Yes, me weak willpower lost again, so here is chapter three already!

Fairy Blue: I'm so glad you like! Hope this one is just as likeable, if not more.

Prexistence: Your request has been granted. Bandages me poor weak will

Ishandahalf: bows 'Tis a great and honorable pleasure to have you read my works, dahling. And egads, you make me giddy and blush with your comments. A lot of the subplots and subtext and foreshadows (like the diaries) and such in this story won't play out until the later parts. I figured that by breaking the whole of this into its smaller parts, its identifiable mini-arcs, that I could reliably get each part Completed. 'Tis a smaller load to bear, that way. At least it FEELS like it, which goes a long way when I get the fleeting chunks of time to sit down and write on fan fiction for fun rather than my professional endeavoring and real-life responsibilities. I certainly do hope that these smaller parceled out stories do not disappoint you. :D

Kitsu Lebeau: Thank you so very very much.I certainly plan to keep going with this one. This first arc, Part One "Birds of a Feather" that is, is already completed. But, it is only just the first of five (if I remember correctly) sectioned out arcs of the sketched out whole of 'X-Men Rising.' I've got a very rough draft of the ENTIRE story already completed, but it's got so soul, so here's hoping that in dealing with each smaller part at a time, that the load won't be as great, and I can finish it all in a reasonable amount of time. I plan to only start posting each arc (or Part) after it's completed, like I'm doing with this one. Here's hoping this works. :crosses fingers:

Anamarie Chambers: Where's that oxygen! I need it stat! She's been like 24 hours without air! Hurry! Hurry! …ahem. Hehe. You made me breathless with all your kind words of praise, sweetie. Thank you so much for your comments. You definitely helped beat my willpower into submission. One chapter a week had been my original plan with posting this… boy did I falter… but with comments like yours, how could I not:D

RebelRogue127: Yes, you came back for chapter two! And I did get that incredible review you left so far for Seether. As for my writing being so dense and complicated, don't work yourself up too much about fully comprehending every word as you read it. I revisit everything important, a purposeful design so that if you do feel a little in the dark here and there, you can just keep going, hanging on for the ride, and things will be clarified in other more directly apparent ways later. :D As for Magneto and Raven wanting Rogue… are you sure it's even specifically ABOUT Rogue? Perhaps she's just a thing for them to play with, to manipulate, because they've already worked their claws into her in such a way that she's practically an unwitting pawn in their schemes… Or is that someone else I'm talking about? Hmmm… There's probably some level of truth to my teaser, but you'll have to read on to find out. :D


Chapter Three

"Yeah, and the grunt's with them," Victor growled into the communicator. "Almost makes this gig digestible."

"Tame as ever, eh, Sabretooth?" Erik chuckled breathily before becoming quite serious once again. "Don't indulge yourself too much. Occupy them, but don't get caught."

"Yeah, I know." He was bored of talking already. The Wolverine was close enough to smell. That particular scratch just had to be itched. Soon. He hoped this reunion would be spicier than it was with the Cajun. This undercover crap just wasn't his forte. "I'll keep you posted."


"All clear, here," Logan reported to Cyclops, who was on the opposite side of the north wing of the 'Diamond Research Facility' as Logan's team. Both teams were outside the razor wire topped fence.

Logan almost wished he'd gotten assigned the task of tracking the kid from the explosions. Seemed more his speed than this slow and quiet infiltration assignment. However, someone had to elder stripes and half-pint, though. Would he really have trusted the task solely to Storm and the still mourning One-Eye?

He grunted. This teamwork crap was still irksome to him. Far as he could remember, he preferred it solo.

"Move in," Cyclops ordered via the comm. device. "No further than the outer wall though."

"Ya heard him, elf," Logan prodded.

No sooner than he spoke, he regretted it. The sulfur scent of brimstone was hell on his sensitive heightened senses. Bamf! They disappeared. Bamf! They reappeared against the front wall beside a plate glass window. Since Nightcrawler most assuredly preferred being able to see where he was teleporting to, they were chosen to go through the front entrance, also known as the 'public front'.

Skint! Crunch. Spark. Fizzle.

"Cameras, One-eye."


