MX Sn4: Comrades In Arms

The new Double Helix streaked westwards across the country, cloaked from both sight and radar.

"So, we're heading for California..." Lexa prompted, looking from Jesse to Shalimar, expectantly.

"Yep," Jesse answered. "Like I said, Eve's got money. She actually purchased the penthouse suite of a hotel, the Majestic. . .and the property next door to it, which happened to have an old World War Two bomb shelter underneath it."

"A bomb shelter? In southern California?" Lexa asked with a frown, perplexed.

"Weird, right?" Jesse asked with a grin. "But somebody was paranoid enough back then to have it built, and built right. Adam had some of his contacts examine the place before Eve bought it, and it was verified to be earthquake proof. Sure, stuff might fall over in a big quake, but the place is structurally sound, won't collapse," he explained. "So Eve had it converted into the California Mutant X team's Haven, and Adam pulled some strings to have it done quietly. Eve now owns the Majestic's penthouse and the property next door, but the fact that there's a bomb shelter under it is off the record." Jesse grinned. "Actually, the record says Adam's contractors found the place to not be sound, so it was filled with concrete."

"Well, when you're running a mutant fugitive operation against shadow departments of the government, what's a little falsification of documents, right?" Lexa asked with a flippant smirk.

"Only the tip of the iceberg," Jesse nodded back.

"So, Eve owns the hotel's penthouse and the property next door," Lexa summarized. "What's next door?"

"The hotel's parking garage," Shalimar answered with a pleased smirk.

"You're kidding?" Lexa asked in shock.

"Nope," Shalimar answered, her smirk spreading into a grin as she shook her head. "The whole team orders room service from the Majestic's four-star restaurant a couple times a month, uses the weight room, the pool, sauna, whatever. . .and all it does is reduce the rent the hotel has to pay Eve each month!"

"And she bought the penthouse suite, isn't renting it from them?" Lexa asked, still shocked but beginning to grin as she realized the answer.

"Nope, bought the penthouse, so the hotel can't sell to new owners. Or I suppose they could, but whoever they sold to would have to buy Eve out separately," Shalimar answered, still grinning. "She proposed to build the parking garage at the same time, and the Majestic's owners jumped all over the proposal, since they could pay for a good part of the construction with the money Eve spent buying the penthouse. She –and Adam– had the whole thing set up as a cooperative venture, so the hotel owners didn't even realize they were only buying the proposed building from Eve, not the land it was being built on," she finished with a chuckle.

"Like retailers, big box stores, they own their buildings, the actual store, but they're usually renting the land from the mall they're next to," Brennan commented from next to Jesse in the cockpit.

"Nice," Lexa nodded, smirking. "So, she owns her home, which happens to have housekeeping and room service, etcetera, a top-secret high-tech headquarters, and she's still earning income on top of it."

"She's rich and smart," Brennan smirked. "My kind of lady."

Jesse smirked and backhanded Brennan's shoulder.

"I thought you liked 'em rich and dumb, so you could take their money," he smirked.

Brennan laughed.

"This is true. No, wait, rich and good-looking," he nodded.

"Oh, so Eve is your type, now; I see how it is," Jesse smirked.

"Nah, you're right, too smart for me," Brennan nodded, barely managing to keep a straight face. He almost glanced at Jesse to see his reaction, but he didn't dare. Brennan knew he wouldn't be able to hold back his laughter if he did.

Jesse blinked, unsure how to respond. He finally folded his arms, giving Brennan a dirty look for his unspoken implication. The glare was enough to set Shalimar off, bellowing laughter, and even Lexa chuckled. Jesse turned to share his glare for Brennan with girls.

"Fine, fine, I know who loves me," Jesse declared, facing forward and watching the moonlit clouds roll by beneath them. "Jamie, my fellow Molecular. I taught Jamie everything the kid knows; Jamie thinks I'm smart," Jesse finished, trying to pout at Brennan but smirking at the same time.

"Oh, the hell you did," Brennan shot back, smirking openly. "Jamie already knew every trick possible changing into other people. Kid took 'identity theft' to a whole new level way before meeting us. Jamie just learned hacking from you."

"And infiltration. Elastic shapeshifting isn't so different from phasing; we can both sneak into places," Jesse protested. "And Jamie can assume anybody's face after sneaking in, so that's better than me at infiltrating, really."

"Riiight," Brennan agreed sarcastically. "I'm sure you taught Jamie everything about assuming the role of a guard or whoever after sneaking in. Not like the kid had any experience at that before meeting Mutant X, what with the whole petty criminal with the flawless record and everything," Brennan laughed.

"Oh, fine," Jesse scowled, turning away from Brennan in protest, his features softening as he caught Lexa's expression. "Jamie's not like Leo," he told her softly. "Leo was a mimic; Jamie's just an elastic shapeshifter. Doesn't actually become different people, just shifts to look like them. Snaps back to normal when finished, literally like elastic. Kid can stretch a couple dozen feet, too," he finished with a grin.

"Elastic kid, huh?" Lexa asked with a weak smirk, still thinking about her twin brother. Leo was a Molecular, too; he had been a true mimic, capable of shapeshifting into other human forms for as long as he wanted. His powers had spiraled out of control at fourteen, so Lexa had tried to get Genomex to help him, in exchange for her joining the GSA. Lexa had spent her whole life trying to help Leo, but Genomex had only tortured him, trying to test the extent of his abilities. The powerful form and personality by the name of Troy that Leo had developed to protect himself and break free had scared him so much he avoided Lexa for years, afraid Troy would emerge and hurt her out of a sense of betrayal if they ever met again. His fears had been correct, and Troy would have killed a helpless Brennan if Lexa hadn't stopped him. She had been forced to use lethal force to do so, killing her own brother.

Lexa shook off that line of thought, refusing to give in to her despair over failing her brother, and turned to Shalimar, instead.

"So, Jamie the elastic Molecular, and you said their new Elemental is named Chris? Any idea what he does? And you said they were still looking for a Psionic; I assume that means Owen is a Feral?" she asked.

"Yeah, Owen's an Ursine. Guy's huge," Shalimar answered, her face scrunching with disbelief at Owen's size. "Adam always said we were some of the most powerful examples of our New Mutant types, and I'm easily more agile than Owen, but Owen is a lot stronger than I am. I'm not sure if Adam actually got a gauge of Owen's upper limit, but I know he can bench something like a ton. I saw him roll a car over onto its roof, once."

"Yowza," Lexa nodded, the look on her face expressing that she was impressed. "Big Bear."

"Yeah," Shalimar nodded, smirking at the cockpit. "Brennan hates it; he's not used to having to look up to meet somebody's eyes."

"Yeah, yeah," Brennan called back, scowling. Jesse made no effort to hide his smirk.

"And Chris? What sort of Elemental is he?" Lexa asked.

"You know what, I have no idea," Shalimar answered, blinking. "Hey, Jess, did Jamie ever tell you?"

"No, I never heard. I didn't even know his name was Chris. Or wait, is it Chris as in Christina? Emma might have known, but she never said anything to me about it."

"Um, I'm pretty sure Jamie said he was named 'Chris', but I never heard what he did, just that he's an Elemental. And apparently kicks ass at bars, including at karaoke. You know how Jamie gets, full of rambling excitement and only possibly-relevant details," Shalimar answered.

"Oh, please. You just have no appreciation for a good ramble."

"Right, Jesse. You haven't taught me anything at all about listening to someone ramble, Mr. Exposition," Shalimar smirked, causing Lexa to bark out a laugh she attempted to cover as a cough. Jesse turned to frown at her, then turned back to frown at Brennan, too, when he snickered.

"Okay, it was around midnight when we lifted off in DC; we should be in LA in around what, twenty minutes?" Jesse asked, checking his co-pilot readouts to verify their speed and heading.

"Right," Brennan nodded.

"So it'll be around nine-thirty, their time, when we land," Jesse mused out loud. "Do we just walk in to the Majestic, ask for the penthouse? Or should we try Haven first?"

"Well, you said Haven's next door, right?" Lexa asked. "What difference does it make? And shouldn't we call first, let them know we're coming?"

"We'd love to, but we don't have any of their contact information. Adam might have had Eve's number in his phone, but we never did. If we ever needed to contact the California division, we just did it from Sanctuary," Shalimar said with a shrug. "We've lost all their info. I bet Adam took care to destroy it when he went to prep the Helix while Brennan and I held off the Dominion's troops; he must've destroyed the key, too, or at least thrown it down an air vent or something, but we don't have it, so..." Shalimar shrugged again. "We show up unannounced. Hell, Adam might have sent Eve a warning that Sanctuary's been lost; she might even be expecting us, though probably not this soon."

"Key?" Lexa asked with a frown.

"Oh, yeah, to the elevator at the Majestic," Shalimar explained. "It accesses the penthouse, otherwise you have to get the front desk to call up and get a resident's permission to send you up in the elevator; it won't access the penthouse without the key or the desk's override. Turn the key the other way, and the elevator goes down to an access tunnel to Haven. Eve didn't even have to get that added; Adam just got the records erased. Some bigwig worried about the Commies must have been renting the penthouse back in the 50s when the bomb shelter was built, had access to it added to the penthouse key."

"I can force the elevator circuits without the key, no problem," Brennan offered from the cockpit.

"I think Haven's probably a better place to start," Shalimar said, answering Jesse's original question. "If there's nobody there, I'm sure Eve has an alarm set that will notify them up in the penthouse, and there's probably a direct commlink to the penthouse we could use to tell them we're there, anyway. And if someone is in Haven, so much the better."

"Good thought," Jesse nodded. "Heck, there might even be an intercom to the penthouse in the elevator. The Majestic's fancy, right?" he smirked.

"Jess, have you ever seen an elevator with an intercom in it?" Brennan asked, glancing at Jesse with his face screwed up into an expression that suggested he thought Jesse was crazy. "In a hotel? Maybe in an apartment building, but, y'know, those would have the intercom in the foyer, by the mailboxes."

"HellifIknow," Jesse laughed back. "I've never been there, neither have you or Shal. We're all operating on reported information here; who knows what we'll find."

"Guess we'll find out soon enough," Brennan said with a tiny shake of his head.

Eve was worried.

She had received a brief message from Adam the night before that disturbed her. She couldn't call it a distress signal, exactly, but it had been distressing for her. And the situation must be disturbing for Adam and the original Mutant X team, because the message had simply read: "Sanctuary compromised. Do not attempt to contact."

And that was all.

Eve presumed the message meant not to contact Sanctuary, but Adam had been notoriously difficult to contact for some time now as it was. He had been forced to disappear almost a year ago, after he had learned that the secret factions that bankrolled Mutant X had corruption within them, and they were too powerful for Adam to overtly investigate. The power games and intrigue involved in what she and Adam were relatively sure was known as the Dominion were worse than medieval empires multiplied by modern corporate politics. Adam had to disappear to be able to follow the hidden clues to find the truth; the accident that had killed Emma had provided a cover he couldn't afford to pass up.

Adam had taken that opportunity to vanish, and Eve had helped him, covertly funding his investigations, since he could no longer rely on his previous funding, and any attempt to use his own resources could be tracked too easily. It had gutted her to keep his secret from the rest of the team when they made contact to inform Eve and the Californian division of Mutant X of the loss of Emma and Adam, but she knew it had been necessary. Eve knew Adam had recently returned to Sanctuary and his team, after he had made an important discovery of some sort. She didn't know what that discovery had been, but it didn't sound like things had gone well from that point.

Eve hoped Adam or the rest of his team would make contact soon, but who really knew what had happened? Or how long it would take for them to make contact, if they were on the run from people who made the shadow government factions of the GSA look like amateurs.

The communications alert on Haven's main workstation chimed to let Eve know there was an incoming call. She figured it was probably Jamie or Owen, they were out checking on a safehouse and should be back soon, but she couldn't help hoping it was Adam or a member of his team.

"Talk to me," Eve said to the vox-activated microphone, her standard response during operations, from Haven or in the field.

'Eve, Jamie and I are going to be late getting back,' Owen's voice came over the commset. 'There's been some suspicious activity at the safehouse. At first we thought it was just some bums or gangbangers had tried to force their way inside, but Jamie says somebody tried to hack the electronic lock, too. The scents on the door were fresh, so I'm gonna see what I can find. Jamie's seeing if there's any other electronic leads we can track.'

"Be careful, Owen," Eve warned him. "We know something happened to Sanctuary; we can't afford to take unnecessary risks. We don't think whoever's after the original Mutant X team knows about us, but we can't risk it, either."

'So you're telling me to curb my natural enthusiasm. I hear ya,' Owen responded.

"If by 'natural enthusiasm' you actually mean 'reckless, impulsive nature', then Yes, yes I am," Eve told him with a wry smirk she knew Owen would be able to hear in her voice, even without his Feral hearing. She snickered at the surprised burst of laughter her answer provoked.

'Okay, okay, if the shoe fits, huh?' Owen chuckled back to her. 'I've gotta go, follow the scent before it gets any colder, but if it leads me anywhere or I find its owner, I'll come back and get Jamie first.'

"Good enough," Eve smiled back to him over the line. "Keep us informed. I'm going to put Josh on watch and go have a quick workout and shower; I should be back before you find anything."

'Aww, now you did it,' Owen mock-whined back. 'Now I'm gonna find something right away, before Jamie's even ready to leave here. You know Josh's wacky luck is gonna make me right, too.'

Eve laughed out loud in response.

"No, no. I. . .I deliberately said I was calling Josh– –it doesn't work if you do it on purpose."

'Shyeah, right, that was on purpose,' Owen laughed back. 'And I'm restrained in all things. Later.'

"Later, Owen," Eve said with mocking sarcasm, annoyed but amused that he had gotten the last word. Her denial had been pretty feeble, not that she was going to admit it. "Eve out."

She closed the communication line, then flicked a switch to put the vox-microphone on overhead page. It was easier to broadcast her voice throughout Haven than to track Josh down. He was a Feline Feral and had a tendency to lurk in the oddest places. He also had a tendency to ignore his phone if he didn't want to talk to whoever he thought was on the other end, like if it was Eve asking him to sit still behind a workstation.

''Eve to all points; guys, be on the alert. Owen and Jamie may have found something suspicious at the safehouse, so we need to be ready to roll if they call. Josh, get your kitty butt down here; I need you on watch while I take a quick workout and shower break.''

"Aww, get Chris to do it!" Josh's voice echoed back to Eve from somewhere overhead as she switched the page off. He was in Haven's main expanse, probably up in the rafters someplace. Eve knew if he was that close, he might have heard her entire conversation with Owen, since it had been over a speaker and vox-mic. Eve relaxed her shoulders and took a deep breath, tipping her head back to address the ceiling.

"Now, CatBoy!" she bellowed. Eve was a genius geneticist and scientist, much like Adam, but she had also been a gymnast since she was a little girl, and she had grown into fencing and ballet as she got older. The breath control she had learned as a dancer served her well when she moved away to college and began studying martial arts as well as fencing; Eve had impressive vocal force when she chose to use it.

There were a few soft thumps overhead before Josh appeared atop one of the partitions separating other work sections from the main area of Haven. The lean young man vaulted to the floor, landing in a crouch next to Eve's desk, his long hair falling in disarray around his face from the movement. He tossed his head to flip his bangs back, cocking his head in the process to peer sideways at Eve with one eye.

"Get Kev to do it?" he asked hopefully, knowing it was pointless but hoping in vain anyway.

"Kevin is updating the database with all the genetic information from Jimmy, after we placed him three days ago. Jimmy's the first Simian Feral we've ever heard of; you know darn well Kevin's busy. That's why you're out here literally climbing the walls."

"Well, yeah," Josh admitted with a shrug as he straightened up. "What can I say, bored without him. –" Josh cut himself off as Eve held up a warning finger, then stood.

"Don't even ask if Chris can do it; you're here and bored and he's not," she told him, taking her chair by its back and rolling it around behind Josh. She rolled it forward to jab the edge of its seat into the back of his knees repeatedly until he gave in and sat down. He didn't move, however, just crossed his arms and frowned, keeping his head turned just the slightest bit to see what Eve would do from the corner of his eye.

"Good Kitty," Eve told him, patting Josh on the head before rolling the chair back into place behind the workstation monitor.

"Don't call me Kitty," Josh pouted, but he couldn't help his expression from sliding into a smirk, proud he had gotten her to give in and move the chair into place with him in it. Eve didn't care; she knew enough about cats to choose her battles carefully, and as long as Josh manned the communications center as she asked, he could be as catty about it as he wanted, for all she cared.

"I'll be back in less than half an hour," she promised. "I've been sitting here since lunch and all I had for dinner was a cup of instant soup. Sue me if I want a little exercise after being behind a desk all day. Not like you can point any fingers there, Mister."

"Okay, okay, you're right –as usual," Josh agreed, settling himself in the chair properly and rearranging the keyboard and mouse to his liking. He checked the screens after flicking Eve a glance over his shoulder to tease her about being an always-correct smartypants, but his voice softened as he devoted himself to his task. "Take your time, get some real food. I'll be bored until Kev's done, anyway, unless Jamie and Owen find something first."

"Hah. That's almost what Owen said," Eve told him. "I told him I was putting you on watch, but I should be back before he found anything. He groaned and told me that I'd done it now, that thanks to your wacky luck he'd probably find something before Jamie was ready to leave."

"After you made him promise not to jump ahead recklessly?" Josh asked with a grin over his shoulder.

"Exactly," she answered with a smile. "I won't be long, just a ten-minute workout to work the kinks out and get my blood flowing, quick shower and make a sandwich; I'll be back before you have time to be bored."

"Honey, Please," Josh said with a snort, not even glancing up from the careful arrangement of paperclips he had started constructing. "I'm bored now, much less half an hour from now."

"Please, you're a cat. Didn't you get feline patience with the agility and senses?" Eve asked flippantly as she walked away, heading for the miniature Dojo at the rear of Haven.

"Sure I did," Josh called back. "Feline patience, as in, patient for the things I want to be patient for, like waiting out prey. Sitting behind a desk watching monitors, not allowed to read 'cause I'll fall into the story and forget to watch screens?" He shook his head emphatically, even though Eve was already walking away. "Do Not Want."

Eve laughed.

"Yeah, well, you can has a cheeseburger with Kevin after I get back. He should be done by then," she called back over her shoulder.

"Oh, thank God," Josh muttered, glancing at the screens before attempting to make his paperclip creation stand up on its own. It promptly fell over, so he started stacking the various office supplies on the desk as high as he could, instead.

Fifteen minutes and four collapsed towers of office supplies later, a monitor caught Josh's attention when it blinked to life of its own accord. It was the feed from a hidden camera in the Majestic's elevator, programmed to switch on whenever anyone attempted to access the penthouse key switch.

"Oh, hel-lo..." Josh said to himself with curiosity, peering at the tiny screen intently. He frowned for a moment, trying to see, then shook his head at his own foolishness and flipped a few switches to change the elevator's monitor to be the view on the main screen.

"Much better," he murmured with satisfaction, watching as four people waited in the elevator car. Two men and two women, one of each fair-haired and the other two dark. The lighter-colored man and woman were shorter than their compatriots, the tall, dark man apparently fiddling with the key switch on the elevator's control panel while the shorter guy leaned in to say something to him. Too bad the elevator's camera was video only, no sound.

Josh pressed the zoom on the camera's remote controls on Haven's main workstation, getting a close-up of the lower half of the elevator's control panel, including the key switch. He blinked in surprise to see that the man wasn't even touching the key switch, didn't have any lockpicks or other tools in his hands as he reached for the switch. . .just his empty index fingers pointing at it, both of which sent tiny bolts of electricity into the key switch.

Josh glanced at another monitor, verifying that the elevator was moving. Down, to Haven's access tunnel, not up to the penthouse.

"Oh Hell no," Josh snarled, quickly hitting a series of controls to set the monitors for automatic reporting, recording everything they witnessed for later perusal if necessary. Josh had a feeling the tapes wouldn't be needed, since trouble had obviously come to them.

"God damn it; Eve and Owen did not need to be right about trouble showing up before she got back," he muttered as he double checked to make sure everything was running smoothly without an operator. "Figures my wacky luck brought the trouble to me, not Owen," he groused, pausing and cocking his head to one side, listening to the Dojo at the rear of Haven. Josh's eyes flared the pale jade green of a cat's, his pupils extending to vertical slits as his hearing expanded in Feral mode, listening for Eve. Sure enough, he heard nothing in the Dojo, but Josh could hear the shower running in the small locker room adjacent to it.

"Double damn it," he muttered, reaching for the communications array and switching the intercom to its overhead paging mode.

''Kev, Chris, Trouble!'' Josh said forcefully into the vox-mic. ''We've got intruders, four, accessing the tunnel, at least one's a New Mutant. Eve's in the shower, somebody yell at her; I'm getting the drop on 'em.''

Josh switched off the overhead page and stood quickly, the rolling desk chair scooting out from behind him from his movement. He snapped out one arm and snagged the chair by its back, moving it back into place at the desk as he crouched, opening the mini-fridge under one end of the desk with his other hand. Josh grabbed two plastic bottles of water from the fridge and swung its door shut again as he sprang back up into the air. He landed atop the same partition he had jumped down from before and hurriedly made his way to the entrance at Haven's front.

Josh perched atop the cross beam of a support column that braced Haven's roof, part of the structure that made their base earthquake proof. There was a veritable webbing of beams and girders in every corner and under the entirety of the ceiling, bracing everything to ride out the force of an earthquake. It also provided Josh plenty of places to lurk relatively out of sight, since he was also above the light fixtures. He was crouched directly over the entryway with the water bottles in his hands, their tops unscrewed and removed. A hefty splash of water would give the invading Electrical Elemental a surprise, swinging the fight in Josh's favor if the intruders managed to get inside Haven before Chris and Kevin could provide backup.

Suddenly, three people –the taller, dark-haired man and woman and the shorter blonde woman– simply stepped through the door. Josh blinked in surprise, then frowned as he realized the door looked. . .fuzzy? Maybe? He couldn't see it clearly since he was almost directly above it. His attention was seized when he noticed the shorter woman had golden eyes as she surveyed the room, another Feline Feral. The only reason she hadn't seen Josh was that he was directly above a light fixture, hiding behind its immediate radiance.

Josh repressed the urge to hiss slightly, not wanting to attract attention as he put his thumbs over the open mouths of the water bottles. He whipped both arms forward, flinging the open water bottles at the tall Electrical Elemental. With Josh's Feral strength behind the throws, the water bottles burst when they struck the dark-haired man, soaking him; Josh sprang off his perch in the rafters at the same time.

"Shit!" Brennan yelled as he was struck by the bottles, realizing he had been doused in water even as his combat instincts were yelling for him to take out his attacker with a tesla coil. Brennan realized the danger just quick enough to refrain from using his powers and thus electrocuting himself; he was getting sick of being wet in the middle of a fight.

"Watch It!" Shalimar cried out, shoving Brennan aside as a long-haired Feral she didn't know nearly tackled him from above. He certainly wasn't Owen, moved like a Feline Feral. . .she dodged aside as the lean man swept a kick at her knee when he landed on the floor instead of on top of Brennan.

