Two and a half hours later, both girls were ready to assume new identities and go anyway.

They were once again sprawled atop Jubilee's bed. Jubilee herself was lazily plucking at pieces of fuzz on her blanket, while Paige appeared to be trying to smother herself.

"So what'd you find out?"

Paige gave a barely audible groan and lifted her head off the pillow just enough to speak. "Emma laughed at me, Sean said he'd think about it, and Jean volunteered herself and Cyclops."

Jubilee choked back a laugh. "No way am I going to another concert with those two again." She looked back at Paige. "What about Yorkshire?"

Paige dropped her head back onto the pillow. "He kicked me out of his room when I asked."

Jubilee sighed in disappointment. "Yeah, Ange had pretty much the same reaction. I mean, the way these guys are acting, you'd think we were asking for their first born! Not that I'd really want Ange's first born, since it'd probably have no lungs 'cause of all that cigarette smoke," she continued rambling as an afterthought. "Anyway, Rogue said she'd go, but she had to leave on a mission with the Cajun soon. Personally, I think they're just goin' on vacation and blew me off."

"Bobby said he'd go."

"He just wants to see bimbo Spears. 'Sides, I don't think he'd meet the approval committee's standards."

Paige gave another groan.

"So what we're facing here is a night out with Scott and Jean Summers? Just shoot me now."

"Unless . . ."

"Unless what?"

Paige grinned evilly and reached for the phone resting on the bedside table, immediately stopping once her hand rested on it. The grin widened. "I have a better idea. Let's go find the video link station."

Realization dawned on Jubilee's face, followed closely by a wicked smile.

******

All the training in the world could do nothing for Rogue's balance.

She teetered uneasily down the hallway, barely able to see where she was going thanks to the mountain of books cradled in her arms. The fear of upsetting the stack was enough to keep her grounded and out of the air. Even though she laughingly entertained the thought of being the first X-Man ever to be killed by literacy, she was exceedingly proud of her new treasures. After Bastion's seizure of everything that wasn't nailed down in the mansion, and some that were, she had grown distraught at the thought that all of her overblown, trashy romance novels were lost to her forever.

That was when Jean showed her the miracle of internet shopping.

After ordering a frightening amount of books, including a large back order of out of print books due to lack of readers, she headed to the nearby Barnes and Noble to claim her order. It had cost her a small fortune, but they had been kind enough to throw in a free bookmark as a thank-you gesture.

Now she simply had to get to her room without tripping and drowning in the books. They'd never find the body, she mused. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief when she could see the end of the hallway that branched into two other hallways leading to the male and female dorms.

Then she saw the light flashing in the corner of her eye.

"Oh boy," she muttered, carefully making her way into the room. The flashing light was a signal to show someone was on the other end, and also served as a precautionary method of letting the receiving team know it wasn't a dire emergency. It was for that very reason Rogue considered going on to her room as if she saw nothing. She groaned and squashed the urge to run.

"Who is it?"

"Incoming message from Massachusetts, United States," replied an oddly stilted robotic voice that reminded Rogue vaguely of Bishop with a falsetto.

"One of the kids." Her mind raced with possible reasons why they would be using the video link. Maybe it was a prank. For the supposed next generation of superheroes, they all seemed to enjoy prank calling the older teams. She still laughed every time she remembered Kitty's tear-streaked face as she laughed and related her favorite prank story. As the story went, one or all of the students had talked Jono into using the phone Forge had long ago crafted for him that would convert his telepathic speech into sound waves able to be carried over phone lines. The result was a call made to Excalibur, during which Jono flawlessly mimicked Pete Wisdom's sleepy, angry, and accented voice. That in turn sent the older man into a paranoid frenzy in which he promised revenge on Emma Frost and her spandex-wearing self for probably putting her student up to it in the first place.

"Call," Rogue reminded herself, hitting the large blue button and waiting patiently for the screen to come into focus. She saw Jubilee and Paige staring back at her, and a cold dread clutched her heart. They really were going to take her up on her offer of going to the concert!

"Hello, and welcome. I'm Dr. Clayton Forrester, and soon you will all bow down before me." Paige stared at Jubilee, who simply shrugged. "It's got the same screen setup." Paige shook her head and looked back at the screen.

