xp_logs | Litmus: Action Time (Reply)

In Berlin, the members of Magnetic North don't pose even a small team of X-Men much of a challenge. But sometimes a lesser threat can hide a greater, and when the Brotherhood show up, the situation goes from 'contained' to 'chaotic'. Scott faces off against Toad while Jean, on a nearby rooftop, moves from switchboarding to trying to protect the rally attendees from Toad's little 'surprises'. Marie finds herself getting up close and personal with the Brotherhood's newest recruit, and when Kurt goes after Baron Wagner, his whole world is turned upside down.

"I can't believe we went to all this trouble to take these jokers down in order to preserve the sanctity of an anti-mutant rally," Scott muttered in disgust, lowering his unconscious burden - a young member of Magnetic North who hadn't bothered keeping an eye out for people sneaking up behind her - to the ground. There were four more, all young, and all of them had been just as easily taken down; they'd gotten to the rally site just in time to catch them gathered together for a little pep talk before they set to creating a serious disruption or went after Wagner.

"Part of the job, right?" Rogue said with a shrug as she finished securing one of the other Magnetic North members. "And it wasn't like it was all that much trouble. Kinda like setting NFLers against a high school team - these guys never stood a chance."

"It was easy", Kurt agreed, but he cast a wary glance around the area just in case. "Their threats must have been more convincing than the reality."

#And that's all of them.# Jean's visual check wasn't as thourough or effective as the mental search she'd just finished, but the view from the roof was beatiful. #Didn't even think to leave a guard, unless he's much better at shielding than this group was.#

#Thanks, Jean,# Scott sent back down the switchboard, then forced himself to smile, at least briefly. "Time for an anonymous call to the local police, I think, and then we can be out of here." He actually didn't have any objections to a quiet in-and-out. It was highly desirable, as a matter of fact. They'd left off the leathers so that they could blend into the crowd, so if they got out cleanly no one would ever know the X-Men had been here. Given the nature of the crowd, also highly desirable. "It really is just solving the immediate problem," he muttered, gazing down at the unconscious mutants. "He'll keep attracting adverse attention. I wouldn't want to be his security team."

"If they are good at their jobs", Kurt said dryly, "I think they will be steering him away from public appearances as much as possible."

Marie felt goosebumps rise on her arms and a slight shiver ran through her body. No matter that protecting this guy was the right thing to do, the idea that he'd be giving more speeches gave her the willies. "Unfortunately, Ah don't think the good Baron will go for that so much, y'know?" Reaching over, she rubbed one gloved hand over her arm. "But yeah, Ah say we get out of here."

"And we're in agreement," Scott said - or started to. Something moved in his peripheral vision, something far too high on one of the buildings to be a person, and he froze, his head turning in that direction. That's not...

But it was. Toad. "Oh, shit," he breathed, the possibilities coming crashing in on him. "Toad. The Brotherhood's here."

Kurt's head snapped round in the direction Scott was looking, followed by a stream of quiet invective in Romany. "One of the Brotherhood, at least. And where there is one..."

Scott scanned the crowd quickly. No Magneto, please no Magneto... He only hoped that Mystique wasn't here either. It wasn't that he didn't trust Kurt, but it was yet one more complication they didn't need.

Then he saw a face he knew.

"Son of a bitch!" His exclamation was lost in the roar of the crowd as Wagner paused after a particularly vehement passage of his speech. "It's Veres." Joszef Veres, the schizophrenic mutant killer they'd taken down in Budapest nearly two years ago.

Here. With the Brotherhood?

***************************

It was not, Jean later realized, Jean herself who actually heard the first explosion. Keeping track of her own physical body was problematic when playing telepathic switchboard - there were just too many other bodies to keep track of, and the medical training she'd done meant she tended to focus a little more intently into the physical presence of whoever she was mentally contacting than Nathan did. So it wasn't her actual ears that heard the first explosion, but she did turn to look with her actual eyes and thus saw the second small flash a few blocks away from where the first had gone off.

#Problem,# she sent to Scott, reaching quickly to pull at the falling debris and settle most of it on top of the building it had just been blasted off of - safely away from any passers by.

