August 2000 - April 2002

Part 1: Family ties and inevitable uncertainties

Jeanette LeBeau was completely drawing a blank. To the furthest extent of her knowledge, within the past week she'd been in the midst of a complete family crisis, but still, to the current, had no Idea what exactly was going on. Her father was a master at keeping her in the dark about anything he didn't plan to speak of, and her mother had made her best efforts to stay as far away from the whole awful feud as humanly possible. She didn't blame Rogue for this, of course- it wasn't her child who was at the center of the controversy anyway, but regardless, it certainly didn't help her much in figuring out the source of her family's current turmoil.

There were a few things she was sure of so far that morning. For one, Cheyenne was back at the mansion for the first time in nearly four years. Whatever her reason had been for coming back practically groveling at the Professor's wheels for a place to stay was likely the center of the controversy. However, what that 'reason' was, exactly, Jeanette didn't have the slightest idea.

Second, Cheyenne and their father, Gambit, were in the absolute most bizarre feud she'd ever encountered in her life. The two seemed to make it a purpose to cross paths in the halls, at dinner, or in the rec. room, where Gambit would shoot angered looks at her that could make even a Spice Girl's relentless perk wither up and die, and Chey would simply tear up and lend her most feral, monotone growl in his general direction in return. They weren't speaking, and when they did communicate it was through a tone about ten decibels way too high. The confrontations seemed guaranteed to end up with either Remy swinging at her and barely missing, or with Cheyenne - Gambit's rebellious daughter best known as Kayo - threatening castration.

Jeanette stifled a much needed chuckle at that fact. Chey had never been one to hide exactly what was on her fire-cannon brain. She’d always admired Kayo for that, if nothing else.

What Jeanette knew most vividly that morning, though, was of the gloomy funk her little brother Cody was in. He was just as clueless as she and, oddly enough, that fact was her one feeling of stability at the moment. At least she wasn't the only LeBeau child that fell so terribly deflated and confused while caught in the middle of this whole mess .

The two of them had escaped from the mansion's swarming dining area, having fled to lunch with the rest of their freedom-hungry classmates from Mrs. Monroe’s God-awful trigonometry lesson, and lugged their trays out into the courtyard, camping their spot out on a rot-iron bench.

There was a few minutes of tense, monotonous chewing until Jeanette chose to break the silence. She picked away at her lunch, speaking in a voice so sweltered and exhausted that it surprised even her, "Any word from the parental unit on what's up with Chey?"

"Not a one," Cody mumbled behind a mouthful of ham sandwich, shaking his head with a deep sigh. He swallowed and shrugged, "Petite, as far as I know, Chey’s gon’ kick de bucket by next week an’s jus’ not lettin’ on."

Jeanette gave him a swift smack in the arm, "Cody! Don’t even say that! That's not funny!"

"Mon deu," Cody looked hurt, "Who lit your tampon?"

"That's not funny either, smart guy," Jeanette smothered a grin behind her own half-eaten sandwich.

"So goes th’ story of our lives, petite."

"Amen to that," Jeanette grimaced. She finally gave up on the notion of finishing her lunch and chucked the sandwich in the direction of a nearby squirrel, "Cody, I just wish I knew what was happening with them...." Her tired voice trailed off.

Her brother leaned forward, rubbing his temples, his yellow-on-black demon eyes seemed pained. His tensed expression belied his usual casual-calm self, proving that he was definitely as worried as she. Jeanette was thankful for at least that much certainty.

"So dis much we know, non?" Cody stated in a hushed tone, "Chey comes poppin’ up outta nowhere all de sudden after lord knows how long..... after ten minutes of she an’ dad and de Prof in de same room t’gether, she and Pere are ready to kick de snot outta each other. Ever since, dey on a one way homicidal trip wit’ de other’s name written all over it."

Jeanette nods, "Spot-on. Plus Mom stays clear for obvious reasons... I mean besides the fact that she and Chey hate each other... Chey's been a bitchy, cryin’ mess since she got here ... and has been making a heck of a lot of trips to visit Mr. McCoy in the MedLab..."

She suddenly paled.

Cody blinked, "What? Petite, what's wrong? Jeanette!"

"Oh my God," Jeanette gulped hoarsely, "Think about it Cody! Constant crying, multiple trips to the Medlab, showing up on family's front doorstep out of nowhere?! What if she IS dying?! Cody!?"

"Oh for...," Cody waved off the notion, frustrated, "You said it yo’self- NOT FUNNY. I was kiddin’, Cherie! Dere’s no way she wouldn't tell us if--"

"But its possible! What if she caught Legacy? Oh, God, Cody, what if--"

Cody clapped a hand over his kid sister’s mouth, "Forget it, petite. Ain’t no way in hell I’m goin’ t’ accept dat." He let his hand drop and slumped in his seat, "Quite frankly," he sighed morosely, "I can’ no handle it right now."

The two fell silent once again, but this time abruptly alert at the cause of their interruption... The sound of fast moving, boot-clad steps against a cold stone walkway grabbed both of their attentions. The scuffling was fairly distant, and the steps were heavy, but hurried ones. The two siblings watched as their half sister Cheyenne LeBeau crossed the far side of the garden, making no effort to mask her whereabouts whatsoever, despite the fact that the Professor and Mr. McCoy had been searching for her for nearly two hours. Their view was of her shocking burgundy knee-length mane of hair, ebony pants, spaghetti-strap shirt, and heavily booted feet as her blatantly angst-ridden frame made its way through and away from the garden, down the oak-lined path that would lead to the property's pond.

Jeanette and Cody exchanged knowing glances. They'd had little time nor chance to corner their sister and try to prod for some inkling of what sort trouble she was in- or, perhaps, what trouble she had managed to cause. Either way, they both felt somewhat deserving to know what on earth was going on after a week of being kept on the outskirts of things. They were desperate, really- but neither would ever completely admit it. An unspoken plan of action passed between the two with a single glance, as Jeanette and Cody LeBeau both rose to plod down the garden after Kayo.

Part 2: Insight from the kid prodigy

Short, stubby fingers fluttered with rapid persuasion in mid air, somehow magically raising a churning sphere of pond water in front of the wide-eyed, curiosity-filled face of Lleander Xavier Neramani. He squinted behind chubby cheeks of not-quite-gone baby fat, his tongue pursed out the side of his half-smiling mouth in intense contemplation. After all, it wasn’t entirely easy to create a mid-air habitat for the small tadpoles that circled within the sphere in front of him- but he had done it.

Lleander smiled proudly at his success- the same smile an average seven year old may grant a trip to Disney... but Lleander was no typical kid, that was for certain. A brilliant, powerful mind lay behind his dark, inquisitive eyes- a brilliant mind with an equally kind, heart-felt nature.

For all due causes, Lleander was the most incredible little kid Kayo had ever met. She’d loved to coddle the child as a toddler when she’d lived in the mansion years before, and as she’d watched him grow, he’d inspired her continually. He made her think, made her feel, made her want to care about something other then her own hardships for once.... sometimes his presence even helped to ease the pain of her past. For the moment, Kayo hovered above him on the branch of a tall, mossy oak, watching contentedly though dark, red-on-black eyes, wondering just how to approach him after so long.

She’d yet to have spoken to the boy since her arrival. There had been too much chaos going on since- to much hell to pay from one too many of her life's more recent traumas. One of those incidents in particular she hoped to gain some insight on from the brilliant little mind below her. If only she could just.....

"YAAAAAGGGHHH!"

Kayo got careless.

Her foot slipped over the tree’s mossy coat....

She panicked...

screamed.....

braced for a horrible impact..... That never happened?

Cheyenne heard a light, mirthful chuckle, "Jeese, Cheybee! You loosin’ your spying-when-you-shouldn’t-be-in-the-first-place tact, or what?"

Chey braved it up, and opened one eye, then another, and found herself completely vertical, suspended in mid-air, her formerly flailing arms and legs halted in comical mid-motions, rendering her entirely unable to move. She glanced up at her grinning little knight-in-shining armor as he used his chubby outstretched arm to keep her suspended.

"You are good, kid, I gotta give you that," Kayo smiled shakily, still riddled with panic from her near-plummet, "Could I, uh," She nodded to the ground to Lleander and back as best as she could for barely being able to move her neck, "Could I get down, please?"

Lleander shrugged, "Fair enough."

The moment he retracted his mental grip, Kayo hit the leaf-lined grass with a rather disgraceful 'THUD'! Lleander simultaneously released his home made fishbowl, placing it much more carefully into the pond off the side of the creaky dock on which he sat. Chey glowered up at him, shaking her mass of burgundy hair away from her face as would a wet dog, but not yet moving to stand, "Kinda rough for a 'hello how yah doin' wasn’t that, Lee?"

LLeander raised his eyebrows, grinning at her comically.

Chey sighed, smiling, shaking her head as she stood and plodded her to his side way across the weather-worn deck, "I know, I had it coming. ‘Never sneak up on a telepath’, I know. Personal space dilemma, right?" She smirked, "So, how long did you know I was sitting there?"

Lleander took on a wry tone that reminded Kayo strikingly of his father, Charles Xavier, "Long enough to sense why it is you want to talk.... Or rather, should I say, ‘of whom?'"

"Dang you telepaths," Cheyenne cringed, feeling the tickling sensation of a telepathic intrusion in her head as the child scanned her mind with his.

Lleander giggled at that, Kayo noticed, but she dared not watch for what his expression may be when he found what it was he was looking for. She simply sat, rubbing her tear-puffed eyes like a limp rag doll.

The weather was a breezy calm. Kayo could smell the fresh-cut grass of the Mansion’s expansive property, the familiar scents of its inhabitants, and the beginning preparations for that night's dinner, but none of it came as consolation to her beaten, withering conscience. Chey felt hallow, afraid, and resented the brand new trial that had so recently manage to plow its way into her life.

She didn’t want it. Didn’t need it. But this was her mistake, she feared.... and now she was stuck with a much larger repercussion then she’s ever bargained for.

Cheyenne could feel the wave of shock that swept over Lleander moments later. He’d found it. The sensation hit Chey like a ten-ton mallet. Lee whistled a wow, "Man, no offense Cheybee, but you REALLY landed in a heap of a mess this time."

Kayo muffed his hair up affectionately, but her pained expression remained the same, "I know, kid. I know."

There was a long silence- a needed calm. Lleander let Chey have the moment to rest. To think. It hurt him to feel how deep in despair she had become, and what scared him more was the course of action she was considering to ‘fix things’...

Kayo was superised at the strength and the desperation that came behind the grip Lleander suddenly had on her arm. "Cheyenne, don’t even think of it," He pleaded to her, "Please don’t do it. Its not fair for all involved, and you know it....."

Chey shuddered at the small voice that entered her head...

*You can’t risk another life to fix the fault of another.*

A bleary-eyed Kayo hugged the little boy. She knew that he knew exactly what she needed to hear. It didn’t ease her worry, but it definitely gave her incentive to follow her instincts... whether she would live to regret it or not. For that she felt immensely greatful.

Lleander grinned that mischievous little grin of his, "You’re quite welcome." He thought for a moment, then peered up at her hopefully, "So I suppose a game of fetch is out of the question, then, huh?"

Kayo beamed, shaking her head. It was amazing what she’d caught herself doing over the years gone by in her Canine form to make this kid happy. Playing fetch. Doing stupid animal tricks. Being toted around on the end of a leash of all things! The thing was, she enjoyed it, as long as it made him happy. She was superised at the disappointment she felt in not being able to feed the boy's childlike excitement, "Nope, sorry, kiddo. Can’t shift in this condition, Mr. McCoy says is too much of a risk."

Lleander shrugged, understanding, "Fair enough."

Both young mutants grew abruptly silent. They peered at each other suddenly, now aware of the presence of two others in the nearby shrub. Lleander could sense them. Kayo could smell them.

"Did they follow you here?" Lee questioned, not bothering to look back at his friend’s half-siblings, who were doing a very poor job of hiding some twenty feet to their right amidst the dense overgrowth... though he knew that they could be entirely stealth if they wanted to. Their blatant clumsiness was a clear "Hey guys, over here!" on their part.

Kayo sighed. She had to tell them. It was overdue- way overdue- and entirely unfair to have been avoiding them since she’d arrived - popping up out of nowhere and completely turning their family life for a loop. She swallowed back a whole new wave of guilt with some mental coercing from Lee.

*Time for the Big Sis to fess up, Cheybee,* Lleander prodded.

Cheyenne gulped, "I know, kid. I know."

Part 3: NY Fireboy and the evils of morality

In the furthest crawl space gamer’s cubicle, out of shot of all other eyes and ears inhabiting the geek-cluttered ‘NY Cyber Cafe’, a computer screen monitor flashed to life. There was a scuffle within the cubicle- the occasional metal clank and jangle, accompanied with rather pissy little voices and a large array of the type of words you just don't say in a public setting. Oddly enough, The computer’s inhabitant himself hadn’t said a word... and was ignoring the racket for the most part, although barely. A young man with wicked white eyes and the overall aura of a fire-cannon lunatic slipped a cigarette from his half empty pack, placed it in his goateed mouth and lit it... with his index finger?

.... There were more scuffles and shuffles from the floor amongst the legs of his chair. A brown leather knapsack skipped and scooted across the cubical floor as if having a life of its own. Abruptly flying off the handle, hit a wall and took off in the opposite direction in a flying leap, nearly lobbing off the man's cigarette and taking its owner’s entire head with it. Trevor O’Brian, The notoriously caustic NY fireboy, Inferno, shot the bouncing bag a pissy squint of a glare and relit his fag.

SCOOT. SCRRIIITCH. CLACK-KLINK....

THUNK!!

A dent in the cubicle wall later, and off the bag went again, this time dodging strait at his feet. Trevor scuffled up quickly enough to save his nearly bruised ego, pulling up his legs to sit Indian-style in his roll-along chair.

You don’t let your own pets take out your ability to WALK, he figured, Its just not done, man.....

THUNK!!

The Critters were in rare form that evening. It seemed they’d decided on inheriting A.D.D. and an acute case of claustrophobia for the occasion, and were going to make this whole ordeal as much of a living hell as sub-humanly possible for Trevor himself.

SCRIKLANK! Inferno gave the bag a good kick.

Why Trevor always felt the need to drag the little bastards along everywhere he went usually managed to allude him completely, and was doing an equally good job at doing so at that point. It was as if there was some written law stating that all mental manifestations must be within a five foot radius to their creator at all times. It seemed he couldn’t even pick his freaking nose lately without one of the little creeps wirring around his head, laughing its silver, fire-bitten butt off.

... And their laugh. That was HIS freaking laugh, man- the same raspy baritone- and it tripped him out every time, no fail. The Critters had inherited weird stuff like that from him since their manifestation a few years back- his laugh, his bad humor, his even worse temper...

And quite frankly, at the current, ‘He’ was annoying the hell out of himself.

"AAAAAGGGHHH!"

Trevor shot to his feet nearly swallowing his smoke as the scream sounded from the knapsack, and he dove for the bag.

The screaming continued from inside of it, "HE BIT ME! The motherfucker BIT ME!"

Trevor tore open the bag, enraged, "Will you SHUT UP?!"

Five innocent, eerily alien-esque black eyes on metallic orbs peered up at him from within the red lining of the sack.

One stuck out its lower lip (The little bastard actually pouted!) pitifully proclaiming, "But it hurt!"

Trevor blinked, flustered, "Just... I... You..." There was a paused. Trevor suddenly didn’t like their expression, "Don’t you guys even...."

Out poked five lower lips.

"Aw, man! Don’t you pull that crap on me you creepy little--" Trevor was cut off as the Videophone chimed over his Internet connection on the nearby computer. He punt-kicked the pack to the far end of the cubicle, ignoring the five raspy snickers that accompanied it, and plopped back down into his seat. He felt the previous wave of mixed anger, confusion and wretched depression that he’d been lost in just minutes beforehand- and for the past three weeks, at the least- take him over, yet again.

Inferno rubbed his fatigue- ridden face, and moved to hit the 'ENTER' key that would activate the Videophone Internet link, "Run your mouth, you got me."

The elderly bald man that flashed across the screen and the smug look that accompanied his image had never failed to infuriate Inferno. It was the same Hairless Wonder sitting there, the same one he’d been glad to turn his back on just four years previous, the same white- laced ‘peace, love, and fruity freaking happiness’ GoodGuy..... The same man Inferno had respected with everything in him, but hated the hell of just as much. None of that, at least, as his boiling, fury-ridden and currently sky-rocketing temperature was now telling him, had changed.

Charles Francis Xavier peered back at his former student and relentless rebel-monger with a look of cool clam, easily managing to mask the wave of sheer sympathy that lie just below it. He peered back at the same scared, angry adolescent he’d taken in just years beforehand- now an angry, bitter young man.

Charles supposed he’d taken the wrong rout in dealing with the child and his friends the first time he'd taken them in. Perhaps he had come off as far too righteous and authoritative for the vengeful, vagrant children those few years back. The professor had regretted every minute since of having let the children go, leaving them to further their misguided plight for Mutant Equality. He hoped that soon he would have a chance to guide those now hardened young adults towards a more effective fight for freedom.

Xavier laced his fingers in front of him, "Mr. O’Brian."

Inferno’s eyes narrowed, "Chuck."

Xavier’s eyes never faltered from the younger man’s bitter white, "Regardless of whether or not you believe me, it is good to see you again."

Inferno grunted, but said nothing, despite the sack of retarded suckers he called pets and their newly formed in-bag tackle spree they’d begun at his side.

Xavier stared him down, "What is it you wish to ask me, Trevor?"

Inferno’s eyes finally hit the floor. He felt drained, but burning with fury. He couldn’t bring himself to ask of something from this man- to ask anything- but he had to. That damned fine line between want and need had been stripped clean. He had to give in, as much as it destroyed his withering ego and pride to do so.

She had hurt him. Betrayed him. But he had to do this for her, because he loved her. He had to do it for Cheyenne.

It was Clear to Professor Xavier that the young man was wavering back and fourth on one of those horrid moral decisions that he hated so much. It didn’t take a psychic to see the devastation that had taken its toll on the man’s physical grandeur alone. Lord only knew what it must be doing to his loose mentality. Xavier made his move, his voice even, his fingers tented on end in front of him, "You are welcome to stay here, if you wish to be with her, Trevor. I realize things between us have been.... difficult..... to say the least. However, Nexus and yourself are always welcomed here, regardless."

Charles sighed thankfully as he watched the man’s tense continence ease, and his eyes flicker in their visionary track offscreen in contemplation. Charles was making headway, and both of them knew it. He pressed on, "The school is enrolling for new students Friday, Mr. O’Brian. You all will be excepted immediately due to your prior enrollment here, if you choose to attend. You will have a place to stay with her, at least."

Inferno finally looked up at the old man, his eyes quaintly glazed in exasperation. He was glad Xavier said nothing of it, sparing his pride of that much, at least. There was a quaint sigh from him. He rubbed his temples as if willing his next action was proving to be unearthly painful and, finally, Inferno nodded in agreeance, "Right. We’ll be there."

Charles made a mental note to pat himself on the back later, but for now, he continued to console the wretched young soul at hand, "Good." He nodded, "Miss Kayo is doing fine, as Hank has told me. She’s been quiet. Avoiding her father, as you can imagine... is clearly depressed. But she is doing well. She’ll be glad to hear you are coming."

"And the baby?" Trevor thought for a moment at what had escaped his lips, gapped, and nearly kicked himself. He shouldn’t care about the damned thing! It wasn’t his offspring, wasn't his problem... He was sacrificing everything for Chey, not that bastard of a--

"Perfectly healthy." Xavier lowered his voice as a father would to his disobedient son, "You’re doing the right thing, Trevor. Don’t undermind that fact. You can’t raise a child on the streets. It will be better to keep the child here where it will be safe."

Trevor’s eyes darted back to the floor. The hurt had returned, and was tearing through his chest, "Right."

Xavier nodded, "So I can expect to see you this weekend."

"Yeah. Yeah, We’ll be there."

"Good."

The screen went blank.

Part 4: Dig your own hole

Kayo was, absolutely, without a doubt, fed up with life at the current. She was deep within one of her "Starsmore Funks," as a couple veteran GenXers would call it, in reference to the dark, ruthless hero-gone-recluse Chamber. The notoriously bitter Brit had tried to off himself multiple times before beating the crap out of Emma Frost some eight years ago, disappearing, and haphazardly reemerging as the professional criminal known as Core. Or at least, this was what Kayo had been told countless times. Or warned of, really. There was an apprehension within the NY, Massachusetts and the newly opened satellite schools about the defunct, introverted students because of the incident, and Kayo herself had come under scrutiny on a daily basis from the day she’d arrive on campus for the first time years back. Cheyenne's being manic depressive just never seemed to help ease her peers’ paranoias.

Hmph. Imagine that.

Not that she cared what they thought. She, personally, liked Chamber- Nexus having aided him less then a year ago in bagging an FOH member that had tossed his mutie baby off the seventh floor of his apartment building. (Bagging him as in "tying him up, giving the guy a duct tape turban, painfully irraticating the headful of duct tape afterwards, and kindly leaving the scumbag on the doorstep of the NY police department with a cute little ‘FRY ME’ note attached to his forehead"- not bagging as in "body-bagging", although Jono had made it a point in making sure the guy was one big bruise before leaving him to squirm in the hands of the cops.) Jonothan himself was truly a good guy. He was severely twisted from the plights of his own awful powers and the idiocy of other people, yes, but like Nexus, deep down inside of his twisted little head, he was human... or as human as a mutant could get, anyway.

Chey didn’t plan on ‘Pulling a Jono’ anytime soon, though. She’d been there, done that, and outside of Nexus’ occasional screw-up, she tended to stay as far away from the butt-end of the law as possible. This, however, didn’t rule out gratuitously submersing herself in a credulous Starsmore Funk when the opportunity arose. She liked those. People stayed clear of her then, for once actually bothering to regard her personal space and just generally leave her the hell alone.

At the moment, Kayo was a discreet lump of distraught short-person on the roof of the Xavier Mansion. This was the trademark LeBeau hangout- The same one her father Gambit had inhabited as an escape since his first stay at Xavier’s little freak refuge decades ago, the same one his children and her half siblings Cody and Jeanette would follow him to years later, just to spend time with ol’ Poppa LeBeau, and the same one that none of their dysfunctional little elite had so much as grazed within the past few weeks for fear of a head-on brawl between Cheyenne and her father.

That night, Kayo had decided to brave it up, bargaining on the possibility that the quiet little star-gazer’s post would be empty. Thankfully, it had been. She needed to get away before she went completely buggy.... or ‘doggy’, or whatever you wanted to call it in her case. She needed someplace to cry her already tear-stained eyes out without the rest of the world fearing her impossible transformation into some idiot super-villain... She needed to escape her father, so she did.

Chey scanned the dark, crisp-cool mansion ground through clouded, tired eyes, with one eye in particular that was giving her fits... the big, red puffy one that had finally made a long-awaited contact with Remy LeBeau’s fist. This had not been a good evening. Chey had not been too verbally kind to the already fuming Cajun, and he hadn’t responded too physically kindly in return. Regardless, she felt like a kicked puppy- like someone, namely a big mop-headed dad-person, had ripped out her heart and pissed on it. She didn’t need the hate right now. She needed HIM.

Kayo retracted the protective hands that had seemed a barricade between the troublesome little thing growing away within her tummy and the rest of the spiteful world and sat on them. She knew she couldn’t expect any different from anyone right now. She’d dislodged and defiled everyone else’s trusts, it seemed, and this was just the repercussion. Her father, Trevor, her friends and family as a whole- she’d hurt them all, and now, she feared, they hated her. And for that, she hated herself more then anything. Had she not feared they would track her down and kick her butt for doing so, Kayo just may have joined the wounded likes of Chamber before even letting this whole mess come to pass. But for now, she did the only logical thing she could rationalize doing. She cried like a freakin’ dam broke. The uncontrollable sobs continued, her head pulsed and burned from temple to temple. She seemed to see simply through a hazy sheet of red.

...... And to make it worse, she seriously had to pee.

Dammit. Wasn’t pregnancy supposed to impose piddle problems once the kid-to-be was at least bigger then a.... a.... however big they weren’t at three months? Whatever. She was not going back in that house. She’d fall victim to frostbite due to urine-drenched PJs far before she’d earn another shiner to match the first one.

Not that getting swung at by Gambit was a common occurance, because it wasn’t. Sure, when she was a kid, it usually had taken a good whack ‘long side the head to set some sort of boundaries, because she had known none. Kind of like swatting a really big puppy with a really big newspaper- something to get the mental gears knocked into place, you know? Besides, Gambit was more of a big sucker-of-a-teddy-bear type person for the most part anyway.

.... but how was she to have known that he knew that many swear words in Latin? SHEESH!

..... She’d snapped, said the mean stuff, then he snapped, and he’d.... he’d......

Cue the waterworks, take five.

.... He couldn’t hate her too.... anybody but him... How could someone that meant everything to her want nothing do with her?.... he couldn’t....

Emotionally stunted.

The phrase, for some queer reason, took the opportunity to invade her distraught thoughts. She, according to Hank McCoy, was emotionally stunted. Her rationalization mojo was stuck at about ten years far too underdeveloped then what it should be.

I can’t. I can’t do any of this. I’m twenty three freakin' years old and I can’t even handle myself right. What the hell am I going to do trying to handle a little spawn of Satan on top of it?!

This thought is insued by yet even more sobbing. Kayo’s senses went daft with the tears, and she never even noticed the lanky mop-headed frame that had swaggered onto the roof to her side. The familiar, oddly comforting scent of cigarettes and cologne never even hit her recognition until she’d found herself being picked up bodily and pulled into the lap of her bleary-eyed father.

It was a familiar act. More then once one or the other had come to each other’s aid, trying to bleach away whatever harm had been done, whether they’d committed it or not. When Kayo was 14, first finding her niche into the bizarre little Xworld, and running, desperately trying to heal from a twisted, dilapidated past, She’s learned that, sometimes, comforting from the demon-eyed Cajun was the only thing that could stop the chaos and the pain. She thanked God that hadn’t changed, and knew that it wouldn’t. Gambit had gone for years without any loving arms to run to, knew the hollowness and despair it created, and had promised that he would be there without fail for his loved ones whenever it was needed, despite the cost. He’d told her this countless times, and she believed it for everything a man’s honest word was worth- everything and then some. So he held her there, rocking softly, muttering quiet comforts. Kayo eased slowly, knowing the affection was an open apology, as well as a chivalrous act of love.

