Hello fan fiction fans! If you've read this story up to this point, then that means a heck of a lot to me. I didn't think I`d make it to double-digit chapters! Thanks for all your support, I definitely wouldn't be here (in word form) if it wasn't for all your favourites, follows, reviews, and PMs! Keep it coming! Now, let`s start with the tenth chapter now, shall we?…
Chapter 10: A Fiery Rest of the Day
I've always hated history class because it's always so boring. It's probably the only subject in school that I actually didn't like learning about. Everything else is interesting.
But history here at Mutant School is different. It's way more interesting than I thought it'd be. I don't really know how to describe it, but mutant history is a lot more interesting than human history at Mutant School. The first class of the day finished before I knew it, and pretty soon I was walking with Kitty on my way to my next class.
The second class of the day was Science with a mutant man named Dr. Hank McCoy, who's codename is Beast. He had an odd appearance like Kurt Wagner, only Dr. McCoy has blue skin and fur, abnormally large hands and feet, and sort of resembles a blue ape. He is definitely a smart guy, hence "Doctor", but unlike his codename, he is a kind and gentle mutant with superhuman strength and agility. I already feel that he is one of my favourite teachers with his witty sense of humour and kindness.
The third class of the day was Art class with Mr. Wagner, which I expected from earlier. He made a grand entrance into the classroom by suddenly appearing on his desk from nowhere in a purple puff of smoke, proving once again that his mutant power is to teleport. I also learned that his X-Men codename is Nightcrawler. His mutantity also gives him superhuman agility with his three fingers and all.
We ate lunch, and then the class after that was Close Combat class/Phys-Ed with Mr. Logan, whose codename is Wolverine. Of all the teachers at the school I have met so far, he would probably be my least favourite. Not that I don't like him. He just sounds really grumpy, gruff and intense, and when he's fighting, he's an absolute monster. That's probably why they call him Wolverine. I also found that he has three long claws in his knuckles made of adamantium (the metal), but that's all I know. I was told that that is not the mutant power he was born with, and those claws were given to him by force from a program called Weapon X. I never found out what his real mutation is, though.
Next class was Math with Dr. McCoy again. I explained who he is already. The last class of the day was Life Skills with Prof. Xavier. Basically, in this class you never know what the Professor will be talking about or teaching that day. Sometimes the Professor will talk about history, or the future, politics, or some other topic. Today the Professor talked about the Sentinels and how we mutants can protect against them, but we can basically exhale because the Sentinel program has been halted, but we still need to be careful since the government will bring them back without hesitation. The school day ended pretty soon, so that's why I'm relaxing in my room now at 4:35 PM.
I lay on my bed, my metal exoskeleton wrapped around my leg like a cinder block, trying to relax after my first day at "Mutant High". According to my schedule, my first Danger Room session is scheduled for 5:30 tonight, with my second and third session at the same time on Wednesday and Friday. I also learned from reading my weekly schedule that Music replaces Art on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is also taught by Mr. Wagner. All I'm really doing right now is staring at the ceiling and deciding whether or not I should start on that math and history homework now or later when I hear a knock on the my door. I get up to answer it and make my way towards the door, but when I place my hand on the doorknob, my danger sense goes off. My instincts are telling me not to open that door.
Not sure what to expect, I take a few steps back until the edge of my bed stops me. The person at the door continues to knock, each knock getting more impatient and louder than the next. After about ten more seconds of continuous knocking to no avail, the person angrily shouted loud enough for me to hear him from the other side of the door. "I know you're in there, little girl! Open up or I'm burning this door down!"
Pyro.
Reluctantly, I use my telekinesis to turn the door knob from my distance and swing the door open. As expected, Pyro is standing in the doorway, his lighter in hand opened and lit, and his other hand with flames dancing on his fingers. His mutant power to manipulate fire, which I experienced earlier, allows him to do such a thing without getting burnt. He is looking angry and fierce.
"If you're going to call me something, call me Trinity." I say in a snarky way. "I would say Trin, but only my friends call me that. Buttheads don't have the authority to.
He ignored my comment. "Thanks to you, Xavier kicked me out of the school! I have to pack my things and get out within the next hour, and it's all yours and Drake's fault!" he wailed like a little kid.
I felt a small wave of happiness wash over me. I haven't even known Pyro the Butthead for a full day, and it already felt like he'd been my lifetime nemesis. I guess that's what happens when you're as short-tempered and jerky as he and Skylar is.
