Manhattan Island had been a city once, or so Bridget had been told. Now it was a graveyard. If the stories were at all based on truth, the massive collection of dull gray spires that had once been habitable buildings had served to form the foundation of a massive empire, a metropolis that had not been equalled in its time. The long streets, which stretched too far in either direction for Bridget to see their end with her naked eyes, had once bustled with more people than a person could count. All around her were traces of life and society left behind to the elements. Signs that stood long dormant and abandoned, some so large that Bridget struggled to imagine how they had been secured to the buildings, had once pulsed with electric lights at all hours of the day, or so she was told. The hollow, immobile metal husks that now crowded the avenues like hundreds upon thousands of huge, dead insects had once been cars, modes of transportation that moved immeasurable numbers of humans from place to place. The tunnels beneath her feet, where few mutants dared to venture nowadays, had housed a network of trains that were like the arteries and veins of the vast city.

All of these facts seemed dubious at best as Bridget reached down where the pavement of the street had cracked, plucked a dandelion that had bloomed in the hard gravel beneath at some point in the last day or so, sniffed it with her sensitive, pink-tipped nose, and tossed it into her mouth. The only sound within the canyons of withering concrete that loomed around her was the gnashing of her teeth as she chewed. It did not satisfy the hunger pangs that pulsed in the pit of her stomach with what seemed to her like more frequency than usual, but it helped.

She stood on 52nd Street and Broadway, but the significance of those denominations had no resonance with her. She used the terms only out of habit, as that was how the streets had been labeled a long time ago, before she had been born, before the city had been abandoned to the gangs and mutant communities, and it was as good a system as any to remember where she was. Certain areas had been subsequently renamed since mutants had become the majority of what scant population remained, of course. The dark pit of rubble and ruined buildings that the older adults still referred to as Times Square was simply called 'The Coffin' by Bridget and her companions. It was a dead place. A quiet place that no one traversed. Other streets had been renamed after heroes who had fallen there during the war or who held some place of significance in mutant history. There was Shadowcat Street, Cannonball's Crater, Cyclops Alley, and Magneto's Fist. In other places, the old buildings themselves had taken on new monikers, depending on who resided within, or what had transpired there in the past; Headstone Heights, the Dragon's Tooth, and of course, the Duke's Tower.

Bridget turned to the south and gazed up where the Duke's Tower loomed in the distance. It was an older building, of that much she was certain, with a textured, geometric surface that tapered towards the top like a needle surging upward into the sky. It was the tallest building on the island of Manhattan, though she was informed that this was not always so. The Dragon's Tooth, the adults told her, had once been called Freedom Tower, and had stretched smooth and gleaming into the sky even higher than Duke's Tower. That seemed unbelievable to her, especially since the Tooth was only about three quarters the size of most buildings around it, jagged and broken as though it had been cleaved apart by a gigantic blade.

She took a last look at the Duke's Tower and fought a chill. She knew full well that the top floors of any building in the city were by and large uninhibited, and the Tower was no exception; Years of neglect and structural abuse from the war made living in the taller buildings suicidal. But still, she could not fight the distinct feeling that the Dukes of New York were up there, watching her even now.

Usually, she had never even needed to interact with the self-appointed rulers of the island. Her tiny mutant clan operated independently, outside of the influence of the mutant gangs and syndicates that functioned under the control of the Dukes. That did not make them free to do what they wished, however. In one way or another, everyone who lived on the island paid their dues to the Dukes and their Marauders, sometimes in ways more horrible than Bridget liked to recall. Everything had changed since the Sinister broadcast, however, and she and her companions had been informed that neutrality was no longer an option. If they wanted the security that the Dukes offered, they would need to do more than make the odd food delivery or, in Bridget's case, spend a night enduring the 'hospitality' of the Dukes' lieutenants. That had been a terrible night, but no worse than any other young mutant girl on the island had to endure. After all, what choice did any of them have?

Bridget herself was not certain what to make of the Sinister transmission. Certainly a cure for Terminus was a good and welcome thing, or at least the adults seemed to think so, but something about this strange man named Sinister's intentions made her wary. It sounded as though he was daring humans to bring a new war to the doorstep of Manhattan Island, or Morlock Island as some had taken to calling it, and that didn't sit well with her at all. From what she had experienced at the hands of the island's other inhabitants, she was not even certain that mutants being unable to breed was such a bad thing, though she spoke those concerns to no one.

