FicWad

Author's Note: Kinda ironic that the most climactic scene in this fanfic to date fell on September 11th in the story line. I did not intend for that to happen, but it's interesting to see how it all is panning out, as I add definite dates to everything. Oh, and the Auto shop scene, yeeeeeeah. I knew next to nothing about cars when I wrote it. Does it show?

~ ~ ~

“Hi, Kitty,” Jean said as she peeled away from a group of her friends.

Kitty looked up from her locker where she was busy storing all of her books and getting the morning’s binders ready to go into her backpack. She was a little puzzled as to why Jean was bothering to talk to her, but she shrugged it off when the red head began looking at her face, and the newly healed scratch.

“Great, I’m so glad to see that there wasn’t a scab. Those things are really awful. They itch forever and if you do pick at them then you have a nasty scar.” Jean said happily as Kitty continued to fish around in her locker for the granola bar that was her breakfast.

“Uh, yeah,” Kitty mumbled, still not quite conscious.

“Hoi! Kit-kat Bar!” the loud shout made Kitty wince, “Have you finished A.L. yet?”

“No, Betsy,” Kitty replied, after deciphering the fact that A. L. probably meant Annabelle Lee, and wishing that everyone wasn’t so awake at the moment.

She looked around and saw Betsy with John and that weird vampire girl. John was chatting animatedly with Betsy, while the vampire looked like the sun should have been outlawed. At the moment Kitty agreed with her, and felt some of the fellow feeling shared by people who aren’t awake before eleven in the morning for the brooding Goth.

Marie looked for a moment at Jean’s too perky smiling face. She hit on an inspiration.

“Yah know, it could be Jean beatin’ Kitty up,” she whispered to Betsy and John.
The two foreigners looked at each other. They both knew that when it came to Jean, Marie had a tendency to be paranoid. This was probably just one of those times. They decided to change the subject, so that Operation: Kitty Stalking, as John was calling it, could begin in earnest.

“Y’reading Annabelle Lee?” John asked in a bouncy happy voice.

Jean plastered her normal fake smile on her mouth, and both Rogue and Kitty shuddered at the alertness John had.

“More like force fed it, but yeah.” Kitty responded in a call me back in an hour and I might be able to string two words together tone of voice.

“Oh, it’s great. Poe’s really good on general principles, but Annabelle Lee is one of the best things he’s ever done. The eye is looking at you.” John felt that now was the time to dip into random sayings with a slight relevance to the point at hand.

“Riiiiiight.” Jean said skeptically to fill the silence that this statement had left.

The bell rang, breaking up the chance for more awkward conversation between the five teens. Rogue and Betsy left for their fashion design class, while John did the courteous thing, in his mind, and escorted Kitty to the French class that they shared. Jean’s pre-calc class was in the same direction and so she walked with them as well. John took this as an opportunity to find more about his house mates. More to drive them insane, that is.

“So y’re not a cheerleader?” John asked Jean for the fifth time.

“No, soccer and cheerleading are two different things,” Jean tried to explain, once again.

She would have sworn that she had a reflexive twitch that started when ever the crazed Aussie opened his mouth. She understood why Betsy was friends with him. The purple weirdo was just as crazy, or eccentric as she put it, as he was. Not to mention that she delighted in all things inane and perverse.

A disturbing thought seized Jean. What if John and Betsy got married? Oh God, think of the children! The only way they could be possibly more of a terror to society was if John married a patricidal psychotic gothic witch.

“Excuse me, Jonathan, I think I left my text book in my locker.” Jean said, and she hurried off.
Kitty giggled. “Is that your goal in life? Made people around you insane?”

“Well, I’d also like to write the great Australian novel, get pots of cash and retire somewhere nice, like Sydney, or New York. Somewhere fifty miles from any countryside, anyway.” John replied.

The reached the classroom at this point which was probably a good thing for Kitty, because if she laughed at John’s antics anymore she was in grave danger of choking on her granola bar. The French teacher, Mademoiselle St. Croix, saw Kitty, and immediately lassoed her to talk about the first pop quiz of the year where Kitty had been the only person in class to actually receive a passing grade.

