Obligatory warnings and disclaimers:
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If reading this is in any way illegal where you are or at your age, or you don't want to read about male/male relationships, go away. You shouldn't be here.
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The X-Men and any related characters are property of Marvel Comics, trademarked and registered and copyrighted and all that. I'm using them without permission.
For those who read the comics and worry about such things, this story takes place in the (much simpler and easier to follow) Ultimate X-Men universe, and starts right around issue 54. The current chapter takes place during and after issue 58.
Comments can be sent to "dustyh75@hotmail.com"
Thanks.
"I can't believe everyone else gets to go to New Jersey and fight robot monsters and we have to stay here and write a report about it," Warren grumbled, making another note on his pad. "This totally blows."
"Totally," Seth agreed, staring mindlessly at the television, trying to figure out what he was supposed to be writing down.
The two of them were on the couch in the rec room, trying to follow the battle on the network news. CNN was covering it, but they also had Fox News pulled up on the picture in picture, and Warren had one of the local affiliates streaming live video on a laptop on the coffee table in front of them. Warren, as always, was stretched out in just a pair of jeans, his upper body looking even better since he'd started working out more to take his mind off of his bandaged wings, and Seth was bumming around the house in jeans and a sweatshirt. They'd been ready to change into their uniforms when everyone else did (everyone except Allison, who continued not to have one), but the Professor had pulled them aside, benched them, and most insultingly of all had given them homework before leaving the mansion.
"And not the way you do," Warren added, shaking his head. "The bad way."
Seth raised an eyebrow at him, smirking.
"How the hell would you know?" he asked, snickering.
"Are you saying you're bad at it?" Warren snickered back. "Ali saw you eating a banana yesterday at breakfast and said you practically swallowed it whole."
"I guess she was looking for pointers," Seth shrugged.
"You wish," Warren said, rolling his eyes.
"Actually, I wish I was out in the field with the rest of them," Seth sighed. "This blows."
The team had been dispatched to New Jersey following sketchy news reports of an out of control robot, but it didn't look like any robot Seth or Warren had ever seen. Whatever the rest of the team was fighting was big and black, but also glowing yellow inside and outside and constantly changing shape. Staring at it kind of hurt Seth's eyes in a way that was hard to explain, like a cartoon had come to life and had become three dimensional. The robot monster didn't seem to want anything or to communicate, which was even more odd. Who the hell would send a giant shapeshifting robot to New Jersey?
Before the X Men arrived, the machine had been grabbing things off of the street and pulling them inside itself with no rhyme or reason, sending out tentacles of black and glowing yellow to grab parked cars, newspaper machines, mailboxes, and whatever else it happened upon. Most people had fled the area in front of the large, slow moving creature, so it hadn't managed to grab anyone, but once the X Men were on the scene it began trying very hard to capture them, sending giant hands and tentacles and claws and whatever else it seemed to be able to think of to grab with against them.
"The Professor says you have to raise your combat rating," Warren shrugged, his face tightening into a wince. Mentally he smacked himself, wondering why his body couldn't seem to remember that his wings were still bandaged up. He had the slowest learning curve in the world, it seemed.
"How the hell long is that supposed to take?" Seth asked, shrugging and wincing as well. "Scott's been beating the hell out of me for two weeks. I think I have bruises on top of my other bruises and I swear to God yesterday he was deliberately trying to break my ribs."
Warren laughed, shaking his head. On the news, the creature picked up Peter and tried to bite him in half, and Seth pretended not to be worried, trying to look casual. Warren noted it, caught the way Seth's eyes widened and his lips tightened just the slightest bit, and decided not to say anything. Peter and Seth continued to distantly orbit each other in the mansion, one leaving the room when the other entered, neither really speaking to the other but both guaranteed to watch the other leave and then pretend they hadn't been doing it. War had planned on saying something, but Allison told him to leave it alone.
"Do you want to get punched in the head?" Allison asked, shaking out the match from her cigarette and dropping it into an empty Coke can next to Warren's bed.
