"These will be your quarters." Stryker led me to an open door. I looked in and saw a man cleaning a gun.

"Do you think it wise to have both male and female share a room?"

He gave that one sided smirk. "I'm going to leave that decision up to you." His eyes went from me to the man in the room who was now staring at us from his cot. "Play nice."

When he left, I turned to the man but said nothing. Our eyes didn't break contact as I moved into the cot across from his. "You get drafted too?"

"No, I volunteered."

He scoffed. "Why?"

"To help my friend." Who did this guy think he was?

He started putting his gun back together. "You want to be a martyr?"

It was me who scoffed this time. "I don't die easily."

He smiled. "Welcome to the club." After his gun was put back together, he reached behind his head and unsheathed a katana. He then pulled out a file from his cargo pants and started sharpening the blade.

"So," I placed my duffel bag under the cot. "What do you bring to the table here?"

"I'm a swordsman. And yourself?" He sent me a quick glance.

"I'm Mother Nature." I held out my hand and teleported Last Of The Mohicans from my bookshelf at the Hawkins home.

"That's a nice trick. Can you make it disappear too?" Smart ass.

"If I wanted to. But I'd rather read it instead." I opened the book and he went back to sharpening his sword. After a minute of silence between us, I asked. "When do we do stuff around here?"

"Stryker usually tells us. Other than that, we're either in our cells or we're training."

"Sounds like prison."

"It can be sometimes." We didn't speak for a little while after that. But about forty-five minutes later, he said, "Wanna go to the courtyard?"

"Sure." I put my book under the pillow and stood up.

He looked down at my jeans and my tight long sleeved green shirt. "You got a uniform hero?"

Hero? "Yeah." In fact I have four, but I brought two with me: my original, and the one that Virgil and Richie gave me. I went with my original. "Well turn around." He rolled his eyes as he turned to face the door. I quickly went into my duffel bag and pulled out the pair of cargo pants, sleeveless green under armor, and a pair of green high tops. I quickly changed and cleared my throat so that the swordsman turned around.

"Nice tats." He nodded towards the vines on my arms.

"Thanks." I hated it when people mentioned my tatoos. It's not like they were my idea. "We going or what?"

"Follow me." And I did. He led me out of the building to a large courtyard. There wasn't any grass, that's too bad. He stopped in the middle of the courtyard and turned to me. "Training starts now."

"Training?" I had expected there would be some kind of training, I just wanted to play dumb.

"Stryker put you in my cell, meaning that I have a new partner. And as partners, we have to train together."

"And how are we going to do that?" I already knew the answer.

He just smirked. "Let's just see if you can beat me first." He unsheathed two swords and came at me.

The minute he took off for me, it started raining heavily with thunder and lightning. What good is a fight if it's not even slightly dramatic?

The vines on my arm peeled off and I waited until my new partner got closer before I hit him with a gust of wind that threw him ten feet in the air. He landed on his feet, and came at me again. This time, I made grass grow to six feet. The man cut his way expertly through the new grass. I waited until he was about five feet from me and then I started making the grass wrap itself around him. He easily sliced through it, and then the grass grasped his feet and hung him in mid air. He was about to cut through that, but he was struck with a low voltage lightning bolt, it was just enough to stun him.

I walked over to him as we both got soaked from the down pour. "Had enough?"

"You cheated."

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did. Too!"

"Now didn't I tell you two to play nice?" I retreated the grass back into the ground and cleared the skies. My new partner got up from the ground and we stared at Stryker who was standing next to the main building. I made my vines go back onto my arms and waited to be yelled at. Stryker started coming towards us. "That was a fine show. Not many can beat the Deadpool."

I gave a quick glance over at my new partner when Stryker said his name. He didn't like the name, I could sense it. "Well I cheated. I shouldn't have struck him with lightning."

"You do whatever you have to do to win. Remember that."

"I'll keep it in mind, now was there something you wanted to talk to us about or did you just come to watch the show?"

Deadpool just snickered and gave a quick look at me. Stryker barely smiled, but it was still there. "I came to tell you that we are going to start our 'testing' on Lance. You said you wanted to supervise"

"And I do." He turned around and Deadpool and myself followed him. "So, what's your name?" I asked Deadpool.

"Deadpool." His mouth dripped with disdain.

"I meant your real name."

After a minute, "Wade Wilson. And you?"

"Andi Hojem."

"I meant your other name."

I rolled my eyes. "Arbora."

He smirked. "Tree, how appropriate."

~.~.~.~.~.~.~

"Can I help you?" a woman in her thirties with long white hair asked Richard Hawkins as he stood on the doorstep of a mansion.

"Yes, I'm supposed to be meeting with a Charles Xavier."

She smiled. "You must be Robert Hawkins." She held out her hand and he shook it. "I'm Ororo Munroe."

"It's very nice to meet you."

"Please follow me." She led him through the main room, up the staircase, down the hall, and into a room with two French doors. "Professor, Robert Hawkins is here to see you."

The man in the room turned his wheel chair from the window and smiled when he saw Mr. Hawkins. "Thank you Storm. Hello, I'm Charles Xavier."

"Robert Hawkins."

"Now, you wanted to talk to me about your daughter?" Xavier folded his hands in his lap.

"Sort of. It's about my daughter's friend. He's having trouble controlling his powers. And she wanted to know if you could help him out."

"Well, I can certainly try. So when can I meet your daughter and her friend?"

"See, the problem is, I don't really know."

"How could you not know?"

Mr. Hawkins wasn't really sure if he should tell Charles this, but he said, "She's with a man named William Stryker."

"Why would you let her go with William Stryker, he is a mess of danger."

"She was desperate to help Lance, her friend. And I wasn't going to be able to stop her."

"We have to get her out of there immediately." Xavier started to roll towards the door, but Mr. Hawkins stopped him.

"Hang on there, Charles. You don't know Andi."

"And you don't know Stryker. That man won't stop until he gets exactly what he wants, and he doesn't care who he has to go through to get it."

"Trust me, if Andi senses danger she'll take care of it."

"I doubt Andi can take out an army of mutants."

Mr. Hawkins smirked slightly. "Andi herself is an army."

"Robert, the only reason Stryker would be interested in her is if she had powers. What exactly are they?"

"Andi has the ability to control plants as well as the weather."

"That is an interesting power Robert. But I seriously doubt that Andi can take on an entire army of mutants by herself."

Mr. Hawkins sat himself in one of the chairs by the wall. "Charles, she's already taken on an army by herself. And she won."

"Do tell." Xavier was now very interested.

"Have you ever heard of the Green Lantern Corps, Charles?"