Institutionalized

INSTITUTIONALIZED CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR (NC-17)
Disclaimers Apply


A/N Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE (tm), has the menagerie returned yet? The kilt-eating critters are getting antsy and will eat anything plaid soon... lol. InterNutter, TC and Maxwell Pink are groovy. I said it and I meant it! ;) Readers/Reviewers: I love you people. Thanks for reading and reviewing and reading some more! The menagerie is taking a break on this side so I'll just let y'all know that the slash I'm planning has been moved towards the end of the fic, so y'all have time to mentally prepare yourselves, lol. :)

"You scared the snot out of me!" Kitty cried when she saw Storm.
"Pleasant imagery, child." Storm grimaced but withstood Kitty's full-on hug assault. "I'm sorry to have frightened you so badly."
"I just was freaked out when a woman answered the Professor's phone...I had no idea you were going to be meeting him! I thought you had gone to find Tabby..." Kitty gulped for air then asked. "Did you find her?"
Storm's lips tightened. "No, we did not. Logan and Wanda are chasing some trails, but Professor Xavier needed my assistance in convincing two more...individuals...to return with him and Warren. Aside from that, I needed to sign the papers as a witness, turning the boardinghouse into a school, officially."
Kitty nodded, interested but mentally occupied. "Did you see the grounds? Did you see it all?"
Storm nodded grimly. "I cannot fathom what has happened. Where are the others? Cecilia and the Wagners, that is."
"They're all in the boathouse...They didn't want to come across to here for some reason..." In reality, the reason was clear. Astrid had said it most succinctly-the attack did not focus on the boathouse or those within. It was as if they were not there. They were safer there, they felt, and the mansion was little more than a beacon to whoever had come in the night and taken the residents. "I was thinking that there has to be some way to follow the tracks, but they disappear once you get to the road. And that's just the car...the plane is harder. It was the Blackbird."
"The Professor took the secondary..." Storm sighed. "He said it was small enough not to draw attention in a commercial hangar. Damn it," the weather goddess said sharply. "This wasn't supposed to happen for years yet...you are not ready for such things." Her words were punctuated by the faintest of "clunks", like someone dropping boots behind a closed door.
"Looks like we don't have a choice," Kitty sighed. "I checked just about everywhere...we're it."
"Are you sure?" Storm asked. They were standing just inside the front door, some sense of safety being afforded by the sheer enormity of the house. "I thought I heard someone in the kitchen..."
"That's, like, so not funny, Storm!" Kitty said with a weak laugh. "C'mon, I can, like, totally appreciate trying to distract me or whatever, but..."
"Shhhh!" Storm hissed. She pressed her finger over her lips and motioned for Kitty to stay there as she crept on silent feet towards the kitchen.
Kitty, being Kitty, followed. She frowned at Storm's shushing but did not say anything else as she kept a distance of a little over a yard between them, far enough to be out of the way should the older woman need to move fast but close enough to jump in and help. _Whatever kind of help I can give...maybe scaring them off with my frizzy hair day and the Mount Rushmore of zits on my chin? _ Storm, if she knew that she was being followed, gave no sign of the knowledge as she paused at the entry to the rec room. The power still had not come back on and the only light in the room was streaming through the windows, pale yellow with the promise of a hot day in store once the sun rose fully. There was no one in the rec room, Storm's careful perusal only turning up a stray sock and the debris of the party the night before. The kitchen was equally empty except for one thing... "Look," Kitty said softly, breaking the silence. "Someone's been in the drawers." Sure enough, several drawers stood open or half way open, the contents apparently rifled through.
Storm raised a platinum brow and poked gingerly at the innards of one such drawer. "The tiny flashlight is missing, the one Logan uses to look under the hoods of the cars."
"He needs a flashlight?" Kitty wondered faintly, her eyes darting around the kitchen and then back to the rec room, searching for signs of life.
"I think it's for effect," Storm allowed. There came again the clunking noise and both women paused. "Mudroom," Storm mouthed to Kitty.
Kitty nodded and closed the distance between them, stopping her teacher/foster mother in waiting/mentor with a hand on her arm. "Phase," Kitty said quietly. Storm started to form a response, something undoubtedly along the lines of "no," but Kitty beat her to it. She phased through the door and into the mudroom itself, her eyes adjusting to the shadows. There was movement and then the clunking noise again. Whoever was in there wore all black and seemed to be facing away. Gritting her teeth and shifting her weight to her heels in order to lunge more aggressively, Kitty flung herself at the noisy shadow and cried out wordlessly, wrapping her arms around what she supposed was their neck.
_*Bloody Hell! Leggo! _ *
"Jono?" Kitty said, a cross between a cry of relief and agitation. The door flew open even as she exclaimed the name.
_*What are you all about, Kitty? Damn near took ten years off my life! _ * Jono rubbed at where most of his neck remained under the bandages and glared wishes of pain on his attacker. Storm, to her credit, had not lunged in with figurative guns blazing but rather had remained by the door, looking alternately amused, confused and annoyed.
"We heard noises...where have you been? Everyone is missing and...and..." She was very nearly close to crying but refused to let her guard down in front of a virtual stranger, especially just then, with all Hell breaking loose around them. "Weren't you at Rogue's party?"
_*Do I look like the party going sort? _ *
Storm cut in. "Where were you last night and where have you been this morning?"
_*I was down in sublevel four all night because the damn party was so loud, all that banging and clanging. I didn't want to be around all that crap so I took my guitar and some books down below. I asked Paige to come with me but she wanted to dance, she said... I've only been upstairs a few minutes. Right mess that rec room is, ain't it? _ *
Kitty and Storm exchanged glances. "Jono," Kitty said hesitantly, "Everyone is missing except for you, me, Storm, Doctor Reyes and Kurt's parents and one sister. We don't know what happened yet."
_*Paige...Paige is missing? _ *
"Yes." Storm's response was not curt but merely short and very telling.
Jono nodded. _*Right...Right. _ *
Kitty frowned. "What were you doing that made all that noise?"
Jono may have blushed if he had the capacity to do so. _* I'll tell you when you're older... _ *
"Ewwww!" Kitty cried.
_*Not that! _ * Jono would be damned before he told Kitty, or anyone for that matter, that when he was feeling particularly down about something in particular, other than his ubiquitous self pity or recent Paige-lust, or just needed to clear the sludge from his brain, he reverted to a childish urge, something he rarely indulged in. He hopscotched. A lot. And tended to knock into things. _*What're we going to do then? _ *
Storm said evenly, having caught a glimpse of the chalk pattern on the floor and suppressing a surprised expression, "The Professor and some others will be here shortly...we wait until they get here before going off half-cocked."

