-6-
Ororo dreamt of drowning beneath relentless, thin surges of water,
lit through by bright, sunless sky. She felt like she was choking on
air while waves, tasteless and without scent, crashed and swirled
around her clenched hands. She woke awash in the surf of her
own hair, gasping as she coughed strands out of her mouth.
The tendons of her shoulders and chest stood out against her skin
in relief stark as lightning in a clear sky.
Now dreams, she thought and pressed her hand hard to her chest,
shutting her eyes until her ripping heartbeat dropped into a
bearable rhythm and the adrenaline-rush ebbed. Groaning in relief,
she opened her eyes and raised them to the dead sky as seen
beyond the skylight. In the wake of her panic she felt bereft, like a
hummock of rock bared on a sand bar at low tide.
Disentangling herself from rumpled bedding, Ororo shook her
head at the bleak turn of her thoughts and blamed it on her troubled
sleep. The dream had been unusual. The feelings it had deposited
were not. Fatigue upon waking was only one draining legacy of
Scott's death. At least it had been neither his fault nor hers. And to
be sure, they had learned long ago that jobs well done did not
always yield victory. They had known this and more importantly,
they had embraced it.
Wrapping this thin comfort around herself, Ororo rose from the
futon. Taking up the top sheet, she neatly sidestepped the three
thick folders and the musty journal stacked beside the bed. Labeled
"EB - Richards", "EB -Xavier" and "EB - McCoy" respectively,
the folders contained preliminary reports on Betsy Braddock's
recent transformation. She would reread them later, perhaps when
her shoulders were less stiff. The journal, one of the pre-cog
Destiny's volumes, had been the companion of too many nights
and was welcome to trouble someone else with its portents of
unavoidable doom.
Spreading her toes, Ororo planted her feet on the floor. Bending
one knee after the other she spread her arms wide. An unnatural
breeze swept round the room as she reveled in the motion. The
sheet she held fluttered and sighed. Her wrist joint sounded
with a loud and abrupt 'crack' and she grimaced.
"Old, so old before your time."
She bent slowly at the waist until her nose met her knees. The
sheet draped the floor as her hands slid down her thighs. She
could hear the sounds of people moving about on the floors below
and realized that she was holding her breath, waiting for a familiar
voice or steps.
Twisting the sheet about her body and knotting it neatly between
her arm and breast, Ororo made her way into the bathroom. She
studied her reflection blearily as she brushed her teeth. She took
up her hairbrush and gave her staticy mane several hard licks. The
tearing sound this produced brought Ororo up short and she
gentled her strokes, but partway through brushing her hair she lost
interest in the task and began to clean her brush instead. Red
stands were threaded through the bristles, gleaming dully among
white.
Sighing deeply, Ororo exited the bathroom and returned to her
bed. Sitting, she reached for the phone. A small mark appeared
on her forehead as she dialed Jean's home in Anchorage. Holding
the phone between her head and shoulder, she frowned as she
listened to the dial tone. The knot in the sheet loosened. After the
thirteenth ring, she hung up and redialed.
As she tightened the slipping knot in her sheet, she remembered
that she did not give a damn if she were naked or not and stood.
The phone rang. She put it on speaker and began to pack, stalking
from armoire to closet to bureau as she selected warm and versatile
clothing. She rolled pants and sweaters and body-stockings in tidy
wads and had just begun to arrange her rolled clothing into a
canvas carry-all designed to fit into the smallest of airplane
storage spaces when a familiar psychic voice, vibrant but
unobtrusive, brushed her natural shields.
:ORORO!: sent the professor. :I've been calling you. You are
preoccupied with something?:
Her many concerns stopped her throat but after a moment, a single
one rose to prominence and she was able to say, "Jean."
Wordless resignation laced with complex regret presaged his, :Of
course. She has not returned any of my messages either.:
Ororo zipped shut her carry-all.
:Have you determined the extent to which Reed Richards, Henry's
and my reports explain the effects of Betsy's most recent
transformation on her combat performance?:
"No." Ororo replied, uncharacteristically succinct as she unwound
the sheet from her body.
:How soon can you review her most recent Danger Room sessions?
Your input is invaluable and I need it as soon as possible:
She straightened the sheet and tucked it under the futon. "I was
planning on taking a leave of absence, Professor. To look for
Jean."
Immediately, the color of his thoughts gained opacity and the
Professor sent, :Between that and the report on the satellite Kitty
and Rogue destroyed, I doubt you'll be able to leave today.:
Abruptly, Charles' mental presence swirled away, like water down
a drain. Too perturbed by his wishes to attend to this
uncharacteristic rudeness, Ororo finished making her bed. She
summoned a tight rain for a quick shower. She dressed in the first
things touched when she reached into her closet - a shirt that could
have belonged to any of the larger X-men and ancient pants.
Permitting herself a hasty breakfast, she plucked several finger-
length bananas from the one bearing tree in her greenhouse; ate
them on the way down to the War Room, pausing at the kitchen for
some coffee. All the while her senses were opened for the evidence
of the lives under her care. Thus she steeled herself for the hours
she would spend deep underground, closed off from live scent,
natural light, and fresh air.
*
In his bedroom, Charles Xavier turned his attention from Ororo
and focused his awareness on the woman hurtling through the
underbrush bordering the northeast edge of Graymalkin Lane.
Her brilliant mind shone with innumerable facets but it was
marred by terrible scar. Where the seat of her telepathy
should have been was a terrible blankness, like a massive
keloid. His lack of foresight had caused that scar but she
had managed to fashion what remained of her psychic
abilities into powerful shields that he could only breach
with difficulty.
Purpose rode her like a horse.
She had to get to him and get him out of the mansion - post-haste.
It was with his heart in his throat that Xavier sensed her stumble
across the stream in shoes ill-suited for rough journeying and make
her way to a free-stranding, scruff-strewn boulder. It contained a
hidden opening to a dank, subterranean path. The path slanted to
the shore of Breakstone Lake. He stayed with her as he hauled
himself from his desk-chair to his hoverchair and she fastened a
tiny breathing mask to her face. He watched over her as he directed
his hoverchair to the space beside his bed, his breath catching with
sympathetic shock as she dove into the freezing waters. He
triggered open a hidden panel in his wall just as she found the lead
wire leading to a specific spot on the lake-bottom, and hurled
himself into to the drop-tube behind that panel as she swam into a
hole screened by carefully molded rocks and water plants. He fell
in darkness, breaking through a spiderweb. She crawled through
chill depths of a watery tunnel and was caught in the gravity net in
a manmade cavern deep beneath the mansion when her head broke
the surface of the subterranean pool that cavern contained.
"Tessa," he said from where he was sprawled beneath the
drop tube.
Gasping, she tore off the mask and crawled out of the water on
hands knees, gaining the shore and resting only when she lurched
to the computer bank set into the wall, lifting the clear lid on a red
button and slamming her palm firmly against it, activating the
cavern's defenses.
Wheezing, she sank to the floor, the skin of her face squeaking as
it dragged down the length of the cabinet. Her face was white, the
tattoos beneath her eyes blacker than wet coal against her skin. Her
lips were an flat-orchid. Water pooled beneath her.
The professor pulled himself along the floor until he was beside
her.
"Who is it?" The professor asked, resting his hand on her wet
head. "Whose measure are we taking?"
"They call themselves the Neo," Tessa finally gasped. "And they
are not benign."
*
As far as mutations went, Warren's did not convey wide-ranging
offensive capabilities. At best, he could soar to the stratosphere
and thus deprive a combatant of air, but short of murder (he could
lift someone high into the air and drop them, rather how
seagulls obtained clam suppers) he had only speed and agility to
rely upon in a fight. When his vintage Lincoln had broken down,
Warren had decided to walk to Bobby's house rather than
take a Taxi into Manhattan because 1) Betsy had cancelled their
date, 2) in the two weeks since he'd been absent from Xavier's
school for gifted youngsters, he hadn't challenged his endurance
and 3) he hadn't heard from Hank in ages and if anyone knew
where Hank was, Bobby did.
Normally, Warren avoided walking long distances. His preferred
means of travel was winged flight. Walking to Bobby's house was
more an exercise in discipline. And when the third semi to pass
him splashed damp road grit onto him along with the choking
backwash of dust he'd only recently learned to avoid by turning his
head away, pride kept him on Nicholls Road North.
Being Warren he nonetheless looked smug. This had as much to
do innate grace as the image-inducer that hid his wings and
disguised the blue of his skin. His tracksuit was still crisp; the
splashes from the road fell on the red fabric in geometric streaks.
His curling blond hair, which Betsy had cut only recently, was a
study of unnatural-seeming perfection, despite having been
repeatedly raked by grit laden gusts.
Normally, Warren would have noticed three attackers converging
on him. Two stalked him from the deep embankment beyond the
road's shoulder; one fell towards him from the sky. His eyes
were fixed on the distance as put one foot before the other.
The call of the sky was echoing loud within him when a reek of
dank stone and still water assailed his nostrils. Without thinking,
Warren's wings beat furiously, driving him into the air. He barely
got a glimpse of his two ground assailants before the net they
launched at him bloomed to his right. In two beats of his wings he
was high above them and tapping his X-Comm for help. Before he
could realize that the communicator was dead, a whistling shriek
warned him that a large was mass hurtling towards him.
His attacker's feet were aimed at his back, and may have
broken it had they connected, but Warren was fast, mercury-quick,
and he dropped and dodged, taking the blow on his arm. His arm
went numb and he flipped in the air, grappling with a foe who was
as fast as him if not faster. They punched and hit, dodged and spun
in the air. Elbows, thighs and arms collided, grunts and wheezes
sounded and feathers rained. The man could fly and he was strong
and fast, but in the air he was not Warren's match. Warren drove
his shoulder into his assailant's midsection then landed a solid hit
to his face. His assailant fell out of control, his grey-white hands
glowing a pestilent yellow.
