Have you ever wished for fire

To burn away your mind's restraints?

Have you ever been for hire

Or suffered those cheap complaints?

Could it be that I don't want to save you anymore?

Could it be that we don't have what it takes?

---Pig, Seether

Wisteria sat up hesitatingly, wincing slightly but pride clearly keeping her from moving a hand to the side where her ribs screamed in pain. Dani rushed to her and almost hugged her with the relief of Wisteria waking up again, but seemed to think better of it before putting Wisteria in more pain. Instead, she straightened and frowned. Rowan sat down again, but still wore a scowl.

At any moment she expected her friends to begin on the lectures, and the talks of how reckless she had been…and some of it was probably true. Actually, she expected all of it to come from Ben and Dani, and they looked ready to open their mouths, but ironically, Rowan opened his mouth first.

"Are you insane?" He spat in an accusing tone.

"Quite possibly, but as far as I know, I remain lucid." She replied calmly, but this just seemed to infuriate him further. His face darkened with anger, and some spark in his eye seemed close to concern.

"You're on restriction. But instead of staying inside, you decide to take the car…no, let me rephrase that. You decide to take a car that does not belong to you, drive at unknown speeds down a dirt and gravel road, and then on to the badly paved asphalt before the interstate, on very little sleep and God knows what else, fall asleep at the wheel, and almost get yourself killed, not to mention an innocent. You must be very proud."

"Is the innocent human?"

"Yes, but what does that--?"

"Is he dead?"

"No."

"Then I'm not proud." She watched Rowan's face darken even further and turned to see Dani, Ben, and Bain scowling as well. It wasn't like they hadn't heard similar comments from her before, and she couldn't understand why they were surprised now. It would remain an enigma.

She snatched an IV out of her arm in one fluid motion and began to get out of the bed, but Dani put a hand on her shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Getting out of here."

"Oh, no you're not. The doctor said you need to be here for at least 48 more---"

"The doctors don't know anything. I'm going." Wisteria started to get up again, but Rowan stood, his hand behind his back and some light dancing off the wall behind him. Wisteria was fixed on whatever could be making the source of light for a moment, but then caught the look on Rowan's face. Murderous…she had never thought those black eyes could be so full of anger when normally they were laughing at everything. Rowan was never serious.

"You're not leaving this room. We are going to call the nurse, she is going to reinsert the IV, you're going to rest, and you will do so until the doctor releases you. You will if I have to knock you out for you to accomplish it."

"You couldn't knock me out."

"Try me." He glared for a moment, but Bain stepped forward.

"Um…Rowan, could I see you in the hallway?" Without a further word, he grabbed Rowan's free-hanging arm and pulled him into the hallway. The hand behind Rowan's back was empty.

Bain gestured madly in the hallway, partly from exasperation. "What was that about?"

"What?" Rowan said calmly, feeling less angry in the hallway.

"That! You had a fire ball in your hands, Rowan. You looked ready to char her."

"That's because I was." Bain frowned and sighed, running his fingers through his dark brown hair. Bain's eyes met Rowan's again.

"What's gotten into you lately?"

Rowan's immediate thought was 'her', but he did not say that aloud. He sighed and tucked a strand of his shoulder length black hair behind his ear. "I don't know."

"Me either." Bain said, shaking his head. "Me either."

Wisteria studied the map she had set up for herself in the main chambers that contained the bounty hunters working for Vaughn. The rest were in the makeshift rec room, probably getting into a fight, breaking more bones, setting themselves up to be out of work and be put onto grunt duty, such as washing floors, dishes, ect. This was like a team…Arachne would say a family, but Wisteria would never stoop so low as to dub something or a group of some ones that.

She had no family.

She stood alone, next to her cot, which she rarely used, used to the hardness of a solid stone floor. Her fingers traced a river, and then across Texas, off into California, not having a clue what she was thinking or doing. All she knew was that she had to find the ones that did this, the place where she had been, and make sure they all died. If any other place like her's existed, she would destroy it, or if more than one, them, methodically, and this would never happen again.

