MX Sn4: Underground, Undercover, UnderWatch

The next day, Eve was still worried.

She had planted a few bugs in the GSA's systems while she was there, specifically in their monitoring systems, to keep an eye on their progress. Her bugs were sophisticated pieces of work, microscopic nanites that worked their way into the circuitry of the GSA's computers and systems she had assigned them to. They formed communication networks within the GSA's own systems and broadcast their discoveries on the same adaptive wavelength Eve's cellphones utilized, meaning there was virtually no chance of their being discovered. Unfortunately, they would burn out after a few days, but it gave Eve the chance to keep a direct eye on what the GSA did as it rebuilt its operating database, as well as their day-to-day operations while the bugs were live. She had programmed them to wait for the GSA's systems to return to live functioning, so if the bugs were already reporting, then the GSA had restored their systems with disturbing speed.

Eve knew the EMP she had detonated had fried most of the GSA's systems and that it would take some time for them to be restored or replaced, but it didn't appear to be taking nearly as long as she had hoped it would. With governmental resources behind them, the GSA was already geting back up to speed, and apparently they had taken to backing up their data off-site automatically, so they had only lost a small portion of their files and information. Fortunately, the part Eve had managed to destroy included everything the GSA had gained about the members of Mutant X they had captured, since they hadn't been there long enough for the next automatic backup to secure, but the fact that their systems were already back up so that Eve's nanites could inform her of such was definitely worrying. There was also the fact that whatever information had led to the GSA staking out Eloy's Diner most likely was still present, so Eve was worried that the operations center of the Californian branch of the Mutant Underground was still threatened, as well.

With a sigh of frustration, Eve began hacking her way past the GSA's firewalls, attempting to get into their electronic records and see if she could discover what information they specifically had regarding Eloy's Diner and the first safehouse nearby. If she had realized her EMP wasn't actually going to destroy their records, she would have programmed her nanite bugs to have infiltrated the GSA's records as well as their monitoring sections. She made a mental note to investigate making a future generation of her nanites reprogrammable by remote.

After a short while, Eve blinked in surprise as she became peripherally aware of a presence next to her. She glanced to her side to see Jesse crouched next to and just behind her desk chair, watching Eve's progress on her monitor. He turned his head just enough to meet her eyes, giving Eve a small "Don't mind me; I'm not being annoying, am I?" smile.

Eve shook her head slightly in both amusement and acknowledgement that Jesse's watching her work over her shoulder wasn't a problem. She turned back to her screen, twitching when she saw someone else on her other side from the corner of her eye. Eve turned to find Shalimar mirroring Jesse's position, except that she was watching Eve and smirking, instead of watching the screen.

"What, are you guys bored?" Eve asked with a smirk, knowing she was about to be fed some pat answer. She didn't know what it was about Ferals and Moleculars forming Mutant X teams, but she knew Shalimar and Jesse on their best tag-team behavior were just as bad as Jamie and Owen at their worst.

"No, we're entertaining ourselves picking on you," Chris said gleefully from immediately behind Eve's chair. Eve made an undignified squawk as she snapped her head back, looking up to meet Chris' eyes as he leaned over the back of her chair and grinned into hers, waving one hand cheekily.

"Fitzpatrick!" she groaned at him, changing her position to bow her head forward in defeat. "I swear, bad enough you team up with Owen and Jamie, now you're gonna help the original Feral and Molecular jokers, too?"

"Hey, hey, they're helping me!" Chris protested, still grinning. "And just be glad Josh isn't here; I can team up with his snark too, you know."

"Well, Thank God he's not then," Eve answered with a smirking eyeroll as she straightened up and turned her chair around to face her audience. "I'm sort of amazed you don't have him roped into this, not that you'd need any rope. He'd love to see if he could climb up the back of the workstation and stare at me from overhead without me noticing." Eve resisted the urge to turn her chair back around and check to make sure as Chris chuckled; the idea was entirely something Josh would do. "He must not be here; he'd love to do that. Where is he, anyway?"

"Out, with Kevin," Chris answered with a half shrug. "Probably exploring each other's tonsils with their tongues in the back of a movie theater somewhere. Anyway, they're out, and that's where we're going, too. With you," Chris emphasized, grabbing Eve by the fingers and tugging as he stepped back, urging her out of her seat.

"What? No..." Eve protested, half-heartedly trying to pull her hand free of Chris'. "..Guys, I can't, really. I appreciate the offer, but I've got way too much to do; we have to find out how threatened Eloy's Diner is, and..."

"Ennnh, Wrong Answer," Chris said, pressing on the fingers of Eve's other hand like a game-show buzzer with his free hand, then taking them and pulling Eve out of her chair. "Besides, we're going to Eloy's, so the old team can meet him and check the place out. Anne's there, too; you three can be sticks-in-the-mud together and come up with strategy or something while I introduce these guys to the regulars."

Chris turned to Shalimar and smiled, giving another one-shouldered half shrug. "Eloy's actually not a stick in the mud, unlike our brilliant leader here, but he pretty much runs the west coast Mutant Underground, so he can button down and be way too serious when he needs to be."

"Which you could never be, which is why you're not running the Underderground," Eve told Chris with a droll tone to match her unimpressed eyes, then she broke the effect with an amused smirk. "Fine, FINE; I'll go, just let me change into something less Scientist and get Jamie to watch my GSA bugs here. They're being disturbing," she explained, giving the screens an irritated pout as she opened her cellphone and thumbed a speed-dial. "Jamie? Yeah, Chris is kidnapping me. Could you? Thanks." She closed the phone and pocketed it, looking up to Jesse and Shalimar and ignoring Chris. "I'll be with you in just a minute, if you want to go get Brennan and Lexa. Chris will be happy to drive," she finished, smirking at Chris' squawk of protest as she left to go change her shirt.

Half an hour later, Jamie was entertaining himself by trying to hack into as much of the GSA's live operational reports as he could, all while taking care not to reveal his electronic presence. He was recording both the live feeds from Eve's nanite bugs as well as all the data he managed to access, hoping to have a breakthrough to present Eve with when she got back. Jamie knew she would throw herself into Chris' outing, and it would be good for her, but the back of her overactive mind would still spend the whole time worrying about the issues she had left behind her. Jamie figured if he could make some progress on the fronts Eve felt she had temporarily abandoned, she could let go of her self-imposed guilt and devote those energies somewhere actually productive, like making use of the information Jamie provided.

Besides all of which, Jamie enjoyed hacking, particularly when he was hacking through the security of the GSA or some other truly deserving party.

Jamie glanced up when the security monitors indicated the elevator's access switch was in use, verifying that it was Owen descending from the Majestic's penthouse to Haven. A moment later Owen entered Haven, wearing only gym shorts, well-worn wrestling shoes, and the tiniest excuse for a tank top, along with a towel draped over his shoulders. He was carrying a six pack of Gatorade in one hand, the chilled plastic bottles sweating condensation, and his iPod in the other.

"Something wrong with the Majestic's weight room?" Jamie asked as Owen strode by the main workstation, headed for the modified miniature gym on the other side of the locker room from Haven's Dojo.

"Yup," Owen grunted back, not bothering to turn towards Jamie as he passed by. "Its weights are too light."

Jamie shrugged to himself with a frown. He was slightly hurt by Owen's not even sparing him a glance, but he knew it wasn't anything personal. Owen had faced his worst nightmare the night before, and everyone had let him sleep in as late as he chose that morning, by unspoken agreement. If Owen was still having a few feelings of aggravation the next day and wanted to work them out through some serious weight lifting, that wasn't a problem. Normal people seeing Owen use the weight machines in the Majestic's gym on their highest settings and getting frustrated because they weren't providing him with enough of an endorphin rush would be more of a problem. Jamie knew he had his own issues with his emotional dependency on his friends, but he knew better than to take everything anyone did personally. He just hoped Owen was back to his normal cheerful self after he finished his workout.

"Well, I'm stuck on monitors, but I'm here if you need me, Bro." Jamie turned to watch Owen make his way to Haven's gym, nodding to himself when he saw Owen acknowledge his comment with a silent salute from his iPod hand.

While Jamie was contemplating Owen's emotional issues, Chris was parking Eve's Range Rover at Eloy's Diner. Nobody really liked driving in Los Angeles, so Eve was more than content to make Chris drive them across the city as payment for interrupting her work. She had spent the drive chatting with the original Mutant X team, reconnecting with Brennan as well as Jesse and Shalimar and getting to know Lexa a little.

Brennan glanced around at the neighborhood as they exited the car, realizing he hadn't really gotten a good look at it the day before, since they had been arriving in the middle of a fight. It wasn't a bad neighborhood, looked like a middle-class commuters' business district to Brennan, sprinkled with sidewalk shops and eateries like Eloy's Diner, but Eve's Range Rover still looked a bit out of place. Brennan frowned at the car and considered the area, then turned to Eve as she took the keys from Chris.

"Is this the best place to leave your car?" Brennan asked her with just a hint of concern in his voice. "I mean, I suppose it's broad daylight and all, but I used to steal cars. . .I wouldn't leave one as nice as yours in this area after dark, you know?"

"Sure," Eve answered with a small smile. "But we're just here for lunch, and honestly, with the number Ferals in and out of this neighborhood at all hours? –The crime rate is actually pretty low." Eve turned and led the way into Eloy's Diner, waving to a departing young woman she recognized as they approached. "Besides, I'd almost feel sorry for anybody who tried to do anything to my car," she finished with a smirk, pressing a button on her key fob and causing the Range Rover to respond with a chirp that didn't really sound much like a standard car alarm.

"Eve! Chris!" Eloy called out as their group entered his diner. Eloy was a shorter man with a broad frame and longish black hair, curling at his collar. Shalimar noted that while his skin wasn't particularly dark and his eyes were actually a blue so dark they could easily be mistaken for black or dark brown, his features were strongly Inuit, or of some other Eskimo people. She wondered what his last name was and if he was maybe originally from Alaska.

Chris and Eve walked right up to the counter, returning Eloy's smile, and Eloy reached across the counter and took both of their hands, squeezing their fingers in a curled grip as he smiled, instead of shaking them. Eve turned and gestured to the rest of the group to step forward as Chris released Eloy's hand and stepped back.

"Eloy Itangniak, I'm pleased to introduce you to Shalimar Fox, Jesse Kilmartin, Brennan Mulwray, and Lexa Pierce," Eve announced, pointing to each member of the original Mutant X team in turn with her upraised palm. Shalimar smiled, Jesse nodded, Brennan did both, and Lexa merely quirked an eyebrow at Eloy's answering smile.

"Pleased to meet you all," Eloy answered with a nod of his own. "I swear, Eve spends half the time with her head underground in her work; it's nice to finally meet her old friends," he said, meeting Shalimar and Jesse's eyes knowingly, unwilling to speak openly about the Mutant Underground during the diner's busy lunch hour when there was sure to be general public present. "Go ahead and take the booth in the back; Anne set it aside for you when Chris called. I think she's in the bathroom, but she'll join you in a minute, and I will as soon as we get the lunch rush under control," he finished with a smile, gesturing with a hand for them to take the booth in the back corner. Chris smiled and led the way; he knew Eve had provided Eloy's Diner with some interesting foam padding for the upholstery of the booths and their partitions, meaning the booth in the back corner was virtually impossible to eavesdrop on, even with Feral hearing. Given the fact that there could be a number of Ferals in the diner at any time, it was nice to know there was a place that Mutant Underground business could be quietly discussed without having to conspicuously move to the back rooms when Chris wasn't there to mute the sounds of the conversation.

They got back to the rear booth, which had seating around three sides of its table since it was in the corner. This meant that it could seat eight people, and they saw that Anne had left six menus on the table, leaving room at each end of the communal bench seat for herself and Eloy. Just as the group was settling themselves with Chris and Eve in the middle so that their newly arrived companions would be sitting with their hosts, a slightly nervous young woman stepped up to the table.

"Hi, guys," she said in a soft voice, giving a tiny wave of one hand to Eve and Chris and looking like she was on the verge of blushing as she looked from one member of the original Mutant X team to the next. Anne was a tall young woman, only a few inches short of six feet, with dark gold hair in a feathered cut and liquid eyes that were hard to determine the color of. They seemed to be hazel, but at the same time they were too blue to call a color that was a mixture of green and brown. She hesitantly lowered herself into the seat on what had apparently become the girls' side of the table, next to Lexa, then leaned forward to be able to meet Shalimar's eyes as well as the rest of the table's. "I'm Anne, Anne Smith. I've heard. . .just so much about you guys, especially from Owen and Jamie, it's all just kind of. . .wow, I'm nervous," she finished in a rush, blushing as she flicked her gaze from Jesse back to Eve and Chris for reassurance.

"Hey, Anne, it's okay," Eve answered her with a chuckle. "These are the good guys, the original good guys; they don't bite. Not even Shalimar," she finished with a small smile.

"Nope," Shalimar concurred with a grin. "I've been known to scratch, but that's only bad guys. I think I've only bitten my way through a fight once or twice, and they were definitely bad guys!" she laughed. "No need to be nervous."

"Oh, it's okay, I kind of like it," Anne said, smiling at the confused looks her statement earned her from the rest of the table. "I'm an empath, a pretty strong one, I guess," she explained, still blushing but also still smiling. "It can be kind of overwhelming, always feeling what everyone else around me is feeling, never sure if what I'm feeling is my own emotions or someone else's...it's kind of nice knowing that my nerves are my own. —That sounds totally insane, doesn't it?" she finished helplessly, her face frowning as she hoped she hadn't just made herself look like the ultimate freak in front of the heroes of the Mutant Underground.

"No, no it doesn't," Shalimar quickly insisted, reaching across the table to place her hand over the back of Anne's. "We used to have a Psionic on our team, Emma, who was a telempath. She dealt with the same thing, and I personally have no idea how she managed it all the time; it's not crazy at all," she said, giving Anne's knuckles a squeeze before withdrawing her hand. "Heck, Emma lived in Sanctuary with us, only four other people's emotions to routinely deal with. You're living in a city of millions; I'd say you're a trooper," Shalimar finished with an emphatic tip of her head.

Anne looked up from Shalimar past Chris to see Brennan and Jesse nodding as well, contemplating her seriously. Anne could feel their emotional memories of Emma brought up by Shalimar's words, as well as Shalimar's own and Eve's admittedly more limited ones. Anne teared up slightly, reassured by Shalimar's words and the emotional sincerity she could feel behind them and the matching sincerity from her teammates. The reassurance made Anne's nervousness recede, but that left her open to the more melancholy emotions stirred by the bringing up of the original team's memories of Emma.

Lexa leaned sideways towards Anne, pursing her lips to speak out of the side of her mouth in a stage whisper:

"I'VE BEEN WORKING WITH THESE GUYS FOR A YEAR, AND I THINK YOU'RE ALL CRAZY, IF IT HELPS."
Anne burst out in giggles, trying to sniffle at the same time while the rest of the table laughed as well. Lexa sat back in her seat with a smirk, proud of herself for diffusing emotional tension and smirking more at the impressed look Jesse gave her from across the table for having accomplished it. Anne wiped at her eyes with a napkin, trying to blot tears without ruining makeup as Brennan sat forward to address her, trying to return some sort of normal to the conversation.

"So, you're an empath, but not a telempath? These guys have made it sound like you're Eloy's number two, helping run the Mutant Underground. . .how does strong empathy help with that?" he asked.

"A lot, actually," Anne answered, sounding just maybe the slightest bit put out by Brennan's question but also relieved to have the conversation moving on to a topic she was comfortable with. "Suspicious characters generally feel suspicious, or at least malevolent while they're planning to do something suspicious, so I can usually spot them if they come in here or have an eye on a New Mutant I'm with. And then there's the work of prepping New Mutants to actually enter the Underground. A lot of times they're nervous about their future, concerned about leaving their old lives behind, all sorts of things. They might not be comfortable bringing the subjects up for whatever reasons, but if I know they're having a major concern they're not expressing, I can suggest it, instead."

Anne smirked as Brennan considered her answer with a contemplative nod, then let a pink glow pulse over her forehead as she made Brennan perceive her as looking and sounding like Shalimar, still with a pink-glowing forehead.

"Besides, I can also do mental illusions, and my empathy is strong enough to use as psi-bolts," she finished with a proud grin, allowing her illusion of Shalimar to drop.

"Whoa!" Brennan said in surprise, reeling back in his seat and blinking. "Okay, then. I was impressed with your empathy answer, but if you can trick and blast people, too. . .you sure you don't want to be on an MX team, not running the Underground?"

"Oh, No," Anne answered with an emphatic shake of her head and a frown. "Sorry, I was just bragging, really. I wouldn't ever want to blast people, or mess with their heads with illusions. It. . .it would be too easy to make a habit of it, you know? I'm glad I'm not a telempath; I don't think I could deal with that temptation, to change people's feelings to make them want to do the right thing, take away their free will, you know? I. . .I kind of did something like that with my illusions when I was younger and it. . .well, it ended badly. That's why I want to be part of the Mutant Underground, help other New Mutants deal with their lives and their abilities, not let those things turn them into something they don't want to be."

