TITLE: Bad Romance
STARRING: Hellion/X-23
UNIVERSE: AU based on Ultimate X-men
RATING: M
SUMMARY: A whole new take on the X-men. Laura and her twin brother Jim come to the school to kill Professor Xavier, but will they?
TITLE NOTE: Named after Lady Gaga's Bad Romance.

-1-

"I dunno, Jimbo. Are we really ready for this?" the girl asks, wrinkling her slightly beaky nose.

The boy and the girl are standing outside, in the brisk autumn breeze, an assortment of eyes trained on the mansion that looms above them. It looks forbidding in the
dim light, haloed with the leafless skeletons of trees.

"Don't call me that."

"Are times really this desperate?" the girl persists, ignoring him. "I really think whoring you out is a better idea. You've got two very viable holes—four if we count your
ears—and they could each be bringing in a couple hundred an hour."

"Shut the fuck up. We're going to have retirement money if we pull this off."

"You really planning to retire?" the girl asks, with an amused grin.

"Don't think it'll be necessary. My point is we could easily afford to Get Lost, if we do this. Really lost, so no one can find us again."

The girl says nothing, looks at the school again.

"Well, we ain't getting in by ringing the doorbell, Laur. Time to hit the books."

"We could pretend our car has engine trouble," the girl says.

"We don't have a car."

"Well that's some serious engine trouble right there."

"Fuck off," says the boy, annoyed. "This will take serious planning. You know this. The guy in that castle there is the world's strongest mind reader. Blocking him out is going to be hard."

"It doesn't matter in your case. You've got nothing in your head anyway."

"LAUR!"

"Okay, geez. We sleep on it?"

They leave.

…

Laura looks up at the moon from the rooftop, her hair flying in wisps around her head, her skin very pale, her expression sad, as opposed to its usual extreme expressions of displeasure,
amusement, or excitement. In the dark, blood was black, as she thinks it really is. It just pretends to be red. Blood black with the deeds of those that came before her, and those who end
with her, and the in-between. A drop falls out between her fingers; she watches it fall slowly, part of her mind calculating how fast it is going, and when and where it will land.

Plat! the gentle noise on the sidewalk thirteen stories below. It rings in her ears. She and the boy live on the thirteenth floor. People pretend it's the fourteenth, but really, she knows the score.

In the room they share, the boy sleeps on the ratty fold-out couch, and she gets the narrow bed. He is there now, grunting and making angry sounds in his sleep. SNIKT, she hears, a slightly

heavier sound than her own claws popping. Because Jim's are heavier, and he has more of them.

"RAWWRL!" he snarls, swiping at the air with his claws. Laura sighs, then swivels on her behind, ducks and climbs back into the room, where Jim is obviously having a night terror.

It's her job to wake him up when he does this. She rolls her eyes, grabs a pillow, and goes for it, clapping it soundly over his face and putting pressure down. "WAKE UP!" she yells, automatically

curving her body away from the claws that shoot straight up—but she's not fast enough. A claw slices right through the pillow, parts the stomach of her shirt and slides right into her stomach.

"WHUMMPF—jeeezus—" Jim's waking up now; he retracts his claw, and Laura bends over for a second.

"Sorry," he grumbles, sitting up and rubbing his eye. "Hurt?"

Laura examines the red splotch. Smooth, unbroken skin. "Damn, kitty's got claws. I actually bled."

Jim seems unimpressed. "Nah, that's just whatever you spilled on yourself earlier, you bloodthirsty harlot."
"Not a nice way to describe your sister," Laura says, heading towards the bathroom with a new t-shirt in hand. "Coincidentally, I've come up with a cover story for the school thing."

"Oh?" Jim is all ears. He's looking forwards to be able to afford some answers—and some real disappearing. Then they won't need to live on the edge all the time; they could relax. There'd be no
chance of Kimura riffling a hair on their heads ever again.

"We get caught," Laura's voice trails from the bathroom along with the thundering sounds of herself pulling on a new garment.

