Kitty finally had her package from the mail-order geology club she subscribed to. She took it up to her room, opened it, then looked around carefully to make sure nobody was around. The coast was clear.

Kitty pulled out the mortar and pestle from under her bed, set a mineral in it, and set to work grinding it down. After nearly half an hour of hard labor, she'd reduced it to dust. Next she mixed in a little aloe vera to turn it into paste, then poured it into a little tub she kept for the purpose.

Kitty carefully wiped off the mortar and pestle, placed a new rock within the mortar, and set to work again. She sighed, but kept working steadily. Who knew when Rogue would be out of the room all day again? She'd just die if anyone ever found out what she was doing. The trace amounts of chemicals in commercial make-ups bothered her so much that she couldn't wear them, and even the so-called organic formulas were only good for a night out before she had to scrub them off or deal with a scarlet rash the next morning. She refused to go bare-faced, so she had to spend hours creating her own make-up.

It had taken her forever to figure out a mascara recipe that worked, until the one day that she got so fed up she mixed aloe vera with fireplace charcoal. It didn't look quite as good as the store-bought stuff, but she could wear it all day.

Experiments with perfume had taught her that she needed an alcohol base for any perfume. Unfortunately, she was too young to buy her own alcohol and when she tried nicking some out of her parent's stock, she'd discovered that the processing it went through gave her the same problems she had with store-bought perfumes. She'd solved this problem when she found out that the black sheep of the family, Uncle Eddie, made his own grain alcohol. She'd managed to fill her water bottle with it when his back was turned and scented part of it with chopped-up rose petals from the backyard when she got home. It took her a few tries to get it right, but eventually she figured it out. Since then she had expanded her skills and stock of scents.

Unfortunately, it had been nearly a year since she'd seen Uncle Eddie and she's run out of alcohol nearly a month ago. That meant she was back to spritzing a handkerchief and hiding it under her shirt. (1)

Kitty sighed to herself, pushed her hair out of her eyes, and continued grinding down the rock. Nobody had any idea just how much work went into creating her peppy valley-girl exterior. Some days she just wanted to go bare-faced, be declared a geek, and be done with it.

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Sidefling to one of 'Nutter's fics, don't remember the name.

Review? Please?

Niteflite, Scrawler, Eternity's Voice, you've all given me such helpful reviews all the way through that I wanted to do something for you. If any of you want, I'll write you each a one-shot Evo fic of your choice, so long as it's not slash or smut. E-mail me with what you want.