Disclaimer: All X-Men and related characters, names, sets, etc. belong to Marvel. Cyle Katarn, the Kindred and EHAM belong to me, and have the same restriction -- if you want to use them, all you need do is ask (unless I'm in a really foul mood, so don't wake me up at three AM to ask).

Oh, and mega thanks go out to my proofreader, Luba. This would have been rubbish without you.

All events depicted assume that the Avatar Series kicked off after Uncanny #350, so no Psi-War.

~..~ Denotes private thoughts.
#..# Denotes telepathy.

Also i'd like to thank everyone who sent me emails and apologise to everyone who didn't get one back. Thanks for having patience.

Episode 3 of the Avatar Series

Starring:

"... And twist --- one, two, three --- and stretch --- one two three," the voice of Cindy Crawford sang out from Paige Guthrie's exercise video. Jubilee opened one bleary eye and looked at the clock next to her bed. It read 5:30 AM, and the ex-mallrat just groaned. She'd long since given up on believing it was any use at all berating her roomie for running the video. Still she couldn't help but try.

"Yo, Hayseed, can you keep it down?"

"Did you wake me up? YES, you farmer hick with Cyclops aspirations! It's five thirty on Friday morning and I'm awake. You do the math, since I'm way too tired to," Jubilee snapped as she tried turning over. She could feel that she was awake, and even Wolverine hadn't been able to teach her to fall asleep easily. She decided that she would find a creative way to get back at Paige later.

She threw the covers off herself and sat up. Jubilee looked around her room and wondered for the umpteenth time how Paige could look the model of perfection and order outside the room and could be a total slob inside it. She swung one foot out of her bed and onto the floor but rather than connecting with the floor her foot landed on something soft and squishy. Jubilee's stomach flipped as she realised she had stepped in some freshly husked flesh.

"HAYSEED!"

*****

Elsewhere, in the gym, Monet was practicing some unarmed combat techniques that one of the X-Men had taught them. While she did not personally like Logan very much, she would have been a fool not to notice that he could probably take her down without breaking a sweat. As Emma had shown them once during a practice session, strength wasn't everything.

As she kicked she thought about her being up at five forty five to practice. It would completely ruin her image as a know-it-all to practice something like this. Still she wasn't ashamed, just careful.

After all she had a secret - well, she had more than one, but recently she had gained a new one which she had to keep at all costs. She had buried it so deep down that only if Frost and that Summers woman worked together would they maybe get it out of her. Suddenly a diminutive little aborigine appeared next to her.

"Mentor." He merely looked at her. ~He knew!~ was the only thought that went through her mind.

"I wish I could tell them, Mentor, they are so worried. But I can't -- I promised."

He still said nothing but merely sat there. The accusing look on his face had gone however, and for that Monet was profoundly grateful. She didn't like to think of her mentor being angry at her.

Without warning she suddenly sensed a presence. It was not human, was the first thing she realized; the second was that, whoever it was, was excellently Psi-shielded as the presence seemed to vanish instantly.

#Miss Frost,# she tried to say, but she didn't get further than 'Miss' because she heard the older woman's voice in her head.

#M, I want you to wake the others and prepare to evacuate the Academy.#

#What's wrong?#

#Just do it, damn it. If you can, you should try to evacuate to Westchester.# Suddenly she lost mental contact with Emma Frost, one of the two teachers. Without a moment's hesitation she flew out of the gym, heading towards the dorms.

*****

Out front of the academy Emma Frost dragged her attention back to the figure in front of them. 'Them' being herself and Sean Cassidy, the Banshee, the other instructor at the Academy -- she liked to refer to it as the school for wayward mutants. But, right now, she was only worried, about her students and her school.

"Ken ye give one good reason, why I shouldna throw ye of the grounds?" Sean asked the intruder.

"Because you cannot," he replied.

"Well then, how about a name?" Emma asked. Normally she wouldn't think twice about taking on one person but something about this person made the hair on the back of her neck stand out. She'd ordered M to evacuate everyone, she hadn't dared contact anyone else because whoever this person was his Psi-Shields were more formidable than any she had ever seen. Save - maybe - Xavier's. Who knew how well he might be able to read her?

"I am Dei-Tan."

"Well, Dei-Tan, now you go." Emma said, preparing a massive Psychic blast. She never got a chance as a blast of pure psionic energy hit her full on. She was stunned, and only just able to make out the forms that appeared next to Dei-Tan, who looked at Emma and then at Sean. Emma realised that the blast hadn't come from Dei-Tan, but from one of the others. Dei- Tan raised his eyebrow, which ran round his entire forehead.

"And after you fall, so will your students," and all Emma could do was send out a warning as far and as strongly as she could. She heard Sean call out her name before something hit her and she had one last thought before disappearing into blackness. The thought surprised her,

~The children.~

*****

Jubilee was sitting at the window looking out in slight surprise. She had just come back from washing her feet after stepping in Paige's discarded skin. It took her twenty minutes to satisfactorily clean her foot from that disgusting stuff. Discarded skin was so gross.

Then, with little better to do -- since Everett was still asleep and she didn't feel like making breakfast -- she had gone to look out of the window. She thought about Ev a lot lately. Although they both joked around she knew that she felt more for him than just friendship... now, if only she knew a way to tell him. As she looked out of the window she saw something she wasn't expecting. There was a person standing on the lawn outside the front of the academy. Frost and Sean were down there as well.

"Hayseed, you've got to come see this. Frosty and Sean have a visitor."

"I'm sure it's none of our business, Jubilee, or they would have said something," Paige replied as she continued her workout. Then, without any warning, Jubilee saw Frost grasp her head in pain, while several people appeared next to the stranger. Then she saw them firing some kind of weapon at Sean and Emma, and both of them were vaporised, in a single white flash of light.

"WHOA!" Jubilee yelled, as she stepped back in shock. She didn't like Frost much but she didn't want to see her dead.

"Paige, Frosty and Sean, they're dead," Jubilee cried out with tears in her eyes, as Paige ran over to her.

"What are ye talking about, girl?" Paige said, trying to calm down the frantic Jubilee. Then M came in at the same time the entire building rocked from an impact.

"We have to evacuate."

"Frosty is --"

"I know, Jubilation, but right now we have to worry about ourselves. I've already woken the others. We're assembling in the Bio Dome, " M said as she started herding the two out of the room. Jubilee grabbed her uniform on the way out. Two minutes later the entire team was assembled in the dome as M explained the situation.

"About five minutes ago I detected a presence on the grounds. Miss Frost ordered me to evacuate everyone to Westchester. Now, we have to decide, do we try to stop them here or do we find the X-Men for reinforcements?"

"How long till they get here?" Jubilee asked.

"Unknown. If they have a telepath, then quite soon. So we have to decide now."

"And Senor Cassidy and Senorita Frost?" Angelo asked. M looked down and Jubilee closed her eyes briefly.

"They are gone."

"What?!" were the assembled cries from the people who had not witnessed the fight.

#If they're dead, then we should make 'em pay,# Chamber said psionically to the rest.

"I'm with you," Jubilee said. "Nobody, but *nobody* kills an X-Man and gets away with it!" Slowly the others nodded, then M looked up.

"They are coming here. The Academy has mostly been destroyed. We know this Biosphere, they do not. May I suggest that we split up into small groups and wage guerrilla warfare against them from in here?" The others agreed.

