Title: Lifestyle Changes – the re-write.

Reason: Well, many of you will have seen X2. I'm trying to adjust things to fit, and simultaneously slim down the story a little. The big alterations start round about chapter three.

Author: Wallace (wal_lace@hotmail.com)

Chronology: This is set in 2001 just after the end of season two of Angel and season five of Buffy. For those who are defeated by the recent lack of continuity, this means that Buffy is currently extremely dead, and Angel has headed off to either Tibet or Sri Lanka to deal. Wesley is still clean-shaven, but tough and capable and good friends with Gunn. Gunn still has his rough edges. Fred is still being Crazy Lady in the attic. On the down side, mutant thief Gwen Raiden hasn't turned up yet, though I may be able to wedge in a reference somewhere. There will be spoilers for most episodes that have featured Faith, but not much more.

This story takes as an assumption that in 1999 the 'near future' was 2001. Therefore, this is just after the events of the two X-Men movies. There will be heavy spoilers, especially for the end of X2. Seriously, if you haven't seen it, and don't want the ending ruined, stop reading right now.

Disclaimer: The vast majority of the characters and concepts utilised or referenced herein are owned by people and companies other than myself. Personally I always feel that they belong as much to the actors who play them as to the hacks who write them. That said, I'd like to confiscate Storm from Halle Berry.

Casting: The original version of this story – which will be removed when this version overtakes it – made much mention of casting, since it's a crossover between a movie world and a TV world. That said, the Jubilee in my world will always be a 5'4, elfin, blue eyed thief, with a smart mouth, psychotic tendencies, and horrible taste in clothing. Otherwise,

            Faith (Wilkins)                                       Eliza Dushku

            Wesley Wyndham-Price                         Alexis Denisof

            Cordelia Chase                                      Charisma Carpenter

            Charles Gunn                                        J August Richards

            Veronica Sawyer                                    Winona Ryder

            Scott Summers (Cyclops)                       James Marsden

            Robert 'Bobby' Drake (Iceman)                Shawn Ashmore

            Henry Philip 'Hank' McCoy (Beast)          The voice of Kelsey Grammer, coupled with SFX

            Warren Kenneth Worthinton III (Angel)     Jared Leto with the dye job from 'Fight Club'.

            Marie D'Ancanto (Rogue)                        Anna Paquin

Remy LeBeau (Gambit)                          John Leguizamo, minus about twelve years

Lucas Bishop                                        Keith Hamilton Cobb

Logan (Wolverine)                                  Hugh Jackman

Kurt Wagner (Nightcrawler)                     Alan Cumming

Katherine 'Kitty' Pryde (Shadowcat)         Katie Stewart

Professor Charles Francis Xavier             Patrick Stewart

Random Pop Culture Fact: Trapper John's real name is John Francis Xavier McIntyre. Coincidence?

Feedback: Feed my addiction.

Archiving: Yes, please. Pimp me.

Prologue 1988

'So . . .' He says weakly. 'Now that you're dead, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?'

She manages a smile. They've been to hell together, though by different routes. They brought each other here. The least she owes him is a smile.

She finds a cigarette in her pocket. She holds it up to him in a mock salute. A few days before, he lit up from her burning hand. Today?

The cigarette hangs from her mouth. The clock ticks down, stops for a moment, starts up once more.

She waits.

1993

'You don't have to. Not yet.' Lucas tells her.

'I am gonna have to tell him, sooner or later.' Shari points out. 'You can't build a relationship on lies, big brother.'

'What will you do if...?'

'If he turns out to have issues?' His younger sister shrugs at him. 'If he can't take dating me, we break up. That's all.'

'And if word gets out?'

'That I'm a mutant? Then I have to put up with the mutant-haters as well as the racists, I guess. It's no big deal, Bish. This is nineteen ninety-three, not eighteen ninety-three. It's not like we're gonna see a lynch mob chasing me down or something.' She smirks at the ridiculousness of that thought. Her brother remains grim-faced as ever.

1999

'Well, look at you.' She says. 'All dressed up in big sister's clothes.' She is the big sister, too. Buffy may be two years older, have been doing this two years longer, but before that? Faith's already older than the blonde will ever be, inside.

'You told me I was just like you. That I was just holding it in.'

They're standing face to face now, and once again Faith isn't sure whether she wants to kill the other girl or fuck her senseless. Even with the new attitude, which reminds Faith far too much of herself, Buffy still has that effect on her. She can't help but smile.

'Ready to cut loose?' She asks. All good things come to an end.

'Try me.' This isn't a capture. It's a confrontation, although only one of them realises it.

Faith's still smiling. Buffy's not here to bring her in, dead or alive. She's here to establish once and for all who's better.

'Okay then. Give us a kiss.'

2001

Agent Sawyer's desk is a mass of too much paperwork. Assigned to retroactive cases going back before she was born, she's been unable to work her way through the backlog. She isn't expected to.

After all, you don't want boat-rockers having time on their hands.

