Chapter 25

Rivalry

At Bayville High

"So you're not going to be here later?" Jean asked Dean.

They were sitting outside of school, enjoying the brief time they had before class.

"I'm afraid not, I'm going to visit my parents for the day." Dean mentioned.

Jean pouts, "I was hoping we could spend some quality time together today"

Dean put his arm around her, "Don't worry, we will. I just have to get the rest of my things from back home, plus I haven't seen my parents in a while."

"Alright but when are you going to get back?" she asked.

"It all depends on if my mother makes food or not, then anything goes." He admits to her.

"Sadly I can't argue with that, your mom is a fantastic cook. Hey maybe she can teach Kitty how to cook." She suggested.

"Why what's wrong with Kitty's cooking?" he asked.

"Kitty messes up everything she tries to make. One time she made muffins that were harder than rocks, you could've played soft ball with them" she joked.

They both shared a brief laugh.

Dean stops laughing as he sniffs something funny in the air. It kind of smells like Logan after he uses the Danger room for an hour, wet dog. He looks around and spots the Brotherhood hanging out not too far away from him with someone new with them.

The guy stood about his own height, had a long black haired Mohawk, onyx colored eyes, and a tattoo going down his arm. He was also wearing a black tank-top with black jeans. His stench reminded him of Logan, and so did his face. His face would have looked exactly like he pictured a young Logan, except with Sabertooth's body size and his dark cold eyes. Now those were a pair of eyes he would never forget; the eyes of a raging animal that just wanted to rip you apart and eat you. And to top it all off he was giving Dean a dirty look, he didn't know why but something in his gut told him that this guy would be trouble.

Jean noticed something strange about Dean's sudden reaction, "Hey, what's wrong?" she asked.

Dean looked at her and back at the guy again, "Nothing" he said, "Nothing at all"

Later on that day Dean had finished his last class of the day and he was eager to just get out of here and go.

He meets up with the rest of the gang as they all usually do after classes finish.

"So you're not going to be here later?" Kitty asked.

"Yeah I'm going to my place to get the rest of my stuff." Dean answered.

"Oh and I was going to bake cookies today" Kitty sounded disappointed.

"Oh hell no! Dean I'm coming with you man, I don't wanna be anywhere near Kitty's cooking." Evan said backing away from her.

"Shut up!" Kitty yelled, "My cooking isn't that bad!"

"You're right Kitty, it's not bad" Kurt said resulting in everyone eyeballing him for such a statement, "It's a catastrophe"

That resulted in everyone but Kitty laughing their asses off.

Kitty started chasing Kurt around the hallways, "I'll show you a catastrophe! Get back here!"

Everyone laughs at the site of Kitty trying to catch Kurt.

Not too far away from them Dave and Stoney were getting their things from their lockers. At the moment Dave was enjoying his soda while he waited for Stoney.

"Will you hurry up? I wanna get out of here." Dave said sipping his soda.

"Dude its called patience, learn it bro" Stoney said getting the last of his books.

Dave turned around and suddenly somebody bumped into him resulting in them getting soda all over their black tank-top and black jeans.

Dave looked up at the guy with the black haired Mohawk; his face looked extremely pissed off.

"Uh-oh" Dave gulped.

The guy lifted Dave up by his shirt with one tattooed arm and pinned him to the lockers, "Look what you did to my clothes meatbag!" he growled.

"I-I'm sorry" Dave stuttered, "I didn't see you"

Stoney was frozen in place from fear.

"You're dead meat!" the guy pulled back his fist ready to punch his face in.

Dave closed his eyes and waited for the impact but it never came. He opened his eyes to find the guy's fist caught by somebody else. He looks over and sees that Dean caught his fist.

"You let him go or your stained clothes will be stained with red next" Dean said looking stern and unafraid of this guy.

The other guy flashed him a cocky grin, "Why don't you make me, tough guy" he said provoking him.

"Then I will" Dean sent powerful fist into the guy's chest sending him sliding back.

Dave dropped down and ran behind Dean.

The other guy got right back up like it was nothing and readied himself, "Big mistake" he said.

They both prepared themselves for a fight but before they could start someone yelled, "What is going on here!"

They look back and find Principal Darkholme stomping up to them, "I will not allow such behavior in my school, is that clear?!" she yelled at both of them.

Dean backs off but the other guy simply growled in return.

"I said is that clear Daken?" she asked getting closer to him eyeballing him.

Daken turns around and walks outside without another word.

Mystique is angered at her new recruit's uncontrollable anger. At times he could be the calmest person around but the smallest things could change his attitude and make him do a 180. It is also difficult to control him when he is vastly superior to her in physical ability.

