Al Chapter 1
After the adrenaline of "escaping" and "Free Falling", Al and Jaicen drove in silence for a while. Al had a feeling Jaicen had no clue where they were going as much as he did, but he knew the further away they could go to get some answers, the better at this point.
They drove for a while before Al dropped off an exit ramp and followed a few signs to a local mall. They parked in a large outdoor garage and sat in the car quietly as the retractable top re-closed itself. After that, they sat a little more in silence.
There were too many questions Al had at this point. Not the least of them was where were they and how were they possessing two other people (if that's truly what it was). A little less annoying was the need to wear the glasses that Al had realized fairly quickly were a necessity if he ever wanted to look at anything without obliterating it.
"As illogical as this seems to be, let's try and look at this from a logical perspective," Jaicen said to Al.
Al looked over at him and listened patiently.
"We both know where we were before we woke up," Jaicen started slowly. "New Orleans. This, clearly, is not New Orleans. We also, clearly, are not ourselves. So what do we do from here?"
"I'm still so fuzzy," Al replied vaguely. "But, if you were trying to figure out where you were, how would you go about doing that? We have to start answering questions one at a time."
"A newspaper," Jaicen mused. "Or the internet? Is the internet here? I would guess."
Al nodded his head and opened his car door, getting out. He heard Jaicen do the same and shut his door in unison with Jaicen. They both stared up at the large mall and glanced around at several people milling around, headed to the mall and generally just enjoying the day.
It was hot, had to be summer here too. Al's birthday was in July, so the timeframe was the same at least.
"Do they have libraries in malls?" Al said out loud.
"They'll have something," Jaicen confirmed. "Let's go."
The two went into the mall and began perusing through the different stores, neither really knowing what exactly they were looking for but just believing when they saw it, they'd know. The first store that gave them any clue was a book store. Both quickly ducked in and Al immediately went over to the periodicals. He picked up a New York Times and looked at the date. July 24th, 2014.
"Right day," Al mumbled.
They shared a look and set the newspaper down, looking around the bookstore slowly. That's when Al noticed the coffee shop in the back of the store.
"Come on, I think I've got something," he said and made his way back there.
Al led and Jaicen followed to the back of the store, where another room opened into a rather large well known coffee establishment. Al spotted a free computer monitor and moved his way towards it quickly. Taped to the top of the computer was a laminated note that said "Computers are for paying customers only". Al shrugged and sat down, beginning to type away.
"Do we have any money?" Jaicen asked, to himself more than anything.
Through everything, all the jumbled thoughts and fuzzy memories, some of the most obvious things had slipped their mind. Jaicen reached into his pocket and pulled out a wallet. He looked inside and saw this man's driver's license, James Howlett. He had no cash. Al continued to punch away at the keyboard.
"My name is James Howlett," Jaicen said.
Al nodded and typed the name into the computer. A fairly common name, a couple hundred thousand returns came up. There was a long pause and then Al typed in "Charles Xavier – School for the Gifted". A picture of Charles along with a couple of hundred articles sprouted up.
"Bingo," said Al.
A worker behind the counter then seemed to notice that Al and Jaicen were not paying customers and quickly moved over to tell his boss. Al began skimming through a few different articles while Jaicen kept looking around.
"Boy the coffee smells strong in here," Jaicen muttered. "And pastries."
Al glanced to him and back to an article, not noticing the validity his complaint.
"Charles Xavier, often known as Professor X, is the founder of Xavier's School for gifted youngsters in North Salem, New York," Al read. "He is the leader of the band of mutants that call themselves the X-Men, who claim to have good intentions yet seem to cause wanton destruction no matter where they go. Of the documented members of this so called X-Men are included to but not limited to, Scott Summers AKA Cyclops, Jean Grey, Hank McCoy AKA The Beast, Logan Howlett AKA Wolverine and Bobby Drake AKA Iceman, to name just a few."
The manager was now walking over towards them.
"And then it has links to different articles about all the bad things these X-Men have done," Al concluded as he noticed the man approaching.
The manager was an older man but he seemed a little unsure of himself when he looked at Jaicen, obviously a little put-off. His voice came out only slightly a stammer.
