“I want what you want, Logan. I want the sword.”

“To kill Fujimori with.”

“To kill Fujimori with,” she agreed.

“And what else? Come on - you ain’t goin’ to all this trouble just to kill a man for the irony. What else is up?”

She studied him again with those starlit eyes of hers, and he wondered how old she was. She looked to be in her twenties, but her eyes were infinitely older. She had seen much in her life, and most of it was ugly. “Who do you wish to resurrect?” She asked, deflecting his question with one of her own.

“That’s none of your business.”

“So we understand each other,” she replied crisply, standing straight and turning back towards the street.

She was going to play it that way, was she?  Fine; whatever. She wasn’t getting ahold of that sword.

After a moment, she added, “I think it would be beneficial if we worked together, Logan. You don’t know what’s been happening in this city, and - as much as I hate to admit it - I could use some help against Fujimori. There have been rumors he’s brought in a Kalivrana to combat me, and if it’s true, I'll need all the help I can get.”

“So much for working alone,” he sniped. So, she wanted something from him too - lucky him. Why did people always want a piece of him? What was wrong with them? Well, he supposed she had an excuse; she was an evil demon. They did things like that. “So what the hell’s a Kalivrana? Some kinda demon?”

“Yes. It’s rare on this plane, but they have a very specialized diet.  They eat vampires.” She glanced at
him over her shoulder, gracing him with that razorblade smile again, a single dark brow quirked up questioningly. “So what do you say, Logan?  You help me with Fujimori, and as soon as I kill him, the sword is all yours.  Is it a deal?”

He was sure she was planning something else, that she was going to use him and screw him over, just like everyone else who’d ever offered to make “deals” with him.  But he could use a guide through Demon Town, especially if she had the bad rep that she seemed to think she had.

He studied her, and tried to decide if pairing off with a vampire who was so obviously lying to him would pay off in the end.

10

Bob realized he’d been under a bit too long when his lungs started to hurt. That was the problem with having a physical body - so much could go wrong, and it was pretty high maintenance.  But what fun you could have with it.

He surfaced for air and let himself float on the surface of his pool, hardly aware that it was perhaps a little too chilly for night swimming, and a touch too damp. But it wasn’t raining, like Helga had claimed when she begged out of a dip; it was just misting.  It probably wouldn’t seriously rain until later.

It was so wonderfully quiet when it rained at night.  Save for the distant screech of tires on wet pavement, the only sound was the drops ruffling the leaves of the trees and pattering down on the ground, and the air always smelled so clean it was almost perfumed. How could have Hel picked staying inside and watching television over this?

He floated like a dead man on top of the water, his shorts clinging to him like a second skin, and looked up at the pinpricks of white stars that made up the Sydney sky overhead, peering through the gray cloud layer as only he could.  Beautiful.

Also, eventually kind of eerie. He decided to sing and fill the void. “With the fire from the fireworks up above, with a gun for a lover and a shot for the pain, you run for cover in the temple of love, shine like thunder, cry like rain - ”

A weird feeling overcame him like an Arctic breeze, leaving a wake of goosebumps on his bare skin, and he knew what it was even before he could see the cracks in reality forming right in front of the mimosa tree he had planted near the southwest corner of his privacy wall - tiny filaments of prismatic light that seemed to arc out briefly before curling in on themselves, twining together and joining forces before being swallow by a growing vertical gash of white light.

“And the temple of love is falling down,” he muttered to himself, as he swam towards the far end of the pool. As soon as he reached the steps on that side, Osiris had popped out whole in this reality, and made a noise of disgust.

“Oh holy Bitmer,” he cursed, ducking his head between his shoulders and holding out his arms like he’d just dipped them in paint. “The sky of this shitty dimension is leaking!”

“It’s rain, Sy,” he corrected, climbing out of the pool and onto the stone walk surrounding it. “Surely you remember it from your time here.”

His hawk eyes flashed with rage. “Here? I was in Egypt. The sky rarely leaked, and when it did, I had Mother put a stop to it.”

