A/N: Okay, as promised, here's my next chapter, extra-long. Enjoy!
Chapter Five
Rogue moaned softly as her alarm clock blared, calling her out of her sweet slumber and into the world of the living. Or none-sleeping. Take your pick.
To her surprise, Kitty was still sound asleep when Rogue got up. Rogue frowned and decided to wake her up later if Kitty failed to get up after Rogue had gotten fully dress and put all her makeup on.
After putting on her dark purple lipstick as a last finishing touch, Rogue looked over at Kitty, who was still sleeping. Rogue sighed, and walked over to her roomie's bed.
"Kitty," Rogue said, nudging the long brown-haired girl's arm with her foot, "ya' need ta' wake if ya' wanna' get ta' school on time."
Kitty moaned and swatted Rogue's foot away.
"Don't need to get up," Kitty mumbled, flipping on to her other side, "no school today."
"What do ya' mean?" Rogue asked, squatting down and blowing in Kitty's ear (knowing that it would annoy her). "It's Monday."
"Yah," Kitty said, lifting up her arm and trying to shoo away the breath, "But it's, like, a school holiday."
...
"What???" Rogue asked, standing up.
"Teacher work day, or something," Kitty mumbled, pulling her blanket over her and almost kicking her laptop off the bed. "Now can I go back to sleep?"
"Whateva'," Rogue said, moaning and laying down on her bed.
All that for nothing, she thought.
"Wake up, wake up, Wake Up!!!" Kitty shrieked in Rogue's ear.
"Go away," Rogue said, picking up her black pillow and lifting it up, a threat.
"But, like, Logan and Ororo need us in the reck room!" Kitty said, taking the pillow from Rogue's hand and waving it around.
"There's, like, something important on the TV, and, like, everyone has to, like, see it! So wake up and get up and let's, like, GO!" Kitty hit Rogue with the pillow, which probably wasn't a good idea, seeing that it got her a little upset.
"I'm going!" Rogue mumbled, muttering under her breath and sliding off the bed as Kitty was practically jumping out the door and down the hallway.
"Did you hear the news?"
Tessa looked up from her computer screen and at the young British girl in the hallway. Betsy's forehead was creased with worry, and she was fidgeting.
Tessa nodded. She was probably one of the first people in the Hellfire Club to find out what had happened.
At a school, some student had attacked and killed a football player, ripping his eyes out. Then, at a school assembly, he went onto the stage and ranted about how he was going to get the "U-Men" to implant they eyes in his head, because the football player was apparently a mutant who had some sort of X-Ray vision.
Eventually, he had been shot down by a firing squad, but the public was still shook up about it.
The U-Men was a controversy. Were they better then mutants because they killed the Homo Superior? Or were they worse because they used the harvested organs on ordinary humans to make them mutants too?
Tessa personally found the whole thing disgusting, but didn't say so.
"Do you think we're safe?" Betsy asked. Tessa looked up, surprised.
"We?" she asked.
"Us mutants," Betsy said, looking nervously down the hallway.
That's right, Tessa thought. Betsy's a mutant. Telepath, I think, who can do nothing greater then Mastermind can "Of course we're safe, here in the Hellfire Club," Tessa said. "Some of the most powerful mutants are here. Some silly 'U-Men' with their 'mutant harvesting tools' can't get to us. Not when we have a woman who can turn to diamond and a man who can create such great allusions that you think they're real." Betsy calmed down, but it was appeared that she was still a little frightened. "Do you know were my brother is?" she asked. Tessa nodded. "He's in a conference with some suppliers to the Hellfire Club, the Worthingtons, I think. But he should be out shortly," Tessa told the younger girl. Betsy nodded and left.
"So what exactly are we all gathered around the TV for?" Rogue asked to no one in particular, not liking the cramped arrangements. All the X-Men and New Recruits were gathered around in the same room; and though it was big, Rogue still didn't like being around so many people at once. Especially since so many of them were talking, and the volume in the room was getting deafening, almost like being in an Elementary School cafeteria.
"Quite down, students," Ororo Munroe said. No one appeared to listen.
"Students, you heard Ms. Munroe," Hank said. "Quite down." Apparently, no one had heard Ororo or Hank.
