Shake Your Foundations
14. Give and Take
He'd run into it time and again with Shadowatch and the Siegie kids, but didn't think much of it because most Siegie kids were arrogant prats who thought the world revolved around the Crimson Guard and the Fred Series project. The world did not, however, meaning Shadowatch tended to either avoid the little weasels outright or get into fights with them whenever their paths crossed. Zartan hadn't worried overmuch about it these last two years, given that the kids tended to behave whenever they were together and the cameras weren't rolling.
With the Bayville High School as an individual testing ground, however, Atlantis' inability to play nice with others in her age group was fast becoming a major issue. Most "normal" kids annoyed her too much to be worth talking to because they were either too sheltered or selfish to understand how the world worked. The Brotherhood, though damaged enough to relate, lacked the collective maturity and respect needed to connect completely and held too close a personal connection for her to consider them worth risking their trust and silence. The X-brats weren't even worth a by-your-leave for much the same reason as the normal classmates. And the "secret" new Acolytes featuring Pyro their old nemesis Bolt? Not an issue yet, and not one they worried about becoming a problem in the future. The new Acolytes were slightly more trouble than the first by dint of a near-religious devotion to Magneto and his cause—nothing more. Until the group showed their faces, Atlantis considered them somewhere around the Crimson Guard's threat level but ignored their existence.
But for all they couldn't get her to interact with children within Cobra or the other mutant factions, she'd begun to form a working relationship with two human girls here at the high school. Both were good kids, got passable grades, and avoided the mutant factions as if their lives depended on it (which it might). And they were in a different social circle than Zanya's popular clique, providing more information about what went on at the school. Fewer ideal options for testing her social skills existed.
The problem was that Andrea's impulsive temper had just gotten her scaly butt grounded for the Wednesday evening the two girls in question requested a study date.
"Is it more punishment to keep her here or make her go for 'girl time'?" Zarana asked later that evening. Andi was consigned to her room with Zanya, working on homework while the adults talked. "That's what you need to be asking."
"And what do you suggest?" Zartan asked. His girls were both similar and completely opposite each other in personality; arranging punishments that maximized learning from their screw-ups and minimized boredom sometimes required a second person to bounce ideas off of. Or to toss ideas his way; whichever worked.
"Me? I'd make her go." His sister shrugged. "She's been stuck in one base or the other for a month solid for medical leave, which is essentially the same as grounding her for that long. Two more days won't mean a damn thing to her and you know she'll use it to get out of this study date if she has a chance. She hates math homework, and doing that while forcing her to interact with a "normal" family is going to be punishment enough on its own."
"But won't that give her the impression she's won somehow?" Because that had been the case with Zanya any time they changed punishments. It made his beloved daughter a very special pain in his rear end, really.
Zarana shook her head. "Not this time. You're making her do something she'd rather avoid if possible, something she avoids more than forced medical leave. It's like making Cobra Commander give up booze until the paperwork's done instead of just locking him in his office with it."
"No one's been allowed to do that since the last one that tried got set on fire and launched from a canon in '92." He looked at her. "Is that really the example you want to use?"
"It's fitting." She stared back. "And until she's cooled off enough for either you or Mystique to get her to talk through whatever's pissed her off, you're better off not keeping her too cooped up. The more we do that, the more creative she gets in trying to entertain herself. It's how she ended up near the damn paint sprayer in the first place."
He sighed, weary eyes meeting her sharp gaze. "How did you get to be so wise about this?"
"About the time you put me in charge of a pair of teenage drama queens." She smirked.
The next evening, Andi had a study date and Mindbender began setting up shop in the infirmary, with his merry band of ninja gophers currently on an inbound transport. How Zarana managed to talk Zartan into letting her out for the night, she didn't know, but figured she owed the woman a thank-you card. At least.
There'd been the cursory request to re-do her blood-work (which the boss denied on the grounds that the usual medical team's last screening was still considered 'current') before she went out of her way to avoid him, up to and including bringing her own lunch to school and eating away from the cafeteria the day before. She understood the necessity of such actions. Her… acquaintances, on the other hand, did not and proceeded to grill her about it over dinner and homework that evening.
"All this fuss over the new nurse?" Stacy asked over her slice of pizza. The trio were holed up in Jenna's room, textbooks and scratch paper littering the floor as they attempted to salvage their grades for the semester. "Isn't that overkill?"
"Not for Nurse Bender, it's not. Trust me on this." She knew what the man was capable of. "I'm just glad I don't have to stick around much longer to put up with him." The new plan was to have her on a transport back to Chicago two days before the Homecoming dance so she wouldn't have to deal with the extraction itself... or Dark Shadow's potential coup.
