Lucky Me

Chapter 032


Deep breaths to calm down. Big long deep breaths.

I cracked an eye to look down at the thing in front of me.

It didn't disappear, get more cloth, or even look more comfortable.

My uniform stared back at me and if it had a tongue, it would be sticking it out.

I dared to pick it up off my bed, and took another deep breath (how else were you supposed to get skin tight spandex on?) I wanted to fuss and fight about it, but then I had a very clear memory of the rest of the team I was supposed to be co-leader of bursting out in laughter and me blushing like mad when my clothes were ripped off.

After putting it on, and adjusting it in several positions, I looked in the full-length mirror that had been provided, and automatically wished I didn't look.

As I (with wings tight around me) went down to the big metal room with guns, I had a thought (very dangerous for me), how the heck was I supposed to keep it from riding up my behind?


"Whoa! Look at those thighs!" Chris said as soon as I walked in, "Look at all that jiggle!"

"Why are you looking, pervert!" I shot back, and then glared at him. I felt so exposed; maybe it would have been better if I just came in my underwear after all. But of course I got the image of Chris running around in them because you know, he did steal them.

The newbies where in the Dangerous place, and so were the other upper class people. For once they weren't attempting to play god with our fate by shooting at us (though it probably was an excellent way to relieve stress).

"Wow!" D-M shouted clapping and running up to me. "You look so cute!"

"Shammmooooo!" Chris went on, but only until Daisy elbowed him in his side.

"Don't listen to him; he's just jealous because his uniform shows off his flabby behind."

"Dude, why are you even looking at his 'flabby behind' anyway?"

"Because she'd punch me if I looked at hers."

And how exactly would I know? I didn't have eyes in the back of my head (or anywhere lower). They could look all they wanted (I didn't know why though) but if they started touching then we had a problem.

"It is nice to see everyone on time and dressed in the proper attire." I could have sworn I saw him smirk, just a tiny one, but I think that there was most definitely a smirk at the end of his words. "There is a very good reason as to why we make you do this."

"This?" Adam asked, and the Professor nodded, but he didn't answer, Scott did.

"The Danger Room and personalized training sessions, and yes, even the uniforms, Kookie."

Major blush on the cheeks.

"To distract the bad guys with bad fashion taste?" Chris asked, Bobby-Pervert gave him a nasty look. I still didn't know the story between those two, but it must have been something interesting. I guess I could have tried to ask one of them, but I was afraid they'd bite off my head or try to joke it off. Joking it off wouldn't be bad if the jokes weren't so horrible.

"Not quite. They are to allow flexibility without the hindrance of clothing. That way we have optimal use of our body and powers," Came Miss Oreo's reply. Of course none of them would object to it, they all had killer bodies. Both the males and females.

"We aren't going to be fightin' y'all again?"

Oh my goodness, I hoped not, I was getting bruised just thinking about it.

Professor then smiled, and that was creepy. It's not relaxing as some people think, oh no, it sent chills down my spine. The last time I saw that smile I ended up at school with Bobby-Pervert, and then in a giant clock that striped me of my clothes. Needless to say, I really didn't like that smile.

"No, but I would like to remind you all of why you are here. And why we put you through all the various exercises." Kerry zoned out now. "I would appreciate it if all of you tried your hardest to pay attention."

"I think that means you, Miss A.D.D."

Oh, shut-up, Bobby-Pervert.

"Professor, I think the rest of us should get things ready for the day?"

The Professor nodded, and then continued with his speech as Scott and the others yawned as they walked past us. Oh great, we had to suffer through this alone. So Professor went on about why we had to be separated from our families for a better future. But at the mention of family my heart broke. I couldn't help it. No one else had this problem from what I understood.

D-M's family sent her here in order to become better with her healing powers, and they called and wrote her all the time. She even got packages from them with various things, mostly pictures. I missed pictures of my family. I wondered if Darcy has grown much since I last saw her?

Adrian said he was an orphan with an older half brother, Jared. Jared apparently knew their mother, but Adrian never did. He and his brother were eight years apart and as different as 'the north and the south'.

Adam was boy genius who was sent to expensive smart school since he took an IQ test when he was ten. But he went home every opportunity he could. He lived in Michigan originally or somewhere around there.

Chris, well, Chris was Chris. He didn't mention anything about his family, and I never finished reading the files I was given oh so long ago. I was too afraid another nasty secret would raise its nasty head and bite me in the behind again.

