Kaiten: Blue Sky (4/4)

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

In the aftermath of the fight in Mexico, the X-Men try to pull themselves together and figure out how they're getting home.


Logan leaned up against one wall of the washroom, looking at his rather wasted expression in the mirror. He looked gaunt, thinner than he could ever remember being before. His guts felt like they were on fire, he was coated in blood - most of it his own - and apparently the brawl had disrupted the water pipes to the building. He twirled the faucet in vain, looking to get a little water. Swaying, he put out a hand to steady himself against the wall. Once the room stopped spinning, he shrugged out of the tattered leather strips that were his uniform, leaving only his boots and the shredded remnants of his uniform's pants behind.

The door opened, and Nathan extended a set of school sweats, clearly taken from the supplies on the Blackbird. He'd set his psimitar down somewhere along the way, and was holding his injured arm against his chest protectively. He managed a ghost of a smile that barely shifted the drying blood on his face.

Logan looked at the sweats, then at Nathan. He reached out a hand - that was visibly trembling - and took the sweats. Logan pulled them on, heedless of the sticky blood covering most of his body. Then he gave the mirror as close to a feral grin as he could manage and pulled out his bottom cigar out of the ruins of his uniform. He thumbed his lighter to life, lit the cigar, and stuck it in his mouth.

A few seconds later, Logan was racked by coughs as he spit the cigar out, letting it fall to the tiled floor.

"I think you need to let your lungs finish regenerating before you try that," was Nathan's comment, no particular edge to the words. Just weariness.

"No kidding, bub." he said, sounding as weary - if not more so - than Nathan. But after he spoke he was racked with another round of coughing, coughs that brought a red-flecked foam to Logan's lips. He wiped it away with the back of his hand.

"We've got the Preservers loaded on the Blackbird," Nathan said after another moment. "A few might have gotten away, I'm not sure... but we've got a lot of prisoners to bring back."

"Lucky us." Logan rasped. "Where we gonna put 'em?" he asked, straightening up the best he could. Standing full-on upright still hurt like blazes but he'd be damned if he was gonna crouch all the time just because his guts hurt. "We getting ready to dust off?"

"Plane's going to take some work. Before we can do that. And the terrorists are in the cargo hold," Nathan said, patiently. Understandable that Logan couldn't focus. "They're already aboard." And he was a bit distracted, monitoring their level of consciousness from here.

"Meant once we get back to New York. Where we gonna put 'em?" Logan asked again. "Stack 'em up in the basement? Stick 'em in a spare bedroom?" He made some very unsteady steps towards the door where Nathan stood. "Stinks in here." he muttered.

"Hand them over to the government. What else? If I could reach Charles from here I'd tell him to give Cooper a heads-up in advance, but I can't, and the radio needs some work too." Nathan stepped aside to let Logan through the door. "You need to get back to the plane and go sit down." His voice was matter-of-fact, if not brusque. "You're no good to anyone until you heal up a little more."

"I'm fine." he said brusquely. He turned the corner out of the doorway to walk down the hall that led outside, but he was carefuly to stay very close to the wall. Just in case. Each step hurt, but Logan was beyond such trifles at this point.

"You're lucky it was me and not Marie that came after you. She'd be dragging your half-blown-up ass back to the 'Bird without further ado."

Logan raised one hand and popped his claws. The effect was somewhat ruined by the rivulets of blood that trickled down the backs of his hands to soak into his already-bloody sweatshirt. "Said I was fine, Nate." he reiterated, then sheathed the clows and slowly - very slowly - walked down the hall with his head held high.

Nathan just rolled his eyes - just a little - and followed.

--

"How the fuck are we going to get off the ground in any kind of timely fashion?" Nathan muttered, limping slightly as he walked around the Blackbird to get a better look at the wing. "Shit. I hadn't realized the damage was that bad."

"Basic jury-rigging toolkit and a great deal of hope," Pietro replied. A large spool of baling wire and a few rolls of duct tape thudded to the ground. "And when we get back, I'm going to suggest to Summers that he keep a set of blueprints in the plane against just such an occasion." He eyed the wreck critically. "I think I can get us an engine. Probably. The structural damage . . . well, that's going to take some help, especially when we're in the air. Think you're up to it?"

