*hikes wearily back on stage, followed by several flies* Ha ha! I live! *faints onto the keyboard* x.x' *nose hits several keys* 'zzzzzddddddddddddsssssssssssssssssssssssssssx'
Avalan: 0.o'… Umm, please excuse the Author, it's her first day back from camp, and she's kinda half dead… so I guess I have to run things today… what do we do first? Oh yes, reviews!
Sabby: Thankyou! ^_^ 1st person is Soulsearch's specialty, and she takes great pride in her Selwyn pieces… he pops up in many things, in many different forms.
Smallfry: I really don't think that Soul's Sellie's a girlfriend sorta person… not that he's gay or anything (I think), he just never considered it before. He's too… how to put it… clueless.
Abast ye hearty soldiers! *falls out of chair* pilloooooow….
Avalan: Oh dear.
Disclaimer: We own Sellie-chan, but no one else. Don't sue, it's not worth the brain cells.
*snores and rolls over*
Avalan: -_-;
The KAI Project
If the brotherhood are the masters of leering, then Logan is the very master of Looming.
Not that he's a particularly friendly person in the first place, but I quickly found it better to keep on his good side, or just get out of the way. I also learnt a lot about the other people in the school.
It turned out that Professor Xavier is a powerful psychic, and Scott's eyes send out powerful 'optic blasts', which is why he wears sunglasses all the time. The first time Kitty walked, or 'phased' through a wall I practically had a heart attack, and Kurt can teleport. He also doesn't look like the Kurt that I see at school.
He's blue, and he's fuzzy. He has pointed ears like an elf, and incisors like those of a cat.
The first time I saw him, I stared, and he looked slightly apprehensive.
"You are so…" I searched for a word to describe it, and Kurt looked slightly nervous; he obviously wanted to be accepted. "Cool!"
He relaxed, and smiled.
"Really?"
"Sure! It's not every day one comes across someone with a tail. I've learnt to be open minded."
Spyke, a slightly obnoxious young terror (perfectly normal young teenager) on a skateboard who can shoot spikes from his body that are almost like bone, hence his name, is yet another person in the institute.
Jean is also in my year. There seems to be a lot of tension hanging between her and Scott, and she's also a telepath, but not as strong as the professor. She was very welcoming, and is popular, dating the captain of the football team, which doesn't go down well with Scott.
Rogue still hasn't said anything to me. Her power is draining other people of their energy, and if they also have special abilities, borrowing them for a short amount of time.
Storm, a lady with shocking white hair which contrasts with her dark skin (and is consequently Spyke's aunt) can control weather. She's a very patient and mature woman, who doesn't take crap. She and Wolverine seem to be the ones in charge of the horde under Professor Xavier.
I was sharing a room with Kurt, which meant I had a balcony and my own bed. Kurt seemed rather put out by the arrangement, but didn't argue… too much.
We set up a 'you stay on your side of the room, and I stay on mine' procedure, and that was about it. It seemed a bit immature, but I wasn't complaining, the bed was comfortable.
All the other rooms were either being used, or reserved for whoever might be coming soon.
The night that I moved in, I knocked quietly on the door of the Professor's study.
"Come in, Selwyn." It would take a while for me to get over the whole 'mind reading' thing; it still creeped me out at this stage.
I poked my head into the door, and smiled slightly.
"Um… I just wanted to apologize for being so rude… It wasn't very fair of me to do so without knowing about what you were trying to make me see..."
The professor didn't smile, but he still sounded pleasant.
"It's quite alright, Selwyn. It was only natural for you to be suspicious after what you grew up in." he replied.
"Um… so… yeah…" Lost for words, I twisted my gloves slightly, then turned towards the door.
"Oh, and Selwyn, make sure you're ready for training tomorrow morning."
I turned back around, and blinked. Slowly.
"…Training?"
"Quite. You're one of the X men now."
"I… See."
I turned, quite deliberately, and walked out of the room, my hands flexing at my sides.
