Lucky Me
Chapter 059
"A frying pan?"
I laughed nervously. "Yeah."
Scott sighed, amused or annoyed (who could tell?).
"You had millions of dollars worth of equipment, both earth and alien, and you used a frying pan?"
Was it so hard to come to terms with?
"Yeah, as we found out, once those 'millions of dollars worth of equipment' gets unplugged, they turn into millions of dollars worth of useless metal. However, a frying pan was—practical and portable." Okay, not really practical, but it sure did do the job of smashing Sabretooth's face in well enough.
Storm and the Professor were both smiling while laughing under their breaths. I felt like a comedian in front of the toughest crowd on the planet. I was just glad they didn't have any rotten fruit.
"Practical?" There was that echo in again. "After almost a year of training, you found a frying pan practical?"
"I was using what was available at the time." It was either fight the killer with a frying pan or start throwing teammates at him; I picked the less messy way out. Gathering my withering courage I continued to defend my weapon of choice, "I wouldn't consider it, if I were you, as panicking and forgetting every—delightful, uhm, 'tick of the trade' you've been trying to engrain into us for the past year, I'd like to think of it as using my resources."
Scott gave me an amused smile that reflected in his tone, "A frying pan."
I thought we got past this.
"Yeah, a frying pan." I was thinking of having it as a special add-on to my 'utility belt'.
Professor chuckled.
"Very well, Kookie. Please tell Adrian to come in."
Wow, I wasn't going to get in trouble? Like a good little unpunished person, I went to the door and did like he said to do. Adrian shuffled in, head hung, and hands shoved into his pockets. The perfect picture of 'oh man, I know what's coming' attitude.
"Yes, sir?" I was about to leave when Scott told me to shut the door. Oh great, just when I thought I was out of the—uh, frying pan I went into the fire apparently.
"Adrian," no more amusement, just rock hard seriousness coming from the Professor. At this moment I was so thankful not to be on the receiving end of that tone (for once). I tell you, I expected to see Adrian's name on a gravestone Professor said it so hard. "You were left in charge, were you not?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you then left the grounds, correct?" Fingers steepled, maybe I should take measurements for Adrian's coffin...
Adrian started to fidget. "Yes, sir."
"Why?" This time Miss Ororo asked, and when Scott folded his arms against his chest, I knew I would be sending my sincerest apologies to Adrian's brother.
"Uh, well because-" Adrian stumbled. Didn't he realize he was digging a deeper hole? "I went to see-I went into to town."
"Were you aware of Chris' unauthorized electrical experiments?"
"I-sort of did." Liar. He knew exactly what Chris was doing. Corbo had complained about it a few hours after being left in charge. All his video games were on the blink because of shock-happy boy. "I didn't think it would cause this." Then, from somewhere unknown the ugly bug of courage bit him. "And it's not like I left in secret. I told them all, and I even left Kookie in charge. If you want to gripe at someone, why not her?"
Hello, Mr. Hyde!
"Ex-cuse me?" In an expression of D-M's: them's fightin' words!
"Kerry," Scott cut in—no, correction, Cyclops cut in. "Stay out of this."
Whoa.
"We left you in charge, Adrian." Storm pointed out, again. "Therefore the responsibility falls upon you."
"But I left Kerry in charge."
My little list of potential homicide victims just kept getting longer.
"We left you in charge that means you were to remain here and be a leader in case anything happened to your team. You failed to do such."
Majorly.
Ooops, the Professor shot me a look, guess my defenses were down or something and I was 'thinking' loud again.
"Being a leader means being accountable, which means signifies putting the team before your personal relationships, knowing where and when to be, and always being aware of the dangers your team could face." Scott's ever popular 'how to be a leader' speech. I think he forgot to mention you had to have a steel rod up your behind which doubled as your backbone.
Another look from the Professor and gee weren't my shoes interesting?
"What's the big deal?" Adrian pressed (dumb and pretty soon to be dead guy). "Nobody got hurt."
Scott shot me a warning look, the Professor started to say something mentally to me but it was way too late. My teeth clamped as my jaw locked, "I. Don't. Believe. You!"
Storm then tried to interrupt me, but there was something that I had in common with many of the people in the house, you mess with mine and I'd mess you up.
"Back off, Summers," Adrian admonished. The world faded away to just me and him like never before.
"I told you, Adrian. You knew what you were doing and you didn't care."
He stiffened, and I got full of myself (or just more aggression).
