Disclaimer: I do not own X-Men or Marvel. My New Year's resolution is to stop getting so irrationally angry at this fact.

I'll let you know in advance that I will not uphold this resolution. It won't even last a week.

Chapter 20: West Coast Shuffle

Being an insomniac had a few perks. Namely, I could easily operate at someone else's convenience when it came to time zones. I didn't have to sleep, so if I had to stay up until the wee hours of the morning to make things easier for Megan to Skype with me, it wasn't a major issue. 2 AM for me was like 10 AM for her.

I couldn't help but smile as I saw her reaction when she took in the view of my bedroom. It was all I could show her for the time being without disturbing others or going outside in the dark at an ungodly hour.

She had showed me her room first. It was just as light and fluffy as I imagined it would be in my head. Like, what you expected a girl's room to look at when you had never seen one and viewed it in your head.

"Wow, Bel! Your room looks more normal than I thought it would!" She said, sitting back patiently as I gave her as good of a look as I could through the camera of my phone, "It definitely wasn't what I was expecting."

Wasn't what she was expecting? Now what did that mean? "What did you think my room looked like?" I asked, flipping the camera's view back to me so she could see the skeptical look on my face.

Megan had the good grace to blush at being put on the spot by me, "I don't know. A wall full of DVDs and Blu-Rays. Three TVs and a bunch of video game consoles hooked up to them. Dark curtains and stuff."

I gave her a stern look, entirely in jest, "You thought I had a shut-in's room, didn't you?" Megan averted her eyes and fidgeted in place a bit. It made me laugh, "Come on. I'm not that bad, am I?"

I mean, no, I didn't have a countless number of DVDs. I had all of my movies and series downloaded on a bunch of mobile hard drives and backed up on a cloud, thank you very much. And I did have a bunch of consoles. I had like eight of them, and a bunch of games for them. But I kept most of them out of plain sight when I wasn't using them.

Also, I did have blackout curtains as a function of my powers' symptoms. It was just that they were open at the moment.

She was more dead-on in her expectations of what my room was like than she knew. The only reason I didn't have another TV in my room was because I couldn't afford it. Two screens was definitely on my list of things to make happen.

"So how's Wales?" I asked, laying back down on my bed, resting my arm and phone on my chest. She did the same, instead laying down on her stomach on her bed, "Is it... I have no idea what Wales is like to even start asking questions," I admitted with some shame.

Megan didn't hold it against me. Instead, she let out a desperate sigh. She was not a happy Pixie, "Compared to Salem Center, my hometown is soooo boring. I feel so sorry for you now! How bored must you have been at the Institute when you live in San Francisco?"

Given everything that happened, I didn't really have a whole lot of time to dwell on the common trappings of teenage boredom, "I don't think that's a fair comparison, hon. Some kind of weird garbage was always happening at school. Anything would be boring compared to that."

And I had learned to embrace the quiet when I could get it. It just meant that there wasn't anything actively out to get me or otherwise screw me over at the moment.

I could see her kicking her feet behind her fitfully, "What am I supposed to do all summer though? All my friends I had left from here are away on their holidays."

That made me feel bad. It made me wish I was there to entertain her. Alas, I was thousands of miles away, "Relax. I'm pretty sure there'll be enough crazy to go around when we get back. Especially if you hang around me for any decent period of time," She had experienced it already, come to think of it.

A distasteful shiver went through her, remembering what had happened when they'd tried to go on their first supervised date, "Yeah... I think I'm okay with not having to deal with anything like that again," Her expression then turned to one of concern, which confused me. We hadn't been talking about anything sad. Not until that point at least, "Bel, did you ever talk to anyone about what happened with those aliens? About what happened with Professor Pryde?"

I pursed my lips. I didn't want to talk about this, but it had been long enough. To Megan's credit, she didn't ask me anything in the days and weeks after I'd gotten back from Breakworld. Knowing her, she must have been dying to do it. I appreciated that she let me be for a while. That was why the thought of talking to her about it then didn't bother me as much as I thought it would have.

"There's not a whole lot to talk about, Megs," I said to her before at least trying to give her something concrete, "Things didn't go the way we wanted to, and now my teacher's lost in space. She's not dead, she's just... not here with us. Because she had to save the world."

Now she was stuck drifting aimlessly through space, and I couldn't help her. Not when it counted. But then again, I had done enough thinking about that particular fact. Dwelling on it further would do me no favors.

"You know what? I think it's really cool that she did that," Megan said with a sad smile, "It really, really sucks that it happened, but your teacher saved the world! Everybody knows that Kitty Pryde saved the Earth."

If nothing else, at least the S.W.O.R.D. and the Avengers let that knowledge go public. The more positive news mutants and the X-Men could get, the better. As far as I was concerned, after Agent Brand forcibly recruited us into service, the least she could do was make sure everyone knew that we had been the ones that saved their asses.

My teacher had saved their asses. Human, mutant, four-legged mammal, and slithering reptile alike. Every creature on Earth. The thought did give me some comfort.

"I'm proud. I'm proud of Miss Pryde. I'm proud that she trained me. I'm proud that she thought I was good enough to lead the Paladins," And it was the last real order she had given me. She had believed that I had what it took to be a legit leader. To take care of everybody under me. That meant something. Even more than it did when she'd first given me the responsibility, "So that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go back to school, I'm gonna lead my team, and I'm gonna make sure that nothing like that ever happens to anyone I care about again."

That meant my crew. That meant Megan. That meant everyone that had made my life better for being in it. If it was in my power to prevent something so terrible from occurring ever again, I would do so.

I wasn't going to watch anything so sad happen and be powerless to prevent it. Over my dead body.

XxX

I had overlooked a particular aspect of bringing guests over to my house for the summer. One guest more than the other to be more specific. Laura.

