Disclaimer: I do not own X-men: Evolution.

Chapter 14

It had been two weeks since they had moved into the base. After hearing Lance's story, Magneto simply lead everyone to another part of the base that functioned as a barracks of sorts, for anticipated new recruits. It was simply one large room filled with bunk beds and footlockers. The Brotherhood spread out from each other as best as they could in order to give each of them a modicum of personal space. While they were moving in, Magneto took Mastermind and Amara with him, and Amara hadn't been seen since. After that first day, their schedule for each day consisted of nearly the same thing that it had back at the brotherhood house. Wake up, eat breakfast, train or work out most of the day, and then spend the evening however you liked. However, due to Lance's destruction of the bedrooms their options to entertain themselves were limited to sitting on their bed doing nothing, or sitting in the "rec" room watching movies with everyone else.

Needless to say, morale wasn't particularly high.

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Moments after Apocalypse's defeat

The cavern that imprisoned Apocalypse for five thousand years shuddered once before a fantastic burst of light appeared. The stale air began flowing outward, displaced from its position by the Eye of Ages. It was not however, the same vessel that was last seen by Wolverine and Rogue. This one spun awkwardly through the air before landing hard on the floor below it. In addition to the haphazard landing, it was smoking, and looked to have decayed from ages of disuse and decay. If anyone had been there so see the vehicle, they would have seen it being opened rather forcefully from the inside, the door torn open rather than sliding softly, as was its design. Out of the sundered door stepped a man. Or at least, it appeared to be a man. He was tall and thin, but fit. Two things made him stand out from any other figure that you might see every day though. For one, his skin was blue, and appeared to be covered in wires and thin blue plates. As for the other, he had metal gauntlets and boots on, and had a machine attached to his back.

Apocalypse dropped down from the vehicle he had been imprisoned in and breathed in the fresher air of the cave. As he knelt down, he examined his surroundings, hoping to garner some bit of information that might tell him what time he was in when he felt them.

His horsemen! They were still active!

He reached out to them mentally, trying to gain control, but even as he did his best to retain it, their minds slipped away from his, as the devices he used to control them failed.

He roared out in rage, shaking the cavern he was in, trying to make the world feel his power. There was no response from anyone or anything, which served to anger him even more.

How could he have been defeated? His technology was much more advanced than all others. Nothing should have been able to break through the spheres that protected his pyramids, and even if it could, there was nothing on the earth that would have been able to damage his pyramids. He was too advanced. Their primitive minds had no hope of even grasping the basics of the machines he had built and controlled.

Yet, when he had been freed from his prison a group of his own kind appeared, using the Eye to travel. In addition, those machines had been able to break through the spheres that even he had thought were impenetrable.

His face changed to an ugly grimace as he turned to look back at the Eye of Ages. Twice! He had been defeated twice by his own technology! It was obvious that the machines were not worth using anymore. They only lead to defeat, and this world had progressed much since his own time. Technology alone would not be sufficient to conquer and rule.

He rose and focused his power on the already damaged vessel. He had forcefully arrested its traveling and used the devices that he had merged with to force its return to the Earth. However, it had not been easy, and it had taken a long time in order to do it. A very long time. His sense of time had difficulty tracking how long he had been in it this time, but he estimated that it had taken at least several centuries, if not a millennium. It was pure chance that it had returned to the same time that it had left, but this had given him the opportunity to rebuild his great empire from the ground up. This time however, with the pure power of his own kind, and without the machines.

In moments the Eye of Ages began to glow a soft blue as he poured more of his power into it. Then, when he deemed that it had absorbed enough of his energy, he suddenly clenched his fist and released his hold over that energy. The soft glow suddenly turned into a blinding white light and the power roared. It would have deafened any other being on the planet, but would not phase Apocalypse in the slightest. He turned and left the cavern that the fragments of the Eye were cooling in.

There was one more thing that he needed to be rid of in order to start anew. It would hurt, but he was no stranger to pain. Pain gave strength, and he would not fear it. He looked down at himself and grabbed at the strange power that resided in him.

The machines that were attached to him begin to glow much like the Eye had moments before. Soon the glow of the machines seemed to bleed off of them and onto his body, spreading over it. Apocalypse looked down at his body and saw that he was ready to remove the devices that were literally part of him, merged into his body at its most base level. He clenched his fist and resolved not to shut his eyes as his body exploded.

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'Mesmero...'

'Mesmero...'

'It is your master. Awaken, for there is much to do.'

