It was seven-forty in the morning when Kitty strutted down the stairs and past the dining room, a half-eaten granola bar in her hand. She nodded a brief greeting to Storm, but pointedly ignored the slim girl seated at the dining table, who was half-heartedly using her fork and knife to cut her French toast into tiny pieces.
"Hey, Storm, I'm going to school now, 'kay?" Kitty called out, and started to scurry past the room.
"Hi, Kitty," a pointed female voice spoke up with obviously phony friendliness. Kitty paused, before retracing her steps and turning around to face the speaker.
"Hi, Princess," she spat out sarcastically, but the other girl remained unfazed at hearing Lance's nickname for her coming out of his ex-girlfriend. Instead, she examined Kitty contemptuously, before arching one eyebrow and remarking snidely, "Nice outfit, Cats. You'll blend in perfectly at the airport Hooters. I especially like how low-cut your dress is, especially since, you know, you really don't have the cleavage at all for it!" The nasty remark caught Storm's attention, and she looked up from her gardening magazine, about to chastise the other girl for her offending words. However, one look at the revealing red dress that Kitty was sporting pushed all lectures of never letting a man come between two friends way into the back of her mind. The elegant, silver-haired young woman stood up, and cleared her throat discreetly.
"Kitty, I'm afraid that dress really is too inappropriate to be worn at school. I suggest you go upstairs and change into something more suitable for learning," she suggested quietly. In other words, cover them up or you're grounded for the next two weeks. The other girl sat there, a smugly satisfied smirk on her face as she nodded along wisely to Storm's stern words, while Kitty stood in place and stewed, glaring murderous daggers at her former friend.
"You're just jealous because you're too large to fit in this dress," she scorned venomously. At this, the other girl leapt up, furious.
"You better watch what you're saying!" she bit out, outraged. Calming down, she added, "Especially since we both know that you're just trying to show enough skin so that you can seduce Lance into getting back together."
Kitty glared back.
"Oh, and like you aren't?" she remarked contemptuously. In response, the other girl smirked, before smugly twirling around in place, showing off her silky long black coat and matching cowboy hat.
"Oh, yeah, now this will really make me look like a two-cent slut," she scorned.
Kitty bristled.
"Afraid to show a little skin, huh, Princess?" she retorted instead. "Gee, I wonder what exactly you're trying to cover up underneath that coat of yours!"
"Oh, that's it!" The other girl lunged at Kitty, who didn't back away at all, and Storm had to step in between and break the two girls up before a full-force catfight could be unleashed.
"That's enough!" the regal African woman ordered sternly, and at her words both girls fell silent. "We agreed the other night that the two of you were going to coexist peacefully, as teammates. If you can't do that, then one of you will have to move in with Rahne, at the far end of the house."
Silence, as the two girls hung their heads, somewhat hesitant to speak up. Storm calmed down, and, seeing that her words had gotten through, reminded gently, "Kitty, you should go upstairs and change."
"I'd better go, now, or I'll be late," the second girl coughed, and exited the dining room as Kitty stormed upstairs, in search of a less revealing outfit.

She darted into the garage, and looked around, in case there were any potential witness lurking in the shadows. When she was satisfied that nobody was in sight, she scurried over to the nearest car, flinging her belongings into the backseat.
"I feel like Britney Spears at the Video Music Awards," she grumbled to herself, as she quickly stripped off her silky black coat and cowboy hat, to reveal the tight-fitting black leather tank top and pink hot pants underneath. Hopping into the driver's seat, she turned the key in the ignition and swiftly backed out of the garage, managing to catch a glimpse of the now jeans-and-sweater-clad Kitty's outraged face as she caught sight of the sexy outfit that the other girl had been hiding underneath the innocent trench coat all along.


"Thirty-two, one, twenty-six," she murmured, repeating her locker's combination to herself as she twisted the dial. There was a clicking sound, as the locker door popped open, and she reached inside and pulled out a heavy geography textbook.
"Hey, I see you've gone shopping over the weekend, Princess," a familiar voice spoke up, and she quickly turned around, slamming her locker shut behind her.
"Hi, Lance," she spoke up, suddenly feeling shy. Twirling around in her outfit, she added, more boldly, "Yeah, do you like it?"
"It's...uh...well, it's very pink," Lance finally remarked, not knowing what else to say. Darn, she thought silently to herself. Pink will remind him of Kitty. I knew I should have gone with the gold ones!
"Did you say something, Princess?" Lance arched one eyebrow, and she blushed, not realizing that she'd been talking to herself.
"Who me?" She feigned innocence. "I didn't say anything at all."
"Whatever you say, Princess," Lance replied. "Whatever you say."
There was a pause, before he went on, "Say...did you by any chance get a prank call from two girls calling themselves Patricia and Tori?"
She giggled.
"You know, I've been meaning to ask you, what kind of blade does Pietro use to shave his legs with?" she asked playfully. Lance made a mock despairing face.
"So you did find out," he moaned in dismay. "Well, there's one Brotherhood cat that's been let out of the bag."
"You mean there's more secrets?" She fluttered her eyebrows, pretending to be shocked. Lance grinned boyishly.
"Princess, the Brotherhood has so many skeletons in its closet that we have to force the Blob to guard it against neighborhood dogs," he quipped. She giggled again.
"Oh, really?" Innocence was splashed all across her words. "You know, us X-Men have some secrets of our own..." She deliberately let her voice trail off. Lance leaned closer.
"Oh, yeah?"
She felt a jolt of electricity at being so close to him, but a flirtatious courage had overtaken her.
"Yeah," she breathed softly, gazing deep into his eyes.

