Sorry it took me so long to update. I was...preoccupied (bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-
hee-hee-hee). Anywho, just wanted to let all of you people out there know
(just wanted to let you five people out there know...) that I'm sorry, and
I'll probably update more frequently from now on. Okay, I'll shut up now.
***
Chapter Three: Introductions
***
Through the door, Greta could hear what seemed like all the people in the institute bustling around. Her hand lingered on the doorknob, her eyes out of focus, as she listened. After about ten seconds of what seemed like normal activity, she turned the knob slowly and pushed the heavy wooden door open a crack. Now she could see a small slice of what was going on. It seemed like everyone was just coming in from school.
School. Now there was a thought. Greta had wondered what a school had looked like up until she was twelve, when she had actually taken a chance and gone inside one. The halls had been so *empty-looking,* and echoey (Note: Is that a word? I dunno, I think it is, and I'm gonna use it), and the lockers had been so *different* than the ones she had seen in her brief visit to the YMCA. She had been wandering the halls, just staring in awe at the shiny floors and the classrooms filled with children learning that she jumped about two feet into the air when a teacher had asked her if she was lost. The instant she landed, she had fled. It had taken her a week to get over her grudge for that one teacher: how dare she scare her like that? Just when she was starting to get used to her surroundings.
Greta was still peeking through the crack in the door when she realized someone was looking back at her. Black eyes...
Jumping back, Greta pressed her back against the wall beside the door. She dropped her head against the wall behind her and silently cursed her nerves. She shouldn't be that jumpy. She was among *friends* now.
Evan had just been sitting in the living room, silent for a change from his usual demeanor, loud and obnoxious, when he had heard the side door open. That door was hardly ever used; it led to one of the back halls. Curious, he turned his head and looked past the couch, where Kurt was helping Kitty with what appeared to be her chemistry homework, and past the chair by the fire, where Scott and Jean were roasting their toes, to see that the door had been opened a tiny bit. Evan leaned forward a bit in the armchair, putting his chin in his hand. He could just see the glint of what appeared to be brown eyes, and the unrecognizable gleam of wet, newly- combed hair. Suddenly, the eyes (and hair) disappeared behind the door, and Evan blinked, startled. Jean, sensing his bewilderment, turned around in her chair and met his eyes. He gestured with his head toward the side door. Jean's mouth formed a silent 'Oh,' and she stood up and headed for the (Note: infamous, now) side door.
Greta was hardly surprised to see Jean come through the door. "Hello," she said quietly.
"Hello, Greta," Jean said brightly. "I thought you would've been asleep by now."
Greta shook her head slightly. "No."
"Oh," continued Jean, unphased. "Well, would you like to meet some of the people you'll be living with here at the institute? I could introduce you to them now."
"Okay." Soft as ever. Jean started to turn back towards the door; her hand was still resting on the knob, when she turned back.
"By the way, how is it that you came to *this* door? It's hardly ever used, see, and..."
"Um, I...I just turned right when I came out of the bathroom, and..." came the reply, soft as ever.
"Oh, okay. Well, let's go, then!" Jean opened the door and stepped through. The people in the room seemed to sense that she was going to make an announcement. The couple on the couch stopped talking, and all faces in the room seemed to face the red-headed figure in the door. Greta peeked through the space between Jean and the wall, her hand on the doorframe. "Everyone, I want you to meet Greta. She was just recruited this morning." Jean turned around to look at Greta, smiling. Greta slowly stepped out of the dim hallway and into the well-lit living room. Her head was tilted down at the floor, and the only thing she lifted was her eyes to peer around at the occupants of the room.
Slightly surprised at Jean's announcement, Evan stared at the new girl in the doorframe. She was a few inches shorter than he was, it seemed, but it was hard to tell because of the way her head was turned down towards the floor. It was almost like she didn't want people to see her face. He could tell from the way she held herself that she was shy, and unaccustomed to so much attention. Evan took in the features he could see: brown eyes, straight brown hair...her hair was combed, but the part was most definitely not straight. The split ends of her hair lay on her shoulders, just reaching them. The clothes she was wearing, which seemed to be some of Jean's, were slightly big on her; her hands were covered by the sleeves, and you could just see the ends of the plain white socks she wore poking out from underneath the baggy khakis. There were freckles dotted lightly across her nose. Evan found his eyes drawn back to hers, and it took him a moment to realize that she was staring straight back at him. His cheeks flushed, and he looked back at the floor.
