Morning greeted me gently, just before she melted into afternoon, and asked me to wake up. Politely ignoring her, I turned over again and buried my head under the covers.

Morning and I, I realized, had a funny sort of relationship. Sometimes she was a friend to me, and I'd be awake and painting at seven AM. Most of the time, however, her kind words were gone and she could be downright motherly and condescending, yanking me from my bed before I finished dreaming. Today she was a disgusting mixture of the two.

/No,/ I thought into my pillow. My digital clock, however, now stared at me, complaining "9:52" in my tired eyes.

"Why?" I asked my pillow, whining.

The pillow didn't answer. Groggily I ambled to the dresser and pulled out clean clothes, including my oft-worn Wallflowers T-shirt. I threw these on with the permanently paint-stained jeans I'd worn yesterday. Fearing that sleep might threaten my eyes again, I headed out the door and started to walk downstairs hoping I might wake up. Then I realized I must've looked awful -- yes, I'd just woken up, but there was no need for me to look that way. It probably didn't matter in the long run, but for now -- well, I imagined there were elephants lurking in the brush, and I wasn't prepared for the safari. Not yet.

Wondering why they didn't have another bathroom nearby, I waited in front of the closed door. This, I noted, could be a chance for practice. I concentrated on the person in there and felt gingerly, empathically, for the identity of the occupant. If, I reasoned, I could find a specific person (as I had at the cineplex), I might be able to concentrate on that one person and find out who it was.

I reasoned correctly. I knew the person in there, and lucky for me, it was Paige. I waited, now almost immediately annoyed for no real reason other than that I knew she was there. It was childish, I knew, this odd feud between us. There was no reason for me to be angry with her, and no reason for her to be angry with me. There was ... there was Jono, and there were suspicions, but nothing beyond that. She and I had never really talked with one another -- before the suspicions, she seemed nice enough. Perhaps I could put all this behind us....

She stepped out, bright golden hair shining in the light from the window, oblivious to my presence.

"Good morning!" I chirped brightly. She was first shocked by my greeting, but, as she turned to face me, resonated a quiet anger like water boiling slowly beneath her surface. Which, I noted, wasn't altogether unlikely. Briefly I wondered if she could Husk into steam. Steam could burn you. Badly. Steam could get inside your throat and choke you -- burning you at the same time. It could --

She breezed past me coldly.

And cold, I realized, was just as deadly an assassin. I listed the possibilities in my mind -- possibilities of my impending death. Just her discarded skin alone was enough to effectively smother a person. Like me. That in mind, I hoped sincerely she'd cleaned up after herself this time. I entered the bathroom to find that, thankfully, she had. Grabbing my hairbrush, I pulled the excess strands of hair from its bristles, ready to deposit them in the garbage can when I noticed it was filled -- and nearly overflowing -- with scraps and pieces of varying sizes of tinfoil.

Tinfoil? This early in the morning? I didn't want to know. I brushed my hair and teeth and washed up -- adding a little lip gloss and a touch of eyeshadow, even though it was completely unnecessary -- before finally presenting myself to the world of the living downstairs. Only the late sleepers, I noted, were around; everyone else had gone off somewhere. Alison and Jubilee sat at the table, their places separated by a purple box of Chocolate-Frosted Sugar Bombs. I didn't want to touch the stuff, myself, so after procuring a bowl and spoon I pitifully whined, "Isn't there anything else besides Sugar Bombs?"

Alison was appalled. "What, you don't like Sugar Bombs?"

I turned. "No, I don't. Do we have anything else?" There were other questions I wanted to ask her, too, like did she enjoy her evening at home?

"You poor insane person, you don't like anything good!" she insisted from her position at the table.

Happily I found a box of Life in the cabinet and ate that instead. We ate in relative silence -- even Jubilee was oddly quiet -- until that Bobby guy came downstairs, a grin plastered across his face like he'd just done something remarkably stupid and knew he was going to get away with it. He stretched, yawning, then greeted us with a particularly pleasant "Good morning!" before he virtually skipped to the fridge and took out the milk. He drank directly from the carton, replaced it, and grabbed a bowl from the nearby sink.

