DISCLAIMER- yadda yadda, bite me.
Ish-Yeah, I think I'll have her write Remy a letter. As for blown up, I'm trying to stick at least a bit to the comics. Sorta.
Sweety8587- Okay, you can eat the chocolate Ettie, and here's a stuffed one to hug. (gives a stuffed-animal version of Ettie)
Panther- I though of a way to work in the big gay black guy.
DreamerLady- She doesn't know all. That really would be scary. She just has really good intuition. And Rem's not an ass, he just needs to see a good shrink about his guilt issues. And, yes, I have a plot. Mostly.
Totally Obsessed47- Yes! Ettie lives in the universe with the Witness. Good eye! In fact, Panther has been pushing me to bring in Bishop, and I think I might. In fact, I did.
CHAPTER 10
Forge had come back to the Institute at nine that morning to finish up his repairs to the time machine so that it would send Charlie Maximoff and Etienne LeBeau back to their respective future alternate realities. It was now one in the afternoon, and he was getting grouchy.
"Why isn't this working?!" He slammed his human hand down on top of one of the metal boxes he was working on.
Something hummed. Something else whirred.
Rogue had unknowingly left a stray hair in the arch that she had stood in the day before, and, since the machine didn't discriminate between the DNA of a whole person and that of a piece of hair, the machine locked onto it and opened the portals. To quote (A/N: I'm pretty sure) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
"There was a great, terrible silence.
There was a great, terrible noise.
There was a great terrible silence."
Only this time, the lights stayed on. From one portal emerged a scary, suited, masked, apparently sexless minion—that was the first word that popped into Forge's mind when he was him/her/it—carrying a big gun; some kind of rifle, it looked like. From the other, there was a tall, beefy, dark-skinned man with the letter "M" scarred over his eye, dressed like a futuristic biker, carrying an even bigger gun, and this one didn't look like any gun made in the current time period.
On a side note, had Tabitha been there, she would have said that, regardless of his sexuality, the big biker dude vibed gay.
Forge looked back and forth between the two men. "Ummm..."
The sexless minion pointed its gun at Forge. "Where is Charles Xavier?"
Forge put his hand and metal tool thingy up in the air and gulped. "Iyyyy....uhhhh...um? Who?"
The gay biker swung the butt of his gun up and slammed it into the head of the minion. The minion dropped to the floor, unconscious. Forge sighed in great relief and dropped his hands back to his sides. His savior then reversed the direction of the muzzle of his rather more impressive gun and pointed it at Forge. The boy's hands shot up once again.
"LeBeau? Where can I find him?" the biker asked, his voice deep and gravely.
"Um? Upstairs? Somewhere?" Forge squeaked out.
"Thanks." The man turned to leave, then stopped after only getting a few steps past the cowering inventor. "Forge?"
"Yeah?"
"Oh, I didn't recognize you at first." Gay-biker Man reached into a pocket in his leather vest and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "Here. You told me to give this to you."
Forge carefully reached out for the paper, keeping his other hand/metal morphing tool up in the air. "Um...thank you?"
He nodded before striding off to continue his quest.
Forge stood absolutely still for a second, then ran to the console at the rear of the Danger Room. He started hacking into it and finally got a hold of Dr. McCoy in his lab. Beast went to warn Remy, and sent a psychic message to the Professor. Charles then had Storm call Rogue, as well as the other students who had gone out to spend their Saturday elsewhere, to tell them to get back ASAP.
Hank reached a hand out and caught Remy's arm as he walked down the hall, coming from the bathroom. He pulled the younger man into a waiting elevator, looking and sniffing around to make sure that no one had seen them.
"Hey!" Remy yelped. "Wha' de fuck?"
"Forge made another boo-boo," Hank explained.
Remy rolled his eyes and pulled his arm out of Beast's loose grip. "Yeah, remind me not ta put dat guy on my Christmas card list. What'd he do now?"
"Apparently he let through someone who is looking for you, and is carrying a big gun."
Gambit's eyebrows went up as he went into self-preservation mode. He pulled out a deck of cards from his back pocket and pulled them out of the cardboard box. He shuffled them a few times through his hands, getting the feel of the cards, then tucked them into different pockets, up the long sleeved T-shirt he'd put on that morning, and hid a couple in places that Hank couldn't even catch with his animalistically enhanced vision. (A.N: Which brings up the question, why did Dr. McCoy always where glasses in the comics and TAS?)
"So," Gambit asked, "dis guy say why he wants ta kill me?"
