Chapter Twenty- Five

Author's Note:

Hey guys, I kinda figured that maybe I should be communicating with you more, since I really don't do that very much. And also I just wanted to thank you for your wonderful reviews, they really give me a boost of motivation among being forced to write essays on needless things in school. Whenever I hear that we need to write a paper, I internally cringe because I know it'll drain me of my inspiration. So I go home and immediately work on a chapter here so I can get it up before the awful point of my writer's block.

That's really besides the point, but I wanted to say thank you for the reviews and I hope you all are enjoying the story. I'm trying really hard to generate some ways that we could take the plot, especially with this new rally thing that Allie is heading to. How do you feel about her lying to Peter? I sorta became bitter at her as I was placing her thoughts in the story, knowing that she's been such a devoted character to him throughout the entirety of the book. And now suddenly she made a shifty decision that's likely to not end well.

Also, what do you guys think about Erik and Peter? I've been struggling to decide whether or not I want to have their relation announced, as when the next X-Men movie comes out, I'd really like to follow that plot line. Since, in the films, Peter hasn't quite told Erik yet, I don't want to go ahead and do it here, otherwise I'd probably have a little debacle with writing around the already expressed fact later on. But who knows, maybe I'll just do it and see how things go.

I've realized I wrote three paragraphs out of my thoughts, so I'll just let you guys read now. Lot's of exciting things in this chapter, with introductions to new characters and a new conflict, so I hope you guys enjoy and I'll try to write more of these notes. Maybe we can get good discussion stirred up or something of the sorts-

Okay. I'm gonna leave now. Enjoy!

"Do you really think that fifteen thousand are going to be there?" Allie asked Raven, flush against her seat as they drove at overwhelming speeds towards New York City, running a little late for their rally. Although the handling of the car could've made someone else rather sick, Allie mentally chuckled at the speedometer's marking of a cute ninety miles per hour; it didn't compare to running with Peter. As the blonde comically thought to herself, the Mystique just shrugged, pulling a hand from the wheel to scratch her forehead in anxiousness.

"I'm not sure. But I think a lot will show, maybe not quite fifteen thousand though," she answered, taking a sharp turn to enter a tunnel that would eventually lead them into the city itself. As the light was quickly snatched away from the pair, Allie reached down to turn on the radio, hoping to evade the eerie feeling settling in on her. She knew she was going to be safe with Raven during the demonstration, as the woman acted almost like a mother figure towards all of the younger X-Men, but that didn't stop her nerves from being restless.

As some band sang about running so far away, they both lapsed in and out of conversation for a couple minutes until they'd finally reached the mouth of the tunnel, yellow glare from the lights being replaced with sun rays, much to their delight.

And their satisfaction seemed to rise even further when the pair saw that already there were a lot of people there, protesting away with a wave of signs and chants. On top of that, judging by how the mass of people took up the space of quite a few streets, to the point where Allie and Raven couldn't even see the end of the crowd, there were definitely more than fifteen thousand there. And that was honestly one of the biggest accomplishments alone; it showed off their unity.

"Holy shit," Allie muttered underneath her breath as Raven struggled to find somewhere to park in the sea of cars, some even just stopped in the street with little effort. It wasn't like anyone would try to drive through the next seven blocks anyways.

It wasn't long and Raven was able to squeeze the small car into a pretty tight space in the parking lot of a pizzeria ,that was obviously closed, since they weren't chancing having their store wrecked if things went south in any way. Usually in a scenario of a demonstration, if it happened to turn into a riot, everything around them was fair game; cars, apartments and especially stores. Not that Allie could really agree with destroying innocent people's property, but she knew those were usually the outcomes of that sort of thing.

She vaguely remembered the race riots from when she was younger, watching as Watts and Detroit got mass media coverage due to the violence and rallying. It was scary, especially for little Allie who just sat by while her mom and dad shook their heads at the situations shown through the black and white. But they had helped to make a change, in some way or another. Now it was the mutant's turn to try and express their right to full citizenship and participation in not only politics but just simply American culture in it's own.

