But she knew, even before he was over her, looking down into her face, that it wasn't Scott - the stubble had been sort of a giveaway, hadn't it? That and the fact that his body on top of hers was heavier,harder somehow. The funny thing was she didn't really care. She knew she should, but as Logan kissed her she forgot all about it. And Logan tasted so clean; even his sweat didn't taste salty. If she thought about it clinically, it made sense - toxins were filtered out of his body long before, if in fact they made it that far - his immune system effectively obliterated even the toxic byproducts of his own system. It was endlessly fascinating - if the exact genetic components of Logan's immune system could be isolated, it was quite possible that not only could people with immune disorders be cured with targeted gene therapy, but many illnesses could be completely wiped off the map - but right now she didn't care about the physiological implications of Logan's mutation.

She ran her hand down his back, felt his muscles ripple beneath his unusually soft skin, and she knew she had to watch it. If she got too carried away, let her defenses down, her telepathy instantly kicked in with this level of physical closeness and intimacy ...

... but it was too late.

At first it was okay - no, it was great. On the surface, Logan's overwhelming desire for her filled her own mind, intertwined with her inexplicable lust, and they became a single entity. Her touch became his, and his taste became hers, his skin was her skin, and they were indistinguishable in the sensations thrilling through their bodies. For one second, it was the best thing about telepathy. All their feelings were doubled, magnified, and she couldn't imagine what intimacy was like for people without telepathy - they missed out on so much pleasure.

But Logan's own mental defenses were down, and inadvertently, as entwined with his mind as she was, she went too deep.

Suddenly she was assailed by pain, by a sensation of being trapped under ice and having her skin peeled back like a wrapper, knives digging deep into muscle and scraping bone -

Jean woke up with a shout, immediately bringing her hands to her face, as if she could wipe away the horror. But of course horror and pain wasn't that easy to wash away, and certainly not when it was that brutal and intense. She was glad that Scott was already up and out, so she wasn't in the position of having to explain her nightmare.

She needed to do two things: she needed to get Logan out of her system, and she needed to build a mental block around whatever memories of his she had inadvertently acquired.

She thought it would fade, but even after taking a shower and getting dressed she was still shaking, and she wasn't sure if it was completely due to the nightmare or not. It wasn't all a nightmare - it had started off disturbingly pleasant.

She had been allowed to sleep in far too late - it was almost noon of a punishingly sunny and warm day, and she could feel a burgeoning headache deep behind her eyes. She hoped some caffeine would cure that.

On her way to the kitchen, she encountered Scott in the hall, coming out of the elevator. "Hey Jean," he said, giving her a small smile.

She hugged him, and although he initially stiffened in surprised, he melted into it, hugging her back. "Are you all right?" He asked curiously.

"I am now." He was still her oasis of peace and calm; his mind harbored no memories that would make you wake up screaming. And whatever the Organization had done to him, Bob - for better or worse - had fixed it, so he could cope without lingering trauma.

He seemed to understand she needed the peace right now, and simply held her until she felt like she got her mental bearings back. "So what are you up to?" She asked, stepping back from him.

"I agreed to give Antonio driving lessons today," he admitted, with the slightest grimace.

"Oh dear." He had had his learner's permit for three days before he totaled a car, and very nearly himself. He admitted he was "probably" a little "reckless" - which was like saying Logan was often a tad aggressive.

"I'll bring a dart gun, just in case."

"Please do." She gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Be careful."

"Always am," he replied, giving her a brilliant smile. She watched him disappear down the hall, and wished she could roll with the punches that easily. But when you were a telepath, and learned so much that you sometimes would rather you didn't know, it made things that much more difficult.

She had only been in the kitchen a minute, inhaling coffee fumes and hoping it would wake her up, when Rogue came in, looking strangely perturbed. "Is something wrong?" She asked, mentally bracing herself. Oh, how she longed for a day when something wasn't wrong.

"There's this weird British chick at the door," Rogue replied, gesturing behind her at the front room beyond the kitchen. "She says she knows Logan."