Wisteria jumped when someone spoke behind her, having thought the entire time she was alone. "Arachne tells me you stare for hours at that."

She whirled and saw Vaughn, sitting on one of the cots, smirking. Wisteria did not respond. Perhaps she did. Perhaps she didn't. Time was not of the essence, so besides knowing the day and week, she didn't keep up with it.

Vaughn continued, obviously not having waited for her answer. "She tells me you study it, read old newspapers from nearly two years ago, look up people that are obscure, and never seem to turn up much, spend long periods of time looking into apparently nothing. What are you looking for, Wisteria?"

"A mark."

"We have provided those, haven't we?" Wisteria nodded, and he smiled. "But not the one you're looking for." He didn't wait for her acknowledgement that the statement was true. He interlaced his fingers and leaned his elbows on his knees. "You are a strange case, Wisteria. We've had natural marksmen before, but not like you, and rarely female. You are methodical, resourceful, you research your subject, you hunt without mercy…you prefer to use slower methods and hand to hand fighting or weapons rather than employing your powers…you are like a machine. My own personal killing machine."

Had she cared anymore, that would have registered as an insult, but she didn't care. He continued on. "But you also seem to pick your victims out. You refuse to kill without regards to race, mutant or human. Only human marks…and you make requests, something no new marksman has ever done. 'No mutants'. 'Information on government or underground military operations'. 'No women or children, of either race, unless in a circumstance I deem worthy'. What makes you think you can make such requests?"

"You need my business. I can take it elsewhere."

"What makes you think we wouldn't kill you rather than let you leave?"

"You killing me is an improbability. I don't consider it." She said it in all seriousness, but he smirked wider and laughed, as if she had said it for his amusement, then continued in his assessment of her.

"You don't socialize with the others, you hardly sleep, if you are not working or training you are deep in thought and not to be disturbed…may I ask a question?"

"You're going to anyways."

"Which do you kill for, Wisteria? Business or pleasure? Is it a personal vendetta or a job alone?"

"Both." She started to walk out of the room, because this conversation seemed pointless. But right before she left, he spoke again.

"As of yet you live here and kill for us, but are not on the permanent team. Is there any chance in you changing that fact?"

"Not much." Wisteria left the room and headed down the flights of stairs, headed nowhere again, for no particular reason, except to escape incessant questions. Wasn't that always her goal?

She had studied the old newspapers, looked to see if she could figure out the timeline. October 21st, 2001, they take her away, 13 years old that very day. October 21st 2003, she escapes. October 27th, 2003, she joins up with Arachne and begins to build up her strength. Now, nearly 2 weeks later, almost in the dead of winter, she had almost caught her life up, realized where everyone had been where, followed government up to that point, and began to plot out searching points.

It could take her the rest of her life, but she would make sure this never happen again.

Wisteria started to walk down the street alone again, ignoring the stares of others who found her skin strange and wondered why the green girl looked so furious and drawn to within herself.

The park was the usual destination, a good place for thought.

She stopped on the edges of the lawns that led to the midst of the park, staring at a growing congregation, that seemed to have some invisible line drawn between them, two moved toward the front. A man that had a metallic helmet encircling his head and a red cape that billowed in the wind—strange choice in fashion—and a man that was handicapped by a wheelchair spoke, the first rather loudly, the other in a gentler tone. Wisteria leaned against the trunk of a tree to watch, realizing that had it not been getting into the twilight hours, and was at a time when the park was busier, this would have been a stranger sight. But Bayville Park, unlike Central Park, was vacated along the line of 5:00p.m. by most of its visitors.

"Magnus, you have to realize that your students at Bayville cannot continue to cause such destruction as they do. They will eventually be arrested or expelled from Bayville High if they act in this way." The man in the wheelchair was the first one she heard speak. She noticed that the girl who's car she had stolen the other day was standing behind him, along with a man sporting a visor, a boy with reddish brown hair wearing sunglasses, a girl with black and white hair and what looked to be a tiger's tail, and a tall, muscular man that she could barely see the face of…dark, hair covered, and looking ready to kill.

