A/N ~ Well, isn't that nice. Finally get the files fixed and Fanfiction.net goes whacko. Things were a bit hairy for a minute there, weren't they? It all came out in the wash, though.
On a lighter note, I found out Fox Kids UK is playing Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors on late night scheduling. Yay, 1980s Golden Age cartoon sci-fi. I love 80s cartoons. My Little Pony, Jayce, Care Bears, Moondreamers, Charmkins, Ulysses 31, Sylvanian Families – the stuff I was raised on. Just as a point of interest, does anyone else remember this show? Or any other good 80s cartoons I failed to mention here? Tell me in reviews! I like reminiscing.
Nessie6 ~ Gambit, yes. Romy… don't think so, but from the way it's written that could be open to interpretation. Quite honestly, Romy bores me. Back in the early 90s when the original cartoon series got me hooked on X-Men, I would squeal in fangirlish glee whenever a smidgen of Romy appeared, but now… meh, it's been done to death. Originality is the key. And yes, that was Warren.
Rurouni Tyriel ~ New Mutant goodness? Gimmie! *Cracks whip*
Yuki ~ Your review is greatly appreciated, Yuki. As for the meaning behind 'wotcher', I always understood it as a truncated version of 'what are you?' or 'what have you?' Basically, what's up? How are you? Are you okay?
Gerri ~ Indeed, you have knocked the Grasshopper vs. Magneto scenario squarely on the noggin. I applaud you for that. And you're very good at articulating your ideas, so don't get any notions to the contrary, y'hear?
Lady Iapetus, Roving Wanderer ~ Got it in one. You can thank Klutz for that little side-fling. *Sniff* I wish they're release Inuyasha in the UK.
Hootild ~ Yes, Remy has poor-but-sexy English. I'd take his most wandering of wandering Cajun accents over Brummy drawl any day. For anyone who doesn't know, Brummy basically means Birmingham (the English variety). Can't stand the bloody accent, or anything remotely like it. Which isn't so good, since I live smack bang in the middle of Midlands Accents Ground Zero, and my father is Wulfrunian (vaguely like Birmingham accent). Honestly, I hurry past people in the supermarket biting my tongue so I don't shout at them and show myself up. Ugh, ugh, ugh…
DemonRogue13 ~ The Ragin' Cajun is in da house! Sorry, couldn't resist.
Ezrajade ~ Again, the New Orleans trivia was from Klutz. What I wouldn't give to visit the place and see it for myself, though…
Tenshiamanda ~ So if Remy's your second favourite, then who's your actual favourite mutant?
UnknownSource ~ We see a lot more of Wolfsbane and Peter in this chapter, so I hope they continue to endear themselves to you. Rogue, too, though not because she's popped it. Oops, said too much…
Cheesy Monkey ~ A crazed muppet? And how, pray tell, is this different from a normal muppet? Hee hee, that reminds me of something Hank McCoy said in an old comic I won't look out right now. Somebody screamed when they saw him and called him an animal, to which he replied, deadpan – "The name is Beast, my dear lady, not animal. Animal is a muppet."
Yodelbean ~ I blame you that I've been walking around proclaiming things to be 'mightily befrigged' lately. But yes, it is indeed prodigious that my dissertation survived. No way in hell am I going to go around collecting all that data again. Thirty five-year-old children to be interviewed in a single afternoon… *shudders* ICU? I shall bring you flowers.
Yma ~ To be sure, our ficcery will wrap up soon enough. You're excited and you already know what happens? Hmm. Shhh about the 'extras'. Don't want to spoil the surprise, now, do we?
Ice Princess ~ Uniqueness rules the day! I get called unique a lot. I get called special, too. Hmm, I'm sensing a pattern here… No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth, just over a vacuum (seriously, I broke my little toe for the third time since last Summer).
Ambrosia ~ Arschgesicht is a real word. My Grandmother uses it all the time. I think it's more translatable to 'your face looks like a bum', 'you have an ass for a face' than actually 'butthead', but that seemed one people would be more likely to understand. See above for my feelings on Romy. Justice League deserves no ridicule! Apart from the fact that it might be a reason behind why XME got cancelled, it's well-made and has great scripts and voice-work. I like that show. Granted, 'A Savage Time' pissed me off greatly because of the prevalent negative German image (though they did redeem themselves with the line I can't quite remember bu ran akin to 'We're not evil'), but the second season makes me feel better. Phil LaMarr rocks my socks. He voices Green Lantern and Virgil Hawkins of Static Shock, another show I like.
AerinBrown ~ I know I'd wait for the next bus if that one came to my stop. "Uh, no, it's okay. I'll wait for the 543…"
The Phantom ~ Spoons are evil. Nothing else to it. Sporks are better. I found a great phrase akin to the picnic basket idiom the other day, by the way. 'A few tinnies short of a six pack'. And yes, poor Alvin. *Straightens Alvin's hat from where Phantom squashed it with patting*.
*******************
Thirty-seventh Fragment ~ Cloudburst
*******************
"Y'know what?"
"No. What?"
Kitty pressed one hand against the glass, almost as if she was watching Mutie Town dwindle away beneath them. Beside her, Rogue's face was blank, but her dark eyes were quick and discerning over and around the new mutants crammed aboard the bus.
There were around thirty of them, all told. Some sat, some stood, some clung to the walls and ceiling as only mutants could. Of all those recognisable by name, only Bairn had come along for the ride. Layla, Scry, Sneak et al had elected to stay behind with Grasshopper, leaving the rest to choose as they would.
Rogue still wasn't sure about them, herself. There was a desperation about these people that pressed against her brain, and she gritted her teeth against the mental onslaught that came form being in such close quarters with so many living, breathing bodies. Crude psychic shielding of her own untutored design stood around the core of her mind, but still she was subject to many thoughts, dreams and memories she really didn't want.
So it was that, when Kitty suddenly spoke, Rogue was more than willing to indulge in the distraction.
Kitty, with Hope nestled in her arms, sighed and caressed her baby girl. Hope was grizzling, but seemed peaceful enough, considering. "I feel sorry for them. They're like the Last Stand, y'know? Grasshopper and the other who stayed behind - they feel like they've got to stay there, just... just in case somebody needs them. Imagine, being trapped like that in a place like that."
Rogue nodded. "But it was their choice. They chose to no to come with us."
Curiously, Kitty shook her head. "Did they? I'm not so sure anymore." She sighed again and wrapped Hope a little tighter. "Rogue, what happened?"
"Excuse me?"
"Life used to be so simple. I thought this trip was supposed to make things better for all of us, not more complicated. Fates, internal politics, this weirdo Magneto and his goons - I don't like them, by the way."
"Me neither, but don't say that too loud. One of 'em might hear."
Kitty bobbed her head. "That Wolfsbane creeps me out, especially. She just so... so..."
"Wild?" Rogue tapped the side of her head. "I bumped into her earlier. Her mind's all jumbled an' half-feral. A mess."
"Why does that not surprise me? No, I shouldn't say things like that. I mean, we don't, like, know why she's the way she is. Come to think of it, we don't know much about *any* of those guys."
"Other than they tried to kill us over Pietro?"
"Other than they killed us over Pietro."
Rogue looked over her shoulder to where the cluster of Acolytes were huddled together a few seats back. Magneto was absent from their midst, since he was outside directing the now-flying bus.
"There's somethin' odd about the one in the gaudy suit..." she said after a moment. "What's his name - Human-Spider[1]? His mind don't quite ring true, an' I kept getting' flashes of memory from him durin' the fight."
"Like what?"
"Family stuff, mostly; this girl with red hair, college, some strange images of spiders. Kinda freaky, but no more than any of us, I suppose." She gritted her teeth, and her voice dropped to a whisper, lest someone else hear her. "But the weird thing is... keep this under your hat, but I don't think he's a mutant."
"Say what? With those powers of his?"
"Powers or not, he don't... don't..." She searched for appropriate words. "He don't feel right."
Kitty frowned. "So what is he, then? Human?"
Rogue glanced at Alvin sceptically. "Maybe," she allowed, and then sighed. "I dunno. Maybe he's an alien from another planet. Do you think ol' bucket head knows?"
"What? About him being an alien?"
"Wiseass."
Kitty smiled thinly and shook her head. "Doubt it. And I don't think we should tell him. There may be nothing to it, and it's not really our place, y'know?"
Rogue nodded and fell silent, watching Mutie Town fall into the hazy distance and wondering how long their journey would last from here.
*******************
Ariel gulped.
Somehow, he'd become separated from the people he knew, and now someone they'd been fighting with previously was attempting to become friendly.
Very, *very* friendly.
"No hard feelin's, eh?" she said. "All *is* in love an' war, y'know. An' t' me, they seem mighty close together." One talon unzipped his jacket, and her hand snuck inside to feel his shirt and the chest underneath.
Ariel tried to escape through the wall at his back. "I'm only twelve," he said, and grasped for something to deflect her attentions, landing on the hated nickname that had kept him alive before. "A water-baby..."
"Time ye became a water *man*, then," she said, leaning in to kiss him.
A flash of pain. Wolfsbane looked up to the source, drawing back her claws...
Ah yes, Dazzler, looking properly indignant. But what else was to be expected from such a proper little miss? Red, jagged letters spelled out her message
HOW DARE YOU!?
Wolfsbane lowered her hand and smiled amiably, which didn't do much to hide her fangs. Then she sat up, brushed herself off and patted Ariel playfully on the head.
"Just havin' a bit o' fun," she replied, voice muted by Dazzler's constant sound-dampening field. She met the other girl's challenging gaze, quite aware of many eyes on the two of them - one pair of them Spider's.
Dazzler narrowed her eyes, and the words faded. Only the brightly glowing dancing light motes betrayed her anger still, and she turned on her heel to move both herself and Ariel to another seat.
As Ariel, still cowering, glanced back over his shoulder, Wolfsbane winked and jumped onto Dazzler's back, eager to prove who was the dominant female once and for all.
Dazzler hit the deck with a meaty thump. A burst of light spewed from her open mouth. Glowering, she swung around and clocked Wolfsbane once on the side of the head, getting a bloodied hand for her troubles.
A tattered sleeve dangling from her lips, Wolfsbane grinned down at her teammate, then made a choking noise as a strong pair of hands grabbed the scruff of her neck and hoisted her into the air.
Logan brought his face close, ignoring the snarls and flying spittle. "No fightin'," he said simply. "Had enough of that a'ready."
Wolfsbane growled, top lip rippling in as threatening manner as his ever could. "Don't get involved where your ain't wanted, Pops."
{SNIKT}
A long silvery claw poked tellingly at the side of her neck, and she winced, trying not to move as it pressed against her jugular.
"Whatcha do on your own turf don't bother me none, kid. But so long as you're on this here bus, y'tow the line, understand? Else me an Mr. Pointy [2] here get real up close an' personal with y'insides."
Wolfsbane made a noise that could've passed for an affirmative. She was promptly dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Dazzler smiled smugly, getting to her feet and leading Ariel away to the proverbial safer waters.
Wolfsbane snarled, and made as if to huck a gob after them, only stopping when she caught Logan's eye again. She swallowed the saliva, grumbling profusely, and made her way to sit at the opposite end of the bus where she could maybe get a little peace. People moved aside as she passed.
A droplet of thin, gauzy webbing fluttered to her feet. She looked up to where Spider was hanging upside-down from the roof, cocking a jaunty grin his way and only shrugging when he ignored it.
A hand jutted into the aisle, catching her wrist. She might have snarled, might even have bitten it off had the feel of Logan's fingertips not still been fresh and tingling on her skin. So instead she simply looked at the owner, curling her lip in disgust when she saw it was one of Quicksilver's little buddies.
The pale girl had haunted eyes. She stared at Wolfsbane with something akin to pity. Needless to say, that didn't go down so well, and the lycanthrope jerked her wrist away, growling.
"What're *you* lookin' at, skunk-head?"
"He's taken."
The words startled her. She blinked a second before answering. "What're yeh talkin' about?" she demanded - though somehow she already knew, and didn't need the subtle gesture to the figure on the ceiling.
"He was taken long before you met 'im," the pale girl said. "Lost his heart a long time ago, an' nuthin' you do will ever make him yours, Rahne."
Wolfsbane started, taken aback by the use of her real name; her true name, the name she'd given up the day Magneto gave her a new chance of life on Asteroid M.
Then her anger returned and she leaned forward, placing a hand on the rail and invading the pale girl's personal space. "The name," she whispered fiercely, "is Wolfsbane."
