***
Disclaimer: I do not own the X-men or other related characters. I only own
Alexia Tambor, Luke Tambor, and Zydane Maylor (and any other Characters
related to them, that are not included in the X-men cast.if that makes any
sense.)
***
*.* is a thought
A/N not too much action in this chappie, but as my friend Pete says, it can't all be high-speed chase scenes.
Also, I'd like to thank Pete for editing this story for me, as well as suggesting little nuances that could happen in the plot and ways to develop the characters. Where would I be with out him?.Probably the State Hospital ^_^
On with the story. ***
It was almost four hours later when the two dirt bikes pulled up to the gate that led to the Mansion grounds. The painful blisters on Alexia's hands had opened and oozed and were beginning to crust over. The pain had been there so long, she had almost forgotten it, but when she peeled her right hand off the handle bar to punch in the code that opened the gate, she had a nasty reminder.
Luke had survived the long trip, though he was getting weaker by the minute from the pain and the effort of hanging onto Zydane. All Alexia could think about was getting her brother into the infirmary. Nothing else mattered to her.
"Kurt, what's the gate code?" she asked, her mind still slightly spinning from her violent use of power earlier in the day.
"Ach...I think it's four-eight-two-one-six," he answered.
Alexia hit the numbers on the panel and the door began to swing open. Alexia led Zydane up the drive way as fast as she could.
The other students had been out front, playing frisbee on the huge expanse of the lawn, but the game stopped in mid-throw when they spotted the strange vehicles.
Alexia parked her bike and ripped off her helmet, causing a sharp pain in her scalp. "Jean! Tell the Professor I need help, my brother needs medical attention!"
The red-haired girl holding the frisbee nodded and closed her eyes.
While Kurt and Zydane helped Luke off the bike, Alexia hurried up the stairs to open the door of the mansion. Before she could reach it, the door swung open to reveal a very unhappy Logan.
"And where have you been?" he snarled at her.
"Kurt and I went to visit Zydane and Luke and."
"And who told you you could go? You didn't tell anyone! Really smart, kid, what if something happened to you or Kurt, no one knew where you were. We couldn't even pick you up on Cerebro. What ever gave you..."
"LOGAN! Later! My brother got shot, and he's in bad shape," Alexia shouted, not really in the mood to be lectured.
Logan's face changed entirely. "What do you mean shot?"
"It's something you do with a gun," Zydane piped up. "You know, you eject a bullet at high speeds and watch it rip through something." He was practically carrying Luke up the stairs.
Logan stared at the wounded young man for a moment, and then turned to Kurt. "Elf, take him down to the infirmary. Hank'll be there soon."
Kurt nodded, took Luke from Zydane and disappeared with him in a cloud of sulfuric smoke. Zydane blinked in surprise and looked, slightly confused, over at Alexia. She decided that it would be better to deal with Logan instead of Zydane at the moment, since Logan was fuming again.
"Logan, seriously, can this please wait till later?" Alexia said quietly, barely able to hear herself over his voice.
Logan narrowed his eyes. "Sure. You're in trouble whether I yell at you or not," he told her, but he was quiet after that.
Alexia rolled her eyes and took Zydane's arm in her free hand and led him inside past Logan who was still glaring.
Professor Xavier was just coming around the corner in his wheelchair with Ororo following him. He did not look all that happy, but he seemed to be suppressing his habit of lecturing for the moment. "Your brother is in the infirmary, Alexia. Dr. McCoy says he will be fine, and that your cauterizing technique could have saved his life. Right now, Hank is stitching Luke up, so you cannot visit for a few hours. If you both would accompany me to my office, I would like to talk to you about what happened over the past few hours."
Alexia nodded, and motioned for Zydane to follow her and the Professor. They headed into the Professor's comfortably furnished office, and they sat down in two chairs across the desk from where Xavier positioned his wheelchair. Ororo brought the two young people glasses of water, and then left the room, closing the door behind her.
Alexia settled back into the chair. She was relieved to hear that Luke was going to be fine, but now dread was growing inside of her with the idea of having to retell of the horrors of the past twelve hours. Zydane was tense as well - she could see it by the way he looked around the room at anything but the professor.
