I was getting bored by my normal sized chapters, so here's a long one
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Chapter 29:
A week past with no incident whatsoever for Nathan or his friends, as he attended all his classes at the school with Scott, Ororo, Jean and Logan as teachers, or should he call them Mr. Summers, Miss Monroe, Miss Grey and Mr. Logan (who was in fact only named sir by the students). They each taught maths and mechanics, history, art and English Literature, Science and English language, and Logan was left with self-defence. There was also the professor who gave physics classes.
Rogue had been incredibly hostile towards Kitty the past few days, but she had finally gotten over Nathan, and was *trying* to be as nice as possible to Kitty. What she didn't understand was that Nathan hadn't even made a move to show her how he felt, and it was as if he was trying to stay away from her. Multiple answers to that question passed through Marie's head, but there was only one that she liked repeating to herself because it made her smile: He was SHY. Of course, she caressed the thought that he would come back to her, but she had a feeling it would never happen. Another one of her problems was that every time she saw a boy she was interested in, she kept comparing him to Nate, and it bugged her that she couldn't forget him. Bobby was just a friend, John too, and the other boys were . . . mostly strangers. She had turned her head towards Logan again, but he only saw her as an 'adoptive daughter', so there was no point. She could only be alone . . . with a mutation like the one she had.
On the other side, she was happy to have Nathan as a friend, as she was still 'allowed' to stick around him.
Kitty was always complaining to Jubilee about how Nathan never spoke to her anymore, and she was starting to suspect something about Rogue having something to do with it, even if she denied it.
Maxim still stayed with his pal, but he now had other friends, and stayed more with them, leaving Nate with Bobby and Pyro.
The days almost passed to fast for Nate, as he spent his time in and out of classes, on the grounds on the basketball field, in the library or simply in his dorm. He had almost forgotten his old habit of moving around all the time, and so didn't go to New York or check on anything involving his criminal activities.
He thought of Kitty often, but still didn't dare to ask her out on a date. He didn't know if she took him seriously.
~~~
A bell rang, announcing the end of the English Literature class.
"Be prepared for a quiz on Wednesday," Ororo shouted above all the noise the students were making as they packed their things.
Since it was a Friday, some of the students were going back to their parents. They weren't many, but were well seen because they had loved ones waiting for them. Scott was the one bringing them back and forth, and most of the times Logan helped out too, but only because the professor asked him too. Nathan had a bit of remorse, thinking of his parents back in Ontario, and he felt the need to call them. After all, he hadn't spoken to them in over five months.
Packing his things, he listened to the conversation John brought up with Bobby.
"Agh, we're Friday," he mentioned. "You know what that means," he said mater of factly to Bobby, who grunted for a response.
"I.D.R.T.," Bobby answered, closing his book.
"What's that?" Nathan asked, not even out of his seat yet.
"Individual Danger Room Training," John said, as if it was the most logical thing in the world.
"And, what is that supposed to be?" Nathan continued with a cocked eyebrow.
"You don't know what the Danger Room is yet?" said John incredulously. "Ah, you didn't visit the South Wing when you had all your free time? Well, the Danger Room is there. It's-"
"A virtual training program taking place in a room that's named the Danger Room," Bobby finished. "About every student has to take about two classes per week, and John and I signed up for late afternoon on Fridays. It's fun, but takes out absolutely all your energy.
"Come with us!" John said, walking to the door. "Maybe you could be allowed to try it too."
The trio walked out of the room, towards the South Wing. It was half dug into the ground, but still had windows. It was pretty cool in that hallway, until you reached the two silver gates both forming an encircled X, similar to the one in the lower levels. Behind them was the Danger Room. Entering it, Nathan immediately felt comfortable. It was very, very big, and plain. It was totally empty, and could have contained about five to six X-Jets, just to give an approximate size.
Bobby and Pyro were already walking to a door located on the right side, talking about something to do with the level of their training programs. A voice was heard in an intercom, and Nate guessed that it was Jean.
"Come on, boys," she said. "We're starting now."
Nathan followed his friends through the door and ended up in a room very similar to the one found in the lower levels, where all the uniforms were kept. It had the same form, but less suits because only the boys' were there. The ones belonging to the girls had to be in another changing room. Nathan waited for his friends to change before following them back out. Jean's voice was heard in the microphone again.
"John, come up here with Nathan, will you. Bobby, you can get in place, we'll start with you."
