X-Mans Ate: Bringing Down Da House

by D D

When Mutant Hunters attack a hidden sanctuary to target the X-Mans, they must do what it takes to survive the crumbling mansion and secure their future.

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comedy

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X-Mans AteBringing Down the House Jeanetta stopped at the end of the hallway. For a moment, nobody on the porch moved. Misty stood with one arm bandaged, her son between her and the doorway. Magnetrick waited beside her, bareheaded and already irritated. Behind them, three strangers crowded beneath a porch light that Jugga-Knot had to lean away from. Reen’s claws remained out. The whiskey bottle he had set on the hall table stood within easy reach. “You got a lot of nerve,” Jeanetta said. Misty looked at her. “I know.” Nightwalka stepped forward before either could say more. His mother caught him against her, holding so tightly that he felt her injured arm tremble. For months he had imagined this hug. He had not imagined needing to look over her shoulder to make sure nobody behind her was reaching for a weapon. “Let me see you,” she whispered. “You saw me the other night.” Her grip loosened. He let her hold him another moment, then stepped back. Professor Z entered from the living room. His gaze moved from Misty to Magnetrick and finally to the three people on the path. “I assume there is an explanation.” “Several,” Misty said. “And my helmet,” Magnetrick added. “Nobody is receiving anything until we talk.” Z turned his chair. “Inside.” Jugga-Knot examined the doorway. “Sideways,” Misty told him. “Try sideways before you demolish something.” He considered the suggestion, turned, and squeezed through without taking the frame with him. Lady Longnails followed, then Hothead, whose red jacket still smelled of the car wash. Reen picked up his bottle and took a drink. “If any of y’all turn into me,” he said, looking directly at Misty, “at least have the decency to buy your own liquor.” Nobody laughed. Hothead nearly did, saw Jeanetta’s face, and reconsidered. * * * Jeanetta chose the armchair nearest the exit. Cyrus stood beside the fireplace. Reen took the wall opposite him, while Rougie and Stormisha settled close enough to Jeanetta that Misty could not approach without passing one of them. Nightwalka remained standing. Misty sat on the edge of the couch. She did not borrow a kinder face. “The old man across the street was me,” she began. “The bird outside your window. The person wearing Reen’s face in your bedroom. All me.” “We figured that part out,” Jeanetta said. “Get to why.” Misty looked down at her bandage, then made herself look back up. “A man hired me to watch this house. Learn your routines. Find a way inside. He said your baby would grow into something dangerous. That killing it before it was born would save other people.” Jeanetta’s fingers tightened around the arms of the chair. “And you believed him?” “I let him convince me.” “That ain’t what I asked.” Misty swallowed. “Yes.” Cyrus shifted beside the fireplace. A faint red line showed at the edge of his visor. Z raised one hand without looking at him. “Who is this man?” the professor asked. “I don’t have a name I trust. He communicated through screens, kept his face in the dark. He had a bunker in the woods. Sabertoof and Froggy worked for him. So did they.” She nodded toward the newcomers. Lady Longnails folded her hands. “We were sent to bring her back. Nobody mentioned a pregnant woman.” Hothead shook his head. “Definitely wasn’t in my job description.” Jeanetta ignored them. “Were you going to kill me too?” Misty’s silence answered first. “Yes,” she said at last. Nightwalka stared at the floor. Hearing it plainly was worse than what he had already understood. “Then you walked in,” Misty told him. “And I saw what I was doing.” “You saw your son,” Jeanetta said. “My child was already there.” Misty lowered her head. No one rescued her from the silence. When she continued, her voice had lost its rehearsed steadiness. She told them about hearing Nightwalka call from above the bunker, about the second camera watching the mansion, and about refusing to return to Jeanetta’s room. She repeated her employer’s threat to kill them all, including her son. Then she explained the prison escape and the attack at the paving yard. “I brought Magnetrick because you need help,” she finished. “Whatever that man knows about your baby, he’s willing to kill you over it. Both of you are in danger.” Jeanetta rested a hand over her stomach. Misty hesitated. “Who’s the father?” “I don’t know.” Reen straightened. Cyrus opened his mouth. Jeanetta looked between them. “Both of y’all stop answering with your faces.” Cyrus closed his mouth. Reen took another drink. “Knowing might tell us something about the child’s abilities,” Misty