Chapter 2- Christian's Return

Sying was in a pretty good mood on Valentine's Day, and he came down to breakfast grinning as he kissed Elin's cheek. "Happy Valentine's Day," he sang out to her.

"And a happy day to you too," Elin said, smirking his way. "What has you in such high spirits?"

"I'm going out with Krissy later on today," he said, grinning even wider. "Her mom gave us permission to use their island and go sailing."

She looked shocked. "You're kidding me."

"Do I look like I'm kidding?" he shot back, grinning wider as he gestured to himself. "I bought flowers and everything."

She got up and made her way over to wrap him up in a hug. "Well good. It's about time!"

"Right?" He spun her around and then kissed her forehead. He took a deep breath and then tipped his head to the side. "I told her she shouldn't have made me wait… I gotta ask you… I mean. I don't want to just lie down and act like it didn't hurt, but Elin, it's a date with Krissy and I just…"

She smiled up at him. "Enjoy it."

He grinned and spun her one more time before he headed for the door. "Mom's got like five kinds of chocolate, and she's going to hit you all with it — fair warning."

"Why?" she asked scrunching up her nose.

"She's in a good mood," Sying said with a small smirk. "I told her about the date this morning and I think her exact words were 'oh good, then I don't have to twist up an Elf'."

Elin shrugged with one shoulder. "Well … she kinda earned it."

"She did," Sying said, though he couldn't stop smiling. "I'm sure Krissy will come find you after the date, but save an ear for me, okay?"

"Always," she promised. "Go have a wonderfully romantic time — between the two of you, it should be pretty sickening."

"That's what I'm hoping anyway," Sying agreed before he headed out.

He wasn't surprised to see that Krissy was already dressed for a day in the Caribbean — though she still looked absolutely amazing. She turned around, grinned at him, and teleported over to grab his hand. "You look great."

"You do too," he said with a smile.

"So, how do you want to do this? We can borrow a bamf, or we can run there, or Mom said she could have someone fly us, but I think she put that option forward so Papa could say that we had a chaperone…"

He couldn't stop grinning, especially because she was a deep purple that meant she was flustered. "I think I can probably run us there no problem."

"Oh good, because that was my favorite option of the three," Krissy said with a little smile and an even deeper purple flush to her cheeks.

"Breakfast first, though, right?" Sying asked. "I mean, unless you packed that too, in which case, hold on, because I brought flowers and—"

"You brought me flowers?" Krissy asked with a steadily growing smile.

"Well, yeah."

She grinned and leaned over to kiss his cheek. "You're really made of so much sugar and sweet things."

"I've been told I'm my mother's son," he said with a little smile.

She grinned and took him by the hand as they went to grab a bite before taking off, though they hadn't made it all the way through breakfast before some of the other students started to trickle in — including, to Krissy's shock, Christian.

For a moment, she just stared at him before she settled into a serious glare. And the morning had been going so well. "What are you doing here?"

Christian gave her a rueful sort of smile. "I know, I know," he said, holding up both hands. "I owe you an explanation."

"You owe me more than that," she said, her eyes narrowed and her tail twitching irritatedly behind her.

He bit his lip and then looked around as it became apparent that several of the other students were watching the back and forth. "I was wondering if I could speak to you."

"Oh, now you remember I exist," Krissy said with a little sniff, though when a few of the younger kids were snickering and the older ones were watching the show, she let out a breath and then turned to Sying. "Don't go anywhere. I'm just going to deal with this really quickly and be right back," she said.

Sying frowned. "Are you sure?"

She smirked at him and leaned forward to whisper just low enough that he could hear, "I just have to take out the trash."

Sying actually broke into a smile at that and made eye contact with Christian for just a second before he very quickly snuck a quick kiss and grinned at Krissy even wider. "You know. For luck."

She grinned and then disappeared in a poof of purple and took Christian with her outside for the second 'port, her arms crossed and her tail twitching behind her. "You have five minutes before I 'port you into the lake."

Christian looked properly ashamed of himself as he nodded. "I wouldn't blame you," he said. "I didn't mean to be gone that long. You have every right to be mad at me."

"That's right I do."

"I just got caught up in Norway," he explained. "I hadn't been back there since you and Chance got me out of the program."

"You got caught up for a little longer than 'I missed my flight and I'll catch the next one', Christian," she pointed out, still with her arms crossed.

