The Next Offspring

by jenskott

Fifteen years after of the end of Operation: Zero Tolerance, the children of the legends gather in a new team to fight against the evil

2. Challenges

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Next Offspring

Author: Jenskott

Summary: Fifteen years after of the end of Operation: Zero Tolerance, the children of the legends gather in a new team to the fight against the evil.

Continuity: This is the first of one series depicting a new generation universe. The history begins fifteen years after of Operation: Zero Tolerance. Look the first chapter for another details.

Rating: PG-13.

Disclaimer: Check up on the First Chapter. I'm not going to write the same thing always.

Feedback: To jorgisimox@hotmail.com. Whether it likes or you loathe it, write. Advices and CONSTRUCTIVE criticisms are allowed. But I've to warn English isn't my native language.

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Part Two. Challenges-

Along of the cold gateways, the visitors and the ills moved according to the flood of their lives. Each one got into his or her own business, disregarding to the rest, such like had done out of the ominous building, everyone going with their troubles, never sticking the head out of their little private world, ignoring the somebody's else worries and brainstormings. That aura of coldness irradiated outwards of the hearts, and weighed upon the souls and the people of a sad faceless building, whose chilliness pervaded the environment as a cancer, surrounding with a frightful feeling that choked the spirits from out, and contaminated the kind spirits of within.

Only some time on a while, the frozen mask of indifference cracked and thawed. Then the unknowns gathered into groups, and whispered bewildered, a sensation couldn't explain, cause anyone now forgotten. A figure, lonely, mighty, crossed the passages, walking with not rush or pause. Abruptly, all snapped of their reveries, and frantically moved away of the vague shape. However, she never spared one glance, neither looked at one particular. Just walked without stopping, oblivious to the remainder human beings, with the eyes and the mind miles far away. Yet never bumped with someone, always dodged perfectly the crowds of persons, helped by the ones jumped out of her pace, scared with the idea if remain on the spot, all their secrets would be read as a open book, their brains no more blank folios to that one.

Once in a while someone less observant was in middle of her way. Then looked over her. A pretty woman, probably in her late teens or early twenties, with a breathtaking face and flowing red locks flowing behind of her. The man was about of saying something, when noticed her eyes. An ocean of the most intense blue, with sparks of green abysms. Abysms where his soul was lost, swallowed and thrown up out them. He got out of his dizziness, and gulped, thinking his past, dreams, thoughts, and feelings stolen so quickly as if wasn't anything.

Very scared tried something such lame as "Are you fine, kid", or "Have you lost, girl?" The woman flatly denied and kept walking, not being able care less him. Once out his sight, the remembrance of the meeting blurred for the person, who forgot the exact person who bumped with. Just remembered two glowing eyes of sky after of the rain. Burning inside her mind with bitingly cold fire.

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Where am I?

Where am I?

In a bed of hospital, naturally was whispered in somewhere of her mind.

Why am I in here?

Don't remember? The crash car, of course. You were going a tad too fast, or maybe it was the opposite car whose owner had got one of too many drinks. But it doesn't matter now, does it? was the answer.

Why am I alive? she muttered tiredly.

Oh, that's very simple. Your telekinesis shielded you against the brunt of the hit. You didn't die, but got out the bad-wounded enough to get moved to the hospital. In the whole, you were extraordinarily lucky

Oh, yes. She remembered now. In her drugged and shocked head floated the picture. She was driving placidly, minding in her business, when two cars drove by the other lane. The first of them stopped brusquely, forcing to the other to go out of its lane to not crash, invading hers. She swerved hastily, burning tyres on the asphalt with a vicious screech and stench of burnt rubber, trying dodging the car without hurting to anybody, warning telepathically to the pedestrians to get out, and returning to the roadway drawing a wide loop.

She took a minute to breath relieved when he truck rammed in her.

She recalled the shock, the surprise and the fear knotting her throat. She recalled get her arms in front of her in a gesture of futility, like if not seeing the truck would avoid the impact. She recalled the windowsill shattering in splinters, the hood crumpling as a paperfold, the motor torn in shreds, the shrapnel pushed towards her with a strength and a momentum lethal to any human being. She recalled staring at the metal stretching to tear apart her body. She recalled by sheer reflect arise a telekinetic shield up. She recalled the horrific screeching boom of the front of her car and the truck slamming in her, the screams of people, and the cries of her son...

ALEX!

"ALEX!" with a shout of sheer terror, she slammed open her lids, and lurched onward, seating on the table. Her pupils were dilated with the dread, and her temples glistened with sweat. Her ears sensed the crazy thumping of her heart, threatening burst out her chest, and her ragged, labored breath.

And still other sound.

"He's right here, Jean. Alex is safe and sound. And thanks to you." Stated warmly a soothing, familiar voice. Her backhand felt the touch of tender fingers caressing her sensitive skin.

She turned her head more slowly than she'd like, blinked to send away a haze clouding slightly her head. And saw by her bedside her husband, smiling her lovingly and sending her support, love and reassuring through their linked hands, and holding with one of his arms their youngest child.

"Is-is he all right?" she stammered slowly, struggling for getting back her full conscience. Scott nodded eagerly.

"He's. Calm down, love." He said, offering her the three-month baby.

She stretched out a hand, tipping his delicate face with little more than a brush, and her mind probed gently his, a short peek in his emotions. They were a swirling whirlpool of fear, doubt and puzzlement, his newborn brain unable of assimilating and understanding what had happened and its full extend, but knowing instinctively some was wrong, some very wrong had happened to her mom.

She levitated the baby as far as her arms, establishing at the same time a mindlink, and sending warm, nice, calm emotions to reassure him, flowing his body with love and tenderness, assuring his self she was perfectly well and his daddy too. The badly shaken emotions had rocked the very foundations of the infant lessened somewhat, and he felt more eased. Soon trust washed over his fears, the trust if mom told all was right, then all had to be right.

She cradled to the baby, and gave a sidelong glance at her husband. The light was coming from the window, sparkling on his brown hair and flashing red on his sunglasses. It seemed to brighten his aspect, darkened with his costumed dark brown suit, and give him a halo. He beamed, and she smiled gingerly.

She stroked the fuzzy hair covering the head of the young Summers, and she felt cramps cracking in her body, sharp pains dulled by the tranquilizers.

"How... How long have I been in here?" she mumbled without look at him straight.

Scott bent his body and kissed her on the lips. She grimaced. They had surely to be dry and cracked, but he didn't seem care, and she didn't feel reject from the psilink.

"Your car crash was yesterday, honey. Our car came out... let's to tell it'd be perfectly well if it was an accordion instead of a car." Scott tried smile, albeit her face was horrified. "The truck was severely damaged. Personally I think it shouldn't have receive so much damage, but your telekinesis had to smash it brutally, ripping apart the metal and compressing the front until flatten it. The lorry driver emerged out hurt and fainted, but unharmed otherwise, although you'll excuse me if I'm feeling me no particularly sorry for him."

Scott swore some foul under his breath, his countenance twisting in a snarl, and instantly it did melt when glanced down at his boy. "Your telekinesis saved you and maybe also our son. Or maybe it was his powers manifesting for first time, I can't tell. But it saved his life. The doctors moved you to the hospital and they phoned. I came here faster than Kurt might teleport me, and after they vowed me you were well and stable, I've been taking care of you." He said with a sigh, reminding his panicked, crazy conduct when he arrived, and a smirk of happiness.

"You? Are you sure of not letting aside to anyone?" Her wife smirked.

He blinked. "Of course Rachel and Nathan were here too. What do you ask for?"

She leaded her look at the door. "Ray is in the other side."

He nodded as the doorknob clicked open and the door opened slowly, letting pass the light and the sound.

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Rachel closed the door once got into the room. Quietly cursed her imprudence. While watching over a bunch, she bumped against a poor man; the next she knew, had raised automatically her shields and scanned his whole mind at once. Never use your powers carelessly, their parents were always saying. She was trained for not hearing or looking into. But often to read and scan minds was the only way of surviving.

The paranoiacs telepaths ended messed up, honey

Not now, mom

However she beamed relieved watching her mother awoken and looking well, even though her skin color was slightly yellow, and there was tiredness lurking on her eyes. Rachel stepped forward, handing over her a square, thick objet. A book.

"Take this, mom." She mumbled meekly. "I bought it to gift it when you woke. It's to read while they deemed healthy and you are discharged. Although I hope it doesn't take the whole book."

Scott peeked at the title and smiled. 'Wuthering Heights' by Emily Brontë. He remembered it was a book Warren, Bobby and he were supposed to have read in English Lit class, but only Jean and Hank read actually. Her daughter wasn't much of a lover of the old literatures, preferring to Anne Rice, and being devoted of 'Lord of the Rings' for example. But she had heard to her mother complaining about having lost the book one of the times that the mansion was turned into smoking ashes, and in addition she was dead.

Jean smiled at her daughter, and thanking her the token, handed over to Alex back to Scott, placed the book on the table nearby, and adjusted her pillow to rest on it with less pain.

Rachel smiled back and stared silently while her mother got comfortable and his father yawned loudly and slumped on the chair holding her little brother and shaking his head. She couldn't blame him, he had watched over her mother and taken after the baby during the entire night. Nate and she proposed him to sleep as they remained up, but he didn't want. He denied to sleep or rest, keeping alert up, in case of mom retrieved the awareness, or Alex needed his daddy saying all would be right. It was a rough experience.

Among other things because mom was sedated and Alex frightened, but it doesn't stop to the baby of being a baby. And he cried often for the night, complained, demanded milk and lullabies, and of course being cleaned after of his physiological necessities.

And cause of the 'scent' floating from the bin, had just changed the diapers.

Jean Grey-Summers didn't needed the telepathy to know why smiled her daughter. However...

"Have you found out anything new, dear?"

"Other than the patient of the 666 jumping for the window because was in the 'Devil Room', the one of the 302 running away with his bare ass naked, and the typical anti-mutant feeling growing, not thanks to our 'friends' of the FOH..."

"Dear, you are reiterating..."

"Sorry, dad. I found out certain stuff rather interesting. You'll see..."

A while later, a nurse dragging a wheeled table, assorted medicaments on top, came in and moved next to the bed. She was a petite woman, with young looks, and curly shoulder-length black hair. On a whole, an unthreatening neither suspicious person at all. The woman got a syringe, and began to fill it with a thick liquid, after grabbing cotton and soaking it with alcohol.

As she executed flawlessly her job, noticed of the man looking her steadily. And the now aware patient, tired but glaring balefully. And the daughter. Even the baby, but it had to be imaginations of her. It had.

The man seemed be mulling about something, until at last opened his mouth. "Miss, I think must give thanks to the hospital for the kindness my wife has received..."

The nurse smiled warily. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad...

"Since If any anti-mutant or mutant-hunter organization had paid one nurse to poison her and to my son, I would be certainly pissed off."

The smiled vanished like the color of the face, utterly drained. The act of the woman crumbled with both, her expression blanched speaking more than thousand words.

Abruptly the man lifted his red glasses up and a sort of odd light or beam blasted the syringe, sending its shards to the floor. The nurse stared the liquid drenching the tiles, unable of moving. Her limbs quivered so much that she not could stand upright anyhow.

Pick up the bits. Clean the stain

Pick up the bits and clean the stain. First and foremost she'd do that. The nurse didn't ask what thing compelled her, only met a focus and clung to it. Do, do, do, her brain repeated as a mantra. So she gripped very fiercely the mop and the bin detached to the table, and cleaned the mess. Rubbed and rubbed the floor, until the point of scratching the black-and-white tiles, the eagerness and commotion stirring in her and making her to quiver. She didn't realize.

Two hands pulled the bin roughly. The man glared her through the lens, and unleashed other beam, powdering in dirt the lethal would-be shot. After he returned back the steamy recipient.

Go out

She gathered her things and obliged immediately. At no moment she wondered whose were the orders shoving and forcing her. Only wanted to run away of that people, capable of atomize her without effort, and the voice was leading her in that direction.

When she had gone out -remarked with an aloud slam of the door, hinges cracking preceding it-, Cyclops stared to her beloved one. Jean fumed, color red on her face and not only on her hair. Color of anger.

"Why have you let to her get away with it?" he merely stated, knowing already the answer.

She looked with her piercing eyes, waiting already the question. They knew each other too well. "She is only a pawn of others. Damage her, shout her, or demand her would accomplish nothing. But if whoever send her thinks there won't be consequences..." she trailed off, while her soul gave up her body.

The physic realm was being left back when heard to her daughter to exclaim: "Dad has just said 'pissed off'?"

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Inside of the inn, a man read calmly a newspaper. Skipping the news about the so-called heroes, he couldn't less than chuckle. The most people looked for a conspirator, stalker or spy on the darkness of filthy dead ends, dressed with trenchcoat, sunglasses and hat, or like dashing morons driving fucking BMW with a blonde bimbo hanged around of the arm. Not reading rubbish on the inn of a hospital, very purposely trying a normality appearance.

A single eye glanced at a figure coming near. Stealthily, he stood on his feet, and went towards the restrooms. Once into, he turned around. She was behind him, of course.

"How has it gone? You succeeded?"

The nurse kept paralyzed.

"Answer!" he shouted, imperiously. His voice was laced with something approaching to worrying. It grew when she didn't speak, staring stubbornly to the wall behind him, with glazed over eyes.

I'm afraid she can't answer. Neither to speak, and within seconds she'll sign her resignation to the hospital, with no glimpse of the reason

He jumped backwards, smashing himself against the wall.

Ahead them floated a blurred shape, an otherworldly shade, with a wavering form, shifting and rippling as the water. Its vague outline was so ethereal, the world revealed through it with a violet hue. Steadily, the void swirled and grew up, shifted into a woman surrounded by vaporous fires.

It's ironic muttered, floating weightless on the tightened air. One while ago my daughter was annoyed for scanning the brains of the entire hospital, when we taught to don't peek into minds. Thanks for showing her it was right

Her smiling, ironic lips upturned with an ugly sneer. To pay one nurse to kill to one woman and her... How do you call it? Evil seed? You're sickeningly repugnant

With the last sentence, her eyes glowed, glowed with bright flames, glowed intensely with an unholy light flooding the surroundings, glowed until the world faded in white.

Later on, the man left the hospital, without memories of the place. He didn't remember if mutants were allowed inside, nor who mutant had intended to murder. When wrote the report, qualified the mission of successful, copying the phony facts implanted within his brain. His superiors bid praise, and he forgot anything relative to the matter. However, Jean had recorded an awful nightmare, to haunt his dreams. The former day slept his last night of rest, and never went back to attack them.

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The Summers family held two principal characteristics: they are quiet and somewhat too serious, and also slow in anger. Somehow were blessed with very powerful mutant gifts, and likewise cursed with a power so vast as uncontrollable. For that is hard get really furious to one -train widely their self-control-. They can snap and chew off your leg, but lose the control is way, way odd.

But if a person does it, better he or she starts to run. This is verified with the two brothers -Scott and Alex- and even the in-laws -Jean and Lorna- and the descendants.

So, is tough to enrage one Summers. But today someone had DARED to do something THAT stupid.

By that Rachel stalked crossing the building, and seething the jaws. If the people before moved away, now ran seeking a hiding, feeling the raw danger. The old Summers self-control was the only reason what she hadn't carbonized their brains for.

She was furious? The understanding of the century. Why? Well, for beginners, she was resigned to fight for a world that hated her, was used to people frightened of her cause her latent power, men had regarded her as a piece of meat constantly... but a thing was her, and other entirely different their parents. NOBODY attacks her mother and him/her is allowed BREATH. Moreover, if mother would die father would be crushed and broken. Therefore she and her big brother would be alone to bring up her little brother, which NOBODY is allowed threaten. She swore it when he was delivered.

I defend a world where persons kill persons daily, where anyone shoot against women, babies and children, elders and disabled persons, and always summoning pathetic excuses summed up in: didn't like me, gave me a glow, was of other whatever, or 'I'm the one decides who lives and who dies'. Maybe they're only the noisy and most visible minority, but I or dad or mom or Katya or Carol meet one decent person of every twenty. Father often found himself asking because he bothered for that people, and I'm not surprised. Bunches of humans hate us even though we are their only hope and resource

Already we have established the dangerous anger of a Summers. To nullify it, they get a great source, their first or second more used feeling: forlornness. With that spirit, she wandered without so much potential menace. However, so absent-minded never noticed a person walking in the opposite direction till their foreheads collided, and both crashed in the tiles, butt-first.

