A few aspects from the X-Men movie(s) have been added. When Cerebro shows up, just think of the movie version.
Please, if you're reading, let me know what you think! Simply telling to 'update now' or 'cool story', while kind, doesn't exactly help me much.
BtW: I'm sure that at least one person noticed that most of my titles are song titles… Though I won't say which ones. - If someone can actually tell me which ones they are, I will put a special notice in here for you. And now, on with the next chappie!
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Held safely in the embrace of Harry's arms was Chatoyant, her fur still slightly bristled from the remnants of her earlier rage even as her master stroked her with long, soothing motions. Narrowed cat eyes observed the mad scramble of mutants in front of where they were seated in a corner as they struggled to find a way to keep Evan's convulsing body from dying.
The captive mutant lay bound on another table, unconscious.
"Hank, his heart rate is accelerated!" Ororo called to the teacher across the room, where he was busily examining the toxin gathered from Black Widow's poison gland. Her normally calm, collected state had been reduced to a helpless upset in the face of her nephew's suffering.
"Sedate him," he said shortly. "This is some form of neurotoxin, but I cannot isolate its structure. It also appears to infiltrate soft cellular forms and…destroy them."
He's been under it for a rather long time, Chatoyant murmured softly into Harry's mind. Perhaps it is because of his particular mutation?
"Is there nothing we can do?" Harry whispered aloud, tone hopeless. Despite having mastered many different types of magics, he had never been able to remain objective enough to be able to perform serious Medical Magic—with the delicate structure of the human body and the multitude of possibilities of destroying something essential with a mere flicker of thought, it required a patience and single-mindedness that Harry had only ever been able to find in the battlefield.
Chatoyant remained silent.
Another spasm coursed through Evan's powerful body; his back arched towards the ceiling in a tight bow, his jaw tightened visibly, and the muscles of his body stood out in thick, straining cords that looked ready to snap. Blood oozed from his mouth where his lips were pulled back into a snarl.
It was so much like the Cruciatus that even the experienced Harry could feel the bile rising in his throat.
At least his guts aren't falling out.
Struggling not to retch, Harry Apparated out of the Infirmary.
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He reappeared in the main foyer with his familiar still clutched in his arms, a cold feeling spreading over his skin.
Evan was slowly dying despite the best efforts of the Institute's greatest medical minds. Rogue had somehow appeared at the end extremely flustered and rambling to herself, before Xavier had taken her aside to a private room to speak. Wolverine's wounds had turned out to be more severe than previously thought—the skin of his entire right side had been torn to hanging shreds. Chatoyant had been touched by one of the intruders, a gross violation of taboo that left a sick feeling lingering the back of both their minds. Kurt and Artemis were gone.
He tightened his grip on his familiar, unaware that he was standing still as a statue in the entrance hall staring blankly into space. All he was concerned about was the fact that as soon as he begun developing a sort of attachment to someone, they were stolen away from him. Again and again and again.
About the only good thing that came of this was the fact that Xavier had excused all of the students that attended Bayville High from school for the day.
A muffled explanation from his right immediately attracted his attention. Turning sharply, Harry found himself looking at the closed door of the same sitting room he had been carried to when he had lost consciousness in the mall some days before.
Without a second thought, Chatoyant leapt lightly to the ground and morphed into a tiny black moth with ease, then fluttered to the thin crack at the base of the door.
"That can't be right!" Scott Summers, of course.
"Why would I lie about this, Summers?" Rogue snapped, and through his familiar's eyes Harry could see the sneer twisting her lips.
"I don't know, but there must be a mistake! It's lunacy! They'll end up destroying everything!"
"They hardly sound like the epitome of goodness and virtue," the girl growled. "What else did you expect of them, really?"
"But sending all of mankind into a war of human and mutant is just, just stupid!" Scott's tone was incredulous, and he was pacing around the small room in agitation as Xavier sat silently and Rogue glared. Jean watched worriedly from the couch.