"That's not a plan, that's a death wish," Jim replies. He doesn't sound surprised.

"Oh, but how," Laura says, looking around the corner. "I'd kill anyone to be able to die."

"I hear you." Jim makes a face. "I actually have a headache, can you believe that?"

"You are a headache," Laura replies. The pillow is flung at her and she ducks easily, with almost the same expression of mischief on her face as her brother.

Jim is her brother—her twin sibling. They're the rarest kind of twin, genetically identical except for gender, and their claws. They were created by a lab about ten years ago and artificially aged to the
maturation of their mutations. And were given a military education, in addition to dog training and both psychological and physical torture by their handler, an unstable, brutal woman named Kimura.

They are alone in the world, together.

…

The boy leans, his cheek on his palm, his palm on his elbow, his elbow on the desk, on the surface of which he taps his pencil, his eyes on the clock on the wall across the room. He looks weary. Before
him is an exam sheet; the room is quiet save for the sounds of scraping pencils.

He's tired. He's been up all night, studying; this is his final exam. Forever. Well, it's the end of high school anyways. And he thinks he's failing. Scratch that—he knows. His thick eyelashes droop; he suddenly
wishes he had paid a bit more attention to the academic side of school. Instead of working his ass off for football and popularity.

Well, he hated the books side of school. It made him feel dumb. When he tried to read a sentence, the words swam, and suddenly interchanged ends, and became totally different things. Hopped around on
the page like frogs. Sometimes it was worse, and then sometimes he'd actually get to read it before it happened. He remembers a time when he liked reading, when he actually could tell what the sentence meant.

It seems like forever ago, but in reality it was only three years since.

Looking at the paper that awaits his pencil, he contemplates scratching his leg. And exposing his upper knee through his shorts. And looking at some things he'd scribbled on his skin this morning, after no sleep,
and with ten minutes to go before he left.

Choose one of the topics below and then write a 200 word essay.

The words on his thigh aren't going to help him. Already the words are warping in front of his eyes, changing. Easy choose none of the 200 toothpicks below and write then.

He feels like crumpling the paper. His pencil lead snaps under the pressure he's exerting; his knuckles are white. He doesn't understand what's happening to him. Is he getting stupider by the minute?

"All right, pencils down," the lady at the desk at the front says, not looking at them. Her pale blue eyes are trained on a magazine on her desk.

He ignores her. The sound of twenty-nine pencils hitting the desk, but not his.

"I said pencils down, Keller," the lady says, louder this time. Her voice is nasally.

He looks up, his eyes full of hatred. Fuck her. He wants to stab his pencil into her eye socket.

Next moment the kids around him are screaming, trying to escape their desks; the test administrator is sitting still in her chair, her head lolling over the edge, a pencil firmly lodged in her eye
socket through a shattered spectacle lens.

There is a lot of blood.

"Holy shit!" he says, bolting backwards himself, shoving the desk away with a loud screech. The sight is revolting—who would do something that sick? Then he remembered his sudden urge to
do just that—to make her shut up.

No way. He grabs his book bag and runs for the door while the students are still too startled to think. No stopping; he walks very quickly across campus, people yelling things to him. Greetings, news
about the disaster that has just happened in the testing room, flirtations. He rummages in his coat pocket, his fingers icy and numb. Keys, keys…there, he has them, he needs his car now.

There, just where he'd left it. A little red Roadster. It gleams softly in the dying light, with all the time and effort of what should have been spent on his school. At least he has something to show
for it. And, after all, it is his dad's car—the only thing he has left of him.

He gets in, with shaking fingers inserts the key in the ignition, turns. The car purrs to life.

"It wasn't me," he whispered to the car's interior. "I'm not a bad guy. Really."

Nothing talks back to him. He suddenly becomes aware—in the silence—of his roaring, pounding migraine headache that he can actually see—little green sparks of light—when he closes his eyes.

He backs out and heads for home.