Disclaimer: Just in case you've forgotten, i don't own the X-Men or any of their cool stuff...all of that belongs to Marvel and 20th Century Fox...even Logan, which is a very very sad thing indeed...i'm only borrowing them to have my wicked way with them...especially Logan...:) A whole host of people DO belong to me, including (but not limited to) Angela, Evie, Buzz, Sam, Sarah, Peter and a couple of kids who make their debut in this chapter, Hea and Jung...all my OC's are very skittish about strangers playing with them, so hands off...

Chapter 5

(Angela)

About three weeks after our romp in the woods, we decided it was time to hit another facility. All told, it had been about four months since our last mission and Kyro, Logan and I were itching to get a little more payback. Ten bases down, only about sixty more to go according to the BCI file. That didn't take into account the scientists, military officers and other personnel that had "retired" in the meantime. Most of those had dropped completely from public view, a few of the scientists were still working in their respective fields, mostly immunology, biochemistry and genetics. The rest were already dead, more than half by their own hands. At least, it was made to look that way. I had my suspicions, but it didn't matter either way.

We'd changed our focus from Europe to Asia for that next mission, a base in North Korea to be exact. Evie had started her kindergarten level classes by that time and was absorbing knowledge at an alarming rate. I wondered secretly if she had a mutation that was manifesting early that was helping her learn so quickly, but Charles assured me it was not the case. We just had an extremely intelligent little girl and I counted myself lucky for that. So, when it came time for us to go to Korea, Rogue helpfully scheduled an all-night "camp out" for her six- to eight-year-olds out on the grounds. Evie was terribly excited about the idea and chattered on about it incessantly the whole week leading up to it. When Saturday came around, we sent her off with kisses, her stuffed bear tucked under her arm.

I turned to Logan once the group vanished into the woods. "You ready lover?"

"As I'll ever be." He replied and slipped his arm around my shoulders. We made our way downstairs to the hangar, where Kyro was already mostly done with the pre-flight routine in Blackbird One. I slipped into the locker room to change into a pair of black cargo pants and a black micro-fiber shirt, long sleeved and fitted like a second skin. I pulled my hair back into a single braid that fell down past the middle of my back, then slipped my feet into a pair of soft shoes. I'd leave those in the jet when we got to our destination, even though Logan preferred I didn't run around on these things barefoot. I wasn't concerned about how my feet would come through this, just the rest of me. As soon as I was put together, I returned to the hangar and boarded the jet.

Kyro gave me a wink as I settled into my usual seat as far from that big window in the front as I could get. Logan came back and gave me a kiss and squeezed my shoulder in reassurance, but he had to return to the co-pilot's seat. I wished like hell that he could sit with me when we went on these things, but it was more important for him to be up front in case he was needed for anything. I closed my eyes and took a few calming breaths in an attempt to meditate, but as soon as the jet was in the air, the familiar panic started to set in. This would be the longest flight I'd been on since the Bad Old Days and I didn't have the advantage of being drugged to the teeth to get through it. I would have asked Hank for something, but I'd been shot up with just about everything and my healing factor had long ago adapted to the sedatives that worked the best. Now, I simply wasn't willing to go through all of that just to have a comfortable flight, so I gritted my teeth and endured the best I could.

Several hours later, Kyro set the jet down as gently as he could about six klicks from our objective. This was going to be one of the more difficult bases to hit, since the North Koreans tend to be seriously overprotective about their military installations, especially the ones they're not supposed to have. As we disembarked, Logan stopped short and looked around him. "Holy shit. I've been here before." He said.

"What?" I asked, an icy finger of fear tickling my spine. "When?"

