Persistence of Memory
folder
X-Men - Animated Series (all) › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
57
Views:
7,448
Reviews:
68
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Category:
X-Men - Animated Series (all) › General
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
57
Views:
7,448
Reviews:
68
Recommended:
0
Currently Reading:
0
Disclaimer:
I do not own X-Men Evolution, or any of the characters from it. I make no money from from the writing of this story.
27
Persistence of Memory Chapter Twenty Seven (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply
A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE, Prophetic Muse, Hamster
Witch, and Uberbeta, the glitter is missing again. Be on the look out for sparkley werewolves. InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are lovely
and delightful for archiving. J ProPhile gets extra squishy muses
for…whatever. (I don’t know why they’re
squishy. They just are.) Morgan gets a big gold star for mean and
funny tricks. ParkerFloyd—That review
really meant a lot to me! Thank
you! Readers/Reviewers: Big, huge, duck kisses for all of you. I kicked up another armadillo lurking
around…I think they’re planning a revolt.
Warren
twisted slightly, popping his back and stretching his wings. They ached from the two hours of slow
circles around the perimeter of the Institute property, staying high enough not
to be noticed but low enough to notice everything. He breathed a sigh of relief as Logan and someone he guessed to
be Rahne in canine-form trotted out into the open, followed by Jamie and
Bobby. Warren checked to make sure that
he could not be seen before setting himself down in a thicket of trees. It would be a good ten minutes before Logan
and Rahne made it this far and he was grateful for the rest. Just as he was starting to doze lightly, the
heavy crunch of Logan’s booted footsteps snapped him to attention. “Not a damned thing,” he said without
preamble.
“Nothin’?” Logan sounded almost disappointed. “Damn.”
“Wanting
some bloodshed are we?” Warren yawned, rising to his feet. “Where’d you send Rahne?”
“She
checking the outer perimeter. Looks
like the lot of ‘em left, but I think at least one or two are up to
something.” He shrugged. “Call it a hunch.”
“I’ll call
it a banded bandersnitch[1]
if you’re right,” Warren replied.
“You don’t
think we’ve got anything to worry about?” Logan sneered. “Listen here, bub…” Rahne’s howl broke the burgeoning
argument. “Ha!” was all Logan said as
he took off through the brush towards the origin of the sound.
Rahne sat
before the fence, panting slightly and looking as proud of herself as she could
manage in her current form. “What is
it?” Jamie, rather Jamies, cried, crashing through a layer of pine needles and
detritus as Logan drew to a halt before Rahne.
“Are you okay?”
“She’s
fine,” Logan said shortly. “What is it,
Rahne? What’d you find?”
“Is this
disturbing to anyone other than me?” Bobby muttered, approaching at a much
slower pace. “Lassie’s trying to tell
us something,” he muttered.
“Shut up,”
Jamie snarled, his double popping out of existence.
“Sorry…trying
for levity and missed. Sorry, Rahne.”
Rahne
emitted a dismissive snort and turned to nose a spot at the base of the wrought
iron, woven through with chicken wire along that portion of the property. She growled softly and nudged the spot der,der, turning and whining softly at Logan.
He dropped to his knees next to her and sniffed deeply of the air. “Cheap stink water,” he muttered. “Man. Or a woman with really bad taste.”
Bobby and
Jamie exchanged looks. “They can smell
that?” Bobby asked.
Jamie
nodded, smiling slightly. “Rahne’s got
one hell of a sense of smell.”
Warren made
a soft chiding noise. “Language.” He valiantly
ignored the proffered raspberry.[2]
Logan stood
and sighed. “Ain’t more than an hour
old. You sure you didn’t see anybody
out here, Warren?”
“Not a
soul, but I have to be honest…My arc took me over twenty miles and it’s very
possible someone slipped by while I was on the far side of the property.”
“Did they
get in?” Bobby asked, suddenly serious.
Logan did
not answer but began pacing the length of the fence away from the small
group. Rahne gave a short bark and
followed, sniffing the ground closely.
Warren nodded. “That’s a
yes.” He backed away a few paces and
spread his wings, taking flight before Bobby and Jamie could fully comprehend
what was going on.
“Well,”
Bobby said after a minute, “this is getting annoying.”