said. “Then when I know, you can get in line behind me.” Z leaned forward. “For now, we protect everyone in this room. Misty, you will give Monsta the bunker’s location and everything you remember about that surveillance equipment.” “I will.” “And you stay out of my room,” Jeanetta said. Misty nodded. “You have my word.” “That ain’t worth much yet.” “I know.” * * * Magnetrick waited until Monsta had finished checking Misty’s wound before raising the subject again. “My helmet.” Professor Z studied him across the desk in his office. Misty stood near the window. Through the open door came the sound of Jugga-Knot asking whether a dining chair had a weight limit. “Your people may stay here while we assess the threat,” Z said. “We need somewhere secure to plan.” “Then we agree.” “On one condition.” Magnetrick sighed. “You behave. No threatening my team. No intimidation. No moving vehicles because you dislike where someone parked them. You and your crew help protect this house and follow its rules.” “Do you give everybody this speech?” “Most people have not tried to tear the house apart.” Misty folded her good arm across her waist. “Say yes, Trick.” He looked at her, then back at Z. “While we are guests here, we will behave.” Z opened the cabinet behind his desk. Magnetrick’s helmet rested inside, its familiar shape catching a narrow strip of lamplight. The professor lifted it onto the desk. Magnetrick reached for it slowly. He checked the lining, ran a thumb along the rim, then lowered it over his head. Z felt the familiar barrier close between them. For several seconds they regarded one another without speaking. “And the name?” Z asked. “What name?” “Your crew.” Magnetrick’s mouth almost curved. “The Kings of Tomorrow.” Z sat back. Misty glanced between them. “He said it like he invented it.” “You hated that name,” Z said with a chuckle. “My opinion changed.” Misty shut the office door. The smile left Z’s face, though not the warmth beneath it. “Curtis, Isaiah, and Leonard would have enjoyed hearing you say it.” Magnetrick looked toward the old photograph on the shelf. “Yes,” he said. “They would.” * * * By evening, the mansion had found a cautious rhythm. Jugga-Knot sat on the floor beside the dining table after testing one chair and deciding against a second. Hothead discovered that Stormisha knew the owner of a club that had banned him. Lady Longnails listened while Rougie explained which bathroom actually had reliable hot water. Scambit offered to design a logo for the Kings of Tomorrow. “No,” Magnetrick said. “You ain’t seen the package.” “I have seen you.” Rougie hid her smile behind her glass. Later, Misty found Nightwalka on the back steps. She sat beside him, leaving space between their shoulders. For once, when he asked a question she did not want to answer, she stayed until he finished asking it. Inside, Monsta changed her bloodstained bandages and checked Cyrus’s healing chest. He stocked the emergency medical case before putting it beneath his workbench. Z had him review the evacuation route, then sent everyone to eat while there was still food warm enough to argue over. Jeanetta watched Magnetrick straighten the damaged kitchen latch without lifting a hand against anybody. When he caught her looking, he stepped away from the door and let her pass first. It was not forgiveness. It was one ordinary, undamaged moment. After dinner, Reen and Cyrus checked the ground-floor windows together. They made it almost halfway around the house before disagreeing about something. Neither raised his voice enough to bring Jeanetta downstairs. For a few hours, that counted as peace. It ended just before dawn. Reen was in the kitchen pouring whiskey into a coffee mug when he heard engines stop outside. Not one vehicle. Several, cutting off in quick succession. He set the bottle down and listened. A bird should have been making that much noise in the hedge. Nothing was. “Z.” He spoke quietly. Upstairs, the professor’s eyes opened. White vans stood beyond the damaged gates. More blocked the rear service lane. Men and women in gray armor moved through the pale light, carrying rifles with transparent barrels. On their helmets, an open eye was crossed by a vertical blade. Reen’s claws slid out. “The hunters.” * * * Z’s warning reached every sleeping mind in the mansion. Jeanetta sat upright. Across the hall, Nightwalka was already pulling on his hoodie. Misty opened her door in her own skin and caught his wrist before he could disappear. “Stay where I can see you.” He looked at her hand. “That worked real good last time.” She let go. Outside, a woman stepped beside the command truck in polished gray armor. A red stripe crossed her helmet. She carried no rifle. Transparent shields rose around her as she touched the controls on her wrist. An amplified voice spread across the lawn. “This