1X06 – The Trask at Hand – Act I | X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

1X06 – The Trask at Hand – Act I

1X06 – The Trask at Hand – Act I

Fred was sitting at his desk in what was a small hole of an office at one of the Homeland Security buildings that Cooper and the council had moved into after the events with the Brotherhood Acolytes. He was typing away at his laptop when Val poked her head through the door. “Find anything?”

“No,” he sighed, glancing up at her, “and I know I’m looking for a shape shifter. Cab companies, security cameras… nothing, no leads. She wanted us to know she was there but didn’t want to get caught, can’t imagine why.”

“She wants Trask to move Sentinel,” Val agreed to his unspoken assessment.

“But if we don’t,” he leaned back in his chair, “she or the Acolytes, or Magneto himself, will work their way to it, they did it before.”

“At least this way, it’ll be on our terms,” Val said dryly, “and I don’t intend to get caught out like last time.”

“Last time?” he played dumb just to see the sour look on her face.

“The Acolytes made fools of us,” she said bitterly, then she got a glint in her eye, “but I’m taking it as a lesson learned.”

“Oh?”

“Call up your X-Men friends,” Val gave him a conspiratorial smile, “odds are they’re going to stick their noses into this anyway, Sentinel’s too dangerous to them not to get involved.”

“They gave Nimrod back,” Fred pointed out.

“After they broke it,” she returned wryly.

“To keep Magneto from getting it,” he frowned.

“So they say,” she wasn’t entirely convinced, “but regardless, I want them where I can see them,” she crossed her arms and left no room to debate, “if they want to ‘be the better person’, then they can prove it.”

Fred considered her for a second, then he gave her a scoffing laugh, “And it’s a move the Acolytes won’t see coming, us actually working together.”

“Got it in one,” she grinned, then gestured to his phone that was lying out on the desk. “Trask wants the Council’s help in moving Sentinel. We move it in two days, Thursday to be exact,” she almost laughed, “I know it’s a school day but they better be ready.”

“They’re not stupid,” he wanted to shake his head at her, “even if I don’t tell them, they’ll know there’s nothing altruistic about this, that you’re using them.”

“I’m not trying to hide it,” she shrugged, then sighed, “I know, they claim to be the good guys, but they’re just as capable as doing untold damage if left unchecked. Now, I’ve seen our government give weapons to the ‘good guys’ to fight other ‘bad guys’,” she exaggerated the words, “then only a decade or so down the line find those weapons turned back on us. I’m not making that mistake here, especially since mutants are weapons.”

“They’re not weapons,” Fred said sternly, sitting up straight in his chair to look her dead in the eye, “they’re people.”

“So is a suicide bomber,” she replied coldly, leaning forward, “only when a mutant blows up, odds are it can walk away and do it again.”

…

“Agent Cooper is being very amicable,” Scott said wryly to Fred over the phone as he walked down the hall of the school.

“You suspicious?” the agent asked.

“Be lying if I said no,” he lifted his glasses just enough so he could rub his eyes and pinch his nose. “She wants us where she can see us, right?”

“That’s the gist of it,” Fred said wryly. “I’ll get you’re the details closer to time, you understand.”

“Of course,” he nodded reflexively as he turned a corner.

“I have to go,” the older man said distractedly, “we’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you, Fred,” he finally said, “keep me appraised,” and with that the other man hung up.

Slightly frowning, running through all the possibilities, he followed the sound of power tools and headed into the garage. Bobby’s black Ford Escape was lined up next to Jean’s green Ford Focus and Ororo’s white Ford Fusion.

At the end of the long garage was the workshop. The school had to be very self-sufficient, a lot of the renovations were done by themselves except where required by law to have a licensed electrician or welder, safety considerations and all that.

Logan was leaning over a door which was laid across two saw-horses. He had a jigsaw in his hand and was cutting a square out of the bottom. Several other doors were leaned up against each other off to the side in two piles.

“Wondered where my classroom door went,” he said dryly as Logan blew the dust away and got a hand sander to work off the edges.

“It’s for that shape shifting cat,” he sanded off edges for the brackets to fit as he was effectively putting in ‘doggie doors’.

“Right,” Scott nodded, “she got trapped in the science lab and then changed back into a human, had to cover herself with the Table of Elements.”

“Yeah, Chuck thought this was a good idea,” Logan shrugged and picked up a drill and some screws, “and besides, she ain’t the first shape shifter and won’t be the last.”

