"Josette, this is probably a dumb question but. . ." Anna says, tapping on the slightly open door. Josette looks up from where she's sitting at the table. "Ahhhh, we do save labels." Anna says, seeing the piles on the table in front of Josette and the scissors in her hand.

"Yes we do, there's a box in the office for each type and I check the labels cut off cans here in the dorm. There's a notice on the bulletin board but not many people read all the notices."

"We always saved them back home, the state didn't pay much per student at our old school."

"They don't here, I think it's not quite 1900 a year per student spread over the three semesters." Josette says. "And they keep whining about their precious budget and threatening to cut the schools more."

"Yeah, that sounds familiar." Abby snorts. "Then whine about how the schools aren't educating students the way they want."

"And their pet projects get fatter and fatter while everything else suffers."

"Schools, the roads, medical coverage for people who can't afford it. . ." Abby shakes her head. "I'll give Joyce the labels we've been saving from our food then. Otherwise we'd have been taking them home for Mom to drop in the box at the store."

"Split them?" Josette says. "That way you're helping out both schools." The twins nod in satisfaction.

Josette ducks into the office after class the next day, handing the labels over.

"Thank you Josette."

"My bag was getting full so I grabbed the recycling bin and worked on it." She looks at the signup board.

"Do you need a ride? There's room for one more student."

"No, I'm good."

"Guys, do any of you need something at the store?" David asks, tapping Alexander and Michael on the shoulder as they walk to dinner. He waves Alan over.

"The shuttle doesn't run this late."

"I don't plan on taking the shuttle." David chuckles. "I know where the cameras don't cover all the parking lot at the megastore."

"Really?" Michael purrs.

"Yeah."

"Isn't sneaking out without telling against the school rules?"

"Yeah, but it's fun." David chuckles. "This weekend so we have a couple hours. Too late tonight, unless we hurried we wouldn't be back in time to lock the dorm up."

The semester passes quickly, the group of new friends settling into a pattern of working on their papers and studying after classes and Saturdays at the library. A couple of weeks before the midterms Josette settles at the table one morning to find visitors sitting at the front table.

"Anybody know who the guests are?" The others shake their heads.

"Who is the young woman with the the white streak in her hair?" Charles Xavier asks, his attention drawn to her when she entered the room.

"Josette Takahawa, one of the dorm monitors for the girls dorm along with the twins who are sitting at the table with her."

"What is her mutation?"

"Knowledge absorption, she can touch a book and download a copy into her mental library."

Xavier shakes his head, while an unusual mutation. . .similar to Rogue's it would be useless in a combat situation.

"Why is she here instead of at a normal high school?"

"Josette has been here since she was ten years old, she lost her mother in the Pasadena earthquake and never knew her father. Her mutation was activated due to the trauma of being trapped in the car, rather than going into the overcrowded foster care system in California she chose to come to our school. She transferred to the local school to finish the sixth grade, but was withdrawn from losing her mother. The school didn't have the classes necessary to engage her so she was tutored here until she could officially enroll in our school."

"She'll have to enroll in the local school when I shut down the school."

"Politely, no. Bluntly, fuck you. You aren't doing anything to our school or our students."

"Young man, I am the . . ."

"Annoying asshole who thinks he can do no wrong since he's the 'authority' on mutants. You are not turning any of my students into soldiers for your cause. Just your wanting to take some of my students but not other proves your lofty goals of mutants and normals existing in peace is pure propaganda."

"You're not training these children in the best use of their powers."

"No, I'm letting the children *be* children."

"This school will be closed."

"No, it will not."

Charles Xavier had contacted the government agent he deals with later that morning and had been laughed at. *Laughed at*! He'd tried claiming they weren't teaching the children properly and been shot down, the classes were more than they'd get at his school. He'd tried promising that the students would be trained in their abilities, something the school's not doing. When he'd been asked if *all* the students would be trained in their powers, his silence had been met with a snort and a 'nice try Xavier, the students are staying right where they are.'

"I will be coming back in a couple of months, and we *will* be talking about shutting your school down." Professor Xavier warns Principal Madison before the car comes for him.

"*You* can talk until you're blue in the face, it's not going to happen."

Josette wrinkles her nose at the shrimp on the buffet line a couple nights later. She grabs Anna. "The shrimp smells off, don't get any." She looks at her. "Grew up in California eating sushi. I know what seafood is supposed to smell like." Anna nods, passing that along to Abby and Alan, they grab the others in line and tell them not to eat the shrimp. They nod, with all the other selections nobody will go hungry.

