A/N: Sorry for the long delay! I had (still have actually) several papers to finish and a final coming up. I was also planning to finish Days of Our Childhood first, but then decided against it. All three stories will continue as work permits.

Origins Revealed

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"I don't believe this!" Althea groaned after hearing what Spyder and Trinity have been up to behind their backs. "I shouldn't be surprised and yet I still am!"

"No small achievement that." Wanda said. "Every time you think we've figured your sisters out they pull something like this!"

"Well, on the bright side we did kick Hellion butt today!" Toad chimed in. "And we've got a new friend in New York!"

"That's true." Althea agreed. "And maybe Lina's letter will help cheer Fred up."

"Not to mention give us insight on our foes." Roadblock agreed. "We can stop them from giving us woes." He opened the rest of the letter Lina had sent in the bottle, it was about the different Hellions and what she had managed to learn about them while she was staying with them, which was a considerable deal.

"Check this out." Cover Girl said as she skimmed over it. "Metatak's name is Takashi Watanabe. His family's apparently big on tradition and kicked him out when he became a mutant. Apparently he thinks that if goes all samurai on America—I guess they had family in Hiroshima—they may think he's honorable enough to take back. He hopes anyway."

"Sure." Pietro snorted. "That'll work. Like obeying your father and carrying out his every whim will make him finally see you as something besides hired help. As if worshipping him will give him the acceptance he worked his entire life to get—" Pietro seethed.

"Chill Pietro." Low Light said as he also went over the letter. "Apparently Forceflow—one Jacques de Montesquieu—is in a similar position. Minus the Hiroshima and samurai stuff."

"They're all basically like that." Spirit noted. "Vortex and Megawatt; Semira Bashar and Rodriguez Idiaquez, respectively, lost their families. Semira's in Eritrea's war with Ethiopia and Rodriguez's to border vigilantes when they tried to enter the US from Mexico."

"And Side-Splitter, our prisoner upstairs, is named Phelan O'Brian. Irish, not that we didn't know that, and lost family too—to Ulster loyalists in Northern Ireland."

"They're playing off resentment against the United States abroad to win over desperate mutants." Cover Girl noted. "Ethiopia was an American ally and so is Great Britain, not surprising that some Eritreans and Irishmen wouldn't be too fond of us.

"Same with Mexicans over border gangs and the Japanese over Hiroshima." Low Light agreed. "And France, well…is France."

"Man, just like the Hellfire Club to play on people like that." Lance said. "Just like Frost did to get John Proudstar's brother onboard."

"Indeed." Blind Master nodded. Shipwreck frowned.

"Wait, what about the other two Hellions?"

"That's right there isn't much about them here." Althea noticed. "Just their names. 'Evasia—Amira al-Batani and Red Nova—Vladimir Tubarov.' " She blinked. "Wait a minute…I know that name…" Roadblock slapped his face.

"Oh boy!" He groaned. "Trouble ahoy!" Roadblock ran out of the room, returning a few minutes later with one of Shipwrecks photo albums. "I didn't guess…oh what a mess!"

"What? What is it?" Toad asked as Roadblock skimmed through the pictures. He apparently found what he was looking for and he held up a picture in it.

"Check it out, once you see, there ain't no doubt." The Misfits leaned in for a closer look. It was a picture of a man in uniform holding a four or five year old boy in his arms.

"What is this?" Low Light asked. "Wait…isn't that—?"

"It is." Cover Girl confirmed. "Oh boy."

"Would someone mind cluing us in?" Pietro asked.

"In your case, that could take years." Wanda said.

"That's Colonel Sergei Tubarov of the Soviet Union's October Guard." Everyone turned to look at Althea, who had her eyes closed as if she were trying to mentally re-picture the image in her mind.

"Soviet Union? Man that picture's got to be ancient by now!" Toad exclaimed.

"Who's the October Guard?" Shane asked.

"Basically a Soviet knock-off of us." Shipwreck said. "Right down to their battle cry. 'Yo Ivan?' Give me a break!"

"Don't tempt me." Roadblock said. "For a while we had an exchange program with them. One of their men would come here and one of ours would go there." He said, pointing to the man in the picture. "This guy also brought his kid, Vladimir." Althea gaped for a minute.

"Waitaminute, Vlady? You mean that he…and Red Nova…is…oh boy." She gulped as she sat down on the couch. "I knew he looked familiar when I saw him at the beach! I knew it!"

"Wait, you know Red Nova? The guy whose been making our lives an even bigger hell than usual for the past four months?" Shane asked, incredulously.

"Bingo." Althea groaned. "He lived at the Pit with his father for about a year and a half. And I grew up here. I haven't thought about him in years!"

"Wait, is this the kid you had a crush on?" Shipwreck asked, blinking.

"WHAT?" Everyone exclaimed, Toad loudest of all. Althea blushed fiercely under the attention.

"It was years ago! Long before I met you! We were just friends!"

