[It All Started With Duck Pajamas...]

"You," she declared as she turned a page in her French book, "are the most idiotic girl in the entire world."

Her roommate just sighed, staring at the ceiling with a dreamy smile spread wide across her lightly tanned face. She rolled her dark eyes from behind the rectangular black framed glasses she wore and shook her head slightly, sighing for a very different reason than her love-stricken roommate. She ran a hand through her sandy brown (blond?) hair, making pieces fall out of the messy bun she had previously put it in to study.

"I mean it, Rogue. What's so absolutely lovely about this guy that makes you so love-sick?" she demanded, honestly wondering why Rogue, one of the only girls she'd ever come to know who agreed with her on the opinion that teenage love was pretty stupid, had suddenly turned into a lovey-dovey, love-sick puppy when some new guycame onto the scene of Xavier's.

"He's just so..." Rogue struggled to find the right word, dark hair sprawled out against the quilt of her bed. Rogue thought hard for a minute and she stared at her blankly, waiting for her to actually say something meaningful, something that had been a rare occurrence in the past week since. Rogue gave up her struggle and just sighed, making her roll eyes again, scoffing and then continuing to copy down verbs in simple future tense. Damn, she hated AP French.

"You are the most idiotic girl in the entire world," she repeated. It was useless. It was almost eight, and she didn't understand half of what she was writing anyways. She gave a frustrated sigh, rosy lips pouting slightly as she gave up on any hopes of getting her French homework done that night, and re-set her alarm so that she'd have time to hopefully figure it out in the morning, though she doubted that she would. She just wasn't in the mood for anything that night.

"I know, Kitty. But can you really blame me?" Rogue pleaded. "Look at him!" she said, even though the guy was nowhere to be seen, considering he was probably in his own room on the other side of the dorms. "I can't help but love him! He's hot, he's sexy, and he's Southern!"

Kitty mentally groaned and swore that if Rogue had been standing up, the girl probably would have swooned and collapsed, her words so exaggerated that it made her sort of want to puke. "Could a girl want anything else?" Rogue sighed dreamily as she got up from the bed and stripped out of the large gray hoodie she'd been wearing, which had 'Mississippi printing across it in big letters. She replaced it with a cute, long-sleeved red top that would make Logan, her guardian, go absolutely nuts, because he'd had have to beat the boys off with a stick, or more likely, his adamantium-based fists.

The thought of an over-protective Logan made Kitty's heart clench. Her father was over-protective...

"You comin', Kitty?" Rogue drawled as she applied a cherry red gloss to her lips that matched the color of her top. Kitty shook her head.

"No thanks," she said, declining calmly. "I'd rather just stay in. I'm pretty tired. First day Xavier's is always draining, you know?"

"Alright. Holla if you need anything," Rogue said, shrugging. Kitty fiddled with the strings coming out of her distressed denim skirt. "Y'all don't know what'chour missin', sugar!" With that last comment, Rogue exitted, leaving the door open a crack because she'd lost her key and because Kitty could sleep through anything, and therefore probably wouldn't wake up whenever she came back from the party to let her back in.

Kitty sighed and stared up at the ceiling. She and Rogue had painted it like the night sky their first year together as roommates, way back, before the invasion and before Jean died at Alkali Lake and before Jean died...again, at Alcatraz. So much had happened since she became friends with Rogue all those years ago when she showed up with Logan, and not all that had happened centered around just Rogue and Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning alone.

Kitty hadn't told anyone about what had happened during her summer. When she came back to Xavier's earlier than usual, people wondered what happened, but were kind enough to know that Kitty would inform them when she was ready. The most information anyone knew was that she'd gone home to Chicago when school ended in June and that she was back barely four weeks later, pretty much begging the Professor for work. She'd worked the summer away, from July to August; weeding gardens, helping teachers with class plans, practicing in the Danger Room. By the time came around for the new school year, everyone had noticed that Kitty was different. She didn't laugh half as much as she used to, and she seemed to zone out a lot. She was more temperamental, and her opinions had changed drastically. No longer did she find herself obsessed with Piotr or fascinated by Bobby. Now, she thought of love as a teenager as something stupid, as something not to waste her time on.

Everyone knew something was up, it was no secret. At lunch that day, she'd heard the smaller kids whisper and place bets on what it could be; bad break-up, jail, drugs. It made her smile, and in a sicked and twisted sort of way, she kind of admired the smaller children for being somewhat honest by not being sneaky enough to keep their whispers unknown. Kitty sighed again. It had only been the first day of the new school year. The smaller kids were bound to ask her what was wrong soon. After all, she could only keep her personality change hidden for so long when she was a favorite in the X-men Team among the younger generation.

Kitty turned to rest on her side, arms bent and hands resting in front of her face, off to the side. She stared at the photo that sat on her nightstand, glaring into the smiling cobalt eyes of her father. She was four-years-old, sitting on his shoulders with her head on his, smiling from ear to ear. He was wearing his uniform, dark blue making his eyes stand out and clashing against the pink shorts she wore in the picture. She put the picture face down on the table and closed her eyes.

He promised...

