Thanks for all the feedback: signals x lost, Bardic Feline, Firefly25, raniatlw, T. Riddle, Dusty, WormmonABC, IceBlueRose, Psyc, Eboni, Ice Princess, UnknownSource, Pandora
AN: I'll try to watch the run on sentances. With the characterization of my villians: Kelly could use a venue for expressing his side of the story, he does have one. Still I don't feel he would explain himself to a student or a mutant. I'm trying to move Wanda into situations where anger isn't her only reaction. Sabretooth I honestly think of as a complete psycopath. In a similar vein, I've yet to see anything good about Duncan in the show, he was introduced as a major bully (I loathe bullies and I don't understand where they come from. My personal experiance was that I'd rather be hurt than let someone physically intimadate me, and they happily obliged). He moved on to being a lousy boyfriend to Jean who made a point of rubbing the relationship in Scott's face and most recently fired a weapon at an unarmed child. I see very little redeeming about him.
Scott woke to the feel of the hotel swaying like a ship caught in a storm. "Shake-down, I know you've got your powers back, but no one else likes earthquakes," he snapped.
Lance stood in the middle of the room, head cocked to one side, swaying in counter-point to the earth's upheavals as if listening to music only he could hear. "This is so cool!" he exclaimed.
"Knock it off already!" Scott growled.
Lance shrugged and the room went still. "If you insist, but I wasn't…"
"Avalanche that is quite enough," Storm announced as she and Jean burst through the door from the other half of the suit. "Using your powers like that is the height of irresponsibility."
"Like I was trying to tell Summers," Lance ground out. "It's not me! I can stop it, for a while, but it's not my fault!"
The other three glanced at each other uncertainly. "We are in California," Scott realized. "Geez, I don't learn do I?"
"Lance, my apologies," Ororo said quietly.
Lance shrugged. "I've never been in an earthquake that I didn't cause before. I actually thought it was me at first too. This is totally cool!"
"People could be hurt Lance," Storm reprimanded.
"Oh my," Jean exclaimed. "It's been three days since we got here. Lance said it felt like three days till Christmas, he likes earthquakes…"
"You predicted it," Scott said.
"I did what?" Lance asked.
"But we failed to recognize the warning for what it was," Storm said. "Lance, are you certain you cannot dispel this quake?"
Lance's expression indicated Storm was ruining all his fun, but he immediately tried to do as she asked. His awareness of the regular world fell away to be replaced by the grinding pressures within the Earth. As he got a better understanding of the situation Lance was stunned that he was holding a force of such magnitude in check, even momentarily. And yet…
"I can't do anything up here," Lance complained. "There's too much interference. This place has all sorts of dampers built into it."
"If that is the case," Storm said. "Scott, the window. Jean float him down to the street."
"No," Lance cried. "I'll loose control. No flying!"
"There's always the stairs," Scott said grabbing Lance's arm.
Avalanche slid back into his other world of epic forces and delicate control, trusting Cyclops to get his body where it needed to be. The earthquake was something gargantuan, barely comprehensible. He'd delayed it in a moment of impulsive irritation at Scott over being blamed for the quake. The longer he held it back the more aware he became of the vastness of the forces he'd set himself against. He couldn't stop it, Avalanche knew that much, but maybe... It was going to be tricky to carry it out though; if he screwed up he could make things worse. The last thing he needed was to be trying to translate the quake's mood through the damping measures built into the high-rise structure.
Cyclops pulled Avalanche's arm over his shoulders and all but carried the other mutant toward the stairwell. Jean and Storm ran ahead, clearing their way of any obstructions.
Once they were out of the hotel Storm directed the group to a park across the street. "We are outside Avalanche," she said.
"A lot of little quakes," Avalanche explained, dragging his attention away from the quake for a moment. "That's better than one big one right?"
"Yes, I believe so," Strom replied.
"It's going to be a whole lot of little quakes," Avalanche sighed. "This is going to take a while."
Storm's expression became concerned, "Jean, we will need to monitor Lance's blood pressure, if the strain on him becomes too great we shall have to allow nature to take her course."
Avalanche's eyes rolled back in his head as he completely submerged his consciousness in to the play of titanic forces shaping the planet.
What he needed to do was practically the reverse of his normal mode of operation. Before the Earth had always been a sleeping giant that he muscled into activity. Today the giant was awake and restless. The Earth's normal resistance to change was a distant memory. Rather than needing to employ brute force tactics to get anything to move he had to channel already active forces that far exceeded his own strength.
