I have no willpower, so I'm updating this li'l bugger already.

Those of you that have read my previous movieverse fic will recognize some parts in this chapter. However, DO NOT skim those parts. I've tweaked them significantly in ways that directly pertain to only this story and the themes and purposes and intentions, pertaining to THIS story.

As with all my writing, every word is picked specifically. Don't fret if you don't see the connections up front, just hang on for the ride, but also, don't discount anything as filler whatsoever.

RebelRogue127: I'm so glad to hear you are enjoying it. These are some of my fave characters too, which is why I have to use them. I'm not neglecting my not-so-fave characters though, either, and I promise to treat them all as if they were my faves, so I can prevent alienating their fans. My favorite aspect of the X-Treme story was the use of Destiny's Diaries. I always thought they would've shared more insider information regarding why they would convince a somewhat poor-example-of-motherly-love terrorist such as Mystique to take in Rogue than they did. But then, that's what I try to tap into in "Seether." Speaking of "Seether," if you like plots utilizing Vargas, that story is a good place to go. I look forward to seeing your comments.

Ahem... enough whoremongering of my other stories.

Onto chapter two of X-Men Rising, Part 01 "Birds of a Feather."

(Don't forget to check out the links to the pics, either, please:D)


Chapter Two

"Why didn't she just tell you?" Ororo asked. Her distrust was blatant.

Xavier smiled wryly. "She had her reasons, I imagine."

He was in Cerebro, speaking via a communications system on intercom. Storm was in the pilot's seat of the Blackbird already running the pre-flight sequence.

Kurt, already strapped in his seat, could hear them, but wasn't listening. He whispered rhythmic phrases in his native Germanic tongue under his closed eyes and bowed head.

Paying closer attention was Rogue. Donning a flight jacket as an accessory of her uniform, she passed by Scott, who was setting up the holograph for the team's briefing.

Storm spotted her. "Rogue, could you—"

"Already on it," Rogue said as she started checking some of the lesser controls. Rogue had begun basic pilot training shortly after the Alkali lake incident. Xavier thought it a good idea that she actually learned how to fly before she got behind the controls again.

"Is this a training session or a rescue mission?" Logan asked with a gruff grunt as he took his seat as well. Though he often denied it in a very Logan way, he had become a mite bit more protective of Rogue—and some of the other kids too—since Jean's death.

Two of those other kids were sitting around him waiting for what was to come with the virgin nervous eagerness of their first time. Though Kitty had been used previously for covert operations, they were of more controlled and less risky nature than this mission was anticipated to be. Fiddling with the collar and cuffs of her uniform, she was a vibrant thing, fluttering and wispy as a ghost so near corporeal form, but not near enough. She wondered if her fellow 'newbies' to the 'official team' were as nervous as she. They'd both been in much more dire situations with the team before, sure, but this was still their trial run on an actual, real, legit X-Men mission.

Bobby, seemingly calm and steady beside Kitty, gazed in quiet wonder at his busy girlfriend as she assisted Storm. Rogue shone brightly to him. The passionate person she was to become was emerging slowly while he still seemed stuck in his shiny-and-new refinement. More and more often he caught glimpses of her coming-to-bear—like rubbed off patches of an abrasive polish designed to buffer, make resilient, and gleam. Her equally burgeoning dichotomy—tough/durable and ardent/audacious—conjured a dual reaction in him. It raced his pulse, heady and throbbing in that teenage way, and quickened his breath, hesitant and doubting as a geeky kid about to insert a pin in a frantic butterfly's wing so he could prove his worth to his teacher at the science fair. What hope did he have of containing such a wild and free thing? How temporary was his grasp of her when her touch was so startling? She was too tempting for him not to try, yet too frightening for him to risk himself wholly. Like this mission they were embarking on, his approach was collected and reserved. It was a failsafe of his to press the stretchy-give of his nimbus confines only so much. He'd been in Xavier's midst longer than Rogue, but he wasn't emerging quite as quickly as she was. For that matter, even Kitty, in her own way, was more experienced and ambitious than he.

"All ready?" Storm called back from the pilot's seat.

Rogue tapped a button and the ramp rose and sealed shut. "That's a go, Storm." Rogue confirmed before she took her seat with Bobby, Logan and the others. Still a rookie as pilots-in-training go, she had a guilty-pleasure love of using pseudo-pilot lingo.

Scott bypassed any further possible chitchat with the activation of the three-dimensional holographic display of—"Seattle," he informed them stoically.

