Two mornings later, Jean and Hank found themselves in the kitchen
fixing breakfast for the household. It gave them a perfect opportunity to
compare notes, Jean thought. The big blue guy had been holed up in his lab
running test after test on various things. Her own efforts had been
directed toward contacting the Professor and the other adults of the
Institute and monitoring Pietro's health. The kid was just worn out.
Jean really, really hoped Mr. McCoy was having more luck than she was.
"All right," the Beast growled, flipping the pancakes. "Logan is on his way back, you said."
"Yeah," she said as she rummaged for the syrup.
"Ororo?"
"Africa somewhere. I can't get a hold of her at all." Aha! There it was. Almost out, though. We need to go shopping soon.
"Hmm. Scott's still in Hawaii?"
Jean put the syrup on the table and started setting out plates. "Uh- huh. He can't get his tickets changed, either."
Mr. McCoy sighed and put a platter of pancakes on the table. Wiping his big hands on a towel, he leaned on the back of a chair.
"So it's pretty much up to the few of us and whatever help we can round up from in town," he said with a rumbling sigh.
"I think so," she responded without much enthusiasm. "I'm going over to the Brotherhood house this afternoon and see if any of those guys are around. We might need their help."
"Morning," Bobby yawned as he shuffled in.
"Good morning, young Mr. Drake," Beast said, checking his bacon.
"Hi, Bobby," Jean said. "Any luck on contacting Professor X?"
The younger boy sighed. Jean didn't like the sound of that.
"Tried everything. Communicators (both handheld and over the Blackbird's comlink), e-mail, instant messaging, cel phone," Bobby ticked off on his fingers, "land telephone, text messaging, and thinking really loud in his direction."
Instant Messaging? She'd forgotten that Forge (who had taken to the Internet like a duck to water) had set up an account for the Professor. 'ChromeDome1963.'
"Darn it," she muttered. Well, the Professor had been training them for years to tackle situations that came up in his absence. Even he couldn't be everywhere at once. Still, Scott had been groomed for the leadership role - not her. The thought of trying to handle this mystery wasn't a pleasant one.
Bobby flopped into a seat and started filling his plate as Jean paced.
"You can't just, you know," he waved a hand around in what she supposed was meant to be a telepathic gesture, "do your thing?"
"It doesn't work like that, Bobby," she told him. "There's a limit to my range. HE might be able to talk to us over half a continent, but I'm just not that good yet."
"Mm," the boy said around a mouthful of food. "What's he doing in Denver anyway?"
"Keeping an eye on an anti-mutant rally," Mr. McCoy said, sitting at the head of the table. "And don't talk with your mouth full."
A muffled, girlish shriek echoed through the walls into the kitchen, causing the three to stop and exchange a look.
[Bamf!]
Kurt appeared in one corner of the kitchen, clutching a towel around himself and dripping soap and bubbles all over the tiles. His body shampoo, Jean noticed, smelled like lavender.
"Verlassen Sie hier![1]" the skinny blue devil shouted. He flicked a two-fingered hand across his eyes and blinked a couple times, apparently noticing where he'd teleported to for the first time. "Oh. Good morning," he said, looking down at his feet and turning noticably darker under his fur.
"Problem, Kurt?" Mr. McCoy asked gently.
Before he could answer, Kitty stalked into the room and marched over to Kurt.
Poking him in the chest with a hairbrush she said in a flat voice, "You forgot this," and walked back out. Everyone stared at Kitty's retreating back. After a moment or two of bewildered silence, Jean cleared her throat.
Kurt looked up from the hairbrush he was holding. "Ja?"
"You're dripping all over the floor," she told him.
"Ach, sorry."
[Bamf!]
Bobby snickered. "Going to fix the shower in the girl's bathroom anytime soon, Mr. McCoy?"
"It's not high on my to-do list at the moment," came the reply. "But I think I might have to reevaluate that."
The three of them ate quietly for a few minutes. Kurt and Kitty wandered in a half-hour later, apparently no longer talking to one another. Jean winced mentally. Great way to spend a vacation. Babysitting a pair of teenagers who wanted to feud. It didn't last long.
"Pass the butter, bitte," Kurt said to Bobby. Kitty immediately took the container and moved it out of reach. This led to bickering. The bickering led to raised voices. Minutes later, Kurt and Kitty were shouting at each other across the table. Kitty's voice was reaching an octave that rivaled even the most vigorous soprano and Kurt was slinging German invective at machine-gun rapidity.
