A/N: Thank you to those of you who have reviewed, and thank you for
putting up with my beta-less story. To those of you who are reading this
but haven't reviewed, shame on you! Any reviews are appreciated. All
flames will be used to heat my castle in the wintertime.
**********************************
"Checkmate."
I sighed and knocked over my king for the fifth time that evening. Charles was a brilliant strategist. I had never seen war, yet he saw it every day. Out of all the White Dragons, only Katerina had been no stranger to war. We guarded our charges at the expense of our people. For the past three generations the Dragons had been forced to look outside of our race to breed.
"How has your little cousin been doing?"
Snickering, I shook my head. "I learned early on that it was a hazard to my sanity if I tried to keep track of how and what she was doing. Usually I really don't want to know what's going on. If I don't see it, it didn't happen."
Charles laughed. "You haven't had much experience with children have you?"
"Nope," I replied brightly. "Mel did all the babysitting while I studied. She got the kids, I got the homework." My sister hadn't been born a White Dragon, she was a silver in dragon form so I was the one who got Japhi. Oh joy.
"So I don't suppose that I could convince you to teach classes for a while?"
I cocked my head slightly. "I'd volunteer for advanced Physics, but you have that covered. Perhaps something in engineering or computers? It might be possible for students to get college credit, I was an assistant professor teaching first year classes at my college for a couple of years a little after I got my PhD."
"I was wondering if you had ever managed to go to and finish graduate school."
"Just because I spent all of that summer pulling pranks does not mean that I didn't study. I managed a three point nine GPA. It would have been a four except for my final project for Genetics. We were supposed to do a rough gene mapping of our own DNA, I deliberately garbled mine. There were things there that I didn't want anyone to see and it was much safer to make a small error in procedure that botched everything than to fake results."
Charles cocked his head in confusion. "What would you have to hide? You aren't a mutant and no one knows what makes a mage different from other humans."
"There are more creatures than humans that walk the Earth. All of my people are born mages and appear as humans, yet our DNA is distinctly not human. Nineteen pairs of chromosomes and four point one billion base pairs definitely would look odd."
"How? I mean, that seems like an excessive amount of DNA for any creature."
I shook my head. "Not really. My people are incredibly long lived. That huge amount of excess DNA protects the coding regions from damage. There is also a little bit more that is coded compared to humans."
He looked at me with the curiosity of a fellow scientist. "How is it that neither humans nor mutants have never heard of you or your people?"
"But you have." I pushed my chair back as I stood up and headed towards one of the many bookshelves lining the walls of his study. My fingers danced over the leather bound tomes, many older than my dam and sire, as young as they had been at my birth. Finally I found the one that I was looking for. "Blackwell's Treatise on Mythical Beasts" was one of the older ones; I had given him it as a parting gift at the end of my internship after several afternoons discussing "The Once and Future King" and the possibility of any of the magical creatures being real. Erik had gotten a dozen rotten eggs and a box rigged to cover whoever opened it in neon pink paint.
I flipped quickly through trying to find the specific entry before turning it so that Charles could read it. "He doesn't give very good descriptions, but they're as accurate as any that I have come across so far."
"What? But this is about dragons!"
I started laughing. It was so easy to forget that my mind was closed to him. "Aye, and we do guard treasure but it is a treasure more priceless than all the gold and jewels in the world. It is the power of creation."
He just looked at me stunned although he had seen enough not to be too shocked. "So Japhi and your sister are dragons as well?"
"Not Japhi," I shook my head. "But she is my cousin all the same. Her father was my uncle and a dragon, but her mother.was something entirely different. Their people have no males with which to breed so they look to other races. No matter how diluted the blood, they always bear daughters and breed true. Japhi is my ward until she either finds her mate or I die."
I picked up two game pieces in my hand. Absently, I turned the pieces over in my hand. The white queen and a black pawn. In only a short time the pawn would reach the eighth square.
****************************************
Japhi slipped quietly into the game room where many of the students were. She had never seen so many children at once even before her last burning. The Dragons had too hard a time breeding for there to be more than one or two offspring every generation and the only Dragon child that she had ever seen had been Kat who had been born eight hundred years after Japhi's first burning.
"Hey! What's your name?" one of the older girls called out.
