Woo! Guess who's back-back again-I am back-tell a friend! Right. So.
I got reviews!! Yay! *Dances around* And now, I respond:
MetaChi: I had fun! Oh, what fun I had! Such fun fun it was! I almost got to meet Jack Horner! Almost! I was in his museum, looking at fossils excavated from his Birthday site and everything. I was so DAMN close! ^.^ Heh heh. I think Lupin's my fav as well…but still. I miss him! *Sobs* ^.^ Go Angry Beavers, Rocko, and HP! A big bladed Bo! Woot!
C-Chan10: You-you got to walk past Alessandro Nivola?! O.O He is so cute!! I just watched that movie last night! *Sigh* Raptors. How I love thee. It was a little slow at times, yes, but I did like it. Thestrals rock! You do? Yay!
Tewks: Thanks for reviewing. I like reviews.
Retneprac: The reason I've only got 14 posted is because I don't want to post them all at once. It would kill a few of my cliffhangers. They'll be coming fast now, though, because I have finished!
Okay. Story. Here y'all go:
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Janella was still reading in her room when she felt it, a searing pain in her head, neck, and shoulders. Harry Potter fell from her hands, bouncing on the bed and sliding to the floor with a hollow thunk as she clamped her hands to her head. She lashed out with wings and tail to drive off her attacker-and realized that the pain was not hers. She had leapt to her feet, thrown open her window and clambered half way out of it by the time her conscious brain connected the phantom pain to her bond with Kurt. She was gliding over the mansion's grounds when she realized that she probably should have told someone what she was doing, and she was entering the low cloud cover when she realized that she didn't even know where Kurt was, just that something was wrong.
She locked her wings against the breeze, thanking any deity that cared to listen that it was nighttime already, and winced as the pain in her shoulder and wing took her breath half away. Mr. McCoy and the Professor had been right. She was not ready to fly yet. But that was unimportant; she had to find Kurt. That pain had not been trivial, and she was only feeling a portion of it. She gritted her teeth and powered on, angling wings and body to best catch the wind and dipping below the clouds. She was unlikely to be seen against the clouds unless a spotlight was directed against her. She began a wide spiral over the city, the cool air helping to clear her head of the haze the pain had induced.
As a series of pricks and scrapes made themselves known on her back and legs, she began to realize how hopelessly ill-prepared she was. She didn't even know where Kurt and the others were! Were they at the movies? Driving home? Maybe they'd stopped somewhere to eat! She didn't know! The blood bond wasn't a damn homing beacon.
When she noticed a blossom of fire along one of the small back roads leading to the mansion, and figured that was the best place to go. She folded her wings and dove, falling like a rock (on a slant) towards the spot of flickering light. As she drew closer, she could see with a shock it was one of the many vehicles from the mansion, it's front driver's side crushed in and the whole thing flipped in a ditch and on fire.
Trees lined one side of the road, low grassy hills the other. Selecting the hills as a more preferable landing place, she slammed her wings open and attempted to land normally. She was unable to extend her injured wing fully, though, and flopped the landing, crashing down the hill. She managed to sit upright and slid the last few feet into a ravine, only to come face to face with a bristling Iceman and a fired-up Magma. She held up her hands defensively.
"Don't shoot!" she cried. "It's me, Janella!"
"Janella?" That was Kitty. "Like, how'd you get here so fast? Rahne just called for help, like, a minute ago!" She was crouching in the grass next to a large and suspiciously blue lump, and beyond her was Rahne, putting something, presumably a cell phone, into her pocket. Janella heaved herself to her feet, her face a mask of impassiveness to disguise the pain that movement caused.
"What happened?" she asked urgently, managing not to stumble over the poorly illuminated ground to Kitty and drop into a crouch beside her.
"There was, like, a squirrel in the road," she explained tersely. "Kurt was driving, and he swerved to, like, avoid it, and we hit a telephone pole."
"Kitty was sitting next to me and she grabbed me and phased us out before he hit the pole," Amara hurried to add. "And then Rahne and Bobby were knocked out when the car rebounded, but Kurt-"
"He hit the pole head-on, and right on the driver's side." Bobby took over now. "He slammed into the windshield, and it knocked him out, and then the entire thing flipped into this ditch."
"It didn't, like, catch on fire, though, until I had managed to, like, get him out," Kitty finished. As they had been talking, Janella had been surveying the situation, her eyes already, almost unconsciously, tuned for night vision. Her training kicked in now, both that she had received with the X-Men and the earlier training provided by her stepmother ZaiFae; Invader training. Of course, she had not planned for either of her children to become Invaders, but having gone through the training herself, the tall Irken knew how practical it could be.
Its practicality was showing itself now. One of the first things instilled in her was never let an unconscious person fall asleep. Ever. Kurt was definitely unconscious, and if the blood covering his head and shoulders was any indication, he had head trauma, which meant it was dangerous to move him or even try to wake him up. She reached down and gently touched his forehead, before snapping to her feet.
"Does anyone have any water?!"
"What?"
"Water," she said impatiently. "A liquid. Any liquid! We need to wake him up without moving him!"
"I thought I saw a…" Rahne started.
