Loose Ends (Part One)

The mysterious hole hidden in the back of the Mets' stadium carried us to a new destination altogether. How had Roekel been able to hide a hole in Citi Field leading to the sewers of NYC?

…A lot of us weren't fans of that development. Yet, we explored regardless.

"This place smells like ass," Wing remarked astutely, trying to cover his nose as best he could.

Hellion rolled his eyes and strode ahead, taking point in our formation, "Duh, dude. It's a sewer. Of course, it smells like ass."

"I'm burning this uniform once this mission is over," Armor asserted seriously. I absolutely believed she would, regardless if it would piss off our superiors, "Even if I wash the smell out, I'm pretty sure there'll be this phantom odor, you know? Like, looking at this suit will make me feel like I'm smelling it."

Unpleasant scent aside, we'd had to deal with a few automated defenses, but nothing that couldn't be destroyed in a matter of seconds. The fact that there had been anything put up to deal with intruders must have meant we were on the right track.

After a few hiccups getting to that point, it felt like we were rolling. Sure, Hellion and Wing had gotten a bit banged up, and... the more I thought about it, the more I realized things might not have been going as smoothly as I felt they were. After all, we were walking next to a river of shit. Seemed like a metaphor of some sort.

Mercury let out a sigh – a risky endeavor, taking a deep breath inside of a sewer. Then again, she didn't need to breathe, "I really though this whole X-Men thing would be more... I dunno."

"-Glamorous?" Wing finished in his girlfriend's stead, "Same. All the stories you ever hear about are the big battles to save the world or help people. Never stuff like this."

To be fair, they gave all of us full disclosure about the danger from day one. For fuck's sake, there was a graveyard on campus. The more mundane unpleasant things like this were likely to slip one's mind.

We were able to find our way through the veritable maze before us because of the Cuckoos leading us from afar via Cerebra. They could still feel Quire and used that to keep us pointed in the right direction. This was good, as I would have felt terrible about doing it the old-fashioned way - by dragging a tracker along with us who could show us where to go by scent. Laura and Nicky would have had a bad time down with us in the sewer.

"You're close to Quentin," We all heard the Cuckoos say in unison in our heads, "Everyone, be careful."

We were already on high alert, but still, their direction was too vague to act on, "...Just how close is close?" I asked aloud.

The answer to that question was received when the sewer began to shake and tear itself apart around us. The ceiling fell down, causing our group to split to avoid getting buried. Enough of a wall collapsed that I could see daylight, and I took it, blasting out the rest so I and whoever managed to follow me out could escape.

I almost fell into the East River, along with Pixie and Armor. By the time I turned around to get more of us out, the way we'd come from closed off.

"Damn it!" I shouted before calming down. The others were with Hellion. With his powers, he could protect them all from a cave-in, "Hellion, come in. What's the situation on your side?"

It took a moment for him to respond, but when he did, I could hear crashing and other noises in the background, "Everyone's fine, but we're kind of busy right now, Marcher!"

That sounded like they were in a fight, if I ever heard. Crap. They separated us before taking their pick of who to go after. We'd been whittling them down up to that point, taking down three of theirs up to that point.

"Bel, look!"

As I'd contemplated finding a way to get back into the sewers from another opening, the ship we'd been pursuing started to rise from the river. If it surfaced from such a hiding place in the middle of the city, risking revealing itself in such a way, that meant it was about to take off.

Pixie was the one that pointed it out, "If that thing gets away, we'll have to find it all over again," She bemoaned.

"No way," I growled, charging as much energy between my hands as I could in short order, "I would rather have sex with a running blender than chase this stupid thing down again!"

Armor went wide-eyed and took a safe step away when she realized that I was charging a Lux Bomb again. There was no need to be too scared though. It wasn't like it was as big as the one I used in Limbo. I didn't have time for that, and it wasn't a good idea to use something that strong in the middle of New York City anyway.

