"War is indispensable. It is nothing but fantacsim and beautiful soulism to expect very much (or even, much only) from humanity when it has forgotten how to wage war." .....Nietzsche

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Katya walked silently through the still abandoned streets. It was before dawn and not many people would be stupid or foolhardy enough to walk the streets with a group of people. Therefore most people would have written her off as just slightly more than crazy to be walking the streets, as she tended to do a lot now a days. Alone. She lifted her head into the slight breeze that was blowing off the coast, wondering why she was here of all places. Thoughts skirted around in her head like ants over one of the popsicles she remembered vaguely from her youth, overall wondering what it was about her that had attracted Pete Wisdom to ask for her help with a mission that, if he was half as good of an assassin as his file said he was, he obviously needed no help with. She closed her eyes for a second, still focused on everything around her with a part of her mind so that no one would sneak up on her, and quickly pictured the directions she had memorized very quickly just by looking at them. She'd always been able to do that with most things. For a fleeting moment, she wondered what it would have been like had she been able to get a proper education, but quickly shoved the thought aside. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was finding the proper building, getting the hell off the street, and finding out what in the everlasting creation Wisdom wanted her on this mission for. She reviewed the directions on the paper of her mind and quickly moved down another block until she found what she thought was the proper building. Moving quickly up to the nearest wall she shoved a piece of an old poster aside, ignoring whatever slimy substance was over it, and found what she was looking for; a picture of a small burning sun.

Looking up at the place, Katya was not particularly impressed. Though she had to admit the place would be easily defendable since there was a minimum amount of windows and only so many exits that she could see. She shrugged as she bypassed the locked door and phased through the wall. As she came out silently on the other side, she looked around the dim and dingy interior, curling her lip slightly in disgust. This place reminded her of several of the places she'd been forced to hide in when she was younger. There was a reason she tried to not look back at the distant past with anything less then the threat of death looming over her head. A roach the size of a small cat skuttled along the wall and she reacted instinctively from years of putting up with the creatures. It was still twitching around the throwing star impaling it, she already knowing that would give away her being there to Wisdom, when the door to the apartment/bunker/whatever in front of her opened. She had her claws popped out around his throat and she was looking death, in the form of hot psychic blades that she KNEW was going to leave red marks if she lived, in the face. She didn't move a muscle and neither did he. In any other situation she would have found this slightly humorous and, in her younger days, might have asked if he wanted her to say uncle, but she didn't find it at all humorous now with hot knives slowly searing her flesh on either side of her face. She heard a British voice from somewhere behind the orange and yellow brightness she was forced to see, "Put yours away and so will I." She nodded very slowly in accordance with that thought, being careful to not hit the hot knives at all if she could help it. She felt a flash of respect for his skills, knowing that as soon as he had opened that door a oneway dampening field had spilled into the hallway, taking away her one advantage in her mutant power and letting him keep his. He didn't even twitch with claws on either side of his neck and, knowing that, her respect for him went up another notch. The British accent kicked in again, this time in annoyance that neither one of them was going to go first, trusting the other would put their weapons away. "Look, ye bloody twit, I don't want to be standing here all day. We'll do this the untrusting and immature way. On the count of three. One...two..." she'd already retracted her claws by the time he got done saying "three" and the brightness around her face abruptly vanished.

Knowing that the bright spots were not going to give way to real vision anytime soon, Katya closed her eyes to help the process along and relied on her other senses to evaluate the man before her. He felt to be about six feet tall if she was feeling his heat right. She would have tested his aura in her mind like a rare brand of chocolate, but since her mutant powers were temporarily turned off that would have to wait until another time. She instead lifted her nose slightly into the air and scented it the way Logan had taught her. He smelled of cigarettes and scotch, and underneath that she smelled a spicy and clean fragrance that was all male. She heard his breath go in and out and was impressed that his lungs didn't show any kind of slowdown or wheeze due to the cigarettes he consumed. Finally, after the bright spots had reduced themselves to in and out black dots, she opened her eyes. She blinked a couple of times until he came into focus, slightly dimmed, but at least she could see. She found that a plus. She perused the man before her calmly and calculated possible weaknesses as she came across them subconsciously, and from the look in his eyes he was doing the same to her. She finally looked to his face and studied the hard line of his jaw as well as the lines of harshness around his lips. This man hadn't seen a lot to laugh about in his life, she could tell, but she was positive he could get the job done if someone asked him to, no matter how ugly that job would seem to other people. She finally met his eyes and was somewhat shocked to realize that the photos hadn't caught them correctly. They were an even more unique shade of grey than she'd ever seen. They reminded her of a sheet of steel combined with ice. And underneath that shielding was fire... lots of it. She didn't know how she knew that, since the ice was so apparent in his eyes, but she went with her gut instincts most times, and this time would be no different. Finally, she found her voice and, looking him right in the eye, got control of her baser impulse to sit there and stare at him all day. "Mr. Wisdom, I presume? You know who I am. Now then, may I come in?"

