‘Running wasn’t easy. It took time, longer than we would have liked, and planning. But eventually, Marcus and I left, taking Leyna with us. The actual act was surprisingly simple. We were supposed to be her guard. Alex stayed behind, playing the old friend who has changed sides. He made it clear to Magneto that his loyalties lay with him, and I suppose because he wasn’t related to Marcus and I, Magneto believed him. Of course, he wasn’t thinking particularly straight at the time, he was beyond furious at the loss of Leyna. Anyway, Alex remained in camp, feeding information out to Marcus and I, and because of this we managed to evade the Brotherhood for a month or so. We kept on running, moving from place to place every few days, never staying still long.’
Alex took up the story.
‘But it didn’t take long for Magneto to become suspicious. The way that he would receive word that Marcus and Tia were in one place and then when he sent out a team, they would have completely vanished. He isn’t stupid, he knew there must be a leak, and naturally he suspected me first. We knew that our time was running out, but we weren’t prepared to give in. We knew of the X-Men, of course, almost every mutant in America knows you, and we realised that you were our only chance of keeping Leyna out of Magneto’s clutches. Unfortunately we had no idea how to find you.’
Tia stepped up again, the story flowing from each of them in turn.
‘And that was when we got lucky. Magneto had exactly the same thought that we did. He realised that Marcus and I would go looking for the X-Men. We were trained fighters; he knew that we knew we couldn’t evade him forever. We could stand and fight, but we would lose and we would die, or we could find the X-Men. It was obvious which option we’d pick. And that was when we saw our chance. We had no idea how or where one might find a member of the X-Men but Magneto did. So Alex suggested setting a trap; a trap to lure in the X-Men’s best fighters, and pick them off, one by one. The Brotherhood easily outnumbers the X-Men, and Magneto knew that taking out Wolverine, Storm and Cyclops would decimate the team. Even if Marcus and I did find you after that, there was no way you would be able to protect Leyna.’
Alex again.
‘So I suggested to Magneto that we set up an ambush, host an event to lure you in; something odd enough to cause you to investigate but not threatening enough to send the entire team. Magneto agreed to it, seeing it as an opportunity to destroy the competition. My plan was that I would feed the ‘where’ and ‘when’s to Marcus and Tia and then, when your team arrived, Tia would be able to take everyone out of commission for a few minutes, preferably before anyone got hurt. It was easy. It was simple. We wouldn’t need to find the X-Men because you guys could come to us. And it would have had the added advantage of really, really pissing Magneto off.’
Jubilee spoke up for the first time, disbelief in her voice.
‘So basically, you set up a death trap for Scott, Logan and Storm, in order to locate us, so that you could ask for our help?’
When put like that, it didn’t seem to make much sense, thought Rogue. Alex glared.
‘Look. We had been on the run for months. We were exhausted, hungry, and running out of places to hide. In short, we were desperate, and the more desperate you are, the cleverer and better essentially stupid plans look.’
‘De man has got dat damn right,’ murmured Remy.
Rogue ran through the large amount of information that had just been divulged. A couple of things still made no sense at all to her.
‘I don’t get it. This plan of yours; yeah, it was fairly stupid, and had more holes than a badly knitted jumper, but the way you set it up, it could have worked. But it didn’t.’
Tia looked puzzled.
‘How do you draw that conclusion?’
‘Because Scott has a gash the size of the Grand Canyon gracing his neck, and Logan came to my room last night looking like death warmed up, and believe me, with his healing factor, that’s quite the achievement.’
It was the turn of the Professor to do some explaining and he wheeled his way forward.
‘Last night, I was using Cerebro; just scanning. Over the last few days, something hadn’t seemed right. I had been detecting large groups of mutants, who all seemed to be converging on one place. An abandoned military base just south of Alkali Lake. But from what I could tell, all these mutants were fairly low grade. Class Two, Three at most. They didn’t have the makings of any kind of army, but we haven’t heard anything about any sort of mutant conventions. There appeared to be no real threat, but I was curious, so I sent Logan, Storm and Scott to check it out, simply to scout around for information and see what was going on. I did not even consider the idea that there might be any danger.’