"You're smoking in here?" Warren blurted, jumping out of bed and padding over to the window. He pulled it open, the curtains billowing around him, and heard Allison snickering behind him.
"Nice ass, Wings," she snickered, and Warren blushed as he realized he was naked. It seemed kind of impossible to forget, considering what they'd just finished doing, but he'd been more concerned with opening the window before the smoke detector went off than he was with modesty. He picked up a pair of baggy shorts off the floor and stepped into them, still bright red, and Ali snickered again, making sure the sheet was demurely tucked around herself as she ashed into the Coke can. For all the time War spent wandering around the house half dressed, he could be surprisingly modest in the weirdest ways. "One of these days we're going to have to do it with the lights on, War."
"I'm sorry," Warren said sheepishly, standing by the window in the baggy gym shorts, the strings hanging down toward his feet.
"Don't be," Ali said, blowing out the smoke in a long, thin stream. "I think it's cute. You're my little angel, and I get to corrupt you. I love you, baby."
"I love you, too," Warren said, beaming at her, and she felt warmth spread all through her chest and face. God, his smile. He was so fucking perfect, and didn't even seem conscious of it. She'd always thought she'd end up with someone kind of like her, a guy who smoke and drank and was in a band, and somehow she'd ended up with War. It wasn't what she'd thought, but it was better than she'd hoped, and now that she had him she'd do anything to keep him. "You really think we shouldn't say anything to Seth?"
"I'll ask again: Do you want to get punched in the face?" she repeated, shaking her head. "Leave those two alone."
"But they like each other!" War argued, throwing his hands up toward the ceiling. "Ow. Damn it. I'm serious, though. They stare at each other all the time and pretend they're not doing it. They just need, you know, a little nudge."
"We're not nudgers," Ali said, shrugging. "War, I know what you mean, but the reason they're not together is the same reason why we're not saying anything. They're both stubborn and they're both scared to trust people. They're both all sealed up in these tight little boxes, and they're not going to come out of them and see each other until they both decide to at the same time."
Warren shook his head, padding over to the bed and crawling in alongside her, laying on top of the sheet and resting his head on her shoulder. He stared up at her with his big blue eyes, mentally willing her to put out her cigarette. Ali pretended not to notice, and took another long drag, but she carefully exhaled the smoke away from him.
"When did you get so smart?" War asked finally, tracing the tattoos on her arm with his fingertip. Allison laughed, dropping the cigarette in the can.
"I didn't," she confessed, leaning down to kiss him. "I'm just repeating what Jean told Kitty when she asked the same question. Now bring that hand over here, and the rest of you with it."
"Yes, ma'am," Warren whispered.
"Why does it have a head now?" Seth asked, jerking Warren's attention back to the television. Peter, punching and swinging, had smashed his way out of the giant cartoonish mouth, sending glowing yellow shards of teeth flying everywhere before they were absorbed back into the whole, sliding back into whatever part of the creature they landed by.
"What do you mean?" Warren asked, staring thoughtfully at the screen.
"Well, before, it was just a big, I don't know, like a blob," Seth explained, sketching a boxy shape in the air with his hands. "But once it started fighting with the others, it changed."
"It's a shapeshifter," War said, shrugging. On the news, Bobby managed to encapsulate one of the hands in a big block of ice, really pouring it on, but the log-sized fingers flexed and shattered the icy covering. Warren shook his head, making a note on his pad. "Damn, that should have worked."
"I know, but I feel like the shapes are important," Seth said, chewing on the end of his pen. "It ate that streetlight and didn't turn into a streetlight, and it didn't turn into a car when it picked up that one we saw. But look at it now. As soon as the others showed up, it got a head, and hands, and eyes, and a mouth, and look, now it has all those spikes. It almost looks kind of like hair."
Warren leaned forward, raising an eyebrow.
"Maybe you're right," he said finally, shrugging. "Are you going to put that in your paper?"
"Yeah, I am, so no copying," Seth grinned. His smile faded as he continued to watch. "I just feel like it's important, but I'm not sure why. Look, I think Jean's holding it in place."
