It was night, but the glow of lights from the city around him washed out the stars; the sky was simply a deep indigo, midnight black bled out by an overabundance of electric light. He stood and looked down, to get his bearings. He was maybe twenty stories up, on a tall building overlooking most of the other office buildings in this densely developed area.

Down the narrow street on the neighboring side was a huge, bright neon animated sign, the waves of red light advertising Coke, while the waves of green light advertised Fuji Film, on signs slightly larger than your average billboard. They lit up the blocks like colored spotlights, and he understood instantly he was in the Ginza section of Tokyo. Only here did neon technology and towering office blocks of glass and steel meet wooden noodles houses and traditional paper lanterns hanging on strings to illuminate narrow back alleys.

He vaguely recalled Marc's Blade Runner poster, and realized the art director for that film probably just took photos of Tokyo and Hong Kong and just added some futuristic touches to the cityscapes. Both cities seemed to have an indefinable touch of the alien about them, and the familiarity of the skyscrapers seemed to make it worse.

Logan wondered vaguely why he was here. He felt sore, like maybe he'd been beaten up, or maybe he'd slept up here, and he could taste old blood in his mouth. What little clothes he wore - and they were a shambles; rags in everything but name - showed signs of being shot, stabbed, torn, and burnt, and he'd bled on them fairly copiously. But not all of the blood was his.

The air around him was cold, reducing his breath to white vapor, but he felt very warm, almost hot - still healing, then. When was this? The last time he was in Japan, he didn't get to the Ginza. He was hauling Scott's bony butt around, looking for Nariko - they didn't even stay for nightfall.

Oh shit - Bloody Friday. Was this Bloody Friday?

He looked down at the tattered remains of his shirt, and wondered if any of this blood was Mariko's.

He didn't want to be here. He knew he was asleep, and tried to wake himself up, but he wasn't sure how you did that. He looked down at the network of streets below him, and considered jumping. You always woke up before you hit the ground, right?

He got a sense he was no longer alone, twenty stories above the city of Tokyo, and looked over his shoulder warily, ready to fight.

The energy thing. There it was again, a human sized chevron of red-orange flames that weren't exactly fire, on the opposite end of the roof. It hovered just off of it, and nothing else was caching - if that was even possible. It seemed to be constantly moving, and yet still; he could feel almost unbearable power coming off of it, that wasn't quite heat but was close. He had to squint to look at it directly - it was bright enough to hurt his eyes.

Once again he felt the deep dichotomy he had encountered before. The urge to run, to get away from the thing as fast as he could, and the sister desire to stay, to let the flames - or whatever they were - consume him, burn him alive and finally give him peace. He held up a hand to help shade his eyes, and demanded, "What are you? What do you want from me?"

There was nothing, silence, as the fiery thing not made of true flames seemed to undulate in its own breeze, large segments of psychic fire unfurling briefly, like tentacles or wings. But it didn't move any closer to him, and if there was any hostility, he wasn't picking up on it ... yet. "Can you even talk?" He wondered, suddenly seized by the fact that it probably couldn't.

( Psychic fire? Why the hell had he thought that? Where had that come from, and what the fuck did it mean? )

He waited, hoping it would call him a dumb ass, but there was nothing but the sound of an occasional car below, and the hiss of wind through the branches.

What the fuck ..? What branches?! This was the Ginza - there were no trees, and certainly not up here. He concentrated, listened harder, and realized what he was hearing was a voice: layered, whispered, and inhuman. It was like hearing the words of ghosts through a layer of time. It was probably female because it was so delicate, but he couldn't even be sure about that.

He couldn't make out a single word. He could occasionally make out syllables, but that seemed less than helpful, especially since they seemed to be completely out of synch, with no two in a row. It also seemed like they were a recording being played backwards.

Logan squinted into the light, and seemed to see something within it. A dark shape, almost humanoid. He inched closer, hoping for a better look. "Why can't I see you?" He asked. "And why can't I understand you? You're gonna have to help me out here, okay? You're gonna have to find another way to communicate."

