Back to Gatefold#3 by A. Crute
October 2017 |
WOLVES AND WOLVERINES
Canada, The Last Stop Bar, a week ago…
The bar was a dark and smoke filled. Halogen and Xeon lights advertising different types of beer flashed on the walls around the bar behind people’s heads as they sat in booths.
Three pool tables were placed in the centre of the bar, all of which currently in use.
This was the last bar within Canada’s borders before you hit Alaska and US soil once more. That, the owner once thought would be enough of a claim to fame to bring people flocking in. He learned in the 6months after he opened the bar this was not true.
This was not surprising, he managed to get enough money to get the bar up and running because of it’s less than central location. It was to put it politely in the arse end of nowhere.
There was enough business to go around however. There were a few difficult years near the start in the 60’s but pretty soon it became a biker bar. In the 70s truckers latched on to the place as a good spot for a meal and a few drinks when on the road, they mixed well with the bikers. In the 80s a new crowd moved in, the management learned soon enough not to ask what their line of work was. There had been too many horror stories from the thugs, assassins and killers.
The man who was sitting at the bar fell into one of the categories above. Management made sure not to ask, he just kept the whisky, scotch, vodka and beer coming. Whatever the guy wanted and had the money to pay for with no questions asked, no judgements…it’s what always made this place so popular. That and the brawls which would occasionally break out.
He was a runt to be sure but Management and none of the guys in here, even if they ganged up, would want to battle with him. He had these vicious beady little eyes, they were constantly peering around like a predator just waiting for a chance to strike. He looked like he needed to shave and he most definitely needed some kind of hair cut.
Management turned to put a glass down. When he turned back the man was no longer alone at the bar.
The difference between the two men who were now sitting together couldn’t be more pronounced. The figure was tall and slender as opposed to short and squat. His skin was as pale as moonlight and his hair as white as snow. The short man looked like he had been through a rough few years but the new slender one looked like he didn’t have a days work under his skin. The new man looked very effeminate whereas the short bloke looked most masculine.
“I’ll have a light beer please,” he held his finger up. It was long and slender. His voice was soft and carried on the effect his body displayed. What was clear…and under oath Management would swear he hadn’t looked…was he had a solid tightly toned muscular body underneath the light green shirt he wore. His accent was European.
“I’ll serve you man but I got to warn you the guys round here might not take to your kind to well…not in public at least,” he flashed a smile to let the guy be aware he was trying to help not threaten him.
“I’ll be quick,” he nodded. He turned sharply swinging on his stool to face the short man.
“I recognise a scent on you,” spoke the figure, he didn’t bother to turn to the younger man.
“You remember something? I find that hard to believe Logan,” the glass went down on the bar sharply and Logan launched himself sideways with almost inhuman speed. He crashed sideways onto the now empty stool.
The young man was now sitting on the stool which Logan had just leapt from. The runt growled and turned to the slender man. He was trying hard to keep his temper under control, he was already aware that he wasn’t going to catch the white haired waif no matter how hard he would try.
The white haired figure slapped down a brown folder on the bar. Logan was sure it hadn’t been there a second before. “My father thought you might like this, maybe help jog your memory.”
The white haired man tossed a few dollars on the bar and lifted his newly poured glass to his lips and downed the alcohol quickly. Management watched him. He suddenly jumped back, the man was gone. Management had literally blinked and he was gone.
He looked down at the man whose name he now knew as Logan (after ‘accidentally’ listening in). Those eyes stared back at him “See something interesting bub?” Management knew the right answer instantly. He raised his hands and shook his head before moving on to stand somewhere else in the bar.
Logan opened the folder. There were two sheets inside. The top one was a photograph. It was a photo of nine people, men and women. They were posing in a small group in front of a large stairwell.
Logan instantly recognised one of them. It was himself, he had no recall of the photo ever being taken…unsurprisingly given his Swiss cheese brain. All he could ever remember was snippets of thought, more feelings than that but never sensible. His nose seemed to remember everything, tell him things that he couldn’t understand just like the ‘familiar’ scent on the speedster. The back of the photo identified the picture as being 1963.
He inspected the other faces in the photo. There was a woman slightly older than the others. She leaned on a cane and wore sunglasses, a teenage girl who didn’t look right. Logan couldn’t put his finger on it in the black and white photo but there was something which looked off.
There was a forth figure Logan’s eyes fell on for a little longer than the others. He was a tall white haired figure, easily bigger than the others in the photo. He had a massive barrel chest and a beaming smile. He bared more of a passing resemblance to the figure who had just been in the bar except whereas his face had been feminine this man definitely looked masculine.
Logan took a deep inhale of breath as he looked at the man standing next to him. He was close to 6 feet himself. He was thinner than his friend but was well toned and slim rather than skinny. He was bald. What made Logan inhale was he recognised this man.
It was a man he had seen many times in his fragmented memory. It was always the same, his eyes opened and this figure was standing over him one hand on his own head and the other stretched out over the top of Logan’s. He associated the man with pain, he didn’t know why but a headache usually followed. It always sent his heart racing. “Who are you?” he asked the photo.
He lifted the photo clear of the next sheet and got an answer. A name and an address. He slid the stool away from the bar and picking up the folder began to walk out.
Now, Escher’s Relativity…
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Escher%27s_Relativity.jpg)
Jean stood on the middle stair and leaned on the banister looking down at the people who were walking sideways up the wall towards her.
It was a famous picture she had seen before but had never expected to be living within. The people walked up the stairs at the angle she stood on and another walked past the other way on the vertical descent of the stairs.
They were going about their everyday lives faceless and seemingly unaware in anyway of the lack of a universal gravity. The gravity however seemed to be having a different effect on her. She felt absolutely normal as she stood on the stairs but her long red hair was ‘standing’ on end (though in truthful it was hanging as if she was upside down.)
This was the worrying mind space of Professor Charles Xavier. Jean was in no doubt that this was not his normal mind space, she pictured a vast library and a toasty fire…she was not far from the truth. In his vast library the books themselves were doors to explore through to different rooms and locales of his mind.
He was at the moment however putting Jean through her paces. His young charge had vast telekinetic abilities or at least the potential for vast telekinetic abilities and they were developing nicely and rapidly over the past few years.
She had however been neglecting her telepathic prowess. This was a version of the Danger Room just for her. A training exercise bound only by her mentors mind.
Jean released the banister and drifted ‘upwards’ away from the stairs and then began to fall as a different version of gravity took her, dragging her towards a door which to her looked horizontal.
“Focus,” she told herself. She at first tried pushing her body with telekinetic energy. In Xavier’s study where she now lay a vase he had received as a gift from a friend shattered.
“You’re in a telepathic world…not a real one,” Jean reminded herself aloud. The difference between accessing her telekinetic powers and her telepathic ones in this world were a very narrow set. Her body in this place was not a real one, focusing on physical form would do no use so instead she focused on something else, some intangible quality about herself in which she slowed herself.
She halted and shifted her position so as she touched down on the ground she had managed to shift the entire room around herself so she was able to step through the door. She reappeared through another in the exact same stairway filled room.
She walked up the stairs that was lined by small mirrors no bigger than a CD case. She reached the top and found herself in a long corridor. She seemed to have left Relativity, probably because it offered no more trick for her.
This entire world was set up by The Professor as a test for her telepathic abilities but not only that but her reasoning, logic and imagination… ‘the three biggest skills a telepath can have.’
There were three challenges she would have to overcome in this mental world so she could ‘extract’ her fellow X-men…who were in reality just sitting around back at the mansion playing videogames or something. Relativity was the first she assumed.
She walked along the corridor, it was lined on one side with a perfectly white and smooth wall which almost looked to be nothing at all but she could feel it’s very ‘wallishness’ pressing in on her.
The other wall was lined with one long mirror. She turned to look into it for a second, the reflection which looked back at her was much younger than she was now. It looked to her much like she had thought of herself in her youth when her powers first emerged.
She was wearing a pretty pink dress dotted with little yellow flowers. Her hair was held out of her face by a hair band. The little girl smiled before fading away.
The world began to spin. Jean suddenly found herself facing in a different direction, she also found herself crumbling to the floor holding her head. A wave of dizziness had come over her which compelled her to sit down and compose her thoughts.
She sat there for what felt like a few minutes, she felt distant and weak. This was one of the dangers of being a mental projection, a distraction or lack of concentration can have the oddest effects on you until you manage to focus again.
She looked down at her hand which flickered in and out of being like an old video recording. It was then that the voices began to return.
They were voices she had long ago banished when The Professor began her treatment, she had barely heard them since. She could now hear them as strong as ever, all of the voices of everyone from her town and the county….voices and thoughts she couldn’t block out and threatened to sweep her away. To take whatever made her Jean Grey and toss it upon the rocks in the rough sea of her mind. The pain and the emotion and the other voice which was strongest in her mind screamed to her.
She tightened her hand into a fist and focused on it, focused on feeling the pressure and touching skin to skin on being solid and strong. It helped and she found herself feeling much more ‘there’.
Jean stood and took a step forward only to find herself pressing against some unseen barrier. It was cold to the touch and solid…completely flat too, which was very hard to do with thought constructs like she did with her telekinesis.
She looked through the solid but invisible barrier out at her own reflection in the mirror…no, that wasn’t right…she was the reflection and that was her frozen in place beyond it’s glassy surface. It was that which stopped her progress.
How to explain that which she felt and how she knew this she couldn’t say. Something in her mind just told her that this was the case, something she was picking up from The Professor.
Jean flung out her hand to shatter the glass…nothing happened. She tried again, trying to plum the depths of her psychic powers to affect the ‘reality’ around her like The Professor had taught her to do…nothing.
She stood back, though she didn’t actually physically go anywhere. She leaned backwards and found herself held up again by some force. She was standing there for what felt like half an hour trying to think of what next to do…realistically she knew however it could have been just a few seconds if that, the speed of thought being entirely relative.
A smile spread across her face as she figured out what she needed to do. She closed her eyes and imagined nothing…or as best she could. Thoughts kept creeping in but she did her best to push them out before they were able to form into something whole and solid. She stepped into the darkness letting it envelop her and take her.
She focused on the darkness in which she was nothing, unseen, lightening and becoming a brilliant white nothingness. She could feel herself dissolving and fading from sight, become intangible and fading away like she had moments earlier. She would simply step through the glass like a ghost, she stepped forward.
Jean came to the ground with a thud as she bounced hard into the glass and fell back to the position where she started. She swore loudly, she was sure that would have worked.
Jean sat in that room for what felt like hours trying to focus her mind to think of a way out of this trap. These hours would be tedious and torturous to others but she had spent years in the real world trapped within her own mind, it had felt like centuries to her…and yet instant when The Professor reached out to her.
She tried each of the techniques she had just tried again and again over that first hour thinking that maybe she just hadn’t done them correctly…each time only to fail. She then set about trying to think of other things she could do.
She thought she was close when she simply commanded the reality she was in to change, to put her back in her own body but it didn’t work.
The words of the Professor about logic, reasoning and imagination kept playing through her mind. He also told her she would have everything she needs to complete the tasks.
