Chapter 2: "Disappearing Act"
In LA, Jubilee was sitting on top of the Marvel, kicking her feet over the edge as she waited for her sweet little alien husband to finish what he was working on.
With the school set to open up this fall, there had been an increase in vandalism, trespassing, that kind of thing. Or, at least, there had been an increase in attempts to do that kind of thing. Noh's security system kept out people with malicious intent, and so far, it had done a pretty spectacular job of making sure that the worst of it was on the gates and the stone walls.
It was kind of fun to watch him work, too, because he would pick up a corner of the school and lift it just slightly enough so he could crawl underneath it — cockroach DNA coming into play as he slid through — and then emerge a little later with a grin and covered in dirt.
Jubilee kicked her feet happily as she watched him slide back out this time, brushing himself off and shaking some of the dirt out of his hair. He was doing stuff like that more often ever since Iron Man had come back with improved nanites for not only Sying but Noh. He just had a little more spring in his step, and he liked to show it off by doing ridiculous things like picking up buildings just to prove he could.
He vaulted up the side of the Marvel, which hummed delightedly with both of them sitting on top of it, and kissed her once he was there. He was sweaty and gross, but he was grinning, so she let him kiss her for a while before she pushed him back at the shoulders and shot him a teasing grin. "You smell horrible."
"So does the underside of a building," he pointed out, bending down to steal another kiss as she laughed at him.
"Was that the last of it?" she asked, reaching up to brush some of the dirt out of his shock-white hair.
"I'll want to walk the perimeter one more time before we go home, but beyond that, yes, that is the last of it," he promised, and she grinned at that.
"I don't remember you taking this long when you set up at the mansion."
"Last time, I was building upon what was already in place, not creating an entirely new security system from scratch," he pointed out.
"True enough," she admitted.
He watched her out of the corner of his gaze for a moment before he laughed and scooped her up to kiss her deeply. "Well," he admitted slowly, "I may also be pouring so very much into this system because it is meant to keep our children safe. Sying, Melody, Celeste — if I have my way, they will never see the least bit of trouble."
"You mean until they join the team," Jubilee pointed out.
"You never know," he said with a pretended thoughtful look. "It could be that they choose to stay here with us."
Jubilee laughed at that. "Our kids? Be anything but X-Men?"
"You're right. How foolish of me to even suggest such a thing," Noh said with a little smirk before he scooped her up that much tighter. "What would you say to a trip down to the beach, my Jubilee? You seem to think I'm in need of a bath anyway."
"Ooh, yes," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck and settling into him. "That sounds perfect."
He grinned at her and peppered her with little kisses as he carried her down to the beach, running right into the waves with her as he fell backward with her still in his arms.
When they came back up out of the water, she shoved him in the shoulder with a laugh. "You goon!"
"I was faced with a choice between bathing alone and taking you with me, and how could I possibly choose solitude when you are here?" he laughed.
She rolled her eyes at him and splashed him with one hand, scooping the water up into his face. "Don't try and sweet talk your way out of trouble, mister."
"Have I ever done such a thing?" he asked, looking and sounding perfectly affronted.
"Only all the time," Jubilee replied, and he just laughed and kissed her all over again, pulling her into the water after a moment.
They played in the waves for a while longer before they finally came out to the beach, grinning and soaking wet and fully-clothed, though Noh was no longer caked in the dirt and grime of working underneath the LA school.
"If you like," Noh said with a crooked sort of smile, "I can get your bathing suit from the Marvel so that we can continue our day at the beach without worrying over your outfit."
"You're not even sorry, so don't pretend to be," she shot back, and he laughed as he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
"Then if you don't want to stay, perhaps I could help you dry your hair?" he offered, and she rolled her eyes as she reached over to shove him in the shoulder.
"Oh, go get my suit, you goon."
He grinned at her brilliantly before he was off in a flash, speeding along the shoreline back toward the LA school. It was no time at all before he met his ship, and as he knew exactly where Jubilee's suit was, he had it in hand in a second and was almost out the door again when the ship's lights went from a lighter blue to a deep red.
Noh froze and put a hand to his ship, feeling its distress reverberate through his skin. "What's wrong?" he asked aloud, running his hand along the wall all the way through the run down to the cockpit.
