The Xavier Institute Neo

Issue 9

"Plan B"


The blood practically drained from Logan's face as he watched the professor fall from Anna's grip to the hard, marble path that led through the grounds. Anna smiled broadly as she said "Well, ah guess that's all theah is to it. We don't hafta to be heah anymore."

However, as she said that, Logan could have sworn he saw a slight blur of motion in one of Anna's hands, as if she was using her fantastic speed to hide something in the left pocket of her large, brown jacket. Logan was probably one of only a couple dozen martial artists who would have even been able to notice that kind of speed, and, he quickly realized, another one was the man dressed in black, who'd fought him before. At the moment, though, he was still inside the mansion, which meant that there was no way he could have seen what she'd done.

Quickly adapting to her new powers, Anna put one hand to the edge of her head, apparently sending a message to her other partner inside. In only a moment, he'd seemed to appear right next to her, and then, they all grabbed him by the shoulders and hands (except for the porcupine girl, who brushed one claw against the big guy's leg.) Then they were all gone, leaving Charles Xavier lying on the marble walk to the institute.

Logan cursed again, running over to where the professor lay on the ground, but to his amazement, Xavier was still breathing. Logan didn't get it. It didn't make any sense. When Anna hung onto someone long enough, they died, and their uniqueness was permanently added to her own. Why, he had to wonder, would she leave him alive? What was she planning?


Anna seemed to have broken contact with Alex about midway through the series of teleportations back to Raven's house, and somehow, had still arrived there before any of the brotherhood's other members, and was lounging on the sofa with a sad look in her eyes when Raven came in the door, followed by the other members of the brotherhood, each wearing their psychic scramblers over their ears.

"Well, I guess that's it." Raven said aloud with a satisfied smile, though she was feeling great worry in her heart, "We're ready to start our takeover of the human race. With the power to control their very thoughts, they can't possibly resist you."

"True," Anna replied, drawing on the education and dignity of the professor as she spoke, "but neither can you anymore, mother."

In that moment, Raven felt her mind being forced open from without, and a flood of images rushed to the front of her thoughts; images of herself as both a military agent and an espionage spy. Raven's special powers to take on the appearance of whoever she wanted to had made her a nightmare to all those who tried to keep secrets from her employers, and she'd been code-named Mystique.

For a moment, Raven struggled to draw her own thoughts back where they belonged, and was able to get out the words... "How... could you?"

"Check your ear, mother." Anna said darkly.

At once, Raven reached up to her left ear, and slowly drew her hand back down in shock and alarm. Her psychic scrambler was missing. She had no idea when it had been taken from her, but she knew who had it, even before Anna dug it out of her pocket and crushed it in her hand. After that, her memories continued on; the time that she'd spent in between two major wars, trying to find out who and what she was, the realization that her power over her own form had made her virtually ageless, and the time she'd spent wandering through the American South and the Midwest, looking for some kind of answer to the question of her own existence, but always being called back again, in time, by the need for truly great agents in espionage. Unlike other women searching for explanations of their existence, however, Raven had had the power to defend herself. She'd been trained by the military, first in guerrilla commando tactics, then in black ops martial arts, then later in survival skills by the navy seals; some of the toughest people on planet Earth. She feared no man.

At last, Anna witnessed the first meeting of Raven and her own father, within Raven's long-forgotten memories. The way they'd seen the sadness and discontent with the state of their own little worlds and eventually, found that it was easy to complain to one another. That had led to a three-week relationship, which had led, in turn, to her conception. That was when things got pretty horrible.

When Raven realized that she was pregnant, she immediately went to see a doctor claiming to be an expert on mutations from birth. His name was Nathan Essex, and at first, Raven had gone to him simply to confirm that her child would, in fact, be a mutant. His reply had been encouraging to her, but it was horrible to Anna as she listened to it.

"I just wanted to be certain that it would be a mutant, like myself."

"All children born of mutants are mutants themselves, whether it's just one parent or both that carry the mutant gene. There are no exceptions to that." Nathan had replied, looking not the least bit outgoing as he spoke, "Why did you care about that, though? Is it really so important that your child be a mutant?"

"Well..." Raven muttered, "I was... This is going to sound stupid, but apparently, more and more mutants are showing up, and... I'd rather we didn't have to use our powers as weapons to get what we needed."

"You're telling me that you have a major dream for the future of mutantkind," Nate had replied with an impressed smile, "and you're hoping your child will help you fulfill it."

"Well, it hasn't gone that far yet..." Raven admitted, "but it seems to me that sooner or later, humans are going to wind up opposing all mutants, and when that happens, I'd rather my own offspring was on my side. After all, there's no guarantee mutants could win a war against humans. We have special powers, but... there are so many of them..."

Nate raised one eyebrow in surprise, then moved over to the windows, drew the blinds down and turned on the lights in the room they were in. Raven seemed a little nervous.

"Are you now telling me that you want the powers of your child to be great and mighty, beyond all others?" Nate asked, his eyes widening and his smile growing broader as he moved closer to her.

"Well, it'd be helpful..." Raven said. She wasn't sure what Nate was suggesting, but it certainly looked as if she'd have to defend herself soon.

