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 Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 8:20 pm
"Two weeks, on a beach with a bunch of people I don't really know. What could be more fun?" Teagan muttered to herself as she stood, watching the other students goof around before they left. She could see Penny with another girl, and that one guy that she had fought when she was still Venom.
"Perhaps, a vacation in what I need after all that has happened, it'll help me get my mind off of all of this." She thought to herself, grabbing her bag as she heard the call for the students to get their luggage onto the Jet.
"Guess we're leaving soon." She thought, wandering towards the Jet.
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Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 8:44 pm
Daniells slung her book bag full of clothes, over her shoulder, grabbed her suitcase, and walked down too the jet. She sat down in one of the window seats of the jet and relaxed.
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Posted: Fri Jul 01, 2005 9:54 pm
Jacen somewhat stormed into the Institute, following the instructions that Logan gave him to get their Jet. He didn't know why, but he felt hurt and betrayed by the Brotherhood. Obviously betrayed enough to turn his own back on them, but at the same time, he was quite angry with the whole situation. It was a good thing now that his aura was under more control than usual after Ahab's tampering. There'd have been a veritable shitstorm of negativity in the house of Xavier.
He ran across a few students who managed a quick, "Better hurry," or "They're going to leave without you." Jacen ignored them and stalked his way towards their hangar. Some of the weirder things that happened were when he came up to a rather secure door that granted him passage. Odd, because he wasn't associated with these people officially. Was Xavier getting lazy in his old age? "Probably not," Jacen muttered to himself as he stopped dragging his duffle bag on the floor and threw it over his right shoulder. He did his best to relax, to calm down, but he couldn't. God, he couldn't. He even tried counting to five, but that did nothing at all. Again, he passed through a set of secure doors that led directly to the hangar, and he found that even seeing his new friends standing there did nothing to calm him.
They must have not noticed him walking up to the jet. Of course they didn't, they were both looking upwards to the inside of the vehicle chatting away. When he got to the two ladies, Jacen spoke up, albiet quietly.
"Excuse me," he said as he walked past the two ladies.
"OHMYGOD! You scared the crap out of me!!!," Penance's friend, Regina said. Jacen figured they had to be rather close friends. They were almost always seen together, gossiping, or doing whatever it was they did. Jacen paid no mind to what she said. He kept walking up the ramp into the Jet.
"Jacen....?," Penance asked out of curiousity, "Is there something....."
"It's nothing," Jacen said as he threw his duffle bag towards the back of the jet. He knew where he was going to sit. As far away from any of the other students as possible. He knew his presence wasn't exactly a welcome one....well....not by all of the people on the trip. His bag landed on the floor with a loud "CLANK!" A few of the students looked back startled as hell.
With arms folded, Jacen plopped down hard on the seat behind him. In a rather loud, annoyed voice, he spoke only this; "When do we leave? I want to get the hell out of here."
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 10:12 am
She watched Jacen walk up into the back of the Jet with a look of concern on her face. Her assumption was that he either had a bad encounter with somebody at the Institute or judging by the fact that he had his belongings, he had an ill met welcoming at the Brotherhood house. After taking a foot forward to go follow him she stopped. She didn't feel like it was her place and didn't want to force an issue he didn't appear to want to talk about.
"Freya, my dear, where are you?" Penny looked at the entrance and wondered where the girl had gotten lost at in the Institute, "I think everybody is restless and ready to leave."
"Hey ladies, what are you waiting for," A blonde girl yelled from up in the seating area.
"How the hell she'd get in there?" Penny shrugged and followed Regina in. The cargo was good to go. Only a few hours and they'd be out of Bayville and on the beach.
Taking the last remaining window seat, she pulled out her headphones to be able to ignore some of the other kids on the trip. Much of their antics she had no patience for. With her head back agains the the window she pulled out a book and started to read. When it started to frost over, she threw it across the aisle and hit Bobby Drake in the head with it.
