Aftershock
Disclaimer and Summary: All disclaiming and summarizing placed in Chapter One remain for this chapter, and all following chapters.
Author's Notes: It took me quite some time to get this chapter written. It's rather long, but I think you guys will like it. Another Note: I'm not exactly sure where this takes place, but It's between the first and second movies. Since It's never said how much time passes between the two, I'm going with almost a year, but not quite. In fact, a lot of time passes in this very chapter, with just a simple line break.
So bear with me. Thanks.
Reviewer Shout Outs:
Fireball: Thanks. John comes in the next chapter, but I hope you enjoy this chapter too!
Kumiko Eharu: Ahh! Someone who won't mind an OC ship! Whee! Hope you enjoy.
the proud canadian: Here ya go!
Tigereyes: Yes, it is rather bizzare, that's why she goes by Jake ;)
Chapter Two:
A day and a half later, Jake Smith was still driving.
She stopped ever three hours or so to re-fill the gas tank.
For once in her life, she was happy with the strange family traditions she had had to deal with since she was born, such as the savings account, fully under her jurisdiction, which her grandparents put around $500 dollars into each year. That, plus random cash gifts from family and friends, and her monthly pay check from her part time job, the sixteen year old run away had just under $10000 to her name.
The first time she stopped, she'd withdrawn every cent, not daring to risk the authorities freezing her account. And she drove.
At her second stop, she had her long blonde hair cut to just under and inch in length.
At the third stop, she had the now short hair dyed black.
She didn't exactly know where she was. She wasn't even sure where she was going.
Somewhere in her subconscious, she figured she needed to get out of the United States. Somewhere in her subconscious was heading North, to Canada. But her conscious mind didn't know this yet. It was just driving, with no real agenda.
It was close to four in the morning, quite dark, and the heavy clouds blocking any semblance of moon light from the sky indicated a gathering storm.
It hit with a vengeance. A streak of lightning tore the sky, followed in two seconds by it's accompanying clap of thunder.
Jake realized she should stop for the night, but she didn't bother. She didn't even slow down. She continued driving; breaking the speed limit as she roared down the winding forest road, seemingly paved around each and every tree in the forest.
The rain started unexpectedly, and she flipped on her high beams and her windshield wipers at the same time, but it didn't seem to help at all. As fast as the wipers swept the water away, there was an equal amount splashing into its place.
Jake, having been experimenting with her abilities, rolled down the window just enough to stick her hand out of it as another bolt of lightning broke the sky down the middle. She pulled the electric residue straight out of the air, and shivered as the charge entered her. The resulting buzz woke her up more than any amount of caffeine could.
But there was something else coming with the electricity this time.
As the charge flowed into her, a flash flew through her mind, obscuring her vision better than the rain covering her windshield ever could.
It was a vision of something, in sketchy black and white. She was seeing, from a birds eye view, a car racing down a narrow winding road, then swerving, and slamming into a large truck, spinning off of the road, and slamming into the base of a large tree, where a flash of lightning brought two more trees crashing into the car, crushing it like an aluminum can.
Another flash resounded through Jake's head, and she was back in the car, driving at well over seventy miles per hour.
She slowed down the car, but not much.
Not nearly enough.
~~~
Ororo Munroe woke up with a start. She had been having a dream, and a sharp clap of thunder had clued her in to just how severe the dream was. Her dreams were effecting the weather.
But it was more than that. Her dream had confused her in a big way, but she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that someone was in trouble, someone needed her help, and that someone was a young Mutant, with ties to the weather in some way or another.
Ororo jumped to her feet, and, dressing quickly ran to her best friend's bedroom door, knocking on it frantically.
The insane knocking jolted Jean Grey awake and she got up, opening the door with a yawn and a stupid blink.
"What's wrong?" She mumbled.
"We've got to go. Someone needs help."
~~~
Jake, while shaken up by the vision, ignored it's warning.
She was driving blind, much to fast for her won good.
She didn't even see the huge tractor trailer bearing down on her until it was seemingly too much. And the Driver of the truck didn't seem to see her either.
