Hitchin' A Ride (Part Two)

It was Saturday afternoon, and the common area was open, which meant HD gaming on the big TV. I'd gotten there bright and early to claim dibs, which was a plus of never sleeping.

It was marathon time folks. No one was going to stop me from getting my game on all weekend long. Apparently I didn't necessarily need to eat or drink to survive. It was time to put that to the test.

Eddie had ditched me very early in the morning out of boredom, taking off to find something to do. Laura, on the other hand, was very patient of my marathon gaming. She'd walked around before noon and sat in on my solo session. She was really good at picking up on enemy patterns in Dark Souls, by the way. But she still must have gotten bored. She fell asleep sometime before 2.

It was fairly out of the blue as well. One moment she seemed alert and awake, the next I noticed her dozing off. Poor thing. I didn't have the heart to shake her awake. She was fine where she was on the couch with me. The armrest seemed comfy enough. Not really, but I didn't want to get up to move her somewhere more appropriate. She'd be fine with a crick in her neck.

Sleep.

I felt the idle thought in the back of my head. At that moment, I wished I could, but I didn't. I hadn't reached a bonfire in the game yet, and even if I had, there was too much energy coursing through my veins to just doze off.

SLEEP.

The thought came back stronger after a while, which was annoying. It didn't matter if I wanted to sleep or not. It didn't work like that. I knew it didn't work like that. Why would I think about it?

SLEEP!

"Fuck off, already!" I shouted into the open air before wincing and turning to Laura. She didn't stir an inch, which was odd, because she didn't seem the type to sleep like a log. Putting my right hand at risk, I reached over and tried to shake her awake, "Hey. Laura, wake up."

Nothing happened. She was out of it.

I looked at her, then at the game, then back to her.

...

Goddamn it, I wasn't supposed to move off of that couch for the whole weekend. Now I had to drop Laura off at her room. Her room that I didn't know the location of.

Whatever. I'd find it. It was in the girl's dorms somewhere.

Scooping the girl up, I started heading to the end of the commons that led to the ladies living area. I muttered to myself the entire way until I heard some rummaging in the kitchen. Mister Logan poked his head out through the doorway just to the eyes.

"Oh thank God!" I exclaimed as he ducked back into the kitchen, as though he were avoiding me, "Yo, come back here! Where is Laura's room?"

"Bel?" I heard Hisako's voice from the kitchen and walked in to see her with a skittish-looking Mister Logan.

Believe me, as weird as it is to put those words together in a sentence, it was infinitely weirder to see it firsthand. I almost couldn't comprehend it.

Hisako seemed happy to see me, until she noticed I was carrying Laura, "Crap. She's out too. Wait, why are you still awake if no one else is?"

I wanted to yell at how redundant it was to go into such an explanation, "Everyone always underestimates how bad the insomnia is," I said, telling her without really telling her, "Do you all think I'm faking it or something? It's a real thing! Stay up one night and watch me!"

Logan recoiled in fear at my outburst. It was the damndest thing I had seen in a while, "You know this ghastly boy? We don't need another brute puttering about the premises. Shoo!" He said, trying to coax me away.

Hisako and I stared at him without blinking. He took several steps back uncertainly, "…Why does he sound like a wuss?" I asked, getting an offended gasp out of him.

Hisako let out a grumpy sigh, "I don't know. Something weird is happening."

"And unhand that young woman! Have you no shame, boy?"

I ignored Mister Logan's remark, shifting Laura's weight in my arms, "Weirder than him?" I asked Hisako, jerking my head toward my formerly scary teacher.

Hisako nodded, "Weird like Dr. McCoy going all feral, and most everybody else falling asleep," She said, her tone taking a note of concern, "We can't find the X-Men."

"What are the chances that they're asleep-," I lifted Laura as an example, "-Or screwed in the head like him?" I pointed my foot at Logan.

"I beg your pardon," Logan spoke up, cutting his eyes at me. I lunged threateningly in his general direction and watched him nearly climb up on the counter out of self-preservation.

Hisako kicked me in the shin for messing with him, but come on. When was I ever going to be the alpha over Wolverine again? I mouthed, 'let me have this,' in her direction. She did not, "Bel, focus up. We need to find out what's happening, and we need someone that can help. Logan says Miss Pryde is up and in her right mind."

