I curled up in the corner making myself look as small as possible
gathering enough courage to peek out of my safe spot between the futon and
the wall. The intruders couldn't see me there, I was safe but my mother
wasn't. In the dark room she was struggling against them, screaming and
struggling. I tried to move forward to help her but ran into some sort of
invisible wall not knowing it was my mutant mother's way of protecting me.
I saw one of the men throw her onto the couch across the room from where I
was and a knife glint in the dim light. That was when I covered my ears and
squeezed my eyes shut. I was only ten and seeing my mother murdered was not
good for my mental stability. Tears started to leak through my eyelid's
barrier as even through my hands I could hear her fighting and a tremor
shook the house violently.
"What the hell?" One of the four men asked. "Fuck, the house is coming down!" It didn't though, the men ran and knowing they might come back but knowing I could go see my mom one last time I ran, the shield having been lifted, over to her. "Mom?" No reply, I shook her lightly. "Mom?"
"Lance," she barely whispered and gathered me into her arms getting her blood all over my pajamas as she held me one last time, "why are you out of bed?"
"I heard you scream," I answered my voice almost squeaking, "why did they…"
"They're scared of what is different, it's human nature." She took a deep gurgle of a breath, "they aren't bad people, just scared."
"But what's different about you?" I was young and confused and holding onto my mother with a death grip afraid of losing her.
"I'm… special, like you…" I looked into her comforting, brown eyes to find them glazed over and her face already paling in death.
"Mother? Mother? Momma!" I tried to wake her up, tried to wake myself up before I collapsed in a heaped still clinging her on the couch crying. It wasn't fair! She hadn't done anything! She HADN'T! "MOM!" I wasn't holding back anymore, just crying like I was two years old again, no not crying, sobbing. I was alone, and the world was really scary.
"You have no idea, Avalanche." I turned around and was suddenly no longer a boy who'd just used his power to scare off his mother's murders, but a young adult looking down at a bald man in a wheel chair with a masked man standing behind him. "We'll never be accepted by humanity, how many will have to die like she did before you realize this, Mr. Alvers?"
"What happened to your coexistence?" I asked mouth barely moving as I found it was suddenly cold and my breath was showing, but somehow the other two didn't have breathes of their own.
"Oh, we can coexist with humanity, they'll just have to realized that we are the future and therefore the leaders." He was silent for a moment before continuing. "You see, Lance, not even with my power can Mimic block me out of your heads, I know about you and Mr. Summers. How long has it been now? A week? I've been informed about your little 'issue' by the principal and with some prying I know everything."
"No, you're just a figment of my imagination, you aren't anything!"
"Are you willing to risk Scott's life on that? Cause he will have to be punished for being a double agent." And somehow I knew that Xavier had really gotten into my head.
"NO!"
"Woah, Lance, calm down!" Jordan placed a hand on my chest and pushed me back into my bed. He and Keith were standing over me looking worried as I tried to get my head straight. Oh god oh god oh god Scott!
"Xavier knows," I blurted out forcing myself up, "he knows everything, he just wanted us to think we were safe. Oh god! He's gonna kill Scott. Oh god oh god oh god!"
"Lance!" A flash of blue, white, and light brown and Cami landed on my bed, "I heard you scream, are you ok? Hey where are you going?"
"To save Scott," I got up driven by adrenaline and determination not to lose someone else. I pulled on my new leather jacket and a pair of black jeans over my under shirt and boxers and stopped only at the door to put my boots on. "What are you guys doing?" I almost snapped as Keith and Jordan jumped into the jeep.
"Looking after your ass while you go insane," Keith snapped right back. "Plus it was the only way to get that suicidal sister of yours from following you." Oh right, Cami would do something like that. Probably still would.
They'd both put on some decent clothing on their way out. Keith had managed to pull on a pair of black jeans and a his yellow vest I so badly wanted to burn and Jordan had just had time to pull on his jeans leaving his top half covered with a white tank top.
"Gates will probably be the hardest part to get through," Jordan started from the back seat being the rational one as usual. "Then there's the security system, and that big hairy guy with the claws."
"Zap it, zap it, fry him," Keith answered shrugging and removing his gloves. I was doing about 50 in a 25-mph zone, but I really didn't care at the point. "You think too much sometimes." A pause, "Or we could explode it, shake it up, and zap him."
"You're interesting at night," I commented which came out more of a grumble.
"Eh, well, what can I say?"
"How about LANCE SLOW DOWN!" Jordan yelled as I noticed we were approaching the gates to the institute. A large 'KR BAM!' and the large iron fence was nothing but metal dust. "We have all lost our minds."
