A Chinese-American woman sat on the hardwood floor of the apartment
she and her friends were renting. She held her slender hands up to her
temples; her head tipped back slightly, just enough to keep her hazel brown
hair from falling into her eyes.
"Have you heard from her yet?" a much taller brown-haired woman said as she entered the room, dressed from head to toe in a blue and silver body suit.
"She's in. She can't really talk. There's two telepaths on the grounds. plus I sense another one with potential that I don't think they know about yet." The Chinese-American woman answered without speaking aloud, projecting her mental voice into the mind of her companion. "She's gathered the data we need to track him. It's just a matter now of analyzing the journals to find out where he is."
"Can she do it without detection?" the blue and silver suited woman asked as she sat down on the couch.
"Hey!"
"What the hell?!" She shot back up. "Badlands?"
"Sorry."
The air seemed to waver and a mid-sized blonde man appeared out of nowhere.
"You don't need to enter shadow mode with us around! It's a damned nuisance trying to keep track of you as it is!" the woman in blue hissed.
"Can't help it. I'm edgy. Our fearless leader is in potentially hostile ground, Mez here can't really communicate with her, and we don't know what's going on." The speech proved Badlands an Englishman by his thick accent. "I wish you'd let me go in after her, Whirlwind. No one would know I'm there."
"He's right. I can't even track him when he's shadowed." Mez put her hands down into her lap. "I don't think that they could either. He'd be invaluable back-up."
Whirlwind sighed and studied her two friends. "All right. If we don't hear from her in another twenty-four hours, Badlands, you move in. Does that sound okay with you two?"
"It sounds bloody marvelous." The Englishman leaned back on the couch and folded his hands behind his head.
"Then I shall continue to listen for her." Mez put her hands back to her forehead and closed her eyes in concentration.
A woman with ice blue eyes and long blonde hair crossed her long legs and swiveled her chair around to face the tall, hairy man in front of her. She didn't like meeting her clients in her professional office, but you don't turn away a client this big and powerful at the door - lest he takes it off its hinges.
"What are you worried about? Everything is going according to plan," the woman said as she folded her hands in her lap.
"Are you sure we can trust this guy? You said so yourself that he hasn't been under your control as long as some of the others," the big man growled.
"Relax, Sabertooth," she smoothed out the wrinkles in her pink skirt and tugged the edge of her gray sweater down. "You hired me to get your boss out of the clink, and that's just what I'm going to do. This man has powers almost identical to Magneto's, he's the best candidate for the job."
"He'd better be. If anything goes wrong, it's going to be your head that I take off!" Sabertooth rumbled.
"You dare threaten the head of the New Realm?" her eyes narrowed and grew even colder then before as she stood and stepped towards him.
Involuntarily, he took a step back from her and her frozen gaze. "DreamWeb, I just want this to go as smoothly as possible. Not like last time."
"I know," DreamWeb turned from him. "I saw that little fiasco on the news. The official reason for Magneto's capture is listed as injuries due to the mechanical failure of his machine. A machine that they still cannot figure out the purpose of."
She turned to him curiously. "What was that machine supposed to do to all those people anyway?"
"It was designed by Dr. Maxwell DeLeon." He crossed his arms over his chest. "It's supposed to evoke a spontaneous mutation in average humans while leaving natural born mutants alone and unharmed."
"Fascinating," DreamWeb said, holding one hand up to her cheek. "I can almost appreciate your boss' genius. Too bad the machine failed on him."
"The machine didn't fail. It was blown apart by." He trailed off, embarrassed at their failure.
"By who?" DreamWeb's voice, as sweet and as smooth as honey seemed to carry hidden acid in it.
"By those rats, the X-Men," Sabertooth growled through clenched teeth.
"X-Men?" DreamWeb laughed. She held up her hands in protection as Sabertooth whirled on her in his anger. "Seems like we've all got our thorns in our side, doesn't it?"
He grunted.
"But I won't have mine for much longer, nor you yours. Not if my new - acquirement - comes through for us." DreamWeb walked back to her desk and picked up the phone. "David? Yes, could you find me a man-one Dr. Maxwell DeLeon?"
"What do you need him for?" Sabertooth asked as she hung up the phone.
"I just remembered where that name sounded familiar from. I think I can not only free Magneto, but put a long-standing problem of mine to rest as well."
She ignored Sabertooth's raised eyebrow and sat back down. DreamWeb turned her back to the man. "You may show yourself out. I will contact you again when I have more information about the status of our operation. And don't worry so much. When dealing with the New Realm your money is always well spent."
"Right," Sabertooth snorted derisively, turned on his heel and stormed out of her office, slamming the door behind him.
"Ms. Manchester? Are you all right?" a man's worried voice broke in on her intercom. "He just stormed out of here."
