SEVEN: UNLIKELY ALLIANCE.

"What do you mean you were with the professor? Where is he now?"

Instead of the regular four people that normal sit at the kitchen table at Mom's we have seven this morning. It's weird having all the seats occupied, plus an extra one that's pulled up to the table, for once. I woke up this morning and cooked breakfast with Bree. Now, everyone's eating, and trying to decide next steps. Luckily Logan's made contact with Jean and Scott.

"Sabrina, add that to our list of problems," Jay yells from across the breakfast table. He's beside Carrie, pouring her a glass of water, but makes sure Bree hears him before he asks Carrie, "is that enough?" To which she replies with a grateful yes.

My sister clicks her pen and nods, "got it. Missing Charles..," she mumbles while gracefully scribbling the words on the page in front of her. "Right under out of bread."

Mom chuckles from beside Bree at the table, "I don't know if missing bread is as important as missing Charles." She reassuringly rubs her youngest daughter's shoulder with a tight squeeze.

Bree flips the sheet of paper to show Mom her skillfully written list, "oh, don't worry we color coded the list. Blue is stuff around the house, red is infinite danger, green is miscellaneous."

"It sounds like you guys didn't get much sleep with all the effort you put into this list," I glance between Bree and Jay smirking at them playfully.

He chews a piece of light toast in his hand and shrugs his shoulders, "I slept fairly well last night, believe it or not. Sabrina and I made our list earlier this morning before breakfast."

Romeo scoffs, standing to retrieve the bottle of syrup in the middle of the table. He drizzles a few drops on his pancakes before announcing, "okay, can we get back to more important matters now? We've got a house full of missing mutant students, a missing teacher, and now we don't know where the professor is." He looks at each of our expressions before shrugging his shoulders, "what the hell are we gonna do about it?"

Logan sets his communication device on the counter, causing a dramatic shift in the room. He returns back to the breakfast table after ending his conversation from the other room. "Scott and Jean are on their way. Finish eating, they'll be here soon."

"Let's just add more ducks to the pond, because if you haven't noticed Logan, we're sitting ducks in a stupid pond," Romeo slaps the table his anger getting the best of him. Jay jumps with shock from beside me, but I keep eating, starting to get used to his on scheduled out-burst.

"Rome"-

Jay's warning is cut short. Romeo slaps away his friend's hand of caution, "no! Don't 'Romeo' me. It's like I'm the only one who gives a shit..," his voice trails off in the midst of Logan sitting down, sighing loudly and making himself a plate.

"Lina," to my surprise Logan says my name while ignoring what sounds like what threats Romeo is now spitting at Logan, "can you hurry up and do the thing where you slow him down?"

"Sure, yeah," I tell Logan before flaring my hands out at Romeo until he's moving too slow to make coherent words come out of his mouth. For once, he's silent, and there's no sound left in the kitchen except for the soothing silence that follows. "Better?"

"Better," everyone agrees in unison before going about their breakfast.

"Your home is very beautiful, Ms. Smith," Carrie stirs the conversation away from the too slow furious boy across from the table.

Mom hums while trying to eat what food is in her mouth much quicker. "Call me Pandora, Ms. Smith makes me sound old."

Bree chuckles, while adjusting her list, "she always says that," she mumbles to me across the table.

"This home actually belonged to my mother- er, or well more accurately her grandmother"-

"This house has been in the family for a while," I wrap things up a little neater than the mess Mom was making with her words. "They were witches, believe it or not."

"Your grandmothers were witches!?" Jay gasps, his eyes almost popping out of his head. He looks between Bree and me, his head shaking with disbelief, "your family dynamic is.. it's obtuse. I- I mean your fathers are- are well, your fathers. And you're telling me your grandmothers are"-

"Ever heard of The Charmed Ones?" Mom asks, but when no one registers the infamous name she explains, "Phoebe, Piper and and Prue? They were the first Charmed Ones, until Prue died, but later they found out they had another sister, Paige"-

"Wait, so you're a witch?!" Jay points to Mom, his eyes practically falling out of his head.

