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“Get out of my mind.”

“Honestly, Kitten, you’re starting to sound like a broken record. You’re a bright girl. You can come up with better than that.”

“Don’t call me that!”

“I’ll call you whatever I like. I can do that, you know.” A thin curl of smoke rose from Emma’s unfiltered cigarette as she pursed her lips around the enamel holder. Her arched brows rose up into question marks. “Watch those thoughts, young lady.”

“Get out of them, then and we’ll both be happy.”

“You could be happy. Just let go, Katherine. Accept your place in the academy. You belong here. You’ve belonged here from the start.” Kitty struggled uncomfortably in the cool titanium manacles and glared with as much fire and bile as she could muster. Her inhibitor collar sent out psionic disruptor signals to her nervous system, blocking her brain’s command over her ability to phase.

She was a sitting duck.

One moment she was on a posh private jet, chatting a mile a minute with Doug, and the next a faintly nasal British voice purred at her from behind the flight attendant’s curtain. All she could initially remember was Emma welcoming her to Boston and thanking her for accompanying Douglas on his flight. Kitty’s heart hammered with a rush of adrenaline. She tasted metal when Emma’s bodyguards appeared at Logan Airport with suspiciously bulging blazers. They were bundled into a sleek limousine with oddly little preamble. “That’s it, watch your heads, darlings, in you go.” Kitty felt an impending sense of doom as they drove through the elaborately scrolled wrought iron gates. Cherubim and birds in flight peeked out from the Gothic letter on the front sign. Window dressings, Kitty realized, to disguise the hall of horrors it was. Pay a thousand dollars a month for tuition to send your kid to hell…

Kitty continued to project her thoughts in hopes of the Professor pushing back, but it was useless. Doug was shuffled off to his guest suite; Kitty was “escorted” under heavy sedation to a chamber nearly identical to where Ororo had been held captive.

At least I have my own body, she sighed, such as it is. Ororo hadn’t been so lucky, after involuntarily letting the White Witch stuff hers into that ridiculous little costume that looked like something out of an S&M film and abuse her powers with flagrant abandon. The White Queen poking around in her thoughts was bad enough…she shuddered in her seat.

“Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it, Kitten,” Emma cooed with a smile that didn’t reach her icy blue eyes.


Elsewhere…

“Storm…’Roro! ‘RORO! Will ya get back here?”

“No.” Ororo’s black leather boots had seen better days; they were already beginning to show cracks from repeated immersion in the muck of the Morlock tunnels. Now they were taking a beating in the underbrush of the strange planet that was their makeshift home, for how long, nobody knew. “I don’t have to stay and listen to the Professor’s belief that I’m no longer fit to lead.” She yanked aside some vines that were dangling down to snag her narrow plume of hair, coifed in its showy Mohawk haircut. “Come with me if you want. But I have no intention of staying where I’m not appreciated.”

“Slow down, then, Legs, let a guy catch his friggin’ breath,” he huffed. Ororo was jerked back by the arm, clamped in Logan’s viselike grip. “What’d Charley say this time ta get ya so lathered up?”

“What didn’t he say?” she groused, blue eyes sparkling with irritation. “He made ‘helpful suggestions’ that his age and experience made him better suited to lead us into this battle that’s quickly turning into a war! And that if I didn’t agree with him, he’d be happy to make me see things his way?”

“Hold up,” Logan stopped her, releasing her arm to pause her tirade with a wave of his hand, “ta see things his way? What the flamin’ hell did he mean by that?”

“You of all people know very well what he meant.” His hackles rose up and he bristled noticeably as he mulled her words.

“Shit. That ain’t gonna wash. Charley really said that,” he mused. That definitely got his back up and made him want to break something. No one messed with his mind, or with the mind of his best friend, even if they were in a dither over where their “friendship” stood.

“Yes.” She smoothed her hands over her head as if to rinse the revelation out of her hair, cupping her nape helplessly. “No one plays with my mind,” she snarled. “No one. Only one other person has lived to tell the tale.”

“That’s only ‘cause I stopped ya, darlin’, and I don’t wanna see ya travelin’ down my road. Ya’ve had some close calls, ‘Roro, but ya ain’t a killer. Don’t let it stew. It’ll eat ya up.” Logan breathed in the fresh scent of loam and floral scents, still amazed that their captor had tailored their surroundings to all of their various needs.

If only the Beyonder wasn’t so damned cryptic…

“What do you suggest, Logan?” she tossed back, throwing her hands up in lathered gesture. “I said my piece. He didn’t listen. And here I am.”

“I’d want ya in my corner any day o’ the week, ‘Roro. Ya know that,” he reminded her softly. She gave him her Sunday-best glare and spun around, stalking off into the brush.

“Sure you do,” she muttered under her breath.

“I told ya ta quit runnin’ off, woman, so get back here already, damn it, I ain’t done!” He caught up to her and snaked out his beefy hand, wrapping it around her arm and jerking her back against his chest. She felt his hot, exasperated breath against her cheekbone as he rasped “Quit treatin’ me like I’m the enemy, or like I don’t understand. Ain’t I more deservin’ of a little credit, darlin’?” The set of her shoulders was still stiff and unbending, and he steadfastly ignored her attempts to jerk free.

