Genosha: The Unrelenting Struggle: The Night Before

[x-gambit.livejournal.com]

Paige and Kyle discuss handling the whole situation.



Kyle grunted loudly as the hatchet cracked into another log, and then set it down to wipe sweat away from his face. The (fucking) suit took care of most of it, but not his face, and the combination of filthy hair and lingering dried blood and the smells of a collective group of people, none of whom had access to shampoo - the ones who still had hair anyway - sweat in his eyes was just another irritant on the pile of things that were irritating him beyond all measure.

After a moment, he picked it back up, and worked through another log, and another, until he got to one that instead of splitting, even roughly, just seemed to collapse in on itself, sending up a cloud of fungal spores and rotten wood into Kyle's face. "FUCK!. Fuck fuck fuck fuck..." the exclamation was loud, repetitive and ended with the hatchet being thrown down into another log.

Finding a quiet spot outside to sit and methodically shut down her brain had seemed like a good idea at the time. A not particularly difficult one, even; they were surrounded by trees, chirping birds, perhaps even a babbling brook should she desire to seek it out, and the camp had a wide enough perimeter that Paige didn't feel the need to stay too close to the group at all times. Probably for the best, since not having a lab to hide in was wearing on her people skills.

Something about the whole fighting for her life thing, too, maybe.

She was letting a thought on water purification pass - for the third time, she didn't say she was especially good at shutting her brain down - when Kyle's distant eruption pierced whatever calm Paige had been managing. After a moment her eyes opened and she sighed, getting to her feet.

"Hey," Paige asked when she had made her way over, pushing a branch aside as she picked her way through the trees.

Kyle'd given up on the wood chopping and had just started in on a tree with his fists, one of which was bleeding, despite the healing factor being back on. His head whipped around, and he nearly snarled out a "Go the fuck away." before he caught himself, only getting out the "Guh" sound before he just stopped altogether, resting his head against the tree, and wiping the blood off his hands with his sleeve. "Sorry, not great company at the mo."

"I... see that," Paige replied after a short pause, but continued to approach none the less, picking her way carefully through the grass. "It's understandable. I don't mind... I date Jono. My brother's Sam. And Jay. There's pretty much nothing you can do that's going to offend me at this point." Her smile was wry but true, and her eyes gave away a certain fondness as she tilted her head at him. "Which one are you beating yourself and the tree up over?"

Kyle stared at Paige for a second, incredulous and then shook his head. "God, where do I fucking start? They've got my girlfriend, and it's my fault. They've got God only know who else, Yvette, Laurie, I don't know, they almost turned us into ... things..." he plucked at the red suit they'd forced him into. "And fuck, for all I know, the thing they do to people here is my fault too. If it's Rory asshole who was calling himself Ahab, me and Jennie and Marius were the fucking test cases!" He glanced up at the treetops, shook his head and snapped his attention back down at Paige. "I swear to God, if it's Rory Campbell, I'm going to do more than chew his fucking ear off."

Paige laughed, shorter than usual but still there. It sounded just like it fit, with them surrounded by trees like this. "Sorry. It was funny," she replied to his surprised face. "Look. I'm pretty sure whether it's based on the research they pulled from the three of you or not, that still makes it Campbell's fault, not yours. As for the captives..." Paige leaned into the tree with a tiny shrug, not apathy so much as "it is what it is". "Make sure we get them back. If that means chopping wood so that someone else can scout and bring us back some intell, so be it, but you make sure you are doing what is needed. You take some solace from it, you know?"

"I don't even know what people need here." Kyle snapped. "They've got Dori, and that is my fault, I told her to run, and she panicked. " He kept twitching his hands, claws sliding in and out of his nailbeds. "I don't know what anybody needs, I just ... dammit, why aren't we doing anything? We're chopping fucking wood, we could be ... I dunno, more intell whatever, looking for people, something, and I'm just chopping fucking wood?"

