Disclaimer: Everything belongs to Marvel except the OC's, which belong to me. Don't touch.

Authors Note: I hate Kitty's accent…and I can not write Kurt's…so I left those out. Kurt sometimes speaks in German, but without the accent, and Kitty speaks like a non-valley girl teenager. Anyway…Enjoy!

Prologue

            "Christy, let's go! The sensors are gonna come back on in ten minutes, and we need to be into the woods by then." The young man speaking was standing halfway in and halfway out of a small office, his gaze darting from the figure he was addressing to the hallway and back every few seconds, fingers clenching and unclenching nervously.

             "Just gimmie another couple of seconds and…yes, I found them!" The girl at the desk appeared to be glowing faintly from her face and arms, the only skin exposed by the hospital-blue shirts and pants she wore. She stuck a pale yellow hand into the cabinet and plucked out a pair of folders, tucking them under her arm.

            "Then let's go! I am not going back into that cell." The boy stepped out into the hall and held the door open with an outstretched arm.

            "I know Jim, I know. You took care of the electronic records, right? So this should be it…no trace of us once we're gone." Christy jogged out of the room, pushing the door out of his hand and letting it close behind them. The pale light from her skin created dancing shadows on the walls as they away from the office.

            "Yeah Chris, I did." Jim peered around the corner at the end of the gray-on-gray walls. "I stashed the stuff out on the training course this morning during second session." He whispered as they continued on towards the imposing steel doors at the end of the hall. "With what I swiped, we should be able to get at least two hundred miles from here by tomorrow night."

            "And you got my cloak, right? I can't really go anywhere without that, ya know." Christy sighed and wiggled her fingers in front of her face absently, watching the trails of light the motion left in the air.

            "Uh huh, of course." Jim stopped before the doors, staring at his reflection in the black coated glass. He'd be able to grow his hair out, he realized, reaching up to run his fingers through the brownish mess.

            "Hey, stop starin' at yourself." Christy gave him a shove, pushing him into the doors, which opened smoothly into the crisp night air under his weight.

            "Christy! Damn it…the alarm might have gone off!" Jim stumbled a step or two, as he spun around to glare at her. "You should be more careful."

            "Hey, I trusted you had it all worked out. See? That was just faith." She grinned at him and stepped out into the night air, her skin seeming all the more luminescent in the moonlight.

             "…I hate you." He glared at her , though there was a faint smile on his face, then they both turned and jogged across the front lawn. The building they had exited was an imposing four story stone square, featureless except for the front doors.

            The lawn appeared to be a complicated playground, littered with various jungle-gym equipment. The two avoided touching any of these things as they ran across, sliding to a stop before a chain-link fence.

             "I never understood this fence; all that technology and then a fence. It's so anti-climactic." Christy said as she reached out and ran her hands over the cold metal.

             "Better a fence then something we can't climb over, glow-worm." Jim had disappeared into the bushes, and he emerged with a large brown gym bag. He tugged a simple black cloak from it and tossed it to the glowing girl, then swung the bag over his shoulder.

            Christy stopped to catch the cloak, pulling it over her shoulders as she twisted around to peer back at the building they had just exited. "I wish we could have gotten the others out. Betsy or Devon would have gone in an instant."

             "We can't be sure of that, Chris. Besides, the alarms would have gone off if more then two cell doors were opened at once. I couldn't change that, it was hard enough just to get ours open at all." Jim grabbed the fence and started hauling himself up and over it.

             "I know, I know." She sighed, leaving the hood down, her long white-blonde hair hanging down her back as she followed him up the fence.

            Just as the two of them were dropping off the other side, every light in the compound flared to life, the internal alarms blaring so loudly they could hear them through the walls.

             "Oh hell," Both teenagers stared at the building for a moment, then turned and took off into the woods.

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            Five minutes later, as they picked their way through the forest that overlooked highway seventy-three, they heard the helicopters.

             "Damn it. They're gonna just gas the whole area, you know." Jim shouted over to Christy as he moved over to the edge of the hill, peering down at the highway. "I'm gonna go get us a ride." He turned and started down the hill, his form seeming to shimmer and fade and then vanish halfway down.