Allie understood how people could be scared- how humans could live in fear. Often times, as it seemed, it was mutants who were causing some sort of terrorism whether it be assassinating the president or attempting to nuke every land form on earth. But in the same regard, it's mutants who had stopped it every time. Not all of them agreed with world domination/annihilation. And clearly the wrong move for the state of New York to pull was to ban mutants from doing something so simple. Whoever thought that was a good idea was a complete dick.

"Alright, c'mon, let's go," Raven said quickly, ushering Allie out her side of the car since the blue mutant had squeezed so close to another vehicle she couldn't even open her own door. "We are extremely late."

"Yeaah," Allie drawled whilst tumbling out of the passenger seat and onto the pavement, shimmying quickly out from the parking spot and into the lot. Raven followed suit, briskly walking towards the massive crowd without any waiting around. The blonde skipped forward, attempting to match pace with the disguised woman, not wanting to make her late nor be parted from each other. "Who is it we must meet?"

"His name is John but he likes to go by Jonah. He works for the paper," Raven explained while plowing through the crowd at last, finally having met the bulk of the rally. "Stick by me!"

Allie raised her brows and cautiously took hold of the other blonde's leather jacket, not taking any chances in getting lost in the crowd of mutants and people. There was too much going on for the girl to even think straight, so she just let her feet carry her in the direction Raven was leading them in. And that was straight to the front where a small riser was located, a crude representation at their own stage. Though the mutant hadn't expected for there to be a speaker at the event, she wasn't all that surprised. Of course they'd need some sort of boost, some sort of adrenaline shot.

They were, after all, trying to make a change in just a couple of hours.

"Shit!" Allie shouted when someone's We deserve our rights! sign almost fell straight on top of her after they must've lost hold on it's roughly made handle. It looked as if they taken a paint stir and just slapped a piece of construction paper onto it and called it a day. Not that Allie was really judging, nor did she care that much, she just wanted a reason to insult the sign for it almost hitting her in the head.

Raven looked back quickly to see why Allie had called out. "You good?" She yelled, turning back around to keep trucking, though had her head perked slightly to listen out for the girl. Allie just nodded and ducked a little as they swept past everyone.

"Yeah," she said, pulling closer to the woman as they neared the front of the crowd. It seemed as though they had been walking for about ten minutes, which was far too long for there to only be about fifteen thousand people, Allie observed. They had underestimated the likes of the other mutants, much to her delight, as she had thought that the blatant family-like aura from Xavier's school was some sight to see. The crowd she was in, watching as all of their smiling faces declared that they wouldn't be bullied to submission, was proof that there was more than just a school of kids who were outcasted. It was almost everyone.

"Stay close," the woman said, finally breaking through the dispersed line of people who were leading the demonstration, the pair heading straight towards a group of well dressed people who were huddled together. Most of them were men with the exception of one taller girl, looking to probably be in her early twenties with short black hair and sporting a very business like blazer-pencil skirt combo. She stood out from the rest of the people in the group as she turned, idly looking at the crowd while listening in on the conversation before her. Allie could immediately tell she was a mutant through her purple colored eyes that were shown by the slight movement in her stance.

There seemed to be something about her that managed to capture Allie's attention, though she was unsure of what exactly had her staring. Trying not to be creepy, the blonde just turned and looked at Raven's back as they neared the group, reaching out slowly to take a dip into the pool that was the mysterious girl's mind.

As Allie entered, she couldn't feel anything. It wasn't like when she had dealt with the observation of Apocalypse's mind, for there his only uneasiness was the idea of losing his power; of being put down and never coming back up. But there, as Allie walked closer, being able to feel even further yet, she couldn't get any lick of a fear, or anything at all really. It boggled her since it wasn't like she was being blocked mentally by the woman, as she had clearly felt that sensation when Charles totally ran Allie's ability out of his head on a few occasions. What was going on there was just plain emptiness. No fear at all. It was almost impossible.