On the screen, wings of fire had blossomed around Jean, and they whipped out around the robot creature even as Scott and Allison blasted away at it. The others moved the crowd back, Kitty attempting to argue with a camerman before Peter, in typical Peter fashion, picked the man up and physically lifted him out of the way. The creature shook and twitched, bright sparks erupting from the yellow cracks in its black surface, and it attempted to send out another wave of spiked appendages. Jean held them back as Scott and Ali continued to pour on the firepower, Ali's beam trembling a little as she began to tire. Warren bit his lip, hoping she wouldn't falter. She liked to pretend she didn't care one way or the other, but Ali really did want to prove herself to the others.
"I think it's going down," Seth said, and Warren nodded.
On the screen, the creature reared up for a second, its mouth opening in a silent roar, and then it seemed to collapse in on itself. The boxy exterior collapsed like a punctured balloon, the bright yellow lights beneath the surface winking out, darkness rolling through the creature from the outer edges in toward the center. The arms thinned like garden hoses with the water shut off, sinking flat and then disintegrating as they fell to the ground crumbling and cracking into gray dust. The giant head was the last part to go, the bright white eyes turning gray, too, the mouth yawning open before the whole thing fell apart, and then both stations flipped to a shot of the newscasters in the field. Behind them, Seth and Warren could see crews of police and firemen starting to move forward, and there was a brief shot of the team moving quickly toward the jet.
"That's weird," Warren said, turning to Seth. "Usually they stay and at least give a statement or something."
"Maybe one of them's hurt?" Seth suggested. They'd all looked ok, but at the end, when the creature was disintegrating, there had been a lot of dust and confusion. It was possible something had happened that they hadn't been able to see because of the camera angles or the emergency crews moving in. "Should we call the Professor?"
"I don't know," Warren answered. "We probably shouldn't call him if he's still at the bank. He gets pissed about everything lately."
Before they could say anything else, Scott's voice crackled through the room.
"Touch, Angel, respond please," he said, the use of their codenames cluing both of them in to the fact that Scott was using the radio on the jet and the channel was not secure.
"Angel and Touch, standing by," Warren said, shrugging at Seth as he muted the television. Seth shrugged back, unable to read anything in Scott's clipped, businesslike tone.
"Our ETA is approximately twenty minutes," Scott said brusquely. "Situation green. Marvel Girl requests assistance from Touch upon our arrival."
"Understood," Seth said, even more baffled. "Situation green" meant that everyone was ok, uninjured and accounted for, so what could Jean possibly need assistance with? He could tell by Warren's face that he had no idea, either.
"Cyclops out," Scott concluded.
"Out," Warren said, and there was a brief crackle as the channel closed. He looked at Seth. "What's going on?"
"I have no idea," Seth said, shrugging. "Should we put our uniforms on?"
"I don't know," Warren answered. "I guess we should meet them at the hangar."
Ten minutes later Seth, fully clad in his X Men uniform, joined Warren in the hanger, fastening his armbands as he walked in. Warren chuckled, giving Seth the once over, as he stood by the hallway door still wearing his jeans.
"What?" Seth asked, rolling his eyes. "It's not like I'm going to get to wear it in the field anytime soon."
"I guess," Warren said, shaking his head. "I can't believe the Professor's letting you wear a belly shirt."
"This again?" Seth asked, shaking his head. "He lets Jean wear one, and we agreed that I'm expressing my individuality. Besides, you don't even wear shirts! At least I have half of one on."
"Whatever," Warren said, turning toward the hangar door as the lights along the wall flashed, signaling the jet's approach. It was, of course, the smaller, backup jet, since the Professor hadn't replaced the one Seth and Bobby crashed a month or so ago.
As they watched, the hangar doors slid open and the jet roared in, blowing Warren's hair back and ruffling Seth's jersey. Warren keyed a button on the panel by the door, and the hangar doors began to close. Through the cockpit windshield they could see Scott, who gave them a thumbs up sign as he slowly rolled the plane into place and parked it. There was a low hum as the engines powered down, the interiors glowing softly, and a light hissing as the door on the side of the jet opened. When the ramp came down, Ali was the first one out, rushing across the hangar toward War and kissing him on the cheek as he swept her up in his arms.