The 3D image collapsed with the sound of a falling rush of beads, and then sprang up again, this time, a closer view of a high security building. Another collapse, shuffle, and reformation, and the view was close enough that the display illustrated razor wire topped fencing.

"The Diamond Research Facility," Scott continued, "headed by Dr. Essex, the very scientist that was assigned as McCoy's partner for the Mutant Good-will Research Committee."

A side section of the holograph collapsed, reshuffled, and reformed, this time into the face of the very mutant—not that the public was aware he was one—their mission was to save. Dr. Henry 'Hank' McCoy wore thick black-rimmed glasses that would've been Buddy Holly like if they weren't so small on his face. His mop of dark hair crowned the wide round face atop bulky, stocky shoulders. He gave the impression of being gorilla like, but with an air of the delicate, the cultured, to him. An odd mix to be sure. More odd to those who heard him speak. The voice and word pattern never quite meshed with that face, that body.

The team didn't have time to speculate on that too much before Scott continued.

"With Cerebro's help, the Professor has determined that there are mutants detained in cells on the north end of the complex."

Collapse. Reshuffle. Reform. The north end appeared in muted detail. Collapse. Reshuffle. Reform. A hallway. Barred doors. An interior view.

"This is the closest approximation of Dr. McCoy's location we have."

Bobby piped up, "You couldn't get a lock on him, Professor?"

"There is significant interference with my telepathy there." Professor's voice sounded the tiniest bit tinny through the speakers.

"It could be a trap."

"That is a possibility, Logan," Xavier admitted ruefully. "This is to be first and foremost a reconnaissance mission. If you can use stealth—" Kitty and Kurt nodded as if he'd physically gestured to them "—to release some of the mutant captives, then do so. Otherwise, we will reconvene and determine a more precise plan."

"But she said tomorrow—"

"She is employed by Magneto, Rogue," Xavier said.

Rogue's entire body thrummed tightly hearing that name. Oh how she wanted to get her hands on him!

"Caution is imperative," Xavier stated as the doors sealed him inside the big round room. "I will monitor from Cerebro."


Irene turned on the light for her watchful companions, not needing it herself, but only after she situated herself comfortably in her favorite high back chair in her own meager apartment's living room. If her private quarters could qualify as an apartment, that was.

"How did it go?" Erik Lensherr's commanding presence rode his voice, a low brewing rumble of a jet engine just lifting.

"Rogue doesn't exhibit as much of your imprinted unyielding as I would have expected."

Open. Flicker. Shut. Laughter. "She took the bait, didn't she?" More laughter. "She's a slippery one, though. How can you be sure?"

"Yes, Irene," Erik said, "Tell us. Will my old friend's brood prove to be the disruption I require?"

Irene picked the black orb up off the little table beside her chair. A two handed shake—she wasn't as nimble as she once was—and watched as the small white pyramid floated to the equally small window's surface. She quirked a smile as she read the 'Magic Eight Ball's' answer of, "All signs point to yes."

A scoff came from the darkest corner of the room. "Probable, but not absolute. You didn't actually see them do it, did you?"

"Probabilities are your specialty, Wanda," the blue one said. It was perceptively in Irene's defense. "If you doubted her vision, you should have offered your services."

"Bitch," Wanda accused.

Mystique merely smiled, an almost surprising flash of white in all her darkness. The retort of 'witch' that lingered on her tongue was just too simple to release.

"Regardless," Magneto, seemingly oblivious to the bickering amongst his ranks, said, "We'll have confirmation one way or the other soon enough."


A cell phone buzzed, apparently set on silent, but was ignored.

The twice-dimming lights corroborated what many of the elegantly dressed patrons that mingled in the lobby, halls, aisles, and balconies of the ornate Seattle opera house already were estimating: intermission was ending (1). Up in a balcony box seat, a certain Cajun thief charmed a belle femme who openly wore her wealth upon her earlobes, neck, and fingers. He trailed a seductive hand along the length of her arm. A mock coy blush warmed her cheeks.

She gestured to the opening curtains, a continuing of her feigned shyness. "Remy… it's starting again."

Monsieur LeBeau—never one to give up easily—swept up her hand in a gallant gesture. His cell phone rang again, but he continued ignoring it for more entertaining play. He caressed a finger over one of her bejeweled rings. With just the right amount of a heady whisper, he said, "Beautiful…"

"It belonged to my grandmother," she explained.

He winked and slid heated lips across her knuckles. "That too, chére." He rose up the smallest bit—an effectively charming meeting of his flirtatious eyes—to spy the result of his handiwork upon her pretty face.

The flush to her cheeks conflicted with her quite unexpected stiffening.

