Jake lay awake in his bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was barely five a.m. yet he was wide awake and not tired in the slightest. In truth he never slept well, his dreams made doing so hard. Mark was snoring quietly on the other side of the room, seemingly content. Jake looked over and studied his roommate. Jake found something stirring in him, it was a strange and unfamiliar feeling and he suppressed it. Something was wrong with him, he was sure of it. He had strange feelings for certain friends, male friends, that he was thought were not natural.

Kitchie looked again at Mark sleeping soundly. The boy was easily Jake's best friend. The two never had any problems with one another, but Jake felt something more. He couldn't help but admit he liked Marks eyes, a beautiful shade of dark blue, almost black. His soft hair fell down to just above his shoulders and would fall across his handsome face. His nose was the perfect length and width compared the rest of his features, with full light red lips, and thin cheeks. He was well built, at least more so than Jake was. He seemed to be smiling in his sleep, and Jake found himself smiling too. Jake sat up, deciding it was best to try and do something rather than lying in bed with nothing but his thoughts.

He stood up and stretched out as quietly as possible before tiptoeing into the bathroom. It was a large room with marble and stone fixtures and shiny steel fittings. Jake rinsed his face in the sink basin before stripping off his pajama bottoms and loose shirt. He stepped into the shower and washed himself with his lemon scented soap and shampoo under lukewarm water. Afterwards he wrapped a towel round himself and headed back into his room and raided his wardrobe for something decent. He settled on a tight fitting red T-shirt, skinny jeans, and blue trainers. Finally he took the time to style his hair, spiking it upwards with his hair gel in front of a mirror. Once he was happy, he left the room and entered the deserted corridor outside.

The quiet sound of snoring echoed down the dark hall. It was still dark outside and so Jake had to navigate his way down the corridor unable to see clearly. The halls were deserted; he was often the first one up in the morning. He'd take a seat in the kitchen and wait for the other early risers. Caim was often one of them and it was at this time they would have their most interesting conversations. As it was when Jake wasn't on a sugar high and Caim was too groggy to be self conscious. Descending a flight of stairs, he found that the door to the kitchen door was already open and the light was on. Intrigued he peaked round the corner.

He heard voices long before he saw anyone, two distinct voices, a man and a woman's. They spoke in hushed voices due to the fact they didn't think anyone was listening, suggesting they were talking about something Jake shouldn't hear. But curiosity got the better of him and he closed in further to try and hear what was being said. Inside the room the man and woman sat around the far end of the table. Jake recognized the woman: she was Natasha Dugan, his X-Men teacher. The woman was in her mid twenties with long brown hair that was tied back into a ponytail. She wasn't wearing her usual smart clothing; instead she wore a pair of jeans and a sweater over a T-shirt. Jake didn't recognize the man, He was covered in head to toe in blue fur and he was heavily built with feline facial features, sharp teeth and claws.

"- if she is involved then it will mean's that our suspicions are correct," the man said.

"But why" Mrs. Dugan replied. "It doesn't make sense for Mystique join with-" A look from the man told her not to say anymore.

"Alas, it seems we are not having this conversation in private any longer," he said before peering round and looking directly at the boy at the door. Surprised, Jake stepped back and tripped over his own feet and fell hard onto his rump. He let out a sharp cry as sudden pain shot up his spine, before looking up and finding a furry blue hand hovering above his head. He took it and found himself lifted up without any effort. He was placed gently on his feet and was greeted by a smile from both of the adults.

"Hello there young sir," the man said. "And who might you be?" Jake was too busy staring in awe to answer, the man was truly remarkable. His voice was smooth and gentle and well spoken, in complete contrast to his monstrous appearance.

"Hello Jake," Mrs. Dugan said from behind them. "Don't be alarmed by my friend's appearance, Hank is more likely to talk you to death than hurt you." Hank shot her a look of mock annoyance which barely masked his grinning, whilst she simply smiled warmly.

"Are you hungry Jake?" she continued. "I suspect you were wanting some breakfast."

