Ororo glanced down the hall toward Scott's room then slipped out muttering mockingly, " 'Storm, You can't go to a bar, you're supposed to be a high school student. What if someone sees you?' Like my ID is real anyway Scotty."

A short while later she slid into a booth across from a heavy-set, dark haired young man who stared at her with a happily disbelieving expression.

"I figured you wouldn't come," he stammered. "I thought that other guy had to be your boyfriend or something. That you were just..."

"Who, Scott?" Ororo laughed. "I just work with him, really uptight, wouldn't know how to have fun unless some wrote an instruction manual. Nothing like you Danny."

Danny blushed, girls like Ororo, who looked like they could have a bright future as a super-model, didn't just walk up and hit on guys like him, only she had. Better yet she was here now, with him, not with the slim, muscular guy in red shades who'd shown up and drug her off almost before he'd worked up the nerve to ask her out.

"Want to dance?" Danny asked hopefully.

Ororo smiled happily extending her hand to him.

"So what do yo' do?" Remy asked, forcing himself to draw Mark into conversation.

As far as Remy was concerned learning to use his empathy, as Xavier called it, was the bane of his existence and probably the professor's as well, but the one thing they'd managed to discover was that there was a vocal component to it. In other words it was easier for Remy to influence a person if he was talking to them and easier to read them if they were talking.

"Jus' like normal people," Remy had commented with a short bark of laughter at the time. "Mebbe there's rien to dis empathy dat yo' t'ink I have den an ole' fashion silver tongue. Certainly got de devil part neh?"

"No!" Xavier had protested, his mental tone carrying the sharp bite of anger. "You know better than that. You are not a demon, devil or the offspring of such. You are a mutant, a post-human, and I am quite sick of hearing you refer to yourself and others using derogatory terms. Furthermore, your mental shields are solid evidence of a psionic component to your mutation. Your reliance on speech is simply a crutch. If you would simply permit me..."

The conversation had ended like every other instance when Xavier had suggested Remy should allow the Professor anything more than surface access to his mind: Remy had left.

He didn't bother to storm out. He simply left. They both knew with a little time, effort and the willingness to leave Remy disoriented and headachy for days afterwards Xavier could force Remy's shields to yield. They both knew Remy could be subtly influenced through telepathy, if the telepath had a sufficiently light touch. However exposure to telepaths was only increasing Remy's sensitivity to them. Still since setting an upper limit on the destructive potential of Remy's more showy talent Xavier hadn't tried forcing the issue.

It didn't mean that they liked or trusted one another, which made Xavier's attempts to train Remy in the use of his illusive psionic talent a trial for both participates.

When teaching Jean Grey, Xavier had done it from the inside out. Linking with her mind to share his experiences without ever translating his hard won knowledge into clumsy words. That option wasn't a viable method of teaching for Remy.

Due to Remy's shields even speaking mind to mind with Remy was awkward, they heard each other as if listening to a badly tuned radio station. Despite the lack of clarity Xavier continued using mind-speak as his primary mode of communication and Remy kept his shields firmly in place and that battle of wills was only one of the minor difficulties.

After months of training the one thing they were both firmly convinced of was that Remy's abilities were not a derivative of telepathy. While a telepath could pick up on the emotional overtones of a person's thoughts and Remy could deduce a person's thoughts from their emotions, his powers functioned on an entirely different level than those of a telepath. Even the concepts Xavier could explain to Remy in words couldn't be applied to Remy's powers.

So in the end what Remy knew was that if he wanted to get a read on a person he should get them talking.

Rachael was easy; gregarious by nature the mere presence of another person was enough to get her going. Mark was less open, still Remy was beginning to get a feel for him as well.

He'd never be able to fully trust his empathic abilities after they'd failed to warn him away from Richard and Essex, but he was learning to listen to them again. Listen to the gardens singing their grief and loss, listen to Rachael's bright, blind conviction and Mark's more battered hope. They were nice people; this had been a family in the truest sense of the word. Until someone came along and tore that apart. Remy wished he could do more for them than just looking for their son's murder.