“Stop it,” Logan ordered.

But Leonie had no desire to stop. “What, intending to influence me or something, huh? I don’t think so, asshole.”

“Damn it.” Logan really didn’t want to cold cock a girl, so he looked at Rogue and said, “Marie.” At her quizzical look, he jerked his head towards Leonie.

She followed his thinking, but scowled at him all the same, not wanting to even briefly absorb any of her. Still, she bit the fingertip of her glove and used her teeth to pull it off, then grabbed Leonie’s arm with her bare hand.

“What the fuck -” Leonie began, turning to Rogue with a sense of violence.

But Rogue had been trying to learn how to regulate her powers of “stealing”, and poured it on, making Leonie wince as veins suddenly stood out in relief against her pale skin, and her eyes unclouded - while Rogue’s clouded up, veins spider webbing across her own face.

Xavier looked up, taking a shaky breath, and said, “Thank you.”

Rogue let go of Leonie, who staggered back a step, but Rogue’s eyes remained clouded over for a full minute before they returned to normal. “That’s one weird power you got there,” she noted, rubbing her own head.

“What the fuck did you just do, bitch?” Leonie roared, getting back her strength back with her rage. But Logan grabbed her other arm and pulled her out of reach of Rogue.

“She borrows other people’s powers,” he informed her. “But she can borrow them all if she wants, so knock it off when I tell ya to knock it off.”

She yanked her arm away violently, and glared at him. “You don’t order me around, perve. I don’t have to do jack shit.”

“We are not your enemy,” Xavier told her.

“Fuck you! I don’t know any of you! You’re all-”

“What’s your last name?” Logan interrupted.

That stopped her dead. She looked back at him, her eyes getting that wild, cornered animal look again. “What?”

“Your last name - what is it? What about the name of your foster parents? Do you remember that?”

She stared at him, and he could smell the panic coming back full force. “Wh-why the fuck do you wanna know?! What’s your fucking last name?!”

“I don’t know. I’ve never known. What about you?”

She started backing up, towards the door, and was giving them all a hollow eyed look now. He’d hit the absolutely right - or wrong, depending on your point of view - buttons, and all she wanted to do was run. “Just fuck off! I don’t know what your deal is, and I don’t give a fuck!”

“We might be able to help each other, Leonie,” he told her. “The people who fucked with your head are the same people who fucked with mine.”

“Logan, what are you saying?” Rogue asked, sounding shocked.

“Nobody fucked with my head,” she snapped, and the stench of fear was starting to come off her as strong as vinegar. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, but I am so out of here.” She turned and started stalking towards Xavier, and Logan knew in her current state she might hurt him to get him out of her way, so he quickly went after her.

Xavier, for his part, was unafraid. “We can help you find some answers.”

“I don’t need any answers,” she snarled, and pulled back her fist.

The gesture was familiar, but even Logan didn’t expect the claws that shot out of her hand.

Rogue let out a surprised yelp, Piotr went wide eyed with shock, but Xavier wasn’t at all surprised, which probably told him more than he wanted to know. “Outta my way, old man,” she growled.

Logan grabbed her from behind, and turned around, shoving her farther back into the room and putting himself between her and Xavier. “Put those away now,” he said, feeling like an idiot. What the fuck was he, her dad?

Oh god - apparently yes.

“You -” Rogue said, but since she was looking between him and Leonie, he wasn’t sure which one of them she was addressing.

“You wanna get gutted?!” Leonie threatened him, holding up her gleaming ivory claws. There were minute streaks of blood on them, and it looked like blood was beading at the base. She was a fast healer, but not quite as fast as him. He wondered if that meant something. “Get the fuck out of my way or get shredded!”

“You wanted to see what I had, darlin’? Okay, I’ll show you,” he said, and popped his own claws on both hands.

It got the reaction he expected. Her jaw went instantly slack, and her eyes were riveted to his hands, her surly rage being drowned in bone deep shock. “How -” she said, and stopped, aware that her claws no longer seemed that impressive. At least his were metal.

“Yer welcome to try shreddin’ me,” he told her archly. “But somehow I don’t think I’m gonna be the one hurtin’.”

“Oh god,” Rogue gasped. “She’s yours, isn’t she?”

That made Leonie look at Rogue in wide eyed shock. “What? What d’ya mean -” But then Leonie’s eyes scudded back to him, and the look on her face was so wounded he didn’t know if she was going to cry, vomit, or try and rip his face off. “No.”

He retracted his claws, and asked, “Are ya ready to talk now?”

She withdrew her own claws, but with great reluctance. “If you knew who the fuck I was, why didn’t ya tell me?!” She shouted angrily, tears welling in her eyes.

