Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed.
Some parts of this chapter were taken from the film (as best I could manage, anyway). If you recognize it, it's probably not mine.
"Alex, come on, Charles and Hank are about to push Sean out the window."
"I—what?" Alex paused, arms outstretched over his chest, as he turned his head to look at Raven. There was no way that he'd just heard what he thought that he'd heard.
"Come on," she repeated from the doorway, all but stamping her foot. "I do not want to miss this."
"What?" Alex repeated, racking the weights automatically and sitting up.
"Sean, Charles, window, move."
That made even less sense than her first statement had, but she looked like she was getting ready to grab him and haul him bodily out of the room so he pushed himself up off the weight bench. "Okay, okay, I'm coming." And if she yelled at him for not having cleaned up the weight bench, he would just blame her for hustling him out of there so quickly. Not that it would do any good, knowing Raven, but…. "Can I at least ask why Charles and Hank are going to push Sean out a window?" he tried as he hurried through the halls after her.
"To help him work on his mutation."
"Since when does he need to be pushed out a window to make him scream?" Sean was probably the most cooperative of all of them. Besides...a window?
She didn't answer as she led him down a flight of stairs and into yet another unused bedroom, once again raising the question of just how many rooms this place had, but now obviously wasn't the time to ask. Erik was already in the room, leaning out the window on the far wall, and Raven climbed up onto the arm of a chair behind him so she could see over his shoulder. Which didn't leave a lot of room for Alex, but Erik signaled him over before he could ask, shifting sideways slightly to let Alex slip in between him and the window frame.
"They're seriously throwing him out a window?" Alex checked as he leaned out.
"I believe the plan is for him to jump."
Sean was sitting in the window of the next room over, his feet on the edge of the brickwork that ran the length of the building. And he did not look happy. Something was fastened across his chest and his arms, but Alex couldn't see what it was from the angle he had.
"Why?" Be it jumping or being thrown, he still hadn't gotten a good answer to that one yet.
"If I understood correctly, between Sean's scream and the…wings…that Hank created, he should be able to fly."
"Seriously?" Alex looked back at Erik, trying to figure out if the man had taken up joking along with chuckling, but Erik's only response was a slight nod. "Since when do sonic screams make somebody fly?"
"Hank's idea," Raven cut in. "Charles thinks it's a good theory, though."
"Did anyone ask what Sean thought?" Alex didn't bother waiting for an answer, twisting around to look back out the window. Where Charles and Hank had stuck their heads out on either side of Sean, and Sean was actually looking even more unhappy than he had been a few minutes ago. Being able to shoot plasma blasts out of his chest suddenly seemed like a way better power to have than Alex had ever thought before. At least it didn't have much in the way of applications beyond the obvious. He frowned. That he knew about. Who knew what those measurements that Hank had taken had really been for?
Sean crossed himself, and Alex glanced back at Erik quickly as Sean held his arms out. Erik's expression was half amusement and half what-the-hell-are-they-thinking, which didn't exactly help the situation feel any less bizarre, and Alex turned back as Sean began to lean forward. And then plummeted to the ground below with a scream that most definitely wasn't sonic.
"Oh, ouch," Alex muttered as he hit the ground, hearing a similar mutter of sympathy from Raven. For a moment afterwards, there was silence, but then Sean shoved himself back to his feet and made a decidedly rude gesture at the other window, and Alex couldn't help joining in with Erik and Raven's laughter.
A moment later, Sean dusted himself off and stalked towards the door, ending the morning's entertainment, and Alex pushed himself away from the window with Raven and Erik. Personally, Alex didn't want to be in the area the next time Sean saw Hank. Or even Charles. In fact, he wasn't sure that he wanted to be in the building.
"You, find me after lunch," Erik ordered as Alex reached the door, and Alex wasn't surprised to turn back and find the order directed at him.
"As long as you swear you won't push me out any windows," he agreed. And then wished that he hadn't as Erik just stared. Giving Erik ideas was probably not a good thing.
Three dummies in front of him, and a dinner plate strapped to his chest that was supposed to help him hit only one of them. Plus some sensors that did God only knew what. Alex could already see how well this was going to end.
