Thanx to DemonRogue13 and Snowee2003 for reviewing!
Apologies for the butcher job I did on Kurt's accent. My German's lousy!
Disclaimer: Wanda hexed the disclaimer and it exploded. Then she did an evil laugh.
"Professor? Can we talk to you?"
The Professor looked up at Jean. Behind her stood Kitty, Tabitha and Amara, all frowning and looking uncomfortable. It didn't take a telepath to know that they were unhappy about something. "Certainly. Take a seat."
The four girls chose seats in the Professors office, still looking worried. Jean cleared her throat. "It's, uh, it's about Rogue."
"Oh yeah?" Wolverine walked into the office and the girls visibly tensed. "You know why she missed the training session this morning? Why didn't you speak up at the time?"
"Wait," said the Professor. "Rogue missed training? That's not like her."
Wolverine raised an eyebrow. "Didn't you know?"
"I've been using Cerebro all morning, not monitoring student activities. I'll contact her now and ask her to return."
"Couldn't you find her Jean?" asked Logan.
Jean shook her head. "She's out of my range – Professor, what's wrong?"
Professor Xavier was frowning, his hands resting on his temples. "Quicksilver. He's coming here now."
Kitty gasped. "Quicksilver's coming here?"
"His mind is confused, agitated. He's thinking too fast for me to read his reasons." The Professor opened his eyes wide. "He's entered the building."
"Let's go!" Logan sprinted out of the office, followed by the four worried girls, while the Professor sent a telepathic alert to the other X-Men.
"Like, how are we supposed to catch him?" asked Kitty. "When he's goin that fast, we can't even see him!"
"Improvise, Half-pint," replied Logan, pausing to sniff the air. "And hope for his sake that I don't catch him first."
*********************************
Pietro's mind was stuck in a loop. Rogue, the rings, Magneto, the nerve gas…
Trying to think of a way out of the situation, he suddenly remembered the Danger Room. Didn't it have reinforced walls, could be totally locked down? Maybe even the air vents. He even had a good idea of where it was thanks to Magnetos insistence that he be aware of the mansions layout. If he put the whole lot in there – well, he hadn't failed, had he? He'd done as he was told and it wasn't his fault if the X-Men weren't in range. Then Magneto would have to let Rogue go.
Wouldn't he?
He raced in what he hoped was the right direction, past a seemingly stationary Kurt Wagner and Scott Summers, down a flight of stairs. He hadn't stopped cursing Magneto since the moment he'd walked into the house and thrown the rings at him…
Pietro stopped dead, his forward momentum removing five yards of carpet. He didn't notice.
- Walked? –
But when Magneto tried to be intimidating, he always hovered two feet off the floor, to force the other person to look up. He never walked.
- Thrown? –
The rings were silver. Silver was metal. Why throw the rings when he could just make them float towards Pietro instead?
"Ohmigod!" exclaimed Pietro out loud. "It wasn't even him!"
Snikt.
"Something we can help you with, bub?"
The teen spun around and Logan was surprise to see his face pale and his blue eyes wide. The smell of fear came from him – and something else. Chemicals.
"Where'stheDangerRoom?"
Suddenly Logan understood the fear and the chemicals. "Go down the stairs and to the end of the hall!"
"Getthemtoopenit!" with that, Pietro sped off again. Logan telepathically told the Professor what was going on and the Professor relayed the news to the other X-Men. Storm was the closest to the control room and she flew in and opened the Danger Room. As soon as the door opened, she saw a bag flung inside and she hurriedly closed the doors again.
Outside the Danger Room, Pietro watched the doors slam shut and turned to see Jean flying towards him. "Tellthemto sealtheairvents!"
"Wh-"
"DO IT!"
Speaking to Storm telepathically, Jean was glad to see the other X-Men come running. Pietro took no notice of them, merely eyed the Danger Room doors nervously, until Scott grabbed him by the shoulder.
"What are you doing here, Quicksilver?"
"Are the doors airtight?"
"What?"
"'Cause if they're not, I'm leavin in a hurry!"
"They're airtight," growled Logan. "And the vents're sealed. But Storm reckons that bags givin out clouds of white shit!"
"That bitch!" said Pietro. "She said I had seven minutes. That wasn't even four!"
Snikt.
"What're you doin here?"
"Uh…selling Avon?"
"That's it, I'm gonna…" Logan went to grab Pietro, but the boy was halfway down the long corridor before he could be stopped.
"Jean, Kurt – go get him," ordered Logan. Kurt nodded and teleported Jean to the front door. As Pietro ran towards it some two seconds later, Jean lifted him up telepathically. He began cursing angrily, but realised that if he kept running he'd probably cause a tornado and trash the house, so didn't struggle too much.
Kurt teleported back to the others. "We got him!" he reported with satisfaction.
"Good," said Logan grimly. "Let's go get some answers."
Kurt eyed Kitty, Tabitha and Amara as the group got into the lift. They seemed distressed. "I zink some vun already knows ze answers."
All the girls could do was avoid Logan's glare.
Upstairs, Pietro was sitting in the Professors office, still being telekinetically restrained. "You-don't-understand-I-have-to-get-of-here-and-find-her!"
"Pietro," said the Professor calmly. "Why don't you tell us what's going on? Maybe we can help you."
