I know, I suck. And this is also shorter than I've been requiring of these chapters. Which makes me really sad, but I'm so damn stuck that I'll go with anything.
Please review.
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Raul felt himself hit the floor, but he remained thoroughly dazed until he noticed the warm stickiness oozing over his upper lip. Horror suddenly struck him, thrashing its way up his spine and making his veins freeze. Snapping his blurred eyes open, the panicked boy whipped a hand to cover his face, snatching at the strap to his bag and almost falling in his frantic rush. The sound of confusion followed him towards the washroom, and he hoped with all his might that he his blood hadn't made contact with any of them or their clothes. Or his clothes, for that matter. Or the floor.
Skidding into the boy's washroom, Raul forced his aching body to move faster, hissing at the droplets of blood that had started dripping from his hand. He yanked up the faucet at the first sink he reached, running the water over his hands desperately. Blinking, Raul managed to gain most of his sight back only to realize that he wasn't alone in the washroom. Swearing to himself, he cupped his hands and watched blood drip into the water that pooled there. Raising it to his face he allowed the blood to dissolve away the water, thus dissolving itself in the process. He repeated this several times before he was satisfied his body's healing had taken care of it, then lifted his head to meet the eyes of the wreck that stared back through the mirror. His hair was an absolute mess, and his eyes were bloodshot. Other than that though, all signs of the beating he had received had disappeared.
"Whoa." He heard off to his left, and he turned to face the source of the sound, leaning on the counter to keep himself from shaking. Crouching on top of the counter beyond the next sink over was the small, greasy boy from before, his eyes wide as he leaned slightly towards Raul. "How'd ya do that, yo?"
Raul blinked then turned away quickly, hurriedly checking his clothes for holes burnt through them. "I don't know what you're talking about." He was pleased to find that none had appeared.
"Whoa!" He heard the frog-like boy exclaim again, and he shifted his eyes over to realize that the boy was examining a splatter-pattern of holes burned deep into the counter in from of the sink he had been using. "That means that you're one too, hey? Man, the way that gash healed was pretty sweet." He continued, poking at the designs with a cautious fingertip.
Raul narrowed his eyes, but couldn't think of anything to say. Rubbing his face with his hands, he let himself sigh.
"Don't worry dawg. I'm like that too." Raul dropped his hands from his face and watched as the scrawny boy tilted his head back and a long, dark green-ish solid streak shot from his mouth, seemed to touch an invisible wall in mid-air, then retreated back. "Six-foot prehensile tongue, yo." He said proudly, and Raul instantly relaxed. He let his eyes meet the other boy's yellowy-green ones.
"The name's Raul Sedlak. You?" Raul asked, stepping back to the counter beside the boy and trying to work his hair back to the perfection it had held before he had gone through the lengthy beating.
"Todd Tolansky, the Toad. Part of the Brotherhood, who you'd be smart to avoid."
"Oh. Is that the gang-thing that the Lance Alvers guy is in?" He asked as he cracked his knuckles absently, the light pops sounding surprisingly less intimidating than Duncan's had.
'Ya know Lance? Yeah. He's kinda like the leader of our group, yo." Todd flashed him a yellow grin and hopped to the floor, and Raul was glad the frog-boy hadn't seen the involuntary shudder of disgust the expression had caused.
"Kitty introduced me to him." He replied as he managed to flatten his bangs to the point that they looked barely presentable. Todd stood from his crouch beside him, and Raul realized how shockingly short he was. The brunette chuckled lightly.
"Oooh, so you know his pretty little Kitty. That must mean you're part of those X-Geeks, hey?"
Raul nodded to the mirror, then touched the corner of his right eye out of habit, examining the gold that lined his pupil and flecked out into the midst of the green. He felt general fondness towards the eye despite his utter hatred for it, and the horror it had caused him.
"Thanks for savin' me back there, yo. Sorry you had to, y'know, get hurt an' all."
"Apparently the jocks here don't like pretty boys." Raul said softly as he turned and shouldered his bag, mentally kicking himself in the face for losing his class list. "It was nice meeting you, Todd. I'll see you around."
Raul was just leaving the washroom when the bell for lunch rang, and he swore inwardly again. He had missed his second class completely, and that most likely wouldn't go over well with his teacher. Just as the sound stopped he saw Rogue emerge amongst the rush of people coming out of the library across from the washroom, and he weaved his way around people to fall in beside her.
Rogue managed to not comment on his appearance, which he was glad for. Either she managed to not comment, or it wasn't as bad as he thought it was, but he stuck with the first. They broke off from the main crown and headed to the hallway that was home to Rogue's locker, which was where he could see Kurt and Evan messing around laughing.
The group sat around chatting for several minutes before all of them headed off towards the cafeteria, where Raul noted that Scott already had a table secured. He found himself standing a bit away from the others, but he didn't mind, since he didn't like being in tight groups much. Suddenly he was shoved from behind and he whipped around, his heart leaping to his throat as Duncan cracked his knuckles in front of him. They just wouldn't leave him alone, would they?
"Hey faggy." Duncan said coldly, and Raul felt his heart, which was currently still lodged in his throat, turn to solid stone and begin it's slow descent to the very bottom of his stomach, where it sat in a very noticeable lump.
"Duncan!" He heard a voice he could link to Jean say from behind the thick blonde, and Duncan instantly dropped his hands to his pockets.
"Heya Jean! I was just sa-" He said as he turned to face her, but he cut off at the glare she was giving him.
