AN: Mmm. Mmmmmm. Bored.... not good....

On the other hand, you guys get another chapter!

Saw M2 recently. Could they have jabbered MORE?? And what was with that dance/sex scene?

FYI: a little blood in this one. Not for faint of hearts. Also a little short.

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Laurel frowned, consulting her map as the gas jockey grinned at her and filled her bike. She ignored him: she was old enough to be his grandmother, for crying out loud. "Do you know how to get to Dr. McCoy's place?" she asked finally. The pimply young man's face fell, and he pointed up the road.

"Just follow that road until it curves off to the right. At the last Shop'N'Go you'll see a small road to the right named Confluence Road. That's his. It'll take you up to his house. It don't go no where else." She nodded, folding up her map.

Suddenly a helicopter thrummed overhead. It was heading right in the direction that the kid had pointed in. "Shit!" Laurel shouted. She pulled out a twenty, thrust it into the kid's hand, and threw herself back on the bike. "Keep the change!" she shouted over her shoulder as she sped out onto the road.

Reaching speeds that were most certainly illegal, Laurel tried to keep pace with the helicopter. It quickly out distanced her, and by the time she hit the Confluence road, it was out of sight. The road was twisty, and uphill, and Laurel felt herself desperately losing seconds as she tried to gun her engine harder. I love bikes, she thought to herself, but God, sometimes I just wish I had wings.

Just then the helicopter flew over her head, heading in the opposite direction. She slowed down, and cursed heavily. "I'll get you yet, Stryker, if it's the last thing I do!" she shouted to the sky, aware of how corny she sounded. "Might as well see who's among the survivors," she muttered, starting back up the bike again.

The house on the top of the hill looked practically destroyed. There was a huge gaping hole where she assumed the front door was supposed to be. There was debris piled up against the outside walls from the helicopter's wind, and the front garden had been ruined by tracks of men landing heavily. A huge soot mark stood in the front walkway, from a large flash strobe, she suspected. Stryker had learnt.

Pulling out her gun, she carefully stepped in the house. She surveyed the wreckage. The TV was still blaring to her left, and heavy footprints marked the way the 'soldiers' had taken, as did tranq darts stuck in the walls. There was a slight smell of burning past the TV room, and she investigated to find the back door, in a corner of the kitchen, likewise blown in. The back door leant heavily against the refrigerator, which was completely beyond repair, seeing as how it was the closest to the back door. To the left of the kitchen was a set of stairs, one going up and one going down. She stepped back into the hallway, following the marks, and then her eye lit on something huge and inky blue in the large vaulted living room, on the other side of the hallway. "Oh my God…."

She rushed over to the figure. Grimacing at the terrible smell coming from some sort of green goo, she tapped his shoulder gently. He was out, but still breathing. She tested his limbs for broken bones, finding just a shoulder out of socket, and quickly popped it back in again. Her fingers touched the back of his neck and came away slightly wet. It wasn't blood; whatever it was made her fingers tingle and she quickly wiped it on the torn and stained carpet. It might have been acid; his neck certainly looked like acid had been placed on it in a small circle. "Sir?" she asked, trying to turn him over. He was heavy! "Dr. McCoy?"

There was the sound of helicopter blades outside, and someone thudded in the living room. Laurel had just enough time to pick up her gun and shoot him. The bullet went through the man's calf, sending him down, and she was standing over him before he could move. "Jackson," she said in a disgusted tone. "I should have known. Were you the one that flew here?"

The man's eyes grew big and scared as he focused on her face. "Yes, Impost-"

She backhanded him with the gun. "Don't call me that! Where's Stryker?"

"At the base." The mark on his face was turning bright red already from the power of her strike.

"What were you planning to do to him? What are his plans?"

At this Jackson's face locked. "I will not tell you."

Her face likewise hardened. "I've killed men before, you know," she said conversationally, almost casually. "You all wanted me to be a killer. I can. Would you like to see how many times I can hit a man with a gun… and miss all the vital parts?" She pointed her gun down and pulled the trigger without aiming. The man's ankle shattered in a spray of bone and blood. His face paled and he clenched his teeth. "A taste of what you gave me," she said quietly. "Care to try any more, or is your palate clean?"

"This guy was working on a cure for mutants," the man jerked his head at the still recumbent mass, his fingernails digging into his hands. "The General told him to try it, and it turned him into the blue freaky monster. I was supposed to come back and exterminate him. The cure failed."

"What is Striker planning?" pressed Laurel. "Where is Logan??!"

Jackson looked up at her, surprised. "The General doesn't know where the hell the bastard is," he rasped. "We had to work on a replacement. The Wolverine is out of our hands. The General needed him, too. He's got something big coming up…"

There was a sudden roar behind her. Laurel whirled around to see the furred mutant race towards her. She backpedaled furiously, but he grabbed her and threw her head first into a wall. As her healing factor sped along, she straightened her neck and untwisted her spinal column. Laurel rose just in time to see him claw the throat out of Jackson, ending the miserable man's life in a quick spurt of blood. Then his eyes lit on her again.

He was grasping her by the front of her leather jacket and knocking her against a wall before she could blink. This guy was fast!

"What have you done to me?" he snarled, throwing her against another wall. Laurel assessed the situation: his eyes were crazy, and he wasn't going to calm down in a hurry. In the meantime, all that he was going to do was destroy his home and hurt himself. She had to stop this.

She reached out beyond the warding stone and grabbed onto his mutation. Within seconds her muscles filled and bunched out on her arms, and her body strained against her clothing as blue fur sprouted over her body. She threw her legs around him and pulled him off of her, kicking him into the living room again. She liked this mutation! She reached him and grabbed him by the shredded remains of his shirt.

"Look, buddy," she snarled around her jutting lower teeth (maybe not, she thought---I'd have to pay a fortune in dentist bills.) "I didn't do this to you. So just settle down."

"Settle down?" he roared. "Settle down??!" He tore his way out of the shirt and leapt on her. She fell backwards, and used her legs to throw him into the opposite wall.

"Never mind," she said, as he turned his body with blinding speed and used his momentum to push off the wall and come flying back to her again. "Why don't you just take a nap?" And she rolled over, snagged Jackson's fallen dart gun and unloaded three darts into his oncoming chest. He dropped like a rock, and again she had to dodge to avoid having him land on top of her.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. What must it be like, having to be forced to take an untested genetic "cure", and waking up as a blue beast? Not for the first time her mind flickered back to Logan. She gently picked him up and maneuvered him onto the couch in front of the TV. Flicking the TV off, she went to go explore the rest of the house. He had to have a bedroom in here somewhere.

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