             "Alright. I'll…try to hold them off." Christy watched him disappear before she tugged her hood up to limit the amount of light that drifted from her pale face and yellow eyes. She closed her eyes as she listened to the helicopters approaching. She knew the company had two of them, kept on the roof in case of emergencies. If she could stop one, then maybe…

            She moved to the edge of the hill, flexing her fingers as she watched the sky, and waited.

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            Jim dropped onto the side of the road with a thud, then froze as he heard the sound of an engine from around the corner. He stepped back into the grass and stood as still as he could as a black van came around the corner, moving slowly, two men in full black combat gear peering out the windows. He focused, concentrating, to keep his power working.

            They had been training him to hide every type of heat while he was invisible, to ensure that nothing but the most intensive scan would find him. He'd picked it up rather quickly, but pretended not to. Hopefully they would just try the Infra-red scanner instead of bothering with the high density ones.

            He held his breath as the van approached but did not slow down. It was working! The van came before him, passing so close he could read the "Manrin Juvenile Detention Center" logo on the side…and kept going, disappearing a few moments later around the next bend. Jim let out a breath and almost dropped onto his rear, staring at the space where the van had been.

             "Thank God…" He muttered, His concentration slipping in his relief, causing him to flicker into view for a split second. "Stupid," he chastised himself.

            He stood and dusted himself off, standing next to the road and waiting. A few moments later a large tractor trailer came around the corner, causing Jim to grin. These guys gave rides, right? He let himself reappear and stepped out onto the road, waving to the driver.

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            Christy counted to twenty after the helicopter appeared above the trees before she brought her hands up above her head. As she continued to count her hands became brighter and brighter, an aura of yellow light seeping from her fingers. When she reached thirty her eyes opened and she let out her breath, slamming her hands together. A beam of light flared out from them, lancing up through the trees and into the back of the helicopter, cutting through the second propeller and sending the vehicle spinning out of control. She watched it spin out of control, tumbling into the trees off to the left. She stared until she felt the heavy vibration of the vehicle hitting the ground, then turned and ran down the hill after Jim.

            He was standing next to a stopped truck, holding the passenger side door open and waving to her. She didn't even stop, simply jumped past him and up next to the thirty-something driver, who offered her a slightly confused smile. "…What's going on out there?" His accent was southern, and the battered looking cap on his head claimed he was a Braves fan.

             "We don't know." Jim answered as he climbed into the truck and closed the door. "But we saw some people earlier in the trees." He looked at Christy and grinned. "I told him how we got lost hiking, honey." The emphasis on the last syllable almost made the girl laugh. "I think we must have wandered into a government training area or something."

            The driver looked skeptical, but nodded, leaning forward to peer up at the woods, then pulled the truck into gear and started down the road.

             "Well, it'll be an hour or two before we get where I'm goin'. You two can sleep in the back if you want." He thumbed back towards a simple cot in the small room behind the seats.

            Christy nodded again. "Thank you. I was afraid we'd be lost out there. I told you hiking was a bad idea." She lightly hit Jim in the shoulder, and the other teen just smiled as they both moved to sit in the back, leaving the driver to sing along to his radio.

             "You shot down the helicopter? I felt the crash." Jim whispered once they were in the back, and the blonde girl nodded.

             "I had to! It'll keep them busy…and hey, at least I won't glow for a little while." She brought an arm out of her cloak, and while she was still very pale, her skin looked dark and normal. "Where is he taking us, anyway?" She crawled to the back of the cot and settled in against the wall.

             "He said he'd take us as far as some place called Bayville, in Massachusetts. It has a train-station, he said. We can get pretty much anywhere from there." Jim set his bag down on the floor and sat next to her with a sigh. "I guess we pulled it off."

             "I hope so."

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            If there was one thing Logan did not like, it was being woken up in the middle of the night by voices in his head. He'd adjusted to it, of course, but every time it happened he had nightmares when he eventually got back to bed. Not that he ever got back to bed during the same week when this happened.

            "So Chuck, what's so important you had to drag me out of bed? I was dreamin'." His bare feet slapped against the cold metal of the Cerebro chamber as he approached the bald man he called Boss.

            Charles Xavier glanced over his shoulder at Logan, then back to the panel. "As much as you enjoy your dreams of battle with Sabretooth, Wolverine, I suspect this is more important." He taped a few buttons on the panel and a map appeared on the monitor. "I have been picking up mutant signatures from that facility up north again."