She retraced her steps. They played through her mind like a video recording, perfectly re-showing everything which had happened since she entered the mindscape. Then she knew exactly what to do…she cursed herself for not thinking of it the first time around.
She closed her eyes again and reached out, grasping for that certain something that she was looking for back along the corridor. She grinned as she found them and began to bring them to her in whatever passed for telekinesis in this world.
Her eyes opened to look at the rotating mass of mirrors as she placed them next to one another. Their small CD case sized reflections merging as they touched until there was a full length mirror just behind her form on the other side of the glass. She looked into it and felt the world spin again.
She found herself back in her body. Her hands flew out instantly smashing the mirrors on either side of her. She had gotten out of the trap and doubted The Professor would force her back in if she looked into them but she was not taking the chance.
The long corridor which led to a door offered no more surprises. She opened the door tentatively and found herself instantly adrift amongst a sea of nothingness…darkness as far as she could see. A pitch blackness in which she hovered.
She hung there wondering what to do. A ‘TK’ push resulted in no movement, she was in a complete vacuum with nothing to push against so her powers wouldn’t work…even when they weren’t really her powers but a mental projection of such.
Jean ‘breathed’ out slowly and tried to let the edges of her mind go ‘fuzzy’ to try and pick up anything a clue or a hint which might let her know what to do…she got it when an image of The X-men came to her mind.
She reached out and held the strong rope which had materialised in the darkness. She looked along it’s length until it vanished into the void. When she gripped it a memory from the previous week came to mind. It was simply the five of them relaxing and watching a movie after a training session but it made her smile. She relived it up until the moment Warren slid sideways and rested his head on her shoulder, she felt Scott’s dismay and saw his face and slipped from the dream like state.
She began to pull herself along the rope. It was made of four strands wrapped tightly around one another. She could however move her fingers around one strand at a time. She did so with the first one as she continued to climb down and let the thoughts flow into her mind.
This was Hank. She held the thinner strand and immediately got a certain feeling of ‘Hankishness’. He was a gently giant, the most kind and sweet person she had ever met and possibly even the smartest…these were qualities she had previously attributed to The Professor who was like an uncle to her and the one person in the world she trusted more than anyone.
A memory of Hank pushed into her mind. It was one of his terrible jokes but it made her laugh so hard partially because of Bobby’s reaction which had him squirting iced milk from his nose. Scott had stood back with his wry warm smile trying to burn through his serious exterior. Warren sat next to Jean trying to act like he found it as funny as they all did but it was obvious he thought it a touch too silly for his sense of humour.
“Luke,” hissed Beast doing his best Darth Vader impression. “Luke I know what you’re getting for Christmas.”
“No you can’t!” cried Hank as he dropped to the floor and clung to the table leg as if he was hanging over a great drop. “It’s not true!”
“Luke,” he gave another Darth Vader like hiss. “It is true.”
“No! How can this be!” he screamed as he dropped back down before leaping back into his Darth position.
“I have felt your presents with the force.” He spread his hands out awaiting applause. This is when the laughing ensued.
This was Hank down to a tea, the constant entertainer which made it impossible for anyone not to warm to him.
Jean slipped her fingers around the next strand as she continued her hand over hand crawl down the rope.
This was definitely Warren, so warm and strong and yet strangely aloof. It was obvious that he felt some attraction for Jean and if she was honest she couldn’t help but return it. He was one if not the most handsome teen she had ever met, just made more so by these fantastic wings which sprouted from his physically perfect form.
He was fun and carefree and there was something which attracted Jean to him in that. That given the lives they all had led was something she could need, something she liked. He was probably the most like her both in personality and maturity which was another good point to him.
Yet there was always this aloofness, this distance even when he was trying to impress her or snuggle up to her in movie time. He seemed to want to keep everyone at arms length, much like Scott does but whereas Scott definitely wanted to let people in and just had trouble showing it Warren was the opposite he seemed not to want anyone to know. He was all smiled and ‘the big man on campus’ but was secretly pulling away.
She wondered if something in his past, with his family no doubt had made him feel the need to keep everyone at a distance whilst still having this outward persona.
Her fingers next moved to the rope which was Bobby. She felt a strange distance with him too which was odd. It was not something she really understood with him. He was fun and full of life and energy very much like a little brother to all of them, Hank especially. The two had seemed to adopt one another from their first day all those weeks ago and had only gotten closer still.
They were the two who got on with everyone at all times…other than when their pranks got their ire up but recently there had been this feeling of him being uncomfortable when not with Hank.
She tried to think of the time when she was alone with him when she first realised this but the more she dug through her memories the harder it became to think of a time and instantly she knew the answer. She was always with Warren or Scott, not entirely her choice true but regardless. This was probably why he was feeling distant, because simply that’s how he felt. He hadn’t really had a chance to know her properly on a one to one level. It was something she would try and remedy.
It was a process of sheer elimination that she knew who the next one would be as she entwined her finger around it. Scott filled her mind. She could define Scott simply, cute but waaaaaaaaay too serious for his own good.
She couldn’t blame him, she knew about his powers and the control and worry he constantly had to keep in his mind for fear of hurting someone around him but she sometimes thought he focused on it too much.
When he did relax she could feel all this warmth and strength from him…the strength often came through when he was commanding the team anyway. The surface thoughts she picked up from his mind unintentionally made her smile. She liked Scott. Liked Scott but until they both worked out their own problems she didn’t think anything could come of it. This was made even more complicated by the fact she Liked Warren too if she was perfectly honest with herself which was something she always had to be following the time trapped inside her own mind.
She wrapped her hands around all four strands and felt the strong rope that was the team and relaxed her mind letting them do most of her work for her. She shot off down it’s length like a rocket.
When she opened her eyes she could see something at the end of the rope shooting towards her. It looked like a giant gladiator arena. She drifted into it slowly.
She landed in the sandy floor and looked up at the gigantic stands full of absolutely no one. “It’s the Coliseum how I always imagined it looked in it’s heyday.”
The Professor walked towards her appearing from nowhere. He was dressed as a Roman Gladiator. He smiled at her warmly and indicated across the length of the field. There her team stood in full X-men uniform.
Xavier indicated to jean and she found herself in her uniform. The Professor moved between her and the team summoning a shield and spear to his hands from the thin air. “Final Challenge,” he smiled as he dropped his weight onto his back foot.
“This is a little unfair Professor, you in armour with a spear and me in my costume…all of this within your mind.”
“This is what I think of as my best protection in combat…you chose your own,” he smiled at the thought of Jean’s confidence in The X-Men uniform. “Any weapons you want you can summon.”
Jean smiled, she mirrored the Professor as they began to circle around one another before stopping and circling back so that jean was never closer to The X-Men than he was.
The ground around them began to shake and rupture. Xavier looked worried as a giant metallic hand erupted from the ground…a giant gladiator began to climb out of the ground behind Jean.
“Well done, I didn’t sense this.” He rocked back and launched his spear up at the Gladiator. It connected and the giant statue of metal vanished instantly. He was suddenly tackled by Jean. She rolled with the force she slammed into him and set off sprinting towards the team while he still lay on the floor.
Xavier reached out with his mind and stopped her where she stood. Jean was yanked back hard. She quickly scanned the world around her aiming to garner something from The Professor’s mind should he think about tactics or something. She got one word clearly and strongly.
She screamed it aloud. “PHOENIX!” A fiery raptor exploded around her flapping it’s great and terrible wings.
Xavier stumbled backwards allowing Jean to drop down and leap towards her team. Her fingers glanced against Scott and suddenly she found herself in Xavier’s study again.
He smiled, yet Jean could see a look of worry in his face. “You did very well,” he nodded visibly shaken by something unexpected. “Now if you excuse me…I can sense my next appointment arriving.”
An hour later, Bobby’s room…
Bobby stretched out on his bed and yawned loudly. There was nothing better than a Sunday afternoon nap. It was very tiring to be an endless source of energy, the irony of his thoughts were lost on him.
He rubbed his eyes and then rolled to his side as he began to open them slowly and scratched the back of his leg with his foot.
He looked at the little puppy which was peering around his door. He closed his eyes and smiled. His eyes suddenly popped open in a sleepy double take. The little puppy could be seen just vanishing around the edge of the door frame.
“The Professor bought a dog!” He leapt up from his bed and gave chase.
He rounded the door just to see the little brown dog bounding along the corridor away from him yipping excitedly. Bobby padded after it.
The dog stopped and turned around to look at him. It gave an loud yip and bounded away at a much faster speed. “Come back puppy!” Bobby called, he was a big kid at heart especially around puppies…but wasn’t everyone.
Bobby reached the top of the sweeping stairs which went down to the main lobby. The puppy dog was nearly at the bottom with it’s little legs carrying it faster than Bobby’s could carry him even with their height advantage.
He grinned and launched himself onto the banister of the stairs sliding down it using the balance he had been perfecting for his ice slides.
The dog reached the bottom and began making a B-line for the swinging door of the kitchen. Bobby hit the floor and launched after it, his slide having caught him up with the little dog.
He leaned forward and grabbed the little puppy being caught by his own momentum he tumbled head over heels through the swinging door with the puppy in his arms.
“Bobby?” The Professor looked down at bobby from the table which he sat at surrounded by the other X-Men and a woman Bobby didn’t recognise.
She was younger than the Professor but was definitely an adult adult rather than a young adult. She had a pretty face regardless of the age it showed. She smiled warmly at him creasing the sides of her eyes. She brushed her red hair behind her ear.
“Is this your puppy?” her asked.
“That’s my…daughter,” the woman smiled and indicated. Bobby turned his head, where he had been holding onto the little puppy dog he was now holding on to a little girl by her leg. Her other leg was taking her weight and was pressed down next to Bobby.
She was younger than him. Her short red hair was in two tiny bunches on the back of her head. Her skin was a pale white and she had a tiny button nose. The expression on her facer was somewhere between embarrassment and fear of the teenager who held her.
“This Robert, is Moira an old friend and colleague who is coming to work with us and this is her daughter Rahne. She’s a mutant like us, her powers have just shown at a younger age much like Scott’s, Jean’s and Hank’s…though not at birth like him.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you Robbie,” smiled Moira.
“Hey you’re English,” Bobby grinned. He had released Rahne’s foot and was climbing to his feet.
“No were Scottish but I wouldn’t worry, you’d be surprised how often you Mexican’s make that mistake.”
“I’m not Mexican,” Bobby looked confused.
“You appear to have missed the point of the sarcasm,” Hank shook his head with a gentle smile. “So Miss McTaggart what brings you and Rahne to join our little misfit family?”
“Well Charles asked thinking you might need some extra help. It also helps me with my own research to have a few more mutants around. I’m looking into what Charles just said. When and why do mutant powers emerge when they do? Many occur before puberty.”
“Ah an intriguing prospect indeed, I read a speculative paper on…oh my god. You’re that McTaggart! Doctor McTaggart!”
“Please, spare me me blushes Henry.” She waved her hand in a bashful manor.
Bobby looked up at Rahne as the others chatted about science of mutants…something Bobby cared little to nothing about really. “Sorry for chasing you…and tackling you.”
Rahne blushed slightly and turned her face ever so slightly away from him. She was painfully shy. “It’s okay I shouldnae been in yuir room. I was exploring.”
