Age of Apocalypse: Shifting Times

by jenskott

In an alternative Age of Apocalypse WeaponX didn't rescue to Jean Grey from the pens. That simple fact changed the fate of many characters.

5. Collapse and Hope

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Age Of Apocalypse: Shifting Times

Author: Jenskott

Summary: In an alternate AOA, Weapon-X never rescued to Jean Grey from the pens. That single fact changed the world.

Notes: I regret the delay but real life and other fics got on the way. The next chapter will come sooner, I promise. Please, keep reading! And review!

Rating: PG-13.

Disclaimer: Sadly they belong to Marvel Comics.

Feedback: To jorgisimox@hotmail.com. Very cherished and appreciated and beloved. However English isn't my native language, therefore forgive my very obvious mistakes. Still I'll thank polite advice.

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Part 5. Collapse and Hope-

The creature didn't know what thing it was anymore. Its fragmentary memory recalled dimly a time of large forests with life stirring up in them. Massive trees and weird animals filled its world, and the animal spent its life in sleeping and patrolling its kingdom, looking for a daily meal or a mate for breeding. Its existence was nice and carefree, and the creature was glad and happy.

Then came the time of the pain. It recalled wandering across its wood when loud booms scarred the ground and big fires charred the trees. Humans trapped it. Bullets wounded its gigantic body, electricity singed its fur and clubs bruised its skin. Hurt and laughs and cruelty and more hurt. And the hovering, grinning face of another animal, except its fur was greyish-blue and that monster walked upright. It ignored what happened, but amidst the haze clouding its tiny memory it grasped one thought with stark clarity.

It had been harmed without mercy and with brutality, without motive and with cruelty. It had been beaten and scarred and flayed by humans. The same ones were now leading it callously to another jail.

And it was powerful. Way mightiest than it had dreamed of or cared for. It could make them pay. Yes, let them reap their sowing.

One of the Infinites was leading up to the animal into a bigger cage, and he frowned when a fearful howl, filled of hatred and ache and unquenchable rage, echoed behind of him. With a start he pivoted to face the monster, just in time of seeing a massive claw turning a blur of movement and slap his helmeted head.

The brutal momentum of the blow ripped off instantly his head and hurled it against a wall, where it splattered in a pulp of blood and marrow with shards of metal scattering over the floor.

The Infinites placed behind of him screamed, frightened out of theirs wits, and cocked theirs rifles, but the monster swept them with a swing of its muscular upper limb. Next it surged on the remainder guards and with a slash of its arms sliced asunder theirs bodies. The hatch was automatically shutting, but it rammed and slammed on the thick titanium layers until rendering them to shreds. It stormed out, free at last.

The watchers recoiled in fear. That hybrid of tiger and bear was a monster of seven-feet of height and one thousand three hundred pounds of weight. Its trunk-like frame was stout but sinuous and nimble, giving it great strength and incredible agility. Its limbs were long to run at high speed and thick to stand on his hinder legs, and they trembled with barely restrained rage and savagery. Its paws were very broad and powerful, with glistening claws, sharp like daggers and capable of shredding metal as sandpaper. Its long and bristly fur was dark brown with black stripes, and was still burnt and singed in many places. Its maws were opened, oozing bubbling foam and displaying its long and pointed teeth, including two saber-like fangs. And its eyes were bloodshed pools of hatred, gleaming with a choleric red glow.

The shell-shocked soldiers stumbled backwards. The bear-tiger smelt the scent of the flesh and the stink of the fear and lunged onwards. Rounds of bolts scorched its pelt and pierced its hide, but he was oblivious to them. Its immense fists shattered armors as eggshells, crushed bones as ripe fruit and shredded flesh as fabric. Arms swung to both sides smashing the Infinites on the heavily armored walls, and hurled around weighed men as torn rag dolls. Bullets, electric discharges and energy blasts hardly bothered it. They only succeeded in increasing cent-fold its fury and bloodlust.

Meanwhile, the animals trapped in theirs cages were staring with frozen horror that gory scene. They were downright frightened of the monster, knowing they could be its next preys. So they were hunched in the bottom of their murky and stinking prisons, hoping it didn't hear theirs low whimpers.

Havok pulled his motorbike in the kennel and watched with deep contempt and sickness the paltry soldiers' performance. He listened during seconds the cacophony of dying screams, growls, pleading cries and howls of raving and primal fury, and hopped off its vehicle.

Alex approached with large strides at the gruesome scene, staring all along to the experiment disembowel casually several soldiers and scattering their maimed limbs everywhere. He crossed severely his arms and glared the fight with a disdainful grimace.

"By the Dark Lord, I'm supposed to be Chief of Security, no of Animal Control." He snorted.

Of sudden the bear-tiger noticed of a new figure entering in its peripheral vision field. Its smell was foul but its nostrils didn't detect fear in it. It was a challenge. Adrenaline was pumped in its bloodstream, increasing its murdering instincts. The tiger rotated slowly its huge shape, leering at the man with malevolent eyes and curling its red-smeared lips with a snarl. It lunged on him.

Alex contemplated nonchalantly the bear charging with tiger-like speed, and he noted imperturbably the blotches of plasma smearing its maroon coat, the murderer glint of its fangs and the mixture of fresh blood and foamy saliva dripped out of its maws. He peered at the corpses piled and shook its head with a diffident air. It masked the inward satisfaction he was about of feeling, unchaining his power.

"Incompetents. If you want something well done..." He voiced dejectedly and flung his arms onwards, both fists linked. An itch coursed them, and shimmering ripples of golden plasma erupted out of them, hammering to the mutated beast with rather ground-crushing force to slam it on the opposite wall.

Havok stopped with one thought the stream of power flowing out of him and spared a glaringly stare at the nearest surviving Infinite. "How could possibly you be so incompetent? Am I supposed to do everything?" He spat.

"I'm sorry" The kennel jailer whined pitifully, huddling up on the floor.

"Sorry? SORRY? You-" The Havok's roar trailed off when sudden noises drew his attention. Sudden noises of an engine burning and wheels grinding on tough ground.

He turned to see to Jean Grey parking her own bike beside one column and getting down.

"Another ruckus, Prelate Summers?" She queried casually, tossing over her shoulders her rich red mane. "And provoked by another McCoy's hybrid, I see. Someone has to tell to the good doctor ties his pets."

He observed her, sauntering casually towards him with a nonchalant and whimsical stance, and curled his lips in barely repressed disgust. "Speaking about responsibility, Grey? Then I suppose you know where my brother was the last night and what he was doing."

"As a matter of fact he got bored to himself with paperwork until he couldn't keep open his eyes and then he retired to his quarters. And just in case of you want knowing, I was busy sorting out files. Why?" If Jean was shaken inwardly, she showed no outward signs at all. Nor a wavering in her stride, nor a blink, nor a faltering in her voice. His face was an unyielding mask. But Alex was aware of the truth.

"We were awaiting him two hours ago, but both of you were nowhere to be found, like always. One patrol has found to Northstar and Aurora in critical state in the Alphabet ward. But you knew it already, didn't you?"

She didn't flinch, answering swiftly and noncommittally. "No. I wasn't aware. Why?"

Alex chuckled with dark skepticism and narrowed his eyes in two sharp, gleaming slits. "Jean-Paul and Jeanne Marie are in coma and can't give away to their assailant. What luck to you and Scotty, right?"

"I don't understand what you... Look out!"

The warning cry came too late, with tragic outcomes. The mutant animal stabbed with its claws to Havok, leaving four long gashes zigzagging along his backside. Alex howled in pain and crumpled on the floor, at the mercy of the scarred, burnt and very enraged animal.

"Damn it!" Jean exclaimed, raising a telekinetic shield around Havok and lashing out to the beast with an invisible fist. The force blast struck down to the animal, and it focused its ravenous eyes at her. Exactly like Jean intended. "Run away, Alex."

"I... don't need... your help." Alex stuttered through gritted teeth as he struggled laboriously to stand up. His legs denied obeying, and he collapsed down newly. Strings of blood trickled out of his dry mouth.

"Excuse me but I'm not doing this for your sake, you know." She seethed. The animal pounced on her, but Jean rolled sideways, dodging its surge. Immediately she added her telekinesis to the momentum of its leap, shoving it in one tough column. The tremendous force of the blow dented and bent the pillar, and the roof quaked. "But for Scott's! Because your death would break his heart, who knows why!" She blurted.