“Keep delaying me, see if a stray bolt of lightning doesn’t find its way up your backside,” she hissed venomously.

“Eh. Sounds fun. Ya never know, I might just enjoy that,” he grunted without humor. “Yer welcome ta try. I might sizzle a little and walk funny fer a while, but I guarantee ya, darlin’, I’ll still get up from it and dance a little tango, and ya won’t feel much better for it.” Then he paused a moment. “Will ya?”

“Errrgh.”

“Tell me what ya really think,” he nudged, gentling his grip long enough to envelop her in a bear hug from behind.

“I think he’s wrong.”

“Kay.”

“I think the Professor is trying to relive his glory days.”

“Eh. Could be.” He wouldn’t dismiss it outright. Charley getting his legs back was nothing to sneeze at. He could grow his own legs back, hale and hearty, without giving it another thought, but the Professor didn’t have a healing factor. His new body was the work of Sikorsky, the tiny, mosquito-like Shi’ar medic on Lilandra’s Imperial Guard.

“I think Scott’s pandering to his whims.”

“Panderin’, eh? That’s new. Not wrong, mind ya, but I never heard ya own up ta that before. Must be my bad influence.”

“Perish the thought. I’m not stomping around, stabbing things, guzzling beer and cursing like a longshoreman.”

“Not yet. And not beer,” he reminded her, smiling into her warm skin as he nuzzled her shoulder. “Just gimme time. I’ll corrupt ya eventually.” That worked; she barked out a laugh that sounded downright inelegant. “That’s my girl.”

“Am I?” she ventured.

“Eh?”

“Your girl? Or am I still just your friend?”

Damn.

Logan released her only to spin her around to face him. He sighed, opening his mouth to explain himself, clasping her gloved hands in his and fingering the skipping pulse in her wrist. His mouth strove to shape words, but he eventually shrugged without ceremony.

“Dunno.”

“You don’t know for which one?” She really wanted the answer. More badly than she wanted to admit.

“I don’t know what ta call it anymore, darlin’,” he admitted guiltily. “What are ya s’posed ta call it when ya go at it like rabbits with someone who ya normally just argue with a lot?”

“Complicated,” she quipped. “Unexpected,” she added. The mischievous revelation played on the periphery of her thoughts: Rabbits?

“Fuckin’ nuts,” he completed. “Problem is, I must be goin’ a little crazy myself. What happened back at home, ‘Roro…it didn’t feel wrong.” His voice was contemplative, and she felt a tiny, wonderful shiver when his lips continued to caress her shoulder in minute nibbles. “Felt damned good.” So good it was frightening. He was too fresh off of being left at the altar. His first roll in the hay was supposed to happen with a nameless, faceless broad with a body ta kill for who he’d never call again once the hotel sheets went cold. It wasn’t supposed to happen with someone he sat across the breakfast table from every morning.

He was supposed to be looking at Mariko over the edge of his morning paper when he was eating his eggs. But his mind kept skipping back to that comfortable time in the kitchen with Ororo playing with her yogurt and granola. His visions of Mariko’s ivory skin and almond-shaped black eyes kept shifting to Ororo’s mocha skin and eyes like liquid blue topaz, and he nearly shook his head against it.

“You don’t know how you affect me,” she stammered. “I…wish you didn’t make me feel this way. Under the circumstances,” she qualified. “We live together. We work together, if what we do could be called work. We aren’t exactly Scott and Jean,” she blurted before biting her tongue.

Logan let go of her hands, letting his drop, and she wanted to soothe away the hard set of his jaw and neck.

“Sure we ain’t.” His eyes were hooded beneath his cowl. He ran his hand over his nape in defeat. “Those two were the only ones that could make it work, eh?”

“They made it look so easy.” Bang. Bang. Bang. She kept hammering those nails into his coffin. “It’s too soon. You love Mariko.” It wasn’t past tense. He didn’t argue. “I won’t be your consolation prize or a poor substitute.” The wind felt like it was being knocked out of him hearing Yukio’s words on her lips.

“Who said ya were poor?” he retorted, spreading his arms wide, palms up. “Ya got an A fer effort, Sunshine.” She stepped back as though he’d slapped her. The sky above them began to churn as clouds began to swirl and spread into each other in the strange, foreign atmosphere of the barely explored planet. Logan wasn’t in the mood for drama, but Ororo had brought it to the table and served him up a hearty heap of it, anyway.

“You don’t just cut deeply with your claws, my friend,” she murmured. A strong wind swept against him, nearly knocking him over despite the firm anchor that his metal-laced frame afforded him, and Ororo was lifted into the sky.

“C’mon, ‘Ro…”

“No!” she thundered back. “FUCK YOU, Logan!” she shrieked over the gale of wind that carried her back to the compound.

“Shit. That wasn’t very ladylike,” he griped. Fine. Fuck him, then. How much worse could it get?

“THERE HE IS!” The clank of metallic clamps tearing through the brush toward him interrupted his mental self-abuse, and Logan extended his claws out of long habit. He’d given them a workout and a half over the past forty-eight hours. Every thug and superpowered megalomaniac calling themselves the next ruler of the world had come banging on their door non-stop, and his botched up “talk” with Ororo had been the closest thing to peace that he’d had since they were zapped to this…whatever the fuck it was.

