Notes: Oh look, another universe! Haha. This one is the 664 universe, and in keeping with the theme of several of our most recent universes, we've decided to give one of the characters we love a better start at this world.

This time, that character is Noh-Varr.

A couple notes here: We are, in fact, using Canucklehead Cowgirl's character from her 906 universe, K, though she's already in the X-Men. And this starts from Noh-Varr's first introduction to Earth. It... was not a good one.

Hopefully, this will change that.

Chapter 1: A Cry For Help

Noh-Varr could remember an explosion and not much else before he found himself in this strange prison.

He was completely encased in a yellow bubble, some kind of localized field that was forcing his arms behind him at an unnatural anglem away from the aliens in long, white clothing observing his every move. One of the aliens hit a button on a speaker to call for someone outside of the room, but it was a dialect Noh didn't recognize.

There was so, so much he didn't recognize about this place.

The technology was strange. Slow. Nothing like what he was used to. On his ship, the very walls would breathe, but here, everything was muted. Lifeless. Even the bubble that he was encased in, which was slightly advanced enough that it could read his brain waves, was static, quiet. It all seemed so impersonal.

He'd barely had the thought before an arc of electricity traveled through his entire body. He hadn't been expecting it, so he gasped in surprise and pain for only an instant before he decided to simply reroute everything to his audio cortex for the foreseeable future.

After all, he was sure he had just discovered the reason the technology around him seemed impersonal. It would have to be, or it would risk feeling his pain as well.

Another arc passed through him — he didn't know why. Not one of the aliens in long white clothing were attempting to ask him anything, and there seemed to be no point to it. There was no observation, just sneers. Which seemed incredibly pointless to Noh. If there was going to be torture, there should be a point to it.

Or did these creatures not understand basic scientific observation?

Then again, Noh had no idea where he was. It was possible that he was on some backwards planet where this kind of thing was commonplace. He'd read about the Shi'ar Empire before his people had wiped them out, though the lack of feathers indicated that this wasn't them. No green skin, so they weren't Skrulls….

Noh couldn't remember any species of significance that looked like this. At least not in his reality. Not any species of significance, anyway. But then again, this wasn't his reality anymore. It was possible some primitive species that hadn't been tamed by the Kree still thrived in some backwards corner reality...

Still, whoever these aliens were, they had no idea who they were dealing with. He was Kree; he was created and designed specifically to further the aims of the Empire. The moment he got free, he would destroy this place and find the omega frequency, even if he had to cobble something together from this primitive, quiet equipment. He would contact the Empire in this reality, and together, they would raze the whole planet for the insult.

The Kree did not take insults lying down.

Noh was just considering the best way to destroy this place — should he tear down the walls with his bare hands or should he simply detonate everything he could get his hands on? — when a new player entered the scene.

The alien wasn't quite as tall as some of the others in long white coats, but it was obvious the others deferred to him from their body language alone. He wore gold rather than the white the others did, and he wore a mask that covered everything but his eyes and mouth. It seemed unnecessarily bulky and clearly didn't offer the man a full range of vision.

Inefficient, just like everything else Noh had seen since waking up from the explosion.

The alien in gold was the first to address Noh directly, speaking in a language Noh didn't understand, though the tone was clear enough to decipher. He was smug. He was triumphant. Whatever this man's game was, he clearly felt that he had accomplished it.

The man continued on and on, but it was his tone, echoing in that metallic helmet, that ultimately decided it for Noh. He spit at the man, aiming for the slit in his helmet, but unfortunately, his hallucinogenic substance didn't make it through the metal.

Next time, Noh thought, watching the man as the aliens in white rushed to collect his saliva from the helmet. The care with which they were handling it indicated that they might be scientists, or at least have some modicum of sense when it came to dealing with biohazards. He didn't want to ascribe intelligence to these primitive aliens just yet, though he could certainly ascribe cruelty to them, as the man in gold had hardly turned away before another arc traveled through his body.

His muscles seized, but he had already rerouted everything. Whatever they were after, he was not going to give them any more satisfaction than their smug gloating at having captured him in the first place gave them.

But how to get out of this situation… now that was a quandary all on its own.

