Hey all! I'm back once again from another long ass trip where I didn't do much of anything at all. But it was a nessisary one anyways. A tip for those of you who like to party all weekend, or plan on doing it one day; don't try it, it really sucks to only have three hours of sleep after eighty hours of being awake.

It really sucks.

Mistaken Identity

Chapter Twelve

If this is tuesday, then it must be Tokyo.

"Holy crap!"

Sharpened steel cut through the air with an angry hiss, leaving a short and very clean cut across the front of Mato Hibiki's shirt. Completing his backstep, he changed direction, stepping back into the space he had cleared to make way for the sword. "First lesson, allways control your zone!" Stepping forwards again, he dropped onto his tailbone to avoid the quick riposte.

"Careful, these suits of armor are-"

"I know I know, made of metal!" Rolling back onto his shoulders, Mato kicked one leg into the air, catching the hollow suit of armor on the leading elbow to stop the two handed downward swing. His other foot crumpled it's metal torso with the sound of a gong being dropped ten stories.

"Hah, piece of cake." Rolling backwards, heels over head onto his feet, Mato slapped his hands on his thighs to clear the dust from his pants, then fingered the neat cut in his shirt. "Assholes, I allways lose tunics that way... D- Uh-oh." Leaning back, he felt a sliver of fire trace along his cheek.

"Are magical, they don't fall over and lay there like most mortals do."

"Now you tell me." Ignoring the trickle of blood flowing down his face, he tilted his head to the side and gestured for the metallic foe to come closer. "C'mon, don't'cha want another piece? Bring it, you reject from a junk he- Whoop!"

The suit brought it, stepping forwards to deliver a mighty overhead slash with both hands, stepping into the swing to add devastating force. The blade hissed through the air again, and sang as it struck.

"Heh, looks like ya missed, ya wanna try that again?" Standing with his arms crossed over his chest, Mato smirked at the suit as it wrenched it's blade from the floor. "I'm starting to get it, you only have as much skill as the person who made you, and since that punk kid ran off... Heh." Leaning back to avoid a backhand slash from the animated iron suit, he shook his head. "You swing that thing like a baseball bat." Another clumsy swing, and again, Mato merely leaned to avoid the blade. "Really, if this is all you got, lay down and save me the trouble."

"Taunting it isn't the best idea you've ever had." Urd sounded a bit, antsy, for some reason, he noted.

"It's a hunk of metal, it doesn't have any feelings. C'mon Urd, that kid was a ninth rate magic user, even I could tell that." Another poorly aimed swing, another evasion, this time a sidestep as Mato focused more on Urd's changed tone rather than on the fight. "Sloppy with his follow through too, hope he doesn't plan on playing in the majors." Dropping into a crouch to avoid having his head cleaved off, he arched an eyebrow. "Something wrong Urd? You sound a bit stressed."

"You would be stressed too, if your life was riding- Since when were you an expert on magic users, mortal or otherwise?"

"Hey, y'know, I get around." Planting a hand on the floor, he swept both legs around to scoop the suit's footing out from under it. "I learn a trick or two." Shifting into a handstand, he continued his twisting movement to spin around on his palm and jack-knifed his body, dropping his legs earthward. "You go to the Brazil, see a bit of Capoeira, mix it with some modern gymnastics..." Rotating his shoulder and center of balance, he slammed his heels into the chest of the falling suit of armor before it could finish hitting the ground. "Add some super-human strength and speed..." Sitting casually with his legs crossed, he shrugged again.

Urd was getting close to her wits end, being in a mortal body was bad enough, but to have to share it with such a reckless person. "Must you insist on restricting your powers? We have more important things to do than to waste time fighting!"

"Oh, so you caught that didja? Enh, it was bound to happen." Standing up, be brushed off the seat of his pants and arched an eyebrow at the now motionless suit of armor. "What, we all done here?"

"That's odd, the spell's duration couldn't have worn off that fast... It's almost, as if... Mato! Move!" Something bad was coming, some sort of danger, she could feel it through him.

"Huh? Nah." Bending over to take a closer look at the body, he frowned. "No way it's that easy."

"Move! Move! Something's attacking us!"

"Oh so now it's us now... Figures, whenever something stupid happens, it's just me, but when it's immanent danger and/or death, it's we." Crossing his arms over his chest, he squatted down, balancing on the tips of his toes.

"But we could DIE!"

"Hey, we're not dead yet, are we?" He leaned forwards again, resting his elbows on the ground, keeping his arms folded. "...What keeps making that swishing noise?"

"ARGH! How could you have dodged every one of my attacks!"

"Hmm?" Turning his head to glance over his shoulder, Mato's expression changed, rather humerously. Like he saw a walking jellyfish or something. "Uuuhh...I don't quite know how to tell you this..." He rolled onto his side, resting on one knee and an elbow. "I didn't even notice that you were there."

