Who Is She?

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Chapter 7 : The Battle To Be Won

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Summary: Rogue is mad at the x-men now so what will they do? When she starts a fight with them intent on winning what will happen? Will the thieves' guild actually turn up causing an even bigger fight or will the x-men somehow find a way to stop Rogue and take her back to the mansion?

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Sorry but I was too tired to update when I got back the other night, it was 1am and all I could do was drag myself upstairs and sleep, lol. And recently I have been too depressed to do much at all to be honest, sorry. So I apologise for making y'all wait for this chapter but I will be posting another three chapters up tomorrow and two on Wednesday and for the rest of the week I will post one chapter a day to make up for missing my deadlines, and I hope everyone had a great Halloween ^,.,^

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Thanks for more story alerts and favourites and special thanks to my frequent reviewers;

the-writing-vampire : Such a long review, YAY, thank yah. I am glad I am keeping at least someone hooked to my story; only need one person to like it to keep updating. I am sorry to have made you wait so long for the next chapter, lets just hope that I really don't have the first symptoms of appendicitis or it will be even longer till I can update, lol. I will just stick to trying my best with people's accents. You're right about Remy being able to calm Rogue down, he is the only one and she can't understand why, yet anyway. Your so good at guessing how my story will go and I love your idea about how Rogue gets some of Remy's memories and pieces together who he is to her, I might include that in my story somewhere along the way of them remembering each other. On the issue of how they are going to be able to capture Rogue, well its actually quite interesting and adds a little twist to the story concerning Rogue so I hope yah will like it. By the way the playground is quite significant so keep wondering about that one, lol. Thanks again for another review and I hope ya will like this chapter. ^__^

cappsy: I am glad yah liked how Jean got what she deserved for prying in evil Rogues mind, I had fun writing the last chapter, lol. Thanks for reviewing again and I hope you like this chapter :"]

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Disclaimer: I do not own the X-Men

-A-

'Now you've done it red' she yelled at Jean as she charged her power up to it's maximum within seconds.

Jean was shocked that she could feel her telepathic power being used, this girl was obviously very skilled and special, not to mention trained – but she could sense that she was a rogue at heart, definitely not one for teams. She wanted to help her desperately, being the kind person she was, but the only way to help this Rogue, she realised, was for them to somehow by miracle beat her at her own game and take her back to the professor for help, forcefully. They hadn't realised the extent of her powers until now but she was sure she was more powerful than they could imagine.

Even so, Jean refused to think that this girl was beyond help.

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Rogue could barely contain her anger as her sudden hatred for the woman in front of her flared out of control. She hated being interrupted but the one thing she hated more than anything was pity, she just couldn't stand people pitying her. She had always been this way so angry and bent on revenge and hate, it was especially difficult for her as a child and it had obviously dragged in to her adult life too. But now thanks to her powers if she didn't keep her emotions in check then she could easily snap.

Unfortunately the x-men didn't know this about her; they hardly knew anything at al about her to be fair. This was another thing that puzzled Rogue, she didn't know them, she never asked for their help and she certainly wasn't going to just stop having fun and go with them to become a 'human lover' as she called them. So it was certainly confusing to her why they were doing this but as long as they were here she might as well have a good time, possibly killing some of them in the process as she had done to so many others in the past. All she knew was anger, hatred and fear, she chose never to act on the fear but the other two, anger and hate, she was best friends with, it was all that kept her going from day to day.

She knew what bit of her mind the woman had managed to reach; her outer layers of psyche were those memories, which she wasn't too bothered by. The particular ones that the red head had managed to extract were from a long time ago but she had gotten past it, there was one of her dad beating her and for the first time her mutant powers helped her fight back and another of being all alone and then recruited by mystique and how her evil behaviour and mindset started because of that one incident with Ms. Marvel. Rogue wasn't too bothered by the woman knowing these memories or the fact that she had shared them, the real issue on hand was that she very much disliked her mind being penetrated at all. She already had enough people inside her mind without another person sneaking around. And then when the red head had looked at her with pity and understanding, that just annoyed her more.

Suddenly she had a flash of memory. "Not another one" she had meant to think but accidently spoke out loud as she clutched her head.

The x-men looked at her warily, wondering what was going on and surprisingly even a little concerned for her – they seemed to be drawn to her, they guessed this was most likely due to her mysterious powers.

For a moment all Rogue could do was close her eyes tightly and try to dispel the images of her childhood, a boy with demon eyes and then a rusty old playground. Just as quickly as the hints of memory has surfaced Rogue had managed to push it back down again, burying it deep inside her mind where she kept all of her other 'useless' memories.