“Speaking of which,” he frowned, thinking of his recent phone conversation, “Mystique struck again.”

There was a notable pause as the feral mutant drilled the metal brackets into place.

“Virginia,” Scot continued, “a computer scientist who was working on Sentinel. Didn’t try to interrogate him, Rogue was seen with the Brotherhood in Switzerland so no absorption, just straight up killed him and made little effort to hide it,” Scott shook his head, “The whole Sentinel project is going to have to be moved and re-staffed. Fred seems to think that was the point, a way of freeing up Nimrod so Mystique or the Brotherhood could steal it again.”

“The government never should have gotten Nimrod back,” Logan gruffed, attaching the swing door.

“Let’s not rehash that, okay,” Scott sighed. “I’m telling you this because you’ve had the most experience with Mystique. I wanted to know what you made of the situation.”

Logan paused, hands gripping the sides of the door, taking a few breaths, “Woman only has one motive: what’s best for her. Right now, apparently working for Magneto is in her own best interests. Until it stops being in her best interest, she’s letting him call the shots. So I’d be looking less at her and more at Magneto. What does bucket head get out of it?”

Scott nodded, considering his words, “Thank you, that was actually very informative.”

The man gave a non-committal grunt and went back to installing the doggy door. With a shake of his head, Scott turned to leave but almost ran into Kitty.

“There you are,” she frowned at him, “you didn’t answer your phone.”

“Oh, sorry,” he remembered declining her call, “I was on with Fred, what did you need?”

“Doug and I were looking into that Trask fellow,” she told him, “we found something interesting.”

…

Scott followed Kitty into the conference room with Logan at his heels. Doug tapped away at his computer and the rest of the team also made their way in, except the Professor who was on a conference call in his office.

“So, yeah,” Kitty started, moving over to the display, “there is no ‘official’ record of a ‘Colonel Trask’. But unofficially, i.e., in documents ‘not available to the public’,” she was using a fair amount of finger quotes, “there is mention of him in some reports but there is no actual profile or service record we’ve found.”

“Yet,” Doug added without looking up from the laptop.

“Yet,” Kitty conceded, pointing to the screen where a logo with the letters HLS appeared, “but in conjunction with his name we did find reference to a group called Humanity’s Last Stand.”

“I’ve heard of them,” Jean spoke up, “they’re a known hate group,” everyone looked at her. “Last year the Professor and I put together a list of groups that, should mutants become known, might threaten or harm the school.”

“First we’ve heard of this,” Scott frowned at her.

“It’s just a list,” she shrugged. “Anyway, they’re a ‘racial purity’ kind of group. They claim not to be racist, they simply believe different races shouldn’t intermix or ‘muddy the waters’.”

“How is that not racist?” Bobby asked dryly.

“If I remember correctly,” she creased her brow in thought, “they claim that ‘the farther away we move from that which makes us different, we destroy that which makes us unique’.”

“Rhetorically,” JP mused, “that makes some sense…” all heads now turned to him, “rhetorically. In this context though it sounds like a bunch of racist s—”

“Well,” Jean cleared her throat, “the group does not condone any kind of mix-breeding, they’ve called inter-racial marriages abhorrent, could even be behind some murders though nothing has stuck. We put them on the list, as much as we’re having difficulty defining if mutants do constitute a separate race or species as Magneto claims, I’m sure they’d have issue with us regardless.”

Scott chewed on that for a moment then moved on, “What does this group have to do with the Colonel?”

“Liability,” Kitty filled in, “Colonel Trask has a connection to the group which his superiors believe could undermine Trask’s credibility should any of his projects move beyond Black Ops into the public domain.”

Bobby raised his hand to get everyone’s attention, “He’s building a machine that will hunt down mutants,” he lowered his hand and shrugged his arms widely, “now, I can put two and two together and it still equals racists douchebag.”

There was a snicker from half the people in the room, but Ororo explained, “It’s all about perception. It is one thing to be told Sentinel is necessary for their safety, a whole other to see it as a tool of segregation or repression. The populace as a whole will be much more forgiving of one than the other.”

“Oh,” it dawned on the accountant, “ah, right.”

“Do we know what the connection is?” Scott asked, steering the conversation back to the task at hand.

“Well, the group’s leader is a man named Simon Trask,” Kitty grinned as she brought up another image, this time of an older man, late 50s, “think that’s connection enough?”

“A start,” he returned dryly, “is this our Colonel Trask?”

