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When It's Love	By : DrunkenScotsman Category: X-Men - Animated Series (all) > Het - Male/Female Views: 4320 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: All X-Men characters and locations are the intellectual property of Marvel Comics. I make no money from writing this story.

Chapter List
- 2
- 3
- 4
Chapter 3: Pilot Program
- Violence
The X-Men assembled at 1900 hours, filing into the briefing room before their planned session. Professor Xavier steepled his fingers and smiled tightly. Motley though they seemed at first glance, these mutants had risen to every challenge they’d faced, and they had done so by overcoming their interpersonal friction to work as a team. Pride at his students’ accomplishments filled him, though he kept his expression mostly neutral.
After all, excellence did not preclude the need for further practice, further refinement in pursuit of perfection.
“Good evening, my X-Men,” he greeted them once everyone had found a seat. Cyclops and Jean Grey, his longest-tenured students – practically his adopted son and daughter – sat side-by-side and hand-in-hand on his right. On his left, Beast adjusted his reading glasses before placing his bookmark and closing his hard-cover copy of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. Beside Beast, Storm exuded a regal air with her perfect posture. Gambit, on the other hand, propped his feet up on the table, nonchalance personified as he flipped a card from one pair of fingers to the next. Rogue sat beside Jean, her chin propped in one hand, leaning her upper body more toward the Cajun. Ever the loner, Wolverine leaned against the door jamb.
“Usually, we use the Danger Room to hone our mutant abilities, both to defend ourselves and to ensure we do not accidentally harm the humans we wish to embrace as brothers and sisters. Tonight’s session, however, will present a much different challenge. I will turn the briefing over to Beast, who designed tonight’s course.” The Professor gestured to the blue-furred genius beside him.
“My fellow mutants,” began the erudite mutant, whose gaze swept his teammates as he spoke. “Based upon our recent misadventure in the Savage Land, where Mr. Sinister forced us to battle his ruffians with an insurmountable handicap – sans our powers, that is –“
“We got our asses kicked,” growled Wolverine, who often grew impatient with Beast’s loquacity.
“Indeed,” Beast conceded graciously. “Bearing in mind the ease with which we were dispatched, the Professor, Cyclops, and I began devising training scenarios for the team, wherein we labor under such a handicap –“
“Let’s not call ‘not having powers’ a handicap,” Professor Xavier interjected, holding up a cautioning hand. “That's too close to Magneto’s language.”
“Point taken, Professor,” Beast assented. “At any rate, tonight’s session represents the first such exercise. I have reverse-engineered Mr. Sinister’s mutant-suppression technology and incorporated it into the Danger Room’s holographic projection matrix. The device – some of my finest work, if I may say so – suppresses the X-Gene by emitting a high-frequency pulse of iridium ions, which –“
“What’s the mission, Beast?” interrupted Wolverine again, uninterested as he was in the technobabble.
At this point, Cyclops stepped in. “Patterned after an actual encounter with the Friends of Humanity, we’ll be under siege inside a pool hall. Our objective is to escape and rendezvous at the hospital two blocks south.” The team leader fixed his ruby-quartz visor on the often-unpredictable Wolverine. “No fatalities.”
The Canadian snorted. “Right. I’m sure they’d show us the same courtesy.”
“We have to be the better people if we’re to earn the humans’ trust,” argued Jean, her voice gentle.
Wolverine didn’t reply for a long moment. “Poppin’ the claws with no healing factor hurts like a bitch anyway,” he finally conceded. “I’ll play it your way, Boy Scout.”
“Since my mutation manifests as enhanced physical capabilities,” Beast chimed in, "it is unaffected by the device. Therefore, I will remain in the control booth, both to monitor the device and to refine the scenario’s difficulty as needed. Because this is merely the first of many, I require baseline data.”
“That is why our opponents are baseline humans, correct?” asked Storm.