"You ain't doin' it right, bub," Logan said. He let out a loud whistle. Every one looked at him.
"Now," he said. "Thanks fur quieting down. Now, tha' next person ta' talk is gunna have four o'clock Danger Room sessions with me every Saturday fur a month."
From that point on, no one said a word.
"Thank you, Logan," Ororo said, walking over to the TV and turning it on. "Some of you need to see this. Jean, in case some of the footage is a little to much for the younger students to take, I want you to block them out of their minds."
"Yes m'am," Jean replied automatically.
I wonder were the Professor is? Jean thought as she put up a mental block in all the younger recruits minds that would block out any image that they would find disturbing. It had taken her a while to learn such control, and the shield might collapse, but it that was so, Jean could always erase the image.
The TV image flickered, and then filled with the face of reporter Trish Tibley for NYBC.
"Isn't that the reporter that Hank's got a crush on?" quipped Bobby from the back of the room, getting a glare from all the adults for interrupting, and a few chuckles from some of the students.
Logan walked over to him, sat down, and whispered, "See ya' Saturday, bub."
Bobby gulped, and Jubilee's face turned red from trying to hold in laughter. Rogue, who had turned around to see the whole thing, turned back to face foreword, and rolled her eyes.
"Hello," said the friendly voice of Trish Tibley, who tucked a piece of jet-black hair behind her ear that had a respectably sized pearl in the lobe.
"This is Trish Tibley reporting for NYBC, were just seconds ago a teenage adolescent murdered a fellow student."
"So, what does this, like, have to do with us?" Kitty whispered to Rogue. Rogue glared and put a gloved finger to her lips.
Trish began to walk across a lawn of a school, a completely serious look on her face.
"Here at the Massachusetts School that will go unnamed until further investigations, the principal was having another school assembly for drug prevention."
The screen flickered from Trish's face to a taping of the assembly.
"Fortunately, they were taping it at the time, so we have real footage of the incident. Younger children and pregnant woman may want to look away, for some of the footage is very disturbing. Our technicians have somewhat edited the footage so you can tell what the people are saying."
The teens of the Xavier Institute shifted.
Great, most of them thought. Another mutant attack. Like this is going to help us any.
The principal walked up to the stage, shaking an old lady's hand. The woman sat down, and he began to talk about how drugs were bad, and how they ruined people's life; things that every teen hears at school at most assemblies.
Suddenly, there was some yelling from off stage, and the camera swung to show another student wearing a t-shirt with the picture of Magneto on it. There was blood spattered on it, and his left hand was clenched around something.
He yelled something, which came up as captions on the bottom of the screen.
"Hey, freaks! You all remember your dear football player, Jason, right?" He opened his palm.
"Is that...?" asked Bobby, wide eyed. Jean grimaced.
It was two eyeballs, pulled out of someone's sockets.
Rahne whimpered, and Jean's mind shield kicked in, blocking the images from the people who couldn't take it.
"That's really, like, gross," said Kitty, looking more frightened then disgusted. The teen on the screen waved the eyes around.
"He was a freak! Could see through things!" He pointed at the audience of shocked students.
"And I was thinking, why can't we normal people be like the freaks? Huh? You all laughed at me for reading comic books and watching anime! But look who's laughing now!" The kid let out a hearty laugh that nearly mimicked one of a mad scientist.
"This...this is horrible," Scott said.
"I'm gunna take this to the U-Men and they're gunna put these baby blues in my head! And then no girl in the hall will be safe from me!" He laughed again. "That's right! I'm gunna be a U-Man! So you freaks watch out! Us U-Men are gunna come and harvest your powers, and your children's powers and..."
He stopped talking and passed out. A bullet had flown though his head, splattering the old woman behind him with blood. She let out a scream and ducked, afraid that another shot would be fired at her.
The camera swung again, this time aiming at the person who had fired the shot. It was a S.W.A.T. member, and he did not look happy about killing the teen.
The background went dim, and the horrific scene was replaced with Trish Tibley's serious face.
"As you can see, the situation is bad. This is not the first person that has mentioned the U-Men. Another teen, this one a mutant, named Martha, had left a note in her own luminescent blood saying simply that 'the U-Men took her'. At first it was believed that she was simply a run away; now it appears to be much, much more then that."
Trish turned and looked at the school.
