"Once upon a time there was light in my life,
Now there's only love in the dark.
Nothing I can say,
A total eclipse of the heart." Bonnie Tyler

She awoke with a slight hangover, but nothing like she'd battled before, so she wasn't going to complain. She glanced around her room, and she felt the lines appear around her mouth as she scowled because she couldn't remember getting to her room. The last she had remembered had been sitting at the table with Pete and him getting a pretty far off expression on his face, so she had let her mind drift and somehow in the process had ended up here. She swung her feet over the side of her bed and shook her hair out of her face... obviously she had let her mind wander too damn far and had ended up falling asleep. She hurried over to the dresser she had been given to use and, opening one of the top wooden drawers, noticed the time. And she swore in languages she'd not used in a while when she saw exactly how late she was for the morning debriefing. She hurried over to her small bag of essentials and quickly grabbed up another uniform since the other was being cleaned right now and hurried toward the shower, anwyay. She was late so what the hell... she might as well be cleaned and not smelling when she got there, she figured.

Five minutes and some creative hurrying later, and she arrived at the debriefing room. She walked in to find them all sitting at the table and in the middle of a heated discussion that stopped as soon as she walked into the room. She glanced over at R, who had been talking when she walked in, and nodded to him, "Don't let me disturb you, Brit. Go to it." She then walked around to the only available seat at the table currently, across from Pete and between Romany, who was somehow sitting up pretty well, and Michael who was holding some type of relief map. Rahne, who was sitting down the table a ways in the big rectangle, was glaring daggers through her head that she didn't understand, but she ignored it for the time being, making a note to herself to be careful of the young Scotswoman in case she was unstable. Agent R smiled at her slightly and continued she assumed with his original argument, "As I was saying before Katya walked in, we need to come up with a better plan then a direct assault on the base if we even have a shot. We've collected plenty of brass and have the greats that are homemade explosives and of course some nice toys, but at the same time a full frontal assault would get us all killed. And you know it, Harold." Pete's father glared back at him and slammed his fist down hard on the table. "And I'm telling YE that if we have a shot in hell of getting into that place and saving the human high council the best way is to create one hell of a fuss and bother, and the best way to do THAT is just attack them outright." Agent X shook his head as he said, "I agree with agent R on this one, Harry. We've not a chance in hell of getting close to them without getting slaughtered if we take the frontal assault route." The table quickly erupted into havok as Rahne took Harold's side and everyone got into one huge free for all over the details. Realizing that this was probably all she had missed anyway, Katya felt eyes on her and looked toward them automatically.

She locked eyes with a pair of grey-blue eyes that she knew she'd never forget in all her days. Pete puffed on his cigarette calmly as he studied her with a heat and intensity she found confusing and somewhat exciting and, figuring it was only fair, she studied him right back. Her first thought was that he needed a shave, but then she changed her mind as the stubble seemed to fit him anyway. It would burn on a woman's skin, she figured, but would feel good anyway...,rough, yeah, but it would be worth it to feel that against your skin. The next thing she noticed about him was the fact that the suit was back into place in full measure. She had preferred the look he had going last night, but she knew now that the suit was his version of armor, much like her uniform. It allowed them to distance themselves from who they really were. Sometimes she wondered when it was that she lost touch with who she was, but had written it off as unimportant. She was somewhat depressed now that she hadn't looked for that woman perhaps a little harder, because it might allow her to relate better to another human being, such as the one sitting across from her.