He furrowed his brow. "Not that long before Stryker grabbed me, a few months or so." He walked to the edge of the clearing where we'd set down the jet and scanned our surroundings. "I was still with the Special Forces then, had a mission to come in and see if they were usin' that base down there to make chemical weapons. Me an' a guy named Langram were sent here." He shook his head sadly. "Ran into a woman named Miko, a cop from Japan. She was here after her father, some kinda rocket scientist. They'd kidnapped him to make him come up with a delivery system for their damn weapons, tortured him. By the time we found him, it was too late."

"Logan, you don't have to go over all of that again." I said and rested my hand lightly on his arm. "That was a long time ago."

He swallowed hard and nodded. "Yeah, I know. That whole mission was doomed from the start." He stood there for a few more minutes, lost in thought or memory. Finally, he strode over to a tree and popped a claw, then carved something into the bark. When he was done, he knelt in front of it for a few more minutes, head bowed, eyes closed. I turned away then, sensing that whatever he was doing, this was a private moment for him. Kyro must have felt the same thing, because he joined me a few seconds later. Finally, I heard Logan move again and turned around just in time to watch him kiss his fingers and touch the carving on the tree. "C'mon, let's get this over with." He said and moved soundlessly into the trees.

I stopped for a second by the tree to see what he'd carved there. It was a series of Japanese characters and I'm almost ashamed to admit that I couldn't read them. I turned to Kyro. "Hey, what's this say?" I asked.

"It says 'For Miko Katana, samurai. Vengeance will be yours.' And he has signed it with his name."

I nodded. I didn't need Logan to tell me that this Miko had probably not left this forest alive. Something had happened to her and he now felt it was his duty to exact revenge on her behalf. The fact that he named her 'samurai' told me more about her than if he'd spelled the whole story out for me. My lover is a born warrior with a very clearly defined sense of honor and that day, it was as much about that as it was about revenge.

Kyro and I took to the high road as soon as we hit the trees, with Logan between us on the ground. This was actually an old ploy that we had used back during the Alkali Lake days, since he could take more damage than me – or Kyro, for that matter – and survive. Still, we moved cautiously, from shadow to shadow, tree to tree, making no more sound than the native wildlife that still clung desperately to this forest. After about half an hour, the trees thinned and we got our first look at the base.

We were high above it, a complex of buildings and what appeared to be storage tanks for fuel dotting the area. The tanks gave me pause, because they were so out of place here. Next to the base was a huge dam, easily the same size as the one that had been at Alkali Lake, which should have provided more than enough power for a complex of this size. I was trying to puzzle out the answer when Logan came up noiselessly beside me. "They're camouflage, darlin'." He whispered. "Entrance to the underground complex is inside that one over there." He pointed one out with a snort. "A couple of 'em were used to hide their regular weapons, vehicles, stuff like that. The rest of 'em held the chemicals they were usin' to make their weapons." He sniffed the air and chuckled. "Smells like they ain't been in the chemical weapon business for a while."

"Their secret was out." I replied as I scoped the base. "Even if only one person knew about it and got away, it was out."

He nodded. "An' of course, that had ta be me. I always make it through, no matter what. Lucky me."

"No, lucky me." I said and turned to him. "Logan, everything that happened to you brought you to me. Because of that, we now have a beautiful daughter. Don't tell me that it wasn't worth it."

He wrapped his arms around me and kissed the top of my head. "Yeah, it's worth it. Back then, I didn't know why I was made this way, to always survive. Now I do an' I wouldn't trade it for anythin' in the world."

"Good." I gave him a quick kiss, then turned back to the base with a sigh. "All right, all business now. Coms on, code names only." My eyes hardened and I swallowed hard. "Let's kill them all."

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Three hours later, we stumbled away from the base, then broke into a run to make it to the shelter of the forest. I adjusted the heavy backpack that was filled with disks and files that we had gleaned from their offices, more information that we hoped would eventually lead us to the Director. Logan and Kyro adjusted burdens of their own.

