6

John looked out the window, trying to make out the people on the street below. It looked like the same random assortment of homeless and hustlers and hookers and desperately lost tourists, the scum and rabble that made up the neighborhood. He had lots of ideas about Los Angeles before he came here, but none of them had actually prepared him for what a shithole this place was.

This place was just like Pittsburgh but without the charm, and had a hell of a lot more Mexicans and gays. Not that he had anything against those groups … as long as they were mutants. If they were norms, then fuck ‘em.

He had a sneaky sense that he was being followed home, but every time he looked, he saw no one behind him. John figured he was being paranoid - a problem intrinsic to being a rebel leader - but maybe someone had been following him. If so, they had been really good at it, almost professional. The FBI wouldn’t try something, would they? He’d burn this whole fucking block down. Did they really want to play so recklessly with other people’s lives?

Satisfied there were no feds loitering across the street or set up in the trashy office building across the way, which he was sure was a front for a couple of illegal companies, he went to his fridge and got a beer, wondering why someone like him had to get so ripped off for rent. Seriously, his apartment was just one big room with a bathroom, and that was it. It was as expensive to live here as it was in New York, but somehow not as fun.

You’d think leading the revolution would get him some perks, such as money, but apparently you needed someone like Mystique to rip it off for you. And damn she was good at that, even though she was creepy. Sexy but creepy. Women like her - hell, soldiers like her - were harder to find than he had imagined. Good revolutionaries were harder to find than he imagined too. He had guys, but they didn’t seem interested in doing stuff, or at least politically relevant stuff. Breaking up shit was a lot of fun, but you couldn’t just spray paint “Mutantz Rule!” on the rubble and have it mean something. Idiots. Maybe Magneto had been right about that - good peons were hard to find.

He’d just had a swig of his beer when there was a knock on the door that made him pause. Would feds knock? Cops might, but he was sure feds would just knock the door down. He always wore his igniters on his wrists, so he raised his hand as he approached the door, risking a quick glance out the security peephole.

Much to his surprise, he saw Rogue standing in the narrow corridor of his apartment building, with some blond guy standing behind her, his arms crossed over his chest. John scrutinized the guy carefully, trying to identify him. Was he a student from the school? He didn’t think so. He was a really pretty boy; he kind of looked like a twinkie you’d see on the streets of West Hollywood. Maybe that’s where Rogue picked him up.

Rogue pounded on the door again, and snapped, “C’mon John, I know you’re in there! I just wanna talk!”

He lowered his arm and went back to the window, looking out for any familiar faces or jets hovering in the sky. If the rest of the X brats were here, they weren’t being obvious yet. “I don’t talk to homo inferiors!” He shouted back.

The door rattled hard as Rogue must have kicked it. “Fuck you, John! Open this goddamn door before I bust it down!”

What an empty threat. She was just a girl now; she had no powers to back it up.

Suddenly a male voice he didn’t recognize, with an accent he couldn’t place, said, “I’m a mutant. Will you talk to me?” Was that the twinkie?

“Who the fuck are you?” He snapped, stalking back towards the door.

“He’s a friend,” Rogue answered. “Now open the door!”

He wanted to tell her to fuck off, but he didn’t get this. If she was here with the X-Men, neither Logan or Bobby would bother to knock. And why would Rogue be with them anyways? She was a traitor; she’d turned her back on mutancy. He thought she’d been cool at first - or at least her tits were cool - but now he couldn’t believe what a jackhole she turned out to be. If they were going to have a confrontation, it might as well be now.

“Fine, don’t get your panties in a bunch,” he snapped, undoing the deadbolt and opening the door. She stormed in, making him step back, and the twinkie sauntered in casually, like he was here to redecorate the place. He was pretty slender, but he had those well toned arms that all the young gay guys around here seemed to have. There was nothing remarkable about him, nothing screaming mutancy - he had a black tattoo encircling his arm and a water bottle shoved in the pocket of his slightly oversized shorts, but neither suggested anything abnormal. “Who the hell are you?” John asked, looking both ways down the hallway before closing the door. He didn’t see anyone else, but he knew better than to just assume that meant nobody was there.

