X-Men: The Savage
Iceman
Kurt eventually accepted the invitation to join Mr. Reign, after considering his zero other real options. Surprisingly, so did Mystique, though Hank said she'd talked a lot about protecting Kurt in her sleep, so he assumed that she was only staying to protect her son, though Kurt felt that, if that was the case, she wouldn't stick around long. Being under Trent's wing meant training: a whole lot of training.
Logan, Mystique, Kitty, and Hank all had very singular powers that could not be enhanced from training. Logan and Hank had powers that were not able to be controlled, Mystique had more than a century of experience, and Kitty had been trained by Xavier while she was spying on him, and she had been declared an expert in her power days before the breakout. All that they had to worry about was their fighting ability, which Logan and Mystique had in droves. Hank had a natural acrobatic ability, and when that ability was mixed with his quick thinking and imagination, he proved a formidable foe. Teaching Hank a fighting style would hinder his abilities; thus, all he needed was a daily spar with another team member.
Kurt, on all of the other hands, had a power that could be increased and elaborated upon, and although he had more acrobatic ability than Beast, he wasn't nearly as intelligent. Also, all of the years of being a mercenary, he'd lost his fighter's instinct. He usually accepted jobs where, if fighting broke out, the mission was a failure. These missions fit into his sneaky nature.
He also found out that although he was by no means out of shape, he was not as physically fit as he could have been. Just days after training began, Kurt began to notice his muscles were becoming more defined and much larger. When the entire team went to Africa to visit a friend of Trent's, Ororo (who they did not have time to meet), Kurt got a few looks from the women that were members of the much larger team, and two men. These looks weren't the normal looks of confusion or disgust that he was accustomed to; they were looks of unmistakable lust. The girls were quickly shooed away by Mystique, who informed Kurt that they were only interested because none of the team members were allowed to leave the premises, speak to humans, or even "congregate" amongst themselves. Mystique didn't find it funny when Kurt said he saw no problems with their motivations, although he didn't say it in such a gentlemanly manner.
It turned out that the day in Africa was the team's day off. As soon as they got back, they began training again. Dominic was the combat instructor, both battlefield and hand-to-hand. Battlefield training, however, was going on "insignificant" missions that almost got them killed every time. What made the team feel worse was that Dominic wasn't even using his powers during the exercises and never got a scratch on him. The missions were almost always against the F.O.H., and they went on about three of them a day. Emma told him that Trent used to do all of the training, and that he was lucky he wasn't around during that time. It was during a training exercise that Bobby was seriously injured, leaving him unable to train, much less go on actual missions. Logan, who Kurt had a hard time making up with, was only being trained under Trent for a little more than a week before Kurt arrived, and made the excuse that Kurt never would have been able to stab him had he not been in training less than two hours beforehand. Since the man could heal an entire forearm wroth of flesh in about thirty minutes, as Kurt heard the day afterward, he didn't believe the excuse.
In the six days that Kurt had been on the team, Trent had only stopped by the hand-to-hand training session once, just to see how Kurt and Kitty were advancing. Dominic had just finished sparring with Emma, who defended herself well, but ultimately fell to Dominic. Trent seemed a tad disappointed that nobody had defeated Dominic yet.
"Come on, Trent," Dominic said once Emma limped her way off of the mat, "it's been years since we fought."
"No," Trent simply answered.
"But Kurt and Kitty haven't seen you fight yet, and none of them have seen you fight me."
"I'd hate to hurt you, Dominic. I wouldn't want to put a damper on tonight's fuck-fest."
"That was low, Trent. You're just begging for a fight now." Trent seemed to acknowledge that everyone in the room was looking forward to the fight.
Though everyone knew that they were both incredibly powerful, they'd never seen how they stacked up without their powers. Trent had never gone with his team on their training missions, and when he was teaching hand-to-hand. He simply taught them the moves and criticized them from the sidelines. The few times he did fight it was incredibly evident that he'd been holding back.
"Let's make this quick," Trent said. For the first time, Kurt and the other new recruits saw Trent take off his ever-present overcoat. Tucked behind the coat, flowing down to his ankles, was Trent's hair: jet-black and straight, just two inches from the ground. The coat floated over to a bench that resided against a far wall. The hair, which the four new arrivals had their eyes locked on, began to shrink, as if all of the follicles were being pulled into Trent's head. Soon, it looked as if Trent had shaved his head two weeks before, and the hair had grown just a little. It would have been stupid to give Dominic something that long to pull on.
Another surprising thing was that Trent had been constantly slightly hunched over whenever he stood, making the team think that Dominic was the taller of the two. As Trent stood across from Dominic, he fully extended his back, revealing that he was actually about an inch taller than his brother. His height was magnified by his fighting stance. Dominic put himself into a classic pose, with his knees bent. Trent simply stood up straight, his hands at his side, at a slight angle to his brother.
Without warning, the fight began once the two had taken their places. Dominic was smirking throughout the majority of the fight, despite the fact that he couldn't lay a punch on Trent. Trent hadn't retaliated, though. He spent the first minute of the fight dodging every punch and kick thrown. His fighting style showed surprising restraint and flexibility, but mostly a drastic difference to how he trained his recruits. He seemed to have trained them in a way that they could never beat him should they somehow be stripped of their powers. He also seemed to have trained Dominic this way.
Then, Dominic slipped up. The first show of offense by Trent turned out to end the fight. Aside from relentless dodging, Trent seemed to excel at hitting an opponent many times without giving them a chance to respond. Dominic attempted clothes-line type move, and Trent looked like he was going to lock arms with him, but instead, he went completely under it, and struck his brother in the back of the neck with both fists. Once he turned around, the series of blows continued: a knee to the gut, a knee to the back, an uppercut, a front-side sweep-kick, an elbow in the kidneys (this hit struck Dominic down, citing that he was in the air from the sweep-kick), which caused Dominic to land on Trent's knee. Trent lifted his knee, tossing his brother in the air, and hit Dominic in the face hard enough to get him perpendicular to the ground, though half a foot off of it. Trent finished the fight with a spin-kick to the same kidney, sending Dominic flying for a few feet. All of this happened in about five seconds.
