AUTHOR'S NOTE: Much love going out to Tenshi no Koneko and thanx4reading
for your comments. Keep 'em coming! Enjoy.
616 timeline 04-29-2004 (uncharted area of) Nevada, United States
She was flying. She'd always loved the feel of the wind tousling her hair, whipping her clothes against her frame. She felt weightless, despite the metal horse she carried between her thighs. True, the motorcycle, which weighed close to 1000 pounds, was no BMX bike, but, with the help of some subtle TK, she jumped each dune with ease, and even managed a few stomach- twisting flips.
A bullet bit Rachel in the shoulder, and she shook off her daydream to concentrate on the task at hand. She came crashing back to the desert sand. In front of her, three Hummers were swerving in and out of complex formations, trying to shake their tail. Each of the cars was equipped with two expert gunmen, who tried in vain to train Uzis upon her. Rachel twisted and turned to dodge each spray of gunfire, kicking up dust to confuse her enemy. She could've put up a telekinetic shield to save energy, but she like to show off.
Summers used her most delicate measure of telekinesis to unhinge the spark plugs of the two Hummers closest to her, causing sparks to fly beneath the vehicles' hoods. Opening the oil tanks, she gave the sparks fuel, and effectively ignited fire near each of the engines. As soon as they saw the flames rising from the front of their cars, the henchmen inside leapt out to roll upon the ground. However, the machines exploded mere feet from them, catching the six bodies on fire. As she sped past, Rachel sent a wall of sand onto them, suffocating the flames.
She accelerated, sending the bike's engine from a growl to a roar. It had taken her two months of diligent effort to telekinetically construct a replica of her father's precious '04 Valkyrie Rune, and it had been worth every minute. She leaned forward, her chest constricting, her body heat rising. The engine was now screaming at her, pleading for mercy. Rachel was unrelenting. She could fix whatever damage she did to the pistons later, so she refused to hold back the growing urge for speed, for danger, for annihilation. Lost yet again in her own fervor, she didn't notice the heat-seeking missile shooting toward her until it burst into her back.
She tumbled forward, somersaulting in a sea of dirt, until she came to rest in a lifeless heap. Or so it seemed.
Rachel had survived the explosion without a scratch, but her Valkyrie was completely destroyed. She lay still for almost two full minutes, gathering her rage, pocketing it until it could be most sufficiently utilized. She looked around to see where the rocket launcher had come from, and spied a four-story government building almost two miles away. As the car finally turned around and made its way toward her, she heard Bolivar Trask from deep within the sterile halls, commanding the men inside the vehicle to "finish her off."
Her anger almost bolt out of her in the form of an attack against the Hummer, but she had to restrain herself. Inside that vehicle was a disk packed with information about the members of several mutant leagues, including the X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, X-Factor, and the newly formed Excalibur, of which she was the field leader. Finally, the SUV came to a stop a few yards from her crumpled form. Cautiously, one of the gunmen stepped out and crept toward her, his gun aimed ominously at her. He fired one, two, three, four shots, to ensure that she was dead.
Each bullet ricocheted off her skin. In order to keep the man and the car within her reach, she created a psychic illusion in which the bullets penetrated her skin with a spray of blood. The henchman, now standing right above her, turned back to the driver of the Hummer with a nod. While both men gave a sigh of relief, Rachel created a tiny plasma sphere. When the gunman turned back around, she had the glowing bomb in her hand, inches form his face.
She glared. "You *do* realize I had to make every *square inch* of that beautiful machine out of *thin air*?"
The sphere exploded, and the man's entrails flew in all directions. The Hummer started to pull away, but she was already inside, moving at the speed of light. She grabbed the titanium case she needed, leaving another plasma sphere upon the floorboard, and dashed out in a split second. As she walked away, the machine burst into flames, sending debris through the humid air. She laughed to herself, hearing Trask two miles away, screaming for someone to "find out what the hell that was and which freak group it works with!" They could search the CIA database for the next hundred years, but they couldn't find someone who never existed.
