"There they go", said a tall and lanky boy. His blonde bangs hung over his face in an un-kept manner. As he and his rotund friend looked out one of the windows of the mansion, they watched the X-Men's Blackbird climb into the air.
"Where do you think they're going?" The portly young-man spoke between heaping mouthfuls of potato chips – leaving an unsightly mess of crumbs all over the floor. Had the two teens not been glued to their window perch, they would've seen the massive shadow of the young man who now towered over them.
In a slight Russian accent, Piotr Rasputin spoke, "THAT IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS." The two boys snapped their heads around, startled by the booming voice behind them. They gasped in awe at the sight before them: Piotr Rasputin, also known as Colossus, dressed from head to toe in an X-Men uniform. Even without being sheathed in his organic-steel skin, the young man was still an imposing sight – standing at 6' 2'', weighing a modest 240lbs of chiseled muscle.
"Holy SH*T, Peter", the blonde teen said. "They made you an X-Man?"
"Yes we have", said Professor Charles Xavier as he came out from behind Colossus on his motorized wheelchair. "And watch your language Mr. Guthrie."
"Sorry Professor." Sam Guthrie looked at the floor – his face flush with embarrassment.
"Mr. Rasputin is officially on the X-Men roster… on the same probationary basis as Rogue and Bobby Drake. If you'll excuse me, I have some matters to attend to" The Professor wheeled past Colossus, spun around, and headed out of the room.
"So… they let you into the club?" asked the heavier young man – still munching away on his potato chips.
"Yeah. They said I earned a spot on the team because I kept YOUR fat ass out of trouble. Come on man, clean up your mess, Freddie." Colossus pointed at the ever-growing pile of chip crumbs on the floor. Guthrie just laughed and giggled at the comment.
"Don't hate me cuz I'm beautiful", said Fred J. Dukes. And with that, he extended his stomach so that it reached the pile of crumbs on the floor. When the stomach reached the floor, it began to pick the crumbs up and move them up his shirt, up to the boy's chin and into his mouth, where he ate them.
"Dude, you're disGUSting," laughed Sam.
"What'd you expect from the BLOB", added Colossus, who was also visibly affected by Fred Duke's mutant power. Fred was given the nickname "Blob", much to his chagrin. Everyone knew he could control every muscle in his round body – which meant that he could use his stomach, or any other body part, like an appendage. What they didn't know was that Fred was insanely strong… and practically immovable once he planted himself on something solid.
"Anytime you want to get your ass kicked, pretty boy… just bring it!" replied Fred.
"Yeah like you could", Piotr poked Fred in the stomach, at which point, the folds of his belly wrapped around and held his hand. Piotr blanched at the sight of his hand enveloped in the young man's stomach. He went to pull it out… but he couldn't. Fred Duke just wore a sly smirk on his face, but said nothing. Piotr tried harder to pull it out, but the fat guy's belly wouldn't let go. Sam Guthrie stared wide-eyed and amazed at the display of strength. "Ok, blob-butt, you asked for it." And with that, Piotr's began to glisten… becoming sheathed in his organic steel skin. In this form, Piotr's strength became super enhanced. He was able to pick up cars and juggle them like tennis balls (a feat which impressed the girls to no end). He gave his arm a mighty yank, which made Mr. Duke wiggle violently… but that was it.
"HOLY SH*T", said Sam, mouth wide open in pure shock. He watched as Piotr, in full gleaming steel, tried to jerk his hand free from its gastric prison. Fred Duke just leered at Piotr as the large young man repeatedly tried to escape, then, all of a sudden, let him go. Piotr fell back, staring at the cherubic young man in astonishment.
"Wanna try that again? How about two out of three?" Fred Duke put down his chips on a nearby end table.
Piotr backed away a little and said, "No way. The thought of touching you again ain't my idea of a good time." Duke didn't respond, as Rasputin just walked away.
"Un-FREAKIN-believable", Sam said. "Dude, you never told me you were all strong and sh*t!"
"Heh-heh. Nobody asked." Fred Duke picked his bag of chips up on his way out of the room. "I'm gonna go play Madden on the X-Box, you wanna come?" Guthrie nodded in affirmation and left the room with his plodding friend – forgetting that they just saw the Blackbird take off heading eastward.
