Disclaimer: I do not own any part of X-men: Evolution.
Story Summary: (Begins in the first episode of Season 3) Mutants are out and that spells trouble for Nick Fury, agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. who has been ordered to stay out of Bayville. But he has other plans, first is the rescue of the captured X-men and brotherhood and second is the long term protection of the kids and Fury can't think of a better candidate than a young mutant called Gabriel McKinner, who is currently incarcerated in Belleview for paranoid schizophrenia.
Authors Note: This fic is mainly centred on Gabriel, it won't be completely about him but, well, I'm just warning you now.
Unstable
Breakout
'How's he been doing doctor?' Gabriel curled up on the flat padding of his cot mattress and wondered just how he was doing; he wasn't injured in any physical way, the bruises had gone the first week in the infirmary, it took longer for the broken bones to heal though.
'He's just out of solitary colonel, he's doing fine.' Yeah, Gabe was doing fine all he did was talk to a fellow patient and he was thrown through the goddamned wall fine, pah!
'What was he doing in solitary?' Gabe realised that the voices he was hearing weren't in his head but outside in the corridor that connected to his room.
'He incited a riot among the populace' I asked a simple question! He answered angrily in his thoughts
'How did he do that?' The first voice sounded familiar, the second was one he had heard recently, that much he was sure of.
'He triggered a psychotic break in the other mutant we housed here.' Mutant? He was a mutant, wasn't he? Gabe was unsure on that point, memories of green liquid and human sized bathing tubes pushed their way into his head.
'Wanda Maximoff?' Wanda! The name reverberated in Gabe's head, he had been put in here to watch her and to make sure her father never came back for her. But worse things happened to her and Gabe's rage and protective urges had kicked in and he had attempted to stop them, sometimes he succeeded and he was put in solitary for attacking the wardens, sorry aides, and others he would spend weeks in the infirmary, letting the sick cold dread and anger simmer and store till he was well. Once he was beaten so bad for stopping an attack that he couldn't speak for a month; they never found the doctor responsible again.
'The one and the same, we got hell from the state when she escaped three weeks ago.' Wanda was gone? And for three weeks? Then what the hell was he still doing here?
Wait, A colonel was coming to see him, maybe he was getting out. Some one knocked on his door, the loud metallic booming of each bang echoed around the room. The door was forced open with a deafening creak and in stepped the doctor who oversaw his treatment, a big muscle bound aide who kept a close eye on him and…and…
Gabe got up out of the cot and faced the newcomer. He didn't salute but he did stand at attention. The colonel didn't look away from Gabe but talked to the other two.
"We want some privacy." Neither the doctor nor aide moved. "Leave." The edge in the colonels voice made them go. Gabriel stayed at attention and listened to the fading footfalls of the doctor. The colonel looked him up and down with his good eye. "Which one am I talkin' to?" he asked, Gabe's brow creased in confusion. "Never mind, I got my answer. Now, do you know who I am?" Gabe nodded.
"Colonel Nicholas Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. my boss." Fury nodded.
"At least they left you with most of your faculties. Fury looked momentarily at the door then back to Gabe. "How much did you hear?"
"Enough to know that Wanda's gone and my mission's been scrubbed, when do we leave?" Fury's face fell, just slightly, but it was enough to worry Gabriel "We are leaving aren't we?" Fury said nothing "Aren't we?" he asked again, forcefully.
"Due to your constant assaults on the asylum staff, the doctors have felt you should be permanently incarcerated here in the CI wing." CI stood for Criminally Insane, the doctors used it as a warning against bad behaviour, Gabe had always thought that it was nothing but a threat; maybe he was a special case. "Of course that won't help me in the current situation I have found my self in." He continued, "The world has found out about mutantkind Gabriel, and the U.S. government has issued all mutants to be found and captured, it's a knee jerk reaction to a world they have found themselves in." Gabe kept silent. "And caught in the crossfire are professor Charles Xavier-" Gabe pricked up at the name "-and his X-men." Fury noted Gabe's reaction. "You remember them." Gabe nodded.
"Xavier was a friend of my fathers, I met him at a function where he talked of his school, I said some things I'm not proud of." Gabe shrugged "Rest's history." He remarked. Fury nodded again.
"Xavier's missing and his X-men are being hunted by the police and National Guard, some of them have been captured and taken to the Nevada military base." Gabe smirked.
"Area 51? They're that scared?"
"Yes, and what's more the colonel in charge is as psychotic as he is paranoid, this mutant thing will be something he's been waiting for. It'll play on his fears and delusions, he'll jump to conclusions and probably declare war, not good." Gabe had to agree.
"What started this, how did mutants come out?"
"A giant robot attacked the downtown Bayville area, or more specifically the X-men and they're counter-parts, the Brotherhood." Gabe scoffed.
"The Brotherhood was reinstated?" Fury nodded "I feel sorry for the new members."
"Good, because one of theirs was taken and you'll be retrieving him as well." Fury turned and banged on the door. "Municipal Parking Garage, two clicks west of here. You have two hours." The door opened and framed Fury; he walked out and then turned back to his agent. "Remember, all bets are off." Then he left without another word. Gabriel kept his face passive until the door closed again when he smiled, his first since he got rid off that doctor, Fury had given him the go ahead to escape, by any means necessary.