Fear, even in the smallest sense, was what made them do many things. Listen to someone talk because you were scared they'd be offended if you dazed off. Being scared to do your work wrong on the job and doing your best in order to succeed. Being scared that your handwriting was rough on that one essay and going back to fix basically the entire thing, just so you could get a good grade on penmanship. There were so many things that fear took a hold of in one's life that it was practically impossible to live without. If worry disappeared, the entire world would be in ruin because people would have no reason to give two shits about anything.

What scared Allie in the situation of the woman having, seemingly enough, no fear was that she had no idea what her mutation was. If someone incapable of feeling any uneasiness had superhuman abilities, that could mean extremely bad news. And Allie was just getting over fighting some overpowered mutant who feared almost nothing, she didn't want to do it again.

"Mr. Jameson!" Raven called whilst climbing onto the riser, catching a young man's attention as she approached. Popping away from the group of men plus the strange woman came a lean man, dressed very nicely in a pair of slacks and a button up shirt, hands in his pockets respectively while a newspaper laid between his arm and torso. He almost looked posed for some television show as he neared them, appearing to be the boy next door type of guy.

"Hey, great to finally meet you," he said in a voice that sounded like it had taken a beating from a hobby of cigarettes. He seemed too young to have already been affected by the negatives of regular smoking, making Allie cringe. He must've done it a lot then; she couldn't even imagine doing that to herself. Her dad had a problem with it, though back then it was okay to smoke pretty much everywhere you wanted to. It even was in the 80s, apparently, though Allie could see that it wasn't so prominent then. The smoke couldn't have been good for you if there was something about it that attacked your vocal chords. "I see you've brought a friend."

He smiled at Allie while reaching his hand out to shake Raven's hand. The disguised woman took it earnestly, passing his hand onto Allie's then. She shook it quickly and stepped back behind Raven, not really enjoying the fact that he couldn't keep his eyes off of her even as the other mutant began speaking with him.

"When are you giving the speech?" Raven asked him, noticing how he kept glancing at the other blonde as he spoke to her. She just mentally rolled her eyes and moved a little bit closer to Allie in hopes of hiding her away more.

"Soon, we are just making some preparations. We weren't expecting this many people to show up," he said, gesturing out to the street where thousands of people stood getting themselves hyped up for their demonstrations speech.

"Good, we need to get it done quickly before something goes wrong and this entire thing heads south," Raven explained, arms crossed with caution as she looked around the setting. Allie shook her head in response to the statement, not being able to think about what would happen if in the scenario of a riot. She'd just have to run and hope that she could get home safely somehow.

Her mind suddenly flashed to Peter looking worried, wondering where she could be if Raven came back to the school, unknowing of Allie's whereabouts.

I should've told him, she thought angrily at herself. Why did I not tell him? He probably wouldn't have even reacted in the way she thought he would've. Damn it. If something happened at this rally and he realized that she was in it, Allie would have a lot of explaining to do… she not only lied to him, she put herself in danger. Why did she come there? Allie should've just said she'd pass on the offer that Raven had given her, but her frustration was just so high in that moment that she wanted to help. She wanted to make a difference.

But there was no going back. Allie was there and figured she'd need to adopt that irritated mind set once more if she was going to make an impact on the mutant rights issue.

"That's what I said," a man who had suddenly dispersed from the group came up to them, placing a hand heartily on Mr. Jameson's- or Jonah's- shoulder. The young man just looked over at the other who'd just shown up to their conversation with slight annoyance. Allie wondered what his deal was with the older guy. "I brought a bodyguard with me," he then chuckled, throwing a hand back towards where the woman with the purple eyes stood stoically.

"Yeah, and if that one goes down you have roughly twenty five thousand others to take her place," Jonah said monotonously, turning back to look at Raven, all the while sneaking glances at Allie.

