The next day, I met Logan at the entrance to the Danger Room at one o’clock like I always did when school wasn’t in session. His arms were crossed squarely across his chest and his stance was none too inviting.
“Hey.”
I noted that he’d left off the kid. I took that as a white flag. My, “Hey, yourself,” was cheerful.
The thick, circular door slid apart to let Bobby and Cyclops through. They were done exactly on time, as per usual. Cyclops was a stickler for those kinds of things. I was glad he wasn’t my trainer.
“Got her warmed up for me, Scooter?” Logan asked.
“No, just tired her out,” Cyclops replied, barely stopping.
Bobby gave me a fleeting look, but kept on walking. I had to say something.
“Hey, Bobby, wait.”
He paused to turn around.
“Jubes, Kitty, and me are going to the mall later. Do you want to come with us? I have very specific things I need to buy, and I’m going to need some help to keep them on track.”
“Yeah, sure,” he agreed, walking backwards. “When?”
“Meet us in the game room at, like, three-thirty.”
“Will do.” He grinned, his blue eyes warming over. “Hey, Cinnabun’s on me.”
“As if I’d pay,” I scoffed.
“Heh, right. Later, Rogue.”
“Later.” Grinning like a moron, I followed Logan into the Danger Room.
“Not exactly nursing a broken heart is he,” Logan remarked.
Evenly, I replied, “I wouldn’t want him to be.”
I began stretching out, my arms especially. My shoulder adjusted itself audibly. “Oh, that felt good.” Logan tilted his head and cracked the vertebrae in his neck. We were probably two of the few people in the world who kind of enjoyed the sound of bones popping.
“I’m ready,” I said once I’d made sure my shoelaces were tied and my hair was secure back in a ponytail.
“Get one of those light guns,” he told me. I did so, even though I was disappointed. I liked the one-on-one physical stuff better. Who could say why?
Since my power was pretty worthless in battle, Logan trained me in hand-to-hand combat and gunmanship. From Stryker, the Professor had gotten the idea of using tranquilizer guns, as they were quick, bloodless, and equally effective on humans as they were on most mutants. I was getting to be a pretty good shot.
Logan went into the control room to set up a hologram of targets. When I blasted them all down, he adjusted the hologram so that they seemed further away.
“Make them move or something. This is too easy,” I complained.
He complied. I mastered three more levels before he said through the intercom, “That’s enough. The Professor’s waiting.”
Logan was possibly more anxious about the upcoming meeting than I was, which made a certain amount of sense as it was going to be he who was risking his life by letting me test my power on him. That made me all kinds of nervous, but I forced myself to trust that Professor Xavier knew what he was doing.
I put my windbreaker jacket back on over my long-sleeved spandex top, glad I hadn’t broken much of a sweat. As we headed up to the Professor’s office, I watched Logan out of the corner of my eye. I was pleased he was going to be the one to help me with this, not just because of his handy regenerative capabilities. Whoever was going to be doing this with me was going to end up occupying a large portion of the guestroom in my mind. Plus, it meant that I was going to get to touch him. I should’ve been so happy about that considering my touch was his pain.
“Hello,” Professor Xavier greeted us when Logan opened the door. “Please, take a seat. I’ve just got one more paragraph I want to finish.”
He was reading a thick novel, the cover of which was white and red with black print. Sitting, I tilted my head so I could read the title. Science fiction.
“No, no,” the Professor said, putting his bookmark in place. “You’re thinking of H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man. This is Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. Ellison’s protagonist is socially invisible, not physically. It is an extremely enlightening book. I recommend it highly.” Logan and I stared at him, only one of us out of rudeness. The Professor stapled his fingers together. “Right, yes. On with the reason we’re here.”
Logan relaxed into the chair, putting his booted feet on the edge of Professor Xavier’s desk. Logan was lucky he was such a good fighter. The Professor might not have put up with him so well otherwise.
“Before we start, can I ask you a question?” I asked the Professor.
“Ah, yes. You want to know about Everett. Everett has the unusual ability to duplicate other mutants’ powers for a short while, just by seeing them in action. That’s how he was able to turn your powers on you, and how he escaped from harm.”
Oh, so like my power only constructive. Lucky.
“Everett’s gift has its own troubles, just as yours does. No mutation is perfect. I know that you weren’t too impressed with my offer of control,” the Professor said, making me shift guiltily in my chair. “However, I do believe that this is an attainable and worthwhile goal. In fact, my theory is that it’s a natural progression, already taking place. With the appropriate measures, it is my hope that we will be able to speed up process.”
“How can you say I have control? Look what happened yesterday.”
“There are several factors in that case very unlike the prior progress you’ve made. Before you say anything more, try and humor me for a moment. Think back to all the people you’ve touched since your mutation manifested itself. Think about how long you touched them and what effects it had on them. Can you remember?”
I nodded.
“Good. Walk us through it, Rogue. Then you’ll see the pattern.”
I took a deep breath. “David was the first. We kissed. My first kiss. It wasn’t long. Maybe five seconds. He spent three weeks in a coma. I didn’t let anyone touch me after that because I knew that it’d been my fault, even though I didn’t really know what’d happened. Anyway, when he started school again, David told everyone what I’d done to him, so people weren’t exactly lining up to touch me. I thought it’d be okay. Then my momma – She didn’t really want to believe that there was anything wrong with me, so she’d try to touch me sometimes. I woke up one night and she was touching my cheek. She fainted. She was out all night. A couple days later, my parents sent me upstate to this clinic called Southaven.”