Rachel telekinetically bathed herself and donned a pair of black vinyl pants, a red tank top with a golden phoenix emblem, and a black, floor- length, leather trench coat, as well as her father's signature ruby quartz shades. She glanced back at the wreckage behind her with a sigh, and murmured, "Some people have no respect for art."
* * *
616 timeline 04-29-2004 Woodbridge, Suffolk, England
Rachel opened the large, wooden door to her bedroom, announcing her presence. "I wouldn't touch the bottom drawer if I were you."
Logan, who had been idly looking through her bedroom while he waited for her return from America, pulled his hand away from her dresser. "How'd you know I was here?" he asked. Placing her sunglasses upon the nightstand, she threw him an impetuous look, as if to say, What don't I know?
He closed the top drawer. "Is there a reason you have two dressers and a closet full of cd's and guns, but no clothes?"
She smiled. "This is all I ever wear. I'm not a priss, I guess." He chuckled and they settled upon the bed. In the months that she'd stayed at the Braddock Manor, Rachel's relationship with Logan had healed and grown. Though they lived in separate countries, they made it a point to visit each other every week. They had gone through a lot of similar experiences in their long, worn lives, and both of them got some semblance of peace from opening up to each other, though neither had ever thought such a feat possible.
After several minutes of pleasant teasing, Logan's face grew somber, and it was obvious he was mewling through some internal battle. "What's wrong?" was Rachel's simple query, though she knew the answer.
"Things have taken a bizarre turn over the past couple of weeks," he admonished. She didn't offer anything else, so he went on. "Well, that's actually the reason I'm here, you see. I'm supposed to tell all of you something pretty important, but I don't even know where to begin, and I figured you-" He looked at her a moment before rushing on with an intense speed. "I figured you would know what to say, since you've obviously had a long time to digest Jean's resurrection."
She smirked. "Wow. You really are a disturbed little man, aren't you?" He gave a pleading look, and she laughed, trying to lighten his mood. "Don't worry so much! Jean is fine."
"I didn't say Jean wasn't fine," he grumbled.
"No, but it's what you're thinking. I know you're not buying the whole died-on-the-moon-living-in-a-cocoon-Phoenix-clone-story, but really, she's back to her old self."
"Are you admitting that she was ever not her old self?"
She rolled her eyes. No one knew for sure if Jean had died upon the moon or not. If she hadn't, as she claimed, she had actually been in a cocoon at the bottom of the Hudson River during the entire Dark Phoenix catastrophe, and the Phoenix Force had made a clone of her. If it had been her, however, and she could reconstruct herself after death, the world was certainly not a safe place anymore. "Logan," she said soothingly, "would it make any difference?"
He shrugged in frustration. "Of course not. I'll love Jeannie forever, no matter what she does. It's just that, no matter how much I love her, I'm not blind to her faults, like all those maniacs back at the Mansion." He paused. "But I still love her." And so he had hit the basis of why this was so hard for him. Phoenix was about to marry Scott, and Logan would never betray Cyclops, despite his love for Jean, so he was now doomed to live out his days pining for the woman he could never touch.
Rachel rubbed Wolverine's shoulder sympathetically. He loved both men equally, and understood the depth of both relationships: Jean and Scott, and Jean and Logan. She tried again to lift her uncle's spirits. "Yeah, I heard about the infamous kiss you gave Jean on the battlefront. I mean, I always knew you had balls, but right there, in front of Scott, and Warren, and everybody!"
His eyes grew wide. "How the hell did you find out about-?" He let it go with a sigh, and gave her a suspicious look. "Exactly how much do you know, anyway?"
