Disclaimer: don't own and never have owned anything to do with the X-men or marvel. I just write about Kai.

A/N: if you haven't read the authors note previous to this chapter, it basically just says that I added more to my chapter 8: the phoenix so you might want to read the last chapter over. Of course unless this is your first time reading this fic and you just read it.

Another Author note: I HAVE A TRAILER!!!!! Yippee! I've finally figured out how to make one using ripped vids from youtube and windows movie maker, so go check it out on my profile!

Chapter 9

It was a modest office black by federal standards, left over from a more decorative age, like the Old Executive Office Building and the Smithsonian. But, what it lacked in modern aesthetics it more than made up for in proximity to the one building in town that really mattered. The one with the address 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The offices housed the youngest of the President's cabinet departments. But, the reason both for its importance and for its being treated as a bastard stepchild could be found on the official identification plaque out front:

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF MUTANT AFFAIRS

As usual, despite the constant surveillance of CCTV cameras and patrols by the DC metro police and federal security, someone had still managed to tag the sign during the night, using spray paint to cover Affairs with the word Abominations.

The third floor front suite, with a view of the White House, belonged to the Secretary of Mutant Affairs. Alicia Vargas – former secret service bodyguard to the previous president, now employed by DOMA as unofficial bodyguard and thoroughly official executive assistant to the Secretary – strode down the elegant wood hallway and with pro forma knock, opened the door to her boss's office.

The room was exquisitely furnished; whatever else you could say about Henry McCoy, DSC, PhD, he had excellent taste. At the moment, he was also hanging upside down from the suitably reinforced chandelier, thoroughly enjoying the latest issue of the Economist.

Alicia was a lovely woman, the kind you would expect to be chairing a PTA meeting. She was as professionally turned out as her boss, them both wearing quality designed suits. The major difference was that hers was cut to hide a SIG, while his was built around his six foot, nearly 300 pound, immensely athletic body completely covered in rich blue fur.

He had fangs, too – a mouthful. And claws that became quite evident when he neglected to keep his nails properly trimmed. He had a leonine mane of hair which was a discernibly darker hue than his body, swept elegantly back from a dramatic widow's peak, as well as sweeping side whiskers that bore an uncanny resemblance to one of the major villains of a world-famous comic book. He could bench press twice his body weight without trying, and had reflexes that were almost a match for Alicia's – only because she too was a mutant, just not quite so obvious a manifestation, thank God – and agility that could send the most madcap of monkeys back to school. He was, in fact, everything implied by the nick name he'd been given back in school – The Beast.

McCoy could also speak a score of languages fluently, was one of the more respected genetic anthropologists on the planet, a demon dancer, and apparently an even better lover. He enjoyed fine wines with his brother, the Jungion psychiatrist, preferred cooking to eating out because he was a better chef than most professionals, and had an unfortunate weakness for karaoke bars. His speaking voice was wonderful, but his singing tended to recall cats congregating on a backyard fence.

What endeared him most to Alicia, however, was the fact that he needed reading glasses. He wore a classic pair, perched on his rather dramatic nose.

McCoy raised an eyebrow over the spine of the magazine as she snared his jacket off the back of his chair.

"The White House called," she told him. "They've moved up the meeting. Something to do with Bolivar Trask."

"Hmnh" was Hank's only comment as he flipped through a crisp, confined somersault to land on the floor with feline grace. He frowned as he slipped on his shoes - Alicia was the only one who ever saw those reactions, the only one he truly trusted here - he muched preferred to go barefoot. His feet were designed for it, not for being strapped in. But, people were spooked enough by his appearance as it was; dressing respectably was the first, big - necessary - step towards winning their tolerance, if not their acceptance.

"Your car's waiting downstars," She told him as he donned his jacket, taking a moment for their usual exit ritual as she smoothed the shirt across his shoulders and straightened his tie.

Then, twitching her own suit jacket to make sure her gun was in ready reach, she followed him out the door.

xXx

Another surprise awaited Hank and Alicia when they checked in at the White House: The meeting originally scheduled for the Oval Office had been moved downstairs to the Situation Room. It was a small and select meeting: The President, his national security advisor, the director of the FBI, a pair of uniforms, one representing the Joint Chiefs, the other the national Security Council, and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Bolivar Trask.

Big as Hank was, Trask matched him in every dimension, tall and broad and radiating the impression that he remained as powerful and dangerous now as he was in his youth. They'd come out of Detroit, served a career in Army Special Ops before confounding everyone when he turned in his papers and built a new life for himself in disaster management. Trask had barely made it out of high shcool, yet over the course of his two careers he had amassed more practical knowledge than a roomful of certified academics, possessing an eclectic mix of street smarts and on-the-job training. He was a brilliant manager, as gifted in the military and defense aspects of his department as the civil, and seemed soundly determined to protect the country from natural disasters and terrorist threats.