“Quite so. Later scenarios will pit us against Mr. Sinister’s ruffians, the Brotherhood of Mutants, the Four Horsemen, and even Sentinels – separately, of course.”
Gambit whistled. “You gonna get us killed, mon ami, if we gotta tangle wit all dem while we got one hand tied behind our backs.”
Beast smiled thinly. “I shall endeavor to maintain a strict adherence to the Danger Room’s safety protocols.”
Storm raised her hand. “Why is the rendezvous point located at a hospital? Will we not place the patients in danger with our presence?”
“We are proceeding under the assumption that the Friends of Humanity will, at minimum, not risk the poor publicity of destroying a hospital,” answered the Professor. “However, in a real crisis, we would do well to remember that hate is most unpredictable. Do not linger in such places when lives are on the line.”
Beast looked around at the other X-Men. “Are there any further questions?”
No one had any, so Cyclops led the team into the Danger Room, while Beast and Professor Xavier entered the control booth. Beast loaded the scenario, and the chamber’s projectors whirred to life. The team’s vitals, the Danger Room’s power consumption, and the scenario’s program parameters all appeared on separate glowing displays. The Professor activated the mutant-suppression field generator, followed by the intercom. “Once the scenario begins, you will have five minutes – plus or minus thirty seconds – before the Friends of Humanity attack. This grace period will allow you to acclimate yourselves to your depowered state. Good luck, my X-Men.”
“‘We are not now that strength which in old days moved heaven and earth; that which we are, we are,’” Beast quoted.
“‘One equal temper of heroic hearts, strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield,’” the Professor finished with a smile at the erudite Beast.
The X-Men soon found themselves inside a pool hall, empty aside from the smell of cigarette smoke lingering in the air. The mutants stretched to limber themselves. Cyclops removed his visor and blinked until his eyes adjusted. “We’re on the clock, people. Jean and I will scout exit routes. You four, set up defenses to keep us from getting overwhelmed by a mob. We’ll reconvene in three minutes.”
Jean regarded Cyclops with a strange expression as they walked through the building. “It’s always so disorienting,” she commented. “Everyone is so… silent now.”
“I imagine it feels something like Wolverine losing his sense of smell,” replied Cyclops. “For me, it’s nice to see things in their true colors.” He gave the redhead a meaningful smile.
Jean smirked. “It’s nice to see those pretty eyes,” she admitted.
Wolverine and Storm worked together to flip the tables onto their sides to form barricades. They set racks of pool balls behind the tables for throwing and unscrewed the cues to form two smaller clubs. Not a word passed between them while they worked.
Rogue and Gambit shuttered the windows and wedged a table against the door. Neither measure would prevent a determined mob from breaking in, but it could at least slow them down. Rogue scratched her arm anxiously. “Ah’m more’n a little worried about this,” she told the Cajun. “Ah never really learned how to faht. Whah bother, when Ah’d knock someone out cold with a touch?”
Gambit nodded as he withdrew a small metal cylinder from a pocket in his trench coat. “And if y’ needed, you could touch someone who knew how t’ fight,” he observed. With the press of a button, the cylinder extended in both directions until it became a quarterstaff.
Rogue sighed. “Then Ah absorbed Ms. Marvel, and technique didn’t matter much anymore, since Ah had the strength of ten men.” She shook her head. “Ah hate feelin’ helpless lahk this.”
“Basic advice, then,” growled Wolverine. “Stay outta the way.”
“That’s mahty helpful,” grumbled Rogue.
Gambit shook his head. “Three t’ings t’ remember, chère: If y’ can’t see, y’ can’t fight; if y’ can’t breathe, y’ can’t fight; if y’ can’t stand, y’ can’t fight.”
Rogue nodded. “Okay – go fer the ahs, the throat, and the legs.”
“The knee and ankle joints are the weakest points of the legs, and blows to the abdomen can also rob one of breath,” added Storm. “Also, do not underestimate the utility of strikes to an opponent’s groin.”