"Really?" While it was intriguing, it also put her instantly on her guard - no offense to Logan, but did he have many friends? No wonder Rogue was leery.

She followed her out into the main room, abandoning her coffee, and since she didn't recognize the magenta haired Indian woman talking to Brendan, she assumed that was the "chick" in question.

" - any pictures of him shirtless?" Brendan was asking her. He had become more at ease with his half-demon status as time went on, although he hadn't told anyone about it at the school; if asked, he simply said he was a mutant. They needed to work on that. "I won't keep it, I just need to see it. I have an eidetic memory."

The woman, who had painted her lips purple to match her hair and eyes, frowned slightly. "Which means what, ducks?"

"I remember everything perfectly."

"Oh. That must suck for you."

He shrugged. "It has its moments. But there are some positives, like seeing Logan once in a tank top."

She smiled knowingly, and gave him a wink. "Lovely sight, inn't it?"

"Ah, my god, lust overload. But I only got the glimpse of him once, and I need more. Have you seen the guns on that guy? God ... "

"His arms aren't the only guns he's packing," she told him, with a lascivious wink.

Brendan stared at her, jaw gaping in shock, red eyes as big as saucers. "Oh. My. God."

Rogue went up to him and gently grabbed his arm, giving the woman a look that was equally dubious and curious. "Come on, Bren. I think we've learned enough for today."

He didn't move, so Rogue had to pull him along to get him going. "I think I'm in love," Brendan said, as Rogue dragged him out of the room. Well, Jean had to look at it this way - at least Brendan had found a reason to stay on.

"Hello, can I help you?" Jean asked, instantly resenting the professional chill to her voice. But she couldn't help
but be instantly suspicious of anyone claiming to know him. It wasn't like he mentioned her ... but to be fair, he didn't mention anyone unless he absolutely had to.

The woman took no obvious offense at it. "Sure. I'm lookin' for Logan, he told me he crashes here sometimes. Is he about?"

"No, I'm afraid he's not." She took a gamble on politeness and held out her hand. "We haven't been introduced - I'm Jean Grey."

The woman shook her hand easily; she had a firm grip, but not crushing. "I'm Srina Adar, also known as Nightshade. Do you have some freaky mutant nickname?"

"No, I've never really decided on that." Also, she was a Doctor, and who wanted to be treated by a Doctor with a nickname like "Firebird" or whatever? Not that she was a snob. "Nightshade? I hope that doesn't mean you're poisonous."

"Oh no, it's kind of a pun - can't see shade at night."

Jean looked at her curiously, not quite following her ( how could there be shade at night? ), and that's when the woman disappeared. She glanced around, startled, but the woman hadn't appeared anywhere else in the room. Then she heard, behind her right shoulder, "Boo." She whirled around, startled, and found Srina standing there with a big smile on her face. "Sorry, I like to show off when I can."

Jean smiled politely, and tried to show that she wasn't at all rattled by her little display of powers. "Invisibility - that's quite impressive. You move quietly too."

"Well, I had ta learn, or it would have blown the edge bein' unseen gets me, ya know? So what's your deal?"

"I'm telekinetic, and I have some telepathic abilities."

"Ooh, nifty. I bet that comes in handy on dates."

She knew the woman was just trying to be nice, but there seemed to be something abrasive and perhaps the slightest bit disingenuous about her. "Er, yes. How do you know Logan?"

"Oh, we go back - I met him in London. He's the only one I've met who renders my ability kind of pointless."

"He can hear you?"

"Yeah, and smell me. Also, I think he feels me, but that's just a guess."

"Feels you?" She almost didn't want to know.

"You know - he knows when people are lookin' at him, and he seems to know when people are around him, whether he can sense 'em any other way. A sixth sense." She then let out a humorous snort. "Like he needs another one on top of the other five, right?"