"I've done more research than probably anyone else into the subject of mutant genetics." Nate said, his grin transforming into a smirk, "I think I can give your child the genetic gifts that it needs to grow more powerful than any mutant has ever been or ever will be, but I should warn you in advance. There's still a slight chance that this won't work, in which case, the baby will die."

Raven barely hesitated at all before agreeing to the procedure.

Furious, Anna tore through even more of Raven's memories, drawing a satisfying scream of pain from her mother as she witnessed Raven's memory of pulling up to the address where Anna had lived for most of her young life, before discovering her mutant powers. Raven was holding Anna in her arms. Anna was only a few months old, from the looks of her, but she already had a few white hairs along the front of her head.

Quickly, Raven reached the front door and rang the bell. There was Barry Hynes on the other side, and immediately, Raven shoved Anna, who was still asleep, into his arms.

"Listen, Barry." Raven said in urgency, "I've got work again, and I can't afford to take care of a kid anymore. You'll have to look after her for a while. Make sure she gets a good education, and learns respect for her elders. I don't know when I'll be back."

Then Raven was turning to leave, and Barry spoke up at once.

"Wait a minute! Yah can't just drop her in mah arms like this! Ah don't know how to look aftah a kid!"

"Well, you'll have to figure it out." Raven replied, tossing her hair back in a way that revealed the full coldness of her heart at last, "After all, you had as much a hand in creating her as I did, and I've held onto her for over a year."

Then, Raven got into her car and was off, and Anna continued rifling through her mother's other memories; the jobs she'd taken for the military after leaving Anna with Barry, the networking that she'd built up under a number of assumed names and faces, and the friends she'd made who'd helped her to locate the other members of her first brotherhood. A particular friend of hers had been Alex, whom some considered to be a truly unbeatable fighter, and maybe he was, for those with normal human strength. Alex had a way of just sort of absorbing all the skills of whoever he happened to be around, which made him an ideal partner for missions. He'd pick locks, sneak through hallways, and fight opponents with martial arts, while Raven handled the light gun play and heavy espionage in disguise. They'd gone on so many missions together, that nothing could have broken them apart. If Anna hadn't developed such an intense loathing for Raven by that point, she might have felt a little jealous of Alex.

Anna saw how Fred Dukes had been discovered by the two of them after they'd left the military again at the end of the war, and sworn never to fight on the side of the humans again in any more of their battles. She saw how Raven had gotten news from a contact of hers about the death of Barry Hynes, and had rushed out to pick up her daughter, fascinated by the sort of person she'd become, and the sort of powers she'd developed. Then, at last, Anna saw the formation of the first Brotherhood of Mutants, and the rest she'd experienced herself, but one thing more made itself quite apparent to Anna from even Raven's most recent memories. Though Anna had caused Raven a great deal of stress recently, none of it was a sign that Raven cared about her. Raven was still thinking about her only in terms of the use her powers would be in achieving the domination of mutants over humans. She was thinking about Anna like a weapon that was becoming dangerous to its wielder, not like a person with her own needs and desires. Raven had engineered everything about Anna from the very start. In her eyes, none of the feelings or whims that Anna had really mattered, and when she was sure of that, Anna released her mother from her psychic grip, and slumped back onto the couch again.

"Yeah..." Anna muttered, feeling more than a little sad over what she'd just learned, "Ah can't say ah'm too surprised by any of that, but it's very disappointing. Ah guess ah could always just take you for what you did, of course. Then ah'd have your powahs too..."

But when Anna said that, she could see the look of trust still in Fred's eyes as he and the others hung back, waiting for her to make her move. It was a look that defied the situation, the past, and even basic logic, but it was a look that meant more than all the fear, all the scorn and all the fury that Anna had ever seen.

"But then, if ah take you, ah'll have you in mah mind." Anna said with a smirk, "Ah'll see your face whenever ah call out the people ah've taken, and ah'm sick of looking at you. Ah'm sick of your dreams of powah, mother. Ah'm sick of your cause. Ah'm sick of you, and ah'm never going to help you again. Ah'm leaving, and ah'm taking mah scrambler with me."

The other members of the brotherhood moved aside in, in most cases, terror as Anna pushed past them for the outside world, when she heard her mother's voice shouting "Wait!"

"Wh-where... will you go?" Raven asked, though she was still barely able to keep her breathing level.

"Nowhere." Anna replied, "Anywhere. Maybe even everywhere, all at once. Ah'm going to follow in your footsteps, mother. You always wanted me to take the path you chose for me, but ah'm going to take mah own instead, just like you did."

"Oh..." Anna said after taking only a few more steps away from the house, "and there's one more thing ah want to take with me before ah go..."

Suddenly, Anna seemed to just fade away into to nothingness, though those gathered knew that she was simply moving with such speed, that none of them could keep track of her. However, she wasn't the only one who'd vanished...

The sound barrier crackled around the figure of Anna Marie Darkholme as she rocketed through the air over the central United States, carrying the much larger figure of Fredrick J. Dukes in both of her well-clothed arms.


Xavier had expected never to regain consciousness when the ambush had occurred, and in his sleep, he'd felt very much alone and helpless, though he hadn't dreamed about any specific kinds of images, things or people, or really, been certain of anything until the very moment when he opened his eyes and found himself in the infirmary. Logan wasn't too far away, seated in a chair, and he was looking deeply worried, even when he saw Xavier wake up.