"Who is she?" Raven asked. The older man just shrugged.

"A gift from a friend. Apparently she has a sort of system about her that is controlled by a single person, me, and can carry out tasks given by myself," he explained, hand placed on his chest as he addressed himself. Allie's brows furrowed as she looked on at the woman, realizing that perhaps she wasn't even a mutant at all, less a human. She was betting more towards the robot idea. Which would explain why she couldn't see any fear at all within her, though it was strange because Allie knew for a fact that robots typically didn't even have true brains, just some sort of programming that made them appear to have one.

But whatever the system was, it didn't account to a living brain with all of it's neurons and scientific stuff that Allie hadn't cared all too much about freshman year. So why could she take a peek in if there wasn't even supposed to be anything there?

It gave Allie the chills as she thought of the possibility of some mutant girl being taken over and used as some sort of base for a robotic like system, her body being just a shell to look, for the most part, normal. Now that, that was something that she'd only read in those creepy 1800s science fiction books.

"Seems productive. So what's the plan?" Allie snorted at Raven's comment, turning her back to them to look out by the crowd, noticing some of the people in the front staring up at the group curiously. The blonde just smiled at them and waved, watching as their happy faces disguised their slight over laying of fear that something may go wrong on that day. Allie could only empathize with them, for she felt more or less the same way, though truly hoped her emotions were just being stretched due to Peter not being there.

She really did feel safe with him. And the thought pissed her off because Allie could've just made the right decision and had been cozy at home with him while his dad came…

Allie had forgotten about that. His dad was supposed to come that day. And she lied to him, went to a place where something awful was likely to go down… and was completely missing a point in Peter's life that would probably mean the world to him. Fuck. She kind of hated herself in that moment. Why did she do this?

Just thinking about her massive mistake, Allie worriedly brought her hand up to run it through her hair, nervously glancing around with her other hand on her hip. Apparently Jonah had seen her rather displeased state and abandoned the conversation he was in to approach Allie. He came up beside her quietly, though she could clearly feel him for his fear of her rejecting his attempt at small talk was very strong; almost overwhelming really.

"Is there something wrong?" He asked her, his raspy voice annoying Allie slightly. She really did not want to talk to him in that moment. He was too confident and cocky for her tastes and, well, Allie had Peter, of course.

"Just nervous," she said bluntly, not really wanting to be too much of a prick to the man that Raven had been affiliated with in the first place, Jonah being the person that she had pretty much showed up for. The reporter just sighed, hands in his pockets yet with that damned newspaper tucked in his arm. Did he just have it for the image or was he actually going to read it?

"Oh I-"

"Jameson, get your ass over here! We are starting!" The man who owned the robot woman called to Jonah, thankfully putting an end to the awkward encounter that he had been forcing onto Allie. It was her turn to sigh, but in great relief. Without even saying another word the reporter turned and jogged across the short riser to reach the area where a microphone was set up, ready for whoever would be giving a speech that day.

She hoped that it was at least a good one.

The X-Mansion…

Peter had been waiting. According to Charles, that day was the one that Erik was due to arrive at the mansion to help with their big kidnapping issue. And though the boy was rather nervous to even simply see the man, he was also really excited. It was like that moment in a book where the narrator's secret is finally revealed to another character and it's just this really fun feeling of finding out their reaction to it being released. He always looked forward to that moment in some stories, a swell of happiness at finally seeing someone else know some sort of wild plot twist.

And soon, he hoped, Peter would have a living plot like that with his dad. If he managed to gather the courage enough-

"Peter!" Charles rolled up to the living room, Erik trailing behind him loosely. Peter turned sharply, freezing in place when he saw the metal manipulating mutant behind the telepath, unknowing of how to react to him standing there. He had appeared so suddenly it startled Peter enough that he didn't even understand what was happening. "I brought Erik in to talk about our… situation. Since Allie and Raven are both out on their own expedition, I figured it would be safe to say you're next in line to talk to about it."

