2 meeting Rogue

|3 weeks later|

Rogue a teenaged brunette girl with white colored bangs and wearing goth-like clothes is standing at a port overseeing a wide river while listening to the music coming from the club just a few steps away. Two football players who go to the same school as her approach and one of them shoves the other in Rogue's direction to push him to talk to the girl he's been staring at all week.

"Huh? Can I help you?" Rogue asks the blonde football player.

"Dance, would you like to I mean, with me that is." The jock asks stumbling over his words.

"I'm really just hanging out here, ah hell why not? Afterall what's the harm in just one dance." Rogue agrees after seeing the downcast expression on his face.

The two of them then head into the club, where they dance together until the football player's friend pushes him closer to Rogue, making the two of them fall over and when he tries to help her up he touches her arm and promptly falls unconscious, feeling drained of all energy while Rogue sees flashes of the teens memories. "Ah my head, what's happening to me? What am I? Who am I?" Rogue asks scared and runs out of the club, pushing aside the football player's friend, recalling a memory of the now unconscious boy training in his sport.

While this is going on the woman raising Rogue, who is also a mutant warns Mystique that Rogue's powers showed herself and is relieved to hear that she's coming to help out with the situation at hand.

At Xaviers academy

Logan is testing the school's defense system with Storm pushing him towards the danger room, where she tries to take him out with the help of the many obstacles contained in the room until Charles stops them telling them that for now it's got to be enough since they still haven't repaired everything from when Kurt accidentally teleported in there with Todd.

"What is the point of this demonstration again?" Scott asks while Logan makes his way up to the command center.

"The point young cyclops was to teach you to find weak spots in sophisticated security systems." Storm tells him.

"That's right bub and I'd say ours needs a little work." Logan tells them arriving at the command center.

"The fence was pretty easily breached, maybe we should electrify it or install poison gas sprayers." Logan tells Storm.

"Wolverine." Storm says in a warning tone.

"Alright, alright, knockout gas then." Logan caves in.

"Is it just me or is anyone else just seriously freaked by all this?" Kitty asks being the newcomer at the school, having only joined about a week ago.

Being met with silence she scoffs "Oh right, it's just me? Great."

"Relax Kitty, you'll be fine." Kurt tells her, having been hanging from a pipe while eating popcorn and teleports so he's sitting next to her. "We're right beside you. Popcorn?" Kurt says offering her the bowl of popcorn with his tail, making her shriek in surprise not being used to the teleporting teen suddenly appearing elsewhere.

"Oops, sorry. Next time I'll hop before I port." Kurt says.

"Whatever look guys it's late. If it's no biggie to you I'm going to drop out." Kitty tells them phasing through the floor and heading back to her room until she hears someone talking in the professor's office and peaks into the room, seeing Ben, whom she only saw a few times after she joined the academy, with his image inducer active talking to the professor.

"Are you sure I should turn it off?" Ben asks him in an uncertain voice, having managed to shift back to his human form by now with Storms tutelage but only for a maximum of 30 minutes up till now.

"Yes, I think that it will be a great motivation for you, like when you look into a mirror and don't see the real you. I'm hoping it will drive you to master your abilities even faster." Charles tells him.

"OK I guess, the others should still be in the danger room, so I should have enough time to shift to normal until they're finished." Ben agrees and turns off the image inducer, now looking like the ghost-like creature he always turns into despite his best efforts again.

Kitty watching them screams out in fear and starts to flee to her room. After Ben successfully shifted back to his human form the professor sees his sullen expression and tells him "It was her first time seeing you without the image inducer on wasn't it?" Ben nods in return, looking at the watch.

"It's going to be fine, you know maybe you could even teach her something Kitty has the same ability as you in your ghost form, she also can become intangible." Charles tells him, hoping to show him that he's not different from them and that they're all mutants.

"I see. Anyways, I'll try your way but I think I should still wait with school until I don't have to try to get back my human form." Ben tells him.

"I agree." Charles says when suddenly he sees Cerebro alerting him to a new mutant, so Charles leads them to the danger room.

"X-men we have an emergency. Scott get the black bird prepped for launch and since it's a weekend assemble the full team." Charles orders once they arrive in the control center of the danger room.

"Yes sir, what's the mission?" Scott asks.

"Cerebro has detected a new mutant in claudicate county Mississippi. My mental impression received a highly disturbed individual. Our mutant is a danger to herself and possible others as well." Charles explains.

A few minutes later everyone is in the blackbird with Scott teaching Kurt how to pilot the aircraft.

In the back Kitty is sitting next to Ben, who is still holding up his transformation, which is visibly starting to affect him if the focused expression is anything to go by.