"Shhh!" someone hissed, sneaking into the room. Kitty didn't move, and kept her eyes closed, drifting in and out of sleep as she tried to figure out what was going on.

"I cannot believe I'm doing this!" another voice whined. She barely recognized it, and it took her several seconds to realize that it was Bobby's. It was different, probably deeper. Logan would probably cry from joy. It seemed that Bobby had testosterone, after all. Kitty snoozed back into subconsciousness again, until she heard footsteps.

"Well, we are. Now come on, help me figure out which drawer it is!"the other voice ordered, and she struggled to remember it. It sounded so familiar, but so... not, at the same time. It was hard to pinpoint the owner, and sleep was fighting for dominance over her. She sighed deeply before settling again. It was probably just a strange dream, anyway. People were awake and about now. There was no way that Xavier's was being invaded again without anyone noticing. And besides, if there were military ops invading the school again, they would be using S.W.A.T hand signals, or something like that, not whispering like James Bond wanna-bes.

"Jackpot! Panty drawer!" the voice that didn't remind her of Bobby cajoled. That statement made her realize that this was not a dream. Her eyes snapped open and she leaped off the bed, years of training from Logan in the Danger Room making her leap into attack mode almost instantly. She tackled the tresspassers and flipped on the light switch with her foot, her petite 5'3 frame sprawled over two obviously far larger ones. She was instantly flipped over, and she phased through the floor, grabbing one foot and taking the invader with her to the game room below.

"Bobby?" she said, still somewhat sleepy despite the adrenaline high. He laughed nervously, scratching the back of his head.

"Hey, Kitty," he said, dragging out the 'hey'. She regarded him skeptically.

"What the heck were you doing in my room?" she asked, blinking and then standing up, stretching. "And who else was there?"

"Well, you see," Bobby said, laughing again nervously. "It's the big Back to Xavier's bash, as per annual tradition and-"

"Bobby, cut to the chase."

"JohnisbackandweweresortofdaredbyBlinktosneakintoyourroomandstealyourunderwearandshowittoalltheguysinthewestwingbathroom!" Bobby rushed. It took Kitty a second to figure out what he said, but slowly it clicked.

John + dare + her underwear + all the guys in the west wing bathroom.

Oh, hell no!

Kitty sprinted towards the west wing, ignoring the slight sting of her ankle, which she landed on wrong thanks to the added weight of Bobby Drake, aka, Iceman, aka, one of her best guy friends who was so going to get an ass-whooping once she maimed John and got her panties back.

She found him running down the hallway, hands clutching fabric that didn't belong to anything he was wearing. He ran through her, smirking at her, before he sprinted down the stairs. She raced after him, annoyed and tired and blushing at the fact that he held her underwear like he had every right to. Why the Professor even let John, aka Pyro, back into the school, was beyond her. Everyone had been against the idea, even her, back when she was forgiving and nice and thought the best of everyone. John Allerdyce had betrayed them all, joining Magneto's ranks and leaving his friends behind for a man who told him that he was a god among insects. No one was happy with what he'd done; it was a miracle that anyone tolerated him. But Bobby, out of all people, stuck by him, and thus, Xavier's was steadily getting used to his presence again as the school prankster and bad-ass.

"Come on, Kitten," he taunted, "you can run faster than that." His smirk made her anger flare. He'd been cocky before he left, but it had never bothered her because she never really spent any time with him. She'd always been too interested in Piotr or Bobby to pay any attention to John. Besides, he had 'bad news' written all over him, and Kitty did not enjoy bad news.

She scampered down the hall after him, and it was at times like these that she wished she hadn't fallen asleep wearing a denim mini-skirt and that she wasn't so short. The current situation was the perfect example as to why she hated PE as a kid. Dodge-ball had been hell before her mutation kicked in...

John was stupid, she found. He was stupid because he was yanking doors open left and right to put up a barrier so that she'd have a more difficult time catching him. Obviously, he'd forgotten her mutation at the moment, and his actions only slowed him down and made her job a lot less difficult. She phased right through everything, and sprinted the last few feet. She was going to catch him! She was going to catch him and take her underwear back and-

And she ran right through the door of the west wing boys bathroom to find every boy above grade seven standing there as John held her undies high in the air. There was utter silence, most of the boys totally ignorant to her presence in the room and staring at the treasure John held. One boy fainted. Kitty rolled her eyes and then looked up, seeing if John had gotten her really risky ones or if they were just her everyday ones. Then she grinned like a cat who got the cream, because John Allerdyce was a fool.

"Dude, those are shorts!" one guy called out. Murmurs went throughout the room and Kitty stood there, smug, as she sent John a look. He glared at her and then looked at what he held.

"Yeah! With rubber ducks on them!" another guy added. "Dude! You grabbed pajamas! What the hell?!"

"Bravo," Kitty mused, arms crossed over her torso as she looked up with John, smug grin so wide it made her face ache before she turned around and phased right through the door, the guys just realizing that she was in the room. She made her way back to her room calmly, walking softly but quickly, as always. John opened the door and glared at her back(side...).

"This isn't over, Kitten!" John hollered at her, because no one made a fool of John Allerdyce and got away with it.

"Whatever," she said, smirking back at him as she rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.