Oops.  It's been over a month, huh?  First, I'm alive.  I'm sorry to scare you.  Second, to explain, I was banished from my computer every weekend for over a month (Damn all overnight extracurricular activities!) and non-school days are a big BIG BIG majority of my writing time.  Thirdly...oh, just start reading the fic before you guys keel over like you wrote you would.  I can't afford to lose what fans I have...wait...whoa, I have fans!  Are you reading yet?  Go.  Vit!  Thank you.

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Previously, on ToS... (I owe you guys this much.  The story starts after the next set of symbols if you want to skip, though I REALLY suggest you skim some of this seeing as its been so long.)   

In the last twelve fic hours or so: OC mutants Alan and Hannah-Laura figured out they were pregnant and are planning to get hitched; Remy says Hell with the coma and nearly kisses Rogue, but Jimmie the mutant know-it-all ruins the moment (we all hate him for it); Remy gets called away by this Mell girl who is a top-notch hacker, the baby sister of the assassin Marie whom tried to kill Gambit in the Magic Kingdom but was killed by her own victim, a self-esteem-less and suicidal teenager, and a mutant who thinks she's gone insane to boot; it turns out Xavier's been looking for someone to blame Kitty and Kurt's "deaths" on, and a thief with a bad reputation whose grandmother's tomb crashed down on Miss Pryde ranks up there on suspects; and to keep Charles from doing something drastic, Remy meets the guy...and the Wolverine...and his adamantium claws...repetitively!  ...Inhale!!!...what?  My face was turning blue; I dictate what I write.  Onward! 

Meanwhile Rogue, Jimmie, and Cara –this mysterious new mutant- walk around town, and Cara starts questioning Rogue about why she's with Remy ("Oh, I don' know.  It could be that he has billions of dollars and hundreds a' bounty hunters at his disposal to hunt me down if I run, between Gambit's empathy an' Jimmie's mind control I really don't think about leavin' him over much, I can't go past tha city limits alone without gettin' shipped back "home" in a steel crate (or more likely gettin' shot in the head), Remy has this darker side I REALLY don't want to get on tha bad side of again, an' –oh yeah- I have a frickin' collar on my neck!  ...uh, what was I saying, Jimmie?  Oh, thanks.  ...Ahem: I love him with all mah little heart, and nothin' you tell me will make me feel different!" ...Just thought I would mention her "reasons" for staying).  Cara figures correctly that something's up with Jimmie and mind control, so she hits him over the head with a rock –hey, it worked.  To dump Jimmie and theoretically prepare to leave town, the three go to Cara's hotel, coincidentally the same one where Remy is running for his life.  At that hotel, Xavier gets tired of Remy dodging swipes and helps Wolverine cheat...ooh!  That had to hurt. 

Meanwhile, Mell is at a bar across the street from the hotel getting *hic* vede vede drunk.  We learn about here that Gambit adopted her and Jimmie [and that half-werewolf Leo Lycaon (his dad was a werewolf, a real werewolf!) as a brother].  However, Mell is clueless about everything in the last sentence and then some.  Back at the hotel, Xavier picks up that Mrs. Remy LeBeau is in the building and has Wolverine bring her to him, perhaps to free her; who knows?  Rogue turns all kick-ass defense attorney for Remy, but her tactics are kind of stupid to use on a genius telepath who is NOT thinking straight!  Translation: if she doesn't watch it, he's going to give her a brain aneurysm –nice guy or no.  He's never had students die before.  Nope.  Never.  Baldy can't take it.  He's gonna blow!  ...uh, moving on:  In Cara's hotel room, Jimmie wakes up and finds Cara knocked unconscious (thank you, Xavier...aka Mush Mind).  He gets filled in on what he missed by the voices in his head and wishes he had stayed unconscious. 