"Who is the U-Men? We are unsure. But police say that they may be linked to a book that talks about the same ideas as the teen; Humans harvesting the organs of mutants that would give them their power and then implanting it in themselves. No matter what side of the mutant threat, it is sure that the U-Men are something to be reckoned with."
Ororo turned the TV off with the press of a button from her remote control. She looked at the students.
"Zey had to call uz a threat," Kurt said finally, sighing.
"Doesn't everyone call us a threat?" Wolverine asked, sighing.
"And we would think Hank's beloved Trish would never do such a thing," Bobby said with a sigh, trying to lighten the mood.
It didn't work.
Instead, everyone turned and glared at him, even Jubilee.
"What?" he asked. No one replied.
"Has anyone told tha' Professah 'bout this?" Rogue asked.
"I would think he already knows," Jean said. "Considering he isn't here." Jean frowned. "Were is the Professor anyway?"
"He went to Muir Island for a little R&R," Hank said, repeating what he had told Rogue. Some of the students were getting up to leave, and half of them were already gone.
"An' he dinnie tell me?" asked Rahne. She pouted. "I would o' liked ta' see Mora again. I do miss 'er."
"I am sure that he will take you next time, Wolfsbane," Hank said. "I will alert him of the situation as soon as I can, if he has not already heard."
Jean nodded and the rest of the students filed out. Rogue was the last to leave. She turned and opened her mouth to say something, then frowned, and left.
"Doesn't seem like Chuck ta' up an' leave without tellin' tha' rest of us," Wolverine said after everyone had left. Hank shrugged.
"Was there anything different about the Professor before he left that we should know about?" asked Strom curiously, folding her hands in front of her. Hank shook his head.
"Not that I know of," he said. "But he did seem a little shaken up."
"Do you think it's somethin' 'bout his powers?" Wolverine asked.
"I am not sure," Hank said. "Whatever it was, he wished to keep it to himself." They all exchanged looks.
"I better work on contacting the Professor," Hank said finally.
A/N: O.O;;; That was alot longer then I thought it would be. Anyway, the next chapter may or may not be a little short, I dunno yet. Stay tuned and remeber to review!!!
Chapter Five
Rogue moaned softly as her alarm clock blared, calling her out of her sweet slumber and into the world of the living. Or none-sleeping. Take your pick.
To her surprise, Kitty was still sound asleep when Rogue got up. Rogue frowned and decided to wake her up later if Kitty failed to get up after Rogue had gotten fully dress and put all her makeup on.
After putting on her dark purple lipstick as a last finishing touch, Rogue looked over at Kitty, who was still sleeping. Rogue sighed, and walked over to her roomie's bed.
"Kitty," Rogue said, nudging the long brown-haired girl's arm with her foot, "ya' need ta' wake if ya' wanna' get ta' school on time."
Kitty moaned and swatted Rogue's foot away.
"Don't need to get up," Kitty mumbled, flipping on to her other side, "no school today."
"What do ya' mean?" Rogue asked, squatting down and blowing in Kitty's ear (knowing that it would annoy her). "It's Monday."
"Yah," Kitty said, lifting up her arm and trying to shoo away the breath, "But it's, like, a school holiday."
...
"What???" Rogue asked, standing up.
"Teacher work day, or something," Kitty mumbled, pulling her blanket over her and almost kicking her laptop off the bed. "Now can I go back to sleep?"
"Whateva'," Rogue said, moaning and laying down on her bed.
All that for nothing, she thought.
"Wake up, wake up, Wake Up!!!" Kitty shrieked in Rogue's ear.
"Go away," Rogue said, picking up her black pillow and lifting it up, a threat.
"But, like, Logan and Ororo need us in the reck room!" Kitty said, taking the pillow from Rogue's hand and waving it around.
"There's, like, something important on the TV, and, like, everyone has to, like, see it! So wake up and get up and let's, like, GO!" Kitty hit Rogue with the pillow, which probably wasn't a good idea, seeing that it got her a little upset.
"I'm going!" Rogue mumbled, muttering under her breath and sliding off the bed as Kitty was practically jumping out the door and down the hallway.
"Did you hear the news?"
Tessa looked up from her computer screen and at the young British girl in the hallway. Betsy's forehead was creased with worry, and she was fidgeting.
