Notes: Hey, DW, sorry the other site is weird. But yeah, we agree: Susan needs a serious attitude adjustment. How can ANYONE dislike Kari?
Chapter 10: "What Scared Kari"
While the adults had been putting up with obnoxious siblings and holiday drama, the kids had their own table in the next room over, and they were definitely not having any such problems.
Gerry spent most of the dinner regaling all the kids with stories of his adventures at school. He absolutely loved Kindergarten, and since the twins would be starting school next fall, they were eating up his every word, eyes wide with their little chins in their hands as Gerry imparted his wisdom.
"And I'm not big enough to play in the other half of the playground. You gotta be in third grade or older to play there, but sometimes some of the kids in my class try to sneak off, and they're not very good at being sneaky, because they keep getting caught," Gerry told his captive audience.
"Do you sneak there?" Charlie asked, one eyebrow raised, though when Gerry gave her a sideways grin, it was clear she was having a hard time looking severe.
"That's a secret," Gerry said importantly, which had Chance laughing, especially when Charlie couldn't even come up with a good response for that.
"Gerry gonna show us how to do stuff when we get to school," Krissy agreed, looking very proud of her fellow Hawk.
Gerry nodded his fervent agreement. "Mmhmm," he said. "'Cause that's what big brothers do."
"Big brother, big head," Zoe whispered to Kari, who giggled madly, especially when the bamfs — who had more or less been designated the babysitters for this group and were taking their duties as seriously as could be expected of the group — started miming bigger and bigger heads, pretending to tip over from the weight of their own imaginary, huge heads.
Gerry glanced over at the bamfs and started to laugh when he saw what they were up to. "You gotta do it right," he informed the nearest bamf as he started to dramatically pretend that his head was growing, falling sideways with a look of terror as the bamfs fell apart in little giggles at the little boy's antics.
"Big brother, big head," Zoe said in a tone that said Gerry was only proving her earlier pronouncement right, and both Kari and the bamfs fell apart in little giggles all over again.
"You gonna go to school with us, Sying?" Krissy asked curiously while most of the group of little ones was still distracted with the 'big head' silliness.
"Mommy says so," Sying said with a sage little nod. "She wants me to make lots of friends."
"But I'm your friend," Krissy said, frowning.
"Uh-huh," Sying agreed, nodding seriously. "You can make friends too."
"I don't wanna make new ones. I like these ones," Krissy said, still frowning at the prospect.
"We'll go together," Elin broke in when it looked like Krissy was starting to get herself nice and worked up. "All of us — okay?"
Krissy thought about it for a second, her little face scrunched up in concentration, before she just let out all her breath. "I guess," she allowed, and Elin smiled and patted her hand.
"No worrying, Krissy," Sying said earnestly. "We go together, so you have friends — even if nobody else is very nice."
Krissy shot him a sort of look for that one, and Gerry shook his head hard enough that his blond curls bounced. "Everybody will wanna be friends with Krissy. I mean, she's purple. How can you not wanna be friends with Krissy?" he said in a tone that clearly said the whole idea of Krissy not having friends was simply ridiculous.
Chance grinned and nodded along with his best friend. "Yeah, we like Krissy."
"See?" Gerry climbed out of his seat so he could scoot around the table and wrap up the little purple elfling in a big hug. "Nothing is scary about school, I promise!"
"Besides," Charlie said, trying to join in the reassuring efforts, "you don't have to go for a while. You got lots of time here with everybody else first!"
Krissy looked mollified by the efforts of all her friends to reassure her, though it was when Sying assured her, "If you don't go, I don't go; I can learn all my school things from Dad's ship anyway," that she broke into a little giggle and kissed his cheek, which started a whole new conversation as everyone started to tease the two of them.
The whole thing was entirely too adorable, but while the kids were teasing each other back and forth, they were completely oblivious to the fact that there was a new player on the stage, a blue-skinned assassin who had managed to slip past the outer security and was watching the small children with one eyebrow quirked up and a frown pushing at her expression as Mystique considered the best way to make her approach.