"Ouch!"

"OUCH!"

"I'm sorry! I didn't want..."

"I didn't intend..."

"I didn't think..."

"I didn't know..."

Dumbfounded, both raised the heads in the unison. Next they jumped back, pointing each other.

"YOU!"

"YOU!"

Clad with a plain tank top and a short skirt split in the middle, stood Carol, whose flushed cheeks contrasted with the obsidian hue of her skin. The two friends hugged warmly.

Rachel stepped back, and looked over at her 'cousin'. "I'm glad of seeing you, girl. Have you come to visit to mom?" She queried pleasantly.

Carol nodded. "No, mother and me have come; and Jimmy, although who cares for him?" She sighed regretfully. "I know, I know. 'It was about time'. I'm so sorry Ray, but we found out of the news right this morning, and we went down here the most quickly we could."

Carol bit her lip, and lowered her head. Ray blinked, feeling the wisps of sorrow she was giving off, and reached out with her conscience. There was hurt rippling into her, but also... guilt?

She shook her head and patted her back. "Carol, stop it."

Her friend looked up. "Uh?"

"You're brooding. Only I'm allowed brooding and wallowing even for things aren't my fault." She joked, poking a finger on her chest. The black girl laughed.

"Let's go" Rachel said dismissively, and began to retrace her steps, and Carol automatically came along with her. Both girls strode swiftly across the corridors, dodging doctors and stretchers, and disregarding the shouts. The telepath had shut down to herself to the pain, the sorrow and the deep, deep grief wavering from the rooms, but she could notice even thought her friend was less nervous, seemed worried nevertheless. Carol was constantly throwing glances backwards, and fidgeting with a bang of ivory hair tingling her cheek.

"So" she started to speak, needing a conversation to get rid of that weighed mood, and careful checking her tone to be the most neuter possible "Why didn't you find out until this morning? What did happen?"

Her friend hurled a swift glance, but she didn't find any accusation lacing the tone. "Fine. Do you remember the mission was scheduled, with several X-Men and X-Factor, and several of the youngsters in training as my brother and me? That involving Sentinels, which was supposed to be a cakewalk? It turned anything but that."

Rachel pondered that. " I remember now. However I've been the entire time of yesterday in the hospital, so I hadn't time to secondary things, for example, think about you. I'm sorry."

The weather-manipulator chuckled. "Who is apologizing with no reason NOW, Red?" She chuckled again and switched smoothly in her introspective mood. "We were battling the whole day, blowing up underground headquarters, and smashing Sentinels. There was even TWO Master Molds. I can't figure me out who is the enough idiot to-" she trailed, shaking her head in fed-up disbelief.

"Many were injured or broken, but calm down, there were no victims. The point is we returned in the early morning, thoroughly spent. Uncle Hank and Aunt Cecilia began to patch us, and father went away with mom to the bed hastily before sharing news. He had healed for then, but she was very worn and sleepy, with several bumps, and he wanted her resting. We listened the tale this morning in the breakfast, and we drove to New York. Father couldn't come, because he offered to mother to teach today her classes so she might stick around in the hospital the whole day."

"So here are you." Rachel nodded. "Where are Aunt Ororo and Jimmy?"

She laughed. "Caught in the paperwork. The jerk, I mean the clerk down there in reception gave us a hard time about 'being close relatives', made dizzy our heads with questions and more questions, and started to hand over us a form after another to fill out and sign. When I saw the paper heap we were stuck with, I slipped away."

"Before you lost your temper and killed to the receptionist?" Her friend smirked.

"Yes" she said gleefully. "Although I believe personally it'd be for the humankind's sake."

"The bureaucracy is evil." her friend said darkly. "Everyone its minions must die."

"Right. Even may the hospital chief offered me a job after I get the medicine degree." She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "By the way, changing themes, Nate is here, right? I want greet him too."

She regarded her dumbfounded. "Don't you know that? He's right now in the mansion. He's going to teach one of the classes of Dad so he can remain near of mom. It was Ph. Ed., seems me."

Carol gave a 'aaah'. They had to have him missed when were traveling by the road. Then the full implications of the sentence dawned on her. Her eyes widened and her face turned horrified.

"Cousin Nate? Giving a class of Uncle Scott? _COUSIN_NATE_? _NATHAN_SUMMERS_?" She gazed her seeking confirmation, and gasped. "Are you CRAZY? Uncle Scott is tough in the workouts, but you DO know what your brother is like. He will KILL them. Or something MUCH WORSE."

Rachel grinned enigmatically. "Maybe. Maybe not. We shall see."

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In one of the grounds of the School Xavier, several students lazed around, seated on the benches or in the battered land of the track, letting the soft sun and the seldom country breeze got relaxed, looking around to the far woodlands where jays and nightingales chirped.

Of the dozen and half of teenagers, many were sort of human looking, but they were using unconcernedly theirs mutant skills, therefore marking them effectively as mutants anyway. The bigger boy was gathering wisps of pressurized air and swirling them around his fists until giving them drill-like shape and shooting them randomly, boring holes in the floor. Another girl was snapping her fingers constantly, a flame flickering in or out each time. Another boy faded out or into. A four girl, seemingly annoyed, controlled her shadow and it flowed to the boy, enveloping him and nullifying his invisibility. A shapeshifter turned into bucket and threw the water at him. A half-beast boy felt it soaking his black fur and growled. A girl next to him, with green scales armoring her skin, lizard-like tail, claws, fangs and slit amber eyes, shook her head and looked away, her snake-like senses feeling the nearby living beings thanks to her detection of temperature changes. A fourth boy, seated on the ground cause his body was of a centaur, watched the hour, wondering when the class would begin.

The student placed most outside of them wondered just the same thing, lying sprawled on the ground and gazing the clouds of spongy whiteness flying by, cloaking the sun once in a while, and casting a shadow on the ground beneath.

A shadow, darker and with an outline most distinct loomed over him, and the bored teenager focused in it.

Instantly he jumped on his feet and knuckled at his forehead, fully serious. The rest looked at him no particularly interested, and rose up and straightened as swift as him.

"Good morning, Mr. Summers." chorused everyone. Nathan grinned with a grimace was supposed to be friendly, but only was successful in getting the kids squirming uneasily.

The apparent class delegate, a young telepath boy with his hair streaked with white and black in a zebra-like pattern, stepped forward, staring respectfully to Nathan. The time-traveler chuckled, knowing the boy was sizing up his own shields, and covering mentally in awe. His family was quite the legend among psychics.

"What can we make for you, Mr. Summers?" the boy wondered, keeping a carefully neutral tone.

"No much." He stated indifferent. "But my mother has got a traffic crash and is in the hospital..."

Gasps of surprise, fear and horror rippled through the group. "Poor Mrs. Summers." mused a girl with her head downcast.

Nathan smiled, noticing the sincere concern flooding the group. "Oh, she's doing it fine. My father has warned me mentally that she's just awoken. Still he wants to spend the whole day with her in the hospital, looking after her..."

The children nodded in approval. Though the half-snake girl raised the hand. He looked at her.

"But we got a scheduled class now with the Mr. Summers. Then who-"

The speaker trailed off abruptly, realizing the reason of the presence of Mr. Summers here and now.

"No" he whispered, frightened. The eerie Cable grin, toothy and sharp, didn't ease the dread.

"NO!" screamed everyone desperate.

Nathan smiled further widely.

"NO! PLEASE, NO!"

"Oath! Calm down, kids, I don't bite. No usually. And I don't eat little children. Just be in your best conduct, obey my orders to the letter, and perhaps you'll do it past the next hour."

Then he snickered. The children shivered again. One of them wailed. Her partner patted her back and looked up with the customary 'Father, why have thou given up me?' face.

Nathan really didn't understand why they got so scared with him. Maybe the awful stories told by his team to the youngsters had blown out of proportion on the grapevine. Or maybe Scott was too lenient with the students, paying mind to their age in the physical trials.

Of course couldn't possibly be his methods were exceedingly harsh. No, it couldn't be right.

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Ororo had sworn once in her childhood in El Cairo, on her parents' grave, she would never kill. She had committed that sin once, and it had got her horrified. The stench and the sight of thick blood spilling had been carved in fear and revulsion into her head. For it, when she joined to the X-Men ranks, and know of its vow of never killing, Ororo approved of it, overjoyed and satisfied of his life-respectful rules. All through the years she had to make difficult and hard choices, but she intended always to save lives instead of end them. She tried always to follow through her swear.

She was right now considering seriously in breaking it. After all, a Jury might deem it self-defense in this particular matter.

She had spent nearly one hour writing down forms, filling out papers, marking boxes and signing files, and in short, repeating the same actions one and other time. Her son didn't display signs of fatigue, but then again, he got a healing factor. She had her wrist bruised, and her fingers had been molded with the pen shape.

The clerk had been giving her a hard time since she came, making questions, raising objections, asking pointless things, giving troubles for anything. Then, when Ororo had convinced her she wasn't a risk to the security, she had swarmed her with papers and more papers, towers of pressed cellulose raising beyond her head. She had sighed, and joined to her son had started to write forms. When she got over with it, the clerk began to point defects and more defects, and contradictions only she saw. At the end she found always something gave her an excuse to push her to repeat the entire process.

She was wondering for now how many forms more the clerk estimated necessary to let them go, or how many needed to get the idea. She had stated time after time she was Ororo Munroe, born in Brooklyn, New York, married and with two children, close friend of Mrs. Summers, hence she wished to go up and see her. How much hard was understand that single purpose?

Unfortunately her daughter couldn't help them with the Bureaucracy Battle, since she had fled stealthily at her first chance, letting them cope the, no laughs please, storm alone. It was regrettable, but Carol would be regretting it with chagrin by far greater when Ororo got her hands on her. Or when Carol returned and met the clerk had been... disposed of. She wasn't ready to break up downright her sacred promise, but perhaps maims, lacerations or incinerations were broadly acceptable.

A rash, repeated sniffing noise baited her attention. She glanced at her side with an imperceptible tilt of head and watched the familiar gesture of Jimmy with his head lifted and his nostrils swelling with air, inhaling deeply, nearly tasting the atmosphere, sorting out the thousand smells floating on the air, old and new, familiar and unknown.

"Sister is coming." He stated. "Uncle Scott and Cousin Ray come with her."

He turned at her and beamed. Her mother opened the mouth, but before spelling something, a familiar voices greeted her. She rested the pen on the table and rose up. Ororo whirled facing them with a smile tugging upwards her lips.

"Scott! Rachel! It's a pleasure!" she smiled, stretching out her hand, simultaneously leading a warm smile at Rachel and hurling a demanding glare at her daughter. She winced.

"Hi, Aunt. How do you meet?" the youngest Summers queried friendly.

"Good morning, Ororo" Scott shook hands with her in a formal greeting. "It's a true pleasure."

She nodded. "I wish only the circumstances were more... pleasant. I'm awfully sorry for not having been here before. Please, I hope you don't think it means-"

"It's all right, Ororo." He cut her off with an impatience born of his need for reassuring her. "Besides, it isn't so bad how it seems. Jean is awoke, and maybe today or tomorrow she'll sign out."

He sit down on a cushioned chair, and beckoning her to imitate him, he started to relate the facts, all the time while the kids lazed around, oblivious to any trouble. Imprudently unconcerned, and with the defenses and alarms lowered. No thinking what any trouble might raise of sudden, at any moment, to bring chaos in their lives.

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Jean Grey focused deeply, shutting her eyes. Her self accessed to her mind, and this one to her power. Steadily the baby raised on the air, and quietly was transported at the little crib, where he was carefully placed, like carried by invisible hands. Was disturbing to watch the covers folding, fully smoothed, and tucking in the baby, as something ruffled his first hairs furthermore, in a gesture of soothing stroke. Oddly, the baby seemed unaffected.

Jean smiled broadly and picked her new book, pondered telekinesis came handy sometimes. An orangish lock slid down her face, tingling on one cheek, and she parted it with a gust of breath. Yes, sometimes.

Phoenix paid attention to her book, and started to read. Her mind idly drifted at her husband, her daughter, and her best friend. She couldn't help get worried, hoping Ororo wasn't too troubled with the lateness. However, there was something amiss, the weird feeling she wasn't bothered only for that, but there was something, a gut feeling bugging her and keeping her relentless.

She shook her head in dismay, and shielding her little off her odd brainstorming, she started to read, leafing through the book.

Dizziness, confusion.

However, after a while was hard focus in the reading.

A powerful sensation of wrong, out in somewhere.

Very hard.

The sensation again stirred in her, this time made more specified; a bad feeling of sickness, something disturbing her and churning in her guts, upsetting her body. Jean shook her head, but it got just worst.

Wondering if it was the book and the tiredness put together, she put it on the table. But she kept dazed, sick, as if some was depriving her of the awareness and the balance. She closed the lids and focused.

When she opened her green eyes was about of breathing with relief, releasing air, and thinking herself a fool.

She choked a scream of fear instead.

Tides of a blinding green light washed into the room, flooding the place and forging a whirlpool, with her like the proverbial hurricane eye. Never mind where she looked, the reality twisted and warped in the span of a millisecond, following crazy and chaotic whims. Objects, walls, floor, ceiling, all swirled in one direction and around a center, and every time she tried to spot it, a world of pain stabbed her brain, and the twister shifted the direction and speeded up its roaring motion. Very soon she also rotated on her bed, with no idea of right-left, up down. She screamed while her head throbbed and her veins pleaded to explode in a shower of blood and brains. And a piece of she nearly wished to oblige.

However, Jean Grey-Summers was too tough-headed for that. Ignoring the growing pain focused in two shades. From a spot the green brightened to radiant yellow to golden and after to white, and waves overwhelmed her, nullifying her brain and erasing will. She answered increasing the power, and the light ripples answering drawing a big maw made of wisps of color to swallow her. With hopelessness she send two messages, and after sank into the forgetfulness.

*********************************************************************************

Jean...

To the beginning was so peaceful. The darkness invaded a black landscape, soft void where she floated as if she was swimming. It was so wonderful...

Jean, awake...

Then sounded the voice. Such kind and nice, so warm. And at the same time, so annoying.

Jean, come on honey, go back...

Why couldn't whoever leave her alone? She only wished sleep. Only sleep...

Don't do this, Jean. Awake. Return. With me.

So nice. Some in that accent, the sound... was familiar. Part of her wanted to check up on it. Part wanted just sink deep down within the unsoiled, immaculate darkness.

Jean...

Again! What the hell must he be so annoying for? Why...

Him?

Scott.

Phoenix swam upwards, and with a start, emerged headfirst bursting out of the nothingness.

Carefully she opened the eyes. A blur of red and brown took form and shape. And was him, of course. Always him.

"Darling..." she mused with a weak string of voice.

"Don't speak, sweetheart. Just rest. Breath. Recover you."

Jean caught him in a hug and buried her face on his chest. "Not offense, honey, but I'd like throw up."

"And I'm not surprised, Aunt. Not a bit."

Jean blinked. she shifted slightly and slowly her weigh, and leaned her chin on her husband shoulder.

She blinked again with the bizarre sight, even if it wasn't so rare considering what kind of thing happened her in a daily basis. Yet she wasn't exactly at her best performance, her head stinging still.

Hunched to four legs on the tiles, nose glued to the floor, Jimmy Logan was crawling. His nostrils sniffed constantly. His claw-armored fingertips trailed the grime of some footsteps and smell, a stark contrast with the white, sterile tidiness of the floor of the hospital. He headed with steady slowness at the window.

He walked as far as the windowsill, and stroking the metal, his hands gripped it fiercely, while her sight was far from there. The turmoil of his emotions pulsated all over his wet temple, his unforgiving eyes, his clenched jaw, and his strained fists.

Anger. A touch of hate. A glint of excitation. A glimpse of indignation. Plenty wrath. Craving for revenge.