            Logan stopped next to the chair and looked at the panel . "We checked that place out, though. No mutants, and the signals stopped."

            "Yes, I know. But perhaps…well, I can not speculate on why they stopped, but these two mutants were outside of the compound. I was going to send you to investigate, but then they began moving down route seventy-three."

            "Which brings them here." Logan sighed and rubbed at his eyes. "Sometimes I think this place is a mutant-magnet."

            Xavier smiled knowingly and brought up several satellite surveillance photos on the screen. "They appear to be in a delivery truck coming towards town. And their was an explosion near the compound earlier. I want you to go investigate what happened." The small panel-printer under the computer began churning out a sheet of paper.

            "And if they don't stop in town? You gonna send anyone to meet them?"

            "No. I want to see what they do. If they do not stop in town, then we will go after them. But we can handle that. I need to you go up to that facility and report back as soon as you can." Xavier handed him the print-out, then shut down the computer.

            Logan stared at the paper for a moment before stuffing it into his pocket. "Fine. But you owe me sleep."

Chapter 1 – Welcome to Bayville         

12:30 PM, Bayville High

Kurt Wagner, acrobat, x-man and teenager, braced himself, his whole body tensing as he leapt to the left. It was just like training, just relax and dodge. He felt the projectile shoot past his ear, as he spun, landing on his feet a moment later to the sound of a splat behind him. Then he grinned.

            "Ha! You missed! And you wasted your cupcake!" He straightened up and pointed two holographic fingers at Kitty, who was sitting across the park bench from him, a sour expression on her face. The two of them were seated at a picnic bench outside of the high school, enjoying the shade of a tree that now had cupcake sliding down its trunk  .

            "Damn it Kurt! If you're going to tease me at least let me get even, it's no fun otherwise." Kitty crossed her arms over her pink tank-top and stared at her lunch-plate.

            "Well, you should've known better then to throw something at an acrobat! I am used to dodging things, remember?" Kurt dropped back into his seat and pushed his own cupcake across the table to her. "Just don't throw that one, yes?" He scooped up his sandwich as Kitty grabbed the cupcake and took a bite, muttering something that might have been "fine" through the pastry.

            "And don't talk with your mouth full! Why, if your parents knew they would just…die and…" Kurt seemed to stare at a space behind Kitty's head for several seconds, then back to her. "And…wait…what was I talking about?"

            Kitty Pryde sighed and swallowed her mouthful of cupcake, looking at him with a slightly tired expression. "Amanda just walked behind me, didn't she?"

            "Uh…no?" Kurt gave the false answer a try. It couldn't hurt, right?

            "Liar. How come she isn't eating lunch with us today, anyway?" Kitty took another bite of her cupcake and twisted around to see Kurt's girlfriend disappearing into the cafeteria.

            "Oh, she is finishing up some project. It's really no big deal. She said she'll still come to the mall with us after school."

            "Goody. Did you round up Scott or Jean to drive us?" Kitty scooped up all her trash and dumped it on Kurt's tray.

            "Nien, but the professor gave me bus fair. So we'll be fine. What about Rogue, is she still coming?" Kurt took the tray and climbed out of his bench to dump it in the trashcan nearby.

            "She said something about wanting to go write," Kurt shook his head as he took a bite of his sandwich. "I'm supposed to pick her up some more eye-liner."

            "Purple, I assume?"

            "Of course; what else?"

            "We should see if we can find some pink. Just to see what she does."

            Both teenagers laughed at the rather disturbing mental picture of the goth girl wearing anything pink as they headed towards the cafeteria doors.

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            That afternoon the two of them, plus Amanda, were perched on the bench at the bus station, staring down the street at the passing traffic.

            "Yeah, so Logan left sometime last night. We don't know where he went, but rumor has it that there was a big explosion up north and the professor thinks there were mutants involved." Kurt rambled to Amanda, who seemed to be staring at his face without actually hearing him.

            "Kurt! We aren't supposed to tell anyone about that." Kitty threw a pebble at him, which he reached out and blocked with his palm, a slightly confused expression on his face.

            "But…it's just Amanda. She's at the mansion all the time anyway." He pointed at his girlfriend in explanation, and Kitty just sighed.