The ordeal left Dominic unconscious. The only signs of life were his heavy breathing and the occasional cough of blood. "Get him awake as soon as possible," Trent said to Hank. Kitty snapped out of her trance and ran to Dominic, trying to assist him in getting the blood out of his lungs. She'd heard about the disastrous effects that occurred when the two clashed, and saw a few of the scars, but she didn't like seeing it happen. Trent's hair returned to what they assumed was its normal length, and his coat floated back over his arms. "Come on, Kurt," he called, "we're starting early today." Kurt followed Trent out of the gym, looking back once.
Kurt's individual training, aimed mostly at increasing the distance he could teleport, usually took place at night, to decrease the possibility that the areas he teleported to were well-populated. Aside from distance, Trent had been testing Kurt, testing if Kurt could have some sort of divine knowledge of the place he was to teleport. He figured Kurt had been avoiding obstacles subconsciously. Trent would make the target area (the place that Kurt was to teleport) in the middle of a large mass, and sure enough, Kurt would miss the mark and appear at the point closest to the mark, but had sufficient space for Kurt to stand freely. Sometimes this distance was miles apart, and Kurt didn't even think about it.
"Vere all of those hits necessary? Dominic seemed to be unconscious after the third hit."
"He was unconscious after the first hit, and may I remind you that I'd rather hear you speak German than hear you stumbling over English words."
"Then why did you keep hitting him," Kurt said in German. It was a relief to speak his native tongue to somebody besides his mother.
Trent responded in German as well, "Because he didn't want to fight me for sport, he wanted to test himself, and I wasn't about to lie to him on where he stands among our family."
"And where does he stand?"
"Second place."
Kurt now felt he had somewhat of a better understanding of Trent and Dominic's relationship, and he was a bit worried about the reinforcement of the insinuation that there were more than two Reign brothers. "What will I be doing today," Kurt was glad to move the topic away from what he just saw.
Trent looked at Kurt, suspicious of his sudden change in subject, but he answered Kurt's question anyway. "The day you broke out of Xavier's, I was in Moscow. I left something that has no political reason for being there. I want you to identify it, tell me what it is, and then get it. You are not to leave the spot you're standing in until you've identified the object, and you definitely won't go to Moscow until you've seen me."
"How am I supposed to do that?"
"They're your powers. Figure it out, though I suggest you start small. You have no time limit." With that, Trent walked away, leaving Kurt with the staggering task of doing something he'd never even come close to doing.
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Bobby stared out at the lawn, looking down on Kurt, who was standing in the spot that Drake himself once stood in. Bobby's mission had been to create an eight-hundred foot ice-sculpture of himself in the middle of the Sahara and sustain it for twenty-four hours. At the time, it was nearly impossible, but just before the accident, he could do it while sleeping.
The accident had been during one of their training exercises. It had turned out that the particular base they were invading was not only the holding pen of several rogue mutants. The mutants they were to save all had the same level of hatred for Trent that Mystique had possessed. Since the governments of the world had largely turned on mutants and some had taken to actively hunting them, the majority of mutants had turned to absolute anarchists. Their absolute hatred for authority obviously led to a disgust of Trent's rather strict training regimen and his tendencies to keep his motivations and methods mostly top-secret. They had no such disgust when Bobby, Emma and Piotr had come to break them out. Unfortunately they also weren't incredibly grateful, and seemed to try and do everything in their power to mess up the plan that had been carefully laid out to keep them alive.
When one of the ungrateful mutants was supposed to hold a door open for Bobby to get through, he simply ran off, leaving Bobby to deal with two hundred F.O.H. special agents. Drake immediately erected a ten-foot thick wall of ice that was as durable as he could muster under the time constraints. What he hadn't though about (his mind still trying to quell the anger he was feeling for the man that abandoned him) was the ventilation system. So while he was freezing the wall, trying to create a moisture trail thick enough for him to travel through, one of the most famous F.O.H. soldiers managed to aim a rifle out of the duct and shoot Bobby right in the spine, immediately retreating afterwards. Just as Drake hit his knees, his body in shock from the injury, the soldiers managed to get through the wall, some getting off shots. They hadn't broken the wall quickly enough, though. Emma had contacted Trent, who arrived and ripped the soldiers apart, literally.
Bobby was able to heal most flesh-wounds by simply transforming into his ice form and filling in the areas where his flesh would be. He could transfer his DNA into that ice and when he got back to normal, the ice would just turn into the missing pieces. The filled in areas would be completely numb for months afterward, citing that nerve cells were much more complicated to replace. This being the case, his spinal cord was taking an extremely long time to replace; he had only been able to walk for three weeks. The process had been going by much quicker since Hank arrived. Being both an M.D. and a geneticist, Hank was able to both perform surgery on Bobby, and enhance his ice's ability to hold DNA strands. Despite the advances, Drake was still only at about fifteen percent of his maximum power, and maybe a bit more recovered physically.
His enfeebled state was the reason that Emma was frantically arguing with Trent to give her the job instead of Bobby. Trent, for some reason, was unbending in his assertion that Bobby was the one for the job. Drake didn't really care either way. If Trent was going to give the mission to an injured man, then he knew that Bobby could do it, and Bobby knew that Emma was capable of performing the same task.
"You've already delayed Bobby's mission four days," Trent barked back at her. "Every day you delay this, the more dangerous the mission becomes."
"Then let me go on it! I know you don't want Bobby dead, so don't put him in this situation."
"He's going!" Trent looked at Bobby, who was letting his wife destroy any chances he had of getting back into missions again. If he stayed out too long, he became a liability. He had to be reminded of his survival skills, and taken out of constant care. In other words, he had to get away from Emma. "I will send him into the middle of a F.O.H. base to drag her corpse back if you delay this mission enough." He took another look at Bobby, who was now turned toward the conversation, then Trent looked to Emma. "The time that he goes on the mission is the decision of the leash-holder." Trent took his leave after that statement.
