A/N: Awww...thanks to the people who reviewed, I luv you guys, you're so nice!
Okay, new chapter...this one will have another original charater named Gwen/Radar, please review and tell me what you think.
A/N 2: The second chapter of my first fan fic! Yay!
A/N 3: Ohhh my god I just looked at an X3 page and it might be called: X3: The Curse of the Mutant Whore.
Die, Brett Ratner, DIE!
Disclaimer: Yeah, I don't own the X-Men. If I did, we'd live in a penthouse in New York. Xavier would pay rent, though.
Chapter Two: Something Bad
New York City, Present Day
Caroline Fahler stood on the dirty sidewalk, listening to the hum of the passing trucks and taxis. They spewed ugly smoke into the air, creating a light coat of smog over the many buildings and stores. People passed in either direction of where she was standing, never stopping. The streets beat with an unheard throb of city life.
Caroline never tired of it all.
She had moved back to New York soon after she had saved up enough money. It had taken years, but it had been well worth the wait.
Of course, she mused, if her mother hadn't dragged her to Germany, she wouldn't have had to wait at all.
It was just like her mother to do something like that. Never stop to talk about it, never stop to ask, do whatever she wanted to do without ever worrying about how it might affect anyone else around her.
While thinking, the air around Caroline's head crackled with electricity. She suddenly patted her hair down to prevent the effects of static, feeling ridiculously vain. Angry thoughts, most of them about her mother, always seemed to come with voltaic changes in the air around her. She could never explain it.
Maybe, she thought, an image of the mutant child who had lived with them popping into her head, she didn't want to explain it.
Mutants. She didn't like the idea of them. Reports on the news told her that they could blend in with every day poeple, so you couldn't even recognize most of them. There had only been one she had met, and she hadn't seen him for years. Little freak was probably better off that way. Who knew what she would have done to him if she'd had to put up with him another day longer than he did?
Crackle crack pop. The air was charged up again.
Gwen grimaced as she spread the heated wax over the front of her leg. "Ow."
She grabbed the remote sitting on the couch next to her and changed the channel to a Roseanne rerun, then placed it on the coffee table next to the spot where her leg was resting. Anything to take her mind off of the pain of having to wax her legs on a Saturday night.
A cotton strip lay on her lap. Gwen grabbed it and placed it on the quickly cooling wax, then waited for a moment.
"Gwen," she told herself, "don't scream. You know what Kurt said about it."
She grasped the edge of the strip, gritted her teeth and pulled.
Ororo "Storm" Munroe strolled up the empty halls of the boarding school. Saturday nights were usually like this, with the students sitting in one of the three television rooms watching a movie rented from a local Blockbuster. Scott had volunteered to take care of them all that day, which Storm was supremely grateful for. She loved the children like her own, but since Jean had died, she hadn't had a moment to herself to think.
Clunk.
Storm jumped at the small noise that had startled her from the midst of her musings, then, upon listening closer, realized that it had come from the room on her far left. She walked over quickly to the lit doorway, and peeked in.
Sigfreda Gwen Wagner, daughter of Sigfried Wagner, and Kurt Wagner's niece, aka Radar, was rolling around on the floor in between the couch and the small coffee table, holding her leg and cursing through gritted teeth.
"Radar?"
Gwen looked up at the door, stopping midword through a particularly violent swear. "Hey, Storm."
"Are you okay?"
Gwen stood up, smoother her pajama bottoms, and sat back down on the couch. "Yeah, I'm fine. Don't worry about me, I'm just doing my regular every-six-weeks ritual."
"Why don't you just shave?"
"Ennh," was the response. "You can keep walking, it's okay."
Storm pushed the door open wide, and Radar winced. The pair had never quite talked any more than the usual polite teacher-student conversations. Storm assumed she was just shy at first, but realized it probably wasn't true when she saw Gwen hug Artie in a jokey sort of way in the halls or playfully wrestle with Jubilee. She decided that it would be up to her to break through the seventeen-year-old girl's sometimes on, sometimes off shield.
"Mind if I sit?" she asked, pushing over Gwen's waxing kit supplies on the couch and settling down without an answer. "What are you watching?"
"Roseanne. AKA the best show of the nineties." Gwen grinned at the TV, her expression the total opposite of Roseanne's famous scowl.
They sat in awkward silence for a moment, until Gwen cried out, "If this is about my essay, I chose to write about Taye Diggs because he's one of the pioneers for African-American Broadway actors and that is totally legit even if you think I'm being shallow-"
"This isn't about your essay. I just wanted to talk."
"Oh. 'Bout what?"
"I don't know. What do you want to talk about?"
"Errmmm...world politics?"
Storm looked up at the girl and saw a slight glint of a smile on her face.
"I haven't offended you in any way, have I?" she suddenly blurted out.
Radar looked surprised. "Whu?"
"It's just that...you seem kind of distant when you're around me."
Relief washed over Radar's face. "Well, that's cuz I'm a loudmouth."
"Excuse me?"
"Yeah, everyone calls me Lois around here."
"Lois?"
"That's the name of the mom on Malcolm in the Middle, she's a total loudmouth."
"What does that have to do with-"
"Well, I'm a telepath so I know a bunch of stuff I really shouldn't know and if I'm around you I might tell you that- ohh...wait, never mind. I'm not even s'posed to know. But don't worry, it's nothing big, it's just that...yeah, never mind."