"Nah, Lance just has to be the knight in shining armor and we're the ones to make sure he doesn't get killed."
"Good point, noble stead."
"Why thank you, worthless squire," Keith shot back.
I stopped the jeep and jumped out. "And now is where training would have come in handy," I thought for a second, "or maybe some theme music."
"Cause I'm TN…"
"Finish that sentence, Electro, and I will kill you," Jordan warned. Lack of sleep certainly made people interesting. "Now, do we go to the tallest tower to find Scott or something?"
"No, you distract short, fuzzy, and angry and the weather witch and I go find Scott, I know the mansion." None the less the alarm had been sounded and Wolverine and Storm were coming for us. I sent a tremor through the ground and Wolverine lost his balance.
I managed to get passed them as Electro had way too much fun finding out how well a metal-coated skeleton conducted electricity and Jordan distracted Storm with exploding pine needles. Well, can't say it wasn't an interesting Friday night.
It was dark inside the mansion and I pressed myself against the wall as Spyke, Jean, and Nightcrawler ran by to find out what was going on outside. I turned enough to look out the window to see my allies' reaction but decided it best just to go get to Scott as fast as possible. Xavier had been wrong. It hadn't been a week it'd been more. I remember that because on Wednesday Lily had baked us a cake, but Fred had ate it so we had a sandwich for the one-week anniversary we had. It was peanut butter and jelly. So it was one week and two days. Then why did it feel like years?
"Scott!" I opened the door and saw him awake looking out the window confused.
"What are they doing down there?"
I walked to the window to find TNT using Spyke's projectiles against him in a shower of explosions while Jean tried to help as did Storm and Electro getting ganged up by Wolverine and Nightcrawler.
"Apparently getting their butts kicked."
"Ok, why?"
I looked at him and smiled sheepishly, "I thought you were in danger, Xavier knows, don't ask me how I know he knows but he does and was going to kill you or something and I couldn't lose someone else. They came along to make sure I didn't get myself killed." He turned his gaze and grinned shaking his head.
"I can't stand this place much more anyway." He kissed me and for a while it almost seemed romantic. Nothing can be that romantic when there's thunder, rain, explosions, and just about everything else you could think of going on outside though. "Uh, did you get your whole team?"
"No."
"Well they're out there now," Scott noticed furrowing his eyebrows and cocking his head to the side, "Why is Wolverine laughing?"
"Pixie dust, acts like laughing gas. Was hilarious the time Ann used it on Keith, Fred, and Zac. We better get going, you've been to the house so you know just how well they can use their powers for torture." I knew it was too easy so was alert, for once this early in the morning, as we left for the front doors.
Go ahead and take him, he's no use for me anymore. I looked up to see an outline watching us. I just glared at him and did my best to put a mental block around my mind. I knew it wouldn't work but I concentrated on getting the hell out of there.
"I did not know Mimic knew how to fight like that," was Scott's first remark as we came out of the doors. The girl in question was currently doing her best to beat up Kurt, her heel connecting firmly with his stomach before he teleported away and behind her.
I just shrugged knowing she knew how to fight for the same reason Rogue and Kitty did, they either couldn't use their power or it wasn't very effective. Kitty, by the way, did not look good in the morning she actually looked scary. Her hair was messed up and without and makeup she was…. Scary was the only way to put it.
I sent a large tremor through the ground making sure afterwards that I'd gotten Tylenol recently. That seemed to make people stop and I looked at Zac who was sitting patiently in the jeep as if waiting for my cue. He grinned and with a snap of his fingers everything slowed except for us who lived with Irene, and Scott.
"I love my power," He said getting up and walking into the middle of the whole scene. "Everyone in the car, mission accomplished, now let's all go to sleep before Jordan goes a-wall on us all." Jordan was not the type to be in a fight in the morning and be happy. He actually looked ready to kill.
"I get to sleep in tomorrow," Jordan grumbled getting into the jeep. "No one bothers me until I get up, is that clear?"
"Perfectly," Mimic teleported so she was sitting in the seat next to him and Chameleon showed herself sitting on his other side.
"Yep we'll make you breakfast in bed even!" Ivy also got in the jeep, sitting behind the three and TNT looked less than amused.
"Let's just go, I can't hold this place still forever," Regulator stretched showing that he probably could.