"That's– –that's really noble, Anne," Jesse said, nodding contemplatively and then meeting her eyes with a smile. "Good for you."

Anne blushed again, glancing at the rest of the table guiltily. "Okay, enough about me. I think I've had my fill of my own emotions today; I'm ready to go back to the status quo of everybody else's," she said with a self-conscious laugh. "And Eloy's gonna be here any minute to take your orders; you should at least open your menus. I recommend the tamales or chili if you like spicy food, and Ketch fries a mean burger if you don't. The pulled pork and chef's salads are great, too."

Eloy approached the table with a pen and pad in hand just as Anne finished speaking, watching their guests open their menus.

"Hmmm, you guys haven't even read the menus yet. Anne's just a chatterbox, isn't she?"

"I am not!" she protested, frowning with her lips pursed in amusement at the laughing look Eloy gave her, pleased to have tricked such a response out of her.

"You guys have an idea what you want, or do you need a few minutes?" Eloy asked, pen poised over his pad and eyebrows raised as he looked from one face to the next.

"I think we'll take the usual, a stretched Texan cop for me and a cook's bunny special for Eve, am I right?" Chris said with a self-indulgent quirk of his upper lip and one eyebrow, glancing at Eve for confirmation.

Eve frowned back at Chris in utter confusion, and Eloy laughed.

"Chris, diner lingo does not consist of randomly making up codewords for things on the menu," Eloy said with a grin. "I'm guessing you meant a barbequed pulled pork sandwich for you and you're guessing a chef's salad for Eve?"

"What do you mean, it doesn't?" Chris asked with a disappointed frown. "I had about twenty more jokes lined up in diner lingo, just waiting for someone else to order!"

Eloy snickered.

"You could come work the lunch rush for a few days, I'm sure you'd pick it up quickly," Eloy said with a grin. "You did want the barbequed pulled pork, right?"

"Yeah, yeah," Chris frowned more, visibly making an effort not to laugh and ruin his put out façade as he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. "See, you understood my diner lingo just fine!" he insisted, letting his smirk emerge as he looked up to meet Eloy's laughing eyes.

"On second thought, we can handle the lunch rush as is," Eloy smirked as he jotted down Chris and Eve's orders. "I wouldn't want you corrupting my employees' proper diner lingo with god-only-knows what you would come up with. A Coke and a Diet for drinks, right?"

"Damn, another plan seen through," Chris muttered with a grin, snapping his fingers in melodramatic disappointment as Eve nodded in confirmation of their drink preferences.

"Anybody else ready?" Eloy asked as he looked to the rest of the table, his pen still held at the ready.

"I'll have the T-bone with hashbrowns, medium-well, with a chocolate shake," Shalimar answered as she flipped her menu shut.

"Anne recommended the tamales; I'll take those with an iced tea with lemon," Lexa said, also closing her menu and handing it to Shalimar, who had taken Eve's and Chris'. Jesse and Brennan were quietly discussing their selections, Jesse looking up when he heard Lexa finish.

"I'll have a bacon cheeseburger with a lemonade, and he'll take a double cheeseburger with a Coke," Jesse said, tipping his head toward Brennan to indicate the taller man's order as Jesse collected their menus and handed them across the table to Shalimar.

"No problem," Eloy replied as he finished jotting down their orders and stepped up to take the six menus from Shalimar, nodding to her in thanks. "One check, or separate?" he asked Eve, figuring she would probably claim it, as was her habit.

"Oh, one check, please," she answered dismissively, flapping a negligent hand at the concept of separate orders. "And feel free to have Ketch take his time, so you can join us when they're ready," she finished, then glanced at the rest of the table. "Unless anybody's starving?"

"Umm, could we just get a basket of fries for an appetizer to pass the time 'til you join us?" Brennan asked hopefully.

"Sure," Eloy replied with a smile. "On the house; I'll be right back with that and your drinks. Stacy's here today too, so it won't take too long to get the lunch rush down to where she and Ketch can cover it. I'll be with you guys in fifteen minutes, tops," he finished, heading back up to the counter.

Twelve minutes later, Eloy came back to their booth with a tray of food and a second round of drinks, passing them out and giving Anne a soda as well. Eloy handed the tray off to Stacy as she came back with the other corner booth's check, then slid into the seat on the end next to Jesse.

"So, we had an interesting time last night..." Eve began quietly as Eloy looked to her and the rest of the team started eating, Lexa raising her eyebrows in surprise at how good the tamales were. "..We good to talk?"

Eloy turned his head to the side and stared into the middle distance for a moment; Anne's eyes grew distant as she mentally "listened" to the emotions of the people in the diner and immediate area. After just a moment, Anne blinked and Eloy turned back to Eve, meeting her eyes.

"There's who knows how many cellphones on in the area, but the only one in here that's being used is the guy at the end of the counter. I've been listening to him run some sort of business meeting over the phone for the past forty-five minutes, and I'm going to short out his phone if he's still there when we're done," Eloy said, rolling his eyes as he mentioned his annoying customer. "There's a couple digital cameras outside, but they were moving away from the diner and not actively being used."

"Josh said you're a Psionic..." Shalimar said to Eloy in surprise. "..You're sensing technology. . .you're a Telecyber?" she asked. Eloy nodded in response, impressed that Shalimar recognized his ability.

"Business Dweeb is irritated, the guy in the couple three booths down is elated with his relationship and the girl is kind of frighteningly depressed, and there's a guy at the counter who's seriously pissed about the newspaper he's reading, but that's Grant, and he's always like that," Anne reported, giving a half frown as Eloy chuckled at her mention of Grant. "He's a Reptilian Feral; I don't think he does happy. But there's nobody overtly suspicious or paying specific attention to us in the area, other than Stacy. She finds one or maybe both of you to be hot, by the way," she finished, giving Brennan and Jesse a wicked grin. Brennan smirked, pleased as always with being thought of as attractive; Jesse shifted uncomfortably and tried not to blush.

"Okay, well, long story short, the big fight we had down the street last night was because the GSA was watching this place," Eve told them, frowning in sympathy as Anne sucked in a hasty breath in alarm. "I blame myself; we've been operating for a few years now, and we never considered the possibility that the GSA might someday figure out so many New Mutants come here." Eve paused, closing her eyes and shaking her head in self-admonition. "I was angry at myself about it last night. Josh pointed out that the New Mutants who come here are regulars, they choose to take the risk of predictable behavior so that they can be part of a mutually understanding and supportive community instead of starting new lives under false pretenses as part of the Mutant Underground. And Josh was right, that's fine and it's their choice, but it doesn't change the fact that the GSA apparently has their eyes on this place. We need to get word out to the New Mutant community here in LA that the GSA is keeping watch for discernible patterns in New Mutant activity and that coming here may now be risky." Eve frowned in frustration, glancing apologetically at Eloy. "I don't want to hurt your business, Eloy, but–"

"Eve, please," Eloy reassured her, closing his eyes and bowing his head just slightly as he raised one hand in a gesture to ward off Eve's concern, telling her not to worry about it. "Our people's safety is a lot more important than my bottom line. I get all sorts of local business people in here for lunch and dinner; the regulars missing a few meetings for a while isn't going to break my bank."

"Well, that's good," Eve replied with a nod. "We're investigating to find out just how much the GSA knows and see if we can find out what their specific plans are, but we don't know how long it may take to find that out, or how long it may take to deal with once we do know. Now, I'm not saying that people should stop coming here, Hell, that might look even more conspicuous, but we should all definitely be keeping our eyes open and use common sense. Stay in groups, mingle with the public at large, avoid enclosed areas, use public transportation, etcetera. We'll have to set up some awareness seminars, get the word out on safety practices, that kind of thing."

"Oh, I can do that," Anne said eagerly. "We've got phone and email trees set up for emergencies; I guess this sort of qualifies. It's an emergency notice about the situation, right? And between the regulars here at the diner in the off hours and the people who attend my meditation and Tai Chi groups during the week, we can meet face to face with most everybody to go over things in detail as needed," she finished, Eloy nodding in agreement.

Roughly another quarter hour later the discussion had moved through the topics the proposed seminars could cover, the New Mutant members of Mutant X making contributions and finishing their meals as Eve finally began eating hers. Shalimar offered to speak to any Ferals that Eloy and Anne could assemble, ready to explain to them in concepts they would relate to that their proactive and protective natures would be more likely to cause harm than good under the circumstances. Brennan and Chris offered to run a streetwise safety seminar to point out how to not just blend with the general populace but hide in it, and Jesse suggested offering a panel on what would be involved in temporarily altering behavior patterns to keep routines from being predictable. Lexa offered to help instruct how to do that without making the changes conspicuous, as well as proposing a more direct seminar to offer some grisly details about what could happen if the people of the New Mutant community didn't take the increased threat level seriously. Eloy frowned at that approach, but Lexa suggested that Owen might want to point out the unpleasant results of avoiding such an approach, and Anne supported the idea as an expert in people's emotional responses, knowing that sometimes the grim truth was necessary.

Anne broke off in mid-sentence as she was explaining how people could refuse to see the truth and might need graphic explanations, her eyes growing distant as she mentally perceived something.

"Eloy, who just came in?" she asked urgently, in a quiet voice. Eloy leaned to his side slightly to be able to look back into the diner proper, seeing a dark-haired man wearing a neatly trimmed goatee and a grey business suit approaching the counter.

"Looks like a standard IBM, why?" Eloy asked Anne quietly. "Scan him?"

Anne nodded to Eloy, confirming that she wanted him to scan the newcomer for dangerous electronics as she turned to address the confusion she felt coming from Lexa.

"IBM is Italian Business Man; Eloy's a Whoopi Goldberg fan," she explained, then turned to Eve. "He's definitely suspicious; he's suspicious of this building, and he's feeling disgust and hatred for the people in it."

"What's an Italian business man have to do with Whoopi Goldberg?" Brennan asked quietly, knowing the answer wasn't important, but the nervous tension that sprang up at Anne's warning made him need to use humor to cut it.

"It's a line from one of her movies, 'Burglar'. Josh is a fan too; I actually recognized that quote, geeze," Chris answered, feeling a similar need for humor, even though he knew focus was what was needed at the moment.

"He's got a cell as well as a pager, a PDA, and something I'm not sure of, feels like another communications device," Eloy reported, frowning at the possibilities of someone with the mindset Anne described carrying three different pieces of communication technology.

"And no briefcase, if it's the guy in the grey suit who just walked in you're talking about," Jesse said quietly. "My eye was caught by the movement of the door, and it looked weird for a businessman to not have anything at all in his hands."

"Go run interference, and shut down his devices," Eve told Eloy. "Stacy's got a good head on her shoulders, but she doesn't know he's suspicious. If he's an innocent businessman, his company will replace his electronics. If he's GSA, we should just be glad those are all he has," she finished.

Eloy nodded, sliding out of his seat. He concentrated as he stood, a brief flicker of pale blue inside his eyes causing the radio to spin through a number of stations, spouting clipped gibberish over the diner's speakers. Smooth as silk, Stacy turned away from the register and the grey-suited man, moving farther behind the counter and scowling as she attempted to adjust the "malfunctioning" radio. Seated at the counter, Grant simply scowled harder, no longer reading his paper, only pointing his eyes at it and waiting to see if his Feral strength was about to be needed. The other New Mutant regulars in Eloy's Diner also recognized his telecyber warning signal, keeping alert for trouble while continuing to act normally.

"Hi, I'm Eloy, welcome to my diner!" Eloy cheerfully announced to the man as he approached. "Don't mind the radio, it's old and just does that sometimes, just needs the knob turned again," he explained as he turned away from the man to reach behind the register for a menu, hiding his eyes as they flickered with pale blue light and scrambled the various electronics the man was carrying. "Did you want a counter or booth seat?" Eloy asked as he turned back to the man, offering the menu.

When Eloy returned to the group's table a few minutes later, Anne's face was pinched with worry. It was her own worry on top of what she could feel coming from the regulars who had recognized Eloy's warning, but she could feel Eloy's specific worry that was lurking behind his eyes as he sat back down. It was a match for hers, instead of hers being a mirror of it.

"I don't know how, but he noticed when you turned off his things," Anne said in a low voice as Eloy slid into his seat. "It was a flash of alarm, then. . .malicious elation that his suspicion was confirmed."

"Do you think he's a New Mutant? Felt Eloy turn his electronics off, somehow?" Lexa asked quietly.

"No, I think he's GSA," Eloy replied in an equally subdued voice. "That close, I could feel the magnetic strips of the credit cards and whatnot in his wallet when I used my ability. One of them is a parking pass with a hefty amount of circuitry in it, and another is an ID card with so much circuitry in it that he just has to be government. By itself that might not be proof, but if he recognized my using a New Mutant ability..."

"Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it's probably a GSAgent and we should duck," Chris muttered.

"Well, we wanted to find out what the GSA knows about the Underground here, and then this guy shows up. Sounds like serendipity to me," Lexa said. "I say we grab him and make him talk."

"You don't mean like with torture, right?" Jesse asked with a worried frown.

"Of course I don't," Lexa frowned back, slightly hurt. "We're better than them. But, you know, reverse psychology. They're willing to torture my brother and Owen, they'll be willing to believe we'll torture them. I am willing to convince him of that."

"Okay," Brennan said with a nod, considering options. "We just need to get him alone, and make sure. No offense, Anne, but you're not a telepath; you don't know why he's feeling the things he is, even if they are suspicious. We'll face him down, confront him with what we know, make him think we know more, see what he does. He gives us any reason, we can take him down, and if we do and find out he is GSA, well, then we've got him, and can trick him into telling us what he knows."

"Okay, so how do we trick him into going somewhere he can be caught? The bathrooms in here are single occupancy, and trust me, as cool as Hollywood might make it look, we do not want to try to follow his car through LA, high speed chase or otherwise," Eve said.

"Oh, that's easy enough," Shalimar answered. "If he's GSA, he's here on suspicion of New Mutant activity. He's maybe convinced of Eloy, but if we give him a New Mutant or two in sorry shape that he'll think he can catch, he'll follow us. At least to see if we run to the safehouse or whatever, and the rest of us can follow and catch him."

"And how do we convince him of that?" Chris asked, impressed with the plan but unsure of its actual logistics.

Shalimar shrugged nonchalantly in response.

"Shouldn't be too hard. One of us can fake being sick, seafood allergy or something, bad enough off to visibly lose a little control of a power in front of the guy, then stagger out the door, reassuring Eloy 'the house' isn't far and they'll be fine, not to worry. This isn't a residential district; the only 'house' that couldn't be far is the safehouse. If our 'sick' member looks weak enough, any GSA goon would totally follow," she declared.

"Okay, but who's gonna be our bait?" Brennan asked. "This place is still full of lunch hour normals; we don't want to give away the fact that New Mutants hang out here to anybody who doesn't already know or at least suspect. Elemental abilities are too flashy, otherwise I'd do it, and a sick Feral is a dangerous animal, even if they're weak. I guess Anne could make him see an illusion that convinced him to follow without revealing to anyone else, but..."

"Don't be silly, Anne's not a combatant, and I am," Jesse said with a frown, then flashed a quick smile of reassurance at Anne. "You sat him at the counter, right?" he asked Eloy.

"Yeah. Oddly enough, he looked like he might want to leave in a hurry," Eloy answered with a wry frown.

"Well, then you get up there at the register, and I'll be between you and him as I tell you I'm leaving. I'll just mass my stomach as I turn away, with my hand over it; he'll be the only one to see."

"Okay then, Eloy, get up to the register, so Jesse can pull this off before the guy gets his food. He doesn't have to pay if he never got what he ordered; he'll be able to follow Jesse right out. Put whatever he ordered on my tab. Jesse, just lead him in the same direction as the fight yesterday; the safehouse is a just a few blocks over," Eve said, shooing Eloy out of the booth with one hand and urging Jesse to slide over, ready to get up and leave once Eloy was in position.

Just a moment after Eloy stepped behind the register, poking a few buttons to print a report of the day's take so far, Jesse came up to the counter at a pained trot. He paused momentarily to wince and put a hand to his stomach just in front of the man in the grey suit before continuing on up to the register. While he paused, Jesse held his breath, causing his stomach to mass for the briefest of moments, the wavering reddish orange lines of his power effect radiating out just past his fingers. Jesse gasped as he released the massed state of his stomach, hiding his grin of success as a grimace of pain when the man turned and saw the vanishing orange lines of Jesse's massing.

"Hey, you okay, Man?" Eloy asked as Jesse reached the register, meeting his supposedly pained blue eyes.

"Uh, no, actually, don't think I am," Jesse grunted back. "Eloy, was there shrimp or something in the chili?"

