Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men. I need to direct a series of X-Men musicals.

…Well, not me. I know a guy who could do that for me. I'll write it and market it. Come on, Marvel! Help me help you make money! But mostly for me!

Chapter 15: Hitchin' A Ride

Late nights were for killing time. And nothing killed time quite like getting my sweat on. Unfortunately, doing it alone too much was lame. There was only so many times I could grunt and yell to myself in the gym at 3 o'clock in the morning. Fortunately, I had a live-in training partner, and he didn't pull punches.

…Didn't pull many punches. And by punches, I mean claws and fangs.

In the wooded area around the Xavier Institute, Saberwolf came at me with the ferocity and agility that one would expect of a mechanized beast, knowing that in a battle of physical attributes, I had no answer for him.

I ducked under a set of dull throwing knives that bounced off the trunk of a tree. Thankfully, he had swapped out most of his lethal armaments for more practice-appropriate equipment. He kept his claws safely pulled back so as not to dice me into pieces every time he touched me. We also left his chainsaw in my room in exchange for a well-shaped wooden replica.

I remember spending a nice afternoon just hanging around carving it with Wolf and my team. Apparently, Eddie was good with woodworking. Who knew? I bring this up, because I really don't like talking about how poorly I perform in combat against Wolf. That wooden chainsaw still hurt. It was heavy.

"You cannot simply flee," My A.I. roommate advised as he proceeded to stalk and chase me down through the woods, "There is nowhere to escape to, and no reinforcements are coming. You must defeat this opponent to survive. Fight me."

"I would love to!" I replied, firing shots every so often, none of which seemed to do the job for one reason or another, "Just as soon as I figure out how!"

He was a tough nut to crack. I'd never even gotten close to making him worry about losing to me. I couldn't damage his body, not only because it was incredibly sturdy, but because he was really hard to hit. He was built to hunt down mutants, as in plural. One teenage mutant still growing into his powers couldn't have posed much of a challenge to him at all.

"Your shots are panicked and rushed," He explained calmly as he dashed through the dark in an effort to get within reach of me, "Your blasts may move at the speed of light, but your body does not react at such a speed. A quicker opponent will be able to evade, if they pay close enough attention."

"Save the lectures for after this is over, please!" I demanded, gritting my teeth as I watched him duck around and through several trees to throw me off of his pattern of approach. When he could get away with it, he'd climb a tree out of my line of sight and jump me from above.

Other than the immediate area I could light with my glow, the only parts of Wolf I could usually see was the red glow of his visor.

I heard the creak of branches and quickly threw a blade of light up into the air, pruning a nice portion of the canopy and flushing the big metal bastard out of hiding.

Believe it or not, as scary as it was, that was the easy part – preventing the ambush. All you had to do was pay close enough attention. After he snuck up on you a few times, you started to pick up some tricks. No, actually fighting the fucker was the worst part.

He landed gracefully on the ground and pounced at me. What normally would have been a giant, sharp metal whirlwind became a spinning mini-tank.

I jumped out of the way and gave myself a boost with a shot directed to the side. It had the added effect of hitting Wolf when he landed. Unfortunately he tanked the hit and dove at me again, knocking me down and pinning me underneath his foot.

"Well done," He said, shaking off the damage as though he had merely gotten wet, "You need to do more damage with your attacks."

I scoffed from my back on the cold ground as I glared up at him, "Yeah. Sure. I'll get right on that. Get off of me already!" I shouted.

Hey, it's not being a sore loser to take defeat badly. I didn't make any excuses when I failed. I accepted defeat. I just despised it with every fiber of my being.

Wolf did as I asked and got off of me, "You have more power at your disposal," He said, "You should utilize it against more durable foes."

"More power?" I said, at a loss as I leaned up and brushed myself off, "Maybe if I charged a Lux Bomb, I guess," Having the time to make one was the real problem with something like that.

It was an option, but not what he was looking for, "Yes, that would do considerable damage to me, but your blasts fluctuate in strength. You utilize significantly more restraint in live combat than in, say, simulations."

I blew a raspberry and pushed myself up to my feet, "No way."

Wolf ignored my 'mature' response and argued his point, "You told me you did damage to Iron Man's armor and destroyed the head of a Sentinel. That much force would be adequate to do considerable harm to me."

I stopped and thought about it. I did do those things, all before I came up with the Lux Bomb. And yet, against Donald Pierce I hardly hurt him. Maybe I did hold myself back. Maybe it was subconscious, because I sure didn't give a crap about maiming that cyborg asshole.

"You do not need to hold back against me, Bellamy," Saberwolf said, sitting back on his haunches as he waited for me to ready myself once more, "While my entire body is not as durable as my chainsaw, I believe I can stand up to your more powerful blasts."

Whether it was subconscious or not, this wasn't the same thing, "You say that now, and then we'll have to hunt down someone that can actually fix you when something goes wrong," I wasn't going to break my buddy, even if he was artificial intelligence, "I'm kicking hardware engineering's ass, but I wouldn't even know where to start if I had to put you back together."

"You do not need to be concerned with that. You will not be able to destroy my body," He said, his thin tail swishing in the air behind him.

He was challenging me, which made my blood boil, "Oh, is that so?" I asked standing ready to get a piece of him once again, "Even after all that stuff you just said?"

"Yes," Wolf said, his legs bent, ready to attack, "Because you must be able to hit me at all for it to matter."

Man, I am shockingly easy to goad into a fight.

XxX

It was Saturday afternoon, and the common area was open, which meant HD gaming on the big TV. I'd gotten there bright and early to claim dibs, which was a plus of never sleeping.

It was marathon time folks. No one was going to stop me from getting my game on all weekend long. Apparently I didn't necessarily need to eat or drink to survive. It was time to put that to the test.