Jean exchanged a look with Mr. McCoy, who rolled his eyes.
"Damn, and I thought our house had issues."
"...und nächstes Mal wenn Sie eine Dusche wünschen, können Sie wie jeder sonst warten, KÖNIGIN KATSCHEN![2]"
Kurt waited for a response, then flicked his eyes toward the door, where Pietro was slumped against the frame. The white-haired teen was somewhat paler than usual, Jean saw, but at least he was awake and standing. Sort of, anyway.
Pietro staggered slightly on his way to the table and threw himself into a chair.
"Is that my t-shirt?" Kurt asked her. She nodded. Kurt was the closest in size to Pietro and so she'd grabbed a shirt at random out of his laundry basket. 'Just another fuzzy bum' with a crude drawing of a hobo under the text. Perhaps that particular one might have been a mistake. Why did the little German have to order his shirts from a specialty shop, anyway?
"It fits me pretty well, furrball" Pietro said with a small smirk.
"You're velcome."
Mr. McCoy tapped a spoon on his glass of orange juice, getting their attention.
"Now then," said Hank. "Since we're all here and more or less awake, I think you should know what I've found out in the way of testing."
Everyone else nodded, interested. He smiled inwardly. This was just like teaching a real class, sometimes. Reaching under the table, he pulled out a plastic bag and tossed it onto the table where it landed with a juicy squelch.
Bobby leaned in to get a better look at it. "What is that?"
"That," Hank said as he arranged the bag so everyone could get a look, "is the shirt Pietro was wearing two nights ago. The, ah, blood is still a bit wet," he added.
Kitty pushed her plate back, looking a bit green.
"Now, as I suspected, you" he pointed at the speedster, who was nibbling on a biscuit, "were coated with far, far more blood than could have been expected, given the wound you sustained."
Kitty spluttered, spraying droplets of orange juice all over herself.
"I've done repeated testing and have come to the conclusion that at least two mutants - notice I didn't say just people, but mutants - bled on you at some point. My guess would have to be that you were fighting underground at the time, probably in a military installation located somewhere Rockies, during the night. One of the mutants was hurt fairly badly, possibly even killed. All three of you were drugged at the time, by something that either inhibits the X-gene or suppresses it to the point where it's too feeble to generate your unique powers." Hank paused, warming to his subject. Research was only his second love, but teaching like this was fun! "I'd have to guess an Air Force base or possibly a civilian airport, but in either case, the aircraft you were attempting to escape on exploded while you were still several hundred feet away from it."
The silence was profound, Hank noted.
"How...?" Kurt said in an awed voice. Hank waved him to silence.
"Well?" the big blue man asked Pietro.
The boy was visibly shaken. "Right in one. How could you figure all that out?"
Ah. Hank decided he had to remember to explain things to these kids. They just didn't have the lab experience to follow his train of logic.
"Well," he started, "first off, there are three different blood types on this thing." He gestured at the shirt. "Incidentally, were you aware you're anemic? Anyway, there's a fair amount of deep red clay ground into this - that's not usually found aboveground in most places. In fact, it's fairly common under the plains just east of the Rocky Mountains. There's a couple threads of olive green cotton stuck to it in a few places. Most military on the continent use that color uniform for some reason." Jean nodded, apparently starting to understand. The rest of them were still looking blank. "One of the blood types shows higher nitrogen content than the rest, which is indicative of heart blood. Heart wounds, of course, are usually fatal whatever the circumstances. All three blood types showed signs of Naproxin, a common sedative. I imagine you probably still feel a little 'drunk,' as it were. That particular medicine is fairly potent. It was also mixed with some sort of inhibitor that affects the X-gene. I haven't done much study with that, but it seems advanced." Bobby was nodding, along with Kurt. Kitty, he noticed, was still a little green around the edges. "The airport thing was actually fairly easy. I'm surprised I didn't catch it at first, but there's a fair amount of jet fuel droplets spread over the back of this. As well as a number of burns caused by the same fuel."
Hank sat down, slipping the bag off the table with a squish.
Pietro stood up and walked over to the coffee machine, pouring himself a cup of double French roast. Sitting back down, he took a sip. Then he nodded, a quick jerk of his head.
"He's right. About all of it." And then he launched into his own narrative.
Pietro drew a ragged breath. This wasn't going to be pleasant for any of them. Heck, he was drinking coffee in the headquarters of his archenemies...well, maybe not. Hell, he didn't know. Shaking off that momentary twinge of guilt over what he was about to do, he looked around the table. Oh well, maybe the X-Geeks would help him out. Who knows, perhaps he could just put all this crap behind him for once and everything would turn out all right.
