Of Hearth and Home
Chapter Seventeen: True Colors
Derek smiled fondly up at the observation deck of the danger room.
Once again he stood alone in the middle of the vast and empty room as the dull whine of the power grid built itself up and engaged the room's systems one by one.
Storm stood with one arm across her midsection, holding the elbow of the other arm. Her free hand was idly stroking the charm on her necklace.
Kurt couldn't help himself. He wanted to grin madly and indulgently at her. He had watched 'Calvin' throw himself at Storm several times over the last few days – only to be rewarded with some witty banter or a casual smile. And every time, Kurt would watch as Storm sauntered away and his friend would turn his attention elsewhere.
The first time had been the worst. They had already met once by Kurt's guess, when Storm passed by during a friendly game of chess. Kurt slowly lost the game – and then – just before he lost completely – two moves from defeat …
His opponent swiveled the board around and gave Kurt the winning 'side'. They had then 'fought it out' for six moves before 'Calvin' looked up and smiled knowingly at Storm.
She had been so cool to him. So … indifferent.
And Kurt's heart went out slowly, over the course of Derek's long, slow and lonely sigh.
Kurt immediately recognized the sharp and honest 'edge' of loneliness when he heard it. And in that one moment – he had wished that it had been a real blade, or the attack of an enemy that had cut him instead. At least then there would have been something to do; some way to help, or even a wound to heal. Because anything would have been better than standing there; stock-still, and watching her walk away.
Then, when Derek turned back toward the game and to face Kurt, Kurt saw the worst part of it. His new friend wasn't sad, or hurt, or even embarrassed. But Kurt could see it in his eyes. He had something he wanted to say …
Kurt knew, all too well, what it meant to go unheard. How many people had he seen cringe at the sight of him, only to refuse to listen as he tried to calm them? He couldn't imagine and didn't want to remember long enough to count.
But to see them together today, arm in arm as he escorted her to the observation deck, and to see the loving way that they smiled at each other as he slipped away to begin the session – did Kurt's heart a world of good. He felt like he was swimming in liquid joy.
But he tried not to let on.
Instead he smiled through the windows and tried not to dwell of Storms reflection in the glass.
Professor Xavier had shown a keen interest in this session and stared down at the floor intensely with a sharp and piercing gaze.
Beast, being his good-natured self, went about calibrating the rooms controls and setting up extra observation equipment – including a piece that received information directly from a sensor that Derek was wearing. It attached to electrodes on his temples and behind his neck. In addition to providing basic health data like heart rate and galvanic-skin stress monitoring, it also provided basic brain-wave information that was vital to truly classifying his abilities.
Logan was there, sitting in one of the control positions and chewing on a toothpick, awaiting the 'action'.
But Kurt couldn't help but notice that no one else had joined them. He thought for sure that Bobby and Jamie would have come; maybe even Kitty. But so far, he stood alone.
"Are we ready?" Xavier asked through the microphone as the door swept open behind him. He paused to glance back.
Rogue took four or five purposeful steps inside the room and crossed her arms over her chest in a huff. She threw herself – to lean against the back wall of the room.
Kurt smiled at her curiously but she just looked away and blew her bangs up and out of her eyes. Logan eyed Charles and Beast, caught Beasts eye and nodded sideways to indicate Rogue. Beast shook his head 'no' and gave a small wave of 'dismissal'. Logan relaxed back in to his seat but looked unsure of Beast's 'answer'.
"I changed everything up for this sequence." Beast narrated. "Completely re-wrote the program. Everything. So that nothing he saw last time could help him. This should be totally 'unpredictable'." He smiled.
"Sounds interesting." Logan decided.
Rogue rolled her eyes looked away at an empty corner of the observation deck.
Derek was smiling up from the floor. His blue eyes stood out across the distance. He was giving a 'thumbs up' sign.
Xavier keyed a control and leaned back to observe.
The room burst to life. Huge sections of the floor began to flip end over end to display different features on the reverse. Derek had to run in order to stay on even ground without being thrown or swallowed by the floor beneath him.
Weapons platforms began surfacing on the 'new' sections of floor, and by the second shot, he was back-flipping to the firing pattern and evading the shots with ease.
"Whoa." Rogue said, forgetting herself.
"Yeah." Logan said slowly, knowing full well that Derek had not moved that fast when they 'met' in the hallway outside the infirmary. He landed on a newly emerged weapons platform and seemed to 'shatter' it. He simply hit it in such a way that it seemed to collapse on to itself, slightly, right where it sat.
"Cannon four is down." Beast said. "So is the floor panel."
But Derek seemed to know this. He ducked low, by the weapons of the platform, and waited for a fraction of a second before turning a single back-flip in place and landing on his feet as a shot of weapons fire seemed to pass right through him.
"Did that one get him?" Kurt jumped nervously.
"No." Logan said, seriously. "He was off the ground. He drew the fire low and then went high."
"Weapons are losing accuracy." Beast informed them. "He's managed to damage the targeting sensors on cannon four and we're getting echoes."
"Wow." Xavier brought everyone's attention to the floor below.
Derek was moving with an incredible grace and the fluid motions of a master martial artist or professional dancer. He had found his 'groove'. His route around the room looked erratic and random, but in a moment he turned the route in to a circle and found himself doubling back toward the first broken weapon. He was drawing the fire of the platforms and using it to strafe the other weapons while nimbly avoiding the flipping floor panels.
"This scenerio is down to sixty percent." Beast informed Xavier.
"Switch to phase two." Xavier told him.
"Phase two?" Kurt asked, his attention focused on the man below. No one answered him.
Instead, the floor and ceiling began to form columns intent on smashing in to each other and Derek began riding them to varying heights before side-stepping the impacts, often in to empty space – only to be caught by newly rising columns.