Gabe jumped up to his small window, twelve foot up from the floor and called out. "Morigan!" a quiet cawing answered him. "It's time to leave, do what I told you, just like we practiced." An extension of the Gargoyle above Gabe's window took flight and revealed itself to be a big black bird, who winged her way around the corner of the building and out of sight. Gabe dropped down to the floor and faced the door and counted the time off in his head.
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Morigan hovered on a thermal for a second to find her target before swooping down on the generators around the back of the asylum. She perched on top for the breaker box and used her beak to push down on the handle; it was too rusty to move, so Morigan was going to have to be creative.
She took flight once more and saw what she needed, she swooped down, grabbed a gas canister by the back of the kitchens that opened out into the same area and hitting one of the aides in the back of the head as she flapped back up into the sky and dropped the canister. It ruptured on something sharp and ignited, the generator blew spectacularly and Morigan, happy with her work, flew back to her perch on top of a gargoyle and waited.
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The fire alarm rang out from somewhere outside followed by screams of surprise and pain, Morigan in full swing. Then the siren rang out, warning of a power outage, when the siren went all the electric doors were automatically shut off for an easy escape, most of the wards had been refitted with back up generators but Gabe's wing hadn't and as far as he knew he was now the only resident. His door clicked and buzzed. On cue the aide came in to stop him from leaving, Gabe jumped up and stuck to the wall, the warden walked directly underneath him and looked around, then hesitantly looked up, Gabe dropped on him and gave him the full force of his knee as it connected to his collarbone. The warden staggered from the blow as Gabe landed on the floor, he kicked out and forced his opponents knee at an angle it shouldn't bend then got up and wrapped his right arm around the warden's neck and put his left hand on the back of his head, he pushed hard, wrenching his neck with a sickening gristle-like sound. Gabe knew Fury would be angry as soon as he found out and claim he meant for Gabriel to only stun his captors, but for Gabriel, when all bets were off, all bets were off. Still, it would be his only kill for the day.
Gabe stepped out into the corridor and immediately felt a chill, he was only wearing a light cloth pyjama set and it wasn't really designed for warmth. Gabriel ran down the corridor regardless, taking the first left and up the stairs towards the roof, two aides waited for him at the top of the stairs, tonfa batons at the ready, Gabe leapt up over them and onto one of the warden's back and kicked off again, pushing him down the stairs, landing and turning with the momentum and elbowing the other in the stomach, he left the warden vomiting on the floor and pushed the latch to the roof and exited out into the night. He paused by the door to get his bearings, he could see Manhattan in the dusk light he needed to head roughly in that direction then divert right after five minutes of building hopping and continue for a further ten minutes, his course set he walked to the edge of the roof top and looked down, he was quiet high up, luckily he didn't fear heights, shouts behind him alerted him to his current predicament. He turned around to see four or five wardens coming up the stairs behind him.
"Step away from the ledge Mr Haley, it doesn't have to end this way." One of them said, Gabe turned around and crouched down, closing his eyes in concentration. He heard and felt the wardens' approach, waiting for them to get within arms length to activate his power and leapt up and back flipped over the street and onto the opposite roof. He opened his eyes and saw that the Wardens' had been pushed back a few feet by the overpressure caused by his gravity shifting abilities. Gabe paused once more and breathed in his first breath of free air. Psychically calling Morigan to him, he started to jump from building to building, getting ever closer to his objective, it had only been forty-five minutes since Fury had left his cell; Gabe was getting rusty.
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Fury Leaned against the Lincoln town car he had borrowed from the New York S.H.I.E.L.D. office, along with two of its agents: Carter and Woo. Fury looked at his watch, a full hour had passed when he heard someone thump down onto the roof of the car, he noted that both of his agents had un-holstered their side-arms.
"You're getting slow Shift." Gabriel dropped onto the tarmac of the car-park.
"I'm out of practice Fury, I'll be back on form soon enough" Gabe threw a quick salute, not necessary but a habit Gabe had picked up. "Who are the suits and why are they pointing weapons at me?" Gabe asked, looking over at the red-headed Carter and black-haired Woo.
"Don't worry about them." He said, motioning for them to lower their weapons, which they did. "They're just here to look after me." Fury motioned to Carter, she obediently opened the rear door for her superior, Woo opened the other rear door for Gabriel, who walked around the car and got in, pushing a plastic bag with some kind of logo emblazoned on it out of his way. Fury picked the bag up and handed it to Gabe once everyone was in and the car was in motion. "We got you some sweats, they'll do you until we can get you to Bayville, we'll kit you out there." Gabriel nodded his thanks and clumsily put the sweats over his asylum clothes, he watched as they passed Belle View, the place was in an uproar. "How many?" Fury asked once they had hit the highway.
"One, but he deserved it." Gabe answered simply, not wanting to go into detail.
"How?"
"Broken collar-bone, disjointed knee joint and broken neck column, relatively quick and painless." Fury couldn't help himself.
"Relative to what?" Gabe's face fell.
"Relative to what he did to me." He said quietly. Woo and Carter had the sense to stay quiet themselves and automatically forget all they heard. Fury made a small noise in the back of his throat before speaking.
"I suppose you're wanting an apology for putting you in there?"
"Not unless you want me to put your face through the window." Fury made the throat noise again. Carter turned around in the passenger seat.
"We'll be in Bayville in a couple of hours." Fury said nothing; Gabriel nodded and shifted in his seat and closed his eyes, for some reason that hour of exertion had taken everything out of him. He was asleep in seconds.
