Jess drove up the school's driveway and whistled; there was a fountain in
the front yard, topiaries everywhere, and neatly cut lawn as far as the eye
could see. She had driven through two gates on her way in, both of which
had been wrought iron, and the school itself was an ancient brick mansion
that sprawled across the property. She parked her rusted-out car in front,
climbed out, and headed for the front door.
She knocked on the door of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Gifted youngsters? She thought, what were they ON when they names this place?
Fall-Girl opened the door. "Oh, Hi! Come on in, I'll take you to the Professor." She held the door open. Jess stepped inside the Entrance Hall and looked around; it was like stepping into an old English castle. Two grand staircases swept up to the second story on either side of the front door, dark hardwood covered the walls, and classic paintings hung everywhere. The ceilings were at least ten feet tall where they didn't open and connect to the second story ceiling, making the rooms look even more spacious than they already were.
"Nice."
"Yeah, I know, isn't it great here?" Fall-Girl started towards the right- hand hall, and Jess followed.
"I don't think you told me your name," Jess said.
"I'm Kitty Pryde," Kitty continued to flounce down the hall. "Your name's Jennifer Simpson, right?"
"Jess Silvers."
"Oh. Well, that's pretty close, anyway. The Professor's office is right around this corner," the girl turned a corner, and Jess had to trot to keep up with her. "I told him about you, and he seemed excited. As excited as he ever gets, at least." She flashed Jess a smile, and knocked on a particularly large, thick, wooden door.
"Come in," someone behind the door said.
Jess pushed the door open. A sixty-ish, bald man was sitting behind an antique oak desk.
"Miss Silvers," He smiled slightly. "Welcome. Kitty, thank you for escorting our guest to my office. You are excused."
"Ok. Bye," Kitty left, her brown ponytail bouncing behind her.
"Please," Professor Xavier gestured to a chair in front of his desk, "sit down."
Jess sat. She felt a familiar tickling in her head, but if Joe had felt like a fly, this felt like a whale. Except, the whale touched her memories so gently and unobtrusively that Jess doubted she would have had any idea what was happening if she hadn't practiced Joe's telepathy. "You know," she said, voice low, "It's not like I'd have any reason to lie."
"I can see that now," the Professor said, pulling out of her mind, "but we have gained many enemies over the years, and it pays to know exactly whom one is dealing with."
"Are you satisfied that I'm not an enemy yet?"
"I am satisfied that you, yourself, are not an enemy. But I would like to know more about these people following you. Would you rather explain them to me, or let me look at your memories of them?"
Jess pinched the sleeve of her jacket. "You can look. But I want to come with." "Of course,"
The whale returned, but this time Jess was ready for it. She closed her eyes, focusing on what the new presence in her head was doing. Pictures flashed in front of her mind's eye; Joe begging on the streets; Sennya crying in the corner of an exotic plant stand after being hit by her 'employer'; police knocking on her door in search of a missing girl; driving at night with her stolen charges asleep in the backseat. The pictures became a flood of barely coherent images; learning to use Joe's and Sennya's powers; sleazy mutants inviting her to join their gangs; fights in the back streets; bars; practicing powers stolen from other mutants; running so fast she couldn't breath; faces leering at her out of the darkness. And still, the Professor riffled through her memories, searching for the people Jess was running from.
A new face flashed up, but instead of discarding it like the others, the professor held on. Jess saw Steven Lum, a man she had dated for two years and almost married. She saw his blonde-brown hair, the sharp angles of his face, and the gleaming blue eyes that had always seemed to be just a bit too far apart. She remembered how clever and charming he had been, at first, how the very way he seemed to think was like a breath of fresh air, and she remembered the day his parents had sent him to a mental institution in Tucson. Steven had never let her meet his parents, saying that all they hated him and would do anything to break things up between him and Jess. Jess had believed him, and gone to rescue him from the asylum. Once he was free, Steven had been different; he had become consumed with the need for revenge, forcing Jess to help him with plans to get back at his parents. When he had started plotting murder, Jess finally started to get scared. She went to visit his parents and found that Steven had painted her a picture of them that was so far from the truth, it took her several days to get over the shock. She agreed with them that Steven was dangerously ill, and turned him in to the police.