Jesse phased through the door and only narrowly avoided being ran into by someone he didn't recognize, his reactions being just quick enough to abort the breath he had been about to take, maintaining his phase long enough for the long-haired guy to spin through the space Jesse was stepping into.

The guy leaped over Shalimar's answering kick, twisting in midair to grab the arm Brennan swung a punch at him with, jerking Brennan off balance and sending him into Shalimar's path. Jesse stepped forward as he took his breath and resolidified, holding it to mass his form and be ready to knock their attacker down once he was within reach.

"Jesse, incoming!" Lexa yelled, snapping the guy's head around to face her at the sudden sound of her voice, which was just what Lexa intended. She slapped her hands together, pointed at his head, flinging off the biggest strobe she could. It flared brilliantly directly in his face; at point blank range it was more than enough to blind the keen eyes a Feral.

The man snarled in shocked surprise and pain, throwing himself blindly backward into an awkward shoulder roll to get away from Jesse and out of Brennan's and Shalimar's reach.

"Josh, incoming!" a clear tenor voice called out, and the long-haired Feline Feral clamped his hands over his ears, rolling away from Shalimar and Brennan and to one side of the voice that had called his name.

Lexa looked up as Shalimar's head snapped around to face the new voice, both women catching the full force of a sonic wave that immediately followed the newcomer's warning. He was short and stocky, dark-featured with black hair in a longish spike and skin that was a bit pale for Southern California, his face screwed up in fury as he shouted. The man's voice hit with a shockwave, the intensity of his cry causing the air to visibly vibrate like heat shimmer, the concussive force of his yell propelling everything in its path away from him.

Shalimar stumbled and clamped her hands over her ears, her balance lost from the sudden ringing in her hearing. Lexa staggered, off balance from the sheer amount of concussive force slamming into her. She had taken the brunt of Josh's rescuer's attack, smashing bodily into Haven's blast-proof door behind her as the soundwaves slammed into her body.

Lexa sagged as the Sonic Elemental's shout ended, either senseless or having had the wind knocked out of her by suddenly colliding with the steel door. Jesse took a step forward to check on Lexa, then found himself jerked off his feet and flying through the air, crashing into a partition that divided the lounge area from Haven's main expanse.

Jesse went down in a heap; his concentration had been shattered by the shock of being jerked off his feet in his massed state, so he had been un-massed when he hit the partition. Brennan turned to the young man who had thrown Jesse through the air with a gesture, obviously a telekinetic Psionic.

The guy had longish hair with floppy bangs, big hazel eyes and a full mouth, drawn back in a hard smirk as Brennan approached. He was young and not too heavily muscled, not all whipcord muscle like his Feral friend Josh, but he had broad shoulders. He almost casually threw a punch that Brennan knew he could block with no problem...

..Except that when he did, his blocking arm found itself jerked aside by the guy's telekinesis. Brennan's face screwed up in alarm as he realized his mistake, not expecting a Psionic to use their telekinesis in hand-to-hand combat. The guy stepped forward into the opening his telekinesis had made in Brennan's defenses, decking him. The telekinetic force behind the Psionic's punch sent Brennan flying to land with a crash into the top of the partition Jesse had already slammed into, knocking it over.

The Sonic Elemental was advancing on Shalimar, his fists raised as his friend Josh kip-upped to his feet, trying to blink the spots out of his vision. Jesse was staggering to his feet and turning to check on Brennan, trying to keep an eye on the Psionic when an absolutely blood-curdling shriek tore through the air, seizing the attention of every person in the room.

^"Mutant X, Stand Down!^" Eve bellowed at the top of her impressive lungs after her shriek had paused the fight. She was standing in the middle of Haven's main causeway, soapy water running down her face from under the towel wrapped around her head, and clenching her robe securely shut with one hand. Her other hand held a long rapier with no hand guard in the en garde position, brandishing it at the various members of Mutant X in irritated fury. "Shalimar, Josh, Kevin, Chris, Jesse, and Brennan, Stand Down!" she thundered. "Honestly! We're all on the same team here, people! I'm turning around and going back to finish my shower, and when I come back, I want this place picked up, the lot of you patched up, and at least one of you had better be mopping up the floor, or you will ALL answer to me, Got It!?" she demanded, one eyebrow raised imperiously in absolute expectation of immediate obedience.

"Yes, Ma'am," Josh, Kevin, and Chris chorused, Josh sneaking a glance at their visitors to see their reactions. Brennan looked shocked, Shalimar was smirking but nodding, and Jesse was grinning softly, shaking his head in disbelief as Eve turned around and marched back to the locker room. Josh shook his head himself, then stepped forward, in front of the three standing members of the original Mutant X team, jerking his chin at their fallen teammate.

"She okay?" he asked, raising one eyebrow in a dare to any of the three of them to make something of the fact that she or any of them might not be. The whole situation might be a misunderstanding, but as far as Josh was concerned, a good way to avoid that kind of misunderstanding was not sneaking into other people's secret headquarters.

"I didn't hit her that hard," Chris said, giving Jesse a nod of 'no hard feelings' as the younger man turned to check on Lexa once more. Chris turned and jogged off to fetch a tool kit, to start putting the lounge partition back together.

Shalimar sighed, knowing the whole thing had been a ridiculous misunderstanding; just their luck that the half of the Californian team they knew wasn't on monitor duty when they got there. She could hardly blame Josh for taking the initiative to defend his lair and teammates; Hell, her Feral instincts approved of his response, even if it had been misplaced. It wasn't as if he had known that. She walked up to Josh, her empty hands turned palms up with her wrists at her hips her head turned demurely aside to expose her throat, chest, and stomach in a show of vulnerability.

"Sorry for barging in on you unannounced," she said, looking at Josh out of the corner of one eye. She figured he was Feral enough to recognize her as an Alpha, as well as the fact that she was lowering herself to submit to him because she was in his territory.

Josh blinked at her, then grinned.

"What, is this, like, being defenseless by way of apology for barging in here, offering up your..." Josh's eyes flicked down to Shalimar's torso, the left side of his mouth turning up wryly, "..soft girly parts in submission or something?" he asked, incredulous.

"Well, yeah, actually; we invaded your territory, after all," she said back snappishly, barely restraining her voice from growling in irritation as she turned her wrists over to plant her fists on her hips, turning her head back to stare at Josh directly –defiantly– once more.

Josh laughed, holding one hand up in protest as Kevin came up next to him, grinning.

"Oh, God, Sweetie, no..." Josh hiccupped out through his laugh as he shook his head and met Shalimar's eyes once more, still ginning. "You get why I reacted as I did, no harm done, apology accepted," he said with a nod. "The Kinsey goes up to what, six?" he asked, sliding the hand he had raised around Kevin's waist and pulling him close. "I'm, like, an eleventeen, at least. Don't go offering yourself submissively to me; that ain't you and is just insulting to me, Ferals or not!" he finished with a laugh, turning to kiss Kevin's lightly-stubbled cheek before laying his head on Kevin's broad shoulder, still grinning at Shalimar.

Shalimar laughed.

"Okay, okay, point taken," she said, raising both hands and lowering her head as she backed away, still snickering. "Where's your towels?" she asked, glancing at Brennan's still-dripping form.

Josh laughed, letting his hand trail across the small of Kevin's back as he stepped away.

"C'mon, I'll show you, get the mop while I'm at it," he said with a grin as Kevin stepped over to the lounge area, telekinetically lifting the fallen partition and holding it in place as Chris jogged back up to them with a tool kit.

"You guys okay?" Brennan asked Jesse and Lexa as Jesse helped her take a seat on one of the recliners in the lounge area.

"Yeah, just knocked the wind out of me, slammed into the wall," Lexa wheezed, trying to draw deep breaths all the way to her diaphragm to restore her breathing properly. She opened one eye to glance at Chris as he started unscrewing a bent partition support bracket. "You kinda hit like a truck."

"Sorry," he tossed back casually, giving her a one-shouldered shrug as he worked. "I'm fun at clubs and parties, though. I bet you are, too, with the built in light show, and all."

Lexa laughed in surprise, weakly, but the involuntary response actually did more to reset her breathing patterns than her deliberate efforts had. She looked at Chris in reappraisal, wondering if he had done that on purpose.

"I've been known to light up a bar or two," she admitted, glancing at Jesse.

"Even when you're not wired on DXL, huh?" Jesse asked with a forced smirk. Lexa smiled back wryly and gave him a nod.

Brennan nodded to Jesse and Lexa, glad to see that they were alright, then hurried after Josh and Shalimar.

"So, Eve'll probably kill me for asking before she got back and might make you repeat the story, but what happened to Sanctuary?" Josh asked as he led Shalimar and Brennan into a storeroom towards the rear of Haven. "I mean, Jamie and Owen have gone on about how awesome the place is, and we got Adam's message 'Sanctuary's been compromised,' but that's all it said. What actually happened to it?"

"Well, long story short, the secret people who funded Mutant X decided we were the bad guys when we wouldn't jump through their hoops anymore," Shalimar explained as Josh led them back to a cabinet, opening it and handing Brennan the fluffiest towel he saw. "They stormed Sanctuary when we wouldn't turn Jesse over to them, and we kinda blew it up behind ourselves as we made a run for it. Not like they gave us a lot of choice."

"Actually, they already had Jesse at that point," Brennan said as Shalimar grabbed a few more towels and Josh picked up a mop and bucket. "We had to go find Adam, and the Dominion followed us– –they were actually after Adam the whole time; that's why he disappeared in the first place," he explained as they trooped back to the entryway. "Jesse bought us some time to escape Adam's hideaway, but they caught him in the process. They already had Lexa, and came after us and Adam in Sanctuary. We had to blow up Sanctuary escaping, took the fight to them to rescue Jess and Lex, but they caught Adam. So, we're pretty much on the run, and here we are," Brennan finished as they reached the entryway once more.

"Are you telling the 'Why Are We Here?' story?" Jesse asked with a laugh as Brennan stepped into the lounge area. "I just finished telling Kevin and Chris."

Brennan set his towel down on a side table at one end of the sofa, stripping his sodden shirt off before picking the towel back up again, drying off his upper body and specifically his arms. Shalimar tutted and grabbed his wet shirt, wiping up the wet spot it had left on the table with one of her towels before using her Feral strength to wring Brennan's wet shirt out over Josh's mop bucket. She folded her towel into a small pad and put it on the table before folding Brennan's shirt and putting it on top of the towel, shooting Brennan a glare in the process. Josh paused in his mopping up of the water by the entryway to watch Brennan carefully dry himself, and Kevin openly stared at the unexpected sight of Brennan's well-muscled upper body, the partition he was mentally holding up beginning to wobble.

"Dude, eyes on your work," Chris muttered with glee when he glanced over his shoulder and saw what had interrupted Kevin. Kevin shook his head and grabbed the partition with his hands, holding it up manually as he returned his attention to the play of Brennan's muscles as he dried himself off. Chris shook his head with a grin and went back to work unscrewing the brackets that had been bent by the partition's toppling.

A few minutes later the water had been mopped up, the destroyed bottles thrown away, and the lounge area partition re-attached to its mate once Kevin had telekinetically straightened the bent metal brackets. Josh had returned to his seat at the main workstation, unenthusiastic about it but willing to make the effort to put Eve back into good humor when she returned. Kevin had returned to finishing his update of their database on the new information regarding Simian Ferals, which Jesse found fascinating. Chris had taken Shalimar, Lexa, and Brennan on a fifty-cent tour of Haven, pointing out the guest rooms they would be free to use. Brennan had gone back to the entryway to fetch their duffel of supplies and was just emerging from the guest room he had claimed when Eve returned. She smiled to see Brennan in dry clothes and Haven restored to rights, then turned in surprise when the communications array chimed its incoming call alert again.

"This is Josh," the long-haired Feral said after flicking on the vox-mic, figuring it was Owen or Jamie with an update.

'Dude, we've got trouble,' Owen's voice came back over the line. 'Jamie figured out that the attempted electronic hack on the safehouse lock was done by remote, and I followed the scents of whoever tried to force the door back to a surveillance van. It's chock full of GSAgents, and that's not the worst of it.' Eve and the rest of the team except Kevin and Jesse had come up behind Josh as Owen spoke; they could all hear the deep growl of repressed anger in his voice.

Just after the original Mutant X team had taken in Jamie and begun planning to create a Californian team, Owen had been captured by the GSA. They had physically tortured him to test the extent of his Feral abilities; Owen had nearly been at the point of psychological collapse when Mutant X rescued him. Owen had a deep, pathological hatred of the GSA, and nothing made him angrier faster than when the GSA attempted to catch other New Mutants. 'They're parked just down the street from Eloy's Diner. I think Eloy's cover may be blown, or they're really suspicious, at the least. They obviously know the safehouse is only a few blocks away.'

"Crap," Eve gasped in alarm. "Eloy's is halfway across the city; we'll never get there before they make their move. . .Owen, you and Jamie have got to stall them! The original team is here, we've got backup, but until we get there..."

'Got it,' Owen answered, still sounding angry but weary as well. 'We'll come up with something. Get here as quick as you can, though; I've got a bad feeling about this.'

"We're on our way," Eve reassured him. "I'm calling Eloy to give him warning; you two just slow them down. Be there soon," Eve finished, reaching over Josh's shoulder to switch the commline off and the intercom page to the computer lab on. 'Kevin, Jesse, we've got trouble! Owen and Jamie need backup now, so we've gotta go!'

"Eve, we've got the Helix parked on top of the parking garage; we can get across town no problem," Shalimar said.

"Ohh, fantastic!" Eve sighed with relief as Kevin and Jesse came running up. "Let's go, People," she finished, leading the way out of Haven and down the access tunnel to the parking garage's elevator instead of the Majestic's penthouse elevator.

Owen disconnected his call to Haven, then punched the second speed-dial on his modified cellphone, calling Jamie. Eve had bought a set of six cellphones under some package deal, then proceeded to strip their guts out and modify them to operate more like dialable walkie talkies, enabling the team to contact each other at any time, using any carrier's signal.

'Yeah,' Jamie answered after only one "ring" over Owen's line.

"Dude, where are you?" Owen asked. "Eve's on the way, said she's got the original team with her, so we've got serious back-up, but we need to stall these goons long enough for the team to get here."

'Dude, I'm just down the block. You oughtta be able to hear me by now, Bear Ears,' Jamie said back with an audible smile. 'I'll be with you in just a second. I think I've got an idea to buy some time, too.'

Owen disconnected without bothering to say anything, his eyes flaring green-brown as his irises spread to fill the entire space between his eyelids. He cocked his head to listen for Jamie's approach as he clipped his phone back to his belt, also keeping an ear on the GSAgent's van. Bears were generally placid creatures, but the old adage about a mother bear's fury was just as applicable to male bears; they just got wound up for other reasons than their young. Owen's bear eyes narrowed as he heard the voices of the GSAgents in the van. He couldn't make out what they were saying, they were too far away, but he could tell by the tones of voice that they were getting restless. That wasn't good; they'd make their move if they got too impatient. Part of Owen was fine with that; his animal side was feeling a bit impatient, too.

"Dude, chill," Jamie said as he came up to Owen, laying a hand on the big man's shoulder. Owen's head snapped around to glare at Jamie before he registered the scruffy dark-haired presence as his friend; Jamie left his hand where it was on Owen's shoulder and simply raised an eyebrow in response. "Heh. It's not like I'm surprised you didn't hear me coming, Bear Ears; I could see your jaw flexing halfway down the block. I'm amazed you can hear anything over your grinding teeth."

Owen smiled sheepishly, rolling his back-to-normal eyes at Jamie as he willed his face and jaw to relax.

"You're right, you're right," Owen admitted, holding both palms up slightly in surrender rather than making it an argument. "But I can hear those goons; they're getting restless."

"Ah-hah, so they'd be interested in a distraction," Jamie answered with a smirk, toeing off his sneakers.

Owen frowned.

"What are you doing?" he asked as Jamie unbuttoned his baggy cargo shorts and let them drop to the ground as he shrugged off his backpack. Jamie was wearing skintight biker shorts as underwear, which he apparently didn't mind flaunting to anyone who should happen to glance down the alley Owen was keeping watch on Eloy's Diner and the GSA's van from.

"Providing that distraction," Jamie answered with a smirk as he stuffed his cargo shorts into his backpack and pulled a hip-pack out after unclipping his phone from the shorts.

Jamie stood and smirked at Owen, the expression on his face unchanging even as the features making up that expression shifted. His lips grew fuller and went to a darker shade of pink as the scruff on his cheeks disappeared, those cheeks growing rounder as his face grew softer, his eyebrows becoming finer as his hair lengthened. His shoulders narrowed as his hips flared, filling the form-fitting shorts in a different way as Jamie shifted from male to female.

"So, you think this will be distracting?" Jamie asked with a smirk as she clicked the hip-pack around her waist, clipping her phone to it as she stepped into her shoes, shapeshifting her feet even smaller to fit back into the shoes without untying them. After clipping her phone to the hip-pack's belt, Jamie grabbed the baggy bottom of her men's tee shirt and tugged it snug around her ribs, quickly tying off the bottom of the shirt in a knot at the very top of her abdomen, making the tee shirt into a converted halter top. She planted her fists on her hips and tipped her head to one side as she awaited Owen's response, still smirking as she playfully batted her thick eyelashes at him.

"God, you're awful," Owen said, flipping the back of one hand at Jamie in dismissal. "And don't go in your normal girl form; that's just wrong," he went on. "Go tall and blonde, that'll distract any testosterone goon, right? And bigger boobs."

Jamie straightened, the playful smirk fading from her face as she concentrated for a moment. She grew an inch or two in height, which admittedly worked better with her still-man-sized shoes, and her hair lengthened even more, growing from just past her shoulders down to the middle of her back. Jamie's hair went from dark brown to sun-kissed blonde as it lengthened, her tee shirt growing snug across the back and shoulders once more as her chest expanded to fill it.

"Better?" the tall blonde Jamie asked in a bubbly voice that was nothing like her normal tone.

"Awesome," Owen smirked as he grabbed Jamie's backpack and shrugged it on. "Go get 'em, Tiger. That van's back only opens on the passenger side or the rear, so if you distract the driver, I'll roll it onto the passenger side. If we can spin it to block the rear doors, the only way they'll be able to get out is through the driver's door."

"And I can stop that long enough for you to grab something to block that with," Jamie nodded, her bubbly blonde voice sounding strange speaking in such serious tones. "They'll probably take out the windshield and get out that way, but that'll take time, hopefully enough for the team to get here."

"Eve said she was calling Eloy to give warning, too, so maybe anybody there can bug out while we keep these guys tied up," Owen answered, then gave a nod. "Let's do this."

Jamie nodded back to Owen and sauntered out of the alley, rolling her hips up the street as she approached the GSA's van from behind. She was walking with the heels of her palms on the backs of her hips, elbows out and chest thrust forward, sure to grab attention.

There were in fact a number of cat calls and whistles as Jamie sauntered up the street, which only made her grin and get more into character. She turned that smile to meet the gaze of the GSAgent behind the van's wheel as she met his eyes in the rearview mirror. Jamie slid her hands across her bare abdomen to fold her arms beneath her breasts as she came up and leaned into the driver's side window, smiling at the agent.

"Wow, do you have, like, cable and everything in this ride?" Jamie asked in her best dimwitted blonde voice, stressing the word "ride" just the tiniest bit.

"Cable?" the man behind the wheel asked, confused.

"Sure!" Jamie bubbled back at him. "You've got, like, a zillion antennas on the roof of this thing; you must get great reception!" she said, giving "reception" the same slightest stress she had "ride". Jamie leaned into the van, smiling into the man's face as hers passed within inches of it, turning her head to look for the cable TV screen and blocking his view with her hair. Jamie couldn't decide if she should snicker or be grossed out when she heard the guy inhaling the scent of her hair.

The driver was fully distracted by Jamie being literally in his face; Owen assumed the rest of the goons in the back of the van were probably paying almost as much attention to Jamie as Owen casually walked past the van on the driver's side. He stopped abruptly and dropped into a crouch as he reached the mid-panel of the van, reaching out with one hand to tap Jamie on the back of the leg and let her know he was in position.

"Wow, that looks really high-tech!" Jamie said as she pulled back, beaming her best confused blonde face into the driver's cloudy expression. "Like, even more complicated than my combo VCR/DVD player, and God knows I can't figure that thing out!" she finished with an elaborate shrug, smiling again as she watched the driver's eyes watch her chest. "Well, my guy's here, so I gotta go. You have fun with that nap!" she finished with another grin.

"Huh?" the guy said, looking up from Jamie's chest in confusion just in time to catch Jamie's knockout punch with his face.

Jamie was still grinning brilliantly.

As soon as Jamie threw her punch, Owen sucked in a deep breath, his eyes flaring green-brown again as he shifted to Feral mode. He wrapped his fingers beneath the van's frame, exhaling steadily as he stood and lifted, slowly tipping the van over onto its side. Jamie shifted into a shorter, stockier male form, his expanding ribcage pulling the loose knot in his tee shirt free, and did his best to help. Jamie hadn't a prayer of moving an entire van full of men on his own, but every pound of force he applied was one less that Owen needed to overcome the van's weight.

The GSAgents inside were just beginning to cry out in alarm as Owen heard the latch of the rear doors click, the van's floor only at a forty degree angle. Owen snarled a new breath and let his rage flow, bellowing as he heaved and Jamie turned his back to the van, dropping into a crouch and thrusting with his legs, pressing his shoulders up and back into the edge of the van's undercarriage.

Owen toppled the van onto its passenger side, onto the sidewalk, the GSAgents inside crying out in pain as well as alarm as they lost their footing and fell into the van's side, now facing the ground. People on the street were crying out in shocked confusion and running as Owen sprang over the van, twisting around in midair to land in front of the windshield, facing the van's hood. He planted his forearms against it and snarled again, sinking low and shoving with his legs, sheet metal screeching as the van began to ever-so-slowly rotate in place.

Jamie threw himself over the van's rear wheel, collapsing his torso into elasticity to slide into the wheel well, wrapping himself around the van's rear axle. Jamie restored himself from the chest up, leaving his lower ribs and the middle of his torso elastic as he grabbed his own thighs. Jamie walked around the van's rear and roof to the streetlight in front of where it had parked, stretching his middle out behind him. He grabbed onto the streetlight, wrapping his arms around it and walking his legs up to it as well. He continued to let his torso stretch out behind him, letting his lower body fall to the ground and "walking" his legs around the streetlight by planting a heel and then bending his knee, dragging his lower body forward. Once he was straddling the streetlight, Jamie crossed his ankles to lock them, then concentrated on reversing his elasticity, trying to draw his body back to its ordinary shape.

The pull of Jamie's entire body against the van was much greater than he would have been able to apply just using his arms and legs, helping Owen to spin the van on its side. Jamie had to concentrate to apply his power how he wanted it; if he reverted his midsection fully to normal, it would be crushed in the van's wheel well. But he could apply his elastic and shapeshifting abilities selectively with focus, allowing him to apply all of his elastic strength with the right configuration, as he was doing at that moment.

