Aidan could see the wooded hill looming up with the fenced-in lawns and the mix of antique colonial architecture with newer, utilitarian constructions that marked the Cullen's compound.
"We oughta be visible pretty soon. If anyone's looking..."
He glanced downward to keep tabs on the monster, but he couldn't see it anymore. All he could see was miles of wooded hillside - plenty of available cover if the thing wanted to hide.
"Oh, crap... where is it?"
Freight Train was out, plugged into her mp3 player and trying to figure out what to do with her day. She was tired of being inside, tired of playing basketball by herself, tired of her Wii, and now...tired of standing on the lawn and looking at the trees. She was about to wander off when something came zooming up over the treetops. The little bruiser shielded her eyes and squinted.
"...Sunshine? Izzat you?"
The Tiny Titan couldn't tell what the hell Banner was carrying, and her confusion seeped into her posture as her head tilted, her jaw slackened, and her body sagged. She also didn't see what in the world she was flying away from so quickly.
"SUNSHINE! WHERE'S THE FIRE!?"
Clarity Cleine paused by the steps of the Cullen Institute to untangle a small bloom of forget-me-not's from the ivy growing up the stone exterior. The woman had an armful of papers - she'd been making some copies - and was dangerously close to being late for her meeting with Ethan but the distraction was too welcomed to resist.
It was a gorgeous day and while she would have liked nothing more than to wander the grounds, Clarity had a busy afternoon scheduled. A lot more had been involved in moving back to the school and she was taking the opportunity to tie up loose ends.
Smiling as she freed the little flowers, the teleporter started as a loud shout reached her ears. Clarity straightened and looked about, identifying the source of the shout as one of the students she'd briefly met earlier in the week. Lousy with names on the best of days, the woman refrained from going over and instead glanced upwards to look at what had so caught the girl's attention.
While it was not unusual to witness demonstrations of powers, the distinctively desperate appearance of Banner's flight - whose passenger Clarity did not recognize, even faintly - made her brow furrow. Out of instinct she surveyed the air around them for a reason to explain the behavior: nothing. That was strange. Perhaps something was wrong with the boy?
They were descending rapidly and Clarity headed towards their approximate landing point, plans forgotten.
"Gah!"Originally Posted by Freight Train
She nearly dropped Aidan, as she rather abruptly ended her flight and landed in a heap a few feet from FT. Banner rolled onto her back, eyes shut. Worst. Landing. Ever.
...and of course, everyone had to see it. She could feel that familar burning in her cheeks as she sat up, checking herself over out of habit before checking on Aidan.
"You okay?"
Thank God Aidan knew how to crash-land. He didn't try to catch himself, just rolled shoulder over shoulder to kill his momentum. His ribs hurt like hell, though.
He grit his teeth and tried not to cough, since it wouldn't do his ribs any good, and hefted himself up on one arm. "I think so. Where'd --"
Aidan was suddenly aware of what looked like an elementary-age girl running their way. "You, shortstack, get help - we've got company!"
That cloud they'd been flying through had somehow found its way to Cullen's. It drifted in front of the sun, throwing the whole campus into shadow. Aidan knew the Astral demon couldn't be far behind.
SHORTSTACK!?
"Look, chump, I am help!" she yelled as she skidded to a stop. Her heels left small trenches in the soft ground as her powers tried to keep her moving, and her upper body snapped forward, bringing her face inches from Aidan's own. "If I'd hit you just now, you'd be a smear. So whatever company you brought, I got it covered." She was absolutely livid, red in the face and breathing heavy.
Aidan stared at the girl incredulously, but he kept his mouth shut. Maybe you didn't think a tiny, yapping dog could kill you, but you still didn't stick your fingers near its mouth.
But that was when a long, bony talon hooked over the top of the brick wall at the edge of the grounds, followed by another, and then the creature hauled itself to perch on the wall like a gargoyle. It leaned forward under the shade of its wings, and a thick drop of viscous fluid fell from its anglerfish jaws and melted the grass underneath.
The leading edge of the cloud's shadow was slowly creeping toward the three mutants on the lawn. The creature dropped from the wall and prowled just behind the advancing penumbra, growling like a death rattle.
Aidan turned toward the demon, and his hands burst into blue flame. Which was good, because it helped hide to how much his hands were shaking.
"No offense... but you think you might want to reconsider that?"
"Are you two alright?"
