Rogue, her face buried in her pillow, was so focused on her thoughts that she almost didn’t hear Xavier’s voice echo through her mind.

     “All students, I would like you all to come down to the front room as soon as you can. I realize that this is a difficult time for all of you, but we have a new student enrolling here at the Institute, and I would appreciate all of you welcoming her here as warmly as possible. She has been going through some rather… difficult times of her own lately. Thank you.”

     Rogue groaned and just buried her face further in her pillow. She was the only student at the Institute left who had a room to herself, and now that was out the window as well… She idly wondered if this day could get any worse, but quickly pushed that thought from her mind—she didn’t want to jinx it, after all.

     After a minute, Rogue finally sighed and pushed herself up reluctantly from her bed, wiping the remnants of tears from her eyes before leaving her room and heading downstairs.

     Rogue was the last one downstairs. Glancing around, she saw all the other students and instructors sitting and standing around in a half-circle around the entry doors to the Mansion. Usually, most of them would be chatting—or, in the case of the former New Mutants, goofing off—but today, most of them were silent. Beast and Colossus were in a corner, discussing something amongst themselves quietly, but otherwise everyone was just standing around, a depressed look on their faces while they all stared at the floor.

     Taking a seat next to—ugh, Bobby—Rogue looked out the glass entry doors. At the foot of the driveway she could see a car parked out front, its door open. Two women were talking to Professor Xavier, but the sun was behind them from her point of view, so she couldn’t make out any details of their appearances besides their silhouettes.

     Finally, about a minute later, Xavier stopped talking to the two women and wheeled up the ramp to the entry doors. Pushing them open, he wheeled inside as they closed behind him.

     “Well, everyone, I’m pleased to announce that it looks like our numbers will be increased by one. After they saw what our team did during the Apocalypse crisis, this fifteen-year-old girl and her family looked into it and decided that this place would be best for her. Now, I realize that you all are used to seeing unique mutations, but I have to admit that this is one of the most extreme I have ever seen—nearly all of this girl’s biological functions have been altered after she became a Mutant nearly a year ago, and she has had a very difficult time adjusting. Thus, I ask you all to please be particularly understanding and helpful while she adjusts to life here. I am pleased to introduce Cessily Kincaid, who was brought here from Seattle by her mother, Debra.”

     Motioning for the two women to come in, Cessily and her mom opened the doors and walked in.

     It was hard for Rogue not to gasp at Cessily’s appearance, though a few other students did so before quickly silencing themselves. Cessily was rather tall for her age, roughly halfway between Rogue’s and Jean’s height, but she was also rather lanky with a very slim figure, similar to Kitty’s. She had bright red, neatly-trimmed, shoulder-length hair, and she was dressed in a plain T-shirt, blue jeans, and sandals.

     That much about her was normal—the rest of her appearance immediately screamed “Mutant!” to even the most casual observer.

     Firstly, her skin was silver. No, Rogue corrected herself, it was much more than that—her skin had a very… watery appearance, like it wasn’t completely solid. This was confirmed when Rogue noticed a few drops of the silvery stuff dripping from her hands and chin to the floor below. Weirdest of all, instead of just staying on the floor, the silver droplets slowly crept back towards her sandals and merged with her feet! Upon closer examination, Rogue saw that Cessily wasn’t so much lanky as slightly mis-proportioned—due to the constant dripping off and reabsorbing of her body matter, the lower half of her body was slightly larger in proportion than a normal person’s would have been, while the upper half of her body was slightly skinnier than it should have been.

     Rogue also noticed a few odd features about her face, besides the silvery “skin”—for one, she had no eyes, at least in the traditional sense. Oh, there were eye-like features on her face, but the eyes had no pupils to speak of, and they were the same color as the surrounding silvery skin. There were also two line-shaped indentations going down the sides of her face, though the indentations seemed very shallow. The lines stopped at the eyes, but otherwise, passed straight through from the bottom of her chin to her hair.

     Cessily stared nervously at the speechless crowd for a moment before quickly turning back to her strawberry-blonde, somewhat chubby mother.

     “M-mom, maybe this was a mistake…,” Cessily said, her voice, which had a slightly watery tone to it, taking on a tinge of panic.

     “Honey, c’mon, we already discussed this,” Debra said reassuringly, putting a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “You’ll be fine. They’re just surprised, that’s all.”

