Woops. 'kay, I'm back. After a whopping…oh, only 6 days. Hmm, not as bad as I thought. Anyway, I've been assaulted by non-X:Evo story ideas and dragged to two Art Institutes in under a week, so the chapter-writing thing didn't happen until today.

…Well, now I must take a moment and thank the 70-ish people who follow this story and put up with me, especially the 20 that joined in on chapter five! And before anyone asks, it's called the Stats feature. Coincidentally, this statistical readout of fic information also reminds me how few reviews I have…

Kidding. I'm not one of those writers who harangue readers for reviews. And if I should ever refuse to update until I get so many reviews, my Kurt-loving friend Mell has permission to leak my home address so all y'alls can come beat me to a bloodied pulp…assuming she doesn't beat you to it…


And speakin' of reviews, here's the (terrifyingly long) REVIEW RESPONSES:

)))giveGODtheglory(((— (Thanks for reviewing more than once.)

Breathe, hon. The cloning gone wrong (that happens a few chapters from now) is just to exact revenge on a character I Hate. And that reminds me… HEY, ABOUT SPYKE… DO I OOC HIS CLONE AND MAKE HIM COOL OR JUST MISCARRIAGE THE "FETUS"? …HE'D HAVE NORMAL HAIR AND CUTE FOREHEAD HORNS!

Hmm, and I think that's everythi…hold the phone. What do you mean, Logan had the metal put back? When was it removed? And How? It's, like, grafted to the bones. I mean, unless the bones in his body were torn out and he had to grow them back…EEEWWWW!


)))otak the Canadian(((—

I just have to laugh every time I'm told my fan fiction is "original." Though, I must admit, I see your point. Originality is hard to find on this site. With X:Evo there's always Romy or a slumber party—often both. That I can handle, but it gets worse. So much worse, I can't mention it without kicking this fic's rating up to M

Let me just tell the entire site somethin' before I come back to you. 'EY! READER PEOPLE: GET A CLUE AND GET A FRESH STORYLINE! THANK YOU.

Woops, sorry M'luv, you've stumbled across a pet peeve. Mmm, now where were we? Ah, yes. 'Horror without gory details.' As a writer fond of gore, details, and such, I'm glad someone's appreciating that I'm holding back.


)))skin2skincontact(((— You're a boy! —Jumps Him(!)— Thank you for adding diversity to the site! I wonder if any other reviewers are guys…

Um, ahem: 'the others come in & it branches off from there.' Funny you should write that. I'm of the opinion that if this fic goes on, I'm splitting it up so each clone gets his/her own fic. Of course, I'm not going to do that yet, simply because I haven't written that much material. Grand plans are only good if you work towards them. So I'm working, I'm working.

It's gratifying that people look forward to my updates. It proves that one needn't cliffhang chapters. Anyone else hate it when a writer does that non-stop?


)))WolvGambit Le Diable Blanc(((— Sorry. Yours was a short review, so the response is shorT. "Thanks for reviewing."


)))Velvet Shadow(((— A loyal reviewer. I…I'm just so happy!


)))ishandahalf(((— Okay, I'm POSITIVE I've read that quick bunny on crack line before. …but where? Hmm…

Yes, slightly dark and disturbing is like my trademark. My nom de plume is the Bone White Butterfly for a reason…unlike 'ish-and-a-half,' which I still don't get after reading your bio thing. Your mission is indeed accomplished. …And idiots' mispronunciation of words is a little annoying, yes.


…I'M DONE! WAHOO! OKAY, I'VE GOT TO START WRITING SHORTER REVIEW RESPONSES.


I'm SORRY, but the writing in this chapter seems so damn bad to me. Too complicated. And that mean's you'll end up tearing your hair out trying to understand it. …Okay, I'm going to try and edit it ONE MORE TIME…and then you're on your own!

Could I suggest you read this chapter SLOW?

XXX

Cloning Evolution

Step 6: Border on the Psychotic

XXX

The small cemetery in Jersey was a quiet one. The one side that faced civilization was protected by a tall hedge, and forest hemmed in the rest. The gravestones didn't arrange themselves in straight rows, preferring to clump into territorial plots where, on occasion, entire family trees had been laid to rest. A disused little church sat off to one side, made from the same weathered stone as many of the grave markers that it watched over. Its cellar doors were closed, but the usual brass lock was missing.

Within the underground room, cobwebs ruled. The only light came from a grimy window set a few inches above ground level—and from two glowing eyes. Remy LeBeau stood in the little disturbed dust. Those eyes of his moved about, taking in the details that had grown vague in his mind over the years. Things had changed, of course—the glass shards had been swept away and the mattress in the corner had been dragged out—but many aspects were the same. The reddish brick lining the inner room still crumbled. The dark leafless branches of the old tree could still be seen through that small rectangular window. He found the energy for a faint smile. The dim light still made the fragile spider's silk glow.