Tessa nodded. She was probably one of the first people in the Hellfire Club to find out what had happened.
At a school, some student had attacked and killed a football player, ripping his eyes out. Then, at a school assembly, he went onto the stage and ranted about how he was going to get the "U-Men" to implant they eyes in his head, because the football player was apparently a mutant who had some sort of X-Ray vision.
Eventually, he had been shot down by a firing squad, but the public was still shook up about it.
The U-Men was a controversy. Were they better then mutants because they killed the Homo Superior? Or were they worse because they used the harvested organs on ordinary humans to make them mutants too?
Tessa personally found the whole thing disgusting, but didn't say so.
"Do you think we're safe?" Betsy asked. Tessa looked up, surprised.
"We?" she asked.
"Us mutants," Betsy said, looking nervously down the hallway.
That's right, Tessa thought. Betsy's a mutant. Telepath, I think, who can do nothing greater then Mastermind can "Of course we're safe, here in the Hellfire Club," Tessa said. "Some of the most powerful mutants are here. Some silly 'U-Men' with their 'mutant harvesting tools' can't get to us. Not when we have a woman who can turn to diamond and a man who can create such great allusions that you think they're real." Betsy calmed down, but it was appeared that she was still a little frightened. "Do you know were my brother is?" she asked. Tessa nodded. "He's in a conference with some suppliers to the Hellfire Club, the Worthingtons, I think. But he should be out shortly," Tessa told the younger girl. Betsy nodded and left.
"So what exactly are we all gathered around the TV for?" Rogue asked to no one in particular, not liking the cramped arrangements. All the X-Men and New Recruits were gathered around in the same room; and though it was big, Rogue still didn't like being around so many people at once. Especially since so many of them were talking, and the volume in the room was getting deafening, almost like being in an Elementary School cafeteria.
"Quite down, students," Ororo Munroe said. No one appeared to listen.
"Students, you heard Ms. Munroe," Hank said. "Quite down." Apparently, no one had heard Ororo or Hank.
"You ain't doin' it right, bub," Logan said. He let out a loud whistle. Every one looked at him.
"Now," he said. "Thanks fur quieting down. Now, tha' next person ta' talk is gunna have four o'clock Danger Room sessions with me every Saturday fur a month."
From that point on, no one said a word.
"Thank you, Logan," Ororo said, walking over to the TV and turning it on. "Some of you need to see this. Jean, in case some of the footage is a little to much for the younger students to take, I want you to block them out of their minds."
"Yes m'am," Jean replied automatically.
I wonder were the Professor is? Jean thought as she put up a mental block in all the younger recruits minds that would block out any image that they would find disturbing. It had taken her a while to learn such control, and the shield might collapse, but it that was so, Jean could always erase the image.
The TV image flickered, and then filled with the face of reporter Trish Tibley for NYBC.
"Isn't that the reporter that Hank's got a crush on?" quipped Bobby from the back of the room, getting a glare from all the adults for interrupting, and a few chuckles from some of the students.
Logan walked over to him, sat down, and whispered, "See ya' Saturday, bub."
Bobby gulped, and Jubilee's face turned red from trying to hold in laughter. Rogue, who had turned around to see the whole thing, turned back to face foreword, and rolled her eyes.
"Hello," said the friendly voice of Trish Tibley, who tucked a piece of jet-black hair behind her ear that had a respectably sized pearl in the lobe.
"This is Trish Tibley reporting for NYBC, were just seconds ago a teenage adolescent murdered a fellow student."
"So, what does this, like, have to do with us?" Kitty whispered to Rogue. Rogue glared and put a gloved finger to her lips.
Trish began to walk across a lawn of a school, a completely serious look on her face.
"Here at the Massachusetts School that will go unnamed until further investigations, the principal was having another school assembly for drug prevention."
The screen flickered from Trish's face to a taping of the assembly.
"Fortunately, they were taping it at the time, so we have real footage of the incident. Younger children and pregnant woman may want to look away, for some of the footage is very disturbing. Our technicians have somewhat edited the footage so you can tell what the people are saying."
The teens of the Xavier Institute shifted.
Great, most of them thought. Another mutant attack. Like this is going to help us any.
