Maybe Autumn was right for once, and Kurt actually was just exhausted. She sure hoped so; she really wanted a mutant friend that she could connect with.


After Autumn showed Kurt the way to his room, pointing out the way to her room if he had any questions. She left him to his own devices, wishing him a good night and shuffling her feet to her own room. The thought of laying down in her own bed and going to sleep with Shay sounded like heaven. Once she got to her room, Autumn hardly remembered to at least take off her shoes before she collapsed onto the oh so soft pillows. The last thing she recalled before falling asleep was Shay cuddling up to her chest, purring contentedly at the sound of her steady heartbeat.

Autumn woke up to a mouthful of fur and impatient mews. Shay had shifted his place sometime in the night and ended up right on her upper neck, nearly on her face. He had started kneading her hair with an even louder meow. She groaned when he meowed in her face yet again, "Someone's a bit hungry... ugh it's too early for this Shay bae."

Gently pushing him off of her face, Autumn checked her alarm clock and noticed that she would've had to get up soon anyways, "Great timing Shay."

He huffed indignantly and padded over to his food bowl, meowing loudly once again. Autumn rolled her eyes at his persistent demands for food. She scooped out his breakfast and told him, "You sure do love your food, fatty."

Shay ignored her comment and started gulping down his food. He acted like she starved him. Autumn chuckled at him and pet his silky back, "You're silly, I'm gonna get dressed."

Once she felt satisfied enough with how she looked with her standard black skinny jeans, a dark brown button up left open over an off white, graphic tank-top and a soft orange camisole underneath it, finishing it up with a pair of knee-high, medium auburn colored boots. Autumn gave Shay a kiss on the head and shrugged on her messenger bag. Making sure that the door was closed, she walked down the corridor, passing an aggravated Scott who was arguing with Jean through the bathroom door. She shook her head and told him, "Give it up hot-shot, she's gonna take as long as she wants."

He just frowned deeper at her and went back to arguing with Jean. Autumn shook her head and continued down the staircase. She was mentally going over a list of upcoming tests and project due dates when she heard the Professor call out to her, "Autumn, would you come here for a moment?"

Autumn veered down the hallway to his study, the still heavily cloaked figure of Kurt Wagner not escaping her notice, and replied, "Sure thing Professor. What can I do you for?"

Before the Professor could respond, Scott called to him, "We're heading out Professor."

"Just a moment you two, come here. There's someone I'd like you to meet," Professor halted them before they could leave.

When they reached the room, the Professor continued, "As you already know Autumn, this is Kurt Wagner. He arrived late last night."

"Hey Kurt, this is Jean and I'm Scott. How you doing?" he held out his hand for a handshake, but Kurt backed away nervously.

Autumn opened her mouth to assure Kurt that there was nothing to be afraid of, but the Professor beat her too it, "You are among friends here, Kurt."

"Yeah, no worries dude," Autumn added on lamely; she was going to say something like what the Professor had said, but oh well.

Kurt hesitantly took his hand out of the pocket and shook Scott's outstretched hand with a soft, accented, "Hello."

To Autumn's mild surprise and excitement, Kurt's hand was blue, covered in a fine fur, and it had only three fingers opposed to Scott's five. Unlike Autumn, who had the common courtesy to mask her surprise, Scott looked utterly shocked. His expression made Kurt rip away his hand and stuff it back into his pocket. Autumn crossed her arms and cocked her hip in an obvious expression of 'you douche'. Her narrowed eyes promised Scott a good shocking later.

The Professor cleared his throat and continued, "I was just telling Kurt how I set up this institute for gifted youngsters. Youngsters whose gifts aren't always an asset. Right Scott?"

Scott had the decency to look nervous, "Uh... so you heard about last night."

"Kinda hard not too, I mean it was on every news channel you could think of," Autumn threw in.

If Autumn could see his eyes, she assumed he would've glared at her, "It was a bad situation and there was an accident... I'm sorry."

"I know," the Professor folded his hands below his chin, "Fortunately, no one was badly hurt and the true cause was not discovered, but you must be more careful Scott," he lectured.

Scott got fed up with all the hits on his slip-up last night, "Come on, Professor! I'm packing a bazooka behind each eyeball! What do you want from me?"

"Control, Scott! That's what you're here to learn. That's why you're all here," He firmly told Scott, before turning to Kurt to explain, "Scott's eyes omit a destructive optic blast beam."

Kurt pulled back his hood and exclaimed with a chuckle, "Cool!"