What Noh-Varr didn't know — because he had been unconscious and badly injured at the time — was that when his exploratory craft was shot down, the Plex consciousness — a smaller version of what was known in this universe as the Supreme Intelligence, though much less powerful and designed as part of individual ships to facilitate a hive mind to run the imagination engines — had reached out in a desperate plea, across all frequencies and telepathic pathways.

Help us. We are dying.

The ship went down in New Jersey, and the Midas Corporation — the people who had shot it out of the sky and who were already moving to recover the technology on board in order to sell it and use its secrets to make new technology on Earth — was already salvaging what they could. The ship had been badly damaged enough that the Plex consciousness was dead, that last cry for help the only thing it managed before the ship went down, though the ship itself was fighting back against the salvage crew, putting out cosmic radiation that was sure to kill anyone who got close. Still, the ship was dying, too, and even those outbursts were growing fewer and further between.

The truth of the matter was that the message was a long shot. Earth didn't have the right technology to catch the message… and the only reason an interdimensional cry for help was even heard was that it managed to reach Jean Gray in the Xavier Institute.

It was the middle of the night in Westchester, and the team was fairly worn out after a fight with the Brotherhood. Jean and Scott both were dead to the world asleep, her head on his chest until she heard the telepathic cry and jerked awake, the desperate words rattling around in her head.

It was enough to stir her sleeping husband, and he blearily sat up, frowning when he saw that she was breathing hard. It had been an intense cry from a dying people, carrying with it the final fears of an entire ship full of people, and she was shaking slightly. It was a lot for one person to take — the message had been meant to reach a hive mind, not a single one, after all.

"Jean?" Scott asked, frowning, his hands on her shoulders. "Jean, what's wrong?"

She took a deep and steadying breath as she turned to face Scott. "Someone's calling for help," she explained, reaching out to his mind with hers almost automatically, letting him hear — but not fully experience — the message.

"It's not much to go on," he said, though he was already pushing back the covers to get out of bed and get changed.

"No," she agreed. "But I think I at least have a location."

"Alright. I'll get the team together," Scott said, though Jean couldn't help but smirk when she caught his thoughts about what a pain it was going to be to wake up some of their teammates, considering the fact that they hadn't been asleep for very long.

I think you're a little off, Scott.

On what? he asked as he pulled the uniform on.

Jubilee will be the hardest to wake up.

Scott paused, smirked, and shook his head at her. I was thinking I'd let her sleep in. We don't know anything about whoever was calling for help. It would probably be better if we didn't bring her or Kitty.

You know she hates being left behind, right?

Jean, I don't need to be a telepath to know that, Scott said, then pulled her to her feet and kissed her quickly before he headed out the door. "I'll get everyone up. Meet you at the blackbird."

Jean smiled his way as he rushed down the hall to wake up the other X-Men before she turned her attention back to the message she'd received. It had a location in the undercurrent of the message, but when Jean tried to reach out to whoever it was that had been in such distress and pain, she couldn't seem to find the source of the message.

She didn't know if that meant they were too far away or if it was something else entirely — and considering how much pain she had felt from the message, she was worried that they were already too late.

She had just changed into her uniform and was partway down the hallway when Charles Xavier rounded the corner as well, frowning thoughtfully.

"You heard it too?" Jean asked.

"Some of it," Charles admitted. "But clearly not all of what you did."

Jean let out a sigh that dropped her shoulders. "Whoever sent it…"

"Yes," Charles agreed before she had even finished the sentiment. "I'd suggest rushing things along."

"I haven't been able to sense anything from them since," Jean admitted.

"Nor have I," Charles agreed. "But I'll monitor things here. Perhaps they will reach out again."

Jean smiled at him and nodded before she hurried past him to meet up with the rest of the team. She was one of the last to arrive, with Remy bringing up the rear and still pulling on his coat. Jean could tell just from the fact that Scott's ears were still slightly red and his thoughts were along the lines of 'bad timing' that he'd interrupted Logan and K, though neither of them were giving anything away. And Kurt still looked a bit bedheaded, his fur sticking up in a few places — though Ororo looked as serene and regal as ever. And, Jean was glad to see, Kitty and Jubilee were there too — though both of them looked like they were still asleep, Kitty leaning on Piotr's shoulder with her eyes only partly open.

