X-Men: Evolution

Blood Magics

19. Takeover

As they left the X- Jet, Beast could hear Storm speaking behind him.

"Now, Dragon, I want you to sit in that corner. You sit there, and you stay there until you're told you're allowed to move. Understand?"

"Yes, Mrs. O." Came Dragon's quiet, miserable voice.

Beast waited until they were further away from the jet and the door had closed before looking towards Xavier.

"You're worried about what's going on with her, aren't you?"

Xavier nodded. "I do not yet know if her decision to stow away and come along was her own or if it is a result of the strange occurrences lately, but there is something going on that I don't have an answer for yet. My biggest concern is her sudden ability to use ice, which she claimed she did not do. I can't see how it was anyone else, given the circumstance, but at the same time… I sensed Bobby in two different places at the same time this morning. Only for a brief time, but I detected him both in the garage and the hangar. The Bobby in the hangar vanished after a moment without a trace, while the Bobby in the garage left with everyone else. I made sure to verify it was him. I don't have any explanation for the second presence in the hangar, and I need to find one."

"You think it's connected."

"I don't see how it possibly couldn't be. Wolverine, are you picking up anything?"

Wolverine carefully checked the old laboratory's entrance with his sense of smell; Xavier had scanned it with his own powers as the jet was touching down and found nothing, but there was no such thing as being too careful.

"Nothin.'"

"Good. Let's proceed, then. The sooner we finish up here and get back, the sooner I can look into the other ongoing problem." Xavier sighed.

Beast felt one corner of his mouth turn up. The information that he had to share, that he'd learned overnight, wasn't going to help Xavier with the problem any, but he also doubted it would make anything worse. It was, however, one more mystery to puzzle over, and in all honesty, Beast couldn't say one- hundred percent for certain that there was no link, so he figured he'd better share it just in case.

"Well, just on the off chance you want another strange thing about our tiny stowaway to ponder, I found something interesting in her scans last night as I went over them."

"Oh, no. Don't tell me there's another problem."

"Not… exactly. Although it may be best to let Ororo in on this, too…" Beast mused.

"Then let's just wait until we're finished in the laboratory and back on the jet. One task at a time." Xavier sighed.

Beast felt his lips twitch upwards again. "Very well, I concede your point."

Wolverine snorted and looked over at Forge. "Sorry to involve you in the family issues, kid."

Forge gave a nervous chuckle. "Hey, not to worry. I've caused a few of those issues in the past myself, haven't I? That makes me part of it, right?"

"I should think so." Xavier smiled. "Now, let's get in there, and see what we're able to find."

Storm kept an eye on Dragon the entire time. It wasn't exactly an exciting task; Dragon did precisely what she was told and sat in the corner Storm had indicated, with an occasional fresh wave of tears and some sniffling.

Logic said that Dragon had to have snuck on the jet herself. She was hiding in a shadow not to get caught, for heaven's sake! The most plausible explanation was that she'd snuck on board on purpose. And yet… there had already been one bizarre incident. Something in Storm's instincts told her that something wasn't right here, either.

The others searched the abandoned lab, and she listened in on their communications; it appeared to be just that, an abandoned lab that had once been blown up. No other people were there, nor was anything intact. That didn't seem to stop Forge, though; after several hours and a thorough search, they left the lab with several bits and pieces of electronics that Forge swore up and down he would be able to get something off of.

He had no idea if any of it would be useful for their search; that was going to be up to pure luck. But he was certain that he could get something.

Once everything was safely packed away, everyone got into position to strap themselves in for takeoff; since they had no Dragon- sized seats with appropriate seatbelts for her, Storm had Dragon finally leave the corner and instead held her on her lap, just in case, while the jet took off. Once they were safely in the air, Xavier contacted the mansion; Piotr answered on the third ring.

"Ah, friends! I assume that everything has been going well?"

"As well as we could expect, I think. We're on our way back to the mansion now. Ah, but Piotr, would you do me a favour? I need the security footage from the hangar this morning before we left it sent to us as soon as possible; I need to take a look at it right away. I have reason to suspect that something very strange is going on."

"Of course, it will be done. Should I alert the others to prepare for a problem?"

"No, not yet. I'm not sure if there's a problem, exactly, but it is something I need to check right away."

"Very well. I will send it as soon as I can."

"Perfect. Thank you, Piotr. We'll be back in a couple of hours."

Ending the call, Xavier looked at Beast and repressed another sigh. "Now, you said you had something you wanted to share with us? Is it best done… privately?" He asked, knowing that Beast would understand what he didn't want to say aloud: when we talk about Dragon, should we make sure she can't hear us?

Beast paused. "I don't… see any reason not to share it with the whole room, so to speak." He answered at last. "It's… an odd finding, but I don't think it's a… sensitive one."

"Very well, then, what did you find?"

Beast paused again before starting.

"Actually, if I can pose a quick question first… if we did not know Dragon's age for ourselves, what would you assume it was? Think back to your first meeting; what was your assumption?"

