Notes: I know, right? I just want to grab all the junior X-Men and wrap them up in blankets and give them cookies and milk and never let anything touch them again ever and just gahhhhhhhhhhh.

Chapter 9: Bad Life Decisions

It took a few minutes for the rescue team to realize that they were down one Kree fighter — if for no other reason than that they were sure he'd come back from whatever it was he was up to. Especially since Jubilee was still in obvious shock and blaming herself for the whole mess.

Logan had stuck to her like glue, sure to keep telling her repeatedly that nothing that had happened was her fault, ready to repeat himself as many times as it took to get his message though her. But … most of the time, the two of them were just half curled up and keeping quiet as Jubilee vacantly stared at the television and Logan put on more and more ridiculous movies that he knew she didn't like. It was purely his measuring stick to see when, exactly, she was going to snap out of him and tell him off for it.

So it wasn't even until Jean poked her head in that they were aware Noh hadn't managed to find his way back to the mansion. "Have you two seen Noh?" Jean asked with a frown. "I can't sense him anywhere, and the professor wanted to talk to him…"

Logan frowned and gently shook his head, not willing to disturb Jubilee too much when she clearly wasn't reacting to everything yet. How long has he been out of touch? Logan projected to her.

No one has seen him since the rescue team got to that facility, Jean said.

Check with K to be sure, Logan replied. She's torturing Tony and putting him to work on deciphering the coded crap.

Jean nodded at that, unable to stop her smile when she knew that 'torturing' was in fact an apt description. Thanks.

Any time, Jeannie.

Jean smiled and headed down to the War Room, laughing to herself at the looks on Tony and K's faces. It seemed a shame to break them up, but… She really was starting to get worried. So, she knocked on the doorframe.

"Have you two seen Noh?"

Tony looked up at her first, which was what K was waiting for to snatch his freshly filled coffee mug right out of his hand. Which, of course, earned a curse before he gritted his teeth and answered Jean. "No. He hasn't been through. Was he supposed to be? I might be able to track him. That tech he's got has a weird signature."

Jean bit her lip. "No one's seen him since you were at the facility," she admitted. "He's not here; I was hoping he might have been helping you two with something."

"Not yet," K said, twisting out of Tony's reach with the mug. "But Tony can start looking — right after he gets himself some coffee."

"Thanks," Jean said. "The professor wanted to talk to all of the kids who were there… after what happened… I'm worried about them," she admitted.

"You've got good reason to be," K agreed. "None of them were prepared for that. All of them were out of it in one way or another."

"I know," Jean said with a little nod. "I could hear it."

"If we can't find him, I'll let you know," Tony said, already making his way over to a different computer screen to start the search. "And when I do find him … she'll let you know and get me more coffee. For once."

"Good luck with that," Jean said, unable to hide her own smirk as she headed out.

Tony was just getting into a good grumble as he looked into the tech signatures when K got up to bring him a cup of coffee — just because he was trying to help, after all. "This is how it works: you get me coffee, I return the favor," she said as she set the cup down next to him and then took a seat close by to see how, exactly, he was searching for Noh.

Eventually, Tony did pick up a trail — though it was definitely not any place that Noh would have gone if he was just looking to be by himself. It was one of the bigger MRD headquarters, and he seemed to be smack in the middle of it.

As Tony straightened up — and clearly took on a look of growing alarm — K watched him out of the corner of her eye, only to reach over and take his hands off the comm and hold onto them for a moment. "Just … let's see what's going on first. He's clearly onto something."

Tony looked surprised for just a moment… and then that turned to a smirk. "Any excuse to hold hands, right?"

"Oh. Absolutely," she replied with a troublemaking look. "No telling when something like that happens. Better drink it up."

"Take what I can get?" Tony teased.

"If that's the only way you can get it …" K wasn't entirely paying attention to him, though, as she narrowed her eyes at the satellite images, biting her lip. There were only so many explanations, after all. And K was more than a little suspicious of the trail of destruction. It wasn't that it was beyond Noh's ability … it just … didn't line up with his ambition. "…That sounds like some kind of damaging admission to your stellar reputation." She sounded almost far away as the images updated.

"Not as damaging as the fact that I can't even properly distract you," Tony said as he leaned over her shoulder. "That bad?"

"It's just not like him," K said, only halfway snapping out of it. "The destruction, sure. But not on his own." She turned to look at Tony for a moment. "I just want more iron-clad confirmation that it's what I think it is before sounding the alarms."

"And if it's what you think?"

"Then … this could get messy."

Tony nodded at that as he offered her a hand up to her feet. "Then… I'll keep the team on speed dial."