By the time she saw the impending doom, she figured it was too late to do anything.
If she were to swerve, then she would plummet off the side of the road, down a five to six foot straight drop, and into the trees lining the road. If she hit the brakes, she would be run over by the truck. So she did both.
Cranking the wheel, she then promptly hit the brakes. The car didn't seem to stop fast enough so she turned the key, pulled it from the ignition, and the, as it still hadn't stopped, she put her hand firmly on the dashboard, and sucked every last watt of energy from the engine.
The car stopped, but she hadn't turned far enough.
The grille of the truck slammed against the quarter panel of her car, slamming her into the passenger seat, despite her seat belt.
The car spun a half turn counter clockwise, and the nose of the car was slammed into the side of the truck.
This slammed Jake forward against the steering wheel, knocking her unconscious.
This didn't stop the car.
It skidded backwards across the road, then fell off the embankment, slamming with a crushing finality into the base of a tree.
Just as the vision had predicted, a bolt of lighting felled two more trees. One slammed across the hood of the car, the other crashed the top of the car inwards.
A series of cracks spread across the windows and the glass soon imploded inwards.
A particularly jagged piece of glass dragged unceremoniously across Jake's right cheek, laying open the skin in four perfectly parallel lines.
Her right leg was trapped under the dashboard. If she were awake, she would have felt the bones in her leg warping under the pressure.
As it was, there was nothing, Jake was slipping slowly in to absolute oblivion.
~~~
By the time Ororo and Jean arrive at the scene of the crash, the car had caught fire, but the rain, still falling heavily, had quickly put it out, leaving the automobile caught under two large trees and gently smoldering.
The girl was trapped in the car, seemingly by her leg, and her face, arms, and most everywhere else were covered in blood.
But she was alive, and her chest rose and fell in slow, rhythmic breaths.
"Well shit."
~~~
"You what?"
"We... rescued her."
"How?" It was obvious that Professor Charles Xavier was not happy.
"Well..." Jean started. She was standing protectively over the girl, who was lying unconsciously on a platform in one of the labs at the Xavier mansion.
Her right leg was bent to the right, but Jean knew, from a quick series of examinations and a few x-rays that nothing was broken. Somehow, the bones had bent, but not broken, and stayed that way.
She had bandaged the four cuts across the girl's cheek as well as possible, but she was next to one hundred percent certain that the cuts were going to scar, permanently reminding the teenager of the night before.
Ororo stood on the other side of the platform, watching Xavier worriedly.
"She was scared. I could feel her." Charles shook his head.
"You didn't even bother to tell anyone else?"
"I didn't think we had time... I almost went alone."
"She could be dangerous!"
"Well, there is really no way to tell. But, she is hurt," Jean stepped in. "Shouldn't we make sure she recovers? She's a teenaged mutant. Isn't that what the institute is for?" He sighed heavily in response.
"Fine." Jean and Ororo exchanged smiles, "But..." He continued, "She is YOUR responsibility." They both nodded solemnly, and he turned his chair to leave.
"Let me know when she wakes up."
~~~
Almost three weeks later, she was still unconscious.
A series of CT scans had ruled out the possibility of brain damage.
The wounds across her face had healed, and had scared over just as Jean had predicted. The four ridges of white were permanent.
The warping of her leg was also permanent.
Jean was sure that with physical therapy, she would be able to walk relatively normal.
If worse came too worse, she'd have to carry a cane, just to keep herself upright if anything. But this might prove a bit awkward for the girl that appeared to be about sixteen, but it wouldn't be a problem at all if the girl never woke up.
Also, there was no way to tell exactly what the girl's mutation was.
As told by the blood test Jean had run, the girl was of an O+ blood type, she did have the mutator gene, and it was active.
Past that, Jean was metaphorically in the dark.
In seemed as if the girl was in a coma, with no visible cause. But it was still very possible.
Jean was beginning to give up hope when the unexpected happened.
Jean was running yet another CT scan on the girl when the machine shut down without warning.
