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1X07 – El Chacal – Act III
“So,” Misty turned a chair around and sat down, “you wanna tell me why you’re looking into El Chacal?”
“The truth?” Jean sighed, “we’re looking for a story. A headline. Something we can use to distract a police officer from looking at a friend of ours, maybe you know her, Cecilia Reyes.”
“Doc Reyes,” the woman nodded, “stitched me up on more than one occasion. Her clinic got hit a few days back, been trying to figure out who did it myself.”
“Could it have been El Chacal?” Theresa asked.
“No, I’ve ruled them out,” Misty glanced over at Jean, “and what did you mean by distract a police officer?”
“There is a Detective Milson at the local precinct,” Jean explained, “he thinks Cecilia might be doing something illegal.”
“Milson, I know of him,” she gave a sour look, “figures.”
“He thinks Cecilia is involved somehow, other than being the victim,” Jean leaned up against the counter, “you said you were looking into it, do you have any leads?”
Misty got quite for a moment, glancing between them, “I don’t know who you two are except that you’re obviously crazy.”
“Call Cecilia,” Jean countered, “she’ll vouch for us.”
“And if she does?” Misty asked.
“We’d like your help,” she said bluntly, “to get Cecilia in the clear, El Chacal off the streets, and Milson what he deserves.”
…
Bobby hit the cue ball with his pool stick and frowned when he completely missed the number fourteen ball.
“Nice shot,” JP was grinning and went to line up his own attempt.
“I think I had too much chocolate yesterday,” Jubilee was hunched over on a nearby barstool, “is that even possible?”
“For normal people, sure,” Bobby laughed as he grabbed his drink, “for you? No such thing.”
“See, that’s what I thought,” the girl tipped her punk sunglasses over her eyes as if she had a migraine.
“Oh, hey,” he turned to her when JP made his shot, “what was that about Xavier having a son?”
“Seriously, Bobby,” she frowned at him, “how do you not know these things? You’ve been here as long as I have.”
“I may or may not pay attention to certain things,” he paused, “or most things. I’m also not a nosey eavesdropper like yourself.”
“I am not a nosey eavesdropper,” she quickly countered, “I’m a sophisticated eavesdropper.”
Bobby chuckled but it was JP who came around the table and said, “Would you mind filling me in? Or are you not supposed to know.”
“It’s not a secret,” Jubilee shrugged, “but it’s not something the Professor likes to talk about since the whole thing is kinda scary… and kinda his fault.”
JP got comfortable against the pool table, “What happened?”
“Well, the Professor was married,” she began, “and he had a son, David.”
“He was married?” Bobby said bluntly, then cleared his throat, “Continue, please.”
“David was really powerful, crazy powerful,” Jubilee got a little animated, “you know how Jean is a telekinetic which means she can ‘technically’ do any kinesis but not very well because it’s not a specialized power?”
“Right, it’s like running,” JP shrugged, “a marathon runner can sprint at the end of a race, but they will never be able to sprint like professional sprinters, who in turn, can’t outlast a marathon racer.”
“Exactly,” Jubilee nodded, “but David, apparently he could do anything like it was a specific skill set.”
“That’s pretty powerful,” the Canadian was duly impressed.
“Yeah,” the girl was just as impressed, then frowned, “but from what I hear, the Professor worked him pretty hard to expand his abilities, unlock what all he could do, and Magneto was there at the time so you know he didn’t try to hold him back or anything.”
Realization dawned on JP’s face, “MIDID.”
“Xavier’s first experience with Mutation Induced Dissociative Identity Disorder,” she told him. “David is a mess, he doesn’t have one or two new personalities, he has hundreds.”
“Hundreds?” Bobby couldn’t believe it.
“That’s what Jean said,” Jubilee shrugged.
“Damn,” JP shook his head, “that’s… have they made any progress helping him?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted with a frown, “he apparently is stable as long as he doesn’t hear mention of his father, that’s like his trigger, so they call him David Haller, after his mother, and keep him somewhat isolated, not completely, but they monitor what he does so that he doesn’t blow a gasket and some not-so-nice personality take over. Apparently each personality has a single skill set, and while some might be relatively benign, there has got to be one or two with a ‘thermonuclear war’ setting.”
It was quiet for a moment until Bobby broke in, “You said he has hundreds of personalities, right? Jeanne-Marie only has the two, so she’s way more likely to come back around,” he assured his friend.
“Yeah, sure,” JP said distractedly, then pointed to the pool table, “it’s your turn by the way.”
