Quick Note: Thanks for the reviews:)

"You're thirteen?" Jamie Madrox looked surprised. Kevin was getting a lot of that lately.

"Yeah." Kevin squirmed when he realized he had to look upwards to talk to his new roommate.

Jamie seemed nice enough. He was a tall, skinny boy who had a permanent goofy grin fused on underneath a mop of unruly hair and laughing blue eyes. Kevin knew the guy for just over an hour and he already sensed many detentions in his future.

But he had yet to know what his…"mutation" was.

He had spent the last two hours in a very serene, principal's-office-type room talking to Professor Xavier, the "bald guy in a wheel chair who can read minds and stuff". He taught English to the students himself. Kevin figured he was also the principal, though Ms. Munroe, Mr. Wagner (as he started to call the friendly "Amazing Nightcrawler"), and the other teachers never introduced him that way. He found out that Ms. Munroe was a science teacher, and Mr. Wagner was the newly appointed art teacher.

He had also met the math teacher, who was a brooding young man that leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. His name was Mr. Summers, and he always wore red shades, even when he was inside. Kevin guessed something was bothering him. When he was introduced, Mr. Summer's handshake was cold and unfeeling.

Then he met Mr. McCoy, a massive specimen of human being who was a new teacher, like Mr. Wagner. He was taking the place of a "Ms. Grey" who no longer worked there, though Kevin did not know why and he sensed this was a touchy topic. Mr. McCoy was teaching history.

Lastly, there was Logan. He had no last name, but he did hear "Wolverine" whispered throughout the halls. Mr. Wolverine wasn't really a teacher. Kevin wasn't sure what he was, or what he did, being far too old to be a student. He was big, hairy, and just as brooding and gloomy as Mr. Summers was, except Mr. Wolverine seemed a lot more threatening. Mr. Wolverine had peered down at Kevin and shook his hand firmly. He heard a clicking noise in his knuckles.

Mr. Wagner, who Kevin was starting to take a liking to, showed him to his new room where he would be staying. He never recalled ever agreeing to attend this school, or even agreeing to stay, but the adults seemed to already have it stuck in their minds that he was a student and he belonged there.

Since apparently they were "all like him".

"Come on you have to meet the other eighth graders." Jamie said brightly, and pulled him up. Kevin would have preferred to stay in the room, maybe get some sleep, but he left his single backpack on his bed and followed his roommate into the hall, where they crashed face-first into a huge metal cyborg.

"AHH!" Kevin yelped and jumped back roughly into Jamie.

Suddenly there were five Jamies, four clones of his roommate shooting out from the original. Each landed on the floor, rubbing their sore elbows.

"AHHH!" Kevin yelped again.

"What the hell?" the metal cyborg grunted. Then the metal plates covering his skin retracted into some unknown place and before him stood a regular dark haired guy, about seventeen, though heavily muscled.

"Hi, Piotr." The Jamies, plural, greeted. "I'm showing the new kid around."

Kevin gaped, open-mouthed at the five Jamies. "You….you…"

"Yeah, I forgot to mention." Jamie said sheepishly as his multiples merged back into one in a freakishly awe-inspiring display of weirdness. "That happens when I bump into stuff hard enough. I multiply."

Kevin was still open-mouthed as Jamie talked about his mutation like it was nothing more than a temporary rash.

"New kid?" Piotr asked looking down at Kevin. "You mean this floating shirt right here?"

Kevin realized he had made himself invisible unintentionally. He promptly reappeared. Piotr looked impressed while Jamie looked overjoyed.

"I know, it's awesome. Professor Wagner told me all about his mutation." Jamie exulted. "I bet you can even sneak into the !"

Piotr gave him a discouraging look, but Jamie just sneered at him. "Come on!"

"Where are you going?" Piotr asked the younger boy sternly.

"I'm just gonna let Kevin meet the other eighth graders." Jamie insisted. Piotr looked doubtful, but shrugged and started to walk away.

"Don't let Jamie do anything." Piotr warned over his shoulder. "Nice to meet you…?"

"Kevin."

"Don't listen to the Great Metallic Turd." Jamie said just loudly enough for Piotr to hear. He jokingly retaliated with a certain one-finger salute.

"He's a robot or something?" Kevin wondered. Jamie laughed.