My eyebrows furrowed. "Actually, if anything it's your fault!" I shot back. "It's your own stupid fault that you tried to set me on fire for nothing and it backfired on you when Bobby showed up! If there's anything to blame for your relieving expulsion, it's you and your sad excuse for a brain!"
With full-on anger, Pyro stomped closer to me and attempted to grab my shirt collar with his fiery hand. If he touches me with that hand, he would definitely set me on fire instantly. Fortunately, with the help of my danger sense, I quickly darted to my right to avoid his fiery swipe, nearly crashing into one of my dressers. This is the wrong place to have a fight.
"There's no point in fighting, Pyro!" I said matter-of-factly. "You can just walk through that door now before you get hurt, or anything gets destroyed."
He smirked devilishly. "I'm not the one who's going to get hurt."
He outstretched his one arm that did not hold the lighter. The fire from his lighter grew larger and jumped to his hand, seemingly growing larger within it. He then outstretched the arm and sent a blast of fire right at me. I instinctively jumped forward with an acrobatic front flip, soaring over both the blast of fire and the fire distributer and landing right behind the unaware Pyro. I raised my hand and hit him straight on the back of his neck with a knife-handed strike. He cried out in agony as he dropped his lighter and fell over on his hands and knees and all the fire disappeared suddenly. He had not been firing long enough to set anything aflame.
"This is your only warning, Pyro." I informed him seriously. "Get out of here like Professor said, right now, before something bad happens."
I saw a drop of blood drip off of his lip and onto the floor. Jeez, I didn't know I hit him that hard!
"It's kinda too late for that." he muttered bitterly.
He didn't get up on his feet, but instead twisted around entirely and sent another blast of fire at me which had travelled to his hands from the dropped lighter. Instead of dodging the blast, I outstretched my arms towards the flames and used my telekinesis to stop the fire from reaching me. It worked, and the fire stopped in its tracks as soon as it reached my arms, but Pyro continued to fire even more flames at me, making it hard to contain it all. The rapidly increasing fire is being pushed closer and closer towards me. Pyro is now standing, a crazed look in his eyes, and sweat is started to drip down my forehead, from both heat and nervousness. Just as I was about to ditch this idea and dive away for my life, to both my and Pyro's surprise, a blue beam hit Pyro square on his chest. He went flying through the air and crashed into the wall with great force, falling to the ground face down. He groaned, struggling to get to his feet, then gave up and fell back to the ground, knocked out cold.
Speaking of cold…
I turned on my heels to see Bobby standing there with his hand raised, pointing at the spot where Pyro had been hit with the ice beam. Cold steam was coming out of his palm, so he brought it up to his face and blew on it to blow the steam away. He smiled at me. "You're welcome." he said in a snarky way.
"Yeah yeah, I was about to say thanks." I said. "That's the second time you've saved me today."
"Yeah, John can be a real a** sometimes…all the time, actually."
"Tell me something I didn't know." I rolled my eyes. "There's a reason I call him a butthead."
Trinity? What was that crash? A concerned voice says inside my head. Professor X's.
Pyro tried to take his anger out on me after you kicked him out of the school. I thought as my reply to him. Violently. But then Bobby showed up, now everything's all good.
Okay. he replied in my head. I'm not surprised. John has always been the violent vengeful type. Is he unconscious?
Uh…yeah. Sorry 'bout that.
No need to apologize. It was only for self-defense, I'm sure. Just bring him back to his room and I'll do the rest. It's room #302.
Okay. Thanks Prof.
A brief humming sound told me that he had broken off his connection to me. I turned to Bobby.
"Was that the Professor?" he asked.
"Yeah." I replied. "He wants us to bring Pyro back to his room."
"So that Professor can mind-control him into actually leaving the school the polite way that he isn't. Sounds reasonable." he scoffed.
We both carried the unconscious Pyro and made our way to room #302. Luckily, he had left his door swung open, so we didn't need to go and get Kitty to phase us through his locked door. We placed him on his bed before going back to his room. I thanked Bobby for his help once again, when he admitted that he had actually been on his way to my room to try and surprise me again when he saw what was happening. After he left, I sat at my desk to start on my math and history homework.
About half an hour later, when I went to the kitchen to grab a snack, I see Pyro mindlessly going down the stairs, luggage dragging behind him. I can't help but smile. Good ol' Professor.