Bob tried to swallow his smile, but couldn’t. For all his pseudo-fascist bluster and obsessive love of death, Sy was such a fucking wimp at heart. Even though he was a complete prick, Bob couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. “Got somethin’ for me, or did you just cross the dimensional threshold to whinge?”

More death looks from the Death God, but with a flick of one bony, clawed hand, a small scroll appeared.  Sy opened it and looked at it, even though he surely knew what it said. “There was no Jean Grey who died in Canada during the time frame you gave me, giving and taking two months on both sides.” The scroll then burst into white light and disappeared, and Sy gave him a look like he smelled bad. “Why are you dripping?  Have you sprung a leak as well?”

He gestured back at his pool. “I was swimming, mate.”

His jaw went slack, and he seemed perfectly gob smacked. “You went into sky waste?  On purpose?”

Bob rubbed his eyes, and briefly thought of clawing them out. Well, it would be better than having this conversation with him. “It’s not … look, okay, Jean Grey not dead. So what happened to her?”

“You’re asking me? I only know she’s not dead.”

“Have you checked into Camaxtli?”

“Eris said he’s dead.”

“I didn’t say check with Eris, did I?  Of course she’s going to insist he’s dead, ‘cause she’s a god and she’s supposed to be “infallible”.”

Sy’s posture stiffened, like someone had just jammed a metal pole up his ass. “We are Highers - of course we’re infallible.”

Bob rolled his eyes. “No we’re not.  Just ‘cause we can kill entire realms by coughing doesn’t make us perfect. In fact, it puts our fuck-ups on a cosmic scale.”

His huge eyes narrowed to the size of tangerines. “We do not, as you say, 'fuck up'.  Maybe you do, but we all know what you are.”

“Honest,” Bob shot back. “Unlike the entire lot of you.”

Sy was unmoved, although still grossed out about the weather. “You’re a hypocrite. You accuse us of being snobs, but you think you’re better than us.”

“I wish I was, Sy, but at the end of the day, I know I’m no different than the rest of you. We’re all made of the same coherent energy, and it frustrates the hell out of me.”

He snorted disdainfully. “You should be the god of self-loathing.  It would fit, would it not?”

Bob was going to tell him something nasty about his son and his sister, but then it suddenly occurred to him, “You continue to insist we’re infallible, Sy?  Explain me. You said I was a hideous accident - how do I exist?  If we’re infallible, then I’m perfect.”

Sy opened his mouth to say something, closed it, then tried again, with the same amount of success. After a long moment of fumbling for words, he hissed, “I hate you.” He then disappeared in a flare of white light.

Now that was a way to win an argument.

The misty rain had turned into a full on piddling, but unlike Sy, Bob didn’t care if the sky pissed all over him. He let himself fall backwards into the pool, and let the water gently undulate beneath him, carrying him farther away from the edge.

So Jean didn’t die. She was transmogrified/transformed, or possibly even ripped out of this reality. That did sound like someone protecting their avatar in an extreme manner. Could she even exist in this dimension anymore?  Eventually she could adapt, but maybe not right away; maybe that’s why she hadn’t reappeared yet, and seemed to be content with communicating with Logan in such a cryptic, painful manner. Or there was more going on, just as he feared. Why couldn’t anything be simple?

He wondered if he should tell Logan or not.  No - he needed to find something a bit more than “She didn’t officially die,” and he needed Logan to come back to him first; there was no point in accidentally pushing him away even further.

Jean wasn’t dead. That should have been a good thing.  So why didn’t it feel that way?

11

It was only when Yasha suggested he go back to his hotel and change into some less bloody clothes that Logan realized he'd never registered at a hotel.  He'd gone straight to Leyoshi’s after the jet landed, and it turned out it didn’t matter anyways.  He could go check in now … drenched torso to ankles in blood?  No, he couldn’t see how that was going to work.  He hadn’t brought a change of clothes either.

