A/N: Thank you guys for the reviews, as usual :) Since so many of you were all down because of the whole emotional fest of the last chapter, this one here has a good bit of humor to it. Thanks for reading!

~X~

Chapter Twenty One: The Diabolical Thunderstorm

Scott had been told of the storm to come and he had indeed, freaked and ran off to stock up on anything they might need. He spent the entire day running errands and measuring the distance from the ocean to the house. The next afternoon, he called a meeting which, in Rogue's opinion anyway, was irritating and utterly pointless. Especially since he pulled her and Remy away from making dinner. He led them into the dining room where everyone else was seating themselves at the table

It was just as she had told Remy the other night. Scott thought it was the best idea in the world that she pretend to be Pyro's girlfriend for no other reason than to 'get information on the situation'. Whatever was going down in that warehouse, the flame-thrower was in on it and Rogue had an opportunity to know him on a more personal level. It didn't matter to Scott that Pyro didn't actually want to be her boyfriend, and it certainly didn't matter that she sure as hell did not want to be his girlfriend. The man was a lunatic! She'd have to be severely depressed or just as crazy to want him. But as much as she might not like the way things were turning out, Scott was right. Their best move right now was for her to go out with Pyro and hopefully get him to spill the beans. It was doubtful that he would tell her anything, but she had to try.

When that issue was out of the way, Scott brought up the next one with every level of seriousness.

"Rogue, your real boyfriend won't stop calling. He's always tying up the phone line."

Fury rose within her. There was a loud slap as her hand found the table. "He is NOT my boyfriend!"

"Wait," Tabitha interrupted, "You have a boyfriend? Where I have been all this time?"

"He ain't my boyfriend!" Rogue repeated, hitting the table again just for emphasis. If it was the last thing she did, she would make sure that everyone knew that she wasn't dating Jack and that she loathed him with every fiber of her being. It seemed really necessary.

"No, he's not." Kitty agreed. "But he could have been, if Rogue hadn't been so like, mean to him! I really thought that when we came out of that bathroom that you'd have a new attitude, but nooo! You came out and started macking on one of the Acolytes!"

"Kitty." Rogue said flatly, staring at her like she'd grown a second head. "He came on our date wearing a football jersey."

There was a murmur of understanding around the table. Everyone present was all too familiar with how much Rogue hated football. But the next question from Tabitha had nothing to do with football.

"So what kind of kisser was Pyro?"

Rogue deadpanned. "There was a lot of tongue."

"Good tongue or bad tongue?"

Thankfully Scott spoke up. "We're off subject. Just tell him to stop calling."

"But I have." she explained, exasperated. "He won't listen to me. I tell him no and he thinks I said yes. I say I hate him and he takes it as a compliment. I don't want anything to do with him—I don't even know how he got this number."

Everyone looked at Kitty. She blinked back at them for a few seconds.

"If you must know," she began, ignoring their collective groan, "after you left with Pyro, Rogue, Jack was upset. He was like crying and stuff which I thought was weird since he's only known you for like a week or so. But he was crying and I wanted to make him feel better so I gave him the house number and encouraged him to never give up on you. I didn't think he'd actually listen to me."

"Kitty!" Rogue exploded. "What is wrong with you? Seriously, what the fu-"

There was a loud rapping noise on the table and they all turned, incredulous, to see Scott sitting at the end of the table with a gavel in his hand and a no-nonsense look on his face. "Order everyone, and please, Rogue, watch your language."

The silence stretched on for a really, really, really long time.

Finally, Kurt asked in an unbelieving tone, "Who gave you a gavel?"

"I bought it." Scott said defensively. And he would remain that way. There was too many times when their meetings got so loud and no one paid attention to the subject at hand. He figured that he had to have something loud that would draw their attention again and a gavel made the most sense. It sort of upset him that no one realized this. Of course, he had to keep it to himself. A true leader should remain stoic and professional, never allowing his feelings to show. This was the military—uh—the X-men. And if it was the last thing he did, Scott would be as strong as he could be…Until later that night when he could whisper his feelings to Jean in the darkness of their room.