A dance began between human and beast, between brain and primal fury. Jean sidestepped, dodged and ducked from its blows, punches, bites and slashes, with the skill of a trained athlete, fast and deft. But she couldn't last, avoiding it eternally, and she did know. A single misstep and its strength and speed would end up the fight at once. She wanted blacking out its mind telepathically, but the overwhelming backlash of a simple probe nearly had killed her. Such was its revengeful ire and bloodlust.

She intended finishing it off in the swiftest and most merciful way possible, but it wasn't going to happen. Its mind was too raw and primal for being easily shut down, and telekinetically the battle would be drawn-out, since the animal would withstand many blows and its rage would grow with each one. She remembered how Logan killed a mad bear once. He had intended being quick and clean, but the animal had endured long, prolonging its suffering. And Logan suffered along with it. (*)

Her eyesight spotted several wires hanging on the ceiling. She snatched them mentally and they rushed towards the bear, latching around its limbs, trunk and neck, and coiling around them tightly. The misshapen monstrosity howled in fury and clenched its awesome muscles, straining the bounds.

But Jean got the break she needed. She pictured mentally its large heart, thumping unceasingly and pumping carbonated blood in the lungs and oxygenated fluid in the main artery. She contemplated sorrowfully the vital organ, and with a rueful and determined thought, stopped it dead.

In the physical world the mammal gurgled with a faint whimper, and its horrific power vanished. Its eyes, former pools of boiling fury, turned blank, and its limbs stiffened. The cables loosened, unwinding around it, and let it sliding down. It resembled a puppet with its strings cut.

Jean approached at its bulky, square-snout skull and gazed in its bulged eyes. Light had withered and died out, but its hollow stare seemed locked on her, glaring her with accusation carved on the eyeballs. She trembled in behold of that denouncing and lifeless look and lowered her head. Inwardly she wondered to herself why she felt such appalling regret. All in all, that dimwit animal had been spared of further torment. Right? It had been a merciful deed. Right?

Yes. And if she really believed that, also could believe little blue men inhabited the Moon. (**)

Now lay at her feet the fresh corpse of another dead being. This time executed by her ruthless hand. And she pitied that poor animal. She was so fed up of so much pointless death. It surrendered her, swallowed and choked. She didn't believe the world was really meant to be like that. It just couldn't. No when she recalled a time of shining sun, green prairies, clean streets and smiling people.

With a defeated, remorseful sigh, she left behind the poor tiger-bear and walked towards Havok. She regarded his appearance. His uniform was torn and coated in viscous blood and its back was a gory mess. The kevlar was tattered dregs displaying deep furrows where the blood seeped out. There were swells on his face menacing with turning purple bruises.

Reluctantly she offered helpfully her hand. "Your back is a mess. Come on, rise up."

He slapped it with a disdainful growl, though. "You had better to watch over your own back. Sinister isn't to protect to my brother longer. And there're transgressions can't be forgiven."

Ignoring the puzzled fluttering of her cherry eyelashes Alex crawled on his knees, toppled, kneeled and began to arise. Trying pretending indifference, he shook off the specks of dust, dismissing the searing ache burning in his back and the dizziness the blood loss caused him.

Jean folded her arms challengingly. "You talk is meaningless."

He huffed and turning his back to her, stomped away. "You'll understand. Very soon."

The fiery redhead stared at his hastily retreating form, wincing with the fresh wounds branded his racked backside.

He had implied unerringly that he was aware of theirs little, lethal game. And perhaps he had even got rather good evidences, and using to Scarlet wouldn't delay the burst this time. If he could prove somehow that they were Apocalypse's foes, their lives would be worth of nothing. She could mock of him or spurn him contemptuously, but she didn't ignore how dangerous he really and truly was. Jean gulped saliva, afraid, and considered her options. Brainwashing him was discarded. She had done so in many previous times, and he could have acquired tolerance to mental manipulations.

Of one or other way her instincts were screaming the end was close not matter what. The Apocalypse's plans, the Sinister's defection, the tangled Magneto's web... Too many things happening too fast in too many sides. Scott was right, the Armageddon was coming at great strides. And she might tell the Age of Apocalypse was running out of time. Likewise she knew her days in that place were numbered. If that end was due to her death or escape was regardless. But she had to run away for surviving. And she wouldn't escape without Scott.

She cast a last glance full of regrets at the gloomy and frightened animals, locked behind rusty bars, and walked hastily out of the godforsaken kennel. Her forehead was creased with lines of a troubled frown.

She was going to meet to Scott. Matters needed be arranged.

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Once upon a time he had been named 'Mike-whatever' (he'd forgotten his own surname). A perfectly anodyne inhabitant of Chicago, with a common name, no steady girlfriend and a lousy job allowed him to pay his bills. But it had been a lifetime ago. Before the culls razed and flattened its hometown, and he was lucky enough to survive to the carnage. He had been deemed fit to survive and transformed into an Infinite. So what if his entire family had been purified? They were flawed and unfit, but he was worthy. Strong. He was a High Lord soldier, a weapon of the Justice and Purity, aimed at every puny flatscan.

Somehow he didn't think being an Infinite involved patrolling along the thirty-feet-height rampart bordered the pens and cut them off from the ruins of the ancient New York. But there he stood, watching over the Sector Five gates and controlling the wagons rolled towards the entrance.

Right now a truck was trundling along the rails while it approached, wheeling in slowly with a dangerous sway during its trudge. It was natural, since it was obviously overloaded with corpses.

The Infinite waved his hand to catch his partner's attention, a rookie recently bullied by the High Prelate in mopping sewers, and both walked towards the wagon, which was steadily pulling in the stop. The soldier stalled while the vehicle braked fully, and slid the hatch open. He needed checking the scavengers inhabiting the shoreline didn't sneak into. What laugh, like if someone wanted going into...

A tide of fetid stink greeted him. The inside of the wagon was shrouded in shadows, a pitch-black darkness with an overwhelming stench of death and foulness, so thick was almost solid and palpable. Its dense cloak enveloped the bag of stiff bodies, dangling immobile from the ceiling. Suddenly two purple-glowing slits opened in its bowels, shimmering with fury and hatred.

The next Mike knew, purple energy flashed, and a blade swung towards him, drawing swiftly a dazzling loop while it severed his neck. His head, no longer attached to the trunk, dropped downwards and rolled along the soil strewed with debris.

Frozen in paralyzing horror, his partner yelped and cocked his rifle upwards, but his movements were sluggish, like if he was swimming in treacle. Several star-shaped, energy-flaring shurikens darted from the shadows, imbedding in its forehead, arms and heart, piercing layers of armor like if they didn't exist ever.

While the Infinite crumbled, falling on the ground, Elisabeth Braddock emerged out of the wagon, tossing her mane of rich indigo hair over her shoulder with disdain and nonchalance. What she was able of keeping such aloof calm just having slaughtered two men was eerie.

Glancing at the two new corpses, Betsy pondered over it. The reeking slime of that fetid transport had warped surely her mind, she decided. However she had no time for introspective hesitations.

She sprinted towards the gates, and approached to one tiny square where rows of keys lined up. Before killing to both soldiers she had extracted telepathically the alphanumeric opening code. Hers fingers rushed to type it.

With a dull whir and a rumble of gears rotating, the towering gates opened steadily. Before the automatic shutting lock them down again, Betsy slipped into and instantly leapt in the shadows. Using her fabulous ninja skills she slithered along corridors and passages, dodging the monitors, knocking out several cocky Rooks and murdering any soldier enough daring, unlucky or dumb to spot her.

She had just sliced the underbelly of an Infinite, leaving him kneeled on the floor with his innards spilled out, when an excruciating pressure hit her. Elisabeth staggered, swaying sideways while her hands clutched her head. She toppled onwards, but her quick reflexes flexed her legs into a crouch. Betsy remained squatted, groaning and puffing as she felt the entire pressure of an ocean weighing above her. It menaced with flattening her.

It was an unwelcome and destructive sensation she had experienced through once in the past, when she was apprehended and dragged in the Black Tower. In there the telepathic power of the Consortium crushed her as a sledgehammer, fracturing her resistance in tiny powdered bits. Her conscience was too frayed and tattered to put up some fragile resistance. She barely was able of keeping afloat on the swirling vortex of numbness threatened with drown her in oblivion.