"I am the strongest, so it makes sense I stay here," M said. "We need to find Artie, Leech and Penance, and we need to send a warning, at least, to the X-Men." She was glad that Franklin was back with his parents. This was going to get ugly.

Angelo looked at Chamber, then at the others. "I'll go to the comm room. Then I'll be back," he said quietly, then took off towards the front of the biosphere. Chamber and Husk were going to go after the children. M, Everett and Jubilee, would try and stop the invaders.

A round of "Good luck"s was all that was said as they vanished into the bioshpere, M in one direction, Jubilee and Synch in the other.

***** The lawn in front of the Academy.*****

"Jey-Dak, status?" Dei-Tan asked his second in command. Jey-Dak was shorter, and somewhat broader than his commanding officer, but couldn't even begin to match his gaze.

"We've got everyone going after their assigned targets. The school should be clear in a matter of minutes." He paused as two bodies appeared beside them. It was Emma and Sean's bodies, with big holes in them. Dei-Tan smiled as he looked at the bodies.

"Good, we will return with the others. As a target goes down, our people return. Understood?"

"Dei-Tan I don't understand. Why don't we just kill them all?"

"You don't need to understand, you only need to obey my orders." Dei-Tan turned his head to his subordinate, and stared at him with the same gaze that got people shivering when they looked too long.

Jey-Dak looked away first.

***** the Midnight Runner on approach to the East Coast of the USA *****

"Glad you know how to fly dis t'ing, mon ami," Remy LeBeau said as he watched Cyle play the controls of the Midnight Runner, so that he was calmly dodging the clouds, literally.

"You can fly straight, can't you?" Rachel asked from the copilot's seat.

"Where's the fun in that?" Cyle replied as he banked to the left and missed another cloud. Only then did he see that there was a Boeing 747 coming straight towards them.

~Probably from Kennedy, ~ thought Cyle as he checked his position and noticed that he wasn't as far from New York as he thought. He thrust the controls forward, sending the Runner into a steep dive that had Remy crashing up against the chairs and Rachel -- had she not been strapped in -- against the windscreen. The cloaked Runner missed the plane.

Remy looked up and raised an eyebrow. "Just how close was dat?"

"Computer says that we had at least ten meters. So relax and leave the flying to me," Cyle replied as he put the plane back on course.

"Why, I ought to--" Rachel started to say, when she suddenly got a faraway look. She glanced at Cyle and saw her expression mirrored.

"You felt that?" she asked.

"Did I ever. What was that?"

"Reminded me of the White Queen, Emma Frost."

"Chere, you forget, she's a good gal now," Remy said. "She's teaching Generation X at de moment."

"If she's in trouble, shouldn't we help?" Cyle asked. The others looked at each other and nodded.

"Set a course for Snow Valley, Mass." Cyle nodded as the craft banked north towards Massachusetts.

*****

Angelo would never have admitted it but he was scared. They had been attacked several times before. But never had anyone been killed. The dull booms echoing through the Biosphere gave some idea as to how much of the buildings would remain usable. He just hoped he could get to the comm room. He crawled through the high grass, trying to use it for cover.

He reached the edge of the grass, and was about twenty yards from a door that led to the inner compound. From there it was twenty seconds to a comm panel. He took a deep breath and started the dash. He ran to the door, opened it, and slammed it behind him, then waited for a few seconds. When he heard no sounds of pursuit he let the breath he was holding go and started moving again. He quickly made his way down the corridor and turned left into the comm room.

He stopped dead in his tracks as he saw it was too late. The room was destroyed. He heard a sound behind him and turned to see a man standing there.

"Hola," he said, while dropping into a combat stance.

"I'm El Toro."

"So what's that to me?"

"It's the name of your defeat. The man lunged, but he was slow. Angelo dodged and sent his skin to wrap round the arms of the big man. This didn't seem to bother him, he just yanked his arms back and sent Angelo flying. Skin hit the wall hard. When he shook his head to clear the stars he saw that El Toro was pointing a strange gun at him. It flashed once, and then he felt nothing.

El Toro kept looking as, a few seconds later a body appeared. The shot-up body of Angelo.

*****

Chamber and Husk arrived at the treehouse just in time to see Artie and Leech being hit by a strange white blast. They vanished briefly, and reappeared, horribly mutilated. Paige screamed, and the guns were trained on them and fired. Despite the fact that Paige was in solid crystal form, neither of them felt anything.

A few seconds later they reappeared. Both had large gaping wounds and Paige's body was back in flesh form. The J'Hiddian looked at the bodies. Mer-Don approved of the horror tactic. The warrioress known as Amazon contemplated the damage for a few seconds more, then called for a beam-out.

*****

Penance was stalking something. Her history was more complex than most. At those times when she wasn't in an autistic fit, she knew it as well.

It had all started in Monaco. Monet, her brother, Marius, and the twins Claudette and Nicole had lived there happily. Then Marius began delving into black arts. His resulting corruption by dark forces had disfigured his body as well.

M rejected him as a brother, or as a business parter. Marius wanted M to help him conquer the world. When she refused, Marius had put a curse on her. And Monet had been transformed into Penance.

The twins had chased away Marius, and Penance with him. Realising that M had been transformed, they started a deception of their own. They used their own powers to impersonate Monet. It seemed as if the twins had vanished.

The charade lasted for years, and in that time the twins masqueraded as Monet, while the real M languished in the form of Penance. Recently however that had all come to light and the twins had taken Monet's place inside Penance's form.

So after many years M was back in her own body and the twins were inhabiting Penance's form. Now, within the school the twins were using their abilities as Penance to hunt the attackers. As she got to the lake in the center of the Biosphere she stopped briefly to get her bearings.

It proved a mistake. Within moments her fear of failing, and of being trapped in Penance forever, was overwhelming her. She threw her head back in pain and saw a woman standing there. She didn't look quite human. She swallowed once, before raising a strange device that shot out a burst of white light. Then the pain stopped.

*****

Cyle had been lots of places, in more timestreams than he cared to remember, and he had seen a lot of destruction along the way. When he saw the Academy -- or what was left of it, however -- he felt his blood boil. He had killed, yes... he had watched people killed, yes again... but he had a policy against killing children, and he was sure that the people in the Academy had been mostly childen. And the ones that weren't children were almost certainly good people --even the White Queen that Rachel and Remy had mentioned would be. So when he brought the plane in low over the academy he was shocked. It had been destroyed. The three main buildings had collapsed and a dome a bit further on was shattered and burning.

"Mon Dieu," Remy said softly. Then he looked at Rachel.

"Yes Remy," she said, answering his unspoken question. "There are survivors, three of -- sorry, now two of them, in the dome over there. Cyle, land this thing. I'll take Remy and go on ahead." Cyle nodded and brought the Runner in close to the dome, then Rachel using her telekinetic powers jumped from the plane, followed by Remy. Cyle then went to find a good place to use as a landing spot.

Remy had split up from Rachel to search better for the two survivors. He was cautiously walking through the jungle that was the Biosphere of Generation X. He thought to himself that it would have probably been a beautiful thing before it had been destroyed. Now, however, the trees were blackened and the ground scorched. There were big holes in the ground and the lake had been muddied up by a blast of some kind hitting it.

