Chapter 9 Later on Saturday
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.
The X-Men were at a loss as to what to do. Wanda's powers were somehow running interference so that Cerebro could not detect her or T.J., and Kurt's powers were being suppressed so he was also not detectable by Cerebro - not that it was that good at detecting very specific locations anyway.
"Damn it!" hollered Professor Xavier. If they'd stayed, we might've been able to use them to detect where Kurt is and they could have sent us off after him. We could've plugged Talia into Cerebro to get a better idea -she has some special connection with her dad.
"Listen," said Cain, "if you find him, let me talk to Graydon."
"Why?" asked Xavier.
"I understand him, I might be able to get through to him and help him to see the error of his ways and release Kurt."
"And why do you think you would? We've extended every kindness to him..."
"Charles, I understand him, you don't. I didn't know I was a mutant until I met Mr. Sinister, so I was in the same exact boat as Graydon. My brother was special, I wasn't. I understand how he feels."
Meanwhile, Graydon had managed to get Kurt to the Jasper building, where on one floor the FOH had their offices. They were theoretically there under the auspices of the Carlton Trust, a charitable organization, but the Trust had moved most of the charitable work to other offices and the executor of the trust, Mr. James Carlton, was concentrating on his Friends of Humanity work there.
"What are you going to do?" asked Graydon to Mr. Carlton, who had arrived from his Washington office that day, and who had immediately asked to see the young man.
"Come and see. By the way, I am very proud of you. It took a lot of courage to overcome family loyalty and to turn in your brother for the greater good. If you hadn't, mutants would be a lot closer to finally completing their designs and taking over the world."
"I have family loyalty," replied Graydon. "I just don't define family by blood. By genes, I mean - well, I define it by one gene, I guess, but..."
"I understand. You are an exceptional young man." He placed a strange-looking helmet on Graydon, and then another on himself, and opened a door.
They came into a room where on a table lay Mastermind. Everyone in the room had special helmets on.
"These prevent him from getting into our heads," explained Carlton. "We are going to use him to bring out the mutant's desire to kill, so they won't be able to disguise their true hatred of humanity. Then we will set them loose on that human-traitor to his species, J. Jonah Jameson. When they kill him, humans everywhere will see that only wild-type humans are really humans. Mutants are nothing more than beasts."
Graydon nodded.
Just then, Kurt was brought in by Farmer and Murdock, who had taken him earlier, just after Graydon had arrived. "Okay, we got him tied up nice and tight."
"Excellent." Carlton turned to Jason Wyngarde. "Mastermind, do your stuff."
"This is no good, Tyrone," explained Tandy.
"We have all of these photos that Peter took."
"No," argued Peter, "she's right. We know who the people are, but I didn't bother to get any footage of them talking, nor did they say anything technically illegal. They did talk about using bio-weapons to take away mutant's powers, but technically that isn't illegal, and they did not talk directly about killing mutants. They did discuss eradicating the X-gene, but later speakers clarified that they would do so through legal means, changing the laws to get mutants rounded up and sterilized. I don't trust them to avoid vigilantism, of course, but everything they said could be construed as legal, and there are enough people sympathizing with them that prosecuting them would be difficult. Besides, they are pretty tight. If worst comes to worst, they could deny everything; it's my word against theirs."
"So," asked Tyrone, his face barely visible in the darkness that enveloped him, even in the brightly lit warehouse where his hideout was, "you can do nothing."
"I don't have enough yet, especially with Jameson captured, to cause them much pain. You need a vigilante to help you."
"So you are useless?" asked Tyrone. Good grief, thought Peter, does he always sound this depressed?
"No, I'm not. I have a deal with a superhero. I provide him publicity, and he tells me where he'll be so I can get camera shots of him."
"You -" Tandy stammered, "you're the one who takes pictures of Spider-Man for the Bugle?"
"Shhhh! It's a secret!" Peter put his index finger to his lips. "Listen, give me half an hour and I will get him."
Laura Kelly was spying the entrance to the Jasper building. Not being able to find parking, she kept driving around, visiting the front of the building every fifteen minutes. She would rescue Kurt, and then he would owe her one. And she would add to her collection.
Wanda had managed to park and find a place to spend the stay while looking for Kurt. She technically was underage, which should have made it impossible to get a room but many places wouldn't care if you paid and promised not to tell anyone about the violation. She had to pay extra for her daughter, who had on an image inducer to make her look like a cute but normal dark-haired little girl.
Unfortunately, Talia had lost the "signal," and all they knew was that Kurt was somewhere in Manhattan.
Finally, Wanda noticed something wrong with Talia. "What is it, dear?" she asked.
"I don't know, Mommy. I'm hot, and tingly, and I have a headache, and I feel like I'm going to throw up."
"Uh-oh," whispered Wanda. "Uh, Talia, any other feelings?"
"I - I want to be you, Mommy. I want to know what it is like to be you."
"Oh my... Talia, I think you're manifesting."
"What?"
"You're getting your powers - at least one of them. As I recall, possession is one that they talked about."
"Posse... poss... what?"
"Possession. It means you can take over another person's body. Don't tell anyone - I mean, no one outside the Institute. They already think Kurt is a demon. Telling them you can possess people - oh no. Bad idea."
Talia lay down on the bed. Wanda went out to get some water for her, when she bumped right into Laura Kelly.
"What are you..."
"Same as you. Looking for Kurt. I know where he is. Do you?"
"N... no, I don't..."
"Good!" Wanda immediately regretted having revealed her ignorance. "I'll help you rescue him, but at a price."
"What? I'll pay anything."
"Let me get him for a night. Just one. I don't want to break up you and his little fling you got going there. And I certainly don't want anything bad to happen to his daughter. I just enjoy the sport of - 'collecting' rare and exotic people. Just once and I'll never bother you again."
Desperate to find Kurt before he got hurt, Wanda agreed.
Meanwhile, Tabby and Kitty had forgotten about finding Kurt for a short time, as they had been told that there was nothing they could do until Logan came back with more information. Logan had earlier gone out to see if he could track Wanda and Talia, while the Professor kept trying to find someone using Cerebro.
"So," asked Tabby. "Tabitha LeBeau, Tabitha Smith-LeBeau, or Tabitha Lebeau-Smith?"
"Hm..." replied Kitty. "I don't know. But I know I can't hyphenate my last name, I mean Katherine Marko-Pryde? Mark o' Pride? I'll sound like some Irish version of a Looney-Tunes character."
Outside, Gambit and Juggernaut were listening in.
"Well, mon ami," smiled Gambit. "Let's hope Kitty's not as unstoppable as you, non?"
"Grrr...." was all that Cain could say.
As all of this was going on, the Red Skull was languishing in his prison in Mexico. His services had yet to be called on by Sinister. Apparently he had not found anyone yet whom he wanted to breed the Red Skull's mutant seed with. Suddenly he was approached by a fearsome-looking man.
"Who... who are you?"
"I," said the man in a very deep voice, "am Apocalypse."
"What do you want?"
"Sinister is mad. But I can free you from his grasp. But first you must promise to help me after you get out?"
"How can you trust that I won't betray you?"
"Because if you help me, I will be able to give you power beyond your wildest imagination. The power to let the Aryan master race rule once more."
The Red Skull's smile immediately showed that he was interested.
The fool, thought Apocalypse. I will help him. But as long as he brings about the next evolutionary cataclysm, what care I if his so-called "master race" survives or not?