In the end, word was passed down the pipe that the Dukes had decided that Sinister would be welcome to add his strength to theirs in making the mutant cause stronger, but declaring the island his own, planting a flag of a new nation without the Dukes' consent? That was another matter entirely, and not one that would be tolerated. So while the larger gangs under the Dukes' control readied themselves for a fight, smaller groups' like Bridget's clan, had been charged with scavenging and acting as sentries and lookouts for Sinister and whatever army he had amassed behind him.

The scavenging was no challenge. It was the only real skill that Bridget had managed to hone in her years of living in the hollowed-out shell of a city. It was true that, in the haste of their evacuation, the humans had left precious little behind in terms of the resources they had deemed valuable at the time; Batteries, gasoline, perishable food and the like. But there were still untold amounts of supplies for the bare essentials of living. Food and clothing, while they had been stripped from the most obvious of places, could still be found if one knew where to look, and Bridget had become especially adept at knowing where to look. Basements of what had formerly been stores or shops of some kind that sold food in years past were always an easy target, but those pickings had become slim as time had gone on. Besides that, she had mapped almost by heart every overgrown garden and collection of plant life on the island, where fruits and vegetables that had once been subject to careful, controlled cultivation now teemed with overgrown produce. Some of her clan still hopefully requested meat, but she left that task to her comrades. The thought of hunting and killing an animal, eating its flesh, had always bothered her.

She looked up into the sky, her long, rabbit-like ears pricking up slightly as she peered into the hazy clouds of the mid-morning sky. She did not know exactly what she was searching for. In his transmission, Sinister had mentioned that he would be arriving by airship, but in truth she had very little idea of what exactly that was. Something told her she would know it when she saw it, but that had not stopped her from peering into the heavens at every bird and insect that managed to catch her attention.

Abruptly, a small, grey cat hopped up onto the rusted hulk of a car nearby and mewed intently at her.

Not many people could easily differentiate between an average feral cat and one that Damien had possessed, but Bridget could spot the signs easily now. There was a cloudy darkness in the animal's eyes and a deliberate, distinctively non-animal attitude in its movements. It was more relaxed than any normal animal in broad daylight had a right to be. Bridget smiled at the cat and walked towards it, hopping slightly on her large, powerful feet with each stride.

"Hi Damien," she said, raising a hand to wave, "Anything to report?"

The cat blinked, yawned, and shrugged its tiny shoulders. To anyone that was not familiar with Damien's abilities, that would have come as a shock, but Bridget barely noticed the strangeness of the animal's human gestures.

Damien himself would be nearby, of course, but tucked into some hiding space so secluded and out of the way that there was no chance he would ever be found by any casual citizen of the island. His mutant ability to project his astral form out into the physical world, even possessing simple-minded creatures and machinery to a limited extent, would have made him formidable if not for the fact that his body, already hindered by a broken leg that had never healed properly and left him with a severe limp, was left inert and totally helpless while he did so.

There was an infinitesimal change in the cat's eyes, it's face, and Bridget knew that Damien was releasing the creature from his telepathic grasp. The feline blinked, shook its head, and hissed at Bridget in confusion and surprise when its senses finally returned. It darted from the roof of the abandoned vehicle, disappearing into the broken window of a nearby building.

There was a shimmering in the air nearby, and Bridget watched as the almost undetectable distortion in the atmosphere took on the shape of a human body, marking the space that Damien's astral form occupied. Of course, he could travel through the physical world without making such disturbances that gave away his position, but he had learned this trick to allow his friends to know where he 'was', which was useful. He could not speak to her directly in this form, but he could hear her, and when his astral body was nearby, Bridget could sometimes detect his emotions or responses to questions if he concentrated hard enough.

Just as quickly as it had appeared, though, the apparition faded. Bridget did some internal calculations and realized that Damien had probably been outside of his body for the maximum amount of time that he could be. He would make his way to her in his physical form in a few minutes.

"You let it get away."

Bridget turned, hopping on her bare, rabbit feet, to face the third member of the scavenging party.

"I did what?"

