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HOTWIRES AND AWKWARD SITUATIONS
Part 7
written by
Little Horn and Flonnua7a

Send us a little e-mail please, just tell us what we need to do better and what we could improve about the story, Continuity errors and just your general opinion. C’mon, our in-box is always empty..

Eve huddled inside her parka. Her sister always picked the coldest, darkest corners to hold her midnight Soirées. She tried to remember the last time she had played something really mean on her. It wasn’t that long ago. She had spilt ink all over her school shirt by accident and Gloria tried to strangle her against the wall. Good thing her mom stepped in. Eve frowned at her sister, who was tapping her foot impatiently. She was ignoring Eve’s mood on purpose. She huddled herself more. It was getting really dark, and they were at the far end of the football fields. She could hardly see in front of her. There was a deeply cold wind blowing harshly and passing cars lit up the trees with an eirée light. Gloria had definitely picked here to freak her out. Gloria seemed comfortable, which was odd. She wasn’t even wearing a jumper. She must have been waiting for someone by the way she was standing. Gloria started nibbling her thumbnail in a very annoying way. Eve felt like snapping at her, but the cold was making her tired. A car moved in the road next to them, creating a loud rustling in the rows of dead trees. She shivered. Suddenly, someone jumped out of the tree opposite her. She covered her mouth and tried not to scream.

" Ah. There you are. I thought you’d forgot."

Eve sighed from relief. It was only chamber. He had his hair slicked up like that guy… Robert Smith or someone from the Cure. He walked over and talked to Gloria quietly. He looked over at her and then took a place beside Gloria, who folded her arms and looked at her in a very high and mighty way.

" Eve…. I don’t have to explain what this is all about do I? Or have you gone deaf in the past week?"

Eve glared at her sister. She could really be a jerk when she wanted to. she dragged her all the way out here to talk to her about something she already knew about. And anyway, what could she do about it? Tell everyone she was lying? Chamber didn’t seem to mind the cold either.

" Yeah. But what can I do about it?"

Gloria rolled her eyes and then stared at her coldly.

" Eve. You’ve just ruined my life. I had a chance to start over again and not get the crap I got in my last school. Now you’ve ruined it."

Man, she looked really pissed. She knew she had done a stupid, dumb, hurtful thing when she told the school about Gloria, but Gloria had done many stupid, hurtful things to her. Gloria walked over and stared down at her little sister.

" You don’t get it do you?!"

Her voice was getting more and more harsh.

" I had to leave our last school ‘cause I got kicked about so much ‘cause a this….." She clenched her fists and teeth angrily. Eve squeezed her eyes and looked at her feet.

" And now I’m gonna have to leave this school, or be pushed bout the rest of my life!!"

Gloria stepped closer to Eve. She was making her feel really uncomfortable.

" You made this mess for me. When I thought I could get away from this crap."

Her voice had started to shake with anger and she grabbed Eve’s collar roughly.

" So you better rectify your outburst or I will do something I won’t regret."

She had lifted her about a foot off the ground and Eve had started to squirm.

{ C’mon, we’ve got some other things to sort out.}

Gloria promptly dropped Eve on her butt and walked calmly off, as if nothing had happened. Eve picked herself up for the dirty, strangely warm ground and brushed herself off. She looked at the fuzzy, yellow light flashing through the tall, dark forms of the trees and shivered. A cold gust of wind blew around her as she wrapped herself in her coat and ran.

Gloria scribbled furiously into her notebook. Jubilee was lying on her bad, flipping the t.v. channels in her pyjama’s. she looked over at Gloria, but decided flicking channels was more fun. Trying to compose beautiful poetry was not as easy as made out. Gloria picked up a bottle of tip-ex and smeared it all over her page. It made a lovely, white, sticky mess.

" Grumble….razzum…love…frazzumm…hate…."

Jubilee was painting her toe-nails. Gloria darted her a look.

‘She better not be getting varnish over my blankets.’

" Darn, that never comes out.."

Jubilee said, and picked up the spilt bottle of nail varnish from the bed. She mopped it up with her pyjama leg and settled into watching t.v. again.

Gloria tore out the page an threw it on the floor. It made a pathetic swishing noise and landed a foot from the bin. Gloria chewed furiously on her pen, which started to fill with a clear liquid.