John tried to avoid the young teacher. She was one of those people who disapproved of people who had no ambition. John did have ambition, but it was the ambition to become a great writer, which in Mademoiselle St. Croix’s book was tantamount to wanting to become a garbage man. So the Aussie skulked in the doorway, hoping that the two would move so that he could get to his seat before the start-of-class bell rang.

Lance spotted John lurking in the door to of the French class and called the gangly boy over. John came happily enough, glad to be out of the way of his Wonder Woman like teacher.

“Hey,” Lance muttered, “You got second block free?”

“Er, yeah, why?”

“Just meet me by the lockers on the second floor, C wing. I have a little re-decorating planned.” Lance grinned to himself, but the grin was also shared by John.

“Great, be there mate.” John told Lance as he saw an opening by the door and took it.
Lance saw Mademoiselle St. Croix glaring at him over Kitty’s shoulder and decided to beat a hasty retreat to his Auto class.

Mr. Cassidy came in late. He hadn’t shaved and the fumes of cheap whiskey mingled with the fumes of gas, spray paint and other various chemicals which were normally present in the classroom. The small group just looked at one another. Even without having had the experience of pouring the rounds of drinks they all knew what had happened. In a small town like Bayville it was hard to keep things like alcoholism and evil cousins a secret.

Lance liked Mr. Cassidy. Unlike everyone else in the school he did not have hang ups about little things like vandalism. Well, as long as the vandalism was artistic and would not hurt anything more important than someone’s ego. Mr. Cassidy generally thought that most egos could use a little bruising now and then.

It also did not hurt that Mr. Cassidy was the only teacher who was giving him anything near a good grade. Lance had long since given up trying to be good at any other class. What was the point, he reasoned, of wasting time when you knew that the teachers would not care, and were out to get you anyway?

Sure, Lance was not the smartest cookie out there, but he was fairly intelligent. He knew that he could try harder, but in the long run he would have to destroy the image that the teachers had of him before they would consider changing his grades to more favorable numbers. Sadly, math was subject to people’s opinions just like everything else.

So, this was the only class that Lance actually tried to pass. It was not all that hard, actually. He liked cars, he liked the teacher, and he liked pissing off Scott Summers, which happened every time a project was finished. They invariably had the best two grades in the class, but Lance had the better of the two.

Today was no different. Mr. Cassidy got around to passing out grades from a quiz on hot rod engines and Scott had a ninety nine. Lance had a ninety nine point five, with extra credit, which rounded up to a nice one hundred.

Scott glared at Lance’s paper over Lance’s shoulder. At least his eyebrows shot down, and his mouth turned down, so one could safely assume that he was glaring. It was amazing how easy it was to read his expression even with those dark red glasses protecting his eyes.

Lance smiled smugly and with a very innocent air asked what Scott had received. Scott scowled some more and muttered his grade. Lance magnanimously patted him on the shoulder and said that maybe he would do better next time.

It was a trick that he had learned from Pietro and Jean, oddly enough. Rub someone’s nose in what you can do and it will burn them, but be nice about the fact that you won and they lost and you win again, while shoving their ego off a quiet cliff somewhere in the middle of the night.

“All reit, be quiet, ye hooligans,” Mr. Cassidy muttered at the class trying not to aggravate his headache any further, “today we’re goin’ t’be werkin’ on our re-spray jobs, so git.”
He shooed the class out to the garage. Normally Mr. Cassidy was not a didactic teacher; he showed the class what to do and then expected that they did it. Talking was rarely involved in the exercise, and usually only when he needed to swear loudly as someone dropped an irreplaceable car part on his foot.

He was a calm, measured man, who liked things to stay constant, and therefore had taken a strong disliking to fickle people. This might have been one of the reasons why he had not been fired yet. Ms. Darkholme also felt that fickle people should be eradicated with extreme prejudice, and that people who shared her opinion on this topic were worth their weight in gold.

