MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING

This chapter includes an attempted lynching. Yes, the X-Men are an allegory for racism and homophobia and always have been, and we try to treat that with respect and care. We also acknowledge that there is real-life racism and homophobia, including within the Marvel universe as-is.

However, while we try to be careful about the way we write sensitive topics, we recognize that this can be a triggering topic and wanted to warn you.


Chapter 11: "A Desperate Father"


Leslie Ann was grinning to herself as she got home for the weekend, her homework in her backpack as well as a Valentine she was using as a bookmark since she found it on her desk during math. It was one of those Avenger Valentines that you could get in boxes of twenty, but she still thought it was a sweet thought.

She was sure her dad would have a heart attack when Neil finally got up the courage to ask her on a date — and she was sure he was going to — but she really did think he was cute. Scales and all. He was just really nice, and she liked hanging out with him.

She dropped off her books in her bedroom, but instead of the usual family dinner, there was a barbecue outside in the backyard. Someone new had moved in across the street, and Leslie Ann's parents had invited them over, along with a few of the other neighbors, for a party, like they always did for new people.

"Do they have any kids?" Leslie Ann asked curiously as she and Mary Beth helped their mom bring out some chips while their dad carried out the big heated container of hot water so people could make their own cocoa to warm up if they wanted to sit outside — though Rachel had cleaned the house so anyone who wanted to be inside could stay in if they wanted.

"No, I don't think so," Rachel said.

"Well, darn, I was hoping there was a cute boy," she teased, and Mary Beth giggled delightedly.

"Don't let your dad hear you say things like that," Rachel warned.

"I meant a cute boy for Mary Beth," Leslie Ann said, getting even more giggles from her little sister.

"What, do you already have one?" Rachel asked, raising one eyebrow and turning to give her daughter her full attention.

"Not yet," Leslie Ann said with a grin.

Rachel shook her head at that. "You have the same tell as your aunt," she teased. "She could never lie to me either."

Leslie Ann laughed. "Well, he hasn't asked me out yet," she admitted.

"Oooh. You totally have a boy," Mary Beth said, wide-eyed and grinning.

"Not yet!" Leslie Ann insisted, and her sister just laughed.

"You so can't tell Dad," Mary Beth whispered.

"Don't I know it," Leslie Ann said, shaking her head.

The three Wright women just shared little grin as Rachel directed her girls on where to set out the food, and Leslie Ann asked her little sister about how band was going and how her language arts teacher was — since she remembered that Mary Beth said that teacher was really tough.

Finally, some of the neighbors started to trail in, and Rachel and Anton greeted everyone warmly. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the two of them, so it was obvious who the new move-ins were when there was a pause in all the warm welcoming so that there could be introductions.

The new neighbors had come up from Roanoke for the wife's work, and the husband worked from home as an IT consultant, so he was able to make the move. He seemed to get along well with a few of the neighbors, though his wife was what Leslie Ann's grandma would call "a personality" when she was being nice.

She seemed to have opinions about everything from the texture of the barbecue to the decorations in the house, and Leslie Ann quickly decided that she didn't want to have to stick around to watch her mom making the "I'm killing you in my mind" face. She filled up her plate and headed inside with Mary Beth.

The two girls curled up by the fire and chatted as Leslie Ann answered all of Mary Beth's questions about Neil. As she spoke, Leslie Ann was lazily playing with her mom's houseplant, a perennial flower that she always tried to perk up when she came by because it was really beautiful when it was in full bloom. She played with the petals until they were thicker and stronger and the stem was stiffer and the leaves were fuller.

"What are you doing?"

Both Wright girls looked up in surprise when they saw their new neighbor standing there, and they glanced at each other. "Just talkin' about boys," Mary Beth said, though she self-consciously took her feet off the coffee table.

But the woman was staring at Leslie Ann, and Leslie Ann suddenly got it. And her temper, admittedly, got the better of her — after dealing with all those MRD simulations for team training and being benched with the rest of the junior squad while stupid people were making it hard to even go on a simple mission.

