Four
Degas strummed her fingers on the dead log, Oz and Jean argued back and forth about going to go see Professor Xavier.
"Why not just go?" Degas shouted finally. "I see no reason in why we can't just go."
Oz nodded happily. Jean shook her head No.
"Well why the bloody hell not Jean! You said so yourself that you think the Professor already knows that you are alive! And now could he not? Him with Cerebro and all?" Degas asked. "I mean, come on Jean don't be mean."
"I don't want to go back there just yet, I don't think that I am ready to go back there just now." Jean said. "Besides, what can the Professor do for us there that we cannot do here?"
Oz made to say something then stopped. "Ah, good point."
"I mean," she nodded. "What are we going to do anyway?"
Degas pulled her hair into a ponytail and put her hands on her hips. "I don't know, but I could really do with some mutton right about now."
Jean laughed. "Only you would say that!"
"Mutton eh?" Oz licked her lips. "Not a bad idea. I'll be back in just a moment." And she teleported away.
"Where'd she go?" Jean asked.
Degas shrugged. "Who knows." She eyed her friend. "So, you two know each other?"
"I don't remember her." Jean shrugged.
"Well, if we go talk to the Professor, maybe he could read both of your minds and see what the connection is exactly." She looked into the starry sky then crossed her legs and sat down. "What kills me is this. eh, she remembers you, but she doesn't remember me."
Jean looked over at Degas who was still studying the stars.
*** *** *** ***
Oz appeared half an hour later carrying a small bag. "It's still hot."
Degas looked over at her. "Mutton?" she jumped up and ran to Oz who fished out three Tupperware bowls.
"Yeah, straight from the Navajo reservation."
"Which family?"
"The Ambrose Family." She smiled. "They are good people."
"Meko?"
"Yeah, his family."
Jean opened her bowl and looked at the brown liquid. "What exactly is this?"
"Mutton stew, it is the vertebra of a lamb and its-"
"You'd rather not know." Degas nodded. "It is good shit, that's all I got to say. Eat it, judge it, the Ambrose family kill when it comes to making Mutton Stew."
Oz nodded. "What she said." She pulled out a small baggie of tortillas. "They made these too, they are really cool."
"This is good." Degas said sipping up her stew.
Jean looked down at it, ripped off a piece of tortillas, dipped it in the stew and ate it.
Degas and Oz watched her intently and waited with bated breath for a response.
"Eh," Jean smiled. "Not bad, it's nothing I have ever tasted before, but it's not bad."
Oz and Degas smiled at each other and they went on eating.
When they were done they put the Tupperware back in the bag and they pulled the blackest apart and they fell asleep. The moon had set and the east horizon was a dull gray growing bring.
Oz ran through a forest, a teleporter was following her, calling to her by name. Shadows ran beside her, in front of her, behind her, they chanted her name, they chanted words of malice and words that brought fear to her heart. The teleporter called to her more furiously, its voice full of worry and concern, a voice she knew. yet. did not know. Glimpses of the teleporter, it looked like her, the real her, blue skin, a tail, pointed ears. him. this teleporter was male, she knew him, in her heart she knew him. No name came to her, he was an echo from her own past. Maybe he didn't really exist; maybe he was a shadow that had taken form to fool her.
Oz tripped on some roots. The shadows closed in, they had weapons, weapons she had never seen before, things from an alien race used to probe and pick and torture. she screamed. The other teleporter appeared with his weapon. He scarred them, he challenged them and threatened them, they took steps back then stopped and assessed the situation then they again began to close in. he turned then to her, grabbed her with his tail and pulled her into his arms and they teleported away.
They appeared in the mansion. She looked around but there was no one in the mansion. They ran around to the different rooms, but no one was there. She ran outside to the front, the lawn was covered with dead bodies. Everyone who lived at the mansion was on the ground, blood covered them, a war had broken out on the steps of this school, and everyone had died. Logan was looking down; he had just walked onto the premises from a journey he had taken, he had come back to the same horror as Oz and the other teleporter. The other teleporter, Oz wheeled around to see who the other teleporter was, there was a blinding white light, she could head Logan screaming her name, then, something dug itself into her stomach. The pain was a searing white light, like the one she was starring into. And all the while Logan was screaming her name, she could hear him trying to get to her, but the shadows where there, they were fighting Logan and the other teleporter, and the pain of her stomach made her feel as if she was falling.
She was falling. an abyss that never ended, an abyss chock full of blinking, binding white pain. She screamed, in agony, in misery, in sadness. Her life seeping out of her in the red liquid that was her blood, her life. going. going. gone.