"Actually, it makes perfect sense," Xavier said quietly. "Most people believe that the two cannot coexist and that war is inevitable. The Queens want to use that to their advantage."
"But why Kurt?" Jean demanded suddenly. "And Artemis?"
"I think they were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time," Xavier replied calmly, folding his hands over his legs.
"How are we going to get them back if we can't even find them, Professor?" Scott cried, flinging his arms into the air. "What if they're being tortured right now?"
"We will find them, Scott," the crippled man replied firmly. "We will bring them back here alive, one way or another."
"Cerebro is useless," the older teen continued ruthlessly. "No doubt they would have covered up any other traces of their whereabouts, physical or mental. What other way is there! And let's not forget that we don't even know what they were after in the first place! Are all of Cerebro's parts still here?"
"Yes, Scott, nothing has been stolen."
"Then what was the fucking point?" Rogue cried, voice breaking into a half-hysterical shriek.
Reconnaissance, Harry thought suddenly. They're starting a war; they need to know the enemy.
He pulled away from the door and let his body fall silently against the wall, sliding slowly down to sit on the floor. Chatoyant's little moth form flittered onto his hand, her slight weight a breath of velvet against the skin Harry could never seem to warm anymore.
There had once been a journal Harry had kept during sixth year. It was a simple, but elegant little thing, with the musty smell typical of wizarding books and softly tanned leather covers, but its crisp parchment pages had not held words of dreams or musings or even a simple Dear Diary. Instead, it had held a neatly categorized inventory of every person that had fallen victim to the Dark Lord's growing reign, organized by date and type of death. It had not been difficult, with the combined reports of the Daily Prophet and his own nightmares that broke through the Occlumens shields Harry had used that could block even Voldemort's own conscious mind, but not the magic that had connected them for fifteen years. But then Draco had found it, and destroyed it; and had managed to convince Harry that the Dark Revels and Voldemort's actions were in no way a result of some fault of his own and that he had to get over it, or the Malfoy heir would curse him so horribly it would make the Dark Lord seem a mere amateur in comparison.
But now there were two more names to be added.
Status: unacceptable.
A tall, powerfully built woman, skin violent red and glistening with the points of a thousand razor-sharp scales, startlingly blue eyes utterly cold and emotionless.
Harry could do nothing for the boy slowly dying in the infirmary. Evan's life was now entirely in the hands of Hank and Ororo.
But Harry was not completely useless.
He knew the appearance of Kurt and Artemis' abductor.
"Tonight, I will use Cerebro to try and locate their whereabouts," Xavier's voice continued from inside. "Rogue, I do not want you or anyone else to leave the school grounds. Understood?"
Harry blinked, then smirked to himself. He was not one of Xavier's students, technically.
Ready to go hunting, Cat?
Feral glee rebounded down their link.
Slipping quietly away from the door, Harry Apparated to their room and headed straight for the magically sealed drawer. With a wave of his hand, the wards were released and he withdrew the many tiny vials of potions, slipping them into a cloak pocket; another hand wave had him dressed in the attire he usually saved for battle.
Where's Hedwig?
Flying towards the estate right now.
Moth-Chatoyant fluttered her wings in anxious anticipation. What do you think will happen to Evan?
I…don't know. Harry's eyes narrowed as he swept the room with a second glance for any stray possessions. But the other mutants will take care of him.
Because of the night's activities, nearly all of the mutants were either with Xavier in the little sitting room or gathered with the professors in the largest of the game rooms. Still, after Harry Apparated back into the Entrance Hall, he took care to walk unobtrusively yet in a casual manner so that any who might see him would not grow suspicious, and nearly managed to slip through the front door.
"Harry?"
Cursing, Harry turned to find the elder professor just exiting their conference room, backed by a stunned Scott and Jean and a red-eyed Rogue.
"Where are you going?"
"Out," the wizard said shortly, fleetingly wondering why he had not just Apparated straight out of the mansion.