"Go get it!" Janella snapped, somewhat tersely, and Rahne obediently darted up the hill. She rounded on Amara and Bobby. "Is there any way you two can work together to melt some more water or something?" Janella asked. "I have a feeling that whatever Rahne brings it won't be enough…" Sure enough, she returned a moment later with a partially full, partially crushed plastic water bottle. She tossed it to Janella, who, working on instinct alone now, reached up and caught it, pulling off the cap and hesitantly dribbling the water over Kurt's face and neck. It didn't do much, but by then Bobby had created one huge ball of ice between his hands, and Amara had lit up hers. She positioned them on either side of him, with Amara moving her hands closer or farther to the ice ball to vary how fast it melted, and Bobby continuing to replenish the ice so the melted water remained relatively cold. Janella crouched at Kurt's head, cleaning the blood off of him methodically and hoping the stimulation would bring him around faster.
She periodically checked his pulse, and each time she did, it felt slower. Of course, it could just be that time itself was slowing around them, but she didn't believe that, didn't hope that. She could still feel his pain resounding through her, but gritted her teeth and ignored it, as the world narrowed to the drip of the water and the working of her fingers over his fur.
"A little closer now, Amara," she murmured, and the younger girl obligingly thrust her hands closer to the ball of ice. The drip of melted water became a steady stream, and Janella was able to brush away the last of the dried blood, but was alarmed to see more seeping out from under his hairline. With out thinking, she stripped off her t-shirt and shredded it, folding several of the strips into a pad, which she pressed to his head at the point of the bleeding. As the pressure was applied, her heart leapt to see his eyelids flutter weakly open. Kitty moved in to continue applying pressure, and Bobby and Amara scrambled back. She put her hand gently on his shoulders, and he turned his head a fraction of an inch to see her better. She winced at the fresh, echoed waves of pain that that injudicious movement caused swept through her. She grimaced, momentarily dizzied, but pushed the feeling away, as she had been the low burning sensation in her wing. She reached down and took Kurt's hand in hers, squeezing it slightly. The nerves up and down both of his arms were on fire, and as a result so were hers, but she knew the pain would help keep him from becoming unconscious again.
Rahne scrambled up and over the hill to the sound of brakes screeching. She had put herself on lookout so that the X-Men who responded to her call could find them (as if they could miss the flaming wreck of the vehicle).
"They're here!" she called out over the sounds of doors opening and closing, as Mr. McCoy, Ororo, Logan, Jean, and Scott surged up and over the hill. The older people pushed her and the other four younger ones out of the way, and she jarred her wing on landing. This small additional pain cracked the barrier that she had put up to hold back their shared pains while she worked, and it overwhelmed her like a black, roiling tide. She was unconscious before she even got a chance to see how Kurt was.
"Someone get her in the van," Logan snapped tersely of the prone young girl behind him as he and the other full adults worked on preparing the elf for transport back to Mansion. It already did not look good for him, and the added collapse of Short Stack was not helping in any way. Rahne and Amara wrestled the collapsible stretcher Hank had brought up over the hill, and rolled it down beside Kurt. Jean, hands on her temples in concentration, slowly lifted his prone body off the ground and onto it.
Logan had to admit, when he, Ororo, and Hank answered the emergency call from Rahne, he had not been pleased to find that Jean and Scott had volunteered themselves for the rescue mission, but he was grateful now that they had come. Jean had been able to block the elf's pain and ease him back into unconsciousness, a safe one this time, with her telepathy, and Scott was doing a good job of calming the ones who had been in the crash and extracting the full story.
Logan looked around. Everything seemed to be under control. Ororo and Hank were bringing Kurt back over the low hill to the van, Jean following. Scott was herding the other four victims of the crash over to his sports car. The fire department had been called to deal with the wreck, and other than Kurt, there were no serious injuries. Which left the question of Janella. Actually, it left several questions.
Why was she out here in the first place, when she was so obviously restricted to the mansion? How had she known what had happened before everyone else, as she must have to get there just as the emergency call was being placed? How had she known what to do so well? Why had she collapsed when they arrived? Why wasn't she wearing a shirt? Actually, that last one had an answer. Someone had shredded something to stop the elf's bleeding, and the several loose strips of fabric they had found were the same color as the shirt she had had on early today. But the other questions…he wasn't so sure, and she certainly wasn't in ay condition to answer them now. He sighed and stooped to pick her up.
It wasn't as if the girl's presence, no matter how mysterious, wasn't a blessing. According to Kitty, Kurt would have died if she hadn't shown up, because, while they all had hypothetical training in dealing with these sorts of things, none of them had ever really had the opportunity to apply it. Her getting him back from unconsciousness had been brilliant. He carried her up and over the hill, and released her into the competent arms of Ororo, heading around to the front of the van and getting into the driver's seat. This was shaping up to be one hell of a night!
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This was one damn hard chapter to write, and I have no idea why. It just was. Stupid chapter.
Trivia fact: Before I wrote this, I had a different Chapter 15 in the works, and it was almost completely finished. Then I decided I didn't like the direction it was going in, scrapped it, and wrote this, which is infinitely better, though it didn't come out quite as well as I had hoped.
Interesting little POV change at the end there, but I had some stuff I wanted to get said, which I couldn't do from Mythos' POV if she was unconscious! So I did it from Logan's. Don't ask why I picked him, though, I just did.
A little more sappiness there, but that's okay. I like it.
As I said above, this story is finished with eighteen chapters, and my longest so far! Go me! Anyway, I'll be updating soon, so…
Disclaimer: I've said it before and I'll say it again: I don't own X-Men: Evo. I am making no money off of this fic. My only profit is a swelling of my sense of self-worth when people review. Thank you.