“I didn’t know. I suspected, but I wasn’t sure. Are we sure now, Chuck?”

“Yes, but it’s not quite as cut and dried as you think.”

No, nothing was, was it? “I’m sure. Can we go to his office and talk about it, or should we announce it to the rest of the school?”

She continued to stare at him, trembling from rage, tears welling in her eyes but not yet falling. “Is my mother here too?”

“No.” He decided to leave out the fact that she was dead, because she was having a hard enough time dealing with all of this. Not that he was having an easy time of it himself, but hey, he was the adult here, and he may as well act like it. Besides, hadn’t he always feared he had family out there somewhere? Family he wouldn’t know if it came up and bit him on the ass.

Sometimes he hated his life.

Wait a minute - sometimes? Every single fucking hour of every single fucking day.

9

Perhaps he was under the delusion that things would get easier once they were in the secluded confines of Xavier’s office. If so, then he needed his head examined. Anew.

Leonie refused to get anywhere near him, and kept looking at him funny. He figured she was probably thinking “Where the hell have you been all my life?”, but could not, in fact, remember her life, so she couldn’t recall if he had actually been there or not. There was nothing worse than a snit aborted mid-stream.

When Logan declined to sit, Leonie did, but fidgeted uncomfortably, and he knew she probably hated him for being able to pace. Well, he never expected to win father of the year.

As Xavier briefed Leonie aloud on a somewhat cleaned up and abbreviated version of Logan’s connection to the Organization, he heard, in his head, *I think there are some things the girl shouldn’t hear right now.*

He almost nodded, but stopped himself. Would it matter? She wasn’t even looking his way. *Agreed. So she’s mine and Sloane’s?*

*Absolutely, positive DNA match on both you. But there were some oddities.*

*I gathered. Such as?*

*Well, for one thing, Static had clearly never given birth to a child. And there were some … unusual aspects to Leonie’s DNA.*

*Unusual?*

*Her mutations seemed extremely specific. My friend seemed to think she showed every sign of being quite well engineered.*

Logan wished he was surprised, but he wasn’t. *So she was tailored to be the best of both worlds? To have Static’s power and mine in one package? Building a better weapon.*

*It would seem so.*

*Well, at least they gave her Sloane’s looks.*

Xavier paused to give him a wry smile, then went on telling Leonie about the Organization being an “espionage” group that hadn’t treated mutants “very well” (understatement of the millennium), and Logan working for them but getting his memory “wiped out”. Xavier then wrapped things up by saying the group had attacked the mansion recently, and they were all lucky to be alive. “So, what, you think I’m a spy for them or somethin’?” She asked defensively, clearly not happy with any of this.

Before Logan could ask if she indeed was, Xavier reassured her, “No, not at all. But you must understand it is vital we know exactly where you came from, and what memories - if any at all - that you have. It’s more than likely that they did the same thing to your mind that they did to Logan’s.”

She ran her hands through her hair nervously, and said, “Look, I - I don’t know. Why would they fuck with my head? You ain’t gonna tell me I’m some kinda spy, are you?”

“No, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were training you for the role,” Xavier said kindly. The sky visible through the window behind him was the color of blood oranges, and it briefly brought to mind Jean’s new, slightly altered “happy place” before he quickly squelched the thought. He really didn’t need to think about that now, and certainly not with the risk of Xavier picking it up. “That’s why it’s imperative you tell us what you can remember.”

“But I don’t - look, I’m just a bored suburban kid, no matter who my dad supposedly is.”

“Can you tell us the name of your foster parents at least? Give us an address?”

Her shoulders slumped, and she wrung her hands together nervously in her lap. “I-I don’t … you’re just gonna contact them, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely not,” Xavier assured her. “Not if you don’t want us to. We’d just like to know who they are.”

Unaware if Xavier was still on his wavelength or not, he thought, *She doesn’t heal as fast as me. Any idea why?*

There was a long pause, but Xavier finally thought back, *There seems to be some conflicts between your genes and Static’s. While they made them work together, the girl may suffer some physical effects from them. She has roughly four mutations, and it’s … difficult.*

It was weird to hear hesitation in a telepath’s thought stream. *Is she dying?*

*Not yet. But she may be robbed of several years due to her conflicted physical state.*

Maybe that was good, in a way. Maybe she didn’t have to look forward to a pointless existence that droned on and on, while everything and everyone died around her - if she could even remember them.

“Their names are … Paul, and … Tammy? Yeah, I think Tammy.”

“You think?” Logan repeated. She was just grasping at straws; she really didn’t know.