_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_
A super stealthy ebony jet streaked away from the Atlantic coast of the US, headed towards Britain. Seated in the cockpit where Scott Summers and Ororo Munroe. Behind them were Logan and Kurt Wagner, then Bobby Drake – who was visibly upset that Marie wasn't coming along. "What if she needs me?"
"Look kid", Logan was getting tired of Bobby's 'Marie-needs-me' tirade. "Marie isn't going to help us much in this mission. It could be EXTREMELY dangerous, and she's not as trained to use her powers in combat as the rest of us."
"And YOU are?" Bobby looked angrily at Logan.
"Well, for some of us…" SCHUNK!!! His claws popped out of his leather glove. "…it comes natural!" The Wolverine gave the kid a feral smile.
"Not for me", replied Bobby – who seemed less belligerent at the sight of the older man's adamantium claws. "I only know how to put up walls and freeze stuff."
"That's good enough for now", chimed in Cyclops. "We're just going to have you perform defensive maneuvers – remember what we said in the meeting. This is an extraction. Emma Frost is alive… and fearing for her life."
"Yes", added Ororo, "Cordelia Frost was her sister, but the government must have assumed it was Emma who died at Oprah Industries."
"That's probably cuz they didn't leave enough of her to identify the body." The thought of men in uniforms killing mutants made the Wolverine's blood boil. His mind was suddenly flooded with images and sounds of a past he would kill to forget, but is dying to fully remember.
"Possibly…", Scott let our a deep breath, "But we can't go in there ignoring that there is more here than meets the eye. The new reports could be a total cover up to misdirect us. And we have to go into this expecting a trap. Alpha Strike on my mark – at the first sign of trouble."
"And vat iz this Alpha Strike, again?" Kurt Wagner probably understood only half of the meeting in the ready-room. For one thing, English was not his best language. And another thing, Scott and Professor Xavier bored the life out of him as they went on, and on, and on… about every detail of the mission. It seemed that just as the attack was being reported, Professor Xavier had received a call from Emma Grace Frost, known as the "White Queen" of the Hellfire Club. The call wasn't telepathic – even though Emma is almost the most powerful known telepath on the planet (second only to Professor Xavier). The call came through a secure frequency on a specially built satellite phone that used psionic technology (like Cerebro), thus only useful for a powerful telepath. Per Xavier, Emma was a wreck… learning of her sister's death along with the rest of the world during the FoxNews broadcast. The Professor declined to comment on why he had a privately secured, and virtually untraceable, line to Emma Frost - but at the moment it didn't matter. Apparently, she was away on a recruiting mission in England for her Massachusetts Academy when she heard the news.
The Massachusetts Academy is one of the oldest and most respected private college preparatory schools in the United States. The Academy was founded in 1700 to bring "proper breeding and culture to the children of the gentry of the wilderness," according to the school's official history. Located in the Berkshire Mountains in Snow Valley, Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Academy has for decades been attended by the children of America's social, economic, and political elites. The school teaches young people from grades seven through twelve (senior year of high school). It is a boarding school, with students living on campus.
Emma Frost serves as the Academy's headmistress, and was also chairperson of the Academy's Board of Trustees. Frost devoted much of her time to her work as chairperson of the board and chief executive of her corporation, Frost International, but she still managed to spend a surprisingly great amount of time at the Academy. Her subordinates ran the day-to-day affairs of the school in her absence.
However, unknown to most of the world, Frost is also the White Queen of the secret Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club (making her its second highest ranking member). The Inner Circle sought to achieve world domination through-political and economic means. Frost had been secretly training adolescent superhuman mutants, which she called the Hellions, in the use of their powers in an underground complex beneath the Academy. The Hellions also studied as regular students at the school. Frost intended that the Hellions would eventually use their powers on the Inner Circle's behalf as a covert strike team.
All these newly disclosed facts were fresh in Cyclops' staggeringly analytical mind. It took all of his calm, every stoic fiber of his being, to shunt his desire to lash out at Professor Xavier for hiding all these "minor details". Telepathically, he communicated with him that "this wasn't over by a long shot". But for now, there were more pressing matters: the safety of this Emma Frost, the safety of the team, and the very lives of the children at the mansion. He turned to Kurt Wagner, taking in a deep breath, and answered his query, "An Alpha Strike means that we obliterate everyone. Scorched earth. I don't like that kind of tactic… but we all have to be ready to use lethal use."
