Chapter Five

AN: Again, finally I brought myself to type up another chapter of my most difficult piece yet. But the ideas are flowing now and I'm keen to get on with some of them so this story should be updated more often now, especially seeing as I got a 'satisfactory' from T'Pol herself, which is worth any amount of reviews I could ever get –smile-

Telaka

----

He was not happy. In no sense, in no utter way was he pleased, or thrilled, or with that feeling of ease that he had eventually begun to slowly don about the mutants being on board. He had left his first officer with two of them and she had come back no less than an inch from being taken down for good by a lightning bolt and wild fire ('kinetic energy' he had been told, but he wasn't for listening to the jargon of Phlox right now).

This was at least this was how Archer perceived the delicate situation.

Sick or not Storm was now in his ready room with Cyclopes, and beside Archer was T'Pol. The Vulcan looked nothing of the harassed state her Captain was sinking in to. After the insect attack she had actually thanked Remy and Ororo rightfully, and tried now on a countless number of wasted times to reassure Archer that what had been done had been done solely with good intent. Archer however had had enough and had simply converted back to his direct, no nonsense nature and demanded instantly what this small but seemingly ruthless group of seven was capable of.

Scott hesitated as he asked the question, which was more of an order to answer. His hesitation gave Ororo the gift of speech to take a stand in counter of the Captain's accusations. It seemed she sported now the same blunt mood that Archer was infamous for.

"Captain, we were placed in a volatile situation, and more importantly a situation that we had never in this sense experienced before. You cannot expect us when threatened with our lives to sit back and wait for backup, no matter how you operate in emergencies on this ship. We have been trained to handle ourselves and protect ourselves in the direst of situations, for example when we are alone and cornered, and we will act with our powers accordingly on that. Whatever you think myself and Remy were trying to do to your first officer is most likely far from the truth of saving her ass."

Scott was blatantly surprised – in all honesty he had never heard Ororo say 'ass' before.

"If we had wanted to, we could have overrun this ship by now, and you would never have known what hit you. Certainly I doubt you could stop us. But we are of no threat, I promise you that, and I ask that you believe our word, because that is all that we can give right now."

Yes, Scott was surprised. He also smiled very slightly before uttering a small rough cough as he faced Archer once again, his expression and voice composed and tinted with a shadow of sincerity.

"She's right. It's irrelevant what we can do, and we won't act irresponsibly with our mutations, so we can only ask that you to believe us any maybe trust us."

Archer listened, grudgingly. He barely moved, didn't give himself and inch and he was still not pleased. He would get the answer he had asked for, not a sweet-talked, sugar coated way around it.

"What – can – you – do?"

The eventual answer brought him neither satisfaction nor disgruntlement.

Of healing factors and skilful acrobats he had not expected – their nature sounded too docile, too gentle to be the stuff that compiled the terrible legends that had been Mutants. Of total weather control and optic blasts powerful enough to dismember a mountain he had expected, and feared, and knew better as the legends of Mutants and X-Men.

The personalities he was dealing with at the current moment, a well-tempered Captain and tightly composed Sub Commander also came under his list of unexpected revelations.

T'Pol was neither shocked nor surprised and verged dangerously on looking impatient and short with her Captain. Instead she kept her arms crossed and behaved as the Vulcan she was supposed to be – emotionally derived and neutral.

Now, as many countless times before, she had to step in and reason out the situation. More promptly though she did this because Archer had not voiced a word since Scott had started on the answer he had been demanding.

"Sir?"

As T'Pol leant slightly in front of Archer his dark hazel eyes flickered onto Ororo and quickly cemented their sights there on her thick, blazing white head of hair. She shifted from one steady foot to another slowly, almost cautiously as he kept his pupils trained on her enigmatic features.

T'Pol for all her strong calling voice could not arouse him until he was satisfied by remembering rightly what he saw in her.

"You were one of the last X-Men…"

Ororo blinked, and drew in a cold, deep breath. "Excuse me?"

Archer's finger started on Ororo, wavering up and down as a rush of understanding took him and eased the pressure around his temples. He turned to T'Pol almost excitedly.

"Were you around during the Alpha Sentinels' last attack?"