Xavier held up a hand to stay him, or keep her from making a smart ass remark; he really didn’t know which. “Any last name?”

She was silent for several seconds, fidgeting in her chair, once again playing with her hair nervously. “Morton? No … Mason. Definitely Mason.” She nodded, as if that somehow made it that much more correct.

“Address?” Xavier persisted gently. He had an amazing way of being demanding without seemingly like it in the least.

That took her longer. She was quiet yet fidgety for what seemed like several minutes, even though Logan knew it was only seconds. He heard every squeak of the leather seat, and it took all his concentration not to hear her nervously racing heart, but he could do nothing to block the smell of her fear. He bet she didn’t like to think about these things, so she didn’t have to recall all the gaps in her own knowledge. He felt a terrible sympathy for her, and knew she should, because she was related to him, and what a special kind of hell that must be. “Arkham Street, I remember that much,” she finally conceded. “North Hill area, if that makes sense.”

“Nothing else?”

“No.”

Xavier glanced at him, and he heard in his mind, *That make any sense to you?*

He shrugged, but she wasn’t looking at him, so he got away with it. *There could be a North Hill area in Toronto, but I’ve never heard of an Arkham Street. Doesn’t mean there isn’t one, though; could have changed something since the last time I was there.*

Xavier sat forward, clasping his hands together on the neat surface of his desk. "I was wondering if you would allow me permission to look into your mind. I promise I wouldn't-"

"No," she snapped, almost bolting up from her chair. The smell of fear spiked dramatically. "I don't want you in my head."

"He's not one of the bad guys," Logan told her. "He's not going to fuck around in there."

She looked at him for the first time in a long while, and the look was far from pleasant. "I don't like telepaths."

"Neither do I. But he's okay."

"Why don't you like telepaths?" Xavier asked, although Logan thought the question was self-evident. But just because it was self-evident to him didn't mean it was to her.

Leonie switched her suspicious gaze from Logan to Xavier. "Because ... because, that's why. I don't like them."

*Her head's been fucked over too,* he thought ruefully. Logan knew a knee jerk, atavistic response when he heard one, and that was it. She probably didn't remember it, but that hate was not a mindless one - she'd been hurt, even if she didn't have a specific memory of it.

*Agreed* Xavier thought back at him. He thought he picked up a trace of regret in that.

"It might help us find you some answers," Xavier said gently, even though Logan knew he'd already resolved himself to her saying no.

He was glad, because then her response wasn't a disappointment. "What answers do I need? I forget shit, all right, but if it was important I'd remember it. What I need is answers from him." She jerked a thumb at Logan, then turned her glare back on him. "So yer my dad, huh? Who's my mom?"

How much of this should he tell her? "Sloane, another ... operative. She had telepathic negating powers, like you."

"Where is she? Still with them?"

He glanced at Xavier, who simply shrugged. He was leaving it up to him. "No, she's dead." He paused briefly before adding, "They killed her." It was possible that that knowledge would shock her into wanting to help them more. It was also possible it would have the opposite effect. It was all a crapshoot.

Her eyes widened in surprise, but her first response was his first response - anger. Like father, like daughter? "And where the fuck were you? You didn't stop them?!"

"He had no memory of her," Xavier interjected smoothly, stepping in to save his ass. "They had tried to kill him years before, but he escaped. Yet not with his memory intact."

That was a very nice way to put it. If only they were trying to kill him, it would have made it easier all the way around.

"Why do they even want fucking mutants if they're always tryin' to kill 'em?!"

Logan hated to admit it, but that was a damn good question. Still, he knew the answer. "'Cause the best thing to kill a mutant is another mutant. They want us as weapons for their cause."

Leonie dry washed her face, which gave him a twinge in the gut - who knew nervous gestures could be hereditary as well? "So we don't play nice and they eighty six us, is that it? We're a commodity?"

"Yeah."

"You're safe here," Xavier quickly added, perhaps picking up the spike in her anxiety.

But from the way she looked up at him sharply, she didn't find that comforting. "You just said they attacked this dump."

"They did, but not successfully." Xavier was a born salesman; he had a glib answer for everything. "Logan fought them back."

"I didn't." Not really, not successfully. He just incapacitated some of them. A lot. Most. Still, they got away with a few kids.

Xavier's look was odd, somewhere between stern and proud. "They'd have overrun the school quite easily if not for you. There's no need to be modest."

Leonie looked at him again, but this time with more curiosity than scorn. Logan wondered if Xavier had simply said that just for that reason, of pushing Leonie into a more favorable disposition. "So yer Mr. Tough Guy, is that it?"

"It's what I was trained to do," he lied. Actually, he was trained to kill anything in any way possible, and all the adults in the room knew that. But she was freaked out enough as it was.