Rat, or Ratboy as nearly everyone else called him, seemed to materialize out of the scant shadows of the abandoned, garbage-strewn street as though by magic. With her large ears and delicate, sensitive nose, Bridget could usually detect any living thing that approached her, to a certain degree. Rat was another matter entirely. His feet, slender and pale and tipped with a thin claw on every toe, were naked at all times, much like her own, and the boy had all but mastered the art of moving silently on them. Though he was naturally thin and rail-like, he wore a plethora of rags and discarded clothing that seemed to add a bulkiness to his frame, obscuring his face under a hood of dirty material. Under that mass of garments, Rat, like any mutant, had a distinctive smell that Bridget could pick out of even the densest crowd, but his layers effectively masked his scent in a barrier of city aromas that she could not easily sort through. She supposed they had all mastered ways of not being detected, in some way or another.

Rat walked towards Bridget, a long length of metal pipe perched on one shoulder. He irritably gestured where the cat had been sitting on the car, his small, gleaming eyes piercing the shadow under his makeshift cowl.

"The cat, you let it get away," he pouted, his thin whiskers puckering, "I could have caught that."

Bridget wrinkled her nose. "Not cats," she said, almost pleading, "Rat, please don't start eating cats."

Rat grunted and chewed on the end of his metal pipe, which was already pock-marked with dents and scratches from his large, impossibly durable teeth. The rodent-like young mutant had a metabolism that demanded to be fed on an almost hourly basis, and Rat would eat literally anything to sate it. Of all the mutants on the island, he was the least likely to go hungry. She had personally seen him consume three empty glass bottles and half of a tire for dinner. It was part of what gave him a measure of notoriety on the island. There were rumors that he would even consume fellow mutants if given the chance, but Bridget knew that to be false. Laughable, even. Aside from his voracious appetite, Rat was one of the gentlest people she knew.

"What about squirrels?" Bridget asked, "Or raccoons?" The island was positively teeming with both, and were widely considered to be the greatest competition for food. Rats were another obvious choice if the boy insisted on hunting for meat, but she decided not to bring that up. She suspected that her companion had a natural affinity for the rodents that he shared a genome or two with. And, of course, if she brought up rats, he would almost certainly bring up rabbits, which, while rarer and harder to trap, still existed on the island in ready supply.

Rat seemed prepared to pursue the issue further, but then thought better of it and turned his attention to the sky.

"Seen anything?" he asked, not needing to be more specific. She knew what he was referring to.

"No," Bridget replied, likewise turning her gaze upward, her nose and ears twitching slightly as they tried to collect any new information, "Nothing yet."

"Me neither," a familiar voice called out.

They both turned to see Damien rounding the corner of a nearby cross street. With his dark sunglasses and walking stick, he could have been mistaken for being blind, but anyone who watched him walk for more than a second could easily see why he carried the long wooden pole. His left leg had been broken badly while he had been captive in a mutant internment camp as a child, little more than a toddler, really, and had not healed correctly. The limb twisted awkwardly below his knee, and Damien could not support weight on it for more than a few moments before it caused him pain. He used the length of wood as a crutch, grasping it firmly in both hands as he limped on his mangled leg. He had learned to move about as quickly as any average person who walked at a brisk pace, but demanding anything more than that of him was an exercise in futility.

Neither Bridget nor Rat made a move to assist him as he made his way toward them. Damien would have balked at their attempt if they had tried. The brown-haired, slightly freckled young mutant was particularly sensitive about his handicap, and trying to help him only made him more bristly and cold.

Like almost everyone on the island, including Bridget and Rat, he had an unhealthy, starved look to him, with a motley collection of found clothing that hung off of his slim body, fitting him badly. The collar of his shirt, pulled up high as it was, did little to hide the shiny pink ring of scar tissue that raised up around his neck where an inhibitor collar had been affixed for over a year of Damien's relatively short life. Nearly every mutant that had served time in a camp, including Rat, had similar marks.

Damien took one last look skyward before shrugging his shoulders. "Maybe he'll never come."

Bridget's rabbit-like nose twitched as she thought about that. It certainly was possible, but she didn't think so. The Dukes certainly seemed to believe that Sinister meant business.

"Anyway, come on," Damien motioned, "I think I found something."