I hadn't taken into account what the other people around me would think when they found out that she was spending that long with me by ourselves. My first warning should have been when my mom mistook her as the girlfriend I had recently informed her of the day we came to San Francisco.

The next clue came when I'd called Eddie out of the blue, just to see how my wingman was getting along at home. When my circumstances became known, he didn't let me off the hook.

"Dude, you don't get it. Pixie's gonna stab you when she finds out you have another girl staying at your place."

Once he mentioned it, it hit me that somehow the issue had not come up in the three times we'd spoken since summer break had started. For one of those times, Laura had been around, but when she overheard that it was Megan calling me, she made herself scarce.

How the hell had I held three hour-plus conversations over the phone with her without talking about having Saberwolf and Laura around? That was amazing.

"Megan's not gonna stab me. She doesn't even do that," I defended, for both her sake and my own, "What's the problem here, anyway? What if I had you and Hisako over for the summer instead? Would it still be the same thing?"

"No, because I'd be the buffer between you two, or you would be between me and Hisako. But here, it's just you and Laura. Haven't you ever heard two's company, three's a crowd?"

"Wolf is here."

"He doesn't count. You know he doesn't count." Eddie shot back confidently, "I normally trust your judgment, Bel, but I can't say much about this executive decision of yours."

"Well, it wasn't all my decision. Mister Logan kind of strong-armed me into it."

"Ooh, that's good. Use that as an excuse when it comes up with Pixie. Not much you can do with the Wolverine giving you an ultimatum."

No, I couldn't use that as an excuse. It wasn't really much of an ultimatum I had been given. Mister Logan had just acted tough because he didn't know how to ask a kid for a favor, and it wasn't like I had a whole lot of problems with having Laura at my family's house. Besides, I didn't need an excuse. I could do what I wanted. No one controlled me.

I didn't see what the big deal was.

XxX

A few days into staying at my place in San Francisco, and my guests finally settled into the swing of the still life. Since I never slept, I was the only soul puttering around the house until someone else woke up.

The first person awake was usually Dad. Since he ran the theater, He was usually there from 11 in the morning until later at night on weekdays, so he got up early to get some stuff done before heading into work.

Basically, every morning, he'd hang out with me and eat breakfast in the living room. Mom hated that, but I'd be damned if I was going to eat by myself in the dining room or the kitchen at 6AM like some kind of chump.

Dad and I sat on the living room couch, listlessly eating bowls of cereal while the series I'd been binging on Netflix on-and-off with Saberwolf, "Have you been watching this all night?" He asked.

From right next to us, Wolf chimed in, eager to paint a negative picture of me, "He has been watching this all night. I have been sleeping. This is normal."

I stopped chewing and gave him a funky sideways look, "No. I took a break at 3 to play games with you and work out," He couldn't have thought I was lazy, "I'm not a couch potato. There's just not a whole lot for me to do that late."

"So you really don't sleep, ever?" Dad was still getting used to my powers and all they entailed, including my rampant insomnia, "Hell, if I were you, I'd use all of that dead time to learn some new skills. Be a renaissance man, boy."

I grinned at him and picked up my phone from the coffee table and wiggled it at him, "Funny that you mention that. I have a list."

Curiosity took hold and my dad had to take a look to see what was on It, "'Shit to Learn How to Do This Summer,'" He looked over at me and chuckled, "Hmm. Let's see. Learn an instrument? Not in this house. Learn to cook? Just don't burn the house down," My dad looked up from the phone again and gave me a strange look, "Learn to speak Japanese? Why Japanese?"

Why indeed?

"My teammate talks crap about me in Japanese all the time, right to my face," I deadpanned, "I need to know what she's saying."

What kind of obscene shit came out of Hisako's mouth whenever we argued? I didn't know. She never told me. Also, Noriko was no help. Whenever she was around to hear it, she wouldn't spill the beans either, and to top it all off, last time I brought it up while she was laughing at whatever Hisako said, I got tazed. To be fair, I may have made a crude remark about how Japanese girls all stick together.

My dad was interested in my attempt to better myself, even if it was for petty reasons, "Really. How's that going?"

"Poorly," Wolf commented from the side of the couch.

Unfortunately, as Wolf had bluntly indicated, I had little positive progress to let my father know about, "I don't understand kanji… and I keep forgetting that you're supposed to read it right to left. Also, I don't get a lot of phrases. This is hard by yourself!"

"That's why you usually learn foreign languages in a group, or from a teacher," Dad said, tapping me in the side of my head, "Unless you became a genius while you were gone, I'd look into getting some help with that. You just said your friend speaks it."

I scoffed. After the pain in the ass she was with calculus? No chance, "I am not asking Hisako for help to study anything. Never again," I said.

Dad's eyes lit up, which put me on-guard. He had found an opening for something, "Speaking of your teammates, what the story with the girl upstairs?"

Ah, Laura. Of course. Mom and Dad probably had a pretty decent-length conversation when he came home the first night after I'd showed back up. If they did, it didn't go down around me, but I'd have been a fool to think they didn't talk about Saberwolf and Laura.

The crew had been at home for dinner the night before, and the atmosphere had been... strange, to say the least. Laura wasn't exactly talkative on a good day, and clearly felt out-of-place sitting at the table with us. Wolf was a good sport, though. He was respectful to my mom, answered her questions, asked her questions back. He conversed. A real gentleman. Easily nicer to her than he ever was to me, the bastard.

Laura didn't talk about herself at all. The most Mom could get her to say was that she was familiar with San Francisco, and what kind of classes she took at school.

I was driving myself nuts trying to think of ways to make her feel at home. Wolf had settled in nicely enough. I just wished I could do the same for her.

