The earth shook, though only enough to rattle Jean Grey's world. And everyone in it, she noted with quick glances around the busy building she was in. Her smartphone came alive with a fury a few moments later in the dark recesses of the Columbia University library. First came the ear piercing government issued alerts that bellowed in electric whine. The text bar that followed simply read: "Metahuman event in Upper Manhattan/Harlem area. Shelter in doors until notification for all clear." How, Jean Grey had to ask with a heavy heart, was it not sad that to the citizens of New York City "metahuman events" were becoming just another natural disaster.
A few moments more, and a text appeared. The number was zeroed out, there was no caller I.D. information offered. Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Danny Rand taking on some unknowns that are doing a number on the Defenders. X says they're mutants. Guess you're not the only ones? Stay safe but see what you can find out. - 13.
Jean wanted to return the text. Maybe something along the lines, 'uh, yes, hello there, we're not ALL trained spies you know?' She didn't. She only snorted at the apperance of the text, stuffed the phone into her back pocket, and kept moving. Her CIA handler hadn't mentioned a location. Her CIA handler. Just try explaining that to ANYONE not part of a secret team of super-powered (mostly) young men and women, assembled, disassembled, and hidden across the world by the CIA as a favor to certain remnants of SHIELD. Let alone her parents. At one point Jean's parents were suspicious Jean and this "Sharon" were possibly dating.
The Fresh Prince was right: parents just didn't understand.
It was getting worse; the tension in the city. She could feel it, like a heavy humidity that thickened the air and made breathing harder than it had any right to be. Nevermind there was little to no humidity in New York City today, let alone in the big university library building she walking out of. A few times she had to "ghost" past security guards that were enforcing the shelter in place. Then the exit door on the West side of the building, leading her to a New York City alley just as her phone began buzzing again. It was Pete. You hear about what's going on? A few moments later; Think they need help?
Mutants? Against the Defenders? Depends on the mutants involved, right? If they were fighting the X-Men...she didn't like the Defenders' chances. But if these mutants weren't up to the level of the X-Men? She could almost hear Xavier in her head, 'What level is that?' That the X-Men were immediately broken up and sent their own various ways had always been a wound that wouldn't heal, especially not when she saw coverage of the Avengers, of Defenders, and heard whispered stories of secret covert SHIELD teams. The ground began shaking again; this time harder, for just slightly longer. Quickly she sent a response to her Spider-Pal: I think they're good. Plus I heard some high value asset team is being sent in. It was a joke, but only of a sorts: Marvel Girl was a walking one person high value asset team. That's why she didn't need a location from Agent 13.
All she had to do was follow the screaming.
It required moving on foot, but luckily it wasn't all that far away. She passed way too many cops, of which she avoided, and crazy people crying out that the end of New York City has finally come. That the aliens have come again. Jean had to push past it all, and Manhattan streets choked filled with cars at a dead stop. And frightened drivers with frightened passengers inside those cars. The thought brought her current purpose into a clearer focus. Lives were depending on her to help. Real, human, innocent lives. She'd gone from a college student to a secret hero in the matter of five minutes. Nothing good ever started with a text from your CIA handler, it seemed.
One thick rectangle of a building; glass and steel equally polished on it's exterior. The sign and canopy read, "Rand Biotech." People were running out of it's double entrances, screaming. Not telepathically, either, but literally. The building shook, but the sensation was different than before: this time the building shook, from it's frame. Before, something had shook the very ground of New York City. Getting in was easier when she scanned the mind of the nearby NYPD Captain coordinating victim evacuation and a sweep of the building. She got the layout of the building and it's entrances/exits from his memory, and had him tell his officers to pull out after completing evacuations.
"Wait, leave the freaks to their fighting Captain?"
"Better they go down with the building than all of us go down with them, or get caught in their crossfire," the Captain responded in his radio, at Jean's telepathic direction. If the mutants were dangerous, it was better to get all collateral damage away from the fight. And in general it was just a good idea to get innocents away from the vicinity of a "super" fight. Because there was always damage. It was always unintended damage, but damage just the same when you weren't "super" and just unlucky and in the way. In China they'd been fortunate to avoid it, but they had been trained for it. Trained for that, and so much more...
