Standard DISCLAIMERS apply with the added Dakota and Yankton are mine.
FEEDBACK/ARCHIVING are welcome things. Send feedback to bkittle@creighton.edu
I've kinda rated this PG-13 for the fact there is a part in there I wouldn't let my younger cousin read. If it is actually PG-13 is actually up to the reader.
CAPS = loud speech
bold = noises
italics = That's what I thought
Climb That Mountain High (Part 1) Beverly McIntyre
There has to be one more. There's ALWAYS one more. Just when I think I'm done, I remember just one more body I have to clean up. Dakota grimaced as he caught the scent of a decaying flesh on the breeze. I'm going to have to talk to Chuckles about this. I never signed up to do carcass clean-up.
Dakota moved toward the stench as his stomach roiled. An entire morning of picking up decaying bodies had made him ultimately regret eating breakfast this morning. Never again will I say, 'We can clean this up in the morning.' Though he had been lucky on some accounts, Maggott's two little slugs had taken care of over half of the bodies. Dakota grimaced again when he thought about it. Stop it. You're just makin' yourself even sicker. Why just because the X-Men arrived home around four in the mourn- squish.
Had the tall man actually been paying attention to where he was going rather than getting lost in his own thoughts, he might have seen the entrails before he stepped right in them. Dakota looked down at his feet and felt a wave of nausea wash right over him. Oh, now I've gone and stepped in it. He backed out of the mess he had walked into and began to vigorously wipe his boots off in the grass. When he was sufficiently happy that his boots were clear of entrails so he could burn them later, he looked up at the clearing in front of him.
He had found the N'Garai body that he had hoped Maggott's slugs had taken care of. The entire clearing was covered with N'Garai parts. Lucky, next time you explode something with vital organs, you get to clean it up. The grass was dyed a deep red with blood. Pieces of alien body adorned the surrounding trees. It looked like a creature had exploded from the inside out. Which it had. Which is why I'm not happy with a certain blond personage. This is definitely going to require more than one Hefty bag. This was a big sucker. Dakota dismally looked around the clearing. A big sucker with a lot of innerds.
Heaving a mighty sigh, Dakota wiped his palms on his blood-stained jeans. He pulled the last pair of rubber gloves Dr. Reyes had given him out of his back pocket. He put them on and made sure to snap them just like he had seen thousands of times on the television and the movies. He pulled the red bandana that hung loosely around his neck back up, over his nose and mouth. Maybe next time I could con Reyes out of a surgical mask, too. Dakota grabbed one of the last two trash bags dangling out of his front pocket and snapped it open. Now, where do I start?
"Do you need any assistance, Dakota?"
The black-haired man looked down the path behind him. Storm, white-haired leader of the X-Men, was strolling up the path. Dakota felt the breeze shift so the stench of what was left of a N'Garai wafted away from him. Somebody doesn't like the stench either.
"Sure. Fill this up." Dakota held out the empty garbage bag for her. Storm stopped in front of him, looking down at the bag, then at Dakota.
"I do not have any money."
Dakota's brow furrowed. Huh? It took a second for him to realize he was still wearing the bandana over his nose and mouth. Thus, he resembled a bank robber.
"Oh, no," Dakota gasped. "The world's going to fall apart. Storm made a joke."
Storm took the plastic garbage bag from his hands. "Though I am not known for my sense of humor, I do have one."
"Hmm. I'll just have to add slight sense of humor to Chu-Xavier's files next to fashion sense and a sense of justice." Dakota turned and crouched down next to the nearest smattering of N'Garai parts. He picked up the pieces that were not melded with part of the landscape. "If you don't mind me asking, what are you doing up so early. You guys came in pretty late."
"It is not quite as early as you think. It is nearly noon."
Dakota paused in picking up rather unmentionable things. He had been out since six picking up the grounds of N'Garai mess. It was no small wonder that his stomach was protesting; it was running on empty. I get to eat as soon as I finish cleaning up this. 'Cause if I go in to eat and actually manage to keep it down, I'm not coming back out here.
"But I must ask, Dakota, did you not go a little overboard on taking care of this N'Garai?"
"I didn't 'take care' of this one," Dakota said as he straightened up. He turned and dumped the bloody mess into the waiting garbage bag. He was glad that the bandana hid the lower half of his face when he saw Storm wrinkle her nose at the odor now coming from the bag in her hands.
"If you did not, then who did?"
"Longshot." He caught the shocked glance from Storm to the contents of the bag. "The thing tried to eat Yankton. Longshot wasn't going to have his puppy eaten by a big, slobbering demon. He pulled out one of his throwing spikes and let loose on the demon."
