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"Fred I realise this'll be a stretch but do you think you could avoid a few missiles, just a few."

Pietro didn't get an answer as Fred was too busy flying the plane to suitably respond to his sarcasm and everyone else was just ignoring him. The two groups had met at the airstrip without any complications, Lance had created a crevice under all the soldiers outside the holding cells that they'd fallen down and Magneto had covered with several sheets of metal. His powers had been given back their vitality through anger at how he had been weakened in public, even worse, before X-Men. As a result of lots of zigzagging through corridors the large procession hadn't encountered any of the bases personnel, and they had managed to load all the mutants into two of the planes, with only a few minor scuffles with guards that had been dealt with before they could raise the alarm. The group had been split fifty-fifty, with one plane piloted by Brotherhood, the other by Acolytes, each had one X-Man onboard, and the other X-Man had been headed off for the Blackbird. The problems had started with take-off.

Obviously two cargo planes couldn't take off without attracting some attention, but it seemed as though Magneto had under estimated the number of fighter planes in the base. The Blackbird had joined them and was trying to help but the three planes were being swarmed under, missiles shooting at them from every direction. And it seemed as though every single one was hitting the Brotherhood plane.

They'd been in the air for twenty minutes now and under fire the whole time, Magneto was building a shield around his plane and Rogue was deflecting as many missiles directed towards her plane as she could, and Storm was taking care of the Blackbird's defences. But unless they could pull a big finale out of their hats, they were fighting a loosing battle. The mutants from the base were clutching each other, eyes wide and scared, staring at the Brotherhood who were all clustered around the controls, Rogue held in Lance's arms as she defended their plane, The three boys throwing ideas back and forth, but they weren't really getting anywhere. There was one plan they knew would work, but none of them wanted to suggest it. Then one missile struck far too close to home, sparks flew from the control panels and the whole craft juddered uncontrollably.

"Sorry."

The collision had dragged Rogue out of her daze and now she was staring up at her family, eyes half closed, apology written in the lines of her face. Not that their passengers understood that seeing as how they started to mutter about how she wasn't protected them properly. Complaints swiftly quelled by a few hard stares.

Several long, silent moments passed after the collision, Kurt was travelling around the back, trying to calm down the frightened mutants, the Brotherhood had their eyes attached firmly to the control panels, and the problems indicated there.

They were losing fuel far to rapidly, the fuel tanks must have been hit at some point, they were losing altitude too, and sparks and burnt plastic could never indicate something good in their experience.

"Fre…ietro…L…ce. Will…of…yo…id…ots…answe…yo…damn…radi…!"

The message was nearly inaudible because of all the static but, and the on/off switch was red hot when Fred tried to switch it, but he managed it in the end, Rogue was too exhausted to flip it telekinetically.

"We're all alive Dad, just about anyway."

In all the excitement no one noticed the casual, almost affectionate way Pietro spoke to his father, or what he called him, except for Magneto himself of course.

"Wel…jus…nderful…bu…did…u…hav…to…giv…us…al…your…opp…nent…we..ha…nough…of…

our…own."

Sarcasm was distinguishable even through the static.

"Uncle Erik would you quit complaining. And if you're doing anything vital hand it over to someone else. We need to do something drastic or we're not going to get out of this."

Logan noticed what she called Magneto; he'd stayed with the Acolytes to keep an eye on them, but he didn't have time to think about that just yet.

"Lance sit down, Erik, I'm going to meld you with Lance. The two of you can start a quake in the planes, rip them apart, I'll try and keep this hunk of junk in the air."

A few garbled syllables that sounded vaguely like Logan could be heard over the radio but they were cut off quickly. Rogue wasn't paying any attention anyway, she'd already sunk deep into her mind, blocking out everything else.


Swirling ribbons of energy surrounded Rogue as her astral-self materialised in her mind, behind the coloured veils thick oak doors could be seen, behind which were the psyches who had once made her life such a living hell, but were now happy tenants.

Walking through the corridor she ignored the doors, heading instead to a round door, built of the same heavy oak. It swung open as she approached and she walked into a room remarkably reminiscent of Cerebro, that was in fact where she had copied the new design for this room. The spherical walls were made of the same energy that roamed free out in the corridor. Standing on the platform she reached with her thoughts and pulled two bands of energy towards her, one black with small shots of white, the other steel grey. Face scrunched up with concentration she twined the two together, when she had a strong rope she flung it up above her head. It passed through the curved ceiling, and it you had been outside Rogue's head at that time you would have seen Lance and Magneto collapse to the floor, eyes rolled all the way back in their heads.

Outside the fighter planes began to quake, the very atoms that made them shaking apart, the ceaseless attacks on the escaping mutants as the soldiers found themselves with more immediate problems.

But Rogue didn't have time to wonder how the two men were doing, after she'd tossed their powers out to them she'd raced out of her astral Cerebro and headed straight to one of the doors, throwing it open, startling the rooms occupant out of six years, or she would have if the occupant had been alive.