A planet, more or less, slapped together haphazardly with leftover remnants of other worlds. The Beyonder had set up the board, and he’d arranged the game pieces where he wanted them, much to the pawns’ collective outrage. Logan was minding his own business, still reeling from Ororo’s plea of reason up in her loft, then…poof. They were in their battle gear, lumped together with all of Manhattan’s so-called “heroes,” suddenly duking it out in a fight that someone else picked for ‘em.

Logan fumed the moment that disembodied, jaded voice announced that they were to fight for their lives and their right to go home. He was the Wolverine. No one told him what his rights were.

They were the guy’s fuckin’ toys? Last time he’d been anyone’s toy was during his time in the Weapon X program. He’d gotten mad. Folks got themselves killed. And it wasn’t pretty.

“It’s the Wolverine! Get ‘im!” Crusher Creel bellowed, swinging his wrecking ball around on its chain like a pair of bolas.

“Easier said than done, you imbecile,” Doctor Octopus warned him in thickly accented, haughty tones. “Do you know what he’d made of?”

“Shit. Just like any other man,” Titania scoffed. “I ain’t impressed.”

“Likewise, Petunia!” Logan shrugged, throwing himself gratefully into the fray.

“It’s TITANIA! Got it, shrimp?” Well, that just tore it.

Finally. Someone he could smack. Something he could break without guilt. Life was good.

In the middle of all the tangled tentacles, flying fists and booming thuds of multiple wrecking balls, Logan found a small measure of surcease, but the nagging thought remained in his head: Never shoulda treated ‘Ro like that. She didn’t deserve it.

Ororo felt tingles of unease creeping up her back as she flew away, still fuming and cursing to herself. Why did she keep running into this wall? It hurt enough the first few times that one figured she’d a) learn her lesson, and b) leave the Wolverine to his own devices and beleaguered, dysfunctional love life.

“An A for effort,” she chuffed. “Hmmph.” Was that how he really felt about it? That raw, primal sharing of heat and want? The way her whole body sang and squeezed itself around him, thirsting for him? Wanting to drain the well dry?

Well, fine then.

Ororo’s boots barely touched the ground as Scott approached her at a run, barreling out of the complex. “Storm, where the hell have you been?” Kurt followed shortly on his heels, looking curious when he noticed that she was alone.

“Out. Took a walk. What do you want, Cyclops?” He bristled at her terse look but didn’t back down.

“You don’t just run off. It’s not safe enough for any of us to just run off alone. Look what happened to Wasp,” he reminded her. “We were worried. The Professor was concerned.”

“I’ll just bet he was,” she said smoothly. “Can’t let the helpless sheep stray, can we, Cyclops?”

“You’re a leader, Storm. You can set a better example than that,” he accused.

“And my walking away right now won’t stop you from telling me how. Or the Professor. Might I remind you, Scott, that you don’t even belong here right now.”

“None of us belong here, Storm, last time I checked.” The slender strip of ruby quartz of Scott’s visor glinted more brightly, as though his power was charging it for a confrontation.

“The X-Men have a battle to win. Not a married man stolen away from his honeymoon. You gave this life up. I’m team leader now. So do me a favor and butt out.” She punctuated it with a jab of her finger into his chest, firm enough to make him stagger back. She stalked back into the compound.

“Kurt??”

“Ja, mein freund?”

“What the hell was that all about?” He turned to face Nightcrawler, not bothering to use his codename now that Storm had left. “What’s got her panties in a bunch?” Kurt coughed; he didn’t want to discuss the status of Ororo’s panties, in light of the looks Logan and Ororo had been exchanging since they returned from Japan. He still couldn’t fathom it as it was.

“Best not to ask, Cyclops. I wouldn’t know how to begin to tell you.” Kurt went back in the direction that he came, excusing himself with “I’m going to check up on Piotr.”

“Fine. Sounds good. I’ll just…stand watch. Or something,” he finished lamely. Someone had to. This never happened with his old team. He led, they followed, and everyone liked him. Jean. Bobby. Hank. Warren. He didn’t have to worry about playing King of the Hill, getting shoved off and landing on his keister. Especially not by Ororo, for cripes’ sake. What happened to “My native people worshipped me as a goddess, I swore never to take a life, I need to maintain the utmost control at all times to avoid total mayhem?” What happened to being his friend and showing him respect? Why the pissing contest?

Even worse, he shuddered, why did she seem so damned determined to piss bigger than him?

Scott made up his mind right then and there that they were going to win the Beyonder’s little game and go home. He would go back to Anchorage. He would greet his wife at the door and kiss her senseless. And they would make love with him on top. And that was that.

He didn’t even have time to imagine Maddie in his favorite yellow nightie.

“Cyclops! We have a situation. Gather Nightcrawler and Storm and head out into the jungle about thirty clicks north of here. Logan needs assistance.”

“Where the hell has be been, Professor?”