Peter, realizing he was staring at the two men as if he were an insane person, attempted to act cool and collected. "Yeah of course, sounds good. Yep." He scooched over on the couch to allow room for Erik, though his dad took a seat in one of the arm chairs beside Charles. Awkwardly, the mutant just put his feet up as if he'd only moved over to make room for his legs. Why was this already going awfully?

Charles looked to both of them, an expression of disdain for their topic of conversation on his face. "I have informed Erik of the bare minimum of our issues here, but before we get into further details, I'd like for you to explain how this Stryker character has affected us within the last ten years or so." Peter nodded as he listened to the professor speak, slowly moving position so that his legs were no longer on the couch. He felt a little rude for sitting so casually when talking about what would inevitably be Allie's despair, as that was the greatest tie they had to Stryker.

As he shuffled clumsily back to a regular sitting position, Erik watched Peter with a strange look in his eye.

"For someone who can't get their legs tangled, you're quite rough on your feet," the mutant commented, forcing Peter to look at Erik with a raised brow. He just shrugged, leaning comfortably back into the couch with ease, sinking in the cushions.

"For someone who is an all powerful mutant, I'm surprised you don't know karate," the boy threw back at his dad, noting that maybe in the ten years he'd last seen him the man had in fact learned karate. Seriously, Peter suddenly thought, scoffing mentally. Would he really spend time to do karate when he could throw a building at Bruce Lee and call it quits? Don't think so.

Erik just smiled and narrowed his eyes at Peter. "Sure, but I still know crazy more than you." Something about the comment made the boy's inside tingle, as he realized Erik had remembered their conversation from the Pentagon, all those years ago. It wasn't like the mutant had forgotten about Peter.

The boy laughed, leaning forward to place his elbows over his knees, hands locking into each other to make a perch for him to place his chin. Finally, they had broken through the ice a little bit.

"So," Peter said, brows raised yet by their little bout of teasing. "Basically the age of us knowing Stryker started back at the whole White House thing. I don't know if you were there or not…" Peter offhandedly said to Erik sarcastically, not even smiling at his own joke as he continued on. Though the other mutant sat there with a smirk on his mouth, close to interrupting Peter just to make a comment of his own. Between the father and son, Charles watched with a little smile, enjoying the way they already seemed to have some sort of bond without all parties knowing of the relation. Perhaps these things just came naturally.

"I guess Stryker worked with Trask on the project, since Allie had seen him there when she tried to stop Raven from like, ruining everything," he explained, gesturing wildly with his hands as he spoke. "Then… after that we had a few months peace. Everything was good…" Peter sighed. "One day we are out at this old playground that I used to screw around in as a kid, eat some cream puffs that I had stolen or whatever, and shit just went down."

"Allie and I decided to play some sort of mix of tag and hide and seek, which don't worry, I wasn't playing unfairly and just zooming around and being a dick. I counted first, she hid and all of a sudden I just hear this gunshot, Allie scream and then me whooshing through that treeline like I would never stop. When I got there some guy with this black suit on and a gun in his hand is standing there."

By this point, Erik's expression had lost it's humor and turned sour, a look of discomfort on his face as Peter told a tale that only drifted darker as he continued. Charles listened on too, pained as he had to listen to the retelling of what he had seen glimpses of through the couple's unguarded minds.

"Obviously, I was pissed. Shot the guy in the leg, took Allie to the hospital, told them it was a gun range mishap and then hauled ass back to the dickhead. I didn't find out much off of interrogating him myself, so I decided we would need to take a roadtrip to see Charles, the man who could dissect any brain. Probably both figuratively and literally."

The professor shrugged. "I know a thing or two," he said before gesturing Peter to continue on.