Holding his wings close to his body to cut lift, Warren followed.
He caught his assailant around his head and shoulders. The miasma
of cave dweller - dead skin, deader eyes and the metallic reek of
heavy ground water - was strong.
A second net launched from below captured Warren and his
assailant. Both dropped to the ground, the air shrieking around
them as the ground reared up. Grounded, Warren was quickly
overwhelmed.
*
Storm knew better than to wish that Scott were alive, but the low-
ceilinged, narrow room, designed to comfortably seat two long-
limbed persons, was unfriendly since his death. Her mouth
twisted with humor only Scott would have appreciated, shared.
"Had Betsy grown another limb and were still in the process of
using it, we might see a clearer result. The professor has informed
me that Betsy tends to tell her limbs to move a certain way. She
craves flight. When she tells her feet to run harder, or her fists to
punch she yells telepathically." Storm crooked her mouth and her
expression gentled. "This only makes me thankful for my own
natural shields."
Looking to the chair beside her, the one which normally contained
Scott, Ororo reached for her comm badge and tapped it. There was
short series of chirps and she spoke: "Outside line, Betsy
Braddock's cellular phone, 212 area code."
There was a series of clicks but no open-line hum. Odd. It had
been at least ten hours since her last telephone call to Betsy. In
glancing at her timepiece to make sure of this, Ororo saw that she
had been beneath the mansion too long for her comfort: the small
hairs on her arm stood straight. The faintest crawling sensation
resulted when she brought her fingertips to the skin of her arm. She
studiously did not look upward.
Deciding to give herself a break, Ororo stood.
Whenever she had been down in the second subbasement
anteroom with Scott, he made sure that she stayed only a
little longer than their previous time there. Thanks to him,
she could spend hours in the anteroom, focused on the X-Men
and their progress, and not on the crush of stone and earth above
her.
It had been Scott's idea that Danger Room footage be viewed in
the antechamber. Here she had no illusions that they were
outdoors or in a wide open space. Her concentration, already
formidable, usually served to distract her from where she was and
her imagined vulnerability. Still, she did not relish being down in
the subbasement more than she could help it.
Betsy's outside line did not pick up. Tapping her comm badge,
Ororo said, "Outside line, Warren Worthington - Manhattan
residence." She powered down the monitors, exited the anteroom
and approached the elevator doors. Her nostrils flared as she
waited for the doors to open and she steeled herself as she
entered and the lift. She began a stately ascent into the mansion
to break her fast properly, but there was a series of horrible
sounds as the power failed. The soothing, comforting whine
of the Shiar powersinks and generators halted and she was
plunged into crushing, silent, darkness.
*
Forge and Kitty were hunched over his computer monitor,
studying an electronic schematic of the house power plans.
The lines were glowing green when the first massive clunk
of total power failure registered.
"No!!!" Kitty wailed as Forge's computer powered down and
darkness fell. There were fizzling chirps as each tried to activate
their X-Coms. Calmly, Forge reached for the circular punch-light
on the desk and tapped it. A feeble fluorescent glow threw their
faces into harsh relief. He pulled a handheld unit from his pocket
and activated it. On the small display, the schematic they'd been
scrutinizing on the computer screen appeared.
Kitty stepped away from Forge, reached to the wall behind the
computer monitor and with a flip of a switch connected the
computer to a dedicated power source. The computer monitor
blinked on and the house plans they'd been studying re-appeared.
To Kitty's disappointment and Forge's frustration, the powerlines
were depicted in red.
*
Ororo's eyes opened their widest. A weird, vicious howling
sound began as the air pressure in the elevator dropped. Electric
arcs, purple, pink and white, crawled and flickered over her hands
and face, snapping and crackling as Ororo beat at the door. Her
eyes were glowing white and a rhythmic banging began as Ororo's
terror manifested as fluctuating air pressure.
Claustrophobia, worse than she'd experienced in a long time,
threatened to take her mind away. By the feeble, eldritch light of
her eyes and the St Elmo's fire she'd summoned, Ororo could
barely see. Panic had her imagining that the elevator was rocking
and groaning around her, but that was the motion of her own self-
propelled body and her voice.
There was a 'BAMF'. Sulfur-stink filled the elevator.
"Ororo!" cried out Kurt, shielding his face as sparks shattered the
air.
"Kurt!!" Ororo screamed.
His hard-muscled arms, densely velveted with short, comforting
fuzz, fastened around her waist.
She shut her eyes tight in anticipation of vertigo. They
vanished in a sulfuric burst of air.
*
"We've got no power," Kitty observed.
"This is very strange," Forge said, frowning more than usual at his
handheld.
"What is?" Kitty asked, tossing him a flashlight from under the
desk. He caught it without removing his eyes from his handheld.
"Well, according to that," he pointed to his computer, "we're
completely offline."
Kitty reached under her desk for the laptop computer she kept
there. "But?" she asked.
"There's a . . some kind of diagnostic running."
"It's not your handheld interacting with your computer or some
other auxiliary system kicking in? Mansion is riddled with 'em."
She checked the batteries in her flashlight.
"Hardly."
She cocked her head, her hip, and her foot and waited. When he
said nothing, "What, we're being scanned? The professor would
know if we were under attack."
Forge didn't answer.
"And our auxiliaries do work when it comes to defense."
"I need to concentrate," Forge muttered.
"Professor?!" Kitty yelled, augmenting that with a mental shout.
Forge sucked his teeth, pursed his lips.
"Guess he's not here," Kitty said, turning on her laptop.
Forge refrained from glaring.
"I'm gonna go more hands on and check out what's going on with
the powersinks. You gonna join me?" Kitty asked.
He grunted.
"That handheld is not gonna slow you down *too* much."
He ignored her.
Kitty wheeled on her heel, made a face, and hefting the flashlight
into her palm, headed for the second subbasement.
*
"You're unhurt?" Xavier asked Tessa, who was shivering beside
him. She stood tall, despite her obvious discomfort, her posture
perfect.
"Yes," she said eyes on the monitors depicting the quiet grounds.
The infrared monitors revealed three humanoid shapes on the
Institute
grounds.
"You took a great risk coming here."
"My earlier attempts to alert you were unsuccessful. I surmised
that the failsafes had been compromised."
Xavier nodded. "Forge and Kitty have been reworking our
mansions defenses."
Tessa nodded. "How open are the intruders' minds to you?" she
asked.
"They're only testing us," Xavier said, his voice distant. "Assessing
our defenses as you said.
Tessa nodded.
Xavier spoke again, "I sense great hostility but no intent to attack -
at least today."
"You only heard me just in time. The probability was high that
they would attempt to take you captive were you in residence."
"What else do you know?"
"Only what I've told you: that they are old; that they have been
hidden and seek to take our measure; that they are not benign."
He nodded. "And so we wait." And they did, but not before he
turned his awareness to the garage and motor pool.
*
Ororo and Kurt landed on the cold flagstones of the dark
chapel. Frozen for a moment, Ororo beheld what little of Kurt
hadn't melted with the shadows looked singed around the edges.
His long sleeved tee-shirt, a deep purple, was burnt at the hem.
The turpentine-stain laced carpenters pants he wore smoked.
"Mein Gott," he gasped, his flame-yellow eyes blinking rapidly.
"You almost gave me a heart-attack."
"Never!" she gasped, and hurried over to him. Tightly, she
embraced him and he hugged her back.
"That was very dangerous what you did, my darling Elf," she said
hoarsely.
He chuckled and could not help but nod emphatically, but ever the
gallant he said, "No risk is too great."
"Thank you," she replied.
They pulled away from one another and rose to their feet. Their
hands remained linked as they walked down the aisle to the
shut doors.
"What made you come?" Ororo asked.
"There was a terrible noise. I was sawing through some boards for
the pews--" Kurt gestured at a carpenter's stand where boards were
waiting to be sawn into pieces. Ororo released Kurt's hand and
hurried to the extension cord, pulling it from the wall.
He grinned, thanking her with a nod. "When the saw and the
light I'd hung from the wall died, the silence was conspicuous.
I teleported to the mansion foyer and called for anyone. No
one came. Then I remembered that you were supposed to be in
the War Room all day but when I teleported to there, I still
couldn't find you. When I heard the disturbance in the
elevator shaft, I guessed you were there."
And panicking, Ororo thought. She said, "You should not have
risked it. But I thank you."
They each grasped a handle, shouldered the chapel doors open.
Snow and leaves blew in from outside.
By daylight, Kurt looked exhausted. His warm amber eyes were
glassy and his cheeks sagged. The neat fuzz napping his skin had
lost some of its sheen.
"Thank you, my friend. You risked much for me."
"Ach," Kurt demurred, "anything for a pretty girl."
Chuckling despite herself, she slipped her arms around his waist
and jumped. Her hands hooked beneath his arms as she caught
the wind and they flew back to the mansion.
Kitty met them at the garage, a bucket of used motor oil in her
hands.
"Katzchen," said Kurt, dropping from Ororo's hands to neatly land
on the driveway. "What happened to the power?"
Kitty shook her head. "It's probably a glitch but Forge is checking
it out anyway. Though wouldn't that be a hoot if this was
something prophesied in one of Destiny's journals?"
Unconsciously, Ororo shook her head 'no'. Kurt blanched as much
as was possible considering his skin color. "That was a joke,
guys."
"Those journals worry me," Ororo said.
"And I as well," said Kurt. "Who else is at the mansion?"
"Just us - Pete and Marrow took off earlier this morning for the
naval yards and a car came for Professor 'bout a half hour ago.
