Dismal Angel 2010 - Episode 14
Chapter 1: Flying Solo
Monet St Croix was not the kind of young woman who would scare easily. With as more power in one fist as a wrecking ball and amazing invulnerability to most kinds of physical harm, she'd never felt the need to feel much fear for anything.
Until now.
Flying the X-Men's Blackbird jet had seemed simple at first. Monet had watched the instructors a few times as they operated the controls with ease, it had not seemed so complicated. Monet had felt that if even a simple woman such as Jean Grey could fly a jet then it must be quite easy.
How wrong she'd been.
Getting it out of the hangar had been easy enough, with only one or two slight bumps to show for it, and whilst Monet had escaped the Xavier estate she'd wondered if mending the dents from the Blackbird would be as easy as banging the dimples out of a car.
Still confident, she'd began her treacherous journey. The blackbird was not handling as smoothly as she'd wanted it to, but she'd been confident enough her piloting had nothing to do with this and that Jean and Scott must have surely damaged the jet somehow prior to herself getting her hands on the controls.
Monet shook the thoughts off, and as she flew through the dark blue sky at an uncontrollable speed, she checked around the control panel area for any instructions but found none, and despaired.
I don't NEED instructions, Monet thought. This is EASY, even ROGUE can fly this thing and she's not exactly the quickest study. If she can do it, I can.
Monet had been noticing the dark clouds building up in the sky the further the jet sped towards its destiny. She could hear high winds, and could feel the updrafts against the jet, and it would slightly rock to the left then the right under the strain.
You cannot allow this jet to get damaged anymore, Monet, Monet thought at herself, you've already put dents in it, and this thing is worth more than my entire education.
Monet wished she'd thought to bring someone along with her, the whole journey had been very lonely. In the past she'd never been fully alone. She'd always had someone near her, and despite she'd usually be less than humble towards them, she realised that company had been valuable.
Monet doubted she could do this alone and it had been foolish to think she could. She was one person, and there was no telling how many of those clones they were, she'd seen more than five at the mansion, and surely if there could be five, there would be more. If the X-Men were captive somewhere, it'd take more than five clones to hold them back.
"It's time to get in touch with Dr MacTaggart and Mr Cassidy," she said to herself sternly, "I know they're complete cretins and Mr Cassidy's silly little screaming isn't going to be much good, but I can't do this alone, I've gone as far as I can…" she glanced to the visual mapping system.
She'd been flying for hours, and her destination was still considerably far, . "Where am I anyway?" she squinted her tired eyes towards the screen, "over Finland…NO! What am I doing over FINLAND?! I'm going the wrong way!! This is so not as easy as it should be!" she frowned a little, "I haven't made any turns!"
She felt so much like crying. She was meant to be in control, and competent, and had always proved to be so many times that to fail when she REALLY needed to be competent made her feel so inadequate.
"No, do not think like that," she told herself, hearing her own voice soothed her a little, "if you want to be one of the X-Men you need to prove yourself as a sufficient and stable member of the team, not a helpless girl."
Keeping one hand on the control, she pushed a bare finger over the touch screen and dragged her finger down the screen so that the map began to move under her finger, "right, Monet," she told herself sternly, "geography is one of your best subjects, lets see…" she frowned again deep in concentration.
Dragging her finger along the virtual map on the visual mapping system she began to plan out her route.
"Alright, I need to go straight over Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine…Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Egypt…Sudan…Uganda…" she began to mentally map these in her head. "I'll be in this jet for the rest of my life…" she despaired. She tapped the screen twice gently to zoom in on Africa.
Monet began to rack her brains for the location of Genosha. She'd been a child when she'd heard of it, eight years old, on a vacation with her father. Her father had heard the story of a mad scientist who had been stationed on the island, who had been snatching children. Monet smirked a little, her father would always remind her of this story every time she'd gone off on her own, how easily she could fall pray to this mad scientist.