"Oh, crap, you know, there might have been," Eloy frowned back worriedly, used to prevaricating for the betterment of the Mutant Underground. "I know there was some shrimp Ketch was going to have to throw out at the end of the week; he might have chopped it up and thrown it in the chili this morning to use it up... You have a seafood allergy, you need a doctor?" he asked with concern.

"No, no," Jesse answered in a slightly strained voice, raising one hand in protest and then clamping it to his stomach. "I'm just gonna go, the house isn't far, I'll be fine," he finished, turning for the door.

"Okay, if you're sure," Eloy replied with a worried frown. "You take care; you don't look so good. And forget the bill; it's on the house, and so's your next meal. Whatever you want; we'll make sure there's no shrimp in it."

"Thanks, Eloy," Jesse answered as he turned away, staggering out the door.

A moment later, the goateed man in the grey suit also exited Eloy's Diner, heading the same way Jesse had at a brisk pace.

A short moment after that, Shalimar bolted after the both of them, Lexa, Chris and Brennan hurrying after her under the cover of Lexa's light-cloak.

Jesse slowly moved down the street, smiling slightly when Shalimar spoke over their commrings:

'He's following you, Jess.'

Jesse made his awkward way down the street, veering to the edge of the sidewalk and reaching out to "steady" himself against a building's wall with one hand. He paused for a moment, hanging his head and using the motion to take a covert glance behind himself. When he saw that the man was indeed not far behind him, Jesse slipped around the corner with a deliberate stumble, into the alley.

He broke into a jog, hustling to put just a bit of distance between himself and his pursuer but trying not to make it so much as to make the man suspicious. Jesse's intent was to make sure the man followed him far enough into the alley that Shalimar and the others wouldn't have to worry about witnesses as they captured the man. Jesse leaned up against a windowless wall and put both hands to his stomach, panting in supposed pain and waiting for the grey-suited GSAgent to close in on him. He would then simply phase through the wall and sneak back out into the alley elsewhere, ready to back his teammates up as needed. Jesse just hoped there wasn't anyone in the back room of whatever building it was he was leaning against.

'I'm on the rooftop above you, Jess; he's entering the alley now,' Shalimar warned Jesse over his commring.

Jesse clutched his stomach tighter and bowed his head a touch, shaking it back and forth slowly in supposed pain and keeping his eyes slit open to watch the man's approach. The man moved cautiously down the alleyway towards Jesse, taking care to make as little noise as possible. He halted a few dozen feet away, obviously watching to see what Jesse would do next. Jesse figured the GSAgent was probably hoping to be led to the safehouse, confirming Jesse was indeed part of the Underground and maybe even revealing the safehouse's access code if he were careless in his "distress". Jesse turned his back on the man and shuffled farther down the alley, still leaning against the wall as he went and keeping his body language pained even as his face smirked.

'Still following you, maintaining his distance,' Shalimar told Jesse. Jesse didn't bother to respond, visibly or by speaking; he simply shuffled to the end of the building's wall, knowing the GSAgent was behind him, then exhaled to phase and stepped through it.

Watching from the rooftop above, Shalimar grinned in fierce delight as she saw the GSAgent jolt to a stop in surprise at Jesse's abrupt disappearance. She glanced back towards the street, noting that Lexa, Chris, and Brennan had just entered the alley, still invisible, but she could see their silhouettes with her Feral vision. Shalimar's gaze snapped back to the grey-suited man as he quickly turned around to also look in the Elementals' direction, then he leaned back and looked up at Shalimar.

Shalimar frowned in concern, wondering how the man had known any of them were there, then jumped over the rooftop's edge to drop into the alleyway below, putting the man between her and her teammates. She landed in a crouch, snapping her head back up after the impact of landing to glare at the GSAgent, her golden Feral eyes with their vertical cats' pupils shining with her anger.

"We know you're watching us," she growled at him, just waiting for the man to give her an excuse to take him down.

The dark-haired man met her glare, frowning with anger of his own as he realized he'd been led into a trap. Then his eyes flared, the angry brown of his irises flashing an argent grey, shimmering silver as a wave of mental energy poured through his eye contact with Shalimar, flooding her mind.

Shalimar's body froze, her mind screaming protest, trying to tell her vocal cords to snarl her fury, trying to tell her limbs to attack the man, but none of her muscles responded. She couldn't even move her eyes, frozen like a statue as the man turned around again to face the alley's mouth, frowning as he looked for Shalimar's companions.

Jesse stepped out of the wall just slightly farther down the alley, knowing Shalimar would have wasted no time in confronting the man. When he saw the man peering down the alley towards the street with his back to Shalimar and her crouching without making a sound or the slightest movement, he knew something was wrong.

"Shal?" Jesse called, dashing forward to her side but keeping his eye on the GSAgent. The man spun around at the sound of Jesse's voice, just as Jesse reached Shalimar and put a hand on her crouching shoulder. Once the man had turned his back, Brennan stepped away from Lexa, rolling his hands over one another and generating a tesla coil as he reappeared in a flare of light.

Jesse kept his eyes on the man, watching to see what he would do and grinning slightly when he saw Brennan appear from Lexa's light-cloak. Shalimar's shoulder under his hand was tensed, but only slightly, like she had just landed from her jump and was ready to move, not like she was straining against anything or was hurt somehow. Jesse dared to look away from the man, figuring Brennan would have him if he tried anything and knowing Lexa was there too; he stepped forward to turn and look at Shalimar's face, wondering why she was unresponsive.

Shalimar apparently chose that moment to respond, turning where she was crouched on the ground to punch forward with the arm Jesse wasn't touching, smashing her fist into his stomach. Jesse gave a breathless gasp of pain and shock, his blue eyes wide with surprise. He certainly hadn't been expecting Shalimar to attack him, and she had moved too fast for him to have massed or phased in time anyway. Jesse dropped onto his ass on the alley's blacktop, hands clenched over his stomach in real pain this time as he tried to regain his breath. Shalimar rose smoothly from her crouch in a quick, fluid motion, snapping one leg out to kick Jesse in the side of the head and render him unconscious.

"JESSE!" Brennan cried out as he saw Shalimar attack his partner, the little brother she never had. "What–?" Brennan questioned, but then gave it up as irrelevant, sneering in anger as Shalimar knocked Jesse out. "Guys, get him!" Brennan called out to Lexa and Chris, urging them to take care of the GSAgent as he unleashed his tesla coil on Shalimar before she could do any more damage.

The man ducked aside as Brennan's electricity surged past him, Shalimar moving an instant later, but it was a second too late. Brennan's bolt blasted into her as she crouched, zapping Shalimar unconscious before she could leap away.

Lexa dropped her cloak with a radiating flare of light, frowning in anger as she slapped her fingers together at the man's head, snapping off a strobe to explode in his face. The GSAgent was experienced, however, recognizing that Lexa was a light manipulating New Mutant when she revealed her powers by dropping her cloak. He threw one arm up in front of his face, hiding his eyes behind the crook of his elbow and protecting them from the brilliant flash of light.

Chris stepped forward, ahead of Lexa and Brennan, holding one hand out in a warning to Brennan, urging him to stay back and not go rushing to Jesse's side. Chris figured Jesse and Shalimar were down; their conditions wouldn't change in the few moments it would take them to take care of this guy, and he didn't want to accidentally add Brennan to the list of injured. He held his hand out in a silent warning because he had already inhaled deeply in preparation to use his power, not wanting to waste his breath on a verbal caution when a hand gesture would do.

Scowling in anger, Chris opened his mouth and bellowed at the GSAgent. The sonic force of Chris' shout slammed into the man, causing him to flinch in pain and clamp his hands to his ears. The soundwaves of Chris' cry compressed the air in their path, causing it to visibly ripple like a desert mirage and buffet the man's grey suit as Chris shouted at him.

The GSAgent fell to one knee, gritting his teeth, his eyes streaming tears of pain as Chris' power poured over him. The goateed man sneered in grim determination as he raised his head, glaring at Chris through the visible wavering of his Elemental shout. Chris scowled more as he met the man's gaze, pouring on a bit more of his power.

As their eyes met, the GSAgent's flashed silvery grey once more, seizing command of Chris' muscle control just as he had Shalimar's.

Chris spun in place as he increased his volume and power, slamming his concussive shout into Brennan and Lexa, who were caught just as off guard as Jesse had been. Chris' volume continued to increase as he scythed his head back and forth from pointing at Brennan to pointing at Lexa, knocking them both off their feet as the GSAgent regained his and sprinted away down the alley, disappearing around another corner.

Brennan and Lexa both had their hands clamped over their ears and their teeth gritting solidly to try to close their sinus passages against the ringing in their skulls as Chris' breath and shout finally wore out. Chris simply stood there as Brennan hesitantly removed his hands from his ears, not moving in the slightest except for breathing.

"Chris?" Brennan asked as he got his feet under himself and stood up, moving closer to peer at Chris with a frown of concern. Chris continued to stand motionless, his face still set in a tense frown, his mouth still open.

"Chris?" Lexa repeated as she leaned in to look at Chris' face, her hands over her jawline and her fingertips rubbing at her ringing ears. "Anybody home?" she asked, snapping her fingers in his face, only inches from his eyes and nose.

"Apparently not," Brennan answered with a grimace. "Crap."

Lexa caused her upraised hand to glow brightly, watching Chris' eyes intently.

"His pupils constricted normally," she said as she dropped her power and hand, straightening up. "So his involuntary responses are normal. He's still breathing and his heart's beating, obviously."

"Did you see Shal?" Brennan asked as he frowned at Chris, wondering if they could help their new friend. "When I shot at her, she ducked, but late. Normally, it'd be hard for me to hit Shal at that range; she'd have time to leap aside. But she didn't, not until that guy was already ducking. I think he mind controlled them, made them attack Jess and us; that's why she was slow."

"He must be a Psionic," Lexa nodded as she gently tried to close Chris' mouth, blinking in surprise when it worked. "When we came into the alley, he turned to look at us, then looked up at Shal, and there's no way he could have known any of us were there without some kind of special senses. Anne said he knew when Eloy used his power; I'm wondering if maybe he can mentally detect other New Mutants," she finished as she used a thumb to rub the frown out of Chris' eyebrows, knowing he'd have a horrible headache if he held that position for too long. She blinked in surprise at Chris' immobile face as a thought occurred to her. "Oh, crap; do you suppose he's conscious, just mentally paralyzed without that ass telling his body what to do?"

Brennan winced, hoping Lexa was wrong but worried she was right. He put a hand to Chris' shoulder and gave it a consoling squeeze, just in case he could feel it.

"Hang in there man, we'll figure something out. Lex, go back and get Eve and the car; we can't carry all three of them," Brennan said as he moved down the alley to check on Shalimar and Jesse.

"Oh, yeah– –good idea," Lexa said, frowning at Chris' waist. He wasn't wearing a belt for his phone to be clipped to, like Jamie and Owen did. There was a bulge in one of his pockets that had to be his cellphone, but if he was conscious, he would feel her reaching in for it. . .Eve's signal-adapting cellphones would work with the original team's commrings, but the rings didn't have any way to dial the phones; the phones had to initiate the contact. They hadn't even been there for twenty-four hours; Eve hadn't had time to try to adjust either system yet.

"I'll be right back," Lexa told Chris' still form, hurrying from the alley and back to Eloy's Diner.

Not quite an hour later, Eve had finished hooking Chris up to the monitoring equipment in Haven's medical lab and was analyzing his readings. She had already examined Jesse and determined he did not have a concussion, so he was napping with an icepack on his head. Shalimar was still unconscious, but Eve hadn't been able to find anything wrong other than the standard after effects of being zapped unconscious by electricity. As a Feral, Shalimar should have recovered from that and woken up at least fifteen minutes earlier, so Eve was hoping that examining Chris would reveal more answers regarding the power that had been used on both him and Shalimar.

Eve winced in sympathy as she discovered that Chris was indeed conscious and aware of his surroundings, according to his brainwave activity. She frowned in self-admonishment as she hurried back to Chris' side, wishing she had thought to swing back past Eloy's Diner as they left the alley; Anne could have told them Chris was conscious just by empathically sensing him. She grabbed a hypospray off the pharmaceuticals console as she passed it, adjusting its settings to be appropriate for Chris as she returned to his medical examination bed.

"Chris, I know you can hear me," Eve told him as she put her free hand over his where they had been folded over his chest. "I. . .I don't know what to say, actually. That I'm sorry you're going through this? Hell, you know I am. You'd have something witty to say, even in a situation like this, wouldn't you? Of course you would; you have before, after all," she said with a sigh, squeezing his hand. "Well, whatever witticism you would come up with here, just pretend I said it instead, okay?"

Eve paused, unsure how to go on, then decided just to plunge ahead. Leaving Chris waiting wouldn't do anyone any good, especially when waiting was the only thing he was capable of at the moment.

"I'm going to sedate you. . .there's no reason for you to just be lying there suffering pointlessly while we try to figure out an answer." Eve smiled, a sad smile but amused by the thought that had occurred to her all the same. "I mean, lying there without moving, that must be like cruel and unusual punishment for hyperactive you, right?" she asked Chris' motionless form, ignoring the moisture gathering in her eyes. "Well, that was my attempt at wit, anyway. I bet you'd have done better. Anyway, I'm hopeful putting you to sleep might restore your brain's control of your body when you wake up. The brain normally stops directing the conscious muscle groups when the body is asleep, so hopefully when your sleep cycle ends, that connection will be restored naturally."

Eve hesitated, then moved her hand to cup Chris' cheek.

"Good luck, Chris. I'll be here while you sleep, and when you wake up," she told him, then pressed the hypospray to his neck. In a few moments, his readings changed to indicate normal-looking sleep.

With a sigh, Eve turned back to the medical workstation, calling up Chris' and Shalimar's readings side by side to compare them and hopefully discover why Shalimar wasn't waking up.

She was worried Chris wouldn't either.

Half an hour later, the medical lab's intercom switched on.

'Eve, I think I've got something...' Jamie's voice announced.

Eve hurried over to the intercom, jabbing the vox-mode button with her thumb.

"What is it, Jamie?" she asked urgently, hoping for the breakthrough they needed.

'I think you'd better come see this. Brennan's with Jesse; I'll get Lexa to confirm.'

"Be right there," Eve responded, poking the intercom again to turn it off. She glanced at Chris and Shalimar's sleeping forms, hoping neither of them chose the next few moments as a good time to wake up, or that their muscular control would be normal if they did. She hurried from the medical lab, wondering what it was that Jamie was having Lexa confirm.

Eve hurried up to Haven's main workstation just in time to hear Lexa say:

"Yes! That's him!"

"Looks like a wuss," Owen commented from where he was leaning on the back of Jamie's chair. Beside him, Josh nodded.

"Doesn't matter if he's a wuss if he can make other people do his fighting for him," Lexa commented dryly. Eve hurried up to Owen's other side, nodding gratefully to Lexa when she saw Eve and stepped aside to make room.

"Louis Feldspar?" Eve asked, reading the GSA profile Jamie had up on the screen. "He's the one from the diner? –I didn't see him."

"That's him alright, shady goatee and all," Lexa replied as she nodded. "And look at his official record," she went on, pointing at the screen. "Twenty-three captures of New Mutants and no failures. That's so quote-unquote 'impressive' it's suspicious in and of itself."

"Heh. That gives me an idea, actually," Jamie said, giving the screen a smirking glower.

"What's that?" Kevin asked from where he was watching on Josh's other side.

"Well, there's absolutely no mention of his being a New Mutant here in his GSA profile, or anywhere else in their records, that I saw," Jamie explained. "But we know he is one, so obviously he's hiding that fact. Using his ability to sense other New Mutants to be the bestest little GSAgent ever, the ultimate sellout," he went on with a frown, glancing up over his shoulder at Owen's subvocal growl of anger. "So, I don't know exactly how we'd do it, but it'd be pretty poetic justice to expose him to his GSA keepers as a dirty secret-keeping New Mutant, right? Hell, they'd love to get their hands on the ability to detect New Mutants; maybe they'll do some creative surgery on him trying to duplicate it."

"Dude, sick," Kevin commented, his slightly pouty mouth twisted into a grimace of distaste. His frown only deepened when he glanced at his boyfriend and saw Josh smirking in approval of Jamie's suggestion.

"But anyway, it gets better," Jamie went on, clicking the mouse to bring up a few other reports and documents he had tagged and pointing them out to Eve. "It looks like due to his record Mr. Feldspar has been granted a fair amount of autonomy; I think the whole staking-out of Eloy's Diner was his idea. That would explain why he stopped by himself today, besides his detection ability, and it's possible he may not have communicated his findings to the rest of the GSA yet. I'm still working on that, but if it's true, then I only have to delete his files, and if we can expose him, then only the GSAgents under him he told about Eloy's would actually know, and they'll probably all be in shock over his being a New Mutant anyway, so we probably won't have to worry about them acting on their knowledge," Jamie finished with a smile of accomplishment.