"I'm fine, David," she replied, turning to the box. "Have you located the good Dr. yet?"
"I have."
"Good. Arrange for a meeting between us."
"I wouldn't recommend it, ma'am," David Devine cautioned. "He's still affiliated with Future of Technology Laboratories, known to be mutant experimenters. I don't think."
"I'm not paying you to think. I'm paying you to obey. Or do I have to weave a web for you as well?" She scratched her pink nails down on the table. "I'd like to think you're loyal to me without such coercion."
"I am, always Ms. Manchester. You know that," he spoke, subdued.
"Then do as I say," she finished, then leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap.
"As you wish." The intercom went dead.
Jean Grey saved her work and yawned. She stood and stretched, cracking her stiff back. Glow didn't even look up. She continued to punch keys at a furious rate, moving between windows of raw data and typed entries, periodically saving.
"Hey, you ready to call it a night yet?" Jean asked.
"Hmm?"
"Glow. Sara, it's after ten. we've missed dinner. Let's pack it in," Jean said, amazed at the other woman's endurance. "We can start again first thing tomorrow."
"Oh. right. just a second." Glow stopped typing and saved her finished work to one of her disks. Pulling the disk out of its drive, she shut down the computer she'd been working on and turned to stand. "I guess I'm a little stiff too."
"Come on. Let's go back upstairs and raid the fridge. I'm starving."
"Sounds good to me." Glow stifled a yawn and followed the other woman out of the room.
They rode the elevator upstairs in tired silence and walked down the halls together, all the while proving that yawns were contagious. As soon as one woman yawned the other did likewise. They glanced at each other in mid-yawn and giggled.
"Looks like we're both done in," Glow smiled at the redhead.
"Yeah, I just hope the kids left us something to eat."
"Whoa."
Jean followed Glow's gaze to the fridge that had just come into sight as they rounded the corner into the kitchen. She groaned. The fridge was covered from top to bottom in a solid block of ice.
"Bobby."
"The blonde boy I met this afternoon? He did this?" Glow thumbed towards the refrigerator.
"His power is to make ice. He's good at it, he's just not good at controlling when he makes ice." Jean put her hands on her hips. "He should have told someone about this though."
"He did."
The two women turned around to see Cyclops and Wolverine behind them. Scott had a chisel and hammer with him. Logan just had his claws bared.
"We're going to start chipping the ice away." Scott told them. "I don't want to wait for a block of ice that big to start melting. it'll take forever."
"Not necessarily," Glow turned a speculative eye to the frozen fridge. She began to glow with her yellow hallo and took a step towards the appliance.
"So that smell was you," Logan observed.
"Excuse me?" Glow turned on him. "I showered this afternoon. A fact, thanks to you, that everyone is aware of."
"No, I mean that burning smell. I wasn't sure before, but I am now. Every time you use your power the air smells like burnt ozone." Logan held up his hands to placate her.
"And I need to know this because?" she rolled her eyes.
"Just an observation."
He nodded to the domestic device. "So what are you thinking of doing?"
"I can use the heat of my electricity to start super-speeding the melt on this block of ice. I won't melt it all the way through. I don't want my power hurting the fridge. I'll just make it easier for you guys to cut it loose," she answered him.
"I'll get a mop and bucket," Jean sighed. "Either way you do it, we're going to have an awful mess here."
She grumbled as she turned away. "All I wanted was some leftover chicken."
"Shall I?" Glow motioned back to the hunk of ice.
"Go ahead. Better it than me," Cyclops waved her on.
She winced at the reminder of the earlier incident and pressed her hands against the surface of the ice. Her halo shined a brighter yellow and white while yellow bolts of electricity crackled around her, surrounding the appliance. The ice began to sweat and drip water at an astonishing rate. It soon became apparent that they were going to need Jean's bucket and mop sooner then they thought. Glow stopped her melting when she reached two inches from the surface.
"Ick," Glow pulled away and took a step back in the slushy water. "I hate wet socks."
She jumped into the air and hung there, much to Scott's surprise. Leaning over, she pulled her socks off her feet and flew past them into the hall. "I'll skip the late night snack and just eat in the morning. Good night boys."
"'Night," Logan called after her.
"I didn't know she could fly," Scott stared down the hall after her.
"Yep, and her landings stink just as much as yours."
Logan advanced on the fridge and started to chip the excess ice away from the door handles with his claws. "You gonna help or not?"
"Right," The other man hurried forward with his hammer and chisel and began work on the door's hinges.
"Damn. I should have gotten Storm instead of a mop. She could have evaporated this and saved me the trouble," Jean said as she entered with a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other.
"I'll get her," Logan said, retracting his claws.
"Hey Logan," Scott called after him.
"What?" the dark haired man turned in the doorway.
"Just make sure you knock first."