“So what else can you turn into? Can you be like a bear?”
“Och no, just a wolf…me ma’ says I’ll get bigger quickly soon. I wont be a puppy for much longer. What de yae do?”
Bobby smiled, he did love showing off. He iced both of his hands up and pressed them together. He began moving them apart. In his hand was a rough ice sculpture of a wolf.
“A pony, we had some back on the island,” Rahne stroked against it gently.
“It’s ah…yes it’s a pony,” blushed Bobby. “Scotland is an island?”
Rahne laughed, “Yuir funny Robbie.” Bobby smiled, he didn’t know why he was funny but he was never one to disregard such a compliment.
“So you’re going to be an X-man like us?”
Rahne smiled and shook her head coyly. “Ma’ says at least not until I’m 13…I’m only 9 now. Kevin could be one but he’s poorly.”
“Whose Kevin?”
“Kevin,” Moira responded having picked up some of what the two young mutants were talking about “is my son. He’s a mutant too…his powers have made him very ill. Part of my research is aimed to help him. Rahne misses him since he fell ill.”
“But Uncle Charlie said as soon as he’s well enough he can come here too,” Rahne perked up with a smile. The Professor returned the smile and nodded back, he loved Rahne and always had. He had known her since she was two years old when Moira adopted her.
Bobby looked to The Professor. He had never thought of him as being a ‘Charlie’.
“Anyway Rahne go wash your hands. We’ve brought Uncle Charles his favourite remember and you said you’d help me make it for tea.” Moira drained her cup of tea and stood up. Hank made a motion to get the cup for her but she waved him off “If we’ll be living here we’ll not be treated like guests.”
“By tea you mean Dinner?” Scott raised an eyebrow above his ruby shades.
Little Rahne giggled. “No silly it’s too late for Dinner, we mean for tea.”
The mutants smiled, Professor Xavier nodded to Scott to tell him he had in fact been correct. “So what are we having Moira?” piped in Warren, he had tried the best cuisine from around the world but had never visited Scotland or had any of it’s traditional dishes.
“Haggis, Bannock, Pease Pudding…though north English rather than Scottish and chips…and Dundee Cake for pudding.”
“It sounds great,” Bobby grinned as he leapt onto the chair at the table not realising what anything was or that it would take about 3 and a half hours to properly be prepared.
A secret and sacred location, Asia…
The morning birds sang in the trees.
The people of the small mountainous village were awaking and beginning their chores of tending to their livestock and gardens before breakfast would be served.
The people of this province had changed little in hundreds of years. They kept to their traditional ways. Ways which were slowly dying out as with each generation more and more of their young went off to live in the cities or indeed different countries.
They however continued with their work and their lives. It was the way they had always done things.
They kept up with the things they had to do. They appeased their quant traditions and the spirits of their folklore which had always noted their homes as a place of strong magic and mysticism.
Even with the war which raged through their country many many years ago and the destruction of their temple. Now they simply worshiped without it.
The earth shook suddenly. The side of the mountain which looked down on their town, where their temple used to be carved into it exploded outwards showering stone down on them.
The giant figure stood and looked down at them. He had been walled up in that cave in for what seemed like forever tunnelling his way out slowly but surely with his massive amounts of strength.
Now he was free. Now he would have his revenge on the man who put him there.
That evening…
Warren had managed to haul himself out of the bathroom after an hour or so of feeling under the weather. He thought everything was lovely but when he discovered that Haggis was the heart, lungs and liver of a sheep mixed with mince, onions, oatmeal and boiled in the sheep’s stomach he had come over a little worse for wear.
Bobby was just finishing his third portion of extras. He especially loved the big yellow blob or ‘sludge’ that was pease pudding. “Hey it’s like a hotdog, it doesn’t matter what’s in it as long as it tastes good right?”
“Where’s everyone else?” the winged mutant asked. He flipped an apple into the air before grabbing it and taking a bite.
“They’re in the lounge having coffee, Hank is coming back in a little while to play hide and seek with Rahne…it’s my turn to hide.”
It was almost on cue that Rahne burst through the swinging door. “Robbie you can’t play if you’re just going to keep hiding in the kitchen to eat the haggis.” She had gotten a lot louder and more comfortable all of a sudden.
“I bet you didn’t turn into a wolf for a second to sniff me out either did you?” Bobby stuck out his tongue at the girl who smiled and blushed.
“She wouldn’t need to Bobby, I can smell you from down the hall. Just like the internal organs of a sheep if you ask me,” Hank smiled as he came into the room. Hank watched a distinct shade of green come into Warren’s face for a second. “What say my little Rahne that now it’s Bobby’s turn to seek.” Henry hauled the little ginger girl up onto his shoulders and turned on all fours to bound out of the room.
“If you go on the roof you’re cheating!” shouted Bobby after them as he took another big bite of haggis. Warren decided he may need a little longer in the bathroom.
Living room…
The four sat chatting. They had so far managed to cover the pasts of both Scott and Jean and a little about Moira.
“So you adopted Rahne? What about…was it Kevin?” Scott asked. He was always interested in adoption. He knew the ins and outs from one side but not the other, the other side always seemed to odd and scary to him. He thought about Alex, if Moira was a representative of who was allowed to adopt then he figured his little brother would be doing fine.
“No Kevin is my son,” Moira bit her lip. Charles reached across and placed his hand over hers. Jean noticed a look pass between them as he did so and an emotion race through the two of them. “He’s a mutant, a very strong mutant…too strong. He can bend molecules to his will…do whatever he wants with them. His powers hurt him…and keep him alive. He can’t control them.”
“Eric used to think that he was The Phoe…” Moira was silent. Her eyes moved to Charles and then she shook her head.
Jean and Scot exchanged a glance but didn’t push any further. They knew she was going to say something but didn’t know what.
“So, anyway…” Moira smiled again beaming. “Are you two a couple then?”
Scott went bright red. “We…ah…er…” then he was silent.
“No,” Jean smiled. “Just good friends, yes Scott?” She smiled at him. She was trying to put him at ease already picking up on his embarrassment and unease at the question but he took it as a rejection.
“Yeah,” he nodded slowly.
The lights suddenly cut out plunging the room into darkness. “I’ll go check the circuit breaker.” Scott nodded. A faint glow could be seen now radiating from behind his glasses.
Meanwhile in exclusive club in New York City…
“Leland!” barked Sebastian Shaw as he burst into the study where Leland sat sipping from his glass of single malt.
The two men were dressed in the garb of the 17th century as was the style of the exclusive Hellfire Club.
“Shaw, a pleasure to see you…I get the feeling that my sentiment isn’t returned.” He grinned through his big bushy orange beard.
“You’ve been using my business contacts for your own stupid games,” Shaw barked again. He grabbed Leland’s glass and slammed it down. Leland was to his feet and in the face of Sebastian Shaw in the space of a second.
“Stupid games? There is nothing stupid about the games I play.”
“Yes fine, we all know that you’re games are anything but silly but using my contacts draws attention to us. I don’t want to be traceable should one of your little hunting trips go wrong…as they always do.”
“If any of us takes stupid risks it’s you Shaw,” Leland picked up his drink and finished what was in the glass. “What with your links to Xavier and Magneto, if anyone is going to put this club at risk it’s you and you’re quest for The Phoenix…or perhaps your fetish for psychics. Is the newest one even legal yet?.”
“Leland you do not wish to push this any further, believe me.” Shaw glared into the eyes of his fellow inner circle member. They were partners with the same goal in mind but there was always animosity between those in the inner circle. You didn’t get there by being trustworthy and so when you are there it pays not to trust anyone.
“Do you think he’s found the Phoenix then? Xavier and his X-Men…or Magneto and his Brotherhood? Or do you think your own Hellions could have it amongst their number? What would you do if you had it? Who would you side with?” Leland ‘huffed’a laugh out briefly, he always enjoyed challenging Shaw over his beliefs.
“I’d use it like all things, for power. I don’t care about mutants or humans…all I care about is myself.”
“Not the club then? The inner circle above everything is the way if works if I recall the pact.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Shaw shook his head. It had been a simple slip of the tongue but he knew Leland would seize on it.
“ Perhaps I should get involved in your quest, in the best interests of the club you understand.”
“What will it take to pacify you Leland?”
Leland smiled and leafed through some photos which Shaw had not noticed on the table. “I want this one…for my next ‘game’.”
Shaw looked down at the picture of the X-Man taken during their confrontation with Magneto and nodded. “Deal. I shall see to it, you make the other arrangements.”
Upstairs…
Bobby hand his hands firmly on Rahne’s shoulders as he pushed himself along the icy path he had created in the upstairs hallway. The Professor had given him permission just this once telepathically to make Rahne feel more at home. He had a bad habit of indulging her too much, or so Moira told him.
She gasped as they changed direction sharply. The darkness didn’t seem to bother either of them as light beamed through the upstairs windows.
The door where Beast had been counting suddenly flew open and he shoved his head out of the door sniffing the air. He had a sense of smell above a human, it was no where as refined as Rahne’s was in her wolf form and he was unlikely to be able to identify anyone by scent alone but right now he was getting something odd. Cigar, alcohol, leather, motorcycle oil and blood.
He turned to glare down the corridor towards the two young mutants. “Bobby!”
The glass in the big bay windows at the end of the hall which led out onto the shared balcony shattered as a figure leapt through them with a growl. The blades he seemed to carry in his hands reflected the light.
He delivered a swift kick to Bobby sending him and Rahne hurtling sideways. He then sprung forward towards Beast who was mirroring the move himself. The two snarled at one another before meeting in mid air.
The intruder swung what Beast could now clearly see to be claws rather than knives towards him but the teen arched his back to avoid the swing and landed his two huge feet on the man’s chest tossing him back with a strong double kick.
Beast landed on his feet while the intruder landed in a heap. “Quicker than I though you would be by your scent…I was expecting some animal mutation. Generally dog rather than monkey,” he growled before launching up again.
Beast dodged the swing of his claws again only to get a solid knee to his head. It felt like a sledge hammer blow. This startled him and sent him to his knees.
“Hey,” the man known simply as Wolverine turned and growled at Iceman who had his hands stretched out towards him. There was a wall of ice behind the iced teen through which a growling animal could be heard. “Take another step and I turn your eyes into ice cubes.”
Wolverine growled. He was working out if he could get across the distance before his eyes had a chance to freeze and if he could operate without them long enough for them to heal.
He turned at the last second as a strong scent of vomit swept into his nostrils. The last second was too late as the figure of Angel slammed into him drawn by the shattering of the glass.
It felt to Warren like hitting a brick wall. Wolverine slashed at him taking out a number of the lower lying feathers as Warren’s wings shifted and came down hard across the other mutants shoulders.
Warren expected for the bone to break in the man’s shoulder but instead he simply forced him down to one knee. A kick was forced into the young feathered teen’s gut before Wolverine launched over his shoulder and pivoted his weight tossing the hollow boned one with ease at the ice cube.
They both collided with the ice wall shattering it and bringing it down on top of them. A form sprang from behind the ice. The dog…no wolf was much bigger than it had seemed a moment ago. It was still only a young pup though, nothing he couldn’t handle.
