“No,” Scott insisted, not even bothering to turn around. “You’re not coming with us.”

“Well I ain’t staying here,” she shot back. Either she didn’t get that she wasn’t welcome, or - most likely scenario - didn’t care.

“Why can’t she come along?” Brendan wondered, putting his magazine down and getting up. “Logan ain’t here, and we could use a bad ass with us in case, ya know, something goes wrong.”

“Aren’t you the bad ass around here?” Bobby replied.

Brendan flashed him a middle finger, but it was all teasing. Although it was now all just water under the bridge, no one had forgotten that Brendan had single handedly (well, with one bit of help from Matt) beaten back an attack by a mutant hit squad. Scott wondered if things wouldn’t have gone worse for them if Chameleon was on the team at the time.

Scott was briefly disappointed that he wasn’t considered a “bad ass”, but he quickly got over it - after all, wasn’t that just another way of saying thick headed bully? He’d rather take a pass on that. “You’re not even a peripheral member of the team, Cressida,” he pointed out. “You don’t even want to be here. Why would you come along?”

She shrugged. “Something to do.”

Oh yeah, that was a good reason.

“C’mon, Chico, let’s go prep us a jet,” Chameleon said, her voice becoming strangely deep. When he looked at her, he saw she had morphed form into Logan.

Brendan joined her, looking slightly goggle eyed at her instantaneous transformation, and asked, as he followed her down the hall, “So, can you mimic him wearing a sleeveless shirt?”

Scott sighed heavily and shook his head, aware he’d probably never get rid of her. He could tell her she wasn’t rated to fly the jet, but she would insist she could fly anything, and he was not going to argue with her in front of the kids, especially since he knew they’d probably be on her side. Had they no idea what a dangerous person she was? She wasn’t “an old friend of Logan’s” - she was an assassin, plain and simple. (And how did he tell them that without freaking them out, or inadvertently glamorizing such a thing?)

Well, maybe he should look at it this way: if Magneto was still around, he’d assume he’d be only confronting X-Men. He’d never be prepared for another rogue Organization agent, who didn’t have a single ounce of metal to her name.

Come to think of it, he sort of did want to see the look on Magneto’s face when he was confronted with something he hadn’t prepared for, and Mystique with a shapeshifter who was even better at it than she was. That might make putting up with Cressida worth it.

13

Logan found himself staring up at a bright blue sky, dotted with fluffy clouds like wisps of cotton, while the air was redolent of water and greenery, and birds sang happily in the trees.

Okay, this was wrong on several different levels. Wasn’t he in the apartment of a Persaid demon named Cujo just a second ago?

He sat up, and figured he was somewhere in Central Park, but a slightly idealized - or at least cleaner - version. He could feel fabric beneath him, and found he was laying on a blanket, probably spread out for a picnic. What the fuck? This wasn’t his memory. So whose memory was it?

He felt a sharp burst of fear induced adrenaline as he quickly looked behind him, and found Jean sitting several feet away, eating an apple.

He stared at her in surprise, wondering if interaction was at all possible, when she suddenly said, “I prevented a mugging here once, you know.” She paused to chew a bite of her apple, then went on. “I didn’t mean to catch the thought, you understand, but I did. I made them change their mind and go home.”

He looked down the slightly sloped hill (were there hills in Central Park? She had definitely elaborated this scenario a great deal), trying to find what she seemed to be staring at, but he saw nothing beyond a very run of the mill duck pond and a bike path. He saw no one familiar looking down there either. “Jeannie?” He asked, still a little startled. Was it her? Was this completely psychic, or had he actually been removed from where he was? It all seemed so damn real it was truly disorienting.

She just chewed on her apple, not looking at him, and he started to wonder if this dreamscape was interactive in the least. Perhaps not.

There was a wicker basket off to his right, anchoring down the corner of the blue plaid blanket, and a familiar smell made him look inside. Beer. “You don’t drink beer,” he said.

“I know, neither does Scott,” she replied, finally speaking directly to him. “But I didn’t think he’d like you being here, so I removed him.”

That sounded far more sinister than she probably intended. He took a beer, felt the cold and slippery surface of the aluminum can in his palm, and wondered again if this was somehow real. But what she said proved it wasn’t. “This is a memory, huh? You and Scott came here once?”

She nodded, and finally looked at him. Something swirled in her irises, red and hot, like living fire. “He took me out here for our first anniversary. It was charming.”

Charming? Something about he way she said it indicated she really wasn’t that crazy about it. “You liked the thought more than the gesture?”

“Picnics usually sound better than they actually are.”

“Don’t most things?”

