Chapter 10 – The List
Kissing her had never felt so good. It had felt wonderful before indeed, but because he knew they couldn't be doing it in the current situation, it felt so much more special. Moreover, kissing with a meaning was definitely something else. With her, instead of being a random thing you do purely for the sake of pleasure, a kiss expressed the deep affection they had for each other. While he had his hands entangled in her hair, he kissed her luscious lips slowly and tenderly. Goosebumps quickly spread over his body as he felt her lips' plumpness…
"X-Men! Meeting room! It's urgent!"
Scott Summers, the bastard, waking him up at… what? Six a.m.? It'd better be good. It's crazy how irony goes. When he was having terrible nightmares about the massacre of the Morlocks, and they were quite frequent actually, nobody ever woke him up. Now the one time he gets to have a sweet dream, he got kicked out of bed by Cyclops barks.
He'd slept for only four hours that night. Since images of the past nine days kept floating in his mind, he had trouble sleeping. Before, he would have found relief in a night out, playing cards, drinking and finishing the night off in some woman's bed. But he had to prove her assumptions wrong, prove he could be better than that. How long he would take it, he didn't know. It was going to be hard. Nonetheless, he was determined to push himself to the limit.
X X X X
Prior to his arrival, Rogue, Jean and Wolverine had already taken their seats in the meeting room. Not seeming to care that he was late, he grinned at everyone and took up an empty seat by Rogue. Looking at her, he reached for her right hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze. She, on the other hand, didn't stop looking at Cyclops with attention, waiting for his commands. Leaning sideways a little he whispered in her ear. "Did you like the list?" She remained silent but her reaction gave her away. Her cheeks tingled and glowed with warmth blushing in shades of salmon. She looked at him for a fraction of a second and turned her attention back to Cyclops.
"Always the last one, aren't you Gambit?"
"Piss off, Cyclops."
"Look, we are ready to leave. There is a situation going on downtown. It seems there's a mutant being harassed by a crowd. We are going to help the guy out. No one is to get hurt. Let's try our best to ensure that there are no injuries not to say casualties."
"And you need all of us for this piece of cake?"
"Yes, because, as I said, I don't want anyone hurt. If I did, I would just go there and blast everyone quiet. We don't need a big display of mutant weirdness. Let's try to calm the crowd down with minimal strain."
"And how exactly are we supposed to do that, Cykes? Telling them jokes, eh?" Wolverine asked impatiently.
"Oh, we are not going through this all over again… Logan, we should immobilize people without hurting them." Jean spoke firmly.
"Why aren't the others coming?" Rogue asked.
"Beast is working on his project and has to be here for his patients Xavier and that fucker of a friend he has, Magneto. I hate him being around… Storm and Jubilee will be flying to Illinois later today on a recruiting mission. There's this girl they'll try to bring to the Institute. This has been scheduled about a month ago. I think we can easily take care of the situation without their help."
"Oh, OK. Then, what are we waiting for, sugar?"
"Just one more thing before we go, this guy is pretty strong. We don't know him, couldn't find anything about him in our archive. So, be careful."
X X X X
The night before, after flying around for about an hour and feeling a bit better, she went to her own room. She cautiously opened her window from the outside and flew in. The pocket of her jacket seemed heavy even though there was only a feather light envelope kept in it. Ah, what the heck! If her heart was going to hell for loving that devil anyway, she might as well as read the damn thing. Wobbly, she took a deep breath and opened the envelope with such care as if she were about to dismantle a bomb. A sigh. There. Open. 'Just read it.'
Ma cher, mon amour, ma Rogue,
Today when we arrived, I felt so helpless for not being able to join you in your room. Having to be apart from you all of a sudden has left me off balance. I couldn't help but notice that you changed your ways the moment we stepped out of the jet. What's the point of us being apart? Maybe you are treating me differently because you think there's no way we can be together without skin to skin contact. Then I had this amazing idea of making a list of things we can do together as a couple that does not involve you sucking the life outta me. I have to give credits to Storm and Wolverine, they helped me out a bit.
Ok, here we go. Couple stuff: go to the movies, watch TV, stroll in the park/beach/mall/wherever you wish holding each other's hands (provided you have gloves on them, sorry!), go shopping, have dinners out, swim, go dancing, go the bar, have drinks together, travel to beautiful places, play snooker, cards mmm just thought of strip poker! Good one!
We can play basketball, wii, cook together, read, well, reading is boring, I don't have an eraser here, just disregard the last one. Instead of this one, we can spend time kicking ass in the danger room. Also, there are a whole lot of hobbies we could take up together! Ok, what else? We can talk loving stuff, I loved it when you said you love me, but you seemed to have only said it because you thought the creepy Doctor would kill you… you could do it again just because you felt like it. We could share secrets, talk about everything and anything that came to our minds. I could be your best friend! You could also fly and take me with you. I guess I would like that.
You must be wondering about sex stuff. Well, we could shower together, see each other naked as much as we liked, we can hug as long as we are fully clothed. Take naked pictures, make videos. We could sleep together. Just for the benefit of sleeping together, trust me on this one. Just for being there for each other when we woke up or had nightmares. Just being close can be enough. I love to be close to you and smell your scent.
Also, there's ice! We could sex play with ice! It is amazing, it send shivers up and down your spine and get you so turned on that the ice melts as soon as it touches your skin. If we include condoms in our game, possibilities are endless. You could suck my…
'Oh, he's such a perve.' She thought. 'How could I think this was going to be something worth reading?' When she read the dirty things he suggested, there were loads of obscene stuff she hadn't even thought possible, she crunched the paper into her hand and threw it in the paper bin basket. Deep inside though, she knew it was very cute of him to take the time and write her that list.