Becoming a busy little worker bee, Jimboy taps Absorption Kurt's "mind" into Rogue's body so the Fuzzy dude can cool Xavier down.  Xavier gets confused when Rogue/Kurt teleports, but Wolverine acknowledges it as a fact of life and goes out to get drunk.  Instead, Logan meets Mell.  He gets protective and gets her to go home.  Not really; she fakes a call on her cell to get a ride home and waits in the car that he won't let her drive drunk.  She waits for Remy by smoking cigarettes and Logan watches the car from the roof with a beer.  Jimmie comes clean face to face with Xavier about his hand in a lot of things (Rogue equals Kurt? things) and gets the guy to go.  It helped Charles to know Kurt is still alive in some fashion and to hear from a familiar source that Remy was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  He and Wolverine leave.  On the way out, Logan catches a whiff of Kitty's scent, but he doesn't believe his nose (well that's a first).  Anyway, Jimboy gets Mell to stop smoking and spends a few minutes with Cara.  He couldn't even see her with his mind before (ticked him off), but he figures out how to look inside her head and changes her memory.  He tells her brain she just had some fun time shopping with Rogue and returned to her hotel room.  Right, she really did do that.  Really, really.  Note the sarcasm. Then he goes into the bar to keep an eye on Mell and drowns his sorrows with a root beer!  Poor guy.  He does all that work and he knows Gambit is still going to drub him.  Also, he knows he's going irreparably blind, so he should get some slack.  But does he?

Remy wakes up, and the Rogue/Remy not-so-romantic-tension starts up AGAIN!  Will I ever just fluff it?  That's a joke, right?  ...Ahem.  He has Mell take them home, leaving Jimmie to figure his own way back to the complex.  Jimboy hates it, but he never expected anything different.  Mell can't know about him –Gambit's rule.  It was technically illegal to tell her to stop drinking telepathically, but it was that or Remy punished her too.  Isn't Jimmie nice?  Anyway, walking home, the fic segues towards a weird vampire side plot.  A race of immortal bloodsuckers hide somewhere in N'Awlins.  While their ice blue blood won't turn a person into a vampire, it does speed up regeneration and, subsequently, reverse the aging process somewhat.  When concentrated, this blood becomes a miracle.  "Become young again, save a terminally ill or permanently crippled person with just one injection.  Buy your Blue Miracle today!  SeeYourLocalBlackMarketOrganizationForDetails, PricesMayVary."  Hundreds of N'Awlin's "vampires" have been killed in only three centuries (remember, they live until killed so that's a lot of death) just for their blood.  That sucks...damn pun.  What's worse, their eyes are so sensitive, a candlelight a yard from their face could blind them permanently.  There are only two positive aspects (besides the usual strength, speed, immortality, etc). They hear "spirits" in their minds telling them about the world.  This is sort of like what Jimmy can do, but no.  Also, they have a metal compound called suith that blocks out telepathic and magical probing; even the spirits won't "talk" about a person wearing it.  This is actually the metal that Magneto's helmet, Katherine's ear clasp, and Kurt's prison walls are made of.  Enough background.  Our main vampire is Nakor, whose family was destroyed by the LeBeaus.  With his daughter dead, wife missing, and his blinded son still screaming about the "red eyes" ten years after returning home, his hate is justified.  Note that "red eyes" hints towards Darien (Jean-Luc's evil older brother, presumed dead but you know what that means).  The only thing Nakor hates more than LeBeaus are the Changed -his people's word for mutants.  He met the "first" Changed called Echil, and the cat mutant (think the original TV show's Sabertooth...brr) injured him.  Serious loss of pride there.  Nakor would do anything to get his hands on any Changed, but especially the cat and the red eyed type.  I really couldn't care less about Victor, but Remy must be protected from vampires at all costs!

Moving on, Remy, Mell, and Rogue get home; Jimmie gets home; and Nakor gives a vampire teenager a tour through the hidden parts of their home: the Memoriams (tombs) and the wings for the crippled.  It turns out they don't tell the little ones that they've gone from hunters to hunted unless necessary.  Wouldn't want to start a panic, now would they. 

