neopoints | (no subject)

[ the professor had once hypothesized once that omega level mutants were born for the express purpose of ensuring the species would continue on with only the best genes. josh hadn't been paying much attention in that lecture - he'd been sixteen, irritated by a heat, and wholly unaware of what an omega was. what he got was that while not all omegas were omega level, all omega level were omegas. he'd barely started understanding what mutants were.

hadn't stopped him from noticing how good julian had smelled in the seat next to him. how he'd pull his eyes from the window to his friend - his only real friend here - and just stare at the smug line of his lip with a sudden, inexplicable want.

the professor had called him out of class. mercifully letting him get away with the excuse of a headache. he'd caught quentin's eye and hadn't quite understood the look, only decided he hadn't liked it and stomped away in his tripp jeans and a ripped band shirt.

he'd stayed in dani's suite for the rest of that week with a 'cold'. about a week later he and david were friends and he and julian were on the outs, and he - ever the fool - was busy chasing rahne. then laurie. and then m-day had hit so suddenly and so traumatically that his body had automatically shut his cycle down.

all that was more than a lifetime ago. krakoa is now.

and krakoa is in danger.

the five don't travel together. lose one or two and you can temporarily replace them until they get online. lose all of them and the system falls apart. he's got two guards, both of them powerful and both of them skilled, and even that's not enough. josh feels the shrapnel of one of the sentinels cut through him and drops to his knee with a hiss, feels the edges of it dig through his senses as they spear through quentin, and -

and the fucking power dampener is kicking in, draining his power and -

and then they're stumbling through the gate. the air is instantly hot and the forest around them ancient beyond imagination and -

and he's hitting the ground, a hand coming up to grab for the wound before he thinks better of it. instead he stretches out his senses, trying to find anything that thrives in the dark and cool. he can take the hit - quentin he's not so sure about. he's put that body back together enough times to know it comes apart easy.

it'll be a while before the power dampening beam wears off. ]

H-Help me move him, Keller. There's a cave - that way.