As he searched for one of the survivors he saw something that made his heart stop for a beat. He saw the body of one of the students. She was called Penance now, but she had once been Monet St. Croix. Or so he believed. Remy had no way of knowing that the twins were now inhabiting the badly mutilated body.

His mind went back in time, he remembered being at the house of the St. Croix's, years ago. He had met Monet when she was young, just once, and once again when she was somewhat older. Then a few years later he heard that the twin sisters had vanished. Monet started suffering from blackouts around the same time.

As a favor to St. Croix senior he had tried to find out what had happened. It took him quite a bit of work, and several favors, but he found out that Penance seemed to be the twins. He had gone to Monet and told her as well, but, even as he talked to M, he noticed something odd. Then he realized -- one of the twins had been Autistic, and Monet was displaying symptoms of the same problem. He had asked her directly if she was really Monet. Remy was shocked to find out that it was the twins, playing that they were M.

They had made him promise never to tell a soul. He had misgivings about the promise, but he had made it anyway. He kept it as well. It was soon forgotten in the wake of other, darker secrets. It wasn't untill recently that he had been able to pull a favor from Gateway to free Penance.

He walked over, but hesitated to touch her. He saw that she was dead. Even without turning her onto her back he could see that she had been ripped apart. That was no small feat, considering that Penance had diamond hard skin.

"Oh Monet, it shouldn't have come to dis." Remy sat for a brief moment and grieved for her as he'd grieved for everyone else that he couldn't save. as he'd grieved for the Morlocks that he couldn't rescue. Even knowing that he couldn't have got here any sooner really didn't make it any better. The twins were dead, but Remy thought that it was Monet that had perished.

He heard an explosion come from an area to his right, and he stood up and ran over in that direction, still making sure that his approach was unnoticed. What he saw was stunning. There was another body, belonging to a coloured guy whose name Remy didn't know. He also saw someone whom he did recognize. The girl had been a member of the X-Men for a while and had always got along well with Remy.

That was due to another secret he knew, this one not a dark secret, but one that he had agreed to keep anyway.

Jubilee was jumping about shooting off fireworks at someone, but Remy realised that something was different. She wasn't just shooting out little fireworks. She was loosing volleys of power that were ripping the scenery to pieces as her opponent tried to dodge them.

He was incredibly fast for a normal human, and Remy figured it for a mutant speed factor, and the ability reminded him a lot of Quicksilver, except Quicksilver didn't have massive amounts of cybernetic implants. The cyborg jumped over a tree, still angrily pursued by Jubilee's fireworks; then he suddenly dove towards Jubilee, whose fireworks were going in the complete opposite direction. She didn't have time to readjust before he'd rolled in front of her and kicked out her legs from under her. She went crashing down .

"You are not quick, so now you die," he said, and two blades shifted from under his forearm and came flashing down towards Jubilee. Before they hit, however, an explosion hit the cyborg warrior known as Blade and he was knocked off Jubilee. She turned her head to see Remy throw another card towards the cyborg, then come and help Jubilee up with one arm while keeping another card ready in the other hand. Jubilee accepted the help getting up. About then Cyle linked in to Remy, telepathically, and could see the events through his eyes. LeBeau allowed this so that Cyle could find them easily.

"They killed them," Jubilee whispered." They killed them all." With that, she launched another plasma attack and hit the Cyborg dead in the chest while he was still reeling from the card Remy had thrown his way. To Remy's surprise the blast went straight through him as his chest cavity was blown out by her fireworks. He vanished almost the same instant. Jubilee looked at the spot where he had disappeared and then slowly walked over to the body of the young man. She knelt and let the tears flow freely as she put a hand on his cheek.

"Oh Ev, " was all she said as she cried over the body. Remy walked over to her and knelt down and put a hand on her shoulder. She turned and buried her head in his shoulder as he hugged her. Remy held Jubilee for a few minutes as she cried and continually asked, why. Remy held her as her body was racked with sobs and he knew he didn't have an answer.

About five minutes later Jubilee's crying had subsided untill she was sobbing only occasionally. Remy knew that she would grieve but, for now, she was pulling herself together again. He heard a sound behind him and out of reflex pushed Jubilee backwards and swung a card around toward the sound.

Cyle's reflexes were good, they had to be, but even he wasn't quite able to avoid the card.
As he crashed to the ground, Remy heard a mental voice talking to him.

#Remy, get back to the Runner, I've got Monet, she survived.#

Remy thought back at her, #Oui chere, I've got Jubilee, we're coming.#

"If this is how you treat friends, gumbo, then you don't need any enemies." Cyle coughed as he stood up and tried to regain his balance. The blast had knocked him for a loop and he had lost all sense of depth, making it quite hard to walk or move.

"Je m'excuse, " Remy said. "Here let me help, lean on me." Cyle did so gladly. The three of them made their way back to the Runner. Jubilee helped support Cyle, thankful for something to do to take her mind off what had happened. At the Runner they saw Rachel and Monet. Jubilee walked over to her and Monet reached out and they hugged, Jubilee then looked at her. Monet was filthy, her clothes were torn and she looked somewhat dazed. Jubilee realised she must have looked much the same.

"Are you okay?" M asked.

"No Monet, I'm not. They got all of us," Jubilee said almost on the verge of tears again. M looked much the same way.

"I know," she said quietly.

"Then we're all that's left of Generation X," Jubilee said quietly.

"Come on, kids we've got some medi-kits in the plane and you've both been hurt," Rachel said as she shuffled the two of them up into the plane. Cyle was helped into the plane by Remy, then -- after tending to the basic injuries -- Rachel and Remy went outside to have a quick talk. Cyle got up and made his way outside, too. Inside, Jubilee and M were having a debate between themselves.

"We need to think about what to do next," M said.

"No kidding, any ideas?"

M then proceeded to tick them of on her fingers. "We can ask to stay with M'sieur LeBeau and Ma'mselle Summers, we can go to the X-Men, or we can go our own way."

"Speaking of Summers," Jubilee commented as she sat up, "Wasn't she with Excalibur?"

"Yes, I thought that too. I wonder how she came to be with LeBeau, and that other man. Him I've never seen before," M said thoughtfully.

"Maybe a new addition to Excalibur, or else he's with the Cajun. Either way, what do you think we should do?"

"I have to admit, I don't particularly like the idea of going our own way. Going to the X-Men seems a good choice."

"After what they did to gumbo, not a chance, at least not for me!"

"What do you mean?"

"He...he led the Marauders into the Morlock tunnels. He realised that he'd been tricked and tried to stop them, but he didn't make it, and now the X-Men have condemned him. Then, just to round it off, Rogue says he didn't make it to the teleport thingee that Psylocke pulled up in time. So he was left at the South Pole."

"And just how did you find this out?"

"Hey, I live off gossip. Once the X-Men knew it was only a matter of time before I did."

"I see, so that leaves. here."

*****

"Remy, what now? I'm not sure we should take them with us."

"Dey should have de choice. Maybe dey want to go back to de X-Men."

"I'd like to offer insight," Cyle said.

Remy went over to help support him. "What, mon ami?"

"Dei-Tan took out the school."

"What?" Rachel cried. "How do you know?"

"The Cyborg who was taking on Jubilee -- he was the same one who got Kurt to let Dei-Tan go in London."

"Dammit, what he be trying t' do?"'

"It sound to me like he's systematically destroying the X-Men," Rachel offered.

