Devourer of Sins

DEVOURER OF SINS CHAPTER TWENTY TWO (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply

A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, I think the postal service is at it again...I understand they fear dolphins. Sic Dodo on 'em! Ted can lead the charge! InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink, I'm drinking a tequila sunrise in your honor tonight for archiving! (maybe two...you never know...I'm crazy like that) Readers/Reviewers: There was an...accident...with the killbot. The Killer Kitties (tm) are working out the kinks, but two of the ducks are missing... The platypi are acting awfully happy, though, so maybe THEY did something...


Kurt stared intently at Kitty, his tail flipping back and forth unconsciously as he fixed all his attention on the girl. Her eyes were closed, wrinkles forming at the corners where she squeezed them tightly against the light, her mouth quirked in an expression similar to pain but not quite. Once, he opened his mouth to ask her if she was okay, but a slight shake of the Professor's head shut him up. _I hope to Hell she knows what she's doing...The Professor is tons of times stronger than her and stuff like this is nothing to him, easy as pie. _ Three hours had passed since Logan had taken Kitty to see Professor, three hours of his intensive instruction and desperate attempts by Kitty to control this sudden supersensory ability. "Schatz," Kurt finally murmured, "take a break..."
"No! I can do this!" she snapped, a frown marring her features.
"He's right, Kitty," the Professor nodded at Kurt appraisingly, "you've been working very hard for a long time. Take a break, rest, and practice these techniques later. I'll send for you this evening and we can evaluate your progress."
"But I think I've almost got it!"
"Kitty, it took Logan over a year to master some of these techniques. You will take longer."
"Hopefully," Kurt said firmly, taking Kitty by the elbow, "you won't need to do this much longer."
Kitty snorted. "Maybe I need medication...mutant Prozac or something." Kitty shook herself to clear mental sludge and offered a weak smile to Kurt. "I could do with some ice cream..."
"There's the Kitty I know and love!" he smiled, porting them both in a wink.
The Professor passed a tired hand over his eyes and sighed. He knew that that morning, Logan and Beast had "liberated" the corpse of the man who posed as Professor Simpson and it was resting in the lab's deep freeze even as he sat in the study. Beast had planned on examining the cadaver, but the Professor was not quite sure what the doctor was looking for, exactly. _*Hank, are you busy? * _
_*Charles! You're not going to believe this! It's...it's fascinating! _*
*_What would that be? _ * The Professor was already in motion, Beast's panic-tinged enthusiasm propelling the older man forward.
*_You have to see it to believe it... _ *
The Professor had a horrible flash of a disembodied,e, fe, furry arm lying on the lab table but received no feelings of pain or distress from Beast so was confused as to what he was seeing. Ignoring a minor ruckus in the rec room, the Professor made it to the med lab in record time. Beast was staring open-mouthed at his lab table, glasses dangling from between two thick fingers in an abandoned effort at cleaning the lenses, as if it would change what he was seeing. "Hank...what on Earth...."
"It is the most amazing thing, Charles...this white powder of Kitty's is alive!"
"Pardon?"
"Look..." he motioned for the Professor to come closer and look into the microscope. "See? They're moving! But the thing is, they weren't this morning! It was only after I..."
"Wait...they? These are a...they?" The Professor peered into the eyepiece of the microscope and stared as the tiny particles seemed to swirl in a dance, forming circles and polygons, seeming to heap on themselves before collapsing again.
"Just give it a minute...wait..." Beast was bouncing on the balls of his feet like a kid at Christmas. "See it now?"
"Huh. No-it disappeared!"
"It didn't disappear! It's mimicking the slide! Look!" Beast nudged his friend aside and gently removed the glass slip from the microscope's platform. Titling it to one side, another slide, perfectly formed to all appearances, slid off to land near the groping blue arm. "It seems to take the shape of the last thing it touches..."
"How on earth can it be doing this?" The Professor eyed the blue arm warily. "And _what _ on earth..."
"I don't know!" Beast grinned broadly, sealing the slide replica in a plastic bag and labeling it "sample B". "All I know is that I spilled my coffee this morning and it started all this!" He waved his arm expansively, taking in the entire lab. "I had some of the powder on my arm after I cleaned up and it seems to have reproduced my append..it..it's disturbing, actually, how lifelike it seems..."
