Joe woke up to a beam of sunlight coming in through the window and bearing down on his face, needing to cover his eyes with his forearm until his sight adjusted. He considered falling back to sleep-he was still exhuasted from the events of the last two days-but just couldn't. So instead, after groaning his annoyance, he pulled himself from the bed.
Still in his bed clothes-a faded red t-shirt and pyjama pants with a cartoon moose on them-he headed out into the hallway. He had no clue what time it was, but the sun's glare that entered through a window on the hallway's far wall next to Joe's door told him it was early afternoon.
Joe headed down the same way he had come up the night before with Scott. Slowly descending the wooden stairs into the entrance hall, suddenly realising he had no clue where to go. He considered calling out, but decided it would be rude to do so, so instead he took the path up the hallway which Ms. Munroe took the night before. It lead him into a massive room the size of the entrance hall, with shelves of books that went up and touched the roof and a series of expensive looking leather couches in the centre.
He found himself looking at the books, gliding his hand along the shelf until he found one he was especially interested in, "The Old Man and the Sea" by Ernest Hemingway. He flipped through the browned pages, and was only half-surprised to find that it was a first edition. 'I expected as such,' he said to himself. 'This place is so fancy I'd be shocked if it wasn't.'
"You are the new boy, right?"
A cool, elegant voice caught Joe off guard, and he looked back over his shoulder to the small sitting room. There was no one else in there.
"Hello?," he looked from side to side, and for a moment, thought he was day dreaming.
"I am up here," Joe looked up to the roof, finding a stunning young woman floating right above the archway where he had entered the room. She was holding a large book open in her arms, and was looking down at Joe with a thin smile on her unbelievably pretty face.
"Uhh, yeah, hi...My name's Joe...I'm new here."
The girl descended so elegantly from the shelf to the floor that Joe could have mistaken her for an angel. She was absolutely perfect. High cheekbones and porcelain like skin, framed wonderfully by a head of pale golden hair that matched the colour of wheat. She looked at him through a pair of almond shaped eyes that were a such a deep emerald green, Joe couldn't help but stare mindlessly at them.
But it wasn't just her dazzling features that made her so beautiful, it was the way she stood. She carried herself so elegantly, much like a royal would, and it gave the girl a ethereal, confident glow.
"I know you are new Joeseph," she held out her free hand, which, after a second of thinking about what she was doing, Joe realised she wanted to shake his, and he took it, again amazed. Though this time it was by how soft her skin was. He didn't even realize that the girl had started speaking again.
"My name is Samantha, but my code-name is Grace."
Joe nodded, then scrunched his brow. "Code-name?"
The girl nodded. "Yes, code-name. It's the moniker that I go under when out in the field so as to not have my true identity revealed."
Joe smiled awkwardly. He couldn't be comfortable around this girl for some reason. It irritated him.
"Do you have one yet?" Joe shook his head.
"I don't even know what I can do yet." The black haired boy said, shrugging his shoulders. He looked down to the girl, who closed the book she was holding and lay it down on an arm of one of the couches.
"Have you met anybody else yet?" Joe shook his head.
Samantha smiled and beckoned him through the doorway that he'd come in from. "I would get changed first, if I were you."
Joe blushed, humiliated by the fact that the most mesmerising girl he'd ever met had just seen him in his pyjamas, then nodded before running up the staircase back to his room.
0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0
He'd pulled on a black and white sleeved raglan shirt-one not unlike like a baseball player's jersy-a pair of blue jeans and his favorite red converse shoes, he carried himself down the staircase to where Samantha sat waiting on one of the last stairs, her back straight and her hands gently resting in her lap.
"Are you ready Joeseph?" He nodded, and she lead him through a series of hallways until they reached a kitchen/living area where two boys sat on a couch, one eating potato chips from a large plastic bowl and the other playing a video-game on a big screen television.