She knew it was a desperate move, but Kurt had been absolutely no help in telling her where he'd hidden his father. And she simply had to find him, or she would go insane.
The real trick here would be getting in undetected. While the children were more or less separate from their parents, the door connecting that room to the living room was open, and Mystique had noticed several of the adults — as well as a few of the junior team members — peeking in at regular intervals to make sure all was well. Then there was the fact that those little blue rats were looking after their playmates…
Then again, maybe she didn't want to make a subtle entrance. Better that Kurt knew she was there, knew what the stakes were, so that he would fold to her demands at last and just tell her where he was keeping Azazel. He was really so easy to manipulate when it came to his little family; it was a weakness.
So, Mystique set to work on the window. She would at least disable the security so her entrance would be a surprise — but once she was in, she wouldn't worry too much over whether anyone knew she was there. Besides, surely they would all come running when they heard the kids.
Mistral had settled into a good spot to watch the holiday goings on long before the day even started. The security at the mansion was top notch, and she really wanted to get a second crack at it, to come back when they were on higher alert and not in the more festive, relaxed mood they were now. There were really no settings in place to stop a breeze from blowing across the lawn, which was how she found herself in the branches of a tree, binoculars trained on the window as she observed Susan Bishop's interactions with the people there.
When Mistral had seen that Miss Bishop wanted her to break into the X-Men's mansion, she had been a little wary. Every mutant on the planet knew the X-Men, knew the good they had done, knew them as heroes.
Even Mistral wasn't above some starry-eyed admiration, though since meeting Gambit, she wasn't quite so doe-eyed as she had been when she was younger. Not because he didn't live up to the hype — quite the opposite — but because it was one thing to admire from afar and another to know the object of admiration.
So Mistral had tried to come into this job with a grain of salt; there were black sheep in every organization, so it was entirely possible that one of the famed X-Men had simply married wrong. That kind of thing was common enough in Mistral's line of work, after all.
But still, Mistral had a feeling that it was more likely that Susan Bishop was simply overselling the matter and that she would have to teach her a lesson later for wasting her time. But she also wasn't going to turn down a job that took her to the famous institute. Every mutant she knew would have killed for a chance to be this close; she wasn't going to squander an opportunity like this when it was dropped in her lap!
So, Mistral relaxed in her hiding spot as she watched Miss Bishop knock on the door to the mansion — and she wasn't too surprised to find that Nightcrawler and Hawkeye greeted her cordially, even if it was clear there was some tension between the two sisters… right up until the younger Bishop girl wrapped her sister in a hug.
A slight smile touched Mistral's expression as she dissolved for a moment into the wind so that she could get closer, breezing across the doorway with the fall air to see the awkward family reunion a bit closer up before she returned to a hiding spot inside the mansion, hiding in the duct work.
It was always harder to hold her gaseous form for long periods of time, but Mistral managed it all the same, watching as the Bishop girl tried her best to be polite to the Wagner family. But thus far… there was nothing to suggest the kind of treatment that Susan had suggested was happening.
Mistral had just decided to do a little investigating of her own when she noticed something that only another thief would have seen — the dangling wire that meant someone had cut a security system.
Mistral breezed through the small room where all the little ones were gathered, curious. She had been through the security workup of the mansion several times over, and she hadn't been able to get her hands on anything like blueprints. Cutting a system like this meant that whoever did it had to know what kind of system it was as well as how to disable it, and all Mistral had been able to find out about this place was that its systems simply didn't exist anywhere else on earth.
So more than likely, this new player had been inside the house before, and that, more than anything else, had Mistral's curiosity piqued.
But there was something else, too, a flash of anger, as she took her attention from the security wiring to the occupants of the room — and she realized that not a one of them could have been older than elementary school age.
Mistral's attention to the intruder turned from curiosity to anger. What thief with any honor would break into the room full of children?
