There was obviously something going down between Redemption and Gwen, but Zeke really didn't notice, he was way too busy looking deeply into the eyes he hadn't seen in months, the eyes of the woman he loved with all his soul. She moved him like nothing else could. His recklessness, lack of caution, desperation, emotion, desire, she controlled these. With the flash of her smile he would do anything for her. The love was true, and the love was rooted. It was unlike anything he had ever experienced before.

Ki had been passing.

Beth had been dawning.

Evie was eternal.

The "had beens" were replaced by something incredibly pure. True love. Nothing else in the world could replace the feelings they felt toward each other. Their very existence banked on their relationship. Without Evie, Zeke would die, or worse... live. He needed her like a thirsting man in the desert, like a starving man without any hope of food. His loss in her was complete when she lifted her eyes to his. Amazing.

Zeke heard Gwen's voice wake him to reality. They really ought to be going. Redemption had recommended the AVPs, and Zeke was all for the idea. But he also wanted this woman, Gwendolyn, to be safe. He had promised her that, and he couldn't just leave her here now, when humans all around him were being killed mercilessly. In fact, he firmly believed the murders were wrong, and revenge was worthless. All that mattered was loving and acceptance, he was idealist.

The ideal was Evie, and the ideal was love.

With that in mind, he could not just allow Gwen to be killed. She had put up with Zeke's warmongering far too long for that.

He turned to Redemption, not taking his arms from around Evie, and looked into those eyes. The eyes are the windows to the soul. The words of Scripture breathed deeply into him in this moment. His Mom's clear teaching moving his heart in this moving moment. He saw good there, and liked it. The man's eyes seemed real, he wasn't faking it when he said he would care for Gwen. This man deep down believed that it was his duty to protect this head nurse. So be it.

"We will head to the AVPs... Redemption, I trust you will take care of this woman. Thank you so much for all you've done." Zeke stuck a spare hand out in his direction. Then he turned towards Gwen, "You will be safe with this man, his eyes tell the truth, he will take you to safety. Thank you." He nodded in her direction.

Then, without a word, Zeke took his arms from around Evie, grabbed her right hand with his left, held his right hand ready for combat, and headed for the building's exit. At the last moment, before leaving, he spun on his heels and stared Gwen down kindly, "I owe you one, if you ever need anything, call me. You have my number." And he shot a pattern of numbers into the floor in sulfuric writing. His eyes glowed yellow-green for a split second then returned to their merry brown.

He walked out the door without another word, Evie right behind him, happy as ever. As he left the building he thought, I wonder if she ever really will try to contact me...

OOC: And here I abandon the thread. Thank you guys, I've enjoyed this one a lot. The number reference is a set up for the government group plot. Moving now into the Evac thread.

~ "You will be safe with this man, his eyes tell the truth, he will take you to safety. Thank you."

Gwendolyn bided her time until Zeke and Evie had skipped off into the blood-strewn sunset. Then she said, with no lack of appropriate one-eyebrow-raised awe: "That man is even more of an idiot then you are, Kid." 'His eyes tell the truth', do they? Keep Zeke there away from car salesman; that's all that Gwen could say. As for that fancifully left number on the floor: she glanced at it with her other eyebrow quirking, ready to dismiss it. What did he think she had, photographic memory? It had taken her three months to learn her own cell phone number--

Gwendolyn nearly choked. That one number was one digit off from her ex-boyfriend's number. Now there had been a messy breakup. High school quarterbacks turned factory workers do not wait with loving eyes upon sweethearts pursing higher education. Suffice it to say that Gwendolyn was going to remember Zeke's number, whether she wanted to or not, and that Tony Lorenski knew where he could shove it. Which, naturally, left her alone with the fly-boy Kid.

She turned to him, and narrowed her eyes. "Don't talk back. If I want to see my idiotic no work ethic hags dallying around like morons, then that's what I want to see, not Ireland's fairy-dancing hills or that 'wonderful' little hot spring in Kyoto. Understand? As to those lessons you've learned; I'll believe it when I see it."

~ "if the guy with the gun said I was trust worthy I have to be right?"

She couldn't help but give an abrupt laugh--her thoughts exactly--followed by an immediate glare. "Just take me to--Woah!"

They were in the air. They were in the air, and he'd better watch where he put those hands, or she was going to--

Look down.

"Woah!" Gwendolyn threw her arms around his neck, and ducked her face into his stupid uniformed chest. Which had some decent muscles to it, but be damned if torture could make her admit that. Slowly, his insistent questions filtered through the rather loud sound of her heart beating in her ears. Were they too high? Going too fast?

With a distinct force of willpower, Gwendolyn turned her face back to the night air and brought her arms back to herself. Oh wow. On second thought: she left one of her arms around his neck. "Don't be condescending, punk." She snapped. Oh wow, that ground was a long ways away. And scrawny-butt here could certainly book it; she understood how he'd been able to outrun the Stalkers after his little exploding escape from the Camps.

Huh. It was actually a little pretty up here. Exhilarating, maybe. Tolerable, even with present company factored in. The lights of the city were beyond stunning. "Oh, wow." Then they were--descending? She almost snapped at him to not act condescending either, until she realized their destination was in sight. She could see a disorganized cluck of ant-sized hens milling around, coming in and out of the hospital doors. As they got closer, she could make out hospital workers trying to calm them--trying to calm fellow professionals! If she was the college who'd set these people loose on the field, she'd find a rock to crawl under. They set down. Immediately, this irritating cry shrilled towards them:

"Gwendolyn! You're okay! Weweresoworriedforyouandohmygoshareyouokay--"

"Jamaica."

The rushing ball of concern in a nurses' uniform stuttered to a halt. "W-what?"

She had turned back to the Kid. "Jamaica. I like Reggae, and I could use a drink."

