Persistence of Memory
folder
X-Men - Animated Series (all) › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
57
Views:
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Category:
X-Men - Animated Series (all) › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
57
Views:
7,365
Reviews:
68
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own X-Men Evolution, or any of the characters from it. I make no money from from the writing of this story.
2
Persistence of Memory Chapter Two (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply
A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse and Hamster Witch… ‘Your bodyguard?’ ‘His
gardener!’ InterNutter, TC and Maxwell
Pink are extra shiny groovy bunnies for archiving. J ProPhile is extra sparkly because he’s a
smutmuse. (No idea how those correlate
unless it’s some weird 1970’s 51 thing.)
Readers/Reviewers: *BLUSH * Thanks!
Kitty was
uncomfortably aware of the whispers that followed her around the mansion for
the rest of the day after the Danger Room incident. Logan was putting up stoic front, only admitting that Kitty had
gotten some good hits in and his fall and subsequent brief bout of dizziness
was merely the result of some weird vibrations off the new equipment in the
Danger Room and not anything she had done.
But they all knew better. The
rumor mill always does. Only one of the
new students had enough bravura to ask Kitty in person. “Did you really do all that to Mister
Logan?”
“Do all what?”
she asked wearily, pushing away from the desk she was sitting at in the
library. “I didn’t phase through him, I
didn’t do anything with any metal bits, I don’t have any powers other than
phasing… What exactly am I supposed to have done to him?” “Um,” the
faintly green-tinged boy murmured, shuffling his feet in embarrassment. “Nothin’ I guess.”
“Leech,
right?”
“Yeah,” he
said, looking up at her shyly.
Geez. He makes Jamie look like a senior
citizen. “Look, what happened
earlier was a pure accident. Things
like that happen sometimes. I’m no one
to be afraid of, okay?”
“Okay,” he
said, sounding unsure. “I guess.”
y
sy
sighed and closed her binder, abandoning all hope of studying for her
PSAT. “Has anyone given you the grand
tour yet?”
“That girl
with the stripy hair did yesterday,” he said, sounding a bit bolder, more
comfortable. “But I don’t remember
where anything is!” His confidence
faded in a snap.
“It took me
a while to get used to the new layout, too,” Kitty lied, knowing full well that
she had gotten lost only that morning
in the new addition to the massive house. “Want me to show you the key rooms so you can find your way to
class tomorrow?” Leech nodded furtively
and followed Kitty from the library.
“This is the old part of the Institute,” she began, showing him various
studies and nooks and closets to be avoided for fear of toppling storage boxes
down on himself. “This is the start of
the…Oh!” Automatically, she covered the
young boy’s eyes with her hand. “What
the Hell do you two think you’re doing?”
Todd
straightened his shirt without a hint of guilt. “Makin’ out. You should
recognize that by now.”
Rogue,
trying to surreptitiously wipe a trace of slime from her neck, said as lightly
as she could, “So how’s Logan?”
“Peachy
keen,” Kitty said, her hand still over Leech’s eyes. “Both of you have your own rooms!”
“Look who’s
talkin’, Miss Downstairs Coat Closet.” Todd
managed not to grin but his brows twitched in amusement at Kitty’s strangled
growl of embarrassment. “Who’s this?”
“Leech,” he
named himself. “Who’re you?”
“Toad,” he
said, grinning and dodging Rogue’s jabbing elbow. “Us green guys gotta stick together. Wanna see where Remy hides the beer?”
“Who’s
Remy?” Leech asked, slightly in awe of Todd as they headed on down the hall.
“He’s not
really going to show him, is he?” Kitty asked fretfully.
“Nah. Remy moves it ‘round,” Rogue sighed. “Never leaves it in the same place too long
after the Great Hangover Epidemic of 2003.”
“Bobby and
St John still get twitchy whenever they see a bottle.” Kitty sighed and joined Rogue in leaning
against the wall. “How many are we up
to now?”
“Fifty,
counting the adults. What did
you do to Logan earlier, anyway?”
“I’m not
gonna get away from this, am I?”
“Not until
you spill it, chica.”
“Okay, we
were running that really annoying sim that sounds like you’re inside a meat
grinder or something with all that whirring noise and…”
“Wait,
wait, wait!” Rogue cried suddenly.
“Stay right here!” She pushed
away from the wall and dashed down the hall.
Kitty barely had time to sigh before she was back with Jubilee and
Amara. “Now you can tell!”
“Don’t you
want to wait for Jean?” Kitty asked archly.
“She’s at
work,” Jubilee said, waving a negligent hand.
“She’ll understand that we couldn’t wait.”
