Disclaimer It's all Marvel's. No money made. Suing will profit no one.
Want? Take ... Have ... just lemme know where it's going :)
Thank you everyone that's reviewed so far! It's those and the death threats that keep me going :P
ishandahalf: I too am glad I'm not lying dead in a ditch someplace, it'd really cramp my style ;)
Rai: Can I stop wearing flame retardent gloves to open my email now? :D
Rascal: What happens next? Well, I thought I would kill them all. Ah hahahhhhahahahahahh. Coughs. Or, you know, not. Maybe Disneyland.
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"Yo, Lance? Didn't we used to have a front door? And, you know, windows?"
Lance stood open mouthed before the wreckage that was once the front of the Boarding House, ignoring Todd's knee-jerk humour in favour of running inside. The floorboards warped worryingly underfoot; chunks of masonry were still falling off the walls.
"Fred? Pietro?"
The only reply was a light fixture giving up its defiance of gravity, swinging down on the cable and past his ear. He flinched to the side and yelled again, louder.
Toad's reedy voice called through, tight with nerves. "It looks like it's gonna fall anytime and I am so not gonna dig you out if you get buried."
A slight shudder ran under him and the door to the front room fell off its hinges, slamming to the floor and creating another strong tremor he felt through the souls of his feet.
He backed out onto the street once more.
"Maybe a quake hit it. A really, really ... specific one." Todd turned suspicious eyes on Avalanche, who finally glanced his way frowning at the accusation. He barely managed to evade the swinging slap to the back of his head.
"I've been in the work shop all night, idiot. It wasn't a quake, Pietro must've gone sonic in there."
The pavement jumped lightly under their feet, but this time it wasn't emanating from the building. Both turned to see Fred making his way laboriously towards them, chewing his way through a burger a touch bigger than his own head. He hadn't noticed them, or the state of the house and, unless they got his attention, Lance realised he was about to walk right over them. On his list of preferred ways to die, being trampled by a huge fat guy didn't come high.
"Fred. Fred!"
It took at while for the Blob to stop; his stomach maintained a forward momentum long after his feet had ceased moving. Eventually everything settled and he looked with confusion over the top of his snack. "What?"
"Look at the house."
Fred took another bite of the burger as he obediently swung his head to look at the Boarding House, and then began to choke as he tried to gasp a breath of processed meat. He was going purple before Toad threw himself bodily at the massive back with enough force to dislodge the obstruction.
Once he'd regained the ability to speak, Fred rounded on Lance. "What did you do??"
"I didn't do anything." Lance stood nose to nose with the other man, fast becoming angrier about being suspected than he was about the House itself. "Look at it, fat head. If I'd done that there wouldn't be walls left! It had to be Pietro."
Fred backed down slightly, ducking his head a little to acknowledge the reasoning, then snapping it back up again and jabbing one thick finger into Lance's chest. "Don't call me fat."
Lance shoved the finger away and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "Okay, Toad, go find Mystique. She probably doesn't know about this yet, or she'd be here yelling at me too. Fred, stay here. Right here. Don't move."
Grumbling, Todd bounced away as Fred simply shrugged and chose not to question orders that let him finish his food in peace.
Lance crept back into the house. He was fairly sure it wasn't going to collapse just yet. Several years of causing sudden destruction had given him a fairly good idea of when something was about to fall down, go boom. The building couldn't be saved; there was way too much structural damage for anything but a wrecking ball to deal with. But he should have some time to try and piece together what had happened.
Slowly, he inched his way up the stairs, keeping tight to the wall to avoid putting undue stress on the floor he wasn't sure would support a rat, let alone himself. The wood still creaked and rippled alarmingly, but it held.
On the second floor the damage was far less catastrophic. Doors were still in their frames and there were even a few cracked pictures on the walls. They'd been cracked when he'd first arrived, so that was nothing new. Down the hall was Pietro's room. The door had been slammed open hard enough to leave an impact mark in the whitewash of the wall by it. But it had been opened from the inside, not the outside.
