Disclaimer: I do not own X-men: Evolution.

Chapter 3

"Look Kitty. I like you. I think you like me. But, you never give me any space anymore. I do have a life outside of you, and you aren't letting me be my own person. I'm sorry, but it's over." She started to say something but he cut her off. "I hope that we can still be friends." The words hung in the air, feeling awkward in the tension. Then, she started crying, and ran through the front gate, towards the institute.

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"Read 'em and weep boys. Full house." Remy smiled as the others all groaned and threw their cards down.

Todd got up, quitting the game, joining Fred and John. Pietro and Remy were both evenly matched, and staring each other down. "Come on guys, this is gonna take all night. Let's do something."

"Now hold on just a minute. I want to see who wins." John responded, moving over to the couch to get more comfortable.

"I think I'm gonna go to bed. I'm tired." Fred turned and lumbered off.

Todd was bored. Inevitably, his mind drifted to Wanda. He couldn't help it. She was just so...perfect. Their were absolutely no words to describe how he felt about her. About the things he wanted to do with her. Right now though, it was nearly one in the morning, which meant she was upstairs, in bed, asleep. Too bad she tended to lock her room door., otherwise he could sneak in, and just...watch. But, her window might be open. Todd jumped out of the still broken window in the living room and started climbing up the side of the house. Shuffling over, he made his way to Wanda's window. He tried to open it unsuccessfully. 'Damn. Locked.' Luckily, the curtains were pulled back, and he could see in. It was hard to make out the inside of the room with the glare from the moonlight. He had to hang nearly completely in front of the window to see inside, but as always, he was rewarded with a vision of paradise. She was sleeping on her right side, which was usual for her, and perfect for Todd, which meant that if she woke up she would have to turn around to look out the window, giving him plenty of warning to hide. The blankets were pulled up on her, but he could still see her bare shoulder, the strap that should have been resting on it having slid down her arm somewhere. 'Fucking beautiful.' Sometimes he wished she had longer hair, like when she first came to the house, just so that he could pretend to run his fingers through it. But, the short cut she had now looked great too. Made her look hot. Sexy. Erotic. Made him want to take her, and...well, hopefully she would reciprocate the motions. For now though, he was content to just sit, and watch, and wait.

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"Once again, police have found another mutant dead. Authorities are currently looking for the killer, and have reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been called in to help search for him."

"Two mutants fled their high school today, when one began attacking fellow students and ..."

"The mutant registration act has been proposed once again by congress, despite protests."

"The mutant known as "The Juggernaut" resurfaced today, robbing a bank in Iowa before literally stomping over the police's attempts to stop him. He has since eluded pursuers, despite the state organizing the largest manhunt in its recorded history."

Magneto sighed. There was nothing on the television other than mutants. There was a serial killer loose in Dallas hunting mutants, protests in nearly every major city in the United States, as well as in London, and violence on both sides was growing rapidly. Professor Xavier had decided that if another mutant either lost control or attacked humans, the X-men would respond and do their best to either help or stop him or her. But right now, he had just received a very unwelcome piece of information from Mastermind. Jason had routinely been only a part-time member of the Brotherhood, called in when needed, and free to do whatever he wished when he wasn't. But yesterday, in Albany, he had "overheard" a the thoughts of a man that had been commissioned to begin working on a new sentinel program. After following him home and investigating, a fact that surprised Magneto, and resulted in a considerable bonus for Mastermind, he found that all the man knew was that he had been selected to work on the rockets for a new type of sentinel. Which meant that sentinels were either being built again, or were going to be built again soon. And sentinels were built to do only one thing: hunt mutants. Peace was impossible.