"6.99 at Barnes and Nobel. I expect a new one before the end of the trip," She grumbled and leaned over the seat to Regina who was having a conversation with Porter and whispered, "Hey, we sharing a room or..." She motioned betwen her and Porter.
"I think you and I are..." Regina blushed and looked like she was about to die if Porter overheard the conversation.
"How many bedrooms does this place have?"
Regina looked up at the ceiling as if the answer was written there, "I think the lady said there were eight bedrooms, dining room, kitchen, living room, balcony, patio, two bathrooms... hot tub... it's fully decked out..."
"Nice," Penny smiled and sat back again and threw her feet over the side of her seat. She looked back at Jacen who was looking none too thrilled. Do I go talk to him do I go leave him be? I wish I was a mind reader... Putting her headphones around her neck she got up from her seat.
She paced by Bobby, Kurt, Kitty and Rogue who were seeing who could out do the other in power related practical jokes. Rogue whined about how it was unfair she couldn't really use hers and Penny touched Rogue's neck, "Have fun." Bobby protested and Penny just shrugged walking away, "Shouldn't have ruined my book."
Sitting in front of Jacen she turned around in the seat, "This may be a dumb and inappropriately timed question, but are you going to be okay?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 10:57 am
"So are you going to tell me about this," Regina said motioning to her eyes as Porter sat down beside her in one of the front rows. He strapped on the safety belt like their pilot, Storm, informed.
He looked at her, really looked at her. It had seemed so unfair to him that he wasn't able to really see the person he wanted to... and yet he could see her best friend. I'm going to be thanking Xavier for a long time...
"This is me untamped with," Porter smiled and rubbed the stubble on his face, "Xavier and I had been working on the damage for months now..."
"Damage?" Regina gave a confused look and he realized that she really didn't know anything about him. Well, didn't know anything directly from him. No doubt the students had gotten his file... they always managed to get the files.
Porter slouched back in his seat and told her somewhat about his past: being sold to the government, being part of a program, being manipulated into being a super spy type... and leaving and being afraid of hurting more people. He looked out the window across from her to see the clouds, "I was turned into somebody hurtful and that's just not me. I spent years alone... Being at the Institute is a shock to the system I can assure you. From being only a name on the Internet to being a physical presence around my students."
"A presence everybody seems to enjoy," She looked at Penny who had hurled a book at Bobby's head for some reason.
Porter laughed, "Well, I'm not one for the establishment and my philosophies are a bit different than some people... guess that makes me the rebel teacher. Everybody always wants to be in his class."
"What is your ability now?" Regina turned back to him.
He looked at her for a second, "Well, I can control the emotions I push onto people now. There was some key turned in my head that just wouldn't let me turn it off. Kind of a backwards sort of empathy..."
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 6:36 pm
"I'll be fine," Jacen answered with a rather annoyed tone in his voice. Despite the fact that I'll have people trying to hunt me down now.....
"Um...Ok. Sorry," Penance said as she turned around rather quickly in her seat. When she did that, Jacen kicked himself in the shin. After all she's done for him, this is the way he acts when she asks a simple question. Bad mood or not, he shouldn't have snapped at her like that.
Leaving his bag in the back, Jacen cautiously jumped over the row of seats in front of him, landing in the seat next to Penance. She didn't jump, almost as if she expected him to come up there.
"I'm sorry, Evie," Jacen said as he felt the jet starting to lurch forward for take-off. Jacen wasn't too particular on flying, even after all these years. "Honestly, I'm just.....wow. In a moment of annoyed reflection." Penance almost had the words from her mouth when Jacen immediately said, "I'm out of the Brotherhood. By choice."
"That's.....great," she said. He didn't know what she'd expect to here from him next, but he hoped....prayed to God that she wasn't thinking of him joining the Institute. His views were too much in the opposite direction of Xavier's to even think of staying with them.
