Sky High

The fights going on around me paused as everyone turned to Magneto and the screen that showed a line of missiles being slotted into place to be launched toward the ground.

"Erik, this is madness. Who are you targeting with those?" Xavier asked, horrified.

"When I brought all of you up here I disabled the cloaking on Asteroid M. Right now, SHIELD should be preparing an attack after I sent them my terms," Magneto said.

"And I'm sure we can all guess what those terms were," I muttered trying to figure out how I wanted to handle this. Magneto attacking SHIELD could screw over mutant relations with governments and it'd be easy for the rest of us to be targeted due to his actions. The problem was stopping the missiles. 

'Jean, can you tell everyone to get ready to escape? I don't think we can stop him from launching them so I'm gonna try to turn them around and have them hit his base instead.'

I got the telepathic confirmation from Jean as I assumed she began to tell everyone to get ready to run for the Blackbird, but the next thing she said threw a wrench in my plan.

'Alright, tell me when you're ready and we can go stop them,' Jean sent to me.

'What do you mean we?'

'It'll be easier if I help you with my telekinesis. I learned how to fly with it, I'll be fine,' she telepathically explained. My plan for turning the missiles was to use almost all of my hard light to use constructs and then change my density to let me float the ground. Jean's help would make it less draining on my energy reserves, but it'd make it a little more messy if I wasn't doing it on my own.

'Fine, count it down.'

I didn't have time to argue with her, Magneto was already about to launch the missiles after arguing with Xavier.

"This is the next step, Charles, you just don't have the drive to make the call," Magneto said, waving his hand as the missiles finished loading and, upon his gesture, they were launched. 

I heard Jean's telepathic shout to tell everyone to get moving. Wolverine lunged at Scott and knocked him out, quickly taking down Alex as well when he tried to blast him in retaliation. Laura jumped onto Sabertooth's back when he tried to attack Logan, with the rest of the X-Men quickly making their way into the Blackbird while I used my super-speed to grab Jean and sprint towards the outer wall of Asteroid M.

Extending my hand, I used hard light to form a drill that pierced straight through the wall and gave way to the sight of the open sky outside.

"And where do you think you're going," Magneto commented, causing me to turn at glance at him. He gestured at Laura, who was still on Sabertooth's back stabbing him with her claws, and sent her flying hands first towards us with her claws extended. I set Jean down to catch her, but Magneto controlled her to fly up above me as he tore a new hole in the hull higher up and sent Laura flying out of it.

"Hmm, who will you save, child? The people who would seek to ostracize us, or one of your own?"

I didn't even give that choice a second thought. I just ran forward and jumped out of Asteroid M, feeling the wind whip around my hair as I plummeted after Laura. Glancing back, I could see Jean flying down after me as well.

I tucked my arms to the side of my body to make myself fly down even faster, using a small amount of hard light wrapped around my body to make myself speed up as well. I was starting to burn through my reserves, but I didn't have time to be stingy right now.

I caught up to Laura quickly, catching her in my arms and halting our descent as I flew in the air using my hard light.

"You know I would've healed from the fall," Laura commented a little breathlessly.

"I'd rather not test if you could heal from being a puddle, thank you very much."

Laura gave a very unladylike snort at that, but before we could say anything else, Jean came flying down to us.

"Guys, the missiles," she reminded urgently as we turned back and scanned the open air, spotting them flying through the sky. They were already getting too low for comfort and we probably weren't going to be able to turn them back around at Asteroid M like we originally planned.

"Alright, new plan, we need to detonate them mid-air," I said, quickly taking off flying with Laura as Jean flew next to me.

The three of us quickly closed in on the missiles as Jean held her hand up to her head to concentrate she used her telekinesis to wrap around one of the missiles and squeezed hard, causing it to explode and send shockwaves through the air. Jean got sent flying back slightly, but my shroud of hard light protected me and Laura.

"It's too slow, you're not going to get them all and I'm running low on energy," I said. Looking at how many were left, I could see they were decently close together, so I had an idea.

"Jean, take Laura."

Jean flew over to us as Laura looked at me with confusion.

"What are you going to do?"

I smirked at her as I handed her off to Jean. "Something either really cool or really stupid."

Taking off towards the closest missile, I stopped using hard light and landed on it. Shifting my density, I stuck my hand through the missile and triggered the detonation. I had to use my super speed to react fast enough to take off running, jumping off the edge of the missile towards the next one as it exploded behind me. I could feel the heat on my back as I did it, the detonation happening a little too quickly for my tastes even if I could outrun it.

"Alright, one down, a lot more to go."

I continued in kind, using a combination of super speed and density manipulation to detonate the missiles, but we were starting to get close to the ground. Getting to the last two, I found they were a little too close together for my tastes, but I didn't have the time to hesitate.