Logan’s rapt attention was making me nervous. The Professor knew all this information, of course, but it was news to Logan. Our pasts were virtually unexplored territories.
“It was pretty awful, like crisis counseling meets juvenile detention center. I ran away twice. The first time, I barely made it out of town. Second time, I knocked out one of the security guards, Eugene Macomb. I got caught in LA and shipped back. The other kids started calling me Rogue after that. Being around them wasn’t so bad. One girl, Paige Guthrie, we called her Husk because she could shed her skin and make it turn into stuff like rock. Anyway, we thought maybe if I touched her and could take her power I could shed my skin and be able to touch people or something. Didn’t work, obviously, but I found out I could borrow powers. So when Jeffery Garrett came in, I borrowed his teleportation and hit the road.”
“How long before you met up with Logan?”
“Eight months since David, three since I ran away from Southaven.”
“And how many people did you touch in that time period?”
I squirmed again. Nothing had happened, yet I was still not comfortable talking about it. “I stole this guy’s wallet once and he grabbed me by the back of the neck. It was warm out, so I wasn’t wearing my hood. It was only a brush. He didn’t get knocked out or anything, but he stopped chasing me. I went back to LA, since that’s where mutant kids go. I stayed underground with some other mutants. There was a girl, Domino, she convinced this prep school kid she called Cypher to help her rob some ATMs, and I kept a lookout. But then she got it in her head that we should rob a bank. I wasn’t about to get caught and sent back to Southaven again – ”
I cleared my throat, remembering Logan wasn’t my only audience.
“Uh, and, you know, robbing banks is morally wrong – so when they tried to force me, I knocked them both out, used their powers to get some cash, and hit the road. And the other…I always got rides with truckers because they asked the least questions. They were mostly pretty nice, and they left me alone. Only two of them ever tried to get rough with me.”
“Christ,” Logan hissed.
“They never got very far,” I felt compelled to make clear. “One of them, Gordon was his name, he…well, he pushed me down and tried to kiss me.” There had been more to it than that, but Logan was seething enough. “He didn’t even last half a second before he was unconscious.”
“Anyone else?” Logan gritted out.
“No. Then it was you. And Magneto, and you again. It’s just been Bobby since. Oh, and John once, when I had to stop him from hurting those cops.”
“Go back for a moment,” the Professor said. “Think about when you touched Logan. You needed his power to heal yourself from a potentially fatal wound, which takes a lot of energy. So why wasn’t he unconscious as long as, say, David? You only kissed him.”
“I can heal pretty quick,” Logan reminded him.
“Point taken. That could very well have been a factor. But what about John? You held onto his leg for quite some time, if you’re remembering correctly, and he walked away unscathed.”
“That’s true. And I let go really easily. I don’t know how.”
“I can only offer speculation, but I think it’s because you were concentrating hard enough that you were able to pull his energy from his power instead of from his life force. That’s why he was unable to use his power while you were touching him. In the case of Logan, you didn’t have that control yet, so you drew from both sources equally. Notice when he healed you yesterday – which was, I have to admit, against my advice,” Professor Xavier added for Logan’s benefit. “Since you were unconscious, your body blindly absorbed all that it could as fast as it could. The effects were rather powerful. Logan was dizzy for a good twenty minutes.”
Logan shrugged, not looking at me.
“Therefore, I believe that the key to your power, Rogue, is to embrace it. When you wield it for a purpose, you’re in control.”
“But what if I don’t want to take someone’s powers or their energy? What if I just want to touch them?”
“That…can’t be done.”
His certainly shocked me. “How do you know?”
“Dr. McCoy ran more tests yesterday. I’m afraid the results…You see, every gift has a purpose. Yours is not much different from Logan’s in that they’re both designed for self-preservation. Logan is virtually impossible to kill and, since his body has reached its peak, he no longer ages. You could probably do the same, just by living off other people’s life forces.”
The suggestion was highly offensive to me.
“I didn’t say you would. I merely pointed out that you could.”
“The test results,” Logan interjected, getting to the heart of the matter.
“Yes. It is difficult for me to say this to you, Rogue, but you deserve the truth. In order to unlock this life essence, the people you touch have to be weakened. Your cells exude a sort of imperceptible toxin, which does the job. That toxin is why you can’t just touch.”
“I see.”
It was a good thing I’d officially given up all hope yesterday, or this news would’ve crushed me.
“Professor McCoy thinks that there’s a slight chance that if he were able to get enough of this toxin to test he could maybe find something to counteract it. Perhaps.”
“Can’t hurt to try,” I managed, because it was expected.
“No, it can’t. Rogue, I’m very sorry.”
The phone on Professor Xavier’s desk rang suddenly, causing me to jump.
“Excuse me,” he said, picking it up. “I have to take this. Hello, Mr. President. Charles Xavier. I’m glad you got my message. Pardon me? No, I can hold.” Putting his hand over the receiver, he told me, “We’ll discuss your future training more tomorrow. This could take a while.”
Logan and I left his office quietly.
“Like I said, there are creative ways,” Logan said finally.
“It’s still not worth it.”
“What’re you going to do?”
I checked his watch. Right on schedule. “First off, I’m going to go change. Then, I’m going to meet the gang.”
A vast, infinite universe of coping strategies open wide to me…and I chose the mall. For better or worse? I still don’t know.