stormkeeper_lovedoris (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stormkeeper_lovedoris) wrote2011-02-25 05:32 pm
stormkeeper_lovedoris) wrote2011-02-25 05:32 pm
Entry tags:
X-men Fic "Election Day" (2/approx. 8)
Chapter Two of my X-men fic "Election Day" is behind the cut.
If you missed chapter one, click here.
Tess – one of Cortez’s people who met us in the shuttle bay - gave us a tour. The place was huge, and teeming with mutants. We got out of the shuttle bay and into the corridors, and there were mutants all about. Didn’t take long to realize that if you were the kinda person who liked your peace and quiet, you wouldn’t be too happy up here and I worried a bit about Wolverine who was loyal to us but always such a darn loner at heart.
The tour took better part of the morning because Asteroid M is so huge, and we had a big group, and sometimes we’d run into a mutant we knew.
We passed a bulletin board – an old-fashioned thing, looked like it was made of actual cork. Tess said that this would be the central spot for any messages to be posted, but that if we brought our hand held devices we’d get the messages electronically. Fortunately we all had the hand helds, but I thought folk like the Morlocks who probably didn’t have much fancy technology could use this board to get news.
The bulletin board announced that there’d be a meeting in the assembly hall the next day to discuss “the future of mutantkind after the martyrdom of Magneto”. (Please!) It said that every Asteroid M resident was “welcome and encouraged to attend the meeting”. Guess I don’t need to say that we sure all planned to be there.
Tess was friendly enough, and she showed us to the dining room, the store, rec room, sick bay, assembly hall, observation lounge, library, gym, meeting rooms, and movie theater. Storm took special note of the greenhouse. Tess showed us where the Control Room was but didn’t let us enter. I figured that to walk from one end of this place to the other would take a long time.
Using her hand held device, Tess assigned each of us a room and we each brought our luggage to our respective rooms. Remy was right: the rooms were small. A while ago we X-men had all gone on a cruise and the rooms here were a mite smaller than the cabins on the cruise ship. Each one had a bed, a desk, chair, and closet – and not much else. Barely enough room to turn around in. But thank heavens above that they each had their own bathroom including a shower. I sure didn’t want to have to share that kinda thing with strangers. Guessed I’d been spoiled all those years in the mansion.
Tess explained some of the other logistical stuff with how Asteroid M works. If you had money, you could pay your room and board, and purchase stuff from the store. What they were charging was pretty reasonable, I reckoned after glancing at some of the prices in the store. But even if you couldn’t afford it, you could sign up to work. There was plenty of stuff that needed to get done on the asteroid, kitchen type work, mechanical, janitorial, and so on. So any mutant who was willing to put in a few hours’ work on most days could pay for their stay here, easy as pie.
Honestly by this point my jaw wanted to drop open and a couple of the X-men didn’t hide their surprise. It was kinda scary that Cortez had put together an operation that looked this organized and, you know, normal. This sure wasn’t the Cortez that I remembered from our last run in with the jerk. I guessed that maniac wanted to win over mutants so badly that he went to this level of detail and that was downright worrisome.
***
We didn’t get any slow down that first day. Right after our tour, the Professor wanted us all to meet. Storm pressed a few buttons into her device and one of the meeting rooms was booked for us X-men.
The meeting room – like pretty much every other room in this place – was nothing fancy. Cortez may’ve been organized but he sure didn’t believe much in decorating. The rooms and their equipment and furniture had a white and metallic color scheme going on and that was it. The meeting room was a bunch of tables and chairs. There wasn’t a huge circular table like in the War Room so we just took the chairs and made them into a circle.
The thing that most caught my eye about the layout of the meeting room – in fact, about the whole asteroid -- was that most rooms had huge windows. You could stare out into space and look at the stars.
We talked about a lot of stuff, but at this point it ain’t worth spelling out everything. We talked about the big meeting that was gonna be tomorrow. We got updates as to when the Morlocks and X-Factor would be arriving, and we made plans to get with them. We also wanted to get a sense of what the mutants on board the asteroid were thinking now, so we had an idea of where things stood before the big meeting the next day. So most of the group was asked to just get out there, explore the place and talk to people. Someone also had to talk to Tess to cover off on paying for our room and board up here. The Professor was gonna try to get back in touch with the White House and the UN, so they knew what was going on and could be reassured that at least the X-men would do everything in our power to prevent a war.
***
So that was the meeting. I wasn’t asked to meet with the Morlocks or X-Factor so Remy and I spent most of the rest of the day walking around the place and trying to talk to people to get their ideas about tomorrow’s meeting – and what in the heck they thought all us mutants should be doing up on Asteroid M.
We stopped in sick bay at one point. Hank was there, offering his doctoring services. Cortez had a doctor on his team (another thing that near made my jaw open) but Hank was made to feel welcome in sick bay too. Any doctor who wouldn’t welcome him was a darned fool, that’s for sure. I wasn’t a doctor but to my eye, the infirmary looked pretty well stocked, full of fancy equipment. Hank said it should be more than adequate, “assuming my estimate of the number of inhabitants of this space station is not too far from accurate”.
When we were there, the doors opened up and Bobby walked in. He asked if they had any vitamin C pills or Echinacea. Hank asked if he was coming down with a cold.
“No,” Bobby said. “It’s Jubilee. She told me she’s got a tickle in her throat and she wasn’t hungry at lunchtime. She thinks she’s coming down with something. Poor thing.”
Bobby always had a soft spot for Jubilee – heck, most of the team did – so as soon as Hank gave him the stuff he high-tailed it for Jubilee. I hoped she’d be okay.
Speaking of lunch, Gambit wasn’t too impressed with the food on the space station. Me, I ain’t the most fussy eater but Remy is. So we headed back to the dining room and kitchen. Funny thing is that Jean was already there.
She and Remy talked a bit. The X-men had plenty to do but Remy and Jean wanted to see about making the food better. The way the space station was set up, some of the folks who couldn’t pay their room and board worked in the kitchen. And like I said, the food itself came from a combination of the green house and frozen foods and other stuff Cortez’s people had shipped up from earth – and stuff from the food replicators since the green house and our other supplies couldn’t possibly feed everyone on here. Jean and Remy spent a few hours fiddling with the replicators and talking with the kitchen staff people.
I watched Jean for a bit. It definitely wasn’t the right time – so much was going on – but I knew I’d have to say something to her and offer to listen if she wanted. She just wasn’t “up” and smiling like she normally is. I knew from talking with Storm that it had to be the baby thing. Then I smirked to myself that Cortez was so darn organized, maybe he had a fertility specialist on board.
Maybe, I thought, I could sit with Jean and tell her that I knew how she felt. We both wanted something desperately and couldn’t have it. ‘Course I figured I wouldn’t tell her that I had decided to break if off with Remy and tell him to find someone else. That wouldn’t give her much hope on the baby front. Just thinking about splitting with Remy made my heart turn all cold – I think I dreaded that more than I did the idea of a war, so I had to go set my mind on something else.
And I did. While Remy and Jean were doing their thing in the kitchen, I hung around the dining room and talked to people like we’d been instructed to. I’d say I could feel energy and excitement and fear in the air soon as I stepped on board, and I still felt it thick like humidity in the summer.
It had been a while since I’d been around so many mutants at once. ‘Course I lived with the X-men but you know you just kinda get used to your own family and they seem normal after a while. On Asteroid M there were powerful mutants and mutants without any powers. Some looked normal, some looked downright weird. You saw all different ages and races, and plenty of folks didn’t speak much English either. Some were friendly and some weren’t.
Some asked me if I was an X-man. It was a downright dumb question, but I didn’t tell them that. All us X-men nowadays wore our black uniforms and each uniform had an X somewhere on them. Some of the people didn’t want to talk to me when they saw that I was an X-man. I didn’t know how to take that except that I had to fight my temper on that one.
