* * *
"Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and
years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst
movies in the history of the world."
— Dave Barry
* * *
Logan made it to the Academy by late afternoon, following the driving directions Marie had e-mailed him. The easiest thing to do would have been to print out the message, but without Marie there to guide him through the process he wound up just grabbing a blank sheet of printer paper and writing the directions down.
The "security" was laughable — motion detectors opened the gates, and he drove his motorcycle right in. The administration building wasn’t overly difficult to pick out — large and central, with fewer between-classes students going in or out. Logan was given pause by the number of students, and wondered just how many or how few might be mutants.
Brazenly sauntering into the lobby of the building, he checked for signs — like, "This way to the Ice Queen’s office" — and was greeted by a matronly woman behind a desk, some sort of secretary, receptionist, or administrator. "May I help you?" she asked, politely but with a edge to her voice to match her obvious assessment of, "Too old to be a student, too scruffy to be a teacher."
"Yes, I’m looking for Emma Frost." [Whoops, almost called her "Frosty." Might not be the best way to go to a job interview...]
"And you would be?" A more careful assessment, as she tried to decide whether he qualified as "legitimate business" or "riff-raff."
"Logan. From Xavier’s School for the Gifted," he reluctantly added, hoping that the "academic credentials" would improve matters.
They didn’t. The secretary’s face set in disbelief, as she made a show of checking a schedule planner. "I’m sorry, but I don’t have you down for an appointment."
[Guess I didn’t look academic enough — or maybe it was the "gifted" part that threw her.] "I didn’t have one." Sensing the approaching brushoff, he added, "I’ll just go find her myself, let her know I’m here," quickly heading past the desk into the bowels of the administration complex. He remembered Frosty’s scent from when she came to get Marie, and could no doubt track her to her lair.
After a few token protests of, "Sir — sir! I can’t allow you to go in there," his preternaturally sharp hearing clearly picked up the receptionist’s murmur into her phone. "Ma’am, we have a breach in security. A ‘gentleman’ claiming to be a Mr. Logan from Xavier’s School is heading to the private levels."
Emma’s response, non-whispered but via a phone’s handset, was fainter but still audible. "How interesting. I’ll set a few of the more advanced students to stopping him. This should be a good test..."
Logan grinned to himself as he rounded the corner and Frost’s voice was lost. Whether the test was intended for the students or for himself was an open question, but it mattered not. Flooring a cadre of half-trained teenagers without the use of any weaponry or funky mutant powers — without, in fact, breaking a sweat — would more than amply prove Marie’s claims as to his skills and the students’ lack thereof.
Frost’s scent was all through this building, but strengthening in this direction. He kept his ears — and nose — open for warning signals of impending attack, but the ambush when it came was so clumsy that it would have mattered little had he blundered into it unwarned and unprepared.
Possibly they were trying not to be heard, attempting to sneak up on him through a connecting passageway he was approaching. But he could hear footsteps, breathing, a cough and a muffled, "Shh!" He smirked and kept walking as though unaware of their presence — but when they suddenly popped out of the passageway to block his path, he couldn’t resist a chuckle.
There were five of them. Three boys, two girls. Halting and looking them over, he asked disingenuously, "What are you, the welcome committee?"
One of the guys stepped forward. "I’m sorry, this area isn’t for casual visitors. I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave now." He didn’t sound particularly apologetic, despite his words. The very faint accent sounded Middle Eastern or North African.
"What if I don’t want to leave?" Logan crossed his arms, taking up a casual-looking stance but nevertheless ready to leap into action.
"Then you get carried out," announced another of the guys. It was Beef (though Logan didn’t know this yet), and he was still smarting at having been beaten up by a chick mere days before. He pounded a fist into the opposite palm, anticipating violence and clearly looking forward to it.
[Big and dumb. Probably expects his size to carry him through any fight.] "Really? And which of you brats is going to take me down?"
That was enough to set match to powder. Beef lunged for Wolverine, who happily ducked aside at the last possible fraction of a second, adding a shove as the young man went past to send him crashing to the floor. Deliberately he turned his head to watch the punk hit the tiles, pretending to be ignoring the other four students. [That’s it, kiddies, I’ve got my back turned and everything. Which of you is gonna try to hit me when I’m "not expecting it"?]