But now she was ready, way readier. Instead trying raising barriers to hold back the unstoppable tide, Betsy mustered her forces, reinforcing her own will to think and fight, but letting the energy flux battered her mind. With dexterity born of experience she blended her mind with the routine mayhem of the astral plane, masking to herself like a swell, a puny fray on the thought fabric. Having set her camouflage, she began to rebuild her shields, brick after brick.

The overwhelming flood ceased with such abruptness her physical self lurched violently. She panted compulsorily while she rose up, held by quivering legs. Her chest heaved with ragged and shaky thumping, and her head hurt a lot. Like if a mold was around it, and someone was squeezing it. But the burden was bearable now.

Betsy resorted to hide in every nooks and crannies possible and available in her path, mindful of the necessity of keeping every her resources to hold in check the Consortium, having no energies to spend in meaningless confrontations. She lurked as a panther of beauty and grace along the corridors and spiral staircases leading towards the Sinister's lair.

After of a hurried sprint she finally reached his dwelling. And gawked, surveying that artificial landscape, those wrecked ruins were a modern lab no long ago. She blinked as observed with agape amazement the walls molten and scorched, the hardware broken and the floor severely lacking of a good sweep.

She had heard murmurs in the grapevine, but she had assumed they were phony speculations. Truthfully she couldn't pay heed to rumors swore Sinister had abandoned his genetic experiments, when he invested so many efforts in breeding them and nurturing them. Thus she had been skeptical, but she was wrong.

Of course she wouldn't have believed either Sinister would hand over information to the X-Men, warning of the mad plans of his hallucinated master. The good doctor's secret journal ought to be really secret...

The British ninja shook her head in annoy. Why Sinister had run away wasn't matter of her concern. She needed now a new plan, preferably where she wasn't killed. She couldn't convince to Sinister to stop to Apocalypse and set free the prisoners if he was away. Of course there was a backup option...

Her finely tuned ninja senses ringed a loud warning and she whirled to face the danger, before the red wolf had been stalking her sprang from the shadows and pounced on her. Its prolonged claws were unsheathed and its drooling maw was widely open, displaying rows of sharp and long fangs.

She froze it telekinetically in mid-air and swatted it aside with a sweep of her psychic katana. The large canine struck the floor with a yelp, and she leapt on top of it, stabbing its skull with the razor sword tip. The carnivore howled while blazes erupted out of the blade pinning it down.

Nevertheless the energy was telepathic and acted only in a mental plane, knocking out to the animal instead of killing it. With a sweeping gesture Betsy arose and perused to the long-snout red-furred wolf while she picked up dust specks of her tight outfit.

Interesting. Beneath that beast-like appearance shimmered a human conscience. Maybe in one time or place more suitable she might have examined properly the being.

Her dimmed psychical senses warned her of the incoming danger too late to avoid it. While she pivoted around, struggling for build a shield, she cursed her clumsiness, not having caught on the trap in time.

She shrieked when hot-melting plasma ripples struck her and charred her costume and skin. Her last thought before the world turned black was why he hadn't killed her right away.

As he watched with barely restrained satisfaction to his hunt while she crumbled and lay sprawled on the littered floor, Alex stopped his explosive blasts with a flicker of his wrists.

Havok walked towards the fallen heap. His blue eyes were leering at her, roaming along her body, but his look was lewd, no lecherous. His main emotion was delight with the defeat and capture of a foe had made a fool of him earlier, no lust for a gorgeous woman.

He hoisted her in his arms and marched out of the lab carrying her fainted self. She would be another pawn to destroy not only to his brother but also to the X-Men.

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Tic. Tic. Tic.

It was disturbing the way the drumming of the pen on the table might turn out so engrossing, Scott reflected as his hand tapped the pen on the desk with an unceasing up-and-down motion. So annoying as the relentless and steady thrum was, it helped to divert his mind from his main concern. He tossed aside the pen, letting it roll along the board, and picked up the report again.

In few pages, Aaronson explained the McKenzie's arrest, the redhead his baby brother used to romp and amuse with very often. As Scott read and reread the file he sighed heavily, not only because Scarlet was an added trouble he didn't need right now, but also because he understood altogether the full implications of the 'idle footnotes' of the report.

How the hell could they possibly blurt to Alex his secret affair, other than anything but secret, was with a spy of the Human Council? And how might they broach the thorny issue of the McKenzie's health state?

Scott wondered briefly how Alex could be such unrepentant, hormone-driven dumb. If he intended engaging with a human, he should be careful with the protection. And with the allegiance of his partners, too.

The repercussions of this incident were unsettling. Alex would take unkindly the news. He would be upset, afraid, shocked or enraged, pick up one option. His brother could be devising his downfall somehow, but this revelation could destroy all his plans and machinations. In his stupidity he had stomped on countless laws: fraternization with humans, collaboration with enemy -not mater what it was involuntary-, crossbreeding... to Apocalypse mating with humans was tantamount to bestiality, and any child born of human and mutant was a natural aberration couldn't be allowed live. The entire family was scarified, frequently for himself. Scott never got stomach to bear the executions, and Sinister labeled them as a genetic waste, but his brother usually enjoyed them. Scott had the inkling of he wouldn't do this time.

And the idea of seeing to his nephew or niece charred to the bones wasn't appealing to Scott either. How would feel Alex knowing he would become father? Scott wasn't certain of which would be the Alex's thoughts. His own feelings on the matter were unclear. But he rejected the notion of seeing his kin murdered. No, if he might, Scott would fight so the Alex's offspring saw the daylight. Although that could not be so good stuff in this crazy world.

Knuckles rapped softly on the door. Jean. Scott laid his paperwork on the table and sent mentally a beckoning nod to Jean, inviting her to go into. Meanwhile he'd file away his hesitations until the right moment.

Her grave and slightly pale expression when she opened the door and sauntered in his office almost urged him to jump out of his seat. He suspected that perhaps that longed for moment had vanished.

"Alex has come to see you, Scott. He wanted talking with you, and even demanded you go out to face him. I said him bluntly you haven't why obey him and he should wait on the threshold while I warned you." She stated with cool and noncommittal voice, only broken by the disgust she used to refer to Alex with.

I believe the time has come She whispered in his brain with her mental voice, a rich and melodic tone.

"Thanks for the assumption, Jean. Tell him what he comes to my desk if he wants see me so badly." Scott answered. Jean nodded briefly and walked briskly out of the room. When she returned, Alex was in tow.

He seemed hugely satisfied and amused for anything, an insane joy and delight the offense apparently hadn't spoiled. Perhaps he thought it didn't matter anymore.

Scott crossed his arms, summoning his sternest and most gruff expression, and looked down on him. "What do you need now, Alex? Shouldn't you be lounging in your private suite by now?"

"Tonight no" He replied with a petulant smirk. "I have a lot of chores to look after since I'm going to take the reins of the Elite from now on."

Cyclops displayed no reaction other than a spiteful snort, but the ruby quartz shielding his eyes shone intensely. "Have you been drinking excessively of late? I am in charge."

His brother approached to him, slowly and ominously, until only few inches separated his noses. His leer focused fixedly in his visor. His hot breath tickled on his skin. "Give up. Both of us know you're a traitor. Well, you and your carrot-haired partner, albeit that's an obvious assumption."

Jean Grey glowered with a forbidding growl would have impressed to Logan if he had heard it.

Cyclops uncrossed his arms, putting them akimbo. The red lenses flashed ruby. His grimace twisted in a scowl. "You are crossing the border."

Alex retorted with a snigger. There was something murky and eerie dancing in his eyes. A wild and dark glee. "No at all, Scott. Please, follow me to the McCoy's lab. I have to show you something."

Scott rose his dark eyebrows. "You must think you've got me for real now, Alex. You are smiling like the cat ate to the canary." He spun away determinedly and strode towards his table, overcrowded with sheaves of nonsensical files, and thick wads of reports. People used to be amazed at the messy disorder of his desk, since they mistook him frequently by a neat freak. Actually he only kept order in the cabinets, never in his table. He didn't need really, since his spatial memory exceeded anybody else's one. "But I highly doubt anything you think you know about me be as juicy and compromising as this."

