1
"I'd like to ask you a question.", X-23 asked Rogue.
The other girl's eyes narrowed as the girls they shared a home with not so subtly turned their attention to the two. "Does it have to do with our boyfriend?"
X-23 sat back and pondered Rogue's question. Rogue, and the other girls, raised an eyebrow at this behavior. After a moment, X-23 replied "I do not think so. It...shouldn't?"
Rogue nodded and the others turned away. "Okay, shug'. Shoot."
X-23 twitched toward her hip, stopped, and nodded. "Right - 'proceed', not...
"Why are you avoiding Magneto?"
Rogue sat bolt upright. She actually thought about lying. Then she thought about her reason for lying. "Dammit."
"Because he's a scary terrorist?", Kitty mused.
Rogue thought about taking the out that was just offered. That would be the same as lying in the long run. "Double dammit."
She grabbed her boyfriend's other girlfriend by the wrist and bit her glove off the other hand. She pointed adamantly at the rest of the girls in the room with an uncovered hand, threat nearly explicit, and stomped out with X-23.
The girls went back to studying. No one, not even Jean and X-23 noticed the literally memory foam soft footprints that carried one of them out of the room.
X-23 was surprised to find herself led to Kurt's room. Rogue anxiously knocked on the door. The door cracked open into shadow and no one was there. Then it opened all the way and as the light of the hallway shined in, Kurt became apparent. "Um...vas I supposed to do something?"
"No, you didn't miss anything.", Rogue assured him. "I just really need to borrow your powers. The mansion has way too many ears."
Kurt nodded. "For how long?"
"I'd like to not have ta walk back. Or climb.", Rogue shrugged.
"Is that...safe?", Kurt asked.
Rogue turned to X-23. "Can you hear his heart beat?"
"I can see his pulse.", the other girl replied.
Kurt raised his hand to his neck. "Even with the fur?", he asked incredulously.
X-23 shrugged. "Well, yes. But I was actually looking at your eyes and how they expand and contract because of your pulse."
Kurt and Rogue shared a look.
"Well, alright then.", Rogue stated. "So X-23 will make sure that I'm extra careful."
Kurt nodded. "Okay. Let me get a mirror. Come in and close the door."
X-23 entered and Rogue followed, closing the door behind her. X-23 called out to the darkness. "Why do you need a mirror for Rogue to borrow your powers."
"I don't need one.", the darkness answered back. Kurt returned to visibility when he switched on a lamp. "It's just the best part of Rogue doing it."
X-23 looked at Rogue. "There's a good part and you haven't told Todd...or me?"
"Not when you look like you do.", Kurt sighed. "But when your mutation forces you to look like me..."
X-23 was completely confused. "But I thought, quote 'chicks dig the fuzzy dude' end quote." Kurt glared at her with an expression that was much more demonic than elfin. "Oh. More lies.", she understood.
Kurt carried a mirror back to his bed. While he laid down, Rogue undid her boots and pulled them off. She pulled the waist of her skirt and underwear down a bit in the back while raising her shirt. "Ready?", Kurt asked.
Rogue took her ear rings out. "Now.", she said as she pocketed them. She held her mouth open.
Rogue grasped Kurt's hand with her ungloved one. Kurt held onto the mirror as long as he could. The image inducer never had a proper model to copy so it's effect was an approximation, a guess. The boy tried to write it all to memory as his ears shortened and his hue normalized. Rogue slowly grew fangs. All but the white streak in her hair blended into a blue that was darker than blue had any real right to be. His eyes faded as Rogue's began to glow a pupiless yellow. As the fingers in Kurt's hands unmerged, Rogue's fused as did her toes. The tail that came from the bare spot in her clothing thrashed about.
"Is he alright?", Rogue looked down at the rather unassuming boy with strikingly red hair that lay before her asleep.