Eyebrows shooting up, Paige fought off a sorely unimpressed look, taking a breath. "Okay. I had Jay go missing, and we all saw how well I dealt with it, so. I get it." Pushing off the bark of the tree she beant down to grasp a hanful of grass that had gone to seed, picking them apart. "But I take a little offense to the notion that just because you have chosen to take on basic labour, we are not doing our jobs. That we're not doing everything we can."

She sighed. "I'm not good at this. I am not trying to rip you apart here, but seriously? If you're going to get mad, get mad at them. Channel it effectively. I know you can do this, I wouldn't have bothered otherwise, I really like you. So bloody well put your angst aside and... take a breath, or I am going to schedule you for awkward DR sessions until the end of time. I mean, Fabio themed stuff here. It will be awful."

"Really. Fucking Fabio?" Kyle was pretty sure that's not what he was going to say, but it just sort of came out. "Fabio? Dude is old, Paige. Old." He shook his head, a little incredulous and actually laughed. "I'm not saying like, you guys aren't doing your jobs or whatever. I'm just saying I feel like I'm not, I guess. I just.. I am pissed off at them, but I can't go just be a fucking idiot and try to take on like, every Genoshan ever myself, and I hate waiting. I wanna go punch someone and I'm trying to like, chop wood and pretend it's their faces and it's seriously not. Helping. I just get even more pissed off."

"Fine, Justin Bieber, whatever, I work with Garrison, what do you want from me?" Paige shot back, smiling. "Though, if you want to get technical, a quick blast off of stress is fine and good, if it helps you sleep, yay you, but studies show that the whole cathartic break shit thing doesn't actually work for people with any amount of anger issues. Just builds up adrenaline and keeps the whole fight versus flight thing going."

"Just. So you know," she ended, sending a stalk of grass seeds everywhere as she pushed them up with her fingernails.

"Nerd." Kyle said, entirely without malice. After all, the girlfriend was a nerd. "So, what I should like, do calming things and not actually go beat crap up unless I do it till I pass out. Huh." Well, Paige was a genius, and he wasn't, and so until someone else told him otherwise, he'd work with that. Maybe. He sat down, leaning against the tree he'd been abusing and resting his head against the rough bark. "I just wanna do something useful. I mean, yay, we're not being turned into mindless power plant drones or some shit, but I'd kinda like to accomplish something or ... something." He used the bark to scratch the back of his head, and grunted. "I just... I mean, how are you like, actually keeping your shit together here? I thought I had a handle on it and now I'm like, losing my shit every five minutes."

Paige gave him a look that said seriously?, tilting her head to the side. "Sweetpea, no one, at least that I've met, ever really has their shit together. You just get better at reasoning with yourself," she replied honestly. "I mean... Okay, see, I'm like you, I want to do something useful, but right now I can't. So I tell myself that I will be able to in the future, and that I have to be ready for when that time comes. I have to be my best then. And until then, I get some sleep, I try and meditate a bit, I eat. Otherwise, when there are things I can do, I won't be ready, I'll be too in my own head to see what I can do, or worse, I'm putting other people at risk."

"I am so really like, so bad the buddha's saying fuck you, Kyle, bad at meditating." Kyle said. "Though, I guess fucking up my hands on a tree isn't really helping there." They'd healed already, but now they itched. "I just can't do that sit still and zen out thing, because then I start thinking like, they have Dori, they have Yvette, where's Marius, shit, there's kids with us here. I mean, Jesus, if it was just us, that'd be one thing. But Layla's here, and who the hell knows where the rest of 'em are. Artie, Matt, Molly's fricking thirteen. I can't... like you said, I'm in my own head." He looked around - at Paige, at the trees, at the amount of wood he'd chopped. "Though, damn, in my own head is like, wood chop city."

"Oh, I'm awful at meditating," Paige admitted, laughing. "As in, awful, awful. But I'm getting a little better at it, and it does help shut down the parts of my brain that need a rest." She looked over at the pile of wood with him, making a suitably impressed face; it was pretty epic, to be certain. "It may not work for you. So you need to find something that does, because, uh. We're set for campfires until at least next month and I'm not staying here that long."