In the every day world hours passed and Storm, Cyclops and Jean waited. Every now and then the Earth flinched, Scott decided he knew exactly how a fly felt when a horse twitched a muscle under it. Those twitches and Lance's increasingly harsh breathing were the only overt signs that something unusual was going on. "How's he doing?" Scott asked Ororo.
"I have not observed any blood pressure spikes," Ororo said. "However I wish we had a better understanding of Lance's abilities before putting them to such a test."
"I think we might be attracting some attention," Jean said gesturing subtly toward a pair of police officers. "That's the third patrol I've seen. I'm encouraging them to not notice us, but…"
"We may want to change hotels tonight," Scott finished.
****** ****** ******
Todd looked up from his cereal. "Blue-boy you actually have clothes besides your X-Duds. I mean ones that aren't holographic?" he asked as Kurt came into the kitchen dressed for school, but without the image inducer.
"Ignore him Kurt, you look great," Kitty said. "But I thought the Professor fixed your watch?"
"I'm not taking it," Kurt stated. "Principal Kelly is just going to have to get used to how I look. I'm not doing anything wrong by looking like this."
"Amanda's going to love it," Kitty said. "She always liked your real look best."
"This I've got to see," Todd said. "Gimme a minute to get ready, I'm going to school. If Kelly's head blows up I wanna see it first hand."
****** ****** ******
"More police," Jean said. "Maybe we should head home when Lance is done."
Lance groaned. His eyelids fluttered as his focus returned to the world. "Did you know there's some sort of underground complex out under the desert?" he asked slumping back in exhaustion. "That thing was driving me crazy. It collects the energy from the earthquake somehow. Screws with the patterns, makes it like playing a guitar with a crack in the body."
"So the earthquake's taken care of right?" Scott asked.
"Yeah," Lance sighed laying back on the ground and closing his eyes. "All the built up pressure's gone. I kinda miss it, made me feel like I could do anything."
"You said the complex was taking the energy from the Earthquake," Storm said. "Do you know for what purpose?"
Lance cracked an eye open. "How'm I supposed to know that? I could feel the place because whatever it's made of just eats vibrations. That's all I know."
"That doesn't sound like any technology I've heard of," Cyclops said. "I think we should check it out."
"I agree," Storm replied. "Avalanche, can you lead us to the facility?"
"Yeah sure. Let's go looking for people to attack us. That sounds like a great idea," Lance snorted.
"Can you do it?" Storm repeated.
"Fine, I'll take you there… Bunch of nosey, do-gooder, X-Geeks," Lance muttered under his breath.
"What is wrong with you?" Jean demanded glaring at him.
"Maybe the fact I just risked screwing up my powers again, practically the day I got them back," Lance snapped.
"People might have died if you hadn't helped," Jean exclaimed.
"Well I did it didn't I?" Lance pointed out, getting up and stomping away. "Now lets get this stupidity over with so we can go back to our own business."
The other three watched him for a moment then Scott hurried to catch up with him. "Notice anything different?" he said, grinning. "Something you're not doing?"
Lance stopped, his eyes widened as he realized he'd just walked across an open area without experiencing vertigo or needing assistance. His concentration turned inward for a moment and he realized he could still sense the Earth's vibrations, it just wasn't messing with his other senses any more. Slowly he grinned. "Maybe this good deeds stuff does have its rewards," he said.
Scott shook his head. "Come on Rocky. We aren't done yet, an X-Man's work is never done."
"Technically only Toad and Blob joined, I was on sick leave," Lance pointed out good-naturedly.
"We had best catch up or they will have investigated it without us," Storm said as she and Jean hurried after the boys.
"We'll fit you with a uniform when we get home," Scott replied.
"Oh for joy."
****** ****** ******
Kurt walked down the main hall of Bayville high in all his blue-furred glory, not looking left or right, staring fixedly at his destination, trying to shut out everyone and everything around him.
Todd hopped along beside him. "Hey, I think that's the forth one who didn't notice you…. Oooh cockroach!" he announced his tongue shooting across the hall to snag the delectable little morsel. A girl squealed with disgust. "Yo, this school's really gone to bugs since I left… And I like it!"
"Hey Blue, looking styling!" Tabby yelled wrapping an arm around his shoulders.
