18

Xavier felt Wesley’s pain long before he came in the door.

Having only sensed him over the phone before, when he'd called to speak to Logan, he knew Wesley was a quietly intense man, intelligent but much darker and with much more depth than he ever let on.  He was calm, as always, but he was also always thinking, and he had a strange knee-jerk tendency towards violence.  But Angel wasn’t lying when he said Wes had been fighting the supernatural all his life; certainly he’d been trained all his life, to the point where much of his reflexive reactions were those he'd been taught. Subtle brainwashing.

But it wasn’t all rote.  He was extremely driven, almost frighteningly so.  Case in point: despite hurting, and being well aware of the seriousness of his injuries, as soon as he'd reached the lab, he'd slapped a butterfly bandage on the gash on his scalp, solely so the blood wouldn’t drip in his eyes while he worked, and then took some synthetic adrenaline from his “magic kit” and injected it into his own thigh.  He knew, even if he wasn’t off on the dosage, just how easily he could give himself a heart attack, but the drug would make him less aware of the pain; keep him sharper, keep him focused.  It also might thin his blood and make the bleeding greater, hence the bandage on his head.

As frightening as the automatic disregard for his own health was, at least he had been upstairs trying to stop the destruction.  Xavier knew what was going on - he could feel the fear, the pain, and even feel the heavy footsteps of the invaders vibrating through the walls.  But could he do a damn thing about it?  He couldn’t even get a sense of the attackers; they were telepathically blind to him, their brains far too alien for him to even sense at any level.  It was troublesome, almost as much as what he was preparing to do.

Once the odd rituals began, Wesley assured him he didn’t actually have to believe in any of it for it to work, which was certainly a relief, but he still felt silly having a spell cast on him, to say nothing of having something painted on his forehead.  What was this, a carnival?

The “paint” they used smelled like swamp water full of aluminum salts, and tingled a bit.  The symbol painted on his head was merely a triangle inside a circle, with a small dot like a blotch inside the triangle. It was suppose to repel any god who wanted to make direct contact with his mind - an odd thought if there was ever one.  Wesley had warned him several times that no Human had made direct contact with god energy and survived, and certainly no telepath.  Then he'd offered to take his place.

He was no telepath but Wesley was pretty sure he could induce possession of himself by a demon capable of telepathy, and through that, do what they were asking him to do.  The idea was horrendous - there was no way in hell Xavier would allow anyone to do such a thing to spare him - but Wesley had been deadly serious.  If he had balked, Wes would have done it, even if it meant he’d never regain control over his own body.  That was the former Watcher's frightening intensity and darkness, rearing its ugly head.

It did explain how he could be friends with Logan.  Logan didn’t make friends easily, and the few times Xavier had encountered Wesley over the phone, he sounded calm and very laid back, the picture of stereotypical English reserve.  And while he seemed that way in person too, it was clear that most of that reserve was actually a steely resolve.  He had witnessed much horror - both figurative and literal - and he had all but sacrificed his life to put a stop to it.  There were no half measures in anything Wesley did, and that made him a natural to get along with Logan; the Wolverine wasn’t known for his half measures either. If you engaged in any sort of moderation, it made being friends with Logan somewhat difficult.

It had occurred to him that Wesley would actually make an excellent team member.  No, he wasn’t a mutant, but he was certainly knowledgeable about many things that were obscure to them, and he was obviously resourceful and if not completely fearless, then extremely hard to unnerve.  And Xaxier had to admit he’d love to see what class he would teach if he could set him up as an instructor.  It was an added bonus as well that he was one of the rare normals who didn’t recoil in horror at the idea of mutants - and why would he?  He’d been around the inexplicable all his life.  His mind broke things into the categories of Humans and Demons, and the sub-categories were simply ‘good, bad, neutral, could go either way depending on motivation’, and that was pretty much it.  Yet he was obviously more than happy where
he was, even though he still internally winced when he said he worked for Wolfram and Hart, and Xavier knew there would be no luring him away.  Still, it would have been nice to show the kids that there were other normals out there like him.  And his intellect and knowledge would have been an asset in itself.