"Yes Ma'am," he replied tentatively before following the others back into the kitchen. He took his usual spot at the corner of the island and watched as Mrs. Dugan busily prepared breakfast. All he had to do was simply touch the various appliances and they would come to life as though she had spoke to them. In half the time it would normally take Jake to make some toast and a hot chocolate she had prepared a small banquet for the three of them. Jake's plate was piled high with bacon, eggs, toast and baked beans, while a second plate had pancakes drizzled in syrup and sugared waffles in honey. It was far too much for a normal person, yet alone Jake. He didn't eat large meals and rarely had things quite so fattening, but he gave it a go none the less. He tucked in to his bacon and eggs while the others started talking again.

"When did you say Logan will be back?" Mrs. Dugan asked.

"A few weeks, he and Jubilee are investigating the link between you-know-who and you-know-what," he said, before glancing at Jake with a slight smile. He continued: "So Jake how is life here at the institute?" Jake looked up, realizing he was being spoken to.

"Sir?" he asked nervously.

"Please, call me Hank," he corrected. "What is it like here for you, are you settling in?"

"Yes sir, it's fantastic here," Jake answered.

"Good." Hank smiled. "And how have you found your X-Men training." Jake looked nervously to Mrs. Dugan, hoping she would answer for him: she was the head of his team so she knew how well he was doing better than he did.

"Err, good sir, I mean Hank," he said, hoping Mrs. Dugan wouldn't contradict him. She smiled and gave a slight nod of assurance. She and Hank returned to their conversation and Jake gave up listening after a while as they were talking about things he didn't have a clue about. He continued to eat his huge breakfast, content to let their conversation fade to background noise. He'd barely eaten any of his savory plate and only half of his sweet stuffs when he pushed the plates away, completely full.

"Have you finished?" Hank asked.

"That he means is can he have the rest?" Mrs. Dugan said patronizingly. Hank shot him a genuinely annoyed look while she grinned teasingly at him.

"Sure Mr. Hank, I can't eat anymore," Jake replied. The others laughed softly as Hank took Jake's plates and began devouring the food. Jake saw someone come in out of the corner of his eye and looked up to see Lars smiling at him as he poured himself some coffee. Jake beamed back as the boy took a seat next to him. Lars greeted the other two with a smile, and they both smiled back before continuing their conversation.

"I thought I'd find you in here," the taller boy said. "I was wondering if you wanted to train with me before classes."

"Erm, yeah sure," Jake said enthusiastically. Lars never normally trained with him. They would run together sometimes but Jake didn't have the strength to match his friend.

"Good, I have just the place in mind," he said before he gulped down his coffee. He jumped off his stool and headed for the door and Jake followed a moment later. He said goodbye to Mrs. Dugan and Hank and thanked them for the breakfast before following his friend through the corridors of the Institute. Once outside they turned and headed for the forests that surrounded the building. The sun had yet to come up and the twilight cast an eerie gray shadow over them. Jake felt the chill of the cold air around him and hugged himself tightly for warmth, regretting he hadn't put something warmer on. They walked deep into the forest, maintaining a brisk pace until they came into small clearing, far out of the view of any prying eyes.

"Here we are," Lars said.

"Why didn't we go to the gym?" Jake asked, confused and a little out of breath.

"Because they don't let you practice using you powers in the gym," Lars stated. "You need to be out of the way to do that."

"Use your powers?" Jake asked. "But isn't that what the Danger Room is for?"

"You can't expect to develop your powers just be practicing in the Danger Room," Lars explained. "It's like fitness training, you can't achieve a strong physique just from want you learn in gym classes, you've got to put in a lot of practice yourself."

Still not convinced, Jake simply nodded as Lars to up a position. The clearing was filled with large boulders that had found their way down from the mountains. Lars stood a few feet away from one of them and braced himself. He outstretched both his arms and took a deep breath. Jake felt the ground tremor as a partially visible shockwave erupted from his arms and shattered the boulder. Lars's body shook with tension as the recoil from the shockwave pulsed through his body painfully. There was a reason behind his muscular frame: without it he wouldn't be able to take that strain exerted on his body when he used his powers. Having a figure like Jake's would probably kill him.