She smirked. "Let's see... Jean came back from the dead and joined X- Factor without telling anyone. Madelyne Pryor found out that Mr. Sinister had cloned her after Jean, and went all psycho, becoming the Goblin Queen. Jean found out about Scott's marriage to little Miss Maddy, and went pretty crazy herself, while poor Scott is nearly insane with guilt and regret. Madelyne seduces Scott's young brother Alex, of course, only using him to hurt Scott. But that's not enough, so she also decides to kill her and Scott's son, Nathan. But the day is saved, by X-Factor, both teams of the X-Men, and old X-Men Beast and Angel. Now, Maddy is dead, by Jean's hand. Jean and Scott are set to be married, and Jean is planning on adopting Nathan as her own son..." She trailed. "Am I missing anything?"
Logan eyed her, astonished. "Have you known all this all along?"
"I've known all this since I was about five years old."
He shook his head, baffled, and looked away sadly. "What am I gonna do?"
She placed her hand upon his cheek, and made him look at her. "Life goes on, I promise."
Just then, the door swung open, and a blonde with long, pointed ears stepped in with a load of laundry. "Oh, uh..." She looked from Rachel to Logan and back again, apologetically. "I didn't mean to interrupt; I'll come back later."
"No, Meggan, it's okay," Summers said, getting up to help her with the towels. "You didn't interrupt anything." Logan stood and threw a distasteful look at the girl. Meggan smiled uncomfortably and closed the door behind her. Rachel came back from the adjoined bathroom, resisting the urge to laugh at the notion that anyone would believe her and Wolverine an item. Seeing the look on his face, she sobered. "Listen," she told him, "I'll give the news to the rest of the team. You don't have to stay."
He considered the offer and nodded. "Yeah, why not? I mean, you know the story better than most of us that were there." She hugged him, and he slung his leather jacket over his shoulder. "Well, I guess I'll see you at the wedding then." He started to leave, but turned back. "Hey, can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Do you know anything about the wedding from your reality? You know, did Scott and I get in a fight or anything? Was I even there?" Ah, Rachel thought to herself. So he's considering not attending.
"You really wanna know?" she asked. He nodded. "You were the best man."
He tried bitterly to hold back his chuckle, though in vain. "Figures," he muttered, as he walked out the door.
616 timeline 04-29-2004 (uncharted area of) Nevada, United States
She was flying. She'd always loved the feel of the wind tousling her hair, whipping her clothes against her frame. She felt weightless, despite the metal horse she carried between her thighs. True, the motorcycle, which weighed close to 1000 pounds, was no BMX bike, but, with the help of some subtle TK, she jumped each dune with ease, and even managed a few stomach- twisting flips.
A bullet bit Rachel in the shoulder, and she shook off her daydream to concentrate on the task at hand. She came crashing back to the desert sand. In front of her, three Hummers were swerving in and out of complex formations, trying to shake their tail. Each of the cars was equipped with two expert gunmen, who tried in vain to train Uzis upon her. Rachel twisted and turned to dodge each spray of gunfire, kicking up dust to confuse her enemy. She could've put up a telekinetic shield to save energy, but she like to show off.
Summers used her most delicate measure of telekinesis to unhinge the spark plugs of the two Hummers closest to her, causing sparks to fly beneath the vehicles' hoods. Opening the oil tanks, she gave the sparks fuel, and effectively ignited fire near each of the engines. As soon as they saw the flames rising from the front of their cars, the henchmen inside leapt out to roll upon the ground. However, the machines exploded mere feet from them, catching the six bodies on fire. As she sped past, Rachel sent a wall of sand onto them, suffocating the flames.
She accelerated, sending the bike's engine from a growl to a roar. It had taken her two months of diligent effort to telekinetically construct a replica of her father's precious '04 Valkyrie Rune, and it had been worth every minute. She leaned forward, her chest constricting, her body heat rising. The engine was now screaming at her, pleading for mercy. Rachel was unrelenting. She could fix whatever damage she did to the pistons later, so she refused to hold back the growing urge for speed, for danger, for annihilation. Lost yet again in her own fervor, she didn't notice the heat-seeking missile shooting toward her until it burst into her back.
