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"Hello?"
What you gonna say to the woman who killed your ex-wife, stole your heart, and then let it grow over like land too close to a swamp? In those days my life was tangled between a hell of a drinking habit, tryin' to learn to read and write well enough at age 24 to pass as a goddam adult, and a strong desire to figure out the best way I could help our people.
I hung up the phone without saying anything.
But I remember it vividly because it happened just before I sat outside to read the newspaper and was finally spurred into action. Smoking a cigarette out on Xavier's porch, newspaper in hand, wearing a robe and little else, with a glass of orange juice trying to cure my permanent hangover, I read about a doctor who had just been arrested for conducting experiments on mutant children in his basement.
My first thought was I was surprised they arrested him. My second thought was that I was pissed off it was on the back pages. And my third thought was that, more than anything, I felt the need to go to that house, to stand in that room, and to see what that bastard had done to our kind.
In those days I still felt that if you harmed one of us you harmed all of us. Sometimes I still do. But I didn't know then that the phone call and the newspaper and the juice without the pulp would set into motion a time in my life that I referred to as the X-ternal—And I'm not still not sure what to make out of all of it. To be part of it, but not part of it. To be external of a lot of things, which is what we were a lot of the time. I'm not sure if we really were outsiders or we just liked to think of ourselves that way.
*
The door creaks open slowly and, with a tearing sound, Remy LeBeau removes the police tape that covers the back door of the house. It's not even a house, really. More like an apartment down below some Italian restaurant not far from Mutant Town. This is where he took them. It must have been easy access for him—whole group of mutants just blocks away.
"Errybody watch yo' step. Dun wanna 'lert no one we're here," he calls out to the Mansioneers who happened to be closest to him when he read the article. He takes one of those small flashlights and turns it on, looking for the sub-cellar that the newspaper described.
"Are you sure? Because from what the paper said, I'd really like to have a few words with the people who were here," Hope grumbles, even as she follows near-silently behind Remy. There's a definite military cast to the way she moves through the space - methodical, clearing each room before she's ready to move forward again with a gun held at the ready.
Chance put a picture of the so-called 'doctor' up on his wall: when someone earns the wall, they are promised justice. One way, or the other. They arrested the man so he's willing to give the system a chance (no pun intended), though it failed him int he past, and failed his kind more often then not. If the system fails, then the 'doctor' will get a visit from Freefall. At the moment, he's decided to pay the house a visit to see if he can find anything that will be useful if things come to that. By sheer chance (again, no pun intended), he is standing on the back wall of the building, oriented with the wall itself down, so he's looking down at the window tha the's using a tool to carefully jimmy open. Sliding it in, he steps in and falls down into the room, spinning in the air in a graceful motion to reorient his gravity to the natura down. He lands with a not-quiet thud. He's dressed all in black, with a black mask, and a pair of black batons strapped to his back. Rising, he looks around and pulls a flashlight from where it was strapped to his belt, clicks it on and begins looking around… That is until words reach him. He freezes in place, listening.
Remy holds his hand up to Hope as he, too, hears something. There's a quick click as his bo-staff elongates as the Cajun begins to step, slowly, towards the door that separates himself and Hope from whatever lies on the other end. After a few paces, he reaches for the door and begins to turn the handle, slowly, until, at the last moment, he flings it open.
The thump draws Hope's eyes up toward the source, just for a moment, before she finishing clearing the room they're in. Can't let one thing distract from another, that's how you get ambushed. Any other part of town, and she would be able to tell that whoever they're approaching is a mutant. Here? She's picking up on every power in a two-block radius. There's no pinpointing where any of them are coming from. So when Remy moves for the door, she moves for the other side, mouthing out a countdown and holding her gun at the ready for whatever waits on the other side.
Chance, when suited known as Freefall, has one primary strategy for battle, or even just surprise: don't hesitate, change planes. The moment the door is flinging open, he does a standing back flip even as he reaches up to grab the batons from his back; midway through the spin down reverses for him and he slams into the ceiling, crouched, staring at the door and who is beyond it with his batons in a fighting pose. The flashlight is dropped without a thought, bouncing and clinging on the ground. "I have no quarrel with you — unless you're a partner of the man who owned this house — and don't want to hurt you." His tone is grave with the implication of: But I will.
Remy's body tenses as he's about to plunge into action. With the staff held high he lunges, only to stop abruptly. He looks over his shoulder back at Hope as Chance makes his declaration, unsure of whether or not to trust the guy. After a long, tense second he contracts the metal rod, slides it into the pocket of his trenchcoat and reaches to light a cigarette. "You got any idea who dun owned dis here house, ami?"
Hope's gun tracks Chance when he hits the ceiling, though she doesn't pull the trigger - yet. "We're looking for information about him too," she nods after Remy relaxes, though she keeps her gun at the ready. Just because he's getting a chance doesn't mean she's determined he isn't a threat.
