Day One: Introductions

[Drake 53]

Sam watched casually as Lance walked passed the coffee machines. As he did, a pair of glass coffee pots, filled with steaming hot brew, toppled out of the machines and onto the floor.

"Damn. What a mess," said Sam. He called over to Lance. "Don't worry about the tea, man!" He lowered his voice to talk to Natalie. "So I saw you out in the water earlier. That was some wipe-out. Good thing your buddy Marcus Connor was there to pull you out."

***

Colossus changed back to his regular form and answered the door. It was a girl with long brown hair. "Hello," said Peter. "

Hailey peeked around Peter's large frame and smiled when she saw who it was. "Hi, Lila. Come on in." She looked up at Peter. "It's ok muscles. She was invited."

Peter stepped aside to let the girl in. "Ah, welcome to Xavier's Institute, Miss Lila."

[Vergere 1]

Lance, although usually good humoured, glared darkly over his shoulder at the man, but said nothing. He'd been around Kelly long enough, and around his own buildings, long enough to know when something like that wasn't his fault. Dryly, and a bit sarcastically, "Of course not. I need to clean this up instead." He sighed and went about getting a mop to clean up the spilled coffee.

***

Kelly grinned brightly. "You can do it, Danny. I didn't bring a normal board out for you because, well, no one's caught on that fast, but you can use mine if you'd like." She pulled it out of the sand and offered it to him. "I'm sure Natalie wouldn't mind me borrowing hers for a swim or two."

[Rogue 4]

Natalie's skin bristled, and she looked over to the man in surprise. "I..I'm sorry?" Was this guy watching her? Did he know about Marcus? She picked up the glass and started to move over a seat nervously. "You'll have to excuse me, but my father put a special emphasis on me not talking to old men."

Edited May 5, 2008 by Drake

[Mara 29]

"Some of the science comes easily enough, but I do have to work hard. I'm not a genius." Joseph smiled. "You know I need these classes for university.

Speaking of," he reached over the table to poke her shoulder. "Where have you applied?"

Before she could answer, the fire alarm went off, and they headed out of the cafeteria, Joseph dumping his empty bag in the trash on the way out. Once in the parking lot, he answered her, "Yeah. Weird."

When they were told they could leave, Joseph glanced back at the school building. "Wonder if I could go in and get my books..." By then Cat had left him, so with another glance, he sweet-talked a security officer into letting him into the school to get his backpack, explaining that his locker was far away from the computer lab.

With his bag filled to the hilt with the books he had gotten in the morning, he headed away, down a few blocks to the nearest bus station. He knew Monday was cleaning day and didn't want to disturb his mother, so he took the bus route to the beach, which took quite a lot of stopovers.

* * * * * * * * *

Bridget and the others' conversation was interrupted by the fire alarm, one second after August got a strange chill down her spine. Bridget rolled her eyes in frustration. "What does a girl have to do to have a quiet convo?"

"Totally." Answered Tawny.

August hurried out with the rest of them, her messenger bag with her notebooks still secure at her side. She didn't have any books, but it was only the first day. No homework, yet.

Once she heard classes were classes, she immediately split from the group and found her Mercedes and got in. She spent a few moments thinking about the alarm before she pulled out. August wondered if she was having some delayed mental breakdown from her parents' divorce two years ago.

[Andy 60]

"Thanks I'm a fast learner," Danny took Kelly's board, "and, well, this saves me walking back to get one." He laughed, and headed back out to sea.

* * *

Chase recognised the girl from earlier at school when Kurt had teleported next to him, but hadn't caught her name up until now. He was still a bit unnerved about the place, so seeing another familiar face--albiet not someone he knew at all--was reassuring.

[Vergere 1]

She grinned. "Well, this time you're in charge of the surfing, Danny. I'll follow your lead."

[Mara 29]

A half hour later, Joseph finally got off his last bus and walked down the boardwalk towards the beach and the Cove. He had a couple hours to kill before his mother expected him home.

He peeled off his backpack and sat down by an empty outside table, staring out towards the water a moment before reaching into his bag for his physics book.

* * * * * * * *

When the parking lot had emptied out more, August turned on her red sports car and carefully pulled out, heading toward the street. Even though it was warm out and the sky had changed to a brilliant bright blue without a cloud, she kept her top down.