Kitty's translucent hand—phasing, they called her power—passed through the bulk of the tiny camera dangling from the overhang on their side of the north wing. Less volatile than Logan's way, but it got the same results. It fizzled, sparked, and even smoked a little as Scott lowered her back to the ground. She had stood upon his knee to reach it.

Scott shoved her flat back against the wall and peered around the corner.

"Guards, too," Scott said, hushed, into his comm. to Logan's team.

Three guards on solo separate rounds, apparently alternating, so far as he could perceive from his particular vantage point, at least, marched alertly across the courtyards edging the wings of the complex.


Kkktttzzzsss. The guard stationed at the security desk in the lobby depressed the talk button on his walkie-talkie. "Two cameras down now." His tone was urgent, on alert, but thick with the calm and confidence of experience and expertise.

Bamf! The guard had but a moment to smell the acrid black smoke before a blue tail curled out from it to take his gun away. A pale, pale hand emerged from the smoke on the guard's other side while he was distracted. It reached silkily, slippery to his oh-so-human cheek. The effect was immediate. Veins rose, bulbous, and he convulsed, once… twice…

Fwump! He fell to the chair then slid awkwardly to the floor in a crumpled squeeze half under the desk and half against the cabinet of drawers at the edge.

"The least we expected, Scott," Logan said as Rogue pulled her glove back on with a flex and stretch of her fingers to get the thick leather to fit just right. "If this place is so dirty, shouldn't there be more?"

Logan shoved the guard over so he could get a better closer view of the video screens. "There's no cells on these feeds."

"Would they display them here?" asked Kurt's Germanic voice. "This lobby is their public zone."


"Cyclops, Logan, Professor, you're not going to believe this," Storm was saying into her comm. unit.

She and Bobby were in a small park in the middle of a residential neighborhood. Bobby pushed a swing they were passing and it squeaked. Loudly.

Storm tossed him an admonishing look before continuing to Scott and Xavier, "I think he's heading for the research center."


Inside Cerebro, the muted scarlet radiances formed three scenes around Xavier. To the left, Storm and Bobby followed what they thought was the route the mutant from the theater was taking. To the right, Logan, Rogue, and Kurt rifled through the lobby security station. Directly front and center, Kitty phased her and Scott through the outer wall.

"Indeed, I am to agree," Xavier said. The scene ahead of him held a familiar muted red figure with the sickly purple trim further down the hall. "Scott, you've got company. Explosive company."

An abrupt movement by Logan in the scene to the right pulled his attention there. A different muted glowing figure, also edged with the purple, was stalking up from the hall behind them.

"Behind you, Logan," Xavier said, but Logan already smelled him.


"Sabretooth," Logan growled.

"You brought the frail with ya again," Victor said as he stalked into view. "Going soft, old man?"

"Stay here," Logan said to Rogue and Nightcrawler. Skint! He released his claws before he was up and over the desk. He rammed into Creed and rolled them back into the dark hall from which Sabretooth had emerged… just as what few lights there were for Kurt and Rogue went out.


Kitty gasped once when it went dark. She gasped again when a small brightly glowing object sailed toward her and Scott from out of the depths of that long dark hallway stretching ahead of them.

Scott shoved her to one side while he dodged to the other side in time for the charged playing card—he realized as it passed within a few inches of his goggled eyes—to fly into the wall behind them.

BOOM!

The blast threw them both forward, away from the explosion itself but toward their attacker.

"Oomph!" Kitty smacked into some equipment, learned her lesson and phased, stumbling through the adjacent wall and into another room.

"Kitty!" Scott called when she disappeared from his oh-so-limited sight.

Deep in that hall of darkness came a disembodied—for all he could see—voice serrated from cigarettes and liquor, like awls, slippery from the Mississippi sprawl, and spiced with a crawfish crawl. "Think y' got other things t' worry about, mon ami."

A crackly fizzle, and three charged cards illuminated a face to match the voice (1). The man's demonic red irises flared in a sea of black sclera. A flick of his wrist, and the cards were soaring at Scott.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Scott dove ahead as the ceiling exploded and rained down on him. He rolled to his feet and let loose a concussive beam that missed the man and smashed through the wall at the end of the hall. He was on his feet, readying another blast, when the metal tip of a Bo/staff uppercutted his chin and whipped his head painfully back. It popped him in the gut, reeling him forward. It hooked the back of his knees, buckling his legs. It swept at his ankles, toppling him to the floor.