#No fucking kidding!# was the unexpectedly vehement answer from her husband. "Rogue! Follow Veres," he ordered over his com, letting his companion do that while he started to look around for Toad, who had vanished abruptly from where Scott had first spotted him. Of course. The son of a bitch couldn't stay put, could he...

A woman screamed, hurtling through the air and to a bruising impact with the ground that cut her scream off abruptly as she gasped for breath. The dark-clad form that leapt from the spot where she'd gone airborne to the nearest wall was unmistakably Toad, and Scott gritted his teeth, firing off an optic blast that missed by mere inches as Toad moved.

#Phoenix, tell me you don't sense anything suggesting Magneto's here, please...#

There was actually a pause before Jean's reply, as a third, this time above an open air market, had required the greater part of her attention. #Couple problems, then,# was the response at last. #I'm not picking up any sightings of him, or any extra panic of the sort he so loves creating.# Again, there was the strange sense that, while she hadn't left his mind, she wasn't paying attention and a few heartbeats later Jean added. #Explosives up here. Lots of them.#

#Shield. We can't have civilians taken out by-# The garbage can ten feet away exploded, and Scott flung himself to the ground, hoping to avoid the shrapnel.

#Am.# Although the point was possibly more strongly made by the metal shards being slammed into the ground before they'd gone more than about ten feet. It wasn't an elegant reaction, and possibly some of those shards would never be successfully removed from the pavement, but Jean didn't have the time or patience for elegance just now. She couldn't personally see or hear all of the explosions, so the only way to keep track was to open her personal shields enough to sense the crowd's reactions. But doing that, while trying to maintain the switchboard (more or less) and telekinetically react in time... well, she could already feel the headache forming.

Scott could feel her reaction. It was easy to track on the link, although too simple, and he had to pay attention to what he was doing as he scrambled back to his feet, looking around sharply for Toad. "Nightcrawler, stay on Wagner," he ordered. Was the politician the target, or was it the crowd?

Interestingly, large portions of the crowd reacted almost as strongly to Toad leaping through them as to the small explosions, and Jean managed a distracted #Round the corner, left# in Scott's general mental direction. The'd placed one of their explosives under a car. The smaller boom, thankfully, gave her enough time to get a solid shield up before the much larger boom rocked the area, and only the soundwaves made it through.

He was going to find Toad and blast him in the head. He really was. If there was one thing Scott Summers hated, it was being outmaneuvered. There was screaming up ahead, bodies flying this way and that. The little son of a bitch was wreaking havoc on his way to - wherever the hell he was going.

Jean held the shield strongly over the car as it burned itself out, but for the moment things seemed calm - possibly it was the last bomb? Well, no, knowing Toad there'd be at least one more when she wasn't expecting it, but it seemed like she had a few seconds to refocus. She breathed deeply a few times, and then blinked. She couldn't see what was coming, but that flash of thought had definitely been Toad. #Er, Cyclops. Duck.#

He did - if not quite in time. Toad's flyng kick glanced off his shoulder, knocking him to the ground, but not dazing him. Scott's head jerked back up and he blasted at the other mutant, now in front of him. It didn't quite catch him squarely - unfortunately, but it did send him reeling to the ground as well.

Scott struggled back to his feet, faster than Toad. "Stay down," he warned the other man. "Next time I aim for your head."

The moment of breathing room gave Jean time to re-solidify the mental net, even if it was the most fleeting of touches to her other team mates. The centering deep breath, however, turned into an explosive, "Damn it!" when yet another bomb went off, this one right across the street from her perch, inside a mailbox, spewing flaming letters everywhere.

Toad didn't listen of course. He leapt back to his feet and launched another kick at Scott, one that would have taken his head off had it connected. Fortunately, Scott saw it coming and ducked, firing off a quick blast that smashed into the side of Toad's leg and evoked a pained curse.

"Thought the next one was supposed to be aimed at my head, Summers?" Toad hissed at him.

"I lied." #Phoenix, where are the others?# he sent rapidly as he and Toad circled each other warily.

#Rogue's got Veres. Keeping him occupied. Nightcrawler...# There'd been something strange - not with Kurt but near him. Something had felt... off. #Nightcrawler's gone after Wagner.#

Split up. They were split up, and as much as it had been necessary, he didn't like that. At all. #Try and 'encourage' the civilians to get out of here,# he sent to her. Waiting for Toad to make a move. #They're just prey, at this point-# Toad leapt at him and Scott let off a blast, sending him hurtling backwards.

