West Coast Shuffle (Part One)

Being an insomniac had a few perks. Namely, I could easily operate at someone else's convenience when it came to time zones. I didn't have to sleep, so if I had to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to make things easier for Megan to Skype with me, it wasn't a major issue. 2 AM for me was like 10 AM for her.

I couldn't help but smile as I saw her reaction when she took in the view of my bedroom. It was all I could show her for the time being without disturbing others or going outside in the dark at an ungodly hour.

She had showed me her room first. It was just as light and fluffy as I imagined it would be in my head. Like, what you expected a girl's room to look at when you had never seen one and viewed it in your head.

"Wow, Bel! Your room looks more normal than I thought it would!" She said, sitting back patiently as I gave her as good of a look as I could through the camera of my phone, "It definitely wasn't what I was expecting."

Wasn't what she was expecting? Now what did that mean? "What did you think my room looked like?" I asked, flipping the camera's view back to me so she could see the skeptical look on my face.

Megan had the good grace to blush at being put on the spot by me, "I don't know. A wall full of DVDs and Blu-Rays. Three TVs and a bunch of video game consoles hooked up to them. Dark curtains and stuff."

I gave her a stern look, entirely in jest, "You thought I had a shut-in's room, didn't you?" Megan averted her eyes and fidgeted in place a bit. It made me laugh, "Come on. I'm not that bad, am I?"

I mean, no, I didn't have a countless number of DVDs. I had all of my movies and series downloaded on a bunch of mobile hard drives and backed up on a cloud, thank you very much. And I did have a bunch of consoles. I had like eight of them, and a bunch of games for them. But I kept most of them out of plain sight when I wasn't using them.

Also, I did have blackout curtains as a function of my powers' symptoms. It was just that they were open at the moment.

She was more dead-on in her expectations of what my room was like than she knew. The only reason I didn't have another TV in my room was because I couldn't afford it. Two screens was definitely on my list of things to make happen.

"So how's Wales?" I asked, laying back down on my bed, resting my arm and phone on my chest. She did the same, instead laying down on her stomach on her bed, "Is it... I have no idea what Wales is like to even start asking questions," I admitted with some shame.

Megan didn't hold it against me. Instead, she let out a desperate sigh. She was not a happy Pixie, "Compared to Salem Center, my hometown is soooo boring. I feel so sorry for you now! How bored must you have been at the Institute when you live in San Francisco?"

Given everything that happened, I didn't really have a whole lot of time to dwell on the common trappings of teenage boredom, "I don't think that's a fair comparison, hon. Some kind of weird garbage was always happening at school. Anything would be boring compared to that."

And I had learned to embrace the quiet when I could get it. It just meant that there wasn't anything actively out to get me or otherwise screw me over at the moment.

I could see her kicking her feet behind her fitfully, "What am I supposed to do all summer though? All my friends I had left from here are away on their holidays."

That made me feel bad. It made me wish I was there to entertain her. Alas, I was thousands of miles away, "Relax. I'm pretty sure there'll be enough crazy to go around when we get back. Especially if you hang around me for any decent period of time," She had experienced it already, come to think of it.

A distasteful shiver went through her, remembering what had happened when they'd tried to go on their first supervised date, "Yeah... I think I'm okay with not having to deal with anything like that again," Her expression then turned to one of concern, which confused me. We hadn't been talking about anything sad. Not until that point at least, "Bel, did you ever talk to anyone about what happened with those aliens? About what happened with Professor Pryde?"

I pursed my lips. I didn't want to talk about this, but it had been long enough. To Megan's credit, she didn't ask me anything in the days and weeks after I'd gotten back from Breakworld. Knowing her, she must have been dying to do it. I appreciated that she let me be for a while. That was why the thought of talking to her about it then didn't bother me as much as I thought it would have.

"There's not a whole lot to talk about, Megs," I said to her before at least trying to give her something concrete, "Things didn't go the way we wanted to, and now my teacher's lost in space. She's not dead, she's just... not here with us. Because she had to save the world."

Now she was stuck drifting aimlessly through space, and I couldn't help her. Not when it counted. But then again, I had done enough thinking about that particular fact. Dwelling on it further would do me no favors.

"You know what? I think it's really cool that she did that," Megan said with a sad smile, "It really, really sucks that it happened, but your teacher saved the world! Everybody knows that Kitty Pryde saved the Earth."

If nothing else, at least the S.W.O.R.D. and the Avengers let that knowledge go public. The more positive news mutants and the X-Men could get, the better. As far as I was concerned, after Agent Brand forcibly recruited us into service, the least she could do was make sure everyone knew that we had been the ones that saved their asses.

My teacher had saved their asses. Human, mutant, four-legged mammal, and slithering reptile alike. Every creature on Earth. The thought did give me some comfort.

"I'm proud. I'm proud of Miss Pryde. I'm proud that she trained me. I'm proud that she thought I was good enough to lead the Paladins," And it was the last real order she had given me. She had believed that I had what it took to be a legit leader. To take care of everybody under me. That meant something. Even more than it did when she'd first given me the responsibility, "So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go back to school, I'm gonna lead my team, and I'm gonna make sure that nothing like that ever happens to anyone I care about again."

That meant my crew. That meant Megan. That meant everyone that had made my life better for being in it. If it was in my power to prevent something so terrible from occurring ever again, I would do so.

I wasn't going to watch anything so sad happen and be powerless to prevent it. Over my dead body.