" 'Morning, Bobby," Jubilee greeted in startling contrast to her name as well as her usual demeanor. I suspected she remained awake long after our late return from the movie, and that was now taking its toll on her.

"OHMYGODIDON'TBELIEVETHISISTHATBOBBYDRAKE?" Alison exclaimed, completely abandoning her prized Sugar Bombs and wearing a look that registered somewhere between joy and impatience.

"Light," I muttered at the same moment Bobby proclaimed, "The one and only!" with that stupid grin still on his face. I wanted to smack him. Or let someone else smack him since I never actually would. He seemed like the kind of guy that needed a good smack.

"I can't believe this," Alison was going on -- gushing, really -- about this self-absorbed, egotistical, completely full-of-himself Ben Krieg/Mat Cauthon/Tom Paris type. But then, I reminded myself, Alison liked that type. At least when it came to Tom Paris -- but this was beyond even that. "It's really Bobby oh my gosh I can't believe this this is too cool ..."

"Lay offit, willya? He's nothin' special," Jubilee grumbled.

"Ooh, someone's in a bad mood," Bobby chided gently.

Jubilee's only response was an annoyed sound in her throat that could have easily passed for a growl. Alison was going so spastic I thought she'd ask for Bobby's autograph any minute now. Bobby himself loved all the attention, and tore off his T-shirt and socks, preparing to -- well, I wasn't sure exactly what he was preparing to do. I was getting frightened. Jubilee took another bite of cereal. I stared into my bowl of soggy Life.

Bobby had now metamorphosed into a walking ice cube and was proudly demonstrating his frigid talents for Alison. I was afraid. I hoped someone might come and liberate me from this crazy scene. But Jono didn't eat and so would have no reason to come to the kitchen. Unless ...

Empathically scanning the building for him, I eventually sensed him -- beneath us? Oh, well ... Keeping a lock on him, I sent out an empathic cry for ~help~. Between my own talents and his telepathy, I figured it just might work.

By now a pile of ice cubes was stacked in the middle of the floor and some crystalline mass was hanging from the ceiling like a stalactite. Alison watched, enthralled, bombarding our positively arctic new best friend (whatever happened to me?) with questions about everything imaginable. Jubilee had gone somewhere, leaving a bowl of warm chocolate-frosted milk with an accompanying spoon in her place. I hadn't noticed her sneak off, perhaps because I was so intent on testing my empathic Instant Messages. I sighed disconsolately. My cereal had long since gone soggy, but I ate it anyway. Life is one of those cereals that works just like its namesake -- it can get a little soggy and still be alright. /After all,/ I added ruefully, /it all comes out the same in the end./ I snickered to myself at the incredibly tasteless joke when I was veritably assaulted with a double barrage of energy that could only mean two psions had just come within my range.

The first was Jono, who had arrived -- in response to my plea, I assumed -- rather concerned yet at the same time thoroughly lost. I was about to explain when the second signature waltzed into the kitchen wearing an impossibly short white silk robe -- and, I took it, not much else, if anything at all. Emma hadn't been upset when she walked in, but upon sight of the lingering Bobby creating ice sculptures -- much to the delight of his adoring fan, who at one point had been my friend Alison but was now reduced to an extremely out-of-character quivering pile of goo to be manipulated like so much raspberry Jell-O ... I wondered if only for so brief a span of time, how raspberry Jell-O might be able to kill someone. The particularly vexed Emma simply ordered, "Robert Drake, NOT in the house!"

Alison took mild offense at the chastising of her hero; Bobby took none that I was aware of but lost the snowman getup. I just wanted to get out of here. This didn't make any sense. It was all too strange.

Jono still stood in the doorway, perplexed. *Someone called for help,* he explained. *Wot's going on?*

"Nobody called you," Emma insisted. She was also in danger of losing her scrap of robe, but there was no way I was telling her that.

