1X05 – Second Star to the Right – Act IV | X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

1X05 – Second Star to the Right – Act IV

1X05 – Second Star to the Right – Act IV

“This isn’t going to become a habit, is it?” the doctor asked as she joined the Professor and the X-Men team in the infirmary viewing area. Aurora could be seen through the glass, lying passed out on the medical bed. JP was absent, though most were unsure if that was by choice after the talking to Logan gave him.

“How long till she wakes up?” Scott ignored her jib.

“I knocked her out for several hours,” Cecilia informed him.

“How’d you do that?” Bobby asked from where he and Kitty were sitting off to the side. “Did you gas her?”

“Adamantium tipped needles,” she informed him, glancing over at Logan, “expensive but they come in handy. It’s the only metal known to be able to break invulnerable-classified non-metamorphic skin.”

“Did she suffer any damage?” Storm was standing closest to the window. She did what she had to stop Aurora. The troubled mutant discovered one of the reasons the name Ororo is synonymous with Goddess in some parts of the world.

“No,” Cecilia shook her head, “the impact with the ground was enough to knock her out but since her invulnerability is a product of her super strength, which in turn is due to the makeup of her skeletal structure, muscle fibers, skin tissue, etc, you’d need the blast pressure wave of a twenty kiloton bomb before we’d start to see any real internal damage form.”

“Twenty kiloton?” Scott questioned with a raise of his brow.

“Or there abouts,” the doctor shrugged in a general exaggeration, “every super-strength mutant is different and it would take testing to be able to mathematically predict torque, tension and lift ratios.” Cecilia frowned and glanced back at the woman, “Though I think someone took a more hands on approach to figuring all that out.”

“Oh?” everyone’s eyes turned to Cecilia.

“I was able to get some proper x-rays,” she paused, picking her words, “and it looks like Jeanne-Marie has had three major bones broken in the past, I’d say, three, maybe two, years, and a slew of minor ones. Like I said, she might as well have steel bones, but whatever they did to cause hers to break, I don’t even want to think about it.”

“I told you,” Logan spoke with a tinge of a growl, “they break you, it’s what they do.”

…

There was a nice solid crunch and the lock popped, the door swinging wide. Light filtered into the room and reflected off the dust they had disturbed, the area almost glittering. The four figures walked slowly into the living room which was empty save for a few pieces of furniture which were covered with sheets.

“Do we have electricity?” Pyro asked as he played with the light switch.

“No,” Rogue rattled through the memories she saved, “no utilities. Celso found the deed to this place in his mother’s stuff after she died. It’s bought and paid for, no bills, property taxes are paid out of a trust. He’s been trying to figure out what to do with it once he realized it belonged to his grandfather who was going by the name of Perry when he lived here, not Kaminski or Fuchs,” she pulled a flashlight from her pocket. “It was looking into this place that lead him to the name Fuchs though he still doesn’t realize they are the same man.”

“For a lowly lab tech,” Dom mused as the group fanned out in a general perusal of the building, “he went through a lot of trouble. What was he hiding from?”

“Who was he hiding from is the more likely scenario,” Pyro corrected.

“Doesn’t matter,” Quicksilver shut the door behind them, “we only want what he could have hidden. Pyro, do the honors?”

The team went quiet as Pyro started walking forward, slowly glancing around the room, tapping his toes against the floorboards. He shook his head lightly and kept walking, stopping to turn towards a bookcase only to shake his head, “No, easy access.”

Rogue looked over at Dom and they both shrugged, knowing the man tended to mumble during his walkthroughs.

Pyro snapped his fingers, “There’s got to be a basement.”

Dashing down a hall way, using his lighter as a light source, Pyro eventually found the door leading to the basement, taking the stairs three at a time. The team followed a bit more reservedly with flashlights in their hand.

“Hah,” he shouted out, “perfect.”

When they got the bottom, there was a concrete floor complete with a thin layer of dirt from years of being left untouched… and nothing else. A shelf was empty of even random goods such as glass jars full of nuts and bolts. A wooden work bench, just as encrusted in dust, was off to the side but not quite up against the wall.

“Pyro?” Quicksilver questioned.

“Look,” the Aussie got down on his knees next to the table seemingly okay with the amount of dirt that rubbed into his clothing as he wiped at the floor, “there is a crease in the concrete.”

“Yeah?” the leader was not impressed, “they probably laid the floor in sections.”

“Ah, but this is a perfect rectangle,” he slid around the side of one of the legs, clearing out the cut in the concrete with his finger, “it’s hidden by the table, your eyes get distracted off of it.”

Once he pointed it out, Rogue could see the rest of the lines, “He’s right.”

“Dom,” Quicksilver gestured to the floor and Avalanche stepped forward and kneeled, placing his palm on the concrete.

“There’s something down there,” he spoke after a moment and the ground began to lightly shake.

Pyro hopped up and pushed at the work bench, Rogue and Quicksilver joining him to get to out of the way quickly. The floor cracked, chunks of concrete being pushed up and tumbling to the side. Earth followed next, moist, almost like peat moss.

