(bows head in shame) I’m so sorry for falling behind as I’ve done this year. I keep getting distracted by school and just life and being lazy and…I’m really, really sorry for taking so long, I hope you understand…

Disclaimer: I don’t own Digimon or X-Men Evolution. So sue me. No wait…don’t.

The X-Evolution - Memories

Chapter 17: Smoke/Screams

Takuya’s face twisted in concentration as he slipped around on the smooth metal surface of his flying platform…thing. He could feel that the flattened orb itself was stable enough - Magneto was always excruciatingly precise with his magnetic powers - but it didn’t do anything to block him from the wind or thick moisture left over from the rain. The only reason that he hadn’t just given up and dropped down to grab the disk with his hands was because he could feel Toad watching him, waiting for a chance to heckle him.

He was not going to give him that satisfaction.

Magneto hummed, subtly pulling their attention to him. His silvery-blue eyes had narrowed at the black copter that was approaching them, maneuvering through the buildings with a skill too refined to belong to any amateur. “This is quite the aggravating circumstance…”

Takuya risked a glance up and swallowed hard. The windows of the helicopter were heavily tinted, but there was just enough light coming from a near-by building for him to see the figures up front - Kouji and a taller, red-haired man that Takuya felt he should have recognized, but didn’t.

“I should have known that Gambit would turn against us eventually,” Magneto muttered, clicking his tongue again. “As fickle as fate, that one is. We’ll have to show him that alliances forged in haste break far too easily…”

Behind them, Toad laughed through his sinus cavities and hopped on his platform. “Heh, you got it, boss! I’ll show them!”

He jumped up and, with a noise not unlike hacking up a lugie, spat a huge blob of his not-quite patented Toad Sludge at the copter. It splattered across the side window, sticking the passenger-side door shut, but didn’t deter the copter from its flight in the least.

Magneto gave Toad a look of contempt, causing the younger mutant to shrink back in fear, before the icy gaze moved to Takuya again. There was a little spark in the depths of the cold irises, not really a flame, but something haunting, a glint of burning ice. It was strange, almost as though…

“Flare, why don't you give your old friends something to deal with?”

Takuya twisted around, staring at the Brotherhood’s leader with wide, shocked eyes. “Are you serious? I can't…”

Magneto‘s cold eyes glanced his way. Suddenly, the force keeping the metal disk in the air was gone, and Takuya was falling fast. He pitched forward, the disk sliding out from under his feet, scrambling for a hold until he was jerked to a stop twenty feet lower than he had been before.

“You were saying, Flare?”

Takuya groaned, the sound turning into something of a growl as he pulled himself off the metal sheet. He knelt up, groping in his pockets for the scraps of paper he’d hidden there, tucking the sketchbook - Kouichi’s sketchbook - between his arm and his chest for safekeeping. Finding a single loose scrap, the remains of the scientists’ notes on the cure, he lifted it into his grip and risked a glance up at the window.

He could almost see the dark blue eyes beyond the tinted glass, watching his every move, boring into his mind.

“Forgive me…”

The paper burst to life, little tongues of fire licking against Takuya’s skin comfortably. Seconds later, the flame was a raging torch, leaping across the empty space and drawing fuel from the oxygen in the air.

A pleasant tingling sensation ran up Takuya’s body as his power stretched out like a third limb. He took a deep breath, remembering what Storm had taught him, building on his instincts to stretch the arc and focus his aim as close as possible.

The flame sliced across the top of the machine, leaving a deep black groove of melted plastic in its wake. The white-hot tip of the flaming whip hit the middle of the rotary blade, melting the metal edges and fusing the machine together. He was careful to leave the underlying gears unharmed, and the blades were still turning - they were slowing down, but they were still turning. The copter was disabled, but it would be a slow decent, they should be able to figure out a way to land…

“Excellent work,” Magneto said, something that could almost be called humor seeping into his tone as he slid in front of Takuya. “Exactly what I needed.”

With a swipe of his purple-gloved hand, the liquid metal came to life, rising up in a single metallic mass that twisted around the blades and choked them off completely. From the molten plastic came more and more pieces of Magneto’s arsenal as his magnetic powers ripped the computer systems apart and yanked the steel skeleton from its proper place.