So that was what the uniform that I found on the end of my bed was for. The background was black, with a royal blue high-necked collar that ended in a 'v' at the top of my chest, with side bars of the same blue. It came with blue fingerless gloves, a loose belt with an 'X' on it, and a pair of blue ankle boots that clipped at the sides as well. It looked kinda tight, and I was rather image conscious. I started to dread the next morning.
When I got back to my room, I instantly went over the Kurt's desk, and stood behind him. He was doing his math homework.
"That's 3.493." I said, pointing to the question that he was working on.
Kurt glanced up at me.
"I thought you were staying on your side of the room." He said mildly amused, but still scribbling the answer in.
"I need to ask you something."
"Vat is it?" He asked, turning around to look at me.
"Um… What kind of training is held in the mornings?"
I think he could tell I was apprehensive, because he smiled slightly.
"I'm guessing you haven't seen the danger room yet."
That just didn't sound too healthy. "…Pardon?"
He smirked evilly, and continued. "It's a room filled with sharp things, and moving things, things that shoot, and things that roll and try to crush you! Wolverine shoves you in there, and sees how long you can… stay alive!"
He disappeared in a small puff of smoke, then appeared behind me, and whispered in my ear "be afraid, be very afraid."
After a moment of silence, he started laughing, and sat back down at his desk.
"It's a simulation thing. We all work together, and see how long we can keep going before we die… not really dying though… It's all pretend, so don't worry about it so much." Kurt finally confessed, still sniggering. "Ah, the look on your face…" He shook his head, and turned back to his work.
I raised my brow, and went a-wanderin' in an attempt to find food, until I eventually found the kitchen. Do you have any idea how large that place is? And yet I still had to share a room.
You know how I mentioned Logan's habit of looming? I found out about it the next morning.
It was about five minutes to six and almost everyone was standing around chatting, and waiting for six to roll around. Kurt had woken me by peering at me and shaking my shoulders, which ended in screaming, about five minutes beforehand, so I was still half asleep. For lack of anything better to do, I was reading through my Chemistry textbook.
I was still reading, oblivious of anything else when a shadow was suddenly cast over me. I glanced up, then double-took.
"Mr Logan!" I squeaked.
He was looming. There was no other way to think of it. He couldn't have looked more threatening unless he had his metal claw-things out.
"What are you doing?"
"… Reading…"
"And what should you be doing?"
"… Training?"
Wolverine hauled me to my feet by the back of my collar.
"C'mon then, shrimp."
I suddenly realised that everyone else was gone.
I sighed wearily, discarded my book, and followed him. I had a new nickname, and another person reminded me of my height, or lack there-of. Damn.
Inside a perfectly harmless, if not thick set of metal doors, was a domelike, immense chamber. And I mean immense. It was entirely made of metal, and there was an observation deck up the top. There were panels of various sizes everywhere, which I could tell were hiding various things.
Everyone else was doing stretches, and had fallen into a slightly revered silence. They were professional about what they were doing… or so I thought.
*~*~*~*
For an hour, I ran around with various things trying to shoot me, impale me, slice me into bite-sized pieces, trap me, trick me, and generally have me hospitalised. By seven, I felt like sleeping again, or collapsing… or possibly melting into a small pile of exhaustedness. I didn't want to know what else was going to be done later on in the training.
"Hey, Shrimp." Mr Logan called as I shuffled wearily after everyone else, eager to have a shower.
All hopes to be somewhere near the front of the shower line died, and I stopped and turned around.
"Yes?"
"Have you had any previous training?"
"…Yes," Of course I had. As previously mentioned, I was a very bored person. When I was eight, I had taken the initiative to ask to be taught how to fight, because I was already planning to escape some day.
"I thought so." Logan said, coming up to me. He almost looked friendly. "You did well for your first try, Shrimp." He told me, whacking me on the back, quite hard, and I stumbled forward a few paces.
What can I say? I'm frail.
"Eh… thankyou." I replied, unsure what else to say. I resisted the urge to start massaging the pain out of my back.