Then up came a long metal box, military style with two locks and faded German lettering.

“Lead us straight to it,” shaking his head, Dom look up at his friend, “never ceases to amaze me how you can do that.”

Pyro shrugged like it was no big deal, “Fuchs went through a lot of trouble to hide himself and if he didn’t take the notes with him then he obviously didn’t them need within easy grasp.”

“So immediately you thought, basement,” Rogue said wryly, knowing how his mind worked.

“Anything else wouldn’t have made sense in the narrative,” he replied blankly.

“Let’s get this opened,” Pietro grabbed the metal handle of the box and Avalanche took the other, hauling it up onto the table.

Touching the edges of the locks, the Greek caused the metal to crumble into dust. The lid was tight against the seals, a vacuum having formed inside. With a grunt, Dom was able to pop the lid, the four of them peering over the sides.

“Yep,” Pyro piped up, “looks like papers to me.”

Rogue rolled her eyes as she and Quicksilver both reached into the box, “Careful,” he told her, “these files have to be at least seventy years old.”

“Well preserved,” she commented, the paper yellowing but not quite brittle, “the air tight seal meant no moisture got in and it was kept cool.”

“I wonder if that was intentional,” Pyro asked and Dom shrugged.

“These look like patient files,” Rogue recognized a few words in German as she flipped through one of the notebooks, faded images of doomed patients sliding about, making her sick to her stomach.

“So,” Pyro sobered up, “he did have Mengele’s stuff.”

“Yeah,” Pietro was glancing through a file.

“Wait,” Rogue didn’t know a lot of German, but she had German speakers in her head and while it wasn’t exactly like having an interpreter on hand, they did point out the meanings to some of the words, such as ‘Behandelnden Arzt’, “look at the signatures on these files, under Attending Physician, that doesn’t read like Mengele to me.”

She held one of the files off to the side so Pyro could look to where she was pointing, “That’s definitely an E… and what are those? N’s? No, that wouldn’t make any sense. S. Ess… Essex.”

Little voices sounded in her head but she couldn’t figure out what they were saying.

“That’s English, not German,” Dom pointed out that the word was more of a typical English surname.

“I burned down a pub in Chelmsford, Essex, once,” Pyro smiled fondly at the memory.

“I know,” Dom frowned at him, thumping him in the shoulder, “I was this close to making it with that blonde who was all legs, some wingman you turned out to be.”

“Two words,” he held up two fingers, “flaming Sambuca.”

“Even if they aren’t Mengele’s,” Quicksilver broke into the conversation and hurriedly, even for him, gestured for Rogue to put the files back into the box, “Magneto may find a use for them. Let’s get going before someone calls to report a break-in.”

“Right,” the whole situation was rather curious but she was glad these weren’t Mengele’s papers, at least she didn’t have to consider what she’d do if they contained the secret to control. The devil would just have to wait for another day to tempt her…

…

Cecilia was going through some of the medical cabinets, looking at what the school had and needed to restock. What they really needed was a full time doctor at the school and while the offer had been given to her, she felt she did more good working in the clinic, helping anyone and everyone who needed it, human and mutant alike.

A soft moan got her attention and she turned to see Jeanne-Marie, or whoever she thought she was, stir softly.

Walking over to her, Cecilia got out her light to check the woman’s eyes to make sure there wasn’t any kind of concussion or other damage as result of the fight. Sure, Jeanne-Marie was invulnerable but that was no reason not to make sure a lucky strike didn’t cause brain injury.

Aurora, must have been Aurora, reached up and violently grabbed Cecilia’s arm while her other hand went for the first thing she could find, the railing of the bed. Ripping up the railing she brought it over to bash Cecilia but it simply dinged off of the psioplasmic bio-field Cecilia was able to form around herself as part of her mutation.

“Are you quite finished?” Cecilia admonished her, “Because if you are I’d like to make sure you’ve had no adverse effects from the fall or the drugs I gave you,” and she added a tad on the snarky side, “if that’s okay with you?”

Working her jaw and attempting to save face, Aurora said, “Whatevers, Doc.”

“Split personality or no, I’ve worked an ER in the Bronx,” she said as she examined Aurora’s pupils which dilated correctly, “your little tough-girl act is a bit of a joke if you ask me.”

“Little tough-girl act?” Aurora got offended, “I could break you in two.”

“Like I haven’t heard that a few million times,” she grabbed a blood pressure monitor and began to wrap it around the woman’s arm, “are you going to say something about capping me next, or my favorite, threaten to turn me into chunky salsa? Breath regularly for a minute.”

Aurora was way too bewildered to give Cecilia any trouble as she filled up the wrap to pressure and then checked her pulse rate.

“Looks good,” she declared as she removed the wrap, “your invulnerability protects you from most injuries but one can never be too sure. Better safe than sorry.”

With that done, Cecilia moved off to write the information down on a chart to put in the woman’s medical file which included the results of the x-rays. Aurora still seemed to be stunned in place so Cecilia decided to push things a bit.