*I'm not making it up.*

~exasperation~ radiated from Emma as she finally gave up and tried desperately to ignore -- well, everything I was trying to ignore, though in different forms, of course. I didn't want to brush too closely against her emotions, but did I detect something a bit deeper underneath that exasperation? Something directed towards the adjectevial Mr. Drake, perhaps? I didn't want to ask; it would be way too forward, improper, and just generally wrong. There was no denying what I sensed, though, and I grinned in spite of myself.

Sensations barraged me in the next second: ~shock~surprise~pain!~ from one party and an ~amusement~ from the other, all colored with Alison's gentle ~concern~embarrassment~. I looked slowly up, afraid of what I might find.

Emma was sprawled on the floor, the robe's thin belt hanging at her sides and just a bit more showcased than we needed to see. A bit? Nah, she was ALL there, displayed for the world to see. She was growing angrier and angrier and I was so sure she would kill someone in there and I hoped it wasn't me.... It wasn't long before I noticed the shinier parts of the floor -- a patch of ice?

Bobby was in TROUBLE.

I didn't want to be here when she killed him, and I was absolutely certain she would -- perhaps not actually kill him, but she would certainly do something positively awful and I still didn't want to be here for fear I might be caught up in the frying of brains, marked as an accomplice ... or something just as bad. Or worse. I just didn't want to know. I looked for my escape, to Jono who I suspected --

-- no, he wasn't there. What the heck? Ignoring my cereal bowl I dodged quickly past the growing confrontation and followed where I at least thought he'd been. It was tricky: empathic signatures are not as much like footprints as one might have you believe ... and the Academy was big. Still, he couldn't have gotten very far....

He couldn't have.

And he didn't -- I sensed him before I spotted him, on a couch in one of the lower levels, channel surfing. He was so bored, so disinterested, so disgusted with the programming ... nothing even coming close to intelligent was on in the early hours of afternoon. "I don't think anything's on," I suggested timidly. I was scared half to death of this thing that loomed before me -- that quite possibly loomed before him, as well, but I couldn't read anything from him -- it was like he was a closed book, something behind a locked door and I most certainly did not have the key.

*No,* he agreed.

The most decidedly awkward silence filled the room. I wanted to say something, anything ... Instead I turned around and started to go back upstairs. That was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. /Why leave? Just because you have nothing to say?/

Just because I had nothing to say.

Yes, perhaps I was scared to death of this. That didn't mean I had to run away from it. If I faced this -- if I faced this, I wouldn't have to deal with it festering inside me any longer. I had no idea what the outcome of the whole situation would be, but the point was, there was a situation in the first place, and because of its existence, I had to face it. And that meant gathering some sort of courage to continue speaking. I turned back around and went back into the room.

So maybe I looked like a dolt. So what? "Sorry," I apologized.

Jono said nothing, simply stared at the television screen, mindlessly clicking through channels.

I didn't know what to do. "I think I'll just go," I blurted.

*Again?* he asked.

I swallowed hard. "If -- If you don't want -- I mean, then I should just -- "

*I don't mind,* he said.

He didn't mind? What? The question of whether I had heard correctly really had no place here since he spoke directly into my head -- and it was such an intimate form of communication!

I didn't say anything -- I couldn't -- and gingerly took a seat on the opposite end of the couch.

"And I don't want the world to see me, 'cause I don't think that they'd understand ... " What? Oh, the television -- music video. I recognized the song as "Iris", by the Goo Goo Dolls -- didn't they use that in City of Angels last night?

"Cause everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am ..."

It was a good song, too ... and something I could work off of. A start. "Do you ever feel like that?" I asked.

*Wot?*

"The song," I pointed out. " 'I don't want the world to see me 'cause I don't think that they'd understand. Everything's made to be broken, I just want you to know who I am', " I quoted. "It ... it reminds me of you. Ah, sorta."

