Chapter Four: Visitations

No characters belong to me. The X-Men and associated characters belong to Marvel. GI Joe and related characters belong to Hasbro. Althea Delgado (as she exists in this fic), Xi, Brittany, Daria, and Quinn Delgado, and Claudius Delgado belong to Red Witch. Only Watson the butler is mine (as far as I know).

            The Braddocks left after dinner. Fortunately, their sons often fought each other in inappropriate places, so Elisabeth duelling with Logan wasn't too odd. Not that that prevented the Professor for ripping Logan a new one. Ororo was driving the Braddocks back to their hotel, and Hank was watching the students.

            "How good is she?" Xavier asked Logan, after berating him.

            "Honestly? I give her nearly even odds against Wavedancer."

            Xavier's eyebrows raised.

            "Althea has been trained ever since she was very young. Elisabeth hasn't."

            "I know." Logan hesitated for a moment, and then pressed on. "She's too good, Charles. I can buy her being that good with a sword, since her parents have had her fencing for a long time. But a fighter? No way. Something's been done to her. And I think I know who did it."

            "Emma Frost," Xavier scowled. He had new respect for her- somehow, she managed to psychically teach Elisabeth the martial arts in such a way that he couldn't detect it.

            "What's she got to do with this?" Logan asked, surprised.

            Xavier related the incident in England, and then what he learned about Ms. Frost.

            "So this 'Hellfire Club' has a branch in England and in America, huh?"

            "Actually, they're two offshoots of one club. They're more or less independent of each other, but they maintain close ties. Emma's a member of the American Inner Circle. According to Sir Braddock, the members of our Inner Circle act independently of each other."

            "So we don't have to worry about any other rich people coming for us?"

            "Hopefully not."

            "Good. But I wasn't talking about her, Charles." He leaned in closer. "You know I travel."

"Yes."

"I've got a lot of names in a lot of places. From Hong Kong down into Southeast Asia, they call me Patch. I've gotten into a lot of scrapes with a lot of nasty customers, but the worst are a group of ninja mercenaries and assassins called the Hand."

"I've never heard of them."

"I ain't surprised. They don't advertise."

"What do they have to do with Elisabeth?"

"When we were sparring, she used a lot of moves that only members of the Hand use."

"Well, perhaps one of her instructors learned the manoeuvres."

"No, Charles," Logan said firmly. He had to make him understand. "Nobody but a member of the Hand teaches anyone their fighting style. The penalty for teaching something you pick up is death- your death, your student's death, and the death of both families. The only reason I know them is because I've survived them. The Hand has no use for anyone western. They're fanatical about it. It's part of the reason why they hate me so much."

"So it's impossible that Elisabeth could have learned these techniques from anyone that isn't a ninja for the Hand?"

"Oh, yeah."

They were silent for a while.

"Mutant millionaires," Xavier muttered. "A clan of ninjas. What's the connection?"

"Beats me."

"And you're sure about this?"

"Yeah, but I called for somebody to verify."

"You did? Who-"

"COME BACK HERE PIETRO!" Jean could be heard screaming.

Xavier looked at Logan.

"I asked for the Blind Master, Charles," he groaned. "Not for the rest of them."

***

            "So you're an X-Geek, huh?" Althea asked Elisabeth.

            "I wouldn't call myself a geek, but yeah," Elisabeth nodded.

            The two young women recognized each other immediately. While the rest of the Misfits got into fights with the X-Men, Wavedancer and Psylocke chose to catch up.

            "How'd your parents take finding out?"

            "They told me they love me, and it doesn't matter what I am."

            Althea grinned.

            "Told ya. Doesn't it feel better with them knowing?"

            "It does," Elisabeth admitted.

            "Two for two!" Althea smiled.

            "Yes, you are," Elisabeth grinned. "So, all of these fine looking men… are you dating any of them?"

            Althea smiled. "Yeah, him." She pointed at Todd, who was being chased by Roberto and Ray.

            Elisabeth blinked.

            "The Toad?"

            "Something wrong with my sexy Toddles?" Althea asked, offended.

            "Not at all," Elisabeth replied quickly. "So what do you like about him?"

