A Working Class Mutant Is Something To Be
by DarkMark
So this was the way it was, thought Jean Grey Summers. Not quite enough to make you run home to the Professor, but...darned if it didn't make you wish for those days.
Well, those days weren't here anymore, she reflected, shoving the typewriter carriage back again with her hand, not her telekinetic powers. Now she was out of little old Noo Yawk with a gold band on her finger, possibly a baby growing inside, and a job at a temp agency. Bang-bang-bangity-bang at the keys of a qwertyuiop machine, 8 hours a day, five days a week at different places in and around the medium-sized city of Ector. While we wait, my dear, for the local school districts to pass judgment on my application, she told herself. While we hope for a job teaching grade school brats (not brats, don't be so harsh, dear, only children, tell yourself that again and again) and we hope that some of the modelling agencies we've sent photos to and put feelers towards again will take a second chance on the little redhead who walked out on them a couple years ago...
Bangity-bangity-click. Dear sirs, We regret to inform you that due to your failure to pay your electric bill...we are sending over Magneto and the Blob to destroy your garage. No, no, don't type that. If you do, make sure you can levitate the Liquid Paper over here real quick.
Mrs. Minten clacked up in her black high heels and early frump dress. "Mrs. Summers," she said.
"Oh," said Jean, nervously. Her elbow nudged the water glass by her side and, despite herself, she used her TK power to halt it before it could tip over. She hoped that the grab she made for it with her other hand looked convincing enough. "Yes, ma'am?"
Mrs. Minten, her temporary boss at her temporary job, looked critically at her. "Are you certain you've done this sort of work before? Satisfactorially, I mean?"
"Oh, yes, Mrs. Minten," said Jean, not daring to smile. "At the Xavier School I handled most of the professor's correspondence and such."
"That's good, Mrs. Summers, because I've noted your speed is about what one would expect from a starting temp. That is, you're adequate. By such standards, of course."
"Oh, well, thank you." She hesitated, then reached for another form to assault with her typewriter. "Anything else I can do for you before you go?"
"Why, certainly, Mrs. Summers." The older woman produced a manila folder from behind her back. If Mrs. Minten's grip hadn't been cast iron, it would have leaked papers from its overstuffed confines. She dropped it on Jean's desk. Some of the contents tried to spill out, but couldn't make it, like cons getting shot down before making it over the wall. Jean looked at it and buried her teeth in her lower lip.
Mrs. Minten was still talking. "We trust you'll have worked through these by the end of the day. That will be enough time, won't it, Mrs. Summers?"
"Ah, trust," Jean fumfuhed. "Yes, Mrs. Minten, trust is good. Basis of a relationship between employee and employer, even on a temporary basis. You can, you can, uh, trust me to make a frontal assault on these papers. That's what us temps are for."
"Good," said Mrs. Minten, attempting to beam. "We'll send out for lunch. Burger King be fine by you?"
"Oh, absolutely," Jean averred, her fingers already bangity-banging again. "No onions or tomatoes. Please."
The temporary supervisor walked off. Lord, if You are listening, she thought, have Factor Three assault the main gate so I can put on my green miniskirt and yellow mask and save the day and not have to finish all this dad-blamed steno work.
Neither Factor Three nor any other sort of registered super-villain made an attack on the electric company that day. Sighing, Jean grasped her coat with frazzled fingers at 5:45 and resolved to hit church on Sunday with a prayer request for evil mutants.
Them was the days.
-X-
"And that's the 6:00 report, I'm Scott Summers for WESR, Empire State Radio. Next news at 10 p.m. See you tomorrow...auf wedersehen."
He cut the mike, brought the volume pot up on the cart that played the news theme, and then hit the button on a jingle cart. "W-E-S-R," chorused the singers. By the time the last letter was out, he had a Creedence song pumping away on the left-hand turntable. He sighed, got up, stretched. Donny Tallent was outside the booth, waving. Time to get the heck out.
Scott opened the door and let Donny in to take over. "Hot time, Summers in the city," cried Tallent, flinging wide his arms. "Don't tell me you ever get tired of hearing that."
"I get tired of hearing that, Donny," said Scott, with a half-smile.
"Well, the back o' my neck's gettin' dirt and gritty," confirmed Donny, who affected a black handlebar mustache and wore a red plaid shirt with blue jeans that had been on him for three work days running. "How you like it so far?"
"I like it fine, Don," said Scott, letting him by so he could sit down and pull on the headphones. "Wish I was doing news fulltime, but what the hey. It's a job."
"That it is," agreed Donny, adjusting the phones. He turned up the volume to near pain level. "It ain't much of a living, but it keeps the gut greased and the gas-guzzler fed, or maybe it's the otherdamnway around. You tell me something, Scott."
"Shoot."
"Do you really, really think you're all that cool?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I never, ever see you take them cheaters off, man. Like you think Hollywood's gonna drive up here in a limo, roll out a red carpet from the front door, and say, 'We're lookin' for real cool people, and you are the one, baby!' Like that!" Tallent was grinning even wider. It did not seem humanly possible. "So why, Scotty?"
Scott fingered his shades. "I've got an eye condition, Don. They can't take strong light, my eyes can't. That's why I wear them, all the time."
"All the time?"
"All the time."
"Even when you're with little Jeannie doin' the..."
"Hey."
"I'm just jokin', don't get mad at me."
"Sure, Donny. But Jeannie is somebody I don't want turned into a landing field for jokes. Okay?"
"Okay, man. No offense intended."
"It's cool, Donny. But Jean is off limits, okay?"
"Received and noted." Creedence was dying down. Donny opened the mike. "AND...it's what you've been waiting for all day, all month, all year, even. Your tax return? Naw! Just the RETURN of DONNY TALLENT!"
"DON-ny TAL-LENT!" chorused the paid jingle singers.
"And we are...here with you...up until the midnight hour," advised Donny, under the thrumming beat of a Beatles intro. "Gonna take you well on into your nighttime pursuits, so just...settle down now, and let's all...GET BAAAACK! Do it, John, Paul, Ringo, George, and Billy! Yeah!"
Scott grinned despite himself and watched Donny uniting himself with the music for a few more seconds. Then he let himself out. He didn't think Donny even noticed.
There was nobody much around at the parking lot from which he took his Rambler. Quite a letdown from the kind of cars he drove when he was with the Professor. But, let's face it, he told himself, there was no more Professor anymore. Nor was there likely to be a Professor ever again.
He wondered, pulling out into the early evening traffic, if there would be a Cyclops again, either.
True, there was a lot to miss, not being an X-Man. The adrenaline rush of facing the Danger Room once a day. The feeling of absolute purpose when the team faced off against an enemy. The bond all six of them, the Professor included, had shared...not just because of the dangerous old non-mutie world outside, but because they really loved each other.
But he loved Jean more. And even if you love your family, you someday have to leave. You do that when you grow up. He wasn't sure when he had done that, but he knew when he had to admit it to himself. That was the day he stood up to Charles Xavier and told him they were all leaving.
That hurt. But he had to admit he'd felt transcendent, that day. The umbilical cord had been severed, and he had been freed to make it on his own.
He'd done it before. He'd had to, when everyone thought (well, almost everyone) that Professor X was dead and the government had asked the X-Men to split up and cover more parts of the country separately. Bobby and Hank had gone one way, the Angel had gone another, and he and Jean had taken a third course. It hadn't lasted, of course...Mesmero, and then Magneto (or a reasonable robot facsimile of him) had turned up and the team had to reband.
