The following day, Remy told his...bunk-mates?...captors?...custodians?...new acquaintances...that he needed to go to the library. Magnus informed him they had a library at the School, two actually, and Remy was less than welcome to choose a book and read it, perhaps in his newly assigned quarters or better yet, back in a cell.
"Except I'm not lookin' for a book," Remy told him. "I'm picking up a research article I'd requested."
"Research into what, exactly?" Magnus asked in a clearly disbelieving tone of voice.
"Nun-ya."
"What is 'nun-ya'?"
"None ya business. Can't believe you fell for dat one."
Rogue volunteered to take Remy to the library before any further structural damage was done to the mansion. She had to return her borrowed library book anyway and find something different.
"Do not think for a moment that we will fail to pursue you, should you make an effort to escape," Magnus informed him.
"I'm more afraid of de librarians and their overdue fees than you," Remy snapped back. Rogue dragged Remy through the back door and onto the patio.
"If ya don't quit, Remy, Ah'm going to have to find you some professional help for your suicidal ideation!" Rogue said as she marched him down the path towards town.
"Who is dat guy, t'talk to me like I'm some idiot? Only people who actually know me can talk t'me like I'm an idiot! I resent his assumptions when I've yet to prove t'him true idiocy."
"You could just show even a modicum of respect, sugah!" Rogue said with exasperation.
"I will when he does t'me!"
"You always this stubborn?" she asked, shaking her head.
"No, I'm not," Remy insisted. "I am always reevaluating my beliefs based on new evidence. I am actually very easily persuaded t'do and think newer, stupider things-to my own detriment! So you might be right to find me help, chère, seeing as how I'm likely to commit self-harm."
Rogue had calmed a bit, and slowed her pace now that Remy was out of Magneto's line of sight. "Do ya really want to go t'the library?" she asked.
"Weh. And maybe someplace where I can buy some smokes and candy."
Rogue shook her head in an admonishing way. "What're you lookin' for at the library?"
"I said, I got a research article there."
"Alright, alright," she said in a placating tone. "Ah believe ya. What's it about?"
"Me, having too much curiosity for my own good."
"So, more self-harm?"
"If it's got as much jargon in it as de article McCoy wrote, then yes. I am like to beat my head against de wall."
"Do ya ever answer a question with a straight answer?" she asked, looking up at him.
Remy shrugged, noncommittally.
Once at the library, Remy returned to the reference desk. Lara wasn't there, she was back in the stacks about to get sniffed. Remy walked down the aisle, said: "Pardon my reach," and injected himself between the skeevy patron and the librarian. Remy stood several inches taller than the sniffer, and gave the man a glare. He was not wearing his sunglasses. The man stumbled backwards, a look of fear on his face, and ran back up the aisle.
Lara straightened from where she was crouched, retrieving a book from a lower shelf. "Here's the...book…? Hey, where'd he go?"
She looked up at Remy. "Hey, girl," he said to her, propping his elbow on a shelf, resting his chin on his fist.
Lara poked the book into Remy's chest. "Don't you 'hey, girl' me, buster," she said, smiling. "Nice to see your face-finally. But I thought you were going?"
"Change of plans," he said. "I'm enrolled in de school up de way. Trial admission. Current status: Undeclared."
Lara was momentarily confused, then realization dawned on her. "Oo-oh, you mean at Xavier's. Well, that makes sense. You here for your research paper?"
"Did it come?"
"It did, and it's a doozy," Lara said, leading him back to the reference desk. "No judgments! I'm just saying it's long. You're going to have to pay your copy fees this time."
"C'mon, chère," Remy said. "I am strapped for cash at de moment! Can't you put it on my tab?"
Lara relented, retrieved the research report from under her desk where it was wrapped in a manila envelope. "Here you go," she said. "I guess that means you'll be back if I put it on your tab. You'd better not stiff me, John."
Remy paused. "My name's not John. It's Remy."
"Are you for real? Now that you've got this weird accent thing going on, you've decided to become a different nationality all of a sudden? Who are you, Madonna?"
"I'm for real," he told her. "Only dat I was using an alias before, so I could conduct super-secret espionage, break into a highly-guarded institution, obtain classified information, and then flee via de underground tunnels runnin' from here to New York City."
"Oh, ha ha ha," Lara said sarcastically.
"Thanks for this," he said, holding up the envelope. Rogue was approaching from the popular fiction section, several paperback novels in her hands.
"Find what you need, sugah?" she asked.
"Yup, you got any spare change on you?"
"Ah don't," she replied. She smiled at the librarian. "Can you remind me what numbers recipe books are?"
"641.5s," Lara replied. "Looking for a specific kind of recipe? Particular regional cuisine? Method?"
"That's okay, honey, Ah'll just browse a bit," she said and pointed to Remy. "Can you mind this one for a sec?"
"We don't offer babysitting services, but I'll let you know if he wanders off," replied the librarian.
"Et tu, Bruté?" he whispered to Lara.
She raised her eyebrows. "Curtis said you'd found a hottie with a naughty body," she grinned wolfishly.
"You...you'd better hush up!" he hissed in an undertone. "I'm gonna kick Curt up and down dis block!"
Rogue soon returned holding her books to her chest. "You ready?" she asked Remy. "We should probably get back before they release the hounds. Or Logan."
Lara's smile was very big, and her eyebrows very high. "Bonjourrr, Remy," she trilled.
Remy pointed a finger at her in warning, kept pointing at her until he was standing in front of the circulation desk in the lobby.
"You got a thing for that girl, hunh?" Rogue observed.
"I have a thing for every girl," Remy informed her, draping an arm over her shoulders. She stiffened and shoved his arm away.