"But Scott", asked Storm, "we haven't been attacked yet. Maybe they know we're not a threat… that we're the 'good guys'."
"No 'Ro", Cyclops wished that were true. "To them we're vigilantes. Luckily, that means we're not as high on the list as terrorists… but that could change at any moment. Remember… we ARE harboring a man who tried to kill the President…"
"SCOTT, HE DIDN'T…."
"I know, I know", Cyclops cut Storm off, noting that Kurt Wagner has become one of her "hot buttons". "He wasn't in control… but that may not mean a thing to them."
"You think zey know I was not myself?" Kurt shrugged and shook his head like a child trying to explain his innocence to a parent. "I could see vat I was doing, but I couldn't help myzelf. I cried to God to help me stop but…"
"It's ok Kurt…", Storm patted the three fingered mutant on the hand. "They obviously know… or we would've already been attacked. (Turning to Cyclops) Scott, what's our E.T.A.?"
"About another hour and a half. I'm pushing the Blackbird's engines as much as possible." Scott Summers was too busy with the controls to notice that Ororo Munroe didn't mind that their trip was going to be a little while longer. Had Scott not been concentrating on the best vectors to avoid pulse and Doppler radar signals, he would have noticed that the blue tail of the mutant called Nightcrawler was wound gently around Ororo's ankle. The brown-skinned woman noticed this gesture all too much. Lately, she and Kurt had been spending most of their free time together. While she unloaded some of her emotional baggage on the blue German, he would gently listen and offer REAL comfort… not just clichés and platitudes. Wagner's faith in humanity, and his faith in God, was oddly attractive. Here was a man that should hate humanity for how he has been ostracized, for how he has been marginalized to the fringes of even mutant society… but he still had something inside him that she didn't. Something she didn't know she ever wanted or needed… until she met him.
_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_
The Blackbird continued on its course, flying low over the ocean, eastward towards the emerald isle. It was invisible to every known sensor in the world. But the world has changed in recent years. And with the events of the previous week, the nations of the world, especially the United States, have begun deploying new kinds of sensors and technologies that until now were the stuff of fantasy. Though the full cache of Cerebro-modified GPS satellites was yet to be brought online, the first phase of these next-gen devices were already fully operational. Unbeknownst to the X-Men inside the Blackbird, these functional units were aiding taskforce Submariner – the joint services operation in charge of locating and destroying Island-M, Magneto's base. The Blackbird was indeed invisible to most of the world… but not to them. Some 400 miles south of the Blackbird's rapidly changing position, anchored 14 miles from the shores of WHAT USED TO BE Island-M, an Aegis cruiser's bridge crew is relaying their sensor reading to another team of military tactical analysts at the Pentagon.
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Ronald Dryer was at a planning session with Dr. D.B. Banner, General Kevin Foley Jr. (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), and Admiral Clarence Stark (Chief of Naval Operations). An aide to the Secretary handed him a report with the latest tracking data of the Blackbird. Secretary Dryer dismissed the aide, and then turned to the other gentlemen assembled before him.
"Just as your M.I.B.'s predicted Dr. Banner", Secretary Dryer said, "The X-Men are making their move." The men were meeting in the same subterranean Pentagon war-room that had become their new base of operations for the new mutant-offensive. "Do you want a copy of this report?"
"No thank you, I already have that data", Banner shuffled some papers out of his briefcase and laid them on the silvery steel table. He began tapping on the keyboard of the monitor in front of him, and then, on the wall monitors that dotted the room, his analysis was displayed for their collective perusal. "Take a look at this intercept (pointing at the wall monitors), it shows a psionic site-to-site transmission at the very moment the media broke the story on the Hellfire Club."
"Do we have any idea yet on who made the call?" asked Admiral Clark.
"Yes", answered Dr. Banner while continuing to type on his keyboard. (Pointing to the wall monitors) "We know that it was THIS person…"
"That's Emma Frost!" gasped Admiral Clark. "Didn't General Ross confirm that she was dead?"
"That was a calculated misdirection, Admiral." Secretary Dryer placed both his hands on the table as he continued speaking. "My apologies that you weren't informed sooner, but the decision was made after consultations with the NSA and the M.I.B."
"Ronald… at least an email. For goodness sakes, that was two hours ago." Admiral Clark didn't like sending his men to Island-M working with partial information.