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Despite the many more protests of Emma, Bobby was out to find a girl that seemed unimpressive and unimportant overall by dusk. Her name was Jubilation Lee. An odd name for a child of two human parents for the time she was born in. But apparently her family had their family names plotted out for generations to come. How Trent had come across that information without actually talking to the girl, Bobby would never know. Even more confusing was the fact that Trent would tell Bobby that much information, but wouldn't tell him what she looked like, or what purpose she would serve, especially after Trent said he had no intention of training her. He couldn't have had a past connection to her, or else he'd go get her himself and get her back in less than five minutes.
Bobby ultimately rested on his hypothesis that Trent decided that Bobby needed to spend some time out of the mansion, away from his wife. He loved Emma, but she could be a bit overbearing at times, and since he had been injured, she began to think that he'd lost all ability to make a decision for himself. He was understanding of her emotions most of the time, but all of their arguments (which were surprisingly rare) eventually ended with her shouting about Bobby not being able to make his own decisions since he was shot in the back.
Once he left the mansions, he almost believed her. He barely knew where to start looking for the girl, and he couldn't make up his mind as to what course he should take. All Trent said was that she was in Seattle. In most major cities, finding a mutant wasn't a problem; the mutants were shoved into a tiny area where everyone knew everyone else. Seattle, however, was where Sinister had set up one of his biggest bases. Once the usefulness of that base had been exhausted, for whatever reason, he moved on. However, that base happened to house many of the "second-rate" mutants that had been used as experiments. Once Sinister left, he let all of them out, apparently having no need for experiments anymore.
They took good care of the base and expanded upon it considerably, taking up most of the city – by force. The formed quite an organized and potent force in a surprisingly short amount of time. Trent didn't count them among his allies because they were a "defensive community" without any real leader or direction.
Sinister had the base pretty well defended before he left. He decommissioned most of the base's defensive capabilities before he left, but a mutant they call "Forge" – citing that was the only name he'd ever been called by – managed to get all of the automated defenses up and running in less than two days. That base focused mainly on anti-aircraft guns, which could even shoot down a spy satellite or a missile if calibrated by a professional. Such a well-defended location drew mutants in from all over the world, making just one extremely hard to find. For more than four years, the city had gone without disturbance.
Trent decided against just popping Bobby into the city, which would be extremely noticeable. Instead, he sent Bobby, with a car, about five miles outside of the outer perimeter. This meant that he'd have to go through one of the gates, which were heavily guarded and equipped with sensors that told when someone approaching was a mutant. Of course, that was just a prelude to the interview process for everyone that allowed past the gate. Piotr once had to enter the city, but upon hearing who had sent him, they let him skip the interview process. However, among the inner circles of powerful mutant groups, Trent's motives were being questioned on a regular basis. Not just because he said he wanted a world of peace with no dominant species, although the clear majority of mutants wanted mutant-rule. They began to question his motives because of the actions he was taking, or lack thereof.
His power certainly dictated that he could simply wipe out the F.O.H. and he would have enough allies against Xavier to take him out, but he made no such move. The majority of his serious missions involved making allies or collecting machinery that seemed to serve no purpose, and was afterwards hidden from the team. In fact, Bobby's mission got Trent the most worked-up Bobby had ever seen him, and Bobby was just fetching a eighteen year-old girl with a second rate power. Trent's motivations could typically be guessed at by the time that mission had been started, but not this time.
"Name?" Bobby had arrived at the gate and had come to a full stop without even realizing it; he was too busy trying to figure out the purpose of his mission.
"Robert Drake." The guard straightened himself out, apparently familiar with his affiliation.
"Are sent here under orders Mr. Reign?"
"Yes."
"Wait here." The guard left into the wall that surrounded the city. He was gone for the better part of ten minutes before he finally came back. "What is your purpose here?"
"I'm here to pick someone up."
"Who?"
"I can't tell you that," Bobby assumed. He didn't want her to be talked to about the evils and tricks of the Reign family before he got a chance to talk to her.
The guard looked back through the doorway he'd just emerged from, contemplating going back to ask a few more questions. He decided against it. "Go on through. You'll be expected to answer a few questions."
"Of course," Bobby said as he drove through the opening gate. The place where he was to answer those questions was within eyesight after the first corner was turned. Again, all of the questions were asked while he was in his car. Only this time, the person asking the questions seemed to be a bit higher up in the unofficial ranking system of Seattle.
"Hello, Mr. Drake." Forge himself had gone away from his constant chore of upgrading the city to deal with Bobby directly. "I hope that we didn't keep you waiting too long. I realize that you must have made a considerable drive."
"Not as long as you'd think," Bobby said smirking.
"Well, anyway, if you would care to come with me to answer a few specific questions. Your car will be waiting for you when we're finished." Bobby agreed and stepped out of his car. A soldier, temporarily a valet, stepped into the car.
"You might want to be careful with that," Bobby warned, "Trent built that car by hand." It wasn't actually true. Trent had used his powers to turn a hunk of metal and other components into a car, to work on accuracy with his powers. He had done that at the age of eight, and had long forgotten about it. Nonetheless, the soldier angered the cars behind him by traveling so slowly.
"Normally, we don't like to hold people back so much, but you are the closest we have a foreign diplomat."
"I'm honored, but I'm not here to sign a treaty. I just need to find someone and take return to New York." Forge looked at him with a smile, but it was not a trusting smile. He was staring him down, as if waiting for Bobby to spill all of his secrets.
"Well, to be honest, several of my most trusted associates used to work with Mr. Reign, and have advised me that nothing is ever that simple with him."
"Well, then, they can assure you that I have no idea what his reasons are. I'm just doing a favor for a man I owe my life to."
"Certainly understandable, but I am trying to protect the lives of every person within these walls, and if your orders start endangering the citizenry, then we will do everything in our power to make sure you never come back here."
"If my orders tell me to cause harm to others, then I'll be protecting your citizenry for you."
"Very well, then. I'll let you get on your way. No offense, but it's best that you hurry away. You seemed to insinuate that trouble might be on your heels."
"That I did," Bobby felt Emma's influence showing through him, allowing him to act as stately as possible. Admitting what Forge had said made them want to get rid of Bobby as quickly as possible, which was a good thing since a lot of the people in Seattle weren't too happy with Trent's idea of bringing about a world of human and mutant cooperation.