Sorta?

He contemplated this, turned it over. *I guess,* he finally decided.

"... yeah, you bleed just to know you're alive ..."

I bit my lip. Had I chosen my words wrong? He didn't bleed ... no blood ... but alive. Yes, alive. And beautiful. And the music was beautiful, too. I got caught up in the song almost like I did with my own music, the way I played it -- it was weird. The video was all shades of lonely ... Did he want me to know who he was, or was I part of that world that wouldn't understand? Maybe I just didn't have a chance.

I looked over at him from the corner of my eye: so hard to read, the same black leather draped over shoulders I knew were likely scarred beneath that thick jacket. And the same demeanor draped over his emotions, this dense veil I couldn't penetrate. What was going on in his head that he wanted to keep so locked up and hidden from everyone?

I looked at my hands, squeezed my own fingers, looked at my feet and made sure they were still there. Back at the TV and then back at Jono and I couldn't read him.

Trying to get through to him was like trying to drive through a fog without any headlights.

The screen flickered; there was a hint of static -- what would happen if the TV went out completely? It kicked back in and Madonna's "Frozen" came on -- now that was a beautiful video. The channel was instantly changed.

"I -- " I began to protest. "I liked that video," I stated.

*She's trying to be gothic and isn't pulling it off very well,* Jono informed me.

"But the imagery -- just look at it. Frozen. The shades of blue and black, it just looks cold. Like -- like there's something you can't get through to ..." I glanced back at the floor. "C'mon, change it back. Give it a chance."

*No,* he decided, and kept channel-surfing.

He was more stubborn than I was! "It'll be gone by the time you finally get back to it," I insisted. "And you just might like it."

" ... mmm, if I could melt your heart ... "

"Thank you."

" ... mmm, we'd never be apart ... "

*You're welcome.*

" ... mmm, you hold the key ... "

We sat in relative silence aside from the -- at least, what I considered beautiful -- imagery.

This was going nowhere. I was going around and around in circles and it would continue to do so unless I did something about it.

I was going to do something about it.

I closed my eyes -- it wasn't necessary but it helped my concentration -- and gathered all the ambient energy I felt, all my own energy and perhaps some from people upstairs -- I took it all in and held it, flooded it through every part of me. Without any warning to him I rammed all of it through the shield he'd set up. I was nowhere near as strong as he was, nowhere near coming even remotely close to his immeasurable power. And I realized my error as soon as my probe reached him -- the emotions I read from him were -- were regret, hurt, pain -- so much pain -- I shouldn't have done that, I shouldn't have ...

Jono looked directly at me but didn't say a word. He didn't need to.

I tried desperately to pull out, to pull away. His shields were back up and now I was on the inside. I didn't have enough power to pull out the same way I'd pushed in. This was an invasion of his privacy, even if I couldn't read thoughts, and it was wrong. I just -- I just couldn't let go.

Maybe it was him -- I don't know, it was nothing I'd done before and certainly nothing I could repeat even if I wanted to. I felt the fluid empathic ties encircle his mind and oh LIGHT what was I doing -- and tie off -- this wasn't me! I wasn't doing this, I wasn't in control!

Wasn't I? Or was this some odd subconscious need to be even closer to him simply because I knew I couldn't ever be --

-- tied tight and I wanted to unravel the knots I'd made but they were too strong and I don't think I was even the one to tie them!

What the bloody hell had just happened?

Jono was just as extraordinarily confused as I was. I didn't need to keep a lock on him, it simply stayed there even when I tried desperately to pull out and away again.

*Wot -- wot did yer just do?*

~fear~confusion~anger~

I had no idea. "I don't know," I whispered shakily in whatever voice I had left. "Maybe -- I should --" I got up and started to leave, but I hadn't taken two steps when something caught beneath my foot and I found myself on the floor. Again. I wanted to laugh; it was like there was some twist of fate that just kept me here and I couldn't leave even though I wanted to, I wanted to get so far away from here, from him and I wanted to scream at whoever or whatever was keeping me here.