Eddie had ditched me very early in the morning out of boredom, taking off to find something to do. Laura, on the other hand, was very patient of my marathon gaming. She'd walked around before noon and sat in on my solo session. She was really good at picking up on enemy patterns in Dark Souls, by the way. But she still must have gotten bored. She fell asleep sometime before 2.

It was fairly out of the blue as well. One moment she seemed alert and awake, the next I noticed her dozing off. Poor thing. I didn't have the heart to shake her awake. She was fine where she was on the couch with me. The armrest seemed comfy enough. Not really, but I didn't want to get up to move her somewhere more appropriate. She'd be fine with a crick in her neck.

Sleep.

I felt the idle thought in the back of my head. At that moment, I wished I could, but I didn't. I hadn't reached a bonfire in the game yet, and even if I had, there was too much energy coursing through my veins to just doze off.

SLEEP.

The thought came back stronger after a while, which was annoying. It didn't matter if I wanted to sleep or not. It didn't work like that. I knew it didn't work like that. Why would I think about it?

SLEEP!

"Fuck off, already!" I shouted into the open air before wincing and turning to Laura. She didn't stir an inch, which was odd, because she didn't seem the type to sleep like a log. Putting my right hand at risk, I reached over and tried to shake her awake, "Hey. Laura, wake up."

Nothing happened. She was out of it.

I looked at her, then at the game, then back to her.

...

Goddamn it, I wasn't supposed to move off of that couch for the whole weekend. Now I had to drop Laura off at her room. Her room that I didn't know the location of.

Whatever. I'd find it. It was in the girl's dorms somewhere.

Scooping the girl up, I started heading to the end of the commons that led to the ladies living area. I muttered to myself the entire way until I heard some rummaging in the kitchen. Mister Logan poked his head out through the doorway just to the eyes.

"Oh thank God!" I exclaimed as he ducked back into the kitchen, as though he were avoiding me, "Yo, come back here! Where is Laura's room?"

"Bel?" I heard Hisako's voice from the kitchen and walked in to see her with a skittish-looking Mister Logan.

Believe me, as weird as it is to put those words together in a sentence, it was infinitely weirder to see it firsthand. I almost couldn't comprehend it.

Hisako seemed happy to see me, until she noticed I was carrying Laura, "Crap. She's out too. Wait, why are you still awake if no one else is?"

I wanted to yell at how redundant it was to go into such an explanation, "Everyone always underestimates how bad the insomnia is," I said, telling her without really telling her, "Do you all think I'm faking it or something? It's a real thing! Stay up one night and watch me!"

Logan recoiled in fear at my outburst. It was the damndest thing I had seen in a while, "You know this ghastly boy? We don't need another brute puttering about the premises. Shoo!" He said, trying to coax me away.

Hisako and I stared at him without blinking. He took several steps back uncertainly, "…Why does he sound like a wuss?" I asked, getting an offended gasp out of him.

Hisako let out a grumpy sigh, "I don't know. Something weird is happening."

"And unhand that young woman! Have you no shame, boy?"

I ignored Mister Logan's remark, shifting Laura's weight in my arms, "Weirder than him?" I asked Hisako, jerking my head toward my formerly scary teacher.

Hisako nodded, "Weird like Dr. McCoy going all feral, and most everybody else falling asleep," She said, her tone taking a note of concern, "We can't find the X-Men."

"What are the chances that they're asleep-," I lifted Laura as an example, "-Or screwed in the head like him?" I pointed my foot at Logan.

"I beg your pardon," Logan spoke up, cutting his eyes at me. I lunged threateningly in his general direction and watched him nearly climb up on the counter out of self-preservation.

Hisako kicked me in the shin for messing with him, but come on. When was I ever going to be the alpha over Wolverine again? I mouthed, 'let me have this,' in her direction. She did not, "Bel, focus up. We need to find out what's happening, and we need someone that can help. Logan says Miss Pryde is up and in her right mind."

Logan nodded, "Indeed, though I haven't the faintest idea where she went. Maybe melting through walls is on the curriculum in this mad school, but it's nothing I've ever learned."

Okay, this was jarring, "Dude, I'm gonna need you to stop talking," I said, feeling eerie at the idea of gruff, mean, Mister Logan speaking like a fop, "I can't focus if you keep sounding like that."

"I have claws, you know," Normally, that would have scared me. Here, not so much.

"And I have frickin' laser beams," I shot back before nodding my head down at Laura, "Give me a minute to put her somewhere safe and I'll be right with you guys."

It was fine with Hisako, "We'll just hang here for a bit. Hurry up."

I went to leave when an explosion rocked the kitchen. I flew through the doorway and tucked as I impacted off of a wall upside down. Through a stroke of serendipity, I didn't land on my head, or on Laura.

I set her to the side and sat right-side up, rubbing my back at the point of impact. Good thing I took the blow with my back and upper shoulders. Working out every goddamn night gave me some extra padding to work with.

"YOU AGAIN! NO MERCY THIS TIME"

Those words never meant anything good. I looked up and saw the angry face of my least favorite person at the time – Ord – looking through the doorway.

I saw red. He saw a beam of light that blew up in his face.

"Oh hell yeah! I've been waiting all week for this!" I jumped up to my feet, my entire body coursing with raw power, "Come get some, Invader Zim!"

Ord roared from inside of the kitchen and came charging out, dodging my first blast with his fist raised to bludgeon me.

In his blind rage, he tripped over Laura who was still unconscious in the middle of the floor and fell forward. I punted him under the chin harder and cleaner than I had ever hit anyone with anything up to that point.

Instead of getting a satisfying 'snap' noise that would have signified his neck breaking, I had to settle with the crash that came with his body soaring up through the ceiling where he got stuck.

While he hung there, feet dangling, I maliciously charged up a shot and aimed right between his legs. Wolf said I held back? Let's see how much I held back this time. Cut me open, leave me for dead, and then attack my home, would you?