"I know," he said. He took a step forward. "Listen—"

"Save it." She shook her head at him. "Even before you pulled this, I really wasn't that interested."

"I know," Christian said again, this time with a small smirk. "But we had fun, didn't we?"

"What do you want?" she asked, her arms still crossed.

"I just thought I owed you an explanation," he explained, then reached out to rest a hand on her arm. "I'll get out of your school and your life if that's what you want—"

She let out a sigh and at least tried to be reasonable. "You shouldn't quit school."

"I've been gone a while; I think that ship has sailed," he pointed out. He shook his head. "That's not the point. The point is—"

But whatever the point was, Krissy didn't get to find out when, instead, there was a massive explosion that knocked both of them off their feet into the half-melted snow.

She must have blacked out, because she wasn't aware of much before she felt Christian shaking her shoulder urgently, and she groaned as she pushed herself up on her hands and then to her feet and shook her head hard to look around at the grounds and...what was left of the school.

"No," Krissy whispered as she felt her knees give out underneath her, and she stumbled, catching herself with one hand as she felt suddenly like she was going to pass out.

The school was in ruins. Absolute ruins. Not even a wall was left standing upright, though she could see one wall blasted all the way across the lawn like it was nothing. Some of the rubble was smoking.

Which means…

Krissy teleported straight to the center of the wreckage, her eyes wide as she started to dig frantically, her ears twitching for any sound of anyone buried under there, praying the whole time that someone was so that she could know they were okay.

She could hear Christian not far off doing the same thing, digging desperately and swearing under his breath.

She could hardly see for how hard she was crying, her breath coming in hiccoughs as she kept on digging. There was an emergency system; her dad and the bamfs should have gotten everyone out. But there wasn't enough time. There was no warning at all.

She let out a strangled cry as she lifted part of the rubble in front of her and very nearly dropped it all over again when she saw the maroon-furred hand peeking out from underneath half of a wall. She could see part of his tail too…

Kade. She pressed one hand over her mouth but could stifle her sob in the least as she desperately clawed at the wall. "Christian, please! Help me!" she called out, trying to lever it, the feud totally forgotten — it wasn't important when he was an able body to help.

Christian swore as he ran over to where she was before he went around to the other side of the fallen wall and swore some more. "Krissy…"

She strained against the wall a few more times. She even tried teleporting off with parts of it, sure that this overwhelming anger and grief would be enough to let her do it, the way she'd seen her father teleport off with people's arms when he was mad enough. But she couldn't do it. She just couldn't do it.

She was choking on her own sobs as she struggled before, suddenly, something whizzed past her ear, and she heard Christian call out to her but took a second to understand what was happening.

When she finally looked up at him, she could see the red-hooded cultists with guns pointed their way, and she bared her teeth, tears still streaming down her face before she teleported to the cultists, tearing weapons from their hands with a growl on her lips.

"Krissy!" Christian called out, and it was the pure distress in his voice that finally made her pause as she saw one of the cultists with his gun pointed right at Christian.

But no way was she going to let these creeps get anywhere near anyone else, no matter who it was. She teleported behind the cultist and ripped the gun from his hand, beating him savagely over the head with it with her lips curled back in the kind of snarl her stupid grandfather would have been proud of. She bent down to give Christian a hand to his feet when she heard the sound of rifles being cocked around them.

"We need to get out of here," he muttered to her in a low tone.

She hesitated just long enough that she could feel his grip on her arm tighten. She didn't want to leave…

But then one of the cultists took a step forward, a wicked smile on under his hood. He clearly thought her hesitation meant that she was giving up, and that just wasn't going to happen. She bared her teeth at him before, in an instant, she teleported off again, with Christian in tow.

When they reappeared again, it was in Bed Stuy, at her uncle's building. Her mom swore by the healing powers of a good hideout on the roof up there, and seeing as no one was up there but the two of them, Krissy had to agree.

As soon as the smoke cleared, Krissy felt her knees hit the floor, sobbing hysterically. She couldn't get it under control, even if she'd wanted to try, and she didn't actually want to try.

"We need to go," he whispered to her urgently when, finally, she had exhausted herself enough that she was all but limp and not even bothering to hold herself up. "If those guys knew where to find you before…"

She nodded, still holding onto him. "Storm… or maybe Kitty."