"Everyone thinks they're a comedian," Logan growled and walked out, muttering under his breath. "I'm never gonna live that down."
"Have you heard from her yet?" a much taller brown-haired woman said as she entered the room, dressed from head to toe in a blue and silver body suit.
"She's in. She can't really talk. There's two telepaths on the grounds. plus I sense another one with potential that I don't think they know about yet." The Chinese-American woman answered without speaking aloud, projecting her mental voice into the mind of her companion. "She's gathered the data we need to track him. It's just a matter now of analyzing the journals to find out where he is."
"Can she do it without detection?" the blue and silver suited woman asked as she sat down on the couch.
"Hey!"
"What the hell?!" She shot back up. "Badlands?"
"Sorry."
The air seemed to waver and a mid-sized blonde man appeared out of nowhere.
"You don't need to enter shadow mode with us around! It's a damned nuisance trying to keep track of you as it is!" the woman in blue hissed.
"Can't help it. I'm edgy. Our fearless leader is in potentially hostile ground, Mez here can't really communicate with her, and we don't know what's going on." The speech proved Badlands an Englishman by his thick accent. "I wish you'd let me go in after her, Whirlwind. No one would know I'm there."
"He's right. I can't even track him when he's shadowed." Mez put her hands down into her lap. "I don't think that they could either. He'd be invaluable back-up."
Whirlwind sighed and studied her two friends. "All right. If we don't hear from her in another twenty-four hours, Badlands, you move in. Does that sound okay with you two?"
"It sounds bloody marvelous." The Englishman leaned back on the couch and folded his hands behind his head.
"Then I shall continue to listen for her." Mez put her hands back to her forehead and closed her eyes in concentration.
A woman with ice blue eyes and long blonde hair crossed her long legs and swiveled her chair around to face the tall, hairy man in front of her. She didn't like meeting her clients in her professional office, but you don't turn away a client this big and powerful at the door - lest he takes it off its hinges.
"What are you worried about? Everything is going according to plan," the woman said as she folded her hands in her lap.
"Are you sure we can trust this guy? You said so yourself that he hasn't been under your control as long as some of the others," the big man growled.
"Relax, Sabertooth," she smoothed out the wrinkles in her pink skirt and tugged the edge of her gray sweater down. "You hired me to get your boss out of the clink, and that's just what I'm going to do. This man has powers almost identical to Magneto's, he's the best candidate for the job."
"He'd better be. If anything goes wrong, it's going to be your head that I take off!" Sabertooth rumbled.
"You dare threaten the head of the New Realm?" her eyes narrowed and grew even colder then before as she stood and stepped towards him.
Involuntarily, he took a step back from her and her frozen gaze. "DreamWeb, I just want this to go as smoothly as possible. Not like last time."
"I know," DreamWeb turned from him. "I saw that little fiasco on the news. The official reason for Magneto's capture is listed as injuries due to the mechanical failure of his machine. A machine that they still cannot figure out the purpose of."
She turned to him curiously. "What was that machine supposed to do to all those people anyway?"
"It was designed by Dr. Maxwell DeLeon." He crossed his arms over his chest. "It's supposed to evoke a spontaneous mutation in average humans while leaving natural born mutants alone and unharmed."
"Fascinating," DreamWeb said, holding one hand up to her cheek. "I can almost appreciate your boss' genius. Too bad the machine failed on him."
"The machine didn't fail. It was blown apart by." He trailed off, embarrassed at their failure.
"By who?" DreamWeb's voice, as sweet and as smooth as honey seemed to carry hidden acid in it.
"By those rats, the X-Men," Sabertooth growled through clenched teeth.
"X-Men?" DreamWeb laughed. She held up her hands in protection as Sabertooth whirled on her in his anger. "Seems like we've all got our thorns in our side, doesn't it?"
He grunted.
"But I won't have mine for much longer, nor you yours. Not if my new - acquirement - comes through for us." DreamWeb walked back to her desk and picked up the phone. "David? Yes, could you find me a man-one Dr. Maxwell DeLeon?"
"What do you need him for?" Sabertooth asked as she hung up the phone.
"I just remembered where that name sounded familiar from. I think I can not only free Magneto, but put a long-standing problem of mine to rest as well."
She ignored Sabertooth's raised eyebrow and sat back down. DreamWeb turned her back to the man. "You may show yourself out. I will contact you again when I have more information about the status of our operation. And don't worry so much. When dealing with the New Realm your money is always well spent."
"Right," Sabertooth snorted derisively, turned on his heel and stormed out of her office, slamming the door behind him.
"Ms. Manchester? Are you all right?" a man's worried voice broke in on her intercom. "He just stormed out of here."
"I'm fine, David," she replied, turning to the box. "Have you located the good Dr. yet?"
"I have."
"Good. Arrange for a meeting between us."
