[AN: Ok, so between helping one of my clients bake for Thanksgiving and doing my own baking, I finally managed to get away long enough to edit and put a chapter out! Woot! Also in the AN news; since I got that new job as a search engine (tech support for a company that started as a search engine lol) I have to go through a whole month of training starting December second, which means that I'll be doing about seventy hours of work a week! Seriously! So I wanted to tell you all that I will be VERY busy all next month. Don't worry, though, I'll try to get as much of the stuff edited as I can before that starts so I can get it out on time, and I will still be posting, it just might be a little late, like today's. Sorry, but at least I hope you'll all bear with me through this strain on my writing time. Anyway, here's the new chapter, I hope you enjoy it! Please feel free to review, message me, or just read!]

Kerri flew up into the air, straight toward the hovering figure to take him down, just like she'd practiced so many times in training. She could tell that he was the one making the strange sound, and thought that if she could beat him, whatever was happening with the sound would stop, she wasn't sure what it was, but if they were enemies, it could be a weapon.

"Kid, leave him," Logan called up to her as he attacked a redhead with blue skin.

She turned her wings and suddenly shot to the right, making a u-turn around him, shooting back past behind him and towards the ground at another target without even questioning it.

She headed toward a dark figure in a red shirt that looked like he had a porcupine on his head and aimed at a spot where there weren't things poking out as much, his waist. She tilted into a drive, gaining speed, and just passing him, wrapped her tail around his waist.

He stumbled, pulled off balance, and Kerri's feet came forward, griping into the ground with her taloned toes, using her momentum and strength to fling him over her head towards a tree.

She was crouched on the ground, her tail over her head when Logan hastily walked past her, saying, "I'm going to warn Xavier, you keep 'em occupied for a second."

Kerri watched him pass, but something struck her as off with this. She pushed off with her gripped toes, getting in front of him. "No," she told him. "No one gets in." Her head tilted forward slightly in challenge.

"Get the hell out of my way kid," Logan demanded, walking towards her, but she whipped her tail in front of him and back, making him stop to avoid being hit.

"What's my name?" She challenged.

Logan smiled, a smile he'd never smile. "Ok, you got me." Logan shifted, his likeness moving back to reveal the blue skinned redhead.

Kerri tilted her head. This woman was an appearance shifter.

She also had a sort of laser gun, which she pulled out to threaten Kerri with. "Now, get out of the way, little girl, before I hurt you."

But Kerri wasn't impressed. Her tail flew out, grabbing the woman's hand and jerking it to the side so the weapon wasn't aimed at her. She stared into the woman's eyes with a challenge for a moment before snapping her tail, pulling the woman to the ground a few feet to the left, she snapped her tail again, arcing it so she flung the woman into the air and slammed her into the ground next to her. There was a pause in movement as she gathered her strength, but then Kerri threw her through the air as hard as she could, aimed at Logan, who punched her hard enough that when she landed on the ground she was wavering on the edge of consciousness.

"Good pitch, Kid," Logan commented, not yet in full berserker mode.

Kerri nodded and hopped a little, flying towards the darker porcupine boy, gaining as much speed as she could on the way, then reaching out and grabbing the front of his shirt, her feet landing just a little past him, and she used her momentum to throw him like a shot put, turning and letting go.

He flew through the air for a couple of feet, then landed, rolling to his feet. He sprang up and pointed towards her, shooting out a few of his quills at her.

Her eyes widened and she leaped into the air thinking, 'that's disturbing...'

She was headed back to where Logan was fighting the redhead again, only a few feet off the ground, but her tail was suddenly grabbed by a silver haired boy, and she was being pulled backwards at incredible speeds.

She flared her wings and felt the boy's hand slide down her tail a little, but they didn't want to stay open. She got an idea, and stretched her fin out, then flared her wings, this time holding onto them with her hands to give them extra support.

Her tail blade sliced into the boy's hand as it was jerked down her tail farther, and he let her go.

She stood facing him and whipped her tail through the air, slicing a furrow in the ground. "I wouldn't touch that if I were you," she told him.

He looked at her smugly, although he was the one with the cut, so she had no idea what he had to be smug about. "Littlefirecrackerarn'tyou, full of surprises."

Kerri saw a few quills coming towards her, so she leaped into the air and out of the way, not sure what the boy had said except that she was full of surprises.