Kitty
rolled her eyes and sighed loudly for effect. “Okay, we were in that new sim…”
“Ugh. The whirring one?” Amara asked with some
disdain. “I melted the gears last week
and he fixed it!”
“That’s the
one,” Kitty affirmed. “Everything was
going…well is the wrong word…”
“He was
kicking your ass?”
“No one’s
ass was getting kicked at this point!”
She pushed her bangs from her eyes and soldiered on. “He came at me with the whole claws thing
going on and I phased to avoid the whole death thing and then I, like, grabbed
this random metal junk and I, like, swung at him…” She paused, closing her eyes to rein in her nervousness over the
matter and try to control her remerging speech patterns. “Okay, I swung at him
anstenstead of just making him growl, he went down like a sack of wet cement.”
“Whoa.” Jubilee was chewing her gum furiously,
intent on the story. “Then what?”
“I thought
he was trying to get me to react more or some junk so I, like, did this
roundhouse kick and I think I broke my toe again.”
“What about
Logan?” Rogue demanded. “What’d you do
that made you think he had his ass kicked?”
“He didn’t
recover quick as usual,” Kitty explained.
“It was like I’d really hurt him or something!” After a pause, she
added, “He even bruised for a bit.”
“He bruised?”
Amara asked incredulously. “How?”
“Blood
coagulated under the surface of the skin. How do you think?” Kitty sagged against the wall again and
said, “I just freaked out when he went down like that. He was fine after a few minutes but still…”
“Logan’s
practically invulnerable,” Jubilet int in, shaking her head. “Who’d a thought a girl would drop him?”
“That’s not
funny,” Kitty said sternly. “It was
like his healing factor was gone for a while!”
Todd and
Leech chose that moment to reappear. “Thought
you’d still be here,” he said to Rogue abandoning Leech to slip an arm around
his girlfriend’s waist. “We got shooed
back up here.”
“Why?” Amara arched a brow. “We have a mandatory orientation for class
n hon hour.”
“Banshee
just told us to get our asses up here, yo.”
He shrugged and jerked a thumb at Leech. “He’s got some freaky powers!”
Leech
looked distinctly embarrassed under interested gazes. “Not really,” he mumbled.
“I just cancel people out.”
“Like
Wanda?” Kitty asked Todd under her breath.
“Nah,” Todd
said, warming to the topic. “Wanda’s
gotta want to do it…he just does!”
Leech
shifted from one foot to the other nervously.
“I gotta go,” he muttered, turning and running down the hall and
disappearing around the newly-built corner towards the dorms in the new wing.
“He cancels?”
Kitty asked. “Maybe he was in the
Danger Room or something…”
“Couldn’t
have been if you phased,” Rogue pointed out.
“Something else made Logan go all Scarlett O’Hara.”[1]
Jubilee
shuddered. “Thanks for that mental pic
of Wolverine in petticoats.”
“You all
are disturbed,” Amara proclaimed imperiously. “I’m going to take a nap if the
meeting is canceled.”
“We don’t
know that,” Kitty called after her. Amara
did not respond.
“Hey, if
things are canceled,” Todd began suggestively. Rogue’s smirk was all the answer
he needed.
“Ugh,”
Jubilee groaned as the two tried to act nonchalant, walking back down the hall
to Rogue’s room. “At least and and Kurt
are cute about it. Those two need a
hose turned on ‘em.”
Kitty
barely noticed Jubilee’s mild insult. “Why
aren’t we allowed downstairs?”
Jubilee
popped her gum. “No idea. I left Nero running on a temperamental computer. If you find out about the orientation, lemme
know, kay?”
Kitty was
nodding to empty air as Jubilee bounded back to her bedroom. It was the last official day of summer break
with the new and first semester at the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters
impending; lethargy was rampant. I could go see what Kurt’s up to until the
meeting starts. Or I could be nosy and
go downstairs and see what’s going on…
She bit her lip as she hemmed and hawed, her hormones and curiosity
engaged in a pitched battle for several long moments. Curiosity killed the cat.
Guess I’d better hope for nine lives.