"Like, hi Greta! I'm Kitty! It's great to meet you." Kitty bounced across the room, high pigtail flying behind her as she broke the short silence that had descended over the room. She stuck out her hand toward the newbie and Greta was a little uncertain of what to do as she grasped Kitty's hand lightly. Kitty didn't even notice, jubilantly shaking Greta's hand with a big grin on her face. Greta had to smile at Kitty's exuberance. How often did you meet someone that excited about a new person, after all?
_Especially a new person like me._
Scott saw the barest hint of a smile appear on Greta's face as Kitty shook her hand. He tried on his biggest welcoming smile as he, Kurt, and Evan moved a little closer to the new girl.
"Like, you are sooo going to like it here! You get all the *coolest* privileges, and, like, the *biggest* room, and...wait, which room is yours?" Kitty didn't wait for her to respond. "I bet you got the room next to mine and Rogue's. Have you, like, met Rogue yet? Ooh," she squealed. "and have you seen the *pool*? It's the coolest! Once it, like, warms up outside and stuff, you *have* to go swimming with us! You are going to just, like-"
"My name's Scott," he cut her off, bumping her out of the way and sticking out his hand for Greta to shake. She took his hand gingerly. "I'm the leader of the X-Men," he said, just a little too proudly. "I'm sure you'll fit in well here-"
"Hey, have you, like, seen the danger room yet? It's so-" Kurt put a hand on her shoulder, quieting her down. Scott stepped aside and let Kurt step into the little circle.
"Guten tag." Greta reached for his hand, but he pulled back. "Listen, before we shake hands, I have to show you something." Unless you paid careful attention, you couldn't see Greta's puzzled expression. Kurt, however, picked up on it. "I, uh, don't really look like this, you see," he explained carefully. "I don't mean to scare you, but-" he turned off his image inducer. "This is me. Mein name is Kurt Wagner."
Scott could see Greta's eyes widen slightly, but then that tiny little smile appeared on her face again. She reached out and shook Kurt's hand before he could blink.
"Nice to meet you..." she said in a voice barely above a whisper. Kurt looked down at the hands clasped between them, then looked back up at her and grinned.
"Hey, get outta my way, I have to meet her too!" Evan shoved past his blue furry friend, who stepped back, grinning. Evan stuck out his hand.
"Name's Evan, but you can call me Spyke," he said, grinning in that way that only he could. She took his hand as lightly as she had taken the others, and her eyebrows lifted in the tiniest of movements as she reacted to his...er...forward manner.
"Oh, that's right!" exclaimed Jean. "We forgot to tell you our mutations." The grins remained on everyone's faces as Jean pointed out each of their mutant abilities. She only paused when she came back to Greta. "Greta, um...the Professor didn't tell me exactly what you can do. Would you mind explaining? Maybe a little demonstration?"
Greta moved her head back to the position it had been in before: facing the floor, with only her eyes in view. "I don't really know a lot about it," she started softly. "The only thing I've been able to figure out is this." She moved to lift herself off the floor (Note: like she did in the first chapter), when she realized her hand was still in Evan's. Ducking her head immediately, she blushed at the floor and pulled her hand away from his. When she finally looked back up at the group, she saw a mild blush still on Evan's face, along with an embarrassed smirk.
"I can, um..." she continued. She moved her hands so they were parallel to the floor, pressing the insides of her wrists against her thighs.
_She probably doesn't know how much she looks like one of those kid- dancers,_ Jean thought, smiling to herself.
A mild look of concentration could be seen on Greta's face as she 'pushed' with her mind, through her palms. Peering down, she could see her feet were about eight inches off the floor. Tentatively, she took a few steps forward on the air. The circle of people stepped out to accomodate her. After about six steps, Greta released the 'force' she was exerting on the floor slowly, and stepped back down onto solid hardwood.
"Hey, Greta." Greta's eyebrows lifted slightly again as she looked at Scott. "I just have a question. Why did you take those steps when you were up there? I mean, if I'm not mistaken, it looked like you were applying pressure to the floor with your hands. And I could see the way you turned your hands behind you when you wanted to go forward. So why'd you take those steps?"