"I didn't even like, realize I was going at it that much." Kyle scratched at his hair, and grunted. "Huh. Maybe the zone out get shit done thing might actually be working better than I thought." He didn't feel better now, but clearly he'd been productive. "My frustration, uh, word, uh, threshold isn't great right now though. One log full of dead crap and I kinda flipped out on it." He kicked the rotting log, apparently the only one he hadn't turned into firewood and it puffed out another little cloud of spores. "Which, you now, kinda my song, get frustrated, flip out like a ninja, beat something up."

Paige shrugged. "So maybe that is your version of meditation. Just consider working on less, um," she gestured, searching for the phrase. "Flipping out, I believe you said."

Vance and Jubilee end up talking about their different methodologies.



Another Genoshan landed on his back in the dirt ring, wind knocked out of him. The first few sparrers at been overconfident; tenative about fighting a girl a head shorter than them. However, they quickly learned that their size and reach only provided a small advantage, while her training provided a large one. Ororo had made it clear that they needed as many of them as possible able to fight, which forced Jubilee to go at a lower level than her training. But with each fall, a few more picked up a technique or two that might help them in the upcoming fight.

Vance had been sitting on the sidelines for a little while now, watching the smaller woman go to work on some of the less trained Genoshans, teaching them how to be more effective in a fight despite her injuries from the past few days. His own injuries had had the chance to heal enough that he could see clearly out of both eyes now, though his right eye still looked swollen and purple with a large bruise, and he had been learning right along with those others who were paying attention.

At a natural lull in her training exercise, though, Vance finally separated himself from the circle of rebels, bringing Jubilee some much needed water. "Hey," he offered her with a slight smile as his eyes looked away to the rest of the people around and back again. "Looks like you've got a passion for this stuff." He paused for a moment to consider the smaller Asian woman, his arms folded over his chest, "Not always easy to teach people without actually doing damage, is it?"

Jubilee took the water and sipped gingerly at it, the wounds in her mouth and cheek making it difficult to do anything that required their use, which was why she then took a moment to pull out the paper and pen she'd been using to communicate when words were needed.

"You get trained long enough, you end up working out the best way to train others," she wrote quickly, flipping the small pad over to show him before writing again. "If you're damaging the people you're training, you need to go back a few steps and make sure they know what they're doing."

"Now /that/ sentiment sounds a lot like someone I know," Vance said as Jubilee flipped the last statement around to show him, his lips pulling in an actual smile at the memory. "Granted," he added, indicating the camp of rebels with a gesture of his hand, "we weren't worrying about life or death. Just whether someone would get hurt in the ring, and if the audience got a good show."

The memory of somewhat happier times faded, and Vance's face grew more serious again as he simply took a minute to watch the people around with a sort of grim determination. His eyes flicked back to Jubilee, but unable to see her fully around some of the swelling, he turned his head back towards her again before speaking. "You're not with the X-Men, are you? At least--" he stopped to rephrase, trying to think a minute before he continued. "You weren't at the briefing before we came here when they called everyone together. But you're obviously involved on some other level."

It was a statement that sounded more like a question as he tried to sort it all out in his jumbled head.

"Not anymore," Jubilee wrote, a raise at the corners of her mouth all she could manage of a smile without hurting herself. "You heard of Pete Wisdom? Or Remy LeBeau? I'm one of their people, we're...specialists, I guess you could say."

"I've heard of them," Vance admitted before offering a slightly wry smile. "Mostly, I don't know that much about them, though. Or even what they do." He took a minute to re-assess the shoter asian woman, flashes of the train ride coming to mind. "But, from the skills I've seen from you so far and your gentle treatment," he said wryly, gesturing to her injuries, "at the hands of the Magistrates, I'm guessing that it typically involves something a little more subtle than the usual fare?"