They were children, barely ten years old and feral like us. Logan had found them, scenting them out when we'd finally found the lab. He'd left Kyro and I to take care of whoever and whatever he found in there, which was not a pretty sight. Not being content to experiment on mutants they knew would heal, the so-called "people" in this facility were attempting to force a healing factor onto other mutants with useful powers. The lab contained their failures, mutants in various stages of dissection, some of them as young as twelve. My rage knew no boundaries and it was only the frightened cries of the children that brought me back far enough to go and see what Logan had found.

They were being kept in tiny cages hardly big enough for them to stretch out in. They were barely coherent and it was obvious they'd been tortured, probably in an attempt to make their mutations manifest early. Had I not rounded the corner in time to watch Logan decapitate the last of the guards posted on them, I would have ripped them to pieces myself. It wasn't until I tried to coax them out of their cages that I realized the monsters here had succeeded in their torture when the little girl produced claws not unlike mine and tried to rip my throat out. I scrambled away from her, the claws barely scratching my neck, before I eased myself forward again and showed her my own claws. Her eyes widened with surprise and she started babbling to me in Korean. It was Kyro who saved the day on that one, Korean being one of the only languages that Logan didn't speak. He whispered to them softly and eventually they rushed to him in tears. I know the Japanese have a reputation for being emotionally distant, but not our Totem.

The girl was named Hea, while the little boy was called Jung. They'd been taken from their village more than two years previous, their parents killed. How the people here had known they were X gene positive was beyond me and I didn't have time to worry about that. Logan and I made another quick circuit through the base to make sure we'd gotten everyone, then went through and stole as many files and other information as we could. It wasn't until we were on the way out that we made a startling discovery, which prompted our extremely hasty retreat. Someone had rigged a self-destruct mechanism, which would go off if a certain command wasn't entered into the computer every three hours. We'd hit the base just after it had been last entered and we barely had enough time to make it clear. Leaving much more behind than we would have liked, we grabbed the kids and ran for our lives.

We'd only made it a few yards into the forest before the whole place blew sky-high. Logan and Kyro threw themselves on top of the children to protect them, while I was thrown to the earth by the shockwave. I lay there stunned for a moment, coughing, but recovered soon enough. We kept running as fast as we could until we got to the top of the hill where we'd left the jet and not a moment too soon. The dam that had been holding back the river for so long gave under the combination of the pressure from the water and the damage it took from the blast. I cursed softly, pissed off that I'd been denied the chance to leave our calling card someplace where others would find it. Then I thought of the memorial Logan had left for a woman long dead and smiled. So it wasn't in letters big enough to read from a hundred yards, but it was carved into that tree: Vengeance. Eventually, the people we were after would find that and they would know we'd been here. And that we were still coming for them.

We arrived back at the mansion tired and dirty, but also strangely calm. We hadn't known what to do about the children, so we simply brought them back with us. The Professor still knew how to get a hold of Bennington; maybe he could find the rest of their families for them. If not, they could always stay here with us. I had a feeling that Kyro would like that very much. After eleven missions, we'd finally managed to save someone and if they were the only ones, it would be enough.

Kyro took the children with him to the room he'd shared with Chasca for the past four years, figuring they'd feel better if they had someone they could actually speak to. Logan and I agreed and bade them a weary goodnight before shambling back to our own room. I barely had the energy to bathe before I fell facedown on the bed, asleep almost instantly. I woke up enough to snuggle into Logan when he followed suit after his own shower, wrapped my arms around him and drifted off again.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"…Thank you, Hellcat. She's perfect." He says, his voice low. "Don't worry, you'll see her again someday, when we send her to kill you and your lover..."

I sat bolt upright with a gasp, claws out, looking around wildly but there was nothing to see. Logan followed suit a heartbeat later, his own claws visible just below the surface of his skin. I let out a breath and gave him a weak smile. "Sorry lover. False alarm." I apologized.

He dry-washed his face and sighed. "Angela, you're gonna be the death of me I swear."

