Chapter 3: Boom Boom Wants Zarya In Her Room, Spend The Night Together, From Now Until Forever

Disclaimer: I don't X-men, you know the rest by now

A/N: I'm serious about reviews, people. No more chapters unless I get some feedback, good or bad.


And it was. Hours later, Zarya was introduced to retro, punk, tomboy, and girly styles, and found out that she wasn't fond of pink or ruffles of any kind. Zarya was clothed in a very tomboy cargo pants-black leather tank combo when Tabitha decided to move on. "Now for make-up," Tabitha purred, pulling out a small, hand sized plastic object.

"Oh no," She replied, standing up and backing away, shaking her head. "Do you know what kind of nasty stuff is in that? It's like poison to your skin."

"Aw, please?" Tabitha pleaded, giving her a good example of 'puppy-dog eyes', but Zarya remained strong.

"No," She repeated firmly, and then she found a distraction; a case of CD players next to the dresser. "Why don't you teach me about CD's instead?"

"Ohh, yeah, I forgot about that," Tabitha replied, jumping over to the case and fingering through the round slits of plastic. Meanwhile, Zarya took a sigh of relief, sitting down on the edge of bed to watch the blonde girl. Music was way better than poisoning herself, right?

Wrong. Turns out, Tabitha liked her music loud. Really, really loud. So loud that Zarya didn't find it hard to imagine that her ears were bleeding. Despite the loudness, Zarya found herself liking it, she always liked the music that she would hear in big cities.

"Isn't this awesome?" Tabitha asked as she stood, her hips already shaking to the beat. "Don't you wish you learned about this sooner?" Zarya smiled nervously, but had a hard time ignoring Tabitha's intoxicating joy, and found herself following Boom Boom's lead, which just made the blonde happier. "Ooh, that's it Zarya, shake those hips. You're a total natural, you know that?"


But their fun was rather short-lived, as the music was interrupted by a loud knocking at Tabitha's door. "Hey Boom Boom, turn the music down or I'll turn it down for you!" Lance screamed, and Zarya felt a slight tremor; probably a warning shock.

"Maybe we should listen to him?" Zarya asked, her eyes turning dark green again from nervousness, but Tabitha just laughed.

"Why? He's not going to wreck the house, Mystique'll kill him." She replied, but turned down the music anyways. Afterwards, she opened the door a crack and made a small, glowing yellow orb in-between her fingers, flicking it at Lance before slamming the door closed.

"What? Hey!" Lance yelled, but then screamed when Zarya heard a small, distinctive sound of an explosion.

"So I guess that's why they call you Boom Boom?" Zarya asked and Tabitha smiled.

"Yep. I make time bombs of varying strength and size, and I can control when they go off, too. Cool huh?" She said, and slowly a strange look crept up on her face that Zarya didn't recognize. "I just got an idea…"


Luckily Mystique walked in at that moment to save Zarya from whatever new 'idea' Tabitha had. "Now Boom Boom, let her get some sleep. She has a big day ahead of her tomorrow."

Tabitha pouted, but shrugged. "Okay, fine. Bye Zarya. Luckily we've got all of summer to do everything."

"...So, what's tomorrow?" Zarya asked innocently as Mystique led her down the hallway, assumingly to her new room.

"You start training tomorrow," Mystique replied. "It's about time that you learned to control your transformations."

"Control? I have plenty of control." Zarya replied, suddenly angry as she turned to face the blue-skinned woman, who stopped and pointed her towards the nearest cracked mirror. Zarya gasped at the sight of hair; it was blood red and starting to curl.

"Then what's this?" She asked, and Zarya blushed, only to get angrier at the sight of her eyes then turning a deep forest green. "Your powers are too reliant on your emotions, and we need to fix that, or you'll never be able to go outside without a disguise."

Zarya sighed, rolling her eyes as she focused on returning her hair and eye color to normal. "Fine…" She replied, mimicking Tabitha's whiny tone perfectly, making Mystique smile.

"Well, at least you seem to catch on quickly." Mystique replied before opening a door to reveal an empty room. "This is your room, please try not to destroy it, even though no one else bothers. And here, change into these to sleep in."

Zarya nodded as Mystique threw long blue t-shirt and a pair of grey short shorts at her before leaving. Closing the door, Zarya stared at the clothes for a while, not bothering to turn on the lights; her eyes adjusted to the darkness. 'Why do I need special clothes to sleep in?' She asked herself, but shrugged. 'Just go with it.' After she changed, she looked around at the room. It wasn't like the fancy little hotels she would see tourists living in during their stays in big cities, but at least it wasn't a mud hut.

Yawning loudly, Zarya laid down on the bed stiffly for a few minutes- she never remembered sleeping in a bed before- but managed to fall asleep.


{Dream}

Zarya was on a small bed, curled up in a ball, crying her eyes out. Only she wasn't fifteen; she was barely five, her hair was a limp grey, sticking to the tear lines on her cheeks.

Pain was shooting through her body, and she could feel something hot and sticky on her back, where the pain was the worst. That pain fed something deep inside of her, burning white-hot, destroying everything else, this painful fury-


Downstairs [Pietro]

Come midnight, Boom Boom's music finally died down, which Pietro wasn't sure to credit with Lance -since he had said something about it- or Mystique -because she's Mystique.

Either way, Pietro was grateful for some piece and quiet while he watched his shows. Mystique left to do whatever she does at night after apparently showing Zarya to her new room, Fred had gone to bed a while ago, while Lance had gone to make Boom Boom turn down the music so he could do the same. Toad was busy harassing Wanda, and Pietro could only hope that Boom Boom was asleep.