I didn't even want to look at him. Frantically I tried to undo whatever just happened, but I couldn't -- I couldn't fix it or make it better. Upset -- but nowhere near tears -- I got up and went back upstairs. I kept climbing floors and steps and floors, walking, running, whatever -- I just had to go. This escape was the only thing on my mind, the only thing --

Floor hit me hard again just seconds after I realised I'd run into someone. My nose hurt ... my elbow stung wildly and I felt something sticky and wet running down my arm. /Nonononononono ... / I thought, some steady stream of more colorful expletives following my denial that I'd again collided with -- no, this felt different. This -- person --

I gathered myself up and kept on my way not even looking at the man -- who I knew was Mr. Cassidy -- if I had to run into someone, why did it have to be a teacher? Now he'd be asking me what was wrong, and trying somehow to fix it, to make it better.

"Jen, lass, please come back here and --" He cut himself off, sure some other words might be better. " -- let's have a look at that elbow."

Grudgingly I turned back. I had to; Mr. Cassidy was the only one who had any authority over me here since he was in charge. Emma didn't count. I reluctantly, wordlessly held out my elbow, still bleeding. With a finger wet with my own saliva, I cleaned the excess blood but it kept flowing. And it still hurt like crap.

"Ye must have hurt yuirself pretty badly," he said. He almost sounded condescending, but it wasn't the intent behind his words.

Having nothing to say to that except a particularly sarcastic, "No, really?" (which I kept to myself), I remained quiet. I was, however, increasingly aware of the terrible pain in my stinging, burning elbow.

"Let's take this down tae the medlab," Mr. Cassidy suggested. I had no choice but to follow, cradling my arm in my right hand. I didn't want to stain the carpet with dripping blood -- although it might've been fun in Emma's office. The thought made me grin in spite of myself -- in spite of this new awareness in my head.

The medlab was particularly clean, with unfamiliar medical technology gleaming pristine shades of aluminum and white. For all its sterility, there was an unusual sort of darkness about the place.

Mr. Cassidy opened a cabinet and, frustrated, searched its contents. "Ye'd think they'd put the first aid kit back where it belongs," he muttered.

And I didn't want to admit what was actually going on. It was nice of him not to ask where I'd been going so fast and not paying attention.... I didn't even know where I was going, just that I was leaving. So.

That weird dark presence --

Mr. Cassidy turned around, having finally found the first aid kit. I held out my elbow and, after it was cleaned, allowed it to be wrapped in sterile gauze.

It looked so much like --

I couldn't shake the nagging feeling of what I'd inadvertently done; there was a lingering depression that wasn't mine in the back of my head.

"There ye go. Good as new."

"Thank you," I said.

That dark presence --

"Um, Mr. Cassidy?"

He turned just as he was about to leave. I didn't have to tell him if I didn't want to. But it was so ... well, just wrong. Not right. I had to tell someone -- someone who could do something about it.

"I --" I began. "I think I did something, um, wrong." I knew I did something wrong, there was no "think" about it.

~confusion~ mixed with the soup of emotions already too chaotic in the back of my mind. "Go on ... "

"With -- with my powers." I'd been about to say "with Jono" but that would've given the wrong impression entirely. "I, um, I -- I think I --" I took a deep breath to try and sort out my words. I used the best phrases I could find. "I think I est--managed to establish some sort of empathic, ah, link." I avoided the question I knew he must want to ask: with whom? ~concern~ flashed in his sky blue aura but he refrained from asking. I wondered why -- didn't he want to know?

"I think," he said instead, beginning slowly, "that I'm not the person ye need te talk to about this."

If not him, then who? Ought I take this up with Jono, who I was still having trouble communicating with properly? Not bloody likely. "Um?" I asked.

"I wouldn't know where tae start with such a thing," Mr. Cassidy explained. "An' the nature of yuir powers bein' what they are and all, ye'd surely have better luck with Ms. Frost."

