X23 had not expected the night to be so crowded. Guards she had anticipated; security webs she had planned for; but unknowns wandering blindly through the farthest perimeter of her staging ground...

It was a desert. It was supposed to be deserted.

Despite her precautions, the unforeseen dog had caught her scent and nearly caught her as well. She had retreated to a rock outcrop, hidden by deep shadows and a slight breeze that blew towards her and away from the dog, which had had enough sense at least to recognize her as a predator and break off his pursuit. In any event she had not moved, had barely breathed, until it became clear that the girl, unlike the old man and the dog, was not going to leave.

Annoyed to the point of anger, she'd left her place in the shadows and crossed the rocky soil soundlessly. The girl had stiffened and begun to turn as if she sensed something, but then it was too late and she was caught.

"What are you doing here?" she hissed again. The girl struggled briefly, uselessly in her grasp. Taller than her captor, at least a few years older, she was stick-thin and not strong enough to break free. A butterfly trapped under a wolf's paw.

"I don't - I'm not doing anything," the girl rasped out. She had soldier's hair, cut short, cut almost to the bare skull, so it could never get in the eyes or be grabbed by an opponent. But her tattered green uniform stank of fear - the pervasive, lived-in fear of years, the kind of fear that crouched in corners of one's mind no matter how valiantly it was suppressed. Without her mask - soaked stiff with blood and therefore ruined, it had been abandoned in the desert - X23 could smell the fear clearly. "I'm not armed. Let me go!"

"Name," she demanded, jerking hard with the arm across the girl's throat. Hard enough to momentarily choke, not hard enough to cause permanent damage. She would get a satisfactory answer to one of her questions.

The girl struggled again, earning another sharp jerk across her throat. "Rachel," she croaked. Now her voice, too, bore anger.

Rachel. By force of habit and painful training, X23 flicked through the lists in her mind, the endless lists of potential targets that HYDRA had forced her to memorize. Unsurprisingly, Rachel-with-short-red-hair was not on any of them. Rachel-with-short-red-hair was not on the far less lengthy list of potential allies, either.

The sensible thing to do would have been to pop her hand claws and slit Rachel's throat with a flick of her wrist. Easy. Effortless. She was too close to her target to have it screwed up by an unexpected complication.

But something stayed her hand. Maybe it was her reluctance to do what HYDRA had ingrained within her. Maybe it was the undue influence of Wolverine. Maybe it was the fact that Rachel had been so afraid for so long.

And so had she.

"You smell like fear," she said roughly, releasing her hold on Rachel. The girl staggered forward, whirled around, faced her.

"You have nightmares about being locked in a white room," Rachel shot back, then clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes widening in visible surprise.

Abruptly, X23 became aware of a buzzing in her head - the persistant gentle, probing pressure of intangible fingers slinking through her brain. Telepathy. She snarled and snapped her psychic defenses up.

Rachel flinched as though she'd been struck.

The urge to let the girl live abruptly dried up and blew away as fury loomed in mercy's place. The fire of her rage licked along the paths of her nervous system, lighting the world in shades of stark black-and-white. Of predator and prey.

She popped the claws on her right hand and held her fist low, ready to swing up and into her opponent's torso. "Stay out of my head!"

Rachel took a step backward, bringing her hands up.

X23 felt a definite tugging on her leather jacket by dozens of invisble hands. Telekinesis.

She growled, low in her throat, and popped the claws on her other hand, waiting even in her anger to see what the girl would do. A telepath/telekinetic was no obstacle for a HYDRA assassin. She'd gut Rachel and move on. The scent of blood would bloom in the chill desert air; she could almost taste the seductive copper tang already, and it pushed her further to the edge of action and made her blind to the truth that she did know a telepath/telekinetic with red hair.

But then a yellow light very different from the watery stars flashed over the other girl's sick- orange boots and she realized that the roving security patrol had arrived at her position, probably alerted by the flare of mutant powers. The realization hit her like cold water, damping but not extinguishing the conflagration of her rage.

Training kicked in. The situation was changing rapidly. She had an EMP generator on her back, a mutant teenage girl in front of her, two armed guards almost within visual range, and a mission that could not go uncompleted. Four problems that had no immediate common solution at first glance. It took her less than a second to come up with it.

A solution. An obvious solution.

She sheathed her claws, took a quick step, shoved Rachel in the direction of the flashlight. And ran.

Startled, stumbling, Rachel cried out, "What -?"

The light instantly recentered squarely on her face, turning the red hair almost the same orange as the boots. Rachel put up a hand to shield her eyes at the same moment the guard shouted, "Freeze! Stay where you are!"

From her new hiding place among the rocks, tucked in a deep well of shadows that no flashlight could penetrate, X23 watched. The two guards surrounded Rachel, weapons leveled and aimed, barking orders that the bewildered girl followed without resistance. Handcuffs were snapped around Rachel's slender wrists and one guard prodded her forward with the business end of his weapon.

As the trio moved off into the darkness towards the base, she followed, hugging the shadows and keeping the generator from scraping the rock. She was satisfied in her training despite herself.

She was the best there was at what she did.

And she was going to save the world.