They had made out better than Bridget would have expected. Damien had led them into the basement of a store that had at one point sold meat of some kind. At first, Bridget and Rat had protested, rankling their noses at the scent of decayed meat that had long since festered into little more than piles of dry maggot food in the shop's broken glass cases, but Damien had urged them on. In the basement, hidden behind a veritable mountain of discarded trash left in the wake of the humans' hasty retreat from the island, sat a small pallet of canned vegetables and fruit, still wrapped up tightly in clear plastic cellophane with labels that had become faded and indiscernible in many places.

Rat had suspiciously pierced the packaging with the razor-like claws on his hands, withdrawn a single can, and bit into it, his teeth shredding the hard metal of the container as though it were made of paper. He contemplated the flavor as he chewed both the metal of the can and the food inside alike before turning to them and nodding.

"Peaches," he said, clear syrup dripping down his chin, and tossed the can to Bridget.

Her mouth began to water almost instantly as the scent of fruit and sugar flooded her nose with enough intensity to make her go weak in the knees. She tilted the can into her mouth and felt the room-temperature, sticky fruit fall into her open maw. She practically groaned in pleasure as she chewed, handing the remainder of the can and it's contents to Damien. Damien likewise ate the preserved fruit, allowing himself a rare smile as he swallowed. He handed the empty can back to Rat, who tossed the whole thing into his oversized jaws, crunching it between his teeth and grinning in appreciation.

"How did you find it?" Bridget asked breathlessly, still slightly overwhelmed by the pleasure of sugar on her tongue.

"The cat," Damien said simply, pointing with his walking stick at the edge of the cardboard pallet. They could see the faintest traces of claw marks on one corner where an animal had tried and failed to break through the packaging. "She found it some time ago, but gave up trying to get at it."

"See?" Bridget glared at Rat, bracing her hands on her hips, "That's why we don't eat cats."

Rat shrugged unapologetically. "I would still take peaches and cat over just peaches."

"You would take broken glass and peaches over just peaches."

Rat made a show of contemplating her accusation before clicking his large pointed teeth and winking at her. "Mmmm... Yep."

It took awhile, but they managed to make their way out of the basement without leaving any of the cans of precious food behind. Amongst his layers and layers of rags, Rat had several articles of clothing that could be fashioned into satchels with the right amount on ingenuity, and before long Bridget found herself trudging up the narrow metal stairs and through the shattered storefront with the heavy weight of nearly two dozen cans pressing into her back and shoulders. Rat carried the next heaviest load, with Damien managing only a few cans tied up in a old t-shirt over his shoulder. Bridget didn't begrudge them their lighter burdens. Her legs and large feet, while awkward sometimes, were extremely powerful relative to the rest of her body, and she could carry more weight than either of the boys combined.

Bridget was surprised to find that a moderate wind had kicked up in the short amount of time they had been in the store's basement. Dust and paper and any article of litter light enough to be carried in the air blew by her lazily, headed south, downtown. It hadn't smelled like incumbent weather was due anytime soon, but her nose had been fooled before.

"Weird wind," Rat muttered, and Bridget was glad to know that she was not the only one to notice.

Damien emerged last from the storefront, leaning heavily on his stick and panting slightly from the effort of getting back up the stairs on his twisted leg. Pressing on the wooden pole with one hand, there was a rhythmic, dull thumping noise as his crutch met the dust and trash-covered sidewalk.

Apparently even Damien, who's hearing and sense of smell were not better than any average person's, also noticed the bizarre and sudden nature of the wind, and gazed up through his dark sunglasses, squinting slightly as though to make out the source of the odd weather. He seemed about to comment on it too, when his pole struck something that was not concrete. It made a sharp, metallic rap as the wood hit it, and each of them looked down, taken off-guard by the noise.

"What is that?" Damien said, poking the object again with his walking stick. Again, it produced the same odd pinging.

Bridget watched as Rat leaned down and pushed bits of refuse and dirt away until he found the source of the noise. It was small, flat, and circular, and Rat picked it up in his slender, delicate hand, eyeing it quizzically.

It looked almost like a large coin, but instead of both sides being flat, one was rounded and convex and smooth. Rat frowned and spat on it, rubbing the moisture of his saliva into the layers of caked-on dirt and grime with his thumbs. Slowly, the accumulation of years of filth began to break away, and Bridget could see color beneath. Finally, enough dirt had been cleaned off for Rat to see the object unobscured. He made a face, then turned the small disc to show his comrades.