We hadn't had any weapons on the Blackbird to fight with when the ship had shot us down before, but we weren't on the Blackbird now.

*BOOM!*

We weren't on the Blackbird, and I was better than any cannon that could be mounted to a plane like that to begin with. The Lux Bomb impacted off of the side of the spaceship as it started rising above the water. The sight of the explosion ripping out a whole side of the thing, along with the sound of it splashing back into the water was extremely satisfying.

It was the time to pounce... but the team.

The team was split, true, but Hellion had been a squad leader at a point in time. Mercury's squad leader, in fact. And Wing was good enough to figure into that equation on his own. My first thought was that they could handle it. It was quickly snuffed out by the thought that even if they could, it was playing into the enemy's plans. Just because my crew could probably deal with the ambush, didn't mean it was smart to leave them to do so.

Of course, if an attack of that sort was launched while the ship had tried to take off, the ambush had likely been a diversion to allow the ship to evade us. I had grounded it, but who knew for how long?

In the end, it didn't matter. Splitting us up once today wound up with Cess and Hellion both getting injured. We weren't doing that again.

Armor apparently shared my brain, and preempted anything I was going to say, "Pixie, can you teleport me back into the sewer?" She asked.

Pixie alternated between staring at Armor and at the downed ship, "What? But the bad guys are stuck right there," She pointed out.

Armor nodded and nudged me, "Yeah, and if it somehow tries to take off again, I'm sure Sol can just blast it back down to earth," She said, "Pop me in, pop back out to back him up, and you two can get a closer look. Can you do it?"

Pixie still seemed hesitant to drop another of her allies off into the fray, but when she looked at me and I nodded my consent, she gave in, "Yeah," She confirmed, moving close to Armor, "I'll be right back," She said to me.

I gave her a small smile and turned my eyes to Armor, "Be careful."

She rolled her eyes in return, "Please. You have more of a habit of getting hurt during these things than I do," She remarked cheekily, "See you in a minute."

"Sihal novarum chinoth!"

One pink portal around the two of them later, and I started running along the riverside to get closer to the ship. Pixie wouldn't be long. Hopefully the others would follow soon, but with the numbers they had, they should have been fine.

I had been told in the past that I lacked a sense of self-preservation. This was just another example of that flaw in my operating procedure. Sure, sending backup helped them, but what about me? I had isolated myself for the time being. And I had no idea what else there was in store for me. Still, I had to at least keep close to the ship. It was what we were there for, after all.

And by 'keep close', I meant 'go inside'. It wasn't like it was hard. After all, I'd blown a gigantic hole into the side of it. Surprisingly buoyant, it hadn't started sinking to the bottom of the river yet. To my abundant good fortune, the hole in the ship led to the room where we'd last seen Jay and Quire's container.

Ha! Congratulations on playing yourself, Van Roekel. That's what you get for making the observation window inside your ship tougher than your ship's exterior.

It didn't take me long to find Quire's container. It had X-Men branding on it, and was the only thing in the room with glowing goop in it. My only problem was that I'd have to lug it out of there myself for the time being. Oh well. I was a strapping young lad. I could throw it over my shoulders like Atlas and power it out of there until someone else stronger than me could take it off my hands.

I didn't really want to be that close to Quire, but at least he wasn't able to get into my head and say anything to me.

"Took you long enough, douchebag."

Crap. Strike that last thing.

"Jesus," I muttered as I squeezed the two of us through the opening I'd just come through, "What, did you spend all the time you've been shut up training? Just so you could yap at me again?" I might have been flattered if I hadn't been so annoyed.

"I've been asleep, asshole," Quire rebutted, " You know how boring it gets staying in here doing jack shit but watching you losers? Sometimes I doze off for a while."

Asleep? For weeks? Because I hadn't heard a peep out of him in forever. I thought it was because I'd had Ruth practice her telepathy on me, and she shoved defenses in my head. Wishful thinking, perhaps, "Oh, so fucking with me wasn't entertaining enough for you?"

