It wasn't that Jean's misdirected rage was at all funny,because it wasn't;it was just he sometimes had the urge to laugh when things seemed really sad or hopeless.And while she was not hopeless,she was deeply unhappy,and didn't seem to want to acknowledge that.Which was her choice,but it seemed like needless pain.

Ah,Humans.Sometimes he just didn't understand their need to make things more difficult for themselves.

Speaking of which,it took him a while to convince Scott to let him fly their super swoopy jet,but there was no way Scott could pilot them through dimensional shockwaves-he didn't even know what they looked like.

They didn't want Rogue to come along,of course,but he insisted,and so did she.As young as she was,if he was right,she might end up being crucial to throwing the odds back towards their side.It was kind of handy,being able to absorb people's abilities and use them for yourself.

Sadly,Scott insisted on sitting in the co-pilot's seat,watching him like a hawk and ready to take over the instant he fucked anything up,while Rogue and Jean sat in the back.Storm was going in an alternate way,ahead of them,because she was going to be part of the surprise welcoming committee.He hoped she took teleportation half as well as Logan had.

They had been in the air for ten minutes when Bob asked,"Why didn't you ever put a radio in this thing?"

"We have communicators,"Scott replied,gesturing to his headset microphone.

"No,I mean a radio radio,"he explained."These long journeys could use some tunes to help kill the time."

"Yeah,that would be cool,"Rogue agreed.

Scott looked back at her and scowled,a tacit "Don't encourage him".

"Considering we're moving at super-sonic speeds,we'd never really be able to pick up any signals for long,"Jean said, trying for diplomacy.Belatedly,she realized she may have been needlessly harsh towards him because she was upset.

"You can try and compensate for that,or just put in a CD player,"he suggested,trying not to laugh at the evil frown Scott was giving him out of the corner of his eye.Now that was actually funny.

He tried to concentrate on flying the jet,but honestly he hardly needed to.It was so high tech,the instrument panel flat and almost all digital,like something on the Starship Enterprise,he could have been asleep and the thing could have flown itself.A good thing too,since he hardly knew what he was doing.He mentioned that once they had taken off,but only Rogue thought it was funny. Scott looked like he was about to have a cow in the midst of an aneurysm.

Some people just had no sense of humor.

Bored,he started singing under his breath."I hear a rumbling.I hear transmission grind.I bear witness.I have the clutch now.Three times dark on the turnpike,from the Motor City to the city of Dis.They trace his travel by his credit card.No sleep, smokes, and he is nauseous-"

"What's that?"Rogue asked.She was really nervous about flying,but was trying valiantly to pretend she wasn't.

"An obscure old song you could have never heard of,"he admitted."Do you have a suggestion?"

"Huh?"

"What kind of music are you into?Sensitive singer-songwriters?Alternative?Hip hop?You're not going to make me sing Eminem,are you?"He asked,glancing over his shoulder and giving her a roguish (Ha!Irony!) grin.

She smiled back,his attempt at distraction at least partially working."No.I didn't think rap could be sung,though."

"Oh sure,if you don't mind being a little cheesy about it,"Bob replied,and then,to break the tension (most of which seemed to be coming from Scott),demonstrated,in his loudest lounge lizard type of voice:"I like big butts and I cannot lie,you other brothers can't deny-"

Rogue almost screamed with laughter,while Jean shook her head and looked away,trying to hide the fact that she was laughing in spite of herself.Scott just looked at him,slack jawed and appalled.Well,it wasn't Eminem,it was Sir-Mix-A- Lot,but he was better than Eminem any day of the week.Of course,Public Enemy was better than all of them,but they didn't exist anymore,and Rogue probably didn't know who those old fogies were.

"I roll with the times,"Bob said,continuing to grin at his own joke.Bad form,yes,but sometimes you had to make these jokes for yourself.

He saw Scott shaking his head out of the corner of his eye."I see why Logan hangs around with you,"he muttered to himself,still seemingly horrified.How 'straight' was this guy?He seemed so uptight he didn't know how his spine didn't snap from excess rigidity.He was all for self-control,especially when you shot death rays from your eyeballs,but come on.