When he arrived, his ship had already pulled up the necessary holograms, and he saw the alien signatures not only near the beach — uncomfortably close to where he had left Jubilee — but the ones closing in on the school.
"Well, that cannot stand," he said under his breath before the Marvel opened up its doors to him again — now that she'd told him what the problem was — and he went soaring out of the ship toward the beach.
It was immediately clear that something was wrong when Noh arrived, because the few civilians who had been out on the beach were fleeing, and as Noh approached the spot where he had left his Jubilee, he shouted out in anger when he saw the exact moment that a large man hit her with a dart gun of some kind.
His bracelets responded to his mental commands as quickly as he was able to raise his arm, and he leveled the gun at the man responsible, blasting him back from Jubilee before the man could pick up his prone wife.
He rushed to Jubilee's side, leaving skid marks in the sand where he stopped, and scooped her up to check her over. Her breathing and heart rate seemed to be fine…
He heard the shot from the dart gun from several yards out and spun to avoid it, glad for his enhanced hearing and speed as he locked gazes with the man who had dared to fire at him.
He bounded toward the man in question, a low hiss that he couldn't control splitting the air, and a loud crack echoed over the beach once his fist connected with the man's jaw and shattered it. The man fell backward, and Noh hit him one more time for good measure over the head to be sure that he was out for the count before he turned his attention back to Jubilee, who he had carried over his shoulder the entire time, unwilling to put her down when there might be more men waiting for them to be separate to grab her.
He didn't know who these men were. They didn't have MRD uniforms, and their weaponry was not Terran. They were not Shi'ar or Kree or Skrull… they must have been rogues of some other kind, though what that meant for their attempt to capture Jubilee, Noh did not know, and he didn't plan to find out.
He rushed down the beach, headed for the Marvel, and he was very nearly there when a blue portal opened nearby, and Noh just barely skidded out of its way to avoid running directly into it. The woman who stepped out of it had six arms and was wielding a sword in each one of them, and had Noh been slower than he was, he would have been badly sliced.
He bared his teeth at the strange woman, and she twirled her swords at him in an obvious challenge, though Noh had no time for this woman, more focused on getting Jubilee out of danger as he sped around her — though he didn't quite reach the Marvel before another portal opened up again, and Noh just barely sidestepped it.
He narrowed his eyes and very gently set Jubilee down. "I think you'll find that it is a poor idea to deter me from taking care of my wife," he said, and the woman just laughed.
"Save it, Kree," she said, twirling the sword that she held in a metal hand.
He simply sneered at her before he darted forward, both guns drawn from his bracelets in one fluid moment, though this woman was quick, ducking and dodging nearly as quickly as Noh could shoot at her and managing to get close enough that he was just as occupied with trying to avoid being sliced open himself as she was with dodging his blows.
The woman was grinning as she tried to press forward, and while Noh didn't allow her to gain even an inch, that didn't seem to bother her in the least. When she finally did manage to get a good hit in that forced Noh to stumble a few steps back, one hand pressed to the freshly bleeding wound on his chest, she threw out a hand, and Noh let out a cry when he realized it wasn't a sword that she was using but that she was instead creating a portal.
He sped toward the portal that had opened up near Jubilee to let through a large man clad in similar clothing for the first two. He was already pulling her through the portal, but that wouldn't stop Noh. Wherever they were taking Jubilee, he wanted to be there, no matter what kind of trouble she was in.
When he passed through the portal, he found himself with the large man in a room with no doors and windows. The man was still holding Jubilee, but that could be quickly remedied. In a flash, Noh had hit the guy solidly enough to stagger him, and he managed to catch Jubilee before she could hit the ground when the man dropped her.
With Jubilee secured, he spun to face the portal — but there was no sign of anything but the four walls and one stunned man.
Furious, Noh spun on his heel and grabbed the man in question by his collar. "What is going on?" he demanded, slamming him against the wall, though before he could get any answers, he heard a sharp hiss and let out a sound to match it when he glanced around to see the blue smoke starting to fill the room.
Noh let out a frustrated noise as he slammed the man into the wall once more — this time simply because he was angry more than anything else — before he threw the man aside and plowed one fist into the wall as deeply as it would go, tearing at the wall, though there was still much more of a lining left, metal beyond what he had managed to get through, before he felt the strength leaving his limbs. He drew back his first and plunged his hand into the wall once more, though before he could pull any more of the wall off, he sank down to the ground alongside Jubilee and the man who had grabbed her.
