Chapter 12
Eric raised his fist to the door for the third time in the last five minutes. He had gotten up early today in hopes of catching Charles for a morning cup of tea. He was happy the other night went so well, but he also knew that was far from making all things better. Morning tea would hopefully be the next step in mending their relationship. But, despite what he heart wanted Eric could not force himself to knock on those doors. Before Eric had a chance to begin his spiral, he heard a loud crash followed by a yelp inside the room. Pushing all anxieties from before out of the way, Eric barged in.
“Oh, good morning, Eric,” Charles said rather calmly.
Next to him laid a broken head bust and a pile of books. After a quick glance Eric realized he was unhurt and sighed in relief.
Charles chuckled when he put these two pieces together, “Oh my friend, you always do assume the worst. Was just trying to put a book back when my hand slipped. No harm done.”
Eric blinked, “Well, glad to hear it. I guess I’ll be on my way now.
He turned to walk out the door when Charles stopped him, “How did you get in here so fast? There wasn’t three seconds between dropping the bust and you opening that door?”
“Would you believe me if I told you I was walking by?”
“Or, Eric. You know I can always tell when you're lying.”
“Mind Reader I swear. Fine, I was waiting outside hoping I would be able to join you for tea and perhaps a game.”
“Always,” Charles responded, wheeling over to the chessboard while Eric prepared himself a cup.
Once Eric returned, Charles held up two closed fists. Eric sat down his tea and tapped this left hand, letting it remain longer than necessary. Charles opens his fist to reveal a black pawn.
“I see your instincts haven't gotten any better.”
“How do you not know this is what I wanted?”
“Because darling, you have always been the one to make the first move.”
Simultaneous smirks appeared on the two men’s faces. And the game began.
“I believe that is checkmate,” Eric told Charles sometime later.
“Hold on,” Charles said, grimacing at the board. He went to move a piece when he was interrupted by the phone ringing.
Charles held up a finger, implying that he wanted to pause the game, and picked up the phone, “This is Charles Xavior. Who am I speaking to?”
“Yes, I have my colleague here, do you mind if I put you on speaker phone?” Charles said, “Eric, this is Ororo. She runs a queer shelter down in Texas. Storm, this is Eric. he helped me found the Institute.”
“Lovely to meet you both. As Charles said, I run a queer shelter down here in Texas. Nothing fancy or official. I just have a few extra beds in my house that I let queer teens stay in. Some just for a couple nights, some more permanent. I’m calling because with all these new laws our idiotic governor is passing I’ve been getting a lot more kids. I can’t house them all and a lot of them have nowhere else to go. There’s a couple more places like mine, but they can only do so much. I stumbled across your website while looking for alternatives for them and I found you guys.”
“How many kids are we talking about here?”
“I can keep a few and have placements for the others. But, right now I get about six or seven kids sleeping on my living room floor,” she let her voice drop, “and between me and y’all money is getting a little tight.”
“We understand. I do not see any reason why we can not take them. Let us talk to our colleagues and we will see what we can do,” Eric said, “We will keep in touch.”
“Thank you, boys. I know this will mean the world to my kids. What you are doing is good. Something as simple as a warm meal and the roof of a head can be life changing for these kids, I’ve seen it.”
“We were all alone once,” Charles half smiled and looked at Eric.
She nodded, “I don’t mean to cut this meeting short boys, but I would really like to get the ball moving. I’m going to go ahead and send you my contact information over and let you go. I did not want to talk to any of my kids before I got things confirmed. So now I need to figure out who can and needs to be able to go. With everything happening down here, there’s some kids that just are not safe. And I’m sure you need to talk to your team.”
“Of course,” Erik told her.
With one last nod the line went dead.
“I’ll call a meeting.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“So, let me get this straight. This random girl that you don’t know called your personal cell phone this morning. Claimed she had all these kids in Texas she was taking care of, and needs help getting them to a safer location. No explanations, no names, no organizations she’s with. And none of that raises any red flags?” Darwin questioned.
“Well, I looked up the name she gave me. She is indeed a real person, who has a history for speaking up for LGBT rights. And I looked up that bill she mentioned, it’s also legit. If you guys want to help with that you gotta be prepared that sometimes these kids won’t always be wrapped up in a little bow for us to pick up.”
“I don’t know, I’m with Darwin on this one it all just seems a little strange. How do we know she’s not faking it, and this isn't some sort of trap?” Angel kept questioning.
Charles opened his mouth to respond, but Erik beat him to it, “We don't, we are going in blind to this operation. For all we know we get on this phone call and spill all of our secrets to someone who will use it to shut down our whole operation. But, that is just a risk you have to take when you're in this line of work.
“You're making this sound a lot fancier than it actually is. We are not on some black ops mission,” Charles added, but didn’t protest his points.
“No, I like it. Adds some fun to it, we should come up with a team name,” Raven joked.
