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The Lightning Round
by
Gax
The Don't-Sue-Me-Bit: All of it belongs to Marvel, except Cody, who, even as you read, is having a good stretch after a long sleep, scratching her butt, and asking me if there's any bacon for breakfast.
Background: Outside of any continuity except my perforated imagination.
Archiving: ASK ME FIRST.
Notes: Feedback and criticism is begged for, flames will be blithely disregarded. Please refrain from throwing rotten fruit.
Dedicated to all the faithful readers who have dropped me e-mails, especially when my life was sucking more than it had previously had ever sucked. Also, dedicated to the Wolverettes, the Bad Girls at the Swirl, my offline buds who have pestered me to finish this, and even to the guy who gave me the first really bad review this story has seen. (I'm wondering why you read every chapter if you hated the character so much, but, hey, thanks for doin' it all the same.)
... with additional props to Lori and Tim, as well as my two favorite Geminis, Mikey-pie, and my Ever-Lovin' Husband, Chris.
A gust ripped through the hall and down the staircase, blowing paintings off-kilter and leaving area rugs flapping. At the head of it was Cody.
Logan saw her bedroom door open like it was kicked in by an invisible foot. She yanked her duffel bag out from under the bed and started throwing things in it. Not all the things were hers.
That nasty feeling was crawling up the back of his head again. The edgy tingle of unfinished business at odds with a desperate desire to have his old life back. "What're you doin'?"
"Granting your fondest wish." She snarled. "I'm leavin'." Her tee shirt was soaked through with sweat, and by the smell of fear coming off her skin, he knew not all of it was from her pushing the sound barrier.
"Guess your word ain't worth much." He bit down on something a little like panic as he watched her continue to pack.
"C'mon, you should be thrilled." Her eyes flashed toward him. "This is what you wanted, right?"
Hearing the commotion, Kurt teleported to her doorway. His heart almost stopped when he saw her packing. "Cody, what are you doing?"
A lump, roughly the size of a golf ball, formed in her throat. Damn him for making this harder. "I'm leaving."
"Why?" he asked softly.
"Because Professor X has decided to go diggin' where he's not welcome."
Logan was starting to piece it all together. "Jean and Cyke are on their way to New Mexico." He rubbed the back of his neck. Couldn't say he was altogether comfortable with the idea. He sure as hell wouldn't have wanted anybody digging into his past, whatever it might be.
Kurt blinked. "Is that reason enough to leave?"
"Reason enough for me." She shouldered her duffel and headed for the front door. She wanted as much distance between herself and this place as she could get. Things she taken a lot of time and trouble burying were threatening to swallow her up.
Kurt was right behind her. "Cody, wait!" The sound of his voice made her hesitate, just for a second.
"I can't."
Weeks of pent-up frustration roiled to the surface. "Can't, or won't?"
"Pick one." Her feet resumed stomping toward the door. This was too hard. It needed to be over.
She felt his hand on her shoulder. "Why are you so afraid of people knowing who you are?"
Oftentimes, the most important decisions are made with the least forethought. And though Cody would have been the first to remind anyone that every single act in life was a choice, none of this wisdom was forthcoming when all she saw between herself and freedom was Kurt.
Feeling trapped and choking on fear, she made her decision at the speed of light, and mercy was no part of it. She shrugged off his hand and turned on him. "You won't even go to church--CHURCH, for Christ's sake, your spiritual home--without making yourself look like someone else! And you're gonna hand me some dumb-ass line, like "be yourself and it'll all be okay?' Bullshit!" She turned away before she could fully grasp the absolute hurt in his eyes.
While he and Logan stood stunned, she threw open the door and walked out.
Or, tried to.
When she reached the threshold and tried to step through, something pushed her back. Hard enough to make her stumble. That's when the real fear set in. The human part of her cowered and the animal leapt forward. She snarled through sharp teeth and threw herself at the opening. She wound up on her ass. Cody backed up to give herself a good running start and pushed her speed. She would make it out of here if it was the last thing she ever did.
The two men watched in a kind of horrified fascination, unable to stop her.
Cody hurled her body forward with all her power. She hit the threshold, bounced twenty feet, and landed flat on her back on the hardwood floor, out cold.
***
Rather than talk about what was actually bothering them, Jean and Scott opted to hit the ground running. They rented separate cars at the airport and drove to Boca de Perro, the nearest town to the Shanakee Reservation. As soon as they were checked in to the Coyote's Rest Motor Lodge, Scott headed for the town's hall of records. Jean watched him disappear in the rearview mirror of her jeep, then got in gear and headed for the Reservation.