"-sacrifices are great, and for some of you, it will even be greater." Professor was giving us the you-better-be-paying-attention glare. I think it was mostly for me, but I think I was being conceited. He glared harder at me, so okay maybe I wasn't being conceited.. "The things you endure now will ensure a better tomorrow for those who follow."

"That's debatable," Adam replied. My eyes grew in size, I couldn't believe he would somewhat disagree with the Professor. No one disagreed with the Professor!

"Perhaps, but now is not the time." The glare shifted from me to Adam, and then to someone else. "The important thing is to enjoy the day you have now, live and laugh with friends and family. The family you have here, in the mansion and the so-called cousins around the world who also train and have trained to wear the 'X'."

"Are we just going to listen to you preach or is something important going to happen today?" Chris snapped, and I thought D-M broke his arm she slapped him so hard. "Would you stop that!"

"Stop being stupid and I might."

"It's easier to ask him to stop breathing," Adrian said half-heartedly. Chris called him a jock and stuck his nose up in the air.

"No, my 'preaching' was merely to let you know that you are never in this alone. To celebrate this fact, the Danger Room session for today has been cancelled."

Praise! Praise!

"Instead, we are dedicating this weekend to a family reunion gathering. You will meet those who have gone before you, and fight now in the places you will be tomorrow."

I hoped he wasn't being literal.

"You're excused."

I was thrilled about that! I quickly made a dash to the door and up to my room to put decent clothing on. After I had changed another thought hit me upside the head (it's the only way I'd pay attention to them).

I wore this uniform for no-good-flipping reason?


When he said 'all those' he meant all those. There must have been about thirty or forty people there and some had to cancel due to missions or other engagements. Good grief. Where were all these people going to sleep? I was going to try to run them down as D-M ran them to me.

"Okay, stick with me, Sam is over talking to his old team, 'X-Force' but for the most part they've been replaced by someone-else." There was a Tabitha, a Julio (with a 'J' not an 'H' he's Mexican, or so I was preached), Roberto (just what this place needed, another Bobby to deal with), and a Theresa. My head was swimming, but then she moved on.

Oh, joy.

With Gambit and Rogue stood this guy with a metal arm and leg, named Forge. There was a green haired chick named, Lorna (how D-M knew all this I wasn't sure, I think she's partly telepathic or something). And then there were so many others that all their names blended into the next, so I gave up.

I felt like a weed among the roses. They were all so—pretty, even the guys (heck, mostly the guys).

"Kookie!" I turned around and there was Adrian with a sour puss look on his face. "You see that guy that looks like he's sorta glowing?"

Which one? I think all of them had a glow around them. Man, I was going to have to go to a plastic surgeon or something to ever be official. Well, except Mr. Logan, he's got the short end of the stick…that was not a joke about his height. At least I didn't mean for it to be.

But I saw some brown hair guy with a nasty look on his face, arms crossed, and glaring at his feet. "Yeah?"

"That's my brother. He's a bundle of joy."

Actually he looked like he got a carrot stuck up his behind, like this guy named Dell I used to know. Sheesh, Mr. Pity Party and Don't-Judge-me, a.k.a. all around jerk. Not like Bobby-Pervert, this guy was a jerk-jerk not a joking jerk that thinks he's funny.

"That's ….nice?" What the heck was I supposed to say?

A few minutes later I had wandered around to the pool, where the supermodels were splashing and playing. Man, if I actually cared how I looked most of the time, I think I would try to go anorexic or something. But I was far from a girl-girl, okay, so my 'buddy' was crawling into my thoughts a lot more than was healthy, but he should never had asked for that second dance!

Daisy was missing so she wasn't poking me with questions, and everyone had pretty much left (they were trying to beat the traffic) so there shouldn't be any funny remarks come Monday.

At least I hoped not.

"Hey! You!" I turned around, I didn't usually answer to 'hey, you' but logic handed to me that it was probably me since everyone else knew everyone else's name. I saw a younger blonde girl come running up to me, and as bad as a thought this was, in the tiny bikini she was wearing I was hoping she didn't bounce out—if you know what I mean. "You're Kerry aren't you?"

"Uh-huh." Man, what'd they do? Hand out pamphlets with our names and pictures on it or something?

"I'm Paige Guthrie, Sam's little sister." Whoa, and Sam had more siblings? I had heard of that country charm but, I hoped he had more brothers who would come up here. "I'm goin' to be the one instructing you on the uhm, 'skin' problem you have?"

I couldn't help myself, "You mean the problem were it falls off every so often?"

