Rogue rushed into the school and was met with the traffic of too many teens in too tight a space. Unconsciously, she brushed her hair closer to covering her face and ears. She tried to spot Todd over the crowd...when she wasn't the tallest person...and Todd wasn't the tallest person...and he tended to slouch to revert to his hunched over hopping stance...
Cussing took over her southern accented internal monologue.
"Let me through!", she barked.
The senior in front of her turned. "You need to watch yourself, mutie. You can't use your powers on me."
Rogue frowned. She lifted up a gloved hand. "My 'powers' require skin to skin contact." She drew her hand back.
X-23 grabbed that hand and pressed forward. "Please excuse us.", she commanded as she brushed the student aside.
After the senior had collected himself against the lockers in the wall, he objected. "You can't use your super strength in school."
X-23 didn't glare at him. Just assessed his threat potential and whether the best course of action would be to kill him. Somehow the senior understood the expression. "My powers are, in order, an accelerated healing factor then enhanced senses then retractable claws. You will note that heightened strength is not on that list."
"Sure.", the senior agreed. "Ma'am."
X-23 nodded and then took off with Rogue. "You do have super strength. Because of the/"
"That's a side effect of my power set and circumstance, not a member."
"Look. Shug.", Rogue tried again.
"You made Toad cry.", X-23 blurt out."The reason you live is that you are not an imposter. Therefore, you have the power to fix this." The girl turned to her. "You will fix this."
X-23 was about to sniff but remembered that she couldn't use her powers in school. Instead she opened her mouth and breathed in, tasting the air. The girl snarled and dragged the other with her.
Todd stood, one hand on his neighbor's locker and his head in his own. He knew tears were like pheromones to bullies, so he would not cry. School was not the place for powers but if he could just turn the liquid that threatened to fall from his eyes into eye drops, or even water.
Just as X-23 walked up with Rogue, the Brotherhood just so happened to coincidentally step out of the crowd to block them. With the Scarlet Witch in the lead.
"Toad?", X-23 called for his attention.
"Bitch?", the Scarlet With countered.
X-23 smelled Toad, actually all of them. "We don't have time for this. Get out of my way."
"You know, we could just happen to find ourselves off school grounds.", the Scarlet Witch told her. "Bitch."
Ggrrr...
"What do you care, Wanda?", Rogue asked. "You never stopped hating him. Or us."
"I never hated anyone.", Wanda explained. "It's just that the multiverses want to use this vile idiot as a whipping boy, so I'm more at ease when he's in pain. But I'm stlll Brotherhood. We look after our own."
Wanda turned her head to X-23. "And that means leashing this bitch before I have to tame her. So she knows when to sit. And whom to beg from."
RAWR! "That's insane.", something inside the girl growled.
The Scarlet Witch waved the accusation away. "Toad being heart broken has put the universe in so much harmony that my mind is clearer than it has been after Pietro...in weeks."
Fangs set in place. "Fine. You like people shorter than you suffering? Well, I'm shorter than you. Why don't you try hurting me?"
Rogue wrapped her arms around X-23. She dropped to both her knees. "Plu-ese, Wanda. I'm literally begging you, on my knees, let me talk to my boyfriend."
Todd pulled his watery eyes out of his locker and tried to look past his frie...team.
Wanda cackled. "The things he's upset about are giving him reasons to lose all respect for them and proving themselves to be nothing but an animal?"
She smiled and threw her brother's arm over her shoulder. "We're done here."
Lance looked back at Todd. "Maybe we should/"
Wanda snapped her fingers in his face. "I said that we are done here." And with that, she led the Brotherhood away.
Rogue did not even bother to rise instead of crawling over to Todd. "Shug, I am so, so, very sorry."
Todd looked around them at the crowd of human teens gawking at them. "Are you still my girlfriend?"
"Yes!", Rogue blurted out. "I mean, I want to be."
X-23's muscles were still tensing as she whipped her head to Rogue. "You have to ask me that because of her!"
"Then I promised not to air our dirty laundry in the street.", Todd followed up.
It was enough of a gesture to calm the two girls a bit. He took them both by the elbow and led them to the door of the classroom across the hall. The door was locked. He lifted his leg to kick it in with the strength he used to hop but remembered that despite Wanda's threat that he remained on school grounds.
He turned to a girl from the crowd. "May I please have one of your hair pins?" He opened his mouth and poised his tongue as if to snatch it out of her hair.
"Ew, you can have it.", the girl told him as she yanked the metal from her head and tossed it at him before immediately leaving.
"Thanks, yo.", he called out. The boy broke it in two and quickly picked the lock to the classroom.
When they entered, X-23 immediately went for the clock that Principal Kelly hid his camera in. The teacher was moving to object, so Todd took a step forward. Todd quickly took Rogue by the shirt sleeve, plucked off her glove, swept the desk in front of the teacher bare, and touched Rogue's hand to the teacher. That teacher fell into something more than just drifting off to sleep.
