Chapter Ten: Something Wrong
She was walking down the hallway. As she turned the corner, she heard someone talking. Despite the fact she knew who the voice belonged to, she still wanted to go inside the room. She saw the metal door.
As she opened it, she saw the small girl with brown hair. She was tired-looking, and the expression of shock crossed her face. Tears came to her eyes, and yet Rogue didn't understand. There was a flash of light, and suddenly, the girl was there on the ground, bleeding from the mouth and the head.
But Rogue didn't feel remorse. She kept beating her. And then Rogue decided it was time to take off the glove. As she reached her ungloved hand towards the girl, she did her best to crawl away, despite being in what seemed to be extreme pain. But Rogue was too quick and she put her ungloved hand on the girl's forehead. Suddenly she felt extreme power coursing through her body. She closed her eyes to fathom how amazing it was, and when she opened her eyes, the girl was laying there in front of her.
Her eyes were wide open and she was not moving. Rogue checked her pulse. She found there was no pulse, and that was when she realized the girl was dead, just as she had been told to do. What she had been made to do...
Rogue's head snapped up off the table. She realized she was still in her dress. Tears were dripping off her face. Looking around, she saw no one.
And then she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned around to see Kitty, who had changed into her pajamas, staring at her with concern.
"Is something wrong, Rogue?" Kitty asked. "I brought your pajamas down from our room if you wanted to change at all." She smiled, placed Rogue's pajamas on the table and then sat down in the chair next to her.
Rogue looked around and realized they were still in the ballroom. She smiled and took the pajamas. She then left for the bathroom, and when she returned, she saw Kitty still sitting there.
"Where's Alison?" Rogue asked.
"She's upstairs, asleep," Kitty answered. "But I want to know if you're okay. I saw you going through something. Was it a dream?"
Rogue sighed, knowing she couldn't keep it away from Kitty. Her little sister was someone she could trust with her secret.
"It was a nightmare," Rogue answered. "It would the second time I've had a nightmare like this. I just don't know if I want to explain all that it was about just yet, though. I'm sorry if you wanted to know, but I can't. Not right now."
"I understand," Kitty said. "I understand well, because you've helped me through something like this. Of course, that was a fear, not a nightmare, but aren't they sort of the same? Both your worst fear and nightmares have something that you're scared of, right?"
Rogue smiled and nodded.
They hugged. Then Kitty said, "Let's go to the kitchen and see if there's something for us to eat. I'm not too tired, so I'll stay awake for a small while more. Besides, you need something as a snack to help you forget the nightmare."
She got Rogue up out of her chair. Rogue realized the ballroom had been cleaned, all except for the tables. She guessed they would be soon, before school started later.
Then she realized that it was Saturday, and that yesterday had been Friday. She smiled, knowing that none of them were expected to wake up at 7:30 to get to one of their classes.
When she and Kitty entered the kitchen, they saw that Bobby was sitting at the main table, a bowl of ice cream in front of him. He smiled as he saw the two girls.
And then he saw the tear marks left on Rogue's face. He wondered why she'd been crying.
"Good early morning," he greeted, speaking softly so as to not wake up anyone else in the house. "I'm surprised the two of you are up right now. What's going on?"
"Just finished having some dreams," Kitty explained, saving Rogue from having to give the true version. "She and I just wanted to see if we could get something to eat before we went back to bed."
"Ah. I'm not the best when it comes to sleeping at night," he said. "You see, my parents only believe I'm at boarding school. They don't even know that I'm a mutant, and so I'm a little scared to know what would happen if I actually told them. It's hard, having to go to sleep every night, wondering if they would either accept and love you, or hate and ridicule you for your secret."
"My parents both know what I am," Rogue said. "My boyfriend Cody and I went upstairs into my room, and we shared our first kiss, and then it ended with me taking most of his life-force out of him. When I left, he was still in a coma. Now I'm careful when I'm around my friends. I want to make sure I don't hurt them or anything else."
"I can see where you're coming from," Bobby told her. "Being a mutant isn't the most fun job in the world."
"It's definitely not," Rogue agreed, wiping a tear from her left eye.
"What about you, Kitty?" Bobby asked. "Do your parents know that you're a mutant, or do they just think you're at a school for the gifted?"
"They know, and fortunately, they accept me for it," she said. "It's helped when I've lost the key to my house or if we've locked ourselves out of the car. But I'm scared of what my power could be used for if someone is able to take it away from me. Would they use it in the right way, or would they abuse it? That's my main question. After all, phasing is an ability that some criminals would love to have, I'm sure."