Cerebro was as prepared and reinforced as it was ever going to be, and so was he.  It was thought - hoped - that the machine interface would be another level of protection, beyond spells and amulets, and whatever they had in store for him.  He had done most of his interacting with Wesley, as Amaranth was off in her own section of the lab, holding everything together in a distressingly literal sense.  All he could sense from her was power, somewhat like her grandfather, and yet not exactly like him (it?) at all.

He turned his chair around to face Wesley as the doors to Cerebro slid open.  Wes had put on his poker face; appearing to not be in pain, and even somewhat bored.  Even if you ignored the bandage on his head, it was hard to ignore the sweat trailing from his neck, or the dilation of his pupils.  But his hands
were steady as he carried the small lead box inside.  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” He asked.

It was all Xavier could do not to laugh.  Wes was concerned about him, when he himself had just been thrown through a wall upstairs? “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.  How will this work?”

Wesley came out farther on the catwalk, and opened the lid of the box.  The only thing in it was something that looked like a small, rock-encrusted skull, but it was unlike any skull he had ever seen.  It could have been the skull of an infant Human, but there were three eye sockets, and the jaw was oddly lengthened, and held several small, sharp teeth.  It looked like a strange hybrid between human and shrew, and it seemed to glow with a sickly green inner light. Wesley had told him it was the skull of Forlescioni, a highly prized object in black magic circles.  Xavier hadn’t asked why, and Wesley had not volunteered the info. Honestly, he didn’t want to know its history; it felt wrong, and it smelled like blood, even though there wasn’t a drop to be found on it. (On Wesley, yes, but that was a different smell.) 

“There’s a protection spell cloaking this from the notice of most beings, but anything at a god level of power will sense it.  It will, to a degree, throw an aura of protection around you.  Hopefully, it’s the bait we need.  If not, we‘ll go to plan B.”

“Which is..?”

“Still in development stages,” he admitted with a grimace. “Let’s see what happens with this.”

Not exactly inspiring, but he could understand.  When did anyone have time to plan anything?  This was all being done on the fly. If they'd had time, perhaps they could have prevented all of this in the first place. Xavier nodded, and glanced at the box. “Where does it go?”

“As close to you as possible.  Perhaps on an unobtrusive part of the console?”

He wheeled his chair back into position, in front of the control panel of Cerebro, and let Wesley place it where he thought it was best.  The box was small and didn’t take up much room, but it radiated evil like
an indefinable odor.  Perhaps it was “contained” for now, but the sooner it was gone, the better. “I’ll be outside,” Wesley told him.  Needlessly - Xavier already knew that.

He just nodded, and asked, “How are things upstairs?”

As if on cue, blood started to trickle from beneath his soaked bandage, but Wesley tilted his head so it wouldn’t fall into his eyes. “Not well, but not critical either, not anymore.  Timely intervention by one of Bob’s fellow gods helped avert disaster.  Marcus is keeping an eye on things.”

Xavier caught the thought he didn’t voice - “For now,” - but he knew better than to comment on it. Besides, he could sense Marcus’s pain from here, but along with that pain was a fiery and resentful anger, that - if he was anything like Logan (and he must have been) - would feed him and keep him going.  The desire to make someone pay was a sadly common Human response, but it might just keep him alive.  It very well might have to.

“I’ll do my best here,” Xavier told him, picking up his Cerebro interface.

“..All we can ask,” Wesley replied, taking that as his cue to leave.  But at the door, he paused, and added solemnly, “Good luck.”

With all these Ganesha pendants about, it was almost a joke, but he knew Wesley was serious. “To you
as well,” he said, and waited until Wesley was clear of the doors before putting on the interface, which he knew Scott - and everyone - thought of casually as his “helmet”.

Now they were all going to find out if Cerebro could help him get in contact with 'Jean' or not, and if either of them would survive the experience.

19

 
Beating the shit out of the Hierophant wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it should have been.

Or sure, it was fun for a minute but, without access to his magic, Greg was castrated; about as effective as a door off its hinges.  Bob certainly had no problem tapping into the “power conduit” in his mind, though, which had led them to here. Wherever here was.