She remembered his face when she told him that she was the one who had given him up. He had pretended to be devastated, and then held a knife to her throat when she turned her back on him. Jess was scared out of her mind and, in desperation, had accidentally pulled the energy off a nearby light bulb and poured the heat onto the hand that held the knife. Steven let go of the knife and dropped to his knees, clutching his arm, screaming in pain. Jess had locked him into the kitchen while he was down, and dialed 911. When the police arrived with the ambulance, Steven looked her straight in the eye and smirked. "I know what you are," he whispered, his face still white with pain. After that it was like she could feel anything that used energy of any sort; lamps became furnaces, power lines were floods of barely controlled fire, and anything alive glowed with heat. Jess had left Steven's further care in the hands of his parents, and ran. She ran until she crossed the Mexico border, where she slowed down enough to try the light bulb trick again. She managed to melt her pocketknife into an unrecognizable blob.
The Professor pushed deeper into these memories. Jess saw the first mutant she had ever seen, or at least recognized as a mutant, other than herself; Sennya, sitting in the Mexico dirt and feeding power into a scrubby little bush. Jess had hidden herself and watched, spellbound, as Sennya's hands glowed, and the plant sprouted new leafs and flowers. That night, Jess saw the girl sitting outside a canvas tent, sobbing her heart out and nursing slap-marks on her face and neck. After that, Jess had acted on instinct and had taken Sennya away, back to America, to take care of her.
She remembered touching Sennya's hand for the first time, and feeling the torrents of power that flowed just under the skin. She remembered letting herself taste that power, how it was like flipping a switch somewhere in her gut. Suddenly, she could see what made plants tick, and how to help them. She WANTED to help them- her hands itched to stroke and caress anything green. It wasn't very hard to learn how to control the new power; all she had to do was practice on the first tree she saw, and soon she was better at it than Sennya herself was.
What WAS hard, then, was just about everything else. Someone had canceled all her credit card accounts, and taken all her money out of the bank. So Jess got a job at some tiny, fleapit bar, which was the only place she could find that didn't ask questions about social security and things like that. She was dead sure that using her real name would attract Steven instantaneously.
She was able to scrape out a life that way; a precarious, lonely, penniless life, but she thought it was better than what would happen if she let Steven find her.
One night while she was working tables at her bar, she saw a man pinching out and re-lighting a flame on his lighter, but without touching the little dial on the side. Small ripples of heat rolled off his hands whenever he touched the fire, just the same as Sennya's. Jess's heart had almost stopped; here was another mutant, an ADULT mutant, who was surviving pretty well, judging from the price of the booze he was ordering a steady stream of. She had confronted him, and asked how it was that he was managing so well. This had led to Jess's involvement in mutant gangs, which, once she knew where to look, seemed to be everywhere. They always seemed to be far more than willing to let her join their "organizations", and were, more often than not, violent when she turned down their offers.
This made staying in one place even more dangerous than it had been before. Jess had been forced to keep running, but not before learning how to use the powers of every mutant she came in contact with; by the time she found Joe, she could shape-shift, create flame, sprout bat-like wings, blend into backgrounds chameleon-like, move objects with her mind, and read minds on several different levels, in addition to controlling plants and directing energy.
Her experience in telepathy was what introduced her to Joe. She had been walking down a rather grimy street with Sennya one day, when she felt a bold tickling right at the front of her mind. It had only taken a second for her to find the beam of heat that was connecting her head to a scruffy young boy's. She walked up to him, switched on one of the higher orders of telepathy she had acquired, and read his own mind.
(You gonna take me with you, like the girl?)
(Well, I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I saved one kid, and left another to rot in the streets, wouldn't I?)
