I'm going to be completely absent for a few days as my youngest turns one.
Hope that was an amazing time for your family!
-
Last Seen:
0-12 hrs ago
- Joined: 8 yrs ago
- Posts: 4124 (1.34 / day)
- VMs: 18
-
Latest 10 profile visitors:
-
Most recent →
Heat,
Supermaxx,
Sad Ogo,
Nightbringer,
Mae,
Sep,
GreenGrenade,
udonoodles,
Lord Wraith,
WitchHunter
Status
Recent Statuses
26 days ago
Current
Participated in my first table top RPG session.
14
likes
2 mos ago
Fandom RPs overtook the Guild like five years ago. Non-Fandom RPs are just hard to get people for. Population decreased, exacerbating the issue.
5
likes
2 mos ago
Hey, man. Did you touch my drum set?
1
like
2 mos ago
There is no Star Trek TV after DS9/Voyager. Quit lyin', girl.
4
likes
4 mos ago
No one knows what the fuck they're doing. Especially on this site.
10
likes
Bio
Unless you want to offer RP, I don't care, you're better off not sending it my way.
Arena Stats
1 Wins /
0 Losses /
0 Draws
1100 points
1100 points
Most Recent Posts
Hope that was an amazing time for your family!
House of X, Building 01
Unincorporated Genosha
It was a primal rendezvous; even more than she had any intention of. In the pre-dawn hours at the House of X central building, Emma Frost was a sparkle of white in an otherwise still and dark interior. There was luck that the top of the two residential floors had been occupied by Hank, Scott, Thomas, and herself. Hank wasn’t even present, Thomas a deep sleeper—not that she had stalked through the hall.
Scott was awoken with lips near his waist, and calmed with a telepathic surge of her presence covering him, and her hot breath upon his inner thigh. A corset, and little else, was little enough; yet she had spent nearly an hour of determination beforehand showering, moisturizing, and applying just small touches. Enough eyeliner that when their eyes met across the length of his upper body, he’d notice. A difference of perfume between her wrists and the back of her neck, so a different rush came depending on a difference of position, and other touches he’d never know, but would notice in his waking lust.
Not that she allowed him to take initiative. Oh, no. Emma held him there and placed an index finger on his lips, wicked eyes and a domineering gaze commanding he wait until she was done. Until he was breathless and utterly relaxed in every fiber of his body. Then, if he could manage a second go of things, he could have his way. Scott Summers had never failed to take advantage of a second, or third, go of things.
She was sweat covered and laying her head at the foot of his sweat soaked bed, as he lay catching his breath, his head at his pillows, as she explained the meeting from the night before, with the two. “I may have to take more time away. Storm and yourself will manage perfectly fine, but it may be worth considering another telepath to the team if—”
Emma stopped as the alarm sounded. It was a softer ping rather than a harsher klaxon. Each member of the team knew the differences in alarms. This raised her brow especially because of what it meant, as she left the room, mentally, and touched with the person down in the control room in their basement: Storm, what’s happening?
Munroe was brief, Xavier and Cerebro have alerted us to as an incident in the US. Be ready in five.
Emma could have laughed. Fifteen, but I do promise to hurry, darling. She sat up and swatted, playfully, at the rear-end of Cyclops. “Down in the control room in five, Summers,” she said as she slipped off the bed and rushed for her shower and closet, “I’ll meet you down there.”
Even a mind honed from decades of discipline and conflict took more than a handful of moments to rally from the combination of an early morning with Emma Frost followed by the call to arms. He was just about coming to terms with the revelation of her impending absence, gazing down at her languid, naked, form. Quite distracting him from the matter was the dappling of moonlight over the softness of her skin, highlighting the sloping curve of her hips, before she was already moving, the look of sudden unrelated amusement on her face a clear sign of the telepathic conversation even as the ping roused them both from the post-erotic haze of their pleasure.
He did manage a murmured assent, his own hands catching her a moment after her own swat, pulling her briefly back to him for a moment by her waist to place a kiss to the side of her neck, then allowing her free movement, only pausing a little longer to watch her leave. Hate to see you go he thought the first part of the anecdote, knowing the words would bleed through to her without voicing them, before he was up and changing himself. She’d taken the shower, so that left him with rather more limited options to become presentable and still on time, especially as on time to Scott Summers was at worst the second person in the room, but he’d manage, such was the sacrifice of leadership. He felt there were few who would feel he had any right to complain about the wake up he’d received.
Getting changed was made only slightly more difficult by the aftershocks and perspiration of the previous hours, with enough product used to mask, if not entirely cover, the scent of him and her upon his skin. By the time his suit was on, his mind was on serious matters, and it truly took him less than two of those five minutes to be out the door. In contrast, Emma had just about switched the shower on.
Despite the situation of his wakeup call, Scott was the second to arrive, only Storm was present, as was to be expected, before him. He gave her a tired but respectful nod of greeting. He didn’t press for an update before the rest of the team had arrived, at this hour there was no need to have her repeat herself. Instead he set to making himself a coffee, offering the same for the longest standing of his remaining teammates in the interim.
While they may not have been as punctual as their leaders, the rest of the team weren’t far behind, and so Scott steadily added increasing numbers to his ‘order’ already knowing the personal preferences of each, which as this hour was mostly different varieties of ‘strong’ with disconcerting amounts of sugar for some. For someone who could be so famously sharp, Miss Frost certainly didn’t appreciate it in her coffee.
“So, Storm, what have we got?” Scott finally asked, returning to the briefing table with the full complement of coffee even before the aforementioned telepath arrived, timed perfectly to her sweeping in, the last of them, but still within her offered time limit, to reach the impromptu gathering.
“Ya look awfully cheerful this morning, Scott.” The woman was cross from the early hour and the rude awakening of the alert. Her Southern gulf coast accent thicker than the humidity on an August summer day in a bayou. Standing just next to Summers, Rogue couldn’t help but side-eye him and ask.
“He does look, hmm, uniquely chipper…” From one heavy accent to another, Kurt’s speech clear and concise after a sip of steaming hot coffee from the wide, thick, brown mug he handled carefully with both hands, seated on the other side of the briefing room, the middle of it taken up with the holographic projection of a globe, framed by the kind of booth seating usually only found in restaurants and dinners, yet somehow was seen as functional here.
The House of X was a strange mismatch of styles and construction.
“This one,” Magik said, motioning with a thumb to the woman in white beside her, “was smirking and is oddly quiet for her. They fucked.”
Ororo Munroe’s face fell into a palm as the room fell into snickers and laughter at the declaration of Illyana Rasputin, who’d been standing near the door when the White Queen came in at the last second and took a spot next to the Ruler of Limbo.
Emma sighed and rolled her eyes, but Storm was done with the distraction. “Houston, Texas. In one of the upper middle class suburbs we have Seven Lakes High School, Katy, Texas. According to the Professor the mutant we’re looking for is sixteen year old Carmen Cruise; not certain about her abilities. Whatever it is, it has the X-Desk alerted and dispatching local FBI. We’d like to get there first, but according to Sage it’s gotten worse in the past half hour.”
“Law enforcement? In Texas? However could that get worse?” Emma didn’t need to smirk, the tone of her voice was already the perfect mix of sarcastic and smug.
“According to Sage monitoring social media feeds, Reavers are aware of the incident.”
Emma frowned, “Oh.”
“No time for a jet, I think,” Synch stood up from the booth seating, and looked at Illyana…who stared at him in confusion. “Oh, I…I didn’t know how it works. Would I want to be teleported while I’m seated? Wouldn’t I just fall? Or…? You tell me…?”
Magik looked past the new X-Man, to Storm and Cyclops, a small smirk spreading across her lips at agonizing slow speeds for Synch. “He’s gonna be fun. Let me see?” Magik motioned to the holographic globe indicating the location. It was little more than a holographic projection of Google Earth, allowing Storm to zoom in to the southwest US coast, to the city of Houston, to the eastern suburb of Katy, and finally, to the highschool surrounded by upper middle class suburban homes. “Yeah. I’ll try not to land us in the retention pond next to the school.”
The disc of light appeared blinding bright and warm to the sensation of touch, growing from it’s relatively small size to develop the time crammed in the tight debriefing room, before the light faded, replaced instead by the harsh and bright Texas sun, the humidity and nearly hundred degree heat index, leaving them in the far side of the southern parking lot of the massive American high school campus.