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Lance was enjoying a rare moment of silence and solitude while eating breakfast. Todd had convinced Fred to go into town at the crack of dawn, and spend the day hanging out. Pietro, John, Remy, and Wanda were all still asleep. It was weird, since he didn't normally enjoy himself when he was alone, but right now, it just felt right. His thoughts drifted to Kitty. She had looked at him like he had betrayed her yesterday. It wasn't his fault though. She had just been suffocating him, always wanting him to spend time with her, no matter what he felt like doing. It wouldn't have been so bad if they actually did anything together, but most of the time when he did anything together, they just sat around. It wasn't a bad thing to do, every now and then. But Lance Alvers wasn't known for patience, and after the second week of doing nothing together, he was quite tired of it. Maybe if she had been willing "experiment" then he could have handled it. Did she actually think that all those times a couple said they had just been "hanging out" that they actually just hung out? Back when she had school and when the Brotherhood and X-men regularly fought, they hadn't been able to be together that much, and he was more than willing be with her then. Once, maybe twice a week, go out on a date somewhere, that he could handle. Spending every single waking moment with her, he couldn't. Not that he had ever woken up beside her anyway. No. Breaking up with her made sense. They just weren't right for each other. He needed someone a that wasn't so high maintenance, and that was more than willing to break a few rules to have fun.

He finished his cereal and was cleaning the bowl, when there was the loud slamming of a door upstairs. Then, the sound of someone stomping down the stairs alerted him that Wanda had woken up and was ready to hex someone for some trivial reason. She stormed into the kitchen.

"Where is he!?"

"Who?" He asked genuinely confused. How on earth had someone pissed her off already today?

"TOAD! Where is he!?" She thundered. A light bulb popped overhead as various dishes began floating around the room.

"He went in to town this morning with Fred. Why?"

She growled. "Because, if he thinks that he can get away with it then has another thing coming!" She stomped into the living room and turned on the television, leaving the dishes to crash to the floor.

Lance, meanwhile was faced with a difficult decision to make. Find out what Todd had done and try to calm her down, or do the smart thing and let her simmer all day while avoiding her. His curiosity got the best of him, and he finished drying his bowl then walked in and sat on the couch.

"What did he do?" he asked.

"I found slime on my window this morning." She growled venomously.

"Okay..." Lance really didn't think it was that big of a deal, but she was a bit of a neat freak.

"On the outside of it. Which means, that he was on the outside of my window last night, trying to get it." She said the last part of that sentence with a hint of worry in her voice.

"Whoa. Whoa. Slow down. Are you sure? He didn't, you know, accidentally slime it?" Lance knew Todd was obsessed with Wanda, but to the point of trying to...get into her room while she was asleep? That was taking it too far.

"Yes I'm sure. He was trying to get in. And, when I find him, I'm gonna-" She cut her own sentence off in burst of blue light that caused the the ceiling fan to come loose and start flying around the room.

"Take it easy." He stopped himself from yelling. "You're mad at Todd, not the room, or me. Once he gets back and you get done thrashing him I'll talk to him. Make sure it doesn't happen again."

"I'll stop it from ever happening again plenty well on my own. I don't need you to fight my battles." She glared at him.

Now Lance was starting to get mad himself. Here he was, trying to help her out and she was getting mad at him! "I don't fight anyone's battles other than my own. I'm just saying, he doesn't respond well to pain. The fact that it makes you notice him is enough for him. It probably makes him want to do it more if that's what gets your attention."

"Yeah, well, it will make me feel better. And, he must be punished." She growled as her fist turned blue.

"HEY! Shut up!" They both turned to see Pietro in his boxers at the foot of the stairs. "Some of us are trying to sleep up there!" He turned to walk back up to his bed, missing the look that Wanda and Lance gave each other.

"Whoa! Ow! Oh! Please! I'm sorry!"

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Pietro gave up on going back to sleep. He had laid in bed for nearly half an hour, unable to sleep from the early morning adrenaline rush. 'Note to self. Don't piss Wanda off. Don't piss Lance off. Don't piss Lance and Wanda off at the same time. Hmmmm. I wonder what they were talking about that made them so angry to be interrupted. Something private? I need to find out.' He got up, grabbed some clothes and a towel, and went to take a shower. He took his time, but still didn't take very long. The bathroom was simply too disgusting for him to want to spend any large amount of time in there. Not to mention the fact that the air in there was probably poisonous.