"Nah, he just coats himself with metal sometimes. He thinks it's cool or something, calls himself Colossus. Tries to impress the girls with it."

They made their way down the carpeted hall, Jamie chattering away several warnings like don't surprise Logan while he's asleep or you will have three new holes in your chest and don't talk about Dr. Grey.

"What happened to her?" Kevin asked suddenly. Jamie looked at him darkly and he didn't pursue the matter any further.

They passed by the kitchen, where Kevin saw a tall blondish boy and a brown haired girl with white-streaked bangs laughing. They both looked about Piotr's age. The boy blew onto the girl's drink and it instantly cooled, fogging the glass. Kevin blinked.

"Bobby and Marie." Jamie whispered. "Bobby can freeze things, even just whatever particles are floating around in the air. And Marie, well, she has literally a Kiss of Death."

Kevin looked at the smiling girl. "What? She looks nice...?"

"Oh she is. It's just her mutation is whenever she makes skin-to-skin contact with someone she sucks out their powers." Jamie explained. "It's even worse for humans though. She sucks out their life force completely. She calls herself Rogue."

"Rogue?"

"Yeah, we all have our little mutant names. It's fun. Bobby's is Iceman." Jamie grinned. "They go out, you know. Date. I always wondered how they…"

"How they what?"

"You know."

"Huh?"

Jamie shook his head. "Never mind." He tugged Kevin along again.

As they walked, Kevin asked, "What's your mutant name?"

Jamie stopped and puffed out his chest. "Multiple Man!"

Kevin raised an eyebrow. "Multiple Man?"

Evidently Jamie had expected more of a reaction to his brilliant mutant name. "Yeah, Multiple Man."

Suddenly someone pushed into Jamie, causing four more Jamies to come shooting out of him.

"Hey!" the Jamies glared. Behind them stood two girls, one a pretty girl of about sixteen and the other an Asian girl the same age with pink-streaked hair and insanely bright-colored clothes.

"Multiple Idiot is more like it." They loudly dressed girl joked.

"Kevin, meet Jub – "

" – ilee." Jubilee finished for him and she put out her hand. Kevin shook it, immediately wishing he had wiped his sweating hands before.

"Jubilation Lee." Jamie enunciated clearly, causing her to shoot him a dirty look. "And that's Kitty."

The brown haired girl waved. Jamie was one again and he turned to the girls. "If you'll excuse us ladies…"

"Please." Kitty rolled her eyes and pushed Jamie out of the way, causing him to multiply again. "You were in our way, you turd."

"Like that matters to you." Jamie scoffed. Kevin wondered what he meant by that, until Kitty walked directly through each one of the Jamies. Kevin's eyes nearly bugged out of his skull.

"It's called phasing." Jubilee explained, snickering at Kevin's expression. "You better watch your back in the shower."

Kevin turned slightly green.

"She's just kidding, little dude." Kitty laughed, pulling along her friend. "See you later."

"Wanna go out?" Jamie called out to Jubilee as the walked away. Jubilee answered by tossing something in the air. It exploded into a burst of light right in Jamie's face. He looked at Kevin, his face covered in soot.

"I guess that was a no." Kevin said, smiling for the first time in a long time.

"She knows she wants me." Jamie insisted, wiping his face on his sleeve.

"I guess she thinks she's too old for you." Kevin suggested.

"Please. She's sixteen. Three years doesn't mean anything. Dr. Grey was a lot older than Professor Summers."

The two fell silent again at the mention of the mysterious Dr. Grey's name.

Soon they were standing outside a very loud room. Kevin shifted uneasily at meeting his peers. Would they accept him? From what he had seen in the hallways, it seemed like all the kids here were already really close. What if they didn't like him?

"You did it again." Jamie observed.

"What?"

"You're invisible. Do you do it when you're nervous or something?"

Kevin sheepishly forced himself to reappear. "I dunno, I guess so."

"It's still really cool." Jamie said as he pushed Kevin in front of him. They entered the loud room and everyone stopped. Kevin suddenly felt several eyes on him and he sweated.

"Dude, stop doing that. We're not going bite." Jamie said. "Well, actually Rob might, but he's got his shots."

"Shut up, Madrox." A Hispanic-looking boy his own age said. He nodded at Kevin. "Invisible huh? Awesome."

Kevin, to his exasperation, found he was invisible yet again and willed himself to reappear. He had to learn to control this power. Rob's eyebrows shot up. "He's thirteen?"