Nathan gave him a look that was half-wary, and a little wilder than it needed to be. "Well. This is where I remind myself that I helped hold back a tsunami, right? So holding a plane together in the air should be child's play."

"Barely a feather by comparison," Pietro assured him breezily. "Mind you, this particular barb would appreciate getting back home in one piece." He looked around for a moment, then picked a fallen tree branch off the ground and threaded the duct tape onto it. "Hold this for me, will you? Just parallel to the ground, so the tape's right there when I need it."

A finger of telekinesis extended outward to do just that. "You're MacGuyvering the plane. Why am I not surprised."

Pietro's image began to flicker like a bad stop-motion animation, and the tape started to whir around the tree branch, the rolls visibly beginning to shrink. The near engine began to quiver and rattle. "I'm the closest thing we have to an airplane mechanic, and this is the closest thing we have to a machine shop." His voice was just as jerky and disjointed as his presence. "The only thing that should surprise you is when we don't blow up a hundred meters off the ground."

"I'm going to hold you to that, you know," Nathan murmured grimly.

--

Kurt was sitting on the ground, not far from the jet, injured leg stretched out in front of him. His left hand was in his lap, and he was moving it as little as possible. He didn't want to risk making the bone damage any worse, after all.

Nathan approached him, holding his own injured arm against him and wishing he hadn't tried the tree method of putting the shoulder back in its socket. Neccessary, but Moira was going to have his head. "Kurt, let me see," he said, kneeling down beside the other man. "We're looking at another hour before we can get off the ground, minimum. If she holds together all the way to Florida it's going to be a miracle."

"It is broken", Kurt said without looking up at him. "Badly, I think. It was already damaged, and then..."

"I can see that. Hold still." Nathan took a deep breath, reaching out to lift Kurt's broken hand with his good one even as he reached out telepathically to dull Kurt's pain center. "This still might hurt. I'm sorry." Telekinetic field medicine had been one of his skills at Mistra, and with the X-Men, he'd only honed it. Still, it was difficult to ease the bones back into place - too many fractures, and he just hoped to hell he didn't make a mistake here. At least they could get it treated relatively soon.

Kurt gritted his teeth as Nathan did his work, but didn't make a sound. He'd had accidents before, as a young boy back in the camp, and had them treated without the help of a telepath. When it was done, he said simply, "Thank you."

Splinting a hand was a pain in the ass, but Nathan did it, quickly and effectively. He could have kept it in place better telekinetically, but considering he was already holding the bubble on Jinasena and would need a fair amount of his power and attention free just in case the 'Bird decided she didn't like being back in the air, it was probably best not to split his focus any further. "Well, this has turned into a right royal clusterfuck," he muttered as he finished the splint, a roll of gauze winding itself around Kurt's wrist. "I laugh, now, thinking that we expected them to be gone. I think they must have brought more people in."

"The day ended well, all the same", Kurt said quietly. "We lost none of our own, and the more of theirs were here, the fewer there will be to catch later."

"We lost none of our own yet, you mean," Nathan said grimly, hauling himself back to his feet with a wince he couldn't hide.

Kurt glanced around at that, eyes suddenly worried. "Is... is there a chance we will this time?"

"If we can't get back to Florida and get Jinasena to Scott?" Nathan asked testily. He offered Kurt his good hand. "Come on. Between the two of us we have two good hands."

Kurt reached up without hesitation, pulling himself to his feet. "Then let us go to Florida, my friend."

--


On the way to Florida, a bizarre coincidence makes them decide to risk a landing - and bring an abrupt end to a teammate's holiday. Cain is philosophical.


It was not what one would call a particularly good landing. The Blackbird was visibly - and severely - damaged, the holes in the hull and the left wing showing the signs of hasty repair work, and the plane was obviously being steadied by force as it set down rather shakily on the gravel road. The beach itself, where the very large man in the Hawaiian shirt was sitting, was not an option for a variety of reasons. Mostly because it was going to be touch and go getting it back off the ground even when said ground wasn't soft sand.

The stretch of Mexican beach was almost completely uninhabited, with the thatched-roof cantina a few hundred yards past the Blackbird. The beach's lone inhabitant, clad in an aggressively loud Hawaiian shirt, wide-brimmed straw hat, and oversized Bermuda shorts frowned over the rim of the margarita he was drinking directly from the pitcher as the waves lapped up over his bare feet.