The sheer volume of ninja sent to handle a simple extraction alongside the usual Viper squadron was excessive. Even factoring mutants into the equation, they only needed six and got fifteen. One didn't pad their numbers and fly themselves to a totally different state unless one had a long-term plan nearing fruition and felt the underlings could handle any surprises themselves. Zartan was livid about it (and from the last report she overheard, Destro wasn't pleased with it either), but Mindbender, Cobra Commander, and the Baroness didn't seem to find anything wrong with the double order of ninja.
"He is a little creepy, I admit, but he doesn't seem that bad." Jenna tilted her head to the right, the corners of her eyes crinkling behind her glasses as she squinted.
She could hardly say that Nurse Bender made his own dates from test tubes, or played with DNA like children played with train sets. Unfortunately, she knew more than she ever wanted to about his personal life because he refused to shut up about it. That would suffice for this situation. "He's more than a little creepy. Papa's worked with him before... said he likes to pick up women at hospitals burn units because they're more willing to overlook his eccentricities for a little affection."
"Well that's…unfortunate." Jenna winced. "Those poor women..."
"Taryn's friend Lisa still thinks he's, and I quote 'hot for an old guy'." Stacy said.
She shuddered. No one should find that man attractive, ever. "Yeah, but she also thinks Duncan Matthews is 'so the perfect hunk', so I don't know that I'd trust her judgment on the subject." Or any other subject for that matter, since Lisa Whitmore was flunking most of hers this semester. Taryn needed smarter friends who weren't Zanya.
"Most girls find Duncan or Scott Summers at least moderately handsome," Stacy remarked, raising her eyes to meet Andi's. "You not into boys or just not into their type?"
"Matthews is a spoiled, bigoted jackass who thinks the rest of the world owes him something, and women are objects to be used and discarded. There's nothing attractive about that." She raised her eyebrows in a silent challenge. "And Summers is too self-righteous and inflexible to be worth anything. Saint Jean can have him; they're perfect for each other."
"So what does strike your fancy, then?" Jenna asked. "You know, since conventionally attractive males apparently don't do it for you."
She frowned into her slice of pepperoni pizza. She knew the other kids on the team had noticed members of the opposite sex, but she'd yet to understand why they all started acting like complete idiots over a marginally attractive face. "I don't know that anything does, really. Not on a purely aesthetic level. Besides, dating is a waste of my time. I could be doing way more important things than going to dinner with some airhead jock who only wants to get in my pants." The shudder rocked her shoulders and head, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. Just thinking about it, even now…
"Fair enough. I could come up with a list of illnesses I'd find more pleasant than dinner with Duncan Matthews." Stacey shrugged. If she noticed the overreaction, she chose not to comment on it. "But, in a hypothetical dating situation, what do you find attractive?"
Was there an answer for "none of the above"? She looked up and caught the half-hopeful, half-fearful (and what the heck was up with that?) expression on Jenna's face and realized she couldn't back out of this without losing a lot of street cred with anyone in their peer group. Granted, she was supposed to leave for Chicago again before the homecoming dance, so it didn't really matter…but Jenna apparently needed to hear this. "Someone who's not a whole foot shorter than me would be a good start. Nice smile, expressive eyes, and not intimidated by a girl who can out-drive them." Or, you know, beat them to a bruised heap in the training ring. Most folks considered that a turn-off.
"So not the bad-boy type either?" Stacey prodded.
"There's no type. I'd have to be friends with them first; anything else is doomed for failure." She poked a piece of pizza crust at the shorter girl. "And why are we interrogating me anyway? You're gonna end up flunking that Spanish quiz if we don't get back to the books."
"But Spanish is boring. Nobody even speaks Spanish this far north." Stacey pouted.
"Uh, yeah, they do. I can name five local students who come from Spanish-speaking homes just off the top of my head," she countered. "And if you ever have to take a job farther south, or in some health or human service fields? Spanish translators are in high demand. Knowing how to get basic information from a client in Spanish might be what gets you your dream job." Chicago was a big ol' bundle of language barriers and old grudges cemented in those barriers. Understanding what someone was shouting at you could both save your life and keep a new gang war from starting.
"Well, aren't you well-informed." Stacy griped.