"About two weeks ago, Mystique came to the house with a message from my father. The old bastard wanted the Brotherhood to do a job on an airstrip outside Denver. It sounded simple, and all of us were itching to get out of the house for a while. Lance especially. Guess he felt some fresh mountain air might do him some good."
He looked around the table, waving off the curious looks before they sidetracked his tale.
"So the next morning a rental van is waiting for us in the drive. The five of us took off for the Wild West. Mystique had other business to attend to and said she would meet us there. Heh. Should have seen her for what she is...well, anyway, four days later, there we were in Denver. Cool place, but it really needs more air, you know? Too easy to get winded up there when you run. Mile-High City. Anyway, where was I?"
"You got to Denver, and...?" Red prompted him. Oh, right. Denver.
"Yeah, so we get to Denver and check into a freakin' hotel, like we're some sort of tourists. Nothing happens for almost three days. Longest three days of my life, I tell you. You try squeezing Fred into a double room. I had to share a bed with the other two, Wanda..." He choked involuntarily. Damn it, not now. "Wanda took the couch so she wouldn't have to sleep with the guys."
Pietro took a sip of the coffee, gripping the hot mug with both hands to keep them from shaking.
"So the third night, I mean like way after midnight, the window of this room opens on it's own and my father floats in and rouses us. Tells us his evil plot, or whatever you guys call it. It sounded simple, actually. All we had to do was go out and trash this airstrip so a speaker wouldn't make it to this 'Normals Against Mutant Aggression' meeting. Simple, like I said. So we all agreed we'd hit it on that Friday, 'cause the maintenance guys would be, you know, off for the weekend. This guy was supposed to be there the next day for the rally on Sunday."
He paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out through his nose. As he took another sip, Nightcrawler leaned over to the big furry guy at the head of the table...Harry? Henry? Hank, that was it...and whispered, "Vhen vas the Professor supposed to land in Denver?"
"Last Saturday."
Pietro nodded.
"I'm getting to that," he said, weakly raising a hand to interrupt them. "Apparently his Acolytes had other orders. If the speaker got there early, take him down. Permanently. Speaking of which, he's recruited a couple new people."
"Oh?" said Red.
"Yeah, some British chicks. I guess one of them isn't really a recruit, more like an ally. Calls herself the 'White Queen,' whatever that means. The other one's about your age" Pietro waved a hand at Jean "and has some really insane martial arts moves. Both of them are telepaths I guess. Didn't really have much to do with them."
The guy calling himself Hank grunted. "You said the Acolytes had other orders?"
"Oh? Oh, yeah, I did. If the speaker landed first, kill him."
Red and Big Blue exchanged a look. Pietro sighed.
"Look, Lance and the rest of us didn't agree with that at all. We got into place at the airstrip just minutes before the plane landed and rolled into an underground hanger. I guess we were really surprised when your Professor Xavier got off the jet with Rogue. I don't know what she was doing there," Pietro added with a puzzled frown.
Jean nodded. "She was feeling cooped up over here and since she didn't have any family to go back to, she offered to go with Professor X as a sort of field trip." She shrugged. "Cabin-fever, I guess. Go on?"
Pietro pushed aside his empty mug and sighed.
"Well, anyway, to make a long story short," Pietro started. Kitty rolled her eyes at him. He shot her his best sneer. "As soon as the Professor got off the plane, the Acolytes attacked him and they didn't hold back. Once Lance saw what was going on, he didn't want a part of it and the rest of us agreed. So we waded into the fight, trying to get to the Professor's side." He shook his head at the memory. God, what a nasty ordeal. "We weren't the only ones, I guess. Pyro looked downright sick at the idea - and he's a nutball to begin with - and tried to help us out. That Gambit guy just plain bailed on the whole thing and disappeared even before we started to move in. It didn't help much. We managed to make it to within a hundred feet of your guys before we got swarmed."
Pietro swallowed hard.