I let out a sigh and dropped my shoulders. Of course everyone was curious about the quiet girl. But there wasn't anything I could say, "It's not a pretty listen, Dad. I only know a bit of it, and it's more than enough of the picture to tell you that," It wasn't like I could just go about telling anyone else's business to begin with, "Besides, it's not my place either."

We all had our issues. It was up to us how we worked them out; whether we let other people help us or not. By this point, I probably had my share of them too.

Dad eyed me closely, completely ignoring the show on the TV screen, "I'm not going to say anything to your mother, but you look different."

I quirked my eyebrows, realizing this was going into a talk, and paused the show, "You know, Mom said that too."

"No, I mean you have a different look in your eye," He said, "What's been happening in that school?"

What was the right answer to that? I wasn't going to sit down and tell my parents that I'd been tortured and nearly killed several times. When I told them about the things that happened, they got the quick and clean versions. That was how I was going to keep it, "I don't even know where to start, honestly. How I got him might be the most believable story," I said, gesturing to Wolf.

Wolf took that as his cue to make his presence known, "It is all believable because it all happened," He pointed out.

I rolled my eyes in return, "I know that, Wolf. But we were there. You can't really explain that kind of stuff to other people who weren't. It's a hard sell."

I found a Wolf bot in the bowels of a secret hideout under Hudson Bay, manned by a crew of anti-mutant racists run by a cyborg. That was the gist of the story that my family got. It checked all the boxes they needed to know, sounded bad and extensive enough that they didn't ask more questions afterwards, and left out all of the nasty things they didn't need to know.

If Wolf had the vocal range to scoff, he would have, "You humans make everything so difficult. Sharing facts between one another should not be a complicated process."

"My point is-," My dad interjected to get things back on track, "-You look like you've been through some things. The way you walk and look around," He stopped and sucked at his teeth, "Whatever that girl's been through, she's ten times worse than you though, at least. Can't even make a sudden move around her without her flinching."

"She gets much better about that after she gets used to you," I tried to defend for Laura's sake.

"I just want you to be careful," Dad said with a deep sigh, "You said when you left that you didn't know what you were getting yourself into. Do you know better now?"

God, did I ever. I was still greener than goose-shit, but I was becoming accustomed to the chaos of being a mutant – of being an X-Man. Even if I wasn't one officially, I'd had a taste. More than a taste.

"I do," I told my father, reaching over to the side to give Wolf a solid pat, "And trust me when I say, whatever I've seen so far, it's nothing compared to Laura. Just... be patient with her. Laura's pretty weird, but she's a good girl. She won't cause any trouble," On her own, she would be just as much trouble as I was. Whether that was a good thing or not was up for debate, "It's just… she's my friend. My teammate. I don't think it's fair to leave her all alone for the summer."

Just like that, the atmosphere seemed to break. My dad got up from the couch and rubbed my head, "Always gotta be a sucker for the girls, don't you?"

I swatted his hand away. Not like it really mattered if he tried to screw with the curly mess I had up top, "Shut up, old man. It's your fault. I learned it from you."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," My dad yawned as he walked away, "Stay out of trouble today."

"I haven't been in trouble since I've gotten back," I argued in return before looking over and nudging Wolf, "Who does he think we are?"

The lunacy of holding such a conversation with a wolfbot was not lost on me. This was my life now. My normal was now abnormal.

XxX

I did not have a car yet. This irked me. Yes, I knew how to get around the area without one, but walking the hills all the time was for the birds. Especially when I was traveling with others. Feet pounding the pavement once more, I led the motley trio consisting of guy, girl, and A.I. to whatever adventure the day had for us.

"We're going to the mall today," I said, trudging downhill grumpily, "There has to be something in this town that gets Laura's attention."

It was still my mission to put a goddamn smile on her face at least once, come hell or high water.

Laura interjected, offended at being talked about while she was around, "I am standing right here… again."

I looked back at her half-apologetically, "I know. But you're no help here. I've tried," I turned to my second tagalog, snapping at him, "Wolf! You're supposed to be smart and attentive. What have you noticed?"

"Nothing that will aid you in your endeavor," He said. If I didn't know any better, He sounded disappointed, "But is visiting a shopping mall really the best approach?"

I shrugged. True enough, malls weren't what they used to be, but there was enough variety to where we could find something, "Either that, or we sit home and Google shit until something comes up, but that's boring, right Laura?" No response, "…Laura?"

I turned back and saw Laura staring at a house across the street from where we were. It was one of the homes in the row, one that had been vacant for a while. About a year and a half before, it blew up. That had been scary, I remembered. Just a few blocks from my house.

"What's up?" I asked. Laura just remained still, staring straight ahead, "Hello? Laura? You there?" Wolf sat down in front of her and waved his tails to get her attention. That did the trick, "Are you alright?"

She realized that she had been staring and finally responded to us, "I am not hurt."

That wasn't what I meant. There was something swimming around in her head, and it wasn't good, "That's not what I mean," I said with a sigh before deciding to explain what I knew about that place, "That house. The family there died in an explosion a while back. I didn't really know 'em, but the girl who lived there rode my bus," What was her name? It was all over the place right after it happened – in the news and the school, "Megan Kinn-..."

That surname was familiar, because it belonged to the person who was with me. I trailed off and focused on Laura's face. She looked like she had seen a ghost, horrified that I'd made some kind of connection between her and the girl who lived in that house.

More than horrified, it looked like she was about to burst into tears, which stunned me more than anything else. It stunned me long enough that she took off running like a bat out of hell before I could do anything to try and stop her.

To say I was at a loss was an understatement, "Wolf, what was that?" I asked, reaching out for my metal cohort's support.