"I was in the field!" she boasted, giggling as he spun her around.
"I saw!" War said, kissing her again. "You were great!"
"Get a room," Bobby sighed, rolling his eyes as he walked past them.
"Shut up," Kitty snapped, thwapping him on the back of the head and pulling him toward the hallway. "You're so moody all the time."
"Glad you guys are ok," Seth told Kurt, even though he was staring past him at Peter when he said it. Peter pretended not to notice, stalking past them and muttering something about needing a shower, and Kurt shook his head, watching them both. Seth raised his eyebrows for a second, not dignifying Peter's attitude with a shrug, and glanced back toward the door of the plane. "Do you know what Jean wanted?"
"I need help with this," Jean said, walking slowly down the ramp. She had her hands out in front of her, and floating between them was a perfectly round black sphere, crisscrossed with an orderly grid of yellow lines. Seth's eyes went wide as he realized what it was.
"Holy shit!" he blurted. "You stole a piece?"
"We didn't steal it," Scott clarified tersely. "It broke off, and Jean took it to study."
"Come on," she said, heading toward the hallway. Her hair was twitching a little, moving as if in an invisible wind, and Seth realized she was using her power to hold the sphere.
"Is it safe?" he asked, following. Scott, Warren, Ali, and Kurt walked behind them, watching and crowding into the elevator with them.
"It's inert, so I think so," Jean answered as they rode down to the basement. "When we beat it, it just kind of shut down. All the other pieces fell apart, but I was holding this one and I think that kept it from happening, but I'm not really sure. I want to get it into the lab and do a couple tests."
"What did you need me for?" Seth asked, walking into the lab with her. Everyone else, apparently, had just decided to come along for the ride. "I'm not a scientist or anything. I don't even know how to use half the stuff down there."
"I know," Jean chuckled, shaking her head. "But when we were fighting I caught something, some kind of thought pattern. I couldn't narrow it down, but I think if the two of us were working on it, your power and mine at the same time, we might be able to get it."
"It's a robot," Seth said, shaking his head in confusion as Jean deposited the sphere on one of the work tables. "I can't read anything off of stuff, only from people."
"I know," Jean said again, turning toward him. Her green eyes twinkled as they met Seth's blue ones. "I don't think it's a robot, though. I think it's alive."
Before they could say anything the lights flashed a little brighter and a beeping tone rang through the house. All of them glanced up at the ceiling, as if they could see through it, and Kitty's voice crackled through the air.
"Hey Scott?" she asked, not waiting for an answer. "Bobby and I are in the hallway upstairs, and we can, like, see the lawn, and there's some kind of, I don't know, it's like a car? But it's flying? Anyway, it's landing in the driveway."
"Meet me outside," Scott said, tapping the keypad by the lab door. "And bring Bobby. Peter?"
"I am on my way," Peter's voice boomed tersely. He sounded pissed off, and Seth wondered if it was because he was missing out on that shower he'd been muttering about.
"You need us?" Ali asked.
"I don't think so," Scott said, heading for the elevator. "Be ready, but I think we'll be fine."
The lab door closed behind him, leaving Seth and Jean standing over the sphere and Warren, Ali, and Kurt leaning against the wall. Jean turned back to Seth, eyeing him expectantly, and Seth felt his stomach flutter as he wondered how they'd go about doing this.
"Are you sure we shouldn't help them?" he asked, his voice shaking a little.
"I mean, flying cars don't land here every day, right?"
"If Scott says it's fine, it's fine," Jean said, shaking her head. "If anything happens, like they make a hostile move of something, the alarms will go off and you'll have a good excuse for changing into your suit."
Seth blushed, catching Kurt muffling a snicker behind them, and when he turned back to Jean she still had that expectant look on her face as she pulled off her gloves.
"Shall we?" she asked, holding out a hand. "I thought we'd link up easier if I held your hand, so that your power could bridge and I could use mine more to shield us in case we do make contact and it's hostile. I'm hoping it won't be, but it seemed pretty hostile in Jersey, so we should probably be ready."