Xavier's usually kind face was frowning. "Harry, I need everyone to stay inside until we decide what to do."
"Decide what to do?" Harry sneered incredulously. "We go out and find Kurt and Artemis, kill whoever is fucking with us and the politicians, and make everything happy again."
No sarcasm, indeed, Potter.
"How are you going to find the perpetrators?" Xavier asked softly.
The boy opened his mouth, then snapped it closed and glared murderously at the psychic.
"Harry, I'm going to try and find them using my power," Xavier continued. "Please, stay here until we can all decide on a future plan of action."
Torn, Harry stared at him; he knew that it made sense, to devise a clear and logical plan of action before executing anything. Yet at the same time, waiting had sometimes proved detrimental to the Light's cause, hesitations that often resulted in dead bodies and hovering Dark Marks.
The words of his dark little journal taunted him ruthlessly.
"Fine," he said tonelessly, feeling as though the previous fire that had filled his veins at the prospect of finally taking action had turned to ashes.
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Cerebro's sterile titanium interior echoed slightly with their footsteps.
I thought Scott said that Cerebro would probably be useless, Chatoyant murmured.
He did.
Then why are we wasting time here? She demanded hotly.
There's still a possibility that it might be successful, Harry replied, but even his thoughts sounded doubtful.
The walk down to the school's bowels to Cerebro's location had been anticlimactically uneventful and silent. Unconsciously Harry had begun counting off the minutes in his head, wondering if one would be the moment in which he arrived too late to bring the two mutants back alive.
Leaving the others standing just inside the closed entrance, Xavier wheeled down the narrow aisle suspended in the center of Cerebro's spherical body and stopped before a long, steel-plated console. He calmly removed a strangely shaped helmet and placed it over his bare head before closing his eyes and taking a long, slow breath.
Almost immediately, the overhead lights dimmed and a misty hologram-like image flew into existence, outlining the seven continents in a rolling, pale fog all around like some great panorama. Tiny white dots flitted about in the billions, nearly indistinguishable from each other.
His rage quieted slightly in the face of this new magic.
"What is this?" he murmured in awe.
"Cerebro," Scott whispered to him. Rogue was ignoring them, and Jean was wrapped up in whatever the professor was doing. "It's a machine that enhances the professor's natural ability, powerful as it already may be. Every one of those little lights is a human, and Cerebro allows him to track down any person on earth just by their mental or mutant signature."
"Then by concentrating on them, he can tell where they are specifically and what's happening?"
Scott nodded. "But if he concentrates too hard, he might kill them."
Stunned, Harry looked over to the crippled professor. Such power, he thought, and still he bears no cruel intentions. His respect for the old man grew tenfold, and the small flicker of shame in his heart followed suit.
And yet I didn't have the strength to resist temptation.
"It is harder than you might think," Xavier said, his clear voice breaking the overpowering stillness inside Cerebro. "I am much older than you, Harry; I have had more time to make mistakes, and more time to rectify them."
The billions of pale dots suddenly darkened to an angry red, fewer now in number but no less brilliant.
"These are the mutants," Scott supplied, sensing the wizard's question. "He's going to try and isolate Kurt and Artemis' brain patterns."
After a few seconds, the great map zeroed in on the Atlantic Ocean, to a small scattering of moving red forms.
"They're traveling," Xavier murmured, brow furrowed in deep concentration. "Something is preventing me from contacting either one or getting a clear reading on them."
"Where are they headed?" Rogue demanded.
"Somewhere in Europe. Their path is too northern a route to be going to Africa or southern Asia, but again, something is keeping their exact circumstances unclear."
"I can run a program that will plot their exact path and destination corrdinates," Scott volunteered.
"I thought the Queens were in New York," Jean said with a puzzled expression.
"As did I," Xavier sighed, removing the psychic enhancer.
