Welcome to Gaia! ::

Why did some teachers ruin classes like Geography or History with drawn on boring speeches that made it completely uninteresting? Penny had voluntarily took double duty in these classes this term hoping to learn something of interest... but it was the same textbook stats that makes everything so bland. So what if Luxemburg borders Belgium. Talk about the culture, give some interesting facts.... for christ sake, show a bloody movie about the Crusades.

Of course, it got interesting when Jacen came to class. Penny stopped staring out the window for five minutes trying to think of a catch slogan for Regina's campaign signs. Let them eat cake... was the only thing that came to mind to counteract Pietro's DO YOU LIKE PIE? signs... but somehow, if anybody had any knowledge of anything, quoting Marie Antionette wasn't a good idea for a Presidential election.

Car accident, my a**, Penny thought and watched Jacen sit back into his regular seat out of sight and mind of the rest of the students. She knew well enough that the types of battle wounds he was wearing wasn't from a normal school bully... or a car for that matter. But that was his business, she supposed. Of course, she wanted to ask about it.. but of course, she knew that one day asking too many questions was going to lead her to no good.

Her mind wandered back to the teacher as he stating that they were to have a debate in one week on the for and against of the Crusades. Most people groaned but Penny didn't mind. It sure as hell was better than doing the practice questions in the back of the book.

"I think Regina should offer cake instead of pie," Penny said to herself as the bell rang. She really had no good ideas. She really wanted to come up with a good one, "Quality makes it a Colt... ah, use a gun slogan, that will go over well. Regina Colt, the other white meat. Got Colt?"

She sighed and gave up on her thoughts. She had to start focusing on a literature test that was to take place in fifteen minutes. Of course, her favorite jock a*****e was beside her locker as she started to put in her combination. Any trained eye would have seen she wasn't looking at the numbers, she was listening to the lock.

In the best, I'm pretending I'm joking around in front of my buddies but I'm really serious but I won't admit it cause I'm a jock a** voice, AJ asked Penny, "Going stag again this year, Croft?"

"With only winners like you left in the available list, you bet I am," Penny smiled and pulled out her literature book. In all truth, it kind of depressed her how much she put off people but she wouldn't admit it. Afterall, she is too cool for this place... because she is Penance, a lone soldier. Of course, that is what she convices herself.

After his friends said something smarmy about some other girl down the hall and left, AJ leaned over, "Come one, what about you and me."

"Come on, get serious, AJ. You can't talk to me normal in front of your friends, so therefore, you can't take me out on a date. How many times do we have to have this conversation?" Penny asked and closed her locker. She left it at that and back tracked to class.

"If they get used to the status quo, how does one ever grow?" Porter asked Professor Xavier as he was sitting in a visitors chair in the Infirmary. Hank McCoy had forced Xavier to remain there for observation for a few days. Of course, Xavier required his staff to hold meetings there. Porter was no exception.

Xavier nodded his head in that intellectual manner. Porter sometimes hated that, like the man knew all your secrets already. It was nice sometimes having his own training. He knew his brain was a scrambled egg to Xavier sometimes. Government experiments and training and crap like that was fun.

"I am not disagreeing with your assessment, Jonothan. I just ask that you do it carefully. You have some volitile personalities in your group now... but I am sure it is nothing you cannot handle." Xavier had actually been pleased at the group Porter decided to form. With the abscence of Alanna, who returned home to her mother's ailing side, Porter pulled Kurt Wanger onto their team.

"I am going to train them hard. They may not want to grow up to be X-Men, but they will know every facet of their abilities for the day they walk out of these doors," Porter tapped the lengthy files he had already been gathering. He pulled everything from their first dental records to the secrety blog they had online under some psuedoname like Yucon Jack that nobody else in the school knew existed. He thought Penny's was especially humorous in that her screen name was Samurai Jack.... A samurai she is definately not... but she'll learn.

He left Xavier's room and went to look in on Morgan. Porter had been by every six hours since Morgan was admitted. He walked in on Morgan and McCoy talking about what had happened.

"You took a good beating, Morgan," Porter sat down on a chair there and adjusted his shaded glasses. Before Morgan could question his presence, "I'm Mr. Porter, your new adivsor. The doctor says you're making very good progress. Your new abilities are certainly interesting."

He found Morgan particular interesting as the boy was obviously party of a 'special project' himself. Unfortunately, it seems, that it caught up with Morgan before hew as ready for it. Nobody was catching up to Porter anytime soon.

Regina caught Penny as she was heading to her Literature class. "I know you've got that test soon, but I wanted to see if you've seen Kurt or Kitty? I just found out that Alanna had to return home. Guess who's on our team now?"

"Um... One of the two you mentioned?" Penny teased, grinning. Somehow she felt better when Regina showed up. Maybe because she was one of the few people that really understood the lone wolf.

"Yup." Regina walked next to her in the class they shared. "Kurt's joining the team. I doubt he knows yet. I just found out because I had to run home to get a book... and things really echo in the shadows."

She explained the incident. She had taken a cut through the shadows to the manor to get one of her books that she had left in the mess that was her and Penny's room. Upon running through the shadows she heard the new teacher's voice and listened in for a few moments. Her now date, was now on her team, she wondered howt hat would work out...

"Anyways, ready for that test here?"

An hour later, Morgan was allowed to leave the infirmary, but he had to stay on the grounds, and not move around too much. The ribs might be healing fast, but they were still cracked ribs nonetheless.

So, to ease the boredom of being cooped up for the whole day, he picked up his GBA, his copy of MegaMan, and sat outside in the sun. He figured that if he couldn't be running around yet, he should at least get some fresh air instead of sitting inside all day.