"Right," Remy pushed his chair back from the table. "We gotta get back to dinner. Rogue?"

Everyone else copied him, standing up from the table and leaving the room.

"What are you making?" Scott asked sadly, following them into the kitchen as a clap of thunder erupted outside. Just as the news anchors had predicted, a storm had come over to cover the area. Right now it was still rather gentle and hadn't started raining yet. Thunder boomed and lighting lit up the mid-afternoon sky and the wind was slowly picking up speed.

Amara, who, in favor of attending the team meeting, had been standing by the window and couldn't seem to drag her fearful eyes away from the sky outside.

Scott observed Rogue as she went to stand over the stove and salt some boiling greens in a pot. Remy went to cut up raw chicken and throw it into flour.

"A good ol' Southern meal." Remy told him happily and narrowly avoided slicing one of his fingers off with the big butcher knife in his hand.

"Careful with that!" Rogue told him sharply as she replaced the lid on the pot in front of her.

Scott took in the smell in the kitchen through his nostrils. It really did smell good. "What kind of Southern meal?"

"Fried chicken," Remy pointed at the chicken in front of him with the big knife in his hands. "Collard greens," he jabbed the knife towards the pot and Rogue jumped backwards to avoid it. "Black eyed peas and cornbread," he twirled the knife in his fingers and then turned to chop the chicken again. "And blackberry cobbler for dessert."

"REMY!" Rogue fumed.

"What?" he asked obliviously.

"YOU NEARLY TOOK MY HEAD OFF!"

"Oh, just nearly?" He grinned. "Remy's sorry. He'll have to try better next time, non?"

Rogue started forward but Scott's hand caught her elbow just in time. "Relax, Rogue. He's kidding. RIGHT, Gambit?"

"Of course."

Rogue continued to scowl at the back of Remy's head but didn't try to attack him again when Scott let go of her arm. Besides, he had that big knife. He could easily take her as long as he had that. Plus, he was probably expecting her attack so it would just have to wait for later.

Yes.

Later.

"Don't get me wrong," Scott spoke up, trying to distract her, "it smells good but is Kitty going to eat any of that?"

Rogue brutally cracked an egg into the cornbread mix. "If she's hungry she can go eat with that thing she told to call me."

It was at that exact moment that the wind picked up speed and the porch swing was thrust into the side of the house, eliciting a squeak from a terrified Amara.

"Right..." Scott innocently pulled a pad of paper and pen out of back pocket. "Rogue. I know I've asked about it a million times, but can we talk about the night you and Remy saw the perps again?"

Rogue bristled. "Ok, as long as you keep callin' em 'perps' I ain't tellin' you nothin'."

Scott stared at her. "Did your accent just get stronger?"

After smelling the air she shrugged a little. "Maybe…it must be all this good food."

"Right." Scott nodded. "So, describe the per—I mean people."

Sighing, Rogue poured oil into a pan and started to heat it. She glanced over at Remy, still cutting the chicken. There was only one major reason that she had managed to avoid talking too much about that night to Scott, no matter how much he had harassed her about it. That was the night that she and Remy had kissed. Mentally she sighed. That was probably the only kiss she would ever get from him. For him it had been about the mission. Still, though, she didn't want to talk about it. Besides the fact that most of the time she couldn't look at the man's lips, the tension and awkwardness between them that the kiss had created was all gone. Neither had said a word about it and Rogue had almost forgotten about it. Except that she hadn't forgotten about it, and thought about it every other minute.

"They all looked like normal people." Rogue said to Scott as she opened the oven and checked on the cobbler. Seeing that it needed more time, she shut it again and came over to sit at the island across from him. "They didn't seem like hardened criminals or hired thugs."

"Not hired thugs." Scott murmured as he scribbled down on his pad of paper.

"The leader seemed to be a woman. But I'm not sure if she was the leader or not, she might just have been the bravest since she came up to us first. Do we have to go down there again tonight?"

