Shadow King: Karma Chameleon

[x-jeangrey.livejournal.com]

Kyle slips while talking to Jeannie...



Jeannie didn't tend to wander the building much - it was huge, and way too easy to get lost, and the way everybody looked at her was so weird. But, while the rooms they'd let her and her mom use were nice, sometimes a girl just needed to get out and move. Hands tucked deep into the pockets of the stone-washed jean jacket she'd found in the attic she headed downstairs toward where she heard voices, wanting some company her own age for a bit. Even if nobody here believed they were her age.

Kyle barely noticed Jean, walking with a double armful of library books, a bag of beef jerky snagged on one claw and three DVD's stacked on top of the books. It was the smell of hairspray that got his attention, and caused the cascade of books onto the floor as he grabbed at his nose, flailed, and only recognized the other person as "sort of an adult" in time to stop from swearing loudly. "Dude, Madonna explosion..." he muttered.

"Oh my God!" Jeannie practically squealed. "You really think so?" Wow. Madonna. She could only dream of being that cool.

His attempt to re-stack his books was paused as Kyle stared for a long moment. Right face, right hair color. Wrong clothes, wrong smell. Way wrong smell. "All you need are those like, fingerless gloves." He said, trying to figure out if this was some weird prank, or more of the "All the telepaths are crazy now.". He was suspecting the latter.

"Yeah, I know." Shrugging somewhat awkwardly she stuffed her hands into her gloves, glancing away. "The only gloves I could find were, you know, real gloves and it's totally too cold to be cutting those up." Jeannie had considered it anyway, but if they weren't black and lacy it so didn't count.

Okay, definitely not some kind of prank, this was legitimate weird. "So, uh, Dr. Grey... Dr. Summers... no, wait, Dr. Grey-Summ... " Kyle stumbled over what exactly he was supposed to be calling 80's-pop-idol-Jean. "Miss Jean!" There, that would work. "Uh. Yeah, I bet those are kinda hard to find right now. With it being, like, winter and all."

Dr. Grey, in Jeannie's mind, was her father, but they'd told her she grew up to be a doctor so she could possibly have coped with that. It was when the boy kept going that Jeanie went very, very still. Dr. Grey-Summers... The ring that had been on her finger, which she'd buried in a drawer in her room so she didn't have to think about it, was now very much on her mind. "Dr. Grey-Summers... would be me?" she asked, completely ignoring his question.

~Ohshit~ "Uh. " Kyle ran his hand through his hair, which only made it look even more like a haystack then usual, and prayed for a sudden attack of ninjas. Which did not materialize. "Kinda?"

"And who," she asked, fixing the boy with a hard stare, "is M-Mr. Summers?" She had to know, she had to.

Why couldn't the teacher with amnesia be one of the ones he didn't like? Or one of the ones that he could loom over? "Uh." Kyle said. Again. "Mr. Summers is Mr. Summers. He's, like, the head... teacher in charge of being in charge of here. Except for the Professor who... man, school administration confuses me." Maybe if he played dumb, she wouldn't catch on. Obviously -this- Dr. Grey had no idea who he was, and therefore, hadn't ever seen his essays and maybe she'd think he was stupid.

"Wow... so are you a total airhead or what?" Jeannie's look had shifted to one of withering disdain - largely to cover her shock. "I mean, you may be, like, a senior or something, but even I can figure out who my teachers are." Head teacher, huh? She'd married a teacher - ew.

Success! Kyle was greatly relieved, and oddly pleased with himself. And decided that this must be how Marius felt most of the time. "Yeah, but my girlfriend's cute and I am awesome at football, so it all works out." Might as well play it to the hilt. "I know who my gym teacher is, it's just history and English that throw me off." It wasn't technically a lie. The matter of history teachers had changed twice this year.

Jeannie rolled her eyes. "Shades of John Hughes much? Whatever." She opened her mouth to say something else and then stopped dead for a second. Head teacher... Head master... "Wait, Scott? That Scott guy's last name is Summers?"