But in that time, he had started to make a life for himself, as had Jeannie. He had become a radio newsman, and Jean had become a model. And he had to admit that, despite not having a mansion to live in, despite having to earn a paycheck every week instead of living on a stipend, it really was a trip. It was being a grownup.
He had missed it when the X-Men got together again. But the feeling was subsumed under the cameraderie, the esprit de corps. At least, it was until the five of them couldn't afford to ignore it anymore.
The Professor had come back. He wanted to make it like it was again, lording it over the team, handing out demerits and privelages, regulating their lives for them.
That was why they had to break away.
He had asked Jean to marry him and she had said yes. They'd had the wedding a month and a half ago. Now Bobby and Hank were making lives for themselves out in San Francisco, and Warren was finding out how to run Worthington Steel and doing a decent job of it.
Scott and Jean had come to the upstate city of Ector and looked for work. He tried every radio station in town and landed a job with WESR. Not news reporting full-time, as he had hoped, but mainly jocking with a bit of reporting on the side. That was the way to start out again. That was, perhaps, the only way he could start out again.
Jean had a degree in education. But she was facing the fact that a lot of other women did, too, and those who had jobs in the school system wanted to hang onto them. So she did temp work as a secretary, and worked on trying to get some modelling gigs together after having been typed as The Girl Who Walked Out On Us A Couple of Years Before. She'd had a little success in that area...mainly newspaper ads and such...but it was a far cry from a well-paying thing, so far.
But it was what they had. New lives. And each other. And by damn, it was going to work. No more running back to the school, no more giving their lives to the Professor.
No more Cyclops and Marvel Girl?
He wondered.
As he drove off the exit and headed for his neighborhood, Scott Summers still couldn't fit an answer onto that one.
-X-
"Honey, I'm home."
"Oh, god, Scott, don't ever say that again. I'm getting uncontrollable flashbacks to Leave It To Beaver."
Scott hung up his coat on the tree by the sofa and grinned. "Did I hear you expound once upon your secret feelings for Eddie Haskell?"
Jean was stirring a pot of something on the stove and, luckily, not scattering too much of it on the white metal top or on her apron. "Yeah. I used to fantasize of being June Cleaver and taking him upstairs and doing perverse things to him."
"Such as?" Scott loomed in the kitchen doorway.
"Making him vacuum. Dressed in a maid's outfit." She bent down to the cookpot, but looked up coyly. He grabbed her gently about the waist from behind.
"Chili?"
"Chili con carne con queso con a bunch of spices I had around."
"Mmm."
"Get away from me or I'll never finish this."
"Would that be so bad?"
"Yes. I'm hungry." She felt his chin on her shoulder and rested the side of her head against his. "How was work today, hon?"
"Work was fine, Jeannie."
"Anything interesting?"
"Nope. The local chapter of Students Against the Vietnam Insanity held a mini-rally at the campus. Drew about 100 students and 200 reporters. Business as usual."
"Did you go?"
"Wanted to, but the boss said no. He let me cover the mayor's response to it." He was moving his hands over Jean's abdomen, bringing on a response she wouldn't dare admit to yet.
"What kind of response...did he have?" breathed Jean.
"Everybody's got a right to protest, even if they are druggie Commie kids who ought to be sent to work camps and rehabilitated, along with bleeding-heart empty-head ACLU types. In other words, his usual."
"Did they like--stop doing that! Did they like your segment?"
"Oh, not as much as I like yours."
The chili pot eerily lifted itself above the stove and floated above Scott's head. "Darling, do you want to eat this or wear it?"
He looked upwards. "You might get it on yourself, too."
"I doubt it. I'm highly accurate. Well?"
Scott disengaged his arms. "If you insist. Satisfied?"
"Not yet. Save satisfied for after dinner."
"'I can't get no...'"
"'Baby, better come back, maybe next week--'" Jean responded.
He threw up his hands in surrender. "All right. All right. After dinner."
-X-
"Scott?"
"Mmhmm?"
"I'm worried."
"What about?" Scott sat up in bed a bit, glad that his quartz contacts were still in place. His left hand stroked the back of Jean's head. "Money?"
"Nooo...although I s'pose I should be about that. We're both making some, and we're getting by."
"True, so far. What is it, love of mine?"
She settled her head against his bare chest. "Well, one of the things I'm worried about, believe it or not, is whether or not we'll have to do the X-thing again."
"Thought we'd settled that six weeks ago, hon. The team's broken up. We may get together someday, but not till we've learned how to be individuals."
"Don't mean that," murmured Jean. "It's just been six weeks without being Cyclops and Marvel Girl."
"Yeah."
"Do you think we'll ever have to do that again?"
He paused. "I asked myself that same question today on the way home, Jeannie. Know what?"
"No. What?"
"I didn't have an answer."
"Guess that's good enough. I don't have one, either."
"I suppose if we have to, we will. But we don't have to. At least not yet."
"Yeah," she said.
"Are you glad?"
"So far."
"So...anything else you're worried about?"
"Ohhhh...arguments."
"Arguments?"
"Yeah. Arguments."
"What arguments are you worried about, Jeannie?"
"We haven't hardly had any yet. That's why I'm worried."
"Oh! Well, if you want some, I'll try and oblige."
"Dummy." She slapped his ribs, lightly. "I don't necessarily want or not want 'em. I just know that couples get to the point where they argue, sometime after they're married. And I really don't want them to be bad, when they get here."
He played with a curl of her hair. "I'll never argue hard enough to hurt you. At least, if I find out I am..."
"Ohhh, don't worry about that." She sighed and snaked her arm behind his back, hugging him about the side. "Besides, we don't know how they'll go until we have them."
"I suppose not. Just don't go buying a Lincoln Continental on our budget."
She snickered. "That makes me think of the time we had to, oh, you know..."
"What?"
"When we had to go to Europe to save the Professor and Banshee from Factor Three. And we didn't have the money?"
"Oh, nuts!" He laughed.
"And, and both of us tried to get a job in construction, I levitated those girders, and you riveted..."
"Yeah. With my power beam." He was chuckling.
"And we couldn't get in because they couldn't give us union cards!"
He was cracking up. "We don't want them damn muties in our union!"
She was in semi-hysterics. "'Look for the Mutant Label...that says we're able to mutate in the U.S.A.!'"
"Oh, hell! And a half!"
"And, and Bobby and Hank were out there doing carnival stunts and passing the hat...oh, gawd..." She was gasping for breath.
"If that stupid kid super-villain hadn't happened along when he did, I don't know what we would've done."
"Yeah," she said, stifling her giggles with a hand over her mouth. "What was, what was his name? Mewhacko?"
"Mekano. That's just as bad. And his dad, holy Moses...'You taught my son a valuable lesson by beating the crud out of him. Tell me what you want.' 'Oh, five plane tickets to Europe.' 'Four.' 'Five and we promise to beat him up again when we get back.' 'You got it.'"
Jean had her face against the pillow and was kicking her bare feet. Scott said, "If you get any redder, I'm not gonna be able to tell where your hair ends and your skin starts."
"Scotty, Scotty, Scotty," she gasped. "It's just that...there was so much about being an X-Man that...well, now a lot of it seems really, really dumb!"