"Sirs, the computers are for paying customers only."
Al ignored him, clicking at the mouse a few times and furiously typing at the screen. Jaicen turned his attention to the manager and put his hands out to indicate he was sorry. The manager opened his mouth to speak again when he heard the printer begin spitting out papers. Jaicen looked at the printer and saw a laminated sign that read "10 cents a print-out". Six sheets printed out, Al scooped them up, and turned walking off. Jaicen hurried after him, leaving behind a speechless manager.
"What's that?" Jaicen asked him.
"Just a few articles about these X-Men and two group pictures," Al replied as they both walked out of the coffee shop and then shortly thereafter, the book store.
"I think I saw a bar across the street, how bout we have a drink and do some brainstorming?" Jaicen asked.
"If I didn't know better, I would call you Charles Xavier, because you just read my mind."
The two entered a relatively low-lit bar called "The Golden Lasso" and sat down at a table near the bar. They both ordered a beer and Al laid the two pictures on the table. The first was a picture of six people; a very young Scott Summers in a goofy yellow and blue outfit and Charles Xavier were near the front. With them was a boy younger than Scott, an attractive teenage girl, a relatively large muscular beast of a man and most surprising, a pretty boy with actual feathered wings sprouting from his back.
Al and Jaicen studied the picture intently and then looked up at each other.
"The guy with wings is interesting to say the least," Jaicen said.
Just as he spoke, the waitress came back and set the beers down, hearing Jaicen's remark.
"Oh is that Warren Worthington?" she asked, looking down at the pictures. "A young picture of him. Still handsome for sure."
Al and Jaicen looked up to her quietly and she smiled stupidly, turning and wandering off. They then looked at the second picture. The second picture was more up to date clearly, as it had an older Scott with an older Logan in it. The woman from the previous picture had her arm around Scott's waist in an embrace. There were a few other people, or mutants in the picture but it looked like they weren't prepared for the picture being taken because nobody was paying attention to the camera.
"Interesting bunch," Al remarked.
"Okay, so where exactly do we go from here?" Jaicen said, sitting back and taking a sip from his beer. "I mean, if what we've seen already is any indication, we're not in Kansas anymore Toto. It just seems… what are you looking at?"
While Jaicen had been talking, Al's attention had been drawn to the television above the bar. It was a news broadcast of some sort of a fight that had broken out in downtown New York. The woman who had yelled at Al and Jaicen in back the mansion was fighting a man with a blowtorch strapped to his back. The camera was trying to pick up more, but it was chaos as figures shot in and out of the fight. Ice was thrown here and there and Al could've sworn he saw someone surfing across a sheet of ice? A giant man in blue? A man so big that Al didn't see how he could possibly be upright and moving, but he was.
"The worst part, is that I feel like this is so familiar but I can't quite put my finger on what this all is," Al said with a grunt.
"I can't even remember our last name," Jaicen sighed. "Okay. So we know it's one day after we were in Vegas. We don't remember what happened in Vegas, but we do know it must've stayed there because here we are in New York; somehow apparently inhabiting some other people's… mutant's bodies. It sounds ridiculous just coming out of my mouth."
"I feel like maybe, this wasn't something that existed where we came from," Al said. "I mean, I know my brain is all screwed up, but this seems new to me in the sense that… I've physically seen it but not in a realistic way."
Al paused and grew frustrated, knowing that what he was saying really didn't make sense.
"I know what you mean," Jaicen replied. "Like it was a cool book I read that didn't really exist in the real world."
"Exactly!"
Jaicen took one of the articles from Al and began reading as Al read another silently. They both sipped periodically from their beers. Al read all about the vigilante X-Men who claimed to be about helping but seemed to cause so much destruction along the way. He also read a bit about mutant hating groups and another group of evil mutants called the Brotherhood which Al could only assume was the ones he had seen on the TV screen before.
After about ten minutes of silent reading, Al noticed that a few of the men at the bar were looking over at them. Jaicen was reading his article. There were three of them, relatively burly men, with one smaller man in the middle showing them something on his phone, although only one of them was still looking at the phone. The other two had their eyes on Jaicen and Al.