With a wrenching screech, the van spun in place, Jamie letting go of the streetlight and slithering free of the van as its rear doors came to a rest just in front of the streetlight. Even as Jamie was getting to his feet and examining the grease and grime smeared over his sore abs, the van's rear doors tried to open, swinging out less than half a foot before running into the streetlight's base.

Jamie grinned at the cursing coming from inside the van's rear compartment.

"Evil government agency," Jamie said with a smile to the people coming out of the bar down the street to see what the commotion was about, staring at him in shock. "Black van, antennas on top..." he explained as the people stared in shock before running back inside. Jamie shrugged as the voices coming from the cracked-open rear doors of the van yelled in outrage.

"Go!" Jamie called to Owen. "Get something to block the driver's door with," he called out as he jumped up to plant his forearms on the van's driver side, which was now its roof, and climbed up onto it. He jumped up and down a few times to scare the men inside with thumps on their roof, then walked up to the driver's window.

"Hey!" Jamie squawked, dropping into a crouch as a shot rang out, the bullet passing within a foot of Jamie's face. Jamie balled up his fists and made his forearms go elastic as he threw two punches; his fists' momentum carried them into the van, stretching his arms out behind them. The GSAgent gasped in surprise as he was punched in the face by a man eight feet away from him; Jamie's other hand grabbed the agent's handgun and yanked it out of his grasp as Jamie reverted his arms to normal, snapping them back out of the van.

Jamie switched the gun to his right hand, pointing it into the van as he called out so that the GSAgents in its back could hear him:

"I'm not exactly fluent in guns, but I've got this one pointed directly at the space you guys have to crawl through to get out of there. I suggest you stay put."

Jamie met the eyes of the agent he had taken the gun from, waggling his eyebrows at the man as he stared him down over the sights of the man's gun. Jamie carefully centered the gun on the man's torso and pointed at the van's rear compartment with his free hand, bobbing it back and forth in a "You should move now" gesture.

The GSAgent scrambled back into the rear of the van.

Owen leaped up onto the van's driver side, standing on the fender, in front of the driver's door.

"Didn't see anything handy, but I've got an idea," he said. "Open the door."

Jamie did, lifting the door up and holding it open with his left arm as he kept the gun trained on the rear compartment with his right. Owen reached through the open driver's window and hit the power lock button, locking all of the van's doors. Then he curled his hand into a fist and smashed the lock button panel of the door in, rendering it useless. Owen grabbed the upper frame of the door, heaving with his Feral strength and snarling as he twisted it out of shape, folding it in to block the driver's window like a mangled set of bars. Jamie backed off and let the door fall closed; Owen had been careful to bend the window's frame in such a way that it did not protrude out to prevent the door closing.

"Gimme the gun," Owen said as he stepped forward onto the driver's door, peering down into the van's cabin.

"What are you gonna do?" Jamie asked cautiously, hesitantly offering the handgun's grip to Owen.

"Relax, I ain't gonna shoot anybody," Owen grinned fiercely. "There's another master lock in the passenger door's armrest," Owen explained as he took careful aim, then fired, putting a bullet through the other power door lock panel and rendering it useless as well.

Jamie suddenly shoved Owen's side, knocking him off the van to fall across the windshield. Owen stifled his cry of shock and flipped in midair, landing on his feet and looking up in surprise to see what on earth Jamie thought he was doing.

Owen's eyes widened in shock even as he was looking up and landing; Jamie had turned to face across the street and forced himself to collapse into total elasticity as an energy wave slammed into him, blasting him off the van and smashing him into the storefront on the other side of the sidewalk. Jamie's elastic form flattened against the brick building's front and bounced off of it, landing on the ground and reverting into Jamie's normal form as Owen ducked behind the van and crouched at Jamie's side.

"Jamie! Dude, you okay?!" Owen asked in alarm, his concern all the more bizarre-looking on his face with his eyes wide and green-brown in Feral mode, his instincts screaming to protect his pack. He heard more screams of panicked people in the background, but he didn't care about that when he'd just seen a teammate get blasted.

"Ow," Jamie said weakly, then took a deep breath. "Dude, that hurt. I hate slamming into things. Or having things slam into me. Good thing it was a kinetic energy wave though; if that had been thermal, I'd be toast. Literally."

"Okay, now I'm shooting somebody," Owen said, stretching up on tiptoe to peer over the van's side. "Where'd it come from?"

"Across the street, rooftop one closer to us from Eloy's," Jamie said as he rolled to his feet. "Basic GSA goons in black; I only saw 'em 'cause one was building up an energy charge. He threw it as soon as I saw him, didn't have time to warn you."

"No sweat. I got 'em," Owen answered, his Feral eyes peering down the emptied street towards Eloy's and up. He raised the gun, taking aim quickly, and fired. A snarling grin spread across Owen's face as a yell of shocked pain rang out down the street in the aftermath of the gun's report.

Owen started to aim again, then snarled in frustration and relaxed his shooting stance.

"Damn, they all ducked."

Jamie laughed.

"Hell, man, even GSA goons are smart enough to duck after you shoot at them," he chuckled.

"Fuckin' traitors," Owen snarled, referring to the New Mutant GSAgents. "Sellouts. Hunting down their own kind just to keep their own asses out of pods."

"Head in the game, Pal, not your past issues," Jamie commented, keeping watch behind Owen. "We didn't know about the group on the rooftop, just this van. Who knows how many more might be out there. Or what other powers the roof group might have."

"You're right," Owen sighed, cocking his head to listen and peering around at the other rooftops that had a line of sight on Eloy's Diner, keeping an eye and ear out for more trouble.

"Van tipping, gunshots. . .the cops oughtta show up in not too long, right?" Jamie asked.

Owen snorted.

"LAPD? Who knows. But yeah, probably soon, just to inconvenience us."

"You're a pessimist," Jamie chided, then narrowed his eyes at the street behind Owen. "Hey. . .that couple, they're looking at us. Didn't take off when you flipped the van, or when you started shooting."

Owen turned to look at the couple Jamie was pointing out, then barked out a cry of alarm, Jamie gasping at the same time.

"Jump!" he yelled, even as he was grabbing Jamie's shirtfront in one fist. They had trained together, been members of the Californian division of Mutant X since day one together; Jamie knew what Owen was doing when they both saw the curly-haired woman move. He jumped into Owen's arms even as Owen was hauling him in by his shirt once he was airborn; Owen dropped into a crouch as he scooped Jamie up in his arms, leaping a dozen feet away as the woman of the couple thrust her blue-glowing hand at them.

Owen and Jamie landed four yards away from where they had been as the van's roof and the sidewalk in front it frosted over, gleaming razor-sharp crystals of ice spearing out of every solid surface.

"Crap!" they muttered in unison as Owen moved to set Jamie down.

"No, throw me at 'em," Jamie urged him, quietly.

"What?" Owen asked, confusion crossing his Feral-eyed face.

"Just do it! Chuck me at 'em; they totally won't be expecting it," Jamie murmured, keeping an eye on the approaching GSAgents as Owen frowned at him.

Owen shrugged, flinging Jamie up into the air as the Molecular curled into a ball. Owen rotated his wrists to face his palms away instead of upward as he shifted his hands behind Jamie's back, stepping forward and shoving his arms out, flinging Jamie at the man and woman heading towards them.

Jamie uncurled as he was flung, snapping a punch and a kick out into the startled faces of the two GSAgents. Jamie's arm and leg stretched out, covering the diminishing gap as he flew toward the agents, punching and kicking them simultaneously as Jamie made the rest of his form collapse into elasticity. He bounced harmlessly off the ground and onto his feet as the curly-haired woman and overly-styled blond man reeled back from Jamie's blows.

Owen turned at the almost inaudible sound of stealthy feet in combat boots sprinting at him from behind; he dodged aside as an orange-eyed Feral with a rangy build and copper hair in a crew cut leaped at him.

The Feral spun as he landed in a crouch, turning to face Owen as Owen regained his footing.

"Yer gonna pay for shootin' my bud in the leg," the Feral growled at him, one side of his upper lip curled back in a canine snarl.

"Yeah, well, your bud shot mine first, Carrot-top," Owen snarled back, then lunged at the guy. The Canine Feral growled in rage at Owen's mockery of his hair color, leaping forward to meet Owen in mid-tackle. Unfortunately for him, Owen's lunge had been a feint, which meant the Canine Feral leaped neatly into Owen's arms as he stopped himself short with his arms spread, ready to grab his opponent. Grab him Owen did, turning to fling the rangy Feral through the razor ice sculpture his other friend had created and into the van's roof, which was also covered in edged icicles.

The copper haired Feral snarled in rage as he realized he had been tricked, his snarl changing to a yelp of pain as he crashed through the ice crystals. He was bleeding as he fell into the smashed ice on the sidewalk below, but he wasn't too terribly injured. The force of Owen's throw had smashed him through the vertical ice crystals coming from the sidewalk, and they had reduced his momentum enough that the horizontal ones protruding from the van's roof mostly only jabbed him, rather than stabbing into him. Painted metal didn't frost well; the crystals coming from the van's roof cracked off at their bases and fell to the ground after the Feral had hit them.

Jamie turned and kicked the curly-haired woman in the stomach as he returned to his normal form. Not that Jamie had anything against women in particular, –hell, he spent a fair amount of time as one– it was just that she had already proved herself dangerous. Jamie didn't know if she was an inverse Thermal Elemental or maybe some weird kind of Molecular who could affect the water molecules in the air, but he wasn't giving her a chance to give him a second demonstration of her decidedly dangerous New Mutant abilities. Her partner probably had some tricks of his own, but Jamie was hoping he could keep them both from concentrating long enough to take them out of the fight.

Spinning back towards the blond guy wearing too much hair product, Jamie balled one hand into a fist, flinging it at the man and focusing on rendering his arm elastic, letting his fist fly out and smack the man in the face again, keeping him off balance. Jamie turned back to the woman, dropping to a crouch and sweeping one leg at her, kicking out with his foot. He made his leg elastic as he kicked, stretching it out so that his foot hooked around the back of her far foot, pulling it out from under her and into her other one as Jamie snapped his leg back to normal.

The curly-haired woman fell with a squawk, the breath wooshing out of her lungs as she landed flat on her back. Jamie dashed over to her and dropped to one knee at her side, slamming the bottoms of both fists into her solar plexus. The woman gasped soundlessly, having had no breath to lose, but now she couldn't draw a new one, either. Jamie knew her nervous system would sort itself out and she would start breathing properly again in a moment, but in the meanwhile her breathing difficulties would keep her out of the fight; Jamie hoped she might pass out and miss the rest of the fight entirely.

The Canine Feral scrabbled on the ground in pain, hurling himself away from the shattered ice crystals poking into his back in an awkward roll onto his hands and knees. Owen dashed forward, intending to take advantage of his enemy while he was down, take him out of the fight, but the rangy Feral had a trick of his own. As Owen rushed in, the copper haired man snapped one arm up, flinging a handful of ice shards into Owen's face.

Owen cried out in pained surprise, jerking to a stop and rubbing at his face, angry at himself for falling for the oldest trick in the book. He had seen the attack coming, too late to do anything about it but close his eyes, but at least that reflex had kept the razor shards of ice out of his eyeballs. Owen backpedaled away as he wiped the ice and blood off his face, but his second of hesitation cost him.

The Canine Feral flattened himself onto his forearms, propelling his lower body forward with a thrust of his legs, twisting at the waist as he curled one knee back up to his chest, then thrust that leg out into a kick to Owen's gut. Owen had cleared his vision as he backed away and looked at his opponent once more; he saw the attack coming with just enough time to tense his abdominal muscles against it. The Feral's kick was powerful, but the awkward position he had executed it from meant he wasn't braced for it. Owen had steeled his abs, so the wind wasn't knocked out of him; he was just knocked back a step, the Feral's unbraced position meaning he was propelled the opposite direction.

Owen regained his footing as the Canine Feral rolled back onto his own feet, both of them glaring at one another before charging forward once more.

Jamie looked up from the silently gasping woman to check on her partner just in time to see a neon-green starburst manifest on the Psionic's forehead and come streaking at him. Jamie threw himself to one side, narrowly dodging the blast of psychic energy and rolling to his feet.

Straightening up with his fists raised in ready position, prepared to fling them across the intervening distance at the overly-styled Psionic, Jamie gasped in surprise.

Standing in front of him was not one, not even two, but three dark blond Psionics with too much product in their hair. All three of the man's faces smirked as nimbuses of neon-green energy formed into starbursts on each of his foreheads.

"Crap!" Jamie commented hastily, throwing himself forward in a diving somersault at the middle image of the Psionic. Jamie thrust out with both feet into the man's stomach as he rolled forward, hoping to carry himself in under the man's mental blast. Jamie was actually throwing his legs out into a rolling kippup, assuming the middle image of the Psionic wasn't the real one, since that was obvious choice. However, if the guy was assuming Jamie would decide that, he was still prepared for his feet to slam into the chump's midsection rather than throwing himself onto his feet.

Jamie's feet did indeed pass through the Psionic's mental illusion of himself; Jamie thrust with his hands against the ground behind his head and flung himself up onto his feet. As Jamie's upper body flipped upright he threw his fists out to the sides, at the other two images of the Psionic as Jamie elasticized his arms. His fists flew out, stretching right through the other two images of the Psionic– –none of them were his actual position.

Owen threw himself into the other Feral, pretty much assuming he would come out on top. True, the guy was a Feral and hit harder than an ordinary human, a lot harder, but Owen was huge and could pretty much shrug off almost anything an ordinary person could throw at him. This guy was a Feral, not a human, but he was a Canine Feral, and Owen was Ursine. A dog versus a grizzly bear wasn't much of a contest. The bear might get bitten a few times, but nothing that wouldn't heal, and the dog wouldn't stand much of a chance once the bear caught it.

The Canine Feral socked Owen across the jaw, a punch Owen simply rolled with, and when the rangy man threw a punch with his other fist into Owen's stomach; the man's knuckles met the same abdominal steel that had blocked his awkward kick previously. Owen snarled a grin in the copper haired man's face as Owen caught his punching wrist in one hand, backhanding the guy across the face with his other.

Stunned by the blow that had caught him off guard, the man staggered backward. Owen let him get a pace away, then reeled him back in by jerking on the man's arm, since Owen still had him by the wrist. The man gasped as his momentum suddenly reversed itself, shaking his head and realizing the trouble he was in as he regained his senses.

He regained them just in time to see Owen's fist piledriving right into his face.

The Canine Feral slumped, unconscious, and Owen growled in frustrated anger. His inner beast had been awakened, angered, and he had wanted to beat on the guy some more. Not just beat on him, but fight him. Even enraged, Owen wasn't about to beat on someone who was unconscious and helpless, much as the sellout might deserve it.

Owen was just about to drop the guy's wrist and let him finish collapsing to the ground when he blinked in surprise as the guy fell upwards. The sudden twist of his wrist in Owen's grasp to the opposite angle and his weight tugging in the wrong direction broke the unconscious Feral free of Owen's hold; the man fell straight up into the air, as if gravity had been reversed for him.

Looking up in surprise, Owen grunted in further surprise to see a man hovering twenty feet above the street, who caught the Canine Feral as he started to drop again, holding him with one arm like he weighed next to nothing. The hovering man glared down at Owen, his dark eyebrows furrowing in anger.

"You shot me," the man snapped, his voice as angry as his expression. "Charlie here promised me you were gonna pay for that. And trust me, you are."

The man gestured at him, and Owen dropped to his knees as the weight of his body began increasing on a geometric progression. Owen cried out in pain as his knees slammed into the sidewalk; it felt like he had not only just dropped to his knees on cement, which he had, but also like he had been holding several hundred pounds of weight at the same time. Owen collapsed forward onto his hands, worried he might have shattered a kneecap or two, his elbows almost giving way and spilling him onto his face as the weight of his body continued to increase.

Owen slid his palms forward, grunting with the effort of sliding arms that weighed at least a hundred pounds each, also grunting with the pain of his heavy skin scraping itself across the sidewalk. Thank goodness it was a smooth sidewalk. Owen was quickly flattened, the weight of his thighs and hips forcing them to the ground and causing his knees to straighten and his legs to extend behind him. He had been rendered prone on the ground, his heart struggling to pump blood that weighed a dozen times more than it should through veins and arteries that wanted to collapse because they also weighed a dozen times more than they should. Owen knew his Feral strength was the only thing keeping him alive, and he wasn't sure how long it would hold up.

Jamie threw himself to one side, diving to the ground, knowing he was in trouble. He had no idea where the overly-styled Psionic was, but the guy could probably shoot him with a mental starburst any time he wanted. Jamie was a little surprised he hadn't already, but maybe the guy had been waiting to see how Jamie reacted to his triplicate trick.

Apparently Jamie's attacking of the three duplicates had been all the response the Psionic had been waiting for, because as Jamie threw himself to the ground and rolled away, a neon-green starburst streaked through the air where he had been standing a second ago. The psychic blast had come from in front of him and to one side, so Jamie turned and sprinted the other direction. He whipped one hand at a big motorcycle parked a few yards away, rendering his arm elastic and stretching his hand across the distance to grab the motorcycle around the base of one of its handlebars. Jamie jumped at the bike, concentrating to snap his arm back to normal, yanking himself across the distance in a split second and jerking him out of the path of the next neon-green starburst.

Jamie grinned as he leaped over the bike and ducked behind it, hearing the Psionic swear in frustration. He was in kind of a laugh or scream situation, so he chose to laugh. Hopefully the rest of the team would arrive soon and bail his and Owen's asses out of this mess, so they could have the last laugh.

Owen lay on the ground, panting, struggling just to keep his heart beating. He knew he wouldn't be able to last much longer, but it wasn't like there was much he could do about it other than try to hang on. Maybe the police would show up, and Flying Guy could fly away with his friend Charlie and leave Owen the heck alone. Quite frankly, Owen would rather go to jail than die of gravity-induced heart failure at twenty four, but he figured he could get away from any cops if Flying Guy would just turn the extra gravity off.

His eyes already in their green-brown Feral state because his body was using the extra strength of its Feral mode just to keep his heart beating, Owen grinned as his enhanced hearing picked up a sound he hadn't heard in a long time but would never forget.

The muted roar of the Double Helix's engines.

Eve wasn't as good a pilot as Brennan or Jesse, but she was thankful Adam had insisted that she learn how to fly the Helix, "just in case." The rest of the team was obviously going to have a fight on their hands; they had seen the psychic starbursts flying as they flew by overhead, and there was another guy standing in midair over Owen. Eve thought about just flying the Helix into him but decided against it; if he had seriously hurt Owen, or worse, then running him over with a VTOL jet would be letting him off too easy.

Parking the Helix on top of Eloy's Diner with its tail facing back down the street, towards the fight, Eve triggered the rear hatch, knowing the team was ready to leap to Jamie and Owen's aid. Eloy's Diner was a one story building; they could actually all drop to the ground with relatively little hassle and join the fight quickly.

Brennan didn't even bother exiting the Helix, just thrust his arm through the open hatch and blasted the man hovering over Owen, holding a hand out and obviously doing something to their big teammate. Bolts of electric-blue lightning flared off Brennan's fingertips and streaked through the air, connecting with the hovering man's floating form and zapping him thoroughly.

The hovering man cried out in literal shock, dropping his unconscious Feral companion to the street below and falling himself as the concentration he had been using to negate gravity's pull on him was shattered. Owen surged to his feet, uppercutting the falling man in the sternum with a bellow of rage as he stood and the man fell to the sidewalk. The man was spun around in midair by his collision with Owen's rising fist, bones snapping as he flipped over around Owen's fist and slammed flat on his back into the sidewalk.

Owen was debating between spitting on the guy or kicking the rest of his sellout ribs in when the windshield of the GSA's van just to one side of him shattered. Owen winced at the loud report of the gunshot echoing from inside the van, turning to run back towards Eloy's and his backup as the armed GSAgents began scrambling out of the van's cabin.

"Owen, DOWN!" Brennan yelled as he, Shalimar, and Josh sprinted for him, the rest of the team right behind them. Owen threw himself to the ground as Brennan stopped running, rolling his hands over one another to build up a tesla coil. He thrust his hand out as the rest of the team kept running past him, electricity arcing out of his fingers to slam into the small mob of GSAgents behind Owen, zapping several of them unconscious.

"I got the rest of them; Ferals, Move!" Chris called out as he also stopped running, his voice projecting far louder than it should have been. Josh knew what was coming and Shalimar quickly got the idea from Chris' projecting voice, both of them leaping aside and past the GSAgents, distracting some of them as the two Feline Ferals ran on to catch up with Jamie.

Chris drew in a deep breath as he stopped running, motioning the others to move to one side as they passed him by. Kevin urged Jesse and Lexa to move aside with him as Chris opened his mouth, and shouted.

Chris' shout poured forth in a shockwave of sonic energy, the concussive force of it compressing the air in its path, causing a burst of that much more pressure as the wavefront of his shout slammed into the GSAgents. The air vibrated with the force of Chris' yell, visibly rippling like heat shimmer where it was compressed by the concussive force of the soundwaves. Chris bellowed for a full six seconds, which didn't sound like a long time, but it was long enough to blast all of the GSAgents off their feet, sending them tumbling down the street away from Owen, even the ones who had already fallen to Brennan's electrical blast.

Shalimar and Josh sprinted down the street to join Jamie, both of them crouching behind the car parallel parked one space closer to Eloy's Diner than the motorcycle Jamie had ducked behind.

"Jamie, you okay?" Josh hissed in a stage whisper as he and Shalimar took cover behind the car, both of them trying to peer through its windows to see the street beyond, to find the source of the psychic starbursts that Jamie had been running from when they arrived. "Where's the Psionic?"

"I'm fine, and no idea," Jamie said back. "Lost track of him while I was fighting his partner, and when I looked up, there were three of him. Heya, Shal."

"Hi, Jamie," she answered with a tense smile of greeting, pleased to see Jamie again, even if under less than ideal circumstances. "So, he's an Illusionist?"

"And shooting those psi-blast things," Jamie answered with a nod. "I'm worried he could be right behind us, or just ten feet away, ready to blast us silly, and we don't know it because he's making us see the street as empty, y'know?"

"Mental invisibility's a good trick, but hard to pull off on a Feral, much less two," Shalimar answered, tossing a smirk at Josh. Josh grinned back, keeping a quiet eye out as Shalimar spoke with Jamie. "He doesn't have our hearing or sense of smell; he can't convince our senses they're hearing or smelling things he has no concept of."

"Hey, good point," Jamie said, brightening. "He probably just went invisible and snuck off when you guys showed up as cavalry."

"Maybe, but he could just be lurking somewhere nearby, ready to blast anybody he gets the drop on," Shalimar warned him. "You know what assuming makes. If you have to assume, always assume the worst. Pessimists get more pleasant surprises," she finished with a smirk.

Jamie rolled his eyes.

"You don't live and work with this guy," he said, pointing at Josh. "His wacky luck would make–"

"MOVE!" Josh shouted, interrupting Jamie as he swatted at Shalimar's crouching thigh to express his urgency. Shalimar sprang at Josh's yell, both Feline Ferals leaping away from the car they were crouched in front of as a wave of shimmering heat energy flew into the car. The gas tank was on the passenger side, facing the incoming heatwave; the car exploded in a rolling ball of orange flame and greasy smoke as Jamie scrambled away from the motorcycle.