     “Cessily’s body appears to be made of a non-toxic form of mercury,” Xavier said to the students, hoping to break the awkward silence. “This gives her a Mutant ability of being able to stretch and manipulate her shape. However, she has had some problems with keeping herself in a fairly solid state, which is why Cessily’s parents decided to bring her here.”

     “Cessily, I understand that you’re nervous,” Jean said, as she and Cyclops got up and stepped forwards towards the new Mutant. “But don’t worry, your appearance doesn’t matter here. We’ll all help you to control your gifts and put them to good use as best we can—I promise. It’s just been a bad day for us, that’s all.”

     Scott smiled and held out his hand. Cessily slowly turned away from her mother and shook his hand. Scott’s face betrayed for a moment the odd feeling of shaking a cool, watery hand, but he quickly reigned it in.

     “Welcome to the X-Men, Cessily,” Cyclops said, and the other students and instructors lined up behind him to shake Cessily’s hand in turn.

     For the first time in nearly a year, Cessily—and her mother-- smiled.

     “Man, I’m really going to miss my mom...” Cessily said as she finished unpacking her stuff in her new room.

     “Don’t worry, you’ll get to visit your family three times a year,” Rogue said as she completed hanging Cessily’s clothes up in their shared closet. “Professor Xavier gives you all two weeks in the summer, and a week each for Winter and Spring Break to go home and be with your family.”

     “Yeah, I know that, but I’m still really going to miss her… After my powers emerged and my parents… divorced, my mom still stuck by me… Say, how are your folks? You get along with them alright?”

     “…Not… really. Let’s just… leave it at that.”

     “Oh… okay,” Cessily said. After a couple of seconds of awkward silence, she continued, “What’s going on here? Why is everyone so depressed?”

     “Oh… that,” Rogue replied, sighing. “Well, there’s this guy, named Robert Kelly—he used to be our High School Principal, but then the secret got out about Mutants, and he went on his own little twisted crusade against us. Long story short, he got tired of ‘dealing’ with us and decided to run for Mayor to try to do something about it. The reason we’re all so depressed is that last night was the elections, and…he won. The Prof says that he’s ‘optimistic’ because Kelly ‘only’ won by nine percentage points, but that still seems like a pretty big win to me. It’ll still be another two and a half months before he takes office, but still…”

     “Ah… I guess I couldn’t have picked a worse time to come, then,” Cessily sighed. “What does Mayor Kelly propose doing, exactly?”

     “Besides mutant registration, the guy was never too clear on the subject. Makes you wonder what else he’s planning…”

     “Well, I can’t comment on any other policies he has on his mind, but mutant registration doesn’t seem so bad,” Cessily said.

     “What!?” Rogue said in disbelief, looking up from the bed, where she was helping to fold Cessily’s remaining clothes. “You have GOT to be kidding me. That’s practically segregation!”

     “N-not really,” Cessily stuttered, her tone taking on a touch of nervousness. “If he would g-go much farther than just registration, I guess I could understand, but I mean, the g-government does kind of need to know who we are and w-what we can accomplish, in spite of how people treat us, since not all M-mutants help out the rest of the public.”

     “Why, so they can come in the middle of the night and hunt us down? Give me a break! You, of all people, should realize this!”

     “Th-there are other laws to protect us from th-those sorts of things, Rogue… Not to mention he’s j-just a mayor of a city, he doesn’t h-have that much power. And besides, he’s got a job to protect the rest of the city from Mutants th-that aren’t so peaceful. He c-can’t just trust all the M-mutants to come out and unveil themselves t-to the world when they’ve committed a c-crime.”

     “You know, you’re starting to sound an awful lot like Kelly himself,” Rogue said, her eyes narrowing as she brushed aside the folded clothes and stood up. “You seem to put an awful lot of trust in humans, but then you turn around and say in the same breath that the government shouldn’t trust us.”

     “I’m n-not saying there’s a really easy a-answer to all of this,” Cessily protested as Rogue made her way over the door and exited the room. “It’s just not a b-black and white quest—“

     “Y’know, I’m not going to do anything bad to you, or stop from helping you when we’re in a fight,” Rogue angrily interrupted, poking her head back into the room, “But do NOT expect me to be your friend. In fact, I think it’d be best if we just didn’t talk for a while.”

