Face the Blood - Yvette, Dori and Inez

[x-penance.livejournal.com]

On the way to the village to do their work for the day, Yvette, Inez and Dori get distracted.



It was a lovely mid-morning. The sun was shining, the birds were singing and the Red X mission was going well. Three girls walked along the dirt road from their camp to the old village where most of the work was going on heading for their day's assignments. They were three very different individuals: one tall and blonde and lithely built, one short and red-skinned, her hair, hands and feet elongated spikes and the middle one bright and bubbly and sporting a luxuriously bushy tail.

Yvette kicked a pebble along the road, watching it bounce along. "It is strange," she said, contemplatively. "To be so close to home again. Well, 'close' being the understatement. It is not so far away for the American way of thinking but in Europe, it is much more."

“It always kinda is strange,” Doreen said, “so I get what you mean. Though it’s weird too, because you can live your whole life in a place and then suddenly it doesn’t seem like home,” she chattered. The air here smelled so much different than what she was used to, that she kept taking in deep breaths just to try to process it all. “How far from here did you grow up?” she asked, looking over at Yvette.

"I was born in Albania, on the border with what is being called Montenegro," Yvette explained. "So perhaps... one hundred miles, even though it is another country away, yes? My mother and I were moving to Sarajevo, in Kosova, when the war is nearly ended. I was the little girl back then. My grandfather, his brother was living there and they were taking us in."

Inez stayed quiet and just looked around. Aside from Mexico, she'd never been outside the country she was born in. And while she'd grown up around guns and people on the wrong side of the law, she couldn't imagine what it must have been like growing up in a war zone.

"Are you gonna stop by and see your family while we're here?" she asked Yvette. "How long's it been since you've seen them?"

“Yeah, if we get a chance we should go. It really isn’t that far and I’m sure they’d all be happy to see you,” Doreen said to Yvette, changing pace a bit and walking backwards, looking at her two classmates.

"Not since the last year - it is sometimes not so comfortable for me to be flying alone," Yvette admitted matter-of-factly - between the damage her skin and hair could inflict on seats and the stares, mutters and sometimes outright hostility she had received in the past, she wasn't particularly keen on commercial flights and it wasn't like the Blackbird was available to ferry students home. And Clarice did enough shuttling people around. "So I should go to visit my mother. I write to her every week, but it is not quite the same." She changed topics, slightly, to avoid that prickly subject. "Have you been to the foreign country before?"

"Just Mexico," Inez admitted. She felt wildly out of place here, not speaking the local language and seeing a lifestyle she'd never had any experience with. Growing up on the run hadn't exactly been picket-fence suburbia, but at least she'd never had to grow up in a place like this.

"I suppose it just shows that stupid prejudice isn't just limited to humans and mutants, yo," she grumbled, picking up a rock and sidearming it casually, watching it sail out of sight. "People are dumb."

“That’s not fair,” Doreen said, “Not everyone is dumb. I’ve been to the Alps before, but that was a few years ago. We haven’t had the money for it recently. Well, Dad has, but he doesn’t go anywhere with us right now,” Doreen said, her tail twitching a bit. “The kids here are awesome. So maybe the next group of adults won’t be that bad.”

"People are people," Yvette said with a small shrug. "Some are being good, some are being bad." She nodded to a group of children up ahead, clustered in a small group with one in the centre. "It is good to see children playing without fear. No humans, no mutants, no bombs... just the friends and the sunny day."

“Um… they’re not playing,” Doreen said, pausing, “They are afraid,” she could smell it. It was heavy, thick, “There’s something wrong there.”

Inez glanced over. The kids didn't appear to be playing a game, they were just standing around, and some of them looked worried. She motioned the other two over and started walking towards the kids. "Hey, Yvette? Can you ask them what's going on?"

Eyes flaring, Yvette nodded and approached slowly, careful to stay on the road - they'd been warned about old ordinance and land mines lying around in some areas. Fortunately, speakers of Serbian and the Bosnian could generally understand each other and although Yvette had been a little rusty in the former, she could make herself understood. When she turned to her friends after a moment, her facial lines had stiffened along with her hair, a sure sign of trouble.

"The girl, there," she pointed to the young girl, maybe no more than eight, standing stock still and white-faced. "She is standing on the land mine. We need to be helping her, before it explodes."

“I could maybe get her off of it. I can jump pretty high, after all. So maybe… I can get her out of the way,” Doreen offered, “We do need to help her.” That was why they were here.

"Yeah, but won't it like, explode?" Inez asked.

"Not if we are putting the new weight on it so it will not," Yvette suggested, musing over the situation and trying to think of a plan. "I am thinking... Inez and myself are being hard to hurt, so if I am putting my foot on the mine as Dori is taking the girl off it, and then Inez is smashing it... that would be working, yes?" She looked from one friend to another for confirmation.

Inez bit her lip. She knew that she was hard to hurt, but something like a bomb... if it went off, she wasn't sure if she could survive that.

"Oh well," she said flippantly to cover up her nervousness. "Who wants to live forever, yo? Let's do this."