She returned to reality when all conversation in the room stopped suddenly. She looked around feeling somewhat out of sorts and flushed, and wondered fleetingly if she was coming down with the flu. When her confused gaze moved over all the people sitting and staring at her expectantly, Pete came to her rescue, "Agent R asked what you thought of a full frontal attack." The voice was very low for her ears only, and perhaps Rahne's, but she was still thankful for the rescue. She thought about it for a second, and then shook her head, "I don't know the layout of the base, but I DO know that usually a full frontal assault is just plain suicide. The best way to go about it most times is to take out some high-up member that is considered important and then try to break the ranks, or just sneak in with a high powered rifle and take people out that way. Full frontal assaults would get us all identified and would end up with a lot of casualities and not a lot getting accomplished. If we were going for just a distraction, I'd say that you were right, Mr. Wisdom, but as it stands right now, if we're going to save the Human High Council no matter WHERE they are, a full frontal assault wouldn't be the best way." Chaos erupted in the wake of her statements, but Pete seemed to grow quickly weary of it and, holding up a hand, yelled out over the din, "SHUT THE HELL UP!!!" Suddenly all faces were looking at him angrily as they hostily shifted their eyes to one another. "Look here. We've got two ex-paratroopers and a couple of assassins by trade. If WE can't figure out a way into the building without a full frontal assault and all of us getting killed, then we are in deep, deep shit. So, here's the plan. Katya will work with me since we're the two assassins by trade. Since Romany is down and out for the time being, we're going to sneak into the base and figure out the best way to sneak into the place since the plans we got are far from good ones. Then, Agent R and Agent X, I want you two to get on the ball and figure out what in the bloody Hell Black Air is planning as transport. While Katya and I are in there, we're going to figure out the best place to take out the whole Human High Council in one fell swoop. Michael, Nick, I want you two to start breaking down the computer codes and other computing types of crap that Katya and we all recovered from that base, and I want it yesterday. Rahne, I want you to study the schematics of that cloaking device that Katya had and get me the readouts in a couple of hours. I want to know how to make a couple of those." Katya silently cussed and cussed some more at that foul up. Magneto was going to have her head for giving up that cloaking device. She'd always been very careful, but Pete seemed to take away her good sense, which was proving deadly for what few advantages her people had. If she kept this up she might as well hand this ragtag group all of her people on a silver platter and tell them to behead them for the hell of it. She had to keep in mind at all times that Pete was first and foremost a soldier. And a good one at that. Her headache was not improving. The day was not starting out well.

The room emptied faster then a race after the shot had been fired. She shuffled through the papers that Agent R had been nice enough to provide her, and studied the map for a couple of seconds to memorize it as best as she was able. Pete noticed her doing it and shook his head. "You know I thought you were lying at first. I figured you were actually getting high tech readouts from some satellite right into that overbright brain of yours, but now I realize that you actually do just study the areal readouts and other maps to get a fix on your position, don't you?" Katya plunked the maps and other papers down onto the table with more than a little force. "Yeah. So I study the damn maps. I'm not a freak. I'm smart! I prefer NOT to get lost in the middle of nowhere if I can help it and, as a matter of fact, I try damn hard to find my way to places in as straight a line as possible to save effort. Got a problem with that?" Pete seemed a bit taken aback by her peevish tone but shrugged, "No problem. I'm just surprised. Me dad could get himself lost in his own backyard. I ain't much better, although I do, through some miracle of fate, tend to get where I need to be. Oh, and no, I'm not going to give back the cloaking device until we're done with it. Even if you ask nicely." Katya glared at him so hotly it was amazing his head didn't catch fire. "And here I thought you'd be nice and just hand over a new military advantage. How stupidly naive of me. I'm not THAT dumb, Wisdom." She slid her chair back from the table and, stalking toward the door, snapped over her shoulder, "I'm going to requisition one of your prized aircraft and do some tinkering on it to get the damn thing silent. I'll meet you in the hanger bay in twelve hours. Be prompt or I leave without your British ass." With that she was gone, leaving only a slightly amused and somewhat confused Pete Wisdom in her wake, wondering what was working her into a fine lather.

