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#8
MAY 11 |
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“Blooming Threat” Part One
Logan really had no idea why he had been incorporated into a meeting with Chuck and Emma, but she said it had something to do with Warren being on a business trip. He didn’t much care; these kind of procedural affairs weren’t what he woke up in the morning for. But as much as he hated to admit it to himself, he was becoming more of a stiff and less of a rebel with every passing day. His loner status once was something he treasured, but with the X-Men he had been forced to evolve beyond that…even if it was kicking and screaming.
Chuck tried to offer him some kind of reconciliation. “I know this isn’t your usual cup of tea, Logan, but with Warren on a trip and Ororo recruiting a student you were next in line for this review. We have new associate staff joining us on the grounds and we desired to go over them with a senior member of the team.”
Picking between his teeth with one of his claws, Logan said, “Associate staff? Do we even have enough people at the Mansion to justify that?’
“Not yet but that could very quickly change.” Emma sat too properly in an all white, swivel desk chair. “Mutant numbers are on the rise and that means more potential young people with powers too devastating for even fellow mutants to be safely around. That directly involves us and, with people like Sekhmet drawing away our attention, it wouldn’t hurt to have an accessory unit of people around.”
Logan propped his feet up next to one of the War Room’s consoles. “Another squad, huh? Dontcha think it might get cramped with all those twitchy fingers?”
Xavier frowned at Logan’s posture. “This isn’t s combat unit, Logan. Yes, they’ll have the necessary training for emergency situations, but their primary focus is to fill in critical functions on a day to day basis that the majority of us cannot. As I’m sure you’ve come to realize, our recent successes in mutant relations have brought all of us less and less time.”
Emma tapped on the console in front of her and holographic images of two men and three women appeared from the main computer, centrally located in the War Room. “These five will serve as a much needed supplement to us while we try and quell problematic situations.”
“Don’t spend any more time trying to sell me on it lady. Just give me the review of these jokers.”
Tapping a few more keys, the hologram zoomed in on a slim, twenty-something redhead with emerald eyes and freckles. “This is Ryan Kinross. He’ll be the Mansion’s Primary Science Advisor and–”
“Knew I seen that nose somewhere before!” Logan exclaimed, pointing at the young man. “That kid is related to Moira.”
Xavier nodded and smiled warmly, if not tinged by a bit of regret. “He has many of Moira’s features and her capacity for genetics. His own mutations and his Aunt’s tremendous work in mutant gene therapy made him a prime candidate for the position. He reinforces my belief that Moira’s work is some of the most overlooked in all of science.”
The hologram next zoomed in on an overweight Brazilian woman with long ebony hair and beady eyes supported by thick glasses as Emma continued. “This is Camille Ramon, a longtime advocate of mutant rights in brazil and other parts of South America. Unfortunately, her work and status as a mutant have made her a target of assassination by any groups. She has been hired on as our International Establishment Director. Her primary job will be to parlay with other countries to try and establish X-Corps offices on a global basis.”
Logan honestly didn’t expect much success on that front. “Seems like the woman might be more trouble than she’s worth, especially if people are gunning for her. That could put the kids in danger.”
“Not more dangerous than a few former mercenaries, soldiers, and terrorist,” Emma pointed out. “We can hardly blacklist Mrs. Ramon because of threats made against her. It would only encourage more people to make those same sorts of actions.”
Next on the docket for the shifting hologram was an olive skinned man with a buzz cut and a face battered by many fists. Logan could see confidence in the way the man held his shoulders and the neatly pressed casual clothes meant he took himself seriously. “This guy has to have been career military. It’s all over him.”
Emma nodded. “Ricardo Nunez. He was a member of the Marines until he was recently ousted as a mutant and forced to resign his post. Their loss, our gain. He’ll be providing combat training and military tactics lessons to our student body. He’ll even be helping a few of us more experienced mutants learn some new tricks.”
Logan crossed his arms. “Don’t even think about including me in that, lady.”
Xavier laughed. “Logan, I’m confident you could run circles around ninety percent of the soldiers in the world today, so I wouldn’t insult your talent. But given our status it only makes sense to have someone on the grounds whose primary job is to teach the children how to handle themselves in the frequent situations we find ourselves in.”
“But don’t be so quick to dismiss Ricardo. He has the intestinal fortitude of a man walking into a line of cannons armed with a slingshot.”
Logan clicked his teeth. “I’ll take your word for it, Emma.”
