'On the road again…it feels so good to be on the road again—NOT!' Oh, please God! Let me out of this car from Hell! (I glance to the right, and there is—LITERALLY—the recently burnt remains of a Volkswagen "Bus" sitting on the side of the road. Bubbling, melted tires and all.) …On second thought, this heavenly mode of transport is just fine, thank you!

(The temperaturekeeps rising. I swear the Devil has something to do with this.)


A quick chapter, written when sitting cramped in a car behind a hysteric three-year-old. By the way, that was a quality disclaimer. I'm not to be held responsible!


XXX

Cloning Evolution

Step 5: Rise from the Grave

XXX

A host of glaring eyes focused on the inspector as he stepped into the room, then softened when they realized who it was. Remy LeBeau smiled subtly and handed Derek a clipboard. "Be a pal, an' fill de papers wit' pretty marks?" Derek shot a look at the other men in the room, who grinned and waved dismissively. He nodded and wasted no time in writing out the form so it said their unit had the hardest workers on the bloody planet. And they should get a raise.

The three other men, visibly relaxed, turned away from their work to greet the Security Head. It was a well-known fact that Remy was about as serious as a clown, especially when it came to his job. No one quite knew why Magneto had appointed him for it. The most widely accepted theory was that it was a reward for loyalty; there were old clips that showed Remy had been with Magneto from the very beginning. The most rare of crazy of rumors said Remy was the head of a mafia family that ran American crime—and a good chunk of the international part, too. Why that would make him the American government's Security Head was a mystery, though.

Remy grabbed a seat and perched behind Chase and his multitude of computer screens. "What you workin' on, boy?"

Trick question, really. Chase only ever did one thing: "chase" after a certain crime syndicate that the government wanted dead. Of course all organized crime needed to be taken down, but a certain group had made itself Enemy Number 1 with Magneto's regime. The Assassins' Guild had tipped off the previous government about an extensive network of mutant safe houses in return for immunity and the occasional blind eye. The mutant protectors' headquarters had been located in New Orleans. On Ash Wednesday, a good chunk of the American Army broke in and staged a massacre.

But now the government was pro-mutant, and the tables had turned on The Assassins' Guild. The teams that chased after them were death squads, ordered only to take a few key persons alive. Chase's job was to track down the locations of the group's cells. It was more like his obsession. His big brother and father had been in one of the mutant safe houses. Though normal, his mother and he had been in another. Getting the actual mutants out of their house hadn't stopped a mob from trying to burn it down with them in it. Even back then, the world had realized the family members of mutants had the recessive genes for it themselves. They'd been forced to go into hiding as well. Only, their safe house had remained safe when their loved ones' burned.

Being mutant family, Chase had managed to get a job in the new government's security branch. He had used the resources and his limited free time to track down the monsters who were responsible for his brother and father's deaths. Then Remy LeBeau came in and told him to stop this craziness and just focus on taking down The Assassins' Guild. It had been his job ever since.

Remy asked him if he'd found anything new. Chase shook his head. It was the same. Some of the cells they knew about were being put under the microscope instead of flat-out destroyed, but no new people came in, and no one left for a different cell. Mind readers in the death squads said none of the enemy ever knew of a cell outside their own. They were dead in the water.

He received a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder from Remy before the man moved on.

Gupta and Arnold's desk was next. At the computer, one dark hand strayed over a chalk white one to tap a few pertinent keys. On their screen, a girl ducking through a train depot's crowd blazed into sharp focus. "Gotcha," they smirked together.

Remy's head appeared between the two slightly older men's. "Caught somun', Salt'n'Pepper?" he asked, using his name for them. Gupta and Arnold were as good a pair as salt and pepper—and they looked the parts too. Arnold's dark, coarse hair had turned a peppery gray with age. Gupta was an albino. They were sweet men, minor mutants who had never known they were until the blood work was done. Arnold had simply been notorious for hunches. The same went for Gupta and what he called his "little lucks." Their powers combined and the skills they had garnered from the Information Age made them perfect for the tricky job of tracking down people who didn't want to be found.

Gupta had once compared his work to shooting silent moving targets blindly. And then he put on a blindfold, picked up the offered shotgun, and started gunning down the wooden bull's-eye ducks at the booth on the fairgrounds. Arnold still had that giant teddy bear stashed somewhere.

Arnold pointed at the girl on the screen. "Unregistered mutant. She's been headed west sporadically, bound for either L.A. or Mexico—but I'm guessin' Canada."

Remy nodded and told them to alert the Northern Border Patrol if she slipped from the radar. "So what's her story?" he asked, cocking his head. "Lil' Kentucky farm fille bred an' raised t'believe mutants be devils? Starts pickin' up tractors one-handed and panics?"