"Are the students nearby?" Xavier asked, feeling tired, but also somewhat refreshed.

"They might be in the library, but we've got classes canceled for a while." Logan replied, "Wherever they are, they ain't within earshot."

"What about Anna and the other intruders?" Xavier asked.

"They got away, but we've got our own problems." Logan muttered angrily, "Five missing mutants, all while we were gone. Sheila says it was a guy all dressed in black."

Xavier slowly grabbed the head of the bed he was resting in until he'd managed to seat himself in an upright position. There was a look of shock on his face, though it was a slightly groggy expression.

"One man subdued and kidnapped all five of them?"

"Sound like anybody we know?" Logan asked knowingly.

"It sounds like it could be several people I'm aware of," Xavier replied, "But I'm not going to leap to conclusions. Why is it so stuffy in here, anyway?"

"Stuffy?" Logan asked, surprised, looking around. To him it seemed, if anything, just a little chilly. There was some sense of sterility in the infirmary, as in most infirmaries, but he wouldn't have called it stuffy.

"Never mind." Xavier said, "Where's my chair? We need to rescue the others." X-men!

The last words were spoken in Professor Xavier's telepathic voice, immediately getting the attention of Piotr, Kurt, Scott, Jubilation, and of course, of Logan, but there was one other person that Xavier had caught the attention of; Alison Blair.

"Professor!" he heard back, then only a moment later, a flood of memories shot through Xavier's mind, as Alison relayed to him in her thoughts about what had happened not long ago.


Xavier stood in the hallway of his school, watching as Bobby Drake was throwing snowballs at Ororo, who was practicing repelling them with blasts of wind. Xavier was a little chagrined that they were doing it in the middle of the hallway, rather than in the Danger Room, but then, it was probably Bobby who'd started it, and he was simply incorrigible at times.

Off to one side, Xavier could see that Alison had concealed herself behind a screen made of bent light, which surrounded the plants near the entrance when a small, black, liquid-like substance seemed to have seeped through the crack in the mansion's large double-doors, and in a flash, they'd been flung open, and in had stepped a man with white skin like a ghost, or a terrifying clown, dressed entirely in a black outfit that hung around him in long, black strips, each of which quivered as if with a life of their own. The man also had a diamond-shaped gemstone set into his forehead, which was red like a ruby, and even his eyes were as red as blood all over. He had no pupils that Xavier could see, but he didn't, apparently, have any difficulty seeing.

"I am looking," the strange man had said, "for the mutant known as Scott Summers. I have need of his assistance."

"Look, pal, I don't know who you think you are, but this is private property," Bobby said, at which point the man's hand reached all the way across the room in the blink of an eye to clamp down over Bobby's mouth.

"I pay no heed to those foolish laws, crafted by lesser men to impede those with great aims. If you do not know where Scott Summers is, then you are of little use to me, though I might discover a secret or two in those genes of yours..."

However, when the man had stretched his hand out like that, Ororo had started to back away, and when he started to talk about examining Bobby's genes, she aimed a blast of wind at the man's arm, knocking it away from Bobby's face.

"Stay away from him, and stay away from us!" Ororo exclaimed.

"I'm afraid I can't do that. The help of Scott Summers is absolutely essential to my plans." the man said, "One way or another, I'm going to have that help."

"Scott isn't even here, at the moment."

The words had come from Henry Mccoy, who hung from the ceiling just over the hallway's entrance, looking down at the intruder with some curiosity, "Of course, if you'd like to leave a message, I'll be sure to give it to him."

"I don't mean to work through intermediaries." the man replied indignantly, "Just tell me where he is."

"My, my. You are nosey, aren't you?" Mccoy asked, "Alright. The truth is, he's in a military jet, headed in this direction. He'll be back pretty soon. I'd offer you tea in the meantime, but there's the little matter of breaking and entering. You've said that you don't respect the laws of lesser men once already, but some of us are pretty attached to them, I'm afraid."

The man thought it over for a moment, then gave a short "tsk" with the edge of his mouth and looked away.

"I wasted my time in coming here." he said, "I was certain that the students would be left behind. A pity. Now that I've tipped my hand, it would be truly miserable of I had to return without the prize..."

The man was obviously thinking hard about his future courses of action, but at last, it seemed that he'd arrived at a decision.

"Alright." he said, "If he's not here, then all of you are coming with me. If nothing else, I may learn a thing or two from the nature of your mutant powers."

"Yeah, right!" Bobby exclaimed angrily, "You think you can just tell us to come, and we'll..."

However, it seemed that the mysterious stranger had no intention of simply telling them to come along. In only a moment, his whole body was stretching out in liquid-like tentacles, that lashed violently through the whole mansion's front hall. Ororo tried to repel them with wind blasts, but there were too many, and they were coming at her from too many different directions. She didn't have the experience she needed to completely protect herself from all sides. Bobby's first attempt, in turn, to freeze one of the tentacles solid proved to be a huge mistake, as it cracked easily through the ice, enveloping him completely in that black, tar-like substance.