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
I wait outside of the Danger Room at 5:27 along with some other mutant students for the teacher to show up. This is my only class of the day where I have no friends. In all my other classes, it was always either Kitty, Bobby or sometimes even both of them in the same class as me, but not this time. Kitty had told me that it is because all X-Men train together rather than with the non-X-people. That sucks. Now I'm just praying that there are no partner activities. Hey, I'm good at being friends with people, not making friends!
After another few minutes of agonizing wait, a woman with long, red hair finally showed up. She wore a green costume with yellow sleeves, gloves, long boots and a yellow X across her chest. I can tell that it is her X-Man uniform.
"Good afternoon, everyone." she smiled warmly at everyone. "I'll just open the door for you guys, and you can go in. Mr. Summers got held up with something, but he should be here shortly."
She walked up to the humongous door and placed her hand on the hand scanner to unlock it. The lights flashed green, signaling that access has been granted, and the doors automatically slid open. All the kids started to file into the Danger Room, including me. I made my way towards the inside of the room along with everyone else.
"You must be our new student."
I turn to see the red-headed teacher smiling at me friendly-like.
"Yeah, I'm new here." I replied.
She stuck her hand out to shake. "I'm Dr. Jean Grey. The Profoessor told me about you. I'll be instructing Danger Room sessions 5:30 to 7:00 on Mondays and Wednesdays along with my partner Mr. Summers, who isn't here yet. It'll just be him instructing on Fridays."
I shake her hand and distinctively remember what Bobby had said to me the other day when I first met him. You've got telekeh? Like Dr. Grey?
"I'm Trinity. You have telekinesis?" I ask out of nowhere.
"Yes." she replies. "And telepathy. How did you know?"
"Bobby told me. You're a telepath, like Professor?"
"Nowhere near that powerful." She smiled. "Come on, we're holding up the rest of the class. You ready for your very first danger room session?"
"As ready as I'll ever be."
We walk into the room to see all the other mutant kids stretching out and warming up for the upcoming activities. Surprisingly, I don't feel as nervous as I thought I'd be.
"Okay, people." Dr. Grey started. "Mr. Scott Summers is actually in the control room right now preparing our session…"
This made everyone look up towards the glass-surrounded control room way above us to see Mr. Scott Summers working with the controls over the big control panel. He looked up to notice all of our looks and gave a weak wave. He wore a black leather hooded costume with a yellow belt that had a red X symbol in the middle of it, two thin yellow stripes going down the sides of his chest and more yellow around the cuffs of his gloved hands and black boots. He is obviously in his X-Man uniform as well, but what catches my eye is the red ruby-quartz visor he is wearing with one thick lens that extends over both eyes. I can't help but wonder why he wears it.
"…so while we wait for him on that, let's first do some warm-ups, shall we?" Dr. Grey said.
For the next five minutes, we did basic warm-up stretches as well as a half lap around the room (It's only half a lap since the room is too insanely big to even do a full lap) until Mr. Summers gave Dr. Grey a signal from above that meant he was ready.
"Okay, we're ready to start." she announced. "Today we'll start off with something basic; just getting to the other side of the room as fast as you can."
Everybody in the room groaned except for me, since I didn't know any better. If getting to the other end of the room as fast as you can is so hard, than obviously that means there is some kind of catch.
"Who wants to start?" Nobody moved. "Okay then…Trinity, since you're new, would you like to start?"
The question takes me by surprise. And it's one of those questions that only parents and teachers ask where you obviously are not allowed to say no. "Uh…Okay." I answer with some nervousness in my voice. A few people snicker behind me as I step forward. Dr. Grey smiles and walks out of the room. A few seconds later she is above us in the glass-surrounded control room alongside Mr. Summers. He presses a button and leans downward slightly to speak into a microphone.
"Okay Trinity. Like Ms. Grey said, just get to the other end of the room as fast as possible." The mic projected his serious voice throughout the entire room. "The timer will stop as soon as you touch the other wall, but take it from any student; there will be a few…obstacles to slow you down." A few kids smirked. They obviously don't know what I am capable of.
I get into a ready position to start running. No need to be nervous. Just need to get past the "obstacles" and get to the other side of the room…
"3…" Dr. Grey starts the countdown, speaking through the mic. "2...1…GO!"
I break out sprinting not completely at top speed. The last thing I want to do is waste all my energy at the beginning. Still, I'm trying to get there as fast as possible, but I haven't seen any of those "obstacles" yet.
