X Mansion
January 7th, 2001:Wednesday
6:21p.m.
Fritz was so furious with
Axel that he could have torn the couch to pieces rather than sink easily into
the plump cushions. "Call me an animal will he. I'll show him a fucking
animal," He thought hotly, rising from the sofa in irritation. A scowl
crossed his lips when the door opened and Kurt crossed the threshold with a
worried look on his face.
"Fritz? Are you okay?
Axel said you ran off," Kurt said, closing the door and shrinking the
distance between him and the other mutant.
"I'm fine. Just having a
little problem adjusting to people calling me an animal!" Fritz replied
angrily.
"Ah, you got the animal
treatment too? Yeah, that happens. They do it all the time to me," Kurt
explained, slumping into a plush chair and resting is animalistic feet on a
coffee table. Fritz did the same. "I'm sure you'll get over it
eventually."
"Maybe… But why do they
do that? Call us animals?"
"Who knows? Maybe they
think it's funny, maybe they think we are animals. I could care less what they
think, really. You should do the same, or you'll be outta here like that,"
Kurt said, snapping his fingers.
"What's that supposed to
mean?" Fritz turned his head curiously toward Kurt.
Kurt scoffed and said,
"What do you mean 'what do I mean?' They say stuff like that all the time,
and if you can't take it, you're going to want to leave. Trust me; I
know."
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
X Mansion
January 7th, 2001:Wednesday
6:25p.m.
Axel followed Scott into the
dining room, where everybody that he had met earlier was already seated at the
huge table, along with a couple others. Axel glanced around uncomfortably,
waiting for somebody to tell him what to do.
"Sit down," Scott
said, practically reading his thoughts. Axel nodded and took a vacant seat next
to Kitty and placed his hands in his lap.
"Hey, what's up?"
Kitty asked, smiling.
"Uh… Nothing, I
guess," Axel said, shifting nervously in his seat.
"Sorry you hafta be like,
be paired up with that… thing," she said, shuddering.
"Ah, it's no big deal.
He's alright." Just then, Fritz and Kurt both walked into the room,
laughing and talking amongst each other. Fritz plopped into a seat next to
Evan, and Kurt next to Fritz. They quieted down and looked at the Professor
expectantly, who was seated at the head of the table.
"Glad to see you all made
here in one piece," the Professor began, though nobody understood why they
wouldn't be 'in one piece.' "Jean, will you retrieve the food
please?"
Jean nodded and closed her
eyes, lifting her hands. Following the motions of her hands, plates of food
emerged from the kitchen and settled across the table.
"While Jean brings in the
food, I would like to introduce you to a couple of instructors that you haven't
met yet," the professor said to Axel and Fritz. "To my very left is
Dr. Hank McCoy. Otherwise known as Beast." The professor gestured to a
huge gorilla of a man sitting next to him, covered in blue fur.
"Hey," Beast said,
lifting a gargantuan hand that was attached to an arm that had to have reached
to the ground.
"And over there,"
said Xavier, motioning to Axel's right, "is Orora Monroe. Or Storm."
"Hello," Storm said.
She was a very beautiful woman with dark colored skin and flowing white hair.
As the last items of food flew onto the table, professor Xavier spoke again.
"We have decided to have
a bit of a feast in honor of our newest additions." He waved his hands out
to Axel and Fritz. "Eat as much as you can, you two. You have a big day
tomorrow: your first day of school."
Axel and Fritz simultaneously
shivered.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
X Mansion
January 8th, 2001:Thursday
7:00a.m.
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!!
"What is that…? That
horrible noise. What is it? Am I still dreaming or--" Axel was
suddenly up and out of bed, awakened by the most annoying beeping noise he had
ever heard, his covers thrown to the side and onto the floor. He glanced around
frantically, trying to make sense of where he was. Large, comfortable beds,
sizable closets on either side, a door leading to a bathroom, and a… thing in
the bed next to his. What was it?