Wolf's tails drooped to the ground as he stood up and looked off in the direction that Laura ran in, "I do not know, Bellamy. But at the end, she was afraid. Very afraid. Right after you brought up that name," He pointed out for my benefit.

It wasn't even that. It had been the entire exchange, "What about before that? I've never seen her... cry," That had been surreal.

Wolf seemed to be at a loss. The nuances of human interaction were lost on him, "I do not know. I cannot read most human emotions. Fear is the easiest for my sensors to detect. It has more physical traits for me to pick up on. Others, not so much."

Not only him. Me as well. At least as far as this girl was concerned. She was a mystery, wrapped up in an enigma, housed in a conundrum. The closest problem I had to compare it with was getting closer to Ruth, and at least she was completely willing to let me in, even though she wasn't entirely able to make it easy due to her circumstances. Even then, she didn't stone-wall me at every turn like Laura was.

Yet again, for the second time that day, I was reminded of Laura's sole request during a talk we'd had back at school. She had never asked anything of me before or since.

"Please, be patient with me. I am… not good with people."

"Fuck," I muttered to myself as her words repeated inside of my head. I wasn't going to give up on her, no matter how difficult she was, "We've gotta go get her now, don't we?"

Wolf nodded and shook himself out, as though he were preparing to be active, "That would likely be the correct course of action."

"Do you know where she is?"

"The mutant Laura Kinney is 3621 feet northeast from our location."

She was how far away? Good lord, that girl was in shape, "What? We've been standing here for how long? Three minutes? Four?"

"Three minutes, twenty-one seconds, to be exact," Wolf specified for me.

I knew Laura was in much better condition than everyone else on my team, except for maybe me, but I didn't expect that, "You're telling me she's on course to run a goddamn 5 minute mile?" I looked in the direction Wolf had indicated and got even more heated, "God, I hate running uphill!"

And yet, I did it. Because that was how much I cared. Wolf, the asshole at heart that he was, didn't bother keeping pace with me. Even using my powers to speed myself up, he was still way faster than me and left me in the dust.

"I hate you so much!" I yelled at him as he started pulling away, "Fine! Screw this!" I channeled light energy to my fist and shot it at the ground underneath me to give me a boost up onto the rooftops. All of those parkour kids could fuck off. They wished they could do what I could.

Somewhere along the line, I'd lost him, but kept roof-hopping and searching regardless. I cleared entire streets trying to stay going in the same direction. I wound up hoofing it all the way to Russian Hill before I got a call from my wayward wolf friend.

"You've got some nerve calling after ditching me," I greeted him with the moment I picked up the phone, "Where are you?"

I said those things in jest, mostly, but it was no laughing matter once he told me why he was calling, "There are armed individuals nearby, gathered near Hyde and Lombard Street," Wolf said suspiciously, "I do not know why they are here. I have not heard any talk of orders."

That wasn't good. Even if it didn't involve us, we were way closer to any paramilitary action than I would have wanted, "Have you found Laura yet?"

"No."

I couldn't/wouldn't leave her behind for whatever bullshit was about to transpire, "Keep an eye on those guys, just in case," In case they started coming my way, "I'll get her myself."

"Hold on one moment," Wolf stopped me before I could hang up, "The mutant Laura Kinney is now 189 feet south from your current location."

So I'd gone a little bit past her? Very well. At least I'd dodged the goons with guns, "Cool. Be careful, Wolf."

"You as well," He said before hanging up. And that was it. Trouble was afoot, and we were stuck on the fringes of it, with potential to get sunk even deeper into it.

Off of the street, I finally caught up to my teammate at the old Lombard Street Reservoir that they'd turned into tennis and basketball courts. She wasn't alone. There was some muscular dark-skinned woman with black hair dressed in tactical gear that had way too much of her cleavage exposed. Not that this was the first thing I noticed. No, the first thing I noticed was that she was armed to the teeth. Guns, knives all down her thigh. I mean, she had a crossbow. Who used a crossbow?

Speaking of the crossbow, there was an arrow in Laura's chest. Well, if that wasn't a dead giveaway to interject myself, I didn't know what was.

An open-handed blast exploded off of the woman, sending her sliding to the ground and into the chain link fence around the courts.

Laura looked at her assailant, then over to me, "No! You should not be here!" She seemed terrified out of her mind, even after I'd done something to step in. If one of us was in trouble, wasn't it better to fight together? "Leave! Run away!"

"Are you out of your mind? Not without you," I said, pausing to take another shot at the woman as she started to stand back up. Once again, it exploded off of her and knocked her down, but she got right back up, "Seriously? You can just take those head-on?"

The woman didn't answer me, instead seething to herself about getting ambushed, "...Gonna rip your guts out..." Been there, done that. The more important thing was, how was she still in one piece? Let alone still moving around.

Laura answered my unasked question, "Kimura is almost indestructible," She said quietly.

The word 'Indestructible' covered a lot of ground. There was no way that I couldn't actually hurt this person, "That was the same thing as a hand grenade going off in her face. Twice," I said before noticing the name she had dropped, "Wait, this is Kimura?"

She certainly seemed unpleasant enough with the sadistic sneer on her face. And she had basically shrugged off what should have been a critical blow from yours truly. It wasn't like I could pull my punches on an attack that exploded.

Kimura seemed positively livid. Too bad. I wasn't in the business of caring about people who messed with my crew, "Sorry. Laura looked scared, so I figured you must not be very friendly. If you are, my bad."

Her anger temporarily gave way to the surrealism of some random kid coming out of nowhere in a red Street Fighter Zangief shirt to mess up her ambush, "Who the fuck are you?"

A fair question. One that wasn't getting an answer, seeing as how she was probably with the guys with guns Wolf told me about, "I'm with her. That's all you need to know."

