Mission
"We're coming in." Cyclops stated as he landed the Blackbird half a mile south of their destination, in a clearing in the woods. The X-Men had been sent on a mission to help a mutant, escape a mob of mutant haters, in Toulouse, France.
"In the caves, right Scooter?" Logan asked already at the ramp.
"Yes." Cyclops replied.
"Ah, France, da country of Gambit's ancestors." Remy flaunted his French vocabulary as the group walked out of the jet, making Ororo chuckle at some of his statements since she was almost fluent at the language.
"Ya know, sugah, ya still need to teach me some of that." Anna flirted in her Southern drawl. This did not go unnoticed by Remy, who replied ten-fold.
"Well of course, chere. When we get back, you and Remy will be spendin' a lot of time together, learnin' de ins and outs." Conversation was cut a few minutes later as the group came across the caves which held the frightened girl. They obviously couldn't all arrive at the entrance; it would scare her even more. So they designated Anna to make first contact; as it said on the roster.
"Hello?" Anna questioned stepping into the first cave. "Ah'm nut gunna, hurt ya, I just -" Suddenly Remy was behind her, wrapping him arms around her waist. "Gambit! What are you doin'?" Remy quickly spun Anna around and planting his luscious lips on that of his would-be lover.
At first she was stunning unable to move, then when she realised that she wasn't sucking the life force out of him she relaxed, putting her arms round his neck and deepening the kiss. They kissed for what felt like forever; suddenly he tried to back away, gagging. Anna felt Remy's life force being pulled into her and attempted to pull back as well: it wasn't working, they were shackled.
Anna finally pushed off of Remy, he plunged to the ground. The man's eyes were open; aghast, his face was pallid and contorted in pain. Blood slowly made a pool around his head, where it connected with the hard, rocky ground.
The woman, who had just slain her would-be mate, stood for a moment in complete shock, her face spectral-like. Her knees crunched as they hit the ground, she pushed her face into her hands and elicited a scream, full of agony and eternal shame.
Only a few metres away, stood the rest of the X-Men. They saw their teammate's speech being interrupted by an unseen event; she had stopped in her tracks. They didn't see the smile on her face that eventually turned into a grimace, nor her eyelids shooting open. What they did see however was her collapse to her knees and they definitely heard the scream that escaped her throat.
Remy was the first one up, sprinting towards the distraught woman, he was followed a nanosecond later by Logan. Remy skidded to a halt in front of Anna and wrapped his arms around her tightly, quelling her fear. She almost immediately stopped her shrieking, removing her hands from her face and opening her swollen eyelids to look at the man she just murdered.
"Remy?" she croaked.
"Oui, chere," he chucked mirthlessly. "What all dat yelling about? You scared us."
Anna almost laughed as her returned Remy's bear-hug, hiccupping into his shoulder and pulling back tears.
While Remy raced it to Anna, Logan chased the girl running out of the seeming empty cave. Scott called for him to stop, but he continued to run after the girl who had hurt his friend and colleague, weapons drawn. Ororo immediately followed, not thinking of her own safety or revenge for her girl friend, only the safety of the two people she was chasing.
Logan eventually caught up with her in a field, his hand raised as a first step in a deadly strike. Just then he felt a bitter wind knock him off balance, he fell to the grass. He was recovering when he suddenly returned to his past. Stuck in a tube, wires attached to significant places in and on his body. Logan saw, scientists and military officers outside the glass, discussing his progress. His fury erupted, a metallic taste rose like bile in the back of his throat, suddenly he was unstoppable.
His unbreakable claws broke his muscle emerging from in-between his knuckles, he tried to howl in pain, but all he succeeded in doing was almost drowning as the mask slipped. The men outside panicked as their experiment escaped from his prison, slashing through the glass wall. Then the massacre started.
Logan opened his eyes from the nightmare, but it wasn't Logan, it was Wolverine, the metallic taste still evident in the back of his throat. Logan was now in his Red stage and the mob from earlier were rising from the east side of the field, they were opposite. Ororo would have to subdue him quickly.
