Mission: Fin Fang Foom!!!: Across The Ocean

[x-dominion.livejournal.com]

The X-Men head out with a large crew to tackle the disappearance of the British ships and the Mandarin's involvement. The trip over isn't the smoothest.



"I must say Summers, one of these would have been very useful back in the 1980s," Christian Kane said from the jump seat behind where Scott and Sam sat at the controls. Garrison's father had been spending the time on board arranging certain clearances for the Blackbird in some of the countries in which they needed to land, through contacts that appeared to be suspiciously non-official. The older man had deflected any questions as to whom he might be speaking with an easy charm that was becoming familiar to the X-Men onboard. Even at his age, there didn't seem to be any slowness about Christian, as if the years had touched little more than the colour of his hair.

"Very useful indeed," he muttered, before setting down the headphones. "Once you reach Japan, Captain Hollinger knows to deal directly with you in my absence. There's a local SIS station which is providing a covering operation, just in case you run into any difficulties with the Chinese."

"It has its drawbacks," Scott said, checking his displays. The weather was mostly clear, all the way to their destination, which was a relief. It wasn't that he didn't have faith in the repairs done in March and April, but they hadn't tested the 'Bird in heavy turbulence since. "There have been times we could have wished that the stealth system was a bit better, but until they come up with a invisible plane..."

"The Masters of Evil once developed an invisible plane. And then they lost it," Christian said wryly, considering his own adventures back decades ago. His own challenges had been just as deadly as the X-Men's, but some of them on the fair side of ridiculous looking back. After all, it had been the Sixties. "I've arranged for transport out of Macau through private means, keep us under the radar, so to speak. After all this is over, we'll meet in Hong Kong. Despite the handover to the Chinese, Her Majesty's government still has plenty of friends there."

Kurt raised his eyebrows, somewhere between amused and taken aback. "The Masters of Evil? Was that their own name for themselves?"

"Their name, I'm afraid. They were incompetent, but still dangerous." Kane said, with a smile. "I sometimes miss the days when it was as simple as stopping Baron Zemo from building an orbital laser. Things got more complex once they finally broke apart. Of course, none of it ever made it to the news."

"Nothing covert and useful ever makes the new. Unless someone fucks up," Clarice pointed out, draping herself across the back of the seat, "I mean, everyone knows the CIA does some cracktastic shit, but Barbara Walters isn't saying boo. She's all concerned about asbestos or ketchup being declared a veggie."

"Dude, ketchup's a vegetable? I thought tomatoes were fruits..." Kyle said, half distracted just by being -in- the Blackbird. Observation only and he'd promised, several times to several people that he'd be on his very best behavior. As it was, he was having a hard time sitting still, and was trying to look at everything at once, look out the windows, and also not squirm and look like a gawking teenager. He was pretty sure he was failing the last one miserably. "How fast are we going?" He asked. Again. He'd asked it twice before.

"Fast," Sam teased Kyle gently from the copilot seat. Still, he had been on good behavior (for Kyle, at least), so he relented. "A little above Mach 2," he told the young man. "We'll be in Macau before ya know it."

"So let me get this straight," Cain said as he lumbered forward from his seat. "There's some Bermuda Triangle shit going down, and we're going to sit on a boat in the hopes that whatever's been attacking the other ships jumps us? And then.. what? Beat the shit out of them?" He cracked his knuckles gleefully. "I always said fists are nature's problem solvers. I ain't never beat up a pirate before. Should be fun."

"Pity the pirates," Scott murmured wryly, and checked their airspeed.

"Don't be too overconfident." Christian said quietly. "Remember, whoever is behind this is not just hijacking the ships, but doing so quickly enough that no one has any real details, and none of the ships have been seen again. If the ships were turning up in a Singapore or Madripoor scrap sale, I'd believe nothing more than the usual pirates. This... could be something else entirely."

"Of course it's something else entirely." Garrison muttered from his seat at the back of the plane; the furthest away he could sit from his father and still be on the Blackbird. Only the people around him could hear his distracted muttering. "If it was pirates, there would be proper authorities. But no, since it's my old man, there's some super villain who wants to blow up the moon using lasers powered by crystals found in prehistoric shark gullets or something. There's going to be a car with ejector seats involved at some point..."

"Let us hope not", Kurt muttered under his breath. "Those are no fun at all."

Shiro smirked at Garrison. "Maybe we will be lucky and this will all end up like Austin Powers. Beyonce Knowles will come to our rescue, and you will discover that you have a long-lost twin brother."

"I have no doubt that I have siblings that I've never had any idea existing." Kane said darkly. The Canadian had been in an uncharacteristically foul mood ever since his father had turned up at the mansion, and the interest in which the others had paid in Christian stories about the bizarre intelligence world that he'd once dominated was not helping.

"Settle, all of you," Scott said curtly. "If you need something to occupy you, go take a crack at the holes in what we're generously calling our deployment plan."

Shaking his head, Jim decided to check on Jan and Jennie. As options went, talking to two teenaged girls seemed like it would be significantly less fraught than sitting on the edge of the gently-roiling subtext pooling around Garrison and his father. "You two doing okay back here?" the telepath asked, moving slightly awkwardly down the aisle to join the two trainees still seated at the rear of the plane. The turbulence was only slight, but Jim judged now wasn't the time to start passing up weak excuses.

