Evolution or
Not, they all still belong to
Marvel. No suing.
Also,"supraorbital tori" is the fancy-shmancy term for browridges. I took an anthropology class and now everyone's gonna pay for it:)
He will rule them with an iron scepter; he will dash them to pieces like pottery.
- Revelation 2:27
Xavier had not been to Egypt in years, and the memories that he had of it were mixed. It was in Egypt that he had first encountered Storm - she had stolen his wallet in the middle of a busy Cairo street - and it was in Egypt that he had first encountered the Shadow King.
This trip promised more bad memories.
He sighed and rubbed his eyes, tired from his intense study of the few seconds of video that Storm's headset had recorded before the blast. The image of Apocalypse, once run through Cerebro and "cleaned up," presented a terrifying picture. The mutant was huge by anyone's standards, with bulky blue armor only increasing his height and girth; his head, resting atop a massive, corded neck, seemed almost too small for the rest of his body. It was the face that had captured Xavier's attention: thick blue lips wrapped around Apocalypse's skull to his ears in a macabre rictus of a smile, with baleful red eyes all but buried in shadow under heavy supraorbital tori.
The face reminded him of nothing so much as the multi-ton Olmec stone heads, or perhaps the moai of Easter Island - and with that thought came a sudden jolt of realization as to why those cultures had created such objects in the first place. Appeasing an angry god, indeed.
"We're two minutes out," Scott announced. They had jumped time zones again, flying away from an advancing dawn, and now the world outside the jet was the deep blue-black of pre-midnight. Xavier, occupying the co-pilot's position for this jaunt, looked over at his student and the mutant standing behind him.
Yet another in a long list of complications.
"Descend here," Cable said, showing Cyclops a point on the Blackbird's on-board navigation display.
Xavier sighed again. He did believe the mercenary, having seen the telepathic evidence firsthand, but it was an uncomfortable burden; he didn't particularly enjoy concealing the truth from his students. However, having them find out now would be... upsetting.
"At the risk of repeating myself, this is fascinating," Beast said over the radio. "There's no record of En Sabah Nur anywhere, let alone his tomb, but the satellite photos I just, ah, borrowed from NASA are showing definite evidence of an ancient excavation."
Cable's mouth twitched in annoyance. "I told you."
"Yes, you did," Xavier said, adding telepathically, You realize that you're not making any friends.
Who says I want to? Cable shot back, then severed the communication link with what Xavier was coming to recognize as a characteristically brutal thought.
He had his parents' tempers, and none of their care. Wonderful.
"Beginning descent," Cyclops said, voice neutral. He was obviously trying to ignore the mercenary - a more futile task than he could know.
The Blackbird came to rest on the flat, rock-strewn sands with its side to the narrow canyon that housed Apocalypse's tomb. Xavier reached out with his telepathy, running a superficial scan of the area; the malignant force was there, pulsing under the earth like a cancerous heart. Risking another backlash, he focused his powers on Apocalypse's mind for the briefest of seconds, then terminated the connection. The ancient mutant was indeed weakened from the explosion, but still powerful. Too powerful for his liking.
Xavier closed his eyes against the sharp pain of a blossoming headache. Attacking Mesmero and Apocalypse in a few hours' span had taxed him more than he liked to admit, and he was starting to feel the effects. As much as he hated the idea, whatever battle his X-Men were about to face, they were going to have to face it largely alone.
That didn't mean he wasn't going to accompany them - far from it. Staying on the sidelines during the fight in Tibet had been an exercise in frustration; now he would take his chances beside his students, where any good teacher would be.
He waited until the X-Men and Cable had departed the plane, then descended himself and joined the group as they trekked towards the canyon's opening.
Predictably, Scott was the first to call him on it. "Professor, are you sure you should be here?"
"I'll be fine, Cyclops." To forestall any further argument, he said, "Storm, fly ahead and check for possible traps."
She nodded and lifted upwards into the night with a gust of wind that sent the sand and gravel swirling. It was warmer here than it had been in Tibet, but not by much, and he wished for better protection than his professorial jacket provided. At least the students, in their more insulated uniforms, were comfortable.
His headache worsened for a moment, and he pressed his forehead in a vain attempt to relieve the pain. This was not a smart idea at all; he was going to be nearly useless. And yet, some small - all right, be honest - large bit of ego wouldn't let him reconsider his decision. He was not going to let his students face this on their own. They had to succeed now. With the helicopter destroyed, there was no way for the others to come to their aid, save civilian transport. And that would simply take too long.
They paused at the mouth of the canyon, waiting for Storm's report. A soft rustling sound heralded her return, and Xavier looked up expectantly as she lowered herself to a point approximately five feet over their heads.
"The canyon is empty," she said, shaking her head. "If there is a trap, it's not outside."
"Traps. Plural. And they'll be inside." Cable drew one of the two large guns strapped to his back and held it at the ready. "Well?"
Xavier looked at his students - the most treasured parts of his life - and knew there was only one answer. "Let's go."
Storm flew ahead, while Cable and Wolverine took point. Cyclops and Jean followed closely behind the adult mutants, and Xavier fell in between his two oldest students. The sand on the floor of the canyon was layered slightly deeper than it had been on the plateau - not quite deep enough to cause problems for his chair, fortunately, and he had no trouble keeping up them.