"WAKE UP!" Degas pulled Oz into a sitting position and slapped her.
Her eyes shot open and she looked around for the shadows, she could feel them close, too close, why couldn't she see them?
"It was just a dream," Jean cooed from her blanket. "Oz, calm down, it was just a dream."
Oz sighed, the shadows were running away, were a dream, and as all dreams, breaking away into bubbles and leaking away like water leaks away in cupped hands. She was shot in a cold sweat, her breathing labored, but she was claming down.
"Are you all right Oz?" Degas asked. "You were screaming."
"Nightmares." Oz rubbed her temples, images were fading away, but the horror of what she could not remember was still there, clearer then. then what? She shook her head; her eyes opened and darted around for distractions.
"Maybe we should go see the Professor." Jean admitted. "Whatever is in your head Oz isn't good, you dream nightmares that would send me into shock."
"He is not going into my brain." Oz said straightly. "No one is going to go into my brain."
"Oz, whatever is troubling you, Professor Xavier can help you."
"NO!" Oz stood up. "Whatever is in my head is going to damn well stay there! I've seen it unlocked and known to me before! It is a torrid of damn information that I do not want but it is too damn painful to unlock and get out of me! It is a physical pain to remember what they put in me!" she massaged her temple harder. "Look, I appreciate your concern, but please, don't try to help me Jean, it is you who need the help."
"Me?"
"Scott is going crazy, he thinks he's lost you completely, Logan isn't much better, but he is better, you choosing Scott over him, the loss of you was hard on him, but it was harder on Scott, he knows you shoes him over Logan, and that is killing him."
Jean gasped. "But, I can't go back."
"Why not Jean?" Oz demanded. "You are killing the people you love! The children, the other teachers! Everyone loves you Jean! And you, you leaving them! You surviving and not talking to them! It's been what? Nearly a year now and here you are with Degas just doing what? What are you doing out here Jean?"
"Well, I'm."
"What?" Oz looked over at Degas. "What exactly are you two doing out here?"
"I was looking for-"
"Look Oz!" Jean interrupted. "Degas found me a little down river from here, she pulled me out of the water and tended to my wounds. The Phoenix Force kept me alive through the pressure of the dam breaking and it even healed my body of all broken bones. Degas found me after that, her and a few friends of hers. They told me what they were doing and I offered to help, so, I did."
Oz looked back at Degas. "And what are you looking for?"
Degas looked up at her, her eyes full of unknown emotion. "Was looking for-"
Just then the earth shook with the force of a major earthquake. Oz stumbled to the ground, then quickly pushed herself back up as the aftershocks shook the earth.
"What the hell is that?"
Jean looked around. "Something's not right."
Three fighter jets blasted overhead, one released a missile that zoomed ahead then turned toward another jet that was approaching fast.
"That's Professor's jet!" Jean shouted.
The missile wavered off course and exploded a mere few feet above the earth's surface. Another quake shook the earth.
"Are the missiles causing that?" Degas shouted.
"They can't be!" Jean answered. "They are not that strong!"
"Besides!" Oz added. "There are after shocks, these must be real earth quakes."
Degas shouted something, but a missile swerving overhead drowned out her words. The explosion was closer, the heat of it slammed into Oz and Degas who were closer.
"Bitch!" Oz shouted rubbing her left arm. "That burns!"
"Get into the river!" Degas shouted pulling oz with her. "We should be safer there, at least from the missiles!"
They ran into the river as the jets overhead proceeded to engage themselves in a dogfight. After some long moments the fighter jets retreated and the Professor's jet landed. Logan and Storm ran out, both skidded to a halt when they saw Jean's head peeking out from behind Degas.
Degas turned to Oz. "I was looking for you."
Oz blinked. "What?"
"You remembered Jean, I thought you would remember me, I mean, I am your cousin after all. I was with you when you lived at the manor with your father and his co-workers."
"Co-workers?"
"It was called Wayside Manor, on the upside it looked like a hospital for the terminally ill," she shrugged. "In a way, I suppose it was. Your father and his co-workers experimented on mutants, seeing what would happen with what chemicals pumped into the bloodstreams. But for us," Degas looked at Oz. "For us, it was different."
"Who's 'us'?"