"Alexia, you haven't introduced me to your friend here," Professor Xavier said after a few moments.
"Oh, yeah, heh, sorry," Alexia stuttered, surprised that he hadn't just launched into a stream of questions. "Professor Xavier, this is Zydane Maylor, my best friend. Zydane, this is the Professor."
The two men shook hands, and the tension in the room seemed to ease a little.
"Now, Alexia, I want you to tell me everything that happened while you were gone, starting from the moment you arrived in Chanceton until you returned here to the Institute. Mr. Maylor, you may jump in at anytime to add anything you see fit." The Professor then turned his eyes on Alexia and stared at her expectantly.
Alexia took a deep breath, and started to tell the story. It was easy at first, telling about getting to Chanceton, going to the garage to hang out while Zydane worked, almost getting hit by a car on the way to the Bungalow, trailing, the man on the road. It started to get difficult when she began to tell about their little burn-fest. The Professor had often told her that her power was not a toy and that it wasn't to be played with, but she had defied that teaching. She told him about the chase from the rock quarry, her nightmare, and seeing the man outside in the line of trees across the driveway, then the loss of the contact with the scouts, and the getting the younger kids to safety, and then the search for the scouts.
"Did you find any of them?" Xavier asked.
Alexia began to shake her head, but Zydane spoke up. "Yeah, I found one. Our scout at the quarry, David...they killed him. He was hidden in the brush..."
Alexia took a deep breath in. She hadn't really believed that Zydane had found a dead body. She suddenly felt very sick to her stomach. She cast an ill look at Zydane and he picked up on the story. "Then the people came back, and they cornered us in a cemetery, and they said they were after Alexia. They shot Luke to make her come with them, or they'd shoot me and Kurt too. She used her powers to get us out of there alive."
Hearing the story all over again was making Alexia feel slightly dizzy, and her stomach felt worse.
Professor Xavier's face turned into a frown. "What do you mean they were after Alexia?"
"That's what they said - they only wanted Alexia. They called her Mutant 777, like that was her title," Zydane explained, not sure what to tell him.
"And how did Alexia use her powers to keep them from following you?"
Zydane described the scene of the brilliant white light shooting from her hands, the car blowing up, and the men beside her incinerating. At the description of the men bursting into flame and writhing on the ground, Alexia couldn't control her body. In one last-ditch effort, she lunged at the near-by garbage can and vomited violently into it. Her stomach was empty, but her body still convulsed, and the sour taste swept through her mouth, but it wasn't enough to get her mind off of what Zydane was saying.
If he was right, she had killed almost a dozen men, and hadn't realized it until just now.
"Alex? Are you OK?" Zydane asked, alarmed by her sudden sickness.
"She's suffering a type of shock," Professor Xavier told him, wheeling his chair over to where Alexia was now kneeling beside the can, her convulsions subsiding. He noticed a strange shadow running down the back of Alexia's neck, almost as though it was the shadow of her braid, but it did not bend with the braid. "Alexia, what is on the back of your neck?" he asked, moving her hair. What he had thought was a shadow wasn't. Instead, it was a line of blood that was flowing from somewhere in her hair. "How did you get wounded, Alexia?"
The girl reached to the top of her head with a shaking hand and felt around, until she touched a spot that hurt so much it nearly made her vomit again. She pulled her hand away to find her fingertips covered in blood. "I don't know," she said, a bit shocked.
The Professor frowned. "I'm afraid I cannot give you your punishment at the moment, since you are suffering shock, as well as a head wound. I want you and Zydane to go down to the infirmary to get checked for any other injuries you may have sustained. Once you are done there, I want you to go straight to bed and sleep, understand?"
"Yes, Professor," Alexia said with a nod, and she got up and motioned Zydane to follow her.
----------------------------
"My, you certainly have a way of getting yourself into the thick of it, don't you Miss Alexia?" Dr. Hank McCoy asked as he examined Alexia's hands. She winced in pain as the large, blue-furred, gorilla-looking mutant applied disinfectant and then wrapped her hands with gauze and bandages.
