The following is a fan fiction piece, the final chapter of a four parter.
As per usual on this sort of occasion, I'd like to thank everyone who's
asked for part 4 and just in case no one knows it by now, I am not a
professional comic book writer, this story does not fit into X-Men
continuity, and that all characters (with the exception of Sam Page and
Sarah Philips) are the exclusive intellectual property of Marvel Comics
Group.

Special thanks at this stage to Dawn Bobby, Ryan Leary and Leslie Vera who
proofread, edited and helped me throughout the story

Lee (Budgie) Barnett  
budgie@compuserve.com

In Chapter 1: Five current or former X-Men (Cyclops, Wolverine, Banshee,
Bishop and Shadowcat) are spending a pleasant evening in "Harry's Hideaway"
when a bomb explodes in the next booth, killing four people, including a
couple standing at the bar named Scott Summers and Jean Grey. After
discovering a link to "BWS Industries" the team fly to London, BWS's
current headquarters...

In Chapter 2: The team make their way to London where they meet up with
Peter Wisdom, Kitty's lover and team mate in Excalibur, who informs them
that BWS is in fact an assassination bureau run by the British Government.
The tam split up and while Logan, Kitty and Wisdom break into the offices
of BWS, the three remaining X-Men book into their hotel room where they're
ambushed by namesakes and are taken prisoner by a so far unseen enemy.
Meanwhile, Kitty, Logan and Wisdom, having broken in, are discovered by a
woman baring Kitty's name. Logan attacks the woman, demanding to know
what's going on...

In Chapter 3: The woman explains to Logan, Kitty and Wisdom that there's
another BWS with similar names to the X-Men who is going around killing
people. She doesn't know why. She does know however that the X-Men have
been set up by Val Cooper. At the same time, Banshee and Cyclops awake to
discover they're on the SHIELD Helicarrier with a very annoyed Nick Fury,
who tells the confused X-Men that someone is trying to convince the world's
intelligence agencies that the X-Men have gone bad. Logan, Wisdom and Kitty
rejoin the team, as Wisdom, Logan and Fury realise that all the clues add
up to only one place : Genosha. Bishop, meanwhile has woken up to discover
he's a prisoner along with Val Cooper. He meets his captors and immediately
knows who BWS are - Beast With Sugarman...

Now read on...

SERENDIPITY

Chapter 4 - "And For My Next Trick..."


Valerie Cooper had thought she'd seen it all. 

She was, after all, the official mutant liaison between the US Government
and their sponsored mutant team, the motley crew known as X-Factor. And in
that capacity had dealt with mutants of all shapes, colours and types. She
was once accused of being racist when she fired a man from his job; the
fact that he was negligent had nothing to do with it, she was fervently
told. It *had* to be that she was racist. Val had laughed in her accuser's
face and merely asked Rahne Sinclair to drop into the office. As the
teenager walked in, as usual in her half-lupine phase, the protester had
gulped twice and got the message. Val wasn't interested in the colour of
someone's skin, merely how useful they were to her. 

Val wandered why that particular memory had leaped into her mind. As she
regained consciousness to discover she was bound on a table with legs and
arms apart, she realised why. The first thing she was aware of was the
smell of decay. It surrounded her and as she opened her eyes, she realised
she was looking directly at a horror straight out of the fairy tales that
she read as a child.

The face was enormous and covered with what looked to Val like pustules of
poison. The smell came from them, she assumed, and then reappraised her
thought as the mouth (//the size of it!//) opened and she recoiled against
the stench.

The creature skittered back a few paces and turned to someone.

"She's awake," said Sugarman, reaching with one of his hands to a table
piled high with candy. He grabbed a few candy bars and tearing them open,
threw them into the maw below his nose.

"Yes, I expected it some time ago," replied his companion, moving into
Val's field of vision. With a start, she recognised Henry McCoy, ex-Avenger
and one of the founding members of the X-Men. In a second though, her keen
vision noticed that one of his ears was pierced, and, free-wheeling though
Hank could be, she knew that he detested piercing. The logical conclusion -
the only one - was that this was the fake Beast, the one that her team had
tried to convince her came from another dimension. Lorna Dane had
christened him BadBeast and the name had stuck in reports.