He caught the folder of yellow covers he was flipping through earlier and tossed it nonchalantly at Alex. His blonde brother snatched it in mid-air, and with a suspicious glare of distrustful curiosity, opened the portfolio. As he read, his eyes bulged out of his sockets and his face blanched. He gagged.

A sneaky telekinetic tendril pried the wad off his shivering, sweaty hands and laid it on the awaiting Jean Grey's hands. The redhead shot him an acrid glare. "Better I keep this for the current time. Otherwise your focus might slip and your powers can burn the paper without meaning it. And we don't want that, do we? Although I'm fairly certain of Scott made copies in foresight."

Without further words she turned the first leaf and started to read attentively. Before long she was half-kneeled on the carpeted floor, guffawing uncontrollably, bursting in peals of laughter. Scott picked up the folder she had let slip on the floor, and after placing it onto his desk, he proceeded to give her soothing pats on her shoulders. Gradually she managed restrain her whole-heartily giggles.

"God! What joke! And what fool!" She blurted.

Scott gave to Jean a smiling beaming and turned to glare to Alex. His face was a mixture of fury and horror, both dueling for being the prevalent emotion, a stark contrast to his bold former attitude.

"If you want showing me something, go ahead. Play your trump card." Scott stated.

"Fine." Alex grated stiffly.

The three of them marched out of the office, and headed towards the nether levels of the Tower. Led by Havok, they descended by bridges and spiral staircases wound downwards as a corkscrew, penetrating sinuously in the thick, pitch-dark darkness. Jean, who was fully controlled and observant already, got the weird sensation of being treading in the maws of a beast that was about of clamping its jaws around them.

And when they were standing in front of the McCoy's den, she knew they were effectively putting theirs head into the lion's mouth.

And Alex, who had apparently recovered remnants of his former forwardness, seemed extremely eager of carrying out this deal. His face was split in a shark-like and smug grin when his hand gripped the doorknob and pushed the gate.

Scott and Jean went into the lair, feeling theirs hearts sinking with dread. Then they saw her.

Elisabeth Braddock was manacled and shackled to one wall in cross-like position, glaring with disdainful and defying glare to her sinister keeper, Dark Beast.

Theirs hearts skipped a beat. Both of theirs minds were reeling with the sight, since as it wasn't necessarily threatening, definitely it wasn't a good thing. Questions about what Alex had found or what Psylocke was doing in that continent raced hastily across theirs thoughts. Something alarming was going on.

"Do you see what has found the cat? The infamous Elisabeth Braddock. Betrayer to her own race. Terrorist. Blaspheme. She ran into me when she was stalking in the Sinister's quarters." Alex, who had approached to the contraption while they were busy gaping at the woman, whirled towards them with a predatory smirk twisting his glossy lips. "You seem stunned."

Unbeknownst to him, Dark Beast was watching gleefully the performance, perched on the top of a control board. His bulky frame swayed sideways pleasantly on his makeshift stool while his wicked eyes witnessed the stiff exchange between both siblings, with the sensation of contemplating a previously rehearsed play.

"Stunned? You have no idea."

"Let me guess" Alex aimed a finger straight to Scott. "Perhaps you have been working with those traitors since the redhead arrived here from the very first. Or perhaps earlier. Perhaps you were double-crossing us from the beginning, and the Grey's capture wasn't anything but a cunning plan to infiltrate a spy. I figure that genetic blunder was your newest contact. Right?"

"You are reaching. That rubbish is nonsensical. And preposterous." Scott retorted acidly.

"No, Scott. I have got a tape of both of you helping to that blonde brat Smith to escape. And it isn't the first time. I know you are guilty of many jailbreaks."

It was like watching to two dogs snapping bites to each other, Beast reflected sagely.

"If I'm mistaken, prove it!" He roared. Murderer glint shone on his eyes. "Execute to the rebel now!"

And Scott answered. "No. I'm not under your command. I have neither reason to obey you, nor loyalties to prove you. Is that clear?"

And came the long-awaited and foretold climax. Alex clicked his fingers. Following on that cue, Sam blasted from the shadows, hitting to the Prelate with the surge and the strength of a cannonball. He was heaved and tossed on the ground, and when he struggled for rising, the crushing massive fist of Elisabeth Guthrie smashed him, flattening him on the cracked land with hammering force. He moaned and fainted.

Hank McCoy grinned insanely and hopped off his ledge, putting together his heels when his paws touched silently the floor. He leapt agilely towards the crowd, feeling a crazy joy partially caused for a lust of blood and revenge. Only a certain and clouded dizziness on his head bothered him.

"At last my hour has come, after so many years looking to Sinister giving you everything whereas I was systematically ignored! The Elite is mine! I'm in charge!"

There was something amiss in that picture. Something was going awry, a detail he was passing by...

"Never I liked that boss. So sanctimonious, so self-righteous."

"True, sister. We have fulfilled our part of the deal, Prelate. Fulfill yours now."

"Of course. You have earned a promotion from Rook to Prelate."

Where the hell was Jean Grey?

"What are we going to do with your brother now? Kill him?"

"No. Too easy. Too swift. I want he suffers. McCoy, get to the former Prelate and dissect him... or whatever."

Suddenly his hesitations faded and the minor details were hastily forgotten. His squat frame crouched in front of Scott and his claws grabbed eagerly fistfuls of the dirt-stained dark-blue shirt. He licked his lips in anticipation, feeling laughter bubbling and bursting in his belly.

"Oh, yes. Often Sinister used to brag about the rich genetic potential of the Summers lineage. I'm truly avid and impatient for examining a guinea pig with such pedigree." He brushed one cheek of the man with a long-pointed, sharp nail. "Alas, poor Cyclops. You ought to have foreseen what was befalling over you."

"It's ironical you are telling that."

That single short sentence startled to Dark Beast.

Of sudden the face his eyes were looking at went through a transformation. Its outline blurred, and its lines turned younger, more roughened. The visor disappeared, and blinking blue eyes appeared beneath it. The long mane of locks suddenly began to shorten in a short-cropped haircut as the same time its rich-brown color brightened up in a silvery golden.

And while the astounded McCoy gawked to the bruised Alex's face, a powerful crimson beam slammed him, smashing him against the opposite wall. When the blast stopped and Beast came round, a horror exclamation he couldn't restrain erupted out of his thick lips.

The Guthrie siblings were slumped on the floor, obviously blacked out, and Psylocke, who he had supposed was efficiently disabled, stood behind them, brandishing parallel to the floor a katana of crackling purple energy that her fingers gripped tightly. And sprawled on the floor lay Havok, no Cyclops, who currently was glaring him with a fierce glow in his visor. Jean Grey stood behind him, while a red blaze flowed out of her forehead and coiled around Alex, freezing him with psychic shackles.

"Just like I blurted earlier, McCoy, it's ironical listen to you saying that." He mused. "And funny. I told you clearly what I'd make you if you defied me again. I warned you."

His lens let out a new dazzling blast, which blew to McCoy in the wall. Henry agonized and moaned in behold of the awesome strength of the hit.

"I'm sure you are over-eager of knowing what has happened here." Jean interjected, never relinquishing her hold in the Prelate Havok. "While Scott was drawing your attention in him, I pried telekinetically the inhibitor off Elisabeth and debriefed her telepathically of the plan. Beforehand I had located to the Guthries, and thus when they attacked, Scott sidestepped, letting to Havok bearing the brunt of the hit. To two telepaths was exceedingly easy distract and deceit your puny brains."

"Oh, yes." Betsy asseverated with glee. Her tongue flickered over the razor edge of the blade, letting sparks running along the rim. "Pathetically easy."

"That's right. But please, don't give me undeserved credit." Jean joked, performing a dashing reverence at Scott. Nobody would tell she was utterly focused in her task. "Scott arranged the evil scheme instantly when he saw to Psylocke. Isn't he clever?"

Betsy almost choked with guffaws, the only positive reaction the Jean's jokes got. Marvel Girl coughed twice and loomed over Havok, overshadowing him with her figure.

