Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.
Henry Van Dyke

Iora Rua: You'll have to find that out this chapter. :)

Rogue77: Yeah…Dahk is a little out there sometimes.

Flamingo1:  You just hit my idea on the head with that review! :)

Laureate: I didn't mean to gross you out that much…Hezibah would love some chocolate mousse…

Azzandra: Indeed. Dahk is another piece of Danny.  But more on that later.

^*^*^*^*^*^*^^^*^*^*^*

"Did Cerebro find anythin'?"

Professor Xavier shook his head.  "Nothing.  It's as if she has disappeared.  Her mind may be too far isolated yet for us to pick up on her.

Logan paced the room.  "Well, what are we gonna tell her parents?  She just up and walked off?  She's in a coma, Chuck.  Somebody must have kidnapped her."

"We shouldn't jump to conclusions. She may have woken up."

"And left? Doolittle wouldn't do that.  She would have waited."

"Yes…That is one of her best points.  And I do not believe she would have gone this long without contacting us…"

'Professor? The Brotherhood is here.  They said they wanted to talk with you.'

"The brotherhood is here." Charles said to Wolverine, who tensed up in surprise.

"This ain't a coincidence."

"I don't think so either.  Come, let's go talk with them."

^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^**^^*^*^*^*

"Hey, Mr. Dead cat. You wouldn't happen to know the way to a certain research facility would you?"  I asked the floating apparition.  A ghost.  Well, not really.  More like energy. 

When animals die, they leave behind a sort of shadow made out of energy of themselves for a few days or as long as they want to. Danny couldn't see them with her blue eyes, but my green ones saw them perfectly.  The cat looked up at me.  It had been a pretty calico, but it got killed almost a week ago in an accident.  The last thing it had wanted before it disappeared was to feel human warmth again.  So I had snuggled the little energy form up to my chest, talking about life in general.

A couple miles away. You are going there?

"Yup."  I grinned at it.  It blinked its eyes at me, and gave me more in depth instructions in the form of pictures rather than words.  Then it reached up and touched noses with me.

Good Luck. Goodbye. Thank you.

"Glad I could be of service."  The cat leaped out of my arms and padded down an alleyway, where it went through a brick wall.

Maybe it was off to chase dead rats.

I didn't feel sad for it.  It had lived its life the way it wanted, it's family had given it a beautiful funeral, and it had no regrets.  If it wasn't sad for itself, how could I be sad for it?

I walked down the street, humming a nameless tune.  My little bugs had stayed at the school.  I didn't want anyone to run off with my creation.

Sea Research Center.  Center for researching dead sea animals.  That's where I was headed.  A happy place.

After all, if one was looking for a smart brain, what better place to look?

^**^^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^^*^*^

"Holy cow!" Bobby exclaimed as he watched the cloud of bugs swirl about the school.  "I've heard of bug problems, but this is ridiculous!"

Scott, Jean, Bobby, Kurt, and the Brotherhood stood a little ways apart from what used to be Bayville High.

"We told you!" Tabby said with her hands on her hips.  Scott looked puzzled.

"So what?  The school needs an exterminator."

Todd rolled his eyes.  "No, yo!  Those bugs, they ain't alive! It's like somebody pulled a Dracula thing and went bringin' em back to life, yo!"

"
How do you know?" Scott said, more confused than ever.  Todd raised an eyebrow.  "…Oh…"

"Let's shut-up about Todd's habits and figure out what kind of mutant could have done this!" Pietro intervened.  Wanda rolled her eyes.

"Uh…I saw something when you guys left." Fred commented uneasily.

"What?" Jean asked.  Fred had stayed behind to watch the building while the Brotherhood had contacted the X-men.

"This girl, she was really thin, she had real dark hair and these weird kinda flashy green eyes.  She walked right out of the school and the bugs kinda parted for her."

"Vhat did she look like?"  Kurt broke in.