"Lance started shaking things up around the new girls and I guess one of them started hitting him with her mind because the next thing I know, he's gushing blood from his nose and reeling on his feet. He collapsed against me. Todd took on that younger British chick. Bet you didn't know he studied Shotokan, did you? Fred had a better time against Collosus, I think, but then Fred's pretty hard to hurt in the first place. It started to go downhill after that." Pietro took a deep breath and folded his hands together, staring at the table to calm himself. "My fath-," he began, then caught himself and started again. "Magneto started flicking metal things at all of us and hit Fred with the sharp end of an I-beam. Whatever he did to the damn thing managed to take Fred in the chest and he stumbled back into me. I got out from behind him before he fell, but he was in a bad way. The Brit wiped the freakin' floor with Todd. He gave out pretty good, but she fought with some sort of glowing knives on her wrists and just slashed him until he fell. Wanda did ok against our, against Magneto, I think, but then Sabretooth was on me and I had to play keep away for a few minutes because Lance wasn't moving much. Professor Xavier took a hand at that point and managed to whack both Magneto's new girls in like a New York minute.
"Damn, he's good," Pietro said in a shaky voice as he recalled the next bit.
"Anyway," he said after a moment, " Rogue actually managed to get near enough to Colossus to absorb his power again, but he shook her off and the two of them went toe to toe. It's a bit of a blur, because I was moving around so much, but eventually me and Lance and Rogue and the Professor were backed up against the airplane. Wanda was fighting her way toward us, but Magneto was interfering big time. And then...well..." Pietro looked at Jean. "Is getting mental messages from him always so staggering?"
The redhead thought about that for a moment. "It was probably the situation," she said. "He can be a little forceful at times. What did he say?"
"Just told all of us to get on the plane, like, yesterday. Couple problems with that, though. We were still in a real bind, with our backs to the wall. Then Wanda went down under a pile of 55-gallon barrels and I kinda lost it. I dropped Lance and just went off like a rocket toward Magneto. Sabretooth got in my way and that's when Magneto hit us with those damn needles he had hidden somewhere. All of us fighting him just got stabbed and that's when I started to slow down-"
"Wait, wait," Bobby exclaimed. "What about this Pyro guy? You said he didn't like Mags' idea either, right?"
"Yeah, Pyro. I don't know what the hell he was thinking. He sees the rest of us starting to go down and just lit off a drum of jet-fuel. Then he goes and sends the fire in a big honkin' ball toward Magneto and Sabretooth - and me, I might add. It didn't work. Magneto hit him with another needle. And that's when the world exploded."
There was a moment of shocked silence.
"The what?" asked Jean, eyes wide.
"So there we all are, lying at Magneto's feet, dazed and drugged, and he's floating over us...and over another stack of jet-fuel containers. It's really quiet in the hanger, and Magneto opens his mouth to say something, probably how he was going to wax all of us at his earliest leisure. And then this voice echoes throughout the hanger." Pietro cleared his throat and tried to affect a New Orleans accent. "'Ah don' lahk your attitude, mon ami. And what Ah don't lahk, Ah remove from th' game board.' Then there was this really creepy laughter and a little glowing playing card flipped end over end through the air. We all just watched it float lazily into the stack of barrels below Magneto. The king of hearts, I think." Pietro chuckled as a thought occurred to him, receiving several strange looks in the process. "The king of hearts - the suicide king," he explained. "When the card hit the barrel, well, that's when the world exploded."
Pietro rubbed a hand across his eyes. God, this was tiring. How long had he been talking?
"I must have been thrown clear of the explosion somehow, because when I woke up, I was lying outside the hanger entrance and Mystique was crouched over me with some blind woman standing behind her. I don't remember a word she said, but she brought me as far as New York before leaving me at Grand Central Station behind a row of lockers."
"And you ran here?" asked Hank. "But with the drug in your body, you shouldn't have been able to use your power." Pietro cut him off with a wave of his hand.
"I metabolize drugs like a two-year old. Something about a more efficient system; a normal dosage of aspirin could do me much more harm than good. A half-tablet has like the same effect as two would on you. Daddy Dearest probably misjudged the dosage by too little and so it wasn't enough to put me under."
Pietro stood, weaving a little. Hank stood up too, but Pietro waved him down. "All this talk has exhausted me. I'm gonna go lie down." Thankfully, the big mutant nodded.
The white-haired teen walked slowly out the door, trying to act as normal as possible. He made it as far as the upper hallway before he slumped against a wall and slid to the floor. Seconds later, the first tear slid down his cheek. Wrapping slender arms around knees, he curled up and sobbed quietly. No, this hadn't gone well at all.
------
Translations:
[1]: "Get out of here!"
[2]: "...and the next time you want a shower, you can wait like everyone else QUEEN KITTY!"
