"I want him!"
Nisse glanced over at her best friend as the trio stepped out onto the patio behind the dining hall, and burst into laughter again. "Him? You mean pyro-boy out there?"
"YES! Him!" Rhiannon exclaimed. "Why the bloody hell didn't anyone tell me there was a pyrokinetic in this school?!"
"Hmm, let's think about this," Dante said sarcastically, finding a table and pulling out a chair for each of the girls before seating himself. "Just a thought here, but maybe it could be because you were arrested for 'accidentally' starting a fire that burned down three city blocks? Shit, girl, and they call him Pyro! Ten bucks says you've done more damage than he ever has!"
Rhiannon grinned impishly at him without a trace of remorse. "Okay. Point. But it was only abandoned warehouses that were scheduled for demolition anyway, it's not like it was anything important! I didn't, you know, put people out of homes or anything!"
Dante shook his head. "You're hopeless. You know that, right?"
"Damn skippy," Rhiannon retorted happily.
Rhiannon Graves was seventeen years old and had been living on the streets since her mother's death eight years before. Her father, never tolerant of her "unnaturalness" as he called it, had thrown her from his house before his wife was even buried. She had survived easily enough, able to steal food from street vendors by projecting a false image of herself, pretending to examine their wares while she was actually pocketing them; anyone who tried to mug her tended to suddenly find a very large, very muscular man looming over them. But when Storm had rescued her from jail and the Professor had offered her room and board as long as she kept her grades up and kept herself out of trouble, she'd taken them up on the offer eagerly. She'd been at the school for almost four months now, and was happier than she'd ever been before.
"So what d'you want for lunch?" Nisse asked the pair of them. "Looks like it's teriyaki chicken or cream of mushroom soup with mashed potatoes."
"Potatoes!" Rhiannon sang, bouncing up and down in her chair. "What?" she asked, when both Nisse and Dante stared at her. "Potatoes are fun."
"Fun. Right," Dante repeated blankly, and turned to his girlfriend. "Who let her into the crack stash again?"
Nisse just laughed, and Rhiannon blew a raspberry at him. Finally they managed to settle down enough to actually go get their lunches. Their table was quiet for several minutes as the hungry teens concentrated on their food.
"HEADS UP!" All three of them automatically shot back from the table as a basketball landed on it, hitting a plate and sending mashed potato flying in every direction.
"Sorry, sorry!" A thin girl with close-cropped black hair and hazel eyes came jogging up to the table, looking thoroughly embarrassed and apologetic. "Sorry, guys," she said again, "that wasn't supposed to happen—"
Rhiannon burst into giggles. "What'd you do this time, Sparks?"
The girl, whose name was Elizabeth Donnen, grinned sheepishly. "We're working on our catapult for physics class," she said, gesturing back to her own table where several of her classmates were sitting with their heads in their hands, glaring at her. "I accidentally touched it before we had it ready, and…" She held up a finger, and the trio saw a crackle of electricity spark across it. "…yeah," she finished lamely.
Nisse snorted with laughter. "Maybe you should let them deal with it until it's finished?" she suggested. "Or at least take it outside where there's not so much danger of attack by projectile potatoes."
"Projectile—" Sparks goggled at her. "Heeeeey! Now THERE'S a thought!" And she trotted off back to her own table, a thoughtful expression on her face.
Nisse stared after her, horrified. "Oh, gods," she moaned. "I gave her an idea."
Dante watched Sparks go with his usual blank face, then turned to Nisse. "You do realize that if she does anything, I'm holding you personally responsible," he said calmly.
"Promise?" Nisse asked slyly, and both Rhiannon and Dante roared with laughter.
"Dammit, Angelis, you know what I meant," Dante growled, but he was still chuckling.
Nisse pretended to pout for a moment, then gave up her charade with a smile. "I know, I know," she said, leaning over to kiss him.
Rhiannon shuddered slightly at the sight of her friends' touch, and kicked herself mentally for not being able to suppress it. "Sorry," she said apologetically when she realized Dante had seen it.
Dante smiled sadly. "Don't worry about it, Rhi," he said quietly. "You know I don't blame you."
Nobody was quite sure exactly what the full extent of Dante Williams' abilities was, but part of it definitely involved nightmares. Dante wore gloves and long sleeves for much the same reason that their classmate Rogue wore them – anyone he touched began to relive the worst moments in their lives, and if he held on long enough, they became permanently trapped within their own heads, floundering in sorrow and depression, unable to care about anything, until they wasted away. It was not a pleasant experience, and Rhiannon knew it firsthand.
It had only happened once; the three of them had been in town doing some summer shopping. Because of the heat, Dante had taken off his red leather coat and gloves, and for once Rhiannon had been wearing a sleeveless shirt. They'd been crossing a street, Rhiannon lagging behind to wave at a puppy, when a drunk driver had careened into the crosswalk. Dante's superb reflexes had snatched her out of harm's way a split second before she'd have been killed, but the moment his bare arms wrapped around her, her face had gone slack, wide-eyed and horrified.
Though the contact had lasted less than thirty seconds, Rhiannon spent the next two days in a bed in the hospital wing, huddled under a mound of blankets and rocking back and forth, staring blankly at nothing. She had even refused to eat for a while, but eventually she was coaxed back into a conscious awareness of her surroundings. Nisse told Rhiannon later that Dante had been almost in tears when he'd carried her into the school – and that was no small matter for a boy who usually expressed the emotional range of a turnip.
Rhiannon had never told anyone what she'd seen when Dante touched her, and they hadn't pushed the topic, but since that day, every time she watched Nisse and Dante touch, she shivered, and a haunted, deadened look came over her face.
The real mystery, however, was why Dante and Nisse were able to touch at all. No one, not even Professor Xavier, could explain it, but Dante's powers had not the slightest effect upon his girlfriend. Someone had suggested that perhaps it was because Nisse had had such a pleasant life that she had no negative experiences to be reminded of, but this didn't really make sense; even the smallest child has terrors – bogeymen under the bed, things that go bump in the night, the schoolyard bully who steals your lunch money. Someone else had suggested that maybe it was because Dante simply did not want his powers to work on her, but Dante had glared that one down and retorted that, if it worked like that, Rhiannon never would have ended up in the hospital wing.
After a while, people had learned to drop the subject.