Oh, and Rogue went out to get us some lunch."
"Piotr took Sarah out there again?" Kurt asked.
Kitty shrugged. "Yeah. The girl really likes all that heavy rusting
machinery. Especially the chains."
"That can't give Peter much to paint that he likes, though."
*
In Port Jefferson, Long Island, Bobby preened under his mother's
attentions, purring comically as she tinted his hair. She had the
*best* hands.
"Jesus God, Maddy," said Willie Drake, halting his wheelchair in
the middle of his wife's kitchen with a sharp squeal of tires.
Envelopes, flyers, and advertisements cascaded from his lap onto
the floor. Maddy looked up from brushing dye onto a section of
Bobby's brown hair. Bobby hunched under the drip-cape, clutching
the egg timer he'd been fiddling with to his chest.
"You gonna teach him to play with dolls, too?"
Maddy pursed her lips, folded foil around the section of hair she'd
been color-treating, and sniffed. Her expression curdled further as
the stench of dye hammered her.
Bobby started to stand but his mother's fist pressed into the meat
of his shoulder, keeping him in his seat.
Willie fixed mother and son with a withering stare. Maddy and
Bobby glared back. Willy angrily spun one wheel of the chair,
whirling in a tight arc, and trundled out of the kitchen the same
way he'd come.
Maddy tsked.
"Can I get the mail now?" Bobby asked.
Foil rustled as Maddy highlighted another section of his hair. Her
fingers worked as quickly and surely as they had before Willy's
interruption, but Bobby could sense her tension. Also, she was
tapping her heel on the floor.
"Mom?" he hazarded.
"Let me get the rest of this in here and turn on the timer and then I
can clean up your father's mess - like I've been doing for these past
thirty years and more," she added under her breath.
"Mom, are you - are you . . . ?"
"Am I *what*, Bobby?" she snapped, setting aside her tint brush.
Having an affair, he thought. "Happy?" he asked.
She reached over his shoulder, grabbed the egg timer and
wrenched the dial to the fifteen-minute mark. "Not at the moment,
dear."
"Mom," he began, twisting in his chair to face her.
She looked up from the egg timer with a thoughtful expression.
"Some horrible woman called for you the other day."
Bobby's eyebrows almost met over his nose.
Maddy's gaze sharpened, pinning him. "She has this hideous
finishing-school, Northampton lock-jaw." Maddy swayed a little
from side to side, a haughty sway. She spoke through barred teeth:
"I haven't heard its like in years. Said she's your headmistress of all
things."
"Was her name Emma? Emma Frost?"
Maddy nodded. "Yes, it was."
"She's the headmistress of the Institute's sister school in
Massachusetts."
"Oh. Well, she's called for you a few times now."
"And you're only telling me now!" Bobby yelled, then winced as
he
realized he sounded just like his father.
"I just remembered now!" Maddy yelled back, her face flushing.
"And in any case, you've been waiting on Henry McCoy's call, not
some -" her face became petulant, "_Chippy_." Her snippy,
condescending reply sounded way too much like his dad's acidity
for Bobby's comfort.
"I suppose you've been talking to Hank all this time but you
haven't bothered to let me know he's called either."
"Temper, Bobby." Maddy replied, then more gently. "I'd do no
such thing. I'm as worried about him as you are. He was close to
Scott too."
The front door bell rang, playing Dixie of all things.
Maddy's eyes widened in dismay at the tune. Bobby cringed.
Maddy said, "That man!"
Whereupon Willy bellowed loud enough to be heard in the kitchen,
"Son!"
*
Forge stood before the double doors to Professor Xavier's suite, a
datadisk in his hand. His breath came in short pants and his mouth
was clenched. He raised his hand to pound on the door but a
sudden spurt of rage moved him to duck his chin.
The doors opened with a sudden whoosh, revealing Storm in
disheveled glory. Printer ink smudged her cheek and nose. Her
shirt, an over-large, much used chambray one was very similar to
his, down to the blue ink stains on the front pocket seam. It had
been buttoned out of order. Her frayed cargo pants were dirt
stained at the knees and thighs.
She also carried a manila file folder.
Forge colored dramatically, his skin purpled with rushing blood.
Her blue eyes widened with blank surprise. Anger looked strange
on him - at least, it did not suit him.
With a slight toss of her head, she shook off her surprise. "Forge."
Silenced by the notion that the shirt she wore had once been his,
he could only nod.
She took a deep, quick breath. "Have you seen the Professor?"
He opened his mouth to reply but she spoke out of turn. "Of course
not. You are looking for him. Obviously, he is not here."
Forge backed away. Stepping over the threshold, she closed the
doors behind her.
He scowled. Or rather, his brow furrowed and lowered and the
wing of his jaw surged and twitched.
Resisting the urge to soothe that tic with her hand, she managed a
tight-lipped smile at Forge before striding away from him.
In a breath, Forge took three steps in her direction and reached for
her arm.
She whirled on him, keeping her arm well out of his reach.
The liquid black of his eyes shone and his voice was low with
intent, "We need to talk."
Reflexively, she shook her head no.
The brilliance of his gaze dimmed. "It's business, Ororo."
"Then you would do well to conduct yourself accordingly," she
said severely. The weary affront this evoked shamed her and she
relented. Her voice husky, she said, "Is this regarding the
satellite communications mishap? Or today's power failure?"
"Both are related."
She tapped the file she held against her warding hand, the one
she'd raised when he'd tried to grab her. "You are welcome to a
copy of this incident report. Most of the pertinent information is
included. Should you have any questions, you need only
forward them to Katherine - Kitty."
Additional lines wrinkled across his forehead. "Downed satellites
are the least of our worries. I think I found something about the
mansion's power source. I could use the original consultant's input
and I hoped I could be put in contact with him."
"Cable rebuilt the mansion but he is away indefinitely."
"Right." Forge's face was thoughtful.
Suddenly, she felt his fingers brush her shirt - his shirt - her shirt
and he slipped the data-disk into her pocket. It was a casual
gesture, but her inner control slipped its moorings, sliding the
length of her body to pool heavy between her legs.
A hint of ozone buzzed in the air.
"We need to talk." He patted his pocket significantly.
Ororo nodded. She and Forge parted ways. She started for the
Professor's labs, her fingertips at her lips. Her pulse had yet to
return to normal when she turned a hallway and almost ran into
Rogue.
Rogue caught Storm's shoulder with one gloved hand, holding her
at bay and neatly preventing a collision. "You in some kind of
hurry?"
Storm brushed Rogue's hand from her shoulder with more patience
than she had shown Forge. "Forgive me. I did not see you."
Rogue nodded, folding her arms. "You okay?"
"Or course," Storm replied, but noticed then that Rogue looked
dubious. "Considering," Storm added. "Have you seen the
Professor?"
Rogue raked her full bottom lip with her upper teeth. "Not since
this morning. He was gone when I came back with lunch."
Storm's head tilted. Her mouth stilled. "He insisted that I have this
report ready for him today." She looked at the wall bordering
Xavier's room and shook her head. "He should have informed me
that he was leaving."
Rogue smiled sourly in sympathy. "Yeah, least he coulda done."
Rogue then tilted her head at Storm and bit on her inner cheek.
"Speaking of neglectin' to say goodbye, you know when Gambit
took off? He say goodbye to you?"
If the question was meant as consolation for her embarrassing
ignorance of Xavier's whereabouts, Ororo thought it was a noble
effort. She chose her words carefully. "I believe Remy left us two
days after Jean did."
"Mm-hmm," Rogue hummed as if to say, 'Thought so.' Her skin
was flushed and her full lips were thinning as Ororo watched.
"And when's he comin' back?"
Reflexively, Ororo shrugged, touching her hands to her chest and
dipping her hands gracefully towards, Rogue. The placating
gesture was one she had seen Egyptian shopkeeper after street-
vendor after taxi-driver use to deflect the heat of misplaced anger.
Part of her was surprised that her body made it and that it worked.
"I know no more than you."
Rogue was twisting her hand around her thumb. "No?" She
sounded hopeful.
Storm raised her hand to her forehead. Her spread fingertips
grazed her hairline as she mastered the urge to flee.
"I'm sorry to bother you about this. It's just, you an' Gambit are so
close an', I figured you'd know where was. I shouldn't bother you."
"I had been meaning to see you regarding something that is
unrelated to your relationship with Gambit . . ."
Abashed, Rogue laughed. "What can Ah do for you, 'Roro?"
"What exactly happened on the night that the Harrisblite satellite
was damaged?"
"Ah shoulda filed a report. Ah, Ah don't know what Ah was
thinking."
"True, but we had recently buried Scott. Will you sit with me and
tell me what happened?"
Rogue clasped her hands in thanks and shook them at Ororo.
"Lemme run down to the chapel and tell Kurt Ah won't be helpin'
him with the pews. An' then I'm all yours." She started down the
hall towards a window. "Take me two shakes."
"Could you not use your X-Com?"
"Mine's broken too," Rogue said, working the stuck window latch
delicately. "Meet you where? Your attic?"
Ororo nodded. "Should I help you with the latch? It might be
painted shut."
"Nah." Rogue grinned when she tripped the latch. Storm stifled a
wince as Rogue shoved open the window. Cold, dry air flooded the
hall, making her nostrils itch. Storm couldn't stifle another wince
when Rogue stepped onto the white windowsill and it creaked
under the weight of her foot.
Rogue grabbed the top of the window frame. "Lock up?" she said
over her shoulder.
"Of course," Storm replied.
Rogue jumped out of the second story window, leaving a dirty boot
print on the windowsill. Wiping off the boot print with the hem of
her shirt, Ororo watched Rogue turn a tight right rather than fall to
the ground. There was hardly any snow on the ground, rather, hard
packed dirt and dead grass. Storm closed and locked the window
with much more exertion than Rogue had used.
