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….
"There's also a girl, but she's powdering her nose right now," I smiled. "Hey, Rogue, you alive back there?" raising my voice slightly, I asked the girl huddled on the other side of the car.
"Yes! I'm fine!" the fan of extreme tourism answered, rising from all fours. She looked pale, but overall passable.
"Excellent." I turned to the X-Men who had now come right up to us. "So, now that the formalities are done, let's move on to more important things!"
"We…" Cyclops started, but I silenced him with a sharp gesture of my right hand. In the sense that I wagged my index finger with a disapproving tsk-tsk and all that.
"Oh, most beautiful goddess," quickly, decisively, but gently and carefully, I took Storm's hand captive, "you are obligated to tell me your name as quickly as possible so that I may imprint it upon my heart!"
"Uh… er… huh?" the baffled woman blinked helplessly.
"Loki, God of Magic, at your service," my smile widened. "And now, please, quench the thirst of my soul, tell me your name."
"Ororo Munroe… Storm," shaking herself off, the woman tried to gather her scattered thoughts.
"A beautiful name," I assured her, trying to give my voice velvety intonations while gazing lovingly into the lady's eyes.
"Hey!" Cyclops called out to me. "What is happening right now?"
"Introductions," without breaking eye contact, I released the woman's hand and took a step back. Only then did I turn my face to Cyclops. "But if you prefer something rougher, you can busy yourself building a bonfire."
"What bonfire?"
"For that under-baked Viking," I waved a hand toward the corpse. "He's a regenerator, and who knows how twisted his genome is? You don't want his body growing a new head, or his head growing a new body, in a week thanks to the clean local climate, after which an angry and aggressive mutant goes to take out his frustration on the nearest human settlement, do you?"
"We will take him with us," Ororo stated very softly, without raising her voice, but firmly.
"Suit yourselves," I lost visible interest in the matter, dismissing the illusion watching over Sabretooth's body with a casual gesture. Then I headed toward Rogue, who was standing lost by the car on the other side of the fallen tree.
"Who is that?" Cyclops's very quiet whisper reached me.
"Some psycho," Logan answered him in the same tone. "Asked for a lift to the nearest town."
….
Further communication lost the zest of novelty, and the distinguished mutants launched into a discussion of all sorts of boring but necessary details.
Logan's car had given up the ghost, and the X-Men had clear instructions to bring the person Sabretooth was hunting to Xavier.
True, there were now three suspects, meaning candidates for the "true victim", but this meant only one thing: all conversations quickly boiled down to attempts to convince Wolverine to go somewhere with two shady individuals, abandoning all his property, business, and measured existence.
And the man, in my opinion, wasn't exactly strongly against it, but he simply couldn't force himself to agree to such nonsense without truly compelling arguments from Cyclops and Storm.
Unfortunately for the latter, they were tight on arguments, since even the "we can protect you" line met only sour skepticism from a regenerator with an adamantium skeleton.
Things finally moved off dead center thanks to Rogue, who agreed to fly almost instantly.
This allowed Storm, during the next round of arguing, to use the killer argument: if he didn't trust them, wouldn't it be better to personally ensure the girl was safe rather than relying on their word?
Logan kicked against this too for a bit, trying to convince himself primarily that he shouldn't give a damn about the fate of some random girl he'd known for less than an hour, but… he couldn't do it. Gritting his teeth, he was forced to agree.
I didn't participate in this concert, preferring to silently admire Storm's face and quietly send a couple of phantoms to search for the spot where our new friends parked their jet.
In the end, I found the spot, embarrassed Ororo to the point of uncomfortable shoulder shrugging, and even managed to study the aircraft's design slightly.
In my past life, I was quite far removed from aviation and mechanical engineering in general, so I got some rather amusing sensations.
Loki, as the God of Magic, knew Asgardian technology inside out, as well as the tech of several neighbors in the Nine Realms with whom Asgardians regularly interacted.
But Earth tech was… not exactly a dark forest to him, but perhaps more like how an advanced IT specialist from the twenty-first century feels when handed an early mechanical calculator.
Plus, all Asgardian technology was techno-magical after all, whereas on Earth, technology developed separately from magic, which added its own note to the sensations.
However, they didn't let me satisfy my curiosity for too long and politely offered to help carry… the corpses. Or rather, one specific corpse.
"So, you want me to trust you, let you whisk me away to parts unknown for purposes unknown, and on top of that, carry the dirty, bloody corpse of a two-meter savage, which you are the only ones who actually need, onto your plane?"
I raised an eyebrow skeptically, forcing Cyclops and Storm to shift awkwardly again.
"I'm liking you guys more and more!" I abruptly switched to a positive tone, letting a reflex smirk plaster itself onto my face.
"Look, darling," I shot a conspiratorial glance at Rogue, "black clothes, ominous red visor, transporting dead bodies across the border, we are definitely being recruited by the Bad Guys!"
"We are not bad guys!" Storm said, offended.
"Whatever you say," I snorted in response, walking over to Sabretooth. "We're just illegally transporting a decapitated corpse across an international border on an illegal private jet. I love America!"
I effortlessly lifted the body by the scruff of the neck, holding the head in the same hand.
"I want to kill him already," Cyclops shared in a half-whisper.
"Get in line," Wolverine grumbled, adjusting the bag of belongings on his shoulder and lighting a fresh cigar.
"Let's go," Storm commanded shortly, catching Rogue's bewildered look and immediately marching in the right direction.
….
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