"Goddamn, I hate it when they use fire!" Josh snarled to himself as he landed in a crouch, tucking his back up against the corner of one building that stuck out farther than the front wall of the one next to it. Shalimar had leaped in the opposite direction, landing in front of the narrow alleyway next to the building Josh was crouched in front of. They both had the instinctive Feral fear of open flame, but Shalimar had been forced to confront that fear on several occasions. She wasn't about to go running past the blazing inferno that was the car's wreckage, but she wasn't instinctively seeking cover, either. Shalimar sprinted down the alleyway, leaping up onto the second floor's fire escape landing and quickly dashing the rest of the way up to the roof.

As Chris was bowling over the last of the GSAgents from the van Owen had tipped, two more big black vans screeched around the corner up the street, speeding past Eloy's Diner and slewing to a stop. Lexa flared with light and vanished from sight as the new vans' doors were flung open; two more squads of armed GSAgents leaped out, one indiscriminately opening fire and the other fanning out behind them, wielding electrified stun sticks. Kevin was already running after Josh and Shalimar; he ducked when their cover exploded, then turned to hold back the newly arrived agents, fury at their distraction when his Feral lover had just been confronted by open flame fueling his telekinetic attacks. Brennan dove for the ground, squirming on his belly to get behind a car, and Owen hit the ground yet again, having just gotten back up to his feet as Brennan and Chris took care of the first agents. Jesse took a breath and held it, massing his body and pulling Chris' shorter form behind him, since most of the bullets were headed Chris' way because he had just battered the other squad of agents. Chris gasped and flattened himself against Jesse's diamond-hard massed form, standing back to back with him as a score of bullets squashed themselves flat against Jesse's impenetrable body.

"You're bulletproof; are you soundproof?" Chris asked from the corner of his mouth, over his shoulder to Jesse. "Plug your right ear, if you're not."

Jesse raised his right arm, clamping his palm over over his ear; Chris turned behind him and leaned out past Jesse's side, ducking to peek around his ribs. Chris took a quick breath and shouted, only his eyes to his goateed chin showing past Jesse's triceps and side. Chris' quick shout slammed into the group of GSAgents firing at him and Jesse, knocking them off balance. Brennan had made it behind a car and peeked up to watch through both sets of the car's windows; when he saw Chris distract the agents by knocking them off balance, Brennan leaned past the car's windshield and zapped a number of them with another tesla coil.

The GSAgents scattered as a number of their group collapsed, some of them ducking behind their van or its wide open rear doors to use them as cover, a few others charging Jesse and Chris, figuring they could get in close before Chris or Brennan could unleash another energy attack. Jesse stepped forward to meet the first two agents, smirking as one broke his hand trying to punch his massed jaw; he sent the other one flying with a massed palm strike to the agent's chest. Chris dashed around Jesse, jumping into the nearest GSAgent with a flying kick. He knocked away another's incoming punch with one hand as he landed, punching the guy across the jaw with the other. Chris turned and snapped a foot out at the next agent, kicking the stun stick out of his hand before the man could jab him with it.

Shalimar crept up the ladder leading from the fire escape up onto the building's roof, raising her head just enough to peer over the roof's low wall. She grinned to see two black-garbed GSAgents leaning over the corner of the building's front wall, trying to find Josh or Jamie. She silently finished ascending the fire escape ladder and began creeping across the roof as quietly as possible.

It wasn't quite quietly enough; the redheaded woman's head snapped around at a soft gravelly crunch of the roof's asphalt surface under Shalimar's boot. The redhead's green eyes flashed golden as they converted to feline slits; she had heard Shalimar's stealthy approach with her Feral hearing.

The other Feline Feral had heard Shalimar's boot scrape on the rooftop's surface a few yards away, so she had an idea of how far away her opponent was. Unfortunately for the redhead, that was how far away Shalimar had been when her boot had made that small noise. She had leaped the instant she had seen the redhead react to her presence, flying through the air to land immediately behind the other Feline Feral as the woman spun around. She gasped in surprise to see Shalimar so close, already on top of her. The woman's Feral reflexes responded, bringing her hands up to defend herself, but it was too late. Shalimar was already thrusting her arms forward, one high and one low. The redhead managed to bat aside Shalimar's higher arm, but her lower caught the other woman in the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of her and pitching her backward over the roof's low wall.

Shalimar didn't have time to see how well the other Feral handled the three story fall; she still had the Thermal Elemental who had blown up the car to deal with. He was an Asian man with short hair and cold eyes, only an inch or two taller than Shalimar, and he also had well-developed reflexes. Even as Shalimar was landing and knocking his Feral partner over the roof's edge, the man was drawing his fists up to his chin, infrared heat building in a hazy shimmer around them. The man punched one fist at Shalimar, sending the charge of thermal energy surging at her; she used her crouched position to spring aside, the thermal energy scorching the roof's asphalt and leaving a thick scent of hot tar in the air. Shalimar leaped again, flipping over the man as he flung his other fistful of heat at her, twisting in midair to land facing him and kicking the Elemental in the back.

The man spun around as he stumbled away from Shalimar, proving his reflexes by regaining his footing at the same time. He inhaled and exhaled forcefully, focusing on his hands as he generated more thermal energy, wrapping his fists in infrared heat once more. After appraising Shalimar over his shimmering fists for only a split second, the man dashed forward, snapping one leg out in a double sidekick, almost catching Shalimar in the side of the head when she nearly returned to her former position after dodging the first kick. He swept one burning fist at her, driving Shalimar back with its radiant heat before she could attack, and he pressed his advantage, following her in with his other hand.

Kevin had run after Josh and Shalimar, watching as they took cover behind a car; he had been pretty sure he'd seen Jamie just past them. Ferals were stupidly fast, it would have been another minute before he caught up with them. . .when they had leaped away and the car they'd been next to had exploded. Kevin had thrown up an arm to shield his face, crying out in alarm as another van sped past the fight behind him, getting ahead of it before its doors had opened and disgorged another squad of GSAgents. Many of them had run back toward the fight, to come at Mutant X from the other direction, but some had turned toward both the burning car and Kevin.

Kevin frowned angrily, his furious will lifting the lid off a garbage can before flinging it like a frisbee into one of the agents, the rest of the can smashing into two more agents a split second later. The can swung around in midair even as its contents spilled to the ground, smashing into another man so hard it sent him sprawling into a third. The can lifted up into the air, flipping upside down, and dropped over another GSAgent's head, forcing his gun arm back down to his side. Kevin wasn't done yet, rotating the can ninety degrees and forcing the man inside it to bend over double before he smashed the can down the line of men, knocking their feet out from under them all in one broad stroke.

Kevin's boyfriend could be in trouble, even Owen wasn't the best around open flame, no Feral was, and Kevin didn't feel like wasting time on these schlubs. He telekinetically grabbed the mess that had spilled out of the garbage can, flinging it up into the air over the agents to come raining down on them as a disgusting distraction. His eyes flicked from one agent to the next, watching their hips and hands, plucking guns and stun sticks out of hands and holsters, zipping them over to land in a pile at Kevin's feet one by one.

Some of the GSAgents had struggled back up to their feet by the time Kevin had retrieved all their weapons; they were slowly moving in, waiting for more of their comrades to join them and counting on their superior numbers to defeat a lone New Mutant.

Josh forced himself to stand, still eying the burning car balefully. Intellectually, he knew flame couldn't hurt him if he was careful; it wasn't alive, couldn't maliciously strike at him, and he was mentally aware of fire safety, but none of that mattered much when his instincts were screaming at him to get away. Josh considered it an accomplishment that he had only put his back to a corner, rather than fleeing entirely. The only reason he hadn't was because he had seen the man on the roof throwing the energy wave at him and Shalimar in the first place; he knew the guy could take another shot if he moved, drew attention to himself. Josh was intellectually aware of fire safety; he was also aware of the mess a wave of thermal energy would make of his back or head. Those kinds of burns would make passing your hands over a bonfire look like a picnic.

Just as Josh forced himself upright and to take a step away from the building, closer to the fire so that he could look up and make sure the guy wasn't about to par broil him, a woman landed on top of him. She was a redhead, a Feral, judging by the way she landed, not to mention her golden eyes with vertical pupils and the way she tore into him, snarling. Josh had been caught completely by surprise, taking the full weight of her impact with only his chest and shoulders. His lean frame went down under her, twisting to try to roll out from beneath her, to let her take some of their crash into the ground, rather than pinning himself between her and it. She held on, panicked and enraged, adrenal response making her all the more dangerous as she attacked. Josh had only been a heartbeat away from losing it already, due to the sudden near-miss explosion of the car, and their sudden tumble back toward the blazing flames pushed him over the edge. Josh also lost control, giving back to the redhead just as well as she gave it out, both of them snarling, snapping, clawing and grappling at each other as they rolled across the sidewalk.

Owen picked himself up off the ground for the who-knew-how-many-eth time that day, grunting in annoyance at the ache in his knees. He surveyed the fight, watching carefully to make sure Jesse and Chris were handling the new squad of GSAgents, which they were, even as Brennan joined them. He saw one agent who had slipped aside, raising his gun. Owen was about to shout out a warning when he noticed a heat outline immediately behind the man. He couldn't see anyone there, but he had seen the woman with the first Mutant X team he didn't recognize flash with light when the second and third vans had screeched to a halt. His Feral vision could see the heat her body gave off; Owen grinned as he watched her seize the agent's wrist in a nerve pinch, making him drop his gun with a gasp of surprise that was cut off when she chopped him in the throat with her other hand.

Motion at the corner of his vision attracted Owen's attention; he turned his head to see a blond guy with 80s hair coming closer from down the street. He was staring at the new member of the original Mutant X team, his eyes giving off a faint neon-green aura that was coalescing in the center of his forehead. The only reason he hadn't seen Owen was that he had been watching the fight in the street; Owen was on the sidewalk and had stood slowly on purpose, to avoid attracting attention to himself. That was a pretty good trick for someone who was 6'5" and had shoulders that were over thirty inches wide, but a superhuman battle in the middle of the street could distract people from a lot of things.

Blondie was staring right at the light chick, and he had a Psionic starburst forming on his forehead. He could see her. . .she was in trouble and assuming that she wasn't. Owen had to move.

"WATCH IT; HE SEES YOU!!" Owen bellowed, springing up the street to get between the new girl and the Psionic, push her aside, throw off his aim, something... Owen knew he couldn't have reached the Psionic guy; he was too far down the street, so he had sprung for the new girl instead, trying to warn her. Her head snapped up at his yell and sudden leap for her; Owen saw the movement of her heat outline. He thought maybe her light-cloak didn't work too well if she moved too fast; there had been a perceptible shimmer when she chopped that agent's throat, too.

Lexa looked up in alarm as someone yelled at her, something about "watch" and "see"... She was pretty sure they were yelling at her; she was the only one over this way near the sidewalk, the fight having moved out into the street proper. She looked up to see someone who just had to be the new team's Owen leaping for her; he was even bigger than Brennan. Owen landed a pace in front of Lexa, spinning to put his back to her as he walked backward a step, into her, reaching behind himself with one arm to try to push her aside. . .Lexa tried to look over Owen's shoulder, grimacing in annoyance when she couldn't because he was too tall, and leaned around his side to see back down the street, to assess the threat he was trying to warn her of.

Unfortunately for Lexa, she leaned the opposite way Owen was trying to urge her, placing her directly behind him and leaning past his side as the Psionic unleashed his starburst. Owen had turned the other way, trying to see where Lexa was, why she had evaded his urging arm. He turned his head at just the wrong moment, looking away from the Psionic as he attacked. Lexa gasped in wordless warning, from the opposite side Owen had turned to look; he snapped his head around and received the neon-green psychic blast right in the face, instantly rendered unconscious and falling backward. He collapsed on top of Lexa, who went down with a cry as her cloak deactivated with a flare of light; she was pinned under Owen's large form, the Psionic and other GSAgents closing in.

Jamie ran up to Josh and the redheaded Feral Feline, unsure how exactly to help but knowing he needed to stop them before anyone was seriously hurt, and Kevin was busy with the newly-arrived GSAgents. Both Ferals had apparently lost their minds, snapping at each other like animals, their fight not really looking even the least bit human, not that a knock-down drag-out fight grappling on the street by people was all that distinguished, either. Jamie tried to throw a punch or two into the middle of them, stretching his arms to avoid getting too close, hoping he could either help Josh take out the crazy chick or knock some sense into him so he could do it himself, instead of the two of them just scrabbling at one another. He yanked his first punch back before it connected when they suddenly rolled again, about to hit Josh in the eye instead of the redhead's head, and his second punch was batted aside by an errantly flailing foot, Jamie's elastic arm too easily knocked off course.

Sighing, Jamie stripped off his tee shirt, holding it in both hands as he waited for the wildly flailing Ferals to roll so that the redhead was on top again. It took a moment, Josh had managed to shift his weight once he was on top to begin to pin her, but she felt it coming and writhed, thrusting her midsection up and then using the momentum of dropping it again to hurl her forehead forward, head-butting Josh in the chin. She wriggled as she hit the ground again, managing to tip them onto their sides once more. Jamie mentally shrugged, figuring it might be the best chance he was going to get, and threw himself onto the ground behind the woman, rendering his whole body except for his arms and hands elastic. He impacted smoothly, reaching forward to wrap his axle-greased tee shirt around the woman's head as he struggled to wrap her legs up in his elastic ones.

Kevin raised one pissed-off eyebrow, gesturing with his hands to make the pile of weapons lift itself off the ground and spread out in a line before him, all the guns' muzzles and business ends of the stun sticks pointing at the approaching agents.

"Really, don't make me quote Dirty Harry at you," Kevin told the men, scowling at them all the more.

"I don't think so, Kid," one of the agents said, stepping forward just slightly. "You're strong, but I bet you don't have any finesse behind it. I bet you can't pull all those triggers individually, and I bet you wouldn't even if you could." The man grinned at Kevin. "Are you a killer, Kid? Are you?"

Kevin's lip curled. He wasn't, but this guy didn't know that. He was just assuming, and it ticked Kevin off when people assumed things about him. Given that this guy and his goons were already slowing him down when Josh might need him...

"Do You Feel Lucky, Punk? Do You?" he murmured, then focused on one gun, the one floating right in front of the agents' spokesman. It was true that Kevin didn't have the telekinetic dexterity to aim and fire multiple guns at the same time, but he could telekinetically do two things at once, as long as one was as simple as continuing to hold in place a number of objects he already had floating. He concentrated on that individual gun, and it streaked forward to smash into the spokesperson agent's solar plexus, flying so fast it was a blur to the onlookers' sight.

The spokesagent collapsed, wheezing for breath and turning purple, forearms clamped over his violently aching middle. Kevin had retained his telekinetic "grip" on the gun, bringing it back to his floating line of weapons as the other GSAgents stared in shock. Kevin knew he was going to have a headache from splitting his concentration too far, but he wasn't being left with too many choices. He dropped the guns, ignoring them for the moment, smirking when the group of agents all jumped. He brought the stun sticks closer together, lining them all up in the same position and at the same angle, so that he could see the finger triggers on their handles. Frowning harder, now in concentration, Kevin triggered the stun sticks, all of them lighting up with purple electricity.

"If you guys don't actually want to Make My Day..." Kevin snarled, using anger to cover the strain in his voice as he wielded over half a dozen weapons telekinetically, "..I suggest you either voluntarily grab one of these things to put yourselves out of this fight, or get the fuck out of here!" The stun sticks were beginning to tremble, so Kevin sent them steadily advancing on the agents, gambling they would break and run rather than attempt to seize the weapons by reaching past their electrified ends.

Kevin quietly sighed with relief as the men turned as one and ran down and across the street. One of them had actually complained that that wasn't how the Dirty Harry quote went as they all ran away from the fight and disappeared between buildings on the far side of the street. Kevin dropped the stun sticks, then scooped them all up along with the guns and dumped them all in the abandoned garbage can, telekinetically buckling the metal and folding the can shut. Let the cops deal with that as evidence. Not like any of it had Kevin's fingerprints on it.

Shalimar spun, ducked, and wove from side to side, narrowly dodging the Thermal Elemental's energized fists and flying feet. He feinted a punch at her face, following it up with his other hand, flinging the shimmering heat energy around it at Shalimar's head. She saw his first hand abort its punch and his second hand moving; Shalimar just managed to duck beneath the infrared blast; the scent of her own scorched hair filling her nose as she spun away from the kick he aimed at her ducking chest.

Her spin brought Shalimar around to the man's left side, with the hand he had emptied of its thermal charge. She pressed the attack, lashing out with kicks and punches faster than he could keep up. The man had impressive reflexes and obvious extensive martial arts training, but so did Shalimar, and her Feral speed was superior. She clipped him with a kick, followed it with a jab to his ribs, and pressed her advantage, closing in on him.

The man managed to dodge one of her blows and block another, but the rest were getting through and wearing him down, and he knew it. He allowed a punch from Shalimar's left hand to get through, turning to take it against his well-toned abs and leaving his right arm free to throw its charge of infrared energy at Shalimar from point blank range. He timed the move well, using his body's slight stagger of reaction from her blow to cover the movement of his right arm, hoping to get the drop on Shalimar.

His hopes were in vain; Shalimar had been keeping careful track of the man's remaining energy attack and saw what he was trying to do with it. She flung herself backwards as he struck, bending herself double at the waist in reverse, executing a backhandspring without any springing. Her Feline flexibility enabled Shalimar to contort herself so more fluidly and quickly than any gymnast; the Thermal Elemental's energy attack whipped over her arched abs without touching her at all. Shalimar kicked out with her feet as she flipped backwards, the toe of one boot catching the man on the chin and the sole of her other boot smashing into his solar plexus.

Shalimar propelled herself backwards off of the man's front, using the momentum of her kick to complete her flip and land on her feet, bent low to the ground as she checked to make sure he was out. Shalimar stood as the man collapsed backward in a heap, his head lolling slackly, satisfied he was indeed unconscious. She turned and hopped over the building's front wall, dropping thirty-some feet to rejoin her friends.

"Lexa! Owen!" Jesse cried after turning at Owen's shout of warning, seeing what had happened next. He massed again and batted aside the next GSAgent in his way, sending the man flying into some of his associates. Jesse ran to intercept the other agents approaching his fallen friends, sending one flying with a high kick as he rushed in, placing himself between his teammates and the grinning Psionic approaching them.

Jesse faced the man, frowning in fierce determination to keep his friends safe, ready to shrug off whatever the guy could throw at him until Brennan or Chris could cover Owen and Lexa, then he'd march over there and swat the arrogant punk down. Jesse had had a long night already, and he wasn't interested in playing "nice" anymore.

The blond Psionic smirked, looking at the Molecular before him. It was pretty obvious he was impervious to physical harm, and he clearly thought that would protect him from psychic blasts, as well. The coiffed man thought that was pretty funny; maybe it was true for some Psionic starbursts, but he knew his affected the mind directly. His blast shut consciousness down, leaving the victim comatose for a while, and even though he wasn't sure how this heroic Molecular's powers worked, he obviously still had a mind running them.

The neon-green starburst formed quickly on the man's forehead, streaking across the intervening distance and slamming into Jesse. Not physically slamming, but smashing into his mind; Jesse didn't even have time to be surprised it affected him before he was unconscious and collapsing on top of Owen and Lexa.

"Oof!" Lexa gasped as Jesse fell across her and Owen, blocking what little view she had left entirely. "Jesse! —Shit!" she yelled, knowing she was helpless with the weight of two grown men on top of her. Hell, almost three men, with Owen's size. Her legs and one arm were pinned by Owen; she couldn't budge him with just one arm and no leverage, and when Jesse fell on them she couldn't even see to aim a laser with her free hand, not that it was very free with Jesse lying on its arm.

She couldn't see, was trying to listen for either help arriving or someone else getting close, in which case she was going to set off the brightest strobe she could, directly above Jesse and Owen. Lexa couldn't see the GSAgents prowling closer, couldn't hear clearly over the battle raging behind her, Brennan yelling Jesse's name and Chris yelling in general, couldn't hear anything past him...

Lexa shrieked as one of the agents tagged her hand with a stun stick, purple electricity spasming through her form as well as Jesse's and Owen's, knocking her unconscious along with them.

The redheaded Feral snarled in rage, her hands flying up to her head to seize Jamie's wrists. He grinned, as much as he was able with his face rubbery; he had rendered everything but his fingers elastic once he had his shirt pulled over her face. His fingers were twisted in the shirt, so simply curling them into fists was enough to hold the shirt in place, even if the hand portions of those fists were elastic. She grabbed at his wrists, yowling in fury and fear from her unexpected fall and the fire, yanking at Jamie's arms and trying to tear free. Jamie's arms simply stretched with her pulls or gave way beneath her nails, not harmed in the slightest.

Josh made a wordless noise of gleeful anger as she was distracted and seized his opportunity, grabbing the woman by the throat and attempting to smash her head into the ground. His efforts were pretty much thwarted by the way her skull simply bounced against Jamie's rubbery self, not doing any damage to either of them. Josh snarled in frustration, then flinched as the wind shifted, washing the scent of the burning car over them.

The woman made a shrieking snarl as her senses registered fire she couldn't see approaching her; her hands finally found Jamie's tee shirt instead of his arms, and she shredded it, tearing her way loose. Her scarlet tresses flailed about her face as she shook her head free of the greasy shirt's encumbrance, her golden eyes roving in panic as she sought an escape path.

Josh didn't even register Shalimar dropping to the ground nearby; the only half-coherent thought in his head was that his enemy was trying to get away and the fire was coming. He snarled in survival-of-the-fittest rage as she registered his hands around her throat and tried to grab his forearms, kicking with her feet and trying to get one knee between them to shove him away despite Jamie's restraints. Josh locked eyes with his enemy, both of them snarling visceral, territorial hatred at one another as he released her throat with one hand and drew it back, his thumb and index finger spreading to the width of the distance between her vertical pupils as he curled the other three fingers tightly to his palm, ready to strike...

Jamie reformed his jaw to cry out in protest as he saw what Josh was doing over the woman's shoulder; Shalimar darted forward, afraid she wouldn't be quick enough. . .when Josh was suddenly jerked off the woman, flying through the air backwards.

He yowled in surprise, twisting and flailing to try to both turn himself around and orient his legs to take the impact upon landing, but whatever was pulling him through the air had done so by both his shoulders and his hips. Josh's writhings did him no good whatsoever, only distracting him from noticing Shalimar darting in and knocking out the redheaded Feral before she could flee. The Feral young man snarled in renewed fear at his helplessness, the emotion disguised as a below of rage. He was still trapped in his animal thought processes and not using human reasoning to respond to his situation, lashing out in fight-or-flight response.

Josh was spun around in midair as he reached the ground once more, hitting it awkwardly as he was turned and ending up almost falling to his knees. His upper body was still being pulled away from Shalimar and Jamie, so he couldn't drop onto his hands, which only made him snarl in protest all the more. Josh collapsed forward as the pulling force dropped him, colliding with another warm body. Falling into another body, into the arms of someone else, they would close, around him, he'd be trapped, captured...

