DISCLAIMER: Nope. Don't own X-men. Still.

Legion had wrecked the place. From what she could put together they had inside information. Which made it sting even more.

The mansion was designed to protect and be undetectable. No one but X-Men were supposed to know where it was, and very few non-X-Men did. But somehow they'd gotten security codes, access ports, and keys to unlock all the main frame systems, turning off the power, the lasers, and mostly the advantage.

They were smart. Rogue realized that as she traced the bomb's epicenter. Someone was a genius. They managed to rig the bomb to go off in a semi-circle blast. Damaging everything in front of them, but no one behind their lines.

Rogue sat in the med bay, head hung low, thinking of what she'd seen today. Two people were dead. She'd found Tabby and Evan herself. Her friends were dead or dying, lying around her, moaning in grief, screaming in pain.

And she couldn't do anything about it.

She smelled the brimstone. It was like the odor that Kurt gave off whenever he opened a port to bamf. One of them was a teleporter, she deduced by the residual reddish purple smoke left that was different than Kurt's blue fog. Another could control nature. The tree branch that had impaled Tabby didn't have any DNA on it, so it wasn't a bone branch off, like Evan's. This person wasn't shooting spikes, hoping to hit someone. They knew what they were doing as they impaled her, first in the stomach. Then...in the head.

Rogue pushed the image out of her head. She remembered becoming detached as she screamed for help and weeped over Tabby's dead body. Her breathe still shuddered upon ever inhale, and her heart lurched with every exhale.

She remembered they're faces, smiling at her. Laughing with the group. Flailing during Danger Room sessions. The Danger Room... What if Xavier's supposedly well designed training systems weren't working the way that they were supposed to?

What if every failure was deserved and every victory was a fluke? What if he was setting them up for failure? And what if his dream was destined to die?

Gambit sat on the bed next to her as she felt the tears stinging her eyes. She truly believed in this dream of a peaceful co-existance. Rogue had seen it from all sides. She'd been a bystander, a participant, and a catalyst in it all. How could she not want anything other than a true peace when she'd seen all sides raging in one glorious psyche battle in her head.

Rogue broke. She started to cry. Tears finally flowed with grace and sobs choked her as she sat with her head in her hands in the med bay with gloom surrounding her.

Gambit didn't know what to do. For the second time that night he had witnessed a girl that he hardly knew morph into even more of a stranger. Rogue was always so strong, so tough on the outside, but with all of the recent events that battered her mind and forced her to accept a reality that she felt she was responsible for, her barriers were finally broken. And now she sat crying next to him, giving up all strength and resistance, and turning into someone who he didn't know what to do to help them.

Gambit was by nature a manipulator, but more so a people reader. He knew what people thought inwardly, what they would do, how they would react. But he couldn't ever predict that she'd do this.

And he wanted to badly to fix it. Listening to her sobs was breaking his heart.

So he did the only thing that he could think to do.

Rogue stiffened as Gambit wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She tried to wiggle away from him with no avail. Why was he doing this? Did he honestly think her so weak that she needed his pity?

Rogue wanted to scream. She wanted to hit, punch, kick. She wanted to be anywhere but there. In his arms. And mainly because it felt so right.

"Gambit, they're gone."

"I know, chere, I know."

"Why does this keep happening to us?! Why can't people just leave us alone?!" Rogue shouted, throwing a cup of Jell-O at the wall. The green mess that she had made hadn't helped relieve any anger.

"Because, Rogue. Dey know we're a threat. Dey know what we can do, all in the name of our cause. We be willin' t'fight fo' our dream, and dey know dat passion can't be taken away. Dat sort o'thin' ain't somethin' that's gonna quit afta bein' knocked down once o' twice. Rogue, its the people dat keep fightin' dat pose de most risk. Because dey won't go down wit out takin' some o' de bad guys with." He said, giving her an almost weak smile.

He wasn't expecting his words to help, but the smile on her face told him that they did stir something in her. "What'cha smilin' bout, petit, y'were blue a second 'go?"

"Its...ha. It's nothin'. Just..." She turned to him, meeting his eyes. There was some happiness there. "That's the first time you've included yaself in with the team. Ever."

