Disclaimer: Furor Paxx and VulgateOfEarth do not own the X-Men or any affiliates. All are the property of Marvel Entertainment Group, Inc and its various affiliates and partners. Phoenix Malcolm, Haiden Malcolm and all irregular characters are the sole property of Furor Paxx and are being used with permission.
~~ Evan ~~
Evan looked at Kurt, he could just barely make out his shape against the darkness of the walls. He looked like he was praying, but it was too dark to be sure. He looked in the corner and saw Phoenix riveted to a dark spot on the wall. Evan crawled to where she sat and looked with her. He didn't see a thing. Evan reached out tentatively and found Phoenix's hand. It was ice cold, and he almost didn't notice the change around him because of the shock of it, almost… he felt a momentary reel of vertigo and then he was standing behind Phoenix in a blood red room. It was made of stone, but the light made it look like the walls dripped blood. Evan turned around and saw bodies hanging off giant hooks; they were nailed to the walls, columns, everywhere that there was room. There were racks with people screaming, begging for mercy, chains hanging from the ceilings some with whole people on them, others with just one or two limbs. Evan saw all this and understood just what kind of people had taken advantage of Phoenix, what kind of people had brought her to this place. He turned around and saw a stone alter, made of the same stone as the rest of the place, but he knew, that it wasn't a trick of the light that made it look like blood. There was a high table just beyond the alter and at the table sat seven skeletal looking creatures. Their mouths were twisted in frozen screams and they looked like they had been there for a while. Evan walked up the stairs to stand behind one of the bodies. These had been people once, he knew.
Leaning forward, he picked up a paper that had been sitting in front of one of the corpses. He read it with disgust and confirmed his greatest fears. She had been normal once, but these seven… they had changed her, Evan didn't understand the technicalities of it, but somehow, they found a way to turn a normal person into a mutant. The only hitch, their first, and ultimately last, human test subject was less than sane to begin with, and part of the procedure involved playing god to the poor girl. She hadn't known, hadn't suspected, and in her mind, they were still alive, still leading her to her promised reward. She had what they called a double-mutant chromosome. Evan vowed to find out what that was and why it meant so much. Eventually, Evan just stopped reading and decided to get Phoenix out of there. He collected the papers and a set of CDs and walked back to Phoenix.
"Are you okay? Can you hear me?" She reeled forward and Evan caught her. "Answer me, Phoenix. Are you okay? Please answer me." The world spun and the red light disappeared.
"Ach, mein Gott!! Don't do that to me again." Evan set the papers and disks down. Phoenix sighed and looked up, right into Evan and Kurt's faces. Her whole body went stiff and then suddenly relaxed as she fainted.
"Oops."
"C'mon. let's get her on the bed so we can go and pretend this didn't happen." Pietro was back and jitterier than, well, anything that Evan knew of.
"That's a good idea. What time is it?" He asked.
"Midnight."
"Let's go. Dump her on the bed and leave her." Before they left though, Evan grabbed the stuff he had gotten from that torture chamber.
"What'd you find?" Pietro asked.
"Nothing." Evan lied. Kurt said nothing as Evan quietly slipped the papers up his sleeve and the CDs in his pocket. Pietro couldn't see, it was too dark, but Kurt's eyes were made for the dark and he didn't miss a thing. "It was a waste of time."
~~ The Next Day ~~
"Scott, what's a double mutant gene?" Evan was sitting in the front seat today.
"A what?" Scott's brow furrowed. He had heard the term before, but he couldn't remember where. "I have no idea, it sounds familiar, though. Why?"
"Nothing, I was surfing the net and it was mentioned." In the back seat, Kurt was harassing Kitty.
"I did not!! I would, like, never do that!"
"Oh, but I saw you making googoo eyes at him, could it be love?"
"Like, icksome!!"
"Kitty's i~in l~ove! Kitty's i~in l~ove!" Kurt taunted in a singsong voice.
"Scott, make him shut up!"
"Both of you cool it." Scott warned them. He sighed, wondering how he was going to ask Evan and Kurt about where they went last night. He knew from experience with the two that it couldn't have been good, but he also didn't want to invade their privacy. Nevertheless, Professor Xavier had asked him to find out, and that was what Scott would do.
"Uh, that is so not fair, did I go and blurt out how you keep sneaking out in the middle of the night?" Kitty demanded from Kurt. Out of the corner of his eye, Scott saw both Kurt and Evan pale. "I bet you didn't even know that we saw you two slink back home last night either. Where were you? You couldn't possibly have spent all that time at Pietro's house. Did you accept another dare?"