"I wouldn't recommend it, ma'am," David Devine cautioned. "He's still affiliated with Future of Technology Laboratories, known to be mutant experimenters. I don't think."
"I'm not paying you to think. I'm paying you to obey. Or do I have to weave a web for you as well?" She scratched her pink nails down on the table. "I'd like to think you're loyal to me without such coercion."
"I am, always Ms. Manchester. You know that," he spoke, subdued.
"Then do as I say," she finished, then leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap.
"As you wish." The intercom went dead.
Jean Grey saved her work and yawned. She stood and stretched, cracking her stiff back. Glow didn't even look up. She continued to punch keys at a furious rate, moving between windows of raw data and typed entries, periodically saving.
"Hey, you ready to call it a night yet?" Jean asked.
"Hmm?"
"Glow. Sara, it's after ten. we've missed dinner. Let's pack it in," Jean said, amazed at the other woman's endurance. "We can start again first thing tomorrow."
"Oh. right. just a second." Glow stopped typing and saved her finished work to one of her disks. Pulling the disk out of its drive, she shut down the computer she'd been working on and turned to stand. "I guess I'm a little stiff too."
"Come on. Let's go back upstairs and raid the fridge. I'm starving."
"Sounds good to me." Glow stifled a yawn and followed the other woman out of the room.
They rode the elevator upstairs in tired silence and walked down the halls together, all the while proving that yawns were contagious. As soon as one woman yawned the other did likewise. They glanced at each other in mid-yawn and giggled.
"Looks like we're both done in," Glow smiled at the redhead.
"Yeah, I just hope the kids left us something to eat."
"Whoa."
Jean followed Glow's gaze to the fridge that had just come into sight as they rounded the corner into the kitchen. She groaned. The fridge was covered from top to bottom in a solid block of ice.
"Bobby."
"The blonde boy I met this afternoon? He did this?" Glow thumbed towards the refrigerator.
"His power is to make ice. He's good at it, he's just not good at controlling when he makes ice." Jean put her hands on her hips. "He should have told someone about this though."
"He did."
The two women turned around to see Cyclops and Wolverine behind them. Scott had a chisel and hammer with him. Logan just had his claws bared.
"We're going to start chipping the ice away." Scott told them. "I don't want to wait for a block of ice that big to start melting. it'll take forever."
"Not necessarily," Glow turned a speculative eye to the frozen fridge. She began to glow with her yellow hallo and took a step towards the appliance.
"So that smell was you," Logan observed.
"Excuse me?" Glow turned on him. "I showered this afternoon. A fact, thanks to you, that everyone is aware of."
"No, I mean that burning smell. I wasn't sure before, but I am now. Every time you use your power the air smells like burnt ozone." Logan held up his hands to placate her.
"And I need to know this because?" she rolled her eyes.
"Just an observation."
He nodded to the domestic device. "So what are you thinking of doing?"
"I can use the heat of my electricity to start super-speeding the melt on this block of ice. I won't melt it all the way through. I don't want my power hurting the fridge. I'll just make it easier for you guys to cut it loose," she answered him.
"I'll get a mop and bucket," Jean sighed. "Either way you do it, we're going to have an awful mess here."
She grumbled as she turned away. "All I wanted was some leftover chicken."
"Shall I?" Glow motioned back to the hunk of ice.
"Go ahead. Better it than me," Cyclops waved her on.
She winced at the reminder of the earlier incident and pressed her hands against the surface of the ice. Her halo shined a brighter yellow and white while yellow bolts of electricity crackled around her, surrounding the appliance. The ice began to sweat and drip water at an astonishing rate. It soon became apparent that they were going to need Jean's bucket and mop sooner then they thought. Glow stopped her melting when she reached two inches from the surface.
"Ick," Glow pulled away and took a step back in the slushy water. "I hate wet socks."
She jumped into the air and hung there, much to Scott's surprise. Leaning over, she pulled her socks off her feet and flew past them into the hall. "I'll skip the late night snack and just eat in the morning. Good night boys."
"'Night," Logan called after her.
"I didn't know she could fly," Scott stared down the hall after her.
"Yep, and her landings stink just as much as yours."
Logan advanced on the fridge and started to chip the excess ice away from the door handles with his claws. "You gonna help or not?"
"Right," The other man hurried forward with his hammer and chisel and began work on the door's hinges.
"Damn. I should have gotten Storm instead of a mop. She could have evaporated this and saved me the trouble," Jean said as she entered with a mop in one hand and a bucket in the other.
"I'll get her," Logan said, retracting his claws.
"Hey Logan," Scott called after him.
"What?" the dark haired man turned in the doorway.
"Just make sure you knock first."
"Everyone thinks they're a comedian," Logan growled and walked out, muttering under his breath. "I'm never gonna live that down."
