Disoriented » Captain America

chapter twenty six

26 x hi I've come to screw everything up

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The X-Men were a little more surprised at my spontaneous appearance than the Fantastic Four been, but in their defense, the only one of them I knew was Logan. So . . . there was that.

On the bright side, I enjoy meeting new people. Even if I do technically already know them.

"Who're you?" was immediately asked of me by one tall, blond young man who I recognized as Iceman.

I grinned as brightly as I could, already looking past him and the gang of mutants that were close to his age, searching for Logan in specific. Though Scott or Storm would also do . . . "Jo Wilkes, you're Iceman," I spoke quickly and confidently, dark brown eyes snapping back to him as my smile turned to a smirk. The look on his face portrayed evident surprise as I then gestured to three individuals beside him; "Here we also have Shadowcat, Colossus, and Angel, and I need to find one of your higher ups. Okay?"

When the only reply I received was blank (entirely dumbfounded) stares, I sighed loudly, looked up to the ceiling for a moment, then finally looked back down to the four mutants. Could I have just bypassed them and headed on? Yes. Was that a good idea given what was heading our way? No, not really. Did that mean I had a whole lot of patience given the fact that I was facing four people with fantastical abilities who should get this by now? No. But then again, I'm never really patient, anyway.

"All right, let's start from the beginning, but not too far," I said as I placed my hands on my hips and regarded them all intensely.

"Are you a telepath?" Shadowcat blurted, before I could begin my spiel.

I smirked. "No. I'm the master of all of time and space and everything else that pertains to. If you need a more in-depth explanation, that means I control time and space, can teleport, and do a crap-ton of other fun things that I would be glad to show you were it not for the impending doom. Literally. There's a villain named Doom coming. Well, not here, but you get the point."

Cue the owlish blinking. This time, it was Iceman who stepped up; "Do you just need to find Professor Storm, or something?"

"Yes, that would be marvelous," I said dryly, watching him with raised brows.

"All of the professors are in the room down that hall to the left," Angel informed me, pointing to aforementioned hall.

"Great!" I forced a smile at all of them before wiggling my fingers in a gesture of farewell, "See you all sooner than you'd like!"

And then I was in said room, smack in the middle of the more experienced X-Men, who also gave me looks of confusion. At least this time Logan was actually there . . . I counted that as a win.

"Jo," he greeted me with a slight smile (the biggest smile I'd get out of him given the circumstances). "Hope you're not here with bad news."

"Hardly," I scoffed. "Here to check how the gathering is going. You have one hour and thirteen minutes until we're meeting at the Baxter Building," I declared then, eyes raking over the room at the new faces.

They stopped when I reached the Beast, whose real name I actually knew. "Amazing," he mused, staring at me openly, intelligence shining in his dark eyes.

It didn't throw me off in the slightest that he was blue. Something about regular interactions with all sorts of aliens tends to numb you to that sort of thing. When he approached me and offered a hand, I shook it, even as he continued to talk; "I'm Doctor Hank McCoy, it's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Wilkes. Logan's spoken highly of you, which is saying something, given it's Logan."

I grinned at that last part. "Pleasure's mine, Hank. And, listen, as much as I'd love to talk to you about the implications of time-space travel . . . now's not the time."

Hank smiled widely. "I couldn't agree more."

With that said, I turned to the other three X-Men in the room who I had yet to meet. They included the same Jean Gray who had been mentioned amidst my predicament, along with one Nightcrawler and Gambit. Beside them were Scott and Storm, and I smiled at all of them as pleasantly as I could manage. "Given you all apparently know who I am--" I cut Logan a look there, to which he merely shrugged, "how's about you introduce yourselves?"

"I'm Jean Gray," the redhead said, watching me with unveiled wariness, before waving to the two males near her; "This is Kurt Wagner, and Remy Lebeau."

I smiled politely. "Pleasure to meet all of you. Scott, nice to see you again, glad to see you've had an update in eyewear-- Storm," I said then, turning toward her with my hands on my hips, the look on my face about as serious as it was going to get. "How's your team, would you say?"

I was pleased when she wasn't thrown off by being singled out, and even more pleased at the response she gave. "A lot more put together before you got here, Jo," she said with a gently teasing smile.

Laughter bubbled out of me. "That's to be expected though, isn't it?" I turned to the rest of the team and winked, "You get used to me. Really, though-- we're down to an hour and eight minutes. You're all going to be at the building on time?"

"Won't be a problem," Logan assured me.

I grinned. "Glad to hear it. Then, in that case, it's safe for me to get out of your hair . . . though I should warn all of you we'll be working very closely in the next, ah . . . let's call it an undeterminable time span."

Remy smiled in a far-too charming way at that, red and black eyes shining with amusement. He spoke with a Cajun accent, as I'd anticipated; "Can't say I'm too disappointed at that, chere."

I smiled flatly at him, "Charming though you may be, joli garçon," I retorted, "I am taken. Also, I need to go. Logan?"

"Yeah?" he asked, watching me with ill-concealed amusement.

"When you meet Johnny, try not to kill him," I said with a childish smile, before teleporting off.

It's always fun to leave people with last words that they don't understand, after all.