Chapter 13: "Unexpected Side Effects"

The sort of lazy feeling that had permeated the mansion over the summer as everyone focused on recovery — or playing with the littlest ones, depending on the family — came to an abrupt halt in early August when the reports came in that a planned Superior Rising rally had been crashed by the Friends of Humanity, and the resulting violence had already gotten bad enough that the police couldn't contain it.

Logan pulled in both senior and junior teams for the first decent all-hands-on-deck situation that the junior team had really seen in a long time. "Senior team will handle the FoH," Logan had told them. "You guys have done pretty well dealing with the SR idiots so far." He turned toward Chance and the youngest of the group. "Keep a bamf nearby. Tensions are just gonna get worse once we get there."

Chance was already nodding as Chloe and Kaleb glanced at each other. "Got it," Chloe said seriously.

Unlike their usual briefings, Logan simply pushed them toward the comms and directed them to the jet. "I'll give you the details on the way — we need to get there now, and it's changin' as we go."

"So we'll just have to think on our feet," Chance said as they got moving.

"Your dad'll give us the update in the air," K promised. "He's on it."

"Of course he is," Chloe said with a proud little grin.

The full teams loaded up to head out to the scene, where they weren't surprised that they could see the fighting from incredibly far out. With some of the mutants in Superior Rising, it wasn't exactly subtle, and the Friends of Humanity had come heavily armed.

"Looks like someone broke the dampening field the Friends of Humanity had up," Scott let them know as they headed in. "They've got some old tags, though, so keep your guard up."

"Thanks, Slim," Logan said. "Stay patched in. You've got a better view than we do." It was true too, since once they were on the ground, the crowd was thick, and it was incredibly hard to see the big picture of things.

When Logan went right for the tightest clashing area of the two hate groups, James almost burst out laughing when Logan cleared his path into the middle by simply snarling out a 'move it' at both sides.

"That's my grandpa," Sying said with a grin Gerry's way before he dove in as well, following James' lead in letting the Superior Rising groups see a former Horseman and then using their idiotic distraction to their advantage.

Logan and K worked to separate the front line between the two groups and at least managed to make a path for the police to move in and start to push both sides back, but it was slow work, even with Kurt and Kaleb and the bamfs — and Krissy, since it was all-hands, and she decided she'd had enough post-maternity leave practice to feel safe about diving back in — working in overtime to get the team members where they needed to be. The riot seemed to be spilling beyond their control and stretched for several blocks of pure, simple, mindless violence.

Naturally, James found himself in a prominent position without meaning to, close to where a few brave cameramen were documenting the whole thing. It just … seemed to be working that way when he'd go out — and had been for the past few missions. He had to wonder if it was something the press was doing purposely. But that sounded a lot like paranoia to him.

Kaleb appeared close by James with an impish grin and his tail swaying behind him when he saw the focus on his friend. "You want to go somewhere you can slash idiots or do you want to be Golden Boy some more?" he offered.

"I'm good," James promised. "Just trying to do my job."

"Suit yourself," Kaleb said, then glanced beyond James to where Chance was having the opposite problem as James. Where James had a hard time getting anyone in SR to fight him, Chance had too much negative attention. Kaleb let out a sigh when he saw the purple poof that meant Krissy had stepped in to help move him. "And I just moved him too. What, do they have Chance-dar?"

When Krissy reappeared with Chance further out, there was a poof of blue a second before Kaleb followed suit, bringing James with him.

"Just that popular," Chance said with a frown.

"They're all jealous," Krissy had to tease him, more than happy to help one of her best friends avoid being killed as her first mission back in the field. They'd always worked well when they were being protective.

"What's the game plan?" James asked, already starting toward the crowd. "Pick a partner and see who wants to fight? Dad was pretty vague in his instructions."

"I think we're supposed to stop the fighting, but since that doesn't seem likely, we could always just smack 'em around," Chance suggested, falling into an easy, well-worn meter of banter with his old sparring partner.

"Hey. I learned how to do that from my dad," James pointed out.

"So you know how to do it," Chance said with a smirk. "Come on, let's blow their tiny minds working together, huh?"