What it was was obvious: a crystal palace.  And not just any old palace either; this place was fucking massive.  Logan hadn’t seen the outside since they materialized within the foyer, but the arched, cathedral ceiling was about a hundred feet above them, and the walls easily eighty feet apart.  Adding to the impression of space was a lack of furnishings.  The few pieces there were seemed to be made of the same translucent, ice-like crystal as the rest of the place.  The only way he could actually see the objects at all was due to the flickers of multicolored lights that seemed to race through the walls and the floors at irregular intervals, like fragments of an aurora borealis being used as bullets.  He wondered what the hell the lights were supposed to mean, regardless of all this crystal.

“This could belong to Donald Trump, but I haven’t seen his name anywhere, so it can’t be,” Yasha commented wryly, looking around.

They followed Bob down the glass hall, their footsteps barely making any noise at all, which was truly
odd since their voices seemed to echo no matter how quiet they spoke.  “This is the home realm of Neb-er-tcher,” Bob told them.

“Did you just clear your throat?” Logan asked.  That could not be a real name.

Bob shook his head. “It means “lord to the utmost limit” - in other words, Lord of the Universe.”

“You’re shitting us,” Yasha instantly replied, exchanging a nervous glance with Logan.  If he wasn’t, what did that fucking mean?

“Sadly, no. Now understand that’s just the P.R. spin - reality is always a bit different.  He doesn’t actually rule the entire universe; nobody could deal with that kind of paperwork.  Besides, gods are as territorial as dogs - everybody needs a tree to piss on, or there’s hell to pay.”

Logan really didn't need the mental image of a god taking a leak on a tree, and yet there it was.  Somehow he bet that image wouldn‘t make it to the 700 Club fundraiser collector plates.  “But I’m guessing he’s really powerful.” He now looked around with greater suspicion, and tried to track one of those prismatic bullets within the wall, but they were moving just too damned fast.  It was more an impression of color than anything truly tangible.

“Yes, quite.  Let me tell you a story about something that no Human has ever been aware of.  You can't tell anybody else, ‘cause the Powers That Be will make me bend over and assume the position just for telling you as it is.  Now, in myth, it’s a title that was given to Osiris when he supposedly put himself back together after Seth hacked him to pieces.  That isn’t true. I don’t think Seth ever laid a hand on his brother, even though he was an unbelievably vicious bastard, although it is pitifully true you can’t kill Osiris - death gods are almost impossible to kill.  It can be done in theory, but it is so fucking hard you’d never believe it.

“Anyhoo, Neb-er-tcher is a real thing, that really existed for a bit, until it was determined erasure was necessary.  See, Nebby was an experiment that - in the classic way of these things - went horribly wrong.”

“Are you gonna tell us he’s a god version of a Frankenstein?” Logan said this with a tacit warning in his voice. If Bob confirmed that, he would slug him.

“No, more of a god hybrid.”

“”Hybrid?” Yasha repeated.  Logan envied her ability to keep her voice completely neutral. “Hybrid with what?  Demon?  Human?”

“Powers That Be.”

Both he and Yasha stopped in their tracks, but Bob kept walking.  Finally he paused, and looked back at them curiously. “Problem with that concept?”

“A god isn't a Power That Be’s … is…whatever the fuck?” Logan struggled to ask.

“Well … not exactly.  It’s a kind of semantical difference.”

“If it was just semantical, there’d be no such thing as a hybrid,” Yasha pointed out.

“Let’s just say that they’re both mostly energy based beings, but on different frequencies. The thing is,
the PTB’s thought it might be an interesting experiment to see what life among certain gods were like - especially since they had reasonable suspicions that some other gods were scheming against them. So
they created Nebby as both a solution and a test.”

“Let me guess,” Logan sighed, anticipating the rest of this story.  “He went insane, and they sent him
away, like they did Lucifer.”

“No, he was just a complete dick.  He was shifted off to a side dimension so he couldn’t bother them or their dimensions anymore, and they locked him in a time loop to make sure he never bugged ‘em again. You know they don‘t like to kill their own kind; that‘s something Lower beings do.”  He then turned and started walking down the seemingly endless glass corridor again.  They had no choice but to follow him.