"Chris got hurt. In case you are a complete idiot, and I haven't ruled out that possibility, you'd know that he took up a new residence in the medical wing."
I think Professor said something or tried to, but when I got on my high horse you might as well let me ride it until it died.
"You suck at being a leader, and you suck at being friend. The only thing you seem to be good at is running away so you wouldn't be where you needed to be."
"You didn't seem to mind," he bit back, over his shoulder I could see Storm and Scott started coming toward us. "You got a chance to be a glory hog again."
"Me!? I wasn't the one who tried to let the air out of Bobby's head in January!"
"If you hadn't chickened out, I wouldn't have had to take charge!" Adrian (after thinking for about two seconds) just let me win this fight. In fact, instead of saying anything I just tipped my head, smirked, and crossed my arms across my chest. My wings even seemed to all but twitter with glee.
I heard angels bust out with peals of laughter when Adrian, again, paled in realization when he caught on to his mistake. He just called the kettle black.
Storm and Cyclops separated us, attempted to calm us down while we continued to glare at one another.
At the end of the grudge match, they gave me a very interesting question.
There were a grand total of two things I needed the most after I left the Professor's office. One was to fly around and get some fresh air, and the second was to lock up all sharp objects and frying pans before my team became dangerous with them.
This probably wasn't right to think, but it got a person's attention faster, right?
I sighed and tucked my knees to my chest.
I flew all right, and I flew right off to the boathouse. Don't ask me why. I was kind of setting myself up for failure. You know that annoying little voice in the back of your brain that quotes the truth? Not the conscience, but rather the ear-bleeding, little prickly know-it-all voice? Yeah, well, I'd like to smother it with my behind, because it wouldn't shut up.
'You're here, because your parents are here,' it said in a sing-song voice.
I shook my head, hoping to knock over the little voice from the stage it stood on with the megaphone to my brain.
I'd like to chunk it into the lake and drown it.
Scott said I did a good job, but so did the Professor. Grace under pressure was an admirable trait, blah blah blah and didn't fight with Adrian—at least with witnesses who were capable of testifying. But one thing bugged me the most about that odd meeting (disregarding the whole Adrian thing) was that Scott never said anything beyond what the others said.
Big deal right?
He's my new 'father figure' and it didn't take a genius to figure out I preferred my dad over my mo-Heather any day of the week. Dad might have died, but he never pushed me away. He loved me, but with Scott, I didn't want love (if I did, would that be too freaking weird or what?) I thought I was going for something else. I did want his 'dad' love, but it just felt weird to think about it.
Okay, like major secret time.
Back when I was still normal (at least back before the wings and the skin and the whole mysterious confusing romance thing) I had studied mutants. Well, duh. I had said as much before. I knew about the X-Men, but, of course, Trish Tilby didn't exactly call them by name. Anyway, I used to think how cool it would be to run around saving the world and striking poses, using witty comebacks, and all the other typical perfect hero stuff. I thought that if I were to be a hero (or a heroin) I would make my parents proud.
Let's face it, my grades weren't the best (they're average for the most part), my attitude wasn't the best, my height, build and hair were all average. Heck, if it wasn't for the wings I think I'd blend into the wallpaper in any given elevator.
I was that dull.
At least in my mind.
But back to where I was going to go before I took the back roads to Depression, and that was straight to Honesty Central.
Think about it, if becoming a 'hero' had been a 'dream' of mine to make my parents proud, and those parents were gone (I feel like I was talking about something as trivial as socks for crying out loud) I had a new set to try to make proud of me. I didn't know why, exactly. Maybe it's because my mo-Heather called and then pushed me away again, maybe because she kicked me out, harassed me, and then 'divorced' me as her own flesh and blood.
But what did this have to do with Scott?
Simple, Jean and I were still having problems (I was a teenage girl, she's the 'mother' person, it's like some kind of law that we had to fight) but Scott reminded me so much of my biological Dad, Zach. Zach-Dad always said he loved me and the major thing I couldn't stand was for him to say only that. When I was in dance class (when I broke the other girl's toe when I missed the step?) afterwards all he said was 'I still love you' and left it at that.
And why was I complaining? One might scream. Yes. It's a very Kerry thing to do. Never, not once, did Dad ever say he was proud of me, so there you had it. I wanted Scott to be proud of me. I wanted to hear him say those words because I had him and only him to look up to as a father now.
Okay, sappy moment over.
I had to go wash my mouth out with bleach.
I wondered if my tongue would become all blotchy like jeans when they got bleached?