*
"Does that hurt, dear?" Maddy asked, swabbing a long scrape on
Warren's deeply sculpted, light-blue arm.
"Not at all." Warren grinned thinly.
"You sure? You *are* holding your breath," she stage-whispered.
"Okay, a little," Warren stage-whispered back.
Bobby had an uncharitable thought. He almost kicked himself for
it until he looked over at his father who, as usual, sat in his
wheelchair. Bobby hated that chair. What he hated even more that
his dad had turned gray and was looking over a rifle with hard-
eyed focus.
"I hate to say this," Bobby broke in. "Do you think they followed
you here?"
"They took my attaché-case and ran," Warren replied, speaking
over Maddy's shoulder.
"Doesn't mean they didn't follow you."
There was a klick ca-chick as Willy loaded the rifle. It wouldn't
be any good if the Friends of Humanity showed up at the door. Or
Sentinels disguised as cops.
"They didn't follow me."
"Sure, because your busted image-inducer hid your wings and blue
skin *so* well."
"Bobby," Maddy said mildly. "Lower your voice."
Bobby ignored her, still training his eyes on Warren's. He aimed
his thumb at his father, his jaw mulish. "Your wings are workin',
aren't they? You could have flown away, called for back-up."
He turned away from Warren and his mom.
"Cops'll be here any minute. They'll take your report, son," he said
to Warren. "Bobby: get my other gun."
*
Ororo glanced into Xavier's office. It seemed to be whispering to
her, which while not entirely sane, was not unpleasant. Memories.
Not all hers, but some were, and each room had a different set.
The photograph on the mantelpiece of the fireplace was of Jean
and Scott's wedding day. They had been caught unawares. Jean
was resplendent in her shining wedding gown. Storm had secretly
disliked its design, but Jean had made the garish satin beautiful.
Jean only had eyes for Scott. She was lifting a wave of sun-
streaked red hair from her eyes with the help of the breeze: the
better to see him . . .Uncharacteristically, Scott looked happy:
surprised and relaxed, ecstatic and weary.
Once, Storm had known what that look felt like, and had seen it
reflected in another's face.
Tenderly, Ororo touched the glass covering the photo. She
replaced the photo on the mantelpiece and placed the completed
report upon Charles' desk with a sticky note identifying it as such.
Framed photographs of other affiliates; students and instructors,
past and present, graced the wall to her right. There was one of
Forge and the rest of X-Factor: taken when he was X-Factor's
government liaison, prior to his assumption of the team's
leadership. Immense Guido and light-hearted Jamie Madrox
- the Multiple Man - beamed at her. Scott's brother, Alex of the
sun-bright hair and open mien; far more temperamental than his
brother, his moods and thoughts had chased each other across his
face like the clouds tore across the skies of the Outback. He stood
beside his heart, Lorna Dane. She and Alex had been lovers
longer than Ororo had been in X-men and he was long lost to them
but death hadn't altered Lorna's devotion.
Alex was missing from the next photo, which was of X-Factor.
Ororo's gaze lingered on Forge, searching for any sign that he had
regretted withdrawing his offer of marriage. This photo never
failed to rouse emotions better left unattended and the windows
shook with the force of the wind battering them from outside and
the sky fluoresced white-blue with lightning. The X-Men were all
about second chances, and their affiliates had taken that philosophy
to heart: so vile Sabretooth was in the photo in addition to another
feral, Wildchild. Shard, a time-traveler, sister to Bishop, was also
present.
There was a third woman, someone Storm did not know. She was
dark of hair and eyes. The cast of her features reminded Storm of
the great ladies of the Garden District of Cairo. The gaze behind
her dark-framed glasses was hard. She had a lush mouth and
elegant features but there was a coldness to her that denied true
beauty. Then Storm realized she was gazing at the shapeshifter
Mystique. Ororo's expression curdled and she turned away from
the portrait with hooded eyes.
She drifted down the hall towards the staircase, haunted by sense
memories. Of quiet laughter and proud sighs that accompanied the
Professor and Forge when played chess. The two extremely
intelligent men, so pleased to be able to play a game without
seeming childish - though the delight they took in checkmating
each other rivaled that of any five-year old's at winning a game.
Jubilee rollerblading down the hall despite being told, time and
time again, not to. Or maybe, upon reflection, *because* she was
told time and time again not to. Rogue, propelled by a kinetically
charged basketball, crashing through the wall. Or so she had heard,
and the giant hole in the wall had seemed to indicate that Jubilee
had not exaggerated. The paint beneath Storm's fingertips was
slightly darker than that on the rest of the wall, the paint of the
repair less than a perfect match to the undamaged portions.
The memories distracted her from the silence that was only
briefly relieved by gusts of wind as heard wreathing the eaves.
She mounted the stairs toward her attic passing the windows
overlooking the empty basketball court. The court should
have been echoing with cat-calls and the squeak of court shoes.
Now the wind whistled and wailed while dead leaves chased
circles around one another.
A voice made her pause on the stairs. She turned around to see
Kitty. In the then, Kitty had been a small, gracile creature, a
dancer, ingenuously telling Storm that she had never seen anybody
like her before. Her young girl eagerness had made the simple
words into an extremely gratifying compliment.
"Ororo?"
Storm blinked away the young girl in her mind's eye and focused
on the young woman standing at the bottom of the stairs. "Yes,
Katherine?"
"Could you spare a minute?"
"Whatever for?"
"I was hoping we could try the new communicators out in some
adverse weather conditions, and the equipment we have can only
simulate so much."
"Where you not working with Forge on the power systems?"
"He got a bug up his butt and I decided to do something about our
comms since this afternoon's power glitch fried them all."
Storm stepped down a few steps. "Is the Danger Room
malfunctioning?"
"Oh, God, no. Then we'd really be screwed, Cable being so scarce
and all. Naw, it's just occupied right now, and would you be so
good as to summon us up a storm for us?"
Storm started back down the stairs. "I will see what I can do."
Rogue, dressed in bright yellow, form-fitting coveralls, was
waiting in the entrance hall for them. Her green eyes lit up at the
sight of them. Smiling with preoccupied warmth, Rogue hugged
her elbows and raised an eyebrow at Storm. Storm tilted her head,
wondering if she looked particularly mournful. With a glance and a
slight nod, Storm reassured Rogue that all was well. Rogue sighed,
her green eyes twinkling, and she draped an arm over Katherine's
slight shoulders, a bounce in her step.
When new to the team, Rogue had been trusted by no one,
mistrusting everyone. But she had tried so hard. She had been
valiant in her efforts to make amends for past crimes and to
ingratiate herself with her former enemies. Rogue's hair had been
worn short and close to her head. Though all of eighteen, Rogue's
eyes had been as flat as marble. Lines had bracketed her mouth
from constant frowning. Rogue had worn green and white, then,
the colors she made notorious while an enemy of the X-Men and
the Federal Government. Storm preferred the green, but nobody
asked her about these things.
"Storm, boss, ya gotta pay attention." The image of the memory-
Rogue vanished before Rogue's amused voice and snapping
fingers. She beamed, her smile taking up almost all of her face.
"Ah don't want ya zappin' me while Ah'm up there."
"I was under the impression that you enjoyed that."
"I'll take my thrills where I can get 'em but I admit it's hell on my
hair. If you can figure out a way to make call lightning that doesn't
make my hair all frizzy -"
Ororo chuckled. "Next you will be asking me to make small,
*friendly* lightning bolts."
"If you could make them small..." began Kitty, but stopped at an
exasperated look from Storm.
They went outside, and walked to area of the grounds chosen for
the experiment, though Storm doubted her ability to keep a
thunderstorm so contained that it would not spread to the whole of
the grounds.
Even that would be tiny.
"Colossus has one inside the mansion, too. These things are heavy
duty - distance is no problem - but I'm not sure how they're gonna
respond to nearby electrical interference."
Rogue nodded. "And if the X-Men are gonna be using 'em, they
need to work while whoever's got them is dodging lightning bolts."
Storm nodded absently, closed her eyes, and let her heart reach for
the skies.
Droplets of water evaporated against the heat of her skin.
"Um, that's a start," Rogue said after what must have been close to
three minutes. "Though I was kinda hopin' that 'frizz' could be
avoided," she added under her breath.
Storm opened her eyes and looked distastefully at the drizzle
she had created.
"I guess conditions aren't conducive to creating a thunderstorm,"
said Kitty. "That's all right. We'll try again later."
Storm tightened her lips at the patronization she sensed in their
voices. "Give me a moment."
Rogue raised her arms and plunged upwards into the air. Her flight
raised a breeze stronger than anything Storm had managed to call.
A little time passed. It felt like a lot of time. Each additional
lightning-less second was an embarrassment, though she knew it
should not have been.
Her tongue touched her lower lip. Her eyes remained placidly
closed. The drizzle began to coat her face. Raindrops began to
weigh down her hair, but she longed to stomp and raise thunder
with her steps. She wanted to scream hail onto the earth. She
wanted to go up there and squeeze the clouds until they yielded
rain like rivers.
The rain began to fall, fast and hard. There was a distant rumble,
and then a louder, closer one.
She opened her eyes to rain that would have blinded most - even
her X-Men. Kitty was soaked to the proverbial bone. Her hair was
plastered to her skin. Rainwater dribbled over the planes of her
face and dripped from her chin.
"As you wished," she said to Kitty. "May it suffice."
She walked away, but she didn't go inside. Instead, she sat down
on the porch and watched the lightning and rain, and tried to forget
that, for a quarter of an hour, the skies had completely ignored her.