Scott continued to write quickly. "No," he said, sounding distracted. "He's not putting out any traps tonight. How many were there?"

"I reckon about…fifteen. Maybe more."

"Describe the 'leader'."

"Dark hair," Rogue yawned. "Dark eyes. Annoying voice. Tanned skin. Kind of short."

"Good, good." Scott nodded and kept writing. "Did they say anything interesting?"

BOOM. The thunder outside clapped loudly and caused the windows to shake and Amara to cover her head with her arms.

"Nothing much." Rogue shrugged. "Just that they'd been watching us."

"WHAT!" Scott shrieked.

"Well they didn't say that exactly. They said that they knew we had been there all week."

"Oh my God…" Scott wrote furiously on his paper. Rogue propped her chin on her hand and watched him with a raised brow. "How did they see you there in the first place?" He stopped writing to look up at her. "Weren't you hiding and keeping watch?"

"Of course. My book fell out of my lap and they heard it."

Scott bent again to continue writing. "And what happened then?"

Rogue prayed that Remy wouldn't turn around at that moment. Thankfully, he didn't so he couldn't see the way her face had turned so red. But strangely his back seemed to have gone slightly stiff and she no longer heard the chop and slide of the knife on the cutting board.

"Um." She cleared her throat when she found that her voice sounded slightly strangled. "We-we um. Um. We kind of-sort of. Just um I-I don't I can't-"

Scott looked up at her. "What?"

"I-" She frantically searched her mind for anything that didn't have to do with moonlit kisses on the beach. How romantically corny that sounded. "I…forgot."

Scott frowned as he studied her. "You forgot?"

"Yes." She squeaked.

"Did you just squeak?" Scott sounded worried now.

"No!" She squeaked.

Chop, slide, chop, slide. Remy had gone back to cutting the chicken. This somehow helped to deflate some of the tension Rogue was feeling. If Remy hadn't been listening the first time she probably would have been fine. But then again…maybe not.

"I'm pretty sure you squeaked." Scott pointed out.

Rogue cleared her throat long and hard before answering. "I didn't." She replied calmly.

"Ok then. Let's forget that." Scott sounded a little relieved. "What do you mean, you forgot?"

"I didn't. I just…forgot at that…moment." She finished lamely.

Scott sighed. "All right, so what did you do when they heard the book fall?"

Remy stopped chopping again. Rogue mentally cursed him and fervently wished that she had a knife of her own at that moment…

"Nothing." She said quickly and calmly before her mind could make her think of Remy's lips. Or his hands. Or his cards. Or the moonlight. "They turned, saw us, and came over. We talked to them for a moment and then Remy decided to show off and they saw that he was mutant, freaked out, and ran away. End of story."

"Ahuh, ahuh," Scott was nodding and writing at the same time. "You didn't see what car they came in or if they were walking?"

"I doubt they were walking." She replied. "They were carrying a row boat with them. But no, I didn't see if they were driving."

"What about you, Remy?" Scott asked.

"Non." Remy answered without turning around.

Fssshhhh. The chicken sizzled and popped as it was laid in the pan.

"Ok," Scott kept writing and Rogue curiously tried to read what he was putting down. But before she could see, he finished and scooped it up. "I'm going to call fisherman what's his name and tell him about all we've found out." Scott looked like someone had just given him a present. He happily grabbed the phone from the wall and skipped—or ran off.

BOOM. The thunder rolled again accompanied by a flash of lightening.

"Oh my God!" Amara shrieked. "Did you see that?" She pointed out the window off toward the ocean. "There was a huge lightening bolt! It was HUGE!"

"Amara," Jean spoke calmly as she picked herself up off of the couch and walked over to her frightened team mate. "I think you should walk away from the window now."

"But-"

"We're fine." Jean smiled and wrapped an arm around her waist. "As long as we're inside, nothing can hurt us."

"I think it's if you're in the car, nothing can hurt us." Tabitha pointed out.

