Which is actually the teal first part of the actual fiction. Heh.
::Chapter:_:Two: Premiere Episode (part 1)
She was running for her life. Something people who weren’t born in New York did. People who were born in New York packed heat, or at least a taser. This woman didn’t have any of those. She just had fast feet.
Something in the darkness above was following her, leaping from building to building like something out of a horror movie.
But that wasn’t what she was running from. She didn’t even know that the blackened shape above was *there*.
What she was running from was a typical New York gang. They had knives and, though running with them was not wise, they were doing so anyway.
It’s all fun and games until somebody loses an eye.
The woman ran into a fence, and rattled it in the way of all those who never learned to climb, yet couldn’t abandon a fifty-dollar pair of shoes in order to make climbing possible. She screamed, and only got some loud guy telling her to shut up, because the game was on.
People rarely care if anyone screams in New York.
The gang stopped at the mouth of the alleyway, and as one man, smiled. They liked it when their prey was trapped. It made for more fun.
“Please - I’ll give you anything… Don’t hurt me?”
“Maybe we take it anyway, anh?” their leader grinned. “Maybe we *like* you, an’ let you go.”
A dark shape descended, dropping out of the sky. “Maybe you should let her go anyway.”
There was an Angel in the alley. Six foot two, blue eyes, blond hair… the well-defined muscles of a man who worked out, and the cocky smile of someone who knew he had wings.
White, perfect, angel’s wings.
“…oh my God…” whispered the woman.
Nobody noticed the slight sneer that crossed the Angel’s face, the imperceptible tilt of the eye.
No.
Everybody was looking at the wings. Everybody *always* looked at the wings.
“Fuck you!” The leader attacked. It was a very short decision that resulted in him being catapulted over the heads of his compadres. A pair of wings made a very effective weapon, since they were full of muscle.
The rest of them broke and ran.
“OhmyGod, ohmyGod, ohmyGod…” The woman stepped forward. “Oh, thank *Jesus*…”
Warren Worthington III leaped, unfurling his wings and propelling himself upwards so that his rescuee would not get clingy. He *hated* it when they got clingy.
They never said ‘Thankyou’. They always praised God or Jesus.
As far as he was concerned, both of them were *dead*, and fuck 'em both for making him like *this*. A freak.
…and behind him, in the shadows of the alley, one shadow detached itself to look upwards. This figure was blue and covered in a fine, soft fur. His eyes glowed in the dark and his pointed ears stood out.
Kurt Wagner smiled, showing sharp teeth. “Unglaublich…”
~
Professor Charles Xavier, bald, late forties and confined to a wheelchair, whirred down the corridor at his School for Gifted Youngsters with a deep-set frown on his face. The halls, with their rustic oaken panelling and claret coloured carpet, were empty save for himself. At one time the multitude of rooms he passed might’ve been filled with children, learning, laughing and playing the way youth does.
Yet the classrooms lay empty, thick with dust and inhabited now only by spiders. The children were almost all gone, or had been stopped before they even arrived. Only those with no home other than this place remained, and there were no classes anymore for there was no time to teach, and no teachers to spare. Charles Xavier’s dream of a school had been dashed by the exposure of mutantkind to the world, and now his mansion in Westchester, New York was a hollow shell of its former glory.
Yet it was a shell for a very good reason.
Camouflage.
He wheeled into the elevator and pushed the button that would lead him to the lower levels of the Institute, then steepled his hands in front of his face and closed his eyes.
Why now? Why did that idiot Dann have to choose now to make things difficult? The letter in his pocket burned a hole in the fabric, and he patted his jacket just to make sure it was still there and he hadn't just imagined receiving it.
It was, and he hadn’t.
Damn.
The elevator came to a juddering halt, and dinged open to reveal quite a different hallway to the one he’d just left. Shining steel graced the curved walls and vaulted ceiling, latticed with bleeping nodes and wires like the inside of some hideously engorged microchip. Star Trek had nothing on this place.
Yet Xavier paid it no heed as he flipped the switch on his wheelchair and trundled along towards a huge metal door emblazoned with two shafts crossed over each other to form the letter 'X’. There was no doubt to whom it was referring, and he quickly punched the relevant code into the security panel and waited for the doors to hiss open on a glass-fronted room overlooking what could only be referred to as what a Roman Amphitheatre would’ve looked like had there been no seats for spectators and made of metal.