The friendly ones I got to talk to, and I asked them about that. One of them said the X-men are “sorta intimidating”.
One guy said that “you X-men haven’t done anything for us regular mutants”.
Now I can control my temper pretty well if I want to, but I felt my face get hot. I forced myself to take a breath, and in that time the first guy’s friend said something to him. He said, “Hang on a minute. That’s not true. The X-men fought back against the Sentinels. And that crazy Apocalypse.”
“Sugar, that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” I said. And I wished we’d done a PR campaign, but you know it’s kinda hard to do that when you’re fighting just to keep yourself and the rest of the planet alive.
I went on to say more about what we’d done over the years, but the creepy thing was that the first guy had just shut down. You know how you can tell when someone’s just not listening to you? Like say you disagree on a social or political thing, and you’re trying to explain your point of view but you can tell the other person ain’t considering any views but his own? That was how it was.
But I thought – I hoped – that some other folks around us were listening.
When I could actually talk to people, I wanted to see what they thought of Cortez and – you know – what we’re doing up here and what they wanted up here. Some folks said they just wanted to be around mutants and get away from regular humans. Some wanted to just live their lives in peace and hoped they could do that up here. Also, some of them said that they didn’t have a job or money back on earth and they really liked the way you could just work for your room and board here. I reckon that a lot of mutants can’t get hired at a regular job.
But that wasn’t what everyone said. Magneto’s name came up a lot. So did the names Genosha, FOH, and other extremist groups. I heard stories about folks getting beat up by regular humans, getting their houses burned down, and one woman said they killed her husband. I wasn’t surprised – think ‘bout what happened to Moira’s son.
And along those lines, I shouldn’t have been surprised - and I guess I wasn’t - but most of the mutants up here had had pretty tough lives. And that made them kinda all jagged around the edges. What made it worse for them is that most of them hadn’t had a group of people like the X-men. My life hadn’t been too much of a picnic either, but having the other X-men made it go from tolerable to good. I felt bad that these folks weren’t part of groups and didn’t have that.
The people who wanted a war – I tried to find out if any of them had ever fought in battle. Most hadn’t. It was scary to see that some of them hated non-mutant humans as much as we were hated. One of them told me that he didn’t “buy any stupid ideal of humans and mutants working together,” and a bunch of others nodded when he said that.
Bobby popped into the dining room when I was winding down my socializing with the folks there. I asked him how Jubilee was and he said he thought she would be fine but he’d keep checking in on her.
Something else happened later that day. Remember that the Morlocks and X-Factor arrived on Asteroid M later that same day, and that different X-men were assigned to go meet with them.
Storm went to meet with X-Factor. We’d had members of their team at our mansion just the day before (though I gotta say it all felt like much more than one day had passed), but their leader Forge hadn’t been one of them. So Storm went to meet with Forge and talk about what might happen on Asteroid M and how both our teams could prevent a war.
Put that thought in the back of your mind, and I’ll tell you what I saw when it was dinner time. All of us X-men had planned to get to the dining room at the same time and eat together. We also talked about what we’d done that day. I sure liked getting back with everyone again, ‘cause like I said that day was flying by and I had to know what everyone else had been up to.
But we later found out that other mutants wondered why all the X-men sat together at one table during dinner and didn’t hang out with other people.
Apart from everything else going on, something was up with Storm. She had this look on her face that I hadn’t ever seen from her before. I was dying to know what it was. Then someone who was sitting next to Wolverine said something, and when I looked that direction I saw that Wolverine had this look on his face. I might not’ve recognized Storm’s look but I’d sure seen Wolverine’s look before. The damn fool was jealous.
Had seen that look from him often enough over the years, given all the time he spent with Jean and Scott. I had to find out what he was jealous about, ‘cause I had an inkling and I wondered if it could be true.
And Remy and I were two peas in a pod like usual because as soon as I could get him alone, I mentioned this and he’d not only seen the same thing but had an idea as to what was going on. So we hunted Storm down.
***
“I can’t speak with you right now,” Storm said to us in the corridor. “I need to meet with the Morlocks.”
“Wolverine and Beast met with Callisto just a few hours ago,” Remy said. Wolverine and Beast had been picked to meet with the Morlocks given what they had done for Leech a few Christmases ago. “They got it covered.”
“I know,” Storm said. “I would’ve been there as well if I hadn’t been meeting with Forge at the same time.”
“You know, Storm,” I pressed, “maybe it’s better that we left it to Wolverine and Beast. Callisto might still hold a grudge against you – not that any sane person would think they got a reason to, but there’s no tellin’ with Callisto.”
Storm was quiet for a second. “You might be right,” she admitted. Then it seemed like she looked around in her head for something else to do. So I then reminded her how those of us who hadn’t met with the Morlocks or X-Factor had already been doing what we were told to earlier at the meeting: talk to the mutants on this station, get the lay of the land, find out what people thought. Angel and Psylocke had spoken with that Tess lady to settle the X-men’s finances for our stay on Asteroid M. Storm knew I was right ‘cause what else do you think we X-men had talked about during dinner?
“So how ‘bout a game of pool instead?” Remy asked.
Storm looked like she wanted to say no – I knew how much she loved to keep busy – but she agreed, and we made our way to the rec room. We didn’t get lost on the way there which really was kinda a miracle.
When we got there, the rec room was buzzing just like the rest of the place. It still felt exciting and weird to be around so many mutants. There was only one empty pool table left and we took it.
“I am concerned by what I heard at dinner,” Storm said, even before her first turn. “Wolverine and Beast said that not every Morlock is in agreement about trying to avoid a war.”
“Gambit ain’t too worried,” Remy said. “Callisto’s with us.”
“She always whips her team into place,” I added. “I wouldn’t worry too much if a few of them have doubts.”
I was trying to turn the conversation around to where Remy and I wanted it, when Forge walked into the rec room. He saw Storm – who I gotta admit was facing away from him and bending over to make her shot – and made a beeline for us.
Storm turned around soon as she saw that Forge was there. She looked all flustered and excited. I was pretty amazed. No, I’d never seen this before.
And heck, in my only interactions with Forge before, he’d been so darn serious and dry. There was a new side of him right there in front of us when he and Storm got to talking. All I can say is that from his tone of voice and the look in his eyes, he sure wasn’t trying to play coy regarding his interest.
So it took Remy and me just a few seconds to figure out the situation. “We’d better go check on Jubilee, chere,” he said. “See if she’s feelin’ better.”
“Yes!” I agreed. “We’ll see you two later.”
And we hightailed out of the rec room, nearly bumping into someone on the way out.
“Remy guesses we know why Wolverine looked so jealous at dinner,” he said as we walked down the corridor.
“Yeah, funny how that is,” I said, kinda smirking. “Does he need for a woman to be with another guy – or pursued by another guy – in order for him to get interested in her?”
“Dat could be,” Remy said. “Some guys are like dat.”
“I wonder what’s gonna happen.”
“I dunno. Those two, Storm and Wolverine, still stubborn as mules and proud too. He don’t act fast, Forge gonna win Storm over. Remy thinks the old fool gonna let Storm slip right outta his fingers.”
We came to an elevator bank. Remy slowed down his pace. “You wanna come to my room, chere? Maybe we have a cuddle again.”
I started to think right then and there that maybe Remy was masochistic. Or maybe he really was crazy. What guy in his right mind would want to sit there and cuddle and not be able to do anything more?
I didn’t answer his question. Instead I muttered, “Least Storm can touch a fellow. Wolverine maybe is a stubborn old man and Forge maybe serious as mud, but one of them could at least get touched by her if she wants.”
“Chere,” Remy said. His voice was soft, soothing, and quiet. In that one syllable he told me to not go there again and that everything was okay. And that maybe made my heart break even more. Especially when I thought of how I had to end things with him and do it soon.
