Once she was cuffed, Titan took her by her (covered) arm and pulled her roughly inside the gate, with half of the men with big ass guns following. The other half stood and looked out at the field as they closed the gate, as if expecting an attack. They probably were; she had no idea what it would take to win a modicum of their trust.

Don't try, the voice instructed. Not obviously.  Remain nonchalant, like they're the assholes.

That last part was easy, but the nonchalant part? She wasn't even sure she could spell it.  Still, she had enough Logan in her that she didn't have to worry about it. She could feel his personality slipping over hers like a glove, but it was an unsettling side, one she wasn't sure she had seen before: the glib liar.

"Why all the paranoia, guys? Think I'm hittin' for the other team now?"

Titan gave her a sidelong look that was scorching. There was something continually pitiless about her eyes, something hard and flat, like she could kill you or kiss you and it wouldn't make any fundamental difference which she chose. Psychopath, the voice told her, with great authority. They all have the same thousand yard stare. That's what makes her dangerous. Not her strength; the fact that she's an amoral fuck who probably can only get her jollies pounding people into pulp.

Gee, that was comforting.

"How did you get away from them?" Her voice was rich with accusation.

"Are you kiddin' me? They thought it was just a matter of "deprogramming" me or some such shit. They shackled me and tried a little telepathic persuasion. 'Didn't work, but I did my best to make 'em believe it did. Then, my poor wittle boyfriend felt sorry for me."  She cackled dryly, surprised at how natural it felt. "I got him to get close enough to take his power. Those assholes should be defrosted by tomorrow, if you wanna hit the mansion now.  It's an easy target."

If she was convinced, it didn't show.   The inside of the abandoned power station was remarkably cold, but then, cement walls - the entire building, save for the outside, seemed to be made of cement - weren't exactly known for their heat retaining properties.

"You sound different."

"Too much Wolverine. I'm absorbed him before, y'know, and the more I absorb someone, the easier it is for me to imprint their personality."

This earned her a more direct glance. "So the old man is down?"

"Down 'n out. I actually got him at Alkali Lake, but while I was draining him, Brendan, that stupid fucker, got me in the back of the neck with a hypo."

"A hypo of what?"

"Some kinda fuckin' horse tranquilizers. Can you believe it?  It was supposed to keep me and Saddiq down for hours, until Xavier could come around to deprogram us."

"You look sober to me."

"Duh?  I just said I absorbed Wolverine, remember?"

Titan nodded faintly, not ready to concede her an entire point. "His healing factor compensated."

"Eventually, yeah. 'Took a while. 'Guess you guys never gave him that kind of horse pill, huh?"

She shrugged, not really concerned. "They dosed him with a lot of shit, but medicine advances at a rapid clip. So what do you know about his time with us?"

It was Rogue's turn to shrug. "Not a lot. His memories are, like, this fucked up mess.  It's like a badly edited Ed Wood movie or somethin' - nothin' makes a whole lotta sense."

(Ed Wood? That guy in the Johnny Depp film who wore women's clothes?)

That got a smirk from Titan, but it didn't look very friendly. "Yeah, I bet. See, the problem with the old man was that he's a complete nutbag. He kept having nervous breakdowns, y'know, psychotic breaks. There are rumors that Stryker and this guy named Shrike had it in for him, that they loved to fuck with his mind and see how often they could break him, but frankly, he was just weak. A weak little motherfucker who thinks he's hot shit just 'cause he can't remember the last time he went nuts. I always wondered what Xavier was gonna do when Wolverine blew his next gasket.  He will, y’know. He’s a total fuckin’ basket case.”

Rogue was so mad she could hear the blood roaring in her ears. The fucking bitch!  How dare she -

She didn’t want to, but her anger seemed to be subsiding against her will.  A time will come when you can use your anger; right now, it’s wasted.  Save it.

She kept her eyes on the plain gray walls, so Titan couldn’t see the hatred in her eyes before it was tamped down. “So why did they want him back so bad if he’s such a loony toon?” Her voice was level, almost casual, and she didn’t know if she'd asked, or her vestigial Logan personality had asked.  Did it matter?

Titan’s shrug was just a roll of her shoulders, which seemed far more massive and muscular when they moved. “They say he’s a born killer, a rare find, and too expensive an investment to waste. But they’re all fucked, the higher-ups. Wolverine’s a dodo, a lower end model who’s extinct and not worth a fifth of the adamantium in him. They should just let him go and pulp him before he goes all loco on them again.”