The only figure in the room looked up from where he sat by the control board, brow creasing at the sight of Xavier. Scott Summers straightened at the sight of his employer and oft-times mentor, twirling around to face him and stand.
“Professor? I didnít expect to see you down here today. I thought you had a meeting 'til twelve.”
“I cancelled it.”
Scott frowned. Xavier never cancelled his meetings. Something must be very wrong for him to start now.
“If you please,” Xavier said, gesturing to the controls. “A little privacy might be in order.”
“Oh yeah, right,” Scott said, hastily flipping off the intercom and setting the controls to automatic.
Xavier rolled forwards to the great window and peered down into the room beyond. Five figures were currently engaged in battling a giant, multi-tentacled monster of gigantic proportions, and using an array of methods to do so. Two women floated effortlessly above it, one raining down lightning bolts and the other outstretching a hand to guide missiles made of any moveable object in the room. Below them a trio of men circled the creature. One of them appeared to be made entirely of metal, and engaged a number of tentacles; snapping them off and tossing them aside like twigs. The other two stayed at a more respectable distance, one firing red beams of energy from his hands at the monster's main body, the other using a long bo to flip, weave and dodge whilst flinging tiny glowing shards that exploded upon contact.
The monster was only holographic, but they fought as though it were real.
This was the reason the school was no longer a school. These six individuals were what lay behind that thin excuse, for they were a very special 'arm of enforcement’, once vigilantes, but – since mutant exposure – funded by America’s Trusting Taxpayers and controlled almost entirely by the U.S. government.
They were called the 'X-Men’, and they were mutants.
“Professor?” Scott, leader of the team and Xavierís first recruit when he was no more then fourteen years old, stood behind the wheelchair and waited for whatever it was that had brought Xavier down here where the dirty work was done.
“I received a letter from Shawn Dann,” Xavier said simply.
“That PR guy?” Scott was confused. Ever since the X-Men fell under government control thanks to legal difficulties, Shawn Dann had been assigned to get them good press and keep their more destructive activities incognito. Scott had only met him once, but his memories were of a thin, ratty guy who stank of cheap cologne and used far too much grease in his hair. “Why’d he write? Doesn’t he know how to use a computer?”
“He says we’re not getting enough press recently,” Xavier went on, choosing not to answer the question. “Or at least, not any good press. He’s sent me the details of a crime that’s to happen tonight at a certain hotel in Manhattan. I’m to send the X-Men out to deal with it. Apparently it involves a famous singer and an assassination attempt on her, which will then develop into a full-throttle hostage situation on the fourteenth floor. The paparazzi will already be there because of the singer, and when the X-Men rescue the situation, they will gain the adulation of the press once more.”
Scott’s mouth nearly fell open. “You can’t be serious?”
Xavier sighed a weary sigh and pulled the letter out of the pocket. "See for yourself. That’s why he didn’t send it via email where it could be intercepted and copied. This arrived not half an hour ago in an unmarked black van. It has the details of the place, the singer, and what we’re to do.“
Scott scanned the piece of paper. "Seems like he has it all planned out.” Then he crumpled it. “Bastard. We’re supposed to be working on human-mutant relations, not playing ring-around-the-rosies with the National Enquirer.”
Xavier rubbed at his temples, stressed enough about the recent boom in the mutant population without having to deal with petty things like this. “I know, Scott. But Dann intimated that if the X-men don’t appear, lives might be taken so as to keep up the charade. I…I can’t risk…” he trailed off, and Scott kicked idly at the console.
“Bastard,” he said again. “I take it you came down here to run this by me?”
“You *are* the field leader. I canít exactly just send the team out without your approval. Besides which, I’m not entirely sure what to do in this instance.” Xavier spread his hands wide. “Humanity needs to know that mutantkind is not a specific threat, but I’m reluctant to use such… measures. It’s a duplicitous path to take, and one which can only end in bad feeling.”
Scott sucked in a breath of air through his teeth. “Mind it I ask the others on this one? It’s more of a moral dilemma than a team-leader decision, so they’d probably be peeved if I did anything without them.”
Xavier nodded, and Scott killed the training simulation. Then he flipped the intercom back on.
~
Rain pattered against the ground like bullets, lightening danced wildly across the sky, thunder pummelled the air. It was not a good time to fly.
