I have no willpower so here is an update already. Hehe.
Review Responses:
Jason: You are so uber awesome for reviewing before I could even tell you I posted. :D And yes, Remy is a manwhore, but one that liked to be chased by a lion tamer. :D And that, it a way, is it's own way of being tamed. :D
Ishandahalf: Oh mah lordy that was a quick response. What was it up for, five seconds, before you gave that lovely detailed long review. You are so my hero. Hehe, Emma's bitchiness impresses me too. I sort of write her after my eldest sister, with whom I don't exactly get along the best with. Though I love writing Emma, just the idea that I'm imbuing her with some of my sis is a bit cathartic for me… That's so wrong of me. Lol. And oh boyo, does Sinister got a well-woven web of spies going on. But, he's not the only one. Hopefully, it will be apparent that almost every scene has a sense of at least one character disguising something from the others in it. Part Two's title "Fox in the Henhouse" is named directly to that purpose… so, yes, it includes Remy. But… he's not the only one it speaks of. :D Now, for Jono… I heart Jono too. I've included him in every revision, evolution (whatever, hehe) of this movie-verse fic I've ever done. He is bad a$$. Woot! Actually, I'm having much fun writing everyone so far. That's how those moments ("like a suitor to his date's dad on prom night") keep happening. And egads, I can't wait to see ya'lls reactions to my fun with writing Jubilee. Hehe. And awww. The uber suckage regarding your laptop and the lost chapters. I will miss them, most certainly. And though I am enormously honored that you are enjoying my story so much, I hope it doesn't distract you from yours too much. I need my ish fix:D Good luck to you!
Thank everyone who is reading.
On with the mystery/drama/suspense…
Chapter Two
"Ach, Charles, I'm sorry," spouted a spirited Scottish brogue over the phone. "I meant to tell ye days ago I was sending them yer way. I've just had my hands so full with Kevin lately that it slipped my mind completely. I swear that boy is after my last wits. Lately, he's been after me calling him Proteus, of all things. Shape changing Sea God, my arse! He's no metamorph, that's for sure. And, he doesn't even like to swim!"
"It is quite understandable, Moira," Xavier said, the sleepiness nearly evaporated from his voice. "He is at an oftentimes difficult age."
"Not to mention the poor timing of his father, either!" Moira interjected with an exasperated huff. "Just my luck, I marry the only politician actually popular despite his pro-mutant agenda, and he up and leaves us for a showier mutant family."
"Prejudice comes in all forms, unfortunately."
"Aye, it does. And more," she continued, more and more upset. "An awfy peely-wally bairn sure does bugger a canny campaign to pure mince. Except for the occasional media opportunity, he's not been round to see Kevin in over a month now. Not since the new wife came up expecting."
"Does Kevin know about that yet?"
"Aye, he does. And he's taking it hard. And the harder he takes it, the wilder his powers get."
"Ahh," Xavier said, gathering clarity. "Perhaps, that explains why he insists on this name. Proteus. First born."
A heavy sigh, then, "Maybe." Another heavy sigh, and she relents with, "Ye don't be needing me gossiping about all me own problems like this." A snicker, and, "Sean will likely appreciate the minor relief from it, though, I'm sure."
"It is quite the colorful wake up call," Xavier said and chuckled.
"Better than waking to Theresa's nightmares." It was friendly familiarity, not Cerebro boosted telepathy that told him she was fingering her ear with the memories of the incidents. "Of all the mutant powers to give a teenage lass. Her father was one thing, but that girl gives new meaning to the phrase 'screams like a girl'."
"Nightmares still?" Xavier asked it tentatively. "I take it she won't be returning any time soon, then."
"Give him a wee bit more time. She means the world to him and the attack on the school gave him a hefty scare. He is coming around, though." Another one of her wicked snickers, and, "Especially after he got the last phone bill. Seems she be missing her friends back there more than he anticipated."
"I share his predicament."