After leaving the office, it wasn't long before he was deep into the city, having passed through many walls that were once the outer walls. The walls, which were twenty stories tall, concealed buildings that were about eighteen stories tall, and they only got bigger the deeper he got into the city. New York City was the first largest city in the country, both because it had grown so far north that it stretched into land that once belonged to Canada, and due to the fact that many people went to New York from Los Angeles when the trees violently took over California. New York also had a giant fortress at its heart, but it was nowhere near the size of the gargantuan fortress that made up the entire city of Seattle, which engrossed most of the state of Washington.
Seattle was continually expanded upon in a circular pattern. Since each wall was heavily fortified, the deeper into the city one lived, that safer one was. Normally, such a situation would cause a class-war between the people that lived on the inside and the outside, but since more than ninety-five percent of the population were working on or designing the infinitely-important walls, the people remained without discrimination on those accounts. Bobby couldn't imagine a world where walls were the most important things in his life, yet they seemed to keep the city strangely calm, despite the fact that sentry guns often shot down attack planes or fleets of tanks run by small militias of humans who though that the F.O.H. was working too slowly.
Despite the fact that it was a peaceful city, there was a most definite crime problem. The anarchists, who were vastly predominant, protested the formation of a government, which prevented the formation of a police force. All hospitals were strictly voluntary, and often the doctors were training future doctors, due to the lack of schools, so surgery was sometimes performed by unqualified surgeons. There were only two mutants in the city that could heal others, and they were completely swamped at all times.
There were many people who would see something like that as a weakness, but better healthcare would mean a larger population, thus the walls would have to be expanded upon more quickly, and thus be less effective. Although Bobby didn't see why that was such a bad thing. If the walls were ever brought down, there would still be eighteen million mutants inside to deal with, most of them with at least minimal combat experience, citing that getting to the city was quite a chore. The F.O.H. had the entire city surrounded, at about ten miles around the perimeter. They had no problem letting the vigilantes wanting to destroy the city through their lines, but the mutants that tried to get through were usually to be shot. Forge had tried to organize forces to wipe out the line, and although they were successful, many of the force ended up dead, and there were plenty of soldiers waiting to take the place. The only time that the city had a chance of getting rid of many of them was when a new wall was activated. The defenses immediately destroyed anything within that ten miles radius that wasn't within thirty feet of a mutant. Thus, when a new wall was activated, the wall immediately attacked the soldiers still standing near the former border. Within minutes, the soldiers had retreated the half-mile, which was the distance between all of the walls (making for a total of about three-hundred and fifty walls), but the F.O.H. was not without heavy losses by the time this happened. For some reason, there always seemed to be an attack on a F.O.H. base when the walls were activated. Only Bobby and the others on Trent's team knew that Dominic was somehow aware of the times when the wall were activated, and always launched a huge attack as it was about to happen. Since he launched "huge" attacks regularly, the F.O.H. stopped retreating the Seattle Perimeter forces every time an attack was made, and without satellite reconnaissance, they had no way of telling themselves. How Dominic knew was a closely guarded secret, but Bobby was sure that nobody in the city wanted anything to do with the Reign family in general.
Very few people had kept themselves from the current events of the world as Kurt had. Kurt had kept himself doing only two things: living and working. The only news channels belonged to the government, and the real information was still classified. Bobby and Piotr found it almost a little irritating explaining to him things almost all mutants know. They eventually came to the realization that he knew little more than the typical human knew. The majority of the non-mutant public only knew that: Xavier and some other nameless super-powerful mutant were dueling; Seattle was full of a bunch of blood-thirsty mutants; every human was perfectly safe; Wolverine was no longer on the loose; and that the F.O.H. had everything important under control. Most of them were lies: Wolverine was very-much on the loose; Trent just managed to round him up to train and do missions every once in a while.
Bobby started to reach the turning point of the city. Most of the buildings on the outside were workshops to develop parts for the encompassing wall or minor residences. About half-way to the center of the city was where the apartment buildings starting mixing in with nightclubs. The city was truly circular; the sectors were usually confined between a pair of walls. Unofficial regions were divided like a target would be. The "Red-Light District" was a thin ring right in the middle of the wall and Forge's Lab: the geographical center of the city.
Trent had informed him that she would most-likely be toward the center of the city, but Bobby decided to save tracking the girl until the next day. Since Trent didn't tell Bobby exactly where the girl was, like he had with Wolverine and Kurt, there was a bit of research to be done. He had to get to a place that had a computer in it and, to a lesser extent, a phone with a connection to the outside world. Bobby wouldn't be able to find these things in the midst of brothels, bars, casinos, and nightclubs. He went into the center of the city. Aside from the homes and offices of many influential "leaders" of Seattle, there were many very classy hotels. Bobby was smart enough to bring along about ten grand in cash, knowing fully that many things were very expensive. Still, he hoped he wasn't going to be in the city long enough to spend all of it. In fact, he knew that a lot of the places in the city didn't use American currency. Mostly because it was purely symbolic, but also to distance the city from the Friends of Humanity. The businesses of the inner-city, however, had no problem accepting "foreign" currency.
All of the parking garages extended far underground, as did the hotel rooms themselves. Surface room was sparse far into the city. The first floor of the hotel was actually twelve stories underground, making the lobby the thirteenth floor, so as to hold to the superstition of not having any rooms on the thirteenth floor of a hotel. The parking garage went down over twenty stories, and the majority of the levels were stuffed with cars, forcing Bobby to go down fourteen flights of spirals before reaching a level he could park in. He nearly hit the car beside his parking space due to his dizziness.
The elevator to the Lobby was surprisingly long. The elevator stopped several times to let others on. Upon spotting the only occupant, everyone got wide-eyed and walked over to another elevator. Bobby got the impression that not only had the word gotten around within the past thirty minutes, but his face had been shown on every screen in the city. Once, he reached the lobby, he found that he was right. Bobby found that his rotating visage was on a tremendous screen, his biography printing itself over and over underneath his head.
One by one, all of the people on the room turned to look at him, both star-struck and distrusting. Bobby simply smirked and walked up to the counter. "I'm looking for a suite. I don't care about price."
