update, 1/12/2016, explained in the A/N of Chapter 8 of Prometheus: Arya, originally from Carlsbad, California, is now from Glen Island, New Rochelle, NY.

Chapter 5

Quicksilver was already waiting for them in the lobby of the Pentagon. Behind him, a large crowd of tourists were grouped together in dozens. There were four groups all in all. The tour guides stood together in a small semi-circle up front, giving the masses instructions, the do's and don'ts while walking through the hallways of the Pentagon. While they spoke, Arya listened to Hank while he briefed them of the plan.

"I made a device that can disrupt the signal waves of the security cams," he said, fingering the pouch on his tool belt. Arya assumed that his 'device' was inside. "I'll stay up here to monitor what's happening. Charles, Arya, Logan—you're going to sneak down to the underground levels. Your job is to evacuate all the personnel down there, so that Peter can walk Erik out, but I'll be activating the fire alarms for a bigger distraction. Arya, since Charles won't be able to control Erik, you'll have to stop him in case he gets frisky." Arya nodded in grim understanding, sharing a quick glance with Charles.

"Peter," Hank started. At the sound of his name, Maximoff inclined his head. "Your job is to get down to Erik's jail chamber and bust him out. It'll either be made of glass, concrete, or plastic. I sincerely hope you have a plan in mind right now."

Peter smirked slyly. "I do," he said, before disappearing from his spot in a flash of silver.

"We all understand the plan?" Charles asked, to which everyone nodded. After a moment, he added, "And no killing, alright? I don't want a bounty on our heads again like after Cuba."

Arya nodded in agreement. The weeks that took place after the events in Cuba were chaotic; the government wasn't after them, but mutant-haters hung back on almost every street. She and the others were forced to lay low for a month until the tension finally died down. But this was the Pentagon. This was government property. Everyone here was important, and if they killed anyone, it would be worse than Cuba.

Behind them, the tourist groups dispersed. Arya watched as Logan looked at her, and at each of the mutants surrounding him (except Peter). He nodded. "Let's get this over with."

By unspoken agreement, the four of them melded into a random group of tourists. In an attempt at blending in, Hank adjusted his hat, and Logan shoved his hands into his pockets. Arya noticed all of this and slipped her hand into Charles' twining their fingers together. "Apple-pie couple," she murmured to him.

He chuckled beside her and squeezed her hand.

Apparently, they'd picked the first group. It was either their lucky day, or Hank (who led them there) seriously knew what he was doing. Their tour guide, a curvy woman with red lips and strawberry blond hair, started them on their way deeper into the building.

Of course, Arya never expected the government to allow tourists into the more important rooms of the building. All the tour guide led them through were hallways, hallways, and more hallways. Not that Arya minded. Her brain was busy coming up with a back-up plan in case things went wrong downstairs, and a back-up plan to the back-up plan, and another back-up plan for the second back-up plan.

She flexed her fingers beside her, trying to prepare them for the stress she was sure to be going into. A few minutes ago, she had let go of Charles' hand. He'd frowned in confusion at first, but understood as soon as she took her gloves off. Now, as they walked among the perfume-filled crowd, she'd practice grasping onto his mutation. Logan, who was only a little ways away from them, grunted when she tried doing it on him. It worked, though, and Arya was satisfied enough to stop after a second try. He probably just thought it was a cramp or something.

Eventually, the wall disappeared from beside them, giving way to two sets of stairs—one leading up, one leading down—and Arya was thankful that she'd decided against wearing heels that afternoon. Charles and Logan had immediately broken away from the group, leaving Hank who was to stay behind. Arya gave the young scientists a quick pat on the shoulder, to reassure him, before trailing after the other two.

They must have rushed down seven flights of stairs. Arya assumed that the Pentagon had elevators, but it was for Peter to use, not them. After all, he was the one who was going to travel down a hundred floors. But he did have supersonic speed and senses as a mutation.

Their shoes clacked noiselessly against the marble floor. When they passed by a trash can, the three of them discarded their tourist pamphlets and shoved them inside. They walked down an all-white hallway smaller than the ones upstairs and without framed pictures or documents on the walls. Arya was vaguely aware of the security cameras hovering above them, but she ignored them and focused on walking faster.

At the back of her head, she hoped that Hank had already turned a dial on his device or something.

Half a dozen flights of stairs later, the mildly wide hallways became even narrower. The ceilings grew low. Logan, who was the tallest of the three, was required to bow his head slightly in order to stride through. Arya was forced to the back of the group, considering how tight the space was. Charles and Logan walked stiffly ahead of her, and Arya gave the professor's mutation a light squeeze in order to calm him. His shoulders sagged forward the slightest bit.