Pete blinked at the woman in front of him for a minute and then stepped aside, not used to having politeness of all things thrown his way. "Be my guest. You're bloody well going to be working out of here anyway." Most people would have stiffened and gotten irked by his tone of voice, but he was doubly impressed when the woman simply walked by him without even twitching. "Yeah, well, let's get down to business, shall we?" He felt the oddest urge to grin at her sarcastic tone of voice. He knew she wasn't going to be happy about his plan that she was to pretend she was a prostitute that he had hired when she first came to the location, but he couldn't resist seeing her reaction. He wasn't disappointed except for maybe that she wasn't the real thing. He looked over the clinging black body suit that was revealed when she took off her cloak and was definitely appreciative to whomever suggested she wear polyfiberic armor. It fit her well... really really well, he corrected himself as she turned around and looked at him. "What? Did I suddenly grow two heads or something?" Pete shook his head and, since he'd never been one to mince words, announced, "Actually, I was admiring the view. Nice armor." Katya would normally have killed someone for a comment like that on principle, so why with this man did she feel a flash of warmth and a smile tugging at the sides of her lips? She shook her head instead. "Fine, admire all you want, but let's figure out how we're going to save the Human High Council. Oh, and by the way, nice rat hole you live in here." The dry tone snapped Pete back to reality and, despite himself, he smiled a bit. "Yeah, that it is, thanks for noticing." He walked over to the far wall and quickly ran his hands over the surface of the thing until Katya heard a series of several clicks. As a panel slid open to reveal a dark passageway and, it looked like, going down Pete nodded at her. "And the place bloody well has its uses, too. Coming?" Katya snatched her cloak off the back of the rickety chair she'd balanced it on and, shrugging, followed him. "Sure, why not." As she walked through into the dark passageway, knowing where to go only by the white of the shirt in front of her, she muttered, "Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly" and prayed that Pete didn't hear her. Abruptly he stopped and hit something in the dark that made a metallic click and, as the floor started to move downward, she found herself no longer caring if he had heard her or not. The deeper down they went the more she kicked herself for being a fool since she did not know this man and he was taking her, in her overactive imagination anyway, into the bowels of hell. She fleetingly wondered if she was going to meet a demon or if he was right before her when she shook her head resignedly. For God's sake she was Jewish... she didn't even believe in hell, and she didn't believe in Satan either... merely the Anti-Christ. But for some odd reason that wasn't as comforting a thought as she figured it would be as they descended deeper into the bowels of Old London.

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When they finally came to a stop, Katya had managed to gain control of her thoughts and emotions. It wasn't as hard as she'd thought it would be, considering that Pete was so calm she wondered if she checked if she'd even get a pulse from the man. She grinned a bit crookedly at that thought and remembered where she had last heard someone say that. Jubilee had commented that to her right before she went off to join Gambit's merry band of thieves. The smile left her face at that thought, considering Jubilee was one of the young people that Kitty had considered a friend, and once again they had lost her to other causes and other points of view. Katya had lost a lot in her life, but that didn't make things any easier when you finally did in fact lose more. She didn't even notice the fleeting look of sorrow that crossed her face, but someone else in the darkness did.