The pale girl didn't even flinch or draw back. She just stared with those sad eyes of hers, and suddenly Wolfsbane couldn't bear to be near her anymore. It was abrupt, a snapping of barriers, like those troubled eyes could suddenly see past her exterior. They saw past the half-shifted form and wild instincts - everything she'd been left with the when the mob led by her own father cast her out as an abomination and left her to die on a mountaintop. She had become all external, refuting the internal, but those eyes, so loaded with pity, dragged it kicking and screaming back into the light.
Wordless, she drew back and stalked away, conscious of the gazes she drew, but sparing a glance only for the gaudy figure suspended from the roof.
He didn't even acknowledge the look.
She plonked herself down with a growl that might have been a sob, had it not been so ferocious and absolutely savage.
*******************
In the corner of the bus, as far away from Magneto as possible, Logan plopped back down next to Alvin and Pietro.
The boy was covered from head to toe in a ratty blanket, and lay against the battered wall, looking little more than a pile of rags. Occasionally he whimpered to himself, or whispered soft words. He seemed to be sleeping.
Logan cast him a sidelong glance after watching the irritable wolfgirl find a new seat. That was needed watching, but his attention was divided between her and his own.
She didn't even stand a chance.
He pulled Alvin to one side and nodded at Pietro. "Kid's gonna get better, ain't he?"
"With time," Alvin sighed. "I fear the road may be long and hard. Yet, if I have learned anything from my Goddess - and this trip - then it's that love heals all things, and Pietro certainly has more than enough of that in his friends and new family."
Logan snorted, letting Alvin know exactly what he thought of *that* idea.
"Come now, my friend," Alvin smiled. "You of all people should be agreeing with me."
"Don't see why. I got my healin' factor, and I ain't never had much love. I got along fine, though."
"Did you? You may not be mad, my friend, but I can see that you're not being entirely truthful. I don't think I'd be wrong in saying that the cuts on your mind may have healed, but the scars remain, and that they inhibit you greatly." He shrugged. "The children love you as a father, but that's not enough. Perhaps one day you'll know the love of another again, and then all will be as it should."
"Yeah, suuuurree," Logan drawled, folding his arms and propping his feet on the chair in front of them. "I'd like to hear your theory on that one, preacher. Who'd be interested in this old hermit? Nah, been on my own too long now to travel that path again. Got no time for gettin' twitter-pated."
Alvin gave a furtive smile, and looked pointedly in Raven's direction.
Logan followed his gaze. Then he grumped again, mumbling something that sounded like "Yeahrightwhatever".
The zealot's smile did not abate.
Pietro shivered. Alvin broke off smiling to tend to the boy. He wasn't cold, but seemed to have picked up the habit every time an unwelcome thought came to him. Alvin wasn't blind to how Rogue twitched or looked around whenever the erstwhile speedster engaged in shuddering, but chose not to comment.
Logan folded his arms and settled back to watch Magneto's goons chunter amongst themselves. Or not, as the case may be. Their group seemed disjointed, with nobody talking to anybody else if they could possibly help it, and few words being exchanged with anyone else around them, either. Wolfsbane in particular seemed to have the verbal equivalent of a brick wall around her, with people actually looking away, or else glowering in her general direction rather than speak.
Ariel was sat near them. He looked solidly at the floor, avoiding everyone as best he could. Somehow, he'd been separated from the rest of their party in the scuffle to climb on board the bus, and now he looked decidedly uncomfortable with his placing, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket and biting his scaly little lips until Logan was sure they would bleed.
Sighing to himself, the gruff mutant looked out of the window at the countryside streaking past. He wondered how long it would be before they reached the Lands of New Hope, or whatever it was Ororo was calling her turf, now.
Ororo.
The pang that thought elicited was sharp and intense, and Logan winced despite himself. Ororo had been his friend for a long time, and it hurt to think that they might not reach her before she... before she died.
Death.
Such an alien concept to him, and yet so familiar. Death was a long way from Logan's doorstep, and yet every day he seemed to come across it, step over it, walk through it, breathe it in. It was a part of the world now, just like the sky, the water, or the air.
_Hold on, 'Ro. Don't you dare die 'afore we get there._
*******************
Seer crouched outside the door. He jumped up when the human woman known as Maive emerged. Her clothing was simple but meticulously clean, as befitted one nursing the ailing.
"How is she?" he asked, thick tail swinging in agitation.
Maive sighed and folded her hands in a nervous gesture. "She's getting weaker, and she refuses to just rest, even though she can't leave her bed now."
"Can't leave her bed?" Seer's eyes widened. "Is it... that bad already?" He looked at the floor. In what his life had become, Ororo was a pillar. She was his mainstay, his ageless strength. That someday she would be gone was not a new concept, but in those short words from a flustered nurse they hammered home as they had never done before. "I had no idea..."
"She's very frail, Seer, though you wouldn't know it the way she pushes herself. She's insistent about her microclimate, or something, and it was all I could do to get her to take the sleeping pills without crawling away."
He allowed himself a small smirk at Ororo's stubbornness, but his eyes were troubled, and he swallowed hard. "Can I... can I see her?
Maive chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she sighed. "For a few minutes, yes. The pills are only just taking effect, so she'll be drowsy, and I don't want her overexerting herself any more than she has to." She pushed open the battered bedroom door and stood aside for him to pass.
"Thank you, Maive."
She nodded, turning her face away, but he didn't miss her distressed mutter. "Goddess keep us all..."
The bedroom had been ransacked long ago, yet the gilt on the wall panelling was still intact, and it held a ghostly aura of sumptuousness. Almost like a room remembering, really. The bed was a four-post variety, left there only because it was too difficult to move, and Ororo looked tiny and fragile in the centre. Her white hair, spread liberally across the pillow, gave the impression of a ghoul, and her thin, wan face didn't little to alleviate the notion.
"Seer?"
"I'm here." He crouched by her side and carefully stroked her withered hand. She seemed to have aged since he saw her this morning, and his chest grew tight at her ragged breathing. He had to be swift, before the drugs took effect. "Ororo, I had another Vision. A visual one. Ororo," he leaned in close as he eyelids flickered, "they're coming."
"They are?" Whether she fully understood or not was unclear, but she smiled. "Then... maybe all is not lost, after all... The microclimate, Seer. I must... fix... the microclimate... for the plants..." Her hand went limp even as she spoke, and her breathing balanced out a little as she slept.
Seer stood up, replacing her arm beneath the covers. He stroked her head, talons incongruously large and powerful against her stark white hair and worried brow. "Sleep, now. They'll be here soon. They're coming to help you."
He glanced out of the window at the darkening sky. It threatened rain - maybe even a storm. The oppressive air hereabouts looked ready for it, and he stroked her hair once more as she shivered.
*******************
Peter frowned. Out of almost everyone on the bus, he had been the only one really watching Magneto outside. He had been doing so more out of a need to ignore the two female Acolytes than out of actual concern or interest, but now he was beginning to wonder. Beads of sweat had developed on their leader's brow, and he was beginning to look strained, like something was wrong.
"Uh, sir," Peter called out, twisting to the floor and leaning out of the broken window, "are you okay?"
Magneto opened his eyes a fraction. "Storm's brewing," he grunted. "Some electromagnetic interference. Nothing I can't handle. At the moment, anyway."
Peter, thinking it best not to distract his leader any further, fell silent and moved back into the bus.
He nearly yelped in shock when he saw that someone had joined him.
A little girl, covered in green scales, peacock-blue feathers and a wide grin was looking up at him curiously.
"Uh... hi," he said, unsure of how else to respond to this strangest of children.
"Hi," said the kid. "Name's Daisy. What's yours?"
"Uh, um," he said, intelligent to the last.
"'Uh-um'? What's yer real name?" she insisted with a bluntness that was almost shocking.
"Spider-Man."
"Don't play games with me."
He blinked at her, and then smiled in spite of himself. "Peter."
"'At's better." 'Daisy' cocked her head to one side, making her feathers rustle.
Some distance to his left, Peter heard Wolfsbane growl something unintelligible, and made a quick decision to hustle the little girl further away from his teammate.
Daisy squeaked, but greeted his administrations with a curious blink when he lifted her into the crude, hastily constructed hammock he'd strung from the ceiling. Her voice was exceptionally young sounding, but her tone was infected with a sort of maturity that made him wonder just what horrors she'd seen in the world while he'd been sleeping on Asteroid M.
"S'funny, you don't look like a Peter." She pawed at his mask, which was torn and battered, but still clung to most of his face like some determined limpet, refusing to let go and give up the ghost. "I heard the others calling you Spider-Man, but I knew it weren't your real name. Y'know, before. During the big fight?"
"You were there?" Now it was Peter's turn to be surprised, and he blinked under his mask as Daisy nodded.
"My Mommy was the one fighting you. That's her over there, an' my sister Robyn, an' my brother Kurti, an' my other brother Pie-Pie, an' my big sister Rogue..." She pointed to each in turn. Peter drank them in.
These folk were a family unit? They didn't look like it. Well, except for the blue woman and furry boy who'd kicked his spidery butt - what had Daisy called him, Kirri? Carrot? They looked like they might be related, but the others were all completely dissimilar.
Then again, if there was one thing he'd learned from mutants, it was that you couldn't go by appearances.
Daisy went on, oblivious to the fact that she was divulging secrets and identities to an erstwhile enemy. "That over there is Logan - he's my Fairy Godfather. He found me an' made me new clothes." She scraped at the mud caking her overalls and gave a deep, heartfelt sigh. "But they's all dirtied up an' torn, now."
"What about that man?" Peter gestured to the robed figure cradling Magneto's son. "Is he your, uh... father? An uncle, perhaps?"
Daisy gave a short laugh and kicked her feet to make the hammock swing back and forth. Good thing his webbing was strong, an outlying part of his brain mused idly. "No, silly. That's Alvin. He's a zeh.... a zeh-lot. He comes from the Goddess' Lands. There's lotsa peoples like him there - peoples with no powers."
"The place we're going?" Peter looked on the rumpled, middle-aged human with new eyes. "More humans survived? Well I'll be..."
He transferred his gaze to the last of the close-knit group Daisy seemed a part of. It was strange, how that motley party stood out against the horde of Mutie Towners like a sore thumb. It wasn't anything like their unity, but a sort of camaraderie surrounded them - even Magneto's boy. Like they'd seen and done too much, but been through it together, and so took solace in their shared pain.
Daisy followed his gaze. "That's Kitty an' Baby Hope. She don't see so good, but Kurti helps her." She leaned forward conspiritally. "I think he *likes* her."
"Does she like him back?" Might as well find out all he could about these people. Who knew, maybe the information would be useful - and besides, it helped to pass the time in the stuffy, cramped space. He had a suspicion Magneto wouldn't be staying after he made good on his promise to the furry kid and got them all to the Goddess' Lands - wherever *they* were - safely, but he may as well so something constructive in the meantime, right?
Daisy looked suddenly sad. She stopped her kicking. "I don't know. Don't think so. She used to like Mister Lance, but he's dead now. Pie-Pie's sister kill't him at the big river."
The calmness with which she stated the demise startled Peter almost as much as learning that Wanda had taken a life before having her own snuffed out at the Mississippi Bridge. Could it be that there was actual credence to these people's story of her suiciding?
A glance at Magneto told him to shut up about any theory he might have. At least until they were on solid ground again, at any rate.
"Who's that boy?" Peter indicated the last of Daisy's party. "The one with the scales. Is he your brother, or something?"
"No, that's Ariel. He used to be a slave, he says. Got sold at an a... aw... awk-shun. But his owner died, an' Pie-Pie's sister made 'im make the big water wall onna bridge, an' then she died an' he joined us, an'... an'..." She caught Peter's strange look through the mask-hole over his left eye. "What?"
"You saw what happened on the bridge?"
"... Yeah..." Instantly, Daisy's tone turned suspicious, and she eyed Peter with something akin to unease at the sudden urgency in his tone. "Why?"
"Nothing, nothing. Just a theory I had." He waved her concern away - and then promptly fell out of his seat when the bus gave a sideways lurch.
Half the contents fell from their seats, squealing, and Daisy tumbled from the hammock to the floor faster than Peter could catch her and himself both. She rolled a little, coming to rest near Dazzler and getting tangled up in Ariel's limbs. Immediately, she angrily shook him off, leaving him looking hurt and dejected from yet another rejection at her hands.
"Get offa me, Ariel. No touchin', remember?"
"Yeah, I remember," he said in a doleful voice that reminded Peter of himself before he was bitten by a certain genetically altered spider on a school field trip - especially when in front of girls in the hall, and especially being made to look a fool of yet *again*.