"What do you mean by that, Dr. McCoy?" she asked as she shook her hands vigorously, trying to ease the pain. Sadly, due to Murphy's Law, the effort only accented the pain more.
"Well, you are quite possibly the only teenage girl I know who finds pleasure in reeking havoc amongst her fellow students. Such as the time you placed ants in Kitty's underwear drawer..." Hank trailed off, seeing that the memory of Alexia's home made ant farm breaking was doing nothing to cheer her up. "Let me look at your head now."
Alexia undid her braid the best she could without hurting her head too much. Unfortunately for her, even though Hank was a great doctor he didn't really have a subtle way of figuring out if something hurt. He basically felt around until the patient either fainted or punched him from the pain.
"OW! Stop it Hank!" Alexia squealed as his hairy fingers found their way to the bloody spot on her scalp. She squirmed away from him and placed a hand gingerly over her matted and snarled hair to protect it from further assault.
Hank stopped and frowned at the teenager. Xavier had told him that she was suffering from a form of shock and he was starting to agree. Her face was pale, and her hands were shaking. Dark circles were under her eyes, but Hank couldn't tell if that was due to stress or just the lack of sleep the teen tended to suffer from.
"I'm going to give you a pain killer, Alexia. That should help your hands."
Alexia nodded, and took the pill he handed her without protest. He had knowingly neglected to tell her that the pills were not only painkillers but would also knock her out. A few minutes after taking the pills, her eyelids began to droop and she laid down on the table, falling fast asleep.
Once Alexia was asleep, Hank had Ororo help him clean and dry her bloodied, matted hair, and he then wrapped her head around with a bandage.
"Her friend, Zydane is sitting out in the hall waiting to be checked, Hank," Ororo told him once he was done attending to Alexia.
Hank nodded. "Bring him in."
A few minutes later, a tall young man entered the infirmary. Hank remembered seeing him in a picture Alexia had showed him of her friends. His short blond hair looked dirty and was in need of a comb.
"You are Zydane Maylor, I presume?" Hank asked him, motioning for the boy to sit on an examining table.
Zydane nodded and sat, his eyes wide at seeing a person that was even more furry than Kurt. In fact, this person wasn't even furry - he was hairy! And he looked like a gorilla.
"I am Dr. Hank McCoy," the gorilla man was saying. "Tell me, do you feel any pain anywhere?"
Zydane shook his head. "I didn't get hurt or anything..." he trailed off as he noticed Alexia lying motionless on a near by table. "What's wrong with Alex?" he demanded, his face going white.
"Don't worry," Hank told Zydane. "I gave her a sedative so that she could rest, and so that we could tend to the gash on the top of her head without her throwing a fit."
"How did she get a gash on her head?" Zydane asked as Hank examined his eyes.
"I thought you might have some insight in the matter, actually. I found a small piece of metal embedded in the side of her gash. Perhaps she hit her head on a metal shelf?"
"No. She probably got grazed with a piece of shrapnel or something when she was using her powers."
Hank raised his eyebrows. "I see. I never knew that her abilities were that powerful."
Zydane shrugged. "Neither did she, I don't think. Am I gonna live?" he asked as Hank filled out a form.
"Yes, you seem fine. No physical damage, nor do you have a concussion. You are free to go...oh, and can you take Alexia to her room? She should not sleep down here, it would be most beneficial for her state of mind for her to wake up in her room," Hank requested, not looking up from his chart.
"Sure," Zydane agreed, getting up.
He walked over to the other exam table and gently lifted Alexia's still form off it. "Come on, 'Lex. Let's get you somewhere warm, OK?" he murmured in her ear as he cradled her in his arms and carried her out of the infirmary.
It boggled Zydane's mind how light Alexia was, even though she was seventeen. She didn't look light, since her clothes were so big on her they gave the impression that she was bigger than she really was. He remembered carrying her like this a few years back, when they were dating. She had fallen asleep on his mother's couch, so he had carried her over to her house next door instead of wake her up. Back then, Zydane would have given anything to carry Alexia like this. Now it scared him that she was so distressed that a sedative was needed so someone could help her.
