Outside Storm watched in horror.
"What is she doing?" she asked.
"She is officially completely stupid," Kitty breathed.
"Actually, I thought it was quite cool," Mystique said with a wry smile.
"She's going to get herself killed!" Storm said, half angry, half worried, "Angel, circle again, see if you can see her!"
Warren took off, but knew he wouldn't be able to get close enough to see anything.
"Why did she do that?" Storm asked, staring at the window Jack had crashed through, looking for any sign of her.
"There's a kid inside!" Rogue said, "There's still a child trapped in the building."
"How can you tell?" Bobby asked.
"I could hear it, crying," Rogue said, clenching her fists as she hoped with all her might that Jack and the child would make it out safe and alive.
They stood waiting. The fire made quick work of drying them out now the rain had stopped. The heat was so intense, Storm feared that Jack would be incinerated in seconds.
Stood in her protective bubble, Jack stopped and listened. The fire beat against her shield, causing it to shimmer slightly green. Normally it was completely invisible – only when it took a beating did its colour show.
Blocking out the sounds of the fire, she listened for that whimper. It was coming from somewhere near here, she just had to locate it before the whole building collapsed in on itself.
Through the roaring flames and cracking wood, she heard it. A muffled cry of a child. Jack ran carefully through the building towards it, listening to her footsteps, avoiding particularly cracking and buckling sections of the floor.
After a moments running she arrived at a huge wardrobe. She threw open the door, dropped her shield, grabbed the child and raised the shield again. It took only a few milliseconds, but Jack felt her face burning in the intense heat of the fire. The poor child had taken shelter amongst a load of coats and was luckily not too burned, but they weren't out of there yet.
Jack ran out of the room and to the nearest window. It was a fair drop, one she wouldn't make without breaking her legs and probably killing the child in her arms. Her propulsion energy was useless – she couldn't use it to lower herself and so break the fall, it would only push her higher.
She ran to the stairs but they were burned down, with no way of traversing them.
"Dammit!" she cursed, running back to the window. Jump it was.
She picked the window furthest from all the flames and dropped her shield, smashing the window with a glowing fist. It didn't look out at where the X-men were gathered, but onto the other side of the hotel, into the gardens. In the centre of the gardens was a large swimming pool.
"Take a deep breath!" she told the child, who nodded and took a rasping, choking breath and held it.
Jack gritted her teeth. It was a long way to the pool, but she could possibly make it. Maybe.
With the fire approaching rapidly it was now or never. She backed up and took a run up, leaping from the window as a torrent of flame followed behind her, giving her a little unanticipated extra propulsion.
Jack sailed through the air, the child in her arms clinging to her in terror. Jack held out one hand and blasted the ground with her energy, pushing them that bit further along, sending them sailing straight into the water.
The blissfully cool liquid enveloped them, slowing their fall, and for a second all was peaceful. Everything seemed to slow down as noises became an indistinct blur and all heat and movement vanished. As Jack's feet touched the bottom she pushed up and they broke the surface, gasping for breath, hearts beating so fast it was painful. The moment of peace at the bottom of the pool was overtaken by the chaos outside. It was all flashing lights, flickering flames, incoherent yells and sirens. Jack just trod water in the centre of the pool, waiting for her heart rate to calm as she tried to determine what to do next.
Suddenly she was plucked from the pool by a pair of strong hands and felt herself being lifted away from the floor. As the hotel shrunk beneath her she looked up to see Warren above her, his angelic wings beating hard as he lifted her away from danger.
Warren glided downwards, landing elegantly on the floor with Jack.
"You are completely insane!" he said to her, angrily, "What on Earth possessed you to pull a stunt like that?"
Jack turned round to face him, holding up the child she had in her arms. It was a little girl, soggy, soot covered and slightly singed with the widest pair of brown eyes Warren had ever seen. She stared up at him in awe, her eyes scanning over his wings and sucked her thumb pensively. Warren softened and brushed a stray lock of hair from the girl's face.
"We should get her back to the medics," he said, nodding in the direction of the ambulances.
They were practically swamped by news reporters, but Jack and Warren just waded through them, handing the girl over to the medical staff.
"That was so brave, Miss," the nurse they reached first said, "You should get a medal for that kind of bravery."
"A medal would be nice, but I'd settle for a nice cold drink of water," Jack said with a croaky laugh.
The nurse smiled and handed her one. Jack drained it.
