Talons

Chapter 11

The natives had been especially kind to Kotoko. Teacher Xavier kept in contact with him throughout his trip back, as he was rolled into the medical facility, and as he was waiting for treatment in one of the side chambers. When another native came in some time later, he set right to work putting topical anesthetics onto Kotoko's skin, then examined him with great care. And still, through all this, Xavier kept in contact, translating back and forth for him and the physician.

Finally they cobbled together a bed. They set down padding on the floor, then even made the curling ball for him to wrap his aching limbs around, so he could rest in comfort for the first time in days.

In all his time as a scout, no natives had ever treated him so well. Of course, in all his time as a scout, Kotoko had never met someone like Xavier.

He was not sure when he finally slept, but he had the feeling it was not long after he curled around the soft fabric ball. What woke him up was the sound of a soft chime once, then again, and again. He stretched as well as he could, though one of his limbs was still too painful to use.

He heard Xavier's voice softly in his mind. Kotoko, are you awake?

Yes, he thought back. Please enter. I welcome your presence.

I am not alone outside the door.

Your comrades are welcome, also.

Kotoko recurled around the luxurious, soft ball, grateful for the support it gave. The door opened, and many natives entered along with Xavier. To his relief, one of them was Kurt, and he was moving without aid.

All of the ambulatory X-men present in medlab had joined Xavier in his little trip to Kotoko's room. To no one's surprise, Isidro wasn't quite ready to deal with the alien yet, and Hank stayed behind to make sure he didn't slip into mental shock. Xavier opened the door to reveal Kotoko curled around what looked like a great big, spherical pillow; a cushion Logan knew from experience was filled with every spare blanket, towel, sheet, and comforter they could lay their hands on. In turn, he and that pillow rested on a couple of mattresses.

As Kurt entered the room, Kotoko raised up a little and extended two legs, issuing a very close approximation of Kurt's name.

"He's glad to see you," Xavier explained softly. "This is like a handshake. He expects you to touch the end spikes of his legs, open-handed."

Kurt stepped forward and did so, having to spread his arms out fairly wide to reach Kotoko's.

"It's good to see you, too," Kurt said.

A short touch, lasting a second, and then Kotoko retracted his limbs and settled back onto the stuffed ball. Xavier looked a bit surprised, then nodded.

"This is encouraging," he said. "I had not expected Kotoko to learn our language quite so quickly, even with my extensive help last night. So far, he has been able to understand everything we've said. This will make translating a bit faster, though I will still have to speak for him. He has no way to replicate our speech patterns without mechanical aid."

"I guess having no lips or tongue will do that," Ororo noted, watching Kotoko's orifices open and close.

In the bright light, curled around a pillow and crouched on mattresses, Kotoko didn't look nearly so threatening. In fact, he gave the strange, incongruous impression that he was possessively hugging a stuffed toy. He was a mottled orangish-brown, the skin of his body lined with deep wrinkles and warty, sealed bulbs. The many "mouths" opened and shut regularly, but no part of his body swelled and receded to indicate breathing at any point. This close, all could see that he did have some hair, tiny, coarse fibers that jutted irregularly from the wrinkles or the bulbs, but never the barnacles that were his mouths. The claw tips were a deep, glossy brown, smooth and featureless, and so curled under the ball that they did not puncture the mattresses below. The X-men could not see his underside, but all had the distinct impression that doing so would be the equivalent of "looking up one's skirt".

Ororo went to the single monitor on the wall, activated it, and split the screen, allowing the control room and medlab to follow whatever they did. Scott whistled softly as he beheld Kotoko for the first time.

"Well, I'm impressed," he said.

Kotoko made a series of hisses and clicks. Xavier said, "Yes, that's the one. The force beam you saw is organically produced." Kotoko's mouths opened and shut in rapid succession. Xavier turned to the screen, addressing Scott. "He's quite impressed with you, too. Apparently, a full-on blast from the beams that took you down would have crippled him, if not slain him outright." His gaze shifted to the second part of the screen, where the three teenagers stood. "Colossus, I wonder if I could have you bring the separated piloting 'cockpit' from the hanger bay. I would like Kotoko to see it for himself."

"Right away, professor," Peter answered as he left the screen.

"While he's doing that, I'd like to ask you something, Kotoko," Ororo said. "Why did you run off with Kurt last night?"

Kotoko "spoke", and the professor translated, "He did so in the hopes of saving Kurt's and Scott's lives. His armor is meant for scouting, and he had no effective way to fight the enemy off. He gambled that if he picked up Kurt, he would save him from being crushed underfoot, and if he ran, the soldier would follow, leaving Scott alone." Xavier paused. "He apologizes for the distress he caused, but he could see no other way."

