Disclaimer: All characters in this story belong to Marvel. The plot belongs to me.

Note: This follows OZT without any of that M-Plate crap. My version of Monet’s history is different from Marvel’s and I think it’s better. I hope I’m making for the debacle that is Testing Times. That project has been abandoned due to its ultimate crappiness. If you read this story, send feedback!

"Finally."

Emma shut the door just as the sun’s rays slowly began to fade.

It was sunset and Emma and all the female students at Generation X were starting their night of ‘female bonding.’ In other words, a night of videos, food and of course, a lot of talking. Sean had violently protested against this night, stating that the entire group should get to know one another better but Emma gave him her coldest stare and told him that there were some things only girls could talk about among themselves. Sean started to splutter but Emma firmly ended the discussion when she gave him a strong psionic jolt.

So the preparations had started. Even the usually impassive Monet joined in with the preparations. Emma and the girls had gone down to local video store to borrow a ‘couple’ of videos. In the end, about fifteen were borrowed. When Everett unwisely asked what they were watching, Emma ordered Everett to write a fifteen-page essay on the ecological system of the Mediterranean. The last time the girls saw Everett, he was busily leafing through books in the library. The other males had learned Everett’s lessons and were quietly observing the preparations. They were a bit disgruntled at the fact they had been left out but Sean had come up a compromise. The males would get their turn to do some ‘male bonding’ and they would leave the females out in the cold. The male students were happy with this and proceeded to ignore the females.

The females observed the males with much amusement and continued with their preparations. Emma sent Monet and Paige down to the shops to buy some snacks. Jubilee vigorously protested the fact that she was not allowed to buy the food but Emma calmly said, "I know what junk you eat. I definitely do not want to eat that sort of food."

"But Miss Perfect will buy caviar and champagne!"

"Her name is Monet and caviar and champagne is much better than the oily, greasy foods you tend to eat quite frequently."

Jubilee looked at Emma sullenly.

When Monet and Paige did come back, Jubilee had to admit that the selection was not too bad. There were no chips but there was a lot of chocolate. Also to compromise for Emma’s disapproval of soft drinks, Monet and Paige had bought sparkling fruit juice. Jubilee was a bit dubious about the choice of drink and had sampled it.

"What is this?" Jubilee took a quick sip.

"Sparkling fruit juice," Monet replied. "Fruit juice combined with mineral water and..."

"I don’t need a full lecture on it! I must say, it doesn’t taste too bad."

Emma smiled beatifically.

So the night had started. The males had all gone to help Everett with his fifteen-page essay about the ecology of the Mediterranean. Artie and Leech were visiting Franklin Richards and his parents. All was calm in the Massachusetts Academy as the females went down to business.

The females were in the middle of the nibbles when Paige asked, "So how are you and Everett going?" The question was obviously directed at Jubilee.

Jubilee nearly choked on a nut. Emma thumped her on the back until Jubilee could speak.

"What?"

"How are you and Everett going?"

"What do you mean?"

Paige rolled her eyes. "Don’t play stupid with me, Jubilee. I know what your true feelings for him are. Have you told him yet?"

"I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about."

Emma and Monet muffled a laugh.

"What?" Jubilee asked.

Emma spoke. "Jubilee you seem to forget we’re telepaths."

"So?"

"In class, I can basically see your dreams about Everett."

"You’ve been invading my thoughts!"

"No, I haven’t." Emma disagreed. "Your dreams are so vivid and intense that any decent telepath could feel it within a mile radius. Monet has probably felt it and any telepath walking by the school would have probably seen them as well. I can describe them in great detail if you want."

"No!" Jubilee turned a deep red.

Paige and Monet both giggled and Emma gave Jubilee a gentle smile.

"What are they?" Paige asked after she had recovered from her fit of giggles.

"Well..." Monet started but Jubilee quickly clamped her hand over Monet’s mouth.

"Don’t," Jubilee pleaded.

"Tell us your true feelings then," Paige said.

"Do I have to?"

"Well, you once dreamed that Everett and you..." Monet started.

"Okay," Jubilee quickly interrupted. "I’ll tell you."

Jubilee settled herself down on the couch and began to recite what sounded like a memorised speech.

"I like Everett a lot. And I mean, a lot. I daydream about him heaps and I wonder what it is like to be his girlfriend. I also dream about him a lot during my sleep and basically all my waking thoughts are filled with images of him."

"Sounds intense," Paige commented. "Why don’t you ask him about then?"