Lars looked over at Jake enthusiastically who reluctantly stepped forward to face one of the boulders. He looked back at Lars, who smiled in encouragement. Jake sighed and stood ready. He willed his powers forward and a familiar yet odd sensation gripped him. His boy began to lose its solid form and began to become transparent. In a few seconds his body had transformed into a clear liquid. He had retained his human shape, he looked just like Jake, only he was see-through. He smiled happily, for some reason he always enjoyed being in this form, he felt free. Testing himself like he would normally, he extended out his arm and it stretched out for several meters until his reached one of the boulders. His transparent hand swelled in size and engulfed the boulder, around two meters in size, and lifted it up off the ground with little effort and hurtled it high above them. Lars let of another tremendous shockwave and it shattered in mid air.

Jake brought his arm back to its ordinary size and extended the other out. This time it didn't keep its normal shape, instead it molded into the shape of a club. It solidified into a rock solid mass and began to sway in the air before slamming down onto another boulder, breaking it into pieces with a large crack. He repeated the same action on another boulder, before changing the shape of his hand to a sharp solid spike and ripping through several boulders and trees. He hadn't noticed that Lars was studying him, watching as Jake deftly cleaved through rock and wood while he analyzed his movements and reactions.

Jake brought his arm back again and began to flex and stretch himself in various positions. He enjoyed being so free. In this form he felt he wasn't bound by the restrictions of skin and bone. He arched his back until the top of his head touched the floor, all the while keeping his feet firmly on the ground, and extended his arms to wrap around his shins. He laughed to himself as he stood up and decided to see what other strange shapes he could form.

With a big grin he stretched both legs over his head while supporting himself on his arms. Suddenly his head disappeared into his body, at the same time his feet merged together and expanded to reform his face. He noticed Lars wasn't there and a sudden pang of fear hit where his stomach would normally be. He suddenly lost his solid form and dropped into a puddle on the floor. A second later he reformed into his normal shape and turned back to flesh and blood. Scanning the clearing, he looked to see where Lars and got to. He noticed that they had wrecked the place; it looked like a warzone, with rubble and bits of shattered trees littering the small grassy field. Jake began to panic as he realized Lars wasn't in the clearing, beginning to fear he had done something to upset him. He was about to shout out when Lars's voice came from behind him.

"I forgot to fill up my water bottle," he said as if sensing Jake's panicking. "So I decided to go fill it from the stream. The water is perfectly clean here, its mountain water." Lars took a long drink and sat on the long grass, his legs crossed. Jake's smile quickly returned and he took a seat on a surviving boulder opposite his friend.

"I've always wanted to ask you Kitchie," Lars started. "How do you keep yourself together, you know, like a human and not just a puddle on the floor?"

"I don't know, I just do," Kitchie replied. "It's like moving your arm or holding up your head, you don't have to think about doing it you just do. I can make myself as solid as a rock or as soft as water, but I can't explain how"

"Fair enough," Lars continued. "Do you have to keep your human form or can you make yourself into others things, like animals or machines?"

"I don't know," Jake answered honestly.

"You never tried?" Lars wondered.

"Never really thought about it. I can't make things that have a greater mass than me," Jake said "I can stretch myself out but not more than a dozen meters, so I might be able to form a lion or something. But something like an elephant would be beyond me."

"Oh," Lars said, interested, before his attention turned to the something else. "Kitch', I don't want to upset you or anything, but I want to know, how come you didn't use your powers on that punk the other day? From what I saw today you could have kicked the crap out of him."

Jake grimaced but didn't try to avoid answering the question, he was still thinking about what Xavier said to him. He trusted Lars as much as he trusted Mark or Quinn. He decided that he was fine to open up to as the boy.

"I was scared," Jake admitted. "Not so much of the guy though. The whole situation reminded me of my past."

"Oh," Lars said, surprised. "Why, what happened to you?"

"When I was at the orphanage, some of the other kids used to-" Jake found the words were uncomfortable. "-hurt me. They found out I was a mutant and made my life hell."

"I see," Lars said.

"They'd gang up on me," Jake continued, his eyes welling up. "Everyday after school they would chase me and attack me; punch, kick, punch. Afterwards they'd spit on me, and call me a freak and a monster. I tried to go to the adults but they ignored me, and if I ever used my powers I'd be thrown out onto the street."