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Present Time

Wanda was terrified. The nightmares had been getting worse ever since she moved into the base with the rest of the Brotherhood. She lay in bed, unmoving for fear of attracting the attention of something she didn't know. Toad's snoring overrode the sounds of the others' breathing, but if she waited long enough she could begin identifying each person's breathing and know where everyone else in the room was.

She wouldn't be able to fall back asleep tonight. Whenever she woke up from the nightmares she wasn't able to. They were coming three or four times a week now, and the lack of sleep was beginning to show. She tried to hide how tired she was, but Remy had begun noticing that she was even more lethargic than normal, and even Fred had asked her if she was alright the day before.

The problem was that she couldn't shake the feeling that the dreams were real. The emotions she felt in them were so strong that she couldn't just dismiss them. She had heard of repressed memories before, and wasn't able to shake the possibility that she had done so to her own memories. But when? She hadn't had a bad childhood or abusive parent. Her brother and father were always there for her, even when she was at her lowest, like when her cat died. But nowadays, for some reason she couldn't remember his name. In fact, she didn't even feel bad anymore that he died. It was probably simply because she had gotten over it, but something just didn't seem right. She remembered crying for days when he died, but she didn't remember any strong feelings of the event at that time. In addition, she just wasn't someone that would have acted like that. She never cried. Yet she remembered crying a lot as a child. Sometime from her childhood memories and that hazy period where she didn't remember much up until she joined the Brotherhood she had become a different person.

Maybe something had happened to her, and nobody was willing to talk about it. Her brother or father would have told her though, unless they didn't want her to remember, like if it was something really bad. Or maybe, they thought that she knew what happened so there was no reason to ever talk about it.

A sudden snort from Toad brought her back to reality and she clutched the bed tightly, too afraid to move again.

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"Pietro?"

Uh oh. His sister was in "that mood" again where she wanted to spend time with him and talk about when they were younger. Before she could even begin wording the next sentence she was about to speak he had already thought of an excuse and turned to face her at nearly the same speed a normal human would when addressed.

"Yeah sis?" He asked pleasantly, with a fake smile on his face.

She stopped for a moment, seeming to deliberate on whether or not she should continue.

'Please no. Come on, you don't want to talk right now. It's getting pretty hard to keep coming up with good excuses for whenever you want to talk about this shit.'

She saw something on his face that made her stop as she opened her mouth again, and shook her head.

"Never mind."

Pietro put a quizzical look on his face, followed by a concerned one after what he thought was an acceptable amount of time. "Alright. Hey, I'm always here for you if you need anything."

"Sure." She responded curtly, before turning and walking back to the dormitory.

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Lance was the only other one in the room when she walked in. She considered leaving, since she wanted to be left alone, but decided that he wouldn't bother her too much, especially if he knew what was good for him. She moved to her bed to sulk in her own thoughts, but couldn't help but be distracted by her roommates actions.

As she watched he continually mumbled to himself, and alternated between sitting on his bed facing away from her and walking around in the small space between bunks. He walked as if agitated, and would stop every now and then to place both hands on his head as if he had yet another headache.

He would suddenly go rigid as his muscles tensed up tightly before continuing his pattern of walking or sitting, always mumbling. She couldn't hear what he was saying, but presumed it involved...well, she didn't know. Back at the brotherhood house he mumbled to himself a lot up in his room. The others had told her to simply leave him alone when he did so, so she did.

Without any warning he suddenly spun and slammed a fist into the steel wall next to him. The sound jolted her out of her thoughts, and she realized she had been staring at him. He turned towards her, with a dark scowl on his face that made him positively ugly, before marching out of the room.

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A/N: Well, since I fail at making regular updates, I simply have to ask that you all bear with me while I continue sucking. Now, as for this chapter and the last. Last chapter consisted of what actually happened in the base when Lance and Amara were there, and Lance's story left out a lot of parts and was pretty much a bland summary, which would have been boring to write, and would have denied all of you guys a partial action scene.

Now as for this chapter, Apocalypse is back! However, he won't be doing much for a while, but it's important that we know he is back even if the characters don't. What actually happened in the Eye of Ages is that he was stuck traveling through time for about a thousand years or so before he managed to reprogram the machine while it was spinning and use his powers to get it to stop, coincidentally at the only landing zone left for it in this time zone, at exactly the time he left. We'll all have to blame Wolverine and Rogue for not making him stay gone for more than a second or two, but that's another story for another day.

Not too much happening in this chapter, and not much action in the next either, but it should pick up in a few once the Brotherhood finally gets settled in and is ready to perform missions. Once again, thanks for reading, and I'm always open to constructive criticism. Catch you all later.