Laura & Logan - Sunday 31

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Laura Happens



Logan had been given an address deep in the heart of suburbia. And considering he was going to pick up a new kid, he couldn't just ride in on his bike. So, boring car from the motor pool it was. At least he could roll the windows down, get some wind in his hair, and even enjoy a smoke before he had to go get presentable to pick up the kid. He patted his face to check his shave - should last for the next few hours before it grew back into the muttonchops. Had to make a good impression and all that jazz.

He found the address and parked the car on the street. Kinney residence. Huh. Looked depressingly mundane.

The Kinney residence was a nice average-looking house; nothing too fancy, but certainly kept and air of niceness of the kind of houses you would think of with a 'Home Sweet Home' carpet on the front door. The Kinneys didn't have one of those though. Upon getting closer to the house, Logan would notice the woman standing in front of the door as a gate guardian of sorts. Late thirties, still pretty good looking, but awfully stressed, it seemed. The woman immediately noticed him getting closer, and muttered something; she didn't really say anything, so whatever she had expressed was lost.

She pretty much closed the distance between Logan and the house with a tense look. Her mouth opened to say something, but she just closed it again, and then turned. "I'm Sarah, Sarah Kinney; please come with me."

"Sure thing, darlin'." he told Sarah Kinney as he got out of the car, stubbed out his smoke in the ashtray, and followed her inside. "Nice place." he said, looking around. Of course, his only real comparison point was with the Drake place in Boston, but still. This was nice. Four walls, ceiling, floor, looked snug enough. What more could you want?

The comment about her house seemed to calm the woman. "My sister and I have always tried to give the best to our daughters..." The sentence trailed off as she opened the door. "So when Laura...well, she is certainly taking it a lot better than me; the girl is actually excited about being a mutant, when she almost got killed in the first place. She's upstairs in her room, ordering it for the first time maybe." Sarah sighed, turning to see Logan again, a slight frown on her face. "Have we met before?"

"If we did - no offense - I don't remember." he said. Standard response whenever stuff like that popped up. "Where do you think you know me from?" he asked, curious, as they waited for Laura to sort herself out and get her ass downstairs to come say hello. Or whatever.

"You don't?" Sarah crossed her arms over her chest, an uneasy look on her eyes. "If I hadn't been informed of who was coming to pick my daughter up, right now I might be pointing a gun at you." She watched Logan carefully for a moment. "It was years ago, I was working in a--" Sarah was cut by the sound of a door being shut closed, her head turning to see the girl getting to the stairs. Well, she wasn't a girl anymore, not for a long time, some would say. The girl didn't have any obvious mutation, or at least not anything really visible like horns or wings. She had a suitcase in each hand and a huge backpack behind her, and she still looked attractive.

Looking up at Logan, Laura flashed a smile to him, showing her slightly pointier incisive. "Hey hey..." Laura stopped on her tracks, confusion on her face, and the sniffed a couple of times absently. "You smell funny; metal? And...something else, kinda familiar but I can't place it." There was an awkward silence then.

"Feral, huh? Yeah, it's a long story, won't bore you with it right now. You're Laura, right? I'm Logan." he said, offering the girl his hand. "Car's out front. Give me a minute to have a word with your Mom here, then we'll head out." he said.

"Feral? Cool" She somehow managed to drop a suitcase and shake hands with Logan; it felt weird somehow, but she didn't say anything. "Oh, ah right; I'll just go and place this...somewhere outside. And I won't listen!", added as Sarah gave her a significant look. "I'll go aaaaall the way to the car, alright, and then listen to some music, gosh." She was almost out when her mother stopped her to hug a now very embarrassed girl, before letting her leave the house. Sarah waited until Laura was in by the car, earphones plugged and everything. Then she turned towards Logan, looked both excited and clearly frightened.

"Weapon X."

Logan went from relaxed and friendly to on his alert in about a fraction of a second. "What do you know about Weapon X?" he asked suspiciously. This was too weird. How the hell does Suburban Single Mom get wrapped up in a joint US/Canadian venture to create super-soldiers?

Sarah walked to the Living Room, motioning Logan to follow. She then sat on one of the sofas there. "I worked there a long time ago, when I was just a kid; genius geneticists being the future of the nation and all that jazz." She turned to watch him again. "Then you don't remember me? You haven't aged one bit, Logan. We didn't talk much, probably because my work wasn't to talk. I just...ran tests, checked results. I didn't do much until I was relocated." Sarah sighed, gathering strength to carry on.

"Weapon X wanted to make their own soldiers; locating and forcing mutants to join their ranks was getting troublesome, and you being their star asset...they started to toy with your genes. Well, I did. The idea was to create better soldiers, less unstable, and easier to...teach how to act." She took another moment to gather her thoughts.

"We only had failures; apparently making something out of your genes was a doomed project. All the embryos turned out to serve purposes I wasn't aware of...all but one."

