Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men or any of the names associated with Marvel or any of the pop culture references I make herein. This is just for fun and I am getting no monetary gain from this.
Rating: Teen for some violence, maybe some language and death later on.
Author's Note: I'd like to thank 1TheScorpion2, RoguefanAM, and Kid Omega for their reviews. Also a shout out to the guys at TWN for reading as well. I hope you enjoy this chapter just as much. Also, I've never been to any of these places in California so don't hold it against me. If you see any glaring mistakes let me know. Suggestions and reviews are welcome.
Chapter 2
Name: Craig Colletti.
Age: Twenty-four.
Hair: Blonde.
Eyes: Hazel.
Occupation: College drop-out.
Distinguishing Marks: Both ears are pierced and one eyebrow ring.
That was part of the dossier that Cable was able to assemble from the Infonet using Craig's police records the next morning. The members of Rogue's team were standing in the galley of the Conquistador with a copy of the file. A photograph of Craig had been attached the file. It was a photo from when he was arrested after a bar fight. His face was swollen and both eyes had been blacked. "This guy ain't a criminal mastermind. All these charges are pretty small fry criteria," Cannonball said flipping through some of the criminal charges that Craig had been leveled with.
"From the information we gathered, Craig has five hundred doses of Mutant Growth Hormone. This batch, as we know, is impure and is extremely dangerous and Los Angeles has one of the highest populations of de-powered mutants in the country," Cable explained.
"If any number of ex-mutants get a hold of some of this MGH, well, Ah don't know if L.A. is ready for that kind of party," Rogue continued. "Besides, as we've seen, when a de-powered mutant comes down off the high, the result is usually deadly."
"So we're going to scour the city in hopes of finding him before he can sell the drugs," Lady Mastermind surmised. "Be a lot easier with a capable telepath."
Cable lowered his dossier. "You'd rather be back in a coma, your body slowly wasting away? You don't have to use your brain to put someone in a coma. Brute force works just the same," Cable threatened.
"Seeing is believing," Lady Mastermind sneered tapping her temple implying to her illusionary powers.
"This ends now. We're goin' to split into teams to search Craig's past hot-spots," Rogue ordered. "Cable already confirmed that he wasn't taken in by the police so he and Mystique will go to his gang's home turf. Regan and Bobby will search the suburbs where he grew up, see if his family has heard from him."
" The 'burb-brat wanted to grow up into a hood-rat," Iceman quipped.
"Sam and Ah'll check out the last address he was known to live at. Karima, you're gonna stay and guard Sabretooth," Rogue said finishing up.
"I'm to guard him?" Karima asked.
"Sam's already guarded him for a couple weeks straight. Plus, Ah trust your reflexes," Rogue explained. "We'll check in every two hours. Let's hope Mr. Colletti hasn't got too much of a head start on us."
Later
"How's 'bout a game of cards?" Sabretooth asked through the door of his makeshift cell as Karima arrived to check on him.
He could hear her through the large steel door. He could also smell her scent though the vents that the X-Men had made for air holes.
"I don't think so," Karima replied.
"'fraid you'd lose?" he said coyly. "I'd let you win just to have some company."
Karima stood on the other side of the door and said nothing. She knew that Creed was just trying to raise her ire to get her to make a mistake. She would wait a few more minutes and then go to the bridge; the others would be reporting in soon. In his adamantium chains, Creed wasn't going to be going anywhere. "Anyway, what'd you do to get stuck babysitting? Normally it's Cornbread," Sabretooth said.
"Cannonball, is out doing reconnaissance. Rogue chose me because she knows I won't be tricked by you," the sentinel replied.
"Yep, machines only do as they're programmed, right?" Creed asked.
"I'm as human as any of the others," Karima said.
"Right, just look past the gadgets, wires, and sparks and you're Grade A meat," Sabretooth said casually as he pressed his hand against the door of the cell, feeling carefully.