Already a number of the bystanders had come to the same conclusion themselves, and it wasn't at all hard to plant the suggestion that that was a really good idea in the others. Humans might not be herd beasts, but get enough of them together and you really couldn't tell -the following instinct was strong.

Toad, struggling back to his feet, seemed to decide that flight was the better part of valor as well. He bolted, his leaps not quite as assured as they had been. Hopefully I broke something, Scott thought, his jaw clenching as he followed. Too slow, of course, and with Toad weaving back and forth in the crowd, he didn't dare risk another shot.

***************************

The Joszef Veres who moved through the screaming crowd was a very different man than the one whom the X-Men had faced nearly two years before. There was no hesitancy, no haze of madness in his eyes. They were clear and sharp, but there was a different sort of madness there, perhaps, one that was colder and more focused. He reached out casually and grabbed a middle-aged man, snapping his neck in one smooth move.

Marie hovered in the air, eyes scanning the crowd of people below her, trying to find the one man she was looking for. It was easier than she thought as she saw the tall man coldly kill one of the protestors and she zoomed down. Nimrod had already made it a few yards past the initial spot by the time she landed and Rogue chased after him, ignoring the small explosions happening around her. She was on a mission and the bombs weren't part of it. As she finally got within range, she lashed out with a fist to the back of his head.

Nimrod barely flinched. His head rocked forward slightly, but he straightened, turning and giving her a slight smile. "You would be an X-Man... Rogue," he said, his English accented but clear. "I've read of you in the files." His eyes were pale blue, the very stereotype of 'icy eyes', and coldly assessing. "Why are you protecting these-" He paused, snatching a young woman as she ran past and pulling her in front of him, his hand closing around her throat. "-bigots?" he finished. The woman flailed, turning increasingly blue.

"Big whoop. Ah read about you too," Marie said with a casualness that belied her true feelings. "Now if you let her go real nice without hurting her anymore than you already have, Ah just might not rearrange your entire face." She took a step closer to Nimrod and offered a prayer that the rest of the crowd goers would start avoiding the solitary pair - for their own safety.

The smile that grew on the tall man's face was warm, amused - and terrifying, under the circumstances. "You think you can appeal to my better nature. You are very young, aren't you?" His eyes flickered to the young woman still struggling in his grasp. To the German caption on her t-shirt. "'It's them or us'," he quoted, translating for Rogue's benefit. "I can answer that question easily enough." His other hand came up to the back of her neck, and twisted.

Nimrod dropped the body, the smile still lingering on his face. "Now. You had said something about trying to rearrange my face?"

Rogue couldn't keep a look of horror from flashing cross her face as the man across from her cracked the woman's neck with a look on his face as though he were just having a cup of tea. She'd seen plenty of villains and she'd read about the cold, psychopathic tendencies of Nimrod...but seeing it happen in front of her was something entirely different. She felt a swell of anger rising in her and she aimed another punch at Nimrod, followed in quick session by a left cross and an uppercut to his stomach.

The punches did make him take a step back, almost stagger, but the look on his face as he straightened was one of pure delight. "Better. Far better than the others, although of course I barely remember them..." He grabbed Marie's hand as she tried to punch him again and spun around, hurling her into the crowd.

Luckily, that particular attack was one she'd practiced often in the DR and she quickly controlled the direction of her movement, swooping back to Nimrod and flashing out with a kick to the side of his head. Landing behind him, she punched Nimrod's side with enough power to lift him off the ground and send him flying.

He pulled himself back to his feet, shaking his head in a clear effort to clear the cobwebs. Laughing, as he did. "Oh, Rogue!" he called back to her merrily. "Thank you. More targets." He looked around him, eyes focusing on a family - a mother, father, and two toddlers, one in the arms of each parent as they ran. "Shall I kill the small ones before their parents can turn them into small copies of themselves?" he asked - and ran with alarming speed through the crowd.

Marie cursed under her breath and took off after him. Her feet lifted slightly off the ground, since she could fly faster than she could run. Altering her path, she managed to get herself between Nimrod and the family he had targeted. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size? Are you scared?"