Flames flared out to the side, like wings being spread on a gigantic bird, and then something seemed to flash from within it, blinding him -

- and when he opened his eyes, he was no longer on the roof of a building in the Ginza. He was in Jean's garden - her telepathic "safe place". "What the fuck..?" He began, looking around for the creature, but it wasn't here. Or was it?

Looking up, he saw the sky seemed to be on fire.

The red flames that weren't exactly flames seemed to have consumed the sky, and the clouds within, now black as if charred, seemed to writhe and spasm like living things being tortured. It cast Jean's garden in a bloody light, and the smell of roses had been superseded by the smell of sweet hay, with an undertone of desiccation. It was odd, because there didn't appear to be any hay anywhere, just greenery that looked like the color of old blood beneath the violently swirling light.

Beyond the weigela bushes, where he has seen Jean the one time he was here ( she was lounging in a lawn chair, reading a book ), there was a new feature to the landscape - a pond. No, not a pond - it was too large and too deep, swallowing up the immediate horizon in its inky flatness. It was a lake. Alkali Lake.

He winced, and snarled, "You bastard. You just want to torment me, huh, is that it? First Mariko, now Jean - what the fuck is it you want?!"

Of course there was no answer. He was alone here, although he didn't feel alone; he could feel ... something. Something not quite eyes; not quite a presence; but something almost worse, although he couldn't define how or why, even to himself.  There was a path burned in the grass that hadn't been here before, and it led straight down to the lake. Is that what it wanted? It wanted him to go to the lake?

In that one "dream", it had lived in the water - it had grabbed him, and ... tried  to pull him in? Was that what it was trying to do? "I don't drown," he told it angrily. "Not permanently. You're wasting your time."

He waited for something to happen, for some kind of response, but there was nothing. A slight breeze rustled the leaves, made the surface of the dark water ripple, and he realized he'd have to go in there. Jean died in there. Why was he standing on the shore like some useless piece of shit?

He discovered he was no longer wearing the bloody tatters of the Ginza, but all the ( mostly ) intact clothes he'd worn last time ( first time ) he was here. He stripped off his jacket and tossed it aside, and kicked off his boots as he remembered Amaranth saying scornfully, "Don't you ever wear a shirt?" He kept his shirts on as he waded into the icy cold water, an involuntary shiver shuddered through his body, but he continued on. This water was gelid, just like the mountain run off it was, and he could feel himself going numb from the knees down. Oh, fuck it - he dove into the water head first, as soon as he was sure he was deep enough, and the shock of the sudden, monstrous cold was enough to stop his heart. For a second - it was like being suspended over a void, the silence in his body and mind absolute and starkly beautiful, and then the sound of blood pounding in his head returned, the pins and needles pain of his circulation angrily racing beneath his frozen skin. He opened his eyes to the black water, and let his eyes sting as if being pelted with ice.

He had to ignore the panic attack his body wanted to have, memories of being under water, inhaling water as he struggled against bindings that held him down to the bottom of the tank, kept him from breathing air -

(His rage and terror was great enough that one day he broke them. That was how he finally escaped, wasn't it? Adrenaline - panic and rage - to the rescue.)

- and while he squelched the fear, he could feel his heart racing as adrenaline dumped into his system, regardless of his present circumstances. His body had learned to associate submergence in water with pain. He ignored it as best he could.

He had swam about twenty meters before he saw something moving beneath him.

It was a glimmer of fire, like a brief flash of sunlight off the windshield of a moving car, but as he glanced down at the inky depths he could no longer see it. He went up for air, expecting to be dragged down, but it didn't happen. Looking around, feeling his wet clothes and the metal in his body threatening to drag him down, he saw that Jean's garden was gone. He was now surrounded by saw toothed mountains, rising on all sides like a titanic stone fence, the snow on their peaks blindingly white and untouched by Human presence or detritus. Back at Alkali Lake completely.

But for whatever reason, the sky was still on fire, a boiling and angry red, like it was the end of the world.

"What does this have to do with Jean?" He asked aloud, not sure if it could understand him or would care. "Why did you bring me back here?"