"Aye, we all do. We'll close the gap one of these days." Her words expanded between them. Denser, denser. Weightier, weightier. So much more than simply distance between them. "It's a tough fight all around. We're lucky we have you on our side."
"Same for you, Moira. If enough people believed as you do, I wouldn't have much of a cause to fight for at all."
"Ye can stop with the flattery, Charles. I already offered ye full access to Muir any time ye want it." If she had been there in person, he would've seen her playful wink. "I should be letting ye go. From what ye told me about your late night, ye got your hands full."
"Indeed. And if I'm right, settling this might bring you answers regarding Kevin as well."
"A Godsend, that'd be. Thank ye. And thank ye for taking on Warren and Betsy for me. I'll call them and send them round to you at four like ye said."
"Thank you again, Moira. You have my blessings."
As soon as he had the phone hung up he drew upon his telepathy. "Storm, gather the team. Meet me downstairs. I want to survey the anomalies of both Gambit and Rogue's gifts."
A rumble of thunder…
"Ororo, are you all right?"
"Fine, Professor."
"Are you certain?"
Wisdom prevailed independence. "Every time I think I've finally earned their trust…" Rumble. "I haven't."
"You may never gain it."
Rumble…
"But do you need it to continue helping them?"
The drizzle followed in a pale weary mist.
Rumble…
Knock. Knock.
"Come in," permitted the confident leader's regal voice.
"Hey, Mags," Pyro said as he peered in. "Did you just park the Titanic downstairs?"
Magneto's eyes widened just a little bit. "The actual Titanic?"
"Close enough."
Bzzzt. A comm. device on Magneto's desk lit up. Without a physical motion, the metal button depressed, accepting the communication.
"Yes?" He asked.
"Pietro has returned," Mystique's multi-chromatic voice explained over the comm. "Wanda is not happy about it."
"Ahh… Now I understand," He said with a glance to Pyro. Through the comm., he instructed, "Separate them if you can. I'll deal with my children later. Cain and Cortez, however, send them up directly."
"They're on their way."
The comm. light blinked out. Mystique, brief and to the point, had disconnected it.
"Your children?" Pyro asked. "That was Wanda throwing a tantrum or something?"
Eric frowned at him and it was enough.
"Fine, fine, I get it," Pyro said. On his way out, he grumbled, "Thought I left all this kid's table shit back at Xavier's."
Before the door even closed, a tongue clucked from the dark corner of Lensherr's office.
"Just say it," he instructed his companion in the dark.
"Why do you bother employing me when you aren't going to heed my warnings?"
"I don't want to change the future," he reminded Destiny. "Not all of it, at least. However, I do want to be prepared for it."
"The medlab, which you saw briefly this morning, is where we repair ourselves," Xavier said. "But here, here is where we prepare ourselves."
Xavier flipped a switch on the control panel in front of him. Light blossomed on the other side of the glass to illuminate an enormous box of a room, it's measure too vast for McCoy to estimate in so quickly skimmed a scope.
Clarifying proudly, Xavier said, "It is a fully interactive holographic training system that we monitor and control from this room."
"The cool people call it the Danger Room," Jubilee said, then blew a bubble with her gum and popped it. She had just entered with Kitty and Bobby. Two more steps in and she saw just to whom Xavier was explaining. It was a sight that drew from her the exuberant exclamation, "Dude, I bet you have fun on Halloween!"
Hank chuckled, thoroughly enjoying the joke as well as she. "I bet I could, actually." It was warm and jolly, as though he were grateful for being shown a positive side to his new beastly form.
"Jubilee…" Storm said with warmth of an entirely different kind in her voice.
Jubilee rolled her eyes and scoffed. "It was a compliment, Storm."
"That may be, but that doesn't explain what you're doing here at all. It's off limits to students."
Jubilee, not going anywhere, stuffed her hands in her yellow jacket, popped her gum again, and defended with, "Chucky said I could watch."