"You better get used to it, lady, because the X-Men live just down the way, so you moved into a whole city of mutants like me," Leslie Ann snapped at her.

The woman stared at her and then let out a totally disbelieving noise as she spun on her heel, stalking out the door.

"Good riddance," Leslie Ann muttered under her breath.

"Mom's gonna be so mad," Mary Beth said, wide-eyed.

"Mom doesn't like her either. She's stupid," Leslie Ann said, waving her off. She set down her plate on the coffee table and shook her head. "Come on. Let's go do something."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. Snow angels or something. There's still plenty of snow on the front lawn that hasn't melted yet under the trees."

"Could you show me how you make a desk in the tree?"

At that, Leslie Ann broke into a huge grin. "Yeah, for sure," she promised, grabbing her little sister's hand as the two of them headed out front, leaving the adults to do their thing around back.

The two girls climbed up into the biggest tree out front so Leslie Ann could show off her desk creation skills, and Mary Beth seemed to think it was the best idea she'd ever heard.

"We should so do our homework up here from now on," Mary Beth giggled delightedly.

"I can make desks for both of us," Leslie Ann promised.

Mary Beth laughed. "This is pretty much the only time I've ever wanted to do homework."

"It'll wear off," Leslie Ann teased her sister.

"I dunno. Not many people can say their big sister built them a desk," Mary Beth teased. "And even less can say they did it without using any hammers and nails and stuff."

"You just must have the best big sister ever."

"You wish," Mary Beth teased, grinning as the two of them climbed back down so that they could go inside to get their things. Leslie Ann got down first and was waiting at the bottom of the tree for her sister to climb down the rest of the way when she heard the squeal of tires and spun around, instantly on high alert from all the training she had been doing — though she hadn't even turned around fully before the people in the van had hit her with a shot from those new guns.

Mary Beth screamed, which alerted the people in the back to what was going on, but neither of them could react fast enough as Leslie Ann felt someone grab her around the waist and pull her into the van — which drove off before the door was even closed.


Anton had been in the backyard using up the last of the burgers on the grill when he heard Mary Beth scream, and he didn't hesitate to burst into a full-out run, the spatula still in hand. He rounded the corner of the house just in time to see a van speeding off as his younger daughter tumbled out of the tallest tree with tears streaming down her face — and there was no sign of Leslie Ann.

He swore, loudly, and rushed to where he had parked his car, thankful that he always made a point to park around the corner so that he wouldn't be blocked when they had company if he needed to respond to something. But the people in the van already had a serious head start, and even slamming the gas pedal and getting the sirens screaming, there was still a good, long moment of pure panic before Anton spotted the van.

He somehow wasn't surprised to find that it had an MRD insignia on it, given the things that Leslie Ann had said were going on lately. But why come after his little girl? She wasn't new, and the X-Men weren't coming to introduce her like the other kids that Leslie Ann had talked about.

He had a sinking feeling that he did, in fact, know why, but he really didn't want to think about it, or he'd go into an even deeper panic than before.

The van didn't stop for Anton's lights, veering around a corner as Anton sped after it, though Anton was frustrated — but not surprised — when his call to dispatch for a kidnapping in progress didn't exactly get him the backup he wanted when he described the van he was chasing as an MRD van.

His temper was starting to boil over by the time the van pulled into what was clearly the local MRD headquarters, and he slammed the car into park as he screeched to a stop, jumping out of the car to rush to the van.

"Police," he shouted, banging on the door. "Open up now and come out with your hands up."

The MRD agent who had been driving came out with a smug sort of look that just had Anton's hackles raised even further. "What's the problem, officer?"

"Open the van," Anton said through his teeth, an inch away from bashing the guy in front of him.

"I don't have to do a thing," the agent sneered, and Anton took a step closer, eyes narrowed.

"You're a suspect in a kidnapping. Now open. That. Van," Anton said low.

