrated and her speech sped up, "I can control-it-Logan-don't-need-this-newb-tocrampymyst yle."
She sped forward at a fast pace, leaving Sooraya behind, charging at Wolverine. Sooraya watched, fascinated at her electrifying speed and the blue charges of light and electricity all around her body.
Pushing her palms together at Logan, she cried out, a beam of electricity blasted at him, completely electrocuting him and frying his metal coated bones.
Leaving him as on the ground in a smoking heap, Surge put her gauntlets back on, blowing at her smoking fists.
She smirked at Sooraya, "That's how you do it around here. What can you even do? Hide in that oppressive gown? What are you hiding in there? Some useless mutation of being too objectified by guys?"
Dust rounded her eyes, "Watch out-!"
It was too late, Wolverine had recovered and pounced up behind Nori, taking her out.
She watched, rubbing her head, her butt on the ground, as Logan now faced Dust, waiting for her move.
He said, "This is just your first assessment, I want to see what you're capable of, so I can figure out what to teach you."
Dust hesitantly stepped backwards, at a menacing-looking Logan. X23 called out, waving her claws, "Come on Dust! Give it to Logan!"
Sooraya smiled underneath her head piece, at that comment. She nervously wrung her hands under her long sleeves though, she had never really called upon her powers, they seemed to only come when she needed them, but feeling the pressure of being watched by many eyes to use them seemed like a harder feat.
Wolverine roared and charged at Sooraya, leaping into the air with his knife-like caws extended.
They tore through her, and the other students observing, screamed out as they saw the knives puncture and tear through the new girl, who had stood there and done nothing.
As Logan descended down to the ground, his claws having penetrated through her, he was suddenly engulfed in a tornado of dust.
Fine, sharp granules of dust stripped at his skin, covering every bit of him.
It filled up his suit, scratching away at a million miles per hour winds, at what flesh was underneath his mask and clothing.
As his claws had ripped through her, she had scattered into dust, her instinct taking over, and flaking away at him. Her voice, disembodied in the air through the moving dust echoed, "I am Dust, I will rip the flesh from your bones."
The mighty Wolverine finally crumpled to the ground in flayed adamantium coated bones, a full skeleton.
Surge shot electricity at the sand and bones, shocking Dust.
X23 stepped forward, "Is he-is he-...oh my goodness."
Elixer gasped, "The new girl killed Wolverine on her first try?"
Hellion urged, "Elixer, do something!"
"Right," the gold boy knelt down to the pile of metal bones and touched the remaining organ left, speeding up the healing process.
Surge glanced at Dust who was a cloud of power in the air, swirling with gusts of wind.
She twitched, as static snapped at her left eye, and called out to the tornado, "Holy crap!"