"Your eyes are glowing."

The whites of his full coverage contacts, what would be his sclera if it were his eyes, were pink. A flare of red escaped the edges of the contacts. The conquest missed it though. Her attention had waned to the hand he still held. She gasped. Her ring, the one his finger rested on, glowed brighter and brighter.

"Merde!"

He pulled the ring off her hand and tossed it high behind him. He gripped the balcony railing as he watched the glowing ring twirl higher and higher. He hoped it would do its thing in the open air above the audience. He hoped it would end there.

Lady luck was not on his side that night.

The glowing ring hit one of the decorative peaks of the ceiling. BOOM!

A cacophony of screams and wails bounced off the walls and escaped through the enormous hole in the ceiling. Frantic swishings of skirts and scuffings of wing tipped shoes scrambling for traction on the carpet accompanied the rushing screams. The startled patrons were fleeing in panic. A few who were not in immediate danger of the falling ceiling debris and people more interested in blame than safety, pointed accusingly at Remy.

Remy's companion scuttled back from him. Terrified, she branded him, "You're a mutant!"

"Oui," he answered. It was sardonic, a chastisement of himself. This mutinous uprising of his powers informed him of who had been calling his cell phone so persistently.

His grip tightened on the railing and squeezed. Didn't matter if the caller could hear him or not, he still asked, "Haven't I done enough?"

He got his answer not in words or the ring of his phone, but in the red-toned glow that spread out along the railing from under his hands.

"Guess not," Remy said and sighed.

And worse, a feather light bit of debris, perhaps some insulation of some sort, gingerly floated—gloated—toward the railing. For a moment Remy considered batting the debris away, but then he scowled wryly. Luck be a lady and his caller most certainly wasn't one. Besides, it was futile anyways. Something else would fall, would collapse, and perhaps without the kindly warning the next time. Luck had a sister named fate, and she hadn't been susceptible to his particular charms for more than a year now.

He grabbed his companion—another woman now immune to his charms—and scrambled them through the box seat doorway. He dove atop her to shield her just as the debris contacted the railing—BOOM!

Remy sat up. He brushed the dust and debris off himself and the woman. She coughed as the smoke cleared.

"Y' okay?"

He didn't need her voice to know the answer, though. She scuttled fearfully back from him.

"That's gonna blow too, petite," he said, indicating her now glowing velvet wrap. He had touched it when saved her. His damned touch.

She threw the wrap back through the doorway. She fled one-way. Remy fled the other.

The wrap took its damned time falling, but eventually, like lady luck and lady fate scorned, not to mention his caller, had demanded, it connected with the back of a seat. BOOM!


Xavier diligently operated Cerebro. Soft scarlet luminescence outlined an enormous map of the Northwest region of the United States. More vivid illuminations, pinpricks really, dotted the locations of individual mutants. A group of them, rimmed in a sickly purple, bunched together in the Seattle area. A second group, less the purple marring, converged nearer and nearer. Focusing in on that second group, it magnified until Xavier could see through the hull of the Blackbird, and just as he was about to speak to its occupants an even more brilliant crimson, nearly fuchsia dot spiked underneath it. This one too was rimmed like a bruise.


"We're circling for a landing—"

Boom! Woosh! Billowing smoke bubbled up from underneath them. Black and acrid, but lacking the brimstone scent Rogue connected with rescue in accompaniment, the smoke momentarily filled the view from the cockpit.

"What was that?"

"Were we hit?"

"Did we lose an engine?"

Storm and Scott ignored the outbursts of their passengers while they checked all of their panels and sensors. Even Rogue leapt into action. By the time she reached the cockpit they had already flown through the pillar of smoke and could see the source of it. It was hard to tell what type of building it was because of the smoke, flames, and their distance from it, but whatever it was, there were likely a lot of people inside. The adjoining parking lot was filled with parked cars.

"Nothing to do with us," Rogue called back to the others in rash assumption.

"I'm not so sure of that," Xavier's voice said over the cabin's speakers.


Concentration lanced across Xavier's brow as he tried to connect more directly to the mutant that caused the spike.

"Lost control… Not again… Thought we were through…"

Xavier could pick up what the out-of-control mutant said aloud, but he couldn't penetrate his actual thoughts. Those were just soft and tender static and buzz, as though purposefully blocked from telepathy. Soft and tender like a bruise. If only he could get through, he could help.

"Professor?" Scott's confused impatience was evident over the intercom.

Xavier's eyed popped open in time to see the amplified muted red figure of the out-of-control mutant, sprinting full out, trailing explosion after explosion, heading straight for him.