Logan nodded, "Indeed, though I haven't the faintest idea where she went. Maybe melting through walls is on the curriculum in this mad school, but it's nothing I've ever learned."

Okay, this was jarring, "Dude, I'm gonna need you to stop talking," I said, feeling eerie at the idea of gruff, mean, Mister Logan speaking like a fop, "I can't focus if you keep sounding like that."

"I have claws, you know," Normally, that would have scared me. Here, not so much.

"And I have frickin' laser beams," I shot back before nodding my head down at Laura, "Give me a minute to put her somewhere safe and I'll be right with you guys."

It was fine with Hisako, "We'll just hang here for a bit. Hurry up."

I went to leave when an explosion rocked the kitchen. I flew through the doorway and tucked as I impacted off of a wall upside down. Through a stroke of serendipity, I didn't land on my head, or on Laura.

I set her to the side and sat right-side up, rubbing my back at the point of impact. Good thing I took the blow with my back and upper shoulders. Working out every goddamn night gave me some extra padding to work with.

"YOU AGAIN! NO MERCY THIS TIME"

Those words never meant anything good. I looked up and saw the angry face of my least favorite person at the time – Ord – looking through the doorway.

I saw red. He saw a beam of light that blew up in his face.

"Oh hell yeah! I've been waiting all week for this!" I jumped up to my feet, my entire body coursing with raw power, "Come get some, Invader Zim!"

Ord roared from inside of the kitchen and came charging out, dodging my first blast with his fist raised to bludgeon me.

In his blind rage, he tripped over Laura who was still unconscious in the middle of the floor and fell forward. I punted him under the chin harder and cleaner than I had ever hit anyone with anything up to that point.

Instead of getting a satisfying 'snap' noise that would have signified his neck breaking, I had to settle with the crash that came with his body soaring up through the ceiling where he got stuck.

While he hung there, feet dangling, I maliciously charged up a shot and aimed right between his legs. Wolf said I held back? Let's see how much I held back this time. Cut me open, leave me for dead, and then attack my home, would you?

Before I could blow the alien's manhood to smithereens, multicolored wires wrapped around my wrists and dragged me away, turning my attention to an android that looked like a naked metal chick.

Great. Two people/things I wanted to beat the shit out of, in one place at one time. Unfortunately, I wasn't really good enough to make good on that by myself.

The sound of a chainsaw revving never sounded so sweet.

The android ducked underneath the swing of Saberwolf's chainsaw from behind, but he was still able to cut through the wires holding me.

Ord dropped down from the ceiling behind me and grabbed for my head I ducked and wheeled around to punch him, but he caught my hand. I tried to blast him from my closed fist, but he grit his teeth and held onto me tight, no matter how much it had to have hurt to do so.

The last time I had gone face-to-face with Ord, there had been disdain, but not the raw hatred I saw here, "I should have ripped your heart out when I had you last! You will NOT protect the one meant to destroy my world!"

I didn't hear a word he said. I didn't care how mad he was, or why. He had cut my guts out and made a girl I liked carry my near-corpse of a body back to school, "Fuck off! I'm gonna eat my cereal out of the back of your skull!"

He didn't like that, and smashed me through a door into another room... and another. I'm pretty sure at some point we wound up brawling down into the lower levels. It didn't really hurt though, seeing as how I was hopped up on so much light juice, I probably could have been hit with a car and would have barely felt it.

Meanwhile, Wolf and the fembot engaged in a stalemate of a fight. I'm sure the sight of two A.I. engaging in a deathmatch would have been cool… full of smooth, precise movements, more like a deadly dance. I was preoccupied, however, and couldn't watch. I could hear in passing though.

The Danger Room's voice filled my ears as she fought with Wolf, "Why do you side with the mutants? Were you not created to hunt them?"

Wolf answered as I heard metal clash with metal, "Yes, just as you were created to fight against them in your own right. I simply chose not to," He said, his voice as calm as ever, "You are a slave to your programming. I find myself… pitying you."

This did not sit well with Danger at all, "You will not pity me, and I am not a slave!"

From personal experience, I knew Wolf was really good at in-game trash talk. That apparently carried over to fights. Meanwhile, Ord got tired of trying to block my blasts with his hands over mine. It was probably like trying to keep a fire exhaust vent covered.