‘I wonder if she would take some lame excuse… like…’Jubilee spilled cola all over it’…. ‘Jubilee sat on it’….. anything to do with Jubilee….’

Jubilee turned the t.v. onto Jerry Springer. She turned the volume up and started yelling along to the program.

Gloria threw her book into the corner of her already overcrowded desk, where it landed on top of a growing pile of French homework, and switched on the computer (It belonged to Jubilee, but…). Gloria tapped her fingers on the desk and waited for the program to load up. A brain-wave suddenly flashed over her.

" A-ha!"

‘A poem about love my arse…..’

Chamber jerked his head off his desk. Someone was knocking at the door.

{Coming…..}

He looked around himself. He had just fallen asleep on his French homework. The knocking continued.

{Coming……..}

He got up off his chair and staggered sleepily to the door, the knocking continued.

He threw the door open to his antagonist.

{ WOT?!}

Gloria blinked at him, she had been politely knocking on his door and he had just bit her head off. He looked a bit on the funny side too. His eyes were red-rimmed and unfocused, and his hair was all mussed up.

" Uh… Pardon?"

Chamber blinked at her a few times and seemed to register, what seemed to be a fuzzy blob, as Gloria Kelley. He tried a few more times to focus, but his eyelids just wanted to close again.

{ uuhhhhh… Gloria?}

" No! Ms. Frost! I’ve just died my hair and had tons of plastic surgery just to look like Gloria…"

She glared at him with an eyebrow raised.

Of course it’s me, silly."

He cringed and leaned sleepily against the doorway, he looked as if there was a large, bright light shining in his eyes. Gloria smiled as nicely as possible.

" Hey, if this is a bad time, I can call back later.."

{No.. no. . uh… C’min}

Chamber directed her into his room and flopped directly back onto his bed. Gloria walked over to his desk and had a poke around, she’d never let anyone know, but deep inside she was a secret neat-freak. Another closet habit, she smiled to herself. She tidied up his desk as discreetly as possible. Gloria sat down in his hair, looking at his homework.

" God, that French twit gives out the same home-work to everyone."

She looked at Chamber and checked for a response. He was asleep with his head stuffed into his pillow. Gloria walked over to him and patted his head. She tilted her head to get a view of his face.

" Aww, wee tyke… all tuckered out.."

Chamber made a funny groaning noise and batted away her hand. Gloria grinned and returned to tidy up his desk (Now that no-one was looking.).s he fiddled through his English books, he seemed to be doing very well, all A’s. Hmmm.. he was definitely hiding something there. She started to read his English writhing exercises. It was quite good. A short story about a young musician who got in a car crash and was really badly injured. She looked at Chamber, stretched out on his bed.

‘More than a little Auto-biographical, Jonothon?’

She reached out her toe and poked him. He didn’t even twitch. He was fast asleep all right.

Chamber stirred a little and opened an eye.

{…. Wot…are you doing.. in …. Me room?}

Gloria pushed the note to the back of her mind, he needn’t know. Everyone had enough, mutant related problems without her adding to it. She raised an eyebrow to him.

" You let me in."

He rolled around to sit up, he seemed a little less confused than earlier.

{Oh.. yeah…. Wot did you want to talk about again..?}

Gloria pulled out her own piece of paper from her pocket. She shook it out and read it to him.

" *Achem*.. this is my poem for English.. tell me what you think… ‘Kay?

THAT THEN YOU WENT AND SLEPT WITH HIM… And that’s all I’ve got so far.."

Gloria looked at him anxiously.

" What do you think?"

He got up from his bed and looked at it.

{Frost’ll freak.}

Gloria smiled and banged the paper against her palm.

"Good.."

Chamber looked at her, he seemed concerned.

{Gloria, you okay?}

She nodded and whacked a false smile on her face.

" Yea, fine….."

{Nah.. it’s just that..}

He picked up his English book and flicked through it.

{That I found this horrible note from some homophobe prat stuck in my book..}

He picked the book up and held it in the air to see if anything would fall out. Nothing did.

{Well, anyway.. if anyone’s bothering you or anything gel…}

He rubbed her back, but she still felt pathetic. Gloria buried her head in her hands and sighed. Jonothon looked a bit worried.

