NOTE:
italics - That jolly well better be what you're thinking.
bold - I heard that.

The First Step - Part 8
or
Welcome Into Our Lives, Dakota. (Just Don't Embarrass Yourself Too Much.)

Beverly McIntyre

The sun was hours above the horizon line. Its warm rays filtered into the bubble of warm weather that encapsulated the grounds of Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning. The rays felt warm and refreshing on Dakota's coppery skin. It was a pleasantry that he was all but ignoring at the moment. grunt.

"Hold on, maat. We're caught on something." Again. If there is a God out there, he is having too much fun at my expense. Maggott set down his end of the blood-stained mattress. Dakota stopped pulling on his end and let it hang half-way out of his van. He sighed as Maggott once again hopped atop the mattress and found where the corner of one of the built-in shelving units had snagged part of the material. He quickly fixed the problem and hopped off the mattress. He picked up his end just as Dakota picked up his. There are only two questions I want answered in my life: how the hell did I get this into the van originally and how did McCoy manage to cram it so that the mattress gets snagged on everything. The mattress moved two inches this time before becoming snagged on a screw that was sticking out. "Stop. We're snagged again."

Dakota didn't stop. Instead, he pulled harder. His patience had ran out ten minutes ago. Pull and snag. Stop and wait to fix it. Pull anew. Snag it again. Stop again. Wait while Maggott fixes it again. Well, not anymore. Today, I shall carve out my own destiny. This cursed lender of back support shall not stop me. The weather had to have gone to his brain. It just wasn't natural to have fifty degree weather at the very end of December. Especially in New York.

"Maat, I said stop. We snagged on a screw. You're going to-" RRRIIPP! The screw rent the side of the mattress open, sending stuffing flying everywhere and springs to grapple with metal shelving. Dakota continued to pull. He was not going to be beat by a simple mattress. It was his van, and he wanted it back. Dakota continued to pull like a man possessed. His van was almost free of the mattress' bloody oppression. Dakota continued to yank and pull while he felt his feet slide out from under him as the mattress finally burst from the van. He toppled to the ground as the mattress flew on top of him.

Everything went dark. Of course, it should have with a mattress resting nicely on his nose. Dakota tried to move his arms to throw the mattress off, but to his dismay, he found his arms were pinned above his head. This is not one of my better days ,he thought glumly as he heard Maggott's muffled guffaws. He could do nothing but wait for Maggott to get him out.

It was a few minutes before the mattress was removed. Dakota blinked in the bright sunlight and opened his mouth to make some sarcastic remark to Maggott for his speedy save. Dakota clapped his mouth shut when he realized he was looking into a pair of feminine, green eyes. Now, I'm totally embarrassed.

"Are you alright?" Rogue tried vainly to keep a straight face. But the corners of her mouth kept twitching upward. Dakota just glowered and picked himself off of the ground.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Dakota said as he brushed blades of grass and pieces of mattress fluff from his jeans. He glared over at Maggott who was holding his sides and leaning against the van for support. At least he's amused. Dakota sucked in his dignity before turning back to face Rogue. "I guess I should thank you for your...uh...timely save."

Rogue was starting to lose her battle with laughter. "It's... quite alright. It...was...nothing." She quickly pursed her lips together to try to keep the laughs from spilling out. Dakota looked heavenward.

"You'd better let it out."

"Huh?" Rogue was nearly on the verge of letting it out anyway. If she wasn't going to laugh, she had to speak with one syllable words.

"From the look on your face, I think you're going to explode. Let it out. I don't have time to pick up bits of you all over the grounds. Let it out." And she did. For quite some time actually. It was a gale of laughter at his expense.

Later on, Dakota would learn that Rogue hadn't had a good laugh in quite some time, which would make him feel better. But as it was, he felt like the royal fool. He just stood there, patiently waiting for her to finish when Maggott started laughing again. He just rolled his eyes.

"I really should patent this. I'll call it 'The Mattress.' If they don't laugh to death, they're ready for anything." His flippant comment only made Rogue and Maggott laugh harder. After a few more minutes, Dakota walked over to the back of the van and sat down. He scooted back so his feet dangled above the ground and waited for both X-Men to stop. Hope I have more patience with them than I did with the mattress.