Autumn flushed at the immediate thought that went through her head, okay... damn he's cute. The fact that he was blue with pointy ears, yellow eyes, and three-fingered hands didn't bother her in the least. She forced herself to calm down and stepped forward, "I didn't get a chance to ask last night, but do ya got a magic trick that gotcha here?"

He suddenly disappeared before her eyes with a small flash, and odd 'bamf' noise, leaving a lingering smell of brimstone behind him. He appeared on the other side of the room, and Autumn grinned when she noticed a spaded tail swishing back and forth mischievously, "Maybe."

Jean and Scott both sounded awed by his mutation, "Woah..."

Autumn just grinned even wider, "That's wicked man!"

The Professor subtly intervened before they could keep asking questions, "I'll be helping Kurt settle in, we can talk more tonight."

The three of them waved, or in Autumn's case called out, their goodbyes as they left the mansion for another day at school... oh the wondrous joys of school.


It was just another typical day of school at Bayville High, with many of her more mind-numbing classes before lunch. It was the break between periods and chattering teenagers were swarming around her while she switched out her binders for her afternoon classes. Autumn could hardly concentrate on any of her classes today, she was too excited to go back to the mansion and talk to Kurt some more. But unfortunately, that would have to wait until she actually finished school. She shut her locker with a sigh and headed to the cafeteria, not particularly feeling hungry.

When Autumn got to the cafeteria, she immediately noticed two things. One, Isabelle with her signature flame red hair and cherry red lipstick standing at their table, waving Autumn over animatedly. Two, Scott standing at the payphones near the entrance. He looked disturbed at whoever he was talking to or whatever they were talking about. So Autumn signaled for Isabelle to wait a minute as she walked over to Scott.

Autumn only caught the tail-end of his conversation of Scott asking, "So, should I bring him in?"

She leaned against the wall behind him and startled him after he hung up, "Bring who in?"

"Jeez Autumn! Are you trying to kill me?" He accused after he composed himself from his embarrassing scare.

"Now I would've done something else if I wanted to kill you. Anyways, who was the Professor talking about?" she asked curiously, as far as Autumn knew, Scott, Jean and her were the only mutants in the school.

Scott rubbed the back of his neck before he relaxed, "Todd Tolansky."

Autumn couldn't help her nose from wrinkling in mild disgust, "Todd Tolansky? Ugh, his personal hygiene needs some work before he can come into the mansion!"

"I agree, but the Professor wants to bring him in and you know we can't argue with him on this," Scott relayed to her. Autumn rolled her eyes and pushed herself off the wall before she responded.

"Yeah yeah, I know. Just keep his stank away from the girl's wing will ya?" Autumn called over her shoulder as she walked to her lunch table.

Nico and Isabelle raised their eyebrows at Autumn's sentence as she plopped into the seat between them. Isabelle handed her apple over to Autumn, not like Isabelle had wanted it anyways, "Keep who's stank away from where?"

Autumn bit into the yellow goodness and waved off the question, "Nothing, it's an inside joke between us."

Her two best friends looked at each other and chimed, "Whatever."


Per Professor's orders, Autumn found herself changing into her X-men costume along with Jean and Scott, with him being in the male changing area obviously. Autumn walked out of the room, pulling on her black bicep bands followed by the matching pair of fingerless gloves that stopped just below her elbows.

Her whole color scheme revolved around black, scarlet, and the signature 'X-Men yellow'. Her top was black with large dark red circles on each of her sides and a red choker-like collar that connected to a straight neckline, leaving some of her chest exposed. Her pants were also black with thick red bands going down each side which she tucked into her knee-high, black combat boots. The last touches to the outfit were two, red armor plates with yellow detailing on each of them on her upper thighs, a metal harness of the same coloring with padded plates resting on her shoulders and the connecting strap stopping directly above her top's straight neckline, and finally a red belt with a yellow 'X' buckle.

Everything was skin-tight and very flexible, but even with its flexibility, the outfit made Autumn just a bit uneasy. She chose to wear her comfortable skinny jeans and loose tops every day, nothing even close to this outfit's snugness. Perhaps she would get used to it after a few more weeks of wear, but for now she'd just have to deal with her discomfort.

Jean noticed how Autumn still fidgeted with the top and pants of her outfit and was about to reassure her but red lights began to flash around them and the Professor spoke into all of their minds at once, "Scott, Jean, Autumn! Kurt and Todd have teleported into the Danger Room!"