Logan did seem to know when he was being watched, but she ascribed them to his other sense simply being so acute he picked up on subtle cues the rest of them missed. It was equally possible Srina had a point. "Indeed. I'll tell him you were here when he gets back." She didn't want to seem like she was rudely hustling her out, but to borrow a British phrase, it would have been so lovely if she wasn't here.

Srina didn't seem to notice. She was looking around the front room with greatest interest, as if she was an appraiser. "Whoa - are those antiques real?"

"Do you think they would be in a boarding school?"

Srina scoffed appreciatively. "True. But that's a real Limoges vase on the mantel there- I'd recognize that anywhere."

"Oh really. Are you in antiques?" Even as she said it, she knew that was highly unlikely. Her wardrobe was very blue collar and Logan-esque - tight jeans, worn nearly to chamois; heavy, scuffed Doc Martens boots; a very thin, old black t-shirt with the album cover of the first Sex Pistols release -Never Mind The Bollocks - emblazoned across her chest; and a long green leather coat that seemed very unseasonable. She had a black leather backpack slung over her left shoulder, and from the way it hung, Jean judged it to be relatively heavy.

"In a manner of speaking, yeah," she said, giving her a smile that said Srina thought it was a joke. Jean didn't see how it could be, but what the hell did she know about this woman? Logan wasn't even here to confirm he knew her. "Where is the hairy hunka burnin' love? I figured he'd be comin' back here."

Yet again, another puzzling statement. "Coming back here from where, London?"

"Yeah. You didn't know he was there?"

"He was there quite a while ago."

"Yeah, but I mean yesterday."

"He was there yesterday?"

"What I said."

Jean pondered that a moment, not sure he should trust her. She could try and read her to see what she was really after, but she was afraid of what she might see in her mind. "Logan left three days ago - he hasn't been back since." She didn't add that he left with Bob on some mysterious errand, because that was too much information.

"Really?" She raised a single magenta eyebrow, and frowned in thought. She actually had a lovely face, unadorned with make up save for her lipstick, her skin a beautiful bronze that no amount of tanning would ever get you. And while she would have said she was young - late twenties, perhaps? - something about the way fine lines suddenly appeared at the corners of her plum colored eyes suggested she was older than she appeared. "Leave with a bloke named Bob?"

Now it was Jean's turn to raise her eyebrow. "You know Bob?" That almost figured.

"No, but he mentioned him. Weird guy with a ton of money."

Jean couldn't help but nod, even though weird really just scratched the surface. "Why was Logan in London?"

"Oh, Bob needed something, and Logan asked me to help him get it."

This sounded unbelievably suspicious. "What did he need?"

It was Srina's turn to study her, and it was clear she was considering whether to tell her some truth, a little, or none. Jean wasn't sure what she had ultimately decided. "Some ugly rock. Please don't ask me why, 'cause Logan never said. But I figured this Bob was some eccentric rich guy - ain't they all? - and 'ey, you do for a friend, right?"

"Right." Certainly Bob wanting an ugly rock was not outside the realm of possibility; but it was more likely the rock was some demonic object, and Logan had left out the explanation of its true nature for a good reason.

Srina shifted her heavy backpack to her opposite shoulder with a sigh, and said, "Look, do us a favor - if Logan shows up, tell him I've gone to Molokai on vacation for the next ten days. He's welcome to join me, but only if he brings a Speedo." She gave Jean a wink - she winked a lot, didn't she? - and then headed for the door. "Real posh place you guys got here, Jean." She turned in the doorway and glanced back at her with a silky and knowing smile. "And you might want to upgrade your security system. It's good, but you never know when you might have to protect yourself against unscrupulous mutants. Ta."

Jean watched Srina walk out into the blinding sunlight, and wondered if that had been a threat. If so, it was rather mild, and since she gathered Srina - in spite of her lovely name - had a somewhat coarse personality, she didn't think she would ever bother to make a threat that oblique. No, that must have been her idea of helpful warning ... but why had she even noticed the security system? And how exactly?

She suddenly wondered if Logan's choice of "friends" remained lodged in the social strata of misfits, where he had previously seemed to exile himself. And being a misfit among outsiders like mutants was quite a dubious talent indeed.