Inwardly, Scott winced. He hadn't known that someone else had noticed Evan and Kurt's return.
"Awwww, Kitty, that's none of your business!" Kurt complained.
"Evan… you did, I bet you did. Well, you're in trouble anyway. The professor was looking for you last night and when he found out that you left with Pietro without telling anyone…" Kitty let the sentence hang. Professor Xavier didn't get upset easily, but finding two of his students creeping in after midnight when they had supposedly just walked a friend home really rocked his boat. 'And its not like Pietro and Evan are friends, they hate each other for crying out loud.' Scott sighed again, this time inwardly. It was getting harder and harder to keep up with the many mutants at the Institute. As one of the oldest, he felt that it was his duty to look out for the others, but maybe he was wearing himself a little thin… After all, he was only 17, and more and more mutants arrived every month. Scott took a deep breath and willed himself to calm down. As he slowly exhaled, he glanced at the rearview mirror.
"Kurt," Scott hissed. "Your image-inducer…"
Evan and Kitty looked at Kurt, who had reverted back to his normal form. Or rather, un-normal. Kurt ducked down, out of the immediate sight of the windows and began shaking the watch-like holo-projector on his wrist.
"It isn't working, something's wrong with it." Kurt's naturally yellow eyes were wide with fright. They were almost at the school, and traffic had picked up.
Scott gritted his teeth. "Okay, don't panic, it's not that bad. I don't think anyone saw. 'Port back to the Institute and get the Professor to fix it. While you're there, you can explain why you were sneaking around last night. Come back to school once you're done." For some reason, Kurt hesitated. Scott eyed him in the mirror and then glanced at Evan.
"Yeah, man. Hurry before someone sees you." Evan told Kurt, but he was studying the road intently. Kurt teleported as soon as Evan said that, and Kitty rolled down her window to let the smell of brimstone out of the car.
"Eww. Totally gross." She muttered. Evan didn't say anything, and Scott was too stressed out to think of a response. They parked and climbed out of the car in silence, and didn't say a word to each other until they parted ways to go to class.
~~ At the Institute ~~
"Kurt, your behavior is beginning to disturb me. You've been so restless, wandering the halls in the middle of the night, sneaking around after hours, and then you disappear with Evan and Pietro for four hours." Professor Xavier was sitting in his wheelchair, behind a large mahogany desk. Logan was in the office too, but he was far too tense to sit down. Instead, he paced behind Kurt who was seated in one of the comfortable armchairs in front of the desk.
"Kurt," Logan stopped pacing and leaned on the Professor's desk. "You know you can trust us, whatever it is you guys did last night…" Logan's eyebrows twitched as though he had a very clear idea of what the teenage boys could be up to in the wee hours of the night. "I'm not gonna ask what, cause I don't wanna know, but make sure you have some kinda, you know, protection."
Kurt looked at Logan for a second until what he had said sunk in.
"Now, Logan-" The Professor began.
"YOU THINK-ME AND-WHAT?!?!" Kurt jumped up and yelled. "WITH… EVAN AND PIETRO??? ARE YOU CRAZY???"
Logan looked genuinely distressed. "Now hang on a sec-"
"NO WAY!! FIRST YOU IMPLY THAT I'M…THAT I'M… AND WITH MY BEST FRIEND AND HIS WORST ENEMY?!?"
"I never said anything about Piet-"
"THE ONLY REASON WE LEFT WAS BECAUSE SOMEONE HAD THE BRIGHT IDEA TO VISIT PHEONIX AND THEN DECIDED TO GO TH-" Kurt winced and seemingly shrank in on himself. "I have to get to class." He 'ported out of the room before either of his seniors could speak.
"Phoenix, huh? So it's a threesome."
"Logan, I really don't think that's what they were doing." The Professor ventured.
"Oh, you don't know kids these days. I wouldn't be surprised if that Pietro fella was mixed up in this too." Logan shook his head and gave a world-weary sigh. "What's the world comin' to anyway? As if being a mutant doesn't give you a bad enough image…" Logan stalked out of the office, still muttering about the follies of youth.
The Professor waited until he was sure that Logan couldn't hear, and began chuckling softly. "Poor Logan…" His smile disappeared as his subconscious offered up a face and bio to go with the name. "Phoenix is here, then… so she made it. I wonder…" Charles Xavier thought for a moment more and then wheeled his way out of the office and to the room where Cerebro was kept. He had a long search ahead of him, and needed to get started as soon as possible.