"These...things...are not powder are they?" The Professor could not help himself-he reached out to touch the arm. It felt alive, warm to the touch, feeling as if muscles and skin gently gave way under his firm pressure.
"Not if what we're seeing can be believed. I have no idea where to begin, Charles!"
Professor Xavier felt a strange sense of vertigo as he took in all that was before him. "Have you examined the cadaver yet?"
"Not yet...this whole thing just took my attention." Beast nodded at the unasked request and went to the deep freeze, home of various organic samples and a secret stash of ice cream he had managed to hide from Kitty and pried open the heavy lid. "Oh. Well. This is highly irregular."
"What is it?" Even before he looked, the Professor knew.
"The body seems to be missing..."
"How? You've been here all day!"
Beast frowned, reaching in to lift the apparently empty body bag marked in large white letters: "Bayville Coroner-Do Not Remove From Morgue." As he lifted, white powder fell like snow onto the floor and edge of the freezer, hissing as ice crystals met with warm air. "The Hell?"

_Perfect...everyone is off doing their own thing...Now all I need is Scott to come down stairs... _ Jean smiled to herself, arranging her robe artistically around her knees to expose the maximum amount of flesh. Rahne had gone for another run, depressing and confounding Jamie, sending the youth to his room in a fit of pique. Remy and Jubilee..._I don't want to picture it...It's probably illegal in most states and involves high-fat dairy items. _ In fact, a slight tendril of psychic questing gave her guess truth. Kurt and Kitty had gone for a walk, Kurt proclaiming loudly that she needed fresh air and he was going to see to it that she got it. Lance and Amara had made it known in no uncertain terms that they did not want to be disturbed and Jean had no idea where Todd or Rogue were, and really did not want to dwell on it. _*Scott, could you come down here please? _ * She tried to compose the butterflies and her stomach but just gave up after a moment's futility. *_Scott? _ *
*_ Just a second...I'm kind of...er...busy... * _ In fact, Scott had been entertaining very hot and sweaty thoughts of Jean in the shower and was startled when her voice broke into his thoughts. He threw out every mental image he could of baseball, car parts, school work and sweat socks, hoping that Jean had not seen what he was picturing her doing to him. *_What's so important? _ *
She was able to keep the sigh out of her thought as she replied, * _ Just the last part of your Christmas present. Don't you want it?_*
Something about the tone in her question made Scott finish his shower in record time. His hair still dripped water as he hurried down the stairs, stopping short when he saw the tree. Jean was leaning on her elbows beneath it, robe tied quite indecently and revealing more than it covered. "Jean?" he breathed, managing to keep his voice from breaking too badly.
"It occurred to me today that we never got to meet under the tree last night..." She inclined her chin in invitation, Scott accepting and striding to her side in two paces, not sure whether to sit or kneel next to her. "So while everyone is busy this evening..."
"Jean! It's not even ten o'clock yet!" Scott said, silently berating himself for sounding like an old woman.
"You've got one more present under the tree, you know..." she said, shifting to reveal a bow in a strategic location.1
Scott's mouth went dry and his heart thudded heavily in his chest, all blood abandoning his brain along with any remaining protests. Before Jean could tease him any further, Scott was kissing her, shoving aside her robe and throwing the silly bow to one side. Jean rolled them until they were hidden by the lower branches of the tree, the darkened foyer hiding their coupling. The colored lights on the tree dotting Jean's skin with faerie lights and Scott kissed each spot, working downward towards the source of her desire, Jean's hands clutching at his shoulders desperately. His tongue seared a path down her stomach and across her hip, pausing for a moment before he tasted her core. Her breath was coming in hitches and gasps, her fingers digging into the muscles of his upper arms nearly painfully. His breath teased the damp curls between her thighs and he took one long breath before touching his tongue to the pink folds there. "Scott," she breathed, arching to meet his mouth.
"I don't think anyone is up!" Kitty's voice echoed in the hall, making the couple under the tree freeze in sudden panic. Kitty phased Kurt and herself through the door, stomping snow off their shoes as they came into the foyer. She wrinkled her nose and looked around the room as if she could see through anything in her path. "Do you smell that?"
Kurt's eyes widened as he caught on before Kitty did just what was going on. A little too loudly, he said, "Come on, Katzchen, let's go upstairs and get you out of these wet clothes!"