Mom scoffs shaking her head, "of course not. Or- I could be, but I'm not. The awakening ritual demands specific situations, like the blood of"-

Romeo unfreezes at a terrible moment, halfway through a sentence he tells, "if I have to I will, don't think I won't..," he glances around the table then zones in on me and glares, "you froze me, didn't you?"

I don't even get to fully answer, the most I get out is, "Logan tol..," before he glares at me and the familiar loathed feeling of all my energy being drained returns. The air from my lungs is pushed out and I slip out of my chair, onto the ground. It's like my body is magnetized to the floor and trying to detach myself takes more than all the energy I can contain. My eyes shut because instead of fighting it I do my best to welcome the feeling. Maybe that's the way out of this weight pushing against my body. But my plan doesn't work because no matter how long I stay still and try to find peace in the stillness of everything I stay still and I stay heavy. The only thing that happens is the push of the table above me, and the clatter of a fork, then a plate off the table from above me.

Then I feel my feet being pulled from beneath me and I'm staring at the ceiling. Romeo's hands slip behind my neck and the other on my cheek until my energy perks up like someone shot espresso in my veins. I slap my palm across Romeo's cheek, hard. I groan cradling my palm into my lap and groan.

"Oh come on, I taught you how to hit better than that," Logan says from where he's leaning against the wall. With, of course, a cigar in between his lips.

Romeo is struggling to stand up from where he took refuge on the floor, "I said I was sorry, okay?"

"Sorry doesn't cut it in this house," Mom says from where she's sitting at the head of the table. "We just cut things. With knives." I notice her tight grip on the butter knife that ironically has jam on it. But when I give the knife a second glance I realize there's blood on the utensil, not jam.

"Yeah, she cut him," Bree quite literally reads my mind as she pries the knife from Mom's grip. "Look you can't just pull a Logan and go all Wolverine whenever Romeo says something mean to Lina."

"Pull a Logan," Logan mumbles under his breath chuckling to himself.

"Yeah otherwise you'll murder him by the end of the day," Jay jokes under his breath as I stand from off the ground and roll my neck.

Romeo scoffs touching his cheek bone from where I've slapped him to the cut on his hand. "It feels like I'm constantly being abused by the Smith women."

I huff at him and instead of screaming at him or making any other threat I unclench my teeth and finally level with him. It's as if everyone else has faded away when I ask, "when can I finally get you to understand that I'm nothing like my father?"

I can tell he's about to say something snarky or arrogant, but he doesn't get the chance to do so because of the knock on the front door. Bree is the first to make any movement. She shakes her head and a grin of appreciation crosses her face, "oh thank God, finally."

She opens the front door and Scott whips around to raise an eyebrow at the group of us, "what's this about the abduction of children?" His eyes, or more accurately his body faces towards Logan and behind his red sunglasses his eyebrow arches, "you had one job, you know?"

"Yeah yeah yeah," he brushes off Scott's sarcasm and steps on the front porch to look outside, "where's Jean?"

"In the X-Jet," his skeptic eyes look away from Logan back into the house at the group of us. Mom is cleaning off the table, I can hear Jay lecturing Romeo and Carrie is putting things in a backpack that Bree gave her moments ago. "These are the only ones who made it out?"

Logan sighs lighting a cigar and leaning back against the wall. With a puff of smoke he tells Scott, "they're X-Men."

"You'd think Charles would change that name by now," Mom announces as she emerges from the kitchen, "after all, there are women on the team, too."

Scott grins happily when he sees Mom and hugs her once she approaches, "Pandora! Wow, you're almost aging as slow as Logan," he jokes nodding towards Logan who's rolling his eyes with annoyance. "Is it true? You're coming on the mission?"

She sighs as she pulls away from the hug, "I trusted you idiots to protect my girls and now I've got one missing. So," she sets her hand on her hip and shrugs, "if you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself."

We finished cleaning the kitchen table off in under thirty minutes. I took a shower while everyone helped clean the dishes downstairs. Now, in a clean body I struggled to decide on my clothes. What are you supposed to wear on a mission? I went with my sports attire, black leggings and my under armor long sleeve t-shirt. My hair is slicked back into a ponytail and right as I leave I realize I look like I'm going for a run.