In Remy's apartment, Rogue is asleep.  She's probably slightly narcoleptic, which I think would be an interesting character twist.  Remy decides his bum shoulder needs to be secretly healed immediately (It's shredded rather badly and that would mean his roof walking days are over.  Also, if Rogue is in danger with all the protection of LeBeau law to back her up, how does Remy really fare in the world without that protection?  Methinks he gets in quite a few fights.  Who wants to go up against Martin, Knave's fear sucking mutant bodyguard?  Not me!  Especially not with an arm out of commission.), so he looks through his handy-dandy enormous box of medical supplies and finds a cell number for emergencies.  He calls it and his mutant doctor friend Merin answers.  Confusing?  Very.  She leads him to a large quantity of the Blue Miracle in the box, leaving Remy wondering where she got it and why he has it.  Note: Merin specializes in mind tricks like locking away memories.  Remy has asked her to hide his memory, most likely so Jimmy won't pick up anything about the blood.  The boy would have to look to find it.  He dismisses the thoughts from his mind and injects a vial.  For the time the blood is in his system, his eyes remain a startlingly deep blue and are very light sensitive (more so than his demon pair).

In another part of the LeBeau complex, Mell gets ready to sneak out and go clubbing, only to receive intervention through her overweight tabby cat Choo (imagine a cross-eyed Garfield).  Yep, telepathic cat.  Actually, Mell can converse with animals because of her X-gene, but she doesn't know that.  She thinks she's gone insane.  Despite that, the cat holds his own pretty well; he's very formidable, the bogey-cat of mouse mythology.  For that reason, Mell keeps Vodka, cigarettes, and her picture of Marie under the blankets of his kitty bed where he can protect them.  Gambit would react the same if he found any one of those items.  In the end, Mell ousts Choo and roars off into the night.

Again it the complex, Knave (Jean-Luc) LeBeau muses over his aching muscles and bones.  Even though he uses a mutant healer to keep his organs and brain young, he lets his body stay in constant pain.  Why?  And why didn't Remy use that healer too?  Knave doesn't give an answer.  Instead he thinks of Mell and the use she could be to him if he got her on his side like he did Leo and that healer (they were Remy's confidants and charity cases).  He receives a cell call from our half-werewolf Leo. 

Leo:     "She left.

Knave: "Then follow the fille."  

Back in that hotel, Mystique "overhears" this tiny phone conversation.  She's not like Mell, but her hacking skills don't suck.  She starts tracking the nameless girl who seems so important to the LeBeau King through a network of cameras.  She calls Katherine, now a very good motorcyclist (she had some prior illegal experience on a Harley), and has the girl come up for the start of her big assignment.  That assignment at the moment is to infiltrate the upper ranks of the Thieves' Guild through Mell.  Katherine experiments with being ghostlike on the way over to Mystique's office.  After a brief misunderstanding in that room, she gets a goody bag of interesting gadgets and adopts the name of Duchess Katherine Wagner.  She goes to the dance club that Mystique tracked Knave's fille to and manages to plant tracking devices in Mell's car and inside her boot heel (we don't know if that one works or got squished). 

Katherine unwittingly catches the eye of three dangerous people.  In an office overlooking the dance floor (one-sided glass), Emma Frost closes a business deal.  She moves the window and people watches, finally catching sight of a girl standing on a table.  Interested, she takes a closer look and finds nothing (Suith metal hides stuff good).  Looking through the mind of a nearby person, she deducts that the girl is none other than Kitty Pride, the bitch who got away.  Emma tried to recruit the girl for her own mutant school, but failed miserably.  The White Queen decides to stay in N'Awlins for a while and make Kitty pay.  Mystique seems on top of the situation however.  She hacked into Emma's cell phone and destroyed it.  The Blue bitch is less able to handle Katherine's other obstacles.  Normally she talks to the girl though that fashionable ear clasp, but Leo the werewolf has pretty good hearing, and Mystique knows it.  When Pryde gets in close to Mel, she dances with Leo and Raven has to keep air silence.  She manages to warn Katherine about Leo Lycaon's status as Knave lackey and Mell's bodyguard (though not what he is) when he walks out of hearing range, but the last guy doesn't give her that option.  A handsome man named nation is very interested in the strange metal in that ear clasp.  He turns out to be Nakor hunting for a meal for his son and he is very ticked off that a human is wearing Suith.  Katherine plays the fool and he guesses wrongly that she knows nothing about the metal's properties. 

