Independence Day

Disclaimer still applies and whatnot...

Scott cursed under his breath as he met up with Logan and Kurt again. They’d been over every inch of the airport five times already and had found neither hide nor hair of Katherine Pryde. Not for the first time in his life he wished Jean were there to help. With her powers she could have located the girl in moments and they could have already been packed and well on their way home. Logan had scrounged up her luggage quickly enough, unsurprisingly, given that they were the only lavender, daisy-print ones amidst the sea of browns and blacks. Now they were back at square one.

At a loss as to what to do, the two younger men simply waited in silence for Logan to decide their next course of action. The older man was now facing a large diagram of the building, going over it again in case there was an area they had missed. Several hours had passed—many of them spent on the road stuck in a series of traffic jams—since the time they were supposed to meet up with Kitty. Logan scratched the stubble on his chin as he thought. Sniffing her out had proved impossible with all the other over-powering odors assaulting his system. Why in the hell had Chuck sent him two useless mutants when all he needed was a telepath? The said useless mutants were waiting for him to find a solution, but with none forthcoming he sighed and turned to face them.

“Tell ya what, guys,” he said gruffly. “Let’s call the professor and see if he can find out what the hell’s happened with the brat.”

“God, why didn’t we think of that hours ago?!” Scott asked angrily. His whole body ached from the six-hour drive to the city. Not to mention the added stress of sitting through all the horrible traffic and then agonizing over the thought that Kitty had been kidnaped by some anti-mutant organization, or worse, she’d forgotten her meds and phased through the plane. And from the look of his holo-clad friend, who was nervously wringing his hands and shifting from foot to foot, he had just reached the same conclusion.

Logan glanced at his pupils as he waited to get signal on his cellphone. Both were sweating heavily from tromping up and down stairs, through never-ending hallways, and ransacking the hundred or so bathrooms. Both were close friends of the girl, and Logan knew they were just as anxious to find her as he was. Kurt was becoming so distressed that his tail ended up slipping from around his waist—and the cover of his holo—to twitch nervously in plain sight before Scott could distract him long enough to hide it again.

Cursing the lack of signal on his phone, the metal building, and the world in general, Logan unfolded his brochure/map of the complex and motioned for the two boys to follow as he went in search of the payphones.

Thank god the damned place was at least finally clearing out, he thought to himself as they made their way around. The part of the building they were in was empty save for the occasional janitor picking up wrappers and empty pop cans. Logan sniffed the air in the attempt to pick her scent up, but cheap perfume, body odor, and several other unsavory things effectively blocked her out.

“It’s right up here,” he stated, tucking the map into his back pocket. As they rounded the corner to the rows of phones, he noted they weren’t entirely alone in the place after all. He didn’t think much about the three men sauntering up to a girl on the phone, but then something didn’t seem right about that. He frowned as they stopped behind her. There was something familiar about her.

Her back was to them, but she was then roughly jerked away from the phone and spun around by the largest of the three. The leather-clad bloke shook her so hard her legs gave way and he slammed her against the concrete wall. Her startled yelp was the only other sound as her head connected with a painful crack and she slid limply to the floor.

The x-men were upon them so suddenly they didn’t even see what hit them.