Chapter Three

Scott Summers carefully folded Pietro's legs so that he fit in the back seat of his sports car, wondering again what the Brotherhood member had been doing to end up lying slumped over the toilet with a bloody gash on his forehead. He'd tried to wake him, but gotten only gasps about glowing doors before Pietro had slumped back into insensibility.

Still frowning behind his ruby quartz glasses, Scott glanced around the empty after-school parking lot, then looked up at the sky and reached into the car to press the button that would raise the roof. A shout from behind made him turn, hands rising defensively toward his glasses.

"There he is!" yelled Todd 'Toad' Tolensky indignantly. "He beat Pietro up 'n now he's kidnapping him, yo! Stop him, Rogue!"

"What are you blabbering about Toad?" the scowling Goth frowned. "Ah can't even see Pietro."

"That's 'cause Cyke's got the top up, man! Quick, we've gotta stop him before he drives away!"

Rogue sighed, rolling her green eyes as she marched across the schoolyard in her heavy, black boots. "Fine," she snapped in her thick, Mississippi accent. "Ah'll get to the bottom of this. But ah'll tell you now that ah don't believe for one second that Mister Straight-As-An-Arrow Scott Summers would deliberately beat up on—What the--!"

Rogue's eyes flashed as she caught sight of the bleeding Pietro sprawled unconscious across the back seat of Scott's convertible through the open door, and Scott's threatening stance beside him.

"Hey, Summers," she called out, her rising anger and confusion causing her to break into a run. "What's the big idea?"

"See, man?" Toad called out as he hopped up beside her. "What did I say? The dude's a kidnapper!"

Scott sighed and lowered his hand, wishing he'd stopped to say something to the green-skinned boy when he'd carried Pietro past him in the hallway earlier.

"I'm taking him to the Brotherhood House," he explained. "I found him in the bathroom like this. It doesn't look like the work of Duncan Matthews, but I can't think of any other reason for Pietro to run into the wall."

Rogue raised a heavily painted eyebrow. "A wall?" she snorted.

"Whoa, man, is he OK?" Toad asked anxiously, his large eyes wide as he leaned against the open car door to get a better look at his teammate.

"Hey, Toad, watch the fingerprints OK?" Scott exclaimed with a protective frown, causing the younger boy to jump. "I just waxed this baby this morning."

Rogue shot Scott a derisive smirk, taking a rather challenging step closer to his beloved sportscar. "So, how bad a bump do you think he has?" she asked, bending slightly to peer over Toad's shoulder at Pietro's bloodied forehead. "Do you think it's a concussion? Will he have amnesia?"

"Dude, why are his hands blue?" asked Toad, still peering at Pietro.

Scott shrugged quickly, not wanting to damage the other teen's image in the eyes of his teammates by telling them the position he'd found him in. "It's a concussion all right. I couldn't get him to wake up fully. All he did was mutter about an orange glow before he passed out again."

He looked at the shining surface of his car, then sighed. "Do you want to ride along?"

"Thanks, yo!" Toad crawled into the back seat and crouched on the floor, his big eyes full of gratitude.

Scott cleared his throat in embarrassment and looked questioningly to Rogue. Rogue scowled back, her heavy make-up masking the uncertainty behind her eyes. She couldn't count the number of times she'd secretly wished Scott Summers would ask her that very question. Peering up at the ruby-quartz shades that gave his chiseled features their intriguing air of mystery, she bit her lip, considering her answer carefully. It was pretty obvious that if she did accept, she'd get to ride in the front seat… Besides, Pietro was looking pretty bad back there.

"Well—" she started, only to be cut off by an annoyingly chirpy voice calling Scott's name.

"Hey, Scott, we're, like here! Thanks for waiting!" Kitty Pryde bounced up, but then stopped cold as she noticed the inhabitants of the back seat. "Huh?"

"What's going on?" asked Jean Grey quietly, stopping behind her friends and also looking into the back seat.

"Ah thought you were a telepath," Rogue sneered, crossing her arms and leaning back deliberately against the side of Scott's car. Scott sucked in his lips, but managed to restrain himself from shouting aloud as his eyes locked on her belt of metal chain links where it pressed against his precious car. Rogue's sneer stretched into a wicked smirk. Torturing him like this may be petty, but now that Jean and Kitty had turned up, Rogue felt she'd never get a chance to ride in the front seat with him.