The next image zoomed in on was of a petite woman with gray, crystalline skin and crimson eyes. She was wearing a stuffy black business suit and had long, deathly white hair. She looked like a nightmare lawyer. Xavier filled in the details on this one. “This tenacious young woman is Lakesha Fontaine and she will be in charge of all academic studies for the students. Her unique set of mutations makes her extremely capable as an instructor in all subjects and also someone I could depend on to protect the children if worse came to worse.”
“I detect a hint of attitude,” Logan said.
Emma gave him an icy glare. “Why must determined, accomplished women always be subjected to man’s insecurities? She had to fight her way through law school and medical school, and that was after graduating college with honors. I think she’s deserving of a few moments of ’attitude’. Besides, it seems a hardly believable assessment coming from one who takes pleasure in cutting people to ribbons.”
“Oh yeah…you and this broad are going to get along just fine.”
Emma didn’t respond and typed in some more keys to zoom in on the last of the five new hires. She looked like a woman with little patience for nonsense and just as little patience for beauty. Her hair was cut economically short, she didn’t wear make-up and her clothing was plain almost to a fault. Her soft brown skin didn’t show much sign of aging but her brown eyes held all the marks of a life full of experience. Logan pinned her as being either Hispanic or Native American. “Let me guess. She’s not handling cooking.”
Xavier sighed. “Logan, I think you might want to brace yourself for this one. Her name is Giselle Gyrich.”
Launching from his seat, the feral mutant growled. “You mean she’s related to–” “She’s his niece AND she’s a mutant, Logan,” Xavier answered. “She’s been working through her private security firm to provide protection for nonprofits that are pro-mutant. Giselle is doing all she can to erase the stink of her Uncle’ bigotry, and her experience will be invaluable as the Mansion’s Security Chief.”
Logan calmed a little bit but not much. “Bi-racial mutant huh? And she’s got Gyrich for family? Almost feel sorry for her considering. My nose tells me Henry ain’t too keen on interracial relationship either.”
“After interviewing the woman, I learned quite a few more unpleasant things about Henry Peter Gyrich. He’s hardly a man in any case, and not even worth our attention in the long run,” Emma said, dismissing the bigot outright.
Having regained his composure, Logan shook his head. “Wouldn’t count him out all the way, darling. Gyrich always has a way of rearing his ugly head where it ain’t wanted.”
Xavier suddenly looked a lot more thoughtful than he had had a few moments ago. Logan’s acute senses allowed him to hear the rise in Chuck’s heartbeat. “What you ain’t telling me, Professor?”
Charles looked up. “I give you my full assurance that you know everything there is to know about our new staff. What bothers me now is another matter entirely. Something that directly involved you I’m afraid, Logan.”
Logan sat back down. “Spill it. Ain’t never needed you to sugarcoat things for me before, Chuck, and you don’t have to start now.”
“Stryfe presumed that when he attacked Little Rock that he was only affecting humanity in the long run. Charles and I have found out that he was terribly wrong. His psychic attack on that city rocked the Astral Plane in a way that has never been seen in any way since humans first observed the dimension. For lock of a more tactful comparison, Stryfe’s attack on Little Rock was the Hiroshima of the astral Plane.”
Logan could believe it. He and just about everything else in the world had seen the mindless bodies littering the city streets. “What does any of that have to do with me?”
Emma gave him her typical cold haughtiness. “We want you to kill a psychic reawakened by Stryfe’s attack.”
Logan didn’t have any objections to killing. He had spent most of his life doing it, but he was going to need a reason. If only to know what he was about to walk into. “Who, why and how?”
“Her name is Astrid Bloom and she taught me everything I know about my powers,” Emma said, her voice cracking for the first time in a long while for Logan. “Back when I was in college...I was a bit more naïve about my abilities and her intentions. She lived to lord her powers over others and the only reason I was able to put her down was because she genuinely didn’t expect an attack from me.”
“She hardly sounds like the nastiest person we’ve dealt with. Why the hush-hush death sentence?”
Xavier stepped in to answer that. “Astrid already possessed formidable psionic powers when Emma incapacitated her. It seems that Stryfe’s rocking of the Astral Plane not only revived her but somehow amplified her powers. Right now, she’s still in a semi-unconscious state in a hospital, but unconsciously she has cocooned herself from all telepathic contact. In all likelihood, she has the power to resist any telepath, even myself, otherwise Emma and I would have handled the deed ourselves.”