He heard the footsteps and rapidly-nearing breathing and heartbeat as one of them took the offered bait, and when he whirled it was one of the girls — the one with the interestingly lavender-grey hair. Ducking her rapid swipe at his face, he backhanded her into a wall. She twisted in midflight, hitting the wall hands-first rather than against her unprotected back or side, and bounced back into another attack. Logan was impressed by her reflexes — though not by her sloppy and thoroughly telegraphed assault. Ducking her first couple of strikes, he went for a chin shot, which connected. This time when she hit the wall, she slid down it, dazed.
The entire confrontation with her had taken less than a minute, during which time her supposed teammates seemed to have been standing around gawking or something. Logan was taking mental notes for dressing his potential students down in future lessons. [Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. A real fight is *not* like a kung-fu movie — the group does *not* politely take turns attacking the single fighter so he can take them out one by one...]
Wolverine was still waiting for one of the kids to start using freaky mutant shit on him — but whatever interesting new powers he might have run across were apparently being withheld to prevent taking out a teammate through "friendly fire," as Beef charged in again. [Dumbass. Clearly needs to learn about teamwork, also known as "How *not* to get in each other’s way."] Wolvie blocked the hit with his forearm, grinning at the look on the ox’s face as the shock of fist hitting metal reverberated up his arm. It had been a pretty hard blow, actually — it figured that *this* guy’s mutation would be for enhanced strength or something like that — but Logan was just the wrong kind of target for the brute force approach. Using the ever-so-brief pause created by Beef staring at him in mingled pain and startlement, Wolvie returned punch for punch — but *his* landed on the kid’s jaw. It took another two or three strikes on Wolverine’s part, but he managed to knock the big guy on his ass again. [Strike two.]
As the ox hit the floor, Wolvie dived to one side. Some form of electrical bolt crackled through the space he’d just occupied. With as much time as he’d spent around Storm while she was on the attack (whether on a mission or in the Danger Room), the ozone scent and staticky crackle of the air had been enough to signal him to get the hell out of the way.
It was a matter of some debate whether Logan’s metal-laced frame made him more susceptible to electrical shock, or actually served to protect him as a sort of internal lightning rod system. Not wanting to test Hank’s theory in a combat situation, Wolvie dived for the kid who still reeked of ozone, knocking him flying and then knocking him silly with a few well-placed punches.
Turnabout being fair play, Wolverine himself was then slammed into by that first guy, the one who had told him to leave. Apparently he had borrowed a trick from Sam "Cannonball" Guthrie, the human — or rather, mutant — rocket. Well, guided missiles could be taken out via their control mechanisms. A good right-cross to the face downed Rocket Boy (and Logan along with him), allowing Wolvie to make sure that the kid wouldn’t be getting back up anytime soon. Then he jumped aside again, easily ducking something the remaining girl had just thrown at him. Whatever the hell it was she was flinging, he’d just evaded barbecuing — it was the sudden rush of heat that had warned him he’d become a target again.
Before he could take out the girl tossing the fireballs, the lavender-haired chick was after him again. Dazed and angry, her technique was even worse than before — but he had to hand it to her for wading back into the fight. Not that it stopped him from decking her again — but he approved of her tenacity. [I like this one. She’s got potential.]
Then he sidestepped another charge from that goddamned ox, putting himself next to Fireball Girl almost as if by accident and dropping her before she realized her danger. That just left Beef to deal with, but he was proving bloody hard to take out for good. Now that the rest of the team was down, Wolverine had the leisure to choke him into unconsciousness with an arm around the throat from behind. With blood rather than merely oxygen being cut off, a few seconds was all it took.
Surveying the remains of the assault team, Logan shook his head disapprovingly. [Pitiful, just pitiful. *Scooter* could have trained these kids better.]
* * *
"When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an
important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities."
— "Basic Sex Facts For Today's Youngfolk" from Life In Hell
by Matt Groening
* * *
Emma frowned at the tableau presented by her downed students and their unharmed target. She was managing not to look impressed — but just barely. "What a fine showing you make against untrained children."
Logan raised an eyebrow at her. "Funny, I thought they were here to *get* training. And you must have thought they actually had a shot at taking me out, or you wouldn’t have been so casual about sending them to deal with me."
Emma raised her own brow to mirror his expression. "What makes you think I sent them to ‘deal with’ you?"
"It’s what I overhead you telling your secretary you’d do."
The eyebrow dropped, the chill poise cracked for just a moment.
