((I do not own the X-Men I just think Cyclops is hot!))
"We have a problem."
The young woman sat in a cool white panneled room at a chair facing away from an oddly shapped modern looking table. Her hair was wavy, down to her shoulders, and she wore a white lab-coat over a blue jumpsuit, distinguished spectacles adorning her face. To her right was a small central kitchenette with a sink and stove, a refrigerator built into the wall, and a row of lockers with electronic locks for key cards.
"Care to fill us in?" querried Cyclops, standing just inside the door of the small break-room.
Bobby immediately walked to the in-wall refrigerator and oppened it looking for snacks.
"First of all, this place isn't what we thought it was. Secondly, it's a lot bigger than we thought it was." answered Kitty pulling out her palm top and fiddling with it.
The electronic lock behind Cyclops beeped and it's indicator light went red.
"Don't want to be disturbed." explained the young Katheryn Pryde.
"So...." led Cyclops taking a seat accross from her.
"So, the "Target" is aproximately five miles below us." Began Kitty "Because this isn't some ho-dunk tech research facility. It's a massive particle accelorator. And the Target is at the very bottom at the very center."
"Well the proffessor only gave us the longitude and lattitude he pulled from Mystiques mind before..."
"Before I stuck her with a sword. Got it."
"So we expected this sort of complication." continued Cyclops. "All we had on the facility was what you and beast could pull off the internet."
"Well it's still a well kept secret from what I can tell, they don't want anyone to know what they're doing down there." Kitty pondered.
"But the problem specifically is that we have to get down there undetected and I'm assuming they don't have a back stairway." Cyclops added.
"Just the one lift." Kitty said off-hand "Which means your going to need to wear glasses if we want to get to the target without fighting our way through ever lab-coat in the facility."
"I'm sorry?"
Kitty reached down to the seat beside her and pulled up two lab coats, a couple jeans and t-shirts, a small bag, three key-cards, and a clipboard, placing them on the table.
"Covert form the latin cooperire, 'to cover over.'" Kitty said sliding a set of clothes to Scott and handing one to Bobby who was munching on chocolate covered raisins and drinking a bottle of water.
********
Five minutes later three people in lab-coats emerged from the breakroom, traversed the circular hall and walked into the Lift Room.
The large circular room was still speckled with technicians, scientists and a couple gaurds. No one paid the three newcomers much notice until they approached the lift.
One of the gaurds walked over to them as Kitty swung her access card through.
"I'm sorry, I don't recognize you, can I see some ID?" Said the guard politely, giving the very young "scientists" and the man with the red sunglasses a very suspicious look.
"We're going down to run some tests on the... oh this is just easier with a psychic." said Scott lifting his glasses and blasting the guard in the chest with one eye as the lift doors opened.
"Cyke!" exclaimed Iceman running in after the other two as Kitty pressed furiously on her palm top and the other gaurd shot a few pointless warning shots.
The lift doors finally shut and they began to descend. "We're good but we're not that good, you both look like your in high school, no one wears red sun-glasses under-ground and we don't have any ID's to back up our story."
"Well there goes our Coop-er-eye-er" Bobby said throwing his hands up.
"Cooperire." chided Kitty still tapping away furiously. "There, lift is locked but I couldn't block their signal to the downstairs."
"We should expect a greeting party." said Scott.
"I can't believe we did a costume change for nothing." said Bobby pulling off his shirt and reaching into his bag for the x-uniform he'd stowed.
Kitty hid rolling her eyes behind her long hair for a whole minute as the bois undressed and pretended not to be stealing glances at eachother in various degrees of nudity.
"Ready?" said Cyclops dawning his visor and calibrating it.
"Ready." replide Iceman looking to the door expectantly.
Nothing happened.
"Ummm..."
"It's FIVE miles down you two. We're dropping fast but not THAT fast." said Kitty from behind. "Should take at least 30 minutes."
"Shoot I would have spent longer undressing." said Bobby under his breath.
Ten minutes went by.
"So... you dating Beast?"
Another ten minutes went by.
"So... you and Gambit?"
Nine more minutes.
"Is it weird if your girlfriend is into hand-cuffs?"
DING
"Oh thank god we're here."
The doors openned to reveal a much much larger room than the one they had left. At least 30 meters accross it had a ridiculously high cieling several dark windows running completely around the sides at equal vertical intervals. The floor was a washed steel while the massive walls looked like a white polymer and the cieling was supported by enormous arched steal beams. In the center of the room stood a raised circular platform with a long metal cylindar about ten feet in diameter running from it's base all the way to the cieling.
The three stepped out cautiously into the room and were met with a loud voice. "Stay right where you are!" From behind the circular platform stepped a single man in large-red robotic armor with a gold finish. He moved toward them with a whir of engine and his of pressure valves. Raising his arm which looked like a claw but quickly shifted and pulled back revealing something that looked like the barrel of a rail-gun.
Iceman waved his arm instinctively erecting a large wall of ice.
Kitty gave Cyclops a significant look and then stepped out from behind the wall, walking toward the armored guard.
"I said stay where you are! Hands in the air!" yelled the tech-clad sentinal.
