Chapter 9
“You wanna say that again darling?” I questioned. What the hell is this chick talking about.
“You heard me, this place is mine,” nodding her towards the house. “And I don’t really like a bunch of strangers walking around my property like they own the place. Now I’m going to say this only once, leave before things get ugly,” she then cocked the brawl of the shot gun and pointed it at my chest.
Raising my hands ups to my face; I tried to reason with her. “Listen lady, we aren’t here to make trouble. We were instructed to come here from Charles Xavier,” at the mentions of his name, the girl’s body tensed.
“You know Charles?” she questioned, moving the shot gun closer to her body. There was a slight smell of fear coming from her, why would anyone be scared of Charles?
“You know Charles?” I asked back, but got no response. “I’ll take that as a yes then? Okay darling we’re from the school, it got attacked by the government. An escape plan was made and we were sent here to the safe house. Now I don’t know why Charles would make this a safe house if someone was already living here but he did, and I’m telling you now I don’t plan on going anywhere anytime soon. I’ve had enough for the last few days and I need a rest you got me?” well that’s one mean look she was sending my way. Looks like missy here didn’t like what I just told her, well you know what, to fucking bad. If I have to spend any more time in a car with those kids I was going to either de-gut them, or myself. I maintained eye contact with her, if she thinks I’m backing down she’s got another thing coming.
“Is that so?” she spoke after a few minutes of silents. “Well then, you’ll better come inside and get settled,” she lowered the shot gun, de-cocking it as she went and then started to walk towards me. “By the way if you’re going to be living in my house you better learn my name. It’s Rogue not Lady you got me?” Not giving me time to answer she continued to walk towards the house. A noise sounded to my left, alerting me of the wolves. They had gotten up and started to follow Rogue towards the house.
“What about these?” I asked gesturing to the wolves my head. Rogue turned around to look at me, then at the wolves.
“Sasha, Alex, go!” she sound and raised her arm pointing towards the woods. With that the wolves turned and ran into the woods. I looked back at Rogue and gave her a questioning eyebrow, she responded by giving me one back then turned, heading up to the porch, pass the kids and into the house leaving the door open.
“So umm, do we go in, or head straight back to the car?” Mike asked looking to the house.
“I vote the car,” Jubilee answered, also looking into the house.
Moving over to them, I leant down and picked up the Kid into my arms. “Now listen up runts. We are not going anywhere; this is our home for the time being. We’ve got to stay here until there is some sort of contact, you got me?” they all nodded their heads. “Good, now go get your stuff from the car and I’ll meet you inside,” turning, I headed into the house, still holding the Kid to my side. The house was huge; the down stairs was open with a large fire place and a few sofas in front. On each side of the fire place was a top-to-bottom book case filled to the brim with books. Be hide the sofas was a large oak table and a desk, the room also contended a large stair case leading up to the second and third floor of the house. And to the side of the stairs was an entrance which leads to the kitchen, where Rogue now was, washing her hands at the sink. Slowly I moved over towards the kitchen to get a better look.
The kitchen was quite large as well; it held a large oven, lots of cupboards and another table. I watched Rogue as she moved around the kitchen, opening cupboards and removing different items acting like she hadn’t noticed I was there.
“So what kind of name is Rogue?” I asked from the door way. She slowly turned and looked at me.
“What kind of name is Wolverine?” she asked back leaning against the counter top. Wait how did she know my name was Wolverine, I hadn’t said anything and either had the rugrats. Again I sent her a questioning eyebrow, which she then returned. Slowly she relaxed a little and pointed to my neck. Looking down I saw my dog tags hanging loose, I tucked them back into my shirt.
“Names Logan,” not like she would care.
“Marie,” she quietly answered back. “But never use that name, in here and everywhere else its Rogue, got it?” nodding at her, she pushed herself away from the counter and headed towards me. She stood in front of me; keeping eye contact making sure what she said went in. Slowly Rogue turned her attention to the little girl still in my arms?