            "Fine, fine…here comes the bus. At least don't talk about it in there, alright? No need to advertise where we're from…"

            "Alright. We'll make out instead." Amanda said teasingly, getting to her feet.

            "Gah! Not what I meant!" Kitty glared at the both of them before turning and staring intently at the bus, which was a block or so away and could not get to them fast enough. Damn couples. It wasn't any fun if Lance wasn't around.

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            "CD store!"

            "What?" Kitty stopped and glanced back at Kurt, who was bouncing on the balls of his feet and pointing at the nearby music store.

            "You were gonna walk past. You can not walk past the CD store," Kurt calming explained, gesturing towards the offending store. "We have to go in." Kurt pointed again then let his hand drop to his side. Amanda had ducked into the book store, promising to catch up, while Kitty and Kurt had continued walking.

            "But you weren't planning on getting a CD, and I am not planning on getting a CD, so-"

            "That doesn't matter!" Kurt cut her off and grinned. "We have to go in. It's an unwritten law of the mall. And I think that CD I want came out yesterday." He turned and darted into the store, leaving the mutant girl to follow after him, shaking her head.

            Kurt was staring at the new releases rack, reading the various pop band names with something akin to pretentious disdain, when Kitty caught up with him.

            "When did music start to suck?" He commented as the brunette stepped past him to pick up some recent boy-band release.

            "Hey, this stuff does not suck. And that band you like is on this rack too." She pointed at the bottom shelf with the corner of her CD.

            "Fine, why does most of the music suck? Mostly what you buy." The boy grinned at her as he leaned down to scoop up the aforementioned album.

            "You just don't have any taste! This stuff is happy and upbeat and-"

            "Pre-packaged garbage the singers didn't write themselves?" He finished her sentence and received a slap to the shoulder as reward. "Ach! That hurt."

            "You deserved it, furball." Kitty grinned and they both returned to reading the backs of their respective CDs.

            After a moment Kurt glanced over at her, grinning, then back to his CD. "Teeny-bopper."

            "Philistine," Kitty didn't even glance up as she responded.

            "Conformist."

            "Wanna-be Rebel."

            "Barbi-Hey!"

            Kurt trailed off as someone grabbed the CD he was looking at from his hand. The culprit was a girl dressed in a heavy looking black cloak. Kurt could only tell because strands of pale yellow hair were drifting out of the front as she held the CD up to her hood with a gloved hand.

            "Thanks! This is the last one, and I'm just dying to hear it!" Kurt just stared as the cloaked girl turned and headed over to the counter to pay.

            "Uhm…aren't you going to stop her?" Kitty asked a moment later as the shock passed. That had been very random.

            "Well, I didn't really want it that badly." Kurt said as he watched the girl pay.

            "You mentioned it a couple weeks ago, Kurt. You were going to buy it." Kitty poked him in the side lightly.

            "Ja, but…" He trailed off, then shook his head. "I wonder why she's wearing that cloak thing."

            "Maybe she's cold." Kitty shrugged, but started to watch the figure with a bit of interest. It was rather odd.

            "Or maybe she's a mutant." Kurt grinned. "I mean, maybe she's the one the professor sensed last night. He did say they were coming into Bayville."

            "But…why would a mutant involved in some explosion come into the mall?"

            "If I had to guess, I would say to buy that cd." Kitty started to respond, but Kurt was suddenly distracted by the appearance of Amanda at the entrance to the store. "I'll be back in a second."

            "Uhm…alright." Kitty watched him go, before she turned back and watched the cloaked girl pay for her CD and start to leave the store. Kitty looked at the new releases rack again, before she let out an exasperated breath, tossed her CD on the shelf and ran after the cd-swiper.

            "Aren't you hot?" She asked, coming up besides the girl and walking along with her. The hood twisted, perhaps as the girl looked at her, then went back to staring at the CD.

            "Aren't you cold? You aren't wearing much at all." At the others response, Kitty glanced down at her tanktop and shorts. Hey, they were decent! She pursed her lips and smirked.

            "It's the middle of September! So no, I'm not cold. You swiped my friends CD back there. He was gonna buy that." She reached out to tap it, but the girl yanked it out of reach and tucked it away inside her cloak.

