There Must Be Some Kind of Way Out of Here
Chapter 39
Author's Note: Same stuff like all the other chapters - stuff in italics are thoughts and I love you all.
Disclaimer: Don't own any of this - Marvel and Kid's WB do, except my original character, John, but he's so dull that no one would want to steal him. Oh, and this has infrequent cuss words, so there's your warning.
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"JOHN!!!!"
Ten seconds ago, John Jashback had been walking along, whistling a merry little tune.
Ten seconds ago, John Jashback had been standing upright.
Ten seconds ago, John Jashback been feeling very good.
Of course, it was at the expense of another person, but he was willing to overlook that decidedly minor detail.
But ten seconds ago was long gone.
John had been hit by a tornado, or what felt like a tornado.
He had little warning of it's presence, and the warning came far too late. He was caught in the path of the storm with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Which was how he found himself flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, the word 'confused' barely managing to capture how he felt.
"JOHN!!!!"
Blinking hard, a frowning face came into John's field of vision.
Correction, it was an upside smile, which looked like a frown to John. Which didn't help any.
"Jamie," John said very calmly, despite his overwhelming confusion. "What just happened?"
The face overhead, Jamie Madrox's face to be specific, changed the upside-down smile turned into an upside-down frown. Or something like that. "I wish I was in high school," the young mutant said.
"Huh?" John croaked out. He didn't bother to try and get up. He was content with just laying on the ground.
Jamie poked him in the forehead. "I heard you had another fight today. And you skipped school! Man, you do all the fun stuff! If we went to the same school, that would be so awesome, cause then I could watch you beat people up and stuff."
John blinked hard again, suppressing his sigh. Jamie thought what he did was fun?! The boy had to be on crack!
Wait, did he say he could watch me beat people up? He does know that I only actually won one fight, and that was because I got the hell out of there before Pietro could do anything... Or I hope he knows.
John managed a weak smile. "Uh...yeah. That'd be uh...great."
The upside-down smile/frown returned to Jamie's lips.
"Um. Is there uh, any reason why you tackled me, Jamie?" John was slowly regaining his senses, and had managed to patch together that the tornado was Jamie.
His question was laughed at.
Another face appeared in John's view. A pale face, higher up than Jamie's. And a body accompanied it.
"Yah know, a sofa is much comfortable than the floor," a voice said in a mocking tone.
Why, oh why wasn't she the one who tackled me?
John cracked another weak smile. "Cheerful as usual, aren't we?"
Rogue smirked back down at him. "Ah heard you had a busy day," she drawled.
Inside, John groaned. Who didn't know? Everyone probably knew, with his luck. But...
I'm tired of letting this crap get me down. I can be cool about it. I'm a cucumber, as in 'cool as.' Yeah.
Ignoring the fact that he sounded like an idiot to himself, John grinned, big and bright.
"Busy? Nah. I wouldn't call it busy. In fact, nothing really happened today. Nothing important, at least." John slowly made his way back onto his feet, never taking his eyes off Rogue. He wore an amused smile on his face that was borderline indolent. He was lucky she didn't smack him. "Nothing at all."
Rogue opened her mouth but quickly shut it, as if she decided at the last second to not say what she intended. Shaking her head, she silently walked away. John grinned to her back until she had turned the corner, out of his sight.
John turned and looked down at Jamie. "Trust me, bud. You don't want to go to school with me. I live a boring life. All this crazy stuff is a thing of the past. I'm taking a new lease on life, Jamie, my friend. I'm going to live a normal life, or as much as my mutation will allow. No more crazy stuff."
Jamie just shook his head and walked away.
"Uh...Jamie...uh...I'm serious," he said to the boy's retreating back. "No more crazy stuff!"
I don't think he believes me.
That makes two of us.
Shut up.
He slunk his way down the stairs and into the mansion foyer where a majority of the other students were talking. A majority of the male students immediately crowded around him.
"Man, I heard you got into another fight!" exclaimed Ray.
"Yeah, Gimpy. You've got guts, getting into so many fights," Bobby said on top of him.
"Yo man, me and Kurt saw the fight. That punk had no right to get all worked up over nothing!" Evan said.
"Ja!" Kurt said. "Ve were going to come help you, but I zink the fight was ovah before we got there."
"Hey, we should start calling him Rocky, since he gets in so many fights!" shouted Roberto.
Great. Another nickname for me?