'This was all the red-heads fault' Rogue yelled at herself inside her mind for being so stupid, she would let her guard down in front of them again that's for sure.

Bored with these foolish mutants and very much angered Rogue checked her power levels were still at full without them hurting her and she initiated the fight between herself and the x-men by glaring at them with fury before hitting the red head with such a strong psychic blast that it made her go flying backwards in to the others, knocking a few of them to the ground.

She kept everyone in sight and studied their moves as they began to fight her. Rogue feigned frailty and acted like she was a lot weaker than she really was. She was lulling them in to a false sense of security, defending herself only as they all joined in, throwing their own manoeuvres in and unknowingly allowing Rogue to know their techniques before she could get the upper hand. At first they thought that they were actually winning, until the Rogue smirked at them that is and flew up in to the air, out of their reach. She was testing them and they had shown her their abilities and a lot of their manoeuvres, the x-men now realised that they had been tricked and made a grave mistake.

Rogue flew up very high in to the air, so much so that the others couldn't even see her anymore. Just as Storm and Jean took to the air too to chase her a sudden bolt of colour came speeding towards them from the sky and before anyone could move it smashed in to the ground, making them fall over from its tremor as they saw the Rogue fly out of the hole in the ground and they realised it had been her. Storm and Jean immediately went on the offensive and protecting their teammates they flew at Rogue, using their powers to try to stop her while the others on the ground were still recovering. Jean relayed battle strategies to everyone as her and storm began their part of the plan in capturing the Rogue.

Jean flew around the Rogue taunting her and dodging attacks, all the while using her telekinesis to throw things at her which storm electrically charged to pack a punch. But somehow Rogue had knows they were there and keeping her eyes on the red head she flung her arm out at the objects coming closer to her and summoned her power moving ability to drain the power in the objects making them fall to the ground useless and letting the energy flow in to herself so that she had a supercharge. Storms eyes went wide as the Rogue turned her back to Jean, now facing her and used the same power to drain her of all her power. Storm was trapped in some sort of negating field that her powers couldn't break through as she weakly threw lighting bolts at her opponent. Rogue dodged the attacks, making them hit the unaware Jean square in the chest at the same time as she finally drained Storm's power and energy to the point that she fell unconscious. Jean and Storm were hurt so badly that they fell to the ground unconscious and unmoving except for their low breathing. Beast and Gambit rushed to their sides and examined them, as the rest of the x-men got up fully recovered and ready to fight the Rogue. They were worried for their fallen teammates and that anger towards the Rogue who had hurt them helped fuel their powers as the Rogue landed on the ground, ready to fight these 'weakling mutants' as she called them.

They decided to follow the plan that Jean had come up with and slipped in to their minds just before she was hurt and fell unconscious.

Iceman –Bobby- throws a sheet of ice spikes at her while at the same time Cyclops-Scott- hits them all with his optic blasts before the Rogue can defend herself. This creates a thick mist in front of them for a while and seeing as they can't fight when they cant see each other they send Wolverine – Logan - in as the next part of the plan. Wolverine can smell her and with his animal senses he easily finds her in the cloud and catches her by surprise. He lunges at her from the mist and stars fighting hand to hand combat style with her. He is the most experienced fighter of the x-men but even so Rogue is evenly matched with him in the fight. She was caught off guard at first but her enhanced senses and multiple psyches never let her down. She had been trying to listen for where her opponents when the more aggressive mutant had pounced on her from nowhere, starting a battle of their own. The x-men had a back up plan if this one didn't work but they trusted Wolverine, they had faith in him because no one they knew could beat him, he was too skilled, too powerful and they had been sure that he was an equal opponent to the Rogue.

In the cloud of mist, now quite distant from the fight the x-men could hear the fight going on between Wolverine and the Rogue. They were all stood tensed and ready for the mist to disappear any second now so that they could immediately spring in to action and help Wolverine if needs be. They couldn't tell what was going on or who was winning, all they heard were the sounds of fists slamming in to flesh and slight yelps of pain and exertion every so often.

Outside in the clear street Beast and Gambit had managed to get Storm and Jean in to a stable condition but now Beast just couldn't wait for the mist to clear so that he could check on the status of the others. Gambit could tell how his friend felt so he told him to go help the others while he stayed and made sure the girls would be okay. So Beast rushed in to the mist and joined his teammates – he knew where they had been standing before so found them quickly - to hep fight.