"You asked him to marry you." Shipwreck pointed out. Toad looked liked he was going to have a heart attack.

"I was three years old!" Althea protested hotly. "For God's sake, he was the first boy I ever met, okay? It's not like I could go to regular schools and have normal friends with Cobra wanting to get their hands on me!"

"I remember him too." Low Light said, thinking back. "Heck, it's not everyday you see someone beat up Sergeant Slaughter."

"What?" The Misfits gaped at him.

"That's a slight exaggeration." Spirit said. "Vladimir's father and the Sergeant were arguing about something. I think it was whether the AK-47 or the M-16 was the better weapon. Anyway, it was getting pretty heated, they were shouting at each other so Vladimir—all of four years old—walked up to Sergeant Slaughter…"

"And kicked him in the shin." Althea smirked. "I remember that." Then she frowned. "But he and his dad left one day and I never heard from them again. How'd he end up with the Hellions?"

"I think I know." Roadblock sighed, too depressed to even rhyme. "I was going over some of our files a couple months ago when I saw the report. Vlad's father was outed in the Soviet Union. That's why he was recalled."

"He was gay?" Angelica asked.

"No. Worse. He was a Trotskyist. It's a kind of communist they guys in the Kremlin didn't like." Roadblock added parenthetically. "So they sent him to Afghanistan, which the Soviets invaded back in 1979."

"They were probably hoping he'd get himself killed." Spirit guessed. Roadblock nodded.

"They threw him into the war just as the Russians were preparing to leave in '89. He fought, just like he was ordered to. One day he ended getting captured by the Mujhadeen, the anti-Soviet fighters and well…you know what those guys in Iraq do to the hostages they take?" Roadblock asked everyone.

"You mean…" Wanda gulped, making a jerking motion across his throat. Roadblock nodded.

"Oh my god…" Althea said, shaken. "I had no idea…" Roadblock continued.

"And then the USSR broke up a few years later and things ended up going down the tubes for Vladimir. I guess when his mutation kicked in the Hellfire Club decided to recruit him. After all, he had no other options."

"Bastards." Cover Girl muttered. No one disagreed.

"I have to get some air." Althea said as she headed outside. No one moved for a couple of minutes.

"Althea!" Toad said as hopped outside, thinking he'd given her enough time alone. He found her in one of the guard posts, looking out over the Pit. "Al?" Toad asked as he scrambled up. "You okay?"

"I guess so." She sighed. "Sorry, I just needed some space."

"It's all right." He replied as he sat down next to her. "So….you and Red Nova?" Althea snorted.

"Please. For one thing, he wasn't 'Red Nova' or anything back then. I didn't even know he was a mutant! Or would be, anyway. Vlady was just the only other kid at the Pit."

"Vlady?" Toad snorted. "So you did have a crush on him?"

"Hey, you're the one who had crushes on Wanda, Tabitha, and Rogue." Althea pointed out. "Besides, it's like I said: I was a three years old. Ancient history."

"Really? If it's so ancient, why is it bothering you?" Toad asked astutely. "And don't try to tell me that it isn't."

Althea sighed. "I guess it's…I don't know. On the one hand I feel bad for not trying to keep in touch with him more. I guess the Soviet government didn't want me writing to someone they viewed as 'politically unreliable,' what with his father and all. And by the time the USSR fell, I stopped writing."

"But the thing that really bugs me," she continued. "Is…well, what if it had been me?"

"Huh?" Toad asked.

"Think about it. Vladimir and I, well we're a lot alike, if you think about it. Both our dads were in special military units for the two great super-powers. We're both mutants and we both ended up losing a parent." Althea explained, thinking of her estranged mother. "I can't help but think that, what if America had lost the Cold War, if GI Joe had been disbanded and my future that had ended up in the toilet? If the Soviet Union were still around he'd probably be where I am today. And that I'd be the one to end up at the Massachusetts Academy, being used by the Hellfire Club."

"No way!" Toad protested. "I don't know this 'Vladimir' guy, but I do know you. You don't let yourself be used by anyone. He did, I did, so do a lot of people. But not you. You would've seen through that Frost bimbo in a heartbeat."

"Thanks." Althea smiled. "But I still feel sick. I'm going to end up fighting against someone I played in the sandbox with. Well, technically it was a sand bar used for desert combat training, but you get the idea. And the rest of the Hellions are like Vlad too; desperate, but not evil."

"You mean like the Brotherhood was?" Toad asked. Althea nodded.

"It's easy to go all out against someone like Sabertooth or Mystique, but how do you fight someone who doesn't have to be an enemy?"

Toad didn't have an answer.

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A/N: I admit I had to play around with time a bit since Al and Vlad technically should be older than they actually are in order for everything to fit. So there's no need to point out that for Althea to be 16 and Vlad to be 17 in 2006, they shouldn't be old enough to be 3 and 4 years old in 1988-1989. I know it's an incongruity but it couldn't be helped.