Seven Lakes High School, South Parking Lot
Katy, Texas, US
“...that wasn’t so bad,” Synch allowed, smiling at Magik.
The demon queen snorted, as Emma projected the telepathic image of their girl to the team. “This is Ms. Cruise. Sophomore.”
Storm was busy looking at the curb just off the south entrance of the school, and the curb: government black SUVs. She inhaled to begin to speak, before Emma Frost cut her off—”I’m feeling fear,” the telepath reported, grim faced, “The Reavers are inside. And armed.”
“Kurt and Emma, the girl. The rest of us need to get between the Reavers and the authorities, and make sure no one gets hurt. This is a school filled with children, let’s make sure no parent grieves tonight. Scott, point.”
Scott, used to his own authority, didn’t balk at the directive for a moment, already shifting to gain a headstart on the others to cut off the problem before it began. It was usually too much to hope that nothing would go awry, beyond whatever reason had called them to action, but that was rarely the case. This was Texas, the grounds of any school were more sprawling than they needed to be and he broke into a jog quickly, ignoring the slight tease of telepathic feedback from Emma. The White Queen tended not to rush and found it amusing enough in others, despite the circumstance.
He was business now though, business enough that when he turned the last corner and felt the immediate whistle of something passing rapidly through the air he ducked out of the way of the speeding rock without checking his step.
“Mutant scum! Get the fuck away from our kids!” There it was, barely minutes into their arrival and already a reminder why they’d put aside their various differences in Genosha. Not all humans, but a bloody lot of them. He’d long ago managed to master any flare ups based on suppressed emotions, so when the red line across his features suddenly lit up in preemptive anticipation it had nothing to do with the small gaggle of aggressive humans gathered at the school gates. The duck from the stone turned into a full combat roll as a series of impacts clattered across the ground he had previously inhabited.
“Found a Reaver.” Scott had time to warn the rest of the group before a pale skinned cyborg was upon him. They’d responded almost as fast as the X-Men to the situation, it would seem, and the gathering of hostile parents had provided one of their number the time to get close, leaping from the crowd brandishing a large blade. The screams were already in the air, the call to crowd violence forgotten in the presence of a true threat. Luckily there had only been the one to emerge from the crowd. Unlike some, Scott couldn’t entirely rely on his powers, and so motions honed in training pushed his limbs to knock away forceful blows aimed for him. The force shook his body, not the ideal situation for him to be in. Time to even the playing field.
The already concerned cries from the school gates intensified as Scott’s eyes roared into bright ruby life, the controlled cascade of energy rolling across the figure attempting to strike him down with superior force, sending them sprawling back and smoking. Such an outburst had a good chance of killing a human, but if he was lucky he would have disabled the cyborg, that was usually at least the aim. As the steam rippled from the Reaver’s form, his eyes were already turning to the perimeter, finding the startled gaze of a local officer, handgun already raised. At him, of course.
“Put that thing down and get these people out of here, we can discuss who’s fault this is another time, lets save these people.”
Winds whipped at the skin and eyes of the small crowd, as mist crept across the expanse of concrete filled with cars, bordered with neighborhoods of pristine newly constructed homes. The winds were localized enough to hopefully avoid damage to the nearby neighborhood, the fog disorienting and obfuscating to the crowd, as Rogue stepped up and crunched the firearm pointed at Cyclops as she walked past, leaving nothing but a stunned school cop behind. “We ain’t got time for this. There's babies in that building.”
Synch borrowed from Emma, and reinforced Cyclops’ instructions to the school cop with telepathic forcefulness. Rogue, he thought, was right; they didn’t have time for this. “They know we’re about to enter. Most of them have peeled off and seem to be waiting for us in the cafeteria.”
“Are there children in the room?” Storm asked.
Synch took a heartbeat to answer, “A few, not many. A dozen of the Reavers.”
“Magik,” was Storm’s only direction; the disc of light followed, “act fast.”
Seven Lakes High School, Cafeteria
Katy, Texas, US
Before the light carried them to a corner of the massive, two story tall interior space of the school’s cafeteria, they were acting as Synch switched from Emma to Rogue. Storm was the first, a beat after they teleported arrival to the cafeteria, taking a Reaver from behind and lighting him up with enough electricity for Synch to smell burnt flesh immediately.
He crashed into an immensely tall and muscular Reaver, the man felt half machine as Everett struck with clinched fists enhanced with Rogue's strength into the Reaver’s midsection. Cyclops and Magik stayed in the corner, at first; Magik opened a smaller a teleportation disc before them, a handful of small discs appearing around the air in the room before Cyclops let loose with a blast as ruby red concussive light ping-ponged upside Reaver heads.
He heard a Reaver scream as Rogue threw him by the ankle out of a tall window. Storm suddenly had knives in her hands, making a Reaver regret approach. Magik was howling with violent delight as she leapt into a duo of Reavers. It was bloody melee now, as Synch battled the oversized Reaver with fists, shrugging off blows with Rogue’s durability and strength, his mind kept in the present despite wanting to find the others.
Seven Lakes High School, Ms. Meyer's Sophomore English Classroom
Katy, Texas, US
The teacher fired three shots at the center mass of the first one through the door, as some children screamed in the far corner of the interior, windowless, classroom, desks hurriedly braced against the door but pushed aside by the three Reavers that burst through and into the class. The shot Reaver looked shocked, as he fell to his knees, some combination of blood and what smelled like hydraulic fluid leaking out of him, his hands covering the gunshot holes.
One of the two Reavers just behind the one dropped to his knees from wounds pointed a gun of his own at the forty something blonde female teacher in a Navy blue dress. Shock gave way to clinched eyes as she readied to be shot; and there was no scream from the teacher as she heard gunfire, and breathed in a panicked inhale of air filled with the scent of brimstone.
Violence was a blur of light, smoke, and blue fur before the teacher’s now open and wide eyed stare. The voice came gently, as thick in accent as the air had just been in air, “Frau Meyers, it is alright…don’t shoot.”
The woman didn’t even seem to notice she was still holding the gun, aiming it forward, where Reavers had been there now was a blue fur covered man with a soft expression and pleading eyes, misshapen hands with only three fingers held up, palms up and out, as his body language mirrored his speech.
The fear in the woman abruptly gave way to a stronger will as the gun fell, and her eyes blanked—her mind no longer her own as a crystalline Emma Frost stepped over two bodies and smashed a diamond fist into the back of the skull of the initial Reaver into the room, placing from his knees and bleeding out to an unconscious and leaking heap onto the floor behind Kurt.
“Emma, she’s scared,” his protests were immediate.
And just as immediately, Emma Frost dismissed them, as her body went from diamond to flesh and designer skinny slacks, corset, and gloves near to her elbows, eyes on the children, “She’s fine. Take the gun. Children? Let’s move.”
“You’re X-Men,” said one of the huddled children, behind a smartphone pointed at them, recording.
Emma was unphased, as sweet a smile as her lips could find suddenly on her face, the tone of a headmistress mixing stern warning and affection suddenly upon her, “Yes and now let’s get moving, all of you. Into the room across the hall and to the right.” Emma had that teacher, Mr. Roberts, unlock the door and await Ms. Meyers class.
Nightcrawler took the gun from the teacher, placing it on the desk behind her, as students began filing out, Emma reached out and barred the way for a brown haired, brown eyed latina girl wearing jeans and a blue pull over blouse. “Not you, Ms. Cruise.”
“What’s going on?” A pale girl with a heart shaped face and red hair, a green shirt and black tights was the last one not to leave, sticking next to the girl Emma stopped. Best friend, was the telepathic explanation Emma gave Kurt, Emma’s tone remaining just as it had before as she regarded the other girl, “Your friend Carmen is in danger, we’re simply getting her to safety. Please go with your class, Anna.”
The other girl blinked at the use of her name. There were a few moments of silent words between the two girls as they exchanged looks, ending with Anna hugging Carmen and telling her to call her later, before she gave one last look to Emma, and Kurt, then following her class to across the hall. Ms. Meyer followed, still not quite under her own control until she was in Mr. Roberts room and the door was locked after her. Emma alerted the rest of the team they had what they came for. Storm responded quickly for them to meet in the cafeteria. Kurt put as hand on Emma and Carmen, and with a quick bamf they were with the others in a trashed cafeteria littered with unconscious Reavers.
