Summary: Jael isready to back up his threats, but will the X-men be ready for him?Part 11 of the Game.
Rated M for profanity, violence and some sexual content.
Disclaimer : I do not own the X-men or any of their associated villains, but the Siskans, the Dognan, Jael and the Outkasts are mine. Please do not use them without my permission. Thanks. :)
Updated 10-28-13 to add (break)s as needed, yadda yadda yadda...
(One)
In the end, my choice over whether or not to save David was taken out of my hands.
I made a choice and it wasn't the correct one – the day before the event occurred, I didn't feel right. I was on edge and the stress was killing me. I knew this enormous secret, knew that something horrible was going to happen, and yet I felt powerless to stop it. I needed help. Finally, I couldn't take it any more. I violated one of my little rules and spoke to someone about what was going to happen. I spoke not to Babette, but to my Master.
I was no fool. I had made preparations. I had clothes packed and money stashed in case it came down to me simply taking David and running. That was something I hadn't seen in a vision either way so I was keeping it as a very real option. Rules are things to be worked around, this I had learned from palace living. I could be sneaky if I had to be.
So I took my chances and spoke to Trishnar. He had always been a sensible man and he wasn't completely unaware that my dreams were more than simple nightmares. He had indulged me in the past, at least listening to me if not actually acting on anything I told him. I thought he might act on this. He was quiet as I spoke to him, nodding now and again until I was finished. I thought for sure he would recognize that my talent was real, that I was speaking of a very real danger.
To my surprise, he did not.
"I am sure your dreams are vivid and real to you, Dreamer," he said. "But dreams are all they are."
I don't have words enough to describe my distress. I had bared my soul, I had laid it all out to him in clear detail and yet, he did not believe. I admit it, I lost it. A bomb went off in my mind. The dark black rage came on me something terrible. Here it was, a Chuckfet once more controlling me. Owning me. Ignoring me. Deciding not only my fate for me, but that of one I truly deeply loved. I was overwhelmed with emotion and attacked my Master, something I had never done to him before. I injured him but he managed to call for his guards and they subdued me. They carried me off and he rightly put me away.
Once I was incarcerated, I lost all control and had probably one of the worst fits of my life. I threw spikes and flailed about , damaging only myself and my terrible terrible pride. For all of my efforts, for all of this energy I expended, I accomplished exactly nothing.
I should have known better, really. You see, the dreams win, one way or another. If they don't push me in the right direction when I'm sleeping, they subvert me when I am awake. The Master had me locked in a cell and it was in this cell that I found myself when Jael finally came. Jael's men came through the palace and laid waste to the place. They weren't very organized about their destruction - one of them managed to disrupt the main power supply and the door to my cell unlocked of itself. The moment I was freed I made my way out and to the surface but by then it was too late. David was gone.
I wasn't without some comfort, Babette had hidden herself in her fear and wisely stayed that way until I came and rescued her. I took her and we fled, making our way to Xavier's. I had learned from this however. I could trust no one with my secret. Asking for help had gotten me nowhere. I would not ask again.
(break)
Timmy lay sleeping in his mother's arms, warm and happy for the first time in days. They had been on the road all that time, walking all the way from Tennessee because no one would give a mutie whore and her witchbreed offspring a ride.
Timmy was five and the furthest thing from normal a human could be – or at least he looked that way. Like his mother, he was a violent neon green and was covered in a thick scrabbly skin, almost like tree bark. It looked rough and painful to touch, but it really wasn't so, or at least it didn't seem that way to him when he touched his mother. She was the most lovely and wonderful thing in his life. She was his whole world.
His mother had been normal looking most of her life, it had been an act of violence that triggered the change in her - she had been raped by four drunken rednecks on account that she was so pretty. The change came swiftly after, not helped in the least bit that she ended up pregnant out of the deal as well. She did not blame Timmy for her changing, she didn't blame him for anything. She took him as a present from God, a reward for surviving her ordeal and treated him like a most treasured gift.
