A/N: Well, I just had so many ideas banging around in my head that I couldn't update Looking Through Blind Eyes until all the stuff I had for this story is in writing. Okay, so there is more, but my fingers are begging me to stop. They're also telling me that I don't own X-Men: Evolution. That makes me sad. Don't forget to review, and read on!
So, here I am. I've been kicked out of my own home, dragging only a bunch of blankets and the clothes on my back, and I've turned into some kind of wind demon thing. I'm standing awkwardly in the elaborate hall of Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters (ha ha), waiting with Jean while Summers gets this Professor dude up for me to talk to.
When did my life become such a mess? I was so deep in my thoughts, my emotions ranging from bone-deep anger to depression, that the silver wind knocked over all the vases and expensive stuff. I stood stock still, my silver eyes flashing (and most definitely not brimming with angry tears) as Jean scraped up the debris.
"Happens all the time," she reassured. "You should have seen me when I first started learning. I wrecked stuff all the time."
As if that made me feel any better. Jean, the smartest person I know, from my whole ten minutes of contact, had trouble with her...powers.
Can I even call them that? They seem pretty rebellious to me. The silver wind nipped me-it's sharp! A rip opened in my favorite sweatshirt and I was distracted for a split second. So, of course, that's when Scott brought in the mysterious professor.
Who turned out to be an old bald guy in a wheelchair. I coughed, and held out my hand nervously. The man shook it firmly, taking a look at the damage I'd done. "Doing a little redecorating, Loki?" he murmured, cocking his head.
I blanched. "I'm sorry, sir, I mean, Professor, I mean, well, I didn't know you liked them, actually, I can't really control it right now and-" The Professor held up a hand and my babbling stopped. I felt the blood-is my blush still red?-heat up my cheeks.
"My apologies. I find that humor is often a good way to break the ice. My name is Charles Xavier, and I am a mutant. Not unlike yourself." I felt his gaze probing my eyes and ears, and turned away, unable to meet his gaze.
Bravado and bluster, meet meek and afraid. Isn't it easy to lose your cool when your life spirals out of control?
"Mutant?" I muttered, eyeing him. He looked pretty normal...I bet he had a third eye hidden somewhere.
"No, no third eyes here," Xavier said, his smile quirking.
I could only gape. "You- you-"
"Read your mind, yes. It is a gift I share with Jean. Scott has his optic beams, as you have seen-" I sneaked a look at said mutant (ewww...ugly word) and received a stiff nod in return "-and we have two other recruits right now, Kurt and Kitty. Well, along with Logan and Ororo, but I think that they wouldn't really count. They aren't students, after all."
I swallowed nervously. "Are they, gonna, you know, be okay with me being here? I mean, I don't want to be a nuisance or anything-" Xavier halted my babble once more with a hand and motioned for me to follow him.
"Logan is rarely in the house and Ororo is very open to new students," he replied as we puttered along the hall. I trailed off to the side, reluctant, and looking rather stupid carrying a bunch of fabric squares. "And I do not think it is stupid to have mementos of your home."
I blushed, and the mini-parade ground to a halt. "Erm...thanks..." I whispered, stepping in and closing the door behind me. Then, of course, Xavier upped the weird factor by about ten kajillion.
We will talk more tomorrow, Loki. And your control training will begin. Because you have an affinity for wind, you will be working under Ororo, or, as her codename is, Storm. Sleep well.
Riiiiiight. Like anyone could sleep well after that. Spreading my mementos out on the bed, I flopped wearily on top of the covers.
Now, I bet you're wondering what the deal is with the blankets, right? Well, my mom used to crochet when she and my dad were still...together. She made this really big, soft, comfortable, black and silver blanket for me and I've never slept without it. Then she bought me a few more...I'm attached. Pathetic, no?
So, of course, instead of sleeping, I stayed up all night, trying not to blender-ify all the things in my room. My room. Strange to think of it as mine, seeing as how it's so impersonal and uniform. I need to get some pictures or something up before I go insane. And a fan. For background noise, of course.
The hours ticked past and before I knew it, someone was knocking at my door. I took a look at my complimentary alarm clock- 5:26 a.m. I let out a groan and covered my head with a pillow. Whoever it was, instead of going away, decided to speak anyway. "Time to wake up and get started, child," a soft voice called.
"It's frickin' Saturday morning, you freak," I grumbled in response, then froze. I shot up, eyes wide and panicked, and scrambled to the door. I opened it and gasped, "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it that way, it's just I didn't get much sleep and I'm nervous and now I'm babbling again, aren't I?"