‘So how…’ Rogue was cut off by Alex.
‘I presume everyone here has seen that odd bronze helmet that Magneto wears. It acts as a mental shield, blocking him from Cerebro. While he is wearing it, the Professor cannot trace him, correct?’
Xavier nodded.
‘Well from there, it was a simple step to select fifteen odd of our best fighters, and equip them with similar helmets. Magneto knows the Professor, and he knew he would be intrigued by such a large gathering of mutants, for apparently no purpose. I was in charge of the battle tactics, presumably Magneto thought that as I was setting up the only chance at survival my friends had, that my loyalty was assured. I set it up so that a few waves of the weaker members of the Brotherhood would attack first. To Magneto, I justified this as a way of sapping the strength from your team, before sending in our concealed fighters to finish them off and I knew the idea of playing with them would appeal to him. Of course, the real reason was that I knew Logan, Scott and Storm could take the weaker mutants easily. This way, Tia had time to use her talents to take everyone in the vicinity down, whilst everyone else was distracted by the battle. At least, that was the plan.’
‘What went wrong?’
‘Everything was in place. Your three had just arrived and we were preparing to send out the first wave of attacks. Marcus and Tia were concealed, waiting on standby. But then Magneto got suspicious. I have no idea what triggered it. Maybe we had been too arrogant in presuming he had fallen for the front I had been maintaining. But anyway, he ordered me out along with the first wave. I had no choice but to fight. To hold back in anyway would only have made him more suspicious. I knew Magneto would expect me to go for the strongest fighter first so I targeted Logan, thanking whichever God that was watching that he was the one with the healing factor. Turned out I needn’t have worried so much. He was more than a match for me, although I got in a few good scrapes.’
‘The mark? On his temple? That was you? You call that a good scrape???’
Alex had the grace to look embarrassed.
‘Yeah. I feel bad about that, but I had to do it. And the man heals.’
‘It still bloody hurt.’
Rogue swung round to the door, smiling widely in greeting. Logan was standing there, clearly having gotten over his earlier loss of control. He had leaves in his hair and his knuckles looked red and suspiciously raw. The Professor smiled.
‘Logan. Nice of you to rejoin us.’
Logan gave a brusque nod, and retook his place in the far corner of the room. He shot Rogue a swift smile.
‘What happened next?’ It was the first time Kitty had spoken, and she sounded like a child, eager to hear the next part of a story.
Alex sighed.
‘Before we go any further, perhaps we should explain what Tia can do.’
Tia yawned idly, before raising her hands, palms upturned, much like the position Alex had assumed in his earlier display. She clenched both hands into fists, and then sharply unfurled them. A sharp cracking noise filled the air as she did so, and Rogue winced, horrified, thinking it had been her bones making that noise. At least until she saw the crackling blue of electricity filling Tia’s palms.
‘You can wield electricity. Nice.’ Storm sounded impressed.
‘That’s not all.’ Frowning in concentration, Tia raised her palms slightly and after a few seconds a cloud of swirling black began to form around her hands. The lightening crackled, flashing and dancing through the clouds. The bright silver swirls in Tia’s black eyes were alive now, crackling and forking as dancing electricity, and Rogue could smell the acrid scent of energy, the likes of which she had smelt on Logan the previous night.
The Professor looked impressed and awed.
‘To hold the power of the storms in one’s hands. That’s quite the gift you’ve got there.’
Tia smiled her thanks, relaxing and allowing the lightening and the accompanying thunder clouds to dissipate.
‘It has its restrictions. I can make the cloud spread over large areas, but the further I spread it and the more people I encompass; the weaker the force of the lightening when I zap them. I can kill if it’s very short range, or only two or three people, between four and about forty it’s a severe shock, enough to cause unconsciousness, but only just, and any more than forty and you’ll barely feel a tingle.’
Rogue was seeing the light.
‘So you planned, essentially, to electrocute the Brotherhood?’
Jubilee spoke up again.