She was crossing the air toward the quilled boy when a huge chunk of the barred fence flew at her. She turned and dove upside down, evading it, and the silver haired boy easily reached her when he launched a punch into her side.

Kerri flew sideways, landing on the ground. Her side throbbed, but the boy didn't seem to have super strength, so that was a plus. She stood up, and was immediately plowed over by the silver haired boy.

'Speed,' she thought, 'super speed is his power.' She tried to get up to fly out of his reach, but he caught her, hitting and kicking her back to the ground while he taunted her.

"You'renot reallythat badlooking, youknow. Maybe youshould joinus andhang outwithme."

"I don't know what you're saying, you limp armed pansy," Kerri told him, trying to distract him and make him slip up.

The boy stopped and stared at her. He did not look amused. "Excuse me, let me talk slow so the stupid people can catch on, I said that you don't look too bad, and maybe you should join us to hang out with me, but now I'm not so sure."

Kerri had been gathering her muscles back to her, and now she smirked. "It should have been, "let me speak slowly," dipshit," she said as her tail shot forward, grabbing around his neck and whipping him backwards against a tree.

She leaped into the air, flapping to get away from him. She had to dodge as a few quills and lasers came at her.

She landed for a second, ripping the gun out of the redhead's hands before leaping back up, and flung it ahead of her, hoping the redhead wouldn't be able to get it, or at least would take a while, but the floating man with the strange noise held out his arm and directed it back to the woman.

"Be more careful with your toys, Mystique," he told her, but Kerri whipped out her tail as it passed her, slicing the gun in half.

Kerri knew Logan was down on the ground, pounding the resilient mutants into the ground over and over, but she still had porcupine boy shooting at her.

She went into a steep dive and headed right for him, going to tackle him into the ground a few feet, but the silver haired boy caught her in the side, knocking her to the ground again.

He began running around her at super speed, hitting and kicking her as he passed, going so fast it was like she was constantly being hit by an invisible force.

But Kerri had a superpower that life had given her, not mutant genes, and she closed her eyes, taking a breath.

She pushed the pain out of her mind and focused on a ring of grass around her, it wasn't a very big one, limited by her powers, and made it sharp, spiky, pointed.

The boy stopped, yelling in pain as he steeped and the grass went right through his shoe.

Kerri opened her eyes and smiled, letting it go and trying to leap into the air, but he caught her, holding her in his arms and saying, "give me a kiss, baby." Kerri gritted her teeth in disgust and closed her eyes, imagining spikes everywhere on her body. He dropped her, holding his hands up. "Youbitch!"

"Don't touch me, you perv!" Kerri said loudly, flying straight up, but having to dodge a large ball of metal. "You're not the only one who can go fast, you prick," she said as she continued straight up.

She flapped hard, getting above the trees and continuing up.

She was going to go fast. Her wings struggled to continue in the dead air, but she pushed harder. She was going to go very fast. Her breath was coming fast in the warm air, and her muscles wanted to give out. She was at least a hundred feet up when she got to the top of her path and her wings stopped. She took a breath and closed her eyes, laying back and turning in an arc so she was pointed at the ground.

She rocketed toward the ground, entering the tree cover and looking for her target. The wind was blowing past her so fast her hair whipped back and forth, ripping out of the bun she'd stuck it in. It tore at her feathers and a few of them fell to the ground.

The g-force felt like an extreme roller coaster ride, except that if she lost control, she'd crash into something so hard she'd probably die.

There was a glimmer of silver hair and she angled herself towards him, her feet coming forward to grab on as she plowed into him, almost riding him like a surfboard across the grass.

He grabbed her shirt and pulled, making her tumble over him, but she held onto his legs with her hands and flared her wings to get back on top. He grabbed her tail and they rolled to a stop, fighting in a heap, neither one actually very strong physically, just bruising each other viciously.

Kurt, Kitty and Piotr heard a ruckus and saw a familiar form floating in the sky.

"Magneto," Piotr spat, running forward to help Logan. Kitty followed, leaping to catch and making a large ball of metal phase through Piotr, Logan, and Mystique.

A barbed projectile flew at Kurt, and he turned to see a dark boy covered in the same barbed projectiles coming at him as he teleported away, turning off his image inducer.

He reappeared a distance away, taking in his startled expression. "New?" He asked as he teleported again, finding a good spot to attack to disable him, dodging another round of projectiles at the same time.

