A/N
Midterms in college, yippee. Hope I do well. Anywho, sorry for the wait (Forgive me, it's been a monh and a week since my last update) but I hope you all enjoy it! Remember, constructive criticism is my friend and I accept it with an open mind! Thank you all for reading!
Hysterics was not the best thing to deal with over the phone. But, to be fair, neither was the news that a daughter a parent has known all their life had suddenly been identified as a thief, and had not been where she was supposed to be for almost a month.
Professor Xavier did his best to calm the hysterical woman over the phone. "We are doing all we can to find her, Mrs. Nesmond. I have the ability to track her movements, and I am confident she will be found soon."
"You never should have let you out of her sight in the first place!"
"In my defense, she never left with us. She told us she was staying with you, due to some family reasons. She never came to the institute."
"Why would she lie? She's always been a good girl!"
"Can you tell me anything about her?"
"Like what?" The tone suddenly became guardedly hysterical.
"Odd circumstances, general strange behavior?"
The woman hesitated for a minute. "She…she disappeared once. For over six months. And then she came back again claiming she got lost somewhere."
"Did you try to get more out of her? Teenagers do not suddenly go missing for over half a year!"
"Do you know what it's like to lose a child!" The woman demanded. "I was happy enough to have her back, with no questions asked!"
He rubbed his temple. This was not going well. He had already sent the X-men off to track down the girl, but there was no telling where she'd be when they got to where cerebro had last spotted her. She moved in increasingly erratic patterns, ones that made him suspicious as to how secure his office really was. Not twenty minutes after he had dismissed the X-men, the girl suddenly changed course. Every time he gave them directions, he would have to contact them again with a new change in course.
Almost as if she had an inside contact.
"Mr. Xavier, I want to know how this happened. How could she do all of these things behind our backs!"
"I think, perhaps, we put far too much trust in her wish to do the best for herself and her family. I'm sorry to say this, but her behavior is more than just delinquent. She's hurt people. She hurt one of my teachers, and I'm afraid that kind of behavior will get her killed."
"What are you saying?" The voice came with a tremble.
"There are very nasty people, mutants and humans, and if she continues with the stealing and attacks, she'll get into trouble she can't handle. We'll try to help her. There's only so much we can do if she's not willing to come."
"He talked with her a bit more, tried to sooth her worries while being realistic. He'd seen mutants turn bad before. He didn't know if he'd be able to help, or if she truly wanted his help.
He could feel the tension again. She was a part of it, somehow. Waging her own wars that he couldn't see. But even if he couldn't see the war, he could feel the violence creeping over the horizon.
He hoped to himself that he could stop this before blood was spilled.
A small trickle of blood went down my arm as I chewed the glass shard out. I and my new business partner were hiding in an office building of all places. I had to break some glass to get in, but without the alarms and the fact that this was a poor side of town, we were reasonably safe.
Dex was saying something. I wasn't listening. We'd been running for two days straight, dodging those X-men and their jet, hoping against hope they wouldn't catch up to us. In that time, I picked apart the X-mansion or whatever they call it and found out how they managed to dog us for so long.
Damn computers! Damn them for all the problems they've given me over the years. Not this one. This one had to die. And while it was dead, I'd find out new ways, better ways to stay hidden.
I conducted my mini war against the machine with an accuracy that made me feel proud of my troops-rats, roaches, and the odd mouse or two. I had them cut the power source, kill the energy, then get into the stupid thing and eat through the wires and do other sordid little things to it.
'Fix that, Xavier.' I thought smugly.
"Are you listening?" Dex demanded.
"No." I said simply, jerking away from my gloating. "I was working."
"On what?"
"Our clean getaway. They won't be able to pinpoint us now."
"You're bleeding all over yourself."
I glanced down. The blood trickle had grown, and it covered a bit of my jacket. I had changed a few hours before. Pity. I'd have to change again when we moved out. Nothing like drawing an attentive crowd, bloody jackets.
"Flesh wound." I pulled out an old shirt from my bag and held it to the cut in my arm. "So what were you saying?"
"I was saying that since we finally have some time alone we might want to discuss how we're going to pull this off. There are difficulties involved that need to be discussed."
"Of course. Discuss away."
He gave a slight frown to my apparent nonchalance, but didn't rise to the bait. "There are five main gates. Each of them powers all the gates of a lower energy wave, and if we can shut those gates down, we can make it nearly impossible for anyone to get in."
"I'm not interested in nearly."
"You'll have to be. It can't be shut down completely. The harmonics of both worlds are too closely matched to shut one entirely off. The consequence might get us both in trouble."
"Go on."
"We can use the 'aritfacts' to close the gate by making them overload the power source."
"How do we do that? And why would that help?"
"We'll know when we get there. It's different for every gate. Putting too much energy in the power source will cause the doors to believe there's been a sudden surge of energy through the lesser gates, and because there's a failsafe in place, it should shut them all down to prevent magical backlash."