‘But the X-Men were fighting with the Brotherhood. So the plan was to set up a death trap for Scott, Storm and Logan, in order to ask for our help, where you expected them to fight a battle and suffer through a mild electrocution?’
Tia grinned sheepishly.
‘Well…the electricity wasn’t going to be enough to do any real HARM. You’d just get a bit of a headache.’
Marcus spoke up, clearly feeling the need to do some defending.
‘And it worked as well. The cloud spread, Tia zapped, and before we knew it we had our own little zombie scene going on. We had a few minutes before anyone started to wake up, so we dragged Alex out, and went to get Leyna from where we had told her to hide. When we came back, Alex was still out for the count, but you lot had completely vanished.’
He turned to glare at Logan, who shrugged.
‘Guilty as charged.’
Rogue rolled her eyes.
‘Come on. You KNOW he has a healing factor. Didn’t you have the sense to ‘factor’ that in?’ She winced at her own terrible pun.
Alex spoke up again.
‘He has a metal skeleton. We figured he’d conduct electricity better than most and so would be down for longer. We thought the adamantium would erase the advantage Logan’s healing gives him. Clearly we made a minor miscalculation, because when we returned, there was neither hide nor hair to be seen of any of the X-Men save for a black dot that was the jet disappearing into the distance.'
All eyes turned to Logan. Rogue voiced the question.
‘You walked away, AWAY, from a room full of unconscious members of the Brotherhood? No massacre?’
Logan looked majorly affronted.
‘Knew I had ta get out. Couldn’t leave One-Eye and Storm behind. I had to cover their asses.’
He shot a grin a Scott that was just pure Logan. Scott appeared highly irritated.
Alex was watching Logan, looking considerably suspicious.
‘Seriously? All those bastards at your mercy and you just walked away?’
Logan rolled his eyes.
‘So, I kicked Sabretooth. Once. Twice. Multiple times.’
Alex looked highly disappointed.
‘The bastard is a healer.’
‘Yeah, an’ I had to make damn sure he wasn’t going to get up as quickly as I did.’
Up went a questioning eyebrow.
‘I got him where the sun don’t shine. With steel-capped boots. Like ta see the oversized pussycat grow those back.’
By the time that sentence was out of Logan’s mouth, every male in the room was wincing, and every female was rolling her eyes. Logan looked faintly smug.
‘Anyway…’ apparently Tia thought it was time to get the ball rolling again. ‘We weren’t protected by those helmets things so we knew the Professor would have at least sensed Leyna. We got as far as the fuck away from Magneto as we could and sat down to wait. Cyclops and Storm picked us up just before dawn.’
‘And here we are. End of lesson. Any questions?’
Remy spoke up.
‘Remy got a question. De little girl. Remy ain’t doubting what you said, but to Remy, the chere not look like a girl dat been tortured.'
All eyes flickered to Leyna, who had abandoned the miniature horse, and was twirling a finger through Freddie’s fur, turning patches of it sparkling pink. Remy had a very good point, thought Rogue. She’d lived with Logan’s memories haunting her dreams for years, and she knew that a victim of horrible torture did not look like that.
‘We think it is something to do with her power. She doesn’t really seem to remember. We think perhaps that her mind has changed it from an event to some kind of horrible dream. I don’t think Leyna actually views what happened as reality. Her mind is protecting her sanity, and she can escape it during the day. At night it comes back to haunt her.’
Marcus’ explanation made sense, in Rogue’s opinion. It fit with what they had been told of Leyna’s power, and it fit with what she knew of the mind protecting itself. She knew that Logan couldn’t clearly remember what had happened to him, except when it revisited him in dreams. She felt another stab of sympathy.
‘So…what happens now? Magneto has found, and lost, this extraordinary weapon that could win him the war. He’s got to be furious. He’s going to want that weapon back. At any cost. Problem is we’ve got it.’
The Professor nodded.
‘An excellent summary, Jubilee. I must confess that I am not entirely sure where we go from here. It is certain that Magneto will want Leyna back, but I sense he would be reluctant to actually attack the mansion, despite the fact he must know that that is where she will be.’
