A/N: I'd just like to thank all those people that have taken the time to review the story and its chapters thus far. Thank you. And please, keep doing it! Read a chapter, than review it! Tell me what you think! Critique my writing! Yell at me for any errors you find! Or compliment me on my originality! I don't care; just give me some small indication of what you think of this story, and the chapter that you read.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Chapter 5: Santa's Delivery Boy
Scott and Rogue watched as most of the guests of the party left, saying goodbye to them as they went. Within ten minutes all that was left was Scott, Rogue, Thomas, and the Kings. "Well. Merry Christmas everyone." Thomas said with a slight smile. "Now." He said turning to look at Scott and Rogue. "I'm guessing since you two were leaving town when Mike found you that you don't have anywhere to stay for the night. You're more than welcome to stay here with us in the apartments upstairs. Scott if you don't mind you could room with James. And Rogue you could room with Jessica."
Scott nodded. "That sounds good. But we don't want to be a burden."
"Don't think another thing of it, you can help us clean up the mess from this party and we'll call it even." James said with a laugh as he and Jessica started cleaning, Jessica by picking up the garbage on the floor, and James by putting away the extra leftover food.
"Ah think we can do that." Rogue said with a nod as she went to help Jessica, and Scott started helping James. Thomas however had disappeared again while no one was looking, and Rogue didn't even notice that he was gone until she put a pile of trash into the garbage can that was set in the five-foot doorway between the large front room and the smaller back room. "Where'd he go?" She asked looking over to where Thomas had been standing a while before.
Jessica shrugged. "Probably to go change out of that Santa suit." She said as she dumped some garbage into the trash, picking up the lid and putting it back down with her tail. "He teleports. That's his mutation." She said as they continued cleaning.
"Really? That's interesting..." Rogue said thoughtfully as she was cleaning. "He seems like such a great guy, with the things he's done for Danielle and that Roger guy and all."
"Oh ya. He's smart, caring, and got a great sense of humor. He's like a jolly old Santa clause all the time." Jessica said with a smile.
"I was impressed that a community that large could be hidden so easily." Scott said joining in their conversation as he carried a tray of food past them into the smaller room. "I mean you'd think that all the noise we made tonight would draw some attention."
James laughed. "Not in this city." He said as he came back into the larger room. "And there was still a good number of people not even here tonight. Most had physical mutations that stop them from coming out in public." He said with a shrug.
"Yeah. I'm lucky though; I'm easy to hide, especially in winter. But I get to come to this every year, since we hold it here, and we live upstairs." Jessica said as she picked up a few cups from random coffee tables.
"Ah don't get it, if you live here then why'd you come in through the front door?" Rogue asked a little curious.
"Well we weren't here when the party started. James and I go to the Christmas Eve service at the church down the street every year. It's the only service that I risk going to, but James goes every Sunday." Jessica said as she put the lid back on the trashcan, after dumping a few handfuls of cups in it.
"You're religious then?" Scott asked as he came in from the smaller room.
"As a group no, the warriors aren't officially religious. But Jessica and I are Christians yes." James said as he took another tray into the smaller back room. "You'll be amazed to find how many different religions and backgrounds people come from in this group, we've got everything from Atheists, Jews, Christians, religions I can't even pronounce, everything."
"Not to try and change the subject, but I've been meaning to ask you two, are you two even interested in joining the group? Or are you already belonging to a different kind of group. Cause Danielle and a few of the other girl's were talking about that school ya'll go to, that school for mutants?" Jessica asked as she put the last piece of trash into the trash bag and tied the bag up.
"Well we do belong to another group, but I am interested in this group." Scott said to Rogue's surprise, and Rogue turned and looked at him. "Well I mean this is really cool, but we'll have to go back to the Institute eventually. I mean I have to finish high school, and I could never leave the friends I have at the institute, but still, this place and these people are amazing."
"I'm glad you think so." Thomas said from behind Rogue.
Rogue jumped nearly a mile high and yelled as Thomas suddenly spoke from behind her. "Man! Warn people or something when you go and do that!" She yelled.
Thomas laughed. "My apologies. I didn't mean to scare you." He said helping Jessica lift the bag from the trashcan by holding the trashcan down. He was now wearing a black shirt, black pants, black hiking boots, and a black trench coat, and Rogue noticed that he had heavily tinted sunglasses on his face.
"You like that whole matrix look huh?" Rogue asked as she regained her composure, and Scott and James rejoined them in the room.
"Oh yes. I actually find it to be quite comfortable, and the contacts get annoying after a while, so I have to wear the shades otherwise." Thomas explained.
"Why?" Scott asked, curious.
"Well you see my eyes... Are different than most other's. The pupils are extremely large and take in a lot of light. Thus my eyes are extremely sensitive. Plus the Irises on my eyes are black in color. Where most people have colors like brown, blue, or green, I have black. Thus I hide them with contacts to make them a normal color, or I wear the sunglasses so that my eyes can handle the light, and their true color still remain hidden. I suppose you could say I have an eye condition." He chuckled nervously. "I noticed you keep on the ruby shades. Is there a particular reason for that, or do you just like the look?"