Meanwhile shrouded by mist Rogue defended herself easily against the attacks of this strong 'animal like' man as he lunged at her time and time again, his attacks increasing in power and becoming more and more effective when he increased the difficulty of the skills he was using. Wolverine managed to get quite a few hits in before she summoned her skills from her mind and started fighting back. At first she went on the defensive, just dodging his moves and analysing his style as she flipped and dived and rolled away from him time and time again. She was finally able to predict what his next attacks would be from watching him and analysing his movements. Now she could dodge all of his attacks and go on the offense too. She used very skilful manoeuvres and hit him in sensitive places for the body. Wolverine was getting angrier every second, anyone else against him would have been down and begging for their life by now, but not this girl, no, this girl was very unusual it was as if she knew every fighting style there was and was composing one of her own from them. This way he couldn't predict what she would do and was forever being caught off guard. Just then she side kicked at him, aiming for his stomach so he jumped out of the way, but her real plan had been to make him jump back so that she could spin around on her other foot, back flip through the air and kick him straight in the face causing him to fall over. Her technique was very skilful and Wolverine was beginning to wonder if he could defeat her alone after all.

'Who Is She?' He thought as he jumped up before her next attack.

He tried to control his emotions as he got up and launched himself at her again. But he was feeling weak for some reason now it was as if his energy was being drained every time she punched him. Before he could punch her like he had intended she pulled his arm and jerked him past her; he was dizzy enough as it is from the lack of energy so he instantly fell over on to his knees. Rogue took this opportunity to smile at him before punching him in the ribs, stomach, the small of his back and his shoulder blade so hard that he couldn't breathe properly and was doubled over in pain – which never happened to him, this girl wasn't only talented with her skills and gifted with her power but she was also unbelievably strong and agile.

"You have to be the most powerful mutant I have ever been up against kid, and that's a compliment coming from me" He told her as he fell to the floor gasping for air and groaning in pain.

This just boosted her ego and made her laugh a little as she turned him over to face her and straddled him like she had the human man. Rogue's fists were bare so her attacks were laced with her power as she pummelled the man in front of her.

She used a few of the other innumerable powers she had absorbed to enhance her own and multiply her effectiveness of her already amazing skills.

The look of shock on his face was priceless, as he seemed to unbelievably realise that she was beating him. She even laughed a little, finding his attack manoeuvres extremely predictable and pathetic.

The x-men were ready to help Wolverine if he needed it by the time the mist cleared. But when it did clear all they saw was the end of the fight and they all stood there frozen in surprise and shock that this girl had beaten 'The Wolverine'.

She grinned and spat some blood out of her mouth – from when he had gotten in an unbelievably lucky punch earlier - on to her now unconscious opponent on the ground and immediately whirled around to face the other mutants left. Compared to the three she had defeated so far these ones would be yet another match for her skills, especially if they all moved to attack her at once which they were now likely to do since they were obviously running out of manoeuvres and strategies of beating her.

They stood facing each other, Rogue all by herself on one side and the rest of the x-men team across from her, tensed and ready for a fight.

Just then before anyone could make the first move to attack, one of the x-men broke the line and rushed forward, just a little ways from her to go help the man she had just beaten; Rogue now knew that the blue beast like man was the doctor amongst the mutants after she had seen him tending to the others. 'If I defeated him next then the others would be easier to beat without him helping them and sorting out their injuries' She thought to herself, trying to come up with some sort of strategy. Suddenly she had an epiphany, with the perfect plan in mind she set it in to motion. Firstly she used one of her 'borrowed' powers to create a couple of copies of herself, she gave them a different power each, one had fire to defeat ice, another had super strength and the other one had power over earth. She set these three copies of herself upon the other x-men while she used her invisibility to stealthily deal with the beast-like man who was attempting to help the man she had just defeated. She wasn't going to let this man help anyone else until her battle was over and she would win. She crept up behind him and before he could even feel her presence she drained him with a touch of her hand, absorbing all of his memories, abilities and energy, storing them for use later on. Meanwhile the copies of Rogue startled the x-men as they watched them advancing, they had no idea what level of danger they were but they had to attack now before it was too late. Iceman took the first one while Shadowcat and Colossus took the second one and Cyclops took the last one. They soon found out they were evenly matched however as Iceman was overcome by the fire from his opponent, Colossus was too evenly matched with the second one and Shadowcat couldn't even get close to her while Cyclops just kept getting knocked off his feet by the earth tremors sent his way from the third copy. After several minutes of having their asses kicked by these Rogue copies Cyclops ordered them to switch opponents to best suited matches. Now he was against the second copy that had super strength, Iceman was against the third copy that had power over earth it seemed and Colossus and ShadowCat teamed up against the first copy that had fire power.