Rogue gasped. "Our school is doing that badly in math?", she wondered.
Toad picked up the two girls and set them on the desk. Neither objected to his strength. He set one hand on each of their thighs."So which one of you is going to tell me what happened?", Todd asked.
Rogue ducked her head sheepishly.
"It's all her fault.", X-23 accused. "She assumed she had my memories instead of her own of you being her boyfriend. So instead of letting that convince her to court you she decided to cower before me."
"She's right.", Rogue explained, still not looking Todd in the eye. "I remembered being happy, being happy being attracted to you, being happy with you. So naturally that happiness made me suspect the memory. Since I remembered that you were dating X-23 I thought that I had picked up her memories somehow.
"Wait a minute. You're mad that I didn't jump on Todd when I thought I was remembering your happiness with him?"
"Yes, among other things.", X-23 told her. "I know how I feel about Toad. If you knew how I felt, why wouldn't you want him as well so he could make you feel that way as well. We've already discussed getting him others and how he needs the self esteem."
Todd shook his head. "What?"
"Jean's a telepath and still doesn't react well to Toad.", she continued. "I don't know what her problem is."
"And now I feel worse.", Rogue lamented. "I thought I did you wrong because of a power flare up - that I wasn't properly keeping track of whether or not memories belonged to me or not. But she's right - I chose to/"
"No.", Todd refused. "This is a side effect of your powers. And if I was smarter, yo, then I'd have thought this could happen. I need to start thinking. I'm trying my best with this scholarship because I care about you and want to take care of you. But taking care of you means thinking about this type of stuff too.
"So what do I do when this happens again? How can I help?"
Rogue smiled through her tears. "When I go the opposite of delusional?"
X-23 eyes rolled back into her head and then remembered, "Solipsistic." The other two looked to her. "Delusional is believing false things. Solipsism disorder is not believing that true things are real. Like how some of our classmates don't believe that mutants have powers."
Rogue clenched her eyes shut. "But we're not allowed to use our powers on campus and barred from just about every activity where we could use them for an advantage."
"Exactly.", X-23 agreed. "Even our fights with the government's Sentinels are, to them, just on TV like every mecha anime they've ever hoping can be dismissed as weird or ...Quick...slide, slip...Pietro's movments can have just gone unnoticed. Until they say, get taken on a flight by Cannonball they won't really believe it."
"Quicksilver.", Toad supplied.
"Thank you.", X-23 told him. "But the issue at hand - she needs to never make you feel this way again."
"I know." Rogue said. "Give me your phone. I'll take a picture of the three of us that I won't be able to mistake."
"Don't got one, yo.", Todd apologized.
Rogue rubbed her face. "Right. You're getting a stipend. You're getting a phone.
"Alright, what else?"
X-23 thought a moment. "You write a note in your own hand writing. You put in something that only you know and you know Toad doesn't. Put that in a sealed envelope, and write on the envelope to read it. Only we know about the note to begin with. That way when Toad gives you the note, you'll read it and realize that Todd couldn't have faked it because even if he could copy your hand writing he doesn't have the information in the note."
"What would I know that no one else does when we personally know telepaths? Plural.", Rogue wondered.
"How it feels when I hurt you for hurting Toad."
The boy's jaw dropped. "What? Whoa! You aren't hurting anyone."
X-23 slid off the table and bounced from one foot to the other. "But I have to. She disrupted our...pack. I can feel it bubbling inside me. I just want to...want to...lash out. I am not dismissing how you felt when Rogue did that to you. But you don't know how it felt for me seeing you like that."
Todd wrapped his arms around her to stop her from moving. Only him squeezing her got her to stop her restless motion. "You're not hurting Rogue. It was a power flare up. It happens. It will happen in the future. Just like what's going on with you, right now."
X-23 froze in place. "You mean my attitude? That can't be. My super rage was conditioned out of me."
'Super rage?' Rogue mouthed.
"Do you mean the conditioning that you've been trying to shake by opening up to people?", Todd asked.
"Exactly. I've made progress escaping...Oh no.", X-23 realized. "I'm being the unthinking killer again." She collapsed her forehead onto Todd's shoulder.
"Don't worry.", Todd told her.
X-23 whispered into his shoulder, "Why?"
Rogue hopped off the desk. "Because we'll help you through it."
X-23 looked up to stare at her. "Even when I was going to drive my claws through you a minute ago."
"Claws, shug?", Rogue disbelieved.
X-23 shrugged and conceded. "Okay, maybe not like organ stabbing. But your power requires skin contact so maybe the flat side and poking a few nerves here and there."
Todd laughed. When the two turned their attention to him. "I was just thinking that I'm lucky I only have two girlfriends with powers that give them mental issues."
The two remembered Paige. "um...how do feel about blondes?"