"Well they keep me from blasting these concussion beams from my eyes all the time. So it's either wear them, or keep my eyes shut." Scott explained.
"That's a shame." James said as he came up. "Joe can't control his power none either. Neither can I, Thomas can't control his eyes, and Mike can't control his abilities neither, there's a lot of people in this group that can't control their mutations. Jessica can control some of her powers though."
Scott looked over to her. "I thought you said you're powers were just your physical mutations?" He asked with a brow slightly raised.
"I have retractable talons." She said coming closer and showing him the palm of her hand so he could see. "The only thing about my mutation I can control is when they come out, and when they go back in. Other than this quite useful tail of course." She stretched her fingers a bit and on the underside of each fingertip came a slightly curved talon. "They allow me to do fun things, like stick to walls, and stuff, they're.... What'd you call Thomas? Extremely..."
"Dense." Thomas finished her sentence. "They're extremely dense, they can stick into virtually any surface or material." He said with a slight smile.
Rogue felt kind of left out of the conversation, but she was listening anyway.
"They also make great weapons." She said with a slight smile.
"I can imagine." Scott said as he turned back to James. "What about you, I never even asked you about your mutation." He said with curiosity in his voice.
"Ya, that's right. What is your mutation?" Rogue chimed in looking to James.
"I have a metallic mimetic ability that allows me to transfer the properties of different alloys to my skin." He said rather scientifically. It was a definition that Thomas had provided him with of course, but they didn't need to know that. "Or here... In other words..." He held up his right hand. "If I touch a metal." He continued and raised his left hand over to his right, touching the gold ring on his right-gloved thumb with the index finger on his left. "I become the metal." His skin was now golden, entirely, quite shiny actually. His hair was even golden in color. "Luckily though I can still move the same, and breathe and stuff. Although we don't know exactly how, but it does increase my strength a bit."
"A bit?" Scott asked with a brow raised.
"Well... A lot, it increases by ten fold. So my max press usually is about three hundred pounds... so in this metallic form it would be about three thousand pounds. Of course this is just in the gold form. If I were a less dense material such as steel, my strength would be far less. The denser the material, the stronger my strength I suppose you could say." James explained as he began to change back to normal, starting from the top of his head, and finally finishing at the bottom of his feet. When he had changed back, he had fallen onto his hands and knees; Jessica was helping him to get up. "It takes a lot out of me to change back though. And if I don't change back within an hour, my body can't handle it anymore, and I collapse."
"It certainly sounds complicated." Rogue said as she came a bit closer. "What kind of rings do you have there?" She asked looking at his right hand, which had a glove on it, and a ring on each finger of the glove.
"Well the one on the thumb there is gold." He said as Jessica helped him stand back up to his full height. "The black one on the index finger there is Iron. The ring on the middle finger is steel. The one on the actual ring finger is silver, and the one on the pinky there is adanantium. Courtesy of Mr. Kamesama."
"How did Mr. Kamesama get his hands on adanantium?" Scott asked curiously, these people sure were powerful if they were capable of getting that; the only other adanantium he had ever heard of was on Wolverine's skeleton.
James shrugged. "I have no idea. Probably from the Japanese government or something."
"Interesting..." Rogue said as she placed on of her hands on her hip.
"Alright now. It's late, well after mid night, we need to be up when Joe gets back here tomorrow morning so that he can pick up the presents." Thomas said as he came back up to them. "Come on, everybody. Early morning."
Scott and Rogue followed James and Jessica through the smaller back room, down the small hallway, through the second door on the right, up the stairs, and down the hall again. "This is my room." James said as they came up to two doors on opposite sides of the hallway from each other."And this is my room." Jessica said gesturing to the door opposite James' room. "They're both not much... but, we call it home." Jessica said shrugging as she opened her bedroom door. Revealing a small room with a bunk bed a couch, and a T.V. James' room was identical, except that the bunk bed was separated with a bed on each side of the room.
"I'll see ya in the morning Scott." Rogue said as she headed through the door.
"Good night Rogue." Scott said as he went in, and both doors shut, leaving the hallway empty and silent as Thomas came up the stairs, and went into his room on the other end of the hall.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Early Christmas Morning
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Scott was already down stairs in the large front room when Rogue got down there at about eight. Both were showered and ready for a new day. Scott was talking to Thomas as Rogue came up.
"Well I'd love to meet the professor, but I don't think he'll trust me all that much." Thomas said as Rogue came up.
"I don't think he'll care about the chip. He's a nice guy." Scott said as if defending the professor.
"I'll think about it. I'll tell you what. You two go with Joe. Meet some of the other Warriors, that weren't here last night, and by the time your deliveries are done your professor will more than likely be here, and we can all sit down and discuss whatever it is you want to." Thomas said with a nod.
"Alright." Scott agreed. "Oh, Morning there Rogue." Scott said now noticing her for the first time since she came down.
