Chapter IX

"You three start unloading, we need to get the gear inside and check it before we have to use it" Bishop said gruffly. He didn't look like he was in a good mood. Tony Stark stepped down holding duffle bags out for Emma, Nori, and Victor. Nori and Victor retrieved the bags and walked back into the building.

Emma walked up to Tony and waved off the last bag. "What, is Ms. Marvel still ticked with me?" Emma chided.

"Emma what you did to her was wrong and you know it." Tony said, scolding Emma. Carol Danvers: Ms. Marvel had come to the Xavier school to bring bad news about one of their students they found in the megalomaniac William Stryker's Church. The kid had been murdered and Carol was only doing them a service by telling them in person instead of over the phone. Just before he and Carol had come to investigate the body, Stryker had led an attack against the mutant school. One child lost his life, Stryker didn't walk away unscathed either. He had died in the fight. And before that Stryker had blown a busload of ex mutant children up. He had had a sniper take down another mutant. The boy they found in the church was a mutant, he had wings like Angel, but Stryker amputated them. Tony felt guilty for not being there to help. Carol and the other Avengers were all sorry that they couldn't help. But they were fighting a civil war.

"We were busy; if we weren't having problems of our own we would have helped. I'm truly sorry for all the children that lost their lives. And now this attack against all mutants in the country, I have people working on this." Tony said. Bishop had come to Tony for some extra fire power since the mansion was down on the amount that it normally boasted. The purifiers attack had knocked out their defense systems.

The sentinels weren't up and running yet either. Val Cooper was having every one of their new death bots deprogrammed and reprogrammed. The only ones they had left were a few decommissioned mach 1s; those weren't ever very reliable when it came to protection. Tony and Emma talked awhile about the war between the two factions of super heroes. Tony knew Emma was neutral, or so she said, but she felt more animosity against his side for the registration of mutants. They had lost a lot of lives in Stanford, the X-Men had been there helping with the rescues. Hell some of the X-Men had even joined in the Civil War. Bishop took Tony's side, while Cable and Wolverine took Cap's side. Emma grabbed the last bag from the helicopter and set it on the front steps. Some of the other teachers had come out to help carry the bags in. Emma turned back towards Tony, who was climbing into the chopper. "Tony I just want to tell you something that I told Danvers. If your war is anything like mutant kind's you're going to need a lot of shovels." Emma said. She left him there staring back at her. She walked inside with Lucas trailing behind her.

"That was cold Emma and you know it." Lucas.

"Yes that was the idea; tell him something downright mean so he would shut up. The Cuckoos are trying to talk to me." Emma.

"Mother, Wire needs to speak with you and Dr. McCoy at once. She is very insistent." the Cuckoos thought to Emma.

"Fine I will be there in just a minute." Emma said aloud.

Wire sat in Emma's office with Beast waiting on the room's owner. She had kept quiet during Beast's sit rep on the bomb. If it was a pheromone that caused this then she knew where it may have come from. Emma walked into the office and sat behind the desk.

"Did you get any new information?" Emma asked.

"Uh… Yes. Wire here thinks she may know the source of the toxin."Beast

"Yes I do. When Dr. McCoy was explaining the bomb to everyone in the lab, he mentioned pheromones. I actually know someone who has that ability. Pheromones I mean." Wire

"Yes as do I, Wire, only the pheromones my suspect use affect your emotions. As far as I know they never had the potential to alter genetics. Does your friend have this ability?" Emma asked. She was skeptical of her suspect. She knew him pretty well. Dr. Sean Garrison was a psychologist, a pro-mutant spokes person; he was also the one who treated a student of hers. Of course that student ran away not to long after that.

Wire broke Emma's train of thought with her answer. "I believe he does have the potential with his pheromones. I have seen him make a person violently ill with his power. He also used it to make someone go into a coma once. I think his pheromones have a bio-manipulation property. He can also control emotions."Wire said. She actually had a very strong suspicion that this was coming from Mind-Freak. He had just gone missing. Tuesday hadn't been at the office either. Since she wasn't there, Wire knew there was something very wrong with Mind-Freak.

"Well then we will need a D.N.A. sample to confirm that. Then we need to find him. I want to know what he hoped to gain by doing this." Beast said. Thinking over everything he would need in case a fight broke out with this mutant. Problem was that pheromones didn't need to be breathed in. The skin was porous so the chemical could easily get in that way. The only ones that would be unaffected by the pheromone would be Mercury, Rockslide, Emma in her diamond form, and Piotr in his metal form. Their bodies weren't porous; they had no need to breath.

