Anna drove the plastic spike hard into the soft earth. The little grinning pumpkin dressed in a purple stary witch's hat made for a satisfying handhold as she pretended each of the decorative lawn ornaments was a stake destined for a vampire's chest hidden just below the thin veil of dirt.
"I don't think you need to push those things that deep into the ground." Kitty held the remaining plastic pumpkins close to her chest. Connected by a chain of flimsy wire, the pumpkins seemingly couldn't help but get tangled in one another despite Kitty's best efforts.
"Probably not," Anna grunted, snapped the next pumpkin out of Kitty's hand, and drove the thing so deep into the ground that only the tip of its hat was visable above the grass.
"Anger management going well, big sis?" Kurt was performing the same job Kitty was but for Evan across the narrow driveway opposite them.
"You're looking at the anger management." Another grunt as Anna pushed the pumpkin deep into the earth.
"Man, what did we do to get stuck with the worst job?" Like Anna, Evan was covered in sweat and dirt from the effort. Unlike Anna though, Evan had bothered with kneepads and gloves while Anna's knees and hands were starting to look like she had fought a losing battle escaping a trench.
"Could be worse." Kurt pointed his chin back at the mansion. "We could be, Scott."
Anna wiped the sweat from her face, rolled onto her rear, and caught sight of Scott atop a 20-foot ladder in front of the mansion's exterior. 3 rungs below the peak of the ladder, he was guiding fat webs Jean was levitating from the ground onto the face of the mansion. With a hammer in one hand and presumably a nail in the other, he started whacking the web into place. With every hammer blow, his ladder shook on the uneven earth till finally the ladder completely collapsed from under him. Anna lept to her feet when she spotted Scott begin to plummet towards the earth. His arms covered his face as he shouted, but halfway through his descent, he began to spontaneously float.
Jean's hands splayed and trembled as she gently lowered Scott to the ground. Slowly, until he was a few feet above a patch of bushes when Jean's telekinetic ability without notice sputtered out and he fell flat on his face inside the greenery. A couple of bluejays fluttered out of the bush before Scott poked his head out with a scratch across his forehead to show for the story later.
"Yeah." Evan snorted before plunging another plastic spike into the ground. "It could be worse."
Anna rolled her neck across her shoulders and twisted to back in hopes of getting a good crack out of the deal. It was then her eyes fell on the forest to their left.
Kurt glanced at her and snickered. "What are you thinking about?"
Anna snapped back to reality and looked at him. "Hmm? How do you know I'm thinking about anything?"
Kurt pulled more decorative pumkin lights free from their rat's nest. "You always bite your lower lip when you're overthinking something."
Anna felt the inside of her lip with her tongue… and then soon after felt her front teeth lightly pulling the flesh of her bottom lip into her mouth. "Do not!" She said with a little more verbal bite than intended before immediately returning to her task with the pumpkins.
"Then the Mississippi comes out when you're frustrated."
Anna paused mid-spike and leaned back on her haunches. "Alright, mister smart guy." She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes at Kurt. "You got me so figured out, what am I thinking about?"
Kurt looked toward the same patch of trees she had been just moments before. "That's the direction of Logan's camp, right?"
"Yeah, so?"
"So -" Kurt smiled and shrugged.
Anna and Kitty looked at each other. Anna eventually sighed and got back to work. "Just something weird happened. That's all."
"Something to do with Logan smashing that statue, right?"
Anna looked over at Evan from across the road. "How did you know that?"
"The three big gouges in the wall where a bust used to be was is a little hard to miss."
"Yeah," Kitty tisked and rubbed a shoulder that was beginning to sore from holding the decorations all afternoon. "We kinda walked in on the middle of that." She paused. "Well, we found it right after it happened, I mean. We heard this crash and we found it. We didn't watch it go down or anything."
"While we were investigating the 'crime scene' Xavier came out a second later and found us." Anna continued. "He told us to go to bed since that's what 'he was going to try to do.'" Anna air quoted.
"That's ominous." Kurt moved a few more feet in front of Evan to give him more space to drive stakes into the ground.
"It's obvious is what it is."
Anna shook her head and glared at Evan. "And how's that, genius boy?"
"Do you guys seriously not hear Xavier and Logan going at each other constantly at dinner?"
Kitty's brow furrowed. "I don't ever hear them yelling on their side of the table."
"That's because they don't. It's more subtle than that. Logan is always talking about stuff he's heard on the news or things we could be doing differently and Xavier never really gives him the answer he wants to hear. The professor kinda comes off evasive a lot of the time."
Kitty let the bundle of decorations come together in a ball around her fist at her hip. "What do you mean?"
Evan sighed. "Look, I don't know. I've tried listening in on the specifics a few times, but whenever I have I always get a look from my Aunt. All I know is Logan usually looks more pissed leaving the table than before dinner. He probably finally snapped and broke that statue."
"I've seen Logan in a tude around Xavier before." Kitty rose the buddle before slapping it against her hip. "But never enough to do property damage."
"I heard them fighting in Xavier's office before." Anna drove another stake into the ground. "It was a few days after I moved in. It sounded pretty intense behind the door before Logan sniffed me out."
Kitty shivered. "Ugh, I hate it when he does that."
"If the adults want to fight, let them fight." Evan wiped the sweat from his forehead with the length of his thumb. "It doesn't make a difference for us."
"Do we know that for sure?" Anna looked across the road again at Evan and caught his eye. "Xavier, Logan, and Ororo run our lives and the X-Men. If something shitty is going on, we should probably know about it."