“Hello, child," Storm's greeted Carmen with a small smile and supreme confidence, "We will get you home soon, but first we need to see to your safety.”
Carmen Cruise stared at the group, ignoring the Reavers entirely, as if she stared at ghosts. “...I saw all of you die.”
“DOWN ON THE GROUND, NOW!”
The ‘verbal judo’ strong command came from men in tactical gear behind ballistic shields, training combat rifles in the group’s direction. Local law enforcement’s tactical response team. Storm looked unimpressed, as none of them moved an inch, “Magik, if you please.”
Magik smiled brightly, and waved at the men late to the party wearing tactical gear in true smartass fashion as the light disc grew, encompassed the mutants, and left nothing but Reavers and a trashed school cafeteria behind.
Task Force 2, Mobile, Jungle Roads
Andean Foothills, Ecuador
They double-backed five times. Went off road just as often as they were on a road. The trucks struggled with the terrain, but he knew they had to be sure. He’d spent his fair share of training time in the South and Central American jungle as a Navy SEAL. What had started as a simple escort had turned into a tense game of cat and mouse. They had picked up the technical expert from the small airstrip once used to smuggle drugs, now used by their organization to smuggle in resources like equipment and people.
All he’d been told was to pick up the technical expert. They met the contact at the airstrip; a man in his late thirties. Caucasian, midwestern accent, with the right identifier. He’d never seen the man before, but that wasn’t unusual; their organization was heavily fragmented for operational security reasons. One ‘petal’ was separate from the others, and all of them separated from the central column. All he knew was his CO; Lieutenant Colonel Kravik.
It was Kravik who had sent the warning: Warning Echo-Alpha-Nine. Do not proceed.
His blood ran cold when he first read the message. Echo-Alpha-Nine? Well, shit. His time at SHIELD was more than enough of an education on that threat. To his six man squad, and the technician they were escorting, he simply informed them they would have to shake a tail. When his men pressed for details, he gave them little. Just covert operators sent to spy and track them to their destination.
They couldn’t allow that, obviously. Hell yeah, his squad replied, and that was that. The technician had wanted more, but he wouldn’t give it. When they stopped for fuel, the first night, things exploded. Echo-Alpha-Nine caught them. Of his six man squad only four were able to withdraw in time, with only one of the trucks. The technician had been in a panic, and required strict measures to keep in line; he had to punch the man out, cold. While he was out, the four remaining of his squad began talking, nervous.
They had enough fuel to make it to Extraction Point Charlie, he told them. He was right, but no one was coming. Kravik had made that clear after he requested assistance. Shake them. You were trained for this. The man wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t right, either. The second day and into the night they never stopped zigging-and-zagging between off road and on road, nearing Extraction Point Charlie as the jungle night got truly dark, the only warning was the sound of a motorcycle engine behind the truck. Then the operator was on them. He was able to toss his device before the truck crashed and it all went black.
He woke up, his right leg bloody and mangled, from the crash he had to assume, a source of pure agony that told his mind it was a broken leg, seated against a tree just off the side of the dirt road. They were less than a click from Extraction Point Charlie, but they never made it. Deep down, he wasn’t sure they were ever going to make it. He heard enough stories about Echo-Alpha-Nine to know that much.
“Been huntin’ you Orchis boys for months,” threat designated Echo-Alpha-Nine said, as he finished restraining and gagging the technician, the only other one of their group still alive that he could see, “you wanna do some talkin’, or we doin' this the other way, bub?”
He looked up at the Wolverine, and glared. Torture? He expected it, to be honest, but the sight of those claws…nothing got you ready for that. Or how sharp they were. Or just how surgically precise the mutant was with them. Or the dark, dead, predatory look in his eyes. “I don’t know enough.”
“...no, I wasn’t figurin’ you did. But between what you do know, and what that egghead is gonna tell me, and what that phone you tossed might tell me…gonna have to be ‘nough.”
The technician was set up to watch. He didn’t blame the mutant. That was just smart. Make the untrained watch in horror, make them more likely to talk to avoid the same fate. He wouldn’t be alive for much longer, but somehow, the look of that technician’s eyes as the mutant made him start to scream was the worst part.
Unincorporated Genosha
It was a primal rendezvous; even more than she had any intention of. In the pre-dawn hours at the House of X central building, Emma Frost was a sparkle of white in an otherwise still and dark interior. There was luck that the top of the two residential floors had been occupied by Hank, Scott, Thomas, and herself. Hank wasn’t even present, Thomas a deep sleeper—not that she had stalked through the hall.
Scott was awoken with lips near his waist, and calmed with a telepathic surge of her presence covering him, and her hot breath upon his inner thigh. A corset, and little else, was little enough; yet she had spent nearly an hour of determination beforehand showering, moisturizing, and applying just small touches. Enough eyeliner that when their eyes met across the length of his upper body, he’d notice. A difference of perfume between her wrists and the back of her neck, so a different rush came depending on a difference of position, and other touches he’d never know, but would notice in his waking lust.
Not that she allowed him to take initiative. Oh, no. Emma held him there and placed an index finger on his lips, wicked eyes and a domineering gaze commanding he wait until she was done. Until he was breathless and utterly relaxed in every fiber of his body. Then, if he could manage a second go of things, he could have his way. Scott Summers had never failed to take advantage of a second, or third, go of things.
She was sweat covered and laying her head at the foot of his sweat soaked bed, as he lay catching his breath, his head at his pillows, as she explained the meeting from the night before, with the two. “I may have to take more time away. Storm and yourself will manage perfectly fine, but it may be worth considering another telepath to the team if—”
Emma stopped as the alarm sounded. It was a softer ping rather than a harsher klaxon. Each member of the team knew the differences in alarms. This raised her brow especially because of what it meant, as she left the room, mentally, and touched with the person down in the control room in their basement: Storm, what’s happening?
Munroe was brief, Xavier and Cerebro have alerted us to as an incident in the US. Be ready in five.
Emma could have laughed. Fifteen, but I do promise to hurry, darling. She sat up and swatted, playfully, at the rear-end of Cyclops. “Down in the control room in five, Summers,” she said as she slipped off the bed and rushed for her shower and closet, “I’ll meet you down there.”
Even a mind honed from decades of discipline and conflict took more than a handful of moments to rally from the combination of an early morning with Emma Frost followed by the call to arms. He was just about coming to terms with the revelation of her impending absence, gazing down at her languid, naked, form. Quite distracting him from the matter was the dappling of moonlight over the softness of her skin, highlighting the sloping curve of her hips, before she was already moving, the look of sudden unrelated amusement on her face a clear sign of the telepathic conversation even as the ping roused them both from the post-erotic haze of their pleasure.
He did manage a murmured assent, his own hands catching her a moment after her own swat, pulling her briefly back to him for a moment by her waist to place a kiss to the side of her neck, then allowing her free movement, only pausing a little longer to watch her leave. Hate to see you go he thought the first part of the anecdote, knowing the words would bleed through to her without voicing them, before he was up and changing himself. She’d taken the shower, so that left him with rather more limited options to become presentable and still on time, especially as on time to Scott Summers was at worst the second person in the room, but he’d manage, such was the sacrifice of leadership. He felt there were few who would feel he had any right to complain about the wake up he’d received.
Getting changed was made only slightly more difficult by the aftershocks and perspiration of the previous hours, with enough product used to mask, if not entirely cover, the scent of him and her upon his skin. By the time his suit was on, his mind was on serious matters, and it truly took him less than two of those five minutes to be out the door. In contrast, Emma had just about switched the shower on.
Despite the situation of his wakeup call, Scott was the second to arrive, only Storm was present, as was to be expected, before him. He gave her a tired but respectful nod of greeting. He didn’t press for an update before the rest of the team had arrived, at this hour there was no need to have her repeat herself. Instead he set to making himself a coffee, offering the same for the longest standing of his remaining teammates in the interim.
While they may not have been as punctual as their leaders, the rest of the team weren’t far behind, and so Scott steadily added increasing numbers to his ‘order’ already knowing the personal preferences of each, which as this hour was mostly different varieties of ‘strong’ with disconcerting amounts of sugar for some. For someone who could be so famously sharp, Miss Frost certainly didn’t appreciate it in her coffee.