"Yeah, he gets that a lot." Jamie said what Kevin was thinking. He knew he was small, but come on!

"I think he's cute!" a pretty blond girl said from her place in front of the TV. "I'm Theresa."

"Theresa. Or Siryn." Jamie added. He leaned in to whisper in his ear. "She's a screamer." He winked.

Theresa glared and threw a pillow at him, but not hard enough for him to produce any more Jamies. "Asshole."

Kevin just stood and smiled nervously as Jamie introduced his classmates to him. Rob, aka Sunspot, a kid who gets his power from the sun. Theresa, Siryn, who can scream at alarmingly high decibels. Sam, or Cannonball, who was some kind of human rocket, though they didn't elaborate and Kevin was confused as to what that meant. Clarice, a quiet lavender-skinned girl with strange eye-markings, also called Blink for her ability to teleport things with the blink of her eyes. And Lorna "Polaris", a dark girl who could control metal things, apparently just like some guy called Magneto.

"There are only six people in our grade?" Kevin wondered.

"Seven, now." Sam corrected him. "Yeah, just us but we're expecting more. Especially after what the government might do with this Registration crap."

Kevin nodded, pretending he knew what the other boy was talking about. All he'd had to read the past few days were the dirty, unwanted pieces of outdated newspapers. "So how many kids go here?"

Sam shrugged. "Not too many. We don't have a lot of grade levels either. We mostly have the little ones." He pointed at a group of kids who looked about 8-11 years old. One set of twin girls giggled at another boy and ran directly into each other, merging into one complete person. Kevin's jaw dropped for what felt like the billionth time that day.

"Claudette and Nicole." Lorna spoke up. "They can fuse together. It's quite cool. When they're fused, we call them 'M'."

"Yeah. Those kids are the elementary-schoolers. They go to class together." Sam continued. "There are like, ten or fifteen of them." Kevin watched as the boy smirked at the twins, now one person, and a bony spike formed from his hand. The girl/girls shrieked in mock fright as the boy chased them, laughing.

"That's Spyke. Evan." Jamie said, looking up from his game of foosball with Rob. "Professor Munroe's nephew."

"And then there are the middle-schoolers. Us." Sam explained. "But we're all thirteen so we just call ourselves eighth graders. And you know, there are only seven of us."

"Yeah, we stick together." Jamie said.

"Then you've got the high schoolers." Sam rolled his eyes, giving his impression of high schoolers. "There's not many of them either. There's like…"

"Bobby, Rogue, Piotr, Kitty, Jubilee, Jean-Paul and Jeanne – "

"Who?" Kevin asked. He had heard of all of them except the last two.

"Jean-Paul and Jeanne are twins." Clarice said quietly for the first time. "Northstar and Aurora."

"They're both like, human projectiles." Jamie exulted. "It's so awesome."

"Jean-Paul is soo hot." Theresa sighed. "He makes me want to – "

"Cry in despair at his unfortunate gayness?" Rob suggested. This time all three girls, even Clarice, lobbed a throw pillow in his direction.

"Shut up." Theresa snarled.

"What? He is gay! Why can't you get over it?" Rob insisted.

"We can dream, can't we?"

Jamie elbowed Kevin slightly. "The girls have this plan were they think they can turn Jean-Paul straight. It's the saddest thing I ever saw."

"You're the saddest thing I ever saw." Theresa growled.

"So they both have the same, um, mutation?" Kevin interrupted the potential nuclear war between Jamie and Theresa.

"Yeah, Jean-Paul is a speeding mass of sexy – " the boys groaned, " – and Jeanne is a little…well…"

"Nuts." Jamie supplied. "Looney. Off her rocker."

"Shut up, Jamie." Lorna warned. "She is not. She is just…"

"Nuts." Sam echoed. "Looney. Off her rocker."

"Unique." Lorna punched Sam in the shoulder.

"Oh hey, we forgot Gambit." Rob said suddenly. The room snickered.

"Who's Gambit?" Kevin asked.

"Remy. He's the oldest one and he's one got of those free-spirit things." Theresa said dreamily. "He's like, twenty, but he never stays in school long enough to complete it. He keeps leaving and coming back randomly. But Professor X lets him. I guess he's doing a little soul-searching or something."