He had always imagined her to be like one of those spider webs. Soft as silk and beautiful, trapping any fool being who touched her. And yet, when the creature was too strong, she had been rent apart.

With a sigh, he remembered that last dread night on the eve of Magneto's victory. She had found him in the stronghold's center. The question of how she had managed to secret herself in died when she begged him to escape, to leave everything behind. It was their same old argument, but this time she had taken his side of it. In turn, he should have shied away, saying he couldn't abandon his family. But, for all that Magneto's soldiers called themselves Brothers, they weren't family. So he had asked, 'When?'

'Now!'

'But only wit' you.'

She had stared at him for a long, breathless moment before bowing her head. She took his hand and ran. Then the explosions began.

Scant seconds later, they had been separated. The last thing he heard her say was to keep going and meet up with her on the outside. It had been the logical thing to do, but his heart overrode his brain functions, and he had barreled through the halls in search of her. The opposition he had come up against was fuzzy in his mind. X-Soldiers, fingertips, an all-pervading crimson glow, explosions in his wake—that was the only memory he had of the hallways. It simply wasn't important enough to recall correctly. The foyer, in comparison, had everything that mattered to him strewn across the floor.

Rogue lay in a twisted way on her back at the foot of the stair. Thick, poisonous goop gleamed on the floor beneath her as her eyes fixed unwavering on the chandelier above.

Accounts varied. Some said the battle ended when she died, others argued it was when he fell to his knees and took her in his arms, mindless of the poison. Depending on the witness, she had either lunged at Magneto as he stood on the steps, only to be caught in the crossfire—or she had thrown herself into the line of fire to save his life. A few souls even argued that she been hurled into the area already dead. Her getting hit with the poisonous splatter bomb meant for Magneto had only been a lucky coincidence.

Remy hadn't cared about the official story at the time. It was the unfairness of it all that ate away at his mind. They had finally agreed. They would be their own side, not X-Men or Brotherhood, just two people together. And then she went and got killed. His powerful and beautiful fille, destroyed by a stray bit of goo. It was unfair. The hows and whys of it were meaningless.

Or, at least they had been. Politics forced that to change. A law was passed. Those who had opposed Magneto were labeled traitors and denied many human rights. About the only thing they could get a fair trial, though that could be argued when certain cases were decided solely by Magneto's whim.

Remy had focused on that, and on the denial of funeral rites.

The measure had originally been passed to further cripple the Friends of Humanity, which still had a decent following along the Bible Belt and in Catholic communities. Bodies of known members were torn from their graves as their families and communities watched. They either burned on the spot or were left to rot in piles. The psychological blow had only strengthened the resolve of the most fervent. But those who had joined because of an eloquent church leader, or family, or peer pressure—or the ever-popular desire improve one's chances with an F.O.H. love interest—well, they had simply dropped out and pretended like it had never happened. The F.O.H. all but died in a few weeks.

For once, a law actually did what it was supposed to. But then its words were twisted, and it also came to apply to any X-Man who opposed Magneto, and then to any rogue mutant. Any mutant who hadn't joined with Magneto to celebrate his victory was called traitor. Those that had died fighting against him in the war were refused burial.

While this had been happening, the argument was still out on whether Rogue had died in an attempt to save the mutant leader or to kill him. Remy had refused to allow the fate of his fille's remains to be decided by debaters who didn't even know her.

So he had gone to Magneto and dug himself deep into the man's debt for the third time. The hole he was in was now far too large to ever get out of, but with Rogue gone he had no place else to go anyway. So in his subtle way, Magneto had ended the debates and, with a few truths, wove a story for the public that could hold up to a battering ram.

The Rogue had been torn between sides from the start. It had only grown worse as she was forced to either be loyal to her X-Man family or embrace the love she had found with her enemy. When the Brotherhood won, and the renegade X-Soldiers staged an assassination attempt, she had been forced to choose. In the end, she intercepted a projectile containing lethal poison meant for Magneto and died. It had been impossible to pry her from her love's arms for hours. Denying the heroic woman a proper burial would be a crime to both her memory and the man with such devotion to her.

That was the summary of the stirring eulogy Magneto gave in his new capitol of Genosha. The Rogue herself was quietly buried in a graveyard in New Jersey, and no one breathed a word when the Nightcrawler gave her a Catholic funeral. Nor had they even looked at Remy LeBeau as he stood before the casket, and then walked away in the middle of its descent into the grave. He had still clutched an array of flowers in his hand, but by the time he reached the small church across the field, he had discarded every bloom except for a single lily.

