Chapter 5 Part 5 Dodge This...

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"Allow me." Cyclops says, right hand moving to the side of his yellow visor.

"Cyclops, stand down!" Xavier orders.

"Son!" Captain America says to me, holding his hands up. "It doesn't have to come to that."

Captain America is moving forward while I am stepping back, out of the crunch of people trying to get to an open space.

I find the snipers, just at the edge of the range of my telepathy.

I hear one of them recieve orders. "Take the shot. We don't have time for Rogers' coddling. Shoot the little mutant terrorist in the head."

"Yes Sub-Director Hill." The soldier replies, and fires. The bullet flattens against my torso.

"Shit." The soldier mutters.

Everyone fires. My brand new shirt is riddled and scorched by the high powered weapons and the few repulsor bursts from twitchy Guardsmen.

"Stop!" Captain America thunders. "Stop right now!"

I take off the ruin of my shirt, flattened bullets falling from my skin and the fabric, clattering to the ground. "Sub-Director Hill really hates mutants eh?"

"What does Hill have to do with anything?" Captain America replies.

I point in the direction of the first shot. "She ordered Corporal Harris, the sniper placed right there, to fire. She said you were 'coddling' me. Anyway, I"m not your riot guy. But I can probably find him."

"That does not explain the psychic pulse last night." Xavier says.

"That's easy Professor." My smile is thin, embarassed. "I was trying to commit suicide by burning out my lifeforce in a mono-directional burst of telepathic power so no one would get hurt but myself. I failed so I went to bed."

"Why?" Xavier asks. "Why would you want to kill yourself?"

"Because I do not want to be in this horrible, horrible place!" I snap. I almost go off book because I am being honest, as honest as I can be about everything here but I manage to stay in character. "My parents raised me in isolation. I liked that isolation. But now, I am here, and here is as dirty, and duplicitous as they said it was."

"I was going to live a nice quiet life, but I did not even have twenty four hours of peace." I throw the shirt on the ground. "Even your so called law enforcement has an 'assassinate first' mantra." 

"We can talk about this." Captain America says. "We can get you help."

"Did you even think to get a fucking mage to examine the blood stain?" I ask. "Did you think that you could trace it to the actual owner instead of just relying on CCTV and DNA records?"

That makes all of them pause. Most present, Captain America included, disapprove of magic as unreliable and unpredictable.  A few of the officers present are thinking that the head of the SHIELD mage corps did ask permission to visit the scene and had been denied, by Steve Rogers, not Maria Hill. 

I roll my eyes and bark aloud. "Superstitious pricks! Professor, monitor me telepathically so they won't get excited."

I am airborne, rage roaring from my mouth, the sound barrier fracturing for a moment before good sense asserts that supersonic flight is not an urban activity.

At transonic speed, the city races under me as I arc up and then down onto an area burned into my mind from the memory of the Guardsmen: Mutant Town.

Buildings still smolder. The NYPD, the Fire Department and Guardsmen units are still present, but the denizens keep their distance, a comfortable no man's land between the barred entrances to the neighborhood and the rest of the city.

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