Part 4
by Dyce
"DAD, COME QUICK!"
Logan was nearly trampled as Creed - not weighed down
with adamantium, and therefore faster - made a dash
for the dormitories. Logan was right behind him.
The girl's dormitory was empty. They ran into each
other in the doorway to the boy's dormitory,
struggling for a long moment as they took in the
scene.
Meggan was whimpering, huddled in Clarice's arms as
they stood by the door. Geordi was standing to one
side, looking helpless. The other four were in the
middle of the floor. Jonny was on the floor, looking
small and scrawny in t-shirt and boxers - but his body
didn't draw more than a glance. The light coming out
of his mouth as he screamed soundlessly was the real
attention getter. Kyle was holding his friend's head,
trying to keep his skull from banging on the floor as
he thrashed helplessly. Marie and Annie were kneeling
beside them, Marie holding Jonny's hand, Annie resting
her hands on his chest. "Something's happening inside
him," Annie reported tersely. "I don't know what it
is... there's energy building up, and his heart's
fluttering..."
Oh, hell. Oh, hell. Logan knew he and Sabretooth were
both standing there as helplessly as Geordi. He
didn't know what to do. Xavier had mentioned that
sometimes when a mutant power manifested fully, there
were dangerous side-effects. Sometimes the kids even
died. What was he supposed to do? Helping Marie had
been easy, but this...
Marie could feel Logan's anguished uncertainty from
across the room, but she didn't have time to reassure
him. They couldn't hold Jonny down, it would just
panic him further, and it was lucky she'd still had
her gloves on when Kyle had yelled, or she wouldn't be
able to help at all.
Annie's odd eyes were focused on Jonny, one hand
inside the neck of his shirt. "The energy's really
building up now," she said, expression distant. "If
it doesn't stop soon, he's going to burn out...
uh-oh... shit... Marie, gloves off!"
Marie blinked. "Annie, I can't, he doesn't have a
heal-"
"With this much energy pouring out of him, he's not
going to need one!" Annie grabbed onto Marie's bare
arm and hauled it down into contact with Jonny's neck.
Unadulterated power poured through her skin, untainted
by even the slightest trace of personality or memory.
After a moment, she could feel some of it going off
sideways, and realized Annie must have duplicated her
powers. But there was still so much of it, and she
had an odd feeling that she was filling up, somehow,
she couldn't hold on for much longer...
Then a shattering scream that made no sound at all
filled all their minds.
Then a blinding yellow-white light burst into the dim
room, so that they all closed or covered their eyes.
Then, while they were still blinking and rubbing their
ears, someone said 'Ow'.
It was Annie, Marie saw when her eyes started to
clear. She was lying flat on the floor, as if she'd
been thrown back from her position kneeling over
Jonny.
Jonny was half-curled on his side, facing towards the
wall. Towards where the wall had been. Now there was
only a gaping hole. It matched the hole in Jonny's
chest, that looked big enough to fit both her hands
inside. It glowed an eery yellowish-white, no sign of
blood or anything...
Anyway, he looked unconscious, and Kyle was already
fussing over him. Marie crawled over to the otheri
injured party. "Annie? You okay?"
"'s," Annie managed breathlessly. Surprisingly, she
didn't look burned, just very bruised. "H'l'ng
f'n...hi' me h'rd..."
She'd just had the breath knocked out of her. Marie
nodded, patted the closest clothed bit of Annie, which
was her knee, and looked around at the others. Meggan
and Clarice were hiding behind Sabretooth, who was
still growling and scrubbing at his eyes. So was
Logan. They both had much better eyesight than she
did, and the light had obviously hurt their eyes more
than hers. Kyle was still rubbing his eyes, too, but
had his other hand resting gently on Jonny's hair.
Jonny still looked unconscious.
Marie shook her head a little, lips curving into an
unconscious smile. She'd never felt so... alive, so
vibrant with life and energy. And she'd only siphoned
off a little part of what Jonny had been generating.
God, no wonder he hadn't been eating lately... she
wouldn't bother to eat either, if she had a regular
supply of *this*.
She hadn't gotten even the slightest trace of memory
from him. Even better. "Is everyone else okay?