This was why, though it was still far from late, Warren returned to his apartment.
It was a comfortable little place, not overly luxurious for a man of his station, but neat and pleasant enough to make most people impressed.
He landed on the balcony, shaking teardrops of water off his clothes and wings.
There was a knock on the door.
Warren rushed to it, checking through the peep hole to see who the visitor was.
His heart ceased it’s momentous thudding when he saw his visitor's identity.
Smiling, he unbolted and unlocked the door, allowing Greg Hallson to enter.
Greg was one of a very few friends Warren kept, and one of even fewer that knew of his mutation. Indeed, Greg was the only person that knew of Warren’s wings and who was still in speaking terms with him.
’*Jesus Warren!*’ said Greg when he entered. 'You look like a drowned pigeon!’
Smiling, the angelic man shrugged and went to fetch himself a towel whilst Greg locked the door for him.
'Been out flying again?’ he asked rhetorically. 'You should take more care, your father really doesn’t approve.’
'Father,’ replied Warren smoothly, coming out of the bathroom, 'can go fuck himself with a fork. As long as I have these wings I might as well enjoy them. Go– I mean, heck knows I get little enjoyment out of anything else.’
Greg shrugged, 'Maybe,’ he replied, 'but you’re daddy’s the one with the purse, so it’d be good to stay on the right side of him.’
Warren gave no reply, he simply moved to the kitchen to make himself some coffee.
'Aannyway,’ continued Greg, feeling that he was on shaky ground, 'I've got some good news for you. Actually, it was your dad that asked me to deliver it, seeing as you’re not answering your phone much these days-’
Warren rolled his eyes, but his stomach shrank with dark dread, he had thought he knew what this was about.
As if on cue, Greg flourished an envolope, already opened.
'This is a statement from your doctor and surgeon,’ he proclaimed with bouncy enthusiasm, 'it’s about your last check-up. All the tests show that your bones have stopped growing now, your skeleton’s secure!’
'Yeah… so.’
'SO it can finally happen. Warren, it’s safe now! You can have that operation! Get those wings off your back at last. Bye bye freedom, hello sunny world!’
'Great,’ replied Warren, not sure if he meant is sincerely or sarcastically.
On the one hand this was a moment he’d been waiting for for years now, this was a moment his parents had been waiting for. They’d finally get their normal little boy back. No more consultations, operations, therapists, and all the other shit they had put him through since those two bumps had appeared on his back so long ago.
On the other had losing his wings meant he would never fly again.
He would never fly…
Warren sighed and pourded the coffee whilst Greg asked him why he wasn’t acting happier.
'I am happy,’ replied Warren, 'really, it’s just that, you know, this is a big step! I need some time to adjust.’
'OK,’ said his friend tentatively, 'but in the meantime I’ve got some more good news!’
'Humm?’
'Well, when I heard about this I thought to myself, it’s time to celebrate, so I did a bit of work and… TA DA!’
Greg reached into his jaket pocket and flourished two tickets.
'What are those?’ asked Warren uncertainly.
'Those, my dear Angelic compaion, are two tickest to see the next show by that babe you keep going on about, that singer, Dazzler! She's performing in Manhattan! These two tickets allow us not only to go to the concert, but to join her for dinner at her hotel tonight!’
'You’re joking!’ exlaimed Warren.
'Uh uh, just us and a few other guys, a private dinner with the girl herself! My dad runs the hotel, you see, and he picked us up these, knowing how much you love Dazzler. Well, what do you say?’
'I say,’ said Warren carefully, 'that you are one of the best friends ever!’
He grabbed Greg up and gave him a manly hug, laughing merrily, forgetting his troubles.
'Come on, Warren,’ laughed Greg, breaking free from the embrace, 'we better get moving! It’ll be starting soon.’
Warren nodded and went to grab a shower, change of clothes, and a brace to hide his wings.
No more than half an hour later they had entered Greg’s Rolls Royce and were making their way to Manhattan.
Outside a figure watched them leave.
Such was his appearence that he was almost undestinguishable from the gargoyles that lined the roof of the high-rise building.
Nightcrawler smiled, his teeth glittering.
Well, well, well, what a facinating situation. It definitely merited some extra attention.
Moving carefuly, with acrabatic swiftness, he followed the Royce, determined to watch this angel fall.