"But they prove Rogue’s point. If this was the best they could do, you *really* need someone competent teaching them how to fight before one of them manages to get killed."
Emma frowned, then her face cleared. Glancing about at her downed students, she actually allowed a flicker of concern to appear on her face.
Logan approved. It was the most humanity she’d shown so far. "They should be all right. I was pulling my punches." As her eyebrows raised in disbelief or startlement, he added, "If you’ve got an infirmary or something like that, we could take them all there to be checked over."
In response, Frost headed for an intercom at a nearby doorway. "Camilla, please send people to the main downstairs hallway to carry some students to the infirmary. We’ve had a..."
As she hesitated, searching for a plausible excuse, Logan offered, "Volleyball accident."
She glared at him, before continuing, "Slight training mishap."
Satisfied that the wounded were tended to, Emma led Logan to her own office. Closing the door behind him, she offered him a seat, which he ignored. "So, Mr...?"
"Logan. Just Logan."
"All right, Just Logan, so after spending how long working at ‘Xavier’s School for the Gifted’...?" She paused, irony making the quotation marks audible.
"About a year."
"One year working at Xavier’s, you suddenly feel compelled to leave this position and seek employment elsewhere."
"That’s right."
"Any particular reason why?"
He hesitated, reminding himself of how much Marie said this woman already knew. "I was at Chuckie’s" — she looked startled at the nickname — "to be with someone, and with her gone, I didn’t care to stay."
"I see. And were you aware of the age of consent in the state of New York? It’s seventeen, I believe."
"*Really*? We thought it was eighteen!"
"And were you aware that young Miss Gordon is *sixteen*?"
"Sure — got her a present on her last birthday and everything." Mood noticeably shifting from "provokingly obtuse" to "bluntly serious," he added, "If you’re trying to point out that I had — I *have* — an underaged girlfriend, you’re right. I admit it. But it was only Marie — I’m not in the habit of jumping on random teenagers. So if you’re worrying about me having problems keeping my hands off your students, don’t be — it’s just Marie."
"I’ll keep that under advisement," Emma said drily, but her expression had cleared somewhat. And then her attitude visibly shifted, as her gaze went from stern to assessing, eyes thoughtfully wandering down his form and back up again. Changing the subject, "So, Mist— Logan, that was quite a display you put on out there. Where on *earth* did you learn to fight like that?"
He shrugged. "Here and there," not wanting to admit that he couldn’t remember.
"You’ve been a combat instructor at Xavier’s School for a year now — what were you doing before that?"
Logan wasn’t sure he appreciated her look of alert interest — or maybe it was just his standard reluctance at talking about his sketchy past — but she still hadn’t given him the job yet. So it behooved him to play nice. "Wandering. This and that. No steady job." Matching action to words, he started idly walking around the room, examining the pictures on the walls.
"I see." Logan assumed that she was questioning his lack of references (barring Chuckie), until she commented, "Sort of a vagabond rogue, then."
"That would be a polite way to put it." *Very* polite — almost Disneyized. He paused for a closer look at a photo — Frosty with a group of adolescents. He recognized slightly younger versions of some of the kids he’d just thrashed.
"Working for Xavier must have been quite a change for you."
He shrugged. "Some. Got a permanent address, someplace to leave stuff. I still got to run off sometimes — got sent to pick up new kids and all that. Still managed to get into fights," he added — then immediately wished that he hadn’t.
Marie hadn’t said whether Frosty knew about the X-Men or not... If Frosty was setting herself up as Wheels’ rival in more ways than one, Logan wasn’t gonna be the one to go spilling his guts to her. Changing jobs was one things — screwing over the X-Crew in the process was something else entirely.
Unfortunately Emma pounced on that little slip of his. "I hope you’re not referring to your training sessions with the students..."
"No, I... I go out to bars. Sometimes even fight bars." Stroke of luck that his near embarrassment at nearly giving the X-Men away was easily passed off as a reaction to being forced to admit his own rough and ready ways. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t making himself out to be a very good "role model" type to have around her little preppie mutants-in-training...
"How... fascinating," she purred. Thing was, she didn’t sound at all sarcastic. Halting in his circuit of the room — Logan was on his second orbit by now — he turned to face her. Emma took a step towards him, bring herself more than close enough for him to get a good whiff identifying the cause of her interest.