Kyle clapped one hand over his face and groaned. "Yeah. Mr. Summers first name is Scott. Oh, and he teaches shop and Drivers' Ed sometimes too, besides whatever else he does." She wasn't wearing a ring, she looked like she'd fallen out of an episode of "I love the 80's", hosted by Debbie Gibson. He was so going to get a lecture on something. He didn't know what, but there was definitely going to be a lecture involved, eventually.

Ok, she would not freak out. She wouldn't. Particularly not in front of the senior. Who... was clearly realizing he wasn't supposed to have said anything. Which, given the fact that Summers hadn't said anything either, was probably true. "Hey, chill dude. I'm no tattletale, not gonna get you in shit." Wasn't him she was mad at.

A small part of Kyle's brain registered that he should probably somehow discreetly get away and page Mr. Summers or someone. The rest of him was occupied with just how weird it was to hear the words "Chill" , "dude", and "shit" from Dr. Jean Grey-Summers. So instead of a polite excuse to get away from this increasingly weird situation, what came out of his mouth was "Sweet. Hey, wanna go play DDR? It's like Pac-Man, only with your feet."

Woah. A senior wanted to hang out with her. Man, if she ever got back to her school she'd automatically be, like, the coolest girl, ever. The very idea distracted her from her plan of going to find Mr. Summers and kick his ass or something, at least for the moment. "That'd be totally awesome," Jeannie said, grinning brightly. "I gotta do something first, though. And I should find out if I'm allowed to go to the arcade."

"No worries. But you don't have to go out. We have some video games here. It's, you know, safer. I mean..." Kyle pointed at his not-entirely-exposed ears. "With the weirdness. Hard to go out for some of us."

"Oh." Yeah, that made sense, she guessed. Plus, it'd probably look pretty weird if she went to an arcade, too. "Cool beans. So... where do you play games, then?"

"We have a rec room. It's... " Kyle searched for a moment for the appropiate Ninja Turtles-esque word, decided that Michealangelo was probably a bit much and then shrugged. "Huge. Won't even matter that Cain's still in there." He glossed over the basic directions on how to find it, leaving out the alternate "Raid the kitchen" route and grinned. "I gotta go dump my pile of research project of doom in my room, but I can meet you down there." And that way he could email Mr. Summers and warn him.

"I'll see you there in a bit," Jeannie said with a grin.




...and she goes to confront Scott.





Kyle had had a good plan - he'd gotten away from Jean without letting the six foot tall eleven year old know he intended to warn Scott. Hell, given she didn't know what the hell email was the plan was basically flawless on his end. Jean had unknowingly even given him extra time, since she'd had to stop for directions to the headmaster's office, and then part way there had changed her mind and went stomping back to the room
they'd given her to get the thing she'd stuck in the drawer and done her damnedest not to think about. That extra time, however, didn't do a bit of good, given that Scott, working on paperwork, had heard his email program beep at him and decided to deal with it later.

Jean more or less slammed into the headmaster's office, not caring if she got yelled at for interrupting a teacher. Striding forward she slapped the golden ring down onto his desk and then stuck her hands on her hips, glaring at him. "So, like, were you ever going to tell me the whole deal with this or what?"

Scott had managed not to flinch as she stormed in - or at the sight of what had offended her so. "Well," he said as steadily as he could, "I was kind of hoping to wait until after you no longer thought you were eleven, Jean. I'm sure you can see how it would be a little awkward."

"Oh, yeah. Totally ok to tell me I spent God only knows how long in school and became a doctor and stuff, but can't tell me I was, like, in love and married and stuff? Boring school, yes, but happy, nope. Can't do that. Smooth move, ex-lax. Did you think I was a complete airhead and didn't notice the shiny ring?"

"No, but I didn't think I needed to burden you with an old, scarred one-eyed husband while you were trying to figure out why you couldn't remember years of your life." His mouth twitched, absurdly, in an almost-smile. "One of those adult-type attempts to be sensitive."