Jubilee sighed. "He looks on me as a little sister. As a best friend. He likes me a lot but not in the way that I want him to. He probably thinks I’m too young for him. He seems to look at you a lot." She looked accusingly at Monet.

"I can assure you that I am most definitely not involved with Everett," Monet said.

"But you kissed him in L.A!" Paige exclaimed. Then she saw Jubilee’s eyes flash with a sudden anger and then said, "I shouldn’t have said that." Emma’s eyebrows raised slightly at this revelation.

"You WHAT???" Jubilee screeched.

"Kissed him," Monet confirmed. "It was a harmless thing, Jubilee. I advise you to ignore it."

"How can I?" Jubilee stood up and started pacing the room. "You of all people have kissed Everett. I have not kissed Everett before. You are my enemy, Monet and you kissed whom I view as my future boyfriend. How the HELL am I supposed to forget that?"

"Emotions were running high, Jubilee. Everett felt nervous and said he was afraid to die without ever experiencing all sorts of things. One of them was kissing a girl. So I gave him a little kiss."

"A little kiss?" Paige said. "It was more like a big smooch."

Emma flashed Paige a "don’t make it worse" look. Paige obediently clamped her mouth shut.

"So you pash my future boyfriend. What next, Monet? Will you lure him into bed? Be my guest and make him one of your toyboys. You’re rich enough to have a couple of them. You know Monet; you have taken away the one of the few things I treasure in my life. My parents were killed in a car accident. I became homeless and wandered the streets. I abandoned my best friend when I stepped through the portal and ended up in Australia. Wolvie and I were separated when I decided to come to this school. Now I find out that you have been making out with my boyfriend behind my back. The worse thing about this is that you have everything I ever wanted, Monet. You are filthy rich and you have a father that loves you. You are educated, intelligent, beautiful, cultured and everything that makes a person great. You are attractive to boys and you have so many mutant powers. I am actually envious of you, Monet. I thought I would never say this to you but I am jealous of you. And now you do the lowest of all possible things you could have done..." Jubilee briefly stopped for a breath. Before she could start ranting again, Monet interrupted her.

"Now wait a minute," Monet said. Her voice just increased in volume a little bit. "All your statements are entirely wrong. First things first, that kiss with Everett meant nothing. I have absolutely no interest in Everett and I doubt I ever will. He is a good friend but he is not my boyfriend. Second thing, my life is not as fortunate as you think. I may be rich, educated and even beautiful but I remind you that I have an extremely dysfunctional family. My mother is dead, my brother is mad monster, my father has withdrawn into a shell and my twin sisters are..." Monet stopped.

"Your twin sisters are...?" Emma said.

Monet’s shoulders drooped slightly. "I guess you would find this out one day and it is probably best to tell you now."

Monet sat forward with her hands clasped. Emma and Paige looked at Monet with eyes begging for more. Even Jubilee looked at Monet. Monet lowered her eyes and began the story.

"This all happened when I was eight years old. I was very happy at the time. My father had just finished his Foreign Service abroad and he was coming home. My mother was very happy as well and she, my twin sister and I had picked up my father from the airport." Monet looked up and saw expressions of surprise on everybody’s face.

"You have... had a twin sister," Paige stammered.

Monet nodded and continued. "That night we threw a big party for him. My mother told my father that my twin sister and I had developed our mutant powers quite early. He was overjoyed. To clarify this, both my parents were mutants. My father’s abilities were ones of flight, super strength and invulnerability. Unfortunately they faded after he was thirty. No one knows why. My mother was a powerful psi with telepathic, empathic and telekinetic abilities. Her powers were probably even more powerful than yours, Miss Frost." Emma’s eyes widened in amazement.

"How come she was never detected?" Emma asked, still amazed.

"My mother shielded herself very well from everyone," Monet replied. "Even from Cerebro. If Professor X had found my mother, there was no doubt he would have asked her to be on his team of mutants.

Monet lay back on the couch and continued. "My powers had manifested themselves rather like my mother’s powers. I was a telepath, had a photographic memory and I also had telekinetic abilities. I also strangely had a light projection ability but I’ve never exhibited this power very much. My sister had super strength, invulnerability, flight, night vision and also an energy projection ability. She hurled kinetic bolts of energy. You could say I took after my mother while my sister took after my father."

"Your sister’s powers. You have them now..." Emma mused.

"I’ll get to that later. My father wanted my mother to train my sister and I to use our abilities. My mother said that she could train me but she would need help with training my sister. My father said that he would help due to his prior experience. My father also promised the best education for my sister and I and he said that we could become powerful and wealthy people one day."