"Are you?" was his reply. "Afraid for these people?" His smile was taunting, this time. "Stop me, Rogue. Marie. Stop me, or I will kill and kill until this day is remembered for the next fifty years."

Marie didn't respond verbally. Instead she reached out to grab the collar of Nimrod's shirt with one one hand, her other throwing a punch that would've knocked most people unconscious.

He caught her hand, something that few if any people on the face of the planet could have done. "Direct," he said as they strained against each other. "I like that." He smashed his head forward against hers in as close to a classic head-butt as he could manage, given that he was by far the taller of the two combatants.

"Funny. That's what my boyfriend says," she replied as her head rocked back. Sweeping out with her leg, Rogue caught Nimrod behind the knees, knocking him off balance. Glancing around quickly, she let out a sigh of frustration. Too many civilians. Why couldn't they just get out of the way?

Nimrod regained his balance, still smiling - and turned and ran again. Not, oddly enough, at any of the stragglers. He headed right for the atrium where many of the civilians who had gotten out of the way had taken shelter, running right through the glass without a moment's hesitation.

Crap Marie thought, realizing she thought that all too often during missions lately. "What part of 'fight me' don't you understand?" she called after him as she chased the psychopath. "Get outta the way!" she yelled at the people crowding the atrium, some screaming anew as shattered glass struck those standing near the window.

Nimrod lifted one howling man right off his feet and threw him ten feet through the air and into the nearest non-glass wall as if tossing a tennis ball - if a tennis ball hit the wall with a sickening crack and slumped to the floor, unmoving. "Bowling for bigots!" he exclaimed almost cheerfully.

Picking up a small table, Marie hurled it at Nimrod. Obviously, talking wasn't going to get her anywhere with this sociopath. She just had to keep him distracted long enough for the civilians to get out of the way. She couldn't quite call them innocents, but they didn't deserve to die the way Nimrod was wiping them out.

Nimrod caught the table, snapped two of the legs off, and threw them into the fleeing crowd. Given that this was the man who had knocked Nathan off the roof of a building from a window across the street with a coatrack, the results were predictable. None of the civilians had telekinetic shields, after all. "Each and every single one of those that survive will tell others about how the 'evil' mutants killed their friends," he pointed out to her. "They'll fear us, more than they already do, and their fear will make them bold, like cornered rats. And that will be their mistake. Because they cannot fight us in the open." The smile came back. "This is a war, Marie."

No more projectiles for the crazy man. Except... Without another thought, Marie launched herself at Nimrod. "This is a war. It's just not the one you think it is," she snarled.

Bad things happened, when two superstrong, more or less invulnerable mutants got into the serious hand-to-hand combat. Neither of them could score an incapacitating blow on the other, and both were far too committed to the fight to back away for an instant. The atrium was held up by several tall support columns. Two were gone within the first two minutes, and Nimrod just laughed as Marie threw him into a third, shattering it.

"If this place collapses on top of us, we'll be the only ones to walk away!" he pointed out, grinning - and spitting blood. "Two mutants with blood on their hands..."

"Ah have enough blood on my hands," Marie said, lifting up her chin to lock eyes on his. "But each drop weighs on my soul and that's the difference between you and me." There were still plenty of support beams to keep the atrium from collapsing, but if they kept up at the rate the pair were fighting, there wouldn't be in another ten minutes.

"I'm not too proud to be a diversion, Rogue. What do you think my comrades are doing to that-" The Magyar word was unfamiliar to Marie, of course, but it sounded utterly foul. "-Wagner, while we are amusing ourselves here?" Nimrod drew himself back to his feet, almost a shark's grin on his face now. "This is only - how do you Americans say it? The icing on the cake." He ran at the nearest intact pillar - and right through it, of course. Enormous pieces of the glass roof collapsed inwards, steel screaming with the strain before it snapped.

Marie snorted at his first comment. Of course he was a distraction - that's why she'd been sent after him, to leave the rest of the team free to deal with whatever other problems there might be. Any witty retorts died on her tongue as Nimrod ran through the pillar and the resounding crack she heard throughout the structure. She glanced around at the people still cowering in corners of the atrium, the fear in the air almost tangible. She had a choice to make - stop the madman and let everyone in the structure die or let Nimrod escape while saving the lives of people that hated and feared her.