"It kinda loses its luster when you already hate yourself more than I could ever egg you on to."

Ouch. Hurtful, yes, but not wholly inaccurate. Whatever. Once I dropped him back in Dr. McCoy's lab, I could go back to trying to ignore his existence and antagonizing him whenever I couldn't. As a matter of fact, I figured I might as well get a head-start on that latter thing.

"Fine," I conceded as I boost-jumped us from the waterlogged ship back to the riverbank, "But if you're going to keep fucking with me while you're awake, I request that instead of Marcher, or whatever nasty name you want to throw my way, you refer to me as 'The Face That Runs The Place'. We can find a way to shorten that for convenience."

"Hard pass," Quire replied, "...But now that you mention faces... I think it's time I meet you face-to-face."

I knocked on the container illustratively, and also to mess with him, "How you gonna do that, trapped in there?"

"I'm not trapped in here, idiot," Quire said meanly. Before I could ask a follow-up question, he sent a warning my way, "...Heads up."

A sleek, black armored suit shot up from the crashed ship and hurtled toward me, green exhaust spilling from the jets that propelled it.

Not keen on dealing with whatever the unidentified flying object was, I started blasting. A green defensive field formed around the suit that nullified my attack. Once it fell, the individual in the suit retaliated by firing green energy rockets at me. They were fast. Faster than most energy projectiles I was used to having shot at me.

And they exploded too. So, when I dodged, I still got knocked away from the force of the blast.

I hit the ground and slid across the dirt on my side, feeling the skin on my arm get torn up. That would suck later, but it wasn't the kind of thing that would slow me down. I popped back up and managed to get off a shot to keep the enemy at bay. He stopped coming my way but threw up his stupid energy field again. Even if I didn't turn the tide right then and there, I'd bought myself a chance to get up and try again.

As the suit got closer, I was able to see the face behind the visor. It was the same face as the man on the screen we'd confronted when we'd first boarded the ship. Dr. Niles Van Roekel.

I laughed while I stood, setting Quire's container to the side. I couldn't rightly carry him around and fight at the same time, "Didn't think you'd get your own hands dirty on this one. Aren't you a man of science?"

As if that meant anything. There were plenty of intellectual individuals capable of opening up a cap of whoop-ass. I knew at least two in Dr. McCoy and Dr. Richards. I was just trying to needle the guy.

It seemed to work too, as Dr. Van Roekel scoffed at what I was insinuating, "As if you and your ilk have left me any alternative," He gazed down at the arm of his suit and flexed his fingers, "And true, my Turlin race's genetic makeup denies me the instinct and talent for aggression and war... but I've had a very long time to observe the beings of this planet. Earth has given me more study material than I could have imagined."

Hooray, Earth. Undisputed champions of violence in the Milky Way galaxy.

"All of my research has gone into this Minutemen suit," Van Roekel said, "With this? I'm capable of holding my own and overcoming even you mutants."

So, really good technology was the key to beating me? Yeah, to be fair, I guess Saberwolf routinely stomped me, but I still didn't buy it, and I let him know as much.

"Just stomping around in a fancy suit isn't going to secure you a win in a fight. Not against us, anyway," That being said, the armored exoskeleton he wore looked very familiar. In fact, I felt like I'd seen something like it before, "I've been seeing a lot of lame-ass suits like yours lately."

Dr. Van Roekel seemed to pause in thought before nodding, "Yes, you may have come across some of my previous, lesser designs," He said, "They seemed to be very effective, even when their wearers brazenly attacked your home. Imagine how much more effective they would have been with the slightest use of strategy."

It took me a second, but not too long, as I'd been thinking about the Purifiers' attack on the school in the first place. When it clicked, I felt it in my bones. Dr. Van Roekel took advantage of my clearly shocked reaction and went right for me.

When he fired more exploding energy blasts at me, I snapped out of it and managed to avoid the danger this time. He dashed in and turned the arm of his suit into a blade to try and run me through. He made eye contact with me on his approach though, and I gave him a little taste of having an industrial laser shine in his eye.