"Yeah! Rocky!" Bobby started dancing back and forth, punching the air in front of him. John heard someone start to hum that stupid patriotic-sounding theme from the movie.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" John yelled, waving his arms in an effort to silence the others. "You guys can just calm down. The way you act, you make it seem like you lead boring lives. Well, before anyone gets any wild ideas, I'm going to set this to you straight - that wasn't a fight. Hell, none of my supposed 'fights'...," he said, making little quotation marks with his fingers,"...were real fights. I either got my ass kicked, or I ran away. If you think anything else happened, you're delusional. And besides, I'm grounded for about the next month, so...yeah. No more fights for me."
Pushing his way through the circle that had formed around him, John ignored all the questions and comments and made his way to the kitchen. As was the norm for the day, he was conversing with himself in his mind.
You know, we do that alot.
What do you mean, 'we?' We're the same person.
Right, right. But for simplicity's sake, we're two seperate entities, since you don't seem to like me.
Right. And we do do that alot.
But not anymore, right?
Sure, if I can manage to stay out of trouble.
**********
"So how was your day?" John asked, rooting through the refrigerator.
There was only one other person in the kitchen with John - he forced the others to leave. They seemed kind of easy to order around, especially considering the arsenal of powers they had. Maybe the ability to rip off his own arms was more intimidating than John thought...
"Downright boring next to yours," a voice replied.
John poked his head out from inside the appliance long enough to flash a grin over to Amara, who was seated on a nearby countertop.
"Well, compared to everything that's happened since coming here, I'd say today was pretty boring."
She only snorted in reply.
"Come on," John said, pulling out a soda and setting it aside. "You want something?" She shook her head and he dove back inside. "Come on," he repeated, "You can't tell me with all the...unique..." Unique was better than screwy, he decided "...With all the unique things people can do here, that they live boring, normal teenage lives? What I do has to pale in comparison."
"Maybe..." Amara mused, "But you certainly lead a more interesting life than me."
John pulled himself out from the radiating cold of the food storage device and leaned on the door, looking at his pseudo-girlfriend. "You're going to sit there and tell me that you, Amara...er, sorry, I forgot your last name."
"Aquilla," she said for him, a hint of amusement in her voice.
"Right, right," John said, trying not to blush. "You're going to tell me that you, Amara Aquilla, a beautiful mutant teenage girl who can envelope her body in fire lives a normal life?"
She blushed enough to show through her bronze-tinted skin and looked down at the countertop.
"Exactly," John said, nodding to himself. He set about again, digging for food.
He grunted after finding nothing, and shut the door. Taking his soda, he hoisted himself up next to Amara and took a drink. "You wanna tell me some of the crazy stuff you've done before?"
She blushed again, and shook her head.
"C'mon..." John cooed, leaning himself closer to her. "You can trust me. I won't tell anyone."
She shook her head much more fiercely.
"Oh, why not? Haven't I endured enough humiliation to have gained enough of your trust? I mean, Jesus, I walked through the Institute in nothing but my boxers because I was trying to put out a fire." If that didn't work, he play the 'Fire That You Started' card.
She giggled, covering her face with a hand. "I wish I could have seen that," she said, once her laughter subsided.
"I can keep naming off stuff if you want."
"It's ok. I'll tell you."
John smiled smugly.
And so she recanted a story about something quite crazy that she'd done, along with some of the other girls in the Institute. She had only said that much when the dirty thoughts had started to surface in John's mind. Of course, it was nothing like what his perverted, hormone-driven imagination had conjured up. But it did involve...
Amara, Jean, Rogue, Kitty, and the girl Boom Boom who defected to the Brotherhood had made a temporary career as superheroines. Wearing black leather outfits, no less. Fighting crime and looking damn good while doing it? There was nothing John could say or do to top that.
"Do you...do you still have the...uh...uh...y'know..." John said hoarsely.
Her face was beet red, and John hoped her powers wouldn't accidentally kick in. He couldn't afford to lose another pair of clothes fighting a fire.
"I still have it..." she said softly.
His heart stopped. John opened his mouth to say something, but he had forgotten how to speak. Brain turned to mush, he couldn't think of anything but black leather.
"Are you happy now?" Amara said, breaking the growing silence, not that John noticed.
More than you ever know...
But out loud, he said, "I, uh....Yes. I am."
She didn't reply.
"Sorry," he apologized a moment later. "I didn't mean to embarrass you like that."