"Japhi Sundancer. My cousin is a friend of the Professor's. I think that they used to work together but I'm not sure," she replied hesitantly, her previous eagerness gone. "He invited her to visit for a while and I got dragged along."
"So you're not a mutant?" a boy asked snidely.
The red haired girl glared at him. "I'm a telepath as well as pyro- and telekinetic, although there really isn't a difference; any decent telekinetic can excite molecules until they combust." As if to prove her point, the boy's shoe laces suddenly burst into flame.
Most of the teenagers started giggling or outright laughing as he ran out of the room.
"Good one! We've been trying to take him down a few notches for months! My name's Rogue by the way," the girl who had spoken earlier held out her gloved hand.
Japhi shook it and looked at her oddly. "Why do you wear gloves inside?"
"It's my mutation. If I touch someone I drain their energy and powers."
"Oh!" The younger girl's eyes widened as she smiled widely. "Ro-my cousin- does the same thing, mostly so I won't make something go up in a ball of flame. She must have siphoned off my power at least a dozen times already today."
Everyone was shocked. "How is that possible? And how come you're not hurt or anything?"
She shrugged. "Ro says that I'm nearly an infinite source of energy-I regenerate what is lost in a matter of minutes at the most. Besides, she has very fine tuned control over her powers. You should talk to her, she might be able to help you although I think that your powers are more passive and hers are active. She has to think to drain power.well.maybe not anymore. I've certainly given her enough practice."
Rouge perked up at the possibility of controlling her powers, no matter how slight the chance. "Have you been introduced to the teachers yet?"
Japhi shook her head. "Only Charlie and Storm."
"Charlie?"
"Ro's name for the Professor. It seems to annoy him for some reason," Japhi grinned broadly. Annoying people was fun. "Not sure why. I didn't bother to scan his mind."
Rogue looked at her in surprise. "Only an idiot or someone incredibly powerful would be fool enough to try to get inside the Professor's mind."
"Considering some of the comments that they were trading back and forth, I wouldn't want to see what was in his mind. No one ever told me that mutants could get into that much trouble without running into cops."
The older girl looked a little pale before shaking it off. "Would you like to show you around? You could meet the other students and most of the teachers."
Japhi almost danced with glee. "Please? At home there's only Ro and her sister Mel, and they pulled me out of school the first week. Something about a bored pyrokinetic in a public school was a very bad idea."
"I would imagine. We get into enough trouble as it is," she laughed before introducing Japhi to the other students in the room. Kitty and Jubilee were ecstatic about having another girl around and Bobby made her an eagle out of ice.
"Rogue, didn't you need to see Cyclops about flight training?" Bobby asked suddenly.
"Oh crap!" she took off towards the hallway before pausing to turn around. "Japhi, would you like to come? We'll probably meet a couple of the other teachers."
The younger girl giggled before jumping up into the air and taking off after her new friend, zipping around above her head. Rogue grinned. "You have had a lot of practice, few telekinetics have the concentration and patience needed to fly."
"What can I say? I was *bored*."
Rogue laughed and continued on, towards the wing containing the classrooms and teachers' offices. She knocked on the office door.
"Come in," came the muffled reply.
She opened the door and walked in, Japhi trailing behind. "You wanted to see me?"
"Yes." The teacher caught sight of Japhi who was looking around the office. "Who's the new girl?"
"Japhi Sundancer, her cousin used to work with the Professor and they're visiting for a while. I offered to show her around." Rogue turned to the younger girl. "Japhi, this is Scott Summers but most people call him Cyclops."
She barely heard Rogue but was instead staring intently at a photograph of Xavier and three others. One woman she recognized as Storm and the man wearing the visor was Cyclops, but the third. "Excuse me, but who is this?" Japhi pointed to the red haired woman. "She looks exactly like the pictures of my mother."
"What?!" the other two exclaimed in shock.
Japhi looked off in a daze. "Jenna Grage I think her name was. She disappeared almost as soon as I was born, leaving me with my father's family. They wouldn't tell me anything other than she was barely more than a kid. It's been so many years.she couldn't possibly still be alive." She reached out to touch the picture, frowning. "She would have burned out long ago, between her uncontrolled telepathy and pyrokinesis."
Rogue was the first to find her voice. "That's Jean Grey, she died a year ago."
The younger girl blinked and looked up. "Charlie said something about that. She was the one that was going to marry One Eye over there?"