[Uh-oh.] Ordinarily, he might have been encouraged. Flirting with the potential boss lady would probably help him get hired — and Frosty was a pretty goddamn *hot*-looking ice princess.
But "ordinary circumstances" for him in no way included Marie.
He didn’t let himself appear alarmed, instead watching her intently. Taking his undivided attention as an encouraging sign, she took another step towards him. "Logan, would you care for a drink?"
[What the hell kind of school principal keeps liquor in her *office*?] "Nah, I’m fine."
"Are you sure?" she asked, moving to a cabinet and taking out a key.
[Well, at least she keeps it locked up.] "Maybe later," meaning that he might hit a bar or raid a liquor store later on that evening.
"Perhaps," she consented, giving him a sidelong glance as she put her key away. Logan belatedly realized that she had taken his response as indicating interest in having a drink with *her* later. "So tell me, Logan — what’s a grown man like yourself doing with a teenager when he could no doubt have just about any woman he wanted?" Walking towards him again, he watched her with the same attention he would give an approaching viper — something capable of rapid and painful attack, something to be wary of. Mistaking his intent gaze for a reciprocation of her interest, she pressed on. "A *grown* woman — one with mature tastes and... skills. Not a little girl just a few years past Barbie dolls and bicycles."
"Marie’s absorbed a few other people. Some of them are a long way past toys. She’s older on the inside than she looks."
"Perhaps — but she’s still a girl," Emma said dismissively. "Not even legal. Wouldn’t you rather have someone a little more —" close enough now for him to feel her breath on his cheek "— knowledgeable?"
He met the pale blue eyes for a moment before breaking eye contact and stepping away, putting some distance between them. "Like I said, she’s got other people in her head. She’s plenty ‘knowledgeable’."
He tossed a casual glance over his shoulder at Frost, catching the faintly annoyed expression as she said, "Perhaps. But perhaps you should also consider — how very, very hard it may be for her as a young girl paired with a much-older man. Like it or don’t, she’s going to have some very pretty... *expectations* of you. You seem to have made the shift from ‘wandering vagabond’ to ‘schoolteacher’ — can you claim to be ready to even *consider* a wife and children, a dog and a house in the suburbs?"
Emma Frost was *not* a person he’d have picked to go over his future plans with. He’d have sooner discussed it with Magneto, frankly. (He really *would* have. In lieu of kicking the crap out of Lensherr, sitting him down and telling the old fucker all about the bright future he had almost taken from an innocent girl — *and* a mutant, one of those he claimed to be trying to save — would have been a great way to blow off steam.)
But carting his metal-laden self off to the incarcerated Master of Magnetism would have been patently unwise — and the secrecy of his relationship with Marie had precluded discussion with the X-Crew. So it looked like he was reduced to playing True Confessions with the ice queen here.
Hey, at least it seemed to be distracting her from attempted seduction.
"I want Marie to have what she wants for her life. To be able to go around without being afraid of getting touched, yeah. College, no problem. A wedding ring and some kids, fine. And I *like* dogs."
Emma looked nonplussed at this speech — but then she decided what response to take. "So you say you’re... committed to Marie."
It was phrased as a statement, not a question, but he answered it anyway. "Yes."
"And you want to give her what she wants, and also to be with her yourself, I presume?"
"Yes."
"So getting hired on here is *important* to you — to the both of you."
"Yes." He sensed a trap ahead, though as yet the form it would take remained unclear.
"And I’m the one who decides whether or not you get to be with her for the next year and a half."
Things were falling very nastily into place now. "Yes."
"So, you *really* need to get on my good side. Impress me." A pause as if for thought, then, "Any suggestions?"
Logan had a few, but none that would earn him much goodwill from Frosty. "I get the idea you had something in mind." [Please, please let it be a mutant terrorist organization you need a hatchet man for,] he prayed, knowing full well that, Xavier’s rivals or not, a recruitment pitch for a super group was not the trap being laid for him.
Standing close again, Emma thoughtfully ran a finger along the collar of his T-shirt, fingertip teasing at the skin beneath. "Why don’t I offer you that drink again, and then perhaps you and I could go over to my private apartment and you could impress me there?"
"And if I say no?"
She frowned at him, albeit prettily. "You *do* have that option."
"And what will it do to my chances of getting a job here?"
She gave him an *almost* wicked look, too composed and polished for true roguishness. "I fear your disinterest in adhering to the wishes of your potential employer wouldn’t speak well for you."