Jean led her sight at his sister. The young weather-manipulator gulped, reading him as an open book. She was surely smelling her indignation and her fury, hearing his quick heartbeats sending blood loaded with adrenaline, and seeing his muscles and nerves straining.

Jean didn't realize his feelings was radiating at Carol, and polluted her with a wrath wasn't her own. It was logic, after all both were twins. And she had got also angry at the signals she detected anyway.

Jimmy stood quiet for a long while. Abruptly he turned around.

"Let's resume the situation: Aunt Jean sent us a help call. We reached the door, and she was scattered over the bed, half-sprawled on the floor, the sweaty sheet tossed aside. She was obviously sick and dizzy. It only should to be enough for suspecting, but besides, the smell fits with it."

"Please, Jimmy. The rest of us haven't animal senses."

"Of course not." He shrugged dismissively, glancing at Rachel. "On the contrary, you'd have smelt."

"Smelt." She huffed, impatiently. "Of course I'd smell something or someone. WHO it's, I'm asking you."

His eyes flashed with a glare, but no hurled at her, and his lips tightened. "Marauders" Each syllable was laced with acid poison, and boiling with heat.

The time stopped for several heartbeats.

"I have smelt three of them." He stated, knowing no further elaboration was required.

Realization dawned in Cyclops. "Vertigo" mumbled darkly.

"And Disruptor and Scalphunter." pointed Carol bitterly. "Probably as a backup. They came in through the door and came out through of the window. Our no-favorite mad scientist have his ways."

"'Sinister' ways" mumbled Storm "to a 'sinister' person. He must possess some rocket pad or something similar." While she spoke with her soft accent, her brows quirked. "But I'm not so sure of understanding whichever reasons pushed them to attack to Jean and to run away."

Cyclops raised a brow, and felt anger boiling inwardly, burning in his guts. He clenched his fists reflexively to squash it inside and down. "Probably Sinister is again in hunt of other son of mine."

"It's possible, dad" interjected Rachel "but if he was interested in the baby..." Rachel walked worriedly as far as the crib, where tiny sheets lay cast out, pouring as one waterfall. Her hands placed and smoothed the covers, and she tickled softly the bulge underneath. Innocent giggles loosened the atmosphere. "¿Why didn't they steal him? The only thing missed here is..."

Jean smiled, and Scott widened his eyes hid in red. The smiles of Jean didn't use to be so wicked...

Phoenix beamed and looked all around "Because I got to send a telepathic hallucination, and instead of the baby they took that thing."

Jean couldn't resist anymore, and covered her mouth to stifle a fit of laughter. Unfortunately, the chuckles stirred her belly, and she noticed abruptly that the sickness hadn't left her fully. She panicked feeling bitter bile going up her esophagus, and gagged, feeling her legs unable of holding her. By luck Scott suspected when he saw her face paling with green tinges, and her pupils glazed losing the focus. Abruptly he caught her, and both bolted towards the toilette hastily, she staggering with every step.

The retching noises of someone mightily sick confirmed they had done it in time.

Ororo, Rachel, Jimmy and Carol sighed relieved.

The last one blinked, admiring inwardly the running speed of running someone can reach when needs use the toilet. "I can't suppose this is the end of this history, can I?" she queried hopefully to her mother.

And hers eyes abruptly flashed as the thunders she invoked, matching the might of her codename. "NEVER!" she shouted.

Every looked at her. A diffused sheen of glacier steam arose around Ororo, with a hissing dulled with the crackling of golden sparks along her fingertips and hair mane. Her ivory strands flowed upwards with the pull of the rapid streams of wind she was bearing.

"Mr. Sinister has dared to defy to the X-Men. He and his bloodthirsty minions have got the impudence, the nerve of breaking into the room of Phoenix to steal her child. Such foolishness NOT will go consented. We MUST teach them which is the prize they must expect to suffer if attack us and our people."

Carol seemed aghast. Her lips trembled as she tried voicing to her words. "B-but, mother. It's ONLY a..."

Just in this moment, the couple returned back, Scott dragging to Jean on the arms, mainly for his manliness' sake of his manliness, since Jean could walk more or less steady. They'd listened all.

"Hush, Caroline. Ororo is right. The stolen item doesn't matter. That matters however is we must get ourselves respect from our enemies. It's past time that you understand that." His tone turned serious and lecturing, and he gazed at each one with one intensity only his eyes masked behind of the red-gleaming visor can quite manage. "We can't cut any slack. If they fight us, the prize must be bigger than they are willing to pay."

"They can never come out of a battle unharmed and with no consequences" nodded Storm.

Rachel tipped the crown against the plaster, and biting her lips with hopelessness, rubbed her temples. Grudgingly, she had to admit the sentence made sense. Though she not wished a fight so early at the day, and certainly she'd like changing some superheroic clichés of the adults.

"All right, is impossible fight against the elements, and I am not aunt Ororo for ACTUALLY doing it" She give up. "Dad and Aunt can remain here only in case. If Jimmy picks up the scent, I can fly us."

The aforementioned mutant scratched his head. "Why do we use your telekinesis instead of the wind?"

Carol sighed. "Be not more clueless than USUAL, brother. Maybe Creed is going along with them. And then, the wind will give away us faster than you can swear a flaming-"

"CAROL!"

She winced. "I'm sorry, Mother."

"Fine. If there is not more objections... LET'S TO KICK MARAUDER BUTTS!" shouted the redheaded, pumping up her right fist. While she did it, her left hand sneaked into a pocket and clicked on the molecular disrupter. A glow concealed her body. Molecules of clothes exploded, and were controlled invisibly. They were pushed to shift taking other forms, other shapes, other colors, shifting wholly the dress. Within meager seconds she was clad with her flaming, bird-like costume.

Cyclops was secretly pleased. Her daughter ignored it purposely and denied, but her behavior was that of a born leader.

Though shouldn't it be a disturbing concern added?

*********************************************************************************

Massive giants of steel and glass, mountains not of stone but concrete climbed upwards shading the sun and cloaking the sky, casting dim shadows upon the underneath ground. So tall the buildings rose and grew they seemed bend downwards and looming the figures running along their endless roads. The large doorways and windows, mirroring gloom faces with empty eyes and open mouths, seemed glare with frowning grimaces at the crowd moving along of the labyrinth of alleys of the New York City underground, unafraid in the least with the heights closing over their heads.

They didn't care either for the low-rate life forms ingenuously standing near of their way. Mindless fools someday in the future would be crunched under the Sinister's boots. A show of its weakness was their freaked tries for getting out of their way. Were they scared? Very rightly so.

Two teenagers lay scattered near of trash bins, with the backs leaned on walls soiled with black and smudgy graffitis, and the legs stretched across the hot cement, talking about their own laziness. They were two typical street kids with neither foreseeable future, nor solid hopes, nor interest about anything, spending their days doing nothing. Neither of them was unused to the surprises. But when that bunch walked past them, gaped with amazement and weirdness.

A large man paced quickly, crunching the pebbles with heavy boots, and his metallic armor glinted murderously with an inconceivable variety of odd guns and shotguns covering each possible inch of free space of the costume. Behind him walked a green-and-white haired woman, lean and scrawny, holding a bundle with thin arms and sneering at it with a disturbing, ill gleam in her frantic and insane eyes. Beside her strode pompously a middle-aged man with grey hair falling on his furry brows and around his beak-like nose, with a blurred gale of dust and wind surrounding him. Closing the squad, marched two men. One was a Korean, short and insignificant, wearing casual clothes, and with absolutely nothing remarkable about him. The second was a large bulk of man, a muscle-bound, emotionless Inuit with tanned skin, short maroon hair, and a quiver loaded with several metallic harpoons.

Scalphunter. Vertigo. Riptide. Disruptor. Harpoon.

Marauders.

The pair stared at them, mouths agape, while the villains walked without a look to regard their existence. They were certainly very lucky for it.

Passed seconds until one of them was enough bold for breaking the silence.

"Have you seen those folks, bud?"

He nodded eagerly. "Geez! What do you think, dumb?"

"They're supervillains, sure!"

"Oh, yeah? And why are you so damned sure?"

"They aren't Avengers or Fantastic Four, and are too ugly to be superheroes." he said, matter-of-fact.

"All right, point taken."

"I'm going to go after them. Do you want to tag along?"

"I'm sorry. My old man hasn't superheroes insurance."

His partner grunted. "You don't survive in New York without one nowadays."

While the two kids discussed, the five had gone long ago. Perhaps Scalphunter had heard the speech, but didn't give him a damn. If they got one minute more, sure he'd stop to shoot the empty skulls of the insufferable brats. A kind of humanitarian duty truly. But today only mattered the job, not the pleasure. And he was too busy watching the bearings, ready against any menace or X-wimp with death wish.

He was thinking that when his instincts stirred, and he suddenly stepped back right after of having given a step, halting abruptly the march.

The blinding lightning struck the dirty sidewalk with cracking-ground force less a split-second later. The floor exploded with a shower of dust and pebbles.

The group sucked their breaths sharply, and glared up. Some startled with shock, others infuriated with the hinder, and everyone disturbed with fear and apprehension, even though no one of them would face it or admit it.

And up there was she. Standing on top of a lamppost with absolute casualness and careless. Black costumed, with the flowing cloak wildly flapping with unnatural wind, mirroring wings of a bat. Arms akimbo with a gesture of challenge. Of confidence. Of superiority. Charming smile beaming with a fiery glow matching her eyes', that didn't hide a look usually leaded at groveling insects. Short pale hair, trailing with the sudden gust, marring an appealing face. Slender, leather-fitted legs, upright and stuck together.

"MARAUDERS!" her throaty voice boomed, high and powerful over the wind swirling around.

She skillfully sprang off the lamppost, somersaulted, and spinning airborne, landed neatly, with the hunched legs and lightly tense, and both arms crossed ahead of the knees. Hands were touching the floor, and with a frightfully silent snap, bony and extremely razor claws were unsheathed. Their curve edge was lightly jagged and unsettled whoever looked at it, thinking how easily could slice skin and flesh.

She rose up, and stood upright on both feet. An unreadable gaze regarded them. They raised their stances, ready for slaughtering her.

She ignored their motions and flung her right arm forward. "Sinister's sniveling worms, you WILL give back that TEDDY BEAR!" She yelled proudly.

Pause.

A blink. Repeated. And SOUND.

"What... Teddy bear?" stammered Scalphunter, some very odd for him. That phrase was something he really WASN'T expecting.

"Suckers" muttered Windrider, clicking her tongue impatiently. "The one the grass-haired harlot holds!"

Vertigo refrained herself of rebuking the insult, too dumbfounded with the conversation, and stared down.

Instead of the diapers-stainer, milk-drinker, drooling brat she was supposed to get, she was carrying a fluffy, light-brown bear, which was gazing her with starry, glossy black eyes, shining with cuteness.

She shrieked, and let to go the doll with just as hurry as if she had caught a poisoning snake. Everyone ogled the stuffy animal, and stepped back slowly. Stunned looks were exchanged, fingers were pointed at, and gibberish and assorted babbling ensued.

Windrider rolled up the eyes, wondering if she HAD really to engage against those stammering morons. With resignation summoned a wind that snatched the bear, and swiftly hid it under the folds of her cloak. And smirked.

"What has happened, you ask?" she giggled, knowing she'd enjoy this. "It's dreadfully simple, pals. Surely you did THINK to have caught the baby, didn't you?" She stressed deliberately the word, and chuckled aloud. But the laughter was so infect with false joy it shocked her and gave cramps. "Please! You would be surprised if I gave you a speech about it. 'Think' with telepaths so powerful as Aunt Jean is a term THAT relative!"

Suddenly her tone grew serious and fittest to her. "You assaulted her with coward abilities. But, the same as always and of course, she was too much smart for your puny so-called brains. Heck, even Hulk gets more neurons than yours, yours partners, and Sinister, all put together..."

A pregnant silent came. The five began to growl. She didn't focus her sight upon them ever.

"Personally, I'm willing look at other side while you run away, and imagine the terrific, bloody way Sinister punishes the incompetence. Though, Mother is right. If the X-Men are for gaining respect, no challenge or insult may go without response. Doesn't matter the silly rag doll, it's a honor matter."

As she talked, some snapped inside of Vertigo. Some dangerous. She there had been enough.

With a snarl she threw her arms onwards, palms-first, fully spread. Her body shimmered with amber brightness, and green ripples flowed out her hands, wavering at Windrider as a tide. She frowned and tried leap away, but the odd flood of power caught her. Her frown turned horrified dread, and she screamed, that did smirk to Riptide. She redoubled the potency, and as liquid-like waves the ripples washed over her, making her brain to pound. The swirls of emerald gyrated around Carol, wrapping her and blinding her. Her mind burst with pain, her eyes clouded with red, her legs faltered. Thus she fell down.

Forks of invincible lightning crackled and burst up in the sky. A tongue of electricity streaked downwards, crashing in Vertigo. She squealed and screamed as her body quivered with spasms, thousand times shocked. The Marauders just could gawk her in undiluted horror, while she lifted the arms in begging. But at once she pleaded, the lightnings blistered her, and her figure blackened and disintegrated in dust that touched the floor and burned in fire.

She didn't get to spout one syllable ever.

Meanwhile Carol was retrieving her self-control, and her senses newly worked. Not being a fool at all, she had set up a lightning to attack before doing her presence known, only in case. Since she wasn't wishing puke her guts anymore, supposed the stratagem had succeeded.

Albeit a detail was bothering her. Her senses were checking the situation and informed Vertigo had been... well, cooked. She winced with nausea sick. Her nose was revolting with the retching of burned meat, and her ears didn't listen her heartbeats. Had she miscalculated the energy and had slaughtered her? Goddess, she didn't wish fry her, just disable her! True, Sinister didn't give a damn, and each Marauder was a fifth-or-six-generation-clone. But still...

Scalphunter had stepped back, feeling unsettled by some reason. Seeing as the brat had incinerated to Vertigo made him sense queasy, uneasy. A sensation, a shiver, an insistent itching lurking on the pits of his stomach. And then he understood. Dread. It was dread. The progressive realization turned it in rage. Hot, boiling, burning rage.

The thought of a mere lass making fun of Grey Crow reddened his face. His hands shook compulsorily when he grasped a rifle, and aimed towards the head of the girl. Her healing power wouldn't save her when her head was a bloody pulp on the road, he reflected. Although his hands were trembling, when he held the cannon and pressed the trigger, was a distance impossible of missing.

He hit the trigger.

Bullets of death were shot towards the darkened clouds, since on the last moment, his arm abruptly was tugged ninety grades upwards. Right after he was hurled on the air as well, with such force and surge as a catapult when the tense rope is suddenly slashed. He screamed when that power sent his body against the ceilings of the skyscrapers, flew him over them tracing one half-circumference, and lowered the speed to not kill him when he landed face-first, crashing loudly on the pavement.

For seconds her remained upside-down on the roadway, supported fully on his nose. Slowly the gravity slid him down. Dust clouds raised when the fell down, his frame broken, bruised and numb.

"Wow, it's been some home run, right?"

The solid cement muffled a growing growl, a tad hysterical. He turned unsteadily, facing the voice.

She was leaning her back on a lamppost, staring at him with a nonchalant air she most likely didn't feel at all, reinforced with the arms lazily folded in front of her chest. The posture made her red wing-like cloak to shroud her shape. Her mask was drawn down, cloaking her face and the emotions she had to be restraining, the tension, the anger and the indignation simmering inside her, and flashing in her eyes.

But in the holes corresponding to the eyes he couldn't see pupils. Only two slits pouring flaring light.

And out of a corner of her cloak the electrical glint of the curvy edge of her psimitar shone dangerously.

"I'm craving for a good baseball match. I'll be pitcher, catcher, batter, team and umpire. You may be the ball." Her lips were tightly twisted with a bitter, ironic snarl.

"You little..." he struggled frantically for rising, moving. His body lifted up, but no out of his own will.

"You only don't get it, right? Let the game begin." Flamebird whispered dangerously while used her born telekinesis for slamming to the massive and overweighed American Indian against walls and ground.

The silence of the road was disturbed and filled with contusions and ayes for a while.

*********************************************************************************

"YOU DIE TODAY, BRAT!"

"NOT LIKELY, OLD TROLL! Unless you want kill me of horror, nearing you face where I can see it better!"

