Jono's New York, Jean Grey School
Sep. 12th, 2015 09:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sharp_as_knivesHonestly, for a man with senses as sharp as Logan's were supposed to be, his taste was execrable. If Hannibal had known there wasn't a decent bottle of wine on the campus, he would have brought his own. Still, at least Westchester was the type of place to have a decent wine shop.
He checked his watch as he stepped from the gate; still plenty of time even if he had to go a town or two further away.
Of course, he wasn't exactly alone.
They were a little bit like stereotypical bumbling sidekicks from some old Disney movie, if bumbling Disney sidekicks came with sharp angles and plots more nefarious than grand theft puppy. One was tall and a bit on the gangly side. The other was short and stocky, the sort of stocky that seemed almost overweight at a glance, but a second, closer look would reveal that most of that weight was actually muscle. They'd been casing the place for a good hour now, waiting for one of the filthy muties they knew was in there to stray just far enough from campus that they could make a grab at it.
The first of the freaks that had rumbled by had to have been eight feet tall and made of boulders, and there was no way they were going to be able to fit him in the little Honda they'd driven out this far. The second hadn't rumbled by so much as he'd flown, and he'd waved a cheerful hello to the both of them and wished them a good day.
Which had been a bit unnerving, what with the way they'd been pointing their weapons at him.
They were just about to pack it in for the day, maybe reconsider their 'sitting by the gate' strategy, when the tall one gave the stocky one an all-too-sharp elbow to the ribs and hissed between his teeth.
"Ey, ey, look. That one looks like a pushover, don't he?"
Hannibal ignored the men as he headed for his rental car; the campus seemed to get its share of gawpers, and really, he was probably one of the least interesting folks to look at here.
There was a wider range of whites that would go with the meal, but Logan would be more likely to appreciate a red, and Hannibal enjoyed the challenge. Maybe he could find a carmenère...
Sorry, Hannibal. Your new fanclub was more likely to appreciate Logan's taste in beer than they were to respect your fancy wine plans.
Not that Hannibal struck either of them as exactly the sort of person to be walking out of that building. Then again, it took all types to be a mutie. That was the insidious thing about 'em. They could be anywhere. Even now when there were practically none left, you could still see them running around New York city like the proper folk, with their screwed-up genes and their dangerous powers and their insistence that human law had nothing to do with them and their unnatural love for certain letters of the alphabet.
It was the tall one to step up behind Hannibal first, while the short one kept watch. He didn't know what kind of powers this one had, but he was willing to bet the high-tech weapon they'd gotten off the black market was more than enough to be able to handle them. Especially when he was pressing it into this guy's back. Hard.
Hannibal glanced over his shoulder inquiringly. "May I help you gentlemen?" He had a scalpel in his pocket and the keys in his hand; the car wasn't far away. There was gravel on the ground. He couldn't tell what sort of gun that was, though. It never hurt to be pleasant.
"Yeah," the one with the gun said, shoving the barrel a little deeper into the filthy mutie's spine. "You can keep your dirty mouth shut and come take a nice little stroll with my friend and me, here. We'd love the chance to have a nice little chat about a few little complaints from the neighbors."
There was a rustling sound from Hannibal's left as the shorter, bulkier of the two pulled out a few sturdy-looking restraints from a bag he'd been carrying over his shoulder.
The legality of restraints like those... was probably pretty safe to call into question.
"I would really rather not, if it's all the same to you," Hannibal answered politely. "I have an errand to run; please excuse me."
"What, you figure it's that easy, freak? You mocking us? Because I really, really don't like being mocked. Now put your hands behind your back where I can see them, or I'll shoot your spine straight through your guts and we'll take the next gene-joke that walks by, instead."
It occurred to Hannibal that he could probably tell them he wasn't a mutant, but really, that was beside the point, wasn't it? These men were being very rude, and he owed them no explanation. And while Hannibal might feel no particular attachment to the students here, Jono certainly did, so they were a sort of family by proxy.
Not to mention his larder had been rather empty lately.
Hannibal set the keys carefully on top of the car and put his hands behind his back.
Short-and-stout took a moment to assess the situation, looking hard at Hannibal to make damn certain that he wasn't going to try any freaky mutant tricks before stepping in and quickly slapping those fancy restraints on Hannibal's wrists.
"Power dampeners," he grunted, a sort of smug satisfaction in his voice. "Cost a goddamn arm and leg, you know. Funny how expensive this shit runs these days, considering there ain't even that many of you creeps left out there. They should be paying us to take it."
Tall-and-armed was giving Hannibal a rough shove.
"Walk. Don't make a fuss. Last thing we want is trouble."
...Sure, guys.
Hannibal hid his amusement; if they thought those things were going to make the least bit of difference to him (or to most of the mutants he'd met)...honestly, some people needed to learn that "lack of powers" didn't mean "helpless". For now, though, he simply walked between them to the car and waited for the door to be opened. "May I at least inquire where we're going?" he asked, still polite.
"Just goin' for a little car ride," the tall one said. "Going to have a chat, is all. A friendly discussion on behalf of some concerned citizens of the human race."
There was an 'unlike you' buried under all of that, just under the surface. Not that one had to listen particularly hard to hear it.