"Yeah, either way, those two kids have a score to settle. They need to be part of this. Trust me, I've seen this before. If they don't come with us, they'll just go after him alone. He'll kill them as well and I don't want the death of any more kids on my hands."

Rachel nodded, remembering the mutant children that she had hunted as a hound in the future. She glanced over at Remy and saw the expression mirrored. He noticed her look. "Dere were a lot of children in de Morlock tunnels," he said quietly. "Cyle's right, if we can stop dese two kids from dying, den we should."

"We ain't kids, bub," Jubilee said from the hatch.

"Right, you're just short, dark and noisy."

"And you're tall, red and obnoxious. What's your point?" M replied calmly, Rachel bristled slightly. "We are coming with you."

"Oh and do you have an idea as to where we should go?" Rachel asked, somewhat sarcastically -- after all, she was a red-head too.

"Yes, there is my house in Monaco -- we could stay there." Jubilee looked at her team-mate strangely. There had been something in M's voice, almost a need, to offer Monaco as an option. She decided to ask Monet about it later.

Rachel looked at Remy, Remy looked at Cyle, Cyle looked back and shrugged, "It's your call, guys. I don't mind either way," he replied blankly.

"You're useless," Rachel said in good humor. "It's okay by me. Remy?"

"I don't know. I mean dey're kids." He still wasn't happy with the idea.

"Look, gumbo," Jubilee said, "we may be young, but these people were our friends. and, whoever this Dei-Tan is, he killed all of them. Being a member of Generation X has been the best time in my life. Other than the X-men, they were the only family I ever had. Don't you dare try and keep us out of this."

Remy looked at them, then raised his eyebrows and sighed. "D'accord," he said and Jubilee and M almost smiled.

Rachel asked if everyone was ready to leave.

"What about the Frostbite?" M asked.

"The what?"

"It was Miss Frost's plane, based on a Vietnam war design for a spotter called the U-2, that flew so high that no missile could hit it. This one is better, it flies just within the stratosphere. She had it designed after the fiasco with Bastion, on the premise that if it happened again we could escape in it. You said that the Runner had to go back to Excalibur, so why don't we send it back and take the Frostbite to Monaco? It probably survived the attack in the underground hangar."

"Sounds good to me. Let's go." Cyle reset the Runner's autopilot to take it back to Excalibur and left a mesage for Kurt in the recorder thanking him. He appended a detailed description of what had happened, then he and Rachel added some personal comments, and a warning about Dei-Tan for Excalibur. They debated wether to tell Kurt that M and Jubilee were with them now. Eventually they decided it was the reasonable thing to do. After finishing the message Cyle turned off the recorder.

As they trudged through the Biosphere to where M said that the underground hangar was. Jubilee came and walked alongside her.

"So how come we were never told about this plane?"

"Miss Frost assumed that if anyone could survive long enough to tell everyone it would be me. And I have the mental powers to stop a probe so that it would be a good way to escape. Quite possibly unnoticed."

The younger girl realised that Monet wasn't about to say anything else, so they continued to the hangar. It didn't take long to get there. M knew how to fly the plane, and the controls were very basic, intended so that almost anyone could fly it. They soon launched and were headed to Monaco.

***** First interlude *****

Dei-Tan stood and stared at the monitors. One was showing the attack as it had occurred, the second one was showing the rescue made by Remy and his companions. The third and fourth showed the individual fights, such as the one against Jubilee.

Dei-Tan was a typical J'Hiddian. He was more or less humanoid, with a bone ridge just under his eyes. The bone acted as a radar, meaning it was hard to sneak up on a member of his species. He had black hair that, as was standard for people of his rank, was down to just under his shoulder blades. He was wearing the black shirt and combat trousers that he always wore, while in command. His eyes, like all those of his race, were one color. His were the same black as his hair. In a way the eye-design added to the bone structure under his eyes, to create the radar effect.

He was more than slightly surprised. He was watching the events at the academy after he had removed the two teachers. Something bothered him, however. Target four, designate Jubilee, had survived. Blade should have been able to handle her and Target five, designate Synch. So why was she still alive?

It bothered him, much more actually than the arrival of LeBeau on the scene. After all, that factor had been considerd and had been calculated into the equation. He heard someone throwing open the door to his command center. There was only one person who would do that.

"What do you want, Jey-Dak?" he asked, even though he knew the answer.

"One of the targets survived long enough to be rescued."

"I know. Exactly what do you want me to do about it?"

"Take her as well," was Jey-Dak's reply. He stood in the door looking at Dei-Tan as if the other should just drop on his knees and beg forgiveness.

"She is showing powers not on record before -- exceedingly dangerous powers, I might add. I may just lose one of my team because we underestimated her. Besides, she is with LeBeau, and I will not sacrifice the plan just to correct a minor mistake. So one target survived. It makes no difference. The target M survived as planned. And she is with LeBeau and Summers."

He turned back to the monitors, paying no further attention to the man behind him. Technically Jey- Dak's house was superior to Dei-Tan's -- after all, he was Dak. Dei-Tan was only Tan, but Dei-Tan was in mission command, and he wasn't about to let a little turd like Jey-Dak order him about. He studied the image of Jubilee's attack against Blade. Jey-Dak, feeling very ignored, but not sure what to do about it, turned on his heel and left. Dei-Tan didn't even notice.

"Impressive, very impressive indeed." He reached for a communications device. He knew how to take Jubilee down and, even if it didn't work, it would help him get some revenge. For even powerful people like Mister Sinister didn't cross Dei-Tan without regretting it. And interference by the X-Men might just prove to be the way to separate Jubilee from the Cajun mutant. Then she could be removed as well.

"Computer, bio imaging and voice alteration. Match with file on Sinister."

***** end of interlude *****

"What do you mean, they are gone?" Scott Summers, the leader of the X-Men asked.

The Mutant known as Archangel looked at him. "I mean, Kurt says they've left. "

"Where did they go?"

"He didn't know where Gambit went."

Cyclops looked sour as he considerd his options. He found that he didn't like what he saw. "Okay, let's head back to the Mansion. There isn't much we can do here."

*****

"Kurt?"

"Yes, Katzchen?"

"How come you didn't tell them where LeBeau went?"

"They never asked where he was. They wanted to know where Gambit was, and LeBeau did say he no longer called himself that, so I told the truth. After a fashion." Kurt looked over at his team-mate, then smiled lightly.

*****

Sam swore softly as the telephone rang. He didn't want to be interrupted. He was trying to adjust a pocket radio to get the world cup results. It was almost funny, their home had been stripped, Cyclops had almost died, and yet most of them were still worried about mundane things like soccer matches or getting toothpaste. Sam guessed it was just the various different people coping with what had happened.

Another reason he was annoyed was that he had been left behind. He had been in Salem when a call had come in that Gambit was with Excalibur and he had come back to find the house deserted. Most of the X-Men were on their way to Scotland. Storm had not gone with them, wanting to sort out her own feelings first. "Knowing her," Sam mused, "she's somewhere over the Atlantic gliding on the breeze, trying to commune with Mother Nature."

He walked into the main room, which held the only working phone that they had, and picked it up.

"Xavier's Institute for Higher Learning, Sam Guthrie speaking."

"Mister Guthrie. I'm Police Chief Authier, from Massachussets."

Even as he heard the name, Sam felt his stomach knot. Something was wrong, very wrong.