“So, Storm, what have we got?” Scott finally asked, returning to the briefing table with the full complement of coffee even before the aforementioned telepath arrived, timed perfectly to her sweeping in, the last of them, but still within her offered time limit, to reach the impromptu gathering.
“Ya look awfully cheerful this morning, Scott.” The woman was cross from the early hour and the rude awakening of the alert. Her Southern gulf coast accent thicker than the humidity on an August summer day in a bayou. Standing just next to Summers, Rogue couldn’t help but side-eye him and ask.
“He does look, hmm, uniquely chipper…” From one heavy accent to another, Kurt’s speech clear and concise after a sip of steaming hot coffee from the wide, thick, brown mug he handled carefully with both hands, seated on the other side of the briefing room, the middle of it taken up with the holographic projection of a globe, framed by the kind of booth seating usually only found in restaurants and dinners, yet somehow was seen as functional here.
The House of X was a strange mismatch of styles and construction.
“This one,” Magik said, motioning with a thumb to the woman in white beside her, “was smirking and is oddly quiet for her. They fucked.”
Ororo Munroe’s face fell into a palm as the room fell into snickers and laughter at the declaration of Illyana Rasputin, who’d been standing near the door when the White Queen came in at the last second and took a spot next to the Ruler of Limbo.
Emma sighed and rolled her eyes, but Storm was done with the distraction. “Houston, Texas. In one of the upper middle class suburbs we have Seven Lakes High School, Katy, Texas. According to the Professor the mutant we’re looking for is sixteen year old Carmen Cruise; not certain about her abilities. Whatever it is, it has the X-Desk alerted and dispatching local FBI. We’d like to get there first, but according to Sage it’s gotten worse in the past half hour.”
“Law enforcement? In Texas? However could that get worse?” Emma didn’t need to smirk, the tone of her voice was already the perfect mix of sarcastic and smug.
“According to Sage monitoring social media feeds, Reavers are aware of the incident.”
Emma frowned, “Oh.”
“No time for a jet, I think,” Synch stood up from the booth seating, and looked at Illyana…who stared at him in confusion. “Oh, I…I didn’t know how it works. Would I want to be teleported while I’m seated? Wouldn’t I just fall? Or…? You tell me…?”
Magik looked past the new X-Man, to Storm and Cyclops, a small smirk spreading across her lips at agonizing slow speeds for Synch. “He’s gonna be fun. Let me see?” Magik motioned to the holographic globe indicating the location. It was little more than a holographic projection of Google Earth, allowing Storm to zoom in to the southwest US coast, to the city of Houston, to the eastern suburb of Katy, and finally, to the highschool surrounded by upper middle class suburban homes. “Yeah. I’ll try not to land us in the retention pond next to the school.”
The disc of light appeared blinding bright and warm to the sensation of touch, growing from it’s relatively small size to develop the time crammed in the tight debriefing room, before the light faded, replaced instead by the harsh and bright Texas sun, the humidity and nearly hundred degree heat index, leaving them in the far side of the southern parking lot of the massive American high school campus.
Seven Lakes High School, South Parking Lot
Katy, Texas, US
“...that wasn’t so bad,” Synch allowed, smiling at Magik.
The demon queen snorted, as Emma projected the telepathic image of their girl to the team. “This is Ms. Cruise. Sophomore.”
Storm was busy looking at the curb just off the south entrance of the school, and the curb: government black SUVs. She inhaled to begin to speak, before Emma Frost cut her off—”I’m feeling fear,” the telepath reported, grim faced, “The Reavers are inside. And armed.”
“Kurt and Emma, the girl. The rest of us need to get between the Reavers and the authorities, and make sure no one gets hurt. This is a school filled with children, let’s make sure no parent grieves tonight. Scott, point.”
Scott, used to his own authority, didn’t balk at the directive for a moment, already shifting to gain a headstart on the others to cut off the problem before it began. It was usually too much to hope that nothing would go awry, beyond whatever reason had called them to action, but that was rarely the case. This was Texas, the grounds of any school were more sprawling than they needed to be and he broke into a jog quickly, ignoring the slight tease of telepathic feedback from Emma. The White Queen tended not to rush and found it amusing enough in others, despite the circumstance.
He was business now though, business enough that when he turned the last corner and felt the immediate whistle of something passing rapidly through the air he ducked out of the way of the speeding rock without checking his step.
“Mutant scum! Get the fuck away from our kids!” There it was, barely minutes into their arrival and already a reminder why they’d put aside their various differences in Genosha. Not all humans, but a bloody lot of them. He’d long ago managed to master any flare ups based on suppressed emotions, so when the red line across his features suddenly lit up in preemptive anticipation it had nothing to do with the small gaggle of aggressive humans gathered at the school gates. The duck from the stone turned into a full combat roll as a series of impacts clattered across the ground he had previously inhabited.
“Found a Reaver.” Scott had time to warn the rest of the group before a pale skinned cyborg was upon him. They’d responded almost as fast as the X-Men to the situation, it would seem, and the gathering of hostile parents had provided one of their number the time to get close, leaping from the crowd brandishing a large blade. The screams were already in the air, the call to crowd violence forgotten in the presence of a true threat. Luckily there had only been the one to emerge from the crowd. Unlike some, Scott couldn’t entirely rely on his powers, and so motions honed in training pushed his limbs to knock away forceful blows aimed for him. The force shook his body, not the ideal situation for him to be in. Time to even the playing field.
The already concerned cries from the school gates intensified as Scott’s eyes roared into bright ruby life, the controlled cascade of energy rolling across the figure attempting to strike him down with superior force, sending them sprawling back and smoking. Such an outburst had a good chance of killing a human, but if he was lucky he would have disabled the cyborg, that was usually at least the aim. As the steam rippled from the Reaver’s form, his eyes were already turning to the perimeter, finding the startled gaze of a local officer, handgun already raised. At him, of course.
“Put that thing down and get these people out of here, we can discuss who’s fault this is another time, lets save these people.”
Winds whipped at the skin and eyes of the small crowd, as mist crept across the expanse of concrete filled with cars, bordered with neighborhoods of pristine newly constructed homes. The winds were localized enough to hopefully avoid damage to the nearby neighborhood, the fog disorienting and obfuscating to the crowd, as Rogue stepped up and crunched the firearm pointed at Cyclops as she walked past, leaving nothing but a stunned school cop behind. “We ain’t got time for this. There's babies in that building.”
Synch borrowed from Emma, and reinforced Cyclops’ instructions to the school cop with telepathic forcefulness. Rogue, he thought, was right; they didn’t have time for this. “They know we’re about to enter. Most of them have peeled off and seem to be waiting for us in the cafeteria.”
“Are there children in the room?” Storm asked.
Synch took a heartbeat to answer, “A few, not many. A dozen of the Reavers.”
“Magik,” was Storm’s only direction; the disc of light followed, “act fast.”
Seven Lakes High School, Cafeteria
Katy, Texas, US
Before the light carried them to a corner of the massive, two story tall interior space of the school’s cafeteria, they were acting as Synch switched from Emma to Rogue. Storm was the first, a beat after they teleported arrival to the cafeteria, taking a Reaver from behind and lighting him up with enough electricity for Synch to smell burnt flesh immediately.
He crashed into an immensely tall and muscular Reaver, the man felt half machine as Everett struck with clinched fists enhanced with Rogue's strength into the Reaver’s midsection. Cyclops and Magik stayed in the corner, at first; Magik opened a smaller a teleportation disc before them, a handful of small discs appearing around the air in the room before Cyclops let loose with a blast as ruby red concussive light ping-ponged upside Reaver heads.
He heard a Reaver scream as Rogue threw him by the ankle out of a tall window. Storm suddenly had knives in her hands, making a Reaver regret approach. Magik was howling with violent delight as she leapt into a duo of Reavers. It was bloody melee now, as Synch battled the oversized Reaver with fists, shrugging off blows with Rogue’s durability and strength, his mind kept in the present despite wanting to find the others.
——— ⭙ ———
Seven Lakes High School, Ms. Meyer's Sophomore English Classroom
Katy, Texas, US
The teacher fired three shots at the center mass of the first one through the door, as some children screamed in the far corner of the interior, windowless, classroom, desks hurriedly braced against the door but pushed aside by the three Reavers that burst through and into the class. The shot Reaver looked shocked, as he fell to his knees, some combination of blood and what smelled like hydraulic fluid leaking out of him, his hands covering the gunshot holes.