            "He should'a said something when I grabbed it, then." Kitty could almost sense the cloaked girl grinning under her hood, and for some reason it infuriated her.

            "Yeah, well, he's polite…somethin' you obviously aren't, and wouldn't just snap at someone even when they do take his stuff." Kitty put her hands on her hips, looking up at the girl and suddenly feeling rather short. The cloaked girl turned to face her, and Kitty could see a pair of yellow eyes shimmering inside the hood.

            "I don't want any trouble, alright? Just leave me the hell alone. He can get the CD tomorrow." She pointed a black-gloved finger at Kitty before she turned and stormed off into the crowd.

            "Yeah, but…" Kitty started to follow after her when Kurt and Amanda walked over.

            "What was that all about?" Amanda gave the mutant girl a look before she stood on her tip-toes to peer into the crowd after the cloaked girl.

            "She had yellow eyes. Like flashlights." Kitty seemed lost in thought, and Kurt gave her a poke in the side.

            "Hey, Kit? Earth to Kitty."

            "What? Oh…yeah." Kitty nodded vaguely, staring after the girl, then twisted to look at Kurt and his girlfriend . "I'll…catch up with you two back at the mansion, okay? Bye!" And she disappeared into the crowd.

            "Uh…bye Kitty…" Kurt waved after her, then exchanged a confused expression with Amanda.

            Amanda hooked her arm through Kurts, "you have the strangest friends, fuzzy."

Kurt just shook his head.

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            There was one advantage to Kitty's power that she absolutely adored. She could suspend herself within solid objects, sticking just an ear or the front of her face out, and listen and watch while rarely being noticed. She picked up more gossip this way…

            Kitty had followed the cloaked girl out of the mall, through the parking lot and into the back alley where she had ducked into a dumpster to listen.

            "Jim?" The cloaked girl had stopped a few yards from the dumpster, and she reached up and tugged off her hood as she spoke. Kitty almost fell out of the dumpster. The girl's face was glowing like a nightlight, her hair was the whitest blonde she had ever seen, and her eyes were the color of the sun.

            "Put your hood back up! What if someone sees you?" Suddenly, the girl's hood was shoved back on her head and a boy dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a black t-shirt faded into view next to her. Kitty did fall out of the dumpster then…but thankfully backwards, and she was hidden again a moment later.

            ~Professor? I found the two mutants you told us about.~ Kitty tried to project the way Xavier had taught her, but she had no idea if it would actually work. So she listened.

            "Hey! No one is going to come back here…and do you have any idea how hot this thing is? I mean, I love the heat but…" The cloaked girl sighed, and the one she had called Jim put his arm around her.

            "It's just till we find some place safe, Christy. Okay? Only a little while longer, I promise." He smiled and gave her a squeeze, then started to pace. "Did you get it?"

            "Yeah, here." The CD was drawn out and handed over the to the boy who had just appeared. "So what are we going to do now?"

            "Thank you. God, I missed music. I got so tired of that elevator shit they pumped into our cells." Jim flipped the CD over to read the back, glancing up at her second question. "We wait. There isn't another southern train until two in the morning…it's a boxcar train heading all the way to Georgia, we should be alright on that. I found a coffee shop we can hang out in…" Kitty frowned as the boy talked. So they were leaving…the professor would probably want to speak to them before that, and…

            ~Kitty?~ Suddenly, Xaviers voice was echoing through her head. ~Watch them, Kitty. I am sending someone to meet you. Do not lose them…approach them if you must.~

            ~Yes professor,~  Kitty watched as the two mutants began making their way towards the end of the alley. She could throw some trash maybe…oh, screw it. She phased her way through the side of the dumpster, stepping up a few feet before them and waving.

            "Hi again," she tried to smile as the two teenagers backed up a step instinctively, Jim almost falling before he vanished.

            "You…what do you… you're a mutant?" Christy's yellow eyes glared out from under her hood, at Kitty took an unconscious step backwards, nodding.

            "Y…yeah, I am." She tucked her fingers into the pockets of her shorts, trying to smile again. "You two are also, right? I'm from the Xav…" She was choked off as an something wrapped around her neck, and she felt herself get tugged backwards and off the ground.