"Then my brother came home. He had been acting strangely lately and had been away from home for a few days. When we saw him, he looked like what he is now. My parents screamed and my twin sister and I were shocked as well. My brother looked on the servants with hungry eyes and suddenly started to feed on one of them. That servant screamed and fell to the ground in pain. Marius then started to feed on another servant. All this happened while my parents and I were standing there, shocked."

"My father suddenly leaped into action. He obviously thought he still had his powers. He hurled himself at Marius but Marius contemptuously brushed him away. Then suddenly my sister launched herself at him. To this day, I still do not know what she was thinking. She managed to slam him into the wall but Marius recovered. He got up and threw my sister against the wall. Her head was crushed against the wall. Not even her invulnerability could save her. She died," Monet’s tears rolled freely now.

"What was your sister’s name?" Emma gently asked.

"Marion," Monet replied. She regained her composure a little bit and then she continued.

"I could feel my sister dying as her consciousness rapidly faded. Then something happened. I cannot explain what I did or even how I did it. My powers flared. I could feel power radiating out of me. It streamed towards Marion’s body and hovered over it. Then it plunged into it and with it, a strange sort of energy. It came back to me and I reabsorbed it."

"The next thing I knew, I had Marion within me! She was talking to me, saying how we should stop our mad brother. I could feel her powers within me and her memories also. Later on, I realised I had absorbed Marion’s consciousness and it now resided within my body. We were one but I still had control over my body. But now I had her powers. Both my mother and my brother saw what happened to Marion and I and both were shocked. My mother snapped out of it though and managed to launch a massive psi-bolt at Marius."

"There was a massive explosion of energy and it knocked out everybody in the surrounding area. When we woke up, Marion and I saw our mother lying on the floor. We walked over to my mother and I used my power to scan her mind. There was nothing! There was no sign of life in her body. Marion and I started wailing as one, mourning for our dead mother."

"Our father woke up. He saw our dead mother and he started crying too. After a few minutes of bereavement, my father realised that Marius’ body was not among the wreckage that was his home. He searched up and down for Marius but Marius had gone! He cursed Marius’ name and vowed vengeance against him. The police soon came because there were reports from neighbours about a massive explosion near them."

"When the police started questioning us, my father said that something had exploded in the house and that it killed Marion and my mother. I backed up the story. I didn’t want to tell my father that Marion was still in my mind. The servants also backed up our story because I managed to psionically manipulate them. The police took Marion’s body and my mother’s body away for an autopsy. They also discovered that a servant was missing from the house. She was never found. A few days later we heard that a coronial investigation was going to be launched."

"The coroner’s report indicated that a massive explosion killed my mother and Marion. Marion was killed due to the explosion hurling her body against the wall, causing massive head injuries. My mother died due to the strain placed on her body due to the explosion. The cause of the explosion was unknown but that did not matter much to the coroner. He was glad it was done and over with."

"After this incident, my father withdrew into a shell. He sent me off to a boarding school in Switzerland. I made friends there but I was lonely. Marion and I talked when we were alone and she promised that she would never leave me. We practised our powers when we were alone and I soon became quite proficient. Then one day, Gateway appeared. I saw him sitting in the garden of my boarding school. I attempted to communicate with him. He just sat there. Then he said one word, "Penance." Emma’s eyes widened as far as they could at this revelation. The other two were shocked as well.

"Gateway started to train me in using my powers. I became a master of my powers and it seemed he was proud of me. He told me that I needed a new name due to the fact that Marion and I existed in the same body. We thought about and I decided to name myself, Monet." All three females in the room looked absolutely flabbergasted at this revelation. They all started to speak at once until Jubilee asked, "W-W-What was your old name?"

"Claudia," Monet answered.

"D-Do you want us to call you that?" Paige asked trembling.

"No," Monet said. "Claudia is as dead as last year’s flowers."

Monet continued. "When I visited my father again I told him I wanted to change my name. He accepted it without any fuss. It seemed like he did not care any more. I changed my name and Gateway continued to train me. I frequently visited home and it was on one of these visits, the Phalanx captured me," Monet ended her story and sat there quietly. Her eyes were red from her crying but now she seemed to be at a melancholy peace.

There was an uncomfortable silence until Jubilee spoke up.

"I’m sorry for what I said. I-I had no idea."

Monet smiled sadly. "You had a right to. I’ve been acting pretty horribly of late."

Jubilee said nothing but she put her arms around Monet and hugged her. Soon the other two also joined in, forming a group hug. Outside the room, the night silently passed as the four women truly bonded for the first time.