The minutes following the alert were nothing short of kayos. Evan took off running in the direction of his room while Anna heard doors fly open behind her. When she turned, she spotted Scott and Jean bolting down the stairs, leaving Jean's door ajar behind them. There was a clatter from Evan's room and a fraction of a second later he popped back out with something long and black balled up tightly in his fist as he joined the others.
At a loss for what to do, she chased after him till he found the small elevator in the hall near the kitchen where Scott and Jean were waiting inside, holding the door open. When Evan slipped inside, Anna made to follow in after him when a hand caught her shoulder.
"Not you." When she looked up, she saw Scott looking down at her.
She slapped his hand away. "The hell you mean, 'not me?'"
"You haven't been cleared for missions yet. It's too dangerous."
Jean nudged him to one side. "It's true, Anna. Xavier didn't mention you getting the 'okay' to do missions yet. Go meet up with him in the Cerebro room."
Before Anna had the chance to argue, the elevator door slammed in her face - just grazing the tip of her nose - and heard the sound of heavy gears engaging just beyond the thin metal. She kicked the base of the elevator door, then pulled out her phone to see if anyone had reached out to her. Sure enough, she had a message from the 'man' himself.
'Anna,
Meet me downstairs at Cerebro. You will not be joining the others on this mission. I repeat, you DO NOT have clearance to join the others at this time.
-Xavier'
Anna blew out a sudden gust of hot air that dislodged the white bangs sticking to her forehead. It's not that she even particularly wanted to go do any kind of 'mission,' but just the fact so many people were telling her no made her want to fly the damn jet herself. Phone still in hand, she punched the 'down' button with her knuckle, leaned up against the metal door-jam, and drummed her fingers on her hip. After a short while, those drumming fingers eventually formed into a fist that drove into the center of the right door's cold surface. When she pulled her hand back, she saw the door was annoyingly unparsed while her hand stung so thoroughly she could feel each individual bone inside. A second later, the door flew open to an empty car.
Stepping inside the unmoved air, she could clearly smell Scott's crappy cheap cologne he always seemed to wear, and Jean's overpriced flowery body spray. Soaking in the fumes, she punched in the requested level to the small bank of buttons, waited for the car to stop, and when they next opened she found the downstairs pulsing an anxiety ensuing red light. Despite the lack of any audible klaxon or alarm, the red light-soaked corridors made the downstairs a whole new world to navigate. The shadows felt different, the signs were harder to read, and despite her apparent lack of need to rush, she ran for the room she was reasonably sure was where Cerebro was kept.
When she reached the last door in one of the branching hallways, and - sweeping her watched hand over a panel to the right of the door - the door snapped open and revealed a room whose size rivaled the Danger Room, but was easily twice as alien looking. The walls seemed to be comprised of one solid mass of rounded smooth metal to shape a perfect sphere, and before her stretched a long narrow walkway fed into a large platform near the center of the room. Dangling above the platform was a tangled beast of wires and blinking lights held in place by strategically placed struts extending from the upper hemisphere of the room. From a distance, it looked like a car with jet-black sinew levitating in mid-air. Just below, sat before a bank of monitors, was Xavier. He wore a chrome helmet that spilled over with funky-looking tubes and delicate-looking cables. He turned to look at her, the many wires stuck to his helmet sifting and moving along with his body.
"Rogue. Very good, please come and join me." He gestured to a big red chair next to him and turned back around the face the computers. It was strange, though. She heard him clear as day, yet she was pretty sure she didn't see his lips move. Either way, she did as he requested and carefully walked the long pathway while trying hard not to think about how far down the bottom of the sphere probably was.
When she finally reached the end of her perilous walk, she discovered that the chair Xavier had offered her was actually a long and well-worn couch. The dated gold diamond design on the tightly wound red fabric was faded and in several high-stress spots mothballs and frays had long set in. Finding something so grotesquely average on what was otherwise an alien ship made Anna's head feel as if might actually explode. Still, she sat perched on the edge of the couch's center cushion and clutched one of the pillows to her chest. "So - uh -" She could just hear her voice bouncing off the dome-like walls around them. "What's happening?"
Xavier tapped a couple of keys on a keyboard in front of him and all the monitors lit up at once. After looking at them all for a time, she put together they all seemed to be different perspectives of the inside of the Blackbird. She then spotted in tiny print in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen were names.