And that was all there had been to it. She now had two children.
Jess had long before discovered that while most mutations were easy to imitate, telepathy was the one she didn't have a knack for; she managed to learn how to block fellow telepaths, but her protections were always crudely done, and in actual mind reading, she had about all the subtlety of a hippo. So, Jess had discovered what a wonderful boon it was to have a born-and-bred telepath in her little group- Joe could read the mind of any mutant, or normal human, Jess pointed out to him, and delve into their darkest secrets without their having any idea what was going on.
The downside of a living with a telepath, of course, was having such limited protection against his mental raids. Joes' favorite form of entertainment was trying to sneak past Jess's mind blocks, and more often than not, he succeeded, to Jess's infinite annoyance.
The Professor pulled out of her head. "So," he said. Actual words sounded strange on Jess's ears after the intense mental workout. "You believe that if you enroll your children here, they will be safe, and you might be able to figure out a better way of life? One out of the grasp of this Steven Lum?"
"Yeah, that sounds about right." Jess sat up straighter in her chair. "So, do they qualify to live here?"
"Any mutant child is qualified to live here, Miss Silvers. I, personally, am more concerned about what you plan to do with YOURSELF." He rested his elbows on the desk, and created a pyramid out of his fingers, ala' Mister Burns, Jess thought.
"Well, I was thinking I'd figure that out when I learned more about this school of yours."
"Very well." The Professor had apparently caught her MISTER BURNS thought, because he seemed to be fighting back a smile as he folded his arms on the table. "What would you like to know?"
Jess leaned her elbows on the desk. "First of all, is there a teaching job open?" A look of pain passed over Professor's face. "Yes. One of our principal teachers passed away recently, and we're having quite a bit of trouble managing without her."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Can I ask what, exactly, happened to her?"
The Professor looked at Jess for a second, and then chuckled suddenly. "Nothing to do with spaceships, I can assure you."
Jess smiled. "Didn't even feel you that time. Wish I could get that good at telepathy."
"I'm sure your abundance of extra powers more than makes up for that."
"Yeah, I guess. It'd still be nice, though." she mused. "What were you saying about that teacher?"
"That she died saving the lives of everyone she loved." The Professor's look told Jess that that was all she was going to find out about the ex- teacher just then.
"Oh. I honestly am sorry. So," she felt like an all-out jerk bringing this up so abruptly, but tact had never been Jess's strongest point. "What sort of credentials do you require the teachers here to have? I mean, it must be pretty hard to find people who are mutants, have teacher's degrees from Harvard, and are willing to work here." She bit her tongue. Not only had she never been to college, let alone acquired a teaching degree, but she was pretty sure she had just insulted Xavier's.
The Professor looked slightly amused. "The only thing I require in my teachers is teaching capability and competence in the subjects they teach."
Jess relaxed. "So, if I told you that I've been teaching Sennya and Joe ever since I found them, would I be a possible candidate for a job here?"
"You would. May I see how much they have learned in the time you've had them?"
"Be my guest." Jess stifled the urge to jump on the desk and do the Macarena. The Whale returned to her head, and she felt it riffling though her memories of teaching her kids.
"You've got the job. You have gotten them both up to long division, taught them the basics of grammar, and countless snippets of other subjects; I would say this is rather extraordinary, given the fact that you have been on the run for the past three years, and working full-time at any job you got."
It took Jess a moment to process this. "I got the job."
"Yes,"
"And the kids are in?"
"Correct,"
"And I'm just guessing here, but this looks like a boarding school; will they be living in dorms?"
"Yes. And there is an extra room, if you would like to move in as well; all the current teachers live here in the mansion."
Again, Jess only barely suppressed the urge to dance on the desk. "This is wonderful. When do I start work? And when can the kids come?"
"How does tomorrow sound?"
"Like a dream come true. Thank you, sir. We'll be here tomorrow at, say, nine o' clock?" Jess stood up.