Geez. I’m corny even in my internal monologue. She hurried on silent feet to the end of
the hall and pressed her ear against the door of the upstairs study. Please don’t let there be someone really,
really quiet in there…Please let it be empty… She closed her eyes and phased through the door, already thinking of an excuse should a reason for her
presence be requested. The room was
dark and apparently empty, letting her breathe a sigh of relief. Praying her luck would hold, she let herself
fall through the floor, using a relatively newfound ability to control her
descent[2]
to prevent herself from landing hard on the wooden floor of the library. It was eerily silent in the brightly lit
room, evidence of recent occupation obvious in the open books and still-fizzing
open can of soda on one of the tables. “Hello?”
she called softly to no avail. “Anyone
here?” She cautiously checked the
library and found it was as she hoped and suspected—empty. With a silence born of caution, she phased
through the door and into the hallway, pausing in the oppressive quiet. She was about to call out again when she
heard a sharp clicking noise, followed by the snick of elevator doors
closing. She hurried down the hall
towards the elevator, hidden behind tasteful wood paneling. Kitty stifled a gasp as Logan, Beast and
Storm rounded the corner, the large blue doctor pushing a stretcher in front of
them. The Professor lay, silent and
still as stone, on the gurney and the faces of the conscious were grim. She phased through the wall and cursed as
she heard the electric hiss and pop of circuits frying. Damn damn damn damn!
“You go on,”
Logan’s voice drifted through the thick wall.
“I’ll check the breakers and meet you in the hangar. Don’t want a fire to start…”
Shit! Kitty looked around desperately for
somewhere to hide, finding herself in the small security monitoring room with
the banks of image screens and audio feed equipment. Down we go… Kitty
let herself phase through the floor and breathed a sigh of relief as the
darkness of sublevel one welcomed her.
You
have an intmintment?
“Jono!” She struck out blindly, batting
ineffectually at the dark. “Don’t scare
me like that!”
“How would
you rather him scare you, Liebes?” Kurt purred behind her.
“Damn it
all!” Kitty cried. “You two are evil!” She was not sure, bue the thought Jono might
be laughing. Somehow.
Kurt’s
glowing eyes appeared in front of her. “What’s
wrong?”
“Do you
guys know what’s going on up there? And
is there a light nearby? This is really
kind of…weird.”
The space
flooded with fluorescent light thanks to Jono and his proximity to the
switch. What’s going on? We late for that bloody orientation?
“They just
took the Professor out of here on a stretcher,” she said without preamble.
Kurt hissed
a curse. “Why?”
“I don’t
know. Todd said Banshee made him and
Leech get off the ground floor and I couldn’t find anyone else there…” Kitty shrugged. “What do we do?”
We do
nothing, Jono stated. We
wait until they come back and tell us what’s going on.
Kurt
snorted. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
[1] She swooned
a lot.
[2] Kitty’s able
to move up and down with some degree of control so long as she “walks” like she’s
going up or down stairs. At least that’s
what I remember from the comics…I think in the cartoon she just sort of has a
slow descent.
Disclaimers Apply
A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE ™, Prophetic Muse and Hamster Witch… ‘Your bodyguard?’ ‘His
gardener!’ InterNutter, TC and Maxwell
Pink are extra shiny groovy bunnies for archiving. J ProPhile is extra sparkly because he’s a
smutmuse. (No idea how those correlate
unless it’s some weird 1970’s 51 thing.)
Readers/Reviewers: *BLUSH * Thanks!
Kitty was
uncomfortably aware of the whispers that followed her around the mansion for
the rest of the day after the Danger Room incident. Logan was putting up stoic front, only admitting that Kitty had
gotten some good hits in and his fall and subsequent brief bout of dizziness
was merely the result of some weird vibrations off the new equipment in the
Danger Room and not anything she had done.
But they all knew better. The
rumor mill always does. Only one of the
new students had enough bravura to ask Kitty in person. “Did you really do all that to Mister
Logan?”
“Do all what?”
she asked wearily, pushing away from the desk she was sitting at in the
library. “I didn’t phase through him, I
didn’t do anything with any metal bits, I don’t have any powers other than
phasing… What exactly am I supposed to have done to him?” “Um,” the
faintly green-tinged boy murmured, shuffling his feet in embarrassment. “Nothin’ I guess.”
“Leech,
right?”
“Yeah,” he
said, looking up at her shyly.
Geez. He makes Jamie look like a senior
citizen. “Look, what happened
earlier was a pure accident. Things
like that happen sometimes. I’m no one
to be afraid of, okay?”
“Okay,” he
said, sounding unsure. “I guess.”
y
sy
sighed and closed her binder, abandoning all hope of studying for her
PSAT. “Has anyone given you the grand
tour yet?”
“That girl
with the stripy hair did yesterday,” he said, sounding a bit bolder, more
comfortable. “But I don’t remember
where anything is!” His confidence
faded in a snap.
“It took me
a while to get used to the new layout, too,” Kitty lied, knowing full well that
she had gotten lost only that morning
in the new addition to the massive house. “Want me to show you the key rooms so you can find your way to
class tomorrow?” Leech nodded furtively
and followed Kitty from the library.