"Fine," Storm said. "But don't touch anything."
Jubilee waved her still pocketed hands at her sides in a 'like, duh' statement. Aloud, however, she said, "Fry a couple of video games and I'm branded for life."
"And TVs and laptops," Kitty added, "And DVD players and stereos and Storm's car…"
"Ha!" Jubilee rebounded. "The car was you, Kitty."
"Oh, yeah," Kitty said with a mild blush and peaks at Bobby and Piotr. That accident of hers occurred when trying to impress both of them, either of them. She had a sweet spot for the sweet guys.
Piotr, stoically, dutifully, looked everywhere but in Kitty's direction. Nope, he had no awareness of her crush on him. Not at all. Really.
Bobby, on the other hand, had caught her eye, but he flushed and quickly looked away. He surveyed the rest of the people gathered in the booth, then asked, "Where's Rogue?"
"Right here, Sugah."
It had come from behind him.
On the other side of the glass, Rogue hovered and beamed with pleasure. She blew him a kiss and… Her smile faltered. She dropped, sack of potatoes, in screaming alarm.
"Rogue!"
Frightened, Bobby pressed himself to the glass to watch her fall. He only glimpsed her terrified expression for an instant before the sharp angle of his view obscured it from him. From the countless lectures he'd been forced to sit through before being allowed to use it, he knew it was a good 200-foot descent from monitor window to Danger Room floor. Its depth/height was allotted for flyers practice in a multitude of possibly imagined as well as experienced scenarios. That knowledge was enough to send Bobby racing out through the adjoining door and down the stairs to the Danger Room's primary entrance.
"Welcome, gentleman," Erik said in grand stately greeting of outspreading hands. The gesture prompted them to observe the bounty offered in the room. Metal gleamed, polished and refined, for all surfaces, be it walls, ceiling, floors, fixtures, desk, etc. There was little decoration. No pictures or art of any kind. It was clean, stark, streamlined, and reeked of utility, even in the low light that barely hindered the deep muddy shadows in the corners. From out of one of those shadowed corners emerged a withered, soft leathery hand requesting a shake.
Cain Marko took one look at the proffered hand then grunted at the speaker. "This the grandma and grandpa league?"
Irene's voice escaped the shadows a moment before the rest of her did. "You attract such contumacious people." Off Cain's expression, she added. "Ah, yes, I'd forgotten. No big words around this one." She parried her cane towards Erik. "You must be so proud, Magneto."
"You're Magneto?" Cain asked with apparent disbelief.
"Sit," Erik demanded through gritted teeth.
"Senile old fart," Cain muttered. "Yours is the only—"
The metal floor pulled up like taffy and nudged at the back of both Cain and Cortez's thighs. The ringed edges dribbled higher to caress their back and arms. The metal siphoned again, thinner, finer. It wrapped their forearms and YANK! They were seated.
"—chair."
"I am Magneto," Erik boasted in his lordly manner. "And you two, Cain, Cortez, are now my Acolytes."
"Quicksilver recruited us for the Brotherhood of Mutants." They were Cortez's first obstinate words to Erik.
"Genetics made you that," Erik said. "Choice made you mine."
"Choice," Irene scoffed.
"Who's the crotchety crone, anyways?" Cain's crudity.
"Irene Adler," she stated with disgust. "Though, I trust the spirals of fates that I never hear you utter it before your last spill of breath."
"Damn, you sure pissed her right off." Cortez seemed a bit enamored of that perception of his.
"Double for you," she told him.
"Ooh, scary," Cain mock-cooed. "I'm the unstoppable juggernaut," he said and stood, snapping the metal bindings like they were matchsticks, "Nothing you can do can hurt me."
Irene rolled her eyes.
"Hurt you?" Proposed Erik. "She is Destiny. She porters war on the horizon. And for that, we congregate and we empower and we will win."
"You do that," Irene said on her way out. "I'll be in my room having tea." The door closed, but she stopped it with her cane to let in the parting, "I won't come running when you scream."