Jennie looked up from the text message she was sending, right as the plane gave another jolt, making the taller man stumble. "Fine," Jennie said, trying to project an air of indifference. It wasn't the impending "mission" that was bothering her, but rather Jennie could count the number of times she'd been on an airplane on one hand, and it was even lesser when she took into account the plane trips she had been conscious for. "Doin' juuuust fine," she added as the plane bumped again.

"Yep, just fine!" Jan replied with a big grin.

Bracing his hand on the back of a seat, Jim smiled. "You guys nervous?" he inquired. It wasn't difficult for him to read the signs with Jennie, but Jan was a different story. Looking at her grin he still found himself wondering if 'fazed' was anything beyond an SAT word for her.

"Nervous? We're only going into uncertain danger, albeit directly supervised uncertain danger lead by some shaggy ex-superspy that involves trespassing into foreign lands." Jennie's grin was cheerful despite her words. "Why would we be nervous?"

"What she said," Jan agreed amiably. "Unless we're supposed to be nervous? Are we supposed to be nervous? Is it a good sign to be nervous? Maybe I am a bit nervous, it's my first mission and yeah, scary danger, and there's that weird old spy guy, too. We don't usually go places with creepy old men trying to relive their glory days, do we?"

"We're equal-opportunity in our acceptance of threat situations, especially from highly-qualified family members of teammates," Jim said, vaguely glad he'd never dispersed enough personal information to have to listen to similar speculations addressed to him about his own father. Or at least, no more than Cain always had. "As for the nerves that may or may not exist," he continued, "don't worry. Even if things get bad, which is doubtful, I'll be there. We don't build missions around it, but my telekinesis is solid in an emergency."

Jennie's eyebrows went up at that one. "Telekinesis? The telekinesis that you can only do when you're... y'know..." Jennie gestured helplessly. She'd read the personal dossiers of the X-Men just last week. It was rather startling to know the student counselor was actually legitimately insane.

"Hey, he said it's solid, right?" Jan protested. "They wouldn't send him out here with us if they thought he was going to kill us all or something."

Jim suppressed the urge to rub his forehead. "Thanks, Jan. That was sweet. Sort of. But yeah -- it's technically adaptive functioning on my part. Even when I use the TK I'm the same person. Even if it is a little . . ." He tapered off into an aimless wave of his hand, then gave them a crooked smile. "Of course, that's just the extreme. Until that point I'm just telepath-on-site. Technically you guys are more likely to have my back. And I'm fine with that if you are."

Jennie looked at Jan, blinking momentarily. She wondered briefly if this was an act or if Jan really was unflappable to the point of worrisome. She then turned back to Haller. "Well, if you say so." He'd only attacked his teammates once anyway.

"Come on, Jennie! If he goes crazy on us, then we can go into nervous mode," Jan said, looking at Jennie. "For right now, we should trust him. How are we supposed to work as a team if we start off the mission wondering if he's going to go nuts any second and turn on us?" While everyone else on the team had known the X-Men for years, Jan was still new to the whole idea, and she refused to be dragged down by things like worrying if an actually insane member of the team was about to attack her. Jan flashed a smile at Haller. "You can count on us! Consider your back watched!"

Jim noted that Jan's inspirational speeches were about on par with his own, though her grasp of enthusiasm was far more advanced. This wasn't just their first mission. It was his first since January, and all the things that had come since. Jim may have been here for the trainees, but they weren't the only ones being tested. He arched his eyebrow at the quieter of the two. There was faint question in the gesture. "You all right with that, Jennie?"

There was more than a little "er" involved as Jennie watched Jan give her an enthusiastic, if unneeded pep talk. With everything Jennie herself had been through, actually knowing she was going headlong into danger and also being in a position to do something about it was comforting to her. Now, she wasn't going to be the helpless one, and what's more, she was being allowed to not be helpless.

She looked between both her new teammates. "I'm fine, guys, really," she insisted. The plane gave another bump and Jennie grabbed the armrest. "I just have problems with turbulence."

Jim glanced at the fingers on the arm of Jennie's chair, then back to her face. "Don't worry," he said with a faint smile, drawing away from the chair, "it'll pass."

Jean glanced up from her double checking of the 'Bird's medical supplies as Jim passed, heading towards his seat again, and offered him a quick smile. #Now that,# she told him telepathically, sounding amused, #was an impressively ineffective sort of pep talk. The kind that normally takes years of practice. She's got natural skill.#

Jim grinned as he walked past her. #Behold, the next generation,# he responded in kind. His mismatched eyes flicked to Christian at the front of the plane, then to Garrison, still seated at the opposite corner of the plane and looking no happier. #I hope the plane can contain them all.#

#It's survived us, mostly. I'm sure it can handle them.# Although she had to wonder about that, actually, given the way she could feel Scott stewing faintly. She couldn't hear what was going on up at the front of the plane, but something seemed to have aggravated him...

Angelo was staring distractedly out of the window, paying little or no attention to the conversations behind him. He glanced round once at the others, then went back to whatever he was looking at.

Christian merely leaned back in his seat and listened to the chatter in the cabin. It was good to be on a mission again, even with the poisonous glares his son was giving him and the conflicting opinions of the X-Men. A part of his brain was storing everything away, but mostly, it felt restful to be traveling into danger again.

It felt like home.