"You know that girl that sicced a dog on Pietro? She kinds of reminds me of her, only…mean."

"This better not be a trick." Scott growled.  Lance stepped up to him.

"If Fred said he saw it, he did.  You got a problem with it, you take it up with me." He growled back.

Jean calmly separated them.  "We can't fight.  If what you said is true, we have a worse problem."

*^^*^*^*^**^^**^*^*^^*^*^**^^*

Amazing how pulling fire alarms will make people run out of a building. 

I had to move fast.  Sooner or later somebody would figure out what was happening and then we-I would be in trouble. 

I jumped at the chance to ride an elevator to the top floor, where the people were researching brain waves, which the little menu telling what floors did what had said they were going to be.  It would be the fastest way up, and everyone would be using the stairs because you shouldn't use elevators during a fire.

Besides, Elevators were fun.

The elevator rushed up to the top floor and opened into a deserted hallway.  I ran through it, not being able to really shake the thought that some guy in a black cloak was gonna jump out and try to hit me with a scythe or something.  Old habits die hard, I suppose.

There.  A door to brain anatomy research.  Obviously they would be messing with brains.  I walked in.  There were no security cameras.  Who would want to steal dead animal brains? Excluding myself of course.  I looked around.  There were octopi brains.

"Much to small."

There were shark brains.

"Not good thinkers."

And a dolphin's brain, sitting forlornly on a shelf.

"Jackpot."  I pulled it down.  It was heavy and bulky in its container, but that was alright.  I carried it carefully back to the elevator, where I had fun with feeling gravity pulling me down.  I took the time to walk out the side janitor doors and snuck off into the alleyways, past the groups of concerned looking peoples and the fire trucks, and took off back to the school.

^*^**^^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^*^^**^*^*^

"We've been here for hours!" Tabby complained. Scott shook his head.

"She wouldn't have left those bugs if she didn't think she'd be coming back!  We just have to wait." He added under his breath. "And see if it really is Danny."

"It can't be." Lance muttered. "Danny? She may do stupid stuff sometimes, but she isn't crazy.  Well, the road block thing was a little crazy, but we would have done it if we were in her shoes anyway…She'd never do something unless she was provoked.  And usually she's trying to protect someone."

"I don't see how you can be such an expert, Alvers!" Scott snarled.  They glared angrily at each other.

"Look Yo!" Todd suddenly hissed, pointing at the grounds.  The rest of the mutants looked.

Walking slowly across the grounds with a large container in her arms, walked a very thin looking girl with very dark hair.  She walked up to the school building and set the container on the ground as she patted herself off and stretched. 

"Let's go!" Bobby moved. Scott and Lance grabbed him, but not before they caught the attention of the girl.  She turned to face them, and Jean gasped in shock.

"DANNY?!"

Flickering eyes showed slight recognition, but then they started to glitter malevolently.  Green eyes.

Tabby stepped back.  "Uh…Guys…."

Wanda began to back up as well. "That's not Danny."

The girl raised up her hands.  The swirling cloud of insect began to make an ominous sound. They shot up straight into the air and fell like a gigantic tentacle, attempting to crush anyone in its way.

"GET BACK!" Scott tried to fry it with his eye beams, but all it did was make a hole that was filled with more bugs.  Jean had to pull him out of the way as the tentacle slapped the ground.

Dust and dirt flew through the air as wings of bugs hit the ground.  The tentacle righted itself and broke off into several different swarms.  The Brotherhood, with prior knowledge of what the swarms could do, ran away.  Jean tried to shield herself from the flying bugs, which worked relatively well until the crawling bugs arrived.

"Aaack!" She tried desperately to swat them off.

Scott and Bobby were frying and icing bugs as they got too close, but when the bugs that had been chasing the Brotherhood came back to join the fray, they had to retreat. 

Kurt had been trying to teleport to get away from the bugs, but they seemed to be homing in on him.  And they didn't get tired.