"That sounds wonderful, Miss Silvers. I will have Ororo show you around, if she doesn't have a morning class. I will see you then,"
"Bye," Jess walked to the door, trying not to smile like an idiot.
"Good day."
She knocked on the door of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Gifted youngsters? She thought, what were they ON when they names this place?
Fall-Girl opened the door. "Oh, Hi! Come on in, I'll take you to the Professor." She held the door open. Jess stepped inside the Entrance Hall and looked around; it was like stepping into an old English castle. Two grand staircases swept up to the second story on either side of the front door, dark hardwood covered the walls, and classic paintings hung everywhere. The ceilings were at least ten feet tall where they didn't open and connect to the second story ceiling, making the rooms look even more spacious than they already were.
"Nice."
"Yeah, I know, isn't it great here?" Fall-Girl started towards the right- hand hall, and Jess followed.
"I don't think you told me your name," Jess said.
"I'm Kitty Pryde," Kitty continued to flounce down the hall. "Your name's Jennifer Simpson, right?"
"Jess Silvers."
"Oh. Well, that's pretty close, anyway. The Professor's office is right around this corner," the girl turned a corner, and Jess had to trot to keep up with her. "I told him about you, and he seemed excited. As excited as he ever gets, at least." She flashed Jess a smile, and knocked on a particularly large, thick, wooden door.
"Come in," someone behind the door said.
Jess pushed the door open. A sixty-ish, bald man was sitting behind an antique oak desk.
"Miss Silvers," He smiled slightly. "Welcome. Kitty, thank you for escorting our guest to my office. You are excused."
"Ok. Bye," Kitty left, her brown ponytail bouncing behind her.
"Please," Professor Xavier gestured to a chair in front of his desk, "sit down."
Jess sat. She felt a familiar tickling in her head, but if Joe had felt like a fly, this felt like a whale. Except, the whale touched her memories so gently and unobtrusively that Jess doubted she would have had any idea what was happening if she hadn't practiced Joe's telepathy. "You know," she said, voice low, "It's not like I'd have any reason to lie."
"I can see that now," the Professor said, pulling out of her mind, "but we have gained many enemies over the years, and it pays to know exactly whom one is dealing with."
"Are you satisfied that I'm not an enemy yet?"
"I am satisfied that you, yourself, are not an enemy. But I would like to know more about these people following you. Would you rather explain them to me, or let me look at your memories of them?"
Jess pinched the sleeve of her jacket. "You can look. But I want to come with." "Of course,"
The whale returned, but this time Jess was ready for it. She closed her eyes, focusing on what the new presence in her head was doing. Pictures flashed in front of her mind's eye; Joe begging on the streets; Sennya crying in the corner of an exotic plant stand after being hit by her 'employer'; police knocking on her door in search of a missing girl; driving at night with her stolen charges asleep in the backseat. The pictures became a flood of barely coherent images; learning to use Joe's and Sennya's powers; sleazy mutants inviting her to join their gangs; fights in the back streets; bars; practicing powers stolen from other mutants; running so fast she couldn't breath; faces leering at her out of the darkness. And still, the Professor riffled through her memories, searching for the people Jess was running from.
A new face flashed up, but instead of discarding it like the others, the professor held on. Jess saw Steven Lum, a man she had dated for two years and almost married. She saw his blonde-brown hair, the sharp angles of his face, and the gleaming blue eyes that had always seemed to be just a bit too far apart. She remembered how clever and charming he had been, at first, how the very way he seemed to think was like a breath of fresh air, and she remembered the day his parents had sent him to a mental institution in Tucson. Steven had never let her meet his parents, saying that all they hated him and would do anything to break things up between him and Jess. Jess had believed him, and gone to rescue him from the asylum. Once he was free, Steven had been different; he had become consumed with the need for revenge, forcing Jess to help him with plans to get back at his parents. When he had started plotting murder, Jess finally started to get scared. She went to visit his parents and found that Steven had painted her a picture of them that was so far from the truth, it took her several days to get over the shock. She agreed with them that Steven was dangerously ill, and turned him in to the police.
