The Hunter
By: Kismet Noelani Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men. They all belong to someone else. Or several someone else's. Isn't that sad? Oh, well. I do own Cyrene Hunter and the story line. Author's Notes: Okay folks. This is the first story I've ever posted. It's also my first X-Men fic. Please read and review. Let me know what you think of it. No flames please! And now, on with the show.Sorry for the long absences but I've been busy, and the site was down for a while. But, I have been rewriting and working on more chapters. They should be up soon. Enjoy!
All personal thoughts are in italics.
All telepathic thoughts are *italics*
Chapter OneThe lights below twinkled and glittered, like exotic, multicolored lightening bugs. The sparkled around the buildings and over the water. Some would have found the city amazing. Some would have called it beautiful, a marvel. Some would have been awed by what had been created here. Not Cyrene Hunter. She found it disgusting. Yet here she was.
She wasn't fond of the city. The press of people, all their thoughts and emotions bombarding her all the time, made her feel claustrophobic. Even more than that was the press of the unnatural. There was no natural beauty in this man made world. Only parks that had been carefully choreographed until there was nothing special left.
No, she didn't like the city.
The riot of colors, the sensory overload, they bothered her. But, as it is with all things, she had stopped noticing it, had adapted. It was one of the things human beings were so damn good at, adaptation. But some days, the colors, the noise, the never ending whirl of activity was a little too much for her. And this place; this place far above the city was her retreat. Because here she was alone, here she could be herself; here she could breath easy away from the sight, scent, and sounds of the city. This place was blessedly silent.
Silence. Silence so pure that even one tiny breath could be heard. A pin drop. A tear drop. Cyrene loved the sound of silence. There was something about shutting out the incessant noise of the city that never slept. Something wonderful. Something so beautiful it made the heart ache. The poets and musicians of her youth had said, so very, very long ago that the silence was just as important, if not even more so, than the sound. The thought had made her smile then, as it did now. The poets were right.
Some how they always were in the end. The poets, the musicians, the philosophers of old. Somewhere, sometime, in the hustle and bustle of life, their words had been pushed aside and their craft forgotten by all. All but one. She remembered everything they had taught her those thousands of years ago.
She remembered, and the goddess knew she had tried to live out their words, their actions, their teachings. But… but in the end it was so hard. So difficult, so much so that the burden of it had become a physical ache on her shoulders, the weight of which was too much for her to carry after all she had seen. After all she had done. Some days she wondered why she kept on going, day after day after endless day. Some days it was too tough, too demanding. And yet, here she was.
Here she was in New York City. Atop a tall building. In an office where she worked.
She pulled her gaze away from the lights of the city and looked down onto the street. The people out on the street looked much like ants from the height of Cyrene's window but she knew who they all were. Business men and women dashing home from work. Tourists out for the beginning of their 'night on the town.' School kids enjoying their last days, and nights, of summer. Drug dealers and prostitutes, government employees and high powered attorneys, young lovers and party goers. They all walked the street below her. She watched them scurry to and fro, day after day, all marching to the same beat.
She had come to New York in the first place because it was supposed to be an 'exciting' city. The city that never slept. Yeah, well, they might never sleep, but exciting it was not. The city was, in its own way, as predictable as any small town she had ever lived in. And it was just as tedious, in its own way. But not for much longer. Soon she would be leaving. Moving on. Trying to find that part of herself that had been missing for the past fifteen years. The part she had lost when she had abandoned the poets and become nothing but an animal once again.
She'd been at this job too long. People were going to start asking questions soon and she didn't want that. . The last time she had stayed in one place long enough for people to ask questions, things had turned out very badly. Very badly indeed. She objected when people tried to hunt her down and kill her.
Human beings. They would never change.
She let out one deep sigh and turned away from the skyline and back to the work at hand. Cyrene opened the manila file folder in her hands. She scanned the first page of the employee profiles and turned to the second. She couldn't just leave the company without having someone to take her place as its head. Her hand jerked back involuntarily, a small cut stinging on her left index finger, and scattering the pages onto the floor. Her lips pursed into the barest hint of displeasure as she surveyed the mess on the floor. Just when she thought she had it back together something like this happened. Her control was still shot all to hell.