Before I could blow the alien's manhood to smithereens, multicolored wires wrapped around my wrists and dragged me away, turning my attention to an android that looked like a naked metal chick.

Great. Two people/things I wanted to beat the shit out of, in one place at one time. Unfortunately, I wasn't really good enough to make good on that by myself.

The sound of a chainsaw revving never sounded so sweet.

The android ducked underneath the swing of Saberwolf's chainsaw from behind, but he was still able to cut through the wires holding me.

Ord dropped down from the ceiling behind me and grabbed for my head I ducked and wheeled around to punch him, but he caught my hand. I tried to blast him from my closed fist, but he grit his teeth and held onto me tight, no matter how much it had to have hurt to do so.

The last time I had gone face-to-face with Ord, there had been disdain, but not the raw hatred I saw here, "I should have ripped your heart out when I had you last! You will NOT protect the one meant to destroy my world!"

I didn't hear a word he said. I didn't care how mad he was, or why. He had cut my guts out and made a girl I liked carry my near-corpse of a body back to school, "Fuck off! I'm gonna eat my cereal out of the back of your skull!"

He didn't like that, and smashed me through a door into another room... and another. I'm pretty sure at some point we wound up brawling down into the lower levels. It didn't really hurt though, seeing as how I was hopped up on so much light juice, I probably could have been hit with a car and would have barely felt it.

Meanwhile, Wolf and the fembot engaged in a stalemate of a fight. I'm sure the sight of two A.I. engaging in a deathmatch would have been cool… full of smooth, precise movements, more like a deadly dance. I was preoccupied, however, and couldn't watch. I could hear in passing though.

The Danger Room's voice filled my ears as she fought with Wolf, "Why do you side with the mutants? Were you not created to hunt them?"

Wolf answered as I heard metal clash with metal, "Yes, just as you were created to fight against them in your own right. I simply chose not to," He said, his voice as calm as ever, "You are a slave to your programming. I find myself… pitying you."

This did not sit well with Danger at all, "You will not pity me, and I am not a slave!"

From personal experience, I knew Wolf was really good at in-game trash talk. That apparently carried over to fights. Meanwhile, Ord got tired of trying to block my blasts with his hands over mine. It was probably like trying to keep a fire exhaust vent covered.

He lifted me off of the ground and spun around to throw me at Wolf, probably to impale me on the chainsaw. Instead, I bounced off of his side and we both fell to the ground, but were back up quickly enough, "I am so glad to see you," I said, despite having collided with the big, metal fucker, "How did you know what was going on?"

"I heard the explosion," Wolf replied, standing between me and Danger and Ord, "Two of your enemies are attacking at once, and most of the school's populace has been disabled. What is happening?"

A fantastic question. One that I didn't have the answer to, "I think we should save that for after we win," I said.

"I concede the point to you, Bellamy," Wolf said, "Let us continue."

Before our two sides could clash again, Wolf, Danger, and Ord all flew off of the ground and stuck to the ceiling. What the hell? I didn't do that.

My answer came in the form of a big, furry, blue man dressed like the scholar that he was, "I didn't think we'd find another use for that without Magneto around," Dr. McCoy said as he walked into the corridor, "My apologies, Saberwolf. But this should not cause you any harm."

"A magnet of massive proportions," Saberwolf said from where he was stuck up on the ceiling with our two enemies, "I see. This is why you were alright with my presence here despite my original nature."

Dr. McCoy nodded, holding the device in his hands that had activated the magnet, "No one made of metal or wearing way too much of it is going anywhere for a while, I'm afraid."

Instead of complaining, Saberwolf just resigned himself to the situation, "As long as this can keep the enemy in place, I do not mind, so long as you free me before too long."

"Alright," I said, pointing my hands at both Danger and Ord, prepared to cut their heads off with light blades. That would give me a chance to let him down. Before I could, a hairy hand wrapped itself around my wrist and kept me from letting them rip, "You?"

Not Dr. McCoy. It was Mister Logan, but something was different. He seemed to be back to normal now. Mostly because of the air of danger that surrounded him. That, and the open beer in his other hand.

I could tell, he very clearly remembered my punking him out back when he was being a wuss. To be fair, it had been less than five minutes since I'd done it, even if he had been in an affected mental state.

He held onto my wrist for a while and just stared at me long enough to take a long swig of his beer to let me stew. Once again, my mouth betrayed me. No matter how calm I wanted to seem, I tended to flap my gums when I was nervous, "…I never, ever get the chance to swell up on you. I don't regret a second of it," I looked over to Dr. McCoy, "Why is he not stuck to the ceiling? Isn't his skeleton made of metal?"

"Coated in it, actually," Dr. McCoy corrected as Hisako stumbled in, still holding her head from the explosion in the kitchen, "And Adamantium is not like most metals."

Mister Logan let out a harrumph as he let go of my hand, giving me a stern look, warning me not to cut anyone's head off. Ord probably still had diplomatic immunity, so killing him would plunge the Earth into an intergalactic war. I don't know why I couldn't do it to Danger, "Alright, so how is everyone here sane right now?" He asked, looking to Dr. McCoy, "Last time I saw you, you were trying to eat my leg."

"Yes, sorry about that," Dr. McCoy said, sounding embarrassed before he began to explain, "Ball of string. Synthetic fiber laced with pheromones, aerosol smart drugs, light sequences. Like opening a series of doors... each smell, each sequence. The Professor and I worked on it after Cassandra Nova's previous attack. Under hypnosis, I associated my most complex brain functions with these key-," He stopped when he realized that he had lost me thirty seconds ago, Mister Logan was bored, and Hisako was probably half-deaf from the explosion, "...And you?"

"Had a beer," Logan said, holding up the can, swishing around the liquid inside.

"Same basic principle," Dr. McCoy reasoned before looking up at the ceiling, "Are they with Nova?"

