Weekend At Xavier's (Part Six)

After three hours of looking around, things were beginning to get frustrating. More searching and check-ins from the rest of the team bore no fruit.

I stopped to pee, while David checked in over the radio with our teammates, "Okay, Nori. Keep checking," He let out a sigh, ending the conversation just as I was finishing up, "Was this really where Cyclops told us to look? Where are the coordinates he gave?"

"On the jet," I replied, adjusting my junk properly inside of my uniform, "I know how to read coordinates, Prodigy. Emma couldn't ping him with Cerebra after the attack, but he popped up here right before Cyclops called me in. If anything changed, they would have let us know."

Emma or one of the Cuckoos would have given me a quick brain ring with new coordinates if he had gone somewhere else. If he was on the run, they would have let me know that as well. Jay hadn't gone anywhere. He was somewhere nearby.

David crossed his arms and leaned against the trunk of a tree, "Even if Jay had seen the Blackbird coming, if he'd have taken off to run away, one of us would have caught sight of him."

"One would think," I said, having finished relieving myself, "Just keep looking. It's all we can do. Put the technology in those specs of yours to good use."

Seriously, even if it was the middle of nowhere, how hard could it be to find a kid with big-ass red bird wings? No sign of him? Not even a fucking feather? It was Sunday! I only had so much weekend left!

Enough of the nature hike…

"Jay, you dick!" I shouted into the open air. David visibly cringed at the volume of my voice, "Come out already!"

David grabbed my shoulder, still alarmed at my sudden outburst, "What are you doing?"

"We're not hunting the dude. We're just looking for him," I said, explaining myself, "So, if he can hear me, he needs to bring his ass out!"

A paragon of sensitivity I most certainly was not. And, unfortunately, when you went around loudly talking shit, sometimes you paid the price for it. The saying, 'be careful what you wish for', was appropriate here.

From behind, both David and I were hit with enough force to send us both flying. We were knocked to the ground several feet away from each other. I pushed myself up as quickly as I could, while a dazed David scrambled to get his back against a tree to help him stand back up.

To his credit, the entire time he struggled to get up, he never stopped looking for the initial threat, "What the-? Jay?"

I followed David's line of sight to see the winged boy slowly lowering himself to stand on a tree limb high above us. True enough, it was Jay, shirtless and barefoot, only clad in jeans in the middle of winter. If that wasn't enough of a look, it wasn't even the most jarring thing about him.

His skin was pale and greenish, and not like 'sick and tired' pale and green. Unnaturally so. It went up into eyes, even.

Neither David nor I were foolish enough to think that any of what was about to happen next would end well. Still, I had to try and be civil. We weren't some search and destroy team. Fighting was supposed to be a last resort, especially with someone who was supposed to be one of us.

David was the first of us to try and reach out, "Jay, what happened to you? Where have you been?"

"Getting what I need," Jay said, scratching at his chest, "I feel... this feeling under my skin. It's like fire."

"Dude, have you been doing Kick? Is that still a thing?" Maybe Eddie had been on to something when he mentioned previously that Jay might have been doing drugs.

Jay must not have thought that my question was very valid, because he stopped focusing on himself and started focusing on me. Admittedly, I probably could have posed my query a bit more delicately.

And he could have refrained from trying to divebomb me in response.

I was able to avoid him by the slimmest of margins. Jay twisted in the air and landed on the trunk of a tree, hard enough to crack it, and pushed off to fly at me again. That time, David tackled me out of harm's way.

Gritting my teeth in anger, I lifted a fist to shoot Jay out of the sky, only for David to push my arm, "No!"

He threw off my aim, letting Jay get up into the air where he circled overhead.

"Prodigy! What the hell!?" I barked at him, using his codename. The assist with dodging was welcome. However, I was none too pleased by his interference with my shot. I didn't wait for a response, as there was a fight afoot, "Jay, get back down here!"

He did as I wished, diving down again, coming straight for me. I fired a blast at him, but he barrel-rolled past it and plowed into my chest with his shoulder. I had to admit, it had been a hell of a maneuver. Eddie-esque in its execution.

From where I'd been knocked flat on my back, a wheezed a deep breath and sat up, "Damn... was Icarus always this strong?" I asked, checking for broken ribs.

David shook his head, keeping his eyes on Jay as he flew through the trees, trying to throw us off, "He wasn't much for fighting, but he was never weak. This though..." He trailed off, "Something's wrong."

"Oh, you think?" I snapped sarcastically. I hadn't flown all that way to get beaten up, "Fuck this. I'm kicking his ass."

Before David could stop me, I charged off after Jay. If he wanted to scrap, I was exactly the right person to take him up on it.

I fired shots at him, but it was hard to get a bead on him when he was weaving through the forest. I couldn't bend light, and there was nothing to reflect my shots off of, so the most I wound up hitting was trees.

'If this was an open field, I'd have his ass,' I thought to myself. It was little relief. Jay could come right back at me and attack, but now that I was warmed up, he didn't so much as graze me again.

We were both stuck, unable to hit each other, until during one of Jay's flying rushes, I ducked behind a tree, with the plan to shoot him from behind the moment he flew past. Instead of flying past, he stopped his momentum and used a branch to swing around the side of the tree to kick me.

Even if it took me getting hit to get him up close, I was fine with that. I was pretty good at hand-to-hand combat. I stumbled back, but the moment I planted my foot and stopped myself, I lashed out with a high kick. The son of a bitch swatted it away with his wing!

Fortunately, I'd taken my share of knocks from Wolverine and Laura. And one thing I'd learned was that just because one thing failed, didn't mean you stopped everything altogether. Jay's wing swatted my kick away and spun me around, but I went with the momentum and fired a concussive blast over my shoulder that hit him dead center and sent him flying back into a tree.