All of a sudden, part of the wall on my right gets uncovered to reveal a bunch of big holes, like the kinds that shoots out bullets or missiles. One missile shoots out of each hole rapidly, which equals to about fifteen missiles coming at me in total. I try simply stepping out of the way, but it turns out that they follow me; and they're coming fast. Thinking [very] fast, I dodge the first one by jumping high into the air, but use my telekinesis to grab onto it once it misses me. I swing it back around and send it flying towards the other incoming missiles. The impact destroys about four of them in total. Then with great speed, I weave through the remaining ten missiles expertly, practically squeezing between two every time. On the last two missiles, I lowered just my upper body as low as I could to avoid them, then I spun around and pushed every remaining missile that had failed to hit me into the wall, making them all explode on impact.
I continue to run when suddenly several tall and thick spinning poles with many knives attached pop up in front of me. I run and expertly jump, duck and somersault my way through all the spinning knives of death. Any normal person would not have been able to pull off such a maneuver without being cut up. Good thing I have just the right superpower for that kind of situation.
Once I'm passed those rotating knives, I continue to run towards the wall. At this point, I've made it about halfway across the room already. Next thing I know, two huge flamethrowers pop up and spit fire rapidly in front of me. I pick up speed and jump between the two lines of fire, acrobatically front flipping through without getting touched. I felt the heat around me as I went through, which brought back bad memories from that close call earlier today. It was definitely a tight squeeze to get through, so it's a good thing I let my danger sense take over so I could do that flip to sort of make myself small enough to squeeze through. I can't help but think Rotating knives, missiles and flamethrowers?! Are these people trying to kill me or something?!
Almost there. I should probably be expecting only one or two more surprises now.
As I approach just a few meters away from the wall that marks my finish, a metal wall suddenly comes out of the ground a few feet in front of me. It is practically as long as the room itself, so it's impossible to go around, but it is also several inches taller than me, and too high to jump over - or so I thought.
Instinctively, I speed up my pace so I am running at top speed, and I jump over the wall perfectly, without even grazing the top. Only an Olympic Pole Vaulter at my height could have accomplished that kind of jump (but with a pole, of course). I seemingly fly over the wall and land perfectly on my feet. Man, I never knew I could jump that high!
Suddenly, my danger sense goes off, making me instinctively know what needs to be done. I somersault to my left to avoid a trap door that opened under where I had been less than a second ago. Then my danger sense warned me of another where I was crouched now, so I dove forward to avoid it, beginning to land on my hands. The millisecond I landed, my danger sense went off a third time, so I pushed off the floor forwards with my arms, spun in a cartwheel-ish way and landed on my feet. I was now only a couple of feet from the finishing wall, so I ran like I was on fire and dove for it when I was about a foot away, landing on the ground with both hands flat against the wall.
A low humming sound tells me that the simulation has stopped. I get up to my feet and look over to the students on the other side of the room who had been watching me. Some were clapping, some cheering, a few doing both, and the rest just stared with their mouths gaping open, surprised, shocked and in awe of my amazing performance from just now. I look up at Dr. Grey and Mr. Summers, who look very happy and also in awe of what they had just experienced. Mr. Summers looks down at his watch which had been used to time my performance.
"One minute and thirty-six seconds!" Mr. Summers said excitedly through the microphone. "I think that's our record for this year so far!"
Everyone clapped this time, including our two instructors from above in the control room. I just smiled and breathed heavily. I was out of breath, my lungs were burning and my face was covered in sweat. That's probably the most tiring thing I've ever done in my life, and believe me, I've done a lot of tiring things in my lifetime, but none of them are close to this. That took a minute and a half. Imagine how it's going to be like for another hour and a half!
I'm not really sure what happened after that. I was able to catch my breath while watching all the other guys do the same "Get-to-the-other-end-of-the-room" challenge as me, but everybody knew that I still did the best. Everyone was slowed down greatly by actually getting hit by the obstacles, which I had easily avoided and therefore didn't get hit at all. Whatever happened after that was all a blur, because once the Danger Room session was done, I was too exhausted to think about anything. I just trudged back to my room, changed into my pajamas and flopped onto my bed without doing anything else. Within five minutes, I was fast asleep.
Good first day.
THE END!...of the chapter, of course! You really think I would end the story HERE?! Anyway, thanks so much for reading! I apologize for taking longer than usual to finish this chapter, but like I said in the last chapter, it's school time again, so I'm being held up with that. You should expect it more in the future. :-( See you in the chapter 11! :-D