Pyro motioned Nate to follow him as he walked to another door, through which there was a staircase going upwards. It ended in a control room overlooking the Danger Room by a large tinted glass window. Jean was sitting in a chair in front of a control panel covered with buttons. She was still wearing her doctor's vest, and had her glasses on her nose. She didn't budge or turn around to see the two boys who had entered, and kept her eyes fixed on the other side of the glass. She picked up a pen, chewing lightly on the end as she opened a notebook in which were scribbled her observations. There was a speaker not too far away, and she spoke into it.
"Okay, Bobby, today we'll see if your power's intensity has changed from last week, by giving you a serie of level three exercises," she said.
They heard bobby's voice from another speaker, showing his approval. Jean pressed a couple of buttons and Nathan couldn't help but gasp as he saw with his own eyes the empty room materialize a scene he would have described as a dry weed plain, making him think of a scenery he had seen on a postcard. There were a few normal people standing here and there not too far away from Bobby who hadn't moved, and Nathan had the vague impression of having seen them before.
The first was a young girl, maybe around the age of fifteen, honey colour eyes, brunette, wearing a summer skirt and a tank top. What was peculiar about her was that she had a pair of antennas on the top of her head. They were black, except for the round tip that was silver. She looked at Bobby as if it was totally normal for both of them to be there.
The second person was a grown up man, maybe in his mid-forties, with a mix of brown and blond hair, not that tall, but very strong and wicked looking. He had a dirty shirt and a pair of large pants with army boots. He also didn't seem to have shaved for a couple of days. He was lightly bent forward, his palms opened forward, ready to attack the intruder.
The third person was small, green and slimy. He was wearing clothes that seemed to come out of a dumpster, had greasy black and green hair, gooey yellow skin and very small teeth. In one word, he looked like a toad. Kneeling close to the ground, he seemed ready to pounce.
The fourth and last person was a blue-scaled woman with red hair. She didn't move at all, but Nathan had heard of her. To want Bobby had told him, the frogman was code-named Toad was had been one of Magneto's followers, before missing in action after the Liberty Incident. The blue gal was known as Mystique, and was Magneto's closest follower, also the one that had set him free not too long ago.
Nathan watched, visibly very interested.
The first one to attack was the strong man. He charged and at the same moment Bobby turned into his mutation form. He jumped over the man by leaning on his back, just as they were about to collide. The man was instantly turned into an ice cube. Still in the air, Bobby saw Toad jump a bit lower than him, pushing himself against the tower of ice that was supporting Bobby. Nathan saw his tongue grow, catching Bobby's ankle. His friend started falling, but he froze his enemy's tongue before touching the ground, and that set him free once again. He saw the ground coming closer and at the last moment, levelled his palms towards the ground, a column of ice forming instantly, stopping him from hitting the floor. He was propelled back up into the air, where he back flipped to get rid of Toad, who was still stuck in the air. Mystique had taken that time to transform into . . . Pyro! She was using his power to melt Iceman's ice pillars, but wasn't doing a great job, since Bobby always had the time to form other ones on which he leaned, able to stay a fair distance away from the ground and his enemies. After some time of avoiding the hits, Bobby returned to the ground and fought Mystique in a hand-to-hand battle. She was very good in martial arts so she was quite a trick to take off, but Bobby arrived too. The last girl still hadn't moved, just looking at Bobby indifferently. Bobby made a step towards her, but felt two arms grabbing him from behind, taking him to violently he screamed, being thrown to the other side of the room. The other man was up again, and looked very angry. It was then that the little girl took this opportunity to run towards Bobby, probably with the idea to fight. Bobby didn't have the time to do anything as he saw her jump and land a few feet away from him. The other man rejoined her and he punched Bobby in the stomach, his fist being turned into ice a few moments later. With a few other moves, he was turned into an ice sculpture again. Before Bobby had the time to turn the other side, he was tackled to the floor, unable to move. The girl rose from above him, floating not too far away as he struggled to get free. After some time, he arrived to move his arms, then regained the use of his legs. He slowly got up, but felt himself being pushed with an incredible force against the opposite wall. Before falling to the ground, he aimed his palms towards the girl, but she moved just in time to avoid the hit. Many, many tries later, she was laying on the floor, turned into an ice cube.
Sweating and panting heavily, Bobby got up, turning towards the glass panel through which Jean and the others were standing.
"Okay, you control the force of your power completely, but you need to learn to keep an eye on all your adversaries at the same time, and never underestimate them like you did for the young one," Jean commented.