"Yeah, but you better not show up on site," K warned. "And tell Steve to leave the frisbee at home."

Tony frowned at that, though with warnings that specific, it wasn't hard to put together what she meant. "Magneto? Seriously? What's his interest in your space man?"

"The kids said they were talking," K said, shrugging before she gestured to the screen. "You tell me what his interest might be in the kid."

Tony nodded once. "Yeah, good point." He shrugged. "Well, let's go let someone know."

K frowned at him. "I figured I'd just go prep the jet and get into something more comfortable for ass kicking."

"Oh, so I can't get close, but the girl with the metal skeleton can?" Tony rolled his eyes. "Yeah. No can do."

K held his gaze for a minute and then nodded. "No, that sounds right to me." She smiled a little. "Fight you for it."

"That's so not the point," Tony said, shaking his head at her — but smirking all the same.

"What's wrong? Afraid you'll lose?" she teased as she started walking backward toward the elevator. "Totally the point, too."

"It's not me losing to you I'm worried about — it's you losing to him," Tony pointed out. "Besides, even if I lost, I'd still win. It'd be fun to romp."

"Who said romp?" K laughed.

"Potato, tomato…"

The two of them got into the elevator — teasing back and forth about their hypothetical 'fight' all the way up — though when they found Jean and Scott, K got the jump on Tony. "Tony found him: he's trashing MRD facilities," she said. "I think Erik's involved, and all Tony can think about is havin' a little wrassle." She shook her head and gave him a purely troublemaking look.

"Wow. That was a bus," Tony laughed.

But Scott and Jean both ignored Tony and looked worried. "I thought he turned Erik down," Jean said.

"I don't have proof," K said. "Outside of circumstantial evidence, that is. But … the kids all said he'd spoken with Magneto and that Erik was trying to recruit. Again. The fact remains that even when he's been ticked off, the kid hasn't had direction like this before. I don't think he's ambitious enough to run down this path without some guidance." She shrugged. "But again, no evidence. What I do have is a short list of places he hasn't hit yet, and I can be ready in five."

"We'll meet you there," Scott agreed, already in motion to get to the hangar.

Noh, meanwhile, had been going through several MRD facilities, leaving nothing but rubble in his wake as he did so.

It wasn't anything like he had done with the X-Men, and that in itself was almost… freeing. It was a lot more like what he had done before he met them. His people had engineered him to be a weapon, and it was nice to have someone pointing out facilities to destroy so he could simply wreak havoc.

It was nice not to have to think.

He was starting to get tired, but he didn't want to slow down just yet, so he kept going to the comm Erik had given him and asking for the next place to burn down. If he slowed down, he might have to stop and think about his place in a world that constantly tried — and sometimes even succeeded — to kill the only people he loved. He could stop those villains, and that's what this little tour of destruction was about… but after that…

Well, he supposed he would just have to keep doing what he was doing. He would rather his friends be angry with him and alive than follow their creed and let them die.

He wasn't even close to Monet, but seeing her die… He hadn't lost anyone like that since he had lost his entire crew when he was shot down. And he was surprised by how much it hurt, even without the echoing emptiness where the mental connection used to be.

He was tired of losing people. He had to stop it. Somehow.

He was taking a moment to eat, to recover after yet another destroyed facility. This one wasn't MRD but some kind of weapons facility. The fires still hadn't died out, but he had raided the kitchens before he started those fires — after he had already wrecked the lab equipment and killed everyone inside.

"What are you doing, stardust?"

Noh looked up to see that K was making her way over, stepping around the rubble and bodies. She didn't look angry — in fact, she looked a lot like she had when Noh first met her, non-threatening and almost … pitying.

He paused and turned her way, his hands held loosely at his sides. He didn't want her to see him as a threat either; he had told Erik that he didn't want to fight the X-Men, and he meant to keep to that promise. "I cannot stand idly by while the X-Men are killed while I have the power to stop it," he explained, his tone tired and heavy. "No matter what philosophy you follow, death is death."

K shook her head as she made her way closer. "I'm so sorry about Monet," she said gently. "Believe me: the people responsible paid."

"Yes, I saw Magneto's response," Noh said dryly.

"It wasn't just Magneto's response, though," K said. "What…. Are you going that way, then?"

Noh tipped his head to the side. "Don't mistake me," he said. "I won't fight you. But he does know where the worst of humanity is hidden, and those are the ones that would kill innocent children. So, I'm stopping them."

"But we can't let you just … play judge, jury, and executioner, moonbeams."

"Do you know where we are?" Noh asked, gesturing at the rubble.

"I do," K said, nodding.

