Later that night:
The problem is, I just don't see Kurt and Wanda together. What are my little friends thinking? It's like…he's D'artagnan of The Three Musketeers, and she's Catherine of Wuthering Heights. I could see Catherine with Edmond Dantes, the Count of Monte Cristo, maybe, all passionate revenge and brooding, but not D'artagnan.
Grace stretched back in her seat on the X-Men's Blackbird, and slipped her shoes off. Jean was flying the jet; she and Rogue were chatting about the party up in the cockpit.
Grace didn't do much pleasure reading, because she couldn't knit and read at the same time, but she did a great deal of pleasure listening—books on tape, radio shows from the era of old-time radio, and fully dramatized plays. Her MP3 player got a lot of use that way.
This is an interesting train of thought. Who are Erik and I, then? An older version of Benedict and Beatrice, from Much Ado About Nothing, too wise to woo peaceably, and so witty we're always trying to match each other. Unless he's Richard the Third, and I'm Lady Anne, the user and the used, only I don't know it yet…
"Put your shoes back on", advised the panther. She did so, absently.
Of course, my little freinds could be having fun with me—hoping I'll bust my butt trying to get the two of them together, and laughing at my attempts. That would be just like them. I sometimes feel like they're the cue stick, and I'm the white cue ball. They may aim me at the eight-ball, but their real goal is to sink the four, the three and the seven in the fanciest hustler move ever…
"Put your purse around your neck. Now!" commanded her feline friend in a crisp, British army commander voice.
"What?"
"Do it now!" As she did so, she heard an alarm shrill from the cockpit, and an officious voice ask who they were.
"Jean? What's wrong?"
"There's one—no, two unfriendlies. Strap yourself in! You too, Rogue."
"Don't do it!" snapped the panther.
Up in the cockpit, Jean snarled into the radio at the other planes, as Rogue cried out, "Jean—what's wrong?"
"I think they're about to fire on us!"
"No, Ah mean what's wrong with you?" Grace craned her neck forward. It was as if smoke had billowed forth to fill the cockpit, heavy, oily smoke, or perhaps a cloud of seething insects, centered upon Jean. "Your eyes…!"
"Destroy the firebird!" urged the panther.
"What am Ah supposed to do?" Grace may have thought it, but Rogue said it aloud. "What am Ah—what do you mean, pull it off her? Grace, my dragon, he just told me to pull it off her, but what—?"
"Strap in!" Jean commanded, and took the plane into a loop. Centrifugal force alone kept Grace in her seat.
"Ah don't understand!" Rogue wailed. "Ah don't!"
An energy of some sort crackled around Jean, and her hair stood out around her, as if blown by a wind that touched no other. The plane lurched, and the voices from the radio became more strident. Jean's head jerked to the side—Grace turned her own head to track where Jean was looking, and saw a fighter plane, and the person in it, come apart like a flock of ravens dispersing in all directions.
"Jean!" She and Rogue screamed it simultaneously. The only effect this had was to redirect her attention toward them.
"Don't Bother. Me." grated their friend. Her eyes no longer belonged to anything remotely human.
An explosion rocked the plane as a missile from the second fighter hit, and blew a hole in it. The pressurized air of the cabin rushed out into the thinner atmosphere, and a second missile shot out from their foe's plane. Grace felt the same mental start as she had in the danger room, and both the enemy jet and the missile sprang away as the sentinel had.
Oh, God. Did I just kill that pilot?
Am I about to die? My baby! I'll never even hold him!
Erik…!
The X-Jet came apart around them as Jean unfurled great wings of living flame, leapt upward, and away.
Rogue and Grace fell. The oddest part was how peaceful it suddenly was. Certainly there was the whistling of air around them, and it was bitterly cold, but everything troublesome seemed very far away.
"You're going into shock. Don't. Focus, or you'll go splat." It was the panther. "Imagine an overripe tomato hitting the floor. Do you want that to happen to you? All three of you, including the baby?"
"Grace!" Rogue screamed.
"What?" Talking was like trying to pick up individual grains of rice while wearing winter gloves—making her mouth move was clumsy and difficult.
"Swim, dumbass!" ordered the panther. "Fast, now. Remember, you're accellerating thirty-two feet per second, per second!" Grace obeyed. Remembering videos of skydivers in free-fall, she made swimming motions, and achieved forward motion. Something itched her face—getting closer to Rogue, she saw the girl's face was streaked with blood from her nose—the loss of air pressure had broken blood vessels. Hers, she realized, must look the same.
"Take my hand!" Grace held it out.
"But—!"
"I don't think hanging on can make matters worse. If I'm going to die, I want to be touching somebody I love when it happens!" Since when do I love the kid? I don't know. Maybe since I realized she needed it.
Rogue reached out and interlaced her fingers with Grace's. "Now do it!" screamed the panther.
"Do what?" Grace screamed back.
"Push back! You already know how, you just have to do it consciously! Think!"
What does he mean—? She racked her brain. All right. That start I felt in the Danger Room, and what I did to the plane… "I'm going to try something!" she shouted at Rogue.
"What?"