Since filming had started on The Response Division, the movie Kate's company was producing on the MRD, Kate was spending a little more time in New York on business. She wanted to be there for the director, the cast, the crew…. All of them were facing a lot of heat for the project, but every one of them believed in it, and she wanted to make sure that every one of them knew how much she appreciated it.
Of course, now that filming had started, that only meant that the hate mail and everything else that came with it had increased, so Kurt had come with her for her visit to the set. Not that she minded the company.
She tried for the most part to stay out of everyone's way, since the cast and crew had plenty to get done with the interruptions that weren't a highly public figure coming to visit. The director was always good for a good chat, and a couple of the secondary actors were genuinely fun people.
Of course, mostly, she just watched the filming, which was fascinating enough on its own, though she had to admit that it was surreal. Because of the film's 'fictional' status, the 'MRD' was replaced with a simple 'Response Division', but the green uniforms and badges were familiar enough that on that particular day of filming, she couldn't help feeling a little unnerved by all the extras in uniforms.
"Perhaps we should have chosen a different day to visit," Kurt suggested when he saw that little glare she was working on, but she shook her head.
"No. No, the whole movie is about these guys and how awful they are. If I can't take a bunch of them in uniform, how am I gonna make it through the rest of the filming?"
"That's the spirit," Kurt said with a little smile, though Kate did notice that he was a bit tense at all of the extras and the uniforms, not just because of the imagery but because with so many strangers around, it was simply more of a security risk than usual.
Kurt watched each man as they filed past to fill the set, and he relaxed substantially once all of them were past and the filming began, and Kate didn't miss the change in his demeanor.
She stood on her toes to steal a kiss from him. "You take such good care of me. You know that?" she whispered to him.
He smiled at her softly and pulled her closer to return the kiss. "Only when you require my help," he teased.
"And don't you forget it. You married a superhero," she said.
"And you married a pirate," he teased.
"Oh yes," she agreed, stepping in that much closer. "That's half the draw."
Kurt chuckled as he tipped her chin up and stole another, longer kiss before the two of them settled back to watch the frankly unsettling "meeting" scene, though it wasn't long before the two of them were curled up in a corner talking about their plans rather than watching the weirdness of a few dozen uniformed people pretending to be super evil MRD guys.
"I told Kitty she could totally take over my office, seeing as I'm doing most of my work here in the city anyway," Kate said in a low whisper to Kurt. "She and Storm have stacks of applications to get through. I don't envy them."
"Yes, I have seen them and Scott lugging around all that paperwork," Kurt agreed, then smirked at her and leaned forward to kiss her. "It's almost nostalgic. You did the same when you took over my room not too many years ago."
"You asked me to move in."
"That's not how I remember it," he teased. "As I remember it, you simply never left after we returned from our worldwide trip with my best friend."
"Same thing."
He chuckled and shook his head at her, resting his chin on her shoulder so that he could reach her better to plant little kisses as she pulled out her phone and checked a few emails. When she finished what she was working on, he leaned over to kiss her again. "I'm glad for your success, liebchen, but I admit, I miss seeing you at your desk with a pen between your teeth."
"Well, if you miss it, I could always bring a little paperwork from the school stuff back to the desk in our suite," she teased. "You know Bobby's been handling the accounting for us, but I still like to read through the reports so I know what I'm helping to pay for."
"Warren has said something similar," Kurt said with a smile, still watching her closely and smiling softly.
"Yes, well, us rich snobs like to act alike so we make sure to check off all the stereotypes," Kate said with a dramatic little sniff.
He chuckled at her and leaned over to kiss her again. "Of course."
She just grinned, and the two of them fell silent while the director gave the 'MRD agents' extras a few directions and ran the scene again. "It's weird to see that from the outside and not directed at us," she said.
"Yes, it is a bit disquieting."
"Hopefully that translates on the screen," Kate said with an attempt at humor as she leaned over to kiss Kurt's cheek. "That's the whole point of movies like this. Make people uncomfortable, expose the truth—"
"Stir up trouble," he teased.
"I'm pretty sure I've told you once or twice how I feel about trouble."
