Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men!
Chapter 3: Thirst.
The first group, made up by Storm and Kitty, got off the black van and walked away. They all were in civilian clothes, in an attempt to go as unnoticed as possible for a bunch of so called mutant superheroes.
"Team two, get ready and remember: we want to make this clean, quick and quiet." Scott said from the driver's seat, as he parked a block away from the place they had just dropped off the other two. "Keep that on mind, Logan".
"Can't promise anything… dad" Wolverine huffed: "Come on, kid".
Rogue jumped out of the van and found herself on the sidewalk of a street packed with extra high silver and grey buildings. As the van drove away in the opposite direction with team three in it, that is, Scott and Kurt, Logan and Rogue started heading towards the place, blending in with the people that hurried their ways as well.
"So how'll we know who he is?"
"I've smelt him" Logan let her know: "Would recognize that stench anywhere".
"Really? Yah know him?" she asked, having no problem in keeping up with his fast pace.
"Once, when I was gathering some info about that Sentinels' program. Guess I fell short, 'cause now it's either we keep that chip away from him, or we'll have tin men a mile tall, knocking on our door by dinner time".
Rogue zipped up her jacket; she knew better than accomplishing a mission in a "clean, quick and quiet" way, especially when working shoulder to shoulder with Logan.
To enter Grand Central Terminal always felt new, like stepping into the vestibule of a different world. The air, the sounds and the light around completely changed, when traversing the main gates and hitting yourself in the face with this atmosphere of buzz, of moving around fast and lives that connect among each other, just as train lines do. It was the rush hour, almost 6 p.m., so the amount of people coming and going wasn't small.
She heard Logan sniffing a couple times, then followed him down the stairs and straight towards the hallway that began over there, at the bottom.
It was a labyrinth of doorways, stairs and mainly, of people of all kinds. However, he seemed to know very well where he was heading to, so she just let him lead the way. Maybe finding the guy would be the easy part, after all.
They reached a crowded platform, and this is when Logan finally spoke:
"Right behind me, 'bout fifty feet away". He looked up at the screens with the train schedules: "Black coat, mustache, briefcase".
Rogue got her new cell phone out of a pocket and pretended to type on it. Next, began to slowly walk away from Logan, in the direction of the man they were after, so they could corner him when the time came.
She put on the most innocent look on her face she had in her repertoire, as she passed people by without looking up from the phone. She giggled, like she was reading something funny there, and then took a look towards the front.
There he was, briefcase, mustache and all.
Luckily, their eyes never met, as he kept on searching for something or someone among the crowd. She walked past him and stopped by a little further. Logan was still engaged in his figure out train schedules act.
The fake typing and pointless scrolling down continued, when, with the corner of her eye, she noticed the guy seemed to have found who he was looking for. It all happened really fast: someone approached him, they faced each other for a second or two and then the newcomer was gone, quickly getting lost in the crowd, right when the resonance of an approaching train started to fill the space.
Mustache guy would probably want to take that train.
They wouldn't let him.
She started to move in his direction, with the purpose of taking away the thing he had exchanged for the briefcase. It should be easy: a little touch from her bare hands would do it.
But before she could take more than two steps… right then, it felt like they happened at the same time, but of course the sound of some sort of explosion came first, soon followed by people stampeding out in every direction, with Rogue losing her objective from sight, lost among countless backs and heads and coats and frightened faces. She couldn't see the source of the blast either, but as the platform started empty, something by her right side exploded again, sending her butt first to the ground, inches away from the track.
This wasn't a part of the plan, but her gut told her this wasn't a part of mustache guy's plan either.
Smoke and dust surrounded her, as she got back on her feet. It had been a vending machine, the one that had blown up, but…
"Cherie?"
Her breathing stopped right off, air getting stuck in her throat as something inside of her tumbled down the floor like a handful of marbles.
She turned around, petrified.
How this little routine mission became this bizarre display of explosions and meeting face to face with the last person she'd expect to, or want to, was beyond her.
There was a bit of surprise in his red on black eyes, and that half smirk she knew way too well, was hanging from his lips.
"Wh- what are yah doin' here?" she stuttered.