"And regarding your suspects, Havok, you don't got right any of them. We aren't in cahoots with the X-Men, and Betsy isn't anyone's contact as far as I know. Nevertheless, you were partially right in ONE thing." Jean clutched rudely one handful of his jacket, nailing in him a chilled glare of gelid fury. He merely emitted muffled sounds through the gag plugging efficiently his mouth. His eyes were hurling her smoldering, poisoned glares of rage. "My arrival here was orchestrated. No by the X-Men or Magneto. Who disposed my defeat and capture I don't know, but I believe firmly was my fate come here."

She shook her redhead head in grief. "Because you can be sure of I had broken into and got to Scott out long ago if I had known about him. He's a good person and he didn't deserve be surrounded by scum of your kin. I can just imagine what shit he had to put up with during years of Sinister's manipulations, Apocalypse's slavery and his own brother's hatred. You, vermin, are worthless of him."

Steadily her voice had turned throatier and more ominous. A dull glow had flooded her piercing green eyes, and they were now glowing pools of ghostly ivory radiance. "And I've waited this for years now."

Unseen forces hauled his body, and he floated towards the machinery where Betsy was trapped earlier. With furious, determined motions, Jean hooked him to the gear, strapped the wires around his limbs, locked the shackles around his extremities, and dismissing his scared glance, she turned on full power the unholy mechanism. Electricity emerged from the main generator and coursed along conductor cables.

Alex screamed.

Hearing his bloodcurdling howls, Dark Beast propelled his mass onwards, aware of what treatment he might expect of Jean, but the sharp touch of a sword tip grazing his throbbing neck sprang him back to his corner. Betsy stood upright above of him, narrowing in leering slits her vicious eyes. She pressed further the wicked-looking point of her weapon, stating clearly how little effort would take slice his thin skin, and puncturing his windpipe or chopping off his head unless he behaved.

Other shape joined to her, and both cast theirs shadows on him. Grey. Beast felt a sudden, frosty splinter of dread stabbing and twisting in his gut. In between of both women he spotted to Summers, staring indifferent the scene was unfolding. He sported an emotionless expression, with his arms crossed in an idle stance, and yawning once on a while. For first time Dark Beast rued having ignored his threats.

Jean savored greedily his blatant fear. Her glossy lips drew a baleful smirk and her fingers played with a rebel red curl. "Now is your turn, McCoy. I'm a telepath, do you remember? Whenever I trod into your crypt, the suffering of your victims blew my senses. Sorrow, misery, pain, ache, grief, lament, every kind of negative emotions coat and soak this place. Your den reeks to evil and oozes with death. Pain and sadism are carved in its walls and blood paints them. Neither my nostrils nor my stomach can bear that overwhelming stink. Do you sense it too, Psylocke?"

The ninja nodded. She spread her hand towards Jean.

"But it means nothing for you, right? You only care for yourself, right? Perform sadistic tortures with living beings is your only pleasure, joy and love, right? And use the science for justifying your sickening perversion, right? Don't answer anything. I know my chat is pointless. It means nothing to you. But I may do it means, do you know?"

She took the Betsy's hand, gripping it tightly.

"You have inflicted pain and torture upon innocent people without restrain or qualms for too many years, McCoy. But the thing you never knew was what felt your guinea pigs. It's past time to find out about it, don't you think? Let's give him a taste of his own medicine, Jean."

The redhead nodded, and both women flashed and went up in psychic flames. Tongues of purple and red flames boiled and crackled around them, coiling around theirs limbs and licking teasingly theirs faces. Abruptly the ground beneath theirs feet shimmered with bright rose light, shaping an energy pool spread with a ripple until covering the entire room. Floor, walls, ceiling, columns and equipment. Slowly the glowing light withdrew, flowing back to both women. Tendrils of energy danced and clashed in front of them, entwining together and coalescing in a sphere of dazzling power. They spread theirs palms outwards, and blasted the pulsating globe towards McCoy, plunging it deep in his brain.

He screamed, his mind overloaded with awful, devilish images of murders, maimings and bloodshed. He saw, listened, tasted, smelt and touched the death and the pain. Electricity singed his fur, whips flayed his hide and knives and scalpels racked and sliced his skin. Rough claws seized him and sharp objects poked in his innards. He was crippled, mangled and dissected among laughs his howls couldn't mask and wild grins his eyes couldn't forget. His brain was overflowed by the imagery he worshipped before, and it was far more horror than his erstwhile rational mind could cope with. He was burnt, electrocuted and dipped in acid thousands of times before his brain, unable of enduring it, shut off.

Light turned off his eyes and strength left his muscles. He crumpled on the wall, turned into a numb heap slipped on the floor as a lifeless doll.

Pushed by his nagging curiosity, Scott poked him reluctantly with the tip of the boot. No one movement. However his furry chest rose and lowered steadily. He eyed dubiously to both women.

"Why didn't you shoot off his brains and got over with it already?" He asked, imagining fully well what they had done, and shuddering only thinking about it. "He'd be better dead in comparison."

Both shrugged.

"Too easy. Besides, I've wished do this for years now." Jean stated dismissively, and Scott gulped. Sometimes she could become scarier than her former and wild partner could. "Anyway we have right now more pressing matters. Why have you come here, Psylocke?"

She didn't ask about what was going on between Logan and her. Mainly because she was frightened of the answer and of her own reaction. She hadn't straightened still her feelings on the matter.

Scott glanced at the woman of purple hair and mesmerizing turquoise eyes, and used the brief pause to regain his leader mask. With it ready, he bore his sharp glare of piercing eyes in the ninja. "Yes, why have come from Eurasia, traveling across the ocean? Why have you risked to get captured again, knowing Alex seeks the hide of any X-Men? And why am I sure of your answer won't like me at all?"

"Because you are smart. Either that or your instincts are remarkably good." Betsy remarked, keeping tightly shielded her thoughts and masked her emotions. The Jean's behavior and incensed Summers' defense intrigued her greatly, and she recalled her telepathic revelations back then in the tunnels, when she had felt the redhead was hiding something, even from herself. But she'd decide when play that hand, and this wasn't the proper time.

Thus, she rushed to link theirs minds with her own brain, letting a colorful stream of images flowed in them.

Scott and Jean blanched. The redhead was stammering weakly, while the Prelate was focusing his thoughts in one single line, studying his options and deciding the best course of action, thus triumphing over the turmoil was flooding his mind. Betsy had to give him that: He possessed very sharp wits and a mind very analytical, and wasn't afraid of using it. Moreover he was a master controlling his emotions and avoiding a possible foe read or guessed his thoughts. Other than a widening of his eyes -she guessed for the prone arching of his eyebrows-, he didn't show more outwardly reaction. And he seemed so quiet, so calm... His thoughts weren't beating her head, screaming loudly. She liked that trait in a man.

Great. Now she was falling in for him or getting a crush or whatever. If Jean felt something deeper than friendship for him, some kind of special bond, she was beginning to catch on the reason.

She shook her head. There wasn't time for rambling on. The nuclear attack was approaching perilously. Inexorably. Nearer with each second passed.

"Listen, guys, I'm sorry seeming somewhat harsh, but we must hurry up! With Sinister unavailable, you are my -ours- only hope!"

"Oh, my." Jean stuttered. "They can't... mustn't... they're crazy! And how can Logan aid them? Is he out of his fucking mind? He doesn't know-"

Betsy laid a kind hand on her shoulder, stopping her ranting. When she spoke her voice was terse and reassuring, but with tough steel beneath the surface. "I know it's hard on you, Jean, but your disbelieving babble is wasting a time we lack of. So regain your wits or we shall perish." She snapped finally.

Jean gulped, inhaled deeply, and shut her eyes. When she opened them again, her look was serious and focused.

"All right. We are going to release the prisoners from the pens before Apocalypse forces to the Human Council to press the button..." Scott voiced.

"... Or we shall die trying it!" Jean shouted, pumping up a fist.

*********************************************************************************

The Earth was shuddering.

The battered and scorched land quaked and wavered as jelly. The hard ground shook with powerful tremors menaced with split it in thousand jagged rifts, and violent whirlwinds swept its ragged surface with uncontrolled force. Crackling blazes of golden, ravenous fire raged and danced viciously on the surface, licking the barren plain with its tendrils.

And in the core of that chaos was a teenager boy, barely a man, who wielded a power defied description. His fragile body poured sheer psychic power, and the air, already crisped with the charring heat, sizzled around of him. His short brown and white locks were flowing upwards as underwater and his left eye flashed with simmering energy. Ironically he wasn't conscious of the maelstrom he was bringing about, since the entire wholeness of his incensed wrath was focused in a single target.