Thunder Claw had interposed between his recovering sister and the Marauders. Riptide had been the first attacking, whirling his body as a hissing twister, throwing endlessly a barrage of her odd and painful black stars. Though barely some had scratched to the young mutant, who used movements as fluid as water, and as precise as a stalking panther to dodge, duck, avoid, sidestep and slash the nearest with his retractile claws. His were the fastness and the agility of a true predator animal.

"HOW YOU DARE!"

Disruptor is coming close of mine he realized from the corner of his eye while slashed five. "There is few stuff which I don't dare, scum! SUCH LIKE THIS ONE!"

Then he suddenly rotated his body sidestepping a rain of death, and crouched, folding his powerful legs with his full force, to leap high on the air. Once airborne he spun around, and used the momentum of the somersault to land right on Disruptor with his full considerable strength, feet-first shoving and stomping thoroughly against the tough head and smashing it with the strength of his jump increased with the weight and the momentum. Both fell down, but during the descend, Jimmy twisted his body to land on his feet, and his claws swiftly crisscrossed the air, slashing every weapons trying spill his blood, leaving only two scarcely seen glowing trails crossing each other.

"This is your only power, Little Tidy?" He laughed. "Do you get it? Little Tidy?"

Admittedly it was an awfully lousy comeback, he reflected, but he wasn't in the mood for another better. If Riptide was disappointed, didn't show it, speeding up his whirling and multiplying the projectiles. Grudgingly, he continued running away of them, but he realized he couldn't keep up this eternally. No, his only possible tactic was battle, nor defend. If he wished win -or at least survive-, ought to take the offensive.

Choosing play with the same weapons, his eyes clouded with the channeling of elemental energy. Stars were coming at his way, but Jimmy raised his arms, driving the strands of energy with the control and naturalness only come by hard practice, and the fierce gales he stirred steered away all of them efficiently. Under his mind's command, the wind spun and curled making a twist, dragging the projectiles upwards and rushing them back at their maker. However, whether it was because he was immune to his power, or he reabsorbed the projectiles, or his own individual typhoon retrieved them, Riptide kept unharmed, and returned the attack with vengeance.

He wrinkled his frown, and limited to return back the attack again. They were, without having foreseen it, in a stalemate, where each warrior simply threw back the issued attack, and with the number of stars rising and the wind force increasing in fury and recklessness. They couldn't keep on longer, and both knew it.

The X-Man showed seriousness as his brain weighed the options and ran across of the possibilities. He ignored the meaning of physical exhaustion, but still...

His lips quivered, threatening curve upwards. He bit them to repress a broad smile.

His mind shut itself off the physic world, and reached out for another elemental force. Fully aware of the risky of his plan he held his focusing, keeping his twister. At once his right fist clenched, crackling and hissing with amber energy. His eyes shimmered ivory when his conscience called to the Thunder and the Lightning straight after; but instead release it in shape of a blast or unleash a slayer bolt, he confined to gather power around his fist in a little sphere of immaterial glow, tiny but coalescing volatile energy. Jimmy focused to expand the circle in front of him, giving him a precise form and keeping its solidity. The bright globe widened and dilated in a half-circumference-like shield repelled the throwing stars. These crashed uselessly against it, bouncing back harmlessly, rejected for the barrier.

In spite off the speed what Riptide was spinning with, Thunder Claw made out the shock in the blur of his head, and knew was the time. Trusting in his force field, he dashed towards the fallen heap of Disruptor, caught him, and gathering his strength heaved him and hurled onward and upward. He sprang away after.

At the second he brushed a patch of the Disruptor skin, his inheritance left of working. The elements without a will ruling them collapsed and dispelled. The shield vanished and the projectiles pierced its jagged shreds like water rushing out of a cracked dam. Though, Jimmy had sidestepped enough fast, and missed him for a wide distance.

Riptide couldn't see it nonetheless. He only noticed a black blur going out of the barrier holding back his weapons, and before reacting a lump dropped on top of him. When it lunged on him, Riptide didn't notice of the slight pain of the struck so much as a part of his brain was locked down, ripped out of his reach. His powers faded in nothingness. And he screamed.

Right then the stars the curled hurricane had dragged above of him, and without his own power to control working either, the black projectiles hurried downwards, stabbing in the hard rocky ground and the weak fleshy body located below them.

He had fled though, pushed by sheer reflex and self-protection instinct. Still several jet-black six-point stars tore his costume and skin, shedding blood. He staggered, grunting with ache and panting with weariness.

He was over.

An uppercut struck his jaw, and it was followed on for something solid and merciless jabbing his stomach. He launched a tentative punch, but his attacker ducked, and exploiting his crouch, unfolded one knee for unleashing a kick on the groin. A barrage of fists and kicks rained over Riptide as a meteor storm, every time hitting on precise spots and dodging a folly resistance.

Jimmy Logan was temporary loss of power, but he was Logan's son, and therefore would never be defenseless. He was fairly strong, skillful and swift, knew to fight, and was smart; it was more than enough.

Soon the Marauder was fainted on the unforgiving ground, sprawled on the asphalt and cooling down slowly. Jimmy glanced him down, perusing him attentively. He was out cold and bruised, while he wasn't sweating, not even panting. He smiled proudly, and allowed himself to relax for one second.

The abrupt hissing of the air forestalled to the pain lacerating his skin and tearing his flesh.

Energy coursed his body with crackles of agony, and he nearly imagined someone had set him in flames as his legs faltered. He lost foothold, and he slid down, greeting the filthy dirt and tough floor with his face. In his back was pinned a flaring spear with double and sharpened edge pulsating with energy.

He shut firmly his eyes and clenched his fangs for repressing any moaning. He wouldn't give him the satisfaction. The vibrations of heavy boots approaching rippled along the floor, and a evil, inexpressive shadow crawled towards his heap.

Stupid he berated to himself. He was so absorbed in the fight he had forgotten all about Harpoon.

Father had been very specific in never ignore an enemy until it's dead or out like a light. He had insisted once and again, he hadn't paid attention, and got now a large scar like reward. Or worst, since he was without powers still, couldn't either run away in time or heal the wound. Maybe he'd dodge the first harpoon, but not the second. Not so close.

He was imagining things, or other shadow, way bigger, had juxtaposed on Inuit's one?

An ear-shattering boom exploded, and the floor quaked and rumbled with it.

What the flaming heck? he thought, flabbergasted and stunned, but likewise relieved.

Of sudden soft hands gripped his shoulders and hoisted him. He tried standing up, but the legs still writhed, menacing trip. One familiar arm embraced his waist and placed his arm around her neck.

"How long have you been fine?" he questioned after of a spit of thick blood.

"Oh, since you stomped to the Korean runt, but I didn't want deprive of your fun. Though when Harpoon pinned you on the sidewalk as a butterfly I decided get into. I was about of taking him down, when that..." she clicked her tongue, looking for a precise word "Stuff showed on the sky and bashed him, flattening him."

"That stuff?" he wrinkled the nose, and looked ahead.

On top of a chunk of meat -or so they guessed cause of the arms and legs sticking out- stood two silvery robots, rather similar to the Spider-Slayers. A massive body, square on its rear and elongated onward, ending on a triangular apex with a barrage of cannons of several diameters sticking out, as fangs of a beast. Formerly it had been supported by four pairs of articulated legs, ended in three steeled claws, one of them attached opposite to the others, prehensile and longer. In the 'shins' of the legs still whirled slowly saws circular and jagged. Amidst the legs and on top of them, heads of tentacles peeked out. On the top of the robot there was a spherical cockpit, made with glass likely reinforced, but now ruthlessly shattered, with the pilot beaten and fainted. On the front surfaced cannons-lasers and several openings where would be shot from anything. On the back towered a turret with perhaps missiles.

However, both robots were pounded. Someone had thrashed them, and knew make a fine job. The upper one had its plates torn, ripped with brutality and rage. Several tentacles emerged, hanging lifeless, and cut to the half of its probable length. The turret was empty, and someone had twisted the pipes. The hind legs were screwed around its axis, and had one missed. The first right leg had marks of a claw had gripped and stretched it beyond of its length. The pilot continued asleep, but they two didn't feel a bit of pity at him.

On the front of each vehicle were painted with capitals 'FOH', like an evil print.

The lower wasn't so beaten relatively. The cockpit crushed, with the dome shattered and the metal alloy crunched revealed the upper robot had been smashed on the lower. Besides it got marks. Dozens and dozens of carved dents, crisscrossing the sides in rows, and ones engraved on top of others when the space ran out. The global aspect was of a cruel plough had dig and bitten all over there. And everyone the blows displayed the same shape. If the twins didn't know better actually, they would say were fists...

But the most noticeable was the dent was on top of the rest, chiseled in the metal with an impressive and frightful strength. When it hit, the five-inch layer of titanium had given way as a shell egg, bruised and battered. The screws had been pried off, and the sheet was bent inward as a wrinkled canvas. The hit had to be so strong and tough, so awesome and unquestionably powerful, the fist had carved deep its way into the metal, and every detail and ridge of the fingers were visible. Fingers of a familiar hand.

Now it was clear.

Pretty clear.

Carol was the first in breaking a pregnant, silent pause. "Let's look for Rachel. Can you walk already?"

Jimmy stood still, like anticipating something. Then, he felt it. A prick along of his back, and the slight and buzzing ache of flesh knitting together and skin regenerating itself. It itched a bit, but even so the healing sensation used to be wonderfully pleasant, like now. His nostrils and ears also stung, and a wavering tide of flooding sensations rushed towards his brain.

"I'm fixing me. Give me a minute." He stated, and his nostrils widened with an intake of air. His nose absorbed the slightly stinky smell of the metal chunks, and his brain acknowledged the information. "By the way sister, my senses are still dulled, but I think I know now who has sent that junk."

"Yeah. Bright Lady knows what she possibly is up right now."

*********************************************************************************

"Wall."

A loud boom.

"Floor."

A dulled thud.

"Window."

A piercing crash.

"I liked it. Let's repeat again."

A lower smash.

"Hmm... Slightly different."

Another thud.

"Perhaps is it cause of the new lumps?"

Several repeated booms, one after other, choking whimpers and moans.

"This history is starting to get boring. Don't you think so?"

"Ugh... Damned wench."

"TRUCK!" She shouted indignant.

A long crash erupted, followed on for a ear deafening, aloud boom, going on for a while.

"Look what you've pushed me to do!"

Grey Crow didn't answer. His massive frame had pierced the unbending, compact side of a truck like a shooting bullet. In his trajectory his body pierced the opposite side, and his head nailed into a wall, splitting grievous cracks that threatened with crumbling it.

"Isn't that the lorry of a garbage man?" stated a voice.

"Indeed. She must have wasted the garbage trashing it with that shit."

Rachel pounded her forehead with the hands and rubbed her suffered temples. Another joke like that...

"Brother, another joke like that and I swear I'll slaughter you before letting you to kill to others." Stated angrily a female, baleful voice behind her.

"It isn't so lousy" The Jimmy voice mumbled. Rachel turned her head around to look at him fidgeting.

"Yes. It IS. And you tell it the ENTIRE time!" roared the redhead psychic, visibly bristled. Both siblings had come, dragging around three bodies. One vaguely human-like and blackened shape, other smashed, and another flattened and one-dimensional, like a paperleaf.

The Storm's daughter sighed with pent-up frustration, with tiredness, with boredom. Her chest swelled with a slow heaving of air, relaxing with the motion and the fresh air when her nostrils sniffed an well-known scent in it. She tensed, and ran over the odds.

Her brother senses remained a tad dulled. Ray' telepathy wasn't in use, exhausted of the kinetic exercise.

Therefore nobody had noticed of it, and they were unprepared.

"Watch-" she intended to shout, right when the mayhem broke up, suffocating her warning.

A ear-deafening boom. Loud, ear piercing, as a cannonball. Bursting upwards, as a column of solid hardened sound. An earth-cracking wave blasted and expanded in rippling circles, followed on with a tide spread everywhere shaking the road with the hum of crushed boulders and asphalt crunching. Tough and flat cement wavered like a sea, with waves each time strongest and most violent, until at last the ground shattered with and under the pressure, sending a final brutal shockwave. Lampposts, traffic signals, trash bins, cars, all collapsed and was demolished, crumbling down with violence.

Barely saw the incoming explosion, the heroes braced themselves before the shockwave hit. The ground beneath their feet quaked, split and exploded with vengeance, the impact knocking them out with. They fell stricken down, their bodies slumped over the land beaten up, overpowered and motionless.

Except one person. Carol landed neatly on her slender legs, her cloak flapping behind her with the wind she was turning off and had saved her. She smoothed her shining black costume and picked up random specks of dust of her outfit, peering down at her partners. She could just to hope they were fine, and pleading for it, glared ahead with challenge smoldering in her eyes.

She brought forward her arms with a quiet, steady motion, crossing them in front of the chest, and long daggers of whitish-grey bone sprouted outwards, cutting the own skin, with a fearfully snikt, ominous and dry. She hadn't could help that action even if she'd have wanted. And she didn't want.

Out a narrow dead end stood an over-muscled, and hardly feminine woman, with her neck-length raven hair falling over her downcast face, and her two fists fuming still with the hammering force had crushed the floor. And beside her waited a person who did Carol hair stand on its ends. She bristled with fury.

It was a bulky mass of muscles, with trunk-like arms and legs, and hands armored with razor, bone-slicing long claws. His tough nails clicked impatiently, relentless with a fury so blazing as his lion-like mane of blonde hair, its golden spikes framing a face oozing untellable evil. The face was supposedly human-like, but hadn't one shred of humanity within his skull, forsaken by the rationality forgotten long ago. On that face, the eyes, called the windows of the soul, were empty openings at madness pits, with the glowing white pupils oozing murder. The thick tongue licking the fangs completed a picture was getting her sick.

Arclight and Sabretooth, she groaned. Of every the Sinister goons could have showed up...

Arclight disgusted her massively; but when she fixed her sight on Victor Creed, her blank, clouded eyes locked with his, and the time seemed halt. Silent pervaded the road. Seconds ticked, and nobody moved or talked. They might have been perfectly mistaken for two stony sphinxes. The stiff and unnatural quiet went on, and looked no one tried to break it.

Or that looked like, since communication hadn't stopped for one second. It was a language in a level utterly different of the human, rather most subtle and silent, but no less intense. The pounding of a heart. A quirk of mouth, a vague quiver on the lip before licking it with the tongue. A low growl, replied. The flexion of a muscle. A sudden flash on the eyes. A menial gesture with the claws. The rustle of a foot crunching the dirt. The creasing of the brows. The breath quickening. The fangs showing, barely one second, but quite. Every of them were its signs.

Carol noticed slowly of the fast heartbeats in her chest, rushing over-loaded with adrenaline blood in the arteries and the bloodstream. One part of her, her most rejected and scorned part, pounded inside her mind, struggling anxious for unleashing the animal within.

Oh, yes, she noticed her logic slipping, and instincts taking over. Inwardly her animal side had recognized to Sabretooth. It had met an intruder inside of her territory, another predator more, foreign to her pack, and potential menace and foe. She fought over her claws for the control, too eager of polishing themselves with Creed blood. And she knew startled the fraction of her that agreed heartily was steadily growing.

She wished just that, to jump on Sabretooth and put him out of his misery, to bury her claws into his puny brain, and extirpate it. Rip off his head and step on it, chop off his four limbs and split him in two pieces, mop the road rubble with his carcass, plant both feet on his chest and force him to claim her superiority.

After all, what would be the damage? It wasn't worst either than any abhorrent crime the Marauder had committed throughout his filthy life. He killed for pleasure, for money, for boredom, or only because. Slaughtered to innocent people with the strongest's law as right. Sliced them and chopped them with claws and fangs seeking the most painful, most unpleasant and slowest way he could think of, exultant with the sight of the glassy eyes of a moribund. When she was a child, Father often described tales capable of scaring to Alfred Hitchcock. He detailed some of his massacres with serenity and curtness, hoping her brother and she didn't turn out like him ever.

Hoping they didn't turn out like him ever.