She really was going to check the security system now.

11

Al Araf looked so much like an Earth realm Logan almost didn't believe it wasn't, even when Bob told him so. Of course it didn't smell right - it smelled a lot of sea salt and citrus, and odd combination if there ever was one - and while it looked like this was a bustling seaport, nothing looked remotely Human. Oh, and the sea was gold, like liquid sunshine, but really that wasn't nearly as weird as Logan thought it might have been.

Bob was confident his powers could work "flavorless" here - whatever that meant - so while they looked like themselves to themselves, to the beasties strolling the white sand streets around them, they looked just like the majority of them - blue skinned quadrupeds, loping around with a strange kind of grace, with long necks that ended in triangular shaped heads with spiral horns, and three eyes set in the front of their faces, mimicking a pyramid shape. They spoke a language that sounded a lot like bird calls, and they seemed to have some sort of social structure - there was even something that looked like a marketplace. But according to Bob, no matter how they looked, these were all "Gods of a sort". He didn't bother to clarify "of a sort", and while Logan was dying to ask him, he really didn't think it was in his best interest to know. And would Bob really tell him the truth?

Ares didn't cloak himself in any fashion; he walked around out there in his traditional bipedal form, armor glinting in the pale white sunlight, new sword on his hip, and he looked absolutely hysterical. With the little golden laurel leaf tiara he had added, he could have almost been an extra from "The Life of Brian". He looked like the pompous blowhard he was. Some god. No wonder his sister could kick his ass.

The three of them stood in the shadow of a sandstone building - seemingly crude in design but really exhibiting a remarkable level of sophistication if you considered the fact that it was constructed by four legged beings with really long toes on the ends of their paws ( ? ) - and watched Ares strut uncomfortably among the crowd, like an extra from The Time Machine set accidentally stumbling into a remake of the "lollipop guild" scene from The Wizard of Oz.

"Can I please laugh now?" Logan wondered, futilely clearing his throat once more. The more he was trying not to laugh, the harder it was.

"Ares acts like an ass - it's his raison d'être," Bob explained, not for the first time. But finally he sighed, and said, "Okay, get it over with."

He and Helga collapsed against each other in hopeless laughter, holding on to each other's arms to keep from falling over. This was just too goddamn funny. Bob simply sighed, like a father fed up with his kids, but otherwise refrained from comment. He looked away to snicker, wanting no part of their loud and undignified guffawing.

Ares glanced over at them, scowling in confusion, and that only made them laugh harder. He really had to stop, or they'd be incapacitated.

"Come on, we gotta calm down," Bob said, and it was probably an order, because somehow they did. Logan wiped the tears from his eyes, and couldn't remember the last time he last time he laughed so hard. He needed more comic relief in his life.

"I still don't get how this is gonna work," Helga said, rubbing her eyes.

"Well, the baddies should get a sense of Ares, and should wonder why the hell he's here. It'll flush them out, and hopefully his energy will be enough to cloak me from their notice."

"Hopefully?" Logan repeated, not at all caring for the tentative nature of that word.

"Well, I'm just sayin' - " Bob began, but then glanced up towards the pale blue - white sky, as if expecting a dive bomber to appear out of nowhere. Both he and Helga glanced up, but there was nothing to see.

"What?" He asked. It was just then that Logan noticed Ares had paused and glanced upwards as well.

"Here we go," Bob said, just as Ares winked out of existence.

"Hey, he's done a runner on us," Helga said, grabbing Logan's arm. "Or did he?"

They looked to Bob, and he shook his head. "Kuk just grabbed him."

"Can we find him?" Logan wondered. Could their fragile plan have fallen apart right here?

"Oh yeah - Kuk leaves a bright trail."

Logan wondered if he was being literal or figurative, but it didn't matter as long as he could find him. Bob then grabbed his arm, and Helga wrapped her tail around his other arm, so they were all connected. He simply glanced at them questioningly, making sure they were ready, and after they nodded, Bob nodded back. Then reality twisted around them, and the light disappeared.