"Sorry. We had a Mystery Science Theater marathon last night."

"Three thousand!" Jubilee chimed in. She waited for a reply that wasn't given. "Rogue? Is that you under there?" The slight bobbing of the top of a white-streaked head was the only indication she had been heard. "Cool. So, are Wolvie and Sam around anywhere?"

For a moment, Rogue wondered why Jubilee hadn't asked about the books. Then she remembered the girl was part of the team at one time, so seeing what appeared to be a walking stack of books was probably no surprise. "Uh...yeah. Hold on." Unwilling to walk around the mansion to find them, she turned to face the open doorway. "Logan! Sam! Ya got a call!"

Jubilee cringed at the loud voice blaring over the speakers. "Geez. They have tracking devices all over the place there. You'd think they'd actually use 'em now and then." She was quickly silenced by Paige jabbing her elbow into her side. Several minutes later, their targets entered their line of vision, neither looking particularly thrilled to be there. They looked even less thrilled with the looks on the two girls' faces.

"Can . . ." Sam trailed off when he heard a loud shriek, multiple thuds, and Bobby's frantic, apologetic voice in the hallway, suspiciously enough in the direction Rogue had been heading. "Can we help you?"

"Actually, yeah," Paige agreed with a completely straight face. Jubilee wasn't faring so well. "See, we couldn't find anyone to go with us. The ones who were willing probably wouldn't meet your. . .uh. . .expectations, so we're proposing a new idea."

"Not going?" Sam asked hopefully. Jubilee faked a laugh for a split second before letting her face go entirely serious.

"Funny. Actually, seeing as how you two are so eager to see that we're going with body guards..."

"No," Logan interrupted, too aware of where Jubilee was going with that line of thought.

"Please?"

"No."

Jubilee sighed. "Even after you promised to take me to the mall last Saturday? You owe me."

Logan's jaw dropped faintly. "Somethin' came up, darlin'. I told ya I'd..."

"Make it up to me? I know. Here's your chance."

Paige nodded enthusiastically. "And Sam, it's a great chance to make up for missing my birthday. I mean, turning eighteen is a really big deal."

Sam's already dumbfounded expression deepened to comical proportions. "Ah thought your birthday was this comin' Friday."

"Last Friday," Jubilee corrected, shaking her head sadly. "Paige was heartbroken that her older bro didn't even send her a card or call or anything. She sat by the phone for two days, Kentucky. It was awful. You should be ashamed of yourself."

Sam stammered wordlessly for several moments, running a helpless hand through his messy blond hair. "Oh. Well, uh...Ah'm real sorry, Paige. Ah just thought..."

"...Of everything but her birthday, yup." Paige tried to force her smile to remain on her face even though she could sense Jubilee kicking into overdrive with her acting. "She looked like M in one of her trances! Wouldn't eat or sleep or nothin.' She finally snapped out of it one day, which was pretty good, since I was gonna get Sparky to do a striptease for her and knock her out of it."

"She's embellishing a little bit," Paige noted through clenched teeth, smile as fake and shallow as the best in a beauty pageant. Jubilee seemed oblivious to her friend's discomfort.

"He was more than willing, too. Even showed me this little leopard print thong he was gonna wear, which was really more than I needed to see."

"Jubilee, stop it!" Paige ordered sharply, cheeks burning a deep crimson. Jubilee suddenly looked thoughtful.

"I like that shade of red. You mind if I take a picture? I think I wanna paint our room that color." She smirked just enough for her roommate to see. "Jono showed me the boxers he could wear in place of the thong. They were that color, too."

"Ah'm gonna kill you, Lee," Paige warned, a menacing threat coupled with the psychotic and panicked grin on her face. "An' it's gonna hurt."

"Is there a point to this?" Logan demanded impatiently. Both girls spun around to face the screen, having gotten so caught up in their debate they forgot they still had a goal in mind. Seeing that Paige was still fuming, Jubilee answered for her.

"We want imbursement for our suffering."

"It's reimbursement," Paige corrected, teeth still gritted tightly together. Jubilee shrugged.

"Yeah, what she said. So how about it?"

Sam and Logan shared a glance, looked to the screen, back to one another, and Sam could almost swear he saw the older man's left eye twitch spasmodically.