~
“I will not do it!” Piotr banged his fist down on the console, and Scott was thankful he was in his 'human’ form. Had he been wearing his metal skin, no doubt the entire thing would’ve been smashed with the force of the blow. As it was it left only a sizeable dent in the metal.
“Careful, mon ami,” Remy drawled around his cigarette. “You break it, you bought it.”
Piotr glared, but composed himself and sat back down in his chair, which creaked under his weight.
The X-Men resided in a patchy circle around the control room, some sitting, some standing, but all visibly tense. Remy stood off to one side, not quite part of the group, and casually flicked ash onto the floor like the conversation was nothing to him. The others, however, weren’t quite so relaxed.
“I will not do it,” Piotr said again, barely repressed anger sharpening his Russian accent. His style of speech was always more formal than his teammates anyway, but when emotion got the better of him, it somehow became more pronounced. Unlike Remy, who sank further into his Cajun twang until he was barely comprehensible. “I refuse to be used in such a way. It is… it is…” he searched for the right word, spreading his hands wide.
Scott nodded. “I understand where you’re coming from, Piotr, but what happens if we don’t go? Things could get real ugly in a hostage situation. And so many floors up, there’s only so much the police can do. Besides which, I get the feeling Dann could have them hold off forever waiting for us to arrive.”
Next to him, Jean bobbed her head in her own assent. Her short red hair, cropped close to her skull, caught the light and appeared almost orange as she did so, and her green eyes sparkled with unabashed fury. "How could they do something like this? We’re supposed to be the good guys, not the ones instigating problems.“
"Pardon me for stating the obvious, but I think that’s the point." Alex, Scott’s younger brother by two years sighed and fiddled with the stitching on the sleeve of his uniform. His blonde hair, cut slightly longer than Jean’s, swished over his ears and covered one eye in a rakish manner. "Look, whatever we decide, this assassination-cum-hostage-taking is gonna go down tonight. The thing we have to decide is whether we’ll be there to join the party.”
Scott surveyed his brother. Alex was the original go-getter, who hated nothing so much as sitting on his hands when there was a chance of action. However, Scott had been cursed with an over-abundance of reason and morals, and was often the one to hold his darling sibling back in the face of any danger Alex was too caught up to see.
Piotr looked between them. “I will not do it,” he said emphatically.
Alex waved a careless hand. “Yeah, yeah, we heard you the first time. Jeez, change the record, Pete.”
“If we don’t go,” a breathy mezzo coalesced from the shadow to become a white-haired woman, dark skin offset by the startling white of her uniform, “People may die.” Ororo was only nineteen years old, but the Egyptian beauty commanded authority, and there was an aura of nobility about her that forced respect even from her elders. Even the rather skimpy outfit Dann had provided didn’t detract from her innate dignity - which was amazing, considering she wore only a glorified bikini and billowing cape.
“If we do go,” Piotr countered, “There will be a fight. People may die.”
“Wherever the X-Men go, there’s a fight,” Jean exhaled noisily.
“An’ a reporter wit’ a camera to film it, chere,” Remy reminded her, strange red eyes glowing bright as the cherry on his smouldering cigarette in the gloom. Out of habit he’d chosen the deepest recesses of shadow, his thief instincts taking over.
Jean shot him a sardonic look, but said nothing. Instead, she turned to the Professor, who was sat in his wheelchair next to Ororo with his eyes closed, listening to their banter. Had she not been able to sense his feverishly working mind, she might’ve assumed he was asleep. "Professor, what do you think we should do?“
They all turned, fixing upon their mentor. Xavier cracked an eyelid and peered at them in turn. "I cannot make your decisions for you, but I can give you my opinion on the matter. For what it’s worth.” He sat up, spokes creaking, and surveyed the gathering of mutants.
Once, these had been as children to him. He’d trained several of them since childhood, at any rate, and known the others so long it was as if they were family. Yet now they stood before him as warriors before their general, and his stomach sank at what they’d become under the thumb of higher powers.
_The other students will not succumb to the same fate,_ he vowed to himself for the umpteenth time, thinking of the handful of mutated children upstairs in the main body of the mansion. They had nowhere else to go, and in a few cases he’d been named their legal guardian. To them, he was their father, and they his children. He’d be damned if he made them into soldiers the same way he’d mistakenly done to the X-Men. No government officials would ever get their claws into those young ones while there was still breath left in his body.