Nakor, wearing dark-tinted contacts covered by gauze bandaging covered by sunglasses, moves onto to dance with Mell, who unfortunately fits the type of person he wants exactly.  She is healthy, but seems to have no one to miss her.  She's also insane, or he believes she is.  His people consider insanity a contagious disease, so he closes his mind to her.  He knows nothing about Remy's red eyes or her connections to the LeBeaus.  Sadly for her, insane people taste just fine.  He leads her away out a side exit.  Remember Mell is suicidal and he has done this for a long, long time.  Leo gets worried and tracks the girl down.  Katherine notices Leo's panic (she knows he is Knave's fille's bodyguard) and follows him out the door.

Mell is knocked unconscious; Katherine comes through the door and sees a gigantic wolf man charge a man bent over the girl.  She shouts a word of warning, thinking he man is Leo, only to find "Nathan" (Nakor) whirl and stare at her in shock.  He didn't expect to see her there.  He is so surprised he doesn't move out of the wolf-thing's way.  Nakor isn't harmed, but Leo the partially transformed werewolf gets crumpled (try running into a titanium wall at over thirty mph).  The vampire orders Katherine to close her eyes, and she does because shocked people don't think too good.  When she opens her eyes, Leo is now a four foot tall black wolf –weak, but in one piece (to be explained, though I think people can guess...or not).  The wolf and Nakor get wrapped up in a little heartrending struggle to save Mell, and Katherine uses the time to sneak around them towards her.  They stop noticing her and she gets within arm's reach of the girl when Leo notices her and brings attention to her again.  Desperate to save Mell from "Nathan," the invincible monster, she plunges her hand down towards the fille.  Just one touch and they're safe...

Well, that's from twelve o'clock lunch to the Witching hour...good God.  That's 2500 words of badly written summary.  Someone save me!!  ...Anyway, did that help anyone?  It might have confused you a bit...okay, a lot, but it's better than rereading...what is it...44,189 words.  I repeat: GOOD GOD!  I think that's the length of a book.

Um, onto the story.  Onward, I say.  Onward! 

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Ch.  20:          De Bloody Tear

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(I've said something like this before, but I thoroughly hate this chapter.  I've reworked it many times from several angles, and it still hasn't come out right.  Then again, seeing how some readers have formed a support group to help them get through the lean times, I guess I should stop complaining and post what I have.)

The lycanthrope watched in shock as the strange yet familiar girl shot her hand down towards Mell.  She seemed desperate to get her hands on his charge.  He didn't know where she had come from, the girl.  He had not smelled her as she approached.  It was so odd; he should have picked up the scent of the dyes that formed her tattoos and the cow hide she wore over her legs even if the human herself had no scent.  Perhaps she was only a trick of his mind, a sort of delusion.  The vampire noticed his surprise and followed his gaze, startling slightly at the sight of the scentless girl.  The thing that wanted to eat Mell saw her as well, so she had to be real.  Whether that was good or bad was a mystery, however.  For whatever reason, the vampire wasn't pleased to see the human and tried to roughly shove her away from his prey. 

The blood eater's arm moved like a hummingbird's wing, appearing only as a blur.  His hand connected with the girl's shoulder. He tried to fling her into the nearby wall, but his arm only passed through her body.  The werewolf and the vampire shared an instant of complete astoundment.  The girl was the only one of the three who didn't notice the limb impaling her heart; her focus was entirely on reaching Mell.  To her, her hand must have plummeted so very quickly, but the other two saw it slowly glide towards its target.  If he weren't so weak, the lycanthrope could easily have stopped her thrust, most likely by biting her arm off.  As it was, he was powerless.  She moved more quickly than he could, so he desperately hoped she could somehow save the girl. 

As the hand inched toward Mell, the vampire used the time to fall deep into thought.  He pulled his arm from the girl's body and let it rest at his side.  His face gained a calculating look that was visible behind his sunglasses and the cascading raven hair that completely covered his dagger pointed ears.  Finally, when the human's fingertips were mere centimeters from the  unconscious girl's forehead, the vampire became a blur again.  He and Mell disappeared.  The girl's hand, still reaching for where the werewolf's charge had lain, struck the pavement.  Grit and tiny rocks embedded in her palm as her skin was grated away.  She cried out softly in surprise.  The vampire had moved too quickly for her to see.  Indeed, the werewolf to had been unable to follow the movement as well.

