Note: In this time, Scott never lost control of his powers, thus not earning the name Cyclops. He can also shoot many beams at once in many different directions. Also, I won't be using many codenames except in rare cases, such as Wolverine, since he got that name during Weapon X, and Gambit, since that was a nickname of his on the street. And Jubilee because I don't like to type out Jubilation.
X-Men: The Savage
Wolverine
Flashes; he'd gotten so damn tired of them. Every time he slept, he'd get snips of his past that answered nothing. Those blurry images weren't nearly enough to answer any questions, and it was rare that he heard any voices. "His real claws aren't good enough," he heard that one in a few dreams, "Hydra's got a mutant of their own. He needs more reach." He guessed that was also in relation to his claws. He had control of three muscles in each arm that shot out his massive claws, each one weighing fifty pounds. They were released in three stages, a foot at a time. The first stage was the outer-most stage, the second in the middle, staring to become sharp along the bottom, and the third became the actual claw. He had one in each arm.
They had proved useful during his life. He could take out anyone, he'd even scratched Captain America's shield, back when Cap was alive. That sliced star became more recognized than the shield itself, and the U.S. government had been searching for it since his death four years ago. Too bad they didn't look at the base of the tallest tree in the forest that Wolverine mostly frequented. Damn super soldier shouldn't have asked for a rematch.
Unfortunately, he had to go into seclusion even deeper than the one before that incident. That forest became his home, and because most of it wasn't needed, his mind began to slip away. He was an animal. In the past, he was too busy keeping himself alive, but nobody had even come close to finding him the dense forest that had damn near covered the state of California after it had been leveled in the sixties. A bunch of scientists wanted to recreate the redwood forests that had been destroyed, and used some chemical to make it all grow back in a matter of years. The chemical took too well. Trees started breaking through cement, which made up about ninety percent of L.A., so the rebuilding effort ceased, and the trees were just allowed to grow. This gave a lot of space to hide out in.
It became a challenge to hunt, since the animals had long since learned to stay away from his scent at all costs, but he didn't go hungry by any means. But Logan had recently noticed that something was following him, looking at him. It was a woman, something he hadn't seen in quite a while. She was a spy, and a psychic. She had prevented him from smelling her until she was able to hide. How she'd gotten past his mental defenses was a mystery, and required Logan to make his unwanted return to humanity. He had to think, and pay attention to everything around him. If she could prevent him from smelling her, she could do the same for seeing or hearing her. She was good, after four weeks of smelling her after she'd already been gone, he never found out where she was. After that fourth week, she stopped coming back. She must have gathered all the information she needed.
Logan got back to his normal routine. Returning back to a state of relying completely on instinct was harder than he thought. He renewed habits that he'd dropped in order to be more primal back when he first entered the forest. Such as building a fire. The California winters weren't too cold, and he had some heavy coats in case it did get cold. Also, raw meat is easier to get used to than most people would think.
As he watched the fire burn, he resisted acknowledging the very bad spy trying to hide behind him. He was downwind, so Wolverine couldn't pick up the smell. "You know I'm here," the man called out.
"Didn't want to embarrass you," he spoke for the first time in a few years. His voice was grainy, just like the old days.
"There is no need for sarcasm, Wolverine." The older gentleman floated peacefully in the air.
"Are you the one who sent the girl," Logan asked the stranger.
"Girl?"
"Guess not."
"I am here to ask you to join us. You are no longer in danger."
"You mean no more danger than any other mutant?"
"We can protect you," he offered.
"I don't need protection."
"Things have changed since you've disappeared Logan. Three fourths of the country is a war zone. In other countries, it's worse. Any remaining cities have been broken into mutant and human districts; humans getting the majority. If you are in the wrong part of town, you will be taken forcefully to the crime-filled mutant sector from which it is illegal to leave, if you aren't blown apart by a group of ignorant policemen."
"You say that as if I'm leaving."
"You are either coming with me, or you will be less one set of adamantium bones."
Logan didn't receive threats very well, "How do you plan to get that close?"
The man just smiled. Logan felt his bones begin to lift in the air, his body, of course, following. By reputation, he'd identified his captor as Magneto. "Who said I needed to get close?"