Kevin's arms did indeed close around Josh's back after he telekinetically yanked him off the other Feral, one arm loosely going around his waist in a comforting gesture that Josh would instinctively recognize was not enough to hold him, not a threat. The other went under Josh's arm and across his upper back, Kevin's hand cupping the back of Josh's head and forcing his face into the side of Kevin's neck, his mouth over Kevin's collarbone.

"Josh," Kevin said forcefully but not loudly, his Feral boyfriend's ear only inches from his mouth. "I've got you. I'm here; you're okay."

The tension held in Josh's form for a split second as he processed the voice and scent he was hearing and smelling, his arms still tense and grabbing Kevin by the back of the neck and seizing him around the waist in turn. . .then Josh relaxed, his shoulders drooping and his whole body giving in to the motion of collapsing froward, into Kevin's grasp.

"JESSE!" Brennan shouted as he saw his partner go down. He shouted again as he unleashed all the energy he could into the GSAgents between him and his friends, not trying to shock them all but simply blasting into them with brute force. The two or three agents his bolts struck smashed back into the ones behind them, a small domino effect that freed Brennan up for a moment and cleared him a path.

Chris shot a fist into the face of the agent that was trying to grab him, ducking and ramming the point of his other elbow into the man's gut as he reeled from the quick blow to his face. Chris turned and dove clear of the fight, tucking into a somersault as he landed and spinning back to face the way he'd come as he rolled to his feet. He turned his head to face Brennan for one second as the other GSAgents began to close in on them again.

"Go!" Chris yelled at the taller man, then turned and shouted at the incoming GSAgents. He poured on the volume and pressure, shouting for all he was worth and taking care to move his head slightly from side to side, to be sure he washed his concussion wave over as many of the agents as he could. Chris sustained his shout for as long as he was able, his powers and vocal training and experience from years of dive bars with open mics and clubs with karaoke bars letting him maintain his voice for over a quarter of a minute. He backed away from the agents as he bowled them over and away with his shout, slowly following in the direction Brennan had run, hoping to reunite the team and make a stand before they were all separated and picked off.

Chris became aware of someone behind him just as he stopped shouting; he spun, raising his arms to defend himself with all his years of bar brawl experience. He only needed a second, just hold them off long enough to take a quick breath, and he could blast them away, far enough to catch his breath or engage them in hand to hand properly...

He didn't get that second.

Even as Chris was turning, the GSAgent who had skirted wide around his and Brennan's defensive position had reached him, having snuck up between two cars parked almost bumper to bumper by the sidewalk. The man lashed forward with his stun stick, Chris attempting to bat aside the incoming attack with his forearm, but it was too late. If it had been a punch or even a kick, Chris' block would have deflected it, but the stun stick only needed to make contact with him, an arm was just as good as the torso.

Chris cried out as purple current seized his muscles, his voice choking off as his diaphragm spasmed, collapsing into unconsciousness as the stun stick's electricity coursed through him.

Brennan yelled Jesse's name again as he ran to his friends' aid, leaping into a flying kick from several strides away and smashing into the agent who had just leaned down to grab Jesse after shocking Lexa.

"Jess, Lex, Owen, Get UP!" Brennan urged as he turned and blasted two more agents away, then turned the other direction and blocked a punch, grimacing as he punched the guy in the throat and then turned to put a foot into his middle, kicking the man away. More came at him, and Brennan snarled, ducking, blocking, and punching and kicking his way through his attackers, trying to reach his friends, calling their names...

The well-gelled Psionic was impressed; the Electrical Elemental had actually almost beaten the remaining agents, ignoring the ones who struck him with stun sticks, simply using the charges to refuel his own powers. He stepped forward as the tall man spun to a stop, panting as the few remaining GSAgents backed off.

Snarling in anger, the tall, dark man thrust a hand at the blond Psionic, a blazing blue bolt of electricity spearing off his hand and through the Psionic's form. The Psionic smirked as he manifested another starburst; the look of confusion on the Elemental's face as he watched his attack pass through the illusory form the Psionic was making of himself was an expression that never failed to amuse him. He grinned as his psychic attack formed fully and streaked at the Elemental, grunting in surprise when the man whipped one hand up and tried to shoot down his starburst. It didn't stop the attack; the neon-green glow slammed into the Elemental and knocked him out, but if the Psionic hadn't ducked, that last bolt would have had him. He looked up in curiosity as something roared by quietly overhead; he could see the psychic essences of minds that were otherwise invisible, like the Light Elemental, but that had apparently been an aircraft. He watched as the last four New Mutants down the street escaped, the two Ferals picking up their companions and apparently jumping up into the invisible aircraft, vanishing from sight.

"The police will be here any second," he said to the remaining agents as he straightened up, adjusting his jacket. "Take them and as many of our unconscious men as you can fit in the vans. Leave the ones by the fallen van; I can't cloak that much mess. They'll have to pay the price for getting caught so foolishly off guard. I'll keep anyone from noticing the rest until they wake up. Back to headquarters, tell Mr. Feldspar I'll be back ASAP."

The men nodded, two of them carrying Chris and Brennan into the back of one van in turn, three more taking Jesse, Owen, and Lexa to the other van, while the rest bent to their fallen comrades.

"What the Hell was that!?" Shalimar snarled as she leaped on board the Double Helix and set Jamie down, storming up to the cockpit to look to Eve for answers. "We dropped like flies out there!"

"That was a set-up, a trap," Eve frowned darkly as she pointed the Helix back toward Haven. "If we hadn't had you and the rest of the original team with us, they would have had us all easily."

"So, what, we're just flying away, let them take our friends?!" Shalimar demanded.

"Of Course Not!" Eve snapped, turning to shoot Shalimar a look before returning her gaze to the Helix's windscreen. "Without any Elementals, the five of us don't have the raw power to stop both vans and free our friends. This was a planned operation; I think it was a trap for us as Mutant X specifically, and we've been enough of a thorn in the GSA's side that they might not hesitate to slit our friends' throats rather than lose custody of them. They'll be taking them to an actual GSA facility for processing which means the right equipment will give us an edge in getting them out. There are too many threats to Mutant X from too many parties at the moment; we need to think things through and do them right if we're going to come out on top."

Eve continued to frown as she flew them back to Haven, her expression darkening and growing more troubled as they went. Shalimar watched Eve for a moment before deciding she couldn't take the suspense in combination with the rest of the stresses they were under, and asked:

"What is it?" Shalimar knew they were both tense, she was sure the boys behind them were, too, but she couldn't help thinking something more was bothering Eve.

"We're so stupid," Eve hissed quietly, anger and self-hatred ringing strongly in her soft voice, contrasting drastically with the confident tones she had corrected Shalimar with a moment before. "God, Eloy's Diner has been pretty much Grand Central Station for the Mutant Underground around here for a year now; we should have realized the GSA would catch on sooner or later, we should have at least suspected, planned for it, taken some care not to be obvious..."

"Eve, Stop It," Josh called out calmly from the rear compartment of the Helix. "The regulars at Eloy's are exactly that, regulars," he went on in the same careful tone. Shalimar turned to see all three of the remaining Californian division Mutant X members sitting on the bench seat built into the cargo area's wall. Kevin was sitting against the wall with his knees spread wide, Josh sitting between them on the edge of the seat, Kevin's arms wrapped around him. Josh was slumped back into Kevin's chest with his head leaning back to rest on Kevin's right shoulder. Jamie was sitting to Kevin's right, leaning into both of them with his left arm across Kevin's shoulders and his right hand quite deliberately stroking Josh's upper right arm.

"There're enough New Mutants in LA to have our own community. They know what the Underground is for, and they know they can use it if trouble follows them home someday. Until then, if they want to take the risk of actually associating with other people who can relate to and understand their unique problems, I wouldn't call that stupid," Josh said, without ever opening his eyes. "Risky, maybe, but it's a risk they're consciously choosing to take. Wanting to be part of a community they can honestly be themselves in instead of living an anonymously safe double-life of a lie somewhere else isn't a crime. They're the ones we're here to protect, and Eloy and Anne are both powerful Psionics, nobody'd get actually into Eloy's without them noticing," he finished.

Eve sighed, nodding, knowing Josh knew she knew he was right.

Shalimar paced back into the cargo area, her arms still folded angrily across her chest with tension, and stared at the three younger New Mutants curiously. Kevin had his head leaned forward, his right temple and cheekbone touching Josh's left temple and cheekbone. Kevin also had his eyes closed, and after a watching for a second, Shalimar realized they were breathing in sync. Jamie's eyes were still open; he glanced curiously at Shalimar's watching form for a second before returning his attention to Josh, watching his breathing as Jamie stroked Josh's arm at the same speed.

"What are you doing?" Shalimar finally asked after watching for a few moments, raising one eyebrow in perplexity.

"Keeping me calm," Josh answered, still without opening his eyes.

Shalimar kept her confused eyebrow raised, awaiting more of an answer. After a moment, Josh obliged, accurately interpreting her silence as expectant.

"You saw me back there, with the fire; I lost it." Josh swallowed before continuing, the only indicator he was stressed at all, the rest of his body remaining carefully motionless. Shalimar realized he was quite deliberately remaining still, utterly still, like he didn't trust himself to even let tension build, much less act on it. Kevin and Jamie were calmer than she would've expected, too, focusing on Josh instead of outwardly worrying about their captured friends. She was impressed by Jamie, knowing his tendency to be emotionally dependent on his friends.

"I pride myself on being pretty damn thinky for a Feral, but sometimes I think that makes my animal side all the worse when it comes out." Josh briefly opened one eye to make sure Shalimar was still paying attention. "Eve might roll her eyes at my living up to my part-cat nature, but if I didn't express it that way, I'd snap under real pressure, like in battle," he explained, still with the expressionless calm of forced relaxation. "I've got my control issues, like any Feral, but it's like the scientists say: our every impulse is an eleven."

"I thought the scales only went to ten," Shalimar countered.

"Exactly," Josh shot back, still sitting motionless. "Ten. . .for humans, maybe. Not for Ferals. It's kind of been a rough night all of a sudden, and I could smell the tension on all four of you when you got to Haven; it's been a long night for you already. A long couple of days, I'd guess, what with Adam and Sanctuary and all. You can't tell me you're not ready to rip something's head off, and I'm right there with you. And the only things in reach at the moment are friends and allies, or my own stupid self."

"Don't talk about yourself like that, you hear me?" Kevin immediately interrupted, his voice both hard and soft at the same time, frowning at his lover's words. Josh frowned too, taking a deep breath to settle himself, Jamie's arm going still just above his elbow. Josh worked his left arm out from under where Kevin's was wrapped around it, raising it put his hand over the back of Kevin's head, turning it as he turned his own to kiss Kevin gently.

Shalimar's expression softened as she watched; neither of them opened their eyes, finding one another's lips anyway. Jamie turned to smile slightly at Shalimar, then gave Josh's arm a squeeze and stood up.

"You're fine; we'll get them back," he said in a voice just above a whisper, then turned and gave Shalimar another look and a tiny shrug as he crossed his arms over his bare chest and turned to the front of the Helix. He glanced around as he approached the cockpit, keeping his arms folded.

"This isn't the original Helix, is it?" he asked as he came up behind Eve, looking over his shoulder at Shalimar.

"It's not?" Eve asked, glancing down at the controls she was familiar with, looking around the cockpit and frowning, seeing everything as she remembered it.

"You're right..." Shalimar said, surprised. "Our night's already been long because we were breaking into a secret base to steal a copy of our Helix the Dominion had. How the heck did you guess that?"

"Didn't guess, there's a couple things different," Jamie shrugged, still looking at Shalimar. Both of them were looking at each other; neither noticed Eve's slight stiffening at Shalimar's confirmation that Adam's enemies were the Dominion. "Some things are missing, looked like they were added on to the original when I saw them on the way out here last year, like they were modifications. This one doesn't have those."

"You can remember all the instruments from when Adam flew you out to LA over a year ago?" Shalimar asked, amazed.

"Sure." Jamie shrugged again, tipping his head to one side like it didn't mean anything. "Photographic memory, almost total recall. That's how Jesse taught me all the computer stuff so fast when I was at Sanctuary," he explained, then turned to Eve, reaching out to hold the Helix's yoke in position. "Eve, can I borrow your lab coat? My backpack was on Owen and that flake shredded my tee shirt. I'm wearing spandex biker shorts and my shoes; I'm freezing."

"Oh, Jesus, sure, hold that," Eve sputtered, nodding at the yoke as she stood and shrugged her lab coat off, handing it to Jamie and taking the yoke again as she sat back down.

"Thank you," Jamie smiled as he shrugged the lab coat on, wrapping it tightly around himself as he returned to his seat, snuggling back up to Josh and Kevin for warmth. Josh smirked fondly at him and put his right arm across Jamie's shoulders.

"You're washing the grease off it, Bucko," Eve called back as she brought the Helix in for a landing on the roof of the Majestic's parking garage.

"So what's the plan, how are we even going to track the others down?" Shalimar asked as she slid into the co-pilot's seat rather than stand through a landing sequence. Eve knew how to fly the Helix, but she wasn't exactly adept at it, and it had been over a year since she'd been at the controls.

"Oh, that shouldn't be a problem," Eve said without worry as she set the Double Helix down not quite flawlessly. "The GSA might know enough to remove your team's commrings, but unless they're smart enough to either put my guys' cellphones behind some very heavy shielding or smash them to pieces, they'll still transmit their GPSone signals under standard scrambler protocol over any signal they can access inside the GSA's location, which is almost any signal. Even if they power the phones off, that circuit remains active. Finding our people isn't the problem– –it's getting them back out of wherever they are. That's what we're getting equipment for," she finished as she powered down the Helix's engines and opened the hatch.

Chris twitched, screwed up his face in a rough expression of "I don't wanna get up yet," then winced and blinked as consciousness returned and he became aware of how sore he was.

"Ow," he muttered, then frowned at the ceiling overhead. "Where the hec. . .aw, Crap," he began, staring at the unfamiliar flat surface with a bare fluorescent tube in it and a single vent next to the wall above his head, then cut himself off as memory returned. Chris blinked again as he felt something and rolled stiffly onto one elbow, turning to see that the warmth lying next to him on the cold floor was Brennan's unconscious form, complete with subdermal governor in the back of his neck. Putting his free hand to the back of his own neck, Chris winced to discover he had a power-restricting spinal attachment of his own. Sitting up, Chris glanced around the small room he had woke up in.

Small cell, to be precise. The door was bare steel, with a tiny viewplate that could only be opened from the outside. The door itself could also only be opened from the outside, having neither handle nor hinges on the inside. There was a panel in the bottom of the door, roughly two feet wide and not even six inches tall, clearly for a food tray to be slid through. Looking around, Chris saw a tiny, lidless toilet set into the wall across from the door, and two shelves that obviously pulled double duty as both seating and bedding set into the other two walls. Each had a tiny pillow and a small square of a folded blanket sitting on top of its poured concrete surface.

"Yeah, that'll be comfy," Chris sighed with a shake of his head, then turned to shake Brennan's shoulder. "Brennan. Hey, Brennan," Chris repeated, shaking his shoulder harder. "Dude, wakey-wakey," Chris urged, slapping at Brennan's face gently, then not so gently as Brennan continued to be completely unresponsive. Chris sighed, then checked the pocket he kept his MX cellphone in.

Disappointingly but not surprisingly, his phone was gone. Frowning, Chris checked the rest of his pockets, discovering they were all empty. Wallet, change, gum, keys, lighter, dental floss, pocket knife, über-mace that Eve had whipped up disguised as breath spray. . .all missing. The only thing he had left was his watch.

"Well, shit."

Lexa woke with a groan at the pain in her traumatized muscle groups, then silenced herself as clear consciousness returned and she recalled she was in trouble. She was lying on something hard, the light in the room was bright through her eyelids, and there was a weird noise coming from nearby...

Slitting her eyes cautiously, Lexa saw a bare concrete ceiling with a single equally bare fluorescent tube providing the harsh illumination. The wall she could see next to her head was also smoothly poured concrete, and feeling the hard surface she was lying on with her fingertips, Lexa decided it must be the same dull material.

Solid concrete room, heating ductwork built into it, Lexa thought to herself as she saw the plain metal vent above her head. Has to be a cell, not that I should be surprised, she silently sighed, turning her head as if she was asleep and feeling the subdermal governor in the back of her neck rubbing against the thin pillow her head was resting on. She saw the steel security door and decided she probably wasn't under observation, opening her eyes and looking around to see Jesse lying on an identical concrete bench across from her and the amenity-free toilet between them.

Of greater concern to her was the fact that Owen was under Jesse's concrete shelf, curled into as tight a ball as his enormous frame could manage and making a keening whimper through his nose that she hadn't even recognized as a human sound at first. He was lying on his side under Jesse's low concrete slab, his hunched back sort of twitching as he apparently tried to rock in place despite being on his side. There was an odd thrum to his whimper, which she suddenly realized was the word "No" being endlessly, breathlessly repeated, the only variation in the sound being when the whimper stopped as he drew a new breath, his tongue still ceaselessy repeating his denial.

"Damn," Lexa muttered under her breath, then raised her voice. "Owen? Hey, Owen? Can you hear me?" Lexa paused with a frown, unsure how to proceed. Of course he could hear her; he was six feet away and a Feral, for goodness' sake. But how to get him to respond? Lexa shook her head in frustration. Dealing with emotions was not exactly a skill she excelled at. Or even practiced.

With a sigh, Lexa sat up and slid off her bench, crossing the small room to perch on the edge of Jesse's. She considered leaning down and touching Owen, shaking his shoulder or something, pat it reassuringly maybe, not that she had any real reassurance to offer. But the fact Owen was in some sort of fugue state made her cautious. Lexa knew enough about animals to figure that startling a traumatized Feral could be a Very Bad Idea. True, he had a subdermal governor just like she did, so his strength and reactions would be limited, but Lexa didn't want to fight a guy Owen's size in a tiny cell, whether he was currently incapable of thinking about his moves or not. She didn't want to make Owen's mental condition worse by traumatizing him further, either.

She turned to Jesse instead, hoping he might be able to connect to Owen as a more familiar presence, an old friend. At least Owen had met Jesse before, lived at Sanctuary with him briefly; he didn't know Lexa at all, other than ten seconds of interaction in the fight earlier. She didn't think that was enough to really count, even if he had been trying to protect her. Hopefully Jesse could do better.

"Jess. Jesse," Lexa said, putting a hand to Jesse's chest and shaking him slightly. She frowned as he remained unresponsive, not even twitching or changing his breathing pattern. "Jesse. Wake Up." A slap to his chest still got her no response. Hanging her head for a moment, Lexa heaved an aggravated sigh, then reached up and pinched the side of Jesse's neck between her fingernails, just below his ear. "Jesse!"

Jesse twitched violently, a full-body spasm as his eyes snapped open and one hand flew up to his neck to clamp protectively over the pained skin. His alarmed blue eyes met Lexa's smirking ones, calming as he realized she had woken him. Lexa moved back as Jesse sat up, peering around the cell.

"What happened?" he asked.

"We got captured, Einstein," she told him, then pointed down past Jesse's thigh. "Us and Owen. They took our commrings, and emptied our pockets."

Jesse glanced at her pointing hand and his own right ring finger, then leaned forward and peered under the bench as he realized Lexa was pointing at something specifically.

"Oh, crap, Owen! Owen?" Jesse asked cautiously, sliding off the bench and sinking into a crouch on the floor, next to Owen's broad back where it just protruded out from under the bench. "Hey, Owen, it's Jesse, Jesse Kilmartin. Come on, man, you know me. Come on out of there, okay?" he asked carefully, his tone of voice gentle, as if he were speaking to a frightened child. Jesse shuffled into the small space between the head of his bunk-bench and the tiny toilet, putting his back to the wall. He reached under the bench past the top of Owen's head to offer his empty hand, putting his upturned wrist in front of Owen's nose.

Jesse had seen the governor in Owen's neck and felt the unfortunately familiar sensation of his own powers being blocked, so he knew Owen's sense of smell was only human at the moment. He was hoping Owen's memory for scents he already knew wasn't affected, figuring that his own scent was probably fairly strong at the moment, given the night they had already had, stealing the Double Helix.

Lexa breathed a sigh of relief when Owen's whimper and voiceless denial cut off, then leaped back out of the way when Owen exploded out from under the bench, kicking his feet out against the wall beneath it and propelling himself across the floor with a yell. Jesse lurched to his feet, flinging himself back against the wall to get out of the way of Owen's flailing arms, wincing in sympathy as one of them smashed blindly into the base of the toilet.

"Owen! OWEN!" Jesse shouted, trying to get the bigger man's attention, to get him to focus on his surroundings and realize he wasn't in any immediate danger. "Lexa, sit down, not fast, nothing threatening," Jesse urged her as he awkwardly scrambled up onto the bench he had been lying on, sitting down and spreading his arms wide, his open and empty hands resting at the back of the bench, up against the wall. Lexa mimicked his position, pressed up against the front of the cell on her bench, wincing as one of Owen's long legs narrowly missed kicking her as she sat and he flailed inarticulately, screaming in a combination of panic and rage.

"Brennan. Dude, wake the hell up, already," Chris muttered, getting tired of shaking Brennan's shoulder to no response whatsoever. "What the hell did they hit you with, anyway? I got zapped, but I get the feeling that wouldn't bother you much," Chris commented idly, poking Brennan's face with one fingertip, trying to see if he could either get a reaction or give Brennan a funny expression that would stick.

Neither worked.

Chris frowned at Brennan for a moment, considering, then looked up when he thought he heard something. He cocked his head, trying to listen, thinking maybe he heard something through the air vent, but if he had, it was faint. Listening, he couldn't hear anything else, and silently cursed the fact that the subdermal governor he had been implanted with reduced his normal sensitivity to sound. If he could access his powers, he could have magnified any faint sounds coming from the vent until he could hear them, but as it was, he was left frustrated and guessing.

Turning back to his study of Brennan, Chris considered what his little sisters would do if he wouldn't wake up. Smirking at the thought and the always slightly painful homesickness that washed over him when he thought of his past, Chris decided to follow his younger siblings' example. Of course, they'd all been in the single digits of age when they pulled his hair to wake him up, but it had worked on him when he was twenty and his youngest sister five, so he figured it might still work on Brennan.

Chris pinched a dozen strands or so of Brennan's growing-its-way-past-short-into-shaggy hair and wondered if Brennan had any younger siblings, then gave a sharp tug, plucking the hairs from Brennan's scalp.

Brennen yelped, his warm brown eyes blinking rapidly as he jerked himself halfway up to sitting, getting his elbows under himself and looking around in confused alarm.

"Hah. My little sisters rock," Chris declared, smirking at Brennan.

"What? What happened?" Brennan asked as he blinked, then shook his head and straightened up, folding his knees to sit cross-legged as he glanced around the small cell.

"I guess we got captured along with Owen and Jesse and Lexa," Chris answered with a shrug. "I was trying to follow you over to them, got zapped by a taser club. I didn't see you go down, but you were hard as hell to wake up. You were seriously out."