"Ryan, Jake, Jackson, Brandon, Me and You." Degas waited, when Oz said nothing she continued. "We were called the Marauders. We were trained to kill, destroy, infiltrate, spy, gather intelligence. basically we were trained to be ghosts, like a marines special operations unit. We were trained from birth to do this, so we grew up thinking it was the normal way of life. Jackson was good at telepathic spying; Jake was our telekinetic genius who could steal files and papers in a crowded room without anyone noticing. Ryan could manipulate water in any form; Brandon was a specialist in getting us around, he manipulated things, trees, bushes, roots, with that he could create massive tunnels underground faster then a person could run. Then you, you were trained to fight. If anything should go wrong, or if someone stumbled upon us, you were trained to kill him or her, confuse him or her, or to cause a diversion when one was needed. And I was trained to lead all of this, and to destroy any and all evidence that we were there, or that we even existed."
"How?"
Degas looked over at Jean. "You had a student, John, Pyro was his other name. He could manipulate fire. I can manipulate it, I can create It." she looked back at Oz. "We all had short hair, all but me, at the end of the day I had to shower us with fire, the fire had to burn away all dead skin and it would brush away all dead or loose hair. I couldn't manipulate it around long hair for other people, only with me, so I was allowed to keep my long hair.
"This was our job, this was our life, or, at least it was, then one day Jake found something he didn't like and he showed it to us. It was what we really were doing, which was killing a lot of innocent people. You came up with the idea to run away. So we helped you escape first, you would go out, scout out a safe place to live then came back with the information. But while you were out there, they got to you, and they brought you back and they locked your memory, we had to start over with you. When we got you out there again they attacked you and put that shit in your head.
"We didn't know what they put in your head, but with it in you they let you stay out there. So we worked together, the boys and me, and we got out. We scattered for three years, we emailed each other, kept in touch, then we agreed to come and find you. About a year ago we found Jean, through her mind we could connect to other people's mind, into the Professor's mind. It took a long time but finally you showed up at the mansion. We were happier then hell to see that you were alive. We were going to go get you, but we were ambushed, the guys were killed, the Marauders is down to just you and me Oz, we have to avenge our friends."
"But how?"
"The only way we can, we have to go back to Wayside Manor, we have to face what we have been running from for so long we have to get inside your head and learn what they know."
"Degas, it is a physical pain to see the information-"
"Oz. who knows what all this could wind down to. The survival of mutants? Humans? The world?"
"But I don't want to remember."
Degas sighed. "I hate to do this Oz, but we have no other choice." She brought her hand up in a swiping motion, fire bellowed out of her palm and wrapped around Oz, the intense heat engulfed Oz, and she blacked out.
Degas strummed her fingers on the dead log, Oz and Jean argued back and forth about going to go see Professor Xavier.
"Why not just go?" Degas shouted finally. "I see no reason in why we can't just go."
Oz nodded happily. Jean shook her head No.
"Well why the bloody hell not Jean! You said so yourself that you think the Professor already knows that you are alive! And now could he not? Him with Cerebro and all?" Degas asked. "I mean, come on Jean don't be mean."
"I don't want to go back there just yet, I don't think that I am ready to go back there just now." Jean said. "Besides, what can the Professor do for us there that we cannot do here?"
Oz made to say something then stopped. "Ah, good point."
"I mean," she nodded. "What are we going to do anyway?"
Degas pulled her hair into a ponytail and put her hands on her hips. "I don't know, but I could really do with some mutton right about now."
Jean laughed. "Only you would say that!"
"Mutton eh?" Oz licked her lips. "Not a bad idea. I'll be back in just a moment." And she teleported away.
"Where'd she go?" Jean asked.
Degas shrugged. "Who knows." She eyed her friend. "So, you two know each other?"
"I don't remember her." Jean shrugged.
"Well, if we go talk to the Professor, maybe he could read both of your minds and see what the connection is exactly." She looked into the starry sky then crossed her legs and sat down. "What kills me is this. eh, she remembers you, but she doesn't remember me."
Jean looked over at Degas who was still studying the stars.
*** *** *** ***
Oz appeared half an hour later carrying a small bag. "It's still hot."
Degas looked over at her. "Mutton?" she jumped up and ran to Oz who fished out three Tupperware bowls.
"Yeah, straight from the Navajo reservation."
"Which family?"
"The Ambrose Family." She smiled. "They are good people."
"Meko?"
"Yeah, his family."
Jean opened her bowl and looked at the brown liquid. "What exactly is this?"
"Mutton stew, it is the vertebra of a lamb and its-"
"You'd rather not know." Degas nodded. "It is good shit, that's all I got to say. Eat it, judge it, the Ambrose family kill when it comes to making Mutton Stew."
Oz nodded. "What she said." She pulled out a small baggie of tortillas. "They made these too, they are really cool."
"This is good." Degas said sipping up her stew.
Jean looked down at it, ripped off a piece of tortillas, dipped it in the stew and ate it.