Freefall may be masked, but its clear his attention is primarily upon Hope's gun, a clear tension in his stance. Not fear— readiness. First he answers Remy, "Some sick motherfucker." There's real anger in his voice, though its a cool, controlled anger, "…who I am not entirely sure acted alone, and if not, I want to know." He crouches, and does another standing back flip, and once again reorients gravity and lands gracefully — this time down for him is the same as down for them. He glances at Hope. One of his batons is put away, but only one. He crouches to pick up his flashlight with the other. "There might be a partner, some other kids. I don't know there are, but I don't know there aren't, either, and I don't trust the police. Not with this."
"Guess we all on de same side, den." Remy takes a deep drag from the cigarette and turns to look at Hope, nodding to the gun. Whether she does or not is her own prerogative. The slender man pulls his own flashlight out and begins to look at the room around them. It appears to be and office of some sort and this guy, whatever his story was, seems to be some sort of hoarder.
Oddly enough, it's Chance's readiness that seems to convince Hope more than anything else. Nodding once, she lowers her gun, though she doesn't holster it. Just because this one turned out to be helpful doesn't mean the next intruder will be. "I'm Hope," she offers quietly, leaving Remy's introduction to him. No telling how he wants to be addressed. A quick look around the room and she quirks a brow. "You come in through the window?"
"You're mutants?" Chance hesitates, and glances around. Well, they aren't cops, that much is clear. So he shrugs, pulls his mask off, and pushes his hood back, the mask hanging off the back of his head. "Chance. Or, Freefall— for obvious reasons, maybe. I'm a private investigator, though this isn't a paid gig. But I've got a criminology degree along with several years of investigation experience… I figure they might have half-assed looking into a crime against mutants, and I won't."
"Amongst other things," Remy says. He doesn't introduce himself. Anyone who keeps up on the paper and mutant rights might know his picture as the guy who beat the hell out of cops. A lot less know he was once tortured by one. With the flashlight in between his teeth, he begins knocking around mail on the desk. Figuring this will take a while, he takes a seat.
Past them, in the room that Hope and Remy were first in, a doorway hints at a stairway that heads below.
"Yeah," Hope answers Chance's question, keeping an eye on Remy when he starts to tear through the desk. "It's more about how it happened. And making sure there aren't any mutants left behind now. For me, at least." With Remy at the desk, she moves to the right of the door, methodically looking over the piles and papers, searching for anything incriminating. "Hardly looks like they went through here," she grimaces. "If they had, it'd probably look more like that," she nods toward Remi's chaos.
It's dark, which is the only reason Chance hasn't picked Remy out yet. He turns, and lifts his flashlight and goes over to the wall. To anywhere there's anything— book caes, picture, anything, he not only checks behind near whatever is on along the walls, but he knocks on the wall, listening for hollow sounds, feeling for hidden spaces. "Yeah, when the cops are really looking, they leave a lot of a mess. That, or they take *everything*, depending on how serious they are. Either way, this doesn't look serious." He casts a glance over towards Hope, frowning slightly, "Chance, Hope. Heh." He adds, "Yeah, I want to get justice, but also, in case there's others— probably elsewhere."
Remy remains quiet, diligently going through letters, mail, and notebooks. It's not clear if the cops gave a shit enough to actually go through anything. The case itself perplexes him but he's not a cop and doesn't care much for them. While his search is fruitless, Hope begins to see opened envelopes from the same address. Not the bills, there are a lot of those. And the doctor has catalogues and other mail order things. But it's these envelopes that keep coming from an address in Oklahoma that stand out. The envelopes don't have anything inside.
"Like…maybe Oklahoma?" Hope passes a few of the envelopes over to Chance. "Nothing in any of them so far, but there are a lot of them. What was this guy supposedly doing legitimately again?" she asks, looking between the others. "Anything that would reasonably be tied to Oklahoma?"
Taking the passed envelopes, Chance looks them over, and nods to the woman. "He's a medical doctor at…" He names the hospital, then nods to this, "I can makes some calls, see if I can pull anything up about this address, before I go check it out. I can share the intel, if you agree to share anything you find back the other way."
"We gun go tonight," Remy says as he stands, looking over Hope's shoulder. "Iffen dere be sometin to get in a huff about, den better we get to it sooner den later." It's not as if sitting in one of the Professor's classes won't keep until he gets back. The Cajun heads towards the other room and then the stairwell, hopping down them smoothly.
"What, to Oklahoma?" Hope quirks a brow at Remy, taking another look at the address on an envelope. "How're you planning on getting there? I'm pretty sure Tony'd notice if I borrowed a jet. I mean. Probably. By the time we crashed it into a building because none of us know how to pilot it, at least." When Remy heads for the stairs, she raises her gun a bit once more, starting to follow with her clearing pattern again.