That made Bob smirk to himself as he looked out the windscreen,the layer of clouds scudding beneath them like a carpet of spun cotton,growing dark as they outraced the sun around the world.This was a neat little plane,but it was just way too tense in here.Only Rogue actually liked him,and the fact that she had a minor crush on him seemed to help a lot,and that was weird in itself since she was just old enough to be one of his great great great great great granddaughters.He could have pushed them all,but that seemed like cheating,and besides,he should save all his strength:he could be throwing down with some demon god in a less than an hour.

He tried to think of the last current pop song he heard that Rogue might know if not actually like,and started singing, "High, higher than the sun,you shoot me from a gun-"

Ah,he got it right:she joined in."-I need you to elevate me here-"

If Scott and Jean were good being morose,that was their choice.But Bob was determined to be as happy as long as he possibly could be,before the truckload of shit hit the fan.

Of course,not wanting to get attention before they absolutely had to,they couldn't pass through the lobby.Which meant there was only one way down.

Standing out on the terrace in the pale moonlight,Helga looked down at the beach far below,and shook her head. "Nope,can't make that without busting a leg."

Before he could suggest an alternative,she suddenly leaped up into his arms,and he caught her easily."Have to carry me,"she said,smiling brightly,tail wrapping itself around his waist.

He rolled his eyes,but figured what the hell:it was probably the best way to get her down.

She wrapped her arms firmly around his neck,and he held her tightly with one arm as he leapt over the edge of the balcony.

He landed on his feet like before,although a bit more awkwardly with the extra weight.Still,he didn't fall on his ass,so he accepted it as victory.Helga immediately slid out of his arms,letting her death grip go,and stood on her own on the beach."It must be fun to be unbreakable,"she said,giving him a sly smile.

He knew she was partially teasing,but he simply shrugged."It has its moments."

Logan had to lead the way into the jungle and towards the cliffs,as he knew where they were.He hadn't thought of the way as rugged going before,not even in his bare feet,but Helga complained about it a bit."I'm an urban girl,"she hissed, shoving aside a tree branch violently and disturbing a flying fox."I don't really see why people don't pave all this."

"I kind of like it,"he admitted.Strangely,he did;he liked anywhere where it looked like people hadn't been.

"You would,"she replied.He didn't know if that was a compliment,or if she meant that as an obscure sort of insult.

The moon was bright on this temperate,slightly muggy night,but he smelled an abrupt,strange change in the air.The wind suddenly picked up-it was colder too,had a bit of a raw edge to it-and he had a sense a very violent storm was coming in,but that made no sense.Storms didn't come in without warning...unless-

"He didn't,"he exclaimed in angry disbelief,knowing he most likely had.

"Who what?"Helga asked."Bob?"

But he didn't say anything until they reached a small clearing,where the overlapping fronds and twisting lianas didn't render the sky a latticework over their heads,and looking around,he saw a bank of roiling black clouds scudding over the moon,all but blocking the light.

"What the fuck is that?"Helga exclaimed,the moment he saw it too:there was something hanging in the sky.

No,not something-someone.Someone with long white hair spreading out behind her like a fan,a cape billowing like a flag in the now gusting wind,arms held out as if welcoming the violent tumult.

"Oh shit,"Logan cursed.Now he knew who Bob was bringing in as back up.

"Wait-isn't that that X chick that was in a coma?"She asked,as Logan tried to look through the screen of trees towards the far off shore.Even though a scrim of clouds now covered the moon,his eyesight was acute enough that he could see the ocean was foaming with whitecaps,roiling like water in a hot tea kettle:something big was coming.Not just a paltry electrical storm-a monsoon.A hurricane.

A tidal wave.

Bob was not only going to shut the portals,he was going to drown the world.Or at least Dis,which was almost the same thing.

"Since when she can hover?"Helga continued,now shouting since the wind was starting to howl like a pack of wolves, bringing in a strong scent of salt and ozone off the turbulent ocean.

He was about to shout back that he had no fucking idea,but he noticed what looked like a small funnel of air just beneath her feet,kicking up a whirlwind of sand and fallen leaves.It was like a small,stationary tornado.

"I thought she said she couldn't control it like that,"he muttered bitterly,grabbing Helga's arm and pulling her back into the jungle,heading off towards the caves.They had to move fast now;back up was on the way.