When you had Bob, who needed hallucinogenic drugs?  “Time loop?” Logan suppressed the urge to add “…like a Froot Loop?” because then he’d just be a deliberate smartass, same as Bob.

“A Moebius strip of time.  He’s been living the same day over and over again for centuries, and he doesn’t know it.”

“I don’t care how dumb he is - after the first twenty years or so, it had to occur to him that the same thing happens every day,” Yasha replied.

Bob held up his finger - not the middle one - as if about to make a startling point. “Ah, are you thinking of lame comedies where time goes over and over until someone gets something right?  Sorry to shatter the Hollywood illusion, but when time repeats, a small section isn’t exempt.  It all repeats.”

A bit of poser, but Logan attempted to take a stab at what he was attempting to convey. “Are you saying his memory is wiped clean?  Or his thought patterns repeat themselves?”

“Bingo!  A stuffed koala for the hairy guy.  Yes, his thought patterns repeat, and he has no memory of having had them before - how could he?  There’s no time to remember. He’s always starting over with the same slate, he’s not aging, he’s not anything - he just is, existing in a perfect bubble of time that he is completely oblivious to.”

“Until now?” Only the slight lilt in Yasha's voice indicated it was a question.

“Well, until recently. There was a dimensional breach that cut across not only the Earth plane, but was large enough to destabilize the regions between - of which, this is one.”

“The chaos wave?” Logan commented.  It sounded like a question, but really he was just looking for confirmation.

“But isn’t that part of the attack on the Earth plane?” Yasha asked, giving him a curious look.

“And this time, the pretty lady wins a stuffed panda,” Bob said, giving her the thumbs up sign over his shoulder. “The destabilization was the catalyst for all of this; it was the hit that sent all these dominoes falling down, that opened up the dimension to a cascade attack.”

“So what caused the destabilization?” Logan demanded, wondering why everything with Bob had to be
so fucking complicated. “Do you know?”

“I do but, trust me, you don’t want to hear it.”

“Why the fuck wouldn’t I want to hear it?  I do, so fucking tell me already...if you actually know.”

Bob sighed heavily, shoulders slumping, and said, “Fine.  It was Jean.”

Logan alone stopped walking.  But when she realized he had, Yasha stopped too, raising an eyebrow at him.  Bob kept on walking, like this really wasn't something he wanted to deal with. "What the fuck d'ya mean it was Jean?" He snapped, glaring at his back. (For all the good it would do ...)

"She has Cammy's energy signature." Bob finally stopped again, but he only turned part ways towards him, as if afraid to commit to any farther. "So when she manifested on the Earth plane - to rescue you - the universal fabric responded as if Cammy himself had come back.  Did I ever tell you he was kinda shown the door out of here?  He freaked out the other gods, but eventually pissed off one more powerful than him.  It was a "Here's your hat, what's your hurry?" kind of situation."

"Meaning what?  That the Earth plane was booby-trapped if his energy ever registered again?"

Bob briefly nodded his head from side to side, as if the thoughts sloshing in his brain were heavy enough
to threaten his balance. "Something like that."

Logan threw up his hands and rolled his eyes.  Un-fucking-believable. "And you didn't see fit to share this information?!"

"I didn't know about it," Bob protested. "This was a bit before my time, okay?  And Cammy was never the most forthcoming of my associates.  Maybe he didn't even know - I rather suspect he didn't."

"So you're saying Jean can never come back without causing the end of the world?"

"No. I assume the energy signature will differentiate - she's in the driver's seat now, after all - and now that I know about the dimensional bomb, I can defuse it.  She can come back ... I'm just not sure it's wise."

Bob started to turn away again, but Logan quickly said,  "Oh no you don't, you're not getting away with that, asshole. Why the fuck don't you think it's wise?"