"...You're kidding, right?"

"... No! I refuse to accept that!"

A sigh. "Yeah, a lot of people are saying that today..." Standing up, Mato dusted himself off. "Anyways, drop the big metal stick and give it up allready. C'mon, you didn't stand a chance even when you had me by surprise."

"You're just trying to get me to drop my guard! Some sort of ninja trick!" He hefted this six foot long and mildly curved sword like it was a stick. A very large and sharp stick, but still, a stick.

"Aaaaaand you're...Who now?"

"He's the mage you chased off, remember?"

"I am Kevin! Sorcerer supreme! Master of the arcane! Warlock allmi-"

"Ye-ah, listen Kev... You get your spells from books, ne?"

"That's Kevin, sorcerer supreme! And yes, I have mastered the lore of countless sp-"

"Yeah yeah yeah, whatever... You're a wizard or a mage then punk, sorcerer's don't need books... Dipshit."

Kevin, sorcer- er, Kevin, wizard supreme, stared blankly for a moment, slack jawed, grip loosening on his massive sword. "...But the handbook said sorcerer..."

Pinching the bridge of his nose, Mato lowered his head. "Oh my G... You need a handbook for this crap?"

"The Player's Handbook, Third Edition. And the Dungeon Master's Guide, same edition."

"... You learned this from a shitty D&D book!"

"Hey! It's a really good game!"

"What did I ever do to deserve this?"

Some people measure the passing of time in days, some in weeks, even months. The really obsessed, or just nostalgic, measure it in years and decades. Historians, and archaeologists go for centurys and millennia. Gives 'em more bang for their buck, I suppose.

But when you're really waiting for something, or are just bored, you watch it go past by the hour.

I've been counting it by the second since I woke up.

Yeah, it's been that kinda day.

"Friggin' Tuesdays..." Rubbing at the scorch mark on his costume's thigh in irritation, Noir was doing his best to ignore the blood welling out of his shoulder. "Y'gonna muck around some more, or are you planning on taping that hole sometime today?"

"Sorry..." Jubilee hung her head a little lower as she fumbled with the surgical tape. Noir had insisted on tape, not guaze. Tape, he informed her between hisses of pain, didn't shift around as much as guaze did. She tried to use the guaze anyways, and got a fair good yelling for it. A lot of swearing too. To say Jubilee's spirits weren't soaring would be like saying the Hindenburgh was mildly flammable.

Complete, total, apocalyptically depressed. That was getting closer, in her opinion.

"I'm not mad at you." Noir sighed and hung his head, sighing as he focused on nothing. The shattered rock strewn over the mansion grounds looked like salted salad, he noted, as it dissolved into a white-green blur.

"You're not?" She'd hate to see him actully mad then, she'd never heard that combination of curses mixed with so many foreign languages. At least, she assumed that most of what he was saying were actual words. There was an outside chance, at any rate.

"No, I'm very pissed off at Skuld right now, you just happen to be dumb enough to be hanging around at the moment." The green started fading out now, as he descended deeper into his own mind. Jubilee's voice began to grow faint.

"Who is she anyways? That girl, Skuld... Really seemed off her rocker, ya know?" Busying herself, she tried to forget how useless she had been. Covering a quarter sized hole in a man's shoulder was hard enough with all the blood oozing out, not gushing, she realized. Maybe he was running out of- No, best not to think about that, she decided. What really made it tricky was the costume that he was wearing, it stuck to the torn flesh, and the blood made it very slippery. "I hate spandex."

"You too?" Noir sounded fairly amused at that announcement. "I hear there's a lot of that going around lately." His face felt... Distanced. Probably what Botox injections felt like, he assumed. "Skuld was- Is still, I guess, the youngest of the Norn sisters." His own voice sounded far off too, he noted, he was drifting too far in on himself, shutting out too much of the world around him. He needed to find a balanced state of mind. "And the goddess of the future."

"No- What? A goddess? How much blood did you lose anyways?" There, she had finished covering the hole with tape, and for a moment, recalled how the hole had got there in the first place. That was going to make a great story. Watching a guy speared by a metal rod smashing a sentinel with his bare hands, pulling the thing out of himself, and tossing it like a javelin into the head of another walking death-bot. Too bad there was a vaguely Noir-shaped hole in the mansion now.

"Enough... More than enough." Shaking his head brought the world back, along with the sickening feeling of missing hunks of flesh. Noir stood up and brushed Jubilee's restraining hands away. "I'm fine for now, we've got another wave incoming." Frowning beneith his mask at the incoming shape, barely visible against the night sky, he tentively flexed his muscles. Sharp pain flared along his shoulder, and over his back and ribs. Dull pain pounded everywhere else. He'd live. "I thought these robots were supposed to be smart. They keep comin' straight at us, and we keep knocking them apart."