Thanks to that realization, she wrestled toughest against the raging turmoil of internal conflicting emotions and won, squashing down the boiling fury and getting back her common sense. Never mind how loathsome Creed was, she got a duty. She remembered her friends.

Struggling for keeping calm down, forced her muscles to relax, distending them steadily. She got her arms down and beside the sides, with the hands open but the claws still unsheathed. One posture carefully studied, deliberately unthreatening but yet wary. She chose her words carefully before speaking.

"I can, and would, fight against you, and I can guarantee an armored skin or bones laced with metal aren't good things when you're at the receiving end of a twenty millions volts thunderbolt." She paused, licking her lips. Amber crackles sparked in among her nails in warning, reinforcing her point. Her eyes squinted. "However, a battle would be pointless right now. Your mission has failed, and your friends are injured or worst. So I think the best thing is each one go back in his or her den to lick the wounds." She looked down pointedly at the corpses of both sides. "You pick up your garbage and I pick up the mine."

She proposed tracing tiny welts with the boot on the dust imperceptibly. Inwardly was smirking, thinking, the irate comebacks of her brother and cousin if they just heard the name.

Arclight opened her mouth to retort, when Sabretooth halted her with one hand, stepping forward, leering at Carol with a greedy, fearful grin. "Are you saying you want a truce, frail?" he chuckled.

She shrugged. "That was the general idea, Creed. I'm surprised you got it."

"I believe you aren't so brave. I believe you're a little coward, who is pissing in her panties." He sneered.

She snorted. "And since when I care you believe or not, Creed? Agree the break yes or not? Answer?"

"Break?" He stated, barely restraining a cackling laughter. "I want break YOU, frail. And gut you."

She looked forward creasing her brows. But she wasn't staring at the Marauders, but beyond, behind of them. "Your funeral then." She retorted darkly.

"What-"

Before Victor queried what she was referring at, Arclight was suddenly launched on the air by a swift blur green, streaking upwards with hands hauling her over the arms. And on the other hand Sabretooth was bashed and tossed around with a merge of a telepathic spear with a telekinetic blast, rocking him out of his feet.

Arclight was rocketing with a killer speed upwards, the tough wind slapping her face. Powerful arms turned her, and she met herself facing to Rogue. The usually happy and carefree face of the Southern Beauty was now a countenance of livid rage, her sparkling green eyes blazing and boring in her skull. She was hoisting her with her left hand circling her neck, preventing her of using her strength for freeing. "You whore" she whispering, seething, glaring with a burning hatred, and her right fist hammered her chest. The blow torn in pieces the robust armor and splintered her ribs, whose shards sliced the internal organs. Arclight gurgled with a sickening sound and threw up blood on Rogue, staining her with red blots.

After Arclight had been taken away and he psychically roasted, Sabretooth straightened slowly, supporting on his hands and knees and rising up slowly, laboriously.

"Do you think I've overdone it, Logan?"

"No, I think you overestimated her, darling."

He leapt on his feet and spun around the fastest he might in his weakness, and sneered in mockery seeing to Psylocke and Wolverine in fighting outfits, the purplish-lavender ninja garb, and the yellow spandex with blue briefs and black triangular marks.

"Damned cool. I was here thinking in killing a simple frail and look who comes to cheer up my day." He muttered, looking to both mutants with a contemptuously sneer.

Carol heard his taunts casually while gazed at Rogue. "Did you say that crap to my Father always, right before he jams his claws inside your body?" She talked loud, assuring he listened her.

"Why you fucking daughter of..."

"Let her alone, discarded piece of fucking shit of an ice cream maker's dog!" roared Wolverine, lunging at him.

Carol tilted imperceptibly her head, and witnessed with a funny look the fight. Usually a big and epic battle was meant to happen when his father and Wolverine clashed, but was evident the Universe doesn't like them clichés. Both parried attacks, but Logan exploited the first ducking motion he did to stab his claws in the Creed groin. This one howled and doubled in pain, giving an opening to Logan. He darted and slipped around, standing at his rear, and swiped with his claws the spine, severing it. Sabretooth dropped instantly.

"The next time try and get less pity" Wolverine spat. "Win you become turns more boring each time."

"Father!" he heard and whirled in time to look at a black lightning lurching about him and hugging him, with such momentum it nearly took him down.

It wouldn't be funny he thought. I beat up to Sabretooth and got beaten up by my own daughter

He returned the embrace and patted her back "Are you fine, squirt? The big bad Marauders didn't eat you, did they?" He laughed.

"Of course not." She assured, beaming. "I did know you'd win, Father. You are the best at what you do."

Rogue, who was landing after dropping the Arclight motionless heap, listened her 'niece' flattering to Logan and smiled; a thing she had nearly forgotten after trying wiping away the blood stains, feeling how Lady Macbeth in the Shakespeare play. Logan hardly needed anything other than a pout of his child to turn into jelly, and the whole team did know it. When came to her daughter he was a softie.

She yawned. "Oh, well, was that all? I mean it'd be better get away now with the kids, while we can."

Betsy glanced at her, and nodded silently. "Rogue, bring to Rachel and Jimmy. I'm teleporting us."

"Consider it done." She retorted, striding at both teenagers, still fainted, and hoisting them on her arms. Rogue carrying both kids, and Wolverine, leading her offspring with a hand in her waist, gathered with Betsy. The ninja blow violet strands out of her mouth, and shut her eyes in deep, grave focusing. Formless shadows ascended from the ground and swallowed them in a lightless, jet-raven pool.

Slowly the calm, peace and tranquillity returned in the streets.

Gradually the people began to peep out of the thresholds and corners, and the cars and trucks started its way again. The transients walked toward theirs respective destinations, and of the event only remained the weeping wails of the driver of the truck reduced to gunk by Rachel. And it was summarily ignored too.

After all, just was other absolutely normal day in New York City.

*********************************************************************************

A while ago. Salem Center.

"DIE, EVIL FAT! DIE!" blurted Katya Pryde, scrubbing furiously the oven. The scourer, the hot water and the soap powerless to pry off the fat. There was enough oil in there to grease several cars, and she was considering the merits of using a crowbar to triumph over the devilish processed fat. In fact if someone offered her to battle to Hulk, Juggernaut and The Thing to free her of the chore, she'd accept gleefully.

There was somewhat surreal, she decided, in a Jewish working in a McDonalds, selling fast food and meat. After all she was allowed eat meat only in specific cases, of animals properly killed. No... mince meat of Jehovah-knows-what, cooked in microwaves which finish off any remainder nutritional value, and put between poorly-cooked bread halves, lettuce leaves, cucumber and tomato slices, greasy with mayonnaise and ketchup, and stuffed with thousand chemical junks to give it a taste the burger lost long ago.

But here she was, cooking and serving fast food to gentiles who don't care for her beliefs but should to be minimally concerned with their own health. The special sauces, she reflected. It had be the special sauces, setting up some evil manner of mind control, she thought. Yes, it had to be right. They were suspecting since years ago that Microsoft was trying ruling over the world. Why on the Hell McDonalds couldn't be its competence to take over the Earth? The X-Men ought to look after of that matter before was too late...

"Pryde? May you stop and come a second?"

The commanding voice of her boss, and its imperious tone, woke her up out her daydream. She let go the scourer and looked up. His face was partially concealed with the neon light behind him, but the troubling guessed and read in his expression. He was a lean man, bald and with aquiline nose. His apron was filthy and stinking with oil and grease, and had the handprints of who has just wiped clean his hands with it. Right now his hands were akimbo in the waist, and he was staring her dubiously.

She rose up promptly and dried off her soapy hands with a dishcloth. "Yes? What is the matter, sir?" She queried, smiling with deliberate politeness, although was she also worried. He was a kind of man who seems mean, brute or unpleasant, but he was very kind and quite nice when you worked plenty and fine.

He sighed, and whispered, throwing sidelong glances at the door. "I've got no troubles, Pryde. You, on the other hand..." He trailed off meaningfully.

She leaded her sight at the door. And she sucked air, swearing a profanity.

A mob of men was crowding in front of the door, talking, arguing loudly among themselves, glaring at the restaurant, and possibly weighing going into. And all of them were wearing shirts with 'FOH' written on it, and banners such as 'Muties, Die', 'America Pure', 'Kill Muties Is A Holy Cause', and the like.

"Shit!" Katya stammered, more annoyed angry than actually worried or scared. And the motive of worrying and fear she could feel was for his boss and the local, not for her.

She took off the apron hastily, tossing on the counter, and stared seriously the manager. "I'm leaving. Maybe they don't know what I'm, but if they ask, tell them for where I went out for, and if they ask if you did know what I was a mutant, deny it. Don't try being a hero for me. It's likely they let him alone."

He nodded, and Katya bolted hurriedly at the back door, rushing to run away from the local.

And resentful about who forced her to run away from her job how if she was a criminal. Hunting her for a supposed inhumanity, like the Nazis hunted her great-grandparents.

*********************************************************************************

She had sprinted a long way, and she felt next to safe, when they caught with her.

She barely sensed an incoming danger, when an explosion pierced her shoulder shedding blood, and she staggered with the strike and the momentum. She bit fiercely her lips trying restrain a moan, while she slipped, her muscles loosening. She fall on her knees, and after her entire body slid slowly down, sprawling on the rough floor with a deafened plof. Her body remained motionless in a heap, as a rag doll.

Voices sounded behind of her, several voices. Foreign, callous, bloodthirsty. Triumphal.

"All right, I've hit her!"

"You go, Clyde!"

"Sure is she dead? What if is she pretending only?"

"The three of you check the corpse! If she moves a brow, riddle with bullets!" Thundered a fourth person, commanding.

The threesome of high-tech, heavily armored, green-dressed mercenaries approached where the sprawled body was lying. They surrounded together the slumped heap, proceeding with infinite and extreme caution, regarding the corpse in search of life signs, and feeling somewhat peeved as they did, in spite of their earlier bravado. The inspected her attentively, almost fearing she jumped for their throats abruptly. There wasn't one motion, a heaving chest, or a twitch. None. The closest man kneeled, leaning over her head, while his partners aimed their shotguns. He touched the shoulder gingerly, how expecting it turned and torn off his arm. But nothing happened. He looked up at his friends.

"I'm not feeling anything..."

With lightning speed the left arm returned to the life and shot as a snake upwards, and with searing swiftness, going through the man's head, so immaterial like a ghost. The soldier didn't knew anything more since his brain synapses immediately shut down, and he blacked out after a helpless scream.

The remainder soldiers were too stunned and caught off-guard to react hastily, and lost valuable seconds. They hadn't trained up the guns yet when her body had gyrated around, and she had stood up, with her legs crouched and fury and determination crackling alike in her eyes. They barely had fired and missed when she bolted onward with the arms outstretched. She rushed, phasing through their bodies, canceling their nervous system and short-circuiting the electricity of the nerves, disabling them utterly.

"Of course you didn't feel anything! I was pretending, jackasses!" she proclaimed, her voice booming.

Katya braced herself when saw a rain of fire and lead going in her way, shot by the surviving soldiers. The rounds of bullets and plasma projectiles hit and at once didn't hit her shape, now untouchable. She fixed firmly her feet on the asphalt, and jumped as a wild lion, roaring and frightening, lunging on top of them. They were five in all, without counting the three defeated. She started diligently to blow, strike, smash, pound, punch, kick, stomp, twist, and cripple. She was so focused in the task she didn't noticed in anything else.

She was finishing off with the last one with a fast punch sequence when a fireball landed by her side with a shattering boom, exploding with a tempest of blazes and dirt and shrapnel in the street. She kept still, struggling for coping with the storm, but the sudden and violent eruption was too for her, and Katya fell down.

When slowly the light and the noise cleared, and the flames put off, there was a hole mirroring a bowl turned upside-down, with the walls cracked and grey due to the blistering heat wave, where before there was solid and flat pavement. However, the target wasn't in anywhere, dead or alive; and on the other hand remained the bloody carcasses of corpses of FOH soldiers littering the half-sphere.

Massive towers of metal, gigantic eight-legged robots, advanced across the street, jamming the traffic behind them. Their sensors sought menacingly their prey and theirs fore cannons spun ominously.

One brunette head, with harsh eyes underneath the hair, emerged stealthily of the paved road, hoping the soiled floor cloaked her enough. In a split-second she went back inside of the earth, going down with the greatest fastness possible. And right on time, because she could sense explosions of lasers rocking the spot.

Katya submerged as if she dived underwater, and swiftly swam without moving feet or arms along of meters of layers of ground and cement. She pondered the movement had to be calculated perfectly and executed flawlessly. The robots doubtfully allowed her several tries.

But what are they? she wondered An entirely new brand of Sentinels? What hell has FOH been up? She was in a loss, perplexity and doubt messing with her judgment, hesitant the menace was she facing about, and the way she could battle it with. However she put aside those thoughts and focused in the actual bout, even though lingering misgivings remained.

She neared progressively as far as the location she calculated right, and abruptly ascended, crossing stone and after air. But no robot was found. She had missed, mistaking her calculations, and bursting out of the ground, far away of the nearest robot.

Her lightning fast reflects kicked her in action, and she rushed promptly, getting away of the beams they were ensuing at her, and dodging blasts and shockwaves, Katya reached the nightmare of steel, swiftly stretching out her arm to at least touch one leg.

Suddenly, the appendage below the knee disappeared, ceasing supporting the vehicle weight, and the robot sloped sideways, crumbling on the floor with a resounding thud, oil spilling out of severed wires.

Katya rolled around quickly, her arm going along with the impulse, and it hurled the split shin drawing an arc. The spiked spear seared through the air and hit precisely on the cockpit of another robot, piercing the machinery and breaking down beyond repair the vehicle. Another machine more strolled towards her with deadly intention, shooting a barrage of plasma. She glared sorely annoyed at it, and waited for it coming the enough close, focusing her sight on the floor. The metallic slayer sank abruptly on the ground, intangible as the thin air, and its rear half stuck out as a ridiculous mockery of traffic signal. Katya cut off her power, allowing to the physical impossibility of two objects being at the same space and time to happen; the ensuing and massive blowup rocked the street with a flash of light and fire, boulders of cement flying upwards and after falling down.

Once rid from immediate nuisances, Katya grasped the frontal cannons, among the thundering of the shots. Her eyes blazed with an inner light of glaring determination.

Orange flames of energy boiled surrounding her body, and she felt the flesh morphing, hardening beyond of the possible, and the natural physical cycles of breathing, digestion, heartbeats and bloodstream ceasing. She clutched the pipes and yanked outward, fortress and resolution multiplying the power.

Thus, with horrendous, ominous crashes, her limbs ripped with one single movement the platting, tearing the robot in two pieces, mere chunks of dead steel, pulverizing the metal as frail eggshell and the reinforced glass as thin ice. The gained momentum launched her arms backward, unbalancing her.

Right then missiles exploded everywhere, blowing the entire road, making a massacre if people was around. All was useless to dent, weaken or even damage the armored frame of the young mutant, a sad misspent of ammo, collapsing harmlessly against her.

Steelcat darted hurriedly out of the dusty smog, leading towards the last two robots, ramming unstoppable. One of the multi-legged lifted up its beak, and tentacles burst out of sockets on the sides. They were unleashed at her, ready to coil around her body and strangle it and crush it, but the tendrils failed trapping her major but nimble frame. Without missing a beat, she leapt out of the way, rolled down of the robot belly, executed a handspring, landing on her feet, and having surpassed it, dash at the last monster, which bolted electric jolts at her unsuccessfully.

Katya dashed as far as its legs, and being beneath of it grabbed the front right leg with both muscled hands, leaving dents with the squeeze. She gathered every her immense strength, and among grunts and a shout, she lifted the grotesque octopode up, and heaved the mass above his head. Forcing the very joints and wires of the leg, she handled the robot like a whip, lashing to its partner with it and smashing it above of the cockpit, crunching it with a horrifying noise. Shrapnel of metal layers, wires and bolts littered the road on a wide diameter, and the shattered glass fall around making a shining sheet of cutting dust of silicon bordering the vehicles.

Katya paused a second. Funny. It reminded her of a stardust blanket.