"Body cams on the students," Xavier answered before she could ask. He pressed two fingers to the temple of his helmet, then another monitor clicked on.
"Yeah, yeah," said Logan's tinny voice through the screen. "I hear you, Chuck. I got on my nanny cam." Watching Logan's screen, she saw his body shift in the seat and she could just see the top of Scott's head in the driver's seat of the jet. "Come on, pretty boy. Punch it already!"
"We still have the last of our preflight check, Logan," Ororo said from the co-pilot's chair.
"Oh, of course. We wouldn't want to compromise safety while terrorists are planting a bomb now would we?"
Anna blinked and looked at Xavier. "What? Is that what's happening?"
"No. I think that's Wolverine's idea of a joke." Xavier touched his head again.
"Yes, Charles, I'll finish up then." Ororo took something that looked like a tablet out of Scott's hand, then handed it back. "You're clear, Cyclops."
Through Logan's screen, she could see Scott nod, put the tablet away, then flick a bunch of buttons. He and Ororo mumbled something between them as the Blackbird began turning on the platform it sat upon. Finally, a pair of gargantuan doors split before them, leaking in the day's light. She could hear through the video capture of a pair of turbines charging up, and eventually, she could hear it from the room she sat in. The jet began moving, at a crawl at first, but soon started sprinting and devouring the tarmac ahead of it. The picture on all the screens flickered as the jet's turbines engaged and thrusted them through the open doors at the blink of an eye. She could feel a tremor in the Cerebro room from sheer god-like power in the wake of the Blackbird's take-off to the point even the wires on Xavier's helmet swayed unnaturally.
Glancing through individual screens, Anna could see that they were among the clouds in mere moments. She spotted Kitty fiddling with her gray gloved hands in her lap, Jean's body facing the seat in front of her with her arms folded over her chest, and Scott, stiff as a board, staring at a blinking bank lights and glowing switches. Anna felt a vibration in her hand. She looked down and saw her phone's screen glowing with a new message from Kurt.
'Want to see some cool shit? Keep an eye on my screen during the fight!'
Anna felt a little smile jerk at the corner of her mouth as her eyes raised to Kurt's monitor, and she saw a single hand waving back at the lens. She spotted Xavier touching his temple again, then heard "Sorry Professor" through Kurt's monitor.
She looked at Xavier's profile. "Hey, uh - what are you doing when you get all -" She put one finger to her left temple with her left hand then wiggled the fingers of her right. "These aren't the droids you're looking for."
He looked back with the wide eyes of someone who was deep in thought and suddenly stirred. "Hmm? Oh, well I believe I mentioned to you that I'm a telepath."
"Yeah, I remember the freaky reading minds stuff just fine."
"Well, telepathy goes beyond reading minds. I can put my own in your head." He looked at her, and without moving his lips said: "Like so."
Anna's whole body shivered and she clung even tighter to the pillow she held to her chest. "Oh my god! Ew! Dude, no! That's, like - way way too up in my business."
He gave her a disarming smile and raised his hands toward his chest in mock surrender. "I apologize, I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable. I only ever do it for security purposes. Radio transmissions can be intercepted, but telepathic abilities can not. I promise you, it's the furthest reaches of mind reading I will ever do with you or anyone without express permission."
"Charles," rolled Ororo's voice from one of the monitors. "We will be hitting the drop point in t-minus 60 seconds."
Xavier glanced at her screen then tapped away at his keyboard till another blank screen blinked to life. It looked like the fuzzy feed of some CCTV camera pointed at a gas station. The picture was unclear, but Anna could easily enough make out the pillars supporting the great steel awning above a small grid of green and white painted gas pumps, and just beyond she could see the glass-paneled storefront with what looked like a small fire sat just in front of the main double doors.
Xavier held his temple, paused to look at Anna, then back again at the fuzzy feed. "Very good, Storm." He said with typical gravitas. "I've tapped into a camera feed and I believe the boys are in front of the store tending some sort of trash fire. The feed is unreliable, I can't get an exact head count."
"Understood." Watching Wolverine's camera, Anna saw Ororo stand out of her seat. "The jet will touch down briefly under stealth and you all will file out. Unbuckle, enhance your watches, and get into position!"
Under the flurry of flying seatbelts and camera feeds shifting, Anna glanced at Xavier. "Enhance watches?"