When things reformed around them again, it was a darker and cooler place, limestone walls around them and curving low over their heads - Logan was sure he could reach up and touch the ceiling. It smelled like wet sand and dried flax in here, which was weird enough, but the light also wavered like it was being reflected off water. Bob motioned them to be quiet, then crept carefully out of this tiny cover, into the larger cave. He and Helga followed just as cautiously, and Logan could hear the distant echo of voices somewhere ahead in this maze of caverns. " - left me to Eris," Ares was shouting at someone. "She was never coming back, was she?!"

"Now Ares, it isn't like that," a man with a smarmy voice replied. Even from here, Logan knew he was lying. "I'm sure Kumiho is on her way back - she's trying to recruit more help - "

"She's trying to get me killed!" Ares interrupted angrily. He wasn't faking the indignance; when Bob helped him figure out that Kumiho and Kuk had probably left him behind as a sacrificial lamb to his sister, he was really pissed off. Logan figured, what with the omniscient thing, no god could be quite so stupid, but Bob pointed out that some were more omniscient than others. And since when did stupidity know any bounds?

He was glad Bob was around to put things in perspective.

"She would never do that!" The man ( Kuk? ) lied. "How can you think such a thing?" Then there was a dramatic pause, and then he said, quietly, suspiciously, "Who told you this?"

"Who told me?!" Ares roared. When he got in a high dudgeon, he just couldn't get out of it. Talk about a method actor. "Are you implying that I'm stupid?!"

"Of course not!"

The beaten down white sand path ended at the mouth of an opening that seemed suspended in mid air, but looking down, you could see a wide open cavern below; for whatever reason, the level below them was the nexus point of a honeycomb of pathways and openings cut into the rock. In the center was a large ring of black fire - flames like living shadows from the Shadow realm, licking up into the air and collapsing back in on itself - and carved into the side walls were grotesques that looked like unholy crosses between gargoyles, tiki figurines, and Egyptian hieroglyphics.

There were two bipeds down there as well - Ares of course, and a slightly bigger, thicker guy who - while Human looking from the neck down - looked like, from the neck up, a rather large green frog.

"Now there's a fashion risk," Helga muttered.

"And I thought Toad was bad enough," Logan muttered back.

"You are - you're saying I'm stupid!" Ares had turned orange again, his fat face lighting up like a lamp, and if he'd been a regular old Human, Logan would have judged him to be two seconds away from a heart attack.

Frog boy seemed to realize Ares was getting a little too hot under the armor, and lowered his voice ( how did he talk? ) to a more placating tone. "Ares, come on? How long have we known each other?"

Even though they were only thirty feet below them, tops, it still sounded like they were right in front of them. Weird what tricks all this dimensional shit played on your hearing.

Ares looked painfully puzzled. "I don't know."

Frog boy put an arm around Ares's broad shoulders, and Logan saw his fingers were webbed together; he looked more like he had frog feet than traditional hands. "Look, my man, this is a tense and stressful time for all of us. But it will be over soon, you'll see."

"Over for me, you mean." Ares said sourly.

It sounded like Kuk was laughing, but really it was more like an exotic frog burping out a staccato noise - uk uk uk. Maybe that's how he ended up with the ugly monosyllabic name Kuk; it was a noise he made a lot. "No, of course not. You are the man - the big uber alles war god supreme!"

"He's from Hollywood, isn't he?" Logan asked Bob.

Bob just shrugged. "Sounds like it, doesn't it?"

"Which of us is fit to stand in your titanic shadow? No one - you are Ares. Countries used to quake at the mention of your name!"

"Suddenly I feel very, very dirty," Helga said.

"We're all gonna need a shower after this," Logan agreed. This was such an egregious case of brown nosing he couldn't believe Ares was buying this for even a split second, but it looked like he was. His chest actually looked like it was inflating under his breastplate.