Or it might have been the fact that Sean was extremely good at looking stupid, while his mind worked away at top speed. Many who first met him wrote Mr. Cassidy off as being gullible; his students certainly thought that it was easy to pull the wool over his eyes. Of course, their marks at the end of the year usually showed them how wrong they were. Along with fickle people, Sean had no patience for insipid students. He considered them petty excuses of human beings and a waste of space and precious oxygen. He preferred the incorrigible students, as they were infinitely more interesting to attempt to mold. Plus, they reminded him of his own younger years and Mr. Cassidy was a sentimentalist at heart.

He could be extremely dogmatic about almost any subject, although his cousin Tom was his match for sheer stubborn will. Both cousins were very much alike, disliking orthodox methods of getting a point across and hating the idea of tradition when it came to family matters. As children they had made games out of disrupting the lives of the officious people in their community by playing pranks until the pompous individuals lost their inflated sense of importance and screamed at the two boys.

He remembered the way Maeve would call them both immature and inane children from her lofty position of being a year older than the pair. Those had been good times. Sean’s docile mother had not known what to do with her wild son and his even wilder orphan cousin. She had felt vaguely that Tom might commit suicide if he was ever disciplined and therefore had never bothered to correct him. She had tried to indoctrinate manners into Sean, however he had argued strongly against the double standard she was setting by letting Tom run wild and loose, so the poor woman had given up on the matter, gone to bed with a headache and a large bottle of rum.

Both cousins had been extremely willful when growing up, however once they had been separated for a year both grew more mature and serious. The year of separation, instituted by the matriarch of the Cassidy family, the Grandmother, had made both boys grow up, but it also resulted in their growing apart. Tom had come back from America after the year’s probation had ended. He found himself dropped back into the tedious life of the Irish family and discovered that everything, even his cousin Sean, was dull and boring in comparison to travel. Sean, who had spent the year in London with a second cousin once removed, or some other distant relation like that, discovered to his horror that his cousin Tom, whom had had looked up to, was wantonly uncontrolled and unpredictable, willing to do anything for thrills.

It seemed to deteriorate from there. Yet it was ironic that Sean was the one who had ended up as the alcoholic nearly broken shell of a man, while Tom was a gentleman with a disreputable past, a dashing countenance, and the inheritance of Cassidy Keep back in Ireland. Not to mention Theresa.

Sean’s thoughts quickly skittered off that matter and continued to revolve in hung over circles about the problem of where it had all started. Some things were too painful to contemplate. His daughter headed that long list. Even wondering why he and Tom had grown apart so drastically was at little too close to home, but Sean was one of the people who would pick at scabs.

Had Tom said that the ice sculpture that called itself Emma Frost been trying to enroll Theresa in her school, again? Last night was too much of a blur. Sean wanted his daughter to be in school, but he held an instinctive dislike for the cold woman that wanted to be Theresa’s headmistress. It was not as if Emma was a horrible human being-- however, Sean disliked her on the grounds that she was so bloody controlled, as if she thought that showing emotion was a weakness. Plus, some of her other students gave Sean the shivers.

Also, the school was in Boston and Sean wanted to be as close to Theresa as the custody arrangement would allow. Tom had been kind enough to take an apartment in New York so that Sean could be close to Theresa when she was not off on trips with her beloved “Uncle.” Sean ground his teeth loudly, and then looked about for a distraction.

He found it readily in the form of a Summers-Alvers argument. Those two could make his disagreements with Tom look like a drop of water in an ocean. This was why he had paired them together. They were the best minds of his class, and learned well from each other.

Well, in theory they should have made ideal partners. However, theory and practice were two different things. Sean felt that a little healthy competition between the two was a good thing for their psyches and egos, even if it tended to be a bad thing for the rest of the class.

“Break it up ye two! Break it up!” Sean yelled over the other sounds of the class.