"I think we have a couple of guys who just realized they're in a bar with "mutants,"' Al said beneath his breath.
Jaicen looked up just as the men made their way over to their table. The smaller one stayed behind. Two hung to the back and one stepped up to their table boldly. He was a redhead from the top of his head to the thick beard and moustache, even to the hair on his muscled arms. He wore a flannel shirt which seemed a little too small for him and tight jeans. He had tanned skin and a seemingly perpetual scowl.
"Ya know fellas," the guy started with a bit of a southern drawl. "I was sitting over there with mah friends and we couldn't help but notice a bit of a bad smell in the bar. Innit that right, Chuck?"
The man named Chuck, standing to the left of the man, was completely bald. He was taller but thicker than the head honcho and he wore a wife beater and jeans. At the moment his arms were crossed showing off some rather large biceps.
"Gus," Chuck said. "I ain't smelt something so bad since I was shovelin manure out my Pop's farm."
Al saw Jaicen's knuckles go white from gripping the edge of the tables. He could tell that Jaicen was about to lose it.
"And Dave, didn't I say that the smell was coming over in this here corner?" Gus asked.
The next guy was to the right of Gus, a short man but stocky. He wore a trucker hat and a wrestling t-shirt with jeans. He was staring a hole in Jaicen.
"Sure did Gus," his voice was deep.
"I think you guys are barking up the wrong tree," Jaicen growled. "I suggest you continue on your way and leave us be."
Gus reached out and grabbed the more recent picture of both Scott and Logan. He went to bring it up to look at it and Jaicen's hand shot out quick as lightning, grabbing him around the wrist. The large man grunted in surprise and tried to pull away, but Jaicen held him tight. Dave reacted quickly and swung a punch as Jaicen's face, but Jaicen pushed his feet back from the table and Dave missed. Jaicen dropped Gus's arm and grabbed Dave by the shirt during his follow through, using his momentum to launch him through the air and into a wall.
Al, originally a bit surprised, felt his body go into motion. When Jaicen let go of Gus, Gus stumbled, but righted himself quickly and went to grab at Jaicen. Al grabbed him by his shoulder and spun him with his left arm, throwing a right cross and sending him backward to the ground hard.
Chuck went around Gus and after Jaicen. Jaicen turned and Chuck punched him hard in the face. Al watched in amusement as Chuck screamed out in pain, holding his, from the sound of it, clearly broken hand. Jaicen's neck snapped to the side a bit and he slowly turned to face Chuck. Jaicen's face was furious, and scary. He grabbed Chuck by the front of his shirt and lifted him a few inches off the ground, cocking his right arm back.
Things seemed to go in slow motion from there. Before he began the punch, three large razor sharp claws exploded out of the back of Jaicen's hands. Al's eyes went wide. There was no way he was going to be able to stop his brother from gutting this man right here in front of this bar full of people. Al had never seen Jaicen this mad. Some sort of berserker rage had coursed through him and no amount of talking was going to prevent what was about to come.
Al did the only thing he could think of. He grabbed the glasses off his face and looked at his brother. As he hoped, the same beam from earlier exploded out from his eyes and caught Jaicen square in the chest, sending him back and through the bar wall to land on the outside. Chuck went sprawling the other direction, but Al had aimed true and managed to not hit him at all. The world stood still for about five seconds and Al could've sworn he heard crickets. He quickly moved through the rather large hole in the wall to find his brother, scorched shirt, picking himself up off the ground in a bit of a daze.
"Sorry about that," Al said quickly.
"That's two walls you've caused me to destroy today," Jaicen remarked, though his tone was light and almost thankful as he realized what Al had just saved him from doing.
"I think, that we should probably get out of here," Al said.
Jaicen took one look at the hole in the wall and the gathering of people near the entrance and nodded his head.
"This time, I call driver," Jaicen said.
Al just shook his head and tossed him the keys as they ran to the Spyder to make their exit. As they pulled off, there were a lot of human eyes following their escape in rather stunned silence.
In addition to the human eyes, there was one other set watching their escape with rapt attention. But those belonged not to another human but instead, to a rather ominous mutant.
End Al Chapter 1