"It's crazy," he continued. "I spent the better part of five years training directly under Magneto and his goons. HIS goons. None of those Acolyte wanna-bes. I was..I AM better than any of those in hand to hand combat and survival." Jacen knew it was true. It had to be true if Magneto trusted him to go on solo operations at the age of 15. "And after all of my work and loyalty after all these years.....when I needed them the most....they turned their backs on me. Do you know what they were doing when I showed up to pack?"
"What's that," Penance asked, placating Jacen's question.
"Planning a shopping trip."
Penance sat there in semi-bewilderment. Jacen just shook his head again. "They're all a bunch of clowns," he said, "....Just a bunch of clowns......"
"What will you do? Where will you go?"
"Honestly?," Jacen asked as he thought for a second, "I don't know. Right now...I don't know."
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 7:20 pm
"Well," She gave a sympathic smile and put her feet up on the chair in front of her, "At least you know where you'll be for two weeks... and I'm sure if you need a free room, Chuck will let you stay... until you figure out what you want to do... And damn, there is a lot about you I had no idea about..."
"What, Xavier's files aren't complete on me?" He said sarcastically which made her laugh and the reality of it.
"No, actually, they're not," She looked slightly guilty for constantly reading people's files but if they weren't so damn accessible for her then it wouldn't be such a temptation to read them, "I'd be a liar if I said I never read it... I like to know the people around me.... or at the time, against me."
"What did you learn?"
"Truthfully, nothing that I didn't know already. Brotherhood house, powers, and the likes. The rest was blank... you should see my file, it has at least twenty pages and appendices... I've been at the Institute too damn long."
"You staying? Now that you've graduated and everything?" He asked as she looked around to see if anybody was paying attention to what she was saying. She didn't mind being an open book but some things she liked leaving a secret.
Penny shrugged, "Some days I feel I'm needed and have a job to do there and some days I want to bust free and go see the world. The danger room can only simulate the rest of the world... it's not the same. I know it's all fake in the end."
Curiosity struck her at that moment since she had thought about it quite a few times over the past months, "If you were bound to life by your mutant abilities, if you could just be an average joe with no obligations, what would you do?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 7:49 pm
"I'd keep my abilities. Plain and simple....," Jacen said. There was a momentary silence between the two before Penance spoke up and asked him why. "Well....., when I was five...my parents...I mean, my adopted parents, we used to travel alot. ALOT, alot. We were in Russia at the time, and I was privileged enough to see Magento destroying a whole slew of tanks and choppers without even flinching."
Jacen stopped speaking for a moment as he smiled at the fond childhood memory. "Ever since then, I wanted to have powers like that. To be like that. To do whatever I wanted to, you know?"
"But there's more to it than doing what you want to do," Penance chimed in.
"I learned that in time, Evie. Trust me." Jacen looked away for a moment, while thinking. He thought about the onset of his abilities. The destruction...the deaths it caused. "My family....when we moved back to the States, we wound up in Boston. When I was 11...I came home, and my parents just started to go apeshit, when Dad started to beat up my Mom......." He took a deep breath. "There was no trace of a body in plain sight or under any rubble," he said calmly.
Again, he took a deep breath. "....Honestly, with all that...I wouldn't trade my gift for anything. I am this way for a reason."
There was a momentary silence before Jacen looked at Penance for a second, then looked away. There were a few questions he had wanted to ask her, and maybe now was the chance. Or maybe not.
"Anyways," Jacen said speaking up. "I did read your file, but not extensively.....I didn't go prying into your personal affairs....it was none of my business.....if that's of any consolation."
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 8:07 pm
Gen sat in the seat next to Teagan. Figuring since they were roommates, it might be a good idea to begin to socialize. "So... where are you from?" she began, hoping they could get into a conversation. "You have a bit of an accent, what kind? Call me sheltered..." she continued with a sheepish grin.
"I'm glad." Regina said, watching Porter. "That you could finally turn the key back to 'control'. I'm sure you're relieved too. Must suck not being able to really look at your students ever."