X-23 listened above his chest without touching him. She took a few sniffs and wrinkled her nose. "His heart rate is down and his breathing is up: for how he normally is, but now that he is normal those rates are now normal. He's lost a lot of ATP, like he's been hit by a taser and burned through at least a 32 grams of body fat. But despite appearances, he's got more than enough. When your effect wears off, he'll probably just be really hungry and then really tired again. Nothing different than how Nightcrawler usually is."
Rogue was now holding both her gloves in one hand (since they no longer fit), and her boots under her arm. "Hold your nose. You know how this smells and with your senses."
X-23 pinched her nose and Rogue's tail wrapped around her leg.
2
The two girls were at the top of one of the tallest trees in town. X-23 steadied herself with one hand on a branch and sitting on another. Across from her, Rogue hung upside down from her tail from another branch out of immediate reach of the other girl, outlined by the setting sun.
"Why did we have to come out here for you to answer my question?", X-23 asked.
Rogue held her boots to her body, nearly bat like hugging herself. "Vell, that's the half of it. This has ta stay a secret. I know you can...considering what you were trained for. But in a house full of gossipy bi...teens, and that at least of third of us have some extra perception from werewolf hearing to...how did Jaime describe it, post hoc echo location, I'd just rather not take the chance.
"The other half. Vell, I don't know how you'll react to this. And if I can't get your healing factor through your adimantinum, I'd like to be able to just teleport. Just in case."
X-23 raised her eyebrow. "What does your avoiding Magneto have to do with upsetting me?"
Rogue huffed. "Mags can touch me. Vith his skin."
The other girl thought about that. "I don't understand. Are you intending to leave our Toad for Magneto?"
"Ver damnit, shug!", Rogue screamed. "I'm not going to leave Todd. I was telling the truth. He's good for me...us, I suppose.
"I. Am. Not. Using. Him.
"Yes, I like that Todd can touch me. I've been wanting that for so long. And Todd probably knows that: he cares about us and isn't stupid when he tries.
"But his self-esteem."
X-23's eyes widened. "Oh."
"Yeah.", Rogue agreed. "Oh.
"He says he deserves two girl friends but we have to remind him to say it because he might not believe that. He might believe that we're better off without him, or with somehow superior men. And if Magneto can touch you, he'll see you as having an alternative. Which in turn, he'll just assume Magneto is.", X-23 surmised.
"It's vorse than that.", Rogue stated. "Magneto recruited Todd to the Brotherhood personally. And getting Todd out of that situation...If ole Mags had stuck around, Todd would have probably went complete toady for him. He views Magneto as personally powerful, accomplished, capable of commanding others and being obeyed, wealth enough to have a Brotherhood and Acolytes.
"And he knows that Magneto, despite his age - mein Gott, his age - he has a history of fathering children with much younger women."
X-23's eyebrows knitted. "How much younger?"
Rogue smiled with no mirth, baring both her fangs. "I'm probably as close to his youngest daughter's mother's age as she is to mama Maximoff.
"He has a way about him. A charisma that shouldn't the case without it being a power. A regalness that isn't just daddy issues talking. And you've never experienced it since he's come to the mansion and only have the horror stories of tha other X-Men, but when you've been kicked out your house by your own parents for being born the way you were...Eric has a way of making you feel safe and then powerful just when you never thought you'd ever be safe again."
"You do think of Magneto as an alternative.", X-23 accused.
"No, I don't. You gotta believe me, shug, I don't." Rogue assured. "But I feel more than nothing about the man. And if any of that, any at all, slips out in front of Todd/"
X-23 nodded. "His lack of self-esteem will allow him to jump to conclusions before either of us can do anything about it. We both know our 'friends' and his...squad of jerks won't help assure him that you still want him if he himself stops believing it.
"Does Magneto know that he can touch you?"
"I certainly hope not.", Rogue answered. "I've noticed that a lot of the touching people do isn't deliberate, choice made in mind type activity. Hopefully, the time he did was beneath his notice. I barely caught it myself."