"This is good, Jamie, really good," Eve said emphatically, putting her hand on Jamie's shoulder and squeezing it tightly. She stared at the screen and the information Jamie had uncovered, her mind shifting into overdrive as she considered the possibilities and Jamie's suggestions, delighted to find they were well-founded. Some of the tensions she had been feeling all day ended, shifting from worry to purpose, their energies filling her all the more now that they had a direction to be focused in and applied to. Eve's rampant drive concentrated itself in her gripping fingers as she stared at the screen, her eyes almost no longer seeing it as she considered what they could do with the information, instead.

Eve blinked and looked down as she felt her fingertips sink into Jamie's elasticized shoulder. He had turned to look up at her, his grimace of pain shifting to a smile of amusement as his power rendered the effect of her clenching fingernails negligible.

"Ow," he said with a grin anyway, shifting his shoulder back and forth beneath her grip slightly, Eve's fingernails still embedded in his pliable flesh.

"Jesus, Sorry!" Eve exclaimed in shock as she realized what she had been doing, releasing Jamie's shoulder and rubbing it with her palm, instead.

" 'Salright, no biggie," Jamie answered with a laugh, still grinning as Eve's hand squished into his rubbery shoulder. Eve scowled and swatted him on the other shoulder for his antics instead, grinning back as Jamie snickered. Owen, Josh, and Kevin also chuckled, familiar with Jamie's use of his abilities for humor as well as the mindset of "pick on Eve 'cause she's the boss and the only female" that had been common in Haven up to that point. Given Shalimar and Lexa's toughness and no-nonsense natures, that attitude of the boys' would probably be changing in the near future, which was something Eve was looking forward to seeing.

"Okay, so we've got half a plan on dealing with Feldspar, we can work out the details, but we still don't know where to find him," Lexa said. "We need to know his routine, his habits, to set him up. Not to mention we have to snap Shal and Chris out of whatever he did to them, first. We wouldn't want to get him podded if he's the only one who can wake them up."

"Well, I'm reasonably certain the effects will wear off eventually; most Psionic influences do. It takes a ridiculous amount of power to make a permanent change to someone's psyche, but obviously we can't just sit back and count on that being the case, either. I've been studying the brainwave activity on Shal and Chris, and everything looks normal; the only thing that's confusing me is Chris' looked normal even before I sedated him. His brain is functioning normally, but its conscious commands aren't reaching his body. And Shalimar just isn't waking up; I have no idea why not. I admit, I'm worried the effects won't wear off, but there's no actual reason to think they won't."

"But do you have any reason to think they will, either?" Josh asked worriedly. "I mean, if everything looks normal, then you don't have any readings out of the ordinary to keep an eye on, do you? Obviously things aren't normal, but if we don't know why, what can we do about it?"

"You're right, I don't have anything to monitor, but I do have reason to think it will wear off," Eve reassured him. "Most Psionic powers that affect another subject's mind are temporary: making someone see something that isn't there, feel emotions they wouldn't normally being feeling, like that. It stops when the Psionic does; the target just has to readjust to true reality instead of whatever the Psionic made them experience. We're obviously dealing with something a little different here, but what I mean by that is that Feldspar doesn't seem to actually be affecting their mental activity," she explained, slipping into her expository professor mode. "Or not their conscious minds' mental activity, anyway. It has to be something related to the disconnect between conscious muscle control and sleep or unconsciousness, the signals aren't being routed to their muscles, but they're still being generated normally. Even if the effect never wears off, and as I said, that is extremely unlikely, their brains would eventually learn to transmit the signals in a different way; they will recover."

"Did you trying throwing water on them?" Owen asked.

Eve blinked.

"–What?" she asked, her face squinching up into an absolutely baffled expression.

"Sure," Owen nodded. "I mean, you said their bodies are asleep, even when their minds are awake, more or less, right? So, give 'em that jolt to wake 'em up. Heck, yell 'Boo!', or just shake them hard enough, maybe. I mean, you tried the gentle slapping thing when you got them back here, but Chris was still awake, just frozen. And Shal's been out for a while; she should be up by now, really. Maybe have Brennan zap her again, just a little. Not like a tazer to knock her out, but like a cattle prod to force a reaction out of her. Force one out of their bodies, and maybe that'll reconnect them to their minds."

Josh frowned too, more in amazement at the outlandishness of Owen's suggestion than confusion over his making it.

"That..." Josh began in a disbelieving tone, but Eve cut him off.

"–Is so crazy it just might work!" she finished excitedly, turning away from the main workstation with urgency. "Jamie, Lexa's right, we'll need to find Feldspar. You ought to be able to hack his address out of the GSA; see what else you can find. Kevin, give me a hand in medical; Josh, I need to set some things up, go get Brennan. Lexa, put that devious mind of yours to work and figure out how we can set up Feldspar; Owen, help her with the details of what we already know about the local GSA," Eve called out as she hurried away toward the medical lab, Kevin in her wake and Josh veering off toward the guest rooms.

"Well Yes, Ma'am," Lexa responded quietly with a raised eyebrow, her smirk spreading into a small smile as she met Owen's fierce grin. "She's more military than I am; I thought she came from money, wasn't an Army Brat."

"Nope, Eve's just a take-charge kinda gal," Owen answered, still smiling in anticipation of serving some just desserts as he led the way to one of the smaller side workstations.

Eve was explaining to Kevin the procedure she wanted to try as they set up some equipment over Shalimar's examination bed when Josh and Brennan entered the medical lab. Brennan hurried over to Shalimar's bedside, ready and anxious to help however he could. Josh moved over to Chris' medical examination bed, looking at Chris with his lips pursed to one side in consideration.

Josh leaned over Chris' reclining form, reaching forward to grasp one of Chris' earlobes between a thumb and forefinger, then pinched and twisted it. Josh didn't pinch as hard as he could, with his Feral strength that could cause real damage, but he did put a fair amount of effort into it.

He settled back with a disappointed frown when Chris failed to respond.

Deciding to try Owen's other crazy suggestion, Josh moved over to the small refrigerator under the counter on the patient-care side of the medical lab. He removed a chilled bottle of water, unscrewing its top as he turned back to Chris' bedside. Pursing his lips again in contemplation, Josh gave a small shrug and turned down the light sheet Eve had drawn over Chris' chest. He then upended the water bottle over Chris, giving it a squeeze to splash Chris' face and chest with a small deluge of well-chilled water.

"What the Hell are you doing!?" Eve asked in shock, having looked back to Chris just in time to see Josh soak him.

"Dammit, he still didn't wake up," Josh muttered with a disappointed frown. He blinked in surprise as Eve snatched the water bottle from his hand.

"Josh!" she snapped at him. "What the Hell?!"

"What!?" Josh protested back. "You said it might actually work, so I tried it. It didn't; time for your complicated plan B. What's the problem?" he asked with a scowl.

"Ohmygod, I didn't mean it might literally work," Eve groaned, hiding her face behind one hand.

"Well why not?" Josh asked, throwing his hands out in frustration. "Sleeping body, involuntary nervous system reaction, breaks through the involuntary nervous control Feldspar established, restoring normal connection to the conscious mind. Makes perfect sense," he complained. "I'm not stupid, Eve. I mean, we could try touching their fingertips to a hot stove, but cold water seems kinder than first degree burns, doesn't it?" he finished sarcastically.

"Okay, okay, sorry," Eve said in frustrated placation, holding both hands up in surrender. "I didn't mean to suggest I thought you were stupid; I don't. Hell, if it had worked, I'd have called you a genius. You are smart, Josh; it's just that your brain operates in the weirdest ways," she finished, shaking her head in fond exasperation.

"Mmmm, yeah, I'll have to agree with that one," Josh replied, smiling at Eve's compliment and having already accepted her apology and moved on with no need to dwell on it. "I do think outside the lines, I'll admit. Outside the box, out of the closet, I'm just out."

"..Of your mind," Eve replied as she turned back to Brennan and Shalimar, rolling her eyes. Josh made a crazy-face behind Eve's back and twirled a forefinger at his temple, a gesture he was sure Chris would have appreciated, if he had seen it. Kevin had seen it, clamping his lips tightly together and biting his toungue to keep from laughing. Josh could see the amusement in his lover's eyes and gave Kevin a wink, which only made the corners of Kevin's expressive hazel eyes crinkle all the more.

"Okay, as I was saying before we were interrupted by the crazy smart guy..." Eve said as she returned to Shalimar's bedside, continuing her explanation to Brennan. "..Owen's suggestion gave me an idea. Feldspar's ability somehow disconnects the conscious mind from the nervous system, probably by re-routing the electrical signals of the neurons that trigger the nerve synapses. I'd have to do some more tests to verify that, but it fits the facts we've uncovered so far entirely. My guess is that your partially electrocuting Shalimar to knock her unconscious, while she was under the effect of his power, combined to make her condition worse. Her conscious mind was present, but it couldn't provide her body with any input, like Chris' when we brought him back here to Haven. After you shocked her, the disconnect between her mind and body became deeper. Basically, because of Feldspar's power, you knocked her out into a coma instead of just sleep," Eve finished as she adjusted a few settings of the machine she had attached to Shalimar's comatose form.

Brennan looked guilt-stricken.

"So. . .what can we do about it?" he asked hesitantly, his soulful eyes begging for reassurance.

"That's the idea Owen gave me," Eve said with a broad smile, trying to infect Brennan with her hopeful mood. "Somehow Feldspar's ability is keeping the signals of his victims' brains from forming properly and reaching their bodies. Your ability is the perfect counter to that; at the right power levels, the current you generate will act as the nervous system signal their bodies aren't receiving, reconnecting their brains and nervous systems."

"So I won't be cattle prodding them awake, like Owen said; you just want me to bridge the circuit gap between their brains and their bodies," Brennan said, hopeful now that Eve had stated her theory in concepts he could grasp.

"Exactly!" Eve answered, grinning. "It's going to be a two-stage process, that I'll monitor with this," she explained, patting the machine she and Kevin had set up at Shalimar's bedside. "Basically, you'll be starting with a low charge to stimulate a response from her brain, then switch to match that response, so that her system uses it to reconnect with her brain."

"Aww, no cattle prod," Josh muttered in quietly grinning disappointment to Kevin. Kevin snickered for a split second before cutting himself short, then whispered something filthy so quietly under his breath that Josh only heard it due to his Feral hearing. Josh slapped a hand over his own mouth and turned bright red as he stifled his laughter, turning to put his forehead against Kevin's broad shoulder as he guffawed silently, nearly doubling over and holding onto Kevin with his other hand for support.

Kevin simply grinned, waiting to see if Eve needed his help with any more of the medical set up. He had learned more in a year with Mutant X, acting as a field medic and helping Eve patch up the various injuries the team received, than he had in nearly four years of pre-med at college. Kevin wasn't entirely sure where the future was going to take him, further education was on indeterminate hold for the time being, but life was giving him the opportunity to use his training. He was doing some real good with it, helping people, which was all he had wanted in the first place.

Eve had started up the machine once she had finished explaining the procedure to Brennan, directly monitoring both Shalimar's nervous system and her brain activity through the electrodes she and Kevin had attached. Kevin moved up behind her to watch the procedure, and Josh came along just to see if it helped Shalimar and hoping it could help Chris as well. Brennan stood at the head of Shalimar's bed, ready to apply his abilities at Eve's direction.

The monitor displayed information for Eve and Kevin to see, Eve making adjusments until she had Shalimar's readings where she wanted them.

"Okay, Brennan, just give her the lowest voltage you can manage, and we'll go from there. We're just going until I get a reading from her brainwave activity, until your shock causes her brain to respond," Eve explained. "The monitor will record that signal, so that you can duplicate it. Once we're sure you can duplicate it accurately, we start over, and when her brain responds again, you'll hit her body with the matching signal..."

"..Bringing her brain and her nerves back in sync, got it," Brennan answered, nodding to confirm his comprehension as he raised his hands, ready to apply the charge.

"Okay, the monitor's running. . .whenever you're ready, Brennan. Low as you can, just make sure you can confidently reproduce the same charge later. We need her brain to be responding the same way both times for this to work," Eve instructed, Brennan nodding again as he took a slow, deep breath.

Brennan exhaled equally slowly, concentrating as he held his hands over Shalimar's shoulders and upper chest, on either side of her head. He frowned as he realized such a low current would never form a spark, gently lowering his hands to touch Shalimar's bare shoulders. His eyes flickered with blue electricity as he concentrated, stepping the power down as low as he could.

"Okay, normal galvanic response on the nervous level to skin contact. . .Okay, I'm reading nervous response to the current–" Eve began, then Brennan interrupted:

"I can feel it. Her shoulder muscles are twitching, just the tiniest bit; is that what we're looking for?"

"No, that's still nervous system response," Eve answered, her head shaking but her eyes never leaving the monitor's readout. "That signal isn't reaching her brain; that's just her spinal cord giving a flinch response. Like when you touch a hot stove and your hand jerks back before you even feel the heat or pain; that's not your brain, just your spinal cord. Step it up just a tiny bit higher."

Brennan concentrated again, the pulsing flickers of electric blue light in his eyes flashing faster. Watching closely with medical training and Feral sensory acuity on their sides, Kevin and Josh could just see the musculature of Shalimar's shoulders fluttering under Brennan's fingertips.

"There, that's it," Eve said with restrained excitement, not wanting a shout of exclamation to disrupt Brennan's concentration. "Memorize the level you're delivering at now, Brennan, you'll need to be able to recreate it later, after reproducing a copy of her brain's signal for the next step, which will probably be harder."

"Like commiting a kata to memory," Josh suggested, having recognized Brennan's fighting style on the street the night before. He knew Brennan had to have studied martial arts at some point, hoped that a similar focus of mindset would help him reproduce a physical action later.

Brennan nodded slowly in response to Josh's suggestion, his expression and blue-flickering eyes distant as he focused internally on how he was using his Elemental ability. After a moment he blinked, his eyes their ordinary brown when he re-opened them, and his arms and hands relaxed as he took a deep breath, stepping back from Shalimar's bed.

"Okay; did we get what we need?" he asked Eve hopefully.

"Well, what we need for half of this, anyway," Eve said with a nod as she worked with the machine. She unplugged the leads that were attached to Shalimar and left them dangling, ready for their next use as she attached four more for Brennan to the machine. Brennan smirked as Kevin stepped forward and swabbed Brennan's forearm with rubbing alcohol, then wiped it down with the electroconductivity gel they used with the electrodes.

"I don't think you have to worry about the conductivity of my skin," Brennan said with a smirk.

Kevin glanced up from Brennan's forearm to flash a quick smile, then returned his attention to his work.

"Probably not, but we don't want your power interfering, either. This is the tricky part; you're going to have to match Shalimar's brain signal exactly, so we have to present it to you unaffected in the first place, right?"

"Okay, that makes sense," Brennan said, nodding as Kevin stepped back and Eve attached two of the machine's electrodes to Brennan's forearms and the other two to the tips of his forefingers with alligator clips dipped in the gel. Once she was sure they were secure, Eve adjusted a few dials on the machine, modifying its readings to adapt to being connected to Brennan.

"Alright, Brennan, Shalimar's electrical brain activity in response to your charge has been recorded here. I'm going to transmit those signals into you, so that you experience what they feel like. Then I want you to do your best to match their output; I'll monitor you here. If we can get a precise enough match, you should be able to reconnect Shal's nerves and brain," she explained. Brennan nodded his understanding; Eve nodded back and put her finger to the button. "Okay, initiating transmission. . .now."

Brennan blinked at the sensation of the machine transmitting neurological-level electricity into him; when he opened his eyes a second time after blinking again, they were lit from within by tiny sparks of electric-blue lightning. His sparking eyes narrowed as he felt a change in the electrical signal, a flicker or pulse.

"That was it; we only recorded a few seconds of response, so it's on a loop," Eve explained, her eyes still watching her monitor. "It will keep re-transmitting the same signal; just transmit your own verion of it through your hands whenever you're ready," she encouraged Brennan.

"Can we just have this transmitting to me as I give Shal the first charge?" Brennan asked with a frown. "Because I could copy the signal coming from it and step it up through my fingers, no problem," he explained, his squinting eyes looking eerie as they flickered blue from within while he demonstrated his claim, sending the same current into the leads clipped to his fingertips.

"Um, crap, I'll need to use the monitor on her at the same time to verify she's ready, but we've got another one..." Eve responded, her excitement growing as she finally looked up from her monitor once she saw Brennan's proof he could do as he claimed. "Josh, Kev, get the other monitor, it's on..."

Josh was already moving, turning to head around the side of Shalimar's examination table toward the equipment storage rack on the other side of the medical lab, but he paused when Kevin held out one belaying hand. Kevin squinted across the room at the smaller monitor, concentrating, and it sailed across the lab towards them, hovering over Shalimar until Josh collected it in his arms. Kevin turned to the tray-table next to Shalimar's bed, frowning at it and causing the various instruments and care items on it to telekinetically move aside and put themselves out of the way on the counter as Josh carefully placed the other monitor on the table.