"But at least you're careful around those who might want to exploit your power," Rogue said to her. "Kitty's one of the best people I know. I even count her as my little sister now. You should've seen her taking out our enemy in the Danger Room. Of course, that wasn't real, but it was still really cool."
"Speaking of that, since you guys are now X-Men, what happened that one night when it was raining?" Bobby inquired. "I saw you guys come in, and Kitty seemed to be limping. Her teeth were also really chattering."
Kitty and Rogue were at first reluctant to say anything about the mission, but decided to give in and tell Bobby finally. After all, he was a friend, and he was someone they believed they could trust.
"Well, just keep it a secret, okay?" Kitty said. Bobby nodded. "While I was out there in the rain, I was able to take down a group of criminals planning to mug a girl around our age, and when I finished that up, I went to the docks. By then, I was already shivering, and it was hard for me to keep myself warm. But while I was there at the docks, I saw this thing down there, and it was much larger than a normal human should or would be. When I investigated, it turned out to be this huge robot. It realized I was a mutant, and then it attacked me. Rogue came just in time, but I was hit by the thing while trying to escape. I broke my ankle when I landed and then fell into the river. Rogue succeeded in taking the thing down, and then she was able to fish me out. Fortunately Logan was there, and so we got back here just before I froze to death."
Silence fell over them for a couple of moments. None of them knew what to say afterward. It was hard to follow up with something else.
But finally Rogue cleared her throat.
"What's your power, Bobby?" she asked. "What can you do?"
"Watch this," he said. He touched the table, and suddenly ice covered the place where he was touching. It would have spread more, but he took his hand off before it could.
"Wow," Kitty whispered underneath her breath. "That's amazing. It could come in handy for some situations."
"I don't think so," he admitted. "Maybe if someone is on fire or if someone needs their drink to be colder. But otherwise, I don't think it's that great of an ability. It's not as great as some of the others' abilities. I mean, Piotr, can become pure iron or something, and if anyone tries to punch him, their hand will automatically break. Or so I think. I'm not completely sure when it comes to that, because I won't be trying it anytime soon."
"Hey, it beats the fact I can take someone's life out of them," Rogue said. "It's hard for me to think of hurting one of my friends like that. Kitty's power is definitely cool, though. She can phase through almost anything."
"Really?" Bobby's face seemed to light up. "Could I see?"
Kitty was about to reply when Logan suddenly entered the kitchen. He didn't seem to be as tired as they would have thought him to be.
"Nice to see you here," he said. "Happy it's Saturday, aren't you? No classes, sleeping in..."
"You're not angry that we're here at this time of the morning?" Kitty asked. "My parents would have started yelling at me if I did this."
Logan laughed. "Your parents strict, Kitty? If so, I could always help them to not be. Want me to?"
"Nah. They're good the way they are, but sometimes I can't blame them. It could be worse," she explained. "There have been worse parents in the world, I'm pretty sure."
The four of them laughed a little. Logan looked over at the kitchen clock and saw it was 4 in the morning, earlier than he'd thought.
He opened his mouth to speak again, but then he heard a strange sound coming from somewhere in the living room. But then the sound came also from the back of the mansion. He had no idea what the sounds belonged to, but decided it would be good if he went to check.
"What's wrong?" Kitty asked.
"Something's making these really weird noises around the house," he told her. "I need to know what it is. I need to make sure it's not something that could be serious."
As he left the kitchen, Kitty, Bobby, and Rogue followed him. As they peeked around one of the corners of the living room and into the main foyer, they saw mean running across the grounds, speaking quietly, causing their words to be inaudible. They still hadn't seen the four who were watching them.
"What in the heck is going on?" Bobby asked quietly. "Who are these guys? What are they doing here?"
"It's worse than I could have thought," Logan said to them.
"What is it?" Kitty asked. Logan and Rogue saw the fear in her blue eyes.
"It's a raid," he said. "Someone's sent these guys after us. They've learned that this is a school for mutants. It's time to suit up and fight back. If they're here, they're going to try and capture some of us."
He concentrated, and the metal claws of his shot out from the middle of his knuckles.
"Does that hurt?" Rogue asked.
"All the time," he replied. He smiled grimly at the girls and Bobby. "This is where things get serious. No more kid stuff. Welcome to real life, unfortunately. It's time we showed these guys who's better."