"Look I want to apologize for what happened earlier, I just was surprised I didn't expect you to actually look like that. I mean up till now you were always a floating normal looking guy." Kitty says feeling some guilt over her reaction.

"It's alright, how I look now should actually be my normal form but after being on the run for a year or two, let's just say my form has adapted to the situation." Ben tells her.

"You talk about forms, are you like a shape shifter?" Kitty asks intrigued.

"Well not in the sense you'd imagine. The professor told me that he thinks I'm connected to some alien life forms from another planet and can take on their genetic code, meaning I don't only look like them but have their abilities as well. It would be cool I think, if only I could control what life form, I want to be." Ben says with a sigh.

"Looks like I have it easy with my only worry being falling down a few stories while I'm asleep." Kitty says with a small smile.

"The professor told me about your abilities and suggested that if you'd want to, I could maybe help you with your ability since the form I was stuck in for so long can actually become intangible as well as invisible." Ben offers.

"Thanks, I'll think about it." Kitty says when suddenly Kurt seeing the two of them talk teleports outside of the jet, only to lose his footing because of the strong wind and teleport back in, flying right at Kitty. Ben quickly reacts by losing his transformation back to human and grabbing her hand, phasing them out and pulling her over to his side of the plane, so Kurt doesn't hurt her by colliding with her. Kurt having hit his head against the chair makes his way back to the cockpit, getting scolded by Charles along the way.

Kitty who closed her eyes, fearing the impact opens them after hearing the blue skinned teen grunt in pain wondering why she didn't feel anything only to come face to face with Ben's ghost transformation again. After a minor flinch she remembers that it's Ben underneath the creepy look and starts to relax again while Ben transforms back to human muttering a quick "Sorry.", having noticed her flinching back.

"Thanks Ben, I guess I really should let you tutor me to control my powers." Kitty tells him thankful for the safe, making Ben grin slightly as he helps her stand up, having pulled her into his lap when Kurt came at them.

While the X-Men land in the city to go looking for Rogue, Mystique also arrives in the city, having flown in on a private jet. She meets up with Rogue's caretaker and they discuss where to look for the missing brunette and come to the conclusion that she'll go to the home of the boy whose memories she just absorbed. Mystique decides to make her distrust the X-Men by playing the bad guys while she's transformed into some of their members.

So, Mystique disguised as Wolverine goes into the house and attacks Rogue, who was in the boys room trying to sort out who she is.

Rogue knocks over the Wolverine- look alike and runs out of the house while Mystique transforms into Storm and chases after her and throws a lighting grenade over Rogue's head to scare her while she climbs over the garden's fence.

Rogue having fallen off the fence gets back up and starts to run away again, seeing the real Logan as well as Kurt, Kitty and unknown to her Ben, who is flying next to them invisibly and loses one of her gloves.

"Please leave me be." Rogue begs as she climbs over another fence.

"Wolverine, wait. She seems to be terrified by you. Let me try." Kurt says stopping the older man until Ben suggests "Maybe I should approach her, she hasn't seen me with you guys yet."

"Ok kid but you'd better not mess up, I'll go find the prof. but squirt you better put on your best face, no sense freaking the poor kid out any more than she already is." Logan tells him.

"And you Kurt, you'd better keep an eye on the half-pint over here." Logan orders making Kitty protest while Kurt is disappointed that he doesn't get to show off what he can do.

Ben transforms into his human form and jumps over the fence, following the brunette.

"Hey wait up, what's going on?" Ben asks her, walking over to her.

"What do you want?" Rogue asks taking a step back, making Ben stop in his track.

"I just want to help you. We're the good guys." Ben tells her.

"I'm like you. I tend to be alone, because I'm unsure of what I am and afraid to show my face." Ben tells her gently, when suddenly Kurt teleports behind her, having forgotten to turn on his image inducer and Rogue tries to push the blue furred boy away, making him fall to the floor unconscious while Rogue teleports away.

"Well that went wrong." Ben says, going over to check on Kurt while yelling for Kitty to come into the garden so she can help him with their blue furred friend.

"Kurt, Kurt? What happened?" Kitty asks rushing over to the two.

"He grabbed her and she pushed him away knocking him out and she absorbed his ability or something?" Ben tells her unsure of what transpired himself.

"What do we do now? Is he dead?" Kitty asks freaked out.

"He's just knocked out and I don't know, it's not like I have some secret mobile phone or something." Ben replies.

"Wait I know the professor can read minds, so he should be able to read my thoughts." Kitty says and tries to talk to the professor in her mind.

Charles hears her call for help just after Wolverine arrived and after he himself lost the trace of the football players brainwaves, meaning that her absorbing other's minds be only temporary.