"It was." He grabbed one of her feet under the covers and tickled her sole with his other hand.
"Stop that!" She levitated the pillow over his face.
In a muffled voice, he said, "You know what I'm gonna do if you don't take this off?"
"Scott Summers...yipe! Stop tickling!...don't you dare! Don't you dare blow a hole in that pillow!"
"One."
"Stop it!"
"Two."
"Scotttt...."
"Thr--"
She telekinetically raised the pillow off his head an instant before she rolled herself over on top of him. Then she placed a finger on his lips. "Stop the countdown."
He wrapped his arms gently around her. "Are you preparing for reentry?"
"I guess," she sighed, "that depends on the size of your module."
Jean felt the delicious sensation of his hands on her bare skin, easing up her nightdress, approximately three seconds before the phone rang. He said something she never heard him say in front of Professor Xavier.
"I'll lift it," she said.
"Don't bother," said Scott, and reached out for the phone. "Summers," he said into the receiver.
"Scott," said Donny Tallent. He didn't sound hyper. He sounded, Scott noted, damned tense. "The boss phoned, wants you down to the campus. Now."
Scott sat up and Jean, able to hear enough of the conversation to follow along, eased to the side of the bed and looked worried. "What's up?" asked Scott.
"The SAVI group's taken a building over. They've got a few hostages. They say they've got bombs."
He hesitated only a moment. "I'm on my way."
"Scott," said Donny. "They might really have a bomb. Be careful."
"Yeah. Thank you, Donny. I mean that. I'll be by there to pick up a mobile unit."
"Gotcha. We'll be waiting."
"In a minute." Scott hung up, then swung his legs out of bed.
She began to get out of bed on the other side. "I'm coming with you, Scott."
"No, you're not," he said, heading for the closet.
A second later, he found himself lifted off the floor and propelled backward. "Don't you ever tell me 'No, you're not!' about something like this, Scott Summers. I mean it!"
"Jeannie, this could be dangerous!"
"And Magneto wasn't? Or Sauron, or Quasimodo, or the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, or any of those others?" She walked over to face him, still holding him six inches off the ground. "Well?"
"Damnation," he said. "All right. But..."
"But what?"
"Where do you have our uniforms?"
"I'll go get them," she smiled, and lowered him to the ground as she went to the dresser.
-X-
Scott had picked up the mobile broadcasting unit, a backpack thingummy with a headset and mike, from the station on their dash to the campus. The Student Union Building was the scene of the crime. Scott didn't know why they chose it, unless it had something to do with books to read, music to listen to, and food to nosh on while they threatened folks with the bomb. Or bombs.
Of course, they might not have a thing. But you never made that assumption. You couldn't bloody well afford to.
Jeannie was sitting beside him with the unit slung in the back of their Rambler. They didn't talk much beyond the essentials, on the way. The campus was only two red lights away. She turned to him, her hands on her purse. "Scott?"
"Yeah, babe."
"Have to admit something stupid. I'm a little bit nervous."
"Me too. And that's a good sign."
"And I, uh, have to admit something else. Even harder."
"What?"
She grinned. "I'm excited."
He shook his head and smiled. "You would be. Just remember, when we put the suits on, if we put the suits on, it's just like X-Men days. I'm Cyclops, you're Marvel Girl."
"Only a man would think a woman would forget something like that."
"Libber."
"Chauvinist!"
The light changed and the one beyond that was green, also. "Clear all the way," said Scott.
She looked out the windshield. "Not unless you get rid of all those cop cars. And the looky-lous."
Scott grumbled, "They've got as big a crowd for this as for a damn football game." He was beginning to slack up on the foot-feed.
"Not inside, they won't," said Jean. "And that's where it counts."
"You got it, hon."
-X-
The scene wasn't as disorderly as might have been expected. It was nearly midnight, after all, and the undercurrent through the crowd was dull fear, not jubilant protest. As the two of them got out of their car, they saw one straggling student with a sign, hastily made, reading: THIS IS NOT THE WAY. A cop in a leather jacket shoved him. "Get outta here with that, kid," he snapped.
Scott had the mike on in an instant. "S'cuse me, officer. Scott Summers, WESR." The cop whirled, looked like he wanted to part the newsie's hair with a billy club. But the redheaded tomato standing beside him would be a witness, and there was that open mike.
"Yeah?" said the cop.
"Believe I just saw you shoving that student. Why did you do that?"
"Didn't shove him," the cop retorted. "Just tryin' to get him outta the way."
The kid with the sign was near enough by to speak with. Scott said, "Is that the way it was, sir?"
The protester coughed a moment, then, carefully, said, "I'm not sure. I'm really not sure."
Jean and Scott helped the 20-year-old up. "I don't think that sign of yours indicates solidarity with the SAVI group, does it?"
"He--heck, no!" the guy said. "I might agree with their aims, y'know, but their tactics are--well, like, I don't dig no bombs, y'know what I mean? Bombs can hurt people. Don't want 'em in Vietnam, don't want 'em here."
"So do most people believe they've really got a bomb?" Scott held out the mike again.
"Hey, I really believe it."
"Thank you, sir."
The kid crowded closer to the mike. "Hi, Mom! This is Marty and I'm doin' fine!"
"Thank you, sir," said Scott, pushing the youth away a bit more gently than the cop. He saw Jean talking with the policeman, and figured she was better at putting out peace feelers than he was.
"Oh, this is my husband," said Jean, pointing at Scott. "Scott Summers, Officer Dexter. Please, sir, tell him what you've just told me."
Dexter looked like he was chewing over old bile for a moment, then spoke. "The protestors've barricaded themselves inside," he said. "Don't think there's more than six of them, but we don't know. Negotiations are s'posed to be going on. You'd have to talk with Captain Boyer about that."
"Thanks, do you know where we can find him?"
"Huh?"
"Do you know where we can find him, sir?"
"Ah, he's up there near the squad car, in the brown coat," said Dexter. "Listen, is this going out over the air?"
"It could if I wanted it to," said Scott, evenly.
"Well, uh, that bit about me and the kid, it didn't really..."
"It might if I wanted it to," said Scott.
Dexter sighed. "I'll take ya to him."
-X-
Donny Tallent was about to wear a trail in the floor between the broadcasting booth, the coffeepot, and the john. All three of the regular phone lines were lighting up like Christmas trees, but he was only answering ones that came in on the unlisted line. Let the listeners stew. He was nerved enough already.
He was playing some r&b by the Temptations and staying away from anything that might be construed as a protest song tonight. He also had Scott's feed on the cue monitor turned up loud so he could hear the guy even when he was in the john. Lord knows, he might have to run out half-zipped and put the guy on. It'd happened before.
"Don, this is Scott," came the voice. "Put me on."
Donny ran fumblingly from the coffeemaker, sloshing some of his cup's contents stingingly on his hand but, thankfully, not on the boss's carpet. He cut the Temptations' "Papa Was a Rolling Stone", hit the News Bulletin intro cart, and followed it with, "Now we go to Ector University, and Scott Summers."
"Thank you, Donny," said Scott. "The scene here is as tense as might be expected, with a crowd in excess of 300 people standing just behind the police barricades. The student protesters, members of Students Against the Vietnam Insanity, an ad hoc offshoot of Weatherman, have been in existence less than a year, in your opinion, Captain Boyer?"