This new order seemed to work out well for the x-men as Cyclops turned his energy blast to full and knocked his opponent to the ground so hard that she lay unmoving, Iceman used his ice to create a slide and go through the air attacking his opponent from above and encasing her in such thick ice that she could move an inch let alone summon the earth to help her and Colossus and Shadowcat used their double team manoeuvre where Colossus took the fire attacks that barely harmed him while distracting the copy long enough so that Shadowcat could phase through the ground and pull their opponent through the ground, effectively killing her. Within mere moments they had defeated their opponents and stood panting while they watched the copies just disappear and looking around sharply to see what was going on they saw the Beast lying by Wolverine, also unconscious on the ground.

They were lucky to have beaten the copies but then suddenly the real Rogue appeared right in front of them with a flash of fire in her eyes after turning off her invisibility. She gave them a toothy grin before she waved and used another powerful psychic jolt to fling them all back a few metres through the air to land on the ground near Gambit and the two unconscious female mutants Rogue had beaten earlier.

They all recovered and stood up within seconds this time, darting their eyes around to find the location of the Rogue, as they locked on to her and they began watching and assessing her movements they realised that they would have to harm her to take her back to the professor at the mansion. She obviously didn't want their help and wasn't going to stop attacking them long enough to talk and she didn't even seem interested in listening to reason. So now their final attack plan was put in to play.

Hank was down now too, they were short 4 people and she had taken them all down too easily, they had never come up against someone as powerful as this mutant was before and they had limited options left. So the others have to put their alternative plan In to action, they have fight together and defend each other at the same time, predicting that she will attempt to pick them off one by one and in the process making it harder for her.

Cyclops ordered Gambit to come help them and he reluctantly joined them. Cyclops then put their last intelligent and fully thought through plan in to action. He, Iceman and Gambit were the first string while Colossus – Piotr - and Shadowcat – Kitty - were to follow them seconds after. They would have to work together as a proper team to defeat this mutant. It would most likely take all they had since she was obviously such a dangerous mutant so they must look after each other and out for each other's backs.

Before the Rogue had the chance to attack them the x-men made the first move. Cyclops used his optic blasts on full power without taking off his rose quartz visor, Colossus rushed at the woman trying to use his brute force, Iceman created a shield of ice to protect everyone while he shot bullets and daggers of ice at her and Shadowcat phased through the ground to try to get the Rogue from behind and Gambit charged a card –barely- and threw it at her. All of their attacks would have instantly defeated any normal unsuspecting and unskilled mutant but Rogue was not at all like that. She was very aware of what they were going to do because she had used her clones as decoys to see how they handled their fights. Now Rogue used some of her real power, she instantly stopped Iceman's attack of ice by using her heat wave power to melt them all in their tracks and also melt the shield that was protecting the other x-men.

Then she deflected Cyclops's blast, throwing it back at Colossus, making him be badly injured and down for the fight.

'Just four more to go' Rogue thought to herself with glee; happy that she was having so much fun today.

She suddenly sensed the girl behind her, trying to come up from phasing through the ground to get her. Rogue wasn't having any of this so she waited for the girl to come up and immediately pulled her through the ground and flung her in to the air with her super strength. The girl went to high that it was a moment before she began to descend and just before she hit the ground, which could have killed her, however, Rogue stopped her inches from the ground and absorbed her, making her become very weak before flinging her across the street to land on the badly hurt Colossus. Cyclops and Iceman were deeply worried now, there weren't many of them left but they still had to defeat this Rogue before she could hurt anyone else – the professor had warned them that this could be a dangerous mission, they just hadn't known how dangerous at the time. Much to his own surprise, Gambit wasn't really very bothered as long as the Rogue wasn't hurt. 'Hopefully the others won't notice how I am acting' He thought to himself, a little worried about it but still more bothered about the Rogue and her wellbeing for some unknown reason. However, as Cyclops and Iceman became locked in a fierce battle with the Rogue the one thing everyone seemed to notice was that Gambit wasn't really trying to hurt her; he let himself be thrown back from her time and time again without so much as attempting to defend himself from the powerful blows of her merciless and increasingly vicious attacks.