"Where were we vacationing?" she asked herself, it had been so long ago that as good as her memory skills were for remembering valuable information, sometimes the details of her personal life and childhood occasionally escaped her. She zoomed in on Africa once more. "Lets see…" she trailed her finger from Algeria, her native homeland. She'd remembered being on her fathers private jet and seeing a visual map there of Africa as the plane made its way across the vast land.
Monet could almost picture it and then it came to her. "We were in Kenya…" she zoomed in on Kenya, and stared at the mapping system, hand trying to stay steady on the control as the Jet rocked with the powerful winds beneath. "There…there's a couple of islands…" she tapped her finger repeatedly on the screen until she had zoomed in closer, a small cluster of Islands remained just east of Kenya, she zoomed in as far as she could, and was surprised to find the Island was named. In white text on the screen it stood out clearly.
GENOSHA.
Monet laughed in relief that she'd located the island, "see," she told herself, smiling, "this isn't so hard after all," she glanced around the control panel, "right now…how do I contact the cretins…" she mumbled, seeing nothing to indicate what to press.
Monet drew her breath as a loud rumble caught her immediate attention and she realised it was storming, she'd been so caught up in the visual mapping system she hadn't noticed the weather quickly worsen. She began to panic, knowing that with the weather increasingly worsening the communications would be in jeopardy.
"Just when I think things are starting to get easy SOMETHING goes wrong," she sighed, searching the control panel frantically. Finally she found a button marked 'comm' in tiny white text. She decided to take a chance and pushed it hard.
A list of communication options became available, on the monitor that had been showing the visual mapping system. She spoke each item clearly to herself trying to ignore the exhaustion that was building up inside herself. Every vehicle the X-Men owned – both personal and business – was listed as well as properties the professor owned and various affiliates of the X-Men. She found Muir Island on the list and tapped the text lightly to activate the touch sensitive screen.
A black screen appeared, green text moved across the screen announcing 'connecting'. It was some moments before any connection came, and upon the screen, the image of Sean Cassidy appeared, although the transmission wasn't perfect, and the image would jump up and down and grey lines would make their way down the handsome face.
"Monet! Blazes girl! We've been huntin' high and low! What do you think you're playin' at takin' off the way you did?!" Sean demanded, his eyes angry, his lip curled in a snarl.
"Mr Cassidy, there's no time to explain myself…" Monet ignored his anger. Angry instructors, teachers and team-mates were something she was quite used to by now and she knew that when the time came she'd deal with it in her own way, by not letting it get to her. "I'm flying over Finland on my way to Genosha."
"Lass.………..breaking.………..signal…………come back," Sean said, static interrupted his voice, the message breaking.
"The X-Men are in trouble, sir!" Monet cried at the screen, "They've all been taken to Genosha," she said, "It's a small Island east of Kenya…" Monet stated clearly, "you need to get here, now, the exact coordinates are—" she gaped as the screen went black, green text was flashing.
Connection Lost.
Monet screamed at the screen, "NO!! Reconnect DAMN you!" she hit the reconnect button, but nothing happened. She glanced around, lightning flashed off in the dark clouds, the storm had to be interfering with the signal. She realised if she was going to help the X-Men she'd have to do it without the aid of Sean Cassidy and Moira MacTaggart.
"See what happens when you rush in without thinking, Monet?" She asked herself angrily, "no wonder all the instructors think you're a pain in the proverbial backside."
Lightning shot down in front of the blackbird, narrowly missing hitting the nose, Monet jumped grabbing the control sticks and hauling it all the way to the side. The blackbird swayed and rattled as if in protest.
"I shouldn't be up here with this storm going on…" she said to herself taking a deep breath to calm herself down, "but I can't just stop and slow down…if I do I might get there too late...the X-Men wouldn't stop to take a breather and wait for the storm to clear, they'd rush right in and face the danger for the sakes of their team-mates…" she told herself sternly. "They'd do the right thing, and now I have to do the same…" she forced the controls in, and the blackbird began to gain speed.
Monet looked through the grey horizon of clouds ahead, the flickering of lightning upon the edges indicated it was still close by, she could hear the low rumbling more clearly now.
"I'm going to make it," she told herself firmly, "I'm going to be fine."