The inquiry made it to the group a full three seconds before Clarity did, arriving just in time to witness the little verbal scuffle between the strange boy and Freight Train. With a concerned tilt to her mouth, the woman helped Banner up, motherly instinct and experience guiding her hands over the girl to check for the three B's: broken, bleeding, badly bruised. Satisfied that she wasn't in immediate danger of collapsing, the European teleporter turned to her cargo, who'd tumbled pretty fantastically.
Clarity opened her mouth to ask after him but the words never quite left the back of her throat. Instead, as her tremulously blue eyes shifted to discern just what the moving shadow in the corner of their gaze was, a strangled squawk emerged.
Her mind tried to cobble together some sort of recognition, but it was coming up empty. The only thing Clarity knew--felt--for certain, was that that? Was not a mutant.
And that it probably wasn't here to ask about admission requirements, either.
Snapping to guarded attention, Clarity half-turned her head towards Aidan, rigid tension showing in every line of her posture.
"You." Her faintly-accented voice held just an edge of growl. "What is that?"
Little Train was visibly shaken by the monster that loomed up from the wall. She stepped back a few paces, tripping over her own trenches as it began to prowl forward. She looked at the adult; she was frightened, but looked pretty mad. New boy looked just mad. Sunshine hadn't recovered yet, but Freight Train figured she'd be pretty cheesed off, too. So. Mad.
"No offense... but you think you might want to reconsider that?"
Her face twisted into a sneer, as much for herself as for Aidan's skepticism. "No way, Jazz Hands." She pushed herself to her feet, her powers quickly kicking in and bringing her from a controlled run to an unstoppable sprint. The ground sank beneath her feet, sod sprayed up from her heels, and a primal scream of fear and anger let loose from her as she prepared, for the second time in her life, to "freight train" another living creature.
"Hope you like flyin',"she thought grimly, turning her body to check the beast with a frail-looking shoulder.
She'd started moving before anyone else could react - the creature just spread its talons wide for this little snack running so obligingly into its open arms.
There was a resounding CRACK! and the demon flipped up into the air over Freight Train's back. It gave an infuriated scream and tumbled to the ground in a heap of bony joints and leathery wings.
Disoriented, but seemingly uninjured, it leapt into the air after the girl and reached its scythe-like claws toward her unprotected back.
"Damnit!"
Banner leap into the air, grabbing the beasts' tail just before it sunk it's claws into pipsqueak. With all her strength, she twisted her body, flinging the creature the other way, towards Aidan and Clarity. Hopefully they'd teleport outta the way...unless it managed to stop itself mid-throw. She got into a defensive position, just in case...
She heard her shirt get shredded as the thing tried to hurt her; not that it would've had much success with her still going full-speed. She stopped herself with a short hop that planted both feet firmly in the ground, but tripped and rolled as the soft ground gave way beneath her. She lay face-down, reaching behind her back to tie her shirt on at the waist.
"What I wouldn't give for invincible clothes," she grumbled, turning her head to see how the others were doing.
Aidan danced back and forth looking for a clean shot, but Banner and Freight Train were still too close, up until Banner flung the demon like an ugly and very bad-tempered hammer. Aidan stepped in front of Clarity to shield her and blasted a huge blue fireball which engulfed the monster.
The demon went down in a screaming, burning heap, but Aidan didn't dare think he'd finished it off. He peeked over his shoulder at Clarity and said, "In advance, I'm really sorry about the grass."
He spread his arms, and the flames in his hands leapt to the ground, rapidly eating up a patch about ten yards across. Before the white-hot flames had expended themselves, Aidan closed them together on the still-writhing demon. Its screams grew louder, and an awful stench filled the air.
But then a still-burning limb swung out of the blaze and caught Aidan in the sternum, throwing him backwards ten feet, and the demon shook off the flames and rose from the ground. Its membranous wings were almost completely burned away, and its flesh was still smoldering, but the monster still charged after Aidan, sweeping Clarity aside with a careless flick from one bony wing-arm.
Elsewhere in the grounds, the commotion had not gone unnoticed. The noise had reached Francoise Dupont, who sat with knees drawn up to her chest in silent and solitary thought, staring emptily at the sky. She blinked, the haze that had clouded her vision slipping away, and shakily began to rise from her chair. With bare-feet, she padded out onto the front lawn and looked, uncomprehending, across the distance between herself and the flame-wreathed conflict – was that Clarity and Carlos? A feeling like vertigo threatened to pitch her forwards, but she steadied herself and began to move quickly across the grass, her dark hair whipping in the air like ravens wings.
“Stop, please!”
Last edited by Francoise Dupont; Sep 28th, 2008 at 06:57:31 PM.
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