Frantic hammering on doors has Josette, Anna, and Abby coming out of their rooms.

"Please let me in, I need to . . ."

"Go to the second or third floor bathrooms." Josette yells from the hallway. "If the others are as sick as you, you're *all* going to be on the toilets for a while." Anna sends out a mental call with the same instructions and the other girls start heading upstairs.

"Abby, I don't know if any of the bathrooms upstairs have supplies, grab a couple big packages of toilet paper and put two or three rolls in each bathroom."

"You handle the second and third floors, I'll grab the rooms down here."

Josette opens her door and grabs her phone. The twins look at her down the hall. "Principal Madison? Yeah, we've got a problem here. Most of the students are sick. I think it's the shrimp that was on the buffet line at lunch, the twins and I didn't have any." Susan opens her door as does Becka and Fatima. "The three of you didn't have the shrimp?"

"No, I don't like fish." Becka says. "Too many foster homes and fishsticks instead of real dinners."

"We do not get much seafood where I lived, it's not something I'm accustomed to eating." Fatima says.

"Go open windows in various rooms to help air out the dorm, it's going to *stink* the way the others are sick." Anna says. Josette nods as she listens to Principal Madison on her phone. "Yeah, I'll keep you updated. But I can tell you one thing, figure on cancelling classes tomorrow. Because if the girls are this sick, the boys probably are too."

"Thankfully it's Thursday, everybody *should* be feeling better by Monday." Susan says, coming out of a room.

"We hope." Josette says. She looks at the time and stands by the door as the twins make sure everybody's accounted for. The dorm is locked up and Josette shakes her head at the dwindling supply of toilet paper. "And we're probably go through the rest of this before it's over."

"Yeah, and pass out the rid-x tablets when everybody's feeling better, otherwise the tank's going to have to be pumped."

"Air fresheners." Abby grabs a double armful and starts passing them out.

Principal Madison sighs as he puts down the phone. It starts ringing the second it leaves his hand and he looks up at the ceiling in a 'you just *had* to do it, didn't you' and picks it up.

"Hello?" After getting off the phone with David he closes his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose before he sighs and looks up the list of numbers to call. "Everybody, I've got you on a conference call so I only have to say this once. No school tomorrow, most of the students are sick. Josette *thinks* it might be the shrimp that was served at lunch, it seems to be the one thing all the students who are ill had in common and Josette says she, the twins, Susan, and a couple other girls who aren't sick didn't eat it. I'm going to be talking to the kitchen after this call is over and find out where it came from and calling the authorities if there's any left to see if it *is* what is making everybody sick."

His next call is to the kitchen. The head cook immediately grabs the container of shrimp and puts it aside. "Yes, we've got some left, we were planning on offering it again tomorrow. . .Yes, I'll call the health department myself." She hangs up, everybody looking at her and she dials a number. "This is Jennica Sanford at The Hanford institute for exceptional children. We have a possible food poisoning case." She's transferred. "Yes, this is . . .Yes, I have the original container and the container the prepared food was put out in." She listens to the voice on the other end, then calls Principal Madison back.

"Okay everybody, you know the drill. Stop what you're doing and go sit in the dining room until somebody comes out to investigate everything."

"What is it?"

"Looks like the shrimp's bad. Nobody here ate it, right?" Shaking heads has her sighing. "Good. Because except for a handful of students everybody's on the toilet in their dorms. Principal Madison has already cancelled classes tomorrow." The students working at the kitchen grab their school bags and settle at a table to work at her orders.

"Ahhh Jennica." Principal Madison says as a investigative team comes into the kitchen.

"There's the shrimp we fixed up today and the rest of it." The head of the crew nods at her and she heads out into the dining room.

"Are those students?" One of the men asks, looking at the group sitting at a table with books.

"Yes, working in the kitchen in one of the work-study positions available." Principal Madison says.

"I told them to sit there, I figured you'd want to talk to them."

"Are they involved in the cooking process?"

"No, they just put the food out and clean up afterwards. They wipe down the tables and wash the kitchen towels, uniforms, and tablecloths downstairs."

"How often do you get supplies of food?"

"Every two months, we just got a new batch of food a couple weeks ago." Jennica pulls up the computer records. "Here's who we got the shrimp from."

"Did you order anything else from him?"

"No. He's not one of our normal suppliers." Jennica says. Principal Madison looks at the screen and nods. "I don't recognize the name and I'm the one who normally deals with the orders."