"Of course," the young woman said. She seemed calm, but her hands were shaking slightly as she gave him the key. Bobby wondered both what they had been saying about him on the television, and what the people were just elaborating in their mind. He had room 5702: the forty-fifth floor above ground. Bobby deduced from what he saw of the hotel from the outside that he was on the upper levels if not the top floor. "We'll send you the rate of charge tomorrow. Will you be staying more than one night?"
"Maybe, but not if everything goes according to plan."
"The elevators are just behind that wall." Bobby saw as he turned around to go behind that wall that the lobby had all but emptied. He was too tired to think about why he was so feared. He simply punched the "57" button: finding that it was in fact the top floor. Again, Bobby remained alone the entire ride up, even though the elevator stopped almost every other floor.
Once on his floor, Bobby was surprised to find only two doors: one on each side of the hallway, and an abandoned concierge desk at the end. On the left, was 5701, on the right: 5702. The skylight in his gigantic room proved that he was on the top floor. He briefly swept the room, making sure he wasn't being monitored. After searching enough to assure that there were no cameras in his room, he decided to simply fall asleep. He didn't care about audio bugs; there was nothing they could determine from his silence.
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Kitty sat by Dominic's bed, waiting for him to wake up. She wasn't worried about him in any manner. She'd seen him in much worse condition, but she'd never actually seen it happen, and she especially never thought Trent would do something of the sort to his own brother, though the things that she heard about Trent during her months as a spy weren't too flattering, and after thinking about some of them, Kitty couldn't say whether or not those things were false. Dominic, though, was actually very well respected for his abilities and his use of them, as were most of the Reigns, but that didn't mean that they thought much else of them. Only Trent raised the unmitigated hatred among the troops of Xavier, and although the complaints were the same for both him and his brothers, he was simply worse, for no apparent reason.
As soon as she left his bedside to get a drink was, of course, the time that Dominic awoke. Hank didn't bother actually walking over to Dominic, just calling out: "Very nice to see you awake. If you have any unexpected pain, which I doubt, feel free to come down."
"Thanks, Hank," Dominic said. Kitty quickly finished her water and hurried over to help him walk. Once they exited the infirmary, Dominic was insistent that he walk on his own.
"I know you'll be fine, but you need all the rest you can get, including accepting help," Kitty resumed helping him walk, but soon thought better of it. She simply grabbed him, phased them both up to their bedroom, and placed him, sitting, on the bed. This took a few minutes off of their trip from the lower levels to the second floor. Dominic did not offer any resistance or show any surprise at what she did.
"Thanks for the help," he said in a raspy voice. Kitty couldn't help but smile. "What?"
"I've just never seen you this weak before, it's interesting. You always project your strengths; always; and now… it's just the opposite."
"I'm glad you're enjoying my pain," he said through a laugh.
"You know I felt every one of those hits as much as you did," she pushed his chest lightly to have him lay down. She lay down beside him, pressing her body up against his, and draping her arm over his chest. "I just don't have to live with the after-effects." Dominic laughed. "By the way, you told me Trent used the same fighting style that he taught us. What the hell did he use yesterday?"
"I have no idea, but there wasn't any rhyme or reason to it. Probably just using me to act out years of suppressed anger."
"What anger? Everything he's wanted to do since he was a toddler he's been able to do."
"Well, somewhere, buried deeper than his sense of humor, is where he's bottled up all of his… annoyance from unsatisfying victories." Dominic could see the confusion on her face once she stopped giggling from the sense of humor comment, so he decided to elaborate. "Can you imagine having all of that power, and then having to direct it at one individual, who has no chance of fighting back? The man controls gravity: that alone puts him on the top tier of the universe. But he's developed it to a point where he can do damn near anything. He could rip Earth apart with the strain needed for us to blink, and he's forced to face down opponents who are in the frail human body.
"Imagine someone does something to piss you off enough for you to want to kill them, and you have that… heaviness of pure anger on your heart, and you kill them by blinking your eyes: not after a hard fought battle or some incredibly tiring act: after doing nothing but blinking, nothing to release that heaviness on your heart. Trent has to do that constantly, and live with the knowledge that in order to relieve that anger, he'd have to rip the galaxy apart. So he's forced to push it down inside of himself, only letting it out in very limited amounts, in very limited ways." Dominic had pretty much quoted what his father had told him on his deathbed, when he asked why Trent acted the way he did.
"Such as beating the shit out of his little brother," she said questioningly. "I think it sounds a lot like celebrities telling all of the normal people out there how hard fame can be."
"Fame is hard. Right now, Bobby's in Seattle, right?" Kitty nodded. "Well, most mutants and a lot of humans have seen that video of him getting shot in the back." The video had been released to show off the "hero" of the F.O.H. special forces, who was nothing more than a very good sniper, who had taken out many mutants while sleeping or visiting their families, often taking out the families in the process. "Imagine having to go to Seattle, where most everyone hates Trent, and act as his representative to chase down someone that everyone will want to hide from the evils of my family."
"The evils of your family? You mean Andy and Frank," Kitty asked sarcastically.
"You've met Andy?" He said, then shook off the change of subject, offering his own instead. "Why do you keep shrugging off everything I'm saying?"
"I'll admit that Trent seems to be the only one who had the balls to think his stance on the human-mutant crisis through and then actually bring it to life, but you have to realize that the only reasons that I'm still here are because: Trent's the only option people with our stance have, he's currently the only one with the resources and power to carry out his beliefs, and," she leaned in close to him, "because you're here."
Dominic had never known Kitty to harbor such views. "Your opinions of Trent seemed to have changed. Can I ask why?"
"I'm just starting to question everything I see, just like he taught us."
"What, specifically, are you beginning to question?"