"Now get in the fuckin' car."
Hannibal had been called a monster before, and for more logical reasons; he simply shook his head at it and got in the car. He considered thinking loudly in Jono's direction, but shrugged internally; it wasn't as though he wouldn't work out what had happened, and if he came too soon, Hannibal might miss out on all the fun.
It wasn't long before the car was on the move. The taller of the two sat in the back with Hannibal, keeping his gun pointed at him at all times. The stout one was apparently the driver, and an almost obsessively careful one, at that. They were a lot of things, but stupid enough to race away from the mutie school was apparently not one of them.
"So," tall-and-armed said, moving his gun up to press the barrel under Hannibal's jaw. "Tell us a little about that school, hm?"
Hannibal raised an eyebrow at him. "What would you like to know?"
"How to get in," the driver said, simply, without so much as giving a quick glance over his shoulder. "How to do the most damage."
He was clearly the more subtle of the two.
"We're gonna need you to give us the layout," the tall one said, working with that. "What we might run into on the inside. Security, fucked-up powers. We're askin' you to... let's just say... have a little heart-to-heart with us about your freak school experience."
The driver was getting a dry look for that. "You get in by ringing the doorbell and asking politely; it's a school, not a prison. And I suppose you would do the most damage by blowing it up, although I'm uncertain why you would want to." He turned to the other one. "As to my experience, I teach at a different school, so I doubt it would be of any use."
At that, the driver was turning back to look at him, his eyes a little wider.
"There's more than one?"
Well, they had their work cut out for them, then.
"Around here?"
Hannibal's eyebrows rose. "I'm given to understand there are any number of schools in the area, yes, although not the one I teach at. Please keep your eyes upon the road."
Hannibal had no intentions of dying because his captors were too idiotic to watch where they were driving.
The driver said a few unkind words, but turned around all the same at the sound of a horn being blown courtesy of the oncoming traffic.
"You know what the hell we mean," Tall-and-armed snapped. "Tell us more about the muties, freak."
Hannibal shrugged. "Victor enjoys sushi; Robert prefers hamburgers. Quentin refuses to admit he likes anything. Logan has more sophisticated tastes than he will admit to, but still can't choose a decent bottle of wine."
These were the important things, weren't they?
"Oh, fuck off," Tall snapped, and he had absolutely no compunctions about turning his gun around so that he could smack Hannibal across the jaw with the butt of it. "You think we give a shit about the menu? Tell us about powers, give us something we can use, Gene-Joke!"
Hannibal braced for the impact and turned enough to avoid whiplash or concussion. He gave the man a dazed, unfocused look for a moment, let his eyes wander over the car, then made a small, distressed noise, looking as though he wanted to be sick.
"Oh, shit. SHIT. Pull over! Fucking pull over!"
"What?" The man in the driver's seat sounded... more than a little incredulous, there. "What the fuck for?"
"He's gonna blow chunks, man. There is no fucking way I want some mutie puking on me. You don't know what's in that shit!"
"Then don't fucking make him puke, asshole!"
...That said, the car was pulling over.
These two really were almost too easy. Hannibal would have preferred getting them someplace private first, but he was increasingly of the opinion that they had no idea what they were doing; at this rate, he'd end up at one of their homes.
He stumbled from the car as the gunman pulled him out, then knelt for a few seconds making retching noises before looking up at them. "What is it you want?"
The driver looked around at the - sparse but not absent - traffic and heaved Hannibal up by his collar, dragging him into the wooded verge while the other one kept his gun trained on him. He pushed Hannibal down to the damp ground and scowled at him. "No more smartass answers. You know what we want - start talking!"
Smiling just a little, Hannibal talked.
********
So, the thing about this particular neck of the woods and Hannibal was that, if he was going out to get some decent wine, Jono absolutely wouldn't put it past the man to brave traffic as much as was necessary in order to find the perfect bottle. Hell, Jono wouldn't put it past Hannibal to drive to another county to not only find the right type of wine, but also the right year, possibly even with the right pattern of bubbles magically forming on the glass inside, as pre-ordained by magical fairies or something.
Jono... didn't pretend to understand how it was that Hannibal matched wines to the meals that he presented to people, no. He just nodded wherever necessary, and then appreciated the end results when Hannibal let him piggyback on his senses for the taste-testing.
So, because of all of those things, Jono really hadn't expected Hannibal back for at least a while longer, even when, an hour or so after he'd left, the first sign of him was the set of keys that Angel was bringing inside, looking at them with a sort of bland, perplexed note to his features.
"Excuse me, Jonothon? Your partner seems to have left these outside."
Oh. Jono didn't like that already.
//Outside?//
"On top of the car. Those nice men that I waved to earlier must have distracted him, I suppose. They did seem pretty fascinated by this place, after all."
Ah. Right. Jono had almost forgotten what it felt like to have his blood run cold.
//Tell me about these men.//
After another good ten minutes of trying to drag details out of Angel that were more useful than the colour of the tall one's eyes, the word 'gun' had finally been mentioned, and Warren was left standing in the hallway, looking baffled, as Jono spun on his heel to go tap Logan in for a search and rescue mission.