"Y'wanna know somethin' weirder?" He asked, eyes darting to the floor with a look of embarassment. "It's de first time I ever felt it."

xXx

Rogue put her bags down in the hotel room. The underground dorms had been totaled and would have to be rebuilt as a part of the mansion's revamp. Xavier had explained to them the great need to carry on with life and such and such and blah blah blah. Rogue didn't want to hear any of it.

After Apocalypse, she vowed that she would never let someone take advantage of her again. She needed to get to the bottom of Legion and fast. She needed to take them out.

Unpacking her laptop, she started up the newest software, designed especially by Kitty to search both Google's databases and the governments. The blinking cursor told her to type. Begged her to type something so that it could fetch the information for her.

But Rogue's fingers were frozen over the keys. What would she find? She shook her head and rolled her shoulders.C'mon girl. Do this. Its for Tab and Evan.

Search: mutant+Legion

The first article caught her eye. "Terrorist mutant training facility is linked to Biblical Demons!" Of course it was a tabloid, but as everyone learned from the Men in Black, they were the best place to start.

June 26, 2007

Government sources say that the terrorist mutant training facility had portals, also known as ports to the insiders of the operation, that led into the deep pits of hell. "These ports can only be explained by the ripping of the time space continuum by a certain individual (i.e. mutants with the ability to 'teleport') leading into what is described as an 'underworld' type setting." The group who utilizes these portals call themselves Legion. We, at Fauder have managed to attain special profiles of this five member team. They are as follows...

Rogue read on for at least an hour in the detailed descriptions of the formerly government employed group known as Legion. They were specially designed to take out any mutant resistance. Trask was quoted with saying "What better way to fight fire, than with fire?"

Were these people crazy? They took a 9 year old girl and mutated her beyond any recognition. She was pretty, judging by her picture, but there was no hiding the thousands of little probing scars that scattered her body. They took in a group of five and turned them into fighting machines. A group of siblings, the Corvaxs, were the main components of the group. Day, the ring leader, was apparently the bull goose looney. She was the teleporter and the leading combat expert. She was training all of the little underlings that served her. She was now sixteen, and she did not look it in the least. Her profile picture was that of a war torn veteran who had seen battle too many times, with eyes like Logan's, beaten but still willing to fight and inwardly bitter. Her code name was unknown, making it harder for further search, but from what Rogue could gather, she was hardcore.

Which made her an even bigger threat.

Legion eh? This could be our hardest battle yet.


Further down the page was something that she never thought she'd see. Sitting in front of her were names of two of her own.

Subject:9888734
Name: Essex, Aurora
Code name: Aura, also known as Ash
Age: 14 at time of 'release'. In program system for 10 years.
Mutation: A one Nathaniel Essex (father?) did own experimentation in private lab working for Project Gabriel. DNA sequence rerouted to envelope avian DNA, avian features (i.e. wings, hollow bones, air sacs) given to subject. Project Gabriel has since studied first mutation of the X gene and found that Omega Class healing factor. Cell regeneration unprescidented. Only in Weapon X's files was a recorded predecesor with Omega Class (Subject: Wolverine).

Rogue swore she heard her heart stop. Aura was...Mr. Sinister's daughter?! Rogue shakily highlighted the passage and copied it into a blank document hidden behind the window of the search engine. This was a CIA database. How was it that an X-Man was somehow connected to one of their greatest enemies? It seemed that Sinister had had a plan behind everything within the X-Men's history, constantly scheming to take down Xavier. For what seemed to be no reason at all. It was as though Aura was another black pawn of Sinister's plotting against Xavier and his entire institution.

The paragraph just below added to her heart attack.

Subject:9988789
Name:Jiratto, Jacob
Code name: Spark, (Sparkler?)
Age: 17 at time of relase, in program of 6 years.
Mutation: Control of electromagnetic fields. Subject was tested for metallic control, found to have limited and weak power. (Family geneolgy tested, found to be related to one Eric Lensherr (codename: Magneto; status: undocumented fugitive), as a nephew. Parents captured. Deceased within 3 days of program initiation.

Was this some sort of sick joke? Rogue sat in silence for a long while after remembering that the CIA did not make jokes.

What the hell was going on within this school?