Thanks to:
Furygrrl – I just love the thought of Pyro being Logan's best friend! I thought of it watching 'Cajun Spice' again. Another chapter with no explosions, I'm slipping…
Oceanbang – More Brotherhood in the mansion in the next chapter! And the plot is gonna take a few more twists yet…
Disclaimer: "Do I look funny to you? Funny like a mutant funny?" Uh sorry, I'm watching 'Mainstream'. I own only two of the characters herein and they only have a couple of lines. None of the good characters are mine. Life sucks.
The phone rang, the Slipknot song 'Vermilion' indicating that the Scarlet Witch was on the line. Lance awoke, groaned and reached for it, vaguely grateful that it lit up when it rang. The light from the TV was too faint to make out the buttons otherwise.
"Wanda?"
"This is gonna be trouble," she said bluntly. "Graydon Creed was at no less than four anti-mutant rallies that turned nasty in Bayville over the last four months."
"So the guy's pissed about mutants being treated like shit. Aren't you?"
"You've got it wrong. He was with the protesters."
"What?" Lance managed to sit upright, wincing at the stiffness in his muscles. "You mean he's anti-mutant? I thought he was Sabretooth's kid."
"Looks like he has daddy-issues. He wears a Friends of Humanity T-shirt on all the videos we have of him."
Lance felt a headache coming on. The Friends of Humanity were a recently formed group with strong views on the mutant issue. Living in peace was not a part of their philosophy. Some groups wanted registration, others segregation, but the Friends of Humanity wanted the total eradication of mutants from the United States and it was only a matter of time before sympathisers in other countries joined their cause.
"He smacked some guy with big eyes over the head with a board reading 'Mutants, Go Back Where You Came From' at one rally," continued Wanda.
"No thanks," muttered Lance. "Northbrook wasn't much better than Bayville."
"The guy he hit was a Joel Davenport, the owner of the café that got attacked. Wasn't badly hurt though, not then at least. The cops took creed away, but there's no record of him even being cautioned. It's like he got into the cruiser and let out as soon as they got around the first corner."
"Maybe they did. I doubt mutant rights are a high priority for the local police force."
"Or some one hacked in to the police computer and changed the records. But why bother? Paper records would show that he was there."
"You think he's got a friend on the force?"
"That would be my guess. And if he's involved with the Friends of Humanity, then it's not hard to believe they'd be involved in this kind of terrorism."
"This is not the kind of thing I like to hear at four am," grumbled Lance. "Just because you never seem to sleep…"
"I work better at night. Do you want to hear something that really doesn't make any sense?"
"Not really."
"Leni Zauber, Creed's mother? Records say she died."
"So?"
"Eight months before he was born."
Lance frowned. "How does that work? I mean, are we talking some kind of incubator 'til after she gives birth?"
"Nope. I'm talking about the woman being found dead and being buried, then turning up in a hospital in the US and having the kid there."
"Oh great. You mean this Zauber ID's a fake?"
"Leni Zauber was a real woman, worked for the German secret police force as far as I can figure. Kurt's been helping me with some of the translations and I know the language well enough myself, but it's hard work tapping into a system that's telling me about a woman who's been dead over 30 years. I suspect that some one took on her personality after she died. The question is, who? And does it even matter?"
"So who brought Creed up?"
"Still checking. I'll sent Pietro over tomorrow with some video cameras – we might be able to catch this guy if he goes back to Jean's place. Logic says he won't, but he doesn't know we're on to him."
"We should set some up around the lab too."
"Yeah. You know, Jean insisting on staying there might be for the best after all. If we manage to catch this guy and he's responsible for this, he might be able to tell us about the others behind the attacks. We could bust the Friends of Humanity wide open."
"Wouldn't that be nice."
"In the meantime, watch your back. I'll call if I find anything else."
Lance dropped the phone onto his lap, still covered by the blanket, and scratched his bare chest with a yawn. "How much of that were you listening to Jean?"