"I'll... just hold on to these keys until you come back, then."
*******
Trust dumb luck for the mutant-haters of the day to grab an X-Man's partner. Logan should have been used to this by now; it was why he'd started training the doc, after all. "Relax, kid," he told Jono. "You're practically vibrating. We got my nose and your mind. We'll find him." They were headed down the roadside in the right direction now; walking was slower, but it made it easier to track his scent through all the asphalt and gasoline.
//We will,// Jono agreed, eyes glowing as he made his way forward down the road. //He's still conscious, I know that much. But there's something muddling things up, besides. I can find Hannibal, but it's like… looking through binoculars, or feeling through mud. I don't like it.//
He'd had enough run-ins with crazy people with too much anti-mutant tech in their hands to be able to guess what that was about.
"Dampeners of some sort," Logan guessed. "Means they might be expecting you, so keep your eyes open."
//Could be worse,// Jono muttered, almost grudgingly. //They feel like they're nearby. And dampeners still don't do much good against a good swift kick in the-- Hannibal!//
Sorry, Logan. Jono was usually better at that 'eyes open' thing, but he was breaking into a sprint all the same.
Logan sighed and ran after him. "At least you learned fighting without powers. Now if you'd learn 'careful'..."
Yeah, yeah, pot, kettle. He had a healing factor!
Careful, apparently, was for other people. People who were not running past a parked car on the side of the road that still had the driver's door hanging wide open, following some sort of muffled yelling sounds into the trees.
People who, say, didn't have a partner somewhere in there, either grabbed by accident or meant to be some sort of bait, in some state or other that Jono couldn't quite discern from where he was at. But, judging by the yelling noises, he was definitely getting some sort of reaction out of his captors. Or... something.
What Hannibal was getting, mostly, was cramped; the cuffs they'd put on him held his arms back a bit too tightly. Not to mention the itchy feeling where the blood on his chin was beginning to dry. And his eye was sore and likely blackened. These men weren't nearly interesting enough to make up for the discomfort.
Maybe with a bit more time he could have them literally at each other's throats? It was something to aim for, anyway.
As it stood, the bickering wasn't all that far off, with Tall-and-armed now somewhat less armed, screaming his head off at Short-and-stout while cradling his profusely bleeding hand. He was clearly having a bad day of it.
"Just one shot! One shot through the fucking brain and we can go back and grab a different freak! One that doesn't fucking bite! Do it quick, he won't have time to pull any freaky crap!"
"What, are you stupid? We go back now, they'll be expecting us! We'll have to start over! Look, just hit him hard enough and we can sort it out when he wakes up again! Stop being such a fucking pussy - he's still got the cuffs on!"
"Why don't you drag him back into the car, then, you're so sure they work?! I'm telling you, man, we never shoulda trusted those things!"
...Really, even though the power dampeners were making it harder and harder for Jono to track Hannibal by following his psionic signature, the bickering gave him something to follow easily enough. Nothing was dampening his ears, after all.
Nor Hannibal's sense of smell. And since he'd been waiting for one scent in particular… Unsure if these cuffs worked both ways or not, he sent an amused, exasperated, and slightly disgruntled mental handwave to Jono. Two men, one gun, he thought, no other weapons.
And was that ever a strange garble by the time it hit Jono. He paused, blinked, and took a moment to parse it, a weird mess of intent and absolute radio silence between the occasional actual word breaking its way through. He did catch 'gun,' though.
Bloody dampeners.
//Logan and I can both handle guns,// he thought back, for only Hannibal and Logan to hear. Hopefully at least some of that would make its way through. If not, at least Hannibal was bright enough to figure out that something was tamping it down.
If not, they were going to have to play charades. And once Jono was actually close enough to see Hannibal, kneeling down in the bushes and looking... bloody and uncomfortable, but more or less in one piece, the dampener was starting to push back against more than just his psionic senses. Now he was just outright bloody woozy.
Before the dampeners could get to him too much, he was looking back toward Logan, and then nodding through the woods toward the pair still bickering loudly through the trees. He seemed to have better legs for a fight right about then, and Jono could pick a lock easily enough.
Logan smirked and nodded back, disappearing into the trees as he headed silently for the arguing assholes. Not that they'd probably hear him unless he yelled, but it never hurt to be careful. Well, almost never.
Hannibal caught a glimpse of Jono from the corner of his eye and a wisp of thought from him, enough to let him know that at least something was getting through. He knew better than to look directly at Jono, but he smiled a little. It was probably less reassuring for the blood, though only some of that was his.
"What the fuck is he smiling about?" Short-and-stout glanced over at Hannibal, whites showing all around the edges of his eyes.
Tall-and-armed's only answer was a broken-off gurgle as Logan's hand clutched his neck before knocking him into a tree. He fell down unconscious, and Short-and-stout found himself facing Logan's claws.
That gurgle was probably the most satisfying thing that Jono had heard all day. Incidentally, it meant he could hit a run to get to Hannibal, pulling the pin he kept in his pocket for just such an occasion. (You get locked up as much as Jono did around this neck of the woods, you'd start carrying something along with you just in case, too.)