"But…"
Ugh. There was always going to be a catch when it came to adults.
"You're still behind. Meet me here at four, and we'll see what you can do, one-on-one."
"… Is it too late to say I'm Buddhist and fighting is against my religion?"
He whacked me on the back again, this time it seemed like more of a warning. "Don't kid around. Now get goin', you're stinkin' up the corridor."
"Yes sir…"
I took off at a jog to stop myself from banging my head against one of the solid walls that surrounded me.
Just when I thought that things couldn't possibly any worse, they did. Training with Logan. Alone.
I kept trying to remind myself why I was living there, but came up with a blank.
*~*~*~*
They kept trying to feed me.
I was short and scrawny, so all the other kids thought that I had been mal-nourished at a younger age. It could well have been true, but that was beside the point. I had a slither of toast without anything on it, and a glass of water for breakfast, and they all thought that I was starving myself in protest to the training or something… or on a severe diet. In truth, it was what I was used to.
The kitchen itself was a ruckus, people passing and grabbing things as they pleased, sometimes even throwing things, and I frankly, wasn't used to it.
"Hey Sel!"
An apple came flying towards me, and then exploded mid-way.
Scott gave me a withering look behind his glasses.
"You were supposed to catch that."
Oops.
"Sorry, I'll clean that up." I said, pointing to the pile of ashes that used to be a healthy red apple. The sticker was sitting in the middle of the pile.
As I swept the soot up into my hands, yet another piece of fruit was shoved under my nose. This time, it was an orange.
Scott smiled at me. "This time, eat it genius."
I smiled, and said "put it on the bench for me? My hands are kinda full."
As soon as his back was turned, I dumped the ashes into the bin, and bolted, ignoring the fact that Kitty was trying to lecture me about a proper breakfast as she piled scrambled eggs onto my abandoned plate.
I started walking to school, and was picked up halfway through the forest by Scott, who once again slipped me an orange. I ate it for lunch so I didn't have to stand in the que to buy food. I also learnt not to sit in a corner, and leant against a wall next to a bin so I could feed my scraps in as I ate. It wasn't very comfortable, but it worked.
This time, amazingly enough, I didn't get harassed once. I was still being leered at by the Brotherhood, but I also learnt that Lance had a sweet spot for Kitty. Quite cute, really. Whether Kitty returned the affection though, at the time, was a mystery. At one moment, she could be sneering at his advances, then another, she was giggling at his antics to get her attention. I even saw him carrying her books for her.
I would have mused more about this, and even perhaps asked someone about their status if I wasn't so nervous.
"Tough break, man." Spyke had said respectfully as we headed back up into our rooms.
Everyone threw me pitying glances, but no one would tell me what to expect, bar Rogue's helpful comment: "Pain."
As you can probably tell, I threw on my uniform and walked down into the 'basement' of the institute like there was lead in my feet. It sure felt like there was in my stomach.
I practically regretted breaking free at that moment, and was entertaining the thought of running away yet again when I rounded the corner into the danger room and found the whole thing had been repaired, as if like magic.
No one seemed to be there, and I almost left before I heard Mr. Logan's voice coming from the speakers.
"Up here, Shrimp."
Oh great. He was in the observation deck, at the controls.
"Five laps."
"WHAT?!?" I yelled, as the entire room sprung into action, and I was instantly trying to avoid a guided laser.
I was unimpressed, but I did what he asked.
It's hard to describe exactly what happened because I only remember parts, but just picture a scrawny teenager with black hair in something that looks like an amateur super-hero outfit leaping, ducking and flipping over various implements of mass-destruction and pain, as well as destroying a good number of them.
You make me make it look easy, don't you? Well, it's not.
I got hit in the centre of my back by a vagrant laser beam on my third round, and had to start again. Wolverine said he wouldn't let me eat until I got it right, and frankly, I believed him.
On my second try, I got it right, and went out straight away to collapse onto my bed. I was still curled up in a corner when Kurt came along and poked me.