She’d needed that, and the sobs quieted as soon as they’d started. Chey sat, easily curling her small frame into the comforting grasp, trying to will her tired, humiliated, self hating eyes to at least look at him in the face, but only managing eye-level with the grinning hour-glass wielding watchman of his faded black Led Zeppelin T-shirt.

She could still sense the fury in him. Reality of a few dreaded underlying truths had reared their ugly heads within the past few weeks, And she’d betrayed him more then anybody else. The two sat in silence for an eerily long while, Remy with his stubble-flecked chin at rest on the top of his daughter’s forehead, Kayo, trembling with building angst, staying in her oppressive haze, trying to derive some sort of ease from the sound of his heartbeat and the simultaneous expansions of his chest as he breathed- an odd comfort that only those with a proportionate level of animal instinct could know and enjoy. The comfort of the strength and physical wellness and dominance of another. The familiarity of a scent. The constant thrums of one’s pulse. Kayo only knew one other person alive who shared that same ability too sense comfort so deeply as well as feel it. And right now, she hated that one other person just as much as she hated herself.

"Just tell me ids much." Gambit finally spoke in a tired, drained baritone. Kayo glance up at him, finally willing her eyes to meet his, which were painfully sad, "Was gon' let you die, Cherie?"

Kayo felt the rage reach a sweltering high. "No," she lied blatantly. Acridly, "Still didn’t mean I had a choice in the matter... but no." She watched Gambit's expression grow disturbingly dark, his protective grip on her shoulder increasing to a discrete level of discomfort. Kayo squirmed, "I know what you’re thinking, Remy.... just don’t, all right? Big, Bad and 'Toothy can fend for his own, you know. You can’t kill him and expect to not be missing a few limbs and complete coherency as a definite outcome. I like the whole Remy, not little twitching pieces of him. Don’t even try it."

Yes, right, Cheyenne, that’s going to happen. You conceive your dad’s worst enemy’s kid, and he’s not going to go Homicidal Kung Fu-Style on the guy’s butt.... Idiot.

Kayo sighed evenly, shaking her head at her own ignorance. She watched the leaves of the surrounding trees rustle and glint from the gentled breeze and passive, cold, guilty moon. The untouchable, milky sphere had seen it all. It probably hated her, too.

"I’m sorry." Kayo’s voice hoarsely sputtered, "I don’t blame you if you hate me, Remy. I don’t blame any of you.... But I really need you to be there.... please... I’m so scared..... He doesn’t even know yet... and Trevor’s not even talking to me... and I’m afraid you hate me... and..."

"God, Cherie, I don’ hate you," Remy hugged her tightly as she went off in another bought of sniffles, "I could beat de snot outta you right now for bein’ so damn stupid for trustin' him.... and I could gut dat son’ of a bitch for layin’ a hand on you in de first place, but I love you girl, and nothin’ gon change dat... ever.... clear?"

"Crystal."

"Good," he kissed her forehead, ".... Mon dieu, though, petite.... I’ll never hate you."

Kayo hugged him back, suddenly feeling better then she had in Lord only knew how long. A faint smile of relief slowly grew on the demon-eyed cherub face she kept buried in his shoulder.

"I’m still gon’ kill him though, petite. Ain’t nothin’ gon’ change dat either." Remy glowered ruefully.

Kayo shrugged , her hands lacing her way back over her stomach bitterly, looking into the eyes of the only person alive she now felt she could ever trust. She grinned toothily... coldly, "That makes two of us, ‘mon ami’...."

Part 5: ....What You See is What You Get?

{Author’s note: >song lyrics< ..... & ‘WYSIWYG’ by Pitchshifter is copyright 1998 Geffen Records Inc. }

"So what on earth is going on, anyways?" Chastity Wagner blinked rather irritably, exhasperatedly trying to pull her unruly red hair back into a pony tail. It was late Thursday evening, and the elfish teenager was going about her usual routine of beating her fiery mane into some menial form of restraint before she ‘hit the sack’. She, annoyingly enough, after five minutes of prodding her friends, still wasn’t being tuned into the gossip loop that had been in amidst the chatter that day after Professor Xavier had called a meeting of the NeoX team members to, out of no where, inform them that the notorious Nexus would be paying them all a visit the very next day, "Well? C’mon you two!"

Silence. Chastity sighed. The rec room sounds of nothing other then a low murmur from the muted TV, and the way-too-loud stereo that was likely to gain multiple complaints from other mansion residence, and soon, filled the silent air around them. Jeanette LeBeau continued to mope, munching pitifully on a nearly empty bag of Sugar Bombs, clearly depressed over whatever it was everyone seemed not to be able to find the vocal qualms to tell her about, and Jade Logan was looking as unattached and unconcerned about the whole thing as would her father, her dark eyes nearly staring a hole into the TV screen. Chastity jabbed relentlessly at the older but comparably shorter girl’s arm. Jade gave her The Look. Chastity took the hint and immediately backed off.

"Man, this blows!" She pouted. She attempted coaxing Jeanette. Again. "C’mon, Kid, Cheyenne’s your sister! Why the heck is her freak-o friends movin’ in on our terf all the sudden? What. The. HELL. Is. Going. ON?!"

Still nothing. She was seriously getting most righteously fed up. In a last desperate attempt, she snatched the deity that was the bag of Sugar Bombs.

"Hey!" Jeanette looked as if she’d been shot.

Chastity slipped the bag beneath her fuzzy Elmo slipper in a motion threatening to stomp, "Spit it out, LeBeau, or the psycho food gets it, and I’ll have you suckin’ on Mr. McCoy’s ear in five second’s flat!"

"EEWW! Nasty! Allright, allright! I give!" Jeanette reclaimed her beloved Sugar Bombs, bolted across the room and plunked into a plush recliner, holding a pillow up between herself and Chastiy’s libido-driving glare, "Just, fine! I’m tired, pissed, am heiress to a family of complete morons, and have a serious case of PMS, but fine. What do you want to know?"

" ‘What do I want t--’?! ARG!" Chastity suddenly desired a very large, very hard concrete wall to ram her head into. Repeatedly. Didn’t anyone in this entire mutant household listen to a word she said? EVER? She breathed in deep, trying somehow to collect her frazzled nerves, and braced to repeat herself for the umpteenth time that day, "Ok. Here goes," Pause. "Who the heck is Nexus? Are they those same weird people who used to go here at The School before it shut down when we were kids? I mean, like, the same mean, creepy ones that duct taped my brother to the basketball pole in the gym? WHY are they moving in on our terf as of tomorrow? Is it because of Kayo? Is something wrong? Is, like, that Trevor guy still as cute as--"

"WHOA! Whoa!" Jeanette flailed her arms irritably, "Inhale before you hurt yourself, already! Give me time to think." Jade suppressed a giggle. Chastity composed herself. Jeanette was suddenly cursing the Creators That Be that blonde jokes didn’t work on redheads. She sighed , "Look. I’m not even supposed to breathe a word about this to anyone, but.... but, I mean, you all are going to find out sooner or later, anyways, I guess."

The CD player picked that exact moment to switch. With the gritty screech of an off-set electric guitar and strained vocals in accompaniment, an old Pitchshifter tune fired up. None of the recroom’s attendees paid mind to the song, and none noticed the odd choice of lyrics that chose to invade their personal space....

Nor did they notice its legitimacy in their own dislike of the sudden subject at hand.

Jade blinked, sensing the youngest Lebeau’s sudden wave of grief. It was a pained sensation, like a steel-cold clawed fist gripping her soul. She gulped, suddenly poising tense in her seat on the couch, "What’s wrong, Jeanette? Whats going on?" Not that she’d ever expected, nor braced for the shock at the answer that shot back....

"Cheyenne’s pregnant--"

>Mal-adjusted freaks.<

"She’s WHAT?!" both of the child thief’s friend’s bleated in unison. This was followed by dropped-jaws and looks of utter defilement.

>Mal-adjusted freaks....<

"--- pregnant, by Victor Creed, that creepy Sabretooth cat-guy, and--"

>God awful waste of space. SPACE!<

"WHAT!?"

>Dumb degenerate lowlifes. LOWLIFES!

"Uuug!" Jeanette was nearly in tears, and tried to look as threatening as possible by way of an impending pillow flogging via the Snoopy-sheeted atrocity she raised above her head, "WILL. YOU. LET. ME. FINISH?! Jeese! She’s pregnant- like bun-in-the-oven, I’m gonna pop out a kid in nine months- pregnant, by the Homicidal Hairball. NO, She’s not just visiting, she’s here to stay. Permanently, from what I can tell, or at least until little Creed Junior’s able to move out and get a job--"

>‘Caus I want just one day....

There was a snicker, "Which could be, like, never, if you consider the intelligence factor in THAT gene pool. So what does that have to do with Nex--"

Jeanette shot her a look to kill and raised the pillow a couple inches higher over her head.

Chastity blushed, "Right. Sorry. Go ahead."

"Nexus are the closest friend’s she’s got, Chas. They want t’ help her, The same as I’m guessing our team would want to help one of US if we were in the same slag... so they’re moving in. Should be real interesting, though. I mean, now that we’re both teams, and we’ll both be living here, and they’re... y’know..." Shrug.

"Twisted insubordinate perversions of the mutant race?" Jade offered wryly. The three of them giggled.

>Lowlife de-generation generation.<

"Yes, thats it!," Jeanette announced, "A bit strong on the pessimism, but yeah. As the professor would put it," She sat upright, laced her hands in front of her, and did her best Chuck Xavier, "we’re ‘inheriting troubled youths’ as roomies."

>You’ve got to know your place,

Jade shook her head, glaring at a nowhere-spot on the hard wood floor, "And along with inheriting the bodies, comes all of their problems, views, hang-ups, prejudices.... the whole lovely package. I’m sure that is going to be a sure-fire booster on Neo team moral," she muttered rather sarcastically. "Its quite sad, really."

>God-awful waste of space. SPACE!

Chastity pondered, "Well, maybe it’ll do them some good to stay here. I mean, maybe the freak-o rebel thing was just a phase. Maybe they grew out of it or something. In any case, I don’t think it’d hurt us to try to be a little, like, hospitable, right?"

"Quite frankly," Jeanette blushed down at her hands, "I wish Chey’d never even come knockin’ with all of this crap. It's screwed up my family. It's pissed off my dad. And now we’re inheriting a hellspawn child and a group of over-opinionated rioters to come live in our home. It just doesn’t seem worth it."

>‘Cause I want just one day

"Jeanette LeBeau!" Jade scolded harshly, at both her friend and the slight edged of disownment that she felt lying hidden deep within the younger girl’s heart, "Bit you tongue, girl! She’s you sister!"

> Lowlife de-generation....

Jeanette’s blush reddened, "Ok, MOM.... sorry. You’re right," She huffed, "But I still don’t like it."

>..... And if what you see is what you get,

There was a sudden shout from the hall that made the girls nearly jump out of their slippers. Warren Worthington IV poked his head into the recroom from beneath the main entrance's doorjamb. He looked peeved. Extremely peeved, "Cut the stereo and head for the professor’s office, now, ladies. He’s got a word or two about volume control, got it?"

Jade, Chastity and Jeanette groaned in unison. With no more then a shrug and a whimper about it, the stereo was cut, and the three headed off towards their impending ‘doom’.

>... Lowlife de-generation...

CLICK!

Part 6: Suicide kings and an innocence lost

New York night life remains a strong, vibe-ridden force despite the time, weather, and forever remains better for wear in the dankest moments of the evening. However, for the city’s deviant collective, when trying to keep out of the grasp of the authority, the last place one wants to be is caught out in the masses, lost in the club scenes, or dubbed some sort of socialite royalty. No one collective knew this fact better then the bootlegging mobsters of the 1920’s NY Militia. Brilliant planners, open and willing to pay homage to the obvious, They struck and plotted their home base just out of reach of the popular culture of the time and of generations to come. On the outskirts of Manhattan, overlooking the Bronx, the legitimate face of the NYM still stands, a rather large monstrosity of an abandoned, dilapidated formerly prosperous pub, now little more then a haphazard cultural landmark: A building too historically significant to destroy but too horribly worn to be restored. From its floor boards up, the structure now serves no more purpose then that of a residency for vagrant homeless squatters, subject to constant drug trafficking, and the occasional police raid, whenever the local pig department gets too terribly board. It is underground that the building had, and still to the present, serves its deviant and most beautifully misleading purpose....

Then, upon its creation, when the Mafia kings still played their pawns out of the local shop owners, forged their illegal substances, and kept the entire city as a whole controlled hand-over-fist, the subterranean tavern of the WolfsBaren Pub was the thriving hornets nest of the local Militia.... From the secret passageway located in the rear end of the Pub’s dark, sallow seller's equally hidden ammunition vault, the few that knew of its existence were lead through a narrow passageway, deep into the underbelly of the city. The stone-laden corridor, reminiscent to that of medieval catacombs of late, stretched on for what seemed to be miles. Its final destination, behind steel-framed doors and the constant presence of the most skillful of artilary-weilding thugs, the passageway opens up into a cavernous tavern and various minuscule adjoining rooms. Then, this was the base of operations of the country’s elite Mafia henchmen. It had been the starting creation point for planning of some of the world’s most notorious organized crimes..... The hideaway, brewery, and speak easy of Al Capon and his minions, among hundreds of others in the Criminal Mastermind elite.

Now, the subjectivity of blatant harassment of the local New Yorkers has all but been forgotten. A good part of the once glorious structure that dominated the city’s underworld has mostly concaved, decayed.... is now left as a few pitiful hallow bits of the brilliant base of operations it had once been..... but its reputation for deceit and its aura of anti-authoritative impunity still lives......

..... Now as the home of Nexus.

These days, the tavern, or what’s left of it, is sorely lacking in the armed-thug area. A couple of timid kicks at the steel door at the entrance way by way of a steel-toed boot is the basic hello and plea for entrance..... Most of the time.

Keith Miser, at the moment toting an armful of Chinese food cartons that well exceeded his own weight that just barely managed to give him enough headway to peer over the lot of stir fried cat, let alone enable him to give the door another wrap, is having considerably less luck. He stands precariously, willing his stubby knees not to buckle under the weight, his long pointy ears tremulously pulled back in fear over the sudden image that crossed his mind of being rather indignantly squashed into a neat little blood stain by his own dinner.... his teeth grit, his brow dampened.... he was damn convinced he was near death before the little peephole slot on the massive steel door shot open.... and A pair of black void-eyes peered out at him from behind equally ebony hair.

"C’mon, Mate! Ahm Dyin’ out ‘ere!" Keith hissed.... Then he got a good look at just WHO’s beady black eyes were peering down at him..... "Aw, hell." Colin Shardwik... Noir.... That creepy son of a..... Damn. This was NOT going to be fun. "Not bleedin’ funny, Beanpole! Open the bloody door!"

The obnoxious eyes crinkled at him in a grin- a notorious sign of trouble, "Its easy how this works, y’know. Really. See- YOU say the password, I let you in, comprende?"

"I don’t ‘ave TIME fer this! OPEN.. the... DOOR, Collin!" Keith literally had to rap his tail at his knees to keep from hitting the floor.

"EEHH! Wrong answer. Care to buy a vowel?"

"OPEN THE DOOR, ASSHOLE!"

Noir clicked his tongue at him, "Nope... no, I don’t think thats it. Too bad, innit? Heh-heh. Not havin’ much luck t’night, are we?"

"F@$#!!" Creeper screeched. A carton of hot something pick that moment to split and empty itself in a location Keith would later refuse to admit to. "OPEN! NOW!"

"Bravo!" The gleeful black eyes vanished as the peephole slapped shut. The sound of the door unlatching was the best thing to hit Keith’s lengthy ears in weeks. Light poured into the pitch hallway where he stood from inside the tavern, and the lanky, scarecrow-esque form of Nexus’s hellious Nightmare God stood over him like a badly beaten marionette doll. Noir, in his Black sweats, way-too-many piercings, and deathly pale skin came off as more of a hyperactive cadaver then anything else.... but still held his skill of annoyance with pride... making the goofy bastard all the more annoying. He grinned down at the pained little elfman who was rather comically trying to mop his crotch and keep a grip on his parcels at the same time and quipped, "You got it, man! Now how hard was THAT? seriously!? Yo, Creeper! C’mon MAN! don’t be hatin’! Keith! HELL-ooo! Cree-per!"

Keith, dubbed Creeper during his former years of London Pub barbrawling, gave the black-clad scarecrow a skillfully raised middle finger, and then ignored the lanky git completely, walking right between his legs and into the Den. Collin watched the descending midget with and air of blissful pity, " Huh. MAN! Its a sick sad world, I tell yah. No sense of humor, man, none a’ tall..."

The Tavern... now affectionately nicknamed the Den (some hint of a warm homey feeling that its cold damp interior lacked entirely) since having been adopted as Nexus’s little home base upon its accidental discovery a few years back, has undergone a remarkable transformation. Creeper himself, regardless of the hundreds of times he’s stepped into the place, is still forced to be taken aback a bit at the amazing amount of work and care he and his ‘kids’ had put into the place. The walls of the place, from the sooty floor to the shallow ceiling, were covered completely with carefully crafted graffiti artwork, care of the currently absent and direly missed Kayo. The floor itself has been ‘carpeted’ with a vast array of rugs and spare bits of old carpet. Old, formerly defunct, but carefully repaired furniture is set about the place... two old couches... the group favorite bright red duct-taped recliner....mismatched end tables stacked with dozens of lit candles that illuminate the place.... a large dining table... a small seemingly ancient stove, old mini-fridge, along side two electric heaters and the anti-humidifier fire hazard from hell. This place was home, and comparably, if you don’t take into account the group’s time at Xaviers mansion, which none of them do, is the best they’d ever had.....

........ Anti-superheros in underpants. Hmmm.

Creeper guessed the sight would seem odd to just about any other living organism on the planet.... but none of Nexus had ever been much for modesty..... and sheik loonies in boxers and briefs had been dubbed a common amongst the group. After all, they’d spent years in captivity where everyone and their brother, despite age, sex or race were hose down on a daily basis in one large building as makeshift ‘showers’..... had repeatedly witness their friends and loved ones being assaulted in just abut every horrible way possible. They’d seen enough of eachother to be nulled entirely by meager undergarments. The point being? modesty was definitely out of the question with the Nexus crew. They appreciated eachother’s simple presence, and cared little of.... well... how that presence was presented.

Seconds past Creeper’s silent entry into the candle-lit tavern, its stone walls echoing the light, warm chatter of its inhabitants and the tame murmur of the not-so-tame Prodigy medley that strum on low key on a battery operated radio, Noir came plodding past him, sweeping a handful of the cartons out of his arms in the process. Keith growled, "Gee thanks, Beanpole.... Twenty freakin’ minutes later...."

Noir grinned a grin wide enough to be deemed painful if worn by any normal human being and impersonated his best stereotypical flamer, lisp and all, "No prob, Keefie, baby. Anythin’ for you, beautiful, don’t you know it?"

Creeper nearly choked on his tongue at that last comment, and shot The scarecrow Goth a pissy-glint glare and chucked an eggroll at his head, "Sod off, queer bait!" he retorted indignantly, squaring his skinny shoulders, and once more, shook off and ignored the lanky King of Irk. Keith grimaced inwardly as he pads his short self into the direction of his clueless kids with his armful wan-ton-fried-kitty, his fire-cannon mind racing.... It wasn’t as if Noir didn’t constantly manage to come off as a bit of a... erm... not-so-strait-guy anyways.... He was flippy, perky, a constant tease... sweet enough to induce the cavity from hell.... And yet he was strait as all get out- He just acted like a freakin’ flamer. Period . The sick part was, Keith sighed in the unfairness of it all.... The Ladies seemed to love it.

*dammit.... dammit..... dammit....*

"Dinner!"

*AW DAMMIT!*

"WHOA!" Creeper was nearly clobbered by the charging form of the demon chick, Shayla Ki, with her bat like wings, snaky tail, pixy grandeur and all- in the split second BEFORE her bulky Latino boyfriend nearly close-hanged her in a round-about effort to keep his midget buddy from getting mowed over. She pouted pitifully behind the massive adamantium arms of Caleb Rodriguez, her delicate cherub face set in a mope with the impeccable cuteness enough to make any man unwillingly kick their back leg, "You got my eggrolls. TELL ME you got my eggrolls..."

"You think I’d risk me life in f’rgettin’ yer eggrolls, gel?" an amused grin graced Creeper’s grodey features, "I’m in the clear, bird," he lets his parcels plop, and holds out a mutilated bag, "Bon Appetite."

Shay’s entire face lights up, "Yes, you most certainly are," She snatched the bag, her wings subconsciously coming to rest at her shoulders. Shay giggles, "And yes, I most certainly will." She stuffs a greasy bit of food in her mouth, and tries meagerly to grin through the mouthful, "I ‘uess I can’na fwogh yao ‘ow."

Noir looks up from plowing through one of the cartons, no doubt in search of the fortune cookies for a good laugh, "Can’t flog him? Sure yah can, luv! I gotta boot in th’ other room. Just one wack, man! He’ll be out cold! Hell, I’LL do it! can I do it? Can I? Seriously! You-- mnph!" A delicate metallic hand shot up from the fetal blanketed body on the couch and cuffed its way over Noir’s forever flapping pie-hole.

"Collin, dear," Anne Kenya Shi’s onyx eyes peered groggily up at her hyper friend, "Do shut the hell up. I'm entirely not in the mood forAAEEWW!! GROSS!" Her hand shot back as she wiped it viciously on the arm of the couch, "Brilliant, Beanpole! I cannot believe you just licked me! Ugh!"

Noir literally bowled over laughing that diabolically cackle laugh of his.

Caleb- Dante- cocked an amused eyebrow, "Can’t believe it? Consider the source, Chica."

Annex shot Noir The Look, "Good point."

"Point?" Noir grinned evilly, "I’ll give you a point... Like this one right he-- owowowowOOOWWW!"

Collin’s middle finger barely managed to erect itself before having itself clamped in Annex’s steel-hard grip. The Scarecrow shrieked like a girl, "YYEEOW! OK! OK! Uncle, MAN! UNCLE!"

The entire group cracked up. Anne released Noir’s favorite finger and snickered haughtily, "Care to try that again, Collin, dear?"

Collin stuck his tongue out at her. "Butthead."

"Enough," Dante’s baritone commanded and the lot of them plopped on and around the couch, burrowing through bags and quaintly pigging out. It was a silent glut-fest, though. There was a dreary funk within the Tavern- It had been the underlying emotional basis for the group for nearly the past three months as a whole.

The Nexus kids were masters at boggling emotion. It was a learned trait- one that had molded each of their personalities in entirely different ways, but one they all shared and mastered, none the less. Within that past week, the underlying oppression of fear was the basis of the group funk, and it only took one second of dreaded silence such as this for it to take over all of them.

Their lives were changing. Again. Every member of the team longed for the repetitive droll of a normal daily routine- For the longevity and calm in just being able to be normal. To be human. But that wasn’t to happen. They seemed cursed from birth to live lives of chaos and constant emotional strain.

That week’s shared sentiment was that of complete shock and sympathy. They were about to bring in another innocent soul into their dark little word of sub-normality. The baby of their odd elite- the soul object of their drive to protect and stay together as a team- Cheyenne LeBeau, Kayo- was going to have a kid.... going to sire a child that was not that of the Nexus’s leader, Inferno- Her love for nearly a year now, and her friends and soulmate since birth.

That hurt just as much as her absence- To see their strong, valiant leader nearly wither up and die with the realization that he had been betrayed completely..... yet it was an odd, somewhat credible form of betrayal that racked the teams emotions completely, leaving them unsure of whom to side with. Trevor O’Brian had sworn to himself from the day Cheyenne was born that he would always be there to protect her.... and yet, in the oddest of ways, he had failed to do so entirely.....

Chey, for years, had and still, felt hagridden with the beast-man Victor Creed. Sabretooth. They "shared instinct" as Kayo had put it, so eerily in awe time and time again. "You’ll never know what its like to find the one person on earth who proves that you’re not alone in the world.... Never know what its like to be a horrible creature.... a beast.... to have and underlying need to kill.... to have to shield bloodlust and Rage to keep from hurting everyone I love.... To envision death even though I HATE IT...to have a drive for another soul- just one- someone else out there who has to live the same hell... and at least knows how to control it when they want to," Kayo would cry repetitively in her worst bouts of depression, looking up and her team, her family, with tragically animalistic eyes, "He’s the one."

Shared sediment number two of the week- ‘That One’ was the epitome of scumbag. Nexus gave the man the credit he deserved for having taken care of her for years like he had.... But Creed’d warped her mind within that time. Somehow made her think that she needed the creep, and perhaps she did, but they could never see the logic in it after the few times that the man’s bloodlust had reared its ugly head upon her- hurting her... nearly killing her once. They simply could not forgive the instances when Creed’s fits of rage had been turned against Kayo, just as it had in the girl’s most recent trauma. And now she was cursed to carry his child..... The thought enraged the team, because only they knew of how the unborn had come to be. The Scumbag had hurt her, and the lot of them feared the results. What would become of a baby whose parents were equally barely capable in shielding their mysterious ‘Blood Rage’ fits?

The Den had become a dead-still tomb of monotonous chewing. Noir, for once, was still. Quiet. Gloom over rode his usually sunny demeanor as me nibbled on his fortune cookies, their inner contents oddly laid aside. Only occasionally did he make a half-hearted playful attempt to feed the bits to Anne.

*He’d HURT her.*

The thought tore at them all.

Shay and Dante had curled up together on the couch with their meal, and had donned a fluffy purple comforter, but still their felt bitterly cold. Caleb scratched at his chin thoughtfully, but his eyes remained grief stricken. Shay, usually the team Mom- the Agony Aunt- the spark of hope for them all with her centuries of aged wisdom and grace, cried silently in Dante’s arms. The pixy girl despised the thought of what was coming to pass. Then, there, and yet again tomorrow.

*To give up our freedom AGAIN.... It almost feels too painful to be done. To give ourselves to the ideals of Xavier, knowing as we do of his misled innocence? I hate it ...I’ll only do it for Inferno... and for Chey.*

Creeper was at a loss. His hardened, angry continence glared at one particular piece of graffiti art Miss Chey had accomplished since their stay in the Tavern- The wretched mugshot of her dear Vicky Creed. That bastard. It was all he could do, not to hunt the freak down himself and slowly disintegrate the Beast’s livelihood as slowly and dreadfully painful as possible.... Though He knew he couldn’t... not knowing how much it would ruin Kayo for him to do so. He knew he must share Gambit’s sediment, however, even though her father himself lacked Nexus’s knowledge of the Truth. Keith’d almost looked at the girl as his own daughter over the years.

