"Remarkable..."

"What is it, Hank?"

"I...I haven't seen something like this since the Stepford Cuckoos. Remember them?"

"Yes, the memory is all too raw in my head."

"Ah, yes, sorry Emma. Sometimes I forget..."

"You were saying."

Hank McCoy cleared his throat and pointed at the six girls sitting together in the garden while the rest of the new students at the Jean Grey Institute for Higher Learning mulled around, talking to each other, exhibiting their abilities, as mutants do.

"They're identical. Completely identical except for small differences, such as hair style. But otherwise, the exact same DNA."

"Huh. Interesting."

"I wonder..."

"If they have the same X-Gene as well?"

"Precisely."

"Well, time can only tell."

-0-

"Come on, Cos!"

"Just a second, I need to get this right!"

She took in a long, deep breath, closed her eyes and parted her palms from each other, a spark of light emitting from the space and shimmering in various colours, swirling around her hands before turning into a solid, white ball in the centre of the space, and she opened her eyes, smiling.

"Ladies and clones, I give you, a solid ball of molten energy."

"Great, now can we please go inside? I'm freezing my nipples off here!" Sarah muttered, getting a sharp slap from Rachel, who rolled her eyes.

"A bit of tact would do you good, Sarah."

"Yeah yeah."

They got up, walking towards the door, leaving behind them the setting sun and the chilling evening air, walking towards the dining hall where they were expected to sit and have dinner with a bunch of strangers who had refused to approach them that day, their first day.

"We are never going to fit in here..."

"Alison, be positive."

"Beth, she's right-"

"Cosima, we don't need your encouragement right now to her pessimistic thoughts. You know what happens when she gets pessimistic."

"Sarah, what does pessimistic mean?"

"I'll explain later, Helena."

Still talking amongst themselves, they entered the dining hall, slapped in the face by the loudness of it all. All around them, people their age were playing around with their food, talking animatedly, showing off their abilities in attempts to impress their peers. They all looked at each other, six pairs of identical eyes, and walked towards an empty table.

"We are never going to fit in here."

Nobody corrected her this time.

-0-

Delphine Cormier, a student in her fourth year at the Institute, had been given the responsibility of Prefect. Delphine Cormier, however, was not one to hold this position for long. Delphine Cormier liked to make trouble, liked to sneak around, liked to encourage the same kind of behaviour in her peers. So why on earth promote her to Prefect?

The answer? She was the only one from her class who had survived long enough.

The weathered scars of battles long past were etched into her skin as reminders of that very fact. The glare in her eyes whenever she heard any mention of the disaster that had taken the lives of most of her classmates made everybody remember never to mention it again. The solid, cold line her lips took across her mouth most of the time was enough to make anybody reproachful of approaching her.

Delphine Cormier was a reminder to Scott Summers that sometimes, his leadership skills failed. Disastrously.

"So, as Prefect, your first duty shall be overseeing dinner and making sure that the kids don't...you know. Break anything important. Like their bones. Or the mahogany tables."

"Yes, Mr Summers."

"You can call me Scott, Delphine. We're at that point."

"OK, Mr Summers."

He sighed and watched her retreat out of his office, putting a hand to his head. She would never forgive him, he knew.

-0-

"Hey, blondie."

Cosima looked up from her plate quickly enough to see the character Beth had pointed out. Like her, Beth sometimes showed tendencies to admire the same sex more than was necessary, but unlike her, Beth never acted on those urges. Instead, she kept them to herself, while Cosima would pursue whatever attractive being had sparked both their attention.

"Oh, yeah..."

"What, hot guy?"

"Hot girl."

"Oh," Sarah grinned, turning around in her seat to try and catch the elusive blonde. "Older?"

"Yeah."

"Nice. Go for it, one of you."

"I will!" Cosima grinned, getting up and almost falling over her feet to get away from the chair, the table, and her sisters. Rachel snickered behind her hands, hiding a very obvious smile.

"Don't hurt yourself, sister."

"Yeah, wouldn't wanna embarrass yourself before you've even said a word to the poor girl."

"Shut up," she mumbled, blushing as she moved towards the blonde standing near the door, looking over everyone's heads, a small golden X pinned to her uniform.