"Okay, nevermind then," Eve interrupted herself with a smile. "Alright, Brennan, I'm ceasing the second signal now," she said, matching action to words with the push of a button. "Now, show me you can still produce the first signal, into the leads; I don't have either recorded on the second monitor, obviously." Brennan nodded and concentrated once more, his eyes lighting with electricity from within again as he reproduced the low-level current he had used before. "Good! Perfect match, on the first try! Outstanding!" Eve said, grinning in triumph as she watched the monitor's readings. "Okay, I'm transmitting you the second signal again, on continuous repeat; show me you can still produce the first."

Brennan smiled, his eyes lighting up once more as he reproduced the first current again, even though Shalimar's brain-activity current was being transmitted into his forearm.

"You've got it!" Eve cried joyously, looking up from the monitor to Brennan's laughing face with beaming relief on her own. "You're good at this! Okay, one second, just let me get Shal hooked up..."

Eve turned to the second monitor, which Kevin and Josh had already connected the leads from Shalimar's electrodes to, Josh following Kevin's quiet instructions. Eve gave them both a quick, grateful grin, which they returned in sync, then she powered the monitor up and quickly adjusted its settings, matching the ones she had used before. Once she had them set to her satisfaction, she turned to Kevin and gave him a nod. Kevin in turn activated the original monitor's recording once more, after removing the clips from Brennan's fingertips.

"Okay, Brennan," Eve said quietly, her euphoria momentarily suppressed now that the moment of truth was at hand. "You've got her mental current running for duplication, just hit Shal with that same first current again and maintain it. I'll let you know when her neural response matches, then you hit her system with it, stepped up to the same power you used in the first place. You'll have to go from one to the other as quickly as possible, almost instantly, before her mental response changes."

"Outrace the heat flinch, get the signal to her brain before it reacts," he answered with a nod.

"Right, then it will be in sync and connected with her body, and that should do it," Eve replied with a nod. "Start whenever you're ready, then switch on my mark."

"Gotcha," Brennan answered, his eyes already flickering as he started generating the initial current. Shalimar's shoulders twitched once, visibly, as Brennan touched them.

Almost instantly, Eve said: "That's it! Switch, Brennan!", her eyes never leaving her monitor, even as one hand reached up to absently brush a stray lock of hair out of her face.

Brennan frowned in concentration, his blue-flickering eyes narrowing as he zapped Shalimar with her brain-activity current, at the same nervous-system engaging power level he had been delivering the first current with. Shalimar gave a full-body twitch, her unconscious face grimacing in discomfort.

"Is that it? Do I stop?" Brennan asked, frowning in concern, his narrowed, pulsing eyes never leaving Shalimar's distressed face.

"Yes, that's it; you're done," Eve said, smiling broadly as she watched Shalimar's readings, even though Brennan couldn't see her.

Brennan relaxed his power, straightening up with a look of disappointment on his face.

"But she didn't wake up?" he asked sorrowfully.

"What? –No, of course not. We weren't waking her, just reconnecting her brain and her nervous system," Eve explained, her own confused expression clearing as she realized Brennan's misunderstanding. "But now we can wake her up; she's back to normal."

"Oh," Brennan said, blinking in surprise but nodding even as he realized his misassumption. "OkaOWW!!" Brennan cried out as Josh unexpectedly grabbed him from behind. Josh had grabbed Brennan under the arms and was pinching as he snarled loudly and lifted Brennan off the floor slightly, increasing his surprise and alarm.

Shalimar's golden Feral eyes snapped open at the sound of Feral conflict and Brennan's cry of alarm; she raised her knees and feet off the examination bed, vaulting off of it over its foot in a kippup to the floor. Her head snapped around in midair, twisting to find her distressed packmate and the source of the threat even before she hit the ground.

Josh had already set Brennan down and was cheerily waving at Shalimar as Brennan spun to glare at him.

"What was that?" he snapped at Josh in confusion, resisting the urge to rub his abused anatomy.

"Shalimar's alarm clock," Josh answered with a smirk, tipping his head at Shalimar, over Brennan's shoulder. Brennan blinked in surprise and spun back around again, joy spreading across his face when he saw the teammate he had rendered comatose awake and on her feet.

"Shal!" Brennan said in surprise, stepping forward and gathering Shalimar into his arms. "You're okay! You're awake, I mean," he finished, pulling back from their embrace to look down into her face.

"I am," she answered with small smile, nodding slightly, then her face twisted in concern as she remembered her last cnscious moments, her body under Feldpar's control. "Jesse! I kicked him; is he alright?"

"He's okay," Brennan told her, gripping her shoulders in reassurance as he stepped back. "No concussion; he'll be fine."

"You ass," Eve told Josh, backhanding his shoulder but smiling as she joined him and Kevin at Chris' bedside, where Kevin was readying new electrodes for Chris. "God, it's like you said on the Helix last night after the fight, your every Feral impulse is an eleven!" Josh gave a half-smile and a half-shrug as he held the replacement electrodes at the ready for Kevin. He knew he didn't do anything by halves, and he was fine with that.

"It makes living with him interesting, you have to admit," Kevin said with a smirk as he finished wiping the attachment positions of Chris' bare chest and temples down with rubbing alcohol and began applying sterile electroconductivity gel to the electrodes Josh was holding for him. Josh flashed a grin at him that Kevin smirked in response to, still working together without thought in the manner of well-established couples everywhere.

"Pfffft. Interesting like the Chinese curse," Eve responded, folding her arms as she watched Kevin work, making sure everything was being readied properly to restore Chris from Feldspar's power, as well. " 'May you live in interesting times.' " Josh lip-synced the quote along with her, frowning to silently match her emphasis of the word "interesting". It was Eve's standard response to any time someone sarcastically claimed something was interesting, implying that their taste in "interesting" was poor. Since she said it every time, Kevin had deliberately prompted her, smirking as Josh mouthed the words along with Eve, his back to her so she couldn't see him do it.

"Shal? You're okay?" Jesse asked eagerly as he poked his head into the medical lab, the left side of it bruised and purple around his temple.

"Jesse!" she called back, turning and dashing to the doorway to embrace him as well. "Oh, your poor head!" she frowned, brushing careful fingertips through his hair just above his temple.

"Wasn't you, it was him," Jesse told her, taking her hand in his own before she brushed against the painful area. "Feldspar. Lex, Owen, and Jamie are planning evil for him," he finished with a smirk, then stopped when the expression irritated the swollen side of his head.

"Aww, I wanna help plan evil," Josh smirked as Eve finished placing the electrodes on Chris, beckoning Brennan over to join them.

"Go on, then," Eve smirked at Josh. "The set up's done here; we'll have Chris back to normal in no time. You can't wake him up, though; it will still take another hour or two for the sedative I gave him to wear off."

"No, wait, I wanna make sure Chris is okay, too..." Josh frowned, torn between concern for his friend and wanting to help give payback to his attacker.

"All three of them were on a roll when I got out there," Jesse told Josh as he joined him and Kevin while Brennan moved to join Eve at the head of Chris' examination bed. "I think they've already come up with something; they're just hashing it out. The whole thing will need the details gone over once they're done; you can help with that part."

"Oooo, details!" Josh grinned.

"Josh loves details," Kevin commented, rolling his eyes. "Especially malicious ones."

"Really?" Jesse asked in surprise. "Shal's not much on details. . .she likes the violence just fine, but she's more of the 'apply violence once it's justified and worry about the details later' type." Shalimar had followed Jesse over to them and nodded in response to his summary of her character, finding it accurate enough.

"Nah, it's not a cat thing, just a focus thing," Josh replied. "Well, I guess the focus is a cat thing, but I choose to focus on details. Plus, a Psionic being outsmarted by a Feral is just funny, period," he finished, his eyes never leaving Chris' bed where Eve and Brennan were getting to work. Eve had connected Chris to the first monitor and was adjusting its settings, ready to proceed.

"Okay, Brennan, if you've still got that first current memorized, just try that on Chris. It might need to be a fraction stronger since he doesn't have a Feral's reflexes and sensitivity, but he's an Elemental, so his body is conditioned to excess energy; we'll just have to see," Eve said.

Brennan nodded, touching Chris' shoulders just as he had Shalimar's and delivering the same charge. Chris' shoulders twitched once, visibly.

"That's good, we've got brain activity response, keep going, memorize where you're at..." Eve told Brennan, checking the monitor's readings and verifying it was recording Chris' neural response. Brennan nodded, maintaining the charge he was delivering and staring into the middle distance with his lightning-flickering eyes to commit it to memory.

"Alright, that's covered," Eve said, nodding to Brennan that he could stop. "You can switch to replicate Chris' pattern if we feed it to you, just like you did Shal's, right?" she asked as she disconnected Chris' electrodes from the monitor.

"Sure," Brennan nodded, stepping back out of the way as Eve worked. Kevin re-applied the electrodes to Brennan's forearm and clipped the leads to his forefingers as Josh carried the second monitor over to Chris' bedside tray-table. Kevin re-connected Chris' electrodes to the second monitor as Eve connected Brennan's to the first, then switched it on to send Chris' neural signal into Brennan's forearm.

"Okay, reproduce that. . .good," Eve directed as she watched the monitor, nodding as Brennan's eyes lit up again and he delivered Chris' signal into his fingertips. "And stop . .and the first signal..." she prompted, making sure Brennan could recreate the same response in Chris while receiving his neural signal. Brennan's eyes flickered again, and a grin broke out on Eve's face.

"You've got it," she smiled, beaming the full extent of her happiness and gratitude to Brennan before moving to Chris' new monitor to double check his readings. "We're good to go, Brennan, whenever you're ready..." she told him as Kevin unclipped the leads from Brennan's fingertips.

Eve paused, her eyes fixed on the monitor's screen as she watched the readouts of Chris' neurological and nervous system responses. She shoved aside the rogue lock of hair dangling in her face with a frustratedly distracted hand, frowning at the screen as she watched Chris' readings change when Brennan touched him, then spike when his nervous system was hit by Brennan's memorized electric current.

"That's a match; switch, Brennan!" she said a moment later, her hands gripping the edges of the monitor's keypad as she waited to see if it would work a second time.

Brennan grinned as Chris' face twitched into an almost-frown, his arms moving in restless distress as he slept on.

"That's it," Eve breathed out in a sigh of relief, relaxing as she switched off Chris' monitor and exchanging a grin with Kevin as he turned off Brennan's. "You did it, Brennan, Thank You," she told him sincerely, placing her hand on his forearm after removing the electrodes from it.

"No problem, Eve," Brennan told her with a smile. "It's not like I did anything any of you wouldn't have done for me if things were the other way around."

"Okay," she responded with an answering smile, turning to share it with everyone else in the room. "Okay, guys, let's go see how much worse Jamie and Owen can get when Lexa is added to the mix. We'll let Chris sleep off the rest of the sedative, and then we'll see about putting their plan in action."

From: Office of Commanding Agent L. Feldspar
To: Division GSAgents on call until 0600 tomorrow

Be advised we have confirmed information regarding the secret leader of the criminal faction known as Mutant X. This individual will be at a rendezvous with another powerful New Mutant in the alleyway between Beaumont and Lexington just east of Twelfth Avenue at midnight tonight. ALL available agents are expected to conceal themselves in the area to help apprehend these subjects. Be in position no later than 2300 hours and take great care to remain concealed. . .the specific abilities of this New Mutant are not known at this time. Please note that our sleeper agent infiltrating this rendezvous will be known by her red laserlight hologram in the form of a forehead glow, giving her the convincing appearance of a Psionic New Mutant. (To enable proof of identity for an ID-less agent, be aware that the hologram technology is concealed within her earrings.)

Also be advised that this is a High Security matter, classified as Need To Know only. Discussion of this operation is not to occur, even within the Division, as there is reason to believe a traitor within the GSA is involved, possibly within the Division. GSAgents are trained for these circumstances– –expect the unexpected and be prepared; any agent whose negligence reveals the Division's presence before the traitor is exposed will be severely disciplined.

Commanding Agent Louis Feldspar's cellphone rang.

Checking the display, he frowned to see he was being called by an unlisted number. It was his work phone, which he quite specifically did not give the number of to anyone outside the GSA or government-related contacts. Shrugging as he hit the "Talk" button, Feldspar wondered if perhaps one of the government contacts he had spoken with in the past had written his number down for some reason.

"Hello?"

'Mr. Feldspar?' a female voice asked him.

"And who is this?" he countered with a frown, making sure it was audible in his voice.

'My name is... ..not important,' the woman answered, halting awkwardly in the middle of her sentence to overcome the polite reflex of answering the question. 'What's important is that I can give you the leader of Mutant X.'

"Really?" Feldspar asked drily, leaning back in his chair. "How did you get this number?"

The woman gave a frustrated sigh before answering.

'I'm Psionic, of course. Psychic enough to know that you want Mutant X, so I won't bother asking if you're interested,' she said.

"Well, maybe I am, but why would you, a New Mutant, be interested in giving me the leader of your champions?"

'Hah. My champions, my firm and cold ass. I didn't choose them,' she muttered into the phone. 'I look out for Number One, and there's been a number of people around looking for people like me, making life uncomfortable. I figure giving you something you want that's only bothering me in the first place is a small price to pay to get some breathing room.'

"Some breathing room," Feldspar repeated, applying the First Rule of Interrogation: repeat the last thing they said, just as they said it, non-confrontationally, so that they expand on it.

'Exactly. Meet me at midnight in the alley between Beaumont and Lexington, just east of Twelfth Ave. I'll come alone, and so will you. I'm psychic; I'll know if you don't, and I won't show. I'll give you what you need to get Mutant X's leader then, if you make me believe I'll be left alone, okay?' she asked.

"I'm sure we'll be able to come to an understanding," he answered, quite deliberately not saying anything more specific.

'Riiiight,' she drawled back dismissively. 'Just remember, you set me up, and I'll know it, so I won't come anywhere near you. See you at midnight.'

The line went dead, and Feldspar frowned at his phone, considering.

At midnight that night most of the members of Mutant X were blocks away from the alley, waiting for the right moment.

They were gathered on the corner of a rooftop overlooking Lexington, looking down the street toward Twelfth Ave, keeping an eye on the alleyway a half-block before it. If Lexa sent a flare up into the night sky as a distress signal, they could be there in moments.

"This plan sucks," Josh hissed for the third time in half an hour, the second in only five minutes.

"Dude, Chill," Owen said quietly, dropping into a squat behind Josh's seated form and grabbing his hunched trapezius muscles, massaging the other Feral's neck and shoulders. "It's a good plan, Man, and it's the only way to get this Feldspar creep to tip his hand without giving away we're onto him. It's risky enough with Jamie and Chris having to be so close; we don't know what his New Mutant-detecting range is, really."

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," Josh insisted, his shoulders only relaxing the most fractional amount under Owen's grip. The way he was sitting, hunched over, he couldn't see over the low safety wall at the edge of the building's roof, but he wasn't watching the alley anyway. His eyes remained on Kevin's unconscious form, the back of his head and neck cradled in Josh's lap and pillowed by his crossed calves, as was their usual practice. He had one hand cupping Kevin's jaw, the other fisted in Kevin's shirt to prevent himself from giving in to the urge to stroke his lover's chest repeatedly, just to calm himself. It was only Owen's hands on his shoulders that prevented Josh from rocking back and forth as his tension grew; his left thumb was still continually stroking Kevin's cheekbone as it was.

"The whole thing is stupid," Josh snarled quietly. "I know Eve can fight, but against a guy with mind control abilities? –Body control, whatever," he corrected himself, thinking of Chris and Shalimar's descriptions of being under Feldspar's power. "In the middle of a bunch of GSAgents, with no backup with her but Lexa? Who can't reveal herself without ruining the plan? That's crazy!"

"HEY," Owen said sharply, shifting his hands to grab Josh under the jaw and by the back of the head, forcing his head to tip back and making him look up to meet Owen's eyes. "Relax, Josh. It'll work out. It won't even be a fight 'til Jamie's on the scene at the earliest. You're just stressed over Kev; we all know it, so don't even pretend like it's anything else."

Josh's eyes tightened in anger, almost but not quite triggering the shift to their jade green Feral mode as he glared up into Owen's.

"I'm going to let that one pass," Josh grit out from between his clenched teeth, "Because it's mostly accurate. But I'm not just worried about Kevin; I'm worried about the whole stupid plan nose-diving into the sewers, with Eve and maybe Lexa or Jamie or Chris paying the price, captured or dead or brain-fried by Feldspar or God only knows what else, so don't you tell me what I am or am not worried about,alright!?" he finished in an angry rush.

Owen frowned slightly in self-admonishment as he shifted his hands back to Josh's shoulders, squeezing them by way of apology.

