feathers ↣ w. worthington iii

(20) Does ANYONE Like Footloose???

A knock at Lilli's door brought her out of her thoughts. She jumped, turning towards the closed door. "Come in!" She called, turning and walking over to her bed. She sat down on the edge of it as the door opened, revealing the face of Ororo.

"Are you ready?" She asked Lilli. Lilli nodded, standing back up. It was time for them to go get some more students. They were taking three boys, all of whom were thirteen years old. Jean and Professor Xavier had heard them wondering where some of their friends had gone. They had to go get them before they started asking questions out loud.

Lilli walked out of her room, shutting the door behind her. She and Ororo walked the now-familiar route through the winding halls back to the assembly room. At first, it'd been impossible to remember where anything was, but after a few tours from Hank and Professor X and a lot of panic-inducing wrong turns, the X-Men bad started to get the hang of the hallways. Still, at least one of them went missing once a day and needed to be found. The collection of students the X-Men had stolen back were a different story. Upon Professor Xavier's request, they all took up rooms off of main hallways and never strayed from them since they had everything the students needed: a library, a gym, kitchens, bathrooms, lounge rooms, and more.

Lilli and Ororo were walking down this hallway, passing by rooms and rooms filled with students. Overall, they'd taken over seventy students out of the hundreds enrolled in the school. The main hallways branching off of the assembly room were never empty anymore, and a few times Lilli'd had to wait to go into a bathroom.

After a moment, Lilli and Ororo arrived in the assembly room. Peter and Scott were already there waiting. The four met in the center of the room. "Are you guys ready?" Scott asked. Lilli and Ororo nodded. "Okay. Then let's get going."

"What song are you guys gonna sing? I'm thinking the Star War theme song," Peter said as the four started heading towards the door that led up to the basement of the school. Peter was referring to the tactic that the X-Men had adopted to avoid alerting Cas and his mind-reading capabilities to their plan— they sang a song in their head so that Cas couldn't hear any thoughts of their plan. It was a brilliant idea, and Lilli was able to find a little joy in thinking up songs that she knew Cas hated.

"Footloose. Cas hates that song," Lilli replied, laughing.

"Ooh, good one," Ororo said appreciatively, bumping Lilli's shoulder playfully. "I'm doing Ghostbusters."

"Uptown Girl... she's been living in her white bread world.." Scott started to sing, doing a small little dance. Lilli laughed at his antics, momentarily forgetting all of her worries as she watched Peter join in and start to jiggy around. She and Ororo clapped as the two boys finished with dramatic bows.

"I never knew we had some professional performers on our hands!" Lilli exclaimed with a bright smile.

"It's just a side hobby," Peter said, brushing it off as he opened the door that led to the hallway that led to the basement of the Institute. The four mutants quickly stepped out of the bunker and into the chilly, damp air of the hallway, dropping their fun attitudes and turning serious. There were lanterns hanging every ten feet or so, but other than that the hallway was long and dark. Lilli immediately started singing Footloose in her mind, trying to keep out all thoughts of their plan. So now I gotta cut loose, footloose...

Scott shut the door behind the four and they all walked up the inclined hallway in silence. After a moment, they reached a wall. Ororo pressed a stone towards the bottom of the wall and stepped back as the wall slid open to reveal a small, closet-sized room. The four mutants crammed in and the wall behind them slowly started to slide shut. They were at once plunged into darkness and Lilli's heart rate began to pick up. No matter how many times they did this, Lilli still hated the claustrophobia she got from that small room. Kick off the Sunday shoes, please, Louise...