"What good am I to you dead," Logan asked.
"What danger are you to us dead?"
"Us? So I guess you're still number two under Xavier?"
The metal in his forearm stretched a little, "Do you think that makes me any less dangerous to you?" Just a second after he said that, a medium sized rock floated up to be level with Wolverine's head. Logan had no idea what was happening, but Magneto seemed to get the message in it, and released Wolverine. By the time Wolverine looked up after landing, Magneto was gone, and a very strong scent of yet another man that Logan did not know took his place; he took special care of committing it to memory.
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His position was compromised, and he needed to get the hell out. It was big forest, and to the east, a desert. By the time that he reached Las Vegas, or what was geographically Las Vegas, he was starving. The city that stood before him was a broken dream. In the sweep over the nation that the F.O.H. took, Sin City was the first target. None of the casinos discriminated against mutants; gamblers were gamblers, and thus they were customers. This acceptance was hardly tolerable by the standards of the Friends of Humanity. When the casinos started complaining that the lost customers on the "human side" of town, and bankruptcies or abandonment were rampant in the "mutant sector" due to the fact that they were only ten percent of the population; the F.O.H. chose to eliminate the problem Las Vegas posed instead of dealing with it. It became an example, a shining illustration of how blasphemy not tolerated by the new government, church, and police force of the United States was dealt with. Some of the buildings were still smoking.
But even though the population had dwindled, mutants stayed, and had tried to take over the abandoned Human Section of the city. The idea of mutants being in control was a living Hell to the F.O.H., so the police force stayed as the only human population. Logan must have met about half in his little run-in with them.
"Stop, Mutant," the loudspeaker nearly ruptured his eardrum. Logan managed to see the source of the voice through the blinding spotlight. It was military type van, and it was rocking with the movements of the van getting ready. The movement of the van rocking reminded Logan of an old saying. He couldn't help but smirk. This was of course taken as a threat by the police force. They stormed out of the van, guns pointing straight as his head. "Freeze, Mutant!"
"My name ain't Mutant," he said angrily.
"Identification," the man in the front asked.
"Don't have any," his tone was more one of warning at that point. There was no way fifty guys were going to be a problem for him.
"You're in big trouble, freak," one of the officers said.
"The name ain't Freak either."
Scans from the van showed no other mutant for six thousand feet. The soldiers realized the numbers were on their side, and thus relaxed. "Perhaps you'd like to tell us your name," the man in charge walked up to Logan, showing off his significant height advantage, a mistake others had made in the past.
Logan looked up in the man's eyes; "Wolverine." Memories of the profile flashed through Sergeant Connors' eyes, but it was too late. One of Wolverine's claws was completely extended, impaling Connors. The other claw crashed against the first as Logan shoved it through. The officers looked on in horror, too shocked to move as Logan held the still dying man over his head, skewering him. It wasn't until Logan separated the skewers, ripping the man in half, that the officers started attacking. Several blasts hit him, but he had healed by the time he'd finished ripping through the group like a scythe through wheat. He walked away from the slaughter field wiping the blood off of his face. Before he could think about it, the van sped away; Logan had thought that the driver had been several of the pieces, but it didn't matter now.
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Within days, the image of Wolverine ripping that cop apart was a symbol of for both human and mutant extremists. That damn driver caught the point when Wolverine's claws struck the ground, creating sparks, and the man's blood still hung over him like a cloud. Human's posters and billboards everywhere read: "Think you're safe? So did he." The picture was in the middle, and below that was, "Power corrupts the Savage." The message wasn't as direct as what Logan expected considering the writers were a bunch of hicks. It did, however, disregard the fact that barely an attempt had been made to subdue him; this was as he suspected. Nobody, and no group of people thought that they could take him out.
This was overshadowed by the fact that he couldn't go out anywhere in a Mutant Sector without ten thousand people jumping up his ass wanting him to be the spokesperson. They had their own billboards reading, "He's fighting back; what's stopping you?" While neither of the slogans was very inspiring, it was mostly the image. Like anything those days, it was either blown way out of proportion or turned into propaganda, sometimes both.