BadBeast leaned over her and the light dimmed as she struggled against her
bonds. She was grateful, as the lights were extremely bright.

"I wouldn't bother, Ms Cooper," he said. "The restraints are made from a
type of flexible adamantium that I believe your scientists have said is
impossible. When you have time on your hands, it's quite astonishing how
many impossible things you can do before breakfast."

"I believe the answer is six," replied Bishop, who had been waiting
patiently for the opportunity to advise Val that he was present. Like Val,
he was bound on a table with arms and legs spread wide. He supposed that
Sugarman and the ersatz Beast found it bemusing in some way to parody the
"X" symbol in this method, but he saw nothing amusing in the situation.

"Stars and garters - to quote my namesake - I don't believe it!" exclaimed
BadBeast. "A Lewis Caroll fan," he said, thoroughly confusing Bishop, who
had been referring to Rule 7 in the XSE Handbook.

Sugarman shuffled towards Bishop, then thought better of it as Bishop
glared in his direction. //What do they want?// thought Bishop. //What can
they possibly need from me?//

To his surprise, BadBeast seemed to answer Bishop's unspoken question.
"You're probably wondering why you're here," BadBeast suggested. "Have no
fear. Between you and Ms Cooper here, you're the final elements of a plan
that's been literally decades in preparation. You see," he confided, "your
powers are just what I need to convince *him* that he's wrong."

"Him? Who him?" asked Val.

"Who him?" replied BadBeast with a laugh. "Well, .."

He was interrupted suddenly by a klaxon that blared loudly. "Ah, yes, your
friends. They *are* clever, I thought it would take them much longer to
work it out." He bounded away with Sugarman, plainly with the intention of
leaving them there. He paused at a panel and increased the power of the
lights, almost blinding Bishop and Val. As he was about to leave the room,
he smiled at them, watching as they wilted in the heat. "Don't go away
now..."

                                - o -

The bridge of the SHIELD Helicarrier was, it had to be admitted, not the
best of places to have an argument with Nick Fury. It didn't stop Logan for
a second, but Kitty winced as she watched the men and women in SHIELD
uniforms pretend not to be listening as a civilian (as far as they were
concerned) argued strongly with Fury.

The argument had started five minutes ago and on the one occasion when
someone had tried to intervene, both the men stopped for a second and shot
Scott Summers a look that shut him up instantly.

"It doesn't matter what you say, Logan," repeated Fury, "there's no way in
Sam Hill I'm allowing you to go down there without an escort, namely ...
me."

"That's bull, Nick," replied Wolverine, suited up like all the X-Men except
Wisdom, and taking the last breaths of a cigar. "I know you can handle
yourself better than almost anyone, but this just ain't a job where you
want SHIELD implicated."

"Why? What are you planning to do," interrupted Wisdom, from the far side
of the area Fury used as an office on the bridge, "assassinate whoever you
find down there?" He sat up from where he had been lounging on a chair and
walked over to them. "Look, I know you'd quite like to defenestrate the
toerags who set you lot up. If it comes to that, I'll stand by and sell
tickets, but you know and I know that's the fastest way of confirming to
the outside world that you *have* gone bad."

He paused and lit a cigarette. After he had taken a drag, he noticed Fury
glaring at him. As was Logan. As were half the officers on the bridge.

"What?" he asked. "There's a rule that says you can only smoke if it's a
cigar?!" pointedly looking at Logan's, Fury's and Sean Cassidy who had
broken his rule of only one a day. 

"I do smoke only one a day," Cassidy had protested when he lit his third
that afternoon. "So far I'm up to April 1998."

"There's no way we can go in mob handed complete with a SHIELD task force,"
continued Wisdom. "Anyone who wants to hide can do so. They'd *have* to
know we were here."

"Yeah?" demanded Fury. "We're in full stealth mode and every electronic
surveillance system we've got is at full stretch".

Wisdom sighed. "Nick - you're not thinking. What if they've got a mutant
who can see through the stealth mode?" Although Wisdom took great delight
in seeing Fury completely speechless for a second, he wiped off the sudden
grin that had appeared on Logan's face with his next words. "And forget the
Lone Ranger routine, Logan - that'd never work, the damned country's too
big."

