After several minutes, Raven entered the control room again, her tears dry, the bags under her eyes worse. A few more X-Men had shown up in the meantime. Peter spun around in Hank's rolling chair wearing a Rush band shirt and tight, torn blue jeans, listening to his cassette player through earphones. Ororo leaned against the wall in her favorite leather jacket and black tights. Kurt still spoke to his mother in German, but his words had the universal tone of someone attempting to end a phone conversation and failing.
"Just wanted to let you know," Peter said to Raven, popping out one earphone, "I got here three seconds before 1. Technically not late."
"You are such a liar, Quicksilver," said Ororo, using his codename. "You got here when I did."
He pointed a playfully accusing finger at her, "Which makes you late, Storm. Do your push ups! Get to it! Hup, hup!"
She pushed his chair with her foot, scooting him near Nightcrawler. "Where are your push ups?" she teased.
"Did 'em already. Just now," Peter replied. He spun around to face Kurt and poked him in the side. "Is that your Mommy wishing you a Happy Birthday?"
Kurt's birthday, Raven thought. Jesus, how in the hell could she forget something like that? Maybe that's why her nightmare was so vivid. A knot of guilt formed in her stomach, and she nearly turned around to hide in the elevator again.
Kurt rolled his eyes at Peter and continued talking. With a mischievous smirk on his face, Quicksilver snatched the phone out of his hand in a flash.
"Hallo, Fraulein Wagner!" he spoke into the receiver with a horrible, overwrought accent. "Wo bist du?"
Kurt grabbed the phone back and covered the receiver. "It's, 'wie bist du,' you idiot," he hissed at Peter, then apologized to his mother.
"I am not in the mood for this bullshit, people," Raven barked. Her young charges, shocked and embarrassed, looked cautiously at each other. Kurt finally hung up the phone. Raven took a deep breath and glanced at the clock; 1:10. "Does anyone have a clue where Cyclops and Jean are?" she asked, a bit more calmly.
Right on cue, they both burst through the double doors of the control room.
"Hey," said Scott, panting and leaning over with his hands on his knees, "We're not late, are we, Mystique?" he asked Raven.
She didn't reply. She only glared coldly at them, letting them figure out the mess they'd waded into for themselves. They looked at the clock, then at her, then at each other.
"We had to... um... fix something," said Jean.
"She was helping me fix my visor," Scott blurted, "The new, adjustable one, you know. The button wasn't working, so..." He trailed off as it became obvious no one in the room was buying it.
Raven examined them closer. Scott's perfectly coiffed hair was a mess and Jean's blouse had been buttoned up incorrectly. It didn't take a genius to figure out what they'd done with their afternoon.
Peter leaned back in the rolling chair, making lewd sexual hand gestures behind Raven's back. No one dared laugh, not when she was in this kind of mood. Just then, the elevator door opened and Hank stepped out. His medicine had worn off, and he was now his blue, bestial, muscular self. Peter quickly put his hands behind his head in a fake stretch.
Raven pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "Everyone but Nightcrawler, report to the danger room and give me 30 push ups and 10 pull ups. And 5 laps."
"But-" Peter began.
"Do you want to make it 10 for everybody?" Raven dared him.
He shut his mouth and groaned. Hank moved towards the double doors, but she stepped in front of him, blocking his way.
"Beast, where do you think you're going?" she asked, as if he was a child sneaking off with the cookie jar.
He looked surprised and pointed to the doors. "I've got a lot of papers to grade, so..."
"When I said, 'Everyone but Nightcrawler,' I meant you, too. You haven't done a training session in way too long," she said. "You can't let yourself go," she added smugly.
Beast looked down at his gut and pinched a tiny sliver of flab. "I haven't let myself go," he muttered.
She turned around and faced the rest of the X-Men, clasping her hands behind her back. "All right, team, suit up and get on the floor, hustle!"
"Yes, ma'am," they replied with varying degrees of enthusiasm, making their way to the locker room off to the side.
Kurt was the last to leave the room. He put a three-fingered hand on the door, then gave a worried glance back at Mystique, as if he wanted to say something.
Her stomach tightened. "Well?" she asked, a little too sharply.
He snapped out of it and silently hurried through the locker room door.
She stared straight ahead at the control room monitor, trying to calm down by matching her breath to the rhythmic blinking of the bright green cursor.
After the team had completed their punishment, plus stretches and warm ups, Mystique turned on the P.A system. A small click echoed throughout the danger room, drawing the X-Men's attention to the window above them.
"This one is for everyone except Quicksilver," said Mystique, "Come back up to the control room."
Peter threw up his hands and shook his head incredulously at her. Within a heartbeat, he was gone from the floor and sliding around on the rolling chair again, his entrance punctuated by a tiny breeze.
"What the hell?" he asked. "Why make me come today if I'm not even running this course?"
She momentarily turned off the microphone. "Oh don't worry, I'll make you run until your legs fall off later," she answered, much to his chagrin. "This course requires teamwork, and you need to start learning how a team operates instead of just doing everyone else's work for them."
"But it's so easy when you can just outrun everything," he said, rolling his eyes.
"Exactly."
She turned the mic back on. "Listen up," she said, "because this course is a little different from the ones you're used to." She pressed the 'enter' key, and the room below her began to telescopically expand to form a long hallway, each section rumbling and thundering into place.
She continued, "So far, I've been giving you courses that you could each handle on your own; therefore, the course was considered complete if you crossed the finish line individually. In this course, there will be sections that are impossible to cross without the help of a teammate. That means, the course is incomplete for everyone until each one of you makes it to the end."
Panels slid back to reveal huge digital timers on the ceiling and walls. Each of them read '5:00:00' in bright red numbers, blinking steadily.
"You have 5 minutes to complete the course, without any 'casualties.' Understood?"
"Yes, ma'am!" they shouted from the floor, their voices metallic in the overhead speaker.
"Can I pipe in some tunes?" asked Quicksilver, holding up his Walkman.
"No!" she snapped.
Peter shrugged and put a plug in his ear. She heard "Tom Sawyer" play faintly through the other dangling earphone.
Her hand hovered over the 'enter' key. "Ready... set... go!" She pressed the button, the timers rapidly began to count backwards, and their training began.