“Matthais Gosteli,” the guy replied. His tone of voice was so casual he sounded utterly bored.

“Matthais? What is that, German?”

“Probably, but I’m Swiss.”

“Well, woohoo for you. You have power over chocolate or something?” That was probably a positive development - the Swiss were neutral, right? Nonviolent. So why was he hanging around with Rogue? He couldn’t possibly be her new boyfriend, could he? Even his t-shirt seemed to indicate he was a big old queen.

“What the hell is the MFL?” Rogue asked, scowling at the one piece of art he had hanging on the wall over his broke down futon. It was a black flag with a red x in the middle, and MFL added in white spray paint over the top.

“The Mutant Freedom League,” John said.

“What the hell is that?”

“It’s like Aryan Nation,” Swiss guy said, still sounding bored. “Only pushing mutant supremacy instead of white supremacy. I’ve seen it on the internet.”

“We are nothing like Aryan Nation,” he snapped angrily. “Don’t compare us to those Nazi assholes.” He glared at him, but the Swiss Miss met his gaze with the same casual boredom as it had earlier. What a smug bastard. He was really starting to piss him off.

Rogue gave him a withering glance. “So you’ve taken up the slack for Magneto, huh?”

“Somebody had to.”

She snorted derisively. “Yeah, sure. ‘Cause he’s so beloved after he fucked up the Golden Gate Bridge.”

He considered hitting her, but he wasn’t sure what the Swiss Miss could do. Oh yeah, he could fry him to a crisp, but he had no idea what he could do before he could bake him. Maybe he was fireproof. It‘d be fun to find out. “Just say whatever the fuck you want and get out.”

She glared at him, crossing her arms over her still impressive chest. “Are you here to kill Brendan?”

He cocked his head and snickered. What the fuck was this?

****

Angel wondered if there should have been a vote on how to handle this Pyro, but he knew now that it was a moot point. Besides, he was fairly certain the vote wouldn’t have went in his favor. He could count on Giles’s support for the “do not kill”, but Xander probably didn’t give a crap either way, and Helga and Marcus shared Logan’s rather fatalistic world view, while Rogue apparently didn’t like Pyro, and Matt would support Marc. He really didn’t know how Bren would have voted, but he didn’t want to risk getting burned alive, and who could blame him there? So yeah, a vote wouldn’t have helped his cause at all.

Kier stormed into the office, looking slightly flustered. “Why the hell did ya leave without me?”

Bren looked up from his computer, and flashed him a chagrined look. “I thought you could use the sleep.”

He clicked his tongue and shook his head. “I don’t care. I’m not gonna sleep until you’re okay. You know that.” Kier walked over to the desk, put his arm around him from behind, and kissed him on the top of the head.

“Get a room,” Xander said in mock annoyance.

Kier frowned, wrinkling his nose at him. “You’re just jealous ‘cause you’re not getting laid.”

“Says who?”

“You, actually.”

Xander looked off into the middle distance as he grimaced in remembrance. “Did I? Oh crap. Well, it’s a fair cop, but society is to blame.”

“Or women with taste,” Kier riposted, giving him a wicked grin. Xander flipped him a middle finger.

There was an odd telephone ring, and Helga pulled out her cell phone. “Talk to me.”

Angel was close enough to hear the harsh, guttural tones of a demon language on the other end of the phone. M’grdrin? Helga didn’t reply in that language, though; she grunted a couple of affirmatives, and then said, “Yeah, we’ll check it out,” before disconnecting. “That was a regular named Ru’ulak. I asked him to keep an eye out for anything funky, and he said we should pay a visit to a suburban housing project called Rose Hill Estates.”

“Rose Hill?” Xander repeated, surprised. “Aw hell, me and my crew did some work up there.”

Angel almost forgot Xander was in construction. He also wasn’t completely sure if he still worked in construction, considering how much time he spent here. “So you can take us there?”

He scoffed. “Us, kemosabe? I don’t think you’re coming. It’s still sunny out, and there’s no sewer tunnels up there.”

