The thing was, class tended to leave Clyde in a rather bad mood. It meant that he had to spend time cooped up in a small room with other teens. Even if his classmates were all mutants, it didn't make him feel much better. Looking like a kid because of a mutation was still looking like a kid. Most of them were a lot luckier powerwise and, therefore, acted like they were superior to him.

Clyde was sick of it.

So, as soon as class got out, he made a beeline for one of the quieter, more private areas on the Mansion's grounds: the hedge maze.

He wandered around it aimlessly, trying to collect his thoughts. He passed by the gazebo, kicking a small rock as he walked. So pathetic. All of this, because of his stupid mutation. Just thinking about it made him resentful. Frustrated, he kicked the rock, one last time, as hard as he could.

Clyde’s rock sailed into the hedges. There was a dull thud, followed by a loud FWOMP as the entire row of bushes began to shake violently. A blast of warm air washed over the boy. One might have imagined, for a moment, that the bushes had come to life, furious at whoever could be responsible for rousing them from their slumber.

Time slots in the Danger Room were a precious commodity. That room was one of the most advanced pieces of technology in the entire state of New York, and one of the only places that a young mutant could learn to control dangerous supernatural forces without risking any of the unintentional manslaughter, suicide, property damage, or ecological disaster that usually came with that territory. Kaitlyn had scored an appointment to use that room at 3:20 PM that day, for that very purpose, thanks to concerned members of the Xaviers’ faculty and staff.

It was now 3:25 PM.

Kaitlyn crawled out of the bushes, a small gash on her forehead where the rock hit her. “Ow.” Having crawled a few paces out of the bush, she decided to lay down on her back and stare at Clyde upside-down. “What did that rock ever do to you?”

Moments after Clyde sent the rock flying, he felt a heated gust of wind. From the bushes. What the-

He gasped as a red-headed girl emerged from the hedge. Oh God, he didn't hit her with the rock, did he?

“S-sorry! I-I didn't see you theah!” he frantically apologized, rushing over to the girl. Stupid, stupid, stupid... why hadn't he seen her there? Why had he even kicked the rock? As he got down on his knees beside her, his fears were confirmed. “Yo bleeding!” And from the head, no less! What if he'd given her a concussion or something? “I'd bettah to get you to the DocProf!”

Well, the rock probably wasn't kicked that hard, but Clyde figured it was best to get her there anyways. After all, it was his fault, and if something even worse happened to her, he'd never forgive himself.

“It’s… too late for me,” she said, softly, melodramatically, grabbing the boy’s sleeve. “Tell my girlfriend… I love her. AGH!” Her entire body tensed up, then relaxed. The hand at his sleeve fell to the ground and her head rolled to the side, eyes closed.

She was perfectly still for a second.

“I’m dead,” she explained matter-of-factly. However, if Clyde had any medical training, he might consider that dubious. Dead people typically didn’t speak. Nor did they breathe, nor did they smirk.

“Girlfriend?” Clyde muttered, momentarily confused. But soon, it was clear that this girl was simply being a drama queen. He narrowed his eyes, not amused one bit by her mock death.

“Okay, I get it. Yo mad at me fo that and I'm sorry,” he apologized again. Really, he felt pretty bad about it, so he couldn't just leave without doing anything to help the girl. “Look, you got hit on the head. I'm taking you ovah theah.” He tried to tug at her arm. “Come on.”

Chuckle. “I’m not mad at you.” Kaitlyn sat up, but didn’t let Clyde pull her to her feet. “I was just making fun of you for making a big deal out of it.”

She gingerly felt the area where the rock hit her. “Yeah, I’m fine.” The girl waved dismissively at his efforts to bring her along.

The redhead noticed something. This boy had the rare honor of being shorter than Kait. A lot shorter, actually, and obviously younger. What was he, six? That had to make him the youngest mutant at Xavier’s!

On the one hand, d’aww. On the other hand, she could only imagine how many awful things must have happened for a six-year-old to end up living at Xavier’s. Which he probably did, since the other day students anywhere near his age had all gone home by now. Considering this, Kaitlyn decided to stop messing with him and start being nice to him.

Clyde's narrow-eyed gaze turned into a slight glare. Not only was she laughing it off, she was even making fun of him. Why? He was being completely serious. Head injuries were a big deal! Ugh, this was starting to become irritating.

“At least get it cleaned up oh something,” he suggested with a sigh. True, she probably was going to be fine. Still, Clyde would've felt better if she would at least agree to see the doctor, but, if she refused to go, there wasn't much he could do. It wasn't as if he could drag her there.

“Okay… Sure.” She nodded. Her voice suddenly seemed mellow, almost worried, in contrast to her earlier joking around.

“So.” Kaitlyn stood up. He was a full foot shorter than her, putting her in the rare position of having to look down at someone to make eye contact with them. She made an attempt at sounding amused again: “…So, you didn’t answer my question. What made you so mad at that rock?”

Her bet involved family issues.