"'Let loose?' What do you mean 'let loose?'"
"You remember why Longshot left the X-Men in the first place?"
"He felt he was as we were. Everything had a history while he did not. He wanted to fill in the gaps of what was missing so he could be whole. He felt once he was whole, he could return to us."
Dakota blinked and stopped himself from scratching his head. He didn't need to wash bloody stuff out of his hair, but what Storm had just said wasn't quite what Longshot had told him. "Well, another one of his concerns was not having enough firepower to stand next to you people at times. I kinda helped him find a new power to rival some of you guys."
"What do you mean 'new power'?"
"Well, after he bumped into me, and I mean that quite literally, after he left you guys in Australia, we traveled around together for awhile. I guess sometime while we were out on the road, I said something that made Longshot think that he had something more. He found that something when we ran into the D.C. shortly there after." Dakota let out a small laugh. "Lash didn't appreciate being blown off of her feet by one tiny little spike."
Storm's eyes steeled over. "She got what she very well deserved."
Dakota had never seen this side of Storm, nor did he want to see it right now. Obviously, the X-Men's run in with the Destruction Crew a few weeks ago still had some raw feelings running through the team. Especially in Psylocke and Angel's cases. Psylocke just itched to get back at the degenerate people who caused so much suffering to herself and the man she loved. Angel was more angry because of the wheelchair he was forced to use temporarily. He could have been more bitter about the event but since his wings had "miraculously" been healed from their former charred state, Worthington appeared to be more at ease than his paramour. Of course, Dakota knew there was no miracle to the healing of Angel's wings. The Lakota never counted the things he did for people among those of miracles; he just hoped that his little secrets stayed amongst the people he trusted, like Longshot, and those who just happened to have an inkling of what he did, like Storm.
Dakota quietly turned back to clean up some more of the N'Garai splatterings; he would let Storm work through whatever she was feeling at the moment on her own. As he crouched down, he caught some movement in the woods out of the corner of his eye. Thinking it was just another deer scampering through the woods, he continued to scoop up whatever N'Garai parts he could. He stood up when had a good handful of stuff. He stopped in mid-stoop when he thought he spied a goat-legged man across the clearing from him. The hairs on Dakota's neck started to burn in a manner that made him think that somebody behind him was looking at his butt. When he blinked in confusion, the creature had disappeared but the sensation of being scoped out didn't end. At least I'm a distraction for her.
"Uh, Storm." Dakota stood up the rest of the way. He turned to her and dumped his handful into the garbage bag. She tried to raise an eyebrow innocently. The burning on the back of his neck ceased when he turned around. "Either I've been working too hard out here or we have a satyr running around the estate." Jerking his thumb in the direction of where he had last seen the satyr, he tried to discern any sort of guilty look on the weather goddess' face.
"A satyr?" The feigned innocence disappeared from her face.
"Yeah, a half man/half goat creature popular in-"
"I know what a satyr is, Dakota," Storm rebuffed mildly. "Are you sure you saw one?"
"Well, I'm not too sure. I thought I saw one, but I blinked and it was gone." Dakota started to peel the rubber gloves off of his hands as Storm set the garbage bag down. "Could have been just my body telling me I need to eat something." Or I was too distracted by the thought of you checking out my butt. Gosh, next thing you'll know, I'll have to update Chuckle's files with a sense of humor and a libido.
"We should still investigate it. Stranger things have happened on these grounds." Storm took to the air just as a haunting melody drifted through the air. Storm halted her ascent abruptly and stopped to listen.
Dakota tilted his head to get a better earful. After a minute of listening, he turned his face up to Storm, squinting against the sunlight determined to blind him.
"His middle C's a bit flat, but other than that it's pretty. . . Storm. . . Hello? Earth to the weather goddess." Dakota walked over, reached up, and waved his hand in front of Storm's glazed-over eyes. When she didn't blink or even acknowledge that he was there, Dakota became worried. He dropped his hand down and grabbed her hand. "Okay. C'mon Storm. Time to go inside."
Storm snatched her hand away from his. "I must. . .talk to . . . this master musician." She started to float across the clearing.
"I don't think a master musician would let his mid C stay flat. Storm. Hey!"
Storm continued toward the music. Dakota felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise. This was penultimately weird. Something was seriously amiss.
Being ever so careful where he placed his feet, Dakota followed Storm. As he gazelle-leaped over the biggest of the splatterings, he wished, not for the first time, that he had the ability to fly. It could make his life so much easier. And probably make him look less like a pansy trying to get across the clearing.