Which meant that I had to be a heck of a lot more firm than I was the day before.
“It’s okay, Remy,” I said, and I knew my voice was also quiet and very sad. “It’s been a long day. I’m headin’ for the library to see what they have and maybe just go to my room for a read.”
He looked down and nodded. Then he reached for my hands, kissed my gloves, and let me go.
I found out the next morning that Dazzler gave a concert in the assembly hall late that evening. I heard that Remy was there and I hoped he liked it.
They say you can’t miss what you never had but that night, I put my book away and got under the covers alone. I wanted Remy’s arms around me, I wanted to fall asleep at his side.
***
I got up early the next morning. There was a message on my device with a time for us X-men to meet for breakfast, those who wanted to get up early enough. Remy wasn’t there, but that wasn’t a surprise. The man loved to sleep in and I usually did too. But there was such a feeling of urgency in the atmosphere on Asteroid M – like I said, you could feel it like humidity in August, like a thunderstorm was about to hit – that I woke up early.
Wasn’t much worth writing about with the breakfast. Cyclops said that Alpha Flight was arriving today, and he assigned me to go along with him to meet with them. The Professor was pretty sure that both the Inner Circle and Children of the Shadow also would get here before the big meeting in the assembly hall. He said we might want to keep our eyes on them from afar. Sitting down and having a civilized meeting with them probably wasn’t gonna be possible given the bad histories we had with those troublemakers.
Speaking of meetings, the Professor also wanted to talk to Cortez. We decided we’d wait until after the big meeting today to see how it went. We’d kinda tip-toed near the subject of meeting with Cortez yesterday but Tess had said his schedule was way too busy.
And of course the most important thing that day would be the big meeting in the assembly hall to talk about what we were all going to do up here. The Professor said to make sure that anyone who missed this breakfast get filled in (people looked at me – but Remy wasn’t the only one who slept in!) and to make sure that everyone was at tonight’s big meeting. I don’t think anyone would miss that for the world.
This day rushed by much like yesterday did. Cyclops’ and my meeting with Alpha Flight was downright uneventful. We met with Mac and Heather – the husband and wife who ran it. Good news was that they wanted peace as much as we did, but the bad news was that Alpha Flight didn’t exactly have strength in numbers. We asked them how many people they had with them now, and they looked at each other and told us. The answer was eight. A lot of mutants know about them and their work, but with such small numbers it didn’t seem like they’d have influence over people.
I kinda wanted to talk to Cyke after our meeting, see how he was doing. But he was down to business as usual and just not in the mood for talking. You could see the tension on his face from the set of his jaw, and hear it in his voice though he tried to cover it. I hoped that he and Jean would get that baby they wished for but there sure wasn’t much I could do about it.
Yeah, and speaking of folks who don’t open up, I didn’t get much out of Storm either. I saw her later that day. She mentioned that she and Forge went to Dazzler’s concert last evening but she wouldn’t say anything more than that.
Heck, I don’t blame Cyclops and Storm for being serious. The big meeting was coming up, Asteroid M was jammed with mutants, and a lot of them were angry. I talked to folks, just as I had the day before. Seemed that plenty of them just weren’t worried at all about the downside of making war on the rest of (non-mutant) humanity. Maybe by design the people who came up here were the ones who wanted to be apart from non-mutants. That meant that a lot of the folks who wanted a quiet life were plain left out of the picture, sitting pretty back on earth.
My communicator beeped and it was Remy. He wanted to know if I’d meet him at the gym. I silently cursed the way my heart went flip flop, and said I’d meet him in 15 minutes. I’d been wanting to check out the gym here anyway. I threw on a grubby workout outfit and headed for the gym.
‘Course when I entered the gym I saw Gambit wearing his own grubby workout clothes, but he still somehow looked handsome. You know handsome is an understatement, but the man made me tongue-tied anyway.
“Given how many folks are livin’ up here now,” I said to Remy, “I’m surprised this place ain’t more crowded”.
And it was true – the gym was clean and spacious, but hardly anyone was in it other than me and Remy.
He said, quietly, “Remy think that maybe other people ain’t into pushing themselves like we are.” Then he asked, “What do you want to start with, chere? Weight machines?’
I wasn’t sure if Remy was kidding or not. I could lift any of the machines in this room – the whole machine -- with one hand. But we didn’t have a Danger Room on Asteriod M. “I wonder, Remy,” I said. “If I don’t use the Danger Room and we don’t go into battle for a while, would I be not as strong? Ain’t never really had a chance to test this, you know.”
Gambit was about to say something when several of our team walked into the gym. Angel, Pyslockle, Cannonball, Colossus, and Banshee all headed in.
It was nice to see them all, we said our hellos, and then got down to business. I got on one of the cardio machines, since I like to make sure my endurance stays up. I had a good view of the rest of the gym from the way my machine was facing, and had to admit that I wasn’t thinking much about my endurance. Rather, I was thinking how good Remy looked lifting weights. I tried to make myself think back to my training but it was better to look at Remy.
I got off the cardio machine after a while – my heartbeat was up too high anyway.
A minute or two after I’d mosied over to where the others were with the weights, Bobby entered the gym. He spotted all of us right away and came right up to us.
I was glad he was there. He didn’t train much, fought in battle even less – which was a crying shame because his powers were nothing to sneeze at, the guy just didn’t seem to wanna use them much.
But I guess the others didn’t see it that way. Angel, Pyslockle, Cannonball, Colossus, and Banshee started by ignoring him, even though they were talking with each other, spotting each other while doing their lifting, that sort of thing.
Angel then opened his mouth and told a joke. I won’t repeat it but let’s just say that it centered around making fun of queers. The others laughed.
And then it got even worse. Cannonball – who I used to think was this sweet, shy southern gentleman but who I guess had his insecurities – turned to Bobby and asked if he knew any other good jokes along those lines. That just about made my blood freeze for a second.
I also turned my head and noticed that the two or three non-X-men in the gym were watching us. Banshee looked uncomfortable but the others didn’t.
Cannonball and a few of the others pressed Bobby for an answer to the question, Bobby finally mumbled, “No,” and he turned right for the door and left.
Remy and I looked at each other. I kinda didn’t want to, but somehow the two of us left the gym. We went after Bobby, the door to the gym sliding shut behind us.
He was slightly ahead of us in the corridor. “Hey, Bobby!” I called to him. “Slow down.”
I saw his neck and shoulders tense up but he slowed down and turned around. And I looked at Remy because I didn’t know what to say next.
“Want to check out dat bar and get a beer?” Gambit asked. He always thought of the right thing.
I brushed a hand against my damp forehead. “I’m all sweaty from my workout,” I said. “But I can shower fast. I’d like to check out that bar myself.”
“That’s okay,” Bobby said, kinda mumbling. “I’m not thirsty.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Come on, it’d be fun,” Gambit added.
“That’s okay,” Bobby said again, and he took off.
See, here’s what’s even worse. I didn’t really want to go with him. I don’t think Remy did either, and I guess someone can tell when you make an offer outta pity ‘cause that’s what happened. I didn’t like what happened in the gym but didn’t mind watching the Iceman walk away either. I don’t know.
At least it took my mind off of thoughts of Gambit taking his shower, which he did next. Once we were both cleaned up, it was time for our assignment.
At Cyke’s request, we did some undercover work to check on Children of the Shadows. (Other X-men were assigned the Inner Circle). But ain’t much to say here. They didn’t cause any trouble that day, not as far as we could tell. I kinda had fun in the act of spying on them with Remy, but the Children themselves were boring.
I put off talking with Remy about what I knew I had to talk about with him. Which, if you’ve been reading all along here, you ain’t surprised about. I wasn’t in a hurry to feel my heart getting stomped on by watching his heart get stomped on.