Leonie glanced down at the carpet, her expression and demeanor becoming more sober, more introspective. "What about me?" She muttered, as if asking herself the question. "Was that what I was trained to do?"

"That's what we'd like to find out," Xavier said. "Let us help you."

She looked up at him helplessly, and for the first time since she'd came here, she seemed like a seventeen year old girl, not a surly proto-adult. "I-I have to think about this," she said, getting to her feet. "Can I go now?"

Xavier nodded, giving her a hint of a reassuring smile. "Of course."

Leonie left the office, giving Logan a single, questioning glance, as if still trying to figure out how she could be related to a hairy cretin like him. Then she was gone, and despite the closed door, Logan could hear her running down the halls. "She's gonna take after me, isn't she?" He said regretfully. "She's gonna disappear."

"I don't think so," Xavier said. "If she's like you - and she certainly seems to have certain ... personality traits in common, doesn't she? - she'll want to strike back."

"If we give her a target."

"We may have one," he said, then admitted sheepishly, "I did a surface scan of her thoughts, and they are even less ... ordered than yours."

That made Logan raise an eyebrow at him. Ordered? What was that supposed to mean? But maybe he didn't want to know. "Meanin' what? They already scrambled her frontal lobes like eggs?"

Xavier's smile was wry, a dark mirth sparkling in his eyes. "You do have a way with words sometimes." But whatever humor there was died fast. "Yet, poetry aside, you're correct - someone has been inside her mind. I'd have to go deeper to be sure, but I believe they may be trying to overload her rational thought processes."

Logan considered that a moment, trying to puzzle out the exact meaning. "Make her nuts?"

"In a sense. Mainly just make her rely on her emotions."

Now he got it. "Make her all instinct?" Is that what they tried to do to him?

(Did they succeed?)

"Something like that. It would certainly make her easier to control. Well, in theory."

"The theory didn't work with me."

"That wasn't what they were trying to do to you Logan," he said, as if he knew what the hell he was talking about. Did he? "They were trying to break you and rebuild you, strip your personality and free will, and construct something more malleable in its wake. It was bound to fail on someone as contrary as you."

"I'm not contrary," he shot back. Only after he said it did he realize it was contrary.

Xavier managed to swallow most of his smirk. “Not always. But you have your moments.”

“Look, what are we-” Logan stopped, as out of the corner of his eye he saw a hand curled into a fist, and part of an upper arm, go through the door behind him. They heard a startled, “Oops!” in the hall, as the intangible limb suddenly withdrew through the intact door. Then there was a knock.

God, this place was so weird sometimes.

“Yes Kitty, what is it?” Xavier said, with that studied patience that Logan knew he’d never achieve, not in a million years.

She opened the door a crack and peered in, clearly chagrined. “I’m really sorry about that, Professor. I was thinking about something else and I accidentally phased -”

“It’s perfectly all right. Is there something I can do for you?”

She bit her lower lip nervously, and said, “Actually, it’s about Mr. Logan.”

He rubbed his forehead so she didn’t catch him rolling his eyes. Had he not told them all how he hated being called “Mr. Logan”? He really thought Kitty knew better. “What is it now? Has Death finally shown up, looking for his wallet?”

From the confused look on her face, she really didn’t get that joke. “No, uh - there’s a woman at the door, said she’s a friend of yours? Considering … well, everything, I thought maybe you should check it out first.”

As he sighed heavily, wondering who the fuck it could be now - hey, maybe Leonie had a twin she was separated from at birth - Xavier suddenly looked suspicious. “Someone at the door? Why didn’t I sense them?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Kitty shrugged helplessly anyways.

“Maybe it’s one of Bob’s friends,” he told him, scowling at the thought. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. “I’ll take care of it.”

Xavier quirked an eyebrow at him. “I don’t doubt that.”

Only after he left the office did Logan wonder if that was some kind of joke.

As they headed down the hall, he asked Kitty, “So what does she look like?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t get a good look at her face. She’s wearing a hood - and I don’t know why, it’s not raining.”

“A hood?” Well, maybe he was in for a fight. It would do him some good - fights were uncomplicated things; no thinking involved, unless you employed strategy. Just physical action and reaction, movement and adrenaline.

“She has kind of an accent, though. Maybe British?”

Srina? No, that wouldn’t make sense, and besides, why would she wear a hood? She was a disappearing violet, but not a shrinking one.

The door had been left ajar, but not so much that he could see who was there. Not that it mattered; he caught the scent as soon as he was in range. “Go tell the Professor it’s okay,” he told her, grabbing her arm and stopping her before she could reach the door ahead of him.