The serene moment passed, and she returned to the present, feeling still fury fueling her. She wasn't willing admit a truce, still irritated with the FOH, so she gave up fully to her wrath, letting herself simmer in it, and charged at them. With a leaping Steelcat hammered with the joined fists the upper fighter, and it began. Thick fingers kneaded rigid metal like writhing jelly. Hands crunched big cannons as thin strews, and their ammo blew up, but not ever it deterred her. Fists pounded on the heap, dug in the layers, tearing apart big chunks and powdering them. Entire sections were rip and tossed as old rotten garbage.

At last, she let it loose utterly, tossing caution and restrain to the wind. Her fists rumbled while smashed, pounded, crashed and flattened the robots, with jabs, with uppercuts, with palm blows, with hammer fists, with simple punches. She folded her arms focusing her energies and they vanished in blurs of speed. Blow after blow dropped tirelessly, mollifying the titanium just with the sheer force and the impact of the chunks of steel she called her hands, until rows of hits upon rows zigzagged the surface like skin of a reptile.

Katya kept beating up the vehicles, but soon was palpable it was turning tedious, and boring, so she decided they'd got enough. She arched back her right arm, folding the elbow and tensing muscles the most possible, building up the blow. She finally discharged. And no person could have seen like the arm speared as a harpoon the steel, bending fully and utterly the battered armor, and throwing the robots far away in the sky, streaking as a shooting star.

She got wondered, and stood staring an gaping while her last hit - that hurt as Hell. She sometimes regretted her hand couldn't break- sent to the naive attackers soaring through the sky, going off slowly until vanishing away her sight. They were traveling Eastwards, she curiously noted. At this rate they might effectively to reach New York.

The very though she was entertaining made her to chuckle. What an idea!

*********************************************************************************

A healthy, sincere laughter. "And what happened after?"

"After was cool." Katya nodded sagely, despite of her audience couldn't see it across the phone, and went on her tale. "Some soldiers recovered their bearings, and seeing the mess, kneeled to me beseeching mercy, or weeping. Others babbled they were going to demand ME for destruction of private property. A policeman wanted hold me under arrest by that, or at least to lead me to the station, but he didn't dare. When I noticed it I yelled him might arrest one FOH if so much as he wanted, and kicked the butt to the nearest."

"It had to be a beautiful chaos." The interloper laughed in the phone, the scene easily picturing in her mind.

"Oh, yes. Some neighbors blamed me for the damage to the road, and others wiser wished chomp the heads off of the squad. At last the Damage Control Center goons showed and began to sweep the rubbish and fix the streets. I don't know how they did it that quick. They work at light speed for crying loud!"

She chastised on the telephone. "Yes, they've made profit of the superheroic battles since before of the creation of Excalibur. However they help to the people to clean after ours messes, so I shouldn't be picky about it." Katya almost could see to her mother shrugging while held the cradle. "How is going your shoulder, by the way?" She wondered, changing the theme.

The second-generation mutant unconsciously traced the rim of the fresh bandages, still white and clean, lingering on the bulges of her joint, and flexed slightly the arm. She bit the lip holding a cry of pain. The rush of adrenaline and her invulnerability had got sure of it didn't bother during the fight, but the fight had passed already. And it hurt a lot. She had needed to stop by the first pharmacy she found, and buy bandages, instead waiting to arrive to the mansion. It was one of the reasons -other than try to slay her- she wasn't sorry on the slightest for beating those fools. Besides, Katya remembered regretfully, she healed reasonably fast, but the scar would remain still for a while.

"It doesn't hurt. Barely. Not much. When I turned intangible, my molecules knitted temporally the wound. And when I shifted my body into steel, it remained closed." She answered, telling to herself her mother didn't needed really to get worried with it, when a sudden occurrence flashed in her mind. "Why I can not be in phase and be of steel at the same time?" She queried.

Shadowcat tilted the head, smiling, imagining her daughter was editing her 'medic report' to no get her worried, and retorted. "Why do you want be untouchable, if they can't damage you anyway? It'd make no sense. Besides, your Uncle Hank said your body technically protects itself shifting its density, and when it's rather high, it hardens. You can't get high density and null density at once. It'd be illogical."

Katya fumed. "I suppose. Yet it would be great."

Her mother shook her head on the other end of the phone. "I do think it'd be absurd. Never mind. When are you coming back to house?"

"I'm going back to the McDonalds first and foremost. In there I'll ask to the manager how much cash he'll discount me besides of the due to forcefully lost time. I'll be working until my shift is done, supposing the manager doesn't choose just fire me, that I don't think." She reported. "After I'll be leaving to the mansion."

"Great. See you later on, then."

"Of course. Good-bye mom."

Katya hung the phone and sighed, walking at the job and wondering what would be up for her.

*********************************************************************************

The next day. Massachusetts Academy.

Lucy creaked open the door and clicked the interrupter on.

The bulb light lit up, flooding the corridor with white bright light. However the light wavered and blinked twice, until it blacked out definitively with a screech and a pop.

The auburn-haired girl cursed silently, repressing of telling serious expletives loudly, recalling the little boy was standing beside her.

"The dumb lamp blew out." She stated angrily. "We'll have walk in the darkness." She grumbled, and stepped in the shaded corridor, knowing perfectly the way. A tug in her sleeve stopped her, though.

She looked down, at the seven-year kid was linking hands with her, gazing up with his big eyes glistening with hesitation and a tad of fear. She smiled sadly.

"Sister, I'm afraid." He whispered huskily, tugging twice more of her hand, like hoping it calmed down his fears. She shook her head and scratched her silky, dark blonde hair.

"Don't worry, Nathan. There's nothing in the darkness isn't in the light." She repeated, staring straight on his eyes to transmit him a part of her casual and nonchalant serenity. "You're not afraid. Besides, I'm here with you. What can possibly happen you?" She asseverated beaming.

Then she hoisted him swiftly and cradled him in her arms. "There's no monsters in here. And even if had, you're a kid very brave. I'm sure if someone planned mischief, they ran away when you went into. Besides, if we don't go through the dark passage, we shan't be able of torturing to your cousins who are in monitor watch. Don' you want to torture to the cousins, Nate?"

"YES!" the child palmed gleefully. "Torture cousins is cool." He shook his head.

She beamed, proud, and walked both into the passage, admittedly a bit gloom and murky-looking to one seven-year, whose wild imagination goes ten steps ahead of him, and who sees danger in the shadows because he can't know for sure what there' nothing, she thought. She whispered a soothing song to ease his nerves, although she realized with a wince her last question was the last thing she should to have speak aloud. She was pretty sure her father cursed her brother when named it like his mentor, professor and leader.

However, the moment was bringing a sweet, pleasant smile on her thin lips, and she felt insanely gleeful, with a bit of sad homesickness tinting it. She was getting a remembrance of her first visit in the Morlocks Tunnels. 'There's nothing in the darkness isn't in the light' was the very phrase her mother said then.

She was barely eight-year old, a tiny bundle of child with a mop of pink red in her head, staring around scared in the weird, fearsome bearings. Black tunnels with dark pits where bottomless voids were casting their shadows in them, miles of subways and sewers with blackness hurting her eyes, stench reeking on her nose, and sudden noises startling her at every second. Sometimes were clatters, or screeches, or long wails going on and on, or hoarse and uneven voices, fading away in the long web of tunnels.

All was too much for one little kid, and she grabbed desperately to her mother's leg, pleading her they went back up, nearly weeping.

Then her mother looked her down, and she might see her frowning under the boned horns in her temple, in spite of the darkness. She was disillusioned, she might say it, maybe even disappointed, unhappy or angry. She shuddered, and tears coming to her lids. She didn't want getting to mom angry or sad with her! She was always hugging her, pecking her in her cheek, telling her beautiful stories, and saying her how much she loved her. She didn't want disappointing her, but why she couldn't understand she was scared?

Or perhaps she did. Her mother bowed in front of her, crouching her legs to give her a level look, and resting a forearm on a thigh, she stroked her cheek.

"Do you trust in me?" she had said.

"O-of course, mom. But-"

"Then you DO know mom won't let ever something bad happen you. You DO know mom wouldn't bring down here if you were in danger." She then gave her an intense, pleading gaze, lending her strength. "There's nothing in the darkness isn't in the light, child. And more often than not, the monsters won't hurt you if you show some respect. There aren't monsters over here; and if there're, they'll respect us if we aren't scared, and they had better than do it, since mom will deal with them otherwise." She beamed, and her hand then touched gingerly her knee, shoulders and forehead, where bones were sticking out. "Besides, some people think I'm a monster." She stated calmly.

Then she reflected in her words. How could anyone call monster her mom? She was tender and sweet and caring. Perhaps the monsters hiding in the darkness weren't monsters after all, or only were because she called them so. Or maybe they attacked her because they were lonely and thought she hated them.

She then straightened, and squealed very firmly that she wasn't scared, practically shouting. Her mother smiled, one of her wide, proud smiles made her soar when she was little, and both walked in the tunnels. She wasn't scared longer, and wasn't clutching anymore her mother in a frightened vice grip. And her mother sang some pretty melody, giving a cheerful air to the eerie, gloomy and silent as a graveyard, place.

Then they reached their destination. The Alley. She gaped looking its impressive size, and the candles burning in a light circle, displaying a writing chiseled unevenly on the wall: "In Memory Of The Morlocks. Murdered By The Marauders Just For Existing."

And in the very center of the glowing, blazing circumference, Callisto, hunched on the rubble.

"Sister? SISTER!"

Lucy blinked, snapping out of her reverie to peer quizzically in the door ahead of her. Her brother was calling her name insistently, with a hint of concern crawling in his voice. She shook her head to get off the last dregs of her remembrance, her first meeting with the Morlock ex-leader, and regarded her bearings.

They were in the end of the tunnel- no, of the corridor. They were in the basement, the underground levels allowed only to the X-fighters such as herself, where they could work out her powers and skills, mastering its control and breaking its limits, and watching any trouble could arise at any moment. She met now outside of the Monitor Room, where two of her comrades were meant to watching shift. She turned the doorknob firmly, and slammed open the door.

Pure light followed to dim darkness, and she blinked briefly to get used her eyes to the sudden streaks of light. She frowned at the neon lights, glowing fluorescent from the ceiling. She quite favored the sunlight. It was less artificial and warmer.

She lowered her little brother on the floor, and peered at the two figures hunched in front of one of the televisions. "Hi, guys." She greeted. Apparently they were too busied to realize she was there.

Gailyn and Hank whirled around in their seats, acknowledging her presence with a nod, and turned at the screens. She raised a brow. Gailyn was somewhat tough-headed and even brusque when she willed, and Hank could fabricate a mask of -forgive the pun- frosty coldness when he needed, but neither she nor Popsicle II were really introverted. Or computer-freaks. Something was amiss.

Nathan walked as far as the redhead girl, and pulled down her pant leg. "Cousin, cousin" he chirped joyfully, seeking attention. His tone was imperious, nearly demanding, wanting be looked at, caught in and pampered. It was impossible of neglecting.

Gail averted her sight away of the monitor and perused attentively the boy with a honest smile. She patted his shoulders, remembering he put up with head-strokes only of his close family, and with it gained a delight squeal out of him. She beamed, glad with seeing the boy happy. Lucy smirked recalling he was pretty one of the toys of the team, and all enjoyed getting him around, but she suspected Gailyn was kind with him for another more personal motive. Perhaps the girl was seeing the wasted infancy of her brother and her in Nathan, and due to that fact she was enough overprotective of the kid, even though she was careful in remaining exclusively like a sort of big cousin.

Suddenly the oldest girl changed her mindfulness from her brother to her, staring her with a serious face. Lucy knew it was a 'business' expression. Something bad or grave or dangerous had to be going, which would explain her former alliance.

"Boss." She stated slowly. "You may want to take a look at this."

She pointed at the screen in front of her. Lucy Guthrie nodded, and approached to them. Hank, in a rare moment of politeness and consideration very unusual in him, sit up when he saw she was coming, leaving free the contiguous chair to her, and beckoned her to sit down.

Lucy grimaced and glaring him askance, checked the raven black upholstery. No nails that will pinch her rear, no cushion that will fart if she rests her butt. Perfect. She spun the chair and leaned on it, fidgeting slightly to get the more comfortable position, and with a sigh watched the screen.

She gasped. "What on the Earth is that?" She breathed in disbelief, ogling at the strange picture the monitor featured.

Her teammates exchanged a glance, and observed the screen fixedly along with her, not saying anything.

The monitor displayed an average, daily scene in a city, with the skyscrappers looming on the background. Assorted people walked over the sidewalks, minding in their own business with a varied range of expressions on their faces, cars rolled across the roadways, parrots and doves flew over the sky and landing to peck some crumb. Environment noises filled the scene, conversations, speeches, shouts, complains, motors rumbling, and on. All perfectly normal.

Except for a simple thing. Every so often, in an span of minutes, a glimmering line faded in the air, holding in nowhere as a line drawn on a canvas, or a tear on the air. Then it widened with a buzzing, bothering noise, and it shaped an irregular form, a fragment of photograph cut with a blunt scissors and glued on another photo. It was something SHOULDN'T be there, didn't belong. A piece of reality brutally ripped from its context and placed abruptly in other downright different in all. Like if out of thin air suddenly showed up a person with the body missed waist-down, speaking casually with someone. Like if a branch tree faded, and instead it a lamppost was attached to the trunk, with leaves around the bulb light. Or like if in the middle of a wintry frozen lake in winter, with a snowstorm brewing, there was a patch of Saharan desert, with a dromedary strolling under a burning hot sun, amidst the dropped weather.

The image inside of the photo was blurred, hard of making out. The X-Forcers narrowed their eyes and focused their sights, but they couldn't outline the picture. It was as the sketch of a drawing, the draft of a painting, wet and looked through the glass. A jagged and uneven shard of glass, with its surface disrupting. If the disruption wasn't going on only in the reality distortion, they'd think the monitor was broken down.

The people had stopped of walking, the cars had halted of rolling midway, the people had ceased of speaking, and everyone were frozen as in a true snapshot, gasping at the unreal wedge fitted into their universe. All were quiet, still without movement, when the image shimmered in green, a green glowing and golden, and it collapsed upon itself, of sudden and without warning, vanishing in the thin air like if it never was there.

The three heroes remained staring at the monitor, stiffened and puzzled, hardly grasping the meaning they'd just seen. Nathan just gazed, not understanding anything either, and not caring him for it really.

"Computer" called at last Lucy. "May analyze the origin and kind of that energy?"

/Affirmative. Proceeding/ answered the machine with its monotone, toneless voice, cold and impersonal.

"What are you doing?" queried Hank, staring her dubiously.

"Testing a theory" she shrugged.

/Analysis finished. The energy is of origin temporal/

The information swept through them as a thunder. Gailyn rose up, suddenly understanding her friend attitude.

"Temporal energy!" she gagged "Of course! It was a reality rift!" she exclaimed, summoning the little she knew of the temporal theories had spread out in the close-knitted mutant community in the last years.

"Effectively." Carcass nodded, combing her pink locks in troubling. "How many times has it happened? Where and since when?"

Hank coughed meaningfully in his best professional-like voice. "In the last hour or so several rifts have been opening in several points all about the country. Seams such like that have been opening and freeing temporal energy. It looks, in my opinion, like if some quake is affecting the timestream, disrupting our dimension. Perhaps several timelines are crossing or entangling."

Lucy didn't say the word she had on her tongue's tip, mindful of her little brother, but thought it, aware he was listening her. She'd personally rather he was mistaking, but it did too much sense. Still would pay be careful.

"Where are Theo and Jenny? We need them NOW!" She boomed, staring directly at Gailyn, roommate and cousin of Jennifer Summer. The children of Nathan Summers, Cable, had inherited their father powers, including chrono-variancy, and they could shed light on the matter...

Gailyn Bailey sighed heavily. "Theo teleported to visit to my Aunt Jean. And Jennifer is out, buying coffee. She told me she needed go away because Hank had cracked a prank on her, and she needed to replenish. While she went away, she commented about his future demise."

Henry Drake squirmed under the glare of Carcass, drilling him with an extreme heat. If looks could kill he'd have melt for now.

"I'll help her personally and gladly." She stated with bitterness and murder creeping into her tone. "Meanwhile, Gailyn, try pinpoint to Jenny, and spot more disturbances. Hank, call to Aunt Jubilee. Maybe Generation-X can carry out a preliminary examination."