-0-
Ororo dreamt of drowning beneath relentless, thin surges of water,
lit through by bright, sunless sky. She felt like she was choking on
air while waves, tasteless and without scent, crashed and swirled
around her clenched hands. She woke awash in the surf of her
own hair, gasping as she coughed strands out of her mouth.
The tendons of her shoulders and chest stood out against her skin
in relief stark as lightning in a clear sky.
Now dreams, she thought and pressed her hand hard to her chest,
shutting her eyes until her ripping heartbeat dropped into a
bearable rhythm and the adrenaline-rush ebbed. Groaning in relief,
she opened her eyes and raised them to the dead sky as seen
beyond the skylight. In the wake of her panic she felt bereft, like a
hummock of rock bared on a sand bar at low tide.
Disentangling herself from rumpled bedding, Ororo shook her
head at the bleak turn of her thoughts and blamed it on her troubled
sleep. The dream had been unusual. The feelings it had deposited
were not. Fatigue upon waking was only one draining legacy of
Scott's death. At least it had been neither his fault nor hers. And to
be sure, they had learned long ago that jobs well done did not
always yield victory. They had known this and more importantly,
they had embraced it.
Wrapping this thin comfort around herself, Ororo rose from the
futon. Taking up the top sheet, she neatly sidestepped the three
thick folders and the musty journal stacked beside the bed. Labeled
"EB - Richards", "EB -Xavier" and "EB - McCoy" respectively,
the folders contained preliminary reports on Betsy Braddock's
recent transformation. She would reread them later, perhaps when
her shoulders were less stiff. The journal, one of the pre-cog
Destiny's volumes, had been the companion of too many nights
and was welcome to trouble someone else with its portents of
unavoidable doom.
Spreading her toes, Ororo planted her feet on the floor. Bending
one knee after the other she spread her arms wide. An unnatural
breeze swept round the room as she reveled in the motion. The
sheet she held fluttered and sighed. Her wrist joint sounded
with a loud and abrupt 'crack' and she grimaced.
"Old, so old before your time."
She bent slowly at the waist until her nose met her knees. The
sheet draped the floor as her hands slid down her thighs. She
could hear the sounds of people moving about on the floors below
and realized that she was holding her breath, waiting for a familiar
voice or steps.
Twisting the sheet about her body and knotting it neatly between
her arm and breast, Ororo made her way into the bathroom. She
studied her reflection blearily as she brushed her teeth. She took
up her hairbrush and gave her staticy mane several hard licks. The
tearing sound this produced brought Ororo up short and she
gentled her strokes, but partway through brushing her hair she lost
interest in the task and began to clean her brush instead. Red
stands were threaded through the bristles, gleaming dully among
white.
Sighing deeply, Ororo exited the bathroom and returned to her
bed. Sitting, she reached for the phone. A small mark appeared
on her forehead as she dialed Jean's home in Anchorage. Holding
the phone between her head and shoulder, she frowned as she
listened to the dial tone. The knot in the sheet loosened. After the
thirteenth ring, she hung up and redialed.
As she tightened the slipping knot in her sheet, she remembered
that she did not give a damn if she were naked or not and stood.
The phone rang. She put it on speaker and began to pack, stalking
from armoire to closet to bureau as she selected warm and versatile
clothing. She rolled pants and sweaters and body-stockings in tidy
wads and had just begun to arrange her rolled clothing into a
canvas carry-all designed to fit into the smallest of airplane
storage spaces when a familiar psychic voice, vibrant but
unobtrusive, brushed her natural shields.
:ORORO!: sent the professor. :I've been calling you. You are
preoccupied with something?:
Her many concerns stopped her throat but after a moment, a single
one rose to prominence and she was able to say, "Jean."
Wordless resignation laced with complex regret presaged his, :Of
course. She has not returned any of my messages either.:
Ororo zipped shut her carry-all.
:Have you determined the extent to which Reed Richards, Henry's
and my reports explain the effects of Betsy's most recent
transformation on her combat performance?:
"No." Ororo replied, uncharacteristically succinct as she unwound
the sheet from her body.
:How soon can you review her most recent Danger Room sessions?
Your input is invaluable and I need it as soon as possible:
She straightened the sheet and tucked it under the futon. "I was
planning on taking a leave of absence, Professor. To look for
Jean."
Immediately, the color of his thoughts gained opacity and the
Professor sent, :Between that and the report on the satellite Kitty
and Rogue destroyed, I doubt you'll be able to leave today.:
Abruptly, Charles' mental presence swirled away, like water down
a drain. Too perturbed by his wishes to attend to this
uncharacteristic rudeness, Ororo finished making her bed. She
summoned a tight rain for a quick shower. She dressed in the first
things touched when she reached into her closet - a shirt that could
have belonged to any of the larger X-men and ancient pants.
Permitting herself a hasty breakfast, she plucked several finger-
length bananas from the one bearing tree in her greenhouse; ate
them on the way down to the War Room, pausing at the kitchen for
some coffee. All the while her senses were opened for the evidence
of the lives under her care. Thus she steeled herself for the hours
she would spend deep underground, closed off from live scent,
natural light, and fresh air.
*
In his bedroom, Charles Xavier turned his attention from Ororo
and focused his awareness on the woman hurtling through the
underbrush bordering the northeast edge of Graymalkin Lane.
Her brilliant mind shone with innumerable facets but it was
marred by terrible scar. Where the seat of her telepathy
should have been was a terrible blankness, like a massive
keloid. His lack of foresight had caused that scar but she
had managed to fashion what remained of her psychic
abilities into powerful shields that he could only breach
with difficulty.
Purpose rode her like a horse.
She had to get to him and get him out of the mansion - post-haste.
It was with his heart in his throat that Xavier sensed her stumble
across the stream in shoes ill-suited for rough journeying and make
her way to a free-stranding, scruff-strewn boulder. It contained a
hidden opening to a dank, subterranean path. The path slanted to
the shore of Breakstone Lake. He stayed with her as he hauled
himself from his desk-chair to his hoverchair and she fastened a
tiny breathing mask to her face. He watched over her as he directed
his hoverchair to the space beside his bed, his breath catching with
sympathetic shock as she dove into the freezing waters. He
triggered open a hidden panel in his wall just as she found the lead
wire leading to a specific spot on the lake-bottom, and hurled
himself into to the drop-tube behind that panel as she swam into a
hole screened by carefully molded rocks and water plants. He fell
in darkness, breaking through a spiderweb. She crawled through
chill depths of a watery tunnel and was caught in the gravity net in
a manmade cavern deep beneath the mansion when her head broke
the surface of the subterranean pool that cavern contained.
"Tessa," he said from where he was sprawled beneath the
drop tube.
Gasping, she tore off the mask and crawled out of the water on
hands knees, gaining the shore and resting only when she lurched
to the computer bank set into the wall, lifting the clear lid on a red
button and slamming her palm firmly against it, activating the
cavern's defenses.
Wheezing, she sank to the floor, the skin of her face squeaking as
it dragged down the length of the cabinet. Her face was white, the
tattoos beneath her eyes blacker than wet coal against her skin. Her
lips were an flat-orchid. Water pooled beneath her.
The professor pulled himself along the floor until he was beside
her.
"Who is it?" The professor asked, resting his hand on her wet
head. "Whose measure are we taking?"
"They call themselves the Neo," Tessa finally gasped. "And they
are not benign."
*
As far as mutations went, Warren's did not convey wide-ranging
offensive capabilities. At best, he could soar to the stratosphere
and thus deprive a combatant of air, but short of murder (he could
lift someone high into the air and drop them, rather how
seagulls obtained clam suppers) he had only speed and agility to
rely upon in a fight. When his vintage Lincoln had broken down,
Warren had decided to walk to Bobby's house rather than
take a Taxi into Manhattan because 1) Betsy had cancelled their
date, 2) in the two weeks since he'd been absent from Xavier's
school for gifted youngsters, he hadn't challenged his endurance
and 3) he hadn't heard from Hank in ages and if anyone knew
where Hank was, Bobby did.
Normally, Warren avoided walking long distances. His preferred
means of travel was winged flight. Walking to Bobby's house was
more an exercise in discipline. And when the third semi to pass
him splashed damp road grit onto him along with the choking
backwash of dust he'd only recently learned to avoid by turning his
head away, pride kept him on Nicholls Road North.
Being Warren he nonetheless looked smug. This had as much to
do innate grace as the image-inducer that hid his wings and
disguised the blue of his skin. His tracksuit was still crisp; the
splashes from the road fell on the red fabric in geometric streaks.
His curling blond hair, which Betsy had cut only recently, was a
study of unnatural-seeming perfection, despite having been
repeatedly raked by grit laden gusts.
Normally, Warren would have noticed three attackers converging
on him. Two stalked him from the deep embankment beyond the
road's shoulder; one fell towards him from the sky. His eyes
were fixed on the distance as put one foot before the other.
The call of the sky was echoing loud within him when a reek of
dank stone and still water assailed his nostrils. Without thinking,
Warren's wings beat furiously, driving him into the air. He barely
got a glimpse of his two ground assailants before the net they
launched at him bloomed to his right. In two beats of his wings he
was high above them and tapping his X-Comm for help. Before he
could realize that the communicator was dead, a whistling shriek
warned him that a large was mass hurtling towards him.
His attacker's feet were aimed at his back, and may have
broken it had they connected, but Warren was fast, mercury-quick,
and he dropped and dodged, taking the blow on his arm. His arm
went numb and he flipped in the air, grappling with a foe who was
as fast as him if not faster. They punched and hit, dodged and spun
in the air. Elbows, thighs and arms collided, grunts and wheezes
sounded and feathers rained. The man could fly and he was strong
and fast, but in the air he was not Warren's match. Warren drove
his shoulder into his assailant's midsection then landed a solid hit
to his face. His assailant fell out of control, his grey-white hands
glowing a pestilent yellow.