“Chuck…you mean that?” Logan asked, more than a bit shocked.
“Yes Logan, I do. I cannot begin to tell you my grief at the loss of life in Little Rock, and I can’t help but to think that it might have been prevented if my attitude towards our misguided brothers was different.” Xavier hung his head low for a moment. “We have begun to make progress Logan and I will not allow it to be torn down by mutants unwilling to see even the smallest of lights at the end of the tunnel. I believe this Astrid Bloom could prove to be a prospect none of us want to be faced with.”
Logan always wanted Chuck to see things a little more form his perspective, but for some reason he didn’t imagine it being this unnerving. “Fine, I’ll do it. Guessing that she won’t be able to feel me coming?”
“Her psychic cocoon prevents her from being aware of any outside stimuli,” Emma said.
“Quick and easy. I’ll try to make it painless.”
Emma’s response came out fast and harsh. “Just do it. She’s hardly every shown anyone else mercy.”
Xavier sighed. “Please understand that we have investigated all other avenues of how to handle this problem, but we simply cannot afford for Astrid to wake up. I haven’t seen a telepath resist me so thoroughly since exodus and Legion, and you know how dangerous they are.”
“I get it, Chuck,” Logan said, as he stood up. “Some things just need doing.”
Xavier nodded. “I appreciate your tact in all of this. Based upon our projections, there’s weeks before Astrid might awake, so stay for the introduction of the new hires tomorrow. I would like for as many of us to be there as possible.”
“You got it, Chuck.” Logan gave Xavier a two-fingered salute and walked to one of the exits.
Emma watched Logan walk out of the War Room, surprised he hadn’t scrutinized their decision more. He had bought in to all of it too easy. She wanted him to play up a little bit of reluctance to the idea, if only to maintain their ruse. Part of her wished that she had gone to Logan first instead of Xavier, because then it could be X-Force finishing off Astrid and not him, and Charles would have never have had to come to that decision. She could still look at him and see the guilt in his eyes. Killing was matter better left to his students. Charles’ heart was too good to stomach it.
“Why did we not tell him everything?” Emma asked.
“The emerging telepaths and other problems of the Astral Plane are not for him to worry about. Though I do think we’ll need to confer with a group of our peers to discuss it, but just not at this moment. Too many other problems are on our plate. It seems the more progress we make the more headaches it produces.”
Emma laughed. “Yes, success can be quite a cruel lover when she wants to be. It seemed the further I climbed in the Hellfire Club, the more I had to watch for the knife in my back. Success and power have a way of making the peasants eager to tear you down.”
Charles leaned back in his Shi’ar designed wheelchair and sighed. “Well, removing Astrid will give us one less person with that intent to worry about. I have always believed that I was doing the right thing, Emma, even when it made me feel wrong. Every time I sent my X-Men out to battle some enemy it tore my heart but I knew it was the right thing to do. Is this right?”
Bending down, Emma clasped Charles’ face with her hands. “I’m telling you, Charles, that this is the only way. I know from personal experience that this woman is a power hungry, self indulgent person willing to do anything to anyone to get what she wanted. And for a long time after I put her in that coma, I believed that she was right. You know exactly what kind of person I use to be – Astrid’s worse, much worse.”
“I know. I just—AHH!!”
Both telepaths dropped to the floor as a surge of power ripped through their minds. It wasn’t anywhere near as fierce as the Little Rock attack because this event revolved around a single entity. The psychic signature was so potently familiar to Emma that she looked up at Charles in horror.
“We’re too late. She’s already awakening.”
Charles gripped his temples. “Another telepath aroused her. It feels like Jean, but it’s not.”
Realization sunk in simultaneously for the lovers and the both looked at each other wide-eyed. Emma mouthed the words with absolute hate. “Pryor. And if she’s there then Shaw isn’t far behind.”
“And who better to come after you with than Astrid?” Charles could hear the faintest of laughter in his mind. “My lord, I shouldn’t have even debated you about it Emma.”
“Too late for regrets now, Charles; we’ll deal with it as we’ve dealt with everything else.”
The reality was clear for both of them. Astrid Bloom, a highly dangerous telepath, was now clearly in the clutches of the Hellfire Club and Emma knew what they had to do next. “We need to gather the team. Logan’s mission is pointless now. They need to know everything.”
Charles nodded. “You are right. We do not have a choice anymore.”