Degas and Oz watched her intently and waited with bated breath for a response.
"Eh," Jean smiled. "Not bad, it's nothing I have ever tasted before, but it's not bad."
Oz and Degas smiled at each other and they went on eating.
When they were done they put the Tupperware back in the bag and they pulled the blackest apart and they fell asleep. The moon had set and the east horizon was a dull gray growing bring.
Oz ran through a forest, a teleporter was following her, calling to her by name. Shadows ran beside her, in front of her, behind her, they chanted her name, they chanted words of malice and words that brought fear to her heart. The teleporter called to her more furiously, its voice full of worry and concern, a voice she knew. yet. did not know. Glimpses of the teleporter, it looked like her, the real her, blue skin, a tail, pointed ears. him. this teleporter was male, she knew him, in her heart she knew him. No name came to her, he was an echo from her own past. Maybe he didn't really exist; maybe he was a shadow that had taken form to fool her.
Oz tripped on some roots. The shadows closed in, they had weapons, weapons she had never seen before, things from an alien race used to probe and pick and torture. she screamed. The other teleporter appeared with his weapon. He scarred them, he challenged them and threatened them, they took steps back then stopped and assessed the situation then they again began to close in. he turned then to her, grabbed her with his tail and pulled her into his arms and they teleported away.
They appeared in the mansion. She looked around but there was no one in the mansion. They ran around to the different rooms, but no one was there. She ran outside to the front, the lawn was covered with dead bodies. Everyone who lived at the mansion was on the ground, blood covered them, a war had broken out on the steps of this school, and everyone had died. Logan was looking down; he had just walked onto the premises from a journey he had taken, he had come back to the same horror as Oz and the other teleporter. The other teleporter, Oz wheeled around to see who the other teleporter was, there was a blinding white light, she could head Logan screaming her name, then, something dug itself into her stomach. The pain was a searing white light, like the one she was starring into. And all the while Logan was screaming her name, she could hear him trying to get to her, but the shadows where there, they were fighting Logan and the other teleporter, and the pain of her stomach made her feel as if she was falling.
She was falling. an abyss that never ended, an abyss chock full of blinking, binding white pain. She screamed, in agony, in misery, in sadness. Her life seeping out of her in the red liquid that was her blood, her life. going. going. gone.
"WAKE UP!" Degas pulled Oz into a sitting position and slapped her.
Her eyes shot open and she looked around for the shadows, she could feel them close, too close, why couldn't she see them?
"It was just a dream," Jean cooed from her blanket. "Oz, calm down, it was just a dream."
Oz sighed, the shadows were running away, were a dream, and as all dreams, breaking away into bubbles and leaking away like water leaks away in cupped hands. She was shot in a cold sweat, her breathing labored, but she was claming down.
"Are you all right Oz?" Degas asked. "You were screaming."
"Nightmares." Oz rubbed her temples, images were fading away, but the horror of what she could not remember was still there, clearer then. then what? She shook her head; her eyes opened and darted around for distractions.
"Maybe we should go see the Professor." Jean admitted. "Whatever is in your head Oz isn't good, you dream nightmares that would send me into shock."
"He is not going into my brain." Oz said straightly. "No one is going to go into my brain."
"Oz, whatever is troubling you, Professor Xavier can help you."
"NO!" Oz stood up. "Whatever is in my head is going to damn well stay there! I've seen it unlocked and known to me before! It is a torrid of damn information that I do not want but it is too damn painful to unlock and get out of me! It is a physical pain to remember what they put in me!" she massaged her temple harder. "Look, I appreciate your concern, but please, don't try to help me Jean, it is you who need the help."
"Me?"
"Scott is going crazy, he thinks he's lost you completely, Logan isn't much better, but he is better, you choosing Scott over him, the loss of you was hard on him, but it was harder on Scott, he knows you shoes him over Logan, and that is killing him."
Jean gasped. "But, I can't go back."
"Why not Jean?" Oz demanded. "You are killing the people you love! The children, the other teachers! Everyone loves you Jean! And you, you leaving them! You surviving and not talking to them! It's been what? Nearly a year now and here you are with Degas just doing what? What are you doing out here Jean?"
"Well, I'm."
"What?" Oz looked over at Degas. "What exactly are you two doing out here?"
"I was looking for-"
"Look Oz!" Jean interrupted. "Degas found me a little down river from here, she pulled me out of the water and tended to my wounds. The Phoenix Force kept me alive through the pressure of the dam breaking and it even healed my body of all broken bones. Degas found me after that, her and a few friends of hers. They told me what they were doing and I offered to help, so, I did."