Mccoy's attempt to fight their enemy physically was an ill-fated one. Whatever the substance was that their foe was made of, it reacted more like living glue than any kind of human body, and by feeling along the walls, it had soon found and entrapped Alison as well. When Jean and Sheila had burst from a nearby classroom to try to stop the intruder, Jean had quickly discovered that using her telekinesis to throw a potted plant at her enemy had limited effect, although the stranger's eyes did seem to widen a bit when he saw her use her psychic powers. He captured her, along with the others quickly, and when Sheila pursued him with a chair in her hands, one of his tentacles had shot out and flung her back across the classroom that she'd grabbed the chair from, rendering her helpless and injured.

As the strange being had left the mansion, the memories had faded, because that was all that Alison had seen, but her next thought impulse depicted a large, glass container rising up over her face, and then all was black.

Fortunately, Xavier had been multitasking with his psychic powers. As he'd been watching the images that Alison had sent him, as shocking and horrifying as they'd been, Xavier had been able to also trace Alison's location, and when the images stopped coming, which probably meant that Alison was unconscious, he already had a very good idea of where she, and most likely the others, were being held.

"X-men!" he said telepathically, "Our friends are in grave danger, and I know where they are. The time has come to act."


Although Professor Xavier had no wish to terrify his students, he wasn't about to send them into battle with an enemy like that unprepared, so he showed them the images that Alison had sent him, and before long, each of them was looking very worried. The enemy seemed, from what they could tell, to be physically-indestructible. That would be a hard type of foe to conquer. Then again, Cain Marko and Kevin McTaggert had both shared that trait, and in the end, each had been defeated. Maybe it was just a matter of finding their strange, new enemy's weakness.

Piotr, like the others, was feeling worried as they approached the building, which looked like a simple factory from the outside, but he had other reasons to worry, besides the enemy that they would soon be facing. Not long ago, the professor had told him that the gemstones that had been found in the ruins of his home held the keys to finding his lost sister, but they hadn't seemed ready to yield many answers, or indeed, to do anything at all in all the time he'd spent studying them on the plane ride back from Muir Island. Like ordinary gemstones, they'd remained the same, hour after hour, revealing to him none of the secrets that might be contained therein. After that, he'd left the plane, worried about his fellow students, and been struck from behind, probably by Anna, and, shamefully, he'd been rendered unconscious. However, it seemed that something about that attack, or maybe his unconsciousness, or maybe some other factor had changed the gems somehow, because when he'd woken up, one of the gems in his pocket had begun to shine with a bright red light from within, and it didn't look like an entirely wholesome red light. Piotr knew that the change in the gems had to mean something, and he had a feeling that when he learned what it meant, he could also learn the location of his sister, and how to save her, but he had no clues as to what the light within the gems could mean. What really worried him at the moment was that despite the new developments, he'd gotten no closer to solving the mystery.


"I know that we've had problems and differences recently," Xavier said as the car came to a stop outside the building where Alison was apparently being held, and Piotr could feel the words crawling up his spine in particular, "but at the moment, our friends are trapped by a wicked being of unknown origin and intent. I won't insult you by suggesting that any of you might wish to refuse to help in the rescue."

"Good." the word had been said simultaneously by Kurt, Logan and Piotr, each for their own reasons.

"Not that I haven't done worse in the past," Jubilation said, "but aren't we kind of breaking the law?"

"I'm planning to break more'n that." Logan said, "Sometimes, you just gotta do what it takes."

Even Scott seemed to have no desire to argue with that, and soon, the group had left the car; all except for Professor Xavier.

"I'd be little use to you inside the building," Xavier had told them as they left, "but I can help with strategy and communication from out here."

In only a moment, the remaining X-men were at the front door of the factory, none of them entirely certain how they should approach the problem of getting inside.

"We should knock first," Kurt suggested, "Unless someone here plans to try to sneak inside. I could teleport us into this building undetected, if you wish..."

"Knock if you want." Scott replied, carefully-concealed fury in his voice, "I'm planning on blasting this door down if it's not answered in fifteen seconds."

Kurt shrugged shortly and gave a firm knock. As soon as he did so, holes seemed to open up at the sides of the door, and the sound of automatic guns being fired drove them back, but in only a moment, Piotr was in his metallic form, shielding the group from the gunfire as Jubilation tossed a small energy bomb into each of the holes simultaneously. A couple of short explosions later, the bullets had stopped, and Piotr had returned to his human-like form.

"Okay..." Jubilation said, looking irritated, but not openly furious yet, like Scott, "I'd say that's about enough to merit a good ass-kicking."

"Right." Scott replied, stepped forward and removing his glasses.

The bright red beam that shot forth from Scott's eyes looked, if anything, more intense and focused than what Jubilation was used to seeing in their training exercises. It burst forth like a bolt of lightning, and struck the door at a single point, right in the middle, knocking the metal to pieces, and very nearly tearing the entire wall around it to shreds, as the door flew across the chamber to hit the far wall, probably doing a great deal of damage to that part of the factory too. Fortunately, it didn't seem as if anyone had been in the way.

"Stick together." the group heard Professor Xavier advise them in their minds, "I can guide you to the place where I received the last transmission from Alison, but she may have been moved since then, and there's no guarantee that the others are with her."