It was a badge of some sort, fashioned of metal that had been colored with layers of shiny, chrome paint. It had been scratched badly across one side, but that did not make it difficult to make out the insignia that took up the whole of the object's surface. It was a black 'X' against a field of red.

Bridget felt her mouth part slightly as recognition and understanding hit her like a stone falling on her head.

"X-Men," she whispered, her voice clenching in anxiety.

"Dead X-Men," Damien added.

They had all heard the tales of the battles that had taken place on the island in the early days of the war. Indeed, evidence of the fighting could still be seen all over the ruined city. Scars and craters in the faces of the buildings and the streets themselves marked where explosions and energy blasts of every type had scoured the landscape. Entire city blocks had been reduced to rubble and twisted ruins. There were even bits of abandoned machinery from the terrifying, but thankfully mostly extinct, mutant-hunting robots called Sentinels that had been felled during the fighting. The older mutants told hushed stories of the X-Men, a group of mutants who had banded together when the world was busy coming apart, and had laid down their lives for their fellow Children of the Atom. It had not worked, of course, and the mutant renegades had been hunted to the last man, or so it was said. Even still, Bridget had some difficulty believing even a fraction of what the adults told her. It all seemed fanciful, too good to be true, like most of the stories they shared when the sun had gone down and the lights had gone out. This badge was the first piece of real, tangible evidence that she had ever seen that the legendary X-Men had really existed at all.

Rat frowned and clenched the small disc in his fist, and turned away. He cocked his arm, ready to throw the object back into the street.

"What are you doing?" Bridget asked.

"Getting rid of it," he said, looking back at her, "You know what the Dukes do to anyone who even talks about... Them. Imagine what they'll do if they see this."

Bridget hopped the short distance to Rat and snatched the badge out of his hand. Her comrade looked at her, not comprehending and slightly agitated.

"We won't show them," she insisted, cradling the object, "We'll hide it."

Rat and Damien exchanged glances.

"Why?" Damien asked.

It took Bridget a moment to answer, because, in truth, she was not entirely sure herself. What Rat said was true enough; Being caught by one of the Dukes' lieutenants with it would land them in a heap of trouble. Even being young mutants, who were generally granted a level of freedom and immunity from punishment, would not save them. Even discussing X-Men was done where the Dukes' lackeys could not hear. The adult mutants even hesitated to mention streets that had unofficially been renamed in memory of the fallen warriors, despite the fact that those monikers were generally in common use and accepted.

She looked again at the disc of smooth, polished metal. Even after the abuse it had apparently taken, it gleamed in the day's light, almost defiantly.

The voice of Mona, one of Bridget's first protectors and a member of her mutant 'family' crept into her head. Mona was not much older than Bridget, but she had been her age when the worst parts of the war had started. She had even seen bits of it first-hand.

"We all felt like utter fools when the real fighting started. We felt like we had been duped. You see, before Terminus, we really believed that things were going to get better. Hell, things were getting better. But then the killing and the rioting started and... Well, you know the rest. It was the X-Men who tried to hold it all together. When mutants and humans were at each other's throats, they were the only ones with the stones to stand in the middle, demanding peace. Even when the armies and the radical human groups killed them or took them prisoner, even when mutant extremists declared them race traitors and openly decried their cause, they stood firm. They probably saved more lives than any single group during those times, and all they got for their trouble was spit on from both sides."

"What happened to them?" Bridget remembered asking, enchanted by the enthusiasm with which the older girl related the story.

Mona had sighed. "They died, Bridget. And the dream died with them."

Bridget's mind came back to the present, and she looked at her comrades for a long moment before tucking the badge into her clothing.

"Maybe we can sell it," she said, having no intention whatsoever to do so.

"Who's going to buy that?" Damien asked, incredulous, bordering on angry.

"Okay, okay," Rat said, putting a hand on the other boy's shoulder, "Let her take it. She'll keep it out of sight, won't you, Bridge?"

Bridget nodded, her long ears swaying slightly from the motion. Under her clothes, she could feel the small, furry tail that sprouted from the base of her spine shudder slightly in delight. She didn't know exactly why, but something about the damaged, forgotten badge thrilled her, and the idea of discarding it was becoming more and more distasteful by the minute.

