The Song of Eternity

Canto 7

A Normal Life

Verse 8

Night comes to the house,

An important conversation,

A problem solved,

And files are unlocked.

            Vincent walked into his house to see the twins sitting in the living room watching TV.  "News, now," he ordered as Murphy grumbled and complied.  They watched the screen intently as the prerecorded message to the media played.  "All you two need to know is that our mission is to keep the mutant situation under wraps as long as possible," he explained.  "With the disguises incorporated into your suits, you should have no problem keeping your identities secret."

            "What about you, Elena, and Damon?" Murphy asked as the anger rose in his voice.  "You have sunglasses!  I give the press a week before they find out about you three and another day until they figure out about us," he shouted as Cole nodded in agreement.

            "Don't worry about it.  They do not know we live in this town for one thing.  Secondly, there are no pictures of the three of us as we currently look anywhere.  Not in police databases, not with any government, not with any media.  Nowhere," he added.  "The police will not be investigating us either, we are officially sanctioned by the Avengers and the United Nations," Vincent explained as he heard a noise upstairs, Damon returning.

            "I can bet there are three groups of people in this town who already know the secret," Murphy guessed.

            "And they have all been informed as to our mission here.  You do what you have to do to stop them from exposing themselves," Vincent ordered.  "Where've you been?" he asked Damon who was descending the staircase.

            "Out," he replied coldly.  "There any food around here besides the MREs that Starmore left?" he asked as he walked to the kitchen.  "I guess not," he answered himself.  "I'm going out for food, who's with me?" he asked as he walked to the door and grabbed the keys to Vincent's jeep.

            "I'll have to stay here until the media hype dies down a bit, they have a picture of me," Vincent declined as he looked at a picture of himself from when he talked to the reporters.

            "I'm in," Murphy said as he got up.  "Cole?" he asked his brother who shrugged and headed to the door as well.

            "Don't do anything stupid out there," Vincent added as the door closed behind them and the jeep roared out of the garage.

            "No more driving for him ever," Damon said as he got out of the passenger side of the jeep.

            "He didn't hit anything," Murphy pointed out.

            "But he drove as fast as that thing could go, cut down alleys, went though yards, ran stoplights, and almost got us killed," Damon countered as he took the keys from Cole.

            Cole smirked as he followed Damon and Murphy into the mall's food court.  He breathed a deep sigh when the doors closed behind him and quit controlling his power.  "So long as we don't get into a fight here, you feel free to do that," Damon said as he noted the air around him with supernatural senses.  "But reign it in if the shit hits the fan," he added before buying two pizzas and some drinks.  Cole grabbed the drinks from him as Murphy waited for them at a small table.

            "Can any of them sense it?" Murphy asked.

            Cole shook his head, then mouthed 'maybe'. 

            "If they walked through it, they'd know it," Damon pointed out.  "I wouldn't know about it if I wasn't 'special'."

            Cole nodded in agreement as he looked off into space at what only he could see, his void field.  It appeared to him as nothing more than the air being darker than usual.  The darkness expanded out as he exhaled and drew in as he inhaled, reaching anywhere from ten to fifteen feet from his body in its natural state.

            "Take a look at that," Murphy said as he pointed to where a crowd of people were running away from something, towards the food court.  "Looks like they're running from something," he guessed as he kept eating.

            "What the hell is that?" Damon muttered as he got to his feet and got a glimpse of what was terrifying the people.  "Looks like a dinosaur," he said before the entire food court heard it roar and began to run for the exits.

            "Why's there a dinosaur in the mall?" Murphy asked as he prepared to cast a spell at it.

           "Wait a second, something's wrong," Damon halted him.  "It doesn't have a smell," he explained as he sniffed the air.

            "So it isn't a dinosaur, it's a dinosaur robot," Murphy guessed.

          "I don't smell metal either," Damon added before looking back to a smirking Cole.  "What the hell are you smiling at?  Spill it, what's going on?" he asked.

            Cole pointed to the opposite side of the food court where Damon barely made out a man in the shadows.  "What, I don't see anything," Murphy complained.

            Cole pointed to his head, then at the dinosaur.  He waved his hand and concentrated his void field at the man in the shadows.  Immediately the dinosaur disappeared.  "It was an illusion by some kind of mutant," Damon realized.  "Where'd he go?" he asked as he looked back to where the man should have been to see no one.

            Cole shook his head and mouthed 'I don't know'.

            "Uh, I think its time we bail," Murphy suggested as he began to hear police sirens.

            "Yeah, I wonder where that mutant went though," Damon muttered as the three of them headed to the exit quickly.

            "Out of the way Toad, I need the computer," Lance said as he shoved Todd away from the only computer in the brotherhood house.

            "Take it easy there man, no need to get all pushy about it," Todd replied before leaping from the room. 

            Lance shook his head as he signed on to AIM as 'Shakedown'.  He waited a minute before he noticed DeathAngelVoid come online and began to 'talk'.

            Shakedown:  That you Valentine?  This is Lance Alvers.

            DeathAngelVoid:  Yes, what do you want?

            Shakedown:  Tell me if this is right or not.  Your power is to negate any and all powers around you and you are one of the Turks, so you can handle yourself.

            DeathAngelVoid:  Get to the point, I need to get to sleep.

            Shakedown:  Okay, I want to go out with Kitty, but Xavier and Logan don't trust me that much, so they won't let Kitty go out alone with me.  They say she has to go with one of the other students.

            DeathAngelVoid:  Get on with it.

            Shakedown:  None of the guy students will because they either don't like me or are scared of me.  Kitty's tried talking and has only one who has agreed to anything is Rogue, but only if the date knows about her powers and can handle it.  We've been working on this since before you got here, but know that you're here, maybe you could do me a favor, you know.

            DeathAngelVoid:  You want me to go on a double date with you, Rogue, and Kitty…..

            Shakedown:  Yes, please, I am begging you here.

            DeathAngelVoid:  I will think about it.  Goodnight.

            Cole shook his head as he turned off his computer.  He stared at the pills on the table before downing them with a glass of water and heading off to sleep. 

            Vincent, Murphy, and Damon were all downstairs when they heard him stop moving and his light turn off.  "That's a good sign," Vincent said as he flipped through the channels on the TV.

            "Yeah, now about this dinosaur in the mall," Damon said as he reminded Vincent of the events of the night.  "For some reason the guy who was doing it seemed familiar, like I've seen him before, but I can't remember where," Damon mused.

            "You're not really the sociable type," Murphy agreed.  "You know us, some of the mutants around town, and that's about it.  Maybe it was someone Vincent saw in New York during the Galactus thing," Murphy suggested.

            "No, I have a good memory, it was a face that I have seen," Damon shook his head.

            "You don't know anyone though.  You spend your days off looking through the files in the basement…," Vincent's voice trailed off as the three of them simultaneously raced from the living room to the basement stairs and bolted down them almost falling.  "Voice print Vincent Valentine, open," he shouted as he led the way down the stairs.  A section of cement floor opened to reveal another staircase leading further under the house.  Vincent continued to lead the way as the new section lit up by reacting to motion sensors.

            "When was the last time one of us checked this out?" Vincent asked as he looked at a computer monitor that was flashing a warning over and over again. 

            "Yesterday morning when you were gone," Murphy said as he went to another screen and hit a button causing a picture to pop up on the large monitor in the room.

            "That is the man from the mall," Damon said as he recognized the face.  "Mesmero."