Chapter Five: The Numerous Guises of Robert Drake

*****

SMACK!

A snowball hit Erin dead in the face, shocking her senses into being.

"You looked tired," said the man at the desk, justifying his actions. He gestured to the chair in front of him. "Have a seat."

Erin wiped the snowy remnants from her cheeks and took the offered seat. It didn't take long for her eyes to recover from the shock and come into focus. This guy, though he had just proved himself a man of ice, certainly didn't look like the Bobby she had come to know from the silver screen. This guy, a dark brunet clad in light blue sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt, looked almost... cartoonish.

"You're not Iceman."

Mock surprise lit up the eyes hidden behind translucent shades. "I'm NOT?" He crossed his arms and put his sandaled feet on the desk, focusing his eyes on the ceiling. "Huh. Then what have I been doing these past thirteen years?" When Bobby (it can't be him, Erin kept telling herself) realized the girl in the room wasn't going to answer his question, he took his eyes off the ceiling and stared across the desk. "You don't believe I'm Bobby Drake, do you?"

Erin honestly shook her head.

Bobby nodded sagely. "I see." Then without warning, he chucked a snowball at the mechanical box sitting by the entryway. "Stupid machine!"

The machine couldn't have been bigger than a shoebox, but that obviously wasn't the bulk of it. A plug connected the box to the doorframe and at the top of the door shone a giant television screen flashing the words "COMICVERSE: CURRENT." Upon icy impact the screen went blank and Bobby began twitching and shaking involuntarily.

"Excuse me a moment." Iceman lurched forward in his chair until Erin could no longer see him. Just as she was going to stand up and check to see if he wasn't having an epileptic seizure, he jerked backward hard enough to make his chair shake.

Erin was flabbergasted. No more unfamiliarity; no more not knowing who she was supposed to be looking at. This was Bobby Drake as she knew him: a teenage male, with blonde wavy hair standing on end and an adorable face to boot. Yes, he was still wearing a Hawaiian shirt, but the sunglasses had disappeared. No wonder Rogue went for this guy. She was starting to wish she had put Bobby on the "Character Most Desired" question of her application instead of John.

Although that Jamie kid was kind of cute...

"Sorry about that," he apologized, attempting, in vain, to smooth his wild hair closer to his scalp. "Now, let's get down to business." Bobby turned his chair toward the computer to his left and began to type frantically. "Erin Dawson, is it?"

Right about here is when Reality, in all its disturbing glory, hit Erin like a battering ram to the gut. "Wha-... Buh... Huh?"

Bobby stopped and looked at the fanwriter across the desk. "Come again?"

"What the... But how... Huh?" There. That sounded slightly more comprehensible.

The teen who called himself Iceman pointed to the screen above the door. It now contained the words "MOVIEVERSE." Once he was sure she got that message, Bobby gestured to the mechanical box on the floor. "That's a Trans-Universal Image Modifier, or TIM for short. When a fanwriter like you walks through that doorway TIM's *supposed* to scan your mind to see which X-Universe you've been most subjected to." Bobby sent the box a death glare. "The last person who was in here imagined me as a laid-back-yet-slightly-tense twenty-eight year old with a penchant for Hawaiian shirts and a gaping icy hole in my chest." He grabbed the material of his shirt. "There are still some kinks to work out."

"Obviously," murmured Erin. A sense of comfort washed over her as she became more knowledgeable about the current situation. "Who built it?"

Bobby went back to his computer, reading the file that had come up on screen. "Michelle suckered Forge from Evo-Verse into building it for us."

"Why?"

"Dunno," replied Bobby, eyes still melded onto the monitor. "False sense of security, I guess. The calm before the storm. Michelle's weird like that."

"Who's Michelle?"

"Michelle Solo, the course coordinator. She and Xavier put this whole place together. A funny person, albeit a little insane. You'll meet her soon." A few moments later Bobby finished and leaned back in his chair, much like his predecessor. "Angel Kensington, eh?"

Erin flushed crimson. He had been reading one of her fanfics! "Do you, um, like it?"

"That's not for me to decide," Bobby admitted. "But it's not the worst I've read and I'm only on letter D. At least you have a grasp on what makes us characters tick, even if the characterization's a little off. It's also looking like you need an explanation of some of the mutant powers. I don't just 'shoot ice out of my hands,' you know." Bobby pointed to a line on the screen that matched his quote.

