Chapter Five: An unexpected meeting
Disclaimer: all characters are property of their respective owners.
Spoilers: big spoilers for X-Men: Evolution season 1 episode "Rogue Recruit". Big spoilers for CW's The Flash season 1 and Thor
Author Note: this version of Rogue and other X-Men related characters are from the X-Men Evolution cartoon, although with elements taken from the comics. Flash-related characters comes from CW's The Flash. Other Marvel, DC and Wildstorm character that may appear are drawn from several sources.
A/N 2: I would appreciate feedback on the story, on how could be improved, or things that I have gotten wrong.
A/N 3: I would like to thank my beta Jediknight.
CCPD Stairs
Iris ran up the stairs, as the emergency generators hadn't kicked in yet, followed closely by the teen who was with Ma Hunkle. The older woman was following them at a more sedate pace, though more quickly than would be the usual for a woman her age. After several flight of stairs she finally reached the door... that was closed.
"Barry! Godammit, Barry, answer!" Iris said, hitting the door with her fist.
"Get out of the way." Rogue said, taking a fire extinguisher and using it to bash the lock with all her strength.
The lock gave way and they both burst into the lab. It was dark, the only illumination came from some emergency lights, but it was enough to see a body lying on the floor.
"Barry! Oh, my God!" she said running toward the body. After checking Barry was alive she got her phone and tried to call before noticing that it was dead, "Goddamnit." She then turned to Rogue, who had followed her, "Can you...?"
"Yes, of course." Rogue said, checking her phone. Fortunately her phone was good and had service, so she called 911. After calling two times, as the lines seemed to be a bit overwhelmed, both by the explosion and the storm that was being unleashed over the city, she managed to connect with the call center and appraise them of the situation.
Outside the Central City PD
After the paramedics loaded Barry into the ambulance, Iris boarded it, leaving Ma and Rogue behind in the stairs to the building.
"I hope he is alright, he such a good boy..." Ma said, shaking her head.
"Do you know him? Ah mean, the guy from the lab."
"Barry Allen, he's Joe's foster son." She said, as she composed herself and started to walk toward their car, when she caught sight of the time, "Dammit, we're gonna be late. Come on, get running"
They quickly boarded the car and Ma used her knowledge of both cities' street layout to arrive in just the nick of time, not noticing the man who was following them as they entered the station.
"Take care of yourself, and don't forget to write. My email is in the card I gave you." Ma said as Rogue boarded the train.
"I'll do it, thanks for everything, Ma." Rogue said, hugging the older woman just before she entered the train.
She sat in a window seat and waved to Ma as the train started to get in the way not too long afterwards. She leaned back, thinking that the most dangerous part of the journey was already behind, and hoping to catch some sleep on the way.
Ma, meanwhile, was still musing about Irene's letter as she had been doing intermittently since they received it. She knew Irene well enough to know that she wouldn't use an expression like 'a bolt from the blue' if she didn't mean something or somebody specifically.
Keystone City Grand Station
Sidney "Sid" Jefferson was looking at the people in the station going toward their buses. So far, he hadn't seen the girl that that fucking asshole Trent had sent her to look for. Just his luck that of all the possible FoH operatives, he had to work for him.
'Hmmm... nothing.' he thought as he walked past a group that just had entered the station, and then he stopped. A teen and an older woman had entered just behind the group.
At first sight, the teen looked nothing like the mutie they were following, but one of the reasons he was here was because he never forgot a face. As he looked at her with more attention, taking care of looking like he was doing something else, he realized that the girl was who she was looking for. Her hair color was different, and she wasn't using makeup, but it was clearly her.
He followed discretely, mindful of his instructions and that he didn't have any backup, and took note of the line she was taking, and the stations where it stopped. Then he went back and called Trent, informing him of the development. He got orders to go to one of the line stops, and he figured that the other agents here would go elsewhere.
"So, I'm going to Topeka, boss?" he asked to confirm his orders.
"Yes, I'll meet you there." Trent answered on the phone.
Next morning. Topeka, Kansas. Train Station
Rogue stepped down from the train, having used the train washroom to change her aspect once more, to something closer to her usual appearance, although without makeup and keeping the red dye on her hair, that was now collected in a short ponytail, and to further the disguise she was wearing sunglasses.
As she was walking, she thought back to the night on the train. It had been quite peaceful actually, as Irene's power seemed to have already faded almost completely, as the only thing she remembered from her dreams was seeing the blue-eyed guy from last night again. Well, now she had to see the instructions that Irene had left for her in the P.O. Box.
As she walked through the station she didn't notice that a guy had taken notice of her and was calling somebody with his cellphone, at the same time he was following her unobtrusively.
/\
Sid kept following the girl while the phone called. Just like Trent to be still sleeping at this hour, despite their task.