            "Who are you? Did they send you? Talk, or I'll…" Jim's voice hissed into her ear, and Kitty flinched away, phasing through his arm. She caught herself on the edge of the dumpster and moved several feet away, turning to face them both, hands on her hips.

            "You'll what? I'm not here to fight you." She couldn't help but smile at their stunned expressions. The boy had seen her phase through the dumpster, they should have been smart enough to know that wouldn't work. "Who are you talking about? Who is after you?"

            "We…we're…" Christy started to talk, hooded gaze tilting towards the ground, but Jim cut her off with a wave of his arm.

            "Shut up! She's probably lying…you know how tricky they are, Christy. We have to be careful." He glared from one girl to the other, then grabbed Christy by the arm and pulled her towards the end of the alley. "Come on, we're leaving. If you really don't want a fight you won't follow us!"

            Kitty took a couple step after them, reaching one hand out. "But wait…I…" and they were gone around the corner. She sighed and leaned back against the dumpster, rubbing at her eyes.

            ~Professor. They're leaving…I can't stop them without fighting. They said something about the trainyard.~ She projected again, keeping her eyes closed so she could focus.

            ~Alright Kitty.~ The professor's voice echoed back to her a few moments later, a slight edge to it. ~Jean and Scott will be there in a few minutes. Go with them, follow the two mutants.~

            ~Yes Professor. Is something else wrong?~

            ~I just spoke with Logan. He is up near the facility where the explosion occurred last night. Apparently a pair of flying mutants left the compound coming here several minutes ago. I have tracked them with Cerebro, and they are traveling very quickly. They will be here shortly.~

            ~Oh…are they from the same place? Are they after these two?~ She started towards the end of the alleyway, opening her eyes enough that she wouldn't walk into anything.

            ~I do not know, they are moving to fast for me to read their minds. But I can only assume they are.~

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            "You saw her shoulder! She didn't have a tattoo. Maybe she was telling the truth!" Christy muttered over to her companion as they ran down a side street, heading towards the train yards that Jim had found earlier in the day.

            "Maybe, but do you want to take that chance? I'm not going back to that cell, Chris. Not for a hunch, or a stranger. Not even for you." He took a breath, trying to avoid the hurt expression on her face. "Look, we can't afford to trust anyone. Not right now. Not until they give up looking for us."

            "But…they won't. Why would they stop? They can track us with the psychics, and even if that doesn't work they'll find us eventually. We will need help."

            "We can take care of ourselves. We got away, didn't we?" Jim growled, stopping at the end of a street and peering from one end to the other quickly.

            "We got lucky, Jim." Christy eyed him nervously. "You do know where you're going, right?"

            "I think so. Come on."

            He grabbed her wrist and picked a direction.

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            Half an hour later they dropped down on the other side of the fence into the train yard, peering around in the fading light.

            "Alright…the train should be near the far end of the lot." Jim pointed, swinging his bag over his shoulder as he started to walk. "It'll take us pretty far south. We should be safer down there."

            "I hope so. I'm still not sure we should've run away from that girl, you know. She was a mutant, and if she isn't with…them…then she might have been able to help us."

            "Stop thinking about it, we did the right thing." Jim glanced back at her, trying to sound reassuring. "We couldn't stay here anyway. We're not far enough away."

            "No, you really aren't, children. I thought I taught you better then this." A voice from the top of a nearby box car brought them both to a halt, and a moment later a green haired woman dropped to the ground before them.

            "…Polaris! They sent you after us?" Jim just stared…he had expected a student, maybe Devon or Danielle, but Polaris? The woman was tall and thin, dressed in a grey trench coat, a pair of black pants and a blue shirt, her bare hands resting on her hips.

            "You caused quite a stir, children. Of course they sent me after you." She shook her head sadly. "I'm supposed to bring you back, if I can. Or kill you. But I don't know…" Polaris glanced up at the box car again. "What do you think, Shockwave?"

            A teenager, with dirty blonde hair, dressed in a bright green coat himself…all of his clothing was green, in fact…dropped to the ground next to Polaris. "Kill'em! Kill'em so I can go home. I'm missing my cartoons." He reached a gloved hand out, clenching his fingers, and Jim and Christy found themselves being lifted off the ground in a telekinetic vice.