It was not a white funeral lily, but a vibrantly orange, black-spotted, curling explosion of petals. He had twirled the tiger lily in his fingers as he descended down into the cellar, crunching shattered glass into mere shards with his boots and paying no mind to the sticky stain of cheap wine spilled over the old floorboards. He had left the flower there in the dark place as a reminder. She had been there not so long ago, gleaming bright in the shadows, as dazzling and alive as a tiger lily.

Now, a decade later, Remy stood in the same cellar. A lily was clenched in one hand. Sad, confused thoughts trickled through his mind, and, unthinking, he whispered them into the dim. The words gave the place the air of a madhouse.

"Why? Ten years, Rogue, an' you still don' leave me be.
"An' who's de girl? She looks old 'nough, she could be…
"It's crazy, Cherie. Dead filles do no' throw tantrums in de bibliotheque…
"Is dis torture, a shapeshifter forcin' Remy to see your face…
"…but den why de disguise? De watch…illusion, why hide behind it?"

He shook his head.

"It's no' you Rogue, canna be.
"—Dead an' buried—
"Why d'you force-feed me wit' hope?
"I've held your corpse—I know.

"You are dead, Rogue."

His last words seemed to echo in the empty place. He threw the white funeral lily to the floor and stalked away, up the stairs to the cellar doors. But at the last moment, he stopped, and cast an unwilling glance at the corner where he had held her years ago. The traitorous question fell from his lips.

"…Aren't you?"

XXX

"Rogue, how long are we going to sit here?"
"Don't complain. That's two boxes full of pizza sittin' on your lap."

XXX

The car stopped in the shade outside the old wrought iron gates. The most youthful of its three occupants stepped out first, sullenly, into the sun and the northwesterly breeze.

He had the presence of a fighter. There was also a terrifying slenderness about him that made it hard to compare him to men with veins like ropes and heads dwarfed by their own biceps. There was only one thing about him that made him look the part of a warrior. Though he was thin, the man seemed to be made of nothing but muscle. Thin and corded like steel ropes, they wrapped compactly around his frame. Even the muscles in his eyes, the irises, were affected. Abnormally large, they had the effect of making his eyes seem a solid, deadly block of color when he slit them.

But when his eyelids twisted in the way they were now, he had the look of a lost child.

From inside the car, a polished yet steely voice spoke one word of warning. "Move."

He didn't budge for a long moment. Then, he suddenly moved to the side in a swift, yet spastic and unarticulated shuffle. He stopped just as abruptly, and there was a moment of floundering before he regained his balance. Steady on his feet once more, he rotated slightly to look at the elderly man who now stood in the spot he had vacated. Anyone who had seen a supermarket tabloid in the last two decades would recognize his face. This man was the Magneto.

His eyes had narrowed to slits.

The aged man returned his glare with a steady look of extreme indifference as the third, middle-aged man killed the car engine and stepped out from the vehicle. The driver glanced at the other two, his emotionless face hiding his thoughts about their awkward relationship—the uncaring father burdened with his loathing and obviously ill son.

After an agitated silence, the car doors suddenly slammed shut right as the gates wrenched open. "Wait there," Magneto ordered the other two, pointing through the gates of the cemetery at an old, stone church. The angry man damn near flew towards it while the driver followed at a more controlled, serene pace.

After watching the youth stumble to a stop scant inches before slamming into the church's outer wall, Magneto shook his head and started purposefully towards an area at the back of the cemetery.

XXX

The woman sprawled across the bench seat at the back of her car was a remarkable one. For one, she had managed to drive her vehicle off road through an incredibly dense stand of trees without scratching the paint. For another, she had lain on that seat for the better part of four hours, peering through the open car door with a pair of binoculars—the picture of patience.

The blue teenager squirming in the front passenger seat was another story. She spun around and pleaded, "Can we go—Now?" For the word "now" to be any more emphasized, it would need a brass band accompanying it.

The woman's unending patience was starting to wear very thin. She now understood why it was wrong to play to God and artificially create life. With God's way, children had several years to learn at least some patience. The clone in the front seat was, quite possibly, the most impatient being in existence.

"Rogue… Can we go now, please?"

This was more annoying than the "Are we there yet?" question—though she now had some clone-style experience with that one too. Whatever had possessed her to take Risty on a car trip needed to die a very slow death. Ah, yes: McCoy. The thought of leaving Risty alone with him for two weeks had been too much to bear.

Rogue sighed. "You finished with your book, darlin'?"

"Yes."

"Read it again."

"But I already—"

"Read it again. You can never read a good book too many times."

A book was opened, at there came about a blessed silence. Everything in the car took on a certain stillness as well, marred only by the occasional flick of a page or the stretching of stiff limbs. A frightening number of discarded, empty pizza boxes could be found at the front of the vehicle. One half-covered a small chocolate cake on the driver's seat. The dessert was protected by a clear plastic dome and several warnings that slim blue fingers should stay far away.