Whap!

A blow to the back of the head—pistol-whipped if it'd been a pistol—and Scott was out cold for the moment.


"Scott! Logan!" Storm was all but shouting into her comm. unit. To Bobby, she said, "Nothing."

Xavier's voice crackled through the comm. "Storm—skkt zzt—losing the teams—skkt zzt—elp them—skkkkkt!"

"Professor!" Storm pressed the earpiece tighter in her ear as if that would make it clearer.

"What'd he say?"

"They need help," Storm answered and was already moving rapidly.

Bobby didn't need to be told twice.


"Cyclops, are you there?" Rogue whispered harshly—desperately?—into her comm. "Logan left us. He went after Creed."

Skkktttzzzsss. "Quiet, chére," said the saucy drawl over Cyclops' comm. "Got my own petite chat t' chase."

"Who? What?" Rogue balked back in confusion.


The sanguine-eyed man stepped over Cyclops' unconscious form and dropped the comm. device. His heavy boot crushed it like a cigarette. Another step and he was opening the door to where he thought the girl had gone when she disappeared from the corridor just after his first blast. There was a good-sized hole on the other side of the door. It seemed logical that she had gone through it.

However, it was empty.


Kitty ran through wall after dark wall of rooms merely dimly lit by emergency lights.

"Whoa… jackpot!"

One had finally caught her attention. The pale amber glow of the emergency lights illuminated the room enough for her to know that it was likely the security office for the cells and more. It also contained a large electrical box, opened, with lots of circuits and breakers in organized display. They were even labeled.

She started flipping them. A red light on the camera above her on her left lit up. So did buttons and monitors on her right.

The doorway was still eerily dark behind her.


"Shat? What's a shat?"

"Rhymes with cat." Nightcrawler was actually trying to be helpful.

"Kitty?" Rogue gasped. She had just made the connection of what the southern stranger had meant. She almost gasped again when the power, the lights with it, returned.

"She's okay, liebling," Kurt said.

He indicated the screens at the security desk. Kitty could be seen pushing buttons on a more elaborate security monitoring room.

"Those aren't the same feeds as before," Rogue said. They could also see the cells Scott spoke of in the briefing.

"Kurt! Rogue!" Kitty squealed gleefully over the fallen guard's walkie-talkie, which Rogue then grabbed.

A glance back at the screen that had Kitty on it and Rogue and Kurt could see she was speaking to them on some kind of microphone.

"I found it!" Kitty continued. "I can see the whole complex from here. Logan's duking it out with some blond hairy guy." She cringed. "Ooh, that had to hurt. And there's Storm and Bobby! They just broke through the south fence… I think. What are they doing back here already?" She shook her head—reset. "Anyway! Can you see the cells on your screens? That McCoy guy is in one, just like the Professor said."

"We see the cells, but which one," Rogue asked.

"They're labeled on my side," Kitty explained. "Top row, third from the right."

"There he is," Rogue said. "I can't see him in it. Too dark. Why is the light out in that one?"

Kitty shrugged. "Maybe it blew when the breakers went."

"We should release him, ja?"

However, Rogue didn't answer him. She was wide-eyed at the screens. "Kitty, watch out!"

On the screen, Kitty spun to see the sanguine-eyed attacker, charged card in hand, framed by the darkened doorway to her side.

She, Kitty, gasped, third time.


"Allo, petite," he said as she back peddled away from him. He advanced in a stalking saunter. He was coming at her from the only door. Where else could she go?

Kitty reached back and found the wall with her fingertips just before spinning towards it and phasing through it in a full out breathy panicked sprint.

Gambit blinked. He waved his Bo/staff in the space where she had just been to check if she'd gone invisible or something. A glance to the monitors showed him the truth of it. She flipped from one screen to another as she phased, ghost like, through wall after wall.

"Be useful on a pinch, that," he said with a smirk before scanning the other screens.

"That too," he said as he spotted Kurt teleporting, in a wake of black smoke, from one screen only to appear, black smoke and all, a moment later with a… blue furred beast that did not resemble the man he remembered having seen in there the last time he had…visited. The girl with them backed away at the sight of the beast. He guessed she wasn't expecting the mutant's appearance either.