There were some days Rogue hated being an X-Man.

Leaping into the air, she grabbed either end of the steel pillar that had snapped, muscles straining as she held she held the two in place. "Get out of here," she yelled at the group, watching in disgust as Nimrod continued in his run straight through anything in his path.

He paused just at the hole he'd left on his way in and gave her a half-salute, that shark's grin never fading. "Until the next time, Rogue."

"You better believe it," she muttered under her breath. She had no doubt the pair would meet again - only the next time, she planned on a very different outcome.

***************************

Eric Wagner was not a man to give in easily to fear. He hadn't wanted to leave, to appear to knuckle under to mutant threats, but when the others had appeared, his bodyguard had insisted, claiming that he recognized one of the new mutants as an ally of Magneto - Magneto, of all people!

"~Hans, where are we going?~" he demanded of his bodyguard, breathing hard as Hans steered him towards the stairs leading up to the glass-covered walkway. He was physically fit for a man of his age, but he had no intention of simply running. They needed to find a place to regroup, where he could think of a way to make sure that everyone at the rally knew that he had not opted to flee without looking back.

"~Somewhere safer, sir,~," came the gruff response as Hans encouraged him roughly up the stairs. "~Your message is worth nothing if you are not alive and well to deliver it.~"

"~My message is worth nothing if I advocate standing up for the rights and well-being of proper human beings and then turn and run from these accidents of nature,~" Wagner snapped right back at him, growing increasingly incensed. "~I need a phone, Hans, at the very least...~"

In response, Hans merely laughed, his face seeming to slough off only to be replaced by an alternately slick-and-scaled blue visage with vivid yellow eyes full of hatred. "~I'm afraid you won't be spreading any more of your poison, Eric," Mystique said, giving a twist to the last word as her hand shot out to grab Wagner's arm.

It had taken Kurt a few minutes to locate them so he could follow - it was too much of a risk to teleport into the building without knowing its layout, or exactly where they were - but he saw them the moment they stepped into the glass walkway, and that had solved both problems at once. Right on cue, he appeared a few feet down the corridor, in the usual cloud of sulphur. His image inducer had been damaged at some point, unnoticed in the scuffle, and gave up the ghost now, meaning it was his own face he was wearing.

Wagner was in mid-reaction to the horribly familiar face of the person who was not Hans when Kurt appeared. A cry escaped him before he could help it, and the show of weakness only made him angrier. "You," he spat at Mystique, trying to wrench his arm free. "You should be dead, you-"

"Careful," the woman interrupted, clearly unwilling to release him even with Kurt's appearance on the walkway. "You wouldn't want to reveal too much, would you? You wouldn't want to say anything you'd regret." Mystique's eyes flickered to Kurt, her expression unreadable, though her lips tightened slightly as she increased the pressure on Wagner's arm.

Kurt glanced between their faces, moving slowly closer. "You have met?" he asked, voice carefully neutral. If you weren't a mutant, you'd apparently be a German baron's son.

Wagner gritted his teeth. "Get away from me," he spat at the second blue mutant. "Filth, all of you - trust you to connive together to eliminate one of the only voices willing to risk speaking the truth!"

Kurt turned a flat look on him. "Do you know nothing at all about the people brought from America to protect you?"

"The good baron sees only what he wants to see," Mystique said in a condescending tone, her teeth very white against the cobalt blue of her lips. "How else do you think he has deluded himself for so long?"

Wagner swore viciously in German, and stopped struggling. "Kill me then," he snarled at Mystique. "Prove that I am right, and that I was right-" There was something venomous and cutting about Wagner's last comment, some greater significance.

Kurt just fell silent, ready to teleport forward at the first sign she was about to act, but wanting to hear anything she might have to say.

"If you think," Mystique began, looking not at Kurt but at the politician in her grasp, "that trying to use guilt against me will somehow spare your miserable life, you couldn't be more mistaken. You killed any hope of forgiveness long ago, and now it's finally caught up to you. I'm only sorry your followers might never know of your own indiscretions-- but I think your death will be enough of a shock to them."

Wagner's eyes were like ice as they bored into Mystique. "I had always wondered," he said, almost too low for Kurt to hear, "why you never used my poor judgement against me."