A pair of rich chocolate brown eyes looked up from a body that was slouched on an overstuffed green sofa. The eyes belonged to a lithely muscled young man, maybe twenty-three years old, seeing Rogue he jumped up and would have started to say how wonderful it was to see her and complaining about how she didn't visit him nearly enough, but the look in her eyes discouraged him.

"What is it Roguey?"

A tanned hand cupped her cheek and brown eyes looked deep into green as Rogue struggled to recover from the supreme effort it had taken to bind the power of two alpha mutants together.

"We're in a plane. The plane is falling. Very fast. Need your help. All of your power."

Short disjointed sentence conveyed the urgency more that anything else could have. So they didn't say anything else until they were back in her Cerebro room.

Fingers entwined Jack focused on the well of 'white-glowy-stuff' as he so scientifically called it that represented his very strong telekinetic power and sending it through their joined hand to Rogue. A spike of the 'white-glowy-stuff' was coming from her forehead, breaking through the multi-coloured walls and reaching out of her mind. Those physically in the plane could see the a white, glowing cushion appear around them and lift them from back into the air, when they were scant centimetres away from the rocky ground.

Rogue had set a 'timer' of sorts on the power bind, when the two mutants believed that it was no longer necessary their powers would separate and they would return to consciousness, which they did ten minutes after they had first been joined together (apart Lance and Erik were ruthless, together Avalanche and Magneto could start an apocalypse).

Rogue however remained inside her mind the rest of the journey, keeping the ruined aircraft in the air, only returning to the land of the living when she felt as if enough time had passed for them to be approaching the institute. Through a lot of fancy piloting, (tk cushion manoeuvring from Rogue) the Blackbird and two cargo planes managed to land in the institute grounds and off load all their guests without too much trouble. Professor Xavier and a crowd of students were waiting for them, and at a silent command the crowd of teenagers surged forward to help the test subjects. The brotherhood was jostled about in the melee, some of it was obviously on purpose but the group was far too tired to worry about it. Ignoring Xavier, the other X-Men, the Acolytes, the students and the schools new guests they headed straight off to their cottage. Intending to sleep for a week.


"Are we sure about this?"

"I don't know."

Rogue's head was resting on Lance's lap and her voice was muffled as she spoke into his denim-clad knee. Todd threw his head back, not seeming to feel the thump as his skull smacked into the back of the sofa, Fred groaned and Pietro slid down the wall he was leaning against and buried his head in his knees.

"Well we have to do something, we can't just hide here for the rest of our lives."

"Why not, we have plenty of ways of getting supplies without anyone from the institute seeing us. We've got four safe, solid walls. We can become hermits."

Pietro's voice lifted at the end of his sentence, in a fake, sarcastic, chipper tone, and all he got for his troubles was a pillow thrown at his head.

"We can't stay here though, that's the problem."

"Pietro pay attention!"

"So we can't stay here, but we don't wanna leave the X-Men behind."

"Which brings us back to the original idea."

"We don't have a choice then."

"Not really."

"This could be a major disaster, of apocalyptic proportions."

"'Course, that's what makes it so much fun."

Again Pietro got a mouthful of pillow. After tossing pointless words around for a bit longer, really just to kill time, they slowly, grudgingly headed off the school for the first time in the three days since they'd been back. The first day they'd each collapsed into their beds and hadn't stirred until 3 o'clock in the afternoon the day after. Once they'd woken they'd hung around in their garden for a bit as it was a nice day, dressed in pajamas/nightie and robes they realised they had a problem.

The whole operation that they'd just completed had been done Acolyte style, right down t where Mystique had copied the files in case they'd be useful later on. Storm had seen the CDs, had asked the shapeshifter what she was doing and the two of them had gotten into a blazing row somehow Rogue and Pietro had been dragged into it, and without a second's hesitation they had agreed with Mystique, it really only was common sense to have a back up plan. There would always be someone higher up in the food chain who didn't approve of what those bastards had been doing, and if the sensitive information on those files reached the higher ups, there wouldn't be a problem anymore.

Storm and Kurt had been quiet after their agreement, and then headed out the door in heavy silence, Mystique had bestowed a proud smile on the teenagers and headed out as well, leaving Rogue and Pietro to take the rear.

In the bright sunny garden the differences Rogue and Pietro had felt in that room disappeared, but then the others had mentioned the same kind of feeling. Like they were more Acolyte than X-Man, but they had strong X-Men influences within them. For hours they'd tried to rationalise that feeling, saying that their upbringing and the training they'd received from the Acolytes meant that that only made sense. But the later it got, the less realistic those arguments became. They weren't X-Men, they could never be fully X-Men, but they weren't fully Acolytes either, they were trapped in the middle.

"I am really not looking forward to this."

"You think any of us are Silver?"

The five mutants were standing just outside the school doors, the professor had just invited them inside, saying that the X-Men and Acolytes were with him and that they all wanted to see them. They should be going inside, it wasn't as though the students outside were making them feel welcome, but what they had to do inside wasn't going to be easy.


