Chapter 4

By: Dita

The girls at the Xavier institution needed a break; after all, they had been working hard in their schooling and their training. Sasha had taken some of the girls out on a shopping trip around New York City, her treat, to all the hot spots that she researched about. Jean, Kitty, Amara, and even Rogue had all joined the older mutant on the trip, Sasha's treat. The girls of the X-men were all sitting outside of an Italian bistro eating lunch and enjoying the late Summer weather of New York, they were laughing and gossiping about the males that they lived around, and Sasha tried her hardest to not seem so much like a creepy cougar trying to get into the pants of younger boys.

Sasha lit up a cigarette and took a long drag, exhaling the smoke through her nose, "you girls are making me look like an old hag. There's nobody my age to flirt with there."

"Oh c'mon, Sasha! That's not true! You have Logan, and Mr. McCoy, and even the Professor if you catch my drift." Kitty exclaimed, taking a bite of a breadstick.

Sasha leaned back and crossed her legs, making a sound of disgust as she did so, "Mr. McCoy is like thirty-five, and isn't Logan and Charles in their forties almost fifty? I'm not that old…experience is good, but not that much."

Jean covered her face out of embarrassment to be around these girls, but they all knew that she was just joking. Sasha messed up the fellow telepath's hair and began to poke her fun at the good one of the group.

"Jean, look, we can't all be that lucky to have our Romeo just there for us." Sasha leaned close and began to make kissing sounds, mocking the interaction between a man and a woman.

"You guys are terrible!" Jean cried out, burying her bright red face in her hands.

"Is Scott going to beat me up?" Sasha stated, flicking the ash from her cigarette on to the ground. "Tell him to bring it. I'm trained in cry-baby fu, don't mess with me."

The girls began to laugh again; even Jean couldn't help but come out of her hands to show that she was having a good time and had to join in. "Well, Kitty, you can't exactly be making fun of me since you too have somebody you are interested in."

"Who?" Kitty played brain dead for a second; they always made fun of Lance Alvers who she was seeing off and on.

Rogue made a face as if she was sick on love like a bubble-headed school girl, "Lance, if ya remember."

"Oh! Oh, Lance, you see, well, it's like, uhm-…"

Sasha held her hand up, "I met Lance! And my ruling as head boy-crazy female of this, the Xavier Institute for Gifted Student, is," a sneer came upon her lips after she took a drag of her tobacco. "He's a bad boy."

"Lance is about as bad as eggs left out in the sun too long," Rogue replied.

"Not that kind of bad, but he's a fun one." Sasha smiled once more and winked toward the girls.

Kitty's face was as red as Jean's hair as they spoke about her crush. She angrily took a sip of her soda and looked like a turtle trying to tuck herself inside of her shell from the ring of laughter that the girls did.

"You guys suck…" the younger girl mumbled.

Sasha smiled before resting her cigarette in the ash tray and getting up to go to the bathroom to freshen up. Kitty stuck her tongue out at the older woman who swiftly raised her middle finger in the air as she walked inside the bistro. Her trip inside was cut short by a beast of a human body slamming through the door to tackle the much smaller Sasha to the ground. The man was enormous and carried a funk of raw meat and a lack of personal hygiene that burned the receptors in her nose. His dirty blonde hair was long, shaggy, and unkempt just like the rest of him with the rags being passed off as clothes covered his body. His eyes were brown and bloodshot, reminding her of a patient from an insane asylum.

"WOLVERINE!" he shouted in her face, the very odor of his breath nearly stunning her to death. "You REEK of his stench!"

Sasha tried to squirm free from his grasp; however it was no use as his black claws dug into the tight shirt she wore to pierce her skin. "Get off of me!"

Jean had stood up from the table and lifted the vile mutant from off of her friend using her telekinetic abilities and threw the man somewhere else.

"Gawh! Weird for Sabertooth to be the one to crash our party." Kitty replied as she ran to aid Sasha, who was wiping the dirt and debris off of shirt. "You alright?"

Sasha stood up carefully with Kitty's help, "yeah, I'm fine."

Sabertooth quickly got up and roared before charging towards Sasha, but he was quickly swept off of his feet by the efforts of the telepaths working together. They lifted him off of the ground and threw him into a stack of garbage cans to incapacitate him for a short time. The mundane citizens were in a panic, many of them making calls on their cell phones to the police, fire station, and possibly to the National Guard to control these mutants who were wrecking their day. It was not like it was on purpose, that giant fur ball struck the X-men first! However, they were going to fight back for their teammates. Jean and Sasha stood back to back and watched Sabertooth shake the garbage from his hair and stare down the violet haired telepath. Sasha's eyes narrowed which caused the rabid mutant to become fired up and charge at the girls. He had almost made it to him when he was stopped by a mutant dressed in an orange and black jumpsuit.