"I, um..." Was it just him, or had her voice gotten even softer? "I guess I'm just used to walking."
Jean blinked in surprise as she heard a constant refrain coming from the newcomer's mind: _*Don't blush, don't blush, don't blush, don't blush, don't blush, don't....*_ She wasn't surprised to hear that *particular* phrase being repeated, she was just surprised to see it having an effect. Only the tiniest hint of a blush could be seen on Greta's cheeks as she ducked her head toward the floor again.
Though Jean knew she shouldn't head-hop, she ducked into Scott's mind, to see what he was thinking about all this. What she heard matched her suspicion: he was remonstrating himself: _*Oh, *great,* Scott, now you've upset her. She was shy to *begin* with, and now you've gone and *embarrassed* her, like Evan didn't do a good enough job at *that.*_
Jean had to resist the urge to tell Scott not to be so hard on himself.
_Let him sort that out on his own,_ she thought to herself.
Kitty could tell that things were turning for the worse (she wasn't *that* much of an airhead as to not be able to tell what was going on *here*), so she decided to try and change the subject.
"Hey, like, Greta, you wanna, like, go meet Rogue? She stays here at the Institute, too. You should really, like, meet her if you, like, wanna live here."
"Oh...okay," Greta half-whispered.
_Like, success! Hey, maybe I can, like, make a new friend!_
"Well, let's, like, go, if you, like, want to meet her! Come on!" Kitty grabbed Greta's hand and started tugging her toward the main door. Greta followed behind, that tiny little half-smile on her face again as Kitty dragged her out the living room door and up the stairs.
***
Sorry, but that's all I'm doing today! Yeah, I know you wanted about fifteen more pages (yeah, that's a laugh), but it's a lot of work to write stuff like this! Well, it's a lot of work to write anything, really. But you have to work really *hard* to write *badly* (that's a joke. Laugh)! Anywho, I know I promised some work on developing Greta's skills, but, as you can see, I've gone a bit overboard on the introductions. Sigh. Oh, well, guess you'll just have to wait. Oh, and review. There will be *no more* if you don't review. So there.
***
Chapter Three: Introductions
***
Through the door, Greta could hear what seemed like all the people in the institute bustling around. Her hand lingered on the doorknob, her eyes out of focus, as she listened. After about ten seconds of what seemed like normal activity, she turned the knob slowly and pushed the heavy wooden door open a crack. Now she could see a small slice of what was going on. It seemed like everyone was just coming in from school.
School. Now there was a thought. Greta had wondered what a school had looked like up until she was twelve, when she had actually taken a chance and gone inside one. The halls had been so *empty-looking,* and echoey (Note: Is that a word? I dunno, I think it is, and I'm gonna use it), and the lockers had been so *different* than the ones she had seen in her brief visit to the YMCA. She had been wandering the halls, just staring in awe at the shiny floors and the classrooms filled with children learning that she jumped about two feet into the air when a teacher had asked her if she was lost. The instant she landed, she had fled. It had taken her a week to get over her grudge for that one teacher: how dare she scare her like that? Just when she was starting to get used to her surroundings.
Greta was still peeking through the crack in the door when she realized someone was looking back at her. Black eyes...
Jumping back, Greta pressed her back against the wall beside the door. She dropped her head against the wall behind her and silently cursed her nerves. She shouldn't be that jumpy. She was among *friends* now.
Evan had just been sitting in the living room, silent for a change from his usual demeanor, loud and obnoxious, when he had heard the side door open. That door was hardly ever used; it led to one of the back halls. Curious, he turned his head and looked past the couch, where Kurt was helping Kitty with what appeared to be her chemistry homework, and past the chair by the fire, where Scott and Jean were roasting their toes, to see that the door had been opened a tiny bit. Evan leaned forward a bit in the armchair, putting his chin in his hand. He could just see the glint of what appeared to be brown eyes, and the unrecognizable gleam of wet, newly- combed hair. Suddenly, the eyes (and hair) disappeared behind the door, and Evan blinked, startled. Jean, sensing his bewilderment, turned around in her chair and met his eyes. He gestured with his head toward the side door. Jean's mouth formed a silent 'Oh,' and she stood up and headed for the (Note: infamous, now) side door.
