Anna's second time on the Blackbird, the X-Men's ultra-sleek, high-tech, super jet was a great deal less romantic than the first time when she was spirited away from her hometown in Mississippi those many months ago. The harness crossing over her chest and buckling her tight into her seat dug into her neck and rode up on the crotch. The take-off from the jet's hidden lair on the base of the cliff was so abrupt and fast that her eyes wouldn't stop watering and her ears just didn't seem to want to pop despite their screaming need too. Then there was Logan sat the isle across from her. Just like her, was dressed up in his full combat gear and was just picking his teeth with one of his claws like it was nothing. If she wasn't 100% sure that turning to yell at him would make her projectile vomit, she would have.
Kurt popped up from behind the headrest of the seat in front of her, and he smiled a pointy tooth grin. "You look tense."
"I'm not tense." She pulled at the harness digging into her neck. "I'm the opposite. I'm thrilled I decided to use the bathroom before stepping onto this shit bird."
"It can be a lot when you're not used to it."
"And what, you are? How many missions have you been on since the gas station?"
"None, but we had a few before you joined our intrepid squad." Kurt scratched behind his ear. "You excited for you're first real outing? You look cute in your little green vest thing."
Anna pushed herself out of the trench her body had dug into the chair she sat in. "Yeah," she grunted, "the hell is this about? Everything else about my outfit is black but my boob part is green."
"We all have touches of color. Maybe it's so we can better identify each other in the heat of battle." He thumbed to his back. "I got a streak of blue along my back. I think Kitty has purple around the same spot as you. Evan has white on his back. Jean is green and Scott is yellow."
"Yeah, he's got that big stupid 'X' across his chest like he's an escaped test subject."
"And Jean has a slim lime green running from her shoulder to her leg… I'm thinking the Professor was still working out the uniform ideas when Scott and Jean joined."
Anna dared turn her queezy head in Logan's direction. His uniform was black with lines of gold that added depth to the sleek bullet-resistant armor. A round belt buckle with gold 'X' competed the outfit around his waist. "Why do you and Ororo get to look cool?"
"Because we paid for our uniforms." Logan pulled his claw from his teeth. "Remember codenames, skunk hair. We're on the job."
"We're 'on call' for a job." Anna laid back in her seat. "We're just getting sent to some crappy hospital on a lead we got from three stupid boys at our stupid school."
"Oh, it's real. Xavier got the info confirmed this mourning from his insiders a The Brotherhood. They're hitting Parkview General Hospital tonight with a lot of guys."
"What do they want with a hospital? Steal asprin?"
"Who knows. Either way, the place just got built and was loaded and stocked with supplies just the other day. It's set to open next week. Wouldn't be great optics for mutants if The Brotherhood go kicking in the doors of a newly built hospital."
Anna looked past Kurt's chair in front of her and down the aisle to the cockpit where Scott and Ororo sat. Ororo was dressed in a black shimmery fabric and a cloak that was lined with a white color that reminded her of an evening's freshly fallen snow. She sat in the left seat and Scott in the right who was peeking over the blinking controls and through the front window.
"Final approach!" He announced then refastened his harness.
Kurt disappeared behind his seat and Logan to Anna's left to fasten his seatbelt. "Make sure your com's are hot on your watches and face concealers activated!" Logan commanded as he fiddled with his watch.
Anna clutched her harness as the Blackbird stopped so suddenly she was thrown forward followed by a sharp descent that made her organs feel like they were all jockeying for a spot in her throat. Little stars danced in her vision as she glanced outside and saw they were now in a parking lot eclipsed by a tall building. She leaned forward and dabbed at the sweat on her brow till Logan's beefy hand took her by the shoulder.
"The weather witch is still training Cyclops with the jet. It's… uh, one hell of a learning curve."
Anna pushed herself off of the seat in front of her. "But why do we have to learn with him though?"
'Anna'
She shot up. "Xavier?"
'I'm speaking to you through your mind, Anna. I need you to activate your body camera please.'
"Oh, right." She flicked a subtle toggle switch on a tubular lens resting in the crook of her right shoulder. "Remind me again why you can't talk to us on a radio like a normal person?"
'Radio transmissions can be intercepted. Thoughts can not.'
"Well… isn't that just dandy." After struggling with the buckle to her harness for longer than she cared to admit, she finally joined the others outside the Blackbird who had already shaped up to form a circle.
"We don't know how many there are." She caught Cyclops mid-speech. "The Professor's sources do however assure us they will be striking tonight and it will be swift."