"Yeah, yeah," I shot Cami a look and she pouted at having to miss such a great opportunity to get her rival, "let's get home and get some sleep." I could see that everyone was tired and the thought of Xavier lurking in that huge mansion was creeping me out. It took a while to get everyone into the jeep, and Pietro volunteered to just run home and had kidnapped my sister again before I knew it and I was making a mental note to beat him in the morning. Anyway, one of the main reasons we all fit into the jeep was that no one had been able to wake up Fred, or Todd and Calvin but that was normal. When we got home Irene was sitting on the couch next to Pietro who was holding Cami curled up and crying in his arms.
"What the…"
"You go to bed," Irene instructed stroking my sister's hair before Cami flinched her head and shrunk away from Irene. "Except you, Lance." The other's obeyed too tired to argue.
"What happened?" I asked not noticing that Scott was the only one not to leave. I knelt down next to where my friend was holding my sister and noticed the small tornado she had created around herself as a shield. It hurt when she cringed away from my hand. "Pietro, what happened?"
"Idon'tknow," he answered in full speed, "oneminutewewererunningthenshewas
asleepthensheseemedtohavesomesortofnightmareandkeptsayingsomethingabouthowsh e
hadn'tmeanttoandgetawayandshewastwitchingandthenshewokeupcrying."
It took a while to process that, but a bad dream couldn't have done this. Then I remembered my earlier nightmare of what was my worst memory. She'd been left with our sorry excuse for a father so it was really just a stab in the dark to even try and guess what the dream had been. "What's the matter, shrimp?" I could feel Xavier was behind this, I'd taken Scott so he was torturing me through someone I deeply cared about.
"He tried to kill me," she answered in a voice that was shaky and barely audible curling up most and leaning into Pietro. "I hadn't meant to mention her or call him that it just slipped." Now I had a general idea.
"Pietro," I looked up at the speedster, "take care of her for the night, for some reason you're the only one she'll let touch her. " He just nodded and I felt Scott help me stand up.
"Come on," he whispered, "look at him and tell me he'll let anything happen to her."
I looked over my shoulder as we headed to the basement and sighed, "I hate it when you're right."
"Yeah, well I'll get to be right a lot more often, now I wish I had my stuff."
"We'll get you new stuff and you can borrow stuff, you look about my or Jordan's size." At the bottom of the stairs I turned him around and kissed him. "I love you, you know."
"Yeah, I know. I love you too. Now let's get some rest."
I just nodded. Tomorrow I could go kill Xavier for threatening to kill Scott and making Cami relive a horrible experience that I could only imagine.
A/n: Now Scott is an Ex-man, hehehe. More from my warped mind. Might be the ending chapter w/ a sequel but I ain't sure. Well, review and I'll decide. Oh, and the third genre ended up humor.
"Good point, noble stead"
"Thank you, worthless squire"- Jordan and Keith
I've no clue where that came from. Oh, and happy Easter!
"What the hell?" One of the four men asked. "Fuck, the house is coming down!" It didn't though, the men ran and knowing they might come back but knowing I could go see my mom one last time I ran, the shield having been lifted, over to her. "Mom?" No reply, I shook her lightly. "Mom?"
"Lance," she barely whispered and gathered me into her arms getting her blood all over my pajamas as she held me one last time, "why are you out of bed?"
"I heard you scream," I answered my voice almost squeaking, "why did they…"
"They're scared of what is different, it's human nature." She took a deep gurgle of a breath, "they aren't bad people, just scared."
"But what's different about you?" I was young and confused and holding onto my mother with a death grip afraid of losing her.
"I'm… special, like you…" I looked into her comforting, brown eyes to find them glazed over and her face already paling in death.
"Mother? Mother? Momma!" I tried to wake her up, tried to wake myself up before I collapsed in a heaped still clinging her on the couch crying. It wasn't fair! She hadn't done anything! She HADN'T! "MOM!" I wasn't holding back anymore, just crying like I was two years old again, no not crying, sobbing. I was alone, and the world was really scary.
"You have no idea, Avalanche." I turned around and was suddenly no longer a boy who'd just used his power to scare off his mother's murders, but a young adult looking down at a bald man in a wheel chair with a masked man standing behind him. "We'll never be accepted by humanity, how many will have to die like she did before you realize this, Mr. Alvers?"
"What happened to your coexistence?" I asked mouth barely moving as I found it was suddenly cold and my breath was showing, but somehow the other two didn't have breathes of their own.
"Oh, we can coexist with humanity, they'll just have to realized that we are the future and therefore the leaders." He was silent for a moment before continuing. "You see, Lance, not even with my power can Mimic block me out of your heads, I know about you and Mr. Summers. How long has it been now? A week? I've been informed about your little 'issue' by the principal and with some prying I know everything."
"No, you're just a figment of my imagination, you aren't anything!"