She grabbed a tissue and wiped her finger on it, revealing the unmarked flesh under the spot of blood. The small paper cut had hardly had time to bleed before her mutation had kicked in and healed it completely. Cyrene had incredible regenerative capabilities, meaning that she could heal just about anything and she never grew any older. Her genetic mutation had manifested herself when she was 22, a little later then usual, but she didn't really mind too much. She was quite a bit older then 22, closer to 22,222, but she didn't really care about that either. The only problem was she had started this business and had never aged while here.
She sighed heavily and turned away from the window. Hunter Investments was a brokerage firm. It was also her baby. She played the stock market for many years, well, since it had first opened to be perfectly honest, and the fairly young firm was one of the top in the world. As much as she didn't want to leave, she knew the time was coming. Supposedly, people weren't allowed to discriminate against mutants, the government had passed a law of some sort, but she knew better. As soon as it got out the firm would begin loosing business. She would have to fire people to cut costs and eventually close the firm. It was better for everyone if she simply left before it became a problem. Cyrene walked to her desk and flipped through the calendar. She knew she had an appointment soon. Her intercom buzzed. Speak of the devil she thought as she slid into her chair and hit the button.
"Miss Hunter, your six o'clock is here," a male voice told her.
"Thank you Philip. I'll see her now." Cyrene brought up her schedule on her computer. Mrs. Laura Cayce had her six o'clock appointment. She frowned and contemplated the significance of that. She had met Laura years ago, when Laura was still in college. Laura had been one of the few people who had been completely willing to accept her despite her mutation.
She watched her friend as the door opened and immediately realized that Laura wasn't here to see one of the most successful stockbrokers in the business. She was here to see her friend Cyrene about a problem. Her overly sensitive empathy flared to life as Laura came into the room. It was like being hit with a sledge hammer across the forehead. The woman was upset, worried, exhausted, and depressed. She was an emotional train wreck! For an instant the familiar sensation of being overwhelmed, the feeling of loosing herself in another's emotions, the complete confusion of not being able to distinguish her own emotions from anyone else's crashed into her as her shields collapsed under the emotional onslaught.
But, while she wasn't necessarily strong enough to cope with it all, Cyrene had gained a lot of experience with her empathetic mutation over her impossibly long life. She waited for the feeling to passes as she carefully recreated those steel mental walls that kept out everyone else's feelings and kept her own in.
Schooling her face into a look of kind concern, Cyrene stood and waked to her friend, giving her a hug. Laura gave a weak smile and sat, feeling a little better.
"Cy, I guess you know that I'm not here because I need stock advice," she said rather ruefully.
"Yeah, I guessed that," she answered with a slight grin. Her smile faded as Laura looked suddenly even more worried and upset then before. "What's wrong Laura?" she asked quietly. "What can I do to help?"
Laura took a deep breath before answering. "It's Chase."
Cyrene's lips tightened. Chase was Laura's 10-year-old son. Two months ago, Laura had called her, hysterical. Her son and husband had been hit by a drunk driver, and both had been rushed to the hospital. Cyrene had gone to the hospital with Laura and sat with her through the agonizing hours of not knowing. Laura and Jason were her best friends. She was a lot like an aunt for Chase. They had both come out okay, but Chase's recovery was taking longer then it should have. Cyrene sat silently while Laura continued.
"He's almost completely recovered from the accident, but he's started...doing things." She shrugged her shoulders helplessly, the despair coming over her again. "Jason and I talked about it, and decided we can't go to the hospital because we don't know what they'll do to him. You're our last hope Cy, please."
Cyrene shook her head, not understanding what "doing things" meant. She was tempted to use her telepathy to find out, but her control still wasn't as good as it used to be. Besides, telepathy involved the dropping of her mental shields which would bring that wave of emotions crashing back onto her. "What exactly do you mean Laura?"
"The doctors think that the trauma from the accident triggered his genetic mutation." Cyrene's eyes widened and Laura nodded miserably. "We have a menagerie in our house! It's turning into a zoo! We just can't deal with this! Can you teach him how to control it or something?" Laura asked, hope flavoring her emotions.
"What exactly is his mutation?"
"He talks to animals. They understand him, he understands them."
"I can't teach him how to control that," she said after a moment of serious thought, "But," she quickly stalled Laura's plummet into despair which she could feel even through her shields, "I think I know somewhere that he can be helped." She turned to her computer and opened a very special file. Cyrene Hunter may have been the president of Hunter Investments, but she brokered other things as well. Such as information.
