Her hips swiveled as she walked away from the charred body of a once-was man with the barely restrained danger of a wild animal. She cracked the knuckles in her fingers and rolled her shoulders so that her vertebrae released sickening snaps as well, relieving the tension pent in between her shoulders.

She gave one last glance at the feral man's body and vaguely wondered what his mutation had been.

He'd have to be one hell of a healer to bounce back from the little shock she had just given him.

What had he called her- Anna? It was a pretty name. But, it just didn't feel appropriate. Anna sounded like a sweet kid. Whatever Anna was now was far from sweet. So, she'd stay nameless. Anna didn't need to be remembered as the girl who took down mutants.

She shrugged and shook out the kinks in her arms and legs as she walked away. She paused at a closet in what used to be a hallway, where she stole a trench coat that looked like it had belonged to the visor guy, and thus dragged against the ground and fell over her fingers. She also snagged a pair of gloves that had three holes torn into the back and pair of black boots that were a good four sizes too big and had obviously been constructed for battle. No sense in taking out an entire train's worth of people in her travels.

X-men down, Brotherhood and Acolytes to go.

Unless, of course, she was completely forgetting someone.

The crashing sound of a small scale explosion echoed down the hallway to her left . She stopped dead. No. She hadn't forgotten anyone. There were eight X-men. She'd taken down nine.

In fact, if anything, she was overachieving today.

We should go overachieve by the pantry… She jumped slightly as a voice sounded in her head. She catalogued this among her abilities in stead of assuming she was insane. I'm pretty sure they have some sugar cookies here. Personally, I prefer tacos, but sugar cookies are the breakfast of champions.

What? She thought.

Don't mind him, Deadpool just likes to talk. You should probably get a telepath to take care of him. Another voice called. Great. Not only did she have voices in her head, but there was more than one.

Her muscles tensed again as she chose to ignore the voices, which were now arguing about the dietary destitute one would encounter if they ate sugar cookies for breakfast and followed the sound of destruction down the hall.

-

Remy fell out of the elevator and made sharp contact with the ground. The hard wood started to glow violently with the contact it was making with his exposed upper body.

"Merde!" He planted his hands firmly on the wood and -with an effort- pulled back the charge. He shakily returned to his standing position. "Jus' don't touch anything'… or get close to… or look at…" He reminded himself in almost a whine.

He hated this part. He really did.

Closing his eyes solidly and keeping a firm grip on his trousers so as to pull the accidental charge that kept leaking into them, he navigated the mansion out of the memory of the blueprints.

His skin burned with unused energy. It rolled off of him in waves. So long as he kept moving and out of direct contact with anything nothing should spontaneously blow up… should being the operative word there, but lately Remy had noticed a trend in his life where what 'should' happen and what 'does' happen differ slightly.

Like what 'should' happen is that he should survive long enough to get the girl and live happily ever after. What was going to happen was that he was going to accidentally blow himself up if said girl didn't show up in the next four minutes.

Remy tripped over a soft mass laid out on the ground that he was positive hadn't been there before. In a blur of limbs and curses he pulled the charge simultaneously out of the object, the floor, and his own pants.

What the hell did he just trip over?

Cautiously, Remy opened his eyes.

Well… shit.

It was Deadpool. It took a good little knock to get Deadpool to shut up.

"Merde, merde, merde!" He cursed as Deadpool's body started to glow under his stare. He put a hand on his back and absorbed the burn. Why? …He actually wasn't quite sure after he was done uncharging him. Deadpool's healing factor could take a little explosion.

Now he just felt silly.

Remy shrugged his shoulders slightly and stood up.

"AH!" He cried out in shock, tried to uncharge his pants again, stumbled into the wall, leant his shoulder into the wall to uncharge that as well, fell back down to the ground and finally managed to get everything back to its original color and state of dormancy. He righted himself and backed up slowly, so as not to agitate any further wrath from his burning skin… right into a vase.

"God. Dammit."

The little vase turned slightly pink before he could suck the energy out of it.

Bang!

Remy clutched his stomach where a shard of once-was vase lodged itself, the issue there being that just because it was taking up residence in his skin doesn't mean that it wouldn't explode. In fact, it would just make a bigger, more gory, bang.

The most grotesque, vile curses he could think of ran over his tongue as he dug a burning piece of pottery out of his burning skin in the middle of a soon-to-be-burning hallway. The power that he had wanted to be rid of built up inside of his chest.

It all concentrated in a smoldering feeling in the center of his chest that made it hard for him to breathe. It wasn't so much the pressure of the energy being stored, but the fear that he was going to lose control of it -that it was going to eat him alive- that forced him to keep moving. He had to finish this before it got out of control.

He stumbled forward.

-

She crept up silently behind him as he blundered forward. His eyes were shut so tight it looked painful… in fact, he just looked in pain. That, however, could be awarded to the bleeding wound just below his rib cage.

A little part of her wanted to reach out and comfort him. She didn't. That would have been illogical.

The voice in her head started singing 'Do you wanna touch me' and she grunted with annoyance.

