kiragecko's X-Men
Sinister Flyers
by kiragecko

More Kitty! Back because it's therapeutic to write someone even stranger then yourself. No more disclaimers, they're boring. Instead I'll give you a preview of "You Want HIM On The Team?", coming soon to your computer!

-Bobby grinned.

-"Is he (or she, I'm not looking to get beat up, Betsy) super strong? I've been thinking about it and it would be great if we could have someone on par with Colossus, or -maybe even the Hulk! We could call him (or her)… Magesto (or Magesta, oww, Betsy) and he'd be like 'Magesto (or Magesta) smash puny building. Purple Head is -squished.'"

-"Bobby!"

-"I would have preferred you hadn't suggested a female could be that stupid. Or have such an awful name."

-"Magesta is a cool name, Betsy. Way better then Whisper."

-"You will be taking that back, of course."

-"Ughummhuh…of course?"

It was real. Kitty had gone through the system three times now and the results had been unanimous. Someone had tapped into the computer system. Someone was spying on them. And this wasn't even the worst insult! The program was built into the system and disguised to look harmless. It had obviously been done by a professional and put in place during the original setup of the system. The people who had been trusted to create the network had done this. Her colleagues. And it had taken her over a month to notice!

Fifteen minutes later Kitty was confused and three times as angry. The place that had installed the network didn't exist. There was a name and address, a sort of website, and a lot of clever screens and tricks but the address didn't exist, the website had no actual information and the screens hid nothing. Miss Katherine Pryde, the youngest computer scientist ever to graduate from MIT, was not about to be deterred by something as simple as this. Her fingers flew over the keyboard.

While in high school she had often entertained her friends by finding information people might not have wanted her so see - hacking, in other words. She and Doug had easily penetrated CIA, FBI, and SHIELD security, naming only a few of the American organizations. Since coming to the mansion she'd been catching up on what she'd missed during college - the X-Men seemed quite interested in SHIELD especially.

Finally she had an address and a different name. She'd tell them what she'd found and see what they did. She was looking for abject apologies, a promise that the perpetrator had been sacked, and a return of all private information.

They sent nothing, not even a response that they'd seen the message. She sent another. Same result. She gave them five more minutes. Ten minutes after that she was out of the mansion and on her way to New York. She was so busy wondering why everything in the world seemed to be located in New York that it never occurred to her that she might want to leave a note. To be fair, it is unlikely she would have thought of it anyways.

The building seemed to be a warehouse. It didn't have any computers that Kitty could see. She was confused, frustrated, and not a little angry. There was going to be an explanation as to why a company obviously not fit to setup a network had gotten into her home and tampered with its integrity.

When Kitty was upset (or distracted, or tired) she forgot to watch where she was going. As a result several walls were quickly left behind and she was nearing lost. The walls had changed to stainless steel, cages filled the rooms she wandered through, and it didn't seem like it was likely the building was a warehouse. More like a laboratory. Some of the cages made noise.

Looking at cages made it difficult to watch where she was going and suddenly Kitty found herself inside one of the little cells. There was a hiss, a flash of colour, the feeling of SOMETHING on her skin, and then nothing. She phased through the rest of the cage and looked inside. There was nothing there.

Thoroughly disoriented, she continued her wandering. What was this place? The cages were left behind, but not before several strange animals were glimpsed - things that would have looked comfortable in medieval stories - including a burning lizard, probably a salamander, if she'd read her Bestiaries properly.

Without warning, shots rang out. Kitty was phased, of course, (she generally was, unless there were computers around - they didn't like her walking through them) but was shocked into stillness. Someone had tried to kill her! A green haired woman startled her back into action. The woman was only two steps through her before Kitty had spun around, gun raised. The resulting fight would make little sense put into words. There were at least five people shooting at Kitty, and not all of the weapons were guns. One was definitely a harpoon, for example. Deadly objects were flying everywhere and she was shooting mostly at random. Something purple kept flickering around the corner of her vision. For a while she chased a pale man, who looked to be in charge, but she felt wrong shooting him and he was faster then her. There were several explosions as ammunition hit unintended targets. I won't explain this; instead I'll talk about Kitty's gun.

After her powers had manifested, Kitty had found it difficult to hit men with ideas during walks at night to clear her head. Blunt and sharp objects passed through them without satisfying thuds or slicing sounds. The problem was everything that she was in contact with phased when she did. The solution was a gun. Bullets could be as intangible as they wanted all long as they were inside the weapon. Once they left, however, they had to become solid. This made life much easier for someone who was known to walk through rooms filled with drunk, angry, thugs without even noticing.

After some time, she found herself outside, with a gun trained on the white skinned man. She yelled at him for a while, berating him for spying on them and DARING to touch HER COMPUTER SYSTEM. Explosions were going on in the background, people were running, and something warm was perched on her shoulder. She ignored it all.

Then SHIELD was there and General Fury. She explained things to him while gesturing with the gun (several people were traumatized and it took Fury two hours to piece together the rather random narrative). The green haired woman and most of her companions were found (the word 'marauders' was tossed around) and Fury was yelling at her for being so stupid and cages were being brought outside (everything that could explode already had) and then Wisdom was there and yelling at her for being so stupid and holding her and then the X-Men were there even though SHIELD had promised to arrest them and THEY were yelling at her for being so stupid except for Jubilee, who had yelled cool, raced towards her, and taken off after the object that had flown from Kitty's shoulder. It was a dragon.

It was three hours before the chaos was replaced with the peace of the computer lab. Lockheed had returned to his perch on her shoulder. He was beautiful, Kitty thought. A thin, snake like body, four slender legs, a snake's head on a delicate neck, translucent wings rising from his back. He'd tried to burn Jubilee, fire bursting from his nostrils, and everyone had laughed because she deserved it. Now, however, he was cooing in Kitty's ear, a little forked tongue darting in and out and tickling her. The nasty spyware was deleted, her computers were pure again, and someone else was dealing with the nasty man. She started an e-mail.

-Hey everyone! I just fought my first bad guy today, this creepy sinister guy who tried to spy on us. He messed up my network! Anyways, Mr. Creepy Sinister had a mad scientist lab -and was doing weird genetic experiments! Isn't that cool! Elijah, I'm sending you some of the stuff I found while everyone was arguing - it might give you ideas of stuff to invent. Can -you come down soon? I need a lock that Jubes can't fry. I'm sending you his program, Doug, isn't it freaky? You SO have to give me one I can install without physical proximity. -Stevie, thanks for the practices. It stinks I can't make it to the studio but practicing dance here is almost as good. Anyways, I've got to feed Lockheed and I'm not sure what he eats. -Or where his mouth is. I've seen his tongue but no mouth so far. This might be difficult.

-Bye,

-Kitty

Bestiary - a sort of encyclopaedia made in medieval times, containing all the known animals in the world, many of whom didn't actually exist