Disclaimer: I do not own any of these characters, except for those I invent.
`D.C. is a character I invented. For details, please see "D.C. and the CN Tower" chapters one, two, three, four, and five.
It had been almost 40 hours since they had left. The mist was still hiding Paris from view. The French army had sealed off all arteries into the city, because several hundred people that had gone into the mist had emitted short screams, and then were silent. Even the Seine, the river that flows through the city, had stopped flowing. Water went into the mist, but it didn't come out. The X-men had left the mansion to investigate, but they had left before the news reports. So a lot was going on.
On the other hand, Jupiter was crashing into the sun, and Saturn seemed to have turned into a star.
D.C. had promised himself that if the X-men didn't come back in 48 hours, he himself would go to Paris, to see what the whole thing was about. 40 hours had passed, and not a word had come. The students at Mutant High, with no teachers, spent their time either out on the playground, or watching the news reports. It was extremely boring, because the newscasters were merely repeating the same things over and over. However, one had to give them credit how they managed to say the facts in a different order each time.
D.C. at the moment was trying to fix Clark's alarm clock again. The stupid thing seemed intent on driving D.C. mad. He just couldn't figure out why the radio stopped working when he used his powers to silence the alarm. He scanned it over and over again. He had just spotted the magnet right next to it when Trevor came running into the room, shouting, "A message is being transmitted from Paris!"
Forgetting about the clock, D.C. ran into the common room. The same newscaster was on the TV screen, but now she had something interesting to say.
"A signal has just been received by French, American, Russian, and Japanese satellites in orbit. Message is as follows:
"'We will hold all of Paris hostage unless he that controls the ultimate power comes forward.' Nobody has any idea who the message is talking about. Or what the ultimate power is."
Ultimate power? Would that be power as in brawn or power as in politics? D.C. had no idea what it meant. And judging from the blank and confused faces, nobody else did either. It would seem that maybe the X-men shouldn't have gone to Paris. The fog had been growing thicker.
Also, why would anyone want to hold an entire city hostage unless they wanted something very badly? But why didn't they just hold a courtroom full of lawyers hostage, and threaten to release one lawyer per hour until their demands were met? That would get them what they wanted in a hurry.
The biggest question of all was, should he, D.C., go to Paris and try to get inside? In light of the hostage situation, D.C. felt sure he should at least try. But then, what if whoever it was could control the weather, like Storm? And if everyone and everything that went inside the mist disappeared, that meant that they must have some major league toys, to either kill or knock out every person who went inside, no matter where. Also, planes that went into the fog were cut off. Did they mean they were shot down? But even a plane that is shot down will have a few seconds to shout something. Those planes would just cut out, often while the pilot was in mid-sentence.
So, who had the power not only to control the weather, but also block anything from going outside? D.C. wouldn't know until he got there.
Oh, and there was one other small problem. Paris wasn't connected to New York State's power grid. How was he going to get there?
He could try going through thunderclouds as lightning, but he didn't want to be too obvious. That had been his mistake at the CN Tower. He didn't want to make mistakes here, now that there were civilians involved.
D.C. thought about it a little bit. On the TV screen, it showed a video of a passenger airplane disappearing into the fog.
Yes, of course! The answer was so obvious that he almost kicked himself. D.C. ran into his dormitory. No one was inside. He quickly jumped into the light bulb in the ceiling. See ya later, Worcester! Here we go! Down through Albany, going through assorted towns and cities, yes! Kennedy Airport!