"Yeah, exactly." Oh-kay, sarcasm was apparently wasted on this girl.

She talked for a while more, and then ran off when Mr. Warren came out. Actually she started to parade around the pool, hmmm; the mind was led to ponder on such a mystery.


"Over here!"

Oh, that helped. "Where is here? All I see are clouds!" Not to mention the guy yelling at me to throw the football was blue and white, and guess what, that's the same color as the sky where we (the fliers) were playing 'Air football'. Why? In Sam's words 'just because we're special'.

"Throw it to your left." And I did, Mr. Warren (who wasn't there a moment ago) flew up and caught the thing just two seconds before a bright flash of light zoomed out from behind a cloud and 'tackled' him down and quick. I could only guess it was Sam.

Just so you are not confused, those of us playing were as followed, on the 'Windy' side (Bobby-Jerk named that group, even though he wasn't playing) was Miss Munroe, Sam, Mrs. Jean, Monet (ick) and some guy that looked like Miss Rogue's son because of a white streak he had going through his hair named Nate. Then there were the 'hot tempers' Miss Rogue, Mr. Angel, me, Theresa, Miss Lorna and some other person who was new to me (but really, who wasn't today?) Mr. Jean-Paul I think was his name.

"You're goin' down, Sammy!" Miss Rogue then took the liberty of chasing the streak around the sky.

It was fun, I kept dropping the ball, but it wasn't a fumble (unless it actually had touched the ground, which, like, never happened). But the best part of the 'air football' was that I got to 'tackle' Monet. Apparently she misjudged me and my speed and I was able to sack her good. It wasn't long before she threw me off, but the victory was sweet, despite how short it was.

Now, Mr. Jean-Paul was kinda freaky to me. White hair and an accent like Adrian's but thicker. And he kept staring at Mr. Angel. I don't mean like half-way glance, I was talking about staring at this guy.

I guessed Mr. Warren was right, he's just 'too good looking for too many people to satisfy' too bad that meant men as well.


"Are you trying to burn the mansion down?" Came an angry scream, and then a cursing Scott and some other guy who was trying to put the edge of his shirt out.

"How much juice didja give it there, genius?"

"I never knew Scott was such a pyro."

"I thought you were supposed to cook with the charcoal not cook the charcoal."

"Those used to be beef patties."

"One more joke, and I'm going to let you eat Gambit's food for dinner."

Everyone went quite.

"It's not bad! You all wimps!" Mr. Remy protested, which turned all the joking tables onto him instead of Mr. Scott.

I was sitting with my group, and the quiet and brooding Jared Corbo. Daisy took this opportunity to try with another guy, the girl was going to get a bad reputation if she kept chasing everything that was male and had muscles.

"So if your force field doesn't permit you to touch anything, then how do you cut your hair?" And other various questions that the man answered by rolling his eyes and giving a smart aleck answer. D-M completely ignored the sarcasm, and kept pestering him for more information.

Adam, who had disappeared for an hour or so, came back with a sad look on his face, but then perked up when another brainiac started to talk to him about some big long formula with a bunch of numbers and letters…yawn city.

It was half or so hour later when this chick, who I sort of remembered from when I was picked up at Acola and she was the one all in white then and now, appeared. I was talking with Adrian, until he got and left when his brother basically told him that Adrian had to show his room to his brother. So off they went, and with them, Daisy-Mae (never shutting up). This left lots of seats available for the lady of white to sit down and stare at me.

Where was Chris? The ever reclusive boy had slid under a shaded area and threw things at either me or D-M every so often for fun. Someone had a bee up his behind (more like a hive) but even more than usual. I guessed the thong he was probably wearing was cutting into him pretty hard.

"You don't remember me," the icy voice rang bells. "I was there when we picked you up from that back water place you were living."

She was off my Christmas list.

I didn't answer her on the outside just looked at her with one eyebrow raised like I had seen so many people do at this place. I was turning into one of them….ahhhh!

"I'm Emma Frost." She gave me some kind of smirky smile that I think was supposed to make me smile back, but it made me want to grab a coat instead.

"Uh, I-I-I'm Ker-"

"Kerry D'mon, I know, or would you rather Kookie?"

Did these people put out newsletters or something?

"Don't worry about it, I'm a telepath." No, you see telling me that was only going to make me worry about it. Miss Frost (Emma didn't fit as well as Frost did for this woman), flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder and quite obviously gave me the one over. If a female did that to me, I wanted to get up and leave, call it the creeps or just thinking that they were something they may or may not be. "You've lost weight, and gained more muscle tone, and yet, I was still expecting more."