{Uh.. you okay…?}

She gave him an evil look, but restrained from retorting.

"Yea, except that I feel about three inches tall."

She rubbed her temples in a very psychiatrist way, and took off her glasses to clean them. He gave her a comforting hug. Gloria smiled back pitifully and gave him another manly pat on the back.

" You should really get back to that French homework Jonothon.. you know what that woman’s like about homework.."

Chamber grunted at her and peered at his French book.

{Nope, too hard.. I’ll just say someone stole it.}

Gloria looked at this book. It seemed simple enough.

" I’ll help you if you want…"

{Yea.. okay..}

Gloria edged down the hallway. She hated her Maths teacher. She had sent her to the office for uniform violations. Again. At least Ms. Frost was sympathetic to her individuality. She twisted her wallet chain around her finger. She hoped this wasn’t going to be a reoccurring problem. Whenever she went into Maths class an the teacher was in the mood she would be thrown out and told to go to the office. She could ask for a transfer at least. Gloria threw open another door angrily. It slammed into something hard. And metal.

" Ahhh!!!"

Gloria spun around to see a thin, bald man who seemed vaguely familiar looking dazed in his wheelchair. He touched one of the bent spokes. There was a tall man in his late twenties standing behind him, he looked really familiar as well, and a tall woman with bright red hair and green eyes. They were both staring at Gloria in shock. Gloria quickly jumped to his side and apologised profusely.

"Ah, err .. I’m sorry, I’m very sorry, I shouldn’t have flung threw door open like that!!"

The old man smiled tiredly up at her.

" No, I shouldn’t have situated myself in front of the door…"

The younger man nudged the red-haired woman, who gave him an exasperated look. She wondered what the heck he was staring at. Then she looked at her uniform again.

‘Oh, yeah.’

Gloria stretched out her hand, if she was really polite and apologetic, they might not report her to Ms. Frost. She smiled as best she could and ignored the young couples stares.

" Uh.. real sorry.. My name’s Gloria Kelly, by the way."

Gloria heard a gasp from the woman and the guy in the wheelchair raised an eyebrow at her. Then he quickly lowered it and smiled, strangely, back at her. She didn’t like the look in his eye.

" Could you show me to Ms. Frost’s office please?"

Gloria smiled her best again, realising that it wasn’t that comforting with a face covered with black make-up.

" Which one’s?"

He frowned at her again.

" Uh.. Emma’s."

Gloria smiled again, and told them to follow her. She walked a few feet in front of them, she couldn’t hear them talking, but she was pretty sure they were, somehow. She could hear a slight buzzing in her ears.

"You invited her to be in this school ?!"

The professor patted Scott’s hand in a purposely patronising way.

‘You, as X-men should know that looks aren’t what makes the man.. or mutant.’

Jean nudged him again.

‘Well they are pretty lax in uniform round here aren’t they?’

Gloria turned around an gave them an odd look. Jean frowned.

‘Professor, can she hear us?’

Now it was Charles’ turn to frown in confusion. He knitted his brows and clenched his hands around the wheel.

‘You see, Jean. she shouldn’t be able to, but I should have felt her coming and not have got knocked over by that door. But I suspect she’s not a telepath. Maybe just sensitive to mental intrusion.’

Scott frowned at himself as Gloria took another strange peek at them.

‘I still don’t feel right about her….’

Gloria looked back at the crowd behind her. She hid her smile. She loved getting reactions like this from kids with such rods up their asses like those two. The old gut seemed okay though. Like he saw this kind of thing every day. They approached Ms. Frost’s office. She tapped politely on the door, Frost knew she was there, but it would look strange if she just seemed to ..sense.. that she was there.

" Who are they Gloria?"

Gloria turned to the three people behind her.

" Urrrr….. And your name is….?"

The old man still had that weird look in his eye, he smiled serenely at her.

" Professor Charles Xavier."

" Ahhh!!! Lord, I have never felt so humiliated in my entire life!!"

Chamber and Skin patted Gloria comfortingly on the back. Jubilee seemed to think it was hilarious that Gloria hadn’t noticed the founder of ‘the dream’, or whatever that moral was.