She gave him a small, tight smile. “I know you better than you think, Logan. You don’t have to keep the armor up here.”

He frowned, not liking the sound of that. But if this was a mindscape, yeah, she had him. She was the telepath; he wasn’t. All he could do was concentrate on being vivisected, and hope the experience was horrific enough to drive her out. Still, if this was her, he didn’t want to hurt her like that; she was always afraid of his mind.

“But not of you - don’t confuse the two,” she said, surprising him once more. He hated it when mind readers did that; it was like skipping a page ahead. “It was just I couldn’t handle all the fragments of your thoughts and the pain then.”

“Then?”

“I’ve … this has been a learning experience.”

He closed his eyes, and put the cold can to his forehead, trying to keep his temper in check. It would do no good to go into a rage here anyways; it was done, and he couldn’t change it. Yet. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For … what happened. Camaxtli.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“No, it’s Bob’s. And if I could figure out some way to kill the bastard - ”

“It’s not his fault either,” she said, surprising him. He glanced back at her, and found reality had shifted slightly - she was now sitting right behind him, the apple gone. But he had not felt her, he had not smelled her, and he wondered how much she was manipulating all of this. Maybe it was Jean, but he didn’t like anyone playing with his senses; sometimes they were all he had. “Sometimes things happen for a reason that‘s beyond us, Logan.”

“I don’t believe that,” he shot back, with more heat than he intended. “You know what hanging with Bob has taught me? I was right to be an atheist. There is no benevolent, all powerful God; there’s just a bunch of over-powered, spoiled little brats who live in another dimension and think of us - if they think of us at all - as pests, little ants in a farm. We’re nothing to them but food at best, and maybe a low grade kind of entertainment. They’re no better than people, and possibly worse. Somebody oughta break that to Nightcrawler, but it‘d probably crush him.”

She just smiled at him patiently, and he wondered if he had missed exactly what she meant. “You’re exhausted, Logan. I can feel it coming off of you in waves - are you all right?”

Changing the subject? Yeah, why not? “Haven’t been sleeping well. So what else is new?”

“What’s wrong?” She then looked haunted, her fiery eyes wide and stricken. “Is it my fault?”

He shrugged, and to avoid having to look at her (her eye thing was really eerie-and just slightly reminiscent of Kumiho, although her flames were green), he laid back on the blanket, folding his arms beneath his head and closing his eyes. “You tell me. What did you try and do to me?”

“Nothing. I thought it would be an easier way to communicate a large amount of information.”

“And I still haven’t made heads or tails of it, ‘cept the whole Cammy thing. But I’m not sure I completely get that either.”

“I just assumed, since you could channel Bob, you could handle this.”

“I can handle it. Interpret it all is another story.”

He felt the air change from cool to warm, a breeze as warm as blood, and he opened his eyes to see a blanket of flames spreading across the sky, the blue bleeding away in the onslaught of crimson light. “Why are you doing that?” He wondered.

“I can’t always control it,” she said, almost sheepishly. “I’m still getting the hang of it, as you said.” She said that last part so stiffly, he felt a chill down his spine. Was it Jean? That didn’t sound like Jean; that sounded like something trying very hard to seem Human, even though they weren’t.

But then he felt her hand smoothing through his hair, stroking it idly, and it felt so good he almost didn’t notice the slightly creepy feeling that came with it. “Why?” She asked, so softly he nearly missed it.

“Why what?”

“Why are you after that sword?”

Why did telepaths ever shock him? There was no having a surprise party for them, was there? “You don’t know? You aren’t looking hard enough.”

There was a long moment of silence, and he realized the birds were no longer singing, nor were their any Human type noises coming from below. He glanced up only to confirm they were gone, and he and Jean (or whatever she was) were now alone. Maybe nothing could survive in this fiery landscape, or nothing wanted to.

Suddenly, she gasped, and exclaimed, “You were married?”

Even though it was far too late and probably pointless, he shoved away all thoughts of Mariko and attempted to hide them deep inside his mind. “It was a long time ago.”

“I feel like such an ass.”

“Why? ’Cause of that “women only marry the good guys” comment?” Although it was a nice moment of vindication, he was still not ready to discuss Mariko with her or anyone. “Forget it, okay? Just drop it.”

“Why didn’t you ever mention it?“ She then paused, and seemingly answered her own question. “You love her.”

He sat up, drawing his knees to his chest. He didn’t want to talk about this. “Don’t do this to me, Jean.”

“You still love her,” she repeated, clarifying what she found so shocking.

Logan felt a pointless surge of rage he couldn’t completely explain. He wrapped his arms tightly around his legs, making himself as small as possible, refusing to look back at her. “I said drop it. I mean it.”