Kitty then informs the professor of what happened,and he tells the others, sending Wolverine to fetch Kurt and Kitty while he tells Ororo, Jean and Scott to follow Rogue, who now has Kurt's brainwave pattern and he leads them relaying her position to the others. He also gets Ben to head over there as well since he is the fastest alongside Storm since they both can fly.

When they arrive at Rogue's location, which is a graveyard Jean goes in alone first, trying to talk to the confused girl.

"Hi." Jean says arriving in front of the girl.

"Do I know you? All these memories, I'm so confused." Rogue asks holding her head.

"Yeah I know, I can relate what you're going through." Jean says when suddenly Rogue starts to panic yelling "Jean, you're like the others!"

"Relax, if you know who I am you know I won't hurt you. Look it's tough to go through it solo. Here zero pressure but if you want to talk more you can reach me anytime with this communicator." Jean tells her, floating the device over to her.

"Nice fashion accessory huh?" Rogue asks looking at the object while Scott, Rogue and an invisible Ben arrive.

"We all have one." Storm tells her and Rogue upon seeing the older woman runs away yelling "You, no you won't take me!"

"I don't get it, we were connecting and then…" Jean says.

"Then she saw me, for some reason she's afraid of me." Storm finishes.

Mystique who was watching them uses this opportunity to transform into Scott and scare Rogue, who is now hiding in a tomb even more. Rogue runs out of the tomb and right into the real Scott and shoved him away, accidentally causing his goggles to let of a beam which destroys a power line. Rogue runs back in and into the now as Jean transformed Mystique who continues to threaten her making Rogue teleport in fear, ending up high in the air and falling down before she instinctively teleports centimeters above the ground, landing relatively softly on the ground.

"Are you hurt? Lie still. Don't try to move." Jean tells the girl having seen her fall out of the sky.

Rogue comes over to them and asks "Child, what is it? we are your friends." But Rogue grabs her arm and absorbs her powers. Not being able to control them since Rogue's powers take years to master and are impacted by the emotional state the weather in the area quickly transforms into a massive thunderstorm while Rogue starts to levitate upwards. Due to the wind the earlier damaged power line starts to fall towards Storm, who is lying in a puddle unconscious, so Scott and Jean react with Scott getting Storm out of there while Jean holds up the tower.

While this is going on Ben who was following Scott the whole time, saw Mystique transform and knows why Rogue is so fearful but didn't a chance to intervene. He now looks at the flying Rogue who is losing control of her powers and flies up to her, transforming into an alien he knows can absorb electricity (feedback) and takes hold of Rogue's hands, making skin contact with Rogue's ungloved hand and feeling a quick sting in his hand before it goes away and Rogue falls unconscious being overloaded by the amount of power Ben has accessible.

Ben quickly transforms into his ghost form and catches the in midair, before he turns them invisible and flies them away, telling the professor telepathically what's going on and lands somewhere in a forest, lying Rogue down and waiting patiently.

After a little over 20 minutes the brunette starts to come back to reality and looks confused at her unfamiliar surroundings, before seeing the teen who talked to her earlier.

"Stay away." Rogue yells fearful.

"It's OK. I won't take a step but only if you hear me out." Ben tells her, sitting on a tree trunk.

He sees Rouge sit down herself, keeping enough distance between them so she has a head start if he were to chase her.

"Look we really only were trying to help you and those versions of the others you saw wasn't them. It was a shapeshifter imitating them. I've seen her transform, she really is a blue skinned redhead." Ben tells Rogue.

Seeing the doubtful expression on her face he explains "Look, I can transform into a ghost like being and watched everything unfold and I brought you here after you were knocked out somehow." Ben tells her.

"Wait, you're telling me you were the black thing with a cable as a tail?" Rogue asks confused.

"Yes, that's one of my forms." Ben confirms.

"So why did I get knocked out and not you?" Rogue asks.

"No clue, I'm only starting to get the hang of my powers as well." Ben tells her.

"Anyways what do you want with me?" Rogue asks.

"Like I said we're trying to help, all of us are living an academy where they teach us to get control over our powers and the adults you saw are the instructors. Either way, the offer stands, you still have Jeans communicator, so you can contact us any time you want or you can check out the academy yourself. It's the Xavier institute in Bayville." Ben explains and starts to get back up, walking into the opposite direction of her.

"Why should I believe you?" Rogue asks still having doubts.

"Why should I lie to you? We've only just met." Ben replies before he turns into his blue mothlike alien and transforms his wings into a hood, becoming invisible and intangible. He quickly gets out of her sight and drops the transformation sweating profusely, having had to keep up so many different forms the entire night and takes off in his invisible ghost form, headed to the black bird. Once there he meets up with the team and tells them what happened.