Despite being outnumbered, Kimura didn't seem the slightest bit concerned, "This your boyfriend, X? He seems stupid enough," She spat hatefully at Laura, "I mean, your shitty little school sure didn't make you any smarter," Done with hearing all of that, I shot her with another explosive blast. It worked as well as you would imagine, "What the fuck!" She complained.

I still had my hand up from aiming palm-first at her, "Sorry. Just making sure that didn't actually hurt you," And just to make absolutely sure, I shot her again.

"You done!?" She finally snapped at me. I responded with one more blast that knocked her back through the chain-link fence that had been weakened by several explosions, "Goddamn it, do you morons need an engraved invitation? Get in here!"

When she issued her order, I pointed my hand straight up into the air and fired a blast that would have been visible quite far away. Wolf wasn't that far away. Hopefully, he would realize that meant to get his ass in gear, seeing as how a phone call wouldn't have been prudent.

Kimura sat up properly, handgun pointed my way. I shot her as she fired and again made contact, but this time, she managed to wing me in the shoulder. It hurt, but by now, I'd had worse. Laura yanked the crossbow bolt from her body and launched herself at Kimura, claws out. Why bother having them out? She couldn't stab the woman with them.

In the meantime, I had to deal with armed jerks rushing toward the courts with assault weapons. Fortunately, they had to run up stairs to get to the courts, which meant I had the high ground. And to aim, all I needed to do was line my hand up with whoever I was shooting at and think. You can't dodge light once it's coming your way, people.

Of course, they still had automatic weapons, and I could only get so many before they started unloading in my direction. Once again, thankfully I had the high ground, so that gave me a chance to at least fall back before I got all shot up. And then, something amazing happened.

It had been such a long time since Saberwolf had been turned loose against flesh and blood targets. I had forgotten what a sight it was to see him tear through a crowd of enemies. He was as surgical as a near half-ton machine could be.

With that being under control, I turned around to give Laura some help, just in time to have her thrown at my face by Kimura. She hit and we both went down hard.

The woman sported a nasty grin as she held up her handgun at the two of us, "Well-well-well. X marks the spot," And... then she shot us. Well, she shot Laura. A few of the bullets went through and hit me though, so she essentially shot us both.

I flipped out immediately. It hurt like hell. I didn't even want to see where I'd been hit. I pushed Laura off of me and started shooting all over the place, trying to tag the vicious bitch that had done the deed. I think I may have hit her once. I do know that some soldiers that managed to get away from Wolf and make it up the stairs to help Kimura were met with their doom at my hands.

And then things went dark.

XxX

The soothing sounds of a moving automobile filled my ears first thing as I regained consciousness. As I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the face of Wolf looming over me as though he were about to eat me.

"You are awake," Wolf said, sounding as pleased as I figured an emotionless voice could. I tried to get up, but a heavy paw kept me down, "Do not move around so much. Your gunshot wound has healed, but I cannot judge your head injury."

I gently lifted his foot off of my chest and prompted him to move aside, "Did somebody knock me out?"

Wolf moved over as much as he could to give me space in our cramped confines, "Laura knocked you unconscious," He informed me.

"I am sorry for that," She chimed in from the front of the van. Van? Yes, this was the inside of a van. How'd we get a van? "I did not want to do that to you."

"Why'd you knock me out?" I spoke with a mushmouth. It had been a while since I'd been ko'ed. It still sucked.

"Because you had lost control of yourself," Ironically, the last time I'd been properly knocked out, another friend of mine had also done it, "Also, if I remember correctly, you heal quicker when you are unconscious."

She was right about that. I checked myself over. There were two bullet wounds on my body. One at my upper right chest, the other lower, underneath my pec. I knew this because there were two holes in my shirt, underneath, they were covered with bloody patches.

"How long have I been out?" I said groggily, wincing after touching the still stinging marks. However long I'd been down, it had to have been a while. The shots had healed almost completely from what I could feel.

"Longer than seven hours."

"Seven hours!? What the ffffuck?" I slurred numbly, pushing past Wolf to where Laura was driving in the front, "Where the ffffuck are we?"

Her eyes were locked onto the road, even as I fumbled my way into the passenger's seat, "Southern California. Just outside of San Diego. Please put on your safety belt."

Wait, what? We weren't in San Francisco anymore? Sure enough, I turned to look out the window and hadn't the faintest idea of my surroundings. That woke me up and properly reattached all the synapses in my brain.

So we were a third of a day away from my house. This was not good, "Laura, stop the van."

Request denied, "I cannot," She said resolutely.

My parents were going to kill me when they found out how far away I was. I couldn't think of an excuse for why I would be away so long to save my life. If I started heading back now, by the time I got back I could just brush it all off, "Why? Mom and Dad are gonna kick my ass later."

Just like that, any semblance of calm that Laura had left evaporated into thin air, "Because she has found me. Because she has seen you with me!" Her eyes were wild as she looked my way, "I told you to leave! But you did not! And now she knows we are together, and she will not stop, Bellamy!"

It was jarring to see her like that. And while it was nice to know that she had more emotional range than mild displeasure, it wasn't the time. She was the only one that had any idea of what was going on, "Alright, Laura. I need you to calm down. It's just the three of us right now. Tell me what's going on?"

It took a few moments for her to settle back down, but eventually she did compose herself and get me up to speed, "Kimura. The Facility," A grim expression crossed my face, "They have come. I knew they would. I always knew," She said more to herself than to me, "No, I cannot allow you to return to your home while they are there. She promised she would kill everyone I ever came into contact with. They did not know who you were. They would find out, and they would attack your family."

Which would be bad. Thankfully no one ever dropped my name, as far as I know anyway, "...So do you have a plan, or are we just running away forever?" I replied facetiously.