"With minimal effort I can activate those nano-sentinels in your body. I can activate them quickly or I can activate them slowly. Your healing factor might be able to deal with them; then again it might not," she warned.
"That's what I like about you K. You make a good threat when you want to, and I know you're cold and soulless enough to back it up," he said grinning, he knew that he was pushing buttons with her.
Soulless? Karima wondered. She might have been mostly machine but she definitely wasn't soulless. Was she as cold as Creed implied? She'd show him. She drew her fist back quickly and the set of armor piercing blades extended. With her infrared sensors she could see the heat-image of Sabretooth pressed against the door. She could stab right through and kill him. But wait; that is exactly what he wanted her to do. He wanted to be freed of the cell.
Karima lowered her hand and retracted the blades back into her arm. Soulless? She thought again.
Creed smiled as he heard Sentinel walk away. He could be a subtle beast when it served his purposes. He examined the chains around his wrists. He was confident that he wouldn't have them on for too much longer.
Torrance
Mystique and Cable were crouching behind a wall in a dilapidated house. Currently they were being shot at by some of the rival dealers that had found out that Craig was trying to carve out his place in the drug community. When Cable and Mystique asked about Craig's whereabouts the situation had gone south, as the expression goes.
"I think they're past the point of negotiations," Mystique said as she loaded her pistol with another magazine.
A barrage of bullets tore through the wall above them, raining plaster onto Cable's head. His left eye flashed brightly. He leaned around the edge of the wall and quickly fired several rounds. The bullets struck the gang members in the legs or in the hand; non-lethal hits to remove them from the fight.
"There's only two left up on their feet," Cable said.
Mystique smiled and held up a small cylinder. She pulled the pin out and hurled the device around the corner to where the shooters were positioned. When it came to rest, thick smoke came streaming from the grenade. The two dealers began coughing and quickly lost their bearings.
"Deno! Deno!" one called out groping for his friend in the haze.
"Right here," Deno replied coming toward him in the smoke.
"That's not me Rod," came a voice from behind.
Rod whirled around to find another Deno approaching through the smoke. "What the hell?" Rod demanded.
"It's a mutant trick!" the first Deno shouted.
"Shoot him!" shouted the second Deno.
Rod looked back and forth between the two Denos. They looked exactly the same. There was no way to tell which was which by just looking at them. "Deno, where did we go to school at?" Rod asked.
"We dropped out…" the second Deno shouted quickly as the first Deno leaped up and dealt a kick to Rod's neck.
"Damn muties!" the real Deno yelled and fired several shots at the fake Deno, who evaded them all easily.
Deno was suddenly rushed from the side by Cable. He grabbed the gunner up by his wrists and wrested the gun away without any difficulty.
"The muties have some questions for you," Mystique said coming closer as she dropped her disguise.
Reseda
"I feel ridiculous," Iceman said. "They'll never talk to us looking like this."
"Do you have any other suggestions? This is non-threatening and probably won't raise too many questions," Lady Mastermind explained.
"We are so going to get sued," he said rubbing his forehead.
"I don't know. Do Jehovah's Witnesses sue imposters?" she asked.
Lady Mastermind and Iceman were approaching the house where Craig's parents lived in the suburbs. Lady Mastermind was projecting an illusion around them to disguise their appearance. To anyone that saw them, they were just a couple of average, everyday Jehovah's Witnesses.
The strolled up to the door and rang the bell. After a few moments a young man that looked much like Craig answered the door. He was wearing a bandana and a ball cap cocked to the side. His baseball jersey was oversized and hanging from the boy's slender frame. He wore a scowl on his face. It must have been Craig's younger brother. Sounds of video games and shouts from other boys echoed through the house. "If Craig sent you, we already told him that we didn't want to join," the boy said sourly leaning on the door.
Regan and Bobby looked toward each other. "Riiight," Iceman said.
"What are you waiting for? Get offa our property," the boy said.
"Well you see, Craig didn't show up at our…bake sale and we were wondering if he was here," Iceman lied quickly.
