Exams Are OVER!!! *Kelly dances around her basement (you think I’m joking, don’t you?)* These last three weeks have been absolute hell. But now summer is here .^_^. On a totally non-fic related note, I just got a great summer CD- Blink 182 Take Off Your Pants And Jacket, I love it. On a fic related note, this is the “stunning (phh . . . yeeeesssss . . . stunning . . . ) conclusion” of Outfoxed. There’s just this chapter left. Enjoy! By the way, if you like my writing style, look for my Old Flames series (it’s all Brotherhood) that will probably start around mid-July. (Ps. I GOT TO 100 REVIEWS, thanks everybody, especially the Cat who’s number 100. Woowoo.)

OUTFOXED

Chapter 11: Too Little A Little Too Late

“I can’t remember the last thing that you said as you were leavin’
Now the days go by so fast
And it’s one more day up in the canyons
And it’s one more night in Hollywood
If you think that I could be forgiven,
I wish you would ”

He sat on Fire Fox’s cot, a pencil held between his teeth, as she plucked out and sang the modest tune. They weren’t song writers, that was for sure, but it was as good as any way to pass the time. He enjoyed the days that they spent together, but he noticed that none of the other students were allowed to visit each other as much. Kurt kind of had the feeling that they favored Fire Fox here. Especially since . . .

It had been two years since that fateful day in the forest, they never spoke about the incident and Fire Fox had come to terms with it. Or perhaps she just repressed it, there was a sadness that hadn’t left her eyes since that day.

“Someday I’m going to go to Hollywood. Get away from here . . . you know, see the world . . . find other mutants.” She looked out of the barred window. “The same moon shines in Paris, and New York, and Hollywood, Nightcrawler, and I’m going to see it from all of those places.” She smiled wistfully. “I bet there are other mutants out there, all over the world. We could all work together - united, not divided . . . no matter what happened. I don’t want to have to kill mutants, I am a mutant. I can’t stay here forever. I hate this place. I hate everything about it.” She fell silent and continued to stare out of the window. “Did you hear they retrained Marco? He’s so different now.” Her words hit him.

Marco was a short, vibrant kid, three years their senior. The past month he had been passing out hand written flyers to them all, saying that they should break away from their oppressors and unite together, away from the school. He was full of ideals that mutants should always be on the same side because if they split it would be sure to bring their downfall. Fire Fox believed Marco was right - that, as mutants, they had a common thread and should stand together, whether it was to live in harmony with humans or just together. Kurt didn’t entirely agree. Even if they were mutants, they were still humans. Humans were bound to have different ideas on issues, mutant or not. But that still didn’t warrant the School to retrain Marco.

Kurt shuddered involuntarily at the word retrain. It was one of the worst things that could happen to them, worse then the hole. They forgot who they were - forgot their friends, forgot their parents, forgot love, and forgot compassion. In retraining, everyone always came out 100% loyal to the School. The sad thing was, these ‘loyalty boosters’, as DeMarelle called them, were becoming a common practice, kids were called out from ‘class’ and never came back the same.

“DeMarelle?” Kurt asked quietly.

“Or one of his right-hand men. What does it really matter? Marco’s gone now, they took him this morning.” Her eyes fell back on the window. “How does the next verse go?” Neither of them wanted to think about it, they could be next if they disobeyed.

“The smell of hospitals in winter,” he sang. He wasn’t as good as she was, but she seemed to think it was the other way around. “Then we have that blank line with fifteen syllables, and then ‘And all at once you look across the crowded room to see the way that light attaches to a girl.’”

“So we need something that rhymes with girl?”

“Right. Whirl. Swirl. Hurl . . .”

“Oh, that would make a good song. Hurl? Curl. Twirl . . .”

“Pearl?”

“That we could use. Um,” she paused and chewed her lower lip thoughtfully, “‘It’s like a bunch of oysters without pearls’ or something like that.”

“Not enough syllables. What about ‘And the feeling that it’s all a lot of oysters but no pearls’?”

“I like it.”

*~*~*~*

Kurt was falling. No. Swimming. Swimming through the notes and bars and chords, through the long forgotten lyrics, through a sea of cold warmth and frozen flames. Blue, licking at his clothes, the man’s clothes. His screams. Her screams. Death. Fire Fox. Angeline. The song. Thoughts sank and floated around him, colliding, connecting, separating. Driving at the walls of his skull until it felt as though it was going to explode with understanding and confusion. His head was throbbing.