_Poor kid,_ he had time to think, before the bus lurched again, descended a few feet, and then skidded to a halt on a long, deserted stretch of open wilderness.
While others were still picking themselves up, Peter swung into his hammock and vaulted to peer out of the window, straining to spot Magneto.
Seconds later, a fuzzy blue something was at his side competing for viewing space.
"What's going on? Why've we stopped?"
"There is a storm brewing," said Magneto, turning the corner of the vehicle's rear with arms folded and cape billowing in the sharp breeze. He cut quite the imposing figure. "There was too much electrical interference for me to keep the bus in the air any longer. At least, not safely," he added at Kurt's dark look, though his tone held a hint more challenge than apology.
"When can we set off again? Time is of the essence," the elf snapped in a very un-elf-like manner.
Magneto looked at the sky and shook his head. He seemed tired - ten times older than before, and Peter didn't fail to notice how his blue eyes snapped back and forth between them and the huddled bundle between Logan and Alvin. "Not for a good few hours - if even then. Your urgency is commendable, I'm sure - though I don't entirely understand why you wish to see this 'Goddess' at all. Still, I won't risk crashing this thing simply to shave a little time off your schedule. A few hours shouldn't be too much to ask for, should it? At a stretch, we can be off before dawn breaks."
He spoke as if the sky hadn't turned darker than night, and Kurt shivered before looking up and bobbing his head. "Fine, then. Just no funny business. I don't want to find out later that this is some elaborate ploy of yours to delay us for your own purposes..."
Peter hadn't even thought of that. He chanced a look at his leader, trying to gage his reaction.
Magneto's eyes flashed and green energy coalesced around them like a writhing snake. "Believe me, boy. If I truly wanted you dead, you would be eating dandelions by their roots right now [3]."
With that, he turned and swept away, going to perch on the roof where the wind would whip at both his cape and his soul a little as it picked up. Which wouldn't be long, judging by the roiling turn the heavens had taken. Clouds battered against each other, jostling for space along the gloomy airways.
Kurt sighed. Instinctively, Peter moved to pat the mutant on his shoulder.
Kurt flinched away, eyes filled with mistrust. Then, seeing the other boy meant no harm, they softened to a pale gold and became filled with leadership-anxiety once more.
"Don't sweat him. He's always been offhand, even with us, and he thawed us out - which we're hoping means he likes us."
Kurt's lips quirked a little, like they were trying to remember how to smile. "I know the feeling. One of my own is rather... abrupt when he wants to be."
"Let me guess - which is most of the time?"
"Ja." The curvature increased, and when a rumble of thunder sounded overhead, Kurt beckoned that Peter return inside with him. "No point in us getting struck by lightning if we don't need to, ne?"
"You're German?" Peter sounded surprised. He'd been unable to place lilting accent before, but the light smattering of conversation stirred old high school classes, flitting down halls and past classrooms that leaked foreign vocab in an effort to avoid a tardy slip.
"Born and bred. Not that I've seen my homeland in many long years. Your accent, on the other hand, sounds very familiar. I'd hazard a guess at... New York?"
"Yup. You lived there?"
"Survived is more like it. Actually, Robyn and I were rather near the city, but never actually within its boundaries. Although Logan may have travelled there since the virus..."
Peter blinked, confused. "Just you and, uh, Robyn was it? But what about the others? The little girl, Daisy - she was telling me about how all you guys are related..."
Kurt blinked slowly. Then he shook his head with a watery - if genuine - smile. "Ach, that's how she sees us, now. It's rather a convoluted story, actually."
"Hey, I ain't going nowhere," Peter shrugged. He hopped onto the back of a seat, much like Kurt himself was wont to do. "If you don't mind telling it, that is. Totally understand if you just tell me to bug off back to my own place. You don't really have much reason to like me, after all; what with me trying to, uh, beat you up and all..."
Kurt sighed and looked at Alvin. "To err is human, to forgive divine. You seem willing to forget that I actually beat you to the, uh, beating, so I should too."
Peter stiffened, and then relaxed when Kurt sat beside him, just across from Kitty and the strange, staring girl christened simply 'Rogue'. Her quick dark eyes unnerved him, and he shifted uncomfortably while she stared cold, incisive daggers into his back.
"Uh, yeah. Right. Gotcha."
Kurt settled down, and as the thunder rolled across the sky outside, he carefully outline to Peter all that had happened to him and his 'family' since that fateful day in Bayville when he heard someone crying for a lost friend in the dust.
Peter listened intently. And he learned.
*******************
Ariel looked solidly up. He'd been keeping his eyes skywards for quite some time.
"What's *your* problem?" demanded a voice to his left.
"The sky..." he murmured, distraction making him vague. "It's full of water."
He could feel it, calling him. His natural affinity attuned him to the extra moisture in the atmosphere, the tenuous half-promise of precipitation, so indistinct it was almost a dream. He was suddenly filled with such yearning and need he marvelled at how he could've missed it before.
So thirsty... and he'd been wetting his gills from the exhalations of the crowd with him. It wasn't enough.
And there was water - above him.
The need pulsed through him like the heartbeat of a giant.
*THROB*.
So close and so far...
*THROB*
So thirsty. So *dry*.
*THROB*
_Come to me..._
Ignoring the protests of those around him he pushed his way to the front of the walkway and climbed off the bus. He spread his arms, turned his palms skyward and *felt* the water out with every fibre of his being. He stretched himself, his body and his consciousness.
So far. So very far away, but closer all the time. He could almost touch it with his mind...
And then he fell. Darkness claimed him; swept him up into nothingness like a soft blanket of shadows and murk.
*******************
When he woke, he was on the ground outside and water was falling from the sky.
The others trailing behind him remembered this, vaguely, from the time before the plague. It was called 'rain'.
It was beautiful. There wasn't enough of it in this new, scarred world.
Ariel stripped off his coat, called the water to his neck and gasped, laughing.
"Whatizzit?" Daisy was demanding from somewhere inside the bus. "Whatizzit, Logan? Izzit dangerous?"
"Kurti! Kurti!" Robyn wailed. "I'm *scared*."
"It's all right, liebe. It's only rain."
And in a moment of supreme delight Pietro thrust his hands out the window to catch the falling drops. He was actually *laughing*. "Rain! *Rain*!"[4]
*******************
And in the lands of the Goddess, the people were amazed. They clustered by their windows to look at this strangest of phenomena.
Pure, unspoilt rain fell while the Goddess rested.
That had never happened before.
*******************
"You've never seen rain before?" Ariel was half amazed, half aghast as both Robyn and Daisy shrank away from the cool, refreshing downpour.
Daisy wrinkled her lip, while Robyn just buried further into Kurt's embrace. The elf hugged her tight and invited the other little girl into his arms, which she fled to with great haste.
Peter landed beside them and echoed Ariel's question, simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief as the rain bathed his cuts and bruises. Since the spider bite his healing properties had been vastly improved, but he was still human, and thus was still feeling the after-effects of their most recent tussle.
Kurt wrapped his tail around Robyn's wrist, as was his habit when she was scared. She clung to it like other children might a comfort blanket, but carefully kept her claws retracted to spare the delicate skin thereon.
"Ground Zero, remember?" Kurt nodded at both Peter and Ariel in turn. "We were hit the worst of all places with the virus, and then again with the antidote agents. As well as killing all the green, the chemicals so saturated the area that we never had any rainfall for four years. Thank God the water was piped in from elsewhere. I'm told it was the same in several places throughout the country - perhaps even the world. Wherever they pumped too much antidote basically became a new desert."
Peter blinked; reflecting on how close New York was to this 'Bayville' place. Was that what had happened to MJ? To Aunt May? Heck, was that how Jameson had gone out? Not in a blaze of glory, but with a whimper to a sickness created in a lab, or parched dry by clouds that would not come?
Suddenly, there was wetness on his cheeks that had nothing to do with the rain, and Peter turned his face toward the opened sky. "What did we do to the world?"
"A question we've asked many time, mein Freund." Kurt gave Robyn and Daisy a brief squeeze, and then guided them out into the falling water where Mutie Towners, outsiders and Acolytes alike were frolicking together, heedless of any and all boundaries they'd created between themselves.
"Here's another. Why?"
Kurt shrugged, peeling Robyn off one arm and tipping her chin heavenwards to let droplets plip and run through her fur. She blinked against it, fought him for a moment, and then stopped to let a slow smile spread across her face. It obviously wasn't half so bad as she'd thought.
Daisy peeped out, feathers quivering as they were pummelled, and blinked lizardine eyes at her giggling sister.
"I... I think I remember this stuff... Long time ago, though..." she murmured quietly.
Kurt smiled and pushed at them to go further out and join the others. Then he sighed and looked askance at Peter. "Fear. Blind hatred. Following the crowd. Who knows what really went on in the minds of those who spread the virus? I live from day to day wondering the same thing, but I've long since relegated myself to the fact that I'll never know. And in truth, I don't think I'd want to, either."
"Why?"
"Because 'evil' and 'the enemy' are so much easier to think of and accept when they're faceless. You give them fears, hopes, dreams - everything that makes us *us*, then you're letting yourself in for a whole new ball game of guilt."
"Considering we're about the same age, you sure sound a helluva lot more mature than me... Kurt, was it?"
Kurt nodded, but he didn't smile. "I didn't ask to be. I grew up quickly out of necessity - something I wouldn't wish on anybody else. Truth be told, you were probably better off up there in space. Asleep."
Peter nodded, swallowing his tears. "I think you're right. But then, if I had then we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?"
Kurt blinked. "No, we wouldn't. And conversation is something I don't think I'll ever be able to give up." He looked out at the girls, and then abruptly thrust out a three-fingered hand. "Care to dance? It's been a long time since I last went puddle splashing."
"Uh..."
"Come on, you look like you could use some good old fashioned childishness." He waggled his eyebrows.
Peter pursed his lips, then took the proffered hand and raced out into the rain, whooping like he used to when he was just a little kid splashing Uncle Ben with his new galoshes.
Water flew, laughter accompanying it, as the contents of the bus engaged in a few simple pleasures courtesy of a rainy day.
*******************
Ariel laughed, loud and long. His powers called out, and he allowed them free rein, sculpting the rain around him into twirling streamers of water that danced and sang and swept through the air like ribbons. He kicked off his shoes, letting water caress his webbed feet and slide deliciously over his scales. Then he threw back his head, hair sopping, and opened his mouth to catch a few drops on his tongue, as children have always done during cloudbursts.
He continued this way for what seemed like an age, while the delighted noises of people around him caressed his ears and made his smile yet broader. They were *enjoying* the rain, and he stretched out a hand to arc yet more water over their heads in a refreshing deluge. Some squealed, but nobody told him to stop, and he raced among them, spraying all with small jets until he collapsed in a heap of happy giggles next to one of the bus' front headlamps, tired but blissful.
He fell to watching the others, in particular those he'd been travelling with the longest.
Ariel hadn't been quite sure what to make of these strange people when they first rescued him from Wanda. After all, he hadn't originally been part of their plans, and he wasn't sure they would've asked him to join them had he been happened upon selling his wares instead of trying to kill them. They'd been nice enough, but somehow he'd got the impression that there was a bond between them he couldn't hope to match. Something intangible that held them together, like invisible glue. He hadn't known his place, slinking between those special bonds, and had wondered after his own usefulness. After all, the way he'd been brought up, if you weren't useful, you were cast out. Got rid of. In some cases, even terminated.
Yet now, with rain cascading onto the dry earth and all of them smiling into what he'd done, he sighed with contentment. This was his calling. This was his power. This was his place. The plight of the Goddess had been explained to him in detail when they were locked up in Mutie Town, and he'd wanted to help her in hopes of finding his niche there.
It was difficult for him, a slave, to get used to the idea he didn't have to work for his living. He *wanted* to be valuable, which translated to roughly only one thing. And now he knew how he could be that one thing.
Rain.
He would make it rain in the Lands of New Hope.
He would make it rain, help plants like those abandoned by Alvin grow, and make the world green and lush again.
Someone plopped down next to the other headlamp, breathing heavily and with the last of a giggle on her lips. Ariel looked over, and then shifted away, his smile fading.
Daisy stared out at the others just as he had done, drinking in their faces and basking in their happiness. It was an easy thing to do, as well as an absorbing one, and Ariel took advantage of her preoccupation to slide noiselessly away.
When first approached by Daisy at the bridge, he'd thought she was extending the hand of friendship - which, to an extent, she was. She was the closest to him in age, and rather more tomboyish than she liked to admit. Anyone would think they made a good pair of friends, and Ariel had thought exactly the same thing.