"A touch, yes," Jubilee wrote, turning her head slightly to see him better. Her eye was still swollen shut, even though the blood had been cleaned away and her injuries tended to as best as could be done under the circumstances. She wouldn't be winning any beauty contests any time soon, and she only hoped that Emma's medical experts could do something about her face when she got back to civilization or she'd be putting her disguise skills to way more use then she'd previously done.

She studied the man in front of her for a moment before starting to write again. "We do a lot of the things that would expose your people to ramifications that would be bad for a group living at a school."

It wasn't the entirety of the story, as the X-men had in the past pushed their anonymity to the limit, but there were levels even above that; that were just not wise or needful for them to deal with, and that's where she figured they came in.

"How about you tell me what you've heard, and I'll let you know if it's exaggerated or not."

"Hey," Vance said, and flashed his teeth in a very brief grin, "They haven't decided yet if they are 'My people' yet or not. I'm just a very new, very raw trainee in all of this-- perhaps a little more out of his depth than he would care to admit to." He paused for just a moment and pinched his nose, putting his face in a hand as he said lowly, muttering under his breath but not so quiet that Jubilee couldn't pick up on it if she was paying attention, "If my probation officer could see me now, I would be /so/ screwed." He then shook his head, his expression turning serious again. "Scratch that. I am admitting right now that I am out of my depth with all of this," he admitted with a sort of brutal honesty.

He look back over to Jubilee, "Honestly, I haven't had the chance to learn much about you guys yet. How did Remy and Pete decide they wanted to branch out?"

"Okay, so like, I was told all this when I started with them, but I wasn't actually there when it was all going down, I was totally like, at the West Coast Annex trying to be a good little X-man at the time," Jubilee wrote, scribbling down everything she could remember about what Remy and Pete had laid out for her when she'd joined the team. "They wanted a team that could be used against things that had national or legal protection, things that the X-men couldn't easily touch, or didn't really want to deal with. From what I know, Pete set up the team after his sister was kidnapped, using the people who helped him then as the founding members. We've expanded a bit since then, and I guess we've started taking on a little more work as well. But it's still the basic presumption, we deal with the untouchables, people who for whatever reason believe they're above what they consider petty concerns like people's liberty, or, you know, actual existence."

Vance listened, or perhaps watched, while Jubilee wrote on her pad of paper. He moved around to a better vantage point for reading off of one shoulder, and his arms folded over his chest slowly as his eyes followed the scrawled words as they were etched on the paper.

"Hnh," he started eloquently when she finally stopped writing, his lips compressed slightly in a line as he thought about it for a long minute. "So your team does the kind of work that can't be done by those of us who have to answer to someone else. Whether it be angry parents who have their kids exposed to unnecessary danger, or to governments and groups who would just love to find the school, or the X-Men, crossing these kinds of boundaries that are kind of a-- grey area." And that was being nice.

Vance paused for a moment, then flicked his eyes back to Jubilee, "What about justice? Or due process? What happens to the people you pursue?"

Jubilee gave him a steady look, not judgemental, just assessing as if she wondered if he really wanted to know the truth or not.

"Justice is a fuzzy concept at the best of times," she wrote finally, hoping that the unemotional medium of writing would get across what she was trying to say. "One person's justice is another person's mob, it really depends on the side of the wire you're on, yeah? Frankly, dude, when it gets to us, due process is like, totally done with, we don't go after jay walkers or people that don't stop at a red light, and that should tell you all about what happens to the people we pursue as well."

"No, I know that--" Vance frowned as he brought a hand up and pushed it through his hair, staring out at the camp and the folks surrounding them, wincing slightly as he hit a bruise. "I get it. It's just-- without justice, there tends to be anarchy and chaos. Laws don't always mean justice, but at least they're a place to start."

He looked back at Jubilee, then, his face solemn, "But I know, also, that laws often protect those who want to take advantage of and do harm to others. I'm not /against/ going against the law when it's necessary. But I wouldn't want to make it the first thing to cast aside either."