He flinched on his way to me and his stab attempt went wide. Being that he was so close, I returned fire with a hard punch while he was wide open.

Hitting a metal suit with my fleshy fist worked just as well as you could imagine. The bones in hand didn't like it one bit. Fortunately, I'd doubled up on my offense. The same punch that punished my hand came with a correspondingly powerful concussive blast behind it, which sent Dr. Van Roekel ass-over-teakettle across the ground.

"Dumbass."

Shut up, Quire. It was half of a good idea. That counted for something, right?

"No. How have you not gotten everyone killed yet if this is how you fight?"

I could have done without the distraction. Just because I'd leveled Van Roekel, didn't mean he was about to give up. I'd hurt him though, which was good on the surface, but he must not have been kidding about the suit upping his aggression, because it seemed to anger him.

He sneered at me from behind his cracked visor as he stood. Shoulder compartments rose from his suit, glowing green and set to fire whatever they contained within, "Another thing I learned from the Purifiers - that fighting you mutants is a magnificent test for my creations. The data I've obtained through my Imperfects will give rise to my ultimate masterpiece."

As if I needed the reminder that part of the hardships we'd dealt with lately happened because of this tool outfitting our genocidal enemies, "Thanks, by the way, for giving me a new reason to want to kick your ass," I told him.

"Do you think you can?" Dr. Van Roekel asked, tauntingly.

I bared my teeth at him, "Allow me to answer with-," I fired at him with both hands. He took off into the air, avoiding my shots and let off energy rockets that screamed through the air after me.

I took off running, looking and firing over my shoulder to pick off the incoming missiles. I got most of them, but two still got close enough to explode near me. When I realized I wasn't going to hit them, I blasted the ground and sent myself flying before I could take the hits.

Better to hurt myself and get away than stay close and let him hurt me worse.

I landed ungracefully in a nearby parking lot. There was a lot of rolling on asphalt and cursing. I could imagine that it wasn't a pretty sight, but I wound up on my feet. That's the moral of the story, everyone. As long as you somehow wind up back on your feet, everything will be alright. Or something like that.

And then, because just shooting stuff at me had either proven ineffective, or must have gotten boring, Van Roekel started chucking motor vehicles at me. I saw the shadow of the first one looming over me, quickly growing bigger, and got out of the way just as a Daewoo Lanos would have turned me into a solar-powered stain on the pavement.

In a stroke of bad luck, between Citi Field and Flushing Bay, there was a goddamn expressway, which meant between that and the parking lot we were in, there was no shortage of his new ammunition of choice. There were still people in the cars he grabbed from the expressway too, so part of the p.r. that was beaten into our heads by the X-Men came up. I couldn't just light one of those cars up like the Fourth of July while Van Roekel was holding it. The last thing we needed was the press that would come with that. This by itself was probably going to be bad enough.

To make matters worse, he was smiling. I could see it. He was enjoying it. For as much as he was a brilliant scientist to create all that he had, it turned out he was just another psychopath. Fine. That meant I could treat him like one.

My next plan of attack worked on the bigger, more thickly armored exosuits the Purifiers used, and when I took a good look at his sleeker suit design, I figured it would here as well.

Dr. Van Roekel flew in front of another car flying down the expressway, snatching it off of the ground as it went to brake and swerve around him. Hefting it over his head, he turned to take aim at me, but I'd already taken aim at him.

From my dominant hand, I flung a light blade his way. Curving through the air like a boomerang, I caught him in the left knee. His lower body was much less armored than his upper half.

Everything seemed to freeze for a moment. I caught the look of shock on his face when he realized what had happened. Then, he looked down at the missing limb, and that was when physics seemed to remember that he was now terribly off-balance with a panel van hanging over his head.

He fell over, the van landed on top of him. It was great. Well, not great for the guy driving the van, probably. But it was better than if Van Roekel had wound up throwing him at me.