"What is going on here?" a disapproving male voice spoke up suddenly, breaking her out of her trance. Lance snapped away from her, and both of them turned around to see Scott Summers standing not far away, a frown on his serious features. Lance smirked lazily.
"Nothing that concerns you, Mr. Stick In The Mud," he spat out. Scott's eyes narrowed, as one hand almost instinctively went to his shades.
"If you have any tricks up your sleeve, Alvers..." His voice trailed off threateningly. Lance raised an eyebrow.
"Hey, back off, Summers," he snapped coldly. "Or are you so overprotective that you won't even let your recruits talk with a member of the Brotherhood?"
"Nothing good's ever come out of talking with you low-lifes," Scott replied in a clipped tone. Lance straightened up.
"Are you suggesting that we're inferior to you and your little group of holier-than-thou freaks?" His voice began to rise.
"It doesn't really take much for someone to be superior than you and your clique of degenerates, now does it?" Scott remarked. She watched the exchange with tense eyes, and spoke up quietly, "Hey, come on, you two. Knock it off."
Scott and Lance faced off, as if about to get into a physical confrontation. Fortunately, though, the warning bell rang, and Lance growled, "Forget it; I ain't gonna get detention over something as meaningless as this!" and stormed off. She gazed longingly at his retreating back, and made a motion as if to run after him, before catching herself and staying planted in place. Clearing her throat uncomfortably in the sudden silence, she busied herself by pretending to browse through her textbook.
"Well?" Scott's voice was almost accusing. She glanced up guiltily from her schoolwork.
"Well, what?" she asked innocently, trying to avoid the subject.
"Don't try to be cute," Scott remarked irritably. "What were you doing hanging all over him?"
"I wasn't 'hanging all over him'," she remarked defensively in a tiny voice. Scott sighed.
"You know, I really don't want you flirting with a member of the Brotherhood," he said softly. "I'm really doing this for your own good. Sooner or later, he'll just end up hurting you." And with that, he walked away, heading off for Trigonometry. She glared after him.
"And like you're not doing just that by acting like such a jerk around Lance?" she muttered, as she pivoted on her heels, and ran off to catch her next class.


Dinnertime at the Xavier Institute seemed to be getting more and more strained and silent lately, as all the members of the X-Men sat around the long, oval redwood table, an icy tension hanging heavily in the air. Most of the tension was emanating from the two girls who sat opposite each other, but somehow still managing to keep up their growing animosity toward each other.
"So, um...did anything interesting happen at school today?" Hank spoke up nervously, trying to break the ice.
"Actually, something interesting did happen," Kitty began, a nasty gleam in her eyes. "Now, I'm not going to mention any names or anything, but I'd like to point out that a certain someone paraded around school today decked out like a hooker!" And she shot a phony smile at the girl sitting across from her, who simply glared and tossed back her hair with one flip of her head.
"Oh, really?" Storm arched an eyebrow, and looked questioningly in the direction of a certain someone who'd worn a black coat and cowboy hat to school earlier that morning. The girl in question blushed, and lowered her head, playing around with the corn on her plate. To get the spotlight off of her, she spoke up snidely, "You know, that's what's funny. You see, there's this crazy rumor circulating around the girl's locker room that a certain pathetic freshman tried to get back together with Lance by literally dumping herself at his feet during lunch today!" At this cruel jab, Kitty's eyebrows nearly flew off her face, as she let out an outraged shriek, before grabbing the nearest projectile around and flinging it at the speaker. The other girl blinked as a cold carrot stick bounced off against her forehead, before giving an indignant huff and happily returning the favor with a barrage of lima beans. Kitty sputtered, and spat out soft green beans, glaring daggers.
"Girls, that's enough," Storm began warningly, but by this time neither party was even willing to listen to reason, and Kitty proved it by grabbing the pitcher of iced tea and splashing it across her teammate's face and hair, lemons and all. The other girl shrieked as a torrent of icy cold tea and sliced lemons cascaded down her hair and soaking through her T-shirt.
"Oh, that is it!" she growled, as she grabbed the gravy bowl with both hands, leaning halfway across the table and dumping its scalding hot contents right into Kitty's face and lap. Kitty let out a screech, shaking her head wildly to get the hot gravy out of her eyes, bouncy ponytail slicked and drenched.
"Why you...!" she shrieked, as she leaned over and dealt a thunderous slap across the other girl's cheek.
"That's enough! Stop!" Storm ordered, but her words fell upon deaf ears, as the victim of the slap leapt over the table, scattering plates of food and glasses filled with drinks, sending them clattering noisily to the floor as she tackled Kitty out of her seat and began to furiously wring her neck. The sound of breaking china and glass mixed with the outraged shrieks and screeches, as the other teens leapt out of their own seats, eyes wide with alarm as they watched the hair-pulling and repeated choking in open-mouthed shock.