A feral grin crossed Wolverine’s face. “Storm, you fight dirty. I like it.”
“Growing up on the streets as a girl, one develops a certain… practicality,” she answered in a matter-of-fact tone.
By this point, Cyclops and Jean returned from their scouting trip. “We’ve got a fire exit by the restrooms that feeds into the alley, and an exit through the supply storage room,” Cyclops announced as he surveyed the team’s preparations. “Good work. We’ll see how well it holds up.”
“I don’t plan on runnin’ out the back door,” Wolverine asserted.
“We don’t know how many Friends of Humanity there are,” Cyclops pointed out. “You plan to take them all on by yourself?”
Their brewing argument over tactics was cut short by a cry of “Get the muties!” from outside, signaling that the time for all idle chatter had ended.
The door shuddered at the first impact from the anti-mutant mob. Cyclops joined Jean behind one of the tables, and they both prepared to throw pool balls. Wolverine stood out in the open, fists clenched, ready to scrap. Storm crouched behind a table, a piece of pool cue in either hand. Gambit flattened himself against the wall beside the door, quarterstaff at the ready. Rogue braced the table keeping the door shut.
The door shuddered again, and the shouts of the mob outside intensified. Glass shattered – either the windows themselves or bottles thrown against the exterior walls. Several of the window shutters also shook with impacts, the wood creaking in protest.
The door shuddered again, and cracks spread throughout the wooden frame. The X-Men gathered inside the building knew it wouldn’t hold much longer. Metal tips belonging to crowbars pushed through the window shutters; one of them broke through the latch and flung that window open. Through the now-open portal climbed a mustachioed man wearing a denim jacket emblazoned with the red, white, and blue Friends of Humanity eagle.
Gambit, the nearest of the X-Men, rushed the intruder before he could get his balance after climbing through. An upward strike to the solar plexus with his staff drove the man’s breath from his lungs. A second strike, this one downward, onto the back of the head, felled the man. With a smirk, the Cajun mutant stared out the open window and dared the mob to send someone else through. When someone inevitably made the attempt, Gambit shifted his grip to turn his staff into a blunt spear; a jab to the face or abdomen proved a convincing argument for the anti-mutant bigots to stay out.
“Dese gators under control!” he called. “Dey snappin’ fierce, dough!”
Meanwhile, the front door had finally yielded to the mob’s attempts to tear it off its hinges. Rogue retreated from her position bracing the door, clearing the way for a wave of bigots to clamber over the table, which they soon shoved aside. The humans immediately felt the impacts of heavy pool balls, courtesy of Jean and Cyclops, but those who weathered the projectile flurry fanned out to engage the hated mutants with bare hands, brass knuckles, baseball bats, and the occasional motorcycle chain. The X-Men all silently thanked Beast for not equipping their foes with more lethal instruments of mayhem.
Emboldened by several lifetimes of combat experience, Wolverine threw himself at their assailants. Even without the use of his claws, adamantium sheathed his bones, lending his punches the weight of sledgehammer blows. Bones cracked with each strike he landed, and within moments a trio of men lay unconscious at his feet.
A fourth jumped him from behind, wrapping thick iron links around the mutant’s throat. Wolverine snarled and fought the instinct to unsheathe his claws to cut himself free, knowing he’d be tempted to gut this bastard like a fish. Rogue saved him the trouble by clobbering the chain-wielder over the head with a steel chair. The man collapsed, and Wolverine fought to regain his breath.
Rogue chuckled at the large dent in the seat of the folded chair. “Ah reckon rasslin’ ain’t all fake, anyway,” she observed wryly.
A second window had been forced open during this melee, leaving Storm to stop more bigots from entering. Half a pool cue in either hand, the usually-elegant weather goddess tapped into the brutal lessons learned during her hardscrabble days as a Cairo cut-purse: strike hard, strike fast, leave no room for retaliation. Wielding the gaming objects like kali sticks, she pummeled each intruder with precise combinations of at most three strikes.