"Yeah, they call me Quill," the boy told him.

"Ja? How original, vhat did zhey do, just look at you? Vhy not Porcupine, or Hedgehog?" Kurt laughed.

"Oh, yeah? What do they call you, Fuzzboy? Demonfuzz?" Quill shot back, aiming more quills at him.

Kurt teleported again. "Nein, zhey call me Nightcrawler."

Kerri broke away from the boy, turning and jumping into the air, and saw Kurt a ways away, obviously drawing the porcupine boy away from the others. "Kurt," she whispered, her heart throbbed once and she turned towards them.

There was no good place to grab this guy to pin him, not without getting shot full of quills, anyway, but she had to get him away from Kurt.

Cyclops, Storm, and Jean had made it outside, going to the main group of people while Xavier stayed by the door, using his powers from there.

'Logan, go to your student, she may need guidance,' Jean said in his head, stopping the ball of metal in the air, and getting into a power struggle with Magneto over it.

Kerri landed behind Quill as he shot another set of spines at Nightcrawler. "Stop," she said, "why are you even here? Who are you?"

Quill turned and sent a few spines at her, saying, "we're the Brotherhood, we're fighting for mutant kind, for mutant supremacy, because we're better than humans, and we don't need to take their crap!"

Kerri's wing reacted almost on it's own, curling around to cover her. "Metal, metal, metal," she chanted, shifting it for a second as the spines hit. "Then why are you attacking a school for mutants? Lost? Stupid?" She asked effectively distracting him, dodging to the side of another group of spines.

Kurt thought his heart was going to stop for a second as the barbed arrows flew at her. "Kerri, get out of here, it's dangerous," he told her, trying to get her away from the danger.

She glared at him. "So now you're talking to me? Of course it's to tell me to leave. I'm sorry, ok? It was an accident! Whatever happened, I didn't mean to!" She almost yelled as she flew out of the way, spiraling to miss the spines coming through the air.

"Can you solve your marital problems after we kick your asses?" Quill demanded, shooting at Kerri and Kurt at the same time.

"Shut up, you're only still whole because we're not supposed to hurt anyone," Kerri called to him, landing and trying to grab him with her tail.

He caught it, smirking and asking, "What are you going to do now?"

Kerri gave a half smile and the end of her tail flipped at his shoulder, slicing off some of his quills. "It does more than just grab things."

Quill let go of her tail quickly, worried she might try to cut more than just quills next time. He shot in a new direction, making the two look to see Logan coming toward them, now pulling quills out of his arm like it was nothing.

Kerri winced at the trails of blood running down his forearm, then was startled by a cry of pain.

Her head whipped to Kurt, who stood for a moment, then fell to the ground, shock and worry evident on his face, four quills sticking out of his shoulder, looking dangerously close to his heart.

The blood drained from Kerri's face as she watched him fall in slow motion. "Kurt!"

She moved to get closer, but Quill shot a set of quills into the ground in front of her, making her step back. "He's my kill, stay back."

"Kill?" The word slipped out of Kerri's mouth, dark and slimy, covered in distaste.

"We don't have the same rules as you do," Quill told her. "And I'm going to make a name for myself, he's my first kill, but I'll have more soon, two right now. Say your goodbyes; soon you'll be dead."

Dead, was Kurt dead? She was staring at him, unable to move forward, but his eyes were closed and his body was still, she couldn't tell. He looked dead...

"Kurt..." Her voice was soft, mourning, pleading.

"He can't hear you; he's dead, but you'll be with him soon," the prickly teen told her slowly, like she was stupid.

Kerri felt something inside snap; all of the feelings she'd been feeling, all her worries, fears, hopes, came crashing together, culminating into one big feeling, and she felt something snap.

"You just said the wrong thing, bub," Logan told him, sensing the change in the atmosphere.

Quill sneered and was about to comment to Kerri, but when he turned to look at her, he stopped.

There was an oppressing feeling spreading out as an aura of darkness surrounded her. Her jaw clenched, her eyes became hard as steel, her posture turned rigid, and if looks could kill, he'd already be dead.

"Don't take it too bad, just join us, and you can-" He was cut off by the first shout Logan had ever heard leave Kerri's mouth.