"Whatever it is, it's
going to wait," Axel thought. He looked toward the direction of the
loud beeping and saw that it was coming from a small alarm clock on a
nightstand next to his bed. The large, red lights illuminated the room
slightly, providing the only light in the room.
BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP!!
A simple smack on the 'Snooze'
button ceased the sharp noise, with much satisfaction.
"Eck… seven o' clock."
He felt a little awkward, like he shouldn't be awake. Quite possibly because of
the change in time zones. It would take a while to get used to that, but
apparently his little stowaway in the other bed hadn't gotten used to it, and
was still asleep.
"Fritz, you awake?"
he asked, stretching.
"Uhh… I think so,"
Fritz responded. "It's too early to tell. Wake me up in four days and I'll
give you a better answer."
"Yeah. I wish, man. But
we got school to go to. An American school. Fun, ja?"
"Ja. Fun. Of
course," Fritz said, rising from his bed and letting out a stretch induced
yawn.
"Hey," Axel said.
"Sorry about last night. Yanno, the whole animal thing. I was way out of
line."
Fritz shrugged slightly as he
was putting on a shirt. "It's no big deal. I got over it."
Axel stumbled to the light
switch and flipped it on. The room flared suddenly with the artificial glow
caused by the light bulb overhead, and Axel immediately slipped on his
sunglasses. Afterwards, Scott stuck his head into the room, a sly grin on his
face.
"Time to get up and go to
school guys!" he said, smirking, then left and walked back to his own
room.
Axel sighed and trudged into the bathroom to shower while Fritz left for
breakfast. He was so not ready to go to school yet.
"I've only been here for
like, what, a half a day? Maybe a whole day, but still. I'm too damn tired to
go to school," he said inwardly as he turned on his shower and glumly
stepped in.
******
Fritz dove into his eggs,
bacon and toast, hungrily devouring the delicious sustenance. Kitty was
standing nearby disgustedly, waiting for her own toast to pop up from the
toaster.
"Gross," she said
and turned around, folding her arms. Fritz simply looked up at her and shrugged
innocently, forking chunks of scrambled eggs into his mouth.
Kurt strolled into the
kitchen, whistling some random tune. He plopped down into the chair next to
Fritz and snatched a piece of bacon from his plate.
"Guten morgen. How's it
going?" Kurt said through a mouthful of food.
"Alright. Kind of tired
though," Fritz replied, biting into his toast.
"Well you slept for like
ten or eleven hours! You'd better be tired!" Kurt exclaimed.
"Hey, I ate a lot last
night, okay? I was sleepy, give me a break," Fritz retorted.
Kurt snickered and seized
another piece of bacon, then 'ported from the kitchen back to wherever he came
from. In his place, Axel slumped into the chair and sunk his chin into his
hands.
"What's wrong with
you?" Fritz asked, finally finishing off his food and setting his plate in
the sink. In response, Axel simply glanced at his watch, then frowned, again
resting his chin on his palms.
"Ah, I see. Well, I'm off
to the shower. And don't worry, you'll have plenty to do at school; you'll have
no problem staying awake," Fritz said with a reassuring smile.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Bayville
High School
January 8th, 2001:Thursday
8:43a.m.
Axel thumped his head onto his
desk and let his eyelids shut for a few seconds before opening them and raising
his head. It was becoming such a difficulty staying awake as the teacher droned
on and on about World War II, that Axel was ready to leave and walk back to the
Institute where his big, comfortable bed was waiting for him. Absentmindedly,
he fumbled around with the cast that covered his lower right arm, waiting--and
hoping--for the day that it would be removed. He wondered if Fritz was off in
his first hour, sitting perfectly awake behind his fake image of a normal
teenage boy. A very not tired teenage boy.
"He better not be
awake, damn him. If he's having 'no problem staying awake' then I'll… Have to
kill him. Or something," Axel thought, the monotonous voice of
his instructor fading into the distance. Memories of Berlin flooded back to him
as he began to daydream: the bakery he had walked to, the bread he had
purchased, the multi-ton city bus that had snapped his arm and smashed his face
into the ground.