A couple of the little ones — one with Nightcrawler's distinctive tail, though with pink fur, and one who looked strikingly like Wolverine — were playing near the window, and when it cracked open the slightest bit, the fact that the two babies (they couldn't possible have been two years old yet) were so close to whoever this was decided it for Mistral.
Instead of the usual light breeze that kept her from being detected, Mistral turned up her powers to nearly gale force as, before the blue-skinned woman could even open the window all the way, Mistral bowled her over.
Mystique jumped to her feet, obviously surprised and completely clueless as to what had just hit her. She thought at first that it might have been another alien security measure, but that was about as far as she got before the hurricane-force wind picked her up.
Mystique shapeshifted in the air, straining to fight against the force that had her in its grasp, but no matter what form she took, she just kept going up, up, up…
And then, at tremendous speed, the wind plowed her into the ground. She was knocked out almost instantly before she could even come up with a solid defense against this formless adversary, and the sound of the impact was enough to scare some of the kids, who heard it through the cracked open window.
It had actually been the wind that had scared Kari, since she was closest to the window when Mistral blew past her on her way to Mystique, and the sight of Mystique flying up into the air had only sent more of the kids into a panic.
Kari and Zoe had run to Kari's parents, while the bamfs had quickly teleported several of the kids to the safety of the Danger Room. Dani had nearly torn the door handle off in a mad rush to go find her dad — and so it was Dani that Remy ran into as he was bringing over a pumpkin pie for the kids to eat for dessert.
"What's de rush, petit?" he asked with a little frown as the little girl very nearly bowled him over.
She looked up at him, wide-eyed, for only a moment before she simply seized his hand. "There's a strange lady outside!"
Remy stopped short, reaching into his coat pocket for his bo staff as he said, "Go get your dad, petit. He gon' wanna know if there's trouble." He paused only long enough to make sure Dani was following his instructions before he ran into the room that the kids had been playing in.
The first thing he saw was the open window, and he rushed toward it, sure that it meant someone had managed to get into the mansion — until he saw the two unconscious women just outside the window.
He didn't immediately understand it, but he knew better than to question it when he saw that Mystique had been knocked out, and he reached for his comm to call for backup. "Nightcrawler, you gon' wanna come out here," he said even as he climbed out of the window to approach the blonde sneak thief that he had been flirting with for the past few months. "And bring a few friends," he added on seeing the large purple bruise on Mystique's forehead.
The familiar bamf echoed just behind Remy as Kurt arrived on the scene, though the blue-furred X-Man took an obvious step back on seeing his mother knocked out in the grass on the lawn … and on seeing Remy with a young blonde pulled up in his arms.
"I'm tinkin' you gon' need to keep her somewhere," Remy said as he adjusted his hold on the little blonde thief.
"Right," Kurt said, frowning at the blonde for a moment longer before he simply teleported away with Mystique to take her to the cell that had once held Sabretooth — grabbing Henry along the way to let him know what was going on so that Henry could keep an eye on things and provide backup if necessary.
Remy, meanwhile, readjusted his grip on the blonde sneak thief before he brought her around the side of the mansion. He didn't want to take her inside just yet. She was fun to flirt with, but he didn't know if he could trust her in the house. But he also wasn't going to let anyone cross examine her before he spoke with her.
He had intended to take her all the way to Storm's gardens, but she started to stir awake halfway through the trip, and when he eyes started to flutter open, she leaned into him for just a moment before she gasped, realized what she was doing, and pushed away from him, nearly tumbling out of his arms. But she didn't turn into a light breeze, and he caught her again before she could fall.
"Woah now, where you goin', cher?" Remy asked, and for a moment — he might have imagined it — he thought she might have relaxed when she heard his voice.
"There was… a woman," she said in a voice heavy with exhaustion. "She wanted to come in to your home — which would not be so bad eef not for those darleeng leetle ones."
"You knocked her out; she got a bruise on her head somethin' fierce," Remy assured her, and she relaxed just that much more.