"If they had taken an X-Men to these laboratory facilities, would you kill them then?" Noh asked. "Why is it different now? They are still evil. Beyond salvation."

"The ones in charge are, yeah," K agreed, taking a few steps closer. "But not all of them agree. Many of them are only working here as security or support staff, trying to make a living. You can't know who buys into this and who's trying to live. I think … you might even find that some of them might be mutants forced to work here."

That did get Noh to pause, a knot forming in the pit of his stomach. "Then how do you — you can't simply wait for them to commit murder before you know who is evil and who is not!"

"No," K said, shaking her head gently. "You need to be more precise about it if that's the path you take. That's how the place that used Logan and me was taken down .. from the inside, destroying their pillars and letting it fall."

"That's what I'm trying to do," Noh argued. "I've already told Magneto I won't follow him like a blind sheep, but I'm trying to be precise, destroy the worst threats, the ones that would die anyway, instead of waiting for them to kill or torture innocents."

"And Magneto only knows how to attack whole buildings. Not precise strikes." She gestured around them. "Or am I wrong?"

Noh let out a noise of pure frustration. "This is maddening," he said, gesturing widely with one hand. "This world of constant contradictions and nonsensical philosophies!"

"What do you know about espionage?" K asked, trying to get Noh thinking — and also trying to keep him off-balance so he wouldn't get too comfortable following Erik's orders in the meantime while he was still too upset to think.

"That wasn't my specialty. I'm a fighter, not an advance scout," Noh said.

"Well, what we need is advanced scouts to know where the fighters need to go," K explained. "I can do both, but I know not everyone has the capacity."

"Then I'll find better intelligence," Noh said. "But I'm not going to stop, K."

K let out a sigh at that. "I'm very sorry to hear it, then," she said before she simply turned to walk away. "I'll let Jubilee know why you didn't come back. She'll be sorry to hear you've switched sides, I'm sure."

Noh pinched the bridge of his nose. "I have not," he said. "I've temporarily asked for Magneto's assistance finding the worst of the threats that would kill her."

"If you think that Magneto will let you walk after this? After all the help you've given him?" She spun to face him and shook her head. "It's not going to work that way."

"I set my terms before we began."

K couldn't help but let out a little laugh at that. "And you think he'll honor that?"

"I think Professor Xavier trusts him enough to let him into his home to discuss philosophy," Noh pointed out. "I think that of all the antagonists of yours I have met, he does not have a telepath. And that, thus far, has been my downfall. Nothing else," he added, tipping his chin up.

"Would you trust him if I went along with you?" K asked.

"That's entirely different," Noh said, shaking his head. "You'd be there as an enemy, not on neutral ground. I'm not yet an X-Men. Things are different."

K crossed her arms and reached down to her hip to take off the badge. "Let's go."

Noh let out another noise of frustration. "That's symbolic, K. You're making light of things."

"Nope, that's got the link to my comm too," she said. "If you want to tear the world apart to avenge what happened with Monet — a kid — then you need someone that knows these places inside and out." She held her arms out in an open gesture. "It's only temporary, right? So what's the problem?"

"The problem is I can't watch anyone else die!" Noh spat out, spinning to face her more fully.

"Then it's your lucky day," K said. "I'm hard to kill."

"Yes, for anyone incapable of getting past the metal in your bones. That's not the case here, and you know it," Noh snapped. "And I won't let you get hurt."

K crossed her arms. "You can't stop me. If you think it's safe for you, then I don't see any reason for it not to be safe for me."

"I don't have metal bones," Noh said. "And I have an arrangement. You have two strikes against you."

"He's wanted someone with my skill set in his pocket for decades; it's the same thing," K said, already walking forward to start digging through a computer bank. "Besides … he knows of my reputation when Weapon X was using me.… He'll be fine."

Noh shook his head and zipped over to grab K's hand. "Listen to me," he said urgently. "The entire point of what I'm trying to do is to protect you and the others from Monet's fate. I don't want any of you to break your creed. I don't want you to follow me. I just want you safe."

K shrugged him off and shook her head. "As it stands, I barely hold to Charles' rules."

Noh stared at her for a second, completely annoyed and bewildered, since he really hadn't expected any of the X-Men to come at him from this particular angle. "Then help me by being my advance scout," he said.

"What do you think I'm doing?" K said.

"Threatening to come with me to Magneto — which is both idiotic and self-destructive."

"I can't stick around Charles if I'm going to do this kind of scouting," K said with a laugh. "No. I'm going."

"You just said you don't always stick to his rules…!"

"Yes. And that's what I'm doing now: breaking the rules." She frowned at him as if he was crazy before she started digging through the intel on the half-broken computer.

