Chapter Six: You'd Be So Nice To Come Home To
The journey from ocean to space was a surprisingly short one, though the passengers didn't appreciate it. Unasked questions hovered in the air, as well as accusations, doubts, and regrets. X-Force had no idea how to deal with the two X-Men, and it showed. The silence was, as they say, deafening.
For two hours, it stayed like that. Gambit and Storm snuck glances at the duo in the back, while Magneto and Wolverine played it cold, not giving in to the urges to do the same. When they were on final approach to Avalon, Magneto radioed for Beast to meet them in the landing port.
"Why the need for Beast to meet us?" Rogue called out from the back of the plane, startling everyone.
Magneto was never startled, or surprises, or shocked. He was cool like that. "To confirm who you are, of course."
"Of course," she replied with a smile. That smile stayed on throughout the landing, the physical by Beast, and the eventual escorting to a meeting room, though, by the time they actually were met by the rest of the X-Force, that smile was starting to look extremely scary. Shadowcat remained silent the entire time.
Finally, they were seated and surrounded. It wasn't malevolent, or at least, it wasn't meant to be. Years of combat conditions made Rogue edgy though, so she naturally saw malice where there was none. Or maybe, she was just seeing malice. Once again, all was silent.
It surprised Rogue with how no one wanted to speak. Normally, in tense situations, humans babble, they ramble, it's a coping mechanism. X-Force wasn't coping. It was almost as if they were frozen, unsure of anything. She wasn't surprised.
Beast slowly came through the door, closing it slowly in deference to the blanketing hush. He'd aged since Rogue last saw him. He'd aged a lot. Instead of just being blue, he had touches of gray going on. He was no longer the agile, youthful Mr. McCoy she remembered. Suddenly, it dawned on her.
Rogue didn't know these people anymore. They were no longer her friends. Her family. They had relationships, ideals, and experiences she knew nothing about. Rogue came to the obvious conclusion. These people could not be trusted with the truth.
Beast cleared his throat, and though no one turned to look at him, he knew he had everyone's attention nonetheless. "They are, indeed, who they say they are. The DNA matches as close as they possibly could, though there are a couple slight differences I can't account for."
"It's okay, Beast, Ah can explain those."
"I bet you can," Jubilee said snidely. Secretly, they were all relieved. This wasn't a hoax. They were real, which meant that somewhere else, the rest of the X-Men were probably real too. Real, and alive. In appearances though, skepticism had kept them alive, and this situation was no different.
"Let's focus," Xavier stated softly but sternly. He was smiling, a small smile, one that said he hadn't failed them after all. "Can you tell us, where the other X-Men are? What happened to you all? Where have you been?"
Rogue put up a hand to silence the Professor. "Ah'm sure y'all have lots of questions. Can we please keep them to one at a time? Ah have a headache."
The others sat there and stared at Rogue, trying to reconcile the image of this hard-boiled warrior woman with the insecure Goth girl who'd left them three years ago. They couldn't.
Storm was the only one preoccupied with the other woman sitting there, and in the quiet after Rogue's request, she posed a question. "Why doesn't Kitty speak?"
Rogue turned that cold stare onto Storm, remembering why she liked the serene woman, for her insightfulness. Then she turned and stared at Shadowcat. "Why don't you speak?"
Shadowcat turned her still face to Rogue and quirked an eyebrow. "I speak when I've something to say."
"Well, there ya go...next question?" Rogue asked, her tone now bordering on polite snideness. There wasn't much time, but Rogue knew this had to be done.
"Where are the other X-Men?" Sam asked, his voice deeper than when she'd last seen him. His hair was longer too, not to mention he wasn't the skinny boy he'd used to be.
"They're not X-Men anymore." Shadowcat supplied.
"What do you mean, Kitty?" Xavier asked, moving forward so that he was leaning on the table.
"They are not X-Men, in the way that I am not Kitty, and I am not mutant. We are mutate."
Rogue smiled. "They are mutate."
X-Force glanced at each other, in confusion. Beast chose to speak up. "What do you mean? What is mutate?"
"What are mutate?" Shadowcat corrected, starting to get into the spirit of this little question and answer session.
"How do you explain what a mutate is?" Rogue asked Shadowcat rhetorically. "It's better if Ah start from the beginning, when we disappeared. How does that sound?" There were murmurs of ascent from the room, so Rogue settled in and struggled to find a way to explain this without giving too much away.