"That's right, as far as we know," said Boyer. Donny widened his eyes, briefly. The new kid was getting the goods tonight. "The group doesn't seem to have that many hardcore adherents, but, in a situation like this, it doesn't have to. We're keeping the incident under control so far, and Dean McKay is negotiating with the students over a closed line."
Donny thought he heard a female voice say, "A clothesline?" Boyer repeated, "A closed line. On the telephone."
Scott came back: "The crux of the situation tonight, sir, is the students' claim to have a bomb, or perhaps several bombs. Do you think it is possible for them to have acquired bombs?"
A pause. Then Boyer said, "It's unknown at this time. However, bombs can be made, and terrorist groups, or protestors, or revolutionaries, or whatever you want to call them, definitely have this knowledge and have passed it around. That's all I'll say in regards to that."
"Thank you very much, Captain Boyer," said Scott. "Captain Boyer of the Ector Police Department. So, as you heard, events are still very much up in the air at this point. We do not know what demands are being made by the student protestors. We do not know the identities of those participating in this activity, outside of the fact that they are apparently members of the Stop the Vietnam Insanity group. Negotiations are going on, and it is entirely possible that this event will have a peaceful ending. But, as of yet...it remains to be seen. Scott Summers, WESR News."
"Thank you, Scott," said Donny. "We'll keep you informed with our on-the-spot reporting from the campus of Ector. Back with more music in a moment." He hit a commercial cart, sat down in the office chair in front of the board, and ran his hands back through his thinning hair. The two TV stations in town were covering this mess, too, and the boss, on the phone, had told him that ABC News was taking some feeds from their affiliate for the early morning show.
But by damn! He didn't think any of the network guys sounded much better than Scott, at the moment.
He just hoped that this wouldn't end up with him staring down at Summers's closed casket somewhere.
-X-
Jean and Scott had disengaged themselves from the cops and the crowd and were moving back to where they had parked the car, two blocks away. When they were far enough out, he snapped, "Jean. I want you to--"
"Scott, I'm sorry."
"Just remember not to talk while I've got the mike open," he said. "That remark about the clothesline could get me the biggest pants-chewing in my life."
"I said I was sorry, damn it. And it did sound like 'clothesline' to me."
"Okay, okay." He held up his hand, not looking at her. "Forget it. Discussion over. Help me with this." He was unbuckling the mobile unit from his back. She considered doing it with her telekinesis, but thought that someone might be watching and used her hands. They got it off him and stowed it in the car.
"Now what?" She sat against the door of the car, her arms folded, her breath slightly misting in the night air.
He looked at her for a long moment. "You know those things we were talking over earlier, Jeannie?"
"Yeah."
"The answer to one of them is: right now."
They got in the car and drove it into an alleyway.
A few seconds later, from the other end, Cyclops and Marvel Girl quickly made their way towards the center of the action, and took no notice of the passersby who gaped.
-X-
Captain Boyer was still standing beside Officer Bob Pulaski, megaphone in one hand and coffee in the other, wondering when the hell Dean McKay was going to get back to him with some details when he heard the voice in his head.
Captain Boyer. This is Marvel Girl, of the X-Men. If you're receiving this, don't speak. Just think: Yes.>
What the HELL was going on?
That's sufficient,> the voice went on. I need to communicate with you because Cyclops is with me and we're going to try to neutralize the situation.>
"Don't," said Boyer. "Whatever you do, whoever you are, don't do it."
Pulaski looked at Boyer. "Captain?"
"Shut up, Pulaski."
We've handled this sort of assignment before, Captain. In our first collaborative case, we liberated a missle base from Magneto. Give us twenty minutes and we'll see if we can break this or not.>
"You are not authorized in this matter and I order you by the authority vested in me as a police officer to desist!"
Do you really want that, Captain? Or would you rather see if two New York heroes can save you a lot of trouble?>
"Captain, what's going on?"
"Pulaski, I'm talking with--" Boyer stopped. Then he thought, Can you hear me?>
I sure can.>
Boyer, feeling as stupid as a kid caught by his mother with a girlie book, thought, What do you want?>
Twenty minutes. And don't let them know we're coming.>
You are on your own,> he thought back. You'd better perform.>
Then, aloud, Boyer said, "Pulaski, come with me." The campus cop trailed along behind him. He was heading in the direction of one of the TV news crews. He was in on the private conversation between the captain and the standup reporter guy. There was something about "special ops" and some very strong veiled hints about what status the reporter's ass would be in in if he shpieled about it. The reporter nodded.
Boyer was headed for the second camera crew. Pulaski hung back long enough to say to the guy, "And what he says, goes for me, too. Double!"
Turning away, he decided the look on the newsie's face was worth just about everything that'd happened that night.
-X-
There was no way their presence was going to be a secret from the crowd once this thing started. And the SAVI guys had to be assumed to be listening to radios, and possibly TV as well.
Cyclops adjusted his visor one last time and turned to Marvel Girl. She was shivering a bit in the night cold. "Think you might change your costume a bit after this?"
"Maybe. But I always manage to catch you looking at my legs with this one." She smiled slyly. He smiled back, a tad grimly, and put a hand on the back of her neck, squeezing lightly.
"Let's get this done," he said, and removed his hand.
Without a word, Marvel Girl flexed the mental muscle that controlled her TK powers, and the two of them rose quickly into the night. Within seconds, they were 50 feet over the ground, travelling at over 30 mph over the crowd, the cops, and the buildings of Ector University. They heard the shouts from below. Scott looked down briefly and saw, through his visor, the rubberneckers pointing upward in astonishment. Luckily enough, no one was shooting at them.
They were coming down over the student union building, and about to land on its roof. "You getting anything yet?" asked Cyclops.
"A little," said Marvel Girl, bringing them down atop the concrete roof of the SUB with as little impact as possible. "There's ten of the SAVIs inside. I'll try to do a probe, but--" She stiffened.
"What's up?"
"Cyke, they've definitely got a bomb."
"Hostages?"
"About eight people. They're being held in the main lounge. Sounds like...I'm picking up five there who seem to be SAVI. The other five are scattered around the building. Guards. They're armed."
"Any of 'em on the level under us?" The SUB was a two-story affair.
"Yeah. One over there." She pointed to the north side of the building. He ran to the edge of the roof.
"Lower me. Head first."
Cyclops felt his feet being lifted from the roof by her telekinetic tug. When he was far enough from the roof's surface, Marvel Girl turned him upside down and held him just beyond the roof's edge, lowering him a few inches at a time.
"Over to the left," said Cyclops. "Okay. Down a little more. A little more..."
Inside, a 21-year-old male economics major who was smoking a Pall Mall, holding a rifle he'd taken from his dad's hunting stash, and wondering nervously if his commitment to ending the War might not have gone a little extreme, paced, turned his attention to the windows on the north side again, and dropped the cigarette from his mouth when he saw what looked like the top part of a masked guy's head hanging upside down in the window.
He hadn't gotten his rifle up by the time a crimson beam smashed through the window like a giant fist and banged into his chest. It sent him back hard into one of the marble walls and gave his head a nasty crack. To his credit, he hadn't dropped the rifle.
Cyclops had already swung in through the window, sprinted across the distance between them, and swung a yellow-gloved fist into the guy's five-o'-clock shadowed jaw. He reflected, as his knucks cracked bone, that he'd developed the best punch of any of the old group, except for the Beast. He'd worked on it, for situations just like this.