So, while Short-and-stout was dealing with Logan - and best of luck to him, the poor bastard - Jono was crouching behind Hannibal and working steadily to get him out of those restraints.
//Gonna need a bloody nap after this,// he muttered, not that anybody would hear, not with the dampeners pushing his powers down so thoroughly from so close. //Feels a bit like I've swallowed my own brain.//
There was a click from one of the cuffs, and Jono... took a seat and leaned forward to press his forehead against Hannibal's shoulder. The dampeners weren't getting any less effective here, and focus was getting hard. He fumbled a little more, and in a few more moments, there was a second click, freeing Hannibal's other wrist.
Ah, good. Okay. Well done, go team.
Hannibal took a moment to flex his wrists and roll his shoulders, then reached back to pet Jono's hair. He eyed the cuffs speculatively for a moment, then pulled the scalpel from his pocket and jammed it into a join in the material, slicing through whatever was inside.
The cuffs sat for a moment, then threw off a brief flurry of sparks and a small plume of smoke, the smell of fried electronics raising up around them.
//...Oh thank god,// Jono murmured, and then looked back at Hannibal, concern clear in his features. //You alright? They didn't - is that...?//
A quick pat-down didn't reveal anything much more serious than a few bruises, and that was an awful lot of blood.
Hannibal rolled his shoulders again. "I'm stiff, I've got a few scrapes, and I shall probably have a black eye; nothing serious." He smiled and wiped at the blood to show it mostly wasn't his. "They decided they didn't want me to talk anymore." Too little, too late. "One of them tried to gag me; I took exception. And his finger."
"Filthy mutie!" It sounded a bit frantic; probably because Short-and-stout was busy dangling between Logan's hand and a tree as Logan used his own belt to tie his hands behind him.
//...He had it coming,// Jono decided, after a pause. //Logan, do me a favour and break that bastard's nose, please.//
He had a headache setting in as his senses came back to him. A busted nose was about the least he could request, at this point, though it looked like Hannibal had made one of them regret coming a little too close to those teeth already.
//Funny,// he mused, glancing up at Logan's antics through the trees. //You didn't actually grab a mutant. And he still gave you both a run for your money. Fat lot of good your expensive toys and bigotry did you, there.//
And then, an almost amused glance back at Hannibal.
//I'm curious what you said to them, though.//
Logan snorted and drew back his fist, then let fly at the guy's jaw. "Oops. Missed." The man's yells were muffled and indistinct. "Sorry; can't understand you."
Hannibal shrugged. "I said any number of things. I can be very persuasive."
//No kidding,// Jono replied, vaguely amused by Logan's 'miss,' even while he was pulling himself to his feet, and then offering Hannibal a hand up as well. //I've heard you open your mouth before.//
He hadn't known anybody else in the world who could deliver scalpels so precisely in the shape of words that were as smooth as cream.
//Shall we get the hell out of here? They left their car - we can take that back, save ourselves the hike...//
"Please." Hannibal took Jono's hand to pull himself up, then pulled out his handkerchief and cleaned his face as best he could, which unfortunately wasn't much. "I suppose we'll be doing without proper wine tonight," he said, resigned. By the time he was cleaned up and dressed in something not covered in blood, it would be far too late.
//Somehow, I suppose we'll have to manage,// Jono half-teased. He was still sort of cooling down from the whole ordeal too much to really snark at Hannibal with much fervour to it. //I'm sure there's plenty of grape juice back at the school. That's very nearly the same thing.//
...Okay, he could manage some snark.
Hannibal gave Jono a look slightly too tired for his usual snark himself. "Yes, in the same way that eggs and chickens are the same thing." He folded his handkerchief away and gave Jono a one-armed hug as he turned toward Logan and his captors. The tall one was coming around; the shorter one was sitting with his hands bound behind him, his jaw already swelling. He flinched as Hannibal approached.
"What would you do with them?" he asked.
//In this particular case?// Jono glanced at Logan. //I'm guessing unlawful use of a deadly weapon, kidnapping, assault... all sorts of fun charges could be laid against these two. Especially since, even though they intended to take out a mutant or two, they wound up targeting somebody with no X-Gene to speak of. They're a bloody danger to society.//
At least, that would be Jono's go-to. He shrugged.
//Not my call, though. Wasn't me they kidnapped. Wasn't my school they were looking to cull students from.//
Hannibal eyed the man with the same detached curiosity he'd give a bug. "This isn't my world. I won't say I don't have some ideas, but as most of their rudeness was directed at you, I believe I will defer to Logan." He gave him a polite bow and stepped back, curious.
Logan was quiet for a moment as he looked between Jono and Hannibal and the two idiots that had tried making off with one of the X-Men's partners. He seemed to be giving everyone in the woods some serious consideration before just nodding his head back toward the road.
"Go back to the school, kid. Take the doc back with you, get him cleaned up. He's had a long day. I'll handle these two myself."
There was no way in hell he was letting these two come after the students, next. And this meant Jono could go on living in that happy place where he didn't have to have anything to do with what happened from here on out, and Logan... Logan could take a little extra time here on his own to sort out exactly what had happened before they had come to the rescue.
Consider him curious.