            "No!" Christy struggled, trying to tug her cloak off, trying to get a hand free…anything. She wasn't going to die like this. She could see Jim doing the same thing nearby as Shockwave stalked towards them. He was one of the more ruthless of the syndicates pupils, taken at a very young age, and one of the few people Christy was truly afraid of. "Please…"

            "Oh, you're gonna beg!" Shockwave grinned, flexing his hands again, and Christy felt the telekinetic grip tighten around her. "Beg for me, Flare, come on."

            "D…don't call me that…" She growled, but she could feel herself weakening. Polaris would do something, right? The woman couldn't have really been told to just kill them. But the green haired woman was just watching, arms crossed, a smirk on her face.

            A loud crack sounded from nearby and Jim let out a cry, going limp in the air, eyes rolling back into his head. Christy twisted her neck enough to see, eyes watering from with tears and going red with the pain. He…couldn't be dead, could he?

            Suddenly a beam of light shot past her face, blood red against the pink tint of her vision, and slammed into Shockwave, sending him tumbling backwards into Polaris as all four of them plummeting to the ground.

            Christy just lay there, staring at the evening sky, when the girl from earlier suddenly stuck her head into Christy's line of sight. "Hi! Relax. We're here to help. Just…relax." She smiled reassuringly and Christy nodded, unable to form words.

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            By the time the three X-men had caught up to the two teens, they had already been in the grip of the strange telekinetic. Jean had been tracking them as best she could, and she'd sensed the arrival of the other two mutants but hadn't expected to come across them like this.

            "~Scott, they're both conscious, be careful.~ She mentally shouted out to Cyclops as he walked between Jim and Christy, hand on his visor, gaze resting steady on the green-haired woman and the telekinetic.

            "Check on him," was Scott's only response, pointing at the injured Jim, then moved to stand a few feet from Polaris and Shockwave, who were slowly pushing themselves to their feet. "Don't move."

            Polaris glared at him as she pushed herselt to her feet. "The X-men…This isn't any of your concern, hero. Go away before you get more then you can handle." The green haired woman dusted herself off, smirking. Several small chunks of metal spun up into the air and began a slow circle around her head.

            "Who are you? Why are you attacking these two?" Scott eyed the spinning pieces of metal, and felt the comforting grip of Jean's telekinetic shield as the redhead reached out and encased him in it. ~Just to be safe.~ He heard her voice in his head, but didn't respond.

            "I am their teacher. That is all you need to know. Now leave." Shockwave had picked himself off the ground and seemed to be readying to charge Scott, but Polaris held up a hand to stop him. "We do not wish to fight you. But we will if we must."

            "The same goes for us, lady. Now take your lackey there and go. If these two are running away from you, they probably have a good reason." Scott tapped his visor to emphasize his words, a small optic blast flashing out to catch one of the metal chunks and vaporizing it above Polaris's head.

            "You don't know what you're getting into, boy." Polaris narrowed her eyes and raised a hand, seemingly preparing to hurl the metal chunks at Cyclops…but then let it drop, the metal falling to the ground. "But you shall find out. Come Shockwave, we're going home."

            "What? We're running away?" Shockwave looked stunned, looking from Polaris to the X-men and back. "We can't just run away!"

            "We aren't running away, we'll be back." She pointed a finger at Cyclops. "You've signed your own death warrant, X-man. We chose to ignore you before but now…" She simply smiled and launched herself into the air, followed a moment later by Shockwave. In a minute, they were gone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

            Scott let out a sigh of relief, his hand dropping away from his visor as he turned back to Kitty and Jean. Kitty was helping the cloaked girl to her feet while Jean lifted Jim into the air on a telekinetic field.

            "How are they?" He asked, jogging the few feet back towards them.

            "She'll be alright, but his four of his ribs are broken." Jean pointed at the floating boy. "We need to get him back to the mansion."

            "The…what?" Christy was leaning against Kitty, her hood still draped down over her face. She seemed to have a knack for making sure her skin was hidden.

            "Mansion. It's where we live. You'll be safe there." Kitty smiled reassuringly at her, then turned to guide her towards the jeep.

*~* To be Continued *~*

((.And…there we have it. I know I posted this before, ages and ages ago, but it's cleaned up now and hopefully people will actually READ it. Hopefully.

Please? And review! I do so like the reviews.))