The copter pitched right, then left, throwing its passengers against this wall and then that one, jerking as the computers were fried by the magnetic waves and the massive rotors were ripped out of their place. The gas tank was forced upwards, its metal canister cracking open and bringing the liquid in contact with the remains of Takuya’s flame. The fuel ignited instantly, the fire raging out of Flare’s control, engulfing the vehicle as it spiraled down and down…

“No!” Takuya gasped, dropping to his hands and knees as he watched it fall. A last futile push of the controls sent the copter spinning into a crevice between two buildings. The disappearance was followed by small explosion, and then larger one, and the nothing.

Takuya’s limbs shook, suddenly finding it hard to support his weight. The sketchbook slipped out of its protective clutch and fell onto the metal sheet. He watched the gap for a long moment, waiting for some sign, any sign that they had made it out of there, but there was none. Not even a breath.

Flare took in a few long, deep breaths. He felt eyes on his back and spun around to meet Magneto’s icy glare. “That…That was murder.”

“Perhaps,” Magneto said smoothly, his little not-grin never leaving his face. “But it you who made it possible, Flare.”

Takuya stared at him a moment, the lowered his head to stare at crash again. He kept his eyes on the coiling clouds of smoke even as Magneto levitated their platforms up and away, dragging them away from the site until it even the black ash had faded into the city smog.

( - ) ( - ) ( - )

“Hang on to yer hats!”

Gambit’s shout echoed over the screaming noises of their copter’s eminent destruction, even as Junpei, Izumi and Tomoki were hurled across the cockpit in that order and collapsed to the floor in a heap. Kouji’s hands shot out to grab the edge of the console, locking his elbows to hold himself steady. The heat from the fire was bearing down on the back of his neck as it started to eat through the roof, sizzling beads of melting plastic dripping onto the protective layers of his battle suit.

“Crap, we’re all gonna die…!” Junpei shouted, grabbing for a hold as the craft pitched so far to the right that they were sitting on the wall.

Kouji grunted, planting his feet against the window and his hands against the console to push at the door as hard as he could. “This is no time to panic!”

“I think this is the perfect time to panic!” Izumi shrieked, grabbing Tomoki around the waist with both arms.

“It ain’t over ‘til it’s over!” Gambit warned, grabbing on to the door beside him as the edge of the craft caught on a building and dumped anything that wasn’t held down against the passenger-side wall. He dug into his coat, yanking a card - the five of hearts - out of his pack. It was filled with energy in seconds, glowing a burning red. “Watch your head, kid!”

Kouji looked up just in time to dodge the flying card, pressing flat against the hard chair. The card buried itself in the seam between the two huge doors, lodged into place warped plastic and the thick metal frame. It held there for only a second before the energy was released, blowing both doors and bursting the haul wide open.

At that moment, Gambit let go of his hold and leapt forward, into the open air. “Bombs away, kiddos!”

Kouji got the hint as the red-haired man leapt over him, following suit just seconds later. Izumi was right on his heels, dragging Tomoki along with her. Junpei hesitated just a moment longer - to mutter something about insanity and suicide methods - before he leapt out as well.

They fell several feet, the momentum from their jump the only thing putting air between them and the crashing copter. Forty stories from the ground, the flames finally hit the gas tank, engulfing the entire helicopter in an explosion loud enough that it shattered windows for three stories.

The mutants were hurled downwards on the force of the explosion, tumbling head-over-heels in the slipstream. On instinct, Izumi tightened her grip on Tomoki, and the air rushed to her call, sweeping up under them and killing their momentum slowly but effectively. Junpei grabbed onto her leg, his bulk catching enough of the wind to push him upwards as well. Static electricity rolled up the girl’s body, making her blonde hair stand on end and frizz out wildly.

Kouji and Gambit were a bit further down, arching towards one of the buildings. Gambit grabbed the teen by the arm with one hand, using the other to dig his collapsible bo staff out of his trench coat. He slammed the weapon into the side of the nearest building, leaving a deep grove in the glass panes, slowing but not stopping their fall.

Tomoki twisted in Izumi’s grip, shooting a stream of ice down the curve of the building. It formed an ice slide that scooped Gambit and Kouji into its grip, gradually increasing the slope to slow their decent to a safe speed, its oldest parts falling to pieces and melting away behind them in the heat of the explosion. Izumi, in control now that her initial panic had disappeared, brought the wind under command again to guide their path as they circled around the building, finally arriving on the ground in the middle of a back alley.

Kouji and Gambit rolled off the slide into low crouches behind the dumpster, keeping their heads down. Junpei twisted out of the wind’s grip about a foot off the ground, landing on his back with a thump. Izumi got the wind to ease her to the ground, setting Tomoki down before she collapsed to her knees.