He came closer to her: "Waitin' for the train, mebbe" he raised a brow when saying this, so of course he didn't really mean it. There was something else behind this.
Her lips parted to speak, but she wasn't able to. Her real, normal life (as far as these adjectives can be applied to superheroing around for a living), colliding, bumping right into… him.
This just wasn't supposed to happen. Ever.
"You know this punk?"
He heart skipped yet another beat when seeing Logan right by her side.
And of course she knew she had to lie through her teeth and assure that she had never seen this guy in her entire life, but he spoke first, taking a step forward and presenting his hand to her:
"Non, but I'd love to, yer name's…?"
"Quit it!" Logan stepped between the two of them: "What do you have to do with all of this? And you better start talking now".
"Mon ami, dunno what y're talkin' 'bout, was just passin' by".
The smoke around them got even denser, but then it wasn't smoke anymore. It was fog. In few seconds, Rogue couldn't see anyone or anything anymore.
"X-Men" she heard Storm's voice: "We must retire".
"Don't think so, 'Ro, this creep here… where the hell did he go?!"
"We must retire to the check point. Without delay".
Rogue wouldn't stay there to either convince Logan to leave or, even worst, to help him find Remy, whatever was the reason he had to go after him. She might get a lecture about team work later on, but anyway, she wanted to get out of there as soon as possible so she started to move in this white sea that engulfed everything and almost made you think you were blind. Soon, she found the entrance of a hallway and after that, the huge vestibule of the station. Some policemen were trying to put order, as people kept pushing their way through the exit door.
The check point was four blocks away, heading north. She was pretty much running down the street, putting as much distance as possible between herself and that hallucination of a moment, back there in the platform.
Finally, she reached the black van and hopped on it. She sank in her seat, still dubious to what had just happened.
Few moments later, Scott, Nightcrawler and Logan showed up, and with that, they took off to an almost hour long trip back home, plagued with the reconstruction of facts from their different perspectives. It appeared that, indeed and as Rogue and Logan had witnessed, Trask had received the chip. But at some infinitesimal point and in the middle of the explosions, it had been taken away from him against his will.
"That guy had something to do, I bet on it" Logan said. Rogue was the only one to know which guy he was talking about, because no one else had seen him.
As discussions about what to do next went on, she looked out the window and had to wonder if Logan was right. If Remy had something to do with the explosion and the chip getting robbed. She didn't know much about him, but he certainly didn't seem like the guy that appeared out of nowhere in the middle of a mess, just by coincidence.
All of a sudden, she realized she was thirsty, like she was just now returning to her body after a jump out of your skin moment. She pulled out a bottle of water and took large sips. It was cold and when tasting it, some sort of relieve washed through her. She was away from him now, back to normal. It had just been a tiny portal that briefly opened up between the two worlds of her life, but now it was closed again and for good.
Right?
(…)
In a shadowed tunnel, somewhere in the depths of the Terminal, he met up with his brother.
"Y' got it?"
"'Course, Remy! Now we deliver this gizmo an' we can take the month off. En plus, we can take the rest of the year off!"
As appealing as thirty grand (each) sounded, while they made their way out of there, Remy's mind was somewhere else. And he murmured something to himself:
"X-Men, hein?"
Note: Hi there! I want to say that as you can see, I'm relating the titles of the chapters to food and the like. Why? Because the fic is called "The craving" and even though we're not talking about a craving for food (ehem) I thought it'd allow me to use a set of descriptive food related terms, that also have something to do with the content of a chapter itself (or it's just a mixture of food and sex, lol. I'm sorry if this sounds weird, I'm just kidding). Also, I've been to New York City only once, last year, and for this chapter I wanted to use a place I have actually been to, so I thought Grand Central Station would be good. Amazing place. Well, everything in NYC is amazing. And finally, as you can see with Logan calling Scott "dad", I take more the approach of the 90's animated series with those two, rather than the one from Evolution where it's more like Logan is everyone's dad. One last thing: I think it's obvious, but I want to point out that Rogue is able to control her absorption power. This ramble aside, I hope you guys enjoyed the chap and please drop me a review! Thanks for reading.