"Who cares?" Rogue hissed, hazel eyes narrowed and glittering dangerously. "Let's hunt them down, kill the fuckers, and bring Kurt and Artemis home!"
The professor did not bother to scold her for her language. "Let us develop a plan of action first, Rogue. That way, we'll stand a better chance of finding them and bringing them back safely."
Strategy never had been Harry's strong point. Impulsive thinking on one's feet, however, he had excelled in.
"I will go," he said flatly. "I can travel faster than any other, save Kurt."
"No, Harry," Xavier said immediately. "I will not send you out alone to face several anti-government factions."
There's a first, Albus.
"I'll go as well," Rogue interrupted fiercely. "Kurt is my brother!"
"I can't allow it," the psychic replied firmly. "I will send Logan, Scott, Jean—"
"We're not children!" Rogue snarled, taking a step towards Xavier. "Have you forgotten that I'm an X-Man too? Have you forgotten the Sentinel, and Magneto, and Apocalypse?"
"No, I have not forgotten. But I will not risk either of you or—"
"Unfortunately for you, Charles," Harry cut in smoothly, "I am not under your supervision. As far as I am concerned, your control over me extends only to my gratitude for you having allowed me residence here."
Turning on his heel, Harry made to leave Cerebro's internal sphere.
"Harry, please," Xavier said calmly. "I am not leaving the two of them to suffer under the Queens' hands. But I do not want to risk losing you on a venture without taking as much precaution as possible to ensure that not only yourself, but they and everyone involved return without mortalities."
The boy paused. Xavier had valid concerns, of course; after having lived through, and finished, a war of his own, Harry could understand that. But it was also exactly because of that he did not want to wait.
Rogue's voice cut him to the bone.
"I know why you don't want to wait," she whispered harshly. "You want to go alone, because you want to die in the process."
:Poor little Potter. Is he feeling unhappy:
Shut it, Tom.
"And if I do?" he replied softly.
"Then you're a moron," she snapped. "You think you're the only one with problems, Potter? I don't know what the hell happened to make you such a bitter, reactive, emotionally fucked up little shit, but walking around with this cloud of pure pathos over you isn't going to make it any better. So the world sucks. Get over it. Your lone-hero routine going off to meet his end only shows what a coward you are—if you want to prove something, then goddammit, start living."
There was silence. Then, in the same soft voice, Harry said, "Hurry up and get the jet ready. I won't wait for the rest of you forever."
"England," Scott said suddenly, eliciting everyone's confusion.
"What?"
"They're on a direct path to England; the only other country they could possibly end up in is Siberia," he explained impatiently.
"Why England?"
:Poetic irony, boy: whispered the Dark Lord deep in Harry's mind. :Just imagine it, losing two more in the same blood-soaked fields you lost the others in.:
"Shut up!" Harry hissed. The mutants looked at him, bemused, but he did not notice.
The second we get them back, Tom, I'm coming after you. And this time, I'll destroy you for good.
A low chuckle :I'm immortal, Harry. I cannot die.:
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He's out there.
Rogue crossed her arms over her chest and stared out of the jet window, vaguely noting that the horizon had already begun to turn from penetrating black and blue to soft pink.
They could be hurting.
She had not known Artemis so well; to Rogue, the little girl had just been another of the many younger mutants dumped into the Institute. But she had always had a bit of a soft spot for kids, and the knowledge that the tiny girl could be in pain made her hackles rise.
But the fact that her brother could be in the same state…
That was beyond fury.
"What do ya think he's doing?"
Kitty's voice snapped her away from her dark musings, and Rogue transferred her glare from the landscape to the chirpy girl looking over her shoulder in what she no doubt felt was a discreet manner.
The goth followed her gaze to the last row of seats in the jet, where the English boy sat with his head slightly bowed and that strange shape-shifting animal of his curled up in his lap as a black cat. He looked to be asleep, at first, but a second glance revealed that his breathing was just little too slow and regular.
"Meditating," she said flatly. Kitty looked at her in surprise.
