xp_logs | Nathan, Bridge and Anika, Thursday afternoon (Reply)

Bridge and Anika pick Nathan up after the Bar exam to drive him back to the mansion. GW is coming to talk to Charles. Startling plans are in the offing, for the Pack and for some of the former Mistra operatives. Nathan's not the only one planning to take on some new challenges.

It was a new rental car, but very obviously GW driving it. And Anika in the back seat, Nathan thought, wondering at her presence as he waited for a break in traffic to cross to where Bridge was parked, waiting for him. Not that he was complaining. He hadn't had nearly enough time to spend with the lot of them in New York on this visit, between the miserable weekend and then the study marathon.

"So, how'd it go?" Ani chirped as he got in. "You look reasonably intact."

Nathan grinned at her in the rearview mirror. "It was the Bar exam, Ani, not a torture session. Whatever the kids around me were thinking." Actually, the multiple choice had been surprisingly easy. Much more so than the essay questions this morning, and he'd whizzed through them faster than expected. You were never supposed to second-guess yourself with multiple choice, but he'd sat there and read them through anyway. Just in case anything jumped out at him as being blatantly wrong. Nothing had, and he wondered about that. Could he really have done that well?

GW snorted as he waited for a break in traffic and then pulled out. "I still can't believe you studied for three days and took the Bar. Insane, Nate."

"I would have to agree," Nathan said with a yawn, slouching in the seat. He was tired. It was an entirely different kind of focus, what he'd been using today. He wasn't used to it anymore. "So what are you doing here, champ?" he asked Ani.

"I want to see the baby," Ani said sweetly. "And I wanted to be here to hear your reaction."

"My reaction to what?"

GW grumbled something from the driver's seat. "Ani, you're a snitch," he complained. "Whatever happened to leading into things with some subtlety?"

"It's boring," pronounced the feral merrily, and Nathan heard the unmistakable sound of leather creaking abruptly under her weight.

"She's bouncing," he commented to GW. "Either you've let her have too many strawberries or whatever you have to tell me is that good." He suspected this might have something to do with GW's mysterious hints about coming back to the mansion and talking to Charles. It would have been easy to reach in and pluck it out, just like it would have been at lunchtime when the subject had come up, but Nathan restrained himself without too much effort.

"Well," GW started, changing lanes, "you know how I told you I was coming back to the mansion to talk to Xavier? I kind of want you in on that, too."

Nathan groaned. "Oh, come on, GW, I'm brain-dead here... I just wrote the bar exam. Does this have to be tonight?"

"Yes," GW said, an odd little grin tugging at his lips. "Because we've finally made up our minds, reached a consensus and all, and it's time to actually get about making arrangements."

All right, the vagueness was beginning to irritate him. "There's no reason for you to start talking in legalese, you realize, George..."

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Anika said in cheerful exasperation, her head popping into view as she leaned forward. "Nate, we're going back to Africa to do something about those camps Dom uncovered intel about. All of us. Plus friends!"

Nathan's eyes widened, and he looked sideways, first at the grinning blonde and then at GW, who was still clearly trying not to smile. "What... you're not kidding. All of you? And what friends?"

Okay, this was so not what he was expected. And yet even as he processed the surprise, there was a distinct twitch in the patterns of his mind. A tug, as if something had just been rearranged into a new form.

And it felt... awfully damned good. Nathan eyed GW for a long moment, almost in wonderment. "Joining Dom in the pro bono work?" he asked, managing a good approximation of a diffident tone. "All of you?"

GW stared ahead at the road, the smile trying to get out almost wistful now. "No, idiot," he said. "Joining you." Nathan opened his mouth and then closed it again. GW just shook his head. "Why do you think Dom was in the Sudan?" he asked, almost patiently. "It wasn't just because of some ass-backwards reaction to Pete losing it and joining the Hellfire Club, whatever you think. Sure, that played a role, but who the hell do you think was the positive model, Nathan?"

"Okay," Nathan said with a cough, "before you blow any more sunshine up my ass-" He wasn't flushing, surely, whatever that felt like. "-are you telling me that the whole Pack wants to go back to Africa and... wait, camps, plural?" He straightened in the seat. "You want to look into this network of them that she got wind about?"

"We're there, Nathan," Bridge said, as if that was all the explanation necessary. Nathan made a warning noise and he went on. "There, on the ground, with all but a few of our contacts on the continent intact - and remember, I used to work Africa more than anywhere else back with the CIA, so we've always had plenty of contacts there." He took the next right, keeping just under the speed limit. "How much time can the X-Men realistically spend in Africa? The team you went in with dealt with one camp with no problem, but you knew exactly where it was. And I'd imagine that there are enough other priorities for your intel people that no one's really going to squawk if we take this one off your hands."

"Annnnd," Ani said, drawing the word out in a drawl, "I got us some extra help."