"You're right," she said turning to Warren, "That was completely insane."
"It was quite cool though," Warren said, echoing Mystique, "come on, let's get back to the others."
She grinned, pushing her dripping wet hair out of her face and followed behind him, wading back through the crowds of reporters the way they came.
Rogue hugged Jack fiercely when she arrived back with the other X-men.
"You are the craziest person I've ever met!" she said, "Did you get the kid, is she safe?"
Rogue wasn't sure when she had decided the child was a she, her brain had somehow decided it from the tone of the child's cries. Rogue was starting to think this wasn't normal, but she was too jubilant at Jack's safe return to question it right now.
"She's safe," Jack said, "Bit singed, but otherwise alive and kicking."
There was a rebuke on the tip of Storm's tongue but as soon as those words came out of Jack's mouth it died on her lips. Her foolish act of bravery had saved someone's life.
"Were you really ninety-eight percent certain you could do that?" she asked instead.
"Yeah, I may have to lower that percentage a little bit," Jack said with a sheepish grin.
Fortunately for the team, it was a Friday night, so they could all afford a nice lie in the next morning. Most people enjoyed a long shower or bath as soon as they got up, clearing the last remnants of the soot and smoke from their hair and skin.
Kitty and Rogue spent all morning pampering each other, dragging Jack into the process. They all had facials, manicures and many other beauty treatments as a treat for the success of the night before. Jack commented that it was hardly a treat being covered in smelly things and sitting around for hours, to which Rogue and Kitty responded by attacking her with all manner of moisturisers and makeup.
Bobby and Peter spent some time on the football table, laughing at the news clips they saw of themselves. Many of the younger students couldn't get enough of the stories they had to tell of the night, so they were kept very occupied bragging about their heroics all day.
Warren, however, was not about to waste his weekend sitting around. He had things to do. He wanted to go and visit his Father in San Fransisco, which would mean taking a couple of days out. This weekend was the perfect opportunity.
Storm was quite happy for him to go away and even went as far as to offer him a lift in the jet. Warren was grateful for this – driving was a bit uncomfortable when you had wings.
He called up his Dad to warn him that he would be landing on the roof of Worthington Labs shortly.
Warren Worthington Senior stood on the roof, hands in his pockets, as the wind created by the jet blew, tugging at his hair and jacket.
"When you said you would be landing on the roof I assumed you were flying," he said to his approaching son, "I didn't realise you meant you were travelling by your own private jet."
"It's one of the perks of the job," Warren said, waving at Storm, who gave him a thumbs up and took off, heading back to the mansion.
"If that's the perk for teaching, maybe I should consider quitting business."
Warren laughed and walked with his Father off the roof and into the top floor penthouse.
Once she had finally wormed her way out of watching some romantic film with Kitty and Rogue, Jack headed to the quiet area to study. She took her CD player with her, listening to the Xhosa linguaphone. As she sat down on a beanbag in the corner of the room, she opened the book that came with the CDs. Scanning her eyes over the text she could make nothing of it. It was as indecipherable to her as a barcode was to anyone else. Good thing she didn't need it really.
She was nearly finished listening to the first disk, when Hank approached her.
"How's it going?" he asked.
"Good," Jack said in Xhosa, "That means 'good'."
Hank laughed and sat down beside her.
"I was wondering if tomorrow you would like to come with me to where the Summit is being held. It will give you a chance to familiarise yourself with the place, meet the people you will be working with."
"Am I going to get paid for doing this?" Jack asked, thinking of the one audio book she owned, and the many more there were available to buy if she had the money.
"Of course," Hank said, "You already have something in mind to spend it on?"
"Well, Warren bought me an audio book of To Kill A Mockingbird, to help me with his lessons, I'd like to get some others like it," Jack said, "I like stories."
"It must be frustrating, enjoying stories so much, and not being able to read."
"Not all stories are in books," Jack said with a shrug, "Talk to anyone here and you'd get a good story out of them."
"Yes, plenty of drama and tragedy," Hank said, "If you are anything like Kitty and Rogue you would prefer something with a bit more gushy romance."
Jack wrinkled her nose in distaste, making Hank laugh once again.
"As much as I'd like this to be a visit because you haven't seen me in a while, I must assume that by turning up on my roof in a jet you mean business."
"Well, I was going to drive and still mean business," Warren replied, looking over at his Father, "I came to see you because I think you might be able to help me with something."