"Your watch can center a small distortion field around your head that will stop camera feeds from picking up the details of your face. The feature burns through the battery, however, so we keep the function to missions. It's a little more primitive version of how Nightcrawler keeps his hologram in check."
Anna blinked. "Nightcrawler's… hologram?"
Her question fell on deaf ears as the feeds showed the others making landfall on a craggy parking lot and the jet vanishing behind them like a bat out of hell. It was all disorientating to watch, to say the least, it didn't help now that everyone's face was now a strange pixelated blur.
"Nightcrawler, Shadowcat-" She could make out Scott's voice in a harsh whisper echoing on most of the monitors. "Take up the left flank. Shadowcat, check inside for injured civilians. Nightcrawler, take the roof and wait for my signal."
"Okay," Kitty whispered and Anna watched as she got low to the ground and started threading her way through parked cars to the left of the group.
"Got it-" Kurt made to follow her, then looked back. "Um, what's the signal?"
"Oh, um." The figure that looked like Scott paused, then waved his arms. "There, when I do that, jump. Got it?"
"Uh, yeah. Got it!" He whispered then followed after Kitty.
"Alright, Spike." Scott pointed to the right of the gas station. "Flank on the right. Get into cover and get ready to fire."
"At what exactly?"
"Anything that moves."
"Hey man, aren't there civilians and other people pinned down here."
Anna saw Xavier hold his finger to his temple. "He's right, Cyclops. With an order like that, innocence could get caught up in the crossfire."
She could hear Scott curse under his breath. "Okay, then try to find an open car, sneak in, and jump them when they come near."
"You want me to break into a car?"
"No, not 'break' into one. There are a bunch of cars around here and odds are someone left something open."
"I'm not doing that, dude."
Anna could see Scott fiddle with his face, but it was hard to see past the blur.
"Why don't you do this, Spike." Jean stepped up. "I think Scott wants him and me to walk up so they feel like they outnumber us. You should just find any place nearby to hide, like what Nightcrawler is doing, and jump them when things start getting heated."
Evan faced her and then nodded. "Yeah, alright. I can do that." Keeping low to the ground like the others, Evan made his way to the right of the furthest pumps.
Jean faced Scott. "You ready to do this?"
"As I'll ever be."
"Fucking finally!" Said a voice shrill enough to curdle milk. Both Jean and Scott turned to see a short sallow skinned teen wearing jeans with holes at the knees and a black bullet-resistant vest standing over them on one of the gas pumps. "Jesus, man. We were wondering when you little turds were going to finally come out of your hole."
Scott faced him. "Back off, Toad! Where are your friends?"
"Where do you think?" Another boy, dressed in the same black bullet-resistant vest with greasy dark hair appeared from the other side of the rightmost pillar. "Did you really think we wouldn't notice a freaking jet landing in the middle of a parking lot? Invisible or not, that monster is hardly subtle."
Jean stood and slowly closed the gap towards the other boy, holding her hands up close to her shoulders. "We don't want any trouble, Avalanche. We just want to de-escalate the situation."
"That right?" Shouted a booming southern fried voice that vibrated the awnings metal framework. The double doors to the small store were kicked open and there stood Blob holding Nightcrawler in a headlock with one arm. "Is that why I found this little powder puff crawling around back?" Kurt was furiously kicking his legs and trying to wiggle his fingers between Blob's arm and his neck, but no matter what he did he couldn't seem to budge an inch.
"Take it easy, Blob." Jean held out her hands. "You don't want to hurt him."
"Yeah-" Blob thumbed his nose. "You know, I'm pretty sure I do, princess."
Scott straightened to the greatest height his back would allow. "What are you guys even doing here?"
"We're just stretching our legs." Avalanche stamped a foot and the cement seemed to form around it. When he stamped his foot a second time, the pavement splintered in a jagged line towards Scott where a large shard of earth punched from the ground and launched Scott backward.
"Let's just take it easy here." Jean faced Avalanche. "We all know there is nothing to be gained here. This is just violence for violence's sake." She looked back at Blob. "Please let him go, or else I will be forced to take action."
The big man snorted. "I'd love to see what action you would take, sweetheart."
Jean held out both hands in his direction with her fingers splayed. The tendons and muscles straining under Jean's skin, Anna watched as Blob's arm trembled and slowly began to release Kurt. Blob wrestled against the invisible force, but eventually enough room formed for Kurt to slip out and make some room between him and Blob.