Coming in on the crest of a tidal way.

**

The plane was now skimming the ocean,one sixty feet above but it still looked very close,and Scott,who seemed to be sulking about the singing (okay,so it didn't seem very professional,but it was good to loosen up before a fight) interrupted to tap a sensor screen showing what was behind them.

"We're late,"he said,quickly scanning the monitors to see if he could find something else that had gone wrong.

"No we're not,"Bob replied casually,seeing the little isle on the horizon like a black battlement,the last castle standing in a devastating war."I wanted it on our tail.Three pronged attack:we hit separate parts all at once.And he thinks only Chaos demons can cause chaos.Hah!"

"You wanted a tsunami on our tail?"Scott asked incredulously."How close on our tail?"

"Images in monitor are closer than they appear,"he replied,smirking at his own joke."I told Storm to try and give us a seven minute head start.She could only guarantee a two minute margin of error either way.Apparently once they get that big they're harder to control.And technically,tsunamis are caused by earthquakes.This is a tidal wave."

"How many people are on this island?"Scott continued,looking to punch last minute holes in his slapdash plan.

"None-just Logan.It's a demon island,and I have a feeling the good demons have pretty much skedaddled.But don't worry:I can't think of a demon that melts when hit by water."

"Three pronged?"Jean interjected."Us,the storm-that's two."

"Logan's the third part,"Rogue said.

Bob shook his head."He should be working in concert with us,so no,he's not.The third part is the Chuck and Amaranth show."

"What is the Professor doing?"Jean asked.

"Amaranth?"Scott wondered."The so called witch?"

"Not so called,"Bob replied curtly."And she's my  granddaughter,so don't say anything more negative than that,kiddo."

Scott grimaced,chagrined,and muttered,"I'm sorry,I didn't know.No disrespect intended."

"You really are old?"Rogue asked,sounding genuinely shocked.

Bob decided to answer Jean's question first,since they were surely within the detecting perimeter of the Scanners by now."Amaranth is going to send the Scanners back home,and help Chuck create mass confusion among the security force.Nothing like a little telepathic suggestion to make everyone go into a tizzy."

But the Scanners would be around long enough to send out an alarm before disappearing entirely-which was intentional.He wanted Volta to panic;panicky people made big ass mistakes.

Bob made sure that everything was nominal before briefly closing his eyes and reaching out to Helga and Logan. Show time was just about to start.

And he seriously hoped he could land this thing better than Scott,or he'd never live it down.

**

Helga kept a hold of him with her tail,and he didn't really know why;things weren't really that bad.They were within view of the cliffs through the churning trees when suddenly it was like the world blinked-

-and,in a suddenly calm jungle,Bob was standing before them,dressed for once,although he looked like a leather boy. "Okay,we're just about here.Wait for us before you move in."

"Why didn't you tell me you were bringing Xavier's people into this?"Logan demanded,more ticked that he'd leave him out of the loop than anything else.

"Because I figured it would piss you off,"Bob admitted."Also,it was a last minute decision."

Logan snorted in disbelief,not buying that for a second.

"How can you ask us to wait?"Helga argued.Her tail was still wrapped around his waist;he could still feel it,even in this mindscape."We need to start kicking some ass here."

"Not without a little supernatural help.Volta's obviously using black magic here,and you need a counter to protect you. She here's,but wait for her.Oh,and some others came with Amaranth;please don't kill them if you don't have to."

"Who?"Logan asked,but then there was that feeling of the world shutting its eyes again,and suddenly Logan and Helga were back standing alone in the jungle,being battered by near gale force winds.

"I swear I'm gonna kill your boyfriend,"he snapped,as Helga unwound her tail from around his waist.

"Get in line,"she shouted back.

He heard the crack of a limb snapping,and suddenly the wind propelled the human sized branch right towards them. Helga jumped back,but Logan,on reflex,simply popped the claws of his right hand and sliced through it in mid air,before it could smash him in the face.The two log sized pieces were impelled off in different directions by the violent winds.

Helga just stared at him."You can always duck,you know!"She shouted.