*Alas, my love,* Zydane thought as he walked down the hall, *we have both changed, and perhaps that is not as good as I once thought it would be.*
*.* is a thought
A/N not too much action in this chappie, but as my friend Pete says, it can't all be high-speed chase scenes.
Also, I'd like to thank Pete for editing this story for me, as well as suggesting little nuances that could happen in the plot and ways to develop the characters. Where would I be with out him?.Probably the State Hospital ^_^
On with the story. ***
It was almost four hours later when the two dirt bikes pulled up to the gate that led to the Mansion grounds. The painful blisters on Alexia's hands had opened and oozed and were beginning to crust over. The pain had been there so long, she had almost forgotten it, but when she peeled her right hand off the handle bar to punch in the code that opened the gate, she had a nasty reminder.
Luke had survived the long trip, though he was getting weaker by the minute from the pain and the effort of hanging onto Zydane. All Alexia could think about was getting her brother into the infirmary. Nothing else mattered to her.
"Kurt, what's the gate code?" she asked, her mind still slightly spinning from her violent use of power earlier in the day.
"Ach...I think it's four-eight-two-one-six," he answered.
Alexia hit the numbers on the panel and the door began to swing open. Alexia led Zydane up the drive way as fast as she could.
The other students had been out front, playing frisbee on the huge expanse of the lawn, but the game stopped in mid-throw when they spotted the strange vehicles.
Alexia parked her bike and ripped off her helmet, causing a sharp pain in her scalp. "Jean! Tell the Professor I need help, my brother needs medical attention!"
The red-haired girl holding the frisbee nodded and closed her eyes.
While Kurt and Zydane helped Luke off the bike, Alexia hurried up the stairs to open the door of the mansion. Before she could reach it, the door swung open to reveal a very unhappy Logan.
"And where have you been?" he snarled at her.
"Kurt and I went to visit Zydane and Luke and."
"And who told you you could go? You didn't tell anyone! Really smart, kid, what if something happened to you or Kurt, no one knew where you were. We couldn't even pick you up on Cerebro. What ever gave you..."
"LOGAN! Later! My brother got shot, and he's in bad shape," Alexia shouted, not really in the mood to be lectured.
Logan's face changed entirely. "What do you mean shot?"
"It's something you do with a gun," Zydane piped up. "You know, you eject a bullet at high speeds and watch it rip through something." He was practically carrying Luke up the stairs.
Logan stared at the wounded young man for a moment, and then turned to Kurt. "Elf, take him down to the infirmary. Hank'll be there soon."
Kurt nodded, took Luke from Zydane and disappeared with him in a cloud of sulfuric smoke. Zydane blinked in surprise and looked, slightly confused, over at Alexia. She decided that it would be better to deal with Logan instead of Zydane at the moment, since Logan was fuming again.
"Logan, seriously, can this please wait till later?" Alexia said quietly, barely able to hear herself over his voice.
Logan narrowed his eyes. "Sure. You're in trouble whether I yell at you or not," he told her, but he was quiet after that.
Alexia rolled her eyes and took Zydane's arm in her free hand and led him inside past Logan who was still glaring.
Professor Xavier was just coming around the corner in his wheelchair with Ororo following him. He did not look all that happy, but he seemed to be suppressing his habit of lecturing for the moment. "Your brother is in the infirmary, Alexia. Dr. McCoy says he will be fine, and that your cauterizing technique could have saved his life. Right now, Hank is stitching Luke up, so you cannot visit for a few hours. If you both would accompany me to my office, I would like to talk to you about what happened over the past few hours."
Alexia nodded, and motioned for Zydane to follow her and the Professor. They headed into the Professor's comfortably furnished office, and they sat down in two chairs across the desk from where Xavier positioned his wheelchair. Ororo brought the two young people glasses of water, and then left the room, closing the door behind her.
Alexia settled back into the chair. She was relieved to hear that Luke was going to be fine, but now dread was growing inside of her with the idea of having to retell of the horrors of the past twelve hours. Zydane was tense as well - she could see it by the way he looked around the room at anything but the professor.
"Alexia, you haven't introduced me to your friend here," Professor Xavier said after a few moments.