The agent just laughed, and that decided it for Anton as he grabbed the man by the shirt and batted away the punch that the guy tried to hit him with, pulling his arms behind him to cuff him. "I don't have time for this. You're under arrest on suspicions of kidnapping," he muttered as he put the cuffs on and then stepped around the guy to pull open the driver's side door and hit the 'door open' button to get into the van.

Once it was unlocked, Anton stepped around the guy again, flinging the side door open — but he couldn't find any sign of Leslie Ann.

The total panic gripped him as he searched through the van. The weapons and various equipment to detain mutants were off-putting enough, but there was simply no sign of his little girl.

"Leslie Ann!" he shouted, searching the floor in case there was some kind of hidden switch. He still couldn't find anything — and when he did finally trip the hidden door, there was no Leslie Ann, just more weapons and several inhibitor collars.

He stared down at the weapons for a long moment before the more logical part of his mind reminded him that he was wasting time, and he leapt from the van to where he'd left the MRD agent, frustrated to find that while he had been in the van trying to find Leslie Ann, the guy's buddies had come out to see what was going on.

He didn't care which of the agents he got his hands on first, and the one he did grab found himself slammed against the wall as his feet left the ground and Anton got right in his face. "Where did you take her?" he all but snarled.

"You'll have to be a little more specific," the agent sneered at him.

But that was just the wrong reaction, and Anton slammed the guy once more. "Leslie Ann. My daughter. Where. Is. She?"

"Don't ask me," the agent said, wincing a bit at the hard hit. "I wasn't there."

Anton let out a bark of pure anger as he tossed the man aside and made for the guy he'd cuffed. One of his friends tried to say something to the effect of Anton not having jurisdiction there — but Anton decked the guy with a left hook before he got to the MRD agent. He didn't care what the department had arranged with the MRD. This was his little girl, and this guy knew where to find her.

He grabbed two handfuls of MRD uniform as he picked the guy up and, instead of slamming him into the wall, pulled him closer. "Where is she?" he said, angry beyond shouting; his voice had turned into something a little darker and quieter, right in the man's face.

"Can't keep track of your kid, huh? Well, I'm sure she'll turn up sooner or later."

Anton's eyes narrowed, and he picked the guy up off his feet, this time slamming him into the wall hard enough that his head hit. "I know you creeps took her. I'm not playing games. Tell me where my daughter is. Now."

But the guy's response was just to laugh under his breath, and Anton swore as he tossed the guy aside, his hands shaking in anger. No one in the department was going to get involved in stopping the MRD, either…

He went back to his car, still shaking with rage as he pulled out his phone. It rang twice before Scott picked up, and Anton went right to it. "Scott, Leslie Ann is gone. The MRD took her from my front yard, and I can't find her in their van or their headquarters."

"How long ago?"

"Less than an hour. Chased them for about fifteen minutes, but no one here… they must have moved her before I picked them up in the car," Anton said, trying to force his mind past the panic to the facts of the case.

"We're on it," Scott promised. "You might want to gather up the family and come over. It would be safer for you."

"I'll tell Rachel to bring Mary Beth, but I'm going to meet you there myself," Anton told him.


Leslie Ann was terrified.

The MRD guys that had grabbed her hadn't wasted any time in holding her down to tie her up, and even though she kicked and squirmed and screamed at them, they had tied her hands behind her back. When she kicked one guy in the jaw, his partner just responded by hitting her hard enough that she was knocked back, and then they held her down to duct tape her ankles together as well. The guy who hit her slapped a piece over her mouth as well.

She still squirmed around, but for as tied up as she was, she couldn't do very much.

She did fight them a little harder when the van pulled off to the side and the two guys in the back with her picked her up to take her out of the van.

The panic set in, and she squirmed and thrashed, but the men grabbed her arms and dragged her out of the van, which sped off a moment later. She tried to make it hard for them to take her anywhere, squirming until it was clear that wasn't going to help her get away. Then she dropped, using her body weight against them, dragging her heels into the ground until they picked her up higher.