The Earth was down there below them, and it was visibly growing nearer. What did that feel like? If I can… She tried to duplicate the feeling.
"Wrong way! Wrong way!" Rogue's fingers tightened painfully. They were falling upward now, into the sky, and the air grew thin again.
This is no time to be a slow learner. She eased up on…whatever she was doing, until they were falling toward the Earth once more, not away from it. More slowly, now, though, more slowly. What she was doing wasn't flying. It was a slow fall, a lessening of gravity, until it was a sixth, a twelfth of its normal strength. Like autumn leaves, drifting lazily down. Slowing their descent meant that the fall would take a long time. She decided to start a conversation to fill it.
"So you said your dragon spoke to you." she said to Rogue. "Congratulations on learning how to listen."
"Uh, thanks. Ah think. Ah don't know what Ah did. And Ah don't know what they wanted me to do. All he said was 'Pull it off her.' Of course he meant Jean, but he didn't tell me what 'it' was."
"Welcome to my world." Grace snorted. "Rogue—you've known Jean longer than I have. What happened to her?"
"Ah don't know. We need the Professor, and we need him bad. Did you see all that fire around her?"
"Like wings?"
"Uh-huh."
"Just because you saw it too, that doesn't mean it was there—not now that you're listening to them. My—Our little friends were telling me to 'Destroy the firebird.' I'm guessing we just saw that firebird. The horse on the scroll in the bathroom also said, 'It was never meant to be a person,' and 'It'll burn her out.'"
"And they told me to 'Pull it off her.' Ah guess they meant the firebird is possessing her, or something, and Ah was supposed to pull it off her using mah powers. Ah guess they would've told me what to do next. Why do they have to make it so difficult to do what they want?"
"Sometimes I think it's because they think it's funny. Other times…I don't know. It's like they're watching everything through a very long telescope and trying to describe what they see."
"Is Jean gonna be all right?"
"I don't know."
"Ssssave her from it!" sibilated the dragon.
"Okay, did you hear that?"
"Ah did. What are we supposed to do?"
"Mmmmend what isss broken!"
"Ah heard it say 'Mend what is broken.'"
"You're going to hear that one a lot. Hey, now that you're going to be able to touch people, don't get carried away. Don't grab your boyfriend and jump into bed. At least not without protection. I don't want you winding up pregnant, too."
"Um—Ah won't. Ah still don't know how to turn mah powers on and off, though."
"Maybe you'll just find out when the moment comes."
"Ah hope so—Hey, we're getting awful close to the ground, and Ah think we're still falling kinda fast…"
They hit the trees.
And went through them.
It was a hard landing, and it left Grace knocked out cold.
"Grace?" Rogue checked her pulse. Grace had one, but she didn't know how fast or slow it was compared to normal. At least she was breathing, too…"Grace? Please…? What do Ah do now?" The teenager looked around.
They were in a deep forest. Not only could Rogue see no sign of human habitation, she couldn't hear any man-made noises. There was no way of telling where they were, not at night—and no reason to suppose they had come straight down on their flight path, either. "Help…?"
"Her cell phone is in her purse." said the cat on the pendant around Grace's neck. "It has a GPS tracker in it." It sounded like Anthony Hopkins or somebody like him, somebody from England.
"It didn't get broken? Ah guess not, if Ah'm supposed to use it." She managed to unzip the handbag, and found the item.
"Listen carefully." The panther continued. "You and she fell from twenty thousand feet. She hit hard, and her placenta tore partially loose—."
"Oh, no!"
"Don't talk. Listen! She'll have some bleeding and some cramps. If she stays off her feet for a week at least, it will heal. Don't let her try to stand up. Don't let her panic. Her baby will be all right if she stays lying down and doesn't get upset."
"Ah understand. Can I make that call now."
"Go ahead." Ah remember she said the more specific they were, the more Ah should worry. This must be real bad.
She entered the main number, and got the answering machine. She hung up, and tried Bobby. "Bobby! It's me, Look, Ah need to speak to the Professor or Magneto, right now. It's an emergency."
"Rogue? I'm in Michigan. Where—?"
"Oh, that's right. Ah forgot. Do you—Wait. Ah'll try her speed dial. Bye, Bobby."
She found a contact which simply said 'Erik,' and pressed it.
"Grace?" It was Magneto.
"No, it's Rogue. There's been an accident—kinda. Ah have no idea where we are, Jean flew away, and Grace is out cold. There's a GPS on her phone, though. Can you get here right away? The panther on her pendant told me she has to stay lying down or she's gonna lose the baby—."
"What happened? Never mind. Do what you can for her. I'll be there with help as soon as I can."
The underbrush, sparse as it was in autumn, abruptly sprouted a strange growth. Like a crop of metallic mushrooms, four sensor heads popped up, and a mechanical voice grated, "That is an unauthorized signal. You are trespassing on the private property of Victor Von Doom. State your name and your business here at once, or be annihilated."
"Awww, no!"
A/N: I was looking at the most popular baby names of 2006 online, and among the boys' names were, at number 10, Logan, at number 56, Ian, and at numbers 82 and 83, Eric (with a 'C', but hey!) and Xavier… Patrick is number 93.