It snarled bearing it’s teeth and dribbling saliva from it’s snapping jaws as it moved slowly down the hall towards him. Wolverine met it’s gaze.
Beast was suddenly on his back having sprung, still dizzy, from the ground to help his friends. Wolverine slammed his metal plated head back into the face of Beast who let out a shriek as his nose broke filling his vision with tears.
The wolf launched forward teeth gnashing at Wolverine. Her teeth sunk into the arm he put up to protect himself and tore the flesh with the shake of her head. Wolverine reached up through the pain and grabbed her head yanking it sideways sharply slamming it into the wall with his full strength.
Wolverine moved swiftly tossing the largest of the four mutants who was still trying to wrestle with him to the ground. He then dropped down and pressed his claws close against his throat. “Where is Xavier?”
“He’s downstairs….come join him.” Wolverine turned and rotated his body.
A young woman with flowing red hair was standing at the end of the hall. She yanked her outstretched hands in towards her dragging Wolverine with some sort of force power. She sidestepped at the last second and as she did so flung out her hand again powering Wolverine over the banister.
Moira was rushing up the stairs at that moment to see to the injured upstairs like Rahne and Hank. Bobby and Warren were slowly climbing up, the former being in his ice form at a much quicker rate.
Jean released her grip on Wolverine. Gravity took control and his massive metal skeleton dragged him down. He somehow managed to rotate so he came into contact with the floor feet first…or would have if he hadn’t have been met with a blast of crimson energy.
He ploughed into the wall on the far side of the lobby smashing a crater in it. “Professor can you shut his mind down?” Scott asked to his mentor who had just wheeled up behind him.
Xavier raised his hand to his head and then lowered it quickly. “Adamantium…he’s laced with it.”
“The same thing as Magneto’s helmet?” Scott questioned. “Then he’s immune to telepathy of any kind.”
Scott turned back from the Professor just as Wolverine sprang from the ground where he fell. He was met with another blast which drove him down to the floor. There he sunk his claws into the floor.
The force of Scott’s blast was stripping the tiles from the floor and the skin from Wolverine but he held tight his position. He raised one hand and sunk it into the floor before dragging himself forward.
Cyclops let up on his blasts at the signal of Xavier. “What have you come here for?”
The skin and flesh from Wolverine’s body began to re grow but before it did he was already climbing up to his feet. “I want answers.”
He sprang forward and then to the side avoiding the blast of energy that Cyclops fired. His shoulder barged into Angel who had dived down from above. The winged mutant spiralled sideways.
Iceman hurtled over the top of the banister creating and ice slide which Jean followed him down controlling her own descent with her telekinesis.
Wolverine bounded onto the ice slide and met the young mutant with a thrust of his claws. They slashed through the shoulder of Bobby sending him careering off the ice slide holding his shoulder. He landed in a hastily constructed pile of snow.
“Bobby!” screamed Jean as she turned to pay attention to her friend. Wolverine met her wrapping her in his arms and leaping from the ice slide in one move. He landed on his feet.
The two sets of claws were pressed closely to the side of her throat. They stood between the fallen mutants and the one with laser beams for eyes and the man he came here to see. “Make a move and the red head gets it…and you Red I wouldn’t think about trying to stop me. I don’t think you could stop both set eh?”
“Please we don’t want any more violence,” Xavier stretched out his hands. Wolverine had chosen his target well and he knew it. He could smell the worry coming out of the two mutants he was facing. “I will help you in any way I can.”
“Tell me who I am,” growled Wolverine. “What you did to me?”
Xavier watched his face closely. “I’m sorry but you’re mistaken I don’t…” Wolverine growled and pressed his claws closer to Jean’s throat. She responded with a sharp inhalation of air but little more.
“Don’t give me any crap cueball…I can smell a lie and you reek of them.” He growled loudly. “I don’t have many memories but what I do remember is you!”
“Please, don’t hurt her,” Cyclops shook his head. He was lowering his hands away from his visor button to show that he wasn’t even going to try and blast the man. It seemed to do little but slow him down anyway.
“I want the cripple to tell me everything. Who I am, how I got like this and why he took all of my memories in the first place or carrot top loses her carrot top. I am not a nice man, I am not someone you want to push.”
“Take me then, instead of her…trade us.” Xavier wheeled forward so he was in front of Scott and raised his hands. “My mutant powers don’t work on you so you have nothing to fear from me.”
Wolverine tightened his grip on Jean. “I thought you didn’t know me. So either you’ve been lying and putting this girls life in danger to do it or you’re lying now.”
“I thought you could smell a lie,” Xavier raised his eyebrow. He kept his eyes locked on Wolverine’s.
“I can but you stink of so many I can’t tell one from the other at the minute,” he smiled gently showing his steely metal teeth. “Thing is, since you’ve all got your panties in a twist over this little piece why would I trade her when I can get whatever I want from you. So start talking and tell me everything you know.”
Xavier sighed heavily. “I am Charles Francis Xavier and I am a mutant. I have made it my life’s work to gain civil rights for my fellow mutants. I am the worlds foremost expert on mutation and mutants…this is how I know about you Logan AKA Wolverine. You’ve been around for a long time…no one knows how long exactly. You’re mutant power makes you ageless…”
“I’ve got no memories not no knowledge, if I hadn’t figured it out before one eye there would have helped me figure out that last part.”
“Very well. No one knows who you are, where you come from and how you became who you have become. I have met you once in my life when you assassinated a mutant I was tracking down in the middle east. I tried to access your mind then…and was forced back by the Adamantium in your system then much as I am now. If you doubt what I’m telling you let me ask you how was I supposed to have done this to you when I cannot affect you with my power.”
Wolverine kept his eyes fixed on Xavier. Xavier kept his locked on Wolverine. “Red reach around…don’t get excited fire top…” Logan sniffed her and smiled “there’s a picture take it out.” Jean did as she was told. “Float it over there.”
All eyes were on the crumpled sheet as it floated across the hall to Xavier. He reached up and grabbed it first examining the writing on the back. “Magneto,” he shook his head slowly as he recognised the long elegant letters of his ex-friend.
He examined the other side of the sheet. He looked at it for just a split second. “I’m sorry Logan but you’ve been the butt of a cruel scheme. What do you know of the mutant named Magneto?”
“He’s the messiah right? Or so lots of mutants in my circle of…lets call them friends think so. Like Moses sent to lead us to the promised land by killing all of the humans.” He snorted.
“Well I am the man who has set out to face him at every opportunity. I’m sorry but he sent you knowing there was little to nothing I could do against you hoping you would do his work for him.”
Xavier folded the photo back and placed it on his lap.
“No,” Wolverine shook his head slowly. Unsure of himself. “You’re lying…I can smell it. I’m sure you’re lying.”
“You’re not sure of anything Logan…I’m sorry this is what Magneto and his men do. He’s manipulated you into the position he wants you…if you release Jean I promise you I will do everything in my power to help you out.”
Wolverine shifted his vision from Xavier to Cyclops and back. He let out a low growl. “You’re lying,” he pressed his claws closer to Jean’s throat so that the blades touched her skin.
“Angel!” Scott screamed as the winged figure appeared in his line of vision above Wolverine and shifted sharply to come down towards him. Cyclops tossed his hand to his visor and let out a sharp blast which collided with Angel sending him hurtling back.
Wolverine turned slashing both of his claws through the air where Angel should have been and shoving Jean forward as he did so. He turned sharply leaping past Jean slamming his elbow into her as he did so.
He charged across the room dodging the next blast Cyclops fired. He launched himself up and tackled Xavier from his chair so that he was pressing down on his chest. His claws were pressed against the bald man’s face.
“I’m going to go away now. I have some things to deal with but I’ll be back and you and me are going to have words if I have to rip the throat out of everyone in this mansion before you tell me the truth. That’s a promise bub!”
Wolverine exploded away from the felled body and leaped through the glass on one side of the large oak doors.
“Professor should I go after him?” Scott asked “He wont get away from me in the dark, I’ll be able to see him clearly.”
“No,” Xavier shook his head. He was already setting his chair up ready to climb into it. “Wolverine is possibly the most dangerous mutant on the planet. He’s killed more people than any known mutant. If he thought he didn’t need us anymore then we would all be dead by now. We’ve already had more look today then were due I don’t want to push it any further.”
Charles looked over his students as Moira and Jean helped the injured teens to their feet.
Scott moved directly for the unconscious Angel. “I didn’t mean to hit him so hard. I thought he would have made Wolverine do something stupid and hurt Jean.”
“I understand Scott. You probably saved his life…though he may not thank you when he comes around.”
Later, Charles room…
Moira knocked gently and then entered. Charles was sitting at the little desk he had in there. “Is everyone settled now?”
Moira nodded. “I just got Rahne off to sleep, she was shaken but not hurt. Hank seems happy enough even with the broken nose. Warren is badly bruised up, he’ll be grounded for a little while...he’s a bit out of it but Jean is with him. You may need to intervene between he and Scott, there seems some bad blood at the moment. How’s Bobby?”
“He’s asleep in the infirmary.” Xavier nodded slowly, he pressed his fingers up against his mouth. “I managed to guide him into absorbing moisture into his body before he transformed back…he’s just a little bruised in his human form. I want to keep monitoring his powers tonight.”
Moira walked round behind him and looked down at the photo which Charles was looking at. She thanked god that it was her who was taking the photo that day, if she was in there then they would have had no chance of convincing Logan that it had been a trick.
“You all look so young. You, Eric, Sebastian, Logan, Raven, Irene, Gabrielle, Nathaniel, Christopher…so much ahead of us.” She spoke with a bitter sweet twinge in her voice.
She held Charles’s chair and pulled him back away from the desk. “Charles…how much have you told them? About…everything?”
“Nothing,” Charles shook his head. “Next to nothing, I think it’s safer for the moment. We made a lot of mistakes in our thinking back then and…they don’t need to learn about them.”
“Surely the best way to make sure they don’t make our mistakes are to teach them what we did. The Phoenix…Nathaniel, all of it. Does Scott even know you’re relationship with his father?”
Charles was silent for a second. It answered her question.
They moved over to the bed where Charles pulled himself onto the bed and began to unbutton his shirt. Any shyness he had with Moira had long ago vanished in their youth.
“Charles,” Moira breathed in slightly. “Logan was a friend…a good friend. Couldn’t we have told him the truth.”
Charles looked straight into the eyes of Moira and gripped her hands tightly. “I loved James like a brother, once. I wish I could’ve helped him but you know as well as I do that if he got his memories back he would be more dangerous than we can imagine. It’s the reason we took them away in the first place.”
Moira moved her arm around Charles and felt the base of his back. She felt the three marks where the claws of Wolverine had been thrust through his spine all those years ago.
“Does it still hurt? After all this time?”
“A little,” Charles nodded.
Moira kissed him gently on the head. “I best get to bed, Rahne will no doubt be awake soon. She’ll have nightmares for weeks.”
“Goodnight Moira,” Charles watched as Moira smiled and walked across the room closing the door behind her.
Charles leaned forward and put his hands on his head with a deep sigh. He couldn’t help but think he had a long night of soul searching ahead of him. Answering all the questions Moira had asked him and all the more that he himself had asked himself so many times in the past.