Jean continued giving her annotations while Nate looked around the now empty room, trying to guess how the people and things were being projected. At first, he had thought of holograms, but Bobby had actually fought them, so it wasn't possible. When Jean was finished talking, Bobby had another serie of exercises, then about an hour later, it was John's turn. Nathan took a chair and sat beside Jean, liking to watch what the Danger Room was able to do. After the plain, Bobby had fought in a city and had been ordered not to damage anything, so it had been quite tricky for him. After that, it had been at the beach, somewhere much too hot for him to use his mutation properly and finally, he had finished with a combat on a skyscraper. Pyro had fought in a desert, where he couldn't burn anything but only make sand dunes explode, a forest where he wasn't allowed to burn down the vegetation and an arctic scenery. Once he was finished, Nathan turned to Jean.
"Could I try it?" he asked, looking at her scribble more notes in her jotter.
"No," she answered firmly. "We need to do a serie of medical tests first and find out precisely what your mutation is first. If not, we might not develop it the good way, so until then, you can't use the Danger Room 'cause it wouldn't be safe.
"When do I do the medical tests then?" Nathan asked, annoyed that he couldn't work out in the Danger Room.
"Tomorrow," Jean answered. "Ten o'clock, okay?"
"Yeah, sure," Nate said as he walked out of the room to go find his friends.
~~~~~
The next morning, Nathan dot up bright and early and went down to the gym where he found Logan. They talked, worked out a bit then went to the kitchen where they both ate. It was almost crazy how well the two got along well.
After that, Nate got back to his room and got dressed properly to go down to the med lab where Jean was probably already waiting. She didn't really do a full medical exam because she was mostly preoccupied by Nate's bullet wound and his heart, so there wasn't much to do.
After an hour of small exams, Nathan was set free again. He spent most of the day outside playing basketball with the others . . . and avoiding Kitty.
Everything seemed normal.
~~~~~
The next day, Nathan had to do another serie of medical tests, this time with the professor. After two hours spent in the med lab, he was asked to follow him to his office.
"So, Nathan," the professor started. "Do you remember when you didn't know what you're mutation was?"
Nathan nodded.
"You had your fangs, then we were confused by what you did in your fight down in the lab because at some point you used telekinesis, then with the daggers and your enhanced senses and your small healing factor but Jean and I have finally arrived to a conclusion," he continued. "At the beginning, you were able to do a few different things, because your mutation wasn't fix yet. The X-Gene wasn't properly placed in your blood system and so you had the capability of doing multiple things, but we still find it strange that the X-Gene wasn't 'properly fixed' into your system, because you are the first mutant in which we see this."
"What do you mean by 'not properly fixed'?" Nathan asked.
"There was something stopping the X-Gene from staying in your system," the professor said. "We think it was your body that was refusing it."
"So what now?" Nathan asked after a while.
"Well, your mutation is now 'permanent', I guess we could say," Jean said from the back of the room. "We know you can materialize certain things from your mind by making the other person believe that that object is there, we know you have a feeble healing power and some enhanced senses. The rest weren't permanent and so you won't have them anymore."
"Good," Nathan mumbled.
They kept talking for a while before Nathan was excused and the professor kept talking to Jean.
"You think it would be okay?" Jean asked, once he had closed the door.
"Yes," The professor said. "I think he's ready to join the team."
~~~
that night, Nathan was in his bed, in a dorm that is, sleeping soundly. Max was in a bed on his left, beside which were two other beds, respectfully belonging to Bobby and Pyro, and all three were also asleep. For once, Nate wasn't bothered by his second self and could sleep carelessly. But of course, this was only a window of opportunity that his conscience ungratefully took to push Nathan to the edge of insanity. What one did not know, was that Nathan's conscience didn't want the doom of his owner, but was only a porthole to his past, present, future, thoughts; so in one word, his life.
This time, he wanted to show his 'owner' a part of what he didn't know, yet involved him plenty in many ways. His 'mental picture' took the form of a nightmare.
~~~
Nathan turned in his bed once again, illuminated by the moon outside the window. Pearls of sweat were running down his forehead and his eyes were shut tight, his eyebrows frowning now and then.
All his surroundings were blurry, forming some sort of greenish/blue halo around everything his mind was picturing. At first, he could see a young girl with undefined traits, sitting on marble steps that seemed to lead to two metal-like gates in the middle of which was a design or insignia where a key was to be inserted to open the gates. The logo was of a pair of spread open angel-like wings. Nathan heard the girl sitting on the steps chuckle, and instinctively focused on her. She seemed to be around three years old, but to her size, she could have been younger. It was to say, she was very small. Her mix of dark and clear hair was let loose, moving with the breeze and she had a smile on her face as she held her knees to her chin. She was wearing a summer dress, but didn't have any shoes on. She chuckled again, looking directly at Nathan.