"Kurt! That is, like, the worst pick up line I've ever heard!" Kitty giggled. Kurt tugged on her hand, trying to lead her towards the stairs, but she resisted. She pressed against him, nuzzling his neck with her nose and lips, making him sigh in reciprocation. "We can just stay down here you know...no one's up, it seems, and I've always wanted to do it in the kitchen..."
"Huh?" Kurt's brain snapped like a rubber band. "Do what?" He was not sure, but he thought he heard a snort from the direction of the tree.
"You know..._it _ ." She tugged on his shirtfront and smiled sweetly. "No one has to know..."
"Ja, Katzchen, someone will know..." Kurt pulled back and sighed loudly. "Kitty, you've been unwell..."
"But I'm better now! This whole sense thing isn't nearly as bad, but I think that might be because I've frozen my brain out there, and I really, really, really want to get warm. You know..._w_ .._ ..." Kitty backed away, shedding her jacket in the process and leaving it a soft lump on the floor.
Under the tree, Scott and Jean were frozen in an odd tableau. He had not removed his mouth from her center in his panic and Jean was torn between amusement, pleasure, and annoyance that Kurt just would not go with Kitty so they could get out from under the tree. _*Scott! You can come up for air you know! * _
*_Yeah, but what fun would that be? _ * Kurt was still arguing gently with Kitty-Scott could see their feet dancing back and forth before the tree, Kurt struggling towards the stairs and Kitty towards the kitchen. Feeling particularly wicked, Scott slowly began laving Jean's femininity, her almost soundless hiss of breath making him grin against her, encouraging him. Kitty seemed to be winning, Kurt's feet edging in the direction of the kitchen, so Scott increased his efforts, nibbling at the bundle of nerves making Jean shake even as he slid one finger into her opening. Kitty's sweater hit the floor and Kurt sighed audibly. His own jacket joined Kitty's on the floor and Scott started to ignore what the other couple was doing, secure in the idea that they would not be caught. A definite metallic clink put paid to that thought, though.
"My necklace!" Kitty gasped.
"I'll get it!"
"No, I...oh!" Kitty's eyes went wide and her face went red.
Scott and Jean did not have to look to know they had been caught, but look they did. Kurt was still standing upright but his tail lashed in embarrassment. Kitty was the picture of mortification as she stared, unable to look away out of panic. Jean hastily covered herself with her robe and that seemed to break Kitty's trance. "Oh my God!" she cried, scooping her necklace off the floor. "I'm so totally sorry and oh my God...."
"We'll just leave you two," Kurt said, louder than necessary to be heard over Kitty's babble, and took her by the upper arms to pull her finally towards the stairs.
The front door banged open and Rahne bolted through, shaking snow from her hair and fastening her shirt as she did so. "Kitty! What the Hell are you doing in here?" she said, voice tainted with shock and annoyance.
"Who the Hell else is coming in?" Scott moaned.
"What are you two...oh...I see..." Rahne cleared her throat and averted her eyes, letting Scott finish pulling on his clothes and Jean to die of embarrassment. "Kitty," Rahne said with some determination, "how did you get in here so fast and what the blue blazes were you on about outside?"
"Huh?"
"Rahne, Kitty was with me-we were walking. We've been in here for..er..."
Jean spoke up, "About five minutes!"
"Thanks..." Kurt cleared his throat and continued, "about five minutes...what are you talking about?"
"Kitty was just outside, past the lake! She was runnin' around naked as the day she was born and yellin' at me 'bout me sins! Kit, I don't know what the fuck you're on, but..."
"Just a minute!" Kitty screeched. "I was WHAT?"
"Naked...raving..." Rahne narrowed her eyes and sniffed deeply. "And not you...Kitty, it wasn't you out there..."
"Thank you!" she snapped.
Kurt chanced a glance at Scott and Jean, pulling Kitty to him. "Rahne...what do you mean?"
"She smells like Kitty...that girl out there did, but she smelled...chemical as well. Like medicine. I thought mebbe Kitty here had been taking somethin'...what the Hell is going on here?"
Jean sighed and rolled out from under the tree, mustering the shreds of her dignity to say, "I think it's time everyone was brought into this..."
1 Thank ProPhile for that mental picture... :)