"All right, boss."

*********************************************************************************

Tonight. New York. The Soho.

Agonizing screeches arose with ear-shattering intensity, disrupting the dark nightly calm. An eerie silence followed on, and after other load of screams began, louder and pitched. Tortured wails came after.

Weirdly, the pale moonlight, dazzling above the buildings, bathed not a poor and suffering woman, an old couple or any defenseless victim, but one gang of young, leather-wearing bullies, sprawled over the cracked paved stones, soaking the road with saliva of their gibbering mouths. Their black teeth scattered on the floor, purple eyes half-opened in pain, wounds of ripped flesh and broken bones, footprints everywhere, including swollen groins, apparently told they had chosen the wrong victim for screwing.

The supposedly easy prey was screwing right then the right upper limb of the last one in a manner would be perfectly possibly if the human body lacked of bones. The no-really-so-youth was bulky and taller than her, supposedly meaner and tougher, a man she had neither chance against; but he was the one moaned, kicked the floor squealing and beseeching with such lamentable, such pitiful and broken manner she might have retched in nausea.

With pure and sickened repugnance she glared meaningfully down, at her foot. It stomped on a knife, before sharpened and now blunt, with the edge dented cause the fall. He had threatened her with it, but she disarmed the attacker and disabled his weapon and his person on a matter of seconds, with deceitful, disappointing celerity. Without a weapon he was nothing, one puddle of weeping sobs.

She could smell his scent in that closeness. Sweat, alcohol, and maybe she'd be able of acknowledging the stench of lust flickering in fear, but she didn't possess the smelling-sense of several of her friends.

Nearing her soft lips to the earlobe, the gold bangs brushing the neck in mockery, she whispered. "Looks like if the pampered brit pummeled and beat to the pussy brats."

She noticed of him jerking shakily. Maybe the witticism wasn't of his liking.

Perfect, because I didn't intend it was she thought callously.

"Please, if you're going to hurt me, make it physical and get over with it!" he screamed, pleading.

She shrugged with a huff. "Gladly"

Her left fist tightened as a hammer, and clobbered the tough head, flattening the jet-black cap against the skull. The body she was grasping lost its rigidity, turning limp. She released the arm and let him slide downwards, dropping heavily on the floor.

Still snorting in disgust and annoy, she stomped out, disregarding very purposely to the curious swarm the fight had drawn, whispering and murmuring. It was getting her further angered. Vicky speeded up her strides, fleeing far away from the nosy and peeping people, carrion-eaters hungry for senseless and cheap violence and a good gossip where she stood from, and she retired in her mind, puzzled and baffled.

She didn't understand to those clowns. What did they attack her for? Because she's a mutant? Or perhaps because she's half-English? Her slit eyes and pale skin? Perhaps she was twisting it too much. Likely they were just looking for a good time. And she'd got one indeed. There's nothing so cathartic as violence.

She walked quietly, indifferent to the random transients till an odd glow blinded the corner from her vision, and she lifted her face up.

Her eyes bulging widely and her mouth gaped. Her frame stood suddenly rigid, her limbs feeling numb and frozen. She blinked in sheer incredulity, her mind denying to process the facts, to admit that she was looking at. She rubbed her eyes to clear clean her sight, but the image remained crystal clear, even despite off the smoke arising and the humid air shimmering and sizzling with the blazes.

She shook her head. The attic was in fire couldn't possibly be her family's. No, it couldn't.

Scratch that, of course it was!

After shaking off her stunned state and her protective delusions, Vicky sprinted crazily, anxiously, heading for the progressively nearer building. Her telepathy got sure wanderers and witness remembered only a normal-looking, young kid running in major haste.

However, cloaked under her mindshield she activated the molecular desestabilizer. Her clothes glowed a radiant white before shredding, and concealing into a raven costume, its thigh leather embracing and cloaking the body. Her wide ivory eagle-like wings were set free, rustling with glee of the releasing. Powerful flaps arose winds and blew dust clouds, due to the restrained limbs furiously struggling for taking off, soaring up in the heated night, and drinking sweetly each minute of it.

The feathertips stroking the wind, the muscles opposing to the air, the human triumphing over the gravity. Vicky gushed in delight and satisfaction, her plight held back for a minute. It was life.

*********************************************************************************

High tongues of flames, amber torches of gold climbed upwards, dulling the starlight, coiling and twisting as massive snakes of fire, licking walls and roofs formerly solid and unyielding, overflowing in the rooms as a wild mob before swallowing every combustible fabric to feed its potency and energy. The skyscraper, a respectable and tall building albeit somewhat old, resembled a picture of the pits of Hell, built with hot-melting fire, roaring blazes wrapping its shape as a cloak, foretelling its ruin at any time. Abrupt flashes and explosions pierced and unraveled over and over again the stream of fog and smoke that created by the fire, had gathered on the upper part and dispelled when it touched the icy atmosphere.

Puny streams of cold water were hurled on the starving flames, but they only achieved get it angry, since the fire burst and crackled with more flames even.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was oil instead water She said to herself, grimacing.

Alone in of middle of the mayhem, unafraid of the vigorous rivers of fire, stood upright and serene a person, ahead of the neighbors rescued from the burning building, and near of the firemen. Shrouded on the night, she was a female outline, shrouded with black and outlined with yellow light to the persons who were situated behind her. And still she faced challenging the destruction, with a firm and rigid stance.

Only a light of anxiousness and worry remained fluttering on her face, in the slightly moistened eyes, in her bitten upper lip.

An imperceptible shiver disrupted her stiff stance when she saw the upper flats crumbling down. She heart missed a beat when it went up in flames and light, and thumped again in exultant joy when the rolling blazes scattered to let through pass a shooting star. A devil-like human form, tall and winged, wielding a burden in arms and back, dive upwards, allowing the rushed wind to drag away the sparks singing his clothes, dashing on the air with a howl of victory.

His angelic sight did her think of a messenger of Lord, sent to the Inferno, and arising triumphant. Some different of the fire brightened her face, and she suddenly remembered what breathe was like. After of the strain, the abrupt elation left her muscles soft as the jelly, and she could have fallen.

Recent memories flowed inside as a loud and fresh river, beating in her exerted brain. The startling realization of the fire, the smoke choking them and filling their lungs with toxic gas, the hurried run towards the freedom, running at the nearest window, and the flight downwards, all rushed in her memory as a tormenting recording of their lives never were entirely safe.

The best proof was even though they were saved when they landed on the floor. The firemen were delaying, and the most part of the people was trapped in; besides, albeit they were in time, the ladders reach just as far as the seventh story. They had to act. She wrapped to Warren in a telekinetic bubble, and he went into the building again, led for her telepathy to find the persons in a most immediate and serious danger. When the firemen arrived in the place after an unbearable wait, nearly everyone had got out or had been rescued, and she was forcing her powers to reassuring telepathically to the neighbors all while did scan the building and keep the mindlink and the telekinetic barrier.

Right now was returning to the ground, landing smoothly despite of the man wrapped in his back and the two kids his arms were bearing. He waited to put down the family for crumpling on his knees, panting heavily. Evidently the effort was taking its toll in him. The man who he had just saved ignored him while his sobbing wife met with her family and the firemen took care of him.

She joined to Warren, draping her arms around his taut thorax and soothing the kneaded muscles in her neck with quick pecks. She was transmitting him relief and pride, shielding him off the negative emotions darkening her vision and boiling wildly into her with a more vicious blazes than the blackened in ashes attic. The man was sporting blisters along his entire hide, his hair was singed, and he was limping laboriously.

He couldn't have survived without Warren, but he had forgotten all about the man who risked his life for his. And she skimmed over his thoughts. It wasn't due to bigotry: was plain, pure ingratitude. It did her churning with rage, shuddering and liquid lava of ire, barely kept in check with the memory of them weren't saving persons for receiving thanks, but because it had to be done. And they weren't picking up people according to moral quality.

She was nursing lovingly to her husband when sensed footsteps. Heavy, aloud and unwelcome right now.

The fireman chief. Nearing. A sea of thoughts and customary words swam in his mind, she could read it.

"Thanks for the help, Ms. Worthington." He said. It was supposed to be a rough, throaty voice, but it sounded hesitant, as if he was insecure. Is there most people left yet?" He queried.

It tried being polite. "Not at all, and no, I'm no sensing to anybody." But she voiced sharply instead.

He sighed. "It's a hell of fire, Miss Worthington" He spelt his speech. It sounded hollow, as a dictation. "We're doing our best effort but..."

She whipped furiously her head. Her mesmerizing purple eyes flashed, bright with her power lightening the tears, and they drilled to the man and pierced his mind from one to other end.

"Your best effort, you tell" She rasped slowly. Dangerously. "It's your word. May you swear on me you haven't wasted time?"

He stepped back, making a deeply offended face. "Miss, I don't know you are trying pull, but-"

She cut off it with a severe wave of her wand. She glared at him, looking beyond the stuttering and beyond of the mask of pretended indignation he was putting, and folded her arms. Her voice had a glacial, menacing edge, under which was buried a burning fury. "You were late. Way late, even counting with factors such as the traffic or random incidents as a traffic jam or several punctured tires. I can understand things happen, but you employed twice the time needed to get here, even with several silly accidents hindering. Tell me, what was it for?"

The man peered at her and shuddered compulsorily. The woman spoke with a tone bitingly frozen, and every one of her words were splinters of frozen ice needling his skin. He felt steadily sick with a queasy feeling unsettling his stomach. He didn't know because to talk two words with her was giving him that suffocating uneasiness, because he was so progressively scared of her. Yet he was.

Something was impelling him, prodding him to own up the truth she suspected of. However, another fear, a fear masked of scruples was tugging from in the other sense. He took off his red helmet and rubbed his temples with the sleeve, trying to buy himself some of time.

Her eyes squinted, and a glint glowed in them. His reserves gave in.

"We had... troubles..." he stammered. He wondered where he had got from the strength.

She arched a brow and seethed. Betsy were going to snarl with a scathing retort when noticed the fury was taking over and she was almost giving off purple power. Serene, she needed play serene. "Troubles?" she scoffed, squashing down the ire. "How, let's say, my husband is a mutant?"

The man fidgeted uneasily, restless, averting his eyes at the big fire. He didn't dare to look straight at the flaring eyes of the woman, who seemed glow with her own light. He thought deny it, refuse answer, weave a believable story. But it was pointless. He understood the woman deserved the truth.

So pursuing his meaty lips, looked up and whispered. "Lady, whatever can I tell would stand between the two of us, right?"

Psylocke tilted the head with a frown lingering, and nodded showing her agreement. At the same time released a pleasant hormone in his bloodstream to counteract the one she had released formerly.

The fireman neared to her and whispered. "One hour ago someone phoned to the HQ, warning of an imminent fire on a 'mutant sinkhole', and soliciting -and it meant threat or blackmail- 'cooperation'. That person offered us money to not intervene and menaced us with dire retaliations if we put off the fire. However, one of the commanders is very stubborn about our 'sacred fireman duty', and he convinced to the remainders to carry out our job, although he isn't very fond of the mut... superheroes."

"So now you can get troubles, can't you?" Betsy queried, pretending to have missed the last piece.

He fireman looked away.

Betsy felt her wrath wearing off, washed with pity, and smiled. "Don't worry. We'll help with your trouble"

He blinked, amazed. "What do you mean-" He started, but never knew whatever she got in mind, or was willing share with him.

"MOM!"

A youthful female hurricane rushed at them with such speed her feet barely caressed the floor, and darted as an arrow towards her. She rammed in her like a lightning or a cannonball, and almost tackled her with her excitement. The girl buried her head between her breasts and wailed aloud about her scares and anxiety and her relief seeing her fears no confirmed. Her father rose up at last, and joined to them, embracing his wife and patting the his daughter's shoulder plates. The scene was pretty touching to him.

It was that his eyes, old and submissive, printed into his blunt and unprotected mind. Blunt and stark.

In fact Vicky came soaring from the nocturnal sky, diving downward at her mother, and switching the angle with a mere fold of her wings. Thereby she landed on her feet with perfect accuracy, and her mother and she merged in an embrace, which her father joined delightfully.

Warren Worthington stroked her ruffled bangs, in a reassuring, warming way. "Easy, sweetheart. Every is right now" And you? Are you fine? He sent.

"Thanks dad. I was very scared. I'm glad you're safe and sound altogether." She beamed outwardly. I'm scanning the surroundings. I've just detected two hostile minds that I think are the culprits. They gather enough murdering wishes and blood-thirst to be. They think they're perfectly shielded, but God, they're giving me a headache!

"I know, darling" remarked her mother, carrying on the spoken conversation. I also detect them. Two persons armed and stalking in the darkness. They think they are perfectly mind-shielded, but their dirty brains are practically screaming in my head

They must be the FOH who set the house in fire Warren replied through the link with either of them. He glanced at her daughter. "Do you want walk away for a while, honey? There's little you can do here, and maybe it calms you down" He commented, following in his head. Take them down and beat them up

"I opine the same as your father." Betsy nodded with a smile whose motive was private.

"Well, if dad and you get stubborn with it, how can I possibly resist?" She rebuked, quelling the guffaws she was threatening burst with. "I'll be near." Breaking skulls and kicking butts. It won't take long

"I'm glad, darling." That is the spirit

"Thanks, mom." She curtsied graciously, very proud of her manners. Besides, the fire there must be caught my bedroom, and NO LIVING being burns my Playstation3 and get away with it

Victoria stalked off happily. Warren and Betsy remained suddenly alone amidst a sizable crow of people. Their fears and remorses were going along with them, yet.

In front of them the impossibly hot, burning and ravenous blazes of gold, red and orange, leapt and crackled, dancing with annihilator frenzy out and in of the building, metamorphosed into unholy shrine to some pagan God of Fire. Just few fire hoses battled to its power.

*********************************************************************************

The impermeable, thick shadows. Two men prowled along brick walls in a murky dead end, concealed with a cloaked of darkness, peering attentively at the flames. They were enraptured with the taste was leaving in their lips that wild feast of devastation, an oven brightening the inky sky, and felt pleased with the evil deed. The engulfing flames glowed on the glossy black visors of the helmets, through which were visible their smiles. They were switched in growls when the firemen doubled efforts. Deeply infuriated and scorned, they gather together and whispered grave things at each other, in foreboding tones.

They were oblivious to the world as conspired, when abruptly a glimpse caught the eyes of one. One thing not meant to be there, not showing before them, as a haunted ghost.

He palmed the armored shoulder of his partner. And doubting, shuddering, pointed one place. Above.

And either of them saw it.

A figure. Upright on the peak of a lamppost. Shrouded in blackness, in spite of her blonde locks. Clad with a supposedly ninja outfit, split on the back for spreading out her wings. Unbeknownst to them the wings tested the wind with its tantalizing twitches, checking it for the sake of the glowing, pulsating purple bow her hands were gripping, albeit the light flashing along of the phony wood was less tangible than the cold air. An arrow sprouted out of her right hand, unwaveringly locked on its target.

They moved. Slow, too slow.

"Call me 'The Avenger Angel'" the voice was soft, sensual. Dangerous.

The hand released the projectile. The bow shot.

Barely visible darts crossed the air, light slashing the wind, with the atmosphere of the icy night dulling the shimmer of their flashing shapes. One arrow, and more going along with it, crashed in the helmets and passed through the glass, as if both arrows and helmets weren't at all tangible.

Hurt. Excruciating Pain. Harm piercing the brain. Stabbing the neurons with lacerating blood scars. Rippling along the nerves as far as the edges of the mind. Thought process shattered as frail glass in a hail of countless shards.

The brain might not bear it. And being unable, it shut down.

Both minds were flooded in a sea of blessed blackness.

A quiet glare regarded them. The dark and shaded figure leapt away, and whirling airborne landed, with her wings trailing back; wings no of an angel, but a demon.

Her grim face remained unreadable while she looked upon the fallen heaps, scattered on the floor, so numb as their awareness.

Her broad twin wings expanded out, and she soared over the nocturnal sky, the luminescent white of the flying appendages glistering with the moonlight and reflects of distant embers, last remainders of tongues of flames.

