Chapter Two: Making Fun of a Cyclops
*****
The mixed stench of sulfur and brimstone is not an aroma someone should wake up to. Erin Dawson learned this lesson first hand.
A demonic blue face covered in ritualistic carvings and a piercing set of yellow eyes is not a sight someone should wake up to. Erin Dawson also learned this lesson first hand.
"AAAAHHHH!"
The demon man seemed not to be phased at all by the redhead's ear-piercing scream. In fact, he seemed rather used to it.
"Don't think you're the only one who's screamed like that, liebchen."
Liebchen? That's German, right?
"Wh-where am I?"
"Currently?" he asked, rather casually. "Currently you're aboard the X-Jet, picking up the last of the students before heading back to the school."
X-Jet? Students? School? The extreme amount of tired she was feeling was not helping anything make any sense.
But the midnight blue tinted German looked awfully familiar.
Wait. Something was clicking...
There was something about an e-mail. An odd one, she remembered faintly. There had been something in that e-mail about a school, a Fanfiction School. If only she could remember who it was from...
Why was the letter X flashing in her mind? Probably because that same letter of the alphabet was everywhere she looked; on the walls and on the blue German demon-elf-thing's clothing and-
Oh.
She was on the X-Jet.
Which means...
"You're Nightcrawler!"
Kurt Wagner, the previously aforementioned Nightcrawler, grinned a sharp toothy grin. "Faster than some, slower than others."
More and more from the incident with the e-mail (she didn't know what time it was so she couldn't give an exact measure as to how many hours had gone by since she fell asleep, but she could see out a window that dawn was currently breaking) poured back into her mind. There was an e-mail from Charles Xavier, THE Charles Xavier, about her, Erin Dawson, attending his school for fanfiction. Erin had been in an insane enough mind to actually fill out the application and then, stupidly, sent it to a kid who thought Sub Zero from Mortal Kombat was an uber cool ninja.
And now she was in the sick bay of the X-Jet chatting it up with an overgrown teleporting Smurf.
"Hey, um... Kurt?"
"Ja?"
"I'm not exactly sure I want to know the answer, but how exactly did my clothes and I get here?"
"Uh, yeah, that would be me." Behind Kurt appeared a girl, no older than fourteen, seemingly out of thin air. She was a tiny thing, but that's because puberty hadn't quite hit her quite so hard yet. "The clothes part, anyway." She offered a friendly hand to a disheveled Erin. "Name's Kitty Pryde. I would be the one who packed your clothes and other... necessary items. The elf here was the one who actually brought you on board."
Kitty. Erin recognized her name from the e-mail. She hadn't expected the girl who threatened the well-being of her computer to be so young and nonthreatening.
"And before you ask how I did it," Kitty said, obviously having had this conversation before, "I have the ability to become intangible."
"Intangi-what?"
"Intangible," Kitty repeated. "Like so." Kitty's hand, which was once solid, phased through Erin's as though the older girl's was nothing more than air.
Erin, whether it was from the shock of the actual touch or just plain shock, promptly passed out.
*****
"I've got a bad feeling about this," Scott Summers said, adjusting the sunglasses on the bridge of his nose. He tended to do that when he was nervous.
"I don't know, Scott," Jean Grey (back from the depths of Alkali Lake by the incredible power of fiction) said, "I think it's a great idea."
Scott huffed. "Oh, sure, that's because the fanwriters don't hate you. You'll be hard-pressed to find someone out there who doesn't think I have a... a..."
"Stick up your ass?" Logan offered.
"Rod up your rear?" Jubilee suggested.
"Shaft up your backside?" John submitted.
"Staff up your-"
"I GET IT!"
"Hey, man," John said, clicking his lighter to an inaudible beat, "you started it."
The collective staff of XFI, canonical characters and not, were all gathered in the head office of Charles Xavier. Kurt, Kitty and Ororo, however, were not present, as they were currently 30,000 feet in the air somewhere over Ohio. The X-Men and the students who had volunteered to be XFI faculty were congregated around their leader and mentor while Magneto and his Brotherhood of (Evil) Mutants sat in the corner of the room as far away from Xavier as possible. Stryker, meanwhile, was tied up in the corner with an unconscious Lady Deathstrike at his side (the adamantium removal process had been quite trying on the poor dear).
Additional characters, such as those who had been only featured as cameos (or less) and not directly associated with the school, likewise assembled around the desk of Xavier.
Standing behind Xavier's wheelchair was a tall skinny brunette whose demeanor implied that she carried some kind of power around these parts. To her right stood another female who was just slightly shorter, sporting sun-bleached brown hair, a shirt that stated "The Truth is Out There" and, Bobby frightfully noted, nunchucku.
"You know, Scott, not all of them hate you," Xavier pointed out. "It's just that most of them think you're..."
"A jerk?" Rogue interjected.
"A prick?" Bobby proposed.
"Anal-retentive?" Magneto put forth.
"A-?"
"STOP THAT!" Scott sighed with repressed anger. "I'm tired of people making assumptions about my character just because I appear to be a bit..." Siryn had opened her mouth to finish Scott's sentence. "Don't you dare!" Theresa Rourke's mouth snapped shut.
"I believe you have stumbled upon one of the reasons Miss Solo and I have decided to open a school of the fanfiction persuasion." The Professor gestured to the non-weapon wielding brunette behind him. "Michelle, if you will."
"Gladly, Chuck." Michelle pat Xavier once on the shoulder and took a place at his side. "All of you are here for a single purpose: to educate fanfiction authors about who and what you are and of the world around you."
"Even if it kills us?"
"Yes, Jubilee, even if it kills you."
"Why?"
Jubilation Lee had stumbled onto the age old question. "Why?" Why was the sky blue? Why was the grass green? Why did Toad smell so bad? (Actually, the latter question could be answered with a simple "he never showers," but it was still a question to be asked nonetheless.)
"So that they'll write better fanfiction."
"Why?"
It seemed Bobby Drake also learned the use of the word. "So I'll sleep better at night knowing I've done my civil duty to not only the X-Men universe and its denizens but to the English language as well."
This statement caused a stir amongst the mutants (and one non-mutant, but they all seemed to ignore him). For the most part, an Institute of the Fanfiction Kind was acceptable and the reason for it just as satisfactory.
"I've got nothing better to do," muttered Jean. "Since I'm technically dead and all..."
"I'm game," Logan said. "If another one of those little harpies gives me *another* kid, they're gonna regret it."
"Do I get to fry things? I hope I get to fry things."
"As long as nobody calls me a prick..."
Michelle Solo, Course Coordinator for the Xavier Fanfiction Institute for Soon-to-be Gifted Authors, couldn't help but grin. Things, it seemed, were going to turn out just fine... As fine as it can get at an OFU, anyway.