Young Writers Society

This story is a sequel to my X-Men comic short story series, Shadowed Pryde. You don't really have to read the first three stories to understand this, since the plot is kind of separate, but in order to understand the characters, I would recommend that you take a look at them.

Thanks!

When Scott and some of the others got called out on a retrieval mission, my senses started tingling, and I almost felt kind of relieved. I was aching for some action, some adventure, some anything to break the mundane cycle that we were currently living in.

And that something was the girl, who was either my age or a little bit older who was currently clinging to Jean like she was a life line. There was another unfamiliar mutant with her, but she was the key to whatever was coming next.

I walked over to stand in front of her and stuck my hand out in greeting. She immediately shied away, as if she were afraid of me.

I spoke to her gently, "I'm Kitty. What's your name?"

There was a brief silence while we all stood in the corridor waiting for her to speak. I could tell from the way that she was shuffling her feet that she was looking at her companion, as if asking for permission. Apparently whatever silent signal he gave her told her that telling me her name would be alright.

"I'm Rogue."

"It's nice to meet you." I replied.

Seconds after telling me her name, my sister's companion collapsed. I held her back as all the adults hauled him up and rushed him to the medbay.

"Hey," I told her, "He'll be okay."

"Can you promise that?"

"No. But I can promise that Hank will do his best."

She seemed to be okay with that answer. I could hear the Professor wheeling into the hall behind us.

"You're a little late to the party Xavier," I joked, "The others took the man down below, I'll check on him later. For now, where can we put Rouge?"

"You don't have a roommate yet, Kitty."

It was true. I didn't. All the new recruits were just a tad to immature to stand me for long before requesting a room change. I guess they didn't like my sparkling personality.

"Sure. And while I'm making up a bed for you, you can use my shower and borrow some of my clothes."

"Do you have any gloves?" Her quiet question threw me off a bit, I have to admit. I was not expecting any sort of reply from her.

"Yeah," I said slowly, "I do. You like wearing gloves?"

"No."

Her reply confused me. "Then why do you want some?" I asked.

"The ones I'm wearing are dirty and I need a new pair."

It was clear that she wasn't going to give me any answer beyond what she had already told me, so I let sleeping dogs lie, and bid the Professor goodbye. Grasping her arm, I led her up the stairs and to my room.

After showing her the shower and giving her some clean clothes, I went to bug Piotr for help with one of the spare cots. Being the nice guy that he is, he lifted one of the more comfortable ones off of the top shelf in the large supply closet for me.

Being the nice girl that I am, I thanked him with a quick kiss before ditching my guy for the timid girl in my bedroom.

The minute I opened my door in order to push the cot into the room she was there in front of me, helping me by pulling on the other end. Between the two of us, we got it set up in a few minutes.

"Well," I said with a slight huff, "There's that. Anything you need, you let me know. You're welcome to anything in the room, except my computer and books, since they're designed for people like me specifically."

"People like you?" she asked me curiously.

Did she seriously not know?

"Yeah," I said, "I'm blind. My books are in braille and my computer was built to work for me."

"Seriously? But you seem so..." she trailed off, and I could tell that she was scared of offending me.

I sat down on my bed and patted the space next to me. It took a minute, but she took my invitation.

"I seem so normal? It's okay, I get that a lot. I'm just so used to this place and everybody in it, that I don't have a problem getting around without any kind of aid. And for me, being blind is normal."

"I think that's kind of cool."

"Thanks Rouge. I do too."

"So, what is this place anyway."

"Well, it's official name is Xavier's School for the Gifted."

"So what, you're all really smart or talented?"

I laughed slightly. "Well, some of us are smart. And we all are talented in our own way. But that's not why we are students here."

"What do you mean?"

"Rouge, several of our teachers brought you in. Surely you've got to know that they are mutants."

"Well," she said slowly, "The white haired lady made the snow move around, and that guy with the headgear shot a laser out of his eye to get me out of the car...but I figured that was just them."

I couldn't help myself, I outright laughed at her descriptions of Scott and Storm.

"Soo,"she continued, "I know that they are mutants, but I don't know if anybody else here knows."

"Oh," I reassured her, "We all know that they're mutants."

"But," she said hesitantly, "isn't that dangerous? What if someone in the school is against mutants?"

"Then they would be against themselves." I said dryly.

"I don't understand what you are getting at, Kitty."

"On the outside, we are a school for gifted kids. The sign just doesn't specify what kind of gifted. Everyone here, student, teacher, it doesn't matter, is a mutant."

