Again, thanks for the reviews and multitude of favorites. I appreciate that. Keep them coming, please!

Also, I believe it's about time to include the disclaimer, since posting on a FANFICTION site might not be enough of a hint: I do not own X-Men: Evolution or any of the characters within. Nor do I own the concept of dialogue. Or screwball comedy. I own my laptop, but since it's slowly dying of old age it's debatable how much longer that will be true. And thus is the state of things.

And the two or so weeks between chapter updates was due to a vacation. Totally legit reason.

Reason #3- Diverting, strange conversations


Jamie knocked on the slightly opened door to Kitty and Rogue's room, feeling slightly anxious. Rogue answered, pushing the door further open with her hip and leaning on the door frame.

"What do you want?" she asked, slightly confused to see the mansion's youngest resident at her door. It was commonly assumed that Jamie had a fear of Rogue, one he had never bothered to correct. The actual reason was much less interesting: they had nothing in common. At least Rogue and Kitty had their gender in common, and that was an important enough similarity that their friendship was strong.

Another thing Jamie felt they would have in common would be their reaction when he told them that his tarantula had escaped, and he had just seen it crawl in their room through the partially opened door. In this he was correct.

"Why was your spider out anyway?" Rogue yelled from a chair, where she had jumped by instinct (however if asked her excuse was that she wanted a better vantage point to search).

Kitty sat on the edge of her desk with her feet pulled as far from the floor as possible. "Why do you even have a spider?" she scolded.

Jamie stood just inside the room looking around anxiously. "He's a tarantula, not just a stupid regular old spider. Can you help me find him? If Scott finds out him got out he'll make me get rid of him." He knelt down and glanced under Kitty's bed. "The poor thing's probably scared to death."

The girls cautiously lowered themselves off their furniture and began looking around the room, wounded pride at jumping aside, mentioning places to each other and to Jamie to check.

"Kitty, did you look in the pineapple?" Rogue's voice came out muffled from where she'd stuffed herself under her bed with a flashlight to search.

Jamie leaned out of the gap where the desk had been pushed out from the wall for the hunt. "What?" he asked, baffled.

"The one with candy in it?" Kitty muttered absently, carefully picking up her clothes off the floor and shaking them out. "Yeah. It's clear. Did you look under the round chair with the mutilated butterfly on it?"

"You keep mutilated butterflies?" Jamie asked with an eyebrow raised, looking towards Rogue, who was comically scooting backwards out from under her bed.

Rogue looked at him oddly. "No, are you crazy?"

Kitty picked her footing slowly across the room to a corner where a pile of pillows and clothing stood on what seemed to be a pair of metal legs. She timidly dug through the small plush mountain. "No spider here. How about the blue change bucket?"

Jamie sighed a little in relief. A change bucket, something that made sense at last. His relief returned to vague bewilderment when Rogue balanced carefully on a chair and rummaged through the scarves and long gloves hanging over the top edge of her dresser mirror. "Nope. Maybe the-AAAARGH!"

She jerked back quickly from her dresser as what was clearly a very large, very hairy spider emerged from the crack between the furniture and the wall. Kitty grimaced a little but stood her ground, safely on the other side of the room, as Jamie lurched forward and delicately scooped up his pet tarantula.

"There is something wrong with you," he said to Rogue and Kitty as he backed toward the door, spider safely in hand. "No wonder you room together."

Kitty and Rogue frowned at each other. "What a strange child," Kitty commented.

Rogue shrugged and shook her head a little, going to her desk as Kitty laid down on her bed to study some more. Rogue reached into a drawer, pulling out a plastic bag.

"Want an octopus?" she asked casually.

Kitty looked at the wall thoughtfully for a few moments. "Yeah, all right."

They sucked on sour octopus-shaped candy for awhile. Kitty balanced her pencil on a finger. "Did any of that seem strange to you? It seemed perfectly sensible to me."

Rogue leaned back in her chair, drumming on her desk with a pen as she pursed her lips in thought. "It made sense to me too. I think Jamie's just kind of an odd kid. Probably all that time he spends alone with that spider."

The room became quiet as each roommate did her own thing, aware that they were not alone in the room but comfortable in the knowledge that if they did need to speak, the other would understand. Rooming with your best friend does tend to lead to strange, diverting conversations.