Kitty moved to Wisdom's side. "OK then, Petey my love," she smiled as
Wisdom winced, "how do we satisfy Colonel Fury and Logan?"

"Easy," Wisdom replied. "We act sneaky. Nick, have you got any talcum
powder on this tub?"

                                - o -

The sky underneath the Helicarrier was turning dark as the shuttle
containing Fury, Kitty, Banshee and a team of SHIELD agents slid silently
from a hangar. They had an appointment with the Prime Minister and they
didn't want to be late. As the shuttle officially entered Genoshan
airspace, two mutant fliers appeared either side of the shuttle. Fury
grimaced. The only way they could have appeared that fast was if they had
known their precise position. //Chalk one up for the Brit//, he thought.

As soon as the shuttle had company, Logan, Scott and Wisdom left the
opposite side of the Helicarrier using personal jet suits. They fell
straight towards the earth and at a thousand feet the jet packs came into
operation, slowing their descent. They touched down with barely a bump and
as soon as the jet packs had been removed, they fused into lumps of plastic
and metal, looking for all the world like the junk they now were.

It had been Scott's idea, and one that Logan had considered for a full half
hour before admitting that he wished he'd thought of it. The high praise
from Wolverine had stopped Scott in his tracks, before he realised that the
compliment was genuine. What was irritating to Logan was that the plan was
so damn simple.

Scott had realised that there was no point in using CEREBRO to track mutant
signatures. As well as there being no guarantee that a mutant wasn't
deliberately confusing the readings, there were just too many mutants in
the vicinity.

They needed a way of tracking Bishop by *who* he was, not by *what* he was.
And Scott found it. His thoughts. Or rather the lack of them. Scott was
sure that Bishop would have been telepathically calling for help from the
moment he had been awakened. Of course, Bishop was not telepathic, but
Scott was convinced that Bishop's training would have been to use all
resources, even those he was not sure were there. He would have been hoping
a telepath would pick up his thoughts.

It was therefore obvious to Scott that wherever Bishop was being held, it
had to be in a place where his thoughts for whatever reason were not
escaping to the outside world. Otherwise whoever was holding him was taking
a risk that the rescue team would include a telepath. So Scott had Fury do
a detailed scan of "dead" areas of psi-activity. How Fury accomplished
this, Scott wasn't sure, and wasn't sure he wanted to know either. He
wasn't too keen on the idea of SHIELD having telepaths of its own, but he
accepted the reality.

After a half-hour, they had a full report. As expected, there were hundreds
of places that were psi-screened. Logically though, the team felt they
could exclude most of them. They knew they were taking a risk by skipping
these places but there was only so much they could do. Besides, additional
sensor scans revealed that most of the psi-blockings were due to radiation
still around from the civil war. Bishop couldn't be in any of those places.
Well not be there and still be alive.

They finally narrowed it down to five places : The Presidential Palace, the
military headquarters and the now unused Senate Building in the centre of
the capital. That was the target of the ostensible SHIELD team headed by
Fury.

The two other places were connected, it appeared from blueprints Kitty
managed to hack out of the civil authority computer. One was a candy
factory. The other was the large basement attached that seemed from sensor
readings to cover some three acres underground.

It was not far from there that Cyclops, Wolverine and Wisdom had landed. 

"OK, how far, Wolverine?" asked Scott. He moved the junk that had
previously been their jetsuits closer to some boggy grass. His visor opened
and the eye blasts that were only held back by the ruby quartz blasted them
into the ground. Logan extended his claws and clawing up some grass, earth
and moss from nearby, covered the slight indentation in the ground caused
by Cyclops' beam.

Logan checked the compass and the digital map he'd taken from SHIELD.
"Reckon on 40 minutes in *that*" - he pointed to the Northeast -
"direction, Cyke. Not too bad, but we should have come down closer."

Scott shrugged. "Couldn't be helped. As you said, did you want to risk them
spotting us?"

Wisdom started walking - "not too bad - a forty minute walk," he said,
pulling out an ever-present packet of cigarettes."

Logan turned to him with a smile. "Forty minute run, English..."