[NFB due to distance, but OOC is love! Preplayed with the wondermous![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
furnaceface! Warnings for bigotry, off-screen cannibalism, and a bit of violence. Because Hannibal (and Logan).]
He checked his watch as he stepped from the gate; still plenty of time even if he had to go a town or two further away.
Of course, he wasn't exactly alone.
They were a little bit like stereotypical bumbling sidekicks from some old Disney movie, if bumbling Disney sidekicks came with sharp angles and plots more nefarious than grand theft puppy. One was tall and a bit on the gangly side. The other was short and stocky, the sort of stocky that seemed almost overweight at a glance, but a second, closer look would reveal that most of that weight was actually muscle. They'd been casing the place for a good hour now, waiting for one of the filthy muties they knew was in there to stray just far enough from campus that they could make a grab at it.
The first of the freaks that had rumbled by had to have been eight feet tall and made of boulders, and there was no way they were going to be able to fit him in the little Honda they'd driven out this far. The second hadn't rumbled by so much as he'd flown, and he'd waved a cheerful hello to the both of them and wished them a good day.
Which had been a bit unnerving, what with the way they'd been pointing their weapons at him.
They were just about to pack it in for the day, maybe reconsider their 'sitting by the gate' strategy, when the tall one gave the stocky one an all-too-sharp elbow to the ribs and hissed between his teeth.
"Ey, ey, look. That one looks like a pushover, don't he?"
Hannibal ignored the men as he headed for his rental car; the campus seemed to get its share of gawpers, and really, he was probably one of the least interesting folks to look at here.
There was a wider range of whites that would go with the meal, but Logan would be more likely to appreciate a red, and Hannibal enjoyed the challenge. Maybe he could find a carmenère...
Sorry, Hannibal. Your new fanclub was more likely to appreciate Logan's taste in beer than they were to respect your fancy wine plans.
Not that Hannibal struck either of them as exactly the sort of person to be walking out of that building. Then again, it took all types to be a mutie. That was the insidious thing about 'em. They could be anywhere. Even now when there were practically none left, you could still see them running around New York city like the proper folk, with their screwed-up genes and their dangerous powers and their insistence that human law had nothing to do with them and their unnatural love for certain letters of the alphabet.
It was the tall one to step up behind Hannibal first, while the short one kept watch. He didn't know what kind of powers this one had, but he was willing to bet the high-tech weapon they'd gotten off the black market was more than enough to be able to handle them. Especially when he was pressing it into this guy's back. Hard.
Hannibal glanced over his shoulder inquiringly. "May I help you gentlemen?" He had a scalpel in his pocket and the keys in his hand; the car wasn't far away. There was gravel on the ground. He couldn't tell what sort of gun that was, though. It never hurt to be pleasant.
"Yeah," the one with the gun said, shoving the barrel a little deeper into the filthy mutie's spine. "You can keep your dirty mouth shut and come take a nice little stroll with my friend and me, here. We'd love the chance to have a nice little chat about a few little complaints from the neighbors."
There was a rustling sound from Hannibal's left as the shorter, bulkier of the two pulled out a few sturdy-looking restraints from a bag he'd been carrying over his shoulder.
The legality of restraints like those... was probably pretty safe to call into question.
"I would really rather not, if it's all the same to you," Hannibal answered politely. "I have an errand to run; please excuse me."
"What, you figure it's that easy, freak? You mocking us? Because I really, really don't like being mocked. Now put your hands behind your back where I can see them, or I'll shoot your spine straight through your guts and we'll take the next gene-joke that walks by, instead."
It occurred to Hannibal that he could probably tell them he wasn't a mutant, but really, that was beside the point, wasn't it? These men were being very rude, and he owed them no explanation. And while Hannibal might feel no particular attachment to the students here, Jono certainly did, so they were a sort of family by proxy.
Not to mention his larder had been rather empty lately.
Hannibal set the keys carefully on top of the car and put his hands behind his back.
Short-and-stout took a moment to assess the situation, looking hard at Hannibal to make damn certain that he wasn't going to try any freaky mutant tricks before stepping in and quickly slapping those fancy restraints on Hannibal's wrists.
"Power dampeners," he grunted, a sort of smug satisfaction in his voice. "Cost a goddamn arm and leg, you know. Funny how expensive this shit runs these days, considering there ain't even that many of you creeps left out there. They should be paying us to take it."
Tall-and-armed was giving Hannibal a rough shove.
"Walk. Don't make a fuss. Last thing we want is trouble."
...Sure, guys.
Hannibal hid his amusement; if they thought those things were going to make the least bit of difference to him (or to most of the mutants he'd met)...honestly, some people needed to learn that "lack of powers" didn't mean "helpless". For now, though, he simply walked between them to the car and waited for the door to be opened. "May I at least inquire where we're going?" he asked, still polite.
"Just goin' for a little car ride," the tall one said. "Going to have a chat, is all. A friendly discussion on behalf of some concerned citizens of the human race."
There was an 'unlike you' buried under all of that, just under the surface. Not that one had to listen particularly hard to hear it.
"Now get in the fuckin' car."