She put her hand on his back, between his shoulder blades, and he wanted to shrug her off, but he found himself unable to do so. Her skin was hot, like she had lava in her veins, and he could feel the heat starting to spread through his own body. “I had no idea … you don’t do things half way, do you? After all this time, you still wish you could have died in her place - ”

“Shut up!” He roared, breaking free of her strangely consumptive touch -

- and jolting awake on the futon in Cujo’s bedroom, with Yasha watching him curiously from the curtained entryway. “You’re not one of those people with narcolepsy, are you?” She asked.

He scowled at her as his bearings came back. What the fuck had that been about with Jean? If it was Jean; he really couldn’t say. “No, I was just tired of hearin’ you and your boyfriend fight. Are you through yet?”

It was her turn to scowl. “He is not my boyfriend. And I was waiting for you to get done, you lazy asshole.”

He levered himself up from the futon, still feeling enervated but not quite as much as before, and said, “Fine. If we’re both done lyin’, can we get going now?”

She continued to give him a death glare that would have been much more effective if she was in vamp face. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?”

“No, I’m a dumb ass, but I know when people are lyin’ to me.” He ran a hand through his hair, and asked, “Where are we goin’ from here, anyways?”

“Further downtown. I have a contact who’s been trying to locate the sword for me, and I hope she has by now. I paid her enough.”

He shrugged, not really carrying one way or another. The contact with the Jean thing had left him emotionally reeling, and he felt slightly lost. He wasn’t even completely sure he was here. “Some kinda demon?”

“Sorceress.”

“Of course, how could I miss that?”

She glowered at him, and said, “If you embarrass me in front of Reiko, I’ll rip your dick off and feed it to a werewolf.”

He raised an eyebrow at her, doing his best not to laugh (because if anyone would try, she would). “You just wanna grab my dick, don’t you?”

She rolled her eyes and turned away, storming off. “You wish, Human,” she muttered in disgust.

Oh yeah, this was gonna be fun.

14

Yasha led him into the heart of Demon Town, which ironically looked like just another sub-section of the Shinjuku district. They passed seedy bars and not so subtle soaplands, all catering to demon clientele. Karaoke music blared from run down bars on one side of the street, while Western rap music thudded from even seedier, neon gilded bars on the other side of the street; an urban cacophony that could have made this any part of downtown Tokyo … save for the Slime demons with some kind of moisture dripping from their wide rack of horns (they looked like deer antlers more than traditional “devil” horns) walking boldly down the unkempt sidewalks. Okay, more like reeling - most appeared tanked to the (figurative) gills. Yasha said, with obvious disgust, that the entire breed was “nothing but drunks”. Having never met any before, he couldn’t say.

He seemed to be the only Human around, earning a lot of stares. Sometimes when they saw who he was with, they quickly looked away, and he guessed that Yasha did indeed have an impressive reputation around here. But when a demon that looked like a big pile of warts with eyeballs growled at him, he popped his claws, and that seemed to shut it up. He kept the claws on his left hand out, just to cut down on the number of eyes glued to him. It seemed to work.

She led him to a small shop by the name of Youjutsu - literally, Black Magic. Its dusty front window was full of the usual “magic shop” tchotchkes: crystals, geodes, animal skulls polished to a high gloss, clutches of skeletal tree branches in a vase that looked like a brass recreation of those giant heads on Easter Island, all lit by candle lamps that couldn’t hope to compete with the neon beer signs across the way. But the red candle burning in the snow monkey skull (the wax dripping down looked like fresh blood) was a nice touch.

She told him to retract the blades, so he did (reluctantly), and they went inside, their entrance announced by gentle silver wind chimes. “Reiko, it’s me,” she called, as the thick scent of rare herbs made him sneeze.

There was an audible “poof”, and a woman suddenly appeared in front of them. Small but sturdily built, she had painted her eyes with purple glitter eye shadow, in such a way that they looked both larger and somehow Egyptian, while her thin lips were a mere smear of violet that matched her Mandarin style silk dress. Her hair was swept up inside a fold of matching silk, held together by black lacquered chopsticks. She looked awful; like a disco Asian Barbie doll. “You never said anything about a friend, Yasha,” the woman said. She looked Japanese, but spoke it with a Brazilian accent.

“He’s not a friend,” she snarled defensively. “He’s a mutant merc looking for the sword as well.”

“Hey,” Logan snapped. “I never said I was a merc.”