Jean sighed heavily, and moved around the console to extract the girl from inside the machine.
"Jesus Wept." Echoed from inside the confines of the machine, and Jean's eyes widened to Dear in Headlights proportions.
Jean continued to remove the girl, and watched, transfixed, as the girl sat up, raised a hand to her head, and blinked like an owl.
"What in the hell is going on?" Jean, however, didn't hear the question, as she was calling psychically out to the Professor.
Jake, as she was, grew wary and angry. She had always had a very short temper, even though she had not a clue what was going on. She barely knew who she was.
Keeping one eye on the occupied Jean Grey, Jake swung her legs over the side of the platform she had been perched on, and moved to walk away.
And she fell flat on her face, growling uncontrollably as an intense pain shot through her right leg.
Jean turned and gasped. Helping the girl stand, she tried calming her psychically.
Jake, realizing how helpless she was, let her hard demeanor dissolve, leaving her vulnerable and afraid.
"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you, I'm trying to help you." Jean whispered both physically and mentally.
The girl, gasping heavily as the pain subsided, leaned against the red haired doctor.
She no longer cared if she was in danger. She didn't even care if she was about to die.
She just wanted comfort, and that was what this stranger was offering. And Jake would accept it, no matter what the consequences.
"What happened?" She whimpered as tears welled up in her eyes.
"It's okay. You're okay, you're going to be fine." Jean whispered.
The door opened, and the Professor entered, followed by Ororo and, unexpectedly, Scott Summers, Jean's love interest.
Jean looked back down at the girl huddled in her arms. Her face had flushed in fear and pain, and the four white scars remained just that, stark white against her now rosy cheek.
"Welcome to Westchester." The Professor said quietly and calmingly. His psychic influence seemed to work, as the girl's breaths slowed to a steady rhythm.
"Don't be afraid."
Pages: 7
Words: 2083
Characters (without spaces): 9425
Characters (with spaces): 11480
Paragraphs: 107
Lines: 354
Author's Notes: R&R please! Thanks to everyone who already has, keep reading!
-The One and Only Trey
Disclaimer and Summary: All disclaiming and summarizing placed in Chapter One remain for this chapter, and all following chapters.
Author's Notes: It took me quite some time to get this chapter written. It's rather long, but I think you guys will like it. Another Note: I'm not exactly sure where this takes place, but It's between the first and second movies. Since It's never said how much time passes between the two, I'm going with almost a year, but not quite. In fact, a lot of time passes in this very chapter, with just a simple line break.
So bear with me. Thanks.
Reviewer Shout Outs:
Fireball: Thanks. John comes in the next chapter, but I hope you enjoy this chapter too!
Kumiko Eharu: Ahh! Someone who won't mind an OC ship! Whee! Hope you enjoy.
the proud canadian: Here ya go!
Tigereyes: Yes, it is rather bizzare, that's why she goes by Jake ;)
Chapter Two:
A day and a half later, Jake Smith was still driving.
She stopped ever three hours or so to re-fill the gas tank.
For once in her life, she was happy with the strange family traditions she had had to deal with since she was born, such as the savings account, fully under her jurisdiction, which her grandparents put around $500 dollars into each year. That, plus random cash gifts from family and friends, and her monthly pay check from her part time job, the sixteen year old run away had just under $10000 to her name.
The first time she stopped, she'd withdrawn every cent, not daring to risk the authorities freezing her account. And she drove.
At her second stop, she had her long blonde hair cut to just under and inch in length.
At the third stop, she had the now short hair dyed black.
She didn't exactly know where she was. She wasn't even sure where she was going.
Somewhere in her subconscious, she figured she needed to get out of the United States. Somewhere in her subconscious was heading North, to Canada. But her conscious mind didn't know this yet. It was just driving, with no real agenda.
It was close to four in the morning, quite dark, and the heavy clouds blocking any semblance of moon light from the sky indicated a gathering storm.
It hit with a vengeance. A streak of lightning tore the sky, followed in two seconds by it's accompanying clap of thunder.
