Shake Your Foundations
7. Second Hand News
Given Andi's well-documented tendency to rip out her stitches (not to mention aggravating other injuries she would have), a betting pool had been started among the Dreadnoks over how long it would take for her to undo some of the Medi-Vipers' hard work. Nearly two weeks passed without an injury report, but that all changed this morning. Zartan had hoped that she would hold off another week on trying to re-injure herself, as she had only been released from the infirmary a few days ago. He'd thought she would still be too weak to try anything, but after fielding a frantic phone call from Gnawgahyde retelling of the teenager's attempt to work the paint sprayer with a broken arm and several cracked or broken ribs, Zartan was forced to admit that the only way to keep the girl out of trouble was to keep her where he could personally keep an eye on her. That meant bringing her to Bayville and coming up with a convincing cover story.
His newly-rediscovered social life was going to suffer for this decision.
In the days and weeks since his trip to retrieve his wayward apprentice, a lot had happened in Bayville. Magneto discovered the Joes' listening devices (that Cobra had been tapping into as well) and blamed the X-Men for their presence in the Brotherhood house. Zarana was apparently sleeping with that Joe nerd-boy again, only this time the Baroness found out and Zarana used the 'just plying him for information' excuse (which actually worked, for once) to stay out of trouble. And, he was finally getting some much needed (and certainly deserved at this point) action from a certain redheaded shape-shifter. If things went his way, he would soon start making plans to subtly replace Cobra Commander's incompetent leadership with a little bit of help from Mystique.
Still, there were times when he felt an odd sense of déjà vu when he looked at her. They'd never met in-person before this mission; all he'd known of her before now was her codename, a laundry list of her past completed missions, and a bunch of grainy, unfocused surveillance camera snapshots. Seeing her in person shouldn't have triggered the 'I've seen your face somewhere before' and 'that voice of yours sounds familiar' moments he'd been having lately and he was at a loss for another explanation.
However, with Andi flying out later this week, his focus would need to stay on her and not his new lover. Of course, he would also need somebody to look after the kid while he was teaching class…
This was going to be a very long week.
"Daughter?" A puzzled Principal Kelly blinked. He and Vice Principal Gyrich were in his office. Mr. Tanzar—the new chemistry teacher—stood in front of them. "You have a daughter?"
"She lives with my ex-wife during the school year." The blond man sighed as he explained the situation. "Two weeks ago she was involved in a serious dirt-bike accident, which is why I left in such a rush that Tuesday. She was released from the hospital over the weekend, but since her mother is apparently more devoted to her career than our child's health, she's managed to rip out a few of her stitches and almost re-broke her arm."
"And you want to enroll her here?" Kelly frowned in concern. Gyrich scowled and crossed his arms, but remained silent. Mr. Tanzar shook his head.
"Oh no, not at the moment. I don't know that she has enough strength back to deal with a full class day, let alone this school's gym classes." That comment earned a groan from Kelly. "However, Bayville High has a student body sizable enough that allowing her to audit a few classes while she heals should not cause any issues."
"Trying to pawn a trouble-maker off on us, are you?" Gyrich sneered. Mr. Tanzar didn't even flinch at the red-haired bespectacled man's accusation.
"While she can be rather passionate about her beliefs, my daughter is not the kind of girl who goes looking for trouble." He remarked. "If any of the students here, especially the male students, try to start trouble with her, I am confident that she and the other teachers are capable of dealing with the situation."
"And her presence as a part-time student would be temporary?" Principal Kelly inquired.
"Yes. Once she's completely healed up, she will move back in with her mother."
"Then I see no reason why not to let her audit a few classes, provided she doesn't distract the other students."
"Oh, I think her causing a distraction is the least of your concerns, Principal Kelly." Mr. Tanzar reassured. "She should be arriving sometime tomorrow night, so expect her on campus Thursday."
"Daughter?" Gung-Ho gaped. The Joe team posing as substitute teachers had gathered in the computer room, listening to audio footage from the listening device they placed in Principal Kelly's office.
"That's what he told Kelly and Gyrich, at any rate." Mainframe admitted. "However, since I'm relatively sure that Zanya's already sneaking around here as one of the students, I'd be willing to bet that whoever's coming here is one of those mutant teenagers he's training."
"An injured mutant teenager, judging by that story." Alpine stroked his scruffy beard thoughtfully. "Do we have any files on those kids?" He asked. Mainframe sighed.
"We do, but they're all at least a year out of date. Since we got them directly from SHIELD, it's probably more like two years. I'll see if I can't dig up some more current information on them."
"And how do you plan to do that?" Falcon remarked. "Go ask them nicely?"