***
And then it was time for the big meeting. The room was so full that I figured pretty much every mutant on the station had to be there, and Tess had told us earlier that over a thousand folks now were on Asteroid M.
We all got to the assembly hall early, and sat near the front. X-Factor arrived right after and sat near us. Eventually Alpha Flight and the Morlocks followed suit. Jubilee was still sick – she was fighting something off, Hank said he thought it was just the common cold – but she didn’t want to miss the meeting.
Later still the folks who we didn’t like mosied in – the Inner Circle and Children of the Shadow. The noise level in the assembly hall grew and the room really started buzzing. For just a second I almost felt dizzy. All these years we X-men lived at the mansion, we worked as hard as field hands, and sometimes we worked with other mutants and the government and such – but we also kept to ourselves a lot. We spent a lot of time inside that mansion, when we weren’t battling against Apocalypse or Sinister or Sentinels. We logged a lot of time tucked away in our rec room. It was exciting and scary to be around so many mutants now.
Cortez’s people started setting up microphone stands in the aisles – we guessed that they wanted to let people be heard. There were three of these microphone stands. And once again, I gotta say that Cortez had organized things shockingly well, though at this point I’d figured I had to stop being surprised about it. When it was time for the meeting to get underway, the man himself stood on the stage and he spoke to the group.
I ain’t gonna write out all of what he said. He may’ve whipped this place into shape but he still made my skin crawl and I ain’t gonna pay him the respect of writing out what came outta his mouth word for word.
Cortez started by talking about “the question of” why we were here on this space station “and what we hope to accomplish”. He said that he was not up on the stage to force his opinions on anyone or convince anyone “but rather to hear what the common mutant thinks about our present condition”. So he said the purpose of this gathering is to “let the people speak” and determine our course of action that way.
He then went on to explain that anyone who had a thought or opinion should line up by one of the microphones. He would alternate calling on each one “thus allowing every mutant to be heard”.
The Professor, Cyclops, and Storm had had it figured out as soon as they saw the microphones. Each one got up and headed towards one, and not a minute too early. Apparently we mutants are right desperate to be listened to, because faster than I could blink, there was a line at each microphone. A long line.
So you want me to cut to the chase? I will, and it ain’t pretty. At least half the darn room wanted war. Judging by the applause for the people who spoke, it very likely was more than half the room.
You can’t find a much more articulate speaker than the Professor, and Cyclops and Storm aren’t bad either. They’ve all had plenty of practice – especially Xavier – speaking before government bodies and on TV. Hank later got in line for one of the microphones, and to use a word he would, he was ‘eloquent’ -- though he tossed in one too many of his ten dollar words and I’m not sure everyone understood him. The leaders of the groups we were on good terms with (X-Factor’s Forge, the Morlocks’ Callisto, and Mac from Alpha Flight) got up to speak too and did fine.
The Professor, Cyclops, and Storm got a respectable amount of applause after they spoke, and Hank got some too but less so. But it was the mutants who got up there and wanted a war who the crowd seemed to take to.
Honestly I had to sit there and remember to breathe. Were they a bunch of half-wits? Did they have any idea what a war would mean? Did they want to see plenty of innocent human beings – mutant or not – get killed or injured? They honestly seemed to think that heading back down to earth with weapons and opening fire on anyone who opposed this hoard of mutants would magically make life better for every mutant on the planet. They seemed to think that it would all be over in one battle, and once we’d won it for all mutantkind then the rest of humanity would bow down and give us whatever we wanted.
The Professor, Cyclops, and Storm all made logical rebuttals to these points and a dozen more – much better than I would’ve -- and I couldn’t figure why more folks didn’t seem to listen to them.
It got worse too. Some of the people who wanted war – they attacked us when they spoke. It started out with some kinda veiled comments. One of the Children of the Shadows speakers said that he loved “the way Cortez has it up here. He’s let every mutant live here, even if they can’t pay. He doesn’t hide himself and his people away in a mansion”.
I wish I could’ve spoken and said that I didn’t have five dollars to my name when Xavier found me and took me in. Neither had Jubilee or half our blasted team for that matter!
Then another speaker: “I wasn’t lucky enough to be part of a group of wealthy and well-connected mutants with huge powers. I live in the trenches and struggle for my life. And I think most of you come from the same background. What do we have to gain by appeasing the humans? They’ve never listened to us. Groups like the X-men don’t speak for me because they’re always kowtowing to the humans!” (Unfortunately there was a lot of applause after this).
And another used “the martyr” Magneto’s name and said that the X-men fought against Magneto “all the time”. He didn’t say anything about the fact that Charles and Magneto were friends, too, who cared about each other even though they disagreed fundamentally. I couldn’t see the Professor’s face when Magneto’s name was said.
And it went on with a few other comments that dug us in the ribs. I sat next to Remy and he held my hand. I looked at him and the others and felt a lot of rumblings of fear in my belly.
Oh, and people talked about FOH a lot too. Like the fact that FOH existed meant we could justify making war on all non-mutant humans. That’s real logical.
So all this talk went on for two hours or so. Then Cortez got back on the stage and announced that he had an idea. He said, “I see a lot of passion and excitement in the room, and I see several organized groups of mutants here. I propose an election”.
He went on to describe the details behind his idea, which he obviously had thought through long before the meeting was ever called. He said that the election should be in seven days, “which provides enough time for us to think through the ideas we heard tonight, and discuss and debate them more -- until each of us is satisfied that he knows the right decision”.
Instead of electing an individual, he proposed electing one of the teams that was already in place. He said, “That team will represent us and guide our decisions for our next steps from here. We will consider them to be our leaders.” Cortez didn’t forget to add that he and his people would be one of the teams “running for the privilege of representing you”. He also said that if there are mutants who want to form a team but haven’t done so already, they should form within the next 48 hours so they could get on the ballot.
People clapped when Cortez was done, and he then called for a show of hands to measure support for his plan. Nearly everyone in the entire room raised their hands, and after that Cortez officially and formally adjourned the meeting. So we were having an election in seven days.
I knew that my life for the next seven days I wouldn’t be thinking of as “Monday” or “Tuesday” anymore, but instead “six days before the election,” “five days before the election”, and so on.
I suppose I don’t gotta mention that we X-men had a meeting right after this meeting. For a group of people who love action – and I’m one of ‘em – this was a lot of sitting on our rumps. But it was also on matters of life and death, so we didn’t complain. Jean whipped out her hand held device and used it to book one of the smaller meeting rooms, and off we went.
At our meeting, we talked fast. We felt urgency. We knew that if the election was held today, we’d lose. We had seven days to turn things around, and we vowed to work non-stop to make it happen. A few things we decided to do: get a handle on what campaigning would look like during the next seven days (would there be a debate? Were there any rules we should follow?); get out and talk to as many people as we can; talk to Cortez even if it might be a lost cause; talk to the UN and the President of the US because we gotta keep them posted – but somehow we gotta do this without causing them to panic; talk to the mutant groups that we’re friends with to see what their plans are because if both the X-men and X-Factor are in the running, that might split the vote of the people who’d vote our way.
Is that it? I’d worked pretty hard during my years in the X-men, but I nearly felt dead-tired after hearing about and thinking through everything we had to do. When you’re fighting a battle you get an adrenaline rush, but this would just be a lot of heavy lifting.
Remy said to me on the way out that winning this election would be like winning a war. And wars are a lot harder than battles. He said it exactly, but unfortunately the mutants on Asteroid M didn’t seem to realize what they were getting into.
TO BE CONTINUED
Thank you for reading.
Go on to Chapter Three
If you missed chapter one, click here.
Tess – one of Cortez’s people who met us in the shuttle bay - gave us a tour. The place was huge, and teeming with mutants. We got out of the shuttle bay and into the corridors, and there were mutants all about. Didn’t take long to realize that if you were the kinda person who liked your peace and quiet, you wouldn’t be too happy up here and I worried a bit about Wolverine who was loyal to us but always such a darn loner at heart.
