Ausente sin Culpa ni Presente sin Disculpa | Regateo

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The X-Men, with Cecilia's former colleague, explore Tegucigalpa and get a sense of the sociopolitical situation in Honduras, and just what they're dealing with.

It was beyond obvious that Dr. Dueñas had not brought the X-Men to one of Tegucigalpa's nicer neighborhoods. Trash dotted the street, accumulating on the sides of the road as they walked. There were pockmarks in walls. Paint peeled off the buildings. At one point, they passed a young boy with a shovel, who climbed into a nearby dumpster and began to scavenge through the trash.

As they moved, a few people came up, interrupting Carmen to ask her rapid-fire questions in Spanish, eyeing the three strangers all the while. The latest interruptor was an older woman, who was currently displaying a rash and asking the doctor for her expert opinion. It became clear quickly that this would be a prolonged conversation, giving the three mutants some time to stop and look around.

Not entirely interested in the woman's rash, Angel cast an eye around the area, eyes falling on some nearby walls that were covered in graffiti, mostly in Spanish. Angel's Spanish wasn't exactly up to par.

Though it didn't exactly take a genius to figure out what Muerte a mutantes meant.

"Well that's pleasant," she muttered, elbowing Sooraya to her right and nodding to the graffiti. "Get the feeling we're not welcome here."

"Mutantes pertenecen en el infierno." Sooraya picked out another scribbling on the wall. "Very cheerful... And not very welcoming. I am getting some pretty strong suspicions what might have happened to the clinic..." Not that was something that was very hard to guess, especially with Dr. Dueñas's story.

Promising Señora Bardales that she would stop by with the topical ointment the woman needed to treat her rash, Carmen waited until she was gone before turning back to Cecilia's friends. She overheard the last bit of their conversation and said, tone brusque, "I am sure Cecilia told you what happened to the clinic. You are right, of course. It is not difficult to see why it happened. We made a point, perhaps an unwise point, to treat everyone. Mutant, not mutant, gang member, not gang member. M-Day made the violence against mutants worse."

"How badly was the city affected by M-Day?" Scott asked the doctor. The X-Men and the mansion had been so busy coping with the effects of M-Day near them and getting settled that they hadn't had many opportunities to examine the wider world. Seeing the graffiti here came as a major shock to Scott. For things to degenerate this far this quickly, despite all the positive work done by mutants previously... "It looks like people are pushing a lot of their anger and fear onto the mutants in the area."

The laugh that escaped Carmen at that moment held absolutely no humor whatsoever. "It more than looks that way, señor. Mutants are an easy target. Or they were. The government was almost able to keep things under control before. But so many died. So the people fear the mutants and attack. The mutants try to fight back and are attacked again. People die everywhere."

"Oooooooookay," Angel said, turning her attention back to the good doctor. "So basically, we don't break out our pretty powers unless we have to. Got it. Totally normal human at two o'clock here."

"From the look of it, normal humans aren't doing too well either," Scott noted sadly, staring at the city surrounding them. "Try not to use your powers," he agreed with Angel. "But if you're in doubt, don't hold back. I'd rather not risk any of us getting hurt."

"You?" Carmen stopped walking to look at the man incredulously. "You can fly home, señor. For anyone you and your friends might doubt, this is home. Keep quiet and do not antagonize people, you should be fine. No one wants to make the gringos mad, but anyone you hurt I will have to stitch back together. And since I brought you here, they might not come."

"Dr. Dueñas, that..." Sooraya nodded at some scorch marks on a nearby wall. "... does not look like damage from an ordinary fire. Is there anything else we should be aware of that is happening around here? Because I can see the fear and unease from everyone if I look around. Even non-mutants. And that..." She subtly gestured at another piece of damage. "... looks to be caused by some mutant powers as well."

"As I said," Carmen replied, voice flat. "The mutants fight back."

"And how might that be, exactly?" Angel's voice was relatively casual, for the most part, but the edge was definitely there. They were in a place where humans and mutants would likely attack them without a second thought. They deserved to know what they were up against.

Would telling these people the same thing she had told Cecilia make them turn around to leave without giving the help they had promised? Carmen didn't know. She respected Cecilia, knew of her personal struggles and appreciated that she would try as hard as she had to get help here at all, especially after the clinic she'd worked so hard to establish had burned down.

Still, they deserved to know, she supposed. "There is a gang made up of mutants," Carmen said, sighing. "The came together because of M-Day, I think. They take the new drug, Rave. It makes their powers... more. Bigger, stronger. We do not know if they burned the clinic down or if it was non-mutants."

"A mutant gang might have burnt down the clinic..." Scott took a deep breath and sighed. "I was afraid people might start turning to gangs after M-Day. It's not the best way to deal with it, but it's the easiest, and certainly would seem like the safest in the short term. I'd be tempted to band together and look for a big gun in their shoes," he admitted. "Survival often trumps thinking about the future. What can you tell us about Rave? I've only heard the rumors in the news."

Angel scrubbed her eyes as she looked around, frowning faintly. The entire area had taken on a much more sinister feel all of a sudden. "New Kick, I'm guessing," she muttered.