"Where he was after Moira died, and why, after he came back, he doesn't come down to eat with us anymore, he never seems to go to sleep, why he's gone on his first recruitment kick in over four years, and why the hell he's spending so much time in Moscow; where, I may remind you, your father is buried." Her voice had risen considerably, and now she stopped to catch her breath. "I know that Piotr also left for a while, but at least after he came back, he still acted like a normal, grieving husband. Once Trent came back, he started acting way too much Xavier, only without the temper. I'm beginning to wonder whether or not he even cares about any of us," she was referring to her generation of recruits, "anymore. He sends Bobby, who is severely injured, into a city full of people that will blame him if anything even remotely troubling happens; he has completely detached himself from his friendship with Emma, who used to be the only person he would relate to; he hasn't been giving you anything important, except for saving our asses to go get the Darkholmes; Piotr hasn't left the mansion in months, except for training exercises he doesn't need; and I'm pretty sure the only reason he gave me that spy position was to get me away from him, or you… or both for eight months."
Dominic knew that Trent didn't want him to get too attached to anyone, and he and Kitty had been attached many times for many nights in a row since he got back. "There's no reason for him to want to separate us. The only reason he chose you to be the spy was because were the only one who could pull it off. You know that. After spending the better part of a year listening to what they have to say about him, I'd probably be questioning his methods, too."
"Dominic, I was questioning these things almost as soon as he recruited me. They did say a lot of things that were simply untrue, but a lot of points about Trent were raised that makes me question the things he says sometimes. Haven't you ever wandered why he always says: 'Our goal is to bring about a world that's supposed to be.' Then he goes on about how mutants and humans have no real reason to fight. He has never outright said that our goal is to get rid of Xavier and the F.O.H., or to make them see that fighting is pointless. He always puts it in those terms exactly. You can't tell me that you've never noticed that." Dominic knew very well why he always used those terms, but he didn't say anything. "You need to get some more sleep." With that, she simply got up off of the bed, and walked out of the room. It wasn't long before Dominic banished his reawakened doubts about Trent's plans and went back to his healing sleep.
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It happened every time that Bobby awoke. He was completely unable to move his legs, or even feel them. He was able to sit up though, and after shaking them for a minute or two, he had regained control of his lower appendages. Hank had been unable to offer an explanation for this, and acted strangely whenever asked to. Bobby figured Hank was a bit sensitive when he didn't understand something medical. He certainly got testy when he was working on some genetic studies and couldn't get the results he wanted.
He flipped through the small number of channels on his television, seeing that either he was being shown entering the city or the hotel, or Trent was being discussed in all of his supposed evil glory. He was beginning to hope that as soon as he showed his face to her that she'd adamantly refuse so he could just get home.
Upon leaving his hotel, that wish gained in strength. Not only was everyone staring at him, but there seemed to be gangs that would never find themselves near the center had gathered to plot the demise of Trent's agent in the city. It was surprising to Bobby actually seeing the outcropping of hatred for everything that Trent hadn't revealed about himself. They had no idea what Trent's plans were, or why he was hesitating in carrying it out, but they were sure that the reason made Trent deserving of swift eradication.
Once Bobby got through the first wall, he abandoned his car, it gathered too much attention. He decided to walk through the alleys, which had just a few people in them, and none of them had televisions. Walking through the alleys, though, got him no closer to finding the girl. Sooner or later, he was going to have to face the maddening gangs.
"Sooner," a voice said behind him. It was female, a hint of an accent, but the rasp and the briefness of the vocalization made the accent untraceable. He turned, seeing the figure sitting, huddled against a corner. She wasn't hiding or in the shadows, though her face was fully covered by a hood on a huge, tattered coat. Bobby wondered how he'd missed her when he had walked by.
"Where did you come from," Bobby asked in a way reminding the woman of how people talked to lost puppies.
"You're worried about the gang elements finding you before you find the girl?" He could tell she was stressing to hide her accent.
"Not so much worried as prepared. I know it's going to happen." He swiveled around her, as if she preferred distance over anonymity. He knew that wasn't true, but it was an instinct.
"You don't understand. She is a gang element. She leads a gang in this city that is very similar to the gang you belong to."
Bobby finally got to a position where he was able to see the bottom half of her face. "You knew what I was thinking earlier," he changed the subject. "There are only two women I can think of…" he trailed off as a smile crept across her face. The smile was quite unmistakable, and the lock of blonde hair gave away, without a doubt, who this stranger was. "Betsy?"
She lost her façade and leapt at him, embracing him in a tight hug. He was slightly confused: they had never been too good of friends while she was working for Trent. She released Bobby. "Sorry, it's just been so long since I've seen any of the team."
"It would have been a lot sooner if we had known you were alive. Hell, the last I saw of you was your decapitated body being thrown into a burning building. I'm rather impressed you survived, by the way."
"It was fake," she said, mocking an informative tone. "Trent's had me keeping an eye on your target girl for the past three years. You didn't think he'd let you loose in here with no help or information, do you."
Bobby smirked. It was almost funny how little Trent trusted his other recruits to know certain truths. The team had also had no idea where Kitty had been until Dominic told them that he saw her on one of his raids of the base she was in. "Three years? Did he tell you that when you took the job? I couldn't imagine being away from the team that long."
"Not to mention missing Moira's funeral," Betsy said, sounding defeated.
"Well, at least you weren't on the team when Frank took over."
"What? And you're all still alive."
"After the funeral, Trent and Piotr disappeared. Piotr left Dominic and Kitty with Richard, who was one year old at the time."
"Really? How long were they gone?"
"Piotr was only gone about three months, and took over for Frank when he came back. Trent was gone for about eighteen months. We kept an eye on Piotr. We generally knew where he was. Trent, though… I doubt he was even on the planet. When he came back, he was a different person. Talks less, reads more. He's barely spending any time at the mansion, and he beat the living hell out of Dominic the other day while sparring."
"So he's snapped, basically?"
"I wouldn't say that. That would involve a lack of stability. He's still pretty stable, and he certainly seems to be following through on plans, since it seems you've known I'd be coming, and that I'd have no information."
"They have a few psychics at the borders. If you had come in here with actual knowledge of her, they'd know immediately."
"Who are they and why would they try to stop me?"
"Forge, for one. He's asked Trent for help for years, without any response, except: 'Patience.' Needless to say, Forge didn't take too kindly to that. All of the others would be lead by the random gangs lead by some of the people Trent told were too weak to serve any purpose, then shooed them away here." The last few words were slowed down as she looked at the injured, weakened Bobby. "I'm sure you're here for better reasons."
Bobby sighed. "What can you tell me about her?"