Mr. Summers sputtered without speaking as he watched her rapidly retreating back.
**********************************
"Checkmate."
I sighed and knocked over my king for the fifth time that evening. Charles was a brilliant strategist. I had never seen war, yet he saw it every day. Out of all the White Dragons, only Katerina had been no stranger to war. We guarded our charges at the expense of our people. For the past three generations the Dragons had been forced to look outside of our race to breed.
"How has your little cousin been doing?"
Snickering, I shook my head. "I learned early on that it was a hazard to my sanity if I tried to keep track of how and what she was doing. Usually I really don't want to know what's going on. If I don't see it, it didn't happen."
Charles laughed. "You haven't had much experience with children have you?"
"Nope," I replied brightly. "Mel did all the babysitting while I studied. She got the kids, I got the homework." My sister hadn't been born a White Dragon, she was a silver in dragon form so I was the one who got Japhi. Oh joy.
"So I don't suppose that I could convince you to teach classes for a while?"
I cocked my head slightly. "I'd volunteer for advanced Physics, but you have that covered. Perhaps something in engineering or computers? It might be possible for students to get college credit, I was an assistant professor teaching first year classes at my college for a couple of years a little after I got my PhD."
"I was wondering if you had ever managed to go to and finish graduate school."
"Just because I spent all of that summer pulling pranks does not mean that I didn't study. I managed a three point nine GPA. It would have been a four except for my final project for Genetics. We were supposed to do a rough gene mapping of our own DNA, I deliberately garbled mine. There were things there that I didn't want anyone to see and it was much safer to make a small error in procedure that botched everything than to fake results."
Charles cocked his head in confusion. "What would you have to hide? You aren't a mutant and no one knows what makes a mage different from other humans."
"There are more creatures than humans that walk the Earth. All of my people are born mages and appear as humans, yet our DNA is distinctly not human. Nineteen pairs of chromosomes and four point one billion base pairs definitely would look odd."
"How? I mean, that seems like an excessive amount of DNA for any creature."
I shook my head. "Not really. My people are incredibly long lived. That huge amount of excess DNA protects the coding regions from damage. There is also a little bit more that is coded compared to humans."
He looked at me with the curiosity of a fellow scientist. "How is it that neither humans nor mutants have never heard of you or your people?"
"But you have." I pushed my chair back as I stood up and headed towards one of the many bookshelves lining the walls of his study. My fingers danced over the leather bound tomes, many older than my dam and sire, as young as they had been at my birth. Finally I found the one that I was looking for. "Blackwell's Treatise on Mythical Beasts" was one of the older ones; I had given him it as a parting gift at the end of my internship after several afternoons discussing "The Once and Future King" and the possibility of any of the magical creatures being real. Erik had gotten a dozen rotten eggs and a box rigged to cover whoever opened it in neon pink paint.
I flipped quickly through trying to find the specific entry before turning it so that Charles could read it. "He doesn't give very good descriptions, but they're as accurate as any that I have come across so far."
"What? But this is about dragons!"
I started laughing. It was so easy to forget that my mind was closed to him. "Aye, and we do guard treasure but it is a treasure more priceless than all the gold and jewels in the world. It is the power of creation."
He just looked at me stunned although he had seen enough not to be too shocked. "So Japhi and your sister are dragons as well?"
"Not Japhi," I shook my head. "But she is my cousin all the same. Her father was my uncle and a dragon, but her mother.was something entirely different. Their people have no males with which to breed so they look to other races. No matter how diluted the blood, they always bear daughters and breed true. Japhi is my ward until she either finds her mate or I die."
I picked up two game pieces in my hand. Absently, I turned the pieces over in my hand. The white queen and a black pawn. In only a short time the pawn would reach the eighth square.
****************************************
Japhi slipped quietly into the game room where many of the students were. She had never seen so many children at once even before her last burning. The Dragons had too hard a time breeding for there to be more than one or two offspring every generation and the only Dragon child that she had ever seen had been Kat who had been born eight hundred years after Japhi's first burning.
"Hey! What's your name?" one of the older girls called out.
"Japhi Sundancer. My cousin is a friend of the Professor's. I think that they used to work together but I'm not sure," she replied hesitantly, her previous eagerness gone. "He invited her to visit for a while and I got dragged along."