Now the girl frowned, “There’s no mention of the Colonel’s full name in what records we could find, but no, I don’t think so. Doing a background check there is no sign of Simon Trask ever joining the military, but,” she brought up a picture of a young man who shared much of the same facial features, the picture looking to be old, like from the 70s, “his brother, Bolivar, drops off the map at age eighteen.”

“You’re thinking he joined the military,” JP was the first to voice the connection, “and once he got into Black Ops his record was erased?”

“Working theory,” she nodded.

“Still doesn’t give us much to work with,” Scott let out a long breath as he thought it over, “but it’s a start. We could go to their base of operations, have a look around.”

“Yeah, their main base,” Kitty frowned, “we couldn’t find it, they’re being really smart about covering their tracks at the upper levels.”

“Keep looking into it then,” he told the girl, then while he had the group together, “for now, I got a call earlier, from Agent Duncan, Mystique killed one of the high-level Sentinel computer techs and now the whole program is going to be moved again.”

“They’ll be ripe picking for the Brotherhood,” JP pointed out.

“We can’t let them get their hands on Nimrod or any part of Sentinel,” Jean added.

“And they won’t,” Scott assured them, “Duncan has asked us to help with security on the move.”

“We’re going to help them protect something meant to hunt us?” Logan snorted his disgust.

“Would you rather Magneto used it to build an army?” Jean shot back coolly.

“I’d rather let Pop Rocks have a go at it,” Logan crossed his arms.

“Hey, that’s my line!” Bobby pouted.

“We will not prove the government’s point for them,” Scott said firmly. “I know I’m repeating myself here, but we will not stoop to the Brotherhood’s level.”

…

“Gimme the remote!” Rogue was sitting next to Pyro on the sofa in front of the television, she was attempting to snatch the offending item from him but he held it out of her reach, his arm on her shoulder, holding her back. “Don’t make me break your arm.”

“I wanna watch Sleepy Hollow!” he kept her out of reach.

“It’s a rerun,” she pulled back a bit, shaking one of her gloves off, “and maybe you shouldn’t have broke your tv after watching Arrow.”

“But, eh, da, it was so,” the Aussie got frustrated, clenching his hands against his temples, “logistics, people, it’s not an option, things have to take place in a believable timeline, oh, and you can’t just throw a bunch of pretty faces at the screen and expect no one to notice you have no concept of chara—”

Pyro slumped back, passed out, his head lulling to the side.

“Yoink,” Rogue snatched the remote out of his grasp with her gloved hand, then slipped her other glove back on.

Dom walked up behind the sofa, “Did you knock Pyro out so you could take the remote?”

“Yes I did,” she didn’t even stutter, getting comfortable and pointing the remote at the tv, then frowned, “damn, now I want to watch Sleepy Hollow.”

The bigger man chuckled and headed over to the kitchen, “That is your own fault.”

“Yeah, yeah,” she tossed the remote down, “I was hoping I’d just get his silly accent for awhile, I only grazed him.”

He continued to laugh and reached into the fridge, “Beer?”

“Yes, please,” she stood and moved past the unconscious Aussie to join her teammate. “Ugh, crazy Aussie, I never drink at lunchtime.”

Dom was about to respond but there was a brush of wind, Quicksilver suddenly standing in front of the sofa, “Py-Rogue,” he turned to them, “did you knock out Pyro again?”

“He wouldn’t give me the remote,” she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

The team leader sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, “How long will he be out?”

“Not long,” Rogue thought it over, “a couple of minutes.”

“Fine,” he shook his head, “I’ll start with the second order of business first. The Sentinel project is on the move again, with Nimrod.”

“Why is it on the move?” Rogue asked, sitting on a stool at the kitchen island.

“Magneto was able to use the information you gathered while incarcerated to track down some of the core team members,” he told her blankly and she didn’t like where this was headed, “and the facility is too heavily guarded by the military since our stunt, so your mother took one of the scientists out. Since they can’t know for sure how compromised the project is, the whole thing is being moved.”

Dom asked the obvious, “Mystique going after Nimrod or is that our job?”

“Mystique has another job,” Quicksilver answered, “I know we just got back from Switzerland but pack up and be ready to move out in a couple of hours, we have our own mission.”

“The X-Men,” Rogue spoke up, “they find out about Nimrod being moved and they’ll be all over this.”

“Probably,” the team leader gritted his teeth a bit.

“Melbourne’s on fire!” Pyro sat up and grabbed his head, groaning as if he had just woken up from a nap and not a mutation induced coma.