She gave him a deeply confused look. “You don’t even know who it is.”

“Yes I do.” He tapped the side of his nose as a reminder. “It’s a friend, let him know.” He swung open the door all the way, and sighed at the figure standing on the doorstep, swathed in a black leather duster, the hood of a black sweatshirt pulled over her head like a cowl. “You couldn’t have called first?” He asked.

Even though the dying rays of the setting sun didn’t touch her directly, he could still see Yasha smirk at him. “You were hardly racing back to L.A., were you?”

“Would you?”

“Good point.” She reached out and grabbed him, pulling him over the threshold and into a passionate kiss.

He had no idea how he was going to explain this to everyone, but oh hell, who cared? At least he finally had an ally.

10

Bob realized Cammy was panicking - he had no idea where he was going - when he ended up in the middle of an orgy.

The bodies - mostly humanoid as far as he could tell - writhed on the ground like worms in a frying pan, hiding the red grass of this realm, and covering much of the blue veined marble porticos that rung what might be called the outer ground, the last signs of “civilization” before banyon like trees as tall as the Eiffel Tower swallowed up the surrounding countryside. The sky was a clear wine color, claret as seen through a flame.

He carefully stepped around frotting couples, quartets, and other equally illogical combinations, avoiding the occasional grasping hand that tried to pull him into their dog pile, and finally he entered what might be called a courtyard, marble slabs overgrown around the edges with velvety scarlet moss in a carefully cultivated style of ruin. “Bob, hon-bun, you’re just in time for the party,” a cheerfully languid voice called out.

Off to the left of the yard was a huge circular hot tub, more for communal baths than anything else, but currently lounging in it alone was the ruler of this realm, goddess Ammit - or, as she was known to her friends, Ama. The tub was full of milk, lightly steaming, and she was sunk up to her furry breasts in it, having chosen a humanoid red panther (well, they existed somewhere) form this time, everything about her feline save for body shape and eyes, which were huge orbs of the deepest midnight blue.

The Egyptians had her as a demon god because she was the “devouress of the dead”, in that she supposedly judged the dead, and “ate” their souls if they didn’t pass muster, thereby damning them to the endless sleep (no reincarnation). That wasn’t precisely true; she wasn’t a demon god, but a plain ordinary kind (if a god could be said to be plain and ordinary). But while she was on Earth - not for long - she was very much the equivalent of the Greek goddess Nemesis in that Ama basically was a divine vigilante: piss her off by doing something she didn’t like, and it was goodnight nurse. (But Nemesis was really sour, and no fun at parties; also, a bit of a ragbag.) The problem was, she got medieval on the ass of Seth for having non-consensual fun with some Humans, that was pretty much the end of her tenure. As it was, she didn’t much care for Earth; she could never decide if the gods or the Humans that mindlessly worshipped them were worse. She actually preferred being thoug! ht of as a demon than being worshipped, which made her one of the more sensible gods he had ever known. And it was her basically dislike for their pomposity that kept her out of Ogdoad.

“Sorry hon, I can’t stay. Did Cammy go through here?”

She nodded, her lids heavy as if she was half asleep. “As soon as I sensed him, I told him off, and he went. But I thought Eris killed him?”

“She did, but he had an escape hatch.”

“Really?” Her tail churned the scalding milk. In keeping with her past reputation as a selective shape shifter, her tail was not feline, but that of a crocodile. “What poor bastard ended up his avatar?”

“A friend of my avatar.”

“Oh, ouch, I’m sorry, I woulda killed him, but I am so relaxed right now …”

“It’s okay, it’s not your fight.” Seth was a war god of sorts, with a reputation as a death god, and Ama had killed him in straight sets, although for some damn reason Osiris got the credit when he wasn‘t in fact on Earth (like Sy even had the balls to kill another god - he probably had his mother arrange that rumor). She was deceptively powerful, at least on the Earth plane.

As of late, she had given into indolence, and he couldn’t blame her really. There was nothing much to do in the Higher Realms but turn to mush, to stagnate and slowly go insane. To her credit, at least she was aiming for a pleasurable insanity.

“You could join me, though - you’ll catch him up with him no problem,” she suggested, flicking warm milk at him with her gray scaled tail, the ears on top of her head twitching lazily. “He was bleeding energy pretty bad.”

“Yeah, I know, I’m picking it up.” He was - it was the thread of energy he was following through all the realms.

But the thread was slowly becoming a cord, widening into a stream destined to be a river - how long could he keep running until he simply exhausted his usable energy? Would he even catch up to him before he simply disencorporated violently?

And where the hell did Cammy think he was running to?