Kitty, AKA Shadowcat, raised her hand. Cyclops looked a little confused by the gesture but nodded his head in her direction.
"Anyone ever wonder who all these 'sources' are the Professor has? Does he just, like, know everyone? Do you think they all just met at a barbecue one day or something?"
"Any questions relevant to anything we are doing?"
Spike, AKA Evan the annihilator, raised his hand. "This hospital is huge. Do we know where they are or even what they want?"
"We don't have any specifics on a target. We'll split up and each of us will take 1 of the 7 floors."
"Uh," Kurt the Nightcrawler stepped up to Evan's side. "I don't know if that's such a good idea. What if one of us finds a whole group of them and then it's just the one person to face them all?"
"Then you should radio in before engaging."
Nightcrawler looked between Cyclops and the others.
"Maybe let's try this," Jean, call sign Phoenix, put her hand on Cyclops's shoulder. "Let's do teams of two so no one is alone. We can start from the bottom floors and work our way up." She looked at Cyclops, "Is that agreeable?"
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Yes. That's… probably better."
"I'll patrol the outside." Ororo declared with authority. it didn't seem so much like the older woman intended to check Cyclops' rank every time she spoke. She more or less seemed to speak with the same bravado of challenging the gods to a no-holds-barred arm wrestling match no matter what the circumstance was half the time. "I can provide support where needed and keep an eye out." She gestured in Logan's direction. "And I imagine Wolverine would like to work alone."
Wolverine crossed his arms. Something like a smile cracked his weathered unshaven cheeks. "Hell, I feel like I'm truly being seen right now."
Cyclops shook his head. "Alright. How about me and Phoenix, Shadowcat and Rogue, Nightcrawler and Spike?"
"Oh!" Kitty clapped her hands together. "That way everyone can be with their friends!"
Cyclops pulled off the visor that amplified his laser vision and rubbed his face. "Just… pick a floor and say something on coms if you find anything weird, alright?"
-
"It's weird in here," Shadowcat said as she and Anna walked side by side in a darkened hallway illuminated solely by the moonlight outside. "It feels like being in school after hours. It's just not right." Her wristlight played off the blue and tan checkered floor was well as the white wall to their right.
Still feeling mildly barfy and off balance, Rogue let her hand run along the length of the handrail built into the wall. She stared ahead, the trip on the Blackbird a recent memory, and the anxiety of possible nearby danger was doing a conga line of dread in her guts. "I think I'm majorly regretting being alive right now" she whispered.
"You ever been in school after hours?" Shadowcat continued. "I remember in Middle School when I was helping set up our school dance. I still had to stay after school to help plan and prep and do stuff like that, you know? So most of the time we would meet up in the library to plan dance committee stuff… or was it the computer lab? No, now I remember. There were computers in the library we went to. Anyway, once I got the munchies and wanted a snack, so I went into a dark-as-heck hallway just outside. Boy was it weird. I found the janitor moping, right, except he didn't have a shirt on. But he was wearing one of those jumpsuit things that kinda has to have a shirt -"
As they passed a nurses station, Rogue felt all thought drain out of her ears along with most of the words dribbling out of Shadowcat's mouth. Her roommate and friend had become some of the best company Rogue had ever managed to keep around in her life, and she tried to listen when the other girl spoke. Eventually, though, a cup can no longer be filled and will overflow onto the ground. And right now most of Rogue's cup was filled with her own bile.
A snap like crunching wood brought them both to a standstill. Shadowcat grabbed onto Rogue's upper arm as they listened. Only silence greeted their attention. Shadowcat brought her wrist to her face. "Guys? What was that?"
Eventually, a reply came in the form of Avalanche's voice, but it sounded distant. "- seen it coming." Said the boy, just barely audible. "Toad's mouth is almost as big as fat head."
"I said, quiet!" Shouted a person's voice Rogue didn't recognize. It was clear and spoke with confidence. "Turn around and leave. Both of you. Now."
"Yeah - we can't do that." Came in Spike's voice.
"You think I'm playing, boy?"
"Do you think I am?" There was a strange sound Rogue recognized as Spike drawing his bony thorn.
"Kat," Anna whispered. "What floor did Spike and Nightcrawler say there were going on?"
Shadowcat mouthed the words. "I don't remember."
Over the com the pair could hear something like high voltage electricity popping. "I'm not warning you two again." The voice growled.
"Spike! Get down!" Scott shouted over the com and then there was the sound of his eye beam being fired. Static was followed by silence.
'Rogue, Shadowcat - they are on the fourth floor.' Xavier's voice echoed in Rogue's mind. 'You must hurry! There is someone new with them! Wolverine is already on his way!'