"Damn it!" Blob turned and ripped one of the glass doors off its hinges.
"Take it easy!" Scott shouted from across the parking lot then put a finger near his blurred head.
"Make me you damn twinkie!" Blob then chucked the door filled with jagged broken glass at Jean. At the same time, the air was illuminated by a concentrated beam of scarlet that picked up the door and launched it in the opposite direction.
"Blob, please!" Jean leveled her outfacing palms with her shoulders. "We can all still walk away from this."
The greasy-haired Avalanche looked at Toad and smiled. "Will you listen to this shit? Paragon of virtue over here."
Scott looked at him, hand still near his face. "Are you mocking us?"
Anna noticed Xavier reach for his temple. "Cyclops, he is toying with you. Don't give in so easily."
"God, you guys are just so freaking cute." Back on one of the screens, Avalanche crossed his arms and leaned on one of the pillars holding up the awning. "Let me ask, what is it that you two think is going on here? Are we just a bunch of messed up Brotherhood types here to mess up your pretty town and you need to come and stop us?"
"It sure looks that way. All I've seen you guys do is rip apart a gas station with people inside who've done nothing to hurt you."
Avalanche's smile grew larger. "That what you think, Summers?"
"Wipe that grin off your face, Lance!"
"Or what?"
Scott's eyes began to glow. "You know, 'or what.'"
Xavier's eyes furrowed. "Pheonix, push Cyclops down. Do something to distract him, he's not listening to me."
"Scott!" Anna watched Scott's video turn to look at Jean who was now waving her arms above her head. The next few seconds were a blur of screen shakes and clipped audio.
First Anna saw Kurt teleport in and shove Avalanche into the pole he was leaning against. Avalanche knocked his head hard against the pillar and fell to the ground. Next, Kurt teleported and kicked Blob in the chest where he stepped backward right into where Evan had ended up hiding. After an explosion of bony thorns, Blob was thrown forward, slammed against a car, and then pinned in place by a mess of jagged splinters. Finally, Kurt ported to Toad, but the last boy was ready. He evaded Kurt's leg sweep then completely enveloped Kurt's face with a thick yellowish-green wad of mucus that fired from Toad's mouth like a fast-moving softball. Kurt dropped to the ground and furiously began scratching at the sticky mound that was both muffling his screams and his breathing.
Scott knelt, touched the side of his head, and another scarlet beam flew in Toad's direction. The boy dodged with ease, then stuck himself to the point where one of the concrete pillars met the large awning above with his hands and feet. When Scott fired again, Toad jumped between pillars, allowing Scott's blasts to strike the spots where he once stuck. After the fourth or so blast, both pillars crumbled and snapped, then the air was filled with an ear-piercing screeching as the great metal awning above the gas station began to snap and cave in on itself.
Just as the mass of twisted jagged metal was about it hit earth, the pile began to levitate and gently bob in place. Anna could see through Scott's cam, that Jean was in the middle of it all. Her arms held above her, buckling against the strain, she was obviously somehow invisibly suspending the wreckage. Anna watched Scott gawking for a moment before he brought his watch to his face.
"Shadowcat, is everyone out of the store?"
"Yes -"
"I need you to get out here and clear the parking lot of any lingering civil-" Scott was cut off as a lump of goo hit him on the side of the head and dropped him to the ground. He was turned to his back and jumped upon by Toad who was shouting like a madman.
"How stupid can one pretty boy be? Holy shit, dude! Dumb-ass! Dumb-ass! Dumb-"
It was then Toad who got a knock to the side of the head and fell face-first into the pavement. Before he could stand a foot stomped on his back and shoved his face back into the ground. Then one long bony spike was pressed up against the flesh of Toad's throat. "Shut. up." Said Evan, his chest heaving. Anna saw through Evan's cam, Toad's throat engorging with another wad of muck, then Evan gave his throat a gentle jab. "Try it."
Scott blasted the muck off his face with his eye blast and looked back at Jean. She had one knee on the ground and a puddle of sweat had formed on the ground beneath her head. He brought his watch back to his face. "Kitty!" He shouted.
"I can't phase this lady out, and the car door is jammed!" Anna looked at Kitty's screen and saw her gray gloves lacerated and bloody while trying to peel back a car door through its broken window. Inside she could just see the prone body of a woman.