Laura shook her head in the negative, "We will not be able to run forever," I noticed she never said that she wouldn't have been willing to, "I am surprised that we were able to make it this far without being intercepted. We must find somewhere to stage a counterattack."

I looked around at our current situation, namely the fact that we were in San Diego, "And we had to drive eight hours to do it?"

Laura rationalized her thinking for me, "You were injured. And it would be unwise to continue fighting against them in San Francisco. If that is where they were deployed, they would have strategies, support, and more," She looked over at me as though I were a fool, "Why do you think the police never intervened?"

That was a tremendously good point. Armed men on the street in broad daylight, a gunfight not too far from one of the most famous streets in the city, and I didn't hear a single siren. So there went my future point of taking this to the cops. These people really were powerful then.

Alright. I needed to think. But first, I needed to know what I was dealing with from the perspective of someone who spent her life inside of it, "I think you need to fill me in more. On everything."

"I do not think this is the time," Laura replied far too quickly.

She didn't like that idea. Not one bit. And I understood, but now wasn't the time for sensitivity and understanding, "I think it's exactly the time. In fact, I don't think there's going to be a better time," She didn't respond, trying to occupy herself with driving instead of talking to me. I knew she was listening though, "Laura, we did it your way. I know you never want to talk about the things that happened, but right now it's right in our face. I can't just look past it after it put two rounds in me."

It sucked to force the issue. I didn't want to. Putting terrible things behind you sometimes had to be necessary to move forward. But when those terrible things were trying to grab onto your neck from behind, you had to turn around to try and shrug it off.

Laura was hesitant at first. Hesitant for a while, actually. I didn't expect her to go for it in the end, but eventually... "It will take time to tell you what you need to know."

We weren't using that as an excuse. I didn't care how long it took to tell. I would listen from beginning to end, as long as she was willing to talk, "How long until we get where we're going?" I asked, turning back to the A.I. hanging out in the back of the van, "Wolf, where are we going?"

"The border between the United States and Mexico. Estimated time to arrival at the current rate of speed is 47 minutes."

I didn't bother voicing my next, obvious question. Laura knew what it would be, "I will explain along with everything else," She promised, knowing I would want answers.

"No rush on that one," I told her, "Not like it matters at this point," We were basically already there. It would have been more trouble to turn around and go home than to finish going wherever the van was taking us.

I'd told my dad I was going to stay out of trouble. At least I didn't make any promises that I'd have to break.

XxX

The van we drove from San Francisco to the border was stolen, plus none of us had passports. There was no way we were going to make it across the border. Even if we had a car that was ours, and proper documentation, there was still Saberwolf chilling in the back.

It was startling how easily I went along with sneaking across the border. Laura seemed very certain that this was something we could both do, and that confidence rubbed off on me. What did that say about me, that I was alright with car theft, illegal border crossing, and manslaughter? Because I was sure we'd killed a few of those people after us back in San Francisco. Wolf definitely had.

Perhaps it was another one of those things that I could compartmentalize while it was happening, but later when I stopped and looked back on it reality would set in. Either way, I laser-cut our way through the fence under the cover of darkness and we went along our way.

So there we were. A boy, a girl, and a robowolf, spontaneously walking the streets of Tijuana at night in the swing of summer. What was my life?

"If my parents bring this up later, we stopped at San Diego," I said as the three of us trudged onwards, "We did not go to Tijuana on a whim," It was hard to reconcile that we had even done that, despite the fact that we were there.

"Why?" Laura asked me in confusion

I scoffed, "They're going to kill me for this in the first place. At least let me have a fighting chance to get some forgiveness later," Under the street lights, I noticed that there was a difference to Wolf's gait than normal and stopped to check him over, "What's wrong, buddy?"

"I am feeling the effects of enemy gunfire from the last battle," Wolf told me, "I am not bulletproof, unfortunately."

Clearly. Saberwolf was not completely covered in metal, contrary to me calling him a metal wolf. If you looked closely, his metal was plating, and it could be fractured and broken. There was artificial muscle and tissue underneath that you could see as he moved. He was not a walking tank. He was not invulnerable.

I could see a few wounds on his legs. I had never stopped to wonder before if Wolf felt pain, "Is there anything we can do to help?"

"Laura has already asked this. For the time being, no," Wolf said, "I would require the proper cybernetic technician, the same way that you would require the proper doctor to tend to your injuries."

I had been hurt and on the mend. Wolf had been hurt and would have to deal with it until we found a way to fix him, "So now what? Do we rest, or what?" I asked.

Laura looked to the two of us and shook her head, "No. You and Saberwolf rested enough in the drive to the border. We need to work quickly. I do not like our odds if we stop moving for very long. Kimura will find us."

I noticed that she hadn't included herself in her chain of reasoning, "Well, yeah, the two of us got rest. But I meant more for you. You didn't rest any," She had fought, found a way to withdraw, and drove all the way down south with the fear that an enemy was on our tail.

"I will be fine. I am not close to being tired yet," Laura assured me with a tiny smile, "My stamina is not as formidable as yours, but then again, I am also not a living solar battery."

"D-Did you just make a joke?"

"Did I? That was my simplification of your base ability."

Well, even if it wasn't a joke, I would classify it as one regardless. Baby steps, people. This girl would be properly socialized one way or another. How I took this as my responsibility when no one asked me to was beyond my ability to understand.

For some reason, she seemed more comfortable in the mix of things like this than sitting at a table with friends, sharing a meal. No, not for some reason. It was obvious exactly why, and it was sad how much sense it made.

But all of that could be saved for later. It wasn't the time to look at the person underneath the flesh and bone. Not when we were a pair of gringos and a walking weapon roaming the streets in the part of Tijuana that tourists dared not tread.

