Author's Notes: Thanks for the reviews. You might've guess that Magneto is the one attacking. Well you're wrong. And if you thought that you would get to see The Warrior's reactions to Scott and Rogue kicking Magneto's metal butt, you were wrong about that too. SO ha! Why do you think I called them the warriors?
Chapter 10: The Battle
Just as Magneto was finished introducing himself, there was a small applause from one person at the entrance of the room. "Very nice to meet you 'Magneto'." He said gesturing the quotation marks with his hands. "My name is Dustin, and I have something to discuss with Mr. Baldy here if you don't mind." He said as he came into the room. "If you can just give us a minute..."
"What is this?" Mr. Robaldi asked looking over to the newcomer. "Get out of here!"
Eric too looked over to the newcomer with something of a smirk on his face; obviously this fool hadn't seen him use his powers just moments earlier. "Get out of here now, we adults have something important to discuss."
Dustin smiled ever so slightly, there was something disturbing about his smile, and it bothered Eric. "More important than his life?" He asked stepping into the room, allowing someone else to enter, a smaller guy, with blue hair and a hair cut like Wolverine's, and sharp rough nails like Sabretooth's at the throat of Hans, whom he was holding by the neck as he drug him into the room.
"Hans..." Mr. Robaldi said standing up as straight as he could, which actually made him look quite intimidating with his scars and build. "Let him go!"
"Now, now, calm down. I'm looking for somebody. You should know him, goes by the name King, or at least he used to. Big fella, can't miss him, six and a half feet tall? Muscles the size of most small children? Ringing any bells?"
"No." Robaldi answered dryly.
"Let me ask again." Dustin said nodding to the guy holding Hans who responded by pressing his nails harder against Hans' throat, which made Hans grasp at the hand at his throat. "Ring any bells?" Dustin asked again.
"I'll tell you what." Eric said. "You let him go, and we kill you."
Dustin smiled again that same eerie smile. "Toughness, how foolish." He said as he looked to Robaldi again.
"All right. If you let him go, I'll send him to go get this... King." Robaldi answered. Dustin nodded and the guy holding Hans let him go. "Go." Robaldi said to Hans. "And hurry."
Quickly Hans rushed out of the room and down the stairs, disappearing from the sight of the others. In the meanwhile Dustin made himself comfortable, waiting for Hans to return with King. "Jack, get the others in here. Quick." The guy that had been holding Hans earlier went into the hall, and returned with five other guys, four of which Eric recognized from the alley the other day.
Eric was getting impatient, this was ridiculous, why not just kill these punks, these homo sapiens weren't worth his time, he had things to discuss with this, Mr. Robaldi, but Robaldi might consider him a monster, and turn him down if he were just to out right kill everybody else in the room.
MEAN WHILE
The entire room, except for Mike and Nathan were at the door just as James stepped in front of it. "Hold it!" He shouted. "Too many of us up there won't do anybody any good." He said loudly. "Will. John. Rebecca. Jessica. Gracie. Scott. And Megan. You follow me. Scott." He said looking over to Scott. "You can come, if you want, but if you don't want to, just stay put." Scott didn't say any thing; he just followed the rest of them.
Will was the first to make it up the staircase, the rest of the group almost leaving Scott behind in the dust. He was short of breath by the time he got to the top of the stairs, but the others seemed fine, in fact, they were. He realized that it was because they were all in great shape. It was why all the guys were muscular and well toned, well except for Mike and Nathan, and why all the girls were well toned as well.
They all came into the room at near the same time, all ready to fight, but everyone seemed to be waiting for them, which confused everyone, until James caught site of Dustin.
"King!" He called as he stood up from the armchair in the corner. "Here I thought you were dead." Dustin laughed.
"You should have kept thinking that." James said looking around the room; he recognized four of the seven other guys, as the guys that had been trying to mug the old guy in the alley the other day. Then something odd struck his sight; there was the old guy that had been mugged the other day, the one that he had helped for nothing but rudeness.
Scott had his hand on his glasses when he saw magneto. "What's going on here?" Scott asked, but James put his hand out, blocking Scott and telling him to be quiet.
"What is going on here, why did you track me down?" James asked looking to Dustin for an answer.