“Professor?” Scott prompted, dragging him back to the present.
“Against my better judgement, I feel you should go tonight. If you don’t, the results could be catastrophic for all concerned. According to Dann’s letter, there will be at least twenty people at the hotel, and that isn’t counting people on other floors and staff. The assassins will have automated weaponry. Asassins - as in the plural. It’s to seem like you’re battling a militant group of radicals. That way when they're dealth with there will be no backlash.”
Piotr was aghast. “But we shall… it is prostitution of our powers, Professor! Can you not see that? We would be betraying who and what we are, all for the sake of a few pictures and our names in tomorrow's newspaper.”
“Twenty lives is to many to lose simply because of our morals, Piotr," Xavier said softly, every word grating like sandpaper in his throat. "Those innocent people at the hotel don’t know what’s going to happen. They’ll be unprepared, and may panic. Terrible things happen in moments like that, as you well know.”
Piotr opened his mouth at that, but closed again and fell back into his seat, mumbling angrily.
“What exactly is the 'reason’ behind this assassination attempt, mon professeur?” Remy stressed the word 'reason’, showing his contempt for such a set-up. As if his slip into French hadn’t done so already.
Xavier sighed. “The singer they’re targetting is a closeted mutant.”
“Except to the guv'ment, oui?”
He nodded. “Yes. They’re going to 'out’ her. In public. The assassination is to be paraded as a high profile strike against 'the evils of mutantkind’. The job of the X-Men is to go in and stop it with as little bloodshed as possible, thereby appearing 'better’ than the minor radical group attempting it.”
“Hey career’ll be finished, whatever we do,” Jean said in a low voice, feeling for the young woman who had become mixed up in their PR through no fault of her own.
“Her life will be finished if we don’t go 'rescue’ her,” Alex pointed out.
“If she’s publically outed as a mutant, her life won’t be worth living anyway,” said Ororo, a sorrowful note to her voice.
“Why must we play games with such people?” Piotr demanded suddenly. "Is it not enough that we work for them, now they feel they must recreate us in their image? Why must we be party to this shameless destruction of lives?“
"Ce n'est pas notre place que de demander pourquoi,[1]” Remy muttered, blowing out a cloud of grey smoke. Piotr cut his eyes at his teammate.
“One of these days, LeBeau, I am going to purchase a French dictionary and see what in blazes you say.”
Remy only grinned, while Jean and the Professor looked at him with sad eyes. They’d caught the translation in his mind as a surface thought, and it cut them both to the quick to know that it was true.
“So, we going then?” Alex stood up, answering his own question. Nobody bothered to argue, and he left without another word to prep the jet. Manhattan was a stone’s throw as far as flying went, but if this was to be a show for the press, then they might as well show up in style. Emphasise their image as superheroes.
_Just so long as we don’t have to wear utility belts,_ Scott thought wryly. _Or cowls with ears. Visors I can deal with, but cowls are out._ It felt good to think about something so trivial as he went off to ruin a life just to enhance his own.
Remy and Xavier were the last to leave, the thief once more allowing his training to take over as he slipped out quieter than a wraith.
“Une fois de plus dans le feu de l'action, mes amis.[2]”
~
“Get the database online, Scat!”
The three morlock teens who were manning the system jumped at the sudden sharp voice of their leader, barking them out of their card game. "Y..yes sir!“ A small girl who had catlike features said, and scurried to her position as the others took up their own.
The computer, if one could call it that, was a mess of wires, dumpster equipment, and here and there a piece of stolen high-tech merchandise. It looked as if it would explode any minute, with the multi-cross connections that just barely managed to support it’s life.
Nevertheless, it came close to rivalling any other system in it's resources on the planet.
The Nightcrawler stood, arms folded, eyes staring at the screens as they loaded up the entry files. "Do a search. Male, mid thirties, over 6’ blonde, blue eyes, angelic wings.”
The three blinked, and stared back at him as if he were nuts, but didn’t question his judgement. They learned quickly not to. He was ruthless, fast and sharp-tongued if his ire was up, but he took care of his own like family if they respected his authority.
Morlocks.
That’s what their 'informal’ name was… there were other more honorific titles, but the kids who lived down here in the sewers didn't often get above to play out those lofty goals until they had been through more rigorous training.
But they would soon….
~