"Are you willing to risk Scott's life on that? Cause he will have to be punished for being a double agent." And somehow I knew that Xavier had really gotten into my head.
"NO!"
"Woah, Lance, calm down!" Jordan placed a hand on my chest and pushed me back into my bed. He and Keith were standing over me looking worried as I tried to get my head straight. Oh god oh god oh god Scott!
"Xavier knows," I blurted out forcing myself up, "he knows everything, he just wanted us to think we were safe. Oh god! He's gonna kill Scott. Oh god oh god oh god!"
"Lance!" A flash of blue, white, and light brown and Cami landed on my bed, "I heard you scream, are you ok? Hey where are you going?"
"To save Scott," I got up driven by adrenaline and determination not to lose someone else. I pulled on my new leather jacket and a pair of black jeans over my under shirt and boxers and stopped only at the door to put my boots on. "What are you guys doing?" I almost snapped as Keith and Jordan jumped into the jeep.
"Looking after your ass while you go insane," Keith snapped right back. "Plus it was the only way to get that suicidal sister of yours from following you." Oh right, Cami would do something like that. Probably still would.
They'd both put on some decent clothing on their way out. Keith had managed to pull on a pair of black jeans and a his yellow vest I so badly wanted to burn and Jordan had just had time to pull on his jeans leaving his top half covered with a white tank top.
"Gates will probably be the hardest part to get through," Jordan started from the back seat being the rational one as usual. "Then there's the security system, and that big hairy guy with the claws."
"Zap it, zap it, fry him," Keith answered shrugging and removing his gloves. I was doing about 50 in a 25-mph zone, but I really didn't care at the point. "You think too much sometimes." A pause, "Or we could explode it, shake it up, and zap him."
"You're interesting at night," I commented which came out more of a grumble.
"Eh, well, what can I say?"
"How about LANCE SLOW DOWN!" Jordan yelled as I noticed we were approaching the gates to the institute. A large 'KR BAM!' and the large iron fence was nothing but metal dust. "We have all lost our minds."
"Nah, Lance just has to be the knight in shining armor and we're the ones to make sure he doesn't get killed."
"Good point, noble stead."
"Why thank you, worthless squire," Keith shot back.
I stopped the jeep and jumped out. "And now is where training would have come in handy," I thought for a second, "or maybe some theme music."
"Cause I'm TN…"
"Finish that sentence, Electro, and I will kill you," Jordan warned. Lack of sleep certainly made people interesting. "Now, do we go to the tallest tower to find Scott or something?"
"No, you distract short, fuzzy, and angry and the weather witch and I go find Scott, I know the mansion." None the less the alarm had been sounded and Wolverine and Storm were coming for us. I sent a tremor through the ground and Wolverine lost his balance.
I managed to get passed them as Electro had way too much fun finding out how well a metal-coated skeleton conducted electricity and Jordan distracted Storm with exploding pine needles. Well, can't say it wasn't an interesting Friday night.
It was dark inside the mansion and I pressed myself against the wall as Spyke, Jean, and Nightcrawler ran by to find out what was going on outside. I turned enough to look out the window to see my allies' reaction but decided it best just to go get to Scott as fast as possible. Xavier had been wrong. It hadn't been a week it'd been more. I remember that because on Wednesday Lily had baked us a cake, but Fred had ate it so we had a sandwich for the one-week anniversary we had. It was peanut butter and jelly. So it was one week and two days. Then why did it feel like years?
"Scott!" I opened the door and saw him awake looking out the window confused.
"What are they doing down there?"
I walked to the window to find TNT using Spyke's projectiles against him in a shower of explosions while Jean tried to help as did Storm and Electro getting ganged up by Wolverine and Nightcrawler.
"Apparently getting their butts kicked."
"Ok, why?"
I looked at him and smiled sheepishly, "I thought you were in danger, Xavier knows, don't ask me how I know he knows but he does and was going to kill you or something and I couldn't lose someone else. They came along to make sure I didn't get myself killed." He turned his gaze and grinned shaking his head.
"I can't stand this place much more anyway." He kissed me and for a while it almost seemed romantic. Nothing can be that romantic when there's thunder, rain, explosions, and just about everything else you could think of going on outside though. "Uh, did you get your whole team?"
"No."
"Well they're out there now," Scott noticed furrowing his eyebrows and cocking his head to the side, "Why is Wolverine laughing?"
"Pixie dust, acts like laughing gas. Was hilarious the time Ann used it on Keith, Fred, and Zac. We better get going, you've been to the house so you know just how well they can use their powers for torture." I knew it was too easy so was alert, for once this early in the morning, as we left for the front doors.