"Don't do that," she said in a slightly hostile undertone.
Remy took a careful step backwards and put his hands behind his back. "Okie doke," he said. "Sorry, sorry."
She shook her head impatiently and checked out her books.
They started walking back to the School in silence. Remy was looking up at the canopy of leafless trees overhead. Breaking the quiet, Rogue asked: "You wanted to go to a convenience store?"
"I don't have any money," he told her.
"Has that stopped you from taking what you wanted before?" she asked.
Remy felt his expression harden. He chose not to respond, to confirm or refute her assumption. It was likely she'd see no difference between him knocking over a convenience store than him siphoning off funds from a Ponzi scheme-running white-collar criminal.
I am not a crook!
Understanding his silence as anger, but not the reason for it, Rogue said softly: "Ah'm sorry if it seemed like Ah overreacted back there. It's just that with my powers…"
"S'fine," he said curtly. "I understand about not wanting to be touched."
They returned to the School, entered through the back door and into the kitchen. "I'll be in that room you made up for me, not poking bears," he informed her.
Rogue put her books down on the counter, seeming to want to talk more, but Remy had run out of patience for any more question and answer sessions.
He went upstairs, turned right down the hallway, found the room they had sent him to. The room was furnished with a bed, two nightstands flanking either side with lamps, a dresser and a desk with a chair. Remy would much prefer to return to his efficiency apartment, but he didn't know what these X-Folks intended on doing with him, or how long they planned on having him stay. It seemed his powers had come under full control, and he didn't know if it had something to do with Rogue touching him, or the one-two punch of Kitty turning him intangible at the same time Betsy sticking a proverbial fork in his brain. He hoped it had nothing to do with Sinister and whatever it was the creep had done to him. Remy had woken up in a panic early that morning, thinking he couldn't breathe, feeling the constriction around his body, the sensation of tendrils of something crawling into his mouth and nose and down his throat, pouring into his ears, burrowing into his eyes. The feeling of complete violation was overwhelming. He shoved that into his vault along with everything else horrible and sickening that he'd done or had done to him.
Remy sat at the desk, opened the envelope and removed the contents. The report had to be at least 100 pages long, titled Project: Black Womb of the Eugenics Information Center in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Remy thought: ick.
The study was less of a an article than a very long list of mutants, given numbers and letters based on date of birth, sex, and category. The mutant subjects were broken down into the same categories McCoy had outlined in his case study. The categories were further delimited by various mutant abilities falling within the category.
Remy studied the categories, abilities, and classes:
A.) Psychic/Mental
Illusionist / Projectionist
Hypnotist / Persuasive
Magician / Spiritualist
Precognitive* / Retrocognitive*
Telepath / Empath
Telekinetic
*may cross over with chronal manipulation (see category B)
B.) Energy Generation/Manipulation
Adaptive Power Manipulation*
Energy Transmutation - Electromagnetic / Potential-Kinetic / Thermal
Chronal Manipulation
Generative Power Creation
Chemical / Ionic / Electromagnetic / Gravitational / Nuclear / Sonic / Thermal
Locational Manipulation (teleportation / portal creation)
*certain Energy Adaptives may cross into Environmental category (see category C)
C.) Environmental
Manipulatives
Animal*
Atmospheric
Earth / Mineral
Fire
Vegetal
Water / Ice / Steam
Chemical / Electromagnetic / Ionic / Potential - Kinetic / Gravitational / Nuclear / Sonic / Thermal
*animal manipulatives may cross into Psychic / Mental category (see category A)
D.) Physical
Abnormalities, Physical Non-Human* (excluding genetic disorders/defects)
Accelerated Recuperation / Regeneration
Enhanced Agility / Reflexes / Strength / Stamina
Flight
Intangibility / Invincibility
Longevity
Metamorph / Physical Transformative
*List of documented physical abnormalities
Extraneous limbs (ex: additional limbs, fewer limbs, fins, flippers, horns, tails, wings)
Eye-color abnormality
Hair-color abnormality
Skin-color abnormality
Skin-texture abnormality (ex: Fur, Scales, Slime)
The mutant's alpha/numeric identification would then be followed with a ranking of where they fell on a power level chart, lowest to highest: Dreg, Gamma, Beta, Alpha, Omega. The list of over one-hundred mutants in the study was then used to extrapolate the total mutant population globally and their general breakdown between categories. Remy found the information alarming, but at the same time, interesting. Alarming, because who were all these mutants, where did they come from and where were they now? Morlocks, possibly? He could tell by many of the birthdates that some would be quite old now. The youngest, his own age. On the other hand, it was interesting to see and compare where he might fall in the various categories and know there were others like him, people he could potentially learn something from...if he could find them. If they lived yet. There were few that fell into every category, most fell solely within one classification, be it mental or physical.
19450330/M/A/ΑA(PE Ω) was one example, a man born on the 30th of March in 1945, with a special designation of AAlpha in the Psychic/Mental category. Thanks to the Physics book, Remy understood that the PE stood for 'potential.' There were no rankings for this man in classifications in B, C, or D.
There were a few outliers, however. One in particular had been typed in in italics: 19760418/M/A/Α B/C/Ω D/Ω.1
A male born 21 years ago. An Alpha in the mental category, Omega in the combined Energy/Environmental category, and an Omega in the physical category. It was followed up in the footnotes: 1: Outlier determined as high-risk/dangerous. Eliminated / terminated from study to avoid skewing final results.
Eliminated / Terminated? Well, that didn't sound good.
Another major understatement.
Next time: Remy gets a case of cooties.
Random references:
Et tu Brute - Julius Caesar, Shakespeare
Not a crook - Richard Nixon
Short chapter this time...I suppose I could post another this weekend if you want.