Next Time: Juggernaut!
Canada, The Last Stop Bar, a week ago…
The bar was a dark and smoke filled. Halogen and Xeon lights advertising different types of beer flashed on the walls around the bar behind people’s heads as they sat in booths.
Three pool tables were placed in the centre of the bar, all of which currently in use.
This was the last bar within Canada’s borders before you hit Alaska and US soil once more. That, the owner once thought would be enough of a claim to fame to bring people flocking in. He learned in the 6months after he opened the bar this was not true.
This was not surprising, he managed to get enough money to get the bar up and running because of it’s less than central location. It was to put it politely in the arse end of nowhere.
There was enough business to go around however. There were a few difficult years near the start in the 60’s but pretty soon it became a biker bar. In the 70s truckers latched on to the place as a good spot for a meal and a few drinks when on the road, they mixed well with the bikers. In the 80s a new crowd moved in, the management learned soon enough not to ask what their line of work was. There had been too many horror stories from the thugs, assassins and killers.
The man who was sitting at the bar fell into one of the categories above. Management made sure not to ask, he just kept the whisky, scotch, vodka and beer coming. Whatever the guy wanted and had the money to pay for with no questions asked, no judgements…it’s what always made this place so popular. That and the brawls which would occasionally break out.
He was a runt to be sure but Management and none of the guys in here, even if they ganged up, would want to battle with him. He had these vicious beady little eyes, they were constantly peering around like a predator just waiting for a chance to strike. He looked like he needed to shave and he most definitely needed some kind of hair cut.
Management turned to put a glass down. When he turned back the man was no longer alone at the bar.
The difference between the two men who were now sitting together couldn’t be more pronounced. The figure was tall and slender as opposed to short and squat. His skin was as pale as moonlight and his hair as white as snow. The short man looked like he had been through a rough few years but the new slender one looked like he didn’t have a days work under his skin. The new man looked very effeminate whereas the short bloke looked most masculine.
“I’ll have a light beer please,” he held his finger up. It was long and slender. His voice was soft and carried on the effect his body displayed. What was clear…and under oath Management would swear he hadn’t looked…was he had a solid tightly toned muscular body underneath the light green shirt he wore. His accent was European.
“I’ll serve you man but I got to warn you the guys round here might not take to your kind to well…not in public at least,” he flashed a smile to let the guy be aware he was trying to help not threaten him.
“I’ll be quick,” he nodded. He turned sharply swinging on his stool to face the short man.
“I recognise a scent on you,” spoke the figure, he didn’t bother to turn to the younger man.
“You remember something? I find that hard to believe Logan,” the glass went down on the bar sharply and Logan launched himself sideways with almost inhuman speed. He crashed sideways onto the now empty stool.
The young man was now sitting on the stool which Logan had just leapt from. The runt growled and turned to the slender man. He was trying hard to keep his temper under control, he was already aware that he wasn’t going to catch the white haired waif no matter how hard he would try.
The white haired figure slapped down a brown folder on the bar. Logan was sure it hadn’t been there a second before. “My father thought you might like this, maybe help jog your memory.”
The white haired man tossed a few dollars on the bar and lifted his newly poured glass to his lips and downed the alcohol quickly. Management watched him. He suddenly jumped back, the man was gone. Management had literally blinked and he was gone.
He looked down at the man whose name he now knew as Logan (after ‘accidentally’ listening in). Those eyes stared back at him “See something interesting bub?” Management knew the right answer instantly. He raised his hands and shook his head before moving on to stand somewhere else in the bar.
Logan opened the folder. There were two sheets inside. The top one was a photograph. It was a photo of nine people, men and women. They were posing in a small group in front of a large stairwell.
Logan instantly recognised one of them. It was himself, he had no recall of the photo ever being taken…unsurprisingly given his Swiss cheese brain. All he could ever remember was snippets of thought, more feelings than that but never sensible. His nose seemed to remember everything, tell him things that he couldn’t understand just like the ‘familiar’ scent on the speedster. The back of the photo identified the picture as being 1963.
He inspected the other faces in the photo. There was a woman slightly older than the others. She leaned on a cane and wore sunglasses, a teenage girl who didn’t look right. Logan couldn’t put his finger on it in the black and white photo but there was something which looked off.
There was a forth figure Logan’s eyes fell on for a little longer than the others. He was a tall white haired figure, easily bigger than the others in the photo. He had a massive barrel chest and a beaming smile. He bared more of a passing resemblance to the figure who had just been in the bar except whereas his face had been feminine this man definitely looked masculine.
Logan took a deep inhale of breath as he looked at the man standing next to him. He was close to 6 feet himself. He was thinner than his friend but was well toned and slim rather than skinny. He was bald. What made Logan inhale was he recognised this man.
It was a man he had seen many times in his fragmented memory. It was always the same, his eyes opened and this figure was standing over him one hand on his own head and the other stretched out over the top of Logan’s. He associated the man with pain, he didn’t know why but a headache usually followed. It always sent his heart racing. “Who are you?” he asked the photo.
He lifted the photo clear of the next sheet and got an answer. A name and an address. He slid the stool away from the bar and picking up the folder began to walk out.
Now, Escher’s Relativity…
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Escher%27s_Relativity.jpg)
Jean stood on the middle stair and leaned on the banister looking down at the people who were walking sideways up the wall towards her.
It was a famous picture she had seen before but had never expected to be living within. The people walked up the stairs at the angle she stood on and another walked past the other way on the vertical descent of the stairs.
They were going about their everyday lives faceless and seemingly unaware in anyway of the lack of a universal gravity. The gravity however seemed to be having a different effect on her. She felt absolutely normal as she stood on the stairs but her long red hair was ‘standing’ on end (though in truthful it was hanging as if she was upside down.)
This was the worrying mind space of Professor Charles Xavier. Jean was in no doubt that this was not his normal mind space, she pictured a vast library and a toasty fire…she was not far from the truth. In his vast library the books themselves were doors to explore through to different rooms and locales of his mind.
He was at the moment however putting Jean through her paces. His young charge had vast telekinetic abilities or at least the potential for vast telekinetic abilities and they were developing nicely and rapidly over the past few years.
She had however been neglecting her telepathic prowess. This was a version of the Danger Room just for her. A training exercise bound only by her mentors mind.
Jean released the banister and drifted ‘upwards’ away from the stairs and then began to fall as a different version of gravity took her, dragging her towards a door which to her looked horizontal.
“Focus,” she told herself. She at first tried pushing her body with telekinetic energy. In Xavier’s study where she now lay a vase he had received as a gift from a friend shattered.
“You’re in a telepathic world…not a real one,” Jean reminded herself aloud. The difference between accessing her telekinetic powers and her telepathic ones in this world were a very narrow set. Her body in this place was not a real one, focusing on physical form would do no use so instead she focused on something else, some intangible quality about herself in which she slowed herself.
She halted and shifted her position so as she touched down on the ground she had managed to shift the entire room around herself so she was able to step through the door. She reappeared through another in the exact same stairway filled room.
She walked up the stairs that was lined by small mirrors no bigger than a CD case. She reached the top and found herself in a long corridor. She seemed to have left Relativity, probably because it offered no more trick for her.
This entire world was set up by The Professor as a test for her telepathic abilities but not only that but her reasoning, logic and imagination… ‘the three biggest skills a telepath can have.’
There were three challenges she would have to overcome in this mental world so she could ‘extract’ her fellow X-men…who were in reality just sitting around back at the mansion playing videogames or something. Relativity was the first she assumed.
She walked along the corridor, it was lined on one side with a perfectly white and smooth wall which almost looked to be nothing at all but she could feel it’s very ‘wallishness’ pressing in on her.
The other wall was lined with one long mirror. She turned to look into it for a second, the reflection which looked back at her was much younger than she was now. It looked to her much like she had thought of herself in her youth when her powers first emerged.
She was wearing a pretty pink dress dotted with little yellow flowers. Her hair was held out of her face by a hair band. The little girl smiled before fading away.
The world began to spin. Jean suddenly found herself facing in a different direction, she also found herself crumbling to the floor holding her head. A wave of dizziness had come over her which compelled her to sit down and compose her thoughts.
She sat there for what felt like a few minutes, she felt distant and weak. This was one of the dangers of being a mental projection, a distraction or lack of concentration can have the oddest effects on you until you manage to focus again.
She looked down at her hand which flickered in and out of being like an old video recording. It was then that the voices began to return.
They were voices she had long ago banished when The Professor began her treatment, she had barely heard them since. She could now hear them as strong as ever, all of the voices of everyone from her town and the county….voices and thoughts she couldn’t block out and threatened to sweep her away. To take whatever made her Jean Grey and toss it upon the rocks in the rough sea of her mind. The pain and the emotion and the other voice which was strongest in her mind screamed to her.
She tightened her hand into a fist and focused on it, focused on feeling the pressure and touching skin to skin on being solid and strong. It helped and she found herself feeling much more ‘there’.
Jean stood and took a step forward only to find herself pressing against some unseen barrier. It was cold to the touch and solid…completely flat too, which was very hard to do with thought constructs like she did with her telekinesis.
She looked through the solid but invisible barrier out at her own reflection in the mirror…no, that wasn’t right…she was the reflection and that was her frozen in place beyond it’s glassy surface. It was that which stopped her progress.
How to explain that which she felt and how she knew this she couldn’t say. Something in her mind just told her that this was the case, something she was picking up from The Professor.
Jean flung out her hand to shatter the glass…nothing happened. She tried again, trying to plum the depths of her psychic powers to affect the ‘reality’ around her like The Professor had taught her to do…nothing.
She stood back, though she didn’t actually physically go anywhere. She leaned backwards and found herself held up again by some force. She was standing there for what felt like half an hour trying to think of what next to do…realistically she knew however it could have been just a few seconds if that, the speed of thought being entirely relative.
A smile spread across her face as she figured out what she needed to do. She closed her eyes and imagined nothing…or as best she could. Thoughts kept creeping in but she did her best to push them out before they were able to form into something whole and solid. She stepped into the darkness letting it envelop her and take her.
She focused on the darkness in which she was nothing, unseen, lightening and becoming a brilliant white nothingness. She could feel herself dissolving and fading from sight, become intangible and fading away like she had moments earlier. She would simply step through the glass like a ghost, she stepped forward.
Jean came to the ground with a thud as she bounced hard into the glass and fell back to the position where she started. She swore loudly, she was sure that would have worked.
Jean sat in that room for what felt like hours trying to focus her mind to think of a way out of this trap. These hours would be tedious and torturous to others but she had spent years in the real world trapped within her own mind, it had felt like centuries to her…and yet instant when The Professor reached out to her.
She tried each of the techniques she had just tried again and again over that first hour thinking that maybe she just hadn’t done them correctly…each time only to fail. She then set about trying to think of other things she could do.
She thought she was close when she simply commanded the reality she was in to change, to put her back in her own body but it didn’t work.
The words of the Professor about logic, reasoning and imagination kept playing through her mind. He also told her she would have everything she needs to complete the tasks.
She retraced her steps. They played through her mind like a video recording, perfectly re-showing everything which had happened since she entered the mindscape. Then she knew exactly what to do…she cursed herself for not thinking of it the first time around.