"That's our fault Admiral", Dr. Banner interjected. "The Bureau has had guys concocting schemes and scenarios around the clock. When General Ross said that Emma Frost was dead… we still believed it was her. But an hour later we realized that it was a close relative… a sister, I believe. Cordelia Frost – a known mutant terrorist and member of the Hellfire Club."
(Turning to Chairman Foley) "So why aren't we sending the Marines and attacking these bastards?" Admiral Clark was, as they say, "in a huff". "I got 200 men in the middle of the ocean searching for God knows what… (lets out a breath through gritted teeth) Gentlemen, what's next on the agenda? Are we still planning the next strike as scheduled?"
"Of course we are Admiral", assured Secretary Dryer, "These X-Men are providing us with a bonus, but the main stateside operation is still on task to be carried out within the hour."
"So what are we going to do about Ms. Frost in England?" asked the Admiral.
"If I may be so kind, sir", Chairman Foley, he typed at his own keyboard, and, suddenly, a map of England appeared on the wall monitors. The map had several moving symbols, representing the X-Men's jet, the last known location of Emma Frost, an estimated course projection for the jet, and several other symbols representing military forces. "The British are sending SAS (Special Air Services) forces to this location. They're equipped with some psionic disruption equipment…"
"Garbage…" Dr. Banner was not impressed with the anti-mutant technologies being developed by other NATO countries.
"Even so", continued Chairman Foley, "Their orders are to hold off the mutants, and neutralize any hostiles they can… until a Captain America squad can arrive – with full support."
"But we have squad Alpha on the USS Normandy… and Beta conducting ops in the Rockies. Can we scramble them in time?" Admiral Clark was incredulous to the feasibility of this plan.
"If the SAS buy us enough time, we can drop Lyman's team on the LZ (Landing Zone) within 20 minutes." Chairman Foley tapped his keyboard and the images on the wall monitors disappeared. "The primary op stateside should only be delayed by a couple hours."
_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_+_
The Blackbird skimmed over the treetops of Dartmoor National Preserve in southwest England. "There she is", Scott said, pointing to a small clearing in the middle of nearby thicket of trees that hid a quaint meadow. Emma Grace Frost was waiting for them intently, flagging them down with a makeshift white flag. The color white: it entirely covered the woman like a fresh dusting of snow on a northern mountain. From her platinum blonde hair, to the knee-high high-heeled boots she wore… white was the only discernable color of her attire. Actually, to call it attire would be presumptuous. The woman's scant clothing could hardly qualify as proper attire for the headmistress of a prestigious prep school… or even proper for a seedy nightclub.
Emma Grace Frost wore what looked like two swatches of white silk over her buxom frame, only barely restraining her over-exposed breasts, and leaving her mid-riff uncovered. The mini, mini, mini skirt she wore hardly reached 8" inches down from her waist - in fact, a small portion of her white underwear was clearly visible. Her long legs were covered in white lace stockings, which were adorned with an exquisite floral pattern. In the evening sunlight, her outfit, as did her hair and skin, positively glowed. Upon seeing the X-Men's jet… and her rescuers, she let out a small sigh, closing her eyes: a look of pure relief on her perfectly sculpted porcelain face. The Blackbird glided over the trees, then lurched as it gently set down some 100 feet west from Emma's position.
The landing platform opened swiftly and two leather-clad men descended down the stairs. An equally leather-clad dark skinned woman, whose hair was even whiter than Emma's, followed them. Behind the woman, hunched over as he walked, was the most curious mutant that Emma had ever seen. He wore the same black leather uniform, but it was clear that his skin color was a deep azure-blue. His pointed ears, three fingered hands, and blue whip-like tail made the man look like a blue devil – *All he needs is a blue pitch-fork*, she thought to herself. A younger man, also in uniform, brought up the rear of the troop. "So…" she said, tilting her head in a non-chalant manner, "You're the X-Men?"
"Yes we are… and you are the White Queen." Cyclops didn't ask a question – he fully intended it to be what it was: a statement of fact. Not to be denied. Not to be played down or treated lightly. Because of mutants like these… all other mutants around the entire world now lived in fear and terror.
"Oh come now", said Emma, as she walked back and forth, surveying the team of mutants, "Are we all that different? You have your little school to play with… and I have mine…"
"We do not turn OUR children into criminals!" Storm looked intently at the white-clad woman.