Sitting at his desk in his make-shift office, Stryfe suddenly sat up straight as a strange ripple coursed through the astral plane. He suddenly knew of something important and that it was happening now. He smiled. “Raven, my dear!” he called.
She stepped into his office with a half-smile on her face and a cell phone was in her hand. “Shaw is on the phone. He has a request for us.”
Stryfe took the phone and put it to his ear. “Hello, Sebastian. I didn’t think we’d be communicating this soon.”
“Yes, well, I have three telepaths that I need you to retrieve. I have to give the Hellfire Club some sense of deniability in this matter and seeing as how I helped to facilitate your Little Rock attack, you can consider this a small down payment.”
The telepath nodded. “Then give me the details and we’ll see what we can do.”
After all the details were divulged, Stryfe hung up the phone and handed it back to Mystique, who tucked into her a skirt pocket. “So we have ourselves a new target?”
“Indeed we do,” he said. “We need to make a trip to Boston…”
The War Room
“So you tucked Bloom away in Boston,” Domino said. “Why?”
She had been gathered along with Rogue, Beast, Wolverine, Psylocke and Omega Sentinel into the War Room. Emma had relayed the details of her and Astrid’s relationship while Emma was in college. Almost everyone saw that the story was a deeply personal one for Emma. Astrid Bloom had played a big role in her life and not in the most positive way. Charles believed only Winston Frost had had a more negative effect on Emma.
“I put her in Boston because she hated it,” Emma said with a sad smile. “I know it sounds petty, but after all that she did to me it was the only real punishment I could come up with.”
“And what exactly did she do, luv?” Psylocke asked, running a hand through her purple hair. “I get that she tortured you maliciously, but I have a feeling that there is more to it than you’re telling us.”
Emma looked at Charles with trepidation but continued. “I’m sure you have all noticed that three students at Snow Valley all bear a certain resemblance to myself.”
Logan snickered. “What do the kids call ‘em? The Stepford Cuckoos.”
Emma narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes, quite. They bear such a resemblance because in many ways they are my clones, but only modified enough to be distinct individuals. Some of you may not know this but I encountered The Dark Beast when I was just a teenager. He always kept his eye on me.”
Beast’s mouth practically fell open. Would the sins of his alternate counterpart never end? “So he created those three girls?”
Emma nodded. “It was Astrid that gave him my genetic material. She believed that if she couldn’t control me entirely then she would do it in another way. That act was the one that caused me to lash out in rage and put her into a coma. Now I’m beginning to wish I would have killed her.”
It was a sober, grim assessment that Hank couldn’t agree with. “You did the right thing, Emma, but now we have to stop Astrid and protect those children.”
“The Hellfire Club is unlikely to come after the children immediately as Astrid will need time to get readjusted to her body. But we do have to assume that they are going to move to retrieve her very soon, most likely through surrogates of some sort,” Omega Sentinel said.
“And given all the resources that group of weasels has it could be almost anyone going to get her.”
“I gotta agree with Rogue,” Wolverine said. “We’re about to walk into a hospital full of civilians with no idea who might be on our tails.”
A holographic schematic of the hospital opened up on the center console of the War Room. Charles looked up at it and said, “We don’t have a choice. If we evacuate the hospital we may be forcing Shaw’s hand and creating a much more dramatic situation. Astrid must be extracted or removed as discreetly as possible.”
Domino’s past as a mercenary gave her experience with missions involving a large number of civilians. “We’ll have to disguise ourselves and get in and out with minimal fuss. If we encounter a problem then–”
“We do what we have to do,” Cable said, walking into the War Room with bandages around his torn shoulder. “And I don’t care what any of you say, I’m going on this mission. You’re going to need as many telepaths as possible.”
Emma and Charles shared a momentary glance and then she said, “Agreed. Suit up and get to Boston as fast as possible. Astrid cannot be allowed to be fully awakened.”
Stryfe smiled as he stood outside Boston’s County General hospital. The Brotherhood gathered around him and anticipation filled the air. “Pure chaos,” he said gleefully. “A full hospital...and we can thank Shaw yet again. I think I am beginning to like this new Hellfire Club a great deal. Ready to kill some throwbacks?”
“I love it,” Mystique purred.
“Wait for my signal once we’re inside,” he said. “Remember…our primary target is Astrid Bloom. The other two telepaths are secondary.” He scanned the minds within the hospital, searching for the three telepaths. He smiled as he found them. “Now the fun really begins.”
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To Be Continued...
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