Chapter 38: Why you don't mess with the X-Men.
As the door opened to his cell, the man inside of it smiled.
"Alright, your free to go."
Nodding, the man walked passed the guard, collecting his personal belongings and leaving.
"Now, all I have to do is collect my daughter, and I can get back to my normal routine."
At the Xavier Institute, several days later, the students were engaging in one of their favorite past times, blissfully unaware of what would soon happen.
"WATERFIGHT!!!" Screamed Kitty as she splashed Lance. Lance shook his head, and then launched a splash at Kitty, who phased through it, causing it to hit Bobby.
Amara glared over at the pool in general. "If you hit me, I will melt some personal belonging once I get out of the med lab."
The group continued splashing, although they made a conscious effort to keep the water away from Amara.
Finally, the fight settled down, as the combatants began to lazily float around in the water. Lance leaned against the side of the pool, as Kitty rested her arms and head on the side next to him.
"I don't think that anything this interesting has happened at a pool since that kid you used to baby-sit tried to clean your parents pool with a box of dishwasher detergent."
Amara giggled as she heard this, content to lay back and tan, now that she knew she wouldn't get soaked.
However, Amara was destined for the med lab anyways, as a blast of cold water hit her dead in the chest, causing everybody in the pool area to instantly turn to her, as she fell to the ground, her body shaking.
Wolverine came charging out, and, seeing Amara, picked her up and took her towards the med lab.
"Who did that?" Kyle asked, his voice colder than ice.
"It wasn't any of us, Kyle." Said Jean, "Everyone was shocked by that."
As the X-Men headed inside, Tabby headed towards where the burst had come from, wanting to know who had hurt her friend. Reaching the hose connection, she found a small flower attached to it. A flower that she recognized.
"A desert lily..." She said quietly. That's what my dad used to call me...
She shook her head, and headed inside, rushing to the med bay to check on her friend.
Over the course of the next week and a half, the institute was terrorized by a series of more and more serious attacks.
First, a pile of books fell on Bobby while he was searching for information for a report, knocking him out cold. At the scene, Tabby found a simple stone.
Dad and I used to make patterns with these stones. Tabby thought, chilled.Then, Kurt found his room ransacked when he returned from school. In the wreckage he found a rabbit's foot.
That's the rabbit's foot dad took from me... Tabby realized, as she stroked said foot later that day.
Rahne found herself most unpleasantly woken up by a wolf's skin, nailed into the wall.
That's the same way that they used to do it back home. Tabby thought, seeing the pattern.
Finally, the attacks cumulated in Kitty just barely avoiding a knife to the chest during a trip into town. As the other X-Men calmed the frantic girl, Tabby examined the paper that she had been handed by a strange man. It had a very specific pattern on it.
My old dream catcher, the one my dad destroyed.
Two days later, a man appeared at the door to the institute, the same one who had been released from jail just less than two weeks earlier.
"I would like to talk to my daughter."
"Not a chance, bub." Said Wolverine.
"Let him in please, Mr. Logan."
Wolverine growled, but complied, as Mr. Smith walked past him.
"Let me get my stuff together and say goodbye," Tabby said, her face resigned.
Mr. Smith nodded his head, his face clearly saying that he considered it a gift.
As Tabby walked into the library, she saw Jean, Rogue, Kitty and Amara sitting around the room talking.
"Hey Tabbs, what's up?" Asked Amara.
Tabby looked at the ground, her eyes tearing up slightly.
"Like, what's wrong?" Asked Kitty.
"Goodbye. My dad's making me leave. I don't think I'll be coming back." With that, Tabby turned and left the room, her face streaked with tears.
The X-girls stared after her for several seconds.
"Tha' was odd, evahn for Tabby." Said Rogue.
Jean's face was thoughtful, "Why would she listen to him this time? Last time he tried to make her leave, they had a huge argument." Making a decision, Jean closed her eyes and reached out telepathically. Probing Mr. Smith, figuring he wouldn't recognize the feeling of a telepath in his head, she began to dig...
"Oh no!" Said Jean.
"What's wrong?" Asked Amara.
Jean ignored the younger girl for a second, as she sent off a sequence of rapid-fire telepathic messages.
Mr. Smith threw Tabby's bag into the back of the car that he had driven to the institute, and then told Tabby to get in, kicking her when she didn't do so quickly enough to suit him. Climbing into the driver's seat, he headed for the gate of the institute. When he neared the gate, the car suddenly stopped moving.
"What the?" He asked, as he shifted it into its highest gear and began gunning it.
"Won't work." Said Tabby.
"SHUT UP!" he said, backhanding Tabby.
"Look underneath the car."
Opening the car door, he did so, only to discover that the ground was a good four feet below them.
As he was gaping at the fact that his car was suspended off the ground, he felt a massive hand wrap itself around his neck, and pull him out of the open car door. The car then settled back to the ground, and in the background, Lorna dropped to her knees.
