I've got a few things in here that I didn't make up, and I'd like to point out what they are and where I got them. First: Jean blowing the door across the hall. That's from X3: The Last Stand. Second: "I've never done this before." That may or may not be paraphrased (my comic books are about 800 miles away right now, at my house. I'm at my grandmothers, without internet, which is why I'm finishing this so rapidly) from the New X-Men Academy X (or whatever it's called now) comics. Cessily Kincaid says it as she's about to attack Josh Foley. In the…first one? Sixth? I buy the collections. But it's the first volume. Whatever. So those aren't mine either. Now you know.
Sam Guthrie followed Jean and Laura's brisk pace wondering vaguely what he was doing with them. Surely Bobby or Kitty should be here, and he should be elsewhere in another group. He hadn't been needed yet anyway. Jean and Laura had taken care of what few guards they had come across with ease while he just stood stupidly around waiting for them to finish so they could move on closer to Sabertooth.
When the alarm had started, he was the only one who jumped. Laura'd had too much training to be easily alarmed by...well, by alarms, and Jean was off in Jean-world again, where telepathy was merely a side effect of her powers and the mortal realms were made of nothing more permanent than sand. It made Sam nervous, a little. Jean had never made him nervous like that before. Rogue made him nervous. Not Jean. But at least Rogue showed emotion. The redheaded leader of the X-Men had a blank face, even when attacked at gunpoint. Sam didn't like it. It was creepy.
Even Sabertooth showed emotion. It was the sort of emotion that made you want to go kill yourself rather than stay in his company, but at least it was something. He checked his digital watch out of curiosity. It was nine at night on the dot. Andy Griffith reruns started at nine, and Sam wished heartily that he could be back at the mansion on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and Laura sitting in her armchair grumpily demanding he explain what was going on again, while random fights could be heard through the ceiling.
Unfortunately though, that wasn't the case. He was in a strange hall in a strange building in a part of New York he'd never been to, missing his favorite show and long missing the dinner every mutant present had missed, thanks to the six o' clock news….
"You okay back there?" Laura asked from in front of him.
"Huh? Oh, yeah. Just um, thinking."
"About?" she fell into step with him as Jean led the way down a hall in a dream-state that almost made her look like she was glowing. Or maybe it was just the cheap lighting.
Laura glanced at Jean, whom Sam was still eyeing warily. "She's um…pretty out of it, but as long as part of Jean is still in there we're okay. There's been a slight change in plan though. You get to do something after all. Apparently the blank spots Jean's been sensing are power-canceling cells, because she can sense things anyway if she's close enough- hey, don't ask me- and Logan's in one, and Kitty and Rahne are in another. The other kidnapped mutants can wait, but we need our own. So you need to go bust them out."
"Bust them out?" Sam frowned.
Laura nodded. "Literally. It's all concrete walls here and there won't be any unlocked doors."
"But what if I bust in and my powers stop working?"
She looked at him like he was an idiot, and once he thought about that question to himself he felt like an idiot. "Then it'll be a good thing there will be a giant hole in the wall. We're really close to Sabertooth now, Jean says, and I'd rather you not get killed so early in life. So get Logan out so he can help me."
"But still…'bust'." He almost smiled, but didn't quite dare, at her choice of vocabulary.
They paused for a second.
"Well? Go!" Laura said, then turned quickly and walked off to rejoin Jean, who hadn't waited. Sam hesitated, and Jean gave him a mental map of where to go, and with a heavy heart Sam set off.
Kitty and Rahne were almost beside themselves with nerves. What was taking so long? How come neither of them had been rescued? And why did no one wear watches anymore?
Rahne had been pacing. She really didn't like cages- or cells, or anything with a floor, four walls, a ceiling, and a heavy door that discouraged thoughts of independence- and Kitty's occasional hopeful mutters weren't helping. "I'm sure someone will find us," is only so helpful as long as the right people find us, Rahne thought. The thought of what Sabertooth could do to them if he found them made her want to go throw up. Kitty wasn't as imaginative as her though, but in this scenario that was a very good thing. Gradually, Kitty's hopeful murmurs and Logan's occasional comment began to calm Rahne down enough to get her to sit beside Kitty again, in the corner.
There was a polite knock on Logan's door that the girls didn't hear through the crack.
"D'you seriously expect me to ask who it is?" he said gruffly. The girls shifted, but remained quiet. No need to let whoever it was know that two rooms were occupied.