Walking downstairs, he saw that the earth-shaker and red bitch were in the living room watching something on television. He checked the kitchen, but, there was no food good enough to eat. Normally that would be a problem, but today he felt fairly awake, and ready to cause trouble. Probably because he had been rudely shaken awake earlier. So, running down the street at somewhere around three hundred miles per hour, he found the perfect place to get some breakfast: The Gut Bomb. Now, he had two choices; pay, or don't pay. His first impulse was to steal what he wanted, so he went with that. Charging inside, he quickly ran around the room twice to make it seem as though a wind had come in, and then jumped over the counter, grabbed a paper bag and several sandwiches, all of which had been made in advance in anticipation of customers, and ran back outside just as the doors were beginning to shut. Then, before he could be seen or identified, he raced back home, trying to keep the bag from tearing due to the high speed.

After finishing breakfast, he found that once again he had nothing to do. He could hang out with Lance and Wanda, or, even better, he could spy on them. He ran outside, and then very, very, carefully and slowly, crept just underneath the broken window, to listen in. Lance had the uncanny ability to tell where Pietro was whenever his feet hit the ground too hard. After five minutes of listening to some "bitch" argue with some "ho" over who was supposed to do the dishes, he gave up and went back inside. 'If the humans don't kill all of us, then reality TV will.' Standing in the doorway to the living room, he contemplated on what to spend the day doing. If Remy and Pyro were up, he could go into town and have a blast with them. He could spend the day with the two mutants watching television, but they tended to be either way too dull, or way too pissed, and he didn't like them in either mode. 'Now then, how to wake up Remy, without it actually being me that wakes him up?' He could throw a lighter at John, waking him up, and thereby waking Remy up a few minutes later, but decided that wasn't the best course of action. He could open Remy's door just a crack, letting sound get through better, and hopefully being enough to wake the Cajun up. Or, he could...He chuckled darkly at his next thought. It was simple enough, and would wake everyone up.

He quickly dashed through the living room at high speed, before jumping out the window. He could hear the cries of annoyance behind him. Jumping back through the window again, he raced out of the room and upstairs, before racing back down through the living room again and jumping out. 'Yep. Just like I thought.' He could see the house shake from his position across the street. 'That should wake everyone up.' Trying to wait a few minutes to let Lance calm down, and let Pyro and Remy both get up and start a fight over the bathroom, was tough, but probably the safest course of action.

He lasted one minute. Nearly a record.

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Ah...another slow chapter I'm afraid. Next chapter is going to be the same way I'm sure, although Remy, John, and Pietro are going to cause some trouble together in town. Probably going to have some meaningless glimpses of Todd and Fred just being friends as well. But, the chapter after that is definitely going have some action.

However, Lance and Kitty have broken up! I really felt like the whole "He's not good enough, but he actually is" was overdone. The Lance Alvers I always saw in evo didn't seem to have that lack of confidence problem. But really, I never "felt" the romance between them I guess. One episode it was there, the next it was completely non-existent you know? So I figure, why not have them break up for the same reasons a normal couple does?

One second to last thing. Does anyone know what Pietro's top speed is? Somewhere over the sound barrier is all I know, but I don't know how much over. Any numbers here would be very appreciated. It doesn't matter too much right now, since he is still a teen and isn't at max speed yet, but I would like to know. Thanks!

Please let me know how you felt about this chapter. I'm not entirely happy with it, but I tried to keep everyone in character. The conversation between Lance and Wanda felt forced to me, so if anyone has some advice there I would appreciate it. Also, the early Todd part, while it seemed good to me the first few times I read it, seems a little fake now. I mean, Todd seems to have so much fun without being happy. It really makes him hard to understand. If at any time someone seems really out of character, let me know so I that I can review that part and make it work. One other thing. Does anyone know how to insert breaks in between lines? I've tried most of the symbols above the number keys with no luck, as they don't show up in the final document. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!