Greta was hardly surprised to see Jean come through the door. "Hello," she said quietly.
"Hello, Greta," Jean said brightly. "I thought you would've been asleep by now."
Greta shook her head slightly. "No."
"Oh," continued Jean, unphased. "Well, would you like to meet some of the people you'll be living with here at the institute? I could introduce you to them now."
"Okay." Soft as ever. Jean started to turn back towards the door; her hand was still resting on the knob, when she turned back.
"By the way, how is it that you came to *this* door? It's hardly ever used, see, and..."
"Um, I...I just turned right when I came out of the bathroom, and..." came the reply, soft as ever.
"Oh, okay. Well, let's go, then!" Jean opened the door and stepped through. The people in the room seemed to sense that she was going to make an announcement. The couple on the couch stopped talking, and all faces in the room seemed to face the red-headed figure in the door. Greta peeked through the space between Jean and the wall, her hand on the doorframe. "Everyone, I want you to meet Greta. She was just recruited this morning." Jean turned around to look at Greta, smiling. Greta slowly stepped out of the dim hallway and into the well-lit living room. Her head was tilted down at the floor, and the only thing she lifted was her eyes to peer around at the occupants of the room.
Slightly surprised at Jean's announcement, Evan stared at the new girl in the doorframe. She was a few inches shorter than he was, it seemed, but it was hard to tell because of the way her head was turned down towards the floor. It was almost like she didn't want people to see her face. He could tell from the way she held herself that she was shy, and unaccustomed to so much attention. Evan took in the features he could see: brown eyes, straight brown hair...her hair was combed, but the part was most definitely not straight. The split ends of her hair lay on her shoulders, just reaching them. The clothes she was wearing, which seemed to be some of Jean's, were slightly big on her; her hands were covered by the sleeves, and you could just see the ends of the plain white socks she wore poking out from underneath the baggy khakis. There were freckles dotted lightly across her nose. Evan found his eyes drawn back to hers, and it took him a moment to realize that she was staring straight back at him. His cheeks flushed, and he looked back at the floor.
"Like, hi Greta! I'm Kitty! It's great to meet you." Kitty bounced across the room, high pigtail flying behind her as she broke the short silence that had descended over the room. She stuck out her hand toward the newbie and Greta was a little uncertain of what to do as she grasped Kitty's hand lightly. Kitty didn't even notice, jubilantly shaking Greta's hand with a big grin on her face. Greta had to smile at Kitty's exuberance. How often did you meet someone that excited about a new person, after all?
_Especially a new person like me._
Scott saw the barest hint of a smile appear on Greta's face as Kitty shook her hand. He tried on his biggest welcoming smile as he, Kurt, and Evan moved a little closer to the new girl.
"Like, you are sooo going to like it here! You get all the *coolest* privileges, and, like, the *biggest* room, and...wait, which room is yours?" Kitty didn't wait for her to respond. "I bet you got the room next to mine and Rogue's. Have you, like, met Rogue yet? Ooh," she squealed. "and have you seen the *pool*? It's the coolest! Once it, like, warms up outside and stuff, you *have* to go swimming with us! You are going to just, like-"
"My name's Scott," he cut her off, bumping her out of the way and sticking out his hand for Greta to shake. She took his hand gingerly. "I'm the leader of the X-Men," he said, just a little too proudly. "I'm sure you'll fit in well here-"
"Hey, have you, like, seen the danger room yet? It's so-" Kurt put a hand on her shoulder, quieting her down. Scott stepped aside and let Kurt step into the little circle.
"Guten tag." Greta reached for his hand, but he pulled back. "Listen, before we shake hands, I have to show you something." Unless you paid careful attention, you couldn't see Greta's puzzled expression. Kurt, however, picked up on it. "I, uh, don't really look like this, you see," he explained carefully. "I don't mean to scare you, but-" he turned off his image inducer. "This is me. Mein name is Kurt Wagner."
Scott could see Greta's eyes widen slightly, but then that tiny little smile appeared on her face again. She reached out and shook Kurt's hand before he could blink.
