Chapter 2
Why, why did this have to happen on a weeknight? A Saturday might have found Rogue curled up in Remy's room, close enough to infuse her invulnerability into his skin before she shot out the window. But there was no time. No time for anything. She had a job to do if any of them were going to make it out of this house. The whole team was counting on her. They were all counting on each other tonight.
She smashed through the window, sprinkling glass down onto the lawn. Behind her, she heard the heavy steel DEFCON-4 barrier drop into place, sealing her teammates inside. In the darkness, she could see shapes moving: soldiers and vehicles, surrounding the house. Some of them might have already gotten inside before the lockdown.
That wasn't her problem. Her problem was the helicopters. Her problem was the fighter jets that might still be en route. Her problem was watching Storm's back.
Storm had burst through the skylight of her room, trailing lightning from her fingers and the ends of her hair. She was wearing the white nightgown in which she usually slept, and gleamed like a star over the house.
Rogue heard machine-gun fire.
Scott found Jean down in Cerebro, her posture hunched as though the helmet pressed down on her head like a ton of bricks. Though the enormous telepathy-enhancer ensured she could hear him coming from a thousand miles away, it didn't look like she'd noticed him come in.
He set a hand gently on her shoulder and leaned forward to see if her eyes were open. They weren't. In fact, her whole face was clenched, lines of stress and effort carved across her forehead.
"Jean?"
"Just a sec," she breathed. The lines in her face faded, she rose up from her hunched posture to stretch her back, and her eyelids hesitantly raised up to let in the dim light of the Cerebro control room. When she'd safely shut down her connection to the machine, she removed the helmet and set it back in its housing, shaking out her hair. "Yeah?"
"What're you doing? I thought you were upstairs working on next week's training plans."
"I was working on the training plans," she insisted. "But I had an idea. You know how we were planning on running more CP scenarios?"
"Yeah . . ." Complementary power training was Professor Xavier's latest idea. Most of the X-Men were as close to proficient in their own powers as any mutants their age could expect to be. The next step was figuring out the dozens of ways that their individual powers could be combined, to achieve results that one single mutant couldn't reach on his or her own. Already Amara and Bobby had started to figure out that between the two of them, they could rapidly heat-and-cool just about anything into a million pieces. Hank was talking about moving the good china to a safe deposit box.
"Well, I was working on the scenarios, and it suddenly just hit me . . . I have two powers."
"Yeah . . ."
"And I've always kind of dealt with them separately. TP, TK. And I'm not super-good at either of them . . . there are people better than me at both . . . but then I thought, what if I used them together?"
"What, like picking somebody up and reading their mind at the same time?"
"No." She pressed her index and middle fingers against her temples, closing her eyes again as she concentrated. "Why's the Professor a better telepath than I am? I don't mean like he's an Omega and I'm just an Alpha. Just on a basic, practical level . . . why can't I keep up? What holds me back? It's that I get headaches. The headaches tell me when I've hit the limits of my telepathy. That's where I have to give up. It's like muscle burn. But it's physical. All this time I've been pushing my telepathy to stretch the boundaries of the headaches, but what if I used the telekinesis? Can I shut off my own headaches? I mean, it's physical, it's pressure, it's something pushing inside my scull. So if I can figure out where that is, and just syphon it off . . . could I keep up with Professor Xavier?"
Scott didn't say anything.
"Wow, Jean," Jean said to herself on his behalf, "that's really cool. You're finding a new way to expand your powers. Good for you."
"No, it's . . . it's a cool idea." Scott leaned back against the edge of the control panel, folding his arms. "Have you talked to Professor Xavier about it yet?"
"No. With the political situation and everything . . . I don't think he really has the attention to spare for helping me right now. But this is going fine. I'm down to half a headache already."
"Just . . . I just want to put big red BE CAREFUL letters all over this. Your powers have gotten out of your control before, and it was really, really really, extremely very scary. I don't want to watch that again."
"That was high school, Scott. A long time ago."