When Rogue had bought the cake and some decorating icing at a cake store along the way, Risty had immediately asked what it was. This led to a short lecture on dessert. The girl had no idea what sweets were, seeing as the base was stocked only with food that McCoy deemed adequately nutritional. (A Rogue in disguise was often seen haunting a nearby diner.)

Upon learning about cake, the girl had been chockablock full of questions. 'Why is it good?' 'And why does it make you fat?' 'What are lethal calories, and why were they the answer to both my first two questions?'

'Why did you write the word Charlie on the cake?' 'Who is Charlie?' 'What's a nickname?' 'Oh, so who is Charles Xavier?' 'Why is his name on the cake?' 'What's a Birthday?' 'What's a birth?'

On that long stretch of road, Rogue had begun to long for the simple question of—
'Are we there yet?'
—and managed to jinx herself.

In a likewise fashion, she had foolishly told Risty they could leave the stand of trees when she said so, causing the girl to ask "Can we go now?" every few minutes.

She sighed and looked again through the binoculars. She got a good view of the cemetery's gates flying open "on their own." Magneto had arrived. She turned to look at the driver's seat, where Charles Xavier's birthday cake sat. Right on schedule.

She returned to her binoculars and watched as a group of three men split. Magneto's path took him towards a collection of graves she very much wanted to know the location of, but she found her gaze focusing instead on the two other men. At varying paces, they had taken off towards the old church. She locked onto the slower of the two and recognized him easily. A man that big had to be Piotr Rasputin, the Colossus. He looked good. He had that look that said he was satisfied with his life—or at least had resigned himself to it without too much trouble.

She aimed her binoculars at the last of the trio. He was a wraith of a man, emaciated despite his muscular physique. Anorexic was the word she was searching for. She was reminded of Risty, who had only survived her last growth spurt because of life support and even now fit into children's clothes designed for little girls half her height. The young-looking man should not have been walking. It was something of a relief when he stumbled by the church's side. It showed he was human.

Still, he seemed far too healthy.

Her gaze trained up to his face. She frowned and had the electronic binoculars zoom in. Something about him was bothering her. And for good reason. When his eyes were clearly in sight, she gasped and dropped her electronic eyes. Horrified, she whispered his name.

"Logan?"

XXX


God, I hate breaking up the cemetery scene like this, but…it's going to be REALLY long, and this is the best stopping point for quite a while. Forgive the semi-cliffy, please.

Next chapter is still in the cemetery. It'll be posted soon…though I somehow have to work the writing around my Uni class final exam and get it uploaded before I visit a Chicago Art Institute next weekend…gah!

Um…Logan has a male form of anorexia. Considering how bad the writing is this chapter, I thought I'd tell y'all that once more just in case you missed it. It's about control. He controls how much he exercises—and how little he eats—because doing so is the only way to feel like he has any control over his own life. Remember the way Magneto moves his body like he was a puppet? If that don't make you feel like a powerless victim, nothing else will.

I actually know a guy with this disorder. …Not the "get-moved-around-like-puppet-because-of-metal-bones" part…but the lethal anorexia and control issues.


Tiny Preview of Chapter 7: Clear it with God

Erik strolled towards a certain pair of headstones. They stood to the back of a large clump of graves that had an interesting history. Every person there had two things in common. They were the beloved dead of rich or powerful people. They had also died opposing the Brotherhood. Traitors had a hard time getting their last rites in America lately. Private graves were routinely dug up. Cremated ashes were dumped into the sewers. Attempts to ship corpses off to the burial grounds of Europe rarely succeeded. In desperation, a corpse's loved ones would turn to him. If it were worth something to him, he would arrange an exception. A favor here and there in return for a quiet burial in a New Jersey cemetery.

None of the names or dates on the collection of tombstones was real, allowing for anonymity. Only a person present at the private funeral would know where to look for any one person. Rogue's marker said her name was Anna Marie Paquin or some such. Hers wasn't the grave he was interested in, however, and he passed it by for the two matching headstones tucked deep into the shade, almost into the tree line. According to the carved out letters, they were a devoted husband and wife who had died within a week of each other.

He wondered if he had put them there in the shadows to hide his shame. Perhaps his business of making burial exceptions was to make him feel less hypocritical. The law—his law—refused funeral rites to any who had opposed the Brotherhood. And yet he had these two graves hidden away.

He sighed as he stepped closer to the matching grave markers of Scarlet and Charlie Magnus.

Heh, wonder who they are…
Bah-Bye, y'all.
…sigh…
On to the dreaded Uni homework.