Dean passes by Principal Darkholme, "Why don't you try keeping a leash on your dog Mystique" he said in a low voice.

Mystique doesn't reply to Dean's remark, she knows he'll get what's coming to him soon enough.

Dean goes back over to his teammates.

"What was that about?" Jean asked.

"I think Mystique brought another person into their group" Dean admitted.

"You mean that guy who you just hit?" Scott asked leaving aside the part where he shouldn't have hit somebody.

"Yeah, and from the looks of it he's pretty tough." He looks at his hand, "He took one of my weaker punches like it was nothing, and I can only imagine what that might mean for my full strength."

"This could be a problem Ja" Kurt said.

"We should definitely tell the Professor about this, he'll want to know" Scott said.

As they were leaving the school, Dean and Jean were on his bike ready to leave.

Dean could see Daken from far away giving him a dirty look again.

"What are you going to do?" Jean asked him.

"I don't know, but I suddenly get the feeling that it's a bad idea for me to leave"

Later on at the Boarding house

Mystique was excited to see how her new member would go up against Dean. Although his sort of loose cannon behavior might be an issue, one that could endanger their mission.

The Brotherhood came in all dressed up to fight. Daken came down last with his own unique uniform. It was a black suit that covered his whole body except for his mouth similar to the one Wolverine had. He had bandage wrapped his hands and feet, he wore black boots over the wrapping on his feet, and where there would be black by his eyes like Wolverine's his had white covering his eyes.

"I still don't agree with your plan, I should just fight him as soon as I see him" Daken pleaded.

"You will not, if this is to work you have to take them by surprise. And don't you think about disobeying my orders, or else Magneto will know about it." Mystique warned.

Daken growls in response.

"That's what I thought" Mystique said.

At the Institute

Scott and Jean were in the Professor's study discussing what they had seen earlier today.

"So you are saying that this Daken could be another mutant?" the Professor asked.

"If what Dean said is true then he must be" Scott admitted.

"It seems that the Brotherhood has caught up to us in manpower, but whether this Daken will tip the scale is yet to be seen." The Professor said.

Jean just remembered something, "Oh Professor, Dean also mentioned to me that Daken had a striking resemblance to Logan; although I have no idea how that would be important."

That is where Jean might be wrong. With Logan's past a clouded mystery, and his troubling broken memories of him being experimented on, this could mean more that it seems.

All of a sudden an alarm goes off in the house and gunfire can be heard from the outside.

Everyone is suited up and ready to fight when they go outside to check what's going on. They find a couple of scorched spots from the laser turrets and a letter on the ground.

Scott picks up the letter and reads it.

Dear losers, unless you want us to start causing trouble around town, meet us by the scrap yard in 30 minutes.

"I think Pietro left this" Scott said handing it to the Professor, "and it looks like those new defenses Logan put up work just fine."

"Can't have anybody sneaking in and out of here whenever they want now can we" Logan admitted.

"I suggest you get a move on then" Charles told Scott, "Logan I need you to take the x-jet and retrieve Dean. They will need him for this even if he's late."

The X-men arrive at the scrapyard. They walk through the piles of old abandoned cars and other kinds of scrap metal.

All of a sudden the ground shakes violently and the piles of cars around them wobble and start to rain down upon them.

Cyclops blasts one. Marvel Girl telekinetically moves one away. Shadowcat phases through one that was falling on top of her. Nightcrawler teleports out of the way taking Spyke with him.

A sudden earthquake seems unlikely so that leaves one other possibility and as the X-men regroup across from them have appeared Quicksilver, Blob, Toad, Avalanche, Phantazia, and Fever Pitch.

"Hey X-geeks!" Avalanche yells insultingly, "Did you miss us?"

"Hardly, let's do this Alvers!" Cyclops yelled.

Avalanche's eyes roll back into the back of his head as he sets the ground in motion again pushing the X-men off balance while Quicksilver runs in and Blob picks up a car and throws it at them. Toad hops from one of the fallen cars to another bringing himself into a good position to try and spit slime into one of the X-men's faces and blind them. Fever Pitch powers up and flies up high to get a vantage point for him to sort of 'snipe'. Phantazia stays right where she is ready to blast anyone she can catch.

A little while earlier

As Dean is sitting in his living room with his parents he gets this weird feeling that he should go back for some reason.

"So tell me, how's it going with you and Jean?" his mother asked him waking him up from his daydream.

"Um its going good, a little slow but good." Dean admits.

