Same disclaimers as before: I don't own Marvel, but Marvel doesn't own me, and I own everything that doesn't belong to Marvel.
Read and review!
13 Jun 07
Dart woke up with an acrid taste in his mouth. He flung the thin blanket off of himself and stuck his head outside of his tent to spit.
He stepped out of his tent, his jeans and shirt rumpled, and kicked some dirt over the spit. He heard Griffin Fox in the next tent snoring and jogged off towards Cat's tent.
Dart didn't hear anything inside her tent. "Cat? You there?" He tugged at the tent wall. "Cat?"
"I'm up, Dart." Cat's arms were crossed as Dart turned, relieved, to see her already behind him. "What do you want?" She had faint circles under her eyes and looked as unsteady on her feet as Dart had ever seen her.
"You look like a walking zombie," he said. She grunted in response. "Either that or slightly hungover. Late night?"
"Obviously. There's only so many people who can successfully do watch at night. Lucky me has the midnight shift."
Dart nodded sympathetically. "That sucks."
"Doesn't it? Come on, I'm hungry." She stormed off; Dart trailed along behind, his fingers hooked in his belt loops.
He caught up to her as she collapsed on a log used as a bench. "I'll get us some breakfast." Cat nodded and waved him away.
The woman who cooked for them, Anne 'Bravo' Schönberg, was one of Dart's Morlock friends. She was hardly a gourmet chef, but packaged oatmeal tended to be easy to make. Dart checked out the package lying in a scrap pile on the ground. "Quakers again?"
"Look, I don't get us provisions, ass! So go complain to someone else and leave me alone, moth—"
"It's me, Bravo, chill! And watch your mouth, there might be kids around."
Anne finally looked at Dart and smiled, her yellow eyes softening. "Sorry, I'm sick of all these people complaining. Quakers happens to be good for you."
"Don't I know it," Dart muttered. While he'd been traveling from New York to California, he'd had Quakers oatmeal every blasted morning. "I need two bowls. I decided I'd take pity on you and let Cat mope over there to me instead of to you."
"Thank the Lord for you, then. Here, don't spill. It's hot."
"I know, I know. Thanks." Dart balanced the two steaming bowls and made his way back to Cat, who scowled.
"Oatmeal again? I can't live off this stuff!"
Dart sighed. "Cat, there'll be something else for lunch. Please just eat it so you don't pass out." Cat silenced at his pleading and wrinkled her nose. "It's got cinnamon in it," he added.
She gave in and dug out a spoonful of sweet-smelling sludge. Dart took some as well, and the two sat silent until two other mutants plopped down on Dart's other side.
"Ah can' believe th' guy! He's not only a pompous ass, but a brat! He's worse than Dana's eight-year old brother!" That was a boy.
"What, Quentin? He's cute." The girl sniffed. "Y' prob'ly deserved whatever he did, ya know. Y' aren' th' most honorable of men."
"Evaline, Ah tripped him! By accident!"
"Accident mah ass, Ian! Ya jabbed th' stick right at his ankles, and ya knew he'd almost burn himself."
"Wellmaybeif he didn' flick that goddamned laughter of his all th' tahme—"
"Would you two shut up?" Cat cried. She flung her half-empty bowl to the ground and rounded on them. "I was trying to eat." Her mouth was a thin line, and her eyebrows threatened to meet above her nose.
"Hey, y'all're Cat-girl." The boy, Ian, stood up and gave a lopsided grin. "Ah didn't see ya there." Cat's glare did not diminish. "Ah got th' shift after ya."
"Bully for you. Go off and argue with your girlfriend somewhere else."
"Ah'm his sister," the girl said. "Evaline."
"Dart. A pleasure," Dart broke in. He gave Cat a warning look and she growled and strode away. But she returned quickly. "What?"
"There's some kid who controls fire!" Cat laughed. "That's the coolest! Is he, like, some sort of pyrokineticist?"
Ian blanched and tried to slip off, but Cat grabbed his arm. "Who is he?"
"Fahreboy. Ah mean, Pyro," he corrected, at a harsh nudge from his sister. "Would ya let meh go!" Cat pushed his arm away from her just as a bolt of fire streamed at Ian. She hissed and pushed Dart back, causing them both to trip over the log they'd been sitting on.
Dart stuck his head up and saw Ian pulling off a smoking biker's glove. "Ah spent forty dollars on those!" he shouted.
"Next time, remember that when you trip me." The voice belonged to yet another pale guy with mussed hair, though 'Pyro's' was yellow-brown. He was flicking a lighter with his right hand; Ian glared at him.
"Get lost," Ian snarled. "Go back ta ya daddy Magneto, he'll protect ya."
"Oh, no, I'm getting looked at!" Pyro sneered. "You can't do anything except look, Drac. Don't forget who's in charge around here."
Evaline Rey stepped right up beside her brother just as a disgusted Cat snuck off behind Pyro. "Want ta say that again?"
Pyro stepped up until he was looking down at Evaline and smirked until Evaline flew up in the air and kicked him under the chin. She hovered, her eyes narrowed and her jaw set. "Do ya?"
As the three had a stare-down, Dart cautiously came up and went to follow Cat. Unfortunately, Pyro chose that moment to turn and storm away, and the two collided. Dart swore, having fallen enough times in the past twelve hours to satisfy him for a long time.
"Watch it, jackass."
Pyro pushed Dart back down as he tried to stand and strode off, only to halt a few feet away, his head cocked to one side, frowning.
Then came the familiar "MRARGH!!" and Pyro was face down on the ground, with Cat pinning his knees with her feet and his arms behind his back with one of her own.