The tour took better part of the morning because Asteroid M is so huge, and we had a big group, and sometimes we’d run into a mutant we knew.
We passed a bulletin board – an old-fashioned thing, looked like it was made of actual cork. Tess said that this would be the central spot for any messages to be posted, but that if we brought our hand held devices we’d get the messages electronically. Fortunately we all had the hand helds, but I thought folk like the Morlocks who probably didn’t have much fancy technology could use this board to get news.
The bulletin board announced that there’d be a meeting in the assembly hall the next day to discuss “the future of mutantkind after the martyrdom of Magneto”. (Please!) It said that every Asteroid M resident was “welcome and encouraged to attend the meeting”. Guess I don’t need to say that we sure all planned to be there.
Tess was friendly enough, and she showed us to the dining room, the store, rec room, sick bay, assembly hall, observation lounge, library, gym, meeting rooms, and movie theater. Storm took special note of the greenhouse. Tess showed us where the Control Room was but didn’t let us enter. I figured that to walk from one end of this place to the other would take a long time.
Using her hand held device, Tess assigned each of us a room and we each brought our luggage to our respective rooms. Remy was right: the rooms were small. A while ago we X-men had all gone on a cruise and the rooms here were a mite smaller than the cabins on the cruise ship. Each one had a bed, a desk, chair, and closet – and not much else. Barely enough room to turn around in. But thank heavens above that they each had their own bathroom including a shower. I sure didn’t want to have to share that kinda thing with strangers. Guessed I’d been spoiled all those years in the mansion.
Tess explained some of the other logistical stuff with how Asteroid M works. If you had money, you could pay your room and board, and purchase stuff from the store. What they were charging was pretty reasonable, I reckoned after glancing at some of the prices in the store. But even if you couldn’t afford it, you could sign up to work. There was plenty of stuff that needed to get done on the asteroid, kitchen type work, mechanical, janitorial, and so on. So any mutant who was willing to put in a few hours’ work on most days could pay for their stay here, easy as pie.
Honestly by this point my jaw wanted to drop open and a couple of the X-men didn’t hide their surprise. It was kinda scary that Cortez had put together an operation that looked this organized and, you know, normal. This sure wasn’t the Cortez that I remembered from our last run in with the jerk. I guessed that maniac wanted to win over mutants so badly that he went to this level of detail and that was downright worrisome.
***
We didn’t get any slow down that first day. Right after our tour, the Professor wanted us all to meet. Storm pressed a few buttons into her device and one of the meeting rooms was booked for us X-men.
The meeting room – like pretty much every other room in this place – was nothing fancy. Cortez may’ve been organized but he sure didn’t believe much in decorating. The rooms and their equipment and furniture had a white and metallic color scheme going on and that was it. The meeting room was a bunch of tables and chairs. There wasn’t a huge circular table like in the War Room so we just took the chairs and made them into a circle.
The thing that most caught my eye about the layout of the meeting room – in fact, about the whole asteroid -- was that most rooms had huge windows. You could stare out into space and look at the stars.
We talked about a lot of stuff, but at this point it ain’t worth spelling out everything. We talked about the big meeting that was gonna be tomorrow. We got updates as to when the Morlocks and X-Factor would be arriving, and we made plans to get with them. We also wanted to get a sense of what the mutants on board the asteroid were thinking now, so we had an idea of where things stood before the big meeting the next day. So most of the group was asked to just get out there, explore the place and talk to people. Someone also had to talk to Tess to cover off on paying for our room and board up here. The Professor was gonna try to get back in touch with the White House and the UN, so they knew what was going on and could be reassured that at least the X-men would do everything in our power to prevent a war.
***
So that was the meeting. I wasn’t asked to meet with the Morlocks or X-Factor so Remy and I spent most of the rest of the day walking around the place and trying to talk to people to get their ideas about tomorrow’s meeting – and what in the heck they thought all us mutants should be doing up on Asteroid M.
We stopped in sick bay at one point. Hank was there, offering his doctoring services. Cortez had a doctor on his team (another thing that near made my jaw open) but Hank was made to feel welcome in sick bay too. Any doctor who wouldn’t welcome him was a darned fool, that’s for sure. I wasn’t a doctor but to my eye, the infirmary looked pretty well stocked, full of fancy equipment. Hank said it should be more than adequate, “assuming my estimate of the number of inhabitants of this space station is not too far from accurate”.
When we were there, the doors opened up and Bobby walked in. He asked if they had any vitamin C pills or Echinacea. Hank asked if he was coming down with a cold.
“No,” Bobby said. “It’s Jubilee. She told me she’s got a tickle in her throat and she wasn’t hungry at lunchtime. She thinks she’s coming down with something. Poor thing.”
Bobby always had a soft spot for Jubilee – heck, most of the team did – so as soon as Hank gave him the stuff he high-tailed it for Jubilee. I hoped she’d be okay.
Speaking of lunch, Gambit wasn’t too impressed with the food on the space station. Me, I ain’t the most fussy eater but Remy is. So we headed back to the dining room and kitchen. Funny thing is that Jean was already there.
She and Remy talked a bit. The X-men had plenty to do but Remy and Jean wanted to see about making the food better. The way the space station was set up, some of the folks who couldn’t pay their room and board worked in the kitchen. And like I said, the food itself came from a combination of the green house and frozen foods and other stuff Cortez’s people had shipped up from earth – and stuff from the food replicators since the green house and our other supplies couldn’t possibly feed everyone on here. Jean and Remy spent a few hours fiddling with the replicators and talking with the kitchen staff people.
I watched Jean for a bit. It definitely wasn’t the right time – so much was going on – but I knew I’d have to say something to her and offer to listen if she wanted. She just wasn’t “up” and smiling like she normally is. I knew from talking with Storm that it had to be the baby thing. Then I smirked to myself that Cortez was so darn organized, maybe he had a fertility specialist on board.
Maybe, I thought, I could sit with Jean and tell her that I knew how she felt. We both wanted something desperately and couldn’t have it. ‘Course I figured I wouldn’t tell her that I had decided to break if off with Remy and tell him to find someone else. That wouldn’t give her much hope on the baby front. Just thinking about splitting with Remy made my heart turn all cold – I think I dreaded that more than I did the idea of a war, so I had to go set my mind on something else.
And I did. While Remy and Jean were doing their thing in the kitchen, I hung around the dining room and talked to people like we’d been instructed to. I’d say I could feel energy and excitement and fear in the air soon as I stepped on board, and I still felt it thick like humidity in the summer.
It had been a while since I’d been around so many mutants at once. ‘Course I lived with the X-men but you know you just kinda get used to your own family and they seem normal after a while. On Asteroid M there were powerful mutants and mutants without any powers. Some looked normal, some looked downright weird. You saw all different ages and races, and plenty of folks didn’t speak much English either. Some were friendly and some weren’t.
Some asked me if I was an X-man. It was a downright dumb question, but I didn’t tell them that. All us X-men nowadays wore our black uniforms and each uniform had an X somewhere on them. Some of the people didn’t want to talk to me when they saw that I was an X-man. I didn’t know how to take that except that I had to fight my temper on that one.
The friendly ones I got to talk to, and I asked them about that. One of them said the X-men are “sorta intimidating”.
One guy said that “you X-men haven’t done anything for us regular mutants”.
Now I can control my temper pretty well if I want to, but I felt my face get hot. I forced myself to take a breath, and in that time the first guy’s friend said something to him. He said, “Hang on a minute. That’s not true. The X-men fought back against the Sentinels. And that crazy Apocalypse.”