"My mother warned me there'd be days like this," Wisdom said. "Well, no,
she didn't, but I think she should have..."

                                - o -

Kitty stifled a yawn as the Prime Minister once again assured his guests
that Genosha might well have had a problem in the past but since the civil
war had ended, everything had returned to a peaceful status. His
protestations of pure innocence weren't helped, however, by the frenetic
Minister of State who appeared on a regular basis to put pieces of paper in
front of the Prime Minister.

Kitty and Banshee were dressed as SHIELD agents - Fury had explained that
even though the X-Men had helped bring down the previous regime of mutant
enslaving dictators, showing up in X-Men uniforms wouldn't endear them to
the population. "Besides", Scott had added, "let's just let them think it's
only a SHIELD operation."

Banshee wasn't as polite as Kitty and didn't bother to hide his
frustration. "Look, we're only asking for you to allow SHIELD access to the
psi-areas. If you've nothing to hide, what's the problem?"

The Prime Minister hadn't reached his position by answering direct
questions when asked. He was far too experienced for that. "I can quite
understand your position, Agent...?" He paused for Banshee to give his
name, but when he didn't, the Prime Minister continued "but you must
understand that at the end of the day, when all things are considered,
there are proper channels to go through. Procedures to follow... meetings
to hold..." He lifted his hands as if to show the others how his hands were
effectively bound.

Finally, Fury had had enough. He stepped forward to the desk and leaned
over it, both hands planted firmly down. "Look, Mr Prime Minister..." 

Banshee was impressed at exactly how much lack of respect Fury managed to
put in those three words. 

"...I don't know what game yer playing or what's going on here, but it's
obvious we're getting nowhere fast. All we're asking, very nicely, is to
take a look at some of your psi-shielded areas. Now we've asked very nicely
for an hour and yer stallin'. If I don't start getting some co-operation in
a hurry, I ain't gonna ask so nicely anymore."

The Prime Minister gave a small shrug. "But, Colonel Fury, I have already
explained..." He tailed off as another implication of Fury's statement sunk
in. He'd assumed that Fury had meant that if he didn't get some answers
that he'd go away. Why not? It happened with everyone else that the Prime
Minister spoke to.

Then he realised what Fury meant, just as Fury continued, "...yep, I'll
just have to call my second in command - he's a tetchy chap - and explain
to him that you're holding me hostage in one of these here psi-shielded
areas."

The Prime Minister turned pale at the thought of SHIELD troops invading the
palace. "But, but, but that would be illegal... besides, it's blackmail."

Fury smiled - this little pip-squeak of a politician had been annoying him
for a solid hour. He enjoyed the next words more than he should have :
"Ain't it just..."

                                - o -

As they approached the factory, Wolverine sniffed the air. "There's
something here, Scott - something unpleasant. Can't pin it down though."

"Well, gents," said Wisdom, "let's go a-hunting". He walked over to the
barbed wire fence surrounding the nearby factory and pulled out of his
jacket the can of talcum. He threw it over the fence as high as he could
and triggered his power. The hot knives caught the can at its apogee and
silently blew it apart. The talc floated in the air for some minutes,
highlighting the red beams of the laser array awaiting anyone who entered
past the  fence. There was a small gap about a foot high from the ground
where the lasers did not scan. This was, Wisdom supposed, to ensure that
small animals didn't constantly set off the alarms. The good news was that
the fence wasn't electrified. The powder resting on the wire didn't stick
as it would have done had any current at all been passing through it.

"Hell of a security system for chocolate," said Wolverine.

"OK, how do we play this?" asked Scott.

Wolverine gave Wisdom a glance and Scott turned to Wisdom in expectation.
What he didn't expect was that as he turned, Wolverine would bend slightly
and hit Scott firmly on the jaw. Scott collapsed instantly - he didn't know
what had hit him.

Wisdom smiled wryly at Logan. "A touch of malice in there, was that?" 

"Shut up," replied Logan. "Can you think of another way of guaranteeing he
won't set off those beams?"

"Nope," confirmed Wisdom. He'd had the same thought. He was sure Logan
could keep close to the ground and crawl the distance, and he knew he
could, but he'd wondered how Cyclops would manage to do so. Now he knew.