“There’s no time to ponder that, son. Just go out there and get him. The Wrecking Crew and several others from the enemy camp have ambushed him. I can barely get a lock on his thoughts, but I can sense his psionic energy signature. Go.”

“On my way, sir.”

He was on his way to the compact, battle-equipped aircraft adjoining the compound when a rushing sound startled him and stopped him in his tracks. Ororo and Kurt were barely on their way out of the hangar when a falling object grew larger as it made its descent toward the ground.

“Unglaublich!” Kurt exclaimed.

“Goddess!” Ororo gasped. “LOGAN!” His body hit the ground with a stomach-wrenching thud before Ororo could even summon a wind to slow or blunt his fall. Every last trace of irritation left from their tiff evaporated into thin air. She bolted over to him, closing the last few yards between them, smothering a cry of anguish when she saw the shape he was in. His entire uniform was shredded and torn, and ugly welts and gashes across his limbs, chest and face wept scarlet, nearly blinding him where the blood dripped into his eyes. Dark tufts of hair stuck out from the remains of his mask.

“Nnnnggh.”

“Logan? What happened to you? Who did this?” Ororo whipped off her vest and bunched it into a makeshift pillow, tucking it under his head to elevate it while she peeled away his mask to better assess his cuts.

“I’ll get Reed out here with one of those hover gurneys,” Kurt suggested, rushing off, but not before Ororo caught his pained look at his best friend’s suffering.

“Ya should see “KARRRGGHHKH! “ the other guy,” he gargled. His voice rattled with the strain and the effort not to choke on the blood pooling in his mouth.

“Not funny.” Ororo’s voice shook.

“S’okay. Only hurts when I laugh, darlin’.”

“I’ll make them pay.”

“The hell you will.” Before Scott and Kurt arrived with the gurney, Reed Richards in tow with his medical kit, Logan muttered “Ororo?”

“Yes?” Her hand crept into his as she smoothed back his hair tenderly and mopped blood away from his eye.

“Yer not a substitute. Yer one of a kind. Ya wouldn’t be replacin’ Mariko.” He winced before a fresh spate of coughing wracked his chest. “Yer irreplaceable, too, darlin’. Quit frettin’.” His eyes studied her face, drinking in her features, her skin, her hair. “I didn’t mean it. What I said before.”

“All right.” Her chin quivered before she forced a smile for his benefit.

“And no blubberin,’ either.”

“Perish the thought.” She squeezed his hand before raising it to her cheek. “Goddesses don’t blubber.” They went soaring through the clouds for a good long shower, complete with hiccupy sobs and self-recriminations aplenty, but he didn’t need to know that. A heartbeat later, “I’m sorry.” Reed surprised them all when he flattened his body to the thickness of a sheet of paper and slipped himself under Logan, gently lifting him and easing him onto the gurney.

“Ya don’t gotta make a fuss over me, bub, I’ll heal.”

“You’re less of a target inside. I’ll notify Bruce to reconfigure you a uniform to replace this one. It’s done for,” Reed tsked. Ororo spent the better part of the afternoon sharing the first watch with Kurt, replaying his words in her head. One of a kind.


Back in the tiny village, origin undefined:

“Even if I had my sketchbook and pencils, I couldn’t begin to do you justice. You’re exquisite, Zsaji, did you know that?” Peter leaned over the prone form of the woman stretched out on the cot, looking peaceful enough that she appeared to be merely sleeping instead of unconscious. Her breathing was stertorous and labored, and her eyelids were waxy and revealed the faint outline of bluish veins. He longed for her to open them and stare at him quizzically, the way she had when he’d first staggered into her hut, bleeding from a gaping wound in his side, ribs throbbing with every groan, telling him they’d been fractured.

He couldn’t get enough of looking at her, even like this. He smoothed back an errant lock of shimmering white hair from her face, not surprised by the silky feel of it. Everything about her was so soft and inviting. Her hands were delicate and smooth as satin when she laid them on his chest. Warmth radiated from them, buffering the pain as she knitted his shattered bones back together and closed the wound. Perhaps her healing gifts were not as advanced as Logan’s, but they were certainly impressive. She’d merely smiled when he spoke to her first in English, then in his native Russian tongue, wondering which she would respond to before that idiot, Johnny Storm, swooped down in a showy blaze of flames and spirited her away.

He’d spent the rest of his time inured in the tiny hut, recuperating while he beat himself up. He loved Kitty. He cared for her and would never betray her.

Except that Kitty left in a huff, with her young friend Doug. He failed to smother the embers of jealousy at the unassuming teen’s boyish good looks and enthusiasm for all of the interests he shared with Katya.

With a grunt of discomfort, Peter got up and retrieved the small hearth, setting it over the flames in the brazier. He emptied a packet of Zsaji’s herbs into the pot, stirring them into the mixture and letting the pinkish mist drift into the confined space. As he had done several times since entering her hut, Peter told her about his life before he met the Professor, feeling that she might identify with his simpler early life on the farm. Whatever was in Zsaji’s infusions and concoctions allowed them to communicate on some level, despite the language barrier. They exchanged thoughts and feelings more often than actual words, thanks to the mist. He breathed it in deeply, and picked up the first vestige of her emotions; faint, but still there. It comforted him.