No answer, and he wished he was surprised. There was nothing on the shore, where snow blanketed the land anew, and there was no sign that anything catastrophic had happened here. Sometimes nature's ability to heal rivaled his own. His teeth were chattering in spite of his best efforts to hold his jaw rigid, and he could feel his balls shriveling, pulling up inside him in an attempt to find warmth. He bet his lips were turning as blue as Bob's blood. "Fuck this shit," he snapped, taking a deep breath and submerging once again, his feet slapping the surface of the water as he dove, knifing through the water like he was born to it.

He wondered briefly if he would find Jean's body.

He was probably in the direct center of the lake when he saw the fireball coming towards him from the opposite side. It was speeding towards him at a rate that was impossible, suggesting it had little or no physical mass. He didn't know if it was going to kill him ( well, try ) or what, but he kept swimming towards it, ready to meet it head on - time to get this over with. He was tired of fucking around.

The thing seemed to disappear for a moment, but then in a blink it was right there in front of him, and suddenly it surrounded him, a cloud of flame that evoked a cruel warmth that was far from physical. And before he could do anything -

- images flashed through his mind, bang bang bang, as brutal as gunshots straight to the frontal lobe, along with sensations - touch, taste, smells - that didn't always make sense in context with the images flying by. He tried to grab on to some image, examine it, but it was difficult; they ripped like a tornado through his mind, and it honestly fucking hurt.

But he saw Jean's face among the images. And he saw his, and Xavier's, and Scott's ... and Bob's.

And blood. Lots of blood, a river, an ocean, spreading as flames consumed his mind, and the pain - far too intense to be merely physical  - overwhelmed him. He tried to pull away, to escape, but he was an insect trapped in amber that was rapidly solidifying around him, as the pressure and heat inside his brain made it feel like his head would explode any second. He could almost feel the plates of his skull separating under the strain, in spite of the adamantium plating, as lava coursed through his veins ...

Logan woke up screaming, but rather than pop his claws, he grabbed his head, which still seemed to reverberate with the pain. He sat up, drawing his knees to his chest, and took several deep breaths, feeling the pain fade as air filled his lungs once more. It seemed his skull was still in one piece, and in no danger of breaking up.

Now that he was away from it, he realized there was something about the thing - the presence - that reminded him of Jean. It had her smell, her taste ... her memories? Was that what he was getting? It was hard to say, it was a jumbled mess. A lifetime of thoughts put in a blender, and then, for good measure, shoved through a meat grinder.

It was just tormenting him with her, wasn't it? It used his memories of her against him. But it made no sense - why? Why go to all this trouble for this? It was trying to tell him something about Jean. But neither of them had the language to understand each other.

As soon as his adrenaline level started to ebb, and he could breathe normally, he got up and headed for the door. Logan had expected a cot in the storeroom, but Bob's "room in the back" was actually a tiny but functional sort of break room, with a water cooler in one corner, a mutant ficus in another ( it was taller than him ), and a small twin bed pushed up against the far wall. He guessed it might be used for quickies, but he figured it was probably just a place for employees to sack out between, before, or after shifts. Bob could be thoughtful like that.

Logan had time to wonder why he felt compelled to talk to Bob as he walked out the door, down the small corridor, aware that the scent had changed in the front room. All he could smell was Bob, and all he could hear was him too, singing along to some song on the jukebox. " - when you're around me, I'm somebody else," he sang his voice almost comically deeper than the more soprano voiced man actually singing it. "Someone tell me why - "

Bob stopped and stood instantly, turning to face him as he paused in the entrance way. The bar had cleared out - only Bob was here. Even Lau was gone from behind the bar. "It came back," Bob said. Not a question.

He nodded, looking around at the empty bar. Something more was wrong here, namely he didn't get the sense that other people had ever been here at all. "Yeah, I ... I'm not sure what happened. I haven't really woken up, have I?"

"No. Sorry, I suggested you come to me if it appeared, so I can try and follow it. I was afraid if I told you outright it would pick up the trap and leave."

Logan felt a surge of anger, but nodded in understanding. It was possible the thing could have gotten it. But would it have cared?

