Work Text:
06/2017
Of all the shitholes on this planet, why Egypt?
Pyro pulled the dark, camouflaging cloth of his turban down his face just long enough to spit a combination of dry saliva and sand onto the scorching ground; his very personal declaration of love for this pile of dirt and slums. Three hours of dully standing around in the godforsaken middle of nowhere, and he was already desperate to get back home.
Mystique's ideas were becoming more and more absurd. While her timeless blue and red skin didn't look her impressive retirement age, all the more senility seemed to have taken hold of her mind in the last few months. Not that Pyro had ever suspected the bitch to have lots of sanity in the first place, especially not since she had been forced to take over the Brotherhood. But this ... was perverse.
“Fucking finally.” He made no effort to hide his bad mood when his leader finally approached this ruin of a camp again on her stolen horse, several miles from at least the saving grace of a glass of gin in some dump in Alexandria, where he'd been forced to sit out Mystique's latest madness. Hopefully, she had at least found whatever it was she was looking for, while Pyro had been guarding a piece of parched land without even the slightest clue as to what they were actually doing here. “You done?”
Mystique didn't even dignify him with an answer. The two of them had rarely ever engaged in extensive communication.
She nimbly jumped from her mount and carelessly released the reins, sending the horse out into the open desert with a sharp slap on its white rear, where it probably wouldn't survive for more than half a day. A much slower, more torturous death than its owner had suffered this morning.
The shape of a hooded junk dealer dissolved before Pyro's eyes, revealing Mystique's slender, bare silhouette as she leaned over a rotten wooden table, one of three pieces of furniture in this barely ten-square-meter shelter with only a very holey roof left. With two aggressive thick lines, she crossed out the picture of a house on the map she'd brought with her. “Destroyed,” she finally deigned to explain after all. “She's probably already back out on the streets alone.”
“Who?” Even though he should be used to not always being immediately informed of all the details after all these years, Pyro was slowly reaching his limit.
Mystique had been neglecting her duties in the White House for months. Pyro had had to put out fires for her more than once already to keep her cover from being blown.
And now this fruitless treasure hunt in this shitty environment, from which Pyro would take home nothing but severe sunburn and sand in all possible or impossible orifices ... He'd fucking had it. “Can you maybe finally be so kind ...”
“I don't know the name she went under with after her father's death, but I have photos,” Mystique spoke up unexpectedly, absent-mindedly, monotonously, while she drew abstract patterns on the map with her marker. ”I'll recognize her as soon as I see her. Without her, all this is pointless. I've already positioned scouts in all major cities. Until they are successful, we have to guard this site. Any incidents? Horsemen in the area? Tuareg? Military?”
“Not even scorpions.” Pyro rolled his eyes impatiently. First, they didn't tell him anything, and now he was supposed to be content with cryptic statements again. This day just got better and better.
“Good.” Mystique watched with an amused little twitch around her eye as Pyro repeatedly wrung out his soaked shirt. Thanks to her powers, she didn't mind the unpleasant ambiance half as much, a fact that only made Pyro more irritated. ”Apparently, we are indeed the only ones who know about this place so far. Install a camera on that beam over there. 24/7 surveillance, weekly report. If there's trouble here someday, after all, we'll have to station people at the dig until we find this girl. For now, we'll fly back and keep an eye on New York. The girl has been in the local media a few times too many because of her powers and her knowledge of historical facts that she actually can't even have. We need to make sure we don't lose her to Westchester."
“Why? What do you need her for? What the hell are we even looking for?”
Pyro grabbed Mystique's arm before she could impatiently trigger the signal on her watch that would start the autopilot of the helicopter in the distance. At that moment, he didn't even care about sand, crawling nuisances, or sunstrokes. He finally wanted to know what was going on here. “Raven!”
There were certain surefire ways to throw the Brotherhood leader off course. Calling her by her slave name was one of them. Sometimes she was ridiculously predictable.
Pyro had anticipated the brutal attack maneuver and reacted instantly, spinning around Mystique and bringing her down with a strong kick to the back of the knee, holding her arms together behind her back at the elbows. Her rude curse had him grin broadly. She shouldn't have trained him so extensively if she hadn't wanted him to become just as good as she was. “Cut the crap. I'm one of your most important warlords. You can't treat me like a primitive henchman all my life. What are you looking for?”
It happened faster than he realized that she had already freed herself, her limbs thinning out under his grasp, her powers melting her cells into a flexible mass slipping out from under him. One moment he was kneeling over her naked form in the sand, burning hot even in the shadow – a quite suggestive situation if it hadn't been so damn warm and Mystique hadn't always awoken about as much horniness as a freezer could in Pyro ever since he'd left puberty behind. The next, his eyes were staring up at the bright blue, cloudless sky, and a painful burning sensation spread through his stomach.
“Okay, okay!” he managed to get out, panting for air, struggling in vain against the pressure of a muscular leg resting heavily on his solar plexus. „I'm just kidding, okay?”
“Finally grow up, Pyro, if you ever want me to take you seriously as a partner." Mystique was surprisingly generous today; she released him without another painful kick.
“I didn't talk about it yet because I never knew for sure. But this ...” She gestured vaguely at the remains of the camp. ”This is exactly how it was described in the book that Erik left me. I've been searching for this place for years. It marks the entrance to an underground temple from the time of the Old Egyptian Middle Kingdom, protected by several deadly traps. We need someone who can make contact with those who have been there before, when it was still in use, before we can dig. Someone who knows their way around down there.”
Pyro spat out sand again, laughing and coughing at the same time. His leader was really losing it. “Where's the problem? Then all we have to do is find someone who can talk to the dead. Are you fucking with me?”
“This is exactly why I only need you for backup, not for strategy,” Mystique replied harshly. The faint sound of rotor blades in the distance revealed that she had already summoned her preferred mode of transport during their little scuffle. Time to go home. ”You never had any respect for things much bigger than yourself. Cameras. Now. I have a few phone calls to make.”
With that, she took a few steps aside and dug out the cell phone from her belt pouch that was reserved for White House matters. The argument seemed already to be settled for her.
Pyro gritted his teeth and leaned over the bag of equipment that Toad had prepared for him yesterday, so foolproof that hopefully, he would be able to handle all this complicated technical stuff that had never really interested him much. He obviously wouldn't learn much more today, and Mystique had once again made it very clear to him how she viewed his role at her side. No matter how hard he tried, he would never be enough for her. It wasn't the first time he wondered why he put up with all this crap in the first place. Unfortunately, there were no other options.
“Fine, you need a tour guide, gotcha. At least tell me what we're looking for down there. Do you want to fill our treasure troves with rusted gold and clay bowls?”
“That, my dear St. John ...” Mystique looked back over her shoulder at him with a pitiful smile, “… you won't believe anyway until you see it with your own eyes, thanks to your pitifully limited horizon. Now get to work. We have other things to do.”