If he was lucky, he'd be like Sean and able to walk away when it was over—if he was very lucky both Charles and Hank would be able to too, although the metal walls of the tunnel should help out there—but given that his luck had never been described as 'good'...
He scowled at the door. Why in the hell couldn't Hank stick to tormenting himself with his own mutation? Alex was fine getting beat up by Erik on a mostly-daily basis; he didn't see why his stupid plasma blasts had to be dragged into things as well. Unfortunately, Hank had spent most of the morning fitting and calibrating and whatevering this stupid plate, and it was pretty obvious that Charles wasn't going to let Alex get away with not trying to use it.
He clenched his fists and concentrated, but rather than that wild, spiraling power that he was accustomed to, there was a surge inside his chest and the energy blasted forward, directly out of the plate. And then veered sideways and smashed the left dummy to smithereens. Well, so much for only hitting the one in front of him. But when he looked down the plate was still attached and intact so all things considered, it could have been a lot worse.
Alex took a deep breath and focused again, doing his best to shove more power through the plate, trying to get enough force in it to keep the beam focused straight ahead this time, but it spun out of control anyway, and for a second he felt himself go airborne. And then he was lying on the metal floor of the tunnel, staring upwards as bright lights flashed in front of his eyes.
"Ow." He sat up slowly, one hand going to the back of his head where he could already feel a lump rising.
The door opened a moment later, and Hank and the Professor re-entered just as he was getting to his feet. "Are you all right?" Charles asked.
"Yeah, I'm just great. I think your plate has some glitches, Bozo." The middle mannequin was still standing, practically taunting him, while the one on the right had apparently met the same fate as the one on the left at some point during his flight.
Charles gave him a disapproving look, but Hank didn't even seem to notice as he leaned over. "Was there any damage?"
"To me or to the plate?"
Hank didn't answer—not that Alex had really needed one—as he began to unstrap the plate from Alex's chest. "If the sensors were able to get clear readings, I should be able to recalibrate it based on strength of the plasma blasts. It might be that the heat interfered with the feedback circuits, which would have made it difficult to…."
He continued mumbling to himself as he wandered off with the plate in his hands, but Alex didn't understand any of the words coming out of his mouth so he stopped paying attention pretty much immediately.
"Well we'll have to try again after Hank's had a chance to check the readings and do some fine-tuning," Charles said after a moment, patting his shoulder. "Are you sure that you're all right?"
Alex waved him off, reaching up to rub the back of his head again. "I'll be fine." He could use some ice, but he was perfectly capable of getting that for himself. It was a good thing that they had real power back and weren't just running off the generator anymore, though.
Charles nodded. "You should be proud, you know. All things considered, that was an excellent first try."
"Right." This was one of those times that Alex really wanted to know what bizarrely cheery world Charles was living in.
"No, no, I'm quite serious."
He patted Alex's shoulder again as Alex wondered whether Charles had read his mind or if his opinion was just obvious from his expression.
"But it's about time for lunch," Charles continued, and if he had read Alex's mind, no hint of it showed on his face. "Why don't you go on upstairs, and I'll clean up in here?"
There were fewer fires to put out this time than there had been before, at least, and after a moment, Alex nodded. "Yeah. Sure."
Sean, Raven, and Moira were already at the table when Alex got to the kitchen, apparently plotting some kind of escape for Sean, and he dropped into an unoccupied chair with a sigh. "Where are you going?"
"Dude, I don't care. Didn't you hear Charles talking to me after breakfast?"
"No, Hank hauled me off to model mutilated dinnerware. For all the good it did."
Raven gave him an odd look, but Sean was so deep in his own misery that he didn't even seem to hear Alex's words. "He has another idea to help me—he and Hank—and if the weather is good we'll try it this afternoon." He buried his face in his hands. "Have you looked outside? It's gorgeous! Like sixty-five degrees and not a cloud in the sky!"
"Did he say what the idea is?" Alex asked after a minute.
"No, but Erik said that he wanted to be there." He raised his head again. "I'm going to die!"
Alex considered pointing out—again—that Erik wasn't really that bad, but considering that Moira was sitting at the table as well... He settled for a sympathetic pat of Sean's shoulder as he stood to get some ice. "I'm sure you'll be fine. Really."