Searching for Mell's scent in the night air, the werewolf sniffed deeply.  He caught her smell and looked straight up.  High atop a building's roof, the vampire crouched.  He stared down; a soft expression offering the lycanthrope his silent regrets.  It was a feeble apology in advance for killing Mell.  His gaze shifted to the strange human, and he snarled.  He had been indifferent to her before, but now he hated her.  The werewolf didn't understand why that was.  

Mell's hunter vanished from sight.  The lycanthrope whined.  If he were healthy, he might have had the strength to scrabble up the tall, crumbling brick wall and follow, but he was grievously injured.  His body fought to heal the still open wounds with only the vampire's blood to aid it.  He felt the bluish liquid slicking the remaining fur of the torn mess that was his neck.  Years ago, someone had told him his father's people healed quickly.  That he had survived what felt like ramming a titanium wall at the highway speed limit lent some credence to the statement.  He might have become whole again with time, but the strange blue blood the vampire had leaked into his veins sped the process up from months to perhaps days.  Unfortunately, he didn't have days.  Mell needed to be tracked down immediately before her and her captor's scent left the air.  He inhaled softly, memorizing the shark-like smell of the vampire.  When he was healed, he might be able to track him or one of his kind back to their home.  None of the Guild had managed it before, but none of them had been half-werewolf either.

He started to lope around the building, thinking to follow their scents from his street level position.  After taking three brisk steps, he took a fourth, and he immediately regretted the action.  The leg collapsed under his weight and he soon followed it down to the ground.  It seemed like all the pain he had ever experienced in his life (which was a lot) suddenly caught up with him.  A  high pitched keen escaped his throat.  If nothing else, he decided, he now had an immense respect for crash test dummies.  He blinked, wondering at the strange thought.  It was something Leo would say.  'Leo,' he thought.  He was Leo, but he was obviously something else.  A large black paw stretched before him: his.  Its soft pad would shred if he tried to walk on it too long.  He would have to build up calluses like he did in his dreams.  He sighed, remembering those happy dreams.  When he was asleep, he wasn't Leo Lycaon, the unwanted half-breed an ocean away from home.  He was the wolf.  He was Lupe.

A flash of movement at the edge of his vision caught his attention, tearing him from his thoughts.  The scentless girl had stood and was looking around.  She took in all the damage that had been dealt in such a short period of time.  She turned her head to look at the wall the vampire had caved in by throwing him into it, then at her hand, the wide crimson pool of his own blood, her hand, the piles of crumbled brick strewn out across the alley street, an odd scratch in Mell's German car, and then at her hand again.  She seemed appalled that the pavement had scraped a few skin cells off her palm, like it should have been impossible.  Finally, she looked at him, compassionate hazel eyes peeking over her sunglasses.  "I'm sorry," she whispered as she walked over to him.

Part of Leo told him to snap at the stranger.  A memory briefly came to him.  Back in the club, he had danced with her for a moment.  She wasn't a complete stranger, and she tried to save Mell -or so it had seemed.  The malicious little voice told him to bite her anyway.  He was too tired to argue with himself, so he did.  When she brought her hand close to him, he shot his head forward and snapped many impressively large teeth down on it.  The girl sighed and pulled her hand out through his cheek.  He felt an odd tingle as she did.  She looked at her hand disgustedly and started to shake it with vigor.  As she did, drops of saliva flew off it.  One glob landed smack on his nose.  Leo wiped it away with a paw, whimpering when the foreleg hurt.  He lay his head back down, silently noting that it was rather comfortable to lie down on the ground when shaped like a wolf.  From within, that same dark voice told him to sleep.  Still too tired to argue with himself, he did.

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Katherine wiped off the last bits of wolf drool on her pant leg.  She glared at the wolf who had donated the slobber until she realized he had fallen unconscious.  Her eyes softened.  Leo had been too exhausted to think straight.  Some sort of animal instinct told him to bite, so he had obeyed.  There had been no conscious thought involved; he had no reason to feel any guilt.  She couldn't blame him for trying to rip her hand off.  She had been tempted, though, tempted to let him tear her flesh.  She felt like she needed some sort of punishment.  Despite all of Mystique's training, she had still failed.  Instead of saving the fallen victim, she had let the monster carry him off.

