Clap-clap-clap-clap. A wave of applause broke out all at once.
"Tony, you really are a hero—Spider-Man is a real-world superhero! Tony, I'll support you forever!" Happy the bodyguard had thrown himself into the shill role in person, and God was he loud.
"Tony, you're the best, I love you!" someone whooped—er, a fair few of them men.
"Tony, you're gorgeous—I'll have your babies, a little mutant one!" Lorna, the punk girl, hollered without a shred of shame.
"Tony, I want to marry you too!" Liz mumbled from beside Maya. Madam President was all for it—she'd happily cut Tony off at the source, and she certainly wasn't going to heal him afterward.
Right then, Madam President's sensing finally earned its keep. Without a flicker of expression, she let her gaze drift, seemingly by accident, toward a few young people murmuring together at the back of the crowd.
"Pulse, look at that—there really are a lot of ordinary people willing to help us. It just goes to show our cause has a real future!" a long-haired, sturdy young man said cheerfully.
Pulse was a handsome youth, blond and blue-eyed. He nodded in agreement, but still said, "John, you're too optimistic. You know as well as I do—the ones locking mutants up are ordinary humans too. The ones who genuinely support us, who genuinely care, are a small minority."
"Gus, have some faith. Remember, this whole rescue was ordinary people acting on their own. Today's march—it was a bunch of elementary schoolers who organized it first. From here on, as long as we help more ordinary people understand us, mutants won't be shunned like this anymore. And Tony—whoa, so dashing! He didn't just free all these mutant kids, he's willing to pour a fortune into building us a shelter. And this isn't one of those places that fly a shelter's flag while running an internment camp underneath—ha, I'd honestly go on a date with Tony!"
The one saying this was the trio's only woman, going on twenty, with pale-gold hair and standing under five foot three—sweet-faced and pretty, and right now wildly excited, staring at Tony in the center of the crowd, stars fairly shooting from her eyes.
"Heh—Sonya, don't forget I'm your boyfriend, standing right here beside you," John said with a laugh. "Mr. Stark's a good man, sure, but I get jealous too." From the look on his face, though, there wasn't a jealous bone in him.
Gus—the one nicknamed Pulse—watched his two companions flirt and heaved a sigh. "So what about the assignment Evangeline gave us? That Polaris—Lorna Dane—are we still looking for her or not?"
John smiled. "I've already spotted her. She's over there cheering for Tony too. I'll go find her in a bit, see if she's willing to join us."
"Didn't Evangeline say Lorna already agreed? You think she'd back out now?" Gus asked.
"She'd have joined without question before. But now—maybe she's found a place to belong, and doesn't want to go traipsing all over the country with us anymore," John said.
Hearing that, Madam President had it pretty well figured out: these three were the seeds the X-Men had left behind. Well—at least that's how the plot told it. The real situation remained to be verified.
Under Spider-Man Maya's prodding, Tony's follow-through turned out to be formidable. That very afternoon, once the police had finished registering the names, he arranged for the mutant children to be gathered up and sent, first, to a care facility.
In a deserted little corner of the psychiatric hospital, Maya asked Liz, "And you? Coming back to Manhattan with us, or—"
Liz gave a bitter smile and didn't answer directly. Instead she said, "Do you know how I got dragged in here? Heh. I arranged to meet Andrew—I only wanted to check on how he was doing. And what came instead was a squad of fully armed soldiers. They didn't say a word—the second they saw me, they opened fire. I got lucky. Otherwise you'd never have seen me again."
Maya's face darkened at once. "Andrew called them in on you?"
"Whether it was him or not doesn't matter anymore. He and I are done—nothing between us ever again," Liz said, head bowed.
"But if you don't go home, what about your family? Won't they worry?" Maya pressed.
"That day—that day, the place I arranged to meet Andrew was right outside my own front door. So... you understand now? My parents watched them take me away with their own eyes. And like you said—afterward, they even lied to you." As Liz said it, the tears slipped loose and wouldn't stop.
"Heh—what a hopeless case, crying already? You're hardly the only mutant a family ever threw out. Look at you, you're a teenager. Plenty of others awaken at seven or eight—and there they are, no family, no parents either, aren't they?"
Maya didn't need to turn around to know who was talking—none other than Lorna, with that green hair of hers. She'd been eavesdropping behind Maya this whole time; Madam President simply hadn't wanted to bother with her. Now she'd cut straight in.
Seeing Lorna walk right over, Maya asked, deliberately, "Who are you? And what do you want?"
Lorna cast a glance around—everyone else was either mobbing Tony or packed in at the registration desk, waiting on the buses Tony had arranged.
"My name's Lorna Dane. I'm a mutant too. Though—I prefer it when you call me Polaris!" she said, entirely without hang-ups.
Madam President asked, half-exasperated, "Okay, Polaris. You didn't come over just to make small talk, did you?"
Lorna pursed her lips. "You're an ordinary human—what would I want with you? I'm here for her. I want her to join our organization."
"Me? Join what organization?" Liz asked, startled.
"Hold on—we'll talk privately in a bit. There are outsiders here right now," Lorna murmured to Liz.
But Liz wasn't buying it. She shrank straight behind Maya. "You're the outsider. So what if you're a mutant too—that doesn't mean I can just trust you! I'm not stupid. Ordinary people come good and bad, and mutants come good and bad. Take a look at yourself—decked out like some alt-scene delinquent. Now look at her—our Madam President's got righteousness written all over her, a proper good student. If I'm not going to trust her, you think I'd trust you?"
Well said. If it weren't for Madam President's efforts, kid, you'd still be back in that hospital as a research subject right now. As in—being researched, Maya thought, snug and smug. Outwardly, of course, Madam President remained the picture of unruffled calm.
Lorna was left without a comeback. She looked down at herself, then over at Maya, and—sure enough—there was a reason she got looked down on: she really did come off like a delinquent street kid.
Seeing the mood turn awkward, Maya drew the two of them off to a more secluded corner. "Polaris—tell us about this organization of yours. If you won't explain it clearly, why would anyone just up and join?"
Lorna knew there was sense in that. But how could you go telling an ordinary human about mutant affairs? And this particular ordinary human looked to be a mere child besides.
They were still inside Aldrich Hospital—a sprawling place, with plenty of rooms and stretches of trees. Seeing Lorna fall silent, Madam President was in no hurry; she just tugged Liz down to sit with her. The bus Tony had arranged was a while off yet, and worst case, she could send Liz to Tony's shelter—Liz was a minor too.
"Lorna, you can tell her about our organization. We can trust her as well!"
Just as the mood grew more awkward still, and Lorna was about ready to give up, a deep, resonant male voice came drifting over.