Beautiful Claws by: Tauriel Rogers

31) The Simulation Room

After dinner, I scurried up the stairs to change into some gym clothes and threw my hair up in a ponytail. I don't know why, but there was this excitement about training today with Logan that had never been there before. 

I went down to the obstacle room and stretched to warm up. Then I did my usual workout routine: weight lift, sit ups, bench, repeat, and finish with a few laps around the perimeter of the room. Logan still wasn't there yet so I practiced climbing on the rock wall, balancing on those full size foot swing things, did the monkey bars, and even got in some jumps on the jumping obstacle similar to the one they have GRAVADY. Still not here? Wow. Bobby challenged me to an ice challenge, but he totally let me win and then I practiced making, calming, and extinguishing flames. Trying to put them out was really hard to do. It was almost as if my emotions wouldn't let me! It was the one of the few things I was still struggling with as far as my powers go and Professor X wanted me to master it as soon as I could. 

"Having trouble?" Instead of the small flames going out, they fired back up again.

"Where have you been? You were supposed to be here like, almost an hour ago!" 

"Sorry, I got caught up in something the Professor wanted to tell me about," he apologized. 

"Oh, well, it would've been nice to have known. You could've sent someone to tell me."

"Yeah, I guess I could've," he agreed, scratching the back of his neck. 

"What did the Professor wanna talk about if you don't mind me asking?" I asked as I got the flames to shrink back down. 

"He needed a babysitter," Logan answered. 

"A what?" I laughed, finally getting the flames to extinguish. "So that's how it works, humor," I thought aloud. 

"What?" 

"Nothing, I was just testing something. So a babysitter huh? Isn't that not really your thing?"

"Yeah, I'm not very happy about it. I guess almost all the teachers are leaving. Jean and Storm are headed to Boston to find another mutant, Professor X and Scott are visiting an old friend, and Hank is going on some science retreat fieldtrip thing with the really young students," he explained. 

"So...you're the only adult left?"

"Something like that." I laughed. 

"The Professor is leaving your reckless self in charge for the weekend?" 

"It'll be fun," Logan said, playfully nudging my arm, "what could possibly happen?" I shrugged. 

"I don't know, maybe you and I could spend some time together?" 

"Isn't that what we're doing now?" Logan asked. I rolled my eyes. 

"Logan, I meant you and me doing something together that has nothing to do with school or training."

"Oh," Logan got embarrassed when he realized I meant. "How about a movie? Or laser tag? I've got it, we could go hiking."

"I'm grounded still remember?"

"Who cares? You'll be with me. You know I would never let anything happen to you." I felt my face turn 3 shades of red, taking in the weight of his words. 

"You're offer is very tempting, but, rules are rules and some of them aren't meant to be broken," I said slowly. My heart fluttered when I saw Logan's sad face. "Wait a week and we can go and do whatever we want," I said trying to cheer him up. "Why don't we get back to training for now?"

"Right, uh, we're gonna do something different today," he said, taking my hand and leading me out the door. 

"Where are we going?"