“But sir, he --”

“Wants to use racing --”

“Stripes would look great on a PT --”

“The guy’s on pot if he thinks that a Cruiser --”

“It would help delineate the back end --”

“Stripes will only make it show up more --”

“SHUT UP THE PAIR O’ YE!” Mr. Cassidy yelled at the two students who were fighting over a can of spray paint like a pair of five year olds.

“The car is fine the way it is,” Lance muttered mutinously as Scott stuck his tongue out at his ‘partner.’

Just please let the bell ring, Sean prayed, thinking longingly of the whiskey bottle at the bottom of his desk, before giving his head a little shake. No, he was trying to quit. No more little reminders in the middle of the day, not even after this class. C’mon, ring you damn piece of pot metal! The teacher glared at the old-fashioned bell just as it rang.

“’Alleluia, er-- Ai mean, guid idea Scott. Mebee ye an’ Alvers kin werk on it after school.”
Lance glared after Sean as the burly Irishman turned and stalked off to his office. If Cassidy thought that Lance would be wasting his precious time after school with Sergeant Summers and a bug ugly PT Cruiser he had another thing coming.

“So, see ya here after last bell?” Scott asked Lance, trying not to be too smug about the fact that his suggestion had been sanctioned by Mr. Cassidy.

“Whatever Summers,” Lance waved his hand carelessly as he walked over to the window to pick up his back pack.

Lance slipped the can of red spray paint into his book bag without Scott seeing. Then he straightened up and slung the dark grey sack over his shoulder. It was at this moment that Lance made the mistake of looking out the window.

He saw Kitty with two girls that he vaguely remembered as Jean’s friends. They were walking toward the athletic field, and the fall sun was shining at just the right angle to make Kitty’s hair extra glossy and perfect in Lance’s eyes. He saw Kitty turn for a moment and look presumably right at him. That was when his large and bulky backpack decided that it had enough of defying gravity with the help of his shoulder and Lance was toppled over backwards by its weight.

“Need a hand, Alvers?” Lance could tell that the choking sound emanated from the back of Scott’s throat was an attempt to conceal laughter.

Lance growled and clenched his fists as he rose.

“I’m fine,” he replied tersely before setting off for the C-wing lockers.

Once in the hall he managed to get caught in the rush of people and was able to forget the embarrassment of falling backward when he saw Kitty. Of course, Kitty and her friends managed to plan to come in from the outside and walk a little ahead of him. Lance’s eyes were so busy following the perky brunette, who still had not shaken off the sleepiness of the morning, it seemed, that he failed to notice the bright orange whirlwind heading in his direction at high speeds. Well, he failed to notice it until John rebounded off his chest.

The Australian seemed to sail gracefully backwards through the air, miraculously not hitting anyone, until his lanky frame met the ground with a solid thump. Lance had not moved an inch.
John sat up on his elbows. He was slightly worried that whoever he had bumped into was going to tell him off for not watching where he was going. However Lance just shook his head at the Aussie and then tossed him a can of black spray paint.

“C’mon, we gotta find Todd, he’s in on this, too.”

John watched Lance’s eyes glaze over slightly as Kitty and the two girls turned off into a sub hall that held some lockers. The writer smirked. He loved romance, it was so hilarious. He wondered if Lance was going to follow Kitty like a zombie for the rest of the day. Remembering the faces of the girl who had been talking with Kitty he hoped not. Those girls did not look like the nicest company.

The girls in question were standing in front of Kitty’s locker, smirking.

“C’mon guys,” Kitty pleaded, “I’ve got to get my gym clothes or Mr. Russovitch will skin me alive.”

“Why bother Kitty-cat?” One of the girls asked in a nasal voice.

“Yeah, it’s not like you have a hope of passing gym this quarter anyway,” her blond companion replied. “Isn’t gym the only class your calculus enhanced brain can‘t comprehend, Pryde?”

“Just please let me get to my locker,” Kitty begged, knowing the taunting would go on for at least another five minutes, even if they did allow her access to her locker.

“Well, what do you think Riley?” The dirty blonde looked at her pure blonde sidekick.

