Spoilers: The first 5 issues of GeNEXT. If you haven't read them, give it a shot. They're pretty good. (I'm just going to ruin the end for you, anyways...)

Disclaimer: Marvel owns everyone except Giuseppe, his parents, and Florence. Mangiafuoco and Geppetto are from The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi and belong to him; although, I'm fairly certain my Mangiafuoco is more like Disney's Stromboli. I also have no claim to any of the referenced operas. They are as follows: Verdi's "Rigoletto," Mozart's "The Magic Flute," Puccini's "Turandot," and Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci." I do, however, recommend enjoying an opera at least once in life. It's a unique experience.

Part 2- Mangiafuoco

A Long Time Ago in Italy

Giuseppe Marcoli was born in a small Italian town. His mother died while he was young, leaving he and his father alone. She had named him after Verdi, her favorite operatic composer. Giuseppe's father was a toy maker, and one of his favorite things to make was marionettes. He taught his son the art, and Giuseppe fell in love with the world of puppetry.

His infatuation led to a school nickname of Gepetto, but he did not mind. In fact, he aspired to do that which the man in the children's story had done. Someday, he was going to create a puppet so fantastic and detailed that no one would be able to tell it from a real person.

Throughout his childhood he perfected movement systems and designs that deeply impressed his father.

"Your puppets are wonderful, Giuseppe!" He watched as his son changed the facial expression of one of his creations. "You are truly an artist. One could almost believe that they are alive!"

"No," Giuseppe disagreed, "you can still tell they are only puppets. Someday, father, I will perfect it, but not yet."

Giuseppe's skill also ran to theater, and he was a great fan of the opera. He was accepted into an exclusive academy for the arts, and with the help of scholarships was able to attend. There he met the second love of his life, a girl named Florence. She wanted more than anything to be a great actress in films. She hung posters of her favorite movie stars in her room. She saw Giuseppe as a dear friend, but he always hoped that one day, it would be more.

The night of their graduation from the academy, Florence came to see him in the small workshop where he continued to design his puppets.

"Oh, Giuseppe," she laughed, "still obsessed with those toys? You could be such a great actor, you know. It would be easy for you to get a leading role."

"Why settle for only one part of the whole, Florence? That is the magic of puppets! I can be the whole cast of the production with my marionettes. I am the director and the crew as well. I control every last detail for a production that can be just as I envision it in my mind! Don't you see?"

"Who will watch them, Giuseppe? Children? A small crowd of the curious or nostalgic? The world of entertainment belongs to film now. People crave the reality they can see on the screen."

"So then," Giuseppe sighed, setting aside the brush and paint he had been using the finish the face of one of his puppets, "you still plan to go away to Hollywood?"

"It's all settled, Giuseppe! I have an agent already, and an audition next week. Why can't you be happy for me? I'm so close to my dream."

He was angry that she was leaving, that she thought his marionettes were silly, but most angry at himself for not being able to tell her his true feelings. He should wish her luck.

"You are chasing an illusion." He was surprised at the coldness in his voice. "Do you know how very few actually become stars? Even then, they will only love you as long as your beauty lasts, or until the next young beauty comes along."

He did not turn around the look at her. He knew she would be crying. She probably hated him, now.

"Goodbye then," she said softly. Then he heard the door close as she left. He wanted to run after her, to apologize, to confess his undying love. Instead he stared around him at the puppets he had created. So much of his life had been dedicated to perfecting each one. Was she right? Had he spent so much in vain?

"No," he stated aloud. "She is wrong! My shows will be the most amazing spectacle people have seen in years! They will be drawn back to the older, simpler days, and a true appreciation of art!" Then, Florence would return to him, and all would be well.

He put on a record of Verdi, and picked up the brush and paint.

The next morning he packed up and returned home to his father's village for a while. He still had not decided where he wanted to start his puppet theater. He had only been home a few weeks when his world fell apart.

"Giuseppe," his father looked up from his newspaper with a concerned expression, "what was the name of the young lady you wrote to me about? The one from school?"

"Why, father? What is in that paper?" He rushed over to look. A promising young actress had been killed in a car accident in Hollywood. It was Florence. His Florence! She was gone and he would never see her lovely face again...

He locked himself up in the small shed he now used for his workshop. He worked feverishly on a life-sized puppet. Everything must be just so. He scarcely ate or drank or moved from the stool at the workbench.

Days passed, but finally his father could contain his worry no more.

"Giuseppe? Open this door! Please? I am worried about you. Come back into the house. We can talk-"

The door opened to reveal a very disheveled Giuseppe. His father looked past him to see an intricately crafted puppet. There was no head on the body, that still lay on the workbench, paint still wet. It looked exactly like the photo of Florence from the paper.