Also, (no, no more sappy thinking it's not my style) it still bothered me what Adrian said-I have to prove him wrong before I can say 'yes'. It won't be confusing for too long, I'd explain later.
Back in school, spinning my pencil while Bobby-Jerk went over how to do compound interest or something else as equally boring, I tried hard not to do what Adrian was doing, which was nodding off. Bobby-Jerk kept up with the retarded examples. I yawned and scribbled some fake notes on my paper just to make sure the 'teach' would think I was listening to his dumbness.
When the bell rang, I stayed in the room to wait for the next lesson, which was exactly what he said in this lesson. Yawning, I leaned back in my seat awaiting my punishment like a good little clone.
"Ready to review?"
"Stop teasing me with the possibility that I could get out of this."
He smiled, "You're getting pretty good at this. Keeping up with my humor, I mean, not the math."
I was about to stick out my tongue until his eyebrow shot up and those lips quirked into a smirk. Instead I groaned.
"And that's supposed to be a compliment?" I was just happy that next week was Spring Break! I wondered if the X-Men actually believed in Spring Break?
Probably not, 'spring break' to them was going to be something twisted like 'spring training' I just knew it.
It was a few days later in the Danger Room I stood with a nicely healed Chris.
I thought the team was going to want to pluck my feathers out, but it turned out I wanted to take their feathers out. And since none of them had feathers, I was thinking I'd substitute it with tweezers while removing all their facial hair.
What were they doing?
Nothing.
Absolutely, stinking nothing. There was a huge, steaming pile of nothing standing in the Danger Room where the people I thought were my teammates once stood. They were just standing there. I was freaked out at first, and then I remembered their conversation (while I was under Chris' bed) about doing something like this. I should have told them, right?
Maybe if I told them, they wouldn't be pulling something like this now.
"X-Citers, move," Professor's voice was 'do-my-will' tone. "Enough of this joke."
"No joke, Professor." Daisy was going to be the spokesperson? This wasn't going to be pretty. "We want Ker-, uh, Koo, oh wait..."
"We want Blyt back as the legal bossy, stuck up one," Chris finished. Thanks for the compliments-dork. "Flex needs to get out of here."
Adrian snorted and glared over at me. It wasn't like I planned this, ya know! Of course, I could have prevented this had I told them what had happened. Instead of letting them voice their opinions to Professor who, for the most part, was silent in his little 'box of gloom and doom'.
"Make Blyt our leader again!" Chris wrapped up after a few minutes of complaining what was wrong with Adrian's non-existent leadership capabilities.
Then the ever dreaded moment of silence occurred, the space of 60 seconds where your world could be loped off like a very thin, fragile brittle thread. I bit my lip and waited for one of the people in the 'God box' to explain.
For once they didn't break into their mutant ability of boring everyone to death with longer than life speeches. This was the first time I could remember regretting this fact.
"Perhaps you should ask Blyt her opinion," Professor's voice was exacting. All the eyes in the Danger Room turned toward me (I was hanging around in the back, near the doors. One never knew when one would have to claw their way out of the Danger Room from mad, unhappy team members). I wanted the signature big shinny cannons to come out and shoot me.
Being wounded would probably invoke sympathy from these people. Then again, maybe not.
"Blyt?" Gecko asked finally. I stood as still and hard as stone. "What's up?"
I didn't blink. I knew they weren't going to like what I had to say. Heck, I didn't like it either but it was my choice to see if I was right about more than one thing. Also, because I didn't think I'd be able to handle it right now.
"What's going on?" Chris shouted to the big hidden wigs.
"Blyt," such a strong command for it only being one word. Why couldn't he condense all his speeches into one word? Did he have any idea how much time that would save?
I sighed heavily.
"They offered me the position, again."
Grins broke out across everyone's faces (even Adrian) as they started to go on and on about how they finally realized something good about me. Daisy also realized something about me, like I wasn't moving or talking.
"Waitasec, what's the catch?" D-M asked, hands on hips, eyeing me dangerously. And then, Happy-Happy car on the roller coaster of mood swings jumped off the track and landed on the Say What! cycle. Adam's smile slowly faded away as I just stood there like a dumb apple tree (I was from Washington, it's supposed to be a joke).
Then I got to do the moment of silence.
"I declined the offer."
"I-I can't believe what I'm hearing!" Chris shouted and pretty soon I was surrounded by everyone and they were all shouting. Well, except Adrian. He looked—exasperated.