People were talking but the voices came muffled, strangled. Evan. Kurt willed himself to focus on the words. He was talking to someone near where Kurt was. There were other people talking too - farther away. He couldn’t hear them. But he could hear Evan.

“Look Angeline, thanks. I mean, for saving Scott’s life. All of our lives. The other might not seem too grateful for it but we are, honestly. Scott’s our leader and all.”

“Thanks Evan. I’m just sorry I can’t fix ze rift between ze two groups as easily as I did Scott’s leg.”

“Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Technically you just did, but ask away.”

“Why do you want to unify mutants?”

“For a friend.”

“Who?”

“I ‘onestly do not remember. But it waz important, I do know zat.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t remember anybody or anyzing from my past, just fragments. My mindz a mess. Zere waz zis place, a School I went to. Zey did somezing to me. I escaped once before. Zey captured me - tortured me. I was supposed to be loyal, I was supposed to forget. Somezing went wrong, I didn’t forget it all. I ‘ated it zere, everyzing related to it. I got free again. Ran. But I still ‘adn’t forgotten, parts of it come back to me now. Zey keep me awake at night. I’m afraid zey’re going to come back for me.”

“Wow.”

The voices were fading again, melding into a monotone mumble, but Kurt finally understood. He wished he could tell Angeline; tell her about her past so she wouldn’t be alone and scared anymore; so they could pick up where they left off; so he could feel her soft touch again, but he couldn’t. He wasn’t where she was anymore. He was floating again, sinking, choking, drowning in the sea of his head.

*~*~*~*

Kurt leaned back into the soft grass, placing his hands behind his head and staring up into the sky. The stars shone like winking eyes in the blackness. He inhaled deeply; the wet, warm air from the jungle was fragrant with night-blooming flowers. Beside him lay Angeline, pointing out the constellations, but he wasn’t really paying attention. He was thinking about how great she seemed to smell as well.

He blushed at his thoughts. He couldn’t help it, he’d never felt this way about any girl before. She was amazing, uninhibited, and intelligent. He didn’t even feel . . . wrong around her like he did with most people. He loved her. He wanted to tell her but he was afraid things were going to change between them, that maybe she didn’t feel the same way. But he had to, he was going to explode if he didn’t. She was pointing out the ‘W’ shape of Cassiopeia when he interrupted her. “Fire Fox? Have you . . . , have you ever kissed someone before?”

“Why? I mean no. No, I haven’t, Nightcrawler.” She looked deep into his eyes, his soul.

“Do you want to? With me, I mean. But only if . . . because, I don’t . . .” He never got a chance to finish his sentence, which was probably better because he was starting to babble. Her lips were warm and wet upon his. It felt so perfect, like their whole friendship was meant to lead to this point.

“I love you.” She said, fixing her gaze back up to the sky, “You don’t know how many times I’ve wanted to kiss you. Since the first day I met you, I’ve loved you. I never really cared what the other kids though of me, until you came. Then I cared, I cared what you thought of me.”

“I love you, too.”

She started to cry, “Nightcrawler, there’s something I have to tell you.”

“What?” He didn’t understand what was wrong, why she was sad. He felt happier than he ever had in his life.

“I’m . . . I’m leaving tomorrow night. I can’t stand it here anymore, I have to get out or I’ll go crazy. I wasn’t going to tell you - the less people who know the better, right? I can’t leave you, though. I want you to come with me.”

“Why now?” They had been at the school for so long, what had suddenly sparked her desires to leave into a full-fledged plan of escape.

“I overheard something. They’re planning to retrain you. And me. They said I’ve gotten too strong and they’re afraid that someday I’m going to snap, go over the edge because the power’s too much for me to handle. DeMarelle wasn’t even sure retraining was going to work for me but I don’t want to stay and find out.” She paused again, and seemed to search the heavens for an answer. “It’s their own damn fault I’ve gotten so strong.”

“Fire Fox, what happened to you? You’ve never told me before.”