Huh?


"Hey there," I turned around from where I had been walking by the lake. It was huge, I'd never been to the lake, and it was too close to Cookie Nazi headquarters. "Saw you leave, anything wrong?"

I sighed and shook my head, "No, and since when did you keep tabs on me? And what happened to all the anger I thought you had toward me?"

"I -danced it out of me I guess you could say." And here comes my blush, and his smile. "She didn't say anything to upset you did she?"

She, I guessed, he was referring to was the Frost Queen. After her little comment she got up to leave, but I beat her to it. I flew the rest of the way when I remembered that I could (but flapped away far enough away to not ruin anyone's hairdo).

"How could you guess?"

"Ooh, sarcasm, oh, this is going to be fun." He shot back, joining me where I had plopped down on the beach under some trees. These wings got hot fast.

"You're too optimistic."

"You're getting faster." He gave me that smile at full watt, and I couldn't help but smile back. "So, what did she say?"

I chewed over my options, and decided to look away from him, because if he shot me that smile again, I'd tell him what she said word for word, "Who said she said anything to me at all?"

He gave me this classic yeah-right noise, "Then why'd you come out here? You're supposed to be 'mingling'."

Thinking about it, "Maybe I wanted to get away from people."

"Huh, right." He paused, and then snapped his fingers, "I got it!"

"Is it contagious?"

"Oh ha-ha." He rolled his eyes. "Now shut-up and listen to me." Oh that's going to get me to listen. "I know why you came out here. And you are very tricky."

"I am?"

"Yeah, imagine coming out all this way, in hopes that yours truly would follow you and have a personal and private interlude with you."

I stared at him in shock for a moment, and then burst out in laughter. "Somebody needs to take a pin to that ego of yours, boy!"

"Boy?" I continued to laugh it up, until he did something again. When I had turned my head away from him, apparently he leaned closer (like right next to my ear), "Dancing with a pretty girl twice will inflate any man's ego."

Major, major blushing. I turned to look at him, my mouth hanging open like a dead fish's. I couldn't even process what he just said, and I was kind of thankful for the next line.

"There you two are!" It was Mr. Kurt. "I—hope I'm not interrupting anything." Mr. Kurt was now smirking and raising an eyebrow (I told you it was popular around this place!).

"Nothing important," he said, and got up quickly.

"Right. I came to get you two because Scott wants us in uniform and ready for group pictures and such. Then you two can get back to whatever it was you were about to, or weren't about to do." Then he 'bamfed' out of our sight.

"Need a hand?" he stuck out his hand to help me up.

It wasn't a hand I needed; it was a functioning mind after his little compliment a few breaths ago.


Great. Now they have photogenic proof I looked like a cow in that uniform. Several pictures in fact. One of the entire population of mutants (there were so many), and then one with just the team I was a part of and Saturday (nix the pictures) was fun. Actually, it was the most fun I had had in a while, especially since coming here.

"Hey!" was for horses, "Kookie, come here for a moment."

Got to love Bobby-Pervert's communication system. I was walking away from the study at the end of the hall (cleaning it actually, that's where most of the guests got stuck, and they left it a mess. Me and Mr. Remy switched clean up duty for monitor duty) and had to walk right past his door.

"Yes, Mr. Drake?"

"Someone's in a bad mood." He teased, then started in the Kerry impersonating voice and flipped the imaginary hair again, "But, like, I guess that's because Kenney hasn't called-Te-he."

"Don't you have a puppy to torture?"

"Only you. Here's your test from all those weeks ago." And then a paper flew at me. It was wrinkled all over, and had a huge crease down the middle. My 'teacher' must not have really cared about how he treated the students he lived with papers.

I looked at the grade, I saw red. Literally. "I failed?" Who couldn't help but scream once they saw something like that blaring at them. A big fat 'F' with several frowny faces around it. "Is this why you lost my test? Did I fail because I punched you?"

"Technically you punched the chair," Bobby-the-majorly-huge-jerk-of-a-teacher looked at me with a level stare, "And no, I lost the paper to annoy you, and you failed because you got most of the problems wrong."

Without anything better or more intelligent to say, I burst out with the only thing I could think of to say, "You suck!"

"I'm not the one with the 'F' on my paper, Kookie."

No, you were the one with my shoe stuck up your rear pretty soon! I couldn't believe I failed his test!

No mercy! No heart!

And no way was I going to fail another test!