We'd bought a cheapest white van available, kitted it out with the necessary servailance technology and then sat in to wait. At the current rate of mutation, the proffesor had said, we could be there a while.

At the moment, we were parked around the back of St Stevns High School. Inside, our prey, Sarah Stalone, was taking English. From all information we were recieving visualy and audiably-we'd slipped several bugs into her clothing and, at the moment, Nightcrawler sat in one of the deflated front seats with binoculars, peering through the darkened glass- she'd done nothing. "She haz her face pressed up to the glass,no" the frequent reports kept telling us. Nightcrawler was energetic but very anoying sometimes.

I sat at the back on a plastic stool, feeling bored. I was the only member of our select litle team with no day job; I stayed awake through the night and was to wake the others if anything happened. It was a lonely job, one which I was sure Logan(the muscles of the operation) would've been far more suited for. Nightcrawler even had the name for it.

"Shouldn't you be getting some sleep?" I looked up into the black, japanesey eyes of Jubilee and smiled."You look really tired." she said.

"I'll be fine," I replied. This was a lie, of course: I'd hardly slept in a week and, when I did, the dreams were always unpleasant, warped reality dreams like the ones you get when you have a fever- of men with no eyes and worlds where people had no faces. Jubilee, with her laid-back attitude, had waved them away as products of the current sleeping conditions and the incredible levels of cafiene in my blood, and that I was a fool to worry about them.

But then, off course, she wasnt the one having them.

I poured myself more coffee from the grimed up coffee machine that perched unsteadilly on one of the long metal tables that ran the length of the truck. At the noise or the smell or something, Logan turned in his drivers seat to look at me.

"Any left?" he said bluntly. Ah yes, Logan. He was the tough guy, the rough guy, the guy who had seen the world and shunned everybody, though deep down everyone knew he was a good egg. I hated him. Dont ask me why; maybe it was his abnoxious, macho Americanism and the fact that I was British. Or the way he carefully trimmed his stubble to be not-quite-shaved-not-quite-beard but that perfect, cliched ruggedness. Or how you could hide a body in those enormous sideburns of his.

Whatever it was, I loathed the bastard, but I poured him a cup anyway.

Over the radio came the sounds of voices. We all looked to Nightcrawler who shrugged and said, "Ze teecher aint too happy.(sorry but do you know how hard it is to write like a russian would speak?)"

Nightcrawler was the guy's codename; his real name was Kurt. He was Russian, annoying but likable and had a tendency to be incredibly sarcastic at times.

He was also covered in short, blue fur, had pointed elfen-ears and a long, thin, pronged tail. In many ways he looked like a demon, hence the name.

I wistled a bit and sipped my coffee. The noises on the radio were distorted a lot, affected greatly by the electric fizzle and the layers of clothing that covered the bugs, but it still carried the distinct tones of an uptight, irate man, taking out the stresses and strains of a long day's work on the nearest indiviual. Logan twiddled a few buttons idly, fazing out background noise and interfernence, and the quality greatly improved.

" What a bastard," Jubilee stated( It was funny and more than a little weird that, in the weeks we'd been shadowing Sarah, we'd all gotten attached to her. So much so, we almost took it as a personal affront if someone insulted her). Then he said something about the back pains she' been having and we all looked up; these complaints were becoming a common ocurence now. The Proffessor had said they were likely a product of her emergent mutant ability. The fact that they were getting stronger, more frequent, obviously meant something.

It would probably be a good idea at this point to answer a few questions you may have. These probably range from "Why are you in a van, following a young girl? What are you, stalkers?" to "Why the hell is that guy blue!?" Well, first things first, let me asure you that we are not weird, atleast in that sense. We were simply looking out for one of our own- a mutant. We were all mutants in this van as was she, though she just didnt know it yet. This was why Kurt had the hair, the fangs and the tail, why Logan had powers of regeneration and knifes which popped out of his knuckle (always fun to watch) and why Jubilee fired little plasmoids out of the tips of her fingers. They all had the mutant gene, and had learnt to accept it.

It's funny: when each of them got their power, they hated it and then in time, through the wise teachings of the Proffesor. Mine, then atleast, was completely the oposite. It started out as a dream- I could be anyone I wanted to be. I could even be any animal- a cat and enjoy a brisk, night stroll about my neighborhood fences or a bird and fly to dizzying heights where the oxygen grew thin or even a dolphin and go deep sea diving. For the first year it had been bliss. Now, a year on, here I sat, in the back of a beaten up van that stank of rot and rat droppings, drinking foul, bitter coffee, and wallowing in my own, personal, mental hell.

A mobile phone, that had previously been balancing off the edge off an equiptment-laden metal shelf, rang, and vibrated itself into a pool of damp on the floor. Jubilee answered it. What with her trenchcoat, (OK so it was bright yellow) it could've been a scene out of the matrix.

"A hoy hoy?" (Well that ruined the atmosphere.) I all listened, straining to hear over the drum of the rain on the roof, and I distinctly heard the deep, majestic tones of the Proffesor.

"Uh huh.......Uh huh.......Yeah, we're watching right no-...........we'll get on it right away, sir" and, flicking the mobile shut, she turned to the two in the front seats. "K, you guys stay here, moniter the situation and come in if we need you."

At this, I flung open the back door and jumped out. A cold sheet of rain hit me immediately and I shrank deeper into my thin, black jumper. I was wearing the uniform of the school- bland trousers, boots, shirt and a garish green and purple tie- all for undercover purposes; if anyone asked, I was the new English foriegn exchange student. My features were not my own, thanks to my ability to change them at will, and had been chosen by the Proffesor to be as immemorable as possible. My hair was short and the colour between blond and brown that has no name. My eyes were muddy green and my face so drab, dull and depressed that no American, filled to the brim with steriotypes, could ever doubt I was English. If anyone happened to ask, then I was Jim Slater from Barnsley, Yorkshire.

Jubilee landed on the wet tarmac beside me and set off jogging towards the squat, concrete building that was the school. I followed.

"What are we doing?" I asked, as we weaved our way through the cars of the car park. There was no one around. Only idiots would brave this sort of weather; the rain fell from above, was blown in from the sides and rebounded off the concrete below, effectively getting you from all sides. We were quickly sodden.

"Keeping a closer watch," Jubilee yelled back, over the drumming of the car tops. "That was the Proffesor on the phone."

"I guessed."

"He says Cerebro's picking up something, some unusual patterns. I think it's finally happening. This should be fun to see what happens, huh?"

I squinted and swept away the droplets that clung to my lank, British brow. Maybe a few weeks ago it would've been but now I was just eager to get it over with and get back home, to the hot showers, the indoor swimming pool...

I smiled to myself. Home? I was calling it that after only a month.

We reached the reception and stepped inside, smiling sweetly at the receptionist as we passed. Though for all she cared, we could've weilding chainsaws.