The two girls stayed in silence at the top of the tree. Night dropped around them and while X-23's black leather tried to blend into the night, Rogue faded completely.
"So what can I do?", the night asked.
"Pre-emptively apologize? Offer him something? I'll make the apology he owes me be accepting yours.", X-23 supposed.
The darkness scoffed. "Offer him vhat? My allowance is already spent buying additional clothes so I don't touch the rest of you. Vell, them. You know vhat I mean."
X-23 shrugged. "Another girl for his harem. TV shows usually depict men liking yet more women."
"And he won't see that as me bringing him a replacement for myself, who expects to leave him for Magneto?", Rogue asked.
X-23's eyes widened. The two settled into an uncomfortable silence.
3
"Paige.", Logan started. "You know that outside of the danger room, you have to dispose of your husks in medical waste bags from the infirmary, not just trash bags."
The girl shrunk back, further into her room. "Well, only the skins are biological. Even Dr. McCoy said the other materials generally test non-biological."
Logan rolled his eyes. "Just let me see you putting your husks where they belong. Or else there's going to be consequences."
"Consequences?", Paige asked. "For using ma power in a boarding academy full of people with powers, often more than just the one! Why am I getting singled out?"
"You ain't.", the man replied. "Roberto can't use his power inside because he raises his surface temperature to 4000 degrees, Scott wears his glasses everywhere, Rogue can't even touch her own damn boyfriend, and I promised Chuck that I would never use one of my powers - the ability to get violently angry at the drop of a hat - on any of you kids!
"So you just let me see you change your skin and put it in the right bag!"
Paige could not tell anyone later what had possessed her but she yelled right back at a man known to be a Wolverine. "Oh, is that you want to see?" Paige started unbuttoning her shirt in front of the grown man. "Is that why you and Xavier gave the other girls soft armor uniforms and me a paper thin one?!", the girl screamed as she threw her shirt on the ground. By then Wolverine had turned around, his blood chilled at how out of hand this had gotten. Her bra sailed by him, thrown at the height of her temper tantrum. Wolverine glanced over his shoulder just quick enough to see the girl about to tear her hair out. But instead of just pulling on her hair, the girl's face split open. Two halves of a skin ripped off a solid granite body.
The statue that had once been Paige kept yelling in Paige's voice. "There now. Look!" The skin that had covered the statue and its hair was stuffed into a medical waste bag. "I'll go dispose of it right now. You can sniff around ma room because Lord knows that's what happens around here."
"Guthrie!", Logan scolded. The statue of Paige bodied her way past the adimantinum boned mutant.
Sam had heard his name being shouted by an angry Wolverine, sandwich in hand. Seeing his sister's stone form stomp off, he followed her. "Paige."
"He wants me ta dispose of my husk in the 'special bag' in the 'special place' so that's what I'm doing.", the statue stated.
Sam nodded. "I know that's what you're thinking, but you know how you think when you're like this." He knocked his knucles on her rock hard hair. "You gotta keep in mind that he is one of the teachers at this school."
"Trying to kill us in the Danger Room every week doesn't make him a teacher.", the statue replied. But at least she had stopped yelling. "And now you come along and 'calm me down' and make me do what you say. Which is for me to calm down and do what he says. I wish...I know all these forces that want me to just be bullied into being obedient: you, the teachers here, the teachers at Bayside, the bigots outside these walls, the sentinel buying government... I just wished I was the kind of person that could look at all that bullying just spit in its face. Just tell look 'em all right in the eye and tell 'em you ain't gonna bully me no matter how you treat me."
Having arrived in the infirmary. The statue turned to her brother. "Uh...I could go back to my room and grab some clothes. But then I'd have to make the trip all over again. Or I could just rip this off right here and wear one of Dr. McCoy's scrubs back as a dress."
Sam started eating his sandwich again. "Say no more.", he called as he left.