Wisdom melted the bottom of the fence and then rolled through, making sure
he kept as close to the ground as possible. Logan came next and pulled
Scott behind him.

It took them a half hour but as they got through to the wall of the
factory, Wisdom let out an expletive. He'd felt his tie catch something
with an audible click. He stopped, barely breathing. His right hand slowly
went under his body and with a sigh, he pulled out a switch, not connected
to anything. He moved it so that Logan could see, and then, realising he
was at the wall, stood up with his face to the wall. He moved along the
wall, hearing Wolverine beside him. He looked through a window and then
looked again. 

Wisdom moved past the window and motioned for Logan to look. Logan looked
and saw precisely what Wisdom had seen - nothing, The room was empty. Worse
than that, it had been stripped. "Well, that's that," said Wisdom.

"Not quite," said Wolverine in reply. He sniffed twice. "The nose knows,
Pete - I can smell fresh X-Men... Bishop's here, at least he was here." He
sniffed the air again "... and pretty recently. OK, Leader Man, time to do
your stuff..."

Logan brought Cyclops 'round and when he realised the situation, Scott
calmed down with only a "You and I will discuss this later, Wolverine!". 

"Yeah, yeah, yeah - meanwhile, is there any alternative to going in hard
now?"

"Can't see one," offered Wisdom.

"OK," said Scott, rubbing his jaw and shooting Logan a baleful glare,
"let's do it."

                                - o -

An hour later Fury, Sean and Kitty were back in the Prime Minister's
office. The Prime Minister was puzzled that since everything seemed
satisfactory, why they were still there, but Fury and Banshee had been
engaging the politician in small talk. There had been one area that they
hadn't been allowed to enter, but while Fury had argued with the Prime
Minister outside the room, and no one was watching, Kitty had phased her
head through the door. The room was empty apart from a young boy at a
computer keyboard, busily tapping away at what Kitty instantly recognised
as a financial spreadsheet.

She phased out again just in time to hear Fury exclaim "well for Pete's
sake, if it's just your Treasury economic forecaster, why not let me see?"
Kitty stifled a laugh and said to them both, "I'm sure that's fine, sir.
Shall we move on." As Fury gave her a puzzled look, she mouthed at him that
she'd explain later.

As the Prime Minister poured himself another glass of wine, Kitty felt a
pressure on her wrist. She looked down and saw that the communicator she
wore was flashing very slowly, in time with the pulse she'd felt. It was
designed so that anyone casually looking shouldn't notice the slight change
in colour. She made sure no one was watching and surreptitiously pressed
the light to acknowledge the signal from Wisdom.

She said the agreed words to Fury. "Well, Nick, I think that's about it,
yes?"

Fury and Banshee got the message and with a smile, Banshee said "OK then,
that's fine, then, sir."

As they left the office, Banshee made sure he was the last to leave. At the
door, he looked back at the politician who had raised his glass almost, it
seemed, in grateful thanks that they'd left. Banshee checked no one was
looking and with a mental apology, he uttered a short hypersonic yell that
shattered the glass. Wine spilled on the desk as Banshee left the room.
//That makes up for two hours of twaddle//, Sean said to himself, thinking
that it was a childish action. //Yep//, he thought, //but worth it.//

/Now to find the others...//

                                - o -

Sugarman was moving rapidly around his lab in a panic as BadBeast entered
at a run. "What's happening?" Sugarman demanded as he looked at the
monitors showing Cyclops, Wisdom and Logan in the factory above them.

"Well, far be it from me to criticise and I know that this isn't the time
to say I told you so..." replied BadBeast.

"Right! Right" agreed Sugarman as he looked around to find some more candy.
"This plan of yours..."

"...so you just tell me when the right time to say it, OK?" continued his
fur covered conspirator.

"What?" asked Sugarman, stopping dead in his tracks.

BadBeast walked over to Sugarman and stood next to him. "You idiot!" cried
BadBeast. "How could you not have set up booby traps inside the factory?"
He lifted his large fist to smash it into the ugly mutant's face. He
lowered it again as Sugarman pulled out a gun and pointed it at him

"Well, no one's ever provided the necessity previously," Sugarman replied.
"Now what do we do? I don't want to abandon this base..."