It didn't matter, though. Either way, he wasn't going to be able to just walk around anywhere; as much as he regretted it, he'd have to go back into hiding, just to keep from being hassled everywhere he went.
"You're too far into this war to go back into hiding." The fog was lifted from Logan's mind, and he could tell that she had been following him for a long time.
"How do you get into my mind? Not even Xavier could do that."
"Xavier tries to use raw power to get into a blocked mind, but I use finesse. A mind is like a computer, and I am but a lowly hacker." She came out of the shadows, giving him an image to go with her voice. She was very… white. She didn't have any hint of a tan, and everything she wore was white. But based on how much that white clothing covered, he guessed she wouldn't be able to honestly wear it at a wedding. "If my husband only knew what you were thinking," she angrily said.
"Speaking of which, you shouldn't know." Before she was able to respond, he pulled an old trick he learned a while back. He didn't know the specifics of how it worked, but he'd put three psychics in comas from doing it. All he felt was a slight ringing and a fizz in his head, the psychics never lasted long enough to tell him what they felt. She caught on to what he was going to do before it could have had any substantial affect, but for the split second she held her head in slight pain, he charged her. Within a second, he had her pinned against the wall with his claws ready to cut her head off. "Why have you been following me," his breath poured over her face.
"I was ordered to," she answered with a face twisted in anger. His arms were quickly pushed away from her neck. He couldn't match the strength of her telekinesis, and was soon afterward lifted in the air, suspended by an invisible force. The alley was too wide, and he couldn't reach anything in order to pull himself back down to the ground. He quickly started trying to think of ways to get out of this. His entire body was being held, and his arms and legs were frozen into position. It was easy to see that she'd been trained to fight him. "What Trent sees in you, I will never know."
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Trent, the guy that the really white woman was working for, just so happened to not be in when they arrived at his house. He did, however, leave Logan with a mission.
"Who the hell does he think he is," Logan screamed. "He has you drag me here, and then he gives me orders, the last person that did this to me ended up with a three foot claw up his ass!"
"If you just do this one simple job for him, he will protect you," she tried to calmly explain, but Logan would have none of it.
"I don't need protection! If this guy was interested enough in me, he'd have known that."
Emma was about to let go of the lady part of her keeping at least one side the conversation civil. "Ever since Xavier found out where you were, you've been thrust into this war… on our side, whether you like it or not."
"Is your side ripping cops apart?"
"Our side is self defense of other mutants against the cold bastards that have taken over this country."
"And when you've 'defended yourself' so much that seventy-five percent of the human population is gone, what happens then?" Emma was quiet. "I've heard about you people in the last couple of days. You want peace between humans and mutants? That's bullshit. You're going to have to wipe out all of the humans that hate us, and then we'll be the majority, and Xavier will take over."
"Xavier is our main enemy, along with his followers. And it doesn't matter whether or not you believe in our cause, one way or another; you're going to be fighting for us. Xavier hates you; Magneto was ordered to bring you back so that Xavier wouldn't have to go through the trouble of leaving his base. You're one of two people that have ever stalemated him in battle, and he'll send all of his little mutant soldiers after you until you're close enough so that he can do it himself, and when that time comes, he will rip you apart. Xavier's power has grown in the last fifty years, and your only hope to stay alive is to ally yourself with Trent."
That damn fight with Xavier was the only thing Logan could remember clearly from his past. "There's always more than one way to survive." Logan walked around her, hoping that he would be able to find the exit in the huge mansion he was in.
"How are you going to fight Xavier when you couldn't even beat me? He's ten times as powerful as I am. He can warp and bend reality at his whim." This was Emma's last attempt to keep him in the mansion. The door to the library was slammed shut.
Outside the door, Logan was confronted with a very large man playing with a young child. He'd seen the guy when he was being carried in, the girl had called him Peter. Upon seeing Logan, he told the child, in a heavy Russian accent, to stay in sight, and walked up to Logan. "I don't need to hear another speech from a stranger," Wolverine informed the nearly seven foot man.
"Given the circumstances, and your apparent haste for departure, I would disagree."