"Why?" Adam shouted, "You deserve to be leader."
"No, I don't," my voice was sharp and cold. "I don't want to discuss it; we have an exercise to do."
D-M, Chris, and Adam exchanged looks, highly irritated looks.
I sighed and fell back on my bed. Daisy, Chris, and Adam weren't on talking terms with me. It had been two days since the Danger Room experience and they were so ticked off with me that I had been eating alone at school. Any knock on my door was always a surprise, but because I now had half the people trying to hurt me it was even moreof a shock. I propped myself up on my elbows and told the person to come in.
Expecting Sam, Scott, or one of the others who had been or were current leaders of the X-Men to come in-he poked his head through instead. It was just enough of a target for me to lob my pillow toward.
"Hey!" He ducked out before the pillow made contact. Dang it! I kept forgetting they teach super fast reflexes at this place! Sometimes it made life hard to live here because you had to chase your victims down to hurt them. "Does this mean you're not happy to see me?"
"I'm thinking of hiring someone to break your legs."
He snorted.
"Right, everyone knows that I'm never there for you or anything or a perfect gentleman when you are vulnerable and in my room, alone, and in the dark." He stepped in, shut the door and finished his speech. "Oh, and sleeping with me in the same bed."
I rolled my eyes and dropped back on my bed again.
"Does your sarcasm have a point or are you just trying to get rid of some back log?"
"And your charming personality shines through again."
"I already feel like crap, so your job is done." I shifted over on my side, trying to give him the best cold shoulder I knew how.
"Direct, to the point, and full of emotion, just how I like to be blown off." He lay down next to me, face-to-face. Well, profile-to-face because he wasn't looking at me. "But seriously," that's a concept he didn't know too much about in private.
I guessed there was no getting rid of him, might as well annoy him to death or annoy him to leaving or something.
"What brings you to my room?"
"I told her I wasn't interested." I didn't have a clue what he was talking about for a moment, then it hit me. His would-be girlfriend, he was talking about his 'her'.
"So you came crawling to second best? Gee, thanks. I don't know what to say." I glared in his direction and when he finally looked over at me (thankfully without a smile), "Oh wait, yes I do. Get. Out. I'm not second fiddle in anyone's band."
Man, that was corny.
He sighed/groaned. "Bear with me. You are not my second; you are my first chair as far as I was concerned."
"Sure, and you were only hanging out with her and treating me like a noone because you were trying to make me jealous." I rolled my eyes. "How original of an excuse."
"Partly."
"Oh, please."
"Okay, I agreed to her little idea," and he did mean little, "Because she wanted to make her ex jealous. I never would have agreed to do it if I didn't think you and Chris had something going on behind the scenes," he muttered.
"You and I were 'behind the scenes'; me and Chris are on stage acting out his death scene." Another thought struck me, "Or trying to be stand up comedians, I'm not too sure anymore."
There was no way I was going to hold Chris accountable for what he said to me while there was a severe lack of blood in his body. He didn't really like me. He hated me. That was our relationship, to make our exes jealous and go to prom together while maintaining a healthy love-to-hate understanding.
"Kerry." Then he had to do the whole face touch thing which made me speechless, it wasn't fair, he wasn't playing fair! And the way he smiled, he dang well knew what he was doing! Argh! How could I stay mad at someone who was trying to be charming? And so close? "Don't you know me well enough by now to believe me—"
"Capable of such idiocy?" I smirked. "I know you well enough to know you're capable of that."
He flinched. "Okay, I think I might have pushed that one on myself. But did I turn you out when you needed me?"
Oh sure, he had to use the technicalities again. Just because I went crying to him one stinking night I had to end up paying for it all my teenage years? I only had two years and some odd months to go before I was no longer a teenager. When he started to lean in, I suddenly remembered something and I sat up quickly.
He still hurt me-and he just admitted it was on purpose. I knew that any sort of relationship was not supposed to be static, but this one had more ups and downs than Oprah's weight.
There was another knock on my door, and I had never been so happy to hear one in my life.
"Come in," and another head peeked around my door.
"Oh, sorry, didn't know you had company?" I shrugged. "I kind of have something I wanted to talk to you about. In private."
That was wordy, I gave him one look and he sighed, got up, and left without another word.
"What was he doing here?"
"You had something you wanted to talk to me about?" I probed, trying to neglect the question.
"Yeah," my visitor didn't look me in the eyes. After two seconds I understood why, "Kerry, I decided to quit Xavier's."
