10

"Vuyani!" Storm's relief was evident in her voice, "Thank goodness. Are you alright? Jean sent me to find you…"

"Jean?" Vuyani felt his heart flip over. He wasn't alone, he hadn't imagined her! "I'm alright, I mean, I will be alright."

There was a click as the safety was taken off a handgun. Storm and Vuyani looked upwards, seeing a man silhouetted against a flash of lightning. He was standing on top of the boulder that they cowered beneath, looking down on them with contempt. When he spoke his voice was deep and calm.

"Yes, you will be alright Vuyani," Mwamba told the boy. He moved the gun slightly, taking it off the mutant child. "Your freakish white-haired friend on the other hand…"

Storm's eyes went white as she called on the weather to aid her, but someone else was quicker. A shadow struck Mwamba so fast that the man barely had time to cry out. Three adamantium claws pierced straight through his chest. Wolverine withdrew his claws with a grunt, muscles rippling in his thick neck and beneath the black t-shirt that was stuck to his back with blood and rain. No sooner were Logan's claws free than another shot rang out. It took Mwamba in the shoulder and made him pivot. Time seemed to pass in slow motion for Vuyani as his tormentor fell from the rock, plummeting into the seething water of the stream where he was lost from sight. A flash of lightning illuminated a patch of darkness on the water that could only be Mwamba's blood. Then it was over.

"Vuyani!" Erevu dropped the weapon he had just fired and flung himself at his cousin, wrenching him from Storm's grasp and wrapping him in a hug. He started to talk rapidly to his cousin in their own language, never giving Vuyani a chance to get a word in edgeways. That seemed to be fine with Vuyani though, who finally embraced his cousin back and gave a sheepish grin. Storm let the cousins be.

"Ro?" Logan dropped down from the rock more gracefully than Mwamba had managed. Storm stopped dead when she saw him. The cavity in face was still healing, she could see silver jawbone beneath the rapidly healing flesh of his cheek. As she watched the flesh knit together, new skin pinkish and glistening. Then it paled to white with a five-o'clock shadow as his sideburn grew back. "Ororo, are you okay darlin'?" He reached out and took hold of her arm. Unthinking Storm stepped towards him, placing her other hand on his healed cheek.

"I am fine, Logan. For a moment I thought that I might have witnessed the impossible that is all."

"Take more n' that, 'Ro," Logan grimaced, amused. "Can you do somethin' about this weather? I think Blaze would call it 'minging'." Ororo laughed and instantly the rain and thunder stopped, and the ice started to melt in the returning Tanzanian heat. The laughter made Wolverine feel better than he had done in a long time. For the first time in a long time, he was glad he was so damn hard to kill. A thought suddenly occurred to him. He turned his attention to the two teenagers.

"Hey Bub," he addressed Erevu. "You knew you couldn't kill me, right?"

"Right," Erevu said solemnly. "But I had to take you down before you killed my father. There wasn't time to explain."

"Where is Uncle?" Vuyani asked no one in particular. Logan took a deep sniff of the evening air, "Gone," he confirmed. "He probably ran the minute your man hit the water."

"Father is a coward," Erevu spoke with disgust and disappointment in his voice. "He was forever in Mwamba's control. How else could he bring up his boys to do what they made us do? What they made Vuyani do, especially."

"We could have said no," Vuyani said sadly. "We knew it was wrong, killing rhinos for money, even before my mutation. We could have just run away and never done the things we did. But we both wanted to do it, to be included in the group Mwamba led."

"Saying no to your elders is never easy, kid," Logan told the boy. He went and put a hand on each of the teenager's shoulders, a thought occurring to him as he looked at the guilt in their young faces. "It's just never that easy."

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x- x-x

A door opened into a small monitoring room within the Xavier Mansion's lower levels. Silent feet crossed to where a man drowsed with his feet upon the desk in front of him, his long legs crossed at the ankles and his head lolled back uncomfortably. The newcomer reached out and placed a strong, sweet black coffee to the side of the bank of monitors the man was supposed to be watching. Tendrils of steam rose from the mug as she withdrew her manicured hand and pressed an icon on the screen to accept the incoming call, "Hiya Logan."

"Hey Blaze, is your BFF there?"

Gambit awoke with a start, "Merde!" His feet hit the floor and for a second he gazed unseeing around the room. As his unique red-on-black eyes focused he saw the coffee, Blaze's quick over-the-shoulder smile, and then Logan glaring at him by video link.

"He's all yours," Blaze told the feral, walking away. She crossed the room and perched on a countertop, watching like a hawk from where Logan could not see her. Gambit ignored her and addressed Logan.

"What's dis homme? You don't call, you don't write, you leave me here like…"

"Save it," Logan cut him off before Gambit could get into full flow. Truth was he did feel bad for leaving Remy sat monitoring a screen for who knew how long. Well, sort of bad… Since finding Vuyani, he and Storm had taken the boys back to the farm where they had chanced upon Vuyani's uncle. After a long "chat" with the coward, Wolverine's earlier thought had solidified and when he'd run it past Storm she had been nothing but supportive. Now, back on the X-Jet, his bright idea needed the Cajun even if Logan had left Remy waiting for his call for something like days. With the time difference and his own jetlag Logan had no idea how much time had passed in Westchester. When he explained this to Kitty later, she thought that sounded a lot like Narnia too.

"I need your professional opinion," Wolverine began, deciding that flattering the thief's ego was no bad way to start. He was right, Remy's ears pricked up like a Labrador hearing the word 'walk'. Encouraged Logan told Gambit everything he had learned about the rhino poaching operation. It took a while. Logan knew more now than he ever had about tracking endangered species, dodging the authorities and so on. He'd been staggered to learn how advanced the weaponry was, how well supplied the teams were. Gambit just shook his head, "What did you expect? Rhino horn's worth more per ounce than cocaine."

"So what d'you think?" Logan asked, slightly exasperated.

"'Bout what?"

"About takin' down these poachers, givin' these kids closure…"

"How?" Gambit rolled his eyes, picking up a pen and tapping it against the edge of the desk in front of him. "You don't know not'ing. Maybe if you hadn't sliced n' diced dis Mwamba… Now, unless you gonna give me a year to get a back story, work my way undercover with these salauds?" Logan just raised an eyebrow. Remy shrugged, "You want miracles, see Kurt, non?"

"I don't want miracles," Logan groused, becoming intractable. "I wanna give two kids a second chance. These boys know what they were doing was wrong and they feel guilty as hell 'bout all the trouble they caused. Seems to me like they got dragged into the family business by guys they looked up to, that they wanted to impress. Funny, I thought you might be the one person that got that. Guess I was wrong."