"Him?" she asked aloud, and then hung her head.  For just a while, her mind had been tricked into believing she was back by the cemetery, saving Kurt with all her newfound powers.  What stupidity.  If that had been the case, it would have been easy.  Touch Kurt and let Mystique shoot her black little heart out, then walk away like bullets went through her brain all the time.  Instead, Katherine had done worse than before; she hadn't even gotten to the touch Kurt part of the script.  She looked at the girl's car with the tracking device hid oh so cleverly behind the little door that protected the gas cap.  If she had been smart, she would have ghosted it into the car where only a good deal of tearing apart the vehicle would have found it.  Why was she so stupid; why didn't she think of those things earlier? 

Her brain dragged her away from her misery and put her on the task at hand.  The alley was a mess.  No matter how deserted the place seemed, someone would come and discover a disaster zone.  The blood would be analyzed, and the DNA of a mutant werewolf in the hands of the scientific community could cause all sorts of problems.  Katherine looked around at the destruction.  There was little she could do about the partially caved in wall, but the blood and rubble needed to go, especially the blood.  She walked over to it, knelt, and thought.  It needed to disappear, but she had inconveniently forgotten to bring her mop and bucket.  A thought occurred to her, a very icky thought but a good one.  Groaning, she stuck a finger into the red pool and ghosted it. 

It just lay there.  "All right, that didn't work," she muttered.  The girl pulled her fingertip, all red and sticky for nothing, from the pool and sighed.  She had wanted the blood to fall down through the ground, but apparently the liquid was stubborn.  She looked down at her feet and had a small epiphany.  When she ghosted, she didn't automatically fall but rather had to think about it.  On the other hand, if she ghosted and something fell on top of her, she didn't have to think about it either.  The object just fell through her.  She looked at the bloody finger once more, instantly decided never to wear red nail polish again, and then put it back in the middle of the pond of blood.  Most of the crimson substance had come to rest in a slightly caved in portion of the street, so she submerged her finger almost to the knuckle before she tapped the bottom. 

Katherine ghosted a tiny circular portion of the street surrounding her finger.  She phased out a long vertical cylinder that emptied out into a hollow area underground: the sewer.  She felt the odd sensation of blood swishing past her finger as it fell down through the street.  It was like she had unstopped the drain on a bathtub.  After a moment's concentration, she expanded her the range of her ghostly touch to cover the ground under every speck of blood.  It fell through the pavement like it wasn't there, which it technically wasn't.  All the blood gone, she lifted her index finger off the pavement and took a look at it.  It was completely red.  The girl plunged it down through the ground.  When she drew it out, it was bloodless.  She stood and stared at a chunk of brick.  She imagined ghosting the ground straight from her feet to the piece of rubble, then did so.  Her eyes flicked to bit of brick dust, and each fell away through the ground.  Then she reached for a large one perhaps eight yards away and found it didn't budge.  She walked two steps toward it and stretched her reach.  It still didn't fall.  She frowned at reddish yellow brick, and then shrugged.  Her range wasn't all that great, but for a first timer, she had done rather well.  She took a small step forward and tried again.

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Everett jovially punched the button for the basement  of Club Mist.  Technically there wasn't a lower level, but what the police didn't know rarely hurt them.  The elevator was an antique and rather slow, so he bided the time by enjoying the plush beauty around him.  Lavishly polished exotic wood gleamed.  He detested the crucifix inlays, however.  Everett was a confirmed atheist, though he would never tell his rather religious employers that.  To take his mind off the crosses, he thought of his business meeting with Miss Frost.  Though not much business had taken place, it had been very enjoyable –or so the delusional man thought.  He decided to make an effort to handle all Boudreaux family's negations with Frost Industries, at least if Emma was there to do the bargaining.

