A/N: YES!! I made it! I made it through the writer's block alive!! AAAhhahahahahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHHAAAhaa!

I said alive, I never said sane.

So yeah, sorry for the wait anyone who cares. Hopefully I'll get the next chapter out a bit faster now that I'm in the writing mood.

My eyes watered as I tried to stifle a yawn. How could someone possibly make the subject of superheroes THIS boring? Maybe that was the professor's second mutation. Instead of appealing to our young imaginations, he just assumed we were scientists of some kind and gave us all this technical jargon to work with. I couldn't even count bottles of beer in my head because he stopped me every time I got to 94. Eventually though, I think he just gave up on trying to make me listen and explained it to Aish instead, who, as it seemed, was actually paying attention.

I, personally, was shocked and horrified by her blatantly obvious respect for authority.

Later on she explained it all to me in WAY more understandable terms. The mutants in the mansion were called the X-men (according to Xavier they were NOT superheroes, just super powered vigilantes), and downstairs was basically the Bat Cave. Why Xavier couldn't have just said that and been done with it, I have NO idea.

When I asked her how she could possibly pay attention to something like that, she told me that she always found it better for her to listen in case of a pop quiz, because she couldn't lie her way out of it. So I guess she can be excused of her earlier behaviour.

It also seemed that we would have to spend one more night in the lounge room. Tomorrow someone would be sent to buy what was needed for our rooms. Apparently we'd be too busy to go with them. Oh joy.

We skipped dinner that night, still full from our forbidden snack fest, and went pretty much straight to bed. Probably a good thing considering that we were woken up at 6 the next day.

I've decided I'm really not a fan of vigilante work hours.

Badger-hat Lady (she was the one sent to wake us up) took one look at me, narrowed her eyes, stuck her nose in the air and turned towards Aish.

She lightly tossed to her some light grey sweatpants and a plain white tank top with a big 'X' in a circle on the chest in the same colour as the pants.

"Today's your orientation, Sugah. You'll need to be dressed properly if you want to survive it."

She seemed friendly enough when she was talking to her.

Her eyes turned to glare at me coldly once again, she threw an identical set of training clothes at me with more force than I would have thought possible, almost knocking me off my feet before she promptly left the room.

Aish stared at me wide eyed.

"What'd you do to get on her bad side?"

I blinked after the woman for another minute. I couldn't understand what had just happened.

"I haven't the foggiest."

I clumsily stumbled into the clothes, finding out very quickly that my limbs don't much like working at six in the morning. Aish was already dressed and waiting for me outside, so I only procrastinated for a couple of minutes before finally finding enough will power to open the door.

There she was, chatting to Jean. Jean who gave me an icy stare and seemed to be giving me the same sort of treatment as the badger lady. What the hell did I do?

Everything she said, while sounding like it was directed at both of us, was almost certainly being told only to Aisha. "Alright, we better get this tour on the road. I'm going shopping for your things with Scott in a little while. Come on."

SCOTT!! THAT was his name. I knew it started with s.

Jean led us around through the halls of the colossal building (Xavier may seem humble and modest, but he is SUCH a show off when it comes to money) showing us the Game room, kitchen (for Aisha's benefit), sub basement, staff offices, bathrooms, the rooms which would soon be ours, and a quick round about of the grounds, tennis court, swimming pool, etc. before finally jostling us to our doom which had been waiting patiently for us in the gym.

Standing before us were possibly one of the oddest collections of people I've seen, just falling short of my breakfast experience of the day before.

There were four people in the gym there with us. The exceptionally tall man who came dangerously close to stabbing Bobby in the eye, man with the pink eyes, short scary looking guy who smelled like cigars and was having a bad hair lifetime, and then another who I hadn't seen the day before. I tried not to goggle but it was no use. It wasn't the colour, I'd gotten over that after meeting Dr. McCoy. I think it was more to do with the arrowhead tail, pointed ears, three fingers on each hand and two toes for each foot, or maybe just the overall demonic appearance. I couldn't tear my eyes away until I noticed Jean was talking to us.

"Seven, Aisha; these are going to be your teachers while you're here. This is Peter,"

The tall man nodded.

"He'll be teaching Seven how to effectively use her natural body armour." What!? But I don't even have it yet! "Remy,"

He smirked in an amused way, speaking in an accent I couldn't place. "How do you do."

"He'll be working with Seven on her targeting skills and general projectile technique." Me again? "Logan,"

He grunted.

"He's our survival training and combat instructor. He'll be teaching both of you in basic fighting, tracking, and evading skills."

His eyes flicked to us for an instant and I could have sworn Aish edged just a little closer to me.