"Oh, she's… very unique. Her power isn't tremendous, though it's nothing to laugh at. I'm pretty sure Trent's only interested in her leadership abilities, though I don't know why. She's good, but not as good as Dominic. So, if he ever decided to leave for another reason, I don't see why he'd choose her."
"Anything else?"
"She's young, as you probably deduced from the photo: just turned eighteen, but she's in charge of some people that go well into their forties."
"Trent was leading us back when he was fifteen. Maybe he sees some of himself in her."
Betsy giggled. "Not hardly. Jubilation goes to parties just as often as Trent frowns."
"Well, then, why do you think I'm here to recruit her?"
"Knowing Trent, which I'm not sure I do anymore, I'd say she's just a tool. If he was going after the real power-houses, he'd have you recruit some of the people on Jubilee's team."
"That might be what he's after. He might want to use her as a liaison to reduce the amount of trips."
"Then why would I have spent the last four years here? There's something he wants with her."
Bobby sighed. "I guess it doesn't matter. I'll just do what I was sent here to do. I've got to try and convince her to join the team, for whatever reason. I guess it's going to be a lot easier to get to her now."
"Should be. Don't expect her to be too responsive, though."
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Kurt followed Trent's advice: he'd started small. He would look at a tree a short distance away, and then imagine teleporting there, even starting the process of teleporting, but he didn't follow through. It took him hours before he could take what he used to not even think about and bring it to the forefront. After almost half of a day, he was able to sense everything about a limb of a tree. He could see it from all sides, but it didn't feel like seeing. He was able to tell how much it weighed, how thick it was; basically everything about it. Shortly after, he decided to expand on the amount of area he could "see". He would work on how far away from himself he could see afterward. By the end of the day, he was able to see about thirty trees. He had to focus, though, to get the same level of detail that he had with the branch. Still, this new aspect of his power thrilled Kurt.
Kitty or Piotr would come out every now and then to give him food, and when night came, bedding. He didn't sleep very long, though. For some reason, performing Trent's task now seemed like a game. By the end of the second day, Kurt was able to reach his vision to New York City, and he was also able to see most of it. He'd pushed himself too hard, though, and slept more than twelve hours that night.
"Are you okay, Kurt," a female voice awoke him. It was Emma.
"Fine. Just tired." He answered, taking a brief moment to get used to the sun.
"How is it coming?"
"Faster than I thought."
"It always does. Everyone's surprised what can happen when advancement becomes their whole life. From what I've heard, though, your assignment is quite a bit more difficult than most."
"Vhat did the others have to do?"
"Let me see: Bobby had to make a giant ice statue of himself; Piotr had to run across the Pacific, through the Panama Canal, and meet Trent in London; Kitty had to stay in her phase form for a month, while being a short-term spy in the F.O.H.; and Betsy, before your time, had to siphon away some of Jean Grey's powers, and use them to go to the moon and back. We were all surprised when she came back. That was the hardest one up until you."
"Vhat I am doing is nothing compared to going to the moon."
"Oh? You're being forced to utilize a completely new aspect of your power to find something that is probably very small on the other side of the planet in the middle of a well-populated area. At least Betsy had some practice in taking people's powers. Are you even close to being able to detect Moscow?"
"I can see a very large area, but I can't see things that are too far away."
"How much longer do you think it will be," she asked him, finally placing down the breakfast, or lunch, that she had brought out to him.
"It might be a few days."
"Good luck, then," she said, walking back toward the mansion.
"Vait," he called. She turned to face him. "You didn't tell me vhat you had to do."
"I…" she looked to the sky to find the words, "…I had to change somebody's mind."
"Is that it," he asked.
"It was about something relatively important, for a relatively long amount of time."
"Alright," Kurt said, realizing he wasn't going to be getting any specifics out of her. He stood up and tried to count the number of people in the Empire State Building. After that, he'd try to gain range instead of area. With any luck, he'd be done before the week was out. He hoped the weather held.
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Bobby was tired. Every day, the young Jubilee would promise him a moment of her time to talk, and she'd always manage to weasel her way out of it. In return for her allusiveness, he helped her team do a few espionage missions against the ring of F.O.H. outside the city. Bobby didn't find the relationship very rewarding.
He passed through the door, turning it to ice and traveling the short distance through it, to Jubilee's room. There, oblivious to the other man in the room, stood a young man that was a probationary member of Jubilee's team. He apparently wanted to curry favor with Jubilee by giving her a night she wouldn't forget for a week. He missed the sounds made by Bobby's entrance because of his frantic hopping, and he blocked his own vision of the door by the shirt he was desperately trying to get off. Once the shirt was off, though, he nearly fell over at the shock of seeing the larger man stalking towards him.
"Hey," they boy said. "Hey!" he repeated once Bobby grabbed his arm and tossed him into the hall. Bobby was too tired to deal with the formalities of telling him to get the hell out. All of the team had seen what Bobby was capable of, even the probationary members, so the young man didn't contend with his removal, though he looked as though his life-dream had just been ripped apart.
Jubilee's room was nice: a far cry from the casino it was built under. The rest of the team stayed in the hotel on the upper floors. Bobby still stayed at the penthouse suite he had since first arriving in Seattle five days beforehand. The lack of windows made the room absolutely dark. Bobby remembered seeing a chair in the far corner a few days beforehand, and found his way to it around the bed. Soon, the only light source was the light emanating from the bathroom Jubilee walked out of, stark naked. She seemed slightly confused at the lighting and the lack of anyone charging her from the bed.
She sparked a light in her hand to illuminate the room. She quickly stifled the firework once she saw Bobby. "What the hell are you doing in here?!"
"It's time for our talk. You can't avoid me forever." The light flicked back on, with Jubilee finishing tying her robe. Bobby was a bit disappointed despite himself.
"I'm not joining Reign's team. Talk over."
"He won't let me get away with that."
"He doesn't have to know!"
"He already does. He knows where we are, what we're doing and what we're saying. Everything that anyone does on this planet is monitored by him."
"Then what the hell am I?"
"I don't know, but I follow his orders."
"Congratulations. You're a tool."