She laughed lightly and I rubbed my eyes. "I will give you four minutes to get dressed into exercise clothes and meet me in the entrance hall." With that, she left, her white hair swirling behind her.
I'll admit I was stunned. That was my teacher? Another cut opened up on my arm and I absentmindedly wiped away the blood, throwing on a pair of sweatpants and a tank top I found in the dresser next to my bed. Of course, it then hit me that I had greeted my teacher in my boxers.
I bet she hates me already.
I made it out of my room in three minutes, and stumbled out to the main entrance. Right on time, I supposed, because Miss Ororo was waiting for me. She crooked a finger and I followed hesitantly.
Once we were suitably far enough away from the mansion, she halted the silent procession and waited. I shifted from foot to foot, unsure.
"Can you show me your wind?" I nodded and looked around. Hmmm...a problem. How do I make it come back? I was not entirely sure how to call the silver winds. I held out my hand and Miss Ororo walked around me, studying my posture and face.
"You are very tense," she said quietly. "Loosen your muscles. Let the wind flow from inside you."
I nodded, and forcibly loosened my rigid posture until I was holding my arms up like a music conductor. I imagined the silver wind arcing out from my fingers, not slicing me up like it was so fond of, and instead flying out away from me. I opened my eyes (when did I close them?) and saw that a poor, innocent tree was neat little piles of roundish firewood. Storm nodded.
"Now, try it with your eyes open, and don't take as long." My smile faded, and thus began a long, long day of attempting to wrangle these wind powers into submission.
Needless to say, when we crawled back to the mansion for dinner, I was bloody, sliced, most of the landscaping was destroyed, and the silver wind hadn't gone away. It circled around me, ruffling my hair, and occasionally breaking something.
I think I actually backtracked in my progress today.
I did not intend to eat dinner with the rest of the students here...until I found someone had locked me out of my room. I stalked downstairs and sat down at the table, far away from everyone else. That did not last long.
I heard a loud 'bamf' next to me and the next thing I know, this fuzzy blue alien thing is in my face. I made a slashing motion and the kid narrowly missed being cut in two.
Hey, maybe the training today is going okay? Hard to tell, because the same slash rebounded and slapped me full in the face. I wiped my blood out of my face, careful not to get it on anything but my already disintegrating clothes.
The kid laughed and stuck out a three fingered hand. "Hi! I'm Kurt Wagner. Nice to meet you!" I wearily shook his hand, eating with the other.
"Loki Hydimen. Same." I was not in a talkative mood.
"So, I've seen you around school," he continued, oblivious to my bad mood. "You have english and science with me, I think? And maybe math with Kitty. I'm not sure." He leaned in close, like he was telling me a secret. "She's kind of a stick in the mud right now, with the whole I'm a mutant thing." He nodded wisely. "I'm thinking once she gets used to them, she'll be more receptive to the fuzzy dude."
I rolled my eyes. "That's nice and all, but why are you telling me this?"
He grabbed a bunch of rolls and dumped them on his plate, tearing into one. Kurt gave me a full blown 'are-you-that-thick-headed?' look, and I shrugged. "Well, you're new, you're alone, Scott and Jean are talking, and Kitty has banned me from her presence." A thoughtful look crossed his face. "The Professor has his own stuff to do, Storm keeps to herself, and Logan is...Logan." He shivered.
I caught this as I stood up from my meal. "Logan is scary?" I offered.
Kurt nodded. He bamfed in front of me, and I flinched. My wind sliced open a minuscule cut on the 'fuzzy dude's' arm. Kurt laughed it off, however. "You have no idea. Mostly he just rides around on his bike and fights his rival or whoever Sabertooth is. Sometimes he comes to eat, though, or do missions."
"Oh," was all I could think of to say. The conversation lapsed into awkward silence, and I edged toward my bedroom, trying to escape. Kurt seemed to notice, and let me leave. I flopped back onto my bed, and before I could even think to do anything, I was unconscious.
That most definately didn't last long. I woke up to a blaring alarm. Trying to hide my head under the pillow solved nothing other than making the noise fuzzier, not any less annoying. Next thing I know, Xavier is yelling at me via mind-speak, telling me to get down to the Danger Room.
With a name like that, why in the seven levels of hell would I want to go down there? Nonetheless, I wrestled on a pair of pants and darted out the door, leaving a wake of rips in the walls as I tried to figure out where exactly to go. I met up with Kurt in my wandering, and he motioned for me to follow him.
We went down. Farther than the basement, I guess, because it got even colder as the elevator dropped down and down and down. Finally, Kurt seemed to get impatient, grabbed a hold of me, and teleported.