“Sugar, that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” I said. And I wished we’d done a PR campaign, but you know it’s kinda hard to do that when you’re fighting just to keep yourself and the rest of the planet alive.
I went on to say more about what we’d done over the years, but the creepy thing was that the first guy had just shut down. You know how you can tell when someone’s just not listening to you? Like say you disagree on a social or political thing, and you’re trying to explain your point of view but you can tell the other person ain’t considering any views but his own? That was how it was.
But I thought – I hoped – that some other folks around us were listening.
When I could actually talk to people, I wanted to see what they thought of Cortez and – you know – what we’re doing up here and what they wanted up here. Some folks said they just wanted to be around mutants and get away from regular humans. Some wanted to just live their lives in peace and hoped they could do that up here. Also, some of them said that they didn’t have a job or money back on earth and they really liked the way you could just work for your room and board here. I reckon that a lot of mutants can’t get hired at a regular job.
But that wasn’t what everyone said. Magneto’s name came up a lot. So did the names Genosha, FOH, and other extremist groups. I heard stories about folks getting beat up by regular humans, getting their houses burned down, and one woman said they killed her husband. I wasn’t surprised – think ‘bout what happened to Moira’s son.
And along those lines, I shouldn’t have been surprised - and I guess I wasn’t - but most of the mutants up here had had pretty tough lives. And that made them kinda all jagged around the edges. What made it worse for them is that most of them hadn’t had a group of people like the X-men. My life hadn’t been too much of a picnic either, but having the other X-men made it go from tolerable to good. I felt bad that these folks weren’t part of groups and didn’t have that.
The people who wanted a war – I tried to find out if any of them had ever fought in battle. Most hadn’t. It was scary to see that some of them hated non-mutant humans as much as we were hated. One of them told me that he didn’t “buy any stupid ideal of humans and mutants working together,” and a bunch of others nodded when he said that.
Bobby popped into the dining room when I was winding down my socializing with the folks there. I asked him how Jubilee was and he said he thought she would be fine but he’d keep checking in on her.
Something else happened later that day. Remember that the Morlocks and X-Factor arrived on Asteroid M later that same day, and that different X-men were assigned to go meet with them.
Storm went to meet with X-Factor. We’d had members of their team at our mansion just the day before (though I gotta say it all felt like much more than one day had passed), but their leader Forge hadn’t been one of them. So Storm went to meet with Forge and talk about what might happen on Asteroid M and how both our teams could prevent a war.
Put that thought in the back of your mind, and I’ll tell you what I saw when it was dinner time. All of us X-men had planned to get to the dining room at the same time and eat together. We also talked about what we’d done that day. I sure liked getting back with everyone again, ‘cause like I said that day was flying by and I had to know what everyone else had been up to.
But we later found out that other mutants wondered why all the X-men sat together at one table during dinner and didn’t hang out with other people.
Apart from everything else going on, something was up with Storm. She had this look on her face that I hadn’t ever seen from her before. I was dying to know what it was. Then someone who was sitting next to Wolverine said something, and when I looked that direction I saw that Wolverine had this look on his face. I might not’ve recognized Storm’s look but I’d sure seen Wolverine’s look before. The damn fool was jealous.
Had seen that look from him often enough over the years, given all the time he spent with Jean and Scott. I had to find out what he was jealous about, ‘cause I had an inkling and I wondered if it could be true.
And Remy and I were two peas in a pod like usual because as soon as I could get him alone, I mentioned this and he’d not only seen the same thing but had an idea as to what was going on. So we hunted Storm down.
***
“I can’t speak with you right now,” Storm said to us in the corridor. “I need to meet with the Morlocks.”
“Wolverine and Beast met with Callisto just a few hours ago,” Remy said. Wolverine and Beast had been picked to meet with the Morlocks given what they had done for Leech a few Christmases ago. “They got it covered.”
“I know,” Storm said. “I would’ve been there as well if I hadn’t been meeting with Forge at the same time.”
“You know, Storm,” I pressed, “maybe it’s better that we left it to Wolverine and Beast. Callisto might still hold a grudge against you – not that any sane person would think they got a reason to, but there’s no tellin’ with Callisto.”
Storm was quiet for a second. “You might be right,” she admitted. Then it seemed like she looked around in her head for something else to do. So I then reminded her how those of us who hadn’t met with the Morlocks or X-Factor had already been doing what we were told to earlier at the meeting: talk to the mutants on this station, get the lay of the land, find out what people thought. Angel and Psylocke had spoken with that Tess lady to settle the X-men’s finances for our stay on Asteroid M. Storm knew I was right ‘cause what else do you think we X-men had talked about during dinner?
“So how ‘bout a game of pool instead?” Remy asked.
Storm looked like she wanted to say no – I knew how much she loved to keep busy – but she agreed, and we made our way to the rec room. We didn’t get lost on the way there which really was kinda a miracle.
When we got there, the rec room was buzzing just like the rest of the place. It still felt exciting and weird to be around so many mutants. There was only one empty pool table left and we took it.
“I am concerned by what I heard at dinner,” Storm said, even before her first turn. “Wolverine and Beast said that not every Morlock is in agreement about trying to avoid a war.”
“Gambit ain’t too worried,” Remy said. “Callisto’s with us.”
“She always whips her team into place,” I added. “I wouldn’t worry too much if a few of them have doubts.”
I was trying to turn the conversation around to where Remy and I wanted it, when Forge walked into the rec room. He saw Storm – who I gotta admit was facing away from him and bending over to make her shot – and made a beeline for us.
Storm turned around soon as she saw that Forge was there. She looked all flustered and excited. I was pretty amazed. No, I’d never seen this before.
And heck, in my only interactions with Forge before, he’d been so darn serious and dry. There was a new side of him right there in front of us when he and Storm got to talking. All I can say is that from his tone of voice and the look in his eyes, he sure wasn’t trying to play coy regarding his interest.
So it took Remy and me just a few seconds to figure out the situation. “We’d better go check on Jubilee, chere,” he said. “See if she’s feelin’ better.”
“Yes!” I agreed. “We’ll see you two later.”
And we hightailed out of the rec room, nearly bumping into someone on the way out.
“Remy guesses we know why Wolverine looked so jealous at dinner,” he said as we walked down the corridor.
“Yeah, funny how that is,” I said, kinda smirking. “Does he need for a woman to be with another guy – or pursued by another guy – in order for him to get interested in her?”
“Dat could be,” Remy said. “Some guys are like dat.”
“I wonder what’s gonna happen.”
“I dunno. Those two, Storm and Wolverine, still stubborn as mules and proud too. He don’t act fast, Forge gonna win Storm over. Remy thinks the old fool gonna let Storm slip right outta his fingers.”
We came to an elevator bank. Remy slowed down his pace. “You wanna come to my room, chere? Maybe we have a cuddle again.”
I started to think right then and there that maybe Remy was masochistic. Or maybe he really was crazy. What guy in his right mind would want to sit there and cuddle and not be able to do anything more?
I didn’t answer his question. Instead I muttered, “Least Storm can touch a fellow. Wolverine maybe is a stubborn old man and Forge maybe serious as mud, but one of them could at least get touched by her if she wants.”
“Chere,” Remy said. His voice was soft, soothing, and quiet. In that one syllable he told me to not go there again and that everything was okay. And that maybe made my heart break even more. Especially when I thought of how I had to end things with him and do it soon.
Which meant that I had to be a heck of a lot more firm than I was the day before.
“It’s okay, Remy,” I said, and I knew my voice was also quiet and very sad. “It’s been a long day. I’m headin’ for the library to see what they have and maybe just go to my room for a read.”
He looked down and nodded. Then he reached for my hands, kissed my gloves, and let me go.
I found out the next morning that Dazzler gave a concert in the assembly hall late that evening. I heard that Remy was there and I hoped he liked it.