"Who?" Nathan asked, still a bit stunned by all of this. The last he'd heard, the majority of the Pack was heading back to Tunis, while Ani and Ian were going back to the Sudan with Dom. There had to have been some significant discussion going on while he'd been studying for the bar.

GW sighed. "She called MacInnis," he said with a certain amount of dry humor.

Nathan jerked around in his seat. "You did what... Ani!" he growled at the cheery smile she gave him.

"Oh, bite me," the petite blonde said wisely. "He's harmless these days, Nate. And the only reason I called him was to get him to have Isabel call me."

Nathan gaped at her. "You're not telling me..." And the patterns spun some more, resolving further, until a huge smile grew slowly on his face. "Holy shit. That's..." Amazing. Images in the patterns too, and the brightness of the threads, the vivid rightness of the new shapes taking form... this was right, it was so right. As if it had been meant to be this way all along. The faces of his friends flickered into existence here and there along the interlocking chains of events, angry and determined and joyful and triumphant...

"You're seeing the future again, aren't you?" Ani said, tilting her head inquisitively at him. "You get this particular look when you do that. Like someone just hit you with a chair."

"Tell me." Despite the barely-suppressed delight in his voice, it was almost a plea. He had to know. Needed more information before he could be sure of what he was seeing.

Her blue eyes softened, and she smiled at him. "Izzy, Gavin, Chris, and the two of MacInnis' second gens who weren't at Youra - Malcolm and Carey?"

"And they're all..."

"Loving the idea like it was the best thing since sliced bread."

Nathan shifted back around to face forward, relaxing. "Wow," he said after a moment, staring out at the passing traffic. "They're all medically cleared?"

"Mutant metabolisms make for fast healing, even without healing factors or magic," GW pointed out. Nathan looked sideways at him, still a little awestruck, and caught that smile trying to sneak out again. "Wouldn't Hammer have a conniption fit," GW said softly. "All that time demanding that we had to keep a mutant/human balance on the team, and here I go importing five more mutants."

"Isabel's bored with the government job," Anika said from the back seat. "Gavin likes the teaching, but he also thinks this sounds important, and well, he's not planning to let her go without him. Chris is... kind of at loose ends, I guess, and the two youngsters-"

"Anika, how many months younger than you are they?"

"-are looking for a purpose in life, too," Anika went on peacefully, as if Bridge hadn't interrupted. "And in case you didn't notice, Nate... we're not constitutionally equipped for long periods of peace and quiet."

Nathan opened his mouth and then closed it again. "I'd kind of hoped..." But he trailed off, shaking his head. This sort of thing was precisely what would draw any of his fellow ex-operatives. Hell, if he didn't have so much that needed doing and some very important people who needed him at the mansion, it would have drawn him. The symmetry of it was nearly perfect. "The whole Pack?" he asked again, still amazed by that part of it.

"Sitting around in Tunis has given us all a lot of time to think," GW said obliquely. "After your... well, after what happened on the weekend, plus what you've been doing all this time and what Dom's been doing for the last few months..." He sighed, then shrugged. "We've got more money that we can realistically spend, between the lot of us. Between the slush fund you doled out between the ex-operatives and what the rest of us have earned in eight years of work, hell, Nate, we could carry on operations in Africa for the next thirty years."

"And this was the first thing that came to mind to do?"

"Well, Dom's been fretting about it, and since we're all set up in Africa anyway... seemed like the most logical choice." GW snorted softly. "As conversion experiences go, this one's heavy on the common-sense approach."

"There was a reason that you all wound up in Africa in the first place," Nathan pointed out, feeling obligated to point it out - and more than curious to see what GW's reaction would be. There were things GW wasn't saying, depths here that he wasn't admitting to aloud. But Nathan would poke at those later.

"We'll try and avoid trampling on Hellfire Club interests," GW said. "And if we're going to do this, we have to keep mobile anyway. I figure our chances are good, and quite honestly, I'm getting sick of hiding. It was all right when it was just a question of jobs we weren't taking, but this is... worth taking the chance. Besides, it's Africa, Nathan," he said. "Best place in the world to disappear."

Nathan nodded slowly. "You should talk to Remy," he said. "After you talk to Charles. And what do you want from Charles, anyway?"

"Planning that already. I don't want to be trampling on anything he might be doing, either. As for Xavier, I want to know what he wants in return for whatever help he can give us to do this," GW said matter-of-factly. "I'm suspecting 'keeping the body count down as much as possible' will be on the list. But hell, we've been sharing sources with LeBeau since Pete had his change of allegiances. No reason that the information can't be shared the other way, too."

"No reason at all," Nathan said softly. Just the thought of what the Pack plus another five ex-Mistra operatives could do, chasing down these camps... "You need a telepath, is what you need," he said a bit wryly.

"Uh-uh," Ani said, shaking her head. "You're where you need to be, Nate. Part of this is so that you can do what you need to do here without having to worry about something we can do just as easily over there."

"This isn't going to be easy," Nathan felt obligated to point out.

He sensed, rather than saw her smile. "No. But it's going to be worth it."