“I say we let the girl at her locker, after all we would want to make the poor kitty cat the subject of more ridicule than her long jump.” Riley laughed nastily and stepped aside.

Kitty smiled at them, trying to show that yes, she could be a great friend to them if they wanted. She missed the malicious wink that passed between the two girls framing her locker as she bent to work the combination. Kitty swung her locker open, bent down, and began to riffle through its contents looking for her freshly washed gym clothes.

Suddenly four hands placed themselves on her back and shoved. Kitty flew into her locker and the door slammed shut. The sophomore gulped worriedly as she heard Riley twiddle with the combination to make certain that Kitty could not free herself from her prison. The only consolation that Kitty had was that she was small enough to turn around in her locker and bang on the door.

However, she could only hear the click of Amy’s and Riley’s shoes as they walked away giggling. No one was around and she was trapped until the bell next rang. Credit would be deducted from her already miserable gym grade for having skipped class. Mr. Russovitch booked no excuses.

She sunk to the floor of her locker and tried not to cry. If she had been on the outside she could have gotten herself out easily. It was simply a trick of fractal probability to discover any combination for any locker in the school. They were incredibly simple and anyone who could go through math equations in their head at a fair clip could open these lockers.
She leaned against the door to her locker and sighed. Doug had his locker pretty close to hers; he would be able to get her out-- eventually.

While this tiny drama was being enacted, Lance, John, and Todd had formed an unholy trio right outside the hall from Kitty’s locker. Unfortunately for Kitty, they had not got there in time to see either Riley and her lackey shove Kitty in the locker, or hear her futile banging.
They were currently scouting the hall incase of any teacher activity in the vicinity. This hall had been chosen for the amounts of exits that it had: four different staircases, the windows, and a vandal’s ever ready friend, a boy’s rest room. That and the fact that it was a hallway devoted to lockers and not class rooms made it perfect for the mural that they had planned.

“It’ll be an everlasting memorial to Essex’s charming red stain,” Lance had told the other two when explaining his plan.

The chemistry teacher had yet to discover a way to remove it, apparently. Lance wanted to make certain that he would never forget the humiliation. It was revenge. Petty, most certainly, but Lance needed this sort of outlet for the anger that he kept boiling under her skin.

The brotherhood of vandals agreed to Lance’s idea for a design, and then set off down the hall, arguing quietly on whether the face should be painted first, or the diamond. Lance finally stopped, and said since it was his mural, he would decide and they would do the diamond first, build the face around it, and then redo the diamond and then add the shading.

Lance began to paint the diamond with painstaking detail when a loud thumping made him jump back in surprise. The red spray paint managed to turn in his hand and hit him full blast in the face. He glared at Todd and John; however, his cohorts were more interested in the banging.

“Yes, oh spirit from beyond the veil, we hear you and are willing to do your bidding,” John said in a deep spooky voice.

“John? Is that you? It’s me, Kitty!” Kitty called back from her locker.

“Who killed you? Have no fear, we will have revenge on them!”

John completely threw himself into the role, until he remember if anyone had killed Kitty then they must have done so in between French class, which had been last period, and now. That meant that the murders still might be in the school, and he wasn’t about to tackle a gang of murderers with only Todd and Lance as unreliable back up.

“No one killed me, I just was-- accidentally fell in my locker. Can one of you please get me out? I’ll be late for class.”

“Hey no problem, yo,” Todd said walking up to the locker and cracking his fingers.

“Try not to make any sound,” he advised Kitty as he put his ear to the locker and listened to the tumblers on the old lock to fall in place as he twiddled with it.

The locker sprang open under the talented ministrations of his fingers, and Kitty tumbled out, like a cork from a bottle. Todd sat back, his body automatically assuming a frog like crouch, and waited for the praise to come pouring in. It didn’t. Instead, John and Lance fussed over Kitty and helped her to her feet. From there she made a dive for her locker and for a moment everyone thought that she had gone insane. However, she came out again, holding a bag which held her gym clothes.