It was only then that the woman's yellow eyes flickered to Kurt, and an expression almost like pain came over her face, if only for a second. "Some things are not weapons," she hissed then, stepping back towards the railing and yanking at Wagner's arm so that he would follow.

Kurt didn't betray his alarm at this development, just followed them as quickly as he could. "You know I cannot let you do this."

"Don't, Kurt. Stay out of this." Mystique roughly manhandled the politician against the railing; if they could have been, her knuckles around his arm would have been stark white. "Best just to leave now, before the baron has his accident."

Wagner blanched. "Kurt?" he said, incredulously. And looked at Mystique, not at the X-Man. "You - no, that's not possible..."

"Even when confronted face-to-face with reality you still try to deny it," the shapeshifter sneered. "Some great visionary you are."

"My name is Kurt Sefton", he confirmed quietly, staring at the man in front of him with something like disbelief... but not denial. "But the name I had at birth was Wagner."

Wagner looked from her to Kurt, then back again, a mixture of unreadable emotions passing over his face before his expression hardened again. "I have been blind," he said, his voice low again, "I have never denied that, Raven..."

"That is not my name!" With that, Mystique lashed out, obviously intending to carry out her mission regardless of whether Kurt was still there or not. The railing loomed closed behind them and she struggled with Wagner, anger lending her strength, though making her actions less measured and controlled at the same time.

Kurt darted forward without hesitation at that, only a few feet away so reaching them almost as fast as he would have with a teleport, and joined the struggle. His aim, of course, was to pull Wagner back and away from the edge - and from Mystique. His focus was on the action as much as it needed to be, though his mind was spinning.

Kurt succeeded in breaking Mystique's grip on Wagner, for just a moment. The politician reeled back against the railing, but caught himself, his eyes bleak with hatred as he watched the two blue-skinned mutants struggle. "It doesn't matter," he said under his breath, too low for either of them to hear. "It never did."

What he pulled from the pocket of his jacket looked like a cell phone, but wasn't. The gun fired only four rounds, and was useable only at very close range, but it would be enough.

Wagner took aim - at Kurt.

Ordinarily, Kurt could dodge bullets - but only when he saw the gun pointed at him with enough time to teleport. In this instance, grappling with Mystique, he didn't recognise it for what it was until it was too late. The first bullet thudded into his shoulder, grating over the bone. The second, meant for his heart, instead tore a deep gouge through the flesh of his side as he fell.

There was no sound from the shapeshifter as Kurt tumbled to the ground, merely a blue streak as she whirled about to launch herself once more at Wagner. She struck at his hand, aiming for the gun, her yellow eyes blazing with hatred for the man who had once been so much more to her.

Kurt wasn't unconscious, though he'd fallen - just downed for a short time by the blazing pain. It took him a matter of seconds to force himself back to his feet and see what was happening. And then there was no more time to think. He threw himself with all his weight at Mystique, the momentum carrying them both through the glass of the walkway, to the ground below.

Wagner hesitated, then looked down through the hole in the glass, at the two mutants on the ground below. His face twisted and he raised the gun again - then lowered it at the sound of familiar voices shouting his name, back near the entrance to the walkway.

"~I'm here!~" he called back harshly in German, looking back down at Kurt for a moment, his expression tightening. "~You are no son of mine,~" he said under his breath, then turned and started back towards the stairs.

Neither of the two mutants stirred for a long moment; shattered glass lay scattered about them, speckled here and there with crimson drops of blood. Then, slowly, Mystique drew herself up, looking around for any sign of Wagner and finding no trace of the politician.

There was the faint crunch of glass as she rose, but before she could slip away Kurt felt cool fingers at his throat and then his wrist, checking his pulse and finding it still strong and steady. It was only then that Mystique departed, moving quickly through the shards of glass and leaving nothing behind but her blood, and her son.

He was barely conscious at that point, hardly aware of what was going on, and Kurt didn't hang on to even that scrap of consciousness for very long before his head dropped into the glass and the blood and he passed out.

Two people saw that last moment between mother and son. One, coming around the corner of the building at a run to check on his teammate, nearly blasted Mystique in the head before he realized that she was checking Kurt's pulse. By the time Scott absorbed that oddity, she was gone, and he had more pressing things to worry about.