"Um, please find a corner and get in it, I'm supposed to bust you out." Sam's Kentucky accent sounded slightly muffled through the foot-thick door, but it's message was clear enough: move or get hurt. In the hall, Sam took a deep breath and backed up until he was flat against the far wall. He absently kicked Kitty's flip flop heels out of his way, and narrowed his eyes. He had ten feet to completely destroy a foot-thick wall, if what the mental map Jean projected to him was correct. This was going to be hard.
Not above Cannonball though. He shoved off the wall and punched with both hands through the wall from midair in one blurred motion. The wall wasn't even a problem. The following wall took him out though, since the power-canceling aspect of the cells weren't fazed by the destruction.
"Ow?" he mumbled, dazed, from a pile of broken concrete. Logan looked slightly impressed for a second, until Sam told him- slurring slightly from the hit- what Laura told him, and gave him directions to where they'd left him. Then Logan frowned and sprinted away, claws out.
"Hey, Sam! What about us?!" Kitty called from a crack in the floor. Sam stood up after a few tries.
"I think I'll just try the door this time." He said a little clearer than before, and walked in a relatively straight line back into the hall and cannonballed through the door, managing to stop before knocking himself silly again against the wall. Rahne applauded joyfully and Kitty ran into the hall crying out about her beloved shoes.
Laura sniffed. She could smell him now, which meant he knew they were there as well. As if the siren hadn't been enough of a clue. She had added beating up whoever set off the alarm to her to do list, should she manage to walk out of this in one piece.
Before she could really decide how, he walked around the far corner, grinning in a not remotely funny way. Laura unsheathed her claws but kept her foot blades concealed as a secret weapon, as was routine for her. Had been routine for her. A small nagging voice that hadn't been there before- a conscious, Sam had called it…was it just last week?- wondered if weeks of living in a mansion had softened her. X-23 could probably have taken Sabertooth if she'd really tried- could Laura? And even so, she hadn't been able to work on her hand-to-hand much since Logan was the only one who'd heal- would that matter? And Sabertooth probably hadn't lost sleep over anyone lately…Laura banished the silly little voice back where it came from, but it was too late. Doubt had sowed a little garden in her mind.
And stupid Sabertooth knew it just looking at her. And she knew that he knew but it didn't matter in the slightest because they both knew who was going to win this fight.
Oh well, Laura's conscious thought, at least Sam's not going to die today. Or the rest of them, I guess. I wonder where Logan is?
Sabertooth attacked faster than she would have expected from someone as large and heavy as him, which threw her off guard and made her almost miss her block and counterattack. The fight was on.
About a dozen yards back, Jean had gotten distracted monitoring all the mutants around her, and had missed the guard right behind her, who had roughly covered her mouth and dragged her through a doorway while another guard shut and locked the door, cackling. Yes, cackling. Badly, too. Laura wasn't covered! She had to get back out there. Jean saw someone dressed corporately with a needle gun approaching her slowly.
"Now, this shouldn't hurt for long. But then, I wouldn't know, would I? I don't test on myself." The man laughed pleasantly. "Can't have you ruining my plans, not after I've invested so much money in this."
Jean bit the hand over her mouth, and took the opportunity to ask a question.
"So all this- kidnapping mutants, hiring Sabertooth as the force, all of this…testing. You're behind all of it?"
The man grinned slightly less amicably. "Yes. I am."
"These mutants- these people- are in pain. And you don't care." Jean's eyes started growing darker. The man didn't notice.
People- mutants- were in pain. Jean was a telepath, and they were crying out to her. Her. Somehow they knew she knew what they were going through, and she was their only hope to end the pain. And this man was the cause. Not Sabertooth. He was a pawn too. He deserved to die, but for once he wasn't the man behind the scenes. He wasn't that smart, Sabertooth was only violence, and they'd all forgotten that. It always came down to a man in a suit when you peeled the layers away. And the man in the suit was laughing. The tortured mutants cried out all that louder-
"Yes. You're exactly right. I don't care. And you are the only person to know this. Well, for about ten seconds. Now hold still." He advanced.
Jean had been struggling mildly throughout all of this, physically and mentally, but calmed down in mock defeat as her eyes started turning dark. "I've never done this before," she whispered, and the light flickered for a few seconds in a several-mile radius. Then the man stiffened.
The poison gun fell out of his hand, and almost gracefully, he fell over on top of it, dead. The guard by the door fell next, and then the one holding Jean. They weren't dead, but they weren't going to wake up. Jean stood up the rest of the way and brushed what little dirt there was off her black skirt. She glanced at the door and it exploded outwards, rebounding off the far wall just in time for Logan to fly by, followed closely by Sam, Kitty, and Rahne in her wolf form.