“I once destroyed my father’s neighbor’s tractor by accident when my sister was sitting in its path, playing with her dollies. Would you like me to tell you about it?” He stroked her cheek and began his tale.

Somehow, at some time during the skirmishes of the past few days, Peter Rasputin had fallen in love with an alien healer whose name he could scarcely pronounce. And he didn’t have the slightest clue of what to do about it.


One month later:

Jiro held his hand over his eyes as he stared up at the sky, curious about the growing, falling forms in the sky. “What’s THAT?”

“Let’s look in our monster book!” Eiko suggested. She nudged Akira firmly enough that his reading glasses were jostled halfway off his face. “Hurry!”
“Stop it!” he hissed. “I’m getting it!” He squinted up into the sky, treating himself to a look as he reached into his backpack. “Bet we’ve seen that one before!”

“Bet we haven’t,” Jiro countered. “Doesn’t look like Mothra.”

“You’ve never seen Mothra!”

“Have too! Saw him with my brother that one night when we were camping out in the back yard!”

“Did not!”

You don’t know,” Akira scowled. He yelped “Hey!” as Eiko snatched the book from his hands and began flipping through it carelessly. “You’ll rip it, jerk!”

“Awww, are you gonna whine your way home to Mommy to tell on meeeeee?” Eiko stuck her tongue out petulantly as she went back to turning the pages with her stubby little fingers. “Mothra, Kong, Godzilla, Gamara…” she paused, then looked at the falling shadows again. “Looks like there is more than one.”

“One’s really…BIG.” Jiro’s eyes widened. “Guys?”

“Yeah?”

“LOOK OUT!!!!”

The children scattered as they realized that the creatures were hurtling to the ground, and that they were in their direct path. Only the largest beast remained aloft, and it seemed to chase after a tiny, flitting purple speck. The children hid behind a large tree, stifling gasps of shock behind their mittened hands. The monsters thudded to the ground, and Eiko heard a muffled groan of pain. Monsters didn’t groan, did they?

“Jiro, they’re wearing costumes!” Akira murmured.

“I know those costumes,” Jiro shot back. “Those are the X-Men!” Eiko’s fear turned to delight as she hopped up and down.

“They’re mutants,” Akira pointed out.

“They’re COOL!” Eiko corrected him. “C’mon, let’s go talk to them!” Before either boy could hold her back, or even run ahead of her and beat her to the punch, she darted over to the shortest of the group. “Eeww, this one smells like smoke!” She grimaced and held her nose before remembering her purpose. “What’s your name, Mister?”

“Nnnnnggh…gimme a sec, kid,” growled a voice that Eiko could have sworn belonged to the Boogey Man.

“Dang…Ah feel like Ah went twenty rounds as Sugah Ray Leonard’s punchin’ bag,” Rogue drawled in an effort to break the tension and to assure the children that they were okay. She knew their costumes were a mess, that some of them were bleeding, and they no doubt scared the bejeebers out of the poor little tykes. Then it occurred to her…

“Where the heck are we, y’all?”

“Up in the hills! You’re in TOKYO!” Eiko crowed, even though Rogue hadn’t addressed the children directly. She found herself staring at the children with more than a little consternation.

“Y’all are speakin’ Japanese,” Rogue pointed out.

“So’re you,” Logan informed her, in flawless dialect himself, rasped out in his customary growl.

“My doing,” the Professor explained. “When in Rome,” he shrugged.

“It that STORM?” Jiro whispered loudly to Akira, elbowing him. “Why is she dressed like that? Where’s her hair?”

“Dunno. She looks cool, though. She’s even hotter than Dazzler or Lila Cheney!” The two twelve-year-olds sniggered behind their hands until Logan quelled their chatter with a glare that made them practically pee their pants.

“So you guys aren’t monsters,” Eiko sighed. “Too bad.” Then it occurred to her. “What are you doing here?”

“We don’t know yet, child,” Ororo supplied.

“The Beyonder said he could send us home,” Peter reminded everyone.

“To him, that just meant Earth.” Rogue began to dust off her boots with the cuff of her cowl-necked sweater. “Knew the guy was a chump.”

“Where’s Cyke?” Logan wanted to know.

“Anchorage.”

“How can you be sure, Professor.”

“I can’t sense his thoughts anywhere on the continent. In his case, the Beyonder returned him to where he took him from in the first place.”

“Why couldn’t he do as much for us?” Peter rubbed a crick out of his neck, wishing that Zsaji could caress the aches away. He felt the twisting ache in his heart at her absence. Her beauty would haunt his dreams when he finally reached his own bed.

“Wolverine? Where did you get that monster up there?”

“Eh?” He was dying for a cigar, but he craned his neck up at the sky. He felt a powerful breeze kick up that Storm had nothing to do with, practically knocking him on his keister.

An enormous dragon was flapping its way across the sky. His vision picked out the tiny, purple gnat flitting several meters ahead of its muzzle. The beast was giving chase.

“Holy shit.”

“Lockheed,” Rogue breathed, clearly distressed.

“Professor?” Ororo asked, stifling the urge to call the team to action, out of courtesy, and because she was at a loss for words.