But how could he NOT play out his vengeance?

Dante squirmed a bit on the couch, sighing heavily. Shay poked his belly, "Stop it, you," she smiled half-heartedly, "Pillows don’t move."

There was a light chuckle shared between five of them. Dante beamed, his handsome dark eyes crinkling down at Shay, and he sighed yet again. The sidelined musing had even seemed to light Noir’s fuse, and with a blissfully evil glint in his eyes, he bolted up and over to the refrigerator for Lord only knew what reason.

"So," Creeper cleared his throat and stretched his vertically challenged frame, "Who’d like t’ play Suicide King an’ drag dinner in t’our resident Broken Hearted?"

Annex shook her head dignantly, "You know I’ll get stuck doing it. Poor thing. I’ve told Trevor time in and out that pursuing a relationship with Cheyenne was just setting himself up, have I not?" Dante shot her a warning look. She was treading on a direly delicate subject. Anne ignored it, crossing her arms, slumping back into the couch cushions, directing her void-eye-gaze at the ceiling, "Creed’s not going to let her go. Its mind games. All of it. And she’s caught up into the web..... And you know I’m right." She sat up and looked acridly at Dante, her cold metal patches of flesh seem to reflect her bitterness all the more towards Sabretooth. "I’m right. You know it. And we’re about to be incarcerated because of HIS bastard child."

"Back off, Chica," Dante’s steel fists clenched tensely, his rumbling tone urging Shay to shoot Annex a look of warning as well, "We’ll take Xavier, Creed, The precious Xchildren, all on as they come. Thats not going to change, tu comprende? Besides...," He leaned back into his seat, "That still doesn’t solve just how we’re going to get *these* eggrolls into *that* room, or--"

>PLINK!<

Shay and Creeper suddenly bowled over in a full-belly laugh... Annex rolled her eyes... Dante scrambled around helplessly in his seat, trying to find the cause of the sudden bizarre sound and sensation, "What in the-"

>PLINK!<

"How did-," Caleb looked around himself frantically, with a wide-eyed innocence, "Where-," Down his shirt, at his nonexistent feet, on his back, down his fly- unable, for the life of him to figure out what on Earth his teammates were laughing at until... unti--

>PLINK!<

"You goofy son of a bitch!" he spotted Noir at his side, close enough to even make a big boy like him want to squirm away and dry-heave, as the budding scarecrow grinned that hellicious grin of his... with a handful of Too Much Coffee Man kitchen magnets? Oh no...

Collin points with a malicious snicker at Dante’s right arm, and the Latino’s pissy glare follows the long boney finger to its destination.... and the room’s inhabitants, nix Dante, bursts out into another gut-wrenching laugh.

"Real clever, Beanpole." Caleb scoffs rather caustically.... and brushes off the magnets which have strongly attached themselves- or rather had BEEN attached- to his thick adamantium arm.... and jabs a steel finger at Noir’s scrawny stomach with vicious precision.

"No! No, wait, man!" Noir’s arms flail dramatically, accidentally flinging a magnet across the room, "Check THIS out!"

>>PLINK!<<

.... Dante nearly flies at the removal of the latest magnetic addition... to his forehead, "NOT FUNNY! Not freaking funny!"

Noir cracks up with the rest of them. Dante chucks the magnets at his head... and sorely misses, yet somehow manages to magically knock another insane form of levity into the prankster's feeble brain. The room falls silent as a slight smirk crosses Collin’s ghastly features.... and spreads quickly into an all-out I Am Satan Hear Me Cackle toothy grin.... He looks from the magnets..... To Annex... and nods evilly, "Oh yeah."

"OOOOOooh no!" Annex shrieks and stands to bolt, "HELL no! Don’t you even- AAAGGGHH!" The gothic magnet-wielding bag of bones takes a flying leap at the terror-stricken chick.... Who bolts.... who is quickly followed by Dante and Creeper.... which is watched with dire amusement by Shay. Chaos insues. Collin clobbers Anne. Dante clobbers Them both. Creeper dodges a deadly metal fist and---

"EEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGHHHH!!!!"

>>KER-CLICK... CLINK-KLANK-KLUNK!!<<

The flailing entanglement of Nexus kids stop in mid-brawl to watch a fist-sized metal sphere fly out of the Bunks, ricochet off of half a dozen pieces of furniture, and roll to a rather painful stop at their feet. The magnet wars were all but forgotten as the five of them scooted in to encircle and timidly lean in on and over the trembling little.... thing. Shay’s eyebrows crinkled upward in a wave of pity, and she scooped up the shuttering thing in her delicate claw-tipped hands... it was whimpering.... "Aaaw! I cannot BELIEVE he just did that!" Dante rubbed her back reassuringly as her big doe eyes began to tear up. The little sphere suddenly donned pain-stricken eyes and a quivering lower lip.... "Oh, you poor kid! Its OK, Hun, see? Its OK! He didn’t mean it!" Shay cooed at the thing who’s expression was growing more and more angsty by the second.... he was one of the Critters, Inferno’s bizarre alien-esque mental manifestations that he’d donned as pets some time back. This one of the five infamous Pet Peeves in particular had simply gotten his master’s own angst taken out on him.... and had been chucked clear across the room harshly and unexpectedly enough that little metallic non-existing tears began to spout from its vagrant opaque eyes, down its pitifully scraped metallic cheeks.... and suddenly....

"Bloody hell!" Creeper spat, reeling away from the trepid orb, "He’s gonna blow, mates! Watch out, he’s gonna--"

"WWAAAAAAAAHHH-Haaa-haaah!"

A quiver and a sniffle later, and the Critter was up to an all-out wail, his little liquid metal tears animatedly pouring from his eyes ....downright pitiful. The Nexus kids panicked on the spot- Shay desperately trying to rock the thing back to silence, her pointed ears and tail drooping over the grieving little creep, "Shhhh-sshhh! Its OK! Its OK, little guy... erm.. girl.. uh.... pleeease stop crying! Please!" She looked up at the dumbfounded Dante pleadingly, "Caleb DO something!"

"WAAAH! Waaaah!" >>sniff, snuffle<< "WaaaaHAAAA!"

Dante managed to blink, "I, uh... you... it....Wha-?"

"Nothing!" Creeper grimaced, "Hand ‘im ov’r!" The elfman, looking as gallant as he possible could for being momentarily clueless, snatched the despondent Critter right out of Shay’s comforting grasp, making the Peeve yowl even louder.

"Brilliant plan, Keith!" Annex scowled, covering her ears as best she could with her spiny metal fingers, "Kudos! You’re freaking brilliant!"

Creeper and his short self snarled at her, his eyes flashing white, still with the sobbing steel lump in his fist. He retorted at her over the Critter’s cries, "Shut up, grab th’ F#@&in’ food, n’ come on!" He wheeled around on the balls of his feet and stomped towards the Bunks, stopped dead in his tracks, and yelled at the bleating Critter, "QUIET!"

Silence with little more then a whimper later, and Keith Miser was stomping right back towards the other room. The rest of the Nexus posse followed suit, Annex following direct orders and snatching the nearest carton of Stir Fry, with Shay and Dante trading Looks, following close behind, and Noir mumbling something about ‘one serious case of PMS’....

The five of them paused beneath the door frame that led to the Bunks, sensing each other's trepidation. It was hard enough seeing Inferno in the state he was in, and putting themselves in the line of fire didn’t quite make the horrid ordeal any easier. Trevor O'Brian was a walking time bomb- a caustic trigger-happy spell of dementia waiting to happen.... and often DID happen. He was a vicious fighter, a bold leader, and was knocked down emotionally far easier then he was physically.

The Nexus five traded looks for a moment, not one of them really wanting to go IN there. There was a sigh from Creeper, a shake of his head, and he pulled the bag of Chinese away from Anne. "I’ll go," he whispered gruffly, "stay put ‘till I say otherwise." The others nodded wholeheartedly..... if he was willing to risk getting char-broiled crispy, they figured, more power to him.

Slowly, Creeper pulled back the tattered sheet that served as the blockade between the Tavern and the close quarters of the Bunks, poked his head into the room, big ears and all, and took in the loathsomely depressing scene. The claustrophobically small room was almost entirely dark, and makeshift wear-worn bunks lined the cobblestone walls in military fashion, breaking the emptiness of the cold, hallow space..... It was almost completely reminiscent of concentration camp living. Keith smirked. With all of Nexus’s efforts to break away from their life at the Coercion confines, not one of them felt comfortable sleeping any further then five feet apart. Keith and Shay had grown accustomed to it, and the rest of the kids had grown dependent on eachother’s presence just that much since the day their infant selves had been drug off to hellious camplife. The only way, it seemed, to rid themselves of the horrid nightmares leftover from their childhood was to re-enact some of its darkest, most oppressive atmospheres- and stick together in the midst of it. Even during their time at Xavier’s School for Higher Learning, the sevens’ adaptation to Dorm life had been a joke... and they’d have all silently emigrated from their individual rooms, gravitated towards Inferno and Creeper’s shared room, and managed to resemble a snoozing clump of teenagers by morning...

Some wounds will never heal, Keith thought decisively, and his eyes finally registered the gaunt, deathly idle form of his friend. He breathed in deep.

On the top bed of the furthest bunk to the back of the room, the four of the Critters that hovered just inches above the team’s fetal leader gazed up from their master to Creeper with wild, frightened eyes. The fearless Inferno looked like the image of Death himself. Trevor’s normally pale skin had lost at least five shades to his current state, his eyes and cheeks sunk in, his demeanor brittle and weak as he gazed pitifully at an empty eyed, ruefully grinning stuffed penguin that he kept firmly in his grasp. 'Guin. Cheyenne’s little stuffed pride and joy....

Cheyenne’s.... Kayo... betraying witch. He was furious, broken- the state shown wildly by his slowly diminishing mass and the brittle crackle that came with the skyrocketing body temperature that radiated off of him. With his boiling blood, weakening bones and deteriorating flesh his body was helplessly trying to compensate and heal- but was failing to do so miserably, draining the life out of him by the second. Creeper read his friend like a book. The depression he felt was to be expected... the anger, the trepidation, the angst.... but his physical state at the moment was falsified. Forced. Trevor OBrian was slowly trying to kill himself.

With that keen wave of realization, Creeper, as he’d done countless times in the years since the interdependent Nexus collective had formed, forced back and cooled the panic, and took action immediately, "Bloody hell! Shayla, get in here, gel, He’s fuckin’ fryin’ ‘imself!" Creeper shoved his whimpering Critter in his pocket and, flanked by Shay and the others, took to piling around their suicidal (and likely homicidal if he were in the condition to move) friend.

"Oh god," Annex reeled at the zombied stated of her friend. She tossed the bag of food to the side, snatching a nearby sheet and pushing it into Noir’s hands who had mounted the bunk and crouched next to the dwindling life that occupied it. Squinting against the heat, Collin jerked Trevor into a seated position by the nap of his shirt, cringing grotesquely at the brittle crunch of his friend’s bones as he was moved. A moment and some talented maneuvering later, he’d wrapped the boiling man in the sheet, restricting Trevor’s dazed movement to confused, delirious blinking, bringing the death-hungry man to loose his deathgrip on 'Guin and shake his head furiously.

Keith, in a single leap, had mounted the bunk, barking orders, "Move it , Collin! Good! Dante, it ain’t gonna hut you touchin ‘him, is it? Perfect. Get ‘im off the bed- careful, dammit!- Good! Now ‘old ‘im still!"

Tremoring in Dante’s steel-cold grasp, Trevor was out of it, in a complete daze, his reaction was a jolted, frightened one to the blurred figures that suddenly surrounded him. His pain stricken, crying white eyes had long since been deprived of tears due to the constant heat, and he became all the more peeved by his makeshift straight jacket as he was force to stay upright.... until he stopped breathing.

His charring lungs were nearly collapsed.....

.... With her leader wilting and weak, Annex was a somber, sobbing wreck. She hated when she couldn’t make things right- when things were out of her comprehension of control. There was NEVER control.... and more often then not, she secretly felt at blame. Trevor was her stronghold, her strength. He was their leader. He. Couldn’t. Die. Anne felt the part of the shattered mirror she resembled, but regardless, took on her role quickly, shifting her fingers into razor-esque blades and cutting away the limp rag doll-man’s sheet confines and charred shirt.

There was a pause, and all eyes shifted to Shayla, watching her intense continence with an air of fearful hope. She looked at the child- Trevor may have been a man to most, but was indeed merely a child to her- with a look of motherly vigilance for merely a split second before she moved to save his life... yet again.

"Aw, man," Shay blinked at Inferno’s seething hot heat-distorted flesh before taking action, "This is gonna hurt like hell." The moment her delicate claw tipped fingers made contact with either side Inferno’s scorching face, she screamed in pain- the palms of her hands burning and blistering away immediately, but she pressed on. Seconds later, the room glinted with a brilliant neon green glow. Shay’s mutation in her ability to heal seethed its way from her pain riddled hands to Trevor’s dying flesh, and reflected from his body in brilliant waves of light.

The process was quick. Inferno healed instantaneously, too weak to fight the help, as much as he may or may not have wanted to. His flesh remended, his features refilled, muscle-bound and fit, and his temperature shown its decrease as Shay’s cries of pain dwindled to a mere whimper.

The fifth of the Critters escaped Creeper’s pant pocket and gave a gleeful Whoop-hah as it joined its newly relinquished counterparts. The light dimmed and was gone in seconds. With a collective sigh of relief, The critters dissipated from sight, right along with their master’s consciousness, back into the furthest regions of the dark mind that housed them all. Inferno collapsed into Dante’s arms entirely, well, but comatose. Physically drained from the drastic manipulation of his body. Emotionally at ruin from the pain that still haunted him just below the surface. It was a shared pain. It always was...

Shay was forced to literally peel back her horridly scalded hands and gasped, lightheaded, and coolly crying in angst, knowing good and well that pain would soon outride the shock that her body was in. But it was done. Inferno was alive. The team was still one, for today.

But Tomorrow?

Part 7: ‘Im-A-Pussy-Itis’ and little green men

Draped along with the brilliant skies of a New England summertime sunset, just above the latch-lock bay windows of one of many dormer rooms at the Mansion, 4’9 inches of burgundy mop-headed, gothic girl baddass perched on the top most entanglement of branches of her favorite old maple- a cluster of which looked barely able to support her weight.

Kayo the baddass bitchchick.

In a tree.

....HIDING.... in a tree.

She sighed heavily, the branches setting her to sway and her long bangs pelting away from her face as she did so. She found herself subconsciously judging just how bad of a mess she’d make come ground level if she were to jump, and grinned momentarily at her own stupidity. A cringe, a grumble and a mental butt-kicking later, and she finally admitted to herself the inevitable. She, Cheyenne LeBeau, was suffering an irrepressable case of Im-A-Pussy-Itis. She, Kayo- the little baddass kid LeBeau- was, for a lack of a better term, suckering out. Against her better judgment, the stern ‘do-or-die’ input from her father, against her own pride even, she knew she could not, for the life of her, pick her ghetto booty up and walk into that mansion lobby with the rest of her little mutant world and stand , wait, and face the likes of her closest friends on earth.

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried. She had. REALLY. It just seemed her mind was at a complete disagreeance with the rest of her stubby little self. If the ol’ noggin wanted to march right in there and face the music, her feet would immediately insist on heading somewhere- anywhere - else (especially, oddly enough, locations which provided large contents of food) in order to avoid her dreaded reunion with the rest of Nexus. If she wanted mobility to do so, her butt deemed it prevalent to immediately gravitate towards the floor, so as she and her leather-clad tailpipe flopped to the floor like a dead fish on a hot day.

She knew why. It was reality, man. The stuff was evil, and too much of it occuring within too short a time span could, and at the current did, most righteously, suck the high hard one. There was no getting around it, her entire past week had been one big reality trip, and it kept managing to continue to suck more and more by the mouthful. But then, she reasoned, this was her life. Pure suckiness. And, by all accounts, she was a professional at such.

Chey pondered the profession for a moment, soon to nod sternly, and move to repress a giggle that never came, "Its a hard job but, hell, I’ve got alot of karma to burn."

But still....

Cold feet, knocking knees, pansy assed, whatever you preferred to call it, Kayo’s own reputation as the badass she was in jeopardy. This was not a settling feeling. Not when your entire mode of what little self esteem you have is based around your ability to, despite being vertically challenged, make any given punk jump just short of wetting themselves with little effort on her part.

Chey leaned forward on her perch, head-in-hand, glaring out over the mansion’s expansive property with a look to kill, still pondering. .....But she could be a wimp on occasion, right? What the real world didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. She’d just take her debilitating case of I’m-A-Pussy-Itis elsewhere (preferably out here- no one would bother to look here, nor did she doubt they’d care to) and blame her absence at the orientation on.... on.... Well, shoot, she’d thing of something, right?

Besides, if.... if......

"What the hell?"

The ‘back yard’ of the Xavier’s School for Higher Learning, which was in actuality, one very large, very expansive field, was lined entirely with a thick forest of overgrown oaks and evergreens that shielded the massive red brick steel-lined fence and multiple security cameras that kept vigilance on the school’s ‘talented’ residence 24\7, without fail, with hyper-sensitive alarms that went off if someone were to spit hard enough in its general direction. Yet Chey could have sworn to the big cahuna’s balls that she’d just see something, or someone, flash- (reflect, her heightened senses told her) - something from inside-out within the depths of one of the more predominant oaks on the lot.

.....Hadn’t it? Kayo found herself in a rare case of doubt in her senses. She could smell nothing, having purposely positioned herself upwind from the outside world for a little mental privacy. She blinked, squinting at the spot, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, seconds later wrinkling her pixy nose in a frustrated growl. Could stress and border psychotia make you hallucinate? Maybe? Hell, She supposed it--

THERE! The flash came and went once more, and this time she knew she’d seen it. Chey shot up at full allert, tensely erect, seeming not to notice the knarl of branches upon which she sat were groaning in a deliberate threat to drop her goofy ass in a fifty foot plummet. They weren’t, by her own subconscious sixth sense, given the time nor chance. In the split second in which the single snap of realization hit of the obvious must-be identity of who was on the other end of the mysterious near-blinding flashes, Cheyenne had managed to leap from her perilous perch atop the old tree, land gracefully, and begin to jet clear across the mansion’s expansive property on all fours. (Just because she couldn’t necessarily shift from human to were form didn’t mean that her inbred senses didn’t manage to kick in whenever they were or weren’t needed- like the inconspicuous pain in the ass her mutations always were.) Kayo sniffed the air for the school security alarm’s lazer-sensory triggers and dodged them left and right in a frantic array of zigzags and leaps, only half aware of the dirty mess she was making out of her favorite purple lacy top due to her chosen mode of transportation.

Kayo hit the mansion’s back-yard forest within seconds, coming to a complete halt at the shock her senses took from the change of atmosphere. The dry dusty field, with its choking heat, blinding sun and familiar scents of her fellow ‘Mutie’ residents was abruptly replaced with the humid, shadow-laiden forest, so condense from generations of greenery, vines and towering trees, that it only allowed various patches of the sun’s brilliance to peek through above her. Chey shook it off, standing, clapping the dust off of her jeans, and sniffing the air. She was looking for one scent and one only- that of her suspected ‘stalker’- and, her senses weaving through the voluptuous abundance of living beings that inhabited the Property’s greenery, She found it..... or, him, at any rate.

With a sprint and a graceful leap into an alarm-sensory-free patch of leaves, Chey grinned whole-heartedly, peering up and around her at the dome-like space created by the trees that covered the skyway overhead. Birds, bugs and reptiles all around her ignored her presence altogether.... all accept for one well-hidden being, she knew.... and although Chey couldn’t immediately spot him to save her life, she knew he was there.

"For Pete’s sake, Mort, You got me, already!" She growled impatiently at a nowhere-spot in the trees above her, her fists clenched at her sides, "Quit playing around and get your goofy fun-lovin’ ass out here!"

There was a sudden hystarical masculine giggle that seemed to echo from every end of the forest. Chey looked around frantically for the source of the merriment, because she knew damn well enough that if she didn’t find him first he would likely take the offensive, and make it a point to scare the living crap out of h--

"BOO!"

"AAAGGHHHHYYOUUU!! JeezzooPETE!" Kayo clutched her heart with a gasp, as if it would fly out of her chest at any moment. She swung around on her heals, coming face to face with the grinning green features of Mortimer Toynbee. "You... You... You BOOB!" she sputtered.

Toad cocked an eyebrow, "I’m a boob, now? Pretty cheap, gel. Y’ don’t think y’ could do better then THAT?"

"I’m feeling less then resourceful, so sue me." Cheyenne snubbed her nose in the air defensively.

Mort simply blinked at his short counterpart through his high-magnification goggles, his expression unchanging, "PMS?"

"Sort of.... Extremely," Kayo, running a frustrated, tremoring hand through her hair, finally gave into a grin, Mortimer doing the same. Chey sighed at him, scratching her nose, "So are you coming down from there, or what?"

The Toad seemed to second-guess her intentions for the moment, as he pulled a face at her and continued to perch completely upside-down, his thick-soled combats sticking effortlessly to the underbelly of an old pine branch. Gravity seemed not to be taking the least bit of effect on him for the most part, his spiky green hair untosseled, his attire unaffected by the pull of gravity- He looked to be his usual under-kept, poorly groomed self. Only his face belied his current stance, as it began to turn a darker and darker shade of blue-green as his blood began to rush to his head, and despite his stubbornness and his desire to insue his macho beckoning to avoid following the younger girl’s unspoken-but-inferred direct order, his head swam like a drunken drowning sailor.

... Seconds later, The Frogman lost his balance and unwittingly hit the ground at Kayo’s feet in an ungraceful tangle of limbs, laptop, backpack, and a ladies hand mirror...

... Kayo's hand mirror, to be precise- no doubt the source of the mysterious ‘reflection in the woods’, but...... Chey cocked her head and pulled a face, snatching the mirror right out of Mortimer’s hand and ruefully whacking him up along side the head with it, "How the hell did you get ahold of this?! It was in my underwear drawer! You" (WHACK!) "freakin’" (Whack!) "PERVERT!"

"WHOA! Easy there, killer," Upon swift reflex, Toad snatched the girl’s flailing arm, tugged her to the forest floor, and sat on her, clearly about as unamused as she was, "You think you could spare a poor bloke of getting ‘is head bashed in? Crikey! I just needed some way t’ get your attention! I swear, I---"

>>WHACK!<<

"GIVE me THAT!" Mort snatched the mirror out of her grasp and chucked it to some unseen distance into the woods at their left. He glared at her in a make-shift pout that only managed to make him look even more ridiculous then his usual green, warty persona. Kayo grinned up at him obnoxiously, wriggling her eyebrows, desperately trying to ignore the fact that there was 180 pounds of green, grodey Mortimer Toynbee sitting on her mid-section, arms crossed, eyes gleaming... practically squishing her insides out through her ears.

Finally, Mortimer, deciding Chey’s horrid flog-fest was all but over, hopped up to his feet, dragging Kayo up with him. There was little reminiscing by way of shared googley love-struck eyes or monotonous ‘ we’ve been through it all together’ sighs shared between the two upon this unexpected reunion. There never was. There was never more then nervous glances, snippy, smart ass comments and threats towards each other’s personal well-being. Little was to be had when you’d seen so much death and brutal bloodshed in your time together, and when, more often then not, the slaughtering of the not-so-innocent came as an act of your own shared free-wills, it left for a reaquaintence shattered more by an underlying sheathe of guilt then the thrill of reuniting with ‘family-by-tramatic-accuarance’.

There was seldom any love loss between the two, though, regardless. The lives they’d whitnessed shattered had been disemboweled by the musing hands of a madman, a murdering beast, not their own, and they were powerless to stop any of it. This ‘Madman’ being the same that intrigued Cheyenne to the extent that she’d found herself baited into being consumed deeper and deeper into his perverse life until she was emotionally bound and shackled to his twisted mind games. Likewise, it was the same homicidal maniac that kept the timid Mortimer fearing for his life if he were to deny him the aid that he demanded in his government funded killing sprees.

Strength in fear is a tie that binds more so then any ill-sought case of puppy love or adolescent desires for a soul-felt significant other. Morimer Toynbee and Cheyenne LeBeau kept a never ending watch-out for and over each others lives, knowing that at the first sign that 'He' gained the psychotic notion to rid of one of the two that the pair of them could very well be the others only chance at getting out of what usually would have been their hit jobs brutal fate.

As of late, the only time Cheyenne or Mortimer had made it a point to see each other was when one of these illusive threats surfaced. Knowing this, Kayo was near creaming herself, what with having dear Morty pop back into her life out of nowhere.

Did Sabretooth KNOW? How could he, and how could Mortimer, for that matter? She hadn’t seen either since her last terrifying encounter with Creed, then with Kayo ending up near-dead and Toad finding her and carting her off to the safety of the Xavier Mansion, to the healing skills of Dr. Hank McCoy and his brilliant son Richard.

If somehow he’d found out, though, Chey feared her fate could be sealed. Victor Creed had killed many women with child in his century-long existence and, Kayo gulped, light-headed with the sudden realization, the fact that it was his whore and child that he was to slaughter likely wouldn’t matter in the least.....

Wonderful.

"You should have called," Toad gave her a squinty scolding, rapping an arm around the short girl for support, who seemed to be growing paler by the second, "You should have bloody called! I saw the news reports on the Anti Mutant Campaign Nexus trashed last week, and you weren’t with them, an’ I thought you’d up and gone back and gotten yourself killed!"

"I know, I know, I’m sorry, Mort," She buried her head in his shoulder and, giving him as big of a bear hug as she could muster, the pissy Toadman eased up considerably. Chey sighed, tweaking at the funny goateed chin that she’d never before seen him with, "Something’s come up, man, and its not a good thing....." She paused, uncertain of what to say, "I... I’m," She stammered and shook her head as if trying to jostle the gears back into place. Chey pointedly decided to be incapable of finishing the thought, and feigned lock jaw, dragging a clawed finger across her delicate pink neck, looking up into the stark yellow eyes of her warty green friend questioningly.

"Nooo, no! I should have said something. Crikey!" Mortimer smacked his forehead looking guilty, "This isn’t about Sabretooth.... Erm... rather, its sort of not," He blinked, "or at least, you’re not on his People to Skewer List."