Jonny's unconscious, but..." She touched the side of
his neck. She didn't feel a pulse, but the skin was
warm, and Jonny moaned a little. "But he's alive.
With a hole in him, but alive."
"Is he bleeding?" Logan asked, still blinking.
"Nope. Well, not blood." She held her still-bare arm
over the hole, a whisper away from touching the
yellowish glow. The hairs on her forearm stood up.
"He's still bleedin' some energy, but that's probably
a good thing. I mean, since the build-up inside him
did what it did. I guess the hole is as good a way as
any to siphon it off."
"I wanna see!" Annie, who had obviously gotten her
breath back, crawled up beside Marie. "Hey, cool! I
wonder if it-"
"Don't touch!" Marie said sternly, grabbing the little
clawed hand as it reached out. "It might hurt him!"
"Okay," Annie grumbled, reaching out to pat Jonny's
forehead instead. "He looks okay, though. Except for
the hole."
* * *
After breakfast the next morning - which was late,
because for once even Creed and Logan slept in - Logan
took Jonny off into the woods to practice with this
new manifestation of his telepathy.
"I don't think anyone's ever done this before," Annie
chattered, bouncing over obstacles like a blonde
monkey. "Concussive Attack Telepathy, I mean. Or
maybe it's telekinetics? Jean has both. Maybe it's
like that. Only a LOT more powerful because I've never
seen Jean blow a hole in a wall without meaning to,
let alone a hole in herself, although it doesn't seem
to be doing you any harm, and-"
Logan gritted his teeth. "Tell me again why you're
here," he growled.
"Because I've learned to use eight different mutant
powers, only one of them really mine, although it's
seven if you don't count Marie's power which more or
less works itself although I'm still trying to figure
out how to control it," Annie explained. "I therefore
know more about learning to use new powers than anyone
in the whole world, so I'm going to help.
Jonny roused out of his funk a bit to give her an
inquiring look. "Only eight? Thought you could mimic
any mutant power, like Rogue."
"I can, but I don't get memories with it, so I don't
know how to use them." She shrugged, swinging from a
low branch. "My healing factor works itself so it
doesn't count, but the other six are pretty much
use-in-emergencies-only. I mean, I can make red beams
come out of my eyes. But I can't control how strong
they are, or see where I'm pointing them while they're
turned on. And I can fiddle with the weather if I
want, but I don't because I might flood the Sahara or
dry out the Nile by accident. Most powers are prone
to a LOT of mistakes."
Logan gave Jonny a rather worried look, but the boy
seemed to have brightened up a bit at the idea that
*his* powers weren't the only ones that could majorly
screw up. "Yeah?" Logan prompted, since Annie's
chatter seemed to be helping.
"Uh-huh. Only I can't do telepathy, for some reason."
Annie frowned, clearly annoyed by this. "I asked
Jean why, and she made a scan of my brain, and she
said I don't have the right kind of brain for it.
There's some kinda node or something that enlarges in
telepaths, and mine is smaller and in a different part
of my brain, 'cause I'm physically variated from the
human norm, or something. I can do empathy, that's
easy, but no spoken thoughts or anything like that."
She eyes Jonny with some interest. "I bet you have a
really BIG brain-node."
Jonny grinned lopsidedly, the first time he'd smiled
since he'd woken up and found out what had happened to
him. "Big brain-parts, huh? First time anyone's ever
accused me o' that."
Annie giggled. "Maybe. But don't let it go to your
head."
Jonny groaned. "My... Annie, that's TERRIBLE."
Logan concealed his own smile. The boy was relaxing.
Good. He didn't know a whole lot about mutant powers,
but he *did* know that the more distressed or
frightened the person using them was, the more likely
things were to go wrong.
After a while, they reached a particularly large,
shapeless rock that snuggled into the mountainside a
nice long way from anywhere else. This, he and Creed
had decided, would be a good place to practice the
more concussive aspects of the boy's powers. "Okay.
We're here."
Annie plopped herself down on a small rock, and gave
him an inquiring look. Jonny did the same.
Logan chewed on his lower lip a little nervously.
"Okay... uh... try to blast the rock."
Jonny wrinkled his nose and clenched his fists.
Nothing else happened. "I can't do it," he said after
a minute, shoulders slumping. Logan was torn between
concern and a sigh of relief.