“Rogue, Storm, we’ll have to fly tandem to follow them. Rogue, you should be able to accommodate Wolverine and Colossus.” The Professor’s words were more confident than he felt. His mind ran through possible scenarios of how to handle the situation that faced them when they met the city. None of them were comforting, now that he was no longer safely ensconced behind the headmaster’s desk. He was a soldier. If Storm accepted him, he was a leader.

He’d never been more afraid in his life.

The sight that greeted them when they reached the busy metropolis was staggering. Several buildings had been reduced to piles of gutted, smoking girders. Civilians were screaming and scurrying out like ants from a flooded hill.

“It’s go time,” Logan murmured. “Take us down, ‘Ro.”

“Absolutely,” she agreed. Her face mirrored Rogue’s solemn expression as they made their descent. For the first time in longer than she could remember, the people were fleeing from something they found more terrifying than the band of garishly costumed mutants and were barely sparing them a glance.

Hours later:

Ororo’s lungs screamed, clogged with dust, smoke and wind. She’d been aloft for the past few hours, and Shiro was beginning to wear on her last nerve. Goddess, but he was full of himself.

“You never should have come back to my homeland. The X-Men have never brought anything but trouble into my life, or to my home.” Shiro Yashida still garbed himself in the red uniform displaying the rising sun of his nation’s flag. His dark eyes blazed out from beneath his mask as he studied Ororo a moment. There was no love lost between them, despite Ororo’s past overtures at friendship.

“We’re trying to save it. If you can’t be grateful, Sunfire, then get out of the way.”

“It is you who are in my way,” he argued.

“LOOK OUT!” Ororo sailed through the air, angling herself like a jet and directing gusts of wind to cushion and slow the descent of the falling girders as an entire floor was knocked from the skyscraper.

Storm and Sunfire managed to work in tandem, using no words as they alternately pulverized the wreckage with his heat beams and her lightning, or welded them to stabilize the weakened structure to keep it from crumbling any further. Colossus was on the ground, sheltering citizens with his armored form from tumbling debris. Everyone was struggling against the gusts of air sweeping against them from the wing beats of the enormous green dragon flying perilously close. She was simply too big. Her talons skimmed buildings at random. Neon signs vomited sparks as they were flung to the ground, splintering into shrapnel. Cars were hit by flying girders, crumpling like aluminum cans. Citizens fled into subway tunnels, once they realized that being above ground was the least feasible option. Logan and Kurt led the way, and Kurt continued to ‘port people from harm when they wouldn’t trust the blue demon as he advised them to follow him to safety.

All of the X-men felt strangely bereft of the Professor’s words in their thoughts.

Beneath the wreckage of the skyscraper, trapped beneath a large beam, Charles groaned and cursed himself, trying to ignore the images of different events of his life flashing through his mind on a mad reel. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He wasn’t supposed to be here again. Years in the service, months in space, weeks of rehabilitation had brought him to this again. Helpless. Immobile. Alone in the dark.

Miles above him, he could feel Ororo’s thoughts. Shiro was rubbing her the wrong way. That was nothing new, he mused, wincing as some shrapnel dug into his back, making him chafe and bleed from fresh cuts every time the wreckage shifted. He felt her emotions: Controlled anger, mingled with unbridled worry that made her heart race. There was something else that puzzled him for a moment. If he had to describe it, it was a desperation that he could only remember feeling once in his own life, and he could taste her regret at things she’d left unsaid. Moira had resonated with feelings like that the day they’d said goodbye and broken their engagement.

Ororo was searching for Logan, and God help anyone foolish enough to get in her way. Charles smothered a chuckle. The poor child was in love with him. A recent encounter between the two of them dangled from the fringes of her thoughts, and Charles wisely blocked out the details, not wanting to intrude. He gently skimmed her thoughts again, cataloguing her feelings and wanting to strengthen her, somehow. The events of the past few weeks away from earth were still fresh and raw, along with feelings he never expected from her. Indignance? What left that there? Resentment? Anger? Distrust?

At him. Good Lord.

If I get out of here, we need to have a talk, he promised himself.

Nearby, a low moan underscored the wailing sobs of a child who sounded no older than five, perhaps six. Charles focused himself on those thoughts, letting them be his beacon. He was exhausted and broken, and couldn’t afford to let down his guard, or he’d risk being open to the thoughts of millions, in all of their crashing terror.

A young mother and her daughter. Charles wanted to weep. They’d be lucky if they survived the night, and once again, he winced at the memory of Ororo’s childhood, fragments of it that she’d treated him to since she’d come to his school. Small hands reaching for cold, lifeless ones amidst the rubble. This child deserved the same chance at life. He could feel her mother’s light fading fast. Charles ran through the possibilities of who could come to their rescue.

Ororo was up in the sky.

Kurt couldn’t teleport somewhere he had never seen.

Peter would unsettle the wreckage if he tried to lift it or clear it out of his way.

Rogue had flown back to Westchester.

That left Logan. His senses, his claws, his compact size and unbreakable bones…yes, it would have to be Logan. Charles’ psychic summons was projected more loudly than he intended.