His face darkened considerably, and he looked back out at the camp as his jaw tightened up. "Not that law and order did us much good here after everything that's happened. I certainly appreciate a need sometimes to work outside of the law, too. Especially to do what's right."

Jubilee was silent for a time, watching the people she'd been training with each other, the tenseness to them even as they joked or drank water, or simply sat and tried to recover from what she'd so far put them through. She wished that what she was doing was the worst they'd ever see, but she knew what she was doing was the least of the damage they'd endure before this was over. If what she could show them now would mean they'd come out of it at the end, then she'd break every one of them if she could, build them up into something useful.

'I hope that you will always get to put the law first,' Jubilee wrote after a time, gesturing for silence for a moment when she thought Vance would speak. 'No, I really do, that's not just, you know, a saying or something because I think you're a whimp. It's not because I think you couldn't do what we do, I think any of the X-men could if pushed to it. I mean, I was an X-man, yeah? It's because I don't ever want you to have to. I do what I do, because it means that nobody else ever has to and as long as that's true, I'll go to bed smiling, and thank whatever deity is out there that they throw that shit at me, and not you.'

She put the paper in her back pocket, nodded to Vance and walked back into the ring, clapping her hands to get the attention of the Genoshians, it was time to get back to work.

Layla, Angel and Cammie help out around the camp, and trend closer to serious topics than they thought.



The aid station was as makeshift as the rest of the camp, most of the medical supplies from basic first aid kits found in gas stations, supplimented by those taken from the Magistrates. In charge was a former paramedic, who spent five years dealing with industrial accidents in Prenova before going with Jenny's crew. He tried to make things as comfortable as possible, but the constant movement and inadaquete supplies had left him a collection of wounded men and women, trying to not let their wounds get the best of them.

Years spent in street fights had given Cammie a basic understanding of first aid and the fear of hospitals nurtured until she had gotten off the streets meant she could handle some pretty complicated stuff. Not that she'd trust her 'tender' care over an actual doctor, but at least she had an idea of what to do. Triage was the hard part. You couldn't always tell if someone was worse off than another person based on visible injuries alone.

"You know, I keep trying to think about how this could get any fucking worse, and I just can't come up with anything else, thoughts?"

"Something could pop outta thin air and chew half your face off," Layla replied a with a bright smile to contradict the blackness of her response. "And then it could lay its eggs in your bloody wound and you'll have this like indestructible sac festering for weeks until it explodes and all its little baby monster things explode out of your face sac and then eat you alive for their first meal." The blonde stopped her sorting of pilfered supplies and looked over at Cammie. "Would that be worse?"

"Nah, that'd just be interesting," Cammie said with a snort, "Not a good interesting, but interesting. Especially at the end. I'll make sure to be standing around a lot of people when I pop, as I've always wanted to be a scene out of Alien."

With everything that had been happening, it seemed wrong that Angel wanted to laugh at this exchange. Then again, maybe everything that had been happening was a reason to laugh. Or maybe she'd hit her head somewhere, because she was pretty sure that thought didn't make any sense. She snorted at Cammie's response, choking down a full on laugh - which would have been so grossly inappropriate in the current atmosphere. "If nothing else, that'd probably get you on one of those freaky medical shows," she commented as lightly as she could. "You know, the ones where the people have some mysterious, obscure disease and they don't figure what the disease is until the last five minutes? You could be the woman with eggs in her face and no one knows what they are until they hatch and then the screen goes black."

"Hmm, dissolve into spiders in Times Square or on National Television. Decisions, decisions," Cammie said, picking up some bandages, "I mean, it's not like I wasn't a freak of nature before, but at least time I can be a freak of nature with freaky spider babies. I like this plan."

"If you don't want spider babies Angel can probably like fry them off you. Mmm, crunchy, crunchy baked baby spider!" Layla licked her lips and rubbing circles on her stomach. "You think that's more a hot sauce or a barbecue sauce kinda thing?" She looked genuinely thoughtful on the topic, even as she made a pile of miscellaneous ointment packets and tubes that all looked the same. Her eyes went wide and Layla looked right at Cammie, "Hey, your blood is all toxic and shit, right? Is it like combustible? If Angel tries to set your babies on fire will you explode? Because that is so national television worthy, dude. Like epic."