Both John and Todd considered making wise cracks about either the state of the clothes, or if she would change in front of them. However, Lance was standing right behind them, and he looked like he was in the mood to pound something into the ground. The two boys wisely decided that they would not like to be the someone that was pounded.

“Thanks guys, bye.”

Kitty briefly hugged Todd, which in his mind made up for the lack of praise. In John’s mind it made Todd a more likely target for Lance to stomp. Lance merely seethed with jealousy. Kitty quickly let go of Todd, wishing that there was time for a long shower and lots of soap before gym, and ran off to the locker rooms. If she was lucky she might only be five minutes late.

Lance growled, and then slouched back to the lockers. After closing Kitty’s with a bad tempered bang he continued with the mural. Todd juggled the remaining two paint cans, waiting for his turn, and trying not to laugh at the spray of red across Lance’s face. John was more thoughtful, however. He glanced at the imprisoning locker and remembered the expression on the faces of the two girls who had been talking to Kitty.

Lance clipped him around the ear, trying to get the Aussie to pay attention.

“Hey, what’s up with the head in the clouds act?” He asked when John jumped in surprise at the stinging pain.

“I was just wondering who pushed Kitty in her locker. Remember those friends of hers that she was speaking with?”

Lance looked thunder struck.

Todd, on the other hand looked as if he was trying to remember something.

“Hey, weren’t those two Amy ‘n’ Riley?” He asked, “They hang out with Jean. Rogue complains about ‘em ‘cause they’re in her gym class and don’t know when to pass the ball, or somethin’.”

Then John put two and two together. Marie had the same gym class as Kitty; that was why he hadn’t been assigned to stalk her during his free block. So, that meant that Kitty had been running to a class which contained the gruesome twosome.

Lance was obviously reaching the same conclusion, although he was probably using different facts. Unlike Scott, he did not know his friend’s schedules by heart. John had simply looked thoughtful and worried when he had made his connection. Lance, however, was so angry that his muscles all tensed for a moment and he stamped his foot down hard, as if he could alleviate the raw rage that way.

“We have to go help her,” Todd said, putting the spray cans back.

“Guys, she’s got Rogue t’ watch her back, do y’ really think that anything we can do t’ them would be worse than when Rogue gets P.O.ed at someone?” John suggested tentatively, his accent thickening slightly due to stress. One of nature’s observers, he did not want to get caught in the middle of this.

Todd looked at Lance, and decided that it would be better if it looked like they were accomplishing something, rather than let Lance spontaneously combust. He was not quite sure what was happening to his friend, but he had a suspicion that this was not because of the stupid crush that Lance had. Infatuation could only drive someone so far; this had a ring of desperation to it. Fred had said something about this. When Lance could not solve his problems he went looking for problems that he could solve. It was displacement activity, or something. Again, Todd felt in need of Fred’s expert advice on this subject.

However, Fred was currently struggling through a Home Ec. class and Todd needed an answer immediately. So, he had to use the flimsy resource of his own common sense to divine the possible out comes of this situation. None of the foreseeable futures were good, so he finally decided to trust his sense of survival, which told him that getting in the middle of a possible bitch fight in the future was preferable to crossing Lance in this mood.

So, the two reluctant allies followed their fearless leader into hostile territory. Better known as Mr. Arkady Russovitch’s gym class.

Mr. Russovitch had a good reason for his reputation, and Todd, who had been unfortunate enough to experience his class, was shivering from the thought of confronting the angry Russian. The man seemed to be able to only to exist in a permanent state of pure anger. He had turned being pissed off into an art form. Rage was a zen like state from which he would emerge, on occasion, like a snarling bear from its cave.

This might be why many students took a dim view of former relics of the Soviet Union, for that was what he most certainly was. The Cold War lived on in Bayville High, or at least it would if he had anything to say about it. When he was drunk he raged on about the greatness of Russia, and Stalin’s vision. Of course, it was hard to tell when he was sober.