Holding his wings close to his body to cut lift, Warren followed.
He caught his assailant around his head and shoulders. The miasma
of cave dweller - dead skin, deader eyes and the metallic reek of
heavy ground water - was strong.
A second net launched from below captured Warren and his
assailant. Both dropped to the ground, the air shrieking around
them as the ground reared up. Grounded, Warren was quickly
overwhelmed.
*
Storm knew better than to wish that Scott were alive, but the low-
ceilinged, narrow room, designed to comfortably seat two long-
limbed persons, was unfriendly since his death. Her mouth
twisted with humor only Scott would have appreciated, shared.
"Had Betsy grown another limb and were still in the process of
using it, we might see a clearer result. The professor has informed
me that Betsy tends to tell her limbs to move a certain way. She
craves flight. When she tells her feet to run harder, or her fists to
punch she yells telepathically." Storm crooked her mouth and her
expression gentled. "This only makes me thankful for my own
natural shields."
Looking to the chair beside her, the one which normally contained
Scott, Ororo reached for her comm badge and tapped it. There was
short series of chirps and she spoke: "Outside line, Betsy
Braddock's cellular phone, 212 area code."
There was a series of clicks but no open-line hum. Odd. It had
been at least ten hours since her last telephone call to Betsy. In
glancing at her timepiece to make sure of this, Ororo saw that she
had been beneath the mansion too long for her comfort: the small
hairs on her arm stood straight. The faintest crawling sensation
resulted when she brought her fingertips to the skin of her arm. She
studiously did not look upward.
Deciding to give herself a break, Ororo stood.
Whenever she had been down in the second subbasement
anteroom with Scott, he made sure that she stayed only a
little longer than their previous time there. Thanks to him,
she could spend hours in the anteroom, focused on the X-Men
and their progress, and not on the crush of stone and earth above
her.
It had been Scott's idea that Danger Room footage be viewed in
the antechamber. Here she had no illusions that they were
outdoors or in a wide open space. Her concentration, already
formidable, usually served to distract her from where she was and
her imagined vulnerability. Still, she did not relish being down in
the subbasement more than she could help it.
Betsy's outside line did not pick up. Tapping her comm badge,
Ororo said, "Outside line, Warren Worthington - Manhattan
residence." She powered down the monitors, exited the anteroom
and approached the elevator doors. Her nostrils flared as she
waited for the doors to open and she steeled herself as she
entered and the lift. She began a stately ascent into the mansion
to break her fast properly, but there was a series of horrible
sounds as the power failed. The soothing, comforting whine
of the Shiar powersinks and generators halted and she was
plunged into crushing, silent, darkness.
*
Forge and Kitty were hunched over his computer monitor,
studying an electronic schematic of the house power plans.
The lines were glowing green when the first massive clunk
of total power failure registered.
"No!!!" Kitty wailed as Forge's computer powered down and
darkness fell. There were fizzling chirps as each tried to activate
their X-Coms. Calmly, Forge reached for the circular punch-light
on the desk and tapped it. A feeble fluorescent glow threw their
faces into harsh relief. He pulled a handheld unit from his pocket
and activated it. On the small display, the schematic they'd been
scrutinizing on the computer screen appeared.
Kitty stepped away from Forge, reached to the wall behind the
computer monitor and with a flip of a switch connected the
computer to a dedicated power source. The computer monitor
blinked on and the house plans they'd been studying re-appeared.
To Kitty's disappointment and Forge's frustration, the powerlines
were depicted in red.
*
Ororo's eyes opened their widest. A weird, vicious howling
sound began as the air pressure in the elevator dropped. Electric
arcs, purple, pink and white, crawled and flickered over her hands
and face, snapping and crackling as Ororo beat at the door. Her
eyes were glowing white and a rhythmic banging began as Ororo's
terror manifested as fluctuating air pressure.
Claustrophobia, worse than she'd experienced in a long time,
threatened to take her mind away. By the feeble, eldritch light of
her eyes and the St Elmo's fire she'd summoned, Ororo could
barely see. Panic had her imagining that the elevator was rocking
and groaning around her, but that was the motion of her own self-
propelled body and her voice.
There was a 'BAMF'. Sulfur-stink filled the elevator.
"Ororo!" cried out Kurt, shielding his face as sparks shattered the
air.
"Kurt!!" Ororo screamed.
His hard-muscled arms, densely velveted with short, comforting
fuzz, fastened around her waist.
She shut her eyes tight in anticipation of vertigo. They
vanished in a sulfuric burst of air.
*
"We've got no power," Kitty observed.
"This is very strange," Forge said, frowning more than usual at his
handheld.
"What is?" Kitty asked, tossing him a flashlight from under the
desk. He caught it without removing his eyes from his handheld.
"Well, according to that," he pointed to his computer, "we're
completely offline."
Kitty reached under her desk for the laptop computer she kept
there. "But?" she asked.
"There's a . . some kind of diagnostic running."
"It's not your handheld interacting with your computer or some
other auxiliary system kicking in? Mansion is riddled with 'em."
She checked the batteries in her flashlight.
"Hardly."
She cocked her head, her hip, and her foot and waited. When he
said nothing, "What, we're being scanned? The professor would
know if we were under attack."
Forge didn't answer.
"And our auxiliaries do work when it comes to defense."
"I need to concentrate," Forge muttered.
"Professor?!" Kitty yelled, augmenting that with a mental shout.
Forge sucked his teeth, pursed his lips.
"Guess he's not here," Kitty said, turning on her laptop.
Forge refrained from glaring.
"I'm gonna go more hands on and check out what's going on with
the powersinks. You gonna join me?" Kitty asked.
He grunted.
"That handheld is not gonna slow you down *too* much."
He ignored her.
Kitty wheeled on her heel, made a face, and hefting the flashlight
into her palm, headed for the second subbasement.
*
"You're unhurt?" Xavier asked Tessa, who was shivering beside
him. She stood tall, despite her obvious discomfort, her posture
perfect.
"Yes," she said eyes on the monitors depicting the quiet grounds.
The infrared monitors revealed three humanoid shapes on the
Institute
grounds.
"You took a great risk coming here."
"My earlier attempts to alert you were unsuccessful. I surmised
that the failsafes had been compromised."
Xavier nodded. "Forge and Kitty have been reworking our
mansions defenses."
Tessa nodded. "How open are the intruders' minds to you?" she
asked.
"They're only testing us," Xavier said, his voice distant. "Assessing
our defenses as you said.
Tessa nodded.
Xavier spoke again, "I sense great hostility but no intent to attack -
at least today."
"You only heard me just in time. The probability was high that
they would attempt to take you captive were you in residence."
"What else do you know?"
"Only what I've told you: that they are old; that they have been
hidden and seek to take our measure; that they are not benign."
He nodded. "And so we wait." And they did, but not before he
turned his awareness to the garage and motor pool.
*
Ororo and Kurt landed on the cold flagstones of the dark
chapel. Frozen for a moment, Ororo beheld what little of Kurt
hadn't melted with the shadows looked singed around the edges.
His long sleeved tee-shirt, a deep purple, was burnt at the hem.
The turpentine-stain laced carpenters pants he wore smoked.
"Mein Gott," he gasped, his flame-yellow eyes blinking rapidly.
"You almost gave me a heart-attack."
"Never!" she gasped, and hurried over to him. Tightly, she
embraced him and he hugged her back.
"That was very dangerous what you did, my darling Elf," she said
hoarsely.
He chuckled and could not help but nod emphatically, but ever the
gallant he said, "No risk is too great."
"Thank you," she replied.
They pulled away from one another and rose to their feet. Their
hands remained linked as they walked down the aisle to the
shut doors.
"What made you come?" Ororo asked.
"There was a terrible noise. I was sawing through some boards for
the pews--" Kurt gestured at a carpenter's stand where boards were
waiting to be sawn into pieces. Ororo released Kurt's hand and
hurried to the extension cord, pulling it from the wall.
He grinned, thanking her with a nod. "When the saw and the
light I'd hung from the wall died, the silence was conspicuous.
I teleported to the mansion foyer and called for anyone. No
one came. Then I remembered that you were supposed to be in
the War Room all day but when I teleported to there, I still
couldn't find you. When I heard the disturbance in the
elevator shaft, I guessed you were there."
And panicking, Ororo thought. She said, "You should not have
risked it. But I thank you."
They each grasped a handle, shouldered the chapel doors open.
Snow and leaves blew in from outside.
By daylight, Kurt looked exhausted. His warm amber eyes were
glassy and his cheeks sagged. The neat fuzz napping his skin had
lost some of its sheen.
"Thank you, my friend. You risked much for me."
"Ach," Kurt demurred, "anything for a pretty girl."
Chuckling despite herself, she slipped her arms around his waist
and jumped. Her hands hooked beneath his arms as she caught
the wind and they flew back to the mansion.
Kitty met them at the garage, a bucket of used motor oil in her
hands.
"Katzchen," said Kurt, dropping from Ororo's hands to neatly land
on the driveway. "What happened to the power?"
Kitty shook her head. "It's probably a glitch but Forge is checking
it out anyway. Though wouldn't that be a hoot if this was
something prophesied in one of Destiny's journals?"
Unconsciously, Ororo shook her head 'no'. Kurt blanched as much
as was possible considering his skin color. "That was a joke,
guys."
"Those journals worry me," Ororo said.
"And I as well," said Kurt. "Who else is at the mansion?"
"Just us - Pete and Marrow took off earlier this morning for the
naval yards and a car came for Professor 'bout a half hour ago.