After a couple more minutes, Maggott excused himself to go find a bathroom before he wet himself. As he walked away, Rogue calmed down from gale-force laughter to nearly quiet chuckles. She wiped away some of the tears that were streaming down her face.

"Ah'm sorry, sugah. Ah really shouldn't have. But it was...it was..." Rogue tried to fight off another round of laughs.

"Funny," Dakota supplied unenthusiastically.

"Yeah, that's it. You jus' looked so funny when I peeled that mattress off of ya. Like a deer caught in headlights." Rogue came over and sat down next him. She patted him on the back. She saw he felt none too great about it. "Ya only have to go through five or six more experiences like that ta get truly accepted here."

"Five or six?"

"Yeah, I had 'bout four when they finally accepted me. Though, one should have counted for three.. Y'see, one time the women's showers were down f'remodeling an' we ladies had t'use the guys' showers. Well, Ah kinda walked in on Wolverine once. Ah thought Ah was gonna die right there, either from embarrassment or from Wolvie."

"I assume you didn't die, or I'm talking to a ghost."

"No, he just told me ta go wait outside an' he'd be done in a minute." Dakota gave a small chuckle and shook his head. Rogue then realized that she had never actually told anybody about that incident. She didn't know why she was telling him about it, but she just hoped that Dakota wouldn't tell anybody else about it.

"Well, one of my primary goals as 'assistant professor' now shall be to make sure both the men's and women's showers are up and operational at all times. I just won't reveal my reasons why." Rogue smiled in relief. "By the way, my savior in shining, green spandex, there is something I should to tell you."

"Oh?"

"Yes, part of the reason why Chu-Xavier asked me to be an 'associate professor' was you." Rogue looked a little confused. "Um, you see, Xavier feels a bit guilty for not spending enough time to help you get your powers under control. He believes I may be able to help you with that."

Rogue sat there in stunned silence. After everything that had happened recently, was there a ray of hope? Could this stranger help her get her powers under control? Was her dream finally coming true? To be able to touch someone. To actually, physically make skin to skin contact with someone with out absorbing their powers, feelings, and memories. That was what she wanted more than anything else. The power of freedom.

Dakota sat quietly, watching Rogue digest the bold proclamation. From Xavier's files, he knew how much this meant to her. Once, in a curious mood, Dakota tried not making skin to skin contact with anyone for a month. He barely made it through the month. That was a sensation he never wanted to go through again. After that test, he admired the woman he read so much about in Xavier's files. He knew he was basically a stranger to Rogue, but he honestly wanted to help.

"When do we start?" Dakota nearly sighed in relief. He'd never been an altruist, but this was the one time he wanted to do something good for someone else.

"Tomorrow morning if it's not too much trouble. But there is a little proviso." Rogue looked at him skeptically. "I teach you how to control your powers, you protect me from all evil mattresses that come my way."

"GUYS! GUYS!" ,Longshot shouted as he came running up to the van. He screeched to halt in front of them. He was panting, sorely out of breath. "You gotta... come inside. Something's up... with Warren... and Betsy!"

Dakota tried to push through the clump of X-Men standing at the door to the room Angel had been resting in. He knew what was happening without being told, but he had to act surprised when he got there. It would be one thing to tell the X-Men he helped save Angel's wings; it would be entirely another to explain how he did it. I don't think they would like the part about blood-letting.

When Dakota jostled his way up to the front of the group, he saw a rather strange sight. Dr. Reyes stood to one side with a big sheet of a semi-transparent substance in her hands. It looked a little rumpled and took a minute or two for Dakota to identify. It was the layer of scar tissue that had come off of Psylocke's back. Well, I know that part worked. Psylocke, herself, knelt next to Angel, holding his hand and apparently healed from the wounds inflicted by the Destruction Crew. The real strange thing was that Beast was wiping black flakes of burnt skin off of Angel's left wing. From the small section McCoy had already revealed, there was healthy skin underneath.