Many felt that Sean Cassidy was a better alcohol drenched sop, at least he confined his loud opinions to within the walls of the Wolverine. There had even been suggestions of firing the misfit. However, Ms. Darkholme, being from Austria, was a little more inclined to leniency. Also, if she fired Russovitch, she would have to fire Cassidy, and while Raven Darkholme was many things she was not stupid. Sean Cassidy was one of the only things keeping her enrollment rate up and the dropout rate low.

So, the students had to suffer on under the yoke of the violent gym teacher. They managed, just as they managed under the burden of a task master like Essex. In fact, the few smart jocks that Bayville High had loved their Russian gym teacher. He was extremely easy to manipulate into doing just what they wanted.

He was loud, and persistent, and had a special brand of stupidity that was given only to drill sergeants. He could not play a political game to save his life, but he knew how to play games on a personal level with deadly accuracy.

Of course, this generally went over the students’ heads. They just knew that if they needed defense against a pending suspension, he was the man to be maneuvered into fighting the faculty. The only person who did not fear either him, or try to avoid confrontation, was Ms. Monroe. In fact, they seemed to go looking for ways to clash and woe betide any student who said good things about one in the other’s hearing.

Neither the principal, Sean Cassidy, nor Nathaniel Essex were in anyway perturbed by the unbalanced individual. They simply saw him as something akin to the common cold, or a headache. A naturally occurring phenomenon, that could be avoided if one took precautions and ate plenty of vitamins. In fact, he tended to leave headaches, and stress related illnesses in his wake, so many felt that this analogy was even more appropriate.

Rogue personally felt that he was giving her a headache. It was far too early in the morning to be awake, and here he was, forcing them outside and then yelling at Kitty for having shown up a couple of minutes late. There was no decency in the world when people were forced to get up early by someone who was only too clearly awake himself. Rogue was one of those people who were not awake until lunch time.

Kitty merely stood shame-facedly and let the Russian swearing at 105 decibels wash over her. She was used to verbal abuse by now, and it was only a few weeks into the school year. Amy and Riley giggled to themselves. They had managed to stay on his good side, although, that would change soon, too.

Marie glared at them, and then groaned inwardly as the blond Soviet menace swung around to glare at the two.

“Well?! What you wait for! RUN Comrades! I WILL see you throwink up, until then you will not stop runnink!!!” He shouted, his face turning a florid red, and the tendons standing out on his neck.

The rest of the class indulged in one last groan, and then began to run. When he gave that order it meant that they would have forty five minutes to contemplate the physics involved with their sneakers and the ground as they built up speed. Kitty chose the moment his back was turned to escape with the rest of the class.

She fell in beside her friend, Doug, and the crazy French guy that he had picked up along the way. Doug was breathing in carefully measured breaths, however, his friend, Jacques, or something like that, had a glint in his eye and it was obvious that he was someone who enjoyed ‘challenges.’ Several times he outpaced Kitty and Doug, who were not the fastest runners on the block, only to check himself and fall back with an enthusiasm that made Kitty shudder.

Marie caught up beside the trio, and ran easily with them. Logan forced her to become fit using week-end work out sessions that could have taught Arkady a thing or two about sadistic aerobics. Jacques chattered away in a mode that strongly reminded Marie and Kitty of John, although the Frenchman was more akin to a young colt than an adolesant kangaroo, there was still a striking similarity in their out look on life. It probably was if you talk to someone long enough about inane things then the people you are speaking with will become insane, and that is when the fun starts.

Kitty, Doug, and Marie endured the persistent annoyance in silence, trying not to encourage him. He took no notice of their vain attempts to ignore him and plowed right on, his eyes shining happily as he began to discuss explosives, and the uses of electricity in demolition. Kitty looked at Doug as Jacques rambled on happily.

“This is almost as bad as that day we were on that crazy chat group of yours and that guy started talking about popular methods of torture,” Kitty panted.

“Look on the bright side, there’s only thirty more minutes,” Doug replied, wiping sweat from his brow.

“NO TALKING WHILE YOU ARE RUNNINK, COMRADES!”