"I will have the Cuckoos look for him in cerebra, and if that doesn't work then Wire you will need to gather a team to go look for him. But a small one; only take three to four people." Emma.

Wire looked at the floor. She wandered if she should tell Emma about him going missing. Emma would then eventually find out about Tuesday. Maybe she should ask Wail what he thought she should do. "I need to call a friend real quick. He is involved with Mind-Freak." Wire got up from her seat and walked out of the room while scrolling through her address book for Wail's number on her cell phone. She called him. The phone rang about five times before Wail picked up.

"What the hell do you want Wire? I'm kinda busy right now!" Wail said into his phone. He was out of breath; he was dragging one guy with one hand, holding the phone in the other, all the while wishing he still had his sonic screams. He had followed a few leads and found that his boss was being held prisoner by an organization known as the Hand. He found one of their guards in a bar, drinking his brain cells away. He had brought the guy out back to the alley way to get some information. It wasn't going so well just yet. At least he was able to find two others before this drunk. Wail had just wanted to back up what the first Hand agent had said. Wail picked the guy up by his collar and slammed him into the wall. The guy let out a whimper and fell unconscious. "Well damn I didn't mean to knock you out" Wail said in disappointment.

"Knock who out? Wail what the hell are you doing?" Wire.

"Sorry I was a little preoccupied. I have been looking for Mind-Freak. I found out that it is a group called the Hand that kidnapped him." Wail.

"Well that is good but have you found out where he is being held, how they are holding him, and why Tuesday hasn't blown the place apart yet?" Wire.

"Slow down girl, no I don't know where he is located yet; how they are keeping him there… well I guess that they have him knocked out completely. LSD is hell on telepaths. As for Tuesday, if he is truly out, then he can't keep her physical, she has gone back into his body. He will need all his strength to keep Scarecrow under wraps." Wail said then he went completely silent.

"You still there, Wail, hello?" Wire

"Shit… I wasn't supposed to say anything about the telepathy or Scarecrow, or about Tuesday being his soul. Dammit I really screwed up." Wail said slapping his forehead. Until now that information had been kept between Gradden, Tuesday, and himself. Wail listened but he didn't hear anything coming from Wire's end. "Hun you still there? Cher?"

"Mm'k we think that it's Mind-Freak who caused the de-powering of the adult mutants. He didn't do it intentionally, but he is part of it. He is the only pheramonal toxikinetic on the planet. So I have the telepaths here using the mutant finding machine to locate him. I'm gonna guess that he is undetectable. So we need another means of finding him." Wire

"Good girl." Wail

"Yeah well I will keep his secrets only for so long. When it becomes a danger to my friends here then I let it all out, you got me!" Wire

"Yeah yeah. I knew that he was a part of the mutant's problem; I just have no clue how they did it. And I tried magic to try and summon him back and it didn't work. I can't get a tracker because the abductors teleported. We need to get together and come up with a plan." Wail

"K I will have a teleporter pick you up in the office." Wire

"Good. I will get my stuff, see ya shortly." Wail

Wire walked back into the office and explained about Wail coming to the mansion. Emma was not at all happy. Not only was there gonna be an outsider here, but he was a mutant that Cerebra had never picked up. But Wire could care less. Wire left to find Pixie.

Pixie was in the locker room packing her spare uniform. She already had her cloths packed. Wire walked over to her barley noticing the icy glare given to her by Bling. "Hey Megan could you do me a favor?"

"Yeah sure, what do you need?"

"Well I kinda need you to pick up some one for me. I will go with you so you know where to go. You think we could drop the others off then go?"

"We'll need to ask Vic, and Nori, they wanted you and me in the safe houses, but if they okay it I'll help. Besides that's what teammates are for. I just hope we ca…" Megan was cut off by Wire.

Wire held her hand up to stop the word vomit coming from Pixie. "Girl you put too many words into a simple one to two word answer, we gotta work on that" Wire said laughing at Pixie's need to say everything on her mind all at once. "That's fine lets go find Vic and see what he says, although you know I could care less, Emma wants this done."

"Well if Ms. Frost said to do it then lets' go. Where are we going, I need you to concentrate on the place you want to go, cuz I'm gonna be concentrating the spell on your desired location, so no wishing you could see the ocean, or anything like that okay."

"Great..." Wire began to concentrate on Mind-Freak's office building. '650 5th avenue New York 'she kept repeating this over and over in her mind. She barely heard the incantation.