property is contaminated. All mutations within are designated hostile.” Z reached the landing as the first window broke. A glass capsule struck the wall beside him and released silver vapor. “Suppressant!” Nightwalka shouted. He seized Z’s chair and vanished with it, reappearing at the bottom of the stairs. Smoke snapped around the wheels. Above them, silver vapor began spilling through the banister. The hunters opened fire. Ceramic rounds punched through the front door and the wall beside it. One buried itself in Reen’s shoulder and discharged electricity. His arm locked against his ribs. He snarled, tore the round free, and ducked another burst. Magnetrick raised a hand toward the rifles outside. Nothing answered. “Ceramic,” Cyrus said, pulling him away from the shattered sidelight. “The barrels are glass.” “The vans aren’t.” Two white vehicles lurched sideways. Their axles twisted, dragging their bodies across the entrance. Hunters scattered as the improvised barricade slammed shut between the gateposts. Stormisha threw both arms toward the stairwell. Wind ripped the silver cloud upward and drove it through the broken landing window. Curtains tore loose and streamed after it. “Everybody downstairs!” she shouted. Monsta emerged from the basement with his emergency case. He pushed it into Scambit’s hands and pointed toward the rear corridor. “Utility room. We use di service way.” Scambit nodded once and ran. The first hunters breached the side entrance behind clear shields. Jugga-Knot met them in the corridor. His charge drove the first rank backward through the door, across the small porch, and into the squad behind them. Timber exploded around his shoulders. He turned in the yard, planted his feet, and caught the next shield in both hands. “Y’all could’ve knocked.” Hothead appeared in the wrecked doorway, struck his lighter, and pulled a ribbon of fire along the steps. Hunters retreated from the heat. Lady Longnails moved behind his flames, cutting straps and rifle slings before the startled soldiers could turn their weapons on her. In the front hall, Reen tore through another shield. Cyrus fired over his shoulder, breaking a hunter’s rifle into clear fragments. “Left,” Reen said. Cyrus turned. A controlled red burst took a second attacker off his feet. No argument followed. Reen was already moving where Cyrus needed him to move. For the first time since the woods, neither seemed interested in keeping score. * * * The sonic emitters activated together. Nightwalka felt them before he saw the small devices planted along the fence. Pain clamped around his skull. The teleport he had begun collapsed, dropping him against the foot of the stairs. Scambit staggered in the rear corridor. The cards in his free hand lost their glow. Rougie caught the medical case before it struck the floor. Near the front window, Reen went to one knee with blood running from his nose. The commander lowered her wrist. “Advance.” Magnetrick’s barricade shuddered. He could still feel the metal, but the pain made it difficult to hold several things at once. One van tipped, opening a gap beside the gate. Hunters poured through. Z gripped the arms of his chair and forced a warning through the noise: the emitters, along the fence. Destroy them. Stormisha was nearest the side window. She sent a hard gust across the lawn, clearing the lingering suppressant from Nightwalka’s path. Cyrus dragged him beneath the opening and pointed. “There. On the brick post.” Nightwalka squeezed his eyes shut, opened them, and disappeared. The jump carried him only as far as the hedge. He landed badly, clawing at the soil as the sound drove deeper into his head. Misty vaulted through the window behind him. She wore a hunter’s gray armor before her feet touched the ground. It was only the shape of armor, not protection. She kept low as a squad rushed past, then came up behind the soldier guarding the post. “Unit failure,” she snapped in his voice, pointing down. He turned just long enough. She drove him into the brickwork, took his rifle, and fired into the emitter. Glass and casing broke beneath the burst. Nightwalka managed another jump. This one brought him to the second device. He smashed it against the path, vanished again, and reappeared inside the house with his mother as rounds struck the place where they had stood. The pressure eased on one side of the mansion. It did not stop. At the back, Rougie caught a hunter by the exposed throat above his armor. His memories struck in cold fragments: the briefing, photographs of the house, an order displayed across a screen. NO LIVE RECOVERY. She let him fall and backed away. “They ain’t taking prisoners!” A ceramic round shattered the cabinet beside her. Another hit Scambit high in the thigh. He went down with a sound she had never heard from him. Rougie dragged him behind