After that last shout the nerve that they had used to talk deserted the two computer geeks, and even Jacques was quiet. Rogue was silent, too, scanning the class for Amy and Riley. The two girls seemed to have disappeared. Marie always got suspicious when two people tried to cut Arcady’s class. It usually meant vandalism, which ended her up in front of Darkholme trying to explain why, although she hung with the “criminal element” of the school, she did not have anything to do with it.

About twenty-five minutes later, Marie noticed that Amy and Riley were behind them, she relaxed slightly, and became intent on keeping an even pace. She didn’t notice that Kitty had dropped back slightly. In fact, neither Doug, Jacques, nor even Kitty noticed that her tired legs were lagging.

“Hey Pryde, sorry about the locker thing. We forgot that you still had our chem homework,” Amy said in a conciliatory tone.

Kitty was tired. Fatigue poisons were doing their insidious work, and to top it off, she was sick and tired of having to deal with these girls. So, she made an unwise decision.

“No apologies necessary, I already gave it to Dr. Essex. With notes explaining why all of our handwriting was so similar.”

They were passing the part of the track behind the bleachers, where the long jump sand pits were. Arkady couldn’t see the three girls from his vantage point in the center of the field. Not that it really would have mattered. He had been known to turn a blind eye to hazing before this.

Kitty felt a sharp elbow jab into her stomach, and then she was falling out into space. Sand fountained up with a dull smack as her body hit it, and for a second Kitty was able to admire the fluffy white clouds in the piercing blue sky before Riley loomed over her. One foot was poised to kick, and Kitty felt it bite into her other side as she tried to roll away. Then she was up on the springy surface of the track again and running for her life, Amy in hot pursuit.

“GOOD SHOW COMRADE PRYDE!” Arkady boomed as she came into view, “COMRADE SMITH, TUCK YOUR ARMS IN, OR YOU’LL NEVER GAIN ENOUGH SPEED!”

As Kitty ran for all she was worth she wished that she hadn’t been so stupid. Doug and Jacques were watching Kitty run, completely astonished. Rogue, on the other hand was behind the bleachers teaching Riley a lesson. Kitty was really making a good distraction.

“An’ that,” Marie ducked, kicking the legs out from under Riley, “is why yah don’t bully mah acquaintances!”

Marie stood over Riley, threatening that one wrong move would see the popular girl in traction. Riley was looking angrily up at Marie, a bruise forming on one pale cheek to match the Rogue’s bleeding lip. Then she smiled nastily, and Rogue was sent flying through the air by Amy knocking into her.

At the moment no one was seeing reason. Kitty had collapsed a few yards away completely out of breath, and Amy had just caught up to her when she saw Marie knock Riley down. They were all going to get in trouble, and Amy knew it, however, if she was going to get suspended she might as well have a lot of company. Kitty was probably not going to be saving her anymore effort on homework, or passing test answers any more. And the reason Kitty was doing this was because of this freaky Goth girl, who had a surprisingly good left hook.

Then Riley grabbed Marie’s hands, pulling them behind her back, and Amy grinned wolfishly. She was going to humiliate this girl. At least that’s what Amy thought, until she was close lined by Lance.

Toad hopped over to Kitty, to see if she was alright (i.e. not get involved in the rather large brawl). The now not-so-perky brunette sat up coughing.

“Todd, go to my locker, get out my chem book, and then give the papers in it to Dr. Essex. It’s very important to write on the top: ‘Kitty Pryde wrote these for Amy Smith, and Riley Westcastle.’ Can you do it, please?”

Todd was only too happy to be sent off on an errand that would take him out of harm’s way, so he ran to do Kitty’s bidding. Kitty, in the mean time turned to see a rolling ball in the sand pit and Johnny hovering anxiously nearby, asking them if they really wanted to get suspended.

“COMRADES!”

The familiar bellow froze everyone, as Mr. Russovitch bore down on the perpetrators like an angry colossus. He reached down, and pulled the teens apart, Dangling Lance and Riley in the air, one from each fist, like puppets on a string.

“Frau Darkholme will haf somethink to say to all of you, I think.”