NOVEL NEXT Chapter 062 – Confrontation
[2009 – July]
“What's wrong?”, Elijah asked from her side, his voice even but concerned.
Closing her eyes for a second, Emma pushed outwards with her mind sensing every mental presence within a few miles radius except her brother's, before she answered.
"Intruders are on the school grounds.", she stated calmly, an icy current rushing through her veins bringing with it a wave of ruthless anger, "It's the Blackbird and the X-Men."
Setting down the datapad, Emma directly turned around to leave the medical ward and confront the intruding mutants, though she didn't expect Elijah to follow her without a moment of hesitation, after surrounding Jean with one of his blackish barriers.
"You are not a Hellion, Elijah.", Emma couldn't help but remark, "You don't have to get involved in this fight."
"I already am.", her little brother commented, his voice shifting to a darker tone as his bright green eyes gleamed with a dark and dangerous light, "Because it's Jean they're after."
Suddenly Emma couldn't help but pity the mutants that had come to the academy, rousing not just the anger of one Omega-level mutant of the Frost family, but two.
…
Standing in the wide-open garden right behind the mansion, John a.k.a Thunderbird looked on coldly as he saw several figures stepping out of the sleek jet that he recognized as the Blackbird, Logan, Sean, and Ororo at the front.
They weren't unfamiliar to him, as John remembered the faces of those he thought responsible for his older brother's death perfectly. His brother James had been one of the X-Men and had died on a mission to save a senator that had been held hostage by an anti-mutant terrorist group called 'Friends of Humanity'.
The kidnapping though had been a trap as the room the senator had been held in had been booby-trapped, and entering the door on orders of Charles Xavier had been nothing but a death sentence for his brother.
Seeing the three veteran members of the X-Men, namely Wolverine, Banshee, and Storm, approach him and his teammates along with several teenagers that seemed to be recruits, John didn't hesitate to step forward fearlessly, wrath boiling in his blood as he drew his knives.
“We are not here for you, brats. So don't make me hurt you.”, Logan stated aggressively, unsheathing his Adamantium claws in a threatening gesture as he advanced further.
And just as John was about to respond, another voice sounded out from behind, as the Headmistress passed by him.
“What a rude way of greeting someone whose property you just intruded into, James. Have you forgotten that we are allies, or has your animalistic brain finally given in to its lesser instincts?”, the Headmistress' voice rang out sharply, her eyes shining icily.
“Stop with your games, Emma. Something happened to Jean, we need your help in finding and dealing with her.”, Ororo spoke up, cutting off Logan's response.
“Dealing with her? Are you asking me to attack one of my own students, Ororo?”, Emma questioned in a low voice, an arctic storm of psionic energy beginning to form around her, making her clothes flutter wildly and her hair dance.
"Something has taken possession of Jean and attacked the Professor, nearly killing him and leaving him comatose. You are the only telepath strong enough to rival him and are even more skilled than him when it comes to mental battles. We need you to use the Multivac to find Jean so that we can help her.", Ororo tried to persuade, knowing how dangerous of a woman Emma was.
She knew that the blonde telepath had built the Multivac with Cerebro as an example, and while it wasn't a machine of equal power, it allowed Emma to scan for mutants like the original did.
"Enough of this farce. Whatever the Professor has told you or you think you know about Jean's situation you are wrong. The only thing that has happened was that Jean's power finally awakened into full bloom after having been suppressed by the Professor's mental blocks for nearly a decade. She is safe and currently still resting to adjust to her spike in power. And that is all there is to it.", she stated curtly, before continuing.
“Leave now, before this turns anymore unpleasant than it already has.”, the White Queen demanded with finality, no longer willing to tolerate them being on the academy grounds.
"I am afraid that it's not that eas-", Sean Cassidy, a.k.a. Banshee, began, though the sound of screeching metal interrupted him as three massive abyss-black stakes ripped into the Blackbird.
The next moment they changed shape, expanding and turning into massive spiked and bladed objects of flowing forms, leaving the high-tech jet as nothing more than a heap of burning scrap metal, Elijah appearing in front of it out of nowhere.
John swallowed nervously, as his eyes fell on the black-haired teen. His Apache heritage making him sensible to the changes in another's spirit, he sensed the incredibly sinister desire and destructive intent in Elijah's aura, his instincts screaming at him to run.
While even Logan's aura was just violent or animalistic, Elijah's felt wholly ruthless and murderous. He didn't seem like a fighter or warrior to John's spiritual senses but a killer. Gone was the quiet young man watching over his lover with bright and gentle eyes, a predator thirsting for blood appearing in his place.
The leader of the Hellions was somewhat frightened by the abyssal darkness he suddenly felt coming from Elijah's spirit, unable to understand how it could coexist with the tender spirit that seemed to inhabit him whenever he was around Jean.
…
Dropping the barrier that shielded me from the physical senses of others, making me essentially invisible, I stepped forward as I retracted the barriers that I had just used to demolish the Blackbird.
My barriers' versatility and destructive force had risen sharply with the advancement of my mind a few weeks ago. So, while I was somewhat apprehensive about facing off against Ororo, as she held incredible power in her hands, I was confident that I could force her back as things stood.
Logan and the rest of the X-Men recruits present, including Laura, Rogue, Kurt, and Scott, together with a girl and a boy that I remembered being introduced to me as Katherine Pryde and Robert Drake during my tour of Xavier's mansion, were none of my concern as suppressing or even killing them wasn't really a challenge with the progress I had made since waking up in this world.
"Your first mistake was to come here, don't make another one. Just leave, because while you may survive my next attacks, the recruits you brought with you will not, Logan. The same goes for you Ororo.", I spoke up calmly, feeling the primal desire to use the power pulsing through my veins to dominate my surroundings and urging me to just attack them, though I forced myself to hold back for now.
Instead of the two veteran members of the X-Men, however, it was Scott that stepped forward and addressed me angrily, his lips drawn back in a hateful grimace.
"Bastard! What have you done to Jean?!", he shouted, his hand rising to the side of his visor undoubtedly to reading himself for attacking me.
Hearing the teen's accusations and remembering him plaguing Jean with his obsessive behavior, I decided to just stop holding back.
Wrath and protective instincts battling for supremacy, I raised my hand and directly summoned a barrier around Scott's head, preventing him from using his visor. And with a sharp gesture forced his face to collide with the ground, possibly cracking his skull and leaving him unconscious.
And as if a fuse had been lit, the fighting began.