The man went down and his weapon clattered on the floor. So did a walkie-talkie. It was on.
"Herbie, what's the word?" said someone on the other end. "Herbie, come in. Herbie!"
Cyclops saw Jeannie levitating herself through the broken window and held a finger to his lips for silence. He pointed at the walkie-talkie and the rifle. She grasped them with her mind, lifted them from the floor, and propelled them out of the window. To keep the other terrorists from seeing them, Marvel Girl sent the two objects a full block away from the site before letting them fall to the ground.
He spoke. "Mental comm from here on in."
The next one's coming from that direction,> sent Marvel Girl. Two others up the stairs. I'll take the guy on this level.>
Be careful. Stay linked.>
Go, Scotty.>
They split up. Cyclops headed for the winding marble stairway and was glad his boots were designed to make as little noise while running as possible. Marvel Girl was already sprinting away towards her quarry. An instant of concern spiked into him. Then he forced it back down, not slackening his speed, and got back into X-Man mode.
A black guy, 18ish, in a dashiki, was in the lead on the stairs. He was holding two .45 automatics. A girl in a tie-dyed shirt, jeans, and tennis shoes was behind him, carrying a .38. Both of them gaped at the sight of a blue-and-gold costumed figure barrelling their way from the top of the stairway. The guy was about to use his walkie-talkie and shoot at the same time.
What the hell, thought Scott, let's Captain America it.
He launched himself forward with his legs, whamming into the black kid and sending him back into the girl. There was time enough for the kid to swear, frantically, and pop off a shot that, thankfully, missed Cyke and buried itself in the ceiling. The three of them tumbled back down the stairs, Cyclops smashing away at the Dashikied guy's face, making sure the girl was too off-balance to use her gun. By the time they splatted near the bottom of the staircase, Cyclops had uncorked a punch that put the guy to sleep, then hit him again to make sure. He looked up.
The girl was sitting there, the gun in her hand and a terrified expression on her face. It wasn't quite pointed at him.
"Put it down," he said, as gently as possible. She hesitated.
"Put it down or I open this," he said, indicating his visor. "I'm one of the X-Men."
Silently, she dropped the gun. He didn't know if she knew what he could do, but darned if it didn't seem like the mutant-fear thing was working in his favor for once. He stood, overshadowing her for a second, then gave her a great open-handed blow to the side of her face. Her head snapped back and her eyes went up.
He damned himself, even as he acknowledged that he had to do it. The girl was only unconscious, thankfully.
That was when a burst of semiautomatic fire stictched holes in the ornate wallpaper not far from his head.
-X-
Marvel Girl didn't really have time to concentrate on Scott that much as she went after the guard still remaining on the second level. One track of her mind monitored him, but she couldn't let it distract her. This was going to be hard enough to pull off as it was.
The SAVI guy rounded a corner of the hall and held his rifle with the grip of an experienced shooter. He looked about 25 per cent beefier than the guy Cyclops had taken out and he was enough on the ball to start shooting as soon as he saw her. But his eyes widened as he beheld her dropping on her back before the shots were loosed, almost as if she could have seen him before he saw her. Was he making that much noise?
He was shouting into the walkie-talkie he'd hung around his neck. "Intruder. Intruder, guys. Somebody's in--"
The female mutant yanked the gun from his hands with two strong telekinetic tugs, in between which she sent a powerful blow of mental force into his brain. He cried out in pain. Marvel Girl rolled over, sprang to her feet, and grabbed the rifle barrel's cold, tubular surface. She swung it up and brought the weapon's stock down hard on the SAVI guy's head. He staggered. She did it again, twice.
The guard went to his knees. Somebody on the other end of the walkie-talkie was saying, "Jerry. Jerry, what the hell's going on up there? Jerry, acknowledge!" Then it cut off.
Bad, she told herself. Very, very bad. They know we're in here, and they've got a bomb. Got to wrap this quickly.
The guy, bowed but not yet broken, grabbed for Marvel Girl's yellow-booted foot and upended her, sending her crashing down to the carpet on her back. He tried to spring on her. Gritting her teeth, Jean drove her legs upward as hard as she could, slamming a boot heel into his jaw. She didn't have much chance to show off her physical ability in her fights, but every X-Man had been drilled in martial arts during their curriculum, and she gave away little to the others in the aspects where skill counted for more than muscle.
She used her TK to lift the beefy guy skyward, slammed his head into the ceiling, then cut it off abruptly and let him drop to the floor with a bang. Then she hauled him to his feet, physically, got him in a shoulder carry, and ran for a wall with him. The guard had time to open his eyes a bit before he contacted the wallpaper, sheetrock, and hard studding behind it. He slumped to the floor. A short, quick probe indicated he was out for the night.
Emma Peel's got nothin' on me, she thought as she mentally lifted the damaged rifle and sent it through the broken window. Then she sent a probe and communication to Scott: I've done the guy up here. What about you?>
Without him even sending, Jean felt his sudden tension. She learned from an abrupt surface-scan that bullets had barely missed him a couple of seconds ago, and that he was within sight of their main quarry. A visual probe linked her to his eyes. She saw the hostages sitting on the floor of the main lounge, two armed guards watching over them, two others aiming at Cyclops, and, within the lounge, a bearded kid in an Ector U sweatshirt, sitting at a long table, his arms wrapped about what could be nothing else but a homemade and powerful bomb.
"Let's vote on it, guys," he was saying. "Do we make him a hostage? Or do we make him dead?"
-X-
Dean McKay was trying not to let his frantic emotion creep into his voice as he spoke into the phone. "What was that, Carter? The hostages, you promised not to--"
There was some more talk on the other end of the line, one of the voice's Carter's. The kid who had come in as a pre-law and had become a revolutionary in two short years. Actually, they wouldn't seem so short from a student's point of view: college was a pressure cooker experience, hardly less from the faculty's perspective. But tonight seemed to last longer than a four-year stretch. God help us all, thought the dean, if we tack on graduate school to that...
"Carter, talk to me," said McKay, raising his voice. "Before you do anything drastic, talk to me. As we agreed. Please." The cop facing him, one of two in the room with him and a tech monitoring the call, listened intently on a set of earphones. He was writing something on a pad of paper and showing it to his partner. McKay didn't really want to see what it was.
"Carter!"
And then, Carter was back on the line. "You lied to me, Deano. You said you'd keep the pigs out while we were negotiating."
"I did," said McKay, looking at the cops. The man with the phones on scribbled words on the pad again, and held it up for the dean to see: NONE OF OURS ARE IN THERE.
"Well, one of your running dogs got in here," Carter was saying. "Took out some of my people. We've got him now. He's our latest hostage."
McKay said emphatically, "Carter. The police assured me that no officer of theirs has entered the building. If someone got in, it was on his own."
"Maybe it was," said Carter. "But he shouldn't have gotten in. In case you don't remember, I've got a bomb here. Anytime I get itchy, or think you're not listening to me--I can go pow!"
"I'm listening to you," said McKay. "Haven't I heard all your demands so far?"
"Yeah," said Carter. "You heard me when I said we wanted a teach-in on how our beloved country is involved in this war for purely economic motives. How they're burning women and children with napalm researched in this very campus."
"I told you, we don't have any knowledge of that."
"Horse hockey, Dean! We also want the kids to know how little their government cares for 'em. How they're shovelin' 'em into the mouth of that Moloch they call the Vietnam War, which we call the Vietnam Insanity!"
