Sorry it has been so long. Exams are totally taking over my life, those pesky things.

I also had no idea what the hell to write. This is so not my best chapter, its not even good but what the hell...its the best you're gonna get for a while.

Hope y'all enjoy.

Have a nice day.

***

Gabriel looked into Mac's eyes. She looked serious. Not that it worried him. He had always managed to beat the people he had gone up against. And she had just made it easier for him. By sending the whole of Mutant X to sleep she had left the way open for him to take Sara without any kind of opposition. His plan was still going to work out even with the troublesome interference.

Mac inwardly smiled. This guy was so confident, so cocky in his own ability to win. She wasn't worried, atleast not yet. She knew she could hold her own and protect the others as well. She had had to send them to sleep. If she had have telempathically forced them outside back to the Double Helix it would have taken too long and it would have given Gabriel a shot to catch them. She was prepared to die as long as it involved taking Gabriel with her but there was no way she was gonna risk anybody else.

'So, how's your life been?' she asked pleasantly.

'I've killed some people, got plenty of power and women...in short, its been great.'

'Women, really? Were they all desperate, or blind deaf retards?

'When did you get all funny?'

'I'm not normally this amusing but you're such a fantastic muse.'

Gabriel smirked. Finally someone else other than Shalimar who could keep up with his insults. Now he knew they had to be related.

Mac smirked back. She was incredibly serious about the whole situation but figured it would be interesting and possibly useful if she found out what Gabriel had wanted Sara for. It didn't make a lot of sense that he would capture her for information, what could she possibly know other than the addresses of a couple of safehouses? And it wasn't likely that he went to all the trouble of kidnapping her just to piss Mutant X off. He had succeeded in doing that but it wasn't his aim.

A wistful look filled her big eyes. She was staring at her big brother, the one guy in the world that she was supposed to be able to turn to in any situation, when friends couldn't help, when parents were the problem, this was the guy that she was supposed to look up to. It wasn't so funny anymore.

She pitied him for being so barren of any basic human emotions other than anger but more than that she pitied herself. She pitied herself because despite what she had always managed to tell herself life wasn't gonna turn out okay, she wasn't better off than most people. She had no parents, her friends could never truly understand her and she was faced with the awful truth. Her brother was a scumbag. In any ordinary situation that wouldn't matter but this particular scumbag was trying to hurt people which meant that she was gonna have to deal with it. And she really didn't want to do that.

Gabriel looked Mac up and down. He didn't know exactly what she was thinking but he could see the little cogs in her mind turning. It was always amusing to watch people figuring out what to do with him. He had watched his parents do it countless times, and then Eckhart when he had been considering whether or not to put him in a stasis pod. Knowing that Mac was a feral would normally have led him to the conclusion that she would act on instinct but there was also the psionic side of her. It was a constant battle inside of her. The wildness of being feral, the spontaneity always having to be balanced out by the subdued, cautious psionic within her. It was the same with molecular and elemental. One was stable, the other consistently unpredictable. He knew what she was going through because he had been there himself. He remembered all the confusion, the tension within your own body and mind. He was so glad he was over that stage. It was way more fun watching other people experience it.

Suddenly the three new mutants that had run off after Mac used her telempathy came bursting into the warehouse. They stood looking at the situation in front of them and then each took up a fighting stance. Gabriel leant back against the wall behind him and prepared to watch Mac. He wasn't scared of her, he just wanted to check out some of her moves.

Mac surveyed the view in front of her. The three guys she could take down easily enough, but if she was planning on taking Gabriel out she was gonna need them out of the way for quite some time. And she didn't want Mutant X or her friends to get hurt in the process.

She bent her knees and leaped into the air. She flew across the heads of the new mutants and landed behind them. They turned around and she landed a round kick to one of their heads. He dropped to the ground, floored but not out. The one to the right drew his hands together and started to draw some kind of purple energy into them. He released it and Mac executed a back somersault. It missed her by mere inches and she landed again.

Then the fight really started. She hit some hard punches and kicks and after a while it was just one on one with the guy she had made cry like a little girl. He looked pissed. But that was a disadvantage for him, not her. In her short time at the Mutant X headquarters she had learnt that anger was a weakness and that before every fight she had to try and calm herself down mentally. Being physically wired was fine, it meant the adrenaline was flowing but she needed to stay focused and not let her anger, her rage become an obstacle. She had heard it from everyone in Mutant X. She had gotten pretty sick of it after a while but it seemed to make sense. The guy swung his fist at her head and she ducked swinging her leg across the floor and sweeping his legs from beneath him. His skull slammed into the floor with a crack. She closed her eyes and tried to extinguish the noise from her memory. She opened her eyes and started walking across the floor attempting to avoid the random bodies.

Gabriel had been watching her the whole way through. She was strong, there was no denying it but she didn't have the technique, the skills to beat him. And she didn't have enough confidence in her abilities. Sure, she was good with the feral side but she wasn't happy using her psionic or molecular powers. The corner of his mouth lifted as he thought how easy it would be to kick her ass.