Author's Note: Has the plot thickened enough yet? Should I stir in some more ingredients? Sorry for the sheer amount of dialogue in this one. I guess these guys like to hear themselves talk. Read, review, and endure the anguish of waiting for another update. ;) Cheers, folks.
Jean really, really hoped Mr. McCoy was having more luck than she was.
"All right," the Beast growled, flipping the pancakes. "Logan is on his way back, you said."
"Yeah," she said as she rummaged for the syrup.
"Ororo?"
"Africa somewhere. I can't get a hold of her at all." Aha! There it was. Almost out, though. We need to go shopping soon.
"Hmm. Scott's still in Hawaii?"
Jean put the syrup on the table and started setting out plates. "Uh- huh. He can't get his tickets changed, either."
Mr. McCoy sighed and put a platter of pancakes on the table. Wiping his big hands on a towel, he leaned on the back of a chair.
"So it's pretty much up to the few of us and whatever help we can round up from in town," he said with a rumbling sigh.
"I think so," she responded without much enthusiasm. "I'm going over to the Brotherhood house this afternoon and see if any of those guys are around. We might need their help."
"Morning," Bobby yawned as he shuffled in.
"Good morning, young Mr. Drake," Beast said, checking his bacon.
"Hi, Bobby," Jean said. "Any luck on contacting Professor X?"
The younger boy sighed. Jean didn't like the sound of that.
"Tried everything. Communicators (both handheld and over the Blackbird's comlink), e-mail, instant messaging, cel phone," Bobby ticked off on his fingers, "land telephone, text messaging, and thinking really loud in his direction."
Instant Messaging? She'd forgotten that Forge (who had taken to the Internet like a duck to water) had set up an account for the Professor. 'ChromeDome1963.'
"Darn it," she muttered. Well, the Professor had been training them for years to tackle situations that came up in his absence. Even he couldn't be everywhere at once. Still, Scott had been groomed for the leadership role - not her. The thought of trying to handle this mystery wasn't a pleasant one.
Bobby flopped into a seat and started filling his plate as Jean paced.
"You can't just, you know," he waved a hand around in what she supposed was meant to be a telepathic gesture, "do your thing?"
"It doesn't work like that, Bobby," she told him. "There's a limit to my range. HE might be able to talk to us over half a continent, but I'm just not that good yet."
"Mm," the boy said around a mouthful of food. "What's he doing in Denver anyway?"
"Keeping an eye on an anti-mutant rally," Mr. McCoy said, sitting at the head of the table. "And don't talk with your mouth full."
A muffled, girlish shriek echoed through the walls into the kitchen, causing the three to stop and exchange a look.
[Bamf!]
Kurt appeared in one corner of the kitchen, clutching a towel around himself and dripping soap and bubbles all over the tiles. His body shampoo, Jean noticed, smelled like lavender.
"Verlassen Sie hier![1]" the skinny blue devil shouted. He flicked a two-fingered hand across his eyes and blinked a couple times, apparently noticing where he'd teleported to for the first time. "Oh. Good morning," he said, looking down at his feet and turning noticably darker under his fur.
"Problem, Kurt?" Mr. McCoy asked gently.
Before he could answer, Kitty stalked into the room and marched over to Kurt.
Poking him in the chest with a hairbrush she said in a flat voice, "You forgot this," and walked back out. Everyone stared at Kitty's retreating back. After a moment or two of bewildered silence, Jean cleared her throat.
Kurt looked up from the hairbrush he was holding. "Ja?"
"You're dripping all over the floor," she told him.
"Ach, sorry."
[Bamf!]
Bobby snickered. "Going to fix the shower in the girl's bathroom anytime soon, Mr. McCoy?"
"It's not high on my to-do list at the moment," came the reply. "But I think I might have to reevaluate that."
The three of them ate quietly for a few minutes. Kurt and Kitty wandered in a half-hour later, apparently no longer talking to one another. Jean winced mentally. Great way to spend a vacation. Babysitting a pair of teenagers who wanted to feud. It didn't last long.
"Pass the butter, bitte," Kurt said to Bobby. Kitty immediately took the container and moved it out of reach. This led to bickering. The bickering led to raised voices. Minutes later, Kurt and Kitty were shouting at each other across the table. Kitty's voice was reaching an octave that rivaled even the most vigorous soprano and Kurt was slinging German invective at machine-gun rapidity.
Jean exchanged a look with Mr. McCoy, who rolled his eyes.
"Damn, and I thought our house had issues."