"How do you know?"
"Magic."
Kitty pouted. "That's so not funny."
Wasn't meant to be.
Thinking back, Rogue regretted having turned upon Harry so quickly. It was obvious he had not had an easy life and had an almost inhuman number of issues, even if no one did know the full story. She and Kurt had just begun to form the first tentative gestures of friendship with the boy, when no one else could…and then this happened.
And what was the first thing she did?
Turn on him.
Even though he really had needed someone to tell him to get over himself. Life was a bitch.
So she might regret having done so—but only a little.
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Kurt groaned.
Cotton filled his mouth, and acid sloshed about inside his skull; every tentative movement felt like a crushing blow. He tried to speak, but his overlarge tongue could not form the proper motions.
What happened?
He remembered going to bed, then being awoken by a crash in the hall outside his bedroom…Harry had been frantic, fighting against a tall, skeletal mutant with too many pupils in her shocking eyes…
Oh.
Memory returned like a great slap to the face, leaving him wheezing breathlessly.
The fighting inside the manor, then the red woman rendering him unconscious…
He sighed. Or tried to, rather, but ended up coughing and wincing as fresh pain sluiced through his body.
"I wouldn't move if I were you."
The female voice was nonchalant, as though having a demonic-looking mutant in the midst of painful throes at her feet was hardly worthy of her attention.
"Wha—" Kurt started coughing again.
"There's a big chemical cocktail in your veins," the young-sounding woman reported cheerfully. "Causes a temporary comatose state and partial paralysis. A bit disorienting, but when it wears off it hurts like fuckin' hell. Oh, I wouldn't suggest trying to teleport and whatnot, either. The nasty shock to the system might kill you, and we can't have that happening."
"Where—"
The woman, still unseen, clicked her tongue reproachfully. "Sorry, sweetie, but I can't tell you that. I'm sure you X-Men know the rules of being a prisoner by now." There was the sound of her getting to her feet, and a small, slender form entered his range of blurry vision. Kurt could vaguely recognize that she had brown hair and wore rather bright clothes, but the fuzziness in his brain could not handle smaller details.
"And now that you're awake, I'm relieved of guard duty," the woman said cheerfully, hand moving in what must have been a mocking salute. "I don't envy you the whopper of a headache you're gonna have."
The elf heard the electronic opening and closing of a door, and finally let out the groan of pain he had been withholding.
Headache was a bit of understatement.
It was quite a while—he estimated a couple hours—before he felt confident enough to lift his head and look about with clearing eyes.
It was an unsurprisingly small cell, just wide and long enough or his to lay stretched out, all four walls and the ceiling made of what appeared to be reinforced fiberglass while the floor was a nondescript, cold white tile. The only light came from the single fluorescent light fixed seamlessly into the shining ceiling, just faint enough so that it did not cast blinding reflections on the reflective surfaces. Kurt thanked God for small mercies.
The pain in his body finally slackened, and the teleporter pushed himself into a sitting position with a wince. A conspicuous absence of weight on his wrist made him realize that his image inducer was gone.
"Mr. Vaugner."
"Zut!" he yelped, lurching to his feet and spinning around in a vain attempt to find the source of the voice.
"Welcome, Mr. Vaugner. It is a pleasure to meet you, even if your eyes fail you."
"Where are you?" he hissed, yellow eyes blazing. The silky words still rebounded eerily in the tiny room, and his sudden movements had made his head spin.
"I suggest you worry about more important things. Perhaps about your purpose for being here."
"I vill tell you nutzing!" he growled, accent more pronounced than ever under stress.
"Admirable sentiments—but they all break in the end."
"Monster!"
The velvety voice laughed softly. "You are not the first to call me that, Mr. Vaugner, nor is it the only thing I have been accused of. But you will find, X-Man, that few things are as they truly are. I daresay that Logan would agree with me."
Kurt almost demanded an explanation on why Logan had been brought into the 'conversation', before realizing that blurting anything out might not be such a good idea.