"See, this is why old people are lame." Jeannie snagged the ring back off the desk, clutching it in her fist as she turned and dropped awkwardly onto his couch. "And here's me thinking I grew up into a total Joanie who never even..." She trailed off and blushed suddenly, rushing on. "And I guess you're kinda... you know... cute. For an old guy."

I am going to kill myself. Seriously. Once I've calmed her down and sent her away to play Barbies with someone, I am going to go down to the Danger Room and off myself. This was just entirely too surreal. "That's... flattering," Scott said, and managed to keep his voice level. "And actually, if I have to be honest, you very often thought I was lame even when you remembered being married to me."

"Well, duh. That's cause you are lame." She rolled her eyes at him, then turned her attention to the ring in her hand, turning it about. Jeannie completely failed to look up at him as she asked, "So, um... could you... could you tell me about... about me?"

"Well. You're smarter than I am," Scott said after a moment. "Better-looking than I am. Quite a bit wiser than I am... thankfully, a fair bit crazier than I am, but that was always part of the attraction. Oh, and you could kick my ass up between my ears with little to no effort at all. You definitely wear the pants in the relationship." Laugh. Please laugh. If she didn't laugh, this was going to continue to be impossibly, suicide-inspiring awkward.

She did, although it was remarkably like a giggle. "I totally don't believe you. I could way never kick your ass."

"Oh yes, you could. Regularly." Scott paused for a moment. "Jean," he said, a strange spark in his real eye, "you've been looking at yourself in the mirror enough since this happened, I expect.... which one of us do you think is older?"

"What?" It was such a completely random question. So totally obvious. But... he was a teacher. The obvious questions were always tricks. "Oh, no way... no way!" Jeannie blinked at him, jaw wide. "You're... you're my boy toy?!?"

"Oh yes. It was all very scandalous at the time. One of your college friends made you a 'I Rob Cradles - Ask Me How' t-shirt."

"That's... kinda cool," Jeannie said, looking half amused and half bewildered. "Wait, how much older am I?"

"Five years. But according to all our friends," Scott said, part of him hoping that this might jog... something, some memory, even as the rest of him knew it wouldn't, "I was always twenty going on fifty
anyway."

"Total dweeb," Jeannie told him, nodding her head firmly. "Maybe a cute dweeb, maybe, but still a dweeb." Then she paused, and blinked. "Wait. Five years. So, like, when I was actually eleven... you were six. EW!"

"Does rather break the brain, doesn't it?" Like everything else about this situation. Scott took a deep breath. "Look, Jean... I love you very much," he said softly, "and I'm going to do my best to help you and the others. But unfortunately Charles kept a lot of his contacts on the mental rolodex rather than the physical one, and no one Moira or I have talked to so far's been able to shed much more light on a solution."

He'd gone all serious and she'd really meant to pay attention, but then he went and said the l-word and that was... that was... nobody had ever said that to her before. Well, obviously her parents, and Sarah sometimes when she wasn't being a mega scumbag, but none of them ever said it like that and he was still talking but Jeannie was totally not listening any more. "Do you really?" she asked quietly, sounding rather awed.

"Yes. I do. I won't be melodramatic and say you're my whole life, but you're pretty much what makes it worth living."

"Oh." She blushed red as a cherry, mentally cursing her fair skin, but she managed not to go 'EEEEEEEE!' at him or flail about doing a kermit dance, so that was an upside.

"But," Scott said more briskly, because that was as far as he wa willing to go with his wife when she was under the impression that she was a preadolescent, "I do have some more phone calls to make. And you should go and rest. Whether you remember it or not, you've been through something fairly awful this week."

That got a sigh out of Jeannie and she rolled her eyes. "Everybody's all spazzing over me being so worn out and needing rest and whatever. Make your phone calls. I got invited to hang out with a senior." She actually looked fairly smug at that. "Later."