"I'll think you find that you don't have a choice in the matter."

The voice came from a monitor set in the wall above them both. They looked
up to see the Prime Minister looking down at them. "Your plan to return
Genosha to its previous stature has failed. I'd be grateful if you'd both
leave the country. Any time within the next thirty minutes will do."

The two mutants took a long look at each other. 

Then they spun around as an enraged Bishop said, from the open doorway,
"I'd agree with that synopsis." Bishop was standing in the doorway with his
restraints still around his wrists and ankles. It had taken him a while to
absorb the energy from the staggeringly hot lights and it had almost
exhausted him releasing the energy in time to break his bonds. In the end
he had given up attacking the bonds and with a twist of his wrists, he had
blown apart the table on which he was bound.

"Grab him!" shouted Sugarman as he ran towards a weapons rack

BadBeast leaped across the room, landed in front of Bishop and while Bishop
automatically took up a combat position,  BadBeast's foot swept around and,
gathering up one of the foot restraints, tugged hard. Bishop tried to
protect himself, but was slammed into a cabinet. 

As he was smashed into the cabinet and for a second, saw both Sugarman and
BadBeast framed together in his sight, Bishop experienced a flash of deja
vu so strong it shook him. He knew he'd never met the pair before, but was
equally certain that he'd faced them previously. A mystery for another
time. Since the trouble in Israel, he sometimes felt he could no longer
trust his memories. For someone as dedicated to 'doing' rather than
'thinking' as Bishop, there was only one solution - worry about it later,
when he could possibly affect the outcome. For now, he was busy.

With his last vestige of energy, Bishop pointed and an energy blast
exploded the rack of weapons, blowing Sugarman back. BadBeast lifted one
massive foot and prepared to stamp down on Bishop's neck.

They could hear the sounds of crashing destruction moving closer and with a
snort, Sugarman said "another time, then, McCoy," and skittering away,
pressed a button on a recessed control panel. A hidden door slid open and
Sugarman pushed through the gap, manoeuvring into a vehicle that was
waiting there.

BadBeast looked at the X-Man who had used the distraction to slowly rise in
front of him. "Oh no, my unfair friend," retorted BadBeast as he leapt
across the room. He almost made it before the engines powered up, but
watched as the small vehicle shot through a tunnel. The door had closed
behind him and BadBeast could hear Bishop attempting to open it. He sighed
"It is to weep," he said, before noticing a second vehicle similar to the
first. He smiled an unpleasant smile, showing sharpened teeth. "Sinister
will just have to wait... Seems BWS has had its first falling out of the
board of directors..."

                                - o -

Although Val Cooper would have been pleased to see any Summers X-Man
appear, she was pleased that it was the older brother. The last time she
had seen Alex, he had been about to kill her, so all in all, she was
delighted that Scott appeared through the sudden hold in the wall that
appeared.

Logan followed and then an Englishman, complaining about all the dust. 

Logan seemed about to attempt to cut the bonds that held her when, with a
growl, he had leaped across the room to an ante-chamber. "Damn!" she heard
him shout when he realised that the fresh scents were minutes old. He saw
Bishop struggling to stand and provided a shoulder to lean on. One warrior
leaned against another and they rejoined the others.

They returned to the room to see Wisdom hot-knifing the bonds. Bishop sat
on the table and allowed Wisdom to sever his bonds, wincing at one point as
Wisdom unavoidably seared skin. Bishop rubbed his wrists to bring the
circulation back. He explained what had happened to he and Val to the X-Men
and described with some horror the creature who had been with the fake
Beast.

"The Beast person called him..."

"Sugarman," replied Wisdom, calmly. He'd recognised the description
immediately from when the young "Nate Grey" had psi-linked the entire
Excalibur team. It appeared from what Wisdom recalled that Nate was from
the same alternative history that had produced the two villains. He tried
not to think too hard about  alternative dimensions. That and time travel.
He invariably ended up with a headache.

The ante-room exploded, throwing debris into the room. "We'd better get out
of here," suggested Cyclops and in a run, they followed Wolverine through
the hole through which the three rescuers had arrived. Val slipped and
without pausing, Bishop grabbed her and slung her over his shoulder.