Romeo scoffs when I come down the stairs, "I tell you Princess your fashion choices never cease to amaze me." He's coming from out the kitchen, and dries his hands with a paper towel.

I roll my eyes, ignoring his comment and meet everyone by the door. Jay is holding Gumbo in his arms and is trying to find the strength to leave him. Now he's bargaining, "okay but what if I hold him?"

Mom shakes her head, attempting to not laugh as hard as she wants to, "no, Jay it isn't safe for him."

"Okay, fine," he's about to give Gumbo to mom until the last second when he pulls him back into his arms and sighs, "can't we just keep him in the jet? Please?"

"Come on, Buddy," Mom sighs, holding Gumbo in her arms after prying him out of Jay's grasp. She takes him into the living room and sets him on his plush bed. "Stay," she orders sternly before turning back to the door, "okay then, is everybody ready?"

"We're ready," Bree announces and pulls the list from out of her hands.

The walk to the X-Jet is a little over a mile walking distance. We walk through the neighborhood, the eight of us taking up the entire sidewalk. Scott leads the pack along with Logan and Mom who are reminiscing on their old missions they went on in the past.

"And who can forget Apocalypse?" Mom is the one to bring up the villain who she used to tell us bed time stories about. He was a powerful mutant who almost destroyed the world, just like all the other villainous mutants. "I still can't believe he didn't ask me to be one of his four horsemen."

"I still can't believe Logan told the professor to go fuck himself when he asked for help," Scott comments, causing Mom to laugh.

Logan pauses from smoking his cigar. "You're telling me I should have willingly fought some Egyptian King or whatever the hell his deal is? Not my style."

Bree rolls her eyes and mumbles to me, "I have a feeling we're going to be hearing a lot of the same stories mom likes to always tell us."

I chuckle under my breath right as we descend down a hill that leads us to an open field. There's nothing in the field as far as the eye can see, besides the distant highway that is too far to even dream of crossing. It's peaceful, the calmness of that the field invites. The blades grass reach up to our knees, and the rocks are a little uncomfortable to step over every now and then, but it's comforting to finally have some peace and-

"What the hell are we doing in this field?" Romeo asks, walking from the back of the group to stand in the front with the adults. "Did you really bring us here just to sit on our asses?"

Scott lowers his head with annoyance, "no, Romeo, I did not bring us here to sit on our asses." He reveals the communication device from his back pocket and clicks the center button, "okay Jean, we're here, you can drop the stealth mode."

"Already on it, Scott," her voice crackles in from the device. I blink once and what was once an empty field now holds a large jet that looks like something from out of a movie. My eyes almost pop out of my head when the jet suddenly appears in front of us.

"Cool, right?" Bree beams from beside me, practically racing to get to the jet.

I follow the group to meet at the jet who's back door is now slowly opening. Jean is at the door of the jet when we all walk on together. She's happy to see each and everyone one of us, to which she expresses over and over each time one of us passes her. First Romeo then Carrie then Jay then Bree and finally myself. I can see in her eyes she's looking for someone, I notice it when she sees Mom. Even though she squeals with excitement and hugs her until both of their oxygen supply is nearly out, the second the last two occupants step on the jet she's on edge. At first I think it's Scott she's looking for, and I'm almost certain I'm right when I see her smile and kiss his lips. Then I see her expression when she sees Logan. The frantic look in her eyes disappears, the tension in her shoulders smooth over and I watch her eyes shut as she silently thanks some higher power. I know I'm certain she was looking for Logan when he stands in front of her and gives her a grin that's just for her. There's something I'm missing between the exchange. Something that they understand.

Bree keeps her eyes on me, the slight arch in her eyebrow telling me that we'll circle back to this conversation at some point. I place myself in the seat beside her and glance at the sheet of paper in her hands. She's written each of our names, besides Mom's, and she's added Scarlet's name. "What is that?"

"A cheat sheet," she tells me as she finishes crossing the 'T' in Scarlet's name, "it's hard to keep up with all these love triangles and stolen glances so I'm making a chart."

"Good idea," I chuckle, and furrow my eyebrows with a confused shake of my head, "why am I on the list if it's about love triangles?"