Hannibal had been called a monster before, and for more logical reasons; he simply shook his head at it and got in the car. He considered thinking loudly in Jono's direction, but shrugged internally; it wasn't as though he wouldn't work out what had happened, and if he came too soon, Hannibal might miss out on all the fun.
It wasn't long before the car was on the move. The taller of the two sat in the back with Hannibal, keeping his gun pointed at him at all times. The stout one was apparently the driver, and an almost obsessively careful one, at that. They were a lot of things, but stupid enough to race away from the mutie school was apparently not one of them.
"So," tall-and-armed said, moving his gun up to press the barrel under Hannibal's jaw. "Tell us a little about that school, hm?"
Hannibal raised an eyebrow at him. "What would you like to know?"
"How to get in," the driver said, simply, without so much as giving a quick glance over his shoulder. "How to do the most damage."
He was clearly the more subtle of the two.
"We're gonna need you to give us the layout," the tall one said, working with that. "What we might run into on the inside. Security, fucked-up powers. We're askin' you to... let's just say... have a little heart-to-heart with us about your freak school experience."
The driver was getting a dry look for that. "You get in by ringing the doorbell and asking politely; it's a school, not a prison. And I suppose you would do the most damage by blowing it up, although I'm uncertain why you would want to." He turned to the other one. "As to my experience, I teach at a different school, so I doubt it would be of any use."
At that, the driver was turning back to look at him, his eyes a little wider.
"There's more than one?"
Well, they had their work cut out for them, then.
"Around here?"
Hannibal's eyebrows rose. "I'm given to understand there are any number of schools in the area, yes, although not the one I teach at. Please keep your eyes upon the road."
Hannibal had no intentions of dying because his captors were too idiotic to watch where they were driving.
The driver said a few unkind words, but turned around all the same at the sound of a horn being blown courtesy of the oncoming traffic.
"You know what the hell we mean," Tall-and-armed snapped. "Tell us more about the muties, freak."
Hannibal shrugged. "Victor enjoys sushi; Robert prefers hamburgers. Quentin refuses to admit he likes anything. Logan has more sophisticated tastes than he will admit to, but still can't choose a decent bottle of wine."
These were the important things, weren't they?
"Oh, fuck off," Tall snapped, and he had absolutely no compunctions about turning his gun around so that he could smack Hannibal across the jaw with the butt of it. "You think we give a shit about the menu? Tell us about powers, give us something we can use, Gene-Joke!"
Hannibal braced for the impact and turned enough to avoid whiplash or concussion. He gave the man a dazed, unfocused look for a moment, let his eyes wander over the car, then made a small, distressed noise, looking as though he wanted to be sick.
"Oh, shit. SHIT. Pull over! Fucking pull over!"
"What?" The man in the driver's seat sounded... more than a little incredulous, there. "What the fuck for?"
"He's gonna blow chunks, man. There is no fucking way I want some mutie puking on me. You don't know what's in that shit!"
"Then don't fucking make him puke, asshole!"
...That said, the car was pulling over.
These two really were almost too easy. Hannibal would have preferred getting them someplace private first, but he was increasingly of the opinion that they had no idea what they were doing; at this rate, he'd end up at one of their homes.
He stumbled from the car as the gunman pulled him out, then knelt for a few seconds making retching noises before looking up at them. "What is it you want?"
The driver looked around at the - sparse but not absent - traffic and heaved Hannibal up by his collar, dragging him into the wooded verge while the other one kept his gun trained on him. He pushed Hannibal down to the damp ground and scowled at him. "No more smartass answers. You know what we want - start talking!"
Smiling just a little, Hannibal talked.
********
So, the thing about this particular neck of the woods and Hannibal was that, if he was going out to get some decent wine, Jono absolutely wouldn't put it past the man to brave traffic as much as was necessary in order to find the perfect bottle. Hell, Jono wouldn't put it past Hannibal to drive to another county to not only find the right type of wine, but also the right year, possibly even with the right pattern of bubbles magically forming on the glass inside, as pre-ordained by magical fairies or something.
Jono... didn't pretend to understand how it was that Hannibal matched wines to the meals that he presented to people, no. He just nodded wherever necessary, and then appreciated the end results when Hannibal let him piggyback on his senses for the taste-testing.
So, because of all of those things, Jono really hadn't expected Hannibal back for at least a while longer, even when, an hour or so after he'd left, the first sign of him was the set of keys that Angel was bringing inside, looking at them with a sort of bland, perplexed note to his features.
"Excuse me, Jonothon? Your partner seems to have left these outside."
Oh. Jono didn't like that already.
//Outside?//
"On top of the car. Those nice men that I waved to earlier must have distracted him, I suppose. They did seem pretty fascinated by this place, after all."
Ah. Right. Jono had almost forgotten what it felt like to have his blood run cold.
//Tell me about these men.//
After another good ten minutes of trying to drag details out of Angel that were more useful than the colour of the tall one's eyes, the word 'gun' had finally been mentioned, and Warren was left standing in the hallway, looking baffled, as Jono spun on his heel to go tap Logan in for a search and rescue mission.
"I'll... just hold on to these keys until you come back, then."