"Oooh," she moaned as she readjusted herself, her eyebrows drawn together. "I do not like to do zat; I do not like becoming a storm."
"If Mystique been comin' after de kids, you did de right ting, cher," he promised her with fire in his gaze and his tone.
She laughed lightly at the expression on his face. "Are any of zem yours?" she asked.
"Dey all mine, cher," he couldn't help but tease. "Uncle Gambit gettin' mobbed every year by all his friends' little ones."
"You know what I meant, " she said, shaking her head at him.
"You askin' if ol' Gambit got any attachments? 'Cause if you are, you ain't been paying close enough attention," he said, the smile broadening as he reached the swing in Ororo's garden that he had intended to set her down on in the first place.
He didn't really set her down, of course, not in any real sense. He simply sat down with her, still holding her gently as she recovered from the exhaustion of pushing her powers to that point. And for her part, she didn't seem to be trying to get away from him.
Still, he knew that the other X-Men would want answers, and they wouldn't take his pretty sneak thief's presence at the mansion with Mystique the way he wanted them to. "Whatchu doin' sneakin' round de school, cher?" he asked gently, and she glanced up at him with a small frown for a moment, as if she was sizing up what to tell him.
"Someone ... zey were telling lies about one of your teammates," she said at last. "But luckily for you, I always do my re-search before I take a job." She let out a long breath and shook her head. "I had my suspicions already, but I am not so naive to think even zee X-Men do not have a bad apple or two, no?"
"Dat depend on how you pickin' de apples," Remy said with the slightest of smirks, and she just responded with a single quirked eyebrow his way.
"At anee rate," she said slowly, "ze accusations, zey were unfounded. And where I was investigating, I saw zat you had an unexpected visitor."
"Yeah," Remy had to agreed, nodding along to every word she said. "You knocked her out real good, cher," he added, this time with a smile creeping its way over his face. "You musta hit her real hard."
"Zat," she said, sitting up a little taller and rearranging her shoulders, "is what happens when you hit zee ground at zee speed of an hurricane."
Remy let out a low whistle and raised both eyebrows. "You gon' do dat to everybody what crossed you sideways?"
She shook her head and waved away his concern. "She made me angry, breaking into a room full of les enfants." Her eyes flashed for a moment before she arranged her expression into a far more pleasant one. "Usually, I simply remove such an offender. Or put electricity through them." She gave him a knowing sort of smile at that, and he couldn't help but chuckle.
"You know de X-Men gon' wanna know 'bout dis," he pointed out to her.
"Can't you just… tell zem what I 'ave told you?" she asked, her pink lips poked out in a perfect pout.
"'Fraid not, cher," he told her, and he honestly tried to look sorry about it.
"I t'ink perhaps I am starting to regret my involvement," she said softly, but he just laughed.
"If you did, you sure 'nough wouldn't be talkin' wit me right now," he pointed out. "You gon' be jus' fine. Ol' Gambit ain't gon' let anybody make you do nothin' you don' want."
She gave him an appraising look for a good long time, clearly working out whether or not she could trust him, before she gave him a single nod. "This is fair," she decided. "But you 'ave no way to introduce me to your team," she added, though this time her tone had slipped into something far more playful.
"They gon' love you anyway," he assured her, but she waved off his promise with a little laugh.
"Of course zey will," she said. "I just mean zat you do not have a name with which to introduce me."
"True," he said, nodding thoughtfully. "You do have de advantage dere, cher."
"You may call me Mistral," she told him, and his eyes lit up with a smile.
"Dat's jus' your workin' name," he told her, and he had to grin even wider at the surprised smile tugging at her mouth as she realized that he had really done his homework on her.
"Oui," she agreed, matching her smile to his but not giving anything else away.
He chuckled and shook his head as he gently shifted out from underneath her. "We gon' go see de X-Men now, and if you real nice, you can hit Mystique again for angerin' you so."