The bedroom door creaked open and Jean peered out, looking a little ashamed. "Uh, most of it. How did you know?"
"I wasn't sure 'til you opened the door a little to hear better."
Jean walked into the room, a white robe over her nightclothes. Lance moved his legs off the sofa so she could sit down. "I was awake and I heard the phone ring. You think you might know who's after us?"
"We've got a possibility. Might be nothing."
"Right." Jean looked at him curiously. "Why did you join SHIELD? One moment you were all hanging around Bayville and the next the Brotherhood house was empty and no one knew where you were."
Lance shrugged. "After the whole Apocalypse thing, Nick Fury approached us one day. Said he could use us, if we wanted to do something with our lives instead of slob around. We were pretty sick of Bayville by then and since none of us actually managed to finish high school, or even get there in Wanda's case, we figured it'd be worth a shot. And then we found out we were pretty good at it. We're not like the X-Men, with a big cause to believe in. We just do the job in front of us, get paid and get on with it. Plus we get to get into fights and blow shit up. It's kinda fun."
"So how did Pyro get involved?"
"Just woke up one morning to find he moved into the Brotherhood house. Apparently Magneto told him he could. As long as we didn't let him answer the door, he was fine. Then we joined SHIELD and he's really good at anything fire related, he knows which kind of accelerants are the best and which might have been used depending on how it spread…am I boring you?"
Jean smiled. "No, not at all. I'm just trying to get used to the Brotherhood being a kind of police force I guess. Didn't Pyro go over to the church last night?"
"Yeah, but I guess he didn't find anything new or else Wanda would have said."
Jean nodded and decided to steer away from the subject. "You've all really changed since you went away."
Lance shrugged. "We got older, that's all. Everyone changes. You're not the same either y'know."
"Me?" Jean feigned outrage. "I'm just the same!"
"Nah. It might just be because things are rough for you right now, but you're not as, uh, self-righteous as you used to be. And you're out on your own instead of staying at the mansion and that'd be easier. Why not just be a full-time X-Man?"
"Honestly?" Jean frowned and thought about it. "I guess I needed to know I could live my life without being permanently protected by the others. Putting your life on the line wasn't the risk, being on my own was. I wanted to live my own life, for a while at least, try to spend some time finding out if being an X-Man was what I wanted."
"Is it?"
"I'm always there if the X-Men need me – but they don't really need me, not at the moment. And I got my degree for a reason. I want to help people if I can, and that doesn't always mean using my powers. Pow-R-8 for example. If I can help find a way to neutralise the effects, I'm helping make human-mutant relations better. Mutants would be less afraid of humans if they didn't think they'd be hurt for revealing themselves."
"Don't you miss them?"
"Yeah, sure. Going to the gym before work is hardly a Danger Room session. The Professor was like a father to me, and although I can get in touch with him with a thought, it's not the same. Sometimes it seems very quiet around here, especially in the evenings. As weird as it sounds, I miss Rogue. We actually got friendly and it only took about two years of bickering. Watching Remy trying to charm her and her pretending she wasn't interested was always funny."
"What about Scott?" Lance spoke a little too quickly and tried to hide his embarrassment behind a look of disinterest.
"Scott?" Jean frowned. "Scott and I were really close, but we were too…I don't know, we didn't seem to have much to talk about outside the X-Men. If we went out on a date, the conversation always went back to the missions or the training or the recruits. And Scott always takes too much on himself, takes every failure personally. He forgot how to just enjoy life. Then when Emma turned up…she took one look at Scott and decided she wanted him. She's always gotten everything she wanted and I considered fighting her just to teach her a lesson, but I figured if that was the only reason I wanted to stay with him, it wasn't fair on any of us. So we split. Him and Emma were the excuse, but not the reason. Most people think I don't want to stay at the mansion because of her, I think even Emma thinks it, but it's not true. I'm not gonna say it's not uncomfortable, but I could live with it if I wanted. I just don't want to rely on the X-Men for the rest of my life. I'd like to at least try to make my own way in the world."