"I-don't-need-your-help-now-let-me-go!"
"Has something happened to Rogue?" asked Kitty, walking towards Pietro.
"What the Hell has Rogue got to do with this mess?" growled Logan.
Kitty ignored him. "Please Pietro! Rogue's our friend and we want to help her if we can!"
Pietro sighed, realising he was never going to leave the mansion until he spoke, and quickly explained everything. Too quickly. Five seconds later he's finished the story and the X-Men were looking at him blankly.
"Can't-you-listen-faster?"
The Professor rolled his wheelchair forward. "Maybe if I could read your mind…"
"No way!"
"It wouldn't hurt…"
"I don't care! I've got top-secret plans in there!"
"Look Pietro," snapped Kitty. "Do you wanna help Rogue or not?"
"Oh for…OK then," said Pietro reluctantly. "But don't look at anything personal."
Don't think about having sex with Rogue, thought Pietro as the Professor scanned his mind. Don't think about it, don't – oh shit! Think about something else quickly!
The Professor finished and raised his eyebrows at Pietro. "Much as I like your 'best ever plan to capture the X-Men ever' plan and approve of the 'except Rogue' amendment, I think you watch too many spy movies. Where would you get that much dynamite?"
"Hey-you-looked-at-my-plans!"
"You were concentrating quite hard on it."
"Wanna let the rest of us in on what's goin on?" asked Logan.
The Professor frowned. "It seems that Rogue and Quicksilver have become quite…close in recent weeks."
Pietro suddenly found himself under the death glare of every X-Man in the room. "Hey, we bonded over a psycho parents anonymous meeting!"
"It seems that the two enlisted Wanda's help to engineer the Beasts unfortunate accident at the training session…"
"HAH!" yelled Tabby. "I told you that wasn't my fault!"
"…So that Rogue could use Hanks knowledge to create a serum similar to the one he used to control his mutation. Essentially, it gave Rogue the power of touch. However, Pietro has come to believe that although Rogue no longer absorbs a persons powers or renders them unconscious, she has been absorbing some amount of his personality and memory."
Please don't ask about the skin contact, thought Pietro nervously. It looked as though Logan might have already guessed – he looked like a man with violence on his mind.
"Ze reason Rogue's been such a bitch lately is because she's been touching you?" Kurt sounded seriously pissed off. "Das ist mein sister!"
This was obviously not a good time to be telekinetically pinned to a chair. Pietro considered his escape options, but before he could take any action a red beam hit him in the chest, knocking him and the chair across the room.
"Scott, don't!" yelled Storm. Kitty ran over to Pietro, who was lying in a dazed heap, and helped him into a sitting position. Although he was no longer telekinetically restrained, he was too stunned to run.
Completely ignoring the instructor, Scott fired another optic blast. Kitty made both herself and Pietro intangible and the beam took a chunk out of the wall instead. Kurt and Bobby each grabbed one of Scott's arms to stop him getting any closer or taking his shades off for another blast.
"Calm down!" shouted Kurt. "Vot are you doink?"
"I'm gonna teach this bastard to keep his hands off her!" Scott made another lunge towards Pietro. His teammates held him back with some difficulty.
"Scott, stop this at once!" ordered the Professor. "We need Quicksilver to help us find Rogue!"
Cyclops pulled away from Kurt and Bobby and folded his arms. "OK. For now."
Most of the X-Men were shooting sneaky glances at Jean. She looked like she'd just been slapped.
Professor Xavier waited to see if there would be any more interruptions before continuing.
"Pietro was visited by Magneto today, who told him to loose the gas in the mansion, in the hope of doing us some harm. When he refused, he was told that Rogue was in Magnetos clutches and she would be hurt unless he did as ordered. Except that Quicksilver planned to put the devices in the Danger Room all along, hoping to get Rogue released without doing us harm…"
"Beginning to regret it now," muttered Pietro.
"…And he also believes that it was not Magneto at all, but some one assuming his shape. And I agree."
Logan scowled. "Mystique."
"And Mystique won't hurt Rogue 'cause she's her daughter," said Pietro, picking himself off the floor. "And Summers? You're an asshole."
"Don't, Cyclops," warned Storm as Scott took a step forward.
"We all know that she wants revenge on us for leaving her in area 51," said Kitty. "And revenge on Quicksilver for, uh, like, being loyal to Magneto instead of her."
"You mean betraying her," said Scott.
"At least I didn't lock her in a military base," replied Pietro angrily.
The two might have gotten into a fight right then if a sudden tremor hadn't shook the school.
Kitty looked up, startled. "Lance!"
"Avalanche is probably pissed 'cause he thinks you're meeting him in the park," said Pietro, steadier on his feet than the X-Men because he was used to his teammates tantrums. "He got a phone call from you to meet him. Obviously Mystique getting him outta the way."
"Logan, Kitty – you and Pietro go and stop him doing that," instructed the Professor. "The rest of you, prep the X-Jet. New recruits, you're staying here."
As the others scattered and the younger X-Men protested, Storm paused for a moment with the Professor. "How are we going to find her?"
"I'm going to use Cerebro."
"But if she's not using her powers – "
"Trust me Storm." The Professors voice was grim. "If Mystique has her, then Rogue may not have a choice. And if her powers are too weakened for Cerebro to detect, we may not find her until it's too late."