"Oh I'm taking account enemies too," she taps Romeo's name causing me to roll my eyes, "who knows? In a year or two I'll be sharing this chart at your guy's wedding."

My dramatic gag is lost in the noise of the jet firing up. Jean takes comfort in the co-pilot's seat while Mom straps herself into the pilot's seat. "Let's see if I remember how to fly," she says this but I know she's only joking. I hope. Mom glances at Scott's nervous face.

"You know, Pandora I'm far more capable to fly if"-

"It was a joke Scott," she brushes off his helpful hands, "and you know, Hank practically designed the X-Jet for my piloting skills so why don't you take a seat in the back and calm down?"

Scott looks to Jean for back up, but she simply shrugs and presses her lips together, "sorry, Scott. You know she's right."

He sighs heavily in a sign of defeat. But regardless of his defeat he leans down to kiss Jean and admit, "I can't argue with you."

Across from me is Romeo, who is sitting beside Jay who is beside Carrie. Her eyes are shut the entire length it takes the jet to fire up, blast through turbulence and ease through the clouds. When the jet finally stops shaking she finally opens her eyes and nods reassuringly to Jay. "I'm fine.. I'm fine."

"Really?" He raises a unconvinced eyebrow, "because I have found memories of flying in the simulation and every time you always"-

The color in Carrie's face is tinted with green and she holds her hand over her mouth. I inhale sharply as she runs passed us to the bathroom that is tucked in the back of the jet. Even with the door sealed shut the sound of her vomiting echoes through the jet. I grimace, along with Romeo who groans, "I thought she had that under control."

"Rookies," Logan mumbles with annoyance.

Mom glances in the rear view mirror, her attention mostly focused on Scott and Logan, "maybe this is a good time to go through the plan."

"What plan?" I ask.

"Exactly," Mom nods her head in agreement, "we've got some sort of a lead on the guy who stole all the kids, right? You said you guys could track Ororo."

"Her communication device is off," Logan mumbled from his seat. All eyes go to his ironically relaxed position. His head is leaning back against his seat and his eyes are shut, he almost looks as if he's asleep.

"What do you mean her communication device is off?" Jean asks what we're all wondering from the co-pilot seat.

Logan's eyes open up, "I mean I tried contacting her and got radio silenced. That means one of two things. Either she shut it off and it's still with her or it was broken during the raid and is nothing more than a pile of metal in the middle of the boarding house."

A defeated silence falls over the group of us. In the silence Carrie opens the door to the bathroom and takes a deep breath. "I think that was the last time, really. I already feel better."

Before anyone has a chance to agree or disagree one of the controls in front of Mom starts to beep. We all tense up and look to Mom. "Please tell me that's alarm is a good and does not mean we're going to plummet to our doom?" Jay's optimism pales in comparison to reality.

From his side Romeo glares at him like he's an idiot for asking such a question. "When have you ever heard of a good alarm"-

The jet begins to plummet from out of the sky at such a fast rate it feels like I'm dropping on a roller coaster. Beside me Bree raises her arms and laughs with excitement like we are on a roller coaster. By the bathroom, Carrie yells as she holds onto the door to keep from flying back against the roof where gravity is pushing her.

"Dora what the hell are you doing?!" Logan yells from his seat, gripping his seatbelt and yelling over the sound of the alarms.

Mom struggles to yell over the controls, "it's not me.. it's not me!"

"Jean!?" Scott yells, keeping his red sunglasses against his eyes but his focus remains on the girl in the co-pilot's seat. "Jean, is this you"-

"It's not me," she yells, shaking her head. Her eyes squeeze shut and she too grips her seatbelt in her hand. It seems as though Bree is the only one finding amusement in the fact that we're plummeting out of the sky in a jet with enough oxygen that will cause enough distraction to kill not only is but who ever else is close proximity. I shut my eyes and take a deep breath, I take a cool and even breath, my hand sliding against the jet's wall to feel the metal beneath my touch. It's cool, smooth and a little rough. I take another even breath in through my nose. This time, however when I open my eyes to exhale everything around me has slowed down, everything has come to a speed so slow it seems as if the world is frozen.

