Welcome

[Beast]

This Saturday had gone by considerably better than last. No one was missing, no one was in a coma, and best of all, there was no barbeque to plan for the next day. As much as he tried to delegate the duties to the other X-Men, Hank somehow always felt like it was Scott and himself that ended up doing most of the work. The only drawback had happened two minutes ago, when the severe thunderstorm (which Ororo assured them was natural, and not her doing) cut out all the power in the mansion, and for some reason, the back-up generator had failed to kick in.

Hank dragged himself out of the warm, dry house and into the pouring rain begrudgingly. Part of him wanted to make Forge do it, but he knew it was more out of laziness than an actual inability to check on the circuit breakers himself. As he put his glasses away safely in his pocked, he felt his way along the side of the house. Wet brick slid along the palm of one hand, while a pocket flashlight was grasped firmly in the other. He was getting the eerie feeling that he wasn’t alone, which, in this house, was almost always true, anyway.

The rain washed out most of the scent in the air, but he thought for a moment that he picked up something distinctly… wrong. And dead. And familiar.

“…Wicked?” he peered into the darkness in front of him, waiting. “Is that you?”

[Wicked]

It had been a week since the space incident, however, Wicked couldn’t seem to shake the freaked out feelings. No matter how many times people assured the students that they were safe and the security had been re-gone over and the Starjammers were patrolling their galaxy (or something like that), she just couldn’t completely relax and feel at ease. And so for the last week a small contingency of ghosts had been at her side at nearly all times. During classes it was just Francis that was by her side, by the others joined her just as soon as the classes were finished. Most of their time had been spent either holed away in her room or out in the graveyard.

It was to the graveyard that the small little group of dead and one non-dead were making their way to when the power went out. They’d just made it a short distance away from the house when the lights nearby suddenly went from bright and shining to pitch black. Combat boots halted their muddy progress. Wicked glanced around from underneath the protection of her umbrella, which was being seen to by John, a new member of her contingency. It really was useful to have a mass amount of hands at your disposal. Especially when their owners had no personal concern for the weather.

A few moments of silence passed before Wicked began making her way towards the graveyard once more, ghosts following after their mistress. It would be more troublesome making their way along, now that they didn’t have any sort of light to help them, but the trip must be made. She needed to get the graveyard once more. She needed the solitude and sense of comfort and protection it provided.

Wicked halted once more a few moments later. The ghosts paused as well, somewhat perplexed why they were stopping once more. Their mistress had decided to continue on to the graveyard, after all. A strange, yet vaguely familiar sense washed over Wicked. She could feel the tingling that indicated death was nearby. And it wasn’t just her ghosts. It was something that was not living, yet not quite dead. Not the right kind of dead. There was something wrong with this sense of death. The last time this had happened had been when… she shuddered slightly at the memory of the demon and his tainted ghosts.

“…Wicked?”

She jumped slightly, knocking into John and causing the umbrella to tilt off of her for a moment. The ghost quickly fixed this mistake before his mistress got too drenched from the rain.

“Is that you?”

She remained standing where she had paused, ghosts moving in closer, sensing their mistress’s unease.

“Dr. McCoy?” she asked. Her eyes continued to dart about. Something wasn’t quite right. Maybe someone else was with him and they had a weird sense of death about them. Sorta like how Forge had a sense of death around him even though he was clearly alive. She really hoped that was the case.

[Beast]

"Wicked," he called out to the darkness, "Is that you?”

There was a pause during which Hank held his breath. Something dead was around, and if it wasn't her ghosts, that that meant more zombies. Actually... it didn't smell like anything freshly dead. And yet... not rotting, either. Yet he could have sword that at least once before there'd been something exactly like this...

“Dr. McCoy?” she asked, and he relaxed a little. He was being paranoid. It must have been her ghosts he smelled. It must have.

Hank shined his flashlight in the direction of her voice, until he saw the pale little creature being sheltered by a dead man's umbrella. Once he'd established where he was, he pointed the flashlight toward his own face, so she could see that it was, in fact, only him, and he smiled.

"Hi there. Not exactly the best night for graveyard tramping, is it? Sorry about the lights. I think the storm blew out the backup generator. I was just about to..." he trailed off, looking around, although it seemed pointless because all there was in any direction was shodows and rain. He couldn't help it. Something wasn't right. He'd been living with Wicked and her ghosts for a month, now. He was used to them. What he'd picked up on was something different. Something that his conscious memory couldn't seem to pull out, but which made his subconscious memory set his fur on end, ready for trouble.

He lowered his voice, inching closer to his student. "Wicked... very calmly... and very quickly... get back into the house. Don't look around. Don't make your friends corporeal. Just go, now."