"...und nächstes Mal wenn Sie eine Dusche wünschen, können Sie wie jeder sonst warten, KÖNIGIN KATSCHEN![2]"
Kurt waited for a response, then flicked his eyes toward the door, where Pietro was slumped against the frame. The white-haired teen was somewhat paler than usual, Jean saw, but at least he was awake and standing. Sort of, anyway.
Pietro staggered slightly on his way to the table and threw himself into a chair.
"Is that my t-shirt?" Kurt asked her. She nodded. Kurt was the closest in size to Pietro and so she'd grabbed a shirt at random out of his laundry basket. 'Just another fuzzy bum' with a crude drawing of a hobo under the text. Perhaps that particular one might have been a mistake. Why did the little German have to order his shirts from a specialty shop, anyway?
"It fits me pretty well, furrball" Pietro said with a small smirk.
"You're velcome."
Mr. McCoy tapped a spoon on his glass of orange juice, getting their attention.
"Now then," said Hank. "Since we're all here and more or less awake, I think you should know what I've found out in the way of testing."
Everyone else nodded, interested. He smiled inwardly. This was just like teaching a real class, sometimes. Reaching under the table, he pulled out a plastic bag and tossed it onto the table where it landed with a juicy squelch.
Bobby leaned in to get a better look at it. "What is that?"
"That," Hank said as he arranged the bag so everyone could get a look, "is the shirt Pietro was wearing two nights ago. The, ah, blood is still a bit wet," he added.
Kitty pushed her plate back, looking a bit green.
"Now, as I suspected, you" he pointed at the speedster, who was nibbling on a biscuit, "were coated with far, far more blood than could have been expected, given the wound you sustained."
Kitty spluttered, spraying droplets of orange juice all over herself.
"I've done repeated testing and have come to the conclusion that at least two mutants - notice I didn't say just people, but mutants - bled on you at some point. My guess would have to be that you were fighting underground at the time, probably in a military installation located somewhere Rockies, during the night. One of the mutants was hurt fairly badly, possibly even killed. All three of you were drugged at the time, by something that either inhibits the X-gene or suppresses it to the point where it's too feeble to generate your unique powers." Hank paused, warming to his subject. Research was only his second love, but teaching like this was fun! "I'd have to guess an Air Force base or possibly a civilian airport, but in either case, the aircraft you were attempting to escape on exploded while you were still several hundred feet away from it."
The silence was profound, Hank noted.
"How...?" Kurt said in an awed voice. Hank waved him to silence.
"Well?" the big blue man asked Pietro.
The boy was visibly shaken. "Right in one. How could you figure all that out?"
Ah. Hank decided he had to remember to explain things to these kids. They just didn't have the lab experience to follow his train of logic.
"Well," he started, "first off, there are three different blood types on this thing." He gestured at the shirt. "Incidentally, were you aware you're anemic? Anyway, there's a fair amount of deep red clay ground into this - that's not usually found aboveground in most places. In fact, it's fairly common under the plains just east of the Rocky Mountains. There's a couple threads of olive green cotton stuck to it in a few places. Most military on the continent use that color uniform for some reason." Jean nodded, apparently starting to understand. The rest of them were still looking blank. "One of the blood types shows higher nitrogen content than the rest, which is indicative of heart blood. Heart wounds, of course, are usually fatal whatever the circumstances. All three blood types showed signs of Naproxin, a common sedative. I imagine you probably still feel a little 'drunk,' as it were. That particular medicine is fairly potent. It was also mixed with some sort of inhibitor that affects the X-gene. I haven't done much study with that, but it seems advanced." Bobby was nodding, along with Kurt. Kitty, he noticed, was still a little green around the edges. "The airport thing was actually fairly easy. I'm surprised I didn't catch it at first, but there's a fair amount of jet fuel droplets spread over the back of this. As well as a number of burns caused by the same fuel."
Hank sat down, slipping the bag off the table with a squish.
Pietro stood up and walked over to the coffee machine, pouring himself a cup of double French roast. Sitting back down, he took a sip. Then he nodded, a quick jerk of his head.
"He's right. About all of it." And then he launched into his own narrative.
Pietro drew a ragged breath. This wasn't going to be pleasant for any of them. Heck, he was drinking coffee in the headquarters of his archenemies...well, maybe not. Hell, he didn't know. Shaking off that momentary twinge of guilt over what he was about to do, he looked around the table. Oh well, maybe the X-Geeks would help him out. Who knows, perhaps he could just put all this crap behind him for once and everything would turn out all right.