"And if I say yes?"
"Then you have the opportunity to impress me with your... Enthusiasm for the job. Thorough attention to detail. Tireless dedication to your work. Skill at carrying out required physical tasks. That sort of thing."
"But will it get me the job?"
She pursed her lips. "I’m afraid I can’t promise that *now*. You might prove to be entirely unsuitable."
"So you’re saying I need to climb into bed with you, and if I ‘impress’ you then you *might* decide to keep me around?"
A delicate frown. "You put things very boldly. I haven’t decided yet whether I find that refreshing or merely boorish."
Logan gave no indication that he actually did know what ‘boorish’ meant. "A straight answer, now."
"Well, if you insist upon being crude about it, then I suppose you have the terms of the arrangement correctly."
"No."
"No?" sculpted brows raising in polite disbelief.
"No. No arrangement."
"Then, I’m afraid, no job." She folded her arms, expression a blend of annoyance at having her advances spurned and pleasure at displaying her power over him.
Logan merely nodded, showing no sign of emotion for her to take petty satisfaction from. He turned and left her office.
He’d need to leave the school grounds pretty soon, or risk an ugly scene as Frost would no doubt try to have him *thrown* out — but first he needed to find Marie.
* * *
Forget light — gossip has the fastest speed of travel in the known universe. Marie could therefore have been expected to rapidly hear of the mysteriously sideburned assailant who had wiped the floor with five of the "best-trained" students.
In this instance, gossip was slightly delayed by the recovery time required for the witnesses. Not by much, though, because Marc had taken so little damage and Angelica was out of the infirmary right behind him. By the time Logan stalked out of Frost’s office, the pair had tracked down a couple of mutant classmates studying in the library and hauled them out to a more conversation-friendly locale. Sharon and Haroun found them all clustered in a rec room and were able to add some intriguing additional information. Sharon, aka Catseye, had the enhanced senses that seemed to come with so many animalistic mutations, and she had overheard Ms. Frost’s administrative assistant, Camilla, complaining about the "brute who thought he could bluff his way past me by claiming to be from ‘Xavier’s School for the Gifted’!"
This raised more questions, such as: Was he really from Xavier’s? And if not, how had he known the name of the Massachusetts Academy’s competitor? And whether he was from Xavier’s or not, why had he come *here*?
The idea immediately presented itself, to seek out the recent Xavier student and see how many of their questions she might be able to at least shed light on, if not answer completely.
As it happened, they weren’t the only ones looking for Marie. Catseye’s nose was as sensitive as her ears — but Logan’s was more so, and not only did he have more years’ experience at tracking prey, but he left the administrative building and started looking for Marie first.
So when the mixed group of mutants headed for the cafeteria to catch Rogue at dinner, they arrived in the quad just in time to see...
* * *
Marie had just dropped her chemistry books off in her room and was heading for dinner. She knew Logan would be arriving today, and was abstractedly wondering when he’d get there and whether she’d get to see him before he faced the Ice Queen in her stronghold.
With thoughts like these in her mind, she was therefore unsurprised to heard a sudden voice behind her.
"Hey. These preppies been treatin’ you all right?"
"*LOGAN*!!" she yelped in glee, diving into his arms. Vaguely aware that they were in a populated part of the campus, she only intended a platonic-appearing (albeit enthusiastic) hug.
So when he put a hand under her jaw and lifted it for a kiss, she took a trickle of thought from the contact to find out why he was so unconcerned with the appearance of propriety.
It was all there at the forefront of his mind waiting for her — the ridiculously uneven fight, the interview, Frosty’s indecent proposal, and his refusal. She sighed a little against his cheek. Anger at the woman’s perfidy would come later — first came the disappointment that Logan wouldn’t be transferring to the Academy with her.
There were a few other things at the surface of Logan’s thoughts — such as the mischievous desire to put on a scandalous show and warn the punks away from his girl. Not having seen her lover for a week — and having to say goodbye to him again immediately — Marie was more than happy to comply, running her hands up under his jacket and leaning further into the kiss. When Logan slid his hands down to her rear, cupping possessively, she went him one better. Pulling out of the kiss and bracing her hands on his shoulders, she jumped upward, wrapping her legs around his waist and letting him help support her weight.