"I'm sorry, Mister Guthrie. I regret to inform you that the Xavier's institute in Snow Valley has been destroyed. We don't believe that there are any survivors."

Sam dropped the phone like it was a red hot poker, and then blasted straight through the roof. He had only one thought on his mind.

~Paige~

*****

Sam's blastfield that allowed him to fly at incredible speeds also protected him from outward harm. Nothing however could help him with the spiritual pain as he heard the Police Chief say 'no survivors'. He had felt his heart break. Now he was flying to Massachusettss at full speed. He pushed himself harder than he ever had before. He reached the campus and landed. He was stopped in his attempt to get into the school by a police officer. If Sam hadn't been worried about his sister he might have taken notice of her face, or her body, or something, but right now she was just in the way.

"Let me through!" he said forcefully.

"Sorry, Sir. Nobody's allowed in."

"But mah sister's a student here, you've gotta let me in." At that her face softened a bit.

"I'm sorry. If you go see Officer D'Amelio over there," she pointed at a police officer near one of the cars, "he's the one to talk to."

"Thanks," Sam aid as he ran towards the officer. After explaining the situation to him, Sam was taken to the doctor and was left with him.

"Mister Guthrie, I'm Fred Hadratta," said the kindly looking man with a definite Arab complexion.

~Well, that explains the accent and the surname,~ Sam thought to himself as he shook the doctor's hand.

"Where is she?" was all he could ask.

"I'm sorry, Mister Guthrie. I'm afraid nobody made it out," the doctor said quietly.

"No, dammit, no! She can't be dead!" Sam yelled at him. Sam knew that the doctor wasn't at fault but he just couldn't believe that Paige was dead. He had been sure he'd have known if she had died.

The doctor asked him to come over to a set of stretchers with sheets over them. The doctor knelt down by one of them and pulled the sheet off the person's face. Sam felt his heart break as he saw his baby sister.

He could see that she had been shot point blank because half of her face was missing. Sam turned around and threw up violently. Even as he was sick all over the ground, the logical, sane, part of his mind wondered why she was in flesh form. He could only assume that they had been ambushed and that there had been no time to husk into a more effective form.

The doctor came over with a small vial which he handed to Sam. He saw that they were stomach pills and gratefully took one.

"I'm sorry, Mister Guthrie, to have to put you through this at the moment but, for the record. can you identify her?" Sam nodded weakly but didn't say anything. The doctor nodded and put a sympathetic hand on Sam's shoulder. Sam just sat there and cried.

*****

Scott was piloting the plane that Forge had gotten for them away from Muir island when Jean, who was sitting next to him in the co-pilot's seat, gasped. Her face had gone white and she was looking straight ahead. Then she turned to her concerned husband. He knew better than to disturb her during a telepathic conversation. Besides if half of the pain he'd felt down his link was real then he wasn't sure he wanted to know the rest.

"Oh God, Scott! The academy in Massachusetts. it's been destroyed! Sam just contacted me." Jean was referring to a telepathic bond that all the X-Men shared. It allowed a non-telepath to contact one of the telepaths over a long distance. Effectively it allowed longer distance communication between two X-Men, only one of whom was a telepath, than was normally possible between normal telepaths.

"What!" was the collective cry from the others onboard the Blackbird -- Archangel, Wolverine, Rogue and Beast. As Jean explained what Sam was telling her Logan was starting to fume at the back of the plane, and when she said that the report was labeled 'no survivors' Logan let out a scream and put his hand and claw straight through one of the monitors.

"Logan, calm down!" Scott said forcefully, as he looked over his shoulder at the destroyed monitor. Then another screen lit up. It was the communications panel and the face on it belonged to Sinister.

"Hello, Scott," he said in his gravely voice.

"What do you want, Sinister? And how did you get into our mainframe?" Scott replied instantly.

"That doesn't matter. What does matter is that I have information for you. There were two survivors from the attack on the Academy," he said. Scott started to ask how he knew, but Jean interrupted him.

"Who?"

"Jubilation Lee, and Monet St. Croix."

"And why are you telling us this, Sinister?" Scott demanded.

"Oh come now, Scott, you know I have a soft spot for you. It's no inconvienience for me to tell you that the two children -- together with a few others -- are in a cloaked plane coming over the west coast of France at the Loire Valley, in about half an hour. Goodbye."

"Wait, Sinister! You said they were with others. What others?"

"Why, Scott --Remy LeBeau, of course." At that Sinister disappeared from the screen and the level of tension in the craft increased.

"He was there?" Rogue asked in pure surprise, that Remy was anywhere near the X-Men. She had abandoned him in Antarctica. When she got back to the mansion she had told the X-Men that he just hadn't made it to the portal. Jean had known though, Rogue's nightmares had been so powerfull they had intruded on the X-Men's master telepath's dreams. Jean hadn't, to the best of Rogue's knowledge, told any of the other X-Men about her lie.

Then the call had come in from Kurt that Remy was at the Muir facility. She had hoped to go see him, Only to have Kurt tell them that he was gone.

"Okay, people, heads up! We're going to catch Gambit," Scott spoke up.

*****

Scott Summer's mind was often a dark place. It was crowded with responsibility for his team, guilt for his failures, sometimes even failures that happened years ago. Also there was a certain helplessness to the X-Men's plight, to make the world a better place. The feeling of loss at hearing that their daughter from the future was gone.

There were good things too. His marriage to Jean, the message that Rachel had somehow returned. The various victories of the years.

His mind stuck on Rachel. His daughter from a possible future, lost to them, then returned. Why was she with Gambit, he wondered to himself. It was the one question that had been nagging at him since Kurt had said that she had gone with the Cajun mutant. Scott couldn't understand it, Remy LeBeau, Rachel Summers. Where was the link? What had Remy said that made Rachel sympathetic to his plight?

He dearly wanted to talk it over with Jean, but he was leary of that too. Ever since Antarctica he had felt that Jean was hiding something from him. She denied it and he could hardly say that she was lying, but it still irritated him. He tried to put those thoughts out of his mind and concentrate on finding Gambit and Rachel. He could ask his questions then.

*****

Back in Massachusetts Sam was still recovering from the shock of seeing his sister dead. He had just been talking to the doctor and then the doctor had gone back to his charges. He had then contacted Jean telepathically, and told her. A little later two more bodies were brought to the doctor. Acompanying the two bodies was the policeman D'Amelio and another officer. The second cop walked over to the doctor, who was talking softly to Sam.

"Two more bodies, doc, we think one of them may be the attacker -- it was some mutie trash." At that Sam started towards the policeman, but before he had a chance D'Amelio grabbed the other officer by the shoulder.

"Mutie trash, Mister Main? Does that mean you think of me as that Nigger cop?"

"No sir, I just meant-"

"Frankly, I don't give a damm. We're officers of the law. A law which is equal to humans and mutants. You got that?"

"Yes, Sir," officer Main said as he looked down. Sam walked up to the policeman in charge.

"May I see her?"

"Why?"

"This was a progressive school. There were a few mutants here, and ah met most of them at one time or another," he said quietly. D'Amelio nodded and the two of them walked over to the sheets and Sam closed his eyes as D'Amelio pulled one of them back. Sam took a deep breath and opened his eyes. He recognised the girl from one of his visits to the school.

"Penny," he said quietly, using Jubilee's nickname, as he put a hand on her cheek, and was surprised by its softness.