With a sigh and a look of regret, he set the pitcher down and picked up a small silver urn from where it sat carefully in the sand next to his chair. "I guess this is the end of the road, Miz Vance. Thanks for keeping me company. But you know how it is. Duty calls and all that. Suppose I'll be seeing you some day if I'm lucky."

Slowly, he stood up, reverently uncapping the urn and slowly sifting the fine ash through his fingers into the surf, letting the motion of the waves carry the grey dust out to the sea. Setting the urn down in the wet sand, he watched for a moment as the next wave carried it away, bobbing gently before it vanished.

Turning away, Cain Marko wiped his eyes and fixed his face in a scowl as he stomped towards the Blackbird, which looked about as broken as he'd ever seen it. "I can't leave you kids alone for five minutes, can I?" he hollered over the engine noise.

A moment later, Kurt limped out onto the landing steps, looking all over like hell. "Apparently not", was the wry answer, before he turned a little to let Nathan out.

Nathan looked slightly less like hell than Kurt did, although his leathers were scorched in places and bloodstained in others, and the arm that wasn't holding the psimitar was tucked in against his body, obviously injured. "Here's a happy coincidence," he said, his voice hoarse with weariness but his eyes level and clear. "Okay, so. We have terrorists stacked up like cordwood in the cargo hold, and I'm not sure some of them won't come to before we can hand them over. Also, we have a very angry bombmaker who has come to, and we need to get him to Scott in Florida before Scott blows up and takes a very large chunk of Florida with him." He paused. "It's kind of been a hell of a week."

"When this week started I was in the Grand Caymans listening to a calypso band and enjoying the specific fact that no one around me was going to blow up," Cain grumbled, "Well, so much for my first vacation in forty years." He removed the hat, causing a mass of unruly red hair to fall into his eyes as he scratched at the thick beard he'd acquired over the last month and a half.

Logan had finally made his way over to the hatch of the Blackbird. "Quit jawin' and let's go." he said. Physically, he looked ... slender. Like he'd been devouring his own muscle mass to rebuild severed tissue and pulped organ. For once, he wasn't even smoking. He'd lit up again on the way over and the coughing fit that had consumed him was his body's way of telling him to Knock It The Fuck Off, Dammit.

Gripping the edges of the hatch, Cain hopped up with a grunt, hauling himself into the Blackbird. Sure enough, the pile of unconscious bodies strapped to a cargo net took up a good portion of the back of the jet, especially when most of the inner bulkheads and seats were missing, dented, or shredded.

"Mary Mother o' God," Cain mumbled, looking at the sorry shape of the X-Men's transport. "You guys look like you flew right into the ground with your asses strapped to the nose of th' plane. Someone want to fill me in on the important bits?"

Logan barked out a laugh and stiffly moved to one of the surviving chairs to strap himself in. He was hurting inside, having pushed the factor farther than it had ever been pushed before. It was keeping up, but non-crucial stuff like joint mobility and red blood cell production was way down to focus on all the soft-tissue damage. And he was starving. And all their reserve MREs got riddled with shrapnel and/or blown up real good.

"We got shot down on approach," Nathan said grimly. "Pietro, hit the hatch," he called up to the front of the plane, then looked back at Cain. "I didn't sense it in time. And this," he said, his teeth bared as he looked at Jinasena, who was safely enclosed in a TK bubble, "this is the asshole who's been turning people into bombs." For a moment he looked like he was weighing actual violence.

"He is going to undo what he did to Scott", Kurt chimed in with grim determination. "Whether he likes it or not."

"Oh," Cain said with raised eyebrows, hunching his shoulders and lumbering up to the front of the plane. "So, basically, Summers is going to explode unless we get this pencil-necked geek to him in time?" At the answering nods, Cain knelt to look at Jinasena, grinning in a manner that had absolutely no joy behind it.

"Then let's fucking step on it already, people. Jesus, you guys don't half-ass it when you crash a guy's party. Why ain't we there yet?"

--


Alarming news. And a rescue.


Moira would have his head if she caught him doing this - or found out that he'd done it, even. But he was hurt and tired, and the Blackbird was taking entirely too much of his telekinetic attention. Even at less than top speed, the plane had severe structural damage, and stopping to pick up Cain hadn't done it any good. They'd need a miracle to make it to Florida, and he was the only one around to provide it.