"Lance you can't be serious. You can't all leave, you're home is here, the cottage you made habitable again, this is your home!"

Unfortunately Storm's impassioned response had no effect on the stony faced Brotherhood. Mystique, Magneto and even Sabretooth were smiling, not smirking, smiling! It looked even scarier than a scowl on the feral mutant, John was smiling a bit as well, Raven had explained the family connections to him the day before, and although none of them showed it he cared about the other Acolytes, and they cared about him. And it was good to think that maybe their family was going to grow, it wasn't like the X-Men were going to miss them anyway, they had so many lycra wearing wannabees waiting to blindly join their ranks it was unbelievable.

"Come on Storm, don't you remember how you looked at us. We're not truly X-Men, we never were, and we never cane be, there's too much Acolyte in us for that."

Here Rogue broke off and Pietro began.

"But we're not all Acolyte either, you know that. That's why we had to run before, we don't fit in either of your groups."

Then Lance began.

"Irene's got a house in New York, Rogue got in touch with her yesterday and we're going to move in there. Start up the Brotherhood Boarding House again."

There were more forceful objections, Logan stood up and growled, looking for all the world as though he intended to beat them into changing their minds. That was until Sabretooth stood in front of him, stopping him in his tracks and the two of them nearly started their own World War Three in Xavier's office. Grabbing onto Wolverine's skeleton and Sabretooth's blood Erik pulled them apart.

"Thanks Uncle Victor."

The three words chimed out simultaneously from the silver headed and stripy haired mutant, nearly giving all the X-Men a heart attack. Xavier looked as though he was about to speak so Todd, sick of all the talking made his first contribution to the conversation.

"Look yo, what it comes down to it that it ain't really none of your business. If we don't think we belong here then we don't yo. Live with it."

Fred nodded sagely, "What he said."

"We still want to keep in touch with you. We just can't live here. If we do we're just going to start arguing all the time, which, we're assuming is something none of us want."

"Besides," here Rogue looked nervously towards Pietro, twining his fingers with hers as she continued. "We miss our families, my mum, Pietro's dad, and our uncle."

Logan looked as though he was going to choke when she nodded her head towards Sabretooth. Xavier opened his mouth to speak, but what he would have said remained unknown.

"Don't interfere Charles," Erik's strong voice left no room for dissension. "Todd is quite right, it is their choice and theirs alone. They are not like us, but they will never be like you. And you do not have the right to try and change them, none of us do.

However we would like to keep in touch with you, and as the X-Men helped build your last home, perhaps you'd let us help with the new one. We'll make it even better than the last Boarding House.

He was set upon by two wild teenagers, and to the shock of everyone who didn't know him, and even to Charles's surprise the usually stern face erupted in smiles as he and his son and niece began exchanging news and apologies over the Liberty Island incident at a surprising rate, soon Raven joined in, then the rest of the brotherhood, then Victor, and finally John. Leaving the X-Men shell shocked.

The Acolytes were cold, ruthless fighters, with no emotions. The brotherhood were lively, previously misguided teenagers who had left their earlier misdeeds behind them, misdeeds forced upon them by their guardians. When the two met it should be as it had been in the first instance, the kids should be heartless and angry, they shouldn't be laughing and joking together. It just wasn't right. It just wasn't!


The new Brotherhood Boarding House

"Fred will you watch what you're doing, we're trying to repair this house not bulldoze it."

"Shut up Lance."

The argument swiftly degenerated into childish insults, they playful shoving, then Todd joined in, Pietro and Rogue and an all out war began on the front lawn of the boarding house. The Acolytes were watching indulgently, at one point Rogue raced past, Todd hot on her heels and pulled John into the fray. Leaving the older Acolytes to deal with the approaching X-Men.

"We don't like you Magneto."

"Really Scott, we'd never picked up on that. We're not particularly fond of you either you know. But that's not the point. You may not believe us but these kids are our family, we love them, and for some reason," here he was sneering the words, "they're fond of you."

Then Mystique spoke up. "You do anything to hurt those kids and we'll kill you, but as long as you don't, we'll play nice."

"For the Brotherhood then."

"For the Brotherhood."

And seven pairs of eyes turned to watch the fight on the lawn before them. Normal teenagers on a sunny afternoon, five amazing teenagers, who had made it possible for two groups of enemies to put aside their differences and get along. Just for the sake of five teenagers.


I did it, I finally finished, I really hoped everyone liked it and that the ending was all right, please review and tell me what you thought.

RoganLuvr: hope you liked the ending.

LoneStar: glad you like it so far, did you like the ending.

Veronica: really hope you liked the final chapter.

DreamSprite: sorry it's been a while but I hope you liked it.

Chica De Los Ojos Café: I always thought Magneto should be made human, hope you liked the final chapter.

Scar's fangurl: hope you liked it.

mm4eva2gether: hope you liked the final chapter.