James chuckled at the old tease and nodded once. "Worth a shot."

"I guess I can stay on the ground for the full tag-team effect," Chance said, smirking and shaking out his arms.

"You're just reminding me that I should probably upgrade your thrusters," James said as they stepped back into the thick of it.

"I wouldn't complain," Chance said.

"Gotta finish up the coding first so they'll auto adjust to your stress level," James said, then took a hold of one particularly vocal Superior Rising supporter and pushed them back physically with a growl.

"He has a thing about touching," Chance chuckled. Still, with the attention the two of them in tandem were getting, he ended up taking off into the air anyway; the fact that he was close by James only helped so much and didn't seem to deter some of the braver guys with projectile powers.

Of course, those were the ones that James ended up hitting — hard. And in one case, he headbutted another hard enough to earn an echoing crack and drop the guy in his tracks. "Scaredy Summers."

"Yes, yes I am," Chance said with a smirk — even though he was shooting the Superior Rising creeps from his vantage point between dodging away from the blasts.

One of the purple-shirted men started shouting in James' face — the same crap he always got — and though James was patient, it was clear how much he had simply reached the end of his patience when he snarled back at the guy to step back, very much like his father had been doing for the better part of their involvement in the crowd.

"We need to break this up faster," James said into the comm with a growl lacing his tone. "Someone's gonna get hurt."

"I'm sure we can speed things up," Kaleb shot back, since he was closest.

"Just start 'porting the worst of them into, oh, the nearest lake," Krissy offered.

"Forget it," Logan called over the comms. "Just make the path for the cops and clear out the ones that don't want to be here anymore. The ones takin' off are already on video."

"We can do that too," Kaleb said, a moment before he teleported close to where James and Chance were working up a good rhythm together to start looking through the group to clear out the ones that were done.

But as the kids pushed back and the cops moved in — along with a healthy support system full of SHIELD agents and feds — the little knot nearest the three boys started to go the other way. A Superior Rising member had landed a lucky shot on one of the higher ups in the Friends of Humanity that was near the fringes inciting the riot, and the uproar was fierce and almost immediate. It was pretty clear that they'd been hoping for something like this.

The Superior Rising kids were screaming at the Friends of Humanity for being the worst example of what mutantkind had to put up with; the Friends of Humanity were shouting that the kids were only proving their point about dangerous mutants — and the junior X-Men were caught in the middle.

"Can you fly out?" James asked, almost cringing as he pushed one of each group away from him.

"Yeah, if you don't mind being carried," Chance said.

"What did you think I was talking about upgrading your thrusters for? I don't think it'll fly both of us."

Chance let out a breath of frustration before he nodded. "Alright. Go with Kaleb," he said as he took off again — though he didn't get much further from the other two boys before they both saw him get hit with something that knocked him right out of the air. It wasn't clear which side it came from, either; they hadn't seen what hit him.

"Kaleb, go," James hissed, then pushed back hard against the people around him.

Kaleb looked wide-eyed but still grabbed James with his tail to teleport with him — though he ended up taking a few of the people James had been pushing with them as he teleported to where Chance had fallen and had clearly hit his head; he was bleeding heavily enough to leave a pool of blood and wasn't responding to anything Kaleb tried to do to rouse him.

James hit the guys that had travelled with them before the smoke could clear with a couple of hard, echoing cracks as Kaleb turned to check on Chance. And Kaleb had just let out a low whistle when he saw how the bad head wound was when someone from the Friends of Humanity came up on his blind side and smacked him hard enough to leave him seeing stars as he fell backward. He couldn't exactly hear what the guy was saying as he got up in his face when his ears were ringing — but most of it was slurs anyway.

"Damnit now," James snarled out just before he rushed the guy that had hit Kaleb, fully intending to kick the crap out of him for that — there was only so much he could take, after all. He drew back to hit him, and several pops echoed the crowd as the man shot him as many times as he had rounds in his weapon.

It didn't stop James from creaming the guy, but that was about all that he did before he went down next to the other two — and the crowd began to more or less stampede around them.