     Cessily sighed as Rogue exited the room for good and stooped down to pick up the clothes that the goth had pushed aside.

     “M-maybe I should ask the Professor for another roommate…”

     “Hey, Prof, do you think I could get another roommate?” Rogue asked later that evening, as all the X-Men were gathered around the dining hall table for dinner.

     “I’m sorry Rogue, but your room was the only student’s room left that wasn’t already shared between two people, and I’m not to move the other students around, as they’ve already been settled in for some time,” Xavier said after he finished chewing a mouthful of vegetables. “Not to mention that I don’t want to open up the only unused wing of the mansion yet until we get more students—it would add a substantial amount to our already hefty electricity bills.”

     “Why, what’s wrong with her?” Sam asked from a few seats down the table. “She seemed like a pretty nice girl to me.”

     “Let’s just say she has some… awfully self-defeating beliefs,” Rogue grumbled before taking a bite of meatloaf. “She’s practically a traitor to her own kind, and that stuff like that really pushes my buttons.”

     “Now, Rogue, it is important to be open-mind—“ Xavier started.

     “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Rogue interrupted. “There are limits to what I can tolerate, Prof, sorry. Plus, she stutters whenever she gets put in the spotlight the least little bit. It gets annoying REAL fast.”

     “Hey, where is Cessily, anyway?” Kitty said from her spot next to Rogue. “Isn’t she going to eat with us? I thought we were nice enough to her… well, most of us…”

     “As far as she and her parents can determine, she doesn’t need to eat,” Xavier answered as Rogue briefly glared at Kitty. “She has no digestive system any longer, so the food would just sit inside her body. In fact, she even breathes more out of habit than anything else, as she has no respiratory system either. I’d like to run a few tests on her once she gets settled in and feels more comfortable here, but as near as I can figure, her body is almost entirely self-sustaining. All she really requires is sleep.”

     “Now THAT is freaky,” Bobby said in between bites of his dinner. “I can’t imagine what I’d do if I couldn’t eat anymore.”

     “Well, you wouldn’t have to waste time going to the bathroom, either,” Jamie commented.

     “Still not worth it,” Bobby grinned.

     “So that’s a ‘no’ to the new roommate thing then, huh?” Rogue groaned.

     “Yes, that’s a no,” Xavier said half-apologetically. “I’m sure you’ll get along well enough, just give it time.”

     “I wouldn’t count on it…” Rogue muttered to herself.

     “I don’t know if a one-piece suit would really work for me,” Cessily commented as Beast handed her a standard New Mutant uniform. “I’d rip it apart as soon as I started using my powers.”

     “We figured that, so as soon as it was confirmed that you were enrolling here, Charles and I did some extensive research into what kinds of materials were out there that were capable of being made into clothing,” Hank said as he and Cessily exited the fitting room and walked down the main hallway in the X-Mansion’s basement. “It took a while, but we found a material that’s both comfortable and able to conform to whatever shape your body puts itself in while inside the uniform.”

     “Oh… well then, thank you… very much,” Cessily said, smiling. “It’ll be nice to use my powers without having to worry about ripping or stretching my clothes beyond repair.”

     “No problem at all, I’m here to help,” Hank said, waving away the compliment. “By the way, have you picked a codename yet?”

     “Mercury, I guess,” Cessily shrugged. “I’m not really into the whole ‘codename’ thing. Seems a bit hokey to me.”

     “It helps to protect our identities in certain situations,” Hank answered. “Plus, most of the students think they’re kind of cool to have anyways.”

     As they entered the elevator and Hank pressed the button to take them to the second floor above-ground, he continued, “Well, it’s getting late. You should probably get to bed soon—your first day of school is tomorrow, and I know you haven’t gone to school since your powers manifested.”

     “Oh, r-right… that...” Cessily said, her eyes downcast. “Do you think I c-could get a holowatch to wear, like that b-blue student with the tail… B-Bert, was it?”

     “Kurt,” Hank corrected, smiling for a split second before his expression turned serious. “Cessily, I’m sorry, but an image inducer wouldn’t work on you. It only changes your visual image, but what you actually are—and how you feel if someone touches you—aren’t changed at all.”

     Hank paused as the elevator came to a stop, the doors slid open, and they walked out onto the second floor.