Of course, Laura had no trepidation to going inside of places and asking questions. What did she have to fear? Anyone with bad intentions, she would know what was coming and was capable of tearing them apart, without me or Wolf stepping in.

"You can speak Spanish?" I asked as she walked out of a seedy-looking corner store, "Of course you can speak Spanish."

"You cannot?" She asked me with a raised eyebrow.

I waved my hand in a wishy-washy fashion, "I have a high school fluency. That's just enough to keep me from getting arrested," That, or just enough to get me arrested, depending on what I said, "What'd you get?"

She pointed to a rather large hill that was easily visible from the low-lying buildings surrounding us, "Cerro Colorado," She told me, "That is where The Facility is emanating from in this area. I just needed to know where it was."

She had told me that she just wanted the lay of the land. To know where the enemy was coming from. Even so, I expected... something, "So this is all we came for? I'm going to get my ass chewed out for this?"

Laura did not respond to my query of a call to action, "We cannot attack them on our own. They came for me, so they will have measures prepared," She explained, "They will not capture you. You have nothing that they want. They will simply kill you."

Which would have been bad, for me and for her, "The three of us can't do it by ourselves," I concluded for her, "Well, the Paladins are spread all over the world, and who knows where Logan is?" I looked over at Laura to make a pitch, "We could call the X-Men."

Wolf spoke up, "I have already tried, when you were unconscious," From his reaction, for one reason or another it was a no-go, "We are alone."

Alone and out in the cold with a shady organization breathing down our necks. No one we could rely on to be able to handle it was around, so it was time to get creative with our responses.

If we couldn't rely on the clearly able, perhaps we could enlist the help of the likely willing. After a minute or two to have a think about our options, a possibility struck me, "Maybe we are alone. Then again... we aren't the only students on the west coast."

"What do you mean?"

I tapped my head and pointed toward the north, "First, we need to get back across the border. Second, we need to go to L.A."

XxX

A healthy amount of paranoia kept you alive. Although, when there was actually someone out to get you, it wasn't paranoia, it was caution. Laura's caution manifested itself in the form of having me take a different crossing point at the border fence, about a mile away. She figured she was durable enough to deal with whatever may or may not have been waiting on the other side until I or Wolf could flank the enemy, and I wasn't exactly equipped to argue. Thus, the little lady with claws served as the scout/diversion.

As she approached the little divot down off of the side of the highway on the U.S. side of the border where she had stashed our ride, she stopped and let out her claws.

*SNIKT!*

Wolf had been directed to follow not far behind, but stay out of sight. He also had his phone on speaker so I could hear everything. I had headphones in to minimize the sound I was making. Never leave home without a pair of earbuds, everybody. You never know when you'll need 'em, and they came in handy here.

A spotlight situated on the top of a military vehicle came on, shining bright on Laura. She winced and covered her eyes.

In front of her, Kimura sat on the hood of the vehicle with lots of armed men standing in front of her, pointing guns at Laura, "You didn't think it would be that easy, did you, X?" She said. The smug coming off of that woman could have been seen from space.

It was a bad situation, but Laura remained completely calm. She had foreseen this, "For a moment, yes. I did. Then that moment passed, and I asked my friend to do something for me before he left me alone."

Kimura let out a laugh. I don't think I had ever heard a more infuriating sound in my life up to that point, "Oh that's rich. He's your friend, is he? And he ran away?" She stopped laughing and jumped off of the car, pulling out a handgun for her own personal use, "I wonder what kind of face you'll make after I catch him and kill him in front of you. That sounds like a nice side-project."

I heard every word, loud and clear. Now where was I during all of this, you may be asking? Not far. Remember, I didn't cross that far away. I just staggered my crossing to go after Laura, to the point where by the time I did, she had their full attention. That gave me plenty of time to set up and watch over where she was going.

I'd gotten a decent headcount of how many guns there were by the time the ambush was exposed. Then they'd turned their flashlights on to level all of their rifles on Laura, and boy, did I see everything. That was when the boy who had been raised on action flicks and first-person shooter games for the majority of his life came out of me with a vengeance.

One guy at the back got a freaking laser beam through his head. He was the first. Before his body hit the ground I got another. That was when they all realized things wouldn't be so simple.

"Sniper!" One of the gunmen yelled as others started looking around trying to see where my shots came from. It took way too long. I plugged another two of them before someone realized that there was only one piece of high ground nearby that could oversee the concealed little gully they were set up in. Things got nuts from then on out.

"I asked my friend not to hold back. That you would not do the same for him," Laura said as Kimura seethed at her, "He agreed without hesitating."

Of course. I told her already – fuck these people. One good turn deserved another.

"Well, I'm not squishy like the rest of these clowns," Kimura shot back, "I don't need to drag you back in one piece!"

That was when I shot her in the head. It didn't go through, which was annoying, but it knocked her down and gave Laura a chance to keep from being swarmed by bad guys.

Laura told Wolf to stay back until his assistance was needed, seeing as how he was damaged. Also, the shock and awe effect of seeing him jump into the fray of a battle the enemy could hardly deal with to begin with would break the back of their assault. He was our reserve force. They were close enough to get reinforcements quickly, so my aim was to shoot anyone who looked like they might have been trying to peel off from the fight to call something in.

Kimura pushed herself off of the ground, holding her head. She probably had a pretty good headache. I might not have been able to shoot through her head, but I probably rattled her brain around in her skull pretty good, "Turn off the fucking spotlight! Use your flashlights!" She ordered.

Too concerned about my distance attack, Kimura panicked and forgot about the very small, very fast Laura Kinney. When the light went out, Laura went to work. In the dark, with her claws, she ripped people to shreds. I was glad it was too dark for me to see every detail. There was just enough moonlight for me to keep track of her moving around. When she would go up to someone, I would see a glint of light from the moon off of her claws, and then they would go down in some horrible manner. I couldn't even imagine the degree of bloodshed that was being wrought, and I had watched Mister Logan tear through the soldiers on Breakworld like toilet paper.