"Nice to meet you..." she said in a voice barely above a whisper. Kurt looked down at the hands clasped between them, then looked back up at her and grinned.
"Hey, get outta my way, I have to meet her too!" Evan shoved past his blue furry friend, who stepped back, grinning. Evan stuck out his hand.
"Name's Evan, but you can call me Spyke," he said, grinning in that way that only he could. She took his hand as lightly as she had taken the others, and her eyebrows lifted in the tiniest of movements as she reacted to his...er...forward manner.
"Oh, that's right!" exclaimed Jean. "We forgot to tell you our mutations." The grins remained on everyone's faces as Jean pointed out each of their mutant abilities. She only paused when she came back to Greta. "Greta, um...the Professor didn't tell me exactly what you can do. Would you mind explaining? Maybe a little demonstration?"
Greta moved her head back to the position it had been in before: facing the floor, with only her eyes in view. "I don't really know a lot about it," she started softly. "The only thing I've been able to figure out is this." She moved to lift herself off the floor (Note: like she did in the first chapter), when she realized her hand was still in Evan's. Ducking her head immediately, she blushed at the floor and pulled her hand away from his. When she finally looked back up at the group, she saw a mild blush still on Evan's face, along with an embarrassed smirk.
"I can, um..." she continued. She moved her hands so they were parallel to the floor, pressing the insides of her wrists against her thighs.
_She probably doesn't know how much she looks like one of those kid- dancers,_ Jean thought, smiling to herself.
A mild look of concentration could be seen on Greta's face as she 'pushed' with her mind, through her palms. Peering down, she could see her feet were about eight inches off the floor. Tentatively, she took a few steps forward on the air. The circle of people stepped out to accomodate her. After about six steps, Greta released the 'force' she was exerting on the floor slowly, and stepped back down onto solid hardwood.
"Hey, Greta." Greta's eyebrows lifted slightly again as she looked at Scott. "I just have a question. Why did you take those steps when you were up there? I mean, if I'm not mistaken, it looked like you were applying pressure to the floor with your hands. And I could see the way you turned your hands behind you when you wanted to go forward. So why'd you take those steps?"
"I, um..." Was it just him, or had her voice gotten even softer? "I guess I'm just used to walking."
Jean blinked in surprise as she heard a constant refrain coming from the newcomer's mind: _*Don't blush, don't blush, don't blush, don't blush, don't blush, don't....*_ She wasn't surprised to hear that *particular* phrase being repeated, she was just surprised to see it having an effect. Only the tiniest hint of a blush could be seen on Greta's cheeks as she ducked her head toward the floor again.
Though Jean knew she shouldn't head-hop, she ducked into Scott's mind, to see what he was thinking about all this. What she heard matched her suspicion: he was remonstrating himself: _*Oh, *great,* Scott, now you've upset her. She was shy to *begin* with, and now you've gone and *embarrassed* her, like Evan didn't do a good enough job at *that.*_
Jean had to resist the urge to tell Scott not to be so hard on himself.
_Let him sort that out on his own,_ she thought to herself.
Kitty could tell that things were turning for the worse (she wasn't *that* much of an airhead as to not be able to tell what was going on *here*), so she decided to try and change the subject.
"Hey, like, Greta, you wanna, like, go meet Rogue? She stays here at the Institute, too. You should really, like, meet her if you, like, wanna live here."
"Oh...okay," Greta half-whispered.
_Like, success! Hey, maybe I can, like, make a new friend!_
"Well, let's, like, go, if you, like, want to meet her! Come on!" Kitty grabbed Greta's hand and started tugging her toward the main door. Greta followed behind, that tiny little half-smile on her face again as Kitty dragged her out the living room door and up the stairs.
***
Sorry, but that's all I'm doing today! Yeah, I know you wanted about fifteen more pages (yeah, that's a laugh), but it's a lot of work to write stuff like this! Well, it's a lot of work to write anything, really. But you have to work really *hard* to write *badly* (that's a joke. Laugh)! Anywho, I know I promised some work on developing Greta's skills, but, as you can see, I've gone a bit overboard on the introductions. Sigh. Oh, well, guess you'll just have to wait. Oh, and review. There will be *no more* if you don't review. So there.