“This is the old part of the Institute,” she began, showing him various
studies and nooks and closets to be avoided for fear of toppling storage boxes
down on himself. “This is the start of
the…Oh!” Automatically, she covered the
young boy’s eyes with her hand. “What
the Hell do you two think you’re doing?”
Todd
straightened his shirt without a hint of guilt. “Makin’ out. You should
recognize that by now.”
Rogue,
trying to surreptitiously wipe a trace of slime from her neck, said as lightly
as she could, “So how’s Logan?”
“Peachy
keen,” Kitty said, her hand still over Leech’s eyes. “Both of you have your own rooms!”
“Look who’s
talkin’, Miss Downstairs Coat Closet.” Todd
managed not to grin but his brows twitched in amusement at Kitty’s strangled
growl of embarrassment. “Who’s this?”
“Leech,” he
named himself. “Who’re you?”
“Toad,” he
said, grinning and dodging Rogue’s jabbing elbow. “Us green guys gotta stick together. Wanna see where Remy hides the beer?”
“Who’s
Remy?” Leech asked, slightly in awe of Todd as they headed on down the hall.
“He’s not
really going to show him, is he?” Kitty asked fretfully.
“Nah. Remy moves it ‘round,” Rogue sighed. “Never leaves it in the same place too long
after the Great Hangover Epidemic of 2003.”
“Bobby and
St John still get twitchy whenever they see a bottle.” Kitty sighed and joined Rogue in leaning
against the wall. “How many are we up
to now?”
“Fifty,
counting the adults. What did
you do to Logan earlier, anyway?”
“I’m not
gonna get away from this, am I?”
“Not until
you spill it, chica.”
“Okay, we
were running that really annoying sim that sounds like you’re inside a meat
grinder or something with all that whirring noise and…”
“Wait,
wait, wait!” Rogue cried suddenly.
“Stay right here!” She pushed
away from the wall and dashed down the hall.
Kitty barely had time to sigh before she was back with Jubilee and
Amara. “Now you can tell!”
“Don’t you
want to wait for Jean?” Kitty asked archly.
“She’s at
work,” Jubilee said, waving a negligent hand.
“She’ll understand that we couldn’t wait.”
Kitty
rolled her eyes and sighed loudly for effect. “Okay, we were in that new sim…”
“Ugh. The whirring one?” Amara asked with some
disdain. “I melted the gears last week
and he fixed it!”
“That’s the
one,” Kitty affirmed. “Everything was
going…well is the wrong word…”
“He was
kicking your ass?”
“No one’s
ass was getting kicked at this point!”
She pushed her bangs from her eyes and soldiered on. “He came at me with the whole claws thing
going on and I phased to avoid the whole death thing and then I, like, grabbed
this random metal junk and I, like, swung at him…” She paused, closing her eyes to rein in her nervousness over the
matter and try to control her remerging speech patterns. “Okay, I swung at him
anstenstead of just making him growl, he went down like a sack of wet cement.”
“Whoa.” Jubilee was chewing her gum furiously,
intent on the story. “Then what?”
“I thought
he was trying to get me to react more or some junk so I, like, did this
roundhouse kick and I think I broke my toe again.”
“What about
Logan?” Rogue demanded. “What’d you do
that made you think he had his ass kicked?”
“He didn’t
recover quick as usual,” Kitty explained.
“It was like I’d really hurt him or something!” After a pause, she
added, “He even bruised for a bit.”
“He bruised?”
Amara asked incredulously. “How?”
“Blood
coagulated under the surface of the skin. How do you think?” Kitty sagged against the wall again and
said, “I just freaked out when he went down like that. He was fine after a few minutes but still…”
“Logan’s
practically invulnerable,” Jubilet int in, shaking her head. “Who’d a thought a girl would drop him?”
“That’s not
funny,” Kitty said sternly. “It was
like his healing factor was gone for a while!”
Todd and
Leech chose that moment to reappear. “Thought
you’d still be here,” he said to Rogue abandoning Leech to slip an arm around
his girlfriend’s waist. “We got shooed
back up here.”
“Why?” Amara arched a brow. “We have a mandatory orientation for class
n hon hour.”
“Banshee
just told us to get our asses up here, yo.”
He shrugged and jerked a thumb at Leech. “He’s got some freaky powers!”
Leech
looked distinctly embarrassed under interested gazes. “Not really,” he mumbled.
“I just cancel people out.”
“Like
Wanda?” Kitty asked Todd under her breath.
“Nah,” Todd
said, warming to the topic. “Wanda’s
gotta want to do it…he just does!”
Leech
shifted from one foot to the other nervously.