She tumbled forward, somersaulting in a sea of dirt, until she came to rest in a lifeless heap. Or so it seemed.
Rachel had survived the explosion without a scratch, but her Valkyrie was completely destroyed. She lay still for almost two full minutes, gathering her rage, pocketing it until it could be most sufficiently utilized. She looked around to see where the rocket launcher had come from, and spied a four-story government building almost two miles away. As the car finally turned around and made its way toward her, she heard Bolivar Trask from deep within the sterile halls, commanding the men inside the vehicle to "finish her off."
Her anger almost bolt out of her in the form of an attack against the Hummer, but she had to restrain herself. Inside that vehicle was a disk packed with information about the members of several mutant leagues, including the X-Men, the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, X-Factor, and the newly formed Excalibur, of which she was the field leader. Finally, the SUV came to a stop a few yards from her crumpled form. Cautiously, one of the gunmen stepped out and crept toward her, his gun aimed ominously at her. He fired one, two, three, four shots, to ensure that she was dead.
Each bullet ricocheted off her skin. In order to keep the man and the car within her reach, she created a psychic illusion in which the bullets penetrated her skin with a spray of blood. The henchman, now standing right above her, turned back to the driver of the Hummer with a nod. While both men gave a sigh of relief, Rachel created a tiny plasma sphere. When the gunman turned back around, she had the glowing bomb in her hand, inches form his face.
She glared. "You *do* realize I had to make every *square inch* of that beautiful machine out of *thin air*?"
The sphere exploded, and the man's entrails flew in all directions. The Hummer started to pull away, but she was already inside, moving at the speed of light. She grabbed the titanium case she needed, leaving another plasma sphere upon the floorboard, and dashed out in a split second. As she walked away, the machine burst into flames, sending debris through the humid air. She laughed to herself, hearing Trask two miles away, screaming for someone to "find out what the hell that was and which freak group it works with!" They could search the CIA database for the next hundred years, but they couldn't find someone who never existed.
Rachel telekinetically bathed herself and donned a pair of black vinyl pants, a red tank top with a golden phoenix emblem, and a black, floor- length, leather trench coat, as well as her father's signature ruby quartz shades. She glanced back at the wreckage behind her with a sigh, and murmured, "Some people have no respect for art."
* * *
616 timeline 04-29-2004 Woodbridge, Suffolk, England
Rachel opened the large, wooden door to her bedroom, announcing her presence. "I wouldn't touch the bottom drawer if I were you."
Logan, who had been idly looking through her bedroom while he waited for her return from America, pulled his hand away from her dresser. "How'd you know I was here?" he asked. Placing her sunglasses upon the nightstand, she threw him an impetuous look, as if to say, What don't I know?
He closed the top drawer. "Is there a reason you have two dressers and a closet full of cd's and guns, but no clothes?"
She smiled. "This is all I ever wear. I'm not a priss, I guess." He chuckled and they settled upon the bed. In the months that she'd stayed at the Braddock Manor, Rachel's relationship with Logan had healed and grown. Though they lived in separate countries, they made it a point to visit each other every week. They had gone through a lot of similar experiences in their long, worn lives, and both of them got some semblance of peace from opening up to each other, though neither had ever thought such a feat possible.
After several minutes of pleasant teasing, Logan's face grew somber, and it was obvious he was mewling through some internal battle. "What's wrong?" was Rachel's simple query, though she knew the answer.
"Things have taken a bizarre turn over the past couple of weeks," he admonished. She didn't offer anything else, so he went on. "Well, that's actually the reason I'm here, you see. I'm supposed to tell all of you something pretty important, but I don't even know where to begin, and I figured you-" He looked at her a moment before rushing on with an intense speed. "I figured you would know what to say, since you've obviously had a long time to digest Jean's resurrection."
She smirked. "Wow. You really are a disturbed little man, aren't you?" He gave a pleading look, and she laughed, trying to lighten his mood. "Don't worry so much! Jean is fine."
