Jessie let out a low whistle as she examined the latest invention sitting on Forge's work bench. "Ice. So does it work?"
"To a limited extent, yes." The Native American mutant sent his younger friend an amused look. "I used it to study for our history test yesterday."
"You mean the Mutant Registration Act hearings? You actually went there?" Jessie squeaked.
Forge chuckled and gave her shoulder a careful squeeze with his new metal hand. If Jessie hadn't disobeyed Cyclops and followed them to the technology fair... Well, he would have needed more than a new hand after the Sentinel drone had attacked. "Yeah. Doctor Summers was a knock-out back then."
"Dad and Uncle Scott would say she still is," Jessie growled.
"Far be it from me to disagree with your father," Forge teased.
Jessie rolled her eyes and slapped his shoulder. Her eyes narrowed at the small device. "Is it supposed to be glowing like that?"
"What?" Forge stared down at his temporal device in shock. "Get out! Now!"
Jessie turned and pushed him ahead of her toward the lab's blastdoor. Forge turned as he stumbled out, grabbing for Jessie's hand... But she wasn't there anymore.
"Oh, shit," the teenager moaned. "Wolverine is going to kill me."
Jessie Logan pushed herself to her feet and leaned against the cold brick wall of the alley she found herself in. She looked around, slightly confused. Then, mumbling something about Murphy's Law, she started walking. After all, it was a long way from New York City to Westchester County when you had to walk. At least she was wearing her leather jacket and jeans over her battle suit. Her eyes narrowed in annoyance as a young man snatched an older woman's purse then ran in her direction.
Jessie stepped in front of him with a growl and triggered one set of claws. He skid to a stop, falling on his ass to avoid running face first into the eight inches of cold steel.
"That ain't yours, moron," Jessie snarled as she hit the trigger again, sliding her claws back into her gauntlets. She hooked the shoulder strap with the toe of her boot and kicked the purse into the air. "Get lost, bub, and I won't gut you."
She tossed the purse to the woman as she continued walking, ignoring the few people who muttered, calling her a mutie and a freak.
"Hey!" shouted the woman. Jessie turned back and raised her eyebrows. "Thanks."
Jessie shrugged. "No problem."
Jessie glared down at the rip in her jeans where they'd gotten caught on barbed wire some idiot had strung up through a section of the woods that separated Westchester from the rest of the world. She slammed the front door behind her and stalked toward the kitchen for as much water as she could drink without getting sick.
"Who are you?" asked an almost familiar voice as Jessie let the refrigerator door bang shut.
The bottle of water in her hand hit the floor at she stared at the young woman. A young woman she knew as the nearly forty-year-old Kate Pryde. "Oh, shit."
Professor Xavier watched the human girl as she stalked the room they had left her in until they could find out who she was. Anger radiated off of her like heat from a fire, and even though she apparently had nothing to be angry about. "Hello."
She turned, taking a stance that was somehow familiar. Her body was relaxed but still ready to make sudden movement. Something about her screamed that she wasn't going to underestimate him because he was in a wheelchair. "Professor."
He stared at her for a moment, trying to skim her surface thoughts but found himself blocked by a firewall of carefully suppressed rage.
"Stop that," she snapped suddenly. "I don't like people in my head without permission."
Professor Xavier blinked. "You're very angry, and it isn't about my attempt to skim your thoughts."
"You wanta read my mind, let me give you the Cliff's Notes," she growled. "I know all about your X-Men and the students here. I'd die before I ever told anyone about this place, and I'd die before I hurt anyone here."
"Then the anger?"
She smiled, or rather the corners of her mouth lifted slightly. "I'm human."
The Professor shook his head. "I don't understand."
"No, you wouldn't, would you?" the girl muttered. Her voice rose slightly, just enough so that he could hear her. "My parents. They're mutants, so is my little brother. That I'm human never disappointed them, it disappointed me. Remember that feeling you got in your gut when you figured out that you'd never be normal? That sick feeling when you realized that your family couldn't understand what was happening to you? That's what I feel. Everyone I knew growing up was a mutant, and I'm not. Do you understand that it feels like my body betrayed me on the most basic level? Do you understand that?"
