Part 2: Bullet
little baby nothing, sexually free, made up to break up. assassinated beauty. moths broken up, quenched at last. the vermin allowed a thought to pass them by. you are pure, you are snow. we are useless sluts that they mould. rock and roll is our epiphany. culture, alienation, boredom, and despair.
-little baby nothing
This was hardly the sort of "emergency" he'd expected, when the Professor had sent them out in the jet. They sat above the crowd of teenagers, sitting in one dismal lump on the ground before the two boys who were obviously the mutants in question. The warehouse was, he noted, at least not one of those stereotypical abandoned jobs from bad American cop shows. It was well taken care of, obviously a gathering place for the local teens that was sanctioned by the adult population of the town. The walls were painted in long murals, cartoon skateboarders executing impossible jumps. The ground was strewn about with various obstacles, a large half pipe, and skating paraphernalia of all shapes and sizes from the kids hanging around. But the lights were low, in the after-hours, and it was clear that this was no skating competition.
These kids were not here because they wanted to be. At least, not anymore.
"What's happening here?" He muttered, mildly confused, and more than a little irritated. He didn't see any guns, anything that the two in the middle would be holding the group hostage with, and he couldn't imagine that what the taller boy, the one in the ragged clothing, was saying was captivating enough to keep them all sitting there.
Or the police sitting outside.
"The one in the black, he is the empath," Kurt replied. "He must be holding them there somehow, using his mind."
Right.
Years doing this good-guy act, and he couldn't figure that much out. Fucking brilliant, Jean-Paul. Quel niaiseux. "Your call. You could be down there with the inhibitor, get those kids out of here, and we could be in the jet in fifteen minutes."
Kurt shook his head. "Something isn't right."
He had not been with them long, certainly. But he knew well enough to trust the man's judgment.
"But there is nothing else for it," he sighed after a few moments, turning to look him in the eye now. "See you down there?"
Northstar nodded, and jumped feet-first through the skylight.
Moments later, in a sickening wave of utter despair, he landed lightly on his feet behind the two teenagers, and fell to his knees. He could hardly see, the pain was so strong. No, not pain. Fear. Sickness. A lack of anything at all resembling hope. No light. Just darkness.
Faces flew by him, faces of people he'd known, lost, been betrayed by. Faces of the people he couldn't save. Faces of the family he'd never known.
He looked up, and saw something familiar through the black haze of his nightmare. Kurt Wagner. Someone was looking down at him now, they'd seen him. Two shadowy figures. Young. Kurt was standing now, reaching up as if in slow motion, something metal glinting in his hands.
He cursed aloud. The empath. He struggled to his feet, pushing away the faces, trying to build up his mental blocks. A lifetime of dealing with telepaths, mutants that wanted to fuck with his head. He should have been ready. He should have known.
By the time the blocks were in place, however, the pain had suddenly ended. And he was standing, watching Kurt snap the inhibitor collar into place on a skinny blonde teenager in jeans much too large for him.
"No!" A shout to his left now, "Jake, no!"
A blur of movement, and the other young mutant was standing between Northstar and his teammate. Too fast.
But not too fast for him.
He reached out, consciously accelerating his motion to superhuman speeds, and took the boy by the arm, jerking him back and throwing him out of the way. Hard enough to send him into the half pipe. Not hard enough to hurt him badly.
Nightcrawler nodded as he bound the other youth's hands, and Northstar momentarily turned his attention to the crowd of teenagers who were now looking at the scene unfolding before them with expressions ranging from anger to fear to extreme pain. Those were the ones who had not been able to shake off the effects of the empath's projection. One of the boys stood, and fell backwards against the wall almost immediately. It was clear that he'd been beaten badly, his eye was blackened and he had a rip in his shirt that displayed a bleeding scrape prominently. A few of the other boys, all of them larger, had similar wounds, and seemed similarly surprised to find themselves in their respective states of disrepair.
Marde, he thought, still mildly disoriented from the sheer power of the big-pants empath's effect on him. What in the name of god had happened here?
He turned his attention back to the other boy, the taller, more wiry mutant he had torn off of Kurt, just in time to catch a glimpse of him disappearing again. Too fast.
"He's gone," he said, already moving in the direction he'd seen the boy take off.
"I'll handle this. Bring him back," he heard, as he launched himself into the air and back out the skylight, into the cold moonlit night.
He was rather too preoccupied with his quarry to admire the breathtaking way the moon reflected off the Ohio river, or the quaint, Mark-Twain-ish quality of the small river town itself. But he had spotted the boy almost the moment he'd left the warehouse's walls, and was having no trouble keeping track of him.
His accelerated movements were confined to small spurts of time, between one and two seconds, never more than that, and it seemed to take time for him to recharge enough energy to start up again. There was something jerky about his movements each time he slowed down. Northstar's eyes were not so sharp as to see what it was, but he assumed that soon enough, he'd see enough of the boy to last a lifetime.