But it was just a holographic projection and Xavier regained control, pulling the image back through him so he could continue watching from a more reasonable vantage point.


Remy outran the chasing explosions. At least, he tried. His hand left a glowing print on the hallway wall as he bumped it. Three steps later, an explosion from behind jostled him into another wall where he left another glowing handprint before he rushed onward. Debris chased up from behind him, connected with the print he left three steps back and—BOOM—rocked him into the wall again, where he left a glowing print again, where even the smallest bit of new debris could connect to release the explosive kinetic energy his powers charged in the wake of his touch and thus, BOOM… A cycle he couldn't seem to break, like fate.

Just as he acclimated to the pattern of it, lady luck, scorned somehow by him, stepped in and changed it. Debris blocked the doorway to the stairs. And worse, the end of the hall looms ahead. Nowhere else to go, he scrambled into the final seating-box and to the edge of the balcony railing—where he braces himself to step up. Idiotic, because it too began to glow.

Four levels up, he leapt just as another explosion hit—BOOM—from behind him and chased him with debris to hit—BOOM—the railing just before he leapt, giving his momentum the extra oomph it needed to catch the stage curtain as bits of plaster and wood pelted his back. Much of the curtain was glowing too by the time the swing arced him out and over the set where he let go.

BOOM!

He crashed through set pieces and rolled across the stage.

BOOM!

Hands.

BOOM!

Fingers.

BOOM!

Knuckles.

BOOM!

Forearm.

His shoulder smacked against the arch on the other side of the stage and he managed to get a knee and a foot planted unsteadily on the stage floor. As good as it was going to get without using his hands for balance.

His eyes burned to look before he'd won the fight to stand. He saw the carnage continuing around him. Screaming, fleeing people trying desperately to escape the raining debris, the relenting explosions themselves, and each other.

His eyes stung.

Each other…

His eyes stung and burned.

There were bodies… bloodied, broken, slumped… immobile.

His eyes stung and burned and flared.

And where he looked things began glowing. A jacket here, a hair-pin there, a hand feebly stretching out for a trapped loved one—sizzling red, then hot pink, scorching fuchsia, then BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

"Arrêt!" Remy yelled and clenched shut his eyes. "Stop it!"

"I can help you."

The voice seemed to come from within Remy's own head. It was mildly accented, blander than Remy's own native New Orleans drawl. It brought to mind images of hallowed halls of Ivy League Universities during a haunting storm.

Remy's face contorted as tightly as his clenched eyes and the balled fists he held carefully out of contact of anything and everything, including his own clothing and his own skin. He suffered a small death when he relented, "Do it."

The burning and crying continued around him as he waited the impossibly long moments for the eerie voice to fulfill its offer.

There was no bang or fizzle or click or sigh to signify anything had changed, only the return of the strange voice. "It is done."

Remy didn't yet dare open his eyes or unclench his fists. "What's the price this time?"

"You will know when you get here." Words as ominous as the voice itself. "Quickly."

Gambit was already moving.

"Next time, do not gamble on my patience, Remy."

Would he have been able to, Gambit would've kicked the caller's face. Instead, he settled for the backstage door with the exit sign above it.


There was still no sign of ambulances, fire trucks, or police cars. Nobody had yet come to the rescue.

"Professor?" Scott asked, for what had to be the sixth or seventh time, without answer. They were on their second circle over the explosion-raked site.

"I'm landing," Storm announced.

"Wait," came Xavier's voice through the speakers. "He's… okay, now. Someone intervened and he's gained control. The authorities are already on their way."

On cue, rescue vehicles came speeding into view, though still a couple blocks away.

"It won't be safe for him," Kitty said. She pulled her head back through the hull. "Not with that kind of damage. Those poor people."

"He's fleeing… heading… I've lost him," Xavier said. "I don't think they'll find him. Not immediately, at any rate." A conflicted sigh. "We should continue as planned, for now."

"Storm and Bobby could double back for him," Scott interjected. "We can't just abandon him."

"Agreed."


Some parts originally drafted prior to April 2003.
Rewrite/Edit April 13, 2005.
Rewrite/Edit April 22, 2006.
Footnotes (links to pics):

(1) www(dot)weecheng(dot)com/europe/bbs/odessa/opera2(dot)jpeg
This is a pic I found online that represents what I imagine the interior of the theater/opera house where Gambit loses his powers (pre-destruction, of course). This pic is of an opera house in the Ukraine, not Seattle, but ya'll get the idea.


Thank you for indulging.