Shadowcat's eyes met Rogue's "Crumbs!" She bolted down the hall. "Elevator or stairs? Elevator or stairs! You're not supposed to take an elevator in an emergency, right?"
"Hey! Kat, hold up!" Rogue followed after the girl when an open door with a yellow light pouring through caught her eye. It was down an adjoining hall in a cluster of offices. Rogue took a look back down the hall Shadowcat went down and found she had since disappeared.
Rogue muttered a curse, bit her lip, the drew her laser pistol from a holster at her hip. She made her footfalls as soft as possible and tucked her 50s sci-fi throwback squirt gun close to her chest. The open door within arm's reach now, she hugged the wall and dared a peak inside. Beyond was an office bare of any personal effects. On an empty desk sat a computer monitor and a wired black keyboard. A black office chair tucked under the desk was the only source of color to be found in the whole room. When she peared her head in further she saw another door opposite hers with a white fluorescent light bleeding into the office's ambient and comfortable yellow.
She got low and tucked through the gap in the door and into the office. The soft carpeted floor made it even easier to sneak up on the next door where she repeated the process of poking her head in. This time she very clearly spotted a person in a long brown coat knelt before something on the ground in a room lined with metal. She tried to catch a glimpse of the face but it was obscured by the coat's popped collar. Rogue sat there long enough, she could just pick up on the person humming something.
"In a godda da vida, baby… Don't you know that I'll always be true… take my haaaaand…"
Rogue stared. 'Is that guy… singing In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida?' She thought. Looking around the room, she found no one and nothing else that seemed to pose a threat, so she leveled her pistol for the guy's head, stood, and crept closer.
"Freeze!"
A head of black hair drooped slightly followed by a hand in a fingerless glove tucked a handful of it back behind an ear. The person turned and peered back at Rogue with flaming red irises eyes and completely black eyeballs. "Can I help you?" Said a voice so soaked in Cajon seasoning that Rogue thought her stomach was now starting to play tricks on her.
"Ya'll can help me by stopping what you're doin' and standing up!" Rogue felt the Missippi fly free from her lips as if she was just some other good-old-boy back home telling her friend at the barbecue 'What's good?'
The figure turned to reveal the face of a chestnut-skinned woman with a grinning row of white teeth. She whistled. "She-yoot! What part of the Confederacy did you crawl out of there Song of the South?"
Rogue squeezed the trigger hard enough on her laser pistol for the internal mechanism to make a charging sound. "A place where ammo is cheap."
"Ho!" The stranger chuckled. "Now here I thought New York was going to be boring." She turned back around to continue working on what Rogue could now see was a safe. "How about you give me just a few ticks and we can play. Sound good, cher?
A bolt of scarlet light flew inches above the woman's head and drove deep into the thin metalwork of the wall. The head drooped again. "Wise men say patience is a virtue you know."
"I've never been considered wise and I ain't no man." Rogue kicked the door closed behind her. "Who are you and what are you and those Brotherhood assholes doing here?"
She heard the woman tisk, slowly rise, and come to rest on the safe she had been working on. She pulled an earbud out of her ear, picked up a Bluetooth headphone case from the floor amongst the smattering of other delicate-looking tools, and set the earbud inside. The red eyes, now without distraction, were equal parts haunting as they were hypnotic as they drove deep into Rogue.
"Name's Gambit. As for the playmates your folk are spending their time with, I don't rightly know why they're here. I only know why I am. And you, Rogue if I heard your friend right, just locked us both in a room with no ventilation."
"No, I didn't." Rogue, with her pistol still trained on the woman, tried the door but found no handle. "Oh…"
"Yep." The woman calling herself Gambit said. Her forearms rested in her lap and she gently rubbed her hands together.
"So… how do we get out?"
"We don't! You can call your friends neither. The room is a Faraday cage so no signal can come in or out." She nodded her head. "Guess we're just gonna die in here with nothing but each other for company."
Rogue rolled her eyes, aimed the pistol for the door where the handle should be, and blasted the thing wide open. "Problem. Fixed."
"Oh well, look at you!" Gambit clapped her hands together. "I take it your power is solvin' problems. Wanna see mine?" She pulled out a deck of cards from her coat and started shuffling them. "You like card tricks?"
"Oh god, you're not a magician are you?"
"I make things disappear sometimes but I assure you I am no magician, cher." She made a show of flipping and folding the cards around as she shuffled till she eventually fanned them out. "Pick a card."
"Um… alright." She picked one in the middle.