And then, the little bastard ran into a patch of trees on the riverbank.
He had been known to play a game or two in his time. But none of them involved boys nearly half his age, or anything to the effect of hide-and-seek.
Already, the boy was trying his patience.
And just what the hell had been going on in that skate park?
He landed just near the tree line, and proceeded, slowly, to walk into the mini-forest there by the river. No sounds. Just the rushing of the river a few yards away, the sound of an owl somewhere nearby, hunting.
From a bad American cop show to a bad American horror film. Lovely.
And he'd been having such a nice day, really.
Ah, but he couldn't move without being seen, and Northstar knew he was getting closer. He could hear him shifting now, from one foot to the other. Breathing heavily, as if he'd been injured. That would certainly explain the strange movement pattern when the boy slowed down, if it were true.
He padded his way over the hard packed ground, avoiding the odd beer bottle or snuff can that littered the bare earth under the trees. Obviously, a hang out for the unsavory children of the town. He tried not to breathe too deeply—the scent of pine was barely enough to cover the smell of sulfur and various pollutants coming from the factory just down the river, let alone the smell of an old college dorm party.
Or, he mused, of a rich athlete's hotel room the morning after.
The boy was just on the other side of the tree now, waiting. He could see his fingers, furtively twitching against the bark of the oak he'd attached himself to. Breathing. Scared.
Northstar stopped. He wasn't here to scare the child, after all. "Come out," he said quietly. "I'm not here to hurt you."
No reply. Just breathing.
"Please," he asked again, calmly. "No one will hurt you. I just need to talk to you."
A pause. Then, a surprisingly low voice came from behind the tree. "Who the fuck are you man?"
Charming.
"My name is Northstar," he took a step back this time.
"Northstar," a derisive snort. "The fuck kinda name is that?"
He smiled, in spite of himself. "A code name, I suppose."
"What d'you want?"
"I told you, I just need to talk to you."
"Yeah, that's why your freaky friend collared Jake." And then, he made his move.
He was fast. He tried to run further away, down the riverbank. Had he been able to keep his pace up, he would have stood a chance. But he stopped, now in a small clearing, and stood with his hands on his knees, panting.
Behind him now, Northstar still kept his distance. "You can't outrun me. Why not talk to me?"
"Who the fuck are you?"
"I told you, my name is Northstar. Who the fuck are you?" Perhaps if he spoke to the boy in his own tongue…
The boy stood upright, and turned to face him. "Name is Bullet Time."
Now, he understood.
He was tall, taller than Jean-Paul at a good six feet, strong but thin, a lanky teenage frame. His clothes hung off him, almost rags, his head was clean shaven, his eyes burned bright, even with only moonlight to reflect. A straight, angular face, that might have been handsome once.
But he was covered in linear patterned burns, some a virulent red, some a faded purple, and some just white shining scars. None that did not look horribly painful, however. They ran across his cheeks, over his neck. On his muscled forearms and evident through the fast growing hole in the thigh of his threadbare jeans.
Friction burns. From the hyper-speed movement.
The boy stood, panting at him.
And Jean-Paul stared at him, knowing his face was a hardened mask. But he felt his heart break, inside.
That could be him.
"Are you ready to talk?" was all he said, knowing damn well that no amount of sympathy would soften the boy to him, at this point. It would only make what had to be done harder for the kid.
By way of reply, the boy came at him with a swift jab to the right, which he dodged quickly, but not without some effort. The teen was easily as fast as he, the only advantage he had was that he had the endurance. And his body avoided harm because the same ability that allowed him to accelerate himself at a given rate also allowed his cells, the very molecules in them, to strengthen their bonds, become more durable.
And he couldn't fight this boy. Couldn't cause him more pain.
Another moment's breathing, and he tried again, this time connecting with Northstar's chest once, just where his shoulder jointed with his collar bone. But he only got one hit in. Northstar simultaneously reached out, grabbed the boy by the arm, twisted him around, and grabbed for the other one, making use of the boy's necessary downtime.
More heavy breaths. Northstar didn't let up, held his wrists tight behind his back. But he didn't hold him too tightly either. "Now, will you talk to me?"
"Doesn't look like I have much of a…" breath, "fuckin' choice, does it?"
"No," he replied seriously, "you don't. I meant what I said, I don't want to hurt you. Though you certainly made it a point to hurt me." It actually did sting a bit, where the wiry teen had landed a hit on him. Wouldn't bruise, of course, but still. Impressive.
"How the fuck do you move like that?"
"How is it that you cannot construct a sentence without the word "fuck" in it?"
"Think you're pretty goddamn funny don't you? What's with the costume? You a superhero?" Another derisive snort.
Northstar laughed, this time. Here he was, in a dirty party spot, down by the river, in a run down West Virginia river town, holding a disadvantaged teenage mutant hostage. "No. I'm definitely not much of a superhero, right now."
A grunt, pained this time, escaped the boys lips.