Oz looked back at Degas. "And what are you looking for?"
Degas looked up at her, her eyes full of unknown emotion. "Was looking for-"
Just then the earth shook with the force of a major earthquake. Oz stumbled to the ground, then quickly pushed herself back up as the aftershocks shook the earth.
"What the hell is that?"
Jean looked around. "Something's not right."
Three fighter jets blasted overhead, one released a missile that zoomed ahead then turned toward another jet that was approaching fast.
"That's Professor's jet!" Jean shouted.
The missile wavered off course and exploded a mere few feet above the earth's surface. Another quake shook the earth.
"Are the missiles causing that?" Degas shouted.
"They can't be!" Jean answered. "They are not that strong!"
"Besides!" Oz added. "There are after shocks, these must be real earth quakes."
Degas shouted something, but a missile swerving overhead drowned out her words. The explosion was closer, the heat of it slammed into Oz and Degas who were closer.
"Bitch!" Oz shouted rubbing her left arm. "That burns!"
"Get into the river!" Degas shouted pulling oz with her. "We should be safer there, at least from the missiles!"
They ran into the river as the jets overhead proceeded to engage themselves in a dogfight. After some long moments the fighter jets retreated and the Professor's jet landed. Logan and Storm ran out, both skidded to a halt when they saw Jean's head peeking out from behind Degas.
Degas turned to Oz. "I was looking for you."
Oz blinked. "What?"
"You remembered Jean, I thought you would remember me, I mean, I am your cousin after all. I was with you when you lived at the manor with your father and his co-workers."
"Co-workers?"
"It was called Wayside Manor, on the upside it looked like a hospital for the terminally ill," she shrugged. "In a way, I suppose it was. Your father and his co-workers experimented on mutants, seeing what would happen with what chemicals pumped into the bloodstreams. But for us," Degas looked at Oz. "For us, it was different."
"Who's 'us'?"
"Ryan, Jake, Jackson, Brandon, Me and You." Degas waited, when Oz said nothing she continued. "We were called the Marauders. We were trained to kill, destroy, infiltrate, spy, gather intelligence. basically we were trained to be ghosts, like a marines special operations unit. We were trained from birth to do this, so we grew up thinking it was the normal way of life. Jackson was good at telepathic spying; Jake was our telekinetic genius who could steal files and papers in a crowded room without anyone noticing. Ryan could manipulate water in any form; Brandon was a specialist in getting us around, he manipulated things, trees, bushes, roots, with that he could create massive tunnels underground faster then a person could run. Then you, you were trained to fight. If anything should go wrong, or if someone stumbled upon us, you were trained to kill him or her, confuse him or her, or to cause a diversion when one was needed. And I was trained to lead all of this, and to destroy any and all evidence that we were there, or that we even existed."
"How?"
Degas looked over at Jean. "You had a student, John, Pyro was his other name. He could manipulate fire. I can manipulate it, I can create It." she looked back at Oz. "We all had short hair, all but me, at the end of the day I had to shower us with fire, the fire had to burn away all dead skin and it would brush away all dead or loose hair. I couldn't manipulate it around long hair for other people, only with me, so I was allowed to keep my long hair.
"This was our job, this was our life, or, at least it was, then one day Jake found something he didn't like and he showed it to us. It was what we really were doing, which was killing a lot of innocent people. You came up with the idea to run away. So we helped you escape first, you would go out, scout out a safe place to live then came back with the information. But while you were out there, they got to you, and they brought you back and they locked your memory, we had to start over with you. When we got you out there again they attacked you and put that shit in your head.
"We didn't know what they put in your head, but with it in you they let you stay out there. So we worked together, the boys and me, and we got out. We scattered for three years, we emailed each other, kept in touch, then we agreed to come and find you. About a year ago we found Jean, through her mind we could connect to other people's mind, into the Professor's mind. It took a long time but finally you showed up at the mansion. We were happier then hell to see that you were alive. We were going to go get you, but we were ambushed, the guys were killed, the Marauders is down to just you and me Oz, we have to avenge our friends."
"But how?"
"The only way we can, we have to go back to Wayside Manor, we have to face what we have been running from for so long we have to get inside your head and learn what they know."
"Degas, it is a physical pain to see the information-"
"Oz. who knows what all this could wind down to. The survival of mutants? Humans? The world?"
"But I don't want to remember."
Degas sighed. "I hate to do this Oz, but we have no other choice." She brought her hand up in a swiping motion, fire bellowed out of her palm and wrapped around Oz, the intense heat engulfed Oz, and she blacked out.
