Disclaimer: I do not in any way, shape, or form own X-Men, X-Men: Evolution, or their characters; all of it belongs to Marvel Comics and their individual creators. The characters of Stacey Lofton and Vicki Byrne belong to Stacey Lofton (read our Evo/PotC crossover story on her name!). Aliana LeBeau belongs to Aliana LeBeau. Mithra belongs to stormelle. I reserve the rights to this fiction, its story line, Leila Stone, Leonora Traviata, Carolyn Darjay, Niccolò Traviata, Pricilla Kenes, and Glint.

Confessions of a Future Past

Chapter 6: Setting the Board

2029

"What're you doing now?" Vicki asked as she sat at the foot of her bed, which had various items strewn across it. She stood up again quickly, and pulled a few chess pieces out from underneath her.

"I'll take those," Glint replied, taking the pieces from Vicki's open palm and placing them over a lit-up chessboard. "Just playing a little game."

"Are you actually using one of those new chess sets? I thought you were all about the old ways?" she said in astonishment as she changed her position at the edge of the bed to get a better view of the new contraption.

It had lit-up squares which gave a slight glow to each of the girls' faces. Each piece resembled a real person or animal, unlike those of regular sets. Glint moved the pieces Vicki had sat on to their own specific placements. When she set down the knights on the black side and pushed a few minuscule buttons on the side of the board the pieces took on the likeness of a man and a woman. She then took the rook and put it in the back corner of the opposite side where it took on the image of a man with pale skin, almost an icy blue.

"Bobby? You made the piece look like Bobby?" Vicki said giving Glint a sidelong glance.

"Exactly. I'm going to see how this will all play out. Look at the other pieces," her friend suggested. Vicki looked at each of the pieces, sometimes squinting to see their faces; she recognised many of them, though not all. Some of them she seemed to remember from a dream; or a distant memory perhaps.

Just then, as Vicki started piecing together who the pieces she didn't recognise were, a tone rang out through the small apartment. Both girls took a split-second to identify the sound as the doorbell since it hardly rang. Vicki looked at Glint, who didn't seem to show any interest in the bell or any intention to answer it, before she stood up. "I'll get it."

She walked across the living room with the small kitchen in the corner to the thick door. Before opening the door she peered through the small peephole, then undid various locks. Some things may have changed in the New York area over time, but tons of locks and bolts had not. Finally the door opened to show an inpatient man standing in the hallway.

"Are you guys ready? We're wasting precious time here!" he complained in a low, hushed voice as he crossed the threshold into the small living area. He ran his hand through his light brown hair and looked around the room, then to Vicki who appeared at his right after re-doing all the locks. "She is coming, isn't she? This is our chance to finally prove to President Kelly that we can help out against the alien scum."

Vicki gave him a sombre look, and shook her head. "I can't talk any sense into that girl. I swear, she's like a little kid; she's worse, she's like you when you were younger, Bobby."

"Oh come on, it can't be that bad," Bobby replied with a slight chuckle. He had been known to be quite stubborn and immature long ago and still today he was a little bit of both. "Let me talk to her," he offered and looked to Vicki, who just pointed him towards the backroom, which doubled as a bedroom and an office. He walked into the small room to see Glint finish setting up the chessboard. Leaning against the doorframe he said, "So, what's this I hear about you not wanting to prove mutant usefulness? Not wanting to save the world?"

"If you mean President Kelly's assassination that's supposed to happen today, I'm not going," she replied coldly with out turning to look at him.

"That doesn't sound like the you I know," he chastised and moved from his propped position in the doorway to a spot on the floor across the chessboard from Glint.

"Then I don't know who you know, but it's not me. I'm not going to save an enemy."

"That's why you've got to save him, G., So he won't be an enemy anymore. You can help convince him that we're not bad. That he should be siding with us, not against us."

"Don't call me G," she said, raising her head from the chess pieces to look him straight in the eye. "People like that don't change. He tried to kill us. He had the government create sentient robots to hunt us down."

"You act as if you'd never faced a sentinel before that."

"I hadn't."

Bobby turned to Vicki, who had been listening from the door, now with a drink in her hand. He shot her a look that begged for reinforcements. She mouthed the words 'I told you' to him. He rolled his eyes and stood up and walked into the main room, Vicki close in tow. He sat down on the old couch, resting his elbows on his knees as Vicki sat in the chair across from him.

"She really doesn't remember who she is, does she?"

"I think somewhere in there she remembers all of it. Those futurians messed with her mind though; they blocked out her memories and planted some fake ones too. If you remember, before it faded, Aliana had telepathic powers. She looked in there once and said that Glint would only remember those things if she wanted to. She has to really try to remember," his friend assured him.

"And she doesn't want to. What about La Luce or Xavier? They were both 'grade a' telepaths. Can't they just unlock those memories?"

"Professor Xavier's getting older, his power is very limited these days, but he's still as pacifist as ever. He won't help out unless she asks him. And Leonora didn't have enough time to work on it. She would have, she didn't care about invading people's minds very much. But that pendant Glint has is supposed to help. Leonora said that if she really tried to remember something and could get her hands on little bits of it, the rest would come back with the help of that pendant."

"Telepathy is so confusing."

"Tell me about it."

"Well, I guess if we're going to save the president, stop the aliens, and get my girlfriend's identity back we're going to have to get her memory back. Man, it's like dominoes, you have to set off one to start a chain of events."

"How are we supposed to get Glint's memory back? You saw her, she refuses to remember."

"We'll just have to help her along. Just try to get her to remember something super important that she can't forget. The first attacks maybe. But we can't give up, there's too much at stake. I just wish she wasn't the only one that could save Kelly, it would be so much easier. I mean, Miss Frost could create the same type of hard covering, but she can't encase someone else in it."

"Right. Well, let's go try to talk some sense into the senseless."

---------------

Year 2029. A secret location somewhere under New York.

"Ah hate waiting around here lahke this. I gotta get out!" a voice rang out through the large, cavernous, underground room.

"We can't do that. You know that," a man's voice lectured the first. "We have to wait until it's safe to come out of hiding. They told us that they're going to try to get the president to call of his attack. Maybe they can get him to call of his agents that are looking for us."

"Well, it better happen soon. I'm getting so weak down here with out the sun," a third said.