"Look - Guthrie, right?" he asked Sam, who nodded, and D'Amelio continued, "We've got several bodies and two ash-piles which were probably also people although I have no idea how our coroner figured that one. You seem to be the only one with any idea as to how many people were here. Could you do a head count? There is too much damage to the buildings to find a student roster, or for that matter, find any kind of information about the students." Sam agreed to do the head count.

He'd met most of the students at one time or another, and knew of the others. After a count of all the identifiable people and the ones that he couldn't identify, he found to his growing amazement that there were two people missing. He didn't see Frost, Cassidy, Monet or Jubilee. He said as much to the Police officer and then sat back and thought to Jean, trying to establish some sort of connection.

*****

"Scott, I just had another message from Sam. It seems that there are two people missing."

"It does give some credence that our erstwhile opponent was uncharacteristically unmendacious in his otherwise unvalidated assertions on the fate of a binary set of students," Hank remarked from just behind Scott's chair.

"I know Henry," Cyclops replied. "And we are almost in range."

*****

Onboard the Frostbite there was a small amount of chaos. Jubilee and M were softly talking at the back of the craft, while Rachel flew the plane. Its controls were remarkably basic, and M really needed the time to do something other than fly. Remy was hanging over a panel at the side of the plane. Cyle was lying on his back under the panel. The plane had taken a few hits when part of the hangar had collapsed. So, when Rachel said that a systems check showed that the power level was dropping, Cyle had volunteerd to check. Now, for the second time, he was glad that he had changed clothes back on Muir. The idea of doing basic aircraft maintenance in Indian Silk was less than appealing. Almost as appealing as traipsing through a manmade jungle looking for survivors of a massacre.

As Katarn checked the main energy cables, he noticed that they were damaged, and that power was probably being lost at a point where the cable was frayed and its casing cracked.

"Remy, could you open my bag and grab the green box with the gold edging?" Cyle liked technology, and he knew that he'd need some pretty specialised tools to fix this. His limited weight allowance for any mission was usually filled with his tools, his computer, his swords and some clothes. The clothes were always Indian Silk.

"What are in dese boxes?" Remy asked as he brought the bag to the panel and found the box next to two others, of identical design but with a different colouring.

"Basic tools, made specifically for me," Cyle answered as he opened the green box and took a screwdriver out. As such there was only one thing that was noticably odd about the tool. It was made out of a black substance that was so black that it seemed to shimmer.

"Must be expensive," LeBeau commented as he examined them.

"Priceless."

"How much? Really?"

"They're made from a substance that doesn't exist in this timeline, so it is priceless."

"Not in dis timeline?"

"What do you mean?" Monet asked as she joined the two at the panel. Jubilee wasn't far behind.

"My job is something of a law enforcement official. I travel to timelines to stop people messing with them." Cyle figured that he could tell them a little. "That stuff is called Distrin. If you find one gram of it in any given timeline, you're doing well."

"That rare?"

"Yes, M, " Cyle said as he crawled out from under the panel. He handed the screwdriver to Monet. "Try and bend it," he challenged.

M shrugged. "It's your tool." She then attempted to bend it and was somewhat surprised that she couldn't. Cyle grinned at her expression.

"The only way I know to forge the stuff, is to teleport it into the heart of a star for about a year, then forge it before it cools."

"Into de heart of a star? You be kidding, right?"

"No, Remy, I'm not. I haven't come across anything, ever, that can damage this stuff."

"Nice, Cyle," Rachel called. "But what about that MEC?"

"Well, I'd suggest you use your Phoenix power to get us to the ground safely because, at the height we are at, we don't have nearly enough time to land before we lose all power."

"Even the backups?"

"Yeah."

"I don't have the Phoenix Force anymore."

"What?"

"It was magnifying the effect of me and Brian being in the same time. So to stop the pain from crippling me, I called the Phoenix and, between the two of us and Moira's medical records, we put together a new body for me, and the Phoenix transferred my consciousness into it."

"Cool. but then we're going to crash, aren't we?"

"I can land us with my T.K., but this is going to be a rough landing. M, I want you as my co-pilot."

"I have to admit two things," Cyle said. "One: If you can land us you're a stronger telekinetic than I thought. Two: I had begun to wonder why you hadn't used the Phoenix in a while." Cyle grinned slightly, this was becoming rather more interesting.

As M went to the forward part of the plane Cyle crawled back under the panel to try and get the backup power system on line. Remy stayed to give tools when needed.

"So, homme, what's in de ot'er boxes?"

"Well, the black and green has some emergency medical equipment. I couldn't inject an antibiotic to save my life, but there does tend to be someone around who can."

"An' de black an' gold box?"

"Bring it over here and open it," Cyle said with a sigh. Remy wasn't going to stop before he knew and, besides, the Cajun would probably be sympathetic to what it was.

As LeBeau brought the box over, he noticed how much it reminded him of a box like one that he owned. Fates willing, it was still buried under the mansion, and he'd have to make a trip to get it. As he opened the box under Cyle's watchful eye, he couldn't help but grin as he saw the contents. A complete set of picklocks. Remy figured that he could probably open any lock in the world with these. He also noticed that the set came with miniature wire cutters and other basic thieves' needs. Cyle shrugged.

"I'm not one for sublety, most of the time. Every once in a while though, even I need to do things quietly. First rule of life, always have the right tools for the right job. Besides those tools, I've managed, over the last eight-hundred odd years, to scrounge enough Distrin to replace the blade of the short Katana with a pure Distrin one." Cyle looked over at the Cajun. "It's mono-molecular."

"Eight hundred years?" Remy said slowly and deliberately, making sure he had heard right.

"Yeah. It's. well it's a long story."

"It'd have to be if it be dat long, me'be you can tell it sometime."

"Yeah, maybe." Cyle replied.

Jubilee tried to stop him from going under the panel again by asking a question of her own. "What's mono-whatchamacallit?" Jubilee asked. When he didn't answer, the girl turned to Remy. "Well?"

"Mono-molecular, means dat de blade is one molecule t'ick where it cuts, so it could cu t'rough anyt'ing," LeBeau explained.

Cyle listened to the explanation as he went over the wiring one more time. He was slightly surprised by the Cajun's explanation. A very interesting person,that Remy LeBeau. He reached down and pulled a small knife out of his boot and cut the casing of the wires. Once he'd done that, he carefully put the knife back in its sheath, mindful of the knock-out poison on the blade.

"Gumbo, you wouldn't happen to have a piece of conductive material, about ten inches long, would you? And some duct tape?"

Remy thought for a second. He had his staff. Collapsed, it was just over ten inches long. But he didn't have any tape.

"Got de metal, mon ami, but no tape."

Cyle thought for a second. He needed to stop the power leaking, so if he could get somthing non- conductive around the metal, then he would have a temporary fitting. Hopefully that could last them until they could get some more permanent repairs in place.

"I need something non-conductive, something I can use to tie the metal down." Cyle got a surprise when he was handed something red, with a black center with a gold X on it.

"My belt," he heard Jubilee say. "Frosty and Banshee built these uniforms to protect us. So they were made to stop electricity, and plasma, and some Psionics, and-"

"Enough, thank you, Jubilee. You talk more than Hank did."

At this Remy stood up straight. "Hank?" he queried.

"The first guy at my base to ever be nice to me, was called Hank McCoy. He...well he died in an attack. Why the interest?"

