ii.

Not that she was surprised, but Mystique's plans while at Xavier's were moving steadily along. For all its intents and purposes, it was almost embarrassing how easy it was for her to infiltrate, but now that she was here, it was time for her to acquire what she came for and get the hell out of Dodge before Charles, Erik, or one of the students got too suspicious about "the new girl."

For the most part, Mystique kept to herself, as usual. She attended classes just like any other student, although it was much more difficult to stay awake or alternatively, not talk back when the history that was being taught was completely inaccurate when compared to what she'd seen or read in newspapers at the exact time of certain events. She almost enjoyed her science class, but that was only because she could personally witness Laura honing her skills little by little. Most of the time, something ended up on fire or decayed until it was nothing but dust in her hands, which infuriated Laura, but it pleased Mystique. One day she'd get it right, but at present Laura's focus was always on Scott Summers, the guy everyone seemed to like but Mystique.

She couldn't remember what it was like to fawn over someone like that; she wondered if she'd ever done it at all, but every time she watched Laura attempt to say hello or smile at Scott only for him to ignore her because he was clearly only interested in Jean, a sharp flame singed up her spine and later, Mystique had to bite her tongue while Laura went on and on about what a great guy he was. She was not cut out for this high school shit and as every day passed, Mystique was losing her patience.

The following day, Raven watched Erik speak to her roommate Laura, from her bedroom window. Laura wore tall black boots, skinny dark jeans, a deep purple knit sweater, and a black scarf wrapped around her neck that trailed down her back. Glancing down at herself, Mystique focused, shifted her look to include similar apparel, and looked out the window again.

After a short while, Laura shyly waved goodbye to Erik and walked to a bench in the courtyard with a book in hand to read before lunch. Raven was already on her way outside.

As Erik walked up the stairs to return indoors, Raven popped up onto the railing of the fence, stalling Erik's progress. "Good morning," she chirped, crossing her legs.

Erik chuckled, "Morning? It's almost noon. You missed all of your morning classes. Charles won't be pleased," he reprimanded, wagging his finger at her.

"I overslept." Raven shrugged.

"You don't say," Erik said, tapping his index finger against his cheek, assuming she hadn't, but appeasing his young recruit anyway. "I thought that you'd high tail it out of here after a day or so."

"Trying to get rid of me already?" she teased.

"No," he laughed, "you just don't seem the type to stay in one place for long." He thought aloud, fishing for a little history. Coming up empty, he continued, "I'm pleased that you've elected to stay with us, Raven."

"Yeah, well…we'll see," Raven said. Turning her attention, Raven watched Laura read beneath a vibrantly colored red maple tree. "Sorry I was so defensive when we met. It's just who I am; hope you didn't take it personally."

"My dear, I expected it." He looked down the bridge of his nose at her.

Raven glanced over to her friend again, squinting her yellow eyes and watching her intently.

"You've become fond of her," Erik stated.

"Huh?" Raven asked, playing dumb.

"Laura. Your roommate. She's quite talented, you know. Very immature in using her gifts, but in time…" he said, his voice trailing off. He seemed as enamored in Laura as Mystique and this in turn piqued Mystique's curiosity even more.

As she gazed at the young woman, Laura looked up from her book and caught Raven's eyes. Raven smiled and waved at her, and Laura returned the greeting, but shyly looked back down to her book, pretending to read for a moment before glancing up at Raven once more. Raven snickered to herself.

"…it's been a long journey for her, but I feel confident that's she'll excel here with us," Erik finished, which had Raven wondering how long he'd been talking about Laura while she was zoned out, exchanging glances with her.

"That's a shame," Raven said automatically, assuming the story was a depressing one, but still only half-listening as Laura got up from the bench and came walking towards her. "It's been real," Raven said patting Erik's shoulder before using it to hop off the fence then walking over to meet with Laura.

"Don't forget…later today," he called before turning away, making his way up the stairs and into the mansion.

Behind his back, Mystique rolled her eyes at the reminder. At Erik's insistence, she'd agreed to meet with Charles to discuss their objectives while at the school, as well as her personal observations of events and difficulties she experienced when changing form. The Professor was pleased with everything she'd told him, but said he would want to meet with her again, but this time with Erik so that he could aid in her discoveries and education. Not at all wanting to please Erik or the Professor, but needing a near constant diversion for the two of them, she agreed to comply.

But later that afternoon, Raven did not show up for her session. She was so close to leaving the mansion and didn't have time to play teenage apprentice any longer. Instead, Mystique hid out as Jean in the library doing research until dark. Then, she wandered from her room, down the hall, through the library, and towards one of the school's laboratories. Once she reached the door, however, she heard someone nearby.