Logan put it together. "Jesus Fuck." he said. "You're tellin' me that the little girl sitting in the car listenin' to her tunes is ... my clone?" he said with a growl.

Sarah shrugged in a rather defensive way. "The exact term on what she is remains for you to decide. She might posses your genetic make up, but it was I the one that got impregnated with her; I consider her my daughter just as you could consider her the same. Also, the DNA we used was damaged, which resulted in the number of failures I mentioned earlier, and in the fact Laura is female." There was a minute of silence then.

"She heals like you, possesses enhanced senses and has...claws.


"Funny how that works." he said, showing her his own claws on his right hand in what might be considered a potentially hostile gesture. "You bond her with adamantium too, Doc?" he growled.

His day had officially entirely gone to shit.

Sarah almost shrieked at the claws, but she managed to keep her cool. "Weapon X is not aware of Laura. They all think, or thought, that the program was a failure. I impregnated myself out of frustration, only to discover the things they did to those other babies...I would have been captured, but then you escaped, which allowed me to hide safely." The mention of the adamantium made her frown again.

"I would never hurt Laura; I have done horrible things, Logan, to you and to others, and I'm still paying for that. But after having her I decided to change." A hand raised to remove some hair from her face; Sarah looked older and tired.

"Please take care of her; if the WEAPON program manages to find her..." She didn't end the sentence, realizing she couldn't, and didn't want. "She doesn't know a thing, but I don't know how to explain to her."

"Nice." he growled, retracting his claws. "Don't go anywhere, Mrs Kinney. Don't take a job out of state, don't buy a new house, don't go anywhere. You don't want me to think you're trying to run from me." he said with a gleam in his eye. "And if it makes you feel better, Stryker is dead and Lyman's in hiding." he said. "The project's gone. Alkali lake is gone. Now I get to go tell that little girl what you were too much of a coward to." he said.

"Have a nice day." he told her with a tip of his hat.

Sarah simply nodded. "You can come back here and ask me anything you want; I'm done with running around and hiding. And...thanks." Standing, the woman pulled something out of her clothes that was pending on a necklace; an USB. "Here is all the information I have been able to compile...I was going to show it to Laura when she turned 21, but now I guess she should know as soon as possible...and so do you." She placed it on the little table in front of her, and then walked away. "Have a nice day."

Logan had to restrain himself from lunging for the USB stick. "I'll be back." he promised her, then walked out her front door to the car with the teenager waiting in it. "Hey, kid." he said as he climbed into the driver's seat.

"Hey~"

Laura was paying attention to her nails, earplugs now dangling on her chest as she didn't need to hinder her hearing. Not that she would have heard anything from there, but whatever. Turning to see Logan, she couldn't resist to ask. "So, what do you do?"

It wasn't true anymore, but he couldn't resist it. "I teach art." he said with a grin. Hey, it worked on the Drakes! He fired up the engine and pulled the car away from the curb to head back to the Mansion. "Also do a little self-defense instruction for advanced students." he said. "It's a hobby." he said with a grin.

"Oh, and I'm a cheerleader, for real." The sudden movement threw her a little of balance, but not that much -her balance was awesome now!-. "Huh, funny, really funny." She made a pout of sorts, and then smiled again. Looked at both sides, she turned against at Logan with a devilish grin, raising her right hand, balled into a fist. "Don't freak out..." And then there was a 'snikt!' and two white claws came out of her knuckles. "Hehe...cool, don't you think? And I have one on each foot as well." Laura sheathed her claws then, well aware that someone could see her from outside.

"Nice." he said. Well, if he wasn't positive that Sarah was legit, that just kinda kiboshed it. "Luckily for you we got a few folks with claws around." he said. Then he waited for just the right moment to show off his three - shiny metal and not bone, but all that much deadlier for it.

Laura's eyes widened at the sight of the claws. "Woah...this is getting a little odd. You have claws, I have claws. And you also have this smell on you...a little like me." The image of the steel claws was going to stick for a while in her mind. "Wait a minute...mine a bone, but those are...then all your bones are..." Talking was starting to become complicated. "Is that your...mutation thing?"

"Like I said. Long story. I'll tell you once you've settled in, talked to the geezer." he said. Then he fished his cigar out of the ashtray and lit it, sticking it in his mouth. "Chances are you're not gonna like it much."

Just by the way he put it Laura didn't like it already. "Alright...the geezer?" It didn't seem to be wise to keep pushing on the subject though; the man had steel claws, and healing factor or not, Laura wasn't willing to see if she could regrow a hand or something. "Ugh, using earrings is going to be a pain from now on."

"Chuck. Guy whose house you'll be living in. Runs the Institute." he said. "Good guy." he conceded. Unluckily the drive back was onerously long, rollin' in a cage with a girl who was definitely smelling a little freaked out.

Couldn't blame her, really.