I breathed a sigh of relief and took a moment to catch my breath.

"Damn, Marcher. Make a bigger mess next time, why don't you?"

I stopped and looked around at the catastrophe the rather short fight had caused. Craters from Van Roekel's missiles, destroyed streetlights, torn up earth, and of course several cars strewn about. Literally none of that had been my fault. We'd started down by the bay, where there had been no people or automobiles.

Still... being a superhero, I probably needed to get on helping those people quickly.

"Ungh..."

-After I finished the job, of course.

Van Roekel managed to roll the van off of his body. He tried to get back up, the jets on his suit firing up with the green energy source he'd been using. I lifted a hand and shot him directly in the back with an explosive blast, which did wonders when combined with whatever combustion system he had going on with his armor.

"GAH!" Van Roekel exclaimed as he dropped to the ground, his back smoking. The area where his jets had been situated was completely ruined, the protective material of the armor stripped away from the blast to reveal the internal workings and damaged flesh underneath.

I walked him down as he tried to crawl away. He turned and looked over his shoulder, raising a hand to fire a shot of his own at me, so I shot him with another explosive blast again. From the outside looking in, this probably didn't seem very heroic. It seemed more like an execution at this point than the conclusion of a hot-blooded fight. With my luck, someone was recording this too, just like every other incident I ever had in public.

Standing over him, I kept my hand pointed at his face, glowing with the obvious threat of ending his life. The thing was though, I wanted answers, "So, you said already why you went after mutants for your little experiments. Why'd you want Quire? So you could turn him like Jay?"

Van Roekel's breath came out in labored pants and wheezes. It sounded like he was dying, "I need an improved method to control my army."

So, he wanted to exploit Quire's telepathy? Probably to find a way to incorporate it into the way he controlled the rest of his minions. 'Imperfects', I think he called them at one point. What a demeaning way to refer to your own group.

"An army? You had six guys," I said six, because I wasn't counting Jay. We were dragging his ass home and tying him down until we got whatever was in him out of his system, "You couldn't beat us. The X-Men who've been doing this for years would have done you up worse than we did."

At that, he seemed to resign himself to the fact that he was beaten. The power supply to his suit had stopped working, as the green glow it previously had to it vanished, "I was the last hope for my people. All of my plans... everything I have done..." He trailed off weakly, "Your race has doomed mine, Earthling. I hope you can live with that."

He went limp, and I stayed in place for a moment. When he didn't move again, I lowered my hand and walked away. There was no need to fire another shot. He was finished.

In the interim, Pixie, Wing, and Mercury turned up, flying into the scene. Wing set Mercury down while Pixie darted over to me, "Jesus, Bel! What happened? Are you okay?" She asked me.

I waved off her concern and pointed to the wrecked vehicles around us, "Help them. Make sure they're good, guys. I'm gonna go get Quire," I said, walking off to the waterfront where I'd left the container.

It didn't take long to find it. All I had to do was follow the trail of mayhem Van Roekel and I had created back to where it had started. The container hadn't budged from where I'd stuck it upright in the dirt. As I approached, I did a little spin, skip, and a hop as a victory dance, just to be a jerk. I don't know why. It wasn't like had eyes. Did he even need eyes?

"So, that's done," I said, "I'm gonna call Armor and Hellion to see if they beat the other bad guys, then we're gonna wrap this whole thing up."

I had no idea why I was talking to him. Maybe because I needed to talk to someone after what had just happened. Pixie had tried to dote on me, but it was still a little too weird for me to be around her. It was fine when we were working together in the heat of danger, but when things slowed down, I couldn't ignore the awkwardness.

A few steps away, Quire's voice in my head brought me to a stop.

"Before that, Marcher. Want to see something cool?"

There was something ominous in the way he posed that question, "...No."

"Too bad, liar."