the kitchen island, pressing both hands over the wound. Blood pushed between her fingers. “Look at me,” she ordered. Scambit tried. His face had gone gray. Across the room, Jeanetta felt her baby kick. The hanging light jerked against its chain. * * * Monsta dropped beside Scambit and opened the medical case. Hothead kept fire moving across the rear doorway while Rougie helped tighten a dressing over the wound. “Mi need everybody out of dis kitchen,” Monsta said. Jeanetta tried to rise from the bench where Stormisha had left her. Another kick struck beneath her palm. Every glass in the cupboard rattled. Misty stopped in the doorway. “Jeanetta.” “I feel it.” The child moved again, harder. A thin crack traveled through the tile between Jeanetta’s feet. She pulled them back. Then the whole room shifted. Monsta looked up from Scambit’s leg. Dust drifted from the ceiling into his dreadlocks. “Z!” Jeanetta clutched the edge of the bench. Invisible pressure crowded behind her eyes, pouring through her faster than she could shape it. She had lifted furniture before. Stopped moving things. Held people back. This felt like trying to close her hands around a river. “I’m not doing it on purpose,” she said. Another burst of rifle fire struck the kitchen wall. Her stomach kicked sharply. The island rose an inch off the floor. Reen reached Jeanetta as it slammed back down. He took her arm, then caught her when her knees failed. Cyrus appeared behind him with the visor already open a narrow line. “Out,” Reen said. “Now.” The first shock traveled through the foundation. It lifted the floor beneath them like a wave beneath a sheet. Cabinets tore from their brackets. Upstairs, doors burst from their frames. A deep crack split the entrance hall from the staircase to the front steps. Three hunters running inside disappeared through it. Their rifles struck the edges on the way down. Jeanetta screamed. The force spilling from her answered with another violent pulse. Z’s voice reached her through the noise. Jeanetta. Look at Reen. Listen to Cyrus. We are getting you outside. “I can’t stop it!” I know. You do not have to do this alone. The words did not still the child. They gave her something to follow. Cyrus blasted the locked garden doors out into the yard. Reen carried Jeanetta through the opening as Stormisha cleared the shattered glass from their path. Behind them, a ceiling beam fell across the kitchen. Lady Longnails pushed Hothead aside before it struck him. The edge caught her shoulder instead, throwing her to the floor with her arm bent beneath her. Jugga-Knot lifted the beam. He held it long enough for Misty to drag her clear. “Move!” he roared. His helmet scraped the ceiling. Plaster fell around him. For once, he was trying to keep a room standing. * * * The lawn broke open beneath the advancing hunters. One fissure ran from the front steps to the gates. Another crossed it beside the vans. Armored figures staggered, caught one another, and lost their footing as whole sections of earth dropped out from under them. Magnetrick pulled a torn iron railing across the nearest gap. Stormisha landed beside it with Z’s chair suspended in a tight cushion of wind. “Rear wall!” he shouted. “Everyone to the rear wall!” Nightwalka reappeared beside Rougie and Scambit in the kitchen. He caught their sleeves, but the next pulse threw all three against the island. He struck his side, and pain tore through the place where the hunters had shot him at the church. He could not draw enough breath to jump. Rougie braced Scambit against her shoulder. Blood had soaked through the dressing on his leg. “Come on,” she told Nightwalka. “One more.” The ceiling groaned. Monsta lifted Nightwalka with one arm and Scambit with the other. Rougie stayed beneath Scambit’s good shoulder, guiding his legs around the fallen cupboards. They had almost reached the garden doors when a second beam struck Monsta across the back. He dropped to one knee. Something cracked beneath the impact. Jugga-Knot came through the dust and caught the beam before it could crush him. Monsta forced himself forward, carrying both men into the yard. Rougie followed, coughing so hard she could barely see. Jugga-Knot backed out last. The doorway folded into the kitchen behind him. Across the lawn, the commander raised her wrist again. Reen saw her point toward Jeanetta. “Down!” Cyrus turned and fired before the shield bearers could settle their rifles. The blast broke their formation. Reen pushed Jeanetta behind the garden’s low stone wall while Stormisha flung a curtain of wind across the incoming rounds. The baby kicked twice in quick succession. Every window still left in the mansion burst outward. Jeanetta’s breath stopped. For an instant she felt the weight of the entire house—the floors, the staircases, the ruined rooms—all pulling against