Gupta's mouth popped open. "How'd you guess?"

"Didn't Remy evah tell you he was psychic?"

Arnold only smirked and used a dark, manicured finger to trace Remy's gaze down to the case file lying open on the desk. An eyewitness account described Kylie Barton throwing aside an antique John Deer like Styrofoam after the tractor slid off a ramp at a local fair and rolled onto her father. Kylie's information, including her home address, was listed at the top of the open page.

The pale Gupta shook his head. "Remy, you're the best con this side of the Pacific—and that's no compliment."

"Says you," the Cajun replied. Then he paused and frowned. "You sayin' there's a man better than Remy in Asia?"

Arnold snickered. "His mam's not going to appreciate you callin' her a man."

After Arnold swore ten ways he'd make Gupta tell some stories about his conniving mother on a later date, Remy meandered back to the last man in the room.

Derek slid the filled-out clipboard back to Remy. He wore the fearful awed smile that all youngsters had when they looked up at one of the old war mutants. Remy pulled over a chair and sat, positioning himself at a calculated distance that was friendly without being too close for comfort. "Lemme guess," he grinned, "You're stuck wit' de boring work."

Derek shrugged noncommittally, but he didn't disagree.

"What they got you doin'?"

He pointed to his secondhand, slightly cracked screen. "I'm supposed to be pulling together profiles for mutants we'll be registering soon."

"You make the one for that lil' Barton fille?"

Derek nodded. "At least that was an interesting one. Mostly it's trying to get a word in edgewise as a mom babbles on the phone about how she 'always knew' her little Billy was 'special.'"

Remy did not bother to hide his sympathetic wince.

"I'm having trouble with this one case, though," he admitted with a sigh. "I can't even figure the identity." There were hints of shattered self-esteem in his voice.

"Don't get hung up on it," the Cajun advised, "We all get our hard'uns." He scooted forward and cocked his head at the computer screen. Pointing at the little blue-haired girl in the security footage, he asked, "Dis her?"

"And her mom." A red-haired woman roughly Remy's age was gestured at blithely. Derek rolled the recording forward, and then slowed it where the woman picked up a large assortment of bags one-handed and slung them behind her shoulder. "See. Those shopping bags have to weigh at least forty pounds together. No muscle tension in her arm at all—might as well be holding air. I'm tentatively putting her in at Class C strength." He rewound the footage a few minutes. "The daughter's more tricky. She turned herself into some storybook character to protect her mom."

"Protect?" Remy repeated.

"The woman exploded in the middle of a bookstore. They heard her halfway across the mall. Security moved in quiet her down, and the girl snatched and bashed a stunner to pieces with her bare hands. Staged her own little tantrum." He allowed a smile. "You can tell the two of them are related. They've got the same temper."

Remy gestured at the screen. "If you don't mind…"

"Oh, of course." Derek sat a little straighter and started the recording.

'Yer censorin' tha books Non-Mutants can read!'

The younger man turned the volume down a second too late. He looked at Remy, whose face had gone white. "I'm sorry," he stammered, but the Cajun cut him off coldly.

"Crank it back up."

He blinked. "What?"

"Turn de volume up. Now."

Dark eyes slid his way. He bit back a yelp and obeyed. Remy closed his eyes and leaned forward, listening to the woman's voice.

'What's wrong with The 'ventures of Huck Finn? Is it because it teaches that it's wrong ta treat some people like dirt, just 'cause they're supposedly born "inferior?" That all people are human beings?'

That accent, the 'human rights' doctrine, the affectionate nickname of that damned Mark Twain book—no, it couldn't be. He reached past Derek to pause the footage at a good shot of the woman's face. Red hair, blue eyes, pale skin, no freckles. He didn't immediately recognize the face, but the watch on her wrist was another story. He switched the view to infrared. The shape of her face changed, and he took a breath. "Derek, match the features picked up on the heat scan against the full mutant registry—dead and alive.

The young man balked. "I can't do that. This computer wont—"

"Use the mainframe."

Before he could protest, Remy punched in the access code. The lights dimmed and a projection screen on one wall flickered to life. Sinking low in his seat, Derek matched the points and planes of the woman's face and pulled the data through the mainframe's search engine. He winced as the other computers in the room stalled, knowing this was happening throughout the complex as the search took top priority, stealing computing power.

All four men in the room stared at Remy as he stood and glared at the projected screen. He wasn't the carefree Remy they knew. This one had a rock hard jaw line and glowing eyes that his mirrored sunglasses failed to hide. He was terrifying. They would rather die than be forced to meet his gaze then. They would rather have a staring contest with the Cyclops.

They jumped when a chime issued from a speaker. A profile came up on the screen, covered by a large window that read 'MATCH FOUND.'

"Delete that," Remy snapped. "Let me see her face."