He knew he should intercede, but it didn't seem sport enough. Neither did chasing after the little kitty. Heck, even the eye-beam guy was taken too easily for his tastes.

The monitor that viewed the spot where he had fought Cyclops earlier showed the hall barren of the man's fallen form. He scanned the monitors for a glimpse of him, but couldn't find one. He did, however, find one that showed the big cat and the wolverine going at it.

He grinned. Finally there was something interesting, challenging even, for him to get in on. After all, he had gotten his nickname for a reason.


Logan's claws sliced across Creed's chest and tore through the taller man's shirt like it was wet paper. Creed didn't even dodge it. He used the motion to catch one of Logan's arms, then the other, and flipped him over his shoulder. Creed hurled around to give him even more of a pounding when he smelled a blooming scent of ozone.

Just past where Logan had landed, and was already climbing to his feet, stood Storm, her eyes gone cloudy white, with static electricity peeling crookedly from the tips of her hair, and Bobby, his breath coming out in misty wisps. Wind howled in gusts at Creed. A movement from the boy trained Creed's eyes to the wall that ran along side them. Frost was forming there, advancing in a crystalline wave closer and closer to him. Kinks of lightning danced around it and between the walls, ceiling, and floor.

He was finding it hard to move, his clothes, hair, and boots stiff and cold, when Logan dove at him. The ice at his feet, which Bobby had so subtly formed ahead of the frost on the wall, shattered as Logan's weight tackled Sabretooth back and to the floor.

"Logan!" Storm had shouted. It would've been so much simpler if Bobby had been allowed to finish freezing him in place. There wasn't enough room in there to call upon her control of the weather to intervene. Not with Logan in the way.

She and Bobby feebly watched as Logan tumbled off and rolled up into a crouch, claws brandished, ready to dive at Creed again when a surprise flash hit him in the chest with a small echoing boom.

Boom! Boom! Boom! More charged cards exploded against Logan's chest to drive him further and further from the on looking Bobby and Storm. They also echoed more and louder the further back he was driven, a fact that drew Storm after them faster. Whatever the new attacker's plans, it involved something dark, hollow, and deep. Try as she might, she couldn't get a clear view of just what that something-dark- hollow-and-deep was in the blinks of pinkish light that the attacker's projectiles allowed.

"Step aside," came Scott's voice from behind them. Startled by his presence as they may have been, both Bobby and Storm responded in kind. A concussive blast split the space between them and Logan's attacker, who dodged, but was clipped anyway. It spun him to the side and out of immediate view.

Scott turned those optic blasts of his onto the rousing Sabretooth. Again and again he fired, advancing on him, shoving him violently toward the reason there was an echo, a deep metal lined hole or trench, perhaps, from what any of them could gleam with the light provided by Cyclops' blasts.

Sabretooth was stumbling against a railing when Scott's biggest blast threw him back and through it. A yell as he fell, then thud as he hit something, then thud, thud, something else, something else, and then silence until a faint and final thump signaled he'd hit bottom.

"What is that?" Bobby asked as he and Storm caught up to Scott at the railing and peered down.

"I can't tell," Scott supplied. "Whatever is in there is down too far to see from here. Can you go in for a closer look, Storm?"

"There seems to be enough room to get a good wind going," she answered, "but I think we should find the others first."

A whooshing sound, like a door operated by hydraulics, came from the direction they had last seen Logan's attacker going. The swelling spray of light that escaped to splash across the top of the hole Sabretooth had been knocked into further confirmed that a heavy door was rising. Believing the man was escaping, Scott let loose an instinctual blast in that direction.

"Stars—" started a deep, yet cultured voice. Then Bamf! Cyclops' beam cut through the spiraling black smoke from Kurt's teleport to collide with the hallway wall from where they had just come.

Bamf! Further around the railed aisle, the same black smoke appeared.

"—And garters," the cultured voice finished. A blue furry hand—paw really, like a gorilla's almost—wafted the stinky smoke away from his face.

"Kurt? Rogue?" Storm inquired and started for them.

"Guten tag," Kurt said cheerfully. He was already approaching them. He gestured behind him and reported, "We retrieved Dr. McCoy."