A breathe Chey hadn’t realized she’d been holding escaped from her lips, and she felt destined to collapse with relief, as the Toad sputtered on, "The Bossman still thinks yer shacking up with Nexus, actually. ‘Figured your recent absence in th’ team’s AMC raids was just you recoupin’ after his last GRAND act of idiocy," Toad went from spitting at the mental image of his irate boss to gingerly patting Kayo’s head like the hurt puppy she almost was, "I figured you’d be here, if not with them, an’ want’d to see if y’ were healin’ up ok... and... to ask when you planned on checkin’ in with Creed. Y’know he’s gonna come grumpin’ around ‘ere lookin’ for you eventually."

"I CAN’T!" Chey suddenly reeled and snarled, sending Toad nearly leaping out of his kecks, "HE can’t! He’ll find out! The minute he catches wind of me he’ll KNOW! He cant--" Chey’s demeanor slumped in a teary, sniffling mess, noting the half- hurt, half-concerned mix of emotions that were slapped plainly across Mortimer Toynbee’s face. ‘Aw, hell. Frickin’ BRILLIANT, LeBeau! You blew it!’

Toads eyes were squintily piercing hers, trying to figure her out, "Find out WHAT? What the f-- Catch wind of y-- what do you....." He blinked, as realization hit him like a reeling 18-wheeler, "Oh, no..." It was just then that he had the sense to break his gaze away from her glassy eyes and pitifully pouted lip and down to her still-slender, yet oddly plump mid-section, and experienced the acute sensation of pure, honest fear....

With all the hell the kid had been through in her life, Now this? Pregnant with the child of Sabretooth? That sick son of a redneck hick! Toad felt his macho demeanor crumble with the weight, scooping the girl fretfully up into his arms, "Aw hell no.... no, no... no...."

AAAGGHHRRRRR!!!

A blood-freezing, animalistic snarl was followed by startled cries from both Mort and Chey, A steel-and-bone ‘SNIKT!!’ and a short, fuzzy, feral Canadian pinning Mortimer up against the fat trunk of an old oak The rabid jarring gave the Frogman such a shock that Chey expected the indignant scent of pissed-pants urine to arise, though, thankfully for Mortimers’ non-existent self-esteem, it didn’t, despite the fact that he was being lifted a good three feet off of the ground with a trio of sharp-as-hell adamantium claws being waved in his face.

"LOGAN!" Cheyenne nearly howled, "Logan you PUT HIM DOWN! He didn’t do anything an’ he’s not here t’ cause trouble!" Kayo gained no reaction, half-knowing that the raging Canuck wasn’t going to hear her anyways, regardless of how loud she was. The Blood Rage had kicked in, she could smell it. He hadn’t meant to let it happen- a guy as normally wanna-be-docile as he was never meant it. (Unlike a certain taller, blonder version of the like.) But the sight of one of his spunkiest little buddies (via Kayo) within the grips of and in close proximity to the infamous bad-dude, potential ‘prey’, and the source of the Danger-scent he’d been seeking out (ala Toad) was a BAD combination, Kayo knew, and he was bound to snap- and he did, and regardless of whether he heard her or not, she couldn’t hold back the urge to plea for the safety of her friend, "DON’T YOU HURT HIM! LOGAN!"

Wolverine, looking near as homicidal as might Sabretooth when he would be in his Macho Overly Protective Mode hadn’t a clue that he was preparing to pound the good guy. Seeing little more then a blinding sheet of red, smelling only the scent of his target, and hearing only the panicked pulse of the withering Toad, he snarled viciously, "On the wrong side of the fence, there, aren’t yah, bub?" He didn’t plan on waiting for an answer, "Bad move, wart-hog. You picked the wrong place, the wrong girl and the wrong ME t’go pokin’ around!" Wolverine jabbed a claw in Mortimer’s warty, panicked face, half-stabbing one particularly large wart on his sweat-beaded forehead, "Lets play a little round of connect the dots, shall we?"

"Father, NO!"Chey whirled around in utter shock to see Logan’s daughter Jade stride in a graceful confusion, having been looking for her absent father, and now having found him, looking horrified at his animalistic state. She was running straight for him with obvious hopes of bettering the situation, "FATHER!"

Chey nearly stripped a gear, snatching at the beautiful young Japanese woman in a failed effort to stop her, "Jade, DON’T! He’ll turn on y--!!"

It was a horrid haze of fear, hate and utter chaos. Mortimer had long since been debilitated as Wolverine was literally choking the life out of him. Chey missed grabbing Jade despite her futile attempt, but Jade had the misfortune of NOT missing in her efforts to grab the burly arm of her father, who seemed to immediately loose all recognition of a gasping, weezing Toad, now only to see, hear, and smell a younger, louder *female* target. THIS was bad. Very freaking bad. The second Jade clutched his arm, the second his track of rage changed, the delicate Japanese angel became his target....

"Father!" she clutched his dusty old flannel, "Don’t harm him! Please don--"

SKKKRRAPP!

Not even Chey had expected Wolverine to take such an immediate attack, flying around in a catlike maneuver, cuffing Jade’s porcelain jaw with his mammoth fist, and clawing his way towards her before she even hit the ground...

Kayo made the decision she knew she’s regret later... but she knew by the scent of Logan’s escalating dementia, by the sound of terrified screams of Jade, and by the sight of her gasping fallen Toad, that someone was going to die if she didn’t...

And it took only a split second to occur.... Jade screamed in horror as Wolverine raised a furious clawed fist with a deafening *SNIKT!!*, the exact same moment Kayo leaped up, flipped in mid-air, landed on and straddled the back of the Beast, drew a claw-laden hand across his growl-pulsing throat, and ripped across and through it with all of her might, severing his trachea. Blood flew, as did Kayo as she was thrown off of the back of Wolverine, who stumbled, bleeding and breathless, falling to his knees. Seconds later, his clear blue, hateful eyes rolled back into his skull, and he clamored lifelessly to the ground.

"NNOOOOOOOOO!!" Jade screamed, leaping to her fathers side, clasping desperately at his throat at a wound too deep to heal in time to save her father's life, shooting daggers of murder at Cheyenne who was furiously trying to wipe the traces of blood off of her hands and onto the foliage of the forest floor, "You BEAST! You SICK BITCH! What the hell have you done??!! You KILLED HIM!" She gazed tearfully at her father, her voice choking, "you... killed him..."

Chey gapped at her, rather woozy, "HE was about ready to pull a Hannibal Lector on you ass, are you KIDDING? He’ll--"

"DON’T YOU DARE speak of him like that!" Jade strided over to her furiously, poising to attack, "He WOULDN’T-- He would never--" She sputtered, trying to registered thoughts she didn’t understand. Kayo knew she wouldn’t- she couldn’t. The Japanese Flower wasn’t like Them.... but she raged on, "You an ANIMAL! How COULD you?! You... You’re SICK.. have you no SOUL in that beast body of yours?!" she spat.

‘I don’t know’ Kayo thought, managing only to blink guiltfully at Jade.

"You’re nothing but HIS little drone, aren’t you? You did this for HIM, DIDN’T you?" Jade suddenly sounded eerily cold.

Kayo squinted, "What?"

"What? WHAT!" Jade sputtered, looking like she could skin Cheyenne alive, "Your Sabretooth’s little floozy, aren’t you? How much blonde hair and bad breathe did it take THIS time to get you to kill an innocent man?!"

"WHOA! Back the HELL up! Vic didn’t have a thing to do with this, and if you EVEN try to bring him in on it, YOU," Chey wagged a clawed finger at Wolverine’s limp frame, "are gonna know EXACTLY what it looks like in the afterlife!"

"How dare yo--"

"He’s NOT DEAD!" Chey screeched, stomping her feet like a pouting child, "JEEzzooPETES! I mean he IS, but its TEMPORARY! I mean--" she noticed that Jade’s expression had softened at the thought of her father’s life being not-quite gone, and lowered her own voice accordingly, "The healing factor... its still operable for a short period of time after the vital organs shut down BEFORE his brainwaves shut down. THAT," she pointed at Logan again, "Is, like, a freakin’ paper cut on one of those guys," Jade knew she meant one of the Weapon X ‘nominees’, both of which their beloved Wolvie and Vic had been a part of, "He’ll be back hun, I promise, I just didn’t want you or Mort playing Butcher Baby.... Just, like, don’t kill me before the ol’ boy has a chance to proove me right, ok?"

As she spoke, Chey could hear the slowly mending flesh of the fallen Wolvster.

Jade covered her face with her hands, exasperated, "You’re sure? How can you be so sure?" Her hands dropped, and her tears were revealed.

Kayo padded over to her, leaning in close enough for the two to touch foreheads, and looked up at the Flower softly, her canine instinct to comfort kicking in, for once, at the right place, at the right time, "I pulled that one on Vic once.... and I say ‘once’ because you’ll never get out alive trying a death move on him again... He learns from mistakes like that- his brain, like, programs the stuff, and ... But anyways, he... he’d attacked some kid who’d tried to pick his pocket in L.A. once- gave the kid the scare of his life, threatenin’ to do all kinds of stuff on him, even though I knew he wasn’t in the mood for anything elaborate.... but he WAS gonna kill him... and the kid was not but twelve, and a Tosser, and prob’ly starvin’ half t’ death... Vic got so far into the Rage he didn’t see the logistics of it, an’ I--" Chey watched Jade closely, "I couldn’t stop him. So I sliced ‘im.... an’ the kid ran off-and with his wallet, at that...." Cheyenne half-grinned at the memory, "Man, Vic was pissed as hell when he came too, shit, and he popped up right out of a state like Wolvie’s in over there. He beat the daylights outta me for that one- and not because I took him out- he knew I’d had no choice on that one- HE was just pissed off about that damn wallet! Ask Mort, man, he was there at the ‘otel that night patchin’ me up and ballin’ out Vic, isn’t that right, Mort?..... Mort?"

Chey leaned over to Mort’s spot where she’d seen him sit to catch his breath at the base of the of the old oak.... a spot which was completely and totally Toadless. He’d left. Chey instantly paniced, "Aw, hell. Mort! MORT! Aaaww, DA-mmiiiit!" She yelled out into the trees, "MORTIMERRR!!"

"KAYO, LOOK OUT!"

Jade’s cry was followed instantaneously by a feral snarl and a right-hook straight in Kayo’s face, curtousey of a back up-and-kikin’ Wolverine. This was followed by a left-hook and a fist planted firmly in her rib cage- a rapid-fire array of punches that signified to Kayo, despite her pain, that Logan’s rage had simply not subsided as she’d hoped. He was just bloodier and way more pissed off then he’d initially been.....

Wonderful.

.... Kayo found herself pinned right back up on the same tree as had been Toad, listening to Wolverine unsheathe his adamantium claws, fighting to search for a way out. Jade knew she couldn’t interfere without risking death herself. Chey couldn’t shift into her beloved werewolf form, nor blast the raging beast away because of the baby. She was left with only one alternative action- or, at least, the only one she could think of the time that didn’t resulting in her being dead. It was an action that only managed to work on Sabretooth’s Rages if he were either extremely tired or extremely drunk (Which was REAL drunk it you took into account the fact that he’d have to wear out his healing factor before getting there- which is a hellova lot of beer) She could only hope that the more-controllable Logan would be an easier headcase to solve... So, Kayo figured, ‘fire away’...

... And Chey planted the biggest, sloppiest kiss she could muster, right smack on the snarling mouth of the Wolverine, pulled back, and watched it work its magic.

Jade sat, drop-jawed.

Wolverine immediately snapped out of his Rage, the red haze peeling back, his entire demeanor seeming to shift back into the casual, frumpy old Wolvie.

Chey sighed with relief.

Jade looked very near vomiting.

Then, Wolverine realized what had just snapped him out of his own personal hell.

"Girl!" he cuffed Chey up along side of the head, "What in the blue blazes is wrong with you, kissin’ on a grown man like that! You’re lucky Gumbo Ain’t out here, or he’d tan you so damn bad--"

"Oh, shut up, Wolvie," Chey wriggled out of the pin-hold he still had her in against the oak, and, planting her feet firmly on the soil, she grinned at the dumbfounded Mini-Vic, "You forget I’m a grown woman, myself!"

"That," He wriggled an index finger at her, making a special effort to hug Jade, who was looking disturbed as all get-out, "can sure as hell be argued."

"Heeeyy! C’mon, now, I--"

*Attention everyone*

The telepathic voice of Professor Xavier sounded within the trio’s heads, startling and silencing them immediately.

*Nexus have arrived on the School Grounds. Please reconvene in the Main Lobby for Orientation... and if anyone sees miss Kayo running for the hills, do stop her and make sure she’s present upon the teams arrival. Pick her up and carry her if you have too, just make sure she is there. Thank you.*

"Greeeaaaat," Kayo growled under her breath. A direct do-or-die order from ol’ Wheels himself, and in the presence of Jade and Wolverine. There was no way she was going to get out of this with the two of them involved. She was so totally screwed.

"Lets move, ladies," Logan said gruffly, and started towards the Mansion. Chey and Jade were soon to follow.

"Uh, Chey?" Jade whispered to Kayo as the two padded along across the field behind the Crazy Canuck, "What was the big fuss about the Toad having run off like that? You clearly weren’t pleased."

Kayo Grunted morosely, "Clearly! Its pretty simple, babe. I didn’t get the chance to tell Mort NOT to tell Vic about the baby.... If you don’t make Toynbee swear to secrecy on his life..... The secrets out...."

Part 8: ‘Knock, knock, baby... we’re back.’

Dusk faded away on the New England property of Charles Xavier, and it got cold. Really cold. It was the bitter type of chill that pricks the skin and pierces every move you seem to make, and tears straight through you. To it you are as hollow and invisible as society has cursed you to be.

‘Screw society,’ they think, missing one minor detail.

They are society.

They are their own fate.

A few of them seemed to shiver convulsively, though oddly, more on the inside then out, and the entire lot of them felt haunted. Hollow. Surreal. Even as they mounted the walk, one miserable drug-footed, fait-railed step at a time, their eyes couldn’t force themselves to break away from the star-specked navy skyline that slowly faded as they approached the mansion. The endless night time sky seemed slowly to be torn out of their grasp, as did, they subconsciously agreed, their beloved freedom, engulfed by the demonic silhouetted gothic archways of the topmost winding gables of Xavier’s home abode.

A dark, morbid sensation rode up Noir’s spine. It was one he hadn’t felt in years. He’d blocked the hell of it down deep, as far as he could force it to go. Gangly death-skinned arms cart a black leather bag of the few things he could call his own, black void eyes witnessing the anguishing mental horrors that his friends were subconsciously projecting through his own mind’s eye.

...They felt it too.

Deja’ Vu.

Noir reckoned the first and last time any of them had shared such rotten karma was upon their arrivals to the Camp. Sure, they were just children then. Sure, this was the jolly home of the beloved XMen and their prized Neo X offspring. Sure, the memories of old were in the past and the past was to be forgotten, but it sure as hell felt the same.

They were being jailed.

Locked up.

Unsure of what was to come, or of what kind of bad hurt would come their way.

The difference? This time it was their inner childs’ doing the crying... Their freedom and prides beaten and left to bleed... And this time it was being performed at their own consent.

Old habits die hard. Dumb kids never grow up.

Nexus have arrived.

‘Knock, knock, baby. We’re back.’

**************

Warren Worthington IV, the courageous, illustrious Psihawk, felt disturbingly ill at the rude, harder-then-necessary-knock on the front double doors of his mansion home. He stood coolly in his calm gray turtleneck sweater and slacks, his face a mask of security and calm. Behind clear blue eyes, however, lay a chaotic mess of thoughts. Conflicting emotions. Plans of action and reaction. Warren, in the back of his mind, was debating on just how to handle his teammates once, he feared, Nexus decided to take up as much elbow room as humanly possible within the confines of his home.

... HIS home...

Psihawk tried to block the pompous notion. He knew better then that... he did.... He knew that this place- Xavier’s school- was to be a place of sanctitude for those in need. (and, he figured, after all, their type needed all the help that they could possibly get...) Yet, despite his inner qualms, his knowledge of the need for equality, and his desire to help the minority, Warren could not bring himself to ignore his underlying dislike for the gruesome group of rebels.

He’d despised them growing up. He hated to admit it even to himself, let alone anyone else, but the fact remained an irrepressibly clear. Nexus were a wretched group of individuals- uncultured, noisy, angsty, troublesome, street-hardened souls, and seemed to revel in most areas of life that Warren himself wouldn’t dream of lifting a finger to...

... and, dear God, they’d picked the snot out of him when he was a child. Or, rather, one particular cretin had made it a point to do so, so many years back when he was an adolescent, his younger NeoX teammates were but children, and the Nexus elite were depressed, bitter, frightened teenagers.

For the most part Psihawk could tolerate the older, hardened team. Anne and Shay, grant it, were good people. Beautiful, soul-felt people. Noir had to be the most obnoxious individual to ever exist (Warren had inevitably chalked him up as God’s piss poor sense of humor) but was tolerable, pending you kept ear plugs handy. Dante was a brilliant young man, even though at the time of his original stay at the mansion, that brilliance had been shrouded entirely by the trauma of having been maimed for life. (Psi sympathized with this, unable to imagine the horrors of having one’s legs slowly, gruesomely torn away from his body. It was a god-awful thought.) Warren was unsure of whether or not the past four years had allowed Mr. Rodreguez to be able to look past his permanent injuries, but hoped the best for the kind-hearted Latino. Creeper? Lord, that was one mean little shit. Warren had simply made it a point to steer clear of him entirely... and, at all cost, avoid stepping on him.

No it was the team’s raucious, hot-tempered leader that Psihawk had developed the true dislike for. Inferno- dear, bitter Trevor O’Brian- had liked Warren about as much as a bad case of jock itch. Perhaps Warren had come off as a tad to self-righteous at that young age, or maybe Trevor had been able, somehow, to sense Warren’s potential as a future leader of some great force. (Which, in the eyes of the Professor, as Warren was often told, as the leader of Neo X, he was.) Either way, Inferno hated authority with everything he had in him... It was authority that had continually screwed him over for as long as he could recall, and it was a shade of authority that he must have seen in Psihawk way back when.

Admittedly, now that he thought about it, Warren could not recall Inferno having ever blatantly tried to pound him, physically threaten him, or even make an effort to embarrass him in front of his friends... he’d never done anything of the sort....

... leaving Warren Worthington, planted firmly within the lobby amidst is now older, experienced, dynamic team, suddenly wondering just how justified his apprehensions truly were. Had time dilluded his knowledge of the truth?

... No. He distinctively remembered the mind games... The cold, contemplating looks... The icy, bitter rasp of Trevor’s voice every time he’d been addressed by the caustic ‘NY Fireboy’.

The evidence was there.

Psihawk resolved pointedly to take the latter offensive. He had a team to lead and an image to withhold, and Inferno was not, by any means, going to get in the way of either.

***************

Kayo decided she must have looked quite the mess, as she perched cautiously behind a massive, beautiful, gothic marble carving- one of many that adorned the Mansion’s front lobby. She was a tad bloody from the incident with Wolverine just minutes beforehand (Thank god she was wearing mostly black, she thought, though she admittedly found herself trying to recall if Sabretooth had ever brought up any good tips on removing blood stains from purple silk shirts...) and had a rather rude wolverine-claw-inflicted gash on the underside of her chin, neither of which had she had time to properly attend to, but she was presentable enough. Sort of.

She sighed, looking back across the lobby at her father who was watching her with a warning look intense enough to be sufficiently ranked at incredibly uncomfortable.

...So, apparently any shot she may have had at making a run for it was completely out of the question. It was time to face the music.

... Damn.

****************

"SShhhaaaaayyyy!!!"

LLeander Xavier lit up like the Griswalds’ at Christmas as Shayla Ki pulled back her velvet black hood. The delicate pixy chick was the first to step through the doorway into the eyeshot of the attendees in the lobby, doing her best to carefully set her knapsack of belongings aside onto the rich mahogany wood floor before crouching to kid-level and scooping the sweet-faced child in a hug. Gingerly tossling Lee’s moppy brown hair affectionately with one claw-laden, Shay smiled brilliantly, holding the boy at arms length to look him over, "Goodness, look at you! You’ve grown!"

Lleander chuckled thoughtfully, "Yeah, four years will do that to you," He comically mimicked the ancient demon girl, muffing up her hair as well, "Funny thing .... You haven’t aged a bit." Shay giggled, planting a smooch on the boy’s chubby cheek.

It was then Lee noticed, with a bit of a start, Shay’s carefully bandaged hands. At the same moment, in a reaction entirely natural to his brilliant young mind, Lee slipped into her mind with his in search for the cause of the obviously painful wounds...

His heart constricted at what he saw...

... A dying leader, and act of loving chivalry, a life saved for a hopeless cause- Lleander quickly whitnessed everything Shayla had experienced with her team just the night previous. More stress and strain on an already beaten young collective, and another trauma for the beautiful soul of Shay, who, he grimaced, didn’t deserve it in the least. Lleander quickly retracted his careful mental grip, realizing he must have looked as awkwardly disturbed as he felt, and patted the back of her gauzed hand delicately, "What happened, Miss Ki? Are you all right?"

"I’ll be fine, Hun, Its a long story. Maybe later, all right?" Shay dodged the subject like a drooling, twitching bum and hoped for and interruption of any kind, which she was soon granted.

"Shayla, it is good to see you again," The familiarly soft, cultured voice arose, and Shay looked up from her grinning little buddy, into the all-knowing eyes of Charles Xavier.

She smiled kindly but somewhat coldly, and as her teammates flooded into the room, stood to greet the wheel-chaired man who had, once again, pledged to take her under his wing, "As is it you, Charles."

"WHeeew!! Yeeeaaaahhh!" Noir clobbered in, stepping clear over Lleander, who rolled his eyes good naturedly at the Scarecrow’s ridiculous antics, "Man it still smells like some old fogie up and died in here! Fancy that!" He plopped his bag in the middle of the room and stretched his long limbs obnoxiously. "Home sweet home, eh?" He smacked his lips and grinned a monster, toothy grin, "So whats for dinner?"

"Collin! Behave, would you please?" Anne poked him in the gut with a spiny metal finger.

"Um, no."

"Um, YES," Annex clenched his eyebrow ring in a threat to yank- hard- grinning coolly.

"OK, OK!" Noir batted her hands away playfully, "You’re the boss, beautiful! Chill out!"

"Ahh, kick his arse, gel... If you can find it." Creeper, following a wheel chaired Dante in through the massive, intricately carved mahogany doors, strode in purposefully, doing his damnedest to ignore the stares of the Neo X. (those kids never could seem to grow accustom to the UK’s equivalent to Mini Me walking in through their front door. Weird little gits.) Keith was followed in by a placid, grumbling Inferno, both of whom were dragging in a rickety, rather decrepit looking, graffiti-coated wooden trunk- likely chock full of spare hand guns and vintage Punk LPs. Trevor was having to haunch over considerably to compensate for the grodey British midget’s sheer lack of height. The trunk was placed aside and the fire-cannon duo joined their friends to face the posse of XMen & Co. that had gathered to settle the lot of them in.

The scene was almost laughable. The two teams stood rigidly, sizing each up, both sides of the equation gapping dumbfoundedly at the changes that time had managed to toll on the other. For nearly a straight sixty seconds, there wasn’t a word uttered in the cavernous room.

Nexus, The Neo kids noted, were "All grown up". Their presence, unlike the shielded, defensive mob they’d been before, were now suprisingly dynamic- in a street-worn, tragic sort of way. The stood dark, grungey, looking about as completely uncomfortable as humanly possible, yet ready for whatever might come their way.

Likewise, Nexus were a tad shocked at what four years could do two a group of cute, playful little kid celebrities... Neo X were shaping up to be quite a serious, respectable looking team. Clean cut, sophisticated, of the highest most educational and moral standards, and yet, at the moment, clearly trying to mask their discomfort over the 'new kids at school'...

After spending a few fitful seconds fighting with the zipper of his backpack, Inferno finally reigned victorious in retrieving a much-needed cigarette, and as he casually lit it and took a drag, he suddenly found himself the center of startled stares of the Neo Xers.

He blinked.

They glared...

He grimaced.

They glared even harder.

Huh. Apparently old Chuck Xavier’d finally grown enough balls to enforce that old 'No Smoking on School Grounds' policy he’d been threatening him with for the longest time some four years back... Huh...

Trevor almost caught himself considering dabbing out his beloved fag... until, that was, he noticed the tall, sophisticated young man in the stylish gray turtle neck sweater, with familiar jet black hair offset by placid green eyes... Eyes of which were fixed coldly, almost threateningly, on Trevor and his smoke...

Trevor nearly choked.

Well look at that!

His day just couldn’t get any freaking better could it? It was old Flyboy JR!

...’Warren’, wasn’t it?

A rather cynic grin spread across Inferno’s face as he looked from his cigarette, to the fuming expression of his all-time favorite goofy little birdboy and back, put the fag back into his mouth and took another extended drag.

This was going to be far too much fun.

Turning away from the younger man’s disdainful stare, Inferno preened a bit, cig dangling from his mouth, now facing the man who remained, in his book, the ultimate in authoritative dingbats, Charles Francis Xavier.

"Evenin’ Chuckles."

Part 9: The troubles with compassion (The Reunion continues)

... CHUCKLES?!

Cody LeBeau could hold it in no longer. He could feel it squirming up his spine, itching the delicate back of his throat, causing his eyes to water and his expression to evolve from a false form of sincerity to that of the ridiculous scrunch of sheer pain that he was rewarded for so desperately for trying to hold it all back.

... The impending angst of his friends... the wonderful new nickname he’d just acquired for his beloved headmaster... that ridiculous look on Psihawk’s face (the poor boy was entirely unaware that he looked direly constipated.)... The situation as a whole... was completely and totally retarded.

He couldn’t stand to hold it back a moment longer... so he laughed. He laughed and he laughed hard. Real hard... and he got elbowed right smack in the gut by his rather startled kid sister.

"Cody! What’s the matter with you, are you nuts!?" Jeanette whispered up at him as he tried to catch the breathe that had so politely been completely knocked out of him, her little pixy nose scrumpled up in dismay, "Show some respect, dude! "

Cody rubbed his stomach, pouting rather pitifully. Half of the Neo Xers- Alloy, Transit, Valence and even Freelove, were giving him a look to kill.

The LeBeau boy blinked and shrugged, "What?"

*****************

Noir repressed his own bout of sardonic laughter as he pictured the young LeBeau boy sprouting a beaming halo in his obvious attempt to gain the quaint tint of innocence that the poor boy lacked entirely.