"About two weeks ago, Mystique came to the house with a message from my father. The old bastard wanted the Brotherhood to do a job on an airstrip outside Denver. It sounded simple, and all of us were itching to get out of the house for a while. Lance especially. Guess he felt some fresh mountain air might do him some good."
He looked around the table, waving off the curious looks before they sidetracked his tale.
"So the next morning a rental van is waiting for us in the drive. The five of us took off for the Wild West. Mystique had other business to attend to and said she would meet us there. Heh. Should have seen her for what she is...well, anyway, four days later, there we were in Denver. Cool place, but it really needs more air, you know? Too easy to get winded up there when you run. Mile-High City. Anyway, where was I?"
"You got to Denver, and...?" Red prompted him. Oh, right. Denver.
"Yeah, so we get to Denver and check into a freakin' hotel, like we're some sort of tourists. Nothing happens for almost three days. Longest three days of my life, I tell you. You try squeezing Fred into a double room. I had to share a bed with the other two, Wanda..." He choked involuntarily. Damn it, not now. "Wanda took the couch so she wouldn't have to sleep with the guys."
Pietro took a sip of the coffee, gripping the hot mug with both hands to keep them from shaking.
"So the third night, I mean like way after midnight, the window of this room opens on it's own and my father floats in and rouses us. Tells us his evil plot, or whatever you guys call it. It sounded simple, actually. All we had to do was go out and trash this airstrip so a speaker wouldn't make it to this 'Normals Against Mutant Aggression' meeting. Simple, like I said. So we all agreed we'd hit it on that Friday, 'cause the maintenance guys would be, you know, off for the weekend. This guy was supposed to be there the next day for the rally on Sunday."
He paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out through his nose. As he took another sip, Nightcrawler leaned over to the big furry guy at the head of the table...Harry? Henry? Hank, that was it...and whispered, "Vhen vas the Professor supposed to land in Denver?"
"Last Saturday."
Pietro nodded.
"I'm getting to that," he said, weakly raising a hand to interrupt them. "Apparently his Acolytes had other orders. If the speaker got there early, take him down. Permanently. Speaking of which, he's recruited a couple new people."
"Oh?" said Red.
"Yeah, some British chicks. I guess one of them isn't really a recruit, more like an ally. Calls herself the 'White Queen,' whatever that means. The other one's about your age" Pietro waved a hand at Jean "and has some really insane martial arts moves. Both of them are telepaths I guess. Didn't really have much to do with them."
The guy calling himself Hank grunted. "You said the Acolytes had other orders?"
"Oh? Oh, yeah, I did. If the speaker landed first, kill him."
Red and Big Blue exchanged a look. Pietro sighed.
"Look, Lance and the rest of us didn't agree with that at all. We got into place at the airstrip just minutes before the plane landed and rolled into an underground hanger. I guess we were really surprised when your Professor Xavier got off the jet with Rogue. I don't know what she was doing there," Pietro added with a puzzled frown.
Jean nodded. "She was feeling cooped up over here and since she didn't have any family to go back to, she offered to go with Professor X as a sort of field trip." She shrugged. "Cabin-fever, I guess. Go on?"
Pietro pushed aside his empty mug and sighed.
"Well, anyway, to make a long story short," Pietro started. Kitty rolled her eyes at him. He shot her his best sneer. "As soon as the Professor got off the plane, the Acolytes attacked him and they didn't hold back. Once Lance saw what was going on, he didn't want a part of it and the rest of us agreed. So we waded into the fight, trying to get to the Professor's side." He shook his head at the memory. God, what a nasty ordeal. "We weren't the only ones, I guess. Pyro looked downright sick at the idea - and he's a nutball to begin with - and tried to help us out. That Gambit guy just plain bailed on the whole thing and disappeared even before we started to move in. It didn't help much. We managed to make it to within a hundred feet of your guys before we got swarmed."
Pietro swallowed hard.
"Lance started shaking things up around the new girls and I guess one of them started hitting him with her mind because the next thing I know, he's gushing blood from his nose and reeling on his feet. He collapsed against me. Todd took on that younger British chick. Bet you didn't know he studied Shotokan, did you? Fred had a better time against Collosus, I think, but then Fred's pretty hard to hurt in the first place. It started to go downhill after that." Pietro took a deep breath and folded his hands together, staring at the table to calm himself. "My fath-," he began, then caught himself and started again. "Magneto started flicking metal things at all of us and hit Fred with the sharp end of an I-beam. Whatever he did to the damn thing managed to take Fred in the chest and he stumbled back into me. I got out from behind him before he fell, but he was in a bad way. The Brit wiped the freakin' floor with Todd. He gave out pretty good, but she fought with some sort of glowing knives on her wrists and just slashed him until he fell. Wanda did ok against our, against Magneto, I think, but then Sabretooth was on me and I had to play keep away for a few minutes because Lance wasn't moving much. Professor Xavier took a hand at that point and managed to whack both Magneto's new girls in like a New York minute.