“My compliments to the doctor who set your bones,” she walked over to the light board and gestured to the x-rays which showed unusually dense muscle and bone, “quite nicely done, though I imagine your own muscles helped keep them from getting to far out of place.”

Glancing back at Aurora, a strange look passed across the woman’s face, one Cecilia had seen many times in victims of severe trauma. It was that of wishing they could forget. After a moment, the woman sat up and started to pull the monitor pads from her body, “Yeah, well, no one but the best moved up into the advanced programs.”

“And that’s why Jean-Paul was left behind,” Cecilia said conversationally while she moved to turn off the now squealing equipment which had nothing to monitor, “because while his muscle tissue is like yours, making him invulnerable, his bones aren’t nearly as strong or dense, trying to use his muscles for super strength would snap them in two.”

“As I said,” the woman crossed her arms and looked pointedly at Cecilia, “only the best.”

“Yes,” Cecilia said thoughtfully, “but Jean-Paul’s metabolism, now that’s a work of art, very efficient in how it consumes and distributes energy, so efficient he never gets tired which is why he can run so fast. As a doctor it certainly makes me curious… I’m surprised he wasn’t at least considered for the advanced programs, Class Four or no.”

Aurora stared at her with a blank yet harsh expression, her jaw tight.

“Unless, of course,” Cecilia shrugged, “someone was protecting him?”

“Go back to stitching up bullet wounds the Bronx, chica,” Aurora gave her a snarled look, “cause you don’t know a damn thing about anything else.”

Raising a single eyebrow in doubt, Cecilia was about to comment when Charles and Jean entered the room, the former saying, “Aurora, how are you feeling?”

“Brilliant, thanks,” she said sarcastically as she rolled her eyes and turned to the man.

“I understand that you are now… in charge, as it where?” he said cautiously as he came to a stop just inside the room, Jean standing to his side.

“What did I tell you about staying out of it?” Aurora put her hands on her hips and glared at the man, “but you know what, nevermind. Marie was a weak, simple, little girl who doesn’t deserve to have any fun because she doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.”

“Is that what this is about,” Jean questioned, “having fun?”

“More like actually living your life,” the dark haired woman shot back snidely, “Marie was just too boring, couldn’t even come up with an exciting memory she is so vanilla.”

“You realize Marie is one side of the same coin,” Charles tried, his tone neutral, “and you are the other. I’ve been told that Jeanne-Marie was quite a fun and spirited woman.”

“One who was constantly held back,” her words were full of spite, spreading her arms wide, “but I don’t have that problem anymore.”

“No, you don’t,” another voice joined the conversation and Cecilia saw Jean-Paul enter the room, mentally she started to count down till things would start to get broken.

“Aw, poor little Jean-Paul,” Aurora baited, “guess you’ll just have to get used to your do-what-you-say sister being all gone.”

“I guess I will,” he said evenly, staring at her with a stern jaw that she began to mimic when she realized he wasn’t rising to the bait, “what is it that you want Aurora?”

“What do I want?” she repeated back and a little touch of uncertainty seemed to worm their way into her voice.

“You’re a big girl,” he gave the minutest of shrugs, “you don’t have to answer to me, or anyone, so what do you want?”

She thought about this for a second, then spoke almost like a petulant teenager, “What if I want to leave this daycare?”

Jean Paul was quiet for a long moment, the room going into a very awkward silence that Cecilia was tempted to break, but he finally said, “Okay.”

Aurora didn’t bother to hide the confusion on her face, “Okay?”

“Okay,” he repeated, his face as solid as stone, jaw clenched. There was something in the way he said the word that told the doctor that there was a context she was missing… a conversation that perhaps had already taken place.

“Okay,” this time she was more flippant, walking forward cautiously between the Professor and Jean-Paul, the siblings never breaking eye contact. With one last moment passing between them, the woman swiftly walked away, going through the outer room and out the door.

Once she was gone, JP slumped, Jean walking next to him, placing her hand on his shoulder, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Want, no,” he shook his head sadly, “have to,” he sighed, “I can’t force her better, I’ll only make things more worse than I already have,” pulling away, he headed out of the medical room leaving the three of them in silence.

…

With a backpack full of what few essentials she needed, Aurora looked around her room, correction, Marie’s room, and her eyes fell on a framed picture on the dresser. Heading over, she picked it up and examined the contents.

Marie and Jean-Paul, when they came to the mansion after Jean-Paul had ‘rescued her’.

She didn’t need rescuing. She was Aurora, she was stronger than all this, she had been through hell and back and she didn’t need her guilt-tripped twin to tell her otherwise.

Bollocks to him, she didn’t need his mothering or his help. She didn’t need Marie either. She was perfectly capable of being her own person.

Tears started to trace down her cheek and she idly brushed them away, unsure where they had come from.

With a frustrated growl she slammed the frame down and headed to the window, forcing it open so she could step up on the sill. Barely a glance back, she jumped and flew up into the air, leaving nothing behind but a broken picture in her wake.

X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

A series of short stories in a fictional X-Men TV Universe.