“The King
of Understatement strikes again,” Jamie muttered. He suddenly struck himself hard on the chest, bringing another
Jamie into existence, which then ran towards the mansion. “Going tll Sll Storm,” Jamie explained to
Bobby as they set off after Logan and Rahne.
Rahne had
the man backed against the wrought iron bars and chicken wire, her teeth
bared. Logan was in a much similar
posture, which seemed to bother the stranger more than the seeming wolf
snarling at knee-level. “I just got
lost! I swear! I didn’t know this was someone’s property!”
Logan spat,
“Right. That’s why you had to crawl
under a fence to get here.”
The man was
at a loss for words. “Hey,” Bobby said
suddenly, “you’re that guy from channel four…”
“Brent Stevens,”
Jamie put in, adopting a hokey newscaster’s cadence, “Eye on Bayville.”
Logan
restrained himself, barely, from putting a claw through the man’s stomach. “You’re the one Forge calls ‘the schmuck
from channel four,’ aren’t you?”
“I don’t w…whw…who’s Forge?” Stevens asked, trying not to let his voice crack.
“Shop
teacher,” Bobby replied innocently.
“Let me
guess,” Logan said slowly, as if giving the matter great thought, “you were
just out for an evening stroll through the back end of no where, slipped, fell,
rolled under a fence and here you are.”
“Uh…”
“Or maybe,”
he continued, sounding dangerously cheerful, “you wanted to commit an act of
trespass, take pictures of minors, maybe steal something to show you’d been
here, and write up a nice little story to read on the air tomorrow about the
mutants of Bayville.”
“herehere are
mutants here!” Stevens suddenly crowed.
Logan
snarled so strongly, even Rahne backed down.
“If you even so much as hint at that, bub, you’re gonna be picking up
your teeth in three states.”
Stevens
blanched visibly. “Let’s be
reasonable,” Warren said calmly, coming out of the s lis like some sort of ntomntom. He was wearing a heavy coat,
seemingly too warm for the chilly weather but everyone except Stevens knew the
real reason the coat seemed so bulky.
“Stevens, right?” The man
nodded. “My name is Warren Worthington.
The third.”
Stevens’
eyes lit up. “As in…”
“Yes, those
Worthingtons,” Warren sighed. “I want
to offer you a proposal, Stevens. An
exclusive…” He could feel several pairs
of eyes on him, boring into him with varying degrees of disbelief. “You come to the Institute tomorrow. Interview…” he did some quick calculations,
“six of the older students. And the
teachers. We show you around, you see
this is just a normal private boarding school.
The only thing exceptional here are the students.”
“Throw in
Professor Xavier and it’s a deal,” Stevens said with a touch of greed.
“Regretfully,
Professor Xavier is out of town on business matters. However, you may speak with his assistant directors, Mister Logan
and Miss Munro.” Warren shot Logan a
vaguely pleading look and sighed inwardly when the man remained silent.
Stevens
looked down at Logan’s knuckles, still pressed against his throat, and Rahne,
growling at his knees. “Camera crew?”
“One
camera. And the assistant directors of
the school get approval of all interview questions.” Warren sounded very business-like and Stevens responded to the
tone.
“Of
course,” he said, nodding in concession.
“What time?”
“Two
p.m. It’s a Friday so they tend to get
out of lessons early for unstructured recreational time.”
Logan
removed his fist from Stevens’ proximity.
“I’ll escort him out…Rahne’ll come with me to make sure there’s no
unstructured ass kicking time.”
Warren
nodded and smiled indulgently as Logan half-dragged the reported from the
property. ay,”ay,” he said sharply, his
smile falling as soon as they were out of sight. “Bobby, you go get Jean and Scott. Tell them to meet me in the small library. Jamie, go intercept Storm and tell her
what’s going on. While you’re at it, I
need Kitty, Kurt, Beast, St. John, and Amara.
Possibly Rogue…yeah, get her too.”
“Lance and
Todd?” Jamie asked, backing away.
Warren
sighed. “I suppose…I guess we can clean
‘em up.”
Jamie made
a face and turned to run towards the house at full tilt, calling over his
shoulder, “Forge and Banshee?”
“Surprise
me!”
Jean rubbed
her temples wearily. Her head throbbed
with reverberations of the earlier crushing pain that had been so brief but so
debilitating. It was as if, she
reflected, every single impulse, emotion and sensatioopleople for miles around
were experiencing tried to flood into her mind all at once. Coupled with the loss of control over her
telekinesis and the resulting destruction of upwards of a thousand dollars
worth of office equipment, Jean decided she was having a Very Bad Day. Foot rub notwithstanding.