     “Not to mention, whenever you… drip, your drops would land outside the holowatch’s area of effect, which means that to an observer, you’d look like a normal girl, but you’d be constantly dripping drops of mercury and reabsorbing them into your normal-colored feet. It wouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds for someone to notice something was amiss.”

     “W-well, then… what do I d-do?”

     “I know you’ll hate to hear this, but you’re just going to have to face your classmates as-is. They’re going to know you’re a Mutant anyways, seeing as you’re enrolled here. Might as well get it out in the open on the first day.”

     “N-no! I can’t do that! That w-was the reason I quit going to school i-in Seattle in the first place!”

     Beast sighed and put his hand on Cessily’s shoulder. “Cessily, look at me,” he stated, looking up into her eyes, “No one ever said being a Mutant was going to be easy. And there’s some very, very rough times ahead of all of us, I’m sure of it. But Charles—as well as most of the rest of the people living here—wholeheartedly believe that, given times, humans will come around to us. That’s why Charles has insisted in enrolling you all at the local public school, instead of just teaching you all here and shutting you off from the rest of society. It’s just going to take time—remember, it’s barely been a year since the existence of Mutants was made public. You can’t expect people to adapt to this new world that quickly.”

     “I g-guess not…” Cessily said. Judging from her tone, she sounded like she was crying a little, but Hank suspected that she physically couldn’t, due to the absence of water in her body, among other things.

     “Don’t worry about it, Cessily, you’ll do fine,” Beast said, taking his hand off her shoulder and starting down the hall towards his own room. “And I’m here, if you ever need me, as are the rest of us. We all know what you’re going through—especially Kurt and I, given our… appearances. It’ll be tough at first, but you’ll be able to deal with it, I know you will.”

     “Hey, Drippy! Think fast!”

     Cessily turned towards the source of the voice, only to get hit in the face with two ballpoint pens.

     Sighing, she pulled out the pens now embedded in her cheeks and threw them to the floor. A couple of mercury drops fell down to the floor with them, but they quickly slid into her feet again.

     Cessily tried to concentrate on what the teacher was saying—something about the Civil War—but she found it nearly impossible, given that the entire class—including the teacher—constantly stared at her, even though she had sat in the back row. She found that the emotions displayed on their faces fit neatly into two categories— everyone in the class either hated her or were totally weirded out by her appearance.

     Well, except Jubilee, who also had the same history class that she did. However, even her fellow Mutant wasn’t being particularly helpful—she could tell that Jubilee was trying to keep her eyes off Cessily and pay attention to the teacher, but the constant focusing of everyone else’s eyes on Cessily cajoled even Jubilee to glance her way every now and then.

     A few minutes later, Cessily finally gave up and laid her head down on her desk, trying to mentally picture another place. Heck, ANY other place than this classroom…

     Cessily had almost gotten her mind focused on something else when she felt a pencil fly into her neck and sink in about a quarter of the way.

     Yeah, I’m dealing with this REALLY well, Mr. McCoy…

      “What’s wrong, Cessily? You look a little less… solid… than you did yesterday,” Kitty asked as she, Sam, and Danielle each walked up as a group and took a seat at the same cafeteria table as Cessily—a table which, naturally, she had been the only one at until just now.

     “I’m having a b-bit of trouble… concentrating today,” Cessily said, tapping her fingers on the table repetitively. Given that it was lunchtime, there wasn’t really anything for her to do except wait for the next period to start. Not that she wanted the next period to start, of course… “I have to always k-keep a small part of my mind devoted to keeping my b-body solid, it drives me n-nuts sometimes. Today, I just don’t care, it’s n-not like I could freak anybody out m-more anyway…”

     “First day at this school sucks pretty bad, don’t it?” Sam asked. “Man, you shoulda seen it when Mutants were first made public—this is nothin’ compared to what it was like then. Talk about the rest of the school being on the warpath… You really should consider yourself lucky you weren’t there then, Cess.”

     “Somehow th-that doesn’t make me feel better…” Cessily replied, pulling up her T-shirt a bit, as it was starting to sink into her shoulders.

     “I can really relate to what you’re going through,” Danielle said after she finished sipping her Coke. “Back when I lived in Dark Hollow, no one there would come near me.”