"Maybe we should wait for the Professor?" Seth blurted. The last thing he wanted to do was link his mind with Jean's, and have her sharing thoughts with him. He'd been training with her and the Professor for weeks, but most of what they'd done was Seth trying to read Jean while Jean tried to block him. They hadn't done anything where Jean would be able to get inside and see, oh shit, was he thinking it now?
"He's still at the bank," Jean said, glancing at the clock. She caught a wave of panic from Seth, and sighed. They really needed to get over this. "Seth, you're the only one here who can help me with this, now come on."
"I just, you know, I'm not sure I," Seth stammered, and mentally kicked himself. He didn't have a good excuse, and Jean and everyone else listening knew it, but he couldn't run the risk that she would catch something inside his mind. Even if they were both concentrating on the robot monster sphere thing, which might not even be alive anyway, there was still the risk that he would think the wrong thought at the wrong time or, even worse, let an image slip through. "I don't know how to do any of this, and I just think, you know, the Professor knows how to do this kind of stuff and I, well, I could do it wrong or hurt you or something."
Jean raised an eyebrow.
"You think you could hurt me?" she asked, smirking. "Honestly, Seth?"
"Not on purpose," Seth muttered, blushing. Maybe he should just keep blurting everything that popped into his head, and Jean would decide that he was too stupid to actually be of any help to her. Jean turned to the others.
"Can you guys give us a minute?" she asked. War, Ali, and Kurt all looked at each other and then back at Jean as if they weren't sure what she meant. Jean lowered her voice a little. "In the hallway? So that we could talk to each other without you listening?"
"Sorry," War said, pushing the door open. Ali and Kurt followed him into the hallway and closed the door behind them. "What do you think's going on?"
"Psychic meditation or something?" Ali whispered, shrugging and staring at the door.
"Something is bothering Seth," Kurt said uneasily. "It has been for several days. Have you not noticed?"
Ali and Warren looked at each other guiltily.
"I think it's the Peter thing," Warren said, feeling a little disloyal talking about his friend, even if it was to their other friend. Kurt's blue brows were knitted together with worry.
"I don't think that's it," Kurt said, shaking his head. Ali and Warren looked at him expectantly, but he had nothing to offer. Whatever was bothering Seth, maybe Jean could help him get to the bottom of it.
Out on the lawn, Scott, Peter, Bobby, and Kitty watched as a sleek silver craft, kind of like a car but with hover jets on the bottom instead of wheels, settled calmly onto the driveway. The four of them stood on the steps, Scott in front with the others behind him, Peter armored up and gleaming in the sunlight and Bobby steaming softly as the warm air hit his cold form. As soon as the car settled and powered down all four doors opened, and a brown haired guy about their age, thin and wearing glasses, climbed out with a blonde haired girl. Behind them, a thin, good looking blonde guy in sunglasses climbed out, and all three of them were wearing skintight blue jumpsuits of some kind.
"Can we help you?" Scott asked, ready for them to make a move.
"Sorry to just land at your house without calling or anything," the first guy said, and the car shook behind him as something large moved inside. "We haven't met, but I'm, uh, I'm Reed Richards, and this is Sue and-"
"Susan," the blonde girl corrected. Reed blushed and continued.
"Sorry, Susan and Johnny Storm, and the guy in the car is Benjamin Grimm," Reed continued.
"I'll be out in a sec!" a deep voice grumbled from inside the car. "Stupid car with the deep seats and no room to move around in."
"You guys are the Fantastic Four!" Kitty blurted, grinning.
"A babe," Johnny said, grinning and lowering his sunglasses to get a better look at her. "Sweet."
"Johnny!" Sue snapped, smacking him on the arm. On the steps, Bobby's face darkened into a frown.
"Yeah, we saw you guys on the news," he said sulkily, stepping a little closer to Kitty. "Didn't you guys wreck Vegas?"
"Bobby!" Kitty hissed, rolling her eyes.