I jumped onto one of them, doing the same thing as before and causing it to detonate before running towards the second. The problem was, that they were so close together that the first detonation ended up barely detonating the second one as well. I only had a moment to wrap myself in the hard light I had left before both missile detonations slammed into me, sending me plummetting from the sky towards a desert below.

I could feel burns on my body as I fell, but my healing factor started to work on healing them. It wasn't anywhere near as strong as Laura's, but I wasn't worried about any lasting injuries. I only managed to slow my descent somewhat by making myself less dense before I slammed into the ground. A crater formed on impact, sending waves of sand rushing away from me in waves.

Laying in the crater, I was disoriented and almost certain I had a concussion. Standing up dizzily, I quickly fell to one knee as I panted from exhaustion.

"Note to self, really need a passive durability power."

I'd been used to using Adamantium to protect myself, and if that failed I'd make myself denser, but both of those required active use. I needed to find someone naturally durable so that it was permanently active.

My vision was starting to get blurry as I realized the landing hand had shaken up a lot of my internal organs as the force ran through me. I coughed up some blood, even as I felt my healing factor go into overtime, empowered by the energy from Magneto's gem. 

I could barely tell as Laura and Jean landed on the ground and rushed towards me, Laura wrapping her arms around my body and helping me stand on unsteady feet.

"Casper, are you okay?" Laura quickly asked as I struggled to answer. Coughing up more blood was probably not the best idea to help them worry less, but I wasn't in the right headspace to explain that I was already healing.

"Laura," I could vaguely hear Jean call out as Laura turned away from me. There was some yelling, I think I saw some flashes of light before I collapsed on the ground. 

'Damn, I just need a nap.'

Shakily looking around, I saw some men with guns pointed at us as Jean tried to reason with them and Laura stood with her claws extended growling. That was the last thing I saw before I passed out.

----

I got moments of awareness as my body healed itself. I knew someone was transporting me somewhere, but right now everything was focused on recovering from tanking two missile explosions and a fall at terminal velocity. 

My body finally finished healing itself as I slept, and I opened my eyes to find myself in a cage. Looking around, it was completely barren with some form of clear glass boxing me in. Glancing at the ground, my technopathy didn't take long to figure out the mechanisms behind my current imprisonment.

'So I'm in a cage that's set to drop me out the bottom. I think I've got an idea who picked me up.'

It was while I was looking around that I got a message from Jean.

'Casper, you're awake,' she sent over to me telepathically. I'd never closed the small opening in my mental defenses to let her communicate with me, but I at the very least trusted her to not go rooting around in my head in this situation.

'Yeah, can you tell me what happened after I passed out?'

'Some government agents found us and asked us about the missiles. They started to try to take us in, and Laura ended up fighting them while I tried to defend you. She...she tore through them,' Jean projected, and I could hear her mental gulp as visions of Laura massacring soldiers flashed through her head.

'So how'd we end up captured then?'

Jean took what I assumed to be a moment to compose herself before she replied. 'I made a telepathic shield around the two of us, but it's hard for me to defend in all directions from constant gunfire, so we ended up surrendering. They took us each somewhere separate. Laura's still not awake so I think they're keeping her sedated.'

'Okay, give me a second to think.'

Closing my mind off from Jean for a moment, I ran through what I could figure out. I knew this was SHIELD that had captured us, I recognized the cage I was in as the one they put Loki in that was made for the Hulk. Iron Man had gone public a little while ago, and Bruce Banner was probably on the run, but the rest of the Avengers hadn't popped up yet as far as I was aware.

As I was thinking that, the door in front of my cage opened and a woman walked inside. She was dressed in a black suit that was almost certainly intentionally made to be too tight and had red hair.

"My captors decided to grace me with their presence," I said, leaning back against the wall of my cage.

"Casper Castillo, do you know who we are?" the woman, who was Black Widow, asked.

"Nope, not a clue. Care to enlighten me?" I was curious what exactly they wanted from me. I had no idea what SHIELD's relations to mutants were like, or if they were even aware of their existence at this point. I figured they probably were, but I couldn't be sure. I knew I could escape relatively easily, but I had to coordinate with Jean and find Laura first.

"We are aware you and your companions are mutants, and that you were involved in an attack by the terrorist Magneto."

'So they do know about mutants, and Magneto is a known threat to them. That makes things a little more complicated, I suppose.'

"We want to know everything that went on in that metal sphere of his," Black Widow finished.

I considered her words as I tried to decide how I wanted to handle this. There wasn't any real harm in telling them what Magneto's plan was initially, but it might cause more problems for mutants down the line, and since I was one, problems for me. I also just didn't want to comply with a government agency that'd threatened us after stopping missiles from landing and kidnapped us.

'Hmm, decisions, decisions.'