"It's too easy." Xavier said. "He's moving AHEAD of the program."
"Phase three." Beast said in a mild disbelief.
And as Beast keyed the control, something strange began to happen. Derek seemed to begin to glow.
He appeared to be wrapped in a bark blue aura that left a trail as he moved across your vision.
Storm gasped in recognition and although they noticed, no one said a word.
He no longer seemed even remotely concerned with the exercise. He looked like he was dancing in a stage show or music video – solely for the entertainment value. He was moving with such timing and precision that it was hard to watch and believe that he was human and not a machine or computer generated graphic.
"What the …" Rogue's mouth was hanging open when Kurt checked her reflection in the glass, but it was then that he saw what she was talking about.
Derek no longer seemed to be putting any effort in to moving at all. Instead he seemed to be riding his own momentum and bouncing about the room in defiance of physics, gravity and reason. His blue aura had almost totally obscured him and it was growing 'thick' or 'deep' in appearance.
"He's excited himself like a particle." Hank said in awe.
"Vhat?" Kurt asked, not looking away.
"Like when you boil water – you excite the particles – make them active … but this …" He shook his head in disbelief.
"More like pure Zink in water." Xavier commented. "Potential energy discharge."
"Yes." Hank agreed excitedly.
Derek was flipping about the room in long, slow arcs as a ball frenzied, spinning ball of activity. Phase three had begun, but he was moving in such a manner that nothing in the room seemed capable of hitting him.
And then, he vanished within his aura. And everything in the room stopped moving.
"What is it?" Logan asked.
"Control." Storm sounded heartbroken. "He's just taken … control."
"How do you mean?" Xavier asked quickly.
Derek began to uncurl himself from the balled up position he had been holding during his 'dance'. He stretched out to his full height and simply hung there in the air. He was only visible through his aura in the briefest of glimpses as he moved. It was only then, in the 'front' of his movements that he was not lost in the marbled swirl of blue on blue that covered him.
The room was still trying to attack and run it's program – but the control board was registering thousands of problems, from minor glitches and power failures to downright impossible conditions. Hank had begun to try to respond, but the controls appeared to be dead to the touch. Nothing responded.
"Control." Hank agreed, dropping down in to one of the observation seats and giving up on attempting to restart the sequence.
And Derek, hanging in place, began to move in an orbit, leaving a great trail of vibrant blue behind him. He soared with his arms outstretched, head first, turning long, slow loops in the space of the room.
The trail that he was leaving seemed to hang longer and longer behind him as he began to move faster and faster in his flight. He was forming a solid ball of light in the middle of the room and soon, he was indistinguishable from it.
One of Hanks machines began to register a solid tone.
"We've lost vital signs and brain activity." He sounded hesitantly concerned.
"It's because he has no body now." Storm said quietly, laying a hand to the window.
"Of course." Beast sighed in understanding. "But how did you …"
"The weather." She said softly, watching the great ball of blue energy as it began to pulse with energy. "When I control the weather, the winds and the air … It's the same force … the potential." She realized out loud. "I just control … a different aspect of it."
Logan's eyes were wide and his arms crossed tightly over his chest. "Do you hear that?" He asked.
And everyone strained to listen.
"Ah, I think I hear … music?" Rogue asked hesitantly.
Logan nodded. "It's getting louder too. Has been for about ten seconds."
And then Kurt heard it too. It was thick music – lots of overlapping instruments – forming the sound – but each capable of sustaining the listener all on it's own.
"Lutes." Hank said. "Lutes and a fife."
Xavier shook his head. "Classical piano. Like my mother used to play."
Kurt shook his head. "Nein. Guitars. Rock and Roll. Right?"
"It's all there." Logan told them. "It's all about what we're ready to hear."
"How do you mean?" Beast asked, still listening and seeing for the first time that Xavier, while still watching the room, was also lost in the music.
"When my mood changed, so did the song." Logan replied quickly, still listening.
Kurt tried it. He thought of seeing Storm walking away from Derek. He thought of the pain and the emptiness.
And the violins swept in and took him. They were sad and longing sounds, but lush and thick with life. There were many violins, but they were all solo's – they never played together. He felt the tears flow down his face and he tore himself away from the thoughts. He recalled his enthusiasm and joy at seeing Storm and Derek together and the dark, heavy tones of the violins swept up to become the voices of angels singing in rapt praise of all creation. And again, the tears rolled down his face.
"Mein gott." He swayed to the music. "Vhat is he doing …"
Suddenly, the spell was broken for them all as the celestial music came to a shattered halt as the 'ball' of blue light exploded to the heavy rock and roll scream of "Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!" (1) as it reverberated through the room and then the mansion around them. The surface expanded out and away from Derek. It seemed to pass through everything, themselves included, as it vanished.
Derek was visible again, dropping semi-gracefully and under normal gravity to the floor below.
"Room is back on-line." Beast said, standing to look at the read-outs. "And showing … No damage."
"What?" Xavier whipped on him. "What about cannon four?"
Beast shook his head and flipped the control back and forth. "No damage Charles. He fixed it. He got himself up to an energy state and then threw off that discharge. If I had to guess – I'd say that it carried his intent to the room and shifted everything 'back', on the quantum level, to the way it had been before."
Xavier turned his eyes back to the floor. Derek had already left the room.
"Insane." Kurt shook his head, a smile on his face.
"Impressive." Xavier corrected him.
"Indeed." Hank retorted.
"Yes. Very much so." Storm agreed as she turned, mixed emotions on her face, and swept out of the room.
Kurt turned to speak to her, excitedly, but Rogue had already gone. And Kurt was left wondering why she had come at all.
1) The Who – We Wont Get Fooled Again