“Holeeee! Damn it, Chuck, ya practically fried my brain ta mush!” Logan cursed, clutching at his skull. His expression sobered, and Peter eyed him curiously.

“Where’s the Professor?”

“Outta commission, but not outta the game. Chuck’s buried. He gave me a quick picture of where he’s been trapped.” Logan’s expression changed as he listened to the rest of the Professor’s instructions. “There’s a coupla civilians that’ll be casualties if I don’t dig ‘em out.”

“Let me ““

“Nope. Ya gotta stay out here an’ help Kurt an’ ‘Ro. Yer too big fer this job, Petey. I’ll back in two shakes,” Logan vowed. Peter didn’t doubt it for a second.

“Good luck, tovarisch.” Logan sprinted off, following the call of Charles’ thoughts. Slowly, painstakingly, began to ease himself through the wreckage of a toppled apartment building.

He hated this. So much rubble. So little air to breath. So much like so many places he’d had to fight his way out of, and now he was headed in. The smell of blood assailed his nose and nauseated him, but he pressed on. He didn’t know how much metal and plaster he’d cut through by the time he finally heard the faint cries of a woman trying to comfort her child. He moved some beams aside as gently as possible, and his heart wrenched at the sight of the broken, bleeding woman whose face lit up in relief as he drew close.

“I’m here, let me help you. My name is Logan,” he began, settling on a simple explanation. He sheathed his claws, not wanting to frighten her needlessly, but her lips twisted into a smile he didn’t expect.

“We’ve seen you…on the news.” She peered up at his hands, noting the torn gloves and gleaming housings over his knuckles. “You are the one they call Wolverine.”

“Yeah. Sure am, darlin’.” Her daughter lay beside her mother, her chubby fist twisting into a handful of her mother’s glossy black hair. She looked up with terrified black eyes at Logan before bursting into screaming howls. “S’okay, munchkin. I’m gonna get ya outta here.”

“Logan-sama…” Blood streamed out from the corner of her mouth. She coughed on it, and her eyes watered with the effort it took to speak. “I’m…I’m dying. I won’t make it out from here.”

“Don’t say that, darlin’. I’m gonna get ya outta here. You and yer baby girl. I ain’t leavin’ ya behind.” Logan reached out and began to lift away the debris that had trapped the woman, and paused when he noticed a wicked chunk of a broken beam that had pierced her side, impaling her. Blood flowed thickly from her vitals, soaking her brown dress and sweater.

“It’s too late,” she moaned. “There’s nothing…that can be done for me. My daughter has no father. Someone has to care for her,” she reasoned. Her eyes pleaded with him, and Logan understood, laying trembling fingers over her lips.

“She’ll live. I vow it on my life. She’ll never want for anything.” Logan reached for the struggling child, who’d suddenly stilled her sobs, listening with uncomprehending ears to their exchange.

“Her name’s Amiko,” her mother whispered.

“Beautiful name,” Logan grunted. “Amiko? C’mon, be a good girl. Kiss Momma goodnight,” Logan cajoled, hugging the stubborn child snugly. She was weakened but still struggling. “She’s tired, an’ she needs ta sleep.”

“Mommy go night-night?” she whispered, out of the long habit that Logan imagined was a nightly routine between mother and child. His heart was breaking at the need for the lie.

“Momma’s goin’ night-night. Give her a kiss.” He bent over her mother, bringing her daughter close enough to grasp her mother’s cheeks in her cool little palms, and she puckered up, kissing the corner of her mother’s mouth. The woman managed a weak smile full of love and anguish.

Logan heard her final heartbeats minutes later, dying behind him as he made his way from the wreckage. He steeled himself against the smell of death as he made his way back to Charley. Once he dug him loose, Charles thankfully laid a blanket of sleep over Amiko’s thoughts, making the task of bringing them all out of the wreckage less of a fight.

Charles could never read Logan’s thoughts, but his emotions were an open book in the wake of the rescue, and they were painful in their intensity. Peter collected Charles into his grip, hoisting him into his arms as he carried him to safety. Ororo and Shiro both landed gracefully, but looked the worse for wear. Ororo’s face was wreathed in relief as her eyes landed on Logan, until she saw the tiny, unconscious child held snugly in his arms.

“Logan?” she began tentatively.

“Can’t talk ‘bout it now. Soon,” he suggested. His eyes looked lost. She nodded in understanding as she stroked the child’s round cheek with her gloved hand. “Shiro?”

“What do you want from me, gaijin?”

“I need ya ta get into touch with Mariko.”

“You have no business with my cousin.”

“This ain’t about business, and it ain’t about what she and I had. This is about honor.”

“You know nothing of honor.”

“I made this baby girl’s mother a promise. I need M’iko’s help in keepin’ it.” Shiro’s eyes swept over the child, and he felt a tug of pity for her. “She ain’t got anybody. Kid’s a Japanese citizen. Ya know how much red tape we’d hafta cut through ta take her home with us once she gets outta the hospital. Ya’ve got an important family that can pull a fewstrings, eh?” They shared a measuring glance, and Shiro nodded quietly.

“I will call my cousin. In the meantime…maybe you should all stay with me. I will make the arrangements.”