"I got hit by that Psionic," Brennan said with a nod, his eyes distant as he remembered. "My blast went right through him, then his came at me from another direction. He must be an Illusionist, too."

"Well, that sucks..." Chris said, then cut himself off as he distinctly heard something from the air vent. Chris raised a finger to caution Brennan to be quiet, cocking his head to one side as he listened to the metal grill in one corner of the ceiling. It sounded like a voice, like someone. . .screaming.

Chris' eyes widened in alarm as he recognized Owen's voice.

"Jesse! We can't just leave him like this!" Lexa said forcefully, raising her voice to be heard over Owen's continuing cries. "What are we going to do, just wait for him to wear himself out while we get headaches?" she snarled, glancing down again as Owen curled into the fetal position, the fingers of his fists pressed to his eyebrows as he continued to cry out.

Jesse slid off his bench to the floor once Owen stopped thrashing around. He crouched in front of Owen's head, trying to stay above Owen's curled position on the floor so that if Owen reacted violently again, he wouldn't be immediately in the path of the big man's limbs. Jesse leaned forward and reached out with both arms, placing one hand on the top of Owen's back, between his shoulder blades, and the other gently on the crown of Owen's head, trying to communicate comfort through touch. He sort of wanted to cover Owen's mouth, make him quiet enough to hear reassurances, but Jesse worried that would only make Owen panic more and possibly make him try to bite Jesse's fingers off.

Owen finally stopped screaming as his voice began to give out, still pressing his fists to his head and changing his breathing to hyperventilation instead of continual screaming. Jesse breathed a frustrated sigh of relief, glad that Owen had stopped screaming and hurting himself in the process, but knowing the younger man was still deep in the grip of an epically intense panic attack, a flashback to the first time he had been captured by the GSA and physically tortured for days before Mutant X had rescued him.

Jesse paused as he heard something, coming from above him. He looked up at Lexa only to see her still looking at him and Owen, realizing it wasn't coming from her direction on the other end of the bench, but above and behind him. Jesse turned, looking up, and spotted the air vent. Frowning in curiosity at the sound and worry that Owen was going to pass out from hyperventilation in short order, Jesse moved around in front of Owen, looking up at Lexa as he moved.

"There's something coming from the vent, can you hear it?" he asked her, bending over Owen and trying to figure out if he could cup his hands over Owen's nose and mouth, or maybe pull the neck of his shirt up over them, trying to establish rebreathing to counteract Owen's hyperventilation. Lexa frowned at Jesse, then stood and walked across the bench to stand under the vent and listen.

"God, I thought you meant you heard gas or something, figured they were doing us in..." she complained as she tipped her head to listen, pointing one ear at the ceiling and watching as Jesse tried to help Owen. "What's wrong with him, why is he– –wait, I hear. . .singing?" she finished, looking up at the vent and blinking in confusion.

"Singing?" Jesse asked, looking up with a perplexed frown. He couldn't fit his wrists between Owen's forearms to cup his mouth and nose because of the way Owen was pressing his fingers to his brow, as well as his elbows together and into the top of his abdomen. Jesse thought he might be able to reach through the larger gap in front of Owen's upper chest and drag his shirt up over his mouth, but he was worried Owen's panicked mind would interpret that as an attack or torment.

"Yeah. Kansas," Lexa answered with a puzzled frown. "'Carry On My Wayward Son'. Good voice, but it's faint. It's either far away or there's air filters in the ductwork blocking it." Lexa looked down into Jesse's upturned face, raising an eyebrow in confusion. "Why the hell is somebody singing 'Carry On My Wayward Son' into the air vent?"

"Of course!" Jesse exclaimed, scrambling to his feet and urging Lexa to move with one hand as he reached down and removed one of his shoes with the other.

"Of Course what? What are you doing?" Lexa asked as she walked back down the bench to the front of the cell again, glancing down at Owen's huffing form in concern.

Jesse only shook his head, jumping up onto the bench and slipping his hand inside his shoe, hammering up into the grill over the air vent with the heel of his palm behind the heel of his shoe. He struck hard, desperately, and smashed his way through the thin steel louvers in only a few blows. Jesse dropped his shoe to the bench, standing on his tiptoes in one shoe and one stocking foot to yell into the air vent.

"Chris! Chris, louder!" Jesse yelled. "He can't hear you!"

Jesse jumped down from the bench, glancing up at Lexa as he bent to Owen.

"Help me lift him; we've gotta get him up where he can hear Chris; it's our best shot at calming him down."

Lexa frowned in further confusion, but she decided her answers could wait until Owen got the help he obviously needed. And there was no way Jesse was picking up a guy that big by himself. She got down off the bench, grabbing one of Owen's arms as Jesse grabbed the other, both of them trying to pull Owen's arms around their own shoulders so they could stand with him between them. Owen simply continued hyperventilating, his muscles locked. Neither Lexa nor Jesse was strong enough to overpower Owen and haul his arms away from his chest and head. They managed to sit him upright, but they couldn't get under him enough to lift Owen any higher, certainly not up onto the bench.

Crouched at Owen's side, Lexa on the other, Jesse glanced over Owen's bowed head at Lexa, then started singing to Owen softly.

"Carry On My Wayward Son. . .There'll Be Peace When You Are Done. . .
Lay Your Weary Head To Rest. . .Don't You Cry No More..."
Owen's body visibly relaxed at Jesse's sung words, his shoulders dropping and the tension mostly leaving his form, although he didn't change position. Jesse nodded to Lexa and they each gently grabbed an arm as Jesse hummed the beat of the song, both slinging Owen's arms over their shoulders. They stood, awkwardly climbing up onto the bench and doing their best to haul Owen up after them, trying to get his head closer to the vent. Lexa was on the far side of Owen from the vent, but she could still hear Chris singing, his vocal quality not quite as good as it had been before, but he was clearly going for power over quality at that point.

Jesse shifted his grip to hold Owen's arm in place over his shoulder with one arm, moving his other hand to the middle of Owen's back and rubbing it in soft, gentle circles. Owen's breathing started to even out, and he instinctively scrabbled with his feet until he got them up onto the bench and under himself. Following Jesse's lead, Lexa moved one hand to take Owen's left hand, doing her best to squeeze his fingers reassuringly. She didn't know what was going on, what he was going through, and she couldn't offer any reassurance as to their immediate future or what would happen next, but she could damn well reassure him that he wouldn't be facing whatever it was alone.

After a moment, Owen's arms twitched, his fingers spasming in Lexa's grasp and clutching at Jesse's sleeve. His body swayed as he attempted to find his balance, then he straightened and opened his eyes, blinking furiously as tears welled and spilled over his lower lids, rolling down his face.

"Owen?" Jesse questioned, hoping Owen had returned to conscious awareness of his surroundings, was aware that he was only trapped, not actually threatened. "You're okay," Jesse told him, letting go of Owen's arm now that he was standing on his own and reaching to gently wipe the tears from the taller man's face. "We're okay; we're caught, but we won't let that stop us. The others will come for us, and we're not about to just sit and wait for them, we'll do our part, too, okay?"

Owen met Jesse's gaze, crushing despair robbing his green eyes of their normal brightness. Jesse could see that Owen was present, knew where he was and what had happened. . .and he was absolutely convinced his worst fears had come true. Owen still had the occasional flashback to his torment at Genomex, but it was something he could ride out, could tell himself was only a memory and couldn't hurt him; he was no longer there and it wouldn't happen again.

He couldn't tell himself that when he was back in the clutches of the GSA.

Owen's fist tightened in the sleeve of Jesse's shirt, his face screwing up in a grimace as he tried to choke back the emotions overwhelming him. He barked out a short, choked breath as his eyes overflowed once more and he tried to restrain himself, bowing his head and trying to hide his reactions.

A moment later, a wailing sob that Lexa couldn't believe came from a man Owen's size burst from his throat. Owen turned to Jesse, hiding his face in the shorter man's neck, clutching desperately at Jesse's shirt and holding on for dear life. Jesse brought his own arms across Owen's back, running his hands and forearms up and down it, then gestured to Lexa with one hand, circling it for her to come closer, to join him and Owen.

Lexa frowned, uncomfortable, but even more uncomfortable knowing that her reservations were preventing her from helping Owen, a man who had done nothing but try to help her, even when he didn't know who she was. He had tried to warn her in the fight, and it must have been him who put her and Jesse on the benches, put the pillows under their unconscious heads. She certainly didn't think the GSAgents had done it.

Mentally shoving her reservations aside, Lexa stepped forward and hugged Owen from behind, murmuring consoling nonsense under her breath, just like she used to do for Leo when they were kids. Their situation then had been pretty much the same, trapped with no way out, nothing they could really do about it, and the man younger but taller than she was despairing he would ever be free of his captors. She held Owen tighter, her own eyes watering as she realized how similar their situations truly were. She knew what Genomex had done to the New Mutants they had captured, and she suspected this wasn't Owen's first time in a GSA holding cell.

Lexa had failed her brother, but she wasn't about to make the same mistake twice.

"Dammit!" Chris snarled when he heard Owen break down again, slugging the wall and then wincing and holding his knuckles when he nearly broke them on the concrete. He frowned up at the air vent over the end of the right-hand bench, considering it.

"I'd fit," he said, turning to Brennan and raising an eyebrow expectantly.

"You'd fit. . .what, exactly?" Brennan asked with a confused frown, not following Chris' statement.

"Through that vent," Chris answered, pointing. "I'm short; I'm a contortionist. I've been squeezing through little places to get away all my life. The kids in gym would try to chase me up the bleachers, try to make me go out on top of the closed ones, twenty feet or more off the gym floor. Somebody figured out I was afraid of heights, and it turned into the best Pick On Chris game ever. But when I got ahead of them on the bleachers, I could actually lay down and slide beneath one, climb back down to the ground underneath the stands. And that was just my start. It'll be a tight fit, but I can fit through that vent if I cross my arms above my head, narrow my shoulders," Chris said, demonstrating by raising his arms and crossing his elbows, pressing the backs of his knuckles together. Brennan had to admit, Chris was stocky, but his shoulders narrowed considerably when he raised his arms that way.

"So you want to go through the ductwork?" Brennan asked, frowning slightly as he thought it through.

"Yep. Owen's losing it, you were there when your team rescued him, right? Well, I know a flashback when I hear it, and he needs help. He needs family, a teammate, and I'm the only one here. I mean, he knows Jesse, but we live together, y'know?"

"You're right," Brennan answered, climbing up onto the bench and examining the vent overhead. "The team's all the family I have, either. Let's get you to him."

Brennan reached up to the air vent, pinching one of the thin steel louvers between his finger and thumb, and began bending it back and forth. After a minute, the metal began to flex more readily, and a moment later the thin strip of steel snapped off in Brennan's hand.

"Voila," he said with a smirk to Chris, rearranging the piece of metal to hold it with one point just protruding past his thumb and fingertip. "Instant screwdriver." Brennan began using the flat piece of steel to unscrew the grill covering the air vent.

Two minutes later, Brennan tossed the air vent cover across their cell to land on the other bench, pocketing the screws.

"Okay, up you go," Brennan told Chris, crouching on the corner of the bench under the vent, with his back angled to face the wall's corner. Chris climbed up onto the bench, frowning as he faced Brennan, then shrugged and turned around, presenting his ass to Brennan's face as he bent his knees a bit, spreading them to give Brennan room to get under him.

Brennan chuckled, clapping Chris on the rear as he ducked his head and put it between Chris' knees, reaching up past Chris' hips to take his hands and help him settle back onto Brennan's shoulders, resting Chris' back against the wall to put him in place beneath the air vent above.

"Hey, hey, hands off the goods, Friendly!" Chris mock-protested, smirking as he said it. Brennan chuckled again, slowly standing to slide Chris up the wall so that he could extend his arms into the vent first, keeping his frame narrowed so he could fit through the ductwork. Brennan shifted his hands under Chris' heels, giving him the support to stand up into the vent. Chris was writhing to wriggle his way farther into the duct, trying not to kick with his feet as he struggled to make his midsection turn past ninety degrees.

"Leggo my right foot!" Chris called out to Brennan, his voice muffled by the fact that his body was filling the duct and vent between Brennan and Chris' mouth. Brennan released Chris' foot, and Chris began kicking it in a wide circle, struggling to twist his hips to reorient his body along the back wall. Brennan grabbed Chris' left foot with both hands, heaving to hold Chris up with his arms alone as he ducked under Chris' legs, turning around on the bench to face Chris' knees so he could see what Chris was doing and where he could help, rather than standing blindly beneath him.

Brennan saw where Chris was stuck, his hips at a forty-five degree angle through the vent, unable to clear it because they couldn't proceed straight through, they had to turn to follow his body down the duct. Brennan slid one hand up Chris' calf to the back of his knee, pulling it forward to support his weight with his thigh for a moment as Brennan bent Chris' lower leg and set Chris' knee on his shoulder. Brennan straightened up, giving Chris more lift into the duct, and reached with his free hand to find the outside of Chris' other thigh, sliding his hand up to grab the back of Chris' hip and pull it forward as he stood up all the way, raising Chris' hips as he turned them, popping Chris' waist and ass through the vent and into the duct.

"OW! And Thanks!" Chris called back past his body. "Jesse, Brennan's grabbing my ass!" he shouted down the duct, causing Brennan to blush mightily, thankful there was no one there to see it. Chris, the smug bastard that he was, sounded like he knew the effect his statement would have, anyway. "Awwww, there's air-filters in here!!" Chris called back in protest a minute later.

Jesse, Owen, and Lexa had sat down on the bench, Owen slumped and leaning into Jesse, trying to calm himself down but not doing a very good job of it. Jesse and Lexa each still had an arm across his shoulders, and Lexa was running her other hand up and down the outside of Owen's left thigh continually, trying for a Zen calm through constant repetition. She was even more uncomfortable knowing that Owen was uncomfortable because he couldn't regain emotional control, but she decided the best thing she could do was ignore it, act like his discomfort wasn't there, since he didn't want it to be or want to acknowledge it in the first place. Lexa smirked to herself as the idea occurred to her that she probably thought more like a guy in that sense than Jesse did. She decided to distract Owen from whatever thoughts were chasing themselves through his head and driving him crazy by satisfying her curiosity.

"You've been captured by the GSA before, haven't you?" she asked him quietly, never ceasing the constant motion of her hand on his leg, staring at it rather than looking at Owen's face, not wanting him to feel judged or scrutinized.

"Yeah," he answered softly, his voice still choked with emotion.

"My twin brother and I were Army Brats. Our parents volunteered for Genomex's program, and when we first manifested our powers, they just shipped us off to a military facility to be studied." Lexa frowned into the middle distance, hating her past, but not hating it, because they were all the memories of Leo she had. "Well, they poked and prodded us and commented and life went on, scarier than it had been before," she went on, not so much deliberately engaging Owen as wandering down memory lane at that point, but it was still keeping his attention, so it worked all around.

"When we were fourteen, Leo's powers started spiraling out of control. I would've done anything to help him, but the only thing I could do was offer myself. I chose to join the GSA in exchange for Leo getting the medical treatment he needed." Lexa glanced at Owen, to make sure he wasn't about to reject her as any source of comfort because she used to be associated with his captors. He was still leaning on Jesse, still crying, but he had quieted; Lexa was pretty sure he was listening. "It turned out they weren't helping Leo at all, just telling me they were so I'd be their good little agent. They were actually torturing Leo, testing the limits of his powers..."

Lexa cut herself off as Owen gasped and flinched, a full-body shudder that left him trembling, one hand grabbing Jesse's thigh just above the knee and the other clenching into a rock-hard fist. His entire body went tense, his fist clenched so tight his forearm was trembling above and beyond the nervous tremors that shook the rest of his form. Jesse winced and took Owen's hand from his leg, wrapping his thumb around Owen's and returning his grip, grounding him as Jesse began shushing him, drawing out the sound soothingly and squeezing Owen's shoulder in cadence with it.

"That's what they did to you, isn't it?" Lexa asked softly, laying her own head on Owen's shoulder, all three of them curled together for mutual comfort and support.

"Yes," Owen panted, quietly, still visibly shaken and distressed, his eyes panic bright and far away. "I can't. . .I can't. . .I can't do that again, I can't. . .I can't go through that again, I just can't..."

"Shhhhhh..." Lexa and Jesse both said at the same time, clutching Owen closer, hugging him tighter.

"It's not gonna happen," Jesse said firmly, quietly. "We won't let it. The others are still out there, and you know they're not gonna leave us here. I bet Eve has some way to find us already figured out. Chris is here, too; we'll get out of this."

"Jesse, Brennan's grabbing my ass!" Chris' voice came from the vent over Jesse's shoulder.

All three of them looked up, Jesse's jaw dropping, and Lexa took one look at the expression on Jesse's face and cracked up. She couldn't help it; she was laughing so hard she had to continue leaning into Owen, hanging on to him to keep herself from falling off the bench and onto the floor. She knew there was a hint of hysteria in her laughter, but it felt too good to resist. Even Owen started smiling, still sniffling, but smiling.

Jesse frowned and stood up with a huff, looking at the bashed-in vent cover and trying to figure out a way to remove it, so he could maybe look into the duct behind it. He considered the smashed louvers for a moment, then started bending one back and forth until it snapped. He applied it to the screws holding the vent in place, unknowingly doing exactly what Brennan had done minutes before.

A short while later, a number of bashed and tattered air filters were pushed through the uncovered air vent, falling to the bench and sliding to the floor in ungainly fashion. Chris' hands crept through the vent, sliding along the underside of the ceiling until his underarms reached the edge of the vent, letting his arms lower towards the floor and leaving his face framed in the dark rectangle of the vent.

"Hi, gang," he said with a wave of one of his dangling arms. "Umm, Owen, you wanna give me a hand getting down from here, Big Guy? Otherwise, I'm gonna get about halfway out, then get stuck, then wiggle until I come unstuck and fall out on my head. And this place is made of concrete; that'd probably be bad."

Owen chuckled at Chris' usual absurd humor, wiping at his face and eyes with the bottom of his shirt, then standing up and reaching to take Chris' hands where they were dangling from the vent. Chris lowered his head through the vent, leaning forward and "walking" with his shoulders and the sides of his chest to inch his way forward through the opening. Owen raised his arms overhead, stretching Chris' out in front of him, then pulled slightly, dragging Chris farther out of the vent. Owen let go of Chris' hands, reaching up to grasp him under the arms as Chris slithered out of the duct, gravity taking over and dragging him out and down once his upper ribs were past the vent, his frame narrowing as it approached his waist.

Chris yelped as he slipped free and slid forward, in free fall as Owen swung him around, dropping Chris onto his feet and stepping forward into him. Owen slid his hands and arms under Chris' arms as he moved, pulling Chris close and trembling slightly as he buried his face in the crown of Chris' head, breathing in the reassuring scent of someone his instincts recognized as pack.

"Hey, hey. Owen, man, you're fine. I'm right here; we're all here with you," Chris murmured in reassurance, stroking Owen's back. "Eve and Josh and Kevin and Jamie and. . .Shalimar, right? They're out there, and you know they're coming for us. And we ain't sittin' still waiting for 'em, either. We're gonna bust out ourselves and just catch a ride home with them, right?"

"You sound like Jesse," Owen murmured into Chris' hair, giving him a squeeze before letting go and backing off. His eyes were still red and swollen, but Lexa and Jesse were glad to see they were clear now.

"Yeah, well, Jesse's a smart guy, right? Taught Jamie all his computer stuff? He probably knows what he's talking about," Chris answered with a grin, glancing at Jesse and tossing him a wink. Jesse smirked back.

Owen cleared his throat, blushing slightly at the spectacle he had spent the last ten or fifteen minutes making out of himself, but he knew it wasn't held against him and was grateful for that. He looked Lexa in the eye, unspeakingly ignoring his current embarrassment just as she had ignored his inability to restrain himself a few moments earlier.

"So, what happened to your brother? When you found out the GSA was torturing him?"

Chris blinked in surprise, glancing at Lexa, then consciously closed his mouth. If Owen formed bonds with the original team through his old trauma, that'd be fine. It would be nice to have that trauma actually accomplish something other than torturing Owen's memories and causing him to go berserk when GSAssholes kidnapped other New Mutants.

Lexa pursed one side of her lips as she met Owen's eyes sadly.

"They told him if he told me, they'd do the same things to me they were doing to him, so he stayed quiet for, God, over a year. When I did find out, I tried to leave the GSA, and they implanted me with a mind control device. I eventually got away and joined Mutant X, then left when Adam couldn't help me. I worked as a mercenary, offering my services to people who could help me find Leo. Turned out that Leo had manifested a dangerous personality to escape the GSA. He avoided me for five years, afraid he'd be a threat to me. I found him at the same time some other people who wanted to kill him for his abilities did, and his dangerous side came out. He. . .he would've killed Brennan and probably me. I had to stop him," Lexa finished, her voice shaky and lower lip trembling. "I killed him."

"Oh, Jesus, Lexa, I'm sorry!" Owen exclaimed, stepping forward and pulling her into a hug. She struggled for the briefest moment, then gave in and cried. Owen had just poured his heart out to her, had it torn out of him, actually, and accepted the comfort she offered. She could do the same. She held onto his giant frame and grieved, hiding her face in his massive chest. It was the first time she had cried for Leo in front of another person, the first time she had really let herself go, and it was actually an enormous relief.

"So, Smart Guy, any thoughts about getting out of here?" Chris asked Jesse, trying not to intrude on Lexa's pain. Owen had a bond with her now, but Chris didn't, and he got the feeling Lexa didn't open herself up easily. Sort of like Fort Knox, and she'd probably appreciate it about as much as Uncle Sam would if Chris expected either of them to just make him welcome. "I mean, I can slither through the ductwork until I find a corner I can't turn and then see if I can actually go backward or just get stuck and die of boredom and dehydration, but I've got a feeling the cell ducts don't connect to the outside, even if only little people fit in them."

Jesse looked at the flat piece of steel from the broken vent he still had, considering.

"Actually, I just might have an idea," Jesse said with a cautious grin, looking up at the light fixture in the ceiling. "Here, sit on the floor," Jesse told Chris, quickly sitting on the bench and pointing at the floor in front of him.

Chris raised a confused eyebrow and pursed his lips slightly in befuddlement.

Lexa laughed.

"You asked for it, now you've got it," she chuckled as she wiped at her own eyes, flashing a quick smile up to Owen's face. "You put an idea in the Nerd Wonder's head; now you have to deal with it."

Chris continued frowning as he kicked the destroyed air filters out of the way, then sat down in front of Jesse. Jesse leaned forward with his improvised tool, pressing lightly on the back of Chris' head with his other hand to get him to lean forward. Jesse leaned in and peered at Chris' subdermal governor, picking at the seam of its cover with the edge of the metal louver.

"Whoah, can you turn these things off?" Chris asked in surprise.

"Not with one improvised blade-slash-screwdriver no, unfortunately," Jesse replied. "I'm just investigating to see if my idea is workable. . .and yes, it is!" he exclaimed happily as managed to pry the cover off the subdermal governor, exposing the circuitry inside.

