A/N: Hey readers! I just wanted to say thank you for the continued support, reviews and follows on this story despite the fact that I'm the worst updater in the history of human existence. The constructive criticism is also AMAZING! Please keep that coming. Anyways, thank you!
Chapter 7
Cyclops
Day 1 of the camping trip.
"Lo-Wolverine, do you want to give us a hand here?" Iceman asked through gritted teeth as he tried to bend a tent pole in a direction that it was never intended to bend.
"Why? I ain't gonna be sleepin' in it." He replied while using one claw to cut the end off of a thick cigar.
"Where do you sleep, Comrade?" Colossus questioned in his stunted mannor, accidentally snapping a pole between his fingers.
Wolverine breathed in a long breath of smoke and released in in an O shape. "Outside, like any real man would."
Cyclops sighed and continued helping to put the tent together. He really wasn't in the mood to deal with his classmates' antics. "Wolverine, help us or go somewhere else."
Wolverine scoffed, but picked up a tent pole and began to help the small group of boys. He may not have been happy about it, but at the very least he was helping.
While the rest of the boys struggled to put their tent together, a voice popped into Cyclops' head. Cyclops, meet me at the large field beside our campsite for our first training exercise, Professor Xavier commanded.
Cyclops handed his tent pole which he had been trying to put together to Bobby, and obediently walked in the direction of the field. As he approached the area, his eyes grew wider, and he became amazed at the sight before him. The entire field had been decked out in expensive football equipment (none of which Cyclops could name, as he had never been much of a jock type), spray paint and other training equipment.
"What is this?" Cyclops asked, a little taken aback by the scene.
"This," Explained the Professor, "is where we will train your classmates to fight without using their powers. It's easy enough to fight when you have things like optic blasts, but you all need to learn how to hold your own in a situation where you don't have the option to use your powers, readily available as they might seem."
"Why would we need to do that? Who's coming after us?"
"Scott," Professor Xavier signed, "in my long life time, I have seen more fear and violence from the human race than I think anyone would like to know. We may all feel rather safe right now, since the government does not yet know the extent of the mutant population, but there will come a time when that won't be the case. It is my job to make sure that you are all ready for that. Now, you are going to be leading this exercise, so I need you to test the obstacle course first."
Cyclops nodded his head and trotted over to where two pylons had been placed as a starting line. He crouched slightly and placed one foot behind the other, mimicking the running position he had observed, but never actually used.
The Professor's voice loudly rang out in his mind, shouting, three... two... one... go!
Cyclops sprinted eagerly down the track contained by two white lines of duct tape, not slowing down until he reached a line of tires that he would have to step through. He went rather slowly through the tires, tripping twice before he was able to move to the next obstacle.
Up next was a large wall with small footholds up the side. He gingerly placed his foot on one, and when it did not break under his weight, he swiftly proceeded up the wall. He was better at climbing than he was at the tires.
Once he reached the top of the wall, he jumped down and landed clumsily on the other side. As he tried to get to his feet, he felt something catch his leg, and was immediately ambushed with a hoard of cardboard-cut-out pop-ups shaped like government agents. One hit Cyclops square in the face as it popped up from the grass, causing the teenager to let out a girlish scream. He was knocked to the ground, reduced to a confused ball holding his bloody nose.
"That's alright, Cyclops. It is a very difficult course. You can just start over until you finish it." Professor Xavier assured.
"If I finish it," Cyclops corrected as he stood up and wiped the blood from his face.
It took Cyclops three more tries to complete the course, prompting the Professor to remove a few obstacles to make it easier on the rest of the students. They were all summoned telepathically once the course had been fixed.
"Alright, form a line between those trees." Cyclops said, a whistle dangling from between his teeth. The students had all been told to gather at the neighbouring field, none of them having been told anything except that there would be some sort of race. "Now, the first two people to reach that pine over there Get to pick teams for the race. Powers are aloud. Three... Two... One... Go!"
The students sprinted forward, each of them with their eyes fixed on the pine tree across the way. Within a few seconds, it was clear who the top competitors were.
Wolverine, possessing heightened abilities such as speed, had pulled ahead of the group immediately. Shadowcat had used her intangibility to float above the group and bypass the pushing and shoving that was happening below. The clear winner, however, was Nightcrawler who had just teleported to the tree and claimed the first of two winning spots.
Once everyone had seen that there was only one spot remaining, people began to scramble. Phoenix used her telepathy to cause everyone but her to trip, Iceman put strategic patches of ice in front of his competitors, and Storm caused gusts of winds to make it incredibly difficult for anyone to move forward. In the end, Shadowcat reached the tree first, joining Nightcrawler as one of the winners.
"Good hustle, everyone." Cyclops commended. "Okay, since Kurt won, he gets to pick first. Oh and I'm joining you guys for this."
"Alright," Nightcrawler paused, "I want you on my team then, since you seem to know what we're doing."
Shadowcat spoke after Nightcrawler, "I'll take Wolverine."
"Storm."
"Phoenix."
"Iceman."
"Psylocke."
"Rogue."
"Colossus."