He sighed, as if Logan was asking him to juggle the moons of Saturn.  "Look, she has his energy - she'll attract his enemies, and he's got quite a few.  Jeeze, I wonder why;  you'd think a bloodthirsty, power hungry war god would be Mr. Personality. And then there's the fact that Humans and god energy have never mixed well.  That is part of the reason Humans don't make good avatars.  Present company excepted, of course, but you're a pretty unique case."

He snorted derisively. "'Cause ya can't kill me?  Camaxtli didn't kill Jean either."

"No, Logan. You're a unique case because the power doesn't corrupt you.  My gods, man: you have the power of ultimate destruction at your fingertips - and you don't want it.  I can't take it away from you fast enough."

Logan had no idea why, but that statement was startling. What was that supposed to mean?  Bob must have seen the confusion in his mind, because his eyes softened, his look turning oddly sympathetic. "You've lived with the power to destroy people for a very long time, mate, probably longer than you will ever realize. And you don't want it anymore.  That makes you more special than any mutation."

He almost asked him what he meant by that, but suddenly he didn't want to know.  He didn't want to hear this, and he didn't want to see the pity on Bob's pretty boy face.

"Shut up," he snapped, but he really didn't know if it was aimed at Bob or the thoughts in his own head, or both.  Maybe the only positive side to his memory loss was that he would never know his exact, personal body count.

Bob just shrugged, as if that was fair, and started walking again. "It's not a bad thing, mate.  I wish you didn't think it was."

"You can't corrupt that which has already been thoroughly corrupted," Logan muttered, more to himself than Bob.  That's what Bob was really telling him, whether he'd admit it or not.

But Yasha came up beside him and slipped her arm into his.  His first instinct was to yank his arm away, but he managed to tamp down the impulse.  He had so few friends, he might as well keep the ones he had. "Before things get heavy," she whispered, doing her best to keep this between them. "I wanted you to know, no matter what, it's not your fault."

He stared at her curiously, wondering what she was talking about.  His assassin past?  Jean?  Bob? "What?"

"If something happens to me - doubtful, since I'm working under a vengeance god, but you never know -
I don't want you blaming yourself.  It is my decision to be here and make these choices, and no man - especially a Hu-man - is going to take that away from me."

He blinked rapidly, trying to assimilate this, wondering what had brought it on. "Why are you telling me this? What do you know?"

"I know you," she said, her eyes steady on his. Ever since she'd been working under the aegis of Ammit, she had a bright filament of scarlet energy surrounding her deep black pupils. "I see that flash of guilt in your eyes every time Jean is mentioned.  I never want to be that, Logan; I never want to be another reason for you to beat yourself up. Is that clear?  Because, trust me - if you die, I'm not taking it personally."

He scowled at her for that, but it soon gave way to a small smile.  God, he loved these tough women.  He had no idea why, but he liked ones who were willing to try and kick his ass, whether they actually could or not. "You're a stone cold woman," he replied, struggling to keep it deadpan.

She gave her hair a bit of a model flip as she turned away.  "Don't I know it, Romeo.  They don't call me Lady Blood just 'cause I drink it."

"But you do."

"Yes, well, the name works on many levels." She flashed him a toothy grin as she started to pull him along, up the corridor, and he couldn't help but chuckle.  The sound echoed in this oddly eternal hall, and when it bounced back to his ears it sounded foreign, like a noise from another life.

But it wasn't bad. It wasn't bad at all.

20

When he actually had a moment to reflect, Angel tried to figure out how many seemingly hopeless battles he had been in his life.  Until now, he hadn’t realized he’d made a minor career of it.

Clearly a nest of vampires or marrow suckers was just never a big deal - after all, no matter how many there were, they were usually punks or poseurs anyways, the kind of puffed up, self-aggrandized assholes he could take out en masse while sleepwalking.  No, he was thinking of these various apocalypses he had averted over the years; many with Buffy, some not, and he was pretty sure Angelus had actually stopped at least one (mostly out of spite - if there was going to be an end to everything, only he would bring it about - no one else). It was like stopping the end of the world had become some kind of perverse hobby for him, and he didn’t know what to do to get out of it.  It wasn’t like he could let the world end because he was tired of getting in these massive, harrowing battles, but … would it have killed all encompassing evil to just take a vacation sometime?  Maybe go to Tahiti, get a suntan, just knock it off with the terrorizing and the mass-muirdering for once?