"Yeah," Kitty looked at Anna. "If their fighting is getting this bad… what if it gets worse? Like, leadership in your superhero group should be rock solid in my opinion."
"If you two want to stick your noses in a hornet's nest," Evan waved at them as if they were a bad oder, "go for it. I don't see how you can gain anything from it, but do what you gotta."
"All I'm saying, Ev," Anna sat on her knees. "Last time I blindly trusted an adult, she turned out to be an international assassin."
Evan paused and stared at the ground a moment before he eventually looked up at Kurt who looked down at him. Evan eventually turned his face toward Anna while avoiding eye contact. "What exactly is it that you plan on doing?"
"Umm, well…"
"You don't have a plan."
"I don't know man! We've just been talking out loud here!"
"We could talk to Logan." Anna glanced back at Kitty whose face had seemingly shrunk to a third of its normal size when after mentioning the direct course of action. "Like, you kinda have a good relationship with him, Anna."
"I don't think that's such a good idea." Kurt rested the wad of decorative plastic pumpkins on the ground and sat next to Anna. "The dude sounds pretty steamed right now."
Anna adjusted her legs and sat on her rear. "Logan would never hit me, Kurt."
"Sorry, I should clarify… I wouldn't ask a boxer in the middle of a fight how to do my algebra homework. If you get what I mean."
"Ah. Yeah, that makes sense."
Kitty joined them on the ground. "So, what then, ask Xavier?"
Anna shrugged "Could talk to Ororo. She's always shot straight with me."
Evan shook his head. "My aunt is cool about just about everything, but she isn't going to spill her guts about Logan and Xavier. She's super loyal to them both and doesn't feel like it's our place to know about that kind of stuff."
"And Xavier is more closed off to people than a brick so…" Anna ran her hand through her hair and sighed. "Great."
"Well, Xavier is super closed off, but his office might not be..."
All eyes turned to Evan. Anna leaned forward. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"The guy lives in that office. I bet whatever the adults are being so hush-hush about, you could probably get some sort of hint about it in there."
"Oh-kay," Kurt chuckled weakly, "Let's maybe reconsider a few things before deciding to go dig through the professor's stuff. Like, how is that going to help you figure out what's going on with Logan?"
"Well, it might not." Anna shrugged with her hands. "But Xavier is so damn secretive about everything… well I'd just feel better knowing something."
"He might be that way for a reason, Anna. Do we really need to know everything going on behind the scenes here?"
"Wouldn't you want to know if we're being driven in a bad direction, Kurt? It's our lives being played with here, not theirs. We're the ones putting on suits, risking our lives, and fighting bad guys."
"I'm with Anna on this." Kitty pulled out her ponytail and played with the elastic headband that was formerly securing it. "Logan is kind of a butt, but I would say I trust him even more than the professor. It's not like Xavier doesn't care about us, it's just…" Kitty sifted her mouth back and forth. "I don't know, Logan's been more vocal about trying to keep our best interests, you know? If he's so angry, that kinda makes me worried."
Evan leaned forward and had his hands clasped before him. His eyes were focused hard enough on the ground in front of him Anna wouldn't have been surprised if it exploded.
Kurt rested an arm on Evan's shoulder. "You alright?"
"Yeah… just thinking."
"You sure? Because your constipated face and thinking face look real similar."
Evan snickered and rubbed his face with one hand. He pressed his tongue inside of his cheek and ran it towards his lip where he made a popping sound. "You guys serious about doing this?"
Anna and Kitty looked at each other, and Anna found a steely determination in Kitty's eyes she rarely saw. "Yeah," Anna looked back at Evan and nodded, "I think we are."
"Alright." Evan stole a glance towards the mansion where he saw Jean and Scott setting up to try fixing the webbing to the building again. "I don't know Xavier's schedule, but I know he leaves his office to join us at dinner every night. At the very least he won't be in there then." Evan toyed with the band of his watch. "I've - uh - sorta modified my watch to let me get into any door I want in the house. If you leave your watches with me, I could do the same to them before tomorrow. I also have this hack I use at school to bypass logging in to the computers. I could lend you the jump drive with the hack uploaded onto it so you could get on Xavier's desktop."
Anna's eyebrows peaked. "Damn, Ev! And you're shaming us for being nosy."
"I'm not nosy. I just like to get where I want to go and not get bothered."
Kitty nodded. "Sounds pretty nosy to me."
Evan rolled his eyes. "Listen, you get caught -"
"We don't know you," Anna answered for him.
"Well, of course, you know me. I don't think Xavier will exactly believe that. Just," Evan lowered his head and lightly growled, "just promise me you won't get caught with my stuff, okay?"
"For what it's worth," Kurt leaned in. "I think this is a really really bad idea."
"Noted." Kitty stuck her hand in the center of the group. "Ready?"
Anna and Evan looked at her. "Ready for what?" Anna asked.
"Isn't this what teams do after a conspiratorial meeting? Stick their hands together and say something cool?"
Evan blinked. "I don't think that's how that works."
Anna reluctantly put her hand in the center atop Kitty's. Kitty smiled wide and looked at Evan. Evan looked between the girls, shrugged, and put his hand in.
"Okay, ready?"
Anna snorted. "What are we supposed to say?"
"I don't know. Say what feels right! Okay, 1, 2, 3 -" on three the teens raised their hands all saying different words and phrases with Kitty shouting hers the loudest.