"Nate?, Liam?, please meet Joeseph...he is new here." Samantha said, walking in front of the television. The two boys turned their heads to look at Joe, who waved awkwardly.
"Yo bro!," The boy eating chips said. He was very small with shaggy brown hair and wide hazel eyes that popped out of his head a little, making him look like a bug.
Joe also took notice to the fact that he wasn't actually sitting, he was crouching on the couch cushion. "Name's Leapfrog...how you doin'?"
Joe smiled at the stranger's friendliness. "Fine thanks. You?"
Leapfrog grinned widely. "Savvy bro...absolutely savvy."
The video-game boy stood up to shake Joe's hand.
"Hey, I'm Nate, but everyone calls me Toro." Joe took the boy's hand, just now realising how much bigger Nate was than him. Joe was six foot one, and this Nate guy was at least six inches taller than that, with sandy blonde hair and very dark brown eyes that were so close to being black it was scary.
"Toro?" Joe asked, wondering why he had such a name. He understood Grace and Leapfrog-it was impossible to distinguish Samantha from an angel and Liam from a frog, but apart from this guy's size, he didn't seem like an angry bull at all.
"Yeah bro, T-man right here," Leapfrog suddenly sprung up and landed on the taller boy's shoulder like a parrot on a perch. "This cat right here? Absolutely unstoppable when he starts running, like a freaking panzer with a ferrari engine bro," Leapfrog ruffled Toro's hair and then jumped back to his spot on the couch where he began playing the bigger boy's video game.
The large boy shrugged, as if Leapfrog had said all there was to say, and Joe did the same.
The two laughed.
"Okay. Do either of you know where the others are?" Grace asked, standing completely straight with her hands behind her back.
Toro shrugged, but Leapfrog semi-turned, his eyes still on the tv, and spoke over his shoulder to the girl. "Harmony is in the library working on Miss Munroe's Egyptian essay, and you know Captain buzzkill is probably following Cyclops around, so I'd check the garage."
Grace smiled then beckoned Joe through another doorway on the opposite side of the room.
Toro waved as the two left the room, and Leapfrog hollered after them. "Catch ya' later bro!" Joe heard when they were already a third of the way down the hall, which made him laugh.
0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0oo0
Grace lead Joe in silence down another series of hallways that Joe was sure he'd need a map to navigate by himself, and through a gigantic arch into what must have been the largest room in the mansion.
One long desk about twenty feet long, with desk lamps stationed at random points along it to give light to students working late at night, sat in the middle, and a dozen rows of books made it look like an actual state library. The roof was so high up that Joe couldn't completely make out the patterns that covered it, but recognized some famous scenes from history.
Grace suddenly turned down one of the alleys, where the two found a dark haired figure sitting with their legs crossed and their nose in a leather bound book.
"Hello Crystal," The girl looked up, her mouth slightly agape, and Joe got a better look at her.
She was Chinese, and very pretty, with black hair that was completely straight and fell behind her ears, presumably to keep strands from falling into her eyes as she read. Her eyes themselves were dark and magnified by a pair of half-moon glasses that, due to the frames having a golden sheen, Joe assumed had to be very expensive.
"Hello. How are you Samantha?," the girl said with a flawless smile as she closed her book and took off her glasses, folding them and sliding them into the breast pocket on the blue shirt she was wearing.
"Well, thank you. I would like you to meet Joeseph, he is the new student here." The asian girl stood up and straightened the long skirt she was wearing, then offered him a small hand, which Joe took and gently shook.
"A pleasure to meet you Joeseph, welcome to Xavier's."
Joe smiled. "Hi. It's good to meet you too Crystal."
The asian girl smiled before shaking her head. "Samantha is the only one that calls me Crystal. All the guys, and even miss Munroe and miss Grey, call me Harmony."
Joe's eyes widened. "Harmony? What do you do?"
Harmony smiled her white smile again, then opened her mouth and started to sing softly.
