"I don't know if the world is ready for something like this." Evan got on one knee and sized up the tire. His knee crunched on the salted road beneath him.
"The world will never be ready for anything we have to throw at them." Kurt strapped on his bike helmet and climbed inside the tire. "Including the next form of transportation."
Anna pulled him into position at the top of the hill. "Remember what you need to do if you need to bail?"
"I just bamf out?"
"That's right, and where do you bamf to?"
"That mattress the dirty mattress we found?"
"That's right. Remember, if you feel like you need to get out, think mattress thoughts, Kurt."
"What are mattress thoughts exactly?"
"Thoughts you better be thinking if anything goes wrong." Anna positioned her younger brother just so and sighted down the tire. "Ready?"
"Ready!"
"Three," All said in unison, "Two, One." Then Anna gave the tire a good shove down the hill. They could hear Kurt's shouts, rebounding off the nearby trees.
"You got this Kurt!" Anna called after him, "Remember to stear with your hands!"
"Can he even do that?" Evan whispered.
"Hell if I know, but maybe it'll inspire him. Or at least make him feel better."
At the bottom of the hill the tire launched into the air before smaking into the base of tree hard enough to shake off the snow.
"Ooo," Anna and Evan raced down the hill after him, both slipping along the way.
"Kurt!" Evan dug in the snow.
"Oh god," Anna got on her knees and joined him. "Don't tell me we killed him."
"Killed who?" Both snapped their heads back and found the blue devil himself looking down at them.
"Hey!" Evan brought him in for a hug.
"Easy! Still a little nauseous after going through the spin cycle."
Anna pulled the tire out of its snowy grave. "When did you bail?"
"Right before my demise at the tree. And let me tell you, mattress thoughts didn't stop me from ending up in the neighbor's yard."
"Which neighbor? The one with the cows or the one with the field of dead grass?"
"The one with the exotic animals…"
Anna and Evan looked at each other. "No way!" Evan started, "You got into the Emu barn?"
"They aren't so funny when you're that close… I think I'd prefer a second round with Juggernaut."
"Well," Anna bounced the tire a couple of times like an oversized basketball. "We still got our ultimate transportation device. Want to give it another round, Kurt?"
"I think I'm good for today, thanks…"
Evan kicked the base of the tire, "Why don't you give it a try, super girl?"
"Oh no, I did my part. I pulled it off that old tractor we found. That was my contribution to today's science."
Evan crossed his arms. "And I found the hill."
"It's the hill outside the mansion. It's not like you stared at a map to find it, Evan."
Kurt leaned on his boyfriend, "It looked so much cooler in Jurassic World last night."
"Yeah," Anna and the group began their trek up the hill. Along the way, Anna flung the massive tire up as far as she could and caught it as it rolled back down. "But the gyro-pod things in that movie had, like, actual engineering behind them."
"It's almost the same thing." Evan waved his hand in the empty space in the hole. "We just need the thing that goes in the middle."
"So the whole thing that makes it a vehicle?"
"You guys," Kurt bamfed and appeared on the other side of Anna. "I think the only thing we figured out is that to make a pod like in the movie, it has to be a circle."
"What in god's name are you kids doing?" The group looked at the top of the hill to find Logan standing there with crossed arms.
The group paused and looked at one another till eventually Anna spoke. "Homework."
"Homework?" The corner of Logan's stony face turned upward into a little grin. "What homework involves a giant donut like that?"
"If you must know, the kind of homework that could change the face of technology as we know it!"
"Playing grab ass with a tire is changing technology, is it?"
Anna stuck her chin in the air. "Yes… Yes, it is."
"Well, I hate to put the brakes on the evolution of technology, but I could you your help." He tipped the crown of his head toward the mansion. "Come on."
Each student in turn said goodbye to their new friend, the old tractor tire, as they laid it on the lawn and piled inside Logan's all-terrain vehicle with massive muddy wheels and a roll bar that looked like it could withstand the pressures of the planet's core. He didn't wait for all of them to get settled inside before laying his foot on the gas.
Anna opted to hold to either side of her seat since finding any seatbelt was impossible. "Where are we headed?" She managed to say just as the vehicles massive wheels tackled a small creek.
"My camp."
"Why?"
"We're going to disassemble it."
Anna looked back at the others. "Why? Are you leaving?"
"No," Logan's grip on the wheel tightened, "I haven't been using it and it posses a security risk just sitting out there."
"Hang on," Evan leaned forward. "What do you mean you haven't been using it? Where do you sleep?"
The grizzly man raked the small hairs on the back of his neck with his fingernails. Fingernails Anna had noticed are much cleaner than she'd ever seen them before. "I've been staying in the mansion."
"Wait," Anna pushed Evan's face back so she could get closer to Logan. "YOU have been living in the mansion? Don't you have a whole thing about living in 'opulence' or something?"
"Yeah, well, we all need to make sacrifices right now for the sake of security."
"Yeah?" Anna brushed the man's hair with her hand. "That's why you got a recent haircut, too? For security's sake?"
"Hey!" He shoved her back in her seat. "Buzz off, kid! You're asking too many questions that ain't relevant to anything."
"I don't know," Anna looked back at her fellows, "Feels pretty relevant. What do you guys think?"