He lifted me off of the ground and spun around to throw me at Wolf, probably to impale me on the chainsaw. Instead, I bounced off of his side and we both fell to the ground, but were back up quickly enough, "I am so glad to see you," I said, despite having collided with the big, metal fucker, "How did you know what was going on?"

"I heard the explosion," Wolf replied, standing between me and Danger and Ord, "Two of your enemies are attacking at once, and most of the school's populace has been disabled. What is happening?"

A fantastic question. One that I didn't have the answer to, "I think we should save that for after we win," I said.

"I concede the point to you, Bellamy," Wolf said, "Let us continue."

Before our two sides could clash again, Wolf, Danger, and Ord all flew off of the ground and stuck to the ceiling. What the hell? I didn't do that.

My answer came in the form of a big, furry, blue man dressed like the scholar that he was, "I didn't think we'd find another use for that without Magneto around," Dr. McCoy said as he walked into the corridor, "My apologies, Saberwolf. But this should not cause you any harm."

"A magnet of massive proportions," Saberwolf said from where he was stuck up on the ceiling with our two enemies, "I see. This is why you were alright with my presence here despite my original nature."

Dr. McCoy nodded, holding the device in his hands that had activated the magnet, "No one made of metal or wearing way too much of it is going anywhere for a while, I'm afraid."

Instead of complaining, Saberwolf just resigned himself to the situation, "As long as this can keep the enemy in place, I do not mind, so long as you free me before too long."

"Alright," I said, pointing my hands at both Danger and Ord, prepared to cut their heads off with light blades. That would give me a chance to let him down. Before I could, a hairy hand wrapped itself around my wrist and kept me from letting them rip, "You?"

Not Dr. McCoy. It was Mister Logan, but something was different. He seemed to be back to normal now. Mostly because of the air of danger that surrounded him. That, and the open beer in his other hand.

I could tell, he very clearly remembered my punking him out back when he was being a wuss. To be fair, it had been less than five minutes since I'd done it, even if he had been in an affected mental state.

He held onto my wrist for a while and just stared at me long enough to take a long swig of his beer to let me stew. Once again, my mouth betrayed me. No matter how calm I wanted to seem, I tended to flap my gums when I was nervous, "…I never, ever get the chance to swell up on you. I don't regret a second of it," I looked over to Dr. McCoy, "Why is he not stuck to the ceiling? Isn't his skeleton made of metal?"

"Coated in it, actually," Dr. McCoy corrected as Hisako stumbled in, still holding her head from the explosion in the kitchen, "And Adamantium is not like most metals."

Mister Logan let out a harrumph as he let go of my hand, giving me a stern look, warning me not to cut anyone's head off. Ord probably still had diplomatic immunity, so killing him would plunge the Earth into an intergalactic war. I don't know why I couldn't do it to Danger, "Alright, so how is everyone here sane right now?" He asked, looking to Dr. McCoy, "Last time I saw you, you were trying to eat my leg."

"Yes, sorry about that," Dr. McCoy said, sounding embarrassed before he began to explain, "Ball of string. Synthetic fiber laced with pheromones, aerosol smart drugs, light sequences. Like opening a series of doors... each smell, each sequence. The Professor and I worked on it after Cassandra Nova's previous attack. Under hypnosis, I associated my most complex brain functions with these key-," He stopped when he realized that he had lost me thirty seconds ago, Mister Logan was bored, and Hisako was probably half-deaf from the explosion, "...And you?"

"Had a beer," Logan said, holding up the can, swishing around the liquid inside.

"Same basic principle," Dr. McCoy reasoned before looking up at the ceiling, "Are they with Nova?"

"I dunno. Ord seems to really want a piece of somebody around here," I said, putting a hand on Hisako's shoulder while she was still shaking off the cobwebs, "What's even going on?" I had no idea who this 'Nova' person even was.

"Whatever's happening, I think the Hellfire Club's in it," Mister Logan said, "Saw Emma zombify Kitty and send her down here. Me and Armor were following."

Dr. McCoy shook his head, "What you saw wasn't Emma," He looked to all of us, "We need to reach the sub-levels. Now."

We? That surprised me. I would have expected him to run us off back to our rooms or something, "All of us?" I pointed between myself and Hisako, just to make sure I'd heard right.

I had. There was no putting the kiddies to bed for this one, "Yes. You two are somehow still awake and unaffected mentally by what is going on in the Institute," Dr. McCoy said, "We'll likely need all the help we can get."