I could feel the blood draining from my face, I swore. My mouth hung several inches open before I realized what I was doing and closed it. Had he any idea what he was sentencing me to? "No," I blurted. "Please, Mr. Cassidy, not Emma. Please. Anything but that."

I sent up a hopeful look as he contemplated all of this. If anyone could help me, I was sure he could. But --

"Much as I understand where ye're comin' from -- and believe me, I do! -- I still think it would be in yuir best interests."

My best interests? I did not want to see Emma. I did not like Emma. But like it or not, I was ushered right out of medlab and straight into Emma's office. Thankfully, she wasn't in there, but that also meant that I was forced to wait for her, which I'm certain was worse, because I kept on dreading that one moment in which she returned.

I took a seat just outside the office and sighed.

Mr. Cassidy glanced at his watch and muttered something about "that woman". He then turned to me and said, "I'm afraid I dinnae have the time tae wait with ye; I have a session scheduled with some of yuir classmates in fifteen minutes. Do ye promise ye'll wait here for Ms. Frost 'till she arrives?"

No. Yet I had to obey him -- not because of any suggestive powers he had, but because he was honest and real, whereas Emma was most decidedly fabricated. I couldn't help but trust him. If I told him I wouldn't wait here, I'd be letting him down. And if I said I would and then ran off, I'd be a liar, and would consequently be losing his trust. I didn't need both headmasters angry with me. "Yes," I promised. "Until she arrives."

Mr. Cassidy nodded. "I'll talk tae ye later," he guaranteed.

I still felt slippery as I made my promise. I glanced at my hands, where the vestiges of ink vines wound around my wrist and through fingers like the truth I'd so twisted to suit my needs. My Great Serpent ring coiled around my right index finger, reminding me of the Aes Sedai I acted like. I would wait until Emma came back. That was what I'd said.

I waited what seemed like hours but could have realistically only been forty minutes at most. I didn't know where Emma was, and the only reason I cared was that she was gone in the first place.

I scanned the area just outside the office as I sat in the folding chair that had been placed there seemingly arbitrarily. The hallway was dim, with just enough light to make out my own just barely visible aura. The blue-violet color that surrounded me was ordinarily invisible, but when the lighting conditions were just right, an extremely faint glow could be seen. Dim hallways were one place where this was possible; the only other one that I was aware of was in a movie theater.

Emma was one of the only people I still had some trouble detecting. Her bright white costume, however, stood out in the low light of the hallway and I braced myself. Before she could offer so much as a greeting to me, I smiled innocently up at her and said ever so casually, "Good afternoon, Ms. Frost. I was just leaving." And I bolted down the hallway.

Bobby continued whistling as Emma, refusing to turn the shade of pink that I was probably turning over having seen such a thing, suddenly stopped and glared right at us both, as if she was staring past our eyes and into our very minds. Which, considering that she was Emma Frost, could quite possibly be the case. Suddenly I saw this bright flash of pink light and--

Why in the world was I standing in the kitchen staring at the empty sink? I pondered this as I looked up at ... Oh, Bobby was here too. He was also staring at the sink with a similarly perplexed expression on his face. Obviously, he wasn't going to be able to give me an answer. I felt like I'd just run up the stairs too fast, and I'd forgotten why I'd wanted to get up there in the first place. My mind was a total blank. Bobby glanced down at me in confusion.

"What...?" he asked.

"I have no idea," I answered. We both shrugged it off -- it couldn't have been anything important. But now what? "So ... you wanna play hockey or somethin'?" I asked, realizing as soon as the words left my mouth that playing hockey with Bobby Drake was bound to be a heck of a lot more interesting than normal. His eyes brightened and a devious grin began to snake across his face upon hearing my suggestion. Oh George -- what had I done?

"Sure! The Iceman rules hockey!"

