Months pass. Vampira trains herself, mind and body, to perfection in the danger room. For hours each day she works out with the x-men, learning to fight as a team and honing their respective skills. She meets the famed Professor Xavier, listens to his and the others' stories of the x-men's battles, and slowly forms friendships with her teammates. Her room starts to look less and less like a guest room as more of the items and clothes she has ordered arrive weekly. Eventually she joins Nightcrawler, Colossus, Shadowcat, Rogue, Rachel and later on Storm (who is back from Africa, having regained her powers...) on missions, fighting everything from Sentinels to Magneto to the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Never forgetting Stephen, Driani learns to think of him less, and when she does think of him to remember the good times and not his tragic end. It is roughly four months later that our story picks up.

It had started out as a good day. It was Driani's (or Dri as she was now called) turn to make breakfast. She got up before anyone else to make her infamous blueberry pancakes, which were inevitably burnt. Driani had She'd given up on blood for now, though she still missed it and the euphoria it brought in addition to a power surge. Her room was at this point decorated to exactly her style, with midnight blue walls, antique-ish looking dark wood furniture and a canopy bed. Then she went to wake up her teammates. Walking down the hallway, she started to knock on doors and sing one of the new songs she'd been memorizing, as a result of the music Kitty had introduced her to. While everyone agreed that her voice was beautiful, it was very loud. "Goddess, child! Hush!" Ororo poked her sleepy head out of her room. "Okay okay we're getting up! Cool it will ya?" Rogue was not a morning person, as she proved by flying out of her room straight at Driani and pinning her to the wall. Driani smiled and slid out of her super-strength grasp, then flipped Rogue onto her back. With this sort of friendly rough housing the assorted young people made their way down to the kitchen where Xavier was already reading the newspaper.

After breakfast they changed into their uniforms and met in the observation booth of the danger room. Given the option to design her own uniform, Dri had worked with Rachel (who can use her telekinesis to rearrange molecules in things like clothes) to put together her own look, and both girls had been pleased with it. Deep blue with strips of plum, it fit her form well and the unstable molecules could accommodate her morphing into vampiric form. They selecting a training program, one that used holographic images of a place called the savage land, and then Shadowcat phased everyone down into the room itself. The session was going well until one of the 'dangers' of the room that Vampira had not yet encountered grabbed her. It was a sonic beam, and coupled with the metal tentacles and holographic dinosaurs she was already fighting it knocked her out. Rachel telekinetically pushed the stop button and Nightcrawler teleported Dri to the infirmary. He wondered how many times he'd had to do that for various team mates. Laying her on the table he started to set up the various scanners the x-men had acquired from the Shi'ar. Kurt hoped Driani would be all right. They'd become very close over the past months. She spoke German well and he'd enjoyed speaking in his native tongue with her, in addition to the fact that they had much in common. By this time the others had gotten to the med. lab. As he turned around to assign them tasks setting up the medical equipment, Driani sat up looking dazed. She claimed to be fine other then a bad headache. Storm walked her up to her room, then Ororo rejoined her team to finish the session.

Feeling a little better later, Driani went on a walk around the lake with Piotr and Kitty. From what she could understand the two had used to be lovers, but after their break-up they were trying to remain friends. It was then time for dinner. Whoever had been supposed to cook had instead ordered pizza. Afterwards they had hung out in the living room, watching some movie or other while Rogue beat Piotr at air hockey. One by one her friends drifted up to their bedrooms and Driani was left alone. She went up to her room and put on her night gown but couldn't sleep because of her headache. Returning to the kitchen she made herself some tea and sat down at the table. Occupied with a magazine, it was past midnight before Driani began to feel sleepy. Then she heard a noise, like a motorcycle. A little alarmed she stood up, then realized how silly she was being and sat down again. 'honestly! Here I am, a full fledged member of the x-men, jumping at noises in the dark!' Then the kitchen door opened. The guy who walked in was one of the best looking men she had ever seen, but there was something about him that she did not like. Scarcely taller than her, well muscled and with a shock of black hair, he stared at her and raised one eyebrow. "Who are you?"

No longer scared, Driani felt indignant. "I think I could ask you the same question!" Just as he was about to answer her, a teenage girl walked into the room and stood next to him. "Whose she?"

Driani: "For god's sake I live here!" they looked vaguely familiar, but why? Glancing behind her Driani saw the picture of the x-men taken shortly before she came. Oh. This must be Wolverine and Jubilee. Wolverine tilted his head to look past her and yelled up toward the stairs "'Roro! 'Crawler! 'Cat! Ya home?" "Shh you'll wake them up!" "That's what I'm tryin' ta do. I haven't seen 'em in months." Kitty came down the stairs and rescued the three of them from their awkward situation, sort of. She hugged Logan and Jubilee and explained to Driani that they had been gone for a long time but were also members of the x-men. Driani apologized to Wolverine and then went upstairs to her room to ponder the significance of this new development. She really loved living here and the work she did, and didn't want to leave, not that she had anywhere else to go, but she knew intuitively that she and this Logan guy would not get along well. But there was nothing for it, she'd just have to carry on and hope for the best.

Storm regained her powers in 'Fall of the Mutants', but I didn't want to mention that particular book because it involves characters and circumstances that I don't want to put into my story, yet anyway.

Who am I kidding? Nobody reads this story. It's mine. If people read it they would leave reviews, probably. And how many reviews do I have after all this time? None. Sigh. Maybe I should stop writing and take up stamp collecting.