"Nor do I, Missy", retorted Emma with a leer, "I teach them how to fight, and how to take their proper place in this world… (placing her hands on her breasts, and then moving them slowly down her body) on top!" She licked her lips as she finished her words, all the time staring directly into Logan's eyes.
"And then use them", sneered Cyclops, "for your own agenda!"
"Yes, I do", she answered, still locking eyes on Logan (who was trying hard not to act affected – and failing miserably), "use them for my PLEASURE, and my agenda… but doesn't Xavier do the same with you?"
"He's not a monster like you are", said Storm *or a slut*.
*I heard that, bitch* "As for your precious Xavier", Emma answered, "you don't know as much about him as you think. You think you're all so high and mighty (she pointed at the group of them). Xavier's little boy-scouts! Well Xavier has it wrong. So does Magneto. Who cares about whether mankind accepts us? We don't need their acceptance… or to destroy them… we just need what they can DO for us."
"You vould turn humanity into slaves", stated Nightcrawler, "But no man should be enslaved by another."
"Spare me the moralizing, Keebler elf", Emma reached over to grab her bags, purposely bending over in full view of the team… and exposing a good portion of her thong-clad posterior.
*I can't believe we're saving this whore* Storm thought as she purposely looked away. She noticed Kurt and Scott were doing the same. As for wide-eyed Bobby and sweating Logan…
*You want to save me for yourself, honey* Emma responded to Storm using her telepathy. While the X-Men were presently distracted, they failed to notice the faint rustling that came from the nearby thicket of old growth forest. It was Logan who first snapped his head into attention, as the smell of gunpowder and steel was too close to ignore.
"AMBUSH!!!" Logan screamed, "Take Cover!" British SAS forces stormed out of the surrounding forest. Wolverine recognized that they were equipped with SA 80 machine guns (fitted with a high performance optical sight), M 72 LAW's (Light Anti-Tank Weapons), and HK MP5 submachine guns. He also noted that the soldier's helmets had a silvery band around each of them. The SAS helms were fitted with less effective modified versions of the same psi disrupting device once used by William Stryker (to subdue Xavier). This anti-psionic technology masked their presence and decreased their vulnerability to psychic mutants like Emma Frost.
The X-Men, along with their "guest", sprung into action. Emma began concentrating on the soldiers. To her, their minds were drifting in and out, as if being seen through a fog or a haze. Once she focused on some of them, she began to project orders into their minds. The psi shielding sent torrents of pain into her cerebral cortex, causing her to clench her fists tightly. Emma made some of the advancing soldiers shoot each other in the hands, effectively ending their ability to use their weapons. Cyclops noted the telepath's restraint and creativity. The X-Men's leader laid down some cover fire over the small throng of soldiers who approached from in front of them. The soldiers took cover behind the trees, and readied to open fire on the clearing.
In that moment, Nightcrawler performed a similar maneuver to the one he executed in the White House just a week prior. In split seconds, he appeared in front or behind soldiers, and delivered spinning roundhouse kicks in mid air. Before the disoriented soldiers could train their weapons on him, he was airborne and attacking another soldier. Wolverine took this as his queue to engage some other soldiers hand to hand, or rather, hand to CLAW combat. A couple of soldiers actually fired a few rounds into Logan's gut, ripping his abdomen open. "What are you?" the soldier asked, as he witnessed gaping wounds begin to close on a man who acted like he didn't even feel getting torn open by hot ammo. With a quick swipe of his lethal claws, the soldier's MP5 lay on the ground in pieces, along with several of the soldier's fingers.
Taking up rear guard positions, Storm caused gale force winds and rapidly flying hailstones to halt the advance of the ambushing soldiers. Meanwhile, Bobby Drake froze some of the SAS troops' feet onto the ground. Before they could pull themselves free, and before their comrades could open fire, he used his awesome mutant control over cold and ice to erect an ice wall around the entire battle zone. The wall was 15 feet high, and more than 18 inches thick – on all sides. After hearing some muffled gunfire, he noticed Nightcrawler appear with Wolverine in hand – since they had been trapped on the other side of the wall with the British Special forces.