On the map, it was located just outside of town. While that may have been true as the crow flies, two hours later, she was still driving all over hell and gone trying to find the damn thing. Her water bottle was empty and she was starting to get nervous when she spotted someone walking down the road. Thank God.
She pulled up beside him and rolled down the passenger side window. He was a long, lean fellow covered head to toe in worn out denim with dark pigtails hanging out from underneath a beat-up Stetson. When he smiled, it was all teeth. "Howdy."
Something in his eyes when he looked at her made her blush, but she did her best to dismiss it as the onset of heat stroke. "Hi. I'm looking for the Shanakee Reservation, and I think I must've gotten turned around. Could you point me in the right direction?"
"I'll do you one better." He said smoothly. "I'll take you there."
***
Cody came to with the granddaddy of all headaches. She almost didn't want to open her eyes.
But she did.
Hank was standing over her. "Don't try to move just yet."
"Don't have to tell me twice." She muttered through gritted teeth.
His big blue eyes were all concern. "Your injury resulted in a condition called contra-coup."
"Viva la Revolucion." She moaned.
He smiled. Apparently her personality remained intact. "Contra-coup is when the head is concussed, after a blow, or in your case, a severe fall."
"Cut to the chase, Blue."
"Essentially, you hit the ground so hard that your brain bounced off of the back of your skull, then bounced off the front." He cupped her chin as he shined a light in her eyes. The pupils responded well. "It's not life-threatening, but I do recommend that you rest for a least a day---"
Kurt. Gods, I really fucked up. She sat up, and regretted it. Maybe her brain wasn't done sloshing around. "Any broken bones?" That would almost be a relief. Some sharp pain to cut through the nausea.
"One cracked rib."
"How long have I been out?" Her muscles and flesh were starting to wake up, and a whole new world of pain was opening its doors to her.
"A little less than half an hour."
"Where's Kurt?"
"He went to do some volunteer work at St. Martha's." Hank turned to get his stethoscope. "But now is really not the time for you to be--"
A breeze fluffed his hair just before he heard the MedLab door swing shut.
He rolled his eyes and went for the intercom.
***
Scott ducked out of the freakish early spring heat into the cool dimness of the Boca de Perro Hall of Records. A kindly looking little old woman behind an old wooden desk regarded him over her grandmotherly spectacles. "Can I help you, young man?"
He smiled. "Yes. I'm looking for some information. Specifically, regarding a woman who left here about ten years ago. Her name is Cody Latrans."
The old woman's brow knitted together in recollection. "Well, I've lived here since God was a boy, son, and I can't say as I've ever come across anyone with that name." She tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Could you maybe describe this woman?"
He opened his file and took showed her a recent a picture. Her lips pursed a little, but there was a glint in her eyes. "That's Cody Barking Dog. Oh yes, I do remember her. It was quite a to-do. No one's seen hide nor hair of her in over a decade." She stood up and walked over to one of the large file cabinets in the corner.
"So, what is your interest in her?" She flipped through the files with remarkable speed and yanked one out. It was two inches thick .
"I'm working on a my Masters in Journalism at UNM. One of my buddies told me some parts of the story, and I'm making a paper out of it." He smiled his best All-American Boy smile.
She smiled right back. "Really. That is interesting. Especially considering that UNM doesn't have a Masters Program for journalism, and you're far too pale to have spent any time in the Southwest." His smile drooped a little. She patted his arm. "And the accent just screams 'Connecticut', dear."
Nonetheless, she put the file in his hand. "There's a little desk in the next room, and a soda machine down the hall. Why don't you make yourself comfortable?"
***
Cody pulled into the parking lot of St. Martha's and hopped out of the truck. She was still a little shaky in the legs and her rib was blazing. The house had let her out only when she had promised to come back, and the drive over had been a little hairy, even by her standards.
She walked to the edge of the lawn and looked up to see Kurt, all humanned-up, silhouetted on top of the roof. Oh, great. She took a breath and tried to call out to him without further hurting herself. "KURT!"
He almost dropped his hammer. "Cody, what are you doing here?" He was still angry with her, and besides, Henry had said she was to stay in bed for at least a day.
Shading her eyes against the sun, she yelled, "I came to apologize!"
"Now is really not the time." He called back irritably, shifting the hammer in his hand to pound another nail into the roof.
"C'mon, give me a break. I came all the way out here. And you know how much I hate churches."
Three men came up to the other side of the roof, thankful for her interruption. Whoever she was, she was keeping the mutie distracted as they approached. Evans grinned. This was going to be easier than they thought.
"I'm coming up." There was no ladder in sight, so she grabbed the drainpipe and started climbing. The men weren't worried. She'd never get to him before they did.
