You've reached the voicemail of Warren Kenneth Worthington III. Apparently, I'm not able to take your call at the moment, but if you leave a message, I'll do my best to get back to you as soon as possible.

If you're calling to tell me that someone's in trouble, tell me where we need to book the portal to, while you're at it.

BEEP!

---

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Okay. Warren had tickets. Tickets to the dance. And... his track record for taking Karla to school dances over the years had been somewhat terrible. Last year's Valentine's dance, for example, had been skipped in favor of him standing pathetically outside her door for the better part of an hour, and then the evening had been spent talking and sorting and trying to make the world make sense again.

And then there had been kids the next day.

This year, there wasn't some huge rift between them. He was wearing a good suit (as if he owned anything else) complete with a tie, the tickets were there in his hand, and... Okay, he wasn't completely thinking about dancing, but the thought was there.

And, as a complete contrast to last year, he was even knocking as soon as he'd gotten to Karla's door. In your face, dance-missing tradition.

[For that girl that he's there for!]

Warren sat in the grass near one of the community gardens where the majority of the survivors of Alcatraz had been herded to once more soldiers and paramedics arrived. Because Warren, Jr. was there, they had been given first priority seating on the helicopter, along with Hank, who worked with Karla to set Warren's wing.

Leech had stayed with the rest of the X-Men, who had seemed pretty keen on keeping an eye on him anyhow. They'd come trickling into the park a few hours later, once the more seriously injured had been sorted out and sent off to any medical facility in the city that didn't currently have a gaggle of anti-cure protesters camped outside the front door. Or, rather, most of the X-Men had. Logan was a little preoccupied with some more personal matters back on Alcatraz.

The worst of it was over, then, and the early rays of sunshine were almost surreal, too good to be true after the hell that had broken loose throughout the night. In the distance, the twisted remains of the Golden Gate Bridge stood as an eerie monument to the whole ordeal.

Warren gave his wings an experimental stretch, hissed between his teeth, and folded them at his back again. Still sore. Healing. But sore.

"And this is why I don't want to be a superhero," he grumbled under his breath, wrapping his arms around his knees.

( Karla now looked far worse for the wear... )

[And that's pretty much all she wrote of the plotty things of plottiness! NFB, NFI, preplayed with glacial_witch, who coded this up, too. OOC is welcome. And cookies. I love cookies.]

There was a thick fog roiling over Alcatraz by the time Warren managed to make it back to the island. A thick fog, broken only by the occasional burst of fire, like something large and heavy was being thrown and then hit, over and over again with gouts of flame.

Fog. Not exactly Warren's best friend, when he needed to come in and land. Karla was still here somewhere. His dad was safe, sure, but it wouldn't be worth it if he lost her to a bunch of insane mutants.

The fireballs stopped. A moment later, steam, fire clashing against ice.

"Karla!"

He couldn't see anything through this fog, damn it. He could hear yelling, footsteps as more troops armed with cure weapons honed in on one central location.

To hell with them. They weren't who he'd come back for.

"Karla!"

( Karla was still hobbling... )

[NFI, NFB, preplayed with and coded by glacial_witch, and pretty roughly based on the events of the last big battle in that really stupid movie that this kid comes from. Post contains Violent Themes and NPC death up the wazzoo. Dusty, dusty NPC death. There'll be just one more post after this, sometime later today. Almost done, I swear!]

Warren Worthington, Jr. was a lot of things. The owner of a wildly successful company, the developer of the first ever cure for the X-gene, and obscenely rich.

( Today, he was also horribly nervous... )

[Still NFB, Still NFI, and to be continued in the comments, with glacial_witch at the helm of Warren's old man! Also. WHAT ARE THE ODDS that this post has the same number as the Earth designation number for the movies? Laughing all the laughter, over here.]

The flight to San Francisco had gone more or less smoothly, really. Hell, it had been downright quiet, except for the phone call that Karla had made back while they were still somewhere over Nebraska. Warren had gone pretty quiet from there. The amount of yelling that he could hear from the other end of the phone had been almost as unsettling as the vague knowledge of what they were heading into in the first place.

( One did not simply walk into Alcatraz. )

[NFB, NFI, and once again written with the lovely glacial_witch! We're almost done with this canon catchup mess, promise!]

It turns out Warren and Karla didn't need to ask around for information. By the time they got to one of the common rooms in the mansion, people were already buzzing about a cure station in New York that had gotten destroyed in some kind of attack. Some people said it was a bomb, others said that it was a terrorist attack. It wasn't until Bobby (That was Bobby? Really?!) got back that they learned that it was a little bit of both. An old student named Pyro had blown up the building with his flames.

Worse was still yet to come. A little while later, Magneto himself came on the air on Fox News 5 to take credit for the devastation and deliver a message.

"Today's attack was only our first salvo. So long as the cure exists, our war will rage. Your cities will not be safe. Your streets will not be safe. You will not be safe. And to my fellow mutants, I make this offer: join us our stay out of our way. Enough mutant blood has been spilled already."

The video cut from Magneto's face to images of the attack: the protesters holding up signs saying 'No mutant cure.' The line of huddled figures, behind a ring of police protection, turning their faces away in fear or shame. Then the blast of flame through the windows of the building, clearly blasting inwards from across the street. Scenes of people, panicking, feeling, sobbing, dying. Dying from burns, from shrapnel, from falling and being trampled. A little mutant girl alone and sobbing. Police brutality against an unarmed mutant man.

And through it all, Magneto's voice continuing, repeating his message over and over and over again.

( Several hours later, more news arrived in the form of a much taller and less-smelly version of a person Karla and Warren had met once in a different universe. )

[NFI, NFB, written entirely by glacial_witch, who continues to be made of pure awesome. Ganked from that really bad movie, and we'll be continuing in the comments, because we're crazies like that.]

The trip to Xavier's had been... actually mind-numbingly uneventful. Warren had been quiet, staring out the window of the train and losing himself in his own thoughts, and while the bus had been crowded, it hadn't been so bad that anyone had noticed his claws or jostled his wings. He was going to consider that a win, thank you.

Once he and Karla stepped onto the grounds, he couldn't help but bite back a frown. The place was full of flowers. Which was... not necessarily a bad thing. Except that the flowers were mostly set up around a memorial. A memorial, recently erected, dedicated to the memory of one Charles Xavier.

"That is not good."

He didn't even wait for a reply before he was rushing up to the front steps, inviting himself into the building and making his way down hallways that he'd only walked one before, in a reality that wasn't even his own, looking for somebody who could tell him what in the world was going on. ( Karla was running after him... )

[NFI and NFB for distance, preplayed with and coded by the wonderful glacial_witch, follows this, and ganked loosely from that five-minute bits-and-pieces feature about Warren because there IS NO THIRD MOVIE DAMMIT.]

Things were better, right? They were. He'd disappeared and come back, and the rest of the island was back to normal, and people's homes were returning, too. Hell, all of Warren's accounts and stocks had even returned.

But once he'd gone out and replaced the one he'd demolished, he couldn't get his dad to answer the phone. And... he wasn't thrilled with his father, but that wasn't like him. It just... it wasn't.

It had taken a few hours of sitting, of arguing with himself over the wisdom of running back to make certain that his father was safe and sound, but he'd finally booked himself a portal back to New York. He'd check in there, first, and... go from there. Or something.

Harness. Long coat. Deep breath.

( This past week had been filled with things... )

[NFI since they're on their way out, and preplayed with and coded by the lovely glacial_witch, who is made of pure awesome. True story.]