“That didn’t just happen,” she whispered, closing her eyes and pulling her arms in like she was giving herself a hug. “Tell me that didn’t just happen.”

“It happened,” Junpei groaned, rolling up to sit on the ground instead of lying on it and rubbing his shoulders in pain. “I’ve got the bruises to prove it.”

Izumi let out a pained mewling and buried face in her hands. “I just can’t believe it. How could Takuya…how could he work for…how could he try to…?”

“He wouldn’t!” Tomoki insisted, shaking his head fervently and clutching his hands into fists at his sides. “It’s gotta be some kinda trick, like…like that lady from the briefing, the shape-changer, it‘s gotta be!”

Gambit frowned at them as he and Kouji straightened, picking up his bo. “I hate to break it to yeh, but that ain’t possible,” he spat off to the side, a little bit of red visible in the clear liquid. “Mystique’s able tuh copy peoples’ appearance, their looks an’ their voice. She can’t mimic their powers.”

The younger mutants lowered their heads a bit as their spirits fell. Gambit sighed, collapsing his staff back to his portable state. “Ah know it’s hard to hear, but we gotta accept it. Yer friend’s playin’ Magneto’s game now, an’ the Brotherhood plays fer keeps. If yeh don’t accept the fact that he’s turned traitor…”

“No.”

There was a crash from the back of the alley. The group snapped their heads around to find Kouji kicking a wooden crate to pieces, grabbing onto a thin plank and yanking until it broke off. “There’s more to it than that. I know there is. There has to be.”

“You’ll always be an X-Man. That’s not going to change. Ever.”

He scraped the wood against the wall, knocking the splinters off. He tested the weight and turned back to the group, brandishing his newly-created, makeshift bokuto. “There’s no way that Takuya’s really working for Magneto. There’s something more to this. You’ll see. We can count on him.”

Gambit shrugged, deciding it wasn’t worth it to argue with hopeful teenagers. Besides, the rest of the group had their spirits noticeably lifted - that couldn’t be a bad thing, considering where they were about to be headed into.

Izumi sniffed and wiped her eyes, smiling just a bit. “Okay…so, what now?”

“Now, we spread out,” Gambit took charge, dropping down to draw his instructions in the dirt. “Magneto’s goin’ it on foot, which means Yin’s gotta be somewhere nearby. We split up, we find him first an’ we get him outta here, quick.”

“Sounds good to me!” Junpei leaned down and drew a line out of Gambit’s sketch of their alleyway, curing away and around a corner. “I’ll head this way and go around the block.”

Tomoki rubbed his hands together nervously, brushing the ice off his palms. “I don’t think going alone is a good idea…”

“Don’t worry kid,” Junpei grinned, cracking his knuckles and sending another small flurry of sparks into the air. “I can handle it.”

Izumi rolled her eyes at the display of machismo and put an arm around Yuki. “You can come with me, Tomoki. We’ll stick together, okay?”

The youngest mutant smiled at the suggestion and nodded. “Okay.”

“Then yeh two’ll head this way,” Gambit drew a line that split off from Junpei’s, heading the opposite way down the road at the corner before he glanced at Kouji. “An’ you an’ Ah’ll head the other way, back towards that building we saw goin’ up back there. You up for that?”

Kouji swung his bokuto, giving it a few final tests, and found it to be satisfactory. “Absolutely.”

“Good. Then let’s get a move on…”

( - ) ( - ) ( - )

Yin shivered in the cold, thick air, pulling his jacket further around himself. The shifting drew Angel’s attention, and he tightened his grip to get a better hold on the boy. “Hang on. We’re heading down.”

The boy didn’t understand, but the wind around him changed and he closed his eyes to fight down the sinking feeling as they dropped down through the sky again.

Angel landed in a small, abandoned lot usually used for neighborhood baseball games. He set Yin down on his feet and took a step back to examine their surroundings, making sure that they were alone. Once he was sure that they were, he looked back at his charge.

Yin was still shivering, though it didn’t seem like the cold was responsible this time. Sweat poured off his forehead, his skin held a rosy flush and his breathing was heavy, as though he’d developed a fever in the ten minutes it had taken them to flee here. He pulled the black jacket further around himself like a security blanket, burying his hands inside the folds of cloth and ducking his head down until his glasses were resting against the edge of the collar. The shadows of the gloomy field were coming to life around him, cradling his body as though it were trying to comfort him.

Angel frowned and brushed the shadows away to press a bare hand against the boy’s forehead. He wasn’t hot, but he was clammy and winced away from the touch as though it burned.