She closed her eyes again and reached out, grasping for that certain something that she was looking for back along the corridor. She grinned as she found them and began to bring them to her in whatever passed for telekinesis in this world.
Her eyes opened to look at the rotating mass of mirrors as she placed them next to one another. Their small CD case sized reflections merging as they touched until there was a full length mirror just behind her form on the other side of the glass. She looked into it and felt the world spin again.
She found herself back in her body. Her hands flew out instantly smashing the mirrors on either side of her. She had gotten out of the trap and doubted The Professor would force her back in if she looked into them but she was not taking the chance.
The long corridor which led to a door offered no more surprises. She opened the door tentatively and found herself instantly adrift amongst a sea of nothingness…darkness as far as she could see. A pitch blackness in which she hovered.
She hung there wondering what to do. A ‘TK’ push resulted in no movement, she was in a complete vacuum with nothing to push against so her powers wouldn’t work…even when they weren’t really her powers but a mental projection of such.
Jean ‘breathed’ out slowly and tried to let the edges of her mind go ‘fuzzy’ to try and pick up anything a clue or a hint which might let her know what to do…she got it when an image of The X-men came to her mind.
She reached out and held the strong rope which had materialised in the darkness. She looked along it’s length until it vanished into the void. When she gripped it a memory from the previous week came to mind. It was simply the five of them relaxing and watching a movie after a training session but it made her smile. She relived it up until the moment Warren slid sideways and rested his head on her shoulder, she felt Scott’s dismay and saw his face and slipped from the dream like state.
She began to pull herself along the rope. It was made of four strands wrapped tightly around one another. She could however move her fingers around one strand at a time. She did so with the first one as she continued to climb down and let the thoughts flow into her mind.
This was Hank. She held the thinner strand and immediately got a certain feeling of ‘Hankishness’. He was a gently giant, the most kind and sweet person she had ever met and possibly even the smartest…these were qualities she had previously attributed to The Professor who was like an uncle to her and the one person in the world she trusted more than anyone.
A memory of Hank pushed into her mind. It was one of his terrible jokes but it made her laugh so hard partially because of Bobby’s reaction which had him squirting iced milk from his nose. Scott had stood back with his wry warm smile trying to burn through his serious exterior. Warren sat next to Jean trying to act like he found it as funny as they all did but it was obvious he thought it a touch too silly for his sense of humour.
“Luke,” hissed Beast doing his best Darth Vader impression. “Luke I know what you’re getting for Christmas.”
“No you can’t!” cried Hank as he dropped to the floor and clung to the table leg as if he was hanging over a great drop. “It’s not true!”
“Luke,” he gave another Darth Vader like hiss. “It is true.”
“No! How can this be!” he screamed as he dropped back down before leaping back into his Darth position.
“I have felt your presents with the force.” He spread his hands out awaiting applause. This is when the laughing ensued.
This was Hank down to a tea, the constant entertainer which made it impossible for anyone not to warm to him.
Jean slipped her fingers around the next strand as she continued her hand over hand crawl down the rope.
This was definitely Warren, so warm and strong and yet strangely aloof. It was obvious that he felt some attraction for Jean and if she was honest she couldn’t help but return it. He was one if not the most handsome teen she had ever met, just made more so by these fantastic wings which sprouted from his physically perfect form.
He was fun and carefree and there was something which attracted Jean to him in that. That given the lives they all had led was something she could need, something she liked. He was probably the most like her both in personality and maturity which was another good point to him.
Yet there was always this aloofness, this distance even when he was trying to impress her or snuggle up to her in movie time. He seemed to want to keep everyone at arms length, much like Scott does but whereas Scott definitely wanted to let people in and just had trouble showing it Warren was the opposite he seemed not to want anyone to know. He was all smiled and ‘the big man on campus’ but was secretly pulling away.
She wondered if something in his past, with his family no doubt had made him feel the need to keep everyone at a distance whilst still having this outward persona.
Her fingers next moved to the rope which was Bobby. She felt a strange distance with him too which was odd. It was not something she really understood with him. He was fun and full of life and energy very much like a little brother to all of them, Hank especially. The two had seemed to adopt one another from their first day all those weeks ago and had only gotten closer still.
They were the two who got on with everyone at all times…other than when their pranks got their ire up but recently there had been this feeling of him being uncomfortable when not with Hank.
She tried to think of the time when she was alone with him when she first realised this but the more she dug through her memories the harder it became to think of a time and instantly she knew the answer. She was always with Warren or Scott, not entirely her choice true but regardless. This was probably why he was feeling distant, because simply that’s how he felt. He hadn’t really had a chance to know her properly on a one to one level. It was something she would try and remedy.
It was a process of sheer elimination that she knew who the next one would be as she entwined her finger around it. Scott filled her mind. She could define Scott simply, cute but waaaaaaaaay too serious for his own good.
She couldn’t blame him, she knew about his powers and the control and worry he constantly had to keep in his mind for fear of hurting someone around him but she sometimes thought he focused on it too much.
When he did relax she could feel all this warmth and strength from him…the strength often came through when he was commanding the team anyway. The surface thoughts she picked up from his mind unintentionally made her smile. She liked Scott. Liked Scott but until they both worked out their own problems she didn’t think anything could come of it. This was made even more complicated by the fact she Liked Warren too if she was perfectly honest with herself which was something she always had to be following the time trapped inside her own mind.
She wrapped her hands around all four strands and felt the strong rope that was the team and relaxed her mind letting them do most of her work for her. She shot off down it’s length like a rocket.
When she opened her eyes she could see something at the end of the rope shooting towards her. It looked like a giant gladiator arena. She drifted into it slowly.
She landed in the sandy floor and looked up at the gigantic stands full of absolutely no one. “It’s the Coliseum how I always imagined it looked in it’s heyday.”
The Professor walked towards her appearing from nowhere. He was dressed as a Roman Gladiator. He smiled at her warmly and indicated across the length of the field. There her team stood in full X-men uniform.
Xavier indicated to jean and she found herself in her uniform. The Professor moved between her and the team summoning a shield and spear to his hands from the thin air. “Final Challenge,” he smiled as he dropped his weight onto his back foot.
“This is a little unfair Professor, you in armour with a spear and me in my costume…all of this within your mind.”
“This is what I think of as my best protection in combat…you chose your own,” he smiled at the thought of Jean’s confidence in The X-Men uniform. “Any weapons you want you can summon.”
Jean smiled, she mirrored the Professor as they began to circle around one another before stopping and circling back so that jean was never closer to The X-Men than he was.
The ground around them began to shake and rupture. Xavier looked worried as a giant metallic hand erupted from the ground…a giant gladiator began to climb out of the ground behind Jean.
“Well done, I didn’t sense this.” He rocked back and launched his spear up at the Gladiator. It connected and the giant statue of metal vanished instantly. He was suddenly tackled by Jean. She rolled with the force she slammed into him and set off sprinting towards the team while he still lay on the floor.
Xavier reached out with his mind and stopped her where she stood. Jean was yanked back hard. She quickly scanned the world around her aiming to garner something from The Professor’s mind should he think about tactics or something. She got one word clearly and strongly.
She screamed it aloud. “PHOENIX!” A fiery raptor exploded around her flapping it’s great and terrible wings.
Xavier stumbled backwards allowing Jean to drop down and leap towards her team. Her fingers glanced against Scott and suddenly she found herself in Xavier’s study again.
He smiled, yet Jean could see a look of worry in his face. “You did very well,” he nodded visibly shaken by something unexpected. “Now if you excuse me…I can sense my next appointment arriving.”
An hour later, Bobby’s room…
Bobby stretched out on his bed and yawned loudly. There was nothing better than a Sunday afternoon nap. It was very tiring to be an endless source of energy, the irony of his thoughts were lost on him.
He rubbed his eyes and then rolled to his side as he began to open them slowly and scratched the back of his leg with his foot.
He looked at the little puppy which was peering around his door. He closed his eyes and smiled. His eyes suddenly popped open in a sleepy double take. The little puppy could be seen just vanishing around the edge of the door frame.
“The Professor bought a dog!” He leapt up from his bed and gave chase.
He rounded the door just to see the little brown dog bounding along the corridor away from him yipping excitedly. Bobby padded after it.
The dog stopped and turned around to look at him. It gave an loud yip and bounded away at a much faster speed. “Come back puppy!” Bobby called, he was a big kid at heart especially around puppies…but wasn’t everyone.
Bobby reached the top of the sweeping stairs which went down to the main lobby. The puppy dog was nearly at the bottom with it’s little legs carrying it faster than Bobby’s could carry him even with their height advantage.
He grinned and launched himself onto the banister of the stairs sliding down it using the balance he had been perfecting for his ice slides.
The dog reached the bottom and began making a B-line for the swinging door of the kitchen. Bobby hit the floor and launched after it, his slide having caught him up with the little dog.
He leaned forward and grabbed the little puppy being caught by his own momentum he tumbled head over heels through the swinging door with the puppy in his arms.
“Bobby?” The Professor looked down at bobby from the table which he sat at surrounded by the other X-Men and a woman Bobby didn’t recognise.
She was younger than the Professor but was definitely an adult adult rather than a young adult. She had a pretty face regardless of the age it showed. She smiled warmly at him creasing the sides of her eyes. She brushed her red hair behind her ear.
“Is this your puppy?” her asked.
“That’s my…daughter,” the woman smiled and indicated. Bobby turned his head, where he had been holding onto the little puppy dog he was now holding on to a little girl by her leg. Her other leg was taking her weight and was pressed down next to Bobby.
She was younger than him. Her short red hair was in two tiny bunches on the back of her head. Her skin was a pale white and she had a tiny button nose. The expression on her facer was somewhere between embarrassment and fear of the teenager who held her.
“This Robert, is Moira an old friend and colleague who is coming to work with us and this is her daughter Rahne. She’s a mutant like us, her powers have just shown at a younger age much like Scott’s, Jean’s and Hank’s…though not at birth like him.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you Robbie,” smiled Moira.
“Hey you’re English,” Bobby grinned. He had released Rahne’s foot and was climbing to his feet.
“No were Scottish but I wouldn’t worry, you’d be surprised how often you Mexican’s make that mistake.”
“I’m not Mexican,” Bobby looked confused.
“You appear to have missed the point of the sarcasm,” Hank shook his head with a gentle smile. “So Miss McTaggart what brings you and Rahne to join our little misfit family?”
“Well Charles asked thinking you might need some extra help. It also helps me with my own research to have a few more mutants around. I’m looking into what Charles just said. When and why do mutant powers emerge when they do? Many occur before puberty.”
“Ah an intriguing prospect indeed, I read a speculative paper on…oh my god. You’re that McTaggart! Doctor McTaggart!”
“Please, spare me me blushes Henry.” She waved her hand in a bashful manor.
Bobby looked up at Rahne as the others chatted about science of mutants…something Bobby cared little to nothing about really. “Sorry for chasing you…and tackling you.”
Rahne blushed slightly and turned her face ever so slightly away from him. She was painfully shy. “It’s okay I shouldnae been in yuir room. I was exploring.”
“So what else can you turn into? Can you be like a bear?”