Tired of the macho stare-down taking place in the room around him, the hyperactive cadaver began to fidget, first swaying this way and that, mumbling the jangley tune to some cheesy old 20th century sitcom, then bumbling about Anne on the balls of his heels, half bouncing, just to see how long it would take her to slug him... (not long, as he’d figured- 20 seconds on the friggin’ dot, to be exact. Or, in his case, on his long, skinny, leather-clad arm).

.... and just when that had gotten way too boring too quickly, the goofy giggle had chimed from Cody’s tensed frame like a beacon in the night, catching Noir just short of stomping Creeper’s tail to see what kind of noise he’d make...

Cody LeBeau. Collin gathered he’s get along just fine with that boy, if he had anywhere near the delightful sense of humor he was projecting at the moment. Humor made a person, Noir decided tentatively. It made you feel, made you think, and had the uncanny quality of sheer annoyance, if used correctly, and by all means, if it annoyed someone, then it was a good thing.

Oh, hell yeah...

Upon the interruption, Noir's attention was inadvertedly redirected entirely to the good-humored-and-equally-beautiful-hunk-of-ass Cody, with an unusual bit of interest, a cocked head, and a classic goofy grin.

He hadn’t walked in as completely anti-Neo and some of his other teammates. Collin was never the ‘I Hate People’ type anyway, and knew for certain he was more at interest for making friends on this whole excursion then were the other Nexus kids. But so what, right? He had the right to warm up to the locals, sure. He liked people, nix the ones that made it a point to watch he and his teammates bleed as a viable form of entertainment.

Grant it, he’d met a few of those ‘Other types’ too, and secretly hoped he wouldn’t run into anything of the sort back here at the school. Noir hadn’t taken to well to ‘That Other Type’ of cruel-hearted bastard in the incidents he’d crossed paths with them in his life. As good humored and well natured as Collin Shardwik was destined to be, there was still a twinge of dark masochism lurking in the back of his skull. It was an uncalled for side effect of his powers that he’d had to fight for years, and eventually just grew to live with. On the rare occasion that it was needed to block the guilt and apprehension out in order to do the horrors it took for his mind to function to do in whatever scumbag tried to break down one of his loved ones, that Other Side of him came to a fairly good use.

Yeah, People he liked.

Heartless animals, on the other hand, had to be taught otherwise. Collin recalled the time back at the Camp when a group of guards had ganged up on Miss Alexia, Kayo’s mom, and drug her off to who knows were. They didn’t see a thing of her for four terror woven days, and when she was finally thrown back into the scheme of things, she was quiet as a weeping little mouse for weeks.

Noir’d shown them, though. The creep’d know never to treat a woman like that again, and Collin had made one of the imbeciles do himself in as an example.

This, Noir remembered rather proudly, had occured after forcing the sadistic chump to witness his manhood implode and fly out his ear into his boss’s coffee cup.

Heh-heh.

OK, so it hadn’t really happened, of course- it had been no more then a projected figment of Noirs own imagination-. but old Billy Boy hadn’t known as much, and had been convinced his boss- the Headman of MacAbre Genetics himself- the ass- would do him in anyways for such an infraction, so Old Bill blew his head off.

That was one thing Noir could never figure out, though. Mean people like that committed suicide for some of the strangest reasons. Hell, look at Romeo and Juliet...

Collin snapped back to the present, scritching at his moppy black-haired head.

So, yeah. Most people he liked. Nexus he liked. This Cody kid... he was pretty sure he liked him too. Maybe he’d not have to use his powers during his stay at all. That would be nice. A little freedom from the Dark Side, and ...

"Aw man, this sucks. What the hell is the professor thinking with this stunt? Like its going to do us any good, let alone any good for those weirdos?..."

...And... and...

Noir blinked, jerking his head around in the direction the sassy voice had been projected from, sprouting a rather sour look on his face, and realizing instantly that what had been said hadn’t been said.... it had been thought. Thought loudly, at that. Someone was wearing their hate on their sleeve.

Collin spotted a little redheaded thing... a cute, head-bobbing, pigtailed, baby-doll-faced red head girl... appearing as charming and harmless as a little brown eyed bunny.

Noir pulled out with his mind and swept the depths of hers, and felt swimingly ill.

‘Cute. yeah, she’s cute... and about as sweet as sour piss on a hot day,’ Collin thought wryly. He doubted Chastity Wagner had even taken into consideration that there were at least four telepaths in the room, he being one of them, nor did she care, apparently. He also doubted any of the other ESP’s were bothering to observe the Neo’s brainwaves at the moment, which, for the most part, were comparably kind hearted, despite a slight tinge of apprehension...

But this kid. Geeze Louise, this was one underlyingly pissed off individual...

And yet she was so cuuuute...

Noir scratched his head again, more then a bit stumped. While Nexus had moved into placidly nodding at Ol’ Chuck baby’s lecture over the 'Do’s and Dont’s of the Xavier Institute' (like they weren’t entirely aware of The List. They’d made it a point to test every ‘don’t’ on the roster during their last stay... erm... well... he had, at least.) Noir poked his way around Trevor (Nearly choking, mind you. Inferno looked like a frickin’ chimney at that point) in order to get a better view of the Wagner girl.

She hurt inside, that much Noir could feel.

Poor kid. No one deserved to feel like that, Collin thought. He wondered what could make such a beautiful girl so bitter. Perhaps if he knew what it was, he could help. Lord knew, if anyone had grown accustomed to coping with the demons within, he was your man..... er, your mutant... or your... oh, screw it...

He caught more thought patterns from the girl’s direction...

‘Damn that Kayo... Jeanette’s right... she shouldn’t have come. She just makes me think too much. Think on all the stuff I wish had never happened... think about those creepy bastards and their creepy thoughts and how much I couldn’t stop any of it, and I... I...’

Noir watched, his black heart wrenching, and the girl tried harder to mask a pained expression that lay just below the surface. His entire continence took on a look of sincerity, his playful black eyes softened, his wired physique laxed. He didn’t know what the bitter rambling meant, or what had caused it, but he did know he wanted to... perhaps he could... get into her mind and fix the problem. Noir reached out quaintly with one black fingernail tipped hand, and, unknown to the fuming young redhead, he opened a psi link between the two of them.

He didn’t know of her powers.

He didn’t know of their bewitching evil.

He didn’t know that, between the two of them, an interlocking link could cause any harm.

He’d only wanted to help her...

... and he knew the second the pitch hit the light, the shit hit the fan. The link between them froze them both, rigid, wide eyed, shocked, in a ghastly, seething white-hot pain, their mouths opened as if screaming silent screams, like entrapped zombies from some cheesy old horror flick.

Noir saw the attacks- Chastity’s greatest fears- the incidents in her life that made her hurt from the memory and queeze from the thought...

Chastity saw the attacks, her eyes grew wide, her bittersweet heart giving way to fearful terror. She saw it all again... saw it just as clear and horribly despicable as the day they had first occured... She saw it and she screamed.

"CHASE?! Chastity!!"

Panic struck the lobby as every attendee turned around in shock to see the two mind meddlers, despite their ten foot distance from each other, engulfed in a link they could not seem to break...

"Chase! What’s wrong?! CHASE!"

"What the hell is he doing to her?!"

"STOP HIM! Somebody, please!"

Daniel Wagner ran to his kid sister’s aid, trying to move her, to break her from the spell and stop whatever the hell was happening. He could not teleport her away, could not move her in the least. It was as if she were frozen in time and space. Psihawk and Valence joined him in an instant, the other teammates shouting encouragements for the Wagner girl’s heroless rescue in vein, not knowing what was happening, nor what could be done to stop it.

Nexus as well shared a look of complete confusion before taking what little action they knew may help. They were as shocked as the rest, screaming, entirely swept in cold, brittle fear. Inferno made move to closeline Noir, jumping up to catch the tall man by his scrawny neck in one swoop of his well muscled arm and pulling him down with all of his strength and weight, trying to snap him out of it, trying to break the link.

Chastity, Neo X’s beautiful, beaming Freelove’s powers forced one’s inner most desires to the surface. It was a dangerous ability. Chastity’d nearly been raped as a girl, and that was the source of her bitterness, Noir discovered. That was why Kayo’s resurfacing had hurt her so much. The LeBeau girl mirrored Chastity’s near-fate, only, unlike Chase, Chey’d had to endure the entire band of horrors of such an awful experience- Kayo’d not had a loving big brother to come to her aid.... and that was the fear Freelove experienced here- the daunting terrors of ‘What If?’- with Noir as her unwilling receptor. Through his mind she saw it all, kicking, screaming and fighting the entire way around, while Noir desperately tried to tear away from the mental grip, tried to make it stop for her.

...He’d only wanted to help...

But their powers were a dangerous mix- his to bring out one’s greatest fears, to make the recipricant view every bit of the horrors in the furthest reaches of their mind. They brought out the worst of the Wagner Girl’s mind, just as her power to draw out one’s greatest desires did poor Noir in. More then anything, he wanted to help, wanted to be loved by the person. Despite the dark powers with which he’d been cursed, he only wanted safety for the souls of the innocent... and interlocked with Freelove, he couldn’t stop the mistake he’d started.

The conflicting of powers left for a weblock- a completely resistless psychic connection- and the longer they remained trapped within each others minds, the darker the memories became. They were now no longer reliving past realities, but falsified pasts. Things that had happen became fears of what could have happened... Now The Darkness was sinking into the link...

Noir could only stand there helpless, unable to break his broken, weeping gaze from Chastity’s resentful tears, and as he finally spoke, he was only able to utter little more then grieving apologies.

...and suddenly, his entire world went black...

****************

Silence echoed throughout the lobby. Chastity had collapsed in a heap of a sobbing mess in the arms of Transit, her red haired big brother. The Neo scuffled over quickly, Valence holding her hand comfortingly, Alloy muttering quiet words of comfort, and all the while Transit sat, rocking her silently, looking completely shocked and even paler then usual. The rest of the team glared, either fearful or utterly revolted in the direction of the huttled team Nexus.

Noir’s eyes fluttered open like string-drawn lamp shades, his vision as blurred as his mind, the room spinning. He squinted painfully, his head booming in a static fuzz, trying to make the funny people-shaped blobs above him make sense...

As his vision cleared, a slap-happy grin spread clear across his face, from ear to silver-hoop-pierced ear, "Barker Girl?!"

"Its me, Goober Boy," Kayo leaned over him, looking pretty perturbed, but trying to do her best to smile. She was shaken up, Noir noted. He hadn’t a clue she’d had to completely knock him out cold to sever his entrapment with Freelove. She patted his forehead, allowing herself to grimace sympathetically, "Its me... And dude... you done fucked up."

Reality hit Noir, as well as his stomach, and his innards recoiled in knots.

Chastity!?

"Oh, no," Noir practically flew to his feet, reeled for only a second as his head spun, and watched with a shattered demeanor as Alloy carried a grieving Freelove off too the elevator near the base of the stairs. Collin could feel the hate from the NeoX kids just as much as he could see the confused looks on their faces- all directed at him- the solemn shake of their heads, the cowling grimaces, the muttled cries. Noir felt broken. What had he done?

"No... N-No... I didn’t mean... she’s OK, right? She’s not hurt... I didn’t hurt her... I couldn’t..." Collin's babbles came out with a wave of tears.

"She’s OK, Collin. Its OK," Kayo was the one to take the shuttering scarecrow in her arms, "Its OK."

Collin wasn’t the macho type. He wasn’t afraid to spill his emotions all over that perfect mahogany wood floor, and the tears came in a cascade.

...It had happened again. He’d done it again.

He’d tried to help and he’d only hurt, all because of his mutation.

... that god damned mutation.

***************

"I’m sorry, kid. I’m sorry. Tell her I’m..."

"Quite, you," Kayo whispered softly, rubbing a comforting hand down her friend’s back, hugging him, trying to console him all the more, "I don’t know what the hell what you just did, man, but I know you didn’t mean it, OK? So its OK. Everything’s OK."

‘So much for a grand reunion,’ Kayo sighed into her friend’s moppy black hair. Anne, and Creeper had run off with NeoX and most of the XMen to see to Chastity’s safety. Dante sat nearby, clearly shaken, holding Shay close, as she shot a quick ‘Missed you, kid’ smile at Chey...

And all the while Kayo could feel Inferno staring a bitter, angry hole straight through the back of her skull...

She shuttered at the sensation.

Wonderful. He was still mad at her. Furious, most likely.

Oh goody.

Just another trial to face.

***************

As Alloy led Nexus off to their new living quarters, Remy LeBeau scratched at his forever stubbled chin, grinning wryly at the befuddled look on Professor Xavier’s face.

"Dear lord, what on earth am I thinking with all this? What have I done?" Charles grimaced.

Patting the bald old man on the shoulder, Remy stifled a laugh, "You, mon ami, just adopted a fist full o’ punk-ass teenagers."

"Oi," The professor mimicked Remy’s Cajun slur, almost grinning, despite his apprehension.

"My sentiments exactly," Gambit nodded, and chuckled.

Hah. The old boy still had a sense of humor.

Touché’.

Part 10: Egotism grandeur- ‘Boys will be boys’

Nights within the mansion weren’t going to be their usual cordial, peacefully quite selves for a long, long time, Psihawk gathered, as he set off glowering about the halls of the mansion on a bout of sleepless angst. It was going on two AM and Nexus seemed to be at the peek of their obnoxiousness. Within the spacious game-room gone ‘sleeping’ quarters they now inhabited, radios had gone on and up in volume the moment they’d walked in the room, while spattered in-between threatening song lyrics came sardonic chatters and gleeful giggles, all wrapped up with a cute little clomping-footstep paper and the occasional malicious 'THUNK!' from various unknown thrown objects.

Judging from the multiple complaints and angry looks Psihawk was receiving from his team members and friends as he shuffled about the halls in his sweats and slippers, he wasn’t the only one who wished they’d slipped some sort of blessed downer into the new gang’s drinks before Lights Out. The racket was not intolerable- Trump and Alloy were sleeping like babies in spite of it all- but for NeoX’s light-snoozers it was insufferable, none the less.

Warren hadn’t a clue Nexus weren’t being near as imprudent as it seemed. The team were nearly nocturnal anymore- or whatever you could classify constantly operating on no more then a maximum of four hours of sleep a night. Life on the streets simply had not allowed the group the luxury to call it an early night before nine and sleep in until noon on Saturdays. Life in the alleys of New York City had been a brutal, draining lifestyle, and Nexus had justly adapted. It was ‘normal’.

Psihawk was a man on a mission, however, now striding confidently down the mansion’s lavish halls, strait for the Professor’s study. Lack of elbow room due to new students, he’d firmly decided, he could no doubt handle, but delirium due to complete lack of sleep? There was absolutely no way in all of Westchester that was going to happen to himself or his team if he had anything to do with it, and, he preened, he would deal with it, right there and then. Step by determined step Warren Worthington IV planned his plight word-for-word for the professor, and was damn certain his plea would fall upon concerned ears up until the very second he rounded the corner at the end of the hallway...

...And ran head-on, right smack into Trevor O’Brian.

The both of them reeled back, rather startled, having been glowering about with minds elsewhere entirely, and both seemed to blink dumbly at each other as they worked to gain their bearings. Warren was the first to recover, glaring distastefully at Trevor, making an oddly macho move to straighten his trained posture to his full height and glare down at the older man. The gesture seemed ill-thought out, however. Not only was it unnatural for the sophisticated man to try to size someone up, but, despite his height advantage over the fuzzy blonde Fireboy, he was outweighed by a good seventy pounds. In spite of being rather short in stature compared to many of the XMansion males, Trevor O’Brian was stocked like a ten pound load in a five pound case, and, nix a bit of well-earned chub around the mid-section, it was absolutely all muscle.

For the moment, Warren couldn’t care in the least. It was his pride peeking to the surface, not his abundant logic. It was a rare instance of poor judgment for him, but like the occasional chaffing rash, there it was. And, dear Warren, despite his intellect, got careless...

Trevor was in the midst of shrugging the collision off entirely. Call it preoccupation, call it slight intoxication (because he was, no doubt, a bit tipsy) call it what you want, Inferno was actually moving towards walking off with little more then a lethal grunt at Warren’s fuzzy blue slippers...

... and then he lit a cigarette...

... and Warren, against his own better judgment, snatched the cig right out of Trevor’s mouth, let it fall to the mahogany wood floor, and stomped out the perfectly good fag.

Had the notion not instantly been overridden with sheer fury, Warren would have sworn Inferno actually looked hurt. But that thought came right around the same moment he was being pinned up against the wall by the nap of his nightshirt, and he let the concept drop entirely.

... Its not easy to look dignified when you can’t breathe. Warren, rather shocked at the attack, had never really thought of a reaction to such a scenario, and was at a loss for words. He knew he’d be damned if he’d be caught squirming under this fool’s grasp, so he simply, despite his complexion’s reddening due to complete lack of oxygen, looked as unthreatened and cool as he could muster.

"Do put me down," Psihawk glowered down at the growling man whos grip was growing alarmingly hotter by the moment, "I’d hate to actually have to touch you enough to hurt you."

The birdboy’s cool was annoying as hell, Inferno thought. He wasn’t in any mood to start a fight. He hadn’t really wanted to, and still didn’t, more for the fact that he was having a rather difficult time seeing straight, as opposed to ‘fear’ of the illustrious Psihawk.

Despite his body’s work at burning away the alcohol in his bloodstream, Inferno was, by far, swimmingly drunk. Apparently Xavier had forgotten to make it a point to change the location of the keys to the mansion’s lovely wine seller. Trevor’s mission for a little bit of bubbly to take off the edge of his pain had somehow gone from a few light swigs to the discovery of some hard liquor and an all out glut fest.

"PUT... ME... DOWN," came a second warning from Warren, cool and calm as before, but this time pronounced clear enough for an amoebae to comprehend.

Trevor didn’t appreciate the insolence. Not one bit. "Ah-ah... No, gotta better idea," The white eyed beast man grinned right in Warren’s face, "Hows about I lob off yer head and crap down your neck, eh? Hows that for fun, huh?"

Warren felt ill. It was a disturbing mental image, indeed. Grant it, he wasn’t sure whether the wave of nausea was due to the fact that Inferno smelled as if he’d been wallowing in the bottom of a wine glass, or because of the thought of his own decapitation, or the impending concept of Trevor O’Brian’s bare ass that close to his helpless violated remains, but still...

"We’ll make a date of it," Inferno suddenly freed Warren from his grasp, "Starting now..."

Warren barely blocked the punch Trevor threw at his head, but did so regardless, as if it were a sixth sense, and threw a right hook of his own, which Inferno immediately dodged. Trevor pulled back for one hell of a punch and was in the midst of letting that sucker fly when his entire body was halted by one seriously painful metallic CLANG!

Psihawk blinked, completely confused. Inferno was a reeling sputter of pained swear words. Caleb Rodreguez, seconds later, released his fire-cannon friend from his cold adamantium grasp.

Trevor immediately dove with fiery fists, once again, strait at Warren’s head, and before Psihawk had even bothered to move to dodge him, Dante had caught his inebriated team leader by the back of the leather coat and flung him up against the wall on the opposite side of the hall.

Trevor hit hard, landing clumsily on his feet, his muscles wrenching from the wanton collision, and he almost made move to bicker when Dante cut him off, "Cool off, Chico! We’re not pulling this crap. Not on him," He placed a steely hand on Warren’s shoulder, "Or anyone else in this place. Now either hit the sack, go be pissed of on some drunk downtown, or get bent, because if you go pulling this crap and get us kicked out of here, you know I’ll pound your ass."

Psihawk gapped at the Latino’s bold words, looking from Dante’s massive build- which stood pointedly between himself and O’Brian- to the huffy Inferno, and back. Somewhere an odd mix between drunk, baffled, embarrassed and direly pissed, Trevor, to Warren’s suprise, simply picked his drunken frame up, spat a few choice words in Warren’s general direction, turned... and left.

The moment they were alone, Dante was a fit of heart felt apologies, and amidst his spatter of atonement, Warren was struck with a sudden befuddlement. There was something different about the man. Grant it, He had clearly shed the quiet, defensive shell in which he had formerly been entrapped, but... it was something else... something about...

"Good God," Psihawk sputtered aloud, earning an amused look from Caleb, "You... your standing... How in the hell...?"

Caleb beamed, stretching his massive metallic arms out at either side of him, as if to give Warren a better view of his newfound freedom, "That I am."

"How on earth...?"

"There is much more to Mr. O’Brian then the brainless hot head you’ve seen him display," Caleb smiled kindly, "He’s given me back my life," Warren noticed the man’s eyes seemed to smile, crinkling up on end, along with the rest of his demeanor when he spoke, and watched curiously as Caleb pulled up a leg of his pants, revealing an odd contraption- metallic in appearance, like something straight out of a comic book- a manufactured, mechanical leg of sorts that looked to be man made... but not...

"These," Caleb pressed on fondly, "Were given to me as a gift not but a year ago. They’ve given me back my freedom, my ability to be myself, my heart and soul, in a way. O’Brian created these. Formed them out of his own mind, out of the goodness of his own heart, and he made them a reality, entirely out of the desire to help me."

"Inferno did this?" Warren muttered, almost beneath his breathe. He was startled both by the concept of Trevor O’Brian having a heart, let alone one to lend to others, as well as by the poetic beauty of the man who stood before him.

"He did," was the simple reply. Warren felt Caleb’s intention in his simplicity- perhaps there was truly something beyond the Nexus leader’s hostility...

... though somehow it seemed impossible.

Putting this aside, Psihawk put out a hand to the large man, smiling warmly, "It is good to see you doing well, Caleb."

Caleb returned the handshake openly, "As it is you, my friend."

****************

"You put on quite a show, Mr. O’Brian," Trevor was startled by the voice that invaded his thoughts and ears no sooner had he set foot into the study of Charles Xavier, and almost made move to retort before he was cut off for the second time that evening, "Save me the theatrics, Trevor... and no, not if you paid me," the bald telepath watched the fuming pyro grow red at the reading of his crude thoughts, and smothered a grin.

"Christ, I need a beer," Trevor collapsed into one of the leather sofas within the homey, fireplace-lit, book cluttered study, and pulled a pillow over his head with a groan.

"It seems you’ve already had your fill of spirits for the evening, Mr. O’Brian," The professor ignored the pillow-muffled grumble he was immediately handed back, and wheeled his chair over into closer proximity of his tremulous charge, "I won’t even bother mentioning the price value of some of the wine you devoured, simply because it is unimportant, although I will, however, warn you immediately that the proposed methods of homicide against my top student in which you are contemplating are highly unreccomended, both due to the fact that he can very well fend for himself and that if he is so much as whipped with a towel in the showers, I’ll have you right back out on your delinquent derrière where you came from. Do I make myself perfectly clear, sir?"

Inferno’s muffled response was nearly intelligible, and probably for the better, although Charles, amidst the pillow-hidden clamor, managed to decipher what sounded something to the effect of, "You ‘od ‘amn Pellepafths..."

Xavier resisted the urge to chuckle, as drunken border-psychotics tend to have very poor senses of humor. He instead scratched his shiny smooth head and pressed on, "Anyhow, I do appreciate you responding to my appeal for a short meeting," Charles saw a white eyeball blink at him from beneath the pillow, "It has been a great deal of time since I’ve had the chance to evaluate Nexus’s skills as a team in any fashion, and as a part of our agreement in your staying here, I would like to immediately resume your training here at the school," The blinking shifted into an all out stare-down, "But before I can do so, I need to know where you and your friends are at in your abilities. So, I would like to schedule a DangerGhrotto session as soon as possible for an evaluation. You will be working in a simulation in opposition to my students of Neo X, as they are trained to the peak of their abilities thus far and--"

Off went the pillow, Trevor looking as if he were ready to leap at Xavier and hug him, if not at the chance to take him up on such a challenge, "Give me the when and the where, Chuck, you know we’ll be there."

"I’d like to start as early as tomorrow, if--"

"Deal," Trevor was up and on his way out the door before Xavier himself had time to blink.

"Tomorrow, six AM, then," Xavier called out after him, "And Trevor, do talk to her."

Inferno spun around on his heels beneath the study’s doorjamb, "What?"

"Cheyenne," Charles stated firmly, "Talk to her. Give her a chance, Mr. O’Brian. The both of you need at least that."

"Yeah, Right." Trevor grumbled, stomping out the door, "Damn telepaths."

Part 11: Resent, redemption and all the Rage

"So are we going to talk about this or do you just plan on ignoring me for the next eighteen years?" Kayo glowered with a bitter, quiet ease.

When Trevor O’Brian wants to get lost, he’s the definition of the word. Kayo had searched for over an hour without success, and when a simple case of hide-and-seek had proved to be botched, she’d simply resorted to sniffing him out. The scent had lead her to the mansion’s garage, wading through machines that ranged from Wolverine’s Harley Davidson to the massive high-tech jet that was the Xmen’s new and improved BlackBird to the NeoX student’s various well-kept automobiles. Chey finally reigned victorious in her search, pinning the location of the NY Fireboy, finding herself in the passengers seat of Nexus’s beat-to-heck minivan, starring placidly at her team leader, best friend and worst enemy, amidst the bitter cold nighttime air, and hiding behind tinted windows, fogged thick from the swelling heat projected from Inferno’s foul mood.

He sat mean-faced and frumpy behind the over worn wheel, his angry white stare piercing the hazy windshield and beyond, not blinking, not recognizing her presence, not even budging an inch beyond short, ridged breaths, his nervous fists grasping on the steering panel and the simultaneous twitch of his temples as his jaw worked overtime at knawing the living heck out of a stress-mutilated toothpick.

She sat, staring at her black-clawed hands, shoulders slouched, her usually sure-fire, take-on-the-world-even-though-you-suck demeanor picking the worst time to evade her. Shivering in the cold, her pointed ears pulled back in frustration, Cheyenne was doubting it had ever been a good idea to take the Professor up on his suggestion in the first place.

"Talk to him, Cheyenne," he’d said in his perfectly acquired culture, "He has to work through his misgivings sometime, and an invitation to do so certainly wouldn’t hurt."

‘Last time I take orders from Ol’ Cueball,’ Kayo thought with a sigh. Trevor had his invitation. She was right there. She’d bothered to track the jerk down herself, and even bothered to persue the pointless notion of a conversation between the two of them, yet as far as she could tell at the moment, she was no more significant to him then a bug on the windshield.

... And still, he said nothing. The silence was stagnant, acrid, and it bit Kayo to the core.

Why was he doing this? What happened to ‘I’ll always be there for you, kid'? What happened to the infamous ‘Unbreakable bond’? What happened to ‘I love you’?

Kayo head swam with the hurtful questions, and the one that hurt the most took the liberty of surfacing as well... Did Trevor honestly hold her responsible for Victor’s actions? How could he? How could he be so cold?