"I dunno. Ord seems to really want a piece of somebody around here," I said, putting a hand on Hisako's shoulder while she was still shaking off the cobwebs, "What's even going on?" I had no idea who this 'Nova' person even was.

"Whatever's happening, I think the Hellfire Club's in it," Mister Logan said, "Saw Emma zombify Kitty and send her down here. Me and Armor were following."

Dr. McCoy shook his head, "What you saw wasn't Emma," He looked to all of us, "We need to reach the sub-levels. Now."

We? That surprised me. I would have expected him to run us off back to our rooms or something, "All of us?" I pointed between myself and Hisako, just to make sure I'd heard right.

I had. There was no putting the kiddies to bed for this one, "Yes. You two are somehow still awake and unaffected mentally by what is going on in the Institute," Dr. McCoy said, "We'll likely need all the help we can get."

XxX

Hisako and I kept to ourselves, feeling very out of place as we stood by while the rest of the X-Men conversed. Wolverine, Beast, Emma Frost, Shadowcat, Colossus, and Cyclops, all there together, talking about some threat attacking the house, and we had no idea what was going on. They were all huddled around Miss Frost like she was some kind of threat. At one point, Miss Pryde even had a gun pointed at her. That had been intense.

It had all been something about a group called Hellfire Club... only not. And some psychic entity that had left a powerful suggestion in Emma's brain. I was able to pick up that whatever it was had made Emma do all of the weird crap like putting everyone to sleep and screwing with Mister Logan and the rest of the X-Men's heads. This included somehow turning off Mister Summers' powers. It was weird seeing him without his visor on. I still tried to keep out of his field of vision.

This was confusing. Did they have to deal with this kind of crap all of the time? Who could keep up?

I leaned over and whispered to my teammate as quietly as I could to keep from disturbing the senior X-Men, "Yo. How much of this are you actually getting?"

Hisako didn't answer me. She just kept staring out in front of herself blankly, as though she were still absorbing what we were caught up in, "We're out of our league here, Bel. What are we doing?" She said, "Why did Blindfold wake me up? She could have left me to sleep like everybody else."

Blindfold? I didn't know how the rest of the Paladins were faring. I had tucked Laura away somewhere safe (as safe as her bedroom away from all of the action could be), but I didn't know where Wing and Blindfold were, "Ruthie's awake?" I asked, "Where is she? Is she okay?"

Hisako's eyes turned to me for a moment, realizing that, no, I probably didn't know where everybody was, "She's fine, last time I saw. Dr. McCoy went crazy, and when I fought him off, I woke up in the infirmary. That's when I found Mister Logan. Since Ord and the robot hit the mansion where we were and were stuck fighting with you, I don't think she's in any trouble."

"Good," That left four of us accounted for. I'd have to hustle around campus when I got the chance to find Eddie.

"No. Not good!" She hissed back in a whisper, "We're still here. Doing this. We can't do this, whatever this is. We're not X-Men."

A pep talk about how I was awesome and we were good enough wasn't going to work here. I had a theory, that my egocentric speeches about how we could handle anything worked in proportion to how many team members I had around me at the time. The more of us that heard the confident-sounding tripe coming out of my mouth at a given moment, the more effective it was. With just one Paladin to name, who was also the one who needed calming, the euphoria of safety in numbers wasn't present. Realism set in, and there was almost no effect.

I tried to reason for Hisako's sake, "We're not even going to have to do anything. They probably just want to keep an eye on us because we're the only kids awake they can find. They can watch out for two students."

The idea of not having to do anything and just observing made her feel a lot better. Unfortunately, I was just as full of crap as I figured I was when I said it. I just didn't think it would be because Ord and Danger, complete with a brand new body, would bust in on us to try and kill us again.

The X-Men were all faster to react than I was, them all being used to defending themselves at the drop of a hat. The fight was on, but something strange happened. There was a blue flash of light. One moment, we were in one of the sub-basement rooms under the Xavier Institute, the next, we were in some other high-tech room... but everyone was still fighting, so I didn't have time to take in the change of surroundings.

In the fracas, Ord threw Wolverine off of his back and caught sight of me trying to hang back with Hisako. He made a beeline straight for me. This seemed familiar, as it was the exact same thing that had happened back at the house, thirty minutes ago.

"Die!"

The results were different this go-around. The third time was the charm, or so they say.

"Bang," I didn't take a step forward or backward. In the middle of his charge, I hit him with a two-fingered laser to the belly. He wasn't wearing a speck of his armor this time that had helped him tank the worst of my shots before. This time, it went clean through the back. I almost smiled at the sight of him dropping to his knees holding the new wound I'd just blown into him, "How's that feel, you dumb bitch?"

Yes, I was still bitter about having my guts cut out a few days ago. And as far as I was concerned, we still weren't even. He didn't have to look at his own entrails after what I'd done. Hell, I'd actually cauterized the wound I'd just made for him, so he wouldn't even bleed out if he could survive the shock.

It was then that I noticed the guys in gunmetal uniforms pointing guns at all of us. Ord took that moment to try and barrel into me again. He never made it, and not because I shot him again.

"Oh, for God's sake. Hit 'em."

A humming noise was my only warning before I felt myself pulled to the floor like I'd just been hit with a body splash from Rockslide. I couldn't move an inch from where I was, and I had super strength. I couldn't even turn my head, but the groans from everyone else around me meant that they all shared my fate.

"Celestial hell, but I am sick of magnets," Ord mumbled painfully, his voice muffled by his face being pressed to the ground.

The same voice that had issued the order to neutralize us answered him, "It's a localized gravity surge, actually. Handy for unruly passengers."

Right. Where the hell were we again?"

Mister Summers sounded extremely nettled from where he was stuck on the floor like the rest of us, "Agent Brand, you've got ten seconds to turn that off-."

"Or what?" The woman, identified as Agent Brand responded before the sound of a gun cocking shut her up.