In front of me Bree's carefree expression has a lagging speed to it. Her eyes are slowly reopening as she blinks, the strands in her hair that have escaped her ponytail look as if they aren't moving with the path of her face. Across from me Romeo is gripping Jay's shirt and is screaming at him like he's telling his best friend what might be his last words. Jay isn't returning the same expression. For once he looks annoyed with Romeo for being so dramatic. Across the room Carrie is squinting with focus as she grips to the bathroom door with the intent of not letting go. The sudden flicker of Logan's lighter causes my head to snap to him half expecting him to be moving at a normal speed. But instead he is moving just as unhurried as everyone else while he attempts to light what seems like his tenth cigar today.

I unbuckle my seat belt and make my way to the front of the jet. The second I stand from my seat I slide down and collide into the back of Mom's chair. Due to the position of the jet, at the sixty degree angle of the air craft, gravity takes over and standing is much more difficult than I imagined.

Now that I have time to properly think I realize I'm not quite sure what I intend on doing now that I'm in control. I didn't purposefully slow down the jet, or maybe I did deep down, but now that I'm in this situation I need to figure out a way to save everyone before we-

"What the hell?" I whisper looking through the front window of the jet. Outside on the ground, which is only a few hundred yards away I can see an old man in between the trees where we're set to crash. He's got gray hair, he's in all black and his right hand is stretched out towards the jet. At first I think he's waving, but the harder I squint the more I recognize such a powerful stance. That, and the way he's looking at me mirror's exactly how I'm feeling. What the hell is he doing?

Suddenly I feel the weight of the jet set in on me, I grit my teeth in hopes of focusing enough power to do whatever the hell it is I was going to do. Below the jet, between the woods the old man now has both his hands stretched out towards the jet as if he has hopes of, what seems like, controlling the jet. Right as both hands outstretch the weight of the jet increases on my body and I grunt in hopes of releasing some tension without truly loosing control. Now the man makes a pull motion and I feel the jet slowly start to move a tad quicker than before, I even start to hear the voices of everyone in the jet come back into motion. Slow motion, that is. I can't hold on any longer, I drop to the floor with exhaustion and the plummet of the jet continues. Everything speeds back up and the volume of the room returns. At least now we only fall for another moment before the jet stops, as if someone has caught the air craft and we stay in the air.

"Lina?" Mom finally catches her breath and turns to look at me. "When did you get up here?"

"How did you get up there?" Jay asks, sounding a little hysteric. "We just fell out of the sky and"-

"Shut up. All of you," Logan says from the back where he too unbuckles his seat belt and slides down the floor. He lands right beside me, behind Jean's chair and looks down through the front window of the jet.

"Oh you've got to be kidding me."

The old man from before is now only a few feet from the jet. His powerful hands are still extended to the jet, but now with a wicked, yet wise expression on his face. "Nice to see you, too Wolverine. Now, why don't you all come out of this metal contraption before I do something I regret?"

The only sound is Carrie's abrupt breath and her attempt to shut the bathroom door as she throws up once again.

While the jet is on route to safety, we each unbuckle our seatbelts, and each of us are given what looks like diving suits. When I'm given mine, right after Bree, I raise an eyebrow at the suit wondering what the purpose of so much spandex could be. Romeo receives his suit and asks, "do you plan on making us swim at some point..?"

Logan cuts his eyes at him, "does everything always have to be a god damn joke to you?"

Jay pipes up, "I think what he's asking is why did you give us these?"

"For battle," Logan tells us, handing off the last suit to Carrie before looking at the five of us, "your X-Men now. Time to suit up and act like it."

So we do, or at least we attempt to do so. While I change I try not to focus on the fact that I'm wearing a thong so my entire ass is out while I'm pulling the suit over my legs. As I tug the zipper in the front I furrow my eyebrows and look to my left. Romeo is smirking at me as he pulls his own suit over his muscular arms and across his bare chest. When he sees I'm looking he smiles at me, but not the friendly smile. His smile tells me I should know why he's looking at me with that certain look in his eye.

"Here comes the bride," Bree mumbles from beside me, referring to her previous joke about me and Romeo when she was making her cheat sheet of love triangles.

"Not gonna happen," I tell her as I fold my clothes and set them in my seat, "hey, why were you laughing earlier? When we were falling and everyone was thinking we were gonna die, you were laughing like we were on a roller coaster."