"Fine," Cheyenne spat, her voice breaking as she began to furiously clamor out of the van, "Be an ass, I don’t need this, and I don’t need you---"

"Chey!" Trevor spoke, still not moving, still glaring straight ahead.

Kayo halted in mid-exit and glared at him bitterly, "Well?"

"Get in the van, we need to talk."

"No really?!" Kayo hopped back into the cab, reddened and furious, and slammed the door shut.

The two sat dead silent for only a moment before Inferno hit the ignition with a start, lit a fag and shot her a look, "The Dirtchamber?"

Kayo grunted, "You got the keys, big man."

Inferno hit the gas, "The Dirtchamber it is."

*********************

It had been the darkest, most loathsome gothic clubbing hub in all of the great NY for years. There, Freaks and gouls intermingled with the dark minded and grotesque, the wanna-be vampire and true-to-life Nocturne alike. This place was the core of all fear, fright and gruesome urban legends within the depths of New York City. It attracted the most detestable nightlife the expansive City had to offer. Gothic ravers danced to the soul pounding deathcore tunes, nineball pros made their rounds, and only the badboys strong enough to hold their own dared to sample the booze on the house.

... Enter The Dirtchamber.

Kayo, to her own despair, had a bit of a welcoming committee to contend with upon her first return in months to the well hidden hell hole, and was trying to ignore it, or rather him, with everything in her. She stared at the deep violet light above her, tried to immerse herself in its warmth. She tried to loose herself in the desolate cries over the loudspeaker. It wasn’t working. He was still there, and he clearly wasn’t going to shut up.

"Well if it Ain’t the CatMan’s Gal herself, Cheyenne LeBeau! Its been a while! Wheres the Old Man, eh? Have a bit of a fall out did you two? What is it this time, eh? Too many dead bodies in the love nest crampin’ yer space? Cat kick the crap out of the dog again, is it? Funny, I Ain’t seen him around in some time either, withou-"

"Get me a beer, and get lost," Kayo glowered. She wasn’t one to really hate anyone. It simply wasn’t in her to do so. Heck, once you’ve had the misfortune of sinking as low as sharing a toothbrush with Mortimer Toynbee, you tend to go all out on loving the world, but this guy- Mick Chibboninski- she was pretty sure that her preference for him came the closest within her rank of mortally despise as humanly possible.

Kayo glowered atop her barstool, watching the fat, greasy man sneer at her comment and hit the beertap. He was an ugly thing, with hair in places people just shouldn’t have hair and the general personal hygiene of a dung beetle. He’d grossed her out for as long as she’d known him to be in existence. Crude, rude and butt-ugly, Mick was just slimy by all means- the type of guy who’d hit on a 14 year old for the hell of it. Chey knew this because she’d been 14 and in the bar at a time in her not-distant-enough past and he’d tried to get way too friendly with her way too quickly, thinking she was just another slag off the streets of New York.

Too bad for him she wasn’t, and Sabretooth, having immediately sensed her panic, had looked up from his game of nineball right then and there... and inevitably put old Mickey’s head through a couple of pool cues, his entire massive frame through a huddled pack of on-lookers, and then he, well... we’ll just say that after his Creed Experience, Mick Chibboninski had spent a good few months making amends with his proctologist.

Now, Chubbs was all quagmire smiles as he slapped her beer down on the bar, the foam of it nearly sloshing into Kayo’s lap. Kayo outwardly glared daggers at the open face of her mug, but inwardly was shaking like a leaf. She’d secretly hoped Debbie would have been taking tabs that night.... or Shep... or Nikki... or even that Devo idiot that the Club’s head hanchos would resort to when all else failed. Anyone but Chubbs...

... because now Chey didn’t have her Vic around now to play bodyguard. She knew it. Chubbs knew it.

This sucked.

Chey, flustered, took a monster swig of her Bud- too big a gulp under the swinish bartender's glare, and she went off in a sputter of coughs, her crumbling world momentarily swimming, until the second Mick decided to take the liberty of sarcastically crossing his boundaries to slap her on the back.

He nearly lost an arm.

Chubbs reared back, his own mutant eyes flashing yellow with shock at the dagger-toothed, sheathed-clawed demeanor Chey had momentarily acquired to ward away his contact, "Wha-!? Crikey, Yah psycho, are you fuckin' crazy?!"

Kayo reobtained her beer triumphantly and sipped... carefully, "Bite me, Chubbs."

"Huh, Neurotic much? " Chubbs chided, his fat upper lip pulled up over bad teeth in irk. He shrugged his beefy shoulders and looked her over, "Somethin’ different about you, Mutt," He leaned in again, quiet for a moment, then suddenly gave a wide-eyed grunt, "Well I’ll be damned."

Kayo went pale at the perverse expression on the fat man’s face.

...Ah, lovely.

Even HIS dumb ass had figured her out.

Chubbs sneered, "Thats it! He plugged yah didn’ he? I’ll be damned, thats it!"

Chey nearly fell off of her stool. Knowing it was one thing- hearing it was emotional suicide. Her head swam, her stomach pulsed with indignant fury, and she snapped, "You shut up... just shut the hell up... I swear to God..."

"I knew it!" his fist pounded the bar and glasses rattled. A few of the close ranged drunks and late night partiers peered their way. Kayo wanted to be dead.

Quiet. She wanted it quiet. She didn’t want to think...

Chubbs pressed on, smiling filth, "So its the bastard kid that’s takin’ up to much room at home, eh? I’ll be damned!" Chubbs leaned in close enough to make her exceedingly sick and choked quietly, "Whats the matter, kid? Not puttin’ out? The Master have to get a little --"

"Shut UP!!"

Enter the Blood Rage. Sheet red. Sheer hate. Kayo didn’t see her own arm reach out and snag the gruesome pervert by the top of his greasy haired head. She only saw the attack- the source of her recent pains- again. She saw the only person she thought she could ever trust push his hate just a little to far, hurt her just a little too much, enjoy one scream way to many.

Kayo didn’t even hear her screams now, didn’t hear the horrified cries of the surrounding ravers and eager druggie partygoers.

She just continued to ram Mick Chibbinski’s vulgarity-spewing skull into the equally offensive bartop, all the while, the slight bit of her own language she did manage to grasp made her numb.

"HE-"

(SLAM!)

"DOESN’T-"

(SLAM!)

"OWN-"

(SLAM!)

"ME!!"

Kayo felt herself suddenly torn away from old Chubbs’s conscienceless blubbery mass, felt the familiar heated grasp of a friend, felt the Rage subside, and watched, shocked, numb, and hallow, as the unconscious bartender clamored, bleeding, to the floor.

"Man alive, can I not leave long enough to crap without somebody libel to bleed?!" Inferno raved, holding her tight, warding off fearful, furious partiers with an evil-eyed glare. Kayo sunk into the grasp of her old friend, wide eyed and frightened at the chaos around her, clasping Inferno’s ratty leather jacket for dear, bitter life. Despite his reprimand, she wasn’t given time nor chance for a despondent response. Trevor O’Brian picked up and hauled her small, disconsolate frame with infuriated ease out of the shattered clublife and into their comforting back alleys of New York City.

*********************

Fear is a sickness of the soul. Everytime Cheyenne LeBeau lost control, she knew fear. She embodied it, withered at its embrace, and it broke her. Again.

Four blocks east of The Dirtchamber in a dank, soiled, cal-de-sac back alley, quiet cries could be heard, just barely, over the hectic nighttime buzz of New York. Kayo wheeped mercilessly in Trevor’s arms who was finally, it seemed, starting to care. He held her, rocked her slightly, rubbing a comforting hand on her back, through her beautiful burgundy hair. She held onto him until the sobs seized, milking his timid attempts at comfort for everything they were worth.

It was quiet again. The silence returned, somehow different this time: placid and all-knowing, because this time, it seemed, sincerity over rode the anger. Kayo was entirely unsure of why. She almost didn’t want to find out. This comfort was needed so badly. Her soul ached for it, and here it was, but was it truly sincere?

She didn’t want to know, didn’t dare break the silence, so he did.

"I want to know why," Inferno whispered, coolly retracting his caring hug and watching her closely.

Kayo looked for anger, for deceit. She saw none, so she pressed on, wary, "What do you mean, ‘why’?"

Leaning against the dark brick wall behind him, Trevor’s look fell, his white eyes seemed sorrowful. Reaching out with one hand, he lightly rubbed Kayo’s round stomach with the back of his hand with incredibly cautious care. Actions spoke louder then words. Kayo knew he was hurt.

... but so was she. There was a certain dignity about her words, "If I knew..." she whispered, almost inaudible, "If I knew... I wish I knew." She stared at him solidly in the face, "but I don’t."

"Oh, come on," The careful ease began to drain from Inferno’s face, and he seemed to physically fret, fidgeting, scratching harshly at his goateed chin, "After all this, You’re going to lie to me? I mean what are you... do you thing I’m stupid? You live for that scumbag, you think the sun shines out his ass, and you ‘don’t know’?" He swung around on his heals, with a bit of a snarl, "God! I can’t--"

"All right," Chey’s sudden intrusion shut him up with a start, "All right, you want to know why? Fine! You know why?" Kayo had never literally gotten in Trevor O’Brian’s face before, yet here she was, "You. that's why."

"What?" Inferno’s eyes grew wide. Kayo watched the color drain from his 'grand' continence.

"You asked," Chey bristled, " And your answer is... You."

Silence. Once more Chey pressed on with a sigh, "I don’t know if you realize it, Trev, but Vic’s allot more of a psychoanalyst on the whole commitment thing then you know--"

Trevor scoffed.

Kayo waved a clawed finger in his face, "Don't, all right? I mean for me, not him. He wants you dead, O’Brian, out of the picture... preferably out of MY picture." Cheyenne sighed once more, suddenly not near as confident, and dreadfully tired, "Its sick... He wanted me to lose you Trev, and I couldn’t do it," She ran a hand through her deep red hair, "Last I saw him, he wanted to hook up, like," Chey closed her eyes, "Y’know... anyways, I wouldn’t. I didn’t, and I told him exactly what I told you."

Cheyenne, at that moment, distinctively saw Trevor O’Brian break. She’d never forget it, because there and then she literally caught the scent of his dispair... and oddly, it was uplifting to her, because it was then she knew. It was then she knew for certain that her pain, the baby, the life she’d risked was not out of hope, but out of truth, "I told him that I love you, Trev. I told him that I knew it was Him or you... And that I wanted it to be you, and he... he" she shied away, "... Y’know."

"My god," Reality hit and Inferno immediately swept Chey up in his arms, and as she wept, so did he. He’d lied to himself, deceived his instincts, what he knew to be true, and he’d hurt her because of it. "I didn’t know, I swear to God I thought... Kid, I ... My god. I’m sorry... I’m so sorry."

Love finds its stronghold through only the strongest grip on reality, and they held it, as clearly as they held each other. The silence was needed now. Here, once more, Kayo embodied the fear, apprehension, the hate... and for once, she crushed it.

"I love you, kid." It was a phrase no one ever heard uttered from the lips of the Macho NY Fireboy, but there it was.

Kayo just pulled away, "I know," and looked at him square in the face. She didn’t need to say the same. If he didn’t know that by now, he never would.

He knew...

... and it was time to move on.

She’d never seen Inferno so at ease. He led her out of the ally, carefully taking her hand, a timid look shot her way. They both knew he had a lot to make up for. She knew he would, and for once the silence was spent, "We, uh.... kinda have a Grotto shot with the Neo kids t’morrow, y’know?" Trevor grinned a little, his expression soft.

Kayo, still whiping the tears away, smiled meekly, and chuckled, "'Kinda'?"

Inferno shot a grin, "Well, yeah. Kinda."

"Kinda my butt. What did you do?"

Trev put an arm around her shoulders as they walked on though the dark, "Not telling."

Chey shook her head, "Uh-huh, you better, because I know you-- you...."

It happened so quickly that neither of them knew quite what was happening. Kayo suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, nearly sending the closely-knit Inferno for a loop, her eyes wide, flashing red, her face a mask of mortal fear. She was as pale white as the hidden moon, completely and utterly scared. Something was close... very close. She sniff the air and panicked, her blood ran cold, " you..... Oh god.... oooh... my... God, Trevor."

Trevor panicked. He knew for certain he’d not seen the small woman this incredibly scared in years. She shot towards him, recoiling as close to him as humanly possible, nearly toppling him, shaking like a leaf, "Trevor!", she squeaked.

"Cheyenne, what? Whats wrong? Would you--," He yelled.

"RUN... you have to run...." Kayo sputtered.

"Would you--" Trevor was oblivious, frustrated, frightened, and he shook her, "Cheyenne, what? Would you tell me? Chey! TELL me, What is WRONG!"

"He’s here, Trevor...," he barely heard his love force the words out, but he knew what she meant, "Please run..."

He knew who she meant, and he himself was suddenly deathly afraid.

*********************

Kayo had caught the scent off-handedly from the midnight ally-way breeze. Truthfully, She saw nothing through the pitch of the moonless sky, but she knew he was there. She could swear it, she could smell it, and she was scared out of her mind...

Fear has its way of jarring one’s sense of reality. Of twisting it, retarding it beyond any hint of rationality... it can impair you, make you dillusional, and even kill you at its peak. To Cheyenne, at that moment there and then, That scent was Victor Creed. Reality need not take a part in her perception, because nothing could have convinced her otherwise.

Damien Creed knew the sensation well, and almost pitied the horrified frail’s withering sobs. Heightened senses tended to delude the mind all the more if your scared enough. He too knew that he, to her, with a continence and scent not entirely like his father’s, was the embodiment of Kayo’s fear. That embodiment was Sabretooth.

The fact that she saw him as his father made him discreetly ill, and he grew tired of the mind game. He watched acutely with glowing yellow eyes as Inferno stepped between Kayo and the phantomed Sabretooth that he could not see, fists enflamed, "You got me Creed. C’mon!" He screamed, "The quicker you get out here the quicker I kill you, you sick son of a-- a..."

Damien Creed- Rage- stepped out of the shadows, "Son of a Creed?" He grinned. "Evening, Flamer."

********************

"YOU!" Kayo threw herself at the massive yellow-eyed man, clawing the whole way there, "You... you... You freaking scared me! You creep!!"

Rage almost went to block the tiny clawed fists that flew aimed dead-on at his scull, but came short of making contact with Kayo at all. Inferno’d caught Chey upon panicked reflex and pulled her back to his side, shooting a scalding look of warning at Rage, "What do you want, Creed?"

Rage ignored Trevor completely, standing, head cocked to a side, looking Kayo over.

...What were they doing?

Inferno blinked stupidly, watching the two. They seemed to regard each other in the exact same manner, claws bore, eyes alert, with a few attentive sniffs in each other’s general direction. For absolutely anyone else such and introduction may have seemed laughably stupid, but with these two, Trevor noted, it was entirely natural... and beyond quaintly disturbing.

At that, Damien Creed seemed to give the girl no more then a curt nod, which was returned with a small, odd growl and a shrug from Cheyenne, and she looked away.

Finally the massive son of Sabretooth spoke up, "Toynbee phoned me on it... I didn’t think he was serious. Guess so."

Rage poked at her forehead almost jokingly, and Kayo batted his hand away with a warning snarl. "Mort didn’t tell Vic?"

Inferno nearly made move to scorch the Creed boy when Damien lifted the angry girl’s chin with one spiny atamantiun claw, but his gut told him to hold back. This time he listened.

"Give the jerk some credit, he Ain’t that stupid."

Chey shot Rage the Look, "He told you, didn’t he?"

Damien gave her a cold, knowing look, "Thank him later."

Kayo growled, "And why’s that?"

"Easy," Rage looked from Kayo to the vigilant Inferno, "’Cause how else are you gonna tell the old man and get out of it alive?"

Part 12: Territorial pissings (part 1 of 2) 'Just bring it'

Delicate claw-tipped fingers and two sets of glowing ember eyes danced their lethal dance over the glowing center council of the Danger Grotto's main brain computer control room. Remy LeBeau, Gambit, watched as his daughter's hand's skillful ballet sent the massive Danger Grotto that lay just behind and below the overlooking control room window into an eerie, mechanical life. Simultaneous bleeps and blips, clawtaps and the occasional curse at computer skills that proved to be a bit rusty after years behind a street war as apposed to a technological forefront sparked movement in the massive white room. Blinding lights flashed overhead. Metallic, nonexistent artillery, vibrant environments of nonexistent worlds, along with a massive clamor of life like sounds pulsed, flickered and retracted inside what had originally been called the Danger Room by generations gone by.

Again, seconds later, the room returned to its stagnant white state, only this time it was loaded for action, fully programmed by the complex yet conflicted mind of Cheyenne LeBeau.

"Man, I've got allot of catch up to do if I'm ever going to be able to run this mess the right way again," Kayo rubbed tired eyes and leaned her head back to rest on her standing father's stomach, peering up into a set of red devil eyes that matched her own. "Maybe once Riley gets here I'll be well enough to put some real hours back into training, do you think?"

"'Riley'?" Remy cocked his head, "De baby? Its name is final den, non?"

"I think so. Boy or girl, 'Riley' just seems to fit."

"I like it, Cherie," Gambit smiled thoughtfully. He'd finally hit a realization just a few days previous. Despite his hate for Sabretooth- despite the animosity that had existed between the two for years- Kayo was carrying kin not only to The Enemy, but a grandchild of his own. The baby to come was the child of his own baby girl, Cheyenne, the daughter whose childhood had been stolen from the both of them. Remy had lost the chance to be anything remotely resembling a father to Kayo, and he knew that he was lucky to even have the relationship he did with her now. Gambit didn't want to lose even a minute at the present with Kayo or her child.

The Cajun smiled at his daughter's urgency to learn more about the computer that lay in front of her, "Though somehow I doubt you'll be rollin' in free time once the babe arrives, petite."

"I'll take it as it comes, I guess," Cheyenne sighed. Whirling around in her techno swivel chair, a still pajama-clad Kayo, with her burgundy mess of hair pulled back in a ponytail and a Kermit the Frog coffee mug grasped for dear life, addressed her respectable and well-known audience within the dark, crowded control room that was far too small for the numbers that inhabited it. "That's our cue folks," she announced, "We're ready to raise some hell."

"Tactful as ever, Miss LeBeau," Charles Xavier mused, peering up from his conversation with his son Lleander with a kind smile. Kayo, one of Xavier's favorites, if not his most challenging student over the years, grinned wryly, despite her obvious ill state due to morning sickness, and wriggled her eyebrows at her favorite 'Ol' Bald Bastard.'

"Logan," Xavier pressed on, "And Ororo, I would like the both of you to explain the basis of this exercise to both Nexus and our Neo X students. Judging from the thoughts I'm receiving from each team, Neither has the slightest clue as to what they're about to face, and I'd like for them to be informed, if not somewhat relieved of their dismay once the session begins."

"This should be interesting, to say the least," Ororo parted from her previous conversation with Kate Pryde and Dr. Richard McCoy, "I'll address my NeoX students, if I may," She told no one in particular, yet pointedly piercing Wolverine with icy catlike eyes, "Excuse me if I'd prefer not to walk into a battlefield in explaining this all to our local Nexus heathens. If anything I believe Logan would be better fit for the job."

"Fine," Wolverine started for the door, Storm right at his side, "Whatever gets the job done." The mechanical doors whisked open, and words not meant to be heard were spoken just a little too loudly by a ruefully grinning Logan, "That Creeper guy really does spook the hell out of you, doesn't he?"

"Logan!" Storm halted in her tracks, mortally embarrassed at the bemused chuckles that chimed from within the Control Room, as the doors whisked shut, nearly nipping her in the behind as a result.

*****************************

"No. Way." Trevor O'Brian's usually manly baritone damn near hit a falsetto, "No freakin' way, man! There is no way IN hell I'm going to team up with that pigeon-winged jackass and his team! That wasn't part of the deal, here!"

"Well, it looks like it is now, don't it, bub?" Logan shot Inferno a look to kill, jabbing a stubby finger at Trevor's leather clad chest, "Now shut the hell up, sit the hell down n' let me finish before I smack the stupid right out of you." The fuzzy old man, dark eyes, grizzly demeanor and all, stared downed a fuming Trevor O'Brian without even the slightest hint of intimidation. This, followed by what the rest of the team could have sworn was an animalistic deep-throated growl, sent the infuriated Nexus leader's threatening air shrinking considerably down to size.

The kid was a headcase, as far as Wolverine was concerned. Not too bright either, if not the proud owner of a deluxe package of balls of steel. You would have thought he would have know better by now not to interrupt someone twice his weight and experience, Logan measured.

"Fuck you," Trevor spat at Wolverine defiantly under his breath, but he was resided, as it turned out. Inferno immediately shrunk back, returning to his sulking posture in the shadows of his peers, sucking on the raw end of a diminishing blunt.

"That's more like it," The classic insult slid off of the impenetrable Wolverine entirely, "Now, as I was saying," Logan paused, glaring at Inferno, just waiting for a reason to cuff him. Gaining only a cold glare in return, he continued, "The game plan is this: Xavier has put Kayo in charge of programin', opperatin' and runnin' this Grotto session, and is seein' her through it. Its just as much of a skills test for her as it will be for you folks. She's trying to make the grade here, just like you," Logan shot Inferno a knowing look, "So don't go thinkin' she'll be pullin' your team any slack just because blondie over there's got the hots for her."

Inferno gave a mock valiant gesture with a flick of his cigarette.

"This Grotto session is gonna be a bitch, people," Wolvie announced, "For both you and the NeoX. You are not, and I repeat, you are not in this to kick the living hell out of the X-kids. You are not against them, you are not rivaling them. This session will require you work with them as a team, otherwise you fail. Period." Wolverine buried a fist in his coat pocket and reemerged with a palm pilot communications tablet, intently scanning over the information it provided, "There will be three levels in this training session. Each level will be a greater challenge then the next. Level one has been made as a home-court advantage to NeoX- it will contain a scenario familiar only to the Neo X. Level two has been created as a one-up for Nexus, and level three will have the innate pleasure of kicking the shit out of the lot of you." Wolverine grinned as the hard-core Nexus elite were looking, for the first time since their arrival, a bit squeamish. It certainly didn't get any better then that. Logan grinned a cynical sharp-toothed grin, "Any questions?"

************************************

"Uh yeah... are you trying to get us killed, or am I just not hearing all of dis correctly?" Cody LeBeau had been stuck in the same awkward position- standing erect, half-stepping into his NeoX assigned uniform bottoms- since Miss Munroe had spoken those ... evil, evil words.

"Cody, shut up," Psihawk snapped in a viciously out of character snarl. Already, the brash NeoX leader looked spent, and he'd not so much as looked in the general direction of the Danger Grotto, let alone begun what everyone suspected would be the Training Session From Blackest Hell. Clearly the thought of having to work side by side with the lethal likes of Inferno- the same punkass, bullying bastard he'd feared since age eight- had him, despite his years of respective of training and a prim and proper childhood, nearly pissing in his superhero underpants.

Noticing the wide-eyed, borderline stunned looks on the faces of both his teammates and his instructor alike, Warren composed himself, inhaling and exhaling in one big whoosh. "Right. Damn. I'm sorry, Cody. Excuse me, Miss Munroe, go ahead."

Ororo Munroe, Storm, raised her eyebrows amusedly at the antics of her prized student with a haughty air, "I suppose the fact that you and Mr. Trevor O'Brian have both been assigned to lead your entire squad together wouldn't be much of a comfort to you in your present state of mind, then?"

Psihawk paled considerably, "I gotta sit down."

Jade Logan placed a comforting hand on the shoulder of her queasy team leader as Storm wrapped up her speech, clearly trying to mask a grin in the midst of it all, "Only six of you will be participating in today's session. The Professor wanted each team to be equal in number, if not necessarily equal in skill level," Ororo could have sworn she sensed a glint of nearly extinguished hope in the eyes of her students- the hope to get the bleeding hell out of what, in their minds, could very possibly be the ass kicking to end all ass kickings.

"Scirrocco, Mistral, Kismet, Transit," Those whom the white haired woman called upon held their breath, "You all will be on the sidelines for this training session."

"Yes ma'am!" came an almost gleeful unanimous sigh.

They were free! Safe! Off the hook! Take that, you head tripped Nexus nutcases! hah!

"As for the rest of you," Storm stared down the Doomed Half-Dozen; Freelove, Alloy, Psihawk, Anodyne, Trump and Valence, "I want you in the Grotto, immediately."

************************************

Militaristic Black leather, a stone cold demeanor and an underlying sadistic love for combat and warfare zipped up, strapped on and road the firey-eyed faces of the Nexus elite. If they were the least bit nervous, it didn't seem to show. Perhaps this was due to the hardening of their own humanity over the years. Witnessing years of death and dementia managed to take the piss out of even the most innocent of children. Logan, the Wolverine, knew this all to well.

He pitied the kids, to some extent. He ached for these battered children and loathed the callused masks they hid behind. Yet he admired them. Even without the bloodlust he himself had been cursed with, this rag tag team epitomized what it was to love the chaos of war.

Through their hardships, Nexus were one.

Inferno tied his blonde mane back, scanning the eager likes of Dante, AnneX, Creeper, Noir and Shay, "Ready?"

They nodded. Wolverine bristled at their air of defiance.

"Lets lock n' load."

************************************

The world around them was sent into a wave of chaotic motion the moment both NeoX and Nexus simultaneously set foot into the Grotto. The white euphoria of the cavernous room instantly gave way to an endless wave of adamantium plated walls, ceilings, and floors. The floor itself split apart from beneath them, raising, shifting, literally pulling them together from opposite ends of the room, startled and stricken, into the center of the spinning, shorn-metal-shreaking room.

Then there was dead silence.

AnneX's head swam. She was almost convinced her knees were on the verged of buckling out from underneath her. The sensation of the surreal Danger Grotto was something she had just never managed to grow accustomed to. Even now she loathed it. The falsity of this techno organic holographic world around her made her adamantium skin crawl.

"Computer, begin NeoNexus Training Session KayoOmega41b," a voice chimed over the intercom that resembled Kayo's voice to an eerie degree. "Hold onto your balls, kids, here we go!"

It was Kayo, all right.

The metallic sky above them split wide open with a horrid, almost fleshy tearing noise, and the floor beneath them shot upward. The rush of air, the pull of gravity, the insane wrenching of both teams' stomachs- It was all they could do not to fall to the skyrocketing ground.

Then it halted. The motion stopped. The rivaling teams, now a solitary unit, found themselves, of all things, in an exact replica of the old XMen Danger Room.