whatever had opened inside her. “Please,” she whispered, both palms pressed to her stomach. The next pulse struck. The central chimney split from top to bottom. The roof sagged into the upper floor. Walls separated at their corners, and the east wing dropped with a noise that swallowed the shouting outside. A wide fracture opened beneath the command truck. The vehicle tipped forward. The red-striped helmet vanished beside it as the ground gave way. Hunters along the driveway scrambled for the raised edges, dragging armored hands through loose soil. Many fell before they could reach anything solid. Magnetrick ripped steel from the collapsing roof and formed a sloping canopy above the mutants. Broken brick hammered against it. Jugga-Knot braced one end. Stormisha pushed the dust away while Nightwalka crawled beneath the shelter with Misty pulling him by the shoulders. The front of the mansion stood for another second. Then it collapsed into the rest. Z watched the place where his study had been disappear behind a rising wall of gray. The iron canopy buckled. Magnetrick gritted his teeth, holding it until the last heavy impacts stopped. Beyond the gate, a surviving white van reversed into a tree. Its driver straightened the wheels and fled. The remaining hunters ran after it, abandoning their weapons and the people they could no longer reach. No one pursued them. Jeanetta’s baby moved once more beneath her hands. This time, only she felt it. * * * For a while, all Jeanetta could hear was her own breathing. Reen crouched beside her. Blood darkened his shirt, though the wounds beneath it were already closing. Cyrus kept one hand on her shoulder while staring at what remained beyond the wall. “Did I do that?” she asked. Neither answered quickly enough. Professor Z rolled closer over the broken path. One wheel caught on a stone; Magnetrick moved it aside without comment. “We will understand what happened,” Z said. “Right now, I need you to let Monsta examine you.” Monsta was breathing carefully, every movement pulling at his injured back. He checked Jeanetta while Rougie held the medical case open. The small monitor found the child’s heartbeat. Fast. Steady. Jeanetta covered her face. Misty stayed several feet away. She looked at the ruined house, then at the woman she had once approached in her sleep. Whatever her employer had known, he had handed her a death sentence disguised as an explanation. It had been easier to believe before she had watched Jeanetta beg the destruction to stop. Z counted everyone twice. Scambit lay on a salvaged door, conscious but losing color. Nightwalka sat folded around his ribs. Lady Longnails’s shoulder needed setting, and Monsta could barely straighten. Hothead’s hands shook as he tried to put away his lighter. Rougie had cuts along her cheek. Misty’s bandage was red again. All fourteen of them were there. Behind them, the mansion had become a low, broken heap. No wing remained standing. Through the settling dust, overturned vans and gray armor marked the fissures along the drive. Many of the hunters were dead beneath the collapsed walls and broken earth. The few who had escaped were gone. “We cannot stay here,” Z said. Monsta nodded toward the service lane. “Ridge house.” Stormisha looked at him. “We have another house?” “An old boardinghouse,” Z said. “Three miles west. We bought it after the first attack and kept it ready in case we needed to evacuate.” “You had a whole spare house,” she said, “and let us spend two weeks fighting over one working shower?” “The spare house has one working shower too.” She stared at the wreckage. “Of course it do.” Magnetrick lifted a fallen section of gate. It flattened and bent into a broad platform, its edges curling upward. Reen spread a salvaged rug across the bars before they moved Scambit onto it. This time, Magnetrick waited until everyone was ready before lifting anything. They left by the service lane, with Stormisha watching the sky and Cyrus watching the road behind them. * * * The ridge house stood beyond a bend in a wooded road, close enough to the city that they could still hear the distant sirens. Its pale siding needed paint. The porch sagged at one corner. Someone had kept the small yard trimmed. Inside, the lights worked. For the moment, that was enough. Reen and Jugga-Knot carried Scambit into the downstairs room already stocked with medical supplies. Monsta guided Rougie through the treatment until his own injuries forced him onto the second bed. Z contacted a doctor he trusted and gave directions without mentioning the mansion over the open line. Nightwalka protested when Misty tried to help him sit. She ignored the protest but eased her hand away as soon as he was steady. Lady Longnails emerged from the next room wearing a sling and an expression that kept Hothead from making the comment