"Mr. Fultz. You are from
Germany, correct?" The high pitched voice of his teacher sliced through
his thoughts and ultimately depressed him. He didn't feel like answering stupid
questions right now.
"Last I checked,
yeah," he replied snidely, hoping the woman would take a hint and leave
him alone. A few kids around him sniggered at his remark, but instantly looked
up front in fear of getting scolded.
"Hm. Very funny,"
she said with a sarcastic smile. "Do you know if your grandfather served
in the second World War? Maybe as a German soldier?"
"Uh, I don't know. I
can't really remember anything from before a couple years ago. It's all pretty
fuzzy," he responded. He twiddled his thumbs under his desk to keep him
calm so he didn't jump from the desk and scream at the lady to start talking to
someone else.
"Wait… What? You… don't
remember? What, were you struck with amnesia or something?" she asked,
scoffed at her own, totally not funny joke.
"I don't know. Maybe. All
I know is that if I did have amnesia, nobody told me. I've been in Germany for
as long as I can remember, though."
"Well, you've lived there
for a couple of years, so shouldn't you know whether or not your own
grandfather served in the War?" She glanced around the room as if she had
just made the biggest discovery of the year, and was waiting for somebody to
back her up.
"My grandpa died before I
got to know him. You know, like, four or five years ago. My dad never really
talks about it. Truthfully, I never asked if grandpa served in the War. Most
Germans were Nazis, and I didn't want to know my grandfather as a Nazi.
Anything else, or is this little trip down memory lane over?"
She glared down at him for a
moment, then turned around to a map of Europe that she had pulled down and
began to drone on about something else, which Axel promptly blocked from his
mind.
"Why don't I remember
any of that? And why has nobody ever talked about me when I was little? Any
why the hell am I just now figuring this out?" he thought,
just as the shrieking bell cut through the classroom. He got to his feet and
shuffled out the door, his eyes on the ground. "Why can't I
remember…?"
******
"Hey!" Fritz called
from across the hall. Axel looked up and waved to Fritz, then took his side as
they began to walk toward their English class.
"Man was that as boring
for you as it was for me?" Axel grumbled, shoving his hands into his
pockets.
"Yeah eet vas,"
Fritz complained. "I vas ready to go to sleep again." Fritz started
to talk about how he had spent the last hour with his head in his hands
listening to his teacher's incoherent ramblings. But Axel wasn't listening.
Instead he was trying to make sense of why he had just been practically tackled
to the ground by a speeding passerby. The air was forced from his lungs as his
back slammed into the ground, feebly protected by his backpack. His sunglasses
flew off of his face and clattered to the ground behind him, causing the
glaring light to flare into his too light eyes.
"Whoa! Hey, sorry about
that!" Axel's speeding assailant exclaimed, bending over to retrieve
bending over to retrieve the glasses. He held out his hand to Axel, who gladly
grabbed hold and pulled himself off, bending over with his hands on his knees
until he could breathe easily again. He took his sunglasses from the other kid
and put them back on, blinking a few times to readjust his eyes.
"Damn, watch where you're
going," he grumbled.
"Yeah, sorry about that.
I uh… I was kind of in a hurry, I guess, and didn't really see where I was
going," the kid replied. He held his hand out to Axel and added, "I'm
Victor. Sorry about that, again."
"Uh… No problem,"
Axel said. He took Victor's hand and shook it lightly. "Yeah, I'm gonna go
to English now," he said uncomfortably. "Later." Axel let
go of Victor's hand and walked down the hall toward his class, with Fritz next
to him.
Victor smiled at Axel's back
and snickered quietly to himself.
"Yes… Later. That's when
I'll see you, my friend. Of that you can be sure." He turned on his heel
and headed in the opposite direction.
____________________
That is the last of them. I will wait until this weekend to decide if I have enough reviews to continue.