It was a rush of color and sound mixed in a blender then dumped over my head. We arrived in a room of gleaming metal and I wobbled my way away from Kurt. That was one experience I never wanted to feel again. Trying to straighten my spinning vision, I focused on a spot of black...moving...towards us. Shit.
The figure held out a hand and three gleaming claws shot out of the back. I took a nervous step backwards, and the person rushed me. I ducked under the claws, turning around, and imagined the wind coming out and slicing my assailant to bits.
The winds came out, all right, just they went everywhere instead of at the cloaked guy. I hissed in pain, and heard Kurt do the same behind me.
Then, suddenly, the voice of God echoed around the room. "That is enough, Logan. I understand your point, but this was a bit extreme, don't you think?"
I heard a few other sighs and snorts. I turned; Kitty, Jean, Scott, and Miss Ororo were standing, talking with the guy in black who had jumped us. Miss Ororo gestured to me, and the new guy shot me a Look.
He was scary, alright. Rugged looking, with blue hair, and a snarl looked permanently stuck to his face. "All X-Men to the Blackbird, please," the Professor called. "We have a situation."
I shuffled backwards, hoping to avoid notice, when Logan sniffed and glared at me. I gave him my best 'I'm-innocent-please-stop-staring-at-me' look, but he obviously was immune to my charms and pulled me along to this Blackbird thing.
Well, I didn't realize it was a freaking jet! I stood, gaping, being tugged along into the vehicle in my sweats and no shirt, wondering what the hell just happened and what the hell was going on.
Logan strapped me in, and the rest of the X-Men appeared dressed in these skin-tight suits, looking seriously like someone had told them their kitten had just died. The mood was very somber, and as we lifted off and sped to who knows where in the middle of the night, I squeaked out, "Where are we going?"
Logan growled, "South. Charles says there's some rouge mutant that just discovered her powers. We're here to help." He turned a glare towards me again. I shrunk back into my seat.
"Great. Then why am I here?" Bad mouth, running off with stupid questions around a person who apparently has a bad temper and a set of wicked powers to boot.
"Field training. Had to happen sooner or later." Later would have been preferable...especially when I have no shirt on and minimal control over my own powers. What a life.
All the teenagers chattered quietly as the jet blasted us down south. As to the exact location, well, wouldn't I like to know? Curiosity killed the cat, and the mutant right behind it trying to rescue the damn thing.
We touched down after a hard hour of flying. I disembarked, sticking close to Miss Ororo, who was flying above and scanning the subdivision. "What are we looking for?" I asked, idly turning over a pebble with my wind.
"A girl, your age, running away or causing trouble. Otherwise known as a mutant who just found out her powers, and is very confused and hurt." WELL, when you put it that way, I could pick her out of, oh, say, ten thousand other angsting teenagers. Not.
Fifteen minutes turned up nothing except sounds of a scuffle over the comm link. Well, it wasn't even mine, it was Storm's. I was just listening extra closely. I looked up at the moon, and lo and behold, some girl comes popping into existance the way Kurt does and falls next to me. I leaped back, unsure, but she just stood up and glanced back and forth, panicked.
"Hey! Hey!" I called, approaching her slowly. "Are you okay?"
"You're one of them X-Men people! You're hunting me!" Her voice held the typical twang of a southern accent. Duh. Southern people have southern accents. Now I'm even thinking stupid things!
"What?" I looked up at Miss Ororo, who was keeping out of reach for the time being. "We don't hunt people. Well, I don't think they do. I'm not really 'one of them'."
She looked at me suspiciously, and I took a better look at her. White streaks in her hair (does anyone have normal hair? Makes my dishwater blond self feel slightly incompetent), see-through shirt, gloved hands. "I don't believe you. I can't trust anyone. Especially not someone like you, or like that blue guy."
I shrugged, pretending like the barb at my...less than human appearance hadn't happened. "Fine. Do and think what you will. I'm just here for 'field experience'." Storm floated down, and the girl got an even more panicked look in her eyes and teleported away.
So, the morning ended when we cut our losses and left. Kurt, Logan, and even Storm had been touched by this chick who had taken their memories and powers into herself and almost wrecked the whole town with Miss Ororo's powers.
Everyone was near silent on the way back. We had strict instructions to sleep until tomorrow (Monday) and recuperate. Kurt woke up, very groggily, and Kitty surprised everyone by hugging him fiercely. I looked back out the window, and silently thanked my lucky stars that Rouge (as they took to calling her) didn't fall on me when we met. That could have gotten ugly.
We staggered into the mansion, weary, tired, beaten, and silent.
Life has definitely gotten a hell of a lot weirder. And, dare I say it, I was kind of looking forward to it.
