BLINKING CHAOS
by Gouki
PROLOGUE
"Hope Bishop did his job."
It was the end. Pretty soon, Sabretooth knew, they would all die. Although Apocalypse was dead, the fighting hadn't stopped. The Human High Council was sending their nukes to kill off everything else. One way or the other, it was over. The bombs were coming. He wished Clarice and Kyle didn't have to be there. He knew that they had fought the hardest of all the X-Men to change the way things were, to make things right. They fought the hardest, at least to Sabretooth, for Magneto's dream. If Bishop had done his job right, maybe they would all cease to exist before the bombs fell, but if not......
Nobody believed Weapon X when he told them that the bombs were on their way. At the time, everybody was too busy fighting Apocalypse's forces to care anyway. The only thing that was important at the time was making sure that nothing interrupted Bishop's journey back through time to save the legendary Charles Xavier from his own son. Sabretooth didn't particularly believe in Bishop's stories of another world where everything was "right" and Apocalypse didn't rule more than half of the world. It sounded too good to be true.
What would it mean for Victor Creed? Would he still have become Sabretooth? Probably. Except that he probably would not have had a Magneto there to guide him to the right path. He knew that he would most likely be a killer in such a world. He was a killer in this one, before Magneto and the X-Men set him straight. But it would be better for Clarice and Kyle. Wouldn't it?
While the other X-Men were despairing over the fate the bombs would bring, Sabretooth kept watch of the M'Kraan Crystal. Many of Apocalypse's "faithful" followers had tried to escape into it, hoping to find an easy world to conquer for themselves. They were all stopped of course, most by Sabretooth himself.
He remembered one particularly grotesque little creature with two pairs of arms, one pair sprouting out of its forehead, skittering toward the crystal. "An ugly little thing," Sabretooth thought at the time. "No way is it gonna screw up all the stuff we've worked for." He dove at the little creature and snatched it up.
"Sorry, pal," Sabretooth growled, "yer stayin' right here."
When captured, the little creature began screaming. It was a high-pitched, ugly squealing sound which resembled the sound of one dragging their nails on a chalkboard. "PutSugarman down, hairball!" it spit out, frantically shaking its four fists. "Sugarmannot gonna die here! Notnow not ever!"
Sabretooth squeezed the screaming Sugarman's head underneath his foot until a disgusting popping sound silenced it. "Sorry, Sugarman," he rumbled to the decapitated body. He genuinely felt bad about killing the creature. He supposed that it only wanted to live. But who didn't? Sabretooth certainly wanted to live. He was pretty sure that Clarice and Kyle wanted to live. All of the X-Men wanted to live. None of them would, though. None of them could, at least, not here. If Bishop did his job, they'd all get a second chance.
He thought about Weapon X as the aircraft from Europe approached Apocalypse's citadel. When he told the X-Men about the bombs, he didn't seem to care much himself. He looked like he was already dead, like he had lost everything that kept him alive. Sabretooth knew that Weapon X must have lost Jean, his lover, shortly before he got there. Jean Grey was everything to Logan. He had given up so much for her sake, the least of which was his left hand, when he rescued her from Apocalypse three years ago. Sabretooth and Weapon X were obviously not the best of friends, but it was impossible for him not to feel sad for Logan's loss.
Sabretooth took one last look at the sky. Then his eyes turned to Clarice. She was like a daughter to him. After all this time, she and Kyle had become, like Jean was to Logan, everything to him. Could he really let them die in the explosion, after all they had done to make the world better? Sabretooth already knew how he would end up if this timeline Bishop had told them about was the right one. He thought about Kyle Gibney, the Wild Child. Hopefully, Kyle would be relaxing on a Canadian prairie somewhere in this new timeline, without a care in the world, rather than fighting some insane Darwinist dictator and his goosestepping clone army in a corpse-stained America. And Clarice Ferguson, or Blink when she was wearing her X-Man uniform, would hopefully just get the chance to live a somewhat peaceful life with her family. But if that world's Sabretooth turned out to be the soulless, conscienceless murderer that Magneto had prevented him from becoming here...
He shuddered at the thought. Although unlikely, it was possible for another version of Sabretooth to hurt or kill Blink or Wild Child. The mere thought of him hurting the ones he loved nearly broke Victor Creed's heart. But what could he do? What could anyone do?
A voice then cried out in pain, jolting Sabretooth out of his self-pitying moment. He knew the voice. It belonged to Cyclops, the Prelate Scott Summers of Apocalypse's empire. The battered Prelate was carrying the body of Jean Grey in his arms.
"Cyclops," Weapon X hissed. "Thought yer psycho brother Havok killed you-"
"Logan," Cyclops groaned weakly, "shut the hell up. She's still alive."
Logan looked down at the broken body in Cyclops' arms. "Jeannie?" he choked, checking her over from head to toe. She was still alive, but she wouldn't be for long. She had massive internal injuries, and without immediate medical attention, she would die very soon. Without another word, Weapon X grabbed Cyclops and Jean Grey and leaped into the M'Kraan Crystal. Clarice and Kyle, who were closest to the crystal, moved to try and stop him, but they were way too slow.
Weapon X had made a move to save the one thing he cared about in his life, and Sabretooth would be damned if he didn't get the same chance. His mind was made up. He knew that what he was about to do could jeopardize everything that the X-Men had worked for the past ten years. He didn't care anymore.
Clarice and Kyle were close enough to the crystal. The other X-Men were distracted enough to be too slow to stop him. He decided that there was hope.
"I'm gonna have to be fast about this," he decided. "They'll kill me if they catch me."
Sabretooth didn't bother to let the X-Men know what he was going to do. He dove at Clarice and Kyle as they stood gawking at the M'Kraan Crystal where Weapon X had jumped through with Cyclops and Jean, and grabbed them by the collars of their torn X-Men uniforms.
Then he dove into the M'Kraan Crystal, with Clarice Ferguson and Kyle Gibney in tow. "C'mon kids," he shouted as they disappeared into the unknown, "we're goin' fer a ride!"
The nuclear bombs fell. The Age of Apocalypse was over. But for Sabretooth, Wild Child, Blink, Jean Grey, Weapon X, and Cyclops, an adventure was just beginning...
This story also appears on my webpage, www.blinkingchaos.com, along with a lot of other crap like fan art and... you don't really care do you? Well, I hope you liked it and will continue to read the rest of it! Oh, and a review couldn't hurt either...