"SHUT UP AND SIT DOWN!" Saliva flew like venom from her mouth as she yelled, the sound of his voice making her more angry. Her tail flew forward, about to smack him into the ground.

She looked at Kurt, who lay on the ground, blood pooling across his chest, looking unconscious and, dead?

She hadn't been able to tell him she loved him.

Now she would never be able to.

He was gone.

She had no one.

Nothing.

Again.

She stopped her tail from knocking Quill to the ground, grabbing him and pulling him close, instead. Her hand wrapped around his arm, her fingers weaving around the quills and digging in, the sharp nails almost puncturing his skin. "No, you're going to feel my pain," she told him, her voice as hard and dark as onyx.

She didn't notice Logan going to Kurt as her tail flew back, the fin pulling back and exposing the spine.

Quill was worried that she was going to cut him, so he shot a spine of his own at her, catching her tail, but she just pushed the feeling of pain through her hand and into him, distracting him from trying anything further.

Kerri tilted her head, her wing stretched out.

Her tail flew through the air, slicing through the muscle and bone of her wing, making it feel like someone had poured ice water under her skin, freezing her nerves, as her wing dropped to the ground.

Her scream of pain filled the night air, echoing off of the trees and the school, surrounding them as she pushed the pain through her hand, into Quill, who was staring at her like she was a lunatic.

Which she might have been at that point, she hurt too much to be able to tell at the moment.

She fell to her knees on the ground, blood dripping down her back and vomit flowing into a pool from her mouth at the intense pain.

She looked at him where he'd fallen to join her. She could see the pain on his face, his eyes clenched shut, his muscles stiffening as though he was feeling the same thing she was spread out all over his body, but it didn't feel like it was enough.

"I'm going to shatter your world, like you shattered mine," her voice was painted with pain and hatred.

She dug down, finding the horrible emotions she'd had on that last night at her mother's house and pushing them through her hand onto Quill.

They pulled her down, drowning her in them as they flowed through her. They only added to the dark thoughts flowing through her head at the moment, though, number one being to make this foul excuse for a human being pay for what he'd done.

Logan was at Kurt's side, he could hear the fuzzy blue elf mumbling in German, but he knew German, so he could tell what he was saying; "I love you, Kerri, my angel, Kerri, beautiful, wonderful..." He repeated the words over and over.

Logan wasn't surprised that Kurt loved her, but it was another thing to hear it as what he thought was his dying breath. "Shut it, Elf, you're going to live, just gotta get you to the Doc." He looked over at Kerri, she was on three limbs, blood flowing down her back and arm, her other hand was griping so tight to the mutant in the red shirt that blood was starting to seep out around her fingers.

"Kid, stop it, shift back, or you're gonna die," Logan told her, but the feelings she'd dug up to push on Quill were the ones that had plagued her once before, and now they were running rampant in her head; the questioning of life, if it was worth it, the feelings of everyone hating you and that you were lower that the lowest life form, until you were in the category of it being questioned if you even counted as a life form, until all the feelings made it seem as if the only escape, the only way you'd ever be able to stop feeling this way, the only way you might have a glimmer at happiness, or that anyone would even realize that you even existed, was death, and even then, probably not.

The suicidal thoughts were flowing through her head, making her not care that she was getting light headed and bleeding to death. At least she'd be able to see Kurt again.

A hand slapped across her face, making her look up at Logan. "He's alive, but we need to get him to McCoy, now shift back and help him," Logan ordered, going to keep Mystique away as she attacked them.

Her body followed the order without even thinking about it. The blood stopped flowing as the remains of her wings disappeared and her back closed. She let go of Quill and stood, running to Kurt and falling, hearing his slurred German mumbles.

"Kurt," her eyes flowed with tears, the pain and anger pushed out of her mind for the moment as he blearily looked up at her through mostly closed lids.

Time seemed to flow slowly as her brain whirred back to work.

She stuck out her hands, towels appearing. She grabbed onto them, rolling them and winding them around the quills. Her hand went out, open, squeezing the air once, a rolled bandage appearing, she wrapped it around him tightly, getting pressure to the wounds, she cut, but did not take out, the quills. She was silent as she worked, concentrating on doing it right. When she was done, she called back to Logan, "I need you to carry him!"

Logan turned, and Mystique saw who was on the ground. "What have you done?!" She cried out in anger, hitting Logan and coming at Kerri.