McKay said, as patiently as possible, "I was shovelled into another Moloch's mouth, 27 years ago. It was called World War II. If I hadn't gone, if men like me hadn't served, Hitler would have--"
"Bull****! Different war, different reasons. You're making me itchy."
"Don't," said McKay. "If you want to blow yourself up, release the hostages first."
"No deal. And we want that building named after Malcolm X and a black history course taught by somebody the Panthers nominate."
McKay sighed. Then he tried a new tack: "Who is it that got in there with you?"
"You wouldn't believe it," said Carter.
"Well?"
"He's a super-hero from New York. One of those X-Men guys. He calls himself Cyclops. Guess that makes me Ulysses, 'cause I've got him."
"Carter, don't..."
"Later, Deano. I'll talk to you later."
Click.
-X-
Charles Carter spoke to one of his four remaining men. "I think there's another one in here. Find him."
"Won't that, uh, spread us a little thin?" asked the guy he'd addressed. "We're already..."
"Find him!"
The guy, an ex-high school footballer who hadn't made it onto the team at Ector, shrugged and left. One of the hostages, a janitor in a green suit, gathered his guts and said, "In the name of God, mister, please--"
"SHUT UP!" Carter exploded at him, his hands going near a pull-wire on the bomb. The hostages, their hands and ankles bound and the guns pointed at them restraining them more effectively, chorused in "No"'s and prayers and crying. Only one refused to join the chorus.
"Mind telling me why you're doing this, compadre?" asked Cyclops. He spoke in an accent and tone unlike his normal one. Cyke usually, like the other X-Men, switched his voice a bit when in costume. But since becoming a radio man, his Scott Summers voice was known to thousands of people in the area. Thus, his new Cyclops voice was even further disguised. He spoke in a quasi-Bostonian accent. Jean had kidded him about sounding like Vaughn Meader, but he kept it nonetheless.
A short blonde fellow with another of the ubiquitous rifles smiled. "The guy wants to negotiate, Carter. Maybe he wants your life story, huh? Tryin' to get you--"
"That's enough," said Carter, and the guard subsided. "You oughta know. You're not that much older than us."
"So," said Cyke, "you're doing this because you're afraid of the draft?"
"NO!"
A cleaning lady turned to Cyclops and moaned. "Please don't get him annoyed. Please, please. I've got three kids to come home to and I want to come home to them again when this is over."
"It's all right, ma'am," said Cyke. Then, to Carter, he said, "Didn't mean to jog your toggle, pardner. Just tell me what kind of statement you're trying to make."
Carter nodded, relishing the moment. "Again I say: you ought to know. I recognize you. Seen you in the paper, on Cronkite. You're Cyclops. One of the X-Men. A mutant."
"Correct."
"They call you muties."
"Some of them do."
"You're persecuted. A persecuted minority."
Cyclops sighed. "Could be looked at that way, I guess. But we do all right, except when it's Sentinel season."
"Carter, if I could make a suggestion," said one of the guards.
"Save it," said Carter.
"They're not gonna wait all night," the guard pestered. "We need to get back on the phone and do a deal."
"I said save it!" Carter would brook no authority other than his own. Cyclops wondered how the situation could be handled. The man was as potentially deadly as his bomb. And Jeannie had said that the bomb was a realie.
"Okay, okay," said Cyclops, shifting slightly to a more comfortable position. Two of the guns shifted in his direction and he stopped. "So tell me: why are you doing this? I still don't know."
"It's a statement, man," said Carter, fondling his bomb like a babe in arms. "Unto every man and woman alive at this time is given the burden of making a statement. This is ours. It is our night. The night of SAVI."
Cyclops shifted his jaw and nodded. He could blast the kid. They'd tied his hands, but they didn't know about his glove controls. But it was too risky. He could set the bomb off inadvertently, and probably would. "Can you give me the substance of your statement? In words, that is?"
Carter smiled. "The substance of our statement, man, is this." He pointed to the bomb. "We created this in a lab not far from where they used to do napalm research here. Did you know about that? Bet you didn't. Not unless you read the undergrounds."
"On occasion," said Scott. "I love the Furry Freak Brothers."
One of the guards smiled. "Hey, you know that one too, man? That's one of my favorites."
"Will you shut up?" railed Carter. "The statement: this campus shall no longer participate in acts involving the propagation of the war action in Vietnam. No oncampus recruiters, no ROTC, no nothing. This campus will hire several teachers of our approving who will conduct a teach-in on the War and on inequities in American society. This campus will rename one of its buildings after Malcolm X and hire a Panther as a teacher. Tuition for black students will be lowered, and tuition for white students will be raised to make up the difference."
"Tall order," said Cyclops. "You think they'll give you all that in one night?"
"No," said Carter. "But that's business. You ask for a lot to get a little. We're getting attention from the national press now, in addition to the local, and that is our main objective."
"Wouldn't it have been easier to hire a PR guy?"
"Don't get funny with me, man!"
"Sorry."
Jean,> he thought. Jean. Am I coming through?>
No answer. A guy had been sent to look for her. He put a mental wedge between those two thoughts, and shifted his attention back to Carter. "Look," he said. "There's a simple way out of this. Just let everybody go, turn yourselves in to the nice policemen outside--"
"Nice policemen!" scoffed the blond-haired guy. "Should I mention Chicago, man?"
"I'm talking," said Cyke, as emphatically as he dared. The guard shut up. "Turn yourself in to the cops. There's radio and TV around, covering everything, as I said. They won't dare brutalize you with the cameras on. You'll probably be out on bail within 24 hours. There's enough rich lefties in Hollywood to cover the bill for all of you."
Carter smirked, but did not laugh. "Tell us the rest of it, Cy-clops."
"All right. The rest of it. Something bad goes down. You lose control of the situation. Maybe you just get tired. Maybe somebody challenges your authority. Maybe some cops get sent in, in a sneak attack. There's any number of maybes we can multiply. Infinite possibilities. Most of them have a single result. Something goes boom. Somebody dies. That somebody is plural. It could be you."
"It could very well be," said Carter, unsmiling.
"Well?"
Carter assumed a pose which, to Cyke, looked something like William Shatner in his command chair on the Enterprise. "Don't you think we've thought this thing through beforehand, Cy-clops? We know what the chances are. But we're in control. That's how we determine what--the--outcome--will--be."
Cyclops looked around at the ten hostages, most of whom were trying not to look at the men with guns or the man with the bomb. "What do you think it will be?"
"Just like you said, first version," said Carter. "We grab the press. We make our statement. We insist on a transport plane out of here, with a couple of these old geeks as insurance. We take it to Canada, and live happily ever after in No Draft Land."
"You think that's the way it'll be?" Cyclops said, quietly. "Like there's no extradition treaty between Canada and the U.S.? This isn't like crossing the border to beat the draft, man. The law on both sides will see you as terrorists. You go up there, and Sgt. Preston is gonna send you back."
Carter laughed. "Or maybe Dudley Do-Right, huh? No, we got it sussed. It's gonna work out, man. It's really, really gonna work out."
Cyclops set his jaw. Sometimes, he didn't like it when the logical part of his brain drew conclusions. The kind it drew now were the ones which, he wagered, were pretty close to what Carter really had in mind. His hopes for escape were as impossible as the demands he was making on the campus dean.