"When we disappeared, we went through a subspace portal, created by a mutant named Fitzroy, formerly of the Hellfire Club. Almost immediately we were separated, categorized, and tagged. For some reason, our mutant gene was nullified in the cells, and in addition, Fitzroy uses life energy to create the portals, so we were all very weak. We were trapped. Within days, one by one the X-Men started to leave and not come back. On the third day, Kitty disappeared. On the fourth day, they came for me."
"What happened?" Gambit asked, unable to stand the long pause for effect Rogue was doing.
"They became mutates. It's a genetic process, involving long stints in this large machine that uses microscopic lasers to resequence your DNA. It's all the same DNA, obviously, but it changes the way the mutant acts, thinks, and basically is. When that's done, they use telepaths to keep them in line. Ya think the wrong thought, it gets zapped. Ya feel something that's not appropriate, ya get zapped.
"Finally, when you've become all the mutate you can be, ya're assigned. Given missions and tasks to complete. Ya're also given a mate, and when the time is right, ya're expected to produce little mutate children to further the Leader's cause."
"Who is the Leader?" Magneto asked, not quite as shocked by the story as everyone else. After all, he'd gone through a similar experience as a child in Nazi Germany.
"Ah don't know."
"You're lying."
"And if Ah am? It's my choice. Ah don't even know if Ah can trust y'all anymore. And ya expect me to put all my cards on the table?"
Rogue and Magneto got into an intense little staring contest, which everyone hesitated to stop. Storm stalled everything, just by kneeling in front of Shadowcat.
"Is that why she's this way?" Storm brought her hand up as if to touch Shadowcat's face. Shadowcat jerked away before she could and slammed out of her chair, with a knife in hand and poised to slash anyone who came near. Rogue, in those few seconds, grabbed both Storm's hand and Shadowcat's. The scene was frozen for a few moments, with everyone in shock and how quickly it had turned sour.
"Yes, that's why she is this way. Shadowcat doesn't like to be touched, ya'd do well to remember that," Rogue said forcefully to all of them, as she released Storm, who fell back against Wolverine and backed away. Rogue picked up the chair and pulled Shadowcat over to sit in it again. "Ya be good! Don't cut anyone."
Shadowcat nodded, and Rogue turned back to the group. "Where were we?"
"The Leader?" Colossus supplied from the back of the group, it was the first time he'd spoken up. No one else saw, but Rogue, more attuned to the intricacies of the world, did see when Shadowcat stiffened just a bit. It was not the mention of the Leader that did it, it was the voice. Then Rogue remembered, Kitty had had a thing for the tall Russian, spawned by time spent alone in Apocalypse's Egyptian tomb. It appeared that Shadowcat's brief relapses were increasing. This could not be good.
"The entire process was to transform mutants into mutates, the Leader's own little private army."
"To what end?" Xavier asked, curiosity evident in his voice.
Rogue smiled at them all, and it was bitter. "To take over the world, of course. It started small, with just a few towns. Then, we helped him spread. The Leader now has complete control of Genosha and all the surrounding islands. In two days, he's going to take Australia. From there, Asia. From Asia, Europe and Africa. Then, the Americas. It's estimated that it will take him three years to accomplish this."
Magneto laughed. "And just how is he going to do that?"
Rogue's smile stayed just as bright. "By killing all the baselines, and turning mutants into mutate."
"Do you really t'ink that will work?" Gambit asked, incredulous. X-Force had dealt with loonies like this for the past three years, and none of those plots had worked.
"Ah know for a fact, that it will."
"And how is that?" Jubilee asked, still incredibly sarcastic.
"Ah've seen the future. Ah know what happens."
"You've seen the future, like...the future future?" Sam asked, and for a second Rogue could see that boy she'd once lived with. Then he was gone.
"Yes, the future future."
"And how'd you do dat, chère?"
"Let's just say, it's one of my gifts."
Beast brought the conversation back to the original topic. "Why aren't you like Kitty?"
"My name isn't Kitty. Don't call me that. I am Shadowcat."
Beast swallowed, and across the room, Jubilee made whirly hand movements by her head to indicate that Shadowcat was crazy. "Why aren't you like Shadowcat?"