They say you can’t miss what you never had but that night, I put my book away and got under the covers alone. I wanted Remy’s arms around me, I wanted to fall asleep at his side.
***
I got up early the next morning. There was a message on my device with a time for us X-men to meet for breakfast, those who wanted to get up early enough. Remy wasn’t there, but that wasn’t a surprise. The man loved to sleep in and I usually did too. But there was such a feeling of urgency in the atmosphere on Asteroid M – like I said, you could feel it like humidity in August, like a thunderstorm was about to hit – that I woke up early.
Wasn’t much worth writing about with the breakfast. Cyclops said that Alpha Flight was arriving today, and he assigned me to go along with him to meet with them. The Professor was pretty sure that both the Inner Circle and Children of the Shadow also would get here before the big meeting in the assembly hall. He said we might want to keep our eyes on them from afar. Sitting down and having a civilized meeting with them probably wasn’t gonna be possible given the bad histories we had with those troublemakers.
Speaking of meetings, the Professor also wanted to talk to Cortez. We decided we’d wait until after the big meeting today to see how it went. We’d kinda tip-toed near the subject of meeting with Cortez yesterday but Tess had said his schedule was way too busy.
And of course the most important thing that day would be the big meeting in the assembly hall to talk about what we were all going to do up here. The Professor said to make sure that anyone who missed this breakfast get filled in (people looked at me – but Remy wasn’t the only one who slept in!) and to make sure that everyone was at tonight’s big meeting. I don’t think anyone would miss that for the world.
This day rushed by much like yesterday did. Cyclops’ and my meeting with Alpha Flight was downright uneventful. We met with Mac and Heather – the husband and wife who ran it. Good news was that they wanted peace as much as we did, but the bad news was that Alpha Flight didn’t exactly have strength in numbers. We asked them how many people they had with them now, and they looked at each other and told us. The answer was eight. A lot of mutants know about them and their work, but with such small numbers it didn’t seem like they’d have influence over people.
I kinda wanted to talk to Cyke after our meeting, see how he was doing. But he was down to business as usual and just not in the mood for talking. You could see the tension on his face from the set of his jaw, and hear it in his voice though he tried to cover it. I hoped that he and Jean would get that baby they wished for but there sure wasn’t much I could do about it.
Yeah, and speaking of folks who don’t open up, I didn’t get much out of Storm either. I saw her later that day. She mentioned that she and Forge went to Dazzler’s concert last evening but she wouldn’t say anything more than that.
Heck, I don’t blame Cyclops and Storm for being serious. The big meeting was coming up, Asteroid M was jammed with mutants, and a lot of them were angry. I talked to folks, just as I had the day before. Seemed that plenty of them just weren’t worried at all about the downside of making war on the rest of (non-mutant) humanity. Maybe by design the people who came up here were the ones who wanted to be apart from non-mutants. That meant that a lot of the folks who wanted a quiet life were plain left out of the picture, sitting pretty back on earth.
My communicator beeped and it was Remy. He wanted to know if I’d meet him at the gym. I silently cursed the way my heart went flip flop, and said I’d meet him in 15 minutes. I’d been wanting to check out the gym here anyway. I threw on a grubby workout outfit and headed for the gym.
‘Course when I entered the gym I saw Gambit wearing his own grubby workout clothes, but he still somehow looked handsome. You know handsome is an understatement, but the man made me tongue-tied anyway.
“Given how many folks are livin’ up here now,” I said to Remy, “I’m surprised this place ain’t more crowded”.
And it was true – the gym was clean and spacious, but hardly anyone was in it other than me and Remy.
He said, quietly, “Remy think that maybe other people ain’t into pushing themselves like we are.” Then he asked, “What do you want to start with, chere? Weight machines?’
I wasn’t sure if Remy was kidding or not. I could lift any of the machines in this room – the whole machine -- with one hand. But we didn’t have a Danger Room on Asteriod M. “I wonder, Remy,” I said. “If I don’t use the Danger Room and we don’t go into battle for a while, would I be not as strong? Ain’t never really had a chance to test this, you know.”
Gambit was about to say something when several of our team walked into the gym. Angel, Pyslockle, Cannonball, Colossus, and Banshee all headed in.
It was nice to see them all, we said our hellos, and then got down to business. I got on one of the cardio machines, since I like to make sure my endurance stays up. I had a good view of the rest of the gym from the way my machine was facing, and had to admit that I wasn’t thinking much about my endurance. Rather, I was thinking how good Remy looked lifting weights. I tried to make myself think back to my training but it was better to look at Remy.
I got off the cardio machine after a while – my heartbeat was up too high anyway.
A minute or two after I’d mosied over to where the others were with the weights, Bobby entered the gym. He spotted all of us right away and came right up to us.
I was glad he was there. He didn’t train much, fought in battle even less – which was a crying shame because his powers were nothing to sneeze at, the guy just didn’t seem to wanna use them much.
But I guess the others didn’t see it that way. Angel, Pyslockle, Cannonball, Colossus, and Banshee started by ignoring him, even though they were talking with each other, spotting each other while doing their lifting, that sort of thing.
Angel then opened his mouth and told a joke. I won’t repeat it but let’s just say that it centered around making fun of queers. The others laughed.
And then it got even worse. Cannonball – who I used to think was this sweet, shy southern gentleman but who I guess had his insecurities – turned to Bobby and asked if he knew any other good jokes along those lines. That just about made my blood freeze for a second.
I also turned my head and noticed that the two or three non-X-men in the gym were watching us. Banshee looked uncomfortable but the others didn’t.
Cannonball and a few of the others pressed Bobby for an answer to the question, Bobby finally mumbled, “No,” and he turned right for the door and left.
Remy and I looked at each other. I kinda didn’t want to, but somehow the two of us left the gym. We went after Bobby, the door to the gym sliding shut behind us.
He was slightly ahead of us in the corridor. “Hey, Bobby!” I called to him. “Slow down.”
I saw his neck and shoulders tense up but he slowed down and turned around. And I looked at Remy because I didn’t know what to say next.
“Want to check out dat bar and get a beer?” Gambit asked. He always thought of the right thing.
I brushed a hand against my damp forehead. “I’m all sweaty from my workout,” I said. “But I can shower fast. I’d like to check out that bar myself.”
“That’s okay,” Bobby said, kinda mumbling. “I’m not thirsty.”
“You sure?” I asked.
“Come on, it’d be fun,” Gambit added.
“That’s okay,” Bobby said again, and he took off.
See, here’s what’s even worse. I didn’t really want to go with him. I don’t think Remy did either, and I guess someone can tell when you make an offer outta pity ‘cause that’s what happened. I didn’t like what happened in the gym but didn’t mind watching the Iceman walk away either. I don’t know.
At least it took my mind off of thoughts of Gambit taking his shower, which he did next. Once we were both cleaned up, it was time for our assignment.
At Cyke’s request, we did some undercover work to check on Children of the Shadows. (Other X-men were assigned the Inner Circle). But ain’t much to say here. They didn’t cause any trouble that day, not as far as we could tell. I kinda had fun in the act of spying on them with Remy, but the Children themselves were boring.
I put off talking with Remy about what I knew I had to talk about with him. Which, if you’ve been reading all along here, you ain’t surprised about. I wasn’t in a hurry to feel my heart getting stomped on by watching his heart get stomped on.
***
And then it was time for the big meeting. The room was so full that I figured pretty much every mutant on the station had to be there, and Tess had told us earlier that over a thousand folks now were on Asteroid M.
We all got to the assembly hall early, and sat near the front. X-Factor arrived right after and sat near us. Eventually Alpha Flight and the Morlocks followed suit. Jubilee was still sick – she was fighting something off, Hank said he thought it was just the common cold – but she didn’t want to miss the meeting.