He felt Bob's eyes, and just by the way he was looking at him, he knew that Bob had seen everything that had happened. "Wow," Bob finally said, seemingly at a loss for words. A true rarity.

"So what do you think?"

"I think you're an incredibly brave person. To be afraid of something and go ahead and do it anyways - "

"Spare me the pep talk," he interrupted impatiently, not wanting to hear this. He wasn't sure what he was referring to, but it didn't matter. "What the hell is it? What did it want?"

Bob glanced off to the side as he thought, grimacing at nothing. "I'm not sure. It's all really weird, isn't it?"

He sighed, and threw up his hands in frustration. "So it's a bust?"

Bob shook his head. "No, of course not. I can say it definitely doesn't want to kill you. I don't think it knows its own strength, but it was certainly attempting communication."

"What the fuck was it trying to say? It has something to do with Jean, doesn't it? Alkali Lake."

"It certainly seems that way."

"Seems? So you don't know what it was saying either?"

Bob paused significantly before answering that. "It was an info glut. Again, it doesn't know its own strength."

"How could it not?" Logan wondered. Sure, he had to figure out the limits of his own strength after waking up sans memory, but he did that pretty quick. Finding the metal in his body took a little longer. nonetheless the whole claws thing.

He shrugged, using his hands more than his shoulders. "New to this dimension? New guise? I have no idea. But maybe I can find that out." Bob started to walk past him, but then stopped and clapped his hand on his shoulder. "You did stellar, mate. Why don't you go have some genuinely peaceful sleep for once in your life? You more than deserve it."

Logan grabbed his arm to keep him from walking away - to follow it, of course. "Let me come with you."

Bob shook his head, but his look was not unsympathetic. "I doubt this thing is Human, and until I get a good power gauge on it, I don't want you back with it. It almost hurt you badly without intention: think what would happen if it meant it."

He had a point. He was still surprised his head hadn't exploded. Of course, even Bob had said it hadn't tried to kill him, but hey, didn't everything try to kill him eventually? "So, not Human, huh? What's it want with Jean? Or me, for that matter."

Bob shook his head. "Got me, mate. I'll let you know when I find out."

With that, Bob started down the dark hall, and he quickly faded away into the shadows. Logan considered going after him anyways, but knew the corridor would be just a hallway to him, and lead him only back to the break room.

After a moment, Logan decided to return to it anyways. It wasn't like he had anything else to do. And besides, maybe later he could sort through all the images, and make some sense out of them.

At least Bob had left him the promise of a dreamless sleep. That sounded amazingly good right now; even better than that small moment of oblivion.

He wondered if he'd ever feel that again.

20

Bob walked out towards the pier, ignoring the multicolored shells scuttling out of his path, and wasn't surprised that the man hadn't deigned to acknowledge him yet. This probably wasn't going to be pretty.

His steps barely sounded on the pier as he walked towards him, trying to glare holes in his broad bronze back. Bob knew he'd finally gotten to him when he finally spoke. "Congratulations, Bob," Camaxtli said cheerfully.

"For what?" He asked, even though he had already asked.

"For breaking the unwritten law - killing one of our kind. And not even getting punished for it. Wicked." He gave him a sarcastic thumbs up over his shoulder, never turning around to look at him. Bob could see the currently male Camaxtli was throwing chunks of body parts into the purple water. They were chopped up so finely, in crabapple sized portions, it was impossible to say what species it was. The blood was mostly red, though.

"Someone had to, and I was volunteered." He didn't even know why he responded; he felt no need to explain himself to him or anyone. "I'm surprised you didn't up for it, Cammy - this kind of bloodshed is right up your alley."

Cammy shrugged. "I was waiting for Kumiho to kill them all first. The stuck up bastards."

Bob sat down on the end of the dock beside him, the metal bucket of chum between them. Cammy appeared to be totally naked, save for ... oh christ, was that an orange speedo? Cammy was a completely amoral - and tasteless - prick if he was wearing a banana hammock. Maybe he just wanted to show off the hard, young body he had currently adopted as a form.His shoulder length black hair almost - but not quite - hid the bulging red blood sacs that made up for eyes in his face. "Tell me what you did to Jean Grey."

