A/N Written by our new 'hopper Ishling! Welcome and all that jazz…

The extremely boring tour of the mansion was interrupted by a flash of bright light and a high pitched scream from the direction of the greenhouse. The three teenagers rushed towards it, and were surprised to see a girl sitting on the roof, shielding her eyes, screaming still.

"Who the fuck is that?" Scott cursed under his breath.

"Oooh." Rosie and Sky chorused. "Scooter swore."

The brunette glared at them. "Ok, so we need to find a way to get her down...how did she get up there in the first place?" He sent a telepathic message to Jean, who came running, although rather slower than normal (understandable given her previous experience with random girls appearing.) Using her TK, the redhead flew up to join the girl on the roof.

"Are you ok?" She asked.

The girl shot her a dirty look. "Do I look like I'm ok?" She snapped with a mixed English/Australian accent. "I'm stuck on a fucking ROOF! And I'm afraid of he-ei-eights!" The last word turned into a wail as she began to cry.

"Um, ok, don't cry." Jean said awkwardly. "We're going to get you down." Experimentally, she tried lifting the girl with her TK. It wasn't as hard as she'd expected, the girl couldn't have weighed more than 45 kilograms to her 65.1 The only problem was, she was going to have to send the girl down before her.

"What's your name?" She asked, hoping against hope that the dark-haired teen would know.

"My name's..." She trailed off. "Oh great! Now I have amnesia!" Her crying, which had begun to die down, started anew. It wasn't a pretty sight. Her nose went red, her cheeks paled, the freckles standing out against her skin like blotches, and her eyes screwed up as big tears rolled down her oval face.

"Hey, calm down, ok?" Jean soothed, dropping the girl that last foot, and floating down herself. "You're on the ground now. Not on the roof."

Brown eyes fluttered open. "So I am." The girl said dreamily. "I think I'll go bye byes now." She fainted.

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"What do you think, Professor?" Jean asked, surveying the unconscious girl on the bed.

She was rather short, barely over five foot, with messy dark brown hair halfway to her waist that refused to be tamed by the ponytail she'd wrestled it into. Her skin had the glow of someone who spent their life in front of a computer, the only colour on her face being her flushed cheeks, mouth, freckles and the dark lashes that rested on her cheekbones like bruises. Her face was quite round, and with the button nose gave her an appearance of being much younger than the rather developed body hidden under her baggy t shirt and jeans allowed her to be. Still, she couldn't have been much older than twelve or fourteen.2

The professor sighed. "While she's unconscious, her mind is inaccessible. She seems to have a natural shield against telepathic invasion for some reason, and I can't get through without grievously harming her. We'll have to wait until she wakes up. Did anyone see her arrive?"

Scott shook his head. "We just saw the flash of light and heard the scream."

"It was loud." Sky said, unhelpfully.

Professor Xavier rubbed his temples. "Thank you, Sky. I gathered that from the fact that I could hear it in my office."

"Nnngh." The girl woke up. "Uh…what happened? Where am I?"

"You seem to have been transported to Bayville, New York. You're currently residing in Xavier's Institute for Gifted Youngsters." Hank said, ambling in. "According to Jean, you appear to have acute acrophobia, and fainted from shock when she managed to get you off the greenhouse roof."

The brunette shuddered. "Yech, heights." She said, wrinkling her nose.

Meanwhile, Professor Xavier was delving into the new girl's mind, trying to discover who she was.

"It is also apparent from you accent that you're from either Australia or England." Hank continued.

"Ok." She nodded, then her eyes widened. "Holy crap, you're blue! And furry!"

Scott blinked. "None too bright is she." He whispered to Jean.

"I heard that and I am so." The girl snapped. "Um, ok, why can't I remember anything?"

"We couldn't, either." Sky piped up again.

"Oh…well, I need a name to go by." The girl looked suitably distressed, and her eyes were tearing up again.

Xavier found a good memory, and pushed it as close to the surface as he could.

"Oh, please don't cry, you look really ugly when you cry." Rosie said.

Surprisingly enough, that made the girl giggle. "You remind me of someone." She said. "If only I could remember who…" Unthinkingly, she scratched her arm. "Hmmm…Ishling! My name's Ishling!" The newly named girl smiled. "Cool…"

"That's a very odd name." Jean said.

"Shuddup. It's cooler than yours." Ishling retorted. "Hey, what is your name anyway? Why am I here? How come I don't remember anything? Who are you people? Are you kidnapping me? Is there going to be a ransom? Because I'm pretty sure I'm not worth that. And I really, really wanna go home because I miss my mummy!" She began to cry again.

"Uh, Professor, perhaps we should just put her in a room and let her calm down." Scott said, casting the sobbing Australian/English girl an awkward glance. She didn't seem to notice, unlike when he'd been whispering so quietly even he had trouble hearing himself.

"Quite." Xavier agreed. "Er…Ishling, is it? You'll have a room to yourself, if you'll follow me."

Nodding miserably, the brunette got up and followed the telepath out of the infirmary.

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1 Remember, Jean is tall and plays lots of sport. Muscle weighs more than fat...of course, compared to me, Thumbelina is tall.

2 Seriously, the oldest I've been mistaken for this year is 14. And I'm 18.