"You might have mentioned it, yes," he laughed, still with his chin on her shoulder as he smiled up at her.
"Only the same day we met," she said easily before she stole a long kiss.
For the rest of the morning, things went about like that. Kate and Kurt watched the filming for a little while, and a few people from the cast and crew stopped to say hello, but after a while, it was tiring talking to people in MRD uniforms — or the film equivalent thereof — all morning, so they decided to go somewhere totally different for lunch.
Which was how they ended up in a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant in the middle of the Alps, with Kate's earmuffs pressed firmly over her ears and Kurt grinning at her crookedly for the bundled-up look.
"I think you just pick these places so we have to huddle for warmth," she accused him.
"Lächerlich," he chuckled even as she leaned into him and hid her bright red nose in the fur on his neck and he laughed even harder when she glared at him.
Still, they had hot cocoa, so it wasn't too horrible, and it was nice to get out just the two of them — not for Bishop Publishing business or for X-Men business or school business. Annie and Scott had the right idea — though Kate expected them to be home by the time she and Kurt got back. After all, she was pretty sure the boss man would explode if he went on more than just an overnight trip right now with everything going on with sorting applications and trying to house so many mutants and just… everything.
"Do you think we'll get to do this more or less often once we get Chicago and LA going?" Kate asked as she snuggled into Kurt's side with a little sigh. "Fewer babysitters… but fewer students…"
Kurt shrugged lightly. "You know you only have to ask for a dinner anywhere in the world…" He trailed off and left the sentence with a teasing smile.
"True," she had to admit as she leaned against him. "I guess with so much going on, I keep forgetting to take a breath."
"I can help with that too," he teased, pulling her that much tighter as she laughed and snuggled right back into him.
They stayed in their corner booth in the little cafe until their cocoas were finished before they decided to pick up some chocolates for the kids — since they both knew that the elflings would stage an uprising if they heard that their parents had gone to the Alps and hadn't brought back something for them. Kate wrapped herself up tighter in her long coat, gloves, and earmuffs, which Kurt readjusted with a little smile and the tip of his tail before they headed out together.
There was a cute little sweets shop that the girls adored that always had a few brightly-colored and elfling-sized lollipops. They'd have to get one for Krissy to share with Elin and for Kari to share with James, of course — since, naturally, the little Wagners had their favorites in the Howlett clan. And Kate wanted to get something for Kamala's little boy, just because.
She paused in front of a display of candies sorted by color and grinned. "Oh, we have to get the Romanoffs some purple sweets," she told no one in particular as she started to fill up bags of sweets — apparently buying for just about everyone now, not that this was anything new.
Kurt laughed as he leaned his chin on her shoulder. "We're making a few stops on our way home, I see," he said.
"Oh, stop looking at me like that. You knew this about me when you married me," she said, pushing his shoulder lightly as he simply grinned at her and shook his head at her antics.
Once Kate had finally stopped getting distracted by all the things she wanted to get for every one of the little ones they knew, they took a moment to make sure everything was separated by which families' little ones went where, though Kate blinked heavily a few times, starting to feel tired.
"I swear to you, Kurt, this had better just be a stress headache, because if I start to lose my eyesight in my elder years, I am gonna be mad," she muttered as she pressed her fingers to a spot on her forehead as she found it hard to concentrate on the little candies.
"It must be overwork," Kurt assured her gently, though he too was starting to feel tired. With a little frown, he tried to teleport out of the sweets shop and its heavily sugared perfumes — though when he couldn't do that, he knew it wasn't just stress. "There's a dampening field somewhere," he told Kate in a low tone over her shoulder, and she nodded, immediately straightening to look for the source of the problem. Though, again, that was hard when both of them were having a hard time concentrating right.
With the candy set down and forgotten, the two of them cautiously made their way toward the door, feeling frustratingly sluggish as Kate swore under her breath when they found — unsurprisingly — that the main exit was locked. And the sweet old man who had been behind the counter… she stood on her toes to peer over the edge to find that he had already succumbed to whatever was going on and was asleep in his seat.
Kurt put his shoulder to the door to try and get it open as Kate pulled out her cell phone — if nothing else to let someone know where they were, since it wasn't like anyone knew they'd gone to the Alps. Though she'd no sooner put in Jubilee's contact info than the phone slipped out of her hand and she fell unconscious.