Cammy didn't even pause in throwing chum to the creatures in the water below. They were not quite shark, but only because sharks just had the one mouth. "Who?"

"Don't even try to bullshit me. One of the Humans who acted in your stead to help me corner Fenrir."

He smiled in a sickly manner, keeping his gaze on the thrashing creatures in the ocean, being driven crazy by their own feeding frenzy. "Ah, a lesser. You know I have nothing to do with lessers."

"Not normally, not now. But times change, don't they?"

Cammy snorted in disdain. "You think you're the only one who can have a mortal avatar?"

Bob grabbed Cammy by the throat, and let enough power bleed from his palm so Cammy could feel the sting. Bob's vision tinged blue as the excess energy oozed out his eyes. "You fucking son of a bitch. I had no choice - I'd take it back if I could."

He knew Cammy was hurting - he saw it in the violent swirling of blood inside his eye sockets - but he laughed regardless. "You still have Agrona's energy in you - I can taste it. She chose to give it up, did she?"

"She had already dispersed, only her core energy remained. Now tell me what you did before I break the unwritten law again."

Cammy continued to chuckle, but Bob knew he was at least making him nervous. "I did nothing to the lesser, Bob. Why the fuck would I?"

"Because you're a complete fucking dickhead."

"Yes. But you don't realize your luck, do you? You chose an old soul, a mortal who sees eternity as the damnation that it is. But most mortals get corrupted by that taste of power - they want it. They want more. Did you really think all lessers are above that?"

Bob let him go, but with great reluctance. He was correct about that, but he didn't think any of them would be in contact with Cammy long enough to get a true taste of his power. But perhaps, being telekinetic, something opened up between Jean and Camaxtli that he didn't anticipate.

He had been unable to follow the trail left by the interloper for very long. The energy matrix was so unstable it broke up almost instantly - or it was covering its tracks, anticipating this move on his part. Which meant this thing, whatever it was, knew of his powers, and his connections to Logan.

But the thing knew Logan.

What Bob had been able to pick up from Logan was that the thing - in the midst of the memory jumble infused between it and Logan, which Logan's already chaotic mind was having some difficulty sifting through - possessed some of Jean's more recent memories. The why and how of it was unclear. But Logan's instinctive impression - "That was Jean." - might have been more correct than he allowed himself to believe. Something of Jean was within that thing - or it was Jean. One of the two. But how?

Jean was powerful, untapped, but she had tapped those powers in a big ass way, and there was a taste of something other to that energy. Because of the almost instantaneous energy breakdown, Bob wasn't sure if the energy was demon, mutant, or god, or some bizarro combination of them all.

But Bob instantly thought of Camaxtli, and it was hard to believe that was coincidence.

Camaxtli was a god of fate, along with war, hunting, and several other things that often involved copious amounts of blood.  It was lives he was probably throwing to the creatures churning the water. Bob could see them, in the blood frenzy, sinking  their mouths into each other, ripping out hunks of thick blue skin and tainting the water with their own pinkish plasma. He knew if he pushed Cammy in, they wouldn't touch him - if Cammy would even touch the water. If only Humans knew what a pissant, petty trick walking on water was. There were many demons who could do that too.

And Camaxtli was also considered the creator of fire.

Fireball, or, as Bob thought of it, since seeing its vague shape in Logan's mind, fire bird.  It wasn't like Cammy to be so obvious, except he might be employing reverse psychology. He wasn't above that. There was little, in fact, that he was technically above.

"You know, the Higher Realms are in chaos," Cammy said, seemingly apropos of nothing. "Kumiho wasn't the cause, merely a symptom."

"Are you gonna tell me something I don't know?"

"You should have let the disease run its course. Who knows how crazy things are gonna get now? It'll get ugly before it settles ... if it ever does."

"Are you making a power play, Cam?"

Cammy finally looked at him, casually flicking his long locks over his shoulder as he grinned at him in a manner he probably thought was rakish. But it had a sharp, cold edge to it; a knife made of ice. "Would I do that?"