Yet, quite suddenly Daisy had turned from him. They played when Robyn was around, indulging the youngest member of their tiny group; but ever since Mutie Town, when she once fell asleep pressed against his shoulder and slipped to his lap while they both slumbered, she'd been rather... odd. She refused to even let him grab her arm in a game of tag, and was downright rude if he ever tried anything so much as to hold her hand or shoulder.
So now it was that he actively tried to slip away, and cursed under his breath as her head snapped around and her pale eye landed on him.
"Ariel?"
"Hey, Daisy."
She sniffed, looking to the sky. "You do this?" It was a demand as much as a question, and he sighed, sitting back down in his place. "You make the water?"
"No, it was already in the clouds. I just called it down."
"There was water in the *clouds*? But clouds is jus' bits of... of... cloud," she finished lamely. "Cotton wool. Can't store water in cotton wool."
Ariel shook his head and extended a hand, allowing a small ball of water to float inches above his palm. "Clouds are water vapour, so high up you can't even *tell* they're water anymore." He sent the ball up into the air, and it hovered above the top of the bus, an insignificant speck against the backdrop of the storm. "Can you tell that's water just by looking at it?"
Daisy squinted. "Not really. So... all clouds is water?"
"Mostly. Except dust clouds, of course."
She wrinkled her nose. "Wise guy."
Ariel sighed, and turned his face heavenwards. The rain was cool against his scales, and he shut his eyes, letting it roll across the lids like miniature waterfalls. "Daisy," he said suddenly, "why don't you like me anymore? I thought we were supposed to be friends?"
"We are friends."
"Then how come you don't play properly anymore? You're the one who taught me how to play, but you don't follow your own rules. You won't let me touch you in tag, and I can't very well just keep tagging Robyn all the time. It's not fair on her with her little legs."
"When she runs on all fours she's just as fast as us. Maybe even faster."
"That's not the point."
Daisy didn't answer for a second, and Ariel chanced a peek at her.
She was sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, water having smeared all the dirt and grime on her overalls in greyish brown smudges. Her lizardine face looked thoughtful, and her gaze was unfocussed, staring at pebbles.
"Daisy?"
"You really wanna know?"
"'Course I do. Would I have asked if I didn't?"
She sniffed. "You ever heard of sex?"
That threw him, and for a second he goggled. He'd come across the adult practice before, yes. You couldn't live for so long next to Trader Dan's harem without seeing a few things children shouldn't really know. "Uh, yeah? But what's that got to do with anything?"
"My Pa used to do it." She paused, and then took a deep breath. "To me. Him an' his friends used to... do stuff. Logan tole' me not to think 'bout it no more, but you asked, so... Back in Mutie Town, I had a nightmare. Dreamt I was back home, with Pa an' his friends. Woke up with my face in yer lap. Got me all flibberty, an' then you kept tryin' to hold my hand... Dunno what made me think it. But I kept thinkin' you was after the same thing."
Ariel flinched. "But I'm only twelve."
"My brother was fourteen, an' *he* did it. An' I knew him since I was born. You... I still don't know so good. What's to say you ain't jus' after what they was allus after?"
Ariel frowned. He pulled himself upright. "You saw what happened on the bus, didn't you? When that Wolfsbane tried to unzip my shirt?"
"Yeah..."
"Did I look like that was what I was after? Did I look like I was enjoying myself?"
"No..." Daisy admitted.
"And she was *more* than willing. Daisy, I don't want anything to *do* with that stuff. Not yet. I just... I just wanna learn how to be a normal kid again. Not a slave."
She cut her eyes at him. "Truth?"
He laid a hand on his heart and raised the other, droplets glinting off the webbing stretched between his fingers. "Absolute truth. As far back as I can remember, I lived all my life doing what I was told by Trader Dan, thinking that one day I'd be sold, and then I'd go on to do what I was told by my new owner. I never got a proper chance to just be a *kid*. And that's all I want, now. I wanna be useful, yeah, but more than that, I wanna be the me I would've been if this whole stinking virus mess hadn't happened."
Daisy regarded him for a moment, and then her scaly little lips curved upward in a small smile. "Y'know, that's the mostest I ever heard you say all at once." She heaved herself to her feet and thrust out a hand. "You wanna go play splashin' inna puddles?"
Ariel didn't even hesitate. "*Hell* yeah!"
*******************
Erik sat on the other side of the bus' roof, Indian-style, trying to block out the sounds of happy laughter. So far as he was concerned, there was no call for laughter. So the sky had opened? So it had rained? So what? None of it helped against the ache threatening to consume his entire chest. He felt like he was in the throes of a permanent heart attack.
He would admit it to nobody, but his grief was still very great. His anger had diminished it before, but now that anger was gone, the sorrow had returned in full force.
And so he let his armour crack for a second.
He mourned.
He mourned for the child he'd sent to her madness and then her death through his own tampering. He mourned for the childhood he'd stolen from her. He mourned for the son he'd turned against him, and the bond he'd severed between his children in an attempt to achieve his own gains.
He'd thought he was making them better - improving their powers. He'd thought he was giving them a fighting a chance in a world that would no doubt despise them for what they were when Mutantkind was finally noticed and acknowledged. Charles had tried to convince him otherwise, and thus their own personal feud had sprung up; a clash of ideologies that set two friends at odds with each other because of what was at stake behind their words.
Erik didn't know what might have happened had Mutantkind not been introduced so suddenly and so forcefully into the world's psyche.
Maybe Charles' notions would have proved truthful - harmony between man and mutant. Living together without the need of violence, hatred or fear. A nice idea, but Erik had come from the camps in Poland with the thoroughly learned lesson that what people did not understand, they feared. And fear invariably spawned hatred, and both of those sparked violence. A vicious cycle that was started off the moment a foetus formed in the womb.
Thus he had steered clear of pretty designs, instead choosing to believe a war was coming. He had prepped both himself and his children for it as best he knew how.
Who could've known how all this would turn out in the end? Who could've known the war he dreaded would come so abruptly, or take such a turn? Who could've known that trying to improve his daughter's powers would affect her so harshly?
Erik didn't deal with whatifs. So, instead, he simply tried not to lose himself too much in his grief.
{SCRITCH}
What was that?
{SCRATCH}
His head jerked up just in time to see a figure sink down on the floor far below where he sat. It drooped, as though the rain were battering rather than refreshing it, and Erik suppressed the urge to sneer and turn away when it rested its head back against the bus' hide and revealed its face.
Rogue opened her eyes, though he hadn't made a sound, and regarded him solidly.
There was something about her gaze; something... indefinable that caught Erik's attention, and he paused to stare down at her, meeting her strange dark eyes with his own. She had a haunted look about her, and her stare seemed to bore right through him. It was unnerving, and much to his chagrin he found himself turning away first.
"You're so sad..." came the husky whisper.
Erik grunted. "I think I have a right to be."
"... Yeah..." She blinked, and droplets fell from her eyelashes. "You're not impressed by the rain." Again, not a question but a statement. Then, "Why're you doin' this? Really? Why didn't ya'll just go back where ya'll came from, instead of helpin' us out like this? I *know* it weren't really 'cause Kurt asked you to."
Erik glanced at her, but didn't question how she knew. "I'm making up for lost time."
The double meaning wasn't lost on her. She nodded. Then she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, steadying herself with cool, misty air. Her face wore a tense expression, and Erik watched her despite his brain telling him it was discourteous to do so.
This was the girl that had replaced Wanda in Pietro's mind, and that fact alone sparked a tendril of dislike in his own mind.
"Shouldn't you be with your new brother?" he asked, not caring how he sounded.
Rogue inhaled and exhaled deeply before answering. "Nah. S'easier not bein' so close to everyone."
At once, Erik felt a spike of guilt against his own dislike. "Ah, yes. I, uh, heard about your augmentation." He looked to the middle distance, where rain obscured the view. Water dripped off his nose and collected in his wrinkles, reminding him once again that, despite all his power, all his dreams, all the technology at hand keeping him young, his spirit was still very much that of an old man. "Our jailer was rather loose-lipped."
"A Jamie?"
"Why yes. But how did you - "
"Kid never did know how to keep his mouth shut."
"You've met him, then?"
"Met one of him. Nice enough, but a bit too full on in the 'I-hate-humans' arena. Thought a lot of you, though. That's how we got to Mutie Town in the first place, followin' him as he spouted prophecies 'bout Pietro bein' the son of their messiah."
Erik sighed, dropping his gaze. "I didn't exactly live up to their expectations on that front, did I?"
Rogue looked like she might've shrugged, had she thought it worth the effort. "You ain't no god," she said simply. "You're just a man. A man who's seen an' done too much, at that. They're the ones who raised you on that pedestal. Ya'll never climbed there." She paused to take another deep breath. "Plus, you're in mournin'. Ain't nobody on this whole damn planet's at their best when they got grief on their shoulders."
Erik shuffled in place, but somehow couldn't bring himself to pay her a compliment. "I never realised such settlements still existed down here on Earth."
"Live an' learn." She winced when a high-pitched, joyful squeal sounded from somewhere, and massaged her temples.
Erik watched her, frowning. "Do you see yourself as Pietro's sister?" he asked bluntly.
Rogue didn't seem at all surprised by the question. "Honestly? I don't know anymore. I... Wanda *is* in here." She tapped the side of her head. "It's like... I feel like an echo of her. A memory, almost. I know things about her - things only she knew - an' when they pop into my head, it feels like I *am* her. An' then I think I'm Pietro's sister for real. But then, some part of me knows I'm not. Not really. An' I have to remind myself that I'm me, Rogue, not Wanda. It's... it's confusin', is what it is. 'Specially with everybody else's thoughts crashin' about in here, too. Don't nobody know how to think quietly no more?"
Erik surveyed her for a moment, calculating. Then he removed his helmet and expended a small amount of his own power to send it down to her. "Put it on," he said simply. "Charles Xavier, the world's greatest telepath, couldn't get through that thing. You're no telepath, but it should still grant you a degree of privacy in your own head."
Rogue looked astonished and gingerly took the helmet, running light fingertips over the metal like she was afraid to touch it properly. "But it's yours..."
"I can make another." Erik waved a careless hand and propped his chin on his fist.
Hesitantly, like he was going to whip it away again at any second, Rogue lifted the gift and slipped it over her head. A gasp escaped her lips and her eyes widened briefly. "It's so... quiet all of a sudden."
"It won't do anything about stealing people's powers if you're too close, nor their thoughts if you actually touch them," Erik warned.
"But it's made things so... quiet," Rogue breathed appreciatively, and turned her face up to him. She looked rather ridiculous with only a sliver of pale peeking through the front, and the rest of the helmet swamped her, but the look of intense gratefulness moderated it considerably.
Erik met her eyes for a full few seconds, and then broke the contact; the first to turn away yet again.
Rogue stared at him a moment longer before doing likewise, and they stretched out their stares to encompass the hazy, far-distant horizon.
"Ro-Ro," Erik whispered after a while, voice barely audible over the thrum of raindrops on dry, hard-packed earth. "It has a nice ring to it."
*******************
{DRIP}
{PING}
He snorted in his slumber, too tired to sleep deeply; still in that haze of half-asleep and half-awake, but not nearly lucid.
He couldn't be awake if he was hearing such a gentle rain. Rain no longer existed without killing. He had been there when the bayou started to dry - he saw it with his own eyes, before the Gulf rebelled on the City, plunging it underwater in one freak storm during the Hurricane season.
{*BOOM*}
Remy sat bolt upright when lightning slashed across the sky, staring incredulously at the rain that sluiced from the heavens like all the Angels were crying simultaneously. It fell in sheets, causing the streets of the ghost town to turn to mud - mud! - while beautiful, savage thunder raged overhead, the trees dancing in the wind.
Rain.
*Rain*!
Running out into the street, forgetting he was wearing his only set of clothes, forgetting he was in Colorado near the mountains and that it was not a pleasant temperature to get soaking wet in, he gave an exuberant shout and lifted his hands to the sky.
The rain answered, filling his mouth, his nose, his eyes and his cupped palms with life-giving water. Pure water - not acidic or poisonous like so much other liquid.
"Notre Pere qui etes aux cieux...Merci![5]" he murmured, laughing in the middle of the muddy street like a raving lunatic.
For the first time in four years, Remy LeBeau was happy to be alive.
*******************
To Be Continued...
*******************
[1] Movie. Wrestling match. 'Nuff said.
[2] _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ side-fling.
[3] As in, six feet under. Thank you for that wonderful phrase, Greg.
[4] Paraphrased from the Alex Corda version of _Thief of Bagdad_. The original line was "Wind! WIND! BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..."