His question confused Xavier, and from the looks on everyone else's face, he wasn't the only one.

"I… well, it was easy to tell that she was young."

"Yes, but how young? It was a question that she was asked more than once when she first arrived. What was your first assumption and why?"

"I… didn't really have one, Hank." Ororo said, frowning. "I only knew she was young."

"Yes… it was hard to make an assumption, wasn't it? Forge, what was your impression the first time you heard Dragon speak?"

The boy looked startled to be asked. "Uh, when she spoke? Let's see…" Frowning, the boy seemed to think hard. "I guess… I mean, yeah, she was young. I guess the sound of her voice was like… four or five? I mean, you can't even tell if she's a boy or a girl when you listen to her. She just sounds really young. But the words she uses are… older?"

"Exactly! That's the answer I'm looking for. We were all confused about Dragon's age because even though her voice suggests that she is, perhaps, five at most, her vocabulary is higher; although she was not around any people to learn any higher speaking after the age of five, she has spent a great deal of time listening and watching people and images through her latent ability, which I believe made up for at least that aspect of it. Her voice seems to be that of someone even younger than she is."

Xavier frowned. He hadn't really thought about it before; but Beast was right. Dragon was, in reality, nine and a half years old, but now that it had been pointed out to him… her voice didn't sound like it.

Beast crossed his arms. "I thought of all of this when I noticed in her scans… her biological age markers. Everyone's skeleton has various changes that happen as they grow older. Perhaps the most well- known example is how an infant's skull, when they are born, is in more than one piece, and those pieces grow, overlap, and then merge to become a solid skull, but there are more indicators than that of age. Now, given Dragon's very unique body structure, given to her by her mutation, it's very possible that her biological markers are not the same as those of us who have, we'll say, more anthropomorphic bodies. It's entirely possible that her mutation changes enough that her biological markers do not match up with what I know to look for. But what I noticed when I looked at them, is that all of her biological markers appear to point to Dragon being about four or five years old, even though we all know that she is nearly twice that."

Xavier leaned forward, looking at Dragon; placing his elbows on his knees, his hands came up to shape a steeple just under his chin as he thought. Storm and Beast, too, looked at Dragon, and even Forge stared, though his expression was more a mix of confusion and disbelief rather than contemplation. Wolverine kept his eyes on the controls of the jet.

Dragon squirmed. "So what does that mean? Is that good or bad?" She asked.

Beast gave an amused smile and shrugged. "I have no idea. It may not mean anything at all. Or it may mean that, for some reason, once your mutation emerged, your body stopped aging. There might be something that happened that interfered with the process somehow. I'm afraid there really isn't any way to find out, at least not right now. It's not necessarily a problem, but I can safely say that I think it's a strange finding."

Dragon shook her head. "But that doesn't… there's no… I don't understand. I… I…"

She blinked rapidly for a moment, wobbling on Storm's lap. Concern on her face, Storm reached for her, having taken her hands off her once they were safely in the air.

"Dragon-"

Dragon abruptly leaped away, into the air… and simply stood on it, levitating. Turning around to face the rest of them, things around the jet began to rattle, and the X- Jet itself began to suddenly jerk in the air. Wolverine gave a yell and tightened his grip on the controls, trying to pull out of it, but the jet no longer seemed to be in his control.

"Explain!" Dragon snapped in a cold, commanding voice that was most definitely not her own.

Xavier's eyes snapped to hers, and alarm flared through him; they were no longer Dragon's amethyst purple, but instead, he was looking into the frosty blue eyes of Magneto set into Dragon's head.

"You will explain what this means." Magneto's voice demanded from Dragon's mouth.

"The hell's going on?" Wolverine snarled.

"Dragon! What's happening?" Storm cried. Forge and Beast both braced themselves against whatever they could as the jet's jerking became worse.

"This bird isn't going to be in the air much longer if this keeps up!" Wolverine roared.

Xavier didn't have the slightest clue what was happening or how Magneto was projecting through Dragon, but he knew one thing: Dragon was not wearing the helmet that Magneto used to protect himself from psychics. He didn't want to go into her head right now- given how messy her mindscape was, it was a bad idea- but there was something else he could do.

Hard and fast, he hit Dragon with a psychic blast; Dragon screeched in pain, and first in Magneto's voice, but it rapidly climbed in pitch until she was using her own. The rattling stopped, and Dragon fell abruptly to the floor; Xavier stopped his assault immediately. The X- jet evened out in its flight; several things that had become jarred loose or that had levitated into the air fell to the floor. Multiple sighs of relief echoed through the jet.

"Is everyone alright?" Xavier managed to ask.

"Dude, no! What was that?" cried Forge.

"I'm afraid we don't have an answer for you." Beast was the one who answered, sounding breathless.

Storm got out of her seat, approaching Dragon, who lay in a heap on the floor. Xavier waited a few moments as she checked the girl over, before asking,

"Ororo? Is she alright?"