However, this quiet last only an hour at most. That's when he started hearing crashes, which was normal, then heard another, different, but slightly familiar noise...

…Where did he hear that sound before?

Then it hit him.

Zarya.

She made that same noise, that low growling, when Pietro had scared her when he woke her up. 'Oh good God, not again.' Standing up, he was upstairs in less than two seconds to find Lance, Toad, and Fred hanging out of their bedrooms, staring at the source of the noise; the room furthest down the hallway, which he could only assume to be Zarya's now.

"What are you guys staring at? You're all useless!" Pietro yelled before zipping into the room, slamming their doors closed in the process.


Even though it was dark, Pietro could see the disaster pretty clearly. The window drapes were shredded, the bedposts were either crooked or ripped completely off, the closet door was hanging off its hinges, and everything, even the walls, had deep gashes in it. It took Pietro a while to find Zarya; though when he did, he didn't like what he saw.

Her hair was a red, curly mess, and her night clothes were ripped. But what caught his attention was her fangs, glinting in the moonlight like two, thin, silver daggers. They were long, three inches at least, and had a slightly hypnotic aspect to them…until they were at his neck.

Not again. He was pinned against the wall, and he was too scared to try to move. "C-come on, Za-Zarya, remember th-the c-conver-versation we had earlier? About n-not eating m-me?" He stuttered out, pleading.

If he was about to die, his life better start flashing in front of his eyes, because he really wanted to get rid the sight of Zarya's pitch black eyes staring right through his soul. When that didn't happen, he closed his own eyes to wait for the pain.

But after a few seconds, he felt a very different sensation, something hot and wet dripping on his neck. Opening his eyes, he noticed a glistening trail of tears flowing from Zarya's eyes.

She was crying and about to kill him? What was this all about?

"Pietro?" Her voice was coarse and shaking, but before he could say anything, she fell into him, sobbing. He could feel her hands clutching his back, but only felt light scratches, so she must have retracted her claws.

Pietro stood there with Zarya in his arms for a few seconds, dumbfounded. He never dealt with crying girls very well.

But he figured a crying Zarya was better than a furious one, so he nervously fit his arms around her and rubbed her back softly, whispering shakily, "It's okay, it's gonna be okay," Just like his mother used to do when he woke up crying.

But he didn't know if it was going to be okay. He didn't even know why she was crying in the first place.


It didn't take Zarya long to cry herself to sleep, so he scooped her up and zipped her over to the bed. Laying her down a gently as he could, he turned around to leave when he heard her start to wake up again.

'She's not going to let me leave, is she?' He thought with a sigh as he lay down, wrapping his arms around Zarya's body.

"You're worse than a girlfriend, you know that?" He muttered to her as he tried to get comfortable. "Good thing you're cute." The last thing he remembered was the sweet, natural smell of Zarya's hair before he drifted off to sleep.


The Next Morning

Pietro was the first to wake up -he was always the first one up in the Brotherhood- but he had to try and sit up, only to find a mess of black hair sprawled on his chest before he remembered he had fallen asleep with Zarya. 'And I'm not going to try to wake her up…so I'm stuck here…great…' He thought angrily; he didn't like being stuck. So he occupied himself by playing with her long hair. 'I swear, if someone sees this, I'm going to kill myself.'

Luckily, Zarya woke up minutes later, stretching the sleep out of her body, showing off a flexibility that blew Pietro's mind and made his pants pay the price. "Guten morgen, Zweig*." She murmured with a faint, dreamy smile.

"What did you say?" He asked, suspicious. Had she insulted him?

"Good morning Twig," She replied in English, wiggling her joints until they made audible cracks. "You are too thin to sleep on ever again."

"Hey!" Pietro yelled, but then stopped, suddenly curious. "Do you remember what happened last night?"

Zarya shrugged. "No, not really. All I remember is falling asleep, being in pain, and then, next thing I knew, I smelled you."

"Me? What do, I smell weird?" Pietro asked with a chuckle.

"Kind of," Zarya replied, leaning in to get another whiff of the white-haired boy. "It's familiar, but unique…I can't place it."

"Okay, but you should get some breakfast while you ponder on how I smell; Mystique will probably want to start training you right away," Pietro said, feeling a bit hot under the collar at her nearness, trying to change the subject.

Zarya sat up straight, suddenly wide awake. "Oh, yeah, thanks. I'll see if Tabitha has some clothes for me to wear." She said, getting up and walking away like nothing had happened.

'That's probably because in her mind, nothing did happen,' he reminded himself. 'She's a total Jungle Jane, why would she know anything about flirting or foreplay?'

'She's damn good at it, though,' A darker voice said inside his voice, and he glanced down at the bulge in his pants. Was that morning wood or Zarya's work? Despite everything manly in him, he hoped for it to be morning wood; he didn't need his balls chopped off by Mystique because he got the hots for her new secret weapon.

'I'll just keep my distance, which shouldn't be hard, I mean, she's gonna have to spend a lot of time with Mystique, right? Doesn't even matter if I have to baby-sit her, I'll just throw her over to Boom-Boom.' He told himself, and with renewed confidence, sped off to his room to change, and then downstairs for some breakfast himself, making sure to seat himself as far away from Zarya as he could.


A/N: Yeah, I know that it's a little early for romance, but Pietro goes through girls faster than you can say 'Bob's your uncle'. Actually, probably faster than you can say 'Bob'.

*The German is explained during the story...Why does Zarya know German? Because I want her to, that's why.