“Daijoubu?” he asked gently, recalling the word from their earlier conversation. Xavier had said the boy was unstable, that a shock could make him a danger. Having a plane crash into his apartment certain counted as a shock…

“Onakaga itaii…” Yin whimpered, and, though Angel couldn’t understand the words, he knew the mewling of a person in pain when he heard it.

He sighed and tucked his wings against his back, putting one arm around the boy kindly. Taking one more cautious glance around, he started off on foot, pulling the boy into the shadows, which accepted them like old friends.

Angel pulled Yin against him protectively, keeping all of his senses on high alert. Fate had made him this boy’s guardian, and he would fulfill that duty…no matter what it took.

( - ) ( - ) ( - )

It was supposed to be part of the X-Men code or something to always be ready for action, no matter what action might be called for. But this, Iceman was sure, was absolutely not in the job description.

“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” He shouted over the wind, holding onto the frame of the Blackbird’s escape hatch. He had to use both hands because, if he hadn’t, the wind from the plane’s jets and the updraft holding them aloft.

“This ain’t no joke, kiddo,” Logan growled from behind him, planting one burly hand on his shoulder. “And you volunteered for it, so quit holdin’ up the line.”

Bobby swallowed hard and looked back at their landing point again, just in time to see Kurt and Scott appear out of a cloud of smoke, then disappear again as they dropped down into the penthouse below. Lucky bastards taking the easy way out…

Kitty giggled as she slid up beside Bobby, grabbing his wrist. “Ready?”

Bobby looked at her incredulously. “How the hell are you so calm about this?”

“You just, like, get used to it after a while,” Shadowcat grinned and jumped, Wolverine shoving Iceman out after her.

They dropped like a pair of bricks, falling fifty feet before they hit the roof. Bobby couldn’t stop the instinctive gasp as they hit hard blacktop, even as they went straight through it and came out the other side into the top floor, and from there slipped into the floor. At the last moment, Kitty shot out her free hand and solidified herself just enough to stop their fall. A quick gymnastics move - obviously one that had been rehearsed laboriously - and she’d hoisted them both back onto the top floor, finally coming to a stop on completely solid feet.

Bobby wobbled from one foot to the other, his stomach still shaking from the jump, and closed his eyes to force the vertigo away. “You know what, Kit? Don’t ever do that again…”

He heard a snort behind him and groaned as he opened his eyes. “Shut up, Kurt.”

Any further comments were cut off by an unholy screeching noise from outside. Seconds afterwards, the glass pane shattered as Wolverine threw himself through it. The adamantium claws were, of course, completely undamaged from their slide down the side of the building, and Wolverine withdrew them smoothly as he straightened.

“Let’s move,” he ordered, and the group followed without so much as a blink.

The group of five pushed down the destroyed hall and into the wreckage of what had been Warren Worthington’s apartment, dodging around the flame and debris left by the crash. There was no one in sight and, except for them, there wasn’t a sound to be heard.

Cyclops was the first to realize this, and the thought brought a frown onto his face. “All this…is anybody even still alive?”

“Oh, they’re alive all right,” Wolverine growled, sniffing the air. “They’re here. I can smell ‘em.”

A few more steps down the dark hall and they reached a fork - no, a three-way split, with a hall stretching on either side and still more to go in front. Wolverine signaled for a stop, sniffed the air again, then signaled to split up. Cyclops and Nightcrawler went to the left. Iceman and Shadowcat to the right. Wolverine kept moving straight ahead.

It wasn’t until they’d put a decent amount of distance between themselves and the others that a sound caught Bobby’s ear and he jerked his head to follow it. Figuring out that it came from the other side of the half-collapsed hallway wall, he grabbed Kitty’s arm and slammed them both against the wall. “Ow! Iceman, what…”

“Shush,” he hissed, pushing a finger against his lips. “There’s somebody over there.”

“Really?” Kitty blinked and pressed her ear against the wall to hear for herself. There was a definite thudding noise on the other side, footsteps against the floor. Shadowcat sucked in a breath and grabbed Iceman by the shoulders with a bit of a gleam in her eye. “Let’s get ‘em!”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” Bobby grinned, raising his arms in preparation for attack. “Ready? One, two…Three!”

Shadowcat dove through the wall, pulling Bobby with her. Iceman was already conjuring ice in both hands and had just leaned back to flash-freeze the creep when Kitty suddenly screamed and grabbed his arm.

“Bobby, it’s Yin!”

TBC…

“Onakaga itaii…” - “My stomach hurts.”