Her figure hovering over the sky vaguely remotely resembled one pretty barn owl, but she was lacking of humor for poetic similes. Her body moved on self-pilot, while her mind scanned, searched for other special.

Mom, I've... taken care of them, although I'm afraid it will do little benefit beyond personal satisfaction

Rippling across the astral plane, where distance is a meaningless concept, an answer reached her.

By now we're going to call to the police. Hopefully can see justice by once. Though we must pry out of her minds the person who ordered this disaster no matter what

A pity it be too late for the building she lamented bitterly.

Nobody died in there and it is the truly important. There weren't significant or irreplaceable documents and records inside, and your father saved the most substantial, so we can afford the loss. And the building was old and was insured anyway, so its destruction serves us of excuse to buy a best house. All in all we can keep a positive outlook

Vicky noticed the fine smirk tinting the mindwaves, and pondered about it. Her mother was awfully tranquil and conform with this, but in truth they were hardly poor and homeless; and dad and mom were telling her often with their lifestyle they led was necessary learn to give less worth to the material goods and more to the fact of being alive. It was understandable.

Vicky folded her arms -a no disdainable feat since she was flying-, and thought. She recalled the Aunt Jean's incident, the trouble Katya had run into, and other complications her friends and extended family had been facing of late. Since the gathering of the New X-Men and X-Force nearly one year ago, the violence had increased.

The anti-mutant paranoia had cooled down progressively during the last years, and the people was more used to superheroes, supervillains and super-powerful or weird-looking people. However, although the bigotry had been in a slope since the end of OZT, the FOH and the anti-mutant groups made up the each time fewer members joining in their ranks with an increment in the loudness of their methods and in the brutality and violence in their attempts. And lastly there was a troubling trend set of continued frequent attacks and increasing of Sentinel activity. It was obligatorily urgent behead this trouble before it evolved to something they'd be unable of handling.

Don't worry now for this, honey the telepathic voice of her mother echoed in her mind. She listened her giggling with her start. Now relax. When you go back we shall travel to the mansion

Vicky nodded. Wisps of thought licked in the edges of her shields in good-bye.

Vicky listened still inside her mind echoes of her mother's laughter. And she couldn't help laugh likewise, despite of her misgivings and bad omens, of the turmoil of doubts, worries and insecurities was churning in her brain. They were facing a possibly deadly peril, and she wasn't sure of being capable or being up to the challenge, or being a reliable and useful member. True, either of her parents were mutants and she was a good fighter and pretty powerful in it. But could she be a living legend? Had the skill, strength and might? The determination? The courage and the guts? Was she ready?

She sighed, saying to herself one thing was sure, without shade of doubt: It would not be boring.

Closing the matter, she attended to her flight. Her winged limbs half-closed, folding the wings, thus making them hawk-like, narrow and short. She spread the arms and executed a perfect and swift aerial loop, after diving onwards, soaring on the night, warded with the rustle of the feathers and the hissing of the wind.

The silence lay down on the gloomy alley during the rest of the nightfall, and until the sunshine.

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Four days later. New York City.

The man knew wasn't his lucky day when the Sentinel stomped on his Mustang.

Oblivious to that puny man's wailing and curses and to the plain metal sheet it had left in the wake of its trail, the massive purple and cobalt Sentinel kept on its way. And the long street shook with each hieratic step he gave, with each wide footprint he carved the ground with in its trail. He trudge slowly along the road, its single-mindedness fully focused in the pursuit of its target, and its large arm straightened at its direction.

It bombarded its prey with a flurry barrage of crackling beams, packing highly condensed energy. The chased quarry though executed a intricate and tangled aerial maneuver, gyrating airborne, bouncing in buildings and leaping on and spinning around anything it met. The blasts were dodged and missed completely, ricocheting the towering skyscrapers instead. The Sentinel ignored the riddled buildings, the scorched bricks, molten metal and shattered glass its shots had provoked, the a path of destruction it had marked, and continued its relentless chase.

The intended kill was swinging on one thin string of sticky fabric, holding it firmly with the hands. It finished the arc of the swing, somersaulted, and out of one arm was shot a viscous, web-like, strand, which adhered solidly to one ledge, and the person repeated another swing more, grabbing resolutely the webline with both of her black-gloved hands.

The mutant the Sentinel was hunting and shooting at was a female figure, pretty high to her likely age, costumed with an midnight-black spandex, the thin but enduring fabric clinging tightly on her body, with a white giant spider emblazoned on its front and back. The bright ivory of it and of the triangular eyes matched sinisterly with the ebony raven of her suit. Very gaudy, but it had the trouble of a lot of persons got it mixed-up with the Venom's costume, despite of she protested it was the design of one of Spiderwoman II.

Right now she was screaming another speech at the Sentinel who was intending to murder her, all the time struggling to stay ahead of it and avoid its attacks.

"Damn it! I swear the traffic light was green when I walked across!" she protested, giving it a sidelong glance before executing an aerial spin which would split the spine of a normal human being.

The Sentinel didn't retort with words, whether it was because didn't matter it or was because he'd not dignify it with an answer was left to her guess; not matter what, the thirty-feet-tall, shining robot lifted another arm, stretching its fingers. The hot load of five flame-throwers flared out of them, long and blistering fire tongues launched at her direction. She shot a webline at a satellite dish, spinning in an upward loop, situating above of the lethal fireblasts.

I suspect to the mini-Transformer doesn't like my humor sense May Parker pondered, flinching barely with the feeling of scalding heat pulsating in her back. The rear of the uniform had been singed and it had to be giving her blisters. The last attack had been too close.

"I'm roasted" She stated, using her odd humor sense to vent her fears and impeding the no-so-subtle manner her body was shivering with spoiled her acrobatics. She was figuring the best way of outliving this was giving her best effort, being so unpredictable as she might-

Her spider-sense blared abruptly in her head, and she reacted with a mechanical swiftness, pushed forcefully by a sharp instinct, which was screaming her to move away instantly. She leapt briskly out of the way of the giant fist one second later and pummeled the spot where she was in.

Barely she'd caught her breath when out of its palm erupted a column of fire. She avoided it neatly, when it suddenly changed its direction and curling to blast her. Again her spider sense had saved her of a certain death, warning her when and where from it was attacking her, and she pondered surprised it was moving now as a whip.

She dodged narrowly another punch. The monster was displaying a limitless array of weapons, and on top of it was adapting to her speed and tactics. It didn't bode well. How was she supposed to win this or survive if the robot used those tricks? It wasn't fair.

She shot another webline to swing towards a roof when a blow smashed downwards in the precise moment her spider sense turned on. She sucked air with the jarring hit, feeling the shockwave of the fist rippling through her body, and feeling her whole skeleton moaning and rattling. Pain, extreme, intense pain, washed over her mind, and it sought one way out. Her awareness slowly slipped, sinking in the oblivion, seeking the sweet numbness.

However her self-preservation was far stronger, and she forced her bruised musculature to straight her body, and her arms to weave hastily. The web-shooters oozed sticky webbing and spurted long strands of it, hurling them together to weave to a wide and elastic sheet. The canvas of thick spidernet inflated and expanded with the air and tugged of her maker upwards, halting her abrupt free fall.

A metallic arm arched back and whipped onwards drawing a curve to swat her like a fly, with the speed and viciousness of a whip, the air screeching and swirling in the wake of its trail. She narrowed her eyes, this time ready. The robot would think she was defenseless only fore being an easy target, motionless on the air. Bad mistake.

When the limb was on top of her, streaking with surprising and lightning swift, she released the inflated parachute, stuck a hand on the rounded forearm, and supporting firmly in it, she jumped over and around it with a circular movement. Using the momentum of the blow to go faster -she loved the physic- she spun around and somersaulted several times, landing on the floor with staggering precision. All it'd been realized with a single, incredibly quick and neat, motion, her nimble and fast frame acting with the accuracy and perfection of a well-greased machine.

She huffed dismissively, used to these ordeals, and smoothed her costume.

The Sentinel seemed even less impressed, staring at her with an unyielding, firm countenance. She shuddered imperceptibly looking over the rigid and square jawbone and the eyes, shaded and empty, led towards her. Look back at two bottomless pools of shadows it was like.

At least he could pretend to be annoyed or hindered she snarled inwardly, and flinched seeing it spreading its arms. Its two eyes, its chest, its bulky hands, its belt, all began to flare with shimmering amber light. It was an ominous glow, unsettling and warmless, and even with its eyes filled with flickering blazes they were soulless.

She scowled checking her web-shooters and aiming both together towards it, determination etched on her face underneath the mask. "Very well! Do you want me, over-grown toaster with attitude? It'll be over my dead body!" Her fingers teased the trigger and she stepped forward. "So what if am I rambling? It isn't as if you care!"

The Sentinel didn't retort the taunt. It fired silently its pulsating lasers with a deafening booming, and the air sizzled with the hotness and lit with the brightness of the pillars of orange blasting downwards and piercing with an uproar of noise the pavement down, tearing it like hot butter.

The thundering noise of the cannons shooting muffled another two explosions right before of the beams scorched the ground.

Grey smoke of disintegrated rubble floated, blending with tendrils of violet and stinking fumes. Though, amidst the holes riddling the pavement, the cracked or powdered ground, the grime and the pebbles and the cobbles raining down, the light dulling and fading slowly, a female corpse or her blackened remnants figured in nowhere.

The dim light coalesced around a spot, and vanished at last altogether, showing a tall, lanky boy, with an insulting smirk brightening his face, and wearing a trenchcoat opened and billowing with the dropping wind, displaying a 'X' down it. His maroon locks were glued and mucked up with the grime of the dust, and specks of crushed dirt soiled the worn and tattered coat. His skin was lit with a sheen of colorless light, and sparkling with the energy had touched his hide.

His green-on-black eyes sparkled, but with mirth, and before the Sentinel got over, his hands sneaked into his coat, and dashed outwards throwing a flurry of red-crackling energy-charged daggers. The barrage of projectiles nailed on the legs and knees, piercing the tough layers of metal, and blow up, tearing massive pieces of machinery. Sparks and bolts crackled on the end of wires and destroyed circuitry, exploding even more chunks of the Sentinel. The machine screeched with a buzzing, alarmed voice, and stumbled forward. His legs ruined and torn faltered and it dropped down.

And the everlasting smile had decorated the charming Daniel's face erased off it when he realized it was going to crash down on top of him. He tried roll back, but the looming shadow was covering him already.

However, before the robot squashed him as to an insect, a swift black blur sprinted towards him, grabbed him, and leapt with the out of the way of the harm with a swishing noise. With a wide arc upwards his body was lifted above of cars and trucks, and with another more he swung at the opposite sidewalk, desert and empty. They landed with a low thump, and he was let go with kindness but with no ceremony.

He combed his locks and smoothed his costume, still slightly dizzy after of the rushed and sudden trip, and glanced at his rescuer with a mixture of gratitude and chagrin.

"Shameful." He smirked plaintively. "I try and rescuing to someone, and that someone ends rescuing me."

May waved a hand dismissively. "Consider it the payment for help me." She shook hands with him, deeply thanked, being unable of helping notice his smile was really charming. "I'd be a tattoo on his fist otherwise"

He shrugged, unwilling to take the sincere credit. "I appreciate the words but can't own the merit. My friend saved you, not me. I only took down the Sentinel down, down but on top of me. I was too fool and almost paid the price."

May suddenly turned, feeling the flashing implosion of brimstone before it happened. In the middle of the purple and jet-black smoke cloud turned up the hunched figure of her savior, supported on his four limbs, with his pointed tail fanning lazily behind him, and one of his hands handling a square, black object of tiny size.

"Everyone commit mistakes, mein Cajun freund. You can't blame yourself for it." He smiled a toothy grin at May, flashing her razor and white fangs, and pressed the red button on the object. "Gutten tag, milady. My name's Darkstalker, and saving damsels in distress is my inherited job seemingly."

A blowup sounded from the other side of the street, and the Sentinel burst in flames.

His mouth quirked upwards, a smile of disordered complacence in its artwork. He hid the detonator in an inner pocket in his fitting costume, and rubbed his hands together. He seemed insanely pleased with himself. "Am I a genius with explosives or am not I? Good, good. Now phone to the firemen to put off the fire and the Cleaning Services to cleanse after us, and the matter will be concluded."

He looked sideways to May afterwards, and bowed handsomely. "Good morning, miss. I'm afraid we've been not introduced at each other. My codename is Darkstalker, extraordinary superhero and my friend's is Energizer. Don't worry for his former whimpers, it comes from his father's lectures about 'Mistakes cost lives'. Perhaps you guessed, but we are the-"

"X-Men" she completed with conviction. "I figure is mine turn now. My codename is Spidergirl. Girl, no woman. Remember it, please."

"We'll do" nodded Daniel. After he glanced her regretfully "By the way, I think we owe you an apology. You'll see, the fault that Sentinel chased you is entirely ours"

Her eyes, her countenance, her expression were unreadable behind the cowl, but he was pretty sure she was frowning in puzzlement. However the triangular drawing of eyes on the mask gave the upsetting sensation a glare was perpetually boring in your head. "Yours... fault, you said?" she echoed.

"Yes" he seethed, although she could realize in his voice and his eyes, miles far away, that his anger had little to do with her. "The old and young X-Men located the squad in time to get to the hospital before them, and struck them hard. However some got away disbanded, forcing us to chase them. That creep" he waved at the wrench of shredded and melted metal steaming on the road "was one of them."

"I understand now" She replied, even thought she really didn't. There was somewhat unclear in the picture. "Why would the Sentinels raid a hospital?" she queried, bewildered.

The carefree and goofy countenance of Rick vanished, and he sported a serious, grim face. "That's easy. Almost a week ago my aunt -a mutant- was looked after and healed in that hospital."

Her blood froze cold in her veins. "W-what?" she stammered.

Both boys shook their heads awkwardly, with a heavy burden of sorrow and resignation. "Is it a wonder for you? These monsters-" The sentence Energizer was about of saying was abruptly cut off on his lips. He and his friend spaced out for seconds, and she got the feeling they were very off, an impression reinforced with the pupils dilated of Energizer.

Both squirmed and blinked, a sign of they were over with whatever it was, May though. They shook their heads for getting back their bearings, and then focused in her. She felt an odd sensation peering at their faces, like if they had just noticed right now that she was there, no having her ever seen before.

"I'm sorry." Both mumbled at once. They exchanged a glance, and the furry mutant backed down, giving way the word at his friend. "But looks like if we're needed in another place. Our leader is calling us."

"Good-bye." He said in farewell, visibly saddened, while grabbed his teammate shoulder.

His partner was way more optimistic. "See you later! By the way, if you need help for whatever, give us a call and the X-Men shall be fond of aiding." He grinned, and smoke exploded around them.

When it scattered and unraveled, he had vanished unsurprisingly, teleported at other place. May stood still in the place during seconds, thinking deeply about things.

The pitching and annoying ring of sirens blaring in her ears, combined with the messages of her spider sense did alert her what the police was coming of, and expecting surround her.

Not looking forward to be under arrest, her legs crouched and she sprang nearly thirty feet of height, sticking dexterously on the brickwall. Her right arm flung upward, and she shot a webline, which hooked and glued on a faraway wall. With a start she leapt away, swinging among the buildings, dodging the fewer bullets some policemen intended fire her with.

Instead making her daily patrol of the city, she did a beeline for Forest Hills, taking a shortcut over the roofs. She usually spent more hours watching the streets, but today she'd be focused in anything thing else, and she'd know that.

She wasn't up to hours of looking for action. She was fretting with a turmoil of worries, fears and doubts, swirling in her mind and giving her a headache. And above all, an idea was taking shape within her head.

A bizarre idea, a nebulous occurrence, obscure and vague. But for some reason it sounded so right.

With an tsk she spiraled down and performed a full turn around a skyscraper, only because.

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End Part Two.

Thanks for the revisions of the First Chapter. I plan introduce to Generation-X and its progeny in the third chapter, but I have to get it written still. Please, a little of patience.

In the Part Three, a double synchronized ambush against the X-Men leads to one tragedy and the rebirth of a great power. Part Three: Risen From the Blazing Ashes.