-A/N-: Sorry it took awhile for the update. School just reopened and I’ve been really busy. Also, I want to slow down for a bit because this fic’s coming to an end soon.

Beta’d by The 42. Yay!

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Rogue was, to put it bluntly, dumbfounded. She was thunderstruck, rooted to the spot, horrified. But most of all, she was afraid. It wasn’t as though she didn’t see it coming; she knew that something like this was bound to happen. It was just a matter of time. Ever since she surprised herself by making the flames at the end of the zippo flare up, ever since the dreadful incident with the candleholder that night, hell, ever since her powers returned just days after her birthday, she’d felt different. As though her mutation had been altered somehow—changed, heightened, distorted, since the Cure.

That’s right, she told herself as she took a step towards the half-frozen fountain once more and peered into its icy depths, it must’ve been the Cure. She glanced down at the hand that had stirred the water just moments before, pale fingers still bare and wet and glistening in the sunlight.

What the hell’s happening to me?

She hastily dried her hand against the front of her black blouse and then gave the fountain another once-over. If it really is the anti-mutagen that did this, then I wonder if the same thing’s happening to everyone else who’s taken it. Rogue looked up towards the mansion, knowing that both Magneto and Mystique had been ‘force-fed’ the Cure. Were their powers enhanced as well? Were they going through what she was?

She couldn’t believe it. Without the added modification in her power of absorption, she already had problems in trying to control it. Now, things were much, much worse. And she didn’t know what the hell she was going to do. She’d had about enough of hiding her powers.

“There’s only one thing I can do,” she murmured to herself, and she reached her gloved-hand deep into the right pocket of her faded denim jeans, pulling out John’s chrome lighter silently and fumbling with the lid. The metallic surface of the object was cool to her touch, even through the fabric of her glove, and the details of the cartoonishly illustrated shark mouth painted on the lighter seemed weird and strangely magnificent in the sun.

She had to admit, she was nowhere near as good as John when it came to deftly snapping the zippo open and lighting at in one go. When she finally had a steady flame going, she took in a deep breath, preparing herself. For what, she didn’t really know. She didn’t even know what she was going to do or why she was doing it.

The flame flickered for a moment and her breath caught.

Bringing a finger from her other, still-gloveless hand up to lighter, she prodded at the thin shaft of flame tentatively, and realised that she wasn’t feeling any pain or any searing heat whatsoever as the bright orange light licked at her skin. Instead, she felt a familiar, comforting warmth from the flame, almost as if she were touching John Allerdyce himself.

Of course. He was fire. He was Pyro.

Thrilled, she willed the fire to grow bigger, higher. She felt an overwhelming desire to test the limits of this power.

And it did grow.

All of a sudden, she had John in her head. His thoughts, his memories, his emotions, his words, his everything. They all came crowding back into her mind. All a whirlwind of fiery sensations overtaking her own thoughts, random images of John’s past flashed before her eyes and blinded her…

… Of John when he was young… John when he was kicked out of his own house by his parents… John when he first stepped into Xavier’s school… John when he became best friends with Bobby… John when he first met Rogue… John when he started to hate Bobby because he was jealous of what he had—a loving family, a loving girlfriend, a decent personality—everything that John couldn’t have… John when he was in the Brotherhood, terrorising people for the good of Magneto’s cause… John when he came back to the mansion…

And the flames grew even higher, even hotter. But she was too caught up in the flurry of different emotions to realise what was going on.

Her fingers trembled unsteadily but she still held tight to the lighter. She felt herself go weak in the knees—go cold all over. And she finally felt the pain, the excruciating pain.

It hit her. She was burning herself.

With a sudden yelp, she impulsively let go of the lighter, not bothering to watch it drop to the ground, and plunged her whole hand into the fountain.

Immediately, she felt the burning sting dissipate within the cold water and she let loose a sigh of relief.

What the heck happened? she thought wildly to herself, still trying to clear her head. But it was pretty obvious what happened. She had lost control. If she wanted to know how to truly master her stolen powers, she’d have to get the owners of those powers to teach her how to use them properly.