Derek froze a moment before scrambling to get rid of the box. It disappeared, and Remy's face went slack when saw the woman's unobstructed profile picture. Beneath the shot of a shyly smiling auburn beauty were the words "Rogue, The—X-Man—DECEASED."

The other men showed shock in their own respective ways. The Rogue had died during a last ditch assassination attempt on Magneto at the war's end. Children grew up on stories of her. She had been one of the original X-Men. An orphan, the X-Men had become her family. She could never bear to leave the group, even after its corruption, even when her adopted brother left, even though the love of her life was one of Magneto's top mutants. Finally, on the night of Magneto's victory, several of the corrupt X-Men stormed the Brotherhood's base and nearly managed a coup d'etat. Rogue intervened. She had shielded the leader, taking the poison splatter-bomb meant for him. She died a hero.

It was the sort of true story Hollywood prayed for, but no one was willing to touch it until the government said a blockbuster film wouldn't be an attack on the woman's memory. It seemed they would be waiting a long time.

Consider all that—with the added twist that the woman might still be alive—and the men's shock made perfect sense.

Their sudden fear was also logical, for Remy growled, "Boys," and the dark room began to glow red. "Are we going to tell anyone what we've learned in this room?" he proceeded to ask softly.

Chase caught on first. "No, of course not." The Salt and Pepper pair was saying something similar a moment later. That left only one man unaccounted for.

"Derek?"

The young man found himself staring into demon eyes. "…N–Nn–o," he finally stuttered, "You want this quiet, m–my lips are sealed."

He cringed at the affectionate pat. "Good boy."
The infernal lights went out. Remy nonchalantly exited the mainframe, and the room returned to normal. He glanced around at the men. "You boys have a new assignment. All of you," he added with a look to Chase. He wrenched Derek's screen around so they all could see the mall security footage of the woman and her daughter. "Find them," he ordered. "I want to know where to find them, who they are—what the Hell is going on! You report only to me, or I will explode you." His head cocked dangerously. "Any questions?"

Not a one.

XXX

Gambit was at his motorbike before he knew what happened. He jammed his helmet on, frowning. It was impossible. Rogue was dead; he had watched her be buried.

Hadn't he?

Only after straddling the bike did he remember that damned thing called responsibility. Part of him said Hell with it, but another part shrieked that he couldn't just up and leave. He pulled out a cell, compromising.

A minute later, he roared out of the garage.

XXX

'Gone to pay some mo' last respects. Back in action t'morrah afternoon—Gambit.'

Erik gestured for the secretary to delete Remy's brusque if chipper sounding message and then leave. When she was gone, he busied himself with a diplomatic entreaty from China. Asia had turned out to be far more tolerant of mutants than the increasingly Catholic Europe. He sighed. The last thing he had wanted was for religion to enter the equation. It only brought madness. European Catholic mutants had been killed in droves, often by their own hands, when the Pope deemed them satanic in nature.

Pushing Wagner into the limelight and revealing that he had quietly been ordained by the previous Pope had been the only way to stem the bloodshed. But now the world was dealing with two papacies, and Eric had an unwilling, furry, betrayed-feeling religious leader on his hands.

Religion was the thorn deeply imbedded in his side. He couldn't escape it, even now. The main issue the Chinese had was the worry that openly allying themselves with him would bring Europe's armies down upon them. It wouldn't be a problem if so many millions of idiots didn't believe one old man was the emissary of God.

He rested his head on his fist and watched hollow metal spheres bob in a small water fountain. Seemingly of their own, they rose into the air and began to circle each other aimlessly. Minutes passed like this. "I think it's time to visit my old friend," he sighed at last.

He stood, and a man who had been waiting in the corner opened the door for him. He ignored the bodyguard's look of hatred. After eleven years, it no longer held any amusement for him.

He nodded after he passed though the door. "Logan." The man shut it and followed a step behind Erik Lensherr, the Magneto.

XXX

"Rogue, where are we going?"

"To a graveyard up in New York. There's some folks there I need t'pay mah respects to."

XXX

"…Can I eat some pizza first?"


Well, THAT turned out…erm, interesting…like always, it seems. Have I not done something shocking-ish every chapter? Scott's attempted suicide, McCoy showing Risty how to kill—well, I guess Ch. 3 was okay—Kurt's circus days, THIS…


REVIEW RESPONSES: (updated kinda fast, so not a whole lot of people've had a chance to read CH 4 yet)

giveGODtheglory: Funny you should mention clonings gone wrong. ...Just wait a few chapters...

WAVES TO EVERYBODY. LOVE YOU! GONNA GO SLEEP IN MY OWN BED NOW! ...AFTER I DO MY COLLEGE CLASS HOMEWORK...DAMMIT!