"Answer the damn phone, you goddamned jackass." he said between clenched teeth as the phone rang for the tenth time.
As if he had heard it, an sleepy voice finally answered the phone.
"What the fuck do you want, Sid?" Alex Trent answered.
"I've found her." Sid said.
"Good, follow her, and keep me advised of where does she go." Trent answered on the phone, now quite more awake, "I'll get there with some of the boys."
"I'll warn my own crew, too." Sid said.
"There is no need for that, my people..." Trent protested
"...stick out like a sore thumb in Kansas." Sid interrupted, "While my own men are local, or close enough."
"...Very well, you win." 'For now.' was left unsaid, and Trent closed the line.
Sid followed Rogue, as he sent a message to his people, to the parking lot and saw her take a taxi and heard her destination, a Post Office. He sent Trent and his people a message with the address, and took another taxi to that address.
Post Office
The P.O. Box opened without a hitch and as she expected, there was a letter inside addressed to her, written in Irene's neat handwriting, including a note to open it right in that moment.
'Okay, this is seriously weird.' she thought, before shrugging, opening the envelope and star to read.
After a brief salutation, Irene went right to the heart of the matter.
'Crap!' she thought as she read the letter and looked around. From where the box was she could see the parking lot and there were a group of people seemingly hanging around, but in a way that effectively cut her escape. She went back to reading the letter, and upon reading the next paragraph she smiled.
Outside the same Post Office. Topeka, Kansas
"Are you sure she hasn't give us the slip?" Trent asked.
"Positive, she has retrieved something from a PO Box, and she is now reading it." Sid answered, with an eye roll.
"Hmm..." Trent said as only answer. As much as he hated work with the likes of Jefferson, he had to admit that he was competent. He turned his gaze to the office, or more properly, to the armed guard outside.
They couldn't enter to pick her up, but she only had one way to exit the office and she couldn't stay there forever. He was tempted to send somebody out to call for reinforcements, as the cell coverage in the area was still down after last night's storm, but he dismissed it instantly, twelve people, not including Sid and himself, should be enough to keep a teenage girl controlled.
"She's making a call." Sid said. Trent looked and, effectively, she was making a call through a payphone on the outside of the office. "Good luck in calling the cops, with last night's storm, they are probably..."
His words were interrupted by the coming of a delivery van, which parked just before the doors, blocking the view of the doors and the pay phone.
"Just our luck." Sid commented, "I can't believe she gave you the slip in Central City."
"It doesn't change anything, actually. She can't get out of the parking without us seeing her." Trent said, choosing to ignore Jefferson jape, as difficult as it was for him, as a taxi went and parked just inside the blind spot caused by the delivery van, and got out like a bat out of hell just after a moment, "Fuuuck! Get back to the cars and chase that taxi!"
As they ran to their cars and started to chase the taxi, nobody noticed how Rogue started to walk down the street, having sent the taxi to the other end of the city. She was hoping that the distraction would give her enough time to shake her pursuers.
Unfortunately for her, Trent's rental car had ignition problems and chose that moment to refuse to start. He was about to open the hood to see if he could fix it, while a couple of his men waited inside, ready to start the car at his signal, when he noticed a girl walking down the street.
"It's the mutie bitch." he said as he recognized her, just loud enough for the others to hear it, "Come on, let's go, before we lose her."
"Shouldn't we tell...?" one of his men said as he got out of the car.
"That uppity bastard of Jefferson?" Trent sneered, before he started to walk briskly in the same direction Rogue was going. "Come on, we have to show that we are better than thrash like him."
At first they were gaining ground quickly, but the girl had probably noticed them at some point, because she started to walk at a brisker pace after they turned a corner. Thank God that that there was no alleys where the bitch could hide until they passed. They sped up to catch up with her, but she sped up her pace again.
When they started to run, Rogue started to do the same. It was not that long before both Rogue and her pursuers were running as fast as they could, and unfortunately, Trent and his minions longer legs and greater fitness meant that Rogue's advantage was quickly eroding, even after she threw her backpack in a dumpster.
/\
Rogue looked back, and it didn't look good, those creeps were quickly gaining on her, even after throwing away the backpack. Maybe if she turned right in the next intersection, and tried to hide in a porch, they would pass and she could go back to the dumpster for her things.
As she reached the corner, she looked back at her pursuers, so she couldn't see what was on her way. A moment she was looking back, trying to gauge how much time she had, and the next she found herself sitting on the ground, her front hurting as if she had collided with a steel wall.
"Are you well, miss? I didn't see you." a kind voice with a Midwestern accent asked, at the same time that a hand appeared on her field of vision, she looked up as she took the hand and used it as leverage to get up, and saw the same unearthly blue eyes she had been seeing in her dreams since she left Caldecott County. The guy they belonged to had messy black hair that fell in a boyish curl over his forehead, a red leather jacket slightly open over a blue t-shirt, jeans and workboots.