It wasn't like I had much room to talk. I made two holes in someone the circumference of my fingertip every time I shot them, whether it was in the head or not. Those things bled. I was hurting people too. Badly.

Once the numbers thinned enough, I got up and started running down the hill I was on in a dead sprint. I had a half-mile to get into the fray, and gunners saw me before I could close the distance fully. Laura covered my ass like a champ. Anyone that so much as leveled a rifle my way, she rushed over to them and cut something valuable off of them. In turn, anyone who tried to take her out when she did so caught an explosive blast from yours truly. I couldn't laser snipe while running, but that didn't make me harmless from a distance.

I could still shoot a fool from 50 yards out without batting an eye, and did. Several fools, in fact. It was in the process of doing this that I noticed my new favoritest person in the world slipping away from the fray.

Kimura could be the nastiest person on the planet for all I knew, but in the grand scheme of things, she was just like everyone else. First she tried to bully and terrorize whoever she could get away with it on. Then when you bared your teeth, she tried to fight. And when it all went south, and there was no visible path to victory, she would cut her losses and run.

And run did she ever. To hell with the guys fighting a losing battle against a boy and a girl with freaky superpowers. She fled right for one of the tactical vehicles that brought her.

Kimura yanked the door open and grabbed a radio in the dash, "Send it! Send the goddamn-!" She never got anything else out. I leapt in and dropkicked the door shut, sending her flying into the hummer and banging off of the door on the passenger's side. I punched a hole in the window and started shooting into the car at her, keeping her stuck upside-down in the floor, "You little fuck!"

She couldn't even push herself out, because I kept blasting her back down whenever she tried, "Laura, get the van!" I shouted.

She went to do so at first, but stopped. A sound from the north caught her notice, "Something is coming," She warned me.

It took a moment, but it soon got within my earshot as well. The sound of propeller blades. In the night sky, a helicopter came our way, lights underneath it scanning the ground trying to get a bead on us.

I shot out one before it got close enough to find the scene, but that was all I could get before it spotted us. It started opening up with machine gun fire, and I took cover underneath the hummer I'd gotten Kimura stuck inside of.

"Wolf!" I shouted. My earbuds were still in, and my phone was still in the middle of a call, "If you're in a decent enough spot and have any ideas, I'm listening!"

There wasn't a moment of thinking or hesitation on his part, "I have an idea. For myself. Exterminate."

What happened next would be burned into my brain as the marquee example of why messing with Saberwolf was a terrible idea for just about anyone.

If ever you saw an A.I. fly. Wolf absolutely launched himself at a fucking attack helicopter with a chainsaw, and cut its tail off.

I saw this. With my own two eyes, I watched this happen, move-by-move. He ran up a steep part of the gully, used it to jump one-hundred feet in the air, and corkscrewed himself into position to lop off a chunk of the thing.

It was amazing. I was catching flies, my mouth was so wide open. What a sight. It all happened in a matter of six seconds. The helicopter crashing took fourteen seconds longer than it took for Wolf to actually take it down.

Speaking of the helicopter crashing, it came down in my direction, because I was lucky like that. I started clawing my way from underneath the hummer just as Laura got over to me to help yank me out. We both made it out safely just as the helicopter smashed into the ground vehicle, dragging it through the dirt and rocks with terrible groans and screeches of metal and earth.

An eerie silence fell over the area as Laura and I stared at the scene. Wolf softly padded up to the two of us to take in his handiwork. And for good reason. It was a job well done, "Did you mean to do that?"

I meant drop the helicopter right on top of where Kimura was. Wolf nodded, "Yes."

I almost fell over in shock. Yes, he was a machine, but that kind of precision was beyond anything I could think of. There was just too much to account for to intentionally make that work the way it did, "Really?"

"No," Wolf quickly admitted, bringing my opinion of him down. Granted, that still left it several notches higher than it had been before the fight, "It was... as you humans would say, 'a happy accident'."

Happy? I gave Wolf a certain look and pointed at the vehicular carnage before us, "...I was almost in that," I made sure he knew.

Wolf was unapologetic, "That is why it is a happy accident, and not a tragic one," He said, giving me a snippy reply.

Touche. It had, in fact, worked out. I wasn't hurt. The chopper was down. No one was shooting at us anymore. All was right with the world, except for one thing.

"Kimura is not dead," Laura made sure I knew. I couldn't see her, but she would know better than I would. Wolf didn't dispute her either, so I took their word as gospel, "Even that much is not enough to kill her."

Idly, I raised my hand and fired an explosive blast at the helicopter/hummer wreckage. It blew up in a ball of flames. We all just stood there and stared, "There. How about that?"

"I... do not think so," Laura asked, tilting her head as if she were trying to get a different angle of the inferno, "I have blown her up before. She did not die then either."

Well, maybe she would die of asphyxiation. We could only be so lucky, "Fuck it, let's go before more show up," I grabbed Laura's hand and we all took off for the van.

I didn't realize it at the time, what with my heart still going a mile a minute after the fight we'd been in, but later when I stopped and looked back on everything, something caught the mind's eye of my memory. Something next to insignificant.

It was the first time I had ever touched Laura that she didn't freeze up or react negatively.

Alright. The action is on in the west coast story arc. Our main man is in a violent pickle, but he's got an idea on where to find some help.

So what's next? I dunno. Nothing I'm going to put in an author's note. You'll just have to wait a bit for the next one to find out.

With that being said, I must bid you farewell for now. I hope you enjoyed.

Kenchi out.