"Yeah, he left over a year ago. Wonder when that dude's coming back?" Jamie wondered.

"He really cute too." Theresa giggled.

"Oh yeah, and Pyro. John." Sam added trying to not look disgusted by what Siryn had said.

The room shivered noticeably.

"Who?"

"John Allerdyce." Rob muttered darkly. "He's not here anymore though.

Kevin got the impression the subject of Pyro was right up there with the subject of Dr. Grey. He didn't ask.

"So that makes…what…?" Kevin broke the silence. "Less than thirty kids?"

Everyone nodded. "About that, yeah. There's sometimes more, some people don't like it enough to stay more than a year, or some people have parents that won't let them come back…"

"Why not? It's kind of cool here…" Kevin couldn't imagine a parent saying they didn't want their kids to go to school here. His classmates looked at one another.

"Do you remember how you got here?" Lorna asked.

"Something called the X-Jet."

The boys brightened and began asking him excitedly about what that was like, but Lorna glared them down.

"Ever wonder why a school would have a jet more advanced than anything that the U.S. Military has?" Lorna asked,

No. He hadn't. But it was occurring to him now. It was occurring the hell out of him.

What had he gotten himself in to?

Before he could say anything, Mr. Wolverine gruffly appeared at the door.

"Dinner."

BAMF!

"Dinner time!" Mr. Wagner announced happily, ringing an old-fashioned triangle to herald the meal enthusiastically. "Hello Kevin!"

"H-hi….." Kevin stared at Mr. Wolverine, who had suddenly sprouted long metal claws from in between his knuckles. They looked strong enough to slice through a car door.

"Jesus, Elf." Mr. Wolverine grunted, clutching at his chest behind Mr. Wagner. "Scare a guy to death, why don't you!"

"Entschuldigen - " Mr. Wagner began.

"Don't start with the German again." Mr. Wolverine held up a massive hand.

"Ah, excuse me."

Kevin took a seat between Jamie and Mr. Wagner at a table with his classmates and looked around at the cafeteria. It was a lot like the one at his old school, only much smaller. It had to accommodate fewer students, after all. And it had carpet. And it was far cleaner, with less fighting and yelling going on. The other table was occupied by who his new friends had called "the high school kids" and the rest of the three tables were taken by the little ones. Everyone knew each other, as Kevin watched Piotr reprimand Evan for spearing the table with a spike. Jamie would throw himselves, plural, at Jubilee until she would agree to go out with him. Rogue was turned to face his table, chatting with Lorna about something. It didn't seem like it mattered how old they were, or what mutation they had. It was all just one big happy family. Literally.

"Students, can I – children, please quiet down." Everyone looked at the table in the middle of the room, where the teachers all sat. Professor Xavier was speaking.

"I'd like to introduce to you all Kevin Reed; he will be a middle-schooler here. I trust you'll give him a warm welcome."

Again everyone's eyes averted on him and he even felt himself disappear this time.

"He's shy." The plural Jamies clarified. No one seemed particularly surprised by the fact he could become invisible, but then again they were people who could fuse together, manipulate ice, suck life forces, run through things, etc… No, here he would not be weird.

"Dude needs a mutant name." Rob said through a mouthful of chicken. Clarice made a face at him and flicked a piece of chewed up food from her face.

"Gross."

"I was thinking more along the lines of 'Invisible Man'." Rob said, grinning cheekily. Clarice glared, and then blinked. Rob promptly disappeared. Kevin looked alarmed, but Jamie shook his head assuringly. Just then, Rob came running back into the room.

"Sorry, jeez." Rob huffed as he sat back down, his sneakers squishing and squeaking on the polished floor. "You didn't have to land me inside the toilet again."

"What's your mutant name?" Kevin asked Mr. Wagner, who was nibbling on his salad.

"I told you!" He smiled widely. "In – "

" – the Munich circus he was known as the Amazing Nightcrawler." His table finished for him. They laughed and Kevin smiled. Did everybody know this?

"How bout The Invisinator?" Sam suggested. That was shot down quickly, after they convinced him that Kevin could not "invisinate" people.

"How about Invis – " Clarice began, but Rob unintentionally spit a chicken piece at her again. "Ohhhh, ew!"

"Inviso!" Jamie declared. The table nodded its agreement.

"We hereby dub thee, Inviso!" Rob said.

And so it was.