That lingering resentment Ororo harbored towards Kotoko evaporated. It wasn't a kidnapping, it was a rescue attempt. Despite their fearsome appearance, if there were other talons as noble as Kotoko, Ororo felt she could get used to them quite easily. She walked closer to the alien.

"You endangered your own life to save two aliens you didn't even know," she said, extending both her hands. "Thank you, Kotoko."

Kotoko reached out with two limbs. Instead of touching Ororo's hands with his end claws, he met her fingers with the portion of his skin just above them. The texture reminded her of sharkskin, rough and leathery. Ororo looked to Xavier, curious as to the change in hand placement.

Xavier smiled just a little. "He knows you're a female, Ororo."

:

It did not take long for Colossus to haul the robotic torso back, though it was an awkward fit down the corridors. However, when he set the piece aside and opened the door, he found it a bit too crowded for him and his prize to haul inside.

"That's all right, Colossus," Xavier told him. "Kotoko can move to it instead."

Inside, Kotoko uncurled and left his bed, careful not to make any holes in the fabric. The tips of his claws clicked heavily on the metal floor as he made his way to a jumble of plastic and ceramic plates in the corner of the room. With one limb he probed the pile, obviously searching for something. As he lifted that "arm" away, several pieces of equipment stuck to the underside. The equipment then seemed to slide around and rearrange their positions of their own accord. The rest of the people in the room moved aside to give him space as he walked to the open doorway. One of his limbs, which was wrapped in gauze, must have been badly injured, as he kept it curled under tight, never moving or touching the ground.

Kotoko had originally been rolled into the room, each limb curled up as tightly as the injured one. Exiting was a bit tricky, forcing him to creep through the doorway one limb at a time. When he got to the cockpit pod that Colossus deposited in the hallway, Kotoko arranged himself over it and paused. Then he opened the cockpit and straddled the entire apparatus again. He spoke in his percussive, clicking language during the entire procedure, and a quiet beep occasionally issued from the equipment he carried. After several minutes of this oddly motionless examination, Kotoko used one limb to physically probe the inside. Finally, he placed the limb against the input jack, gently inserting the probe into an open barnacle and closing around it.

"It is as we suspected," Xavier said from inside the room. "Kotoko believes that this is what his scanning equipment had picked up. The input mechanism used on the human pilots is nearly identical to the technology the talons use, whether from Kotoko's side or the King's Own. He would like to go to the hanger and examine the rest of the equipment as well. Though this pod is too damaged for him to repair, the other exo-suit may be intact enough for a power-up, and then he would be able to match power signatures and know for certain."

Scott's voice called to them, slightly distorted as it came through the screen. "We might want to wait on that for a minute. Storm has seen Kotoko teleport the same way as the battlesuit on the roof. That sounds like a mechanism, and we don't know if the big suit might have that mechanism in it. The last thing I'd want is for it to spontaneously teleport back to its masters."

"Or act as another signal for other teleporting enemies to come in on," Kurt added. "If Kotoko found it, others could, yes?"

The pops and hisses of Kotoko's speech tripled in speed.

"That pissed him off," Logan muttered. "I can smell that from here."

Xavier winced a bit, touching the side of his head.

"Slower, please, Kotoko," he requested. "Calm down."

Kotoko stamped with three of his legs, somewhat like someone drumming their fingers. His rate of speech slowed.

"Kotoko is concerned enough that the King's Own seem to have given input technology to us," Xavier translated. "The idea that we have their portal technology is far worse. His kind use the portals to teleport not just as Kurt does, but to go through dimensions as well. Portals seem to be their equivalent of space travel.

"Kotoko himself was only trusted with a portal generator after years of training, and still there is an element of risk that he keeps in mind, as if he was a fighter pilot. If someone miss-steps, the consequences could be as simple as getting lost, or as severe as scattering the user to the four winds." He closed his eyes and shuddered. "Or only scattering part of that user. Kotoko saw that happen once, when a device malfunctioned. A worst case scenario would be opening an uncontrolled wormhole. That doesn't happen anymore, with the safeguards put in, but it happened several times before Kotoko's lifetime, when the technology was first being investigated."

Kurt's mouth went dry. They knew for a fact that the talons' counterfeited input technology was less than perfect. If the teleportation technology was just as faulty....

"We've got to get to the danger room," Ororo said, speaking what was on everyone's minds. "We've got to know just how much involvement the King's Own have."

To be continued….