The man stopped.

"Cherie?" The word came out as a rasp. French.

She found that she understood English and German very well, but French escaped her. Was he addressing her or just making a statement?

"I'm sorry?" She said. She genuinely wanted to know what he was communicating.

He leaned against a wall, one hand pressed flat against the wall, the other wrapped around the bleeding hole in his abdomen, and did something with his lips that looked like a pout.

"Y'r accent's gone." He mumbled.

"I had an accent?" The thought hit her like a ton of bricks. One of the people inside of her head threw a memory at her.

"Ah swear tah Jesus, if Ah get hit with anothah dart-." The man with the visor watched her clutch her neck, held upright by the grip around her waist the other man had.

"My Mississippi river rat." He smirked affectionately.

"Yours?" She tilted her head despite the fact that he still couldn't see her.

"No…" He sighed. "Not mine. Y' weren't mine. I don' deserve y'."

The look on his face as he pinned his hands to the ground held so much emotion, the little brunette girl couldn't even begin to comprehend it. The floor glowed a violent pink.

"Aren't you going to run from me? Fight me? Something?" All of the other mutants had made to get away from her or fight her off, obviously aware of her intentions. He didn't move.

"Non." He said weakly. "I've been waitin' for y'."

He was shaking in the back of the plane. The blue demon-like man watched him, concerned. What was he going to do this time? What was he going to sacrifice to get the girl back again?

"Why?" Her head tilted still farther.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. She gasped.

In the short amount of time she had been given to take in a develop new information and memories of her own she had leaned enough to be positive that she would never encounter anything as beautiful as this man's eyes.

Her objective tugged at her, but she was otherwise preoccupied at the moment.

The red and black eyes that he had revealed to her scanned her in a way that suggested her was trying to commit something to memory. Her. He was trying to commit her to memory.

"Dere was dis bad man, y'see," He started, closing his eyes again. "An' he told me dat de only way t' get ma cherie back was with 'impossible amounts of natural energy'. At de time I had a good damn amount of natural energy dat she could absorb naturally, but not 'impossible' amounts. As fate would have it, because as we all know, sort est une grosse chienne*, the only thing I could do t' save her was t' undo the very same damn thing that got me into this mess. It nearly killed me the first time. It's absolutely going to kill me now." And the truth of his words rang out. He was going to die. For his 'cherie'.

She didn't understand.

"I don't understand."

No sense in complicating emotions.

"You, Rogue. 'm doin' dis f'r you."

Rogue - unorthodox and unpredictable: acting independently and using unorthodox methods that are unpredictable and are likely to cause trouble.

Now that was appropriate.

"Why?" She -Rogue- asked again, wishing his eyes were open so that she could look into them.

The people in her head bombarded her with memories. They were about them. Every move he had made around her, every smirk, every glance. Every time he had come sprinting to her rescue.

She already knew the answer before he said it.

"Je t'aime." He mumbled as he took a step forward and pulled her into a kiss. She had no problem understanding his meaning this time.

I love you.

She felt the pull of her mutation kicking in, only this time it was so much different. She absorbed the energy that was exuding from him and none of his personality. Some of his stronger emotions leaked through. Fear, anxiety, adoration, longing, want, need, love. But, where she had pulled out the other's souls after their energy was spent, there was to much energy in him for her to absorb.

He cradled her face with his hands, holding her close to him as he gently expressed his love with his kiss. Stunned at first to much to react, slowly her physical reaction was purely based on instinct. She pulled him closer and laced her fingers into his hair.

Her emotional response took a little more explanation. Love was a useless emotion. Watch it in action now. This man was giving up his life to save the girl he loved who couldn't even remember his real name. At the same time, she wished with all of her heart she could. Most of all, she didn't want to push away what he was offering. Love. It was an appealing emotion. She would have stayed in his arms for the rest of eternity if she could have managed, but had to push him away when her skin started burning.

"Ah!" She screamed with pain, arching her back and clawing at the concentration of the burning sensation in her lower back, at the base of her spine.

"Merde!" The man cursed in French, he opened his eyes and they both shared a stunned half a second to see that he was still conscious.

Her clothes started glowing pink.

He yanked off the jacket and started to unchargeit, but it was already to late for the rest of her clothes and whatever it was that was lodged under her skin. In a last ditch effort to keep that man out of harm's way, she pushed him roughly away from her and her burning skin.

It was seconds before the burning turned into actual fire.

-

Logan woke up and found that he couldn't feel his body. Which wasn't odd considering he was just shot with lightning. Hell, he should be freaking ecstatic to be able to form a thought coherent enough to realize that he couldn't feel his body.

He stayed on the ground where he had fallen until his muscles and nerves healed enough that he could successfully command them again.

Eventually, he stood.

"Ah!" A familiar voice screamed with so much concentrated pain that Logan couldn't help but wince.

"Merde!" Another familiar voice. Logan took off at a sprint in that direction. …An effort that was greatly hindered when he was blown back several meters by an explosion.