"Why not?" The computer specialist shrugged. "If the kid's injured bad enough to warrant bringing her here and risk jeopardizing the assignment, he'd probably take whatever competent help he could get."
"What makes you so sure they would tell you the truth? The whole family is a bunch of lying, heartless killers." Jinx frowned. The female ninja wasn't in the best of moods and hadn't been since being assigned a mission in which she A) had to work with Falcon, and B) had to pretend to tolerate Zartan's continued existence. The Dreadnok leader was marked for death by their clan…but she was forbidden by the parameters of the mission to use deadly force on any of the Cobra operatives present unless a gunfight broke out between the groups.
Although she was beginning to wish she could stick a katana up Falcon's ass just to get him to stop making unwanted romantic advances toward her.
"Lying killers, yes. Definitely not heartless when it comes to protecting their own, though." Alpine reminded. "Didn't they once give us the location of one of Cobra's research bases just to rescue one of their people?"
"Zartan did it to save his sister during that face-stealing fiasco, yes. Low Light grumbled about it for a few days." Mainframe recalled. And when the normally silent sniper started grumbling about something like that, everybody tended to pay attention.
"Look, if they don't give us the files willingly, you can steal the files for us, Jinx." Gung-Ho shrugged. "Or Mainframe can try to hack into their databases, if Dreadnoks even use databases…"
"The point to all of this is that we desperately need updated files on those kids." Mainframe remarked. "We don't know if they've added more mutants to the team in the last year, or if it's still just the six kids that started this mess. Not knowing that is going to bite us in the ass eventually."
Falcon sighed, knowing that the older Joe had a point. They knew next to nothing about what Shadowatch had been up to in the last year and a half, or how much the team dynamics had changed. And, much as he hated it, the best way for them to get that much-needed information was to encourage Mainframe to continue fraternizing with Zarana. Nothing good could come of encouraging that romantic train-wreck. "We'll try the diplomatic approach first. If that doesn't work, we resort to more drastic and questionably legal measures. Just get us a copy of those files and see if you can't find out which kid is flying into town tomorrow evening."
The only good thing about being a gym teacher was the absence of papers to grade, Zarana decided. You worked the kids until they dropped, then sent them on to their next class. It was a wonderful system, or it would be if Falcon hadn't insisted on starting a goddamn war during every one of their class sessions. Honestly, why did they even need two gym teachers? There was no reason why the girls couldn't play alongside the boys, especially in contact sports. If the guys got fresh, the girls would kick their asses (and possibly their crotches as well, offense pending). Segregating them like this was teaching the girls that they were somehow physically inferior to their male counterparts, which was so far from the truth that it resided in another galaxy. She was living proof of that.
But back to the absence of papers (which, after two years of filling in as a composition, literature, and foreign language instructor, was something worth savoring). She enjoyed having time to herself once class finished for the day. It meant she had more time to spend with Mainframe; more time to check and see how the kids were doing in Chicago; more time to think about the mess that had just transpired at their other base. A mess that, as of tomorrow, would be brought to the attention of those in Bayville.
The mercenary frowned at that thought. The school was a powder keg of tension as it was, and Andi—temperamental spitfire that she was—might just be the spark that caused it to explode. The kid would need to be cautious to the point of paranoia not to let her real identity slip. If anyone here found out she was Sabretooth's kid… she really didn't like what lay down that road.
Nervously toying with the USB drive in her left hand, she continued on her way to the computer lab. It was that wonderful time of day when both her class schedule and Blaine's allowed them forty-five minutes to themselves. Normally it was spent in rather intense, er, romantic ventures in one of the unused second-floor classrooms, but today she had other ideas in mind. Unfortunately, they involved business and not her personal pleasure.
It was a simple, yet extremely complex matter. Andi was still barely standing on her own power, so someone needed to keep an eye on her at all times. Despite the fact that she and her siblings were teaching at the school, there were certain time blocks where none of them would be available to supervise the girl. That meant Andi would inevitably be bored, and when Andi got bored, one of two things would happen. She would either get into fights, or come up with extremely creative ways of entertaining herself with whatever supplies were on hand. Since the kid's left arm was still in a cast and her ribs and lung barely healed, letting her get bored was simply not a very safe option.
But who do you ask to babysit a snarky, emotionally-damaged, mutant teenage girl? Not the Baroness. No, she was pitching the mother of all bitch-fits over Andi being brought here in the first place. That left the Joes, of which there were precious few potential candidates. Falcon wouldn't know what to do with her. Alpine was too busy trying to keep track of Bazooka. And Jinx…there was no way on heaven, earth, or hell that Zartan was going to let the female ninja near his favorite student. Not that she would even agree to it if they asked; she hated Zartan, and by extension of logic his 'clan' as well. That left only Gung-Ho and Mainframe as viable options. Gung Ho had experience with kids, and Mainframe actually had a teenage daughter. They would be perfect for the job, if she and Zartan could get them to agree to it.