"Oh, I knew we were gonna be fine. I could read Magneto the second he started pulling the jet down."

"Magneto?" I question as the jet doors open and the adults file out and down the steps first.

Mom, Jean, Scott and Logan take the lead as they step down the stairs and out of the Jet. We follow them around the jet to the front where the old man is awaiting our arrival, alongside a woman who is covered in blue with red hair. And yellow eyes. This new life of mine could not get any weirder.

"Once again I find you in the middle of trouble, Wolverine," the old man named Magneto sets his hands in front of him as he speaks to the group of us with calm intentions. He's standing in front of the opening to a bundle of trees, the bottom of their shoes aren't dirty and they don't look tired. Did they escape from somewhere? Or did they fly here, too? "You can wipe that look of your faces, I have no intention of fighting any of you. I want to help you find Charles."

"You know where the Professor is?" Scott steps forward, tilting his head at Magneto in question. He steps in front of Jean, almost as if he's trying to protect her from any sudden attack Magneto could make. I look back at him, the old mysterious man. I don't know why they're so on guard around him, he seems.. wise, like all old people seem after a life time of tragic events. I don't want to fight him, I want to talk to him. I want to hear what obvious stories he has to share. The blue girl beside him, however, she makes my skin crawl. It's the way she looks at each of us, like she's running through individual ways on how to kill each of us. When she looks at me her eyes hold wicked intentions. Fearful of those intentions I look back at Mom who's now trying to reason with Logan.

Her hand is on his crossed arms, "maybe we should hear him out. After all the two are as thick as thieves he wouldn't mess with us about Charles." She mumbles this under her breath, even though we all can clearly hear what she's saying. So this Magneto and Charles are friends? Is this who Logan was talking about when he mentioned Charles was visiting a friend before chaos struck? Either way, Mom had a point.

"She has a point, Logan," Jean tells him sympathetically before registering the odd look Scott is giving her and doing her best to explain her intentions, "it's what we're all thinking."

Logan huffs, squinting his eyes at Magneto before uncrossing his arms and looking at Bree of all people. I look at her too. Like always, she's alert, watching and reading everything and everyone in the situation. She looks to Logan and nods, "we should trust him. But if I were you I'd be careful, he keeps thinking about spinning you around in the air like a top."

Magneto chuckles then raises an impressed eyebrow at my sister, "another telepath?" He gasps, like he's discovering one of his favorite coins in a coin collection.

"Empath," she corrects him before walking up to him and shaking his gloved hand, "I'm Sabrina, but everyone calls me Bree."

He looks at her with pure admiration and astonishment but her covers it up well in the way his grin doesn't stretch too big across his face. With grace and ease he shakes her hand, "truly amazing. I haven't seen an empath in quite some time. You know they say empaths are stronger than telepaths," he whispers the last part to her, before cutting his eyes at Jean slyly. The moment doesn't go unnoticed by Logan, Scott and I but none of us are stupid enough to attack him for one petty comment. He finally lets go of Bree's hand and looks to the adults, "why don't we discuss our course of action while the kids set up camp? Something tells me it's going to be a long night before we all get on the same page."

"Kids?" Romeo repeats and scoffs at Magneto as if he's cursed at him, "uh I don't know many kids that call fall out of the sky in a jet and come out alive."

Magneto's eyes zone in on Romeo, "in case you forgot it was me who pulled your little jet out of the sky. I'm the reason you're alive, Kid."

Romeo opens his mouth to jab back but Logan raises a finger of caution. "Don't. Just, go set up a tent or scavenge for berries," he waves off the five of us in the direction of the clearing between the trees not too far from where they were. "We've got some things to hash out."

"Mystique why don't you help the young ones?" He turns to the blue woman who still has yet to say a word, "make sure they don't injure themselves while setting up a tent."

Her name is Mystique? Regardless of her name she laughs with Magneto at some joke that's clearly between the two of them. She steps away from his side but before she gets too far Mom reaches out and grips her blue arm, "don't even think about laying your hands on any of them."