"You really think if they could get to Westchester they couldn't get to Chicago or LA?" he asked, and she frowned at his tone. She knew that he was trying to get her to think clearly, but there was no need to sound so condescending. "Let's just keep moving. We need to get somewhere safe first or we'll get blown up like the rest of them."

"My dad…"

"Krissy." He took her head in his hands, turning her face up to his. "They're gone. You know that, right?"

"Someone should be there for them," Krissy said. If she'd had any tears left to cry, she would have, but at that point, she was too tired to even tell him to keep his hands to himself. "Make sure… last rites…"

"I'm sure the others will take care of that, but they're not the target right now," Christian reasoned. "Come on. Let me pick some hideouts. Places they won't think to look for you."

Sying drummed his fingers against the table, starting to wonder when was the appropriate amount of time to wait before he jumped into emergency mode instead of just frustration.

Ten minutes was too long for this kind of thing, but when it stretched into half an hour, he decided enough was enough and went for a run out around the grounds, if for no other reason than to scoop Krissy up if she was yelling at Christian and run off with her for something better to do for their Valentine's plans.

But when he didn't find any sign of Krissy or Christian on the grounds, he simply didn't trust the situation.

There was a terrified part of him that wondered if Christian had swept her off and she had just… gone with him, but Krissy wouldn't do that to him. Not after all that had gone into putting together their sailing date — and not when he was almost positive that she'd meant every word when she said that she liked him. Though considering how long it had taken to get there, he felt like he was justified in worrying a little bit that she'd gotten stolen away again and wrapped up in a different guy than him. It kind of kept happening. A lot.

He needed a little clarity before he jumped straight to sounding the alarm, though, and when he ran inside, he was glad to see that Elin was still curled up with her book.

"Okay, I need you to tell me if I'm being overdramatic."

"Probably, yes," she said before she looked up at him, but once she saw the expression on his face, the teasing tone and little smile disappeared. "What's wrong?"

"Christian came back," he explained shortly. "Just walked into the school this morning." He shook his head hard. "Krissy said she wanted to 'take out the trash,' but it's been half an hour, and they're not anywhere on the grounds and — at what point do I start to worry?"

Elin frowned and held up one finger as she took out her phone and texted Krissy. Where are you? There is a beautiful, sparkling, maple sugar-coated boy waiting on you. "Give her a minute. There is no way she'd ignore that." But when a few minutes passed and there was no response, she narrowed her eyes and tried again. I just got invited out to dinner with Nolan. We're going to Betsy's favorite place in NY.

But again, after some time passed, there was no response.

"Okay. Now you can panic," Elin said as she got up and headed toward Scott's office. "Though if I was dating anyone at all, I'd tell her I was pregnant, and then, if she didn't respond, we'd know … we would know."

Sying nodded as he followed after her, his eyes wide. "Yeah," he said in a breath.

Elin knocked on Scott's door and pushed it open after he called out a soft and almost distracted sounding 'it's open'. She stepped in but didn't say a word when she saw he was on the phone — instead standing behind the chair in front of his desk and waiting with her arms crossed.

"Alright," Scott said to whoever was on the other line. "I'll call in the team. Have Wiccan teleport you here; we can't wait on this one." He paused. "Right. Thanks." With that, he hung up and looked to the other two. "I need you both down in the War Room," he said.

Elin paused but nodded her head. "We don't know where Krissy is," she said. "So if it's all hands …"

Scott stopped for a moment and looked at her, then nodded. "It is," he said before he simply went to the comms to call in the other members of the team, striding off toward the War Room and looking far more serious than he had even when the call had ended.

Elin turned to Sying, biting her lip as she simply fell into step behind Scott.

The other members of the team started to rush in, though it didn't take long before Sying and Elin got to find out for themselves who Scott had been on the phone with when Captain America arrived with Wiccan — and a few minutes later, the last to arrive were Kate and Kurt, who looked like they'd gotten dressed in a hurry.

"What's up, boss man?" Kate asked, though she paused when she saw that Steve was there with him, looking overly serious. "And, uh, Cap?"

"Kate, you might want to sit down," Scott said in a tone that he just didn't use very often, but that had her glaring at him and crossing her arms.

"What's going on?" she demanded as Logan and K gave the Wagners a knowing sort of look at their late and hasty arrival.

"The Avengers got a call about a bank robbery upstate," Steve explained, using the same tone of voice that Scott had been using before that had Kate all kinds of on edge.