Logan sprinted to the crowd, but again the wind pushed him back until he was a metre behind his former stationary position. He howled in anger and turn on the woman who had done him such an injustice. Again the reaction to an attack was immediate, but this time it came from a new source. A red beam broke Logan's assault.
Storm, you have to shock him.
Ororo knew that no other amount of force, save ones that drew blood, would knock the feral out. There was no point in arguing, so she let a low voltage lightning blast escape from her palm as Logan stood from Scott's defence. The feral dropped, skin pink.
"Honey, you need to come with us." Jean said carefully, walking in front of Ororo to get to the girl. The frightened child began to jog over to Jean when she saw the mob running to towards them; they were only a few seconds from reaching their targets.
None of the X-Men thought that Logan could recover from the electric shock so rapidly, so they were all surprised when he rose from the ground pointing his self-contained blades at the girl running towards them.
Ororo only had a split second to realise that Jean wouldn't react quick enough and throw Logan to the side, that her best friend was in her way so she couldn't throw another small voltage bolt at Logan, that the man would kill this innocent yet destructive child, and finally that the only way to subdue him would be to crash lightning from the sky into him. The firmament immediately split and its mistress' call was answered.
The consequences of Ororo's actions were not as dire as she expected, but it still hit her like a tonne of bricks. Logan skin was inflamed and had turned scarlet and the place were the lightning had struck him was black. Before she could fully revel in her grief over the situation, a Molotov cocktail landed half a foot away from her, she had to dance out of the explosion that followed.
The massive crowd was on them. Remy threw low charged cards at the back of the group, incapacitating several of them and gracing them with eventually scarring wounds, but his attack only made the smallest of dents in crowd of mutant haters. Anna worked with Remy, striking the men and the couple of women who tried to assault her or any of her team.
Scott fired several blasts from his visor, into the ground before the approaching people; soon there was a lengthy crater between them. If a person did get pass the crater, they would be dealt with swiftly and harshly. Jean was taking a defensive position, putting up a fiery psi-shield around herself, Logan and the girl. The people from the mob bounced off the shield with double the speed they had ran at it with. While everyone was somehow stopping their attackers, Ororo couldn't bring herself to hurt another living thing.
The first thing she felt was the thrush in her gut, she doubled over gripping the damaged area. A second man, who she didn't see as her head was dipped, came up behind her pulling her to her feet by her hair and throwing her back, making her roll a few times before stopping. She was pulled out of her daze as she saw ten men pegging it to her, jeering. Ororo immediately jumped to her feet, now was not the time to be distressed over what she had done, she could die, so she took up a Judo stance and defended her position causing as little pain to her opponent as possible.
After less than ten minutes of the fight the entire mob was either unconscious or stumbling back the way they came, some carrying friends. The X-Men ran over to the people who were not long covered by a psi-shield. Jean was on her knees beside Logan's head, checking his vitals.
"How is he?" asked Scott.
"Alive, but pulse is weak." replied the resident doctor. "We're going to have to get him to the mansion or at least the Blackbird quick, we could lose him."
"None of us-" Whatever Anna was going to say was cut off by a loud telepathic warning from Jean. The X-Men, and the stunned girl, were immediately flung into the air.
Hardly any time had passed when they finally arrived at the Blackbird, but the flight had felt like an eternity, the longer they flew the less time Logan had, it didn't look like he was regenerating. No-one spoke throughout the journey and when they were on the ground they instantly went into soldier mode, knowing what to do without being told.
The stoic Scott and Ororo got into the pilot and co-pilot seat, Remy strapped the girl in and started speaking to her in French, but stopped when she looked as if she didn't understand so he continued in English. Jean laid Logan on the medical cot with her telekinesis while Anna gathered the supplies Jean would need to keep Logan alive until they reached Hank in the med-lab back at the mansion.