Kitty just ignored him and kept walking forward.
"I'm serious I don't want to shoot a little girl! Stop right where you are!"
"Oh but if I were a big girl it would be okay then?" Kitty retorted.
The guard raised his arm and began firing a stream of bullets which passed right through the little girl, chipping off pieces of the wall of ice behind her.
In one quick move Kitty stepped forward through the robotic suit, grabbing the man inside and pulling him to the ground with a loud thump.
The suit fell appart behind her, and as the man struggled to rise she grabbed his wrist, pulled off a pair of his own handcuffs through his belt and clipped his arms together behind his back.
Iceman and Cyclopse walked up behind them as the man started yelling obsenities.
Bobby leaned down and breathed a frost into the mans face. "Look..." he checked the nametag "... Trask is it? I can put you in a block of ice or freeze your whole bloody head if I want to, or you can sit calmly and wait for us to leave. Your choice."
The man just glared at Iceman but said nothing.
"Smart move." Iceman finished.
Kitty was standing with Cyclops at the control pannel for the cylindar, typing something out on her palm-top computer. "Ok I think I got it." She said.
Hydrolics hissed as the tube raised in layers revealing it's contents.
The X-Mens eyes widened as the target cam into view. A lone woman with jet-black hair lay unconcious on a metal bed, a net of electrodes covering her nude form, an IV drip by her side stuck into her arm.
"THIS... " exclaimed Kitty "... is the target?"
Cyclops walked up beside the woman and began removing electrodes carefully. "The proffessor only said that whatever Magneto was planning required three components to complete, and that one of them was here."
"Is she alive?" asked Bobby.
"Sedated." replied Cyclops taking off the last of the electrodes and carefully pulling out the IV.
"Is she a mutant?" asked Kitty.
"I don't know any more than you two about this, I promise." said Cyclops flatly. "We have to get her back to the mansion. Beast and the Professor can give us some answers, hopefully."
"This is sick." Said Bobby. "They just have her hooked up like a computer or a lab-rat... no way she signed up for this."
"Getting her out will be a problem." Said Kitty.
"Getting us out will be a problem." responded Cyclops, covering the woman in one of their spare lab-coats.
"Kitty could phase us out?" offered Bobby.
"Through five miles of solid earth and steel. I couldn't even phase myself that far. Plus, the whole needing to breath thing." countered Kitty.
"Ok, well, what then?" Bobby snapped.
"Can you lift us to the cieling? Just phasing the air below us?" asked Cyclops.
"I think so. Yeah." said Kitty catching on "It'll be like walking up a very LONG flight of stairs though".
"No need." said Bobby "Bring her over here, come stand by me."
The three stood together, Cyclops carrying the woman over his shoulder.
"Ok try to hold onto me if you can." Bobby ordered.
Closing his eyes and breathing softly, Iceman pointed his hands toward the ground, freezing a large area of ground below them.
"Ok."
A sound like humming energy mixed with a cold winter breaze emenated from the young mutant and the four rose through the air quickly on a rising pillar of ice.
At the top Scott instructed Iceman to make a bridge to the nearest wall. Then he took off his visor and openned his eyes.
The noise was almost deffening for the three people behind him as a wide cone of energy rushed forward, ripping through the metal cieling as if it werre thin paper. In a few moments Cyclops closed his eyes, stopping the burst of plasma, then picked up the woman again and led them accross the bridge to a long tunnel, his visor glowing softly for light as they entered.
**************
"I'm serious Kurt, this is going to be very painfull, you should take the anaesthetic."
"No I won't do it, " Kurt defiantly stated to Beast for the tenth time "... they may need me for an extraction and I can't risk teleporting on drugs."
Beast finally gave in and gave kurt a long piece of plastic to bite down on then turned on the lazer scalpal. He made a precise incission into the flesh where the barrel of the gun stuck into Nightcrawlers thigh (the rest of the gun having been cut off to make the proccess more accurate).
Kurts screams were loud enough to make rogue wince empathetically even with the bit. Finally the whole area where the barrel was lodged had ben cut through.
"This is going to hurt a lot." said Beast.
Nightcrawler just widened his eyes as if to say "I KNOW! Finish it already!"
Rogue held the blue mutants shoulders as Beast moved in with a small metalic instrument with a hooked blade. He lodged it at the end of the barrel within the leg, and moved it around cutting lose the fused flesh, then carefully removed the blade.
There was blood everywhere, soaking through the gerny in the back room of the jet.
As beast began cleaning it up and pulled out the surgical thread while rogue held a sterile cloth to the wound to hold back the blood, a loud noise like gravel being blasted came from somewhere toward the tail end of the blackbird.
Beast held the cloth with his very clean and dextrous foot while rogue went to a pannel on the blackbird, openning it up and pulling out a taser. She stepped out through the hanger door carefully, and a moment later yelled back "It's ok! They're back! And they brought some naked chick with them!"
"Good news" said beast as he threaded the needle through the skin.
"MMM BSST" came a muffled growl from his patient.
"Yes?" querried beast removing the bit.
"I'll take that anaesthetic now!"