Damien clearly did not understand, but then, he did not understand a great deal of the way people interacted with the world. He had no affinity for material objects or trinkets, and barely had any interest in the people around him. Bridget and Rat were his friends, yes, but very little ever penetrated the boy's cool, detached demeanor. Like many of the mutants she had met in her life, Damien was like a wraith, a shell of a person with very little to keep him getting up every day.

"What the hell is up with this wind?" Rat asked, deftly changing the subject, but also genuinely concerned, and with good reason. The strange gale had increased in speed steadily since they had emerged from the store front. While it was not strong enough to be anything more than a mild concern, if it continued to scale up at its current rate, it would not be long before the three of them were swept up in a storm of dust and gravel and garbage. Bridget looked up again, and could see nothing. Not clouds, not a storm front, nothing to assign blame to for the wind. She did not know why, but the deep blue vacancy of the heavens spooked her more than the sight of any storm.

She was about to voice her concerns when a noise broke through the din of the gusting wind that made her heart sink and sent a hot prickling sensation running up and down her spine. It was the sound of a motor.

In better conditions, without the wind and the discovered badge to distract them, Rat and Bridget should have heard and smelled the oncoming motorcade blocks before they arrived. As it was, the three of them each snapped their heads around to face south, and let out a collective groan of despair.

There were four of them. The vehicles they rode might have been called motorcycles, but that would have been doing a disservice to the sleek, impressive machines that Bridget had seen here and there abandoned on the island. Only two of them actually had two real wheels, while the others made their progress clamorously on old rims that had been wrapped with rubber hose, rope, plastic tubing, anything that would serve in place of an actual tire. The motors of the ramshackle bikes all thudded and croaked laboriously, but seemed to have been pieced together with enough competence that, despite their tortured sound, they did not give out.

The four were driving straight at them, so there was no question that they had been seen. Had there been more warning, Bridget, Rat, and Damien would have disappeared like shadows under bright light, but now there was not enough time. Certainly Bridget had the strength and ability to make a run for it, and with her powerful legs would probably succeed. Rat was also wily enough to evade them even now. But neither of them would ever leave Damien behind, who could not hope to get away on his uncooperative leg.

"Be cool," Rat muttered, "Maybe they'll just pass by. We are scavenging for them too now."

It was a nice thought, but Bridget doubted it. Only a select few individuals rode those ramshackle bikes on patrol in the abandoned streets, and they were those that reported directly to the Dukes. The lieutenants. The Marauders.

Bridget was suddenly drowned in a wash a memories so intense that she could practically feel them playing out again. She saw dimly lit faces through puffy, tear-filled eyes, one of which had been swollen nearly shut but a vicious backhand across her face. She felt hands on her mocha skin, tugging at her clothes, scratching her, pulling cruelly on her tail and long ears. She heard wicked, cackling laughter and the whimpers and cries of other girls that she could not see. She felt herself screaming. And then...

She closed her eyes, fought back a shudder, and hoped with all of her might that none of the four mutants on motorcycles would recognize her face from that night, months ago. She had only been foolish enough to be rounded up by the 'recruiters' once, but that had been enough. She had promised herself as her bruises and the soreness between her legs faded that she would not be taken to that place again, and she meant to keep that vow.

"Bridget," Rat whispered, "Are you okay? Don't worry about these clowns. They won't hurt us."

Neither Rat nor Damien knew about her ordeal. She had never discovered a way to tell them that did not make her feel instantly ashamed and weak. Only Mona knew, and even then it had required no explanation on Bridget's part. Mona had taken one look at her when she'd finally staggered back to their home, broken and bruised and bloody, and had known. She told Bridget that the same had happened to her, that it wasn't her fault, that it was over now. She had even gone through the trouble of heating water so Bridget could have a proper bath, but none of it had helped. And when the bath water turned pink as blood that had dried on her skin dissolved into it, she had broken down crying again. She had told Damien and Rat that she had been attacked, mugged for a food delivery, and that had satisfied them.

"Ho there, maggots," one of the gang said as they pulled up onto the sidewalk, their bikes whining and grunting and belching a burning smoke from their tailpipes. The bikes had been refitted to run on just about any type of crude oil, and their riders were not particular, often ransacking the dirty, rancid cooking oil from the frying machines in abandoned restaurants for their fuel. It was often remarked that, where the Marauders went, the smell of burning grease followed.

"Hey," Rat waved cautiously, being as cordial as possible, "Any word from the Dukes?"

