[center][img]http://www.austinbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/x-men.png[/img][/center][indent][sub][color=ffff00][b]SEASON ONE:[/b][/color][color=#1C86EE] GODS AMONG MEN[/color][/sub][sup][right][b][color=ffff00]INFAMY #1:[/color][/b] [color=#1C86EE]TRUST[/color][/right][/sup][/indent][hr][indent][color=ffff00][sub][b]Xavier's Mansion [color=#1C86EE]♦[/color] New York City, New York[/b][/sub][/color][sup][right][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EnrFe3Zb6k][b][color=ffff00]Theme:[/color][/b] [color=#1C86EE]Human[/color][/url][/right][/sup][/indent]
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Everyone had gathered in Hank's laboratory for the [i]'surprise'[/i] he'd been working on for the past few weeks. Even Bobby, cursed with eternal stupidity, knew why McCoy had so eagerly rushed them all into into his private workshop. Visitors were a rare thing there- not for lack of trying, of course, because Hank could talk anyone's ear off about his latest work. No, it had more to do with the fact that moving through the crowded, dirty room was near impossible. One couldn't take scarcely more than three steps without accidentally bumping into some fragile piece of equipment, knocking over piles of literature or stepping on a technical sketch for one revolutionary gadget or another.

"Uh, sorry- I should've cleaned up before I grabbed you all." Hank apologized profusely as he shoved a desk to the side and collected scattered files and papers with his simian-like toes in the same, fluid movement. There was something oddly natural about the way he would grab onto a robotic arm hanging from the ceiling and swing over to a clearing in the mess, gathering up a bunch of seemingly unrelated materials and placing them in a pile out of the way, effectively just moving the mess rather than actually fixing anything.

"How do you get anything done in this wreck?" Jean asked, turning her nose upward at the trainwreck of a laboratory. "I thought scientists were supposed to be, like, organized and shit."

Kurt appeared in a puff of smoke, his three-toed feet wrapping around a ceiling light before he had a chance to plummet into the garbage pile below. "Nonono," the blue haired demon shook his head, "He has a system, see, like in ze movies!"

"No system." Hank corrected with an embarrassed chuckle. "Just...Just a big mess."

"I'll ask again, then-" Jean sighed, "How do you [i]find[/i] anything?!"

McCoy motioned to his nose. "I can, uh, smell...things. I know how long it's been since I touched that-" he pointed toward a paper near Jean's foot. "-And I hear things, too. Like something's loose in that centrifuge over there. Rotor, maybe? Hm."

"We understand perfectly, Hank." Charles Xavier called from the door, still waiting for his ever-faithful student finish clearing a path so he could actually enter. He was as patient as ever, his hands resting in his lap as he watched the team interact with a bemused smile. "There is...beauty, in the chaos of brilliance."

Grey shrugged and crossed her arms. "Something something 'eye of the beholder,' I guess. He needs a maid. Or those bags from the 'too much stuff, not enough space' commercial."

It didn't take too much longer for them to get the laboratory into half-decent condition, especially once Scott convinced everyone else to pitch in and help Hank move everything out of the way. He led the six of them over toward a large machine in the back of the room. It's exterior didn't match the rest of the equipment: the sterile white and blacks of other apparatuses clashed with the strange machine's shining chrome body. It's center was dominated by a reinforced glass viewing port, though whatever was inside was hidden behind a piece of canvas had thrown over it. He stepped past it and over to a screen and keypad projected on the front of the machine.

"So what's this gizmo, doc?" Bobby asked, his hand clutching at his chin like he was the second coming of The Thinker.

"It's a type of CAD Fabricator," McCoy explained, struggling to tap in a code with his sausage-sized fingers. "Essentially you insert a design into a computer, provide the necessary materials and the machine will make it for you."

"Like zose 3D printers they have in zose Youtube videos!" Kurt interjected. "[i]Awesome[/i]."

"Where'd you even get this thing?" Jean rapped her knuckles against the side. "Must'a cost a fortune."

McCoy continued the finishing touches on his project, adjusting several metrics on the control panel as he spoke to the X-Men behind him. "It was donated to us, actually. By a, uh, friend of the Professor's."

Charles leaned forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees as he glanced over toward the prodigiously genius Metahuman. "Indeed," he confirmed, looking back to the others. "He's asked that I keep his name to myself, but some years ago he came to me in a time of need. I knew from the moment I met him that he was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant- but his status as a Metahuman had forced him from his home. A mind like his was being [i]wasted[/i] because he had a single gene that made him different."

A brief look passed over Xavier, something between disgust and a tired sort of pity. "I gave him a place to stay and introduced him to my peers at Columbia, and it wasn't long until he was attending, free of charge- even the most bigoted among my colleagues could not deny his genius."

"Now he runs a company all his own!" McCoy spun around, arms resting on his hips with triumphant confidence. "Place called Forge that makes armor and weapons for the military and SHIELD. All of it's cutting edge, top-of-the-line stuff. The Professor offered to pay for this but the guy insisted- he said it was the least that he could do to repay Charles."

"And that he believes in what you're all doing." Xavier finished with a nod, a seriousness in his eyes as he met the gazes of each of his young students. "I assured him that his trust was not misplaced."