The elevator stopped, and he heard the doors open, but the ones in front of him remained shut.  His cheeks colored with embarrassment; he always forgot that that the basement was underneath the street instead of under the club itself.  The other set of doors had opened.  He turned around one eighty degrees and left the elevator cage briskly thought the open doors, hoping as always that no one had been there to witness his idiocy.  To his dismay, there was a dark skinned cleaning woman in the large entrance hall.  Fortunately, she was staring up at the ceiling.  He noticed the floor was filthy, covered in dusk and who knew what else, and angrily wondered what she was doing lollygagging at the mural on the ceiling for.  As he opened his mouth to reprimand her, she noticed him and started babbling incomprehensibly, all the while pointing up at the ceiling.  He glared at the woman.  She was thick waisted, had a sagging butt, and one breast was larger than the other.  She was disgusting, and her gabbing hardly made things better. 

"Shut up!  What shit are you talking about?" he finally screeched.

The cleaning woman froze, looked up at the ceiling, and then pointed there again.  "Sah, look!" she exclaimed.  Groaning, Everett did.  He saw a fresco of glorious angels surrounding the Virgin Mary as she lovingly held her little bastard.  He would rather see the dirty alley street only feet above the ceiling painting; it was less of an attack to his senses.  "Sah, look.  Look!" the maid cried like a parrot imitating a broken record player.  "Look at hah face.  Look an' you'll see!"  Grudgingly, he studied the watery face of Mary.  There seemed to be some sort of red on her eye.  It seemed very out of place in a mural done up in blues and golds.  "Tis blood, Sah!  She be cryin' lots.  Look!"  The woman stepped away to reveal a pool of blood. 

Everett stared at it, his face turning the same color as the liquid.  'What is the bitch trying to pull?' he thought angrily.  There was no God, no Jesus.  They were just stupid myths like vampires and werewolves.  "Look, you ignorant fool!" he finally shouted.  "This is all fake; you can't convince me this is some frickin' miracle."  He gestured rudely at the Virgin.  "See your little goddess up there?  If she did exist, she was a bitch, a whore who pretended--"

His tirade was cut short as a large, reddish yellow brick fell through the ceiling and conked him on the head.  He crumpled and lay prone on the ground, thankfully unconscious.  The maid muttered, "Hallelujah!" and went back to staring reverently at her Lady.                      

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Katherine smiled at the spot where the bulky chunk of brick had lain.  "So my range is about twelve feet.  I'll have to work on it."  Her frown dropped suddenly.  She was supposed to be sad and regretful for losing Knave's fille.  Then she tugged the depressing cloud away from her brain.  There was no use crying about it.  It wasn't like the girl was in mortal peril; a very dangerous mutant had only kidnapped her.  If she was so important to the King of Thieves, then she would be ransomed.  All Katherine had to do was track her down before Knave paid a cent but after he  received the ransom note.  It would probably work better that way.  If she had saved the girl in the alley, there would only be her word and a wolf's that she did.  She shouldn't worry too much.  If that tracking device in the fille's boot worked, it would be a piece of cake to track the girl down.  She had gotten her emotions tangled up in the whole thing and hadn't thought straight as a result.  Next time she needed to be more careful.

Katherine looked back to the small area where she, the super powered mutant Nathan, the girl, and Leo had all been only minutes ago.  A thought occurred to her, and she slapped her forehead.  It would have been so easy to ghost the ground under Nathan and let him fall into the sewer below.  She tapped her foot on the manhole cover that led to that sewer.  Then Katherine shrugged.  It was still better to wait for the ransom note, sneak the girl out of some enemy bas, and claim her reward.  At least if the same situation of race to save the unconscious victim came up a third time, she had an extra option for success.  It would be three easy steps: drop Mystique through the ground, pick up Kurt, and calmly walk away.

'Unconscious victim...'  The thought struck Katherine as odd.  Then she blinked and stiffened.  "Oh God, Leo."  She rushed back towards the sleeping wolf, silently hoping he was only sleeping.  She knelt beside him and placed a hand on his neck, trying to find a pulse even though she had no idea how to do it on a four legged animal.  A cold something covered her palm and she snatched it away.  She watched as an ice blue liquid seeped into the abrasions she got when her hand struck the pavement.  "Wonderful," she chirped brightly.  "Now it's infected by whatever the Hell that was."  Her palm felt like it burned; most of the skin had been scraped clean off.  It would take days, maybe weeks to scab over and heal.  It bothered her.  When she could pass through bullets and meat cleavers without trying, it was an insult to be hurt by a mere patch of blacktop.  She was wasting time, she realized.  She put the hand down and focused on Leo, glad to notice he was breathing shallowly. 