"Another word, and all three of you will be PULLING my trailer of stuff behind the mansion!"
The chatter in the car got real quiet real sudden till they finally crested the hill and into Logan's camp. He pulled just short of the fire pit, killed the engine, and slid out of the seat.
"Alright," Logan walked behind one of the tents and pulled out a long trailer with a great deal of effort. "Boys, go through this tent here and here. Tape up any open boxes, throw the loose stuff in open bins, and anything really big we wrap in the tarp when we leave.
"Mein Gott!" Kurt wandered out of one of the tents with an assault rifle, but held it by the shoulder rest like a bag of questionable substance. "What do I do with this?"
"Will it fit in a bin?"
"I… don't know."
"Well, if it does, cram it in one and if don't, wrap it in a tarp later!"
"What if… it starts shooting?"
"Give it here," Logan snapped the gun out of Kurt's hand and ejected the clip. "It's empty. All my guns out here are clear." He tossed it back to Kurt like a soft ball, which Kurt caught like it was an anvil. "You'll be fine." He waved Anna over. "Juggernaught 2.0, I got a special job for you."
"Fun…" Anna followed the older man up the hill till they reached the cabin at its summit.
"I got some lumber under that tarp." He said, a little out of breath. "Get it out of its shelter, would you?"
He dissapeared inside his cabin before she could respond. Still, she followed orders. The long planks of wood were resting together with a chamber of chopped logs for fire wood. Unsure if he wanted just the lumber or anything under the umbrella 'wood' she brought them both out into the light.
"Good," Logan said as he emerged from the cabin with a single suitcase and the lockbox she recognized from her single-woman expedition out there a few weeks back. Without another word, he half walked, half jogged down the hill to deposit his personal items and returned with a red can.
"What's that?"
"Gas." Logan took the cap off and tossed it in the mud at his feet. "We're not leaving anything behind."
"Wait, you're going to torch your place?"
Logan popped a cigar in his mouth a lit it with a fat lighter. "Not my place anymore." He started to overturn the can on the wall of the cabin when Anna caught his arm.
"Wait, just - hang on a sec?"
"What?"
"Just burning your hold place to the ground. Doesn't that seem a little extreme?"
He pulled the stogie out from between his lips and rested a hand on his hip. "I built the place, kid. I decide when it's time for it to go."
"What if we need it?"
"Why on earth would that happen?"
"I mean," Anna shrugged her shoulders. "Why wouldn't it? Who knows what's going to happen on any given day at this point? I'm just saying, maybe having a place to fall back to might not be such a bad idea."
"Kid," Logan put the gas down. "This place wasn't built out of love. You could say, I wasn't exactly in a good spot - eh - mentaly speaking. I joined Xavier in his fight at that point because it felt like the only way to make up some ground for all the bad I'd put into this world. You want to know the truth?" He shook his head, "I want to be rid of it. I don't want to know it's here anymore. I'd like to close this particular chapter of my life, alright?" He picked the gas back up.
"Wait!"
"What now?"
"What you're talking about is the same exact way Xavier felt about the mansion. It was his family home growing up, and it holds all kinds of bad memories for him. But he's found a way to turn it into a place that's a sanctuary for all of us… including you. And like you, he was going to burn it to the ground. Lucky for us, he didn't."
"That's different. The mansion is a property worth millions of dollars. This is just some ramshackle thing I threw together in a week." He doused the base of the wall with gas.
"Hang on!"
"Come on, kid!"
"You were worried about security! What about if you need to conceal one of us from the main property but still keep us nearby? What if… What if Kitty needs to come and hide out?"
Mentioning her name was enough to get him to back away from the wall. "Why do you care about this thing so much?"
"Because this place was the only place I felt safe when I needed it most."
His brows furrowed, and his features grew hard. "What?"
"After everything fell apart with me and my Mom on Mount Salvo, and I felt so lost… it was this place and you that were here for me. I was in the woods blasting trees apart, and you brought me here. You gave me soup and listened to me - really listened to me. You told me who you were, why you were here. This was where I finally got to know who you really were instead of just the scary guy who lives in the woods. And now… You want to just destroy it like it's your decision alone to make!"
Logan's eyes fell, and his jaw went slack behind a pair of discolored lips. He rested a single hand against the wall of the cabin and let his head dangle between lax shoulders. "Didn't think you'd remember that."
"Why wouldn't I?"
"Life moves so fast for you kids. You're moving from one drama to the next." He sucked in a breath large enough the raise is shoulders. "Just didn't think that mattered all that much."
"Well, it did. I can never go back home. I'm a monster according to everyone in my hometown. For us kids, this mansion is all we got. And this cabin is the only other place I got. So I'd appreciate it if you weren't in such a rush to burn it to the ground."
"Alright," Logan capped the gas can. "Okay, it stays -" He was unprepared for the hug that squeezed the air out of his lungs.
"Thank you," Anna said with her face half buried in his bicep.
** AUTHOR'S NOTE
Hey there! I wanted to let you know that I've decided to publish the entire backlog of Rogue Evolution on my website, artoflupin.com. There, you will be A CHAPTER AHEAD and still be on the same upload schedule you've gotten used to here!
If you'd prefer to wait for uploads here, no worries, uploads will continue here as scheduled.
Thanks! **