A man looking very different from what the briefing had suggested he'd look like adjusted his glasses and greeted, "Pleased to make your acquaintance."

Storm, Scott, and Bobby openly stared at the blue furred beast that followed behind Kurt. If people were surprised by the contradiction of his voice compared to his looks before, it was many more times unexpected now. McCoy, apparently not quite used to such stares, fidgeted under their shocked looks. He was grateful that the stirring moans of their waking comrade drew their immediate attention away from him.

Logan sat up before the burns on his chest were fully healed. The front of his uniform was scorched, crispy in some places. He looked at the assembling group and immediately asked, "Where's half-pint?"

"Wasn't she with you, Scott?" Storm asked.

"She was gone when I came to."

"In here," echoed Kitty's cheery voice from several speakers around the perimeter of the room. "Come see what I found."

"That's helpful," Scott wryly commented a moment before the hydraulics began opening a large metal door past Rogue, who was behind McCoy and still approaching Scott and the rest.

Just as their eyes were adjusting to the very bright room beyond those doors, they heard the hydraulics reverse, closing the doors, and their explosive male attacker's sleek moving shadow slipped inside. They all dashed after him, but being closest, Rogue slipped through first. They had just enough time to see a silhouetted hand snake up behind Rogue, latch onto her face, and jerk her aside before the doors fully shut, severing them from the X-Men.

They had no way of knowing the person who grabbed Rogue's face was bare handed. Admittedly, it was the least of their concerns at the moment.

McCoy, fearing for the girl that just helped him escape, leapt to the railing, feet and hands gripped it with equal dexterity, and leapt straight at the button that had been used to close the door. As soon as his paw contacted it, he knew of their dilemma. It was burned, melted really. Useless.

"Logan, cut the lines," Scott ordered.

Skint! Slash! A whirring sound, whining, but the doors didn't budge.

"Bobby, ice it and I'll blast it," Scott commanded as he got in position to do just that. "It'll shatter."

"Rogue could get hurt—"

"I'll be careful," Scott swore, then with force, he demanded, "Do it!"

The metal protested from the rapid drop of its temperature. Frost formed across the surface and Bobby stepped back.

Phwooom! He let loose the smallest controlled beam he could muster in attempt to split it, take a chunk out, something, anything to give them a way through with out too much chance of killing Rogue or Kitty, wherever she may be on the other side, but—CRACK! WHOMP! BOOM! Against the expected physics of it, chunks of the door came flying back toward them.

Everyone looked guiltily at Scott. Could he have mistaken how strong—or weak, rather—the steel was?

"It wasn't me," Scott said defensively, wryly.

"Just me," said a ...somewhat familiar voice from the vicinity of the blown door.

The smoke and icy mist cleared. A female, arms up-spread, hair whipping in an unseen breeze, limbs cutting a path in the light in a way that it almost seemed like that's what's projecting the light like a bird aflame. They don't quite comprehend that she is floating, hovering, flying until she drops—sack of bricks—to the rubble-strewn floor.

Bobby's the first to her side, somehow.

"Rogue?" he asks in surprise, in confusion, in worry.

On her hands and knees and trying to stand, she said, "I love breaking things." It was a breathy rush.

Logan checked the body peaking out from under some of the rubble. Dirty-blond hair, blue eyes, Major rank insignia on her jacket… "She's military."

FLASH!


Several members of the Military Brass converse within range of his heightened hearing. If he cranes his neck far enough, painful as it is in his bindings, he can catch a glimpse of the woman challenging her commanders.

"Colonel, I must protest," she says. "It's inhumane."

"He's a mutant," Colonel Stryker says with a wave of his hand, "an animal."

"He's one of ours, sir," she states most adamantly.

"And he will do what his country asks of him."


FLASH!

Logan blinked away the memory. A set of dog tags mingling with the hair at the base of the downed woman's neck caught his eye and he fingered them, reading, "Danvers?" He didn't know how right he was. How right, and how very wrong…

"Yeah, Patch?" She saw Logan through a tangle of her hair—When did my hair get so long—as he was inspecting the figure below him. She whistled, and then corrected him, "Over here, hot shot."