"Hmn...would crunchy baked baby spiders be considered a meat?" Angel asked thoughtfully, sorting through the scarce medical supplies that she had very little idea what to do with - she'd only ever gone through basic first aid training. "Because that would definitely be a barbecue sauce thing. But then again, baby spiders would probably be pretty bland...maybe you could mix the two. Hot sauce-barbecue sauce hybrid? And Cammie, it would be an honor set you on fire so you explode on national television."

"As awesome as it would be, I'm sad to inform you two that no, my blood isn't flammable. I know, I've tried," Cammie said, trying not to waste more than a stray thought on what had been an interesting attempt on her own life back when she was about seventeen, "But what can't be done with nature can be accomplished with gasoline and special effects."

"I vote hairspray." Grinning, the blonde's eyes moved between the other two girls. "I mean, hello, if you're gonna be set on fire then we should get all makeshift flamethrower on your ass. Or like, it could be a cooperate effort. I could get a mouthful of alcohol and spit in your direction and then Angel can do the whole whoosh! fire thing." She laid a hand over her heart and gave the girls the most sincere look she could fake. "Real friends set friends on fire together."

Angel had to laugh at that - specfically at the images the words conjured up. "You could be like a fountain. You know, except instead of spitting out water, you would be spitting out fire. Or you could be like a fire breather, that would be AWESOME." The redhead shook her head, still giggling. "But yes, group effort. If you aren't set on fire by a group of friends, you might as well have not been set on fire at all."

"Well, I don't know how the fuck I can say 'no' to that," Cammie said, laughing, "But prime time TV or no deal."

"We'll call Katie Couric or some shit," Layla noted with a nod. "Why can't breathing fire be my like second mutation? If I'm gonna bring shit back to life then I should be able to set shit on fire! Like how else does that shit balance out? Like, sure, I can staple my ass to Nico and we can be the death duo, right? She can get all super fucking creepy and oozy and kill shit and then I can bring it back to life. It'll be like a side show." Layla's eyes went wide. "Hey, do they still have those? I can join the circus sideshow! The girl with the God Touch or some shit! Can we set Cammie on fire to death and then I can bring her back? Because that would so sell tickets."

"I'm pretty sure circus sideshows still exist," Angel said thoughtfully. "'Come see the amazing girl on fire die and come back to life!' Herm. That's actually not a great slogan. I'll work on it. I'm not sure calling Katie Couric would actually get you any viewers, though. Now, Leno, Letterman, Conan, that's the stuff you wanna get airtime on."

"As long as I don't accidentally bleed and kill everyone it's all good with me. Well, not Letterman, because he's fucking creepy, but anyone else," Cammie said after a moment of thought.

"Conan is kinda amusing. But they all sorta blow." Layla wrinkled her nose. "What's the Scottish dude's name? That guy is kinda cool, we can call him. And then set Cammie on fire. And then be stars!" The last word came with Layla's hands spread out as if they were running out a banner like you saw people do in movies.

"I've never really been a fan of late-night TV myself. I mean, the commercials are funny, but those are usually the best part." Angel was smiling as she looked around; the smile faded when she saw the makeshift aid station they were standing in. Oh. Right. They were in the middle of a disaster, weren't they?

Layla was all prepared to say how they could turn setting Cammie on fire into a commercial, but the sudden transition from Angel smiling to that serious contemplative look stopped the comment in her throat. The teenager looked down at her various ointments and her expression fell, her mouth turning into a small frown. Without any other sort of segue, Layla spoke to no one in particular. "That asshole said the others were where they were sending us, said that we would see them soon. That Prenova place. What is that place? He sent my girlfriend there." The last was said very quietly, not out of any fear of what Cammie or Angel would say if they didn't know she was dating Sarah but because she could barely say it without crying or screaming.