His heart was in his throat as he asked; he honestly wasn't sure how badly he might have hurt her, he'd been in such a rush. He'd dealt with power fluctuations before, but this was something he didn't think he'd ever seen… had he?

No, that was wrong. This had happened before, with Rogue, when she'd lost control. But Dragon didn't have a mutant power remotely close to what Rogue's was, so how…?

"I… I think so, Charles. She's unconscious, but her breathing and heart rate appear to be within the parameters that Hank established as normal for her." Storm responded.

A chime caught his attention as the X- Jet received a transmission from the mansion; the footage from that morning in the hangar.

"Good timing. Hank, please pull up that footage. Find the moments when Dragon walked into the hangar this morning. I need to verify something. I think I'm starting to have some ideas of what may be happening, although I'm still not sure on how or why. But I need to check something on that footage.

"Of course." Beast still sounded a little out of breath, though it more seemed to be that worry was preventing him from regaining it properly. He tore his eyes away from Dragon's prone form and moved to the communication controls. Pulling up the footage and putting it on a larger screen, Beast forwarded through the footage until a tiny figure entered the room.

"There she is. Zoom in on her."

Beast complied; they moved in until she took up most of the screen, stepping through the hangar. Both shadows and a blue mist leaked from under her feet; from time to time, the blue mist caught on something and formed a patch of ice. They watched Dragon creep around to the X- Jet.

"Zoom in on her eyes." Xavier requested, and Beast did so.

"Oh." Was Beast's startled response; Storm gasped. In the video, Dragon's eyes were a brown iris on a white sclera.

"Charles, what does this mean? What's happening?"

"Bobby." Xavier said. "I wondered."

"Could you fill in the rest of us?" Wolverine growled.

"Certainly. This makes three incidents, now. The first incident was in the infirmary, when Ororo walked in on Dragon tearing a book apart in anger. You said her eyes were different then as well, correct?"

"I… yes, I believe so."

"At the time, you showed me your memory of it and they were an amber colour with a white sclera. Amber eyes, a foul temper, and then add in the fact that she suddenly healed. When you add an aggressive temperament, a healing factor, and amber eyes together, you get-"

"Sabretooth!" Wolverine snarled.

"Precisely. The second incident, Dragon sneaking onto the X- Jet. She froze a pear at the beginning of the incident, and proceeded to stow away on the jet while leaving patches of ice behind. She also had brown eyes. Brown eyes, ice, and factoring in both the decision to come with us despite not being allowed and the fact that I, very briefly, sensed Bobby in two places at the same time this morning- one of those places being the hangar- and we have Bobby taking over Dragon's body. And finally, this third incident… she levitated, she started affecting the jet and everything metal on it, and she had both Magneto's eye colour and his voice."

"Dragon is having other people take control of her body?"

"I don't think it's quite as simple as that, but as far as Dragon is concerned, that's what it amounts to. She wasn't in control of her body any of those times and, by the sounds of it, doesn't even remember what happens when they take over, though we'll have to wait until she wakes to verify it for this incident."

"But… how?"

"As I said, I haven't answered that part yet. I have no idea."

"Hold on, if she had Sabretooth's healing factor, her wing should have healed up good as new. So why can't she use it? Sabertooth's healing is as good as mine is. It wouldn't have left the job undone."

"I suspect each of these, as they emerge, are sporadic and uncontrolled. The real Bobby wouldn't have left patches of ice on the floor or frozen a pear, nor would Magneto have started to bring down a jet while he himself was inside it. I suspect that Sabretooth's healing factor didn't fully manifest, either, and on top of that, Dragon only had him in control for a matter of seconds. His takeover was by far the shortest duration, so it likely didn't have time to finish the entire healing process, and by this point, anything else in terms of healing is probably stagnated. Full healing of Dragon's wing might be possible if a healing factor was introduced again, properly, but I don't think that would be feasible at this point… it's a guess, but since Sabretooth himself doesn't have wings, her body would probably settle into a normal of that wing not being functional now that it's been interrupted. Introduce a healing factor from someone who has wings, and the outcome may be different, but since we can't control this, it's too dangerous to experiment with. The safest thing to do for her and us is to determine how and why this is happening and put a stop to it, immediately. That is, immediately after we land; I'm not up for any more experiments in mid- flight." Xavier added. One near- catastrophic failure while flying was one too many already.

"Oh, dear." Beast whispered.

Storm scooped Dragon up into her arms.

"Young one… what in the world is happening to you?"

A/N: Nothing about Dragon makes sense right now... unraveling this one is going to be interesting for Xavier, for sure.

Also, my Sunday update is going to be later in the day than usual, if anyone is used to having it at a certain time (don't know if anyone reads both of the fics I'm currently updating, since this one has only been updated on one Sunday so far XD). Just wanted to mention it; it will happen, but several hours later than you're used to. I've got something to do that may or may not be repeating on Sundays from this point on, so I'm not even sure yet if it will be a temporary time change or a more permanent one. But it will still happen, I promise.