"All we really found out was that he was an agent working for a really secretive organization type thing. He informed us of this project: Weapon X. It called for the kidnapping of mutants, then for them to be used as test subjects…" Peter felt the intensity of his words wrap around all of them, some sort of bigger than life story coming to their minds as a reality they hadn't quite comprehended before. At least not until they had witnessed it through the entire Apocalypse ordeal that led them straight to Stryker. "Apparently the task was to create an enforcement of super mutants that could fight and win wars and shit like that."

"We stayed the weekend, couldn't quite figure out what to do with the little information we had, and then went home. And… and I should've just… stayed with her. You know that feeling that if you would've just made a choice that could've changed everything?" Peter asked suddenly, not intending to get so emotional with his informative conference with the two men, but just seemed to have gotten caught up in his first retelling of the tale. As the boy looked up, he made eye contact with Erik who had a very empathetic look upon his face. Peter could only imagine the things that the mutant regretted.

"It's… it's besides the point, but when Allie went home that night, Stryker was waiting. I guess he took her. We haven't really talked about it too much. But it was ten years. She was there for ten years. And it was nothing but torture on top of torture, looking to turn her into some sort of monster. Allie- you remember her mutation right? Could like, make people hallucinate their fears or whatever." Erik only nodded in confirmation of knowing how the girl had operated. "Well now she can make shadow men, physical things that can hurt people. They did this through all the testing."

"Then recently we came here, where personally, me and a bunch of other people were taken by the same guy- this Stryker dickwad. Somehow Allie was able to get away and catch up to us in the heat of Apocalypse totally taking Charles over," Peter sighed, leaning into the couch while eyeing up Erik to gauge his reaction over the entire thing. He seemed stoic, like he'd been really taking it in.

Erik moved to the side slightly, framing his jaw with a thumb and forefinger. "So then you were placed within the battlefield that the Horseman had created?" Peter nodded, remembering how he'd approached Erik as the man materialized some sort of force field around himself, not allowing Raven nor he to get to the mutant.

"I couldn't help but feel that you wanted to tell me something there…" Erik stated lowly, making a burst of surprise encompass all of Peter's emotions in that moment. How… Erik must've been thinking about that for a long time. Long enough for him to still have the curiosity from wondering about the encounter that would've turned into a confession if Peter had only been brave enough to do so.

Charles looked at the boy slowly. 'Do it,' he told him telepathically. Peter mentally nodded and looked pointedly at Erik, prepared to spill the beans.

"Yeah, I'm-" smoke. Lot's of blue, inky smoke. It stopped Peter from dropping the bomb as he coughed loudly, looking up through the dispersing vapor to find Kurt and Angel standing before him, both with worried expressions as more mutants entered the living room. Jean and Scott appeared from nowhere, the redhead throwing her hand out towards the television set located in the back of the room, opposite to where Peter and the other two men were seated by the fireplace.

As the device came to life, a grainy image of what appeared to be New York came on, the camera focused in on a man dressed very nicely who appeared to be giving some sort of speech.

"Something is going on," Jean said, telekinetically turning up the volume. "There's a massive rally. I don't know how I didn't hear about it." Then Scott neared the T.V. as his red tinted glasses did little to make the image on it clearer.

"They said there is about thirty thousand people there, most of them mutants," he said, looking back at Jean then the rest of them. Angel and Kurt glanced at each other with faces of worry when the angle changed to an impending mass of riot police marching towards the crowd, though were separated from the mutants by a street wide banner and a small stage. But, it was just paper and a short speech, not that hard to get through with force.

It was when the cameras changed back to the man apparently giving a speech did Peter's heart drop. There, just barely in view was Raven.

Raven and Allie went to see if they could find anything more out about the kidnapping. That's what she told you, he thought with shock, realizing that Allie had lied. She had to be there at that demonstration. And all of those riot police were probably seconds from putting it down, even though it seemed like everything was peaceful.

"Shit," Peter cursed, breaking into spine breaking speeds.

He needed to get to Allie.