So, Pietro had known there was a problem and run. Towards or away, he didn't know. One glance inside the room solved that mystery, the window had been blown in and shards of glass were still sticking into the wall opposite it. He'd been running away, definitely away.
Lance turned and slowly made his way back to the top of the stairs, trying to think and absently noting details along the way. The real destruction didn't begin until half way down the stairs, where Pietro would have been able to see the front door. So, he'd seen something there and panicked. He wouldn't have been able to go back, so he would have tried to force his way past whatever had been ahead. And the little daddy's boy had created a sucking vortex in his wake.
Great. Perfect. Parfait, even. Hey, some of Kitty's French help was sticking after all, who knew?
He resisted the urge to jog down as he normally would and maintained the slow and careful pace back along the corridor towards the darkness of the street outside and the barely illuminated blob of shadow that was, well, Blob.
Greeted by the sight of the last piece of burger being chewed, opened mouthed, he grimaced and looked away.
"Did'ja find what happened?"
"We were attacked."
"Well, duh. Who by?"
"How should I know? Call a psychic line."
"Mystique's gonna be pissed."
"No, I'm pissed. She's gonna be homicidal, man."
There was a screech up the street as a car took the corner on two wheels and barrelled towards them. Lance felt oddly relieved as he recognised it as the vehicle she drove as Principle Darkholme. Sure, she was going to scream and yell and probably threaten everyone on the planet, including them, with immediate annihilation but Mystique would get it all fixed. Well, maybe not the Boarding House. 'Construction Worker' probably wasn't amongst her many skills.
Toad was the first out, almost falling out the door of back seat and to the sidewalk with a white face and trembling hands. His eyes were wide beyond terror, and he seemed to have some trouble standing upright. Weakly, he mumbled. "Can we go again?"
Mystique was calm and collected, in an icy fashion, as she exited from the driver's side and stalked around the front of the car towards Lance and Blob. Silently, she surveyed both of them as if they were on parade, then seemed to choose Lance as the one voted most likely to give coherent information.
As she stared at him, he fought back the urge to either cower, or stand to attention, settling for a one-shoulder slouch. He also knew better than to talk before her, so he simply met her eyes and waited.
"What happened here?" Was that a slight disappointment with his refusal to give her something to pick on? Oh, it really was. He managed to keep the glee from his tone as he replied.
"It looks like someone or something came in the upstairs window to Pietro's room, and he ran. Really ran. The only thing keeping that building together is the gunk."
"I see. And can we presume he is now missing, presumed held against his will?" Raven didn't wait for an answer, looking pensively up at the Boarding House, but seeing something entirely different. "His father will have to be informed."
-o-
As he came back to himself in a rush, Xavier discovered two things.
The first was that he was moving and no one was steering. He was on an icy hill and he appeared to be gaining speed.
The second was that, while he had been able to establish mental contact with some of those still at the mansion, and his brief astral sojourn had verified everyone was alive; he could no longer gain a telepathic fix on anyone in the warehouse.
While the second fact was deeply worrying, the first gained precedence as he noted his course was hurtling him towards a reasonably busy intersection. The wheels of the chair were turning too fast for him to do anything other than break his hands if he tried to manually stop them and, as this was not his usual wheelchair, there was no setting to bring him to a gentle halt. Using the current break would bring him to a sudden enough stop he'd be thrown straight out and probably into the road.
Gritting his teeth he threw all his weight back and to the side, felt the spokes buckle under protest. For a moment he tilted precariously, then the entire chair spun to throw him out and finally stop a few feet away, wheels spinning, one bent at a pathetic angle.
For a moment, he just lay where he was, cataloguing himself. Nothing appeared to be broken; his tweed jacket had taken much of the scraping along the paving slabs. Craning his head, he checked his legs. Both appeared straight and unbroken, in all, he was fine.
Surprisingly, a few cars were slowing. A woman was hurrying over with an expression of concern, reaching into her purse to find her cell phone. He felt a brief moment of warmth that, even with the world as it was; strangers would still reach out to help strangers. It was almost with regret that he gently clouded their minds and removed what they had seen of him.
