New Alliances: Chapter 1

An X-Men Evolution Fanfic

Ororo couldn’t turn off the tv. She could no longer see any of her students, but she sat frozen, listening to the reporters go on and on about “dangerous individuals” and “military investigations”.

Children, she wanted to shout. They were children.

The news story had been running for three hours now, and none of them had returned. Her only solace was that the reporters had no idea where they were either, which she hoped meant they had all escaped.

What was she going to tell her sister? She had promised to take care of Evan for as long as he stayed with her and she had failed them both.

“Ororo! Ororo! There are people outside!” Rahne ran into the room, skidded on the slick floor, and caught herself on the doorframe. “The professor said he needs you.”

She had to remember Logan was with them, and that they had both done their best to prepare the kids for anything that might come their way. For now, there was nothing more she could do for them.

“I’m coming, Rahne.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jubilee, Roberto, and Jaime peeking down the stairs at them. Right now, they needed her. She had to trust the others would be able to take care of themselves. She put her hand on Rahne’s shoulder and led her upstairs.

Kurt was sure he had teleported to the wrong place.

Instead of the mansion’s gates, he was surrounded by people, cameras, microphones, and flashing lights. They talked over each other and pressed in closer and closer, suffocating him.

“Kurt!” Evan hissed in his ear. His fingers dug into Kurt’s arm. “Get us out of here.”

Oh. Oh right, he could do that. He thought of the mansion again, and transported them to the woods beside it, where Logan often held training sessions. Evan’s grip tightened.

“Kurt.” He sounded strangled.

“What?”

“Shh!” Evan pointed at the mansion’s gate, and Kurt’s breath caught as he realized he hadn’t made a mistake the first time. The crowd they had narrowly escaped swarmed the gate. Some people even seemed to be trying to climb it, though they weren’t doing a very good job with one arm holding a large camera.

“What is happening?” He whispered. Evan shrugged.

The mansion doors opened, and the volume of the crowd grew exponentially. Kurt relaxed when he saw the professor and Ororo walk out. He saw a few faces peek out the window, but no one else came.

“Dr. Xavier, what do you have to say about the attack on the city?”

“Where are your students now?”

“Are they part of some sort of experiment?”

“Are you hiding them from the authorities?”

“Get the camera! Some of them are in the window!”

Ororo took a step toward the crowd, but the professor caught her arm and gestured for her to stay back. “My students had no role in causing the incident, and those who were involved at all only went to help the people of the city, as they were trained to do.”

The questions started up again. “Trained? Did you train these kids as weapons?”

“Where are your students?”

“Are all of them mutants?”

“You, there! What do you do at this school?” One of the reporters had their camera aimed at the school. For a second, Kurt was sure they had been spotted, then realized that Bobby had opened his bedroom window and was leaning out to see better. When the reporter asked him the question, his eyes widened, and he slammed the window shut.

“I have no idea where my older students are,” the professor began, loudly enough to be heard over the crowd. Kurt’s heart sank. Where had the others gone?

“And I’d like to remind you,” he continued, “that the students here are all underage, and their protection has been entrusted to me by their parents. ou will not like the consequences if you attempt to go near them.”

The crowd’s volume grew, somehow, even louder, but the professor and Ororo ignored them and walked back inside. Kurt wanted to follow them. He wanted to transport inside the mansion and hide under his bed until everything was over.

“I think—“ He swallowed. “I think maybe we should go.” Evan nodded beside him, and they disappeared once again.

“Are you sure about this?” Scott asked.

“Do you have a better idea?” Jean hissed back.

It seemed like it should be easy to come up with a better idea than just walking into an airport full of people and asking nicely for tickets, but unfortunately Scott’s usual ability to come up with a plan seemed to have exhausted itself when a giant mutant-hunting robot had started roaming the streets of New York.

At least they blended in a little more now. Jean had gotten them in and out of a small department store undetected, so they could find clothes to change into. Out of their uniforms, with her hair tied in a scarf and his glasses in place of his visor, they could have been normal teens about to go on vacation. But getting on an airplane without anyone noticing seemed like a very large jump from passing undetected in a clothing store.

They reached the front of the line, and Jean nudged him forward. They had decided Scott would be the one to speak to give her a chance to concentrate. “We need—“ his voice came out too quiet and squeaky. He cleared his throat. “We need two tickets.”

“ID’s, please,” the woman at the counter said in a bored tone.

“Of course!” They had no ID’s, so he didn’t move except to smile politely.

The woman’s expression grew dull and her eyes unfocused. “Everything looks fine. Where are you flying?”

“Oh! Right. Um, Hawaii.” He wasn’t sure when the next flight to Hawaii left, but the woman didn’t ask when they wanted to leave. She just handed them two boarding passes and ushered them on.

Scott snatched up the passes and let Jean lean on his arm. As soon as they got away from the counter, he let out a breath. “I can’t believe that worked.”

Jean gestured to the boarding passes in his hand. “When do we leave?”

He glanced at the passes. “We have two hours. Let’s find our gate.”

Kitty never thought she would be grateful for Logan’s early morning training sessions.But before coming to Bayville, when the most exercise she got was her pitiful attempt at passing gym class, she never would have been able to walk this far.