"My dad is a teacher; he never stops with the lecturing." Okay, Zartan really didn't lecture all that much. Not really. Buzzer, on the other hand...gods, the man would not shut up. He'd once been a professor at Cambridge, and occasionally the ego-driven academic side of him made appearances over dinner arguments. The arse was loud enough on his own, but in "Professor" mode? Would not f*ng shut up. He even lectured in his sleep sometimes.
"Can we just get back to the homework?" Jenna asked, carding a hand through her short brown hair.
"Fine." Stacy groaned. "But I'm only studying under protest!"
"And because your mother will cut your allowance if you fail another quiz," Jenna said.
"Oh, you hush."
Her oldest brother crashed like a teenage boy taking a corner too fast in a souped-up Ferrari—hard, fast, and total. This happened more often than outsiders knew about, and they worked hard to keep it that way. He'd come a long way in mental recovery, true, but he still had bad days and when mixed with a nasty case of chronic insomnia and what was possibly a touch of PTSD... bad days weren't going away any time soon. Eventually he couldn't force himself awake anymore and passed out for about twelve hours straight unless forced into awareness. Tonight was one of the "crash" nights, which meant that once he picked Andi up from her study date and brought her home, he stumbled to his room and probably wound up sleeping in his regular clothes. Both their girls knew better than to seek him out tonight.
Which was how she ended up being the one to respond to the 2 AM screaming.
Andi's worst episodes came in clusters. The girl hadn't had one in a while (that she knew of), so Zarana supposed it was about time for one to show up and ruin everyone's sleep cycles. Often there was a definite trigger—a particular calender date, a smell, the way someone spoke to her—but sometimes they just happened. And until the kid was coherent enough for conversation, she couldn't piece together the cause of this one, if it existed.
Andi lost about five years worth of maturity every time one of the worst ones broke through, becoming less confident young woman and more terrified little girl. And for those special, recurring nightmares, distinctive changes in posture or reaction revealed which of those they dealt with. This one, she knew, was one of the nastier ones, albeit one she tended to handle a wee bit better than her brother. No other women present in the original event, after all. Andi'd plastered herself against the wall behind the bed, sweat soaking her clothes and hair as her gaze locked on some indeterminate point before her.
"Ssshhh, kid, it's okay." She spoke to the girl before she even entered the room and kept her hands visible. Rule one: do not approach unless acknowledged as "not threat". Kid fought like a bloody wildcat. "It's over. You're safe now."
The growling whine that emerged from the girl's throat broke her heart, just as it had every previous occasion she heard it. Andi stared at a particular spot on her bedspread, though her eyes flickered in Zarana's general vicinity.
"It's alright, kid. They aren't here to hurt you anymore. Just focus on my voice." This time she took a small step forward. Andi still wouldn't look directly at her, but she wasn't tensing in preparation for a physical blow either. She'd take whatever she could get on nights like these. "Atta girl, luv. Breathe for me. Air ain't gonna run out any time soon."
A wheeze indicated air intake. It had taken a while to properly document how many nightmares the kid had in a month, due in no small part to the girl having trained herself to startle herself awake without screaming most of the time. She was hardly the only member of Shadowatch to possess this particular skill, but she was the most proficient at using it. That she hadn't managed it tonight meant something was bothering her.
"That's it, luv. Deep breaths, now." Another small step brought her closer to the girl. "You're safe here. You know us. No one's gonna hurt you." She paused when the kid looked at her, eyes wide and definitely not focused on the here and now. "That's right. Come talk to me, kiddo."
Two blinks, a change in focus, and then… "'Rana?" spoken in hoarse tones.
At last, recognition. "That's right, kid. It's me. Can I come closer?" Andi managed a slow nod of affirmation, but her gaze never wavered. Zarana didn't take the permission to approach as permission to run up and hug the kid, though. Girl wasn't quite awake enough to tolerate that. Sitting down on the bed next to her, however, worked a charm. "Just take it easy, okay? I'm not going anywhere."
Andi leaned into Zarana's shoulder, eyes shut and shoulders shaking. Zarana left her in silence for a while, just sitting there and rubbing the girl's back to help calm her down. "What happened this time, luv?" the woman asked.
"T-they had me in a locker room this time," the girl stammered slowly, "a-all of them wearing helmets that blocked their f-f-faces and f-football uniforms. I know it's st-stupid, but..."
"If it spooked you, it's not stupid." She held the kid in a one-armed hug as she spoke. "You don't need to put yourself down like that, ever. Need me to stay a while?"
Andi stared at her hands. "I don't want to..."
"If that sentence ends in 'bother', you aren't one." Zarana cut in. "Do you want me to stay?"
A long pause receded a single word. "Yes."