Jennica nods. "It was an impulse order, we got a flyer and it looked to be a good bargain."

"Hi, I'm Dr. Miles McCabe. Can I join you?" Miles asks, coming over to the table. The students look over at him and mark their books. "You all attend school here?"

"Yeah, it's a work-study position."

"What are your duties?"

"Putting out the containers of food on the line, replacing them with new ones when they're empty. Bringing out pitchers of milk to the tables. When the dining room closes, we take off the tablecloths, wipe them down and start washing everything up as the cooks go over their meal plans and start cooking if we have the breakfast or lunch shift."

"You make up your meal plans ahead of time?"

"Yes, they're posted on the school server a week ahead of time.

"Do you only offer one main dish?"

"No we usually have three main dishes plus assorted sides. Not including desserts."

After talking to the employees everybody starts going over the building top to bottom as Principal Madison has the students punch out and escorts them to their dorms with somebody from the health department. The

"Did you get the records?" Steve asks Frank when he returns.

"Yeah, plus the list of students and employees, just looking at it I can see that the numbers match. so nobody spiked the food then didn't eat."

"And it's too great a possibility of accidentally dosing yourself."

The kitchen is cleaned up later that night and early the next morning the morning crew arrives to start working on breakfast. They take the news with mixed results, some sighs, some cursing, and some shaking of heads. Since they have people that need to be fed they're allowed to start working, somebody watching them and putting out the food as the dining room opens.

A handful of students start trickling in, filling trays and sitting down to eat. One young girl is waved up to the front table, talking quietly with Principal Madison who nods at what she has to say.

"I'll have somebody take one of the trucks into Boston and stock up."

The other teachers in the room look at him. "We're going to be running low on toilet paper. Josette and the girls were opening the big packages and putting three or four rolls in every room."

"Air fresheners. I noticed every window in the buildings were open." Principal Madison nods.

"How is everybody handling the bathroom situation?"

"Some students are up on the second and third floors. Luckily we have enough bathrooms for everyone."

"We might have to have the tanks pumped."

"Yeah, Josette already said they'd have to be using a lot of rid-x after everybody is back in classes."

Josette's dropped off in town by the shuttle, walking a number of places before she stops at a yard sale. A recliner catches her eye and she haggles the price down before calling the school and requesting a truck come pick it up. She's dropped off in the parking lot behind the dorm and between her and the girls they get everything inside.

"That is *ugly*."

"Yes, but I can toss a cover over it." Josette chuckles. "How is everything here?"

"We've taken more toilet paper up to the bathrooms and the scuttlebutt is that the shrimp *were* bad, but the health department is still testing them. The kitchen itself came out clean. If you see stuff out of place here, it's because our kitchens were investigated too."

"Good thing I cleaned the litter box and took out the garbage this morning then." Josette smirks as she starts putting everything away.

"Have you ever taken the shuttle into Boston?" Abby asks.

"All day? Yes, usually when I needed to break down and get clothes. I usually ended up taking in a movie. I've also spent days wandering museums. I gotta go in in a couple of weeks for an eye exam and probably new glasses, the vision center at the superstore doesn't like the idea of treating me without parental permission, he's passing the buck onto somebody else."

"Shouldn't your social worker be taking care of something like that."

"Please," Josette snorts. "I get a letter once a year saying I need to requalify and that's it. And don't get me started on that harridan we have here."

The twins nod as Josette puts the last of her purchases away and they head to lunch. She's waved to the front table. "School is closed Monday too but they hope to have classes starting again Tuesday. They're going to be putting up a week's worth of assignments on the bulletin board this afternoon." The others nod.

That afternoon Josette grabs a notebook and joins the other students writing down their assignments before heading back to their rooms. The rest of the weekend is busy with working on school assignments.

Monday morning Josette slides into her usual seat at the dining room, looking over at the others.

"Did anybody else get their assignments finished?"

"Yeah, and I don't know about you but I don't *want* to be in the dorm."

"Nope, they've all got toilet paper and I'm spending the day in Boston. Officially it's visiting the Boston library to do research for a paper. Unofficially it's a vacation day since the paper isn't going to be assigned until next semester." Josette says, her lips twitching. "You . . ." Various teachers tap shoulders and papers are handed over. The students look at them, then the adults and grin. "Should be getting the news now. A few of the teachers are coming with us to pay for stuff. We're leaving after breakfast and not due back until after dinner."