She remembered his face when she told him that she was the one who had given him up. He had pretended to be devastated, and then held a knife to her throat when she turned her back on him. Jess was scared out of her mind and, in desperation, had accidentally pulled the energy off a nearby light bulb and poured the heat onto the hand that held the knife. Steven let go of the knife and dropped to his knees, clutching his arm, screaming in pain. Jess had locked him into the kitchen while he was down, and dialed 911. When the police arrived with the ambulance, Steven looked her straight in the eye and smirked. "I know what you are," he whispered, his face still white with pain. After that it was like she could feel anything that used energy of any sort; lamps became furnaces, power lines were floods of barely controlled fire, and anything alive glowed with heat. Jess had left Steven's further care in the hands of his parents, and ran. She ran until she crossed the Mexico border, where she slowed down enough to try the light bulb trick again. She managed to melt her pocketknife into an unrecognizable blob.
The Professor pushed deeper into these memories. Jess saw the first mutant she had ever seen, or at least recognized as a mutant, other than herself; Sennya, sitting in the Mexico dirt and feeding power into a scrubby little bush. Jess had hidden herself and watched, spellbound, as Sennya's hands glowed, and the plant sprouted new leafs and flowers. That night, Jess saw the girl sitting outside a canvas tent, sobbing her heart out and nursing slap-marks on her face and neck. After that, Jess had acted on instinct and had taken Sennya away, back to America, to take care of her.
She remembered touching Sennya's hand for the first time, and feeling the torrents of power that flowed just under the skin. She remembered letting herself taste that power, how it was like flipping a switch somewhere in her gut. Suddenly, she could see what made plants tick, and how to help them. She WANTED to help them- her hands itched to stroke and caress anything green. It wasn't very hard to learn how to control the new power; all she had to do was practice on the first tree she saw, and soon she was better at it than Sennya herself was.
What WAS hard, then, was just about everything else. Someone had canceled all her credit card accounts, and taken all her money out of the bank. So Jess got a job at some tiny, fleapit bar, which was the only place she could find that didn't ask questions about social security and things like that. She was dead sure that using her real name would attract Steven instantaneously.
She was able to scrape out a life that way; a precarious, lonely, penniless life, but she thought it was better than what would happen if she let Steven find her.
One night while she was working tables at her bar, she saw a man pinching out and re-lighting a flame on his lighter, but without touching the little dial on the side. Small ripples of heat rolled off his hands whenever he touched the fire, just the same as Sennya's. Jess's heart had almost stopped; here was another mutant, an ADULT mutant, who was surviving pretty well, judging from the price of the booze he was ordering a steady stream of. She had confronted him, and asked how it was that he was managing so well. This had led to Jess's involvement in mutant gangs, which, once she knew where to look, seemed to be everywhere. They always seemed to be far more than willing to let her join their "organizations", and were, more often than not, violent when she turned down their offers.
This made staying in one place even more dangerous than it had been before. Jess had been forced to keep running, but not before learning how to use the powers of every mutant she came in contact with; by the time she found Joe, she could shape-shift, create flame, sprout bat-like wings, blend into backgrounds chameleon-like, move objects with her mind, and read minds on several different levels, in addition to controlling plants and directing energy.
Her experience in telepathy was what introduced her to Joe. She had been walking down a rather grimy street with Sennya one day, when she felt a bold tickling right at the front of her mind. It had only taken a second for her to find the beam of heat that was connecting her head to a scruffy young boy's. She walked up to him, switched on one of the higher orders of telepathy she had acquired, and read his own mind.
(You gonna take me with you, like the girl?)
(Well, I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I saved one kid, and left another to rot in the streets, wouldn't I?)
And that was all there had been to it. She now had two children.