"Sorry I'm late, Mr. President," Hank apologized, as he strode into the darkened room. Display screens were already active, filling the wall at the far end of the room, where everyone at the table could easily see them.

President David Cockrum indicated the open chair to his left. "Have a seat, Henry. Sorry for catching you short, but things have been happening."

Trask sat opposite McCoy, at the president's right hand. From everyone's body language, McCoy knew this was Bolivar's briefing.

"Homeland Security was tracking Magneto. . ."

With that cue, surveillance images appeared on the display wall, showing a tall and handsome man of natually aristocratic bearing. Some time in the recent past, he must a grown a beard, neatly trimmed of course, which gave him the air of a shakespearean warrior king in exile. A lion in winter, McCoy thought, with a pang of regret at the memory of brighter, younger days, and all that might have been.

Trask was speaking, using a laser pointer to highlight his bullet points with the appropriate image. "Homeland Security has been cooridinating with all the relevant alphabet agencies - CIA, NSA, DIA - Plus their counter parts overseas. As you can see, we got hits on him in Lisbon, Geneva, Montreal. NavSat lost him crossing the border. But we did get a consolation prize. . ."

Different screen now, the biggest in the aray, with a crawl at the bottom to inform everyone that they were watching in real-time streaming video. The setting was obviously an interrogation room of some sort, with a double-door security airlock and double-paned observation glass, suggesting something more appropriate to a biohazard containment facility than a standard lock up. There were two figures in view, interrogator and prisoner. No guards - that could be seen.

The object of all this attention lounged in a chair as though she owned the place, and hadn't a care in the world. She was naked and flaunted a perfect body as proudly as any other woman would a new designer gown. Her skin was as blue as McCoy's fur, her hair the color of blood, swept straight back from her forehead and face to end in an impossibly precise blunt cut at the base of her neck. Her body was decorated with ridges, down the arms, breasts, stomach, and groin, with a scattering along her legs. Hank had always been curious whether they were decorative or had some functional value, and the scientist in his soul wondered, How hard would it be to get a cell sample?

Her eyes were a gleaming chrome yellow, reminding him of another, friendlier, shapeshifter he knew, only Kai's were a much warmer coppery type of gold. The woman on the screen's eyes glowed in the dark, Hank knew, where the rest of her could become effectively invisible. The way they flicked from camera to camera, the way she allwoed herself the smallest of smiles, told Hank that the she knew she was being broadcast, and probably who was watching.

She called herself Mystique. She'd been by Magneto's side for almost as long as he had been in active opposition to Charles Xavier. No one had ever been able to fathom the precise nature of their relationship, beyond the obvious fact that she was utterly devoted to him and to his cause, and that Magneto cared for her as he did for few others in his life, past or present.

She was a metamorph, a shape-changer able to transform herself with a thought into any other human form she pleased. What they were viewing now was supposedly her default form; it was certainly the skin she was most comfortable wearing, the one she always returned to.

The main screen was complimented by an array of lesser display windows, showing different perspecties on the scene. Looking at he one aimed at her eyes, McCoy couldn't hake the sense that she was looking right back at him through the lens. that she could actually see him.

With an inner wrench, he turned his attention back to Trask, who was still speaking. "We picked her up breaking into the FDA, of all places."

"Do you know who she was imitating?" the President asked in an aside to Hank, "Secretary Trask."

That must have been a sight to behold, Hank thought, and almost as if he'd heard the comment aloud, Trask cued an archival shot of the scene in question, showing Mystique before, and then right after, the takedown. Hank looked from the man himself to the screen and back again - as did everyone else present. The match was flawless.

"Yes, sir," Hank told the president. "She can do that."

"Not anymore, she can't," Trask said with pardonable satisfaction. Smart as she may have been he had found a way to nail her: "We got her."

"You think your walls can hold her, Trask?"

"We have some new walls, Henry." came the reply, with the hint of an edge. Trask's tone indicatied that he thought that Hank's question was utterly foolish. What was the point of taking the woman if you didn't have the means to keep her? "We'll be a step ahead this time."

Hank was about to press him on that point when Trask gestured with his remote and added sound to the streaming video from the interrogation room.

"Raven," the agent with her said softly, and was ignored.

"Raven," he repeated, 'I'm talking to you"

She flicked her eyes dismissively. "I don't answer to my slave name."

"It's on your birth certificate. Raven Darkholme, or has he convinced you that you don't have a family anymore?"

No one needed to be told which 'he' was being referred to, but the question did provoke a response. Mystique swung round in her chair to face the agent. Her look promised mayhem. the interrogator took it in stride.

"My family tried to kill me, you pathetic meat-sack."

"So, now he's your family?"

She sniffed, haughtily as a queen, and half turned away striking a glamour pose that flaunted her body to him and to the cameras.