As soon as Remy had his seatbelt on the jet roared into life, sending every animal, for half a mile around, running. The jet set off towards New York and just as it was on the ride to the Blackbird, nobody spoke.
Everyone was thinking about what made Logan attack, obviously it was the girl, but how had she broken him in just a few seconds. Almost everyone was thinking about it, the girl was wondering who these people were and where she was going, and Ororo, she terrorised herself over what she had done.
I could have pushed him aside with a wind or, she thought to herself, no he would just get back up, killing many. But- I could have slowed him down with frost until we were able to subdue him with too much harm. But what if we were not able! Through her inner dialogue, the clouds compressed then smashed together. They twisted from the snowy white into one massive, angry storm cloud. The winds outside the jet had picked up and were throwing themselves into the side of the Blackbird.
Ororo was struck out of her stupor by a violent gush of wind that would have flipped the plane over if Scott hadn't righted it. From the looks on the team's faces they were worried as much for their wind rider as they were Wolverine. She dissipated the clouds and winds quickly, thinking, What are you doing, you could have killed them, like you could have Logan, like you di-. No, no. Calm Ororo. In the back of her head an ominous voice whispered, but it was so low it was just a rumble.
When they finally arrived, Jean and Remy put Logan on a gurney and rolled him to the med-lab. Anna, even though she was reluctant, took the girl to one of the visitors' room. She didn't want to be with a girl that could cause so much suffering, but she knew it was her duty. She wanted to be with Ororo, get her threw whatever hurting Logan had done.
Scott and Ororo were left in the Blackbird when Anna and the girl, who had been identified as Danielle Moonstar, stepped off the ramp. Scott was up, packing away the unused equipment or throwing useless and dirty ones in the bin. Ororo, though unbuckled, was still sitting in the co-pilot seat, checking gauges she had checked two or three times already.
Scoot stopped and turned to his 2IC as he put the last of the rubbish in the bin liner. He couldn't image what it was like almost killing a friend, especially if he was someone like Ororo. Someone who valued all life even those who hated her for being her.
None of them knew too much about her life before joining the X-Men. She had never let the professor enter her mind, she was always adamant about that. They just had to trust her, they always did and she always came through. She was close to everyone, ever the mother figure, but her best friends were definitely Jean and Remy, her sister and brother. But she kept things even from those two. Ororo had spoken of her time before Kenya only twice (that he knew of), once too the professor and the other time when they were on the Blackbird, coming back from her first violent mission.
They had been talking about if they had ever killed anyone and how they had dealt with the guilt. They had all given reasonable explanations of how they could live with it, the underlying reason being self defence. Hank had asked Ororo if anyone had died by her hands, she said she had and when he asked when and how she dealt with it, she just said, "It was before Kenya." Then turned away.
Right now Scott had no idea what to do, they were more colleagues than friends and she had a lot of pride. Not enough to refuse help, but she would work out her inner demons herself, thoroughly, before bringing herself to talking to anyone about it. Maybe he should try to make her talk about it, let it all out.
"Ororo do y-" he started.
"I will do the remainder of the safety checks Scott, get some rest." She said in her maternal voice, not even a hint of the turmoil she was going through. Scott was going to protest when he saw her shoulders fall slightly. He knew then that all she needed was time, and that's what he would give her. He spun on his heels and walked out of the jet.
Long after Scott had left, Ororo still sat in her chair fiddling with gauges. The rumble in her head had increased in volume until it became a throbbing pain. Doing hollow tasks was not going to help her or Logan or anyone, she might as well do her duties and rest, like everyone else from the mission. Ororo finished the safety checks close to midnight, locked up the Blackbird and lugged herself back to her attic bedroom.
When she opened the door and saw the inviting queen bed, she thought she couldn't walk the last few feet to it let alone remove her suit, but somehow she did it, digging into her reserve of energy. Ororo dropped onto the bed, not bothering to cover herself with the quilt; she was asleep within two minutes.