"Wouldn't dream of it," her voice isn't as wicked as I thought it would be once I finally hear it. But there is a twinge of glee in her tone that makes me want to steer clear from her as much as possible. When Mom doesn't let go of her arm Mystique raises her hand to her head as if saluting Mom to promise in almost a mocking way, "Scout's honor." With that she pulls herself out of Mom's grip to lead us into the woods. I'm starting to think maybe this whole thing was a test Charles set up for us. In reality Scarlet is safe and these are just a series of tests he's put in place for us because there is no way the universe works like this. It's too fucked up.

As I'm passing Magneto I do my best to ignore the way he focuses on me through the group. I walk beside Carrie and Bree, but that doesn't keep him from shooting curious daggers from his eyes to the side of my head. Unintentionally, my eyes flicker to his at the last possible moment. He takes the opportunity to speak. "What is your name?"

"Me?" That was a dumb question. I shake my sudden nerves, up close Magneto is far more intimidating than I prepared for. "Angelina Price-Smith," if he asked for my social security number I'd probably slip up and tell him that, too.

"Angelina," he lowers his eyes so that I'm keeping my focus only on him when he says, "you have an extraordinary power, my Child." The way he implies his words makes a nauseating sense wash over me. I can tell he wants something from me. Or maybe he wants me to want something from him. Either way I know I shouldn't get invested in whatever he's trying to sell me on.

At that I finally look away. Our interaction went from visiting grandpa to signing a deal with the devil too quickly. I press my lips together and say, "thank you," because I'm not sure what the correct response for that is.

I meet Bree at the bottom of the hill where she has her hand outstretched for me to grab. The uniform suits we have on are black, and spandex. We were each given shoes with the same material, as well as masks but none of us bothered to put those on. The second I'm at the bottom of the hill with my hand in hers she tugs me protectively to her side and says, "I don't think you should talk with Magneto as much."

I stare at the side of her profile, noting her rushed footsteps to meet up with everyone else in the clearing. My legs take long strides to keep up with her movements, "what? Why?"

"He's got this thing about powerful mutants," she tries to simplify, "it's kinda like trading cards. But he collects them and uses them when he needs them. I think he took an interest in you after you stopped the jet earlier."

"Ooh I'm so flattered," I sarcastically swoon as we make it to the clearing. When Bree doesn't laugh at my joke I set my hands on her shoulders, "I'm not gonna let the guy make me a trading card, okay? I'll be right here saving people with you and these guys until the end of time."

"Just be cautious around him, Lina. I read what he's capable of," she tells me under her breath right as Mystique approaches the two of us with a tent in her hand.

Her quick yellow eyes dart to Bree first then to me where her focus lingers for an extra moment. I glance down at the hammer in her right hand, then skeptically observe the nails in her left hand. The silence only lasts for another moment before she finally asks, "either of you know how to pitch a tent?"

Beside me Bree raises her hand in the air as if she is a student with the right answer in a classroom, "I was a Girl Scout for five years."

Romeo approaches us, and sets down the green tent in his hands. He props it up against the ground and leans forward against his elbows, "yeah well, I've survived the night in the woods with just the clothes on my back and a sleeping bag."

Now Mystique looks between Romeo and Bree. Her eyes squint when she looks at Romeo, before sliding her eyes back to Bree, "you're in charge Girl Scout." With her decisions she hands the hammer and nails to Bree who excitedly jumps in place, "make sure no body hurts themselves trying to set up camp."

Romeo scoffs dropping the tent to the ground and starts to unpack the tent from out of sleeve it came in. "Who the hell died and made you boss?" He mutters this under his breath as Mystique walks in the opposite direction. But before she gets too far she spins around and I watch her skin transform as scales flared up her body until it was like Romeo was looking in a mirror. She matched his look down to the last curl on top of his head. They had the same clothes on, the were the same height, the only thing that differed was one looked petrified and the other looked smug.

Now the two Romeos faced each other. The copy stared at the original and smirked, "not us, hopefully." And with that short expression of her mutation she spun around walking towards Carrie and Jay who began making the fire together. The further the got the more I had to squint to watch her return to her blue figure.

"I hope she decides to stay herself," Bree mumbles as she begins to unfold the tent, "one Romeo is enough for my taste."