Scott stood and ran into gently falling debris. He shouted till he found Kitty and helped her with the door. With pieces of floating awning grazing their heads, the pair finally managed to peal the top half of the door back. Scott reached inside and, after struggling with the tight space, managed to pull her out by the shoulders. Kitty grabbed the woman's legs, then the pair rushed her out from under the suspending awning and to the safety of the sidewalk. Setting the woman gently on the ground, Scott looked back at Kitty. "Where's Nightcrawler?" There was a crackle over his watch and he put it to his ear.
"I'm near the landing zone. I'm gooed but okay."
Scott put the watch to his mouth. "Nightcrawler, you need to port Phoenix out of there now!" A few seconds later, Scott watched as the gently falling awning suddenly and violently collapsed all at once. As the dust began to settle, little fires began to bud within the wreckage. He brought the watch to his lips again. "…Nightcrawler?"
After a pause, there was a cough on the other line. "I got her." He coughed a second time. "She's unconscious. I think holding up… holding all the -" There was an even longer pause. Anna looked at Kurt's screen and saw him holding himself up on all fours next to Jean's body.
"Nightcrawler?" Scott asked a second time.
"I'm alright dude. I'm just wiped after taking a passenger. I'll - Ahhgh!"
Watching Kurt's screen, Anna witnessed a white running shoe crush Kurt's watch wrist under-heel. As Kurt shouted from the pain, the skin and shape of his hand started to pixelate and shift like a webpage struggling to load till finally a deep blue scaly hand with two thick fingers and a thumb appeared.
"I heard something funky might happen if I did that." Said a voice that was all too cool. In contrast to the dire situation her fellow X-Men found themselves in, the voice was like a winter snap in the middle of a heat wave. Pinning the blue hand to the ground with their foot, the person's hand entered the camera's frame and snapped Kurt's busted watch off his wrist. Kurt angled his body cam upward and Anna saw a boy around their age with slicked-back white hair, wearing nothing other than a black shirt and a pair of crisp-looking slacks. The boy turned the watch over in his hands and played with its buttons. "Cute." He said before tossing it over his shoulder and crossing his arms.
Kurt's body trembled, two blue scaly arms struggling to hold him up. "Why… would you do that?"
"Because, blue boy-" The other boy crouched down and patted Kurt on the cheek. "The world deserves to see the real you."
Kurt made to grab his arm, but the boy snapped out of the way so quickly that Anna's eye struggled to follow.
"Ha! To slow, blue balls!" Then Anna just saw the brunt of the boy's shoe connect with Kurt's face, then the screen went black.
Xavier focused on one of the screens. "Wolverine, there's another one we didn't anticipate. His abilities are unknown. I need you to step in."
Then one of the screens shifted from blackness, which turned out to be the foliage of leaves, and sprang out into the parking lot with the camera pointed at the boy. Anna could just see Kurt and Jean laying at the boy's feet, Kurt's nose running with blood.
"Back away from the kids, pinky!" There was the sound of Wolverine's claws being drawn in the audio.
"Or what?" The boy turned and then seemingly teleported in front of Wolverine. "You going to do something about it?"
"Super speed, huh?" Wolverine growled and cracked his neck. "Been a while since I've seen one of your kind."
"Been two seconds since I've seen one of your kind." The boy disappeared, then Wolverine began falling forward on his face. He managed to recover, roll, and turn back around to face him. "The 'slow to catch on' kind."
"You better run off before you get your cute shoes dirty, pretty boy."
"Too late for that, I'm afraid." The boy lifted his shoe and pointed at the red stain.
Anna felt her blood boil along with Wolverine's. "What's your name, you little shit-bird?"
"Well, let's see." The boy sped off and Wolverine twisted right to see him sitting on a piece of broken awning, posing. "I'm fast. You could maybe even say 'quick.'" The boy ran off again and appeared behind Wolverine on top of a parked car. He was stroking the top of his head. "And my hair is silver…" He moved again and reappeared in front of Wolverine and poked him on the nose. "So I guess, if you put those big words together, I'd be Quicksilver."
Wolverine made a jab for the boy's face, but the kid was already gone by the time he wound up his fist. The boy reappeared a few feet away with his hands behind his back, rocking back and forth on his feet. "So, you wanna play the game where you chase me and inevitably end up losing, or do you just want to give up now?"
"Listen-" Wolverine sheathed his claws and wiped his lip with the back of his hand. "You obviously outclass these jokers. Why are you here?"