Annie rolled her eyes. "Lemme try this. Now... uh...
okay, close your eyes." Jonny closed them. "Now,
sort of feel around inside your body. Check on how
your feet feel... and your legs... and your arms...
and your stomach... and your shoulders... and where
the hole is..." Jonny frowned a little, and she
nodded approvingly. "Can you feel it?"
"Sort of. It... tingles." Jonny's cockney accent got
stronger, the way it often did when he was nervous.
"That's good. That's where all that psi-energy you're
generating is dissipating out of you." Annie rested
her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists.
"Can you kind of grab hold of the energy with your
mind? Think of it like a third hand. You can flex
it, or clench it up, just as if it was your hand."
She looked over at Logan and stage-whispered rather
loudly. "It helps to have reference points when
you're using a new power for the first time. Comparing
it to something familiar often works."
"I'll remember that," Logan stage-whispered back,
hearing Jonny let out a tiny, tension-relieving
giggle. Annie probably had the right idea. Keeping
the boy amused would help stop him from panicking too
much.
Jonny seemed slightly more relaxed, his eyes still
closed as he felt around inside himself for his power.
"I think I've got it," he said after about five
minutes. "I can feel it, anyway. It's still a part
of *me*, isn't it?"
"I don't know who else it would be a part of," Annie
pointed out reasonably. "Okay, now that you've got
it, why don't you open your eyes and try to hit the
rock with it?"
"Why do I have to open my eyes?" Jonny asked a little
nervously.
"Because you don't have an eidetic memory, and you've
had your eyes shut for the last five minutes," Annie
said firmly. "You don't want to go blasting trees or
mountainside or me by mistake. If you're going to go
around smiting stuff, it's probably a good idea to be
looking at it."
Jonny nodded reluctantly, and opened his eyes. Then
he squinted at the rock, face furrowed with
concentration. The glowing hole in his chest -
showing through a hole cut in a t-shirt - did seem to
swell and brighten for a moment, but nothing else
happened. "It's not working!" he hissed in
frustration.
"I bet your hands didn't do what you wanted the first
time you ever tried to grab something, either," Annie
said placidly. "It takes time."
"I did it fine last night!"
"That was an accident." Annie shrugged. "Ask any
infant. Grabbing or hitting something accidentally is
a lot easier than doing it on purpose, at least at
first. You need to train up your brain-muscles."
"But..." He gave her a pitiful look.
"But nothing. Try again," she said firmly. "Practice
makes... better at it."
* * *
"He'll come back," Marie assured Meggan, as Logan
disappeared into the woods. "They've just got to
train for a while."
Meggan nodded, clinging to Marie's gloved hand. It
might be Marie's imagination, but the little hands
look less pawlike this morning.
"Come on," she said kindly, giving Meggan's hand a
little squeeze. "Logan went and got some new crayons
yesterday. Wanna try them out?" Meggan nodded again,
brightening a little, and Marie beamed. They figured
she was probably around Clarice's age, from her size
and her interest in toys and crayons and so on. Of
course, with someone who'd grown up in a locked room,
that wasn't necessarily an indication of age, but it
was what they had to work with.
She set Meggan up with the new crayons and a pile of
blank paper, and started cleaning the kitchen. All
the trainees got one morning out of six off training
to take care of things in the cabin, because Creed and
Logan didn't mind cooking but objected strenuously to
cleaning. Marie didn't mind. It was easy work,
compared to training, and because there usually wasn't
anyone else around, except possibly Meggan, it was
usually nice and peaceful.
Marie hummed quietly, stacking the dishes for washing.
This... this was a good life. Physically hard, a
little nerve-wracking at times, but good. Plenty to
eat, a warm place to sleep, Logan to take care of her
and friends to spend time with. Even Creed wasn't so
bad. Once they'd gotten here, away from other people
and civilisation in general, he'd relaxed a lot. He
was even starting to show signs of a sense of humour,
beyond chuckling at them as they collapsed from
exhaustion.