"Backlash?"
"Too much energy causes discharges when the gates are opened. The energy used to keep the gates open is let loose and can have the possibility of burning everything in a ten mile radius. People who built the gates before must have been a lot more loving then Ghallians or Jaakeni's followers ever were."
"You seem to know a lot about this."
"It's amazing what reading from forbidden books on your off time can do for your perspective." He said dryly. "Or at least, books looked down upon."
"I see. Any idea how many artifacts it takes to shut down one gate?"
"A lot."
"Damn. How are we going to get enough of those things to shut down one gate, let alone five? We only have one artifact." I tapped my fingers against my lips and looked out into the night sky. It was clear, and the moon was just beginning to wane.
You could get more help. A deep voice I knew too well sifted into my head. I hadn't heard from him in about three days.
"Absolutely not." I saw Dex look at me quizzically out the corner of my eye, then he seemed to realize I was talking to someone else.
You seek to help your world, and yet you do not find it in your heart to seek out those that love it like you?
"I don't listen to my heart. It inevitably gets me into trouble."
Then listen to yourself. You already said it would be impossible for the stranger and you to do it alone. And there are places that we animals will be of no help.
"I can't recruit others. It would be too difficult. They have agendas."
Agendas is where you work best. Look what you have done with the Stranger. He shan't betray you now.
"How can you be sure this will work?" I murmured.
You know what they want. You don't have to give them peace and love. Give them a way out. They will be your pack if you give the right incentive.
I closed my eyes and tapped a finger to my lips. I opened them again and looked straight at Dex, who was watching me with something close to perplexed amusement.
"I was talking to an old friend. He was giving me advice."
"Which was?"
"How good are you at recruiting troops?"
"We have one hell of a rat problem." Logan glared at the mess before him. Cerebro's room had been torn to pieces.
"We have something worse than that. Cerebro was linked to our security systems. We need to fix it immediately, Logan."
"Why would rats suddenly attack Cerebro?"
"The same reason that crow has been sitting on the tree outside my office window. Danielle Nesmond."
Logan shook his head. "I'm going to hurt that kid when I get her."
"We should be aware of the possibility that that will be the only way we do get her." Xavier said with a sigh.
"Why do you say that?" Logan asked curiously as he pulled a chewed wire out of the wall.
"I have a horrible feeling Logan. Something's happening. Something that's about to boil over onto the streets. I can feel two strong powers closing in, and they hate each other. But the frightening thing is, they hate us much, much more."
I sat cross-legged on the floor and closed my eyes. The animal information started pouring. They touched my mind briefly, found out what I wanted, and left.
I wanted stealth. Power. Intelligence.
I couldn't help but wonder if I was turning into Xavier. His ideals, his 'better control over powers and life' philosophy. But he worked for the good of mutant kind and preserving life as peacefully as possible.
I had another approach. There would be fighting. There would be personal gain. There would be me, and those that ran with me, whether they are human, mutant, or soldiers from another dimension. We'd save the world, but not for the good of the whole. We'd do it for the good of ourselves. That's the only honest path I have now.
The thoughts streamed back in like a tide. Hundreds of profiles. I rejected mutants already taken by Xavier and some other red suited mutant. I rejected humans and other creatures neither human nor mutant that seemed to have a connection with something bigger than themselves. They were nothing but trouble. Their superiors would inevitably come after them when they disappeared, and I already had one refugee on my hands.
I sifted through until I found the more promising files. I placed them in a mental order, and got the directions for the first one.
"You ready to go?" I asked Dex. He was leaning against the wall watching me out of the corner of his eye.
"Yes. Who are we bringing into this little fold?"
"Don't know yet. Don't know his name. I know where he's going though."
"How are you going to convince him, whoever he is?" Dex asked skeptically. I gave him a wan smile.
"I know his little brother."
Please leave your reviews and thanks for reading!
PrincessOfWildfire: I know I write them as annoying, but sometimes they get a little too unrealistic. Yeah, Dex did have an upper hand most of the time, but he's infuriating like that. That entire thing just sort of wrote itself.Don't feel bad! I was trying to make it mysterious. You'll find though that he isn't as happy or carefree as he was in Morphos. Hope you like the chapter! More characters in the next chapter, and I hope you like them!
Arin Ross: Hey! Good to see you back! Eek, you have so many questions. First off, thanks for the constructive criticism, I'm going to try to utilize it in the next chapters, couldn't really this time because I had it written by the time I realized you reviewed. But I shall improve! And the whole Danny power thing, I'll be addressing that later, so I can't tell you right now or it'll spoil it, but I can tell you she has no exceptionally new powers-more like she came into her own. As far as the characters in chapter five that she was looking at, only the two you spotted are marvel. The others were my own creation. I'm afraid there's no Doggy, but Danny hardly goes very long without some animal partner. Hope you enjoyed this chapter. More characters to enter the fold soon. Thanks for reviewing again!