Chapter 11
John was the first to board the X-Jet. He went straight for a chair, since he thought he might collapse again. But he stopped dead when he saw the… giant smirf riding behind shotgun. He resembled a man, but his skin was a deep navy with strange markings etched all over it. His ears were pointed, and his piercing yellow eyes didn't do wonders to make him look less animalistic. To top it all off, his teeth came to points as he said, "Guten tag."
John recognized the language as German, but was too utterly stunned to reply. He noticed Rogue stall behind him when she got a look at the man too. It was obvious on the man's face that he was hurt by their reaction.
"Who the hell is this?" Logan growled as he buckled into the seat behind Storm. John took a seat in front of the blue guy and strapped in.
"Kurt Wagner," the smirf replied, his heavy German obvious. "But in the Munich circus I was known as the incredible Nightcrawler."
"Yeah, save it," Logan grumbled. "Storm?"
"We're outta here," Storm replied, firing up the Jet again as everyone took their seats.
The flight was completely silent, and it was obvious that everyone was lost in their own train of thought. John was busy trying to think of any ways they could have gotten out of that situation unharmed if he hadn't done what he did. No options came to mind. So in that regard, he rationalized the situation to himself, but he figured doing so for the rest of the group would be much more problematic.
Logan's movement to the front of the plane caught John's attention.
"How far are we?" Logan asked, leaning on Jean's chair.
"We're actually coming up on the mansion now," Jean replied, pointing to a GPS.
It was then that the sound of a tiny double beeping alarm went off, and a green light flashed just in front of Storm.
"I've got two signals approaching," Storm said, furrowing her brow. Everyone exchanged a nervous glance. "They're comin' in fast."
A click alerted them that they were being contacted by one of the pursuing aircraft.
The female voice rang loud and slightly fuzzy, "Unidentified aircraft, you are ordered to descend to twenty-thousand feet. Return with our escort to Hanscomm airforce base. You have ten seconds to comply."
John's heart jumped into his stomach. Was this constant anxiety ever going to cease?
"Wow, somebody's angry," Storm said, punching something on the dash in front of her.
"I wonder why," Logan said sarcastically, turning to face John.
John merely glowered for a second, then raised his eyebrows, as if to say, "yeah, wanna fight about it?"
"We are coming up along side you to escort you to Hanscomm airforce base," the technologic voice of the pursuing airplane said again. "Lower your altitude now."
Storm stared out the wide windshield, analyzing both F-16s that were boxing them.
"Repeat, lower your altitude to twenty-thousand feet. This is your last warning," the woman said, and the transmission died.
A single, solitary second had passed when the F-16s pulled back, their shadowy forms disappearing from the windows.
"They're falling back," Storm said, but the way she said it made it sound like a bad thing. Everyone watched in silence as they were left unchecked.
All the alarms started blaring their song, their telltale sound making everyone grasp their seats tightly and bite the insides of their cheeks.
"They're marking us!" Storm exhaled, her eyes going wide.
"What!" Logan gasped back, straightening to his full height
"They're gunna fire," Storm said, punching in some buttons on the dash. "Hang on!" she called, looking back to the passengers behind her and taking hold of the yoke.
Logan scrambled into his seat just in time to have his eardrums plastered to the back of it. Storm accelerated much faster than she normally would have, immediately beginning maneuvering protocol. No one even noticed that Rogue's shaky hands couldn't quite grasp her safety harness.
"I gotta shake 'em," Storm said, yanking the yoke sideways.
The Blackbird did an easy 360, flipping them all the way upside down and back right side up in under a second. John's stomach leapt into his throat and he got the incredible urge to gag. He was reminded suddenly of his first roller coaster ride back before the current term.
"Please don't do that again," he begged, his voice shaking.
"I agree," Logan said, and finally John appreciated the guy.
The GPS system alerted them that one of the F-16s was diving toward them.
"Don't we have any weapons in this heap?" Logan snarled. No answer came by way of mouth, but the sky outside immediately began to turn a sickly navy and gray, darkening the interior of the Blackbird.
John stared out the porthole-sized window to his right, and didn't like what he saw. Huge funnels were twisting their way down from the clouds; probably at least ten of them, and Storm was maneuvering her way through them. Within seconds, one of the dots on the GPS signifying the F-16s fell right off the grid.