"Very good, now put it back in the deck please."
She did as instructed and shuffling the show continued. Gambit made a stream of cards go high above her head and arch till they fell into her other hand. Eventually, all the cards disappeared till only one was in her hand. She flipped so the front faced Rogue. "Is this your card?"
She looked. "No."
"Are you very sure?"
Rogue peered closer and saw the card was starting to glow and audibly whine till it exploded with the force of a firecracker. She flew back, shielding her face, and felt something shove her into the wall. She forced her eyes open, waved away the black smoke, and found that not only Gambit was gone, but the safe she sat on was now open and clear of contents. "Goddamnit!" She shouted then looked out the door she had opened herself, opening a route for Gambit's escape. "God freaking dammit!"
She bolted out the door, through the office, and into the hallway just in time to find Gambit had opened one of the great windows and had already swung one leg outside. She looked back at Rogue, gave her a cheery little salute with two fingers, and was about to swing her other leg though when Rogue swooped upon her and grabbed her by the collar. "I don't think so!" She used all her strength to pull Gambit back into the hallway with her and fell backward for the effort.
Both prone on the floor, they caught each other's eye and scrambled to their feet. Rogue fumbled for her pistol but had it swatted out of her hand by a staff that had seemingly just appeared in Gambit's hand. "I think we're done playing with guns."
"Fine," Rogue struck a tight boxer's stance, "I don't need a gun to handle you."
Gambit flashed a white-toothed cockeyed smile and the pair circled each other a short while. Finally, it was Rogue who moved first, going for a leg sweep. The other woman dodged by falling into a shoulder roll, then swiping Rogue across the abdomen with her staff. Even though ample padding of the body armor, the blow stung and knocked the wind out of her. Rogue wrapped her arm around the staff and pulled it close to her side. Using her body as a fulcrum, she ripped the other end of the staff out of Gambit's hands and sent it skittering across the floor. "I think we're done with staffs," she panted."
Gambit stood, and the smile on her face grew annoyingly wider. "Fair enough." She waited for Rogue to catch her breath and the pair circled each other again. This time it was Gambit who lunged for Rogue in an attempt to tackle her to the ground. Rogue side-stepped, then watched Gambit, instead of crashing into the wall behind her, run up the wall, do a flip, and land behind her. Rogue turned to face her but it was too late. Her back was pinned to the wall by the forearm pressing against her chest by the other woman.
"You're good," Gambit whispered in her ear. "Just not quite good enou-" She was cut short as Rogue snapped her head back and smashed her in the nose. Her grip loosened and Rogue then elbowed her in the ribs before sweeping her feet and knocking her to the ground. She dropped a knee onto Gambit's chest and pinned both her hands to the ground.
"You're pretty good yourself." Rogue blew loose strands of hair out of her face. "Too bad it's not quite good enough."
Despite the blood leaking from Gambit's nose, her grin was as wide as ever. "You're fun."
"Thanks. Now how about you give me the stuff you stole?"
"Sorry, cher. No can do."
"I don't think you have much of a choice."
"Don't I?" She looked then nodded in the direction of Rogue's waist. "How about you check that back pocket."
Anna's eyes went wide. She let go of Gambit's arm, and reached for her rear pocket… when she found she didn't have one. She was about to say something when she found Gambit had already drawn a fresh card with her free hand and it was glowing bright. Rogue jumped back just as the thing exploded sending a shockwave that threw her onto her back several feet away. When the smoke cleared, Gambit and her staff had vanished. Rogue pushed herself back onto her feet and looked out the open window. There wasn't a sign anyone had even been there.
What had pulled her attention was the parking lot a few hundred feet away where a large van was being loaded full of boxes by no other than The Brotherhood boys. "That's not good." She pulled her watch to her face. "Hey, anyone catch eye of the braintrust loading up that van?" There was no answer. She looked at her watch and after closer examination, found that her coms had never been turned on. She cursed then flipped the shallow switch near the watch face.
"Visual. Does anyone have a visual?" The voice sounded like Cyclops's.
"I hear her but I don't see her!" Said Nightcrawler
"Shadowcat, slip through the bottom floor and-"
A window exploded along the same wall Rogue had looked out of and she watched a figure plummet in a hale of broken glass onto the brightly lit parking lot below. The earth cracked and splintered as the black lop-sided figure landed. She could see The Brotherhood boys have near heart attacks seeing it. The figure eventually stood and took the form of a powerful-looking woman with broad shoulders and what looked like long metallic whips wrapped around her forearms. "Throw in what you can and forget the rest!" Her voice boomed and she looked up just as another figure lept out the same hole she had made in the side of the building.