“And what’s your name little one?” the Kid turn her head into the of my crock neck, hiding her face from Rogue. “She yours?” Rogue asked looking back up at me. “No,” I said shaking my head from side to the side. “And no one knows her name. On the night of the attack I found her in Charles office, hiding in the corner,” Rogue’s head shot back up to look at my face, then back down to look at the Kid. Rogue very slowly and carefully ran her gloved hand through the Kid’s hair and looked hard, like she was studying her.
“Abigail,” Rogue whispered. The Kid went as stiff as a board in my arms; she slowly turned her face to look at Rogue. Looking down at the Kid, I watched her as she watched Rogue, trying to figure her out. “It’s finally nice to meet you Abigail. Don’t worry your safe here now,” Rogue whispered whilst running her fingers through the Kids long, black locks of hair.
“Logan?” John called out from the living room. I watched Rogues face as she heard John calling out to me. Quickly, the mask that Rogue had been wearing was shoved right back on and the hard look returned to her face. She stepped back from us, and headed out the kitchen back into the living room. I followed suit and walked over to the kids to make sure they had all their bits.
Rogue stood in front of the kids, back straight, arms crossed in front of her chest. “Right listen up, for those of you that didn’t get it the first times my name is Rogue but I don’t know your. And since you’ve all come from Xavier’s that also means that you’ve all got a ‘gift’. So I wanna know names and powers. You have 30 second, GO!” no one spoke up or even moved forwards. Rogue watched all of them as they stood in a line.
“Right guess I’ll start,” she sounded annoyed, well good, time someone else was for a change. “My power is my skin. If any of you touches me skin to skin, something bad will happen, you’ll either end up in hospital or if you’re really lucky dead. And in case of mutants I’ll even have your powers. So if you want to stay alive in this house, you’re gonna have to make sure you stay out of my way and not touch my skin. Got it?” they all nodded in sequence, with the smell of fear increased in the room, I turned my head to look at the Kid, and just rolled my eyes at her.
She gave a small giggle then turned her face to hide back in my neck, turning to look at Rogue again she stood there giving me a pissed off look. Hate to say it, but she looks sort of hot when she’s pissed. Rogue averted her eyes to look back to the kids. “Right, now I want names and powers. You first,” she said pointing to Mike.
“Names Mike and I can make things catch on fire. I can do this two ways, either looking at something and think about it being on fire, or touching it and think of it being on fire,” to etherizes his point, Mike turned to the fire place and stared at it, we all turned our heads to look, suddenly the logs that were in the fire place caught alight into a rowing fire. Rogue turned back to Mike with a raised eyebrow.
“Impressive, that’ll come in handy if you every need to run again and have to live rough,” Mike gave a small smile and a nod. Rogue ignored him and turned to look at John. “So what about you?” she asked him.
“My name is John, and this is my twin sister Jane. We both have the power to move things with our minds. When we are by ourselves it’s not as strong, but when we are together we can move heavy things. Like when we ran the car of the road, we were able to pull the dents out and lift it back onto the main road,” John said, beaming at Jane as he talked about what had happen and how they had handled it. Rogue just turned back to me and gave me a questioning look, I just shrugged in responds.
“Okay then, that’s good, but I think you two need to start working alone to build up your own individual powers. If one of you gets caught by the government its not going to do the other one any good if they can’t help you, can it?” John and Jane looked at each other with sad eyes then looked down at the floor clutching hands. What Rogue said to them was cruel, even if it was bit a true. Great now she’s moved on to Jubilee.
“So what about you?” she asked. Jubilee stood with her back straight and looked Rogue straight in the eyes.
“Names Jubilee and I can do this,” with that, Jubilee place her hands out on both side and showed Rogue her powers. Once she had finished Jubilee put her hands on her hips and gave Rogue a smirk. Rogue started clapping slowly. “Impressive,” Jubilee turned to look at the others and smirked some more. “However it’s a little early for the fourth of July so why don’t you take your little fire work show elsewhere,” Jubilee stared at Rogue with her mouth open wide, her face then turned red with anger ”HEY! You listen here lady my powers are good. I took down a damn chopper for Christ sakes. I don’t know what crawled up your ass but that’s no way to speak to us. These powers make us stronger than anyone, and Charles said that with training we can be even more powerfully then we are now,” Rogue stepped right into Jubilee starring her down. In a low hard voice Rogue responded back to Jubilee.