One of the two Reavers just behind the one dropped to his knees from wounds pointed a gun of his own at the forty something blonde female teacher in a Navy blue dress. Shock gave way to clinched eyes as she readied to be shot; and there was no scream from the teacher as she heard gunfire, and breathed in a panicked inhale of air filled with the scent of brimstone.
Violence was a blur of light, smoke, and blue fur before the teacher’s now open and wide eyed stare. The voice came gently, as thick in accent as the air had just been in air, “Frau Meyers, it is alright…don’t shoot.”
The woman didn’t even seem to notice she was still holding the gun, aiming it forward, where Reavers had been there now was a blue fur covered man with a soft expression and pleading eyes, misshapen hands with only three fingers held up, palms up and out, as his body language mirrored his speech.
The fear in the woman abruptly gave way to a stronger will as the gun fell, and her eyes blanked—her mind no longer her own as a crystalline Emma Frost stepped over two bodies and smashed a diamond fist into the back of the skull of the initial Reaver into the room, placing from his knees and bleeding out to an unconscious and leaking heap onto the floor behind Kurt.
“Emma, she’s scared,” his protests were immediate.
And just as immediately, Emma Frost dismissed them, as her body went from diamond to flesh and designer skinny slacks, corset, and gloves near to her elbows, eyes on the children, “She’s fine. Take the gun. Children? Let’s move.”
“You’re X-Men,” said one of the huddled children, behind a smartphone pointed at them, recording.
Emma was unphased, as sweet a smile as her lips could find suddenly on her face, the tone of a headmistress mixing stern warning and affection suddenly upon her, “Yes and now let’s get moving, all of you. Into the room across the hall and to the right.” Emma had that teacher, Mr. Roberts, unlock the door and await Ms. Meyers class.
Nightcrawler took the gun from the teacher, placing it on the desk behind her, as students began filing out, Emma reached out and barred the way for a brown haired, brown eyed latina girl wearing jeans and a blue pull over blouse. “Not you, Ms. Cruise.”
“What’s going on?” A pale girl with a heart shaped face and red hair, a green shirt and black tights was the last one not to leave, sticking next to the girl Emma stopped. Best friend, was the telepathic explanation Emma gave Kurt, Emma’s tone remaining just as it had before as she regarded the other girl, “Your friend Carmen is in danger, we’re simply getting her to safety. Please go with your class, Anna.”
The other girl blinked at the use of her name. There were a few moments of silent words between the two girls as they exchanged looks, ending with Anna hugging Carmen and telling her to call her later, before she gave one last look to Emma, and Kurt, then following her class to across the hall. Ms. Meyer followed, still not quite under her own control until she was in Mr. Roberts room and the door was locked after her. Emma alerted the rest of the team they had what they came for. Storm responded quickly for them to meet in the cafeteria. Kurt put as hand on Emma and Carmen, and with a quick bamf they were with the others in a trashed cafeteria littered with unconscious Reavers.
“Hello, child," Storm's greeted Carmen with a small smile and supreme confidence, "We will get you home soon, but first we need to see to your safety.”
Carmen Cruise stared at the group, ignoring the Reavers entirely, as if she stared at ghosts. “...I saw all of you die.”
“DOWN ON THE GROUND, NOW!”
The ‘verbal judo’ strong command came from men in tactical gear behind ballistic shields, training combat rifles in the group’s direction. Local law enforcement’s tactical response team. Storm looked unimpressed, as none of them moved an inch, “Magik, if you please.”
Magik smiled brightly, and waved at the men late to the party wearing tactical gear in true smartass fashion as the light disc grew, encompassed the mutants, and left nothing but Reavers and a trashed school cafeteria behind.
——— ⭙ ———
Task Force 2, Mobile, Jungle Roads
Andean Foothills, Ecuador
They double-backed five times. Went off road just as often as they were on a road. The trucks struggled with the terrain, but he knew they had to be sure. He’d spent his fair share of training time in the South and Central American jungle as a Navy SEAL. What had started as a simple escort had turned into a tense game of cat and mouse. They had picked up the technical expert from the small airstrip once used to smuggle drugs, now used by their organization to smuggle in resources like equipment and people.
All he’d been told was to pick up the technical expert. They met the contact at the airstrip; a man in his late thirties. Caucasian, midwestern accent, with the right identifier. He’d never seen the man before, but that wasn’t unusual; their organization was heavily fragmented for operational security reasons. One ‘petal’ was separate from the others, and all of them separated from the central column. All he knew was his CO; Lieutenant Colonel Kravik.
It was Kravik who had sent the warning: Warning Echo-Alpha-Nine. Do not proceed.
His blood ran cold when he first read the message. Echo-Alpha-Nine? Well, shit. His time at SHIELD was more than enough of an education on that threat. To his six man squad, and the technician they were escorting, he simply informed them they would have to shake a tail. When his men pressed for details, he gave them little. Just covert operators sent to spy and track them to their destination.
They couldn’t allow that, obviously. Hell yeah, his squad replied, and that was that. The technician had wanted more, but he wouldn’t give it. When they stopped for fuel, the first night, things exploded. Echo-Alpha-Nine caught them. Of his six man squad only four were able to withdraw in time, with only one of the trucks. The technician had been in a panic, and required strict measures to keep in line; he had to punch the man out, cold. While he was out, the four remaining of his squad began talking, nervous.
They had enough fuel to make it to Extraction Point Charlie, he told them. He was right, but no one was coming. Kravik had made that clear after he requested assistance. Shake them. You were trained for this. The man wasn’t wrong, but he wasn’t right, either. The second day and into the night they never stopped zigging-and-zagging between off road and on road, nearing Extraction Point Charlie as the jungle night got truly dark, the only warning was the sound of a motorcycle engine behind the truck. Then the operator was on them. He was able to toss his device before the truck crashed and it all went black.
He woke up, his right leg bloody and mangled, from the crash he had to assume, a source of pure agony that told his mind it was a broken leg, seated against a tree just off the side of the dirt road. They were less than a click from Extraction Point Charlie, but they never made it. Deep down, he wasn’t sure they were ever going to make it. He heard enough stories about Echo-Alpha-Nine to know that much.
“Been huntin’ you Orchis boys for months,” threat designated Echo-Alpha-Nine said, as he finished restraining and gagging the technician, the only other one of their group still alive that he could see, “you wanna do some talkin’, or we doin' this the other way, bub?”
He looked up at the Wolverine, and glared. Torture? He expected it, to be honest, but the sight of those claws…nothing got you ready for that. Or how sharp they were. Or just how surgically precise the mutant was with them. Or the dark, dead, predatory look in his eyes. “I don’t know enough.”
“...no, I wasn’t figurin’ you did. But between what you do know, and what that egghead is gonna tell me, and what that phone you tossed might tell me…gonna have to be ‘nough.”
The technician was set up to watch. He didn’t blame the mutant. That was just smart. Make the untrained watch in horror, make them more likely to talk to avoid the same fate. He wouldn’t be alive for much longer, but somehow, the look of that technician’s eyes as the mutant made him start to scream was the worst part.
Given the time elapsed, I'm going to take Logan (Wolverine) back into the X-Men fray.
@Alternax
Damn right. I got like, four, five monies. Easy.
<Snipped quote by Ruby>
Damn, here comes the high roller.
<Snipped quote by Sep>
Lookin forward to seeing my favorite god of hammers again.
Damn right. I got like, four, five monies. Easy.
Forward Research Bunker 'Quito'
Andean Foothills, Ecuador
The low hum of servers droned in the black void of the back shadows of the space. He had been reduced to a shadow among the shadows; the pants they provided him were black, the top matched in color with a basic v-neck cotton tee design. He wiggled his toes inside the grey pair of New Balance sneakers. At first, they had been jailers, even if they were some of the most polite and courteous jailers he could have lucked into. He was never threatened, other than the simple fact he wasn't allowed to leave.
Not yet, anyway, they told him.
In a conference room with a metal table, metal chairs with white cushions, and metal paneled walls, Donald Trask told him the truth: he wasn't anything like his uncle Boliver. Donald was smart, but he wasn't Boliver. He'd heard the tale before; Tony Stark had been the one to conceive of the Sentinel program. In his haste and his multi-tasking glory, Stark had handed the project off to the rising star technical mind in Stark's company: Boliver Trask. Donald wasn't sure if Mr. Stark had understood the kind of man that Boliver was, but the Trask family knew.
