A/N: Please read and review!

The fire sprung up around the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and it inched closer to them, making all reluctantly stand closely to each other. It was a way to lose face against the Brotherhood.

I raised my hand and closed my fist, and the flames moved straight to me moved straight towards me. My other hand caught the slowly forming fireball. Pyro looked at me, and he had a quick succession of surprise, fear, and anger. It would have been pretty comical if this wasn't a serious situation.

Magneto looked at us, and he wore an expression of disgust. "You would work with your slave masters?"

He spoke in a voice that could be heard by large groups of people, and he stressed the right words to stir the hearts and minds of his followers.

I clenched my fist, and the fire went out as I walked towards him. Chase tried to grab my arm to keep me from being out in the open, but I shook his hold away from me. There was some movement from the side of the agents, but I slightly looked up at Magneto, not wanting to fully look up at him as a sign of weakness.

Magneto seemed to be a little amused, but it melted away when I didn't say anything to him. I didn't really react to what he was telling me. It was like I didn't really care about anything he would tell me. I raised out one hand, and the Mutant who tried to sneak up on me had to back away to not be burned by me.

He looked at the rest of the X-Men. "I gave you a chance." He seemed to be bothered by what he was about to do. "If you are not with us, then you are against us."

He disappeared as an older member of the Brotherhood, Azazel, removed him to a different location.

The "war" had just begun.

Steve was looking back at me, and he had his arms crossed. I didn't really look at him, but I knew that his eyes were narrowed to show that he was not happy at some of my actions.

Magneto and the Brotherhood were somewhere in the city, ready to attack at any moment.

"What was that about?" He asked me.

I still refused to look up at him, not really wanting to see that worry for me and some of that disappointment. He probably got impatient at that, and he gently tipped my head back to get me to look up at him.

Concern. Worry. That made sense with what was happening, but strangely, they were more directed at me as opposed to the situation around us. I quickly turned away my face, not really sure what to think about what was deep in his eyes. At the time, I wasn't really sure how to describe it.

"He's mad," I told him. "People don't think too clearly when they're mad."

He looked at me pretty closely when I said that, realizing something pretty important. He suspected there was much more about me than I would show to the people around me.

That was when Steve got a better look at the X-Men, and he could clearly see and recognize Logan. Storm managed to get my attention, trying to figure out what was going on, but I could only give her a small shrug. I had no idea what was going on.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Steve asked me, sounding a little hurt about my apparent deception.

I gave him a confused. "Tell you what?"

"We knew each other," Logan told me, showing that he had slowly learned some things about himself that were previously unknown to him due to what Stryker had done to him. "From the War."

"Wat. . ." I was trying to process that, but I could only shake my head and muttered in Cajun under my breath.

"She probably didn't know," the man who was once nicknamed "Lucky" Jim Logan by the rest of the Howling Commandos remarked.

We had to act against the Brotherhood. And fast. They made their first move, and we had to react. It was chaotic as many of those events tended to be. Fighting and trying to stay alive.

For the few Mutants who had to fight the nearly twenty members of the Brotherhood, Cyclops was in charge. Everyone naturally followed him, no matter what. I didn't really care. He could do what was needed at the time.

I faced my brother, and we only stared each other down. Our powers didn't affect each other, so it was pretty pointless for the two of us to try to set each other on fire.

"You still want to be involved with this?" I asked him in Cajun, gesturing around us with both of my hands. I could understand what made my brother join the Brotherhood, but I wanted him to see what they were doing.

"Matching what they did to us," Billy, Hellfire, told me. "Justice. Eye for an eye."

I shook my head, but I wasn't mad at him. It was his right to have that opinion, and I couldn't really blame him.

"Turn the other cheek," I replied, barely aware of the fighting that was going on around us. We were just a fraction of what was really going on.

There was this overzealous agent who had some of the weaponized cure. In the complete chaos, I was more aware of that agent getting ready to shoot my brother, and I stood between my brother and that agent, shoving my brother out of the way. I took the Mutant cure, and everything felt very weird.

I collapsed to the ground.

My brother was yelling at that agent, frozen in anger and not really wanting to leave my side. He was looking around, realizing that things needed to change. Apparently, Magneto was given a large dose of the cure as well, and Billy took that as a sign to gather the demoralized Brotherhood around him and escape with their lives to regroup for an event to come.

I scrambled to my feet and threw the needle on the ground with a lot of distaste and anger, and I saw that agent having to deal with Pyro. Without even thinking about it, I ran to help that agent. Pyro realized I didn't have the powers that could hurt him, and focused his attention on me, smirking right at me. I narrowly avoided getting hit by a fireball, and he grabbed my wrist, becoming very cruel.

Blinding and white-hot pain shot up my arm, and I yelled out in pain. He let go of my arm and walked away, pleased with what he had done. I held my arm to my chest, feeling the blisters pop up along the reddened skin.

Steve was at my side, checking my arm, and he chose not to go after the stragglers of the Brotherhood. He gently wrapped my wrist with some gauze that he had with him. I was crying, more out of realizing what had happened to my powers than from the second degree burn on my wrist. When my wrist was wrapped, Steve gently held me as he tried to comfort me as best as he could.

I lost my powers that day because of that stupid cure.