"I never said he wanted to kill you."
"He's lookin' fo' me, an' he's carryin' a big gun. Sounds like he wants my head ta dese ears. Mebe ya list'nin' t' a diff'rent story."
Hank shrugged. "Let us say that the Professor is not taking any chances. He has given me instructions to bring you down to the Med. Lab and put you into one of the safe-rooms in there."
"He's not gonna let me fight?!" Remy frowned. "I doan even get t' d'fend m'self? I gotta go hide in a hole like some mouse when he sees de cat? I doan t'ink so, mon ami."
Remy pushed the button for the next floor and slipped out of the half-open doors. Hank sighed and shook his head.
Should have seen that one coming, Hank, he berated himself. Good job. Jeeze! And you're supposed to be the smart one!
While Beast had stood there mentally yelling at himself, the doors had started to close. Hank finally realized this and pushed the doors back open. He stepped out and sniffed the air. Hightened senses were such a useful thing. In less than ten seconds Hank knew that Remy had run right. Towards the stairs. It appeared to Dr. McCoy's scientific reasoning that Gambit was going to go confront his attacker head on.
"I wonder if he'll ever grow out of that, and learn that there are times to rush in blindly, and times to plan a strategy of attack," Hank asked himself as he rushed off to try and catch the foolish young man.
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Forge got out of the Danger Room shortly after the other man had run off. This was good, because when the minion that had been K.O.'ed woke up, he was in a really pissy mood.
He grumbled to himself—or possibly herself; it was still a mystery. Then the minion picked up the primitive weapon that its master had given it so that the murder of Professor Charles Xavier would look like it had been the actions of one of the mutant haters of this primitive century. The Great Lord Apocalypse even had a group to pin it on, which was currently emerging in the inner cities and Midwestern farm-towns alike: the Friends of Humanity. They preached human superiority, and they advocated violent means to remove mutants from society. It would be no huge feat to have them accused of assassinating the Professor. In fact, one of the members might actually come forward with pride to say that they did it. It was all so simple that even Minion #122 could pull it off.
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Fifteen minutes after receiving the call, Rogue and the boys pulled into the driveway of the Institute. It all looked quiet, but that didn't necessarily mean anything.
"Anybody got a plan?" Etienne asked. "Or do we just bust in there, guns blazin', so ta speak?"
"It's really quiet," Charlie observed, popping his knuckles. "It's always bad when it gets really quiet."
Rogue took a deep breath, held it for a second, then released it, just like in yoga. Now was the time to prove that she could be the leader that these two remembered. "Ever'body stay low an' keep ya eyes'n'ears peeled. Don' hesitate ta attack, but keep it a woundin' blow until ya know it's a bad guy, then aim fo' any important body part o' vital organ ya c'n think of."
The three of them moved closer to the front door, keeping to a semi-crotch, and spread out so that a bad guy couldn't take them all down with a single shot.
"Can ya actually keep ya ears peeled?" Etienne asked.
Rogue and Charlie shot him a sharp look. He put his hands up in surrender and shrugged. "Just checkin'."
Rogue turned back around and concentrated on the door. She reached out and slowly pushed it open, hoping that it wasn't bugged to explode. When there was no boom and flash of light, she pushed it so that the knob banged against the inside wall to make sure that there was no one behind the door to jump them. There didn't look like there was anyone in the foyer, or in the front part of the house at all. All was silent.
A noise behind them made Rogue crane her neck around to see the gate being electronically opened, admitting one of the cars that were registered to Xavier, and the students with licenses were allowed to drive if he gave the OK. She relaxed a bit, glad for the back up so that it wouldn't just be the three of them going in alone. A minute later, Kitty, Amara, Tabitha, Roberto, and Bobby climbed out when the car was parked, just behind Scott's baby, in the driveway.
"Where's Jean or Scott?" Rogue asked.
"They went to a movie on the other side of town," Amara explained. "They won't be here for another few minutes."
Rogue debated on whether or not to wait for them. She decided against it. They needed to get in there now and find out what was going on. "Alright. Ah guess y'all follow mah lead. Don' do nothin' stupid, or Ah'll make sure Logan has ya runnin' DR sessions 'til ya drop when this is ovah. We go in there, and we find—"She hesitated and amended what she had been about to say. "We find Storm. If Mystique is in there, Ah'll bet every good CD Ah own that she's disguised as the Professah."
"Lead the may, chicklet," Tabby said.
And so Rogue led them inside.
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POST-A/N: Look! Do you see it!? The plot!