Later still the folks who we didn’t like mosied in – the Inner Circle and Children of the Shadow. The noise level in the assembly hall grew and the room really started buzzing. For just a second I almost felt dizzy. All these years we X-men lived at the mansion, we worked as hard as field hands, and sometimes we worked with other mutants and the government and such – but we also kept to ourselves a lot. We spent a lot of time inside that mansion, when we weren’t battling against Apocalypse or Sinister or Sentinels. We logged a lot of time tucked away in our rec room. It was exciting and scary to be around so many mutants now.
Cortez’s people started setting up microphone stands in the aisles – we guessed that they wanted to let people be heard. There were three of these microphone stands. And once again, I gotta say that Cortez had organized things shockingly well, though at this point I’d figured I had to stop being surprised about it. When it was time for the meeting to get underway, the man himself stood on the stage and he spoke to the group.
I ain’t gonna write out all of what he said. He may’ve whipped this place into shape but he still made my skin crawl and I ain’t gonna pay him the respect of writing out what came outta his mouth word for word.
Cortez started by talking about “the question of” why we were here on this space station “and what we hope to accomplish”. He said that he was not up on the stage to force his opinions on anyone or convince anyone “but rather to hear what the common mutant thinks about our present condition”. So he said the purpose of this gathering is to “let the people speak” and determine our course of action that way.
He then went on to explain that anyone who had a thought or opinion should line up by one of the microphones. He would alternate calling on each one “thus allowing every mutant to be heard”.
The Professor, Cyclops, and Storm had had it figured out as soon as they saw the microphones. Each one got up and headed towards one, and not a minute too early. Apparently we mutants are right desperate to be listened to, because faster than I could blink, there was a line at each microphone. A long line.
So you want me to cut to the chase? I will, and it ain’t pretty. At least half the darn room wanted war. Judging by the applause for the people who spoke, it very likely was more than half the room.
You can’t find a much more articulate speaker than the Professor, and Cyclops and Storm aren’t bad either. They’ve all had plenty of practice – especially Xavier – speaking before government bodies and on TV. Hank later got in line for one of the microphones, and to use a word he would, he was ‘eloquent’ -- though he tossed in one too many of his ten dollar words and I’m not sure everyone understood him. The leaders of the groups we were on good terms with (X-Factor’s Forge, the Morlocks’ Callisto, and Mac from Alpha Flight) got up to speak too and did fine.
The Professor, Cyclops, and Storm got a respectable amount of applause after they spoke, and Hank got some too but less so. But it was the mutants who got up there and wanted a war who the crowd seemed to take to.
Honestly I had to sit there and remember to breathe. Were they a bunch of half-wits? Did they have any idea what a war would mean? Did they want to see plenty of innocent human beings – mutant or not – get killed or injured? They honestly seemed to think that heading back down to earth with weapons and opening fire on anyone who opposed this hoard of mutants would magically make life better for every mutant on the planet. They seemed to think that it would all be over in one battle, and once we’d won it for all mutantkind then the rest of humanity would bow down and give us whatever we wanted.
The Professor, Cyclops, and Storm all made logical rebuttals to these points and a dozen more – much better than I would’ve -- and I couldn’t figure why more folks didn’t seem to listen to them.
It got worse too. Some of the people who wanted war – they attacked us when they spoke. It started out with some kinda veiled comments. One of the Children of the Shadows speakers said that he loved “the way Cortez has it up here. He’s let every mutant live here, even if they can’t pay. He doesn’t hide himself and his people away in a mansion”.
I wish I could’ve spoken and said that I didn’t have five dollars to my name when Xavier found me and took me in. Neither had Jubilee or half our blasted team for that matter!
Then another speaker: “I wasn’t lucky enough to be part of a group of wealthy and well-connected mutants with huge powers. I live in the trenches and struggle for my life. And I think most of you come from the same background. What do we have to gain by appeasing the humans? They’ve never listened to us. Groups like the X-men don’t speak for me because they’re always kowtowing to the humans!” (Unfortunately there was a lot of applause after this).
And another used “the martyr” Magneto’s name and said that the X-men fought against Magneto “all the time”. He didn’t say anything about the fact that Charles and Magneto were friends, too, who cared about each other even though they disagreed fundamentally. I couldn’t see the Professor’s face when Magneto’s name was said.
And it went on with a few other comments that dug us in the ribs. I sat next to Remy and he held my hand. I looked at him and the others and felt a lot of rumblings of fear in my belly.
Oh, and people talked about FOH a lot too. Like the fact that FOH existed meant we could justify making war on all non-mutant humans. That’s real logical.
So all this talk went on for two hours or so. Then Cortez got back on the stage and announced that he had an idea. He said, “I see a lot of passion and excitement in the room, and I see several organized groups of mutants here. I propose an election”.
He went on to describe the details behind his idea, which he obviously had thought through long before the meeting was ever called. He said that the election should be in seven days, “which provides enough time for us to think through the ideas we heard tonight, and discuss and debate them more -- until each of us is satisfied that he knows the right decision”.
Instead of electing an individual, he proposed electing one of the teams that was already in place. He said, “That team will represent us and guide our decisions for our next steps from here. We will consider them to be our leaders.” Cortez didn’t forget to add that he and his people would be one of the teams “running for the privilege of representing you”. He also said that if there are mutants who want to form a team but haven’t done so already, they should form within the next 48 hours so they could get on the ballot.
People clapped when Cortez was done, and he then called for a show of hands to measure support for his plan. Nearly everyone in the entire room raised their hands, and after that Cortez officially and formally adjourned the meeting. So we were having an election in seven days.
I knew that my life for the next seven days I wouldn’t be thinking of as “Monday” or “Tuesday” anymore, but instead “six days before the election,” “five days before the election”, and so on.
I suppose I don’t gotta mention that we X-men had a meeting right after this meeting. For a group of people who love action – and I’m one of ‘em – this was a lot of sitting on our rumps. But it was also on matters of life and death, so we didn’t complain. Jean whipped out her hand held device and used it to book one of the smaller meeting rooms, and off we went.
At our meeting, we talked fast. We felt urgency. We knew that if the election was held today, we’d lose. We had seven days to turn things around, and we vowed to work non-stop to make it happen. A few things we decided to do: get a handle on what campaigning would look like during the next seven days (would there be a debate? Were there any rules we should follow?); get out and talk to as many people as we can; talk to Cortez even if it might be a lost cause; talk to the UN and the President of the US because we gotta keep them posted – but somehow we gotta do this without causing them to panic; talk to the mutant groups that we’re friends with to see what their plans are because if both the X-men and X-Factor are in the running, that might split the vote of the people who’d vote our way.
Is that it? I’d worked pretty hard during my years in the X-men, but I nearly felt dead-tired after hearing about and thinking through everything we had to do. When you’re fighting a battle you get an adrenaline rush, but this would just be a lot of heavy lifting.
Remy said to me on the way out that winning this election would be like winning a war. And wars are a lot harder than battles. He said it exactly, but unfortunately the mutants on Asteroid M didn’t seem to realize what they were getting into.
TO BE CONTINUED
Thank you for reading.
Go on to Chapter Three
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he didn't - he hired a project coordinator to do it for him! ;)
for some reason i didn't see that you had posted this, and i was about to nag you that you were overdue to post the next chapter :) thanks for sharing!
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You're not making a teensy bit of fun of me, are you? :)
It was kinda scary that Cortez had put together an operation that looked this organized and, you know, normal. This sure wasn’t the Cortez that I remembered from our last run in with the jerk. I guessed that maniac wanted to win over mutants so badly that he went to this level of detail and that was downright worrisome.
he didn't - he hired a project coordinator to do it for him! ;)
He realized what had to be done and he did it.
Thanks for reading!
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I can also see it having more rooms that are less posh and that have shared bathrooms. But for the 8 people who comprise his core team, I really think they have their own bathrooms.