She protested loudly and Bishop threatened to knock her unconscious. //It
had been so much easier that way//, he thought.

"Don't even *think* about it!" ordered Scott, trying without success to
ignore the grin that Wisdom couldn't stop from appearing.

                                - o -

The five escapees from Sugarman's hideout had barely been in the open air
for five minutes when a SHIELD shuttle had dropped from the sky. "Get in!"
ordered Banshee, as the door opened. They had obeyed and then been thrown
to the floor as Fury applied hard acceleration.

"Don't know what happened down there, people, but we just got ordered out
of Genoshan airspace. Pronto. And there's a motion going to the UN tonight
to have SHIELD disbanded." Fury smiled. "Like that's gonna do any good."

Cyclops moved to the front chairs. He extended a hand. "Thanks, Nick - we
couldn't have done it without SHIELD. It's appreciated... and apologies for
earlier today."

Fury's smile grew wider as he shook the proffered hand. "That's OK, Scott.
I've been behind a desk for weeks now. This gave me a chance to get out in
the field again. I'll square it with the intelligence agencies about this
BWS thing. You'll be in the clear from tomorrow. Well, as in the clear as
you people ever are..."

                                - o -

The guards outside Nick Fury's office had been warned. "*No one* gets in
for the next hour." The communications officer had been instructed : "If
Clinton calls, I'm busy."

Suddenly a Canadian voice was raised in anger "I don't believe it! She
bluffed me out with a pair of twos! You taught her that, you limey piece of
slime."

Kitty Pryde looked in pleasure at the chips in front of her. She'd asked
Logan to teach her poker for years. He always refused. Wisdom had taught
her in one evening and then after she'd taken his watch, his clothes and
*almost* won his London apartment, he'd sworn never to play with her again.

Wisdom stood away from the table watching the three of them : the most
powerful intelligence agent in the world, the tutor to the next generation
of mutants, and arguably the most dangerous man he'd ever met. Fury,
Banshee and Wolverine. And they'd just been clinically taken apart at poker
by his girlfriend.

//Life don't get much sweeter//, he thought.

He looked at Cyclops, who was, of course, at the computer, writing up his
report. He noticed the screen flash to indicate an incoming e-mail and
watched, curious, as Scott scanned the first few lines. To his surprise,
Scott slung himself back in his chair with an exclamation : "Oh, that's
perfect! I don't believe it!"

"What's up, boss?" asked Wolverine.

"Oh, I'll tell you what's up, Logan. Sam Page - that policeman from the
bar? He just e-mailed me the final police report on the explosion. Take a
look." Scott motioned for Logan to look at the screen as he himself stood
up and leaned against the wall. "Wisdom, give me a cigarette."

"You don't smoke, Summers," replied Wisdom.

"I know, but this might make me start." Wisdom was curious as to what could
have had that effect on Summers. So was everyone else; they all looked at
Wolverine as he read the e-mail. A nasty laugh came from Logan as he
digested the contents of the electronic message.

"OK, folks - this is just beautiful. Heh - OK, here we go... The deceased
were the two lawyers we knew about, Mr Scott Jonathan Summers, aged 62, and
a Miss Jean Cheryl Grey, aged 44. Those last two were, respectively, the
owner and secretary of a small printing shop in the Village. They were also
it appears, in hock to the Mob, big time. Accordin' to Page, Summers'
brother was the go-between. He was hit at home last night."

"But, that means that..." started Kitty.

"...that Summers and Grey had nothing to do with us, nothing to do with the
X-Men, nothing to do with BWS, other than the fact that the Mob got hold of
some BWS detonators. Yup." Logan grimaced. "Of course, now we'll be
wondering *which* BWS supplied it... Ah, hell, Nick," he said, standing,
"deal the damned cards..."

Wisdom turned to Bishop, who was studying the restarted game, earnestly.
//Give him another hand or six and he'll ask to play.//

Bishop noticed Wisdom's stare and returned it. Wisdom lit up and motioned
at Bishop's tattoo.

"So, you ever considered plastic surgery?"

THE END

Serendipity - "And For My Next Trick..." by Lee Barnett 
budgie@compuserve.com