"But I thought that's what you did," Erin confessed. The crimson on her cheeks were probably a blood red by now.

"It's a bit more complicated than that," he explained nonchalantly. "And what's John doing here? I thought he left with Magneto before Jean died."

She had no answer to this. That sense of comfort Erin had a few minutes ago had transformed into a blanket of embarrassment. "I'm gonna die here, aren't I?"

"Of course not." Bobby chuckled. "Maimed, possibly, but not killed."

Erin gulped nervously. "You're kidding."

A lopsided grin played the corner of Bobby's mouth as he returned to the keyboard.

"I wish I was."

*****

XFI was becoming stranger by the minute, if the classes Erin was to take were any indication. While she made her way to the orientation ceremony, as per Bobby's directions and not-so-strict warning about not wandering off in other directions, she scanned the list of courses she needed to take in order to graduate.

If she survived the next nine months, that is.

"'Foreign Languages and Accents. Instructors Kurt Wagner (German language and accent), Marie D'Ancanto and Samuel Guthrie (Southern accent) with an additional instructor TBA. Does this class really need a description?'"

Erin hadn't denied that she needed a class like this. Her writing in this area was, to put it bluntly (and in Bobby's words), atrocious.

"'Bad and Loving It: The Art of Villainy. Instructors Erik Magnus Lehnsherr, Raven Darkholme, St. John Allerdyce, and Colonel William Stryker. How to become evil, stay evil, do quite evil things and, most importantly, WRITE evil.

(Additional note from Mr. Allerdyce: Yes, that's right, I'm evil. Bloody EVIL. Get used to it, mates. And yes, I'm aware my name's ST. John... don't ask. My mother was weird.)'"

The whole "John in the same mansion as Kurt despite the fact that John was supposed to have gone turncoat by now" had earned Erin a seat in this class.

"'Lesser Characters: Not Just in the Background Anymore. Primary instructors Katherine Pryde, Piotr Rasputin, Jubilation Lee and Theresa Rourke-Cassidy with a variety of secondary instructors. You remember all those sub-characters you see behind the main characters? Now they're here to show you that they're more than something minor.'"

Erin theorized that her entry into this class had something to do with the Jamie incident. She didn't exactly know *how,* but she was pretty sure that it did.

"'Physical Education. Instructors Logan and Missy, occasional help from members of the X-Men. This course is what it promises. Education that is physical; and physical hurts, people.'"

Forget what Bobby said. She was going to die here and that class was going to be it.

"'The Difference Between Telepathy and Telekinesis and Other Clarifications: A Guide to Mutant Powers. Instructors vary from session to session, depending on the topic of the day. In this course students will learn about a wide variety of powers that the mutant population has to offer, including explanations and demonstrations of said powers.'"

Hmm. Of all the classes she was required to take, this one actually sounded like it wasn't out to kill her. Unfortunately, she had this class after P.E.; she might not get a chance to live long enough to see this class for herself.

"'Familial Relations: Just Because Our Genes Are Mutated Doesn't Mean Our Family Trees Are, Too. Instructors Scott Summers and Erik Magnus Lehnsherr. Yes, folks, this may come as a shock, but not every X-Man and Brotherhood member has long-lost siblings or children with horrifically tragic pasts. This class will show you that and much, much more.'"

Okay, so Erin might have *accidentally* given Jean a younger telepathic sister in the process of developing her own character. But where in the movies did it counteract such a move?

Finally finished with her verbal scan of courses, Erin looked up and abruptly realized that she was lost. By the looks of things, she was somewhere in the vicinity of the canonical students' dormitories. What was it that Bobby said about not wandering? "Don't if you value your sanity." Something along those lines.

Just ahead, Erin could hear two whispering voices.

"They say he's in there," said voice one (belonging to a girl simply known as Kate).

"I can't believe that they actually *got* him," said voice two (Raven, the mutant student with the bird companion).

"Got who?" asked Erin, at full volume voice.

Like two deer caught in headlights, the girls froze.

Clunk.

"Who do they have?"

"Shh!"

Chink.

"What?"

She never did get an answer. What she got, however, was a cloud of knock-out gas and the beginnings of hysterical laughter.