"Okay. Okay, yeah, it's risky, but when do we ever have a plan that isn't?" Owen asked. "Kind of in the job description, Dude. And yeah, maybe facing a head GSAgent with psi-powers in the middle of half his men is a bad idea. . .but don't forget, we planted those men there, want them there to make the whole crazy plan work. Heck, the hologram earrings were your idea."

Josh snickered weakly, nervous laughter, even as he shifted his worried gaze back down to Kevin's unconscious face.

"I actually got that idea from an old 80s cartoon. My cousins used to make me watch after school 'cause I was eleven and liked action cartoons, and they were in their late teens, Geri was twenty, too old to be watching without me as an excuse," he said quietly, his eyes in the distant past as he stroked his thumb against the grain of the beard stubble on Kevin's unresponsive cheek.

"Really?" Owen asked with a perplexed frown. "What cartoon?"

Josh glanced up at Owen over his shoulder, smirking even as his eyes continued to frown in worry.

"Jem and the Holograms. Her Synergy earrings."

Owen made one of the most ridiculous faces Josh had ever seen in an effort to both frown in baffled confusion and prevent himself from cracking up at the same time. Josh chuckled, turning his attention back to his astral-projecting boyfriend. Owen coughed a choked-off laugh and quietly cleared his throat.

"Okay," Owen nodded. "But Eve has backup, besides Lexa. Sure, Lexa can't reveal herself without risking the plan, but that's why Kevin's there. You know he astrally scouted the alley, found the Agents, and made sure Feldspar's arriving alone. It hasn't even been ten minutes since Kevin came back and told us to tell Eve Feldspar's alone. Feldspar didn't notice Kev spying on him, so he won't know Kev's there while he gives Eve telekinetic backup."

"Well, that's the part I have a real problem with, obviously," Josh sighed in frustration. "Kev did a lot just last night, and I know for a damn fact he didn't sleep well. 'Swhy I took him out to lunch and the early show today, wanted him to relax some, recover. . .and here he goes, doing it all over again!" he snapped in frustrated concern. "You've seen him, Owen; you've seen how hard it is on him to use his TK astrally... –what if he tries to stop a bullet or something crazy, so much that could go wrong; he's already been projecting for a while tonight..."

"Hey, hey hey hey..." Owen murmured, dropping forward onto his knees so that Josh's back was pressed to his front. He winced at the movement, not because his kneecaps were still sore from crashing to the sidewalk the night before –they were mostly recovered from that already– but because now he was sore all over from his intense workout earlier in the day. Owen wrapped his arms around Josh's sides, under his arms to hold Josh with one arm and laying his other hand over Kevin's collarbone. "..Easy, J, easy. Kevin's tougher than you're giving him credit for, whether you mean it or not," Owen told him, lightly pressing the side of his face to the side of Josh's head, speaking quietly into his ear. "He knows his limits, probably better than the rest of us know our own. I know you're worried he'll feel he has to go too far, but Eve and Lexa and Chris and Jamie are there to keep things from getting that bad. Trust them, okay?"

Josh closed his eyes and took a deep breath, relaxing into Owen's comforting touch. Owen was pretty much straight as far as Josh knew, but he was also a Feral, naturally inclined to give and receive comfort through touch. Animals didn't have much in the way of verbal reassurances, after all.

"Okay," he answered quietly, on the exhale. "I do trust them. Even New-Girl Lexa."

"Hey, Lexa's good people," Owen protested as he released Josh and stood up again, moving to stand between him and the three original members of Mutant X where they were gathered at the corner of the roof. "Even if I get the feeling she hides it pretty deep," he finished as he turned around to face Josh, stretching to ease his aching muscles before crossing his arms with a smirk.

Shalimar smirked as well when she overheard Owen's comment on Lexa, but she didn't give any response other than that. Owen was absolutely right, but Shalimar didn't think Lexa would thank her to confirm that. She knew Josh and Owen had to be aware that she could hear every word they were saying, but that was fine. They were all Ferals; they all knew any conversation less than fifteen feet away wasn't private, even if it was whispered. It wasn't any of her business as long as Josh's worry didn't affect his efficiency; she didn't know him or Kevin or really even Owen well enough for it to be her business otherwise.

Besides overhearing the Feral conversation behind her, Shalimar was also listening to Kevin's cellphone, which Jesse was holding to his ear. Eve had dialed Kevin's cell and left the line open while Jesse had muted it, setting up an impromptu and inconspicuous bug for the rest of the team to monitor Eve's progress with. Kevin wasn't using his phone because he was accompanying Eve in astral form, prepared to use his telekinesis to either defend Eve or "prove" her to be a Psionic to gain Feldspar's belief, as necessary. Lexa was also with Eve, hidden by her light-cloak and staying immediately next to Eve so that Feldspar would detect her as a New Mutant. They were taking the gamble that Feldspar couldn't detect normal humans with his abilities, otherwise he would register Eve as two people or more likely remember Lexa's invisibility from their previous fight.

Brennan was keeping his eyes on Lexington below them, monitoring the approach to the alley before Twelfth Avenue. He didn't have Shalimar's Feral eyesight, but his experience as a car thief enabled him to pick out vehicles by their drivers' behavior, meaning he had a fair chance of spotting an undercover police or GSA vehicle as it neared the alley. Fortunately for them, Beaumont was undergoing construction directly in front of the alley, which was one reason why they had picked it; they were much less likely to have authorities of any nature approach from that side.

Shalimar was scanning the mouth of the alleyway and farther down Lexington, keeping a sharp Feral eye out for anyone approaching or any other suspicious disturbance. Her golden-eyed gaze suddenly snapped up, her eyes staring into the middle distance as she cocked her head toward the alley.

"What is it, Shal?" Brennan asked in a near-silent whisper, not wanting to drown out whatever distant noise she was listening to. Jesse looked up from Kevin's cellphone at the two of them, having been listening to it with his eyes closed as he tried to hear as much as he could from Eve's end.

"Raised voices, maybe yelling, I think some of the agents... Jess?" she explained, turning her Feral-eyed gaze to Jesse as she asked for clarification, wondering if he heard something from Eve's phone that explained it.

'Guys?' Lexa's quiet voice came from their commrings as Jesse pressed Kevin's cell tighter to his ear, trying to figure out what had seized the girls' attention.

'You'd better get over here,' she finished.

Just before midnight, Eve pulled up to the side of Lexington just short of the alley before Twelfth Avenue. She was wearing red and black biker leathers to go with her cherry-red Ducati, kicking the stand down and taking a moment to remove her helmet and shake her freshly-red hair out. She continued to fiddle, taking a compact and a tube of lipstick out of her jacket's pocket and checking her makeup and appearance in the tiny mirror, waiting. The extra time seated there allowed Lexa's invisible form to slip off the motorcycle without causing it to move, in case they were being observed by either Feldspar or any of his GSAgents in the area.

Eve's cellphone rang as she was deciding that riding a bike with an invisible passenger's weight affecting its ride had been a strange experience. She snapped the compact closed, transferring the lipstick to her left hand as she plucked the phone from her belt.

"Yeah?" she answered in a Californian Biker Girl voice completely unlike her normal speech patterns as she stuffed the makeup items back into her pocket.

'Kevin says Feldspar's alone and didn't detect his astral presence. He'll have rejoined you and Lexa by the time we finish this conversation; I'm muting his phone so you can leave yours open to us,' Jesse told her.

"Gotcha," she answered, thumbing the END button to supposedly terminate the call. In fact, it only made the screen return to its normal not-in-use display, as Eve had programmed it to do after the plan had been finalized.

"How do I look?" she murmured, fussing over her bike and using her body language to look as if she were just muttering to herself about something.

"Red," Lexa whispered back dismissively.

"Right," Eve said, rolling her eyes in response. "Speaking of, how's..." she trailed off, touching the electrical contact she had installed in the thumbpad of her left glove to the contact on the side of its index finger, between the knuckles. Completing the circuit triggered a radio signal that activated the lasers built into Eve's earrings; a nimbus of red light sparkled into being in front of her forehead.

"Yep, that looks red, too," Lexa answered, still unimpressed. "Can we go now? I can't stay invisible forever."

"Here we go, then," Eve said, supposedly to herself, and strode into the alleyway.

"Not so fast!" Lexa hissed at her. "I can't move that quickly cloaked; I'll show up." Eve halted, triggering her laserlight forehead glow and moving her head from side to side in the appearance of "scanning" the area, then proceeded at a more cautious pace.

Eve sauntered into the alleyway, working her way closer to Feldspar where he stood just past the indirect lighting coming from the street. She smiled slightly; his position would work well with the plan.

"You're alone," she told him when she was less than a dozen feet away, endeavoring to sound both suspicious and surprised but also confident in the factuality of her statement.

"I am," he answered, eying her speculatively. "I'm interested in your offer."

"Okay, so how do I know I'm going to be left alone?" she asked, the fingers of her right hand fiddling with the tip of a lock of her hair. The fingers of her left hand rubbed together in an apparently nervous gesture that actually activated her earrings, causing the red nimbus to flicker into being before her forehead momentarily.

"Well, if I can get your name, address, and phone and Social Security numbers, I can make sure to put you on our 'Do Not Disturb' list," he answered with a smirk, apparently unimpressed by her display.

"Oh yeah, that's funny," Eve replied with a roll of her eyes, propping her right fist on her hip defiantly. "Try again, Buster. The comedy routine is not convincing me to cooperate. You want my info or not?"

"Now now, no need to cop an attitude," Feldspar responded, holding up his palms in a placating manner. "Just pointing out that it's not that simple. I can't exclude you specifically if I don't know who you specifically are, but you consider my knowing who you are to be part of the problem."

"So, what, we have nothing to talk about after all, and this was all a wonderful waste of time? I've known you for thirty seconds, and you're already a lousy date, Mister."

"Well, what would you propose? You've told me there've been people 'around' making your life difficult. Difficult in what fashion? Define 'around'; is that something I can adjust to your satisfaction?"

"Hey, sure, withdraw your goons from the city and I don't have a thing to worry about, do I?" she asked with a flippant smirk.

"Ah. Begin bargaining with an absurdly high price and work your way down to a mutual agreement," Feldspar answered with a nod. "In that case, my counteroffer is not shooting you right now," he finished with a derisive sneer, his eyes still cool and calculating as he drew his jacket open, revealing a handgun in a shoulder holster.

Feldspar blinked when the gun jerked in his holster, the safety toggle snapping off at its base and depositing itself in his shirt pocket.

He jerked his head back to eye Eve once more, the surprise still on his face as she smirked, a glittering red swirl of energy dancing in front of her forehead.

"Well, I didn't really expect you to withdraw entirely," she said in a deadpan voice, though she continued to smirk as the red light died away. "What's your next offer up the scale?"

Feldspar frowned at her, considering.

"As I said, I need more information to make a real offer. What do you consider to be 'around'? I realize you don't want to tell me where you live, but perhaps a neighborhood to have less attention paid to? Would that be acceptable?"

"Hmmm, I don't think I want to paint that target..." she hedged, stroking her chin in thought. "I could give you three, then you'd be wasting manpower to keep an eye on all three specifically for me if you tried to double cross me."

On the third floor fire escape of a building farther into the alley, one half of a pair of GSAgents frowned to his partner.

"What the hell is going on?" he whispered quietly, eying the parabolic microphone he was keeping pointed at the pair in the alley below. "If she's the plant, where's the powerful New Mutant the leader of Mutant X is supposed to meet, not to mention said leader themself? I only see Agent Biker Chick and CO Feldspar."

"Good question," the other GSAgent answered, triggering the shoulder-mic of his radio. "Agent Dirk to Mobile Base; Commander, are you getting our feeds?"

"Affirmative, Agent Dirk. Maintain position; we'll wait to see what develops," the radio answered.

Kevin's astral eyes widened in alarm as he overheard the agent's brief conversation with his commander. He had immediately projected himself over to the agents he knew were closest to Eve and Feldspar, to make sure they hadn't noticed his subtle disarming of Feldspar's gun. He hadn't seen any mobile base of operations in his scouting of the area before Eve arrived, so if he had missed that, he could have missed more, and there could be who knew how many more agents waiting to deploy from the mobile base if needed. Worrying about leaving Eve alone for too long but hopeful Lexa could handle things if Eve couldn't hold her own, Kevin projected his astral form straight up into the sky. He looked down at the streets below, looking for a cargo van or panel truck, any vehicle large enough to qualify as a mobile base of operations for the GSA. He frowned to see nothing but ordinary cars on the surrounding streets, then frowned in thought when he saw a covered parking garage attached to an office building two blocks away. A moment's concentration and Kevin had projected himself there, floating through the garage's roll-up door to discover it was lit and occupied within.

Kevin's mouth opened in an immaterial gasp of surprise when he saw the fleet of black SUVs and a stretched Humvee all idling within the garage, GSAgents in full riot gear waiting inside them, some agents moving to or from the Humvee. He flashed across the room with the briefest of mental efforts, floating his astral head and shoulders inside the Humvee to find out what the Commander was making of the situation.

"Sir, something doesn't add up here," a technician was pointing out to the commander as Kevin entered the Humvee. "Take a look at this," the woman said, typing commands into her computer and making its video display rewind in a blur.

The commander moved up to watch over the technician's shoulder; Kevin hovered over the other one, worried about what she was going to tell her commander.

"This is Agent Brooks' video feed, low-light enhanced," the woman explained as she started the video again. "He zoomed in on CO Feldspar's jacket, presumably to see what he was showing the plant," she continued as Kevin watched what had just happened a few moments before for the second time. "Now watch closely..." she continued, entering a command that slowed the video's playback. Kevin grimaced as the camera slowly zoomed in on Feldspar's gun, knowing what she was going to point out.

"Agent Donner's scans indicate the woman is wearing lasers, but you can see the gun being disabled here, either by telekinesis or ferromanipulation with a great deal of precision..."

Kevin floated back out of the Humvee, then flashed across the garage to the personnel exit, floating through it and into the office building. Discovering the parking garage led into a small visitor's lobby, Kevin concentrated on the desk and floated it across the room to drop into place in front of the door, which opened into the building. Having blocked that exit from the parking garage, Kevin floated back through the door and flashed across the garage to its fire exit. Floating through that door onto the street outside, Kevin glanced around in desperation, looking for something to block that exit with as well.

Silently sighing without lungs, Kevin settled for telekinetically dragging a parked motorcycle up over the curb and knocking it over only inches short of the fire exit. He knew he would be trashed when he returned to his body and that Josh would rightly give him hell for it, but it wasn't as if he had much choice.

Floating back into the garage, Kevin panicked to see a number of GSAgents gathered around the Humvee, the commander addressing all of them at once. Obviously, they were suspicious and about to move out. Kevin flashed across the room to the roll up door, floating up to examine the automated opening mechanism. Grinning in relief to find it partially exposed, Kevin stared in urgent concentration at the portion of the drive chain he could see, snapping it cleanly in two. Worried that it wouldn't be enough, he focused on the wheel the chain passed over, wrenching it out of place on its axle and jamming the door in its closed position.

As he turned to see if anyone had noticed the sounds of the door's mechanism being destroyed, Kevin grinned to see a fusebox in the far corner of the garage. He concentrated, feeling the effort of it now that he had done so much telekinetically while in astral form, and flashed across the garage to the box. Another moment's concentration destroyed the fusebox's lock and opened it, and a moment more firmed Kevin's telekinetic grip on the master power switch. He flipped the switch to the OFF position, then tore it out of the fusebox as cries of alarm went up from the GSAgents.

Kevin flashed straight up, back high enough into the sky to reorient himself on the alleyway between Beaumont and Lexington, then flashed back to it, hoping Eve and Lexa hadn't gotten in over their heads while he was gone.

"Well, you can propose whatever you like, but I need some verification as well," Feldspar told Eve, folding his arms crossly. "So far, you've tried to get me to curb my agency's efforts in a number of ways, but you haven't offered me anything in return for my efforts to try to appease you. What can you tell me about this mysterious leader of Mutant X, or at least to lead me to believe you actually have any concrete information at all?"

"Well, Gosh, maybe I'm the secret leader of Mutant X and this is all a set-up," Eve said sarcastically as she rolled her eyes and crossed her arms in a huff.

Kevin floated up behind Eve, concentrating on the thin braid of bright red hair that Eve had added as an extension to fit the look of her disguise. The back of her motorcycle jacket was black, providing a high contrast for the extension to display itself against. Frowning in concentration, knowing he was going to have a migraine that would last for hours if not more when he returned to his body, Kevin carefully manipulated the braid of fake hair. It twisted at his command, forming itself into cursive script against Eve's back, making five words in quick succession for Lexa to see:

MANY – GSA – NEARBY — AGENTS – WORRY
Kevin relaxed his telekinesis after that, worried he might need it again in the immediate future and worried more that he might simply pass out when he returned to his body. He just didn't have the focus left to have spelled out "worried", much less "suspicious", and wasn't sure if Eve's extension was long enough for that, anyway.