"RETREAT!" Scott yelled above the buzzing.  Kurt teleported over to Jean and teleported her away from the bugs she had managed to get off of her.  Scott and Bobby ran as fast as they could from the swarms.

They skittered into an alley where the bugs gave up they're pursuit and returned to guarding the school.  Gazing out around the corner, Scott realized that Danny had disappeared.  Along with her oddly shaped container.

*^^*^*^*^*^**^*^*^^**^^*^*

\You didn't have to do that./

"They would have tossed us in a looney bin.  Trust me Danny, I know even if you didn't want too." I grumbled as I made my way down the hall with the container.  "Besides, its much more fun to do things our way."

I reached the lab and looked over the carcass.  It had fared well since I left.  No decaying.

"We have a brain Igor."  I said in a spooky tone as I put the container on the table.

The saw had been where I left it.  I plucked it up and carved a large side of the antelope's head off.  I removed that brain and gently lifted the brain in the container out and into the now vacant skull of the antelope.  I used the scalpel and connected a few things with others with a small sewing needle.  Then I took the eyes of the tiger out of the fridge and attached them where the original eyes had been.

"Heheheeh.  I love that song. 'Eye of the Tiger'…."

\What's going on?/ Danny asked sleepily.  She had fallen asleep again.

"We're almost ready!" I said happily as I sewed the head of the antelope back together and added the impala horns I took off earlier to the skull.  I stepped back and admired my handiwork.

"Heh.  Not bad." It was a monstrosity, alright.  Big. Tough.  Toothy.  I had added some changes to the antelope's mouth.  Fangs and a wider mouth with unhinge able jaw.  Wings. Muscle. Everything a girl could hope for.

"Aww…you know, he's actually kind of cute…I think we should call him…Cupcake!"

\…..Cupcake…./

"Well, yeah! What did you think we'd call him, the Annihilator? That's so cliché.  Besides, he looks like a Cupcake named person."

\Alright…sure…/

"Cool.  Now for the finishing touch."  I folded my hands over his heart.  I called the Power to me.  I welled through me like a geyser.  It was getting faster, even if it was still slower than it had been.  Much slower. 

\Necromancy./ Danny said suddenly.

"What?" I said, trying to concentrate on the task at hand.

\That's what the Power is.  To bring the dead back to life./

"Cool." I grinned.

I felt my eyes grow hot and everything I saw began to be tinted in green.  I willed it into the corpse below me, and felt pain wrench through my lungs as the power flowed through me into the beast on the table.  I directed it, it pushed through dead veins from the heart, setting off a heartbeat, coursing through the muscles, repairing them, binding them in the way I had placed them, the skin grew together as if had never been from different creatures.  And the brain.

The brain began to pulse with thought.  It settled within its new body with the Power's help.

The animal breathed and moved beside me.  I lifted my hands from the spot and smiled at the creature as it gazed back at me with blue eyes. It got up and fell off the table on all fours.  It found this too difficult and reverted to two legs.  Standing up on its back legs, it towered over me.  By at least three feet.  I stared up at the creature with a smile and stood up on my tippy toes and cupped its snout as it bent towards me.

"Well, you're a little cutie, aren't you?"

Mommy?

I jerked, a little surprised.

\He is cute…/

"Yeah…Mommy loves you!" I kissed him on the nose.  He was a living, breathing, thinking creature.

He snuffled and turned to explore his surroundings.  I grinned suddenly.

"hahahHahAHAHAHAHH!!!!!!  It's alive! Look at him Danny, we made him ourselves! He's beautiful and—HEY! Don't eat that!" I yelled as I tried to pull the chemistry book out of his mouth.  "You don't know where it's been!"

^**^*^*^^**^^**^*^*^^*^*^**^*^*^*^

Cupcake lives!

Tune in next time:

Dahk disappears!

Herman will take reviews today!  (Oh, and he likes chocolate covered cherries if you want to give him something.  He told me to tell you guys that.)