Yasha rolled her eyes at him, like he was the stupidest thing ever, and took him to a “friend of hers” in Demon Town. They stuck to the roofs until they absolutely had to get down, because she was afraid the scent of his Human blood would bring everyone out of the woodwork.

Demon Town looked like an American tenement slammed smack dab in the middle of Tokyo. All the buildings were drab little cracker boxes, the paint peeling like sunburned skin, rotting on their bases like neglected teeth, the pavement fissured as if it had been broken by an earthquake and never fixed. A feeling of doom overcame him like a shroud as soon as he set foot within its boundaries. Maybe it was a Human repelling spell, or just the depression that seemed to clog the air of this particular neighborhood. He could see, between the corroded walls of two slowly crumbling apartments, a dark ribbon of water that was probably the Sumida gawa (river), but he didn't remember seeing it look so black before.  Maybe the atmosphere of this place eventually sunk into the pores of everything.

He let Yasha lead him into a squat building that looked like a brownstone put through a trash compactor, and inside he groaned at the strong reek of urine and demon sweat. The elevator had two signs posted on it (in Japanese): "Lift Out Of Order" and "This Is Not A Toilet" (that explained the urine smell).  Meaning they had to go up the rickety staircase to the fifth floor.

On their way up, Yasha asked, "So how do you know so much about demons - and killing them - if you are not a hunter?  I know you're not a Watcher."

"I just have experience, all right?  My life is full of demons."

She glanced back at him, one eyebrow raised skeptically. "You really think I'm going to be happy with that?"

"I'm not here to make you happy," he snapped, as a board on the second floor landing groaned in protest of his weight. Even the building was a critic. After a moment, he just decided to tell her, and hope that made her back off. "Look, I'm - I was - the avatar for the Drai'shajan, all right?  That's how I know a lot
of this shit."

She paused several stairs above him, and gave him a somewhat blank look. "The Drai'shajan is a myth."

"No he's not. He's just Australian."

"You're having me on."

"No, I'm not. I wish he didn't exist, but he does. He's this Aussie who owns a bar in Los Angeles, and he's annoying as all fuck."

She continued to study him skeptically. "A fallen Power is an Australian who runs a bar in L.A.?"

"Yeah, I know it sounds bad. But who the fuck would make up something that lame?"

She tilted her head slightly, acknowledging the point. "So what body is he trapped in?"

He had a feeling that was a test, to further judge his veracity. "A Belial demon's body.  But he must have gotten his powers back, 'cause he doesn't seem to need it; it's just a convenience."

"Belial demons are liars."

"No shit, darlin'. Apparently they're also fuck demons as well.  But has any Belial ever been able to make everyone forget they were talking to him?  Or put the smack down on a god?"

That made her eyebrows raise. "A god? Which one?"

"Actually, more than one. Fenrir, Loki, Ares, and Kumiho are the ones I know about."

She leaned against the water stained wall, and said, "I know you're making this up."  Then she paused briefly, and added, "But you aren't, are you?  That's just too wild a story for any human to make up."

"Gee, thanks."

"Still, Humans don't make avatars. They're too weak."

He glared at her. "Do I look weak, sister?" He plucked up his shirt by the hole the spear gun made, just for emphasis.

She glanced away and stood up straight, seemingly chagrined. "Fair enough. Did the Power give you that power?"

It took him a moment to decipher that question. “My healin’ factor?  No, that’s my mutation.”

“Oh. I thought it was your claws and your nose.”

“Those too.”

Her slender brows formed a savage 'v' over her eyes as she glared at him dubiously. “I thought you guys only got one thing.”

He glared right back at her, resenting her “you guys”, and the implication that he was a liar. “It depends. There’s no rules for mutants.”

“Or avatars?”

He shouldn’t have said anything. It should have impressed her, or at least made her back off, but no, of course not. The cache of Bob’s name had finally failed him. “You wanted to know how I knew all this demon shit; I told you. Now let’s get a move on.”

She stood staring down at him for a very long moment, then shook her head and turned around, heading back up the rickety stairs. “I swear, the weirdest people come to Tokyo.”

