Kyle and Nick Take a Trip

[x-wolfcub.livejournal.com]

Already running short on clothes, Nick turns to a member of the mansion who experiences similar problems.



The beginning of the weekend didn't start off that different from the other early days of Nicholas Gleason at Xavier's Institute. He found himself wondering around the mansion, completely lost and confused. After he found himself in several classrooms, the boiler room, and for a very brief but awkward moment what he hoped was not the ladies changing room, Nick scratched his head for a second as he thought that he had found the staff quarters. He closed his eyes, and crossed his fingers, hoping that the door that he just approached and knocked on belonged to one of the school's groundskeepers, the man he was looking for.

"Yo, one second!" It took Kyle a few seconds to open the door, and he was obviously most of the way through unpacking some groceries, obvious by both the double armful of bananas, and the smallish black-and-white cat who was scampering atop a closed giant-sized bag of dry cat food. "Nick, right? Gimmie bout half a minute here. And if you see the cat go for the door, grab him. He's like Cat Houdini."

Nick quickly bolted over and picked up the cat as a scurried past his feet. He figured he'd better be safe than sorry when looking after wildlife. He quickly began scratching the chin of the pet as he began to pace around the room. "No worries. Take your time." He would never admit it, but it felt good to be out of his room for a little while as he quickly took a stroll around the room. He couldn't help but stare at the vastly different staff and graduate housing as compared to his and Johnny's room. His voice came out in a half whisper. "I swear this place is getting bigger every day."

"Yeah, you get used to that though. The grounds are huge, but a pretty good part of that is forested and we let it grow pretty wild." Kyle shoved a pair of loaves of bread into the cabinet above the fridge, and then finally stowed the bag of cat food in yet another cabinet. "It's pretty good for alone time, as long as somebody knows where you are in case of emergency." He wasn't about to mention that in dire emergency, they'd just have him or Logan track someone down by smell. That tended to make people stop and go "Wait, what?"

The mere thought of the forest was enough to tug at the corner of the young mutant's lips. "Yeah, I've already been out there a few times. It's very relaxing." In a rare moment for him, Nick let his thoughts drift to more pleasurable pursuits, like running free in the woods. But he quickly brought himself back to reality, as he shook his head from side to side and forced himself to remember his reason for coming. "So I heard that you go through clothing almost as fast as I do..."

In lieu of an answer, Kyle pulled the leg of his jeans up, showing the bare feet and the inch-long claws. "Good week, I kill a pair of jeans with these things. Bad week, I kill my damn dress pants. Shoes are just right out." He'd had the claws on his hands in to put the groceries away so as not to puncture anything, and now he let those slide out too. "These, not so much, thank God. So, I'm not seeing claws on you, so, I'm guessing either shapeshifter like Catseye, or pyro like Angel?"

"Catseye and I have shared notes already. I'm a shifter." Embarrassed, he let his eyes fall down to the ground as he continued to stroke the top of the cat in his arms. "I'm afraid I don't have as much control as she does though. Whenever I find myself upset about anything, I have to find a new set of clothing to replace the shreds I turn them into." He forced a quick chuckle. "I think it's safe to say my sister was never going to get any hand-me-downs."

"Catseye has magic underwear." Kyle said, trying not to grin. "Seriously. I am not making this shit up. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. Some kind of crazy fabric stuff Forge made. Which, dude, I know nobody ever wants to email the science guy and be like "Hey, can you whip me up some shapeshift proof boxers." but trust me." He opened a closet, and pulled out a pair of seriously abused Teva sandals and started pulling them on. "Nobody wants to see your junk unexpectedly."

"Definitely not. I mean I've already seen enough people in leather around here for a lifetime. I think that a 'peeker' would just add to everything else." Nick flashed a quick smile towards the other feral mutant. He quickly made the decision that it was a good idea to leave his room this morning.

"Yeah, you get used to that." Kyle was all too grateful that his uniform was in a heap in his room and not say, scattered across the suite like he'd removed it on the way to the shower. Because it had been an hour before, and he'd remembered to pick it up before Manuel got back and threw a crazy Spanish hissy fit. "Okay, so step one, cat on the floor, step two, we try to get out before he realizes the door's open, step three, I sign out a car and we get you some clothes."