"Damn, he's good," Pietro said in a shaky voice as he recalled the next bit.
"Anyway," he said after a moment, " Rogue actually managed to get near enough to Colossus to absorb his power again, but he shook her off and the two of them went toe to toe. It's a bit of a blur, because I was moving around so much, but eventually me and Lance and Rogue and the Professor were backed up against the airplane. Wanda was fighting her way toward us, but Magneto was interfering big time. And then...well..." Pietro looked at Jean. "Is getting mental messages from him always so staggering?"
The redhead thought about that for a moment. "It was probably the situation," she said. "He can be a little forceful at times. What did he say?"
"Just told all of us to get on the plane, like, yesterday. Couple problems with that, though. We were still in a real bind, with our backs to the wall. Then Wanda went down under a pile of 55-gallon barrels and I kinda lost it. I dropped Lance and just went off like a rocket toward Magneto. Sabretooth got in my way and that's when Magneto hit us with those damn needles he had hidden somewhere. All of us fighting him just got stabbed and that's when I started to slow down-"
"Wait, wait," Bobby exclaimed. "What about this Pyro guy? You said he didn't like Mags' idea either, right?"
"Yeah, Pyro. I don't know what the hell he was thinking. He sees the rest of us starting to go down and just lit off a drum of jet-fuel. Then he goes and sends the fire in a big honkin' ball toward Magneto and Sabretooth - and me, I might add. It didn't work. Magneto hit him with another needle. And that's when the world exploded."
There was a moment of shocked silence.
"The what?" asked Jean, eyes wide.
"So there we all are, lying at Magneto's feet, dazed and drugged, and he's floating over us...and over another stack of jet-fuel containers. It's really quiet in the hanger, and Magneto opens his mouth to say something, probably how he was going to wax all of us at his earliest leisure. And then this voice echoes throughout the hanger." Pietro cleared his throat and tried to affect a New Orleans accent. "'Ah don' lahk your attitude, mon ami. And what Ah don't lahk, Ah remove from th' game board.' Then there was this really creepy laughter and a little glowing playing card flipped end over end through the air. We all just watched it float lazily into the stack of barrels below Magneto. The king of hearts, I think." Pietro chuckled as a thought occurred to him, receiving several strange looks in the process. "The king of hearts - the suicide king," he explained. "When the card hit the barrel, well, that's when the world exploded."
Pietro rubbed a hand across his eyes. God, this was tiring. How long had he been talking?
"I must have been thrown clear of the explosion somehow, because when I woke up, I was lying outside the hanger entrance and Mystique was crouched over me with some blind woman standing behind her. I don't remember a word she said, but she brought me as far as New York before leaving me at Grand Central Station behind a row of lockers."
"And you ran here?" asked Hank. "But with the drug in your body, you shouldn't have been able to use your power." Pietro cut him off with a wave of his hand.
"I metabolize drugs like a two-year old. Something about a more efficient system; a normal dosage of aspirin could do me much more harm than good. A half-tablet has like the same effect as two would on you. Daddy Dearest probably misjudged the dosage by too little and so it wasn't enough to put me under."
Pietro stood, weaving a little. Hank stood up too, but Pietro waved him down. "All this talk has exhausted me. I'm gonna go lie down." Thankfully, the big mutant nodded.
The white-haired teen walked slowly out the door, trying to act as normal as possible. He made it as far as the upper hallway before he slumped against a wall and slid to the floor. Seconds later, the first tear slid down his cheek. Wrapping slender arms around knees, he curled up and sobbed quietly. No, this hadn't gone well at all.
------
Translations:
[1]: "Get out of here!"
[2]: "...and the next time you want a shower, you can wait like everyone else QUEEN KITTY!"
Author's Note: Has the plot thickened enough yet? Should I stir in some more ingredients? Sorry for the sheer amount of dialogue in this one. I guess these guys like to hear themselves talk. Read, review, and endure the anguish of waiting for another update. ;) Cheers, folks.