Suddenly, like he had felt at the docks, he was 'sucked in' to another image, or another part of his dream, I should say. Now, he could see the same gates and same steps, but the sky was darker, thunder was in the air and everything looked damaged and old, and so looked like the contrary of what it had been before, with the little girl. The marble steps were broken, slashed and hacked, and the gates were almost falling apart. Nathan didn't see anything else for some time, until another person entered his dream: his other self.
Well, he thought at first that it was his other self, but it wasn't. It looked like Nathan but it couldn't be. This Nathan was different, both physically and mentally, but there was something so similar to him it was frightening. This person, like the little girl, laughed, even if everything around him was in total havoc. The little girl showed up again, wearing the same thing, jumping over fallen rocks bare-footed. She jumped into the boy's arms, and he to the floor. Still hugging him, she turned to Nate.
"Hi, Nathan," she said calmly as the scenery around them changed again, to be replaced by the first one he had seen. "You don't remember me?"
Nathan could only stare as the two persons looked at him.
"You're supposed to be here, with us, remember?" she continued.
There was silence for a moment, until the child started talking about many things that Nate didn't understand completely, and all through her saying, she seemed to get more nervous and worried, as if something bad was going to happen and the surrounding, like her feelings, seemed to change from the beautiful bright place near the gates, then to the havoc it was before.
"We're very close . . . we're all safe for now . . . but not for long . . . they're coming for . . . us . . . mutants . . . 'He's coming . . . I want to warn you . . . come back, Nathan . . . mother doesn't know . . . she can't remember well . . . can you help my mommy? . . father is gone . . . we don't know where . . . the control . . . mutations . . . experiments . . . come back . . . assassins . . . mother . . . the base . . . mother at the . . . working . . . Alberta . . . the lab . . . me . . . you . . . them . . . they . . . mutants . . . gone . . . we're here . . . we don't forget . . . you . . . we know . . . mother knows more . . . she won't tell . . . she's afraid . . . we're all afraid . . . safe . . . sanctuary . . . power . . . . mutation . . . Can you help my mother?. . . come back, Nathan . . . help . . . they . . . take control . . . mutants . . . us . . . experiments . . . the lab . . . you . . ."
And suddenly, the words kept getting fainter and fainter before the person looking like Nate disappeared and the girl was left alone. She kept talking, saying full phrases that Nate could only pick up a few words here and there. She looked so desperate. She was starting to disappear. She screamed, falling on the stone steps before it all went black.
After that, Nathan could barely remember what happened as he yelled at the same time the little girl did, his scream pushed by an unknown fear. After that, he remembered waking up the others by his yell, they rushing to his side, Jean coming in, turning on the lights, hearing the Voice louder than ever until, by using her power, Jean did something to help Nate calm down, and so shut his mind for a couple of hours.
In his artificial sleep, even though his mind was 'shut off' and that there was no way to feel, hear or think, he could still hear the little girl from his dream, whispering the same words, and in the background, the same little cold laugh that followed him everywhere. At the end, before disappearing from his mind, the little girl whispered new words:
Don't say a word . . . they don't know . . . it's better . . . for their safety . . . but don't forget . . . come back, Nathan . . .
~~~
Jean waked Nate a couple of hours and he immediately realized, to his great displeasure, that he was in the med lab again. The professor, in his pyjamas like all the others, was looking at him leniently. Before they could say anything, Nathan started talking, the little girl's last sayings running through his head.
"Ah, It's okay everybody, I don't mean to wake you all up, nothings going on, nothing happened, it's just, well, you know, the other voice thing in my head, you can all go back to sleep . . ."
"Nathan, just wait a minute," The Professor said. "All I want to know is, did you have a dream in which a person was talking to you?"
There was a moment of silence as Nathan tried to see if he could give an alternate answer in order to avoid all the others. There wasn't and he was talking to a psychic, so there was no point of lying anyway.
"Yes," he whispered. "But it was only a dream."
The professor only listened to his first answer, and turned to Jean, giving her 'a look', as if confirming something he had said earlier.
"Nathan," he said, sighing. "What you saw wasn't a dream. It was a unidentified psychic from somewhere out of the school, talking to you inside your head."
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TOMTOMTOM!!! Another PSYCHIC. Why does this 'unidentified Psychic' want to talk to Nathan? Well, you'll find out when I'll decide to tell you. Now I need to concentrate on what Magneto's doing. Wait . . . is psychic working *for* Magneto? Aqh. I already see it. Magneto beside Nathan, handing his hand. "Nathan, I am your FATHER!"
Muahahaha. Nope. I don't think so.