I don't own X-men: Evolution
Pyro leaned against the frame of the door that separated his room from Amara's, watching her sleep. She looked so peaceful, the locks of her brown hair that hung down in front of her face fluttering slightly as she breathed, the last rays of the dying sun retreating across her features, painting them exotic ochre. She had been sleeping for about three now, no doubt exhausted from the day's events.
He felt guilt coursing through him. Not just for having distanced her from himself by his previous...actions... (though that was enough to make him want to kick himself repeatedly), but because of what he now knew after Magneto's debrief not fifteen minutes ago.
St John really hadn't cared about what the Acolytes did in the name of mutant superiority when he had originally signed up for the job. Any occupation that let him play with fire as much as he wanted was fine by him. He even got nice pay bonuses out of it. Now, however...
Before he had met Amara, John Allerdyce hadn't given a damn about others because of his lack of attachments; there was nobody for him in the world, just people who were against him. He hadn't cared if anyone got hurt.
But now Magneto had gone too far, in Pyro's opinion. Amara and her friend –Roberto, Pyro remembered now—were to be told that they were being kept merely as hostages. In reality, their collective powers would be used to fuel a new machine that Magneto had built; a machine that had the ability to alter the DNA of any humans within the area until they were mutants as well.
Normally, Pyro wouldn't really have cared, except that Amara's power would be used until she was sucked dry...exhausted, drained and possibly even until death. His insides seemed to curl up like paper in the middle of a flame at the thought of it. He gazed at Amara, lying innocently on the bed. She hadn't done anything to deserve that. It shouldn't happen...
A sudden soft knocking on his door brought St John out of his reverie. Softly closing the door to Amara's room, he opened the other, and was met by the intensely burning eyes of his fellow Acolyte Remy Lebeau.
"D'you 'ave a minute, homme?" Remy walked in as Pyro silently opened the door further. "T'anks."
Pyro held a finger to his lips as he shut the door. "Be a bit quoieter, mate. The sheila's asleep."
"What I 'ave to say merits whispering, mon ami." Gambit sat down on the bed, then sprang up and started to pace up and down. "I—you 'eard what de boss said a little while ago, non? About de machine and de students and whatnot?" His accent was thicker than ever, a sure sign that he was agitated about something.
"Yeah, I did. And I ain't happy about it, I c'n tell ya that. Noither are you from the looks of it, mate."
"Non, dis Cajun t'inks dat ol' Mag's 'as gone too far dis time. Mebbe bein' wit' Rogue has softened me some, but I jus' can't help him with that kind of thing." Remy looked at John, who was sitting comfortably on the bed, watching his pacing. "We gotta get 'em out of here."
"I'm with ya all the way, mate, but there's still Sabretooth to consider. He's with Magneto on this, he doesn't care."
"Remy knows dis. We've just gotta wait till Sabes takes a walk; he always does dat. De machine ain't gonna be activated for t'ree days yet, an' I t'ink I c'n get Piotr in on de plans. He's de homme wit' de morals. In de meantime, I gain de boy's trust while you gain dat of de girl." Remy gave St John a sly look. "Though if she's who I t'ink she is, dat should already have been done..."
Pyro sighed glumly. "I'm gonna need yer help with that, mate. I—made a mistake, and now I don't know if she'll ever forgive me."
"Well, out wit' it. Maybe dis Cajun can help you."
Amara listened to the soft conversation for a few minutes from her position on the bed; she had awoken to the sound of footsteps and a door closing. Curiousity finally overcame her, and she carefully made her way over to sit down by the door, pressing her ear to the crack to be able to hear the words a bit better.
She flushed a deep red as she realized that St John was talking about what had happened between them in the cave...How dare he?! But after a few more sentences she came to realize that he was not, in fact, boasting; on the contrary his voice was full of misery and self-loathing. She rested her head against the door, settling in to listen to the rest of what he had to say.
"...and now she barely talks t' me. Every time she just looks at me I feel like dirt. I said I was sorry, but she won't forgive me. Wot do I do? How can I make 'er trust me again?"