The form that the professor's directions took was, to Jubilation, a little creepy. Whenever they would hit a corner, a glowing arrow would appear in front of their eyes, pointing them in the direction they needed to travel next. In some ways, it was a little like a video game, though, except that in a video game, you're in very little danger of actually being grabbed and shoved in a tube somewhere.

Fortunately, though, the factory wasn't a very big place, and before long, the group had barged through three more doors, charging through two hallways and an assembly room, in which Piotr had used his armored form to scare away the five people working there. They fled, terrified, for the exits, and at last, the X-men had reached a heavily-armored doorway, which Piotr tore easily from its hinges before shrinking down to a roughly human size and stepping into the room beyond, his intent being to shield the others if any more bullets came their way.

Piotr, however, hadn't really been prepared for the sight that greeted him when he entered that room at the center of the factory.

The room was about nine yards in both length and width, and the ceiling was about a dozen feet up from the top of Piotr's head. Plenty of room, he could see, to move around in. In the center of the room, however, was what looked like a series of large computer terminals, and the walls seemed to be made almost entirely of large, glass tubes, filled with some kind of aqua-colored liquid. Contained in several of those tubes were mutants, only a few of whom the X-men recognized, and many of whom didn't look human at all. Piotr was filled with primal revulsion at the sight, and not just because it made a mockery of all civil liberties. In his greatest nightmares, he had dreams of Illyana, trapped in a tiny space and crying out to him for help, and there some psychopath was doing that very thing to so many mutants who'd done nothing wrong. It made Piotr's blood boil, and his face hardened in rage and hate, even before the stranger made his appearance before them.

A black, ooze-like substance had been dripping from one of the vents in the ceiling since they'd come in, but it seemed that only Logan had focused on it intently. The other horrors in the room would have put anyone else off their guard, but he'd seen horrors far worse in his life, and was instead concerned only with whatever dangers threatened their group. Others might also have mistaken the ooze for an oil leak, but Logan's enhanced sense of smell told him that the black substance didn't smell like oil at all. Sure enough, as it began to gather on the floor in a puddle, rising up to form arms, legs and a face from within it all, it was obvious that they'd found their new enemy.

"You did all of this, monster!" Piotr exclaimed, charging their opponent and lashing out with both fists. Piotr's blows did damage to the chambers in which the mutants were contained, to the computers, and even to the floor, splattering the ink-like man in all directions, but when all was said and done, the being's form had returned to normal, only seconds after the attack ended.

"Come now..." he said as Piotr started to back away, suddenly becoming aware that his strength was useless against such an enemy, "Do you think I would reveal myself to you like this if I had anything to fear from you?"

"You've got lots to fear from me!" Jubilation exclaimed, "Burn right here, then burn in hell!"

As she made that exclamation, bright, multicolored energy bombs flashed forward from her fingertips, embedding themselves at several points in the being's flesh, their highly-ionized energy eating away at the matter that surrounded them. Even the stranger seemed to be concerned by that.

"I've been working on this..." Jubilation said with a grin, "I can use my power to create contained energy that dissolves the bonds in atoms. There won't be anything left of you when I'm done!"

Just like that, the bombs exploded, and the stranger screamed in pain as the explosions covered his body, sucking in black ooze from all directions. At last, when the explosions died down, Jubilation seemed to be breathing hard, and only a small puddle was left on the floor.

"Oops." Jubilation muttered sarcastically, "Missed a spot."

"You certainly did." came a voice from within the puddle, "I was worried for a moment there."

Then, before the very eyes of the group, the puddle began to expand, growing larger and taller, until the stranger stood before them once more, totally back to normal and completely unharmed.

Fear was starting to rise within Logan as he watched their enemy regenerate. If physical damage meant nothing to him, then Logan's claws and Kurt's powers weren't going to be useful either, and there was a strong chance that Scott's optic blasts would be just as ineffective. Quickly, Logan opened his mind to the professor.

"Can you take him, Chuck?" Logan asked.

Charles Xavier saw the stranger through the eyes of Logan and the others, and he'd seen the fantastic powers that the stranger had displayed. He knew what Logan was asking. Logan was asking if the Professor could shut down the stranger's mind as he had that of Cain Marko. However, for some reason, Xavier hadn't been able to get a foothold into that strange man's mind in all the time that he'd known of his existence. There was something in there, keeping him out.

"I can't." Xavier replied, "Something is shielding his mind from me. Try to stall him; find out more about him. Perhaps we'll be able to find a weakness that way..."

Logan didn't like the situation they'd found themselves in at all, but he didn't see what else he could do. He had to take the Professor's advice.

"You just said you revealed yourself to us intentionally." Scott said, "Why? You didn't have to."

"Yes." the man replied, "I did. You see, Scott Summers, I have need of your assistance."

"My assistance?" Scott asked, amazed and flabbergasted.

"You have a power unlike any other, Scott Summers." the stranger said, "Yours is a power that, through time and experience, generates an endless amount of pure, mutant energy, or x-force, as your group seems to be calling it. It is one of only a few ingredients needed to create the ultimate power, and I have great need of that power."

"So what?" Scott asked, "I can't give you my powers, and even if I could, I wouldn't. You kidnapped my friends. The last thing you need is more power."