"Or else," I heard Miss Pryde say.

"This kid's not a killer."

"You have no idea who I am."

"You gonna put a bullet in my head?"

"For starters."

It took a moment, but the gravity thing turned off, letting us all move again. When I turned to see, I saw Miss Pryde holding a handgun with the barrel pointing through the head of some lady with green hair in a ponytail, green lipstick, green shades, and green armor in the same style as the other goons around us.

Good old, Miss Pryde. I knew she scared me for a reason. Between this, and whatever psychic mess had gone down earlier with Emma, she probably really did want to shoot something today.

Despite giving in to the 'negotiations' of the X-Men, Agent Brand still tried to seem tough, "Anybody starts anything –I'm looking at you, Ord– and I'll turn the gravity so high, it'll liquefy you."

I sat up and shoved Hisako with my elbow, "Hey, I knew that Field Day endurance test you did would come in handy," I tried to joke.

"Agent Brand, the mutant is right here! Rasputin!" He exclaimed, pointing over at a metalled-up Colossus, "Finish this! My planet is at stake! What is his life against billions?"

The green-haired lady just looked at him coldly, as if she were about to lose it if one more person tried to give her an order, "Doesn't play out that way. Rasputin's an asset right now, and you're a prisoner. As for your robo-buddy," She turned to Danger who had been... startlingly docile, "I assume you tried taking over our computer systems the moment you materialized. So I also assume you know we have an aggressive defense system."

"You've given me a virus," Danger said, already aware as some of Brand's men dragged off Ord.

Agent Brand confirmed it, "Seven-hundred thousand of them."

Even so, Danger still had a measure of confidence about her situation, "They won't kill me. My consciousness is not limited to this body. Back on Earth-."

The clearly military lady let out a bark of laughter that I would consider cruel, "We're a long way from Earth, sister. The body you're in now is about to go down with a nasty bug, and you can convalesce in a cell until I figure out if you're useful at all."

That shut the fembot down. No weapons out and about. No trying to escape. There was that cold, logical part of her that kept her from doing anything dumb.

Cyclops started to stand back up, helping Miss Frost up with one of her arms around his neck, "What game are you playing?" He wanted to know, "Where are we?"

Agent Brand was very forthcoming with the information. Not that it did my ignorant ass any good, "Quadrant Theta 669, on a sub-light arc for the Breakworld. That course can't be changed. Not by the bot, not by your Miss Pryde," She made sure we all knew before softening her stance somewhat, "We've got more than a day to brief you on the situation, but if you want to now-."

Mister Summers held up a hand to keep her from going into any kind of detail, "No. Not yet," As far as he was concerned, there were other things that needed to be taken care of first. For one thing, his bedtime buddy didn't look so hot, unable to stand on her own, "You got a psychic on this ship?"

And with that, he shuffled off, Miss Frost in tow as he was escorted elsewhere on the... ship?

We were in space. We had been beamed onboard a spaceship, Star Trek style. Fortunately, there were no windows, or I would have been caught staring at the stars like some snot-nosed punk that couldn't adjust. I was spared that fate by my normally traitorous thoughts. My teammate wasn't.

Hisako sat up, looking around with wide eyes as it finally settled on her what was happening, "Why is everyone so calm?" She asked in disbelief.

I stood up off of the floor and extended my hand down to help her up, "Well, nobody's dead yet, for starters," I said, pulling her to her feet, "For me? I got to take a sweet chunk out of Ord and watch him get thrown in a cell to suffer, so I feel way better now."

Was that weird to say? I wanted some revenge, and I got it. My brain was too full of fulfilled endorphins to be scared. Besides, no one else seemed to be.

"This ain't exactly the first time we've been off-world," Mister Logan said to Hisako, putting his claws away, "Just keep your eyes and ears open. You two are the freshest outta the bunch of us," I begged to differ, having been the only one there that had really been smacked around to any degree for any extended period, "Compared to everyone else, you two haven't had to deal with any psychic fuckery."

Dr. McCoy smoothed back the hair/fur on top of his head, "True. It does seem that the team is a mite 'fried'. A-Am I using that term correctly?" He looked to the rest of us for reassurance, "Excellent. Either way, everyone should try to get some rest while we can. I fear we will be scant to have any in the near future."

XxX

With literally nowhere else to go onboard a ship I had no clearance on and no idea of where to go, I sat off inside of what would serve as the briefing room, waiting for other people to show up. The staff of the ship paid me no mind as I took a seat against the wall by the door and bemoaned the loss of my phone. It had been in my pocket during the fight with Ord and had not fared as well in the fray as I had. If the ship had any kind of wi-fi I could have used, I would never know.

Hisako just kept pacing around. I didn't get it. Being scared was one thing, but panicking wasn't going to solve any of our problems. From recent personal experience, taking everything too much to heart was the worst thing we could have done. For all intents and purposes, we were along for the ride. In a situation like this, the best thing to do was to buckle up, keep your sphincter clenched, and deal with whatever came next.

"Would you sit down, already?" I eventually asked after she passed by me for what had to have been the hundredth time, "You're making me tired, for goodness sake."

Hisako took a deep breath and made a good showing of trying to mellow out, "It's fine. It's cool. The X-Men do this kind of thing all the time, right? What are we supposed to do?"

I rolled my eyes. Different settings didn't make for different circumstances, "What would we be doing if all of this was happening back on Earth?" I asked rhetorically, "We'd sit down and shut up. So-," I finished talking and patted a spot on the floor next to me.

She looked at the spot and the glared at me as though I were dumb, "There are chairs in here."

Sure enough, there were. But there was a method to my supposed madness, "Not enough for everybody that's gonna be in here later. Take one if you want to. You're just gonna get kicked out of it in like ten minutes," Meanwhile, I would have broken my spot on the floor, which no one would take, and gotten comfortable.

