Kitty excused herself from Pete Wisdom as soon as she possibly
could manage it, quickly collecting her teammates. At their questions
she just tersely replied, "We're heading back, now."
"All right," Rogue said firmly as Kitty smoothly brought the
jet into the air and then kicked in the afterburners to send them
rocketing across the sky, "what's going on?"
"Looks like an old friend of ours might just be back," Kitty
said, keeping her attention fully focused on her flying.
"Who?" Bishop asked from his seat just behind them.
Kitty looked back at the other woman in the cabin, "You
already know, don't you Sage?"
Sage nodded, her own expression grim, "Stryfe."
"Give the lady a prize," Kitty said grimly, "I figure Sakura
and the Brotherhood are working for him. Which means we need to let
Storm and the others know about this, fast."
"You're actually worried," Rogue noted softly, so that only
Kitty could hear.
Kitty nodded slightly, "I got bored once, read through his
data file. It's pretty scary reading. He's certifiably nuts, and is a
telekinetic more powerful than Jean Grey herself. I don't even want to
think about what he could do to someone with that kind of power."
Rogue reached out and gently put her hand over Kitty's on the
controls, "We can deal with this, love. That, I promise you."
Kitty smiled at her, "Thanks."
The trip back to Australia was mostly silent, each X-man lost
in their own private thoughts. They returned to the beach house as
quickly as possible, their friends waiting for them outside.
Heather didn't wait for Sage to say hello, she just crushed
the slim dark haired woman to her as she said, "I was worried about
you."
A blushing Sage smiled up at the blonde, "It's good to see
you, too."
Ororo just had to smile at that. She noticed Kitty's grave
expression and asked her, "What's the situation on Muir Isle?"
"Muir Isle may just be the tip of the iceberg," Kitty said
softly.
"And we're the Titanic," Bishop added.
"We'd better go inside," Kitty added, "there's a lot to talk
about." She and the others who had gone to the island gave Storm a
summary of the situation, and a quick and dirty council of war was
soon underway in the living room.
Sage used the projection system to give a refresher to her
teammates, as well as to inform the two new members, "Stryfe is a
clone, created in the far future from the DNA of Nathan Christopher
Summers, a.k.a. Cable. He was raised by Apocalypse, intended to be the
host for that immortal's essence, but Nathan, along side Scott Summers
and Jean Grey, was able to stop the transference and destroy
Apocalypse himself."
"Evil twin," Heather said dryly, "how original."
Sage had to fight back a smile at that comment but continued,
"Stryfe swore vengeance on all three of them for what they had done."
"They saved him from being possessed, and he swore vengeance?"
Raven raised her eyebrow. Ororo just smiled and shrugged at her lover.
"Stryfe battled against Cable in the future, but he was never
able to entirely defeat him or his allies," Sage said, "so instead he
traveled back in time, to try to destroy those that inspired Cable and
his forces, the X- Men. And Cable followed to try to stop him."
Rogue waved a hand to get Sage's attention, "I was wondering,
how long has Stryfe been operating in our time?"
"It's hard to be exact," Sage said, "as Cable hasn't been
entirely forthcoming about it, but for at least the past twenty years.
During that time," she got back to the lecture, "he fostered
international conflicts, trying to generate an era where discord and
strife would rule."
Bishop nodded, "I seem to recall he did some arms dealing, a
few assassinations and other similar activities, right?"
"Correct," Sage nodded, "but it seems that wasn't enough for
him. Deciding to take a more active role, Stryfe took up his familiar
suit of armor and began to operate publicly, creating the Mutant
Liberation Front."
"Which is when we began to be aware of him," Elizabeth nodded
thoughtfully.
Sage continued, "He appeared purely to be a small time
operator at first, an impression that I'm sure he quite deliberately
fostered. It wasn't until he disguised himself as Cable and shot
Professor Xavier with a techno-organic bullet that we began to see
what he was capable of. He them went on to early slay Apocalypse,
kidnap Scott and Jean, and turn the x- teams against each other."
"The X-Men went after X-Force," Neal murmured, "since X-Force
was tied to Cable."
"Cable and Stryfe battled each other in Apocalypse's Moon
base, and they both appeared to have been destroyed there. But some
time later Cable returned from the far future, and there was an
unconfirmed report that Stryfe had somehow hid himself within Cable's
mind. It's confirmed that he physically appeared to battle both Cable
and the X-Man, as well as his attempt to reactivate the Prime
Sentinels," Sage finished.