“Damn it!” Kier exclaimed. “Man, sometimes being a vamp is a real drag.”

Thrak gargled something incomprehensible, and Rags translated, only slightly more comprehensibly. “e says that’s up in the ‘ollywoood ‘ills, not far from where we just were.”

Angel and Helga exchanged a suspicious glance. “Maybe the demon dragon thing didn’t come through alone,” she said.

“Oh bloody hell,” Giles said, heading for his office. “I’m getting a better weapon this time.”

“Get me one why don’t cha?” Xander said, standing up from the couch and stretching dramatically. “It’ll be good for me to move. My butt was getting numb.”

Bren stood up, and said, “Yeah, maybe I’ll get one as well.”

Kier grabbed his arm. “You are not going.”

Bren removed his arm from his grasp gently. “I can’t just hole up and wait for this to get over with. Besides, Logan will be going with us, and if I’m not safe with him, I’m not safe with anyone.”

That was an excellent point, and even though Kier clearly didn’t like that, he accepted that with a heavy sigh. “I expect you to call me and let me know what’s going on.”

Bren gave him a weak smile and a reassuring squeeze on the arm. “Right away, I promise.”

“I’ll go get Logan outta the shower,” Helga said, heading into the back rooms.

“We don’t have time for any fun stuff,” Marc shouted after her. He stood up as well, and turned to Angel. “You guys think you can hold down the fort? I’m itching for some action myself.”

Angel sighed, not really looking forward to spending such quality alone time with Kier, but not really having a choice in the matter. They couldn’t go outside, and if there were no sewer tunnels up there, they were completely screwed. Kier was right - sometimes being a vampire really sucked. No pun intended. “I think we’ll manage.”

“I could leave you a gun.” Marc grinned, indicating a bit of a joke.

“No thanks.”

“Grenade?”

Angel stared at him in disbelief. Was that a joke too? “You don’t actually have a grenade with you, do you?”

Marc continued to grin at him, his eyes inscrutable beneath his black goggles. Holy shit, he was packing a grenade? Actually, knowing Marc, he was probably carrying more than one kind.

Giles came out from his office and tossed Xander a battle axe. He caught it easily by the handle, and commented, “Great, my favorite. How did you know?”

Giles fixed him with a scathing glare that really needed no elaboration, but he still pointed at the little white strip at the bottom that was a piece of masking tape, with the name “Xander” written on it in black ink. When did he do that?

“If you know exactly where th’ place is, I can teleport us there,” Rags interjected, leaning drunkenly against the wall. He probably wasn’t drunk, but he’d obviously have had several drinks to even be upright. He felt bad for the guy, even if he was confounded by him much of the time.

“Great. We won’t have to deal with traffic,” Xander replied.

Logan came out of the back offices with Helga behind him. His hair was dripping wet, and he was still pulling his t-shirt on as he walked in. He didn’t look really happy about it. “It’s not another demon dragon, is it?”

Helga shrugged. “Don’t think so. He wasn’t really specific. He just said it was bad.”

Logan grunted noncommittally, and still didn’t look very happy or awake, but at least he‘d gotten the slime/blood off. “Fine, let’s go. We ready?”

Thrak gargled, and Rags translated, “Thrak wants ta stay ‘ere.”

Angel and Kier exchanged wary looks. They were supposed to be stuck with him? They couldn’t even talk to him . But what could they say? “Please take the slime guy with you” ? And Angel wasn’t sure that Thrak was actually a male - or any gender. Did Uggs have a gender? Even Giles wasn’t sure, as no Watcher’s guide ever mentioned it. It wasn’t like they could just ask Thrak either. How did you throw that in a conversation? “What gender are you again? And for future reference, how do we tell with your kind?”

Aware that Rags was staring at him, awaiting an answer - he couldn’t tell if Thrak was staring at him or not - he shrugged and said, “Sure, fine.”