Oh, and Rogue went out to get us some lunch."
"Piotr took Sarah out there again?" Kurt asked.
Kitty shrugged. "Yeah. The girl really likes all that heavy rusting
machinery. Especially the chains."
"That can't give Peter much to paint that he likes, though."
*
In Port Jefferson, Long Island, Bobby preened under his mother's
attentions, purring comically as she tinted his hair. She had the
*best* hands.
"Jesus God, Maddy," said Willie Drake, halting his wheelchair in
the middle of his wife's kitchen with a sharp squeal of tires.
Envelopes, flyers, and advertisements cascaded from his lap onto
the floor. Maddy looked up from brushing dye onto a section of
Bobby's brown hair. Bobby hunched under the drip-cape, clutching
the egg timer he'd been fiddling with to his chest.
"You gonna teach him to play with dolls, too?"
Maddy pursed her lips, folded foil around the section of hair she'd
been color-treating, and sniffed. Her expression curdled further as
the stench of dye hammered her.
Bobby started to stand but his mother's fist pressed into the meat
of his shoulder, keeping him in his seat.
Willie fixed mother and son with a withering stare. Maddy and
Bobby glared back. Willy angrily spun one wheel of the chair,
whirling in a tight arc, and trundled out of the kitchen the same
way he'd come.
Maddy tsked.
"Can I get the mail now?" Bobby asked.
Foil rustled as Maddy highlighted another section of his hair. Her
fingers worked as quickly and surely as they had before Willy's
interruption, but Bobby could sense her tension. Also, she was
tapping her heel on the floor.
"Mom?" he hazarded.
"Let me get the rest of this in here and turn on the timer and then I
can clean up your father's mess - like I've been doing for these past
thirty years and more," she added under her breath.
"Mom, are you - are you . . . ?"
"Am I *what*, Bobby?" she snapped, setting aside her tint brush.
Having an affair, he thought. "Happy?" he asked.
She reached over his shoulder, grabbed the egg timer and
wrenched the dial to the fifteen-minute mark. "Not at the moment,
dear."
"Mom," he began, twisting in his chair to face her.
She looked up from the egg timer with a thoughtful expression.
"Some horrible woman called for you the other day."
Bobby's eyebrows almost met over his nose.
Maddy's gaze sharpened, pinning him. "She has this hideous
finishing-school, Northampton lock-jaw." Maddy swayed a little
from side to side, a haughty sway. She spoke through barred teeth:
"I haven't heard its like in years. Said she's your headmistress of all
things."
"Was her name Emma? Emma Frost?"
Maddy nodded. "Yes, it was."
"She's the headmistress of the Institute's sister school in
Massachusetts."
"Oh. Well, she's called for you a few times now."
"And you're only telling me now!" Bobby yelled, then winced as
he
realized he sounded just like his father.
"I just remembered now!" Maddy yelled back, her face flushing.
"And in any case, you've been waiting on Henry McCoy's call, not
some -" her face became petulant, "_Chippy_." Her snippy,
condescending reply sounded way too much like his dad's acidity
for Bobby's comfort.
"I suppose you've been talking to Hank all this time but you
haven't bothered to let me know he's called either."
"Temper, Bobby." Maddy replied, then more gently. "I'd do no
such thing. I'm as worried about him as you are. He was close to
Scott too."
The front door bell rang, playing Dixie of all things.
Maddy's eyes widened in dismay at the tune. Bobby cringed.
Maddy said, "That man!"
Whereupon Willy bellowed loud enough to be heard in the kitchen,
"Son!"
*
Forge stood before the double doors to Professor Xavier's suite, a
datadisk in his hand. His breath came in short pants and his mouth
was clenched. He raised his hand to pound on the door but a
sudden spurt of rage moved him to duck his chin.
The doors opened with a sudden whoosh, revealing Storm in
disheveled glory. Printer ink smudged her cheek and nose. Her
shirt, an over-large, much used chambray one was very similar to
his, down to the blue ink stains on the front pocket seam. It had
been buttoned out of order. Her frayed cargo pants were dirt
stained at the knees and thighs.
She also carried a manila file folder.
Forge colored dramatically, his skin purpled with rushing blood.
Her blue eyes widened with blank surprise. Anger looked strange
on him - at least, it did not suit him.
With a slight toss of her head, she shook off her surprise. "Forge."
Silenced by the notion that the shirt she wore had once been his,
he could only nod.
She took a deep, quick breath. "Have you seen the Professor?"
He opened his mouth to reply but she spoke out of turn. "Of course
not. You are looking for him. Obviously, he is not here."
Forge backed away. Stepping over the threshold, she closed the
doors behind her.
He scowled. Or rather, his brow furrowed and lowered and the
wing of his jaw surged and twitched.
Resisting the urge to soothe that tic with her hand, she managed a
tight-lipped smile at Forge before striding away from him.
In a breath, Forge took three steps in her direction and reached for
her arm.
She whirled on him, keeping her arm well out of his reach.
The liquid black of his eyes shone and his voice was low with
intent, "We need to talk."
Reflexively, she shook her head no.
The brilliance of his gaze dimmed. "It's business, Ororo."
"Then you would do well to conduct yourself accordingly," she
said severely. The weary affront this evoked shamed her and she
relented. Her voice husky, she said, "Is this regarding the
satellite communications mishap? Or today's power failure?"
"Both are related."
She tapped the file she held against her warding hand, the one
she'd raised when he'd tried to grab her. "You are welcome to a
copy of this incident report. Most of the pertinent information is
included. Should you have any questions, you need only
forward them to Katherine - Kitty."
Additional lines wrinkled across his forehead. "Downed satellites
are the least of our worries. I think I found something about the
mansion's power source. I could use the original consultant's input
and I hoped I could be put in contact with him."
"Cable rebuilt the mansion but he is away indefinitely."
"Right." Forge's face was thoughtful.
Suddenly, she felt his fingers brush her shirt - his shirt - her shirt
and he slipped the data-disk into her pocket. It was a casual
gesture, but her inner control slipped its moorings, sliding the
length of her body to pool heavy between her legs.
A hint of ozone buzzed in the air.
"We need to talk." He patted his pocket significantly.
Ororo nodded. She and Forge parted ways. She started for the
Professor's labs, her fingertips at her lips. Her pulse had yet to
return to normal when she turned a hallway and almost ran into
Rogue.
Rogue caught Storm's shoulder with one gloved hand, holding her
at bay and neatly preventing a collision. "You in some kind of
hurry?"
Storm brushed Rogue's hand from her shoulder with more patience
than she had shown Forge. "Forgive me. I did not see you."
Rogue nodded, folding her arms. "You okay?"
"Or course," Storm replied, but noticed then that Rogue looked
dubious. "Considering," Storm added. "Have you seen the
Professor?"
Rogue raked her full bottom lip with her upper teeth. "Not since
this morning. He was gone when I came back with lunch."
Storm's head tilted. Her mouth stilled. "He insisted that I have this
report ready for him today." She looked at the wall bordering
Xavier's room and shook her head. "He should have informed me
that he was leaving."
Rogue smiled sourly in sympathy. "Yeah, least he coulda done."
Rogue then tilted her head at Storm and bit on her inner cheek.
"Speaking of neglectin' to say goodbye, you know when Gambit
took off? He say goodbye to you?"
If the question was meant as consolation for her embarrassing
ignorance of Xavier's whereabouts, Ororo thought it was a noble
effort. She chose her words carefully. "I believe Remy left us two
days after Jean did."
"Mm-hmm," Rogue hummed as if to say, 'Thought so.' Her skin
was flushed and her full lips were thinning as Ororo watched.
"And when's he comin' back?"
Reflexively, Ororo shrugged, touching her hands to her chest and
dipping her hands gracefully towards, Rogue. The placating
gesture was one she had seen Egyptian shopkeeper after street-
vendor after taxi-driver use to deflect the heat of misplaced anger.
Part of her was surprised that her body made it and that it worked.
"I know no more than you."
Rogue was twisting her hand around her thumb. "No?" She
sounded hopeful.
Storm raised her hand to her forehead. Her spread fingertips
grazed her hairline as she mastered the urge to flee.
"I'm sorry to bother you about this. It's just, you an' Gambit are so
close an', I figured you'd know where was. I shouldn't bother you."
"I had been meaning to see you regarding something that is
unrelated to your relationship with Gambit . . ."
Abashed, Rogue laughed. "What can Ah do for you, 'Roro?"
"What exactly happened on the night that the Harrisblite satellite
was damaged?"
"Ah shoulda filed a report. Ah, Ah don't know what Ah was
thinking."
"True, but we had recently buried Scott. Will you sit with me and
tell me what happened?"
Rogue clasped her hands in thanks and shook them at Ororo.
"Lemme run down to the chapel and tell Kurt Ah won't be helpin'
him with the pews. An' then I'm all yours." She started down the
hall towards a window. "Take me two shakes."
"Could you not use your X-Com?"
"Mine's broken too," Rogue said, working the stuck window latch
delicately. "Meet you where? Your attic?"
Ororo nodded. "Should I help you with the latch? It might be
painted shut."
"Nah." Rogue grinned when she tripped the latch. Storm stifled a
wince as Rogue shoved open the window. Cold, dry air flooded the
hall, making her nostrils itch. Storm couldn't stifle another wince
when Rogue stepped onto the white windowsill and it creaked
under the weight of her foot.
Rogue grabbed the top of the window frame. "Lock up?" she said
over her shoulder.
"Of course," Storm replied.
Rogue jumped out of the second story window, leaving a dirty boot
print on the windowsill. Wiping off the boot print with the hem of
her shirt, Ororo watched Rogue turn a tight right rather than fall to
the ground. There was hardly any snow on the ground, rather, hard
packed dirt and dead grass. Storm closed and locked the window
with much more exertion than Rogue had used.