She started on the dishes, and glanced over her
shoulder at Meggan. Clarice couldn't be separated for
love nor money from Miss Pinky, but she'd given one of
her other toys to Meggan - a large, floppy brown
rabbit called, of all things, Horatio. It was now
sitting on Meggan's lap, held close even as she drew
laboriously with an orange crayon. She seemed to be
ambidextrous, they'd noticed, sometimes using one
hand, sometimes the other. Whichever hand she drew or
ate with, the other was usually holding firmly onto
Horatio, Logan, or Jonny, in case they disappeared.
She was kind of cute, now that she was clean. Her fur
was thick and fluffy, and her monkeylike little face
had definite charm. Marie absently pushed a cookie at
her. The poor little thing was so skinny... she
needed to eat more.
"Can I have a cookie too?" a plaintive voice asked
from the doorway. It was Geordi, sweaty and already
covered in sawdust. He and Kyle were helping Creed to
patch the wall. Clarice was 'helping', mostly by
acting as a gofer, although she'd been allowed to
pound a few of the easier nails in.
"Sure." Marie offered him one, and he downed it in two
bites. Then he headed for the fridge. She really
shouldn't let him drink from the milk-carton like
that, but... well... he'd taken his shirt off to work,
and he had a *very* pretty back. He was hardly hairy
at all, unlike the others, and he rippled a lot.
Mmmrrr.
She managed to be paying attention to Meggan when he
turned around, instead of staring, but she still felt
a little flushed. He didn't seem to notice. "I never
thought I'd say construction work was easy, but at
least I don't have to keep looking over my shoulder in
case someone's trying to sneak up on me," he said,
taking another cookie and eating it more slowly this
time.
"Easier than training, huh?" Marie absently rescued a
crayon that was rolling down the table, and headed
back to the sink. It was easier to have a
conversation with Geordi when you couldn't A) see the
look on his face, and B) see how the rest of him
looked. It was unfair for someone so immature and
annoying to be so *gorgeous*.
"WAY easier than training." Geordi opened the fridge
again, hopefully to put the milk away. "I know some
carpentry, so I'm doing okay. He's mostly yelling at
Kyle."
"Poor Kyle," Marie murmured sympathetically. There
was a long pause, and she looked around to see if
Geordi was still there.
He was, leaning back against the counter, looking down
at his hands. "My dad was a carpenter," he said very
softly.
Marie blinked. Geordi *never* talked about Logan's
past, and Logan had never quite been able to bring
himself to ask, even though Marie knew the curiosity
must be gnawing viciously at him. To finally know
something about himself, to know who he was, or at
least who he'd been... "Really?" she asked, somewhat
on Logan's behalf but mostly because Geordi looked so
sad.
"Uh-huh. He made handmade furniture and stuff,
mostly." Geordi's voice was distant, and his eyes
were focused somewhere past the floor. "And
chess-sets. He liked chess."
Marie blinked. "Chess?" That... actually, that did
sound a lot like Logan. He liked strategy, he liked
knowing everything that was going on, and control
appealed to him. "I can see that, I guess..."
Geordi nodded, still lost somewhere in the distant
corridors of memory. "I don't remember him, really.
He vanished when I was very small. But Mom still had
a lot of stuff he made for her... this little box with
a secret compartment and stuff. And a Noah's Ark set
he made for me, with all the animals two by two. My
aunt and uncle still have it. And there was this one
chess-set, right, where two of the white pieces aren't
quite the same shade of pine as the others. I chewed
the originals up when I was teething, and Dad had to
make new ones. They were the last pieces he made
before he... went away."
"Oh." Marie was almost entirely sure that she was
going to be pushed away, but she put a gentle arm
around his shoulders anyway. He looked so sad and
lost and confused, not really knowing his father,
resenting his absence but not able to blame the man
for it anymore...
Geordi let out a little sigh that might have been a
muffled sob, and hugged her tightly, burying his face
in her shoulder.
Marie stiffened in surprise, and then she hugged back,
thankful she was wearing long sleeves, and that she'd
put her gloves back on to play with Meggan. He held
onto her tightly, almost *too* tightly, and she
wondered how long it had been since anyone hugged him.
Months, certainly. Possibly much longer, depending...
"It's okay," she whispered. "It's gonna be okay."
He held on tighter.
She murmured soothing nonsense, rubbing his back
gently. Over his shoulder, she could see Meggan
watching them, an oddly peaceful look on her face as
she hugged Horatio.