She slowly withdrew her hand from the semi-frozen water and inspected the damage. The pain was no longer there but a nasty, red burn mark covered the entire finger. It felt… weird. And even as she watched, the burnt spot was fast fading—healing—right before her very eyes. In less than half a minute, her finger was as good as new.

Her eyes widened.

Oh, my god. I even have Logan’s accelerated healing powers.

Flexing her fingers pensively for a few moments, she suddenly remembered that she had dropped John’s zippo. Eyes darting across the ground frenetically, she searched for the piece of metal.

When she finally found it under a pile of brown, crisp leaves, she vowed never to let it leave her line of sight again. Even if it was the last thing she did.

Still deeply troubled by her newfound discovery of her unstable and highly unpredictable powers, she slowly made her way back to the front doors of the mansion in miserable dissatisfaction. She figured that maybe it would be better if she refrained from telling anyone about what happened there at the fountain if she could help it.

-

The dining hall was filled with an unusually high number of boarding students that night— perhaps because it was a school night. But despite the crowd, a strange undertone of hushed voices and an obvious sombre atmosphere hung in the air. It was almost suffocating.

The ambiance in the room wasn’t helping with Rogue’s current mood either, and she made her way through the coagulating crowd with dismal indifference, catching little snippets of whispered conversations as she tried to find an empty seat. Words and phrases such as ‘mutant killers’ and ‘Warren Worthington’ and ‘stolen cure’ kept resurfacing and Rogue felt sick to her stomach.

A hand tapped her lightly on the back and she turned to find John looking up at her from his chair.

“Well, it’s about time you got here,” he said, feigning irritation, but wearing a slight smirk. His voice seemed loud among all the quietness surrounding them.

He considerately pulled out the empty chair in between him and someone else, who turned out to be Jubilee. She seemed unusually quiet and distant—not even acknowledging Rogue’s appearance—but Rogue reckoned it was just the news of Warren’s father’s death the day before.

“Sorry,” Rogue murmured to John, settling herself between him and Jubilation Lee. “I… uh, I had to freshen up.”

John looked hard at her, as though attempting to read her. He knew something wasn’t quite right.

“I know you’ll probably hate me for asking, but I’ll ask anyway. You okay?”

She looked up and tilted her head to the side. “Yeah,” she replied, “‘course I am. Just really tired, I guess.” She faked a yawn.

He raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. “You’re a bad liar, Marie. A really, really bad one.”

Rogue smiled weakly. “I don’t get as much practice as you do. Lying is an art. One that I haven’t yet fully mastered.”

John didn’t smile back. In fact, he was frowning openly now. “Seriously, Marie, is everything okay?”

Rogue didn’t answer immediately, reaching out to grab a plate and piling it with food. She was glad that he was showing so much concern and she appreciated it. But right now, her mind was occupied with thoughts of fire, fire and more fire. It was hard to think.

When she finally replied, her voice was confiding and subdued. “Everything’s not okay, John. But…” she avoided his worried gaze, “I don’t think I’m ready to tell… to tell anyone anything… yet.”

I don’t want to tell anyone. Ever. I never even asked for this. Rogue speared a lettuce leaf with her fork resignedly.

“That’s okay,” John said after awhile, nodding understandingly. “You can tell me when you’re ready. Just don’t keep it all to yourself, okay?”

Rogue nodded back, grateful of John’s consideration.

They ate in companionable silence. Rogue spotted Raven Darkholme in the crowd, talking to Hank McCoy it seemed. He’s back, she thought, as she eyed the furry mutant. She remembered that he’d left a couple of days ago for the White House. He’s probably collected some information on the Eradicators, no doubt. Rogue snorted. What kind of extremist group would call themselves the Eradicators? Even the Brotherhood sounds better.

She looked back down at her food, glumly pushing a piece of carrot around on her plate.

There was a noticeable clink of cutlery being set down on the table and all of a sudden, Jubilee stood up, her chair scrapping loudly across the floor. She murmured a broken excuse me and rushed out of the dining hall. Rogue could’ve sworn she heard a sob escape the girl and her eyes followed her departure.

She looked back at John quizzically.