"More you tha-"

The X insignia on Jubilee's belt strobed for a moment, then lit with a bright red light. "Jubilee? Are you allright? What happened? Respond." Cyclops' terse voice crackling through the belt mounted radio sounded a bit distant, but no less commanding than it usually did.

Heasitating for a moment, Jubilee touched the device lightly. "I'm fine, but Noir's-"

"Fine too, now land your ass and quit yackin'."

"What! Who the he-"

"I'll explain everything when you land. Uh, gotta go, Noir's hurt." Tapping the radio to shut it off, Jubilee gave Noir a semi-stunned look.

"What? Can I help it if I like being an asshole?"

"Now bow before my mi-"

Crack!

"Shut up allready, geez..." Shaking his fist, Mato stepped back slightly from Kevin, staring at the boy in mild surprise. "Usually, people fall down when I hit them in the mouth." He shook his hand again, it was tingling faintly, and that was bad.

"Breaking into what was probably supposed to be triumphant laughter, Kevin, wizard allmighty, struck a dramatic pose. "Your puny fists are no match for the mi-"

Crack!

"Seriously, fall down allready, this is getting old." Rubbing his fist lightly, Mato stepped back and considered his options, limited as they were. He didn't like the idea of using deadly force, even on a loudmouth punk like this kid. "Lemmie guess, stone skin?"

"Iron skin, you half witted dupe! Your feeble blows are nothing compaired to the arcane might I wei- Hey! Let me go!" Dropping his oversized sword, Kevin began flailing his free arm as he was bent over and put into a wrist lock.

"Hard skin doesn't protect your joints so well, does it?" Grinning, Mato slipped his foot between the boy's ankles and tilted his body to the side, grabbing Kevin's other arm by the elbow and pulling it up over his head. "No more spells for you today." Flexing his knees, he pulled the teenaged magic user farther off balance. "Y'know, I'm starting to enjoy this."

That was when the fireball hit them.

To say it hurt a little was an understatement.

Sort of like saying that the sun was largish, and mildly warm.

"Must everyone and their grandmother blast me today!" A cool blue nimbus of light flickered about Mato's body as the heat melted away. Growling under his breath, he was looking in the direction the flaming projectile had come from. "If this is a joke, it's a pretty damn sick one."

Kevin's teeth were chattering, he felt like he had been dumped into a pile of snow in his underwear. "F-f-freezing aura eh?" He smiled weakly, looking up at Mato's face through the wintery glow surrounding them. "It s-s-s-seems that my sis-t-ter was right." He rubbed his hands up and down his biceps in a convulsive gesture, trying to warm his numbed arms.

"Huh?" Mato glanced down at the boy, his face changing into his octopus-walking-down-the-street look. "What the hell's wrong wi- Oh right, the aura. Oops." Dispelling the fridgid air with half a thought, he tilted his head back slightly and smiled. "And a-one, a-two, a-th-"

Another fireball lanced towards them, coming from directly behind this time.

Kevin had the luxury of gawking at the ball of flame as it sizzled underneith them.

"Heh, back attacks are so damn predictable, same damn thing, over and over." Landing lightly on the balls of his feet with poor Kevin slung over his shoulder, he flashed a quick grin in the direction of his attacker. "So, strike two, gonna go for three and give me a good reason to knock you on your ass?"

"Nay." A figure stepped out of a mass of shadows that shouldn't have been there, there was nothing to cast them in the empty werehouse. It was a teenaged girl with short cut brown hair, clad in robes of a different shade of brown. She looked like something out of a fantasy novel, were it not for her baggy bluejeans and a green t-shirt that had 'WTF?' printed on it's front in bold black lettering. "I would not attack thee again, knowing now who thou art." Kneeling, the mystery girl bowed her head. "I hight be Erika, sorceress of the Devonshire clan, my lady."

"Eerrr..."

The girl, Erika, tilted her head to the side, confusion spreading across her face. "Art thou not the goddess my mother spoke of? The goddess of the past, eldest of the Norn sisters?"

"Ooooohhhhh... Thaaaat. Nope." Grinning widely, he dumped the goggling Kevin onto his butt and hitched his thumbs on his pockets.

"But, thou carry the aura of thine-"

"Oh shut up Erika! Allways trying to sound so smart, using that stupid olde english." Kevin hauled himself to his feet and glowered at the girl.

"Stuff it like you stuff your shorts! Mom is so going to kill you for sneaking out while you're grounded!" Erika returned the glare, grinding her teeth.

"The only thing that gets stuffed is your bra!"

"Snot goblin!"

"Mucus ooze!"

"Booger bat!"

"Harpy!"