More Friends of Humanity poured through the front door. Rogue ducked under the swing of a baseball bat, aimed at her head. She decided to take Storm’s advice, so she placed a fist squarely into her attacker’s groin. Groaning, the man crumpled.
Wolverine traded blows with several more, but without his healing factor he found himself fatiguing faster and the damage accruing. He switched to a more technical approach built on years and years of karate. Blocking with adamantium-enhanced forearms, after all, broke the attacker’s arms or bats, though the latter still stung to the point that his fingers lost feeling.
Once out of pool balls to throw, Cyclops relied on schoolyard-taught fistfight tactics, since this kind of close combat was not at all his strong suit. Jabs and crosses to the face and body-blows to the torso stopped several bigots, though he also had to smash a few face-first into the table.
For her part, Jean held her own reasonably well, considering she, like Cyclops, preferred to fight at range. Usually she would sense a foe’s intent a split-second before the actual attack; without such predictive ability, she found herself taking glancing blows rather than cleanly dodging. One man tried to grapple her from behind, but she punished him with the classic SING combination: elbow to the Solar plexus; stomp the Instep; turn to palm-strike the Nose; and, to finish, a knee to the Groin.
Storm, now unarmed thanks to her weapons breaking, retreated from the window, fending off attackers with judo throws and Muay Thai kicks to the legs, elbows to the face, and knees to the abdomen. Her cape had torn off completely, leaving only a short length to dangle from either wrist. Her blue eyes stared these brutes down, daring them to keep coming.
A blur of motion, Gambit and his staff unleashed combinations as devastating as they were beautiful to behold. High and low, left and right, forward and back – nowhere near the Cajun was safe for a Friend of Humanity. He fought dirty, too, mixing in ankle sweeps with his feet and eye gouges with his free hand. A few of the ones he dropped received a kick in the side to make sure they stayed down. Without his ability to continuously generate energy, though, he knew he couldn’t keep up his usual unrelenting pace.
Rogue found herself in spot duty, joining in whenever one of the others seemed too badly outnumbered. She broke a half-dozen of the baseball bats the humans brought, having collected them from already-unconscious attackers. She cleaned her share of clocks with her fists as well. Unfortunately, since she wasn’t used to defending herself – instead relying on superhuman durability to shrug off attacks – she also took quite a few shots herself, mostly body blows; fortunately, toughness was still one of her defining features.
The Friends of Humanity continued to swarm, undeterred by the beatings suffered by their comrades – and, in fact, further incensed by the mutants’ resistance. The X-Men retreated, driven back by sheer weight of numbers and by mounting fatigue and injury. “Closing time, people,” Cyclops called through bleeding lips. “Last call.”
Storm and Jean leaned on each other as they hobbled out. Wolverine slugged a few more humans before limping toward the kitchen exit. Gambit grabbed a handful of darts from the dartboard and flung those with practiced accuracy to cover their retreat. Rogue, in a display of ingenuity, pulled a fire extinguisher from the wall and sprayed its contents out to form a makeshift smokescreen. After ensuring nobody had been left behind, Cyclops followed.
The exhausted X-Men maneuvered their way onto the streets, on the opposite side of the pool hall from the mob out for their blood. The Friends of Humanity, they knew, would soon follow. Little time remained for them to safely reach the hospital two blocks away. Wolverine, best with directions, took the lead; Cyclops helped Jean and Storm along; Rogue and Gambit, least injured of the team, brought up the rear, wary of pursuers.
“Not much farther,” grunted Wolverine.
Yells of “Get the muties!” echoed down the streets behind them as bigots poured out of the alley. The X-Men picked up their pace as best they could, over their muscles’ protests. Ahead, the hospital stood tall, a beacon of hope for them.