She hoped she hadn't overstepped her bounds on that one, and that he wouldn't take it in the way Freya and Penny seemed to enjoy tormenting her about.
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 8:13 pm
Blair looked around the jet from his seat in the middle. Feeling really uncomfortable because the only people he actually made contact with her in conversation with others. He scanned the area and noticed the group of Bobby, Rogue, Kitty, and Kurt. Bobby, judging by his emotions, and sense of humor...he liked. Rogue seemed like an interesting girl to talk to as well. The other two, he couldn't get a reading on...they weren't feeling too much, besides just joy of being themselves and having fun.
He sighed and slunk down in his seat.
"What have I gotten myself into?"
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Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 11:46 pm
"Even if you have, I wouldn't mind," Penny smiled, "I'll tell people the same stories when asked. Not that I find most of them that interesting. Mostly me getting into trouble here and there."
She looked out the window to see the little towns below them, "I think I always blamed me being a mutant for not doing the things I've wanted to really do. So I've always equated... like our powers forcing us all into the roles we have... I guess that's a bad perspective to have."
"And what would you want to be doing?" Jacen asked her.
She laughed a bit, "It sounds rediculous so don't laugh."
"I'll try."
"I would have been a gymnast..."
"Seriously?" He looked surprised.
"Yes, seriously. I don't find it very condusive to winning a sword fight which is why I don't bust out those moves," Penny realized how stupid her reasoning was, "Heh, this is the restless part of my personality. I go through those phases. I get the whole 'I wonder how things would have been different if...' thing which usually goes against my entire philosphy of life..."
"I think the beach is going to do us all well," Penny turned sideways in her seat and sat cross legged in order to actually face Jacen in their conversation. Go ahead Penance... keep rambling on here... because it would be great to show the fact that you're about fifty personalities short of being commited...Girls are so moody
--------------
He shrugged, "I've been that way for as long as I can remember so being able to look at people without turning them crazy is actually taking time to get used to. I keep looking away like I used to. I'm not even sure if I can force my will on other people."
"What do you mean?"
He checked his watch to see how much longer they had on the flight, "Moral conscience. Back at the pirson was the first time I used my power in years. I don't really like what I can do... unless really pissed off..."
Or the girl you really like is being threatened... He finished his thought without speaking it to Regina. He didn't know how she felt about what his ability entailed and didn't want her to feel guilty for him using it in her defense.
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 12:24 am
Jamie sat still on the plane for a moment, before looking around. Everyone seemed to be in different conversations. That's when he saw Blair sitting alone. He hopped into the seat next to him.
"Hey, I'm Jamie."
Jamie felt almost guilty about knowing as much about Blair as he did. Reading the file on him was definately useful for saving him from Pharaoh, but he still didn't like it.
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 12:39 am
"I know. Thanks for doing what you did.....when I was you know, not myself.."
Blair uneasily situated himself in his seat. He felt uncomfortable purely because he was on a trip with people he didn't know in the slightest.
"So...tell me about yourself...I don't know hardly anyone.."
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 12:58 am
"Honestly, there's not that much to know. Two years ago I was forced out of my hometown, and walked across the U.S.. Then bam, I end up at the institute, and I've been here for awhile." Jamie sighed, thinking about his hometown. Has it been re-built by now? Or is it still just an empty town. . .
"What about you?"
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Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 1:04 am
Blair watched Jamie's expressions and tried not to pry into the boy's feelings and feel what he felt.
"Me? I was just your average opinionated kid in my high school. I wasn't afraid of anyone, not the kids, not the teachers, not even the government. I did what I wanted, when I wanted. And I wasn't a druggie or thief or anything like that. People just didn't like it when I told them what I thought about them to their face. So I've never had much on the people-skills level, I suppose. In my senior year, as you know..a man..a mutant, rather, killed my mother and I dropped out of school because I was so devesated. I left town...didn't have any friends back there anyways. I traveled here looking for this very Institute...wound up a prom...and well, you know the rest. Heh. Not too interesting..."
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