[5] Our Father, who art in Heaven... thanks!
On a lighter note, I found out Fox Kids UK is playing Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors on late night scheduling. Yay, 1980s Golden Age cartoon sci-fi. I love 80s cartoons. My Little Pony, Jayce, Care Bears, Moondreamers, Charmkins, Ulysses 31, Sylvanian Families – the stuff I was raised on. Just as a point of interest, does anyone else remember this show? Or any other good 80s cartoons I failed to mention here? Tell me in reviews! I like reminiscing.
Nessie6 ~ Gambit, yes. Romy… don't think so, but from the way it's written that could be open to interpretation. Quite honestly, Romy bores me. Back in the early 90s when the original cartoon series got me hooked on X-Men, I would squeal in fangirlish glee whenever a smidgen of Romy appeared, but now… meh, it's been done to death. Originality is the key. And yes, that was Warren.
Rurouni Tyriel ~ New Mutant goodness? Gimmie! *Cracks whip*
Yuki ~ Your review is greatly appreciated, Yuki. As for the meaning behind 'wotcher', I always understood it as a truncated version of 'what are you?' or 'what have you?' Basically, what's up? How are you? Are you okay?
Gerri ~ Indeed, you have knocked the Grasshopper vs. Magneto scenario squarely on the noggin. I applaud you for that. And you're very good at articulating your ideas, so don't get any notions to the contrary, y'hear?
Lady Iapetus, Roving Wanderer ~ Got it in one. You can thank Klutz for that little side-fling. *Sniff* I wish they're release Inuyasha in the UK.
Hootild ~ Yes, Remy has poor-but-sexy English. I'd take his most wandering of wandering Cajun accents over Brummy drawl any day. For anyone who doesn't know, Brummy basically means Birmingham (the English variety). Can't stand the bloody accent, or anything remotely like it. Which isn't so good, since I live smack bang in the middle of Midlands Accents Ground Zero, and my father is Wulfrunian (vaguely like Birmingham accent). Honestly, I hurry past people in the supermarket biting my tongue so I don't shout at them and show myself up. Ugh, ugh, ugh…
DemonRogue13 ~ The Ragin' Cajun is in da house! Sorry, couldn't resist.
Ezrajade ~ Again, the New Orleans trivia was from Klutz. What I wouldn't give to visit the place and see it for myself, though…
Tenshiamanda ~ So if Remy's your second favourite, then who's your actual favourite mutant?
UnknownSource ~ We see a lot more of Wolfsbane and Peter in this chapter, so I hope they continue to endear themselves to you. Rogue, too, though not because she's popped it. Oops, said too much…
Cheesy Monkey ~ A crazed muppet? And how, pray tell, is this different from a normal muppet? Hee hee, that reminds me of something Hank McCoy said in an old comic I won't look out right now. Somebody screamed when they saw him and called him an animal, to which he replied, deadpan – "The name is Beast, my dear lady, not animal. Animal is a muppet."
Yodelbean ~ I blame you that I've been walking around proclaiming things to be 'mightily befrigged' lately. But yes, it is indeed prodigious that my dissertation survived. No way in hell am I going to go around collecting all that data again. Thirty five-year-old children to be interviewed in a single afternoon… *shudders* ICU? I shall bring you flowers.
Yma ~ To be sure, our ficcery will wrap up soon enough. You're excited and you already know what happens? Hmm. Shhh about the 'extras'. Don't want to spoil the surprise, now, do we?
Ice Princess ~ Uniqueness rules the day! I get called unique a lot. I get called special, too. Hmm, I'm sensing a pattern here… No, I didn't fall off the face of the earth, just over a vacuum (seriously, I broke my little toe for the third time since last Summer).
Ambrosia ~ Arschgesicht is a real word. My Grandmother uses it all the time. I think it's more translatable to 'your face looks like a bum', 'you have an ass for a face' than actually 'butthead', but that seemed one people would be more likely to understand. See above for my feelings on Romy. Justice League deserves no ridicule! Apart from the fact that it might be a reason behind why XME got cancelled, it's well-made and has great scripts and voice-work. I like that show. Granted, 'A Savage Time' pissed me off greatly because of the prevalent negative German image (though they did redeem themselves with the line I can't quite remember bu ran akin to 'We're not evil'), but the second season makes me feel better. Phil LaMarr rocks my socks. He voices Green Lantern and Virgil Hawkins of Static Shock, another show I like.
AerinBrown ~ I know I'd wait for the next bus if that one came to my stop. "Uh, no, it's okay. I'll wait for the 543…"
The Phantom ~ Spoons are evil. Nothing else to it. Sporks are better. I found a great phrase akin to the picnic basket idiom the other day, by the way. 'A few tinnies short of a six pack'. And yes, poor Alvin. *Straightens Alvin's hat from where Phantom squashed it with patting*.
*******************
Thirty-seventh Fragment ~ Cloudburst
*******************
"Y'know what?"
"No. What?"
Kitty pressed one hand against the glass, almost as if she was watching Mutie Town dwindle away beneath them. Beside her, Rogue's face was blank, but her dark eyes were quick and discerning over and around the new mutants crammed aboard the bus.
There were around thirty of them, all told. Some sat, some stood, some clung to the walls and ceiling as only mutants could. Of all those recognisable by name, only Bairn had come along for the ride. Layla, Scry, Sneak et al had elected to stay behind with Grasshopper, leaving the rest to choose as they would.
Rogue still wasn't sure about them, herself. There was a desperation about these people that pressed against her brain, and she gritted her teeth against the mental onslaught that came form being in such close quarters with so many living, breathing bodies. Crude psychic shielding of her own untutored design stood around the core of her mind, but still she was subject to many thoughts, dreams and memories she really didn't want.
So it was that, when Kitty suddenly spoke, Rogue was more than willing to indulge in the distraction.
Kitty, with Hope nestled in her arms, sighed and caressed her baby girl. Hope was grizzling, but seemed peaceful enough, considering. "I feel sorry for them. They're like the Last Stand, y'know? Grasshopper and the other who stayed behind - they feel like they've got to stay there, just... just in case somebody needs them. Imagine, being trapped like that in a place like that."
Rogue nodded. "But it was their choice. They chose to no to come with us."
Curiously, Kitty shook her head. "Did they? I'm not so sure anymore." She sighed again and wrapped Hope a little tighter. "Rogue, what happened?"
"Excuse me?"
"Life used to be so simple. I thought this trip was supposed to make things better for all of us, not more complicated. Fates, internal politics, this weirdo Magneto and his goons - I don't like them, by the way."
"Me neither, but don't say that too loud. One of 'em might hear."
Kitty bobbed her head. "That Wolfsbane creeps me out, especially. She just so... so..."
"Wild?" Rogue tapped the side of her head. "I bumped into her earlier. Her mind's all jumbled an' half-feral. A mess."
"Why does that not surprise me? No, I shouldn't say things like that. I mean, we don't, like, know why she's the way she is. Come to think of it, we don't know much about *any* of those guys."
"Other than they tried to kill us over Pietro?"
"Other than they killed us over Pietro."
Rogue looked over her shoulder to where the cluster of Acolytes were huddled together a few seats back. Magneto was absent from their midst, since he was outside directing the now-flying bus.
"There's somethin' odd about the one in the gaudy suit..." she said after a moment. "What's his name - Human-Spider[1]? His mind don't quite ring true, an' I kept getting' flashes of memory from him durin' the fight."
"Like what?"
"Family stuff, mostly; this girl with red hair, college, some strange images of spiders. Kinda freaky, but no more than any of us, I suppose." She gritted her teeth, and her voice dropped to a whisper, lest someone else hear her. "But the weird thing is... keep this under your hat, but I don't think he's a mutant."
"Say what? With those powers of his?"
"Powers or not, he don't... don't..." She searched for appropriate words. "He don't feel right."
Kitty frowned. "So what is he, then? Human?"
Rogue glanced at Alvin sceptically. "Maybe," she allowed, and then sighed. "I dunno. Maybe he's an alien from another planet. Do you think ol' bucket head knows?"
"What? About him being an alien?"
"Wiseass."
Kitty smiled thinly and shook her head. "Doubt it. And I don't think we should tell him. There may be nothing to it, and it's not really our place, y'know?"
Rogue nodded and fell silent, watching Mutie Town fall into the hazy distance and wondering how long their journey would last from here.
*******************
Ariel gulped.
Somehow, he'd become separated from the people he knew, and now someone they'd been fighting with previously was attempting to become friendly.
Very, *very* friendly.
"No hard feelin's, eh?" she said. "All *is* in love an' war, y'know. An' t' me, they seem mighty close together." One talon unzipped his jacket, and her hand snuck inside to feel his shirt and the chest underneath.
Ariel tried to escape through the wall at his back. "I'm only twelve," he said, and grasped for something to deflect her attentions, landing on the hated nickname that had kept him alive before. "A water-baby..."
"Time ye became a water *man*, then," she said, leaning in to kiss him.
A flash of pain. Wolfsbane looked up to the source, drawing back her claws...
Ah yes, Dazzler, looking properly indignant. But what else was to be expected from such a proper little miss? Red, jagged letters spelled out her message
HOW DARE YOU!?
Wolfsbane lowered her hand and smiled amiably, which didn't do much to hide her fangs. Then she sat up, brushed herself off and patted Ariel playfully on the head.
"Just havin' a bit o' fun," she replied, voice muted by Dazzler's constant sound-dampening field. She met the other girl's challenging gaze, quite aware of many eyes on the two of them - one pair of them Spider's.
Dazzler narrowed her eyes, and the words faded. Only the brightly glowing dancing light motes betrayed her anger still, and she turned on her heel to move both herself and Ariel to another seat.
As Ariel, still cowering, glanced back over his shoulder, Wolfsbane winked and jumped onto Dazzler's back, eager to prove who was the dominant female once and for all.
Dazzler hit the deck with a meaty thump. A burst of light spewed from her open mouth. Glowering, she swung around and clocked Wolfsbane once on the side of the head, getting a bloodied hand for her troubles.
A tattered sleeve dangling from her lips, Wolfsbane grinned down at her teammate, then made a choking noise as a strong pair of hands grabbed the scruff of her neck and hoisted her into the air.
Logan brought his face close, ignoring the snarls and flying spittle. "No fightin'," he said simply. "Had enough of that a'ready."
Wolfsbane growled, top lip rippling in as threatening manner as his ever could. "Don't get involved where your ain't wanted, Pops."
{SNIKT}
A long silvery claw poked tellingly at the side of her neck, and she winced, trying not to move as it pressed against her jugular.
"Whatcha do on your own turf don't bother me none, kid. But so long as you're on this here bus, y'tow the line, understand? Else me an Mr. Pointy [2] here get real up close an' personal with y'insides."
Wolfsbane made a noise that could've passed for an affirmative. She was promptly dropped like a sack of potatoes.
Dazzler smiled smugly, getting to her feet and leading Ariel away to the proverbial safer waters.
Wolfsbane snarled, and made as if to huck a gob after them, only stopping when she caught Logan's eye again. She swallowed the saliva, grumbling profusely, and made her way to sit at the opposite end of the bus where she could maybe get a little peace. People moved aside as she passed.
A droplet of thin, gauzy webbing fluttered to her feet. She looked up to where Spider was hanging upside-down from the roof, cocking a jaunty grin his way and only shrugging when he ignored it.
A hand jutted into the aisle, catching her wrist. She might have snarled, might even have bitten it off had the feel of Logan's fingertips not still been fresh and tingling on her skin. So instead she simply looked at the owner, curling her lip in disgust when she saw it was one of Quicksilver's little buddies.
The pale girl had haunted eyes. She stared at Wolfsbane with something akin to pity. Needless to say, that didn't go down so well, and the lycanthrope jerked her wrist away, growling.
"What're *you* lookin' at, skunk-head?"
"He's taken."
The words startled her. She blinked a second before answering. "What're yeh talkin' about?" she demanded - though somehow she already knew, and didn't need the subtle gesture to the figure on the ceiling.
"He was taken long before you met 'im," the pale girl said. "Lost his heart a long time ago, an' nuthin' you do will ever make him yours, Rahne."
Wolfsbane started, taken aback by the use of her real name; her true name, the name she'd given up the day Magneto gave her a new chance of life on Asteroid M.
Then her anger returned and she leaned forward, placing a hand on the rail and invading the pale girl's personal space. "The name," she whispered fiercely, "is Wolfsbane."