"So you're not a mutant?" a boy asked snidely.
The red haired girl glared at him. "I'm a telepath as well as pyro- and telekinetic, although there really isn't a difference; any decent telekinetic can excite molecules until they combust." As if to prove her point, the boy's shoe laces suddenly burst into flame.
Most of the teenagers started giggling or outright laughing as he ran out of the room.
"Good one! We've been trying to take him down a few notches for months! My name's Rogue by the way," the girl who had spoken earlier held out her gloved hand.
Japhi shook it and looked at her oddly. "Why do you wear gloves inside?"
"It's my mutation. If I touch someone I drain their energy and powers."
"Oh!" The younger girl's eyes widened as she smiled widely. "Ro-my cousin- does the same thing, mostly so I won't make something go up in a ball of flame. She must have siphoned off my power at least a dozen times already today."
Everyone was shocked. "How is that possible? And how come you're not hurt or anything?"
She shrugged. "Ro says that I'm nearly an infinite source of energy-I regenerate what is lost in a matter of minutes at the most. Besides, she has very fine tuned control over her powers. You should talk to her, she might be able to help you although I think that your powers are more passive and hers are active. She has to think to drain power.well.maybe not anymore. I've certainly given her enough practice."
Rouge perked up at the possibility of controlling her powers, no matter how slight the chance. "Have you been introduced to the teachers yet?"
Japhi shook her head. "Only Charlie and Storm."
"Charlie?"
"Ro's name for the Professor. It seems to annoy him for some reason," Japhi grinned broadly. Annoying people was fun. "Not sure why. I didn't bother to scan his mind."
Rogue looked at her in surprise. "Only an idiot or someone incredibly powerful would be fool enough to try to get inside the Professor's mind."
"Considering some of the comments that they were trading back and forth, I wouldn't want to see what was in his mind. No one ever told me that mutants could get into that much trouble without running into cops."
The older girl looked a little pale before shaking it off. "Would you like to show you around? You could meet the other students and most of the teachers."
Japhi almost danced with glee. "Please? At home there's only Ro and her sister Mel, and they pulled me out of school the first week. Something about a bored pyrokinetic in a public school was a very bad idea."
"I would imagine. We get into enough trouble as it is," she laughed before introducing Japhi to the other students in the room. Kitty and Jubilee were ecstatic about having another girl around and Bobby made her an eagle out of ice.
"Rogue, didn't you need to see Cyclops about flight training?" Bobby asked suddenly.
"Oh crap!" she took off towards the hallway before pausing to turn around. "Japhi, would you like to come? We'll probably meet a couple of the other teachers."
The younger girl giggled before jumping up into the air and taking off after her new friend, zipping around above her head. Rogue grinned. "You have had a lot of practice, few telekinetics have the concentration and patience needed to fly."
"What can I say? I was *bored*."
Rogue laughed and continued on, towards the wing containing the classrooms and teachers' offices. She knocked on the office door.
"Come in," came the muffled reply.
She opened the door and walked in, Japhi trailing behind. "You wanted to see me?"
"Yes." The teacher caught sight of Japhi who was looking around the office. "Who's the new girl?"
"Japhi Sundancer, her cousin used to work with the Professor and they're visiting for a while. I offered to show her around." Rogue turned to the younger girl. "Japhi, this is Scott Summers but most people call him Cyclops."
She barely heard Rogue but was instead staring intently at a photograph of Xavier and three others. One woman she recognized as Storm and the man wearing the visor was Cyclops, but the third. "Excuse me, but who is this?" Japhi pointed to the red haired woman. "She looks exactly like the pictures of my mother."
"What?!" the other two exclaimed in shock.
Japhi looked off in a daze. "Jenna Grage I think her name was. She disappeared almost as soon as I was born, leaving me with my father's family. They wouldn't tell me anything other than she was barely more than a kid. It's been so many years.she couldn't possibly still be alive." She reached out to touch the picture, frowning. "She would have burned out long ago, between her uncontrolled telepathy and pyrokinesis."
Rogue was the first to find her voice. "That's Jean Grey, she died a year ago."
The younger girl blinked and looked up. "Charlie said something about that. She was the one that was going to marry One Eye over there?"
Mr. Summers sputtered without speaking as he watched her rapidly retreating back.