"Oh, my son," his father embraced him, "is this what you have been making? Surely you must realize that this puppet can never replace the woman that was lost?"

"I know, father. It is only a puppet, and a puppet can never be a real person. Go back into the house. I will join you soon."

"Yes. I will make some coffee and breakfast."

Giuseppe turned back to the workbench in the shed. "No, a puppet cannot be a real person, but perhaps people can be made to be puppets." He was no longer merely the puppet maker, Gepetto. Now, he would be the puppet master.

- X - X - X - X - X -

A Holding Cell, Somewhere

Present Day

Scott Summers groaned as he regained consciousness.

"Scott?" That was Emma's voice... "Can you hear me?"

"What happened?"

"We've all been kidnapped by a psycho. You know, same old, same old." Apparently Bobby was here, too.

Scott opened his eyes and winced. There was a lump the size of a golf-ball on the left side of his head. His hand were held together, wrist to wrist, by a manacle connect to the wall by a chain. Then he noticed something interesting. The world wasn't red tinted. Then he felt the collar. He glanced over at Emma. She too was chained to the wall, also wearing a collar.

"These collars aren't Genoshan," Scott noted.

"Seem to work just as well." There was a fourth person in the room.

"Hello, Gambit. It's been a long time."

"You can call me by my name, Scott."

The former X-man was restrained differently from the rest of them. He was in a device that resembled a portable stocks. Probably to keep him from escaping, Scott reasoned. Everyone had a collar.

"Speaking of names," Scott continued inspecting their prison, "whoever took us knew ours."

"I have no idea who this guy is, Scott, but he's sure prepared." Bobby fingered the collar at his throat. "These don't come off easy. We've been trying."

"Has anyone actually seen our captor?"

"Yeah," Gambit's words seemed a little slurred and he seemed to have trouble focusing, "when he brought you all here. Big guy, black beard."

"He brought me in second," Bobby explained. "Caught me at a gas station on the way back from my vacation. You probably figured out that he took you and Emma at the same time."

"Are you okay, G- Remy?" Scott inquired, as politely as he could make himself.

"He keeps me a little drugged. Extra precaution, I figure."

"So, what's the plan, Cyke?" Bobby looked at Scott with a confidence that made him apprehensive. He hated being everybody's rock. It made it that much worse if you let them down. The truth was, as it had often been in the past, that Scott had no idea what they should do. However, he felt compelled to answer.

"Do we have any idea when he might come in here again?"

"Well," Remy closed his eyes for a moment, "he'll need to re-dose me soon, but I can't give you a precise time."

"Will he be alone when he enters?"

"Yeah," Bobby affirmed, "but he's got us positioned so that only one of us could reach him at a time, and we can't reach each other."

"If one of us could knock him backward toward another, we might be able to overpower him."

"Then what?" Remy asked. "None of us is in a position to both restrain him and try to free ourself or anyone else."

"I think," Emma broke in, contributing to the conversation for the first time, "that our major concern ought to be what he plans to do with us. He hasn't brought us any food or water, so I don't think imprisonment is his primary goal."

As she was speaking, the door to their cell opened. "She is quite right," their captor rumbled in a voice now familiar to them all. "I do not wish to simply keep you chained in a dark room. You will all join Mangiafuoco's collection, and then you needn't worry about anything further." In his hands he held a porcelain mask, delicately painted on the front and lined with wires and circuitry in back. "I have a performance planned for you all, and we must prepare."

He began to walk over to Remy, arms outstretched, holding the back of the mask toward his captive's face. Remy shrank back from the mask, curling up in the corner of the room. Scott smiled. Gambit appeared to be cowering, but was in fact preparing to launch him self at his captor. He aimed low, slamming into their captors lower legs, sending him sprawling. The mask flew out of his hand, landing with a clink in the center of the room. With an angry roar, the bearded man sprang back to his feet, stunning Remy with a powerful, backhanded slap. He picked up the mask with great concern and examined it carefully. There was now a hairline crack from the left eye hole downward, but it remained intact.

"That was very unwise," he scowled, "and very futile." He placed the mask on Remy's face before he had time to fully recover from the blow. Gambit let out a strangled cry and his entire body spasmed and then he lay very still.

"Now, rise, Sparafucile, and come with me."

He unlocked Gambit's restraints and held one hand, palm down, over his still form. Next, he slowly lifted the hand upward, and Remy awkwardly rose to his feet. The bearded man made a few other gestures which were responded to in a similar, jerky fashion. He frowned.

"Stop resisting. It will only cause you pain. I have a few tasks for you while I prepare the rest of our troupe." He walked out of the cell, Remy a few steps behind.

"Did you see that?" Bobby had gone pale. "He's going to turn us all into puppets!"

"Stay calm," Scott advised. "With any luck, everyone at Xavier's will have figured out that something is wrong. They'll be looking for us."