Instinctively, Raven turned the corner, concealed herself in the darkness, and closed her eyes, waiting for the intruder to pass. She feared that it was Charles. She'd been at the school longer than she'd expected so surely he would start to become suspicious of her and use his telepathy to discover her true identity. When they walked on, Mystique opened her eyes that lit up like smoldering embers in the darkness, and walked away from the laboratory to go after them. Following the girl down the metallic pathway, Mystique immediately recognized the heavy black boots, dark purple sweater, and black scarf belonging to none other than Laura.

Mystique silently trailed Laura's sluggish tiptoeing until she finally decided to make her presence known. "Looking for trouble?" Raven asked, rapidly shifting her form to the one Laura was familiar with.

Laura nearly jumped out of her skin and shrieked in surprise before covering her mouth and turning to face Raven. "You scared me," she said with her slight Northeastern accent. Removing her hand from over her mouth, she smacked Raven's arm with it.

"Sorry," Raven said lightheartedly while taking a cautious step closer to the pretty girl whom she'd been hopelessly curious about since her arrival.

"It's all right," Laura answered with a nervous smile. "I was looking for you."

"You mean you were following me," Raven alleged with a smirk.

"What? No! Well, I mean, yeah, kinda, but only so I could–" Laura paused. "Wait. You're one to talk," she accused, turning the tables on Raven. "You seem to turn up everywhere I am nowadays. How long have you been following me?"

"Just today? Or…" Raven joked, neither confirming nor denying the fact that she'd been interested in Laura since she'd arrived at the mansion. Laura laughed at Raven's comment.

The flash of gold in Raven's eyes as she spoke made Laura blush and her stomach twinge in a way that she hadn't felt since she'd first seen Scott roughhousing with a couple of the other guys a few months ago. It made her nervous and she unconsciously covered her smile with her hand.

"So now that you've found me, what do you intend to do about it?" Raven asked, slinking around Laura, sizing her up.

Laura's stomach flipped again in the silent hallway and she folded her arms over her chest defensively. "I guess I didn't have much of a plan. But you do," she indicated with a nod. "What are you doing down here?"

"I couldn't sleep," Raven replied.

"Uh huh," Laura said, thinking for a moment. "You know they say you're the one behind the fire at the rally last week. Is that true?"

"Maybe," Raven answered, looking Laura dead in the eye. "Why?"

"Because if it was, you might be my hero."

"That so?" Raven laughed while the Mystique underneath celebrated in silence.

"Maybe," Laura quipped. "Come on, I want to show you something."

Moments later, Laura led Raven back to the laboratory that was commonly used for the biology and chemistry classes. "Wow, a lab. Never seen one of these before," Raven said.

"Not like this one you haven't," she declared, trying the door but quickly finding it was locked. "Shoulda figured this place would be locked up like a vault."

Spinning a ring of keys around her index finger then snatching them back into her fist like a revolver, Raven snickered as she bumped Laura aside with her hip.

"Where did you get those?"

"Can't tell you," she said, sliding one of the keys into the lock. "Then it wouldn't be a secret." She winked, opening the door for them and allowing Laura to enter first.

"It was you, wasn't it? I knew it," she said, taking a step into the room.

Laura certainly knew better than to break into a school laboratory after hours, but she also couldn't argue when the possibility of crossing boundaries came up. Everyone at school was so obsequious and predictable, but Raven was anything but! And while Laura did her best to please the Professor and her other mentors, she enjoyed bending an occasional rule and Raven was the perfect friend to do it with.

"Okay, girl, what ya got?" Raven asked, leaning against one of the blacktopped laboratory tables.

"Hmmm…" Laura considered, rubbing her hands together and looking around the room. "Hand me that, yeah?" she asked, pointing behind Raven where a small aloe plant rested on the shelf.

Taking the plant into her blue hands, Raven held it out for Laura, who enclosed her hands over the thick, gooey leaves then closed her eyes. When she reopened both, the soil and aloe had morphed into a cluster of green grapes.

Amazed, Mystique raised her brows and took the fruit into her hands. "That doesn't even seem possible," she thought aloud, plucking one of the fruits from the vine. "Is it real or is just a glamour?"

"It's real. Taste it," Laura invited her friend, her eyes positively radiant with pride.