The interrogator's tone hardened.

"Are you playing games with me?"

She gave the agent a smile as overtly sexy as her pose, and then morped into a mirror image of him.

"What makes you say that?"

The interrogator leaned forward, "Is it worth it, all this, to protect him?"

"You really want to know where he is?" He didn't need to reply. He didn't have to, the answer went without saying. "All right then, I'll tell you . . ."

She leaned forward. Inviting the interrogator to meet her halfway.

Hank's eyes flickered a warning to Trask. Both men were on the same wave length. This was too soon, too easy. Way to good to be true. Trask already had a phone in hand, a direct line to the holding cell, but never got a chance to warn him.

Even as Hank heard the ringing phone through the main display, Mystique struck, grabbing the interrogator by the ears and delivering a vicious head-butt that would have him in the hospital for the better part of a week with a wicked concussion.

Now the previously unseen guards made their entrance, hard and fast and in no mood to paly. Their adversary was faster than they were, stronger as well, likely more skilled in the martial arts. She'd stopped herself free of every restraint, making her hands momentarily boneless so that they'd slid loose from her cuffs, but the room was too small and suddenly filled wall-to-wall with muscle. She had no room to maneuver, and when she tried morphing into one of them Hank saw that they'd been biotagged. External surveillance systems told the team outside who was who so that they always knew who to hit.

It was a gallant, desperate struggle that reminded Hank too much of a wild animal being caged. It was doomed from the start and quickly over.

Trask shut off the feed.

"One down," he said quietly, "one to go".

Hank stared at him. "You know her capture will only provoke Magneto."

"So? Do we forgo the capture of terrorsit lieutenants because we're scared of their boss? If that's our policy, why don't we just hand over the country to him and be done with it?"

Trask gestured to the screen. "Henry, be real here. You see what we're dealing with here."

"All the more reason to be diplomatic."

"You expect me to negotiate with these people?" asked the president pointedly.

Hank's first reaction was thankfully an unspoked thought:

And what people precisely would you be referring to, sir? The 'terroristst' mutants or mutants in general?

Aloud, he chose to follow his own advice and speak diplomatically: "All due respect, sir, I thought that's why you appointed me."

Hank shook his head, realizing from the look on the president's face and the way the other man's eyes shifted ever so slightly, that the venue for this meeting hadn't been any last minute change, nor had it's earlier start.

"This isn't why you called me here, is it, sir?"

The president shook his head. "No," he said, his tone conveying what was surely meant to sound like a sincere and heartfelt apology. He slid a file towards McCoy.

"This is what she was after."

Hank used a ritual with his glasses to regain his inner composure: he removed the bifocals, puffed on the lenses, wiping them clear on the thick luxurious fur protruding from his cuffs.

When he was done reading, when the axis of the Earth had finished shifting beneath him, he didn't know whether he felt rage or terror, but assumed that it was a decent measure of both. He pressed his hands together, resting his face against them, like a man assuming an attitude of prayer, determined not to allow them to tremble and hoping his voice wouldn't betray him when he spoke.

"Is it viable?" He asked.

"We believe it is, yes."

"Do you have any idea of the level of impact this will have on the mutant community?"

The president nodded, choosing his words very carefully.

"Yes, I do. That's precisely why we need some of your 'diplomacy' now."

Hank closed his eyes, his inner child hoping against hope that this was merely some wild flight of fancy, and that when he opened them again he'd be back in his old room at Xavier's, young and carefree, with no thoughts for the days ahead other than charming the daylights out of Jean and teaching Kai how to slow-dance.

And then came a darker image, of a movie he'd watched far to often, one to compliment the books and files he'd commited to memory while researching his first doctoral thesis, which hadn't been on medicine of any kind, but history. In 1942, there'd been a conference in Wonnsee Villa, a resort outside Berlin, chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, who'd go down in history as "Hangman Heydrich" (his fellow Nazis called him 'The Blood Butcher'). He was then Deputy Reichsfuherer, a handsome, powerfully commanding presence whom everyone assumed would claim the leadership of the Third Reich if and when Hitler passed from the scene. He'd gathered the top bureaucrats in the Reich, from all the key departments of state, and in a meeting that lasted ninety minutes, they'd resolved the 'Jewish question' in Europe. In terms both barbaric in their racial virulence and damnably chilling in their institutional banality, these men signed the death warrant of millions.

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A/N:

Muahh haa haa haa!

gotta love the cliffhangers!

Anywho, I'm changing my whole review policy, cause you people apparently have a phobia of the little button down below.

I haven't, not on one single chapter, gotten 5 reviews. And since I want to have this story finished before I turn 40 (I'm 19 now), I will be satisfyed with just one good review. But, I need a good review, I'm talking more that one sentence. Come on people, give me some critical analysis here, I'm only an amateur writer, I need some feedback on my work!

-R