sorry for the break guys! i wrote this in about an hour. i know it sucks, but i just needed to pound it out so that we could move on. since i'm leaving in a few days, i'm trying to get y'all to a cliff hanger point before i leave:D

just a quick update before i go on vacation : D

thanks to everyone who read and reviewed! How the previous magic that happened in the previous chapter happened will be explained soon:D

DISCLAIMER: Still don't own X-Men. /

note: Aura is age 20. Jake and Rogue are 19.Gambit is 21.Warren is 23.

"AH!?!?!" Aura screamed, and then shut the door. Panting, she tried to block the image that she had just seen out of her mind. Rogue...and Gambit...stuck together like two kids bathing in glue. "Where the bloody hell did that come from?!" She asked herself. A few days ago they were at each other's throats.

"Rogue?!" She called through the door. "C'mon, everyone's tearing each other up downstairs! We need you guys!"

"What?!" Rogue opened the door, righting her hair. "What do ya mean?!"

"They're beating up on one another because Pietro is retarded." She said with a serious face. Aura took in the sight of her friend, looking frenzied and disheveled. There seemed to be nothing askew, no buttons undone, no stretched clothes, except for a slight bunching of her shirt on the side. She would ask questions later, because at the moment they were all in desperate need of veteran X-Men in the civil rumble going on downstairs.

Rogue sprinted with Gambit and Aura out of the elevator and into the lobby. Scott was laying unconscious on the ground with Jean tending to him, and the fighting was still going on.

The-old-Brotherhood kids were hurling chairs and tables from the huge lobby to the far end, away from where Rogue and Gambit were standing, to hit the X-Men and the Acolytes. "What the hell is goin' on!?" Rogue screamed as she screeched to a halt on the beautiful black marble floors. It was like a game of dodge ball that was meant to kill. Rogue went and stood in the middle of the wall, right along the boundary lines of it all. She and the other two must have been off of the game's radar, because they weren't being targeted. Rogue sat down in a chair, feeling the lumpy cushion give under her wait.

"The only way to stop 'em is ta let 'em were themselves out. They can't last much longer." Rogue said sighingly. Only to narrowly avoid being hit in the head with shards of glass from an exploding vase.

Fuming, she jumped up. She put her hands on the side of the chair that she was just sitting in and let her instincts take over. Where to throw it? Who at? I can't get the attention of one, the other will kill 'em! What the hell do I do?! She felt her hands start to burn and tingle with a new sensation.

She didn't question it. She went with the flow. Her instincts were telling her to use her new power to her advantage. And it would be an end all for these nit-witted kids.

Gambit could see the chair start to glow red and fume pink as she took it down from over her head and set it on the floor. "ROGUE! What are you doing?!" Kitty screamed.

"THROW IT AT ZEM!" Kurt added.

Rogue scowled and shook her head. What was her team becoming? Ever since she had been appointed a team leader of the blue-squad, she'd felt like they were really starting to be a team. After the world nearly ended, the kids from the Brotherhood (or at least most of them), felt it in their best interests to join up with the X-Men. Rogue didn't question their personal motives or what they needed to gain from being in her team, she just knew that she would never run her team like Scott ran his. And she'd done a damn fine good job. Blue Squad was a democracy when it came to decisions. Wanda, Pyro, Bobby, Amara, and...Tabby... were all versions of themselves that suited the group oriented style of Rogue's leadership. She knew that each of them, so close to her in age, would probably not be up for a dictatorship, so she gave them power to control the way the team was run. But Rogue still knew how to command the respect and undivided attention of every X-Man in the building.

Rogue kicked the charged chair into the dead center of the room. She heard Gambit swear and shout "HIT 'DE DECK!" Apparently they listened. Rogue was the only one left standing after it exploded in a flurry of pinks, reds, purples, and flying wooden shrapnel with stuffing strewn about. She wasn't going to ask questions about how she got Gambit's powers without killing him at the moment.

"X-Men." She screamed at the Brotherhood side.

"Fall. In." At the Xavier's kids.

"All of you." At the floor.

Rogue waited for everyone to stand in front of her, powered down, calm, and listening.

She couldn't believe the utter chaos that she just witnessed. The people that she had taken so much pride in training and fighting with were acting like they were fresh off the newb train. Untrained. No tact. Even less manners. They were worse than those Fantastic Four kids. She'd met Johnny Storm, knew how bad he was, and now she was forced to admit that her team was worse.

Taking a deep breath and raggedly letting it out she asked, "Anyone mind tellin' me what the hell happened?"

Aura could hear the strain in her voice as she tried not to tear someone's head off. Rogue was so scary ever since she'd been put into the leadership position. When she got angry, she got angry. Aura thought that it was partially from being around Wolverine for so long.

When no one stepped forward to explain, Rogue cast a death glare that would have made her teenage self proud around the lines. Hands on her hips, she paced, waiting for someone to give her an answer. A minute passed. Then two, then five. And still not one of them had moved a muscle. The Brotherhood looked down trodened as they glanced angrily around the room, but cautious not to make eye contact with her. The Xavier's kids knew that they should be ashamed, and the looks on their face told everyone that they were.

"Kitty, thank you for volunteering." Rogue said, eyes landing spitefully on her old room mate. The young brunette glared at her. "Rogue..." She said almost warningly. "Don't make me do this."

Rogue was so very close to loosing her temper and simply killing them all. In addition to loosing two of her friends, the ones that stood before her now were all idiots. Rogue stopped in front of her to whisper,

"If ya didn't want to do this, Kit, y'all shouldn't have done that." She said motioning behind her to the mess that the lobby was.

"It was Pietro." Kitty blurted out. Quicksilver straightened from his slumping state to mutter, "Bitch!". Rogue sent him his own despising look and told him to shut it. "What about him?" She asked, turning back to Kitty.

"He was...he was talking about how he never liked Evan anyways. How he was thankful that he's...gone. Bobby told him to shut up. And he didn't. And...things just got out of hand. I'm sorry, Rogue. We never should have let it get this far." Kitty said, shaking her head. She too had the same sort of disappointment that Rogue had in her class. They were had become Xavier's dream. They were true X-Men.

Or so she thought.

Rogue knew that she would be forever hated for this, but it was what she had to do as a leader. With no referees at this school, the entire place would fall apart. Things were already horrible because Xavier and Ororo were missing in action and Logan hadn't been seen since the attack. The only one over the age of thirty left was Dr. McCoy, and he was not the headmaster type.

"I can't believe all of you. I ain't gonna preach. I ain't gonna lecture. I just want y'all to know that this is possibly the final moments of Xavier's dream. It just might have ended here with all of you."

Gambit knew what Rogue was talking about. He could tell that she wanted to scream at them, say a flurry of mean and hurtful things that all were true. He knew that because the X-Men had turned on themselves, with no one to sit there and guide them, they just might all be doomed. What would they do when their leaders were dead? When Xavier passed on, Magneto was killed, and their mentors were massacred because they couldn't get their act together? Gambit even found himself shaking his head.

He might not be a team player, but at least he knew what was proper team ettiuqite. If these kids knew it, they sure knew how to hide it well.

"Clean this up, please." She asked, sullen, before leaving the room.