Just because we were fist-fighting didn't mean my powers were off the table. He'd used his, after all.

By this point, David had caught up with us. He bore witness to Jay getting right up from my counterattack. I hope he was just as surprised as I was. Probably not as disheartened though.

"Come on..." I whispered to myself as Jay rolled his neck and I heard bones and joints pop, "That shot would have put down a charging bull. How is he standing?"

"Jay has enhanced regeneration," David mentioned.

I didn't care. That shouldn't have mattered. I got all of that one, "A shot like that would have put Laura out. A shot like that would have had Santo picking up pieces of himself."

Even Jay seemed surprised that he was getting up. Surprised, and very pleased, "It's true," He chuckled to himself, looking at his hands, "Things are different now. No more feeling sorry for myself! No more letting other people use me! I'm not weak! I'll find my own answers!"

"Who are you talking to?" David called over to him, because he clearly hadn't been speaking to either of us, "Jay, it's us. What are you doing? Come on, man. Let's just go home."

Jay scoffed at the idea, "Home?"

To his credit, David kept trying, for the sake of his former teammate, "Yeah, back to the school. Back to Xavier's."

Jay let it be known that he had little to no fond feelings of the place, "You mean the place my mom shipped me off to because didn't want to deal with me anymore?" He said hatefully, "She never knew how I felt after Julia..." He trailed off, not wanting to say anymore.

I looked between the two of them, completely at a loss, "Who the fuck is Julia?" I asked. Why did everyone's baggage keep coming back to screw me over? "Stop. Bringing. Up. Stuff. I. Wasn't. Here. For."

Apparently, saying some girl's name was a trigger, because Jay flew across the short distance and pounced on me, pinning me to the ground with both hands around my throat before I knew what hit me.

"You're dead," Jay seethed as he strangled me.

I instinctually started prying his hands away from my neck, only to realize that he was in prime position to catch two scoops. I shot him off of me with concussive blasts, this time with both hands. He went flying head-over-heels up into the air, only to right himself with his wings.

I kipped up to my feet, and could feel the size of the scowl on my face, "You really wanna kill me? You better have something more than your flying cream puff tackles up your sleeve."

I didn't know what Jay's issue was. I didn't know what was enhancing him. But it didn't matter. He moved faster, hit harder, and was more vicious than he should have been, enough so that it was overwhelming to someone like David.

...But by that point, I was beyond used to that kind of crap. So, Jay wasn't much of a fighter? Well, we were about to put that to the test, because just being aggressive wasn't going to fix that all of a sudden.

By then, David had seen enough of my tendencies to know when I was about to go off, "Don't hurt him!" He called out in an effort to stop me.

I spared half a glance his way, though I was still glowing, "You just said he has enhanced regeneration! Elixir can fix whatever I do to him anyway."

"And Wallflower can make him calm down!" David argued back.

I couldn't help but admit, he had a point, "...Well, what are you waiting for then? Call them!" I snapped.

"I already called them when you took off running after Jay!"

I guess I needed to give them a signal to follow, then, "In the meantime, we're going with my plan then!" Which was beat the shit out of Jay until he stopped trying to beat the shit out of me.

I boosted myself into the air through my feet, straight at Jay. He was able to flap his wings and push himself just out of my way, but I immediately laid off the jets and from a position above him blasted him down toward the ground.

Jay crashed through bare branches and tree limbs before hitting the ground face down. Before he could even start to move, I dropped from the air and controlled my fall, landing directly with the point of my knee in the small of his back. A move like that was designed to make a man a paraplegic.

It was fine. He would heal. And if he couldn't heal himself, Josh could do it.

Without the use of his lower body, that left his arms and wings to flail wildly, gasping in pain until he finally blacked out. I looked over at David, and the look on his face was priceless. Granted, it probably looked extremely violent from his perspective... and to be fair, it was.

Me kneeling over Jay's motionless body was the sight all of the others arrived to see. In what was probably my wisest move of the day, I got the hell off of him before Jay's older brother Sam could see what I'd done to defeat him.

"Right..." I coughed, trying not to look conspicuous. Fortunately, Jay hadn't beaten me up very badly, and with his whole regeneration schtick, he was already healing up as well. Good, because there had been a black bruise across his back where I'd landed, "...So, when he wakes up, Wallflower, do your pheromone thing and make him chill out," I instructed, "Don't want him tearing up the Blackbird..."

"Tearing up the Blackbird?" Noriko repeated questioningly. She stopped near Jay to appraise the dirt and grass all over him, "Did you have to beat the shit out of him?"

The question seemed to be unanimous opinion amongst the lot of them. Clearly, no one else there had surmised just how badly I'd beaten the shit out of him, or there likely would have been more outrage.

"Ask Prodigy," I said, fully done with the day I'd just had.

Thankfully, David corroborated in my defense, even though I'd just pummeled someone who'd been a friend of his, "Yeah, he kind of did. Jay just... went nuts."

He didn't know how to explain it, and neither did I. Josh jogged over and kneeled down by him to check him over, "Whoa, shit!" He quickly jumped back when a green substance started leaking out of Jay's ear and onto the ground.

Sam was quick to his brother's side out of concern, "Elixir, what the hell is that? Solaris, what did you do?"

"I didn't hit him that hard," I said. I didn't hit him that hard in the head, at least.

After the green goo had left Jay's body, his skin went back to its normal tone. No green tinge to note of.

Well, at least there was a new, less personal reason to take Jay back to the school; to figure out just what had been done to him.