He tried to take a deep breath, but the stretching of his ribcage by said breath forced him to exhale quickly. "Note to self: Wait until ribs are healed," he mumbled, cringing slightly.

{As you can tell, I'm just waiting until the end of the "day" in the RP}

The final bell had rang and students were being released for the day. Another boring day in a boring school with a buttload of boring work to make up since he was away for a spell. He was going to take his things home to work on it all, but he decided it best not to do that since he felt he'd have a long walk ahead of him. As he headed out the front door, he saw that one girl, Miranda, who was talking about him earlier in the day. She managed a tiny smile when she saw him walk by, but he said nothing. She was busy being chatted up by someone guy and it seemed she wasn't too thrilled with the conversation. Jacen thought nothing of it as he walked outside.

"Hey. Jacen," he heard someone say rather loudly as he exited the school. He looked around for a second and saw his old 'friend' Penance, sitting on her car, wearing a rather curious look. Naturally, her curiousity was met with one of his own and he walked over to where she sat.

"Can I ask?," Penance wondered aloud. He was confused. He didn't know what she wanted now she was wanting ask him questions. Questions about what? When he noticed her point at his injured shoulder, he eased up a bit in his mind.

"Oh. That?," Jacen replied, "Nothing more than a car wreck. Besides, you heard it all earlier." The look she gave him showed him that she indeed knew more than he thought.

".........Alright. I see you don't buy that," he said absently, "If you must know, I was out of the country on business. I ran into one of the locals where I was staying at and he wasn't exactly friendly. As strange as this sounds, I was thrashed not once, not twice, but thrice by that behemoth. I'm surprised I walked away from all that with only these injuries."

"Must have been a big bump."

"Big enough to force me to retreat," Jacen said, taking stock that there were a crushed pack of cigarettes lying on the ground. "Oh....that's a shame. I could have used a smoke right about now."

There was a momentary silence between the two young mutants, when Jacen suddenly turned to walk away. Almost as soon as he tried to leave, he felt someone practically tackle him. Two someone's actually.

"Hi," the brunette said. The other girl just stood there smiling. "You probably don't know us, but we're all.." She was cut off immediately.

"We're in the same Computer Apps class. Yes, I know. What do you want?," Jacen asked.

"Well. Um. We were wondering if you'd want to go into town later, and maybe get something to eat?"

"We?," Jacen asked.

"Yea!," the blonde said with excitement. "It'd be us and our friend."

"Waitaminute....," Jacen said recognizing their voices. "You are that girl Miranda's friends, correct?" They both nodded. "Two things. You guys are trying a little too hard to set me up with your friend." They both got a shocked look on their faces. "And secondly, you guys really need to keep your conversations to a dull roar and not an overt trumpeting." Seeing that they both felt rather embarassed, the girl's walked away, frowns replacing smiles.

"You know...that's crazy," Jacen said outloud, knowing that Penance was still sitting there. "....Absolutely crazy..."

"Yea, absolutely crazy. You've got a fan club," Penny jabbed with a friendly grin.

Would they freak out like AJ would if he ever found out I was a mutant and went to prom with me? Maybe I'm just crazy for being a pessimist.

Okay, it was kind of awkward. Scion was an interesting character for her. Somebody outside of the Xavier world who she was able to match wits with. Besides, he was one tough bad a** and somebody being able to jack him up that badly had to be a severe threat.

She looked down at that pack of cigarettes and really wanted to pick it up, "Worst habit in the world to break I'm told."

She nodded to Jamie as he came by, "Hey Jamie, just the usual. You know."

"You need a ride back to town, Jacen? We have an extra seat," Penny offered to be nice. They had the time. Roll call for their training session wasn't for another hour and a half. Training session with Mr. Fear. That was going to be fun. She already had the feeling that he didn't like her. Why couldn't Logan have been their new instructor? He had something to teach her.

"Yea. Sure, why the hell not?," Jacen replied as he jumped in the backseat. "I'd get my books, but meh.....I'll worry bout it later."

He fumbled around in his pockets for a minute when he sat down. He must have picked up a pair of previously worn jeans that morning due to the fact that he found a half-full cigarette pack. "Huh....I must have been out of it or something this morning," he said absently as he appeared to be flopping around like an epileptic fish trying to find a lighter.

After a few moments of wrestling around, he managed to have lighter in hand, and cigarette lit. He had a feeling he wasn't supposed to be doing this on school property, but he honestly did not care in the slightest.

"So....where you gonna drop me off at?," Jacen asked Penance, "You know if you just showed up at my place of residence, it'd be on like neckbone. Some of those guys.....they REALLY don't like you X-People." He rephrased what he was going to say. He knew that if he said the wrong thing, he'd be walking. And he rarely turned down a lift anywhere.

"And what about you?," she asked rather sharply.

"It's not that I don't like you guys," Jacen said between puffs of his cigarette, "It's that you X-People seem somewhat oblivious to the oncoming storm. That's what bothers me. You guys...kids, mostly. Some not even 15 years of age, training to be some sort of world police force? Granted, I was doing virtually the same thing, albiet in a different aspect."

"Terrorism is a different aspect?"

"In black and white terms like that....yes, it is a different aspect," Jacen replied. "But with the rhetoric being whipped up in Congress and the burdgeoning sense that something radical is about to happen in this country.....Maybe those are the kind of actions we need."

There was an awkward silence for a few seconds. Jacen finished his cig and threw it out the door, to the ground. "Besides, I look at it this way. Under different circumstances any of us Brotherhood or X-Men would be fighting side by side and not against each other.

"Not saying that I don't like fighting against you," Jacen said with a wry grin, "You guys actually pose a challenge." Still wearing a cheshire-like grin, he stuck an open pack of cigs out to Penance. "Cigarette?"