Her voice was incredible, that was the only way you describe it. It was as if someone was playing a harp very carefully, making sure that they didn't pluck any note to hard and over-emphasize any of the notes to make the song as flawless as possible. He closed his eyes and listened to the heavenly ballad in his head. Joe felt the air around him thin, as if he was floating, before he opened his eyes and realizing that actually was floating a good three feet above the floor.
"WHAT?"
Crystal stopped singing and Joe fell the three feet to the floor, where he collapsed in a heap from the sudden impact.
"HOW DID YOU DO THAT?" Joe gasped, his eyes wide as he lay in a heap on the floor. Harmony held out her hand, which Joe took, and she helped him to his feet.
"Due to my mutation, my vocal chords are-according to Miss Grey at least-around a hundred times tougher than a normal human. So my singing voice forms a wave in the air, and it allows me to pick things up, make barriers, anything I want...Within reason.
Joe was still mildly shocked by what this small girl just did with her voice. "What do mean, within reason?"
Harmony shrugged. "Well, my voice is still a voice, and it has it's limitations. If I lift something that is too heavy, it strains my vocal chords and I have to rest them, just like a singer."
"How did your parents react when they found out that you could do that?," Joe asked, curious.
The girl giggled. "My parents think that this is an exclusive music school for opera and broadway."
Joe grinned.
"HARMONY! I'VE TOLD YOU NOT TO USE YOUR VOICE FOR FUN!"
The three teens turned to the large arch that Grace and Joe had entered from, where a handsome boy had just walked in and was walking up the aisle to them. He had a pair of grey blue eyes, and pale brown hair cut very short. He approached them with a frustrated look on his face,and, without even taking notice of Joe and Grace, pointed his finger in Harmony's face.
"I've told you your voice is too delicate to just start singing for no reason!"
Joe, who didn't want Harmony to get in trouble for something he caused, tooka step in between the two. "Hey, mate...It's my fault. I asked to see what she could do." He said with a mildly authentic smile on his face.
The boy looked Joe straight in the eye, and his grey blue eyes gave him an ice cold stare. "And who are you, exactly?"
Harmony looked over Joe's shoulder, having to stand on her toes due to the height difference between the two. "This is Joe, Lachlan! He's the new boy from...where are you from exactly?" Joe looked over his shoulder at the girl for a second then back to Lachlan.
"Chicago," He said, holding out his hand for Lachlan to shake, though the other boy didn't take it.
"I don't care if he's from the Moon, you do not use your voice outside of the danger-room...UNDERSTOOD?" Harmony nodded with her head down.
"And YOU," The boy looked Joe in the eye again. "Since this is your first day I'll give you a pass. But the next time you convince Harmony-or any other X-man for that matter-to use their powers outside the danger-room, I'll give you a week's worth of detention polishing every car in the garage...understood?"
Joe looked at the boy with one eyebrow raised and his mouth agape, not sure if the kid was joking or if he really was a gignatic hardass. "Uh-huh."
Lachlan nodded, then, after looking at all three of them in quick succession, turned and walked out of the library with the same pace that he had entered with.
"What just happened?" Joe said, his expression hadn't changed.
"That was Lachlan, our head-boy. Don't feel bad, he's that way with everybody." Harmony said, turning back to her book.
"Head-boy?"
"Yes, head-boy. Seeing as how there is only Miss Grey, Miss Munroe and Mister Summers here most of the time, Lachlan and I were made head-boy and girl to watch over the younger students." Grace said, her hands behind her back.
Joe nodded. "Ohh."
"Yes. It is only because the two of us are both eighteen."
Joe nodded again. "What's the danger-room?"
Harmony looked up from her book, first to Joe, then to Harmony, and smiled. "He hasn't seen it yet?"
Grace shook her head. "He only woke up a few moments ago."
Harmony closed her book again, still smiling her perfect smile, then stood and took Joe's hand.
"I think it's time then."