Jean shot her a look. "She's wrong, we're ok in the house," she reassured Amara. "The lightening is outside, not inside. But if you stay next to the window, that's probably not wise, so let's just come over here, ok?"

"I don't like storms." Amara whimpered.

"Hey, it's ok, it's fine." Jean tugged on her to lead her away from the window. "That lightening probably won't even come close to the house—HOLY CRAP!"

The thunder cracked and shook the windows again, the wind howled and knocked over one of the rocking chairs on the porch, and rain started to slowly drip from the sky. But none of that was what caused Jean to swear, and however scary all of that was, no one found any of that as shocking as hearing Jean swear.

And getting back to the reason that she had swore in the first place—a big lightening bolt had descended from the sky and hit the beach in front of the house.

Kitty, Kurt, and Tabitha shot up from the couch and all pressed their faces to window to better watch the storm. Amara screamed and dropped to the floor with her arms over her head. Scott ran out of the dining room with his pad of paper in one hand and the phone in the other. Rogue worriedly watched the tree next to the kitchen window bending over from the force of the wind, and Remy started throwing the rest of the uncooked chicken into the pan so that he could cook it before the power went out.

"Get away from the windows!" Scott barked.

Everyone completely ignored him.

"Look at those clouds!" Tabitha pointed. "Look how dark they are! They're almost black."

"And kind of green." Kitty added.

Rogue came over to stand next to them. "Should we bring those chairs in? Knowing Professor X, he probably paid a billion dollars each for them."

"You're going to get struck by lightening!" Scott yelled.

"Scott, help me!" Jean yelled back from her position on the ground where she was trying to calm Amara down. Looking concerned, Scott bent to help.

"I'm not going out there for a chair." Kurt replied to Rogue. "I'll get my fur all wet."

Tabitha snickered. "Oh come on, Blue. I bet you'd go out there if there were pancakes on the chairs."

Kurt suddenly froze and turned to them in horror. "Oh dear God."

"What?" They all asked as they turned to him.

"I think there's a box of pancake mix in the car." He spoke of pancake mix as though his child were in danger. "I have to save it!"

"What the hell!" Kitty stared at him. "You are NOT going out there for some stupid pancakes!"

On any normal day when pancake mix was not in mortal peril, Kurt would have been very upset that she had dared to call his precious pancakes stupid. But right now there were more important things that needed to be taken care of. Like innocent boxes of pancake mix.

"I have to! I'll be back!"

"KURT!" They all yelled at once. But they were too late. Kurt had already disappeared in a puff of smoke and reappeared on the porch. They all turned again to the window and watched him with wide eyes.

"Why didn't he just teleport to the car?" Kitty asked incredulously.

"Because that would have made too much sense." Rogue rolled her eyes.

"OH!" They all screamed in unison as a particularly large gust of wind blew another of the rocking chairs flipping over and over into Kurt's direction. Kurt dived out of the way just in time and rolled onto his feet. Just as the sky finally opened up and the rain started to pour, Kurt sprinted away down the porch stairs and around the house to the car.

They all abandoned the window in favor of running across the living room and crowding around the window on the other side, ignoring Scott asking where Kurt was and the sound of Amara's sobbing.

It was after the wind threw a tree branch and smacked Kurt in the back with it that he seemed to gain some form of common sense and teleported into the car. There, he started to frantically search around for his pancake mix, or at least that was what they thought he was doing. All they could see was the lightening, the wind whipping leaves and other things around in the air, the thick wall of rain, and the X-van wobbling around as Kurt moved inside of it.

"Where is Kurt?" Scott finally came over to see what they were all looking at. "Oh my—" His eyes widened behind his glasses. "What is he doing in there?"

"Rescuing his pancake mix." Kitty told him with a straight face.

Scott just stared at her, looked back out at the car, and then shook his head and went back over to Jean and Amara again.