Three of the group, who looked for the most part rather unremarkable, turned slightly to look at the fourth. From his garb and the way they kept their distance from him, Bridget guessed that he was the most senior of the bunch. He was clad in black leather that, while pieced together from a variety of sources, had been at least partially altered to fit him reasonably well. A rarity these days. Over his face, he wore a dirty, heavily damaged military-style helmet that covered his features with an opaque pane of dark glass.

"The word," the leader hissed from under his mask, "Is you shut the fuck up, hand over what you've got, and maybe you get away with a limp, like your friend there." He pointed a gloved finger at Damien.

Bridget's stomach turned to ice, and she slowly began to shift her body, so that the leader's view of her would be slightly obscured by Rat's bulkier frame. The mask and clothes hid his features, but she recognized the voice. He had been there. He had been among those who had...

"We were told that we were to drop off our portion of supplies to the Dukes' Tower after dark," Rat said, not yet protesting, simply stating fact. "If you just ride around taking everything from us, what are we left with?"

There was no response from the quartet other than the rumbling of their idling bikes and a sniggering laughter from the three underlings. The one in the black leather, the one that Bridget prayed would not notice or recognize her, did not so much as move in reaction to Rat's defiance.

"Hey," one of the riders, heavy-set with a face like a bulldog, snapped his fingers, "I know you. You're Ratboy." He turned to his comrades, "They say this freak will eat anything."

Their leader reached into his jacket, produced a tarnished, beaten pistol, and pointed it at Rat.

"He's going to eat a bullet," he said through the muffling effect of the glass screen over his face, "If they don't drop the cans. Starting with that one in the back. That rabbit-looking..."

The leader trailed off, his pistol lowering slightly.

No, no, no...

"Hey," he chuckled, tucking his gun back into his jacket, reaching up and unstrapping his helmet, "Well, I'll be damned."

The reptilian mutant, the one she had heard call himself Jeremiah months ago in that pit of suffering when the Marauders entertained their brutal, basest desires, lifted the helmet off of his head, perching it under his arm. She wanted to look away, she wanted to run, but her body seemed frozen, unable to respond. His golden, slitted eyes seemed to shoot through her like a blade as the corners of his pebbled, scaled mouth turned upward into a smile of small, pointed teeth.

"Boys," he grinned, pointing at her, "You're looking at a regular demon in the sack. Most of the girls that come to visit us at the tower just flop around like dead fish. This one, though... Getting your hands on her is half the fun. Takes it like a champ, too."

The three lackeys began roaring with laughter as they stared at her. Rat and Damien exchanged glances, then looked in her direction, questions and concern in their eyes. Bridget wanted to turn to dust and blow away into the wind. Her skin felt like it was on fire and covered in frost at the same time as her face flushed.

"Come on, baby," Jeremiah patted the fuel tank of his idling bike, "Why don't you hippity-hop over here and get my warm engine between your legs. We'll let you have all the food you want if you can hold back the tears for more than thirty minutes."

Bridget turned her head in shame, wishing that she could turn her senses off, wishing that she could drown out the sound and sight of the reptilian mutant. She pulled her arms in around herself and... Felt something in her jacket.

It was the badge, she suddenly recalled. The X-Men's badge. The thought of it twirled in her mind, strong like a beacon, like a shield. She thought of the X-Man, the warrior that had died wearing it proudly. A new kind of warmth awakened in her chest, small and delicate, but not like the hot bath of embarrassment and weakness that she had been drowning in moments ago. Bridget turned her head back, sniffed back the tears that had begun to form in the corners of her eyes, and looked at Jeremiah.

"Fuck you, you disgusting, rapist scumbag." Instantly she regretted saying it, did not even know where the courage to speak those words came from.

In the next moment that passed, if not for the wind, Bridget would swear that she could have heard a cricket sneeze. No one moved as Jeremiah's face stiffened in surprise and shock.

Damien and Rat were the first to react. They weren't fighters by nature, about as far from it as two people could be, but they had heard the accusation, had seen the pain in Bridget's eyes, and without a word passing between them, they moved closer to her, shielding her with their bodies, glowering at Jeremiah.

To everyone's amazement, Jeremiah's face once again contorted into a grin.