Amara barely had time to process the full meaning carried within these words when a new voice cut in, thick with an accent that she didn't recognize.
"Well, mon ami, you could always..." the voice trailed off into a series of indistinguishable mutters; the words were lost within the deepness of the male voice plus the accent.
"Remy!" St John's voice sounded shocked. "I will not do that to 'Mara, you sicko! Wot d'you take me for anyways? Hell, I'm in love with her! Would you do that to someone you love? Loike Rogue?"
"It was only a suggestion, homme, calm down. Non, I wouldn't do that to my chere; I was only jokin wit' ya, Johnny."
"Well, it was a bad joke then. You need practice. Now give me some real advice."
Amara sat, stunned by the intensity of Pyro's voice and his vehement declaration of love for her. Perhaps she would have to go over her own feelings in regards to St John; her emotions were a tangled mess. Getting up, she went over to her bed; she didn't really want to hear the rest of the conversation. She had heard all that she needed to for now.
The exact same thought ran through someone else's mind: a pair of yellow eyes gleamed as their owner slipped away from his position under the window.
"Ms Munroe? Is that you?" Bobby Drake's voice nearly cracked with relief. After about half an hour of searching, the remaining New Recruits had finally located the telephone number for Moira McTaggert's laboratory in Scotland.
"Yes, Bobby. What is the matter?" The ever-calm voice of his teacher replied, slightly muffled by the distance.
"Oh, Ms Munroe, are you able to get the X-men back to Bayville as quick as possible? There's been...a problem." He really didn't want to have to explain things over and over again.
"It sounds serious. Of course, we are just finishing our visit here; we'll be back by early morning tomorrow."
"Thanks, Ms Munroe. And please hurry."
Hank McCoy, aka "The Beast", loped up the mountainside, looking about for any signs that his two missing students may have previously been in the area. It was getting dark; the sun had just gone down under the horizon, the sky rapidly fading from deep blue to black.
Beast rounded a bend and stopped. Before him was a small cave that seemed to go back several feet into the mountain, big enough to situate a large bear or pack of wolves. But that wasn't what caught his eye; rather, his interest was drawn to the black marks suggesting fire around the entrance.
Moving closer, he noticed there were words in the rock; not written on in any sort of ink, but etched about an inch thick, concise and clear, in the living rock of the mountainside.
TAKEN BY PYRO TO MAGNETO
"Clever Amara..." Hank chuckled and turned, almost skipping on his way back to the campsite. The little princess had given him all the information he needed in five words.
Amara was awakened at what she deemed to be around six in the morning by muffled voices and the sound of scuffling from the room next to hers. Getting out of bed, she tiptoed over to the door; opening it a crack, she peeped into Pyro's room. What she saw made her eyes widen in surprise and fear.
A half-naked Pyro was struggling to get free of Sabretooth's grasp, his wide blue eyes looking over the gag that covered the bottom half of his face to glare at Magneto, who stood watching imperiously. From the looks of it, St John had been dragged forcibly out of bed; his hair was standing every which way and he was wearing only boxers.
"I am most disappointed with you, Mr. Allerdyce," Magneto was saying, almost conversationally, to the boy held captive by brutal measures before his eyes. "I had hoped you would share my zeal for mutant superiority, but I see you do not have the stomach to go through with the necessary procedures required for our ultimate takeover of the human race. I don't know whether to trust you any more."
St John winced, not at the words, but because at the words 'ultimate takeover', Sabretooth's claws had dug cruelly into the skin of his upper arms; he could feel a tickle as the blood slowly ran down from the puncture wounds. If Sabretooth had indeed heard his conversation with Remy...what about Remy? Hopefully, the older Acolyte hadn't been caught—
"Hey Dad." A blur came to rest beside Magneto, revealing itself to be Pietro. "I just finished locking the Cajun and Sunboy up." Pietro turned to look at Pyro, smirking. "Yeah, you hoped that your buddy wouldn't have been caught, didn't you? Ha. Too bad so sad for you."