“Pyro,” Quicksilver turned and snapped at him, waving his hand in front of his face, “you coherent?”

The pyromaniac held his finger up as he shook his head, blinked a few times, then looked up at the silver-haired Romanian, and apparently adopted a Spanish accent, “Sí, mon capitán.”

“We’re getting fluctuations in the energy grid,” he ignored the Aussie’s glib, “you know, the one that keeps Xavier from finding us. I want you to have a look at it before we go.”

“We’re going somewhere?” he looked between them as he scratched his head.

“I’ll let them fill you in,” and with that Quicksilver was gone.

Pyro looked over at Rogue and Dom, the latter saying, “Mystique assassinated a Sentinel tech, Nimrod’s on the move.”

“Right, okay,” he didn’t need to be told any more, he stood and stretched, “short nap but crazy dream.”

Rogue shook her head as she got up, “You’re the only person who ever claims to have dreams when I knock them out.”

“This is true,” Dom followed behind her, “I remember nothing, I am awake and then next thing I know it’s some time later and I have a hangover I did not enjoy getting.”

“Eh, what can I say?” Pyro grinned.

“What did you dream about this time?” Rogue asked out of curiosity.

“Well, it was the 80s,” he scrunched his face up in thought, “and I had really poor fashion sense… even for the 80s.”

…

“Those worksheets are due tomorrow,” he told the class as they started to file out of the doorless classroom, “no excuses like you accidently lit it on fire or transported it to another dimension.”

With a few giggles and a couple of groans, the kids departed and Scott was left to sort out the papers on his desk, putting away his notes for the day. He was just closing the top drawer when Kitty knocked on the doorframe and stepped inside.

“Got a second?” she asked.

“Sure, what’s up?” he saw she had some folders in her hand.

“Remember when I told you this morning we didn’t know where Humanity’s Last Stand’s main base of operations was?” she started off.

“Yeah,” he nodded, “did you find something?”

“No, but, well,” she started to act very timid, chewing on her lip, “I have an idea that might help us,” she handed over the files.

Scott did a quick scan over them, it was a complete dossier on two names he didn’t recognize, with everything from their social security number to their high school GPA. “Who are these people?”

“Me and Bobby,” she grinned.

He stared at her blankly, “Excuse me?”

“Doug and I set up these profiles, they’ll stand up under any background check short of the NSA,” she gestured to the papers, “Bobby and I can pose as potential new members and find out where the HLS’s main base is. Once we know, if we can get into their records, we might find something on Colonel Trask.”

Scott let out an exasperated breath as he tried to understand what she was saying, “No.”

“But—”

“These people are possibly very dangerous,” he cut her off, “and I say possibly because we just don’t know. I’m not sending you and Bobby into a situation like that, neither of you have enough experience yet to go it alone.”

Kitty had her arms crossed and lips tight, she looked like she might yell but instead said, “In general though, you think it’s a good idea.”

That caused the man to pause, “It’s a classic move, yes, law enforcement has been doing it for years.”

“Exactly,” she quickly pointed out, “and this way there’s no fighting, no having to use our powers, and no chance for someone to get hurt. We go in, find what we need to know, cake.”

“Fine,” he conceded that it was a fairly decent plan, “me and Jean will go. She’ll be able to read any information we need.”

“And what if they make you take your glasses off?” she countered. “They might wonder why a guy is wearing sunglasses indoors, or at night.”

He frowned at her, then sighed, “Then Jean-Paul.”

“The HLS are just as much against homosexual marriage as inter-racial, and you know how JP can get sometimes,” she sprayed her hands wide, “one wrong word and it’s all over,” then she held up her hand to keep him from saying his next words, “and before you suggest Logan, I think we both know that would be a really bad idea.”

Scott grimaced, “He doesn’t do subtle, that’s for sure.”

“Your only choice then would be to send Jean alone, which I know you won’t do, so you’ll have to send Bobby,” Kitty continued with a grin on her face, “but Jean and Bobby? I mean, it could work, but if you’re already sending Bobby then send me with him. We’d totally look the part of ‘impressionable young couple’ and while Bobby keeps them busy I can break into any computers they have and sneak into places Jean couldn’t.”

“Kitty,” he said sternly but worn down, “you’re not eighteen yet.”

“The Professor only said I couldn’t go into a fight,” she pointed out, waving her finger in the air, “this would be recon, not a fight.”

The optic mutant went to speak, then paused before saying, “You really took the time to think this through, didn’t you.”

“Duh.”

X-Men: The (fan fic) Series

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