"Everyone has to try being by themselves for a while," said Lance.
"The Brotherhood stuck together," pointed out Jean.
"I guess, but we all fended for ourselves before we were anything to do with the Brotherhood. In a way, we do rely on each other but we all know we could cope on our own because we did it before."
"True." Jean snuck a look at Lance's bare chest. "Do you really think I might be a target?"
"I don't know. I hope not. People have formed little hate clubs since the beginning of time. Trouble is, they might get the support because people are frightened of mutants and the powers we have. And you can't tell mutants by the way they look all the time. People are afraid."
"I always thought that mutants and humans could live together in peace," said Jean. "I just didn't think it would be so hard. I guess I thought if we helped a few people, we'd be accepted."
"Not that easy. One mutant loses control of their powers; the whole nation decides we're a threat. And that's without the ones who deliberately cause trouble. Yes, like the Brotherhood before you say it."
"I wasn't going to…" Jean trailed off, knowing she'd been thinking it. "Look, I've got a key to the lab. I know it's early but I can't sleep and I know it'd be easier for you if there were no one else around when you check the security. And I've missed a lot of research over the last few days. Would you mind if we went to the lab now?"
And that way you might put your shirt on and I'd feel a lot more comfortable…
"You're dedicated." Lance ran a hand through his hair and stood up, ditching the blanket and causing Jean to look away hastily. "I'll grab a shower and be ready to go in ten. You mind?"
"Uh, no, no, uh, no." Jean cursed herself silently as Lance made his way to the bathroom. The sight of a semi-naked man in her apartment making her turn into a drooling nympho was not a side effect she had foreseen when she agreed to let him stay.
88888888888
The other scientists at the lab drifted in between eight and nine, all of them giving Lance a curious look as he glared at them menacingly. Every time Jean chided him telepathically and every time Lance promised to be nice but never was. The people she worked with all asked if she was alright after being involved in an explosion and Jean insisted she was, showing the burns on her left hand as proof that it could have been much worse. They were beginning to heal, but the skin was shiny and stretched there.
Dr Schwartz, a single woman with a degree in biochemistry and only two topics of conversation – germs and sex – gave Lance an appraising look. "Is he your bodyguard? You have got to give me the name of the company he works for!"
"He's Government issue, sorry." Jean checked that Lance wasn't in the way as she spoke to her colleague. He was busy installing cameras, occasionally removing his mobile phone and giving it an evil look. Smiling to herself as she saw the other woman's disappointed look, she busied herself mixing a compound that she hoped would work better against Pow-R-8 than the other attempts had…
"Dr Grey! Hey Jean, you've gotta see this!"
Jean turned and glanced at Dr Johnson, a nervous-looking blonde man with thick glasses. From the corner of her eye, she could see Lance taking notice of the exchange.
"What's wrong Andy?"
"The samples I've been looking at are of non-mutant blood, making sure that there are no antibodies made to counter the toxic eliminators."
"I know."
"Well, just look at this sample. If this is typical, we could be in big trouble."
Jean sighed inwardly. Andy was the kind of guy who thought he'd be in big trouble if he forgot to pay his paper bill on time. Outwardly she forced a look of concern and walked over to his workstation, putting her eye to the microscope.
Her gasp of alarm brought Lance to her side in moments. "What's wrong?"
"This sample!" Jean straightened up and gazed at Lance. "We've been working with the theory that toxic eliminators don't affect non-mutant genes, right?"
"Assume I agree," said Lance. "So what?"
"This sample has been exposed to Pow-R-8 twice a day for the last week – is that right Andy?"
"Right." Andy shot Lance a dirty look.
"The blood sample suddenly began allowing no resistance to the toxic eliminators. It began behaving like mutant blood. A prolonged exposure to Pow-R-8 brings about sudden cellular reaction in non-mutant plasma similar to the one a mutant would have immediately."