"This power is not for me alone, or for you." the stranger replied, "Whether you know it or not, Summers, everyone you know is in danger, and has been for quite some time. I had originally hoped that I could acquire a sample of your blood without much hassle, but my emissary was... routed by your group. That's why I came by myself to seek your help. When I discovered that you were no longer in the country, I knew that I needed a means of drawing you here, and I thought that the other mutants at the school might offer me some worthwhile samples of mutant DNA, so I..."

"Kidnapped them." Scott finished the stranger's sentence with a furious scowl.

"Essentially, yes." the stranger replied, "Our Earth is a dangerous place to live, Scott Summers. We're in constant peril from more than just a few sources. If our planet is to continue supporting the life of human and mutant alike, it needs an almighty champion who can tell the difference between good and evil. That is what I hope that your cells will help me to create. Because of this, I ask you once to accept my offer. Give me a sample of your blood willingly, and I will spare all of your friends, and all the other mutants that I've gathered here. I'll return them to the places I collected them from. I won't need them anymore. Well? Is it a deal?"

As the stranger said those words, he held out one of his hands, still pitch black, but looking quite solid, apparently for Scott to shake, however Scott Summers knew what his reply would eventually be. He had to struggle with his feelings to keep them from overwhelming his good judgment, but when he'd taken a moment to think about what the stranger was offering him, he realized something else.

"I don't even know your name."

"No," the stranger replied calmly, "but I know yours, and it's given me the power to locate you and take your friends from you. I won't give that power to someone I don't trust. However, if you simply need something to call me by, then 'Sinister' will suffice."

"Alright, Sinister." Scott said, "In that case, here's my answer. You can take your deal and shove it."

Sinister reacted quite calmly to Scott's reply, lowering his hand slowly for a few moments, then spoke again.

"I suppose I'm not too surprised by that reaction, Scott Summers, but I am curious as to why you would choose to fight me in this manner, rather than simply giving me what I want. A sample of blood is not hard to obtain, nor particularly painful, and certainly not irreplaceable."

"You said this wasn't about you." Scott replied, his fury fading as he explained himself, "It's not about me either. You said that I have the power to help create the ultimate being, who can guard mankind with knowledge of right, but how much control would you want over that 'being' when he or she was just a child? Would you want to decide what schools he went to? Whether he went to church or not? What kinds of morals were taught to him by his parents? Would you want to control his life completely? Maybe raise him or her yourself? Maybe our world does need an almighty guardian to protect it, Sinister, but you're not the person to set that in motion. What do you know about the difference between right and wrong? You broke into my school and kidnapped my friends. I'm not going to let you have my power. You've never given me a reason to trust you with anything, much less with everything I am."

Logan grinned a little when he heard that, although he could tell that they were all in quite a bit of trouble. Pretty soon, Sinister would realize that he had to take what he wanted by force, and he was going to attack. When he did, they were going to have to fly by the seats of their pants, because Logan still hadn't been able to find a weakness in his powers.

"Alright then." Sinister said sadly as Scott's speech finished, "In that case, I suppose you've left me with no choice. I'll simply have to take a sample of your blood without your help. That shouldn't be too difficult."

As Sinister finished his last sentence, his arms started to change their shapes, one forming into a large needle, and the other into a scything blade. In only a moment, he'd stretched forward in an enormous, black rain, and the X-men braced themselves for attack as Scott Summers leaned back, out of the way of Sinister's first attack, until he was looking directly upward, then pulled his glasses off.

Sinister clearly expected Scott's beam to fire directly at him, but that wasn't what happened. Instead, beams fired out from Scott's eyes, upward to a level of nine feet high, in a hundred different directions at once. A hundred tiny beams rushed for the edges of the room, and by the time Sinister saw where they were headed, it was too late.

A hundred small optic blasts made contact with solid metal.

A hundred solid, metal locks were shattered into unrecognizable pieces.

A hundred large, glass enclosures burst open as one, releasing their occupants onto the cold, metal floor of the holding chamber.

"If I were you, I'd run." Scott Summers said as the many mutants got slowly and groggily to their feet, "Something tells me even you can't handle this many different kinds of mutant powers at once."

For the first time in the few minutes that Scott had been acquainted with him, Sinister cursed, but he could see quite plainly that there was no way to salvage the situation anymore. Furious mutants converged on him from all sides as he started degenerating back into a liquid state, to retreat into the ceiling vents once more. At another time, he might have said something while retreating, but there wasn't any point. The X-men, he realized, had won themselves a partial victory.


The mutants that Scott had saved from Sinister all had very different outlooks and special abilities. Fortunately, Jean, Ororo, Bobby, Alison and Professor McCoy had been among them, but it seemed that the others had very little in common with one another. They sprang from many different types of parents, and many different races, and it seemed that each had their own unique outlook and philosophy. Most of them, however, had mutant abilities which, like McCoy or Kurt, made them look very different from ordinary humans, and most of them were very poor. Over half of the mutants that Sinister had kidnapped had been homeless before being abducted by him. Still, not a single one considered Sinister's hospitality preferable to their previous lifestyle, naturally.

Most of the mutants had taken the time to thank Scott Summers for rescuing them. Scott rarely saw such gratitude in people who lived in nice houses, or especially the very rich, and it set him to thinking about how, perhaps, poverty really can bring out the best in people, if it makes them remember the vital importance of being thankful for things that one is given.