"I was gonna treat you nice this time," he whispered between his pointed teeth, "Not anymore." He looked at the other three members of his crew. "Kill the rat and the cripple. Cut her tongue out, but leave the rest for me.

Bridget braced herself for the impending violence, screwing her eyes shut. It would never come.

The blast of sound hit them all like a shot from a canon, like an explosion, like the world itself was coming apart. It rocketed down the concrete canyon from the north, kicking up dust, overturning cars, ripping through the narrow space like a wave of invisible destruction. Out of sheer instinct, Bridget dropped to her knees, covering her sensitive ears, crying out in pain as the roar threatened to blow out her eardrums. Rat and Damien followed suit, each covering another's body with their arms and hands. Out of the corner of her eye, Bridget saw Jeremiah curse and dive off and behind his bike. Two others followed suit, but the third, the one with the bulldog face, was slow to react. A block of concrete kicked up in the maelstrom, skipped over the top of a car, and caught him square in the forehead. Even over the din, Bridget could hear the sickening crunch as the mutant's head caved in from the impact. The rest of his body slumped over his motorcycle, overturning it.

"What the fuck is that?" someone cried out. Bridget could not tell who.

Almost as suddenly as it had started, the blast died down to little more than a passing breeze once again, in its place was a peculiar hum that, while not quite a noise, seemed to encompass everything, shaking the very ground with the depth of its frequency, making every other sound seem distant and fuzzy. Dust and debris clouded the air, invaded Bridget's nose and mouth, and she sputtered back a cough. Clearing the dirt from her eyes, shaking it out of her hair, she cautiously looked up, to the north, where the destructive roar had originated.

"Oh... my... God..." was all that she could manage. Rat and Damien followed suit, each sucking in a gasp as they beheld the sight that greeted them.

It was huge. Enormous. Gigantic. None of the words Bridget knew seemed to be adequate. It loomed in the sky, bigger than any building that still stood on the island, too impossibly large to fly, and yet that was exactly what it was doing. It was hard to see clearly at first, as though it was somehow hiding behind the sky itself, but the longer they looked, the clearer it became, as though materializing out of nothing.

It was an airship, Bridget realized. It was the airship. The vehicle that Sinister had promised in his broadcast that he would travel by. But this was unlike anything she had witnessed in her short life. She had not really known what she had expected, but the monstrosity that took over the majority of the northern skyline was almost too much for her to process. It seemed to shimmer in a dozen colors, it's shape was smooth and sleek like an insect or... She did not know what. Along its surface, lights twinkled and shone like fireflies. Bridget felt her knees go weak as the sight of something so massive floating in the sky sent a wave of vertigo down her spine. She had always felt small in the city, but this made her feel infinitesimal. Like a speck under a giant's boot.

"It's him!" she vaguely heard Jeremiah shout, his voice quavering, panic-stricken, not at all the cool, threatening tone that he had used before.

"What do we do?" another of the Marauders cried out.

"We get the hell out of here!" Jeremiah spat, leaping onto his ramshackle motorcycle, revving the engine.

"What about them?" the other lackey asked, pointed at Bridget and her comrades.

"Fuck 'em," Jeremiah shouted, "We're getting back to the tower!"

The sputtering of the engines on their bikes, once loud and fear-inducing, now seemed like the helpless gurgling of a child as the three remaining Marauders peeled out, leaving nothing but dust in their wake. Moments ago, Bridget would have been thrilled to see them ride away. Now the concept seemed strangely irrelevant in the face of the flying... thing that had appeared in the air above the island.

"Has anyone ever seen anything like that?" Rat asked, breathless, as though he had just finished running.

"Once," Damien quipped, "In a nightmare."

Without even thinking to do so, Bridget felt her hands reach out and grab onto her friends, clasping her fingers around theirs. Her limbs began to quiver in fear, and she was not at all ashamed of it.

Mister Sinister had arrived.

I think I'll keep my ramblings at the bottom of the chapters this go around, so you don't have to read them if you don't want to.

It took awhile, but I've finally got quite a bit of material amassed, so the next few chapters should come out fairly quickly. Chapters 1-4 all happen at roughly the same time in the story, so I was skipping back and forth between them when I was writing, as I wasn't sure what the best order for them would be.

Hope you guys like the new characters. I do. There are a few more introductions coming up, some of which I think diehard fans of the show will really enjoy, so stay tuned!

Hori out.