"I know a Hank McCoy, who loves to use big words."

"Really? That's nice. RAY?" Cyle yelled to the front of the craft. Rachel didn't even bother to reply verbally, she just linked straight to the British mutant.

#Talk to me.#

#We've got trouble. I think the temporary fitting will hold, but no guarantees. How soon can you get us down?# Cyle thought back at Rachel as he started coming out from under the panel.

#About twenty seconds. You might want to buckle up -- it's going to be a rough landing.# With that Rachel signed off and concentrated on landing the plane.

Just before touchdown, when the instrumentation went down, M noticed something odd. There seemed to be a craft approaching. This seemed odd to her because they were supposed to be off the main shipping routes.

*****The Blackbird*****

"Cyclops, scanners show a plane going to ground near here." Warren Worthington, the Archangel said from his seat at an instrumentation panel. "It's exactly where Sinister said it would be. Shall we check?"

Scott grimaced. He had tried to sort out his own feelings towards Gambit before trying to confront him. He hadn't succeeded. However, they did need to find and question him.
"Take us down."

*****The Frostbite, just north of the Loire Valley, France*****

"Okay, we're down. Now, everyone, outside." Cyle ordered as they settled on the ground. He unbuckled his own harness and went back to the panel with the leaking energy cable. "If the energy flow is disrupted you could all suffer poisoning. So, outside, untill I'm sure that won't happen."

"What about you?" Rachel asked as she hit the release button for the hatch.

"I'll be okay," Cyle grinned. "Trust me."

*****

Outside the others waited for about ten seconds, when three things happened. Rachel, Monet, and Remy looked up into the sky. The Blackbird appeared in the sky.

The third thing that happened, nobody noticed. In a thicket several hundred meters from the clearing Dei- Tan materialised and stood concealed to observe the event. The balmy ninety degrees didn't bother him, he was here to observe. Better than most, the J'Hiddian leader knew that one had to ignore one's surroundings when possible, and endure when not. Heat wouldn't kill him, but standing in the heat would allow Dei-Tan to observe how Remy LeBeau handled himself. The Cajun didn't have to fight. If he could talk his way out it would also be a satisfactory ending to this confrontation. The important thing was that the observing alien got a chance to see both the targets in action. And he was most curious as to how Monet St. Croix would handle herself.

The three mutants who had looked towards the heavens as the Blackbird appeared, had all done so for the same reason. They recognised the thought patterns of those onboard, except for Remy, who had no active telepathic powers. The X-Men were coming.

*****

The Blackbird landed silently and the four mutants, bound together only by their flight, formed a rough line next to each other. The hatch on the modified SR-71 opened and disgorged a group of X-Men. Cyclops led the way. Archangel and Rogue flew out of the hatch, to settle on the ground at their leader's signal, while the Beast somersaulted gracefully through the opening. Marrow's exit was slow and cautious, as she joined the line forming opposite the others, while Phoenix had to pause and calm Wolverine's instinctive desire to lunge past his fellow passengers to the young girl he'd thought dead so recently - until Logan grunted and subsided, reluctantly.

For a long moment each group took in the other. Some, like Jubilee and Logan, didn't want to bother with the whole thing, they just wanted to stand together again. Both realised that there was a problem with that, though. And his name was Remy LeBeau.

"Gambit!" Scott said frostily.

"Non. Gambit died in de Antarctic. Remember, Cyke? De forgiving X-Men left 'im to freeze to deat'," Remy said accusingly. Cyclops was about to say something when Beast interrupted.

"No, my friend," Hank said, putting the emphasis on 'Friend'." Some of us did try to find you." Remy raised an eyebrow and Scott turned to a man he trusted with his life, a look of complete disbelief on his face.

The Beast shrugged. "The X-Men have always proven able to forgive in the past - until now. I disagreed with our apparent abandonment of that most fundamental principal. It sounded hypocritical to me, and I found others who felt the same way."

"Who?" demanded Scott.

"Jean, Sam, Ororo and Logan felt as I did -- that if we could forgive people like Logan and Jean and Rogue and Angel and Marrow, then surely there had to be forgiveness for our Cajun compatriot. Besides, after he failed to get to the teleport hole in time, what should I have done?"

At that LeBeau's eyebrows rose. "T'anks for de vote of confidance, but where are Sam and Stormy?"

"Sam wasn't there when we left for Muir, and Storm wanted to think about whether to, and I quote: Hit you or hug you. So we piled all available X-Men into the Blackbird and came. Betsy was on her way to England anyway, so she couldn't come. Besides Rogue was very insistent that we hurry."

He shot a quick look at Rogue and saw in her face that she had lied about what had happened. He then turned his gaze to the others, most of whom had mixed feelings about what was happening. Before he could say anything he heard a surprised snort from behind him, then he heard Cyle's voice.

"Sounds like my Hank alright. Henry McCoy?" he asked the blue man. Hank, surprised to hear his name, nodded to the stranger.

Remy then looked at the remaining X-Men. If Rogue got to tell her side, then he was going to tell his. "Dat's what she told you? Chere I would have t'ougt you'd be more 'onest dan dat. What happened was dat Rogue left me to freeze in de middle of de South Pole wit'out so much as a shirt on my back. At least, dat's how I remember it," Remy said, with no small measure of contempt.

This threw the others into chaos, on both sides, since no one but Rogue and LeBeau knew the full story. Both were believable and both were unprovable, except by a scan by one of the telepaths, and neither Rogue nor Remy was likely to willingly submit to one.

Scott wanted to know whether it was true or not, and Rogue admitted as much while, during the commotion, nobody noticed that Archangel had spread his wings and was getting ready to fly.

Fly he did. As everyone was distracted he suddenly lept ito the air and dove straight towards the Cajun mutant.

"LeBeau!" Warren yelled as he closed the distance. Even as he flew he saw his target turn towards him and then duck. He was concentrating so hard on LeBeau that it never occurred to him that someone else might get involved. So, he was taken completely offguard by Jubilee's pyrotechnic burst, which caught him full in the face. As he tumbled to the ground, Marrow threw two bone daggers at the Cajun mutant.

Only the daggers were stopped in midair by a small blue sphere that enveloped them. A purple blast from Cyle into the sphere vaporised the daggers.
"Uh-uh, bone girl," the unknown mutant chided with a finger. "No fair attacking someone when he isn't ready."

"And who are you?" Cyclops demanded.

"Katarn, Cyle C. Kurt called me Spirit," the unknown mutant replied with a grin.

"You attack one X-Man, then you attack us all," Cyclops shot back.

"Fine. But you attacked him first," Cyle shrugged.

"He ain't no X-Man anymore, sugah," Rogue said quietly. Once again the entire clearing fell silent. Only this time to everyone's surprise it was Jubilee who broke it.

"Well, Cyke, if Gumbo isn't an X-Man anymore, then I guess," she said as she slowly undid the X symbol from her uniform and dropped it in front of her," then I guess I'm not an X-Man anymore, either."

M looked over at her, then took off her own symbol and dropped it. "I stand with my team-mate," the Algerian said.

"Kid, what do you think you're doing?" Wolverine asked as he went over to her. When the Canadian looked into his sidekick's eyes, however , all he saw was pride.

"I'm doing what you taught me, Wolvie -- I'm standing with my team."

"I thought we're yer team."