T'Pol's arms remained crossed and her brow promptly slid up as she tilted her head to the side very slightly and blinked slowly in accusation. "I am not that old Captain."

Archer, instantly losing interest in her, turned back to Storm. "I knew I recognised you. I mean," he offered her a small harmless smile, "you're hard to forget."

Ororo touched on her hair subconsciously, frowning as she watched the Captain enjoy his newfound clarity.

His face quickly sobered though and a waver of something akin to pity flooded his darting pupils as they went from one mutant to the other, the memories of their faces becoming less attractive in his mind.

"You were one of the last five as well…"

Archer's fingertip swivelled slowly on Cyclopes and the pity became near to a shadow of angst.

"Yes… You, and… Wolverine, Phoenix, and…" Archer frowned as he searched the duo, as if the fifth name were concealed slyly in their 'X' marked uniforms. It came to him as he placed his eyes carefully on the floor at their feet and he said with some amount of delicacy "Gambit, I believe. The one that, helped save your life, T'Pol."

Finally Archer's frustration and anger left in a meek silence and he looked up once again, eyes anew with desperation and sorrowful compassion. He then swallowed hard and turned to the door briefly.

"There…" his mind raced but there was only one thing he could do to truly explain what was rushing through his refreshed memory now, "there may be something you have to see. Follow me."

As Ororo and Scott eased some of their fears with a weak frown T'Pol found herself at as much a loss in Archer's sudden nosedive in mood as the mutants were. She didn't indulge in a word however and quietly followed at the Captain's heal, encouraging the duo to come forth with them.

They shared a silent gaze. They hadn't the luxury of choice and their trembling curiosities found a strong foothold in their minds. They eventually, hearts thundering for unaccountable reasons and blood chilling with their every movements, followed.

----

There was a beautiful serenity about the small bar on D deck that constantly drew Logan back to its pine benches, carpeted floor and curved bar stand.

Perhaps it was the smell of the stools, the simple sweet smell of wood, something that wasn't coated with a metallic twang or electrical currant, which allured him.

Or perhaps it was the soundproof walls that assured a lull of tranquillity in this small space, allowing a man to be alone and at peace with his thoughts and not the curios tail ends of conversations and confrontations and technical jargon talk amongst a crew of eighty-three.

Perhaps, and most likely, it was the cupboard stocked lovingly with bourbon.

He teased with a small spill of the golden liquid in a crystal glass, swirling the contents graciously around the silver painted bottom before growing bored of the game and downing it quietly. He wondered as he did so whose it was, then realised he didn't much care. It was here and it was one of the few things genuine left on this ride of metal so he poured himself another mouthful.

What Logan began to concern his frayed mind with more was why he always ended up alone in this small corner of the Enterprise. He was in no way lonely, he was entirely grateful even for the lack of milling crewmembers in this small box room, but he was curious nonetheless to the lack of presence in its midst, save Ororo who had dropped in and out a few times now, only when she knew he was here.

His thoughts on the comforting emptiness of the room jinxed him and a quick few seconds later the door was opened with the face of a pretty young Ensign in the new opening to the room. Logan couldn't help but grunt quietly and the Ensign in turn started with a sudden yelp and then a rushed and frightened apology.

Logan looked down at the bourbon. An apology only just missed his own lips as the Ensign stepped in on flighty toes, unsure of where to turn, allowing both in turn a better look at the other. The bourbon glass slowly landed back on the bar stand.

"Jubilee?"

Jubilee was, perhaps, hundreds of light-years and a good hundred or so years away, but the possibility after running through loopholes of the time-space continuum that the young mutant had suddenly appeared on board with the small group of renegades wouldn't have much surprised the veteran X-Man, and tempted him to believe so that it was the girl he had always had a grudging soft spot for.

It was disappointment if nothing else that poured over him in seeing that it was a young woman too old by a half a decade to be Jubilee standing in a halo of light at the door instead. Nonetheless the resemblance was sticking, only that this woman stunk of fear, not bubblegum. You didn't necessarily have to posses a heightened sense of smell to know that though.

"I—I didn't know anyone was in here, Sir. I'm sorry, I'll… just leave now."

The girl turned on her heals and Logan raised his head slightly, turning it a fraction to the door.