That worked, too. But this is a little fast. Normally, the wounds don't heal up completely like they did on Psylocke or that fast like Angel's wings did. Maybe whatever Longshot poured into my wound accelerated my healing factor. If that's the case, maybe I should've tried to fix Angel's leg while I was at it. Oh well, can't exactly go back and do it now. It's been too long since the infliction of the wounds.

"Unbelievable" was all Dr. Henry McCoy could say as he continued to remove the film of dead, black skin. In all of his studies, he had never seen anything like this. He knew Angel's mutant abilities nearly as well as the back of his hand. Rapid regeneration of nearly dead wings was not part of Warren's make-up. The only explanation that Hank could think of was that Apocalypse's tinkerings with Angel had created some sort of fail-safe mechanism if Angel's wings were seriously injured. And apparently that applied to his natural wings better than his former metallic ones.

"Hank, what's going on?" Angel sounded a little worried. He had been told by Beast last night that his wings were going to be amputated. Warren had spent the night with nightmares about his wings detaching themselves from his body and leaving him stranded in the middle of an important battle. But from the looks on everybody's faces that some sort of miracle happened.

"It looks like your wings are here to stay. They've miraculously healed," Beast said as he continued to remove flakes of blackened skin. He abruptly stopped when he uncovered a lone, white feather under a small section. Dakota recognized the spot as where he had placed his hand. "Let me amend that. Your wings have healed and appear to be growing back feathers."

Dakota had sank back into the crowd after seeing the relief on Angel's face. He slipped through the crowd and out the front door. He strolled to the van and let out a sigh of relief. He had never used his healing blood in quite such a fashion before. He hadn't known if it would be enough to save Angel's wings. He'd taken a chance it would, and his gamble paid off.

After the good news, Longshot had smiled knowingly at him. Dakota had just shrugged as he sank back amongst X-Men. Longshot had been smiling a lot since he figured that the medicinal liquid he had poured into Dakota's bullet wound had caused the unusually rapid healing. Longshot knew that his friend would have done something to help Angel and Psylocke once Dakota was able to without blood gushing out of his abdomen. It wasn't anything big. Right? Dakota thought as he bent over to wrestle the mattress back to the side of the driveway. I only saved some guy's wings. Later, he could get some help to dispose of the mattress, but for now he would just move it out of the way. He was just starting to make some headway when he felt a presence behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see Storm standing behind him.

"You move awfully quiet. Y'know that?" Dakota grunted as he dragged his mattress a little farther. He noticed the small trail of stuffing he was leaving behind. Storm had just remained quiet and appeared to be sizing him up. "There a problem?"

"I guess that we X-Men owe you a debt of thanks."

"For what?"

"You gave Angel his wings back." Dakota's back muscles tensed up so quickly, he thought he pulled something. Well, that's one less secret I have to keep. Dakota dropped the mattress and turned to face her.

"A little velcro does wonders. If you don't mind me asking, how did know?"

"Longshot's smile to you."

"Oh."

"I do not know how you did it, but after seeing the light shine in his eyes as you disappeared into the crowd, I know you had something to do with Angel's miraculous recovery."

"Great." Dakota threw his arms up in mock disgust. "Just great. Now, I have to poke Longshot's eyes out to keep a secret around here."

Storm gave a small smile. "I shall keep this small secret for you, but know this, I will remember your ability and will call upon you to use it if necessary."

"If it's necessary, I'll be doing it before you even ask me to. I kinda like you people. You're resilient." He clapped his hands together manically. He looked shiftily from side to side. "That means I've got years to torment you."

"That also means we have years to torment you back."

"D'oh. I never saw it in that light. Um, but there is something else I have to ask of you."

"Such as?"

"Could you help me get rid of this mattress? I have problems when I try to do it on my own." Storm smiled as she moved to one side of the mattress. She picked up that end as Dakota picked up the other. Dakota sighed as he looked over at her. "Let's just not get this thing snagged on anything. Bad things happen to me if we do."

~Fin~

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© 1998 Beverly McIntyre