As Mr. Smith watched, the massive fist wrapped around his fist encased itself in metal. Looking up the arm, he saw that the man on the other end of the fist, the iron giant known as Colossus, was far from happy.
"You are the one responsible for hurting my friends, comrade. I do not take kindly to people hurting my friends. You used us to make Tabby leave her friends. You are no father to her. Even though you may be her blood family, we are far more her family than you could ever hope to be. If you ever do such a thing as this again, I will personally break your arms and legs, comrade."
Colossus then grinned, a cold grin, as the rest of the X-Men and New Mutants appeared.
"I will then give you to each of the New Mutants, one by one, so that they may have their turn. For they look at Tabby as an older sister."
"Does he have to be in any presentable shape after we're done?" Asked Kyle with false sweetness, as the rest of the New Mutants nodded and began mentally cataloguing the ways to hurt Mr. Smith. Tabby's eyes misted up as she saw the other New Mutants nodding in accord with Kyle's statement, and as she heard other questions on what state he had to be in when they were done. Bobby's question of whether he still had to be a man got a few chuckles, and a shake of the head from Colossus, as both an answer and a sign of acquiescence
"Then I will give you to the older, more experienced, X-Men, who see her as everything from a close friend to 'one of the family.'"
The X-Men also began considering the many ways to hurt Mr. Smith, asking more creative questions on the condition he had to be in.
"I will then give you over to the Brotherhood, who consider
her a close friend as well."
The Brotherhood boys simply grinned, as Wanda charged a hex bolt.
"I will then allow Dr. McCoy a round. Dr. McCoy, for your information, is the one who is responsible for training the New Mutants, and thus knows more about them, and is closer to them."
Dr. McCoy growled from where he hung upside-down on a tree, just next to Colossus.
"I will then ask Kurt to walk you back to your car, which we will have put across the town. Of course, while he does that, I will have made certain that we neglect to keep an eye on Wolverine."
With that, Colossus put Tabby's father back in the car, and, while Blob held the front of it, put a fist through the engine block.
Pulling a gun out, he aimed it at the side of Tabby's head.
"Try and get out of the car, and I'll blow your brain out." Said Mr. Smith.
Tabby froze for a minute. Coming to a decision, she blew into her fist, and held the contents at her father's groin.
"Put the gun away, dad, or Bobby won't have to worry about neutering you, I'll just blow them right off."
Looking down at her hand, he saw a handful of boom-balls.
Wanda made a motion with her hand, and grinned.
"Tabby, get on out of the car. The chances of that bullet actually working are none."
Mr. Smith watched as Tabby grinned, and then got out of the car. Pulling the trigger, he found that, indeed, the bullet would not fire.
"I'll sue you all! I'll get her back yet."
"Actually, you would lose the case." Said Professor Xavier, as he reached the scene of the conflict. "As of a month ago, all the paperwork for Tabby to be removed from you custody was filed. It has now been approved. All we need is Tabby's approval, and she will legally become a ward of the Xavier Institute."
Tabby turned to look at him, her gaze questioning.
Xavier smiled. "You wouldn't be the first student who was a ward here. Scott and Jean are actually legally wards of the institute."
Tabby smiled. "YES!"
Xavier nodded, and Mr. Smith sputtered. He then made a foolish mistake, he grabbed Kyle, assuming that the blind boy would not be able to hurt him.
"Tabby, you come with me, or I break his neck."
Kyle chuckled. "Your hand positioning is all wrong for that." Was all he said, before he grabbed the man's left hand. With a deft movement of the wrist, he flipped Mr. Smith on his back, and placed the palm of his hand against his throat.
"If I move my weight to my right arm, your dead. Now get your ass off of these grounds before we get Sensei involved in this."
"I'm offended you didn't invite me to this party to begin with." Came the calm voice that could only belong to Sensei.
"I'm Sorry, Sensei," Said Jean, "I'd forgotten about you."
"No matter, I'm here now."
Colossus grinned, as he said, "Remember what I said earlier?"
Mr. Smith nodded carefully.
"Dr. McCoy and Sensei will be at the same time. Sensei may not be a mutant, but he can easily defeat you, comrade."
With that, Sensei picked up Mr. Smith, and carried him to the gate of the institute. Depositing him on his arse, he then spat on his head.
"Start walking." Was all he said, as he turned back to the institute.
Tabby, meanwhile, was tearing up at what her friends had done for her.
"Why?" was all she asked.
"Cause your one of us." Said Scott.
"And no X-Man walks alone." Said Kyle.
As the other's turned to him, he continued.
"It's a simple fact. How often has one of us jumped to the assistance or defense of another X-Man, even if it wasn't our fight? When has an X-Man ever had to walk down a road without the knowledge that the others would do anything they could to help? X-Men never walk alone, even if we have no one with us in body. In heart and soul, we are always together."
The others nodded, as Dr. McCoy said in an amazed tone. "The Sage proves himself worth his name once more."