Rogue laughed for the first time. "Why ain't Ah a mutate? Is that what you mean? Well, truth be told, Shadowcat isn't a real mutate either. That's the reason she's here with me. Real mutates have allegiance to the Leader and their mates, and that's it. However, mine and Shadowcat's particular gifts interfered in the process, though no one but us knows that. It all has to do with DNA. My ability, to imprint a person's memories and special mutant abilities, comes from skin to skin contact. What my does, is it takes a section of that person's DNA and replaces part of my own with it for a limited time. The longer I hold on, the more the DNA is deeply entwined, ergo the longer I have it. When it fades, my DNA reverts back to the original sequence. Since the mutate process depends on DNA modification, the first time I imprinted someone after the process, I reverted back to mutant. Shadowcat is different, she's part mutate, but not completely. Part of her DNA is always in phase, always intangible. No modifications could be made, but the part of her DNA that hasn't been phased, is modified. She's like a dirty half-breed basically." Shadowcat gave Rogue an evil look, but she only grinned. "Get it now?"
"Why did you come to us now? You want us to stop this "Leader" from doing what he's gonna do?" Wolverine asked, because though he did love having Stripes and Half-pint back, there's always an ulterior motive.
"It's not the leader we have to worry about anymore. It's Jean."
"Jean Grey? She's alive?" Storm asked, speaking up as if the trauma of having Shadowcat try to cut her was passed.
Rogue frowned. "They're all alive. They're just not who you want them to be. Jean Grey, codename Phoenix, isn't who you think she is. She's now the most dangerous mutant on the planet."
"The shield. The one over Genosha. It seemed familiar, it's Jean's?" Xavier asked, but he already knew the answer.
"Oh, yes. Jean is the Leader's right hand girl. She's who ya're gonna have to watch out for. Now, can we get to what we want from ya?"
Magneto tilted his head to the side and studied Rogue. "Our help in this little world-scheme isn't what you want?"
Rogue shrugged. "Ah couldn't care less what happened to the world. That's me helping ya. We need help with something else."
"What else is wrong?" Wolverine asked, concern evident in his voice, as if the "Leader Situation" wasn't bad enough.
"We need Professor Xavier to help Shadowcat."
"What would you like me to do?" Xavier asked, not liking how that sentence sounded.
"Ya remember, that Ah said that each mutate was assigned a mate. Well, they're not just assigned, telepaths forge a link between the two, so that they can be inseparable and further ensure that the procreation of a superior mutate species to inherit the world. Shadowcat has three days for that link to be severed, or she'll die. Already the effects of such distance between them is creating cracks in her personality and her mind. Ah suggest we get it done as soon as possible."
"Do you not have a mate?" Magneto asked.
"Ah do, but he's a mutate and Ah'm not."
"Why didn't you just bring them with you?" Jubilee asked.
Rogue laughed. "No."
"Why not?"
"They don't know we're even here."
"Why not?"
"They couldn't be trusted."
"Why not?"
"Jubilee, are you always this irritating?"
"Are you always this tight-mouthed about info we need?"
"Ya don't need this information, ya're being nosy."
"So?"
It was almost like they were back at the mansion. Almost.
"We don't have time for this," Shadowcat stated. There was a sheen of sweat on her brow, and she had a raging migraine.
Rogue noticed all this immediately. She tapped into the healing powers of a mutant named Sara, who she'd imprinted on one of her first missions, and sent the waves of healing energy into Shadowcat. Within seconds, the gripping pain in her mind eased. The curiosity of the X-Force's at what had just happened didn't.
"What was that?"
"That was me healing Shadowcat. We really must hurry."
"If you can do that, I assume you're using talents of mutants you've absorbed before, then why don't you just sever the link yourself?" Magneto asked.
"Ah'm not a telepath. Using the kind of power of telepathy needed to sever that link would give me an aneurysm. Ah would die. As it is, just contacting the Professor gave me a headache. Are we finished here?"
Xavier nodded. "We can see about severing the link tomorrow. I'll need scans and some time to figure out how best to do it before proceeding."
Rogue nodded. "Where shall we be held?"
"You won't be held. You'll be residing in some spare quarters in alpha quadrant."
"Foolish to not put us in cells. Ya never know what we'll do." Rogue replied to Wolverine's explanation.
"We like to think that as former X-Men, we can trust you," Xavier explained with a smile.
Rogue frowned in response. "Ya might want to get rid of that attitude if we go to battle. Those 'X-Men' would sooner slit your throat than hug you."
Silently, X-Force watched as Wolverine escorted Rogue and Shadowcat out of the room. Jubilee was the one to break the silence, and say the most appropriate thing.
"That was freaky."