Lance had an idea what she was talking about and didn't like it one bit. "In English?"
"Pow-R-8 is toxic to everyone. In non-mutants the so-called toxic eliminators build up and poison the system rather than affecting them straight away, but it will eventually poison them."
"How long has Pow-R-8 been available in Bayville?"
"Almost three weeks now – oh no, everyone's drinking it to prove they're not mutants! We've got to get it taken off the shelves at once!"
"I'm on it."
Lance pulled out the mobile phone and dialled. It was picked up after the second ring. "Fury."
"Lance Alvers. I'm at Dr Jean Grey's lab. She's just found evidence that Pow-R-8 is poisonous to humans as well. We need to withdraw it from sale, now."
"I'll take care of it." Fury hung up the phone without ceremony and Lance called Pietro.
"Anything new?" asked Pietro as soon as he answered.
"You could say that. Jean just found evidence that Pow-R-8 poisons normal humans too; it just takes a little longer. Fury's working on it but it'd be faster if you took care of it."
"I can do a spot of shoplifting."
"Think you can get all the cans in Bayville?"
"Hell no. Most of the shops I can manage, but the vending machines and cafes would be impossible even or me. But I can get most of them. How long before we start getting humans dropping dead?"
"I've no idea. The sample took a week or so, but this shit's been on sale longer than that and there's been no cases like this reported."
"I'll get Wanda to hack into hospital records anyway, see if there's any unexplained illnesses. This is just what we needed. Without this, it'd take months to get Pow-R-8 withdrawn from sale."
Lance shoved the phone in his back pocket. "I've sorted it out for the moment, but we're gonna need some conclusive proof. Hope you can come up with it."
"With this sample, that'll be no problem." Jean grinned at Lance. "We did it! We got Pow-R-8 withdrawn!"
"It might take a while to purge the town totally, not to mention all the other places where it's still sold."
"And we'll still be working on the antidote. But this is great news. Wait 'til Mayor Kelly finds out! This'll put a blight on his career."
"Yeah," said Lance thoughtfully. He anticipated a few problems when news of this leaked out.
Jean's good mood was dampened slightly when she realised Lance wasn't more excited, but forced the feeling away. With Pow-R-8 officially a toxic substance, there was one less threat for the mutant population to worry about.
88888888888888
Jean left the lab early, feeling exhilarated. Finally Pow-R-8 would be taken off the shelves and another threat to mutants was eradicated. And she'd played a part in that. She could think of nothing that would wipe the smile off her face.
"We've got to make a stop at the Institute," announced Lance from beside her.
"Why?"
"I need to speak to the others."
"OK. I'd like to tell the instructors the news anyway." Jean grinned even wider and spun around on the spot. Lance smiled at her exuberance, thinking how different this Jean was from his memories of her. She was almost giddy with her discovery and he spent a moment admiring the way she looked as she struggled not to skip toward the rental car. Only a few inches shorter than him, her red hair had been tied back for her work but a few long tendrils had escaped, her businesslike clothes showing off her dynamite body almost as much as the uniform she used to wear…
O-kay. Definitely too long between faceless flings. Just as soon as he got away from Bayville he was going to have to find some girl to have a short-term thing with before the next mission. Eyeballing Jean Grey was just too weird.
Lance checked over the car before he let Jean get anywhere near it, wishing he had Pietro's mutation so he could finish before some zealot blew him to pieces. But the car was clean and he was planning to switch it before the next day. He climbed into the drivers seat and glanced over to Jean, who was still beaming happily, absently rubbing the patch of burnt skin on the back of her left hand.
If anyone deserves a bit of good news, it's her.
Lance headed off to the Institute, hoping to get some good news of his own. Like they'd discovered who was behind the attacks on mutants and he could get the hell out of town and back to his real life and away from the shadows of his youth.
And away from Jean and his conflicting feelings about her.