"Trust Cosima to be the one to pick up a girl within the first few hours of us being here," Alison mumbled, and Beth kicked her slightly under the table.

"Yeah, but you have to admit. It's pretty admirable of her to try."

-0-

"So, you can..."

"Control energy," Cosima smiled as they sat in the Sunday sun, on the grass next to the fountain her sisters and her had sat on a few days ago. Ever since she had decided to just go up to Delphine and say 'hi', the two had struck up a comfortable relationship, one Cosima hoped could possibly develop into something a little bit more than just sitting a few centimetres apart and talking...

"And your sisters. They can do the same thing?"

"Nah. We were cloned from each other so we're not really sisters, but we are too because we have the same DNA and stuff. But we all have a different X-Gene, so I'm the only one who can control energy."

"Energy Manipulation..."

"Yeah, that!"

"One of my...teammates...had that ability."

"Where are they now?"

Buried six feet under.

"Not around."

"Oh..."

Delphine shook her head – her glorious head of perfect locks – and smiled lazily at Cosima. "Enough about the past. Tell me about your sisters."

"Well, Alison's a Healer. She can like, heal herself and other people. Pretty cool actually. Beth has superhuman agility. She can climb anything, lift anything, run anywhere. The works."

"I've only ever seen that in Mr McCoy..."

"Sarah has Mimicry. Helena has Possession, but it's weird because she can possess other's bodies but she can also be possessed by like...spiritual beings and beings for other realms. She doesn't have a wall up against that sorta thing, so we're trying to teach her how to do it."

"And the last one, Rachel?"

"Yeah, Rachel. Rachel has this really weird...mix. She was in the lab longer than all of us, so the scientists tampered with her the most. She has this really weird ability like, to know your weakness and use it against you, like mentally. Without lifting a finger. And she can also do this whole thing with charisma, like she makes people want to trust her and all that. She convinces people to do what she wants. It's kinda hard being around her sometimes..."

"That is...very interesting."

"What about you? What can you do?"

Delphine shrugged, looking up at the slowly clouding sky.

"That's a story for another time."

-0-

"You and Delphine are getting reaaaaal cosy," Sarah teased from her side of the room the six of them somehow managed to share, waggling her eyebrows. She was interrupted by a large pillow hurtling towards her, Cosima's disgruntled face disappearing behind the velvet of the pillow.

"Shut up, Sarah."

"Are you gonna ask her out any time soon?"

"No, Beth."

"Do you like her?"

"Yeah, yeah I do, Helena."

"Please don't bring her to this room to...you know..."

"I won't Alison."

"I find it pretty funny she still refuses to use the word 'sex'."

"Sarah, don't tease me!"

"We're seventeen, Alison, grow up!"

"Guys, I have to go. I promised Delphine I'd meet her outside..."

"Get it, Cos!"

Sarah narrowly avoided the tiny ball of energy whizzing at her head by ducking face down onto her bed, laughing as the smell of charred wood singed her nose.

-0-

"Pheromone control."

"Huh?"

Delphine laughed as she watched Cosima's nose scrunch up as she looked over at her, wanting so much to just thumb the intricate dreads, to brush a delicate finger along Cosima's cheek bone...

"My power. I can control pheromones. I can make people like me, I can make them agitated, or calm, or switch sides and opinions..."

"Kinda like Rachel."

"Yes. Only I affect through hormones."

"So chemical imbalances in the brain."

"Precisely."

Cosima nodded once, showing understanding, and sat up, bringing her knees up to rest her chin on them, wrapping her arms around her legs.

"So, is it your fault that the chemical imbalance in my brain makes me want to kiss you really, really badly right now?"

Blushing, Delphine shakily shook her head, mumbling that she hadn't intended on excreting any sort of scent to make her want to do that, because that was wrong and almost like forcing yourself on the person, but Cosima just laughed and leaned forward, kissing Delphine lightly on the lips, pulling away to get off the grass and walk to the inside of the building, telling her she'd see her tomorrow.

-0-

The next day, when Scott went to check in with Delphine about her Prefect duties, he could have sworn she was smiling at him. And that she actually called him Scott.

She hadn't smiled in a long time.