First opportunity she got, Rogue vowed to herself she was going to absorb the living hell out of Titan. She half expected the little voice to speak up and tell her she shouldn’t, but it didn’t. She took that as general approval from Logan.

Titan started to steer her toward a metal door painted an alarmingly dull  shade of dark blue pitted with rust spots, and she could smell other people in the room beyond the door, a miasma of conditioners and deodorants, aftershave and hair gel, sweat and cigarette smoke, and a background odor of ozone fried dust. It wasn’t pleasant, and she did her best not to sneeze or cringe, but something in Logan’s scent memory recognized one of these trails of smells: Saddiq.  He was here, and behind that door.

She could hear the rumble of male voices behind it as well, but before she could focus on it, make out their words, Titan asked, “So, who were those idiots at Alkali Lake?”

Sure, why not? “The Triad. One of their bosses owed Logan a favor.”

Titan actually stopped, and a modicum of emotion almost showed on her face.  That must have meant she was shocked. “The Triad? You mean those Chinese mobster guys?”

“The one and only.”

“What the hell kinda favor could Wolverine’ve done for them?”

Rogue didn’t know how to proceed, and the voice didn’t speak up, so she just decided the honesty rule was still in effect. She only wished she fully understood the fragmented memory that drifted up from Logan’s already splintered memories. “He helped them reclaim some lost territory from the Yakuza.” Or did he just help kill a guy? It really wasn’t clear at all. Wasn’t that weird? There was no way Logan could fight her in her own mind; he wasn’t an individual anymore, just a segment of her collective conscious.

And therein was the problem. Maybe she was fighting herself over his memories, because he probably would, and she‘d absorbed him enough to model his personality and will dead on. She really didn’t want this power. Why couldn’t she just be super-strong or be able to fly or bend spoons from a distance or something?  Being more than one person at a time sucked.

Titan was glaring at her, like she was making this up.  But she knew she wasn’t. “Why the fuck would Wolverine work for the Triad?  He's that desperate for cash?”

“They were the lesser of two evils. No, strike that - three evils.”

“How could they ever be the lesser evil of anything? Was Hitler the other choice?”

Well, she probably couldn’t say demons, or that the Yakuza had killed his wife, so …

Wait a fucking second! Wife? He'd had a wife? Since when did Logan have a wife? The news was not only stunning and fairly unbelievable - didn’t he pretty much just shack up with random women? - but the wave of turbulent emotions that came with it was a little disorienting. It hurt to even try and think about her; it actually physically hurt. It was like a muscle in the middle of her stomach was clenching hard, too hard, and made it a little difficult to breathe. She knew if she pursued the thought pattern she could discover a name for this woman, but it hurt so much she didn’t want to. Was that her Logan side putting up the biggest fight of its life, or is that what happened to him when he thought about her?

As it was, she didn’t have to worry about Titan seeing her momentary discombobulation or the fact that she hadn’t given her an answer yet, as the door slid open, revealing a small, windowless room, with only a metal desk and a bare light bulb dangling from a socket as decoration. Two men were inside the room: Saddiq standing in front of the desk, posture ramrod straight and his arms clasped behind his back in an almost military posture, and sitting behind the desk was a moon-faced middle aged man with thinning black hair and the air of a harassed middle manager, suggesting he was the hastily promoted new First, as the old one was clearly dead. Perfect.

“So, is this a trap or not?” The new First asked Titan.

As always, the woman shrugged. “Nothing’s goin’ on yet. I haven’t gotten any reports of movement on the perimeter.“ She tapped the earpiece inside her right ear. “But who knows what their plan is.  Maybe Rogue, here, can tell us...?”

Rogue didn’t so much shrug as dip her head toward her shoulder. “Fuck if I know.  Probably defrost.”

Saddiq was giving her a hard, scrutinizing glance, but she paid no attention.  He was still in their grasp, so she expected him to be paranoid.

Where was everyone? She hoped they’d get here soon, because these cuffs were starting to cut off her blood circulation.

12

Rags’ teleportation spell always left your stomach feeling like it had been kicked by a rugby player wearing cleats. Feeling mildly queasy was really the best possible outcome.

Still, Brendan was proud of the fact that he had no overwhelming nausea to fight back, just a vague feeling of queasiness. Sadly, that was not the case for Piotr or Kitty, who instantly doubled over, grabbing their stomachs and coughing up a little bit of whatever they had for breakfast. Rags was too used to it to let his passenger’s cookie tossing bother him.

They’d ended up square on top of the power station’s flat roof, and while it was instinctive to duck, there were no sensors up here, no guards, and it was unlikely they could even look up and see them unless they were far away from the building. They were patrolling the grounds, but not far out enough to see them, not unless they already knew what they were looking for.

