Safe Corridors

Title: Safe Corridors
Author: Jordanna Morgan (librarie@jordanna.net)
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: G.
Characters: Primarily Kitty Pryde and Hank McCoy.
Setting: Kitty’s early days at Xavier’s.
Summary: How Kitty Pryde learned her way around the school.
Disclaimer: Marvel and Fox create the characters that sell. I’m simply playing with them.
Notes: Just a tiny little 400-word Mutant High problem-solving sketch. It was written as a Fandom Stocking gift for Wiliqueen on LiveJournal.

Safe Corridors

From the first time Kitty Pryde arrived at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, she was awed by the sheer size and complexity of the mansion. It was a vast, sprawling maze, a seemingly endless enigma of rooms and hallways and corridors—and so many walls.

Which quickly began to present a problem for Kitty… or rather, for the people around her.

You see, Kitty could walk through walls. It was her thing. Even by the time she arrived at Mutant High, it was such a second nature to her that she would ghost quickly from one room to the next without a thought. It was as easy as breathing, and at times it made her life an awful lot more convenient.

There was just one problem: any time she popped through a wall that happened to contain electrical wiring, a nasty power glitch was the result.

“Kitty!” squawked Jubilee, in a fair imitation of Siryn, leaning out through the bathroom doorway with dripping hair. “You zoned out the hair dryer again!”

“Aww, Kitty, we were on level thirty-seven!” Peter howled, dropping his Nintendo controller in disgust.

And when Kitty arrived late for a class in the computer lab, Doctor McCoy merely sighed and looked up at the sheepish girl, with an expression of mingled dismay and sympathy that had nothing to do with her tardiness.

“Ah, Kitty,” he said with weary kindness, shaking his head over the reboot screen of his computer. “I can see this problem is going to need some serious consideration.”

Two days after the computer lab incident, Doctor McCoy took Kitty aside just after breakfast. “I want to show you something.”

With puzzlement and faint trepidity, Kitty obediently followed the scientist to the far side of the room, where he pointed out two small stripes of orange masking tape on the wall.

“I was up half the night with Jones, mapping out the electrical wiring in the mansion.” Doctor McCoy tapped the four-foot span of wall between the two pieces of tape. “You see this, Kitty? This space denotes a portion of the wall that’s free of wiring. It’s a safe corridor. I’ve marked them out all over the school—just temporarily, of course. We’ll remove the tape when you know them by heart.”

Kitty’s eyes grew wide, and with a squeak of delight, she sprang onto her tiptoes to throw her arms around his neck.