"Dinner."
I mumbled something that even I didn't understand, and rolled over.
I was woken around midnight by my growling stomach and shuffled down the various flights of stairs to the kitchen, and stole a stick of celery from the fridge, and a cold piece of beef left over from dinner.
Friday passed in a blur of the half-dead, and finally it was the weekend.
By the end of my first week, I could understand why everyone at the institute savoured their two precious days off.
The next morning I woke around ten, and celebrated the day by wearing a pair of dark green cargo shorts that had turned up for me, supplied by the Professor, as well as a white t-shirt. They were the right size.
I walked down to the kitchen and ate a nourishing meal of about one egg's worth of scrambled eggs, and gathered myself a glass of water.
"Hey Rogue, are there any computers around here?"
"Yeah, just go round the corner when you reach the library, and it's the third door on the right." She replied in her southern drawl.
My face must have gone completely blank, because she smiled slightly.
"I'll show you… it's not like I have anything better to do."
"Wait a sec!" I pleaded, before heading off like a shot back towards my room, leaving the poor confused girl with my glass of water hastily thrust in her face.
When I came back down, I had the hard-drive that I had stolen from the faculty where I had been brought up.
Rogue looked curiously at the lump of metal in my hands.
"What are you gonna do, anyway?" She asked as she led the way.
"I'm going to take out the computer's old hard-drive, replace it with this one, then hack the files on it, and read them." I explained casually.
"Right… why?" She didn't precisely sound confused, just weary.
"Because," I said with a sigh, glancing around at the room that I entered, trying to remember which one it was, "It might have things on it about me."
I removed the monitor from on top of it, and used my fingernail to start unscrewing the lid.
"Do you have a key or something on you? Even a credit card?"
"Uh… yeah."
It was a good thing that Rogue stayed behind to watch me, I had forgotten the crucial importance of tools.
I took the ID card off her, and started attacking the screws.
"Aha!" I cried, as the lid finally came off. "Hey Rogue, could you unplug this baby for me?"
The was a rustling noise as Rogue crawled under the bench, and finally, the little lights stopped blinking.
"Danke!"
When I eventually got the other hard-drive in, I had half finished my glass of water, and had been giving a lesson on fiddling with computers, which included 'you see that thing there? If you want to make a computer stop working subtly, you remove that… or you could pour a can of Dr. Pepper on the key board then run…'
And eventually, I booted it up, and got past the firewall.
"Here we go…"
The screen suddenly was filled by the face of my old keeper, and I knew the background; it was his work-lab.
"Selwyn. If you're seeing this, then you have finally escaped. I trust that you took the entire hard-drive not just copying files; I taught you better than that. The reason why you would be watching this is because you want to know who you are. In truth, I know little more than you do. Your mother was a young mutant of little importance that entered our program so that she could get rid of an un-wanted child… that would be you."
I finally had my answers, but I didn't really want to hear them.
I was well aware of Rogue still next to me, who was now giving all her attention to the screen.
My mother never wanted me. I was a mistake. The world came crashing down around my ears, and the man continued.
"The last three initials of your name, K.A.I, stand for Kinetic energy, Artificial environment, Intelligence program, and also signifies you as company property. Which company, I am not at liberty to say."
All the time when I had secretly hoped to have a family that loved me, or maybe even that the institute was there to help me. Nothing was true. Nothing seemed real. I belonged to a company. I was alive because of the interest of a random company.
"The documents that you will find beyond this point explain the purpose of the experiment, and also have some of your personal records, and progress reports. Happy reading." The picture of the man that had looked after me changed suddenly to that of a normal set of files, all with dates instead of names, bar the last three. Selwyn Project, Melgwyn Project, then Guenivere Project.
I vaguely remember turning off the computer, pushing back my chair, thanking Rogue for helping me, and stumbling up to my room.
I fell asleep in a thankfully empty room, and didn't wake up until it was night.
Nguh! What did I miss?
Avalan: -_- The entire chapter.
Oh… Heh….