“Do you
need another painkiller?” Scott asked anxiously, pressing just a little too
hard against her ankle.
“Now I do,”
she sighed. “No, don’t get up…I’ll get
it.” The bottle of Aleve barely missed
Scott’s head on it’s way from the kitchen medicine cabinet.
Scott frowned
and stopped rubbing her feet, merely holding them in his lap between his
hands. “Still no idea what’s going on?”
‘I know
Emma’s still working on the Professor in there…but no. I’m trying to keep my shields up. Rogue even asked me if I knew any quick,
good ways of blocking empathic pulses.”
She slid further down in the seat and sighed again. “Today sucks.”
Scott let
his hanlidelide up her legs, though more comforting that suggestive. “You’re still in your scrubs.”
“Haven’t
had time to change.”
“Well, go
do it and go to bed.” He pushed her
feet gently off his lap and stood, offering her a hand up. “I’ll even start you a bath.”
“We don’t
have a tub,” she yawned.
“Then I’ll
start you a shower.” Jean smiled at him
sleepily and trod towards the stairs.
He called after her, “Um, hot, right?”
“Yeah. Hot as it can go.” She yawned again. “Damn
it.”
“What?”
“We have to
go to the main house. Jamie’s coming.”
“Projecting?”
“Like
crazy,” she sighed. “Grab me a soda,
huh?”
Jamie
blinked up at her as she opened the door before he knocked. “Um…”
“On our
way,” she said as kindly as she could.
“Sorry,”
Jamie muttered, blushing as Scott appeared behind Jean, shirtless and looking
rumpled.
Jean stared
agog at her husband as Jamie darted off into the night. “Scott! Put your shirt back on! Jamie thinks we were…”
“Well, that’ll
teach ‘em to come bothering us after seven,” he groused, pulling his shirt over
his head.
“That’s
going to have to wait for a while,” Jean said quietly, cocking her head to one
side. “Emma’s found something…”
A/N Next up, Remy/Jubilee and someone new….
[1] Anyone who
knows where that’s from gets a cookie, lol.
Jabberwocky is one of my favorite poems. J AH, but can you name the book? LOL.
[2] Rude noise
Disclaimers Apply
A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies, BUSIEST
WOMAN ALIVE, Prophetic Muse, Hamster
Witch, and Uberbeta, the glitter is missing again. Be on the look out for sparkley werewolves. InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are lovely
and delightful for archiving. J ProPhile gets extra squishy muses
for…whatever. (I don’t know why they’re
squishy. They just are.) Morgan gets a big gold star for mean and
funny tricks. ParkerFloyd—That review
really meant a lot to me! Thank
you! Readers/Reviewers: Big, huge, duck kisses for all of you. I kicked up another armadillo lurking
around…I think they’re planning a revolt.
Warren
twisted slightly, popping his back and stretching his wings. They ached from the two hours of slow
circles around the perimeter of the Institute property, staying high enough not
to be noticed but low enough to notice everything. He breathed a sigh of relief as Logan and someone he guessed to
be Rahne in canine-form trotted out into the open, followed by Jamie and
Bobby. Warren checked to make sure that
he could not be seen before setting himself down in a thicket of trees. It would be a good ten minutes before Logan
and Rahne made it this far and he was grateful for the rest. Just as he was starting to doze lightly, the
heavy crunch of Logan’s booted footsteps snapped him to attention. “Not a damned thing,” he said without
preamble.
“Nothin’?” Logan sounded almost disappointed. “Damn.”
“Wanting
some bloodshed are we?” Warren yawned, rising to his feet. “Where’d you send Rahne?”
“She
checking the outer perimeter. Looks
like the lot of ‘em left, but I think at least one or two are up to
something.” He shrugged. “Call it a hunch.”
“I’ll call
it a banded bandersnitch[1]
if you’re right,” Warren replied.
“You don’t
think we’ve got anything to worry about?” Logan sneered. “Listen here, bub…” Rahne’s howl broke the burgeoning
argument. “Ha!” was all Logan said as
he took off through the brush towards the origin of the sound.