She knew more about what happened in the U.S. then any other single person, including all those White House and Capitol Hill flunkies. She had a computer for a brain and a perfect photographic memory, but she stored all her information in special computer files. She skimmed through a specific file, on mutants, until she found what she was looking for. Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. She looked over all the information she had gathered about Charles Xavier and his school.
"There is a school in Westchester specifically for children with mutations. It runs 1st through 12th grade," she said slowly keeping a close watch on Laura's body language. "It's a boarding school..." she trailed off as the hope in Laura's eyes became somewhat diminished and she shifted around in her seat. She narrowed her eyes at her friend. "What's wrong with a boarding school?"
Laura looked at her for a moment. "I'm not sure I want my child living in a place with out me with people I don't know or trust."
Ah. Cyrene could understand that. "How about I go take a look around the place first and then schedule an appointment for you? How about next Monday?"
Laura nodded tentatively.
"Good. Well, I'll see what I can do for you. I'll give them a call tomorrow when someone will actually be there, okay? I'll let you know what I find out."
Laura smiled, her relief so obvious that Cyrene was surprised she couldn't feel it, even with her shields up and at full strength. "Thank you so much Cy. You have no idea how much this will help. I thought I could deal with it, but the snakes in the living room were just too much for me. I really appreciate this."
"Go home Laura, tell Jason that I have a solution. It's going to be okay."
Laura smiled and thanked her again while Cyrene led her to the outer office. After she left Cyrene turned to Philip. "Clear Thursday for me. I'm going to Xavier's School for Gifted kids around one." Philip nodded. "I'm going to dinner." She picked up her purse and stared toward the door. Chinese sounded good, and the Jade Palace always had a table for her.
She caught a taxi outside her building and gave the driver the address. She had grabbed a few files before she left the office. Her first file was a profile list of the upper management of Hunter Investments. The second file contained articles, documents, reports, building records, profiles, and anything else that she could find that had to do with Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters or the superhero team that had been come to be known as "The X-Men." Both files sat in her briefcase; she planned to go over them while she ate.
She got out of the taxi and paid the driver before going over to the door of the Jade Palace. The building itself wasn't anything special. A small hole-in-the-wall kind of place, it was nothing impressive to look at. In fact, it looked just like every other Chinese place in New York City. The special thing about the Jade Palace wasn't the building, but what was inside. The interior was beautiful. Done in reds and gold with authentic paintings and antiques from China, it was truly something spectacular. The food was also another perk. It was the best Chinese food Cyrene had ever had outside of China.
She smiled at the host as she came in.
"Hello Ms. Hunter," the young host greeted her. "We were expecting you tonight. Right this way."
She followed him to her table and sat as Shaiming, her usual waiter, came up to the table. "How are you this evening Ms. Hunter?" he asked as he set a pot of Jasmine tea down. Shaiming was more than just a waiter. He worked for her in her information network. He was one of her best informants.
"Tired Shaiming, very tired, and I still have a lot of work to do," she answered. Shaiming was one of the few people she had ever met that lived up to the meaning of their name; his sunny disposition never failed to make her feel better. They chatted for a few moments before he left to get her usual order. Cyrene valued the predictability of this place. It was a rare thing ton have in this day in age. She sipped her tea and reached into her briefcase. She needed to finish finding a successor and she had so much research to do before tomorrow. She looked at the daunting profiles file and turned to the more interesting file.
Evidently this school, a high end prep school on the outside, was actually a school for mutant children and teenagers. It covered grades K-12. According to the few sources she had been able to get information from the school taught these kids to control their powers as well as the more traditional schooling. It was a very tightly knit community. It had been almost impossible to get any contacts at all who knew about the place. Very loyal these people. Cyrene turned to the few profiles she had on the teachers there.
The first was a Dr. Jean Grey. She was one of the leading researchers on genetic mutations. Very involved with national politics on mutations. Taught general health and science classes at the school. She had gone there herself as one of the first pupils. Mutation: unknown.
Cyrene sighed at the lack of data and flipped to the photo. Beautiful. Beauty and brains, huh. Now there was something you didn't see every day. She had just flipped to the dossier on a Mr. Scott Summers, when a couple was seated at the table next to her. She didn't pay any attention to them until she overheard a small part of their conversation.
"I'm glad that your presentation to the senate went well Jean," a male voice said quietly.