"Oh, yeah, heh, sorry," Alexia stuttered, surprised that he hadn't just launched into a stream of questions. "Professor Xavier, this is Zydane Maylor, my best friend. Zydane, this is the Professor."
The two men shook hands, and the tension in the room seemed to ease a little.
"Now, Alexia, I want you to tell me everything that happened while you were gone, starting from the moment you arrived in Chanceton until you returned here to the Institute. Mr. Maylor, you may jump in at anytime to add anything you see fit." The Professor then turned his eyes on Alexia and stared at her expectantly.
Alexia took a deep breath, and started to tell the story. It was easy at first, telling about getting to Chanceton, going to the garage to hang out while Zydane worked, almost getting hit by a car on the way to the Bungalow, trailing, the man on the road. It started to get difficult when she began to tell about their little burn-fest. The Professor had often told her that her power was not a toy and that it wasn't to be played with, but she had defied that teaching. She told him about the chase from the rock quarry, her nightmare, and seeing the man outside in the line of trees across the driveway, then the loss of the contact with the scouts, and the getting the younger kids to safety, and then the search for the scouts.
"Did you find any of them?" Xavier asked.
Alexia began to shake her head, but Zydane spoke up. "Yeah, I found one. Our scout at the quarry, David...they killed him. He was hidden in the brush..."
Alexia took a deep breath in. She hadn't really believed that Zydane had found a dead body. She suddenly felt very sick to her stomach. She cast an ill look at Zydane and he picked up on the story. "Then the people came back, and they cornered us in a cemetery, and they said they were after Alexia. They shot Luke to make her come with them, or they'd shoot me and Kurt too. She used her powers to get us out of there alive."
Hearing the story all over again was making Alexia feel slightly dizzy, and her stomach felt worse.
Professor Xavier's face turned into a frown. "What do you mean they were after Alexia?"
"That's what they said - they only wanted Alexia. They called her Mutant 777, like that was her title," Zydane explained, not sure what to tell him.
"And how did Alexia use her powers to keep them from following you?"
Zydane described the scene of the brilliant white light shooting from her hands, the car blowing up, and the men beside her incinerating. At the description of the men bursting into flame and writhing on the ground, Alexia couldn't control her body. In one last-ditch effort, she lunged at the near-by garbage can and vomited violently into it. Her stomach was empty, but her body still convulsed, and the sour taste swept through her mouth, but it wasn't enough to get her mind off of what Zydane was saying.
If he was right, she had killed almost a dozen men, and hadn't realized it until just now.
"Alex? Are you OK?" Zydane asked, alarmed by her sudden sickness.
"She's suffering a type of shock," Professor Xavier told him, wheeling his chair over to where Alexia was now kneeling beside the can, her convulsions subsiding. He noticed a strange shadow running down the back of Alexia's neck, almost as though it was the shadow of her braid, but it did not bend with the braid. "Alexia, what is on the back of your neck?" he asked, moving her hair. What he had thought was a shadow wasn't. Instead, it was a line of blood that was flowing from somewhere in her hair. "How did you get wounded, Alexia?"
The girl reached to the top of her head with a shaking hand and felt around, until she touched a spot that hurt so much it nearly made her vomit again. She pulled her hand away to find her fingertips covered in blood. "I don't know," she said, a bit shocked.
The Professor frowned. "I'm afraid I cannot give you your punishment at the moment, since you are suffering shock, as well as a head wound. I want you and Zydane to go down to the infirmary to get checked for any other injuries you may have sustained. Once you are done there, I want you to go straight to bed and sleep, understand?"
"Yes, Professor," Alexia said with a nod, and she got up and motioned Zydane to follow her.
----------------------------
"My, you certainly have a way of getting yourself into the thick of it, don't you Miss Alexia?" Dr. Hank McCoy asked as he examined Alexia's hands. She winced in pain as the large, blue-furred, gorilla-looking mutant applied disinfectant and then wrapped her hands with gauze and bandages.
"What do you mean by that, Dr. McCoy?" she asked as she shook her hands vigorously, trying to ease the pain. Sadly, due to Murphy's Law, the effort only accented the pain more.