"That's it! You're a dead man now! Fireb-"

"Ahem, would you mind not flinging explosions in my general direction?" Tapping his foot, Mato stood behind Kevin, arms folded across his chest, wearing a vaguely irritated look.

Blushing slightly, Erika dropped to one knee and bowed her head. "Forgive me my lady, 'twill not happen again."

"Must you keep calling me that? Do I look like a chick to you?"

"Hah hah, screwed up again I see, you'd better get some glasses granny, if you think he looks like a goddess." Grinning nastily, Kevin swept his arm back in what was supposed to be a grand gesture, but instead ended up smacking Mato in the stomach with his elbow. "This is most likely a chosen of the goddess."

Staning up with a "Hmpff!" Erika pointed her finger at Kevin's chest. "You, dear brother, are wrong again, as usual. My divinations have revealed to me that this figure before us is an avatar, a being created by the goddess herself, bearing a portion of her devine powers."

Mato looked as if he had taken a baseball bat to the gut for a moment. "Guuhhh..." Clearing his throat awkwardly, he shook his head and stepped back from the pair. "Errr, maybe now's a good time for me to go."

"No!"

"Wait!"

Stumbling back as the pair turned towards him, Mato tripped over something, flailed his arms wildly to catch his balance, failed, and tipped over, landing on his backside. "Ow..." Sitting up, one of his hands closed over something oddly shaped. Curious, he picked it up and held it close to his face. "Hunh... One of those charm bracelet thingys... But wh- Oh shoot." Bright light flared between his fingers, lighting up the dim warehouse with blinding intensity. "OW! Eyes! Hurt!"

Both Kevin and Erika threw their arms up, sheilding their faces from the sudden blast of white light.

"Ow, serious ow... Anybody got any visine?" Blinking and rubbing his eyes, Mato slowly stood up, shaking his head. His eyeballs felt like they were on fire, but the pain only lasted a few seconds. "Ok, when I figure out who did that, I'll-"

"You'll what?" The voice was familiar, but different at the same time, and it was coming from close by. Very close by.

"...Urd?" Rubbing his eyes one last time, a blurry blot of grey quickly hazed into a clear view of a beautiful woman with a long mane of white hair and copper colored skin. A trio of blue marks adorned her face.

She was Urd, goddess of the past, eldest of the norn sisters, and she was smiling. She was also...

"Completely naked." Grinning like the asshole he claimed to be, he folded his hands behind his head and stared at Urd.

"Erk!" Flushing a dark shade of red, Urd hunched over, attempting to cover herself. "This wasn't supposed to happen!"

"Well, you don't hear me complaining, that's for sure." He was still standing there, grinning like an idiot.

Growling under her breath, Urd flung her hand out at Mato, covering her chest with the other. "Lightning!"

Mato's eyes doubled in size just before the four foot wide bolt of electricity hit him in the chest. "Crap."

Ugh, I had a mild bit of writer's black on this one, plus I had to head out of town for my cousin's wedding, congrats for her, not that she'll ever read this.

SushiiSquirrel - Useless X-men, a plot, and a cup of tea? What more do you need? Mayhaps more of Noir, but I'm doing the best I can. Maybe if more people sent in reviews, I could write better.

Hint hint.

Moonjava - Thanks again, ask for more, get more. It's that simple folks.

mikai - Hey hey hey, language. As you can see, I did get the next chapter out, but not as soon as I liked. I'm sure everybody else is just as eager as you are to see what comes next. I hope.

The chapter title is a little joke of mine, some of you may have heard it before. Heck, I'm not even sure where I heard it from, it's been that long. It was either that, or "Koi da! PANIKKU!" An inside joke of sorts, that'll give those of you who get it a vague hint of... Something.

But boy oh boy, you've gotta wonder what Noir and Mato's respective worlds are like if they take all the chaos in stride like they do.

A world where trees explode for no reason, where there are games where people throw ducks at balloons and nothing's the way it seems.

Then again, maybe we'll pretend I never said that, and get on with our lives?

I kinda like the idea of a teenaged magic user wearing a 'WTF?' t-shirt, maybe it's just me, but I find it funny. Needless to say, I think Erika is one of my favorite characters, for now... She's coming off as a bossy sister type, but maybe she has a reason for it? I was planning on punking her out a little, but I gave her a bit of inner geek, hence the t-shirt, so the most punk she may get will probably be a wallet chain.

Does anybody else find those things as tacky as I do?

Obviously, Erika's role model is Lina Inverse. If you get that, you'll see a lot of jokes coming then. Casting a fireball at your own brother may sound mean, but remember, he probably cast ghoul touch on her entire underear drawer at least once in the past year. Probably because she cast invisibility on his gym clothes. Probably because he cast chill touch on her suntan lotion. Probably because she cast shocking grasp on his jockstrap.

My, you can bet their mother grounds them a lot.