Jess had long before discovered that while most mutations were easy to imitate, telepathy was the one she didn't have a knack for; she managed to learn how to block fellow telepaths, but her protections were always crudely done, and in actual mind reading, she had about all the subtlety of a hippo. So, Jess had discovered what a wonderful boon it was to have a born-and-bred telepath in her little group- Joe could read the mind of any mutant, or normal human, Jess pointed out to him, and delve into their darkest secrets without their having any idea what was going on.
The downside of a living with a telepath, of course, was having such limited protection against his mental raids. Joes' favorite form of entertainment was trying to sneak past Jess's mind blocks, and more often than not, he succeeded, to Jess's infinite annoyance.
The Professor pulled out of her head. "So," he said. Actual words sounded strange on Jess's ears after the intense mental workout. "You believe that if you enroll your children here, they will be safe, and you might be able to figure out a better way of life? One out of the grasp of this Steven Lum?"
"Yeah, that sounds about right." Jess sat up straighter in her chair. "So, do they qualify to live here?"
"Any mutant child is qualified to live here, Miss Silvers. I, personally, am more concerned about what you plan to do with YOURSELF." He rested his elbows on the desk, and created a pyramid out of his fingers, ala' Mister Burns, Jess thought.
"Well, I was thinking I'd figure that out when I learned more about this school of yours."
"Very well." The Professor had apparently caught her MISTER BURNS thought, because he seemed to be fighting back a smile as he folded his arms on the table. "What would you like to know?"
Jess leaned her elbows on the desk. "First of all, is there a teaching job open?" A look of pain passed over Professor's face. "Yes. One of our principal teachers passed away recently, and we're having quite a bit of trouble managing without her."
"I'm sorry to hear that. Can I ask what, exactly, happened to her?"
The Professor looked at Jess for a second, and then chuckled suddenly. "Nothing to do with spaceships, I can assure you."
Jess smiled. "Didn't even feel you that time. Wish I could get that good at telepathy."
"I'm sure your abundance of extra powers more than makes up for that."
"Yeah, I guess. It'd still be nice, though." she mused. "What were you saying about that teacher?"
"That she died saving the lives of everyone she loved." The Professor's look told Jess that that was all she was going to find out about the ex- teacher just then.
"Oh. I honestly am sorry. So," she felt like an all-out jerk bringing this up so abruptly, but tact had never been Jess's strongest point. "What sort of credentials do you require the teachers here to have? I mean, it must be pretty hard to find people who are mutants, have teacher's degrees from Harvard, and are willing to work here." She bit her tongue. Not only had she never been to college, let alone acquired a teaching degree, but she was pretty sure she had just insulted Xavier's.
The Professor looked slightly amused. "The only thing I require in my teachers is teaching capability and competence in the subjects they teach."
Jess relaxed. "So, if I told you that I've been teaching Sennya and Joe ever since I found them, would I be a possible candidate for a job here?"
"You would. May I see how much they have learned in the time you've had them?"
"Be my guest." Jess stifled the urge to jump on the desk and do the Macarena. The Whale returned to her head, and she felt it riffling though her memories of teaching her kids.
"You've got the job. You have gotten them both up to long division, taught them the basics of grammar, and countless snippets of other subjects; I would say this is rather extraordinary, given the fact that you have been on the run for the past three years, and working full-time at any job you got."
It took Jess a moment to process this. "I got the job."
"Yes,"
"And the kids are in?"
"Correct,"
"And I'm just guessing here, but this looks like a boarding school; will they be living in dorms?"
"Yes. And there is an extra room, if you would like to move in as well; all the current teachers live here in the mansion."
Again, Jess only barely suppressed the urge to dance on the desk. "This is wonderful. When do I start work? And when can the kids come?"
"How does tomorrow sound?"
"Like a dream come true. Thank you, sir. We'll be here tomorrow at, say, nine o' clock?" Jess stood up.
"That sounds wonderful, Miss Silvers. I will have Ororo show you around, if she doesn't have a morning class. I will see you then,"
"Bye," Jess walked to the door, trying not to smile like an idiot.
"Good day."