"Step one," Nick repeated as he slowly put the cat down on the ground, holding his hands above it for a few seconds to try and assure that it doesn't take off running instantly, which he half expected. He kept his eyes glued to the cat as he refused to fully turn his back on it as he walked toward the door. If he'd learned anything from his chases with Catseye, he knew that felines could never be underestimated. Before opening the door, he turned towards Kyle. "Thanks again for doing this for me." Gleason's eyes fell to the ground, he still wasn't used to the kindness of others being shown towards him.

"No problem." Kyle waited with one foot ready to nudge Shamu, Jr, away from the door until Nick was out, and then went for the doorway himself, getting it shut before Shamu had even realized that Freedom was Available. "It's no big, and sides, I'd be an ungrateful shit if I wasn't decent to you guys, after everyone was cool with me when I showed up." He locked the door, and then made a vague hand wave gesture towards the hallway. "And now, to the garage, where I will find a car while you pick your jaw up off the floor at the totally ridic number of very cool cars."

As Nick's nervous eyes fell down to the ground once again, a coy smile appears across his face once again. "It seems like my jaw has been on the ground so much there might as well be a permanent place for it there." He forced his eyes back towards Kyle as they continued down the hallway. "You were a student here once right? What did you think of being part of 'Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters'?"

"I'm probably not a normal case. If I wasn't here, I'd have been somewhere way worse." Like Jail. Or the Army. Or as one of Mistra's brainwashed soldiers. Not that he was going to scare the pants off the already nervous new kid. "Education's pretty solid, if kinda eccentric sometimes. It's.. " Kyle ran a hand through his perpetually messy hair. "I dunno how to put it. It was a good place for me. Still is, which is pretty much why I'm here. I mean, I walked in a messed up white trash kid from Montana with a rap sheet and a bad habit of hitting people with chairs and now I'm in college." For education. Which he was still not admitting yet. "It's a good place if you let it be one. Which sounds totally corny, but there you go."

"I'll hold up putting my face on the posters just yet." He chuckled again slightly as he continued to look around the mansion. He was pretty sure that he would never fully get used to this place being his school, no matter how hard he tried. He once again shifted his attention towards Kyle, raising an eyebrow slightly. "You used to hit people with chairs often, then?" He couldn't help but grin at this one. It was always easier for Gleason to keep the focus off of himself and on others.

"Only Jay, and just the once, because he was being a jerk. Or I was being a jerk." Kyle couldn't remember any other times he'd hit anyone with a chair. It was just funnier that way. "Oh, wait, no, I think I threw a chair at a social worker once. Might've been a food tray though." He elbowed the side door to the garage open, and flipped the switch to the big set of overhead lights.

"Okay, in order of shit I'm not allowed to drive, that's the Rolls, that's Mr. Summer's car, that's Jean-Paul's fancypants car, Mr. Summer's bike, that's Lil's bike, that's -my- bike and no, we're not taking that because it doesn't really seat two, that's Garrison's hunk of shit, and that's Angelo's 'stang." In turn, he pointed at a Rolls Royce, two high-end sports cars, a pair of slim racing-style motorcycles with a large Harley in the middle, a very beaten up old cop car obviously being rebuilt, and a cherry-red Mustang. "And that's the Jeep, which we -are- driving, because it's cool and no one will murder me if I sign it out."

Nick froze as he tried to take in all of the cars in the garage. He had never been a car person, but common, how could you not be impressed by this array. "Seriously, what else are you hiding in this place? A staircase behind a gargoyle statue? Maybe a closet to Narnia hidden somewhere?" He shook his head from side to side as he slowly walked towards the jeep. A devilish smile turned up the corner's of his mouth. "So how long before Scott gives some of the student's driving lessons?"

"How's a modified VTOL plane strike you?" Kyle grinned as he slid behind the driver's seat and started adjusting mirrors. He couldn't help it. Someone had to let the kid know. "And they do driver's ed on a kinda case-by-case basis. Forge is teaching Catseye, but Mr. Summers taught me, sorta." In as much as Kyle needed teaching, which was more 'safety lectures' and signing off that he did know how to operate a car and wasn't going to do anything stupid with it. "Plane's under the basketball court, by the way. Dead serious, if you're out there and the alarm goes off, get the hell off the court."