"I didn't say Jean wasn't fine," he grumbled.
"No, but it's what you're thinking. I know you're not buying the whole died-on-the-moon-living-in-a-cocoon-Phoenix-clone-story, but really, she's back to her old self."
"Are you admitting that she was ever not her old self?"
She rolled her eyes. No one knew for sure if Jean had died upon the moon or not. If she hadn't, as she claimed, she had actually been in a cocoon at the bottom of the Hudson River during the entire Dark Phoenix catastrophe, and the Phoenix Force had made a clone of her. If it had been her, however, and she could reconstruct herself after death, the world was certainly not a safe place anymore. "Logan," she said soothingly, "would it make any difference?"
He shrugged in frustration. "Of course not. I'll love Jeannie forever, no matter what she does. It's just that, no matter how much I love her, I'm not blind to her faults, like all those maniacs back at the Mansion." He paused. "But I still love her." And so he had hit the basis of why this was so hard for him. Phoenix was about to marry Scott, and Logan would never betray Cyclops, despite his love for Jean, so he was now doomed to live out his days pining for the woman he could never touch.
Rachel rubbed Wolverine's shoulder sympathetically. He loved both men equally, and understood the depth of both relationships: Jean and Scott, and Jean and Logan. She tried again to lift her uncle's spirits. "Yeah, I heard about the infamous kiss you gave Jean on the battlefront. I mean, I always knew you had balls, but right there, in front of Scott, and Warren, and everybody!"
His eyes grew wide. "How the hell did you find out about-?" He let it go with a sigh, and gave her a suspicious look. "Exactly how much do you know, anyway?"
She smirked. "Let's see... Jean came back from the dead and joined X- Factor without telling anyone. Madelyne Pryor found out that Mr. Sinister had cloned her after Jean, and went all psycho, becoming the Goblin Queen. Jean found out about Scott's marriage to little Miss Maddy, and went pretty crazy herself, while poor Scott is nearly insane with guilt and regret. Madelyne seduces Scott's young brother Alex, of course, only using him to hurt Scott. But that's not enough, so she also decides to kill her and Scott's son, Nathan. But the day is saved, by X-Factor, both teams of the X-Men, and old X-Men Beast and Angel. Now, Maddy is dead, by Jean's hand. Jean and Scott are set to be married, and Jean is planning on adopting Nathan as her own son..." She trailed. "Am I missing anything?"
Logan eyed her, astonished. "Have you known all this all along?"
"I've known all this since I was about five years old."
He shook his head, baffled, and looked away sadly. "What am I gonna do?"
She placed her hand upon his cheek, and made him look at her. "Life goes on, I promise."
Just then, the door swung open, and a blonde with long, pointed ears stepped in with a load of laundry. "Oh, uh..." She looked from Rachel to Logan and back again, apologetically. "I didn't mean to interrupt; I'll come back later."
"No, Meggan, it's okay," Summers said, getting up to help her with the towels. "You didn't interrupt anything." Logan stood and threw a distasteful look at the girl. Meggan smiled uncomfortably and closed the door behind her. Rachel came back from the adjoined bathroom, resisting the urge to laugh at the notion that anyone would believe her and Wolverine an item. Seeing the look on his face, she sobered. "Listen," she told him, "I'll give the news to the rest of the team. You don't have to stay."
He considered the offer and nodded. "Yeah, why not? I mean, you know the story better than most of us that were there." She hugged him, and he slung his leather jacket over his shoulder. "Well, I guess I'll see you at the wedding then." He started to leave, but turned back. "Hey, can I ask you something?"
"Of course."
"Do you know anything about the wedding from your reality? You know, did Scott and I get in a fight or anything? Was I even there?" Ah, Rachel thought to herself. So he's considering not attending.
"You really wanna know?" she asked. He nodded. "You were the best man."
He tried bitterly to hold back his chuckle, though in vain. "Figures," he muttered, as he walked out the door.