Chapter 9: Lost In A Strange Shape
Bobby kept his eyes on the road, mindful of Jean's watchful eyes on his hands as he was driving. If he wanted to be allowed to take the car out more often, he had to show Jean that he was a good driver.
He was, however, slightly distracted by the sight of Jubilee and Mickie in the rearview mirror, bouncing around on the back seat singing 'Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer' at the tops of their lungs. Jubilee was wearing a short white crop top that showed her maturing breasts quite nicely, and Mickie's low-cut v-neck tee showed a fair amount of cleavage too. And if he glanced quickly off to the side, he could see Jean's own eye-popping upper story too. He quickly returned his eyes to the road.
They were going shopping, this time because Charles's birthday was coming up. Jean wanted to pick up a few things. Bobby also suspected that she was also going to want to keep an eye on them, since unbeknownst to the three teens, Ororo had been at the mall when Jubilee and Mickie had played with the lingerie store mannequins. They weren't sure what she'd told Jean, but here Jean was, playing chaperon to them. Which didn't dampen the girls' enthusiasm any.
Jean grimaced as Mickie started on another round of song right behind her ear. "Forty-two bottles of beer on the wall, forty-two bottles of beer! Take one down and pass it around, forty-one bottles of beer on the wall!"
"Next time I'm going to tell Logan to come with you guys," Jean grumbled, sinking back in her seat and scowling out the windshield at the gray day outside. "They can yell his ear off."
Bobby snickered at her look as he pulled into the parking lot of the mall. "You didn't have to come," he pointed out. "I can handle the girls."
"Like you handled them the last time? I'm not sure I trust you after that," Jean said as she got out. Mickie and Jubilee popped out of the backseat, Bobby locked up the car, and they started for the front door of the mall.
Bobby had saved for the new video game he wanted, so when Jean started heading off toward the store that sold fancy gift items like pen sets and letter openers and stuff like that, he opted to head for the game store. Jubilee and Mickie quickly started to follow him, but Jean grabbed Jubilee's arm firmly. "No. You're coming with me. I'm not letting the three of you go off together. I don't want to be called to the security office to pick up three wayward children. Besides, Jubilee has to pick up something for Charles. Mickie, maybe you'll think of something too." She took her cell phone out of her purse and turned it on, then told Bobby to do the same. 'You know how I hate having to drop my shields in crowded places to track you down, so turn on that cell phone on your belt, Bobby." He reached down and did so, then Jean and Jubilee headed off to the gift store.
Bobby took her to the Game Room, found the game he'd wanted to get, then walked around with her as she looked at things. He eyed the X-Box on the highest shelf of the locked glass case. The other guys had wanted to get a Playstation 2, he'd wanted an Xbox. They'd won. But there were games for the Xbox that weren't available for the P2 system, and he was seriously considering buying the thing for Christmas, ostensibly for Hank but also because he knew Hank would let him play with it.
Mickie saw him looking at it, and smiled. "Xbox is definitely cooler," she said happily. "My parents asked us what we wanted for Christmas last winter, and I wanted an X-Box. My older brother wanted a Gamecube. He got what he wanted—and spent more time playing with mine than with his." She grinned.
Bobby looked at the sample Xbox sitting at a demo station, and sighed. "I wanted one last year, but the guys wanted the P2. I got overruled."
Mickie looked at him thoughtfully, inwardly totaling up the money she had left from the amount her parents had given Xavier. Buying the game system would mean she'd have to forget about buying that dress she'd seen in a store window as they went to the Game Room, but his happiness would be worth it. And really, did she need any more clothes?
She switched topics as she led him out of the store. "Jean said Mr. Xavier's birthday is coming up, but I don't know what to get. What did you get for him?"
"Uh, nothing yet," Bobby sighed. "But the other day Remy and Rogue's volleyball went sailing into his open study window and broke a little reading lamp in there. I was going to stop and pick one up for him. What about you?"
"On my father's birthday I got him a bunch of little prisms that could be strung across the top of a window. When the sun shone in, rainbows would dance around the room. He loved it. I was thinking about getting one of those."