Even so, she was quickly approaching her limit.

She heard voices and stopped to peek around the corner. A sudden wave of dizziness and exhaustion washed over her. Her vision went black for a second. When it cleared, the voice and people they belonged to were gone.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I have to stop or I’ll, like, fall over.”

“Huh?”

She turned around to repeat herself, then realized that Todd and Lance were much further behind her than she had thought. Lance kept one hand on the wall to steady himself, and Todd swayed when he landed in front of Kitty.

“I’m so sorry,” she burst out. “We should have stopped earlier. Are you alright?” It hadn’t occurred to her while they were walking, but of course neither of the boys had been put through Logan’s rigorous training program. She should have realized they would be even more worn out than her.

Lance slumped against the wall, but smiled at her. “Don’t worry about us. I think we’re all just a little tired after that fight.”

She tried to smile back, then looked down the street. They needed somewhere to rest and hide, but where?

She spotted a clothing store with a large “We’re moving!” sign pasted over the glass windows.

“Come on,” she said. “Just a little further.” Lance and Todd straightened up and followed her across the street. With a quick glance around, she grabbed both their arms and phased them into the shop.

Todd immediately flopped onto the floor. “Don’t wake me ’til tomorrow.”

“Let’s at least get away from the windows,” Lance said.

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.”

Kitty left the two of them arguing and wandered around the store. The front room was almost completely empty, but the back was piled high with boxes, all labeled things like, “dresses”, “suits”, or “men’s jeans” in blocky letters.

She found one labeled, “women’s blouses” and started sorting through it for something that would fit her. “Hey, boys! Come here!”

Todd gave a loud groan and crawled into the room. His eyes widened when he saw the boxes. “What’s this?”

She found a lacy shirt in her size and held it up. “Clothes!”

“Oh, good,” Lance said. He scanned several boxes, then pulled one open and started sorting through jeans.

When Kitty had pieced together a full outfit, she found the bathroom and cleaned up as best as she could with a half-empty bottle of soap that had been left behind. She tried to comb her fingers through her ponytail, but it had already tangled so much that the best she could do was work the hair tie out of her curls.

She left her uniform crumpled in the corner. She wouldn’t need it anymore. Then she went back out to the storage room and pushed a few boxes away from the wall to give them some space to sit. Lance came out of the bathroom and found the stop she had cleared. He stacked a few more boxes on top of the ones she had moved in a sort of screen. Then he sat beside her against the wall.

She leaned her head against his shoulder, and he wrapped his arm around her waist. Todd joined them a minute later, sitting on Lance’s other side. Once they were all together, Kitty could no longer fight sleep and soon drifted off.

Kurt teleported them to the gazebo.

Evan thought that was still too close to the reporters looking for them, but he couldn’t blame Kurt for not wanting to leave yet.

He couldn’t quite believe they couldn’t go back yet.

He just wanted to go home or to the mansion. He wanted his parents and aunt to tell him everything would be fine and to fix everything.

“What do we do?” Kurt asked. “Are we criminals? Will they lock us up? Did they already lock up Rogue and Scott and Kitty and Jean? I don’t even have my image inducer! Where can we go?”

“Just—just stop!” Evan was most definitely panicking, but Kurt’s spiral wouldn’t help anything. “Breathe a second, and then we’ll figure something out.” He felt a sudden sense of deja vu, remembering all the times he had talked Pietro down from a similar spiral in middle school, over a bad grade or getting called to detention. He wished his problems now were so simple.

“What are we going to figure out?” Kurt asked. “We’re alone. Where can we go?”

I don’t know, okay? I don’t know.” Because they had no money, their faces were probably plastered on every television in the country, they weren’t even eighteen yet, and Kurt was blue for goodness’ sake! But they had to think of something, and they had to do it now.

“Well, for starters, you can go rescue your friend.”

Evan and Kurt whirled around as a man stepped out of the bushes. He was a large, sturdy-looking man with steel-grey hair and a patch over one eye. Automatically, Evan lifted his arm, ready to fire his spikes at him.

“Who are you?” Kurt asked.

Evan narrowed his eyes. “And what do you mean “rescue”?”

“I’m Director Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D. I used to work with Logan, and when I saw Magneto’s little stunt on tv, I thought I should get in touch with him. Unfortunately it seems he’s been taken by some of Trask’s men, along with some of your other friends.”

“You know Logan?” Kurt’s eyebrows shot up, and his tail flicked around his ankles.

The director nodded. “He and I worked together for several years.”

“Then how come we’ve never heard of you?”

The director raised an eyebrow. “Does he ever talk about himself?” Evan and Kurt exchanged a look. It was a fair point.

“Well why are you helping us?” Evan asked.

“It’s in both of our interests to keep Trask from getting what he wants, which is total destruction of mutants. He was the one who made the Sentinel, after all. I imagine he wants your friends to help improve it.”

Evan looked at Kurt. He still didn’t like this. He didn’t trust this director one bit, but if he could really help them find the others . . .

“Alright,” Kurt said. “Tell us where they are.”

Next chapter