Wow, so this stuff was serious. "I'll definitely have to remember that one. But I think I'll pass on the driving lessons for now. No matter how fast I've been able to crank up a car, I've never found it quite as exhilarating as running at full tilt." He laughed for a second before he remembered that he was talking to a fellow feral mutant. "But I guess you have some experience in that department too."

"Yeah. Climbing too for me. Claws help with that too." Kyle was just a little distracted pulling the Jeep out, until he got it out of the garage and down the long driveway. " Man, it's too bad Rahne went off to work in Tel Aviv. She's pretty much got the same powers you do. She can do the halfway thing, or pretty much turn into a big damn wolf." He made a mental note to talk to Nate about it anyway. It couldn't hurt to see if Rahne minded dropping by to talk to Nick.

The boy reached up and wrapped his right hand around the lever at the side of the Jeep. Riding in cars still wasn't one of Nick's favorite things. "Cat told me a little bit about Rahne. I wish I could have talked to her, I still haven't mastered the whole transformation thing. It's an all or nothing with me." He let his eyes fall down to the floorboards of the car. Even after running for so long, vehicles still made him feel motion sickness when he wasn't the one in control. "But if the Professor can do half as much as Shiro and Marie say, then maybe I'll be able to take care of that step myself."

"Yeah, between the Professor and everyone else, you've pretty much got a better chance than you would anywhere else." Kyle agreed. "Hell, you guys have it better than my class did. They keep improving stuff, we had powers training stuff, but it was pretty informal sometimes. You guys have that whole New Mutants thing, which is pretty awesome, even if it's a goofy name."

"It kind of makes us feel like a new cereal if you ask me." He threw his voice into his best impression of a radio announcer. "Hey kids, get your parents to get everyone's new favorite breakfast snack, New Mutant-O's." But the smile from his joke didn't last long as it hit him like a ton of bricks. Just like it did about a hundred times each day. The image of his parents flew into Nick's head and he instantly clammed up, staring at the floor of the Jeep as they bounced along on their path.

It wasn't so much the expression Kyle noticed, but the abrupt change in Nick's entire mood - his breathing changed, and his heartbeat, the little noises that people made that they didn't even notice. New Kid had trauma. Which was nothing new, about half the new kids had trauma, and Kyle had come with a extra-large dose of his own. "With a bunch of X-shaped oat cereal pieces, and DNA-shaped marshmallows?" he asked, more to distract his passenger than anything else.

Gleason couldn't hide his smile. "As long as they don't forget us and put in some claw-shaped whole grain flakes I'm happy." Although the mood had definitely changed, Nick was happy for the distraction.

"Oh, wow, dude, if there's gonna be bits that represent all the different kinds of powers, it'd be like more marshmallow types than Lucky Charms." Which was up to what, nine, ten? Kyle wasn't sure. "I mean, just with you guys, the only people who have similar powers are you and Catseye. Dori's feral, but she's like me. Stuck like this. " As much as Kyle accepted his mutation, there were days where he would've paid to be able to be able to pick and choose when he looked weird. "I mean, dude, that is a freakin' lot of marshmallows."

"But let's face it. We're the coolest marshmallows of the bunch." Nick shot back with a smile. He slowly pulled his eyes away from the floorboards and turned slowly towards the staff member. "You said 'stuck like this', as if it was a bad thing. Did you have a bad experience?" Gleason quickly remembered that he not too long ago ignored the demons in his closet, and thought that he needed to add an addendum to his statement. "You don't have to talk about it if you don't feel comfortable."

Kyle shrugged, and flicked the ballcap he'd pulled on with one clawed finger. "More like a series of 'em. It's not that I can change it, and I don't have it half as bad as like, Kevin or Marie. Don't get me wrong, I like my powers, but there's a crapton of people who are real assholes about mutants who show it." Not that he was going to go to great lengths to cover up. The hat was as much to prevent the sun getting in his eyes as to cover the ears.

Nick smiled at the thought. "I just hope that there's a day when none of us have to worry about people seeing us for who we are." He really did hope that it would happen, but in the warped world of Nicholas Gleason, he didn't really have too much hope for that. The young mutant simply stared out the windshield at the road ahead.