"What in the hell?" Annex's head swam once more.

'Level One has been made as a home-court advantage to NeoX,' Wolverine's voice rang gruffly in the back of her skull.

NeoX were born and raised training in the likes of the original Danger Room. They knew it like the back of their hand. Nexus, on the other hand, hand never even seen the place before, first hand, let alone trained there.

Kayo's voice returned, "Level One starts in five... four... "

"Everyone Pull together!" Psihawk called to the lot of them, avoiding a 'You're a Dead Mother Fucker' look from Inferno.

"Three... Two..."

"Back to back!" Inferno cried, "I want eyes on every inch of this room, you got me?!"

"...ONE."

The floor of the 'Danger Room' began to rumble viciously before the unseen Kayo even managed to finish uttering that final digit, and with it, from the floor surrounding the lot of teens from every angle of the room, came the demonic presence of monstrous robotic Paladins. Skull-faced, demon-eyed, humanoid robots, sprung up from the floor and seemed to attack NeoNexus almost instantaneously.

Complete chaos erupted in a massive wave of opposing powers. The Paladins fired scorching taser rifles with lethal precision, systematically singling out individual mutant teens as their targets of destruction.

Creeper, glowing white eyes like blinding beacons, fired molecular degenerative blasts from his mouth in a blinding, furious blaze. Shay and Anodyne teamed up, battling the ebony black robotic monsters back-to-back with their shared years of skillful Martial Arts training.

Dante, with powerful motions of his adamantium arms, tore the ground up from the earth in towering pillars the very moment Noir would reach into the depths of his targeted Paladin's programming with his dark mind, programming the robots to literally dread the movement around them, paralyzing the villainous Paladins with fear as Dante brought his earthen stone pillars down upon then, crushing them beyond recognition.

Trump immobilized other Robot assailants with his power-nullifying blasts with ease, and Valence, Freelove, and Alloy, phased, follied and forced their way through their targets like brittle tin foil.

All the while, Inferno and Psihawk were at the brunt of their verbal rivalry- Inferno barking out one set of orders, and Psihawk insisting on a completely opposing set of actions soon after. It seemed the two would much rather have been kicking the living snot out of each other, as opposed to the battling the inclosing clan of Paladins.

Annex herself was in quite the predicament, and in a furied panic, as well. Adamantiam hands and flesh molded into razor sharp spikes, thrashing, tearing at, and evading the Paladins that seemed to be closing in on her had only been effective for a short while. Now they seemed to be closing in on her so quickly she hardly had time to think, let alone act.

Things started to go downhill with a deadly precision. Trump was struck in the back by the taser fire, right between the shoulder blades. He let out a pained scream...

...and completely disappeared, as if the space around him had blinked... he suddenly simply gone. He just vanished, as did Shay- her wings shot and torn, she disappeared in mid-fall, just inches from hitting the ground.

AnneX herself, in the panic of it all, never even saw the Paladin that sprung up behind her and fired at her at point blank range at the back of her skull. The one thing, the only thing she knew was that the wretched swarming room around her was... as if the space around her had blinked... suddenly gone.

**********************************

"Shay! Thank God!" Annex exclaimed in a haze of confusion. Her adamantium skin reforming to a delicate smooth state, she rushed into the open arms of Shayla Ki, the first thing she saw as the world around her- now a completely different setting entirely- blinked back into view. Anne embraced Shay, her head swimming, "What in the hell just happened?"

"Settle down, love," Shay crooned, "I think we just failed the Training Session."

"What?! How?" Annex almost looked offended... until she finally bothered to glance at the room around her, noticing that Shay's damaged wings had been superficial, computer generated wounds. She then spotted Trump close by, slumped, completely unharmed, yet undeniably sulking in a seat in the first of four rows of movie-theater-like seats that inhabited the room. Annex cut just short of pouting, "Oh."

They were in the Study Room- a Theater, of sorts, that overlooked the Danger Grotto from behind a massive, four-inch thick one-way mirror.

"I guess the first time you get hit with any sort of injury, you're out of the game, and get transported here," Shay plopped down into a seat next to Trump, Annex following suit, still holding her friend close.

"Man. Five minutes into the session, and we've already failed it?!" AnneX looked at the ceiling with a placid, wide eyed regret.

"Basically, yeah," Shay grinned, "Man, we suck."

"Huh!" Cody grumbled poor-sportedly, "Speak for yourself."

*******************************

Back in the pandemonium of the Danger Grotto, the battle raged on when suddenly, the eerie hums, whirrs and crackles that the slowly deteriorating population of Paladins emitted ceased completely. The robots abruptly, to the shock of both the flustered Psihawk and the battered Neo Nexus, phased into the ground around them, and, as it seemed, disappeared right along with some of their fellow teammates.

Again, silence left its hollow snare within the Grotto, this time driving home the rift of fury between the two team leaders.

"Way to fucking go, moron!" Inferno spat, coming at Psihawk with a vicious shove, "Did you pull your 'Leader Badge' our of your ass, or what? We just lost three people because of you!"

"Because of me?!" It was everything Warren could do to refrain from knocking Trevor O'Brian's teeth clear out of his head. The NeoNexus team members watched their feuding 'leaders' with an air of confusion and annoyance, as Psihawk shouted, "You're the one who told them not to do exactly what I--"

Psihawk and Inferno alike suddenly, simultaneously, wished to God that their verbal brawl could have waited until later. The whereabouts of the Paladins were, in a split second, made painfully clear to them and their leaderless team.

Having fazed into the ground, the monster machines had regrouped a plan for a new method of attack. At that very moment, jet black pillars shot up from the ground, wreathing and wrenching in a deafening scream, the biggest of which, to the horror of NeoNexus, engulfed both Psihawk and Inferno.

Part 13: ‘Territorial pissings' (part 2 of 2) "Fade to gray"

"TREVOR! NO!"

Kayo felt a surge of fear and utter horror that wretched her soul to the point of discrete, agonizing pain. Right before her eyes her hand-weaved, treasured training simulation went terribly, horribly wrong. Muscles and tendons stretched and contorted and every fiber of her physical instinct picked her sassy pregnant self out of her seat in a desperate move to hit the Abort sequence for KayoOmega41b... and she was shocked when it was her father, Gambit, who held her back from saving her best friend's life.

Utterly confused, panicked and desperate to help Inferno the only way she knew how, Kayo lashed out as she writhed for freedom in her father's arms. Remy LeBeau dodged lacerations from a claw filled hand, "Easy, Petite!"

"Remy, NO! Let me go, I have to--" she twisted and squirmed in the big Cajun's grip, feeling the stinging tips of the Rage edging in on her psyche, "I have to help him! REMY! Let ME GO!"

"CHEYENNE!" the sharpness in Gambit's voice put an immediate end to Kayo's fight for freedom. She looked up at him, eyes pleading, searching his for an answer of some kind... of any kind... gasping in shock at the reply she received, "I'm sorry, Keeb... I didn't want... The Professor knows what he's doin', Cherie, so let 'im do it."

Kayo paled in realization, her eyes grew wide, and she looked at the ageworn Professor Xavier with a resigned look of betrayal. He'd tricked her. He'd gained her trust, made her believe that he'd trusted her enough to run this training sequence on her own, and then he'd tricked her. He'd lied to her... how could he--

"I'm sorry, petite," Gambit must have read her hurt expression like a book. Kayo caught the angered look that her father shot at the Professor as well as the undeniable scent of complete and total resentment that the aging Cajun seemed to radiate. Remy hadn't wanted to support the Professor's deception, it was clear, but had gone along with it for the sake of she and Nexus' future at the School for Higher Learning.

Kayo snarled at Xavier, her eyes flashing red, and razor pointed canines glistening, "You lying son of a b--"

"I did not want to do this, Cheyenne," The professor held up a hand to her impending protests, his eyes gleaming in an idle steely gray, "But clearly you were mistaken in the importance of my directions not to interfere with this program! Now, If those two young men... If O'Brian," He squinted with granite presision,"If that 'team' of yours is to live under my roof for whatever time is needed, they are going to have to make it through this training session on my own accord."

**********************************

Trevor O'Brian's sight flickered back as he slowly began to regain consciousness. His head was pounding, and the pain he felt was surging in blood red bolts across his line of sight. There was a disturbingly human-like grunt and whimper from some where way too close to him, and then an odd deflating noise... Trevor suddenly yipped and shot up like a rocket when he realized there was a hand on his ass that didn't belong to him.

Psihawk gasped and stuttered for air, clamoring to his feet in a hurry- too fast, at that, and he haunched over, light headed, dry heaving, and cradling his ribcage and he breathed in painfully. Inferno had to smother a sadistic grin, whilst almost feeling sorry for the younger man. Warren Worthington had the discrete misfortune of breaking Trevor's fall.

"Aw, c'mon, FlyBoy, shake it off, " Trev clapped Warren on the back a little bit too hard.

Warren shot daggers from behind the black hair that had lost its tie back in the fall, "I hate you."

"Good man," Inferno said over a wince at his own badly battered ankle, "Lets move, these training sessions are timed. Now where the hell are we?" The two peered up and around them, back to back, at the stony, jagged, jet-black interior of the Paladin pillar that had engulfed them seconds beforehand.

"Great," Warren grimaced, wincing every time he inhaled, "we can't fly out. The space is too narrow."

"Too damn dark, too," Inferno said, and his eyes flashed white, "Come to, kids! Light it up in here!" With a shock flurry of firelight, squeals and movement, the Critters formed from thin air, swirling around the cylindrical cavern, grinning like mad. Trevor smirked as Warren dodged getting flame bit in the butt.

"For Pete's sake, I want out of here!" Warren growled, his anger overriding the pain, "Away from these things... Away from YOU!"

"And how do you propose we accomplish that, fearless leader?" Trevor flopped back down to the ground and pulled out a cigarette, clearly resigned to having failed the assignment anyway.

Psihawk scoffed at the man, "I'll figure it out." He looked up again at the small bit of light that streamed in from the top of the craggy metallic tube, his green eyes squinting in determination. The only way out was up, clearly, and if up meant freedom from his present company, then up he would go, even if his psiwings were useless at the moment.

In an immediate course of action, Psihawk grasped a ledge on the rocky prison walls and hoisted himself skyward, prepared to climb... and flailed, falling to the ground beside an alarmed Inferno when the ledges- all of them- disappeared. The walls had molded into sleek smooth metallic panels, and the ground beneath them began to tremor in fury.

"Whoops," Psihawk went pale.

****************************************

First Trump, Shay and Annex, and now Alloy, Valence, Anodyne and Dante disappeared in thin air from the ranks of NeoNexus. Level two had been meant as a one up for Nexus, a level of the training session programmed to favor the street-bound team over Neo X. But the Time Square Riot they had been thrown into just seconds after their team leaders had been swallowed by the transformed Paladin left NeoNexus completely devastated in terms of numbers.

Any other time, a riot such as this, with its screaming sirens, blinding fires and explosions, and mass of panicked running New Yorkers, would have been a challenge fit for Nexus to conquer. But with many of their best either having disappeared, been assumed badly wounded or possibly dead, and in Kayo's case, plumply pregnant, Noir and Creeper were left in an outnumbered defenseless panic.

The NeoX kids, as well trained and skillful as they were, were terribly green in terms of street wars. Freelove had known this, and had also known just how badly this training session was going to hurt the moment Level Two had flashed to life around her. She'd been right, and had watched her teammates drop like flies.

Valence and Alloy had been consumed in the surging crowd, Anodyne had been struck by shrapnel from an exploding molotov cocktail that no one had seen coming, and Dante had been hit by an oncoming squad car whilst tossing a young girl out of its murderous path. Noir couldn't help but speculate that he had possibly done more damage to the car then it to him, as it had squashed up like a shoebox, but regardless, Dante, just like the others, had disappeared as soon as he was injured.

Now they were surrounded, sweaty, exhausted and gasping for breath, squeezing together, facing every end of the riotous Anti Mutant crowd that was inching in closer by the second. Creeper looked like a rabid, caged rat, his eyes stark with panic. Noir and Freelove poised on either side of him, Chastity still terrified of getting anywhere within two feet of Noir.

Gunfire sounded, and bullets sprayed through the crowd. Freelove shrieked, terrified, Noir pulling her close to protect her. There seemed to be no way out of a dreadfully painful, quickly approaching death.

"On my mark, hit the floor!" Creeper stage whispered hoarsely to his trembling teammates. Noir blinked at the British midget, completely lost as to why he would insist something so incredibly stupid.

Keith caught Noir by the collar of his leather suit, "Do what I say, beanpole, this ain't time for a bloody joke!"

Another array of bullets in their general direction seem to emphasize Creeper's pleas, "NOW GET DOWN!"

Noir hit the concrete in a heartbeat, pulling himself over Freelove protectively the exact moment all hell broke loose in Time Square, New York. An explosion rocked the ground from a nearby car, the sky lighting up in its wake. Windows shattered.

Creeper, in one swift, deadly move wretched his body around 360 degrees, a stream of blinding white anti matter energy streaming from his mouth, demolishing every blood hungry protester within a 10 foot radius of his comrades... just seconds before his small body was riddled with bullets.

*****************************************

Despite his biting drive to do so, Inferno didn't have time to blame Psihawk for the Paladin pillar's sudden shift into berserker mode. The tremors were growing dangerously violent by the moment, and the temperature within the paladin's belly where they stood trapped had increase so quickly to such a scalding degree that it even made Inferno begin to worry. He could only imagine the effect it was having on Warren.

The Critters were swarming and screaming like deranged sirens as the men looked desperately for a way out, battling heat that was devastating enough that the soles of their boots were sticking to the floor.

"Can't-- no way to--" Inferno caught the desperate Psihawk in his arms as he stumbled and nearly fell.

"We can do this!" Inferno gasped desperately, not sounding so sure, "We just have to think! there's got to be a way out--!"

"Aw man," Warren gulped. Trevor followed his wide eyed gaze upward. The top of the paladin stricture was beginning to melt from the heat, and scalding glowing molten steel was streaming down the sides of the enclosure, straight for the two team leaders.

Now Inferno was panicking. "Think of something, birdboy, you're the one with the degree!" Trevor dodged the puddling magma at his feet, "Shit! Hurry, kid, we've got to jet!"

Psihawk's eyes suddenly sparked up like a lit M80, "You can hover, right?"

Inferno gaped, "On my Board, yeah, but what in the hell does--"

"Then do it now."

"What d--"

"DO IT!"

Startled at the intensity of the order, Trevor summoned his sleek silver hoverboard, and it transported from deep within his mind to its place beneath his feet. Inferno was lifted upward, a foot off the ground. Psihawk leaped up beside him, just seconds before the lava overflowed upon the place he had been standing. The magma immediately began to rise towards them in a bubbling, fiery brew.

"Good idea," Inferno baited, "Now what?"

Psihawk shrugged desperately, looking very much like he wished he were already dead. Inferno's attention was drawn away by the critters and their demonesque howl. They were trying to tell him something, circling around him at a blinding speed, growing faster and faster. So fast that his close whipped around upon him in their wake..."Bingo!"

"Oh, thank God," Psihawk finally breathed in a loud whoosh. The molten steel was splashing the base of the board, and its rise was quickening.

"I said we have to jet out of here, and that's exactly what we're going to do!" Inferno grinned, and summoned the Critters, "Ok, boys, this was your idea! Lets roll!"

"What are you doing?!" Warren yelled warily.

"I know this sounds ludicrous, kid, but you gotta trust me on this one," Inferno pulled Psihawk towards the center of the board, "Just put your psi sheild up around the both of us or we're going to fry before we ever get out of here!"

Psihawk wasted no time in acting. His psi shield sprang to life around them in a purple flash, veiling them from the scalding, intensifying heat. The purple flash and psionic bubble around the two men popped to life simultaneously as the Critters' chaotic cyclone took on a whole new form. The Critters shifted position to the exact level of the board, and the swift force of the wind they were creating began to slowly cause the hoverboard to rise. Trevor and Warren watched in amazement as the Critters spun even faster still... and faster and faster. They began to glow the same molten orange as the rising lava below them, brighter and brighter, into a blinding yellow light, screaming ear piercing hollers.

"Hold on tight, FlyBoy!" Inferno held a deathgrip on Psihawk's arm, "They're gonna blow!"

Psihawk looked ill, "What?! What happens when the glow like that? O'Brian?!"

At that moment precisely, Warren got more of an answer then he would have liked. The Critters had gained enough momentum beneath them that the molecules of air and magma themselves ignited in one caustic, fiery blast of power. The two men, board, Critters and all shot skyward at a blinding speed, the G-force of the momentum tugging at their flesh and stomachs as they streamed up, up, and finally overcame and exited the bowels of the mutated Paladin, and soared over the computer generated skyline of New York City.

"Whoo-hoo!" Inferno howled, swinging a fist in the air, grinning at Warren who now had a death grip on him, "Ease up, birdboy, we're free!"

Inferno spoke too soon, and gaped in shock at the New York skyline suddenly disappeared, as if the sky around him had suddenly blinked.

********************************

"Nice of you to join us, Macho Men," The ever sassy Shayla Ki pounced Trevor in a hug the minute his feet were firmly on the burgundy plush carpet of the Danger Grotto Study room.

Trevor looked incredibly stupid, gaping open mouthed at the downcast room full of X teens that he suddenly found himself in. "Ok, I am so lost," he stammered.

"Make that two of us," Warren clamored into a chair, greatful for a chance to collapse somewhere without being collapsed upon, next to a newly arrived and clearly pissed off Creeper.

"You're out of th' game," Creeper growled, "Yeh lost, you got tossed on yer arse, you're S.O.L, mate, courtesy of Professor Charles Xavier, the git."

"Say what?"

"We just got word," Shay plopped back down in her theater-esque seat between Dante and a snoozing AnneX, "Chuck took over the session when you and Worthington got sucked into that pillar... thing. Whatever the hell it was. Kayo freaked and tried to hit the panic button to save your tail, and got the proverbial pink slip."

Trevor looked enraged now, "Son of a-- he can't do that!"

"Of course he can," Jade Logan, Anodyne, was pulling her silky black hair out of a bun, letting it fall to her shoulders. She pierced Trevor with a deadly glare, one like her fathers, "He owns the place, he can do what he pleases. Besides, its not LeBeau you should be fearing for right now, Mr. O'Brian." She rose and walked to the one way window that overlooked the Grotto, the rest of the room's occupants following her with their eyes and attention. She fixed her eyes on the scene below, "We've got two people out there, you guys. Noir and Freelove. Level three is about to start and they're our only chance of not failing this training session completely."

"Holy Hell," Psihawk grimaced with realization, "They'll never make it..."

*********************************************

"Where are we?" Chastity Wagner gasped, raking her now soaked red hair out of her face, squinting warily in the downpour, "Mr. Noir! Please! Where are we?!"

Collin couldn't move, paralyzed with fear. Every muscle in his body froze and contorted, his chest heaved in hyperventilation, his face writhed with grief, "It... its Coercion... not Coercion... Anywhere but this..."

Through the rain, amidst the mud, the filth, the suffering and the screams, the wretched buildings and dreary facilities that made up the Coercion Genetics facility sat in full view. The camp's pillars rose high in the air, spewing rank smoke of horrific origins, the smell of death, decay and defecation hit two young mutants' senses almost immediately, and the stench of it was suffocating... and the sight...

They were in the Center Courtyard, the only place within the camp where one could roam free. Beaten, tortured, bleeding despicably mangled bodies, looking much like the living dead, consumed the space. They swarmed there, infested it. Their eyes were empty and soulless. Suffering. They breathed death, feared it at every waking moment... and dear God, Noir wanted to be free of this place.

As Irony would have it, for a man who's powers brought to life the greatest fears in the minds of others, reliving Coercion truly was Noir's worst nightmare. He wanted to scream, wanted to run, wanted to be free of it or be dead. But he couldn't. Deep within him, he knew he couldn't, and it was Freelove's frightened shriek that snapped him back to reality, reminding him why...

"NO!! Get back! Collin, HELP!" Noir bit back a scream of his own, as, without thinking, he took off in a run, searching for Chastity through the prisoners and the downpour. She was surrounded. In her panic at the sight of the horrors of Coercion, Freelove's powers to heighten the desires of those around her had gone spastic, and unfortunately, it was a group of gun and taser wielding muscle bound Coercion Peace Keepers- four of the local already sick minded guards- that had been closest within her range. Weapons drawn and faces masked with hateful lust, they were closing in on the young girl fast.

Noir didn't have time to think- He simply acted upon impulse. He reached into the mind of the guards with his own to stun them the exact moment he plowed through them and grabbed Freelove, pulling her out of their reach.

There were screams from the guards behind him, then an odd, almost squishy exploding sound , and Chastity, who was looking over Collin's shoulder as he ran with her, shrieked and covered her eyes.

"Whats wrong?!" Collin cried, almost falling in her efforts to skid-stop on the muddy ground.

"They exploded!"

"What?" Noir looked back to face a macabre scene. The guards had fallen to the putrid ground like rag dolls. Their heads, from the shoulders up, were devastatingly mutilated. Noir gaped, giving Freelove a protective squeeze as she buried her head in his shoulder, "How in the hell did that ha-- AGH!"

The Coercion Grounds Siren sounded, in a massive deafening wail, startling the Courtyard's inhabitants who cowered at the noise.

"All Peace Keepers assemble in the Courtyard immediately!" a despicably familiar voice wailed over the loudspeakers, "Officers down! I repeat, officers down! Track all non-ID'd inmates and shoot to kill!"

More guards erupted from the crowd, slamming through the brittlely weak inmates, their guns targeting Freelove and Noir.

"RUN!" Collin screamed, snatching the Wagner girl's hand as the took off in a desperate scramble, battling the poring rain that seemed to be coming down in sheets. Noir was so horribly frightened that his legs felt like lead weights as he ran. It was Freeloves innocent sobs that kept him moving, dodging gunfire, and keeping the girl in front of him to block any rogue bullets.

"In there!"

"OK!"

The two turned on a dime and darted into an unlocked set of steel double doors, trying to loose the guards. The thunder of the rain seized, but the wail of the sirens overhead seemed to have, if possible, intensified. Noir locked the doors behind him and pulled Chastity along through pristine steel gray hallways, a seemingly endless labyrinth. They only stopped when they plowed through another double door set and the hallway opened up into a massive dark room.

"I think... w-we... lost... them!" Freelove wheezed, gasping for breath.

Noir could hardly speak. His chest burned, his body ached, "You ok?"

Chastity winced, dizzy, "Been better."

Lights flashed on overhead, and the room lit up. Noir and Freelove screamed in surprise... they were surrounded, but not by anything even remotely human.

"Oh... SHIT!" Noir gulped. With snapping jaws full of dagger teethe, massive paws with wicked talons, mixed with implanted taser weapons on arms, eyes and backs, a squad of despicably mutated werewolf like creatures surrounded the two teens.

Freelove made a squeaking noise, "What. Are. Those?"

"Inmates call 'em Drones," Noir inched closer to her, shaking like a leaf, "Basically they're Coercion guard dogs. Used to be human before they got here."

Chastity shrieked as one chomped at their leg, "What do we do?!"

"I don't..." Noir felt hopeless, but then it struck him. "WE." US! Those guards back there... they'd combusted for a reason! Both Noir and Freelove had entered their mind at the exact same time. Their powers were so conflicting, their minds so opposite, that it had caused everything about the guards from neurons to thought patterns to cells of flesh to attempt to split in two and...

"Boom."

"What?!" Freelove looked at Noir as if he were mad. The Drones were inching in closer, waiting for the first move- a reason to slaughter these two stray sheep.

"We have to cross powers!" Noir told her telepathically.

Freelove writhed, clasping her head with her hands, "No! not again! Get out of my mind!"

"Please, you have to trust me!" Noir hissed, "I never meant to hurt you, and if we don't, we're going to d--- AGH!" Noir nearly collapsed, as claws raked his flesh from behind. The drones were beginning their attack.

"Collin! No!" Chastity shrieked. Drones pounced the screaming scarecrow, biting and tearing, and she herself was snatched, a clawed hand gripping her slender neck.

"DO IT NOW, CHAS!" Collin shrieked, "NOW!"

That was all that it took. Simple trust. For the second time the two mind meddlers collided, this time the reaction was even more powerful then the last. This time more painful, but they held their mental link, rising into the air, frozen, transfixed, unable to move, mouths open in silent, deadly screams. The entire metallic room began to pulsate with their combined massive powers, and with that, the room began to glow an eerie, blinding blue.

The Drones froze, looking skyward, howling in shock at the scene. It was all they could do before they met their fate. Noir and Freelove, the dark and the light, reached out into the minds of the Drones simultaneously. With a massive grotesque explosion, carnage splattered the walls. The Drones were dead, and the Mind Meddlers broke their mental link, collapsing to the ground, exhausted.

"Computer, end NeoNexus Training Session KayoOmega41b," The aristocratic voice of Charles Xavier preened over the InterCom, "Congratulations you two. You've passed the test."

Dazed, with one hand patting the back of a gasping Freelove, Noir watched, thanking the powers that be as the simulated Coercion and gore around them flickered and dissipated from sight. Mechanical doors to their left wisked open and a cheering mass of intermingled Neo X and Nexus kids poured into the room.

"You did it! You did it!" Lleander Xavier was chanting, bouncing adorably around his teammates. The others were ecstatic, praising Noir and Freelove, helping them up, patting them on the back.

Collin gave Chastity a solemn, sleepy grin as the lot of them left the Danger Grotto to celebrate, "Good job, kid. Good job."

Part 14: ‘Taunt me, break me, pick up the pieces’ (Part 1 of 2) Ways of the Feral

There was something dark in those sparkling, innocent little eyes. It was a potential lust for death, a future as a victimizer, womanizer, Feral and freak- everything that his father would, could be and often was- all attributes that would no doubt surface in the years to come, and leave the innocence he now epitomized well forgotten. Cheyenne tried not to think about that now. She had her baby, just as she wanted him, right were she could love him, hold him close, shield him from the evils of the world and, for the time being, at least, from his latent inner demons.

It amazed her the effect that the little pink creature had on her. Kayo felt needed, and so direly loved and depended on, as well as dependent on the baby's presence and touch. The mere scent of his soft velvet skin filled her with wonder, as did his wild black, ember-flecked eyes, precious mannerisms and giggle-filled coos. Kayo had to hand it to Victor- Despite the means, in his own twisted, ill-sought out way, he'd given her the most incredible, beautiful gift anyone had ever bestowed upon her.