"Yes," he said slowly. "That I most certainly can understand."
Jean tilted her head slightly as she watched the human girl play basketball with a few of the students. "You want to let her stay here?"
"From what she has told me, I seriously doubt she would be comfortable in normal society," Professor Xavier said from his desk.
Logan snorted. "Why didn't you just read her mind?"
"Wild One maybe a normal human genetically, Logan," Xavier explained, "but she has been trained by a very powerful telepath in how to shield her mind. It is also difficult to read through extremely powerful emotions. There is a great deal of rage in the child."
"Professor? I think there's a small problem..." Jean's voice trailed off as she motioned toward the basketball court. Wild One was fighting with one of the boys, and he was using his mutant ability against her. Several of the students were staring in shock and a few where cheering the fight on. The truly disturbing thing was that Wild One seemed to be winning.
Wild One threw the basketball to Bobby Drake as she spun around James Proudstar and ducked between two other college-level students. She was having fun -- at least, until a shout from the opposing team caught her attention. She froze, then slowly walked toward the boy who had shouted.
"What did you call me?" she asked slowly.
The blond boy sneered at her. "I called you a flatscan, flatscan."
"That's what I thought you said," Wild One said flatly. Her fist was abruptly introduced to his stomach. She stepped back to let him pick himself up from the blacktop and catch his breath. "Any time you're ready, blondie. Anything goes."
"Johnny, don't! You'll hurt her," Bobby shouted as he tried to push toward them.
"Stay out of this, Bobby," Wild One shouted back. "If the hotshot here thinks he can take me on let him try."
"Hotshot is about right," Johny snapped as he flicked his lighter over the palm of his hand.
Wild One grinned and threw her jacket toward Jubilee. "Bring it on, hotstuff."
The crowd split as the fireball whizzed through the air, and through where Wild One had been. The second Johnny Allerdyce had pulled back his arm to throw she had ducked and lunged forward, catching his stomach with her shoulder and taking them both to the ground.
Bobby quickly froze the small fire that started then turned back to try and stop the fight again. Wild One was standing across from Johnny again, but this time there was a cold smirk on her lips. She held up his zippo lighter between two gloved fingers before flinging it away.
Johny shouted and lunged at her. Wild One met him halfway and the punches flew in rapid succession.
"Enough!" Scott Summers shouted as he shoved his way through the crowd of students.
The girl stepped back and wiped her bleeding mouth with the back of her hand. The rage was clearly visible in her nearly golden-brown eyes even though the rest of her face was a frozen mask. A few locks of chestnut hair had slipped free of her braid and hung loosely around her face.
Scott turned from his examination of what looked like a new student to see how much damage Johnny had suffered. The boy's cheek was split open and it looked as if his nose was broken. One arm was wrapped tightly around his ribs and he was hunched over slightly.
The field leader of the X-Men shook his head. "What started this?"
Johnny pressed his lips together stubbornly. The girl glared at the blond boy. After a moment she turned to Scott. "He called me a flatscan."
Shock sent the stone-faced man's eyebrows shooting over the top edge of his visor. "Why would he call you that?"
"Because it's a derogatory way to call someone a human," she said flatly. "Which I am."
Scott scowled. "You're human?"
Wild One responded with an even darker look. "You don't have to say it like it's a dirty word, Red-Eye."
The sharp acidic response shocked the gathered students. Scott's eyebrows pulled together under his visor. "I think you and Johnny should both come with me."
Johnny and Wild One glared at each other from opposite sides of the medical facility as Jean cleaned Johnny up.
"You're going to have to have your ribs taped up," Jean told the boy calmly.
He only scowled harder at the teenage girl across the room.
Wild One smirked. All she had was a slightly split lip, but Jean had ordered her to stay where she was until Johnny was dealt with. She tilted her head from one side to the other, making her neck pop in a familiar gesture.
Jean turned to regard Wild One as Johnny limped off to face Professor X. The girl looked pleased with herself in a dark way. There was an almost feral light in her hazel eyes that seemed to flash golden one moment and brown the next.