The Blackbird rocked between the funnels, bouncing and jostling everyone around in their high-performance metal chairs. But within another few seconds, the other F-16 disappeared as well, sending a relieved sigh throughout the plane. The skies instantly lightened, the clouds disappearing as well as the funnels. The Blackbird sailed as smoothly as if there had never been any sign of clouds.
"Everyone okay back there?" Jean said, turning to face them for a moment.
"No," Logan said, and John smiled to himself. This guy was becoming more of a kindred spirit by the second. Everything was quiet for a nanosecond.
The alarms began buzzing again, but this time the GPS was going crazy with different colored lights… missiles.
"Oh my God, there's two of them," Storm said, shifting the Blackbird again to try to shake them. She increased their speed as well, hoping to outrun them since maneuvering wouldn't do any good against heat seeking missiles. It would be considered impossible to outrun them in any other airplane, but the X-Jet was a superior airplane, in every way. Sadly, her attempts did little.
John wasn't aware that Jean was trifling with the missiles, but one of them suddenly fell off the grid, skittering sideways and exploding.
"There's one more!" Storm said, a tiny bit of hope in her voice.
John's heart raced as they all waited to find out if they were doomed. The GPS panned downward as the missile drew closer, and John could hear Jean panting in front of him.
"Jean!" Storm cried, her eyes burning into the GPS, where the missile was steadily growing closer.
Jean gasped, her hands almost gripping into the metal of the yoke in front of her. "Oh, God!" she gasped, and John's heart sank.
His hands dug into the seat as the rear of the plane collapsed inward, the metal screaming along with the explosion that had forced it apart. Wind immediately crushed through the airplane, whipping about them and tossing the plane from side to side as easily as a soccer ball. The Blackbird instantaneously did a nosedive, causing the feeling of weightlessness to overtake its passengers.
Alarms and flashing "warnings" immediately occupied the dash of the airplane, and Jean and Storm did their best to pull the plane out of the nosedive. Of course, the Blackbird ignored their requests as it plummeted toward the earth.
Just as John figured things couldn't get any worse, Rogue slipped from her chair, and was sucked, screaming, from the chasm at the back of the airplane.
"Rogue!" Bobby screamed, helplessly reaching out for her, even though she was already long gone. Logan looked back as well, something unreadable on his face. John would have felt his own sense of loss if he wasn't busy staring at the rapidly approaching ground in the windshield. It was like watching a movie; the way it was crystal clear and way too real.
He hardly noticed the blue guy… what had his name been. Nightcrawler? Whoever he was, he jumped from his seat, his seatbelt flying wildly, and he just… disappeared. He left some kind of blue smoke behind that didn't seem to be affected by the winds whipping through the cabin.
Within seconds, he returned, but this time he had Rogue. The two of them collapsed onto the floor of the plane, Rogue quite surprised and shaken. John would have been astounded, again, if he weren't in this situation. He kind of figured that either way, everyone but Logan was going to die. What did it matter if Rogue did it in the plane or out of it?
But suddenly the blown-out rear of the aircraft began to mend itself, like watching a movie in rewind. All the shredded pieces of metal just bent back into place, and John was strangely reminded of Airheads… the way they moved when you held them for too long. Yeah, he was definitely loosing it. He had heard that people get flashes of their past before they die, but did they go crazy? Get visions of candy? Yeah, no.
"Jean?" Storm yelled over the noise of their descent. She was peering at the mending plane, her eyebrows furrowed.
"It's not me!" Jean cried, holding on tightly to the yoke in front of her.
Just as he was sure he was taking his final breath, John was thrown against his harness, and everyone else did the same. The plane had abruptly slowed, and come to a halt, like those Tower of Terror type rides at theme parks.
Great. He was envisioning candy and theme park rides. Was it possible to go senile in your teens?
John took a shaky breath as he looked through his tousled hair out the front of the plane, where stood a well dressed Magneto and lack-thereof Mystique. Her blue, slightly scaly skin shown brightly in the sunlight, and she stood with confidence; one hand on her hip. John had seen pictures and heard stories, but this was his first time he'd ever laid eyes on them personally. And they were definitely every inch as intimidating as they'd been described. Minus the cape; Magneto probably could have pulled off an equally scary ensemble without it.
Magneto grinned as he stared up at them, arm outstretched as he easily supported the metal plane in midair. He gave a sideways glance at Mystique, and by his lips, it looked like he said something along the lines of "When will these people ever learn how to fly?"