Rahne sat
before the fence, panting slightly and looking as proud of herself as she could
manage in her current form. “What is
it?” Jamie, rather Jamies, cried, crashing through a layer of pine needles and
detritus as Logan drew to a halt before Rahne.
“Are you okay?”
“She’s
fine,” Logan said shortly. “What is it,
Rahne? What’d you find?”
“Is this
disturbing to anyone other than me?” Bobby muttered, approaching at a much
slower pace. “Lassie’s trying to tell
us something,” he muttered.
“Shut up,”
Jamie snarled, his double popping out of existence.
“Sorry…trying
for levity and missed. Sorry, Rahne.”
Rahne
emitted a dismissive snort and turned to nose a spot at the base of the wrought
iron, woven through with chicken wire along that portion of the property. She growled softly and nudged the spot der,der, turning and whining softly at Logan.
He dropped to his knees next to her and sniffed deeply of the air. “Cheap stink water,” he muttered. “Man. Or a woman with really bad taste.”
Bobby and
Jamie exchanged looks. “They can smell
that?” Bobby asked.
Jamie
nodded, smiling slightly. “Rahne’s got
one hell of a sense of smell.”
Warren made
a soft chiding noise. “Language.” He valiantly
ignored the proffered raspberry.[2]
Logan stood
and sighed. “Ain’t more than an hour
old. You sure you didn’t see anybody
out here, Warren?”
“Not a
soul, but I have to be honest…My arc took me over twenty miles and it’s very
possible someone slipped by while I was on the far side of the property.”
“Did they
get in?” Bobby asked, suddenly serious.
Logan did
not answer but began pacing the length of the fence away from the small
group. Rahne gave a short bark and
followed, sniffing the ground closely.
Warren nodded. “That’s a
yes.” He backed away a few paces and
spread his wings, taking flight before Bobby and Jamie could fully comprehend
what was going on.
“Well,”
Bobby said after a minute, “this is getting annoying.”
“The King
of Understatement strikes again,” Jamie muttered. He suddenly struck himself hard on the chest, bringing another
Jamie into existence, which then ran towards the mansion. “Going tll Sll Storm,” Jamie explained to
Bobby as they set off after Logan and Rahne.
Rahne had
the man backed against the wrought iron bars and chicken wire, her teeth
bared. Logan was in a much similar
posture, which seemed to bother the stranger more than the seeming wolf
snarling at knee-level. “I just got
lost! I swear! I didn’t know this was someone’s property!”
Logan spat,
“Right. That’s why you had to crawl
under a fence to get here.”
The man was
at a loss for words. “Hey,” Bobby said
suddenly, “you’re that guy from channel four…”
“Brent Stevens,”
Jamie put in, adopting a hokey newscaster’s cadence, “Eye on Bayville.”
Logan
restrained himself, barely, from putting a claw through the man’s stomach. “You’re the one Forge calls ‘the schmuck
from channel four,’ aren’t you?”
“I don’t w…whw…who’s Forge?” Stevens asked, trying not to let his voice crack.
“Shop
teacher,” Bobby replied innocently.
“Let me
guess,” Logan said slowly, as if giving the matter great thought, “you were
just out for an evening stroll through the back end of no where, slipped, fell,
rolled under a fence and here you are.”
“Uh…”
“Or maybe,”
he continued, sounding dangerously cheerful, “you wanted to commit an act of
trespass, take pictures of minors, maybe steal something to show you’d been
here, and write up a nice little story to read on the air tomorrow about the
mutants of Bayville.”
“herehere are
mutants here!” Stevens suddenly crowed.
Logan
snarled so strongly, even Rahne backed down.
“If you even so much as hint at that, bub, you’re gonna be picking up
your teeth in three states.”
Stevens
blanched visibly. “Let’s be
reasonable,” Warren said calmly, coming out of the s lis like some sort of ntomntom. He was wearing a heavy coat,
seemingly too warm for the chilly weather but everyone except Stevens knew the
real reason the coat seemed so bulky.
“Stevens, right?” The man
nodded. “My name is Warren Worthington.
The third.”
Stevens’
eyes lit up. “As in…”
“Yes, those
Worthingtons,” Warren sighed. “I want
to offer you a proposal, Stevens. An
exclusive…” He could feel several pairs
of eyes on him, boring into him with varying degrees of disbelief. “You come to the Institute tomorrow. Interview…” he did some quick calculations,
“six of the older students. And the
teachers. We show you around, you see
this is just a normal private boarding school.