"So, our fate is in the hands of a few retired X-men and a bunch of teenage mutants?" Bobby gave a forced, and slightly hysterical, laugh. "Yeah, no sweat."

"Sparafucile," Emma mused aloud. "Why is that name so familiar?" She considered it for a moment longer, and her eyes widened.

"What is it, Emma?"

"Sparafucile is the assassin from Verdi's 'Rigoletto.' I have a bad feeling about what Stromboli has in store..."

- X - X - X - X - X -

Oli, Rico, and Pavel were all eating breakfast in the cafeteria when the three girls entered, looked at them, and giggled.

"Great," Rico rolled his eyes, "you know that's trouble! They probably spent all night swapping stories."

Oli, however, was not listening. He was distracted by another potential source of trouble.

"Oh, Oli, isn't it terrible?" Megan sat down next to Oli, rather closer than he would have liked, especially after the kiss her astral self had given him. "I barely slept at all last night after Dr. McCoy told me what had happened! Do we have any kind of plan, yet?"

"Um, no," Oli tried to scoot away, eyeing the approaching Becka the whole time, but Pavel wasn't budging, "I actually haven't spoken to Dr. McCoy, yet."

"Oh. Good morning, Megan." Oli's sister said the name like it tasted bad.

Megan sighed and rolled her eyes. "Good morning, Bekka, Becka, and, er, No-Name, isn't it?"

"Be nice, Bekka," Oli chastened. "Remember, both her parents were taken, too."

"Doesn't mean I have to like her," Bekka muttered under her breath.

"Has anybody talked to Dr. McCoy this morning?" No-Name attempted to break the tension. She was answered by a chorus of no's and head shaking.

"I do not no about anyone else," Pavel mused, "but I am just as confused this morning as I was yesterday. Where can we go from here?"

"All we need is a clue." Bekka appeared to have regained some confidence. "Something's going to turn up, I'm sure of it!"

As she was speaking, Hank peeked into the cafeteria and looked around briefly before spotting the group he was looking for. He hurried over to them, and they all noticed both his concerned expression and the envelope in his hand.

"The front gate camera went out again for a short time during the night," he got right to the point. "I found this slipped under the front door early this morning."

They all stared at the proffered envelope. Finally, Oli took it with only very slightly shaking hands. He glanced quickly over the card inside, his expression darkening as he read.

"What is it?" his sister was beginning to panic. "What does it say?"

"'Mangiafuoco and his Marvelous Marionettes invite you to join them for a night at the opera.' Then it lists an address and a time."

"If I'm not mistaken," Hank added, "the address provided is a building that used to be a community theater complex. It went out of business a few years ago."

"It sounds like a trap," Becka voiced what they were all thinking.

"We're still going, right?" Bekka looked at each person in turn, taking in their stunned and, in some cases, angry expressions. "Right?"

"If we want to get to the bottom of this and get everybody back," Oli stated resolutely, "I don't think we have any choice."

"I'm in," Rico affirmed. Becka, Pavel, No-Name, and Megan all asserted their intentions to proceed as well.

"I suppose that if we're going to make this an official undertaking, I shall have to go along as well," Dr. McCoy agreed, after giving the situation careful thought. "I think I shall go see if any of the other instructors would care to join us." With that remark he bounded from the room. "Meet up in the Danger Room in thirty minutes!" he called back over his shoulder.

- X - X - X - X - X -

Danger Room

"We know that our opponent is expecting us." Hank was addressing the entire group that had volunteered to go after the missing team members. X23 had been added to the current group of the GeNEXT team, Becka, and Megan. Cecilia had decided that somebody had to stay and keep the school in a state of semi-sanity. "So," Dr. McCoy continued, "the first question is: are we going to wait until the appointed time, or shall we try and get the drop on Stromboli?"

"I don't like to give any extra advantage to my opponents," X23 admitted, "but the time on the invitation is not very far off and we still need to come up with a strategy."

"Ah yes, that would be question number two: will be approaching this as a single, large group, or will we split into teams?"

"I don't like the idea of splitting up when facing a new opponent. Oli, Becka, Pavel, Rico, and No-Name have proven to me that they can function together as a team." X23 looked over the three remaining teenagers. "Megan's telepathy might come in handy, but I have little knowledge of her control or range. Bekka is a completely unknown quantity to me, so I can't say whether she might be a help or a hindrance."

"If you don't bring me, I'd just follow on my own," Bekka declared defiantly.

"Believe me," Oli agreed reluctantly, "she means it. My sister has dreamed of doing this kind of thing her entire life. I'm sure we can count on her." Bekka favored her brother with a beaming smile.

Hank glanced at his watch and sighed. "Right then, on to planning." They had only a few hours to prepare for whatever this "Mangiafuoco" had in store.