Logan's head whipped up to look at her in surprise. He seemed as startled as Bobby did right then, and he repeated Bobby's question from a moment before. "Rogue?"

She flipped her hair up and out of the way as she sat upright on her heels. "Get hit in the head or something, Patch?" She brushed the dust off her knees and thighs as she stood.

They all got a good clear look at her.

From Rogue's mouth, came the words, "It's me, Carol. Stop looking at me like you've just seen a ghost, Patch. You're the one that supposed to be dead."

"This isn't good, is it?" That was Kitty. She continued through the wall just to the side of Rogue/Carol… both of them. She didn't see the Bo/staff shove her from behind to send her stumbling to her knees. She didn't see the easy withdrawal of it, the retraction of it, or the pocketing of it. She did, however, see him grab Rogue, careful of her skin, and hold a charged playing card under her chin.

"Trade," the spiced saucy voice said. "The Bête for the femme, d'accord?"

Carol/Rogue rolled her eyes. Without any hint of a warning, no bend of knee or deep inhale to concentrate against a strain, she flew straight up and knocked him into the ceiling. Ignoring the falling crumbling chunks of ceiling, she caught their decent a few feet below the ceiling, hovered there while she twisted to pull him around the front of her, and tossed him into the corner, opposite the side where Kitty still sprawled—all as though he weighed no more than a light evening purse. If he were still conscious, he didn't show it.

Still hovering, she reached to her hip to pull out her cuffs and when she didn't feel them she scanned the floor below her assuming they had fallen out at some point. Instead of cuffs, she saw herself half buried beneath remnants of the door and a fine layer of dust and melting ice.

"W-what the…?" She stammered. "I subdued her... I…"

Still hovering, her blue eyes rolled back in her head. She blinked, revealing brown eyes, and—"Ya touched me is what happened," Rogue said in her own voice.

She looked below her. She was still hovering.

"Shit, how do I get down?"

Her body obeyed.

"Like that, I guess."

As soon as she was solid on her feet, Bobby reached for her, to comfort her, make sure she was fine, but Rogue pulled back.

"You alright, kid?" Logan asked.

"Got a wallop of a headache, but I'm okay," Rogue said with a shrug.

Scott got both pairs of restraints from Major Danvers. He tossed a set to Logan. "Restrain her," he said pointing to the Major. He restrained the sticky-as-molasses-man himself.

Logan examined the metal of the cuffs. "Adamantium," he murmured before closing them around her wrists. Click-click!

"Now can you come see what I found?" Kitty asked.

"What is it?" Scott said.

Logan was already moving through a doorway near where Kitty had come through the wall. He seemed almost entranced by what he saw in a possible-missing-piece-of-his-past kind of way.

Following Logan they all saw what made the Diamond Research Facility a medical research center.

"I thought you'd want to see it," Kitty said. And what a sight it was.

Surgical steel gleamed everywhere. To the right side three cylinders sat upright. The front was glass or a dense plastic—they couldn't decipher for sure just yet—through which a thick, opaque green liquid could be seen. Consoles, digital displays, and delicate surgical tools hung limp from mechanical arms to either side of each cylinder. The center was occupied mostly by slab after slab after slab. Strong, hard, cold looking restraints formed half circles where a person's neck, arms, and legs would lie. Bubbling tanks of adamantium strung with large injection tubes and needles were to the immediate left. Those held Logan's attention the most. Did he even register the stacks of molds—surgical tools and cuffs—beside the tanks? A long counter crowded with mundane lab equipment like microscopes, x-ray displays, test tubes, blood-spinners, diagnostic displays and other computerized mechanisms, the entirety of which consumed the remainder of the left side of the room.

"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old," McCoy read in that contradictory cultured voice of his. The screen saver was his source. It scrolled various quotes. "Seek more than just what they thought." He adjusted his glasses and said, "That's not how it goes." He read the next one as well. "I tread in the footsteps of illustrious men… but I will do better." He turned from the screens in disgust. "These have been twisted."

He joined Scott at the far end of the room, where the real prized material was located. Scott had one of the refrigeration unit doors open and was examining one of the vials he'd removed from the specialized holders contained within them. The particular one in his hand was labeled neatly with the name Maximoff, Pietro.

"Blood samples?"

