The door fell in beside Shadow's fading silhouette, bringing with it a cloud of dense smoke and two unconscious forms. The explosion had done its job perhaps too well. I crept forward to the edge of the smoke and turned the unconscious boys over cautiously.
"It's those two new kids who seemed like jock assholes, Stone and Laser. Watch Laser's left hand, that is the one he shoots out of and I think that you can make him shoot while he is unconscious, hence the face of the girl."
Bile rose in my throat as I realized how Jinx had seized control of our isolated mutant world. I laid both of the boys out on the floor so they would look as if they had not been touched. We all stepped over them, Echo making the smoke billow out of the way, and revealing just how many people were coughing and unconscious on the floor. Most of the recent and younger recruits to Jinx's faux X-men, untrained recent finds that had little or no control of their powers. Her attack plan was simple, put the pawns first and save the queen for later. So Magneto like it made me sick.
Half of the children were no older than eight, and some of them were dead. I looked around at the carnage then at the corridor ahead and I snarled at the lying slime that had dared to show her face around us after this. Scales looked equal parts horrified and terrified at the spectacle before her. She had realized how strong we had made ourselves through the survival mode that she had mocked us about, and she had not known what Jinx truly was and what she could do to others.
She turned and fled, her skin changing in her panic, making it easy to follow her down the corridors as her speed changed with every change. Shadow retreated, her eyes blazing, into a corner and vanished. We heard Scales's cries for mercy as we came upon the two. Shadow had the struggling metamorph pinned to the wall by her throat, her glittering knife at the multi-coloured throat, my claws retracted soundlessly as there was no need of them. These were the situations when I was glad that she was an assasin.
We surrounded her helpless form and the quietly anguished voice of Stitches was a palpable force in the still air, making Scales flinch. "Why? Tell me why, Scales."
Scales swallowed and gasped something about necessary sacrifice, Shadow was not buying it and the trickle of bright red blood over her textured skin was evidence. Scales eyes widened and she gasped as if she were a fish out of water before desperately whispering her response.
"She- has –a-death---wish." Shadow's knife loosened its hold so she could speak normally without the lies, "I do not know what has come over her, but she-"
A sound like a cloth being dragged over dead leaves made Shadow jerk her knife back. The wall behind Scales had begun to squirm and writhe as if it were alive and, like many green snakes; it had begun to wrap Scales in a cocoon made of the walls.
Ceramic's hands twisted in a final jerk as all but Scales's head was firmly locked in place, ensuring even with her contortionist skills, she would not escape. Her green eyes widened and her terrified, reptilian shrieks followed us down the hall as we crept toward the junction of the major paths in the school. I could hear nervous chatter and I halted everyone as I listened, Snickers and his mistress were ahead, along with several of their more powerful cronies, and Storm. I looked at Target and he swore loudly so only we could hear, conveying the bad news. Faces soured and everyone readied themselves for battle, my claws itching to avenge the innocent souls that Jinx had destroyed in her death march.
I raised my right hand and Target came slinking up past me, gesturing for us to duck. He came around the corner; his arm out at shoulder level in a gesture that mocked whoever else was on the other side. I knew what was coming and covered my sensitive ears, waiting for the blast. The pacifist was taunting them, and then the sound of Iceman swinging into action and their world was blown to bits. The pure kinetic energy from Target's full power blast went through the walls on either side, sending several heavy forms and more than a few light ones with it. I stood up as I came around the corner without fear now, seeing Jinx just getting to her feet with Snicker's limp form just before her with a huge piece of glass vase stuck in his back.
Alone now, Jinx faced us. Her chest heaved as Stitches walked forward, her hand outstretched. Jinx backed up so fast that she tripped over the unconscious body of Storm and began scrambling back from the pale hand that could mean her destruction. A wall of fire erupted between Jinx and her only escape route, now she could choose the hand or the fire. One pain or the other. I came forward, my right claws toward the ceiling, offering her another alternative.
She threw herself at me, her cloud of cold silencing energy gathering around her like a swarm of knats in the summer. I smiled and turned over my left hand, showing her the piece of glass floating there, the mental energy keeping it aloft my protection. She looked wild, out of control, and desperate. She turned back to me and ran at my still extended left hand, and the horizontal claws that went with it. She plunged herself onto them, her form jerking as they cleanly sliced her stomach in two.
The cold died with her out of control emotions. The anger, the frustration, the spite all vanished as her grey eyes dimmed. She smiled slightly and her last words were seen and heard by everyone on her last ragged breath.
"Thank" she halted, taking a gasp of a breath, "you…"
Her last word faded with her life as the light went out of her eyes and she fell backwards off my claws, almost hitting the floor in slow motion, her face peaceful and untroubled. Echo came forward and rested her hand on Jinx's forehead, closing her glassy and ever staring eyes. Target had walked around the rest of us and had closed the horrified eyes of his brother. He and his brother had never been close and Ceramic as rubbed his back, she fell. The world seemed to slow again, all sound eliminated as everyone's face turned to the dying form of the kind-hearted girl who had been misnamed by the now prone form of the ultimate silencer.
Target's soundless scream as he caught her form was lost on my ears. Stitches descended, her hands flying over Ceramic and she gasped. I could feel the cold around her and realized Jinx had taken one more life. The sound and speed of the world came back all at once; I could hear Target's horrified yells and I could also hear the last breaths of one of my dearest friends.
She looked up at me and raised a violently shaking hand that I took, ignoring the cold spreading in it. "You were a great leader, Jason. We chose, well." Her voice was fading, and the air was creeping into it. She took a long, ragged breath and continued speaking and everyone was held spell bound as she did. "You, need to hold them together. They are the hope of the X-men. " She looked at Target, and her slurred words were for him alone. "Go on, I will always be there. I will never truly leave you, I will always be there for-"
The cold stopped, her breath stopped and her eyes closed, letting her head fall back onto Target's arm. He had stopped shouting, but tears fell in a waterfall onto the face of his best friend, and his only love. He stood up, and set her body on the sideboard where she would not be harmed. My head snapped in unison with Wolverine's as a stirring was heard in the debris from the battle. A staggering Storm came limping toward us, her eyes blazing as she took in the group huddled around Ceramic's body.
Her face changed as she took in what she had stood up in. The masses of unconscious and dead students were pilled in groups; they stretched through the shattered walls and down the corridor, dead, mangled or now screaming in pain as they woke up under pieces of wall with crushed bones. She took in how my team stood behind me, their eyes sharp and the power surrounding us like a cloud.
She held up her hand and winced before I could even start. "Logan, what happened here? Why do they look like X-men and Jinx lies dead before me?"
Wolverine looked at the rest of us and the story came out in several voices, each telling the story in their own way. When it was told, Wolverine retrieved the body of the girl and showed Storm the destroyed face. She was stiff throughout the entire story, her face twisting and the weather growing darker and darker as it went on. When we had finished we all stayed on high alert, ready to counter any attack she could muster in her exhausted and injured state, but all our preparations were for naught. At the end, her shoulders drooped and she fell, her shoulder's dropping as her exhaustion over took her. The sun came out and the windows and holes in the wall held the sun beams trapped in the swirling clouds of pulverized debris.
We looked at each other, shrugged and began the terrible process of sorting out what had been done for the school. We began it as we had begun our investigation, everyone together through the thick and thin.