            "He's been through a lot, so he's tough. He's also kind, and sweet, and" her dreamy smile turned wicked, "you should see him naked!"

            "Is he…" Elisabeth made a hand gesture.

            "Oh yeah," Althea grinned. "Very."

            "He's like Edwin, then."

            "Edwin? Who's-" Althea gaped as she remembered who Edwin was. "How did you ever see Lifeline naked?

            "It's a long story," Elisabeth grinned. "I'll tell you later. Have you and Todd shagged yet?"

            "No, not yet. Dad wants us to wait until we're seventeen and it's legal."

            "So what?"

            "You try keeping something like that from these nutcases!" She looked at Hank and Cover Girl trying to break Tabitha and Wanda apart. "I'd rather take on Jinx, Wolverine, Storm Shadow, and the Blind Master all at the same time. The odds of pulling it off are higher!"

            "I see your point," Elisabeth conceded. "My new comrades are hardly paragons of sanity themselves."

            "You got that right. So… what do you think of them?"

            "What- all of them?"

            "Scott and Jean, for starters."

            "Ah… them. Well, they're both lovely people, but as far as I can tell, Scott has something packed deeply up his arse."

            They looked over to where Scott was wrestling with Xi.

            "Testify, blondie!" Polly squawked as he flew by with Lockheed. Of course, neither was flying in a straight line.

            "Are they tight?" Elisabeth asked.

            "Very," Althea nodded. "They're drinking buddies. And what do you think of Jean?"

            "Jean thinks she's on display all the time, doesn't she? She seems to want everyone to think she's perfect!"

            They looked over to where Jean was trying to retrieve her diary from a laughing Pietro.

            "You've only been here a few hours, and you already know all that about them, huh? You're a good judge of character."

            "Thank you." She pointed at Pietro- or tried to, when he stood still. "What's he like?"

            "Pietro? He's our team egomaniac. He's loyal, and he loves his sister, and he's our friend, but he's devious, sneaky, and let's put it this way- he makes Jean look humble."

            "You forgot to mention sexy as all sin," Elisabeth sighed. Althea froze- uh oh.

            "Look at that hair. I've never seen hair naturally like that," Elisabeth smiled. "And that face- devilishly handsome, that."

            "Well, he has been compared to Satan," Althea muttered, remembering a number of practical jokes he played recently.

            "That body! Lean, sleek, defined… and that bum. Good God, that bum is to die for!"

            "O-kay," Althea said slowly, backing away from Elisabeth. "Please don't tell him any of that. He's hard enough to live with as is." And one cross-team romance is bad enough, thank you very much! Oh well- at least Elisabeth wasn't after her studly Toddles!

            "Ahh!" Jamie's cries for help grabbed their attention. Three Jamies ran past where they were sitting, followed by Brittany, Daria, and Quinn.

            "Shouldn't you stop them?" Elisabeth asked, concerned.

            "Nah- it's best to just let them get it out of their systems."

            "If you say so. And what about them?" Elisabeth pointed to where Lance and Peter were wrestling.

            "That'll go on until Kitty makes up her mind," Althea groaned. "Or until the end of time, which is about the same thing."

            "So that's what the Professor meant when he said that one of the X-Men has a special relationship with one of the Misfits, I take it. Why didn't he just say there was a love triangle?"

            "Who understands how Baldy thinks?"

            "So is this-" Elisabeth indicated the chaos- "going to happen every time our teams meet?"

            "No."

            "Oh, good."

            "It's usually much more destructive."

            "Oh, God."

***

            "You're sure about this?" the Blind Master asked Logan. They, along with Storm Shadow, Snake Eyes, Jinx, Spirit, and the Professor, were in Xavier's study.

            "I called a time out to set this up," Logan said as he put a disc into the monitor. "What do you think?"

            The tape showed Elisabeth and Logan sparring. The bouts were short, due to Logan's superior skill. After three bouts, Logan paused the recording.

            "Well?"

            The Blind Master nodded. "You're right. That is how a member of the Hand fights. She is not fully trained, though. Not yet." Snake Eyes nodded his agreement.