"Like you could run," Cain said, amusing himself.
Rogue's scream tapered off quickly. It wasn't as nearly terrifying a fall as when the wind had torn her from her seat of the Blackbird. Plus, even if the flight power was gone, the invulnerability could still possibly, maybe be lingering.
Logan wasn't about to assume that, however. He made a dash for her. Even if he couldn't catch her in time, he'd be ready with a bare hand to heal her. If only he could do that for anyone he had a care for. In his wake, Nightcrawler disappeared in a wash of black acrid smoke and the familiar Bamf! In complete opposition of their urgent responses, the final occupant of the Danger Room, Gambit, remained as he was before she had risen up on stolen-mutant will alone to surprise her mundane—in Remy's opinion—boyfriend.
Blasé. That was the word for Gambit as Rogue plummeted. He leaned against the wall. His booted foot was hiked up against it as well, just beside the opposite knee. He shuffled his cards as lackadaisically as sipping lemonade on the back porch on a lazy summer day. He peaked, with the mere slightest curiosity, between strands of that cinnamon and marmalade hair of his.
A few steps into his sprint, Logan stopped and titled his head to pick out an… unexpected… sound he was sure he was hearing.
Gambit chuckled. "She's giggling, mon ami."
Bamf! Nightcrawler appeared and reached for her, poised for the expectant crash of her weight into his.
It never came.
Hands on hips, head high and confident and split with a wide-open grin, Rogue hovered in front of him. In full southern damsel-in-distress regalia, she exclaimed, "Mah hero!"
Stunned, Kurt forgot he was about seventy-five feet up. Gravity tugged at him.
"On second thought..." Woosh! Rogue darted and scooped him up in her arms. "I think I stole your line."
"You were joking?" Kurt asked as she lowered them.
"Gotcha," she said with a wink and set him on his feet.
The door burst open with a spill of ice. Bobby slid out on it and skidded to a stop. Hands thrust ahead of him frosted the air, froze it. Slush appeared, hardened solid and slick into a creeping, rolling sweep that dripped supports to the floor. He jumped on it even as he built it, extended it, and slid, slid, slid…
"Gotcha too," Rogue said as she swooped up, snagged him mid-slide, and twirled him around. Holding him close, breathless with pleasure, she whispered to him, "Guess who's sticking around awhile?"
"Put me down," Bobby said. It was quiet, and not at all happy.
Rogue frowned. "Sure thing, Sugah." She surely hadn't expected this reaction. "It was just a joke, Bobby," Rogue added in a mixture of condescension and placation once they were standing steady. "No harm done."
"It wasn't funny," Bobby said. He was clearly perturbed, yes, but something about his expression told her it wasn't all directed at her.
Gambit pushed off the wall and pocketed his cards. "I thought it was."
"Well, Bub, you're opinion don't count," Logan said gruffly.
From the speakers recessed along the walls of the Danger Room came a jumble of voices saying, "Is that the button?"—"Jubilee, don't touch that!"—" It is the right button!"—" It's all right, Storm." And finally thinned to only the firecracker known as Jubilation Lee, who said, "Woah, Bobby! Since when could you do that? 'Cause, dude, this weekend, you, pool, super-cool slide! Hey, stop Kitty! Get your own mic. This one's mine."
A moment later, Kitty's head poked through the observation booth's glass. The rest of her followed and she air-walked her way down to the inhabitants of the Danger Room. "Rogue, that was…" Her expression sank. "Bobby…?" She solidified only a step or two away from him. "Your hand." She reached for it. "It's—"
Rogue—worry, worry, worry—caught Kitty's arm. "Don't touch him." Worry. Worry. Worry.
"Looks like glass," Gambit said and tapped it with the end of his bo/staff. Nobody had even seen him telescope it to full length let alone pull it out from one of the many pockets on his trench coat.
Rogue shoved him back with a protective, "You either."