The cars sped up again; the woman shook her head and blinked, then moved away. He dragged himself over to his chair, grateful now for the punishing upper body workout he insisted upon giving himself daily. He managed to flip it upright, wedging it against the wall and applying the brake firmly, before hauling himself back into it.
There was no chance he could use it, the seat was tilted at an extreme angle and one wheel almost bent double on itself, but it was better than sitting on a frozen sidewalk. He debated on whom to contact at the mansion. Storm's mind was still too chaotic as she attempted to rein herself, and the weather, back under control.
~ Rogue, can you hear me? ~
~ Yeah, Professor ~
Usually he was privately amused how strongly her accent followed into her mind-voice, that it followed at all. Most mind communication was flavourless that way, but Rogue managed to keep her roots close even there. Now, though, he had more pressing things on his mind.
~ Have you managed to revive Kurt? ~
~ He's awake, but he's seein' double again. Boy gets hit on the head more'n the rest've us together. ~
There was an undercurrent of worry to her mind that she was keeping firmly under control, but he wasn't surprised at its source, only that she hadn't yet asked. He tried to break the situation to her as gently as possible.
~ I'm afraid there has been a problem. I am some distance from the warehouse and unable to return, is Kurt able to teleport to me with a new chair? ~
There was a moment of panic, and then thought won through once more.
~ Ah don't think so Professor, he's really out've it. Kitty's just trying to keep him awake as best she can. Storm put in a call to Doctor McCoy, she said you'd want that. ~
~ That's perfectly fine, Rogue. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to take Scott's car and pick us up. ~
He felt terrible at the relief that rushed through her as he inferred that they were all safe and well, but he simply couldn't risk her driving whilst anxious. Although her informal lessons with Scott had allegedly been going well, he dreaded to think of the damage she might do to herself or others if she were upset behind the wheel.
~ I'm leavin' right now ~
And the connection broke as if she'd hung up. He almost recoiled from the shock and when he tried to find her again, he simply couldn't. With mounting worry he scanned for the rest of the inhabitants of the mansion, but they all pinged on his psychic radar.
She shouldn't have been able to make herself a ghost to him, he didn't even know if she was aware she had. There was only one other with the innate ability to do so that he was aware of. Gambit. The train of thought was filed away for consideration at a less hectic time as he heard the sound of pounding feet behind him.
He looked that way quickly; frankly he had expected pursuers far sooner. But, rather than Sinister or any of his Marauders, it was Logan. A visual once over showed no sign of injury, save to his jacket and jeans, which were ripped through and covered in the dust of the warehouse.
"Logan!" He dropped the mental mask he had been wearing to shield himself from scrutiny and Wolverine pulled up sharply as he saw him.
The other man's gaze flicked over the chair and the disarray of Xavier, and then he wasted no further time.
"They're gone, took the Cajun with'em. Musta used a terrasect, 'cause there's no trail. Knocked me out cold, don't know why I'm still breathin'."
Xavier felt his lips tighten with disgust for Essex. "Because he likes to leave enemies alive as a sign of his contempt for them."
"Stupid."
"Yes, well, fortunate for us in this case. Rogue is on her way with transport to get us back to the Institute. Scott and Jean are missing and Kurt has a likely concussion, but Ororo has called Hank McCoy."
"You let Rogue drive?" There was no little horror in the man's tone.
"I don't believe I had a choice."
They both fell into silence, an uncomfortable one as both had the leisure to consider the new piece of information they hadn't wanted to mention. Wolverine broke first.
"The kid knew Sinister."
"It would seem so."
"Think they're in this together?"
"No, I don't. But … it is troubling. He should have told us."
"He was scared, stunk of it. Haven't smelled that on him before."
The silence returned, and stayed, until the red sports car drew up beside them and promptly stalled. Rogue looked over with slightly flushed cheeks and a proud expression, which died when she counted one too few passengers.