The man who he was facing. The man he had trusted in. The person he had relied on when his surrogated father was being too harsh. The monster had killed mercilessly to his friends. He had been naive, arrogant and childish. But Forge and the people he loved were who paid the prize.

Awful and unfair deaths he couldn't mend, nor even with his astonishing power. And the bringer of such desolation was right in front of him.

He was feeling more enraged than never in his lifetime, a frame of mind wildly improper and dangerous to someone as mighty as himself, since in that state he was capable of anything.

However, something was restraining his righteous rage. That man had just explained his origin.

"Do you understand now, Nate? I am your maker. I spliced the DNA of Scott Summers and his perfect genetic match, Jean Grey, and blended it to build you. Slowly I assembled you and deaged artificially in a containment shell, watching carefully the process, feeling confident in the privacy of my secret lab. Unfortunately you father -who ironically knew nothing about you- rescued you when you were on the brink of your physical peak. It's because that you hold the power but no the maturity. I thought you were lost to me forever. Find you and track down took all my resources. Thankfully I was able of locating with Forge and his herd of outlaws before of my defection. Woefully that craftsman had tainted you for then."

Sinister shook his head and glanced at Nate with eyes without pupils. Two slits of icy ruby color, hollow and soulless. Oddly theirs glow was dimmed with something akin to grief, matching his bleak and rueful expression. "I intended working out your potential. I expected honing your skills and tuning your power. I wished so many things... Alas, is too late for regrets. It doesn't matter whether you are ready or not. Humans and mutants are running out of time and chances. You must accomplish your mission."

"My... mission?" Nate narrowed dangerously his eyes. A razor-sharp glint flashed in them.

"Yes." Sinister stated matter-of-factly, grinning anticipatorily. "Kill to Apocalypse."

Nate sensed to the two last surviving members of his circensian troupe, the grim and gruff Sauron and the beautiful and tender Theresa Rourque, stir in fear and lunge forward. He stopped them with a sidelong glance and a wave of hand.

"Don't worry. I'll be done right away." He voiced reassuringly, reinforcing his petition with a tiny psychic suggestion. Then he whirled towards Essex, glaring him with intensity capable of obliterating mountains.

"You have talked, Sinister. Now is my turn." He rasped through gritted jaws, feeling power building up in him. His body was simmering. "I'll speak and you'll listen. Listen carefully my words."

Nevertheless the alpha-level telekinetic didn't speak anymore. Instead he darted onwards, pouncing on Sinister with the fierceness and swiftness of a leopard. His right fist, blistering in flames, arched back and struck the ugly Essex's face. A sickening crunch sounded. Sinister reeled with the attack, and Nate exploited the opening, ramming other crackling fist on his midsection.

Sinister flew backwards and rolled along the floor, clearly amazed and caught off guard for the unbridled brutality of the attack. However his power was kicking in action already and healing the dislocated jaw and torn belly a second later of having been injured. Inwardly his analytical mind was dismissing the pain and praying the boy really used that impressive strength against Nur.

"You talk about me and my life as if I mean nothing but a guinea pig, an interesting pet to experiment with and do away with after it has outlived its usefulness!" Nate Grey roared. "I am the NOBODY'S project! I'm not and I haven't been ever your puppet!"

A tense and still silence pervaded the country.

Sinister rose up, straightening slowly. He peered to Nate. His mouth twisted in a gruesome and mocking sneer. Self-assured and complacent. His eyes twinkled with it. "Perhaps your adventures along with Forge have granted you a sort of... autonomy. But don't delude to yourself. I've been waiting for this clash for too ages. I have absolutely no intention of allowing you stray away of your initial purpose. You are nothing, nothing at all, except a weapon. A weapon I shall aim to the Apocalypse's heart!"

"LIAR!" The savage Nate's answer erupted out of his lips, and his fists exploded in a frenzy of rage and motion, blowing to Sinister unceasingly. The ripple of the rumbling sonic boom echoed across miles as a rolling thunder. Its alone force swept the land as a tidal wave, uprooting trees and rock boulders.

And meanwhile Nathan Grey summoned and channeled raw telekinetic power in both of his clenched fists, unleashing upon Sinister a strength that world had never witnessed.

"I have memories! And dreams! And hopes! And loves! Never mind whatever you say or how twist the reality! I AM NOT A WEAPON!" He bellowed as he hit him mercilessly. Like two piledrivers, his clenched hands pummeled and punished with insatiable ruthlessness the Sinister's shell, oblivious to his surroundings. And the way his power was tearing them apart.

Fire roared, burning the air and charring the ground. Energy flowed and coalesced in his fragile psychic shell, feeding up his own raging power, and he used it throwing around to Essex like a broken toy. He felt mightiest than never, drunk with the releasing sensation of his unchained power. But harm him wasn't enough to quench his bleeding heart. His rage, his hatred craved for more. And his mind granted it.

Of sudden Nate was seeing the universe at subatomic levels. The fabric of the cosmos unfolded around him, the elemental particles kept together the matter, strands tightly bound and linked wove a majestic tapestry. And he realized he had power to act over it.

He spread outwards a telekinetic tendril, and gripped the molecules. He clawed and ripped in shreds the particles, cutting strands, snapping links and ravaging violently the subatomic particles. He went on destroying and obliterating atoms, feeling a bubbling glee as he did so. However that inhuman joy vanished when he watched recompose to the particles he had just taken apart. Realization dawned in him. That regenerating process had allowed to Sinister survive after of his brutal, unrestrained first attack.

He was practically beaming when he canceled the capability, and sent a gigantic bolt towards the Sinister's core. The searing explosion blasted the subatomic realm.

When Nate returned to his physical self he saw to Sinister sprawled along the floor. His body was a messed and butchered wreckage. Out of a large rift on his chest leaked a spring of oozing blood. Torn pieces of his body lay scattered everywhere, drenched in scarlet and smudged in dirt.

And X-Man felt the fury had taken over his heart and ruled over his thoughts wearing off. Gone off the madness had tinged with red his vision, only there was an emotion left: grief. Unfathomable, helpless regret, sorrow and torment. The anger had left a hollow cavity on his chest. A gaping hole filled now with sadness and fear. Sadness because he understood revenge is meaningless: didn't return him to Forge and his deceased friends, didn't ease his pain and didn't seal the chasm nestling in his heart. And fear to the loneliness and to himself, due to what he had done in an instant of blind choler.

He had killed. Mercilessly, wildly, gleefully. Just like Sinister would have wanted.

Maybe that slimeball was right. Maybe he was nothing but a weapon with delusions of humankind.

A point was true anyway. Revenge didn't set the things better. Still he felt that void carved in him.

He was now empty, alone and aimless. He ignored what do or who turn to.

No, it was wrong. He had a goal, a purpose. Like or not, he knew what ought to be done now.

"All right, Sinister. You have taught me something. Apocalypse will come after me sooner or later. It's only a matter of time." He muttered with a sullen, resigned voice. "Except if I attack him before."

He spun around and headed at his last friends with determination. He'd take care of Terry and Sauron, he'd watch they were protected. After he'd set off towards Manhattan. Towards his death, perhaps.

However he was now a living corpse seeking a cause worth of dying for so it wasn't significant.

*********************************************************************************

He was dying.

The very notion ringed alien to him. It wasn't that death was a concept strange to him. Certainly he had seen its pale, fleshless fingers gripping his dearest Rebecca and theirs son Adam. But when Apocalypse granted him his blessing/curse, he believed his demise had been procrastinated forever.

However right now streamlets of abundant blood seeped out of the gaping hole tearing his metallic abdomen and dripped on the barren land beneath his body, filling a crimson pool. His glazed and bulged eyes ogled fixedly to the clouds rolling along the darkened sky. His breath was ragged and uneven, and his chest rose and lowered with excruciating difficult. Piercing sunlight hurt his eyes and bathed his mass soiled in grime. Life was slipping out of his grasp.