"Don't know, didn't care at the time it was being explained," Cammie said, finishing balling up the bandages, "If it's on this hell hole though, I'm sorry to say it's likely not full of kittens and candy." She really sucked when it came to trying to cheer people up so nine times out of ten she didn't even try.

Angel swallowed the strange lump in her throat as she thought about her missing friends - were they here? Were they okay? Well okay, they probably weren't okay...Angel curled and uncurled her fists a couple of times, wishing she could answer Layla's questions - because that meant she would know. And maybe then she could stop being so worried. "Prenova," she repeated quietly, letting her hands fall to her sides again. It was less obvious she was shaking when she stood perfectly straight. "We'll find them." She wasn't sure who she was saying that to - herself? Layla? Did it matter? "And then we'll beat that son of a bitch from here to Pluto." She paused for a moment before adding, "Remind me when we get back I need to put a dollar in the swear jar."

"You get a free pass," Layla murmured, voice low. "I think you earned that." The younger girl was clearly making an effort to control herself. Her jaw clenched and unclenched only to repeat itself again. She was trying to regulate her breathing because she wanted to hit someone. She wanted to hit someone and oddly, despite his crazy, she was sure Kyle would be really disappointed in her if she hit someone who didn't deserve it. But that motherfucker had taken her girlfriend and who knew what had happened to her?

The paramedic in charge of the station came back into view in Layla's peripheral vision and the blonde looked up. "So what is Prenova," she asked him, tone a bit more demanding than it would have normally been. "I mean what's it really like there? What do they do there?"

"Industrial town. Most of the valuable resources are off shore, on the continential shelf wrapped around the top of the island. All of the initial processing, refining, and pipelines start there. It's not even really a town as much as a big factory." He was busy refilling a medical kit, getting ready to move. "A couple of years ago, they put in that secure terminal for the new rail link to the Citadel, and then the damn mutate processing centre there. It's always been a rough place; miners, engineers, mutants - but now, it might as well be a work camp."

The words "work camp" brought to mind images Angel remembered seeing in her history books. She shuddered; If their friends were in Prenova... "So there are going to be guards everywhere," she said quietly, speaking more to herself then to the others. "I mean, not that there aren't guards everywhere in this god forsaken place...what do you know about the whole mutate process...thing?" She was trying to collect as much information as she could about mutates, and the whole process - though what good it would do her, she didn't know.

"You go in a person and come out as a useful tool for deep sea mineral and oil extraction. How they do it, I have no idea." He paused and sat down. "I first came to Prenova eight years ago. Mining communities are rough places, but they are communities. It was more dangerous than a lot of jobs, but the pay was excellent and the shifts reasonable. Guys would spend three months on, and then a month off back with their families in the Enclaves. We were wildcatters. It was a tough, rewarding place to be then. And then things changed. Slowly, and recently, but they changed. Longer shifts, laxer safety, less time off. Then these mutates started to appear - just a few at first. That's when Magistrates that I'd known for years started to look at us all the same way. Like things. Like slaves."

"Mutates aren't people," Layla said slowly. Her gaze shifted to Angel. "You weren't there yet, but they brought one out. We didn't really know what she was. Or maybe I just don't remember them telling us. She was...hollow. She like breathed and blinked and moved but she wasn't a person. She wasn't even fucking cattle. Like Liam said on the train, they're just empty." Layla's eyes dropped to her packets of ointment again before she looked up at the paramedic. "Is everyone in Prenova one? Are there still...actual people? Or are they all...changed?"

"No. There's maybe a hundred, one-fifty mutants in Prenova. Maybe twenty mutates. But that's double what there was six months ago. I joined Jenny because I realized just how much more useful mutates were to the government. Most of the others said I was crazy, that the Commission would never allow that to happen." He shrugged. "But Prenova is entirely under government control. It wouldn't take many people at the command level to hide mutate numbers from the rest of the country."