A momentary silence followed, heavy as a ton of bricks and thick as fog. Gazes were averted and awkward shuffling filled the gap. They'd gotten plenty of talks from the Professor about [i]responsibility[/i] and the consequences of their actions, especially after the mess that was Bayville. It was easy to brush off Scott's blustering, but...

"...So what'd you make with this, Hank?" Summers was the first to break the silence, his hands shoved deep into his pockets as he turned his attention back to their resident mad scientist.

McCoy blinked a few times, as if he'd gone somewhere else in the brief time between when he last spoke and when Scott asked him about the surprise he'd been toiling over since Forge delivered the fabricator. "right! Right." He nodded emphatically, turning around to grab a piece of paper from a nearby workbench. "I, uh, I sent in a preliminary draft with some specifications-"

It didn't take more than a second of him waving it around at a distance for Kurt to appear in front of him in a burst of black smoke, snatching it from McCoy so he could present the [url=https://i.imgur.com/kHr8tx3.jpg]picture[/url] to everyone else.

"-Kurt, you little-" 

McCoy's attempts to protest were all for naught, as everyone else had already gathered around their hairy blue friend to observe the [i]very[/i] rough draft that Hank had sent in to their contact at Forge. 

Their chorus of immature giggling by stopped only when Charles cleared his throat, pointedly nodding his head toward Hank. "Continue, please."

"Right." Hank rubbed his hands together, taking a few, slow steps toward the piece of canvas he'd laid over the observation port. "It took approximately a day for each of them to finish, so five in total, obviously, but they came out much better than I could have expected. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present to you the newest iteration of the X-Men unifor-"

Just before he could pull it aside and make the big reveal, a loud, distinctive chirp filled the room. All eyes shifted over to Scott.

"I'm sure it can wait a minute-" He tried to assure them, only for his phone to go off again.

And again.

And again.

The notifications came in like a flood, hitting his phone so fast that not even half of them got their audio cue off before the next one appeared. Summers felt his jaw lock and his arms go stiff.

"That's Sentinel, right?" Jean asked, her face awash with concern as she looked to Scott.

"Vhat is happening?"

"Somethin' goin' down?"

"It's probably just a bug." Hank assured them all. "Anyway, here's-"

The wave of notification sounds was suddenly cut off when Summers got a phone call, replaced by the smooth sounds of an acoustic guitar. That was enough to prompt Scott to reach into his pocket and produce the device, setting it to his ear. "Who's this?"

[i]“Hey, Eye-guy? I don’t wanna be that friend that only calls when he needs help or whatever, but, uh, well, you might wanna turn on a TV.”[/i]

"...I'll call you back." Summers replied, his throat as dry as a desert as he ended the call and started directing everyone toward the TV.

It was a strange thing to find the mood shifting so quickly. To go from celebrating their friend's latest achievement to gathering around a television set to see history repeating itself.

Hank couldn't stop asking questions. He wanted to talk to whoever had called Scott, insisting it might've been a prank or something. Must've been, even.

Bobby was as quiet as a mouse, and his hands were shaking slightly, even before they'd managed to turn the thing on. Charles had moved over to place a hand on his pupil's shoulder. He didn't say anything to Drake- not that there were words that could comfort in a situation like this one.

Jean still hovered in the back of the lab near the fabricator, too occupied calling up everyone she knew that lived in the city proper to make sure that they were okay.

Nightcrawler was the one that had rushed to find the remote among the mess that was McCoy's lab. Everyone else had ushered over toward the old television set that Hank kept in the corner of his lab. It was meant, primarily, to give him background noise as he worked. But now it bore the visage of a mutant terrorist that threatened the safety of everyone in their city and beyond.

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/j32UPAs.png[/img][/center]

It was a face Scott was making himself deeply familiar with, even as the broadcast switched away from Stryfe to show the chaos his monsters were sewing in the streets of NYC and Star.

When the carnage began, and people on the screen began to die, Scott yanked the remote from Kurt's iron-like grip and turned it off. He stood from where he'd previously sat and made his way in front of the group, looking out over the sea of faces that called themselves the X-Men. 

They'd only been together for a little over a year at this point. Some of them had known each other for longer than that, but not as teammates. In that time they had faced many a threat: Purifiers, mutant criminals and even the occasional gangster. But this was new. This was an enemy with real power- an enemy that flirted with a perverse kind of evil that the world rarely ever saw.

Summers sighed and began in a slow, pained voice. "I know we've been together for awhile. All of us knew what this job was going to entail, and we knew it was going to be dangerous. But this...I can't ask any of you to-"

Jean interrupted before he got the chance to even finish his statement. "Scott? Shut up."

"Zis is vhy we're here."

"They need us." Hank agreed.

All eyes shifted over to Bobby, who looked like he was about ready to throw up. He only nodded and stood from his chair.

Despite the dire circumstances at hand, Charles couldn't help the pride he felt welling up in his heart, the corners of his lips shooting upward just as the rest of the team went to stand alongside Bobby.

"Guess it's settled, then." Summers nodded. "X-Men, suit up."
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