Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men or Portishead's song "Sour Times," so don't get litigious.

Both of the girls were too bewildered to come up with a better idea, so they came out from behind the vase. Gaia shook her head. "Am I never going to be able to have a fair game of Hide and Seek again?"

The stranger in the wheelchair chuckled at that. "Jinx, don't be afraid; I'm not going to hurt you."

Jinx was amazed. "Hey, I was just thinking that! That is so weird."

"Hey," Gaia said in a vaguely hurt tone. "Did you really think I was talking to myself in the elevator?"

Jinx rolled her eyes. "You know what, Gaia? Just shut your mouth." She turned to the wheelchair guy. "So what did you say your name was again?"

"I categorically refuse to shut up!" Gaia interrupted stubbornly.

"You're shutting it now!"

"Please, stop fighting," the wheelchair man cut in. "You are not here for that. You're here because we need you. My name is Professor Charles Xavier and-"

"Wait! You need us? For what?" Jinx demanded.

"That's what I was just going to tell you-"

"What is it?" Jinx butted in again. The Professor held out his hand, which somehow stopped Jinx from opening her mouth again.

"I'm sure you have heard about the strange things that have been happening over the last couple years. A break-in at the Statue of Liberty that left the torch damaged, a flood at an old research facility up north, a disaster in San Francisco that left many people missing or powerless for months… very few people know what actually happened. We know of a group that's had a great influence on these events, and one of its most powerful members has struck out on her own. We're not sure what she might do."

He had not silenced Gaia with his powers, so it was a minor miracle that she'd shut up so far. "And so… you're just going to attack her? What power does she have anyway?"

"I'm hoping we can talk to her, maybe even get her on our side, but I'm planning for the worst. We know she's planned something, perhaps even an alliance with one of her old friends, but we don't know what it is, and I don't want to get anyone killed just because there are too few people to oppose her… Jinx, you're not listening to me, are you?"

Jinx's hand paused, guilty of the minor crime of getting ready to poke Gaia because she couldn't talk and was bored.

"It's all right," he said lightly, lowering his hand. "You can talk now. I just felt like I should explain the problem. And yes, Gaia, I know I never answered your second question. Mystique is a metamorph. And I'd rather you didn't poke Jinx."

Gaia stashed her hands behind her back and put on her most angelic face in response to Jinx's glare and inwardly pouted. Telepathy seemed like cheating, somehow. Not that Gaia wouldn't cheat up a storm if she were telepathic… but still!

"Now," he continued. "There's something I'm mildly curious about. I could just 'cheat'-" he glanced at Gaia. "However, I'd prefer to hear your sides of the story. What were you doing by the side of that road?"

Gaia bit her lip. (It was a bad habit that wreaked havoc with her lipstick.) "Well, we were on our way to New Orleans with this guy we met at the bus station. Yeah, spare me the lecture, I know I should be at home going to school and everything, but… I don't know. It was time to go. I think our neighbors would have lynched us both if we'd stayed much longer. Plus, it's hurricane season and I wanted to stop any hurricanes that might be going there; it's not like they need any more of that stuff. Well, nobody really needs hurricanes, but-"

"Get on with it," Jinx advised irritably.

"Anyway, we ended up stranded in the middle of the desert. The guy had bailed, so we tried to get a ride by hitchhiking. Yeah, I know every book in the world that mentions hitchhiking says it's a really dumb move, especially for young girls, but they are not reckoning with the fact that if any guy tries to attack us or something, Jinx can curse him or I can strike him with lightning. So I figured we were pretty safe. After a few hours, this car came along, a black Buick-"

"A Buick? I can't believe you can remember the brand, Gaia!" Jinx interjected.

"Well, while you were listening to your fancy little iPod, I was playing 'Guess the Model of Car That Will Pretend We Don't Exist and Just Leave Us Here To Rot,' and I remember I'd just said 'Wow! It really is a Buick LaCrosse! I'm getting pretty good at this!' when the car came right at us."

Xavier lifted an eyebrow. "You weren't sitting on the road, were you?"

"Do you think we're idiots? No, we were just off the shoulder. Close enough to see the cars, but not close enough that someone would kill us by accident." Gaia paused for a moment. "Well, it could have been an accident, but I think the probability is roughly the same as the situation where the roomful of monkeys manage to type Hamlet by pushing random-"

Jinx took the pencil out of her hair and threw it at Gaia's head to express her opinion of Gaia's tangents. Gaia caught the pencil clumsily, then held it away from Jinx's reaching hands as she continued. "I kind of froze up, but Jinx grabbed my hand and we jumped, and then everything went black."

"Do you remember who was driving the car?" Xavier asked.

"The windshield was tinted. All I saw was the outline, and outlines are pretty general, like how the guy and the girl they put on bathroom doors would look completely alike if the girl one wasn't wearing a skirt."

"That is so wrong," Jinx agreed vigorously, still trying to get the pencil. "I mean, she doesn't have hair! She needs hair! She needs RED hair!"

Gaia shook her head. "Anyway, that's what I remember. What about you, Jinx?"

Jinx gave up on her pencil, as Xavier was giving her a look that plainly said, "It's your turn."

Plus, there was a voice in her head saying, "It's your turn, Jinx."

"All right! All right. Just don't get into my head anymore. It makes me think I'm crazy. Deal?"

"Deal."

"Okay." Jinx took a deep breath. "What I remember seems a little different from Gaia's story. I was listening to my iPod, which was playing the ice cream song, by the way."

"The ice cream song!" Gaia exclaimed. "I love the ice cream song!"

Suddenly the two were in their own little world, happily humming to each other. Professor Xavier could barely believe how easily distracted they were. "Can we get back to the subject at hand?" he asked. Gaia and Jinx were too busy humming. Sighing, he closed his eyes…

"Agh!" the girls screamed, crouching and covering their ears to try and block out the screaming in their heads.

"Make it stop!" Jinx yelled. The screaming stopped, and they both stood up shakily. "What did you do that for?" she added crossly, putting her hands on her hips.

"I didn't do that."

"Then who did?" Gaia asked suspiciously.

"One of my students. She can scream rather loudly. Someone must have stolen her pudding. She loves pudding."

Gaia and Jinx exchanged skeptical glances.

"I'll just get on with my story," Jinx said. "Okay, so I remember our trip to New Orleans. We snuck out of our houses, and we flew there. Literally. That guy Gaia was talking about, he had the power to fly, so he offered us a lift-"

"Jinx had a crush on him!" Gaia interrupted playfully.

"Can't you just let me tell the story? Okay, so he gave us a lift. But he dropped us off at some random place that was nowhere near our destination. I tried to tell him it wasn't the place we were headed when he put us down, but he flew away. Really fast. We were really confused. There weren't any cars around, so I listened to my iPod. Gaia was supposedly keeping watch, but she was in her own little reality."

"Hey! I was playing-"

"Yeah, whatever. Anyway, this car looked like it was pulling over, so I put away my iPod. I heard Gaia yell something about the car being a Buick, and I was going to tell her to shut up when I saw a wolf attack her. I tried to curse him; I managed to make the lamppost fall on his head, but someone else attacked me from the back. It was like someone had slammed a huge metal wall against my sides. I don't remember anything after that."

The Professor looked pensive. "I can help you both."

"How?" Gaia and Jinx asked simultaneously.

"I didn't know I needed help," Gaia objected. "Jinx needs help, sure, but it's nothing a hospital couldn't take care of."

"I know, Gaia, but let's not get off subject," Jinx said. She turned to the Professor. "What do you want us to do? Or how are you going to help us?"

"I can help you find out who is trying to kill you."