To the beautiful woman who had lured him, now with pinned up hair and wearing what looked like a tactical uniform with no insignia, he came clean. To the man who he had seen in the hotel suite wearing the exact same thing the woman had, and the dirty blonde square shaped woman in the glasses with the white lab coat and khakis on, all three on the other end of the conference room table, Donald spilled it all.
Boliver was a brilliant man, but he could be something of a jerk. It wasn't evil that brought Boliver to the place in history he would eventually inhabit, it was love: it was a father's love for his son. Donald's cousin, Larry, had been born a mutant. So was Tanya, Boliver's daughter. Few knew, outside who Donald had to assume had been the X-Men, or whoever the mutants not on the Avengers-like team of mutants were called. Somewhere, Donald had to admit, Boliver went from love to hatred. His daughter was lost to mystery, his son killed by the very things Boliver created.
Donald did what he could to live a normal life and forget it. He was just grateful he hadn't been born a mutant. When he was younger, he admitted to the trio seated at the table, he had wished he had been born with mutant powers. Who didn't want to be superpowered? The older he got, the more he realized mutants like the X-Men were rare: most mutants were closer to freak shows than they were superpowered. And the odds of being born a superpowered mutant was about the same odds as achieving superpower through science, like the Avengers, or being an alien, like the Justice League.
But, Donald told them, he didn't hate mutants. When they asked if he thought they hated mutants, Donald couldn't help but nod. He did. The woman in the lab coat chuckled, while the man explained: they didn't hate mutants. Their organization didn't hate mutants by its nature. It wasn't anti-mutant, it was simply pro-human. Donald had said it best; when most of the world doesn't have superpowers but those with superpowers are growing in number...what was to happen? Governments had made laws regarding limitations and registration, but none of them had ever had the desired effect. It was a more pressing crisis than climate change. At least with climate change there was some kind of answer, some semblance of hope.
Based on the math alone, within their lifetimes mutants would displace humans on the planet Earth as the dominant species.
Donald had understood their points, who didn't? But he wasn't quite certain a shadowy organization was something he could support. Then Alice, the pretty woman, had asked him to give them a day and let them show him everything they had. If he didn't want to help them, after that, they'd just let him go. He believed them. The evening was spent playing chess with the woman in the lab coat, the four of them had a nice dinner of steak and salad. Alice and he talked late into the evening, and when he asked her what to expect from the next day, she simply told him honesty is what he'd get. Complete honesty.
In the dark lab with the servers the next morning, he waited. When Alice finally arrived, she was smiling. "Do you need anything?"
Donald shook his head, "No," there was a moment's hesitation before he looked from the gray floor and back up to her face, "I honestly just want to get started."
"Yeah, I can understand that."
"So, uh," his small dark eyes set back into his thick cheeked face looked back and forth, "where are we headed?"
Alice's smile never waivered, "When you're done, we'll be right outside the door."
"Oh, um...okay, yeah."
It was a little over half an hour before the stale recycled air of the hidden facility stirred as Donald emerged from the shadowy lab. His eyes wide, his posture changed with his back straight and his shoulders back. In the doorway he stared at the three of them, his voice full of conviction where before there had been uncertainty. "I'm not sure I understood all of it, but...I understood enough of what was shown to me. You all have to do something. You HAVE to do something, and you have to do it now. And I guess...I guess my only question now is...what do you need from me? Say it, and it's yours."
Eastmont Plantation
Unincorporated Genosha
When he awoke half-way through the night, the world seemed oddly quiet. There was the distant noise of waves thundering hundreds of feet below the cliff in which the old building was perched. There was occasional sound from the heavy forest that bordered the property. More immediate to his bedroom, there was the crackle of a small fire in the fireplace. Yet somehow the world seemed to be holding it's breath, and leaving Charles Xavier uneasy. He returned to sleep staring at the Cerebra helmet on the bedside table.
When morning came, and he stirred, the air smelling of seabreeze and dust and years. The building was a pre-fabrication built around an older structure; a colonial plantation from the days of the British Empire. The fields of the plantation had long ago been reclaimed by the wilds of Genosha, but the structure was updated with it's prefabrication exoskeleton due to the caves below. It was there that Charles had truly set up shop, in a lab that was once used to torture and experiment on mutants. There was a satisfaction that the subterranean structure was the place where the newest version of Cerebra was born, the secret lab now expanded and built upon, a mix of high technology, alien technology, and what Forge was beginning to simply call, "organic technology."
It was there the six of them met, waiting on the seventh. It was young Douglas Ramsey who began, his face scruffy with a blonde beard, the result of months away. Forge, Sage, Beast, Trinary, and Black Tom had already been there when the steel caged elevator brought Charles down to the lab. Tom looked something like a gangster pirate. The rest of them wore variations of X-team uniforms. On a whiteboard was a badly drawn tree, with five roots. "Morning, Professor. I was about to get into the systems we've set up."
Charles bid them wait but a few more moments. In the far background of the subterranean level an opening in the face of the cliff, showing the horizon of the Indian ocean from the middle heights of the Genoshan cliff. Their last attendant flew in gracefully, landing softly close to their group, his eyes carefully inspecting new additions to the lab.
"Organic tech, I'm calling it," Forge announced to Magneto.
Charles walked closer to the group, his eyes on Erik. "Douglas was about to debrief us."
And so he did; the four systems in place: Transit and Monitoring, it was agreed Sage was the natural selection for this. After some discussion between Douglas, Sage, and Forge, the mutant with the machine of a mind nodded her agreement, finally. Defense and Observation was a proposal for Black Tom. The man agreed, instantly, before it was even fully explained by Douglas and Forge. Secondary and External Systems would be left to Trinary, given her unique abilities. Hank would provide an Overwatch role, using his experience and various specialties as catch-all for the other three systems. The fifth root was simply marked in red, with a phrase in quotations: "Skunkworks."
This, Forge explained himself, would be his area. Douglas chimed in at the end to emphasis how much progress, and how fast, Forge had made during his short time joining him on the island.
"Thank you," Charles said after a moment's silence, one arm crossed over the chest of his cotton button-up, the other rubbing his smooth chin. "Please, Cypher and Forge, take the day to rest and refresh. Trinary, Hank, Tom, please enjoy the breakfast spread in the dining room above." It was said with the tone of a professor dismissing class. Where fluorescent light met natural rays from the cave opening mid-cliff, the two men stood, regarding the white board.
In his way, Charles simply leaned over, and got on with it casually, "Your daughter is on the island." There was a pause, before he remembered to specify, "Lorna. Bobby Drake is escorting her. Apparently Genosha has had a rash of attacks on defense infrastructure, terrorism from the reports, I've tasked Bobby with investigating it, assuming she would join him in the effort—I appear to have been correct in that assumption."
“She is free to be, as are all Mutants.” It wasn't a surprise that muted Eric’s tone, not that he had known, but trepidation, his eyes following the backs of those dismissed out the door, disappearing the moment before Charles’ spoke. “Perhaps if I had your gift, old friend, instead of my own, my daughters would be less burdened with the errors of my ways. But perhaps that is optimistic of me. I will speak with her when she is ready to do so, I am sure she needs little aid from me to help Master Drake.”
With blue eyes that found themselves staring into the whiteboard scrawled with the black inked marker handwriting of Douglas Ramsey, Charles Xavier found himself unable to keep his mind away from thoughts rumbling like a distant storm in the back of his mind as the suggestion that his old friend would in any better standing with his children should they had swapped gifts, the face and bitter tone of his son a flashpoint for regret Charles did what he could not to focus on. “Between us, I think your relationship with your biological children may be better.”
Erik did not sit, instead his focus resumed on the white board, assessing what he had heard, and what he could still see. “Ambitious, but then, neither of us would be here if we were not. Another great project from the mind of Xavier, although perhaps one day you will not talk to them as if you are still Headmaster.” It was not a particularly subtle deflection via jest, but speaking of one daughter brought up thoughts of another, and when speaking with Charles, thoughts were simply another medium of verse. “Have you yet spoken with Miss Frost?”