“Don’t trouble yerself on my account, bub. Ya won’t hafta worry ‘bout me. I’ve got other accommodations.”

“Not with my cousin. My cousin’s house staff and bodyguards have already been advised not to let you within a mile of her.”

“Tough break,” Logan shrugged. He turned at the sound of an ambulance siren and allowed the paramedics to lift the little girl from his arms. “Her name’s Amiko. I’m her guardian,” Logan informed them in surprisingly crisp Japanese. He supplied them with a few other bits of information, informing them that she had no other kin to notify. Shiro chimed in that he would act as her advocate for her hospital stay. They nodded in easy agreement as they bundled her onto a gurney.

Ororo fought and failed not to eavesdrop. I’ve got other accommodations. He was going to stay at Mariko’s. Of course he’d planned to. What else did she expect?

The skies beckoned to her. Ororo checked on the Professor, Kurt and Peter and informed them curtly that she would catch up with them at the Yashida estate the following morning.

She needed Yukio.

Ororo launched herself into the clouds, surveying the smoking buildings with a pang. Damage caused in only minutes would take weeks to repair. The X-Men would be blamed. They had to go home and check on the children. It was too much, too soon. The wind whistled through her hair and caressed her skin like a lover.

Her boots barely made a sound as she landed on Yukio’s balcony. She calmly picked the locks on the sliding door and let herself in.

Yukio didn’t even express surprise as she strolled out from the shadows. “Ororo.” Her smile spread slowly across her lips. “You came back.”

“I couldn’t stay away, Wild One. If you don’t mind, I need a place to stay tonight.”

“Like I’d turn you away!” Yukio chuffed. She hurried forward and flung herself into Ororo’s limp, waiting arms. Relief was eclipsed by alarm when she felt Ororo begin to tremble. Ororo’s fingers clawed at her back through her thin silk pajamas. “Ororo-chan…what’s wrong?”

“Everything,” she whispered. Yukio pulled back and gasped at the sight she made. Ororo’s white hair was dusty and covered with soot. There were tears in her leather pants, and a mean scarlet gash marred her cheek. Various cuts speckled her flesh wherever it was exposed, and her normally soft blue eyes were hard and bleak, not to mention bloodshot.

“You look like hell.”

“I feel like it,” she agreed.

“Come with me.” Yukio tugged her along, and Ororo followed her like a sleepy child. They made their way into the bathroom, where Yukio began to undress Ororo and ran the shower. She shucked her boots and tossed them into the corner. She drew off Ororo’s vest, and she stood before her shamelessly as Yukio whistled at the cuts and gashes marring her shoulders. Her skin was covered in a layer of grime and dust.

“And you tell me I live too dangerously,” she clucked.

“You always choose it. Danger always chooses me.” She met Yukio’s eyes in the mirror. “And Logan,” she added.

“Is the runt still being hardheaded?”

“Absolutely.”

“You love him, don’t you?” Ororo had just dropped her leather belts on the floor with a thump, and her hands shook over the zipper of her jeans.

“I..I don’t want to.” Her face crumpled. The shower hissed and steamed the tiny room, and Yukio folded Ororo into a fierce hug from behind.

“Welcome to my world, Wind-Rider.” Ororo wept. The skies outside wept with her, and the buildings that still smoldered with dying flames were finally extinguished as the rescue crews flooded into the heart of the city.

Yukio adjourned into the shower with Ororo, heedless of the familiarity when Ororo didn’t object. Yukio cleansed her skin with a small blue bath puff, picking fragments of debris from her cuts. She lavished a creamy handful of shampoo on Ororo’s hair, working it through the plume and massaging her scalp as she balanced on the edge of the tub. Ororo leaned back against Yukio’s knees as she rubbed her troubles away.

“Why do you bother to stay with them? Does fighting the good fight make you happy, ‘Ro-chan, or do you just do it because it’s the right thing to do?”

“I don’t know anymore. I just know that whenever I try to leave, it pulls me back. Your home always does,” she admitted. “The school is my home.”

“So it’s not just Logan keeping you there? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, Ororo, he never sticks around. Once you fall for him, and once he knows it, he’ll just walk out.”

“I’m strong, if nothing else, ‘Kio. Feeling this way about him won’t destroy me.” Her voice sounded unconvinced. Yukio didn’t buy it, either.

“Again, I’ve already played that game. Strong enough to love the Wolverine…shit, aren’t we a sorry pair!”

They rose from the shower and turned off the spray. Yukio fetched fresh towels and a pair of boy-cut silk shorts and a cotton camisole for Ororo. Yukio rejected Ororo’s suggestion of tea in favor of wine, and they stayed up and talked into the night

Logan spent a sleepless night, tossing and turning in one of Shiro’s several guest rooms in his house. He resigned himself to the fact that she really wasn’t coming home tonight, to him. He craved her scent of sandalwood and tea roses and the faint rumble of her deep, rich voice in his ear.

Mariko promised that she would apply for guardianship of Amiko, and she listed Logan as the child’s next of kin. Their conversation started off terse, but ended up with the whispered assurance from Mariko that she missed him. She asked him how Ororo was doing, and he grunted a noncommittal reply.

He knew things wouldn’t look any better in the morning.





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