~~ Evan ~~
Evan looked at Kurt, he could just barely make out his shape against the darkness of the walls. He looked like he was praying, but it was too dark to be sure. He looked in the corner and saw Phoenix riveted to a dark spot on the wall. Evan crawled to where she sat and looked with her. He didn't see a thing. Evan reached out tentatively and found Phoenix's hand. It was ice cold, and he almost didn't notice the change around him because of the shock of it, almost… he felt a momentary reel of vertigo and then he was standing behind Phoenix in a blood red room. It was made of stone, but the light made it look like the walls dripped blood. Evan turned around and saw bodies hanging off giant hooks; they were nailed to the walls, columns, everywhere that there was room. There were racks with people screaming, begging for mercy, chains hanging from the ceilings some with whole people on them, others with just one or two limbs. Evan saw all this and understood just what kind of people had taken advantage of Phoenix, what kind of people had brought her to this place. He turned around and saw a stone alter, made of the same stone as the rest of the place, but he knew, that it wasn't a trick of the light that made it look like blood. There was a high table just beyond the alter and at the table sat seven skeletal looking creatures. Their mouths were twisted in frozen screams and they looked like they had been there for a while. Evan walked up the stairs to stand behind one of the bodies. These had been people once, he knew.
Leaning forward, he picked up a paper that had been sitting in front of one of the corpses. He read it with disgust and confirmed his greatest fears. She had been normal once, but these seven… they had changed her, Evan didn't understand the technicalities of it, but somehow, they found a way to turn a normal person into a mutant. The only hitch, their first, and ultimately last, human test subject was less than sane to begin with, and part of the procedure involved playing god to the poor girl. She hadn't known, hadn't suspected, and in her mind, they were still alive, still leading her to her promised reward. She had what they called a double-mutant chromosome. Evan vowed to find out what that was and why it meant so much. Eventually, Evan just stopped reading and decided to get Phoenix out of there. He collected the papers and a set of CDs and walked back to Phoenix.
"Are you okay? Can you hear me?" She reeled forward and Evan caught her. "Answer me, Phoenix. Are you okay? Please answer me." The world spun and the red light disappeared.
"Ach, mein Gott!! Don't do that to me again." Evan set the papers and disks down. Phoenix sighed and looked up, right into Evan and Kurt's faces. Her whole body went stiff and then suddenly relaxed as she fainted.
"Oops."
"C'mon. let's get her on the bed so we can go and pretend this didn't happen." Pietro was back and jitterier than, well, anything that Evan knew of.
"That's a good idea. What time is it?" He asked.
"Midnight."
"Let's go. Dump her on the bed and leave her." Before they left though, Evan grabbed the stuff he had gotten from that torture chamber.
"What'd you find?" Pietro asked.
"Nothing." Evan lied. Kurt said nothing as Evan quietly slipped the papers up his sleeve and the CDs in his pocket. Pietro couldn't see, it was too dark, but Kurt's eyes were made for the dark and he didn't miss a thing. "It was a waste of time."
~~ The Next Day ~~
"Scott, what's a double mutant gene?" Evan was sitting in the front seat today.
"A what?" Scott's brow furrowed. He had heard the term before, but he couldn't remember where. "I have no idea, it sounds familiar, though. Why?"
"Nothing, I was surfing the net and it was mentioned." In the back seat, Kurt was harassing Kitty.
"I did not!! I would, like, never do that!"
"Oh, but I saw you making googoo eyes at him, could it be love?"
"Like, icksome!!"
"Kitty's i~in l~ove! Kitty's i~in l~ove!" Kurt taunted in a singsong voice.
"Scott, make him shut up!"
"Both of you cool it." Scott warned them. He sighed, wondering how he was going to ask Evan and Kurt about where they went last night. He knew from experience with the two that it couldn't have been good, but he also didn't want to invade their privacy. Nevertheless, Professor Xavier had asked him to find out, and that was what Scott would do.
"Uh, that is so not fair, did I go and blurt out how you keep sneaking out in the middle of the night?" Kitty demanded from Kurt. Out of the corner of his eye, Scott saw both Kurt and Evan pale. "I bet you didn't even know that we saw you two slink back home last night either. Where were you? You couldn't possibly have spent all that time at Pietro's house. Did you accept another dare?"