"And, finally Kurt."

The blue man gave a deep bow, tail waving about lazily behind him. "Guten Tag."

"He's not actually going to be one of your instructors, but we thought it best that you meet the school counselor before he disappears again." He smiled and let out a friendly chuckle.

"Well, if you have no further use for me, I will be going. It was a pleasure to meet you both."

And then he poofed away in a puff of smoke. Well, not really poofed, it was more like a sort of… bamf noise. After everyone had stopped coughing and gagging at the smell of sulfur and the last of the smoke had been waved away by frantic hands, I finally found myself able to complain freely.

"She gets one teacher and I get three? How's that fair?"

Mr. Logan (there was no way I was calling THAT dude by his first name) surprised me by laughing. Either that or growling, I can't quite be sure.

"You'll have three teachers, kid, but you'll still have four classes. You got two with me."

My mouth hung open with horror and Aish snickered quietly as she could beside me.

"Yes, Seven, Logan will also be teaching you how to trigger specific areas of voluntary bone growth."

I turned to her, appalled. "How's HE meant to help?"

It was a sad attempt at getting out of one extra class, but what can I say? I'm a sad person.

SNIKT!

I turned back to the man, eyes bulging out of my head. He had CLAWS. The dude had CLAWS.

"I might just know a bit more about it than you think."

He let his claws slide back under his skin, apparently satisfied by my tiny whimpering noise.

I gathered my scattered thoughts again as quickly as I could to work out another argument.

"And what happened to all the usual classes. Y'know, Maths, Science?"

"You won't be learning those things here. You've already been enrolled in a local school to take care of the rest of your mainstream education."

Great, another new school. This isn't going to go well. I only know how to interact with the creeps at my old school, not the general population.

"Well!" She said suddenly, clapping her hands and rubbing them together with a wide smile. "I have to be going now. See you all later this afternoon to find out how it went, ok?"

And she dashed out of the room, leaving us behind.

As though we were mirror images of each other, Aish and I both turned our heads slowly away from the door and back to our new tutors. The simultaneous sound of us swallowing practically echoed through the large empty space. Easy enough to say that we were slightly intimidated.

The fact that the teachers grinned at our reaction didn't help.

The rest of the day was a montage of different snippets of lessons. One moment Mr. LeBeau (Remy didn't feel right in my mouth) was making me toss cards into a hat and stressing to me the fact that his eyes weren't pink, they were "burning red", and the next thing I remember, Mr. Logan is trying to get me and Aish to spar.

His other lesson wasn't particularly helpful either. He kept telling me that it was "all about tensing the right muscles", only issue being that I didn't know which ones to tense.

Peter's class wasn't so bad. He understood that we couldn't do much until my bone plating had finally come through, so he explained to me what we'd be doing once it had, and talked me through some basic text book stuff.

By the end of the day, Mr. Logan's fitness training had us barely able to stand as we made our way VERY slowly out of the gym.

Jean nearly ran us over in the hallway.

"Oh," she said, eyes wide with surprise. "I was just coming to get you. You look like you've been working hard," she practically mocked, eyeing our sweat stains and reading the exhaustion in our faces.

I managed to scowl at her despite the immense pain my face muscles had to go through in order to achieve it.

"Your rooms are done if you want to come and see."

As we trudged along, finding it more than a little difficult to make it up the stairs and into the girls wing, she explained to us all the gory details of her day of shopping exploits.

The only part that caught my attention was the very part that worried me.

"I suggested it would be easier if we bought for one of you each, so I bought the things for your room, Aisha, and Scott bought the things for Seven's."

NEVER leave a rationally based man to shop for a teenage girl. EVER.

He'd bought everything he was meant to, I'll give him that. He'd just gone for cheapest possible without skimping on quality, resulting in the most mismatched bedroom I've ever seen. Light yellow blankets, with a dark dirty purple coloured pillow, all to match up with mint green walls.

I wasn't quite sure whether I should laugh or burst into tears, so I just remained in a stunned silence until I saw the computer. Jean must have seen me momentarily light up, because instantly she spoke.

"Charles provides a computer for all of the younger residents. For homework purposes mostly." I turned just in time to see her hiding a malicious smirk. "Don't worry; we got one of the younger recruits – Kitty – to have a fiddle with it. Block out anything that could be distracting to your work."

I almost did burst into tears after that.

"Why?" I whispered. "Why are you punishing me?"

Jean smiled sweetly.

"Simple." She turned to leave and show Aish her room, calling back to me dramatically as she walked down the corridor. "You told Scott where our stash was."