Todd noticed Kelly glaring at them so he bounded across the hall to get in his face. "You gonna tell me how to walk?" he demanded. "I ought to sue this here school yo! You're not meeting my needs, ordering me to put an unnatural strain on my mutant physiology! I thought schools were supposed to encourage us to be ourselves, to live up to our possibilities. But it was all a lie, I'm so disillusioned!"
"In your case Mr. Tolensky, the last thing I want to encourage is you being yourself," Kelly said pushing Todd away with a look of disgust. "And you're welcome to continue home schooling, please don't let me keep you here."
"Come on girls, admit it, don't you just want to rub him all over!" Tabby announced, rubbing her cheek against Kurt's.
Amanda pushed between Kurt and Tabby. "It's great the way your friends are standing beside you," she said with a quick glare at Tabby. "Some of them could stand beside you from a little further away though."
"Yeah we're mutants, that's right!" Tabby yelled.
"You gotta problem with that?" Todd added glaring at a random student.
"I have never been so embarrassed in my life," Kurt whispered to Amanda. "Please save me from them."
****** ****** ******
Mr. and Mrs. Sefton were frowning when Principal Kelly escorted them into his office.
They took seats across from his desk, "Is there some sort of problem with Amanda?" Mr. Sefton asked.
"Quite frankly, yes," Kelly said. "Your daughter has fallen in with a dangerous crowd."
"From what Amanda has told us about Kurt and her other friends from the Xavier Institute, they sound like good kids," Mrs. Sefton said. "She hasn't mentioned any other close friends. Amanda has always been somewhat shy."
"They're mutants," Kelly stated.
"If you'll excuse me for saying so, you sound extremely prejudicial," Mr. Sefton replied with a frown.
"Mr. Sefton, don't fall into the trap of believing that mutants are like everyone else," Kelly stated. "Allow me to share some of my experiences with mutants.
Let's start with the students from the Brotherhood Boarding House; they're practically inseparable from the Institute students these days. When I first began my tenure here I tried dealing with them like normal children. When they pulled their destructive, malicious pranks I put them in detention. Mr. Tolensky attended, once. I believe he fell asleep in his seventh period class, which just happened to be the room where detention was being held that day. When he realized class was out, he left.
I tried contacting their guardians. Ms. Darkholme never responded but I did, eventually, manage to contact Mr. Lehnsherr. The man acted like he was humoring a chimpanzee. At the time I couldn't begin to understand his attitude toward me, in retrospect everything is exceptionally clear.
Those boys have no respect for human authority. To try to exert some sort of rudimentary control over their behavior I finally resorted to threatening their eligibility for the free lunch program. Admittedly that was a draconian measure, but it was the only thing that had any impact on them at all.
Which brings me to the issue of their behavior. Do you have any idea of the thousands of dollars they've cost the school district and individual teachers? I've spent over $5000 in the last two terms simply to repair the damages they did to my car.
Then there's the fighting. I admit that the school does have a problem with bullies and that some of their fights were most likely retaliatory in nature. That cycle stared long before my tenure began and was allowed to escalate with little or no intervention from the former Principal. By the time the problem was dropped in my lap it was impossible to determine which party was retaliating for what and nothing I could do had the slightest chance of breaking the cycle. Mr. Alvers, in particular, seems to enjoy fights and is frighteningly brutal. He also has a long history of involvement in gangs from his previous schools.
This is simply behavior I observed in them prior to learning they were mutants. We haven't even begun to touch upon the disasters this school has suffered due to the presence of mutants in the student body. On my first day here I was nearly killed in an earthquake, we all know what cause Bayville's earthquakes. Shortly after that a shot put somehow managed to travel over 75 feet to smash through the window of my second story office, once again coming within inches of taking my life.
Then there is the property damage. Bazaar incidents, undoubtedly the work of mutants destroyed our gym twice in the last few months. Each act of destruction cost the district over $20,000.
Of course they are just teenagers, they're learning to control their powers, it's only natural that they should be exponential more destructive than normal teenagers. I'm certain the adult mutants are models of good behavior. Take Hank McCoy for example, he was one of Bayville's finest teacher, until he suffer a temporary laps of sanity due to his mutation. A lapse during which he tried to murder me! Of course it wasn't his fault. It was his mutation I shouldn't hold it against him, right? From what I can tell, you're daughter's boyfriend has a very similar mutation to McCoy; if he also suffers a lapse in sanity do you believe she would survive?