"Ah take it we're going to see the city with Joe?" She asked with a brow slightly raised.
"Well yeah. I figured we could see the sights a little, meet some of the people in this community that we didn't get to meet last night, and the professor is coming, so then after that we can all sit down and talk about things." Scott said, filling Rogue in, unsure of how long she had been there and how much she had overheard.
"Oh... Where's Jessica?" Thomas said looking around and not seeing her anywhere.
"Ah don't know, she wasn't in her bed when I woke up." Rogue said with a shrug. "Ah thought she would be down here already, so Ah just came down here."
"That's fine, she's probably up on the roof." Thomas said with a nod. "Oh, if you want some food in the back room there's a fridge. It's got plenty of leftovers from last night, or there's some cereal on the top of it, or there's eggs in there. Oh, and the microwave should be on the counter next to it if you wanted to heat something up and the stove works, if you wanted to cook some eggs."
"Thanks." Rogue said with a nod. "Scott, did you want anything?" She asked as she headed towards the smaller back room.
"No, thanks, I already had some breakfast." Scott said with a slight smile to Rogue.
"Okay." She said as she went back to make breakfast.
"So when do you suppose that Joe will be here?" Scott asked turning to see Thomas.
"In all honesty? I thought he would be here already. But he should be here in about an hour at the latest." Thomas said and then sat up really quickly. "Oh, I forgot something..." Thomas said as he stood up, he picked up a remote and hit a button towards the bottom of it. Not ten seconds after he did so a man looking to be about Thomas' age came out of the door in the back of the smaller back room. "AI-9, I need two pins." Thomas said with a slight nod.
"Yes sir." The man said quite blankly to the surprise of Rogue, and then he turned and left again through the door he came.
"Who, or what, was that?" Scott asked confused.
"Oh, that was AI-9. Or his full name, Project: AI-9. Or his nickname, Alfred Ivan the Ninth." Thomas said with a slight chuckle. "James thought up the nickname actually. He's an artificial intelligence android that I created. I've been working on him for years, but I got the basics down and finally put it all together a few months ago." Thomas explained.
Rogue came in with a plate of food and joined the conversation. "So you built him?" She asked slightly skeptical as she began to eat her food.
"Ya, he actually doesn't look like that, that's just the hologram that I developed so that he wouldn't startle anyone." Thomas said. "I'm not quite normal in my intelligence either you see, Katashi used to accuse me of taking Mental Steroids."
"Who's Katashi?" Scott asked looking slightly confused.
"Oh, I'm sorry, sometimes I just call him by his first name. That's actually the first name of Mr. Kamesama." Thomas explained with a slight chuckle. "Anyway." He said as AI-9 came back through the door. "I wanted to give you these." He got up and met AI-9 as he was walking towards him. "Thank you Alfred." Thomas said with a slight laugh. "I always feel like Batman when I use that nickname." He said with a slight chuckle as he came back to Rogue and Scott. "Here ya go..." He handed something small and golden in color to Scott.
Scott held it in his palm and looked at it. It was a gold pin that could go on like a collar of a shirt or something in the shape of a W. "What's this for?" Scott asked as he held it in his fingers.
"It's our own secret emblem I guess you could say. Each member has one, and if you ever see someone wearing one you know that he's a warrior." Thomas explained. "And here, if I ever need the person wearing this for like a mission or something, then I activate this, and this thing beeps." He said. "But I don't think I'll ever use it for either of you, you two are more like honorary members, so you use the other feature. If you ever need us for anything, you press this button here." He showed them a small button on the top of the middle arch in the W. "And this will contact us, and let us know that you need us. It will also activate the tracer inside of the pin so that we can find you." He said with a slight smile.
"Wow. That's pretty sophisticated stuff." Rogue said as she took hers and put her plate down. "Thank you." She said with a slight nod.
"You're very welcome." Thomas said with a smile as both Scott and Rogue pinned their pins on them. Scott pinned his on his shirt collar, and Rogue pinned hers on her shirt's cuff near the glove.
It was that moment that Joe came through the front door. "I'm here!" He called not realizing at first that anyone was in the front room. "Oh..." He chuckled as he looked up and saw them staring at him. "Well at least I'm not terribly late. I'm ready to take those presents now, and I'll have them dropped off by noon. Hi, Rogue. Scott. Merry Christmas." He said nodding to each.
"Merry Christmas." Rogue said in greeting as she stood up. "It seems like Scott and I are coming with you if that's okay." She said as she threw away her empty plate and put on her coat.
"Ya, that's fine." Joe said picking up the red bag that was in front of the Christmas tree. "Let's get these things delivered and you can meet a few people on the way." He said with a nod. "You comin Scott?"
"Yup." Scott said as he stood up. "It was great talking with you Thomas. Thanks for the gifts. And you'll see, you'll like the professor." He said with a nod as he headed towards the door, putting his coat on along the way.
"Off we go then. Santa's Delivery boy service." Joe joked as he opened the door and held it open for Scott and Rogue. This was going to be fun.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Coming Soon... Chapter 6: Deliveries