Scott turned to the girls with a panicked expression, "Ah man, the Danger Room has automated defenses!"

"It'll attack them with everything it's got!," Jean cried out.

"We have to save them before it turns them to toast!" Autumn followed Jean to the Danger Room as Scott hurriedly yanked his boot on

"Get in there! Hurry!" the Professor called before pulling out of their minds.

The three mutants got into the Danger Room to see Kurt and Todd frantically dodging everything the Danger Room tried to eliminate them with everything from lasers to tentacles to flying projectiles. Scott turned to Jean and Autumn, "I've got the canons. Jean, keep them clear of the tentacles. Autumn, try to shut down the Danger Room."

Autumn's eyes widened to saucers as she shakily replied, "Gotcha," as Jean flew off with a firm, "Got it."

She'd never controlled something as big as the Danger Room before, she's only ever shut down a few lasers or tentacles at a time before, nothing near the entire security system of the Danger Room. Hell they'd only worked out that she was even a technopath a week ago! But the lives of two fellow mutants were on the line, so Autumn shook her head and focused on following the wires back to the mainframe of the Danger Room. The explosions and girly screams from Todd weren't helping. She found it after a few seconds, but there were too many encryptions and firewalls to bypass for her too completely shut down the Danger Room.

Autumn growled in frustration, but gasped when she saw the laser Kurt had tried to unplug go berserk, flinging him off of it like a bucking bronco and blasting Scott and Todd, sending them flying across the Danger Room. She frantically hatched a plan and scanned her surroundings for any exposed wires. Once she found some, she sprinted to them and gripped them in her clenched fist, sending out a strong, continuous bolt of electricity, frying the wires and hopefully sending the current to the mainframe, "I sure hope this works."

It took a few seconds, but all the computers in the control room were electrocuted and the security system began to shut down. The claw that was aiming to crush Kurt jolted with electricity and fell to the floor. Ororo flew down to the training area and congratulated Autumn for her quick thinking, since her technopath skills had refused to cooperate her.

Todd shakily pulled himself to his feet as he cried out, "Forget this man! I've seen enough! I am outta here!"

Scott called after him, "Tolansky," but groaned as Jean helped him get up, "I'm sorry Professor, I couldn't stop him."

"It's alright, Cyclops. He wasn't ready to be one of us," the Professor consoled through the PA system, that had somehow survived the electrocution, but turned to the monitor showing Kurt when he started talking.

"I blew it too, Professor. You've been wonderful, but I guess... I just don't belong here," and with that he teleported away before the Professor could stop him.

Scott stepped up to go after him, but Autumn intervened, "Take it easy Scott, I got it."

He tried to protest, but she thwarted his attempts, "You got blasted across the Danger Room, I didn't. So just take it easy, fearless, I'll handle it."


Autumn found Kurt in the docking hangar, uttering an awed, "Was ist das?"

He spun around when she walked in explaining the X-Jet to him, "Now that would be the SR-77 or the X-Jet as we like to call it. It's twice as fast as the SR-71 and it's got three times the range and fire power. Pretty sweet huh?"

He grinned and turned back to the impressive jet, "Sehr gut! Is it yours? Please tell me you get to fly it!"

Autumn chuckled, "Yup that bad boy's ours! I could show you how to pilot it if you choose to stick around. So what do ya say Kurt? You wanna stay a while?"

She groaned internally when her godawful Pittsburgh accent broke through at the end, slurring her words a bit, but she placed a friendly hand on his shoulder with a grin and cringed mentally.

He looked down at her with confusion before turning his head away shamefully, "Me? I almost got you killed a few minutes ago."

"So? Listen, we all mess up sometimes. I know I do on a daily basis with my powers, but that's why we're all here; to mess up, learn from it, move on and become stronger so we mess up less often," Autumn told him gently after she squeezed his shoulder and took her hand away. The Professor had given her a more eloquent version of this speech after she'd nearly electrocuted him during their first training session.

He turned his head back to her bashfully, "You.. you don't mind ze way I look?"

"Are you kidding? You look freakin' cool! Why would I mind?" Autumn exclaimed, finally expressing how fascinating she found his appearance.

"Really? You are not yanking my tail?" He asked hopefully, his pale yellow eyes lighting up.

"Not at all, welcome to the team Kurt," Autumn grinned as she gently tugged him away from the jet by his wrist, "Come on, I'll show you where we hide all the goodies in the kitchen."