Storm laughed.
"What's it like being a telepath?" she asked.
Radar thought for a moment. "Guess I never really thought about it. I been telepath-ing since eleven, so it's kind of like second nature to me. I can talk with my friends during class, and none of the teachers kn- aw, damn. I mean, never mind. I can read people's thoughts and stuff, so it's like I could know anything I want to know...you know?"
It took Storm a minute to figure that out.
Radar continued. "I can also read memories, but I don't like to. It can be real scary or sad. I've only read two people's memories, Dad's and Kurt's."
"Kurt's related to you because he's your uncle, right?"
"Technically half uncle." She grinned. "But 'Hello, Half-Uncle Kurt' takes, like, way too long to say."
"What...what about your mom?"
"Ooh, that's kind of hard to tell. My dad's a teacher in Boston at a high school - or rather, was - when he was, like, I don't know...mid twenties? Well, let's just say that I think I might be the result of a "study session," she made hooked peace signs to show quotes, "with one of his students."
"Ohh."
"You should see it when Grandma comes over. She hates talking about it, it's so funny. Well, yeah, anyways, I don't know who my mom is. She took off after I was born and moved to New York. I stayed in Beantown, though, with Dad. He's like, the most awesome guy, except he doesn't really...you know...accept mutants. So I haven't told him that I'm a telepath." She hugged her knees to her chest, looking thoughtful.
"Maybe you should tell him. You never know."
"Maybe I'll get to ride a flying pig all over the country. You never know. No, just kidding. We kind of have this unspoken rule. 'Anything uncomfortable, we don't discuss." Hence, I don't even know my mom's name."
"That's so sad."
"Not really. I've never worried about it. Hey, have you seen Kurt today? I can't find him anywhere."
Kurt Wagner was, at the time, slumping his way down the hallway to the TV room where he knew Gwen would be. He hated to bring up schoolwork on a Saturday, but she hadn't turned in her last assignment and he needed to grade it. Not that he wanted to. What he wanted to do was go to sleep.
Upon seeing Gwen sitting on the couch, he felt relief. Upon seeing who she was sitting next to, he felt the previous feeling wash away by a wave of nerves. He was such a total brain dead idiot around Storm for some reason, it was embarrassing. But now he would have to quash those thoughts, he had a mission.
"Gwen," he said, and she jumped. He smiled, she knew exactly what he wanted.
"Oh, uh, hi, Kurt. Wanna sit?" She moved a small box and cloth to the table and patted the space between her and Storm. He felt his heart slam in his chest.
Gwen suddenly grinned, and Kurt had an awful feeling that she was reading his mind.
"Why so tired?" she asked.
Kurt, instead of running away, which was what he really wanted to do, took his place next to Gwen. "Some of the students wanted to do a Danger Room simulation this afternoon, and it took a nast turn. Where's your assignment that was due yesterday?" He asked.
Gwen turned pink. "See, it's like this. I was doing it last Wednesday, when-"
"I'll give you till Monday."
"Thank you!" She hugged him, then stood up, grabbing the box from the table. Storm followed suit.
"Where are you going?"
"Professor just 'pathed me - well, I guess he did Storm too, he wants us to go see him in his room." She pressed the remote into his hand. "Take the night off. There'll be plenty of papers to grade tomorrow morning." She walked over to the door with Storm, then broke into a mad sprint, rushing past the white-haired woman, and screamed, "Bye!" in the hallway.
Kurt settled down onto the couch, smiling at Storm's look of surprise. "Good luck with her," he said. Storm shook her head and left.
"What do you think he wants?" Radar asked outside of Xavier's office, finally slowing down enough so Storm could catch up.
"I don't know. It sounded important, didn't you think?"
"I didn't notice, I was trying to get out of the Kurt assignment."
"You really should focus more on German."
"I speak it!"
Storm ignored that last comment and opened the door. Xavier was sitting next to his desk. Rogue stood next to him, looking confused and excited.
"Hello, Professor."
"Yo, Pro," Radar giggled.
Xavier smiled slightly. "Hello Storm, Gwen. Thank you for coming so quickly."
"What's happening?"
"I've been trying to find a suitable mission for Rogue and Gwen to accompany you on, for their training as X-Men, as I told you about," he told the weather witch. "I believe I've located a mutant in Manhattan who's causing trouble in the streets. I need you to go find her and bring her here. This is routine, so I'd like you to bring these girls with you, as training."
Storm nodded. "Radar, go get changed. I'm going to prepare the Blackbird for flight." Storm left through the open door. A few minutes later, Gwen and Rogue followed suit.
"Nice job on your leg," Rogue told her friend, grinning. Gwen blushed.
"Shaddup," she replied. "I got interrupted by Storm and Kurt. Can I copy your Deutsch homework?"
"NO."
"Can't say I didn't try."
They walked in silence for a moment, until Radar said: "Hey, Rogue?"
"Yeah?"
"This is a routine mission, right?"
"You just heard the Professor say so. Why?"
Radar looked contemplative. "I just got this awful feeling that something bad is going to happen."
A/N: Yeah, okay, this chapter was like, way lighter than the first. Caroline's in New York. Gwen's waxing her legs. Kurt's got a crush on Storm.
Next chapter: more Kurt-as-a-kid angst.
A/N 2: Pleeeease review!