"Charles has a big one on his desk," Bobby said thoughtfully. "Sometimes when he's thinking about something really hard he picks it up and takes it to the window. He'll sit there staring at the rainbow for a long time, until he's worked out whatever problem he has. I wonder why we never thought about getting him ones for the windows."
"Let me go and get that, then. I'll meet you at the burger place in half an hour." And before Bobby could object, she had slipped away from him and disappeared into the crowd.
He spent half an hour wandering in and out of shops, putting off the purchase he needed to make until right before he was supposed to meet her at the fast-food place. He walked into the burger joint half an hour later, noted that she wasn't there yet, and sat down instead at a table. While he waited for her, he took his new video game out of the bag and started reading the description on the back.
She flopped into the seat across from him moments later, carrying two bags. The one that caught his eye had the Game Room's logo on it; the other one had the logo of an odds-and-ends store on the outside. He eyed the Game Room bag curiously.
She saw his curious look, laughed, and pulled it up onto the table. "Here," she said with a laugh, I might as well give it to you now." He opened the bag and saw…
"Mickie!" He was speechless as he pulled the Xbox out of the bag. "How did you… what did…I didn't…" He dug out the two games in the bottom of the bag and looked at them. "Wow. The games I wanted, too! How did you know?"
Mickie blushed. "Jubilee talks a lot, did you know that? She's been talking about nothing but how you've been trying to save up to get you one of these. So I got it; now all you have to do is get the games. The store's having a promo where they give you a couple of games free if you buy the system. I picked out the ones my brother liked."
Bobby looked at the girl sitting across from the table from him. Jubilee would always be 'his' girl, but Mickie was a really good friend…he leaned forward and brushed his lips lightly across her cheek.
A chorus of hollers and jeers came from somewhere off behind them, and Bobby broke off the kiss to stare contemptuously at Derek and his crew, sitting at a table behind Mickie's back. The comment he directed at them was pithy and anatomically impossible.
Derek got up out of his chair. "Oh, so big boy wanna come play with us?" he challenged. Mickie grabbed Bobby's arm before he could go over there and answer the other boy's challenge.
"Bobby, come on. He's not worth it." Mickie got up and almost literally dragged Bobby from his seat. "Come on. Ignore them. Let's go find Jean and Jubilee."
"Aw, widdle baby wunning away," Derek refused to let the topic drop, instead following then two and taunting them in a high-pitched, fake child voice. "Let's see what you got in here," he said, bursting into a run suddenly and grabbing Mickie's bags from her hand before she could tighten her grip.
Mickie flushed angrily. "Derek, give that back," she snapped, her temper rising.
Derek reached into the big bag, taking out the game system. "Hey, thanks for buying this for me, Baby," he taunted, walking backward in front of him and shoving the bag into one of his friends' hands. "What's in this one?" Without waiting for an answer, he opened it.
"What the hell are these?" he remarked, picking up one of the tiny four-inch-square boxes and opening them. "Aw, little girlie bought her kissyface boyfriend prisms! Ain't that cute?" He said to his friends. They laughed and agreed with him.
"Stop it, Derek! Give them back!" Bobby lunged for the boy, who darted backward out of his reach. Then, to Mickie's horror, Derek took the delicate prism out of its cotton-lined box and gave her an evil smile just before he dropped it on the floor.
It shattered into a zillion pieces on the floor, and Bobby's temper went with it.
He lunged for the other boy, snarling in anger. Derek, unprepared for the sudden move, didn't have time to pull the smaller bag out of Bobby's reach. Bobby grabbed it, tossed it in Mickie's direction, and tackled the other boy, who went down under Bobby's flying fists.
Mickie screamed out, 'Stop it! Bobby, Derek, stop it--" and then a heavy hand fell onto her shoulder as two burly security guards separated the fighting boys. The first guard shoved Bobby back roughly, and Mickie caught him as he stumbled backward into her. She inspected the growing bruise under his eye with concern. "Bobby, are you all right?" He nodded as the guards grasped his arm and hers firmly.