“Oh, right,” Bobby grabbed his stick and moved to the table.
“I’ll play winner,” Jubilee said in an effort to lighten the mood.
…
“And police are investigating a fire that broke out at Guilhone’s Pub last night,” the news reporter said.
The scene changed to a press conference at a fire house, “We are treating it as suspicious, our investigators are currently identifying the accelerant that was used. We do believe this was deliberate arson as the pattern does match that of the house fire which occurred earlier in the day in—“
Rogue muted the television and looked down at Pyro who was sitting on the sofa eating popcorn. “Really, a bar, you couldn’t help yourself.”
“In my defense,” he held up his hands, “their fire and safety protocols where up to code, no one got hurt.”
“Did you know that before or after you lit the place on fire?” she asked wryly, then waved him off, “Nevermind, don’t tell me.”
“This is good though,” Pyro pointed to the fire chief on the screen, “it looks like arson for hire and that will totally negate his home owner’s insurance. Even if they decide he had nothing to do with it, it’ll be years before he gets a payout.”
“Well, glad that makes you feel better,” she rolled her eyes and tossed him the remote.
“Does it make you feel better?” he yelled at her as she walked towards the kitchen.
“Oh,” she laughed and waged her finger at him, “don’t you go trying to psycho-analyze me.”
“Especially when you have a job to do,” Quicksilver appeared next to the sofa in a woosh of sound.
“Hey, I’m allowed breaks,” Pyro pointed to the two laptops sitting on the coffee table in front of him.
“How far are you?” the man ignored his indignant tone.
“Uh,” the Aussie leaned forward and tapped a few keys, “sixty-three percent?”
“Good,” Quicksilver started to walk away, “let me know when you get to seventy-five.”
With that order, Quicksilver disappeared again and Pyro frowned, “Man, he’s turned into a bit of a douche.”
“Pyro,” Rogue scolded him.
“It’s true,” he held his hands up, “it wasn’t too long ago he’d be here helping us, especially since he’s got the superspeed. We would be done already. Now he’s gone, all the time.”
“Lay off him,” Rogue went to the counter and grabbed a box of Cheerios from the cabinets.
“Give me one good reason,” Pyro challenged her, “and don’t give me any of that crap about how I should just trust him, blah blah, blah.“
“You should trust him,” Rogue countered, then sighed as she leaned against the counter, “when it comes to a fight, he’s still got your back. Just, right now, things are complicated.”
“Oh, great, ‘complicated’,” now it was Pyro who rolled his eyes, “that explains ‘so much’.”
“Now who’s being a big baby,” Rogue replied with a fair amount of snark.
“Am not!” Pyro countered.
“Are too!” Rogue played back.
“Am not!” this time the Aussie accented his words by throwing popcorn in Rogue’s direction.
“Hey!” she dogged and grabbed a handful of Cheerios and threw them at him, “Are too!”
“Am not!” Pyro climbed onto the back of the sofa for better aim.
“Are too!” Rogue dodged behind the counter but not before lobbing another handful at the pyromaniac.
The situation dissolved from there with the two mutants throwing their chosen weapon at the other. At one point, Dom walked in from the gym area and ignored them both as he went to the fridge to grab a bottle of water. Skillfully the Aussie and Southerner dodged around him as they attempted to land a shot.
“I am not helping clean this up,” Dom said as he walked up the stairs.
“Sneak attack!” Pyro shouted as he slid over the island countertop and fell to the floor on the other side.
“You don’t yell sneak attack,” Rogue laughed as she helped him set up, “anything broken?”
“Nope,” he was also laughing though was seriously out of breath, “the floor broke my fall.”
“I’m sure we can get you another one,” she tried to say with a straight face but mostly failed.
As they two sat there, Pyro with his back to the cabinets and Rogue’s to the kitchen counter, they laughed until they could breathe again.
“See, this,” Pyro picked Cheerios from his hair, “this is what I miss. Remember when we used to do this stupid crap all the time? You, me, Pietro… Wanda. Now she’s gone, Pietro is almost always gone, and you, half the time when you are here you’re not really here anymore.”
“What about Dom?” she questioned as a way of deflection.
“Dom’s a good friend,” Pyro shrugged, “but it’s not the same. Pietro and Wanda are family. You and I are family. Us against them and all of us together.”
Rogue frowned, then with a heavy sigh, she moved across the floor and sat next to Pyro, leaning her head over to rest on his shoulder, making sure she wasn’t going to accidently touch skin to skin. “We are family, Pyro. You and mamma are the only family I got worth having.”