She rested her head in her good hand and wondered what to do with him.  Considering Leo had been a fleshy bag of bones and shredded muscles only a short while ago, he was healing nicely.  Whatever Nathan had done, it was working well.  However, she couldn't just leave him there.  If someone found him, he would be carted off to a zoo or shot.  On the other hand, he most definitely didn't fit on her motorcycle.  Calling a cab was out of the question too.  So was carrying him back to her hotel room.  The wolf was huge, almost twice the size of the ones she'd seen in nature films.  There was also no guarantee Mystique was available to ask what to do.  The woman had mysteriously disappeared off the air waves. 

Katherine studied the alley.  She'd dropped the blood and quite a lot of the rubble into the sewer below, but there was still Leo and the fille's car to deal with.  Her eyes suddenly flicked to the car, and she smiled.  "Well, that solves a lot of things."  She walked over to it and tried to peer through the tinted windows without success.  She ghosted her head through the dark glass and looked around.  There was nothing suspicious like a burglar alarm or a ticking time bomb.  She unlocked the door from the inside and ghosted out again.  Looking from the car to Leo, Katherine wondered aloud, "Shotgun or back seat?"  She decided to give the behemoth as much room as possible.  She opened the back door and with a supreme effort managed to haul the wolf onto the long seat.   She studied the open door for a moment, and then flipped on the child safety lock.  If he woke up while she was driving, he might panic and try to leave the vehicle as it was going sixty miles an hour.  The girl noticed a folded blanket lying on the floor of the car.  Reaching down for it, she saw a pillow under the seat.  She frowned, wondering if Knave's fille slept in the car sometimes.  Pushing it from her mind, she covered Leo with the blanket, shut the door, and went around to turn on the safety lock for the other side. 

That done, she slid into the driver's seat and silently thanked God that the car wasn't a stick shift.  She looked around at the controls, trying to remember every time she had watched her mom drive the minivan.  A folder on the dash board caught her attention.  Willing to do anything to put off trying to drive the car, she snatched it to look through its contents.  A piece of paper fell to the floor as she did.  Curious, Katherine bent over and picked it up; it was an upside-down photograph.  She flipped it over and gasped.  It was a photo of her. 

An odd feeling came over her and began to tear through the folder.  There was information on everything, from her birth to her Bat Mitzvah and beyond.  There were notes of when she shot that deer and when she became a vegetarian; there was even psychoanalysis on her transformation from Katherine to Kitty.  She found all sorts of records.  There was her birth certificate, her bank account number, her social security, her--  She stared at the last piece of paper in shock.  She stuttered numbly, "This is a...it's my...my..."  She clamped her mouth shut and breathed deeply.

Finally gaining her voice, she muttered, "So what?  I've known I was a ghost for days.  My death certificate just finalizes it, that's all."  Katherine set the folder down on her lap.  She shouldn't worry about her legal status as a corpse; the problem was that the LeBeaus had been looking through her life.  She needed to find out why.  More importantly, she needed to make it so no one would recognize her as Kitty Pryde if they tried.    

}:{             )|(              \:/               }|{             \:/               )|(              }:{                                                              

Phew.  All done.  There.  I realize the actual fic part is kinda short compared to what I've done in the past, but it seemed a good place to stop.  You've got to give characters a moment when they figure out they're "dead."  On the bright side, I promise you all here and now that I will post chapter 21 sometime on or before 3/28/04.  If that fails, I'll damn the "no AN chapter" clause and tell you guys what went wrong.

No reviews this time, but please give a big round of applause to Persona the ITG, Alliriyan, Kitrazzle Fayn, lara-belle, Steph Silverstar (the former Nie Starwhistler), Turquoise, Flamekiller, and Teiya Renee for kicking my rear in gear, and give a smaller round of applause to roguewannabe29 because although she (...he?) distended my review page (personal pet peeve), she/he(?) helped tremendously with the kicking.  I've missed some people, I know.  The reviews say it all, so look there.