McCoy picked one out for himself from the next refrigeration unit. The name on this one was 'Darkholme, Raven.' He rotated it and spotted a bit of tissue in a clear liquid.

"Among other things," McCoy said. "Genetic catalogue, I hypothesize."

"The other security room is behind that wall," Kitty said pointing past the refrigeration units. She scrunched up her nose. "Ew. I phased through that stuff." A shake of her head to clear the thought, and she added, "There's a control room catty-corner to it, and some wicked looking cells beyond that. Whatever they're designed to hold has gotta be scarier than the Beast here. No offense."

"None taken," McCoy replied as he looked over more of the collection of genetic materials. "I'm not quite fond of it myself, yet."

Barton, Beaubier, Beaubier, Boudreaux, Boudreaux, Blair, Braddock, Braddock, Braddock… Next row. Cargill, Carosella, Cassidy, Cassidy… Cheney… Colbert, Cortez…Creed, Crestmere… Next row. DaCosta, Dane, Dane, Danvers—interesting—Dukes… Two rows down. Ferguson… Foley… Frost… Gavin… Grey, Greycrow, Guthrie, Guthrie… The last names mostly meant nothing to him, other than there being so many of them.

Swish! Clink! Clank! Clatter! Scalpels, forceps, and other scary tools spilled to the floor.

Rogue, still holding a splintered drawer, sheepishly glanced to Scott and McCoy. "Thought it was locked."

"Shh!" Logan returned to the entranceway to hear more clearly. "Footsteps. Heavy. A lot of them."

"Kurt, check it out," Scott ordered.

BAMF!


BAMF!

He landed beside a puddle of water in the hallway outside the pit area where Storm and Bobby had come across the brawling Wolverine and Sabretooth.

BAMF! The end of the hall, rounding a corner. BAMF! Another hall. Another corner. BAMF! Shadows preceded the first of the charging figures. Kurt skidded to stop his momentum. BAMF! A higher vantage point. Three corridors were emptying soldiers into the one below him.

Ping! A bullet struck too close for his comfort.

BAMF!


BAMF!

Nightcrawler returned from checking what was coming from them. A grave look accompanied his equally grave tone when he told them, "Soldiers. Too many to count at a glance. They saw me."

"I signaled them," Rogue said smugly. Blue eyes. A blink. Brown eyes. She pointed to Major Danvers. "I mean, she did. Before she grabbed me."

Logan prodded Rogue. "How do we get out?"

"I… I don't know," Rogue said.

The jogging footfalls were in range for all of them to hear already. It could've been the echo, but the staccato of their steps were so numerous, it was hard to estimate how many. Two dozen? Three? More?

"Yeah, you do. You absorbed her. You were flying. You still got her strength. You've still got her inside you. Think, Rogue," Logan said. He squeezed her arm. Shook her. "We can't beat this many ourselves. They will capture us. Imprison us. Experiment on us."

Bobby tugged at Logan's arm and said. "She doesn't know."

"I could look it up on the computers," Kitty offered.

"No time," Storm answered.

"Hey, wake up!" Scott was trying to rouse the restrained male. It didn't work.

"The pit-thing!" Rogue blurted out. "Stairs on the far side lead down! Service elevator at the bottom."

"We're leaving," Scott ordered before he hoisted the still unconscious man over his shoulders.

"Allow me," McCoy said and easily took the slippery man's weight.


Edited/rewritten April 14, 2005
Edited/tweaked April 27, 2006

Footnotes (links to pics):

(1) www(dot)deviantart(dot)com/deviation/31776702/
(Just put a . in place of '(dot)' for the links to work. I'd REALLY like ya'll to see these pictures, especially this one.)
"Gambit Emerging." A picture I drew/colored in Photoshop. Might be my favorite for this story. :D

Goes with following text:
Deep in that hall of darkness came a disembodied—for all he could see—voice serrated from cigarettes and liquor, like awls, slippery from the Mississippi sprawl, and spiced with a crawfish crawl. "Think y' got other things t' worry about, mon ami."

A crackly fizzle, and three charged cards illuminated a face to match the voice. The man's demonic red irises flared in a sea of black sclera. A flick of his wrist, and the cards were soaring at Scott.


Thank you for indulging.