"It's ok... I don't regret it, telling you or actually doing it. It felt good, using our powers to help people."
John tried to imagine himself using his...power to help people. 'In other news, a bank robbery was thwarted today when a young man subdued the robber by beating him over the head with his detached arm.'
But in spite of that, he nodded. "It was a good thing, doing what you did. But the uh...were the...uniforms necessary?"
She laughed, which he was very thankful for. It meant she was growing more comfortable, either with him, or from telling him. "No, I don't think so, but... They did look really cool."
Oh, I bet they did.
"Do you...do you think, that maybe, I dunno...one day...you'll...show it to me?"
Her face started to turn crimson again, but she suddenly smiled knowingly, a dangerous gleam in her eyes. "That depends. What are you willing to do in return?"
John very nearly sank to his knees and shouted "ANYTHING!" But he stopped himself. He would do anything to see her in black leather, or Kitty or Jean or Rogue. The thought of all four of them dressed like that...it was enough to make a man go insane.
But he caught himself before he mad a bigger fool of himself. "Erm...I don't think I should answer that... Can we talk about something more serious right now?"
Her face took on a worried look. "What is it?"
"Well...it's us. I mean, are you and me, you know, going steady or something? Or is this like a casual thing?"
"I don't know. What do you want it to be?"
He shrugged. "I like you alot," Despite what the nagging voice says, "But...I'm still very new here, and we still don't know each other very well."
"That's true. There's still alot we don't know about each other."
"Ok...then...I guess we're just friends. If we want to make it something more later, then...we can talk then, right?"
She returned his smile with one of her own. It almost made John regret saying what he just said.
"I guess this means I don't get to see that outfit, huh?"
She shook her head. "Sorry," she said sweetly. "Maybe later.... Well, I've got homework to go do, so...I'll see you around?"
John nodded, and watched her get up and leave the room. He leaned backwards in his chair and sighed.
Well...that wasn't too hard, was it?
No, I guess not.
So tell me...are you going to go looking for a new girlfriend?
You know the answer to that. I'm better off going solo, at least for now. I think romantic entanglements can wait till later.
Uh-huh. You say that now, but we'll see how long that attitude lasts in a mansion of pretty girls.
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Chapter 39
Author's Note: Same stuff like all the other chapters - stuff in italics are thoughts and I love you all.
Disclaimer: Don't own any of this - Marvel and Kid's WB do, except my original character, John, but he's so dull that no one would want to steal him. Oh, and this has infrequent cuss words, so there's your warning.
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"JOHN!!!!"
Ten seconds ago, John Jashback had been walking along, whistling a merry little tune.
Ten seconds ago, John Jashback had been standing upright.
Ten seconds ago, John Jashback been feeling very good.
Of course, it was at the expense of another person, but he was willing to overlook that decidedly minor detail.
But ten seconds ago was long gone.
John had been hit by a tornado, or what felt like a tornado.
He had little warning of it's presence, and the warning came far too late. He was caught in the path of the storm with nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Which was how he found himself flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling, the word 'confused' barely managing to capture how he felt.
"JOHN!!!!"
Blinking hard, a frowning face came into John's field of vision.
Correction, it was an upside smile, which looked like a frown to John. Which didn't help any.
"Jamie," John said very calmly, despite his overwhelming confusion. "What just happened?"
The face overhead, Jamie Madrox's face to be specific, changed the upside-down smile turned into an upside-down frown. Or something like that. "I wish I was in high school," the young mutant said.
"Huh?" John croaked out. He didn't bother to try and get up. He was content with just laying on the ground.
Jamie poked him in the forehead. "I heard you had another fight today. And you skipped school! Man, you do all the fun stuff! If we went to the same school, that would be so awesome, cause then I could watch you beat people up and stuff."
John blinked hard again, suppressing his sigh. Jamie thought what he did was fun?! The boy had to be on crack!
Wait, did he say he could watch me beat people up? He does know that I only actually won one fight, and that was because I got the hell out of there before Pietro could do anything... Or I hope he knows.
John managed a weak smile. "Uh...yeah. That'd be uh...great."
The upside-down smile/frown returned to Jamie's lips.
"Um. Is there uh, any reason why you tackled me, Jamie?" John was slowly regaining his senses, and had managed to patch together that the tornado was Jamie.
His question was laughed at.
Another face appeared in John's view. A pale face, higher up than Jamie's. And a body accompanied it.