Though typically wary, Mystique ate the grape and was surprised by just how perfectly ripe and flavorful it was. "That's…incredible!" she exclaimed while doing her best to hide her utter enthusiasm. It was such a simple little trick, but the ways it could be used were tantalizing. With more exploration, she could shift and break building foundations, create organic toxins, compromise establishments simply by turning the flourishing into decay. "How did you learn to control it?" she asked, setting the grapes aside, but continuing to eat them one at a time.

"I owe everything to Charles," she explained. "He said if I steadied my hands just so and closed my eyes so that my focus was more directed towards my goal, that one day, I could create just about anything! Isn't that amazing?"

"It's...spectacular," Raven said, her voice drifting into a softer and seductive tone. She was hungry for the potential in this mutant. She'd heard rumors about her, but doubted their truth. Now she'd just witnessed the girl create something that she could just as easily destroy. Her untapped talents were overwhelming and Mystique would stop at nothing to recruit her into her underground movement against the human-run government and their never-ending ploys to destroy the mutant race. Having been abandoned at Xavier's the second her eyes changed color by her ignorant parents, surely the girl held more than her fair share of resentment. It would almost be too easy to manipulate that energy and show Laura how her gifts could truly be used for the betterment of mutants everywhere, not just in upstate New York.

Jumping up onto the lab table and leaning back onto her hands, Laura hesitated for a moment, taken aback by the change in Raven's tone and strange curiosity she saw in her eyes now.

She watched Raven as she ate the grapes, still wondering where she came from. Xavier's was an open-door institute, and yet, Raven's door was not only closed, but locked and bolted shut. As friendly and sometimes flirtatious as Raven could be, she wasn't forthcoming about any information about herself, which only made Laura all the more curious about her. She wanted to get to know this amazing mutant, wanted to know what it was like to be able to become anyone. Laura thought the best way to try would be to turn the conversation onto Raven, but she was never so great with broaching delicate subjects.

"All right, your turn," Laura said, shoving her friend's shoulder lightly.

"For what?" Raven asked, hopping up onto the table to sit beside her.

"Oh come on. Can you really look and sound like anyone?" Laura asked, leaning forward expectantly.

"Yes," Raven replied.

"That's so rad," she sighed, in awe.

"It can be," Raven said, looking down at her smooth blue hands. "But then I start to wonder things. Like who I really am and who my friends really like…me or who they want me to be," she said with a shrug.

"What do you mean? I like you," Laura said, following Raven's eyes down to her hands and taking one into her own, and smiling at the pretty contrast they made intertwined.

Mystique pretended to be bashful and hid her smile from Laura. "Thanks," she said quietly. "But I think you'd like me more if I were someone else," she said, shifting her form into Scott Summers.

Laura gasped and let go of Raven's hand, unable to process how effortlessly her friend could shimmer into a new figure. She couldn't speak her wonderment and when Scott's hand reached over and took hers into his, Laura felt the air in her lungs completely escape her. Just like Raven had done in inspecting the grapes, Laura took in the reflection of her purple eyes in his crimson glasses, the way his face felt against the back of her fingers, and the rippling strength she felt as she ran her hand down his arm.

"This is unreal. Say something," Laura asked, tentative.

"Anything?" Raven asked through Scott's voice and when Laura's eyes widened even more, Raven shifted closer to her and gently reached her hand around the back of Laura's neck. "Do you want to kiss me?" She asked through Scott's voice again, knowing the answer before she'd even shifted forms.

Knowing it was fake, but still helpless from the illusion of Scott showing interest in her, Laura cast all thought aside, closed her eyes, and allowed herself to be drawn into a kiss. Laura reveled in the moment of her dreams becoming a pseudo-reality and saved each and every sensation to memory. She cupped Scott's face in both of her hands and kissed him again.

When their kiss deepened even further and Laura couldn't stop herself from pushing her tongue into Raven's mouth just to see how real this could be, Raven abruptly pulled away and shifted back to "herself." "I think you get the point," she said, pretending to be disappointed.

Embarrassed that she'd lost herself to a delusion so easily, Laura couldn't bear to look Raven in the eyes now that she was a girl again. What did this mean? She wasn't sure, but she did suddenly understand what Raven had meant earlier by everyone preferring her as someone else…but was that really true? Deep down, Laura knew she was kissing Raven and not Scott, but she couldn't clear her mind enough to think let alone speak.

"Maybe we should get back to the room," Laura suggested, glancing over at Raven who hadn't budged from the table.

"Yeah. Maybe," Raven sulked, quietly enjoying the charade. She couldn't wait to get out of this place, but Laura's prying and curiosity told her Laura might not be there for too much longer, either.