Gambit raised his arms in a show of surrender. "As the lady wishes." He winked.
"Can you see this, X?" Logan asked up towards the booth. "His hand is solid ice."
Over the speakers: "I'm zooming in on the monitors now."
Rogue met Bobby's strained and confused and… curious gaze. "Does it hurt?"
"No," he answered. "It feels… right."
"It doesn't feel right."
Emma adjusted the choker. It seemed tighter than usual. "I don't like it either, but with this much invested already, it's too late to pull out. Frost Inc. is willing to go half on the additional costs, but no more. Worthington Industries will have to take up the rest."
"Two million more is still a lot, Ms. Frost."
"Warren…" she purred. She trailed her glossed nails from the choker down the edge of her plunging neckline of her icy-white suit jacket. "I've told you several times now…" She uncrossed and re-crossed her legs. "Call me Emma."
He quirked an incredulous eyebrow at her mild seduction attempt.
"Always worth the try." She snapped back to seriousness. "How is Elizabeth these days? Any success at Muir Island?"
"MacTaggart recommended a specialist for telepathy. Right here in NY. Westchester."
"Charles Xavier."
Was that a flicker of alarm? "You've heard of him?" Did the etched face on the cameo just flinch?
The telepath's hand went straight to the cameo. "I make it a virtue to know the competition."
"I thought he operated a school."
"That is one of his investments, yes." She pressed the intercom button on her phone. "Amara, some refreshments. Have Jennifer bring them. Spring water… And some chips." She didn't wait for a response. Back to Warren, she said. "Though not as official as he, I have students of my own."
"Don't take this the wrong way, but the idea of you being a mentor to children is a frightening thought."
"Oh, I take that a very high compliment, indeed. Surprises are better when they are unexpected." She stood and walked around behind him, dragging his gaze with her. "But sometimes forewarning sets the nerves all a flutter and buzzing." She drummed her fingers up his shoulder. "Makes the anticipation all the more delicious."
He was tempted to shrug off her hand. More so, he was determined not to play her game, not to give her the benefit of his suspicion, so he turned away from her as though the action equated ignoring her. One part testimonial and two parts indictment, he asked her, "Always the predator, aren't you?"
"Better than being the prey," Emma said as she tapped a very specific spot on his neck just behind his ear. Goosebumps spread out from that spot as though her touch had frozen a nerve ending there, had tipped it fine, silvery, and crystalline.
He shooed her hand away and clutched for that spot when a knock on the door distracted him.
"Come in," Emma said as she retreated behind her desk.
Warren split his attention between Emma and the entrance of a slender young woman with blonde frizzy hair, and hip, stylish, yet somewhat petulant dress and demeanor. Her smile was haughty as she carried the silver tray in such a way that Warren could as of yet only see two perspiring bottles of water on it. The frosty sensation diminishing at his neck made him wish she'd brought something hot to drink. Then again, he doubted he'd be drinking anything Emma had her bring.
Emma smiled viciously, but brilliantly. "Warren Worthington the third, meet Jennifer Stavros," she introduced as she reclaimed her seat. "Her father ran a very successful casino in Las Vegas. When she was fifteen he refused her query to go skiing in the French Alps with some friends. Two months later he filed bankruptcy. For some reason, every customer had an inexplicable stunning winning streak. Good luck for them. Bad luck for him."
"You're a luck mutant?" Warren asked.
"Probabilities, really," Jennifer explained. Her tone belied the modesty of her choice of words. "A modest tip of the statistics scale."
He doubted there was anything modest to either of these women. Back to Emma, Warren asked, "That's how your ventures succeed? Her?" It was cautious, yet disbelieving. He was used to being such a powerful man among ordinary boardroom types. "I thought it was just the telepathy."
"A leaky faucet may make a puddle," Emma said, "But Roulette here makes sure someone slips in it."
Jennifer/Roulette set the silver platter on the desk.