John shook his head. “I asked,” he said quietly, reading her thoughts. “Apparently, she knew the mutant girl who was killed the other night. Tabitha Smith or something. She used to be good friends with her before coming here to study. They were close.”

“Oh.” Rogue didn’t really know what to say. “Was that why she’s been so depressed all this time?”

“Yeah. She’s been locked up in her room all day. Pryde too. She’s all teary-eyed ‘cause Worthington was murdered.”

“Is there a reason to why everyone’s dying?” Rogue asked darkly to no one in particular.

Before John had the chance to answer, someone came running into the large room, yelling something with great urgency. At first, both John and Rogue thought it might have been Jubilee returning. But it wasn’t. It was a young male student, whom Rogue recognised vaguely as a student who’d been in the Institute for awhile. Samuel Guthrie. And he was causing a huge scene at the doorway.

“Isn’t that Sam?” Rogue asked, craning her neck to see over the tops of people’s heads.

John stood. “Cannonball? Yeah, that’s him alright.” He paused as the level of noise around them grew. “What the hell’s going on?”

From some other far corner of the room, someone screamed. And it was rather obvious who. “Everyone!” Siryn shrieked. “Be quiet and listen!”

The deafening cry caused everyone to cringe and stop moving. Some even had their hands over their ears to block her screeching scream.

When all was finally silent, Sam spoke up once more, his unfamiliar voice echoing throughout the eating place.

“Two more deaths have been reported,” he said loudly for all to hear. “Both mutants. Both in broad daylight. It’s all over the news right now.”

The silence continued for perhaps another fraction of a second. And then, like an angry volcano, a torrent of voices exploded and rose in a crescendo. Expressions of shock and terror were mirrored on every single face.

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-A/N-: I wasn’t very satisfied with this chapter and it was meant to go much longer than this. Also, I hope you guys didn't feel that Rogue and John were too OOC in this.

I feel bad to have killed Tabitha ‘Boom Boom’ Smith. She’s actually an awesome mutant with awesome powers.

PsYcHoThErApY17: And I quote, ‘Crazy, fire weilding, Australians are ALWAYS good.’ Woohoo! You have no idea how true that is! And I live in Australia too! LOL.

storytellergirl: ‘I especially love how you're getting these characters to change into whole new people without losing the remnants of their former selves’. Wow. I’m honoured that you think so! It’s actually really, really tough to write these characters and keep them in character when you have an expanding plot and all. (: Thank you for commenting!

Chica De Los Ojos Cafe: ‘I loved X-Men Evolution episodes. You can watch them on YouTube? Could you elaborate more on that?’ Sure I can! All you have to do to watch all the episodes (1-52) is to visit the YouTube site, type down something like ‘X-Men Evolution Episode’ in the search bar and you should be able to get your results and watch it all from the site.

Kumiko Eharu: Hey! Thanks so much for taking the time to review! It’s great that you’ve found this fic interesting and I hope you’d keep reading!

Randabeth: ‘I'm afraid we're running into the clichéd 'Bobby kisses Rogue, Pyro freaks, Pyro betrays Rogue' storyline.’ Heh. I shouldn’t really be saying this and spoiling it for everyone, but no, no. No such thing has been planned to happen. In fact, something a million times better is gonna’ happen. Just wait. Yours is an interesting concept though. (:

Obiwanfan: Your review made me nearly die with happiness.

Sarah: ‘I have been reading this for a very long time, just never got the time to review.’ Wow. Hi. I’m so glad you’ve finally found the time to review. It makes me happy AND satisfied that people enjoy reading what I come up with. So, thank you! I hope to see you continue reading this fic!

Kryptonite: Hey there! Thanks for reviewing! I loved your review! Hmm… And since you wanted to know, Pietro’s name is pronounced ‘Pee-yay-trow’ I suppose. Haha! And ‘Piotr’ is ‘Peter’, basically.

Thank you so much to the rest of you who reviewed the last chapter, namely darkangel1910, zshp1411, we-r-the-cure, Dama Jade, Mrs. St. John Allerdyce, the sillylittlepanda, yaba, xLiLix, Psyc0gurl0 Dementa and michellio. I love you guys!

REVIEWS WOULD BE FANTASTIC!