As Lexa quietly commed the rest of the team to join them, a small, stocky man with spiky black hair and a goatee walked into the alley, heading towards Eve and Feldspar. Farther down the alley on the fire escape and in other hidden locations around the area, pairs of GSAgents were receiving an urgent transmission:

'All agents, move in! Repeat, all agents, move in; it's a trick!'
"What do you mean, a set-up?" Feldspar asked suspiciously, frowning distrustfully at Eve.

"Oh, please, learn to take a joke," Eve said in vexation, rolling her eyes more drastically than ever. Lexa stepped closer after turning away to comm the others, then tapped Eve's back with her finger: tap-tap-tap tap. tap. tap. tap-tap-tap . Eve knew Lexa was informing her that Lexa had sent an SOS; the brief Morse Code message was a signal they had predetermined, a way for Lexa to communicate with Eve silently while she was cloaked. Noticing that their backup was joining them, Lexa began moving out of the alley, heading for him and hoping to throw Feldspar's detection ability off.

"Here, how about I offer up an inside man?" Eve continued as the stocky man approached, noting that Feldspar had already turned to peer over her shoulder before her teammate had gotten close. "I solemnly swear this is a member of Mutant X," she continued, holding up her right hand as she smirked. "I know you caught some of his team last night, so you probably recognize him, right?" she asked as Chris turned to face her when he got to her side, partially revealing his profile in the light from the street.

"Hey, remember me?" he asked as he turned his head to face Feldspar again. "You kind of left me hanging this afternoon, asshole. Good thing my girl here figured out how to break your control. The thing is, she's not a New Mutant."

Feldspar blinked in surprise to see Chris as well as at his statement, then jerked his head to one side abruptly. Chris had been staring between Feldspar's eyes at the bridge of his nose, not meeting his eyes, but he couldn't help their gazes crossing when Feldspar moved just that smallest amount. Feldspar's eyes flashed silver grey in the darkness of the alley, seizing control of his victim's body.

Jamie, still wearing Chris' form because Feldspar had not commanded his body to stop maintaining it, turned and yelled at Eve. At the same time, chaos broke out as a dozen GSAgents in full-body black riot gear stormed into the alley from both ends, charging down fire escapes and out the back doors of buildings that accessed the alley.

The real Chris, across Lexington from the mouth of the alley and also listening to Eve's phone unknowingly atop the building GSAgent Brooks and his nightvision camera were in, screamed down at the alley-intersection of the street below. He was too far away to do more to the GSAgents dashing into the alley than give them a headache, but that wasn't his purpose. His cry spiraled up into something like a vibrato High C except far more devastating, dispersing across the large distance to shatter all the street lights below and plunge the alleyway into darkness.

On the rooftop up Lexington, the rest of Mutant X was moving to join their teammates.

Brennan shoved his hands down at the rooftop, kinetic lightning bolts blasting out of them to thrust him into the sky with his electropropulsion ability. He was headed for the rooftop across from the alley, to pick up Chris and deliver them both to the scene.

Shalimar and Owen sprinted for the edge of the rooftop, leaping over it and dropping to the shorter building next door, dashing across it toward the alley. The building on the far side of the alley was only three stories tall, short enough that they could both drop to the ground below with their Feral strength and agility.

Frowning with worry and grumbling under his breath, Josh stood and scooped Kevin's motionless form into his arms, passing him reluctantly into Jesse's grasp after replacing Kevin's phone in his pocket.

"You're sure this is going to work?" Josh asked worriedly, grabbing Jesse's arm before he could turn away with the burden of Josh's unconscious boyfriend.

"Positive," Jesse answered with a reassuring smile. "Though actually, it'll go better if you help me up onto the wall, here. It's kinda tough with my arms full."

"Jesus Christ, this is a bad idea..." Josh muttered, taking Kevin back from Jesse's arms and jerking his chin at the low safety wall. "Okay, you climb up there first, and I'll pass him to you."

Jesse obliged, climbing up onto the rooftop's low wall, then put his arms at a more accessible height for Josh by crouching. Josh rolled his eyes and used his Feral strength to lift Kevin's 160 pounds without visible strain, depositing his comatose lover in Jesse's arms.

"Okay. Let us land first, then follow," Jesse warned Josh. "There might be shrapnel from our impact, wouldn't want you to get hit," he finished, then massed himself and Kevin in his arms; then he jumped off the roof.

Frowning in doubt and worry, Josh immediately planted his hands on the low wall and leaned out to watch Jesse and Kevin drop, hitting the sidewalk below with an audible CRACK. Josh's eyes flared into their jade green Feral mode, watching closely to make sure Kevin was okay. Sighing in relief when he saw that the cracking had been the sidewalk, which Jesse stepped back up onto out of the holes the impact of his feet had made, Josh hopped over the wall and dropped to the sidewalk below. Jesse unmassed as Josh landed, then handed Kevin's inert form to him before they both turned to dash down the street to the alley.

Feldspar pressed himself back against a wall, blinking in surprise as GSAgents poured into the alley. He turned back to Jamie, figuring the Elemental shout must be something different than normal shouting, so Feldspar didn't know how to trigger it. He much preferred possessing Ferals; their abilities were passive, not requiring the mental activation of an Elemental or Molecular's abilities. Since he couldn't get Jamie to yell any louder than a normal person, not realizing he was looking at an Elastic Molecular instead of the Sonic Elemental he thought he was, he directed Jamie's body to attack Eve.

Jamie lunged at Eve, throwing a moderately decent punch with every ounce of force he could. Eve frowned as she effortlessly parried the attack; it hadn't been bad, but it wasn't very skilled, either. Apparently Feldspar tended to throw everything his victims' bodies had into their attacks, not caring about the self-inflicted damage such acts would cause and using greater-than-normal force to make up for his lack of skill. Maybe it was hard to coordinate a body's movements into proper combat if you were running it secondhand, but either way, Eve's martial training and experience was more than enough to keep any of Feldspar's puppet-blows from striking her.

"We're not mutants, that shout came from outside the alley!" Eve yelled as the GSAgents rushed up to them. "It's Feldspar! He's the traitor; he's a New Mutant, did something to James, made him attack me!"

"Lying! She's lying!!" Feldspar protested, obviously panicking as his men leveled their weapons at both him and Eve where she had bent Jamie's arms behind his back. In an elastically shapeshifted state such a position wouldn't hurt him in the slightest, but of course Feldspar didn't know Jamie was elastic, much less that he wasn't Chris.

"Hi, not a mutant?" Eve snapped sarcastically at Feldspar as they were surrounded by GSAgents, reaching her left hand out into the light of one agent's flashlight to display the chromium contacts in its forefinger and thumb. "Pretty laser lightshow built into my earrings?" she continued in irritation, tapping her thumb against her forefinger to cause the red glow to blink on and off in front of her forehead. Eve held her thumb in position to maintain the hologram, then reached up with her left hand and used its three free fingers to cut off the laser coming from her left earring, causing the hologram to wink out. She opened and closed those three fingers of her left hand in front of her earlobe as an agent shined his flashlight on her ear but not her forehead, making it obvious the red glow was indeed coming from her jewelry.

"What, did you think James here was really that Sonic Elemental from last night?" she snarled. "They freaking escaped; God only knows where they've gotten to by now!"

"Bullshit! I saw him this afternoon..." Feldspar objected angrily, then cut himself off as he realized what he had just admitted to.

"Oh yeah? How did you manage that if you're not the traitor? How'd you meet up with a member of Mutant X if you're not a New Mutant? Maybe you've caught so many mutants because you use your mind control to make them surrender without a fight, keep yourself looking squeaky-perfect clean?" Eve asked derisively as she let go of Jamie and straightened up.

"Look," she said to the agents covering them, gesturing at Jamie. "He's not even straightening up, falling down, nothing! He's under Feldspar's control; didn't you have anybody with a camera, see his eyes flash?"

Feldspar knocked his head back against the wall he was braced against, closing his eyes in frustration. "He is not!" Feldspar protested, releasing Jamie from his power with his eyes closed so that none of the agents would see the telltale flash of his ability.

Jamie remained in the bent over position he was in with his arms behind his back, his unlit face pointed at the ground and not in anyone's sight as he stretched his features into a blend of Chris' and his own. He subtly redistributed his body to be slightly leaner and taller than Chris, which no one would notice him doing with his frame bent over the way it was.

'Guys, come in quietly, if you can!' Lexa told her teammates over their commrings. 'Eve might pull this off yet, but she or Jamie might end up needing an extraction, could go either way.'

On the rooftop across the street from the alley's entrance, Brennan swore as he heard Lexa's update.

"Well, crap, so much for flying down to the rescue," he muttered, looking down at the darkened alley below.

"I'm really okay with that part of the plan being canceled, actually," Chris said, glancing up to give Brennan a nervous grin. "Acrophobic, remember? The flying-in-piggyback and unleashing Elemental Havoc on the GSA sounded good, but that was before I had to stare over this edge to shout out the lights. I really don't think I can do this," Chris admitted, trying to sound casually flippant and make a joke out of it, but Brennan could see the bright shine of true fear in Chris' eyes.

"Okay, Man," Brennan reassured Chris with a nod, clapping a hand to his shoulder. They both pretended not to notice that said shoulder was trembling a bit as Brennan let go and turned to trot across the roof to the back of the building. "Looks like I'm not flying in, either. I can drop off the back of the building and land on the street below, take the long way around to the alley, but you're going to have to take the fire escape all the way down; the Helix is still on the roof up the street where we were waiting."

"Screw that," Chris chuckled. "You guys dropped me off here and flew off down the street so Feldspar wouldn't detect so many New Mutants all together so close to his meeting point; I spent the time waiting picking the lock to the roof access," he said, pointing at the tiny shack-like structure with its single door on one side of the roof. "I'm hoping this place has an elevator, but it'll at least have real stairs, not a damn fire escape to drop to the street from at the end!"

"Alright," Brennan laughed. "You might still miss all the action, but maybe Lexa'll be right and there won't be any. See you there," he finished, then vaulted over the roof's edge, his windbreaker fluttering behind his back as he dropped out of sight. Chris shuddered and trusted Brennan to know what he was doing with his powers to save himself from the fall. He didn't go to check; he'd had enough looking over the edges of multiple story buildings for one night. Chris headed for the access stairs and started down.

Owen nodded to Shalimar that he had heard Lexa's quiet caution to approach subtly from her commring, neither of them breaking stride as they raced across the rooftops. They continued on to the roof's edge of the taller building on their side of the alley, peering over it with their eyes in their golden and green-brown Feral modes, watching and listening to see what the situation in the alley below was, to determine whether they needed to jump in fists flying or hold their position.

"This is ridiculous!" Feldspar protested, carefully not moving. "I demand an explanation! This woman is not a GSAgent; she called me earlier today to arrange this meeting, supposedly concerning information regarding Mutant X!"

"That's right," Eve said in her normal speaking voice, folding her arms after handing one of her earrings to an agent to examine. "And you have no idea why all these agents are here, you expected to be alone, because you didn't receive the email notification of this action. And do you know why you didn't receive notification? Because this operation was designed to catch a New Mutant traitor within the GSA, namely you. The notice was phrased to indicate the 'unknown leader' of Mutant X would be present and of course did not announce the suspicion of you just in case any of the agents in the Division mistakenly attempted to verify the operation with you as their Commanding Officer."

"That's absurd!" Feldspar hollered, his face visibly flushing with rage even in the darkness of they alley. "All of you, listen to me, I've been your Commanding Officer for how long now? And have any of you even seen this woman before? She contacted me; she must have planted that notification somehow!" he barked, flecks of spittle flying from his lips in his rage.

"Please," Eve countered with a dismissive frown. "Ohhh, yeaaah, I'ma super-computer-genius!" she mocked, momentarily slipping back into her biker persona as she waved her hands in fearful parody. She snorted dismissively as she unbuttoned one cuff of her jacket, rolling up the sleeve and offering her forearm to the agents on that side of her. "I'm not a New Mutant, and I'm willing to come quietly back to HQ and submit myself to genetic testing to verify that. Are you, Mr. Feldspar? You wanna release James here from your control so he can be tested too?" she asked derisively, gesturing with her extended hand at Jamie where he was still bent over.

"I ALREADY DID...!" he shouted in fury, his face livid with color and screwed up in a rictus of outrage, then falling slack as the color drained from it when he realized what she had tricked him into admitting.

Eve folded her arms again, one still half-bared, smirking as the GSAgents all turned to cover Feldspar with their weapons, no longer pointing them at Eve.

Feldspar snarled in berserk fury, thrusting his hand into his jacket and seizing his gun. He whipped his hand back out from beneath his jacket, the muzzle of his gun pointed directly at Eve's face, and pulled the trigger.

The trigger failed to move, since the safety was locked in position after Kevin destroyed it.

One of the GSAgents stepped up to Feldspar and Eve, pointing his own gun at Feldspar's face.

"Drop It!" the man barked, unknowingly making the mistake of meeting Feldspar's eyes. Even as he snarled in anger and threw his gun to the ground, Feldspar's eyes flashed argent grey as he activated his power, shimmering silver as he mentally seized control of the threatening agent's body.

Eve saw Feldspar's eyes flash and knew she was in great danger, but even as she was reacting, turning to dive to one side, hoping to dodge the bullet, hoping that aiming someone else's arm from outside their point of view would be tricky, the GSAgent was already moving. Feldspar's volatile emotional state was driving his mental commands to the agent's body, pushing him to act with even more deadly intent than Feldspar normally directed his puppets with. Eve was only drawing an alarmed breath and beginning to tense her body to drop lower and twist away to leap as the possessed man turned forty-five degrees to open fire on her.

Shalimar and Owen swore in sync, leaping across the alley to drop to the lower roof on its other side, then into the alley below. They were both silently cursing their waiting on the first side of the alley, knowing the precious seconds it cost to make another leap would make them too late to help the immediate problem. Shalimar snarled in fury, knowing they could have landed quietly enough to avoid attracting attention; all of the agents in the alley had been focused on the drama immediately before them. Owen was also angry, but he was merely praying that Eve would somehow escape, maybe Lexa could blind the agent, or shoot his gun with a laser...

Lexa had unfortunately moved to the mouth of the alley in her attempt to distract Feldspar by making the New Mutant he was detecting from Eve move while she remained talking to him. Then the GSAgents had rushed in and were now between her and Eve and Feldspar, preventing her from even seeing clearly what was going on, much less having a clear shot at the possessed agent.

Brennan was still circling the building Chris had been on top of across the street from the alley, and Chris was still inside it, rushing down to the street level.

Jesse and Josh were still approaching the alley, not quite there yet because they were pacing themselves to conserve their breath for the fight. As a Feral, Josh could have sprinted there and still been capable of fighting, but he didn't want to jostle Kevin's inert form that badly nor leave his boyfriend's body unprotected at the scene of a fight with an unknown number of combatants. Jesse required breath control to use his Molecular abilities, so sprinting a number of blocks into a fight wasn't exactly an option.

Kevin only had a split second to react, and he knew even as he telekinetically seized the GSAgent's arm that the effort would be too much and exhaust the last of his abilities for the moment. Reacting purely on instinct even as the thought that it would be his only action crossed his mind, Kevin yanked the possessed agent's arm to the side, which resulted in his gun being pointed at Feldspar once more instead of Eve.

The gun went off, the agent pulling the trigger even as his arm was yanked aside. Feldspar collapsed with an aborted cry.

Kevin's body jolted in Josh's arms, his hazel eyes snapping open so wide the whites showed all the way around his irises as he looked up into Josh's Feral green eyes in panic.

"NO! NO, I DIDN'T MEAN..." he gasped, clutching wildly at his lover as Josh lurched to a stop.

"Kevin!" Josh cried out, struggling to keep from dropping Kevin's writhing form, hold him in reassurance, and avoid Kevin's flailing right arm that was almost hitting him in the face all at the same time. "Kevin, what is it, what—Kevin!" Josh yelled as Kevin went into shock, his body's motions going from distressed writhing to full-blown seizure as his eyes rolled back in his head. Josh could feel the tremors afflicting his boyfriend's body as well as the random muscular contractions of seizure; between that and the cold sweat that had soaked his clothes in the scant seconds since he had stopped astral projecting, Josh knew at least part of what had happened. Kevin had done just as he had feared, pushed himself too far and too hard in astral form, using his telekinesis until he hurt himself. And something else had happened as well, Josh was sure Kevin had been emotionally distressed too; he had been panicked before losing consciousness, which could only be making matters worse.