She drove slowly down the streets, watching as the houses gradually got bigger and more spaced out, as she drove into the upper class areas of Greendale.

[Drake 53]

Raising an eyebrow, Sam directed his focus on Natalie, who suddenly dropped back into her seat. It was as though her weight had tripled.

He flashed her a badge showing credentials for the FBI. "And the U.S. government has put a special emphasis on me talking to you. Also...I'm only 32." Relieving some, but not all, of the pressure on the girl, he said, "Don't do that again, Miss Brook. Now, you may have noticed, just now, a special skill that I possess. I am a mutant. I have a special gene in my DNA that sets me apart from every day humans. I have it, Marcus Connor has it..."

Sam took out a small device, that looked like a PDA. He pressed a button and played a portion of the video he had recorded through his electro-binoculars. It showed the transformed Marcus Connor pulling Natalie to shore as a dolphin then morph back into a human. He fast-forwarded a bit, through the two teens talking, until it showed Natalie walking away. Marcus was in the distance, clearly talking to himself, and Natalie turned as though she heard him.

"We call that one 'enhanced auditory pickup'. See, you may not like to believe in such things but you have the gene too, Miss Brooks." Sam put away the device. "That means it's my job to watch out for you and make sure you don't get into trouble. That means, I can't have you blabbering these little secrets to anyone and everyone."

"Don't go running away now." He released the extra gravity holding Natalie to her chair. "There are some people you know who are safe to talk to and some places in town that are safe to go to, if you need to."

Edited May 5, 2008 by Drake

[Andy 60]

Danny paddled out to beyond where the waves were breaking, and waited for his opportunity. When he spotted a promising looking wave, he paddled until the wave caught the board, and keeping stead he pushed up with his arms and pulled his knees in so he could stand. Somehow, instinctively he thought, he knew to keep his centre of gravity low to keep his weight balanced, and he rode the wave for a short while with Kelly following him. Eventually he headed back into shore.

"Wow," he said, "that was great. I don't know why but I expected it to be harder than that..."

[Rogue 4]

Natalie shifted, turning to face him better, and although she was definatly scared, she masked it with anger. "First off," She pointed a finger at him. "You ever do that to me again, and you can just wait and see how fast I go to the media. I don't play games with anyone."

This was by far the craziest day she'd ever had in her life. Mutant...could she really be one? This FBI guy seemed to think so. Honestly, the thought of him lurking around in the shadows watching her gave her the creeps like nothing else ever had. And all because he thought she was going to tell Lance about Marcus.

She realized then that she wasn't going to. Marcus might have been different in ways she couldn't understand, a mutant...but he was still Marcus right? Even if she was freaked out and couldn't be around him right now, he didn't deserve all the drama that attention would cause.

"Secondly, not that it's any of your buisness, because I don't care if you're working for God himself at his behest--I wasn't going to tell Lance about Marcus. What happens between me and my friends, stays between me and my friends. I'm not a snitch."

Edited May 5, 2008 by Rogue

[Drake 53]

Surprisingly, Sam burst into laughter. "Look, I'm sorry about the whole restraining thing but I had to show you I meant business. Also, say you take this to the media. Then what? I don't actually exsist and you'll get far more attention then you'll ever want. It took a long time for mutants to show the public they could be trusted but that peace is fragile. Remember Apocalypse last year? And the chaos over mutants the year before?"

He took a card out of his pocket. Before giving it to her, he said, "Second, it is my business. I get paid for it. This card has a list of names, phone numbers and places you can go if you need help." He slid it down the counter. "I don't want to get between you and your friends, either. Kelly Reed's cool." He nodded toward Lance, who was just about done mopping up the coffee and glass. "And I'm pretty sure that guy knows things too."

[Rogue 4]

She stared at the card on the counter but didn't touch it. Instead she looked him in the eye. "Look, I'm not a mutant. You're wasting your time."

Edited May 6, 2008 by Rogue

[Ayingel 24]

Lila looked the large man up and down before she cautiously stepped inside. "Thanks..." She looked around the grand room. She took note of the small security panel near the door, though she found it hard to believe that that was the only security this building had. Lila smiled half heartedly. "Hi."