Magnus smirked. "Charles, what have they done that they shouldn't continue? Perhaps the petty thefts could have been avoided, had Mystique felt the need to stop them, but retaliating against a group of humans that threatened them? Using the gifts given to them, as is their right, in plain view?"

Charles spoke again, and she could hear the frown in his voice. "I did not get many of the details of the fight, Magnus, but as I understood it, it started as a verbal thing and the first physical attack came from your team, which you need to learn to control. How do you ever expect mankind to accept us if you continue to attack them?"

"I don't expect them to accept us, Charles. That is my entire point." The group behind Magnus nodded in agreement, consisting of a teenage boy with white-blond hair slicked back, a boy who looked a bit sickly and tended to slump or crouch low to the ground at intervals, a man with reddish hair that seemed to have to cans of gasoline attached to his back, and a woman with blue skin coloring and long red hair, wearing a tight fitting white skirt and halter top.

"I don't believe you understand the gravity of the situation. A girl was almost killed by—" Charles began, but Magnus interrupted him.

"No, I don't believe you understand, Charles. It was a clear cut case of self defense, and had Lance not acted, that girl would have called the police, and more lives would have been lost that day. Humans are obsolete, Charles, and one day you will see that—"

"To hell it was self defense!" The girl called Jamie spoke up finally. Wisteria had wondered what had kept the redhead silent for so long. "You weren't even there, Magneto, and guess what? I was! Lance was just being an ass—"

"Red…" The gruff looking man warned as Jamie cussed, but she waved him off.

"Shut up, Logan—and, she wasn't even doing anything until the football players started talking about that stupid article making fun of mutants, and Lance got pissed. She should have called the police, no way our school administration could have handled that fight!" From what she could see of Jamie's face, she looked ready to slap the man in the helmet. He merely seemed amused at her.

"I see…well, as interesting as that all seems, I trust my own people above you."

"Yeah, because you're an idiot." She didn't bother to mumble it either, though the man in the visor looked at her, and she was sure that if his eyes were visible, they would be telling her to shut up. Wisteria preferred she did to. Magnus…or Magneto, as Jamie had called him…began to move away, and his crowd followed him. He spoke over his shoulder.

"It was nice having this little discussion with you, Charles. Keep in touch."

Wisteria watched as they left, marking their direction and keeping her eyes trained. She decided that later she would follow him, find out more about this Magnus character, and maybe she could unravel the mysteries of why this man Charles and Magnus had such a quarrel. As to Jamie, it just seemed that Wisteria could do nothing but run into that red head. She groaned aloud when Jamie turned and spotted her, and then tapped Charles' shoulder.

"Hey, that's that girl I told you about." Wisteria managed to make out from her lip movement. She didn't need another confrontation from this girl…she had gotten her car back, what more did she want? Wisteria started a light and casual pace toward the direction that Magnus had taken, hoping that this time her legs would fail to freeze in place as they had before. And they did fail to, but she found the gruff looking man coming her direction, and then eventually falling into pace with her. At first she ignored him, then she cleared her throat.

"People can get arrested for stalking." She announced as if to no one, and saw him raise an eyebrow subtly.

"Well, if you invited me to walk with you, I wouldn't have to stalk."

"I don't feel in the mood to walk with anyone." She said disagreeably, and he sighed.

"Look kid, we just want to talk to you—"

"Interesting, but not interested. I've got places to be." She started off at a brisker pace, and used a portion of her powers she had recently developed…sinking into the ground and traveling through it, being able to rise again in distances as far as thirty to forty miles at this point, though she knew she could go further.

She emerged again when she knew she was on the edge of the park, and out of sight of the others, and began look for signs of where the others had gone. Tracking abilities worked better if you could go by smell, but she had no heightened scent. However, she could see where the boots the man Magnus had been wearing had left an indent in the grass before leaving the grass and going to the pavement. Shimmering flecks of metal littered the pavement, but they ended just as soon as they began, and there seemed to be no other signs of the ones she had been following.

Great. Now what?