Rags started the spell, talking quietly under his breath, and sprinkling something that Brendan would have sworn was just Mrs. Dash mixed with green glitter. He could have been speaking Latin, or demon, or just saying “Hey Bay-bee” over and over again - with his accent, it was sometimes hard to tell.

Nothing happened, and they all waited for something to change, but the silence prevailed.  The glitter and herbs just blew around the roof for a bit, and Rags declared, “It’s done. So you can go do … whatever it is yer doin’, exactly.”

The three of them exchanged doubtful looks, and then they glanced off the roof at the guard patrols on the perimeter. Some had passed out, others were laughing at nothing and staggering, two were suddenly in an incoherent shouting match with each other, someone was singing tunelessly (Were those Tom Jones songs? Seriously?), and another just sat down where he was and burst into huge, wracking sobs.

Well, it was a “drunk” spell, and not every person reacted to drunkenness in exactly the same way. But Rogue/Logan was right - there was no doubt that it was extremely debilitating, especially when you weren’t expecting it, and everybody got drunk at once.

“This is so weird,” Kitty said, as they watched the two arguing guards start to get in a violent shoving match. It sounded like they were fighting over which of them was the bigger asshole. Brendan figured the guy who threw the first punch would be the automatic winner of that title.

“No kidding,” Piotr agreed. He then metaled up and, just to fit in, Brendan went demon and spiky. The three of them retreated back to the middle of the roof, leaving Rags near the edge to watch the show, and Kitty grabbed Bren's and Piotr’s hands. “Take a deep breath,” she said. “And don’t let go.”

They nodded, and then they must have phased, because they were suddenly falling through the roof.

It was really weird, and he supposed he understood why she told them not to let go, as there was a moment of panic, your mind insisting that this wasn’t right and certainly couldn’t - or shouldn’t - be happening. He felt weightless, but still there was a sensation of falling (how?), and there was some kind of tactile feeling when they fell through the roof layers and came out into an interior hallway, but Brendan couldn’t say what the feeling was exactly, as it was foreign to anything he had ever experienced before.

Kitty rendered them all solid again and they hit the floor, and alarms started instantly screaming through the building, making him wince. “They've got them some great sensors, huh?”

A soldier in body armor and toting a big-ass rifle suddenly appeared out of nowhere, tried to hold his gun on them, and kind of failed. He had to settle with aiming roughly in their direction before slurring, “Identify your fucking selves.”

Did sloppy drunk quite cover it?  His face was flushed, and it looked like he was a second or two away from drooling. His eyes didn’t want to focus, or at least not for long. “We’re the cleaning crew,” Brendan offered, looking as innocent as he could possibly muster with what he knew was his hideous demon face. “We’re new.”

He squinted at them, stumbled slightly even though he was standing still, and finally slurred, “Prove it.”

Deeper inside the building, he heard a male voice roar, “Shut that fucking thing off!”

Prove it?  How drunk did you have to be to recognize steel guy, intangible chick, and hedgehog faced demon boy weren’t the custodial staff?  Could none of these guys hold their alcohol?

Brendan approached him slowly, pretending to reach slowly into his pocket. “I’ll show you my I.D. card, okay?  Don’t shoot.”

“’Sposda wear ‘em around your neck,” Drunk soldier said helpfully.  He actually tucked his rifle under his arm and waited to see it. “Fuckin’ newbies.”

Brendan let the guy watch his left hand, and then pulled back his right and hit him square in the face. He didn’t so much fall to the floor as collapse in a messy heap, like … well, like Rags after happy hour on a Friday night. The alarm shut off almost at the same instant, as if on cue.

He took the rifle off the guy, which was difficult because the guy’s arm got tangled in the strap, and Piotr asked, “Why are you taking that?  Can you even shoot it?”

“Probably not, but it makes me feel better.”

The three of them stuck together, because separating in a strange place this small was crazy and, as it turned out, they scared a couple of drunk guys off just by the fact that they were traveling in a pack. Also, Brendan had learned to point the heavy gun with some authority, but he wasn’t even sure the safety was off.

Saddiq saw it coming and caught her ankle, then, still sitting on the floor, using a leg sweep to take her remaining leg out from under her, sending her crashing down to the floor on her ass. Saddiq then pounced, throwing a nasty shot that caught her flush in the throat.  Using her superior strength, she launched him farther down the hall, but then she rolled over on her side and started choking, desperately trying to catch a breath. Yeah, Saddiq was overpowered, but he was trying to even the odds - and damn if he wasn’t doing a good job. Brendan figured if he was beaten so badly, his brains would be too rattled to think that clearly.