The other, clinging to the side of the building, a few stories up, scowled both at the two X-Men and his own blue-skinned teammate. "Of all the times to go soft," Toad muttered. But there was a strange, speculative look in his eyes as he stared at the fallen X-Man for a moment later before turning his attention to making his own escape.

***************************

Waking up was not a quick or painless process, when you were doing it with a concussion and a fairly significant amount of blood loss. Kurt opened his eyes a crack, shifting on the plane's cot, then groaned and closed them again.

"Yeah," came Scott's voice from beside and above him, "staying put is probably a good idea, Kurt." A hand came down lightly on his uninjured shoulder. "You're okay. Or relatively, given that you got shot twice and knocked out of a window."

"...I was not knocked", he said slowly, staying as still as possible and not opening his eyes again. "I knocked Mystique through. I think. It is fuzzy."

A soft laugh that didn't sound all that amused, barely audible over the sound of the Blackbird's engines, thrumming through the cabin. "I'm not surprised," Scott said, and sighed. "Wagner's all right, if that's any consolation. She didn't manage to get back to the job of killing him."

"Good", came out on a breath of relief. "It was worth it, if it achieved that." If not for quite the reasons Scott might be thinking.

"I don't know, I'll confess to a little ambivalence over the whole thing. Or maybe that's the seething rage over having been set up so effectively." He'd managed to keep his temper under wraps so far, but there'd be some serious abuse of the heavy bag when they got home. "Nimrod killed three people. I think those were the only casualties. We sort of didn't wait around for the clean-up."

"I do not think... it would be a good place to be a mutant, just now", Kurt agreed wryly. "What happened to the Brotherhood?"

"Escaped. All three of them. I guess they got their statement, though, even if it wasn't quite what they wanted." Scott hesitated, then decided he had to say something. Not that he particularly wanted to add to Kurt's ambivalent feelings about his mother. "Mystique stopped to check that you were alive, before she left. I thought you should know that. Then she saw me coming and took off like a bat out of hell, but... she took a moment."

"...she did stop." There was an odd note in his voice, at that. "I thought I felt... but I was not sure, it was after the fall. Thank you, Scott." He paused, then added, "I should tell you. She was there seeking Wagner's death, but it... was not all for political reasons."

"... oh?"

"I think... no. He is my father."

There was dead silence from Scott. For a good ten seconds. Then, there was the sound of him sitting down.

"Baron Wagner. Is your father. The anti-mutant crusader, and Mystique-"

"Remember it was thirty years ago", Kurt said dryly. "I do not know details, but I know that he is my father. And that she hates him for more than his politics."

"Good lord." Scott sighed, running a hand through his hair. Kurt was just lying there, but the tension was obvious. "We can stop having epic family stories any day now, really."

His hand - the uninjured one, on the side away from Scott - was clenched tight on the side of the cot, until Kurt forced himself to relax it. "I wish we would. I have had my fill."

Scott sighed again, resting his own head in his hands for a moment - before something else occurred to him, and he sat bolt upright again. "Was he the one who shot you?" he asked incredulously.

And there went the relaxation. Kurt turned his head away, slowly and carefully, until Scott couldn't see his face so easily. "Yes. He was."

"Son of a bitch."

"I had thought", Kurt continued dully, "that he knew by then I meant him no harm. I was fighting with Mystique, trying to keep her from him..."

"People do stupid things when they panic." Or when they were bigots faced with the living proof of the sins of their younger days, Scott thought but didn't say. "I'm assuming Mystique was threatening his life at the time. He might not have believed you were trying to help."

"Perhaps." The word came out heavy with too many things to separate out.

"Kurt... you'll have time to think this through, sort things out. To try and get in touch with him under better circumstances, if you decide you want to do that." Scott leaned closer to check the bandage on his arm. "Right now, Jean says you have a concussion, so this is not the time to try and figure out how you feel about all of this."

Kurt was shivering, he realized dimly. Only very slightly, but he was. "All right. I will try not to."

Scott noted the shivering and got up, getting a blanket out of the supplies locker and pulling it over Kurt. "We should be back home in about five hours. Try to rest, all right?" Scott's hand rested on his shoulder for a moment, again.

Kurt just nodded, very very slightly, and his uninjured hand came up to touch Scott's fleetingly before it was gone.