"Well it's like this... It seems that business in Chicago isn't going that well. So a few friends of mine move up here with me to New York. We start a new business up here; great job really, and on the side we pick up cash were we can. Not how I really like to do business, but it's life." He cleared his throat. "Now it seems here, that my friends here." He gestured to the seven others, mainly the four that both James and Magneto had recognized. "Were trying to pick up some side cash, when they were trashed by this huge monster of a guy, oddly enough, with a glove on his right hand, with five rings, along with the same exact tattoo that you have on your back." Dustin said. "Now the way I see it, you stopped my boys from completing their business transaction, which stops them from paying me, which stops me from paying others, you know how it works."
"So you want me to pay you now, that the point?" James asked impatiently.
"You either pay up one thousand bucks, or you can work it off for me, or I can make it painful for you until you do."
James laughed, he laughed so hard that Scott was bewildered to no end. He looked around the room only to find that Magneto had slipped out while no one was looking. Mr. Robaldi." James said after a deep breath. "I think you need to leave the room, I don't want to get any blood on your nice suit." James said before walking right up to Dustin, who reached his stomach, and looked down at him. "Dust. You don't try to scare an enforcer. You really think, that you. Okay, you and seven guys, could come here, and make me pay you?"
"You ain't gotta choice." Dustin said with that same disturbing smile.
James smirked. "So you're going to force me eh? You're going to try and fight us all, is that it?" James said looking back, let's see... nine against... one, two, three, four, oh... nine against nine." James said turning back to Dustin. "Look's like you're pretty evenly numbered." James said with a smile.
"Oh yeah?" Dustin said reaching into his pocket. "This ought to put the odds in my favor." He said pulling out a handgun.
James laughed all the more he turned his back to Dustin and looked to Will and the others. "You guy's ready?" He asked looking to the group.
Will nodded. "Ready."
"Then go!" James shouted as he turned around, now in his adanantium form and punched Dustin across the jaw, which sent him flying into the other room.
Jessica and Will were immediately on the ceiling, Megan had disappeared, probably staying back knowing she wasn't useful in this kind of combat, and Scott was left standing next to John, Rebecca, and Gracie. Almost immediately the other members pulled guns, except for the ape like one that sort of reminded Scott of toad almost, except that he was kind of like Sabretooth, that guy was just odd. That guy however was indeed a mutant, the next thing anyone knew he was on the ceiling to, using his nails to stick into the ceiling.
They fired at Scott and those near him; Scot aimed with his optic blast but was pushed down by John, who had just saved him from a bullet. One of the guys had already fallen, John had sent up a force field, bouncing the bullets back towards that shooter, who had taken three shots to the right leg. From the ground Scott blasted the gun in one of the gang member's hands just as Rebecca flipped up to them and kicked him across the face, knocking him around.
Will grabbed the another member and forced him to drop his gun as he picked him up from the ceiling and swung him towards the other side of the room, crashing him into the wall. Gracie had done nearly the same as Rebecca, dodging and somersaulting and kicking away the gun of another member. Jessica was in the middle of a hand-to-hand battle with the other monkey-like dude, and James had taken care of the rest, slamming whoever had been aiming a gun.
James picked up Dustin, still in his adanantium form. "Now get out, and if you come back after me again, I'll kill you. Got it?" He asked smacking him across the face, hard, which made Scott wince.
Dustin didn't answer, but nodded ever so slightly, and crawled out of the room. Suddenly Jessica fell from the ceiling on one side of the room and Jack dropped to the floor gracefully on the other. Jessica picked herself up, and ran on all fours towards him. He did the same, and five feet from each other they pounced, meeting each other in mid-air and clashing and falling to the ground. As they hit Jessica was on the bottom, she took her legs and kicked him up, and as he fell she swiped him with her talons for the up-tenth time. Jack left by use of the window as quickly as he could, and the other's helped their wounded teammate out of the room.
Soon just the warriors were left in the messy and broken up room. James reverted back to normal and stood up, asking if everyone was okay. Everyone was, more or less, just a little rattled, and at least a few were. "Who was that?" Scott asked standing up.
"That was my best friend." James answered gruffly.
"What?" Rebecca asked in disbelief.
"At least he used to be." James explained. "It was a long time ago, it doesn't matter." He said shaking his head. "You okay sis?" He asked looking to Jessica.
"Yeah, just a little cut on the arm, I'll fix it later." She said as she helped Scott get up.
John shook his head. "That was just plain ridiculous. What was that all about?"
Scott just sat back as the different warriors asked James their questions and he answered them, but the most important question to Scott was one that James couldn't answer. Why had Magneto been there?
