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.
I am not trying to repeat any sci-fi shows or movies. If anyone has seen a show or movie with a similar plot, I apologize for boring the socks off you.
Also, I chose the name Marie because it is French and easy to remember. I don't want reminders that Rogue's real name is also Marie. I know already. OK? OK.
Cyclops looked down at the two kids from his girder. What were they doing here? And why was he in the Eiffel Tower? He remembered flying the jet through the mist, then the whole plane tilted crazily. He heard metal ripping and something hit the back of his head. He felt something drilling into his neck and then he blacked out, and here he was, kneeling on a girder somewhere between the second and third observation decks. He noticed something moving below him, and it was two kids, panting and whispering together in rapid French. He decided to talk to them.
Both Marie and Jean-Pierre jumped up when they heard someone coming. Looking up, they saw a man with brown hair wearing some sort of one-lens sunglasses over his eyes and a leather suit. He jumped down, and they both back away from him, assuming defensive stances.
"Hey, hey, hey, I'm not here to hurt you, I'm here to help."
Both kids regarded him with wary eyes. Then the girl stepped forward and asked in English, "Who are you? What are you here for?"
"I'm here to investigate the mist covering the city. Do you know how I got here?"
"No, we don't know how we got here. I woke up in the gift shop on the second level, and he woke up on the third level, and then we were attacked by a man with blue hair."
"Blue hair? Do you know who he was?"
"No. He said something about having to kill me."
"What else did he look like?"
"He had bright blue hair down to his shoulders, and glowing blue eyes."
"D.C.!"
"You know him?"
Cyclops regarded them. The girl was looking extremely scared, as did the boy. He wondered if the two had been brought here for a specific reason, but before he could reply, the boy's eyes opened wide, and he yelled, "Louk aout! Look out!" Cyclops turned around just in time to see an electric blue blur fly at him and collide with him, knocking him off the girder.
Marie jumped after them, Jean-Pierre leaping down from one girder to the next as fast as he could, which was a snail's pace compared with Marie. She could fall several hundred feet and not get hurt, so she could follow Cyclops and D.C. as they fell through the network of beams. She could hear grunting and snarling as the two fought each other. Then she saw the most amazing thing. Cyclops managed to get his hand to the side of his weird looking glasses, and a red beam of light came out of the glasses, pushing D.C. away and smacking him into a girder. She heard his hiss of pain and anger as she plummeted past him, but her only concern was to get to that man. His eye power might be useful in protecting both her and Jean-Pierre. Wait a moment! Where's Jean-Pierre?!?
Foolish for them to leave the boy all alone to try to get down by himself. D.C. smiled. He was a sitting duck, especially to someone who could control energy. The gray piece of metal four inches below his left ear started to make a very soft beeping noise. Nobody except D.C. could hear it, but he wasn't paying attention. He decided to dispose of the boy, and he let a powerful current of electricity travel through the beam he was crouching on. It spiraled and twisted through bits of broken girders that had fallen from the fight above. It snaked its way down toward the boy, who had no idea what was happening.
Marie was trying to get to the man, but he had gotten a good head start. She never saw the beam coming up to smack her in the face, but the next thing she knew she had intense pain in her nose and forehead, and she was spinning around. She had also slowed down a fair deal, and she caught glimpses of the man falling toward almost certain death.
Jean-Pierre was having a really rough time getting down. He had to jump down from one girder from the next, and that was not just scary but dangerous. He jumped down to another girder, and slipped.
Oh dear. This wasn't good. He fell, and fell, and fell. He was looking down, and he could see another girder coming up. He landed on it painfully, and in his pain and anguish accidentally reached out with his powers again.
This time, the tectonic plate carrying Europe and Asia rose several hundred feet, briefly releasing gas and bits of magma, and fell again.
When the ground rose, Cyclops hit the ground a lot sooner then he thought. True, he was falling at a very high rate, but he managed to grab a cable hanging from somewhere, which slowed him down, so that when he hit the ground it was with a whole lot of pain, but nothing broke. He had the distinct impression that he was rising, then falling, like in an elevator, but he looked around and saw nothing moving except the mist. Why is the mist moving so much? Wait a minute…The mist isn't moving, we're moving! Cyclops was in shock when Marie landed with a thump ten feet away from him. She had noticed nothing, and she was in a bad mood.
"Oh sure, I'm all right, thanks for asking."
Cyclops looked around and saw her.
"Where's the boy?"
"I don't know. I suppose he's still up where we left him."
"Hey, one eye!"
"Wolverine! Jean! Storm! Where were you?"
D.C. was still trying to figure out why he had suddenly been attacked by motion sickness. He felt like he had been in a glass jar being shaken up and down. He grabbed onto the girder next to him for support. Ugh. Then he vomited.
Eww. What is this stuff? He smelled something that was sweet and sickening at the same time, then he felt some sort of rain falling on him. Then pieces of partially digested pizza started to fall everywhere. He was just exclaiming in French how gross it was, when he was hit by a sudden thought. If Marie and that man were down there, who was up there? Jean-Pierre thought he would be sick too, and started to jump down again, desperate to get to the ground. He called out for help.
"That was Jean-Pierre!"