"Ah wasn't looking either. Sorry, Ah gotta.." she started to say when a voice interrupted her, as somebody gripper her arm and pulled her back.
"Found you, bitch."
/\
Trent had left behind his two minions by a good margin when he turned a corner and saw the girl there. Without thinking it twice, he took a grip on her arm, checking in the last moment that it was covered by a sleeve, and pulled her to him.
"Found you, bitch." he said, smiling cruelly.
"Who the Hell are you?" a voice said, and he looked up, surprised, and cursing his luck. But he relaxed a bit when he saw that it was a farmboy trying to play tough guy, what with the leather jacket and all of that. But, as he looked again, there was something about him that set his teeth on edge, maybe it was the eyes, how somebody could have eyes so fucking blue?. Anyway, he had the bitch now, and the farmboy better to piss off or else.
"Get off, kid, and nobody will get hurt." he said, producing his gun from the back, "Do you understand?"
Threatening him with a gun didn't have the effect Trent wanted as before he could do anything, he felt the gun being removed from his hand. He looked only to see the kid crunching it on his hand.
"Another freak." he said, taking a step back, but not letting Rogue go, just as his two minions appeared in the corner, "Finish him, guys, while I secure the bitch."
Both guys nodded as he started to run back to the Post Office. He didn't think that those two would stop the freak for long, but by now, even somebody like Jefferson should have realized that the taxi was a ruse and come back as fast as he could.
He snickered when he heard the boom of a shotgun from behind him; Martin must have gotten out the sawed-off shotgun before the freak could do anything. But then, to his surprise, he felt the air move, like an errant breath of wind, and, suddenly, the freak was standing before him.
'How the Hell?' Trent thought, before looking back and seeing one of his minions passed out.
At least the freak hadn't escaped completely unscathed, as his red jacket was done for, barely covering a completely unharmed blue t-shirt underneath with an strange red and yellow symbol, like an S inside a diamond.
"Let her go." he said.
"Don't think so." Trent said, producing a knife from his pocket, "Now you'll turn..." he started to say before he felt a bare hand closing over the hand where he had the knife, and a general feeling of weakness overtaking him. He had enough time to realize that the bitch must have removed a glove before he fell unconscious.
/\
Clark looked at the fleeing man for a moment, but that moment of distraction was all that one of the thugs needed to get a sawed off shotgun from his clothes and shoot him in the chest.
The impact made him stagger a bit, and silently cursed the... thing that had been awakened by last night storm, he wasn't fully recovered of the fight yet.
He looked down for a microsecond, seeing that the jacket was ruined, but the shirt where Ma Kent had serigraphied the symbol on the pod was still intact. It wasn't the first time something like this happened, but it always looked strange to him.
He decided not to take any more risks, and he used his super-speed to disarm the thugs, before bopping them on the head very softly. After examining them with his x-ray vision and noting that he hadn't made any permanent damage, he ran to intercept the first man.
Standing before him, he tried to make him drop the weapon, but to no avail as he threatened the girl with a knife.
It was in that moment, when he received a surprise as the girl, who seemed to have removed one of her gloves somehow, put a hand on the other man hand, and the man dropped down after a moment, unconscious. He looked at the fallen man, while the girl put back the glove she had removed.
"Will he...?" he asked, wary of the girl.
"Recover? Ah think so, Ah only drained him for a few seconds." she said, before starting to massage her temples, "Let me guess, you received a note telling you to come to this area."
"...Pretty much. Did you...?" he asked, her wariness not receding.
"...Send it? No, but the person who probably did it was the one who directed me to go to this area of Topeka." she said, "Ah'm a bit tired of being played like a pawn on a chessboard." she opened her eyes and winced immediately, before talking again, "Ah suppose that you don't have Tylenol or Aspirin, right?"
"No, I don't have anything on me, why?" he asked.
"Ah should have let you deal with him, Ah got a look at his mind when Ah drained him." she said, "Because of that, Ah have a killer headache; his head is not a pretty place."
Clark looked at her, she looked sincere, and he was still smarting after Lana gave him a wholly deserved dressing down last night. His mistrust had almost got Pete killed.
"Do you live somewhere near here?" he asked, an idea starting to take shape in his mind.
"No. Ah have been fleeing since my powers... activated. They are always on, you know." she said, "Ah have nowhere to go, and Ah have been keeping just barely ahead these... bastards, since Central City."
"You can stay at my home, if you want." he said, having decided to follow his instincts.
She looked at him, suspicion evident in her face, before sighing.
"Okay." she said, "It's not like Ah have another place to go... but first, can we go to recover my backpack? I have all my things there."
TO BE CONCLUDED...