"Wait."

Obediently, but with a quiver, she did on the rough growl of a voice, wholly reluctant to deny its order.

"What's yer name kid?"

She allowed her fine, dark brown brow to dip slightly, still with dangerously pale cheeks though as she moved her eyes onto a man of close to fifty years she wagered.

"Hoshi, Sir. Hoshi Sato."

He nodded. "Got time on yer hands kid?"

She hesitated slightly again as she opened her mouth. She had a lunch break of an hour and for some unexplained reason she found herself telling him this.

"Maybe you can help me then, make sense of this pile of floating junk and what the hell it's doin' this far out in the middle o' nowhere."

Hoshi's mind still alerted herself to panic. Nonetheless her feet stepped forward slightly and before a protest could be wrangled she had taken up the pine stool beside the gruff stranger tentatively. She even wore a half smile.

"I don't know if I'm the best to ask but I'll do my best Sir."

"Name's Logan."

The smile grew a little at the corners. "Yes Sir.

-----

To hear of the death of your own sub-race of humanity was something of a harrowing experience; a stomach churning one, turning your head light and all out, through and through confused because with every right you should be dead and 150 years from where you are standing now.

To see it almost defies all words and description of sheer unspoiled horror.

On the large holographic screen that projected historical images from a library in Starfleet Scott and Ororo watched with utter silence Scott fall deftly under a hail of devastating shots. He didn't get back up, and he was the last of the five that Archer had rhymed off to be destroyed by these 'Alpha Sentinels'.

With a flicker of colourfully static the graphic images of a crimson bloodshed that painted out the last stand of the X-Men and their mutant kin disappeared.

T'Pol stepped neatly aside as Ororo sat swiftly down on a chair behind them. Scott could say or do nothing. For a minute Archer wondered if questions would be raised by Starfleet on why he had asked for the files on the Alpha Sentinel operation. To T'Pol it was a perfect example of why humanity had always baffled the Vulcans.

The room where the Tuesday movie nights usually took place had gone a stark, brooding silence. There was a pitting of sick stomachs as Ororo finally stood again and took the side of a wan Scott, close to him, almost afraid if not terrified now of the couple in their presence.

"Why?"

Why… The silence continued.

Archer, in all inexcusable honest hadn't fully contemplated the 'why'. He knew all the fine details and causes the Government had given out once in a longwinded report aptly dubbed "Operation: Extinction" to justify any 'whys'. That we ourselves were close to extinction, that we had tolerated this disease long enough and that we as the superior and rightful owners of Earth had every moral right to seize back what was soon to be ruled by the mutated and dangerously unpredictable. That the X-Men were not the Robin Hoods they proudly claimed to be, and had formed a liaison with our destruction, and in turn were as sick of us as we were of them, and they, unlike us, had no right to claim such a mutual feeling of loathing and such a thirst to take out the thorn of the opposing side.

Archer had always enjoyed history, and had been all too overly enthusiastic to learn about the study theme of 'Mutants' and one of humanity's greatest triumphs since the Nazis had seemingly been destroyed, America ignoring the underground cult of the Hitler obsessed that still exited until a few dozen decades ago.

He stared blankly at the two, and crumbled slightly with murky guilt at their silent, utterly mortified expressions.

"Vulcans have always assumed that humans are somewhat paranoid, and instinctively fierce when threatened. In this case it was a combination of the two, leading inevitably to extreme measures of protection such as the Legacy Virus and the finally attack in the Operation. We have also always thought that mutants were no more of a threat than any human with a gun, or any wild and provoked. Mutants would attack only if provoked themselves on such grounds as hatred for years of stigma or an upfront physical attack."

Archer's misty eyes wore now the sheen of a glare on his first officer. She continued regardless.

"We had planned, around the year 2015 to make first contact with the species, but these extreme measures of protection proved what the elders had been concluding throughout the years of discussion, that they were still simply not ready."

Slowly, almost tearfully but with strict restraint on any outburst of emotion Ororo turned to Cyclopes.

"Scott?"

The leader faced her in turn. "Yeah?"

"I want to go home."