"What are you talking about?" he bit out angrily.
"You will find out in due time, Mr. Vaugner. Meanwhile, I want you to consider how you wish to tell me everything you know about the school Professor Xavier built and the mutants within."
"I don't need to consider," he snarled, fingers curling unconsciously into claws. "I already know. Fuck you, whore!"
The silvery laugh returned. "I'm disappointed in you, Mr. Vaugner. That was little more than cliché; I would have expected more creativity from a student of Logan's."
Kurt gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached.
"Before I must take my leave of you, let me leave you with something else to think about. Remember, my little elf, that you are not alone in this. If you continue this puerile wish to remain loyal to Xavier, then know that I will have no other choice but to take out your idiocy on my dear Artemis."
Artemis?
…no.
"You leave her alone, vitch!" he cried, falling again into his native accent.
Only silence answered him, and Kurt felt the beginnings of despair creep into his heart.
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The air was shockingly cold compared to the controlled climate of the X-Jet's interior, and the frost-bitten grass beneath their feet crunched loudly.
Harry took a deep breath, enjoying the stinging chill of the atmosphere spiking his lungs and ignoring Rogue's shivering and Kitty's complaining.
"You sure they're here, Professor?" Scott asked incredulously, zipping up his blazer.
"If he weren't, we wouldn't be here," Logan growled, seemingly unperturbed by the dreary grey of their surroundings.
Harry stood a little ways away from their group, sharp eyes scanning the horizon. The ground here was broken up into a slightly rocky terrain of weedy grasses and struggling brush, and just over the farthest hill he could make out the beginnings of a town.
"Maybe Harry knows where we should go," Kitty suggested. "After all, he's from England—aren't you, Harry?"
Feeling a bit of his old vindictiveness, Harry briefly considered telling her no, but shrugged it away.
"Yes."
The place nearly reeked of magic, and Harry was slightly distracted by the sensation of magic constantly shifting and morphing around him and beneath his feet.
"There's a leyline near here," he said clearly, drawing the others into silence as he spoke. "I recognize this place."
"Leyline?" Jean asked.
"Center of magic," he explained shortly. "An area or a path where natural magic is drawn."
"Can you find out where they are?"
"I don't know." It seemed logical enough; Harry had had to perform location spells before to find lost witches and wizards. Unfortunately, they could be unreliable, and while Harry had grown into more power than either Dumbledore or Voldemort—or Merlin, some even whispered—he was hardly omnipotent. They were also known to find things related to the caster's query, but utterly unhelpful; while once trying to find Draco, he had instead been led to the place where the two had last had sex.
"Mind in the gutter, mate?" Ron snickered at a furiously blushing Harry.
"Under different circumstances, I would have taken enough points from Gryffindor for improper conduct to leave it mired in negative numbers until you grew too old to even consider such depravity," Snape murmured dryly. Dumbledore and Hermione just smiled.
"I can try, though."
"What do you have to do?" Scott looked nervous, and Harry wondered if the other male was imagining blood sacrifices and evil rituals.
"A map of England and a pendulum."
My sanity would be nice, too.
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I am SOOO sorry for taking so long to update! Life has been nothing but a bitch to me for the last... year or so... Anyways, I must that you faithful viewers for reviewing! You are the reason that I finally got off my ass and updated. I will let ya'll know right now that I will most likely start to add some of X-Men 3 in here, cause that was the most BEAUTIFUL killing spree of main characters I have EVER seen! If you haven't seen it yet, please disregard that last line... I will try to have the next one up in the next month or so... Sorry!
Thanks to the following for reviewing: TheHufflepunk, darkchildlover, DeadRoses, Twin Tails Speed, Letifer, Bratcat, TanyaPotter, emeraud.silver, jka1, Tmctflyboy, Marikili68, hittocerebattosai, and IvySnowe! And if I forgot you: THANKS A BUNCH!