"You'd better watch your mouth, Fireboy," Cat hissed. "Shadows are gonna start to have eyes. Don't touch Dart again, or you'll lose a lot more than this." Cat snatched up his lighter and rubbed his face in the dirt.
She leapt off him and swung up into the trees, disappearing sooner than Pyro could orient himself. He glared at them all, daring them to laugh, and strode off, his hands in fists and his face sprinkled with brown dirt.
Perry rubbed his hand along the outline of the lighter sitting in his back pocket.
---
"Ah can't believe th' nerve of th' guy!" Ian ranted. "Fireboy's a real loser, Fox, an' he knows Ah'm bettah. He's jealous!"
Griffin Fox leaned back against the tree and laughed, as he so often did. "And our friend Cat stole his lighter? I almost wish I could see Magneto's face if he finds out."
"Oh, he'll fahnd out. Ah'll make sure of it. Y'all don't worry, Ian's got ev'rythin' under control." Ian curled his hand into a fist, rubbing his slightly burnt glove with his other fingers.
"I don't know if that's such a great idea." Ian raised an eyebrow. "Cat might be reprimanded, and that means longer watches for us."
They both were quiet for a moment.
"Fine, Ah'll get 'im his lighter back. Maybe he'll forgive meh." Ian snorted, and then laughed.
Griffin joined him, and they relaxed after a few minutes.
"For some reason," Griffin said, "I think you and Pyro will be enemies for a long, long time."
Ian held his chin contemplatively in his hand. "Gee, Ah wonder why."
---
Anne Schönberg, resident cook for the area where her friend Dart lived, was finally sick of oatmeal. She sighed when she realized the only way to get other food was to talk to the man in charge. Magneto.
Anne never claimed to be a superheroine. She knew she wasn't pretty— with her beaky nose and thin mouth, not to mention how she looked about ten years older than she really was, anyone would be hard pressed to call her gorgeous. But where those gorgeous girls were soft and luscious, Anne knew how to be mean.
'Mean' differed from Cat's 'bitchy' in a few ways. Being mean lasted as long as you wanted it to, not as long as you lived. And Anne could get what she wanted without lifting a finger, whereas Cat pounced (prettily) to win.
So she told two lounging mutants, a large black man and a white boy, to dispose of the scrap pile. "And put the trash in a proper dumpster!" she called after them. But they laughed; even she knew litter was necessary when the closest dumpster was in human territory.
Anne made her way up towards the top of a little hill where Magneto and his 'high-class henchman' resided. She swerved in a wide circle to avoid Jean Grey— she rather wanted to live out the day— and finally found the entrance to Magneto's little cave.
The black-clad mutants who guarded the entrance looked up at her from their lounging seats on logs. Anne looked down her nose at them, fixing her eyes on their 'marks'. "I'm here to talk to Magneto."
The others whipped their heads around for a moment before realizing the seemingly bodiless voice was somehow Anne's. "Ventriloquy, my brothers. A helpful skill," Anne said, sugary sweet.
She swept past them and clanked down the metal stairs to Magneto's office. She jumped down the last few and caught Magneto's eye. But he turned back to a teenaged boy who was flicking a brightly colored Zippo lighter.
"We will attack in three days."
"Not sooner?" To Anne, the boy seemed like the perfect example of raging hormones and testosterone. She could tell he was itching for a fight. "Everyone's ready."
Magneto's metal chair moved back of its own accord, and he stood. "My plans have been pushed back since Mystique was... cured." Pyro scowled, and the older man glanced at Anne before smiling. "Patience, my brother. Nice and easy does the trick. Now," he said, "I believe we have a guest."
Pyro spun on his feet to look at Anne, who kept her eyes on Magneto. "I'm Bravo."
"Ah, our ventriloquist. And cook, I hear."
Anne smiled and spread her hands. "Someone has to do it. A hungry army is no army at all. Speaking of food, we need more."
"Of course. Callisto!"
A young girl, sporting leather and a tattoo, came down the stairs. "Yeah?"
"Would you be so kind as to fetch our cook Bravo here more food from the closest store?"
"Of course. But I'm not getting oatmeal." Anne smiled at her toothily.
"All the better." Callisto ran off; Anne guessed she was running at about 200 miles an hour. "Better," her voice came from one corner, "and better," and from the other.
Magneto smiled. "You are quite an asset for the Brotherhood."
"I'm glad to be here," Anne said. "I'm representing the New York City Morlocks, with Dart." Magneto raised an eyebrow. "He's fifteen, shoots darts from his wrists. Poisoned darts, incidentally."
His smile widened. "Better and better."
---
15:13
Well, Callisto does happen to be good for something. She managed to get us some food— and it's not oatmeal. Evaline and I are ecstatic, even though she's still kind of pissed with me and Pyro. She doesn't like taking sides, or so she says. (She really does love it, a lot more than I do. I just like being annoying to other annoying people.)
We do both agree on one thing— Pyro was an ass to Cat's friend. Dart, I think. I mean, who pushes a kid about half their size?
Apparently, Pyro. Evaline's making halfhearted excuses for him (I mean, he is up in the Brotherhood hierarchy)— he was aggravated, and taking it out on a fifteen-year old is a lot easier than taking it out on her.
Except if said fifteen-year old is just about the only friend of the Brotherhood's resident feral bitch. That's kind of contradictory, though— feral is for cats, and bitch is a female dog. Hm.
Evaline just said I'm lucky that she's around. She's right, too— without her, I'd be basically just a guy who can see well. Not so amazing, next to sonic beams and flight, or pyrokinesis, or being feral and a bitch. Even though being bitchy isn't really a power. Just a personality trait.
I want to kill people who tell me I need more of those.
15:24
—Ian Rey.