Those who hadn't immediately left to return to their previous style of living also had the opportunity to hear from Scott and the others about Professor Xavier's school. Many expressed interest in it, though of course, they knew they couldn't afford to pay for an education at that, or any other school. It seemed unlikely that the professor would have turned any of them away, though, if they decided to apply.

Some seemed suspicious of the school, while others seemed more inclined to trust Scott. In the end, however, they were all pleased over being given the chance to make the choice for themselves, and the whole affair filled Scott, and a few of the other X-men with hope again. Jean even remarked once that she was almost glad to have been kidnapped, because of all the good it had done in the end.

Within a few weeks, everything seemed to be more or less back to normal at the Xavier Institute. A few new mutant students had joined, and Henry McCoy had set to work on rebuilding and modifying the pieces of the jet that James Braddock had given to them, but for the most part, it was as normal as life ever got in the Xavier Institute.

There was, however, something that Scott couldn't help but notice as classes pressed on, and he and his fellow students continued the learning process together. None of the newer students seemed in any way interested in the X-men, or in joining their ranks. In some ways, however, that made Scott feel pretty good. Things were pretty hard for mutants, after all, but if every mutant had needed to fight for their survival, he would have felt very badly about life.


It was late in the evening when Raven arrived at the door of the man she'd come to consider her personal expert in genetics and technology. She knocked at the door firmly, but it took several seconds before she heard a reply from within.

"Raven? Is that you?"

"Yes." she replied, agitation coursing through her voice with every word she spoke, "Let me in."

"Alright." Nate said from within the chamber, "You may as well enter, but you know the rules. Don't touch any of my things."

Raven was feeling particularly worried as she opened the door and stepped into Nate's living room, which still doubled as the same kind of messy, disorganized lab that it had been every time she'd entered that room, but one thing was different. Usually when Raven arrived at Nathan's home, he was hard at work on some project of some kind, but when she stepped into his room at that point, he didn't seem to be busy at all. He was just standing in one corner of the room, watching the contents of a cabinet with a glass front, which contained a collection of notebooks and empty beakers with labels on them.

"I assume you came to me with bad news." Nathan Essex said, and Raven could see his frown reflected in the glass front of the cabinet, though he faced away from her as he spoke.

"It's Anna." Raven said, "She acquired the powers of Xavier, and..."

"...and the moment she gained the power to read the thoughts of others, she read yours and left your brotherhood." Essex concluded, "I'm not surprised. From everything you've told me so far, she was something of a delinquent. Still, I'd hoped to have a backup plan in motion for when this time came."

"Backup plan?" Raven asked, confused, "What are you talking about? Anna was our only plan... wasn't she?"

"Was she?" Nathan asked, turning to face Raven with an expression of true curiosity on his face, "Was Anna truly the only plan you'd considered over the course of the time we've known each other? I should prefer to think better of you than that, Raven. You seemed so ambitious when we first met; so eager to get what you wanted from the world... Why have you been so foolish?"

"Foolish?" Raven asked, suddenly becoming furious, "I didn't tell Anna to fall for Fred or rob my mind of all its secrets! I didn't tell her to..."

"That's only half of what I'm talking about." Nate said angrily, "If you're too stubborn to consider that your first plan might fail, that's a horrendous failing. I can't pity you in that case. If you're simply too stupid to formulate multiple different plans at once, that also is a major failing, though it can be forgiven in a common soldier who does nothing but follow orders, as you have in the past. However, I can't begin to imagine what you were thinking by allowing that foolish human to raise the very daughter that you looked to as your last hope! If you hadn't placed Anna in the care of Hynes, she wouldn't have been raised as a human, you would have had the time you needed to teach her what it means to be a mutant, and what her grand destiny was, but most importantly..."

At that point, Essex paused for a moment. He'd started to shout, and he could feel his disguise beginning to loosen, so he carefully shifted his body back into the right configuration, calmed down and continued.

"Most importantly, Anna would not have learned that she could kill the greatest authority figures in her life without consequences. At the time, she was still relatively weak, and you would have had the power to stop her. When she killed Barry Hynes, it set an idea into her thoughts that she was stronger than those around her, and that she could use that strength as she saw fit, with no fear over what others thought. The moment I discovered what had happened, and how she'd grown up, I knew it would eventually lead to this outcome."

"I didn't... I didn't have a choice..." Raven stuttered, not sure what else to say.

"Yes you did." Nate replied, "You could have taken responsibility, and raised your own daughter, instead of passing her off onto some lower life-form who wasn't prepared to deal with her special traits. You really should read more history books, Raven. I suppose you've probably heard of Julius Caesar and his infamous assassination. Caesar was assassinated, not by a single man, or even by two or three, but by a group of people from the roman senate. Caesar had spent his life spreading the domination of Rome all the way to the Atlantic. He was both a mighty leader and a war hero. He'd used brilliant strategies to equip, prepare and lead his men into battle, and he'd helped to win great victories for Rome. If not for him, the Roman Empire never would have come into being. Do you know why Rome's own senators wanted to kill him so desperately?"

Raven suspected there was probably some reason, but she'd long ago forgotten her lessons in roman history.