"Check over at his place," the boy suggested.
"I just totally owned your ass with that chainsaw, man!" another boy shouted from within the house.
"Damn, I can't believe I missed it, yo," Craig's brother shouted to his friends as he slammed the door in the face of the two Jehovah's Witnesses leaving them standing on the porch.
"Those boys need to get laid," Regan sighed as she turned away from the door and headed back to the car.
"Maybe Rogue and Sam are having better luck," Bobby hoped.
Huntington Park
Rogue and Sam had picked the lock to Craig Colletti's apartment when there was no answer at the door. They stood in the small flat and noticed that there was something peculiar. "This is a little odd?" Sam asked.
"It is. All the memories Ah pulled from that dealer showed that this apartment had a nice set up," Rogue replied.
"It looks like he lives here and looks like he doesn't at the same time," Sam added.
The apartment was nearly bare of all furniture. In the living area there was absolutely no furniture. There were indentions in the carpet, however, from where a sofa, a coffee table and an entertainment center had been. "This carpet is still pretty packed down. The furniture was moved recently," Cannonball called out.
Rogue was in the kitchen where there was a table and one chair. She stood at the sink and saw a single bowl and spoon. The milk and cereal crumbs in the bottom of the bowl hadn't completely dried. "Someone was definitely here this mornin'," Rogue said.
"Come 'ere," Sam called out from the bedroom.
Rogue walked in and found some blankets on the floor. There was no bed so he must have been sleeping on the floor. There were just a few clothes stacked neatly along the wall. Sam was standing with a blue piece of paper in his hand. It was a flyer for something named the Order of the Highest Light. "There's more in there," Sam said pointing to a large box filled nearly full with the flyers.
Rogue pulled out a handful of the flyers. There was an address and meeting time information listed. "This sounds like a help-group, maybe," Rogue said after she read over the paper. "Ah think now we should hit the streets. We could be hours if we wait 'round here," Rogue said as she folded up the flyers.
They left the apartment complex and emerged onto the street. They walked quietly for a while until Cannonball spoke. "How're you holdin' up?" he asked.
"Fine. Bit thirsty though," Rogue replied.
"I didn't mean…"
"Ah know exactly what you meant, Sam," Rogue said cutting him off quickly. "Besides Remy tryin' to kill me and Gus turnin' out to be born with a foot-in-mouth mutation; Ah'm dandy."
"You'll get through," he said comfortingly.
That was common advice that everyone seemed to be giving her lately. Since Remy left and joined with Apocalypse, and tried to kill her no less, and things didn't quite work out with Gus everyone kept telling her that things would start looking up. It was getting old fast and she didn't want to talk about it any more. Rogue had started to think that the whole affair could have been avoided if she had lost her powers on M-Day. Remy would never have left and things could have worked out for them, for real this time.
They walked for a while more. It seemed as if Rogue was walking on auto-pilot. She didn't really notice anything even though she was supposed to be searching for Craig Colletti. She was lost in her memories. She didn't fully register anything around her until they came to a stop near a fountain. It was in the midst of a flower garden in the city. "Rogue, is that him?" Cannonball asked jarring her back to reality.
Rogue looked and saw three men standing together handing out blue flyers. They were each wearing a white polo-style shirt and black slacks. One of them was definitely Craig Colletti.
Sam and Rogue moved toward him quickly. "Craig! Hey sugah, what's goin' on?" Rogue called out.
Sure enough, Craig turned and faced them. "Yes?" he asked, his face clearly showed that he didn't recognize the people that seemed to know him.
"Been a while buddy," Sam said warmly.
The two X-Men were right in front of him when one of the other men stretched out a flyer for them to take. "Hello friends. The Order of the Highest Light…" the man stopped in the middle of his recitation. "Rogue?" he asked.
Rogue turned from Craig to see who was addressing her. "Do…do I know you?" she asked.
"It's me, Justice. You don't remember me. You ruined my life," he explained.