Disclaimer: I own nothing, nada, zip. Blaze owns me
A/N: Posting: Just to warn everyone, my posting is liable to be erratic over the next few weeks and months, and my reviewing will be down to nil. I've had some bad new health-wise, so I've got big things going on in my own life right now. I will still be writing, coz it gives me great strength and relief, and I will keep posting, but please be patient with me if I am not particularily predictable.
10
Charles immediately and telepathically showed the four young mutants events he had witnessed in Cerebro earlier that evening. He showed them a plain, pale coloured room in a hospital ward. Without a window, it was lit only by stark neon lights. There was a single bed in the room, shrouded in crisp white sheets. Under the sheets lay the sleeping form of a small person, a girl no older than Magma. Subtly Charles directed the doctor through whose eyes they witnessed the scene to pick up the girl's chart. The doctor read it willingly. A few bumps and bruises, a knock to the head, but that was all. She would make a full recovery from the road traffic accident.
Still, that didn't answer the question as to why she had run so suicidally in front of Blaze's car. Charles pondered the pieces of the puzzle pensively. Meanwhile the doctor went about his duties. He picked up the sleeping girl's skinny wrist to take her pulse. Turning it over in his grasp, the doctor saw a pinkish scar marking the girl's near-white porcelain skin. So, this wasn't the first time the girl had tried to do away with herself. Her pulse was weak, but otherwise normal. The doctor let the girl's wrist fall back to the bed. She murmured in her sleep, but did not wake up.
Next the doctor went to place his hand gently on the girl's forehead to check her temperature. She wasn't pretty, not yet. Her nose had a regal arch to it, and her cheekbones were pronounced. They were features that would make for a handsome woman, but seemed out of place on a child. The doctor hardly noticed, staring instead at the girl's hair. Hair that had been ebony locks, cut in loose waves with a heavy fringe, was now turning white from the roots outwards. The doctor gasped as Charles did; they had both heard of shock turning hair white, but this was too stark and rapid a reaction. Already the white was a hand's width down the length of the girl's hair, and increasing at a visible rate.
The doctor pushed back the girl's fringe to feel the heat on her forehead. What he felt was not a remarkable temperature, but two lumpy projections on the girl's brow. He lifted his hand, scooping away her fringe. There was blood on her forehead, though not from the crash. Two little bony protrusions, like the budding horns on a goat, split the skin on each temple. A mutant; Xavier felt the doctor recoil in a gut reaction. At the same moment, the girl woke up. She did not open her eyes as the doctor left the room to seek help. Xavier sensed her wakefulness and stayed, hovering in the ether, wondering what the girl would do now.
The girl opened her eyes, albino pink eyes and bloodshot at that, the second the doctor had gone. She sat up, blinking as she registered her surroundings, then lurched despairingly to her feet. She staggered for a few short steps, rubbing the lumps on her head with the back of her arm. Then quickly she made a break for freedom, down a corridor, out a fire escape and into the night.
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"The girl I ran over did this?" Blaze was staggered.
"It appears to be too much of a coincidence for that not to be the answer," Xavier returned. "Wouldn't you agree?"
"Sure," shrugged Remy. "But knowin' who dunnit don't get us no closer to getting our powers back or bein' visible again."
"Maybe not," Xavier was brutally honest. "Still, the four of you are the only ones who can track her down without fear of the consequences should she turn her powers in you."
"I think he means it can't possibly get any worse for us," Angel sniggered heartlessly.
"Typical," groaned Rogue. "Then Ah guess we better get a move on an' go find the kid before she gets someone else stuck in this, this, whatever it is."
"After you Cherie," Gambit indicated to the door genteelly. Rogue left, followed by Blaze and then Angel. "Ladies first," Gambit concluded to Angel's wingless back, before following the luckless troupe back into the night.
"If I had my wings, this'd be easy. I'd find the kid in no time at all," Warren moaned as they traipsed down the road again back into town.
"We'll get ya wings back Warren, you'll seen," pandered Rogue, tapping Warren lightly on his arm.
"So where do we start lookin', mes Amies?" Remy asked, cutting in between Rogue and Angel and companionably slinging an arm around both their shoulders.
"Scene of the crime," Blaze answered from a little way ahead of them. She was looking out over the town, pointing in the direction she wanted to start searching. "Right where I knocked the mite over this afternoon."
"Good a place as any," said Angel, ducking out from Gambit's overly familiar arm and catching Blaze up. Gambit's other arm never left Rogue's shoulders. As Blaze and Angel led the way, so Gambit and Rogue brought up the rear, and the marched onwards under the twinkling carpet of stars.
The hunch proved right. The X-Men found the black shadow that had attacked them downtown, at the scene of the earlier car crash. Gambit scuffed a couple of deep grooves in the road, made by his earlier fall from his bike. Rogue and Angel glanced at each other, and then followed Blaze who was pressing on to the black shape in front of them. Up close, the shadow was actually not a shadow at all. It was a bubble of darkness with an oozing, fluidic surface that swelled transiently like an oil slick moving on the surface of the sea.
Frowning, Blaze reached out with a slender hand and touched the black mass. Her fingers pushed against the tension on the surface, then the black goo swallowed her hand up to the wrist. "Cold," Blaze gasped, dragging her hand back swiftly. The black clung to her fingertips in tendrils. She had to shake her hand to get rid of them. The tendrils retracted like sulky children back into the black mass. "Any volunteers to go in there?" Blaze asked, not looking back at the others.
"You're the only one who still has powers," Rogue pointed out.
"Good point," Blaze ceded, taking a deep breath. "Wish me luck?"
Before anyone had time to answer, Blaze stepped forwards and was gone. The void closed behind her with a sucking noise, then it was like she had never been there. The others waited with bated breath, not sure what to expect. Gambit clenched his fists and set his jaw in a grimace, preparing himself to go diving in there after Blaze. Angel went pale with all the horrid possibilities that could even now be devouring his girlfriend. Seeing this, Rogue took Angel's hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
The black ooze made an abrupt popping noise, and Blaze's head, right shoulder and arm were spat back out. "Come on in," she beckoned, "The water's lovely." Gambit was closest, so she grabbed his wrist and dragged him in after her. Rogue and Angel followed, taking a breath before they stepped into the darkness.