This figure was smaller and more oddly shaped. It wasn't till it made landfall atop a then shattered car she could see it was a Spike fitted out in complete bone armor. He wasted no time throwing multiple bone spears in the group's direction.
A long wire uncoiled from one of the figure's arms and lit her face as blue and yellow electricity crackled and snapped along the wire. With a snap like the sound of a thunderclap, she flicked one of Spike's spears out of the air and transformed it into dust. She looked at the boys, "Quicksilver, drive. Avalanche and Toad, in the back. Now!"
Two of the boys followed her orders, lept in the back of the van, and shut the doors behind them. The slick white-haired Quicksilver decked out in some sort of slip-line skin-tight jumpsuit and pointed his screwed-up face in her direction. "You want to run?"
"You'll be running home if you don't get in the damn van!" She boomed
Another figure lept out the open window. Through the shouting and extended claws, it was unmistakably Wolverine. With another snap of light and an ear-splitting crack, the man was sent flying up and into the darkness of the night.
Unclasping his hands from his ears, Quicksilver darted for the van and slammed the driver door shut behind him. When the van turned over and the rear lights ignited, the woman rushed for the passenger door.
"Cyclops!" Anna heard Shadowcat's tinny voice shout from her watch. "What do we do? They're running!"
"Phonix! Can you lift the van?"
"I'm too far."
When the passenger door to the van slammed shut, the wheels squealed as the van made for the open gate leading to the street. Rogue could just see Spike trying to run after them but was being easily outrun.
"Evan!" Storm called over the com, "Get down!"
He looked up, then leaped into a nearby dumpster just in time to avoid a powerful updraft of air that sent one of the lids flying off. The van engine cried for mercy as the vehicle struggled to keep traction on the ground.
Storm, her long black cape flapping like a flag in a hurricane, gently lowered from the heavens above. Her arms were outstretched and her face was tense with concentration. Even from where Rogue stood, she could feel that almighty power of the winds buckling the windows in their frames.
"That's far enough." Rogue didn't hear Storm through the com this time, but instead from the parking lot with the booming voice of an angel speaking on behalf of its god.
An arm reached out the passenger window, then once it gained purchase on the top of the fat white van, the rest of the muscular woman's body climbed out. Facing Storm, the woman unspooled her whips from her arms and drove them into the top of the van to act as anchors.
"Storm!" She called back with near equal bravado as the weather witch. "Storm, cease your winds! Why is it you think I drug myself and a bunch of kids to a hospital, Storm? Did you or any of your friends see a vault in there? Do they keep stacks of cash or gold in hospitals? We came for medicine! We came for medicine that we will need for what's to come. Medicine, which without, many will die. The humans will get more, Storm. The humans will never be left wanting, but we have to protect our own!"
The winds didn't cease, but Rogue did hear the windows around her settle in their frames around her.
The woman stood taller on top of the van. "We were sisters in The Brotherhood, Storm. We were all sisters and brothers there. Don't tell me that has changed now that you live in a different house and keep different company now, does it?" Her arms curled and exposed her taught muscles. "We loved each other once, Storm. Is that no longer true? Does friendship and brotherhood mean nothing to the X-Men?"
Slowly the ceaseless gale let up until it was nothing more than a passing breeze. Storm's arms slowly lowered and her shoulders drooped.
"Thank you." The strange woman's powerful booming voice for a moment had a twist of remorse in it. She retracted her whips and slipped back inside the van.
"Auntie! Storm, what are you doing!" Rogue spotted Spike struggling to crawl out from under an exploded bag of trash in the dumpster
"I can't fire a bolt without hitting Storm," Cyclops muttered on the com. "Spike, can you-"
"I'm stuck!"
"Hold on, Ev!" In a puff of smoke, Nightcrawler appeared in the parking lot in front of Spike's dumpster. She saw him offer Spike a hand when he shook off Nightcrawler's hand and pointed for the van. The blue-haired boy turned and started to run when a sudden powerful gust of wind threw him back.
"Storm?" Pheonix mumbled over the com just as the van audibly struggled to get into gear, then peeled out into the street past the gate and disappeared.
Storm lowered herself to the ground and Rogue watched as she held her watch to her mouth. "I accept full responsibility for The Brotherhood robbery and the consequences therein. For the record, I admit guilt in aiding their escape and impeding the X-Men in The Brotherhood's capture."
Nothing was said for a long while till it was Xavier's voice who took over the coms. "X-Men, return to base. It's time to come home."