            "You two have fought them before?" Xavier asked.

            "Yes," he nodded. "Before our involvement with GI Joe." he explained.

"The Arashikage Clan and the Hand are old enemies," Jinx added.

            "I've never fought them myself," Storm Shadow frowned. "But what I've heard about them…"

            "They hate the West," the Blind Master agreed. "How would an English girl know their secrets?"

            "I have a theory about that," the Professor began, and outlined what he learned about Emma Frost.

            "She must have a connection to the Hand," Spirit reasoned. "And it must be an important one for the Hand to abandon their hatred to allow this."

            "I agree," Xavier said. "But I cannot find any tampering in Elisabeth's mind, or anything that indicates any… downloading. Elisabeth doesn't know anything about this- I'm sure of that. I don't dare probe further- her sensitivity makes it difficult to probe, and until I can fully compensate for it, I don't dare try anything invasive. The results could be disastrous."

            "So we'll have to capture the White Queen if we are to have the truth," Jinx said grimly.

            "We?" Xavier asked.

            "The Hand are old enemies of ours," the Blind Master reminded him. "We do have some personal interest in their movements. Such a radical departure from their usual methods demands investigating."

            "We could use all the help we could get, Charles," Logan pointed out. "The kids aren't ready for the Hand. Trust me on this."

            "Very well," Xavier agreed. "I can't allow one of my students to remain under someone's control, and if there is a plot to turn mutants into assassins through mind control, we can't let it slide. What do you suggest?"

            "Divide our forces. You try to find Frost. Me- I've got contacts in Southeast Asia. They'll help find the Hand."

            "Like who?" Jinx asked.

            Logan smiled. "One of 'em's a lady in Hong Kong named Rosie. She's got her ear to the ground. And if that fails, I got a… friend in Madripoor that owes me a few favours."

            The Blind Master looked right at Logan.

            "You're talking about Tyger Tiger." It wasn't a question.

            Logan looked surprised, but gave a small laugh.

            "Yeah, I am. And you've figured it out."

            "I've had my suspicions for some time, but this confirmed them. No other would have such knowledge of the Hand. You certainly get around, Master Patch."

            Storm Shadow's eyes briefly widened in surprise. No one knew what Snake Eyes did under his mask, but he did look at Logan. Jinx just smiled at her boyfriend.

            "You knew, didn't you?" the Blind Master asked her.

            "Naturally. I'm his girlfriend." She exchanged a slightly sappy look with Logan.

            "He is a legend," Storm Shadow explained to Spirit and Xavier. "He was the bane of the underworld for a time, before he hooked up with Tyger Tiger."

            "It was a long time ago," Logan shrugged.

            "Who's Tyger Tiger?" Xavier asked.

            "She a crime boss in Madripoor," Spirit explained. "She's got a bit of a conscience- she doesn't traffic in slaves or heavy drugs, but everything else is fair game. We've had a few run-ins with her."

            "You've met?" Logan asked, surprised. "I've been back to Madripoor, and I haven't heard anything about her and American troops."

            "It was a secret operation," Spirit shrugged. "She was supplying COBRA with weaponry, until she realized who she was dealing with. She backed out, they went after her, and we stepped in, even though it turned out that we didn't have to. Yes, we know her." He shot the briefest glance at Storm Shadow. "Some of us more than others."

            Logan caught the glance, and grinned.

            "Oh really?"

            "Yes," Storm Shadow said neutrally, but the area around his eyes turned slightly red.

            "Well how's about you and I say hi to her, if Rosie can't find anything."

            "That would be… acceptable," Storm Shadow muttered.

            Jinx looked from her cousin to Logan.

            "I'm going too," she stated firmly.

            Logan looked faintly guilty. Storm Shadow's mouth quirked upwards.

            "Logan?" Xavier asked. "How exactly did you get involved with this woman?"

            "She needed a bodyguard. Her organization was being threatened by mooks with even less of a conscience than she has. If they got control of her set-up, it would have been bad for the area. Very bad. I helped the lesser of two evils. That's all."

            "So when do we begin?" Spirit asked.

            "No time like the present," Logan grunted.