"Where's Remy?"
Want? Take ... Have ... just lemme know where it's going :)
Thank you everyone that's reviewed so far! It's those and the death threats that keep me going :P
ishandahalf: I too am glad I'm not lying dead in a ditch someplace, it'd really cramp my style ;)
Rai: Can I stop wearing flame retardent gloves to open my email now? :D
Rascal: What happens next? Well, I thought I would kill them all. Ah hahahhhhahahahahahh. Coughs. Or, you know, not. Maybe Disneyland.
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"Yo, Lance? Didn't we used to have a front door? And, you know, windows?"
Lance stood open mouthed before the wreckage that was once the front of the Boarding House, ignoring Todd's knee-jerk humour in favour of running inside. The floorboards warped worryingly underfoot; chunks of masonry were still falling off the walls.
"Fred? Pietro?"
The only reply was a light fixture giving up its defiance of gravity, swinging down on the cable and past his ear. He flinched to the side and yelled again, louder.
Toad's reedy voice called through, tight with nerves. "It looks like it's gonna fall anytime and I am so not gonna dig you out if you get buried."
A slight shudder ran under him and the door to the front room fell off its hinges, slamming to the floor and creating another strong tremor he felt through the souls of his feet.
He backed out onto the street once more.
"Maybe a quake hit it. A really, really ... specific one." Todd turned suspicious eyes on Avalanche, who finally glanced his way frowning at the accusation. He barely managed to evade the swinging slap to the back of his head.
"I've been in the work shop all night, idiot. It wasn't a quake, Pietro must've gone sonic in there."
The pavement jumped lightly under their feet, but this time it wasn't emanating from the building. Both turned to see Fred making his way laboriously towards them, chewing his way through a burger a touch bigger than his own head. He hadn't noticed them, or the state of the house and, unless they got his attention, Lance realised he was about to walk right over them. On his list of preferred ways to die, being trampled by a huge fat guy didn't come high.
"Fred. Fred!"
It took at while for the Blob to stop; his stomach maintained a forward momentum long after his feet had ceased moving. Eventually everything settled and he looked with confusion over the top of his snack. "What?"
"Look at the house."
Fred took another bite of the burger as he obediently swung his head to look at the Boarding House, and then began to choke as he tried to gasp a breath of processed meat. He was going purple before Toad threw himself bodily at the massive back with enough force to dislodge the obstruction.
Once he'd regained the ability to speak, Fred rounded on Lance. "What did you do??"
"I didn't do anything." Lance stood nose to nose with the other man, fast becoming angrier about being suspected than he was about the House itself. "Look at it, fat head. If I'd done that there wouldn't be walls left! It had to be Pietro."
Fred backed down slightly, ducking his head a little to acknowledge the reasoning, then snapping it back up again and jabbing one thick finger into Lance's chest. "Don't call me fat."
Lance shoved the finger away and took a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "Okay, Toad, go find Mystique. She probably doesn't know about this yet, or she'd be here yelling at me too. Fred, stay here. Right here. Don't move."
Grumbling, Todd bounced away as Fred simply shrugged and chose not to question orders that let him finish his food in peace.
Lance crept back into the house. He was fairly sure it wasn't going to collapse just yet. Several years of causing sudden destruction had given him a fairly good idea of when something was about to fall down, go boom. The building couldn't be saved; there was way too much structural damage for anything but a wrecking ball to deal with. But he should have some time to try and piece together what had happened.
Slowly, he inched his way up the stairs, keeping tight to the wall to avoid putting undue stress on the floor he wasn't sure would support a rat, let alone himself. The wood still creaked and rippled alarmingly, but it held.
On the second floor the damage was far less catastrophic. Doors were still in their frames and there were even a few cracked pictures on the walls. They'd been cracked when he'd first arrived, so that was nothing new. Down the hall was Pietro's room. The door had been slammed open hard enough to leave an impact mark in the whitewash of the wall by it. But it had been opened from the inside, not the outside.