Hence, the drugs. Go-pills, Nathan rehearsed in his mind as he closed the medkit, swallowing two of the pills with a sip of water. Go-pills, Moira, perfectly harmless...

Pietro had been flitting back and forth between staring narrow-eyed out the window at their one barely-functional engine and glowering at the cockpit readouts. He spared a glance for Nathan when he saw the other man swallow the pills. "How are you doing?" he asked. "There is actual duct tape and baling wire holding this plane together. I'm not sure Summers is going to thank us for saving his life once he sees his baby."

"Amphetamines are beautiful things. Or will be, once they kick in." Nathan lowered himself to the bench for a moment, swallowing as he laid a hand against the inside of the Blackbird's hull. His telekinesis was gliding over the plane's skin, holding the patches, equalizing pressure. The wing was harder. His psimitar, laying on the bench beside him, was glowing faintly despite the fact that he wasn't actually holding it. He wouldn't be doing this without it, suffice to say. "At least we've got Cain back there keeping an eye on our 'guests' now. He can just smack them over the head if they wake up."

"I wouldn't know. Speed isn't something I need any help with." Pietro's voice was wry, and he tossed a look over his shoulder at the pile of terrorists in the back of the plane. "We did land a nice little bonus prize this run, didn't we? If another takeoff weren't almost completely outside the realm of possibility, I'd suggest we stop off for gift wrap on the way."

"Intelligence bonanza. One hopes. Cooper had better never suggest we don't think of her when we're off invading foreign countries." Nathan took a deep, somewhat shaky breath, closing his eyes and making an adjustment to the TK-net around the wing. "So what do you think. We land in Florida, fix Scott, and he can give you some specific pointers as to how to properly fix his poor girl so that we can make it back to Westchester?"

"It's that or we find a very, very large tow truck driven by an open-minded person with three kids he'd like to put through college." Pietro tapped one of the readouts, hoping it might suddenly decide to stop blinking urgently red. It didn't. "I'm a passable aeronautical engineer, but the biggest actual hands-on project I've done up till now was some minor luge refinements. The Blackbird needed a miracle worker, and he's currently too busy thinking nonexplosive thoughts."

"I suppose it'll give him something to do while he's recuperating." Nathan opened his eyes, focusing on keeping his breathing steady. The pills were definitely kicking in. "Hope we don't wind up needing to go anywhere fast anytime soon, though. That would be awkward." He reached out for his psimitar with his injured arm, without thinking - and winced, hunching over a bit. "Ow. You know, I didn't ask, are you - "

He fell silent, freezing where he sat, his eyes gone wide and yet somehow distant at the same time. It was as obvious an indication of telepathic communication as was humanly possible.

Pietro waited patiently for Nathan to come back to the real world. "I'm fine. Split my knuckles a little punching Marko's little Australian clone back there, but it's the tree I threw him into that really lost the fight. Tell me that was good news?"

Nathan's jaw tightened. It was all the outward reaction he allowed himself. "Scott left the containment facility," he said - under his breath, so that the others wouldn't hear just yet. "Stole a plane, apparently. How much do you want to bet that the idiot is headed straight out to sea?"

Pietro's nostrils flared in disgust. "Forget blowing himself up. I'm going to kill him. I'm going to bounce that brainlessly noble lump of solid mud he uses for a head off a wall. Does he know what we're on our way back with?"

"No. Charles says it was while we were on the ground in Mexico..." Nathan shook his head, rising somewhat unsteadily. "I've got to go up front, tell Kurt we've got to change course. Charles is tracking him. This is going to be tight."

"I don't have to tell you that we're not precisely in the world's best shape for a midair interception, do I?" Pietro shook his head. "That blithering idiot. It'll serve him right if he blows us all up because we had to waste time going to get him."

"Rescue first, yelling later. That's the X-Men code, you know." Oh, yes. The drugs were definitely kicking in. Maybe he should take a couple more.

--

Nathan was almost glad they were in the cargo hold. This far back in the plane, they couldn't see the discharges of energy from where Scott was clinging to the wreckage of the seaplane, up ahead - Kurt had circled the Blackbird again, coming in on the proper approach for the stunt they were about to pull. Below the open cargo hatch, however, there was definitely some unusual wave action going on. Nathan looked up at Cain, who had a firm grip on Jinasena, and tried to smile, somewhat futilely.