Then Meggan squealed, dropped Horatio, and raced to
dive between Marie and Geordi, who had jerked apart at
the sound of either Armageddon or the continent
splitting.
* * *
"Woo!" Annie crowed exultantly. "You sure showed THAT
rock who's boss!"
Logan crawled out from under a fallen branch,
muttering a bit. Jonny was wobbling up onto his
knees, staring dazedly at the rubble that had once
been quite a large boulder. "Did I do 'at?" he asked
dazedly, rubbing his chest.
"Yup." Logan reached up to feel his scalp. Ow. Some
of those flying splinters of rock had been very sharp.
Annie, who'd dived behind her seat-rock and thus only
had minor abrasions, was admiring the mess. "That's
good blasting, that is," she said with the sort of
judicious approval that might have come from a
munitions-expert evaluating a particularly nice
disaster-area. Coming out of a round, pink and white
face hemmed in by pigtail, it sounded rather odd.
"Focused. It's good focusing you did there, Jonny,
you can see by the pattern of the debris. You didn't
blast right through the rock, just about two thirds of
the way, so the concussive force did for the rest of
it but the trees that were behind it are almost all
still standing, which is good, because rocks are still
rocks no matter how small you break them down, but
broken-up trees stop being oxygen-producing biomass
and start being firewood."
The flow of chatter had at least given the other two a
chance to get their breath back. "You said to aim at
the rock," Jonny said, still on his knees and wobbling
a bit. Last time he'd been on the floor. This time
he'd been standing up, not properly braced, and the
recoil from his own blast had thrown him quite a long
way.
Logan ambled over to him and checked for any visible
injuries. "You didn't hit your head, didja?" he
asked. Surely the kid's thatch of brown curls must
have padded his skull at least a LITTLE.
"No," Jonny said, shaking his head a little. "I
just... feel a bit off is all. Drained."
"Not surprising. You expended an awful lot of energy
in that blast." Annie trotted over and hoisted him
effortlessly to his feet. She pulled one arm over her
sturdy shoulders. Logan noted with the mild interest
of the severely rattled that Annie was never going to
be a pretty, sylph-like girl like Marie was, and
Clarice would someday be. Annie was going to be the
sort of tall, effortlessly muscular girl who had a
bright future in pro wrestling.
Thinking about that was much easier on the nerves than
thinking about what Jonny had just done to a boulder
significantly taller than Logan himself. Jonny had,
over the last twenty-four hours, gone from being a
quiet, well-behaved appendage of Kyle to coming up
strongly behind Annie as A Danger To Society As A
Whole Especially The Relatively Easily Detached Parts,
like people and large buildings.
When they got back to the house, Creed was still
nailing a patch of fresh, pale yellow boards up among
the grey, weathered ones that formed the outside of
the damaged wall. Kyle was holding the board, looking
a little wild-eyed. As soon as Jonny came into view,
Kyle let go of the board and dashed over to him,
making concerned mama-hen noises. Jonny graciously
submitted to the fussing and was tenderly led into the
house. Annie wandered over to do some
replacement-board-holding, and Logan had a little sit
down on a tree-stump. His heart was still thumping.
"Jonny got it to work on command, Dad," Annie informed
him, as if they hadn't probably heard the blast back
in the US. "He mushed a boulder. It was very
impressive. I think he'd be very good at The
Business, especially the parts with blowing doors open
and knocking down buildings and Hiding the Evidence."
"Yeah?" Creed banged another nail in with two
strokes, and eyed the board critically. "That'll be
handy."
"Oh, yes," Annie agreed, sliding the next board into
position. "Daddy, when are we starting practical
training? Do we get to go on a Job?"
"Soon." Creed hefted his hammer again and reached for
another nail. "I thought a nice easy heist, for
starters. Jewels, maybe, they're small 'n easy to
carry."
Annie nodded gravely. "That sounds like a good idea,"
she agreed. "We don't want to start out on the hard
stuff like assassinations and bodyguarding. I don't
think the guys are up to snuff yet."
"They'll get there." Creed positioned the nail
carefully. "Once you get started on the merc trade,
it gets easier and easier the more you do. They'll be
knifing folks in their beds before you know it."