“What about, the X-men,” Sean smiled, gesturing to the rest of the conference table, “You know, after Professor Xavior.”
“Sounds awesome,” Alex laughed, patting him on the shoulder.
“Can we please get back to the matter at hand,” Charles said, exasperated.
The X-men smiled and nodded. Charles shook his head at them, and hit the dial button on the phone.
“Hello, can you guys hear me?”
A murmur of yes’ responded.
“Ok, good. The name’s Ororo Munroe. I spoke to Charles and Eric this morning about this little operation that's coming together, but if this is going to work we are going to have to work as a team to come up with a plan. After talking to some of my older kids I got a list together of who all we will be moving to. There’s five in total. I know that’s a lot, but opening up these spaces means I can take more in from the street.”
“I think you underestimate our space up here Ms. Munroe. We got more than enough for five,” Alex joked.
“Good, means I might be able to send more your way later. But, right now it will just be the five. They come from lots of different backgrounds, none of them good. So I would like a plan sooner rather than later. I just got news from a friend that a bill is working its way through the Texas government that will make it real hard for LGBT teens to be able to get out of situations. And will limit gender affirming care.”
“Would, double whammy.” Angel muttered.
“You can say that again. So do you guys have a plan?”
“Yes, Raven, do you want to start us off?”
She nodded, “As Charles said, my name is Raven. Just wanted to introduce myself. Right now we have an old jet we’ve been using for transportation. It's not the most convenient thing. But, tits fast and what we already had. So as long as you can transport the kids near somewhere we can land it, we can get them up here. Charles said you found us online, so I’m guessing that means you know about the school coverup. We recently changed our name to Xavior’s School for Underprivileged Children. We have made up the story that we specifically target children in poor living situations to kind of explain all of the children here. Makes the government uninterested and the locals sympathetic. And makes anyone who is looking for an actual boarding school uninterested.
“And it's not wrong, just misleading, I like it.”
“Exactly, Ororo. My name’s Hank. As she said I do a lot of the logistics with the government stuff. I don’t know the exact details behind how these children came under your care, but I’m going to need some type of story and as much information as they will provide so we can put them into our fake database.”
“So you're Hank. It's good to put a face to a name, though you look a lot geekier in person than I was expecting for an ex-CIA agent.”
Beside him Alex did the best he could to hold in his laugh.
Seeing this Ororo recovered, “ though you are still doing impressive work. I can send all that information over.”
‘Perfect. We ask for a little time and patience so we can get things figured out on our end. But, Hank and Raven should be able to make it there by tomorrow morning.
……………………………....
14 hours later the jet was loaded. Raven was in the pilot's seat, Hank beside her riding copilot.
“Okay, well you two should be all good to go. Got a full tank of gas. Everything's working like it should be. And we should have all the rooms set up by the time you get back.”
“Thanks, Alex,” Raven nodded to him as she slipped her headset on.
“Anytime, big boy. Don’t do anything stupid okay. If you can manage that?”
A deep blush made its way up Hank’s cheeks, “Yeah, yeah I can,” he eventually spit out.
Alex smiled and saluted his two peers before exiting the plane, the door closing behind them. Seconds later the ceiling opened up revealing a blue sky. Hank watched as a basketball fell into the now gaping hole. He never did understand the design behind this storage. Before long they were cruising at the comfortable place of 35,000 feet up.
“Auto-piolet engaged,” Raven said as she flipped the switch.
“Heard,” Hank responded, “I’m going to get out my computer if you don’t mind. Hoping to finish all the kids' profiles before we pick them up. It shouldn’t take long.”
“Good. Then it can wait. We need to talk.”
“What?” Hank felt his heart skip a beat.
“Yeah, about the whole “don’t do anything stupid” thing?”
“Yeah, what about it? It's just Alex picking on me. It's no secret that the guy thinks I’m a loser. Just be thankful he no longer hates my guts.”
“Oh, he never hates your guts, don't worry.”
“You sure about that. Didn’t seem like it when I first showed up here, but bit my head off.”
“That’s just Alex being protective over the professor. Practically saved Alex’s life. Now he thinks owes him some sort of debt.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know if Alex would want me to go around airing his personal laundry.”
“Come on, you can’t just drop that on me.”
“Fine, but I’m just telling you the basics. If you have questions you can ask Alex.”
“Deal.”
“When me and Erik first found Alex he was in jail. Some dudes had tried to jump him when he was coming out of a local gay bar. Alex pretty successfully defended himself, but when the cops showed up, the attackers played innocent. Alex got charged with assault and thrown in jail. He was in there for a couple months when the other prisoners found out what he was in there for. Things turned nasty pretty quick. They had just put him in isolation, then the day before they were supposed to put him back in general pop. We managed to get him out. The unspoken idea is someone had but a hit on Alex and he most likely wasn’t going to make it the rest of the week.”
“Wow, I had no idea.”