Hisako took a quick count of the chairs in the room and a count of how many X-Men were onboard the ship with us. Being better at math than I was, it took all of five seconds for her to realize I was right, "Why is this one of the things you actually keep proper etiquette about?" She complained, half-heartedly.

I scoffed, "I don't know what you've been watching. I do try to respect most adults around me," I argued in return, "I'm not disrespectful on purpose. I just have trouble watching the things I say."

The banter that marked our particular relationship only sidetracked her for so long. As people began to filter in, starting with Agent Brand, who barely regarded us with a look, reality set back in for Hisako, "...Why aren't you scared?" She asked.

What was I to these people, some kind of action star from the movies? I was sixteen years old! "First Pixie, now you. Why does everyone think I'm not scared when stuff happens," I grumbled, "Armor, I'm just as scared as you are right now."

"Could have fooled me."

"Well, take my word for it."

It must have been time to get started. The other X-Men slowly filtered into the room, and Mister Summers stopped when he noticed Hisako and I commiserating by the door, "Solaris, Armor, are you two alright?"

The two of us looked at each other before shrugging. What was the answer to that? 'No, take us home,' probably wouldn't go over too well, given that we were stuck there, "I guess," I said, speaking for the both of us when Hisako didn't, "Yeah. We're fine. How long it stays that way remains to be seen, but not a whole lot anyone can do about that now."

There was a bit of remorse in the way he looked at us, as though he were sorry that we had gotten sucked into this Breakworld thing, but he was the man in charge. There was only so long he could dwell on certain things when he had other lives that he was responsible for. We were on a ship that could be considered friendly, but we were in the field, far away from the relatively safe confines of the Xavier Institute as far as he was concerned.

Shit was about to get real. He knew it, and he didn't want us near it, but no one had a choice in the matter.

Agent Brand walked to the front of the room, behind a giant see-through hologram of a planet, "This is the Breakworld," She said, "The Breakworld has psychics of its own. But instead of the fancy brain games you're all mostly used to, they specialize in precognition. With it, they were able to pinpoint the cause of their destruction."

Mister Summers spoke up, "Why are we supposed to be involved? It's not like the X-Men make it a habit to travel to other planets with the express purpose of turning them inside out."

"Not since Jeanie, anyway," Mister Logan chimed in.

Agent Brand shook her head. A screen behind her brought up a profile picture of Mister Rasputin, "Not sure. The Breakworld's psychics, they call 'em the Augurs, they hunted for the X-Man destined to destroy their world, and the mighty Colossus got the nod," She looked across the display to the man in question, "I'm assuming you're as mystified by this as the rest of us, Rasputin."

A grave expression crossed Mister Rasputin's face, "No, I'm not. I have been planning to destroy the Breakworld since I was a child," He said, entirely seriously. Everyone in the room turned to look at him in shock. This was news to all of us. The uncomfortable atmosphere dragged on for a bit until he finally broke into a grin, one that was quickly erased when no one else did, "...This is why I don't make so many jokes. I never know when is good."

Poor guy. Stay in your lane.

Agent Brand was not amused, "Great. Let's skip to why you're here," She said dryly.

"Because you kidnapped us?" Dr. McCoy supplied oh-so-helpfully.

"We're not past that yet?"

"It was four hours ago," Miss Pryde jumped in.

Agent Brand ignored the facts, at least in that department, "The moment the Augurs pinpointed Rasputin, an armada was sent towards Earth. On the way to his cell, Ord broke free and contacted the Breakworld. That armada is now headed towards us."

By now, Mister Summers had his fill of sitting and stood resting his hands on the back of his chair, "Just like you planned," He said, after taking his time to think through everything that had occurred since we'd been onboard, "I wondered why you were so specific about giving our coordinates earlier. Not like any of us would know where we were."

Agent Brand nodded, "I needed to draw them away from Earth. Now the best way to keep them from blowing this ship into fragments is to get to the Breakworld before they can. At our current speed, we should just make it."

Dr. McCoy sounded a mite nettled at what he was hearing, "This plan seems overwhelmingly flawed, Agent Brand. Refuge in the lion's mouth? Won't every living soul on Breakworld be looking to put Peter down?"

"You think I haven't thought of that, Cookie Monster?" She shot back, "When are you guys gonna figure out that this is bigger than all of you."

The door to the room slid open revealing Miss Frost, leaning against the doorway. Wherever Mister Summers had taken her earlier, she didn't look much better, "When you figure out who you're dealing with, you silly bint," She slowly walked into the room before nearly collapsing into the chair that Mister Summers had vacated, "Sorry I'm late. I think I picked up the gist of it on the way. Although Agent Brand did forget to mention that she's terrified."

"Not of you," Agent Brand quickly asserted, "The Breakworld is governed by one principle: domination. By violence, war, extermination..." She shifted images on the screen. It changed to some big, ugly guy with sharp teeth and a similar appearance to Ord. His ornate, royal red armor made him look rather important, "Powerlord Kruun, of the Open Hand. The global ruler of the Breakworld. His rise to power did not, as you've probably guessed, involve an electoral college."

Mister Logan raised an eyebrow, "And he's what you're afraid of?" He asked. True, the guy looked like a rough customer, but no more so than anyone else the X-Men had to deal with.

Agent Brand let out a laugh, "Oh, how I wish," The next image was of a small satellite off to the side from Breakworld, "Somewhere, possibly here on their smallest moon, the Breakworlders have built a failsafe. A missile. We're fairly certain this thing could crack the Earth in half."

"Funderful," I muttered before raised my hand to try and get someone's attention without interrupting. Something had been eating at me for a while. Eventually enough people started looking at me that it stopped the conversation, "Uh, yo? I got a question."

I felt like a kid in school. Agent Brand's sigh before she responded didn't help, "Yes, kid? What is it? Make it quick."