"That's unusual for the Avengers — or what was it that had them calling you?" Kurt asked carefully, though Kate could tell from his tone that he was just as suspicious of this whole thing as she was.

"The identity of the robbers," Steve told them frankly before he directed their attention to the surveillance footage that he put on the screen, and Kate let out a loud gasp as the same time Kurt said 'no' when they saw the purple smoke as Krissy and Christian teleported into the bank vault.

Kate didn't even see Logan pull out the chair for her as she fell into it, one hand over her mouth as she felt Kurt behind her, hands on the back of her chair to steady himself as the footage played on.

It was very clear that something was wrong with Krissy. There was no audio of the footage, but it was easy enough to see that she was crying, openly, wiping tears from her eyes as she looked almost desperate pulling out deposit boxes and cash that Christian scooped up in her wake. When finally it looked like Christian had all of the cash he could carry, Krissy sank to her knees, an expression of pure pain on her face that none of them had ever seen before as she openly wept.

Of course, that was when the security arrived — and that, more than anything, was what had the occupants of the room concerned when they saw that Krissy was tearing into the police officers were a ferocity that she simply didn't use. They didn't stand a chance before they were disarmed and Krissy had teleported off with Christian, leaving an emptied vault and several injured policemen in her wake.

When the footage cut out, Steve was frowning deeply — and most of the others in the room were in simple shock, though it was leaning more toward outrage for a few already. "Now, obviously, the Avengers don't think Krissy is doing this in her right mind — even the police agreed watching the footage that something is wrong here."

"That's right something's wrong," Kate said through the fingers of the hand covering her mouth. She was still staring at the screen even though the footage had finished playing, and Kurt was just behind her, even his tail perfectly still.

"The little jackass with her is the one pulling the strings," Logan said.

"What's his game?" Steve asked.

"We found him in a weapons program," Scott explained. "He was making progress at his rehabilitation, but then he fell off the radar for a while." He shook his head. "We checked the intel to see if he was caught up in the same weapon's program when he hadn't shown up for a while, but that wasn't the case when Rachel peeked at him."

"Is there any chance this is someone different pulling his strings as well? Or that the weapons program caught up to him after you checked?" Steve asked. "I just want to know if it's a possibility."

"I can pull Rachel in to find out," Scott replied, though he didn't look as if that was his first guess.

Steve nodded and then let out a breath. "It would be better if it was. I don't mind telling you the police when we arrived were already talking about how this just proves the mutant problem…" He shook his head. "The fact that she's a visible member of the X-Men is just going to make this worse if we can't get a handle on it fast."

"Kurt and me'll head to the bank they hit," Logan said, watching Kurt look more and more upset. "Might be able to pick up something they missed."

"I'll take a look at the bank records," Kate said quickly. "And try to work up a list of similar ones." She turned toward Billy with a pointed look. "Unless someone wants to be a good uncle and—"

Billy shook his head. "I would if I could," he swore, one hand on his heart. "But believe it or not, there are things falling into place as a result of this, and as much as I want Krissy back too, I'd also like for certain members of your junior squad not to end up enslaved or brainwashed by Hydra, so…"

"That's a crap excuse, Billy."

"I know it sounds like one, yeah," Billy said. "But I'm serious."

Kate let out a noise of frustration. "Fine," she bit out. "I'll do the records thing then."

"I'll dig into his accounts online," K offered.

"She can't teleport too far," Sying said, leaning forward. "I can start looking."

Scott shook his head at Sying. "No, stay here. If we get another call — you know he's not going to leave it at one robbery if he's gone to all this trouble — your family and the Wagners are our fastest response when that happens."

"We can keep a holding pattern — and wait for you to send us out if there's a split in the leads," Elin said. "Monitor."

Scott nodded at that. "In the meantime, why don't you both help K and Kate," he suggested, in particular tipping his head toward Kate with a raised eyebrow look.

"James would be faster with the computers," Elin pointed out as she pulled out her phone. "I'll just text him and tell him to get home."

"Good." Scott got to his feet. "Jubilee, see if you can find either of them. I'll let Rachel know what's going on as well."

"On top of it," Jubilee said as she got to her feet — though most of the others had already started to trickle out, and Logan and Kurt had disappeared almost as fast as Scott had agreed to Logan's suggestion.

So the two of them were already at the bank as Kurt paced back and forth waiting for Logan, his tail twitching behind him the more he thought over the surveillance and how clearly upset Krissy had been on the screen.