Before Arya could muster a smile, alarm bells sounded all across the hall. There was a doorway at the end of the hallway, where loud exclamations and noisy pans sounded, accompanied by the music of sprinkling water.

Charles was the first to rush inside.

"Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls!" he started, sliding past a cook who was soaking wet. Arya switched the imaginary button in her head to autopilot. It was then that she noticed two guards from across the room were nearing them, and she flexed her fingers.

"This is a code red situation," Charles continued. "We are evacuating the entire floor so that we—my, uh, associates and I can secure the prisoner—"

"Who are you?" one of the guards demanded. Neither of them looked very bulky. And beside her, Logan looked like he was seconds away from throwing the first punch.

Charles shifted awkwardly in front of her. "We are, uh, Special Operations CB-FB-CID." Arya gawked at the telepath, gritting her teeth. The guards didn't look convinced. "Look, perhaps you didn't…"

From the corner of her eye, Arya noticed Logan clench his fist. "Calm down," she muttered.

"—we are in complete lockdown situation," Charles was saying.

Logan's hand loosened up. "Too late," he said. Arya blinked, opening her mouth to tell him another thing but he'd already sprung from his spot.

Taking a long stride forward, he slammed the crook of his wrist into one guard's chest, making him double back and gasp as the air was knocked out of his lungs. While the other guard was busy trying to draw his gun, Logan snatched two frying pans from a nearby cooking stand and swiped the guard's legs out from beneath him. The guard flipped, and Logan finished him off by hitting his jaw.

The first guard—the one with the now cracked sternum, Arya imagined—was just straightening up when Logan struck his cheek with one of his pans. Logan grabbed the guard by his shoulder and pushed him over the cooking stand. It fell sideways beneath the guard's weight, and sent them both tumbling to the floor.

Arya took in the scene with a tiny smirk. Beside her, however, Charles gaped at Logan like he had somehow turned into an elephant.

Logan stared at the professor cynically. "Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "Were you finished?"

A quiet snicker escaped Arya's lips. She brought a hand up and pretended to scratch her nose. Charles didn't notice. Logan did, though, and he threw her a small smirk before turning around. Charles rushed forward and knelt by one of the guards, sifting through the loops in his belt before he pulled out a wand-like thing. Arya assumed it was a key of some sort. She followed Charles to the closed doorway at the end of the room. Beside it was a panel with a key-shaped hole on it. Charles slipped the key in and twisted.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking over his shoulder to address Logan. "I'm just not very good with violence." Arya silently agreed.

Then, there came a quiet ding from within the doorway, making the professor whip his head around. The doors opened like an elevator, revealing the one face Arya had grown acquainted with and the one face she wanted to break in with one of her trophies from Glen Island.

"Charles?" Erik said, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

Before Arya could hit him, Charles did it first.

She barely had time to step back when he pulled his arm back, only to bring it forward again and punch Erik square in the jaw. The sheer force of his hit sent him tumbling into the elevator, while Erik collapsed onto the floor. Logan started forward, but otherwise made no other move to hurt Charles. Rage boiled up inside of Arya, but none so worse than Charles'. She decided that her retribution could wait.

She tore her hateful eyes away from Magneto and instead looked to Peter, who hung back by the corner with a plain look on his face. Behind him, a man was stuck to the wall, cocooned by duct tape and his mouth taped over. Arya looked Peter over in approval. "Nice job, Quicksilver."

He inclined his head. "Pleasure." Arya grinned.

Meanwhile, Charles had wandered over to where she stood, leaning against her as he cradled his knuckle. Arya looked down at it in concern, noticing the slight discoloration that had appeared.

"It's nice to see you too, old friend," said Erik. She refused to look at him."And walking!"

"No thanks to you," Charles said bitterly. Arya took his hand and stroked the bruised area until he unclenched his fist. It tightened around hers slightly when Erik stood up.

"You're the last person in the world I expected to see today," he stated.

"Believe me, I wouldn't be here if I didn't have to." Charles snarled, and Arya had the better sense to let go of his hand before he told her to. "If we get you out of here, we do it my way. No killing."

Erik gestured to his head and raised an eyebrow. "No helmet."

Arya tuned both of them out, stepping out of the elevator to stand beside Logan. With pricked ears, she listened past the water sprinklers and fire alarm for footsteps. There were none… yet.

Behind the two arguing mutants, Peter stood by the tied-up guard with an intense scowl on his face as he listened in on Charles' and Erik's conversation; though if Arya had to guess, he was just doing it for kicks. "Peter," Arya called. He zipped from his place inside the elevator and was in front of Arya in a millisecond. "You don't happen to have super-hearing as well as super-speed, do you?" asked Arya.