The Professor et al indeed arrived shortly thereafter, within two hours. The Wagners and Cecilia remained in the boathouse, mainly out of deference to Erika's still fragile state but also because the carnage of the lawn made them uneasy. There was almost absolute silence as Professor Xavier surveyed the damage and then asked Kitty what she knew about it. Slowly and almost shamefully, she told him about the party and passing out, then what had happened when she had awakened. It was a quick tale, she found to her surprise, and it left a dull hum of anxiety in the air. Finally, the Professor said wearily, "This is Sean Cassidy, called Banshee and this is Forge1. Warren and I felt that additional staff would be needed once we got underway as a school...now I'm seeing that we need them as recon."
He sounded so weary that Kitty wanted to cry. "Logan and Wanda are tracking down Tabby."
Storm said suddenly, surprising Kitty, "When they find Tabby, they'll find the others, I'm sure."
"There's something you need to know, Kitty," the Professor said softly, nodding to show that he had heard Storm and agreed with her. "And you, too, Jono... We are embroiled in battle and have been for many days now. There is a complex Gordian knot of treachery occurring in the ranks of the Brotherhood as it tries to rebuild and we have been harboring snakes to our breast, as it were."
"What do you mean?" Kitty asked, almost afraid to find out. The Professor nodded to Forge, who went to the door of the study and opened it a little, murmuring to whoever was outside. Momentarily, Roberto entered, looking the worse for wear. "Sunspot?" she gasped.
"Mystique sent me..."
1 I won't go too far into it, but Banshee has the capability of psionics and in the comics is one of the teachers for Gen X. I'll go more into detail about his abilities in later chapters. Forge has a bionic right arm and leg in the comic verse and his mutation deals with the ability to invent and handle mechanical things. I'm using more of the comicverse Forge in this fic b/c he's older and I need him to be older, lol. I'll go more into detail about him later, too.