In the morning, before attending to Cyclops's call, she reached for the creased paper in the bin, carefully smoothed it a bit, folded and kept it under her pillow.
X X X X
It turned out the mutant they were going to help out didn't need much of it really. Apparently he has the ability to transform his entire body into a form of organic steel making him almost indestructible. Basically, that meant the crowd could keep on throwing him whatever they pleased that they would cause him no harm. However, the aggression was confusing the guy. As he ducked and jerked to avoid being hit by various objects, he would inevitably hit walls and cars causing major damage.
Despite of being capable of withstanding great impacts, large caliber bullets, falling from tremendous heights, he was feeling rather scared at the people's reaction to his armored body. He couldn't understand the hate and was feeling betrayed and hurt at the deliberate attack. Those people should be applauding him for all he knew. He had just transformed into his steel self to save a child from being hit by a truck.
As soon as they saw the scene, they realized it would take a little longer than expected. There were about sixty people and each one of them would have to be handled with extreme caution. Hard as it was, they would have to keep their heads cool and try to ignore all the abuse shouted at them and the hate those people felt towards mutants.
Each one of them had been there before. Offenses and insults were not a new thing to any of them. All mutants would face it at some point in their lives. More frequently than not, they would be haunted by those kind of attacks throughout all their lives.
Rogue flew out of the plane carrying Wolverine and Gambit with her. Jean and Cyclops followed them as soon as the latter landed the plane.
Targeting two men that carried pieces of wood, she flew past the crowd, took both men by their arms and left them on the top of a building nearby. "Well, maybe that's going to give you guys a little more perspective."
Meanwhile, Jean used telepathy to confuse some of the riot participants so that they would just go their own way. Gambit threw some of his cards in an attempt to dissipate the agglomeration of people. Wolverine tried his best but couldn't help threatening people. Hey, at least, he was not slicing them like bread. He approached three guys who were ready to throw stones.
"You guys want to put up a fight with the big guy who's peaceful. Well, pals, these claws here ain't that diplomatic. Wanna try throwing stones at them?" He scared those three away in a second. So easy, he didn't even get any action. Bummer!
Cyclops ran to the big steel body guy and tried to get some answers from him. The guy's name was Piotr Rasputin. 'Complicated name, guess we could just call him Colossus. The man is huge. He thought the nickname would fit him well. 'Better be cautious to see if the guy will take it easily. It wouldn't be wise to engage in a fight with such a strong guy. Those humans can only be out of their minds.' Cyclops thought. He also came to know that the poor guy was only trying to help out. 'That is exactly the kind of attitude that is expected of a true X-Men. He would make a good addition to the team.' Cyclops decided.
Amidst all the confusion, Jean closed her eyes and concentrated, using her psychic power to make people forget the purpose of the fight. Some of them required more of her skills as they needed to totally forget the whole event. She didn't have time in her hands to make those people better human beings.
Her team mates kept on stopping people from attacking using their bare hands only. In a few minutes, there were only five to eight men still there.
When the riot had all but finished, one of the men Rogue had flown to the building top earlier came from behind her carrying a gun, he shouted:
"You flying freak! I'll teach you never to mess up with humans anymore!"
Just as he finished those words, Gambit swiftly extended his bo staff and using it he jumped close to the man and punched him in the face. Not just once but several times…
"Gambit! Gambit! Stop that! That's not how we deal with stuff, sugar."
"If he goes on hitting the guy like that, he might as well kill him!" Wolverine said. "I wouldn't say he didn't have it coming though. Fucking narrow-minded jerk!"
As Wolverine didn't seem very keen to do it, Rogue had to stop Gambit herself. She stepped towards him and kicked his knees from behind causing him to fall to the ground. Seconds after she took action, Wolverine held the other guy who had his face covered in blood.
"Guess we'll have to take this loser to the hospital, huh?"
"That fucker! It served him right!" Gambit said as he stood up. Rogue offered him a hand but he refused.
"Easy, sugar. Calm down. I'm sorry for kicking you, but I had to."
"Cher, guess kicking my ass was not on the list, huh? But that's ok. Gambit doesn't get mad at you. I just lost my cool when he called you a freak."
"Mr. No-one-mess-with-my-woman, I guess I'll have to report this incident to Professor Xavier. I told all of you a zillion times not to hurt anyone. What is more, your aggression was deliberate. You could have dealt with it in a softer way."
"Do whatever you please, four eyes. He deserved it. I'd do it all over again."
"Ok, Ok. There's no point in having this conversation here in the street. Wolverine, would you care to take this guy to hospital? Just wait a moment till I am able to plant a false memory in his head and you can go. Now I guess our mutant hater friend has been hit by a piece of the concrete that came from the structure of this building. How about that?"
"That's great, Jean. That will save our asses. For now." Cyclops said, his gaze was still fixed in Gambit.
During all the while, Piotr Rasputin observed in silence the interaction between the group of mutants that had just helped him. 'What a weird bunch!' he thought. Even though they seemed to act a little strange, he got curious on learning what the guy with the glasses had said about this School for Gifted Youngsters. It wouldn't hurt him to follow them now and see what it was all about.
Of one thing he was certain, better keep distance from that guy with black and red eyes.