Cyrene raised her eyes from the bio sheet.
"Thanks Scott. I'm glad that they finally listened to me. That bill was awful and intrusive. I can't imagine having to live that way," a woman's voice answered.
Cyrene quickly flipped to the photo she had of Scott. Nice shades. She wondered what exactly his mutation was. And he was hot. She looked over at the couple sitting next to her, then back at the photos, then back at the couple. Almost on cue, the song "It's a Small World" began echoing in her head. She was trying to make up her mind whether or not to say anything to them, when her food arrived and their waiter came. She decided to eat instead. All through her meal, Cyrene eavesdropped on their conversation. She was slightly amazed at how careless they were. She learned more from them about the school and themselves from listening then she ever could have learned from articles and dossiers. As convenient as that was for her, if she hadn't been on there side, and she easily could have been looking for information on them for others, they would have been in deep shit. Careful obviously wasn't their byword.
She finished her meal, paid and was about to leave, when she decided to talk to them after all. She just wanted to make an appointment after all. Cyrene turned to speak to them, when she realized Jean had gotten up and gone somewhere without her noticing. I'm loosing my touch, she thought as she stood and walked over to the now alone Scott Summers.
"Excuse me, you wouldn't happen to be Scott Summers would you?" she asked giving him the I'm-just-a-sweet-innocent-harmless-girl smile.
Scott looked up at her and studied her for a moment before answering. "Yes, I'm Scott Summers. Can I help you with something?" The suspicion was rolling off him.
Cyrene smiled harmlessly again and realized that a lot of reading a person's body language was in reading their facial expression. It as harder to do with those damn glasses covering his eyes, but after more than 30,000 years of practice she was willing to bet that he was squinting his eyes and glaring at her. She put on her most vacant expression, stood in a very relaxed position, and tilted her head just slightly. She wanted him to be comfortable, not on guard. Sometimes the best way to do that was to play into a person's stereotypes. Her already small stature would play into the harmless look. She fleetingly wished she wasn't wearing black.
"I read an article about Xavier's School for the Gifted a while back and I recognized you from the pot they had. I actually was going to call your school tomorrow. I have a friend who is looking for a school for her young son."
Scott relaxed immediately. He was about to answer her when Jean came back out of the bathroom. "Scott, who's this?" she asked, obviously not happy that Scott had seemingly picked up another woman while she was in the bathroom.
"Oh!" Cyrene said, making her voice higher than it was, "I didn't even introduce myself. How rude of me. My name is Cyrene Hunter."
"Dr. Jean Grey," Jean answered, holding out her hand while emphasizing the Dr. part of her name.
Cyrene took the hand and widened her eyes, "The Dr. Jean Grey? Oh my goodness! You're one of the leading researchers on genetic mutations! It's such an honor to meet you!" Cyrene gushed, knowing she sounded like a very well informed ditz.
Jean smiled sourly at her and tried to probe her thoughts. Cyrene felt her push at the mental shields. Guess that's one mystery solved. She's a telepath. A very rude one at that, she thought, safe inside her mental walls.
"She was just asking about the school," Scott was saying, trying to placate his jealous girlfriend.
Poor Scott. Cyrene felt an uncharacteristic rush of dislike for Dr. Jean Grey.
"You'll have to call the school and make an appointment if you want to learn more about the school," Jean said coldly.
Cyrene kept her face pleasant and vacant, but inside that spike of dislike was growing.
"Oh yes, I called earlier, but no one answered," she lied smoothly. "And since you're here I thought I'd see if I could get you to schedule me an appointment or something. It's really something of an emergency."
"I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem. When did you want to come by?" Scott asked politely, ignoring the look Jean shot at him.
"I was hopping to stop by tomorrow if that wouldn't be too much of a problem. Maybe around 11:00 so that I could see some of the classes?" she asked.
"Sure. I'll make sure there's someone to show you around," he told her.
"Thank you so much! I really appreciate it. I've got to be going. I have a lot of work to do, but thanks again." She smiled one last time. Picked up her briefcase and walked toward the door. Shaiming stood at the door waiting for her.
"Very well played."
"Keep an eye on them for me. They work for Xavier's School. Both mutants. I need to go there tomorrow. E-mail me if they say anything interesting."
He nodded once and smiled at her. "Thank you Ms. Hunter. Please come again."