Jubilee looked at her mentor with glassy eyes ."Then where were you, when we were attacked? Where were you while we were being slau.." the words choked in the young girl's throat as she turned away with tears in her eyes.

The mutant known as Wolverine had never felt his heart as heavy as when he saw the girl, whom he thought of as his own daughter, turn away from him. "I didn't know. Why didn't you call, I would've come in an instant." He couldn't think of anything else to say. He was about to try anyway when he heard a voice behind him.

"That's enough, guys. The power cable is holding. Let's go," Cyle said as he stood in front of Cyclops. He turned to leave but the leader of the X-Men grabbed Katarn's shoulder.

Cyclops wasn't expecting Cyle to turn on him with fury blazing in his eyes. "Don't you touch me!" Cyle said. There was a flash of blue that was just short enough to realise something had happened, but not long enough for the eye to register what.

What Cyle had done was use his temporal powers to create a bubble of null-time around eveyone in the clearing. It had effectivly stopped time for all of them. Since he was unaffected by the null-time, while all the others were frozen in time, Cyle could swing at the mutant and drop the field just before he hit Scott Summers. Since even a Time Knight couldn't affect anything while in Null-Time he had to drop the field.

Summers went flying backwards, unleashing his own power at his opponent. Normally he wouldn't have reacted so vehemently, but his patience had been sorely taxed recently. Between Rogue's confession, the horror of the deaths of Generation X and Jean hiding something from him, he had had enough. So he struck out at the easiest target, which, right now, was Cyle.

Now Cyle, besides his powers, used a lot of hand-to- hand combat. Few Rogue Knights expected it, so it made sense. And he had taken the time to learn martial arts forms from dozens of worlds. Still it didn't give him faster than human reactions, so Scott's optic blast caught Cyle in the midsection. The impact lifted Katarn off the ground. His own blast went straight back towards Cyclops, who dodged and fired a second optic blast. This one was dodged in turn, and Cyle was about to retaliate when he heard two screams behind him. One was muffled, one wasn't.

"Jubilee!" Logan yelled. A telekinetic shield formed between the two groups with Logan cradling a felled Jubilee on Remy's side. Jean Grey and her time- displaced daughter Rachel, who were standing together, each on their side of the field, were forming the shield. In that brief moment their minds touched and they had a chance to talk, at the speed of thought, so what seemed like a few moments to the real world was enough time to have a serious conversation.

#Why are you doing this? Why are you helping Gambit.# Jean asked.

#It's not Gambit anymore, and I'm helping him because I know where he's coming from. I've been guilty of a few nasty things in my life to, and I wasn't going to let a dangerous double-standard exist.#

#What double standard?#

#The one that forgave me, but wouldn't forgive Remy.#

At that moment Rachel broke the link, and concentrated on the field again.

Wolverine wasn't concentrating on the field or the others, only on the girl he was holding who had been hit full on by one of Cyclops' optic blasts. She smiled weakly at him.

"C'mon Wolvie, let's blow this joint. Let's go to Monaco."

"Monaco? Darlin', why would we go there?"

"Because, Mister Logan, that's where we were going," M answered as Jubilee passed out.

Cyle dropped to one knee beside the three of them. His mind focused only on Jubilee. He took one look at the man holding the young girl, then made up his mind.
"Look, you don't know me, but trust me when I tell you to put her down."

"Give me an incentive, bub? Yer part of the reason she's hurt," Wolverine replied with smoldering eyes, then raised one arm to Cyle's neck and popped two of his claws. Cyle never took his eyes off Logan, even with that man's claws around his neck.

"I know, but if you put her down I can stop her from getting any worse till we can get her to some medical facilities. Is that worth trusting me for?" Cyle asked, still looking at Logan. He held the gaze until the Canadian nodded and put her down. Cyle instantly encased her in a bluish field. Then he let the breath he had been holding out. Cyle didn't like having claws around his neck.

"She's encased. As far as she's concerned time is stopped. She'll stay like that untill I take her out. Or I pass out," He added, under his breath. He caught a sideways glance from Logan, and wondered if he'd heard.

"Fine bub. M, have you got any med facilities?"

"Yes," she replied simply. They headed back to the plane.

"Wait, you can't just take her with you!" Scott yelled, from the other side of the T.K. shield. Cyle, cradling an unconscious Jubilee in his arms, turned to him.

"Sure we can." Cyle proceeded to move one hand under Jubilee." Daanarie." Before anyone could move a pale black light enveloped Cyclop's group and they all seemed to go glass-eyed.

Logan turned to Cyle with a curious glance. " What's that?"

"It's magic."

"Fine bub, be mysterious. I'm coming." At that Cyle laughed.

"First off, I'm serious. It is magic. As far as coming with us is concerned," he shrugged, "if you want, but it's not my call. From where I'm standing, Remy's in charge."

"Well?"

"Hey, it be okay by me."

"Then let's buzz."

The entire group piled aboard the plane. After Jubilee was secure in the med unit of the Frostbite, Cyle went back outside and fired a beam of purple energy at the Blackbird's engines. That had the effect of slicing the main engines off the plane. It was the same power he had described to Kurt when they had first met. He was using his temporal powers to slow down the Tachyons, from faster-than-light, to sublight. He then channelled them into a beam, creating a very powerful weapon, if somewhat draining to use.

Then Cyle climbed back on board. As he sat down he felt a strange tingling in the back of his head. It took about ten minutes to reach the south coast of France. By then the feeling had gone from tingling to pain behind Katarn's eyes. He grabbed a pad out of his bag and spoke softly.

"Tiffani, are you online?"

"Yes," the pleasant female voice of the computer spoke.

"Reference something for me. Tingling feeling behind the back of the skull going to pain behind the eyebrows. Crossreference with all previously logged complaints."

"Checking...checking...check complete."

"Any matches?"

"One." The pad then displayed the previous record. Cyle read it, remembered and closed his eyes. Then looked towards the cockpit area.

"Ray, if you don't land the plane in the next sixty seconds we'll have a real crisis on our hands."

Rachel was no stranger to crisis and had learnt that if someone was that certain, you did as you were told. She yelled for everyone to hang on, then put the plane in a steep dive. The plane stopped about eleven meters above the ground and went into VTO/L and hit the ground seven seconds later. Cyle got up out of his chair and ran for the door. Even as he ran he started to glow with the same energy that he used to create his null-time fields. By the time he was outside and the others -- aside from Jubilee -- were also getting up, the glow was visible from inside the plane.

By the time everyone was outside Cyle was doubled over on the ground. Rachel tried to go to him but Katarn wouldn't allow it. With a wave of his hand and a few mumbled phrases the English other-dimensional mutant did something none of the others could believe. Before their very eyes three skeletons seemed to climb out of the earth to stand in a semi- circle around Cyle, who was glowing brighter by the moment.

Cyle knew what was happening. It had happened before and, right now, he didn't care whether the others knew of his other abilities. The only important thing was that they stayed away. Katarn screamed as the pain increased steadily.

"Please," he whispered," get away." But it was too late. With a final scream Cyle's powers exploded. The skeletons vanished and, in the blast, Cyle's companions were covered, and the plane was covered. And the final thought in his mind was one simple one.

"Not again."

To be Continued...

Next.
What happened with Cyle? Will Wolverine regret coming? And exactly what was M afraid that her mentor knew? Find out here soon.