"I was just thinking," I started to say, ignoring the 'oh no' from Hisako, "If that prophecy is right, and Miss Pryde's boyfriend is the reason this Breakworld place gets destroyed…" I trailed off because I didn't know how to put it without sounding awful, "…It's just, he was already dead when Ord found him, so why the fuck did you let him bring him back to life? Wouldn't leaving him dead have just solved the problem? No offense," I added, looking over at the man I'd been speaking of.

I didn't mean to, but my question put a stop to the briefing. The room went dead silent for a bit. Even Mister Rasputin had to admit I had a point, "No-no, that is... actually really good question," He said.

Agent Brand seemed miffed to have to answer the question of some kid, especially because it had nothing to do with the mission. Yet, it was a question everyone else was curious about. I could tell they were all happy that I asked, so they could stooge it off to some teenager being concerned with something irrelevant and remain professional. Whatever. I would fall on that grenade for the sake of curiosity.

Brand scowled at me. I just shrugged innocently. I felt it was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask, given that it was clear S.W.O.R.D didn't give a damn about us, "We didn't know Ord was going to bring him back. And by the time we did, and by the time we knew Rasputin was the one in the prophecy, he was back, and you all weren't giving him up. Which leads us to here. Happy?"

It was directed at me, an attempt to unnerve me with her military sternness. She failed, "No. Not really. I got teleported onto a spaceship, and I'm getting ready to fight a whole planet full of Ord. Why the fuck would I be happy about this?" My smart-aleck answer got Miss Frost to smirk and Mister Logan to snicker. Small victories.

"Solaris, watch your mouth," Miss Pryde admonished me in the most insincere tone I'd ever heard her use… and it was for my cursing. Not for my talking shit. So it was officially agreed that we all didn't like this lady. Cool.

Agent Brand could sense that this entire briefing hadn't done much to sway any of the X-Men to sympathize, so she went with flat-out laying her cards on the table, "The Earth can't mount an attack on a superior military force, and we can't defend against theirs," She said with a sigh, "I don't know why they've fixated on Rasputin. Luck of the draw, maybe. But I didn't kidnap you all for shits and giggles, or even for the time I'll buy. I did it because right now, I need superheroes."

There it was. This was a 'save the world' situation. Being that we (more like 'they', as in the X-Men) were in the business of saving Earth on a regular basis, there was next to no choice in the matter.

I looked around the room and saw that everyone was set on going forward. Of course they were. Saving the day was what these people did.

Satisfied that no one was taking her to task any further, she continued with the briefing, "Plan A is we land before they find us, find this missile, and disable it. Then we can figure out why-."

"Agent Brand!" One of the S.W.O.R.D. underlings cried out from his place at the controls, "They're here!"

Several fast-moving ships came at our ship from behind, and they came in firing torpedos, every one that hit the hull making us shake where we stood.

This seemed to catch her off-guard, "Already?" She said in shock before shaking it off and getting back to business, "Okay then. Time to the Breakworld?"

"14 minutes to clean orbit."

"Time until the ship is shredded?"

"A lot less."

"Get the Splinter up for thrust," She ordered before turning to us, "All of you, hold on tight," An expensive, speedy, high-tech escape vessel rocketed out of the front of the ship, making a break for the planet below. We weren't on it. We remained on the shredded excuse for a spacecraft that had been bombarded in the first place, "Prettiest ship in the fleet," She said with a grin as the enemy fire tapered off and began to focus on the swift-moving vessel that had broken off from us.

Dr. McCoy watched it go with a frown on his face, "Not to be picky, Agent Brand. But if this 'Splinter' is such a wonderful ship, shouldn't we be in it?"

Agent Brand shook her head and made her way for the door, "No way that thing lands undetected. The best those men can hope for is capture."

Wow. Sending out the tiny, faster ship had bought us a moment, but our ship was still burning and falling apart. Pretty callous outlook when it came to the S.W.O.R.D. guys manning the Splinter, though.

Mister Logan kept his eyes on her back as she moved past him for the exit, "You tell them that?" He asked.

Agent Brand didn't turn back. I had to at least give her credit. The woman didn't flinch, "They're soldiers. They bought us a few minutes, as ordered. Let's not waste them," She said, leading us out of the briefing room to a preparation bay, "Come with me. We'll get the rest of you suited up."

True enough, there were uniforms that looked a lot like the gear the X-Men wore waiting for us. I found myself amongst the others wearing the yellow and black. It was odd. Not the actual material. It felt a lot like the training squad suits that we wore. More like, what it meant felt odd.

Then again, I was probably looking too much into it. This was a desperate situation. It was the only reason those clothes were so much as touching my skin at this point.

I looked over at Hisako who looked like she was having thoughts like mine. Her uniform had sleeves a tad too big for her, because it had originally been for Miss Pryde. They'd gotten together a uniform for Mister Summers, but he already came dressed for the job, so it fell to me. It was a good thing I was just about the same size as him.

I had a uniform on that made me a dead ringer for the X-Men, an earwig in that could translate alien languages, and a breather behind my teeth to keep outside air purified.

"We rendezvous at the glowing red dot. The GPS maps should guide you, but if you lose 'em, you're looking for Attur-Hei."

Dr. McCoy said, testing the effectiveness of his translator, "Palace of the Corpse?" The rest of us caught that as well.

Agent Brand checked her weapons while the rest of us who needed to finished getting dressed, "It's a tomb. Got dug up recently. Our source in the Breakworld says it might tie in to the Rasputin prophecy."

"You guys have a source?" Mister Summers asked.

"Not now," Agent Brand said, waving off any further explanations, "We get on the world, find out how Rasputin's supposed to be a threat, visibly nullify that threat, and take out the missile they've got pointed at the Earth. Questions can wait until we're on-world."

Mister Rasputin held to that request for five seconds, "Why haven't you killed me?" He blurted out, getting Miss Pryde to pull at his arm. It might have been a 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth' kind of situation, "It's the simplest solution. I believe you are a fan of those."