Black flats, tight black jeans, a tight cream colored silk blouse that fit her snugly, black bra strapes visible over her shoulders, red hair long and let free as Jean made her way to the south staircase, and flew upward with a careful telekinetic lift. The building shook again, sudden, violent, and Jean went from carefully lifting to her world shifting, and the brick wall coming rushing up to greet her, her head turning just in time to avoid brick-to-face contact. She was close, now. A few more flights of stairs and she was slowly pushing the staircase doorway for Floor 17 open.
The floor was mostly darkness, broken up in spots by emergency spotlights. Something was burning, though Jean couldn't tell just what. After a quick lobby area of listless corporate decor, Jean found what she was looking for: a big central lab space, it's hardcore air tight security doors ripped from their fittings and tossed aside, twisted and manhandled. Stepping inside got her visuals on six people: Danny Rand, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage. Everyone knew Jones and Cage, but not as much Rand. People knew who Danny Rand was, in terms of his family fortunate and buisness, but few knew the mystical side of Rand. Everything Jean had read about the Defenders said four. She wondered about where their fourth was, until she realized someone was coming at her.
That is, a human body was being hurled towards her.
Quick she realized not at her, but in her general direction. Catching Rand with telekinetic force and gently putting him down took quick thinking, and an even faster mind, but the telepath pulled it off like China was yesterday. Or like she'd been practicing. And of course she had. The CIA had told them all to keep low profiles, but of course they all kept training with Xavier, via telepathic distance, in whatever safe place they could find to train.
It wasn't until she noticed Rand looking freaked out that she realized he couldn't use his five senses to detect her. A quick adjustment, and Jean Grey stood before Danny Rand. Luckily for her he didn't immediately take her for a threat. It seemed unwise to Jean, for his mind to assume she wasn't much of a threat, because she was a girl in jeans and a blouse. Jean kept that to herself.
"Who are you?"
"I'm--" And then Jean's mouth shut as they came into view. Three of them, two women and one man. One black woman, one white woman, both with short dark hair that framed their faces tightly. The man was gorgeous, with red eyes on black background, a brown trenchcoat hanging tight enough around the man to have been the man's shadow. He rose a playing card into the air, said something that sounded like no language she had ever heard, and the card in his hand began to glow purple, alive and hot with energy. Energy desperate for release, and energy like that, when released--
It was Rand who pulled her back from the explosion. Luke Cage bellowed something, and started swinging. Jessica tussled with the black woman, the white woman tried helping the man with Cage. Jean turned to Rand, "My name is Jean. I was sent to help. Why are they attacking?"
Rand's mouth tightened in anger, his fists balling, his right one shaking just-so in white rage his mind was attempting to steel into something colder, and sharper. "They stole something. Right now that's all I know. They killed some security, a few police, just before we arrived. There were waiting for us, except they seem to be stalling, I don't understand their strategy."
The planet shuddered, kinetic force rippling all around as Jean's worldview became violent shaking. Her ears rang, her body's equilibrium slowly came back as her eyes lifted from the ground to...the woman cackling, having just slapped her hands together. She's causing the tremors. A quick, surgical, invasion of their concious minds netted Jean names to their images: the quake causing woman was Arclight. The black woman was Frenzy. The man referred to himself as Remy, in his mind, but minds of the women knew him only as 'Gambit.' He was a thief, and they normally never worked with him before. All three older than Jean's 21, she was fairly certain. Fully grown mutants. How is it possible? Was Xavier wrong about how many mutants there were out in the world? None of it made sense, but Jean couldn't help but stare in wonder for a moment...mutants, real mutants.