So, Pietro had known there was a problem and run. Towards or away, he didn't know. One glance inside the room solved that mystery, the window had been blown in and shards of glass were still sticking into the wall opposite it. He'd been running away, definitely away.
Lance turned and slowly made his way back to the top of the stairs, trying to think and absently noting details along the way. The real destruction didn't begin until half way down the stairs, where Pietro would have been able to see the front door. So, he'd seen something there and panicked. He wouldn't have been able to go back, so he would have tried to force his way past whatever had been ahead. And the little daddy's boy had created a sucking vortex in his wake.
Great. Perfect. Parfait, even. Hey, some of Kitty's French help was sticking after all, who knew?
He resisted the urge to jog down as he normally would and maintained the slow and careful pace back along the corridor towards the darkness of the street outside and the barely illuminated blob of shadow that was, well, Blob.
Greeted by the sight of the last piece of burger being chewed, opened mouthed, he grimaced and looked away.
"Did'ja find what happened?"
"We were attacked."
"Well, duh. Who by?"
"How should I know? Call a psychic line."
"Mystique's gonna be pissed."
"No, I'm pissed. She's gonna be homicidal, man."
There was a screech up the street as a car took the corner on two wheels and barrelled towards them. Lance felt oddly relieved as he recognised it as the vehicle she drove as Principle Darkholme. Sure, she was going to scream and yell and probably threaten everyone on the planet, including them, with immediate annihilation but Mystique would get it all fixed. Well, maybe not the Boarding House. 'Construction Worker' probably wasn't amongst her many skills.
Toad was the first out, almost falling out the door of back seat and to the sidewalk with a white face and trembling hands. His eyes were wide beyond terror, and he seemed to have some trouble standing upright. Weakly, he mumbled. "Can we go again?"
Mystique was calm and collected, in an icy fashion, as she exited from the driver's side and stalked around the front of the car towards Lance and Blob. Silently, she surveyed both of them as if they were on parade, then seemed to choose Lance as the one voted most likely to give coherent information.
As she stared at him, he fought back the urge to either cower, or stand to attention, settling for a one-shoulder slouch. He also knew better than to talk before her, so he simply met her eyes and waited.
"What happened here?" Was that a slight disappointment with his refusal to give her something to pick on? Oh, it really was. He managed to keep the glee from his tone as he replied.
"It looks like someone or something came in the upstairs window to Pietro's room, and he ran. Really ran. The only thing keeping that building together is the gunk."
"I see. And can we presume he is now missing, presumed held against his will?" Raven didn't wait for an answer, looking pensively up at the Boarding House, but seeing something entirely different. "His father will have to be informed."
-o-
As he came back to himself in a rush, Xavier discovered two things.
The first was that he was moving and no one was steering. He was on an icy hill and he appeared to be gaining speed.
The second was that, while he had been able to establish mental contact with some of those still at the mansion, and his brief astral sojourn had verified everyone was alive; he could no longer gain a telepathic fix on anyone in the warehouse.
While the second fact was deeply worrying, the first gained precedence as he noted his course was hurtling him towards a reasonably busy intersection. The wheels of the chair were turning too fast for him to do anything other than break his hands if he tried to manually stop them and, as this was not his usual wheelchair, there was no setting to bring him to a gentle halt. Using the current break would bring him to a sudden enough stop he'd be thrown straight out and probably into the road.
Gritting his teeth he threw all his weight back and to the side, felt the spokes buckle under protest. For a moment he tilted precariously, then the entire chair spun to throw him out and finally stop a few feet away, wheels spinning, one bent at a pathetic angle.
For a moment, he just lay where he was, cataloguing himself. Nothing appeared to be broken; his tweed jacket had taken much of the scraping along the paving slabs. Craning his head, he checked his legs. Both appeared straight and unbroken, in all, he was fine.
Surprisingly, a few cars were slowing. A woman was hurrying over with an expression of concern, reaching into her purse to find her cell phone. He felt a brief moment of warmth that, even with the world as it was; strangers would still reach out to help strangers. It was almost with regret that he gently clouded their minds and removed what they had seen of him.