"You don't seriously think she'd poke around in your head without permission," protested Kitty. "It's, like, totally rude!"

Scott sighed and squinched his face as Rogue's smirk grew wider. "I found Pietro in the bathroom with a concussion," he explained for the third time. "I was just taking him, Rogue, and Todd home."

"You mean that slum of a hide-out?" Jean spoke up suddenly, without taking her eyes from Pietro. "You can't, Scott! We should bring him back to the mansion."

"What was that?" Rogue retorted, pushing away from the car--much to Scott's relief.

"Look," Jean explained in her maddeningly reasonable voice. "He's going to need medical attention, and I can sense a slight pressure building up in his brain. I don't think it's fatal, but it's still bad."

Scott blinked down at her, then turned back to Rogue, raising an eyebrow.

"Hey, he's your teammate," he said. "It's your call."

Rogue ground her teeth, then spun around to take another look at Pietro. As she leaned into the backseat, Toad's bulbous eyes met hers, his concern painted all over his greenish face. Rogue sighed and pulled her head back out into the sunlight.

"OK," she said grudgingly, fixing the three X-Men with her coldest glare. "But we're stayin' with him the whole time, got it? There's no way ah'm gonna let Xavier push us out into any waiting room while he does who-knows-what to Pietro's brain."

Kitty gaped. "The professor would never do that!" she exclaimed defensively. Scott just sighed, sharing a look with Jean.

"Can the two of you find another way home?" He reached into his pocket, then remembered that he'd already put the keys in the ignition when he'd raised his convertible's canvas top.

Jean blinked and nodded, then turned back to Pietro with a puzzled frown. "He's concerned about Kurt. It's so strong that he's dreaming about it. Something about..." Her frown deepened. "An orange doorway?"

"Why would Pietro care about your stupid fuzzbutt?" Toad lowered his head and scowled at her, putting one webbed hand protectively on his teammate's chest. "He's not an X-Geek."

Kitty scowled back at him and pulled her pink cell-phone out of her purse, hitting a button and putting it to her ear. As the others watched her expression changed to confusion, then concern.

"Like, that's funny, how can he be out of range?"

"Who?" asked Rogue.

"Kurt," Jean responded absently, her eyes distant as she cocked her head. After a long moment, she frowned. "I can't sense him either." She exchanged another look with Scott. "Something's happened. We need to get back to the mansion."

"I'll call a cab." Kitty dialed again quickly, turning away and sticking her finger in her ear as she talked to the dispatcher.

Scott glanced between his teammates, then nodded and put a hand on Rogue's back to guide her into the front seat of his car.

Rogue's eyes widened, the hard-learned cynicism fading from her heart for a brief moment as she allowed herself to lean into his touch. Then she stiffened, pushing his hand away with a scornful glare as she clambered into the sports car on her own.

Scott gave her a look of surprise, but only closed the door gently after her and walked around to his own place. Rogue heard Kitty ask about Pietro's blue hands as the X-Men leader passed her, but didn't catch Scott's reply.

"Rogue?" came Todd's quavery voice from behind her as the boy peered through the space between the seats.

"Yeah?" she asked, twisting around in her seat as Scott started the engine and pulled out of the parking space. "What's wrong?"

"He's not gonna die, is he? I mean, Mystique'll blow the roof if he does."

Rogue rolled her eyes. "Sheesh, Toad, don't you know the meanin' of the words 'not fatal'? Pietro's gonna be fine. We've just gotta get him checked out, that's all."

"Oh." He rustled around, elbowing her in the back through the seat. "Rogue?"

"What!" she snapped.

"He's mumbling about a shadow."

Rogue twisted a little more to stare at her unconscious teammate, her eyebrows drawing together as he gasped and muttered quickly about a tall shadow, strangely-shaped. "Red never said nothin' 'bout no shadow."

"Shadow!" moaned Pietro, his hands clenching weakly. "Watch out, Wagner!"

"Hey! He is worried about the fuzzbutt!" said Todd, sounding scandalized.

"Watch out...watch..." Pietro fell silent, one arm falling over the edge of the seat.

Rogue raised one eyebrow slowly, then turned to face the front, an uneasy feeling growing in her gut as the four mutants sped towards Xavier's mansion and--hopefully--some answers.

PLEASE REVIEW!

:D