When he finally made it across the clearing and into the shadows of the woods, Dakota found that he had not been hallucinating. Sitting atop a large rock, a goat-legged man played his reed pipes. He had a mop of curly brown hair and two small horns perched on his forehead. He was the source of the melody that currently had Storm swaying in front of the short creature, eyes closed. It was then that Dakota learned a very important thing: nobody manufactures pants for goat-legged men, or underwear for that matter. As it was, Dakota could tell that this satyr was kind of happy to see such a beautiful woman. A couple vivid images that Dakota didn't particularly want floating through his head passed before his eyes. Ohhh, I'm going to be sick.
The satyr stopped playing his reed pipes looked up at his musically-ensnared prize. His dark brown eyes sized her up. A small smile of delight spread across his lips.
"Ah. I knew if I had the Muses bless my pipes they'd bring much fairer prizes. Come, my fair one. Come find the ultimate pleasure that is the Lord of the Wild." The satyr stood up on the rock, his cloven feet clopping lightly. It seemed the satyr was even more happy and all to willing to share his happiness with a certain white-haired woman. Dakota had to do something before Storm did something that violated all laws of nature.
"Alright, I don't know who you are, Mr. Satyr, but put Mr. Happy Stick away," Dakota said as he moved into a patch of sunlight with an enlarged sense of the dramatic.
Standing on the rock, the satyr glared banefully at him. "Who dares to interrupt Pan's festivities?"
'Pan's festivities?' great not only do I have a mythological creature trying to seduce one of the X-Men, I have a delusional one.
"They call me Dakota. Now, are you going to leave or do I have to chuck you out?" Not sounding too macho, now am I?
Pan looked over at Storm. "Get rid of this meddler, my prize, so that you alone can enjoy the bountious pleasure that only I can offer you."
Where does this guy get his dialogue?
Storm turned to Dakota, her eyes blazing with an out of place passion. "Leave us be." With no more said, Storm picked Dakota off his feet with a conjured jet of wind and threw him back into the clearing.
After getting scraped by tree branches, Dakota flew across the clearing and was only stopped from going any farther by a tree that had grown in the way. Wrapped bodily around the tree, Dakota saw a red haze leak over his eyes. No! Dakota forced the haze back. This was none of Storm's doing. She was somehow being controlled by a creature calling himself Pan. His own will won for the time being. With an inner battle pushed away until later, Dakota peeled himself off of the mighty elm that he had become fairly intimate with.
Wobbling backwards a few steps, Dakota ignored the squishing sounds coming from beneath his boots. He straightened himself up and felt his entire spinal column scream in protest. Fighting back the pain, Dakota turned to back to where the satyr and Storm were hidden. With long, determined strides that only managed to slide a little on N'Garai parts, he crossed the clearing, not particularly caring where his feet landed. Not pausing, he broke through the ring of trees.
Storm was kneeling, supplicant, before the satyr. Dakota picked up his pace and rushed the short creature. Pan had enough time to turn and see Dakota before he was lifted bodily off of the rock. Held by his neck, Pan's feet kicked wildly two feet above the ground. Dakota held the satyr out at arms length to keep those cloven hooves from doing him any harm. Pan grabbed at Dakota's wrist with both of his hands, trying to yank himself free.
"Hhhhell-"
Dakota squeezed tighter, cutting off the satyr's plea for desperately needed aid.
"Dakota, release him!"
Thinking Storm might be returning to her former self, Dakota's grip on the mythological creature lessened slightly. But he quickly tightened it back up when swirling winds surrounded him. Storm was trying to lift him off of his feet again, but this time she found herself shocked. Not even one hair on Dakota's head moved in her created winds. The intensity of the winds increased but Dakota stood there undisturbed. The satyr, who Storm had positioned outside of the small tornado, was starting to turn blue in the face. Dakota held him up so that the creature had to stare in his stone-cold eyes.
"I don't know where you came from or how you got here, but you must know one thing, I came here to help the X-Men. No one, not even you, is going to hurt them when I'm around. So go take your Mr. Happy Stick and go fly with it." Before Storm could stop the winds, Dakota drew the satyr into the winds around him and let go. The satyr, caught up in the winds with no tether to anything anymore was picked up and tossed toward the sky.
"Master! NO!"
Dakota whirled on his heel, ready to face an angry, weather-controlling woman. To his surprise, she stumbled backward with her hands held to her temples.
"Storm," he said quietly, unsure of what was happening. Offering a hand to help steady her, Dakota watched her stumble out of his reach.
She let out a primal scream; winds flared to life around her, whipping twigs and leaves into Dakota's eyes and forcing him to step back and cover his face. As the scream faded in her throat, she wobbled toward where Pan had disappeared. As Dakota lowered his arms from his eyes, the weather goddess collapsed.
"Ororo!"