Logan was delighted, though it took an expert Logan-reader to identify and interpret the signs — half-smirk on one corner of the mouth and wicked glint in the eyes. To the unobservant (or to the audience members too far away to catch the light in his eyes) he merely appeared sardonically amused. "I take it you missed me?" loudly enough for the audience of shocked mutants and a few passing "regulars" alike.
"Damn straight. Do you have to leave right *now*?"
"Yeah, if Frosty calls the cops to make me leave it could get messy. I’m already wanted in enough states without adding Massachusetts to the list." (That last being for the benefit of the listeners — Marie already *knew* how little Logan cared for involvement with the police.)
"One more kiss, then?" she cooed.
‘Not a problem." He made it a good one, too — hot and intense, hands roaming her buttocks in an extremely visible display of mingled lust and possessiveness. Marie for her part kissed back with fervor, clinging to his shoulder with one arm while mussing his hair with her free hand. (It might be her last chance to ruffle those "points" for a while, after all.)
They pulled away with a shared sigh. Marie reluctantly let her legs drop to the ground. They clung to each other for a long moment, meeting each other’s eyes.
"You take care of yourself, kid, till I catch up with you."
"Okay. I’ll call you the first chance I get."
"I’ll keep the phone on."
There didn’t seem to be a lot left to say, really. Marie silently hooked her thumb under the chain around her neck, showing him that she wore his tag beneath her clothes.
He half smiled. "You want to let everyone see that, go right ahead."
[Let everyone know whose name you’ve got around your neck,] Inner Wolvie translated.
Then Logan looked past her to the group of fascinated mutants clustered on the path within earshot. "Looks like Frost didn’t think I’d be a good teacher for you. Not smart. My advice to you is to start looking into martial arts training pretty damn fast — because right now you couldn’t handle a troop of determined Girl Scouts."
With that he turned and was gone, disappearing into the early dusk of late autumn.
Mysterious visitor having absented himself, the pack of mutants behind her pressed forward, wanting to know who the hell he was, why he had been there, what was that about teaching and oh, yeah — was that her *boyfriend*?
That last was from Angelica, and Rogue laughed, realizing that the moratorium on talking about Logan (and, by extension, Xavier’s) had been lifted. She led the mob into the cafeteria, preparing for a good old-fashioned gossip session.
Might as well enjoy the camaraderie while she had it — because of another of the thoughts she had picked up from Logan. Plan A was a bust — on to Plan B.
[Time to call your parents.]
* * *
[Poor Marc. Right up until he saw me glue myself to the face of the guy who’d just got done kicking his ass, I think he thought he had a chance.]
It was enough to make Marie really feel for the guy. *No one* was particularly sorry that the bullying Jerod had taken such a pounding he was *still* in the infirmary, and as far as she was concerned Haroun was a condescending asshole whose ego could desperately benefit from receiving a few good beatings — but Sharon, Angelica and Marc were decent types. Marie was glad that the trio had escaped without lingering damages — though that was due more to deliberate care on Logan’s part than to luck alone.
The X-Men were still a topic to be avoided, but Logan and the non-superhero dealings of Xavier’s School were an absorbing enough topic. Angelica in particular was charmed by the idea of an entire campus in which students were free to use their powers, rather than a strictly-defined area of the administration building.
A certain amount of comparison between powers of the two student bodies also took place, leading Marc to wish aloud for a few bolt-throwing lessons from Ms. Munroe and Rogue to be put in the position of trying to judge whether Sam could outblast Haroun. (She had no idea.)
When Marie finally parted company from the others, they were debating the best methods of suggesting to Emma that Xavier’s School be sounded out for — cooperative learning? Exchange programs? Informal interscholastic competitions? She was still giggling at the mental image of the Rocket Boy Races and Flamethrowing Finals as she made her way to the phones.
Perfect timing, too — caught her parents after dinner, so she wasn’t interrupting.
"Hi, Mom!"
"Marie! Joseph, it’s Marie! How you doing, honey?"
Marie gave her father a few minutes to pick up the extension before answering.
"Hi, baby!"
"Hi, Dad! Mom, Dad — I have something to tell you..."
"What’s that, sugar?"
"I’m cured. I can — I can touch people and not have to worry about it. I can get rid of the gloves and scarves. I can come home and pass for normal."
"That’s wonderful, sweetheart!"
"Sounds like we were right to send you to that other school!"
Marie gritted her teeth. "Guess so," not wanting to admit that she’d been lying to her parents about her control for months now.