The comment about the Headmaster’s tone brought Charles’ blue eyes slowly from the board to the taller man. Charles kept any proper retort to his own thoughts, instead sighing into the subject of Emma Frost. “Yes. I delivered her the Cerebra helmet. She called it ugly,” Charles admitted, as he chuckled in amusement. “We will need to tell her, and soon. I have laid the groundwork I could with my own business firm investments, but she saw through them as easily as we telepaths see through a simple mind. If the woman has an Omega-level talent, it’s the ruthless world of capitalism—and she has truly mastered it. If we’re going to do this in a way that’s different from how you established Genosha, if we’re going to really achieve what we must for all mutant-kind, we will need to lean on her. Have you given any thought to how we approach Sinister?”
“It is unfortunate we even have to consider doing so.” The distaste was evident in Erik’s tone, although whether this was at the thought of Sinister himself or the matter of fact manner that Charles took in regards to dealing with him, was unclear. Perhaps both. He deflected for the moment, as before responding to a less serious aspect of their conversation. “Perhaps we should listen to her, appearances are important, at least we wouldn’t want her to hesitate in wearing it, should the need arise.” He was evidently joking, a tease towards the individual not present. “We should, perhaps later today, when we are done dealing with the Americans. They’ve been speaking with Scott, but that didn’t stop them parking an arsenal capable of eradicating this entire coast of Africa, let alone Genosha, nearby while they did so.” It was almost as bad as the old days, the near world ending conflicts which had dominated the early period of when the world became aware of mutants. The conflicts had never really ended, they’d just gone underground. Or underwater, in this case.
“We will need to offer something to Sinister that he wants, but doesn’t feel he can simply take. An ever smaller list, to his mind, I have no doubt, and it will need to be balanced against what the others will allow, no matter how much you tell them it is for their own good. Some are more heroic than us, in that matter.”
“Agreed,” Charles gave a half shrug as he stared, either at the white board, or past it into his own internal thoughts, “We bring Emma in today or tomorrow, schedules allowing.” She is a member of the X-Men, and they have a habit of becoming unavailable when something comes up. And something always comes up, he finished the thought to himself, sparing Erik the melodrama of the X-Men-centric thinking.
His bald head turned at the distaste of Sinister, the thoughts of one of those former X-Men echoing in his mind: Trust him, Charles, and we will all burn. “We will have to offer him a seat at the table. Hard as it is to swallow, I find I feel best about Mr. Essex when he’s in view; it’s when he’s off in the shadows and lurking about in labs that I feel most anxious about him. That said, he was very willing with our test case” Charles readjusted the weight of his body from one foot to the other as he released a soft sigh from the very pain that the knowledge and experience of Essex had cost him. “They’re ready, by the way. I haven’t told anyone else, yet. The only ones that know are them, themselves, and Douglas; and you, now…and Gerard, of course. He’s aware of all the risks. I’ll handle the killing.”
As far as Charles was concerned, the less said about it all, the better—for now anyway.
Andean Foothills, Ecuador
The low hum of servers droned in the black void of the back shadows of the space. He had been reduced to a shadow among the shadows; the pants they provided him were black, the top matched in color with a basic v-neck cotton tee design. He wiggled his toes inside the grey pair of New Balance sneakers. At first, they had been jailers, even if they were some of the most polite and courteous jailers he could have lucked into. He was never threatened, other than the simple fact he wasn't allowed to leave.
Not yet, anyway, they told him.
In a conference room with a metal table, metal chairs with white cushions, and metal paneled walls, Donald Trask told him the truth: he wasn't anything like his uncle Boliver. Donald was smart, but he wasn't Boliver. He'd heard the tale before; Tony Stark had been the one to conceive of the Sentinel program. In his haste and his multi-tasking glory, Stark had handed the project off to the rising star technical mind in Stark's company: Boliver Trask. Donald wasn't sure if Mr. Stark had understood the kind of man that Boliver was, but the Trask family knew.
To the beautiful woman who had lured him, now with pinned up hair and wearing what looked like a tactical uniform with no insignia, he came clean. To the man who he had seen in the hotel suite wearing the exact same thing the woman had, and the dirty blonde square shaped woman in the glasses with the white lab coat and khakis on, all three on the other end of the conference room table, Donald spilled it all.
Boliver was a brilliant man, but he could be something of a jerk. It wasn't evil that brought Boliver to the place in history he would eventually inhabit, it was love: it was a father's love for his son. Donald's cousin, Larry, had been born a mutant. So was Tanya, Boliver's daughter. Few knew, outside who Donald had to assume had been the X-Men, or whoever the mutants not on the Avengers-like team of mutants were called. Somewhere, Donald had to admit, Boliver went from love to hatred. His daughter was lost to mystery, his son killed by the very things Boliver created.
Donald did what he could to live a normal life and forget it. He was just grateful he hadn't been born a mutant. When he was younger, he admitted to the trio seated at the table, he had wished he had been born with mutant powers. Who didn't want to be superpowered? The older he got, the more he realized mutants like the X-Men were rare: most mutants were closer to freak shows than they were superpowered. And the odds of being born a superpowered mutant was about the same odds as achieving superpower through science, like the Avengers, or being an alien, like the Justice League.
But, Donald told them, he didn't hate mutants. When they asked if he thought they hated mutants, Donald couldn't help but nod. He did. The woman in the lab coat chuckled, while the man explained: they didn't hate mutants. Their organization didn't hate mutants by its nature. It wasn't anti-mutant, it was simply pro-human. Donald had said it best; when most of the world doesn't have superpowers but those with superpowers are growing in number...what was to happen? Governments had made laws regarding limitations and registration, but none of them had ever had the desired effect. It was a more pressing crisis than climate change. At least with climate change there was some kind of answer, some semblance of hope.
Based on the math alone, within their lifetimes mutants would displace humans on the planet Earth as the dominant species.
Donald had understood their points, who didn't? But he wasn't quite certain a shadowy organization was something he could support. Then Alice, the pretty woman, had asked him to give them a day and let them show him everything they had. If he didn't want to help them, after that, they'd just let him go. He believed them. The evening was spent playing chess with the woman in the lab coat, the four of them had a nice dinner of steak and salad. Alice and he talked late into the evening, and when he asked her what to expect from the next day, she simply told him honesty is what he'd get. Complete honesty.
In the dark lab with the servers the next morning, he waited. When Alice finally arrived, she was smiling. "Do you need anything?"
Donald shook his head, "No," there was a moment's hesitation before he looked from the gray floor and back up to her face, "I honestly just want to get started."
"Yeah, I can understand that."
"So, uh," his small dark eyes set back into his thick cheeked face looked back and forth, "where are we headed?"
Alice's smile never waivered, "When you're done, we'll be right outside the door."
"Oh, um...okay, yeah."
It was a little over half an hour before the stale recycled air of the hidden facility stirred as Donald emerged from the shadowy lab. His eyes wide, his posture changed with his back straight and his shoulders back. In the doorway he stared at the three of them, his voice full of conviction where before there had been uncertainty. "I'm not sure I understood all of it, but...I understood enough of what was shown to me. You all have to do something. You HAVE to do something, and you have to do it now. And I guess...I guess my only question now is...what do you need from me? Say it, and it's yours."
——— ⭙ ———
Eastmont Plantation
Unincorporated Genosha
When he awoke half-way through the night, the world seemed oddly quiet. There was the distant noise of waves thundering hundreds of feet below the cliff in which the old building was perched. There was occasional sound from the heavy forest that bordered the property. More immediate to his bedroom, there was the crackle of a small fire in the fireplace. Yet somehow the world seemed to be holding it's breath, and leaving Charles Xavier uneasy. He returned to sleep staring at the Cerebra helmet on the bedside table.
When morning came, and he stirred, the air smelling of seabreeze and dust and years. The building was a pre-fabrication built around an older structure; a colonial plantation from the days of the British Empire. The fields of the plantation had long ago been reclaimed by the wilds of Genosha, but the structure was updated with it's prefabrication exoskeleton due to the caves below. It was there that Charles had truly set up shop, in a lab that was once used to torture and experiment on mutants. There was a satisfaction that the subterranean structure was the place where the newest version of Cerebra was born, the secret lab now expanded and built upon, a mix of high technology, alien technology, and what Forge was beginning to simply call, "organic technology."