Her palm pressed against her forehead, then she lowered it and examined the blood on it for a moment. It wasn’t too much blood.

Clyde could have sworn that, for a second, the girl changed to a concerned tone. Although it quickly vanished, the question still hinted that she knew he was upset about something. Indeed, there were lots of things bothering him. But, it was nothing he felt like talking about, especially to a girl who looked like she was in middle school.

“Fine,” he sighed, “I kicked it because I was being an idiot. Happy?” Even though this girl didn't appear tall for her age, Clyde still found himself looking up to speak with her. That was yet another problem.

Trying to put those thoughts aside, he started to walk towards the building, motioning for her to follow.

“Sure am. That rock had it coming.”

Kaitlyn could swear that she saw a lot of her own feelings in him, back from when she was nine. Mad at the world for not giving her a normal, happy family like every other kid seemed to have, mad at herself because she felt like it was all her fault, and really just mad at anything else that gave her a good enough excuse.

“I’m Kaitlyn, by the way.” She extended her hand to shake, then realized it still had blood on it, so she quickly pulled it back and wiped it off on her shirt before she held it out again.

The redhead already knew exactly how this would go down. She would become his unofficial big sister, and she would teach him how to kick people’s butts and not let anyone mess with him.

“Do you live here, too?”

Looking away from the girl, Clyde rolled his eyes at her weird reply. She probably wasn't truly satisfied with his response, but he didn't want to say much more.

He noticed that she, who introduced herself as Kaitlyn, was offering him her hand to shake – the same one she'd put up against her bleeding forehead. That, he was going to turn down, even though she did try to wipe it off.

“I'm Clyde. And yeah, I've been living heah a few months,” he answered, not sounding too happy about it. How long he'd been there surprised him. All that time, and he still wasn't over what happened between him and his dad.

She nodded solemnly. Best case scenario, she was looking at a 7-year-old whose family shipped him off to boarding school because they couldn’t stand having him around. Most of the other options involved family situations even worse than that. “Sucks.”

What sucks, you ask? Everything in general, especially if you’re a mutant in this crapsack world. Especially if you’re an orphaned mutant kid, which are a dime a dozen, seeing the other kids grow up with parents that still give a crap and trying to figure out what you did wrong to stop deserving that.

“I ended up on the streets when I was nine. Then I got to the Sanctuary. This is my second year over here, though.” She found that sharing more about herself made it easier to pry into other people’s business. But she knew she shouldn’t pry too hard. “Hey, didja know this place went three entire years without getting completely destroyed? Gotta feel safe in a place with that kinda history.” The sarcasm in her voice was obvious. Xaviers' was a national news story just waiting to happen.

“Indeed,” Clyde said under his breath. Sometimes, it felt like his whole life sucked.

Though, Kaitlyn's story caught him off guard. She had to live on the streets? When she was only nine? If she was telling the truth, yikes. Hearing stories like that made Clyde wonder what the hell was wrong with some of these parents.

Clyde didn't know why Kaitlyn suddenly decided to change topics, but what she mentioned did raise some questions. “The school was destroyed?” He'd never heard of such an incident. After all, he had only be in New York for about a year and was not as familiar with the Mansion's history. With all the mutant haters and mutant powers, it was not impossible.

But what was with Kaitlyn's tone? The cynic in Clyde told him that perhaps she'd made it up to scare him. “What happened to it?” he asked with a hint of suspicion. Maybe she was going to try to tell him that a meteorite fell on it. Heh, scare tactics like that didn't work so well on teenagers.

“From what they’ve told me, and what I saw in old news articles,” and it really was worth looking it up just to make sure nobody was BSing her, “It had something to do with one of the kids here doing something dumb… wait.” She stopped walking for a moment, struggling to remember what she had learned about the Mansion’s history. “…no, I’m wrong. That was four years ago. Three years ago was the party they threw here to celebrate the school not getting destroyed for a full year. ‘Cause they had to rebuild after registration ended in ‘08, and in ’07 there was the King Pharms incident. That’s when a bunch of mutants started huge fights all over the city for no reason.”

There actually was a reason; her friends in the Order had told her about it. Most people didn’t know, and it would generally be better to keep it that way.

“But yeah, if you ask the older kids about ‘that time Xaviers’ got wrecked,’ they’ll ask you which time you’re talking about, ‘cause there were at least four." And the incident Kaitlyn caused just before the summer totally didn't count. She had only destroyed several rooms, two hallways, and most of a stairwell.

Wow, Kaitlyn had a lot to say about the subject. The Mansion had been destroyed four times? Heh, kids and their tendency to exaggerate things. Clyde rolled his eyes at it. “Uh-huh. Nice try, but that's not going to scare me.”

So far, Clyde felt fairly safe at the Mansion, even if he did have a psycho with wings for a roommate. Though, considering this place's importance with the whole human-mutant relations thing, it wouldn't be a bad idea to learn more about its history. Perhaps he'd do some digging sometime.

“You seem to like talking about this stuff. I thought most middle schoolahs hated history,” remarked the age shifter.