Yasha ignored him, but Reiko - who looked all of thirty (trying hard to pass for twenty), looked him up and down carefully, as if sizing him up for fighting capability. Or fucking capability; on a woman, the look was sometimes the same. “What’s your name, Wolfman?”

Okay, that was it - the next person who made a “wolfman” joke got decked. “Logan. You’re the witch?”

She looked slightly taken aback, like he thought she might. He had a feeling the terms “witch” and “sorceress” really weren’t interchangeable. “I am no goody two shoes witch, mutant - get it right.”

“And don’t call me mutant,” he spat, not caring for her disdainful tone.

“Hey,” Yasha interjected. “Fight later. I need to know what you got for me.”

But Reiko was still studying him like a fascinating bug she found in her soup. “Logan? How old are you?”

He wasn’t expecting that. “How old do you think I am?”

“What’s this about?” Yasha asked impatiently.

“A long time ago, there was a hunt for a samurai that wouldn’t die, a Westerner who went by the name of Logan. Some yakuza suspected him of being demon, but he was just a mutant. Was that you, Mister Logan?”

“I didn’t know there were Western samurai,” Yasha said. She honestly didn’t care, and Logan was relieved.

“Apparently. Well, Logan?”

He scoffed, trying to shake it off, but damn it, why did he keep running into people who vaguely knew of him? It may have been better if they knew him, but no, they only knew rumors and second hand stories. Bloody Friday must have had more of a lasting impact than he realized. “Do I look like a samurai to you, Morgan le Fey?”

Judging from the way her painted on brows dropped sharply, she didn’t like that name. “What a stereotype, you - “

“Hey!” Yasha shouted, almost vamping out. “Info, Reiko - I ain’t here for my health, and I’m down to time. Where’s the fucking sword?”

Reiko turned her disapproving gaze on Yasha, but it was more haughty than annoyed. “I can’t find it. I found every sword in Japan but that one.”

Yasha was so shocked, Logan was relatively sure she was going to kill her. “After what I paid you - ”

“It is being shielded by a powerful enchantment,” Reiko quickly interrupted. “Someone went to great lengths to ensure the sword is never found. So far I have been unable to break the spell, but given enough time - “

“Enough time?” Yasha interrupted. “You mean more money, you charlatan.”

Reiko took a step back, as if Yasha had actually hit her, and her spine stiffened as she flushed with equal parts embarrassment and rage. “How dare you, you undead parasite! I am not a - ”

They never did find out what she wasn‘t, because in that instant she disappeared - and he and Yasha found themselves surrounded.

It was a tiny shop, so that wasn’t difficult. There were eight very large Ressiks and demons that looked like they were made from tightly packed stones, all carrying guns and very sharp wooden stakes, and one very Human looking Japanese guy leaning against the front counter. But when he turned an oily smile on the both of them, Logan saw his eyes were bright Belial blue. “Thank you for that, Lady Blood,” he said, as unctuous as a lawyer. “Mister Fujimori wanted to make sure his spellcasters weren’t just a bunch of incompetent boobs. Certainly I’m not - ” he snapped his fingers, and a blue spark fell to the floor. “ - but the rest of them couldn’t find their own assholes with a flashlight and a map.”

The ground trembled ever so slightly, and a shadow fell over the front of the store. Logan could only see an extremely large body and huge hands - no face - but it was obviously a Berserker, and one of the larger ones. He smelled burning tires, and heard a noise like gravel down a metal drainpipe. Berserker growling?

“What did you do with Reiko?” Yasha demanded. Logan bet she didn’t care and was simply stalling for time.

The Belial gave her a patently false smile. “Oh, she’s just cooling her heels in the harbor. I’m sure she’ll be fine, if she can get to shore. Don’t let it be said that Mr. Fujimori isn’t generous. If you agree to cease your pursuit of the artifact, we have been instructed to let you walk away.”

“Bullshit,” Logan snarled, instantly hating the smarmy little man. “You’d never trust a vampire, and you’re a Belial: all you can do is lie.”

The Belial only quirked an eyebrow at him. “Ooh, what have we here? An uppity Human? Do you need protection from meat bags now, milady?”

There was snickering among the Ressik and rock crew, and Yasha frowned darkly. “You’re a dead man, Riley.”

“No, you’re the dead woman, if I’m not mistaken,” he replied crisply, relishing his control of this scene.

He and Yasha stood back to back in the middle of the store, and she muttered, “You’re gonna have to prove you’re a Berserker killer now, you know.”

“Yeah, I got that idea,” he admitted. After a brief pause, he said, “I get stakes, you get guns, and we’ll arm wrestle for Belial boy.”

“Agreed,” she said, just as the swarm of demons closed in for the kill.