"Caesar had spent the last several years fighting the influence of the senate in ancient Rome. Once he believed that the Roman Empire had gone as far as he could take it, he'd decided to push aside the senate, and with them, any power in Rome, and in the world that could challenge his own. Caesar was killed because of his obsession with imposing his will on others; because he struggled so hard to force others to do as he told them, he wound up, in the end, pushing them further and further away, until even Marcus Junius Brutus; a man who had once been Caesar's close friend, agreed that he had to be stopped, and personally led the group who murdered him. When you tried to defend yourself just now, Raven, by telling me that you'd never told Anna to do any of those things, you reminded me of the foolishness of Caesar, who focused too much on forcing people to do as he said, until it was his undoing."

Raven was silent for several seconds, but when she finally spoke again, she sounded somewhat lost.

"What should I do?"

"Someone I once considered a good friend of mine once told me" Nate replied, "that it's not always the strongest, fastest, or wisest of a species that survive, but those that are most able to change, adapting to new conditions in their environment. Well, now that you've unleashed a psychotic goddess upon mankind, we're going to have to be able to do some changing. That is the nature of manipulation, of course; the delicate art of tugging at the emotions and impulses of others, so that they do, in the end, what you desire. Had Anna been mine to raise, I should have sculpted her in that way; with delicate care, but there is another who has what I need to create a mutant even more powerful, and I think that with a little work, he's going to fall right into my hands."

"Who is he?" Raven asked, but it was the wrong question. She could tell as soon as she'd asked it.

"Never mind that." Nate replied, "You're better off not knowing for now. You'd only ruin things again by trying to use force instead of finesse. I fought a battle with him today and lost, but whether he knows it or not, he's doing exactly what I wanted him to do."


Just after his last class of the day on Wednesday, the week following the attack by Sinister, Piotr Rasputin had decided to attend to something he'd been putting off recently. He marched into his room and began removing his paintings from the places he'd put them; under his bed, behind his dresser and even the one on the easel that he'd been so close to finishing. They were beautiful paintings, to be sure, but he didn't need them anymore. Their imagery no longer held any meaning for him.

All at once, Piotr had pulled a trash bag over the old paintings, and marched it downstairs, dropping it next to the barrels at the end of the walkway by the institute's front gates. After that, he'd returned to his room, sure that he was drawing the stares of at least a few people there. It didn't make a difference, though. It was something he'd needed to do. He could no longer be inspired by images of silver and red in combat. He'd experienced it firsthand, and it hadn't given him what he'd really wanted.

However, as Piotr marched upstairs and laid a new sheet of paper out on his easel, he couldn't help but wonder just what he should paint. His inner self, once so clear about what he'd wanted to do, was silent. He held the brush before the easel, but no images appeared in his mind. There was no symbolism he could use; no beautiful satisfaction that he could imagine. If, Piotr slowly realized, he really was losing hope completely, there was no way he could paint.

Piotr had put the paintbrush down, wet but colorless, and sat on his bed without grace or concern. The mystery of Illyana's disappearance still haunted him, and that time, he had no real leads that might have helped to guide him, or at least given him some rescue operation to dream about. It all made him very sad, and it didn't cheer him up any when he heard a knock at the door to his room.

"Enter." he said, without daring to attach much emotion to the word.

The door opened slowly, and Ororo peeked inside, looking confused and worried. In only a moment, she'd stepped through the door completely and closed it behind her.

"I noticed what you were doing." Ororo said, "I wanted to check up on you, to make certain that you were alright."

"No." Piotr replied, "I am not alright, but you have my thanks for concerning yourself with my feelings, Ororo. It is good that you and the others are safe, and that the people of this school are no longer being threatened, but I am afraid that the calm of this place does not echo in my heart. My sister is still missing, and I do not know how to find her. The puzzle of her disappearance is proving a hopeless one."

"I know you aren't planning to give up until you've found her." Ororo said, looking sad as she spoke, "I don't need to encourage you in that, but please try to remember that you aren't the only person you can rely on. When I was captured by Sinister, I was terrified that those I cared about had failed me and disappointed me, and that I was going to die, but I was saved by the X-men. I was saved by the fact that, even when we were divided, you, Scott and the others refused to stop working as a team, or trying to cope with the loss. You didn't have to break the law to come to our rescue; you could have spent lots of time searching for a way to recover us that didn't incriminate you, but you and the others did what was best for us all without a second thought. From now on, I'll know better than to think I can't rely on the X-men when I'm in trouble. Maybe you should remember that too. If you need our help, we're there for you."

Then, Ororo put her hand on Piotr's shoulder for a moment, and after a second or two spent digesting her words, Piotr turned to look into, her eyes and said, with perhaps a small glimmer of hope in his own, "Thank you."

Ororo left Piotr's room only a short time later, and Piotr was sitting on his bed for a while after that, but at last, he decided that he would dig the gemstones out of his pocket again, and continue to study them for a while, and that was when the sound of a short, shocked gasp escaped his lips.

That very morning, four of the gems had been clear, while the fifth had shone with a bright light, but as Piotr held them in his hand while he sat there on his bed, he could see quite plainly that another of the five gemstones had lit up...


To be continued...