“Och no, just a wolf…me ma’ says I’ll get bigger quickly soon. I wont be a puppy for much longer. What de yae do?”
Bobby smiled, he did love showing off. He iced both of his hands up and pressed them together. He began moving them apart. In his hand was a rough ice sculpture of a wolf.
“A pony, we had some back on the island,” Rahne stroked against it gently.
“It’s ah…yes it’s a pony,” blushed Bobby. “Scotland is an island?”
Rahne laughed, “Yuir funny Robbie.” Bobby smiled, he didn’t know why he was funny but he was never one to disregard such a compliment.
“So you’re going to be an X-man like us?”
Rahne smiled and shook her head coyly. “Ma’ says at least not until I’m 13…I’m only 9 now. Kevin could be one but he’s poorly.”
“Whose Kevin?”
“Kevin,” Moira responded having picked up some of what the two young mutants were talking about “is my son. He’s a mutant too…his powers have made him very ill. Part of my research is aimed to help him. Rahne misses him since he fell ill.”
“But Uncle Charlie said as soon as he’s well enough he can come here too,” Rahne perked up with a smile. The Professor returned the smile and nodded back, he loved Rahne and always had. He had known her since she was two years old when Moira adopted her.
Bobby looked to The Professor. He had never thought of him as being a ‘Charlie’.
“Anyway Rahne go wash your hands. We’ve brought Uncle Charles his favourite remember and you said you’d help me make it for tea.” Moira drained her cup of tea and stood up. Hank made a motion to get the cup for her but she waved him off “If we’ll be living here we’ll not be treated like guests.”
“By tea you mean Dinner?” Scott raised an eyebrow above his ruby shades.
Little Rahne giggled. “No silly it’s too late for Dinner, we mean for tea.”
The mutants smiled, Professor Xavier nodded to Scott to tell him he had in fact been correct. “So what are we having Moira?” piped in Warren, he had tried the best cuisine from around the world but had never visited Scotland or had any of it’s traditional dishes.
“Haggis, Bannock, Pease Pudding…though north English rather than Scottish and chips…and Dundee Cake for pudding.”
“It sounds great,” Bobby grinned as he leapt onto the chair at the table not realising what anything was or that it would take about 3 and a half hours to properly be prepared.
A secret and sacred location, Asia…
The morning birds sang in the trees.
The people of the small mountainous village were awaking and beginning their chores of tending to their livestock and gardens before breakfast would be served.
The people of this province had changed little in hundreds of years. They kept to their traditional ways. Ways which were slowly dying out as with each generation more and more of their young went off to live in the cities or indeed different countries.
They however continued with their work and their lives. It was the way they had always done things.
They kept up with the things they had to do. They appeased their quant traditions and the spirits of their folklore which had always noted their homes as a place of strong magic and mysticism.
Even with the war which raged through their country many many years ago and the destruction of their temple. Now they simply worshiped without it.
The earth shook suddenly. The side of the mountain which looked down on their town, where their temple used to be carved into it exploded outwards showering stone down on them.
The giant figure stood and looked down at them. He had been walled up in that cave in for what seemed like forever tunnelling his way out slowly but surely with his massive amounts of strength.
Now he was free. Now he would have his revenge on the man who put him there.
That evening…
Warren had managed to haul himself out of the bathroom after an hour or so of feeling under the weather. He thought everything was lovely but when he discovered that Haggis was the heart, lungs and liver of a sheep mixed with mince, onions, oatmeal and boiled in the sheep’s stomach he had come over a little worse for wear.
Bobby was just finishing his third portion of extras. He especially loved the big yellow blob or ‘sludge’ that was pease pudding. “Hey it’s like a hotdog, it doesn’t matter what’s in it as long as it tastes good right?”
“Where’s everyone else?” the winged mutant asked. He flipped an apple into the air before grabbing it and taking a bite.
“They’re in the lounge having coffee, Hank is coming back in a little while to play hide and seek with Rahne…it’s my turn to hide.”
It was almost on cue that Rahne burst through the swinging door. “Robbie you can’t play if you’re just going to keep hiding in the kitchen to eat the haggis.” She had gotten a lot louder and more comfortable all of a sudden.
“I bet you didn’t turn into a wolf for a second to sniff me out either did you?” Bobby stuck out his tongue at the girl who smiled and blushed.
“She wouldn’t need to Bobby, I can smell you from down the hall. Just like the internal organs of a sheep if you ask me,” Hank smiled as he came into the room. Hank watched a distinct shade of green come into Warren’s face for a second. “What say my little Rahne that now it’s Bobby’s turn to seek.” Henry hauled the little ginger girl up onto his shoulders and turned on all fours to bound out of the room.
“If you go on the roof you’re cheating!” shouted Bobby after them as he took another big bite of haggis. Warren decided he may need a little longer in the bathroom.
Living room…
The four sat chatting. They had so far managed to cover the pasts of both Scott and Jean and a little about Moira.
“So you adopted Rahne? What about…was it Kevin?” Scott asked. He was always interested in adoption. He knew the ins and outs from one side but not the other, the other side always seemed to odd and scary to him. He thought about Alex, if Moira was a representative of who was allowed to adopt then he figured his little brother would be doing fine.
“No Kevin is my son,” Moira bit her lip. Charles reached across and placed his hand over hers. Jean noticed a look pass between them as he did so and an emotion race through the two of them. “He’s a mutant, a very strong mutant…too strong. He can bend molecules to his will…do whatever he wants with them. His powers hurt him…and keep him alive. He can’t control them.”
“Eric used to think that he was The Phoe…” Moira was silent. Her eyes moved to Charles and then she shook her head.
Jean and Scot exchanged a glance but didn’t push any further. They knew she was going to say something but didn’t know what.
“So, anyway…” Moira smiled again beaming. “Are you two a couple then?”
Scott went bright red. “We…ah…er…” then he was silent.
“No,” Jean smiled. “Just good friends, yes Scott?” She smiled at him. She was trying to put him at ease already picking up on his embarrassment and unease at the question but he took it as a rejection.
“Yeah,” he nodded slowly.
The lights suddenly cut out plunging the room into darkness. “I’ll go check the circuit breaker.” Scott nodded. A faint glow could be seen now radiating from behind his glasses.
Meanwhile in exclusive club in New York City…
“Leland!” barked Sebastian Shaw as he burst into the study where Leland sat sipping from his glass of single malt.
The two men were dressed in the garb of the 17th century as was the style of the exclusive Hellfire Club.
“Shaw, a pleasure to see you…I get the feeling that my sentiment isn’t returned.” He grinned through his big bushy orange beard.
“You’ve been using my business contacts for your own stupid games,” Shaw barked again. He grabbed Leland’s glass and slammed it down. Leland was to his feet and in the face of Sebastian Shaw in the space of a second.
“Stupid games? There is nothing stupid about the games I play.”
“Yes fine, we all know that you’re games are anything but silly but using my contacts draws attention to us. I don’t want to be traceable should one of your little hunting trips go wrong…as they always do.”
“If any of us takes stupid risks it’s you Shaw,” Leland picked up his drink and finished what was in the glass. “What with your links to Xavier and Magneto, if anyone is going to put this club at risk it’s you and you’re quest for The Phoenix…or perhaps your fetish for psychics. Is the newest one even legal yet?.”
“Leland you do not wish to push this any further, believe me.” Shaw glared into the eyes of his fellow inner circle member. They were partners with the same goal in mind but there was always animosity between those in the inner circle. You didn’t get there by being trustworthy and so when you are there it pays not to trust anyone.
“Do you think he’s found the Phoenix then? Xavier and his X-Men…or Magneto and his Brotherhood? Or do you think your own Hellions could have it amongst their number? What would you do if you had it? Who would you side with?” Leland ‘huffed’a laugh out briefly, he always enjoyed challenging Shaw over his beliefs.
“I’d use it like all things, for power. I don’t care about mutants or humans…all I care about is myself.”
“Not the club then? The inner circle above everything is the way if works if I recall the pact.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Shaw shook his head. It had been a simple slip of the tongue but he knew Leland would seize on it.
“ Perhaps I should get involved in your quest, in the best interests of the club you understand.”
“What will it take to pacify you Leland?”
Leland smiled and leafed through some photos which Shaw had not noticed on the table. “I want this one…for my next ‘game’.”
Shaw looked down at the picture of the X-Man taken during their confrontation with Magneto and nodded. “Deal. I shall see to it, you make the other arrangements.”
Upstairs…
Bobby hand his hands firmly on Rahne’s shoulders as he pushed himself along the icy path he had created in the upstairs hallway. The Professor had given him permission just this once telepathically to make Rahne feel more at home. He had a bad habit of indulging her too much, or so Moira told him.
She gasped as they changed direction sharply. The darkness didn’t seem to bother either of them as light beamed through the upstairs windows.
The door where Beast had been counting suddenly flew open and he shoved his head out of the door sniffing the air. He had a sense of smell above a human, it was no where as refined as Rahne’s was in her wolf form and he was unlikely to be able to identify anyone by scent alone but right now he was getting something odd. Cigar, alcohol, leather, motorcycle oil and blood.
He turned to glare down the corridor towards the two young mutants. “Bobby!”
The glass in the big bay windows at the end of the hall which led out onto the shared balcony shattered as a figure leapt through them with a growl. The blades he seemed to carry in his hands reflected the light.
He delivered a swift kick to Bobby sending him and Rahne hurtling sideways. He then sprung forward towards Beast who was mirroring the move himself. The two snarled at one another before meeting in mid air.
The intruder swung what Beast could now clearly see to be claws rather than knives towards him but the teen arched his back to avoid the swing and landed his two huge feet on the man’s chest tossing him back with a strong double kick.
Beast landed on his feet while the intruder landed in a heap. “Quicker than I though you would be by your scent…I was expecting some animal mutation. Generally dog rather than monkey,” he growled before launching up again.
Beast dodged the swing of his claws again only to get a solid knee to his head. It felt like a sledge hammer blow. This startled him and sent him to his knees.
“Hey,” the man known simply as Wolverine turned and growled at Iceman who had his hands stretched out towards him. There was a wall of ice behind the iced teen through which a growling animal could be heard. “Take another step and I turn your eyes into ice cubes.”
Wolverine growled. He was working out if he could get across the distance before his eyes had a chance to freeze and if he could operate without them long enough for them to heal.
He turned at the last second as a strong scent of vomit swept into his nostrils. The last second was too late as the figure of Angel slammed into him drawn by the shattering of the glass.
It felt to Warren like hitting a brick wall. Wolverine slashed at him taking out a number of the lower lying feathers as Warren’s wings shifted and came down hard across the other mutants shoulders.
Warren expected for the bone to break in the man’s shoulder but instead he simply forced him down to one knee. A kick was forced into the young feathered teen’s gut before Wolverine launched over his shoulder and pivoted his weight tossing the hollow boned one with ease at the ice cube.
They both collided with the ice wall shattering it and bringing it down on top of them. A form sprang from behind the ice. The dog…no wolf was much bigger than it had seemed a moment ago. It was still only a young pup though, nothing he couldn’t handle.