MEAN WHILE
Rogue watched the others leave, and looked around as she was left in the room with Elise, Danielle, Mike, Nathan, Joe, and Chris. "Why'd they leave all of us behind?" She asked complainingly.
"Because in all truthfulness." Mike began. "None of us are of any use in close combat. I mean Joe's useful for strategic stuff, as is Elise and Danielle. Chris is good and useful if he's got room to spread those wings of his, and Nathan and I... Well... yeah." He finished sitting back down.
Nathan spoke for like, the first time in the entire meeting. "I don't mind actually. I'd rather be left behind, no offence to anyone, but I don't want to be in combat and all that, there's no real point to it."
Elise shrugged. "I don't think it really matters, they can all take care of it. Though I'm curious as to why you didn't ask to go Joe." She said looking over to him.
Joe shrugged as he took a seat next to Rogue. "I don't know, I just didn't want to have to use my powers. I mean, in all honesty, that's all I'm useful for. My powers, and playing football." He said with a slight smile.
Danielle laughed. "Yeah... well we love you anyway."
"Yeah, yeah." Joe said as he sat back, leaning with the two hind chair legs being the only ones touching the floor. "We all know you guys only keep me around because no one else would play Santa's errand boy every year." He said with a laugh.
Rogue chimed in. "You do that every year?" She asked curiously.
"Well at least for the last two in a row. That's two out of the three years that I've been in the Warriors." He explained. "It's just sort of an on going joke now. Thomas always seems to pick the same guy until someone new comes along, and then the newest one gets the job, kind of. There are members newer than me, but I still get the job, but I like it, so I'm fine with keeping it." He said with a smile as he sat forward again.
"Yeah, personally I think that Joe would dress up in that Santa outfit if Thomas would let him." Elise said with a giggle.
"Hey, don't blame me if I'm the only one here with Christmas spirit." He said sitting back again. "It's not my fault I like bringing joy to other people's faces." He said with another slight smile.
"I wonder if everyone's okay up there." Mike broke in. "It's been quiet for a while."
"They can take care of themselves." Nathan reassured him. "If there was trouble there'd be more noise than that."
And as if on cue a loud bang sounded throughout the air from upstairs. It was a gunshot, followed by several others, and several yells. Rogue shot out of her chair only to have Joe's hand stop her by touching her shoulder. "Don't worry. Guns ain't no use against James and the others, that's a good sign, it means they're winning."
Just as soon as he finished Megan came to the door helping Mr. Robaldi.
"Meg? What happened?" Nathan asked with a brow slightly raised. Rogue found it odd that nearly no emotion could be sensed from his voice or how he spoke.
"Well the mutant attacking Mr. Robaldi had a few friends, James and the rest are up their taking care of them, I helped Mr. Robaldi get out of there, and came here, since well... I'm no good at combat." She said as she helped Mr. Robaldi to a chair.
He sat down slowly and surely and Megan closed the room's door. "It seems an old friend of James' wished to pay him a visit." Mr. Robaldi said. Rogue couldn't put her finger on it, but he seemed different from the day before, only slightly, maybe because this time he wasn't shouting or scaring anyone to get out.
Rogue looked to Joe with a worried look. "Don't worry, James and the others will take care of them."
"It's not that... Ah'm more worried about Scott." She said with her accent coming out a little thicker than normal.
MEANWHILE
"We'd better get back downstairs." James said finally once everyone had seemed to have his or her questions answered. "The others will be getting worried. Is everyone sure that everyone is okay?" He asked as he headed towards the door.
"Hey, John." Scott said as they were exiting the large room. "Thanks. If you hadn't knocked me down, I would have been hit." He said with a slight nod to John.
"It was nothing. If I were you, I'd be more worried about all the questions that are going to be asked once we get downstairs." John said with a slight wink.
Will was actually crawling above them, attached the stairwell above them as they walked down another flight of steps. "Well I know Elise will be happy to see me alive and well." He said with a smile.
"Oh? And how do you know that? Maybe she was hoping that you'd get shot?" Jessica asked looking up. John and Will laughed.
"Nah." Will said. "I'll bet ya one will make ya twenty that she'll give me a hug when we enter that room."
"Maybe." John said with a smile.
Okay this chapter seriously sucked, and for that I apologize. I promise the next one will be better. In fact the next one will be the last one, and then I'll work on the sequel when the Warriors are actually at the Xavier Institute. I hope that if you read this chapter, you review, and I hope you read the upcoming Sequel story, 'Thirteen Warriors'.