"Okay, okay, okay," Kaleb said as he shook his head hard, trying not to get stepped on, trying to focus — and then teleporting back to where the other two were laid out. "Okay, this looks very very bad."

A pair of Superior Rising guys stopped and knelt down to try and help, but they were pointedly ignoring Chance — all the way up until James roused enough to punch one in the mouth. "Get Chance out of here," James said to Kaleb.

"Right, yes, right," Kaleb said, still a little dazed himself.

"Or … Call for help if you're off," James said, though it was clear that the gunshots had been close enough to point blank to really have torn him up.

Kaleb blinked at him for just a moment before he called for his dad to come help, and when Kurt arrived to find the state of things — one concussed Elfling, a shot up Howlett, and a bleeding Summers — he quickly got the bamfs organized to help him grab a boy apiece and get them back to the jet.

By that time, a few of the others were there as well. Kate had just finished wrapping up one of the bamfs' arms and had a solid amount of bandages around her waist from a bad shot someone in the Friends of Humanity had taken at her. And Chloe was knocked out but otherwise okay — someone had hit her when she ran out of juice.

"What happened?" Kate asked when she saw the three boys arriving with Kurt.

"Too close to the fun," James said. "More or less."

"Bad crash landing," Kaleb clarified. "And then someone took exception to us helping."

"Kaleb has a concussion and … well. No one's really sure what's wrong with Chance. Now," James had to tease before he laid back flat on the floor and closed his eyes.

Kate gave him a dry look for that, though she did look relieved when she checked Chance over and saw that he was healing up. So, she turned her focus to Kaleb to examine his eyes, frowning to herself when she saw that he was having such a hard time focusing on her. "Alright, mister, you and I are going to have a long night of not sleeping if you keep this up," she told him.

"He sucker-punched me, Mom," Kaleb said with a frown.

"Of course he did, baby; he couldn't sneak up on you otherwise," Kate said.

Kaleb smirked slightly at that. "Uh-huh."

Elin wasn't too far behind them as she came in with her parents. "SHIELD has it under control now," she announced before she winced on seeing James. "What happened?"

"Um … I think … ricochets," James replied before he gestured to Chance, who was sitting up on the other side of the plane. "He took a really crappy landing, though."

"On his face," Kaleb supplied unhelpfully.

"Well how else is he gonna land?" James asked, wincing again when he chuckled to himself.

"You're both horrible," Elin said as she made her way over to Chance. She slipped into the seat next to him and looked him over critically before she leaned forward and gave him a long kiss. "How are you feeling?"

Chance looked totally stunned — though he was grinning crookedly. "What, was I that far gone?" he asked.

She frowned and tipped her head to the side. "So, what, less affectionate? That's new. I think that's the first complaint I've heard."

"No, no, not complaining," he said quickly as he started to sit up but didn't quite get there all the way when he was still healing and dizzy. "I just… gee, El, let me take you out or something if you're gonna start doing that."

She blinked at him for a moment and sat back, frowning. "How hard did you hit your head? Really?" As she waited for his answer, her eyes narrowed, and she began to take off her gloves.

"I dunno," he said with a frown.

"Must have been a good one, Mr. Summers," she said before she held up her left hand. "Because you forgot that we got married."

Chance looked like she could have knocked him over with a feather. "Wait, really?" he asked, lighting up like a Christmas tree as he grinned at her.

"Buyer's remorse?"

"No way!" he said, grinning even wider as he sat up and stared at her in near awe. "That's ... wow."

She couldn't help but smile at him and shake her head. "Really? You don't remember any of that?"

He shook his head lightly and then winced at the action. "No, but I wish I did. Married to Elin Howlett. Wow."

She laughed under her breath and leaned forward to kiss him again. "I am not sure if this stage should pass or not."

"The stage of being totally over the moon happy with you? Because I have some bad news for you, El, about how long I've liked you…"

She couldn't help but ask. "Yeah? What … been a couple weeks now, right?"

"Um, no. Since as long as I can remember," he said.

"Well, that story checks out," she said, sure to give him a longer kiss before she settled in with him.