The guy had no intention of letting anyone in this building leave alive. Including himself.
A deathwish? The lust for posthumous fame? Or just a more fitting, final Statement? The motivation didn't matter. All that would matter was the result.
"You think you know it all," said Cyclops. "You really think you know it all."
Carter, his hand cautiously near the wire-pull, said, "Tell me what I don't know."
"You don't know about me, for one thing," said Cyclops. "You don't know what it's like to be a mutant."
A look of curiosity crossed Carter's face. "You're right.
I don't."
"Want me to tell you?"
Slowly, the man nodded. Even the guards looked like they were tracking him. Well and good.
"Okay," said Cyclops. "What it means to be a mutant. To begin with, you're right, in a way. It is being a member of a minority. Even if you happen to be white, which I am, reasonably. But it's different. With us, people have got something concrete to fear."
"So do we, brother," said Carter.
"Yeah, but we don't have to make it. We're born with it. With the power. It manifests usually in your teenage years, when all those hormones start pumping. That's when I found out what my eyes could do. The others I knew had other interesting things happen: wings, ice, mental powers, magnetism, speed, illusions, stuff like that. That isn't even scratching the surface. It's been estimated that thousands of people may be mutants, and not even know it. More are being born all the time. So--it could be your kid. That's what frightens people. You could be white, Christian, Republican, Joe Average, and your child might be a mutant. One of Them. Or even worse...someday, you could be one of Them."
"Heavy," opined one of the guards.
"I was lucky," Cyke continued. "The greatest man I ever knew took me in. He made me into what I am today. I could've not been so lucky. I could've been found by somebody like Magneto. He ran a crew of mutants that weren't nearly so nice as the X-Men. Lots of times, we were the only ones between him and the likes of you. A few of you were grateful. Most of you didn't seem to care."
"Hey, man, I can relate," said one of the guards.
"Shut it," griped Carter, but he listened.
"We didn't really get persecuted until the Bolivar Trask business. He was the McCarthy of the Mutants. He was the creator of the Sentinels. They were those big robots whose job it was to hunt mutants down. Trask died, when he destroyed his own master Sentinel. But that wasn't as important as the fear he'd spread in his TV appearances. He talked about a 'Mutant Menace'. Some of the press got ahold of it. We'd been trying to establish ourselves, the X-Men, as super-heroes to show people that mutants could be their allies, just another kind of human being. We did, to a large extent. But after Trask, a lot of people would always view us with fear. The way they didn't fear the Avengers or the Fantastic Four. After all, those guys had gotten their powers in other ways than being born with them."
A guard said, "Man, Carter, what if we made a demand that a course on mutants be taught? From the pro-mutant viewpoint, of course. This guy could teach it."
"Oh, Lester, will you please," said Carter. "This guy is just trying to Scheherezade you, is all. Eh...go on."
"The bit is that, whatever the current public perception, we have to go on," said Cyclops. "We have a Statement of our own to make. The Statement that, with powers or without, we're human beings...and we can be trustworthy. Plus the fact that, if we don't do it, people like Magneto and the Sentinels will threaten all of us. So. That's part of what it's like to be a mutant."
One of the guards spoke. "Have you ever met Thor?"
"A few times," admitted Cyke.
"What's he really like?"
"Very large, blonde hair, big hammer," said Cyclops. "Powerful. Uses thees and thous a lot. Good guy to have on your side, and if he's around, you better find out where his side is right quick."
Carter looked at Cyclops for a moment, then picked up the phone. "Time to talk. Hello, Dean?"
There were two sets of footsteps. Cyclops turned in their direction. So did most of the others, including several hostages.
Marvel Girl was walking in front of the guard Carter had sent to find her. He had his gun pointed at her back.
Carter spoke into the phone. "Hold it, something's come up. Be back in a moment." He hung the phone up and looked at Cyclops. "You didn't tell us about her."
Scott, are you reading me?>, sent Marvel Girl.
Acknowledged,> thought Cyke. Then, aloud, he said, "You didn't ask."
"Walter," said Carter. "You were gone a long time. What went down up there, Walter? Walter?"
Walter wasn't answering. Jean moved away from in front of him. Carter saw Walter's eyes, as glassy as a zombie's.
Marvel Girl had telepathed a quick set of instructions to Cyclops. They had to be quick. They had less than five seconds to make this work. The other three guards were swinging their weapons in her direction.
With her TK power, Jean yanked upwards on all three barrels, and their shots made plaster dust shake down from the ceiling.
At the same time, Cyclops activated the hand-controls in his gloves and the gate in his visor went up inside of a second. The great red power beam surged forward from his eyes. It was convienient that all the guards were standing, while the hostages were all kneeling or sitting down. With a quick and powerful sweep, he smashed all three SAVI members with an intensity that rendered them all senseless.
But the guards weren't their main focus of action. Carter was, and he was trying to pull his bomb's trip-wire. And trying. And trying.
Marvel Girl was holding the wire immobile with her full telekinetic power.
The wire extended from the top of the bomb to Carter's hand, which was convienient. Jean's power was holding it in two places, as she'd mentally indicated to Cyke, leaving a middle section untouched. With a quick pressure of his fingers, Cyclops narrowed the area of his beam to needle diameter. This had to be done quickly and precisely, and he got uncontrollable flashbacks to the time in which another of his power beams had deactivated Lucifer's bomb and saved the world.
This time, all it did was sever the trip-wire. Jean let go of the top half of the wire, and Carter, still tugging it, fell backwards. In an instant, Cyclops was on him, covering him, bulling him away from the bomb. Jean held the device immobile against the table with her power.
When they had gotten several steps away from the bomb, Cyke dragged Carter to his feet with one hand in his shirtfront. Meekly, Carter said, "I surrender."
"I haven't made my statement yet," replied Cyclops, and uncorked a right to the jaw. Carter slumped.
Cyclops lowered him gently to the floor. Then he took a deep breath and turned to Marvel Girl. She smiled at him, warmly but briefly.
Then he turned to the hostages. "Let's see about getting you free," he said.
Jean moved to help him do just that.
-X-
Donny Tallent was about to lose the last of the coffee he'd mainlined. Mr. Grant was standing not three feet away from him, burning. "If he doesn't turn up within five minutes, he's canned," murmured Grant, decisively.
"It's his first time, boss," said Donny. "Be reasonable."
"His last, too."
"Jumpin' Jack Flash" was fading and Donny was about to roll something by Chicago right after it. He got as far as the first bits of brass notes when a voice came through the cue monitor. "Donny, this is Scott. Patch me in, now."
Donny sighed. Grant switched his cigar to the other side of his mouth. Chicago was potted down and the news intro cart came up. Donny tagged it. "Now, from Ector University, here's Scott Summers."
"Thank you, Donny," said Scott. "We're here on the campus of Ector University, where just a few minutes ago the hostage situation was defused, we repeat, defused by two members of the famous 'X-Men' group, in conjunction with the Ector police department. Here with me is Captain Boyer of the EPD. Captain, can you confirm this for our audience, please?"
"X-Men?" said Donny.
"Shut up," said Grant, leaning closer to the monitor.
Captain Boyer's voice came through. "All I can say is that the woman, this Marvel, uh, Mary Marvel?"
"Marvel Girl, Captain," said Scott.