Kurt sighed. "This is not the time or the place, Cody. And don't come up! That pipe won't hold you!" He was about to give in and teleport over to her when something connected with the back of his head, hard enough to knock him senseless and leave him sprawled on the tiles.
"That was your great plan, Evans?" snorted Wilson. "Hit him with a rock?"
"Worked, didn't it? All we gotta do is slip these cuffs on him and he won't be able to pull any of that mutie crap."
Cody shimmied frantically up the drainpipe, gritting her teeth all the way. Heights were okay when you were stoned or drunk, in the dark... But actually seeing how far she could fall was making her extra nauseous. The double concussion probably wasn't helping any, either. Coyotes just weren't built for high places. Heights were for the birds. Magpies and ravens and crows, the feathered cousins. Corvids did not like canids playing so near the sky. Sweat streaked down her temple. Kurt was the only person in heaven or earth that she would do this for in broad daylight.
She scrambled over the edge just in time to catch three guys holding her friend under the arms and putting some weird-looking cuffs on his wrists. There was a trickle of blood, dark red against the blue fur on his neck.
In one sloppy leap, she managed to land on her feet in the middle of roof. "Don't do it." Fear and Anger were having it out as she tried to get her footing on the slanted surface.
One of them, a small weasely guy, sneered at her. "Or what?"
Cody swallowed. "Or learn to fly, because I'll pitch you bastards off this roof."
Weasel Guy grinned. "Yeah, right, honey. Rocco, hand off the mutie to Wilson. Grab the skinny broad."
Rocco was a mountain with a head. A big blond head with a haircut you could land a chopper on. Any other time, any other place, she knew she could take him. Standing here, trying to choke her heart back down her throat, she wasn't so sure. Looking at Kurt, limp and bleeding, she felt sick all over again. She wasn't used to having something to lose.
He advanced, cracking knuckles on hands the size of cast iron skillets. He was big, but she could tell by the way he moved, he was fast, and sure of himself.
She who hesitates is lost. Cody took a breath and launched herself at him. He sidestepped her neatly and gave her a kick to the ribs just before she hit the tiles on her back. Shock and impact knocked the wind out of her and it took a second to register that she was sliding toward the edge.
She came to a stop a second before she was backhanded across the face.
***
Charles Xavier looked up from the papers on his desk. "Kurt." Something was terribly wrong. The feeling was amplified, far greater than it should have been, as though the young man was within arm's reach instead of a few miles away.
Before he could send the thought to assemble the X-Men, he heard their footsteps running toward his office.
***
The helpful stranger climbed into the Jeep and passed her a canteen full of water. "You look a little dry." She drank gratefully, catching a glimpse of his eyes out of the corner of hers. They were a strange gold color, peculiar and familiar at the same time.
"Thank you."
They got underway. He guided her to a road that seemed completely obvious when she saw it, but that she would have sworn didn't exist five minutes before. It wound around the mesa like a snake and opened up onto a little valley, dotted with shabby little trailers and run-down cars. "See, there it is." A lazy creek skirted the edge and seemed to disappear. He smiled his toothsome smile and his eyes roved up and down her body. "Everyone gets a little turned around now and again."
"So, um, the Tribal Recordkeeper... " She felt hot all over, despite having turned the air conditioning up all the way. "Thomas Blackbird. Do you know where I can find him?"
"Sure. He's that last trailer at the edge of town. The one with the ramp." He leaned close pointed and it out. "You can't miss it." There was a smell about him. A strong mixture of desert dust and creosote, tobacco, and something more. Something delicious and a little revolting at the same time.
When she turned to ask his name, the passenger seat was empty.
***
Scott rubbed a crick in his neck and realized that he hadn't lifted his head for more than an hour. There was a whole lot of information here, and most of it didn't seem to make sense.
Cody was listed in the police records as being an orphan, but nowhere did he find a copy of any birth certificate. Mary Barking Dog was listed as her grandmother and legal guardian, but Mary didn't have any children. Her high school transcripts indicated a bright but unmotivated student (no surprise there, he thought) who was something of a discipline problem (also no surprise) prone to fighting and talking back to authority figures. Then, during the first quarters of her junior year, a sharp improvement. Grades getting better, behavioral problems disappearing, fewer visits to detention. It seemed she became an almost model student.
Hard to imagine the Cody Latrans he knew as a model anything.
Of course, the police records accounted for that. There were several pictures wedged into the file. A mugshot of a teenage Cody, with what looked like a freshly broken nose (it was crooked and swollen to the size of an egg) and two black eyes, stared listlessly into space.
