Chapter 50: In The Shadows.

Pietro held back Alyce with all his might. She was going to kill them. Every single member of that X-Men team, she was going to wring their necks.

"Alyce, calm down, please." Pietro spoke sternly. He had Alyce pinned up against the wall of his room, with Avalanche at the door, relaying the bad news. Pietro didn't know what to say, but he knew what he had to do, if he wanted the house to keep standing.

Alyce clutched onto Pietro's arm, gritting her teeth in anger and trying her best to prevent spikes forming around her body. If she had just heard right, if she had just heard what Avalanche had said. Then Bella was missing. And no one knew where she was. Alyce looked up into Pietro's eyes.

"She's gone...why is she gone?" Her mind was racing, thoughts moving around in her brain with great speed. She didn't know her right from her left at this point, all she wanted to do was destroy something. This all had to be a bad dream. It just had to be. There was no reason that Bella should be missing. Alyce had left her with a house full of mutants. Seven of whom were on the team. Five who were grown adults, and one very powerful telepath. How could a fragile human slip right threw their fingers?

"Alyce, you need to calm down. As soon as you do, then you have no choice but to go back. You need to go back to the Mansion."

Alyce could hear Pietro's words, but they just weren't meaning anything. "I should've never left..." Alyce thought to herself. A million possibilities raced through Alyce's head. What if she had taken Bella with her to The Brotherhood? What if this, what if that.

Cautiously, Avalanche took a step forward placing a hand on Pietro's shoulder. "Alyce, go and find out what is happening."

Alyce loosened her grip on Pietro and locked eyes with Avalanche.

He felt a surge of fear wash over him. The way her eyes looked right now, it seemed as if she wanted to destroy the entire world. Avalanche shook his head. "I know you never wanted to go back there again, but now you have a reason to....just go." It was a shame that it had to come down to this. For Alyce to go back to the Mansion, it had to be because her cousin was missing.

Pietro took a step back, releasing the grip he had on Alyce. He kept his hands ready, just in case she wanted to knock down the house again. "Alyce, Dominikos is right. Do you want me to take you there? I can get you there in under a second."

Alyce shook her head, taking in a deep breath. "Ave, when did you find about Bella?" Alyce was trying her best to push the clouds out of her mind. She needed to start thinking straight if she was going to find Bella. Pietro took this as a sign that Alyce was relaxing, he took another step back and walked to his bed, plopping himself down.

Bella, the girl that had confronted him in the mall. The one from the coffee shop. Disappeared? For some reason he was finding it hard to believe. Even for a human, she had guts. The way she had confronted him in the mall, made him think twice if she really was a mutant or not. Just from that one time, Pietro could tell she had no fear. She wasn't scared of anything. So did someone kidnap her? Or did she take off? Pietro was finding it hard to think of both possibilities.

"When I went to the Mansion to go pick up Kitty, she told me. Everyone on that team is on some serious edge. A few of them even confronted me about it, thinking I took her." Avalanche scratched the back of his neck, trying to shake off the thoughts of the Mansion. He had a fire mutant, an ice mutant and a sparker get all up in his face. The one with the Cajun accent, almost hitting him.

"Does anyone know anything? Like what might have happened?" Alyce paced back and forth. The more she knew here, the less of a reaction she would have when she got to the Mansion. But to her, it seemed that with each passing minute she was being here, talking to Avalanche, was minutes ticking away at Bella's life. It had to be those stupid agents she had encountered. Alyce stopped walking, looking down at the floor. A black swirling mass began to grow larger, bubbling like a hot cauldron.

"What the hell is that?" Avalanche suddenly spoke. He knew Pietro wanted to say the same thing, he just had beaten him to the punch.

Alyce cautiously stepped the tip of her foot inside the mass. "My Father taught me how to...transport myself using my abilities. This would be the second time that I've done this."

Alyce took in deep breath. "Did you manage to find out where they were going to talk?" She directed toward Avalanche who was busy poking the mass with his finger. It wasn't even hot, as it appeared to look, it was actually a bit cold. It didn't even feel solid, like it looked either, it felt more like water. It was the only way to describe it.

"Kitty told me they were going to the 'lower levels', whatever that means."

Alyce nodded her head, taking her foot out of the mass. "I'll be back later." Alyce muttered. She took a step back and hopped into the mass. Once her head was underneath it, the black mass swirled shut and disappeared.

"Dude...I don't know about you, but that is, like, totally cool..." Avalanche muttered, stepping over the carpet where the mass was and checked it out.

"I can still run faster than the time it took for her to make it." Pietro countered, feeling a bit jealous.

Avalanche snorted in laughter. "Someone getting jealous?" He asked, knowing full well that his friend was. He got up and patted Pietro on his back. Whenever it came to comparing powers, Pietro would always get a bit mad, even though he didn't like to show it.

But Avalanche knew his friend for years, and he could tell that when Pietro puffed his cheeks out, it meant he was jealous.

"You look like a blow fish!" Avalanche called out to Pietro as he walked down the stairs of the house.

"Screw you!"

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A/N: *announcer voice* Stay tuned, folks! Things are going to get crazy!