Oh man, he must have taken a harder blow to the head than he thought.

Storm’s idea to blow away all the shadow soldiers was completely sound at first, but of course it wasn’t going to be that simple.  The shadows shape-shifted  into something like bats, and rode the wind until they became something akin to a hurricane of razor blades.  They couldn’t be “blown away” either.  But lightning seem to fry them, which was a good thing, although the end result was an horrific stench like acetate and singed hair.

The axe, tainted with Bob’s blood, seemed to be bad news for all of them, much like it was for the sky and the ground. Therefore, they kept trying to divest him of it, swarming him, trying to get his legs out from under him, risky suicide moves that would pay off if they accomplished their goal.  His teammates watched his back as best they could, but he was making some wild swings, and had come inadvertently close to hurting them with the blade.  So, sensibly, Spider and Storm had tried to pull the battle farther away from him, but at the same time, Piotr remained, smashing and punching the shadow soldiers and not worrying about the axe, because now that he was all metal, the worst contact could do was cause a spit of sparks when metal hit metal. (And - thankfully - the shadows didn’t like sparks either.)

For the most part, the shadows were only partially corporeal, which added to the challenge of trying to keep these faceless minions down.  But when they hit you in one massive wave, they were as corporeal as a goddamn brick wall, which is why his head ached like a bruise.  He didn’t stay on his knees for long though; he couldn’t afford to - none of them could afford to.  There were too many of these things - like an endless road, the horizon always seemed a steady distance away from them, no matter how far they went - and it felt like they were fighting for nothing more than a stalemate; running to stand still.  Kalfu himself had disappeared once the battle had started (well, at least in a tangible form - Angel was sure he was directing the entire skirmish from somewhere close-by), and although what he could see of this dimension appeared to be growing, thanks to his magical axe (wasn’t that the name of a porno fantasy movie playing on Sunset?), it was still oddly undefined, like a two dimensional drawing of a world; nothing real, nothing true. It was almost as disorienting as the wave after wave of shadows - you expected something you could see and touch; you expected the world to be as complete as you were.  But Kalfu’s universe was like an  incomplete afterthought; he needed nothing more than darkness given form to sustain him, so that was all that was here.

Angel had always thought Bob as a god was bad, and that estimation hadn't changed.  But now he had found something worse:  A god with no imagination or desire at all was a hollow, dead thing. Correction: he, himself was a dead thing, but he knew he had desires, and hoped he had some imagination; calling Kalfu dead was an insult to the dead.  Kalfu was just … empty.  A void within a frame.  The abyss, personified.

And even when his own cold blood started to trickle down his face, Angel kept fighting, because he couldn’t think of anything worse than dying (for good) in this place, and belonging to this shell of a god.

He felt like his arms were about to be ripped from their sockets (the axe seemed to grow heavier the more he used it) when the shadows abruptly stopped; suddenly disappearing into themselves.  They were left alone on the partially-illuminated, badly-formed plane, panting and sweating, exhausted but stinking of adrenaline. Everybody was cut and bleeding (even Piotr, whose metal had been cut by those things; it was odd to see metal bleed), and everybody was looking around, sharp eyed and paranoid. “What just happened?” Spider asked. “Did we win?”

“I don’t see how,” Storm admitted warily.

Everyone moved together until they made a back to back quartet, the safest way to be.  “No way, it’s a trick,” Angel insisted, wanting desperately to be wrong, but sure he wasn’t.  “The shock troops weren’t working, so now he’s going to pull out the big guns.”  It was a small miracle that none of them were seriously injured or killed, but he knew no one wanted to die, especially in this place.  They were pretty good fighters, all in all.  Not his usual crew, but not bad.

“What are the big guns?” Storm asked.

Angel shook his head, and hefted up his axe, ready to swing at the first aberrant movement that caught his eye. He really didn’t know, but in a place as soulless as this, it could only be truly hideous.

Oddly enough, Angel was sure if Kalfu had any semblance of imagination, it would come forth now.