"Well, it's none of your damn business."
"I do not think as such. We're in a war, and I have the ability to keep a very powerful weapon on my side. Is that not my business?"
"Not when that weapon has free will."
"Of course, but where will your free will take you? We know what places and what people to avoid; do you?"
"It doesn't matter," Logan was getting sick of these people questioning his abilities.
"I believe your time away has caused a gross underestimation of our enemy."
"Your enemy," Logan corrected.
"You are in this war, Logan. It is a fact you will have to face. Neither Xavier nor the Friends of Humanity want anything to do with you. We are your only option."
"You? The two of you, and this glorious leader of yours? That's not much of an option."
"You will have to forgive Bobby for not being here, and Trent is more powerful than you can possibly imagine. Besides that, our numbers will be growing shortly. You are but the first choice out of a number of very powerful mutants that remain to be… free agents, for lack of a better term."
"And just why am I the first pick," Logan was more curious than he would have liked to admit.
"Rumors say you can't die, and there is nobody you can't kill. Not many people can attest to fighting off Apocalypse."
"If I'm so damned important, then why ain't this Trent guy here?"
"There was an emergency."
"Too bad for him," Logan began to walk away.
"You have no idea of the danger you're putting yourself in," Peter called after him.
"You'd be surprised, bub."
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Logan had no idea where he was, he couldn't overtly walk the streets, some militant organization wanted him to join, and two others were trying to kill him. "The story of my life," he spoke to himself. After a few hours of walking, he determined he was in New York. He reached New York City just minutes after realizing the state. He resorted to the back alleys, avoiding the police.
All around, there kids trying to keep wet in the blistering heat. He realized that he'd missed an entire cultural era. The time he was in the forest was the time when it was too dangerous to raise a child anywhere, especially the city. That era ended just a few days before Logan left the forest. Those were the days when all the mutants were gathered and crammed into a corner of the city that used to be filled with violence and brutality, and the human inhabitants of those parts were given all the money they could ask for and a nice house. Meanwhile, the mutants had all of their earthly possessions taken away from them, and the murder of a mutant for fun happened often, and mostly wasn't even dealt with as a crime. The police would find the bodies and leave them there.
Logan beheld the only side that the F.O.H. would show, the safety of the children, the human children. Even if they did show mutants rotting in the gutters, there wouldn't be enough people to sympathize. Everyone hated mutants, and none of them could give their opinion as to why. They'd quote some bullshit statistic and claim that mutants were savages. Most of them had never even seen a mutant. Logan took all of these as facts, nothing more, nothing less. They were simply another set of truths that laid down rules by which he didn't abide. Laws meant shit to him; if he couldn't find a good reason not to do something, he'd do it, other people's opinions be damned. That's probably the reason why he got in so much trouble.
Speaking of which, he could smell a bit of trouble coming. Two people, indicating that they were mutants, were trying to get the drop on him from the roof. By the time the two redheads descended from the roof, both ready for a fight, there was nobody waiting for them. "Where is he, Jean?"
"I can't tell. Charles told us he'd be hard to probe."
"Keep an open mind."
"Why don't you just blast the whole alley?"
"Good idea," even though Jean was serious, there was a bit of twisted humor behind the request, but of course, Scott took it as a completely serious suggestion. A suggestion that he followed without delay. Within ten seconds, fifteen buildings had been leveled. Jean telekinetically shielded the civilians, however much it disgusted her to do so. Magneto had told them not to do anything that would cause "The Inferiors" to attack prematurely. They would usually reject such a command unless it came from Xavier himself, no matter how much they respected Magneto, but he stressed it so much. They had come to the conclusion that he would be in a dangerous mood if the order wasn't followed.
Jean surveyed each of the people she'd shielded to make sure Wolverine wasn't among them. Most of them were children who would be brainwashed into hating an entire group of people who were their better. It was pitiful as she looked at the weaklings as she released them from the protective bubble. They had been saved by a mutant, and she could see in their eyes that they weren't as strong, but she could tell the ones that would be bragging about almost hitting her.