The only thing exceptional here are the students.”
“Throw in
Professor Xavier and it’s a deal,” Stevens said with a touch of greed.
“Regretfully,
Professor Xavier is out of town on business matters. However, you may speak with his assistant directors, Mister Logan
and Miss Munro.” Warren shot Logan a
vaguely pleading look and sighed inwardly when the man remained silent.
Stevens
looked down at Logan’s knuckles, still pressed against his throat, and Rahne,
growling at his knees. “Camera crew?”
“One
camera. And the assistant directors of
the school get approval of all interview questions.” Warren sounded very business-like and Stevens responded to the
tone.
“Of
course,” he said, nodding in concession.
“What time?”
“Two
p.m. It’s a Friday so they tend to get
out of lessons early for unstructured recreational time.”
Logan
removed his fist from Stevens’ proximity.
“I’ll escort him out…Rahne’ll come with me to make sure there’s no
unstructured ass kicking time.”
Warren
nodded and smiled indulgently as Logan half-dragged the reported from the
property. ay,”ay,” he said sharply, his
smile falling as soon as they were out of sight. “Bobby, you go get Jean and Scott. Tell them to meet me in the small library. Jamie, go intercept Storm and tell her
what’s going on. While you’re at it, I
need Kitty, Kurt, Beast, St. John, and Amara.
Possibly Rogue…yeah, get her too.”
“Lance and
Todd?” Jamie asked, backing away.
Warren
sighed. “I suppose…I guess we can clean
‘em up.”
Jamie made
a face and turned to run towards the house at full tilt, calling over his
shoulder, “Forge and Banshee?”
“Surprise
me!”
Jean rubbed
her temples wearily. Her head throbbed
with reverberations of the earlier crushing pain that had been so brief but so
debilitating. It was as if, she
reflected, every single impulse, emotion and sensatioopleople for miles around
were experiencing tried to flood into her mind all at once. Coupled with the loss of control over her
telekinesis and the resulting destruction of upwards of a thousand dollars
worth of office equipment, Jean decided she was having a Very Bad Day. Foot rub notwithstanding.
“Do you
need another painkiller?” Scott asked anxiously, pressing just a little too
hard against her ankle.
“Now I do,”
she sighed. “No, don’t get up…I’ll get
it.” The bottle of Aleve barely missed
Scott’s head on it’s way from the kitchen medicine cabinet.
Scott frowned
and stopped rubbing her feet, merely holding them in his lap between his
hands. “Still no idea what’s going on?”
‘I know
Emma’s still working on the Professor in there…but no. I’m trying to keep my shields up. Rogue even asked me if I knew any quick,
good ways of blocking empathic pulses.”
She slid further down in the seat and sighed again. “Today sucks.”
Scott let
his hanlidelide up her legs, though more comforting that suggestive. “You’re still in your scrubs.”
“Haven’t
had time to change.”
“Well, go
do it and go to bed.” He pushed her
feet gently off his lap and stood, offering her a hand up. “I’ll even start you a bath.”
“We don’t
have a tub,” she yawned.
“Then I’ll
start you a shower.” Jean smiled at him
sleepily and trod towards the stairs.
He called after her, “Um, hot, right?”
“Yeah. Hot as it can go.” She yawned again. “Damn
it.”
“What?”
“We have to
go to the main house. Jamie’s coming.”
“Projecting?”
“Like
crazy,” she sighed. “Grab me a soda,
huh?”
Jamie
blinked up at her as she opened the door before he knocked. “Um…”
“On our
way,” she said as kindly as she could.
“Sorry,”
Jamie muttered, blushing as Scott appeared behind Jean, shirtless and looking
rumpled.
Jean stared
agog at her husband as Jamie darted off into the night. “Scott! Put your shirt back on! Jamie thinks we were…”
“Well, that’ll
teach ‘em to come bothering us after seven,” he groused, pulling his shirt over
his head.
“That’s
going to have to wait for a while,” Jean said quietly, cocking her head to one
side. “Emma’s found something…”
A/N Next up, Remy/Jubilee and someone new….
[1] Anyone who
knows where that’s from gets a cookie, lol.
Jabberwocky is one of my favorite poems. J AH, but can you name the book? LOL.
[2] Rude noise