"Stop it! Now!" Storm, in a rare flash of fury, allowed her voice to rise to volumes that not even Evan had heard before. The two girls tangled on the floor in a mess of tousled hair and mashed food finally seemed to listen, and miraculously stopped their catfight/foodfight. Storm's blue eyes had darkened with thunderclouds, as she gritted out in a clipped tone, "This is quite enough! Now, I know that both of you realize this, but just in case you've forgotten, you're both members of the X-Men! And I don't care who the boy is, but you'd better learn to put aside your differences and coexist peacefully together, if not as friends, then at the very least as teammates. None of us--not myself, not Professor Xavier, and certainly not the rest of your teammates--will tolerate any more of this infighting. Do you understand?"
Both girls had lowered their heads, ashamed of their behavior.
"Yes, ma'am," they chorused in unison, as in the backs of their minds both girls wondered how severe their punishment would be. And that was on top of all the hell that the rest of their teammates would put them through for engaging in a foodfight right on the dinner table.


Tabitha Smith was in a bad mood that night. Scratch that, Bad mood, with a capital B. Scratch that, the way she was feeling, nobody ought to be surprised if the blonde-haired, blue-eyed Brotherhood vixen unleashed hell on the unsuspecting streets of Bayville. But not before she was done with her manicure, of course, as Tabitha leaned back in her seat, propped her feet up on a rotting wooden table, and continued painting her nails dark red. One could only imagine her annoyance at having her sacred ritual of applying nail polish interrupted, when the supposedly broken doorbell gave a high-pitched, irritating shrill, indicating that the Brotherhood had a visitor. Tabitha growled, and continued painting her nails, ignoring the doorbell. However, the visitor--whomever he or she was--simply refused to give up, as a second shrill resounded hollowly through the halls of the crumbling Victorian mansion. Tabitha swiveled around in her chair to face the direction of the door...but only long enough to flip off both the door and the visitor on the other side, before resuming her task of painting her nails. Finally, after the twelfth ring, the blonde bombshell could absolutely no longer stand the irritating, almost nasal shrills, and grumpily got up and headed down the hall.
"All right, all right, I'm coming," she muttered, absently blowing her nails dry. She reached the door and flung it wide open a couple of inches. "What the hell do you want? And make it snappy!"

A certain chestnut-haired, blue-eyed freshman stood on the other side of the door, index finger poised to ring the doorbell for the fifteenth time. Or was that sixteenth? She'd lost track after the first twelve rings.
"Like, wow," she murmured. "I was always told that the Brotherhood had a tradition of trying to crack every visitor in the nose whenever they opened the door, but I never knew it was true."
Tabitha glared contemptuously at the younger girl and former teammate.
"Well, well, well, look who's here," she drawled, full red lips forming a phony smile that didn't quite reach her blue eyes. Her face quickly darkened into a scowl, as she barked, "Now what the hell do you want?"
Kitty hesitated, looking suddenly uncertain, as she stood there on the doorsteps.
"I...I, um...I..." she stammered nervously, fidgeting around and toying with a strand of her hair. Tabitha gave her an irritated glare.
"Just spit it out already," she snapped, looking annoyed. Kitty took a deep breath, before requesting, "I...I'm here to talk to Lance."


And...Stop! Well, now it looks like it's Kitty's turn to visit the humble Brotherhood abode in search of Lance. Dun dun dun! Hate to cut it off right here, but I just don't feel like writing anymore. And in case you haven't noticed yet, I've narrowed down the possible candidates for the readers by cutting out Rahne and Tabitha. Not that that was much help, I can tell. Would have been much easier if it had been either Jean, Rogue, and/or Amara, huh? Hee hee, here's where I'm showing off my evil authoress skills. So, anyway, it won't be long now before the mystery girl's revealed. There's just one chapter left in the If Only You Knew... story, and that chapter will conclude everything...including revealing the girl's name, and whether she hooks up with Lance, or whether Kitty gets back together with him. I've already got most of the chapter outlined and a title picked, but I'm too lazy to write it, and I'm feeling kind of mean right now, so I'll leave you all with a sort of cliffhanger. Mwahahahaha! I am eeeeevil! Indeed! ^_^