“Now you listen, and you listen good. These powers do NOT make you stronger than anyone else. They make you different, an outcast from the rest of the world. And if you think for one moment that I’m going to allow you to use them for your own good well think again,” Rogue stepped back from Jubilee and turned to address all of use.
“What Charles told you was a complete lie. Sure he told you that you could fight the good fight and all that, but at the end of the day who wins? That’s right Charles, because he wasn’t the one that was out there fighting with his beloved X-Men. And if you think he’s any different than the government well think again. Sure he gave you a roof over your head and an education but at the end of the day you where all training to be soldiers. His soldiers so that he could win his war and prove a point. He wanted you to train, to use your powers to its fullest so that you could fight for him, and you all probably would have done it without a second though. How many times did you see his beloved X-Men come home covered in blood, or better yet come home dead?” she asked us all. It’s sort of true, I did spend most of my time in the med lab after a mission.
“That’s right; Charles had you all so blinded that you couldn’t see the big picture. You were all pawns in his game of chess and at the end of the game how many pawns are left on the board?” no one spoke up, the kids just kept looking from one to another. But I wasn’t going to stand by and watch her bad mouth my friend any long.
“HEY!” I placed the Kid, Abigail on the floor and walked over to where Rogue was standing. “Now you listen, Charles cared for these kids he would do anything for them. He made it their choice to join the X-Men; no one forced them to do anything. He’s goal was to make this world a better place for mutants to live, so that we could live along side humans without fear. And if it meant we had to prove ourselves and fight then we did, and I wouldn’t choose differently,” Standing a foot taller than her, I gave her a hard look. But she just smiled back up at me and placed a hand on my chest.
“You poor man, what did he do to convince you to stay there. Let me ask you a question, did you join the X-Men because it was the right thing to do, or because you felt obligated to Charles to join because he had done something for you?” Well she had me there. Truth is at first I did only join because Charles kept finding links to my past.
“Exactly, and that is how most of those kids felt when they ‘volunteered’ to become an X-Men. Charles had given them a home, food in their stomachs and not once did they question him. Until me that is, and let’s just say the price for not following Charles is a heavy one at that,” she pushed against me to look over at the kids again.
“I’m not Charles, I’m not going to give you the chose to fight the good fight because you are just children it’s not your place. This is my house, my rules and if you choose to break them there is no second chance you’ll be out that door so fast you won’t know what’s hit you. You’ll earn your keep here, doing jobs around the house, be it cleaning, cooking or just getting wood for the fire you do it no questions. You will continue with your school study’s, you will also keep training to control or master your powers but they will not be used to fight wars, they will only be used to fight for yourself when need it. Other than that you will not think of your selves as mutants, you will not use your powers to do your chores. As of this moment you are nothing but normal teenagers are we clear?” with a sad look, all of them slowly nodded their heads.
“Good, now let’s get you all settled, follow me,” Rogue turned and headed over to the stairs. The group picked up their bags and slowly followed Rogue up the stairs, Jane reached out for John’s hand and squeezed it tightly, and Mike place an arm around Jubilee and pulled her into a tight embrace. I bent down to pick up mine and Abigail’s bags then picked up Abigail and held her on my waist again.
“Well, she’s a happy person don’t you think?” I asked Abigail, she in returned placed her head close to my ear and whispered quietly. “She’s lonely; she’s been alone for a long time.”
“Yeah I can see why Charles kicked her out,” Abigail slowly shook her head from side to side. “No not kicked, banished. He banished her,” I looked at Abigail then turned slowly to look at Rogue, she was standing at the top of the stairs looking down at me and Abigail. Wait she wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at just Abigail with a sad look in her eyes. When she notices I was watching her, Rogue looked at me with a hard look; she then turned away and started to walk down the landing.
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Can it be true, another chapter? Well yes it is :D don't you just love it when writers block goes away.
Anyway, enjoy.
Anyway, enjoy.
Chapter End Notes:
So what do you all think? Please remember to leave a review as I love reading them and love to hear your say on the story.
Until next time. Peace out.
Until next time. Peace out.