"Think of it like curling!" he shouted over the roar of the wind. He didn't know if he was going to be able to pull this off, not when he had to move Cain and hold the plane together at the same time; the 'Bird was not liking the high-speed manuevers at all.

Cain blinked, both arms wrapped around the Preservers' mutant "detonator", twitching with the odd feeling of standing on the tail hatch of the Blackbird with only Nathan's telekinetic hold between him and open air. "Curling?" he shouted back. "That ice skating shit with the brooms? Oh man, TELL me you've got a better plan than CURLING!"

Nathan laughed. Despite the plane shaking itself apart, his injured teammates, the horde of unconscious terrorists that were still aboard, and the teammate about to blow up just ahead of him, there was nothing to do but laugh at that, if a bit hysterically. Maybe it was the drugs. "It's a hell of a sport!" he yelled. "KURT! Pull up!" The Blackbird's engines screamed and Nathan tossed Cain and a screaming Jinasena out the hatch, 'skipping' him like a stone over the surface of the waves in an attempt to kill his momentum.

Spinning like a car out of control, Cain's momentum and speed made the ocean's surface like a stretch of solid concrete. Using one hand like a rudder, he tucked Jinasena into his chest and peered over the smaller man, waiting until he saw Scott's seaplane directly in front of him, then arched his back. The moment his heels hit the water, skimming with the velocity of a speedboat, the resistance turned the almost-graceful motion into a chaotic roll of saltwater spray and tumbling invulnerable body.

Breaking the surface seconds later, Cain hauled Jinasena's gasping form above the waves, swimming powerfully towards the seaplane. "Hang on, Summers!" he shouted above the din.

Scott was well beyond hearing. Explosions of crimson energy kept tearing through the water, smashing what was left of the plane to matchsticks. He clung to one of the pontoons out of instinct, not consciously. Jinasena suddenly found enough breath to scream again.

"You idiot, he'll kill us both!" he sputtered, choking.

Cain grabbed the smaller man by the nape of the neck, bringing the two of them eye to eye. "And what makes you think I give a damn whether you live or die?" he hissed quietly. "The boy scouts in the black leather got a lot of rules about that, but I don't see any of them around, do you? You made him like this," Cain said, pushing Jinasena towards Scott. "You fix it. Or I swear to God, if he goes, you go."

Hatred and fear flashed through the Preserver's eyes, but he lurched through the water towards Scott. Self-preservation was a powerful imperative. Taking care to keep behind the semi-conscious X-Man, Jinasena reached out, one hand clamping on Scott's shoulder, the other reaching around to the side of his face.

The result was, somewhat unexpectedly, an explosion.

Scott's whole body convulsed, crimson energy bursting outwards from seemingly every direction. What was left of the plane disintegrated. Jinasena was flung backwards through the water, the snap of breaking bones going unheard in the roar of the massive energy discharge.

"Aw, dammit," Cain groaned, watching the laws of physics take hold, flinging Scott backwards as well. When the X-Men's leader didn't immediately surface, Cain took a deep breath and dove, Jinasena forgotten.

Thankfully, Scott hadn't been thrown too far, and it was only the matter of a few powerful strokes to bring both X-Men to the surface, Cain taking extra care to keep Scott above the water. "Dammit, Summers. You didn't ruin my vacation to up and die on me, did ya?"

Coughing was the only response he got for a moment. Scott opened his eyes, confused and unaware of the fact that his goggles were no longer there - and not registering that he didn't seem to need them. He saw blue water and bluer sky, lit with all the colors of sunset. Blue, not red.

Blue sky.

Above, the Blackbird was circling back, the cargo hatch still opened. Jinasena's body bobbed back to the surface, definitely not of its own accord. He remained face-down in the water, however.

Cain extended his other arm from the water, giving a thumbs-up as the downdraft from the Blackbird's engines rippled the water around them. Small scraps of the seaplane floated by, and Cain extended one of them to hook Jinasena's body, pulling the Preserver closer. A cursory look told him all he needed to know - either from the strain of fixing Scott's power or from the blast itself, the mutant wouldn't be turning anyone else into a human bomb.

#We reap what we sow,# Nathan's voice said in his mind, with a grim sort of satisfaction. #Hold on. I'll get the two of you back up here.#