It snarled bearing it’s teeth and dribbling saliva from it’s snapping jaws as it moved slowly down the hall towards him. Wolverine met it’s gaze.
Beast was suddenly on his back having sprung, still dizzy, from the ground to help his friends. Wolverine slammed his metal plated head back into the face of Beast who let out a shriek as his nose broke filling his vision with tears.
The wolf launched forward teeth gnashing at Wolverine. Her teeth sunk into the arm he put up to protect himself and tore the flesh with the shake of her head. Wolverine reached up through the pain and grabbed her head yanking it sideways sharply slamming it into the wall with his full strength.
Wolverine moved swiftly tossing the largest of the four mutants who was still trying to wrestle with him to the ground. He then dropped down and pressed his claws close against his throat. “Where is Xavier?”
“He’s downstairs….come join him.” Wolverine turned and rotated his body.
A young woman with flowing red hair was standing at the end of the hall. She yanked her outstretched hands in towards her dragging Wolverine with some sort of force power. She sidestepped at the last second and as she did so flung out her hand again powering Wolverine over the banister.
Moira was rushing up the stairs at that moment to see to the injured upstairs like Rahne and Hank. Bobby and Warren were slowly climbing up, the former being in his ice form at a much quicker rate.
Jean released her grip on Wolverine. Gravity took control and his massive metal skeleton dragged him down. He somehow managed to rotate so he came into contact with the floor feet first…or would have if he hadn’t have been met with a blast of crimson energy.
He ploughed into the wall on the far side of the lobby smashing a crater in it. “Professor can you shut his mind down?” Scott asked to his mentor who had just wheeled up behind him.
Xavier raised his hand to his head and then lowered it quickly. “Adamantium…he’s laced with it.”
“The same thing as Magneto’s helmet?” Scott questioned. “Then he’s immune to telepathy of any kind.”
Scott turned back from the Professor just as Wolverine sprang from the ground where he fell. He was met with another blast which drove him down to the floor. There he sunk his claws into the floor.
The force of Scott’s blast was stripping the tiles from the floor and the skin from Wolverine but he held tight his position. He raised one hand and sunk it into the floor before dragging himself forward.
Cyclops let up on his blasts at the signal of Xavier. “What have you come here for?”
The skin and flesh from Wolverine’s body began to re grow but before it did he was already climbing up to his feet. “I want answers.”
He sprang forward and then to the side avoiding the blast of energy that Cyclops fired. His shoulder barged into Angel who had dived down from above. The winged mutant spiralled sideways.
Iceman hurtled over the top of the banister creating and ice slide which Jean followed him down controlling her own descent with her telekinesis.
Wolverine bounded onto the ice slide and met the young mutant with a thrust of his claws. They slashed through the shoulder of Bobby sending him careering off the ice slide holding his shoulder. He landed in a hastily constructed pile of snow.
“Bobby!” screamed Jean as she turned to pay attention to her friend. Wolverine met her wrapping her in his arms and leaping from the ice slide in one move. He landed on his feet.
The two sets of claws were pressed closely to the side of her throat. They stood between the fallen mutants and the one with laser beams for eyes and the man he came here to see. “Make a move and the red head gets it…and you Red I wouldn’t think about trying to stop me. I don’t think you could stop both set eh?”
“Please we don’t want any more violence,” Xavier stretched out his hands. Wolverine had chosen his target well and he knew it. He could smell the worry coming out of the two mutants he was facing. “I will help you in any way I can.”
“Tell me who I am,” growled Wolverine. “What you did to me?”
Xavier watched his face closely. “I’m sorry but you’re mistaken I don’t…” Wolverine growled and pressed his claws closer to Jean’s throat. She responded with a sharp inhalation of air but little more.
“Don’t give me any crap cueball…I can smell a lie and you reek of them.” He growled loudly. “I don’t have many memories but what I do remember is you!”
“Please, don’t hurt her,” Cyclops shook his head. He was lowering his hands away from his visor button to show that he wasn’t even going to try and blast the man. It seemed to do little but slow him down anyway.
“I want the cripple to tell me everything. Who I am, how I got like this and why he took all of my memories in the first place or carrot top loses her carrot top. I am not a nice man, I am not someone you want to push.”
“Take me then, instead of her…trade us.” Xavier wheeled forward so he was in front of Scott and raised his hands. “My mutant powers don’t work on you so you have nothing to fear from me.”
Wolverine tightened his grip on Jean. “I thought you didn’t know me. So either you’ve been lying and putting this girls life in danger to do it or you’re lying now.”
“I thought you could smell a lie,” Xavier raised his eyebrow. He kept his eyes locked on Wolverine’s.
“I can but you stink of so many I can’t tell one from the other at the minute,” he smiled gently showing his steely metal teeth. “Thing is, since you’ve all got your panties in a twist over this little piece why would I trade her when I can get whatever I want from you. So start talking and tell me everything you know.”
Xavier sighed heavily. “I am Charles Francis Xavier and I am a mutant. I have made it my life’s work to gain civil rights for my fellow mutants. I am the worlds foremost expert on mutation and mutants…this is how I know about you Logan AKA Wolverine. You’ve been around for a long time…no one knows how long exactly. You’re mutant power makes you ageless…”
“I’ve got no memories not no knowledge, if I hadn’t figured it out before one eye there would have helped me figure out that last part.”
“Very well. No one knows who you are, where you come from and how you became who you have become. I have met you once in my life when you assassinated a mutant I was tracking down in the middle east. I tried to access your mind then…and was forced back by the Adamantium in your system then much as I am now. If you doubt what I’m telling you let me ask you how was I supposed to have done this to you when I cannot affect you with my power.”
Wolverine kept his eyes fixed on Xavier. Xavier kept his locked on Wolverine. “Red reach around…don’t get excited fire top…” Logan sniffed her and smiled “there’s a picture take it out.” Jean did as she was told. “Float it over there.”
All eyes were on the crumpled sheet as it floated across the hall to Xavier. He reached up and grabbed it first examining the writing on the back. “Magneto,” he shook his head slowly as he recognised the long elegant letters of his ex-friend.
He examined the other side of the sheet. He looked at it for just a split second. “I’m sorry Logan but you’ve been the butt of a cruel scheme. What do you know of the mutant named Magneto?”
“He’s the messiah right? Or so lots of mutants in my circle of…lets call them friends think so. Like Moses sent to lead us to the promised land by killing all of the humans.” He snorted.
“Well I am the man who has set out to face him at every opportunity. I’m sorry but he sent you knowing there was little to nothing I could do against you hoping you would do his work for him.”
Xavier folded the photo back and placed it on his lap.
“No,” Wolverine shook his head slowly. Unsure of himself. “You’re lying…I can smell it. I’m sure you’re lying.”
“You’re not sure of anything Logan…I’m sorry this is what Magneto and his men do. He’s manipulated you into the position he wants you…if you release Jean I promise you I will do everything in my power to help you out.”
Wolverine shifted his vision from Xavier to Cyclops and back. He let out a low growl. “You’re lying,” he pressed his claws closer to Jean’s throat so that the blades touched her skin.
“Angel!” Scott screamed as the winged figure appeared in his line of vision above Wolverine and shifted sharply to come down towards him. Cyclops tossed his hand to his visor and let out a sharp blast which collided with Angel sending him hurtling back.
Wolverine turned slashing both of his claws through the air where Angel should have been and shoving Jean forward as he did so. He turned sharply leaping past Jean slamming his elbow into her as he did so.
He charged across the room dodging the next blast Cyclops fired. He launched himself up and tackled Xavier from his chair so that he was pressing down on his chest. His claws were pressed against the bald man’s face.
“I’m going to go away now. I have some things to deal with but I’ll be back and you and me are going to have words if I have to rip the throat out of everyone in this mansion before you tell me the truth. That’s a promise bub!”
Wolverine exploded away from the felled body and leaped through the glass on one side of the large oak doors.
“Professor should I go after him?” Scott asked “He wont get away from me in the dark, I’ll be able to see him clearly.”
“No,” Xavier shook his head. He was already setting his chair up ready to climb into it. “Wolverine is possibly the most dangerous mutant on the planet. He’s killed more people than any known mutant. If he thought he didn’t need us anymore then we would all be dead by now. We’ve already had more look today then were due I don’t want to push it any further.”
Charles looked over his students as Moira and Jean helped the injured teens to their feet.
Scott moved directly for the unconscious Angel. “I didn’t mean to hit him so hard. I thought he would have made Wolverine do something stupid and hurt Jean.”
“I understand Scott. You probably saved his life…though he may not thank you when he comes around.”
Later, Charles room…
Moira knocked gently and then entered. Charles was sitting at the little desk he had in there. “Is everyone settled now?”
Moira nodded. “I just got Rahne off to sleep, she was shaken but not hurt. Hank seems happy enough even with the broken nose. Warren is badly bruised up, he’ll be grounded for a little while...he’s a bit out of it but Jean is with him. You may need to intervene between he and Scott, there seems some bad blood at the moment. How’s Bobby?”
“He’s asleep in the infirmary.” Xavier nodded slowly, he pressed his fingers up against his mouth. “I managed to guide him into absorbing moisture into his body before he transformed back…he’s just a little bruised in his human form. I want to keep monitoring his powers tonight.”
Moira walked round behind him and looked down at the photo which Charles was looking at. She thanked god that it was her who was taking the photo that day, if she was in there then they would have had no chance of convincing Logan that it had been a trick.
“You all look so young. You, Eric, Sebastian, Logan, Raven, Irene, Gabrielle, Nathaniel, Christopher…so much ahead of us.” She spoke with a bitter sweet twinge in her voice.
She held Charles’s chair and pulled him back away from the desk. “Charles…how much have you told them? About…everything?”
“Nothing,” Charles shook his head. “Next to nothing, I think it’s safer for the moment. We made a lot of mistakes in our thinking back then and…they don’t need to learn about them.”
“Surely the best way to make sure they don’t make our mistakes are to teach them what we did. The Phoenix…Nathaniel, all of it. Does Scott even know you’re relationship with his father?”
Charles was silent for a second. It answered her question.
They moved over to the bed where Charles pulled himself onto the bed and began to unbutton his shirt. Any shyness he had with Moira had long ago vanished in their youth.
“Charles,” Moira breathed in slightly. “Logan was a friend…a good friend. Couldn’t we have told him the truth.”
Charles looked straight into the eyes of Moira and gripped her hands tightly. “I loved James like a brother, once. I wish I could’ve helped him but you know as well as I do that if he got his memories back he would be more dangerous than we can imagine. It’s the reason we took them away in the first place.”
Moira moved her arm around Charles and felt the base of his back. She felt the three marks where the claws of Wolverine had been thrust through his spine all those years ago.
“Does it still hurt? After all this time?”
“A little,” Charles nodded.
Moira kissed him gently on the head. “I best get to bed, Rahne will no doubt be awake soon. She’ll have nightmares for weeks.”
“Goodnight Moira,” Charles watched as Moira smiled and walked across the room closing the door behind her.
Charles leaned forward and put his hands on his head with a deep sigh. He couldn’t help but think he had a long night of soul searching ahead of him. Answering all the questions Moira had asked him and all the more that he himself had asked himself so many times in the past.
Next Time: Juggernaut!