"Potentially a derivative of Kick," Carmen conceded. "I cannot be sure. Partly because all of my equipment has been destroyed, but also because I have not been able to get my hands on a sample." Glancing up and down the street to make sure no potential patients were close enough to overhear, even if they weren't fluent in English, Carmen continued, "It gives non-mutants a high as well. Like heroin. So the gang that controls it controls... everything in the region."

"They would have both mutants and normal humans under their thumb. Especially if it is just addictive as heroin is... Makes the people double dependent, for their safety and their high." Sooraya considered as she glanced around as well. Still, she lowered her voice a lot as she asked the next question. "Do you have any idea who is the major supplier of the Rave? Though it might be better if we talk about that in a more... private place..."

Carmen opened her mouth to reply, but the sound of a shot ringing out stopped her from answering Sooraya's question. A bird, one of the few in the area, flew overhead, and though it was probably coincidental, it felt like a harbinger of the spate of similar noises that followed.

Instinctively, she took cover behind the nearest barrier, signaling for the X-Men to do the same. As they moved, their communicators clicked. The speech was a halted, almost pained Spanish, but Cecilia's voice came through perfectly.

Angel frowned as she went for cover, pressing a finger to ear like that would help her hear better. Or understand. "Shit, what? Cecilia? Cecilia?"

Scott's head popped up over the cover scanning the surrounding area for any threats to the team as Angel tried to get in touch with Cecilia. She had wandered off without telling the team where she was, and now they had no idea where to go to help. That wasn't entirely true, someone here might know where Cecilia had gone, the X-man turned to face Carmen, "Where is she?"

--


Realizing she's a mutant, the gangsters try to get Cecilia on their side. She tries to reason with them.

It was hard to describe what it felt like to be hit by a bullet while not actually being hit by a bullet. The shot — the one that actually hit — had sent Cecilia to the ground, the impact against her shield taking the breath out of her. It was an experience she wasn't eager to relive.

The shots were followed by quiet. A disturbing quiet. Cecilia took advantage of it to half-crawl behind a pockmarked plaster half-wall, taking cover, or as much cover as she could when a translucent shield hovered around her, telegraphing some of her movement. The men seemed to have mistaken her for dead at first, but at the sight, they fired again.

The wall helped protect her. The fact that the gang guys were pretty lousy shots helped more.

Her forcefield, pushed in a way it hadn't been since Billy sacrificed himself and the Phoenix had assaulted her, had grown larger. It began to take on a kind of glow. There was no mistaking its presence now.

Javier took aim once again, cursing out loud at his inability to land a single shot to this point. He stopped when he saw the glow of Cecilia's shield, frowning at its brightness and raising his gun.

"Hey, check that shit out, yo." He nodded toward her general location. "She's a mutant or something too, shit."

"Gracias for the obvious there, brother," Oscar grumbled — still stone-faced, still sober — as he joined in the firing, but the two solitary shots he put high into the drywall were more bluster than anything serious.

"Well played, doctora. I didn't take you for one of us."

Cecilia winced from behind the drywall. "One of..." She let out a small groan and she shook her head. "You're mutants?" If a short Spanish phrase could contain incredulity, indignation, bewilderment and frustration, this one did.

"Smart lady. Yeah, we're mutants. Chosen by God," and here Manuel crossed himself. "Or someone, to take charge of things. If we'd have known you were one of us, we wouldn't have given you such a hard time. But why you treating flatscans?"

"I'm a doctor," Cecilia said, staring at him as if he'd asked the dumbest question in the world. She decided to rise, squatting onto her feet but staying close behind the wall. She didn't trust them, but she wanted to see them. "That's what I do." She surveyed them, trying to get a sense of their powers. "Which is also why I built a clinic that treated mutants. Which you burned down."

"There was a fire? That must've been an accident. Accidents happen, lady." Javier said, followed with a clucking of his tongue. "Say, why don't you come help us instead? We're really good at preventing accidents. Without us, though, who knows what could happen?"

"We will not offer twice, doctora," and this was Oscar again, "We are on the same side. You cannot know the rules of Honduras as an outsider, but we have uses for those with your skills."

"I bet." Cecilia said wryly. The shell was still clear around her. "Bet you guys have all kinds of cuts and scrapes. But I'm not some kind of mob doctor. Plenty of people here will look the other way. I don't do that."

"We can make it worth your while, doctora," Manuel suggested with a leer. "Anything you want, you can have." Then his grin hardened. "We are used to getting what we want here. You might do better to agree."

Oscar tapped the butt of his handgun against his hip in annoyance. "Diez, nueve, ocho," he drawled emphasizing the vowels with a hiss, "This is not a choice, doctora. We control the mutants here. You will be coming with us, even if we have to see what it takes to break your little bubble."

There was a loud click as he reloaded his gun.

"Come out now."

"No." Almost as soon as the syllables left her mouth, Cecilia dropped to the ground, taking cover again behind the wall. "No." She hoped the volume would cover up her fear that outside this shack in Honduras was where she might die. "I'm not like you." Her shield pulsed, expanding and contracting, as if to punctuate that point. "And you're not letting you get away with this."

"You had your chance, lady." Javier said, reloading his own gun and taking aim. "It's a pity. The other mutants we've captured could've used your help. But you can't help anyone when you're dead." He punctuated the last word with a blast from his gun, blasting away again along with his friends. She couldn't hold that shield up forever, after all.