"And that's my incentive to cough up more money for Diamond?" He shook his head and chuckled ruefully. "It's not about guaranteeing their success. It's about what they are doing at all. Elizabeth's problems started right after we last met with Essex. And, his Congressional Committee partner, Dr. Henry McCoy, if you just happened to miss all the news lately, has turned up missing."
Surrounding the two perspiring bottles of water on the silver platter was a splay of poker chips, alternating red, green, yellow and black, like circles of tripped dominoes.
"I never said the guarantee was for you," Emma said, slithery as a snake.
Roulette scooped up a handful of the chips—ruining their pleasant, orderly display—and shuffled them from one hand to another. She tossed one to Warren with a wink and asked, "Are you a gambling man, Mr. Worthington?"
He caught it out of reflex, but dropped it like it scalded him.
"Since you put it that way…" He stood, removed his tailored suit jacket, revealing a series of leather straps crossing his chest and circling behind his back. A yank on two clips at his waist and the straps fell loose. By the time his wings stretched and flexed, shaking free of the straps, he was stepping up onto the opened window ledge. "…I must decline."
Woosh! He flew the coop.
"Well," Emma said, "I supposed I should have closed that window after all."
"Aww," Roulette pouted, "But then I'd have no fun." She picked up the chip Warren had discarded. It was black.
"Enjoy," Emma said as though it mattered naught.
Roulette rubbed her thumb over the raised diamond insignia in purposeful concentration. Then, she tossed the chip out the window and watched it leave her sight. Though she could not see it, she had felt it when it smacked into the ground. Cheeks flushed, eyes twinkling, she looked back at Emma and exclaimed, "What a rush."
"He declined the sedative," Hank said as Xavier wheeled into the medlab with Rogue at his side. "He wants to think clearly."
"Understandable," Xavier responded.
Jono watched without enthusiasm. "Four down, only …" he started counting on his fingers. He gave up after the third round of ten and flicked his hands like waving off some flies. He sat up on one elbow and offered a hand to Bobby, who laid on the bed to his right. "Welcome to the club."
Bobby tucked his hand out of reach and looked away bitterly. Storm patted his shoulder then joined Xavier, Hank, and Rogue in the center of the medlab.
"Can I see him?" Rogue asked the approaching Storm.
"Give him a little time," she answered honestly.
"Is he going to be okay?"
Storm looked to Hank in deferment, but apparently answers weren't coming quickly enough.
"Is it like frostbite?" Rogue persisted. "I mean… could he lose his hand or something?"
"Until we do some tests, I won't know anything, for sure," Hank answered with subdued melancholy.
"You could do something to speed up the process," Xavier said pointedly to Rogue. Intelligence, suspiciousness went unvoiced, but she got the point. Incentive.
She plucked two hairs from her head, one white, one brown, and gave them to Storm. "Same as after Liberty Island?"
Xavier nodded, paternal, almost hen-ish, even.
She rolled up her sleeve. Then, she held out her bared arm. "Who's doing the honors this time."
"We've made do," Storm said to Hank, "but you're the professional here. Mind?"
McCoy answered with the hesitancy of a momentary pause stuffed full of uncertainty, unease, and more.
Xavier spoke up. "You could rescue us just as we rescued you."
"That's almost exactly what I said about Remy last night."
Xavier smiled. "You are wise."
Hank grinned, a bright and shiny—and fangy—contrast to his beastly features. "I am honored."
Storm readied a needle for drawing blood as he put on a pair of latex gloves. He took the needle from Storm and firmly grasped Rogue's forearm. Then he paused.
"I'm afraid I have no lollipops with which to reward you."
"Darn!" Rogue mocked amicably. "And I just had my sweet tooth installed."
He pressed the tip to the oh-so-delicate looking skin at the inner bend of her elbow and inser—
Ping!
The needle broke. Thankfully, it didn't pierce anyone in its unexpected flight.