"Wow, so we smash its electronic guts and Chris can shout the door down?" Lexa asked, looking at the exposed circuits.

"No, no, not hardly," Jesse warned, shaking his head emphatically. "It might work, but then again, it might just activate and not turn off, which would probably kill him slowly, or at least make him wish he was dead. It's connected to his spinal cord, after all, who knows what messing with it might do."

"Uhm, I vote for not finding out!" Chris said urgently, raising one hand in declaration. "You said you were investigating, that doesn't mean trial and error until something works, right?"

"No, no, of course not," Jesse reassured him. "I just needed to see if we could get at the circuits or not. All we need is some wire or something that we can connect to the light fixture, short the whole subdermal governor out."

"And that's gonna be safer than picking at the circuits or giving me a swirly or something?" Chris glanced at the tiny toilet. "Well, no swirlies, too small to get my fat head in there. But still, electrocution is safe?!"

"Not any safer than smashing it, for you," Jesse explained. "But if we short out Brennan's governor, the current won't bother him a bit, and then he can use his powers to turn ours off," he finished with a triumphant grin.

"There's a problem there," Lexa said with a frown. "How do we get Brennan to us, or vice versa? No way in Hell Owen or Brennan is fitting through the duct, and I'm not sure you will either. You're taller than Chris, and he practically had to fold at the chest to fit through there. Heck, I'm not sure I'll fit, and the first one of you to make a hips comment about that gets a knuckle sandwich, clear?" she finished, arching an eyebrow imperiously.

"Wow, she looks like Eve," Chris and Owen said in sync with identical expressions of surprise, Chris finishing with "..when she does that." They both turned in surprise and grinned at each other.

"No, we won't, but Chris can turn Brennan's off, and then Brennan can turn Chris' off, and I'm betting between the two of them they can take care of a door. Heck, maybe even the walls."

"Concrete walls, they'll echo," Chris said with a frown, suddenly serious. "Brennan's gonna need earplugs."

"Where are we gonna get wire?" Owen asked, looking at the stark barrenness of their cell. "I mean, we'll need enough to get from the light to Brennan's neck. He's tall, but these ceilings are still eight feet."

Jesse climbed back up onto the bench and called into the vent.

"Hey, Brennan, you're still wearing your dog tags, right?"

"Yeah," Brennan called back. "You need 'em?"

"No, you do," Jesse called back. "Chris is gonna head back your way soon, hold on."

"Gotcha," Brennan answered.

Jesse glanced at he light fixture, then stood under it, considering the difference in his own height and Brennan's, raising a hand to his chest to figure out the length of Brennan's dog tags' chain.

"That's enough for one wire," he nodded after a moment, then glanced at Lexa. "Lex, what are you wearing in the way of jewelry? They took our commrings, but you've still got your earrings."

Lexa's hand darted up to her ear, realizing she was wearing hook earrings with three short strands of chain dangling free. She unhooked them and handed them to Chris, then rolled her eyes and smiled self-deprecatingly as he gave her bracelet a Significant Look. She unclasped it and handed that to him as well, then reached behind her neck to unclasp her necklace.

"I hope this is enough; I'm not wearing an underwire bra," she said with a smirk as she gave Chris the necklace. He smirked back, Owen chuckled, and Jesse turned pink.

"Oh-khay," he said with an exaggerated cough, turning to Chris and handing him his watch. "This is wind up, so you can smash it open for a fair number of metal bits and springs. Do you know how to hook all this up to the light's power?"

"Dude, when I was growing up, we were jealous of the dirt, 'cause it was so much less poor than we were. I've worked every odd job you can think of and then some, twice. It'll be a trick doing it in the dark with only the light from my watch to see by, but it's not a problem," Chris told him as he added Jesse's watch to his pocketful of metal.

"Oh, yeah, you gotta take the tube out and do this in the dark, don't you?" Owen asked with a frown. "Geeze."

"Depends. The earrings' hooks are nice and fine; I might be able to put the tube back in, but I can do it, either way," Chris said with a shrug. "Now, how do I open the governor?"

Owen immediately dropped onto the floor, and Jesse quickly showed Chris how to open the governor's casing. As the boys were looking at or displaying their circuitry, Lexa sat down on the opposite bench and took off her shoes, then rolled up her pants and stripped off her nylons. Putting her shoes back on and settling her pants back to rights, Lexa looked up to see all three of her male companions staring at her.

"Uhmm. . .What are you doing?" Jesse asked.

"Oh, come on, Nerd Wonder, I'm disappointed in you," Lexa said with a smirk, standing up and handing Chris her nylons after tying a knot into both their ankles. "Use these as gloves," she told Chris, looking at Jesse and grinning as she finished her explanation: "Dry nylon is non-conductive."

Jesse scowled.

"I knew that," he pouted, folding his arms.

"Hey, avoiding electrocuting myself while I zap Brennan was my next concern. Awesome," Chris commented, climbing back up onto the bench as he tucked the stockings into another pocket. "Elevator Up?" he asked, looking at Owen with a smirk.

Owen climbed up onto the bench too, then simply grabbed Chris by the hips and lifted him up to the ceiling, grunting at how difficult it was without his Feral strength. Chris squawked, grabbing Owen's shoulders to hold himself steady until he could reach up into the vent, then pulled himself in as Owen shifted his grip to Chris' ankles. Chris wriggled a bit, twisting to get the angle of his upper body correct, then slid into the duct, laughing as Owen grabbed the toes of Chris' boots and shoved him all the way into the duct.

"Dude, you beat Brennan's record for getting me in here by, like, a full minute and a half! You Win!" Chris called back, wriggling and inching his way down the duct, back to his and Brennan's cell.

A few minutes later, Chris wormed his way out of the duct, dropping into Brennan's waiting arms awkwardly and nearly spilling them both off the bench.

"Whoa! Okay, acrophobic here, let's not do the falling thing; eight feet is high enough over a concrete floor!" Chris gasped as they recovered their footing, then he sat down on the bench and started disassembling Lexa's jewelry and Jesse's watch, linking everything together into a long chain. "Dog tags?" Chris asked when he was done; Brennan blinked, then quickly pulled the chain up over his head and dropped the tags into Chris' hand.

"Just need the chain, and you'll get it back, unless you short circuit this whole thing like crazy," Chris told Brennan, unclipping the tags' chain and dropping them into back into Brennan's hand. The little hole in the beaded chain's clasp was perfect; he could fit one of the hooks from Lexa's earrings in there like it was made for it.

"Jess said I needed the chain; I guess he meant you did, in here with me instead of over there?" Brennan asked, watching Chris fiddle with his various bits of metal. "Why didn't I just throw my chain through the duct to you guys?"

"Because I'm using it on you," Chris answered with a smirk. "Gimme that screwdriver you used, and sit on the floor; I've gotta open your subdermal governor."

"Do what?" Brennan asked with a frown. "What's all that stuff for, though?" he questioned as he handed Chris the snapped off louver and sat down in front of the bench, lowering his head to expose the back of his neck to Chris.

"I'm gonna open this thing, then you're gonna give me a piggy-back ride right under one end of the light, and I'm gonna hook these makeshift wires up to it by the light of my watch," Chris explained as he pried at Brennan's subdermal governor, struggling to work his substitute tool into the device's seam. "Then I touch the other ends of the wires to the circuits of your governor, shorting it out. You survive because you're an Electrical Elemental, and then you can use your powers to shut mine off. We break loose, break the others loose, and raise Holy Hell storming out of this place. Or sneak out quietly, whatever we can get away with."

Brennan laughed, smiling as Chris continued his work.

"Sounds like a plan."

"Yup," Chris answered, the tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth as he finally figured out the trick to the governor's seam and managed to get the edge of the louver's tip under it. A moment later, he gave a satisfied cry of "Ah-hah!" as it pried off.

"Okay, make like a sow's dorsal," Chris told Brennan as he unclipped his watch, then put on Lexa's "gloves" and re-clipped the watch on, holding the nylon over his left hand in place securely.

"Do what?" Brennan asked with a puzzled frown.

"Piggy-back," Chris clarified with a roll of his eyes, grinning as he picked up his jury-rigged wires and climbed up onto the bench, draping them around the back of his neck to hang over his shoulders. Brennan rolled his eyes in return, less amused by Chris than Chris was, turning his back and crouching down in front of the bench. Chris climbed onto Brennan's shoulders, then cheerfully called out "Elevator, Up!" with gusto, hiding his nervousness about what he was about to attempt to do behind humorous bravado. Brennan stood most of the way up, raising Chris up to the ceiling, then shuffled over to stand under the end of the light.

"You gonna be able to hold me up with a hand free, to hold the fluorescent?" Chris asked, serious now that business was at hand. Brennan let go of Chris' right ankle, holding Chris' foot in place against his ribs with his forearm, turning his palm up and waggling his fingers at Chris. "Okay, that's a Yes," Chris chuckled, then twisted the fluorescent tube, deactivating it as he disconnected its contacts, sliding it free of its housing and carefully passing it down to Brennan in the dark.

"Got it," Brennan called out once Chris had found his wrist with the other end of the tube, carefully dragging it along Brennan's arm and over his hand until Brennan could grasp it. Chris triggered the light on his watch, which would only last a few seconds, then carefully pinched one of the "wires", shaking it free of its sibling and withdrawing it from around his neck. The watch's light went off, and Chris triggered it again, shining it up at the fluorescent tube's housing built into the ceiling, looking for the right electrical contact.

After another few minutes Chris had the makeshift wires connected. He had spent an extra minute in darkness as he unclipped his watch again and took off his left "glove" when he realized he needed to insulate one of the wires or they'd short him out as he replaced the tube. He had Brennan's dog tag chain rolled up in Lexa's nylon, double checking with his watch's light to make sure everything was how he wanted it before speaking again.

"Okay, hand me the tube," Chris said nervously, jumping when the end of the tube brushed the side of his knee. Chris took the tube, holding it awkwardly without the use of his index finger so that he could trigger his watch's light again. He quickly fit the fluorescent tube's contacts into their housing, then snarled as he realized the difficulty he had put himself in.

"Damn. Okay, I've got this end of the tube back in, but I can't see or reach the other one from here," Chris told Brennan. "I need you to very slowly move forward until I say stop, when my hand reaches the other end of the tube."

"Got it," Brennan answered, slowly shuffling forward, trying to keep Chris sitting level the whole way. He inched forward for an interminably long moment, until Chris finally called out for him to stop. There was a vague blue light above Brennan's head for a brief moment as Chris triggered the light on his watch again, then again, then Chris breathed out a sigh of relief as the light blinked back on.

"Okay, put me down," Chris said urgently. Brennan did so quickly, caught by surprise by the tone of Chris' voice. Chris moved over to the bench under the vent after Brennan set him down, sinking down onto it and putting his face in his hands, his elbows resting on his knees as he took deep breaths.

"Chris?" Brennan asked, confused and worried. "You okay? What is it?"

"Oh, not too much," Chris answered after moving his wrists apart slightly, his eyes still behind his fingers but his mouth no longer behind the heels of his palms. "I just get nervous when I'm about to electrocute a teammate, that's all."

"Oh," Brennan blinked, not having considered that aspect. "Hey, like you said, I'm an Electrical Elemental, no problem. I got thrown into a 250 thousand volt fence once, no harm at all."

"Yeah, but were you wearing a subdermal governor at the time?" Chris asked, his deep brown eyes soulful and nervous as he looked up into Brennan's. "Although I bet 250 thousand volts would have taken care of one if you had been."

"Um, no, I was only possessed by homicidal bacterial warfare that time," Brennan said with a smirk. Chris frowned at him in amazement. "Come On," Brennan said, turning his back to Chris and crouching down in front of the bench again. "No time like the present. If I don't make it, tell Josh and Kevin they're a cute couple, tell the rest of the team I love them, and save Adam and stop the Dominion for me. That'll be better than even, really," Brennan finished, finding it easy to say his potential last words when he wasn't looking at anyone. He didn't think he was about to die, but it was sort of unnerving to consider the possibility. But hey, their lives were dangerous just about every day.

"Okay," Chris said with nervous determination as he got back onto Brennan's shoulders. "Let's Do This, as Owen would say. Elevator Up," he finished, gripping Brennan's wrists hard as he held Chris steady while he stood and moved to the light. Chris took the wire of Lexa's jewelry in his "gloved" right hand, then tugged his other "glove" free, letting the chain from Brennan's dog tags hang free. Chris struggled his left hand back into Lexa's nylon, pinching at it awkwardly with the nylon-covered tips of his right fingers, finally getting everything settled.

Chris reached for the dangling end of Brennan's chain, carefully lifting it away before lowering the chain of Lexa's jewelry, reaching back out to grasp it again at the end with his fingertips.

Brennan held Chris by the thighs as Chris slid down Brennan's back, holding his arms out to keep the wires apart as he awkwardly got his feet back under himself on the floor. He straightened up, looking up at the exposed interior of the subdermal governor in the base of Brennan's neck, just above his eyeline, bringing the ends of the chain-wires in close.

"Here We Go," Chris breathed out, convincing himself to do it.

The lab coated scientist strode briskly down the corridor of the GSA complex, poking away at her PDA with a stylus and utterly ignoring the prisoner being escorted behind her. True, he was a Feral, snarling and struggling with his arms bound behind him despite the fact he had the black disk of a subdermal governor on the back of his neck, but she wasn't worried about him. Besides the governor restricting his powers and his arms being behind his back, the long-haired Feral had a broad shouldered GSAgent in full riot gear uniform on either side of him, gripping him by the upper arms and forcing him to keep up despite his struggles. There was another guard bringing up the rear, a tough-as-nails looking shorter blonde with a billy club held at the ready in her hand.

Quirking an eyebrow in annoyance, the dark blonde scientist came to an abrupt halt, frowning at her digital assistant's readout and poking a few options with the stylus. The guards immediately halted when the scientist did, jerking the wiry Feral to a stop along with them. He snarled, long hair streaming behind his head as he whipped it from side to side as he struggled to free himself, clearly lost in his animal instincts despite his powers being neutralized. The dark-skinned guard grabbed the Feral by his ponytail, using it as a handle attached to the base of the Feral's skull to hold his head still. The other guard stepped around in front of the Feral, still holding the Feral's right biceps with his left hand, and slugged the Feral in the stomach with his right hand. The female guard looked like she was jealous she didn't get to hit the prisoner while she kept an eye out for any other trouble.

"That's enough!" the guard snarled in the Feral's face, his full lips pulled to one side in a sneer as he glared into the Feral's eyes.

A trio of GSA employees hurried past the small group, skirting wide around the edge of the corridor intersection, not wanting to get involved. They didn't miss the way the important-looking scientist paused to take note of them, nor the way the shorter, dark-skinned guard glared at their presence and the blonde guard watched them openly, frowning.

They did miss the way the Feral and the other guard also watched them from the corners of their eyes instead of continuing to meet each others glare.

A few minutes later, the dark blonde scientist let herself into a storage-processing center, looking down at her PDA with a frown and up at the room with a glare. The GSA officer at the desk was openly shocked; she had apparently entered the secure area without accessing the systems. . .or her access was so high it prevented the monitor from alerting the officer on duty when she entered. The officer figured that was the case with silent irritation, because obviously it wasn't as if the door had been opened from the inside for her and her guards, the short blonde one glaring as the two men dragged a captive Feral into the room with them.

The scientist stalked up to the officer's desk and pierced him with her stare, arching an imperious eyebrow for added effect.

"What the Hell is going on in here!?" she demanded of the officer, her expression obviously expecting an immediate answer.

The officer knew it could potentially be a bad career move not to kowtow to her, but he wasn't about to take lip from some egghead, no matter what her clearance was.

"I could ask you the same question," he told her, looking up at her from his desk coolly, but with a hint of anger showing in his voice. "Bringing a prisoner in here?"

"Oh, you could, could you?" she sneered back at him. "Could you also explain why in God's name you have two Class Five Multi-Band Frequency Modulating Adaptive Transmitters operating in here behind not even a single layer of shielding, carrying no less than..." the scientist paused for a split instant to glance at the readout on her PDA, her face scrunching up in incredulous fury at what she saw, "..Sixteen of our private internal frequencies? Do you have even the slightest idea of what information they might be broadcasting? Do you even have any clue where they might be broadcasting to!?"

The officer blinked up impotently at the furious scientist, having no idea what she was talking about, but now distinctly worried that it sounded like a security breach.

"As for the prisoner, whether he looks it or not, we have reason to believe he's the unknown sixth member of Mutant X," the scientist continued in a calmer tone of voice, enjoying her superior knowledge and the status it was gaining her. The Feral gave a choked snarl that could almost have been a laugh; the dark-skinned guard shot the long-haired freak a look while the other guard slammed him against the door, glaring at him. The fierce-looking blonde stood to one side, alternately watching the prisoner, the door, and the rest of the room, trusting nothing.

"You were aware that all five members of Mutant X were captured and brought in earlier, weren't you?" the scientist asked the officer frostily, sounding as if she'd be surprised if the man were aware he was a mammal. "And that their effects were brought here to you?" she finished with a sneering frown, waiting for the officer to make himself worthy of her wasting her time on him.

"Well, no, actually; no official word has been given yet, so..." the officer began to answer, but the scientist cut him off with another sneering growl of anger and a literal cutting-chop motion of one hand.

"Save it; I Don't Care," she informed him, making it sound like maybe he might possibly should have been able to anticipate that fact, if he were capable of conscious thought and breathing. "Those transmitters need to be shut down, now, and this prisoner has knowledge of them. Where are the effects confiscated from the prisoners?" she asked coldly.

The officer sighed and buzzed her through the gate, getting up from his desk and leading the scientist to a locker, opening it and gesturing to the backpack and labeled boxes of other paraphernalia confiscated from the prisoners' pockets. The scientist gave the officer a look of utter disbelief, like she couldn't even comprehend how he could possibly be qualified for anything other than a janitorial position and doubting his capabilities of even that much, then reached into the locker and withdrew the backpack and tub that had been labeled "Feral #147, Ursine #55; Stergof, Owen".

"You, get the rest," she snapped at the dark-skinned guard, who hurried through the gate and approached the open locker, collecting the tubs from it. The officer blinked in surprise that the dark-skinned guard had simply opened the gate; he hadn't had to wait to be buzzed through. He wondered just how high this woman's clearance was, not noticing when the other guard stopped looking directly at the gate.

The scientist dropped the backpack on the officer's desk, then set the tub next to it and opened it. She snorted in disgust and reached into the tub, which contained only the few items that had been in the Ursine prisoner's pockets. She withdrew the mid-sized cellphone from the tub, holding it up for the officer to see with an expression of utter contempt on her face.

"A cellphone? Are you kidding me? You people didn't check for signal modifications coming from an ordinary transmission device!?" she snarled in furious disgust, waving her PDA at the other tubs the dark-skinned guard brought over. She ripped the lid off the top one, labeled "Elemental #111, Sonic #59; Fitzpatrick, Christopher", and yanked an identical phone out of it, tossing it down next to the first one on the officer's desk. "Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, both those phones were powered off when they were delivered to me; my instructions were to process them for storage for the rest of the night and that a team of experts would be examining them in the morning," the officer offered weakly as an excuse.

"Pathetic," she snapped at him, grabbing one of the phones up again and examining it with her PDA, which was obviously more than just a personal digital assistant. "Morons. Experts, my firm and cold ass. They're lucky I'm on third shift tonight," she muttered darkly, putting her PDA back in her pocket and examining the cellphone, nodding in appreciation of its construction.

The Feral made another stifled noise, causing the broad-shouldered guard with the full lips to slam him into the door again.

Shaking her head, the scientist placed her fingers just so on the cellphone, causing its casing to slide open, revealing ridiculously advanced looking circuitry underneath.

"Absolutely pathetic." She gave the officer a silent look of contemptuous dismissal. "You're lucky you only received these, didn't bring them into the complex yourself. When I find out who did..." she shook her head in aggravation, closing her eyes in anguish at the stupidity of the morons she was forced to work with. "Lucky for whoever that is, I have to find out what Mutant X is doing with these, first." She threw the phones back into a tub, slapped its lid on, grabbed the backpack, and marched away from the officer's desk, leaving the dark-skinned officer to hurriedly grab all of the tubs and follow her.

"You," she sneered in the long-haired Feral's face as she strode up to him. "You are going to tell me everything you know, about these phones and Mutant X."

"Get bent, Lady!" he snapped at her, lunging at the scientist as best he was able from having his back pressed up against the door. His best wasn't very able at all; the female guard tripped him in mid-lunge with her nightstick, and the frowning guard grabbed the Feral and slammed him back into the door yet again, his full lips pulled back in a snarl equal to the Feral's.

"Okay, that's it," the scientist declared, pulling her PDA back out of her lab coat's pocket. "I've had it with you. Did you know I can selectively control your subdermal governor?" she asked him rhetorically, poking at her super-PDA with its stylus. "I'm turning your enhanced hearing, and only your hearing, back on," she told him, glancing up to watch his reaction.

Then she leaned in and shrieked into his face, a piercing scream that rang through the room for over five seconds, glaring as she watched him cringe at the blood-curdling noise.

"And if you thought that was fun, next time I'll just switch on your governor's pain setting and then your hearing, and do it again," she told him as the guards hauled the Feral out of the way of the door. "Would you like to go to Holding now? See your friends?" the scientist asked the Feral in a mockingly sweet voice. "Too bad. We're going to go have a long talk in my office, first."

The officer shuddered as the small group left his area. He wouldn't want to be in that poor sap's shoes for anything.

Eve snickered softly as she led the way down the corridor, away from the storage area.

"God I love making the real GSA bitches look like amateurs," she smiled to an openly grinning Shalimar, glancing around to make sure they were unobserved before pointing at an unlabeled door. "Here, Kevin, try this one."

Kevin hurried forward, placing his hand on the door handle and closing his eyes, concentrating. He reached out with his telekinesis, taking "hold" of the door's handle and reaching through its mechanism, extending his mental grasp to the handle on the other side of the door as well. The tiniest mental effort pulled the handle on the non-locking interior of the room, opening the door for them, just as Kevin had done to the storage area to bypass its security.

They hurried into the small office to get out of sight in the corridor, Jamie reverting from the form of the dark-skinned guard whose ID badge Kevin had telekinetically swiped into his own normal form. He grabbed his backpack from Eve with a nod of thanks and started transferring all of their teammates' possessions from the tubs into it.

"Acting is fun," Josh declared with a smirk, agreeing with Eve's previous statement as he uncrossed his arms from behind his back, revealing they weren't actually bound together at all. "..But Jesus 'Lady', my Feral hearing was never actually off, you know. God but you can shriek." Shalimar nodded in support of his statement and general Feline Feral solidarity, and she hadn't even been at the point-blank range of Eve's scream.

Eve just grinned maliciously at him, amused. Josh rolled his eyes back at her, then sat down in the corner of the room, gesturing to Kevin, who was already following him.

"Okay, Kev, do your thing. We've got their stuff; let's find our people and get the heck out of here."