Heather leaned forward in her seat, her expression troubled as
she asked the group, "So what, exactly, does he want?"
"He started out simply seeking vengeance, but his desires have
grown," Ororo said softly, "now he wants to not only destroy Xavier's
dream, but also each and every dreamer."
There was a long moment of silence in the room as everyone
tried to digest that. Finally Kitty spoke up firmly, "That's something
I will not let him do."
Rogue put her hand on her lover's shoulder, "I'll second
that."
All around the room, there was a general nodding of heads.
Even Raven and Heather, their two newest teammates, seemed to be
caught up in what was happening.
Raven took Ororo's hand in hers and then gave it a gentle
squeeze before asking, "So what do we do now, love?"
"We'll contact the school, let the Professor know that Stryfe
is active again. He and Jean can also try to use Cerebra to see if
they can find him," Ororo answered.
"When I talked to Pete Wisdom," Kitty murmured, "he said there
were a lot of nasty things going on, all traceable to Sakura. Sage,
could you help me try to see if there's any pattern to what's been
happening?" Once Sage nodded her agreement Kitty turned to Bishop and
asked him, "Can you check into the police files, too?"
"No problem," Bishop smiled, "I'll call up Cat, we'll get
right to it."
"I'll go to my intelligence sources," Elizabeth volunteered
before Kitty could ask her, "pass around the image we got of Sakura."
"Now comes the hard part," Neal murmured as the others left
the room.
"What's that?" Heather asked him curiously.
With a wry smile on his face Neal said, "Now we all get to
wait around to see what the bad guys are going to do next."
Out in an abandoned town in the wilds of the Australian
outback, two young woman stood at the edge of the battered wooden
buildings. "Ready?" Polaris asked her companion.
Plasma nodded, saying simply, "Go."
Polaris hurled the silvery disks in the air, and with fearsome
accuracy Plasma cut them down, leaving puddles of molten metal in
their wake.
"Well, your hit ratio certainly has improved," Polaris started
out encouragingly, "but..."
Plasma sighed, "I was supposed to just generate enough energy
to knock them out of the sky, not completely destroy them."
"We'll try it again," Polaris floated over another set of
disks.
"Lorna, I can't do this," the brown haired woman growled.
"Yes, you can," Polaris answered her intensely. She met
Plasma's eyes, "Just think about this, one day you're going to have to
get information from your father's troops. That means your going to
have to take them alive!"
They stood there eye to eye for a moment, and for a second it
was like a spark passed between the two of them. Finally Plasma softly
said, "Send the disks flying again."
And so they began again.
"Very interesting," Stryfe noted as he shut down the view
screen. The armored figure leaned back on his chair, he had been
considering asking Sakura to take up the fine tuning the powers of his
various agents, but it seemed Polaris was already doing so.
Sakura herself paced into the room as soon as he summoned her,
her eye just a bit wary. "You called, m'lord?" the white haired woman
asked.
"You are aware that Polaris has taken up the training of
Plasma?" he asked.
"Indeed," Sakura said, "I helped arrange for that myself."
Stryfe frowned slightly, "Explain."
"Polaris' search for her lover Havok will only bring her so
far," Sakura said calmly. "But with the strong bond forming between
them, we will be able to use one as leverage against the other if
needed," she stated it all quite simply.
Stryfe smiled slightly, "As planned."
"On our mission to the island McCoy and Feral were also
showing the chemistry that you told me to expect," she noted.
"Let's check on them," Stryfe activated another viewer. He
stopped, and a slight smile appeared on his face, "It seems that
things have progressed farther than we had anticipated."
Sakura brought the image up on another screen and chuckled,
seeing the two of them so... busy, atop Feral's bed. "I wonder what
fur the cubs would be," she said dryly.
"McCoy could probably tell you," Stryfe noted as he
deactivated the view screen and leaned back in his seat.
"Is he making sufficient progress in mapping out your and Nate
Grey's genetic structure?" she asked, the threat to the furry mutant
all in the undertones.
"He's making good progress," Stryfe reassured his deadly chief
assassin. Softly he added, "There are only a series of small
differences that he has discovered so far, but in combination those
may be quite significant."
'As long as those aren't just genetic drift from cloning,'
Sakura thought, but she was careful to screen that thought away. Aloud
she asked him, "When will you command him to perform the enhancement
on you?"
Stryfe gave her a stern glance, and the assassin took a half
step backward. "Remember your place," he reminded her softly.
"Yes, m'lord," Sakura bowed to him submissively.
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