"If I find out you've done something to Jean - "

He laughed, but it was contemptuous. "Think I hurt the crumpet, Bob, is that it? Do you think I took one of your superpowered pets and made her more than she is? I want nothing to do with lessers, especially ones who won't worship me like they should. But may I remind you, you requested that I take them under my aegis. If I left the door open, and she acted on it, it's hardly my fault, is it?"

Bob glared at him. "I'm not the push over you seem to think I am."

Cammy glared back at him, as best he could with eyes full of blood. "You're a hedonist, Bob. You are a pleasure god, in fact if not in name. Temptation is your middle name. Should you not foresee all the risks of laying out a banquet in front of a starving woman?"

"What have you done?" He hissed, eyes narrowing in suspicion. He could simply be baiting him, or he could be telling the truth. The problem with gods was it was almost always the same thing. Truth was not only in the eye of the beholder here, but it could be altered at will by the person with the most power.

Cammy didn't look away, but continued to throw away lives without even seeing which ones, or if the creatures got them all. The amethyst water now had white caps tainted pink with their blood as they tore each other apart in search of their precious morsels. "I've done nothing. Maybe you should ask the lesser what she's done."

Bob was tempted to kill him right now. The surge of anger was almost foreign, and he wanted to ascribe it to Agrona's lingering energy, so he did, but he knew it probably wasn't that simple. Was anything ever that simple?

Jean - or whatever Jean had succumbed to - was contacting Logan for a reason. She knew she was powerful, but not the bounds of that power. So she didn't contact Xavier for fear of hurting him, and did not contact Scott for fear of killing him ... but Logan could probably take it. Out of all of them, Logan could probably shake it off, no matter how bad it got. After all, he'd channeled a god before, right?

Shit.

But why didn't she contact him? Or was she trying, through Logan? He could help her, maybe ... but who said she wanted help? From what he picked up of the jumble of images Jean - or whatever - had thrown Logan's way, there was no sense of distress, no plea for help. She was trying to tell him something, but not asking to be saved.

"Are you going to tell him?" Cammy asked, with a gloating smile. "Tell your avatar that, thanks to you, one of his little friends is gone?"

"Don't you dare try and pass the buck, asshole." But it was his fault, wasn't it? He asked Cammy for help, and asked Jean - along with the others - to act as his agents. And he knew how deceptive Cammy could be - he just assumed he'd be able to cut him off at the pass. But not this time - not while he wasn't here.

Fuck the Higher Realms! They never brought anything but pain and misery. At least the hell dimensions had truth in advertising going for them. The Higher Realms were different types of hell dimensions, just run by beings with a greater capacity for self-deception.

Cammy turned his attention back to his pets, and for just a moment, Bob thought he saw a fire bright creature skim the water never the surface before descending into the jewel toned water.

"You're going to force me to fight you, aren't you?" Bob asked, although it was hardly a question. Cammy, out of action for all this time, was going to take advantage of the chaos in the Higher Realms. He was going to make his move. It was as inevitable as the tide.

"I don't want to," Cammy said, with a forced lightness. "Choose your side well, Bob. Otherwise, you're the first one I have to take down. You and Eris are the biggest threats - you understand."

Bob stared at his profile - his sharp nose, his strong chin - and wondered, "What's protecting you now? If I try to kill you, what's to stop me?"

"Besides myself? Well, I must admit I can't work a room like you, Bob, but I am not friendless. And you're hardly the type to kill in cold blood, are you?"

"It's not cold blood."

"No, but it's not sporting. And do you want to know what you'd lose if you killed me? Or can you put the clues together and take a guess?"

Bob knew. The muscles of his jaw went rigid, and he stood up, fighting back the urge to kick the holy shit out of this son of a bitch. "You motherfucker."

He chuckled, as if this was all great fun. "No, no, that was my cousin. Pay attention, man."

Bob turned and walked down the pier. "This isn't over, Cammy."

"No. I think it's just begun," he agreed, still sticking to his false, smarmy joviality. Like they were still friends. Like he hadn't all but declared war on him.

And Bob feared that was true.

*****

THE END
(Or is it..?) ;^)