"Maybe, but not because I woke up from a bad dream. I have other ways of taking you out. Wanna go for another forest romp tonight?"

He smiled at me mischievously and moved in for a kiss. He had just slid his hand under my tank top when the door burst open, admitting a flurry of boundless energy. "Mommy! Daddy! I had so much fun!" Evie shouted as she jumped on the bed between us. "Aunt Marie showed us bugs an' plants an' stars an' all kinds of stuff!"

"Ah, but did she show you how to get away from this?" Logan growled and started tickling her. She screeched with laughter and I smiled as I watched the two of them. After a few seconds, she wriggled away and started tickling him back, which turned into a battle royale for supremacy. Finally, she jumped on his stomach and his breath went out of him in a rush. "I give up! You beat me again!"

"Yay! I beat Daddy! I beat Daddy!" She hopped to her feet and jumped up and down on the bed. I looked at her sternly and she sat just as quickly. "I wasn't jumpin'." She said with all seriousness.

"I suppose I can let you slide, since you had such a stunning victory against your Daddy." I replied and she threw herself into my arms. "So, tell us about the camping trip."

She launched into a long and involved description of everything that had happened, starting with the plant tour Rogue gave them of the woods and ending with one of her classmates falling into the stream right before bedtime. Then, her face grew strangely serious. "An' then, after I was sleepin', I dreamed about the bad men."

I looked at her strangely. "What bad men, sweetie?"

"The bad men, with the guns an' the rockets an' stuff. They come in here an' they try to take me away." She sighed and sat back against me. "Aunt Marie says it's just dreamin' an' then she let me sleep with her all night."

I looked at Logan over her head, then kissed her and shooed her off the bed. "Why don't you go on down to breakfast honey and Mommy and Daddy will be down in a minute, all right?"

"Ok Mommy." She kissed me wetly on the cheek and repeated the process with Logan before scrambling out the door. "Hey Wendy, wait for me!" She yelled when she hit the hallway, then took off at a run.

I crossed the room and shut the door before turning back to Logan. "Lover, we need to talk."

"About what?" He asked. I told him about the dream I'd had twice now and how it was so close to what Evie had just told us. I still swear that I am not psychic, never have been, but somehow Evie was dreaming the same things I dreamed. Or was I dreaming hers? I rubbed my forehead in an attempt to relieve the tension. Trying to figure this out was just a bit beyond me first thing in the morning. When I was done, he looked at me with a hint of panic in his eyes. "Darlin', do you think they know? About her?"

"I don't know. But I do not intend to let that dream come true."

"Don't worry, it won't." He gathered me into his arms and kissed the top of my head. "So long as I'm alive, it won't." That was all the comfort I needed.

AN: Hmm, what's this? The plot thickens, bwahahahahahahahaha!!! Five down and i can OFFICIALLY say 21 and an epilogue to go...:) Yes, i've been slacking on my NaNoWriMo project to finish this, mostly because it was being really demanding and wanted lots of attention...:) Special thanks to Zac and Turiel Tincdaniel, my beta readers and bestest buds on the planet...Extra special thanks to DBK(TM) for letting me know i forgot to send him chapter 23, eek! And for being such a huge supporter...:) Super Special thanks to my readers, for sticking with me...and Super Swanky Special thanks to my reviewers, who were levanna, reeltreble1031 and theNightEnchantress...levanna - you're the only one who really had something that looked like it NEEDS an answer so...this story is following a nine year story arc...so the passage of time will be quick and several chapters are headed with "blah years later"...i tried to make it ten years, but then there'd be like 40 chapters by the time i was done and nine works just as well for the story...don't worry about missing Evie, she's in the story more as it progresses...and she'll play a much bigger role in the next one...yes, there's a next one, you may all happy dance now...:)

Now for all you readers who haven't reviewed, why not give it a try? As a reward, i'll post a new chapter as soon as i get your review! Don't be afraid of that little button down there, it doesn't bite...:)