18: Sentinels
I started teaching English at the mansion. Big whoop. I was a "published author," so at least I had some credentials, though it's not as though the kids had ever read any of my bullshit bodice rippers or album reviews, thank god.
I had been at the mansion for about two months. Bobby and I had fought in front of the whole school after three weeks of living at the mansion. My last phone call from Magneto had come at the beginning of the second month.
I guess a lot of people would have been racked with guilt. After all, I was getting a free ride at Xavier's Academy for Gifted Youngsters, didn't have to do anything, had sex with Bobby Drake, and here I was, risking it all for the ultimate in bad guys.
But really, fuck being compassionate about humans. Magneto wasn't right, per say, but he wasn't wrong either. I really didn't need my ass blown up by the X-Men, so I called him up to quit. That was it. It's not like teaching Claire how to not blow up chairs every time she sneezed was real pertinent information to the mutant power cause anyway.
So there was my life. I smoked a lot, read a lot, wrote some, fucked, and graded essays written by a bunch of scared kids with powers that made them even more scared or more angry. Jubilee and Bobby I got to nurse back to health when they came home from fighting or having X-shenanigans or what have you. Rogue and I went back to being friends; she got over the us being gay thing pretty fast, Bobby's assumptions be damned.
Storm never once mentioned me going the field team and I never asked. I never even got the leathers.
I figured that even I couldn't fuck up my life too hard in less than six months, but during the third, something else happened.
Sentinels happened.
Sure, we'd all seen them in the Danger Room, whispered blueprints, some C-SPAN debate. But shit.
The things were fucking terrifying.
The best way to describe a Sentinel is to take every panicky feeling I've ever had while standing in a back alley, and then giving those feelings a fiftyfoot high body with laser eyes. The things look like they can destroy mountains, and there they are, waiting to kill you as you walk home from the grocery store.
I've never been good about nightmares.
Author's Note: Finals week is the perfect time to update ff.n, right?