Ironical. He had always expected Apocalypse would kill him if he discovered the ultimate goal of his experiments. But now, when he had accomplished his task, his own creation had destroyed him. He had seen to himself as Faust, but never like Victor Frankenstein. No, when his family was lost, slipping among his fingers as sand, he forswore to God and embraced the Science for finding a way of triumphing over Him. But at the end his family hadn't returned, and the science had betrayed him. God had won.

He wondered, half-sunken in the void, if his subconscious had tried recreating a new family. He remembered to the Summers children, progeny of unbelievable potential. They had been his pawns from the beginning, but eventually he had come to care for them like the sons were denied to him. Alex, young, reckless and impetuous just like he was. Scott, mature, responsible and serious just like he taught him. And in love with a woman who was, without his knowledge, his perfect genetic match.

Regrets crushed him. He would have wanted tell him how proud he had done him.

He wanted having him told so many things. And teach him so many others...

His eyelids shut down for the last time. Amidst the darkness he contemplated ghastly, blurry shapes. Gaseous and shapeless, like clouds. They spoke among themselves with odd, musical voices. Some whispered to him, mocking from him, scolding him or even pitying him. Shadows claimed him.

*********************************************************************************

It resembled a massive ant's nest of steel and stone. A colossal tower dwarfing the sea of surrounding buildings. Or a tusk stuck into the ground and tearing a gigantic and gaping wound on it.

He barely recalled blurry sketches of what New York was like. He had been too busy running away along the sewers to notice on the scenery. And he couldn't imagine what the city had looked like before of Apocalypse. But the citadel, the stronghold, the Tower was unmistakable. It resembled a horn stabbing the Earth and spearing the sky, tearing huge scars in either of them. It reeked to evil. The Devil dwelt in it and oozed his corruption and pollution outwards, to sully and taint the remainder planet.

At least that felt Nathan Summers -or Nate Grey-, hovering airborne above of the wasteland was named New York once upon a time. He drifted peacefully in the rushed and frozen-cold gusts of hurricane blew and howled at those heights of the atmosphere. His piercing and glowing gaze was tensely fixed on the city while he glided peacefully amidst the clouds of grime and smog.

Abruptly his body twitched and he dove downwards, soaring towards the stronghold with rocket-like speed and drive. Propelled by his own power he launched his body in a crazy dash, piercing clouds and slicing the air like a bullet.

Something was yanking from him. Or someone. Calling him, summoning, beckoning him. It was overwhelming. He didn't know how or why, but he was needed down there.

He rammed in a lateral of the Tower like a shooting star, blowing up the entire section in smithereens with his blistering energy. His body drilled dozens of feet of thick layers of metal and concrete, until surfacing in one ample hall crossed everywhere with winding stairs and arched platforms.

Mayhem was unleashed in the pens. Tides of people flooded the domed chambers, blending theirs shouts and cries in a deafening riot. Howls and screeches pierced the air. Virulent explosions rocked the walls. Bursts of fire charred ramparts and seared corpses. Soldiers with shining green armors and brandishing heavy arms against a crowd of haggard and filthy prisoners draped with tattered rags. Rounds of sizzling bolts pierced the battered bodies, killing dozens, but the rage drove to the people buried for years in the pens was beyond of imagination, and they attacked, clawed and flayed to the keepers with unheard-of frenzy, without care for theirs wounds. Blood spilled everywhere, coating the battleground, and innards and maimed limbs splashed on the large pools. Cadavers piled on the land and were stomped by careless combatants.

Nathan was sickened with nausea. Something was stirring and churning in his stomach, and barely he repressed the compulsion of vomiting. Not even in his years wandering around the country and stopping by massacred villages he had witnessed such slaughter. He had to stop this thing. Fortunately the beetle-like, verdant armors branded nicely to his enemies.

Sparks of golden flares crackled in his open palms as he built power, and Nate Grey slashed the air violently with his arms. An overwhelming shockwave was unleashed, sweeping the entire crowd and smashing in the walls to friends and foes alike.

Nate winced. As always he was rash and thoughtless in his acts, and it ruined his good intentions. Instead of protecting to the innocents he had blown up to everyone. Why couldn't he be subtle?

Suddenly he was startled when an explosion echoed behind him and something tough slammed a solid blow on his back. Nathan staggered on mid-air while sparks of scarlet light crackled and dissolved around.

Drawn out of his brooding, Nathan spun around angrily, ready for blasting whoever had done that. His head tilted downwards and his eyesight sought to the assailant. He froze and his lips emitted a faint gasp.

His bulged eyes were widely opened and firmly trained on the slim man of blue gear and the lean woman of red hair and athletic fit. The legs' man were flexed in a fighting crouch, while stared at him fixedly, and the woman was laying one hand on his shoulder, perhaps with soothing intent. He was so rapt in observing them he passed over to the stunning woman lurking in the shadows behind of them.

And of sudden the lies and half-truths of Sinister didn't matter. He soared downwards with an artificial calm he used for masking his uneasiness, and landed smoothly on the ground. His eyes drifted from the man, who was giving him wary -or at least he thought they were wary- glances, to the woman, who he recalled from a brief and odd meeting in the psychic plane.

Theirs pupils connected. Just in that moment something clicked in both of their minds. Light flashed as a connection, a link, was forged, and the feedback brought about a burst blazed on the astral plane as a nova before sending pain in theirs heads. They staggered with the onslaught.

Cyclops didn't know what was happening. He'd just seen to Jean and the boy looking at each other, and now she had shut tightly her eyes and whimpered. Through the psilink tied theirs minds he sensed somewhat of the throbbing ache, and he startled. Because he knew he received her pain dulled, as an echo, but it was rather oppressive for giving him a dizzy and staggering sickness. It panicked him, and Scott acted hastily for first time in his life, blasting again to the boy, this time on his midsection.

Nate was hurled backwards and dropped heavily back down. He crawled clumsily on his knees, while Scott kept his crouched and stiff stance, perusing meticulously to the boy in case of he needed unleashing another ruby bolt. Of sudden a delicate hand laid on his shoulder plate and yanked slightly backwards. He turned to gaze at the worried Jean's frown.

"No, Scott. This boy's... a friend."

"How?" He retorted in puzzlement.

"Yes." She stated. "He's the telepath I talked you about back then."

She stood suddenly speechless, staring forward with sorrow.

And not only that, right? The Nate's voice mumbled quietly in her head. She felt it as a hoarse echo the wind dragged burden with large grief. She was distraught, not only for the pain haunted to the boy, but also because she felt still that familiarity with him, like a ribbon entwining in her heart and her soul. Like if she knew him and owed him happiness. I've only spoken like this with another person. And he... isn't longer

I can see you're special... And now you're alone Jean opened the channel so Scott and Psylocke were able of listening her likewise. Do you want come with us?

Nathan shook in denial his head and rose up, wiping off the dust soiling his jacket. "No. It seems that my entire life there has been someone telling me which was my fate. And I've been that whole time running away from it." With each word he spelt his right fist was clenching slowly in fury and determination. "Too much people has died. People I loved. And I owe them as well as myself do what I'm supposed to do."

Scott stared him thoroughly, finding to himself impressed by the fire flaring beneath that youthful exterior. His blue eyes studied carefully to the boy standing in front of him. His long brown and white locks cast shadows in his face, but he guessed the expression his eyes displayed. That stance, that attitude... "You're... right. The time has come... of getting this fight over with."

Somehow he knew what the kid was speaking about. And he felt a strange, quizzical kinship to him.

Betsy, who they'd thoroughly passed by so far, stepped between both, looking sweaty and strained. "By the moment you've helped us plenty." She wheezed. Her breath was unsteady and laborious. "Your intervention has allowed Marvel Girl and me stabilize our hold onto the multitude. When we released to the prisoners they went predictably wild, more interested in getting revenge than in running away with us. But now we have calmed them down and can lead them to the exit."

"Then... are you going to run?" Nate questioned, incredulous.

"We've fought enough already. Our task is over." Jean voiced. "Now we have the duty of saving the remainder innocents while other people take charge of the war."

Nathan got thoughtful and nodded gradually. "True. When this ends, if I keep alive, I'll look for you."

Nate whirled around and began to sprint in direction to the Tower. With a fluid motion he took off and soared skywards, at the peak of the tall horn. "Take care of yourself!" He listened to Cyclops screaming.

Down in the ground Scott Summers felt an unexplainable and sudden homesickness while he stared to the dark shape of the boy dwarfing gradually. Somehow, in his heart, he realized in other world they not only could have been together but they should have been together. He didn't know how, only did.