"Now keep in mind, you promised to stop fooling around like you did with those other girls. Jean is a very nice girl, one that I wouldn't mind having my grandchildren." His mother said washing dishes.

Dean sighs, "Geese Ma can you stop with that, I'm only sixteen"

"But not for long, and she's a keeper." His mother reminded him.

His father was reading the paper while watching the Knicks game, "Honey leave the kid alone, and he's got other things to worry about."

"I just want him to have beautiful children one day, not be stuck as a playboy"

"Ma I know" he admits, "I want to find the right girl for me it's just that—"he pauses.

"It's just that what?" his mother said.

Dean gets up, "I think someone is here to see me" he goes to the window and spots the X-jet approaching. 'I knew I heard it right' he runs outside with his stuff.

The X-jet lands and Logan comes out in uniform, "Kid we got trouble"

"I'm gone for a few hours and boom look what happens"

The fight at the scrap yard continued and everyone has their hands full.

Toad and Nightcrawler end up battling over the piles of cars and junk seeing whose agility is better.

Marvel Girl and Phantazia are duking it out with their powers trying to overcome one another.

Blob has managed to catch Rogue's arm as she attacked him (after she absorbed a good portion of his power) and is now spinning around while Avalanche uses his powers to keep Cyclops off balance to prevent him from firing an accurate shot.

Blob lets Rogue fly and she crashes into a pile of scrap some distance across the yard. He shouts triumphantly, "Ha!" only for something to tickle him as Cyclops finally manages to hit him. "I'm the Blob! You can't stop me!" he yells as he runs right at Cyclops as Marvel Girl grabs Blob with her telekinesis and manages to stop him for now.

Phantazia goes to take advantage of the situation by sending a small blast towards her but Cyclops matches it with his own optic blast.

Avalanche is about to intervene when Rogue tackles him from behind, "Not so fast!"

Avalanche gets back up looking irritated, "Get lost Rogue!" he reaches out and makes the ground shake creating a wave that rolls along the ground at Rogue who manages to catch it and ride it back before having to jump off it as it collides with more scrap from behind her.

Quicksilver dodges some of Spyke's spikes, "You are still so slow Daniels," he taunts his long time rival, "You couldn't hit me standing still"

Spyke produces spikes along the entire length of his arm, "Try dodging this!" he yells as he fires them at Quicksilver who not only dodges them but catches them as well.

He smirks, "My turn!" he then throws them back but at speeds much faster than Spyke can manage and they end up pinning him Spyke to a car by his uniform. Quicksilver is just admiring his handy work when he spots Shadowcat phasing through all of Fever Pitch's attacks.

'What an amateur' he thought, 'I could take care of her easily'

All of a sudden spikes fly at him and pin him to a car.

"You gotta pay attention slowpoke" Spyke said removing the rest of the spikes from his uniform.

Fever Pitch is getting very aggravated at how this little girl can just dodge whatever he throws at her. He throws another fireball but she just phases through it again.

"You know you're never going to hit me like that" Shadowcat said with a cute smile.

Fever Pitch's head starts blazing with uncontrolled flames and he squeezes his fiery bone hands into fists.

Shadowcat can tell that he's definitely pissed off.

Fever Pitch opens his mouth and exhales a wave of fire that fully encompasses Shadowcat. When he stops he finds no trace of her, did he accidentally disintegrate her?

Shadowcat phases out of the ground behind Fever Pitch ready to strike him but before she could something hit her so hard she knocked into Fever Pitch and dropped to the floor unconscious.

Marvel Girl was blocking Phantazia's incoming attacks with her TK shield.

"You're never going to get through" Marvel Girl said.

Phantazia's face grew a wicked grin, "I have a feeling my luck is about to change"

All of a sudden something hits Marvel Girl in the back knocking her over making her lose focus resulting in her TK shield to collapse and one of Phantazia's blasts hit her.

Marvel Girl looks back but see's no one there, 'what just happened?' she thought. She looks forward to see Phantazia approaching. Marvel Girl attempts to use her telekinesis but when she tries nothing happens. "What happened? Why aren't my powers working?"

"It's a side effect of being hit with my Electromagnetic blasts; it tampers with your powers." Phantazia said before blasting her again knocking her out cold.

Cyclops spotted this, "Jean!" he yelled.

With his momentary distraction Cyclops was swallowed up into a fissure that Avalanche made and was quickly closed in trapping his hands along with the lower part of his body.

"Looks like you're stuck Summers" Avalanche said mockingly.

Cyclops struggled to free his hands but the hold was too tight for him, "Alvers when I get out of here I'm gonna—"

"You won't be going anywhere or be doing anything" Avalanche said taking the visor off of Cyclops's eyes.