The cars sped up again; the woman shook her head and blinked, then moved away. He dragged himself over to his chair, grateful now for the punishing upper body workout he insisted upon giving himself daily. He managed to flip it upright, wedging it against the wall and applying the brake firmly, before hauling himself back into it.
There was no chance he could use it, the seat was tilted at an extreme angle and one wheel almost bent double on itself, but it was better than sitting on a frozen sidewalk. He debated on whom to contact at the mansion. Storm's mind was still too chaotic as she attempted to rein herself, and the weather, back under control.
~ Rogue, can you hear me? ~
~ Yeah, Professor ~
Usually he was privately amused how strongly her accent followed into her mind-voice, that it followed at all. Most mind communication was flavourless that way, but Rogue managed to keep her roots close even there. Now, though, he had more pressing things on his mind.
~ Have you managed to revive Kurt? ~
~ He's awake, but he's seein' double again. Boy gets hit on the head more'n the rest've us together. ~
There was an undercurrent of worry to her mind that she was keeping firmly under control, but he wasn't surprised at its source, only that she hadn't yet asked. He tried to break the situation to her as gently as possible.
~ I'm afraid there has been a problem. I am some distance from the warehouse and unable to return, is Kurt able to teleport to me with a new chair? ~
There was a moment of panic, and then thought won through once more.
~ Ah don't think so Professor, he's really out've it. Kitty's just trying to keep him awake as best she can. Storm put in a call to Doctor McCoy, she said you'd want that. ~
~ That's perfectly fine, Rogue. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to take Scott's car and pick us up. ~
He felt terrible at the relief that rushed through her as he inferred that they were all safe and well, but he simply couldn't risk her driving whilst anxious. Although her informal lessons with Scott had allegedly been going well, he dreaded to think of the damage she might do to herself or others if she were upset behind the wheel.
~ I'm leavin' right now ~
And the connection broke as if she'd hung up. He almost recoiled from the shock and when he tried to find her again, he simply couldn't. With mounting worry he scanned for the rest of the inhabitants of the mansion, but they all pinged on his psychic radar.
She shouldn't have been able to make herself a ghost to him, he didn't even know if she was aware she had. There was only one other with the innate ability to do so that he was aware of. Gambit. The train of thought was filed away for consideration at a less hectic time as he heard the sound of pounding feet behind him.
He looked that way quickly; frankly he had expected pursuers far sooner. But, rather than Sinister or any of his Marauders, it was Logan. A visual once over showed no sign of injury, save to his jacket and jeans, which were ripped through and covered in the dust of the warehouse.
"Logan!" He dropped the mental mask he had been wearing to shield himself from scrutiny and Wolverine pulled up sharply as he saw him.
The other man's gaze flicked over the chair and the disarray of Xavier, and then he wasted no further time.
"They're gone, took the Cajun with'em. Musta used a terrasect, 'cause there's no trail. Knocked me out cold, don't know why I'm still breathin'."
Xavier felt his lips tighten with disgust for Essex. "Because he likes to leave enemies alive as a sign of his contempt for them."
"Stupid."
"Yes, well, fortunate for us in this case. Rogue is on her way with transport to get us back to the Institute. Scott and Jean are missing and Kurt has a likely concussion, but Ororo has called Hank McCoy."
"You let Rogue drive?" There was no little horror in the man's tone.
"I don't believe I had a choice."
They both fell into silence, an uncomfortable one as both had the leisure to consider the new piece of information they hadn't wanted to mention. Wolverine broke first.
"The kid knew Sinister."
"It would seem so."
"Think they're in this together?"
"No, I don't. But … it is troubling. He should have told us."
"He was scared, stunk of it. Haven't smelled that on him before."
The silence returned, and stayed, until the red sports car drew up beside them and promptly stalled. Rogue looked over with slightly flushed cheeks and a proud expression, which died when she counted one too few passengers.
"Where's Remy?"