The pale girl didn't even flinch or draw back. She just stared with those sad eyes of hers, and suddenly Wolfsbane couldn't bear to be near her anymore. It was abrupt, a snapping of barriers, like those troubled eyes could suddenly see past her exterior. They saw past the half-shifted form and wild instincts - everything she'd been left with the when the mob led by her own father cast her out as an abomination and left her to die on a mountaintop. She had become all external, refuting the internal, but those eyes, so loaded with pity, dragged it kicking and screaming back into the light.
Wordless, she drew back and stalked away, conscious of the gazes she drew, but sparing a glance only for the gaudy figure suspended from the roof.
He didn't even acknowledge the look.
She plonked herself down with a growl that might have been a sob, had it not been so ferocious and absolutely savage.
*******************
In the corner of the bus, as far away from Magneto as possible, Logan plopped back down next to Alvin and Pietro.
The boy was covered from head to toe in a ratty blanket, and lay against the battered wall, looking little more than a pile of rags. Occasionally he whimpered to himself, or whispered soft words. He seemed to be sleeping.
Logan cast him a sidelong glance after watching the irritable wolfgirl find a new seat. That was needed watching, but his attention was divided between her and his own.
She didn't even stand a chance.
He pulled Alvin to one side and nodded at Pietro. "Kid's gonna get better, ain't he?"
"With time," Alvin sighed. "I fear the road may be long and hard. Yet, if I have learned anything from my Goddess - and this trip - then it's that love heals all things, and Pietro certainly has more than enough of that in his friends and new family."
Logan snorted, letting Alvin know exactly what he thought of *that* idea.
"Come now, my friend," Alvin smiled. "You of all people should be agreeing with me."
"Don't see why. I got my healin' factor, and I ain't never had much love. I got along fine, though."
"Did you? You may not be mad, my friend, but I can see that you're not being entirely truthful. I don't think I'd be wrong in saying that the cuts on your mind may have healed, but the scars remain, and that they inhibit you greatly." He shrugged. "The children love you as a father, but that's not enough. Perhaps one day you'll know the love of another again, and then all will be as it should."
"Yeah, suuuurree," Logan drawled, folding his arms and propping his feet on the chair in front of them. "I'd like to hear your theory on that one, preacher. Who'd be interested in this old hermit? Nah, been on my own too long now to travel that path again. Got no time for gettin' twitter-pated."
Alvin gave a furtive smile, and looked pointedly in Raven's direction.
Logan followed his gaze. Then he grumped again, mumbling something that sounded like "Yeahrightwhatever".
The zealot's smile did not abate.
Pietro shivered. Alvin broke off smiling to tend to the boy. He wasn't cold, but seemed to have picked up the habit every time an unwelcome thought came to him. Alvin wasn't blind to how Rogue twitched or looked around whenever the erstwhile speedster engaged in shuddering, but chose not to comment.
Logan folded his arms and settled back to watch Magneto's goons chunter amongst themselves. Or not, as the case may be. Their group seemed disjointed, with nobody talking to anybody else if they could possibly help it, and few words being exchanged with anyone else around them, either. Wolfsbane in particular seemed to have the verbal equivalent of a brick wall around her, with people actually looking away, or else glowering in her general direction rather than speak.
Ariel was sat near them. He looked solidly at the floor, avoiding everyone as best he could. Somehow, he'd been separated from the rest of their party in the scuffle to climb on board the bus, and now he looked decidedly uncomfortable with his placing, fiddling with the zipper on his jacket and biting his scaly little lips until Logan was sure they would bleed.
Sighing to himself, the gruff mutant looked out of the window at the countryside streaking past. He wondered how long it would be before they reached the Lands of New Hope, or whatever it was Ororo was calling her turf, now.
Ororo.
The pang that thought elicited was sharp and intense, and Logan winced despite himself. Ororo had been his friend for a long time, and it hurt to think that they might not reach her before she... before she died.
Death.
Such an alien concept to him, and yet so familiar. Death was a long way from Logan's doorstep, and yet every day he seemed to come across it, step over it, walk through it, breathe it in. It was a part of the world now, just like the sky, the water, or the air.
_Hold on, 'Ro. Don't you dare die 'afore we get there._
*******************
Seer crouched outside the door. He jumped up when the human woman known as Maive emerged. Her clothing was simple but meticulously clean, as befitted one nursing the ailing.
"How is she?" he asked, thick tail swinging in agitation.
Maive sighed and folded her hands in a nervous gesture. "She's getting weaker, and she refuses to just rest, even though she can't leave her bed now."
"Can't leave her bed?" Seer's eyes widened. "Is it... that bad already?" He looked at the floor. In what his life had become, Ororo was a pillar. She was his mainstay, his ageless strength. That someday she would be gone was not a new concept, but in those short words from a flustered nurse they hammered home as they had never done before. "I had no idea..."
"She's very frail, Seer, though you wouldn't know it the way she pushes herself. She's insistent about her microclimate, or something, and it was all I could do to get her to take the sleeping pills without crawling away."
He allowed himself a small smirk at Ororo's stubbornness, but his eyes were troubled, and he swallowed hard. "Can I... can I see her?
Maive chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she sighed. "For a few minutes, yes. The pills are only just taking effect, so she'll be drowsy, and I don't want her overexerting herself any more than she has to." She pushed open the battered bedroom door and stood aside for him to pass.
"Thank you, Maive."
She nodded, turning her face away, but he didn't miss her distressed mutter. "Goddess keep us all..."
The bedroom had been ransacked long ago, yet the gilt on the wall panelling was still intact, and it held a ghostly aura of sumptuousness. Almost like a room remembering, really. The bed was a four-post variety, left there only because it was too difficult to move, and Ororo looked tiny and fragile in the centre. Her white hair, spread liberally across the pillow, gave the impression of a ghoul, and her thin, wan face didn't little to alleviate the notion.
"Seer?"
"I'm here." He crouched by her side and carefully stroked her withered hand. She seemed to have aged since he saw her this morning, and his chest grew tight at her ragged breathing. He had to be swift, before the drugs took effect. "Ororo, I had another Vision. A visual one. Ororo," he leaned in close as he eyelids flickered, "they're coming."
"They are?" Whether she fully understood or not was unclear, but she smiled. "Then... maybe all is not lost, after all... The microclimate, Seer. I must... fix... the microclimate... for the plants..." Her hand went limp even as she spoke, and her breathing balanced out a little as she slept.
Seer stood up, replacing her arm beneath the covers. He stroked her head, talons incongruously large and powerful against her stark white hair and worried brow. "Sleep, now. They'll be here soon. They're coming to help you."
He glanced out of the window at the darkening sky. It threatened rain - maybe even a storm. The oppressive air hereabouts looked ready for it, and he stroked her hair once more as she shivered.
*******************
Peter frowned. Out of almost everyone on the bus, he had been the only one really watching Magneto outside. He had been doing so more out of a need to ignore the two female Acolytes than out of actual concern or interest, but now he was beginning to wonder. Beads of sweat had developed on their leader's brow, and he was beginning to look strained, like something was wrong.
"Uh, sir," Peter called out, twisting to the floor and leaning out of the broken window, "are you okay?"
Magneto opened his eyes a fraction. "Storm's brewing," he grunted. "Some electromagnetic interference. Nothing I can't handle. At the moment, anyway."
Peter, thinking it best not to distract his leader any further, fell silent and moved back into the bus.
He nearly yelped in shock when he saw that someone had joined him.
A little girl, covered in green scales, peacock-blue feathers and a wide grin was looking up at him curiously.
"Uh... hi," he said, unsure of how else to respond to this strangest of children.
"Hi," said the kid. "Name's Daisy. What's yours?"
"Uh, um," he said, intelligent to the last.
"'Uh-um'? What's yer real name?" she insisted with a bluntness that was almost shocking.
"Spider-Man."
"Don't play games with me."
He blinked at her, and then smiled in spite of himself. "Peter."
"'At's better." 'Daisy' cocked her head to one side, making her feathers rustle.
Some distance to his left, Peter heard Wolfsbane growl something unintelligible, and made a quick decision to hustle the little girl further away from his teammate.
Daisy squeaked, but greeted his administrations with a curious blink when he lifted her into the crude, hastily constructed hammock he'd strung from the ceiling. Her voice was exceptionally young sounding, but her tone was infected with a sort of maturity that made him wonder just what horrors she'd seen in the world while he'd been sleeping on Asteroid M.
"S'funny, you don't look like a Peter." She pawed at his mask, which was torn and battered, but still clung to most of his face like some determined limpet, refusing to let go and give up the ghost. "I heard the others calling you Spider-Man, but I knew it weren't your real name. Y'know, before. During the big fight?"
"You were there?" Now it was Peter's turn to be surprised, and he blinked under his mask as Daisy nodded.
"My Mommy was the one fighting you. That's her over there, an' my sister Robyn, an' my brother Kurti, an' my other brother Pie-Pie, an' my big sister Rogue..." She pointed to each in turn. Peter drank them in.
These folk were a family unit? They didn't look like it. Well, except for the blue woman and furry boy who'd kicked his spidery butt - what had Daisy called him, Kirri? Carrot? They looked like they might be related, but the others were all completely dissimilar.
Then again, if there was one thing he'd learned from mutants, it was that you couldn't go by appearances.
Daisy went on, oblivious to the fact that she was divulging secrets and identities to an erstwhile enemy. "That over there is Logan - he's my Fairy Godfather. He found me an' made me new clothes." She scraped at the mud caking her overalls and gave a deep, heartfelt sigh. "But they's all dirtied up an' torn, now."
"What about that man?" Peter gestured to the robed figure cradling Magneto's son. "Is he your, uh... father? An uncle, perhaps?"
Daisy gave a short laugh and kicked her feet to make the hammock swing back and forth. Good thing his webbing was strong, an outlying part of his brain mused idly. "No, silly. That's Alvin. He's a zeh.... a zeh-lot. He comes from the Goddess' Lands. There's lotsa peoples like him there - peoples with no powers."
"The place we're going?" Peter looked on the rumpled, middle-aged human with new eyes. "More humans survived? Well I'll be..."
He transferred his gaze to the last of the close-knit group Daisy seemed a part of. It was strange, how that motley party stood out against the horde of Mutie Towners like a sore thumb. It wasn't anything like their unity, but a sort of camaraderie surrounded them - even Magneto's boy. Like they'd seen and done too much, but been through it together, and so took solace in their shared pain.
Daisy followed his gaze. "That's Kitty an' Baby Hope. She don't see so good, but Kurti helps her." She leaned forward conspiritally. "I think he *likes* her."
"Does she like him back?" Might as well find out all he could about these people. Who knew, maybe the information would be useful - and besides, it helped to pass the time in the stuffy, cramped space. He had a suspicion Magneto wouldn't be staying after he made good on his promise to the furry kid and got them all to the Goddess' Lands - wherever *they* were - safely, but he may as well so something constructive in the meantime, right?
Daisy looked suddenly sad. She stopped her kicking. "I don't know. Don't think so. She used to like Mister Lance, but he's dead now. Pie-Pie's sister kill't him at the big river."
The calmness with which she stated the demise startled Peter almost as much as learning that Wanda had taken a life before having her own snuffed out at the Mississippi Bridge. Could it be that there was actual credence to these people's story of her suiciding?
A glance at Magneto told him to shut up about any theory he might have. At least until they were on solid ground again, at any rate.
"Who's that boy?" Peter indicated the last of Daisy's party. "The one with the scales. Is he your brother, or something?"
"No, that's Ariel. He used to be a slave, he says. Got sold at an a... aw... awk-shun. But his owner died, an' Pie-Pie's sister made 'im make the big water wall onna bridge, an' then she died an' he joined us, an'... an'..." She caught Peter's strange look through the mask-hole over his left eye. "What?"
"You saw what happened on the bridge?"
"... Yeah..." Instantly, Daisy's tone turned suspicious, and she eyed Peter with something akin to unease at the sudden urgency in his tone. "Why?"
"Nothing, nothing. Just a theory I had." He waved her concern away - and then promptly fell out of his seat when the bus gave a sideways lurch.
Half the contents fell from their seats, squealing, and Daisy tumbled from the hammock to the floor faster than Peter could catch her and himself both. She rolled a little, coming to rest near Dazzler and getting tangled up in Ariel's limbs. Immediately, she angrily shook him off, leaving him looking hurt and dejected from yet another rejection at her hands.
"Get offa me, Ariel. No touchin', remember?"
"Yeah, I remember," he said in a doleful voice that reminded Peter of himself before he was bitten by a certain genetically altered spider on a school field trip - especially when in front of girls in the hall, and especially being made to look a fool of yet *again*.
_Poor kid,_ he had time to think, before the bus lurched again, descended a few feet, and then skidded to a halt on a long, deserted stretch of open wilderness.