A hand wrapped softly around his arm. Jean tugged from him imperiously. "Scott, we have to go."

"I know, Jean. It's only that... I remember to that kid. Years ago I helped him to escape from the pens. And even in that instant, for some motive... He remembered me to myself."

Scott shut up, lowering slowly his head in reflection, thus missing the curious and lightly startled Jean's expression. She had sensed exactly that when she met to Nate in the astral plane.

Betsy quirked a brow, studying the interaction that pair had, and wondering about the meaning of the Prelate's words. She wished understanding fully well what mysteries had lurked in that hellpit. And what ties bonded to Jean, Scott, and that kid whose apparition gave her shivers along her spine.

"Let's go" She mouthed, leaping on the lower level. Her partners nodded and rushed to keep up with her.

Meanwhile, Nate had blasted towards the summit of the spire, flying in a whirlpool of golden blazes, and had crashed roughly on an invisible barrier. He dropped downwards with the impact, momentarily stunned, but his telekinesis halted abruptly his fall. He stared ahead, and saw the air and the light rippling and warping along a curvy surface around the upper half of the horn. A protector shield.

He clung fiercely to the round column and began to climb upwards, with the tireless tenacity of a hellhound smelling to its prey and tasting its blood. His claw-like fingers nailed to the metal layers, digging deep dents on them, and the air sizzled and boiled around his body. He was shrouded in searing fire and steam.

The wind in those heights was a chilled hurricane, and the oxygen was scarce. The teasing sweat glued his clothes to the skin and a headache was throbbing in his temples. It didn't matter to him. He only cared for his hatred.

"I'm after you, Apocalypse!" He shouted with a high-pitched howl.

The chilly wind dragged the echo across the ancient New York, and many souls wondered what it meant, and if it was the sign of the liberation.

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Dazzler never had been one of the main acquaintances of Rogue, neither had known her for years now. Her partners had told her she used to be a very lonely, close-mouthed and saddened person, and her mood improved after getting married to Magneto. She had seen her through many emotional states: ire, lament, joy, gravity. Nonetheless Allison had never seen her more somber and more troubled than in the last days. And she had never seen her as angry and choleric like now.

The blonde ex-singer supposed, while she struggled for restraining to the maddened woman, her husband and son's kidnapping hadn't helped to her mood, already edgy and snappy with the possibility of her world was nothing but a lie. Right now Paris and she were having troubles to keep seized to Rogue, since in her choking and blistering rage she wrestled violently for disentangling from them, lunge at Gambit and vent her fury upon him.

And whereas the Cajun thief wasn't her favorite person, they didn't want him -for the current moment, at least- bleeding to his death.

"Gambit, son of... You let Guido take away to my son!" She bellowed, surrounded for hers loyal troops.

"He was the only might get to Charles out of that hole still alive." Her interloper replied tiredly.

Remy was performing in that moment a great study of his shoelaces. His head was lowered and his long brown locks shadowed his sunken eyes. He didn't dare to look eye-to-eye to Rogue, or to speak again. And thus he remained sprawled on the debris with a miserable, pitiful aspect. Very unlike of his usual attitude of charming bandit. Brass, carefree and roguish.

"He had no choice, Rogue" Allison interjected, hoping her reassuring words reached to the hysterical woman. "At the very least the little Charles keeps still alive! We can save him!"

Lila Cheney, the likewise ex-singer had remained still and quiet, preferring keep a low profile, stepped forward, shattering her silence. "It's right. If you want hating to someone, Rogue, hate me, no him. Remy lost to your son and the shard for saving my life."

"No way! She has no right to blame to Gambit!" Jubilee shouted suddenly, raising a balled fist to the front. Taken over by rage, she stomped angrily towards the brunette woman, and grabbed roughly her cloak's folds, forcing her to her eye level. The effect of the tiny teenager holding to the older woman, with a fury matched Rogue's, was almost comic. "Have you forgotten already what you did to Gambit years ago? You know, like save to Magneto and let to Gambit in the clutches of a psychopath murderer! He has traveled to the edge of the screwed galaxy, has broken the glue held together the universe, has risked our lives for bringing that stupid stuff... for you! He's capable of anything for a person who doesn't care for him at all, and when he chooses being selfish for once, you try killing him! You're a real bitch!"

The strong, callous words of the teenager had the effect of a cold water bucket upon a bonfire. Rogue collapsed on her knees, feeling her overwhelming fury drained and worn off, substituted for a flood of shame, awful fear and sobbing grief. A grief was drowning her.

"My son and my husband in the clutches of that devil!" She choked. "Oh, my God!"

Allison hugged her, but she didn't notice of the tender arms cradling her.

Piotr Rasputin regarded the scene playing in front of his eyes with a pained frown, and surveyed the crowd with his sight. Gambit hadn't brought with himself the M'Kraan, but he'd carried it to the Earth. Kurt and the woman named Destine were keeping to themselves out of that dramatic picture. His partners were pretty exhausted and worn cause of the fruitless conflict and the long and tiresome battles they had waged, but mostly fine. His little sister was wrapped around his leg, with his tiny digits clutching fearfully the leather. She was curious but very scared. And his wife, Katya, was staring to Rogue while her cigarette burned slowly into silvery ashes. She wouldn't look at him even.

She hated him now? Perhaps she did. Perhaps she hated him as badly as he hated to himself. She ought. To him theirs students were nothing but soldiers to train. In Seattle he had cared for and protected to his sister and his wife, only. And now they were dead because his egotism, overconfidence and foolishness. Theirs blood dousing his hands. If he were just able of traveling back in time and make it better... but speculations were now meaningless and useless. However a lingering doubt was nagging him. He was inwardly hesitating about himself, wondering whether his stand hadn't changed him in something worse than an Infinite. And the very suspect got him paralyzed with dread.

"My sister, Destine, and the glass shard" He sighed. "Although it seems impossible, every of the Magneto's plans have succeeded."

"Yes." Victor Creed growled sarcastically, incapable of shutting up his hurtful and callous statement. Neither he tried it to start with. "Everybody did what was asked they did -except LeBeau, what surprise-, so that... What are we going to do now?"

Unexpectedly his words seemed spark back a flare alive in Rogue. The woman abruptly bolted up and on her feet, and her glaring eyes swept to her X-Men with a glance. "Now, Creed, we shall do what the universe demands! You win, Bishop" She eyed thoughtfully to the muscular black man with nicks and scars crisscrossing his hide. "If there had been really a cosmic cataclysm, if that world of yours isn't a crazy dream, let's make it real. That time CAN'T be worse than this, not matter what some can lose. Tonight ends the Age of Apocalypse!" She roared.

Pietro nodded vigorously. Impelled by an odd compulsion he began to walk slowly at the direction of New York City, while the dusk began to glimmer on the sky. Behind him the X-Men followed his trail.

"Let's get back the M'Kraan Glass shard" Quicksilver stated silently, with a face as stony and unyielding as his unbendable determination. In that moment he was the spitting image of his father. "Let's rescue to my father and my brother. And then we shall do what always the X-Men do. We shall give everything... even our own lives, for managing today be the day Apocalypse falls."

The mutants were watching him and following his lead nodded. Rogue, Sabretooth, Wildchild, Sunfire, Blink, Morpho, Marrow, Exodus, Storm, Dazzler, Iceman, Polaris, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Shadowcat. Even odd companies as Bishop, newcomers as Destine or Illyana and awkward allies as Gambit, Jubilee and Lila.

All ready for the last spin in the roulette of the fate. Every ready for shedding theirs last blood drops.

They are mutants. Feared and hated by the people they save. Loathed and chased by the people they protect. Doomed to fight for a dream, earning the hatred of theirs own kin and the humans in every world.

In every time and place they are outlaws. Outcasts. Rebels.

But first and foremost, now and always, they are heroes.

They are the X-Men.

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End of Part Five

(*) That scene references, in the Marvel Universe, to Limited Series Wolverine, first issue. Written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Frank Miller, it's the first Logan-based limited series ever.

(**) According to the Marvel Universe's Chronology the Kree aliens made the Blue Area of the Moon millennia ago. Thus Jean doesn't know the Moon was inhabited by blue men, indeed.