He'd been twisting, trying to break free. Jean-Paul leaned down, examined the wrists he held. Burnt. Like the rest of him. "I'm hurting you."
"No."
"I am. I just want to talk. If I let you go, will you talk to me?"
"I'm not letting you drag me back there, if that's what you mean. You can fucking forget it."
"Very well," he assented, unwilling to hurt him any more. He was obviously in terrible pain from using his power so many times in such quick succession. "I won't drag you back there. I won't touch you. Just tell me you won't run."
"Like you'd believe me."
"I said I don't want to hurt you."
A pause, where the boy stopped squirming.
"You can't outrun me, and you can't beat me. Just talk to me."
"Fuck it. Alright, fine. I won't run, ok?"
"I hope you're not lying," Jean-Paul let him go now, watched him reel away and shake his wrists, as if he'd been writing too much. "If I find out you're a liar, I will drag you back there."
The boy was looking down at his arms now, but his eyes moved upward to catch Northstar's. "I'm a lot of things, maybe. But I'm not a liar."
He saw the light on his watch go off, knew it was Nightcrawler asking if things were under control. He hit the button he knew would send back the affirmative, realizing that his silence would mean that he was otherwise occupied, and the affirmative answer would mean things were, indeed, under control.
And now, what to do with the boy? There he was, staring at him as if he would eat his very soul given the chance, and Northstar couldn't touch him, or he risked causing even more damage to his skin. Mon dieu, he couldn't help but feel his stomach drop, an ache in his chest for the boy. His skin. He couldn't even imagine what it felt like. The pain he must live with, every day. To even be wearing clothes.
"I'm glad you brought that up, mon ami," he knew he sounded perfectly casual. Flippant even. He was an excellent actor. "Who, exactly, are you, and what were you and your friend doing to those children? Some of them were not exactly in mint condition, non?"
"The fuck are you, French or something?"
"Québécois."
"Huh?"
"Forget about it. I'm Canadian," funny how it almost hurt to say.
"Explains a lot about your manners."
"You're the one who attacked me," Northstar reminded him.
"What did you want to know again, pretty boy?"
"Your name?"
"I told you," the boy sneered at him, "Bullet Time. You're Northstar, I'm Bullet Time, and that's good enough for me."
For just a moment, he considered his "adversary." Just a kid, but almost a man. Probably seventeen, eighteen at the oldest. Scared. A young mutant, probably an outcast. And in pain.
"Jean-Paul," he said quietly.
"What?"
"My name," he repeated, "is Jean-Paul."
The teen stood straight now, and looked him properly in the eye. "I'm Rick."
Jean-Paul nodded. "Want to tell me what you and your friend were playing at in that warehouse, Rick?"
The boy flared his nostrils, dangerously. But now that he'd looked him in the eye, shoulders squared back, Northstar could see that the tough guy game was just an act. This was an intelligent, witty boy. And he had no idea how to keep his act going any longer. He was, in short, defeated. "We were just trying to show them that they couldn't fuck with us anymore."
"The kids?" he prompted, when the information stopped flowing. "They did something to you?
"Every day of my life," the youth muttered, his eyes now falling to the ground. "It's not exactly the most PC place, this town. Mutants are something that happen to everyone else, not to people you know, right? And everyone knows everyone in this town, no way to keep a secret. Me and Jake, we're the only two in our class, at least, that people have found out about."
"And they made fun of you?"
Bright green eyes snapped back up to lock with Northstar's cold blue ones now. "What the fuck do you think? Look at me, for god's sake."
"I am," he said, truthfully. "It burns you, when you move that quickly. There might be a way—"
"There is no way," the boy spat at him, his words full of venom. "We've been to every doctor, no one knows how to make it stop. Not unless I stop using it."
"And you can't."
"Could you?" Serious now, again with the tough front falling away, the soul stripping green eyes latching on to his.
"No."
"But it doesn't burn you. Look at you. The poster boy for happy mutants. Pretty and perfect in spandex, flying like you're fucking Superman. But you can move like me. And you never have to stop. And it doesn't burn you." The skin under the burns was turning red now, the eyes were pooling up with water. He was getting angry.
He'd probably been angry for years, of course. He'd just never had someone to take it out on before. "I know people who can help. If you come with me—"
"Fuck you!" a flash of metal now, a butterfly knife suddenly in his scarred hands, shaking. "I told you I wasn't going back there. You'll catch me, but not before I plant this in your side."
"Rick… I don't think you want to hurt me any more than I want to hurt you…," Northstar wondered if he really sounded soothing, sedate, like he did in his head. He held up his hands, slowly, in the hope that the other mutant would see that he was not about to make a move. His mind moved fast now, trying to think of a way to rush the boy, fly him to the jet, get him sedated. His former strategy of "talk to the child" did not seen to be working, at the moment.
The boy just looked at him. "No… no I guess I don't." and he suddenly put the point of the knife into his own forearm, halfway down, on the soft side. "But I'll fucking kill myself before I let you take me back there."