"I'd be a dead tool twenty times by now if it weren't for Trent, even more for the rest of the team."
"You're life would never have been in danger if it weren't for him," she scoffed back.
"I'm a mutant: Critical Priority level. If it weren't for Trent, the F.O.H. would have killed me eight years ago."
"What the hell does 'critical priority level' mean?"
"The F.O.H. defines all of the mutants they identify by a ranking system. The lowest is 'Base level' then 'Normal level,' 'Concern level,' and lastly 'Critical level.' They throw 'priority' in there if the mutants commit a 'crime' against the F.O.H. or are ever called in by a human."
"What would I be," she asked in a childlike tone. She seemed to have forgotten her ruined liaison, and even her staunch objection to the conversation.
"Probably a Concern Priority."
"And Trent? Or Xavier?"
"They're not on the same scale. People like Scott Summers and Piotr Rasputin and Wolverine are on 'World Concern level.' Magneto and Jean Grey and Ororo Munroe are the only three on 'World Menace level.' Trent and Charles, though, are even above that scale. They both fall under the category of 'Super Mutants.' In fact, the entire Reign family is made up of Super Mutants. Dominic and Frank are the only ones that even come close to Xavier and Trent, though."
"How many brothers does Trent have," she asked, again sounding as though the five minutes beforehand had never happened.
"I didn't come in here to talk about Trent's family."
"Do you expect me to make an uneducated decision?"
"I thought you'd already made your decision."
"I thought you had orders to follow."
Bobby sighed. "Seven: Dominic, Andy, Frank, Harold, Lewis, George, and Leo," Bobby listed off quickly from memory. "Trent and Dominic are fraternal twins, Andy and Frank are identical. The rest are fraternal quadruplets."
"Damn," Jubilee said.
"Dominic once told me that their father was a geneticist. I think he might have had a hand in that. The man was big on possessing strength, and I think he wanted as many sons as possible to achieve that."
"I don't guess he has any sisters, then."
"One: Andrea."
"What happened to her?"
"After Trent left Xavier's fold, Charles quickly grabbed any family member he could. Andrea happened to be out and about that day. Xavier captured her, erased her memory, and renamed her, making her believe she was his daughter. He even tricked all of his other children into believing that she was their sister."
"What's her name now?"
"Melissa."
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"Mister Forge," the intercom projected into the man's workshop.
"Yes," he called back.
"Dr. Linkut is here to see you."
"Send him in." Shortly thereafter, an elderly man walked into the cluttered workshop, which was filled with a variety of scrap-metal and junker machines. "Is something the matter with Mr. Drake? Has he been getting into any ill activities that one of my associates couldn't have taken note of?"
The old man spoke, "I know you're busy, Mr. Forge, but I have some very interesting findings for you."
"And they are?"
"Well, we've seldom been able to get close enough to scan Mr. Drake without him noticing and freezing our equipment. Just last night, he seemed to be having a heated debate with… Jubilation Lee, who we have determined to be his target, and didn't seem to notice the scans. We had some very interesting results."
"What do you mean?"
"You are aware of Mr. Drake's run-in with the F.O.H. assassin?"
"Of course."
"That shot hit him in the spine. The specific place it hit would cause complete paralysis from the waist down. The only way to heal completely from such an injury is a stasis tank."
"There's only one of those, and we have it."
"I'm aware, sir. Since it hadn't been used in a long time, I went to check on whether or not Mr. Reign had stolen it somehow, but it hasn't been moved since it was put there."
"So, how has Drake healed?"
"He hasn't."
"Excuse me?"
"His injury hasn't gotten any better; if anything, it's gotten worse. He is still completely paralyzed from the waist down."
"I've seen the footage of him in the city. He's been walking almost everywhere."
"Further scans show a considerable amount of unnatural gravitational shifts encompassing Drake's entire lower body."
"Reign's been moving the man's legs?"
"Not only that. Drake is feeling his legs. Natural chemicals are being forcefully produced and pushed through the man's body, giving him an unnatural sense of touch. The amount of minute and articulate control needed is incalculable."
"How incalculable?"
"I don't think we have a computer that powerful, nor will we for decades."
"Why give him feeling," the question suddenly popped itself into Forge's head.
"That question came up. The only reason we can think of is that Drake doesn't know he's paralyzed. Reign is lying to him."
"How does Reign know what Drake's about to do?"
The doctor took a second to think about that. "He'd probably just need the assistance of a telepath."
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Emma walked into the room that was somewhat of an office, but mostly a library. Trent was on the other side of the room, looking out the window at the night sky. His jacket was off, allowing his hair to hang free. "What is it that you want," he asked, not bothering welcoming her.
"I was thinking-"
"Hold on," Trent interrupted her. Shortly after, a puff of smoke appeared just behind Trent.
"It's Captain America's shield, isn't it?"
"Very good. Now go get it."
"No need," Kurt said. The shield appeared in Kurt's hand, while Kurt didn't flinch. The familiar scent of brimstone filled the room.
"Interesting," Trent said. The shield floated out of Kurt's hands and hung itself on the wall, where a space had already been cleared for it. "You have, by far, completed your task more easily and quickly than anybody else I have ever trained, and it was one of the harder ones. It's also very impressive that you've managed to learn an even more useful ability, though not asked. If only the other recruits had the same resolve," he looked at Emma. He turned back to Kurt. "You have a mission that begins tomorrow. Get some rest."
"Gladly," Kurt said before disappearing with a very happy look on his face.
"What is it that you wanted," Trent faced the window again.
"I was thinking it would be easier for you to do what you have to do next if I cease my influence over Bobby."
"So, you're just making things easier for me? How polite."
She knew Trent wouldn't buy that. "I can't do this anymore. It's just cruel to keep it up at this point. I haven't been learning anything from keeping it going for so long. And he…"
"Fine." Emma stopped cold. She'd never been able to argue Trent out of something in less than an hour. "I'll still need your help in keeping Bobby walking, but you're right. There's no need to keep him loving you."
"Of course, I'll help you keep him walking. When should I cut off-"
"As soon as you feel necessary."
That morning, for the first time in a long time, Bobby didn't awake thinking about his wife.
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Next Chapter: Jubilee