Cyclops immediately closed his eyes as to not accidentally hurt anybody.

Nightcrawler see's this from afar and decides to go help. Toad jumps down in his path to stop him but Nightcrawler is finished playing and as Toad's tongue lashes out he grabs it and yanks Toad hard before tossing the gangly teen out of the way.

Nightcrawler leaps into the air to jump over the scrap but in mid air something takes hold of his tail and swings him into a car head first really hard knocking the wind out of him. He looks up but sees a blurred dark figure standing above him before the lights go out.

Rogue was having trouble handling Blob with just the one power she had, especially when he had more of it.

'What would Dean do in this situation?' she thought.

She thought back to when he demonstrated his impressive kick on the sliding heavy bag, "the power of the kick itself needs to be precise and needs to be focused" his voice echoes in her mind. Focused and precise, got it. All she needed now was an opening.

Rogue comes closer to Blob to provoke him into attacking, which he does. It is way more difficult for Rogue to dodge than it is for Dean but she still has a slight edge on speed.

She sees Blob pulling back a left punch so she ducks underneath the obvious attack and replies with a well focused and precise front kick to Blob's chest sending him flying into a bunch of old broken cars.

"Yes! Ah did it!" she cheered for herself.

All of a sudden something knocks her on her back, she looks up to see Phantazia pretending to clap, "Congratulations, here's your prize" she blasted Rogue rendering her unconscious.

Quicksilver gathered up pieces of scrap and started throwing them at Spyke from every direction.

"Time to show you just how fast I am Daniels, are you ready? Try and stop me!" Quicksilver runs some distance away before running around and running right at Spyke; although Quicksilver is forced to stop halfway because Daken stood in his way.

"Hey what are you doing?! I'm in the middle of something here!" he yelled.

"Go help the others gather up the X-men, I'll take care of the porcupine" Daken said facing Spyke.

Quicksilver hesitates to further argue out of fear for his own neck.

The rest of the Brotherhood gather up all the unconscious X-men in a pile and Blob ties a metal bar around them just in case.

"This is supposed to hold them?" Avalanche asked.

"Their powers are gone for now and they are all going to be unconscious for a while, so don't worry about it. Let's just watch Daken take care of the last one" Phantazia said.

"So where's your friend?" Daken asked with a cocky grin.

"He's not here right now, but he'll be here soon" Spyke said trying to buy him some time.

"What's the matter, he chicken?" Daken said.

"He's not afraid of you, he's not afraid of any of you" he points to them all.

Daken laughs, "Well kid, you're about to find out why he should be" he said approaching Spyke slowly.

Spyke sprouted spikes all over his arms and proceeded to fire them at Daken hoping to slow him down.

As Daken moves at a faster pace and gets closer he makes the slightest movements to dodge Spyke's attacks.

Spyke starts to get really nervous and it shows through his sweaty brow.

Daken starts running while dodging in perfect sync.

Spyke slides underneath Daken at the last possible moment and uses his spiked arm to stop himself and turn around for a sweep. Spyke's sweep was ineffective to Daken's solid stance.

Daken kicks Spyke in the face lightly (at least by his standards) and Spyke goes skidding along the ground.

Spyke wipes his face with his sleeve and see's red, by the looks and feels of that one hit he must have broken his nose; and he didn't seem to put much effort into it anyway.

"C'mon kid, the least you can do is make it fun for me" Daken said approaching again.

Spyke quickly got up and produced a staff like spike.

"A weapon huh, let's see how durable it is" he said with a cocky grin.

Spyke tries to use the staff to the best of its ability and keep a good amount of distance between him and Daken but sadly he's not that good with it.

Daken grabs the staff by the end of it and uses it to pull Spyke closer to him in order to give him a good gut punch.

As Spyke falls to the floor holding his aching stomach, Daken holds the staff in his hands and breaks it in two without any effort. "Play time is over kid" he said like he really meant it.

Spyke panics and covers his whole body with spikes to provide at least some kind of protection.

Daken lifts him up by his shirt, "You think those spikes of yours are gonna do any good? Think again!" Daken started smashing the spikes off of Spyke's body a few at a time.

Spyke keeps trying to protect himself by constantly producing more spikes but they don't last more than two seconds.

Daken starts to laugh sadistically, "C'mon spike boy, can't you do any better?!"

"HEY!" they hear all of a sudden.

Daken stops his attack and looks to where it came from as does the rest of the Brotherhood on the sidelines.

The Brotherhood spots Achilles in full uniform pumped up and ready to fight, "Put him down!"