He grinned over at her, still with that same sort of disbelieving look. "How long have we been married?" he asked softly.

"Little bit over two years," she told him.

"Oh wow," he said, still grinning and completely focused on her even as the rest of the team got in from the mission.

Logan made his way through the jet, checking on everyone as K got them airborne. He'd just spent a few long minutes telling James to relax — and warning him that Hank would be fishing out whatever didn't expel itself — before he stopped and frowned at Chance. "What's wrong with your face? You have a stroke or something?"

"What?" Chance frowned his way, breaking out of the goofy grin he'd been giving Elin. "No... I don't think so. I hit my head."

"He forgot we were married," Elin said. "And he's kind of been … blissing out. That's all."

Logan tipped his chin up and watched the two of them. "Head trauma or did you crack your neck?"

"Pretty sure it's probably both," James said from across the way.

Logan nodded and gave the two of them a subdued smile. "It'll come back, then. Might take a couple weeks, but it'll come back."

"Oh good," Chance said, genuinely relieved. "I want to remember something as amazing as being married to Elin."

"In the meantime, try not to push yourself into remembering anything — or thinking too hard." He turned to look at Kaleb and Krissy. "No dropping bombshells on him. That'll only make it worse."

"Well, being married to his childhood crush is kind of the big one," Krissy giggled.

"Too late to change that one, even for a couple weeks," Elin said.

Logan let out a sigh and started toward the cockpit. "You're both off for at least a week. Give him a chance to heal up more."

"Probably should do the same with Kaleb," Kate said. "Pretty nasty concussion — though he's not forgetting about important things like his feral girlfriend," she couldn't help but tease.

"Kaleb, you're off for two weeks — to start," Logan said from the cockpit. "And no, we're not explaining why that is. Got it?"

"Uh-huh," Kaleb said.

"Ignore them," Elin told Chance quietly.

Chance just grinned her way. "Not gonna be a problem."

Elin shook her head, failing entirely to hide her smile and far too tempted to not touch one fine point that Logan had laid out. "Sounded to me like we just got a week to ourselves."

He nodded slowly, then did something of a double-take and broke into a grin that was somehow even wider. "Oh, yeah… he did say that, didn't he?"

"He did," she agreed, regaining control of her smile. "So what should we do?"

Chance tipped his head to the side as he considered her and then very carefully leaned over to kiss her. "Well, I definitely want to hear more about this being married thing," he said with a smirk.

"You and all the words," she said with a little growl, just to see if it'd get a rise out of him.

He blinked at her before he broke into a laugh. "Oh yeah, I must have done something really good to get married to you," he said.

"Do you want the truth — or is it okay if I make up a wild story?" Elin asked.

"Umm, both. I'm good with both," he said, still grinning at her and completely oblivious to the fact that Kate was gleefully recording the entire thing and barely holding back her giggles, with her reporter bamf over her shoulder cackling with glee.

Elin smiled back at him. "How about you tell me how you think it went down? That would be worth something."

Chance tipped his head to the side as he considered the question. "Well…" he said slowly. "Knowing my family? I'm sure there was a big party. Mom probably made the cake."

"Of course," Elin agreed.

"And… Krissy was your maid of honor, right? Cody was my best man?"

"So far so good," Elin said, nodding.

"And…" Chance seemed to think about it. "There were sunflowers in the bouquet."

She stopped at that and simply stared at him before she leaned in and kissed the sense out of him.

Kate looked like she was about to burst as she shook Kurt's arm. "Oh my gosh. Kurt. Kurt."

"I don't want to watch them, Vögelchen," Kurt said.

"Well not now, but oh my gosh, Kurt," Kate said, gleefully cackling. "This is the cutest thing I have seen in weeks."

"You sound so surprised," Kurt said, shaking his head.

"It's. So. Cute," she said, turning to grin his way. "Kinda reminds me of us when we first started," she couldn't help but tease him. "Total awe… lots of grinning and smiling…"

"They had wonderful examples to watch, yes," Kurt said with a grin.

Kate just laughed at that before she pulled him over by his shirt and kissed the sense out of him, too. After all, it was a good opportunity.