The final bubble she approached had a very large, very scared man in it. She dispersed the bubble, but the man didn't budge. She could feel his fear, too much fear. A small man ran out from under the large figure, and three feet of adamantium was being swung at her neck. She managed to push the arm away telekinetically, and then narrowly had time to do the same to the next. A red beam came to her rescue as the first claw was coming back with a vengeance.
Wolverine was smashed into what remained of a wall. By the time Jean and Scott got over to where he should have been, he had disappeared again. "How the hell is he doing that," Jean asked.
"This is what he was trained to do."
"And I guess the last two years of our training aren't worth shit?"
"The only advantage we have is our powers. We're no going to be able to outfight him, so keep him in our sight at all times." It was ironic that shortly after he said that, Wolverine pounded a foot into his back. Now, Logan didn't have advanced strength, but the way Scott flew would argue differently. A metal laced fist found the base of Jean's neck, disabling her for the next hour or so. Scott wouldn't go down so easily. The first injury his beams caused was still healing, but the second through fifteenth somewhat overloaded him, seeing as how they all hit simultaneously. It was in a desperate attempt to avoid the maneuvering beams that Logan managed to hit the blunt end of his left blade against Scott's temple.
"Scott," a voice came from his waist, "speak to me." The voice was unforgettable.
Logan bent down and picked up the small communicator. "You'd better find a new target, Xavier."
"Trying to avoid the battle, Logan? I never figured you as a weakling."
"The last person who tried to get into my business ended up dead."
"I feel insulted being compared to the human who tried to gain superhuman powers while avoiding the harshness of the life of a mutant."
"Who's being weak now?" Before Xavier had a chance to respond, Logan dropped the comm. unit, and crushed it with his foot. He turned to the two downed bodies, contemplating whether or not to kill them. But he heard another police van coming, and he'd experienced enough infamy in the last few days. As much as he hated to do so, he ran. He didn't get far. After about sixteen strides, his neck snapped without reason. An injury he could recover from, but it knocked him out nonetheless.
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Xavier and Erik looked down at the stout, burly man shackled to an adamantium chair. "It's foolish to not kill him now, Charles." Magneto had, for a long time, been speaking down to Xavier every so often, but he knew when to stop pushing; Charles could be dangerous if someone questioned his integrity too much.
"I like feeling the fear in my enemy's eyes when they die," Charles quipped.
"Sayings like that make me feel that the war has gotten to you."
"Do not mistake hatred for insanity, Erik. I feel no compassion for humans or anyone who fights for them."
"And how has he fought for humans? Had we not attacked him, he might even been on our side."
"He will either die by our hands, or get in our way by allying himself with Reign," Charles spoke as if he didn't believe himself.
"He remained neutral up until a few weeks ago."
"Frost was in the forest spying on him, and Reign himself was there when you tried to bring him back."
"I thank you for informing me now." That was the last thing said before Erik took his leave. He'd pushed Xavier further than most would advise, but it didn't matter. Charles was too busy thinking about ways to torture Logan to death, so he wouldn't stay angry for long. But anger quickly rises when one looks down on slaughtered guards and a chair that's supposed to have someone in it, but doesn't.
Looking left, Charles saw that six of his security cameras were down. They were scattered around the building, making Logan's path impossible to trace. "Clever boy." Charles was the second telepath that day to have a claw narrowly miss his head. He launched the attacker backwards, slamming him into the concrete wall. But no body was left for him to gaze upon. Instead of taxing himself by running after Logan, Charles wiped out the three walls surrounding him. Logan was struggling to get out from under the pieces of the wall; he was aided by a telekinetic force forcing him to crash through the wall behind him.
"What's going on," Magneto screamed as he approached on the scene. A large chunk of the ceiling lost its constitution and began to fall around the master of magnetism. Xavier had to push a few of the chunks to prevent them from crushing his partner, who's reaction time had been dwindling due to his age; he couldn't activate his shield with any speed. The lack of concentration allowed Logan to escape yet again. Any wall within fifty feet found itself in pieces shortly thereafter. "Not that I don't appreciate the help, but would you please desist in ripping our primary base apart."
"Go find that animal! We can't afford him revealing this location." Charles was more disturbed than he probably should have been. "Use any means necessary!"