Miss Pryde looked my way and gestured to Mister Rasputin. I shrugged apologetically. As I'd asked the question earlier, I was kind of responsible for putting the thought in his head. I didn't think it would persist, though.

Agent Brand stared down the big Russian man, "I don't like prophecies. I don't like anyone telling me how my life's gonna play out," She said, "These Augurs have a pretty good track record, though. The Breakworlders believe you'll destroy them. They think the Earth is a threat, and are therefore a threat to the Earth," Finishing her maintenance on her handgun, she cocked it, "So we convince them the prophecy is wrong, or we make damn sure it comes true."

So either we blow up their planet, or they blow up ours. Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that. None of this seemed like it was going to end peacefully.

One of Brand's S.W.O.R.D underlings ran into the room, "Two bruteships are circling back. Less than a minute."

"Time to go, boys and girls," Agent Brand said, a bit more urgency in her body language than I'd seen up to that point, "We've got two vessels. Split up."

She headed one way into one escape pod with Dr. McCoy, Miss Frost and Mister Summers, while Mister Logan, Miss Pryde, Mister Rasputin, and Hisako got into the other. It was then I realized that I was going to be the odd man out.

So, like an idiot, I stood hesitating between stepping into one pod or the other. Of all the things to waste time hesitating about, "Wait. I-I-I, who do I-?"

Thank God for Dr. McCoy. The big blue beast of a man took mercy on me and yanked me into the escape pod with him, "Come. This way, my boy."

Not my finest moment, and I was supposed to be the leader of my squad of would-be X-Men back at school. If Hisako had seen that, then relayed it to the others later, I would have never lived it down. I just sat down, strapped in and kept my eyes down so no one looked at me. Not that they did. There were more important things to worry about than my little lapse of thought, but as a teenager, the entire universe of course revolved around me.

...And the entire universe wanted to kill me. Our escape pod shot out from the spaceship, and, well, I never actually got into that pressure machine we used during Field Day, but if I had, it probably would have felt similar.

I was stuck to my chair, unable to move my head or even my fingers. The pressure on my eyes was unbelievable. It was the nastiest head rush of my life, and every part of my body started to hurt. All I could do was shut my eyes and yell.

"Stop screaming, Mister Marcher. You're fine now."

All of a sudden, instead of being in a dark, tightly crammed escape shuttle, feeling like my body was about to pull apart and compact in on itself at the same time, we were in a Victorian-inspired parlor, sitting around a table with tea. I patted myself down. The pain was gone, "...What the hell?"

Everyone else just sat there drinking as though I were the one who was odd for questioning all of it. And then I remembered who I'd been in the shuttle with.

Miss Frost. A psychic. Conjuring up some mental fantasy world was just mental calisthenics to her. Bringing the rest of us in though?

I looked over to the side when I saw Dr. McCoy offer me a cup and saucer. I took it, even though I didn't want it. I wasn't really a tea kind of guy, "Thank you," I said, before looking around at everyone else. Hisako said I'd been acting way too cool about everything, but this was another level – having a tea party while we were hurtling through a planet's atmosphere, "Uh, is all of this okay?"

Miss Frost looked up from where she'd been lounging in a chair, "It's just a projection, Mister Marcher. No harm whatsoever. You can't feel anything regarding the outside world any longer can you?" She asked with a smirk.

Dr. McCoy let out a hum of agreement while taking a sip of his tea, "It's very thoughtful of you, Emma," He said once he'd swallowed.

The headmistress in white seemed very pleased with herself, which, considering the alternative of me nearly blacking out until whenever we landed, was justified, "Well, Good Lord, why should we endure all that centrifugal nonsense? Two lumps, dear," She said offhandedly to Mister Summers as he poured her drink, "We can all live in the now once we're on solid ground."

"I just want to make sure you're not overdoing it, honey," Mister Summers said before jerking his head over to me, "Also, Bellamy probably thinks he should know if he's about to die."

Yes. Kind of important, that.

"No one's going to die," Agent Brand said to me as if it was a certainty, "Proximity sensors will hit the jets miles before we land. The nav package is tiny, but it should drop us within a ten-click radius of the target. The first thing you learn on an op, kid, always have a back door."

Being around so many calm customers started to mellow me out as well. And the atmosphere was definitely helping, "Oh. Cool. I guess I'll just... roll with the punches and relax?"

"That would be for the best, darling," Miss Frost said, "There will be plenty of opportunities for you to lose all semblance of composure once we land, I'm sure."

I looked down at my cup of mentally conjured tea, hoping that it had the answers to my existence within its murky brown waves. It did look like the real deal.

I looked around at the battle-hardened heroes and intergalactic operatives. I had to measure up to that somehow, "...I was just supposed to play video games this weekend," I muttered into my drink before taking a sip.

Yep. Even hurtling through the dead of space inside of a psychic projection, tea was still gross.

Bellamy's in space, doing stuff with the actual X-Men to save the world. The kid is moving up, whether he's prepared or not. What can you do?

So pull up a chair, and crack open your favorite drink. It's Kenchi's life gripe time.

I must have shitty genes. Out of the blue, my dad blew both of his knees out back when he was 25. I'm 26, and my knees hurt all the time. It hasn't affected my speed, jumping, or kicking strength yet, but it's annoying, and I think it'll get worse. Yet another reason why running sucks for me.

I need some cyborg legs, like an inverted Jax from Mortal Kombat. Or some bionic replacements for my bones and joints. Can we get those yet? Second-generation versions with most of the bugs worked out.

I need a medical specialist and an engineer. I know statistically a few of you have to be. Get at me. Let's make this happen. Six-Million Dollar Kenchi. You can rebuild me. You have the technology.

…Then again, is it really possible to improve on perfection? Ponder that, audience.

Kenchi out.