"K, I don't want to fight with you," Noh said. "Please just… you can't—"

"I'm trying to help you," K said, cutting across him. "You don't get to pick what that help looks like."

"No," Noh said, shaking his head and looking like he thought she was being completely unreasonable, "I am trying to help you and the others."

K ignored him until he was close enough to lay a hand on her — and then, she made a quick move to take the comm he was wearing. Of course, Noh reacted faster than she could and snatched it back, but she was smirking at him as he glowered.

"Are you insane?" he snapped out.

"I want to talk to Erik," K said, doing a fine job of keeping her neutral expression in place.

"I already told you: you're not coming. You can help me be more precise, but that's it," Noh said. "I'm not risking your life."

"That's not your call to make," K said. "And if you want to do this, then you're going to have to deal with whatever consequences go with it. So, either make this easy on yourself and let me talk to him with you — or I'll go find him myself."

"Neither of those options is appealing," Noh said flatly, his arms crossed.

"Have it your way," she said, turning to leave. "I can find him quickly enough."

Noh reacted in what could only be described as a blind panic and didn't even think about it before he reached out faster than she could blink and knocked her cold — though he did have enough of his wits about him to catch her before she hit the ground.

"I'm really very sorry," he kept saying as he shook his head. "But I can't let you die. I'm tired of seeing death on this planet." He let out a long breath, but there was nothing he could do to change the fact that he'd hit her, so he just made sure she was comfortable and that her beacon on her comm was on before he dashed off.

He hadn't been gone for long before backup arrived for K, with Scott and Jean both looking dismayed at the fact that K was down. "What happened?" Jean asked as she crouched down by K, gently pulling her upright — since K had only been knocked silly, not unconscious like Noh had thought.

"He's just being a dumb kid," K told Jean quietly.

"That really didn't answer my question," Jean said. "We see a lot of dumb kids, and they don't leave you seeing stars."

"He thinks he's got some kind of … deal with Erik."

"Yeah, that's more 'dangerous' than 'dumb'," Scott pointed out. "It's both, but…"

"He only hit me because I was going to find Erik myself." K held up a hand as she hunched over a little, getting her bearings. "I wasn't going to. I was just trying to get him to think."

Jean shook her head at that. "Did he tell you what kind of deal it was?" she asked. "Whatever it is can't be good."

"He thinks he's ridding the world of the evil that wants to kill mutants," K said dryly.

"Sounds like Magneto," Scott said, just as dryly.

"Yeah, well … who do you think was whispering sweet nothings in his ear when he was in shock?"

"He still is," Jean pointed out. "That's why you were the first to find him; his mind is actually better closed off right now, sort of like when he did that white run. It's someone else's single-minded focus, and he's letting it blind him."

"So we need to go get him," K said.

"You probably shouldn't go," Scott pointed out.

"Oh, now you're just sounding like Tony," K said in a low tone.

"No need for insults," Scott said. "I'm just saying: Erik isn't an idiot. If he's got a person with metal bones that he knows Noh knocked around in a backward attempt at protection, that's a liability."

"Unless he hears why he knocked me back," K said, then stopped. "Nevermind."

"Alright, then. Jean and I will go talk to him," Scott said, nodding as he got to his feet.

"There's no reason I can't help," K said with a frown.

"Besides the obvious," Scott said dryly.

"Keep it up and I'll join him for real," K said, almost glaring his way.

"Not my fault you won't listen to reason," Scott shot back.

"It's not like you've got much of an argument when you're going to show up in a metal plane," K replied as she got to her feet and swayed a little.

"You need to lie down," Jean said gently. "We'll talk to him; you know we're not going to let him throw everything away."

"I know," K said. "I just don't want to sit still, that's all."

"Then maybe stop fighting with my husband and let's find something useful to do," Jean teased.

K gestured openly. "Okay. Like what."

"Like getting back to help with Jubilee. Or any of the other kids that are also in shock. Or keeping Stark away from this mission too. Or finding leads on where Noh might get sent next if he doesn't happen to be at Erik's palace."

K held up a flash drive and handed it to Scott. "There's the intel on the places connected to this one. Just got it before this … nonsense ended."

"Great. I'll run it," Scott said, already headed back to the jet.

"And how am I supposed to do the other stuff?" K asked, arms crossed.

"We're going to take you and Stark back before we go. We're not stranding you here."

"Never know how things roll," K said half under her breath as she started toward Jean. "Take a minute and look over my memory of that conversation; it'll help you, I'm sure."

Jean nodded. "Thanks," she said before she went ahead and dove in, glad for the invitation, since it was hard to peek into K's mind otherwise.