Angel was forced to stand aside and watch as they followed Rags’s instruction for teleport. Bren, Logan, Marcus, Helga, Giles, and Xander all reached out to form a line that connected to Rags, as they needed to be in physical contact for this to work, and Xander was directly holding on to Rags, as he knew where they were supposed to go. “Is it me, or does everyone else have the sudden urge to sing The Sound of Music?” Xander cracked. He had his belt looped around the axe, so he could carry it on his back.

“I don’t even get that,” Marc admitted.

“I was thinking more of line dancing,” Kier said, taking a seat at Bren’s desk.

Xander scoffed. “We’re not wearing cowboy hats.”

“Was that an option?” Marc wondered.

“Can we just get on with this?” Logan snapped.

Rags obliged him, saying his incantation, and in a moment they were all gone, leaving him , Thrak, and Kier in an otherwise empty office. Kier looked at him, and asked, “So we can throw a wild party now?”

Even though he was clearly joking, Thrak gargled enthusiastically, squelching across the floor.

Angel shook his head and started towards his office. He had a feeling all of these avatars and representatives were building up to something big, but he should have figured that if it came, it would do so in daylight hours, when he couldn’t help put it down.

It was nice to know his luck hadn’t changed one bit.

****

Once again, Rags’s teleportation spell left a lot to be desired.

They popped right back into the sunny hot climes of the Hollywood Hills, and while Logan simply felt it as a minor shifting of reality around him, the others took it a bit harder. Not Helga, who seemed to shrug it off, and Marcus, who just staggered for a moment, then recovered. Giles bent over and grabbed his head, Bren looked so queasy his Brachen side came out, and Xander dropped to his knees, complaining, “I think I’m gonna barf.”

“I thought tha’ was actually kinda smoof,” Rags said defensively. Smoof?

Not that Logan had a lot of time to think about much of anything. The energy in him wasn’t sending out alarm bells, it was in full blown panic, welling up inside him and filling his veins with white hot light, ready to be released at any moment. He started seeing things in blue again.

“Holy fuck,” Helga exclaimed, but wasn’t looking at him. Logan looked at what she was looking at.

They were at the head of a suburban housing project like any other, with pre-fab houses placed on either side of a remarkably pristine asphalt private road. Logan guessed that they’d have seen neatly manicured lawns and nicely bland landscaping in front of homes painted in non-offensive pastels, with SUVs and the occasional sports car in the driveways, with maybe a potted palm or two to distinguish this as Los Angeles. And he was forced to guess what they would see, as right now there wasn’t anything but black.

Some kind of black fungus had consumed the entire sub-division - there was no other word for it. A layer of black fuzz coated everything: the yards, the homes, the cars in the driveway, although most had collapsed, rendering their shapes amorphic and anonymous. Some of the vegetation had decomposed to slime, and the sickly sweet smell of rot was nauseatingly thick. He thought he could lean against it.

“What the hell is this?” Marc asked.

“Is this a spell or something?” Xander asked. “What happened?”

Logan knew - or at least Bob’s energy in him knew. “A god did this. I can feel it.”

“A god?” Giles repeated, confused, looking around as if he was trying to make some sense of all this black death bracketing each side of the untouched road. “Why?”

“You don’t think any people …” Bren began, stunned.

“They’re slime now,” Helga said rather brusquely.

Yes, they probably were; there was a fleshy smell of rot mixed in with the rest. “Why would a god do this?” Xander wondered.

“Because they can.“ Helga answered. Yep, that was right.

“Okay, who did this?” Marc asked. “And what the hell is this stuff anyways? Is it fungus or something?”

“I dunno,” Logan answered honestly. If anything, he thought it wasn’t that complex. Yes, it looked almost like blacker than black moss, but there was something else to it, something that wasn’t quite physical. It was like psychic residue given form. “Rags, take everyone back.”

Rags just shrugged, not all that eager to stay, but everyone else was another matter. “We’re not going anywhere,” Helga insisted, speaking for the group.

Logan stared at her, at the blue energy now wreathing her face in his vision. He could force them all to go and think it was their idea. Did he really want to sink that low? “He’s still here,” he told her, sensing the god energy all around them.

If that didn’t scare them, it should have.