wings ↣ w. worthington iii

6. somehow everyone saw that coming, you blondie ✓

"There was the blue sky above her and all those many roses... Each one was sweeter than the next and as red as gemstones." (The River King by Alice Hoffman)

Word Count: 3204

"LILLI! WAKE UP!" A sharp voice called. Lilli grumbled and buried herself deep into her pillow a second before something smacked her across her face. Shooting up, she was met with Ororo standing over her and holding a pillow.

This wasn't the first time that Lilli had been woken up by way of Ororo smacking her with a pillow. During the school year, Lilli had frequently overslept, and Ororo was always there to wake her up— Lilli was grateful for that. But school was over, and she'd graduated. There were no classes to wake up for, and it was summer vacation anyways. So what was Ororo waking her up so early for?

"Ro, come on," Lilli moaned in annoyance. She laid back down again, but only a half second later Orora took her and yanked her abruptly up by the arm.

"Oh, no you don't!" Ororo exclaimed, thwapping Lilli across the face again with the pillow. "You ge up right now. If we lose this tournament because you slept in, I will make sure you never sleep again!"

Lilli stared at her best friend for a long second, waiting for Ororo's words to register within her head. Tournament?? What tourna- oh, shit!

In the blink of an eye, Lilli was wide awake. She whipped her head to the side and looked at her alarm clock. It read 9:53. "Ro! Shit! Fuck balls fuck ass shit!" Lilli spluttered, throwing herself off of her bed.

Ororo stepped out of Lilli's way and watched her run around her room, haphazardly throwing clothes on her body. "You should really hurry."

"No shit!" Lilli screeched, throwing on a crewneck over her leggings. She slid into the first pair of combat boots she saw and quickly ran to her mirror. She hurriedly pulled her hair back into a ponytail, wiped her face, and slapped herself to wake up her facial muscles. "Okay, let's go let's go let's go!"

The two girls sprinted down the empty halls, their shoes pounding against the wooden floors. They careened around corners and down the stairs and all the way outside to the big backyard where the tournament was being held. A crowd had gathered outside of the makeshift arena— Lilli assumed they were the teams that had already lost. Shit! She had almost missed it!

The idea of the tournament was for the students to show how well they had improved in keeping their abilities under check under massive amounts of pressure. It was simple. The mutants were assembled into random teams and put through a series of stressful events. There was one group that acted out every scene for the team that was competing, and if just one person cracked under the pressure and used their mutation, the whole team was disqualified. It was insanely intense, and seemed almost impossible to finish the first four rounds. The final teams would go into a semifinal, and from there the finals. All of it was inside an arena that the students had spent a week constructing.

It seemed difficult, but it was a fun idea and it was something to do. An added bonus— the winning team would be excluded from all chores until school started back up again in the fall. That was a huge deal, and the main reason everyone wanted to win.

Lilli searched the crowds for her group which consisted of her, Ororo, Warren, Peter, Jubilee, and a boy named Wilson who could breathe underwater. They did have a really unfair advantage because they had so many X-Men on their team; however, since none of them could use their mutations, they were all just normal students.

"Over there!" Ororo pointed right next to the gate into the arena. Lilli looked over and saw their group standing in line, so she and Ororo hurriedly ran over to join with their team.