*
"Does that hurt, dear?" Maddy asked, swabbing a long scrape on
Warren's deeply sculpted, light-blue arm.
"Not at all." Warren grinned thinly.
"You sure? You *are* holding your breath," she stage-whispered.
"Okay, a little," Warren stage-whispered back.
Bobby had an uncharitable thought. He almost kicked himself for
it until he looked over at his father who, as usual, sat in his
wheelchair. Bobby hated that chair. What he hated even more that
his dad had turned gray and was looking over a rifle with hard-
eyed focus.
"I hate to say this," Bobby broke in. "Do you think they followed
you here?"
"They took my attaché-case and ran," Warren replied, speaking
over Maddy's shoulder.
"Doesn't mean they didn't follow you."
There was a klick ca-chick as Willy loaded the rifle. It wouldn't
be any good if the Friends of Humanity showed up at the door. Or
Sentinels disguised as cops.
"They didn't follow me."
"Sure, because your busted image-inducer hid your wings and blue
skin *so* well."
"Bobby," Maddy said mildly. "Lower your voice."
Bobby ignored her, still training his eyes on Warren's. He aimed
his thumb at his father, his jaw mulish. "Your wings are workin',
aren't they? You could have flown away, called for back-up."
He turned away from Warren and his mom.
"Cops'll be here any minute. They'll take your report, son," he said
to Warren. "Bobby: get my other gun."
*
Ororo glanced into Xavier's office. It seemed to be whispering to
her, which while not entirely sane, was not unpleasant. Memories.
Not all hers, but some were, and each room had a different set.
The photograph on the mantelpiece of the fireplace was of Jean
and Scott's wedding day. They had been caught unawares. Jean
was resplendent in her shining wedding gown. Storm had secretly
disliked its design, but Jean had made the garish satin beautiful.
Jean only had eyes for Scott. She was lifting a wave of sun-
streaked red hair from her eyes with the help of the breeze: the
better to see him . . .Uncharacteristically, Scott looked happy:
surprised and relaxed, ecstatic and weary.
Once, Storm had known what that look felt like, and had seen it
reflected in another's face.
Tenderly, Ororo touched the glass covering the photo. She
replaced the photo on the mantelpiece and placed the completed
report upon Charles' desk with a sticky note identifying it as such.
Framed photographs of other affiliates; students and instructors,
past and present, graced the wall to her right. There was one of
Forge and the rest of X-Factor: taken when he was X-Factor's
government liaison, prior to his assumption of the team's
leadership. Immense Guido and light-hearted Jamie Madrox
- the Multiple Man - beamed at her. Scott's brother, Alex of the
sun-bright hair and open mien; far more temperamental than his
brother, his moods and thoughts had chased each other across his
face like the clouds tore across the skies of the Outback. He stood
beside his heart, Lorna Dane. She and Alex had been lovers
longer than Ororo had been in X-men and he was long lost to them
but death hadn't altered Lorna's devotion.
Alex was missing from the next photo, which was of X-Factor.
Ororo's gaze lingered on Forge, searching for any sign that he had
regretted withdrawing his offer of marriage. This photo never
failed to rouse emotions better left unattended and the windows
shook with the force of the wind battering them from outside and
the sky fluoresced white-blue with lightning. The X-Men were all
about second chances, and their affiliates had taken that philosophy
to heart: so vile Sabretooth was in the photo in addition to another
feral, Wildchild. Shard, a time-traveler, sister to Bishop, was also
present.
There was a third woman, someone Storm did not know. She was
dark of hair and eyes. The cast of her features reminded Storm of
the great ladies of the Garden District of Cairo. The gaze behind
her dark-framed glasses was hard. She had a lush mouth and
elegant features but there was a coldness to her that denied true
beauty. Then Storm realized she was gazing at the shapeshifter
Mystique. Ororo's expression curdled and she turned away from
the portrait with hooded eyes.
She drifted down the hall towards the staircase, haunted by sense
memories. Of quiet laughter and proud sighs that accompanied the
Professor and Forge when played chess. The two extremely
intelligent men, so pleased to be able to play a game without
seeming childish - though the delight they took in checkmating
each other rivaled that of any five-year old's at winning a game.
Jubilee rollerblading down the hall despite being told, time and
time again, not to. Or maybe, upon reflection, *because* she was
told time and time again not to. Rogue, propelled by a kinetically
charged basketball, crashing through the wall. Or so she had heard,
and the giant hole in the wall had seemed to indicate that Jubilee
had not exaggerated. The paint beneath Storm's fingertips was
slightly darker than that on the rest of the wall, the paint of the
repair less than a perfect match to the undamaged portions.
The memories distracted her from the silence that was only
briefly relieved by gusts of wind as heard wreathing the eaves.
She mounted the stairs toward her attic passing the windows
overlooking the empty basketball court. The court should
have been echoing with cat-calls and the squeak of court shoes.
Now the wind whistled and wailed while dead leaves chased
circles around one another.
A voice made her pause on the stairs. She turned around to see
Kitty. In the then, Kitty had been a small, gracile creature, a
dancer, ingenuously telling Storm that she had never seen anybody
like her before. Her young girl eagerness had made the simple
words into an extremely gratifying compliment.
"Ororo?"
Storm blinked away the young girl in her mind's eye and focused
on the young woman standing at the bottom of the stairs. "Yes,
Katherine?"
"Could you spare a minute?"
"Whatever for?"
"I was hoping we could try the new communicators out in some
adverse weather conditions, and the equipment we have can only
simulate so much."
"Where you not working with Forge on the power systems?"
"He got a bug up his butt and I decided to do something about our
comms since this afternoon's power glitch fried them all."
Storm stepped down a few steps. "Is the Danger Room
malfunctioning?"
"Oh, God, no. Then we'd really be screwed, Cable being so scarce
and all. Naw, it's just occupied right now, and would you be so
good as to summon us up a storm for us?"
Storm started back down the stairs. "I will see what I can do."
Rogue, dressed in bright yellow, form-fitting coveralls, was
waiting in the entrance hall for them. Her green eyes lit up at the
sight of them. Smiling with preoccupied warmth, Rogue hugged
her elbows and raised an eyebrow at Storm. Storm tilted her head,
wondering if she looked particularly mournful. With a glance and a
slight nod, Storm reassured Rogue that all was well. Rogue sighed,
her green eyes twinkling, and she draped an arm over Katherine's
slight shoulders, a bounce in her step.
When new to the team, Rogue had been trusted by no one,
mistrusting everyone. But she had tried so hard. She had been
valiant in her efforts to make amends for past crimes and to
ingratiate herself with her former enemies. Rogue's hair had been
worn short and close to her head. Though all of eighteen, Rogue's
eyes had been as flat as marble. Lines had bracketed her mouth
from constant frowning. Rogue had worn green and white, then,
the colors she made notorious while an enemy of the X-Men and
the Federal Government. Storm preferred the green, but nobody
asked her about these things.
"Storm, boss, ya gotta pay attention." The image of the memory-
Rogue vanished before Rogue's amused voice and snapping
fingers. She beamed, her smile taking up almost all of her face.
"Ah don't want ya zappin' me while Ah'm up there."
"I was under the impression that you enjoyed that."
"I'll take my thrills where I can get 'em but I admit it's hell on my
hair. If you can figure out a way to make call lightning that doesn't
make my hair all frizzy -"
Ororo chuckled. "Next you will be asking me to make small,
*friendly* lightning bolts."
"If you could make them small..." began Kitty, but stopped at an
exasperated look from Storm.
They went outside, and walked to area of the grounds chosen for
the experiment, though Storm doubted her ability to keep a
thunderstorm so contained that it would not spread to the whole of
the grounds.
Even that would be tiny.
"Colossus has one inside the mansion, too. These things are heavy
duty - distance is no problem - but I'm not sure how they're gonna
respond to nearby electrical interference."
Rogue nodded. "And if the X-Men are gonna be using 'em, they
need to work while whoever's got them is dodging lightning bolts."
Storm nodded absently, closed her eyes, and let her heart reach for
the skies.
Droplets of water evaporated against the heat of her skin.
"Um, that's a start," Rogue said after what must have been close to
three minutes. "Though I was kinda hopin' that 'frizz' could be
avoided," she added under her breath.
Storm opened her eyes and looked distastefully at the drizzle
she had created.
"I guess conditions aren't conducive to creating a thunderstorm,"
said Kitty. "That's all right. We'll try again later."
Storm tightened her lips at the patronization she sensed in their
voices. "Give me a moment."
Rogue raised her arms and plunged upwards into the air. Her flight
raised a breeze stronger than anything Storm had managed to call.
A little time passed. It felt like a lot of time. Each additional
lightning-less second was an embarrassment, though she knew it
should not have been.
Her tongue touched her lower lip. Her eyes remained placidly
closed. The drizzle began to coat her face. Raindrops began to
weigh down her hair, but she longed to stomp and raise thunder
with her steps. She wanted to scream hail onto the earth. She
wanted to go up there and squeeze the clouds until they yielded
rain like rivers.
The rain began to fall, fast and hard. There was a distant rumble,
and then a louder, closer one.
She opened her eyes to rain that would have blinded most - even
her X-Men. Kitty was soaked to the proverbial bone. Her hair was
plastered to her skin. Rainwater dribbled over the planes of her
face and dripped from her chin.
"As you wished," she said to Kitty. "May it suffice."
She walked away, but she didn't go inside. Instead, she sat down
on the porch and watched the lightning and rain, and tried to forget
that, for a quarter of an hour, the skies had completely ignored her.
-0-