"Jean, how fast can we-"
Cyclops didn't have enough time to finish the sentence. Marie had grabbed him and everyone else and pushed off the ground, denting the metal she had been standing on. They all sailed up, Jean covering her eyes, Storm helping them up with a well placed tornado, Wolverine trying to protect himself from various scraps of paper and choking dust, and Cyclops trying to steady his mind's sense of disorientation. They all landed on a girder a few hundred feet above where they had started.
Jean looked around and saw a boy no older then 15 or so. He was looking at them in astonishment, and opened his mouth to say something, when she felt the girder lurch. Looking behind her she saw a familiar person melting the girder. Then the girder tilted crazily, and she could only fall and slid down it.
The girder bent, emitting a sharp scraping noise. The free end clanged on a girder below it, and stopped at a 55-degree angle. All six mutants went sliding down it, landing with a series of thuds and exclamations of pain. And then everyone, including D.C., blacked out, and fell.
For the third time in the last half-hour, Marie had to save the day. She was the first to come to, and she was terrified to see everyone asleep and falling. It took some fancy footwork to catch everyone, but she was able to stop them from breaking their necks when they landed (again) on the second level. Marie looked around. Yep. There's the ruin of the gift shop, the dismembered bits of iron beams, and lots of scraps of debris around. She saw something out from the corner of her eye. She looked just in time to see D.C., whirling head over heels, crash into the small building housing the elevator shaft.
D.C. had a very rude awakening when he punched through sheet metal and crashed into a double decker elevator. He went through the roof into the floor and into the bottom of the double deck elevator. He landed on his back and he felt the floor tear beneath the force of the impact. He gingerly stood up and looked down. Down, down, down, down he looked. If he had gone through the floor, he would've had a long time to think about the landing. The elevator was swinging, and D.C. found it hard to keep his balance. Now, to get out of here.
Marie had to pinch Cyclops very hard before he woke up. "Who is that guy? How do you know him?" she demanded. Cyclops sighed and decided to explain about everything.
Marie had never heard of such a place before. A school for mutants? I want to go! But before she could inquire about enrolling, they both heard a boom that shook the floor coming from the elevator shaft. They started shaking everyone, and pretty soon every person was awake and scurrying for a place to hide. Cyclops had given Marie and Jean-Pierre little walkie-talkies in case they needed help.
Jean-Pierre wasn't very hopeful about their surviving. How could they? This guy had survived almost everything it seemed. And if everything Marie said Cyclops said was true, this man was unbeatable. But the main question was, why had he so suddenly turned bad? Jean-Pierre rubbed his neck. The throbbing hadn't let up, he had just forgotten about it. He couldn't tell where that ache could come from. He hadn't fallen or anyth- Wait a minute! Jean-Pierre pictured the man in his mind as clearly as he could. Very bright blue eyes, shoulder length hair the same color, and just visible, about six inches below his left ear…
He spoke into the walkie-talkie. "Er, Monsieur Cyclops? When you were fighting that man, did you notice anything on his neck?"
"Not really. Why?"
"When you woke up, did you feel a pain in your neck?"
"Yes."
"Tell me, did that guy pierce his neck or something?"
"No. Why?"
An idea had sprouted in Jean-Pierre's mind. A crazy idea, but it was the only thing that made sense.
"I think I know how to beat him."
It hadn't taken long to get out of the elevator. Just a simple energy blast, and the door blew out. Now D.C. was stalking. He had spotted one of the adult mutants, and he was pretty sure she hadn't seen him. She had long white hair, and she seemed very agile. He was about to attack her, when he saw a sudden flash of red light. Something slammed into his neck, about six inches below his left ear. And the gray piece of metal sent an alarm to a certain alien spaceship, hiding up in the heavens.
In that spaceship, the six-armed aliens were trying to figure out what was going wrong. The controller device was heavily damaged, but it still had control of the subject, but just barely. One more hit should destroy it. The aliens decided to abort the project. But to abort it, they would have to delete anything that had to do with it, and since that included a mutant that controlled geological activity, Earth would have to be destroyed.
D.C. was twenty feet from where he had been. Sparks were flying from the gray device, causing burns all over his left side. His eyes were open but with a dead sort of look. Then he suddenly sat up. He looked in the direction of the blast, but before he saw Cyclops retreating, hurricane force winds suddenly blew through the Eiffel Tower. First priority: Protect his neck. He surrounded himself with blue hot flames, which he hadn't used since he was on the CN Tower. It was so hot that the iron beneath him vaporized, causing a foul smell to sweep over the premises. Without further ado, D.C. flew off the ground toward the top. He had orders, to kill every human on the planet. By any means necessary.
"Houston, this is spacecraft Endeavor, we are seeing a very odd weather condition. A bluish haze seems to be forming over North America. Wait a moment…haze is expanding over South America…haze is now appearing over the bit of Europe, Africa, and Asia we can see right now…haze is now flowing from the Americas over the Atlantic Ocean…seems to be headed for Europe…It must be traveling faster then sound! The haze has crossed the Atlantic Ocean! It is now gathering over Europe…looks like it's gathering over France! Houston, are you copying this? Houston, do you copy? Houston? HOUSTON! BLUISH HAZE IS NOW COMING OUT OF COMPUTER SYSTEMS OF ENDEAVOR! HOUSTON, DO YOU COPY?!?"