"You're barely even scratched," Jean finally said. "Correction, you're not even singed. Would you care to explain that?"
"Flame-boy has shitty aim?" Wild One offered. She half smiled at Jean's decidedly unamused look. "I ducked. He doesn't telegraph his moves, he e-mails them a week in advance. You might want to have some one teach him how to throw a ball before he tries to throw fireballs again."
"And what you're wearing?"
"I take it 'style' won't work?" Wild One continued at Jean's small snort. "A friend of mine can make anything. He made this for me to protect me from my own 'self-destructive tendancies.'"
"Self-destructive tendancies?" Jean almost smiled. She could see this girl charging headlong into trouble.
Wild One grunted. "That's what my family decided to call them after I got my hip broken in a fight. It's ultralight adamantium-mesh-reinforced kevlar with light-weight ceramic plate armor under it. The gauntlets have retractable eight inch steel claws." Her eyes sparked slightly. "If I had really wanted to hurt St. John, you'd have been sewing him up, not taping his ribs."
Jean could only stare after the girl as she walked out of the room with wolf-like grace.
Three months. Wild One had stalked the halls of Xavier's School for Gifted Youth for three months. She had made friends and was doing well in her classes. But she wasn't happy.
She sat through Rogue's lecture on nineteenth-century poets and resisted the urge to tap her pencil in annoyance. She settled on grinding her teeth. Finally the class ended and Wild One sat there with her gold-brown eyes locked with Rogue's own doe-brown gaze.
"Something you wanted, Wild One?" Rogue drawled.
"Why are you hiding from Logan?" Wild One asked flatly.
Rogue's eyebrows shot up. "I'm not hiding from Logan."
Wild One grunted. "Bull. You're hiding and so is he. You two have to deal with this stuff between you."
"You know I can't touch anyone."
"There are ways around that," Wild One drawled. "If you don't mind getting...creative."
Rogue sat there for a long time thinking about what the girl they only knew as Wild One had told her.
Logan looked up when someone called his name. He found himself staring into Wild One's flashing eyes.
"Go find Rogue," she ordered. "This is getting absurd."
"What?"
Wild One rolled her eyes. "Do you love her?"
"Of course I do, she my..."
"If you say best friend, I'll smack you," Wild One hissed. "Best friends don't look at each other the way the two of you do. Do you love her?"
"Yes," Logan admitted under his breath as he averted his eyes from her feral gaze.
A gloved hand reached out and forced him to look her in the eyes. "Then go tell her, before you lose her."
Wild One watched from a safe distance with the air of smug satisfaction around her as Logan held Rogue gently against his chest.
"You seem pleased with yourself," Scott said behind her.
"Oh, I am," Wild One said cheerfully.
Scott shook his head. "They're only going to get hurt."
"My Momma always told me there was more to love and loving than touching," Wild One said softly as she turned glittering eyes on the leader of the X-Men. "There's soft looks and words that come from the heart and taking the risk that you'll get burned. That's love. That's what you've got with Jean. Besides, where there's a will, there's a way."
"I don't get you, Wild One," he said after along moment. "You never hesitate to take on a mutant, not even one that could kill you without half trying. You went in the Danger Room without your armor because Johnny said you wouldn't be able to keep up without it. You could have gotten killed."
"And if I wasn't who I am, who growing up around mutants made me, then I would be dead, Summers." She took a step closer and glared up into his visor. "I may be human, but I'm far from being normal. This body has been honed to its finest in reaction time, speed, agility, and strength. I'm the best humanity has to offer physically. And my mind has kept up with it. I see details that you miss, or you would have seen the looks between Logan and Rogue, you'd know Bobby has a crush on Storm, that as much as Kitty and Colossus make cow eyes at each other they'll never work out. I don't see this stuff because of any special powers, I see it because I look."
Scott nodded slowly. "You're right. But.."
"So help me God if you say that this is too risky for a human, Jean will be sewing you up for weeks," Wild One growled before she shoved past him.