BAMF. A drenching wet Kurt appeared with a box of pancake mix tucked safely under his arm. They all screamed and ran away from him as he shook all over like a dog, loosening his fur and throwing the water off of it at the same time. He looked extremely pleased with himself, despite nearly dying from lightening and flying branches and rocking chairs. He pulled out the box from under his arm and looked at with so much love and compassion-

Before Kitty decided to grab it from his hands and slap him over the head with it.

"HEY!" He yelped in concern for the box, and not his own head. "Be careful with that!"

"Why did you do that?" Kitty yelled shrilly to be heard over the booming thunder and howling wind. "You could have killed yourself, you dummy!"

Kurt seemed genuinely surprised by her worry. He just stared in confusion with his mouth slightly agape. "Why do you care?"

"WHAT!" Kitty exploded. "You're my friend, that's why I care!"

"Alright, everyone just calm down," Scott came forward to stand between them. "This storm is clearly putting everyone on edge." He directed a look back at Amara who was whimpering in a corner where Jean was trying to calm her down. "Let's just all relax and watch some TV-"

"Dinner's done!" Remy announced happily from the kitchen.

Everyone scrambled that way as if they were all starving, leaving Scott behind in the middle of his sentence. Scott dropped his head and then went over to try to coax Amara into standing. Everyone else rushed passed a startled Remy to get to the food. Kurt screamed ew when he saw the greens and gripped his box tighter. Kitty glared at Kurt and then asked what Remy and Rogue what they had flavored the greens with. They said meat. She asked what they flavored the beans with. They said meat. Kitty glanced at the chicken. It was obviously, meat. So Kitty ended up getting a bowl of blackberry cobbler and a slice of cornbread for dinner.

Everyone else got their dinner normally enough, except for Tabitha who said for apparently no reason at all, "Darn tooten, it's a Southern meal!" But this was probably just an excuse for her to use a Southern accent and make Rogue narrow her eyes in her direction.

"Everyone thank Remy and Rogue for the meal." Scott said to the group once they were all situated around the dining room table.

"Hm?" Kurt grunted in question, looking up at Scott halfway through shoving beans into his mouth. Predictably, now beans were falling from his mouth and dribbling down his chin.

"Ah!" Scott looked quickly away from this sight and down the table. They had somehow managed to talk Amara into joining them, though she was too nervous to eat and kept jumping and squeaking whenever the thunder rolled or the wind blew the rain against the window. Rogue was digging into a bowl piled high with greens and Kurt was still holding on protectively to his box of pancake mix while Kitty sat across the table and glared at him. Remy was squeezing lemon into his glass of tea, Jean was looking worriedly at Amara, and Tabitha was…just sitting there.

And that's when everything went dark.

Or to be more precise, that's when the wind howled angrily, the rain fell harder, and a lighting bolt CAME DOWN FROM THE SKY and literally slammed into a tree, severing the branch from the trunk and causing it to fall on the power lines.

The resulting sounds were a CRACK, a BOOM, and a whirring vuuuuuummm as the power went out.

Not to mention Amara's screeching, "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!" as she dived under the table.

"This is nice." Scott said tiredly to the darkness as everyone rushed over to the nearest window.

It was a long while before everyone was calm again. Amara refused to come out of under the table of course, but eventually they all settled back to eat their dinner. Jean lit candles and Scott had to admit that despite Amara clinging on to his leg under the table and crying, the atmosphere was kind of nice.

Until after they had finished eating. The sun had slowly set and though there was still a little light outside, it was completely dark in the house. Kurt knew this as they all came into the living room to sit on the furniture that circled the coffee table. Everyone grumbled when he blew out the candles but they all hushed and stared at him when he flipped on the flashlight, holding it under his face and causing what he hoped to be a creepy affect.

"Oh lord." Rogue looked at him. "You're going to tell a ghost story now, aren't you?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Kurt asked in a creepy whisper, still holding the flashlight under his face. "When there's a little girl…RIGHT BEHIND YOU!"

Kitty squeaked and swiveled around to look behind them but Rogue just sat there. "Are you serious?"

"Of course I am!" Kurt whispered. "Her name's Mary Sue and she a mutant hunter!"

