Very much NSFW fic continued from yesterday:
Fracture Seven: Get out!
Flight had control, but that didn’t mean he had *brains*. He ricochetted off the doors, the walls of the cage and the seat while Hess laughed at him. He scrabbled at the back window as the school and all hints of safety vanished from view.
“You can try anything you like, Herr Flockig,” she said. “I mean to keep you, and none of your filthy gypsy tribe are going to stop me.”
Oh, for Andrei’s metal shoes, right now…
Flight landed elbow-first on a window. It cracked.
Egress!
He repeated his action, and the window shattered. He was halfway out before he realised that they were in a moving car, and that car was moving along the Bayville Expressway. He scrambled up to the top of the car and looked about for a means of escape. Any sort of escape. Except, of course, death.
There! A car travelling at roughly the same speed he was.
He jumped without thinking, ran over it and leaped for another car. Going for a stationary object, right now, was suicide. But he *could* get further and further away from Hess. He just had to keep moving, get away. hop from car to car to car to - truck.
He landed on the grill and hauled himself upwards.
It had to happen eventually. Something like one in twenty vehicles on an autobahn were trucks. The odds couldn’t constantly be in his favour.
The driver took one look at him and stood on the brakes, fishtailing across the expressway and throwing Kurt off the front of the truck.
At least he knew how to land.
Flight picked himself up as soon as he’d rolled to a halt. There were strangers coming at him. He ran away from them, only to encounter another group of strangers coming at him from the other direction.
Deperate times.
He built up speed and leaped.
Right over the gap between incoming and outgoing lanes of the Bayville Expressway.
The traffic on the other side didn’t stop. Good. He hunkered down near the barrier, on the thin strip of tarmac between him and the speeding vehicles, and prayed for a friend.
This wasn’t Heirelgart. Flight didn’t know how to get home from here, even though one of the other voices whispered something about another home. In Bayville.
But which way was that?
His tumble from the truck had shaken him up. Got him turned around. And it was midday, which meant he couldn’t even use his night senses to seek out the compass points.
Had Hess known about that when she took him? Get him lost, so that he couldn’t find his way home?
*
“…storm front is expected to continue moving eastwards. Tomorrow–”
“Sorry to interrupt, Hal, but we’ve just got some breaking news on an event on the Bayville Expressway. We’re going to cross live to our camera crews on the site.”
Xavier could already sense that one of his students was involved. _Please let them be all right._
A chopper was monitoring the cleaning up of a traffic jam involving a truck and a congestion of pedestrians. The camera, though, kept the truck on the *edge* of the screen, because of a small figure hunkering on the other side of the highway.
“Twenty miles outside of Bayville, witnesses say this teenager broke *out* of a car and started leaping from vehicle to vehicle.” The camera zoomed on on the huddled figure. His face wasn’t visible, but Xavier knew that shade of indigo-blue hair anywhere.
Kurt.
At least he still had his hologram on.
“He finished on the front of the truck now blocking the other side of the Expressway,” the camera indicated the truck, “which slammed on the brakes, blocking three lanes of traffic. The unknown teenager then got up and ran *away* from concerned citizens who were trying to help him. A subsequent attempt to catch him resulted in him jumping the gap,” the camera zoomed onto the gap, “over to where he is now. That’s a jump of nearly *ten* feet. Over a twenty-foot fall onto nothing but solid concrete. Yes, I think we’re going to cross to our ground crew, now. We’re going to see what some witnesses have to say.”
“Ah saw him. He up an’ outta that car like the *devil* were in there. He jus’ le'p on mah car, up and over it, and on ta th’ nex’ one afore Ah could *blink*,” said Sandy, Witness. “Ah ‘member watchin’ th’ boy afore he went an’ done it. He were jumpin’ aroun’ in there like a *mad*man. Ah tell you whut. You jes’ gotta be plumb crazy t’ wanna le'p outta a car like that.”
Jeff, Truckdriver, was on next. “I saw th’ boy some ten car lengths ahead of me. All the time he was comin’ closer, I was thinkin’ - 'Don't you jump on my rig, you crazy sonofabitch. Don’t you *dare* jump on my rig.’ So o’ course he *did*. I saw his eyes when he pulled hisself up. I never wanna see eyes like that again. If I handn’t’ve stepped onna brake? I think he’d’ve climbed up right on over me an’ my load, and just tried for another car. He could'a *killed* hisself an’ he jus’ didn't *care*. I tell you, that boy was *desperate* to get away from something. *Desperate*.”
Richard, Police Officer, was nursing a styrofoam mug of coffee. “I was proceeding on my rounds when the truck came to an emergency stop in front of me. I could see the individual tumble to a halt through the gap underneath the truck. Of course, I immediately dismounted my bike in order to attempt aid.” He paused for a sip of coffee. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He should have had broken bones. Abrasions and contusions. But he just got up and *ran*. I’ve never seen anyone so afraid…” Sip. “I thought we could catch him, so I yelled to the people who’d stopped up the road to try and box him in. That was when he did a running jump over there.”