They had fled their home in Kingsport when the worst of the anti-mutant fervor had come to their small corner of the world. Timmy didn't understand, they couldn't help the way they looked any more than they could change the path of the sun. Momma had packed up only what she could carry and off they went, following the major roads as they went, trying to keep hidden as much as possible. She had been given Xavier's address by the pastor of her church and she wasted no time in going there, driven by the need to protect her son.
They had finally arrived here at the Westchester Mansion only late last night. The pastor had been correct about this place of safety - they had been given warm food, a shower and a bed. They were here now snoozing comfortably, warm with the promise that in only a few hours, they would be given a flight to Arizona, to a place even more magical than this one. A place where all the mutants could live together and there would be no violence and pain. They would be safe. They were currently housed in a room on the first floor of the Mansion, sharing it with two other small families, all refugees waiting for a ticket out of hell.
Timmy sensed something was wrong only seconds before the ending of his tiny life. His mother jerked in her sleep, a sharp whimper leaving her throat as her arms constricted around him protectively. There was a loud whistling whine, a familiar noise. When he had played with the other kids here, one of them had imitated a missile being fired and flying through the air. It was just like that, only much much louder and far more real. The ground moved out from under him as the explosion rocked the house. Momma came awake and had only a moment to shout in alarm when there was another explosion, this one all around. Fire and heat and death and burning, it consumed them both.
Timmy's short life was over before it had really began, a tiny spark sacrificed in a war that wasn't of his own making. Outside of what remained of the Xavier Mansion in Westchester New York, Jael's great ship, the Hellion, was dealing out death and winning. Jael was done with waiting. He was making Xavier pay dearly for Kimble, making him pay in blood, just as he had promised.
(break)
Gambit's head snapped up from his reading when his phone went off. He had been concentrating so hard on what the Dreamer had written in his journal that he had nearly jumped from his seat. He had spent most of the morning reading Aiden's diary and hadn't noticed the passage of time, it was now almost twelve. The phone bleeped again. He minimized the file he was reading and answered. It was Logan. "Get yer ass down to Chuck's office now."
"What's goin' on? Is it Kimble?"
"No. Worse. It's Jael. Get here now."
Remy didn't reply, he simply hung up and shut down his laptop. A call like that meant only one thing - big trouble. He wasted no time in moving. In minutes he was down with the others in the Professor's ready room, adjacent to his office. All the top members of the X-men team were there, including Warren and Logan and Scott. All looked drawn and tense, the air was thick with the vibrations of sorrow and anger that only came with great tragedy.
Charles looked over his senior staff and took a heavy breath before beginning. "Jael has destroyed the Westchester Mansion and the Massachusetts Academy in Boston."
There were gasps of surprise and the crowd shifted uneasily. Most of them had already known - the rumor mill here was effective and active as any other - but it was still a surprise for some. The Professor turned and clicked a button on a remote. Behind him, on a big screen, came digital snapshots of the devastation, a horrible animation to go along with his bad news, as if he had to provide some kind of proof that the event had been real.
"The attack occurred only a half hour ago. These images were captured by a survivor with a digital phone that had photography capabilities. I've dispatched Fallen and the medical staff out to both Westchester and Boston. They should be there to attend to the wounded and pick up survivors within the hour."
"Why would Jael attack us now?" Bobby Drake asked, his normally cheerful face creased with worry. There would be no practical jokes from Iceman on this day.
"Because Jael certainly knew that the facilities were mostly empty and not as well defended as they have been in the past. Most of my staff is here as you well know. I'm sure Jael realized that there were still valuable assets there that hadn't yet been brought here. Plus there would be casualties. Jael wanted to make the news and a body count only ensures that."
Charles knew well enough that it was so much more than Jael getting press coverage. Although Jael hadn't sent any new messages yet, the Professor knew this was about Kimble as well. Jael was backing up his threats. Jael had threatened bloodshed for Kimble and here it was. Charles didn't want to say too much to this crowd, Jael's demands for Kimble were only known to just a few people, he didn't want to the word to spread that this was personal and have a panic on his hands.
'How many dead?" Logan grunted, his arms crossed.