And with that, we went outside to find a good place to play the aforementioned game. We came upon Ange, Jubes and Ev all hanging around the basketball court on the side of the building and decided to incorporate them into our game as well. Bobby decided that right there was the perfect spot for an impromptu hockey rink, and Bobby iced the courts over as Ange and Ev reemerged from the building where we'd sent them to get the necessary hockey equipment. We laced up our skates as we chose teams, and somehow it managed to end up that Jubes, Ev, and me were pitted against Angelo and Bobby. Bobby, who (obviously) hadn't needed skates, kept trying to insist that he could take us all, without Angelo's help. Angelo thought that he could whip Bobby one-on-one, and we just laughed at them both because they were obviously suffering from some form of mass delusions. And, of course, when we finally started playing, we kicked their butts. Of course.

"Hey, c'mon -- one more game!" Bobby insisted after he and Ange had lost 21-0. "Come on, you wusses!"

Well, of course we couldn't stand for that: it was just asking too much to walk away after Bobby Drake had called you a wuss. So we played another game and despite the high amusement factor of the first game, this one took a rather ... interesting turn.

As I was dribbling the puck up to take a shot on goal (Bobby was being distracted by Jubes' attempt at spinning on the ice), I slipped. This sent both me and the puck flying. At that point, Ev crashed into me head-on and we both went flying into first Angelo and then the goal net (Bobby had conventiently vacated the immediate area). As we slammed into the net, my stick exploded -- it must have been my wacky mutant power going on the fritz again. Anyway, as we crashed through Angelo, Ev must have accidentally synched with me because his stick exploded, along with Angelo's skates.

"¡Madre de Dios! Aaah!"

CRASH!!!

"Saints preserve u -- OW!!"

Apparently, Sean had picked that incredibly bad time to appear on the scene. The puck had, unfortunately, found the unlucky redheaded schoolmaster and effectively thwacked him in the skull. Now that had to hurt.

Not that we weren't in pain ourselves. As we tried to disentangle ourselves, though, we suddenly realized that we were hovering 7 feet in the air. How that had happened, I wasn't sure -- I just knew that I wanted down.

"¡Madre de Dios!" Angelo observed again. "Get us down, ahora!"

"How are we even up here?" I managed to ask as Bobby and Jubes snickered from down on the ground. Whether they were laughing at us or the unconscious Banshee lying on the lawn -- or both -- I wasn't sure. I just wanted DOWN.

"This is all your fault!" Ev yelled at me, trying to unwrap Angelo's arm from around his leg.

"My fault?! How?" I asked, similarly trying to get Angelo's foot out from between my arms. It was not working.

"You're the one making us fly! I must have synched with you."

"Well, then, stop it!" Ev apparently did so, and suddenly he and Ange fell to the ground. Since they were still caught in the net, however, the net pulled me down as well. This hurt considerably, and I let them know it.

"OW!!"

At that point, Jubes and Bobby burst out laughing, not able to control themselves any longer.

"Shut up!" I whined, but frankly I was on the verge of laughter myself. Angelo was muttering bad things in Spanish that I'd really rather not repeat, but Ev was laughing too. On the lawn, Banshee began to stir.

"Oooh..." he moaned. Ev had finally managed to give all of Angelo's skin back to him, and we slowly began crawling out from underneath the net as Jubes and Bobby continued to be consumed by laughter.

"That was ... the funniest thing ... I've ever seen!" Jubilee shrieked. Bobby couldn't talk because he was laughing too hard -- but maybe that was a good thing, in the long run. Sean had managed to get up and was rubbing his head as Ev and I examined out throbbing hands.

"Man, this hurts!" Ev complained. I just stuck my tongue out at him.

"The Medlab, both 'o ye. Now," Sean ordered, one hand still gently massaging the large bump forming on his head. Ev and I trudged off sullenly as Jubilee and Bobby continued to laugh and Angelo continued to swear.

"And please -- will ye find something constructive to do with your time?" Sean pleaded woth the remaining 3 mutants before turning to follow us. "And clean up that mess! I mean it, Drake!"