     “But it g-got better eventually, right?” Cessily asked, looking up.

     “Actually…” Danielle started.

     “Hey, listen, Cessily,” Kitty interrupted, “After school, me, Amara, and Danielle here were going to go downtown and hang out. You want to come with us?”

     “I dunno,” Cessily started, “I don’t really feel like being out in public any longer than I have—“

     “Aw, c’mon, you need to get your mind off things, relax a little,” Kitty insisted. “Besides, it’d be a perfect opportunity for us to show you the area, since you really haven’t seen much of Bayville outside of here and the Mansion.”

     “Well… I guess so… but if things start to get bad…”

     “Don’t worry, Professor Xavier’s taught us all what to do in situations like that. You’ll be fine,” Kitty smiled.

     “Ew! There’s no way I’d eat a sandwich with peanut butter and jalapenos on it!” Amara said, sticking out her tongue. “Are you sure that’s what Kurt was eating?”

     “Yeah,” Cessily replied. “Does he always eat stuff like that?”

     “Yeah, Kurt apparently has another Mutant power that the Professor didn’t pick up on,” Kitty said, smirking as the four rounded a corner onto the main downtown stretch. “His digestive system is made of iron.”

     Amara, Cessily, and Moonstar all chuckled a little, but Cessily’s chuckle was suddenly cut short as a brick came sailing right into the back of her head. It was hurled with such force it flew right through her cranium, splattering Cessily’s head all over Kitty, Moonstar, and the sidewalk around them.

     “Hey! What the heck do you think you’re doing!?” Amara yelled, turning towards the source of the brick and igniting her fists.

     “Just playin’ catch with Drippy,” said a tall, muscular blonde-haired boy their age, flanked by two other high schoolers of similar builds. “What? You Muties gonna do something about it?”

     “I re-recognize them,” Cessily said nervously as a new head started to form from her neck, the parts of her splattered all over Kitty, Moonstar, and the sidewalk starting to edge towards and reunite with her body. “They were all fr-from my history class this morning…”

     “Oh, you’ll see what we’ll do about it,” Amara sneered, preparing to throw a fireball at the boys.

     “Amara, don’t,” Kitty said, putting a hand on her arm. “If we hurt those jerks, we could get arrested… there’s tons of people around here…”

     Indeed, several people walking along the street had stopped to stare at the spectacle.

     “Hey, don’t get mad at us,” the blonde-haired teenager said, grinning. “We were just having a littl’ fun. After all, we didn’t hurt you, did we, Drippy?”

     “Well, n-no,” Cessily admitted, her head now fully reformed. “But it did sting a lit—“

     “There, see? We ain’t done nothin’ wrong. We’re just… training her to use her freak abilities better,” the blonde sneered, the other two boys nodded their heads in agreement. “Nothing any worse than what that cripple does for you guys at Mutie Manor, eh?”

     “Well, we can’t just let them get away with it!” Amara protested, ignoring the blonde teenager’s thinly veiled insults. “We have to do something!”

     “No… we don’t have to DO anything…” Danielle said, smiling mischeviously as her eyes started to glow a light blue.

     “What?! Of course we—oh,” Amara said, stopping herself as she saw Danielle’s eyes.

     Moments later, all three of the boys’ eyes suddenly went wide, focused on something above the girls’ heads. Looking up in that direction, Cessily didn’t see anything, and looked back at the boys, confused.

     Finally, one of them screamed, and a damp spot quickly appeared in his pants. Terrified, all three of the boys suddenly fled, running as fast as they could and knocking over several other people in their desperate attempt to escape the scene.

     “What… what was that all about?” Cessily said, bewildered.

     “It’s my Mutant ability,” Danielle replied, pointing at her forehead as her eyes turned their normal color again. “I can make people experience their worst fears in their minds. Interesting how the one on the left was scared of his grandmother, of all things…”

     “Well, looks like our little trip downtown is cut short--- again,” Kitty said sadly, surveying the dozens of people on the street staring at them uncertainly. “Cessily, did you want to go back to the Mansion?”

     Cessily thought for a moment before replying.

     “No,” she suddenly said, smiling a little. “I think we can keep looking around. Unlike those three guys… I don’t think I have much to fear anymore, at least from people like them. Not since I’ve got you guys to back me up.”

The End
 

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