Jake realized she should stop for the night, but she didn't bother. She didn't even slow down. She continued driving; breaking the speed limit as she roared down the winding forest road, seemingly paved around each and every tree in the forest.
The rain started unexpectedly, and she flipped on her high beams and her windshield wipers at the same time, but it didn't seem to help at all. As fast as the wipers swept the water away, there was an equal amount splashing into its place.
Jake, having been experimenting with her abilities, rolled down the window just enough to stick her hand out of it as another bolt of lightning broke the sky down the middle. She pulled the electric residue straight out of the air, and shivered as the charge entered her. The resulting buzz woke her up more than any amount of caffeine could.
But there was something else coming with the electricity this time.
As the charge flowed into her, a flash flew through her mind, obscuring her vision better than the rain covering her windshield ever could.
It was a vision of something, in sketchy black and white. She was seeing, from a birds eye view, a car racing down a narrow winding road, then swerving, and slamming into a large truck, spinning off of the road, and slamming into the base of a large tree, where a flash of lightning brought two more trees crashing into the car, crushing it like an aluminum can.
Another flash resounded through Jake's head, and she was back in the car, driving at well over seventy miles per hour.
She slowed down the car, but not much.
Not nearly enough.
~~~
Ororo Munroe woke up with a start. She had been having a dream, and a sharp clap of thunder had clued her in to just how severe the dream was. Her dreams were effecting the weather.
But it was more than that. Her dream had confused her in a big way, but she knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that someone was in trouble, someone needed her help, and that someone was a young Mutant, with ties to the weather in some way or another.
Ororo jumped to her feet, and, dressing quickly ran to her best friend's bedroom door, knocking on it frantically.
The insane knocking jolted Jean Grey awake and she got up, opening the door with a yawn and a stupid blink.
"What's wrong?" She mumbled.
"We've got to go. Someone needs help."
~~~
Jake, while shaken up by the vision, ignored it's warning.
She was driving blind, much to fast for her won good.
She didn't even see the huge tractor trailer bearing down on her until it was seemingly too much. And the Driver of the truck didn't seem to see her either.
By the time she saw the impending doom, she figured it was too late to do anything.
If she were to swerve, then she would plummet off the side of the road, down a five to six foot straight drop, and into the trees lining the road. If she hit the brakes, she would be run over by the truck. So she did both.
Cranking the wheel, she then promptly hit the brakes. The car didn't seem to stop fast enough so she turned the key, pulled it from the ignition, and the, as it still hadn't stopped, she put her hand firmly on the dashboard, and sucked every last watt of energy from the engine.
The car stopped, but she hadn't turned far enough.
The grille of the truck slammed against the quarter panel of her car, slamming her into the passenger seat, despite her seat belt.
The car spun a half turn counter clockwise, and the nose of the car was slammed into the side of the truck.
This slammed Jake forward against the steering wheel, knocking her unconscious.
This didn't stop the car.
It skidded backwards across the road, then fell off the embankment, slamming with a crushing finality into the base of a tree.
Just as the vision had predicted, a bolt of lighting felled two more trees. One slammed across the hood of the car, the other crashed the top of the car inwards.
A series of cracks spread across the windows and the glass soon imploded inwards.
A particularly jagged piece of glass dragged unceremoniously across Jake's right cheek, laying open the skin in four perfectly parallel lines.
Her right leg was trapped under the dashboard. If she were awake, she would have felt the bones in her leg warping under the pressure.
As it was, there was nothing, Jake was slipping slowly in to absolute oblivion.
~~~
By the time Ororo and Jean arrive at the scene of the crash, the car had caught fire, but the rain, still falling heavily, had quickly put it out, leaving the automobile caught under two large trees and gently smoldering.
The girl was trapped in the car, seemingly by her leg, and her face, arms, and most everywhere else were covered in blood.
But she was alive, and her chest rose and fell in slow, rhythmic breaths.
"Well shit."
~~~
"You what?"
"We... rescued her."
"How?" It was obvious that Professor Charles Xavier was not happy.