"Heh," Rogue said coyly. "I guess bulletproof means needle proof too."
"This does pose a unique dilemma, doesn't it?"
"Could always fetch Logan to do it," Jono suggested.
"You're not helping," Storm warned.
"What? Not like she couldn't touch him and heal right up afterwards."
"I don't think that will be necessary, will it, Remy?" It was Xavier.
"S'posed t' be immune t' telepaths," Remy said as he stepped inside. "How y' do it?"
"Shouldn't you be asking yourself that?" Xavier held out his hand to greet his approach. "You were projecting it, after all."
"That so?" Gambit asked. "Interesting, n'est-ce pas?" He didn't press the topic further. Instead, he dipped his hands into one of his pockets. A flick of his wrist and two ordinary looking needles appeared in his fingertips. He dropped them into Xavier's upturned palm.
Xavier examined them, particularly, the shiny metal pricking points. "Adamantium, I take it?"
"That's convenient," Logan groused as he entered. He'd been following closely behind Remy. "But if you ask me, my claws would be the safer route."
Rogue rolled her eyes. "I've got enough of you in me already."
Logan's jaw muscle twitched as memories of Mystique surfaced and he suddenly wasn't so keen on the idea himself anymore. Especially when he noticed Rogue was tempering down a near blush. More so even when Xavier frowned, grimaced almost.
Amused with everything and nothing, Remy reached to snatch back the needles. "If you don't want them I could always get a pretty penny somewhere else."
Xavier's fingers snapped closed around them. "We'll need a reliable sterilization process first. I have a feeling we'll need them again."
"That or you could just raid another military base."
"We don't raid anything," Storm said. "We rescue people."
Gambit shrugged and titled his head in Danvers' direction. "Sure she'll see it that way?"
Rogue looked to Danvers—still unconscious—and then to her gloved hands. She hurriedly pulled down her sleeves, covered up all that poisonous skin, all except her face, which was writ with so much under that hardening wit she'd been earning since that fateful afternoon with David in her bedroom. She glanced at Bobby who still tried to block them all out.
"Smooth, Cajun," Logan said. "Smooth."
"She packing some serious heat," Gambit said without remorse. "Ain't nothing t' be ashamed of." He swung those smoldering embers that were his eyes in Rogue's direction, and the atmosphere of the room thickened, sizzled… charged. But the explosion wouldn't be physical. "Y' hear me, chére?"
"I-I'm heading back to the Danger Room. Fetch me when you're ready." She paused at the door as if she'd forgotten something. "I'll see you later, Bobby."
End Chapter 02 of 05.
(Anticipate daily, possibly even quicker, updates.)
Next Chapter: "Count me out," Jubilee supplied without a hint of shame. "I'm not fond of traction."
Edited, tweaked, added to: May 7, 2006
Edited, tweaked, added to: May 14, 2006
Posted May 25, 2006
Footnote:
I let Moira's slang get the best of her in one bit of dialogue. I couldn't help myself. But, since it's likely very few of you could understand it within the context of the story, I will translate here. First, here's the entire bit of dialogue.
"Aye, it does. And more," she continued, more and more upset. "An awfy peely-wally bairn sure does bugger a canny campaign to pure mince. Except for the occasional media opportunity, he's not been round to see Kevin in over a month now. Not since the new wife came up expecting."
Awfy peely-wally bairn very sick kid.
Translation overall Kevin is sick, and it's in connection to his mutation. And though his politician father uses pro-mutant propaganda for his campaign over in Scotland, a sick kid with a not-so-easily-publicly-pretty mutation gets in the way of that very same crafty campaign. So, his father has hooked up with a more poster-worthy mutant family, and is about to have what he hopes is a poster-worthy mutant son, to whom he now gives all of his attention. This is something that upsets Kevin, which thus, makes his illness and mutation problems worse.
Whew! There ya go! (I've obviously taken my own liberties with characters just as the movie writers have. Hehe.)
Thank you for indulging.