"At least ten or twelve dead from Westchester alone," Charles answered, looking across the group when someone groaned out loud. "No word yet from Boston, but I expect it to be about the same. Many more are wounded. I accept full responsibility for these deaths, it was unwise of me to pull out the senior staff as I did."
"You can't protect them all, Charles," Warren offered as he lay a hand on the Professor's shoulder, he didn't want his mentor to take the blame when he had done so much for so many already. "We knew it was a risk bringing the senior staff here, but they were needed. This wasn't your fault."
"We gotta fight back!" someone from the assembly shouted out. "We should be taking the fight to him, not the other way around!"
"And how do you suggest we do that?" the Professor countered. "We don't even know where he is. We're still analyzing what data we have, but from what meager reports we have, it seems as though these schools were attacked by cloaked craft, vehicles on the move. We have no idea how many such craft he has or what they are capable of. We had no idea he was even capable of such destruction before. Until we know what he used to attack us, there is no way to track him down."
It wasn't said, not here in front of this large group, but those in the Inner Circle had already surmised that Jael had gained this new firepower from playing the Game. There was no proof, but since this was a new development it was hard to guess it had come from anywhere else. What they didn't know for certain was if this was a result of Jael building his mysterious Shalayesk machine that they had only heard rumors of. Darken, the young Games Master, had spoken of this mysterious device but had given no details. Was this new weapon already being used against them, or were they facing something worse than even this day's crisis? They had no way of knowing.
"Then we gotta beef up security here even more," Logan advised, whirling into survivor mode. "We don't know when he's gonna pop up here. I want patrols crawling all over this place and the surrounding areas."
"They are being organized as we speak," Warren answered.
"What's his plan? Why not attack us here?" someone asked.
Charles nodded and responded, "My best guess is that he's driving us here, forcing us to regroup. He's allowing us nowhere else to go, no outside resources we can use. We'll have to dig in here and hope for the best. I've called for an evacuation of all the other satellite sites. There will be a lot of new faces and we'll be short on accommodations."
"Don't none of yous be worryin' a thing about that."
Remy couldn't help but smile at the voice. Behind Charles, leaning against the wall, stood Billy-joe Alperts. Gambit was responsible for saving this one. Billy-joe had once been a male prostitute scrabbling out a rough living down in the alleyways of New Orleans. They had crossed paths and Remy had given him a card for Xavier's, not really expecting Billy-joe to accept. He was pleasantly surprised when a few weeks later Billy-joe showed up on the Professor's doorstep, a little ragged, but intact.
Billy-joe had proven to be most valuable. He was blue skinned and an obvious mutant, but his greater talent lay in his hands. He could make things disappear just by touching them. He was lucky in that he had control over this ability, he could do this at will or shut it off. He was no danger to anyone. His current occupation was making the ground under this Complex disappear, one room at a time. He was the chief reason the true nature of this place was kept secret. Excavators were not needed, each room was cleared and shored up, one at a time. Progress was swift and ongoing, more rooms and levels were being added on at a constant pace, trying to keep up with all the new folks coming in.
"Yes, I know you will see to it," the Professor said, smiling at him. He turned back to the group. "You are my most senior people, I have great need of you. I have compiled lists of people. These will be your teams. They need to be trained and put into place. I want drills and worst case scenarios acted out and prepared for. Everyone, no matter their age or status, will be given basic combat and self defense training, no exceptions. We need to be ready."
The group nodded assent. This wasn't something new to them, these things had already been on the agenda, it was just that now things were going to be moving much more quickly.
Remy raised a hand asking to be heard. "Is dis gonna slow up Set's project?" Seth had been given approval to start working on his Dragon 2 prototype, construction had been set to begin tomorrow.
The Professor shook his head and answered, "By only one day. I have a feeling we will have a lot of use for Seth's ship and want it built as soon as possible. I need the delay to extend the shield protection out over the construction site. I also want patrols and guards set up there as well."
Remy nodded, satisfied.
"That'll be all for now, people," the Professor said. "There will be update meetings every four hours. Until then, do your best and get your teams set. Dismissed."