"Well..." Jean started. She was standing protectively over the girl, who was lying unconsciously on a platform in one of the labs at the Xavier mansion.
Her right leg was bent to the right, but Jean knew, from a quick series of examinations and a few x-rays that nothing was broken. Somehow, the bones had bent, but not broken, and stayed that way.
She had bandaged the four cuts across the girl's cheek as well as possible, but she was next to one hundred percent certain that the cuts were going to scar, permanently reminding the teenager of the night before.
Ororo stood on the other side of the platform, watching Xavier worriedly.
"She was scared. I could feel her." Charles shook his head.
"You didn't even bother to tell anyone else?"
"I didn't think we had time... I almost went alone."
"She could be dangerous!"
"Well, there is really no way to tell. But, she is hurt," Jean stepped in. "Shouldn't we make sure she recovers? She's a teenaged mutant. Isn't that what the institute is for?" He sighed heavily in response.
"Fine." Jean and Ororo exchanged smiles, "But..." He continued, "She is YOUR responsibility." They both nodded solemnly, and he turned his chair to leave.
"Let me know when she wakes up."
~~~
Almost three weeks later, she was still unconscious.
A series of CT scans had ruled out the possibility of brain damage.
The wounds across her face had healed, and had scared over just as Jean had predicted. The four ridges of white were permanent.
The warping of her leg was also permanent.
Jean was sure that with physical therapy, she would be able to walk relatively normal.
If worse came too worse, she'd have to carry a cane, just to keep herself upright if anything. But this might prove a bit awkward for the girl that appeared to be about sixteen, but it wouldn't be a problem at all if the girl never woke up.
Also, there was no way to tell exactly what the girl's mutation was.
As told by the blood test Jean had run, the girl was of an O+ blood type, she did have the mutator gene, and it was active.
Past that, Jean was metaphorically in the dark.
In seemed as if the girl was in a coma, with no visible cause. But it was still very possible.
Jean was beginning to give up hope when the unexpected happened.
Jean was running yet another CT scan on the girl when the machine shut down without warning.
Jean sighed heavily, and moved around the console to extract the girl from inside the machine.
"Jesus Wept." Echoed from inside the confines of the machine, and Jean's eyes widened to Dear in Headlights proportions.
Jean continued to remove the girl, and watched, transfixed, as the girl sat up, raised a hand to her head, and blinked like an owl.
"What in the hell is going on?" Jean, however, didn't hear the question, as she was calling psychically out to the Professor.
Jake, as she was, grew wary and angry. She had always had a very short temper, even though she had not a clue what was going on. She barely knew who she was.
Keeping one eye on the occupied Jean Grey, Jake swung her legs over the side of the platform she had been perched on, and moved to walk away.
And she fell flat on her face, growling uncontrollably as an intense pain shot through her right leg.
Jean turned and gasped. Helping the girl stand, she tried calming her psychically.
Jake, realizing how helpless she was, let her hard demeanor dissolve, leaving her vulnerable and afraid.
"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you, I'm trying to help you." Jean whispered both physically and mentally.
The girl, gasping heavily as the pain subsided, leaned against the red haired doctor.
She no longer cared if she was in danger. She didn't even care if she was about to die.
She just wanted comfort, and that was what this stranger was offering. And Jake would accept it, no matter what the consequences.
"What happened?" She whimpered as tears welled up in her eyes.
"It's okay. You're okay, you're going to be fine." Jean whispered.
The door opened, and the Professor entered, followed by Ororo and, unexpectedly, Scott Summers, Jean's love interest.
Jean looked back down at the girl huddled in her arms. Her face had flushed in fear and pain, and the four white scars remained just that, stark white against her now rosy cheek.
"Welcome to Westchester." The Professor said quietly and calmingly. His psychic influence seemed to work, as the girl's breaths slowed to a steady rhythm.
"Don't be afraid."
Pages: 7
Words: 2083
Characters (without spaces): 9425
Characters (with spaces): 11480
Paragraphs: 107
Lines: 354
Author's Notes: R&R please! Thanks to everyone who already has, keep reading!
-The One and Only Trey