"Kitch', that's all in the past," Lars told him. "Let go and forget about them. You'll never be a good X-Man if you freeze every time something brings up a bad memory."

Jake said nothing. He couldn't move, but a part of him wanted to stand up and yell 'That's what I've been trying to do!', but he couldn't help but feel that Lars was right. He was being weak, Jake thought; he should be able to get over this stuff. Mark and Quinn did after all.

Lars got up and checked his watch. "We need to get back, the others will be wondering where we are."

"Okay," Jake said, forcing back any tears before getting up and following his friend as they headed back through the forest in silence. Jake hadn't managed to regain his smile, instead he looked down at his feet deep in thought. Xavier had been wrong, he'd opened up and felt no better for it, if any thing he felt worse. Now it felt like Lars had lost some respect for him. His friend tried to mask it but he had been rather cold about what he had said.

When they returned to the institute the morning sun was high above them and children were already playing games outside. Jake kept his eyes down at his feet. He felt two hands grip both his shoulders and jumped up, startled. He looked to see the people responsible and saw two familiar faces staring at him.

"Hey Kitch', you okay?" Quinn asked with a slight grin. That meant she was in a good mood, Jake thought. Mark looked worried again, and it was not a look Jake liked to see on his face, it made him look older and sad.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Jake replied, unconvincingly. The awkward, fake smile had returned and both his friends looked to each other, concerned. Jake brushed their looks off and continued. "I'm just tired, I've been training with Lars."

"Billy?" Quinn asked, surprised, calling him by his first name rather than the name he preferred to be called by.

"Yeah, he was here a second ago," Jake said, looking around for his friend who had disappeared again. "He must have gone inside, probably to the gym for another workout. Is it healthy to exercise that much? I mean, I know that it's good for you and everything but too much of anything is not healthy right?" His friends smiled, he was talking like he normally did which was a good sign, they thought.

"Oh, I almost forgot to tell you guys," Jake continued. "Mrs. Dugan was in the kitchen when I got up this morning and apparently she had been on some kind of mission. Did you know about that?"

Both shrugged a reply and started walking towards the main building.

"I thought we were her X-Men team, why weren't we told about it?" Jake added, falling into step next to Mark "Oh and she was with a man, but not just any man, a blue man covered in fur with claws and pointy teeth." He made claws with his hands and bared his teeth, which earned him a laugh from both his friends. "Anyway they were talking about someone called Mystique and how she was helping someone who she wouldn't normally work with. Oh and it must be important because someone called Logan and some other X-Men are investigating it as well. What could be so important that it has two X-Men teams working on it, I mean, it's got to be really important for something to have one, so two would be, like, uber important."

"We don't know what the X-Men are doing, we never get told anything," Quinn said.

"That's because we're the youngest team I guess," Mark replied. "They'll tell us these things when we're ready,"

"The wise words of Sensei Mark," Quinn mocked jokingly. "A.k.a, Mark the Ass Kisser."

"Yeah well, kissing asses keeps me out of litter picking," Mark retorted. "That said, you're going to have plenty of experience for your future employment."

"Unlike you, because if you carry on you won't have a future beyond the next ten seconds," Quinn shot back.

"Litter pickers are paid a decent amount, more than people think," Jake said matter-of-factly. The others turned to him, surprised that he got involved in one of their arguments. He stared back innocently with a genuine smile.

"What? They do," he asserted. The three of them burst into laughter as they entered the Institute, unaware that they were being observed as they did so.

Lars stood in the shadows, quietly watching as the three people he had fooled into thinking he was their friend, they had no idea what was happening happily oblivious to the darkness that surrounds them. He thought how easy it would be to kill them and be done with it, but he couldn't, he had a mission to complete.

Xxx

A/N Thanks to Stormynightengale, who is the creator of Mrs. Dugan, a.k.a Hack. Sorry I've taken so long to put anything up, computer troubles again. That chapter was long I know, I wanted to add more but I had to stop myself. I have a truly epic plot in mind for this story, I have a feeling it's going to take me a while. Thanks to everyone who's supporting me, you will be rewarded. I'm going straight to writing chapter 4, it's going to be an all-nighter for me I think.