*******
Trust dumb luck for the mutant-haters of the day to grab an X-Man's partner. Logan should have been used to this by now; it was why he'd started training the doc, after all. "Relax, kid," he told Jono. "You're practically vibrating. We got my nose and your mind. We'll find him." They were headed down the roadside in the right direction now; walking was slower, but it made it easier to track his scent through all the asphalt and gasoline.
//We will,// Jono agreed, eyes glowing as he made his way forward down the road. //He's still conscious, I know that much. But there's something muddling things up, besides. I can find Hannibal, but it's like… looking through binoculars, or feeling through mud. I don't like it.//
He'd had enough run-ins with crazy people with too much anti-mutant tech in their hands to be able to guess what that was about.
"Dampeners of some sort," Logan guessed. "Means they might be expecting you, so keep your eyes open."
//Could be worse,// Jono muttered, almost grudgingly. //They feel like they're nearby. And dampeners still don't do much good against a good swift kick in the-- Hannibal!//
Sorry, Logan. Jono was usually better at that 'eyes open' thing, but he was breaking into a sprint all the same.
Logan sighed and ran after him. "At least you learned fighting without powers. Now if you'd learn 'careful'..."
Yeah, yeah, pot, kettle. He had a healing factor!
Careful, apparently, was for other people. People who were not running past a parked car on the side of the road that still had the driver's door hanging wide open, following some sort of muffled yelling sounds into the trees.
People who, say, didn't have a partner somewhere in there, either grabbed by accident or meant to be some sort of bait, in some state or other that Jono couldn't quite discern from where he was at. But, judging by the yelling noises, he was definitely getting some sort of reaction out of his captors. Or... something.
What Hannibal was getting, mostly, was cramped; the cuffs they'd put on him held his arms back a bit too tightly. Not to mention the itchy feeling where the blood on his chin was beginning to dry. And his eye was sore and likely blackened. These men weren't nearly interesting enough to make up for the discomfort.
Maybe with a bit more time he could have them literally at each other's throats? It was something to aim for, anyway.
As it stood, the bickering wasn't all that far off, with Tall-and-armed now somewhat less armed, screaming his head off at Short-and-stout while cradling his profusely bleeding hand. He was clearly having a bad day of it.
"Just one shot! One shot through the fucking brain and we can go back and grab a different freak! One that doesn't fucking bite! Do it quick, he won't have time to pull any freaky crap!"
"What, are you stupid? We go back now, they'll be expecting us! We'll have to start over! Look, just hit him hard enough and we can sort it out when he wakes up again! Stop being such a fucking pussy - he's still got the cuffs on!"
"Why don't you drag him back into the car, then, you're so sure they work?! I'm telling you, man, we never shoulda trusted those things!"
...Really, even though the power dampeners were making it harder and harder for Jono to track Hannibal by following his psionic signature, the bickering gave him something to follow easily enough. Nothing was dampening his ears, after all.
Nor Hannibal's sense of smell. And since he'd been waiting for one scent in particular… Unsure if these cuffs worked both ways or not, he sent an amused, exasperated, and slightly disgruntled mental handwave to Jono. Two men, one gun, he thought, no other weapons.
And was that ever a strange garble by the time it hit Jono. He paused, blinked, and took a moment to parse it, a weird mess of intent and absolute radio silence between the occasional actual word breaking its way through. He did catch 'gun,' though.
Bloody dampeners.
//Logan and I can both handle guns,// he thought back, for only Hannibal and Logan to hear. Hopefully at least some of that would make its way through. If not, at least Hannibal was bright enough to figure out that something was tamping it down.
If not, they were going to have to play charades. And once Jono was actually close enough to see Hannibal, kneeling down in the bushes and looking... bloody and uncomfortable, but more or less in one piece, the dampener was starting to push back against more than just his psionic senses. Now he was just outright bloody woozy.
Before the dampeners could get to him too much, he was looking back toward Logan, and then nodding through the woods toward the pair still bickering loudly through the trees. He seemed to have better legs for a fight right about then, and Jono could pick a lock easily enough.
Logan smirked and nodded back, disappearing into the trees as he headed silently for the arguing assholes. Not that they'd probably hear him unless he yelled, but it never hurt to be careful. Well, almost never.
Hannibal caught a glimpse of Jono from the corner of his eye and a wisp of thought from him, enough to let him know that at least something was getting through. He knew better than to look directly at Jono, but he smiled a little. It was probably less reassuring for the blood, though only some of that was his.
"What the fuck is he smiling about?" Short-and-stout glanced over at Hannibal, whites showing all around the edges of his eyes.
Tall-and-armed's only answer was a broken-off gurgle as Logan's hand clutched his neck before knocking him into a tree. He fell down unconscious, and Short-and-stout found himself facing Logan's claws.
That gurgle was probably the most satisfying thing that Jono had heard all day. Incidentally, it meant he could hit a run to get to Hannibal, pulling the pin he kept in his pocket for just such an occasion. (You get locked up as much as Jono did around this neck of the woods, you'd start carrying something along with you just in case, too.)
So, while Short-and-stout was dealing with Logan - and best of luck to him, the poor bastard - Jono was crouching behind Hannibal and working steadily to get him out of those restraints.