"It can't be a coincidence, Professor," Scott insisted as he paced the office. "They're too much alike."
"I'll grant you there is a resemblance, but Logan didn't recognise her when she arrived."
Scott shook his head sharply. "I know that, but why would he? He can't remember anything before fifteen years ago. She's seventeen. But there's something else about her. It just doesn't fit."
"And what would that be?" the Professor asked.
"The gloves, the way she avoids touching people. She doesn't have to do that," Scott said as he continued to pace. "It's like it's something she picked up as a child. Then there's the way she moves, and her build, her hair color. She almost looks like Rogue."
"And she keeps trying to bring them together," Xavier smiled slightly. "It seems that she has finally succeeded."
"You approve of it?"
Xavier shrugged. "They aren't children, Scott."
"There is something not right about that girl," Scott muttered.
Professor Xavier ignored it as they went down to dinner.
Wild One stepped between Toad and the visorless Cyclops on the head of the Statue of Liberty. Her forearm came up to catch his tongue as it shot out. She grinned ferally as the claws on her free arm shot out. All Cyclops could hear was the muted sound of Toad screaming after the sharp metal on metal grinding of Wild One triggering her claws.
"Very impressive, young woman," Magneto said as he hovered several yards above.
"It would be," Wild One drawled, "if Frog-boy over there wasn't such a pussy."
Magneto raised his eyebrows under his close-fitting helmet. "Perhaps. I might have a place for you in my Brotherhood."
There was a hard bitter edge to her laughter. "Me? Sorry, Buckethead. But you're trying to distroy everything I've ever cared about, including me, so I won't be taking you up on your offer."
"Pity -- a mutant like you would do well with us."
"A mutant like me," Wild One said slowly. "You really don't have a clue what I am, do you, Magneto? Why don't I clue you in, hmmm? I'm human, you asshole!"
Stunned silence fell over the battle at the nearly roared words. Magneto stared down into her blazing gold-brown eyes. The fire, the rage, in her eyes was very familiar. He had seen it in this place several years ago in the same eyes glaring out of a different face.
"You have your father's eyes," he said finally before flinging her back with a flex of his mutant power.
Wild One snarled and dug her claws into the old copper. "Not that easy, old man. I may be human, but I'm a lot harder to kill than you seem to think. What's the matter? Can't take me out without using your fancy powers? Let's take this primitive, if you've got the balls."
"I could kill you with little effort, child," Magneto lifted her into the air by the metal in her battle suit. "Why do you defy me?"
"Habit?" she offered with a shrug. "It might have something to do with the fact that you want to do the same thing to normal humans as what was done to you."
Magneto stared at her. Slowly he lowered her to the rest of the X-Men. "You are perhaps the exception that proves the rule, child."
"Or maybe you're just wrong," Wild One spat as Wolverine wrapped his arms around her. "My entire life I have been surrounded by mutants, not one of them has ever treated me as less than they are. You'd walk over me and everyone like me, everyone who disagrees with you, like we didn't matter."
The master of magnetism had no answer for that. Instead he turned his gaze to the mutant holding her. "Your daughter is wasted as a mere human."
Wolverine stared down at Wild One. She only shrugged slightly before bloodloss finally made her faint.
Rogue carefully rested her chin on Logan's head and wrapped her arms around his shoulders as they watched Wild One sleep in the infirmary. "Have you remembered who her momma is yet?"
"No," Logan whispered. "I look at her and all I can think is how much she looks like you."
"Me?" Rogue pulled back startled. Her eyes locked on the younger woman's face and recalled her reflection when she was seventeen. There was no roundness of babyfat to Wild One's face, but the cheekbones were high and smooth, her eyes wide spaced under even brows. The line of her jaw and neck... "She does. But how?"
"Momma?" Wild One whispered as her eyes fluttered.
"Hush, darling," Rogue whispered in return. Her soft silk gloves smoothed back a strand of Wild One's chestnut hair. Hair the color of her own.
Wild One smiled softly and sighed as she drifted back into her dreams.
"Our girl?" Rogue whispered to Logan.
"Our girl," he whispered in return.
Fini
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