Kevin nodded, sitting down a bit in front of his boyfriend, then lying back and resting his head on Josh's crossed legs. Josh brushed the backs of his fingers over the edge of Kevin's hairline at his temple, smiling softly down into his lover's face. Kevin smiled back up at him, then closed his eyes and passed out.

Kevin's astral form rose from his comatose body, seeing his own unconscious form before he turned away and drifted through the air to float behind Eve where she had sat down at a computer. She had connected her PDA to the computer's USB port and was rapidly searching files. She clicked one up on the PDA, poking at a few options with the stylus to send the image to the computer's monitor.

"Here we are, Kevin," Eve told the empty air, knowing Kevin's astral form could hear her and presuming it was watching the computer's screen. "We're here..." she went on, poking the PDA and causing a room on the map displaying on the monitor to light up green. "..And the holding area is two levels down, over here," she continued, clicking on her PDA and making the map display drop two levels and pan to the left before lighting up an entire section in red. She clicked back to the original display, then clicked to make it pan down a bit. "The closest stairs and elevator are over here; go check them out and see how much trouble we're going to run into if we head for our friends right now."

Jamie finished packing, ready to return to the dark-skinned GSAgent's form and run interference as needed while Eve clicked away on the schematics of the GSA compound she had found, plotting the best escape route. Josh kept watch over Kevin's unconscious form, his eyes in their pale jade green Feral mode as he kept an ear turned toward the door, Shalimar's a matching gold as she watched it directly.

Owen looked up at the vent Chris had disappeared through, then up at the light.

"Will we know if it worked?" he asked. "Will our light go out when Chris shorts out theirs on Brennan?"

"Probably," Jesse answered, nodding. "The cell blocks are probably all on the same circuit, or at least our two are, since they're in line with and near each other."

They sat or stood in the cell, trying to listen for any sounds of Chris or Brennan from the vent, waiting. Lexa turned to Owen, tilting her head in curiosity as she debated a question, then went ahead and decided to ask.

"What was that before, with the Kansas song?" she asked him, as if it were any ordinary question and not the only thing that had broken through to Owen in the depths of his panic attack.

Owen blinked at Lexa, surprised by the question, then blinked again as his eyes hardened slightly, thinking about what the answer meant to him. Lexa fought the urge to shift uncomfortably, afraid she had offended him, but Owen shook his head slightly, shaking off memories of the past and meeting Lexa's eyes as he answered.

"It's something Emma taught me, actually," he said, glancing at Jesse and seeing him nod; Jesse remembered Emma's care for Owen to bring him back from the psychological edge after Mutant X had rescued him from the GSA. "It's a. . .a coping mechanism, I guess. You know, therapy," he continued with a one-shouldered shrug. "Focus on something positive, use that image or whatever to ride out a panic attack. For me, it's that song."

"Your one good thing," Lexa whispered, her voice still clearly audible in the close confines of the cell.

"Yeah. One Good Thing, to focus on, remember that the panic isn't the end of the world. I kinda. . .kinda spazzed out here, 'cause it's pretty much a repeat of what happened to me to make me need the therapy in the first place. I mean, it's hard to tell yourself the flashback of a panic attack isn't real and can't hurt you when you really are going through the experience again," Owen said quietly, staring at his toes.

"But you're not," Jesse reassured him. "Yeah, you got captured by the GSA again, but it's not the same. Not by a long shot, and we're sure as hell not going to let them torture you again. You, or any of the rest of us," Jesse finished determinedly.

"Yeah," Owen nodded, knowing Jesse was right and grateful for the support. "'Carry On Wayward Son' was my One Good Thing for getting through the aftermath of. . .of the torture I went through. I couldn't hold myself together, emotionally; Emma taught me to focus on the "Don't You Cry No More" line, to visualize and use it. I already loved the song, so it worked. But my Good Thing these days is Mutant X. Making a difference and keeping what happened to me from happening to anybody else.

"What about you?" Owen asked, turning to Lexa. "You said that, 'One Good Thing', like you had one. What got you through everything that went on with your brother?"

Lexa smiled sadly, blinking to keep back renewed tears.

"It's a therapy thing, huh?" she asked, smiling more but with more intense sadness as Owen nodded. "It wasn't my One Good Thing. My stubborn nature is what got me through the things I had to do for Leo, but I never thought of that as my Good Thing. 'One Good Thing' is what I always told Leo to think of when times were hard. When we were homesick for our parents, for life before our powers, when he started losing control of his. . .he told me it's how he got through the torture the GSA put him through. He thought of One Good Thing." Lexa met Owen's eyes, the tears finally spilling from hers. "Leo's dying words were to tell me that his One Good Thing. . .was me."

Owen pursed his mouth, almost biting his lower lip, frowning in sympathy at what the Pierce siblings had been forced to go through. He continued to meet Lexa's eyes and nodded softly to her, in understanding.

"Should it be taking this long?" Lexa asked abruptly, wiping at her face and taking the classic and well-practiced route of emotional suppression and denial. It was familiar territory, so she was more comfortable there.

"We could ask..." Owen said, starting to stand up on the bench, to call into the vent.

"No, don't..." Jesse cautioned. "We don't want to interrupt; Chris might be messing with live wires in the dark at this point. It couldn't take too long, and they'd call back to let us know if there was a problem–" All three of them looked up at the ceiling as the fluorescent tube set into it flickered wildly for a moment.

"There you go," Jesse said with a grin. "Any second now, and—"

Jesse cut himself off, his eyes widening in dawning horror as they heard Chris' panicked voice shouting Brennan's name coming from the air vent, over and over.

Chris took a few more breaths, trying to force his arms to move, even after mentally convincing himself he had to do it. Apparently, his arms had decided his brain was crazy and opted to stop listening to it. Chris wondered what they would do next, if they would make their own behavioral choices without his brain's input, or if they would just wait for his brain to stop the crazy-talk about electrocuting teammates and come back to its senses.

"Just do it, Chris," Brennan said calmly, reaching awkwardly behind himself without turning his head to try to encourage Chris, grip his wrist reassuringly or something. But Chris' wrists were up at the back of Brennan's neck, of course, holding the wires he was supposed to be applying to the exposed subdermal governor that was back there. Brennan's blindly fumbling forearm bumped the bottom of Chris' right elbow, causing his arm and the wire it held to move, making Chris hiss in alarm. Brennan moved his hand, finding Chris' hip and gripping it, instead. Chris breathed a huge sigh not of relief but of having passed an immediate emotional hurdle; Brennan squeezed his hip briefly, then let go.

"Do it," he repeated, and Chris nodded.

Chris reached the ends of the makeshift wires forward, two tiny springs from inside Jesse's watch protruding from the ends of Brennan's dog tag chain and Lexa's bracelet. He touched them to the exposed circuitry inside the subdermal governor on the back of Brennan's neck, wincing as sparks immediately snapped out and the light overhead snapped off, then on, then began blinking crazily as the sparks shot out of the governor.

Crying out in surprise, Chris ducked out of the stream of sparks' way, but he maintained the presence of mind to keep holding the wires in place. Crackling electric blue energy surged from the subdermal governor, racing around Brennan's form, shooting snaps of blue sparks from the spiky tips of his hair, jumping from his elbows to his ribs, between his fingers and from his jerking hands to his hips, crackling through the triangle formed by his legs and the floor.

Brennan collapsed to the floor without making a sound, his limbs twitching and his whole body still crackling with electricity. It didn't look like he was generating it; it just looked like he was being electrocuted.

"Oh, shit!" Chris hissed, then dropped the wires, unmindful of the snaps of sparks they made as they came in contact with one another. He dropped onto his knees as close to Brennan's side as he dared, trying to reach out with one nylon-gloved hand but afraid he was only going to get himself zapped. The "gloves" only covered his hands, and besides, Lexa had said dry nylon was a non-conductor. Chris was sweating bullets at that point; his nervous palms certainly weren't all that dry anymore.

"Brennan?" Chris called urgently, hoping and praying the other man wasn't dead. "Brennan? Brennan?"

"Brennan!" Jesse's panicked shout came from the vent in the corner of the ceiling. "Brennan! Chris, what HAPPENED!?"

Brennan's eyelids were fluttering, his eyes rolled back into his head so only the whites were visible when their lids flicked open a few times each second. His fingers spasmed independently of the twitching that the rest of his body was experiencing, curling and fumbling at the floor they were lying upon.

His jaw moved soundlessly, just slightly, then Brennan's eyes blinked properly as he coughed, opening and then shutting tightly as he gave an extensive groan, the electricity coursing over his form finally fading away as his muscles ceased clenching.

"Holy Fuck, let's not do that again ever," Brennan said weakly, opening pained eyes to look up into Chris' worried ones.

"He's okay!" Chris called out, straightening up and twisting to aim his yell back over his shoulder at the air vent. "He's okay!" Chris repeated, louder, then turned back to Brennan, dropping forward onto his left hand to reach forward with his right and grasp Brennan's shoulder. "You are okay, right?" he asked with urgent concern.

"Yeah," Brennan winced, slowly getting his hands and knees under him to rise into a crawl, then hauling himself to his feet with Chris' help, the shorter man ducking under Brennan's arm to support him.

"Okay, is turning mine off gonna be that painful? Will I start screaming concussion waves the way you sparked electricity?" Chris asked with a worried frown.

Brennan chuckled weakly.

"I doubt it. Mine was short circuited, shorted me out, too. Yours I'm just gonna shut off entirely," Brennan explained as Chris helped him over to the nearer bench, both of them with an arm over the others back.

"Yeah, well–—HEY!" Chris yelled out as he set Brennan down, Brennan grabbing the subdermal governor in the back of Chris' neck and frying it with a quick jolt of electricity. Chris' surprise caused him to accidentally channel a bit of his newly reactivated power into his cry, making Brennan wince at the booming echo in the concrete room.

"Ow," Brennan said, shaking his head in an attempt to clear the ringing from his ears. "Okay, can you take out a steel cell door? Without making my head explode?"

"Hmmmm. Not sure," Chris answered, pursing his lips sideways and screwing up his eyebrows in thought. "Let's ask Smart Guy if he has any ideas. Or what'd Lexa call him? The Nerd Wonder."

Brennan laughed heartily, turning to slowly climb up the rest of the way onto the bench and stand up in the corner with a groan, angling his head to yell into the vent.

"Hey, Jesse, I'm okay, Man. And I can short out subdermal governors, no problem."

"Good to hear it, Brennan!" Jesse called back, his relief at hearing Brennan's voice obvious in his own. "And yeah, we heard Chris, figured you'd got him back online."

"What am I, one of his computers, now?" Chris complained quietly with a smirk.

"Jess, what's the best way for Chris and me to take out this door?" Brennan asked loudly. "I've thrown a lot of juice around tonight; I can get some out of this light fixture, but I don't think I've got enough left to get steel hot enough to melt so Chris can blow a hole through it. I don't know if I'd have that much on a good day!"

"And Chris doing it on his own or shattering the concrete would probably not be healthy for you, right," Jesse answered. "You shouldn't have to, though. You can magnetize the door, hit the whole thing with as coherent an electrical field as you can manage, and the steel molecules will align. That alignment should make them more vulnerable to the concussion of Chris' shout; the door will weaken as it's bent against its atomic alignment on a molecular level. If you both hit it at once, it'll be like your power is holding it steady so Chris' can smash it," he explained.

"Okay, I have almost no idea what he said other than that last part, but it sounds good to me," Chris said with an amused smirk at the awareness of his own ignorance.

"Hell, I understand magnetism, and I still don't know what he was talking about," Brennan muttered as he climbed down from the bench and reached for the dangling chains, draining them and causing their light to dim appreciably while he held them. "But I trust him to be right, anyway. Let's do it."

Brennan stepped away from the makeshift wires, tugging the chain of his dog tags free, and rolled his hands over one another to build up a tesla coil, then unleashed it in a broad burst against the door. Chris stood behind Brennan, reaching up and grabbing him by the shoulders, urging him lower.

"Get down, I have to plug your ears; your hands are busy," Chris told him, and Brennan nodded, frowning in concentration as he irradiated the steel door with electricity, carefully lowering himself down onto his knees. Chris stepped behind him, one foot between Brennan's knees, and clamped his hands over Brennan's ears as he slowly drew in the deepest breath he could. Chris did his best to get the pad of his palms beneath his middle fingers to press the tragi of Brennan's ears closed, sealing the rest of his hands over the rest of Brennan's ears.

Chris leaned forward, getting his face and mouth closer to the door than Brennan's head. His inhalation complete, Chris shouted.

Sonic energy from Chris' shout slammed into the door, the concrete room ringing with the echoing reverberation of his cry. Chris poured on the volume, using his innate acoustic sense to try to match the pitch of his scream to the resonating frequency of the door. As Brennan's electricity magnetized the steel of the door and drew its molecules into parallel alignment, the door resonated more and more strongly as its atomic structure became more rigid. A few seconds into his shout, Chris found the right frequency, upping the volume and power of his shout as the door began to vibrate in a counter resonance to it.

The door quickly began to shudder in its frame, the vibrations of its aligned atomic structure vibrating in counterpoint to Chris' shout. The metal would vibrate a millionth of an inch towards Chris and Brennan as the crest of the soundwaves smashed into it, vibrating away as the trough of each wave passed by. Each wave caused the vibrations to intensify that fraction more, meaning the next vibration of the steel smacked into the next wave that much harder.

After just a few more seconds of Chris screaming and Brennan frowning in concentration and auditory pain, the steel door shattered into hundreds of thousands of fragments, which flew out into the corridor on the concussion wavefront of the last of Chris' shout.

After a few minutes, Kevin's unconscious body inhaled deeply and woke up, his eyes opening after his astral form returned. Eve had spent the time rifling through the GSA's duty rosters, finding the highest-ranked security officer on the premises she could and getting imagery of him on screen for Jamie to mimic and study the body language of while Shalimar kept watch. When Kevin's eyes opened, Josh grinned down into his lover's upturned face, then grabbed Kevin under the arms and lifted him to his feet as Josh smoothly stood straight up from his cross-legged position.

"You okay?" Josh asked with concern, peering at Kevin's face as they crossed to the door along with Jamie and Eve. "You're shaky," he told Kevin, frowning at the fatigue he could see on Kevin's face.

"It'll pass," Kevin reassured Josh and Eve both as she turned to him with a worried expression. "I used my telekinesis in astral form, propped open the stairwell doors, smashed a light and turned off a computer to keep some people between us and the holding area occupied," he explained.

"Dude, that's a lot," Josh said in genuine concern, gripping Kevin's biceps and turning him to meet Josh's eyes. Eve looked on with a sincere frown under her worried look. "You know using your TK in astral form drains the crap out of you, and you've already thrown your TK around through two fights tonight and pulled a few other tricks, too. And you were concentrating on the computers before that. Are you gonna be okay for this?" Josh asked urgently, staring into Kevin's eyes and willing him to be okay. Shalimar looked on in concern, worry for the physical and emotional health and focus of her two newest pack mates clear in her eyes.

"Yes," Kevin answered immediately, without hesitation. "I'm already over my daily dosage of Tylenol for the headache, and all the work I just did means that we won't have to do any fighting to get into the holding area, so let's go," he finished, knowing he had a point even if Josh wanted to argue he shouldn't have done it.

Josh frowned in disapproval of Kevin taking what could arguably be called unnecessary risks before pulling him into a tight embrace. Kevin hugged him back, knowing Josh's protective nature was just a part of who he was, just another part of him that Kevin loved. Even if his overprotectiveness could be annoying on occasion.

"Okay, People, Let's Move," Eve declared as Kevin turned Josh around and folded his arms behind his back once more, the two of them following Eve and Shalimar as Jamie led the way in his Chief Security Officer disguise, out of the room and down the corridor to the stairwell.

Their party emerged from the little-used stairwell to find the corridor deserted, but not just from Kevin's minor distractions of smashing a security station's overhead light and turning off the guards' computer. There was an alarm blaring, and red lights were bathing the entire level in a slowly pulsing glow.

Jamie strode forward in the form of Officer Imposing, shoving open the door to the holding area that Kevin had carefully left unlatched for their arrival.

"What the Hell is going on in here?!" he barked, hoping his voice was at least somewhat similar to that of the officer he was mimicking. He had developed a sense for what sort of voice various facial types had over the years of his criminal impersonations, and he figured any remaining discrepancies would be overlooked due to his irate shouting or be drowned out by the blaring alarm.

"Sir! Get Down!" one of the guards shouted urgently, and Jamie ducked just before a laser blast speared the edge of doorframe where his head had been. Eve dove for cover with a shriek, surreptitiously letting the other members of Mutant X know that she was there, hoping they would realize the other "guards" were Jamie and Kevin as well as Shalimar.

"Stalemate, Sir, both sides have each other pinned!" another guard called out from where he was taking cover behind a steel cabinet. The room was a mess, half the lights exploded and showing lightning-like scorch marks, small laser holes piercing various surfaces in the room and a number of the men blinking furiously as they tried to restore their vision. There was both a desk chair and a large steel desk that looked like they had been thrown across the room and through the barricade of racking the guards had tried to assemble.

To top it off, every lightweight object in the room was against the far wall, a number of the guards wincing with headaches or shaking their heads, trying to clear their hearing. The guards had taken cover behind the steel desks or cabinets of the processing area, each peering around them with their handguns held at the ready, poised to maintain covering fire to keep the escaped New Mutant prisoners on the far side of the door.

"One of the prisoners is bulletproof, keeps stepping into the doorway and taking our shots, giving the others with the energy blasts the chance to open fire!" the highest ranked guard said to finish his report, sounding both panicked at the situation and relieved that a superior had arrived.

"Well, aim for their hands when they shoot at you!" Jamie bellowed in false outrage, acting as if he were stunned by the incompetence of "his" men. "And somebody turn that alarm off, for the love of God! We know the prisoners are loose!"

An electrical bolt came through the door at an angle, not revealing Brennan to the guards, but not coming anywhere near any of their positions, either. Jesse stepped into the doorway in his massed form again, smirking as a few guards jumped and opened fire on him anyway. The rest waited for one of his teammates to appear, then panicked and began firing as Jesse strode forward and kicked aside a desk that didn't have anyone hiding behind it with one blow of his super-heavy massed foot. He turned and sauntered back through the doorway, bullets mushrooming themselves against his back and falling harmlessly to the floor.

"Cease Fire, you idiots; you're just wasting your ammunition!" Jamie called out. Josh and Shalimar had noticed Lexa's invisible form sidling through the doorway in the opposite direction Brennan's blast had gone, moving aside before Jesse stepped out and drew all threat of random fire away from her. She circled the edge of the room, crouching behind a desk near the entry door with Eve.

"You have a plan for getting us out of here?" Lexa asked Eve softly, confident the continually blaring alarm would cover the sound of their conversation.

"Oh, yes, here, take this," Eve said quietly, holding out a small canister. "I've got a gas bomb; this is the counter agent. Spray it over your faces and all of your exposed skin."

"Owen, tell Brennan I need a flashy distraction," Lexa said slightly louder as she picked up the canister, turning her head to direct her voice at the doorway all the guards were nervously watching as the canister appeared to float in midair.

There was a sudden distraction as Josh snarled and tried to leap to his feet, Kevin and Shalimar yanking him back down to the ground before any of the guards had finished spinning around to look at the entry door instead of the doorway to the cell block. A few guards cried out in surprise, but Josh was already on the ground under the pinning forms of Kevin and Shalimar, her nightstick raining down blows that the guards couldn't see were actually hitting Kevin's steel-toed boot. Quite a few more guards cried out after Brennan's head and one arm appeared unobserved on the floor in the doorway, reaching up to blast another bank of the overhead lights.

In the resulting flashes of light and more exploding fluorescents, none of the guards noticed the quick flicker of light as Lexa dropped her cloaking power and reactivated it to include Eve's canister she was holding.

There was a tense moment of stillness as Lexa began working her way back to the doorway, calling out "Now," under the cover of the next blare of the alarm when she was halfway across the room. Jesse's massed form charged through the doorway at an angle, kicking aside another desk and sending a guard scrambling for new cover as his companions opened fire. Jesse phased as he reached the left-hand wall, disappearing through it to circle back and rejoin his teammates.

Lexa used the distraction to slip back through the doorway with Eve's prize.

There was another moment of tense would-be silence if not for the alarm and Josh's "pained" groan. Some of the guards had just taken the opportunity to switch the clips on their guns when Chris' enhanced voice called out:

"Go For It!"

Josh suddenly sat up, ripping the black disk of the subdermal governor off the back of his neck and pressing a button inside it with his thumb, hurling it into the middle of the room. It exploded with a thunderous boom, shocking the hell out of every guard in the room and stunning several of those who were closest to its detonation. Eve stood from behind her hiding place at the same moment, pulling the pin on a small spherical device and casually tossing it underhand into the middle of the room as well.

The gas bomb was triggered by the fake governor's explosion, sending billowing clouds of pale green micro-fine powder throughout the room in seconds. The guards all began gasping and wheezing, collapsing to the ground and rubbing frantically at their eyes and skin as intense irritation bloomed from every nerve ending. Rubbing it only made the skin contact worse, leaving men crying out in pain and writhing on the floor, utterly incapacitated in seconds as the formerly captive members of Mutant X hurried through the room and rejoined their comrades.

"You weren't really pinned down in that doorway, were you?" Shalimar asked incredulously as they hurried down the corridor and back into the stairwell.

"'Course not," Chris answered with a laugh. "We were just approaching that guard station, might have been in trouble if we'd walked in unsuspecting, but Kevin floated two pens up in front of us as an X, so I knew if he was floating around astrally and had seen us, you'd all be here soon. We were just entertaining ourselves picking on those guys, really."

"Really," Eve asked with a droll smirk. Chris grinned and nodded enthusiastically at her. "Well, here, your stuff's all in here, along with Jamie's," she said, handing the backpack over to Owen. "We just have to get up to the second floor, with the computers, then I can pull my last trick and we ought to have a clear ride out of here."

"Dammit, quit saying things like that with Josh here," Owen said with a laugh, smirking at Josh. "His walking jinx self, you'll open the door to the computers' floor and find all the New Mutant sellout agents we were fighting earlier!"

Shalimar glanced at Josh with a confused frown.

"We're pretty sure my feline side is a black cat," he told her with a smirk, shrugging. "Between that and my Irish blood and just my naturally altruistic good karma, my luck is seriously weird."

"You're seriously weird," Kevin teased, leaning to knock his shoulder into Josh's as they climbed the stairs together. "'Naturally altruistic good karma'? Man, you're a brat, and you know it."

"Sure I am," Josh agreed without complaint. "But I'm a very helpful brat, saving people while I drive them crazy, etcetera."

"And you wonder why your luck's wacky," Jamie said with a chuckle.

They reached the second floor, and Jesse phased the stairwell door, allowing Eve to simply stick her handheld device through the door onto the computer system's floor and pull the trigger.

The electromagnetic pulse released by Eve's device utterly fried the GSA compound's computers and most of the electronics they had in the building, leaving Mutant X free to make a clean getaway while the GSA dealt with the aftermath.

Mutant X calmly finished climbing the stairs and opened the door to the roof, casually boarding the cloaked Double Helix and flying it back to Haven for a well-deserved rest.