The crime scene photos almost made him lose his lunch. It was a science classroom, broken beakers and glass everywhere, with a chalk... circle. There was something that might have once resembled a man inside of it (identified as the school's Biology teacher, Mr. Siggertson) but looked like a pile of cracked, charred meat with some kind of reddish pink goo creeping out of the cracks. Cody's blood was found on the table, the floor, and down the hall, and she had been seen by a few students and faculty members staggering out of the classroom, then running out of the building. A piece of torn clothing, identified as the shirt she'd worn to school that day, was found on the floor near the body. She had been charged with arson, first degree murder, and fleeing the scene.
The forensics on the body were truly bizarre. There were no traces of any accellerant found anywhere on or near it. Weird, especially considering the wealth of volatile chemicals within arm's reach in a science lab. The broken glass had come from empty beakers on one of the tables. Siggertson's internal organs had been... liquefied. Melted from the inside. Scott rubbed his forehead. The crisped flesh on the outside had kept him from being nothing more than puddle, like the burnt skin on a campfire marshmallow holding in the gooey part.
He had himself seen her knack for starting fires, and while even he would admit to it being impressive, he had assumed that was at the furthest edge of her abilities. After all, many young mutants coming into their power often do some real damage before they learn to control themselves.
But she wasn't a mutant.
Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps they had all been wrong. At sixteen, she had produced enough heat to char a man to a cinder--from the inside out. By the time the sprinklers had come on, he was already dead. That was ten years ago. It was possible that she was more dangerous than anyone had imagined.
***
This, thought Cody, as the fifth punch connected with her stomach, is not going as well as I'd hoped. Kicking Rocco in the crotch had only pissed him off. He was beating her like a redheaded stepchild.
She couldn't get it together. Her punches were sloppy, her kicks were worse, and she was too scared to use to her speed for fear she'd lose her balance and fall off the roof. She couldn't begin to think of the focus it would have taken to call up a fire.
While she was pondering this, Rocco's arm wrapped around her neck. "Too bad, sweetheart. Why don't you just give up, huh? Make this easier on yourself."
Before he could cut off her supply of air completely, she tucked her chin into the crook of his elbow and bit him in the arm.
"Bitch!" He flung her down hard on the tiles, leaving her scrabbling for purchase as she started to skitter down. At times like this, she had always been able to call up the animal in her to get her through. Now, even the animal was panicking, wanting nothing more than to curl up and whimper.
***
Jean took a deep breath, shook her head to clear it, and stepped out of the Jeep. After three hours of air conditioning, the heat was a hard slap. Like she'd personally offended the sun. "God, how do people live here?" she muttered. By the average look of the average home, she wondered if the average family even had a refrigerator. This was a grinding kind of poor.
But Thomas Blackbird's house wasn't like all the others. It was modest, certainly, only one floor, but it was a house--not a trailer. There was something more permanent about it. The exterior looked like old-fashioned adobe, but a two-sided cement ramp was anchored to a wooden door in front. She walked up to the door and pulled a bell on a string.
***
The fight, if it could even be called that anymore, had gone well past painful and was well into humiliating. At least, for Cody. Rocco seemed like he had hardly broken a sweat. In fact, he wasn't even punching her anymore. Now, he was just slapping her. Like a bitch. While his buddies stood beside Kurt's unconscious body and laughed.
When she managed to look up, she saw that Rocco was smiling. Well, good, she thought, at least one of us is enjoying this. But she had to wonder at a man that would so clearly rather beat up a woman rather than have sex with her. Of course, this was a guy who was here with his two other guy friends, who had trussed up her handsome guy friend in handcuffs. "Kinda homoerotic, if ya ask me." She said dazedly, spitting out a tooth.
He went red from his neck to his hairline. Then he kicked her in the head.
That was too much. ..too much toomuch... Too. Fucking. Much.
Cody vomited. She didn't even feel the nausea catch up to her until she had spewed all over his nice leather shoes. Then, she heaved again. It felt like everything she'd ever eaten--ever--was coming up. Another ten seconds of this, and she'd be begging Rocco to shove her intestines back down her throat.
"Ah, Christ." He said, disgusted. "She puked all over my shoes." He looked down at her as she dragged a shaking hand across her mouth, streaking noseblood and gods knew what else across the sleeve of her jacket. "You're gonna pay for that."
Everything seemed to slow down then. She saw him step towards her, even saw his hand reaching down at the edge of some very blurry vision. But what she saw most clearly from her vantagepoint on all fours was that he was standing in a puddle of vomit.
She pushed him.
He slipped and reached out to grab her.
He didn't make it.
Rocco's friends could only watch as he slid down tiles, crying out, and fell off the edge, dropping two stories, and flattening a bed of tulips on impact.
Cody felt a little better.
Then, she heard the click of the gun.
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