//Gonna need a bloody nap after this,// he muttered, not that anybody would hear, not with the dampeners pushing his powers down so thoroughly from so close. //Feels a bit like I've swallowed my own brain.//
There was a click from one of the cuffs, and Jono... took a seat and leaned forward to press his forehead against Hannibal's shoulder. The dampeners weren't getting any less effective here, and focus was getting hard. He fumbled a little more, and in a few more moments, there was a second click, freeing Hannibal's other wrist.
Ah, good. Okay. Well done, go team.
Hannibal took a moment to flex his wrists and roll his shoulders, then reached back to pet Jono's hair. He eyed the cuffs speculatively for a moment, then pulled the scalpel from his pocket and jammed it into a join in the material, slicing through whatever was inside.
The cuffs sat for a moment, then threw off a brief flurry of sparks and a small plume of smoke, the smell of fried electronics raising up around them.
//...Oh thank god,// Jono murmured, and then looked back at Hannibal, concern clear in his features. //You alright? They didn't - is that...?//
A quick pat-down didn't reveal anything much more serious than a few bruises, and that was an awful lot of blood.
Hannibal rolled his shoulders again. "I'm stiff, I've got a few scrapes, and I shall probably have a black eye; nothing serious." He smiled and wiped at the blood to show it mostly wasn't his. "They decided they didn't want me to talk anymore." Too little, too late. "One of them tried to gag me; I took exception. And his finger."
"Filthy mutie!" It sounded a bit frantic; probably because Short-and-stout was busy dangling between Logan's hand and a tree as Logan used his own belt to tie his hands behind him.
//...He had it coming,// Jono decided, after a pause. //Logan, do me a favour and break that bastard's nose, please.//
He had a headache setting in as his senses came back to him. A busted nose was about the least he could request, at this point, though it looked like Hannibal had made one of them regret coming a little too close to those teeth already.
//Funny,// he mused, glancing up at Logan's antics through the trees. //You didn't actually grab a mutant. And he still gave you both a run for your money. Fat lot of good your expensive toys and bigotry did you, there.//
And then, an almost amused glance back at Hannibal.
//I'm curious what you said to them, though.//
Logan snorted and drew back his fist, then let fly at the guy's jaw. "Oops. Missed." The man's yells were muffled and indistinct. "Sorry; can't understand you."
Hannibal shrugged. "I said any number of things. I can be very persuasive."
//No kidding,// Jono replied, vaguely amused by Logan's 'miss,' even while he was pulling himself to his feet, and then offering Hannibal a hand up as well. //I've heard you open your mouth before.//
He hadn't known anybody else in the world who could deliver scalpels so precisely in the shape of words that were as smooth as cream.
//Shall we get the hell out of here? They left their car - we can take that back, save ourselves the hike...//
"Please." Hannibal took Jono's hand to pull himself up, then pulled out his handkerchief and cleaned his face as best he could, which unfortunately wasn't much. "I suppose we'll be doing without proper wine tonight," he said, resigned. By the time he was cleaned up and dressed in something not covered in blood, it would be far too late.
//Somehow, I suppose we'll have to manage,// Jono half-teased. He was still sort of cooling down from the whole ordeal too much to really snark at Hannibal with much fervour to it. //I'm sure there's plenty of grape juice back at the school. That's very nearly the same thing.//
...Okay, he could manage some snark.
Hannibal gave Jono a look slightly too tired for his usual snark himself. "Yes, in the same way that eggs and chickens are the same thing." He folded his handkerchief away and gave Jono a one-armed hug as he turned toward Logan and his captors. The tall one was coming around; the shorter one was sitting with his hands bound behind him, his jaw already swelling. He flinched as Hannibal approached.
"What would you do with them?" he asked.
//In this particular case?// Jono glanced at Logan. //I'm guessing unlawful use of a deadly weapon, kidnapping, assault... all sorts of fun charges could be laid against these two. Especially since, even though they intended to take out a mutant or two, they wound up targeting somebody with no X-Gene to speak of. They're a bloody danger to society.//
At least, that would be Jono's go-to. He shrugged.
//Not my call, though. Wasn't me they kidnapped. Wasn't my school they were looking to cull students from.//
Hannibal eyed the man with the same detached curiosity he'd give a bug. "This isn't my world. I won't say I don't have some ideas, but as most of their rudeness was directed at you, I believe I will defer to Logan." He gave him a polite bow and stepped back, curious.
Logan was quiet for a moment as he looked between Jono and Hannibal and the two idiots that had tried making off with one of the X-Men's partners. He seemed to be giving everyone in the woods some serious consideration before just nodding his head back toward the road.
"Go back to the school, kid. Take the doc back with you, get him cleaned up. He's had a long day. I'll handle these two myself."
There was no way in hell he was letting these two come after the students, next. And this meant Jono could go on living in that happy place where he didn't have to have anything to do with what happened from here on out, and Logan... Logan could take a little extra time here on his own to sort out exactly what had happened before they had come to the rescue.
Consider him curious.
[NFB due to distance, but OOC is love! Preplayed with the wondermous
furnaceface! Warnings for bigotry, off-screen cannibalism, and a bit of violence. Because Hannibal (and Logan).]