"That would involve tearing this base down, and then it wouldn't matter if he escaped." Magneto was probably calmer than he should have been. But a man with a metal skeleton wasn't too much of a threat to him.
"Stop wasting time!"
"Very well, Charles."
Magneto began searching the halls for the wild man that, for some reason, drove Xavier to the brink of insanity. Left and right he could feel the electrical signals from security cameras being cut off. The large number of other electrical signals, however, preventing him from tracking the source of the disconnections. Suddenly, though, he felt a massive power increase in the main line. That could only be caused by an overload in the primary generator. Very quickly, even at the sake of the walls in his way, he made his way towards the generator. The walls passed by in seconds, but when a human figure hit his shield, he stopped dead. It was Beast. "Who said you could leave your lab?"
"All of the guards watching over the generator are dead. I was heading down there to shut it down." Beast's eyes widened as he looked at something behind Magneto. Wolverine's left claw nearly cut off Magneto's ear.
Logan cussed himself for missing so many important slices in one day. "Must be gettin' rusty," he said as Magneto held him in place, floating in mid-air.
The entire building quaked as a crash came from the direction of the generator. "Shut it down! Quickly," Erik barked slightly nodding his head to let Beast recognize that he was the recipient of the order. Hank bounded down the halls, and was soon out of sight.
The next crash they heard was Xavier crashing through the wall. "Why is McCoy loose?" Charles lost interest in the answer once he saw the reason why Magneto was standing still. The magnetic control over Logan was released, only to be replaced telekinetic bindings.
The large metal doors had a gaping hole in them: the entry point and calling card of Wolverine. The sight that could be seen through the hole was one of despair. The main support beams had been cut through, thus the ceiling had collapsed over most of the control panels and other exits. The remaining panels had been torn to pieces by Logan. "Oh, Dear." He began making as lengthy bounds as he could muster toward the nearest exit.
"You have placed us in the middle of a time bomb, Logan," Charles was closer to Logan's face than anyone had been in about twenty years. "That's too bad, because I can't waste time killing you in any way to satisfy me without having enough time to escape. You'll have to die as a result of your own actions." The back of Logan's head soon became acquainted with a wall twenty feet away. Magneto and Xavier plowed their way through the many levels and erupted out of the top. As quickly as they could, they floated a healthy distance away, and watched the explosion.
"Let's get to our secondary base quickly; before Reign shows up." They renewed their speed toward the underdeveloped base they never thought they'd have to use.
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Logan was covered under tons of rubble for hours, perfectly conscious, listening to the other survivors trying to claw their way through the rubble. There were a few more collapses until only one other survivor was left. He was quoting Shakespeare in the little bubble that happened to form right over him. All Logan had to be thankful for was the adamantium on his skull preventing the corner of a piece of rubble from driving into his brain, or through it, probably.
After what he guessed was three hours, the rubble above was being moved. Not heaved around or rolled off, but it was being lifted off and thrown on the ground nearby. The light burned his eyes briefly after the final debris was lifted off of him. His stomach, which had a few rods through it, began to heal. As Logan stood up, he saw a tall, muscular figure staring down at him from about thirty feet in the air, his overcoat not blowing, despite heavy wind.
The other survivor, who looked like a blue lion crossed with a body builder, came over to help Logan stand. Wolverine made it apparent that he needed no help.
The man above them spoke. "You have two options: either come and work for me, or wait for Xavier's troops to come."
"I fully accept your invitation, sir, but may I inquire as to how we will return with you," the blue man spoke.
There was no answer, as Trent waited for Wolverine to answer. Wolverine was busy examining the air. The man was the one who had scared Magneto off in the forest. "What the hell will I be doing for you," Wolverine asked.
"You'll be working alone. That's all I'll tell outside the mansion."
"Fine. Let's go." The two survivors were lifted off the ground, although it felt as though they were falling into the air. Soon, they were flying behind him at a distance, a great distance.
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Reviews decide the next chapters. The choices are: Nightcrawler, Storm, or an elaboration of Beast. After all of the intros, there should be about eight of them, the real story will start.