It was there the six of them met, waiting on the seventh. It was young Douglas Ramsey who began, his face scruffy with a blonde beard, the result of months away. Forge, Sage, Beast, Trinary, and Black Tom had already been there when the steel caged elevator brought Charles down to the lab. Tom looked something like a gangster pirate. The rest of them wore variations of X-team uniforms. On a whiteboard was a badly drawn tree, with five roots. "Morning, Professor. I was about to get into the systems we've set up."
Charles bid them wait but a few more moments. In the far background of the subterranean level an opening in the face of the cliff, showing the horizon of the Indian ocean from the middle heights of the Genoshan cliff. Their last attendant flew in gracefully, landing softly close to their group, his eyes carefully inspecting new additions to the lab.
"Organic tech, I'm calling it," Forge announced to Magneto.
Charles walked closer to the group, his eyes on Erik. "Douglas was about to debrief us."
And so he did; the four systems in place: Transit and Monitoring, it was agreed Sage was the natural selection for this. After some discussion between Douglas, Sage, and Forge, the mutant with the machine of a mind nodded her agreement, finally. Defense and Observation was a proposal for Black Tom. The man agreed, instantly, before it was even fully explained by Douglas and Forge. Secondary and External Systems would be left to Trinary, given her unique abilities. Hank would provide an Overwatch role, using his experience and various specialties as catch-all for the other three systems. The fifth root was simply marked in red, with a phrase in quotations: "Skunkworks."
This, Forge explained himself, would be his area. Douglas chimed in at the end to emphasis how much progress, and how fast, Forge had made during his short time joining him on the island.
"Thank you," Charles said after a moment's silence, one arm crossed over the chest of his cotton button-up, the other rubbing his smooth chin. "Please, Cypher and Forge, take the day to rest and refresh. Trinary, Hank, Tom, please enjoy the breakfast spread in the dining room above." It was said with the tone of a professor dismissing class. Where fluorescent light met natural rays from the cave opening mid-cliff, the two men stood, regarding the white board.
In his way, Charles simply leaned over, and got on with it casually, "Your daughter is on the island." There was a pause, before he remembered to specify, "Lorna. Bobby Drake is escorting her. Apparently Genosha has had a rash of attacks on defense infrastructure, terrorism from the reports, I've tasked Bobby with investigating it, assuming she would join him in the effort—I appear to have been correct in that assumption."
“She is free to be, as are all Mutants.” It wasn't a surprise that muted Eric’s tone, not that he had known, but trepidation, his eyes following the backs of those dismissed out the door, disappearing the moment before Charles’ spoke. “Perhaps if I had your gift, old friend, instead of my own, my daughters would be less burdened with the errors of my ways. But perhaps that is optimistic of me. I will speak with her when she is ready to do so, I am sure she needs little aid from me to help Master Drake.”
With blue eyes that found themselves staring into the whiteboard scrawled with the black inked marker handwriting of Douglas Ramsey, Charles Xavier found himself unable to keep his mind away from thoughts rumbling like a distant storm in the back of his mind as the suggestion that his old friend would in any better standing with his children should they had swapped gifts, the face and bitter tone of his son a flashpoint for regret Charles did what he could not to focus on. “Between us, I think your relationship with your biological children may be better.”
Erik did not sit, instead his focus resumed on the white board, assessing what he had heard, and what he could still see. “Ambitious, but then, neither of us would be here if we were not. Another great project from the mind of Xavier, although perhaps one day you will not talk to them as if you are still Headmaster.” It was not a particularly subtle deflection via jest, but speaking of one daughter brought up thoughts of another, and when speaking with Charles, thoughts were simply another medium of verse. “Have you yet spoken with Miss Frost?”
The comment about the Headmaster’s tone brought Charles’ blue eyes slowly from the board to the taller man. Charles kept any proper retort to his own thoughts, instead sighing into the subject of Emma Frost. “Yes. I delivered her the Cerebra helmet. She called it ugly,” Charles admitted, as he chuckled in amusement. “We will need to tell her, and soon. I have laid the groundwork I could with my own business firm investments, but she saw through them as easily as we telepaths see through a simple mind. If the woman has an Omega-level talent, it’s the ruthless world of capitalism—and she has truly mastered it. If we’re going to do this in a way that’s different from how you established Genosha, if we’re going to really achieve what we must for all mutant-kind, we will need to lean on her. Have you given any thought to how we approach Sinister?”
“It is unfortunate we even have to consider doing so.” The distaste was evident in Erik’s tone, although whether this was at the thought of Sinister himself or the matter of fact manner that Charles took in regards to dealing with him, was unclear. Perhaps both. He deflected for the moment, as before responding to a less serious aspect of their conversation. “Perhaps we should listen to her, appearances are important, at least we wouldn’t want her to hesitate in wearing it, should the need arise.” He was evidently joking, a tease towards the individual not present. “We should, perhaps later today, when we are done dealing with the Americans. They’ve been speaking with Scott, but that didn’t stop them parking an arsenal capable of eradicating this entire coast of Africa, let alone Genosha, nearby while they did so.” It was almost as bad as the old days, the near world ending conflicts which had dominated the early period of when the world became aware of mutants. The conflicts had never really ended, they’d just gone underground. Or underwater, in this case.
“We will need to offer something to Sinister that he wants, but doesn’t feel he can simply take. An ever smaller list, to his mind, I have no doubt, and it will need to be balanced against what the others will allow, no matter how much you tell them it is for their own good. Some are more heroic than us, in that matter.”
“Agreed,” Charles gave a half shrug as he stared, either at the white board, or past it into his own internal thoughts, “We bring Emma in today or tomorrow, schedules allowing.” She is a member of the X-Men, and they have a habit of becoming unavailable when something comes up. And something always comes up, he finished the thought to himself, sparing Erik the melodrama of the X-Men-centric thinking.
His bald head turned at the distaste of Sinister, the thoughts of one of those former X-Men echoing in his mind: Trust him, Charles, and we will all burn. “We will have to offer him a seat at the table. Hard as it is to swallow, I find I feel best about Mr. Essex when he’s in view; it’s when he’s off in the shadows and lurking about in labs that I feel most anxious about him. That said, he was very willing with our test case” Charles readjusted the weight of his body from one foot to the other as he released a soft sigh from the very pain that the knowledge and experience of Essex had cost him. “They’re ready, by the way. I haven’t told anyone else, yet. The only ones that know are them, themselves, and Douglas; and you, now…and Gerard, of course. He’s aware of all the risks. I’ll handle the killing.”
As far as Charles was concerned, the less said about it all, the better—for now anyway.
I love my job.
But...this week has been a lesson in why I get paid "the big bucks."
Hoping my CEO comes back soon and I don't have to do his job and MY job for much longer. It hasn't left me much time to live life, yet alone work on posts. Hopefully soon. Part of it's done, probably about half? I might just post 2/3s and leave the last scene for a small, solo, post.
Yeah. Yeah I like that idea.
But...this week has been a lesson in why I get paid "the big bucks."
Hoping my CEO comes back soon and I don't have to do his job and MY job for much longer. It hasn't left me much time to live life, yet alone work on posts. Hopefully soon. Part of it's done, probably about half? I might just post 2/3s and leave the last scene for a small, solo, post.
Yeah. Yeah I like that idea.
<Snipped quote by Ruby>
The sheet was never finished so, hard to say?
Come baccccccccccccccccccccccccccckkk EE. Play with usssssssss.
How many more mutant organizations are there? Can we share with the whole class?
I honestly can't tell how serious this is. lol
On the (off?) chance it's serious: yeah, we're sharing with the whole class. Ezekiel and I answered every question Martian had, and despite some of our future plans (Havok) or misgivings (Pryor) made sure he had the roster he wanted. We even went out of our way to include him on story we plotted, going so far as to include him on our Discord DMs. (Poor Martian, btw, Zeke and I are silly.)
We're happy to do this for any wanting to jump into the mutant fray.
There's at least still Excalibur out there or the X-Force or DC's X-Men the Doom Patrol.
Did EE drop his concept for Doom Patrol?
I've got another mutants post plotted out; hopefully I get a chance to write it tonight/tomorrow.
Would anyone mind if I use Senator Robert Kelly (for a post) while cap pays a visit to the President?
He's dead, for us, but, uh. We can have him die after.
© 2007-2017