It is blatantly, painful obvious to me that my staff and I, not to mention the police and possibly the state militia, have no chance of controlling these teenagers. They will do exactly as they please; we are helpless before their whims. For this reason, I don't want them in my school and I won't rest until the normal students, like your daughter, are safe. But in the name of political correctness the school board, the members of which who have never had to deal with mutants on a daily basis, has ordered me to treat them like every other student, until they prove that they are a danger. I fear that proof will come at the cost of a tragedy."
****** ****** ******
After school Todd trooped into Pietro's room followed by Rahne and a very amused looking Gambit. "We need a forth person for Hearts," he declared. "You're it."
"Hearts?" Pietro asked looking at Gambit.
The older man gave an expressive shrug, indicating it wasn't his choice and he found it equally strange, but it was Todd who answered. "Rahne doesn't like gambling and I always loose when I play poker with you, so we're playing Hearts."
"He cheats," Gambit said, explaining Pietro's unprecedented winning streaks in the various Brotherhood poker tournaments.
"I do not," Pietro exclaimed indignantly. "It's only cheating if you get caught."
"You sound more like your old self every time I see you," Todd said happily pulling up a table.
"What'd you expect? It was my head that needed straightening out and I think fast," Pietro pointed out.
Rahne and Gambit grabbed chairs. With a flare Gambit produced a deck of cards and started shuffling. Pietro rolled his eyes as Gambit amused Rahne and Todd with his store of single-handed shuffling techniques. "Yeah, yeah, we all know you're too cool for words. Deal the cards already, showoff."
"Pietro, mon ami, stop and smell de flowers" Gambit replied with an infuriating grin. " 'Sides, we mebbe got another player, non? Or does de lovely femme plan on hidin' behind de door for de whole evening?"
"Rogue?" Pietro asked getting up to greet her.
"Y'all-are-busy-Ah'll-come-back-later-bye," Rogue exclaimed dashing off.
"Rogue-wait-up," Pietro called only to hear her door slamming in the other wing.
"Man, I ain't never gonna get used to a Southern accent at Quickie-tempo," Todd said.
"Oui, dat just be wrong," Gambit replied dealing out four hands.
"I think she's mad at me," Pietro said.
"Why would she be mad at you?" Todd asked. "You're the one who got his brain sucked."
"I don't know. Did she say anything about being mad?"
"We can't understand her," Rahne said. "She talks faster than you."
"Come on Toad, you've had practice, did she say anything?" Pietro pushed.
"I kinda get the gist of it," Todd admitted. "But when I say anything back she gets mad and runs off before I finish a sentence."
" 'Cause you talk too slow," Pietro said scowling.
"Mebbe yo' really are getting' back to yo'self," Gambit said sounding thoughtful as well as pleased.
****** ****** ******
"Find the place, make a door, wander around for a few days and do nothing then seal it up again. You guys are really boring you know that?" Lance complained happily as he disdained the helping hand Scott offered when they encountered a rough patch of terrain on their way back to the X-Jet.
"Charles will want to know about what we have discovered," Storm said.
"I wonder who built that place and why they abandoned it," Scott said.
"I thought it was creepy," Jean said wrinkling her nose. "Didn't you feel like someone was watching you while we were there?"
"I fear my impressions would be useless," Storm replied. "The knowledge that I was underground, in potentially hostile territory, brought my claustrophobia to the fore."
"I couldn't tell at all," Jean said smiling at Storm. "You must be getting over it."
As they approached the X-Jet Lance's steps began to lag.
"Is something wrong?" Storm asked as the other three stopped to wait for Lance to catch up.
"Nothing's wrong," Lance said with a sickly grin. "You've got more of Amara's air-sick medicine don't you?"
"Not after last time," Storm said.
"You were totally high or don't you remember?" Jean asked. "I wish I'd had a camera for the part where you kissed the ground."
Lance scowled at her. "I think I reacted like that because of the earthquake. Come on, I hate throwing up."
"I've got an idea," Jean said and Lance passed out. "See, problem solved," she said telekinetically loading him on the jet. "I love that the Professor showed me how to do that. I can't wait for the next time the New Mutants act up."
"Jean!" Scott exclaimed sounding more disbelieving than disapproving.
"Blame it on TV," Jean said. "My dad loved 'The A-Team' when I was a kid. I couldn't resist."
"Jean!" Scott repeated.
"What? He would have been miserable the whole way home. You know he was going to complain and whine. Plus he really would have thrown up. Then we'd all have been miserable. This is the best solution for everyone," Jean insisted.
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