She inhaled deeply and started talking. He had the feeling that it wasn’t totally directed to him, as though she were telling her story to the grass and the night air and he just happened to be there as well. “My mom was an addict. Dad left her as soon as he found out she was pregnant again, but I guess I was lucky, she kept herself clean for nine months. She even went to a hospital to have me, not like some mothers you hear about that leave their kids in dumpsters. I had my tail and pyro-kinesis since birth though, nearly burned the hospital down. People from the school came, told my mom they could help, offered her something like two million dollars to let them have me and for her to forget about me. I don’t blame her for taking the money, she was weak. It was my dad that had the mutant-gene. So I came here when I was less than a week old, and they tried to break me. I was just an experiment to them, they spliced me so many times I don’t know which thoughts are mine and which aren’t. I gained new powers, I could control water and electricity as well as fire. I was their little mistress of the elements and I was intelligent beyond words - agile, graceful, cunning. They tried to make me perfect, and I came out damn near it. I could do anything. By the time I was seven I could speak six languages. They taught me to think like a military strategist. I know more than thirty types of hand-to-hand combat. I can work with a team or work alone. I’m the best they have and they know it, and they know I could bring them down if they don’t get to me first.”

*~*~*~*

He opened his eyes. The blurry, fading room was silent except for the crackling sound of fire and a faint humming coming from the far corner. The edge of the fire was surrounded by spikes about 5 inches apart, probably to keep them from rolling into it while they were asleep. Kurt squinted through the darkness to see Angeline about ten feet away, washing her hands with her own water. He sat up quickly and groaned audibly from the pain, his ribs burned within his chest and caused him to double over in pain. He realized for the first time that they were probably broken.

His groan brought Angeline to his side, a look of worry on her face. Around him, his teammates mumbled semiconsciously.

“Kurt, ‘ow are you feeling?”

“Okay, I guess. But better now that you’re here.”

She smiled and ran her hand along the side of his face, just like she did that day they met; with the same gentle touch; the same sparkling green eyes; the same connection that they had always shared. She still didn’t flinch at his tail. Kurt couldn’t help but smile through the pain. “I feel like I ‘ave known you forever, Kurt. I can’t explain it.”

“I can, Fire Fox. From the School.”

“Fire Fox?” Her smile disappeared immediately. The hair on her tail stood on end as she retreated from him slowly, her glance darting back and forth nervously, wildly, as though she were filled with fear and anger and madness. A growl from deep within her throat that he had only heard once before echoed in the small dome, filling him with the same long-ago fear. “You’re from the school.” Hurt and rage filled her eyes before being finally replaced by a cold, hard look flooding rapidly in. She looked neither angry nor sad nor betrayed - just distant. He realized that this is how she must have looked before she killed the man, primal but detached. Without warning fire leapt from her body, illuminating herself and the inside of the dome with it’s bright blue light.

He tried to explain who he was to her but couldn’t find the words, she wasn’t listening anyway. Her entire energy was focused on the fire. Behind Angeline, the wall of the dome was starting to sag from the intense heat which washed over them all like an unpleasant shower. Kurt heard the confused and indistinct mutters of his friends waking and knew he had to do something. She would kill them all if the dome collapsed.

Angeline let out a cry which should have never come from a human - lost, animalistic, uncontrolled. It wasn’t her anymore. The school had broken her in the end. He had to save her, as she had saved him so many years ago. It was for the best. His hand closed over the rough spike, warm from the fire it surrounded, and he pulled it from the ground. It was for the best.

His throat was dry and his whole body was shaking from what he was about to do. Would he even be able to? He looked at her one last time before shutting his eyes tightly. She was still beautiful, but it was a cold beauty now. She was nothing without the warmth, the compassion, the perfection which eventually led to her to snap. He had to do it. The teleportation was both profoundly fast and slow all at once. He felt a warm liquid spill over his hands as the spike pierced the tender flesh. He was going to be sick.

Kurt opened his eyes. At first her expression didn’t change, as though she hadn’t been affected by what had just happened. Then her eyes widened and the violent cry stopped, replaced by a gasp. It seemed as if she were inhaling forever, the blood dribbling out of her open mouth, down her face. She fell forward onto him - coughing, choking, gasping. He felt her body go limp in his arms and then he collapsed on the ground with her. Hot tears stung his eyes. He just didn’t have the strength to support himself anymore. Overhead, he heard a strange yet familiar humming sound. All at once he recognized it. It was the professor in the jet.