Katya knew she only needed six or so hours to redo the aircraft since Michael and Nicholas had done an excellent job of improving the thing on their own anyway, but she also wanted to add a couple of new things so she had added in about four more hours onto that. The other two hours, she figured, she wanted to talk to these people and get to know them a bit better. She knew Romany would be in the main computer room probably doing regular surveillance since she was the only one still out of it, really, and surveillance really was the most boring job in the world. She stopped just inside the door and called out to make sure Romany knew she was there. It had been far from necessary, she could tell, as Romany didn't even blink as she said, "Ahh our elusive guest. Please, come on and sit down. This is like watching live action smut fest 24/7 and I could use a break." Katya plunked down into the chair beside her, munching on her energy bar that she'd grabbed from the provisions in the kitchen and then -- seeing all of the aspects of Apocolypse's magistrates live and in living color -- felt her apetite subside a bit, "Ugh. I had pictures of Jean Luc and Aurora together, but I never wanted to imagine them doing THAT in living color. That's just disgusting!" She watched the carnal display of passion, and shook her head, "I've had pictures of them doing a lot, for a lot of different things, but I never knew what went on behind closed doors. How did you guys get all of this stuff set up anyway?" As she looked at another screen of Havok getting dressed up for something, she narrowed her eyes, knowing where he was going and still finding it more than a little annoying that Scarlet would sleep with that piece of crap. Romany shrugged, "Honestly? It was a lot of connections we've had in the goverment throughout the past five years. We piggyback onto a lot of signals very carefully, and for others we've planted cameras on our own throughout the place when we had to break in in the past or when Pete had to go there on a mission. Good ol' fashioned bugging occurred then." Katya made an acknowledging sound and put what was left of her energy bar aside since she didn't see any need for further use of it, "Do you mind if I take some good old fashioned downloaded pictures of some of this in exchange for that cloaking unit? I might be able to use some of this to stop some illegal operations from going on. That and we've found out recently that there is a long term leak from somewhere inside Magneto's band, and I want to see if any of these pictures would give them away." Romany looked out the side of her glasses at her for a moment and then shrugged, "Sure. Leave me your disk and I'll pick out some interesting ones and put in any pics of someone who does or does not look at all important. Sound good to you?" Katya wanted to say no way in Hell, she didn't want anyone touching her disks, but figuring it was the best shot she had, and knowing that she had the means to find out any hacked pictures she might get through Romany, nodded, "That's fine. Thanks a lot, Romany." Romany gave her a slightly quirky smile in return. "Hey, it's really no problem. It might actually relieve the boredom and repetition of surveillance. I mean, even though it's interesting to see how the upper people live, it's just disturbing that these people see more action than one of Apocolypse's high powered artillary guns." Katya watched as one of the generals she knew made out with what looked to be a green skinned beta mutant and grimaced in slight disgust. "You know, it's pathetic. These people are hopping in and out of beds like they're on fire, while I have had a dry spell that's lasted like five years, and I don't miss that at all." Romany's bemused and confused expression tipped her off that something wasn't right as she asked her next question, "But wait. You're married, aren't you? Shouldn't you have, like, sex on tap?" Katya's face closed off so fast that Romany wondered what human emotion might have been going on behind it, "Yeah, well... how did we get onto this thread of conversation? Anyhow, get me those pictures when Pete and I get back from that mission alright?" Romany nodded silently, and her considering and slightly wondering eyes followed Katya from the room.

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

Pete got the schematics from Rahne a couple of hours later, got her working on building some of the suprisingly easy cloaking devices and went in search of the others. That was how he spent the next twelve hours of his time. He was studying a readout of some of Black Air's plans with a slight scowl, holding a snifter of scotch, when a very amused voice broke into the thoughts of conspiracy and assassination. "Yo, boss. You did say that you were to meet Ms. Katya at the hanger in twelve hours, correct?" Pete looked up from his readout and was in the middle of saying, "And your point is what?" when he saw what time it was and let out a very succulent curse. He looked over at R's very amused expression and muttered, "You don't suppose that she'd be late, do you? I mean, I have four whole minutes to make it across almost a half a bleeding mile of tunnels otherwise?" The laughter that followed him as he went into an all-out sprint, readout floating gently to the ground behind him, was his only reply.