"I imagine for the same reason you're here, Mister Wolverine. To keep the kids in check. You know, make sure everyone is playing nice."
"That right? Kicking someone in the teeth while they are down is 'playing nice?'"
"Hey, dude has to learn to consequences of not holding your ground in a fight."
Anna couldn't see it, but she could feel Wolverine stretching out his jaw and his hands forming into fists. "We both got casualties here. Why don't you clean up your mess and we'll clean up ours."
"Oh, I'm not worried about my mess. In fact -" A long bright beam of scarlet light cut the boy off as it plunged into his chest and launched him backward into a parked semi-truck.
Suddenly Scott was standing at Wolverine's side. "I got tired of him talking."
"God dammit, kid!" Wolverine shouted then ran in the truck's direction with his claws bared. Despite running at full speed, by the time he got where the boy had landed, he was already gone.
"Hey, asshole!" Wolverine looked up and saw the boy standing atop the truck, his hands on his hips and his shirt ripped in multiple places. "Nice cheap shot. Now it's my turn!" The boy disappeared and was on top of Wolverine like a one-man swarm of stinging wasps. From every direction, Wolverine was struck with punches and kicks that he tried to block, but by the time he did, there was another one aimed somewhere else. He tried raking his claws through the air in random directions but ran into nothing but air as he took a punch to the solar plexus. Eventually, Scott was drug into the mix by the unyielding force and both were endlessly pummeled by fists. Not so far off in the distance, Anna could hear police sirens.
Xavier took a break from ceaselessly tapping his index finger on the table and looked at another monitor. "Storm, 'Smoke Screen' has failed. I repeat the police jammer has failed and they are on their way. This grudge match needs to end, now!"
"I'm on it, Charles." Watching Storm's screen, Anna got a bird's eye view of the whole gas station, the parked cars on the street, and the small fires within the wreckage. Without warning, Storm seemed to leap out an open hatch in the Blackbird, but didn't fall. Instead, she seemed to soar as if with the wings of an eagle. She extended her hands to either side and little bolts of lightning shot around her at ever-increasing intervals. Quickly dark clouds from above began to descend upon the scene, obscuring the street and surrounding buildings. The only natural source of light now was snapping columns of electricity. They seemingly flew from Storm's open hands and bit the ground below like bullets into flesh, popping and snapping. Fat droplets of rain showered down from above and doused all the fires. Slowly now she descended, like an angel to earth, above where Scott and Wolverine lay in the fetal position covering their faces. The boy, Quicksilver, looked up at her, his eyes wide and face pale.
Storm said nothing. She instead raised a hand in his direction and a gale of wind picked up and pinned him back against the truck's trailer. He wiggled and squirmed but he couldn't break free of the torrent of wind. Soon, shards of ice began to form on his clothing and fused him to the trailer. Only then did she relent on the barrage of wind, and look down upon her fallen allies. "Are either of you hurt?" She asked with the booming voice of a god.
Wolverine stood and dusted off. "Just my ego, maybe." When Scott stood, Wolverine pointed past him. "Grab blue boy and the girl. I'll hunt down Cat and Spike. Then we got to get the hell out of here."
Scott looked back at him. "What about The Brotherhood?" He shouted over the pounding rain around them.
Anna just spotted Xavier rubbing his temple. "Don't worry about them. While you were fighting, I sensed them sneaking off. Only the Quicksilver boy is left. I suspect he came in to distract you all so the others could get away."
Scott touched his temple. "What about the one with Spike?"
"They both got caught up in Storm's hurricane. Toad got separated and disappeared too."
"What do you want us to do about Quicksilver then?"
"Nothin.'" Wolverine answered for Xavier. Shaking Scott's shoulder he pointed back at the trailer. The boy was gone, but left were the remnants of his shirt and his pants. "Kid stripped the clothes keeping him down and ran."
"Well," Scott shrugged. "He might have kicked the crap out of us, but at least we have the satisfaction of knowing he's streaking on his way home." For a fraction of a second, Anna thought she actually saw Wolverine show a cock-eyed smile.
"We don't have time for this!" Storm shouted over the wind and sirens, then pointed at Kurt and Jean. "Save the others! I'll pull around the jet!"
"She's right!" Wolverine slapped Scott on the shoulder. "Hop-too kid, no one gets left behind! Let's go!"