Her silence was overwhelming.

I waved my hand in front of her face slightly, hoping for some sort of response. I could feel her twitch slightly, and I let out a sigh of relief.

Well, at least I haven't killed her...yet.

I started to shake her, and would have continued to do so until she acknowledged me, if it hadn't been for the school alarms going off at that exact moment. I recognized the sequence instantly.

That particular alarm only went off when someone decided to break out of the medbay before Hank or Jean released them. Which meant that the man who had accompanied Rouge was currently making a break for it, since he was the only one occupying that sector at the moment.

And seconds later, I felt the Professor telepathically brushing my mind, asking for permission to enter. I gently let him in, long enough for him to speak to me.

Kitty, our guest has found himself trapped in the Danger Room, which has locked itself down. Kurt doesn't dare teleport into there with the defense mechanism on, so would you be so kind as to help our guest out?

I sighed again, more heavily this time.

Sure thing Professor. You might want to send somebody up to watch the girl while I'm busy. Finding out that we are all mutants seems to have given her a bit of a shock.

How big of a shock?

She hasn't spoken since I told her a few minutes ago.

He paused. I see. Well, you handle her companion and I will send Storm upstairs to take care of her.

Will do.

I cut the connection the minute we were through talking. I hated it when anyone was in my head.

I explained to Rogue that I was going to be gone for a little while, and that a friend of mine would be staying with her until I came back. She nodded her head, which gave me a slight hope that I didn't completely break her, and then I left, phasing through the floor as if it wasn't even there. The gasp that I heard before my head went down let me know that I had startled Rogue even more, and I winced a little.

Well, I thought, that went well.

Thankfully, thanks to the structure of the mansion, the Danger room was only a few stories directly below me. All I had to do was drop down. And, thanks to my mutation, accomplishing that task was relatively easy. And quick. It only took a few seconds for me to drop through the floors to the lower level.

Now, the Danger Room, the Medbay, the Jet Hanger, and all of the X-Men paraphernalia are kept in the lower levels away from the rest of the school. It's all kept a secret from the majority of the students. And in the words of the great Albus Dumblodore, "Therefore, naturally, the whole school knows."

Many of the older children go down there to train at least once a week, or more than once a week if they have to make a trip to the medbay. Which, for most of the boys at least, happens a lot. But for the most part, it is an unspoken rule that anyone who is not a member of the team stays out of the lower levels unless they are told to be there for some reason.

The second I felt myself slip into the control room for the DR systems, I switched off my mutation. Since I was the computer genius in the group, ever since I had been here I was the one in charge of all the holograms and mechanics that we had built into the training sequences. Once I was completely solid, I nearly gagged on on the scent of fried machinery.

Somehow this mutant had managed to completely short out of our systems, and by the sounds coming from the training area below, had thrown himself through the window in order to escape and now found himself trapped fighting our equipment. I sighed, knowing that it would take me and Hank weeks to fix it all.

Looks like we're doing hand-to-hand combat for a while.

Now, normally, if this had happened then we would all be stuck fighting against the holograms until we managed to break all of the projectors and robots. That's how it was when I first came here anyway. But, replacing all of the stuff constantly had been getting expensive, so I created a device that let out a pulse of electricity that had been tuned to just the right frequency to shut down all of the Danger Room devices, and nothing else.

It had taken us over two months to do it, but it was worth it.

I threw the switch, and listened as the sounds of fighting slowly died as the machines shorted and the holos disappeared. Down below me, the man was floundering in confusion, clearly wondering why all of the things he had been fighting were slowly disappearing. I decided not to keep him in that state for long.

"Ya know," I said, turning to him, "You really ought to be more careful around here. No telling what you might stumble into."

"Ya try wakin' up strapped to a bed with a red-head standin' over you with some weird gadgets in her hands and not freak out, petite."

I chuckled, remembering back to the day the exact same thing had happened to me, the very first time I had ever met all of the X-Men.

"Been there, done that." I told him.

"Where's the girl?"

"Rogue? She's in my room."

"She safe?" he asked, and for the first time I noticed a slight cajun accent coating his words. It wasn't a heavy, hard to understand kind of accent either. It was a nice change from all the New York accents.

"Yeah. Little shocked, but she's fine."

"Good."

"So," I asked curiously, "You got a name for me, Bayou Boy?"

I could practically feel him grin. "My name is Remy, petite. But you can call me Gambit."