Xavier introduced me to many of the students, and all of the teachers. It gave me a heavy heart to learn that the mansion was several members short after the events that took place at the Alkali base. My guilt must have been radiating off of me in waves, because Xavier took me aside and told me that he knew I had nothing to do with William's plans, that I was just a pawn and had been powerless to stop what had happened.

It didn't make me feel better.

I had been staying in a spare bedroom in the east wing of the mansion, wearing the borrowed clothes from students and a few of the other female staff. Ororo had been one of Xavier's first students, and she had been the one to come to me with the suggestion of leaving the mansion for a while.

I had been in my room, staring out the window, watching some students playing soccer outside. Logan had told me what William had done- his soldiers had attacked this school and abducted some of the students so that he could test Xavier's determination to kill innocent mutants.

"Hey,"

I turned and found Ororo in the open doorway. She had a worried smile on her face, and I knew that I was the reason for her worry. Since I had been awoken from what turned out to be a coma of four weeks long, I knew that I had been less than open to any sort of friendship with them. My guilt and shame kept most everyone at arm's length, except for Xavier- there was nothing I could hide from him, but he'd never pressured me to talk.

"Yuriko, um, I was about to head into the city for a little while and I wondered if you might want to join me?"

I liked Ororo, I really and truly did, but I held onto the fear that she blamed me for the death of her friend Jean Grey. I did want to leave the school for a few hours, to escape just for a bit.

"Oh, Ororo, yes, I'll be right there," I replied. I wondered why it was that she was inviting me to go out, and it occurred to me that Xavier might have instructed her to try making friends with me. I trusted no one in the mansion completely, but in the time that I'd been there no one had seemed to harbor any hostile feelings toward me- but I had known William all of my life and he'd never given me a reason not to trust him either, had he?

Ororo chose one of the cars from the estate garage and she headed out toward New York, speeding around most of the turns in the road and tearing down the highway. I admired her driving skills, she had an obvious taste for danger and the adrenaline that came along with it.

Is this how she came to be one of the X-men? Did Xavier select the brightest and boldest from all of his students to become members of his task force, or did they elect themselves?

Ororo parked the car and we made small-talk as we window-shopped before finally giving in to temptation and buying a few new additions to our wardrobes. Ororo insisted that I choose whatever I liked- she said that I needed my own clothes, rather than continue borrowing the mismatching items from every other female in the mansion.

It was strange for me to realize it, but I had never had a regular girlfriend to shop with. Growing up in Japan, I had had friends over from school but we had rarely had the extra time or money to shop together, and of course William had never let me out of his sight.

I felt awkward when she didn't bat an eye over all the things she bought for me- I wanted to be accepted at the mutant school, I wanted the sense of family that she seemed to share with Xavier, Logan and the students. It seems childish to say it, but I just wanted somewhere to belong.

"Oh, don't worry about the money. If the mansion wasn't indication enough, Charles has plenty of money to spare and I'm sure that he'd be happy to buy a few things for you himself, but he had a few classes of his own today," Ororo explained as we put the bags in the car trunk.

"Are you sure that he wouldn't mind?" I didn't want to appear as a charity case to these people.

"Trust me, if he could, he would have come along, but he doesn't leave the school very often, he sometimes finds it awkward with the wheelchair." She said as she started the engine and turned onto the street.

"He feels that the wheelchair gets in the way? The how was he able to help me?" I blurted. The question had been plaguing me, I wanted to know how they had known where to find me in the base and how they had been able to remove the adamantium from within my body.

Ororo raised her brows and flipped back a lock of her snowy hair. "Help you? What do you mean?"

"Ororo, I haven't asked Xavier about what happened to me. Do you know? Where you the one who found me? I don't remember anything. How did we escape from the base at Alkali Lake, how is it that I survived?" I hadn't meant to ask her everything all at once, but there was no way that I could ask her one question without asking her all of them.

"All right, Yuriko, slow down, ok? I do know what happened- or, I at least know part of it. But it you want to know everything, you'll need to go to the source. When we get back home, you need to ask Charles."

I knew that Ororo was right- it was time to stop putting it off, it was time to find out the truth.