The principal walked up to the stage, shaking an old lady's hand. The woman sat down, and he began to talk about how drugs were bad, and how they ruined people's life; things that every teen hears at school at most assemblies.
Suddenly, there was some yelling from off stage, and the camera swung to show another student wearing a t-shirt with the picture of Magneto on it. There was blood spattered on it, and his left hand was clenched around something.
He yelled something, which came up as captions on the bottom of the screen.
"Hey, freaks! You all remember your dear football player, Jason, right?" He opened his palm.
"Is that...?" asked Bobby, wide eyed. Jean grimaced.
It was two eyeballs, pulled out of someone's sockets.
Rahne whimpered, and Jean's mind shield kicked in, blocking the images from the people who couldn't take it.
"That's really, like, gross," said Kitty, looking more frightened then disgusted. The teen on the screen waved the eyes around.
"He was a freak! Could see through things!" He pointed at the audience of shocked students.
"And I was thinking, why can't we normal people be like the freaks? Huh? You all laughed at me for reading comic books and watching anime! But look who's laughing now!" The kid let out a hearty laugh that nearly mimicked one of a mad scientist.
"This...this is horrible," Scott said.
"I'm gunna take this to the U-Men and they're gunna put these baby blues in my head! And then no girl in the hall will be safe from me!" He laughed again. "That's right! I'm gunna be a U-Man! So you freaks watch out! Us U-Men are gunna come and harvest your powers, and your children's powers and..."
He stopped talking and passed out. A bullet had flown though his head, splattering the old woman behind him with blood. She let out a scream and ducked, afraid that another shot would be fired at her.
The camera swung again, this time aiming at the person who had fired the shot. It was a S.W.A.T. member, and he did not look happy about killing the teen.
The background went dim, and the horrific scene was replaced with Trish Tibley's serious face.
"As you can see, the situation is bad. This is not the first person that has mentioned the U-Men. Another teen, this one a mutant, named Martha, had left a note in her own luminescent blood saying simply that 'the U-Men took her'. At first it was believed that she was simply a run away; now it appears to be much, much more then that."
Trish turned and looked at the school.
"Who is the U-Men? We are unsure. But police say that they may be linked to a book that talks about the same ideas as the teen; Humans harvesting the organs of mutants that would give them their power and then implanting it in themselves. No matter what side of the mutant threat, it is sure that the U-Men are something to be reckoned with."
Ororo turned the TV off with the press of a button from her remote control. She looked at the students.
"Zey had to call uz a threat," Kurt said finally, sighing.
"Doesn't everyone call us a threat?" Wolverine asked, sighing.
"And we would think Hank's beloved Trish would never do such a thing," Bobby said with a sigh, trying to lighten the mood.
It didn't work.
Instead, everyone turned and glared at him, even Jubilee.
"What?" he asked. No one replied.
"Has anyone told tha' Professah 'bout this?" Rogue asked.
"I would think he already knows," Jean said. "Considering he isn't here." Jean frowned. "Were is the Professor anyway?"
"He went to Muir Island for a little R&R," Hank said, repeating what he had told Rogue. Some of the students were getting up to leave, and half of them were already gone.
"An' he dinnie tell me?" asked Rahne. She pouted. "I would o' liked ta' see Mora again. I do miss 'er."
"I am sure that he will take you next time, Wolfsbane," Hank said. "I will alert him of the situation as soon as I can, if he has not already heard."
Jean nodded and the rest of the students filed out. Rogue was the last to leave. She turned and opened her mouth to say something, then frowned, and left.
"Doesn't seem like Chuck ta' up an' leave without tellin' tha' rest of us," Wolverine said after everyone had left. Hank shrugged.
"Was there anything different about the Professor before he left that we should know about?" asked Strom curiously, folding her hands in front of her. Hank shook his head.
"Not that I know of," he said. "But he did seem a little shaken up."
"Do you think it's somethin' 'bout his powers?" Wolverine asked.
"I am not sure," Hank said. "Whatever it was, he wished to keep it to himself." They all exchanged looks.
"I better work on contacting the Professor," Hank said finally.
A/N: O.O;;; That was alot longer then I thought it would be. Anyway, the next chapter may or may not be a little short, I dunno yet. Stay tuned and remeber to review!!!