“This from a vampire,” he carped, following her to the protesting groans of the aging stairs.

Floor number five was, in reality, floor number four - except you rarely found floor number fours in Japanese buildings, just like you rarely found a thirteenth floor in the hotels of the States: the number four closely resembled the kanji meaning death, so four was considered an unlucky and inauspicious number
in most Asian countries where Chinese or Japanese style ideograms were used (the Japanese kanji was highly influenced by the Chinese, whether they admitted it or not).

The halls was narrow and dingy, but at least it didn’t smell like pee.  It smelled more like demon sweat
and - inexplicably - rice pudding, but Logan had learned by now that if he really didn’t want to know, he shouldn’t ask.

She approached a door at the end of the corridor, and as she knocked on it and said, “Cujo, it’s me,” Logan was taken with a distinct smell of celery.

Oh no - it couldn’t be.

There was the sound of locks being thrown, and a muffled voice said through the door, “Are you in trouble again?”

No Cockney accent; what a relief.

“Not as such. Come on, hurry up - the sun’s up in five hours.”

“Moan moan moan. All you vampires are so impatient,” the crystal eyed demon said, finally opening the door. While it wasn’t Rags (what had Lia called this breed? Persaid demons?), it was a guy who looked a lot like Rags. Tall and slender, human-looking save for having yellow crystals in place of eyes, his hair was black as opposed to Rags’s straw blond, and long enough that he wore it in a small ponytail pulled tightly back at the nape of his neck. And those glassy eyes widened upon (somehow) seeing him. “What the fuck is this?  Chi, I’ve asked you not to bring kills here - “

“He’s not a kill,” she said, pushing past him into his apartment. As Logan approached, “Cujo” backed up, seemingly freaked out by all the blood he was currently wearing. Which was fine with Logan. “He needs some clothes. You’re almost his size, aren’t you?”

Logan shut the door as soon as he was inside, and Cujo had rounded on Yasha, staring at her in slack jawed surprise. “What?  Loan a Human my clothes?!  Are you nuts?  I’ll never get the stink out!”

“You should talk, Celery Boy,” he snapped, glancing around Cujo’s flat. It was small and efficient, pretty much what you’d expect from a Japanese apartment, but what you wouldn’t expect was the shagadelic bachelor pad Cujo had turned it into. Black light posters lined the walls, while lava lamps of various colors and shapes sat on low tables around the room, giving questionably dim illumination to the scene, and yet it was still unable to suppress the glow coming off the Kool-Aid orange colored shag carpet.  A T.V. with its sound muted was currently showing one of those famously brutal and humiliating Japanese game shows, and a hand-rolled cigarette smoldered in an ashtray on a low table in from the screen, where a can of Coke and a bowl of steaming udon noodles also sat, awaiting Cujo's return.  The odd thing was, the cigarette was neither a cancer stick or pot; it smelled like he was actually smoking dried green tea. Well hell, he was a demon - it was possible that was his version of pot.

“His bedroom’s back there,” Yasha said, waving her hand towards a blue beaded curtain that hung in the doorway beyond the television. “Go get whatever, but nothing expensive.”

“Hey,” Cujo protested, but he made no move to stop Logan as he went towards the curtain.  Instead, he decided to argue with Yasha. Logan had only known her for maybe twenty minutes, and already he knew that was a pointless exercise. “What the hell is this about, Yash?  Don’t tell me you’re fucking Humans now.”

“Don’t even joke,” she snarled. “He’s helping me with Fujimori, that‘s all.  Got it?”

As the curtain clacked behind him, he suddenly wondered if Cujo was an ex-boyfriend of hers. Weird. He couldn’t see that match happening at all. Then again, did vampires have social lives? Did they date? What the hell was a date with a vampire like? A light lunch at a blood bank, followed by cemetery prowling?