----

It was cold and desolate and the atmosphere reeked dangerously of years of angst and suffering and ultimately destruction. A rogue wind coughed into life, carrying on it the wispy dust of a land long since in decay and desolation.

There was a bolder in a village, the village nothing more than a small rut of houses that for decades now had been brought down to squat in its own collapse off rubble and mossy cement. The bolder itself, a colossal afraid of a scratchy putrid grey that sat to itself on the outskirts of the village, lay not in complete solitude as everything else did on this overcast island, but occupied a threesome of warmth; two bodies and between them a freshly purchased Happy Meal.

"Why do you always get the Happy Meal? These things barely feed kids these days, never mind the two of us."

The less enigmatic of the duo sat with a scowl on a somewhat comical face that seemed permanently etched out in unnecessary worry. The brief spouts of premature silvery grey hair that stemmed from the edges of his wispy hairline, despite a face that only appeared to be early thirties, added to this perpetual image of a man in constant fret of his surrounding, his situation and his company.

His company wasn't, or shouldn't have been, any great worry to him right now though, only the lack of food brought by the considerably more sophisticated and classically mysterious figure made him dwell in somewhat of an edgy disposition.

The second figure sat under a mass of heavy robes of silky black and fine organza, with delicate grey hems, and apart from a set of well-worn bronze boots this was all the colour sported. The face was hidden, the hands retracted into generously sized sleeves and generally all traces of skin kept away from view of the casual eye.

But despite everything of the body that was hidden, apart from a general outline, anyone could tell there was a sense of a smile under the mask of clothing, and it ebbed through in a waver of speech that had every accent of the world fibered into it somehow.

"Ah Daniels. Don't you just love 2015? Worlds full of sweet spots like this and a Happy Meal only costs forty-nine pence."

Daniels, to be forever deck out in his Starfleet uniform, pouted slightly, adding to the appeal of his huffy nature.

"Give me 2151 any day."

Again a smile trickled into the aura of his companion. "A man of the future. Your so old-fashioned."

For a while they sat in a cold, comfortable silence, enjoying the small spill of heat that came from their over-salted chips and grease-drowned cheeseburger. It was little to fill them up, but as a general rule they did not necessarily need 'filled up', in a conventional, human sense.

It became twenty-seven minutes past one on a chilling afternoon on May 5th 2015 and a spell of ungainly clouds began to seize coverage of the dirty yellow skies above. Daniel's companion grew restless under the robes as the clouds above in turn grew tiresome. A dotting of nippy acidic rain began to spit from their overloaded contents.

With another weary huff Daniels hunched his shoulders and sat forward slightly in protest of the pathetic dribble of poisonous rain.

"Still don't see why we have to be here. I've seen all the documentaries and read all the reports. I know what happens as much as everybody else does."

The black hood sat atop the head of the entity beside him began to slip slightly.

"Hush up Daniels. Nothing makes a better history lesson than watching the events of history as they actually happen. I was told to show you this by Them and I'm in no position to protest so just enjoy the show."

A low grumble trickled from the throat of Daniels. "Gotta be a hundred timelines to fix, and I had to fix this one with you."

A pair of pale, slender hands crept out from under the mouths of the drowning sleeves of his companion, reaching slowly up to take the falling hood and finish its fall down to a pair of slim shoulders. Daniels turned as the small commotion took place.

"About time you stopped placing mystery woman."

A set of mucky brown eyes scowled him. A crop of painfully short dull auburn hair sat atop a young, ashen face. Pale, tattered lips twisted into a half smile and cheekbones that were far too low shone under a stretch of almost transparent, dirty white skin.

Yet still the girl who looked so much a man under her robes got away with being slightly pretty, if not in the utmost abstract way.

"Games are about to start. Don't want to be missing any of it."

Daniels turned back with his stiffly hunched shoulders and huffy eyes. "No, not at all."

A low whistle hummed through the thick, clammy air. It carried no tune but was easy on the ear, even as it picked up a sharp volume on its travels. On a prompting nudge from his companion Daniels straightened up slightly and peered over his cold shoulders yet again as a young gale began to kick up. Its mutant bodily source flew past his head faster than he could catch his breath from the fright of it.

"So begins that legendry Last Battle Daniels my friend. Now pass the lemonade."