Gambit glanced over his shoulder to see that the Friends of Humanity had closed the gap considerably and would soon overtake them. “We ain’t gonna make it!” he called ahead.
Jean looked at Cyclops, worry painted across her features; more than ever, she wished she could sense what he was thinking. As it was, she could still draw some strength from his presence. “Storm and I are slowing everyone down,” she observed.
“Don’t,” Cyclops cut her off between gasps for air. “Either everyone gets there, or no one does.”
Storm shook her head, though doing so threatened to leave the world spinning around her. “Two are acceptable losses,” she argued, despite lacking the usual strength behind her voice.
Cyclops ignored her and analyzed their surroundings, searching for inspiration. The X-Men currently hustled over sidewalk, about fifty yards from the hospital parking lot. Thirty feet behind them, the leading edge of the mob was gaining fast. Any street traffic would have been rerouted away from these blocks, so oncoming traffic couldn’t cut them off; but they also couldn’t weave through the moving vehicles for protection. Entering a side building would ultimately leave them trapped.
The leader of the X-Men found something. “Gambit, Rogue, trash cans,” he snapped, pointing to the round metal and square plastic receptacles lining the road.
Rogue smirked and pushed a tall one with wheels as hard as she could into the oncoming mob. The waste-bin didn’t roll far before it tipped over, spilling its foul-smelling contents and forcing the mob to flow around the impromptu barricade. “Dunno which one’s more disgustin’,” she quipped, “y’all hateful bunch or actual trash.”
Gambit kicked over a few of the round metal cans. “Might be an insult t’ de trash, chère,” he replied with a tired smirk.
“Ah reckon that’ll slow ‘em down just enough, O Fearless Leader,” Rogue called ahead. No Danger Room session, regardless of difficulty, would dampen her spirit – not if she had anything to say about it.
While she was distracted, Gambit stepped into the path of a brick or large rock one of the humans hurled at the back of her head. He turned away from the incoming projectile, taking the impact on his shoulder. The pain that lanced through his body produced a grunt in response. Leaning on his staff to steady himself, the Cajun winced as several similar bits of heavy detritus clattered on the concrete around them.
“Come on!” Cyclops shouted. “You’ve done all you can back there. We’re almost to the rendezvous point!”
Rogue grabbed Gambit’s hand and pulled him along as the X-Men dashed across the final stretch, the hospital parking lot. Once they reached the spaces with parked cars, the mutants began weaving through them; the cars effectively became cover from anything thrown, as well as blunting the mob’s momentum. Alarms from jostled cars rang out into the night. Weary and wounded, the X-Men limped into the sanctuary of the hospital.
“Disgusting!” shouted one angry anti-mutant woman at their backs. “They’re hiding in the hospital! They’re using those innocent patients as human shields!”
“Somebody sure needs a new hobby,” grumbled Rogue.
Cyclops tapped the communicator on his chest. “Blue Leader to Home Base, requesting extraction,” he ordered, leaning on one wall.
Beast’s voice responded: “Roger that, Blue Leader. Extraction jet on route. Please return all seats to their upright, locked positions,” he added, pleasantly tongue-in-cheek.
Cyclops chuckled and, interpreting Beast’s jest as a warning that he would soon deactivate the mutant-suppression device, returned his visor to its proper place. Wolverine bristled, hating the idea of running from any number of mutant-hating bigots. Storm stood to her full height, intent on ending this mission unbowed. On the other hand, Jean had no qualms about leaning on Cyclops. Gambit leaned on his staff, his and Rogue’s hands still clasped. For her part, Rogue had no intention of letting go just yet.
Around the battered-but-unbeaten X-Men, the Danger Room’s immersive illusion faded, leaving only cold grey steel walls.
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A/N: Another chapter in the books, folks! This is my first real attempt at writing an action scene, so any feedback regarding the detail-to-pacing ratio would be greatly appreciated. If you're wondering why this chapter exists, the next chapter should make that much clearer.
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When It's Love