New Legends
Part of the Graves Symptoms of Love Challenge
Continuity: Post Generation X #75, cuts from canon before the launch of the Poptopia storyline.
Hanging out the window of little brownstone Emma'd rented us, yelling down at Angelo and Jono on the street below.
We've been fighting these zetapods for something like three days now. I can't say as we're winning. It’s just me and Alex and Emma and a bunch of kids. Emma was outside alone when the attack started, and she got hurt. She's damn lucky to be alive. Broken arm, some fractured ribs, probably. Something's wrong with her back, but we don’t know what or how bad it is. She's the one who sounded the alarm, got the kids back into the school, ordered the barricades up at the entrances.
Near as we can tell, the 'zetas were created here on Earth. Pete and Kitty always said that they were too much a hybrid not to have been. A cross between the brood and, and, damn it. Something else. I don't remember any more. But they do exactly what you'd expect them to -- hunt and exterminate mutants. Nasty things with too many legs and razor sharp claws, and too damn smart by half. We’ve been running across them on and off for the last year or so, but usually as isolated incidents inside cities. They’ve never been out in the country like this. Never in these numbers. I guess that we finally became too sweet a honeypot to ignore.
It’s the little kids, y’see. None of them are any more than seven or eight, and most of them younger. We're the new school. Mutant preschool, almost, for kids who get dumped when their parents have them tested for the x-gene and can't deal with what God's given them. Most of the kids haven’t manifested yet, let alone be trained to defend themselves. They’re babies. They’re just babies.
Meeting Captain Britain for the first time, trying not to stare and failing miserably. That was the first time I really got how it was more than just us. America, I mean.
It's been a standoff since last night. They're definitely regrouping while we try to raise someone on the radio or telepathically. It's like we're in an absolute dead zone. Like I said, Emma's pretty weak, but the fact that she can't lock on someone is, well, scary. It's only been three days, though. We're just cut off from the rest of the world. The rest of the world isn't gone, it just feels like it.
We lost the two other teachers here, Regina and Charlie. Regina was out on one of the fields with a class and Charlie tried to help her bring them in. Neither of them had combat skills. They were barely more than kids themselves. We lost them and six of the children.
Alex doesn't really belong out here at all. If things had happened ten minutes later, he wouldn’t have been involved. He was just here to drop some papers off. Since then, he’s been spending most of the time watching over the kids, standing guard over them, probably worrying about his own back in Westchester as well.
Looking down out onto the grounds, there's movement on the edges of the property. Hard brown exoskeletons catch bits of moonlight as they scrabble back and forth in the tree line. It won't be long now. I’m surprised it’s lasted as long as it has, to be honest.
It’s strange the things that flit through your head at times like these. There’s no rhyme or reason, near as I can tell, but somehow they’re suddenly important. Ever since the whole thing started it’s just been a stream of random memories. Yesterday it was the Rasputins - Piotr and Illyana. Illyana, mostly, I remember her better. The crazy look in her eye always scared me when I was little. You didn’t want to believe the demon-stories, but you had to anyway.
The movement out in the tree line has stopped dead. There's nothing going on out there anymore.
Drinking too much at Sam's graduation party, and falling off of the picnic table I'd been standing on, only to see him all wrapped up in Jubilee hiding alongside the garage. She told me later that that was the first time he'd kissed her.
The loud crash at the back of the building tells me I've been watching out the wrong window. The screams of the children tell me that it's not a mistake that lacks consequences.
Scott running drill with his team out in the yard, Bobby and Rogue double-teaming him from behind. Storm deliberately not noticing.
I run out into the hall and they're already there, dragging Emma's body along with them. I can't tell if she's dead or unconscious. I hope dead, for her sake. The screams of the children down at the other end ratchet up about five levels and I head toward the sound.
Alex is already at the doorway, trying to force the ‘zetas back away from the kids. He’s having trouble controlling his blasts, there’s just too damn many of them comin from too many different directions. I get knocked backward out the window by a stray shot. The fall’s not much -- growing up with a flier, you learn how to land right, quick. But I hit ground right in the thick of the oncoming ‘zetas.
Sam trying to explain how Cable fit in Summers family tree, all stutters and confusion and descriptions of really big guns.
I can feel a 'zeta cut into my thigh, down to the bone. I husk, but I've done it too many times now, and the wound doesn't heal up like it should. The blood trickling down my leg tickles a bit, sticky and wet where it collects in the fabric of my clothes and sets. I pull at the skin of my arm, hoping for some sort of blade and ending up with some sort of laser. I swing it at a 'zeta and it slices though, sure enough, but God does it hurt. I can feel it eating away at me every time it touches something.
Sam explaining how Xavier was the most powerful telepath on Earth, all awe and pride and wonder.
I don’t know how long it goes on. I don’t know what’s happening in the school. All I know is that I can’t hold out forever, and I have to try.
Betsy slipping in and out of the shadows, methodically psi-knifing anyone she comes up on.
The last thing I see as I go down is the goddamn cavalry finally arriving, fliers taking the air as the X-Jet slowly settles on the ground, looking like nothing so much as a crippled bird.
They got here soon enough, though. They must have. They made it in time. Everything will be fine.
Jean, haloed in fire as she uses Xavier’s favorite trick of mindwiping a whole crowd.
Please God, let them be soon enough.
Everett, standing underneath the trees in the Grotto, just smiling at me.
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