“I gotta go,” he muttered, turning and running down the hall and
disappearing around the newly-built corner towards the dorms in the new wing.
“He cancels?”
Kitty asked. “Maybe he was in the
Danger Room or something…”
“Couldn’t
have been if you phased,” Rogue pointed out.
“Something else made Logan go all Scarlett O’Hara.”[1]
Jubilee
shuddered. “Thanks for that mental pic
of Wolverine in petticoats.”
“You all
are disturbed,” Amara proclaimed imperiously. “I’m going to take a nap if the
meeting is canceled.”
“We don’t
know that,” Kitty called after her. Amara
did not respond.
“Hey, if
things are canceled,” Todd began suggestively. Rogue’s smirk was all the answer
he needed.
“Ugh,”
Jubilee groaned as the two tried to act nonchalant, walking back down the hall
to Rogue’s room. “At least and and Kurt
are cute about it. Those two need a
hose turned on ‘em.”
Kitty
barely noticed Jubilee’s mild insult. “Why
aren’t we allowed downstairs?”
Jubilee
popped her gum. “No idea. I left Nero running on a temperamental computer. If you find out about the orientation, lemme
know, kay?”
Kitty was
nodding to empty air as Jubilee bounded back to her bedroom. It was the last official day of summer break
with the new and first semester at the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters
impending; lethargy was rampant. I could go see what Kurt’s up to until the
meeting starts. Or I could be nosy and
go downstairs and see what’s going on…
She bit her lip as she hemmed and hawed, her hormones and curiosity
engaged in a pitched battle for several long moments. Curiosity killed the cat.
Guess I’d better hope for nine lives.
Geez. I’m corny even in my internal monologue. She hurried on silent feet to the end of
the hall and pressed her ear against the door of the upstairs study. Please don’t let there be someone really,
really quiet in there…Please let it be empty… She closed her eyes and phased through the door, already thinking of an excuse should a reason for her
presence be requested. The room was
dark and apparently empty, letting her breathe a sigh of relief. Praying her luck would hold, she let herself
fall through the floor, using a relatively newfound ability to control her
descent[2]
to prevent herself from landing hard on the wooden floor of the library. It was eerily silent in the brightly lit
room, evidence of recent occupation obvious in the open books and still-fizzing
open can of soda on one of the tables. “Hello?”
she called softly to no avail. “Anyone
here?” She cautiously checked the
library and found it was as she hoped and suspected—empty. With a silence born of caution, she phased
through the door and into the hallway, pausing in the oppressive quiet. She was about to call out again when she
heard a sharp clicking noise, followed by the snick of elevator doors
closing. She hurried down the hall
towards the elevator, hidden behind tasteful wood paneling. Kitty stifled a gasp as Logan, Beast and
Storm rounded the corner, the large blue doctor pushing a stretcher in front of
them. The Professor lay, silent and
still as stone, on the gurney and the faces of the conscious were grim. She phased through the wall and cursed as
she heard the electric hiss and pop of circuits frying. Damn damn damn damn!
“You go on,”
Logan’s voice drifted through the thick wall.
“I’ll check the breakers and meet you in the hangar. Don’t want a fire to start…”
Shit! Kitty looked around desperately for
somewhere to hide, finding herself in the small security monitoring room with
the banks of image screens and audio feed equipment. Down we go… Kitty
let herself phase through the floor and breathed a sigh of relief as the
darkness of sublevel one welcomed her.
You
have an intmintment?
“Jono!” She struck out blindly, batting
ineffectually at the dark. “Don’t scare
me like that!”
“How would
you rather him scare you, Liebes?” Kurt purred behind her.
“Damn it
all!” Kitty cried. “You two are evil!” She was not sure, bue the thought Jono might
be laughing. Somehow.
Kurt’s
glowing eyes appeared in front of her. “What’s
wrong?”
“Do you
guys know what’s going on up there? And
is there a light nearby? This is really
kind of…weird.”
The space
flooded with fluorescent light thanks to Jono and his proximity to the
switch. What’s going on? We late for that bloody orientation?
“They just
took the Professor out of here on a stretcher,” she said without preamble.
Kurt hissed
a curse. “Why?”
“I don’t
know. Todd said Banshee made him and
Leech get off the ground floor and I couldn’t find anyone else there…” Kitty shrugged. “What do we do?”
We do
nothing, Jono stated. We
wait until they come back and tell us what’s going on.
Kurt
snorted. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
[1] She swooned
a lot.
[2] Kitty’s able
to move up and down with some degree of control so long as she “walks” like she’s
going up or down stairs. At least that’s
what I remember from the comics…I think in the cartoon she just sort of has a
slow descent.