She was too scared at first to pay much attention to where they were going, focused more on trying to keep from going anywhere, but when it was painfully clear that she wasn't going to get away, she glanced around her surroundings, shocked when she realized that they seemed to be headed toward the school.

For just a moment, she wondered why they were going that way — and then all at once, it hit her that it couldn't be anything good. At all.

She squirmed a few more times, almost out of her mind terrified, but the MRD agents seemed to be more entertained than deterred by her efforts. She even heard one of them laugh when she tried to twist around to kick out with both feet. She managed to kick one of the guys in the side, but his buddy just laughed when his friend doubled over, and they both tightened their grip on her after that.

They didn't go very far into the treeline of the forest that bordered the school before the MRD agents stopped, though, and Leslie Ann felt her heart fall. If they'd just gone in another half mile or so, Noh-Varr's security system would have knocked these guys out, and she might just have had a chance.

When they came to a stop, the two MRD guys simply dropped her, and without her feet underneath her properly, Leslie Ann fell into the muddy, snowy forest floor, her heart in her throat as she tried to pick her head up. She would have rolled to her side to at least get her bearings, but one of the agents put a heavy boot on her hip, pressing down to keep her from moving.

Still, she could pick up her head, and she peered up at the second MRD agent to see what he was up to, sure that they were going to do something horrible. She didn't know what, but she knew that these were the same people who had helped build that camp in North Dakota.

At first, Leslie Ann wasn't sure what the guy was doing, but when he angled his body back her way, she saw the rope in his hands as he fastened it into a noose and simply couldn't stop it when she burst into tears, crying quietly because the tape on her mouth prevented anything louder that the muffled sounds she could make.

"Finally caught up, have you?" the man standing on her side sneered, pressing harder until she let out a muffled whimper when his boots dug into her and pushed her deeper into the ground. "Whatdya think the X-Men'll think of our little message when they find you?"

Leslie Ann was sure she was going to throw up. Or pass out. Or something. She felt like her heart was beating too hard, and she couldn't catch a breath right for how scared she was. She couldn't get up because of the guy standing on her, and his partner was just a few feet away stringing a rope over a tree.

She was sure she was going to die.


Scott had been ready to tear the town apart looking for Leslie Ann, so he was surprised when Rachel came back with a location much closer to home:

She's in the forest on the east side.

On it, Scott replied, already relaying that information to the other X-Men, though the fact that it was so close… it honestly just had Scott falling into even deeper concern than before. This close to the school meant the MRD were looking for either a fight or a statement. And he sincerely hoped it was the former.

Anton had already been headed to the school, and he didn't even drive the rest of the way up the long and winding driveway when he saw that Scott was headed out; he just pulled over and rolled down the window. "Did you find her?"

"She's still on the move in the forest," Scott told him.

"In the …" It was clear in Anton's expression that he had come to the same conclusion that Scott had as to why they would be so close to the school, and he simply threw his car into park and jumped out, taking off at a run alongside Scott.

Logan met them at the treeline as Scott relayed to Rachel that Anton was with him. She had sent the others into the forest as well — Kurt and his bamfs were searching, along with Hank, Tyler, and K on tracking — a task that was made a little more difficult with the fact that Leslie Ann spend all her time in the forest among the trees and plants, so her scent was all over the place. Storm, Bobby, Remy, Mistral, Kate, Noh, Jubilee — everyone was involved trying to find the missing girl.

And Scott was sure to relay as much to Anton. "We'll find her fast," he promised, though Anton didn't answer except to clench his jaw and nod.

Not that Scott could blame him. If it was his little girl… He shook his head and kept on running.

They'd gone beyond Noh's security lines when Logan very suddenly switched from searching to a dead run. Scott glanced to Anton and was glad to see that the worried father wasn't asking any questions, instead breaking into a run as well to keep up with Logan as he barreled down the scent trail he'd clearly picked up.

It was lucky for them that it was still winter and that, even with the evergreen trees, the foliage was still sparser than usual. If it had been any other season, they might not have seen Leslie Ann when they did.