Remy waited until most of the others had left before raising his next request. "Wit all de wounded an' extra folks comin' in, we gonna need all de space we can get. Let's move Kim in wit Aiden. Dey can use Kim's old place. It'll be all right if dey got guards dere. It'll get 'im out of de Lab."
"Agreed," Charles said quickly. He knew that to a degree Remy was taking advantage of the situation for Kimble, but also knew better than to think the thief was happy about how this had all come about.
Logan frowned. "It'll be trouble. I don't want 'em at Kimble's, it's too close to Angel. Aiden's place'll be good enough."
"Aiden's place too small," Remy complained. "It ain't no bigger dan a t'imble."
"It'll be just fine," Wolverine insisted in his 'there ain't gonna be no arguments about this' tone of voice, sealing the matter.
Charles was still thinking, lost in his thoughts. "Aiden's place should be fine," he agreed absently, thinking of other much larger things. Of course he had never been there and didn't really know just how small it was. "Besides, the guards are already in place there. All the Siskans should be in one place where they can be watched."
"Not Seth," Logan grumbled, still unhappy. Fallen often took Seth with her on her taxi rides, but not today. She left Seth behind, not willing to risk having him so close to a disaster area where Jael had been. She would be busy for a long time, first to carry the wounded, then the dead, and finally to bring the Xavier experts who would investigate the extent of the damage.
"What?" Charles asked, not understanding. "Why?"
"The older Siskans are intimate. I don't want him there alone with them."
Charles' brow crinkled as he mulled that over. It wasn't the first time he had heard Logan refer to Seth as being younger. It seemed to fit, he was innocent and less experienced of things. What Charles hadn't known was how close the other three had become. He glanced up at Remy. "Is this true?"
"Oui," he responded, shivering off a vibration towards the sensitive telepath that said only one thing, / I'm not going to try and explain why, you wouldn't understand. None of you ever do. /
Charles nodded, mildly offended by the unspoken remark, but realizing that to the point of view of this disappointed thief, that it was also true. Many times Remy had tried to explain his point of view and it had not been as well received as Remy would have liked. It was about to happen again.
Remy gave Logan a pained smile. "I'm pretty sure Babette an' de boys would behave wit a guest in de house, mon ami. Dere ain't no worry 'bout dat."
"Really?" Logan challenged. "You told me they wouldn't fuck out in the open and guess what? I arrested their two sorry little asses in a public men's room. Am I wrong?'
Remy stiffened with anger, refusing to reply. Logan was right of course, and now the little runt wanted it acknowledged in front of the boss. He wanted Remy to lose face here, to break down the thief's credibility.
"Am I wrong!" Logan shouted, clenching his fists.
"Boys," Charles warned. "There's no need for this."
Wolverine just grinned his wolfish smile, showing his teeth in a grimace of victory. "Oh, yes there is. Gumbo here thinks he knows everything about these kids and he's just plain wrong. He ain't got one clue about them, but I do. Now, Remy. Am I wrong?"
"Non," Remy finally admitted, just to get this over with. "But jus' de same, Set' can stay wit me," Remy said next, closing this line of questioning. Regardless of what Logan thought, he had no doubt that his answer was true, he believed Kimble and Aiden were not so ridiculous as to perform in front of Seth. He was upset that Wolverine even brought it up, but it was too late now. "Jus' 'til Fallen's done ferryin' folks around."
The Professor nodded, just as willing to dismiss it. They had far more pressing concerns. "You said Aiden had some telekinetic abilities. Let's have him out at the construction site as well. I believe Seth had asked for that himself. Babette should come, too. It'll be easier to keep watch on them all in one place and it'll keep them busy."
"I don't know, Chuck," Logan complained. "If we get attacked all of a sudden, it'll be like servin' up dinner, don'tcha think?"
Charles bristled slightly at the use of the nickname he despised. Logan often did this when he was the most annoyed and wanted the Professor to know it. "The shield generator is on line now, protecting the entire airstrip, including the work site we've prepared. The patrols you're going to set up will give warning enough I think. There are at least two guard shacks with sub level access right at the site itself. I think they'll all be well."
"I just hope yer right," Wolverine grumbled. " 'Cause if yer wrong, there ain't no comin' back from it."