It had just occurred to Gwendolyn that her contract with the Camps had been terminated. That meant she never had to hear the shrill voice of incompetency greeting her again, at least until she found her next job. It was a wonderful feeling. And Jamaica was a longer flight.

It had been a good flight, if you could call a long chilly high speed exhilarating rush in the arms of a punk mutant 'good'. Gwendolyn wasn't sure that she was ready to push the word that far, just yet. The most entertaining part, obviously, had been when he'd stopped for directions. A man stopping for directions. Ha! Even without the flying or the costume, you could tell that this one wasn't human.

The little shanty bar was quaint. There was a band playing out front, and they weren't half-way bad. And the man behind the counter made a damn good tequila. Strong, too. Gwendolyn was on her second, after gulping down her first. It had been a damn long day and she'd just landed in a foreign country with nothing but her work clothes, an empty syringe, and a pack of spearmint tick tacks. So sue her if she hadn't been kidding about needing a drink.

"What are you smiling about?" Gwendolyn scowled across the table, at the kid and his coconut. It was like a bad Monty Python skit in the making. She took another sip of her tequila, and watched the band. Finally, with a vehemence that surprised her, she rounded on the kid and pointed a stern finger his way. "I," she told him, once and for all, "am not 'frumpy'. Where did you get off calling me that, anyway? I am twenty-five years old. I like Reggae and I can handle my liquor. I am not frumpy, damn it. What does that even mean? 'Frumpy'." She snorted, and turned back to the band. "'Frumpy'. Bah." It had been months since he'd actually called her that. Damned if she hadn't spent hours arguing with him in her head since then. Frumpy! Of all the nerve.

She rounded on him again, finger at the ready. "And another thing." She pointed down at her drink. "You better be picking up the tab, here, because my purse is back in the States."

Something hit Gwendolyn as she listened to the Kid talk: her alcohol tolerance was not as high as it had been in college. As evidenced, clearly, by the fact she couldn't seem to get a word in edgewise; she had to be getting tipsy, if this punk was outtalking her, with his snappy comebacks, and his unwarranted compliments, and his offers to put her up in resorts for the next week with all expenses paid.

"What are you, 'The Price is Right'?" Gwendolyn finally snapped. "I don't need a vacation, I don't need your money, and you can spare me the compliments, Scrawny Butt. I ain't interested." She also wasn't blushing. And if she was, it was just the alcohol rushing to her face. "What I need is to not be constantly surrounded by incompetent lazy morons. Who, by the way," she said, referencing his earlier 'you are welcome' line, "are probably still running around like chickens with their heads cut off." She took an ill-advised sip of tequila numero dos. Ill-advised, but it helped her get this next sentence past her pride: "...Thanks for getting us out of there." She leveled a hard stare at him. "Though next time, maybe your little gang of heroes could try not acting like they're in a video game."

She rubbed at her temples as she turned back to the band. "As much as the offer to drain your bank accounts dry is tempting, you'd better fly me back tonight. My family is going to be panicking soon, if they aren't already. And I need to start job hunting tomorrow." That last reason was the cause for the temple rubbing.

Gwendolyn had quite a lot to say after the Pretty Boy's--that is to say, the Punk's first little speech. He bowled right over her chance to speak, though.

What he had to say was interesting. She didn't have to admit that, though. Especially not on the heels of his 'you don't mind nice places do you?' quip. Gwendolyn narrowed her eyes across the table. "Keep your tongue in your mouth, Kid. Bad enough that it's wagging like a brain damaged dog on a walk; you don't need to grace the world with photo opportunities for it. You're going to tell me what this place is, what connection you have to it, and why the hell they'd welcome someone with my work experience, if it's a place with mutants. In that order."

> "In reverse order."

Gwendolyn narrowed her eyes in a don't-you-mess-with-me-boy warning.

> "...now any other work history I don't know about, I can't vouch for, did you do some stripping through college or anything?"

"Wha-!" Gwendolyn managed to exclaim in the half-a-breath's pause before the jerk barreled right over her.

> "I am new to the place but I am joining them as my goals fit theirs. Its a boarding school for gifted youngsters, it also happens to be the home to the X-Men. Its all held in a nice mansion or was nice, the raid was pretty hard on it."

As he finished his drink, she contemplated her own. She contemplated it with a firm hand around the glass, and a steady look on her face. She contemplated it with visual imagery: what would he look like with it splashed in his face? She didn't know what bugged her so much about the kid. When she first met him, she'd been certain it was his bad attitude. Right now, she was willing to swear up and down it was his good attitude.

> " anyway, there is no harm in trying."

"That's one of life's great myths: 'there is no harm in trying'. There's a hell of a lot of harm in trying. Ever heard of attempted murder?" She took a sip of her tequila. It was a good drink, and his face wasn't worth wasting it on. "I'm game to try, though. Working around people with manners would be a change." It was clear from her skeptical tone that she didn't have her hopes up. "How soon can you get me an interview?"

Gwendolyn stared at the Kid. Stared hard. Was he serious about the drunk flying, or was that hour or two of down time just part of his continuing efforts to get her to relax? Gwendolyn was relaxed. She was perfectly and completely relaxed, and don't let her high-strung glare fool you.

"All right," she conceded. "We can stay here for awhile longer. The sooner I'm back in the States and employed, though, the sooner the world is a happier place."

Gwendolyn took another sip of her tequila, and turned to watch the band. There was a little dance floor in front of them, where an elderly couple was cutely shuffling to the tune the band played. Gwendolyn just let herself relax.

...Seriously, where the hell did the Kid get off, telling her she needed to relax? That she needed a vacation?

She stood up aggressively, and stuck a hand out towards him. "You know how to dance, right? Com'on."