"Yah know, a sofa is much comfortable than the floor," a voice said in a mocking tone.
Why, oh why wasn't she the one who tackled me?
John cracked another weak smile. "Cheerful as usual, aren't we?"
Rogue smirked back down at him. "Ah heard you had a busy day," she drawled.
Inside, John groaned. Who didn't know? Everyone probably knew, with his luck. But...
I'm tired of letting this crap get me down. I can be cool about it. I'm a cucumber, as in 'cool as.' Yeah.
Ignoring the fact that he sounded like an idiot to himself, John grinned, big and bright.
"Busy? Nah. I wouldn't call it busy. In fact, nothing really happened today. Nothing important, at least." John slowly made his way back onto his feet, never taking his eyes off Rogue. He wore an amused smile on his face that was borderline indolent. He was lucky she didn't smack him. "Nothing at all."
Rogue opened her mouth but quickly shut it, as if she decided at the last second to not say what she intended. Shaking her head, she silently walked away. John grinned to her back until she had turned the corner, out of his sight.
John turned and looked down at Jamie. "Trust me, bud. You don't want to go to school with me. I live a boring life. All this crazy stuff is a thing of the past. I'm taking a new lease on life, Jamie, my friend. I'm going to live a normal life, or as much as my mutation will allow. No more crazy stuff."
Jamie just shook his head and walked away.
"Uh...Jamie...uh...I'm serious," he said to the boy's retreating back. "No more crazy stuff!"
I don't think he believes me.
That makes two of us.
Shut up.
He slunk his way down the stairs and into the mansion foyer where a majority of the other students were talking. A majority of the male students immediately crowded around him.
"Man, I heard you got into another fight!" exclaimed Ray.
"Yeah, Gimpy. You've got guts, getting into so many fights," Bobby said on top of him.
"Yo man, me and Kurt saw the fight. That punk had no right to get all worked up over nothing!" Evan said.
"Ja!" Kurt said. "Ve were going to come help you, but I zink the fight was ovah before we got there."
"Hey, we should start calling him Rocky, since he gets in so many fights!" shouted Roberto.
Great. Another nickname for me?
"Yeah! Rocky!" Bobby started dancing back and forth, punching the air in front of him. John heard someone start to hum that stupid patriotic-sounding theme from the movie.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!" John yelled, waving his arms in an effort to silence the others. "You guys can just calm down. The way you act, you make it seem like you lead boring lives. Well, before anyone gets any wild ideas, I'm going to set this to you straight - that wasn't a fight. Hell, none of my supposed 'fights'...," he said, making little quotation marks with his fingers,"...were real fights. I either got my ass kicked, or I ran away. If you think anything else happened, you're delusional. And besides, I'm grounded for about the next month, so...yeah. No more fights for me."
Pushing his way through the circle that had formed around him, John ignored all the questions and comments and made his way to the kitchen. As was the norm for the day, he was conversing with himself in his mind.
You know, we do that alot.
What do you mean, 'we?' We're the same person.
Right, right. But for simplicity's sake, we're two seperate entities, since you don't seem to like me.
Right. And we do do that alot.
But not anymore, right?
Sure, if I can manage to stay out of trouble.
**********
"So how was your day?" John asked, rooting through the refrigerator.
There was only one other person in the kitchen with John - he forced the others to leave. They seemed kind of easy to order around, especially considering the arsenal of powers they had. Maybe the ability to rip off his own arms was more intimidating than John thought...
"Downright boring next to yours," a voice replied.
John poked his head out from inside the appliance long enough to flash a grin over to Amara, who was seated on a nearby countertop.
"Well, compared to everything that's happened since coming here, I'd say today was pretty boring."
She only snorted in reply.
"Come on," John said, pulling out a soda and setting it aside. "You want something?" She shook her head and he dove back inside. "Come on," he repeated, "You can't tell me with all the...unique..." Unique was better than screwy, he decided "...With all the unique things people can do here, that they live boring, normal teenage lives? What I do has to pale in comparison."
"Maybe..." Amara mused, "But you certainly lead a more interesting life than me."
John pulled himself out from the radiating cold of the food storage device and leaned on the door, looking at his pseudo-girlfriend. "You're going to sit there and tell me that you, Amara...er, sorry, I forgot your last name."
"Aquilla," she said for him, a hint of amusement in her voice.