“Yash, if you know what’s good for you, let this thing with Fujimori go. You know how fucking dangerous that maniac is. Maybe you should go to Hong Kong, lay low until he forgets about you.  And how’s a goddamn Human gonna help you with him, anyways?”

Cujo’s bedroom was more tasteful than his living room, but then again, it would have to be. He had a futon with a questionable black and white zebra style cover, a free-standing closet on one end of the room, a bamboo blind covered window about the size of a book on the other side, and a small chest of drawers, where a blue lava lamp reflected its weak glow in a mirror. It was enough light for him to see by at least.

“He’s more than Human.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning?  Don’t you watch the fucking news?  He’s a mutant, that’s what.”

It took a little searching, but Logan found a plain t-shirt (he owned a lot with lots of kitschy, nonsensical English words slapped together, like Homey Pancake Coupe) and a pair of jeans that might fit him, if he was lucky. He didn’t know what to do with his bloody clothes, so after stripping them off, he tossed them in the far corner, hoping they left stains on Cujo's hideous carpet.

“Fine, so he can communicate with the dead - how the fuck is that gonna help you with Fujimori?  He has Berserkers on his payroll!”

There was something about the feeling of their argument that told Logan they were indeed exes of some sort, and he couldn’t quite wrap his head around it.  Her sleeping with him?  (Actually, her sleeping with anyone - the phrase “ball busting bitch” had occurred to him).  It must have been difficult being a demon and trying to have a sex life.

He sat down on Cujo’s futon to put his boots back on, tuning out their continuing banter, and wondered how he got such a stupid nickname - if it was indeed a nickname. Had he ever found out why they called Rags “Rags”?  Maybe Persaid demons were only notable for their silly, inappropriate names.

Fuck, he was tired. He felt dizzy just leaning over to lace up his boots, but that was probably the blood loss. He had yet to get a drink, to aid the restoration of his fluid level, and he could feel the metal weighing down his bones - always a bad sign.  He sat back against the somewhat uncomfortable futon and let his head fall back against the frame, as cowardly Cujo continued to try and fruitlessly talk Yasha out of revenge.

He decided to rest his eyes, just for a minute.  Just until the lover’s spat was over.

He didn’t remember falling asleep until he woke up someplace else.

12

Scott told himself, for the seventh or eighth time, that Ororo couldn’t be more wrong. He was not “hiding himself away”; he had things to do. Important things, and there was never enough time in the day to do them all. And that’s why he was spending a rare “free” afternoon in the garage, cleaning spark plugs.

Oh god, he was pathetic.

He tried not to think about it, as he started working on the motorcycle that he’d gotten to replace the one Logan had taken from him. It was used, but in very good shape for it. A few modifications, and it would be -

- (pathetic, pathetic, pathetic) -

- even better than the last one. But there was carbon in the exhaust, and he didn’t like that -

- (you are so fucking sad, Summers) -

- so he really should take a look at the entire engine, break it down. Maybe the fuel was low grade.

Just as he was considering sealing the garage door and starting one of the cars, the inner door burst open, and a slightly breathless Bobby was standing there, staring at him with his wide, ice blue eyes. “Mister Summers,” he said, unfailingly polite, even in his obvious agitation. “You have to see this.”

Bobby hung around just long enough to make sure he was coming, then took off again. “What is it?” He called after him, suddenly very concerned. Ororo had taken some of the younger kids out to the mall, and many of the other kids who were still on speaking terms with their parents were off visiting them.  The school was probably at one-sixth of its normal capacity, and that probably accounted for the eerie silence in the hallways. If someone wanted to attack now - in spite of it being broad daylight - they probably wouldn’t meet much resistance.

The pursuit ended in the front room, where Rogue and Brendan loitered on the furniture, and the television blared loudly, filling the mostly empty space with noise.  Scott knew instantly, from the way that both Bobby and Rogue were staring at the screen, that that’s what they wanted him to see.