            "I agree."

            "We need to let Hawk know about the situation," the Blind Master said. "We can get the three of you to Hong Kong tomorrow."

            "And we can begin looking for Emma Frost," Spirit added. Snake Eyes nodded.

            "I can help with that," the Professor agreed. "Cerebro has recently been modified to watch for specific mutant signatures."

            "Good," the Blind Master said.

            "Do we tell the kids about this?" Jinx asked.

            "No," Xavier said. "They would act oddly around Elisabeth, and for all we know, that might tip our enemies off."

            "Can't you keep people from spying?" the Blind Master asked.

            "I think so, but I can't find any evidence of tampering in Elisabeth's mind. If I missed that, then… it's possible I could be missing other things," he said quietly, in a tone that said 'I really don't want to admit this.' "If we're right about what's going on, then we don't dare do anything that might reveal our- pardon the expression- hand."

            "So we're agreed then?" the Blind Master asked. Everybody nodded. "Good. With the exception of General Hawk, nobody else should know about this until we've got something conclusive."

***

            "This is, to put it mildly, not good, Emma," Sebastian Shaw, the Black King, growled. The Inner Circle had assembled to hear the news about Elisabeth Braddock. "Not good at all!"

            "I know," she agreed, still furious about Xavier's coup of Elisabeth Braddock.

            "We shouldn't have agreed to put the assassin's mind in the girl at all," Harry Leland, the Black Bishop, said.

            "It's not like we had much choice," Donald Pierce, the White King, pointed out. "We couldn't allow ourselves to remain in the debt of those assassins, now could we?"

            "If the assassin's body is ever repaired, how will we extract her from the Xavier Institute?" Shaw went on, ignoring the others. "I've cultivated trust by donating to them, but they'll know by now that I'm in the Inner Circle with you! Hopefully, they won't know how closely we all work together, but even so-"

            "Even so, we can cross that bridge if we come to it," Emma said smoothly. "Xavier will not know about Elisabeth's little cocoon- I buried it too deeply in her mind for him to find easily, even if he was inclined to perform an invasive probe, and given the girl's psychic sensitivity, he isn't. Getting Elisabeth and Kwannon's body together will be easy enough to do, and the extraction will be very quick." Emma was grateful that none of her peers knew the full extent of what she was doing. "And then you can have your precious little British Black Queen."

            "Jealous, Emma?" Leland laughed. It was widely- and incorrectly- rumoured that Emma and Sebastian were lovers. Their relationship, while it had- for a time- been sexual in the past, was forged out of great ambition and mutual thirst for power. Sexual pleasures, while exquisite, were secondary to the pleasure of power. Power required a clear head, and that meant avoiding mixing business with pleasure.

            "And while we're on that subject," Emma pressed on, "I must ask you again- of all the members of the British Hellfire Club- why her?"

            "There are many reasons," Shaw smiled. "She is a mutant, and a powerful one. She is a hereditary member of the British Hellfire Club, and once she is ours, she will be one of the few people ever to claim membership in both branches. Her parents are the Red Bishop and the Black Knight of the British Inner Circle. She will be eminently suited to lead our little takeover, once we get her some extra support."

            "Still on about that, are you?" Pierce asked, surprised. It was common knowledge in the Inner Circle that Shaw wanted to unify the two branches of the Hellfire Club- under his leadership, of course.

            "I've never gotten off of it, Donald," he replied evenly. "Filling out the remainder of our Circle with members of the British club is the best way to do it- or have we all forgotten that we need all the help- all the resources- that we can get? We all know what our 'dearly departed' predecessors duped us into funding." Only Pierce wasn't disturbed by the Sentinels, but he lacked the cause. He was a cyborg, not a mutant.

            "And since that is the case, we need to watch the X-Men," Shaw continued. "You know, I believe it is time that I take a closer look at the Institute. I am helping to fund it, after all."

            "And of course, you'll want to talk to the students, to get an idea of how the school could be improved," Leland grinned. "After all, you should get something in return for your support."

            "Exactly. And of course, to ensure an unbiased report, I shall have to interview the students somewhere both public and private, away from the teachers but near witnesses, just in case- say, at a restaurant in Bayville?"