"Right, right," John said, trying not to blush. "You're going to tell me that you, Amara Aquilla, a beautiful mutant teenage girl who can envelope her body in fire lives a normal life?"
She blushed enough to show through her bronze-tinted skin and looked down at the countertop.
"Exactly," John said, nodding to himself. He set about again, digging for food.
He grunted after finding nothing, and shut the door. Taking his soda, he hoisted himself up next to Amara and took a drink. "You wanna tell me some of the crazy stuff you've done before?"
She blushed again, and shook her head.
"C'mon..." John cooed, leaning himself closer to her. "You can trust me. I won't tell anyone."
She shook her head much more fiercely.
"Oh, why not? Haven't I endured enough humiliation to have gained enough of your trust? I mean, Jesus, I walked through the Institute in nothing but my boxers because I was trying to put out a fire." If that didn't work, he play the 'Fire That You Started' card.
She giggled, covering her face with a hand. "I wish I could have seen that," she said, once her laughter subsided.
"I can keep naming off stuff if you want."
"It's ok. I'll tell you."
John smiled smugly.
And so she recanted a story about something quite crazy that she'd done, along with some of the other girls in the Institute. She had only said that much when the dirty thoughts had started to surface in John's mind. Of course, it was nothing like what his perverted, hormone-driven imagination had conjured up. But it did involve...
Amara, Jean, Rogue, Kitty, and the girl Boom Boom who defected to the Brotherhood had made a temporary career as superheroines. Wearing black leather outfits, no less. Fighting crime and looking damn good while doing it? There was nothing John could say or do to top that.
"Do you...do you still have the...uh...uh...y'know..." John said hoarsely.
Her face was beet red, and John hoped her powers wouldn't accidentally kick in. He couldn't afford to lose another pair of clothes fighting a fire.
"I still have it..." she said softly.
His heart stopped. John opened his mouth to say something, but he had forgotten how to speak. Brain turned to mush, he couldn't think of anything but black leather.
"Are you happy now?" Amara said, breaking the growing silence, not that John noticed.
More than you ever know...
But out loud, he said, "I, uh....Yes. I am."
She didn't reply.
"Sorry," he apologized a moment later. "I didn't mean to embarrass you like that."
"It's ok... I don't regret it, telling you or actually doing it. It felt good, using our powers to help people."
John tried to imagine himself using his...power to help people. 'In other news, a bank robbery was thwarted today when a young man subdued the robber by beating him over the head with his detached arm.'
But in spite of that, he nodded. "It was a good thing, doing what you did. But the uh...were the...uniforms necessary?"
She laughed, which he was very thankful for. It meant she was growing more comfortable, either with him, or from telling him. "No, I don't think so, but... They did look really cool."
Oh, I bet they did.
"Do you...do you think, that maybe, I dunno...one day...you'll...show it to me?"
Her face started to turn crimson again, but she suddenly smiled knowingly, a dangerous gleam in her eyes. "That depends. What are you willing to do in return?"
John very nearly sank to his knees and shouted "ANYTHING!" But he stopped himself. He would do anything to see her in black leather, or Kitty or Jean or Rogue. The thought of all four of them dressed like that...it was enough to make a man go insane.
But he caught himself before he mad a bigger fool of himself. "Erm...I don't think I should answer that... Can we talk about something more serious right now?"
Her face took on a worried look. "What is it?"
"Well...it's us. I mean, are you and me, you know, going steady or something? Or is this like a casual thing?"
"I don't know. What do you want it to be?"
He shrugged. "I like you alot," Despite what the nagging voice says, "But...I'm still very new here, and we still don't know each other very well."
"That's true. There's still alot we don't know about each other."
"Ok...then...I guess we're just friends. If we want to make it something more later, then...we can talk then, right?"
She returned his smile with one of her own. It almost made John regret saying what he just said.
"I guess this means I don't get to see that outfit, huh?"
She shook her head. "Sorry," she said sweetly. "Maybe later.... Well, I've got homework to go do, so...I'll see you around?"
John nodded, and watched her get up and leave the room. He leaned backwards in his chair and sighed.
Well...that wasn't too hard, was it?
No, I guess not.
So tell me...are you going to go looking for a new girlfriend?
You know the answer to that. I'm better off going solo, at least for now. I think romantic entanglements can wait till later.
Uh-huh. You say that now, but we'll see how long that attitude lasts in a mansion of pretty girls.
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