"Not long enough. I still remember way too clearly. If you think you're ready to do this, I trust your judgment. But please, for my sake, take it slow and be very careful."
"I will. Don't worry."
Rogue shot upward, twisting herself into a barrel roll to turn her back to the oncoming fire. She felt bullets tear through the fabric of her pajamas and impact against her skin like hailstones, and in her mind and her ears she heard a cry of astonished pain. Storm!
I'm all right, Storm told her, gathering her winds underneath herself and shooting straight up into the air, out of range of the guns. I'm hit, but I can fight.
There wasn't a backup plan for what to do if Storm was hurt. There was nowhere for her to stand down and treat her injuries. And she was needed to keep the air above the mansion clear. She'd fight until she bled to death; she had to.
Rogue pulled herself to a halt and pivoted, shooting back into the range of the guns. Ah'll keep ya covered, Storm. Just get to work.
"Best. Behavior." Scott's voice was flat and final.
"Cross my heart," Gambit told him, suiting action to the word.
"Zat goes double for me," Kurt offered.
"Okay." Scott turned and looked up . . . way up . . . at the granite steps and façade of the Senate office building. "Here we go."
Gambit fell into place at Scott's left shoulder. He knew he wasn't Scott's first choice for backup on this job, but the Professor had insisted. If this went badly, a quiet exit would be needed. Kurt was quiet-exit guy number one, and Gambit was number two. He wasn't sure how quiet of an exit he'd be able to manage without his tools, but there were metal detectors at every legal entrance so he'd just have to do the best he could empty-handed.
"Man," Kurt muttered as they crossed the imposing marble rotunda, "I haven't been this nervous since ze first time I vent out vith Amanda." He stuck one finger into his collar and loosened his already-too-loose tie. "And I don't sink I'm getting kissed at ze end of this, either."
"She kissed you on de first date?" Gambit asked.
Kurt shrugged and grinned, and Gambit could see a little bit of heat rise in his face as he blushed behind his projector.
Gambit chuckled. "Que vous êtes mingons, vous deux."
"There." Scott had found the door they needed. A brass plaque at eye level read GRAYDON CREED, I-NY in bold black letters. Scott rapped his knuckles against the door, then turned the handle and eased it open. "Hello?"
"What do you want?" demanded a brisk female voice from within.
Scott let himself into the office. Kurt followed close behind, with Gambit bringing up the rear. "My name's Summers. My friends and I have an appointment with Senator Creed."
The secretary stood up, matching Scott's gaze, and grabbed a file from the rack at the corner of her large oak desk. She flipped it open and glanced down one page. "I don't have any record of an appointment. You'll have to call the Senate offices and schedule a time . . ."
"We did that three weeks ago," Scott insisted. "We called yesterday to confirm."
She slapped the file, still open, onto her desk. "To whom did you speak?"
"I don't know. I didn't ask for a name. We just called the main number, and the operator connected us. It was a man's voice."
"That must have been Jonas. He's the senator's press secretary. He certainly doesn't have the authority to schedule an individual appointment."
Scott's jaw tensed, but when he spoke, his voice was still polite and calm. "It sounds like there was a mix-up. I'm sorry we went through the wrong channels by accident. But if there's any way we could have just a few minutes of the senator's time . . . we'll wait all day if we have to . . ."
"Absolutely impossible. With the Mutant Registration Act being debated on the Senate floor? No, you'll simply have to wait. I can schedule a meeting for next month, when the senator will have more time to deal with local issues."
"Next month vill be too late!" Kurt insisted.
Gambit discreetly leaned over the desk to get a look at the open file. Somehow, he'd expected a U.S. senator's schedule to be more complex, but the document didn't look much more complicated than a page out of his study planner. Just the hours of the day running down the left edge of the page, with tasks and meetings written in next to them.
"Mais c'est quoi, ça?" he demanded, pointing at the paper.