Logan cleared it with the cops on scene — after showing off his ID and explaining what he was up to — and it wasn't long before he stepped into the vault, carefully scenting out what he could and looking over the state of the scene.

He hadn't really expected to find much of anything, but it was just something that he thought Kurt needed to do to keep moving so he didn't flat out panic — and it was possible that he might catch a specific scent that could point him to where they'd been. But the only scent that didn't belong in the vault was that of the two teenagers, sulfur, and way too much saline from Krissy crying.

When he finally met up with Kurt again, his friend was back to pacing, though he teleported to Logan in an instant. "Anything?"

"Nothing specific enough to nail down," Logan admitted. "Traces of bleach … but that could be from anything." Logan took a moment to watch Kurt before he turned to the police captain that was nearby and filled him in as best he could — including letting him know enough about Christian that the authorities would know not to let the kid achieve skin-to-skin contact.

Kurt let out a near growl of frustration at that and shook his head. "I've never seen her so upset, Logan," he said at last just after Logan requested to know how much had been stolen.

"He will pay, Elf."

"Oh, of that I have no doubt," Kurt said. "I would simply rather it be sooner than later."

"It will be," Logan said. "Everyone on our side is looking for a couple of kids — one of which thinks he's a helluva lot smarter than he is."

"He won't for very much longer," Kurt promised darkly.

It wasn't long before the cop returned with the numbers Logan had asked for — as well as a basic idea of what kinds of things were stolen from the safety deposit boxes so they knew what the kid was looking for. "There's no way this little punk can honestly think he's gonna walk away from this."

"Unless he believes he has powerful friends," Kurt suggested.

"That ain't gonna help him," Logan said, shaking his head.

"No," Kurt agreed softly.

"And he ain't that likeable to have any friends."

Kurt nodded. "This much is true."

Logan met his gaze and nodded before he hit his comm. "Headed your way," he said so Scott would at least be ready to hear that there was no news.

Chance had slept in a bit that morning — he was trying to do that more often — so he was running a little late to meet up with Jamie, who had already arranged for some tickets to a play she wanted to go see and then a dinner and hotel stay for Valentine's. None of which he could remember really agreeing to, but that was pretty much how things worked with her lately. She was a bulldozer.

"You're late," she said when he caught up to her.

"I was dead to the world," he said, shaking his head. "And a happy Valentine's Day to you too."

"Happy Valentine's Day," she agreed with a little smirk before she stood on her toes to steal a kiss and then pulled on his hand. "Come on. If we leave now, we'll have enough time to stop by this little cafe for food before the play starts."

"Woah, hey, at least let me get some coffee," Chance said, shaking his head at her. "I'm beat, Jamie; it's been a long month. I'm running on caffeine and spite at this point."

"Which is why you need the day to relax," she argued.

"Coffee first," he insisted, which got her to roll her eyes at him, but she followed him down to the kitchen with her lower lip poked out.

He hadn't even finished his first cup, though, when his comm went off — the one for the team back home — and his eyebrows shot up as he picked up. "What's going on?"

"Krissy's missing," Scott told him. "Jubilee and Rachel are trying to find a location on her right now, but we know who has her. We're just trying to pin him down and find out if he's working for anyone."

"I'll be there as soon as I can," Chance promised immediately.

"Just stay by your comm," Scott told him. "We don't know when we'll have a location, and to be honest, there's nothing much to be done right now but wait."

"Is Kade okay? And Kari and Kaleb?"

Scott let out a breath that was audible on the other end. "Worried. But I'll keep you updated."

"Thanks, Dad," Chance said before he pocketed the comm to find that Jamie was glaring at him openly. "It's an emergency."

"So you're just going to ditch me? On Valentine's Day?"

Chance tipped his head her way for a moment and set aside his coffee mug. "One of my best friends in the world has been kidnapped. Yes. I'm going to help find her." She didn't necessarily have to know that he didn't have to leave right now. Besides, he should probably tell Mac what was going on anyway so that he was in the know if Chance had to leave all of a sudden.

"It's Valentine's Day!"

"Yeah, well, she didn't ask to get kidnapped on Valentine's Day either," Chance said, already headed down the hallway as Jamie fumed behind him — and the further he got from her, the easier it was for him to decide he'd just go ahead and head to his ship after he talked to Mac. The Shanghai could use a little pep talk to get the engines ready if he had to speed off.