"This Miss Marvel Girl contacted me, asked us to let her and this Cyclops guy have a shot at rescuing the hostages. Against my better judgment, I gave consent. The hostages were saved unharmed and the terrorists were taken without great incident."
"And the bomb, Captain?"
"The device is in the hands of the bomb squad. The terrorists are in custody. The hostages are being examined by paramedics and will be debriefed later on. That's all I've got right now."
"Thank you, Captain."
"All I've got, except one thing. If super-heroes have to turn up in our town, I'm glad they did the kind of job they did tonight. If not, I'd be looking for a job tomorrow."
"Thank you again, Captain. That was Captain Boyer of the Ector Police Department. Now I'd like to hear from one of the hostages. Yes, ma'am. If you could just step a little closer, that's fine. Your name is?"
"Marcia Taylor. I work at the...oh, heavens..."
"It's all right, Mrs. Taylor. Please stay with me, this won't take long, I promise. Can you describe for me what happened at the outset of the incident?"
"Well, I was helping clean the first floor of the building when we heard the doors being, being forced, I supposed, and in came these wild, crazy men with guns and bombs and..."
"Yes, ma'am. And what did they say to you?"
"I can't use that kind of language here."
"What did they say to you, approximately?"
"They, they told us that they were members of this 'Savee' or 'Savvy' or something and that we should lie down on the floor or get shot. So we lie down on the floor and they tied our hands and ankles."
"Were you physically hurt by the terrorists, ma'am?"
"No, not really, but it wasn't comfortable, and we were scared half to death. They had a bomb, for heaven's sake!"
"What about the two, uh, 'X-Men' who came on the scene? When did they arrive?"
"Oh, it must have been an hour or so after the whole thing started. They captured one of them, too, you know, the one in the blue and yellow with the thing on his eyes, the man one. Then the woman came in, the one in that mini-skirt, the one over there, and she helped free the man and they...I was scared to death. But they saved us."
"So neither you nor any of the other hostages were harmed, as a result?"
"I couldn't say so, definitely. I think we're all right, thank God. And thank the police and those two young people."
"Thank you, Mrs. Taylor. And now, I want to interview one more person before we give it back to the station. Here with me is one of the two X-Men involved in the hostage incident. Would you state your name for the record, miss?"
A female voice came through. "Marvel Girl," it said.
Grant's cigar was held frozen in the middle of his mouth.
"Holy spit," whispered Donny Tallent.
-X-
The two of them had time to catch four hours of sleep before the alarm rang in the morning. Jeannie prepared the standard eggs-over-easy, toast, and bacon breakfast for the two of them. Scott unrolled the morning paper and looked at the front page. The headline read:
'X-MEN' PAIR SAVE HOSTAGES
Below it was a shot, taken with a flash so powerful it had left spots in Cyke's eyes even through his visor, of Cyclops and Marvel Girl herding the hostages out the front door of the student union building.
Jean yawned, trying not to slop coffee on the tablecloth as she poured. "Didn't get my good side," she pouted. "Can I read?"
"After I'm done," said Scott. "Here, take this part." He handed her the second half of the paper. As she paged through it, he scanned the article, which mentioned Cyclops and Marvel Girl and even Scott Summers's name as the guy who interviewed the female X-Man for the radio. And there was something very curious about the article.
Throughout it, they were not referred to once as "mutants."
When they were called something other than X-Men, the writer used the term "super-heroes."
"Oh, Scott, listen to this," said Jean. "It's from the editorial page."
"Mmm?" He lowered the front page for a moment.
"The article's called, 'Hostages and Heroes' and it says, I quote, 'Before last night, Ector had no first-hand experience with super-heroes of the New York variety. Of course, it had never been host to a terrorist hostage situation on campus, either. Now it has experienced both, and if the two members of the famous X-Men team have come to call this city their home, the Ector Enterprise would like to be among the first to welcome them.'"
"Mmm," said Scott, half-committaly.
"'The two masked pilgrims apparently arrived just in time to stop a bomb threat by Students Against the Vietnam Insanity, in conjunction with the Ector Police. The ten released hostages confirmed that the two X-Men, Cyclops and Marvel Girl, penetrated the building where they were being held, executed a daring rescue attempt, and were successful. In an interview shortly after the fact with WESR radio's Scott Summers--'"
"Mmm," Scott said, warming to the topic.
"'--Marvel Girl confirmed that the two of them were operating currently in the Ector environs. She refused to answer more personal questions, but did say, 'After enemies like Magneto and Unus, this was a change of pace.'" She smirked. "Well?"
"Mmm," said Scott.
"'It must be allowed that the Ector Police Department could probably have handled the situation as well, themselves. But this does not detract from the daring performance of the two masked heroes, who bravely faced ten armed students to rescue an equal number of hostages. If Cyclops and Marvel Girl have come to stay, they chose a spectacular way to make an entrance.
"'Some segments of society, however, may not welcome the twosome, if they choose to brand them with the scarlet letter "M" for Mutant. The inflammatory rhetoric of Dr. Bolivar Trask, late creator of the Sentinels, and those who followed his lead have a good deal to do with this. However, for our part, we remember the Magneto incident of 1963, in which the selfsame X-Men stopped the takeover of a U.S. missle base. The X-Men followed this with successes in many other reported cases, including ones in which they collaborated with the Fantastic Four and Avengers, neither of whom had any apparent problems working with mutants.
"'So, for those who would brand the masked twosome with the "M" word, let the Enterprise commit to another term for them.
"'We will call them "super-heroes".
"'And we will welcome them to Ector.
"'Anyone who has a problem with that will have to take on our editorial department. We hereby deputize our shop foreman to act in our stead. He doesn't wear a mask, but he's still got a pretty good right hook.
"'Now, if we could just get the publisher to stop calling himself "Captain Enterprise", things would get back to normal.'"
Jean put down the paper. She couldn't speak. Scott looked at her and saw the wetness welling in her eyes. She finally said, "Scott."
He went to her side, touched her arm. "Jean. Just let it out."
She hugged him fiercely, crying very softly. "They didn't call us mutants. They're calling us...calling us..."
"Super-heroes," he said, patting her back as she clutched him.
"Yeah."
"You want my handkerchief?"
"It's all right. Really, it is. It's just that...oh...after all this time, it sure feels good!"
"I agree. It sure does. 'Marvel Girl.'"
She chuckled through her tears and slapped him on the shoulder. "I ought to smack you one. I know it's a dumb name, but have you got a better one?"
"Yeah. Cyclops. But it's mine!"
She wanted to shake him like a smartmouthed child, but settled for kissing him instead. Then they hugged, and she said, "And to think...it just took leaving New York to do it."
"So far," he said. "You know what?"
"What?"
"We've got to eat and finish getting dressed in fifteen minutes."
"Oh, hell. I ought to call in sick, instead of bleary-eyed. And you said that your boss liked it?"
"Well, we sold the feed of the interview to the UPI, and ABC News grabbed it, too. So yeah, I'd say he's pleased. Think I might just be doing more news, and less jocking."
She sighed. "Maybe I should try modelling as Marvel Girl. Get more gigs that way."
"Probably so. Let's eat. The working-class world awaits."
"It sure does. And you know what awaits after it?"
"What we didn't get finished doing last night?"
"You got it, tiger."
He returned her grin, and dug into breakfast.
****
The title, natch, comes from John Lennon's "Working Class Hero."
Hope you enjoyed this installment.