When she volunteered for the Task Force they were happy to have her. She was one of the FBI's bright young things, fresh, intelligent, and very capable. She had an excellent record, if a little short on experience, and was known to be a fairly ordinary, well-balanced individual, her tendency to obsess over explosions and shootings in high schools aside.

Unfortunately, she turned out to be a little too well balanced. Suddenly the Agency had a sympathiser on their hands. So they partnered her with the other worrying member, and assigned them to working their way through old cases. It was intended to stultify them both.

To Veronica Sawyer, it had proved fascinating.

Perhaps it was her memories of high school that drove her to pay special attention to files like the one she now held in her hands. Perhaps it wasn't, but all things considered, the odds are against it.

'Hey, Luke!' She called, and her partner looked up. Two metres tall and massively muscular, the hugely intimidating African-American had served in the US Marine Corps and NYPD before joining the FBI. Like her, he was rather more open-minded about their topic of investigation than most members of the Task Force. Like her, also, his record was far too impressive for them to simply drop him.

'Another incident in a high school?' He asked, nodding at the file. They'd been working together long enough to know one another's obsessions.

'You could say that. It got blown up.'

'Blown up?'

'As in, bomb go boom. Blown up. Destroyed. Levelled.'

'And there's no explanation…'

'There's already been an investigation. No, what interests me is one of the peripheral details.'

'Which would be?'

'Included among the casualties was the local mayor. No body found, but still officially very dead, though reports are confused as to whether or not he was already dead when the bomb went off. He happened to have an adopted teenaged daughter.'

'Left homeless?'

'Not quite. A couple of days previously she was badly injured and left in a coma. He'd already made provisions to keep her hooked up to life support no matter what, so that was okay.'

'She manifested?'

'It's complicated. The records on her are very incomplete, but at the time she was wanted for questioning in connection with five violent deaths. About a year ago she woke up – which was eight months after daddy dearest was killed – and didn't stop to talk to anyone, just busted straight out of hospital.'

'It sounds as if she's resourceful, but otherwise . . .'

'The doctors agreed that after the first month her chances of regaining consciousness were zero.'

'So she beat the odds. Coincidences happen, Sawyer.'

'Luke, what have I told you about calling me that? Anyway, that isn't the end of it. She was picked up by the local police at the home of one of the people investigated in the destruction of the school, and promptly broken loose en route to the station house by unidentified assailants. She reappeared in LA, where she beat up a couple of people before handing herself over to the police and making a full confession, not just to several assaults and violent crimes, but also to three of the five killings, despite there being no evidence to link her to the commission of said crimes.'

'Sentence?'

'She got unlucky, and pulled a bad public defender. No date of birth, but she said she was seventeen and what few records they had confirmed that. With all that and her full confession the lack of evidence wasn't enough to get her below Murder Two. Twenty-five to life, and she's been sitting in California State ever since.'

'I still fail to see the significance.'

'First, if she is to be believed she killed a college professor named . . .' Sawyer paused to check her paperwork. 'Lester Worth when she was sixteen. This guy was stabbed to death. The coroner's original report concluded that the crime was committed using a sharp knife wielded by an exceptionally strong individual of below average height.'

'How strong?'

'There were clean incisions through his ribs, spine and left shoulder blade. They reckoned the force required to inflict that kind of damage would require a body builder on PCP.' Luke nodded. 'Second, she went into the coma from critical injuries, including being stabbed in an identical manner to Professor Worth – same strength, same knife, which was found at the scene – and falling off a tall building. She had multiple broken bones, massive blood loss, brain damage enough to leave her a permanent vegetable, and the knife wound to the stomach had pretty much minced her internal organs – we're talking never eating solids again.'

'It all healed during her coma?'

'It all healed within a week, excepting the brain damage. That's what took the eight months. Third, and this is the big one – at the age of sixteen, seventeen, she perpetrated several confirmed assaults on rather larger targets, and left them looking like they'd been hit by a truck. Healing and strength, Luke.'

'And you want to investigate this girl... what was her name, Sawyer?'

'Faith Wilkins. And could you please call me Veronica. Or Ronnie. Or Ron.'

'Call me Lucas, then, not Luke. Luke is a Jedi Knight.'

'Lucas is a weirdo in a black turtleneck.' He looked puzzled at that. 'And, yeah, I want to investigate her. At the very least we can go visit the pen, ask her some questions.'

'About her abilities, not the destruction of the high school.' Her partner reminded her. 'Very well, you'd better go pitch it to the AIC.' He leaned over to grab the file from her hands, dropped the hard copy back onto her desk, and slid the accompanying floppy disc into his laptop. 'I'll get to reading.'

She stood, and headed over to the door to the inner sanctum of the Task Force. The sign on it read:

Cameron Hodge

Agent-in-charge

Mutant Investigation Task Force

Behind her Lucas Bishop opened his private E-Mail account, and sent the entire contents of the floppy disc to an old friend.