Rogue appeared, stepping out of the hole. “Finally. Somebody get these damn cuffs offa me.” She had blood on her face, and some had dribbled down onto her dark green t-shirt, leaving a black trail.  Her lower lip was split, but as they watched it was healing itself up, pasting itself back together, just like it did when Logan was hurt.  Brendan expected to see that, but it was still startling to see on her.

Kitty stepped forward, and grabbed her friend’s cuffed hands. In the blink of an eye, she removed the cuffs through Rogue’s wrists, then dropped them, solid now but still locked together and useless. “Thanks darlin’,” Rogue replied, rubbing her chafed skin.  Kitty did a slight doubletake at Rogue calling her “darlin”.

“What the hell happened?” Piotr asked, gesturing at the continued extremely violent - and building destroying - fight between Saddiq and Titan.

“Titan’s a mean drunk. As soon as the spell hit, she punched me, hard enough that I left a dent in the wall. I’m pretty sure a few things inside me got broken; damn, I forgot how weird rapid healing feels. Anyway, after she did that, Saddiq told her to leave me alone, and when she ignored him, he gave her a savage punch in the kidneys and rammed her head down into First’s desk.  She then threw him through the wall.
I guess that’s where you guys came in.”

“Saddiq told her to leave you alone?” Piotr repeated, clearly confused. “Why did he do that?”

Rogue just shrugged, wiping some of the blood off her face. The fight was continuing, and Saddiq was getting some good licks in, but he was doomed.  Titan wasn’t hurting the outside, but the inside of him had to be taking some serious damage.

“Could the spell have negated the hold of the chip or whatever?” Brendan asked.  He looked around for some theories, but everybody just looked back at him, puzzled, and he got a couple of shrugs.

Finally, Rogue grunted, sounding more like Logan, and offered, “Maybe, or he had a chivalrous side that mixed with his own belligerent one. Anything’s possible.  Science and magic don’t always mix well.”

“We have to help him,” Piotr said, but was already on his way down the hall.

“Piotr, she can kick yer ass too!” Rogue snapped and went after him, but Piotr had broken into a run,  smashing into Titan in a full body tackle as she started to crush Saddiq’s throat.  Saddiq went flying, and Piotr and Titan hit the floor so hard it actually made the building shake.

By all rights, Titan should have been crushed under Piotr’s metal bulk, but maybe there was something in her strength power that kept that from happening, or maybe it was just the protection of an extreme alcoholic haze, but she punched Piotr in the face so hard he went flying off her and hit the wall.  He broke some of it, made part of the wall crumble down, and seemed a little dazed.  He probably hadn’t expected it any more than they had.

“So, you want some?” Titan growled, hopping to her feet, her hands curled into fists at her side. “Fine, metal boy. Let’s see if you bleed mercury.”

Rogue ripped off a glove with her teeth, and muttered, “You’re mine, bitch.” Titan almost turned but never got the chance, as Rogue had already grabbed her by her bare throat.  Titan froze, as if she was being jolted with a few thousand volts, and when Rogue let her go, she just flopped to the floor, as good as dead (but not quite).

Rogue was breathing hard, huffing breaths through her nose like an angry bull, and when she noticed everyone looking at her, she said, “I really want to hurt something.”

Brendan just pointed at the wall and backed up a step, hoping she’d pick the inanimate object.  She did; she went over and started to punch and kick the concrete wall, sending chunks of it flying, pulverizing bits of it into dust.

Piotr sat up, rubbing his jaw. “I swear she left a dent.” If he could make a joke, he was okay. (Was he making a joke?)

Kitty had gone to Saddiq, but kept her distance, as she wasn’t sure if he was a good guy or a bad guy. Somehow he was conscious, even though his black hair was now gray with concrete dust, and while he'd managed to push himself up to his knees, he paused to cough up a serious amount of blood. Oh shit, had they ever figured out a way to help Saddiq if they couldn’t cut through his skin?

Rogue was done doing structural damage, and seemed to have gotten control of herself, no matter how tenuous. “Saddiq, you back?  Kid? You know where you are?”

He sat back against the wall with a tired sigh, blood running down his chin, and looked at them all with eyes dark and hard to read. “No, I don’t know where I am. Something’s telling me I should kill all of you, but I think I’m going to lay down for a minute first, okay?”

Rogue went and retrieved her glove from the floor, slipping it on before she walked over to him and grabbed him by the arm. “C’mon, bub, let’s get you home.”