Scott filled them in on the blackbird, picking up Jean's push to get moving. There wasn't much to tell them, anyway, other than that there was a cry for help and that there was every possibility whoever had done it was dead, considering what Jean had sensed in the message. But they were going to find any survivors if they could, or they were going to figure out what had killed them.

Though… that question was fairly quickly answered when the blackbird set down and they saw the salvage crew tearing apart what was clearly a crashed alien craft. It wasn't like anything they had ever seen before, not like any of the other alien tech they'd ever encountered, and Jean stopped short when they got a bit closer to it, her eyes wide and her lips slightly parted.

"It's … alive," she said, staring at the ship. She could sense the ship's reactions, all pain and terror and not much independent thought. But she couldn't sense anyone besides the ship.

"You think the ship sent a call for help?" Scott asked, eyebrows high.

She shook her head. "No, it's not the same… it's alive, but it doesn't have a telepathic awareness."

"Wouldn't have much of one if it was dying," K pointed out.

There was a beat of silence as Jean considered it before she shook her head. "No, the message came from someone — or something — else. I'm sure of it." She reached out a hand to help to direct her telepathic search, scanning the minds of the salvage crew as well… and what she found there had her eyes flying open.

"There was a survivor, but they took him away from here. This is just the clean-up crew."

"Then we're wastin' our time here," Logan growled out, though the words were no sooner out of his mouth before the crashed alien craft seemed to glow with energy.

"Look out!" Scott shouted, though he and Logan wouldn't have been able to clear the blast that followed if it hadn't been for Kurt teleporting them out of there.

The X-Men watched, wide-eyed, as the ship emitted a burst of cosmic radiation. It killed five members of the salvage team instantly, but the rest were at the very least comatose, if not dying. One member of the team managed to remain conscious long enough that he got to a communications device to call for help, but he passed out before he could get much past a report of what had happened.

The team had managed to clear the blast radius, though, and Jubilee turned to look at the others, dropping her chin a bit to look at the ship. "Looks like she can handle herself just fine to me. Not much of a damsel in distress, right?"

"No, but it could have been the survivors that I heard calling for help," Jean said.

"Do you have a location?" Scott asked.

Jean nodded. "Not too far from here."

"Alright," Scott nodded. "Let's head out."

The X-Men followed Jean's lead — she was the one who had plucked the location out of the salvage crew's minds, after all — until they came to a large sort of complex that practically screamed evil lair. It was far removed from any other buildings that size, and it had plenty of guards patrolling the place, not even pretending they weren't guarding the building.

"Can you sense any of the survivors?" Scott asked as the team fell into place, ready to burst into the building to bust up whatever was going on here.

Jean put a hand to her head, but ultimately, she let out a sigh and shook her head. "Something's blocking me," she admitted.

Scott nodded her way once before he turned to the team. "Shadowcat, Wolverine — we need eyes inside the place so we have a better idea of what's going on. If you happen to find any survivors, send us your coordinates, and we'll come in after you, but I'm more interested in finding out what this place is. K, Gambit, Storm — we need to take those guards out without anyone noticing. Nightcrawler, you're with me and Jean looking for the crew of that ship. Jean's right — they're probably the ones who called for help."

"What about me?" Jubilee asked.

Scott frowned her way. "I need you to stay with—"

"No way!" She drew herself up a bit taller and put her finger in Scott's chest. "I can help!"

"I know you can, but you saw what they were doing to the alien ship."

"So I'm babysitting the blackbird?"

"Jubilee, we don't have time—"

"I want to help find whoever's in trouble!"

Scott shook his head. "Stay here, Jubilee," he told her before he ducked out, headed off with Kurt and Jean.

Jubilee crossed her arms and pouted for a long moment, her arms crossed over her chest and her feet kicked up, already planning out how she'd slip out the second the fight broke out. She couldn't follow Kitty and Logan through the walls, but she could so help with taking out the big, creepy guards…..