There wasn't time for any of the three men to fully process the full scene beyond simply the fact that the MRD agents had tied a rope around her neck, and one of the MRD agents was in the middle of pulling the other end of that rope when they spotted him through the trees.

Scott immediately took aim and shot through the rope — and the branch it was connected to — and Leslie Ann hit the ground again. The man who had hold of the other end of the rope would have been Scott's next target, but at the same instant he had fired his optic blast, he heard the sharp rapport of a gun beside him. When he did finally look over, he saw that Anton had pulled his sidearm — and the MRD agent was dead.

And Logan ... Logan was bounding after the guy's partner with his claws out and a full snarl on his lips as the guy scrambled to get away.

LOGAN, Scott screamed through the connection Rachel had set up for them, and while Logan didn't pause, Scott was sure he had Logan's attention as he called out, Forget the badge! while he rushed to Leslie Ann to check on her.

DONE, was the half-snarled response through the connection as Logan tore through the trees.

Anton got to Leslie Ann first, pure terror in his gaze as he dropped to his knees beside her, though it was clear she was breathing from the fact that her shoulders were shaking. She was trembling all over, clearly terrified, and Scott arrived a moment later to quickly help Anton untie her.

As soon as she'd been cut free and the tape was removed, Leslie Ann took in a deep, shuddering breath that reached all the way to her bones — and then another one, gasping in air like she hadn't been able to do with the tape over her mouth. And after just a few breaths, she fell into sobs, clutching onto Anton as Anton pulled her tightly to him, cradling her right there on the forest floor.

He held her as tightly as he dared — while still giving her room to breath — as she held onto his shoulders for everything she was worth, unable to stop sobbing as she cried her pure terror out onto his shoulder. He had one hand on the back of her head as he held her, and he kissed her temple gently as he rocked slightly and whispered out that she was safe, that he was there, that no one was going to hurt her.

When Logan came up to the little group a short while later, he had that look on his face that Scott knew meant he wasn't quite done yet. "I found a solid trail out. Gonna run it down," Logan said evenly. "K's going with me."

"From what Anton told me, you're just going to follow it back to the road. The drive went back to their headquarters," Scott said.

Logan held up the second guy's wallet. "I might have a location and a way in."

Scott paused and looked back at Leslie Ann before he nodded. "Alright."

"You got the little ones, right?" Logan asked just as he turned to leave.

"Yeah. Annie and her sister are already on it," Scott said.

Logan nodded and looked toward Leslie Ann and her father before he melted into the woods. "See you guys a little later. Rest up."

Anton, meanwhile, glanced up to see that Logan was gone and let out a sigh. "We should get inside," he said softly as he picked Leslie Ann up and started to carry her back toward the school.

The rest of the search party was filing in slowly from the woods, and most of them looked furious still. Kurt made his way over to them in a quick poof of smoke and then offered Anton his hand. "I know Dr. McCoy would like to look her over quickly."

Anton nodded once. "Yeah, alright," he said, still holding onto Leslie Ann tightly as the three of them teleported inside. Anton had never teleported before and immediately took in a deep gasp when they arrived, slightly wide-eyed.

"It's a little disorienting the first time," Kurt said gently before he guided him toward where Hank was waiting. "If there was a way to prepare you I would have."

"That's just about how this whole damn thing works anyway," Anton muttered as he shook his head and brought Leslie Ann to set her gently down for Hank.

Hank wasted no time making sure his patient was comfortable, though to Anton's surprise, the furry blue doctor didn't immediately assess her, instead taking care to pull her into a hug and promise that it was being taken care of until he too was convinced that the little girl wasn't going to fall apart.

From there, he worked quickly and gently to check her over and then, with a quick flourish, handed her a Twinkie with a smile. "For only my best patients," he told her.

She nodded with the hint of a smile and then threw her arms around his neck for another hug as Anton let out a breath and whispered 'thank you' over the top of her head to Hank.

"My pleasure," Hank replied. "She's a wonderful girl."