With that, Quire's container burst apart entirely, sending shards of metal and glass-like material flying. I covered up, prepared to be bombarded with the shrapnel, only for every single piece to stop in mid-air. Some, inches away from tearing me to shreds. This was what I saw when I opened my eyes, as well as the green ooze that comprised what had been Quentin's body taking corporeal form.

He was a skinny kid my age with brown hair in a swept back mohawk. He had little muscle definition, and I could tell because homeboy did not reform his body with any clothes on. I'm talking naked, next to a body of water in the middle of winter. It didn't seem to bother him though. It bothered him less than his hair color, it seemed.

"Tch," He let some of his hair dangle over his eyes before sweeping it back with his hands, "Gotta get this shit dyed A.S.A.P."

Hearing the voice that had been in my head for so long in person was more jarring than I thought it would be. As if he sensed my thoughts (because; fucking telepath), Quire turned his beady eyes to me, a smirk plastered on his face.

"Well-well-well," He drawled, "We finally meet in the flesh, Marcher."

"Okay, what the fuck?" I shouted aloud, "Could you have done that this whole time? Put yourself back together?"

"Yeah," Quire admitted shamelessly, "Since a little while after you showed up, actually."

I wanted to pull my own hair out from frustration. So much of this could have been prevented if this Quire had just done something back when things went sideways at the school. Clearly, he was capable of it, "Why didn't you stop Jay from taking you from Beast's lab then? Or after he got you to the ship? I know you knew what that Van Roekel guy was going to do with you."

Quire started cackling, "I was counting on it," He said, "Imagine the look on his face when he tried to crack me open and found himself dealing with an Omega-level psychic. Would've been priceless."

This little troll...

I was about to snap at him about being a moron, but was succinctly reminded of the deadly shards of material only being kept from flying into my face by the grace of absurd telekinetic control, "Omega-level?"

That could be a big problem.

"That's right, crotch stain," Quire's voice lowered, and I could feel the malice in his tone, "Thought you were pretty badass, didn't you? Leading your own team of losers. But Kid Omega is the 'Face That Runs The Place'. I like that. I think I'll keep it for myself."

I felt myself swallow a massive lump down my throat, "Omega-level doesn't mean you're the strongest. Just that you have the potential to be," My words probably didn't sound as confident as I wanted them to, but it was true.

Quire rolled his eyes at my attempt to explain away the potential threat he posed, "Yeah, blah-blah-blah. I took the same classes you did. I know what it means. But if you think I can't live up to that potential..." It may have been the way the moonlight hit him, but there was a dangerous shimmer in his eyes, "...Why don't you blast me in the face the way you do everybody else you don't like?"

My fingers twitched at my side. It felt like an old western, with two outlaws waiting on the high noon showdown.

"Do it. You can take him."

The words sounded in my head, and despite sounding like my voice, I wasn't quite that dumb and confrontational. There wouldn't have been much of a doubt in who would have won a quickdraw challenge here. After all, even if Quire didn't have a defense prepared to stop my shot, he had dozens of deadly little helpers ready to skewer me in an instant.

I knew this already. But the sheer fact that he put me on the spot made me want to try it anyway. And I knew that he knew it too. Actually, him trying to nudge me that way with his telepathy managed to push me further away from a rash decision.

"...Because I'm on the clock," I eventually said. While I was stupid enough to try someone as powerful as Quire who called me on it, I wouldn't do it while I was supposed to be responsible for other people, "If you ask again later, I might just take you up on it."

Oh yeah. Smooth as Egyptian whiskey.

"Whatever, Marcher," Quire scoffed before pointing to his own head, "Just remember, your hands ain't faster than my brain. Ten million thoughts per second. I'll see you coming in slow motion... whenever you decide to try me."

With that, he let the deadly debris fall harmlessly to the ground, including the stuff that had been poised to turn me to Swiss cheese. When he took off flying away from me, I couldn't help but release a breath of relief I'd been holding on to.

I wasn't worth it. At least, not right then, I wasn't. I could literally live with that.