When Wire opened her eyes they were standing exactly where she had concentrated on. They were in the basement. It was used primarily for storage, and the company's offices which dealt with the illegal actions. Mind-Freak had his finger in a lot of pies. They were in the armory. The boss was not above the use of munitions. Wail was bent over a trunk pulling boxes of rounds out and putting them in duffle bags. "You would be horrible to use when sneaking up on someone, hello Wire, who is your friend?" Wail.

"This is Megan Gwyn, Pixie normally. And she can sneak up on people. Others' ears aren't as tuned to pin drop noise as yours are. And hello to you too."

"Fine whatever, we've got nine minutes left before the security system comes online so let's get going, I'm already packed."

"'k Megan can you grab those bags over there and I'll get these." Wire said pointing to the three duffle bags against the back wall.

"Sure." Megan walked over to the bags and tried to pick them up but found that they weighed about as much as she did, each. "Wire I can't carry all of these, can you get these, I'll get the two you're carrying."

"Yeah sure I should have known that he was going to pack an army's worth of weapons and ammunition, and pack light for himself." Wire put her two bags down and walked over to Megan. Wire tried to pick them up but found that she also wasn't strong enough to carry the bags without straining herself. So she went with a different approach. She felt the cold metal start to seep out of her bones and move in between the fibers of muscle. The cable penetrated the skin of her arm, not bleeding at all, it slide out of the underside of her arm. The wire was barbed, and looked like polished steel. But it was a completely different metal. One made of all the minerals in her body, some naturally occurring and others made through her mutation. The wire wrapped around the loops of the bag's straps. It picked the bag up with no effort. Wire's cables were strong enough to pick Colossus up in his metal form. Wire had found that even adamantium wasn't even able to break her metal. She had found this out when a danger room session with X-23 had gotten a little heated. At the most it left a fine line, barely noticeable, a scratch so small even a CD wouldn't skip with it. Wire and Wail carried their bags over to where Pixie was standing.

"You gonna be able to teleport this much weight?" Wail.

"Yeah I use magic, no strain on my body there. I don't know how it really works, just that I'm not supposed to do it or any mag…" Pixie said but was cut off again by Wire.

"We get it Meg, now let's get a move on, we gotta get to the safe houses, and you're the transport for the others." Wire.

"k" Pixie replied then chanted her incantation. They ended up in the hanger, under the mansion. They put Wail's things in the locker room and rode the elevator to go upstairs. Emma was waiting when the doors slid open.

"You took long enough. Megan the teams are waiting on you, get them to the houses so the other students can move in." Emma. "Wire, Match will be taking your place at the safe house for the time being. You and your friend are the only ones who know anything about this pheromone mutant. So we need to get with Cyclops and Beast. Get going now."

Pixie walked to the lobby where the away team was waiting. They were all standing around Caliban, telling him the procedures that the teams had to go by. He was fitting in very well. He was already laughing and joking with Rockslide.

"Alright guys, is everyone ready?" Pixie.

"Yeah Megan we're ready." Match. Santo left the group to go to the danger room. Ben wasn't happy that he had been deputized to X-Man status, he didn't want to be an X-Man, they always ended up dying.

"Good because Frost is mad at me for taking so long. I am gonna start with the safe house farthest from the mansion. That would be Alex and Nick. This is how it is gonna work, only three people in the whole mansion will know the locations of the houses. Then they will hide the memory from themselves, and they will also make me forget all the other safe house locations after each transport. Not even the teachers going know where the other houses are. It is called a double blind, though in this case it should really be like a…"

Megan was cut off by Wolfcub. "Megan I know you mean well but we really need to get going so that we can actually beat the buses to the houses," Nick said, he wanted to go so he could get away from the school, it was always the first place to get destroyed when there was fight coming.

"Yeah right sorry…" Megan said, she began to think of the location of the safe house and said the teleportation spell under her breath. They were transported to a warehouse, beside the docks, in Brooklyn.

"Um… Pixie I think that you sent us to the wrong place," Alex said looking at the uninviting tin and concrete building. On the outside the bottom 3 feet of the structure was concrete, while the upper three stories were tin. There was three windows on each side of the seven foot double sliding doors. The windows were blacked out, so there was no visibility on the outside.

"Nope you are in the right place. The Cuckoos will send you a list of grocery stores and other things you will need for the students. You guys will have Mr. Rasputin for you supervisor. They shouldn't be here for another 2 and a half hours so go ahead and get settled in. I have to get back, the Cuckoos have a constant mental surveillance going on, so if there is trouble just think. See ya!" Pixie mumbled her spell and was gone.