"I meant-" Rogue gave him a strange look, "are you seriously trying to scare me with something so stupid. And the little girl is a mutant hunter?"

"Give it to me, Kurt!" Kitty said excitedly, standing up to hold her hand through the darkness towards the blue boy. "I have a really scary story!"

Amara, who was holding onto the Jean's arm, clung tighter.

Kurt shrugged and passed the flashlight over to Kitty, who took it and held it under her face just like Kurt had. "Ok, like, I should totally mention before I start that this is a true story and I haven't like, changed anything except for the names so that I can protect who this really happened to."

Through the dim lighting of the room, Remy and Rogue exchanged a look.

"So one day," Kitty started in her creepiest voice which turned out to just be a lower tone than normal and not creepy at all. "I was—I mean uh…Bethany was walking through the mall. Everything seemed really like, normal and stuff so Bethany walked into Gap because they had these like totally fab new sweaters on sell. I wanted—I mean, BETHANY really wanted one of the sweaters, even though they were uberly expensive for a sweater made out of that material. I mean seriously, who like, buys a cotton sweater for seventy dollars? Like I said, uberly expensive."

Remy and Rogue's palms both found their faces at the same and there was a collective groan from the group, but Kitty didn't seem to notice any of this as she continued with her 'scary' story.

"Bethany rifled through the sweaters, looking for her size and the right color that would bring out her eyes and not make her look too frumpy. They were still expensive, but she hoped to be able to get the sweater at a lower price from the snooty girl at the register with like, a bribe or something."

"Wait-" Kurt interrupted, "wouldn't that have defeated the whole purpose? If you gave money to the cashier to save money on the sweater-"

"But no matter how much she looked on the shelf, because Bethany did not buy things off of a rack," Kitty continued without paying Kurt a bit of attention, "she couldn't find the right size!"

Kitty said this as though it was meant to be the terrifying climax to the story but was only met with a silent room save for the few snickers coming from Remy and Rogue's direction.

"Guys!" She whined. "You're supposed to be scared!"

"Oh," Remy said. "I forgot."

"My turn!" Tabitha jerked the flashlight away from Kitty and held it under her own face. "Once. There was a man named Jack."

Rogue, unnoticed by anyone else, bristled at the name.

"Jack was a farmer. He always carried his scythe with him, everywhere he went. Then one day-" Tabitha's voice lowered darkly, "-a few rowdy teenagers from the local village killed Jack."

Rogue smiled.

"His family buried his scythe with him."

Kurt snorted.

"One week later, one of the teenagers was going to sleep. When suddenly," now her voice dropped to a whisper, "he heard a low scraping sound accompanied by hard, slow footsteps. Almost as if someone was walking toward his bed and dragging a scythe behind them. The boy was almost too afraid to open his eyes, but he knew he had to! So he counted to three. When he hit three, he would open his eyes and see who was there. One." Tabitha leaned forward, "Two." She whispered. "Three!"

Something outside slammed onto the living room window. They all screamed in alarm, Tabitha swiveled the flashlight around to the window only to find...

"Jack!" Kitty squealed in terror.

"Jack." Rogue spit distastefully.

And there was poor, lovestruck Jack, pressing himself to the window, rain and wind hitting him from every angle as he wailed one name over the sound of the thunder. "Roooogue! Please!" He pleaded, placing both palms against the glass. "Just give me a chance! I love you! Please Rogue, PLEASE!"

Rogue balked when everyone turned her way to hear her answer. "No, you weirdo creep! Go away!"

"But I looove you!" He sobbed, causing the glass in front of him to fog up.

Remy was starting to regret not beating that kid up earlier.

"Go away!" Rogue roared.

"No! I won't! I-" the rolling thunder drowned out his next few words, and when they could finally hear him again, he was finishing with- "FOREVER!"

Rogue face-palmed.

"I swear it, Rogue!" He cried, "I'll love you till the day I die! I'll-"

Tabitha abruptly let the curtain drop over the window. "Well let's hope that's soon."