"And you could have always told me that it wasn't sex but contact,"he shouted back,having finally figured it out.She needed to have physical contact with him when Bob got in contact with her,so he could be 'pulled in' or whatever,which is why she had been holding onto him.The monsoon gale around them had nothing to do with it.

"Does it matter?"She replied.

In spite of the constant roar of the wind,he thought he heard the jet pass by them,although the sky was so black with clouds there was no way to see it.Warm rain was starting to pelt down hard as hail,feeling like needles as it hit them,
and then he sensed something.It smelled a little like Bob,crossed with a gum tree and parchment paper,and he turned to see a young Goth sort of woman with electric blue hair standing maybe ten feet away,under a seemingly undulating banana tree.She was wearing a see through black mesh shirt with nothing but a black sports bra on underneath,and blue leather pants that matched both her hair and her extremely blue eyes.There was something about her face,no matter how delicate it was,that suggested Bob.But for some reason,she had some sort of spider web type thing tattooed on her left cheek,and Logan couldn't tell if she was wearing blue lipstick,or if her lips really were that color.

"Amaranth?"He asked.Just her look,her smell,suggested a connection to Bob.

She exclaimed something in...Latin?..and suddenly threw out her hands towards them.A small ball of light shot from her palms,but before it could hit them,it seemingly disappeared,although Logan could swear he felt a tingle of energy all over his skin."Since I don't know what kind of magic we're dealing with,don't expect my protection spell to last long or cover everything,"Amaranth shouted,betraying an Australian accent even thicker than Bob's."I'll do what I can when I can,but right now I've got to stay out here and work on taking down the barrier he put up to keep the vortices from collapsing.Just take the loony bin with ya,and good luck!"

"The looney bin?"He shouted,sure he heard that wrong,but then the wind brought a familiar scent of vampires,and he turned to see the odd eyed Weird Sisters standing about fifteen feet away,their long black coats blowing around them like capes in the wind.

"Hello-"said the one of the right.

"-Logan,"said the one on the left.

Then they both smiled,stereo evil grins,both seemingly oblivious to the maelstrom around them.

Oh,she had to be fucking kidding!

The outside of the cliffs were being lashed with water,inland property suddenly turned waterfront,but even through the cacophany of the storm,Logan could hear that high pitched hum:in fact,it was louder now,and wavering so much he was sure there was more than a single source making that noise,audibly confirming what they had already guessed.

Some of those pile of rock looking demons-M'griens,supposedly-were guarding the outside,blending easily into the scenery,but Logan already knew they weren't that tough:they did have necks that could be cut...sort of.

It didn't matter too much,though-they were no collective match for him and Helga and the bizarro Weird Sisters.In fact, watching the Weirds in action was an eye opener.They didn't work so much as a tag team than as a single organism that could split itself in two-one would strike in the front as the other struck at the back,not one after the other but at the exact same time,giving the opponent sandwiched between them no chance at all.He was impressed;as enemies, they'd be absolutely devastating.No wonder Bob liked to keep them around.

He wondered why they would help since they were essentially evil,but Helga helpfully pointed out the death of humanity would wipe out the vampire's raison d'etre-any vampire would oppose this,because it would wipe out their food supply. Somehow that was less than comforting,but who said all motives had to be noble?He wasn't completely sure what his motives were here,so the Sisters had one up on him there.

Once they wiped out the M'griens the wind was at almost hurricane force,the rain hitting hard enough to feel like stones,and once they reached the mouth of the suspicious cave he felt...something.It was hard to describe,but it was like walking through a forcefield that was charged but not quite up to lethal levels.

He stopped as soon as he was beyond the mouth of the cave,not completely sure he could believe his eyes.

It looked like the entire interior of the cliff had somehow been hollowed out;golden light from an unclear source illuminated what seemed to be a cathedral of stone,grey rock like marble that arched high over their heads,the sides of the cave as far out of reach as the ocean outside.

There looked to be 'platforms' carved in the rock walls,leading about thirty feet up like irregularly staggered stairs,and the air in the center of the cavern seemed to shimmer like it would in the desert at the hottest time of the day,but he knew heat had nothing to do with it.For one thing he was,for the moment,kind of cold.He felt like a drowned rat,and certainly Helga and the Sisters looked it,so he must have looked that way too (but no one could look better in a wet t-shirt than Helga,no matter how she went on about his 'ta tas').He didn't understand how the water wasn't ankle deep in here,until he realized the forcefield or whatever they had passed through to get inside had probably kept it out.They might have been kept out if it wasn't for Amaranth's spell.