forming in his mouth. Jeanetta took a chair beside the kitchen window. Cyrus brought water. Reen found a clean blanket and laid it over the back of her seat without asking whether she needed it. She pulled it around herself. “Everybody made it?” she asked again. “Everybody,” Cyrus said. Beyond the doorway, Scambit complained weakly about somebody cutting his good pants. Rougie told him she would cut the other leg if he kept moving. Jeanetta let out a breath that almost became a laugh. By late afternoon, the doctor had stopped Scambit’s bleeding and treated the others. Nightwalka’s ribs were strapped, Monsta had strict instructions to rest, and Lady Longnails had threatened three people for offering to help her with her coat. The house smelled of antiseptic and food warming in a pan. Someone had found sheets. Someone else had opened the curtains. Z waited until Magnetrick stepped onto the porch before following him outside. Misty came to the doorway. Behind her, Hothead and Jugga-Knot had begun collecting the few things their crew had left. “You can stay,” Z said. Magnetrick looked out at the road. “We have stayed.” “I mean all of you. We worked together today. You saw what is coming for us.” “I saw what came.” “And it will not be the last.” Magnetrick said nothing. Z moved beside him. “When I visited you, you promised to end the attacks on my people if I found Misty. She is here now. Alive. Standing behind us. It is time to calm down, Trick. Keep your promise.” He let the words settle before adding, “Join us. The Kings of Tomorrow and the X-Mans do not have to stand on opposite sides.” For the first time that day, Magnetrick looked directly at him. “You didn’t find her. She found me.” Z stared at him. From the doorway, Misty closed her eyes. “After all of this,” Z said, “you are going to hide behind a condition?” “You made the condition.” “You know what I meant.” “And you know I never agreed to become one of your students.” “I am asking you to stand with us.” “I stood with you today. That does not give you command of tomorrow.” Behind the helmet, his expression was difficult to read. The barrier itself had become part of his answer. Z glanced toward the packed coats by the door. “Then your decision is made.” “The Kings leave with me.” Misty stepped onto the porch. For a moment Z thought she might argue. Instead she looked back into the hall. “Noah.” Nightwalka appeared with one hand held against his ribs. She approached him carefully. “Come with us. With the Kings. We can finally be together.” He looked past her at Magnetrick, then at the three waiting near the steps. “I’m staying.” Her face changed without her powers helping it. “I came back for you.” “Then come see me.” “It’s not that simple.” “It can be. Use the door. Wear your own face. Tell me where you going before you disappear.” She reached for his hand. This time he let her take it. “These people came for me when they didn’t know me,” he said. “They got hurt keeping me alive. I ain’t leaving them while they still bleeding.” Misty’s thumb moved over his knuckles. “You don’t have to earn a place with me.” “I know.” He looked toward the kitchen, where Jeanetta sat with the blanket around her shoulders. “I already got a place here.” For a moment, Misty seemed about to become angry. Then she drew him into a careful hug, keeping her arm away from his ribs. He held her back. When she released him, she pressed a folded scrap of paper into his hand. “A number I’ll answer.” “You better.” “I will.” She looked at Jeanetta through the open door. Jeanetta met her eyes but did not rise. “If I hear anything about him,” Misty said, “you’ll know.” Jeanetta nodded once. It was all she had to give. Magnetrick descended the steps. Hothead followed, then Jugga-Knot, moving carefully around the weak corner of the porch. Lady Longnails took the path with her good hand tucked into her coat. Misty went last. At the gate, she turned back. Her son was still in the doorway. He lifted the folded paper so she could see it. She nodded and followed the Kings of Tomorrow down the road. Z remained on the porch until the trees hid them. Behind him, a chair scraped across the kitchen floor. Monsta objected from the next room when somebody tried to put a box on his bed. Scambit asked whether losing all his belongings counted as a legitimate reason to stop paying a bill. Rougie told him the bill had not been legitimate in the first place. The professor turned his chair toward the noise. Jeanetta looked up as he entered. Beneath the blanket, the baby gave a small, ordinary kick. She waited. The glass beside her stayed still. The floor did not move. Only then did she pick up her water. Outside, Nightwalka closed the front door and checked the lock. The house held.

X-Mans Ate: Bringing Down Da House

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