" God!! He must think I’m some kind of idiot, and I think I offended the X-leader guy as well, whazziz name..?"

" Cyclops." Jubilee helped. Gloria nodded in acknowledgement.

" Yea, anyway, I wouldn’t worry chica, that guy has a forty foot barge pole up his ass."

He gave her another manly pat on the back. Jubilee frowned to herself.

" Why does everyone always say that?"

Chamber helpfully offered Gloria her inhaler. She took it gratefully and took several good puffs at it. Gloria moaned pitifully to herself and sank into the desk.

{ I think Frost thought it was funny.}

Gloria glared at him.

" I really don’t want the principal laughing at me, y’know. I’m sure Xavier got a good laugh out of it."

Jubilee smiled again and threw her voice in Gloria’s direction.

" Jean came to my room to say hello. She said she’d never seen the guy laugh so much."

Gloria let out another load moan and banged her head repeatedly on the desk.

" You must revise your X-men history!! You must revise your X-men history!! You must revise your X-men history!! You must revise your X-men history!!"

Chamber and Skin patted her on the back again and put a pillow between her and the desk. She suddenly raised her eyes and looked at Jubilee.

" You didn’t tell her I roomed with you, did you?"

Jubilee bit her lip.

" Umm… that did come up.." she smiled comfortingly at Gloria. " She liked your decorations."

Gloria banged her head into the pillow.

" Children."

All in the room looked up to see Ms. Frost standing in the doorway. Funnily enough, no-one had heard her come in. she was looking particularly at the pathetic form of Gloria, with her head buried in a pillow.

" I’d like to have a talk with both young Kellys."

Gloria’s head popped up immediately from her pillow.

" Actually, Pr. Xavier would like to have a word with both young Kellys."

Jubilee burst into giggles, but was silenced by withering glares from Ms. Frost and Gloria. Skin and Chamber helped pull her up from her chair and patted her supportively on the back. She gave a silent groan to herself and dragged herself across the floor. Ms. Frost looked around at them all again.

" And Eve is….?"

Gloria walked into Emma’s office. She could feel three pairs of eyes bore into her, at lest two were probably poking around in her head as well. She spotted Eve looking unusually shy in the corner. Gloria took the furthest seat away, well, she almost did until Emma gave her a warning look and she pulled up one next to Eve. They could at least fake family unity couldn’t they? Eve was admiring her shoelaces and tapping her feet on the leg of the chair. Emma walked up to her desk and took her seat, she looked pointedly at the two girls and then spoke to the room.

" Girls, you may be wondering why you were called up here.."

" Yea, that did cross my mind." Gloria mumbled, a little too loudly. She twisted a tissue around her fist and wished her rudeness against that Cyclops guy didn’t fire up. He was a too easy target to resist. Emma frowned a her and continued.

" Well, there is a simple explanation, we have sent your genetic profiles off to the main Xavier institute in New York, to heave them analysed in more detail than we could here…and they came to some interesting conclusions."

The professor peered over at them both. Gloria and Eve automatically sidled down in their seats.

" Professor..?"

He coughed and sat up in his wheelchair. He looked at the two beside him, whatever they were called.

" After, extensive testing, we came to the conclusion that your family is indeed quite a unique specimen."

Gloria frowned at that. She didn’t like her family being refereed to as a ‘specimen’.

" Even though you show the same attributes physically.."

Gloria peered at Eve to see if she was getting all this. Her face was creased in concentration.

" The same relative heights as each other ecetera.. you’re mutant powers have no relation what-so-ever.. like I said.. very odd."

Gloria looked up from her purple shoelaces. What was he implying? She studied his face, he looked pretty much innocent, he probably didn’t realise what he had just implied. Ms. Frost looked at her desk, she probably just had. The Scott Summers whazziz name guy stood up. Gloria prayed that she wouldn’t fall asleep at the sound of his voice. Or yawn.

" Hank…" He looked at the girls and decided they didn’t know who he was, so he dumbed it down. " Mc-Coy, the Beast, came up with these predictions.. they are only loose though, and are based on you both having a medium amount of training and in the right health circumstances…"

Gloria looked at Eve again, she could tell by the look on Eve’s face, she was thinking of things to say to Cyclops.