Yvette herself wasn't sure how much her own powers could handle, but they had to try. Looking at the girl, it was clear to see she wouldn't be able to stay standing for the amount of time it would take to get help of a sturdier - or better trained - sort. "Very well," she said, trying to mimic Inez's tone and mostly succeeding, but for the slight shaking in her voice. She told the other children to move back to the safety of the road and then glanced at Doreen. "On the counting of three, yes? When I say 'three', you are grabbing the girl and leaping away and Inez and I will destroy the mine."

“I got it,” Doreen said, more than ready to do it. They had to do it. No kid deserved to be threatened by an explosive some dumb adult planted as part of some stupid war. “I’m ready when you are.” She crouched down a bit, judged the distance between her and the girl. It would be easy to get her up and out of range. Her tail twitched and she was ready.
Yvette crouched beside the girl, telling her in soft, gentle tones what would be happening. The girl nodded once, lip and legs trembling and said something back in teary Bosnian. "Okay, we have to be doing it now. She cannot be standing much longer." With a gulp, Yvette stretched out her hand beside the girl's foot where underneath they could see the round raised metal edge of the mine. "One. Two." Another pause and then before any of them could change their minds, she said the fateful last number: "Three!"

Doreen ran and jumped leapt at the moment, it was like flying, even low to the ground and she suddenly hand the girl in her arms as she went soaring through the air, a safe distance from the mine, a plot of ground that had been checked earlier. Doreen loved the feel of jumping like this, and hoped the girl did as well, because the second Doreen grabbed her she knew she was safe.

Yvette resisted the urge to slam her hand down onto the mine, instead placing it firmly on the dirt-covered metal. Tightly, barely able to breathe, she nodded at Inez. "Again, on three," she instructed. "I will take my hand out of the way and you will be punching the mine, here in the centre."

Inez cocked one fist back, her eyes focused on the center of the half-buried mine. This wasn't like building a log bridge over a creek or moving mud away from a landslide. This was a one-shot deal. She held her breath and just nodded to Yvette, indicating that she was as ready as she was going to get.

"One, two..." This time the count was steadier, despite the greater personal danger. They'd managed half of the task, after all. "Three!" She whipped her hand away, hearing the slight 'click' in the soil beneath her.

Inez punched down as fast and hard as she could. Her fist pierced the metal of the mine and didn't stop until she hit earth. When she stopped and pulled her hand back, she looked at the crushed metal of the fuze in her hand and let out the breath she'd been holding in a weak laugh. "Yo, I just punched out a land mine. How awesome am I?"

Doreen landed, and was comforting the kid, not looking back. “We’re okay here!” she called over her shoulder, giving the shaking girl a hug.

Yvette's eyes glowed brightly as she grinned back at Inez. "You did indeed," she said, proud of her friends, a little proud of herself. She straightened up from her crouch, dusting off her hands. "We should probably be getting the children back home, to make sure they are safe," she continued, taking a step back.

There was a click from underneath her foot and she looked down, mouth forming a round 'O' of horror. Beneath her foot was another mine.

"Get back!" she cried out to Inez, at the same time dropping herself into a huddle over the top of the device. Perhaps she could contain the shrapnel...

There was a loud bang, a shower of earth and a small red-skinned girl flung into the air.

Inez had dropped flat to the ground, the noise of the explosion ringing in her ears. She'd lost one of her hearing aids, and the world seemed to be spinning. She breathed in and coughed, running her hands over herself. She was fine - miraculously, nothing had hit her at all.

"Dori? Yvette? Where are you guys?"

When you had super senses some things were just murder. Loud bangs, smoke and all of that were just horrible. She was far enough away that the only thing that hit her was a shower of dirt, but her ears were ringing and her nose filled with the smell of smoke.

“I… I’m still over here,” she coughed, “What happened? Yvette?” Doreen called, “Inez, what’s going on?!”

A little way from them Yvette lay in a small huddle, eyes closed, body limp. A small rivulet of blood, difficult to see against her skin, ran from her nose. Her clothes were in rags, even the self-repairing bodysuit she wore having trouble with the damage, between the explosion and the fact the girl's powers were going into overdrive, subconsciously reacting too late to the threat.

Inez coughed again and made her way over to Yvette, cautiously placing a hand on the smaller girl's shoulder, then yanking it back as she felt Yvette's skin cut her. "Ow! She's... I think Yvette's hurt!" she yelled, still off-balance, her own vocie sounding strange in her ears.

What had they taught them in Red X? Don't move someone who's injured, call for help, wait for paramedics... but this wasn't somewhere you could just dial 911. Right now they were the only paramedics around, and Inez realized that she was going to have to play ambulance.

"Doreen!" she shouted, "Use your phone and call someone at the camp, tell them Yvette stepped on a mine and she's hurt!"

As she spoke, she reached down and cradled Yvette, wincing as her teammate's hair and skin felt like razors against her arms. Careful of her neck, she lifted the little red girl and began carefully walking towards the road.

“She is?” Doreen squeaked and started fumbling for her phone, “I’m on it, ohmigosh…” she was a blur of claws, digging for the phone that seemed to take forever to find, but when she did, she dialed as fast as her clumsy, clawed hands would let her.

Inez tried to hold Yvette as steady as she could, wincing a little bit with each step. Whatever was wrong with the tiny girl, the doctors would be able to help. That's what doctors did. She just had to keep telling herself that as she walked down the road towards the camp.