Pete's night vision had always been exceptionally good. The scientists had once told him it had something to do with his mutant power... the ability to absorb light or some such stupid crap that he'd not even considered important so as usual he had tuned it out and not listened. He really didn't care how he saw so well in the dark, but he did, which made the look that came over his companion's face visible to him. He wasn't one to mince words but he also wasn't one to pry unless he considered it important, and what had caused the pain to enter the woman's eyes shouldn't matter, so he pushed the feelings he had aside and concentrated on business. "Okay, Cat, this is where we get off. Watch your step getting off the bleedin elevator, I don't want to be cleaning you up off the floor." The walls came down over her face so fast that he wondered if he'd imagined the look he'd seen, but was also relieved to see it gone. "Sure, Wisdom. Lead the way." As they carefully stepped off the elevator he knew the exact moment she noticed the sheer drop off of about a foot between the elevator and the floor itself. An earthquake a long while ago had created the rift, and since this wasn't exactly a highly used station he hadn't wanted anyone to fix it. She stepped carefully over the rift and looking around as the lights automatically came on commented, "Interesting. So what do you do down here, read porn and drink scotch?" The hostile sarcasm in her tone was easy to distinguish and Pete realized as he started down the lighted metal corridor before him that he was beginning to like her wit. She was spunky, he'd give her that. He wondered if she was going to take his reasons for getting her here as well as him leading her underneath Old London without an explanation, and then had to remind himself that he didn't care one way or the other. He wanted to meet the woman, he got to meet the woman. If she didn't want to help him complete his mission, well, then, that was her own damn problem, wasn't it? He mentally nodded at the hostility in his thoughts... hostility was good it kept you on the right road. The road to keeping yourself alive.

Katya tried to not let the natural animal inclination in her to feel claustrophobic in the enclosed area get to her, and also to not let it show to the man next to her. She didn't usually mind closed-in spaces, but she liked them much better when she controlled getting in and out of them. All around her were old computer terminals and she fleetingly wondered with a part of her mind what kind of processors they had and if their diagnostic systems were connected to an Intranet to make things easier. She used to love computers before she'd gotten dragged into the fight for survival, even more because she was a mutant. She still knew a lot about them, but not as much as she used to. There was a general lack of books on the subject, and on knowledge in general, really. The High Lord had seen to that. They finally came to a passageway, Wisdom took a quick left and, after a few more seconds of dimly lit corridor, they were in a huge room by the feel of it. It wasn't lighted like the passageways had been, though, and Katya's eyes hadn't quite adapted to the lighting yet. She took true darkness or light better then dimness. While the corrective surgery Muir Island had done on her eyes had allowed her to see more than dim shapes when she was trying to read, it had also taken down her ability to adapt to light quickly. She had learned to just "change" perspectives in situations where flash bombs or other light changes occured... usually by just switching to her mutant power, and allowing her to just "see" the auras of those around her. It was much easier to take them down that way anyway, even if she had been able to see correctly. Needless to say the hot knives hadn't helped her eyes any, and then the sudden drop to near darkness was keeping her eyes off balance. She was very close to blind right now, and she did NOT like that one bit.

Pete spoke one word, "Light," and suddenly the room was flooded with it, which actually helped more than hindered because he then said "Damper off" and suddenly she could see with her mutant power the computers around her and what kinds of electrical impulses guided through them. She then felt her eyes adjust to the new light and was able to see with both senses simultaneously. "Damn". The one whispered word spoke volumes as she surveyed the room around her. "You don't need our help, Wisdom, you got more computer equipment and surveilance technology than the X-men do. And I know you know that because the readout on our specks is right there." The screen she pointed to actually showed the bombed out mansion in Salem from a satellite beam, what kind of life forms were present, although she was relieved to see the lower levels weren't showing on it, and what kinds of weapons and computer technology they had present. She saw the other bases around the world and felt anger rise in her, because she KNEW something was up if he was wanting her help when he had this kind of technology at his command. The only one that had close to this was Apocolypse and she KNEW he didn't know where their base was yet, because they'd all be dead now. She turned with deadly grace, her claws already extended with a "snikt" of sound when she looked him in the eye. "Who the fuck are you and what the hell do you want?" The question was a good one and the answer surprised her, as everything with this man tended to do. "I'm the same bloody man you met five minutes ago, and what I told Magnus was the truth. Black Air is planning on killing the human high council. There was only one catch to that. I had a mission before that. I was supposed to use any means I could to find Magneto's best assassin and destroy them. That'd be you."