"Didn't you guys do the thing in Manhattan?" Ben grumbled, finally pulling himself out of the car. The four X Men stared openly at him, listening to the scraping noise of him moving, a low sound like gravel sliding against stone. He was huge, bigger than Peter even, but he looked like a pile of orange rocks somehow brought to life. His eyes, surprisingly blue, peered out at them from under thick, heavy orange stone brows. "What?"
"How can we help you, Reed?" Scott asked, not moving from his slightly defensive, slightly confrontational stance on the steps.
"It's about the creature you were fighting this afternoon," Reed said. "We arrived on the scene right after you left, and our preliminary investigation was worrying."
"Worrying?" Scott asked, Peter glowering threateningly behind him.
"Did you take a piece of it?" Reed asked, stepping forward. "I'm not trying to accuse you or anything, I just-"
"We think it's dangerous," Susan said bluntly, cutting him off. "If you have a piece, your whole team and, we think, the whole world, could be in danger."
Down in the lab, Jean crossed her arms, staring at Seth. When she spoke, her voice was soft and understanding, but her expression was firm.
"Seth, we have to stop whatever this is," she said, shaking her head.
"What do you mean?" Seth asked, trying to sound innocent.
"You know what I mean," Jean answered. "Whatever is going on between you and me, whatever it is you're hiding from me, we can't keep doing this."
"I'm not," Seth began.
"Don't lie," Jean said, shaking her head. "You can't, and you know you can't. Every morning, when we work on your powers, I can feel it, inside your head. There's a wall, something inside a box, like a big bank vault door, all steel and closed off, and on the outside it's like you spraypainted `Oh shit, no one can see this!' all over it. Whatever you're keeping in there, Seth, I'm not looking for it."
"Huh?" Seth asked. He should have known she'd sense that something was wrong even if she couldn't tell what, exactly, it was.
"I'm not trying to open that vault, Seth," Jean said. "Whatever you're keeping in there is your secret to keep. I'm not going to pry it out of you, and neither is the Professor. I don't know what's bothering you, but I wish you'd trust me enough to know I won't go digging around in your head. I'm your teammate, and, you know, I like to think that we're friends. Friends trust each other, and I was hoping you'd trust me enough to know I don't go wandering through people's heads like that."
"I'm sorry," Seth said, feeling like a heel. "I'm not, I mean, I can't tell you that. It's, I just."
"It's fine," Jean said. "Honestly, Seth. We all have things we don't tell each other. What's yours is yours. I just wish you'd stop getting so upset and nervous around me about it. Now, please, can we just forget about it and get on with this and with training and with all the rest of our lives?"
Seth felt himself blushing, and when he looked up again Jean was grinning.
"I'm sorry," he said, not sure what else to do or say. He believed Jean when she said she wouldn't pry through his thoughts, and he suddenly felt better knowing that his worry had built a shield around his thoughts about Scott.
"It's ok," Jean said, shrugging and turning back toward the black and yellow sphere. "I keep forgetting that you're new to the team, and you're not really used to working with telepaths. Now, give me your hand, and let's see if we can make this work."
Seth, nodding, took Jean's hand, and together they reached for the sphere.
Out on the lawn, Scott cocked his head to one side, trying to make sense of what Sue Storm was telling them.
"How can it be dangerous?" he asked. "The piece we took is inert. It's just a little chunk, and it isn't doing anything."
"Where is it now?" Sue asked, glancing at Reed. They both had the same look of mild panic.
"It's in the lab," Scott answered. "Jean and Seth, or, um, some of our team is running tests on it."
Sue opened her mouth to say something else, but the explosive Bamf! sound of Kurt teleporting onto the top of the steps. His yellow eyes were wide with panic, and everyone jumped when he appeared in his familiar cloud of brimstone scented smoke.
"Scott!" he blurted, stepping toward him.
"What's wrong?" Scott asked.
"The thing!" Kurt hissed, even as Peter turned and flung the front door open. "It's alive, and it's eating Jean and Seth!"
To be continued.
As a side note, I realize this invalidates part of the "Ultimate X4" miniseries where the Ultimate X Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four met for the first time, but I felt like using them here.