The secretary jumped like he'd fired a starter pistol right behind her head, letting out a little scream as she whipped around to face him. Several strands of light blond hair came loose from her carefully pinned up-do and dropped across her face.
"Dey's nothing' scheduled 'till four." Gambit tapped the open time slot. "He's sittin' in dat office doin' nothin' right dis very second."
"Don't touch that!" she snapped, grabbing the file away from him with one hand and combing her disorganized hair back with the other.
"What's going on?" asked a man's voice from the door at the far end of the office.
Scott shot Gambit a quick glare. "Don't sneak," he hissed, sparing a glance for the now disheveled and flustered secretary.
"I wasn't," Gambit grumbled, sulking.
The door swung open, framing the man they'd come to see. Senator Graydon Creed was tall and well-built . . . most of him so thin as to be almost lanky, but his shoulders broad and his arms, revealed by rolled-up sleeves, surprisingly well-muscled. His hair was dark blond, and so, probably, would his beard be . . . he was sporting the start of a five o'clock shadow, though it was only three in the afternoon.
"Senator Creed!" The secretary stuffed her file back into its rack and and hurried around her desk towards him, tugging on the hem of her cream blazer so she didn't look quite so rumpled or frantic and shooting an annoyed, confused glare at Gambit. "These people showed up without an appointment, and—"
"Senator Creed," Scott cut in. Gambit had to give him points; that was the first time he'd ever heard Scott interrupt a woman. "My name's Scott Summers." He extended a hand, which the senator took reflexively. "We wanted to talk to you for just a few minutes about the Mutant Registration Act. We're, um . . . we're here on behalf of the Xavier Institute."
"Xavier Institute," Creed repeated.
"That's right."
"Charles Xavier?"
"Yes, Senator. He's our teacher."
"You're mutants?" Creed dropped Scott's hand.
Scott took a split second to decide what to do with his hand, now hanging in the air with nowhere to go. He settled for lowering it to his side again. "Yes, sir. We just wanted to talk to you, for a few minutes. That's all."
"You came here, into the Senate offices, to threaten a United States senator—"
"No, sir . . ."
". . . but I do not respond to intimidation, and I'll thank you to leave these premises immediately, if you don't want me to call security and have you arrested."
"We're not here to threaten, Senator. We just wanted to talk, to ask some questions. We don't have weapons—"
"You are weapons."
"We're college students."
"Emily, call security."
Scott opened his mouth, then closed it again. He shot quick glances, first at Kurt, then at Gambit, searching for a better idea. Kurt's slightly crouched posture screamed Let's just get out, fast. Gambit raised an eyebrow and gave a little nod towards the senator, suggesting that if Scott wanted this gentleman roughed up, Gambit would be pleased to make that happen.
He could see by the set of Scott's mouth that the roughing-up plan had its appeal, but in the end, Kurt's idea won out.
"I'm sorry we took up your time," Scott apologized, nodding his head respectfully to the senator. "We'll leave." He turned to the door, giving a little flick with his hand to order Gambit and Kurt out with him.
"Well," Kurt sighed as soon as they were out on the street again, "sere vent ze 'just talk reasonably vit zem and it'll all blow over' plan. Vhat a jerk. I'm never voting for him."
"Which is gonna be a big headache for him when he runs for office in Germany," deadpanned Gambit.
"The professor's not going to be happy." Scott combed his fingers through his carefully-arranged hair.
"Nope." Gambit flashed an inappropriate grin. "But hey, nice legs on dat secretary, hein?"
"Didn't notice," Scott answered.
"You better learn to lie better dan dat, or Jean ain't never gonna be fooled." He turned to Kurt. "Blue, mon gars, back me up here. Nice legs?"
"I vas too busy vaiting for her to bite my head off. Or yours."
"You two are no fun."
"Let's just go home," Scott sighed.
French Lesson!
Que vous êtes mingons, vous deux: You two are so cute.
Mais c'est quoi, ça? So what's this?
hein: The French spelling of the interjection "Eh?" or "Huh?"
Mon gars: Dude.