Inwardly, Scott winced. He hadn't known that someone else had noticed Evan and Kurt's return.
"Awwww, Kitty, that's none of your business!" Kurt complained.
"Evan… you did, I bet you did. Well, you're in trouble anyway. The professor was looking for you last night and when he found out that you left with Pietro without telling anyone…" Kitty let the sentence hang. Professor Xavier didn't get upset easily, but finding two of his students creeping in after midnight when they had supposedly just walked a friend home really rocked his boat. 'And its not like Pietro and Evan are friends, they hate each other for crying out loud.' Scott sighed again, this time inwardly. It was getting harder and harder to keep up with the many mutants at the Institute. As one of the oldest, he felt that it was his duty to look out for the others, but maybe he was wearing himself a little thin… After all, he was only 17, and more and more mutants arrived every month. Scott took a deep breath and willed himself to calm down. As he slowly exhaled, he glanced at the rearview mirror.
"Kurt," Scott hissed. "Your image-inducer…"
Evan and Kitty looked at Kurt, who had reverted back to his normal form. Or rather, un-normal. Kurt ducked down, out of the immediate sight of the windows and began shaking the watch-like holo-projector on his wrist.
"It isn't working, something's wrong with it." Kurt's naturally yellow eyes were wide with fright. They were almost at the school, and traffic had picked up.
Scott gritted his teeth. "Okay, don't panic, it's not that bad. I don't think anyone saw. 'Port back to the Institute and get the Professor to fix it. While you're there, you can explain why you were sneaking around last night. Come back to school once you're done." For some reason, Kurt hesitated. Scott eyed him in the mirror and then glanced at Evan.
"Yeah, man. Hurry before someone sees you." Evan told Kurt, but he was studying the road intently. Kurt teleported as soon as Evan said that, and Kitty rolled down her window to let the smell of brimstone out of the car.
"Eww. Totally gross." She muttered. Evan didn't say anything, and Scott was too stressed out to think of a response. They parked and climbed out of the car in silence, and didn't say a word to each other until they parted ways to go to class.
~~ At the Institute ~~
"Kurt, your behavior is beginning to disturb me. You've been so restless, wandering the halls in the middle of the night, sneaking around after hours, and then you disappear with Evan and Pietro for four hours." Professor Xavier was sitting in his wheelchair, behind a large mahogany desk. Logan was in the office too, but he was far too tense to sit down. Instead, he paced behind Kurt who was seated in one of the comfortable armchairs in front of the desk.
"Kurt," Logan stopped pacing and leaned on the Professor's desk. "You know you can trust us, whatever it is you guys did last night…" Logan's eyebrows twitched as though he had a very clear idea of what the teenage boys could be up to in the wee hours of the night. "I'm not gonna ask what, cause I don't wanna know, but make sure you have some kinda, you know, protection."
Kurt looked at Logan for a second until what he had said sunk in.
"Now, Logan-" The Professor began.
"YOU THINK-ME AND-WHAT?!?!" Kurt jumped up and yelled. "WITH… EVAN AND PIETRO??? ARE YOU CRAZY???"
Logan looked genuinely distressed. "Now hang on a sec-"
"NO WAY!! FIRST YOU IMPLY THAT I'M…THAT I'M… AND WITH MY BEST FRIEND AND HIS WORST ENEMY?!?"
"I never said anything about Piet-"
"THE ONLY REASON WE LEFT WAS BECAUSE SOMEONE HAD THE BRIGHT IDEA TO VISIT PHEONIX AND THEN DECIDED TO GO TH-" Kurt winced and seemingly shrank in on himself. "I have to get to class." He 'ported out of the room before either of his seniors could speak.
"Phoenix, huh? So it's a threesome."
"Logan, I really don't think that's what they were doing." The Professor ventured.
"Oh, you don't know kids these days. I wouldn't be surprised if that Pietro fella was mixed up in this too." Logan shook his head and gave a world-weary sigh. "What's the world comin' to anyway? As if being a mutant doesn't give you a bad enough image…" Logan stalked out of the office, still muttering about the follies of youth.
The Professor waited until he was sure that Logan couldn't hear, and began chuckling softly. "Poor Logan…" His smile disappeared as his subconscious offered up a face and bio to go with the name. "Phoenix is here, then… so she made it. I wonder…" Charles Xavier thought for a moment more and then wheeled his way out of the office and to the room where Cerebro was kept. He had a long search ahead of him, and needed to get started as soon as possible.