"What happened!?" Jesse asked as he rushed up. Josh had already dropped to the ground, turning his boyfriend to pillow Kevin's head on his crossed calves as usual, but at that moment it was to keep Kevin from cracking his skull against the sidewalk. Josh had already yanked his shirt off, folding and twisting it into a cross between a pad and a gag, inserting it between Kevin's teeth and holding it in place with his hands outside of Kevin's mouth before a jaw spasm could make him bite his tongue severely.

"Here, no, turn him on his side, recovery position, so he doesn't choke," Jesse instructed, turning Kevin and showing Josh how to help so that Kevin was lying on his side, his thrashing head still cushioned by Josh's lower legs. Jesse arranged Kevin's arms and legs in the recovery position, gently restricting their movement so he couldn't slam them into the pavement, but not holding him down and running the risk of Kevin injuring himself.

Kevin's seizure only grew worse, his body convulsing harder and harder.

Eve dove aside as the gun went off; she heard Feldspar's cry and someone collapsing to the ground even as she dove to it herself.

"Don't shoot! Don't Shoot!" she called out as she rolled and got her feet back under herself. "It's Feldspar's control..." Eve paused for the fraction of an instant it took her to verify that it was Feldspar who had fallen. "..He's down, threat ended, nobody shoot!"

Feldspar's wail of agony echoed up from the alley's surface where he had fallen. The gathered GSAgents lurched into action, cries of "We need a medic!" "Crisis Team, report to Target Area!" and other Black Ops lingo were hurriedly flung about, even as chaos reigned over their radios as the Mobile Command Base continued to insist they were under attack.

"Shal, I saw you guys leap the alley, don't jump down here, just get back to the Helix. I think we're done here; I'm just going to get Eve and Jamie out," Lexa whispered into her commring as she slipped out of the alley. Deactivating her light-cloak caused only the smallest shimmer of light, since the intersection of Lexington with the alley was almost entirely dark after Chris' shout. Lexa slipped back into the alley after comming Shalimar; she had seen Jesse and Josh and Kevin down the street, something was wrong there, but she was the best bet for getting Eve and Jamie out of the alley. They'd be back to help the boys in a minute, she hoped.

Eve had quietly stood up and stepped back to get out of the way of the GSAgents rushing in to stabilize Feldspar. The other agents were gathering in a huddle, trying to sort out the confusing messages coming from their Mobile Base, too many people all trying to use the same frequency at once.

Jamie had stealthily picked up one agent's helmet that had been set aside as the man tried to assess the extent of Feldspar's wound. Phrases like "cranial trauma" and "probable skull fracture" and "possible brain injury" were being hastily reported into a radio set to a different frequency, communicating with either an ambulance dispatch service or the GSA's own equivalent. The agent certainly wasn't paying any attention to his discarded helmet, and the one holding the flashlight for him to work by had kicked it aside, so Jamie graciously removed it for them.

He placed it on his own head before standing up, stretching to make himself taller and broad-shouldered, thankful the baggy pants he had worn in his Chris disguise didn't look too short thanks to the heavy riot gear-style combat boots he was wearing under them. Jamie took a radio and shoulder mic out of his pockets and clipped them to his hip and shoulder as he stood, peeling the black patches off his upper arms to reveal the white letters GSA applied there, just like on the other agents' riot gear uniforms. The disguise wasn't a perfect match, Jamie didn't have any armor on other than the borrowed helmet, but it was enough to make him blend with the crowd of other agents. Their eyes passed over him as any of the agents glanced around the scene, rather than noting him as the "James" that the unidentified plant agent had referred to. Sooner or later someone was going to figure out Eve was not any more legit than she was a New Mutant, but they hoped to be long gone by then.

Eve and Jamie slowly backed towards the entrance to the alley, doing nothing to attract attention to themselves, merely keeping out of everyone else's way in such a fashion that gradually worked them closer to the street. After a moment Lexa came up behind them and took their wrists; dressed in her standard outfit of all black, she hardly stood out at all in a dark alley behind a bunch of riot-geared GSAgents.

Lexa triggered her cloak, a vague shimmer from the refracted backwash of the flashlights passing over the three of them as they faded from sight. Lexa carefully tugged on Eve and Jamie's wrists to guide them through turning one hundred eighty degrees with herself as the central axis, then tugged them forward once she was sure she'd gotten them oriented, guiding them out of the alley.

Brennan came stealthily running around the side of the building across from the alley, then ran past the alley and the commotion of noises coming from it when he saw his three teammates on the ground a bit shy of where the functioning street lights ended. Something was quite obviously very wrong; it looked like Jesse and Josh were struggling with Kevin, and was Josh gagging him? Had Feldspar possessed Kevin somehow?

"Guys!? What happened?" Brennan asked in a rush as he skidded to a stop at their side.

"Brennan! Quick, get the Helix, fly, Kevin needs medical..." Jesse began urgently, but Josh cut him off.

"NO! Brennan, zap him! Just like we did for Shal and Chris, stimulate a response out of his brain. He's having a seizure, pushed his powers too far, his brain's shorting out, you need to get his brain to respond, like in the lab..." Josh babbled at Brennan, his eyes so wide they were almost round, shining brightly with panic.

"Dude, Josh, man, I'm sorry, but No," Brennan said with a frown, holding his hands up in a plea for understanding. "A seizure is exactly what you said, a mental short circuit. That's one of the dangers of my powers; I might accidentally fry somebody's head, if they have an epileptic condition, or even the potential of one, whether anybody knows about it or not. If Kevin's brain is shorting, it won't respond to my shock, or not properly. It's too risky, Man."

Josh blinked rapidly, several times in succession even as his lover twitched uncontrollably in his lap, then yanked Kevin's "gag" out of his mouth, placing it under his head instead as Josh sprang to his feet. Jesse scrambled to keep Kevin's head from striking the sidewalk when his back spasmed as Josh leaped forward and grabbed Brennan by the shirt, yanking him down so that he could snarl into Brennan's face.

"DO IT!" Josh snapped, then his glaring eyes softened into panic once more. "Brennan, please, help him," he begged, fear not only for his lover's safety but dawning horror of what it would mean if Kevin couldn't be helped entering his eyes. Josh wore his emotions not just on his sleeve but painted clearly on his chest, and they were mercurial yet intense, to say the least.

"Do it, Brennan," Jesse said in a hard voice. "Knock him out; it'll work," he finished. Brennan tipped his head to look past the side of Josh's, seeing that Jesse was actually pointing at Josh from behind his back where the Feral couldn't see him, still keeping watch over Kevin's convulsing form.

Brennan sighed, lowering his head in remorse, then grabbed Josh and shocked him senseless. A Feral was a lot more likely to recover from a hefty jolt of electricity than someone experiencing seizure was from a minor one.

"He'll be fine, Go, get the Helix," Jesse urged Brennan as the Elemental lowered Josh to the sidewalk. Brennan nodded and looked back towards the building where they had waited, carefully positioning himself and calculating his trajectory before blasting himself into the air once more.

"Oh my God! Jesse, what happened!?" Eve called in a stage whisper as she, Jamie, and Lexa ran up to them.

"Josh said Kevin pushed his powers too far; he's having a seizure. Josh was freaking out, wouldn't listen to reason, Brennan had to knock him out. We didn't have time to be gentle."

"No, you were right, this is bad; I've never seen Kevin like this, seizure..." Eve murmured in worried agreement as Jamie took over restraining Kevin's arms. Jamie's elastic body was more efficient at keeping Kevin from inadvertently hurting himself; even if a spasm smacked their arms into the ground, Jamie's rubbery elastic form could absorb the impact. He stretched his way under Kevin's head and shoulders to cushion his upper body as Jesse moved back and positioned his own thighs to keep Kevin from smashing either of his knees into the sidewalk.

"What can we do?" Lexa asked in concern. "I mean, I could probably trigger a seizure in someone who's prone to them, photosensitive, but I don't think flashing lights in his eyes is going to help."

"No, afraid not," Eve answered distractedly as she dropped to her leather-armored knees at Kevin's side. She fumbled with the button of the cargo pocket on Kevin's thigh, grimacing in angry frustration when her leather-gloved fingers couldn't work the tight button. She quickly tried to pull her right glove off with her left hand, but the glossy red leather of her fingers merely slipped past one another in her haste. Further frustration contorted her angry face as she stuck the fingertips of her right hand in her mouth, tugging at the glove with her teeth. Naturally, the leather that wouldn't stick to its mate was bound fast to her skin by sweat, even with a space-age nylon lining.

"Dammit, get these things off me!" she barked, holding her hands up for Lexa and Jesse to assist as she bowed her head. Hiding her face only left her looking down at Kevin's, which was flushed, sweating heavily, and twitching with nervous tics brought on by his seizure. She swallowed, closing her eyes as a tear slipped out from beneath one eyelid. She wasn't sure how long Kevin's seizure had been going on before she arrived, but she could tell it was serious, and the longer his brain's signals were misfiring the greater the chance of there being permanent damage grew.

Firm hands grabbed the fingers and wrist of Eve's right hand, efficiently stripping the clumsy motorcycle glove off of it. Those hands instantly moved to her left hand, baring it as well as Eve looked up and saw the warm concern of Chris' face looking down at her.

"Seizure?" he asked simply as he moved back out of the way, so that the street lights could let Eve see what she was doing again. "Is this the epic version of the shakes he gets when he uses his TK in astral form?"

"Yeah," Eve answered, her voice shaky but her hands steady as she unbuttoned Kevin's side pocket, opening it and withdrawing a compact medical kit. "I'm sedating him," she went on, withdrawing the correct hypospray and taking Kevin's pulse with the fingers of her other hand. "Generally a normal seizure just has to be left to run its course, but I'm not sure about Kevin's, being brought on by his powers. We'll need the Helix's facilities at the minimum to determine that. In the meanwhile, relaxing his body will make it less likely to hurt itself," she explained as she prepared the dosage, using the routine of exposition to calm herself, stowing her worries at the back of her mind where they couldn't impact her performance. She applied the sedative to Kevin's neck, over the jugular vein, ensuring the drug would be rushed to his heart and then through his system in the least time possible.

Scant moments later, Kevin's body relaxed, only twitching feebly instead of thrashing about wildly and running serious risk of Kevin injuring himself against the concrete ground. Seconds after that, the telltale muted roar of the Double Helix lowering itself into position came from just yards away, the rear hatch opening and Owen leaping out with a miniature stretcher before Brennan had even finished landing the Helix.

Disoriented, feeling like he'd had a weekend-long bender involving every recreational drug under the sun and his body weight in alcohol, Kevin cracked his bleary eyes open.

"Whappen?" he murmured, assuming Josh or at least someone would be present to answer his question. He was confused, wasn't sure how he had ended up. . .wherever he was, what had happened; he wasn't even sure what the last thing he could remember was.

"Kevin!?" Josh's voice came in a weak croak. Kevin felt the edge of the bed he was lying on move as Josh shifted his weight; he guessed from the sounds of it and Josh's voice that Josh had been asleep with his head resting on his folded arms on the side of the bed. He vaguely wondered if Josh had found a chair or if the funny bed was low, maybe he'd been sitting on the floor?

The dim lighting darkened even more as Josh's face popped into Kevin's field of vision, blocking some of the faint light coming from elsewhere in the room. There was still enough light for Kevin to see the worry and concern on Josh's face, the fatigue and shadows under his eyes as he stared down into Kevin's, his long bangs hanging forward and almost tickling the sides of Kevin's face.

"Ohgod, Kev, you're awake, thank god, you're okay; are you okay?" Josh said in a rush, one hand cupping the side of Kevin's face, gently, like he was afraid anything more might hurt Kevin.

"What– –happened?" Kevin asked, his mouth and throat dry, hoping his confusion was evident in his gummy eyes.

"God, here..." Josh murmured, quickly turning away and standing to reach for something Kevin couldn't see. He came back to perch on the edge of the bed up by the head, sliding his left arm under Kevin's back and behind the back of his neck to lift him slightly, into a more comfortable drinking position as Josh offered Kevin the straw of a cup of water with his right hand.

Kevin drank eagerly, realizing he was parched, and the water was refreshing but not too cold. He stopped after a moment, knowing drinking too much would be a bad idea if he'd been unconscious for very long, which he certainly had if Josh had passed out waiting for him to wake up. Even if the water was extremely good.

"What happened to me?" he asked after clearing his throat, grateful his mind was clearing as well, but still unable to remember.

"I. . .was hoping you could tell me," Josh said quietly. Kevin frowned, knowing Josh was restraining himself from expressing anger. Had he done something, to make Josh angry? He couldn't remember. . .he was hurt, in the medical lab, he recognized it now. . .he must have done something Josh thought was stupid, hurt himself...

"I. . .pushed myself..." Kevin guessed, but he knew it was at least part of what had happened, he recognized how trashed he felt, but this was way worse than any previous drain he had experienced...

"Damn right you did!" Josh snapped as he clutched Kevin's hand in both of his own. The grin he turned to Kevin was all teeth and distrubingly bright but narrowed eyes, fierce yet sad and not having anything to do with happiness. "Jesus GOD, Kevin, you pushed yourself into a seizure! A really bad one, like, Eve was afraid you'd cause yourself mental damage," Josh choked out, his face panicked and young as he met Kevin's eyes with tears running from his own. "She said you could have burned out your powers. And God, I don't think I'm ready to let you try them again yet, or will be anytime soon," he whispered in a broken voice.

"I– I'm sorry..." Kevin said, not even knowing what he had done, but knowing that if it had caused his lover that much distress, he regretted it. "I know you always worry I'm pushing too far, and I always feel like I had to, but..."

"No, no..." Josh said, cutting Kevin off with a bitter laugh and and stroking his forearm with one hand while he continued to hold Kevin's hand with his other. "You did have to, this time. It was a stupid plan, making you backup in astral form, and I said so from the beginning, and God knows I'll be bringing this up next time, but you were saving Eve's life." Josh returned his gaze to meet Kevin's, his sorrowful eyes softer as he leaned in and reached to cup the side of Kevin's face with his hand once more.

"I don't know what you were doing before the dramatic ending there, but there was an interesting story about a bunch of government Men In Black setting off a fire alarm in a parking garage nearby. . .apparently a motorcycle had been knocked over just outside the fire exit, so they couldn't get out that way. They couldn't get out of the garage into the building, either, and the garage's main door was damaged, from the inside." Josh smirked down at Kevin as he playfully tapped his cupped hand against the side of Kevin's face. "You wouldn't know anything about that, wouldja?"

"Afraid I don't, but I'll admit it sounds like my work..." Kevin answered with a smirk of his own. "What happened to Eve?"

"You remember Feldspar? GSA bigwig, actually a Psionic, we were trying to set up yesterday, the gang told us about their exciting lunch at Eloy's after we got back from the matinee?" Josh asked with his brow crinkled into a hopeful frown.

"Okay, vaguely. . .Eve was going to set up a meeting with him, a set-up?" Kevin frowned in response.

"Yeah," Josh nodded. "He could detect New Mutants, so Lexa went invisible and stuck to Eve like glue to fool him, so the only other backup Eve could have was you in astral form. I guess you found the mob of other GSAgents in that parking garage somehow, so you had to stop them, and then when his cover was blown, Feldspar whammied one of his men, made him shoot at Eve. You yanked the guy's arm aside, but it was too much, for you, after..."

Josh's voice trailed off quietly, staring into the distance and obviously thinking of something unpleasant.

"What is it?" Kevin asked, reaching up to put his other hand over Josh's where it held his first one. Kevin squeezed Josh's hand, equally sure that he both did and didn't want to know.

"Well. . .it was an accident," Josh said with a shrug. "You yanked the shooter's aim wide, and that kicked you back to your body. You were upset, panicked, but you went into seizure before you could tell me anything, just said you didn't mean to. . .the bullet hit Feldspar. Jamie gave me the reports as they came in; Eve's bugs are still active. . .turns out the bullet clipped the back of Feldspar's skull, right over the. . .occipital lobe, I think Jamie said? Anyway, it or the chip of skull or something damaged his visual cortex. Feldspar's blind; his powers worked through eye contact, so he's not a worry anymore."

"Wow," Kevin said in response, unsure what to think. He couldn't feel guilty over something he didn't remember, had been accidental, and turned out well in the end. "Are we okay?" he asked instead, squeezing Josh's hand again as he looked up into his lover's eyes.

"God, yes, Kev; don't even worry about it!" Josh insisted, sliding off the bed to kneel next to it, shifting one arm under Kevin's back to drag him to the edge of the bed where Josh could bend over him to hug him properly. "I know I'm ridiculous, that you have to take chances just like the rest of us. . .Shal gave me a hard talk while you were out, dragged me off after Eve was done treating you and Jamie had figured out what else had been going on –and you can imagine how much I liked being dragged off– but Shal explained a few things to me, about being too Feral, about making things worse with the best intentions, overprotectiveness, like that.

"We're good, and I'm going to do better. I Love You, Kevin, and that's all there is to it," he finished with a firm nod.

"I Love You, too, Josh," Kevin said in turn, smiling up into his lover's warm eyes.