            "And if the time comes to interview Elisabeth Braddock," Pierce said innocently, "why- your car will break down, and so there will be a reasonable delay while… everything gets put the way it ought to be."

            "Precisely," Shaw said neutrally. Emma smiled- not bad for a spur of the moment plan, no, not bad at all.

            "So we are all agreed?" Shaw asked. When his co-conspirators nodded, he smiled.

            Emma smiled too. Despite the setback, her plan was proceeding smoothly. She had already alerted Matsu'o as to the… change in plan, and he was no doubt feeding his superiors a line even as the Inner Circle was getting down to its next business: listening to the current report of its spy in Magneto's Acolytes, who was also a probationary member of the Inner Circle: Jason Wyngarde, also known as Mastermind.

***

            The adults in the study emerged to view the chaos.

            Shipwreck was trying to serenade Ororo, who had returned from taking the Braddocks back to their hotel. She was 30 seconds from zapping him. No- make that 29.

            Almost all of the teenagers were in a melee…

            With the exception of Althea, Elisabeth, Kurt, and Todd, who were watching the fight, commenting on it, and even making bets on the outcome…

            And Fred and Remy, who were arguing about food and cooking- again.

            The remaining adults, exhausted by their efforts to stop the violence, were simply watching as well.

            Trinity had finally caught up to Jamie, had him tied down, and were tickling him.

            And through the din, Polly's voice could be heard, singing drinking songs. Lockheed, still buzzed from the Pixie Sticks and Logan's secret stash, was accompanying him with belches of flame.

            Snake Eyes signed something. Spirit, Jinx, and Storm Shadow chuckled.

            "What did he say?" Xavier asked.

            "He said 'Some things never change, do they?'" Logan smirked.

            The fracas went on for awhile, until Fred and Remy's discussion got a little too violent. They brought out different (but very heavy) cookbooks and began to hit each other with them. They got a little to close to the general melee, and somehow the cookbooks flew out of their hands and hit Althea and Elisabeth.

            "Oh merde," Remy groaned.

            "Mommy," Fred squeaked.

            "This is going to hurt, no?" Remy asked.

            "Oh yeah," Althea snarled as she charged them.

            "In places you don't even know you bloody well have," Elisabeth added as she joined the charge.

***

            Inside her prison, Kwannon decided to let Elisabeth handle this without any assistance. The brief merging of their essences brought out some of the girl's hidden training. Unfortunately, it also brought the Blind Master and the Young Master of the Clan Arashikage. They had to suspect the truth, now, and even though her prison was cracked, it still held. But not for long, Kwannon swore. Soon, she would find a way to break free and put herself back in her own body!

***

            The two girls began to beat on the boys, and soon, the four of them joined the melee.

            "It looks like Liz is going to fit in just fine," Kurt remarked.

            "And she's definitely Bree's cousin," Todd added as he watched her go after Fred.

            "How do you know?"

            Elisabeth aimed a kick at Fred's stomach. Someone knocked into her from behind, so her kick missed Fred completely and hit the nearby Scott right in the-

            "That's Bree's favourite defensive move, yo," Todd moaned as he and Kurt (and all the other men) winced.

A/N: Well, I'm done. I hope you liked it! I'm following a very tough act: Red Witch, the originator of the Misfits (bows in worship).

Re. the Evolved Braddocks: How are they? Are they real? Do any of them seem Mary-Sue like? Comments and criticisms are welcome, but no flames, please.

What exactly is the deal with Kwannon? What are Elisabeth's nightmares like? How did the elder Braddocks know of their daughter's mutation? Who is the other telepath with the super-sensitive mind? Why doesn't Xavier want to talk about him or her? Will the Hellfire Club get their hooks deeper into the Institute? How did Elisabeth see Lifeline naked? When will Sgt. Snuffles show up? Is the author going to Evolve anyone else? Is the author completely insane?

The answers to some of these questions are coming up in my next fic, as yet untitled, which will feature the return of some old characters, and my take on a classic X-Men storyline. Which one is it? Well, tune in and find out!