The walls of the canyon soared overhead, seeming to arch inwards. The rock was not smoothly wind-cut as it was in the ancient stone city of Petra, instead being fragmented in much rougher chunks and layers. He was not a geologist, but he knew the signs of water action when he saw them. Storm would have to exercise caution here; any rainfall would cause a flash flood of dire proportions.
"We're here," Cable said, not bothering to whisper. "Here" was a triangular crevice splitting the cliff face. Dimly visible several yards inside the crevice was a blank stone face, unnaturally flat.
"So where's th' doorbell?" Gambit asked.
Cable gave him a dark glance, unimpressed by the humor. "Right here." He held up a palm-sized object that glinted a dull metallic in the moonlight. A small red light flashed intermittently in the center of the object, which was stamped with a series of black ideograms that Xavier didn't recognize.
"We should take a few steps back," Wolverine said, sniffing the air. An understatement. Xavier wondered briefly just how many explosive devices Cable had.
Cable set the device and retreated to join them some yards down the canyon. There was a muffled boom, a burst of smoke and sand from the crevice, and then a silence broken only by the barely-audible clinks of small rocks settling into their new places.
Cable and Wolverine immediately moved into the new entrance, the laser sight on Cable's gun sweeping through the cloud of smoke. "Clear," Wolverine called back. Storm, hovering above the entrance, gracefully dropped down and vanished into the smoke.
Xavier lead the children inside. It was a dark place, both physically and emotionally; he could feel the blackness of En Sabah Nur's soul everywhere. The corridor he was in opened into a vast space of such stygian shadow that it was almost palpable. The walls that he could see were blank - curious for an Egyptian tomb - and until Cable flicked on a light on his gun, the true dimensions of the place were unknowable.
"Impressive," Xavier said. His words echoed - and echoed and echoed. The ceiling was a full twenty feet above them, with the walls stretching away a dozen yards on either side. There were no decorations anywhere.
"Sure, it's big enough, but look at the location," Jean said with slightly forced levity, and for some reason that made Cyclops chuckle. Curious, Xavier lightly scanned their thoughts. Ah. A line from a movie.
Cable, examining the far wall, shifted his gun and called, "Over here."
Xavier rolled over to him. "Hidden door," the mercenary explained, tapping the wall with the business end of his gun.
"I got this one," Cyclops said, putting his hand to his visor's control dial.
The red beam of his optic blast slammed into the wall, collapsing it into the unseen room beyond, and Storm blew the dust away from them with a wave of her hands.
The new room was significantly smaller, and contained only one item of note: a square opening in the floor, perhaps two and a half feet wide. Cable knelt beside the hole, his scarred eye phosphorescing suddenly, and said, "It's a ten-foot drop, straight down, and there's a web of infrared beams on the way."
Storm raised her eyebrows. "Infrared?"
"Apocalypse was always ahead of his time," Cable said, standing again.
Xavier cleared his throat and gestured at the opening, trying not to let his feeling of defeat show. "Well. This is the end of the road for me, I'm afraid. I'll stay here and provide whatever assistance I can."
Cyclops nodded. "Okay. Rogue, you'll stay with the professor... Rogue?"
They all looked around the room, but it was Jean who asked, "Where'd she go?"
Wolverine growled. "I don't know - but wherever she went, the Cajun went with her."
Xavier put a hand to his head, searching for the wayward children, and found them some distance away, in pursuit of a familiar figure. Their timing left something to be admired, but he couldn't really fault initiative. "They have a mission of their own. Wolverine will stay in her place. The rest of you will proceed as planned."
Storm will take care of the students. For that matter, you and I both know, I think, that Cable will not jeopordize them, he told Logan directly, before he could protest.
Wolverine growled again, truly displeased at the arrangement, but didn't object - not verbally, at least. Telepathically, he started complaining almost immediately. Xavier tuned him out and refocused his attention on the others.
"Right," Cyclops said. "We won't let you down, Professor."
Xavier gave him smile of fatherly pride. "I know you won't."
Then he left his students to infiltrate the tomb proper, returning to the grandiose first chamber. There had to be a clue somewhere, some sort of mark or sign that they could use to their advantage. Surely the Egyptians, sticklers for legacies, had left a record of how they'd defeated En Sabah Nur and drove him from their kingdom.
"They're off safe. Jean's telekinesis deflected the infrared beams," Wolverine informed him a few moments later as the older mutant came across the room to stand beside him. "Whatcha lookin' to find, Chuck?"
"I'm not certain," he said. "Hopefully, something that will help us." He reached out to brush away an ancient layer of grime from the frustratingly blank wall - and a knife buried itself hilt-deep in the rock millimeters from his fingers.
Startled, Xavier turned around in his chair to see four Hand ninjas standing not two yards away. He was taken aback by their sudden appearance - telepathy usually left one with few surprises - but Wolverine flashed a predatory grin and popped his claws. "Oh, yeah. I was hopin' to see you chumps again."
"Come now, Logan-san," one of the ninjas said in mildly accented English. Xavier pushed his way into the ninja's mind just long enough to glean that these four had a long history with Wolverine, and that they were being controlled directly by Apocalypse rather than Mesmero. He wasn't certain if that made them more dangerous or less. "You know you cannot defeat us. We have beaten you many times in the past."
The predatory grin widened. "Hundredth time's the charm, bub. Let's dance."