" Well, these are estimates of how your powers may develop."

He pulled out a piece of paper from a folder and handed it Ms. Frost. Gloria held back to point out that they should really be getting the prognosis on her powers. Unless he thought that Frosty could dumb it down for them. She made a face behind his back. Ms. Frost saw her and frowned. Emma looked through the files carefully. She looked at Eve and Gloria.

" Gloria, Eve here, you may be intrigued…."

Gloria took it off her. She looked at it carefully and pulled out her glasses.

" The ability to tele-port through any electrical transmitter, perhaps, with training through the air, water or distances from electrical outputs….. to channel electricity through body and to earth… would result in ability to shoot electricity through body a weapon… perhaps the ability to travel distances from output to output would result in ability to turn body into electricity to flow through the earth… jump form high points to earth quickly by morphing body to electricity to go to the earth… in the principle of lightning… he doesn’t mince his words, does he?"

Eve looked at her paper and frowned in confusion. What the hell was this about? Eve looked over at Gloria, who seemed to understand it okay. And she wasn’t going to give her sister the pleasure of her asking for help. She screwed her eyes up and tried to look as if she was understanding it all. Eve took a peek at the other adults in the room, they looked as if they were mind-speaking. She could hear a faint buzzing in her ears. She shook her head to try and make it go away. Gloria shook here head next to her.

‘It must be the atmosphere in here.’

Emma stood up, to Gloria and Eve’s relief. She nodded at Xavier and his friend. Then turned to the Kelly sisters.

" Girls, we will be doing a lot of in-depth on those and training will be more intensive from now on."

Gloria and Eve groaned at once. The only thing they had in common was a similar hate for training. Xavier looked as if he was about to leave, the young couple got out of their seats. Gloria suddenly had a flash of prudey inspiration. Gloria tried to recall his name.

" Summers?"

He turned and frowned at her. Gloria put two fingers together and pointed them at Scott.

" Z-zap!"

Gloria pulled open one eyelid with the greatest effort. Jubilee was sitting on the side of her bed, putting her shoes on. Gloria opened her mouth to say something, but couldn’t find the energy. She peeled her face off her pillow and poked Jubilee in the back.

"? What?"

Jubilee spun around to face an angry, sleepy, bed-headed Gloria Kelley. Not a pleasant sight, definitely. Gloria fumbled with one and to find her glasses on the bed-side table, but tried to keep her eyes level with Jubilee.

" You’re on my foot."

Jubilee jumped off Gloria’s bed, and foot, like a jet. She was looking for Gloria to play her way today, so pissing her off wasn’t going to help. Gloria put her glasses on and tied her hair back into a slightly more presentable ponytail.

" You look…. Nice.."

Gloria arched her eyebrow at Jubilee. ‘nice’ was not word that could be mentioned in the same sentence as ‘Gloria Kelley’. Jubilee sat down on the side of her bed and smiled politely. She smoothed down Gloria’s blanket and smiled.

"Gloriaaa.. Gloria, Gloria, Gloria…."

Gloria tried to get up, but Jubilee blocked her. She smiled at her again.

"Can I ask you for a favour?" She asked, in a sugary sweet voice.

"Uh…. Well, I was wondering what all this was in benefit for Lee."

Jubilee frowned, in a slightly put off way, but continued.

"See, you’re kinda new….and well…we all kinda like getting outta here, once in a while.."

She looked at her in a slightly harsher way.

"We need you to go along with us to butter up Ms. Frost to let us out."

Gloria pushed Jubilee off her bed and got up, she stretched casually and turned around to face Jubilee.

"Yea, sure. All you had to do is ask."

Jubilee’s face lit up with relief.

"Oh!! Thank God!! We thought you might…"

"Lee, I, off all people, dislike being coped up in this hole all week more then you can imagine…."

Jubilee let out quick sigh and fell back onto the pile of blankets on Gloria’s bed. Gloria dragged herself over to her wardrobe and plucked out a pair of particularly dirty, black jeans with holes in them, a pair of black fishnet tights and a black fleece top. She paused for a second and turned to Jubilee, who was still lying on the bed, with her legs in the air.

"Jubilee, where exactly do you want to go anyway?"