[Rogue 4]

Jean brushed her red hair over a shoulder before approaching the girl and extending a hand. She smiled at her welcomingly. "I'm Professor Jean Grey. You must be Lila."

[Drake 53]

Sam smiled and let out a slight sigh. "Alright then, Miss Brook." He got up from his seat and dug out his wallet. "I hope the rest of your day is uneventful." After dropping a couple 20 dollar bills on the table, he said, "For the coffee."

He left the Cove and made his way back to the Impala. He got in and started it up. As the calming sounds of Led Zeppelin came over the stereo, he leaned over to his glove box. A keypad popped up and upon entering a code, the compartment opened to reveal a wide assortment of gadgets and gizmos. Sam removed one of them. It was a small device, about the shape and size of a bottle cap.

Sam pressed a button on the device, activating it, and tossed it into a nearby garbage can. The device would emit an ultra-high frequency tone. It would go unnoticed by regular humans and most mutants, however many animals and someone with superhearing would find it increasingly annoying. A tiny charge inside would render the device useless in about five minutes...but he would have proven his point by then.

Smiling to himself, Sam drove away.

[Rogue 4]

Natalie was hoping that the rest of her day would be uneventful as well. She pressed her forehead to the countertop again, wishing that the day would just end so she could wake up and everything would be normal again. That's when she began to hear it. It was a noise like none she'd heard before, like a screechier version of the static her Tv got at home. It was the most annoying, assinine, thing she had ever heard.

She had a feeling she had her new government friend to thank for that. She groaned, wishing she could just ram the guy's head through a wall. Too bad the Cove didn't have any. She sighed. After all that the guy couldn't leave without making her headache worse. She looked around. Nobody else seemed to be bothered by it.

Maybe if I ignore it it will just go away. She hoped.

[Andy 60]

Figuring that that was enough adventure for one day, Danny got dried off and changed back into his clothes, then headed back into the Cove, he glanced around and saw Natalie; she looked a little tense.

"Hey, you okay?"

Edited May 6, 2008 by Andy

[Rogue 4]

"Long day." Natalie told him, too lazy to lift up her head. "I got attacked by a shark and roughed up by a guy old enough to be my dad. And that damn annoying noise is killing me. Is it tommorrow yet?"

***

Mystique had been disguised as a beachgoer, knowing that this was the local hangout spot where all the kids went. She hadn't expected to find a member of SHIELD there, but that played to her advantage. She got into her car, following him from a distance when he left. If he was tracking people, she wanted to know who they were so she could bring them to her side.

[Andy 60]

"A shark?" Danny echoed, he wondered what noise she was on about because he couldn't hear anything, "I wish someone had warned me, I don't fancy becoming fish food."

[Rogue 4]

"It's okay. They only attack if they smell blood. Unfortunatly for me I cut my hand before I came to school today. That's what I get for trying to make a peanut butter sandwich with a butcher's knife."

[Andy 60]

"Not having the best of days then, I see. But hey at least we got out of school early!"

[Ayingel 24]

"Yeah...yeah I am." Lila looked at the hand for a moment before accepting the handshake. "You don't look like a professor."

[Rogue 4]

Jean shook the hand, looking to Scott before replying. "Ah, not your conventional one. Scott, Peter and I are here to help young mutants to understand and expand their abilities, to use them for good."

***

Natalie looked up, giving him a smile. He was trying to make her feel better. Very kind of him. Unfortunatly he didn't know the half of it. "You're right. Anyway I'm being rude. How's your day going? I saw Kelly was trying to teach you how to surf."

Edited May 6, 2008 by Andy

[Vergere 1]

Dryly, once he finished getting everything cleaned up, he calls over to Danny and Natalie, "Am I allowed to come back over, or am I still banished to the kitchen?" However, he smiled as he said that.

****

Kelly went and caught a few more waves after Danny left, enjoying the freedom of not being in school.

[Drake 53]

Sam pulled into a gas station along the side of the road. He didn't need any gas but he was getting a little hungry. So he parked in one of the spaces next to the building and got out. He pressed a button on his keys, activating the silent alarm that would notify him if anyone tried to break in.

Going into the station, he perused the snack aisle for something tasty.