"So Ms. Frost is able to teach you, then."
Alarm bells went off at her father’s tone. "Mm, not really. I’m — I’m pretty well taught already." The absolute truth.
"After less than a week?"
Marie winced. "We — we had a breakthrough," she said feebly.
"Well, honey, that’s just wonderful."
Marie frowned disbelieving. Afer all this time waiting for her to gain control so they could... "So you’ll come get me, then?" She shouldn’t have had to suggest it at all, they should have started making plans for a pickup date as soon as they were told she could pass...
"In the middle of the school year? Honey, it’s your senior year — wouldn’t you rather go ahead and finish before leaving?"
"I’d — I’d rather have gone ahead and finished at Xavier’s — my friends are there," acerbically.
"Baby, Professor Xavier wasn’t able to do anything in more than a year, and Ms. Frost fixed you right up in a few *days*. You’re better off sticking with her for a while, seeing what she can teach you."
Ah, the penalties of lying. "Dad — Ms. Frost didn’t teach me *anything*. I learned to control my gift at Xavier’s months ago, practicing with a... friend of mine. I just said I didn’t have control ‘cause I wasn’t ready to come home."
"Now that’s a little bit convenient, don’t you think?"
Speechless, Marie listened to her father as he continued.
"Professor Xavier let you slack off and have fun with your friends and didn’t make you worry about being normal, and then Ms. Frost comes along and makes you *work* for a change, and *now* you want to come home?"
Confusion and disbelief chased themselves around in her head, pursued by rising anger, as she wondered what the hell was going on.
"Sugar, what you’ve been given is a gift from God. Ms. Frost is going to show you how to use it the best you can."
The roiling emotions were cleared, chased out by an icy wash of terror that rapidly mutated to frigid fury. Her mother would *never* have referred to her power as a gift of any kind, let alone a divine one — nor would her father have agreed with the description.
If they were in their right minds, that was.
That *bitch*. That chilly, conniving, scheming, backstabbing, manipulative, mindcontrolling BITCH.
Emma Frost had literally changed her parents’ minds.
Marie went through the motions of saying the appropriate goodbyes and ending the call, but she barely knew what she said or what her parents answered. She was too preoccupied with thoughts of how best to deal with the Ice Bitch. Hanging up the phone, she didn’t step aside but instead leaned against it, rapt in thought.
The knowledge that one was being held in the clutches of an amoral telepath for unknown but presumably nefarious purposes was disturbing. Especially when paired with the realization that one’s parents were enthralled into putting said telepath in the unassailable position of a school administrator with the full authority to "take disciplinary action" and "prevent truancy." Which meant that if she tried calling or even running away to the cops or other authorities, she’d probably find herself turned in to Frosty.
Had she been alone in this, she might have been frightened.
"Are you gonna just stand there all *night*? Some of us need to use the *phone*," griped an unpleasant voice behind her.
Marie turned to glare at the girl. "One more call, then I’m done." Placing her back firmly to the budding temper tantrum, she dialed.
Logan answered on the fifth ring. "What?" Judging by the guarded tone, he might have been expecting an unwelcome call.
Had she been in a better mood, she might have teased him about it, asked if he’d been getting guilt-trip calls from the X-Crew or something. But right now she wasn’t feeling at all playful. "I told my parents."
"And?"
"They didn’t believe me — or didn’t believe that Frost wasn’t the one responsible for what I’ve learned. They want me to stay, they *said*." She hoped he’d reach the same conclusion she had. Helping him out, "Mom said I had a gift from God and Ms. Frost would teach me how to use it best."
Logan had overheard enough conversations with her parents to know how out of character *that* statement was. She hoped.
She was right. "*Shit*. She managed to reach your parents all the way down in Mississippi?"
"Think so."
"Are you being listened to? Right now?"
"Yes." The girl behind her was muttering impatiently.
"All right. Plan C?"
"The place and time you were thinking — but I don’t want to wait."
"Tonight, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Okay. I’ll be there."
"See you then." She hung up, ignoring the girl’s exaggerated cry of relief.
Because that had been the *last* of the other thoughts she had gotten from Logan during their kiss.
[Two AM, under *this* tree,] with a mental image of a large oak with overhanging limbs conveniently close to the wall surrounding the school grounds, [tomorrow night.]
And as she had told him, she didn’t want to wait till then.
* * *