While others were still picking themselves up, Peter swung into his hammock and vaulted to peer out of the window, straining to spot Magneto.
Seconds later, a fuzzy blue something was at his side competing for viewing space.
"What's going on? Why've we stopped?"
"There is a storm brewing," said Magneto, turning the corner of the vehicle's rear with arms folded and cape billowing in the sharp breeze. He cut quite the imposing figure. "There was too much electrical interference for me to keep the bus in the air any longer. At least, not safely," he added at Kurt's dark look, though his tone held a hint more challenge than apology.
"When can we set off again? Time is of the essence," the elf snapped in a very un-elf-like manner.
Magneto looked at the sky and shook his head. He seemed tired - ten times older than before, and Peter didn't fail to notice how his blue eyes snapped back and forth between them and the huddled bundle between Logan and Alvin. "Not for a good few hours - if even then. Your urgency is commendable, I'm sure - though I don't entirely understand why you wish to see this 'Goddess' at all. Still, I won't risk crashing this thing simply to shave a little time off your schedule. A few hours shouldn't be too much to ask for, should it? At a stretch, we can be off before dawn breaks."
He spoke as if the sky hadn't turned darker than night, and Kurt shivered before looking up and bobbing his head. "Fine, then. Just no funny business. I don't want to find out later that this is some elaborate ploy of yours to delay us for your own purposes..."
Peter hadn't even thought of that. He chanced a look at his leader, trying to gage his reaction.
Magneto's eyes flashed and green energy coalesced around them like a writhing snake. "Believe me, boy. If I truly wanted you dead, you would be eating dandelions by their roots right now [3]."
With that, he turned and swept away, going to perch on the roof where the wind would whip at both his cape and his soul a little as it picked up. Which wouldn't be long, judging by the roiling turn the heavens had taken. Clouds battered against each other, jostling for space along the gloomy airways.
Kurt sighed. Instinctively, Peter moved to pat the mutant on his shoulder.
Kurt flinched away, eyes filled with mistrust. Then, seeing the other boy meant no harm, they softened to a pale gold and became filled with leadership-anxiety once more.
"Don't sweat him. He's always been offhand, even with us, and he thawed us out - which we're hoping means he likes us."
Kurt's lips quirked a little, like they were trying to remember how to smile. "I know the feeling. One of my own is rather... abrupt when he wants to be."
"Let me guess - which is most of the time?"
"Ja." The curvature increased, and when a rumble of thunder sounded overhead, Kurt beckoned that Peter return inside with him. "No point in us getting struck by lightning if we don't need to, ne?"
"You're German?" Peter sounded surprised. He'd been unable to place lilting accent before, but the light smattering of conversation stirred old high school classes, flitting down halls and past classrooms that leaked foreign vocab in an effort to avoid a tardy slip.
"Born and bred. Not that I've seen my homeland in many long years. Your accent, on the other hand, sounds very familiar. I'd hazard a guess at... New York?"
"Yup. You lived there?"
"Survived is more like it. Actually, Robyn and I were rather near the city, but never actually within its boundaries. Although Logan may have travelled there since the virus..."
Peter blinked, confused. "Just you and, uh, Robyn was it? But what about the others? The little girl, Daisy - she was telling me about how all you guys are related..."
Kurt blinked slowly. Then he shook his head with a watery - if genuine - smile. "Ach, that's how she sees us, now. It's rather a convoluted story, actually."
"Hey, I ain't going nowhere," Peter shrugged. He hopped onto the back of a seat, much like Kurt himself was wont to do. "If you don't mind telling it, that is. Totally understand if you just tell me to bug off back to my own place. You don't really have much reason to like me, after all; what with me trying to, uh, beat you up and all..."
Kurt sighed and looked at Alvin. "To err is human, to forgive divine. You seem willing to forget that I actually beat you to the, uh, beating, so I should too."
Peter stiffened, and then relaxed when Kurt sat beside him, just across from Kitty and the strange, staring girl christened simply 'Rogue'. Her quick dark eyes unnerved him, and he shifted uncomfortably while she stared cold, incisive daggers into his back.
"Uh, yeah. Right. Gotcha."
Kurt settled down, and as the thunder rolled across the sky outside, he carefully outline to Peter all that had happened to him and his 'family' since that fateful day in Bayville when he heard someone crying for a lost friend in the dust.
Peter listened intently. And he learned.
*******************
Ariel looked solidly up. He'd been keeping his eyes skywards for quite some time.
"What's *your* problem?" demanded a voice to his left.
"The sky..." he murmured, distraction making him vague. "It's full of water."
He could feel it, calling him. His natural affinity attuned him to the extra moisture in the atmosphere, the tenuous half-promise of precipitation, so indistinct it was almost a dream. He was suddenly filled with such yearning and need he marvelled at how he could've missed it before.
So thirsty... and he'd been wetting his gills from the exhalations of the crowd with him. It wasn't enough.
And there was water - above him.
The need pulsed through him like the heartbeat of a giant.
*THROB*.
So close and so far...
*THROB*
So thirsty. So *dry*.
*THROB*
_Come to me..._
Ignoring the protests of those around him he pushed his way to the front of the walkway and climbed off the bus. He spread his arms, turned his palms skyward and *felt* the water out with every fibre of his being. He stretched himself, his body and his consciousness.
So far. So very far away, but closer all the time. He could almost touch it with his mind...
And then he fell. Darkness claimed him; swept him up into nothingness like a soft blanket of shadows and murk.
*******************
When he woke, he was on the ground outside and water was falling from the sky.
The others trailing behind him remembered this, vaguely, from the time before the plague. It was called 'rain'.
It was beautiful. There wasn't enough of it in this new, scarred world.
Ariel stripped off his coat, called the water to his neck and gasped, laughing.
"Whatizzit?" Daisy was demanding from somewhere inside the bus. "Whatizzit, Logan? Izzit dangerous?"
"Kurti! Kurti!" Robyn wailed. "I'm *scared*."
"It's all right, liebe. It's only rain."
And in a moment of supreme delight Pietro thrust his hands out the window to catch the falling drops. He was actually *laughing*. "Rain! *Rain*!"[4]
*******************
And in the lands of the Goddess, the people were amazed. They clustered by their windows to look at this strangest of phenomena.
Pure, unspoilt rain fell while the Goddess rested.
That had never happened before.
*******************
"You've never seen rain before?" Ariel was half amazed, half aghast as both Robyn and Daisy shrank away from the cool, refreshing downpour.
Daisy wrinkled her lip, while Robyn just buried further into Kurt's embrace. The elf hugged her tight and invited the other little girl into his arms, which she fled to with great haste.
Peter landed beside them and echoed Ariel's question, simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief as the rain bathed his cuts and bruises. Since the spider bite his healing properties had been vastly improved, but he was still human, and thus was still feeling the after-effects of their most recent tussle.
Kurt wrapped his tail around Robyn's wrist, as was his habit when she was scared. She clung to it like other children might a comfort blanket, but carefully kept her claws retracted to spare the delicate skin thereon.
"Ground Zero, remember?" Kurt nodded at both Peter and Ariel in turn. "We were hit the worst of all places with the virus, and then again with the antidote agents. As well as killing all the green, the chemicals so saturated the area that we never had any rainfall for four years. Thank God the water was piped in from elsewhere. I'm told it was the same in several places throughout the country - perhaps even the world. Wherever they pumped too much antidote basically became a new desert."
Peter blinked; reflecting on how close New York was to this 'Bayville' place. Was that what had happened to MJ? To Aunt May? Heck, was that how Jameson had gone out? Not in a blaze of glory, but with a whimper to a sickness created in a lab, or parched dry by clouds that would not come?
Suddenly, there was wetness on his cheeks that had nothing to do with the rain, and Peter turned his face toward the opened sky. "What did we do to the world?"
"A question we've asked many time, mein Freund." Kurt gave Robyn and Daisy a brief squeeze, and then guided them out into the falling water where Mutie Towners, outsiders and Acolytes alike were frolicking together, heedless of any and all boundaries they'd created between themselves.
"Here's another. Why?"
Kurt shrugged, peeling Robyn off one arm and tipping her chin heavenwards to let droplets plip and run through her fur. She blinked against it, fought him for a moment, and then stopped to let a slow smile spread across her face. It obviously wasn't half so bad as she'd thought.
Daisy peeped out, feathers quivering as they were pummelled, and blinked lizardine eyes at her giggling sister.
"I... I think I remember this stuff... Long time ago, though..." she murmured quietly.
Kurt smiled and pushed at them to go further out and join the others. Then he sighed and looked askance at Peter. "Fear. Blind hatred. Following the crowd. Who knows what really went on in the minds of those who spread the virus? I live from day to day wondering the same thing, but I've long since relegated myself to the fact that I'll never know. And in truth, I don't think I'd want to, either."
"Why?"
"Because 'evil' and 'the enemy' are so much easier to think of and accept when they're faceless. You give them fears, hopes, dreams - everything that makes us *us*, then you're letting yourself in for a whole new ball game of guilt."
"Considering we're about the same age, you sure sound a helluva lot more mature than me... Kurt, was it?"
Kurt nodded, but he didn't smile. "I didn't ask to be. I grew up quickly out of necessity - something I wouldn't wish on anybody else. Truth be told, you were probably better off up there in space. Asleep."
Peter nodded, swallowing his tears. "I think you're right. But then, if I had then we wouldn't be having this conversation, would we?"
Kurt blinked. "No, we wouldn't. And conversation is something I don't think I'll ever be able to give up." He looked out at the girls, and then abruptly thrust out a three-fingered hand. "Care to dance? It's been a long time since I last went puddle splashing."
"Uh..."
"Come on, you look like you could use some good old fashioned childishness." He waggled his eyebrows.
Peter pursed his lips, then took the proffered hand and raced out into the rain, whooping like he used to when he was just a little kid splashing Uncle Ben with his new galoshes.
Water flew, laughter accompanying it, as the contents of the bus engaged in a few simple pleasures courtesy of a rainy day.
*******************
Ariel laughed, loud and long. His powers called out, and he allowed them free rein, sculpting the rain around him into twirling streamers of water that danced and sang and swept through the air like ribbons. He kicked off his shoes, letting water caress his webbed feet and slide deliciously over his scales. Then he threw back his head, hair sopping, and opened his mouth to catch a few drops on his tongue, as children have always done during cloudbursts.
He continued this way for what seemed like an age, while the delighted noises of people around him caressed his ears and made his smile yet broader. They were *enjoying* the rain, and he stretched out a hand to arc yet more water over their heads in a refreshing deluge. Some squealed, but nobody told him to stop, and he raced among them, spraying all with small jets until he collapsed in a heap of happy giggles next to one of the bus' front headlamps, tired but blissful.
He fell to watching the others, in particular those he'd been travelling with the longest.
Ariel hadn't been quite sure what to make of these strange people when they first rescued him from Wanda. After all, he hadn't originally been part of their plans, and he wasn't sure they would've asked him to join them had he been happened upon selling his wares instead of trying to kill them. They'd been nice enough, but somehow he'd got the impression that there was a bond between them he couldn't hope to match. Something intangible that held them together, like invisible glue. He hadn't known his place, slinking between those special bonds, and had wondered after his own usefulness. After all, the way he'd been brought up, if you weren't useful, you were cast out. Got rid of. In some cases, even terminated.
Yet now, with rain cascading onto the dry earth and all of them smiling into what he'd done, he sighed with contentment. This was his calling. This was his power. This was his place. The plight of the Goddess had been explained to him in detail when they were locked up in Mutie Town, and he'd wanted to help her in hopes of finding his niche there.
It was difficult for him, a slave, to get used to the idea he didn't have to work for his living. He *wanted* to be valuable, which translated to roughly only one thing. And now he knew how he could be that one thing.
Rain.
He would make it rain in the Lands of New Hope.
He would make it rain, help plants like those abandoned by Alvin grow, and make the world green and lush again.
Someone plopped down next to the other headlamp, breathing heavily and with the last of a giggle on her lips. Ariel looked over, and then shifted away, his smile fading.
Daisy stared out at the others just as he had done, drinking in their faces and basking in their happiness. It was an easy thing to do, as well as an absorbing one, and Ariel took advantage of her preoccupation to slide noiselessly away.
When first approached by Daisy at the bridge, he'd thought she was extending the hand of friendship - which, to an extent, she was. She was the closest to him in age, and rather more tomboyish than she liked to admit. Anyone would think they made a good pair of friends, and Ariel had thought exactly the same thing.