"Out," the first guard growled. "We want all of you out of the mall now. We'll escort you to the doors. And we don't want to see any of you in the mall again."
Derek waited until the guards had vanished back into the mall before snickering at Bobby and Mickie. "Oh well. At least I got a new Xbox out of this." Bobby was about to protest when Mickie stepped forward, eyes flashing.
"Give it back." Her voice was coolly even.
"Or you'll do what? Kiss me?" Derek taunted.
Mickie lost control of her temper. Before Derek's disbelieving eyes, she shifted into the form of a huge black panther, curled her lips back from her teeth, and snarled at them.
"Holy sh--" Derek stumbled back a few steps, then turned and ran. Unfortunately, he was still holding the Xbox Mickie had bought for Bobby.
Mickie sprang after them with a fully feline snarl. In this form, she could run faster than they could, and this form was also equipped with retractable claws. She extended these now, and swiped out at Derek with them. Her claw caught the bag, ripped it out of his terrified grasp, and dropped it on the ground.
One of the side effects of shifting was also that she could get lost in the instincts of the animal she shifted into. Her mind was swirling down into the chasm that was the mind of a large, predatory feline, and her own sense of self was getting lost in the mix. She could hear Bobby's frenzied screaming at her, but the words barely registered, lost in the basic, primal instinct of the panther. Hunt! That instinct was telling her. Hunt, stalk, pounce, kill, kill, kill…she tore after the now-terrified boys, following them as they scrambled to get into an old Buick, and clawed and scratched ineffectually at the windows as she tried to get at them. Failing to gain entrance that way, she sprang up on the hood of the car and began to claw the windshield. When that produced no results, she snarled. And turned the claws into hardened steel. Huge gouges appeared in the windshield, and there was only a matter of time before the windshield buckled, and two hundred pounds of enraged feline crashed down on the occupants of the car.
The front door opened, and Jean and Jubilee came racing out. Jean had felt Bobby's distress and had been heading toward the main entrance even before the cell phone in her purse had started beeping. Jubilee stood, startled, and stared at the huge black cat perched on the front of the now badly dented car. "Holy crap," She whispered to Bobby. "Is that Mickie?!"
Bobby nodded speechlessly. Both kids lapsed into silence as Jean focused her telekinesis and lifted the heavy cat off the car. The cat snarled, clawed at the air with its steel claws, and spit in anger as the car with the boys in it sped out of the parking lot.
Still concentrating on holding the snarling, spitting cat, Jean reached out telepathically into the panther's mind. Mickie, snap out of it! They're gone. Change out now!
Inside the mind Jean found nothing that remotely resembled humanity. She shuddered. Mickie wasn't the first shape shifter they'd had at the school, but none of their students had ever been capable of shifting into such a large, dangerous form. The problem She and Charles had speculated was that if a human shifted into the shape of something so overwhelmingly primitive, the student could become caught in the feline's mind and be lost. What she and Charles had speculated on was how they would handle something like that if it ever happened. Well, it had now happened, and the problem was before them.
And she had no idea how to get Mickie changed back.
"Pain!" Bobby yelled at Jean. "You have to hurt her, or jolt her nerves somehow! That's how she changed back the first time, when Derek dislocated her leg!"
Jean flinched at the idea of deliberately hurting someone, but she didn't see any choice. People in the parking lot were screaming in terror, and with all the fuss going on, it was only a matter of time before the local law enforcement called in animal control, and they might just shoot Mickie. She couldn't let that happen.
Still keeping hold of the cat's body telekinetically, she reached out with a smaller portion of her telekinetic power and swung a teke 'fist' into one of the wildly thrashing front legs. The panther screamed in pain as it's leg snapped, and Jean winced. She hadn't meant to hit that hard.
But it didn't change back.
Jean gave up. She didn't know how to handle this; she needed Charles's greater psychic ability and power to find the spark that was Mickie inside the panther and 'wake' the girl up enough to change. "Bobby, call the mansion," she said. "Tell Charles We need the Blackbird for a pickup."
Before she'd even finished speaking Bobby was dialing the mansion's number.