Again, the camera focussed on Kurt. He was crouched in a foetal position.
“The mystery teenager is, thankfully, refusing to move, but he remains *inches* from speeding traffic. All attempts at communication with him have so far been unsuccessful. Our sound crew are currently putting together a twelve-foot-long boom to see if this boy is, in fact, actually saying anything.” The camera went off Judi Bloom, Reporter, to focus on a bunch of techs doing things with cables, broom handles, and gaffa tape. The camera went back to Judi. “We’ve theorised that he *may* actually be responding, but that he’s too terrified to speak at an audible volume. We’re going to have to be careful, because this boy is obviously not thinking clearly.”
_You’ve got that right,_ By now, he’d summoned Hank, Ororo and Logan. They were watching the news as it unfolded with concern plain on their faces.
“Looks like the Elf flipped out again,” said Logan. “I’ll fetch him.”
“Yes. Next to me, he’s known you the longest. Be cautious. We don't want anyone hurt.”
“Right.”
On the screen the boom was being inched towards Kurt. He shuffled a little bit away, but seemed satisfied that it wasn’t a weapon. Officer Richard held up a megaphone and said, “Hello. Can you hear us?”
The boom picked up something that sounded like, “..ei..ar..”
They moved it closer. “Heirelgart. Heirelgart. Heirelgart…”
The media, thankfully, couldn’t make sense out of what he was saying. Xavier, on the other hand, was wincing. He’d picked up the fact that his home village was also his safe word. *Why* he felt he needed a safe word was something he hadn’t been able to glean from his time in Kurt’s mind.
All that he could be certain of, was that Kurt was in peril.
Xavier sent his mind out, and found yet another persona in charge.
This one called itself Flight. His primary goal was to get the body out of danger. Again, safety was the trigger back. Again, he couldn't quite remember what had bought him out into the open.
Xavier returned to the inside of his own head. It was difficult, at this distance, to focus on so many people at once. Even though they were technically one.
He had to be closer to get to Kurt.
Which meant that all he could really do was watch the news and hope.
On the screen, Judi was talking while the helicopter camera watched police seal off a lane on the Expressway.
“So far, he hasn’t said anything else but this strange word. We don't know what language he speaks. He could be a foreigner who was *abducted* into this country, and is trying to escape back home. We don’t know for certain, but this seems to be the most *logical* assumption. As this drama plays out, a police spokesperson has said that they’re bringing in a multilingual counsellor to try and talk to the boy, and – hold on. There’s something happening…”
The camera switched to the helicopter, which clearly showed that the assembled media were blocking a lane, on the opposite side to where Kurt was huddled. Quite a few news crews had improvised long booms to catch the sound on the other side.
Logan pulled up at the police cordon and said a few words while Judi narrated it.
“Someone has pulled up at the barrier and is talking to the police, there. We can’t hear what they’re saying, but it doesn’t seem to be an argument. The person is now walking towards the mystery teen…”
Logan approached slowly, stopping completely when Kurt started to shuffle away from him. Logan dropped into a crouch.
A dozen improvised booms edged towards him.
“Hey, kiddo. It’s me. Logan. You remember?”
Kurt kept whispering, “Heirelgart,” over and over again.
“Look. Kurt. Whatever you’ve been through, it ain’t gonna get better sittin’ here. Right? I can take ya home. Where it’s safe. Don'cha wanna go home? Don'cha wanna be safe?”
Kurt stopped saying, “Heirelgart.” He looked up. A dozen cameras could be heard snapping stills.
Logan stretched forward a hand. “C'mon. I’ll take ya home.”
Kurt was visibly shaking as he tentatively crept towards Logan.
*
The media followed them all the way to the Institute. They demanded an interview. They howled to know what had caused the 'Expressway Incident’. They popped flashes in broad daylight and refused to listen, rather preferring to holler questions at the top of their lungs.
“Professor!”
“Professor!”
“Professor!”
“Do you know why he did it?”
“Is he psychologically unbalanced?”
“What was he saying on the Expressway?”
“Why was he so scared?”
“Was he attacked by a mutant?”
Xavier ignored them all, helping Logan and Ororo guide Kurt inside the mansion.
*
“They’re not going to give up without some kind of statement,” Logan said, peeking out of the curtains. “And the Elf’s gone quiet.”
“That may work in our favour…” Xavier looked over to Kurt, who was nursing a hot chocolate. He was himself again, but intensely withdrawn. Xavier sighed. “I’ll prepare a statement for the media, and select a station with a modicum of restraint. The rest of them will have to cut a deal.”