The house where the Brotherhood of Bayville made their residence reeked of unwashed clothes, mold, body odor, and pizza. Pieces of plaster were strewn along the ground from the products of natural hazards occurring when four teenage boys and a destructive girl all live in the same house. When added in that all were mutants, Kitty wasn't surprised the house looked the way it did. All the same, though, when she accidentally got her shoe tangled in Blob's massive boxer shorts he'd left on the floor, she couldn't help but groan.

"Would it kill you guys to clean up this place once in a while?" she asked aloud, kicking the underwear out of her walking space.

The jarring shudder that proceeded to shake the house revealed that she'd evidently taken the Brotherhood by surprise.

"Kitty?" said Lance, stepping out from the living room looking slightly disheveled. "What are you doing here?"

A sound similar to a metal spring announced the arrival of Todd, though if the noise hadn't given him away, the stench would have. Even a blind man would be able to recognize Todd Tolansky.

"I think she's here to see you, smart guy," he said, snagging a fly from the air next to Kitty's head.

She shuddered. "Gross! Do you have to do that?"

Todd shrugged. "I ain't giving you no hate when I see you eating lunch, Kitty Cat."

"Whatever. I'm not here about that, anyways. I wanted to know what you know about Haddy."

"You mean the fish?" asked Lance.

"What's it to you?" Pietro asked, butting in between them.

"She's a mutant. The Professor decided to take her in as a student."

He grinned. "Wow, you guys really don't waste much time, do you? Not that I'm complaining of course. Things are always best done fast."

Lance snickered. "What's her power, anyways? Being super annoying? The fish's a snoop. Sticks her head in places where it doesn't belong. Just the other day my buddies and I had some trouble with her in the hall." He pounded his fist against the palm of his hand, clearly referring to the fight Scott, Jean, and Kurt had told her about. "She was talking about how I was supposed to be in detention."

"And were you?" asked Kitty, placing a hand on her hip.

"Well, yeah. But that was none of her business. Only Kelly knew that, and he was supposed to be out of town that day. I don't know how the little sneak found out about it."

"So you decided to beat her up with your powers? Lance, that's-"

"Ah, we didn't beat her up," Fred interjected. "We just shook her up a bit. If we'd wanted to beat her up, she'd be beat up."

"What's this about anyways, Kitty Cat? Why do the X-men need our help with some recruit?" He hopped closer to her, until he was a bit too close for Kitty's liking.

"None of your business, Todd!" she said, shoving him.

"Hey, I think you'd better watch it," he said, regaining his balance and leaning forward in a position he must have deemed threatening.

"Yeah, watch it." The Blob held up two massive fists.

Lance pointed her in the direction of the door with a slight tremor to the floor beneath her. "I think it's time for you to go."

"So we've got nothing," said Logan.

"Nothing. All I found out by going there is that the Brotherhood still hasn't cleaned up that pig sty they call a house."

"There must be something," said Scott. "Come on, Kitty, think!"

Kitty leaned back in her chair. "I'm telling you, Scott. I found nothing. They don't know anything more than we do. They didn't even know she was a mutant."

"I believe that you think you gained nothing by going to the Brotherhood's home," said the Professor, "But you might have learned more than you think. Tell us, word for word, exactly what they said."

She waved a hand in the air dismissively. "I'm telling you, Professor Xavier, they didn't give me anything. If you want to know though, check for yourself."

"Very well."

He propelled his chair forward, until he reached where Kitty was sitting, then, putting one hand to his temple and his other hand gently on her forehead, he delved into Kitty's mind.

Kitty, he thought. Kitty, you need to focus on the specific memory. That will make it more easily accessed. Concentrate.

The house in which the members of the Brotherhood lived suddenly loomed before him.

Good job.

He scanned the memory fervently for even the slightest thread upon which to grasp. It was beginning to seem as though Kitty had been right when she had said that there had been nothing important at all disclosed in the conversation. And then he found it. A small enough detail, to be sure, but when every chance counted, nothing could afford to be overlooked. He released Kitty's mind and returned his hands back to their usual position.

"I believe I've found something."

Haddy sat in complete darkness. She couldn't see her hand in front of her face in this type of light; which was good.

About an hour before, she began to become sensitive to things in the room. The television and the magazines had been the worst, but then it had intensified to things as simple as the nightstand next to her, or the speckles of black on the tiled floor could trigger pain as intense as when the Professor had first started trying to get inside her mind. Turning off the lights had helped quite a bit. Perhaps not seeing the objects could hold it off for awhile. She just hoped her eyes didn't get used to the dark anytime soon.

A stabbing sensation attacked her mind and she fumbled around for the bottle of aspirin they had put on the nightstand. The fancy painkiller drugs they had been administering didn't seem to work, so she'd resorted to overdosing herself on the over the counter stuff. She knew the Professor didn't like it, but she also knew that he wasn't planning on stopping her. The medication did seem to be able to keep the pain at bay for longer than the morphine and whatever else they'd been injecting her with.

There was a rattling, then a noise as her hand bumped something off the table.

Curses. She'd dropped the aspirin on the floor.

She slid out of the hospital bed, minding the tubes in her arm that connected to the IVs, and felt around blindly for the bottle. Her fingers wrapped around the plastic container and she opened the top.

"Got you," she said.

She took out several pills and swallowed them whole. leaning her head against the bed as she waited for the drugs to take pain subsided, but only for a moment, before returning in a hellish fury.

She arched her back in pain and screamed before falling to the floor and slipping into merciful unconsciousness.