"And what's that?"
"Actually, it's not me at all you'd be helping, rather a student at the school," Warren began, "There's a girl who joined us a few weeks ago, who through some sort of learning disability – possibly caused by her mutation, or something more regular like Dyslexia, is completely unable to read and write."
"Well, there are no drugs to cure Dyslexia…" Mr. Worthington said.
"I'm not looking for a drug," Warren said, "The thing with this girl is, she can learn languages at an extraordinary rate. In the time she's been at the mansion she has learned Latin completely from scratch, and has mastered a fair bit of Russian.
"What I was thinking was, if there was some kind of computer that read letters, words, and translated them into either speech, or some sort of sound, it could really help her. There must be something out there. What I'm asking for is your help finding it – you've got the contacts, you must know someone who knows someone."
"A machine that reads text and translates it into sounds?" Mr. Worthington repeated, searching his brain for any memory of such a thing, "I'll see what I can pull up later, but for now – would you like something to drink?"
Storm spent her Saturday talking to reporters. She headed out before lunchtime, dressed in full X-men costume, in a chauffeur driven car sent for her by the President. She came to the building that would be housing the Summit, stood on a podium and prepared to answer their questions.
Along for the ride was Mystique, in her X-men guise (a blonde woman as apposed to her dark-haired human appearance).
"Ok, first question," called a man who was trying to keep the conference organised.
About a thousand people clamoured to get a question in. Mystique pointed coolly to a woman near the front and the man handed her a microphone.
"That was an amazing rescue effort last night," she said, "Will the X-men be expecting any payments in return for their services?"
"Our payment is that those people made it out of that fire," Storm said.
"Do you get scared, when faced with a disaster that risks not only the lives of civilians, but the lives of you and your team mates as well?" another person asked.
"Everything we do has its risks," Storm said, "And yes our lives were at risk last night. Even though we wished we could save everyone, there has to be a point where I tell my team to stop. We have to take care of ourselves, as well as others."
"It seemed like one of your team mates wasn't listening to your orders to stop last night," a man remarked.
Storm couldn't think of a reply quick enough so Mystique answered for her.
"If you are referring to the incredibly brave actions of our team mate Starbright, then you should know she is a relatively recent addition to the team, and we are yet to discover the full extent of what she is capable of.
"Our team works as a team, but within that team is the scope for individuals to work as individuals. In the case of Starbright last night her powers not only allowed her to locate a child trapped inside the burning building, but to rescue her successfully from the inferno. As a team we could not have accomplished this."
"Each of our team mates is an individual," Storm found her voice, "As their leader I consider it my responsibility to keep them safe, but they are adults and capable of making their own decisions, and as long as they do not endanger the lives of others, I see no harm in them doing so."
The reporters were nodding to one another, taking notes, but as soon as Storm finished speaking it was another clamour to get a question in.
"So what are your team's powers?"
"How old is the youngest member of the X-men?"
"Who do you think is the most powerful?"
"Iceman is pretty good looking, do you think he would do a photoshoot for our magazine?"
Storm and Mystique exchanged looks. This was going to be a long day.
"I saw you on the telly," Mr. Worthington said to Warren as they sat at the bar, drinking together, "I've got it recorded, not that I needed to – they're still replaying the clips now."
He hit the on button on the TV remote and a television above them turned on, playing clips of the heroic rescue by the X-men. The clips of him were mostly when he was walking with Jack over to the medical area.
"That's her, there," Warren said, pointing out Jack on the telly, "Jack, she calls herself. Won't tell anyone her real name."
"When you said student I assumed you meant a young girl," his Dad said, looking up at the screen.
"She's nineteen, which makes her a student still, but one of the oldest," Warren said.
"Nineteen and she can't read…"
"It's not her fault," Warren said, more defensively than he intended.
Warren Worthington Senior raised his eyebrows at his son with a knowing smile.
"What's that look for?" Warren asked. His Father just laughed.
"Are you heading home this evening then?" he asked, changing the subject.
"Well, Storm said to give her a call when I wanted picking up, so whenever really," Warren said, trying to imitate Jack's cool, unconcerned manner.
"Well, there is always a bed here, if you wanted to stop a bit longer," his Father said, the stammer returning to his normally confident voice, "Only if you want to of course, don't feel…"
"I'd love to," Warren cut him off.
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