Riley Cole Creed was born mid-afternoon on an unnaturally cold fall day via cecerian, after 13 hours of labor and the prolonged decision that Kayo's tiny frame simply couldn't allot a natural birth. As bitter cold sleet attacked what was left of the gorgeous fall colored leaves outside, the inside of Xaviers School for Higher Learning was a mad bustle with the news that their newest resident was a howling healthy little boy.

Kayo was enamored with the creature from the very start. Maternal instinct for a Feral is far above and beyond anything normal humans or mutants could ever comprehend. Like any wild feline or canid, everything from the familiarity of defining emotions by scent to the ability to portray the sense of love or affection through a simple sound or mannerism heightened for Kayo when she was around little Riley Cole.

It amused her the effects Riley had on the other Mansion inhabitants as well. For the time being, at least, Neo X and Nexus managed to find common grounds in their shared interest in caring for the new resident.... although head long feuds, rivalries and rumor-fueled bickering was never too far behind. Inferno had become, bizarrely enough, quite the skilled 'Papa Trev'. He'd been there unfalteringly along side Chey to take care of Riley, whome he seemed to have become enamored with, despite his discrete hate for Sabretooth. The same could be said for Gambit. He and Trevor both seemed to be working in accordance with each other to get past their latent hate for the Creed monster, and simply love the child for being Kayo's baby boy.

It was when Kayo received the phonecall that her couple months of parental bliss were sent in a mirror-shatter of a downward spiral. Katya Rasputin had been closest to the phone when it had rung. Her look of utter fear when she answered it spoke volumes.

Kayo's heart plummeted...

"Forget it, Dames! I'm not doing it. I'm not taking the chance," Kayo waited for what seemed like forever on the edge of a deadly, stinging silence and a lethal, baritone growl from the other end of the line.

"I'll be there tomorrow, 9 AM, sharp," Damien Creed repeated yet again.

"You can fucking roll it up and shove it!" Kayo pleaded, "You don' have a CLUE what you're trying to do here, Damien! You don't have a damned inkling about what he did or what he might do now to Riley if I show up! I won't--"

Kayo snapped quiet with a trepid yip at the vicious snarl at the other end of the line- it was the same 'zip it or bleed' type of snarl she would have gotten from the older man's father. Once she was quiet, however, Damien, unlike his father, at least managed to keep a civil tongue, "Its been five months, Cheyenne. He knows the baby's been born, he knows you're holding out, and he damn well knows he has the right to see his son. I know he hurt you, Kay, but for fucks sake, what would you prefer; facing him on your own terms, or having HIM come to you?"

Why in the hell did he always have to be right? Kayo glowered as she held Riley close in one arm, who was watching her curiously and grabbing for the phone she was holding with her freehand. Her stomach wrenched as she agreed to what could quite possibly be the biggest mistake of her life, "Fine. You'll be here at 9 AM. Is that All I need to know?"

"Uncle Mort is insisting on coming as moral support," Damien seemed resolute, "And Cheyenne... I *will* be there for you, doll. The whole family will be," there was a pause, "And remember what I told you about O'Brian, you got me?"

"I know, I know," Kayo winced, "Damn he's not going to like this."

*****************************

By quarter to nine the next morning, Kayo felt eerily numb, her entire toned physique gone to a trepid, worthless puddy in accommodation to her morbid dread of the day that laid ahead of her. perched on a bench by the black-iron gates of Xavier's School for Higher Learning, shielding an overly bundled baby from the bitter cold chill of a New England winter breeze, Kayo rocked morosely, humming to Riley an old tune she recalled that her mother used to sing to her years ago in Coercion.

It was all she could do to derive some sort of comfort for herself and her child. The incident she's had with Inferno just hours beforehand was weighing heavily on her already distraught nerves. The poor man, not having the slightest clue when it came to Feral behaviors, had gone from hurt to furious in under five seconds flat when Kayo had informed him that he had to stay away from contact with Riley for the next 12 hours.

"Thats f*cking bullshit, Cheyenne!" He'd roared at the tail end of a rabid verbal outpour, "I agree to letting him near Creed and all of the sudden, I can't be seen near him?! Its beyond any form of f*cking logic! If that rat bastard son of a bitch thinks he's going to take away my--"

Riley had been bawling at that point, and Kayo, tired of the irrational verbal abuse, and had taken the liberty of screaming a rather shrill, "WILL YOU SHUT UP!?" at O'Brian.

Trevor gapped, startled.

Kayo pressed on, lowering her voice to just above a whisper, as she tried to comfort little Riley. She did her best to work up an explanation within her mind of something that was out of a non-Feral's ability to comprehend, working it into terms that she hoped Trevor would understand, "Children....." She paused, thinking hard, "Children for someone like Victor are looked upon like a lion would look upon its cubs, all right?" Kayo baited him, "If that lion is not completely sure that the cub is his, he'll kill it, Trev.... and they- Ferals, I mean- judge these things by scent and scent alone. If Vic is handed a kid with your scent all over him, and he comes to the conclusion that he could possibly be your pup, there is no way in hell the baby is leaving the Estate property in one piece," Kayo didn't bother to hold back the blatant fear in her voice. She knew it was something that Trevor would take to heart, "Please, Trev. It'll just be until I get back."

Inferno looked to have been struck ill. Momentarily comprehending the reality of such a twisted method of child rearing and the deadly logistics of it all had, in fact, come as a despicable shock. These Ferals were one hell of a twisted lot, he thought, and simply nodded in agreeance to Kayo's query to leave the baby be...

Now, set cowering in the snowlfurry of a mid-morning storm, Kayo only hoped that the 12 hours Riley had spent away from O'Brian had been enough......

With the flick of her pointed ears and the flash of her demon eyes, Kayo's head jerked to the left at the murmur of a diesel engine approaching from the east, and watched with an intensely sharp wolf-like gaze at the burly black Hummer that pulled up to the curb in front of her. Beyond the scent of the exhaust and the thrum-hum of the engine, the waif of cigarette smoke, two familiar male bodies, and the piercing pummel of the industrial death metal quartet BloodRabid blared over the stereo inside of the truck. The gruesome green cyberpunk form of Mortimer Toynbee was on its way out of the passenger's side door before the Hummer even managed to come to a full stop. The death of the engine and the sight of Damien Creed's massive frame, dark sunglasses and all, emerging from the Driver's side came just seconds afterward.

Kayo found herself caught up in the seedy arms of the Toad before she could so much as blink, " 'Ows my favori' slutpuppy, eh?"

"Hey you," Kayo giggled and planted a kiss on the green man's cheek and gave him a squeeze, "Easy there, love, you'll squish the kid!" It did her heart good to see Mortimer here and smiling.

His muddy yellow frog eyes lit up at the mentioning of Riley, and he pulled on his goggles to look the kid over, looking in awe when Kayo placed the bundled baby trustingly into his arms.

"So this is him," Mortimer looked awkward with holding a child, as he was far more uncomfortable and squirming then the kid was. Kayo repressed a giggle at the sight when she noticed the tears welling up behind the frogman's goggles.... It landed him in a world of shock, she supposed, that someone would let a man as ugly and repulsive as most people saw Mortimer to hold their baby......

Cheyenne caught Damien eyeing Riley coldly out of the corner of her eye. The big man, who was towering over her for the moment, yellow eyes glowing intensely enough that they could be seen as narrow slits from behind dark sunglasses, literally seemed to emanate confliction. Kayo smelled everything from bitterness and loathing and disgust to fascination, to apprehention to amusement coming from the monstrous Feral man.

Kayo read him like only a Feral could... his expressions, scent, posture, even the rate of his pulse and the way he upkept his breathing in a sharp, ridged rattle told her why he was thinking what he was thinking and possibly even how...

Kayo shot Damien a deadly look, her ears pulling back, You know damn well what he was *thinking*.

It was communication beyond anything your run of the mill psychic could comprehend. After all, how could anything as simple as a human understand instincts of a being as far out of touch with humanity as they?

Mortimer was looking discreetly uncomfortable. They were doing it again. That whole sniff-shuffle ear twitching freaky mess of... well, whatever in the hell they were doing. Chey had explained it once to him- that Ferals were communicating with eachother when they put on such a display.... and Ferals could read a person's physical stature like Charles Xavier could read people's minds.

.... It was still bloody weird, though.

"Careful, Dames," Damien creed had unwittingly grabbed for the infant, and took him from his mother's grasp, holding the kid eye-level, his face a mask of scrutiny. The fact alone that Kayo hadn't lashed out and emasculated the man when he went to grasp her 'pup' was suprise in itself for Mortimer. It was there and then that he realized just how much Cheyenne LeBeau deeply respected and Trusted the massive Son Of Sabretooth.

They stared at eachother for the oddest of long moments- the two newly acquainted brothers- infant and man, both somehow managing to carry the exact same measure of "I dare you to blink first" placidity upon their faces.

"Buhdahboo," Was all baby Riley had to say about that, as he suddenly blubbered bubbles and wriggle in Damien's hands playfully.

Damien Creed cracked a grin, "I'll be damned, your one cute little goof."

Riley beamed and giggled at the smiling monster man.... as did his mother. "Well?" Cheyenne poked inquisitively at Rage's leather jacket with an ebony claw.

"Well," Rage place the child back into Kayo's arms and started for the hummer, "the old man may be a dick, but he sure as hell manages to conjur up some damn cute kids."

Toad pulled a face and quiped, "Or more like, its a damn good think he pegs lovely birds, so the whelps look as little like his mangy flea infested ass as possible."

Kayo smirked, "Touche."

****************************************

The ride to the airport, the flight into Canada, all of it was made too long and too strenuous in accommodation to the trepid thoughs and dreadful premonitions that kept waking Kayo from her continual time-passing catnaps. Visions of everything from what could happen to what would happen to what likely never would flooded her mind. Memories of black eyes that haunted her with their cruelty and infatuated her with their warmth conflicted her thoughts. Remembrance of everything from love to loathing, fondness to fear... of pleasure by the touch of a madman, and pain all in the same- everything rattled her brain case, culminating to the base of her skull and laying their to stagnate into what was turning out to be one hell of a headache.

Sandwiched in between the Green-skinned Toynbee and the massive mean-faced Damien Creed, baby in her lap, Kayo, trying to massage away her rapid-fire thoughts with claw tipped fingers, felt assurance only in the pseudo bodyguards she had adopted both as friends and trusted companions.

She felt exhausted. Here eyelids were dead weights, impossible to keep up for any other purpose then to pull her headphone's speakerwire out of Riley's gummy mouth and to shoot dirty looks at the muffy haired five year old behind her who kept kicking the back of her seat.

Was she even ready for this?

The thought struck her suddenly, and she opened her eyes with a start. her surroundings in the dimly lit plane cabin with its stuffy flight attendants and stupid elevator music rotting the brains of its inhabitants.... everything... the sight, sound and smell of it, hit her in start realization.

It was real. She could lose her life tonight. She could lose her baby. She could come out the winner, guns blazing, and kiss that bastard Sabretooth goodbye.... if only she wanted to....

..... But was she ready for it?

No answers came. She opted instead, pulling Riley close, to hide away from reality for as long as she could pressed protectively at Damien Creed's side.

*****************************************

Part 15: "Taunt me Break me Pick up the Pieces" (Part 2 of 2) "Dominance Subdued"

(Note From Mel: This chapter was inspired by "The Perfect Drug" by Nine Inch Nails and "I Shall Believe" by Sheryl Crow.. Mel takes NO ownership of the songs. She *does* However, promote the tunes to their fullest due to the fact that they kick almighty butt.

Also: Anything in italics is a flashback. Anything in bold print is song lyrics. Thanks!)

_____________________________

She had been alone, destitute. The streets were killing her, creating a desperation and a sense of helplessness that she'd hoped so deeply that she would have lost, now free from Coercion. Starvation was taking its toll, as was the running. One never slept in a situation such as that. The constant threat of being hurt, being taken, being raped or killed..... It was unending. And it was killing her.

The memories flooded the mind of Cheyenne Mikayla LeBeau in accompaniment to a tidal wave of emotion as she crossed the threshold of the Creed family mansion in Edmonton, Alberta. Pushing past the haze of memory, she felt rather rigid as she walked with Mortimer and Damien at her side. The icy sleet that bombarded the chaos outside was locked away with the latch of the massive oak doors behind them, and Kayo, numb from apprehension, held her baby close.

In one keen wave, the sights, smells and sense of being that Kayo had always known the mansion to withhold swept over her. Its deep mahogany floor and woodwork, massive stone hearths, mounted game, even the same old stag-antler chandelier that cast its warm essence from its perch on the wood beamed cathedral ceiling somehow managed to ebb away at Kayo's distraught nerves and jittery frame.

To some degree, she still felt of this place as home. It had been the one place she could always run to for the longest time. The place she could always flee to and hide- from life, from Nexus, from the world, occasionally even from its headmaster himself.... Not that she'd ever tell Vic that.

Victor had never been one for tact in the outside world. He killed, destroyed lives, bodies, families, minds. He was paid to making others' existence a living hell, and he enjoyed every minute of it.... but family- his cubs and his mate- were something, possibly the only thing, that he truly, deeply cared for. He'd found, as he'd told Cheyenne time and time again, that they were the only things that gave life any real point. It was they who gave purpose to the thing that he would other wise have no qualm about taking away. They made his life worthwhile, and this place, the Estates and the mansion that it inhabited, was the core of all of these things.

And for that much, at least, this place WAS home, and a comfort. The tension in Cheyenne's chest lessened, if just a little, and she breathed in deep, shedding her winter coat and tossing it on the rack. She looked down at her hands momentarily. They were still shaking like mad.

"Pops, we're here, where you at?" Damien's hitting the in-home com system made Kayo jump with a start. She pushed a sleeping Riley into Mortimer's arms, her pulse racking her skull.

"I'll keep 'im in th' den, then?" Mort stammered, holding the child close, looking ungodly worried at Kayo. She simply nodded and shooed them off through the mansion's rustic foyer and down the hall, watching her friend descend with care with her child in his arms.

"You're late," the ever familiar baritone rumble that was the voice of Victor Creed wasn't shrunk in the least by the ding of the comm system. Kayo's ears perked at the sound, deciphering it... and finding it, frustratingly enough, unreadable.

Damien smothered a scoff, "Yeah, well, take that up with Canadian Airlines. Are you in the house, the stables, what?"

"Cheyenne?"

Kayo winced. The fact that he knew she was listening freaked her out. Damien caught her withered demeanor. "She's here."

"I'm in the Living room."

"Right," Damien hooked an arm around Kayo's small shoulders, "We'll be there."

"You've got to let yourself FEEL it, girl! It ain't no different then needin' to eat, needin' to sleep, needin' to breathe!" Victor Creed's voice pounded in her ears, the big man lumbering her over in a crouch, face reddened, angered, he was practically foaming at the mouth, "You resist it, you're resistin' yourself, dammit! Its Instinct!"

*************************

She smelled him first. Took in a scent that riveted her. One she knew as well as her own. One that made her thrive with passion and jitter with fear. He had his back to her as she stepped into the room, eyes wide, breath shallow, trying not to think. If she didn't think, she couldn't fear and if she couldn't fear, he wouldn't sense the weakness.

The hearth lit room, with its bulky mounted game and deep oak furniture seemed to shrink in his presence... though perhaps that was due to the fear poking through after all. Kayo watched the massive towering frame, with its tight, tensed muscles and sinews clad in jeans and a black tee, and she knew that he knew she was there. He glanced at her from over his shoulder a bit, sniffing the air, his blonde mane tied back and spanning down his wide shoulders and rib cage, glinting gold from the fire in the hearth.

"Pup," Victor turned to face and address her finally, and Kayo froze on the spot, watching him dead in the face, her ears pulled back with an expression that read like something between menace and fear. Victor looked down at her coolly, coldly for a moment, pursing his lips... She still had it. Still had that raging beauty, that innocent spark. The sight and smell of her still send the fire blazing in the pit of his chest

... and then he smirked. The glint in here eyes was full of more hatred then a badger with a stick up his ass.

"What?" he shrugged both arms at that, suddenly inbittered, "Not gonna hurt me? Not going to scream? Not going to make me bleed, little girl? Thought I taught you better then that."

She was quite for a moment- Haughty as hell- and choosing her words carefully.

"... Taught me not to turn on those closest to me," Kayo spoke, the words edgy, and just barely audible. "Never to let their blood on my hands, never to cause their fear for life to deepen, but you..." She nearly snarled, "Congratulations, old man, you with the award for hypocrite of the fucking year."

They were words that cut Victor to the bone with sheets of bitter remorse. He felt confused. He HATED feeling confused, hated being unsure of anything, let alone himself. He was a Feral, God damn it. Not some sissy human or mutant norm. The feeling made him surge with a steadily increasing anger. "You want me to beg, Cheyenne?" He suddenly started to inch towards her, eyes flashing, "Cry? Cower? Insist that you forgive me?"

Now Kayo was feeling frightened. She'd nearly forgotten how absolutely terrifying the man was when he was angry. How could she forget?

"You think I need an EXCUSE for what happened, Cheyenne? That I need to bitch and moan over what I did? Make you feel better?" Victor leaned over the couch in front of Kayo, grasping the back of it with massive clawed paws, glaring at her straight in the face, "Forget it."

Kayo snapped, surging with pristine fury, and lashed out. The moment she cuffed Victor Creed across the face the fury evaded her entirely, and she jerked back, watching the man with wide-eyed apprehension, the memories surging back into her skull, as fresh and painful as ever.

She'd never seen him so lost in the Rage... so completely and utterly inhuman. This was the Old Victor Creed. The careless, murderous animal he had been long before he'd ever met her.... Before NeoX or Nexus were ever conceived... He was that animal now, sparked by a confrontation with one of his greatest foes.

Kayo was utterly shocked when the anger dissipated from Sabretooth's furious frame. He turned back to face her, remembering it all just as she was, his razor teeth bore, but his eyes pained. Broken.

Mortimer and Damien, panicked by the noise, came storming into the room, but stopped dead in their tracks, nearly skidding to a hault at the silence that had spread in the tensed atmosphere. Kayo turned to them, face placid, "Go." She nodded. She was safe. "Please."

Damien understood far more then Mortimer, who was shaking like a leaf, and escorted the warty green man out of the room with him.

Kayo, picking up her courage and fitting it snugly back into place next to the massive hurt that still stagnated within her, looked up into a pair of black eyes that were finally rid of their usual angry mask, "Apologize," She whispered, "mend the hurt. Do something, Vic. I won't last here much longer if you don't," She blinked tears, "Please, do something."

"Damn it Chey," The monster sounded winded, exhausted. Kayo was sure she was the only person on earth who had ever seen the murderous Sabretooth himself on the edge of weeping. She'd seen it before. Consoled it before. Wasn't the least bit sure what to do with it now....

.... And was left utterly winded by his choice of consolation. Victor Creed, not once taking his intense black eyes off of her own, ambled around the black leather couch to stand in front of her, towering over her. He reached out, for a moment almost tempted to touch her. But he didn't. Instead, he crouched in front of her, his massive height diminishing and he bent before her in complete silence, his own pointed ears pulled back in a subversive... submissive manor. All the while he watched her. His eyes blazed into her own.

Kayo's head swam in shock, her eyes growing wide, and she could feel her knees going out from under her. Victor reached out and steadied her, but his stance remained the same.

She'd never seen such a display in her entire life, yet somehow, through her own Feral instinct, she knew exactly what it meant....

She'd been his mate for years, that was well known.... yet she'd never once truly had his heart. Marriage had never been an option. Victor was too above that. Too egotistical. Too proud.

But now... Somehow she knew total submission coming from a man like Creed... from a Feral... was no less then an equivalent to human asking for his mate's hand to wed. Victor knew no other way to apologize then this... Probably why he'd never before felt need to show remorse.

"What do I say?" Kayo tread lightly.... Trevor... what would Trevor say if he knew?

Victor still glared up at her, looking somewhat intensely close to being ready to pounce. "Something more tactful then me, prolly." The grip he had on her arms to steady her loosened. "There ain't no ignorin' what happened, pup," He grimaced at the thought, "I'd promise you it'd never happen again if it were possible. But I can't. You know better then that. I know better... Th' most I can do is promise to protect you from everything else."

This was all so much, so quick. Wed Victor Creed? Could she ever? Was she even insane enough to consider it? Could she do that to Trevor? How could she?

"God, man," Kayo crouched to his level finally, sighing, "You breathe and it leaves me conflicted." She reached out and pulled close a massive hand that had nearly killed her months before hand. "I need time, Vic, she traced the palm of his hand softly before looking back up into his eyes, "I still hurt. I'm still picking up pieces that I'd thought I lossed.... I need time. Please."

Victor knew his touching Cheyenne on his own terms could ruin what little chance they had left permanently, but he was never one for restraint. He leaned out, carefully, and kissed the girl on her forehead. She didn't shy away. After all he'd done, she didn't shy away. "You need time, you got it."

Kayo nodded, inwardly thankful. She pressed on, "Riley," She paused, looking at Victor squarely, "Mortimer has him in the Den. You've got another son, Vic."

"Sin begets innocence," Sabretooth read her mind with a rueful tinge of regret. He nodded and the two stood, untouching, "Don't suppose we could avoid tellin' the kid how he came into the world, do yah?"

Kayo took his hand and squeezed it as they left the room, "One thing at a time, old man. One thing at a time."

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Epilogue: Nexus ReGroup

The murky, wicked cold winter time sunset was all but lost to the Nexus elite, it shut away outside, and they inside, the McGaffrey Bar and Billiards just outside of Westchester their hideaway from the icy elements.

The local hang out was one of the team's favorites. Smokey, chatter filled, with its juke box on a never ending rotation and its smoke-shadowed inhabitants making good use of the beer and billiards alike, it was the perfect getaway that thrust them into their quota seedy element but kept them far enough out of New York City to keep the lot of them out of trouble.

"... and apparently on the planet Gri-hkari in the Shi'arr territory there's one canyon that's literally 26 miles deep. That is unbelievable," Annex poured over her massive 'Shi'arr Geographic Studies' textbook whilst gnawing on a garlic bread stick that she'd impaled with one spiny adamantium finger, "So that's what, taking into account the planet's set gravity? 15.376 minutes that you're plunging to your death thinking, 'oh yes, this is a nasty bit of a situation I've got here, now isn't it?" Annex grinned at the rather uncomfortable faces of the six teammates who were sharing the snug, smoke fogged booth with her, "You talk about one too many minutes left to wonder just what you did to deserve to die!."

"Damn, I'd be countin' all the ways I screwed up enough to have The Big Man Upstairs push me off that cliff, y'know?" Noir gave an obnoxious gnarly grin, "'Its was only a *little* quarter pound of crack, God, I swear!"

Nexus, despite the underlying tension that lay with Cheyenne's absence and the too-long wait for her return, took on the chance for a little bout of good- or, more over, bad- humor, with a greatful ease.

"Seriously, though. Say you have, what was it- 15 odd minutes to live. You know you're going to be modern art on the canyon floor, its inevitable- what do you do for the last fifteen minutes of your life?" Shay was catching on, her eyes sparkling with thought from her perch on Dante's lap.

"I'd be pissing my pants and trying to avoid getting hit in the face with it on my way down, probably," Noir did a ridiculous impression of being squirt in the eye.

The team burst out laughing at the ridiculous antics, caring little about the occasional stuffy glares they got from the other bar inhabitants... who knew better then to say a word. Nexus upheld their reputation quite well. They were none too shy about barfights... hell, they loved to start them.

"I can tell you what I'd be doin' mate. I'd take that bird with me, right there," Keith Miser waved the butt of his beer bottle at the same busty blonde waitress he'd been teasing all night. He'd already slapped her in the butt twice on her way by, and she'd nearly knocked his lights out just the same, except she was clearly too disturbed at the sight of where those pithy slaps had originated from to follow through in her self defense. Keith seemed oblivious to her disgust as well as the fact that she was now avoiding taking orders from that side of the building all together, "Mmm-hnnn," The seedy British midget crooned, "Be shaggin' to the very end, man."

"Oh please, old man," Inferno chuckled darkly, lighting yet another cigarette, "You and Silicon Sweetheart over there'd be playin' Gallager's watermelon before you ever managed to get outta your pants!"

Noir bust out laughing so hard at that that a noodle from his spaghetti went flying out of his mouth and across the table. Annex shrieked and nearly flew out of the booth to avoid the onslaught of pasta.

"Then I'd sure as hell go out tryin," Keith nodded defensively.

"Touche," Dante grinned with a baritone chuckle, "Die a happy man."

"Damn straight," Keith and Dante clicked the necks of their beers in an unspoken toast to a nonexistent shag.

"You guys are absolutely disgusting, you know that?" Shay looked entirely unamused.

"You said it, girlfriend." Annex gestured with her fork, then turning to pull a face at Noir, who was looking at her as if he couldn't bare such an insult to his "innocent" demeanor.

"Jealous?" Dante winked at Shay with a conspiratorial grin.

The magenta haired demon girl was suddenly far less hostile, and grinned at her handsome Latino boyfriend bitingly, "I'm simply coming to the realization that the phrases "The Testosterone hits the roof" and "The Shit hits the fan" aren't too far off the same definition."

"Whoo!" Annex doubled over, clapping at Shay's coy comeback, "You said it!"

The guys were groaning. Inferno shook his head, chuckling, "That was so wrong on so many levels, you know that, don't yo--"

The all heard it at the same time.... The rumble just outside of the building that was a chest-pounding clash of the diesel engine of a Hummer and the acrid bass booms of death metal music. The Nexus six fell silent at once, sharing wide-eyed glances. Rage was back... and Kayo with him, but in what sort of state, or whether or not she had Riley in tow was unknown. Dread swept over the lot of them, praying to a God they usually ignored that she'd somehow be ok. They all went to stand and leave to meet her--

"Wait," Inferno shot. The lot stopped in mid-stance, looking at him oddly. He waved them off, "Let me go see her first. If she's hurt, I'll let you know... But this is kind of between her and me."

There was an unspoken mutual understanding, and the rest of the team sat back down in silence, sharing worried looks. Trevor picked himself up, rid of his cigarette, and, with a pit of fear in his stomach, headed for the door.

It was an odd mix of love, anger, fear, and thankfulness that he felt when he saw her standing there in the cold New England sunset, watching the Creed boy's hummer descend down the street. Her brilliant red hair shown in the sun- and she was unmarred, unhurt.... Riley held safely in her arms. Trevor sighed in a wave of relief.

For once, he had something to thank the monster Sabretooth for.

Kayo seemed to almost melt into his arms when she saw him, and he held her close, safe- so glad she was safe. Yet somehow, he knew the worst of their troubles were yet to come.