According to Bob, Kuk's big power was "power over primordial darkness" - translated, it meant he could turn out the lights. But also he could make darkness a "physical thing" - not quite like the Shadow realm, but close. He also had power over chaos, but no control - he could "unleash chaos", but he had no ability to command it in any way ( "If it could be controlled, it wouldn't be chaos," Bob sagely pointed out ), so usually he was "in the next county" when he unleashed it, so he wouldn't get caught up in it. Bob didn't think he'd let his chaos power fly if they could keep him here, simply because he could get hurt by it himself. And Bob had appointed him the task of "pinning" Kuk to this dimension - according to him, Kuk's mortal weakness was "metal not forged by man". "And you weren't forged, mate - you were born, just like every other Human," Bob helpfully informed him. "Entire empires have crumbled due to niggling little loopholes just like that." Just what he always wanted to be - a loophole. Well, he'd been worse, hadn't he?

The strange thing was as the two gods stood in front of the black fire, the shadow they threw on the white sand floor was red; red and writhing in a manner inconsistent with the fire. It was then he figured out that, in spite of how it looked, that wasn't a fire at all - was that some of that "primordial darkness"? He suddenly wondered how it was moving.

"I am Ares," Ares agreed, although he sounded uncertain of that.

"Yes, you are!" Kuk agreed, sounding more like an agent than ever. "Warrior of warriors! King of kings!"

"Morons of morons," Logan muttered bitterly.

Kuk had steered Ares around to face the flames ( or whatever they were ), and they got a good look at Kuk's face. He was hideous - Logan thought the rear view of his bald green head was bad enough. But he had bulging eyes the size and color of grapefruits, with black pupils more like diamonds than slits, no nose, and a lipless mouth so wide it looked like he could swallow his own head if he had a mind to do it. Some frogs were cute, but Kuk was not one of them. It was a good thing he had no neck, otherwise his big frog head never would have blended in with the rest of his humanoid body.

"You will have that glory again, Ares! Just stick to the plan, and we - " Kuk's large eyes seemed to take in the cavern, and he unwisely glanced up and saw the three of them looking down at them from above. Bob waved, just to be friendly.

" - have company," Kuk finished, pulling his arm away from Ares.

Logan jumped down, over the edge,a thirty foot drop that felt like nothing, and he wondered if it was just gravity that was off here or it was just being infused with Bob power, but even the landing didn't seem that bad.

Still, he was barely on his feet at the bottom of the cavern when Kuk let out a very un-frog like roar, and the whole world went black - the black fire seemed to explode out of its ring of stones ( he only realized belatedly the stones were all shaped like scarabs - did that mean something? ), and paint every available surface with night.

Logan could feel it crawling up his skin, trying to ooze up into his nose and mouth, but he did his best to shake it off and stumbled forward, relying on his sense of smell to find Kuk - he didn't smell like a frog more than he smelled like a wet dog, and wasn't that worse?

A spark of light shot outward, towards the roof of the cavern, a fragment of light so blue he knew Bob had to be responsible for it. Funny thing was, it too was swallowed by the living dark. "Give it up, Kuk, and I won't hurt you," Bob shouted. It sounded like he was only a few feet away, but he knew better than to trust his hearing. He hit something with the toe of his boot - he couldn't see what it was, but he assumed it to be one of those scarab rocks. He was getting closer, in spite of the black stuff oozing in his eyes. His claws were already out.

"Fuck you!" Kuk yelled, and he also sounded a few feet away, but in front of him. "It's over, Bob, and you lost! You're not strong enough to take on Kumiho! Even Eris isn't now that - " He paused suddenly, as if he realized he was about to say a very wrong thing. "It's over!"

"Now that she what?" Bob replied quickly, sounding somewhat tense ( well, for him ). "What has she done?"

"Like I'm going to tell you! You have five seconds to take your beasts and leave, or I let loose chaos!"

The smell of wet dog filled Logan's nose, and he thought he was picking up the feeling of unholy body heat near his skin. Bingo. "No you ain't," Logan growled, and jabbed his claws forward into what he assumed was Kuk.