The moment ended the very second the 'Arclight' woman spread her hands apart again, ready to slap them together again. When she tried, something held them apart. Some invisible force, exerted on Arclight by Jean's focused telekinetic force. It took Arclight a few moments while Cage and Jones chased Gambit across the lab to realize it, but when she did, her reaction shocked Jean:
She smiled. "SHE'S HERE! DROP IT!"
'It' came out of Gambit's trenchcoat. It looked like a gray sphere, but not metal, or polished. Instead it looked like it might be stone, though she couldn't see a single crack or misperfection...but the surface of it looked old. Very old. When it hit the ground, it started moving, coming alive with a purple light that was equal parts shadow and shine. The very second the light grew brighter, and it's glow bigger, a flash of energy ripped through the room, pulsating through every object and being in the room. Off the three mutants, there was no reaction. For the three Defenders, there was nothing.
Jean Grey could do nothing but howl in pain. Tendrils of fire snaked into her mind, coiled around her, and BURNED. Her body snapped this way, then that. Her skin felt like it boiled, even though her eyes told her it wasn't real, she knew it was. She wanted to scream for help, scream for Xavier, but all she could do was scream from the pain, and fall. Fall to the ground, and further still, tumble on and on into a darkness that swallowed her whole. The fire was different in the darkness. In the darkness, the fire didn't burn. In the darkness, the fire seemed to know her name.
"Jean."
Her mouth snapped into a sharp gasp, the length of her twisted as she awoke...on a table in a lab. Her head turned back to the source of the voice who spoke her name, and she smiled. It wasn't Cage, or Jones. It was Rand. "...hi, Mr. Rand." His eyes narrowed at her; Jean didn't sound good, not even to her own ears. Her voice was scratchy, her tone void of energy. She'd just gotten walloped...by what? She looked to the ground.
"It's gone." Luke Cage cut in, guessing as to what Jean was looking for. "It disappeared after the big flash. A bomb that blew itself up?"
"A bomb," Rand continued the thought, "that only hurt you. Psychic bomb?"
Behind hard eyes, Jones added a final harsh tone. "And if you're psychic, keep that shit to yourself."
Cage muttered something, Jones snapped back with a "What?" But that was it. Jean just nodded, and very slowly, very carefully made her way to her feet. The lab itself was mostly industrial glass, with very large, very powerful, microscopes shielded in plastic. It was a micro bio lab. "What was here? What did they steal?"
"The inventory stolen wasn't listed, my people are still working to figure that out."
"Who were those people? Where'd they get those powers from?"
Luke Cage had his own questions, and Jean had a headache. She frowned at the man. How to explain it all? "They got their powers from a genetic mutation--the same way I got my powers."
"And what do you do, exactly?"
Cage asked it gently, but the tension was still easy to read in his eyes. "I'm a telepath, and a telekinetic."
"How strong?"
Her frown felt like it got bigger. "Strong enough, Mr. Cage." The interrogation was caught off by the phone. Agent 13. It went on speaker. "You're on speaker, I'm here with three of four Defenders."
"That name is so lame," a hushed complaint by Jessica Jones, her eyes rolling between Rand and Cage, her head shaking. Cage smiled, Rand was too focused to notice. Or had just taken to ignoring Jones and her negativity. Jean could understand that.
"This is Special Agent Carter of the Central Intelligence Agency. What was the energy spike?"
Jean tried not to groan aloud. "Some sort of psychic attack, I don't know anything more. I did get names for the mutants: Arclight, Frenzy, and Gambit, aka Remy."
"Interesting, we'll talk more about it later. Mr. Rand, I have a team on the way to assist in clean-up and securing the site. Ms. Jones, Mr. Cage, thank you for your efforts. Jean, you have a jet being fueled at JFK now, private terminal 9." Danny Rand tried the "this is a private corporation" bit, and that it was his right to have his people conduct an investigation. Citing about five different post 9/11 laws was all it took for Sharon Carter to shut the man down, before thanking them one last time, and reminding Jean to hurry before the phone line went dead.
"Mutants, huh?" Rand asked, like he was rolling over the idea in his mind, with little amusement.
Jean grinned. "Mutants."