“I was afraid you had forgotten,” he said, picking popcorn from his clothes idly.
“I’ll never forget,” she told him, “I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“I know you will.”
…
“No, I’m writing it down,” Scott was leaning over a desk in the study, scribbling on a piece of paper as he held his phone to his ear. “Right, okay, I’m not sure where you’re going with this but I trust you. I’ll get right on it.”
Hanging up, Scott looked down at what he had written and frowned. Shaking his head, he grabbed the scrap and headed out, stalking the halls until he spotted one of the people he was looking for.
“JP,” he called to the man who was playing pool with Jubilee, “got a second.”
It was Jubilee’s turn and she banked a shot, dropping two balls at once, much to Bobby’s delight.
“I do now,” the Canadian frowned. “Apparently no one thought to warn me that Jubilee is a pool shark.”
“What did you bet?” Scott sighed, he knew he had forgotten something.
“Apparently I’m footing the bill for the next special edition Josephine Martyr book,” he shook his head as Jubilee sunk another ball.
“Jubilee,” Scott turned to the girl, “we told you, no betting real money.”
“I wasn’t betting money,” she went around to the next shot, “we bet books, if he won I would have gotten him the next Scientific American.”
“I was trying to be cheap,” JP defended himself, “I didn’t know I was being conned.”
“I want to be sympathetic,” Scott finally said a Bobby snickered in the corner, “but you’ve been here a year, surely you’ve figured out by now that Jubilee is actually the one who runs this place.”
“Darn tooting,” Jubilee piped in as she once again did a trick shot.
“Where did you learn to do that?” JP shook his head in disbelief.
“’Ro,” she answered as she moved around the table.
“Ororo?” the Canadian blinked.
“Only person who can beat Big G in a fair game,” she set up her next shot.
“Why does this not surprise me?” JP frowned.
“You’re learning,” Scott laughed, “anyway, since you’re done, I have something I need you to do.”
“Am I going to regret this?” he asked cautiously.
“Probably not,” Scott answered.
“Probably?”
“Hedging my bets,” he answered.
“Smart man,” Jubilee said as she landed the eight ball in the side pocket, after having bounced it off the side and ricocheted it against two other balls.
…
Detective Milson sat at his desk at the station, staring at the squashed bullets in the evidence baggy. The lab still couldn’t figure out what exactly happened. They couldn’t replicate the damage that the bullets sustained when they hit whatever it was they hit. It wasn’t a standard bullet proof vest or bullet resistance glass.
He sat the baggy down and looked at the statement from Mrs. Johnston, she only remembered ducking down and covering her son. Dr Reyes then covered her with her body. Johnston had her eyes closed the whole time, so whatever Reyes had done, or had been wearing, she completely missed it.
Everyone knew that the good doctor was the one to go to if you wanted to be healed without raising suspicions at the hospital. How many gang bangers avoided the repercussion of their criminal acts thanks to her?
Grabbing his coat, Milson stood from his desk and headed across the bull pit towards the doors.
“Heading out?” the desk officer asked as he passed.
“Yeah,” he slid the coat around his shoulders, “going to see if I can chase down some leads on the clinic shooting.”
“Any closer in figuring out who did the shooting?” the young man said as he took a clipboard from a woman who had been filling something out.
“Probably El Chacal,” Milson shrugged, “I’m more interested in how Dr Reyes managed to be in the middle of the firefight and not get a scratch.”
“How do people jump out of planes, their parachute fail, and still survive?” the officer commented. “Sometimes these things just happen.”
“Keep that naivety and you’ll never make detective,” Milson gruffed and then headed out the door.
The cold air hit him and he zipped up his coat, then he went down the line of police cars and found the unmarked Ford Taurus which was assigned to him. Slipping into the driver’s seat, he sped off down the road, hitting several traffic lights before reaching his destination. Pulling into a parallel parking space across the street from the clinic, workers were already replacing the glass which had been broken in the shooting.
It didn’t take long for him to spot Doctor Reyes as she called another patient back to the exam room.
Milson checked his watch, it was starting to get late and her shift would end soon.
He could wait.
…
“There are El Chacal in there,” Jean pointed to the large storage house situated behind one of the houses.
“You wanna tell me something this whole neighborhood doesn’t already know?” Misty said dryly.
“They’re getting in a shipment tonight,” Jean offered.
“And how do you know that?” the woman questioned.
Jean almost told her the truth but had no idea if Misty knew about mutants so decided to tell her another half-truth, “I overheard them.”
“Right,” the woman clearly was having none of that.