"Well, you are quite possibly the only teenage girl I know who finds pleasure in reeking havoc amongst her fellow students. Such as the time you placed ants in Kitty's underwear drawer..." Hank trailed off, seeing that the memory of Alexia's home made ant farm breaking was doing nothing to cheer her up. "Let me look at your head now."
Alexia undid her braid the best she could without hurting her head too much. Unfortunately for her, even though Hank was a great doctor he didn't really have a subtle way of figuring out if something hurt. He basically felt around until the patient either fainted or punched him from the pain.
"OW! Stop it Hank!" Alexia squealed as his hairy fingers found their way to the bloody spot on her scalp. She squirmed away from him and placed a hand gingerly over her matted and snarled hair to protect it from further assault.
Hank stopped and frowned at the teenager. Xavier had told him that she was suffering from a form of shock and he was starting to agree. Her face was pale, and her hands were shaking. Dark circles were under her eyes, but Hank couldn't tell if that was due to stress or just the lack of sleep the teen tended to suffer from.
"I'm going to give you a pain killer, Alexia. That should help your hands."
Alexia nodded, and took the pill he handed her without protest. He had knowingly neglected to tell her that the pills were not only painkillers but would also knock her out. A few minutes after taking the pills, her eyelids began to droop and she laid down on the table, falling fast asleep.
Once Alexia was asleep, Hank had Ororo help him clean and dry her bloodied, matted hair, and he then wrapped her head around with a bandage.
"Her friend, Zydane is sitting out in the hall waiting to be checked, Hank," Ororo told him once he was done attending to Alexia.
Hank nodded. "Bring him in."
A few minutes later, a tall young man entered the infirmary. Hank remembered seeing him in a picture Alexia had showed him of her friends. His short blond hair looked dirty and was in need of a comb.
"You are Zydane Maylor, I presume?" Hank asked him, motioning for the boy to sit on an examining table.
Zydane nodded and sat, his eyes wide at seeing a person that was even more furry than Kurt. In fact, this person wasn't even furry - he was hairy! And he looked like a gorilla.
"I am Dr. Hank McCoy," the gorilla man was saying. "Tell me, do you feel any pain anywhere?"
Zydane shook his head. "I didn't get hurt or anything..." he trailed off as he noticed Alexia lying motionless on a near by table. "What's wrong with Alex?" he demanded, his face going white.
"Don't worry," Hank told Zydane. "I gave her a sedative so that she could rest, and so that we could tend to the gash on the top of her head without her throwing a fit."
"How did she get a gash on her head?" Zydane asked as Hank examined his eyes.
"I thought you might have some insight in the matter, actually. I found a small piece of metal embedded in the side of her gash. Perhaps she hit her head on a metal shelf?"
"No. She probably got grazed with a piece of shrapnel or something when she was using her powers."
Hank raised his eyebrows. "I see. I never knew that her abilities were that powerful."
Zydane shrugged. "Neither did she, I don't think. Am I gonna live?" he asked as Hank filled out a form.
"Yes, you seem fine. No physical damage, nor do you have a concussion. You are free to go...oh, and can you take Alexia to her room? She should not sleep down here, it would be most beneficial for her state of mind for her to wake up in her room," Hank requested, not looking up from his chart.
"Sure," Zydane agreed, getting up.
He walked over to the other exam table and gently lifted Alexia's still form off it. "Come on, 'Lex. Let's get you somewhere warm, OK?" he murmured in her ear as he cradled her in his arms and carried her out of the infirmary.
It boggled Zydane's mind how light Alexia was, even though she was seventeen. She didn't look light, since her clothes were so big on her they gave the impression that she was bigger than she really was. He remembered carrying her like this a few years back, when they were dating. She had fallen asleep on his mother's couch, so he had carried her over to her house next door instead of wake her up. Back then, Zydane would have given anything to carry Alexia like this. Now it scared him that she was so distressed that a sedative was needed so someone could help her.
*Alas, my love,* Zydane thought as he walked down the hall, *we have both changed, and perhaps that is not as good as I once thought it would be.*