Chance hesitates, and then shrugs, "I could get us there; it would't be very fast, it'd take a good twelve hours. Maybe a little more. We'd want to bring snacks— but no water, because you wouldn't be able to keep it comfortably in. Its not fun if you're not used to it. It'd probably be faster to wait until morning and take the first flight to Oklahoma City, though." But he follows along with Remy; partly to see what is in the horror show downstairs, partly to keep an eye on him.
"Ah was tinkin' of taking a car," Remy replies. "Bout 20 hours if you push it." He leaves out the part about stealing the fast car. People always seems crabby when it comes to that. Once he gets downstairs he flips on a light and winces as his eyes adjust. Immediately he understands why anyone, even a cop who might hate mutants, would be pressed to arrest this guy.
It's gross.
Tables, cages, medical instruments, jars filled with…all sorts of things. Remy has a strong stomach and he's about to be sick. "Dun think de cops will be gone for long."
"Damn," Hope breathes as she steps down the stairs, catching a glimpse of all the equipment below. "This is…why?" she murmurs, brows furrowing as she shakes her head. "These were people. People just like us. Not so very different from the doctor, even. What makes someone think that any of this is justified by anything?"
"Right, so my way. I can cut that time in half." Chance nods his head slightly, "I need a compass and a map, I'll get those. Someone get a car— I didn't come with one. Don't worry about how fast it is. Make sure it has seatbelts." Then he looks, and he frowns. There's… a strange sensation that is hard to quantify, as if the world just almost vaguely loses cohehsion. Its not really an effect, nothing really happens. But one of the four fundamental forces of the universe *tries* briefly to do something it can't possibly do, and it just feels…weird, though whatever Chance instinctively tried to do didn't actually do anything at all.
"I don't care," Remy replies to Hope in response to her question. He's been done asking those for quite some time. He's only interested in action at this point. "It's yours," he says to Chance as he walks around the makeshift laboratory. The man was a slob, as if the hoarder part didn't already hint at that. You can tell by the makeshift way he cleaned up the blood, still leaving smears in parts of the room. Some older than others.
Remy gives a look of confusion as he feels odd. He looks to Chance then, about to ask if he's alright, but finds that a rather stupid question given the circumstances.
"What if you had help?" Hope looks to Chance, perhaps in favor of not looking at the slaughter. It's not that she's never seen it before, but that doesn't mean she likes looking at it. "Is it the sort of thing that would be easier or faster if you had help with it?"
Chance gives an odd look to Hope, and shakes his head, "Besides the initial binding, there's no effort required; the binding holds for up to a day. I'll have to make course-adjustments from time to time, so it might add an extra couple hours onto the trip, but still shave off at least eight from the trip. The only limiting factor is that if I bind us five G's, that's enough to move about 110mph, which is uncomfortable but safe. Any more and we'll start taking internal injuries. I can bind up to ten G's, but that'd kill us all. Unless you have some ability to add a sort of … buffer?" He hesitates, "If I could *reverse* bind us individually while I bound the car forward, it would cancel accelleration and I could maybe halve the time, but that goes over the limit of how many G's I'm able to do at once."
"Ah got no idea what the fuck he's talkin' bout but we gotta get goin. Ahmma go find us a car," Remy says, apparently done with the idea of this place. He leaves promptly, with the images scarring his mind. "You need anything else, Chance?" he asks, turning to see him fully for the first time in the light.
"Power mimic," Hope explains, raising her hand. "If you can do it, I can do it." She pauses, then tilts her head, looking away with a slight roll of her eyes. "Okay, well. It's a little more complicated, I might need a minute to practice and I'll probably need you to explain how it's done, but I have the capability of doing it."
"I'll get the nav tools, thirty minutes." Chance nods to Remy, and.. blinks at Hope. Then smiles. A genuine smile. "Come with me." He nods to Remy, "Fourty five, while I show her how its done. If she can provide a reverse plane to me, we can go 220 odd mph. Eight hours, tops, travel time." He nods to Hope, and then heads back away from the monstrosity, "If you can mimic, then the first thing to do is to think of down. Feel down. Everyone feels down but what you'll notice if you clear your mind and focus is that you have a vibration from your center of gravity down— and its vibrating because its mutable. You can turn what is 'down' for you. It takes some concentration to be able to find, and believe me, we will not go outside until you have a sense of it and can at least reverse it and reverse it back… this is a power you do not practice outdoors. But really, the basic bindings are easy. I figured them out as a thirteen year old kid in about an hour, and I didn't know what I was doing. The sky-fighting, now that took years to master."
After scaling the steps, Remy walks out onto the street. His face twists and his eyes blaze with anger but his hand is calm, even as he flicks his cigarette into the alley. He exhales slowly, leaving his face in a haze as he walks down the street to find a car of some poor rich bastard.