“I know you only have a small reason to trust me,” Jean frowned, “but I am trying to help.”
“You’re right, I don’t trust you,” Misty looked between the two red-heads, “a couple of crazy tourists who come in and think they can make things all better like some damn superheroes or something. Well, I’m telling you right now, if you really want to help this neighborhood,” she gestured widely, “then you better be prepared to put your neck on the line because these are real people, not some social ‘oh look what I did, ain’t I special’ badge of faux-accountability.”
“It’s nothing of the sort,” Jean assured her, “we are going to see this through.”
“Excuse my cynicism then,” she replied dryly.
“I’m actually enjoying it,” Theresa piped in, smiling.
Misty stuck her thumb out at her and asked, “This girl for real?”
Apparently Theresa couldn’t help but add, “I deal with mental patients for a living.”
Misty glanced between them, “I knew I never should have left the house this morning.”
…
Milson was just starting to feel the kink in his back when Doctor Reyes exited out of the clinic, waving goodbye to the few people still in the lobby. The sun was sitting and a breeze ran down the valley between the buildings so she bundled up before walking to the bus stop.
Five minutes later, the bus rolled up and she joined a couple of others in boarding.
Turning over the engine, Milson checked his mirror quickly before pulling out into the street just as the bus did the same, making its way to the next stop. The detective kept a decent distance, he couldn’t exactly see where the doctor was sitting, nor if she noticed him.
When the woman failed to get off at the stop which was closest to her apartment, Milson smiled, this might be the lucky break he was hoping for.
…
Cecilia stayed on the bus past her usual stop and checked the map that was displayed of the bus route against a text she had on her phone. Two stops later, she got off and headed across the street and waited for a few minutes. Another bus came by, not the return route of the one she had been on, but one which would turn south at the intersection.
Flashing her bus transit card, she took a seat behind and checked her phone again. It wasn’t the most exciting thing, sitting on a bus as it made its way across town, but at least there was no screaming kid or guy coughing up a lung.
Twenty or so minutes later, Cecilia exited the bus at a stop in front of a convenience store along with a few others. Glancing over, she recognized Jean’s car sitting in the parking lot.
What was she doing there?
…
Milson pulled up to the end of the block and watched as the doctor exited the bus and looked around for a moment, letting the crowd clear away. After a minute, she headed down one of the streets and so he quickly pulled into the parking lot and ditched his car.
Jogging, he caught sight of her as she easily made her way down the sidewalk.
The woman wasn’t doing anything suspicious at the moment, but why was she in that neighborhood in the first place? This was prime El Chacal territory.
Without so much as missing a step, Reyes turned and headed down and alleyway between two houses.
Being a cautious man, Milson went to the edge of the house and gently looked around the corner before he was going to head down it. It wasn’t a smart move to just walk into a blind alley. Unfortunately, this meant he lost sight of Reyes.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
Shots rang out and instinctively Milson pulled his gun from its holster. With his gun raised he made quick steps down the alley.
Reaching the back end of the house, he again cautiously looked around the corner to check the situation. All he could see was a wooden storage building, large enough to fit two cars, with smoke coming out of the windows which seemed to be broken.
“Damn,” he pulled his phone out of his pocket to call it in.
“Dispatch,” came a woman’s voice over the phone.
“I have a 10-24, shots fired,” he told her, “ping my location and send back up.”
“Copy that,” dispatch told him, “uniforms are ETA 3 minutes.”
More shots rang out and people started to run out of the building.
Evidence was being destroyed and suspects getting away. Milson ran towards the work shop, being mindful of the chaos around him. The sun was going down making the visibility even worse.
A figure detached itself from the smoke and stumbled forward.
“Halt, police,” he brought his gun to bear.
It was a woman, he could tell that as she shuffled forward, limping on one foot. In her hand which draped limply at her side, she held a gun.
“Drop the weapon,” he shouted at her.
The woman, a red-head, looked at him blankly for a moment before suddenly bringing the gun up to fire. Milson didn’t hesitate and let loose a single shot.
Smoke drifted through and in the adrenaline rush things got a little hazy, but the woman fell backwards onto the grass.
Milson walked forward, gun trained on her, in case she was still mobile. He couldn’t see where he hit her but she was wearing a jacket which could have hid the impact. His next thought was the gun, getting it away from the body.
There was no gun, it was a cell phone clutched lifelessly in her hand.
But he could have sworn it was a gun…
Sirens howled in the distance, smoke was still filling the area, and there was a dead woman at his feet…
When had everything gone terribly wrong?
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