"Well, nice to know we're on a happy nazi field trip," Cammie said, finishing off the bandages and moving to actually start treating with people with them. "This is just going to be a gay olde time, isn't it?"

"Oh yeah, this is going to be just fabulous," Angel muttered, not bothering to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. She wouldn't let on just how shaken she was by what Layla had described. She took a deep breath and a short moment to compose herself.

"So they'll help us, right?" Layla's eyes were on the paramedic. She heard what Cammie and Angel said, she just seemed to be skipping over it. The girl remembered her conversation with Phillip Moreau at the mansion and with that the paramedic was saying now. People didn't think about mutants and the way they were treated like she did, or like the rest of the people from Xavier's probably did. "People here put faith in the government, right? In the Commission people? And they think we're terrorists, right? That asshole Moreau kept talking about how we were part of the Brotherhood...?" She obviously wasn't sure what that meant and sort of glanced around to her companions for some hint of recognition but didn't wait for it. "But they get now that, like, shit's fucked up, right?" She didn't exactly seem hopeful.

"Some will. Some won't." The paramedic said. "Some don't see it, and some won't see it. My father was a mutant too. One of the second generation. There was nothing he was more proud of than his service to the state. He could make things grow."

He sat down in a camp chair, pulling off his jungle cap and rubbing his eyes. "He grew up after the British pulled out and the trade lanes shifted. When two-thirds of Genosha were out of work, and what there was wasn't anywhere near enough. He'd work tirelessly, making state farms flourish. He couldn't pay for a drink in any bar in Genosha. They'd see his uniform, and it was like a rock star had come into town. Many of the mutants in Prenova, especially the older ones, remember those days. The pride they had and the recognition that they got. Some just won't want to believe that could ever change, and they'll fight to stop it."

"I find it hard to believe that anyone can look around at this crap and not realize it's insanely fucked up," Cammie pointed out dryly.

Angel had to agree with Cammie. "How could anyone fight to stop this from changing?" She asked,waving her hands in a vague attempt to sum up everything around them - everything they had seen. Not that it mattered; she just didn't understand.

"Because they don't see it." Layla's voice was distant, recalling details of her conversation with Phillip months ago, even as it grew more frustrated. "They don't know about the crazy kidnapping people from another country shit and they think they're doing the best thing for everyone. Mutants get places to live custom designed to be immune to any crap their mutation has and they work for their country, like soldiers in the US only without the fighting. They don't get it." Her voice was steadily rising in volume and pitch, frustration turning toward anger.

"Phillip didn't get it before they went and fucking kidnapped his ass either. Wake up! They took us and we're the bad guys. Phillip was like dead set on his view that what they do here is in everyone's best interest. He didn't see the shit I pointed out on how it was totally wrong to dictate what people could do or where they could live. It doesn't fucking sink in. They've got fucking blinders on! They've got pride in how they solved their like financial problems. Didn't you just hear him? They have pride the same way Americans think our country is fucking awesome even when it's not. What do you guys not get about that?" In truth, Layla's anger had a lot more to do with Rachel, their kidnapping and the uncertainty of Sarah's fate than it had to do with Cammie and Angel not getting it. A few months ago Layla didn't get it either. She still didn't get it. But she got that the people here didn't get the view from her side.

"You're Americans. You wouldn't understand what our history was, what we faced. More important, what we've watched happen across a hundred miles of ocean in mainland Africa. I'm not ashamed of the mutant program; we were a dying country that did what we had to in order to survive, mutant and human together. That's not what this is any more." He put his glasses back on, looking older than his early thirties. "We've looked at things like Magneto and Apocalypse and San Diego and Hungery, and a hundred other incidents where it looks like it's going to be a war between mutants and humans with only one outcome, and we've smiled and said 'isn't it great that we're better then them'. That we found a way to make things work and raise up our whole country. And now, someone secretly decided duty wasn't enough, and that slavery was the next step. Not everyone is ready to believe that their country has become a lie. These are men and women who already sacrificed their choice about their future for their country. You should be ready for those who are willing to sacrifice more."