For a moment, Scott thought it was some kind of joke. On the T.V. was a man in what appeared to be a FedEx uniform, talking to an unseen reporter as a slightly unsteady cameraman filmed the hastily cobbled together interview. “ - at the Wessex, and it was the damnedest thing I ever saw.  The flames just jumped from one building to another.  It was like it was targeting people.”

The screen cut to the reporter, a tall Hispanic woman with one of those frighteningly plastic local news reporter faces, and helmet-hair an anchorman would have been proud of.  A chyron flashed on the left side of the screen, identifying the woman as Marcy Toklas, reporting for a station he’d never heard of.
“It has taken firefighters six hours to get the majority of the flames under control.  There are no casualty figures as of yet, although St. Vincent’s is reporting that its emergency room is being swamped by people suffering from burns and smoke inhalation. There has been no official response to multiple witness accounts that the flames seemed to former tunnels, and “jump” between the six buildings that were engulfed in the conflagration - ”

Now he knew why Bobby wanted him to see this. “Pyro.”  The Professor had been unable to find him or Mystique, leading him to assume that Magneto had figured out a way to shield them from his telepathy as well.  Scott had assumed that there would be something that would give them away eventually, but he hadn’t thought that it would be Pyro.  But then again, why not?  He was just a kid, and not a very disciplined one, either.

The T.V. was now showing live pictures of charred buildings fuming like smokestacks. “Where is this?” He asked, just throwing it out for either one of them.  Sadly, a lot of America looked like other parts of America; distinctions were being lost.

“Chicago,” Rogue said. She was sitting on the couch, legs folded up beneath her, ineptly trying to hide a Game Boy by tucking it under a cushion.

It didn’t look like a good part of Chicago either. What the hell were they doing there?  And why the hell had Pyro decided to light up half a block? “I’m going to talk to the Professor,” he said, turning away.

“If you go, I have to go with you,” Bobby said quickly. “I cancel him out.”

That was true. Whatever John could light up, Bobby could freeze.

“And I can take his powers away,” Rogue said, standing up. Their eyes were bright with eagerness, either just longing to get out of here and do something, or dying to go after Pyro.

He sighed, and said, “Look, if I go, it’s only for reconnaissance. Surely they’re long gone - Magneto isn’t going to stick around when Pyro makes a big scene - but I want to know why they were there. That’s all. There’s not going to be a fight, and we are not suiting up.  Is that clear?”

They nodded, and Rogue looked vaguely disappointed.  Maybe she had a grudge against John now, but he had no idea - none of the kids talked about him (that he knew of), and he’d become something like the elephant in the living room: no one mentioned it, but it was impossible to ignore.

Brendan was sitting in an arm chair, pretty much ignoring everything. He was pretending to read the New Yorker, but he actually had a comic called 'Transmetropolitan' hidden in there. “Brendan,” Scott said, gaining his startled attention. “You want to prep the jet?”

His draw dropped slightly. “Me?”

Brendan still had questionable taste in boyfriends, but he had lots of promise.  His mutant eidetic memory allowed him to repeat things to perfection after only seeing them once, hence his being rated to fly the jet after only two weeks; in fact, he could have been rated to fly it after one lesson. But Scott had drilled him first, and run him through more simulations than most of the advanced students. Watching him, he had become duly impressed by how he handled emergency situations; yes, he was scared, but he never panicked.  He just ran through all of his voluminous memories, and pulled out what he needed to solve the problem.  He’d actually done better in one crisis sim than Scott, but he hadn’t mentioned that.

If he was just able to do things by rote, he wouldn’t have been very good.  But Bren was better than that; he was a street kid (sadly), and he had learned a lot that you simply couldn’t teach, for good and for ill. His survival instincts were honed to a degree that most teenagers couldn’t claim; most people in their teens felt invincible. Brendan knew he was not, and that no one was.

He was a natural leader. He didn’t want to lead anyone, but that’s what made him perfect for the role.
The best leaders were often the ones that didn’t want it.

It was then that Scott heard a squelching noise in the hall, and cringed.  Oh god, no.

“So where are we goin’?” Chameleon asked, looking in on them from the corridor.