There was only a mere seconds of calm and quiet. Cyclops was about to give the order to move out, when he heard the noise. His eyes, hidden behind his goggles, widened as he realized the cause of the noise. The British had sent in a jet. What he didn't know was that this was an EJ 2000 Typhoon. The Eurofighter Typhoon is an agile, single seat, multi-role aircraft optimized for high altitude, supersonic, Air Superiority. It is capable of operating throughout the entire range of Counter Air Operations, and even Anti Surface-Force Operations. "Bobby, strengthen the wall!" Drake looked at him confused, but began making the ice wall thicker and thicker. But it wasn't enough. The Typhoon jet had already launched its Brimstone missile. Brimstone is derived from the US Army Hellfire AGM-114F missile with a weapon comprising of three missiles and a launcher. Powered by a rocket motor, it can seek and destroy targets many kilometers from launch point. In this case, steerable fins guided the missile towards the wall of ice, avoiding any of the trees nearby. Its final impact on the outer wall caused the payload's tandem-charge warhead to detonate. The first, smaller warhead nullified the older, outer layer of ice. This allowed the primary, follow-through charge to penetrate the main wall and punch a gaping hole through the mutant-made structure.
The remaining SAS forces had already trained their LAW rocket launchers on the mutant team. With the ice barricade crumbling, the soldiers launched their payloads at the X-Men. Normally, LAW's are packed with a throwaway type rocket. The rocket is usually made up of a 66mm HEAT (High-Explosive Anti-Tank ) warhead. But these weren't ordinary rockets. These rockets carried specially developed psionic grenades – made with some borrowed older American designs, they would disrupt the neural pathways of the targets and effectively kill them.
There was only enough time for two, maybe three heartbeats… but in that moment, Emma Grace Frost did something that she thought she would never do. Maybe she was tired of running, maybe she decided that since the world had discovered the Hellfire club there was no point in continuing to live out her charade. Maybe the loss of her sister had cracked the cold-hearted woman's stone heart, or the way that these X-Men were willing to risk their own lives for someone they didn't even know. The team would never know what drove Emma Grace Frost to open up her mind and invade everyone else's on the battlefield at the moment those rockets were fired. How she knew that they were carrying a psionic payload would always stay a mystery… but what wasn't a mystery was that when those warheads detonated, she used the colossal telepathic powers that were hers to wield… and shunted all of the neural disruption into HER OWN MIND.
Wave after wave of neural disruptive energy was drawn away from its intended victims, and sent careening into the telepath's own psyche. Simultaneously, she also flooded some of the disruption into the SAS soldiers' minds. Their anti-psi equipment was nowhere near as good or well-made as what Captain America was using, and thus, through Emma's monumental effort, their protective barriers fell. The soldiers were left writhing in psychic anguish all over the meadow's floor.
The effect on them, since their protective equipment lessened it, would only be temporary. But it gave Cyclops enough time to yell, "Let's get out of here. Storm take care of the weather and give us cover in case that jet returns." Storm's eyes cloud over and an unnaturally thick fog rolls in and envelops the entire region. As the X-Men boarded the jet, Logan stopped by the prone body of the unconscious Emma Frost.
"She's still alive Scott", said Logan, "heartbeat's still pumpin' like normal."
"Cyclops, we can't leave her here", added Storm, an actual look of concern on her face for the woman who just saved all their lives.
Cyclops drew in a deep, labored breath, and nodded his approval. "Ok, Kurt, go get her." Nightcrawler acknowledged the order with a slight head bow, and disappeared with his customary BAMF effect – leaving behind a smell reminiscent of sulphur and brimstone. He reappeared with Emma Frost in his arms. As Cyclops looked at the woman in the German's hands, he noted how much she looked like an angel – and how angelic her last actions were.
"Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine", Kurt whispered over the woman.
"What does that mean?" asked Cyclops.
"It iz Latin", Kurt responded, "It means 'give eternal rest to them, O Lord'". Cyclops shook his head in wonderment, as their resident priest took the infamous White Queen into their exclusive transport.
"Give us rest indeed." He closed the hatch doors, and bade farewell to the land of the Angles – this country, this fair earth, this England.
Author's Note: I'm sorry this was so long in coming. My original outline had MORE parts to it, but I'm including them in the next chapter. If any of you want to know what the White Queen looks like, just type "Marvel" and "White Queen" in the search engine of your choice. You'll understand why I made her act and dress the way I did.