“Yeah, Alex is someone you really have to get to know before you judge. And I’ve spent that time, so I know when he hates someone and when he’s picking on someone what it looks like. And that’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
“If I had to guess, flirting.”
Hank snorted, “Now that’s a funny joke. No way.”
“Come on, big boy, him waiting for you to respond, the way he smiles. It's all one big arrow towards crush. And by that blush on your face I’m guessing it's returned.”
“That’s just Alex.”
Raven raised an eyebrow at him.
“Whatever, I need to finish this paperwork.”
Raven decided not to make a comment about Hank’s blush returning
…………………………………….
It was a small private airport that they decided to land the jet at. Small enough they could load on the runway and avoid crowds, but large enough to not raise any suspensions from the ATO. Ororo and her five teens were already waiting when they touched down. They were all sprawled out around an old Volkswagen van. The pent up teenage emotions seemed to be radiating off them as they approached. Anxiety, fear, excitement, stubbornness. They varied in age, fourteen to nineteen if Hank had to take a guess. All five of them had looked up once the two of them stepped off the plane, and not a single one of them had looked anywhere else since then. It was as if there was a collective thought that if they looked away they would disappear. As they got even closer Hank started to see just how shell-shocked they all looked. Everything became very real suddenly about just the situation that they were taking these kids out of.
Once within distance Ororo stretched out arms and pulled Hank and Raven into a group hug, “Words can not thank you enough,” she muttered.
She stayed holding them for just a second too long before finally backing off. She turned to face the kids.
“Ok guys, these are the people I talked to you about. This is Hank and Raven, who help run the school in New York. The rest of them are still up there now taking care of the other kids. You are in good hands with them. I trust them. Now come on, we can’t hang out on this tarmac forever. Get your stuff, I’ll help. And we’ll load it onto the plane.”
“It’s good to meet you guys, I know some of your guys names from pictures from Ororo, but we’ll get the rest of that out of the way once we’re in the air. I can help with bags.”
The kids didn’t say anything, but nodded and started walking to the back of the van. Once opening the doors however, it was quickly shown that no help was needed. Each kid had only one or two small bags and a couple extra random items. Raven still offered to help anyway, but must just shook their heads and insisted they do it themselves.
“Go ahead and head towards the plane, guys. I’ll catch you in a minute. Just want to talk to Hank and Raven first,” Ororo paused before they were all out of earshot, “Don’t mind them. I promise they will warm up to you eventually. They have just all been hurt time and time again and have trouble forming bonds and trusting new people.”
“We understand.”
“They really are good kids. But, they are still a little shocked by the rudeness of all of this. They knew it was coming, and that it needed to happen soon, just not what they were expecting.”
“It’s okay Ororo, I promise we understand.”
“Yeah, I know that. And I’ll know they will be happy up there, but it just worries me. These kids are my whole life, I don’t have much family and I only have a handful of friends. So they mean everything to me. That’s Bobby and John in the front. Total opposites when they first came under my care, hated each other. But, they’ve both warmed up since then. Little troublemakers when you put the two of them together, but they're reliable, especially with the littles. The one in the middle. That’s Kaz, but he likes to go by Kitty. Young trans dude, so trying to find testosterone for him was a pain. He has got a couple months left, but you will have to figure that out soon rather than later. Then there’s Piotor, my little colossus giant. At his core he’s just a big softie, he’ll deny it but he loves cats. He is decently young too, only sixteen, so he uses his height to his advantage a lot.Their crew, sad to see them go. But I know it's for the best,” she trailed off as tears welled up in her eyes.
Raven reached out to rub Ororo’s shoulder, “Now don’t go doing that. You need to be tough for these kids. I can’t imagine how tough this is. But, let me make you a deal. I’ll give you my number. That way if you ever want to check in on them, and know how they're truly doing besides the moody teenage fine, you can. And then if you ever want someone to talk to about, all of this. The line is always open.”
Ororo laughed at Raven, but accepted the business card that listed her number. It did not go unnoticed by Hank the way their fingers lingered together as the card passed between hands. He looked between the two women, but didn’t say anything.
“Well, we better get going,” Hank finally interpreted after too long of standing awkwardly as the two women stared at each other.
“Yes, no need to keep the kids waiting.”
“Of course, go. Before John takes off in that jet without you.”
“You were not kidding when you said they were troublemakers were you.”
“Nope, have fun,” Ororo waved as the two others started walking away.
“You're gonna miss them you know,” Raven said.
“More than anything.”
There was more yelling in the direction of the plane. So finally Hank just grabbed Raven’s arm and yanked her in the right direction. The girls gave one final smirk and wave to each other before turning around to go their separate ways. During the totality of this, the three were caught up enough in what was happening they did not notice the singular man holding a professional camera that was standing on the tree lines. Nor did they notice the surveillance van parked in front of the airport. Nor were they supposed to. Striker was smarter than that.