Go ahead and take him, he's no use for me anymore. I looked up to see an outline watching us. I just glared at him and did my best to put a mental block around my mind. I knew it wouldn't work but I concentrated on getting the hell out of there.
"I did not know Mimic knew how to fight like that," was Scott's first remark as we came out of the doors. The girl in question was currently doing her best to beat up Kurt, her heel connecting firmly with his stomach before he teleported away and behind her.
I just shrugged knowing she knew how to fight for the same reason Rogue and Kitty did, they either couldn't use their power or it wasn't very effective. Kitty, by the way, did not look good in the morning she actually looked scary. Her hair was messed up and without and makeup she was…. Scary was the only way to put it.
I sent a large tremor through the ground making sure afterwards that I'd gotten Tylenol recently. That seemed to make people stop and I looked at Zac who was sitting patiently in the jeep as if waiting for my cue. He grinned and with a snap of his fingers everything slowed except for us who lived with Irene, and Scott.
"I love my power," He said getting up and walking into the middle of the whole scene. "Everyone in the car, mission accomplished, now let's all go to sleep before Jordan goes a-wall on us all." Jordan was not the type to be in a fight in the morning and be happy. He actually looked ready to kill.
"I get to sleep in tomorrow," Jordan grumbled getting into the jeep. "No one bothers me until I get up, is that clear?"
"Perfectly," Mimic teleported so she was sitting in the seat next to him and Chameleon showed herself sitting on his other side.
"Yep we'll make you breakfast in bed even!" Ivy also got in the jeep, sitting behind the three and TNT looked less than amused.
"Let's just go, I can't hold this place still forever," Regulator stretched showing that he probably could.
"Yeah, yeah," I shot Cami a look and she pouted at having to miss such a great opportunity to get her rival, "let's get home and get some sleep." I could see that everyone was tired and the thought of Xavier lurking in that huge mansion was creeping me out. It took a while to get everyone into the jeep, and Pietro volunteered to just run home and had kidnapped my sister again before I knew it and I was making a mental note to beat him in the morning. Anyway, one of the main reasons we all fit into the jeep was that no one had been able to wake up Fred, or Todd and Calvin but that was normal. When we got home Irene was sitting on the couch next to Pietro who was holding Cami curled up and crying in his arms.
"What the…"
"You go to bed," Irene instructed stroking my sister's hair before Cami flinched her head and shrunk away from Irene. "Except you, Lance." The other's obeyed too tired to argue.
"What happened?" I asked not noticing that Scott was the only one not to leave. I knelt down next to where my friend was holding my sister and noticed the small tornado she had created around herself as a shield. It hurt when she cringed away from my hand. "Pietro, what happened?"
"Idon'tknow," he answered in full speed, "oneminutewewererunningthenshewas
asleepthensheseemedtohavesomesortofnightmareandkeptsayingsomethingabouthowsh e
hadn'tmeanttoandgetawayandshewastwitchingandthenshewokeupcrying."
It took a while to process that, but a bad dream couldn't have done this. Then I remembered my earlier nightmare of what was my worst memory. She'd been left with our sorry excuse for a father so it was really just a stab in the dark to even try and guess what the dream had been. "What's the matter, shrimp?" I could feel Xavier was behind this, I'd taken Scott so he was torturing me through someone I deeply cared about.
"He tried to kill me," she answered in a voice that was shaky and barely audible curling up most and leaning into Pietro. "I hadn't meant to mention her or call him that it just slipped." Now I had a general idea.
"Pietro," I looked up at the speedster, "take care of her for the night, for some reason you're the only one she'll let touch her. " He just nodded and I felt Scott help me stand up.
"Come on," he whispered, "look at him and tell me he'll let anything happen to her."
I looked over my shoulder as we headed to the basement and sighed, "I hate it when you're right."
"Yeah, well I'll get to be right a lot more often, now I wish I had my stuff."
"We'll get you new stuff and you can borrow stuff, you look about my or Jordan's size." At the bottom of the stairs I turned him around and kissed him. "I love you, you know."
"Yeah, I know. I love you too. Now let's get some rest."
I just nodded. Tomorrow I could go kill Xavier for threatening to kill Scott and making Cami relive a horrible experience that I could only imagine.
A/n: Now Scott is an Ex-man, hehehe. More from my warped mind. Might be the ending chapter w/ a sequel but I ain't sure. Well, review and I'll decide. Oh, and the third genre ended up humor.
"Good point, noble stead"
"Thank you, worthless squire"- Jordan and Keith
I've no clue where that came from. Oh, and happy Easter!