With her training Rogue is doing very well considering she was originally against nine mutants at the same time and they had already had a proper plan to capture her unlike her initial idea of that she just had to beat them and get away before more people came. But she hadn't been trained against so many powerful mutants before so as she was getting to the end and only had three mutants left to disable, she found it difficult even with her goddess like powers and abilities, although she would never admit this to anyone. Finally Iceman slipped up, becoming tired after so much fighting and before he could continue his onslaught of never ending icicles that had been previously irritating and distracting th Rogue from Cyclops she had used an ability she had stored to increase her own power and mutate it for a moment so that her normal energy taking ability formed in to an energy blast that hit 'Ice boy' and it immediately absorbed his memories, energy and power and stored them away in her mind for her later use. Leaving the boy to drop to the ground where he was from exhaustion she turned to find the other two mutants. The 'glowing eyes' one hadn't been putting much of a fight up against her so she decided to use her remaining boosted energy before it ran out on her other opponent since she only had enough power for one more use of it. Before she became tired from the quickly receding energy boost Rogue instantly swung round and aimed the same attack at 'glasses', absorbing his energy, memories and powers, storing them away like she had just done with 'ice boy's' and because he had annoyed her so much she also flung him across the road with her psychic bolt and watched as he landed, badly hurt, extremely tired and slipping in and out of consciousness next to the two women she had taken down first.

She laughed and turned her back on the rest of the x-men who were all down for the count as she locked gazes with the last member of the mutant team. She hadn't realised how long she had been having 'fun' but it was obviously late now by the almost pitch black night creeping up on them fast so she decided to get this over and done with soon so that she could move on with her life already and go do what she came here for – to go back to that secret childhood place and try to see what was so great about it that it had stuck with her all her life, refusing to be swallowed up by her black heart and numbing mind. She walked up to the man with the weird glowing red on black eyes and stared at him for a moment as if there was something familiar about him. Suddenly his gaze was locked on to hers and neither of them moved, they both felt some unusual kind of sense within them, it was of trust and knowing. Gambit was still entranced by this perfect 'angel' in front of him when she forced herself to snap out of it and crush him already. When he saw her getting ready to use her powers on him he smiled slightly and sighed, he wasn't going to fight her, he couldn't harm her, there was just something about her that lured him in, it wasn't her abilities that was doing it, it was more than that, a sense of belonging, almost. He couldn't remember when he had last felt this way really. But he didn't get much chance to speculate as Rogue stalked up to him. He was instantly enthralled by her, he found that he couldn't move but he didn't want to anyway, all he could do was stare at her. Rogue didn't want to use her power on him, she felt uneasy about hurting him at all but she needed him out of the way so she put on her gloves to cover her skin and punched him really hard, once in the ribs and once in the face so that he fell to the ground just like the others and wouldn't stop her from leaving - even his stare had screamed in want for her. She has at last managed to beat them, Gambit now down for the count too, but not unconscious like most of the others and not nearly in enough pain to stay down for too long.

As the x-men lay on the ground, some badly hurt and the others unconscious, Rogue stood over them, admiring her handy work. She may have been outnumbered but her training was a lot more extensive and her mission was personal.

That was when the mutant with unusual red on black eyes – Gambit with his vision blurry and swimming from the strong blow - struggled to stand up and staggered towards her with one hand cradling his ribs and the other waved at her, trying to tell her he wasn't going to harm her, he just wanted to talk. She was sure that he would get up for some time after those super strong hits of hers but obviously h was very stubborn, more than she had thought he would be. She watched as he spit out some blood and went back to staring at her, awaiting an answer to whether or not he could approach her. Now that he had found his angel he didn't want to let her go so easily.

She was pretty sure she knew this guy somehow and she trusted him unconditionally even though she had no idea why. So even though she was a little annoyed with him and even more frustrated with herself for being so easy on him she nodded her head and let him come close to her as she waited for him to speak now.

-A-

So that was chapter seven of my story 'Who Is She?'. I hope y'all liked it and that it didn't have to many grammatical and tense errors this time. If there are any major mistakes in this story on my part then please let me know and I will fix them, I haven't checked over it more than once this time because I really wanted to post it up and I am reading a really good book right now. I am trying to make my chapters longer so this one should be a bit better on that issue at least. ^__^

I used their codenames for when they were fighting and that's how it will be from now on in this story. Whenever they are on missions or fighting their codenames will be used but when they are in personal situations or all together somewhere where humans are then I will use their actual names.

Originally this chapter was longer with more surprise appearances and a bit more fighting before Rogue's secret is revealed but I decided that adding that part too made it too long so I have split that bit off to make the next chapter and have cut this one short. I hope I ended this chapter okay and make you want to know what happens next. What could they possibly do now? Will Rogue go with them or will something more sinister happen?

Anyhoo, I will post my next chapter up in the morning since I have tomorrow off college and there will be two more chapters up as well tomorrow.

Thank yah for reading and please review :"]

…Anie