That's where the flash drive came in. As a show of 'good faith' (less that and more of the 'take this and get your information straight for once' line of thinking), Zartan had permitted her to hand over the basic team profiles. They weren't nearly as detailed as their own personal files, but for the moment the general Cobra database entries would suffice.
He was *just* signing off of the school computer when she entered the classroom. The double-take he did upon seeing her leaning against the doorframe was horribly distracting. Zarana found herself involuntarily smiling.
Mainframe looks so damn cute when he is confused... Zarana thought.
"I didn't expect to see you here." The Joe computer specialist blinked, watching her intently as she ambled into the room and shut the door behind her.
"Sorry, luv, but this isn't a social call." She sighed. "You've got questions, we need a small favor, so why don't we make a deal?"
"What...kind of favor?" He frowned. Always beware of a Dreadnok asking for a favor; it often came to bite you in the arse later. Fortunately, Mainframe was smart enough to realize that.
"We need someone to keep an eye on our girl during fifth period, possibly first period on Thursday also, but that should be the only day you need to worry about that." The Dreadnok woman answered. "Can't leave her alone that long or she'll come up with creative new ways to injure herself, as she proved with the paint sprayer yesterday afternoon." Zartan had not been happy about fielding that phone call.
"Depends…what do I get out of it?" He inquired. A mischievous smirk lit up her face.
"Besides my infinite gratitude and the many ways I will thank you for this later? This." She held up the flash drive so he could see it. "Cobra's most recent files on Shadowatch, all conveniently in one place."
She knew he was on board with the idea now. There was that little glint in his brown eyes, the one that only showed up when he was feeling rather pleased about something. "I do believe you have yourself a deal, Zarana." He smiled. "Now, about those questions you mentioned earlier…"
"Her name should be the first one to pop up, since the codenames are listed in alphabetical order." She grinned, handing him the thumb drive. "But we haven't got around to updating it since all this shit happened two weeks ago, so there's nothing about the fight yet."
"Fight?" A flash of alarm crossed his face. "Shadowatch got into a fight? Was it with the Brotherhood? X-Men?"
"The whole team wasn't involved, just our squad leader and her...father." Zarana spat the word out of her mouth as if it were poisonous. That monster had no right… "Rest of the Brotherhood was long gone when this went down. She suffered a broken arm, a couple broken ribs, punctured lung, and more claw marks and bruises than I really want to think about. O'course with that damned healing factor of his, he got off without a scratch…"
Mainframe frowned, clearly thinking over the implications of what she'd just told him. "Her own father did this to her?"
"When that father happens to be a man who answers to 'Sabretooth', it's slightly less shocking but no less disturbing." She sneered. Mainframe's eyes widened in shock. "We're trying to track down her mother—the woman has primary custody, but we have no idea what kind of parental rights he's got. If we could find her and explain what happened, we'd at least be able to keep him from legally showing up to drag her off somewhere." But damn, that woman was hard to trace. Granted, they hadn't exactly had a lot of time to devote to looking, but it was still proving to be a tough search. From the looks of things, they'd need to hack into SHIELD's databases to see if they had any more information on the "shape-shifter, female" DNA sample that Mindbender got a close familial match from two years ago.
"…maybe I can help?" He offered. "Is the mother's last known contact information listed on this file?"
"Yes, but it's grossly inaccurate." Zarana remarked. "The apartment address hasn't had anyone living in it for close to a year and she's changed phone numbers. Andi might have the new one programmed into her phone, though." If she did, she hadn't volunteered that information. "We've got one more lead to chase down, and if that doesn't work, I'll let you know."
"Please do. No kid deserves to go through that." His eyes met hers and she promptly forgot how to breathe. Even after so many years, she still couldn't quite control herself whenever he gave her looks like that. "So, how do you want to spend the rest of our break time?" He asked, knowing they'd just spent a fair chunk of it discussing work-related problems—something neither of them particularly wanted to do when their time together was so short.
"If you recall, I did say I would thank you for your help earlier." She purred, closing the space between them.
"Mmm. And just how do you plan to do that?" He murmured in her ear, the action sending and involuntary but not unwelcome shiver down her spine.
"Why don't we find somewhere a little more private and I'll show you?" The computer lab was hardly the place for this sort of activity.
"I think that can be arranged." He smiled. And in that moment, Zarana was content to forget all about the stress and drama of the last few days. She had him there with her, and she fully intended to make every second they had together count.