The young mutant scoffed. "Who needs super-hearing when you can have super-speed? That's stupid."

Then right at that moment, the footsteps came.

Arya pushed past Peter and made Charles turn and look at her. "We need to leave," she told him sternly. "Now."

Just as the word escaped her mouth, the doors at the other end of the room burst open. "Nobody move!" came the command. Five or so guards rushed into the room, followed by five more, their guns already trained on the five mutants standing by the elevator. "Hold it right there!" the point guard yelled, making Arya freeze. As slow as she might, she brought her hands up to her head and turned around. None of them pulled a trigger. Arya hoped they couldn't see the symbols on her hands, because they would have thought they were offensive.

It sucked that she was in front of all her other male companions, for now all the guns seemed to be pointed at her. The bullets weren't metal either; she couldn't use Erik's power. Hank's assumption earlier that day had been wrong, for Charles' mutation was still dull. Arya could use Logan's, but there was no way she could get close enough to any of the guards' guns before they fired.

Peter, whispered Arya's brain. Her eyes flicked left to right, but she didn't turn her head. Where was he?

"Charles," demanded Erik. Arya resisted the urge to tell him to shut up and racked her brain for a plan.

"Hands up!" the point guard ordered. "Or we will shoot!"

"Freeze them, Charles," Erik said.

"I can't," came the professor's reply. His voice broke, and Arya took a small step back.

The point guard adjusted his gun so that it was undoubtedly pointed at her now. "DON'T MOVE!"

"Quicksilver," Arya muttered through her teeth. "Any time now."

Before she received any sign of acknowledgement, the objects in the room started shaking. Not all of them, though. Arya's heart dropped. Everything metal.

Everything that happened afterwards happened in a matter of seconds.

She shouted at Erik the same time Charles did. She spun around and grabbed his hand, because it was the only thing that was left bare. Her wet hair clung to his face, and his eyes flickered down to look at her. She glared up at him, stopping his mutation in its tracks. All around her, metal pots and pans and spoons and knives flew up into the air, but they didn't shoot themselves towards the humans. Gunshots rang out. Arya felt a spike of heat travel into her palms and up her arms. It wasn't Erik.

Four bullets zipped past Arya's head, making her flinch instinctively. Grunts of pain and noise of pots and pans landing on the floor reached her ears. She whipped around, only to find all ten guards lying on the floor. The kitchen was a mess, but past all the water droplets and spilled sauces—was Peter.

He stood at the other end of the room, standing lamely with his earphones placed in his ears. Arya was fairly sure that he wasn't standing there seconds ago, but behind her and the others. She was sure that he hadn't a cap on before either. He unceremoniously pulled his earphones out, looking at the four of them with inquisitive eyes.

It was then that Arya noticed her hand was still gripping Erik's; rather tighter than she'd intended. She let go immediately, glaring at him for a second more before turning her attention to Charles. "You alright?" she asked.

Her telepath glanced at her, breathing heavily but mustering up enough mettle for a small smile. "I'm fine. You?"

"Couldn't be better," answered Arya sarcastically, earning her a quiet chuckle before the professor let her be, starting towards Peter (or the door). Arya turned around and found Erik staring down at Logan's claws, which he must have unsheathed during Quicksilver's save.

Logan glared after the metal-manipulator as he walked away, but otherwise sheathed his claws. "Let's get out of here," he muttered to Arya, not even giving her a sideways glance before he strode past. She stayed where she was, staring after the three men that barely gave Peter the thanks he deserved.

When the two of them were the only ones left in the room, Arya walked up to him and gave him a kiss on the cheek. He blushed, and Arya smirked. "Don't tell Charles I did that," she said.

"Never," he answered, laughing lightly.

Arya chuckled and nodded for the exit. "Come on. Let's get out of here before more guards show up."

"I'll just kick their asses again."

She grinned. "I don't doubt that."

Quick note: I read every one of you guys' reviews, and they always make me so happy! EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM. To those who have been with this story since the beginning and have stuck with it, cheers to us! And to those who have just finished up with Breach and arrived here, cheers to you too! Not one of your reviews have been ignored - I cherish each and every one of them - and to those Guests who have reviewed, thank you! I can't reply, but if you would make an account, then you'll see that I always make it a point to reply to your reviews, each and every one. ^^

Again, kudos, and I hope you guys have an awesome day!

(If anyone's wondering where all this came from, I just celebrated my birthday and was given a reminder that I need to be thankful for anything that comes my way. I am thankful for being blessed with wonderful readers such as yourselves. Remember, be thankful!)

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Lots of love,

~ellesmer