In the Medlab, Sean first bandaged Ev's hands and rebandaged mine before wrapping his head, moving about in a very professional manner -- especially for someone who'd just been hit on the head with a hockey puck. Oddly enough, he didn't seem too angry; I mean, if it had been Emma that I'd hit, I wouldn't have had a coherent thought left to speak of. I admired Sean for that -- he seemed to really care about us, and genuinely didn't mind being here with us.

That was the difference between him and Emma. Sean was more of a "people" person: a better teacher and listener all around, and definitely a better sympathizer. Emma was ... okay, sometimes, but she just created this air of superiority and control that distanced me from her. I did not want her digging around in my mind, and I sure knew that she wouldn't be the first person I'd go to with a problem. Sean, on the other hand, would understand all that. He cared -- and so did Emma -- but the difference was that he showed he cared, a lot more openly than she did. Sean was cool.

"Now, I assume this all started when your powers decided to activate on their own?" he asked me; I nodded. "And then ye syched with her?" Ev nodded.

"Unintentionally," he told Sean, who nodded and hooked us both up to EKGs -- man, do those things bug me! But I decided that it must have been important, and that it wasn't my place to complain.

"I know that still tends to happen," Sean told Ev, and went over to type something into a nearby computer. "Mutant powers, like I mentioned before, tend to manifest themselves erratically and without warning."

"All right," he said after he finished typing, "I'm going to check on yuir other vitals." He came over and attached sticky things to both me and Ev, turning back to the monitor and punching something up. "Your heartbeats and breathing patterns are still the same, as well as some of your lower brain funcions, but this has happened to Everett before."

Ev nodded. I imagined that it was a quite plausible thing, and said nothing. Actaully, I'd never really thought about it before -- I didn't actually know what was involved in a "synch", but that seemed likely, now that I thought about it.

"I'm just going to run a few more tests for Everett before I start with Alison," he informed us, typing away at the keyboard. As he typed, though, he would explain what he was doing -- what he was testing for, what results he got, and what he believed those results meant. I thought that was a really great thing to do, and most certainly something that Emma would not do. But it was really helpful -- I mean, how else were we supposed to learn the intricacies of our powers? It did us no good for only our teachers to know, and Sean obviously felt that way too. He was definitely one cool guy.

Basically, what the tests told us was that our bodies were still in perfect synch, and would probably remain so for another 2 hours or so. Once he was done with that, he began removing the sticky things from us.

"Now that I'm done testin' Ev's powers, I'd like to explore Alison's more fully. And since ye're synched with her, lad, ye might as well help us."

Ev nodded as Sean motioned for us to get off the beds and began leading us out.

"I thought some trainin' exercises in the Biosphere might be the best thing right now." he informed us as we headed that way. Once we arrived, he informed us that he wanted to see if Ev could help me activate my powers and gain just a little more control over them, since he had pretty good control over his.

The first thing he had us do was try to get some conscious control over the explosions I seemed to be able to bring about. This was by no means easy, and ended up giving both of us a really big headache. We had to stop a lot, and didn't manage to get control over much. It was really tiring, as well as thoroughly frustrating. Sean kept us at it, but he understood and let us take a lot of breaks. We talked during the breaks, and Sean insisted on hearing all about me. I hadn't really gotten too much of a chance to talk to him before, and it was kind of nice.

I ended up telling them all about home, and the Gobble/Arena Circus (I think I gave him some ideas with that one!), and Space Camp, and about how I wanted to be an astronaut someday. He thought that was cool, and even offered to take me to MIT to visit sometime; I thought that was cool. He then ended up telling us -- well, more me than Ev, since he probably already knew -- about Muir Island, and his time with the X-Men, and all his experiences with Generation X so far. It was pretty cool, and it sounded like he had a rather interesting life, compared to most. Then the break was over, and we had to get back to work again. Not totally fun, but at least it wasn't Emma who was making us do all of this.

"All right, now could ye try for that rock over there...."