Kerri looked up at her, turning and taking a defensive pose. "Stay away from him!"

"Get away from my son!" Mystique demanded, but Kerri just stared at her, and it clicked why she seemed familiar.

"You get away, you threw him off of a waterfall!" Kerri's hackles raised, her furry ears and tail coming out as her teeth grew larger and sharper.

"She didn't do it, Mystique," Logan said as he picked up the limp body causing the fight. "It was that one," he motioned to where Quill was sobbing and muttering, still in a pitiful heap of Kerri's terrible feelings, and took off to the med lab.

Kerri looked the blue woman in the eyes for one last moment before running to get ahead of Logan, pushing everyone out of the way as he came through.

They were at least one, maybe two miles from the doors of the school, and even while running it took time to get there, but it seemed even slower to Kerri as she feared that any moment Kurt would be gone because they couldn't get him there fast enough, because she'd wasted precious time being an idiot with Quill.

A hand grabbed her tail as they neared the doors, forcing her to stop, but she yelled for Logan to keep going. "I can handle it!" She turned to see the silver haired boy again, and bared her teeth at him.

"Thistail iskinda cute too," he said, pulling it a little.

She growled at him, "I don't have time for your bullshit!" Her hand moved toward him in a punch, but his hand caught hers with no problems.

"Don'tbe thatway," he told her, turning her to hold her arm behind her back so hard she winced.

"We're leaving," Magneto announced, calling out to his people.

"Toobad, sure you won't come with us?" He asked her, pressuring her arm enough to make her wince again as she refused to give him the pleasure of her crying out.

"No way in hell," Kerri told him.

She fell to the ground as he let go of her. "Maybe you'll change your mind later. I'm Quicksilver, by the way," he told her before he disappeared, moving so fast he left a breeze behind him.

Kerri stood up, ignoring everything else and running into the school, making her way to the med lab as quickly as she could.

When she got there, Kurt's shirt was off and Hank was removing the quills from his shoulder.

He put in a transfusion line and began stitching the holes up behind a curtain as she paced back and forth across the med lab, biting her fingers, lip, hair, she ran her hands through her tail and her hair, trying to stay out of the way.

"Miss Smith, why don't you go clean yourself up while you wait?" Hank suggested, but she shook her head, passing Logan again on her path of pacing.

It felt like days, years, forever, an eternity had passed before he was finished with everything. "There, he's done." Kerri stopped moving and turned to look as Hank pulled back the curtain, afraid of getting close. "He'll be fine, but he needs rest," he told her as he attached the monitors and pulled the blankets over the unconscious fuzzy blue patient.

A breath escaped her lungs and she stepped forward, unsure if she should get close to him. "It will be ok if you sit by him. By the way, that was some good field medicine there, it kept a lot of his own blood in and made him have an easier time getting stitched," he assured her.

She didn't take her eyes off of Kurt as she stepped closer and said, "I was first aid certified in Medical Anatomy and Physiology at my old school."

"Good thing," Hank commented. "Are you sure you don't want to shower or anything?"

Kerri looked at Logan, her eyes pleading. She was afraid that she'd lose Kurt again if she left, this time for real.

"Give the Kid a break, Doc," he told Hank, and they left the two students alone.

In the hall Hank asked, "Tell me the truth, is she ok?"

"She thought he'd already died on the grass," Logan told him, and he looked back at the cracked door with empathy in his eyes. "I don't know what she was doing to the kid who did it to him, but she cut off her own wing to do it."

Hank looked back to him, startled. "She cut off her own wing?" Logan tilted his head in assent. "That would explain all the blood down her back with no cuts..."

Kerri was sitting at Kurt's feet, afraid of hurting him by getting too close. What was left of her shirt hung around her loosely, chilling her back, her hair was a wild mane around her head, and she felt like she was covered head to toe in grime, but she was not leaving his side.

Her tail flicked, and she realized that she was stuck with it and her ears for now, but she hardly minded.

She crossed her arms and laid her head on them on the bed, and prayed.

'God, I know I don't talk to you very much, but dad always told me that you love everyone, even the ones who are lost, and you wait for them to find you, and I figure you can see everything anyway, and I can handle it on my own, usually, but I can't handle this, this is too much. I can't loose him, I need him, I love him...'

"Please, help him..." Her plea was a whisper, air light as her exhausted body fell into sleep.