"Okay then," Cyclops ordered once everyone had joined their respective teams, "follow me to the large field.
"What the hell is this mess, Slim?" Wolverine scoffed once they reached the enormous obstacle course.
"This is what we'll be using to compete. Okay, team captains, you're up first." Cyclops instructed.
Shadowcat and Nightcrawler each walked over to the obstacle course and prepared to start.
"Oh and one more thing, no powers for this! Three, two, one, go!" Cyclops said quickly, leaving the two competitors extremely confused as they were forced to face down the track.
As it turned out, neither Nightcrawler nor Shadowcat were very athletic without their abilities. They both put out a performance worse than Cyclops. Shadowcat finally finished first after a long and gruelling race to the finish line.
Wolverine and Psyclocke were next to try their luck with the course. Rogue completed the course quickly and easily, but still fell short of Wolverine, who finished in record time.
"That's not fair!" Psylocke complained as the two circled back to the group. "He has that damn super speed of his! There's no way I could have won against that!"
"Hey! I won fair and square. I can't help it if I can't turn off my powers! Anyways, you should know how that feels." Wolverine argued.
"Now, now," intervened Professor X, "Psylocke is right on this front. Wolverine had the clear advantage in this race. I think that you should go again and give Rogue a head start, just to make thing fair."
"Fair? FAIR?" Wolverine erupted, even letting a slight growl loose, "you wanna talk about fair? Is it 'fair' that I have no idea where I came from, what that government program you found me in did to me, or how I ended up at this shit school? Is it 'fair' that I have to live each day weighed down by a million pounds of metal on my bones, and the only way I can actually move my body is by this so-called advantage of super strength and speed?
Is it fair that it hurts every time that I pop my claws, or that I have to wear fucking bandages around my knuckles so that people don't loose their shit when my claws make my hands bleed? You really want to talk about 'fair' to me?" he finished, giving everyone a little display of what happened when his claws came out. They all watched in silence as little beads of blood dripped down his vertical fist, staying for a second after being absorbed by the well-placed bandages. He quickly sheathed his claws, making the mesmerized group jump a little at the suddenness. He then turned on his heel and stalked off into the trees.
"Should I go after him, Professor?" Cyclops asked after a moment of awkward silence and nervous shuffling.
"No." Professor Xavier sighed. "Wolverine needs to be alone right now to work through some things."
Storm
Storm lay down quickly on her little blow-up mattress in her tent which she shared with the four other girls. She had stayed out much later than she was supposed to, as she rarely got the chance to be that alone with nature anymore, and all of the other girls had fallen asleep by the time she finally retired to her bed.
She tossed and turned for about half an hour while listening to Rogue snore. The sound filled the tent, and bounced off of the walls, causing the enclosed area to seem smaller than it really was. Storm's breathing quickened, and she suddenly became extremely aware of how constructing her sleeping bag was.
She forced it off of herself in a terrified panic, but was still plagued with the feeling of dread in the stomach. The wall seemed to grow smaller by the minute as she rocked back and forth. Storm felt around for the zipper to the tent door and unzipped it quickly, finally feeling as if she were able to breathe as she felt the cold breeze on her face. There was no chance that she would be able to sleep in there that night.
She stumbled to her feet in the pitch black, rubbing her feet over the cold grass, already coated with the early morning dew. She shrugged a sweater on and decided to take a walk. She followed a well-worn trail in a part of the woods near their campground, taking full advantage of the fact that no one was there to see her use the wind stream to fly a few feet off of the ground.
The further she went, the higher she moved off of the ground. Eventually, she was so high up that she could brush the top of the huge trees with her fingertips. She sped quickly along the wind stream for hours, an expression of pure joy on her face. As the sun began to peak above the horizon line, however, she made the difficult decision to loop back to where she vaguely remembered the campsite being.
She floated gracefully to the ground, her long white hair billowing behind her like a cloud. She turned around quickly, expecting to see nothing more than tree in the dim lighting, but instead was greeted by the brooding face of Wolverine.
"Hi, 'Ro." He grunted and attempted to move past her.
"Wolverine! Wait!" She called back, grabbing his arm to keep him planted in front of her. "Where are you going?"
"I dunno."
"What do you mean 'I dunno'? After the stunt you pulled this afternoon, everyone is very worried about you. I think you owe them an explanation of some kind as to why you never came back." Storm said, using crossed arms and her tapping foot to symbolize her displeasure with the teenage boy.
"I don't owe any of them anything! None of them every gave a shit about me, so why should I care about them?" He said, his voice beginning to raise.
"Wolverine, you're lashing out because of your anger. Maybe you don't see it, but all of your classmate care about you deeply."
"Yeah, like who?"
"Jean! Kurt! Kitty! They're all worried sick about you back at camp!"
Wolverine looked away, as if in thought, "why do you even care, 'Ro? This has nothing to do with you."
"You know, for someone with heightened senses, you sure can be blind sometimes, Logan." She sighed and slid her hand behind his neck, intertwining her fingers in his dark hair. She pulled him close and placed her lips softly of his, an action she had been denying herself for far too long.