Yet, quite suddenly Daisy had turned from him. They played when Robyn was around, indulging the youngest member of their tiny group; but ever since Mutie Town, when she once fell asleep pressed against his shoulder and slipped to his lap while they both slumbered, she'd been rather... odd. She refused to even let him grab her arm in a game of tag, and was downright rude if he ever tried anything so much as to hold her hand or shoulder.
So now it was that he actively tried to slip away, and cursed under his breath as her head snapped around and her pale eye landed on him.
"Ariel?"
"Hey, Daisy."
She sniffed, looking to the sky. "You do this?" It was a demand as much as a question, and he sighed, sitting back down in his place. "You make the water?"
"No, it was already in the clouds. I just called it down."
"There was water in the *clouds*? But clouds is jus' bits of... of... cloud," she finished lamely. "Cotton wool. Can't store water in cotton wool."
Ariel shook his head and extended a hand, allowing a small ball of water to float inches above his palm. "Clouds are water vapour, so high up you can't even *tell* they're water anymore." He sent the ball up into the air, and it hovered above the top of the bus, an insignificant speck against the backdrop of the storm. "Can you tell that's water just by looking at it?"
Daisy squinted. "Not really. So... all clouds is water?"
"Mostly. Except dust clouds, of course."
She wrinkled her nose. "Wise guy."
Ariel sighed, and turned his face heavenwards. The rain was cool against his scales, and he shut his eyes, letting it roll across the lids like miniature waterfalls. "Daisy," he said suddenly, "why don't you like me anymore? I thought we were supposed to be friends?"
"We are friends."
"Then how come you don't play properly anymore? You're the one who taught me how to play, but you don't follow your own rules. You won't let me touch you in tag, and I can't very well just keep tagging Robyn all the time. It's not fair on her with her little legs."
"When she runs on all fours she's just as fast as us. Maybe even faster."
"That's not the point."
Daisy didn't answer for a second, and Ariel chanced a peek at her.
She was sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, water having smeared all the dirt and grime on her overalls in greyish brown smudges. Her lizardine face looked thoughtful, and her gaze was unfocussed, staring at pebbles.
"Daisy?"
"You really wanna know?"
"'Course I do. Would I have asked if I didn't?"
She sniffed. "You ever heard of sex?"
That threw him, and for a second he goggled. He'd come across the adult practice before, yes. You couldn't live for so long next to Trader Dan's harem without seeing a few things children shouldn't really know. "Uh, yeah? But what's that got to do with anything?"
"My Pa used to do it." She paused, and then took a deep breath. "To me. Him an' his friends used to... do stuff. Logan tole' me not to think 'bout it no more, but you asked, so... Back in Mutie Town, I had a nightmare. Dreamt I was back home, with Pa an' his friends. Woke up with my face in yer lap. Got me all flibberty, an' then you kept tryin' to hold my hand... Dunno what made me think it. But I kept thinkin' you was after the same thing."
Ariel flinched. "But I'm only twelve."
"My brother was fourteen, an' *he* did it. An' I knew him since I was born. You... I still don't know so good. What's to say you ain't jus' after what they was allus after?"
Ariel frowned. He pulled himself upright. "You saw what happened on the bus, didn't you? When that Wolfsbane tried to unzip my shirt?"
"Yeah..."
"Did I look like that was what I was after? Did I look like I was enjoying myself?"
"No..." Daisy admitted.
"And she was *more* than willing. Daisy, I don't want anything to *do* with that stuff. Not yet. I just... I just wanna learn how to be a normal kid again. Not a slave."
She cut her eyes at him. "Truth?"
He laid a hand on his heart and raised the other, droplets glinting off the webbing stretched between his fingers. "Absolute truth. As far back as I can remember, I lived all my life doing what I was told by Trader Dan, thinking that one day I'd be sold, and then I'd go on to do what I was told by my new owner. I never got a proper chance to just be a *kid*. And that's all I want, now. I wanna be useful, yeah, but more than that, I wanna be the me I would've been if this whole stinking virus mess hadn't happened."
Daisy regarded him for a moment, and then her scaly little lips curved upward in a small smile. "Y'know, that's the mostest I ever heard you say all at once." She heaved herself to her feet and thrust out a hand. "You wanna go play splashin' inna puddles?"
Ariel didn't even hesitate. "*Hell* yeah!"
*******************
Erik sat on the other side of the bus' roof, Indian-style, trying to block out the sounds of happy laughter. So far as he was concerned, there was no call for laughter. So the sky had opened? So it had rained? So what? None of it helped against the ache threatening to consume his entire chest. He felt like he was in the throes of a permanent heart attack.
He would admit it to nobody, but his grief was still very great. His anger had diminished it before, but now that anger was gone, the sorrow had returned in full force.
And so he let his armour crack for a second.
He mourned.
He mourned for the child he'd sent to her madness and then her death through his own tampering. He mourned for the childhood he'd stolen from her. He mourned for the son he'd turned against him, and the bond he'd severed between his children in an attempt to achieve his own gains.
He'd thought he was making them better - improving their powers. He'd thought he was giving them a fighting a chance in a world that would no doubt despise them for what they were when Mutantkind was finally noticed and acknowledged. Charles had tried to convince him otherwise, and thus their own personal feud had sprung up; a clash of ideologies that set two friends at odds with each other because of what was at stake behind their words.
Erik didn't know what might have happened had Mutantkind not been introduced so suddenly and so forcefully into the world's psyche.
Maybe Charles' notions would have proved truthful - harmony between man and mutant. Living together without the need of violence, hatred or fear. A nice idea, but Erik had come from the camps in Poland with the thoroughly learned lesson that what people did not understand, they feared. And fear invariably spawned hatred, and both of those sparked violence. A vicious cycle that was started off the moment a foetus formed in the womb.
Thus he had steered clear of pretty designs, instead choosing to believe a war was coming. He had prepped both himself and his children for it as best he knew how.
Who could've known how all this would turn out in the end? Who could've known the war he dreaded would come so abruptly, or take such a turn? Who could've known that trying to improve his daughter's powers would affect her so harshly?
Erik didn't deal with whatifs. So, instead, he simply tried not to lose himself too much in his grief.
{SCRITCH}
What was that?
{SCRATCH}
His head jerked up just in time to see a figure sink down on the floor far below where he sat. It drooped, as though the rain were battering rather than refreshing it, and Erik suppressed the urge to sneer and turn away when it rested its head back against the bus' hide and revealed its face.
Rogue opened her eyes, though he hadn't made a sound, and regarded him solidly.
There was something about her gaze; something... indefinable that caught Erik's attention, and he paused to stare down at her, meeting her strange dark eyes with his own. She had a haunted look about her, and her stare seemed to bore right through him. It was unnerving, and much to his chagrin he found himself turning away first.
"You're so sad..." came the husky whisper.
Erik grunted. "I think I have a right to be."
"... Yeah..." She blinked, and droplets fell from her eyelashes. "You're not impressed by the rain." Again, not a question but a statement. Then, "Why're you doin' this? Really? Why didn't ya'll just go back where ya'll came from, instead of helpin' us out like this? I *know* it weren't really 'cause Kurt asked you to."
Erik glanced at her, but didn't question how she knew. "I'm making up for lost time."
The double meaning wasn't lost on her. She nodded. Then she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, steadying herself with cool, misty air. Her face wore a tense expression, and Erik watched her despite his brain telling him it was discourteous to do so.
This was the girl that had replaced Wanda in Pietro's mind, and that fact alone sparked a tendril of dislike in his own mind.
"Shouldn't you be with your new brother?" he asked, not caring how he sounded.
Rogue inhaled and exhaled deeply before answering. "Nah. S'easier not bein' so close to everyone."
At once, Erik felt a spike of guilt against his own dislike. "Ah, yes. I, uh, heard about your augmentation." He looked to the middle distance, where rain obscured the view. Water dripped off his nose and collected in his wrinkles, reminding him once again that, despite all his power, all his dreams, all the technology at hand keeping him young, his spirit was still very much that of an old man. "Our jailer was rather loose-lipped."
"A Jamie?"
"Why yes. But how did you - "
"Kid never did know how to keep his mouth shut."
"You've met him, then?"
"Met one of him. Nice enough, but a bit too full on in the 'I-hate-humans' arena. Thought a lot of you, though. That's how we got to Mutie Town in the first place, followin' him as he spouted prophecies 'bout Pietro bein' the son of their messiah."
Erik sighed, dropping his gaze. "I didn't exactly live up to their expectations on that front, did I?"
Rogue looked like she might've shrugged, had she thought it worth the effort. "You ain't no god," she said simply. "You're just a man. A man who's seen an' done too much, at that. They're the ones who raised you on that pedestal. Ya'll never climbed there." She paused to take another deep breath. "Plus, you're in mournin'. Ain't nobody on this whole damn planet's at their best when they got grief on their shoulders."
Erik shuffled in place, but somehow couldn't bring himself to pay her a compliment. "I never realised such settlements still existed down here on Earth."
"Live an' learn." She winced when a high-pitched, joyful squeal sounded from somewhere, and massaged her temples.
Erik watched her, frowning. "Do you see yourself as Pietro's sister?" he asked bluntly.
Rogue didn't seem at all surprised by the question. "Honestly? I don't know anymore. I... Wanda *is* in here." She tapped the side of her head. "It's like... I feel like an echo of her. A memory, almost. I know things about her - things only she knew - an' when they pop into my head, it feels like I *am* her. An' then I think I'm Pietro's sister for real. But then, some part of me knows I'm not. Not really. An' I have to remind myself that I'm me, Rogue, not Wanda. It's... it's confusin', is what it is. 'Specially with everybody else's thoughts crashin' about in here, too. Don't nobody know how to think quietly no more?"
Erik surveyed her for a moment, calculating. Then he removed his helmet and expended a small amount of his own power to send it down to her. "Put it on," he said simply. "Charles Xavier, the world's greatest telepath, couldn't get through that thing. You're no telepath, but it should still grant you a degree of privacy in your own head."
Rogue looked astonished and gingerly took the helmet, running light fingertips over the metal like she was afraid to touch it properly. "But it's yours..."
"I can make another." Erik waved a careless hand and propped his chin on his fist.
Hesitantly, like he was going to whip it away again at any second, Rogue lifted the gift and slipped it over her head. A gasp escaped her lips and her eyes widened briefly. "It's so... quiet all of a sudden."
"It won't do anything about stealing people's powers if you're too close, nor their thoughts if you actually touch them," Erik warned.
"But it's made things so... quiet," Rogue breathed appreciatively, and turned her face up to him. She looked rather ridiculous with only a sliver of pale peeking through the front, and the rest of the helmet swamped her, but the look of intense gratefulness moderated it considerably.
Erik met her eyes for a full few seconds, and then broke the contact; the first to turn away yet again.
Rogue stared at him a moment longer before doing likewise, and they stretched out their stares to encompass the hazy, far-distant horizon.
"Ro-Ro," Erik whispered after a while, voice barely audible over the thrum of raindrops on dry, hard-packed earth. "It has a nice ring to it."
*******************
{DRIP}
{PING}
He snorted in his slumber, too tired to sleep deeply; still in that haze of half-asleep and half-awake, but not nearly lucid.
He couldn't be awake if he was hearing such a gentle rain. Rain no longer existed without killing. He had been there when the bayou started to dry - he saw it with his own eyes, before the Gulf rebelled on the City, plunging it underwater in one freak storm during the Hurricane season.
{*BOOM*}
Remy sat bolt upright when lightning slashed across the sky, staring incredulously at the rain that sluiced from the heavens like all the Angels were crying simultaneously. It fell in sheets, causing the streets of the ghost town to turn to mud - mud! - while beautiful, savage thunder raged overhead, the trees dancing in the wind.
Rain.
*Rain*!
Running out into the street, forgetting he was wearing his only set of clothes, forgetting he was in Colorado near the mountains and that it was not a pleasant temperature to get soaking wet in, he gave an exuberant shout and lifted his hands to the sky.
The rain answered, filling his mouth, his nose, his eyes and his cupped palms with life-giving water. Pure water - not acidic or poisonous like so much other liquid.
"Notre Pere qui etes aux cieux...Merci![5]" he murmured, laughing in the middle of the muddy street like a raving lunatic.
For the first time in four years, Remy LeBeau was happy to be alive.
*******************
To Be Continued...
*******************
[1] Movie. Wrestling match. 'Nuff said.
[2] _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ side-fling.
[3] As in, six feet under. Thank you for that wonderful phrase, Greg.
[4] Paraphrased from the Alex Corda version of _Thief of Bagdad_. The original line was "Wind! WIND! BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..."
[5] Our Father, who art in Heaven... thanks!