"Don't you 'Hey Jean!' me! If I hear one word about you causing trouble for Raul, I'll be sure that you get a chance to see me angry." Jean threatened, her hands on her hips and her eyes glowing dangerously. Duncan tried to mutter something by way of apology, but she sent him away and he shuffled off to the table where all his football buddies were eating.
Raul smiled at her weakly, and hoped that his heart would turn back from stone so that it could beat and supply his body's cells with oxygen. "Thanks Jean." He said just as weakly.
"Was he giving you trouble?" She asked him kindly, and Raul laughed nervously.
"He and his buddies beat me half to death earlier, and I managed to lose my class list and miss my second class completely." He confessed awkwardly, averting his eyes and staring at the back of a random girl's head.
Jean made a small sound, and he could almost feel the rage radiating off of her. "I am so going to give him a talking to later." She said as she took her seat beside Scott, who raised an eyebrow at her.
Raul flopped into the chair between Kurt and Rogue he assumed Kurt had saved for him, closing his eyes and ignoring all the thoughts of food his stomach was requesting.
Musing absently, the mutant was thankful that his body was fast to take care of injuries and that he rarely got sore. Even then, when he did on the rare occasion, it wasn't for longer than a day at most, and he had never once woken up in pain.
A loud crash across the room caused the boy's eyelids to flutter open; his body in turn agreeing that sitting up would be the best following course of action. Across the room a large boy had thrown a table to the side, his face twisted in fury and a platter of food splattered across his chest. Raul watched with wide eyes as the huge blonde ripped a chair up off the floor and threw it at the offending group of teenagers, the shocked innocents caught in the wave of anger leaping to hide under tables and dive out of the way.
Suddenly the huge blonde was pelted in the back of the head with a glob off food, and his face reddened more in response. Scooping up an entire platter's worth of food off a table, the boy flung it in the general direction that the glob had come from, and ended up hitting a preppy looking girl square in the face. The boy sitting beside her, dressed in a now not-so-new looking red sweater, leapt up on to the table.
"FOOD FIIIGHHT!!" He cried at the top of his lungs, whipping a full platter Frisbee-style and leaping behind the table in the same motion to avoid the wave of food that rained off it.
Raul made a sound resembling a shriek as a food platter landed food-down on the X-Table, his swift falling-out-of-his-chair-backwards skills saving him from the mess that resulted. Rolling away from the downed chair, Raul made another sound of surprise as Kurt, who had somehow managed to end up crouching beside him, got a full pitcher of the Strawberry Kiwi juice the next table over had been drinking dumped over his head. Kurt shrieked something in German and sprawled backwards, shaking his head dramatically and letting out a rather long stream of foreign words Raul assumed resembled 'fuck', 'damn', 'bitch' and several other English words commonly used by teenagers. The attacker,- a girl with a too-big grin, freckles, and blonde braided pigtails,- flashed a toothy grin at Kurt, blushed a bright red, and scampered away as though she hadn't just smashed the blue-haired boy's entire emotional being completely to bits.
"Man down!" Scott cried playfully as he rolled warrior style and straightened in a defensive crouch in front of Kurt.
'This is madness!" Rogue said from where she sat crouched behind the feeble leg of their table.
The slightly shaken mutant rubbed the juice from his eyes and heaved himself to his feet, planting a hand heavily on Scott's shoulder and acting as though gravely wounded. Lifting his head high, Kurt raised a clenched fist into the air dramatically.
"THIS… IS… SPAARRTTAAA!!" The German cried in a surprisingly epic voice, pounding his fist on his chest.
Laughing lightly, Raul ducked as a glob of something that looked like it had once been spaghetti whirled past his head. His laughter grew much louder, though, when Kurt (who was still in a rather triumphant pose) was hit in the face by a well-thrown glob of food. Wiping the whatever-it-was out of his eyes, Kurt hissed something furiously and trudged towards the cafeteria doors that led outside, his movie-inspired lust for battle dampened considerably.
Rising to his feet, Raul decided to follow the miserable-looking German, slightly saddened by the way Kurt walked without care towards the food flying around him. Somehow managing to continue avoiding being hit by the once-edible projectiles, the pale boy slipped out the door and found himself instantly bombarded by pelting rain.
"Verflucht noch mal…" Kurt sighed as Raul walked out to stand beside him. "Now my fur is wet, full of food and sticking together everywhere…"
"'Port back to the Institute and take a quick shower?" Raul offered, stuffing his hands into his pockets. This rain was taking the straightening out of his bangs, and Raul swore he could feel the gel mixing with the rain and dribbling down the back of his neck. At that very moment in time, he was sure he was utterly miserable. Though, for no reason he could think of, he felt like grinning and twirling in the rain like an idiot. Raul had always disliked getting wet.
"I'll be late for class if I do…" The furry mutant said, examining himself and looking incredibly strange because of his image inducer.
"It's either that or go for the rest of the day with bits of gross shit clumping your fur together, though." Raul replied, scuffing his foot at the wet grass.
"I guess you're right…" Kurt said again, flashing him a tiny smile. Looking around, Kurt back against the wall and upon deciding that no one was around disappeared in a small puff of sulfurous smoke.
Shaking the water from his hair, Raul decided to walk around the school and re-enter through the front doors, still slightly afraid of the chaos of the food fight. His hands were still shoved in his pockets, he realized as he lifted his arm to shield his eyes from the rain. Walking with his head down, Raul wondered faintly where the other X-men had gotten to, then he shifted off to assume that they had probably fled into the halls rather than outside into the torrential downpour.