Amara had been caught off guard by Pietro's sudden entrance, and her hand on the door handle wavered, causing the door to move slightly. In an instant, she found her hands held behind her back by Pietro, and force- marched into the centre of the room to stand near Pyro.
"Oh, lookylookylooky. We have a little birdy on our hands." Pietro sneered, pulling Amara into him. "And what a pretty little birdy she is too..." He murmured, his breath hot on the back of her neck.
Amara lost it. Already in a tense situation, her nerve was pushed to the breaking point, and she flared up to become Magma. Bowing her head forward, she suddenly snapped it back, so that her skull hit Pietro's forehead. Caught by surprise, he dropped like a stone. Amara whirled to shoot a blast of fire at Sabretooth, who immediately let go of St John to leap out of the way of the fire.
Pyro landed on all fours, sitting, he tore out the gag and was about to use some of Amara's flame on Magneto when an iron bar slammed him to the floor again. He hit his head and blacked out.
Amara watched John fall, and was caught by another bar to go crashing to the floor. Fine, she thought grimly, if that's the way it's going to be... She concentrated and focused her heat, becoming so hot that the metal bar melted like butter to pool on the floor beside her.
Incidentally, the floor caught fire as well.
"Mastermind! Mastermind!" Magneto was calling someone, his voice registering dimly in the crackle of flames that filled Amara's ears. She aimed a fireball at the Master of Magnetism; he dodged it, still yelling out that one word.
She conjured up another fireball, this time for Sabretooth, when it occurred to her that being in her Magma form wasn't what she wanted to do at all.
Wait...yes it is. I want to barbeque Magneto for capturing me...
No you don't. Magneto's just trying to help you.
He is?
Yes, of course he is. Magneto wants you to help him with something, so that he in turn is able to help you.
That...sounds reasonable.
Somewhere in her mind, a little voice was yelling and screaming that NO! That was NOT what she wanted to do at all, but she ignored it. It was far easier for her fuzzy consciousness just to go along with what the calm, reasonable voice said.
She extinguished her flame.
That's good, very good. Now...
The next thing Amara knew was a pricking sensation right at the back of her neck; a burning spread throughout her body and she dropped, senseless, to the floor.
A/N: Mmmm...half-naked Pyro...
This is just me, telling you that I blatantly ripped off the "mutant making machine" (or M3 as I shall now refer to it) from the X-men Movie. I was out of ideas, okay? Well, I put a lot of stuff into this chapter that I hope got across through all the murky descriptions and awkward conversations. Lemme outline it for y'all.
--John and Remy don't like the M3 plan
--John asks Remy for help to get Amara back
--Amara starts listening in
--Sabes also listens in and reports back to Buckethead
--Storm says the X-men will be back by morning
--Beast finds out (from Amara's message in chapter...10 I think) where they are
--Remy and Roberto are locked up for treason
--Pyro is about to be locked up when Amara stumbles into Buckethead's "lecture", and screws it up by trying to save the day.
--She ends up surrendering to Mastermind.
Bwahahaha...I'm so evil. But I couldn't have them get rescued before John and Amara get all fluffy now could I? The end is near, my friends.
Oh, and use your imaginations to think of what Remy suggested to John. I find that not stating the fact produces far more interesting results within the minds of the readers...cause everyone has their own opinion on how dirty Remy's mind is.
about to fall off computer chair for lack of sleep: Yes, John shall apologize. And yes, Magneto is intensely mental, as you say. I like that: intensely mental. Mwahahahaha...ahem.
HanatheWreck: Thank you! Yes, I shall keep this coming; I rather want to get it over with now...John and Amara's lack of resolution is irking me. Why can't I just get to the fluffy parts?? Glad you like the story! :)
Pietro's Kitten: Lol, John's accent is amazing. Hooray for you continuing your story!!! I'm glad you didn't stop; it's a great start, and I really am looking forwards to seeing how it turns out. Just keep writing, even if there is lack of interest!! Amyros all the way!! :)