"A child is a curly, dimpled lunatic." (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
"So tell me aboot these friends o' yuirs," Rahne said. "And nae more surprises, I dinna think I can take another."
"Well, thereby, as you might imagine, hangs a tale," John replied. He leaned back against the tree and prepared to reminisce.
* * *
John hadn't meant to disobey his father. He decided that would be his first line of defense when he got back. Father had said "I want you to be here when I get back" just before leaving for the conference, which John had decided meant he had free license to roam the Shi'ar capital just as long as he beat his father back to their rooms. He'd spent a wonderful morning exploring the various historical landmarks and various other neat things to see in the ancient city, had sampled the local cuisine--decidedly veggie--and then, in proper tourist fashion, gotten hopelessly lost. Which brought him to the events of the afternoon.
John had, in his short life, been to London, Paris, Rome, and several other old cities on Earth. He had been disheartened to discover that the city-planning maxim held as well on Chandilar as it did on his homeworld; the older the city, the more winding and inconvenient the streets. And this particular city was well over three thousand years old. So here he was, in what his Sensei would call the rough armpit of the city, attempting to divine by force of will the overall layout of the streets. It wasn't noticeably succeeding, but he wasn't about to ask the various lurkers and skulkers in the area for help. He knew very well that an obviously lost eight-year-old human might as well just tie himself up and stick an apple in his mouth.
Either the lurkers and skulkers all had twins, or his imitation of his Sensei's manner was working better than he'd thought; at any rate, John figured he'd been past the same corner four times already and nobody was obviously following him. He was about to give up in utter frustration and ask for directions when he heard the noise. It had sounded like a quickly-muffled child's shriek. The other two or three people on the street corner either didn't hear or didn't care, but John hadn't been raised to walk away from people maybe needing help. In typical eight-year-old fashion, he pointedly ignored the small voice trying to tell him that Father and Sensei probably hadn't meant for him to not walk away from trouble in a rough Shi'ar neighborhood until he was older.
* * *
"Cocky wee bairn, weren't ye?" Rahne giggled.
"I've got all your New Mutants and X-Factor mission logs in my dataorb, young lady," John retorted. "Would you like to go over them chronologically or in order of foolhardiness?"
"I'd like ye tae continue with yuir story."
"Thought so."
* * *
Creeping like a mouse--no, a wolf, he corrected himself, a hunting wolf--through the crumbling buildings, John soon came upon the source of the disturbance. Two Shi'ar in close-fitting black outfits were tightening the ropes and gags binding a pair of children no older than John himself. They hadn't seen him yet, and he knew that people weren't supposed to tie kids up. So he got behind one of them, took a good run-up, and--hoping Shi'ar anatomy worked like human--caught him a swift kick in the crotch. As the black-clad man crumpled, emitting a thin whine and clutching himself, John laid him out with a spin-kick to the head. As he turned to find the other one and deal with him similarly, he heard a metallic click and felt his stomach drop into his shoes.
"Mistake, little human boy," the assassin said in harshly-accented English. "A very mistake. Now you join them." He gestured with the gun toward the two bound kids. Sensei would know what to do, John thought. He'd kick the gun out of the bad man's hand and do that thing he does with the guy up against the wall. I wish I were bigger. Since he wasn't bigger, and couldn't do the thing Sensei did with the guy up against the wall, he went over with the other two kids. At which point the assassin raised his lethal-looking pistol.
Though he could barely remember when his Mommy and Daddy had died in the car crash, and he himself had been trapped in the wreckage, unable to move, until the rescue workers--and Father--could safely cut him out, helplessness had always made him panic. This time, however, with the gun and the bad man and the sure and certain knowledge that nobody he knew had any idea where he was, and he wanted so bad to hit the bad man and get that evil little eye in the end of the gun to stop looking at him . . . something went snap inside, and something else slammed the bad man right up against, and through, the stone wall behind him. He shrieked in surprise and fear, and felt a tingle all over as the something else zipped back through the hole in the wall and slammed into--and somehow through him, without so much as rocking him back on his heels, to disappear wherever it had come from. He looked around wild-eyed at the two other kids, who looked equally shockily back at him, and then he slowly keeled over into merciful unconsciousness.
* * *
"I kin assume that th' others were yuir 'Chuck and Birdie?'"
"You may so assume, yes."
Rahne giggled. "No wonder ye came back tae this time--ye're a born X-Man, all heroism an' no brains tae speak of."
"I dunno," John retorted. "Isn't it in the bylaws that X-Men don't kick enemies in the crotch?"
"Cyclops prob'ly wouldna approve, but Wolverine'd applaud."
"Hm. Well, Father wasn't too pleased I'd disobeyed him, but as the Empress declared me a hero of the Imperium and Kith'anor to the Royal House, he kept his protests diplomatically quiet He had enough to worry about with my premature X-factor manifestation anyway. Sensei--"
"Kith'anor? Some of us dinna understand Shi'ar."
"Oh. Um, it doesn't really translate well; sort of halfway between 'bodyguard,' 'blood brother,' and 'we owe you a big one.'" I'm the first non-Shi'ar to receive the honor in recorded history, because at the time Chuck and Birdie were the only Neramani heirs, and because paired male-and-female twins are sacred in the Shi'ar religion, never mind being exceedingly rare. Boiled down, it meant that whenever I was around, I was supposed to attend their Imperial Highnesses and protect them from all harm, and that I and my heirs for five generations were guaranteed unconditional shelter and succor, whether that meant a shower and shave at an Imperial mining outpost or three dreadnoughts escorting a detachment of the Imperial Guard to invade Kree space."
"Wow."
"Pretty much, yeah. What it meant for eight-year-old me was a permanent stargate in my basement so I could go play with my new friends whenever I wanted."
"Ye hit it off right away, did ye?"
"Well, yeah. None of us really had that many friends our own age, and it turned out we had common interests. I'm told we were an appropriately royal headache for Imperial Security even before Birdie went off to the naval academy and Chuck and I took to messing around with high-speed toys."
"I kin imagine. Ye were aboot tae say what yuir Sensei said about the whole thing?"
"Oh, right. Not so much said as did; he was so pleased I'd taken out a pair of professional assassins all by myself that he took me on a weekend trip to Madripoor to celebrate." John grinned, eyes dancing.
"Madripoor? Changed much, has it, since our time?"
"Not noticeably." John's grin, if anything, widened. "Sensei was a bit unorthodox."
"This'll be one o' those surprises again, I kin tell."
"You're a quick learner. But I think I'm overdue for my first Danger Room session--and you said no more surprises anyway. Care for a ride back to the station?"
"Ahh . . . I dinna think so, it's a nice enough day f'r a walk. Later, though. Kurt said ye kin put th' bike in the hangar wi' th' planes. See ye at dinner."
"OK. Have a nice walk." John gunned the bike toward the hangar. As he flew, enjoying the quiet authority of the machine's flight, he thought to himself that Rahne really hadn't been prepared to hear that he and Sensei Logan had spent the weekend talking security strategies with the best mercenary assassins the Princess Bar had to offer.