He managed to skid into the hanger bay right as she was firing up the engines to leave. By the look on her face behind the cockpit window, neither was she a happy camper. Instead of trying to flag her down, he simply did the smart thing and booked it toward the runway. He then stood directly into the path the plane would take and waited, managing to sip the scotch that he hadn't spilled in his all-out sprint across the underground network that made up the base. It'd taken him a while to perfect that trick. As he watched her barrel down on him, he took a bigger gulp of the scotch and, when she was about four feet from him and going strong, he wondered if the resistance was going to have to go on without him.

The craft suddenly stopped on a dime. He was damn impressed with that as it stopped an inch, maybe less, from him, his toes almost getting squashed by the giant plane wheel. He studied the grade of the tire in front of him serenely as he hit the communicator on his wrist when it beeped, knowing who it was, and listening with no small degree of amusement as a rueful and somewhat amazed female voice spoke out of it. "You know, you are a crazy son of a bitch, I'll give you that. Are you going to get on, or do I just hit the new hover lift function on this sucker and go over you? By the way... you're late." A couple of seconds later, as Pete stepped into the plane, he finished off the scotch and placed the glass by the pulldown bunk in the crowded contents of the craft. He then sat down in the passenger seat as Katya made for their current destination and, after he was sure the more complex manuevers were out of the way, muttered to her, "Why can't you just bloody well be late like every other woman ever created?" Her laughter run through the cockpit and he was amazed at the sound for a moment... he wasn't used to hearing her laugh, although he knew deep in his heart that he'd like to hear it more often. Her laughter choked off after a couple of minutes, subsiding into chuckles as she said, "Well, I'm not a patient person to begin with, so I'm always early. My mentor used to say that I was going to be early to my own funeral and get pissed that no one was there yet." Pete laughed at that, having had more then one comment that was very similiar to those lines shot at him throughout his life, but then he noticed that Katya's amused expression had dissolved into dark thought, and figuring it was worth a shot tried to scale some of her walls, "What? You're looking very solemn all of a sudden." Katya reached up and fingered a lock of her shoulder length blonde hair that had escaped the severe pulled back style she wore it in, and then put her hand back down at her side with a slight slap onto the pilot's seat. "Nothing. I was just reminding myself that the mentor I was speaking about is out of my life and has been for some time. It's better to leave him there. In the past." Pete had not read much about Weapon X, known otherwise only as Logan, but suddenly he wanted to know what the man had done to put such pain and anger into one woman's voice for several brief moments. She looked back at Pete a couple of seconds later, her walls up again in full, and motioned toward the back of the craft. "I know you didn't get much sleep last night. You might want to get some now. We've got a couple of hours before we get to where we're going. We'll be protected from the radar and machines as well as detection due to something I created a while back." Pete took her at her word, knowing above all else that he could trust the woman before him to have done a good job on the ship, then, as he started to get up, he stopped in midmotion. "And what about you? You didn't get a lot of sleep either last night, as I recall, and you probably still need the rest after that whole mission fiasco." Katya shrugged as she studied more sensor readouts. "I'm fine up here, honestly. I'm just going to watch the instruments. I'm not a big one on autopilot because it makes you lazy." Pete shrugged and quickly went back to the bunk, plunking down on it and staying pretty much where he landed, shifting only once to pull his feet onto it as best as he was able. He knew he needed the sleep and prayed that he'd be able to get a few winks of it with the one reason he'd lost a lot of it the past couple of nights sitting almost within touching distances of him. He rolled toward the wall and staring at the greyness of it didn't hold out much hope if his body was giving him any indication.

Katya studied the terminal in front of her, but didn't really comprehend any of the jumbled mass of numbers that it was spitting out at her. She would normally be able to if it wasn't for the fact that Pete was lying on that damn bunk with his feet all of a foot from her back. She figured she was probably imagining it, but it was almost as if she could feel the heat coming off of him from where she sat. When it came to that man she was more and more confused, she'd give it that. She leaned back in her seat with a slight sigh and pinched the bridge of her nose. This was not the time to be distracted, she kept repeating to herself. There would be plenty of time for that later. Just concentrate on the mission and pray THIS time it goes right.