"Wolverine!" Kitty shouted as she watched him he fly off of his bike to tackle the much bigger man to the ground.

Sasha took her car keys out from her shirt and gave them to Jean. "I want you all to get out of here. We'll take care of it from here."

"No Sasha, I can't leave you here alone. We're X-men, we work together," Jean's leadership skills were always on par. Never abandoning her team, that's what being an X-man was all about.

Sasha smiled before levitating in the air and leaving Jean to do her own thing causing the red-head to jump into her role as a leader as she commanded the other girls to help keep Sabertooth off of Sasha and Wolverine. The violet haired telepath closed her eyes and held out her hands as if the was a puppeteer, looking for Wolverine's very mind to help guide and empower his abilities. The moment she found him, the two jerked up simultaneously before Wolverine unsheathed his claws and stood his ground.

"Let's dance, hairball!" Wolverine growled.

Sabertooth roared and tackled Wolverine to the ground with the desire to tear his insides out to see if he could oh-so spontaneously heal from an injury like that. However, the much larger mutant was met with surprise as Wolverine could now easily throw the feral beast off of him. As Sabertooth flew through the sky, Jean was there to catch him with her telekinetic abilities and proceed to launch the man into an empty bus stop shelter in hopes that he would stay down, but her hopes were quickly crushed when she saw the blonde man shake himself off and charge at Wolverine once more. Wolverine took on the challenge and began a full, head-on sprint towards Sabertooth to tackle him as if his was a line back. Once the two collided, Sabertooth thought he could take down the smaller mutant, but had underestimated once he felt Wolverine just plow right through him into an unoccupied vehicle where the smaller mutant lifted up his fist to give him five fingers and three adamantium claws of pain and hurt. Wolverine was stopped though once he saw Kitty phase Rogue's arm through the busted car to rest on Sabertooth's forehead. Wolverine held the feral mutant down as the mutant roared and squirmed like a beast being tranquilized and restrained.

Jean smiled at the sight of the X-men working together to take care of Sabertooth until the authorities arrived to handle the mutant. She looked up to the sky to check on the newest member to their team and saw, what looked like to be, Sasha's fingers twitching and locking up. Concern came upon her face; she quickly threw herself into the head of her comrade to find that her head was a swirling vortex of clouded memories and distorted voices. It was as if she was trying to discern what true memories in her head were and what was fantasy; how she wanted to help her friend so badly control her mind, but she was just as quickly shunted out of her mind and back into her own body. Jean opened her eyes and saw Sasha's body go limp in the sky causing Wolverine to let go of Sabertooth for he felt as if something had left him. The telepath called out to Wolverine causing him to look up at the sky to see Sasha slowly falling towards the ground. Wolverine positioned himself under her body and allowed Jean to lay her body in his arms before he got on one knee to support her. His world went quiet and slowed down for this all looked and felt familiar to him. The mutant's heartbeat quickened and he could hear every beat reverberate in his chest cavity as he tried his best to piece together where he had been in this situation before, especially with her; however, his time was quickly short lived due to Jean screaming his name and asking if Sasha was alright.

"C'mon Vi, come back to us." Wolverine's eyes narrowed due to the fact he called her Vi, where did he get that name from? There was a pain in his chest that grew the longer she was out as he held her close to his body, but he just thought of it as bruising from his battle with Sabertooth.

Wait, his bruises would have been long gone by now. He shook the thought of the pain from his head and turned his attention to Sasha.

"Jean! Is she going to be okay?" Kitty spoke up.

Jean shook her head, focusing on the slow rise and fall of Sasha's chest. "I'm really not sure. We should get her back to the Institute as soon as possible." The last thing she wanted to do as a leader was betray her fellow team member's trust by revealing what was in her head; so she kept that part out.

Wolverine stood up and laid Sasha in the back seat of her own convertible, Kitty and Amara jumping in the back to fan and cater to Sasha while Jean and Rogue sat up front.

"We'll see you at the manor, Logan." Jean spoke, starting the car before making her leave quickly to get Sasha some help.

Wolverine watched as the convertible drove away from him, his heart pounding in his chest not from the fight with Sabertooth, but the moment he felt her in his arms. There was something not right about her for he had never felt his body actually experience worry before. He put on his bike's helmet and revved his motorcycle's engine to drown out the wail of police sirens coming on the scene before kicking it into drive and speeding off after the convertible.