Huh?
‘Why?’ Rogue had aimed her question at the Professor, but it was Logan that answered.
‘Magneto is a soldier. If he’s going ta fight a war, there are certain tactics he’ll follow. If he was certain of an easy win, then maybe he’d attack the mansion, but he ain’t gonna be so sure now, seein’ as we got Leyna and the Fearsome Threesome over there. If he wants ta fight, he goin’ ta try and pick us off, one by one, or, if he’s forced ta stage a battle, he’ll want to do it somewhere where we don’t have the advantage ‘a bein’ on home ground.’
The Professor looked pleasantly surprised.
‘Exactly.’
Jubilee looked baffled.
‘So…what exactly DO we do?’
The Professor smiled slightly.
‘We know he will come for Leyna eventually. And I think we are all agreed we cannot let that happen.’ There was a series of nods. ‘So we wait him out. Eventually he will have to attack the mansion if we leave him no other option to regain possession of his ‘weapon’. So we prepare. We sit tight. And we wait.’
#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~#~
Rogue felt like her brain was about to explode. To think, that only an hour ago, she had been angry at Logan for her disturbed night of sleep, confused by the little episode in the middle of the night, and worried about her appearance. Now she had a whole host of other things to worry about.
Magneto had tortured a seven year old. Said seven year old girl had the power to destroy the world. The mansion was now a safe house for little girl and her motley gang of rescuers. Magneto wanted this girl back. Badly. And the Professor, their great and trusted leader, well, his plan was just to WAIT IT OUT.
Was he insane? Could he seriously not see that this was a really bad idea?
God, her head hurt. She needed some form of distraction from the entire horrible affair and she needed it now.
She was so distracted by her need for distraction that she jumped out of her skin when she opened the door to her room and discovered Logan standing, looking out of the window, his back to the room. She felt a strange sense of déjà vu.
‘Jesus, Logan! You scared the life out of me! Are you planning on making a habit of this?’
He smiled slightly, looking apologetic, but ever so slightly distracted. His hair was nicely mussed, as though he had been running his hands through it, although, she reminded herself sternly, now was hardly the time to be noticing this.
‘Sorry, kid. Didn’t mean to frighten you. Jus’ don’t feel like I can think too much at the moment. Needed a distraction.’
Having him in her room again, after the bizarre affair of the previous night was distraction enough, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.
‘Um…yeah.’
Oh great, her sparkling conversation was back. He raised an eyebrow.
‘Logan, what do you think the Professor is doing? I mean, he HATES war and battles and all of that. Why is he suggesting we just wait here for the Brotherhood to attack? Shouldn’t he be trying to come up with some clever, tactical plan to diffuse the entire situation? I mean…he’s Professor Charles Xavier.’
Logan looked at her for a second, and then turned away to look out of the window.
‘I got no idea. Maybe he honestly thinks this is the best way. Maybe he ain’t got no other ideas. Or maybe, he can’t stand tha’ thought of what those fuckers did to that girl, and he wants blood.’
‘This is the PROFESSOR, Logan.’
‘Probably option 2 then.’
He groaned, running his fingers through his hair, and rubbing the back of his neck. She strangled the irritating voice inside her that was ordering her to offer him a back rub. This is Logan, little voice! Stop having inappropriate thoughts.
‘God I need a break.’
He looked amused.
‘It’s nine o’clock in the morning.’
‘See, and this is why nothing good can ever come from getting up early. All cockerels should be strangled. All alarm clocks should be smashed. In fact, they should just go the whole hog, and make mornings illegal.’
If Logan had looked amused before, he now looked like he was trying not to collapse laughing.
‘Yeah, kid, you were right. You need a break.’
‘Any ideas?’
He grinned. Slightly maliciously. Uh oh.
‘Danger Room.’
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Author's Chapter Notes:
Had to stop writing because of exams :( Still, safely on study leave now, and have quite a backlog of chapters to post. Huge thanks to everyone that has reviewed so far, it makes me very happy, and I hope this is okay :)