“I don’t have a home,” Saddiq said glumly, allowing Rogue to lift him to his feet.  He didn’t look very steady. “I am the property of the Rajan Royal Palace; I exist at their sufferance.”

“No you don’t.” She put an arm beneath his shoulders, keeping him propped up and helping him along.

“Yes I do. I was never a kid either. I’ve never even had a sundae.” Great, he was a self-pity drunk.  Still, it was better than mean and belligerent.

“As soon as you heal up, I’ll take you to Baskin-Robbins,” Rogue promised him, sounding like Logan once more. It wasn’t the voice, which was clearly hers, just something in the choice of words, in the casual delivery, the tone. It seemed more paternal than patronizing. She’d just absorbed Titan, so why was she still Logan? Or was she both, and Logan’s personality - with hers - had simply overwhelmed Titan?

A man stumbled out of the room where Titan and Saddiq had come fighting out of, a guy who looked like a rumpled CPA. Was this “First”?  He looked at them bleary eyed, and asked, “So, uh .... who are you people?”

Brendan leveled the heavy weapon at him with what he hoped was an appropriately grim look. “The bad guys. Want to make something of it?”

He just stared for a moment, uncomprehendingly, and then gestured vaguely behind him, making himself stumble. “ ‘m just gonna go, ‘kay?”

Brendan nodded. “Get a move on.”

The man gave him a half-assed salute, then tottered off, occasionally leaning against the wall so he didn’t fall over. Distantly, he could hear two soldiers arguing violently over who a stripper named Meringue liked better.

“Xavier’s.”

“Why?  Nobody likes me there. The kids are afraid of me.”

“Not all of them,” Kitty piped up, then paused awkwardly. Brendan hadn’t been at the school for a while, but even he knew that was a lie. Of course they were all a bit afraid of him; Saddiq seemed to have no obvious emotions, and he wasn’t afraid of anything.  People like that were just naturally freaky. “Well, okay, some. But you should just ignore them, Sid.  Some of them are just jealous. They’d love to be able to take care of themselves like you can.” Brendan had a sneaking suspicion Kitty was talking about herself, but he kept his mouth shut.

“Pete, can you make sure we have a clear path outta here?” Rogue asked.

Piotr nodded, and went on ahead of them to make sure no belligerent drunken soldiers tried to make a scene. It was terribly unlikely, especially since they’d encountered so few since they broke in, and those that they had met were worse than useless. He had to hand it to Rags - when he'd promised a debilitating drunk spell, he delivered.

“If it’s any consolation, I -er, I mean, Logan - doesn’t know his birthday either,” Rogue said to Saddiq, who was now bleeding on her a bit. “He doesn’t even know the year.  Maybe we’ll have to think up a joint birthday for the both of you. What day sounds good to you?”

“Muslim calendar or Gregorian?”

Rogue sighed impatiently. “No being a smart ass ‘til yer sober.”

13

The portal spit them out into what looked like a Roman courtyard made of gold-veined black marble, a huge building rising up in front of them, with a dozen slick stairs and huge, thick pillars that were covered with what appeared to be screaming faces and blindly grasping arms. The sky was a vibrant ocean blue, a type a little too high saturation to be an actual earthly color.

In the center of the courtyard was a black marble, eight tiered marble fountain, with what looked like molten gold spitting up from the center and spilling down the sides, making a soft noise that was not quite liquid. It was definitely better than blood, but it still seemed obnoxious.

Jean looked around, puzzled and impressed, and asked, “Whose realm is this?”

“Eris, you piece of mongrel trash,” a stentorian female voice replied. “What are you doing bringing refuse to my realm, Bob?”

Eris had appeared on the center of the steps, wearing a sapphire toga that flowed over and clung to her body like water. She had changed her appearance slightly from the last time he’d spoken to her; she was now half brown skinned and half gold skinned, bifurcated perfectly down the middle like that guy in that heavy handed Star Trek episode. But Eris’s true physical form - when she bothered to have one - was patchwork, calico humanoid, as she was sprung from the energy well of two very different gods. That was also why she was so powerful: in her, the contradictions worked.  Her eyes, however, were still nothing but a dark, emotionless well of stars.

“Trash?” Jean exclaimed hotly. “Who are you call -” Eris waved a dismissive hand at her, and Jean instantly dropped to her knees, grabbing her head and making a low, keening noise of pain.

“You do not speak to me, lesser.  Now, Bob, you have five seconds to tell me why you’re polluting my realm with this, or I'll kill you both.”

In an ever changing universe, it was heartening to know that the goddess of discord never changed at all.