From the volume of noise,the shimmer had to be vortices-or some of them-and he wondered if the spell Amaranth had mentioned that was protecting them was also keeping them from being adequately seen.He certainly felt something weird in here,something that was making the hairs on his arm stand on end.

Demons-most of them Ressiks by the look of it-were running around,the effort coordinated but clearly panicked,and he smelled Volta and his Myriast companion long before he saw Volta on one of the high platforms,thirty feet up on the far side of the cavern,the shimmering veil of hidden vortices between him and them.

Volta looked stunned to see them,and looked to be holding something ropy and bluish grey in one of his glass like hands -intestines?He shouted something in a language that sounded like gibberish (Demon-ese,or whatever) and held out his free hand towards them.Like with Amaranth,there was a ball of light that hit them to fast to react to,but this time there wasn't even a feeling of energy;absolutely nothing happened.He seemed even more stunned than before,and Logan guessed that Amaranth's protection spell was still holding.

"I don't have time for you!"He shouted,his voice echoing strangely in the hollowed out cliffside.He gestured to his Ressik staff,now noticing the interlopers for the first time,and ordered,"Take them apart!Feed them to the vortices!"

Over a dozen Ressiks swarmed them like angry bees,while ones stuck on rock platforms simply opened fire,sniping at them from their higher positions,but Logan didn't much care.He moved into position before Helga,making himself a more tempting (and impossible) target,and didn't even spare the Sisters a second thought,since they were vampires and bullets,at best,could only sting like a bastard.

The Ressiks tried to quadruple team him,but that was a joke:he kicked one away as another landed a solid,rock hard punch that spun him around,so he popped his claws and sliced the heads off all three of them in a single slash as he turned on his heels.Sometimes it was too damn easy.

Of course,someone tackled him from behind and took him down,smashing his head repeatedly into the stone floor, splitting the skin of his forehead and causing blood to cascade down his face until the gash healed (only,ironically, to be opened again) ,the Ressik's knee in the small of his back,pinning him down.But Logan threw back a sharp elbow,hitting the Ressik's elbow and bending it the opposite way.

It made a noise like a firecracker as the bone snapped,and he screamed in pain,the noise so obviously agonized that Logan actually felt a bit sorry for him,although not enough to keep from killing the son of a bitch.He bucked him off his back and jumped up to his feet,the thrice opened gash now healing for good,and gave the Ressik a bone shattering kick that caved in his skull.If that didn't kill him, he still didn't think he was going to get up in a hurry.

A bullet slammed through his shoulder,tearing muscle and narrowly missing bone as it passed straight through,and he turned,snarling,just in time for Helga to slam into him and send him sprawling.

"Hel,you okay?"He asked,and was surprised when she punched him in the jaw.

"Ah,fuck!"She shouted,face contorting in pain as she grabbed her hand.

"What the hell's wrong with you?!"He snapped,tossing her off of him and rolling up to his feet.

"Mind-"One of the Sisters said,snapping the neck of one Ressik.

"-control,"said the second one,as she grabbed the gun of a second Ressik,shoved it in his mouth,and pulled the trigger, painting the far wall with the black mess of his brain.

He didn't have to ask who or why:he could smell the Myriast,and then he saw her-it.

To call it humanoid was to imply humans had legs with knees that bent the wrong way,and massively bad cases of black death derived eczema,as well as faces and skulls shaped like footballs stood on end.Her eyes were like small black marbles shoved deep in her sharp yet strangely featureless face,her skin hanging like loose,overlapping grey white scales that might shed any second.Her long arms,which seemed to bend the right way,ended in long,four fingered hands that looked more like claws,and as she snarled at him he realized about half her face was a loosely hinged jaw.

"Think you can get past me,human?"She hissed,her voice sounding gravelly and definitely inhuman.

"Sure I can,ugly,"he said,wondering briefly why he could see the real Myriast,if indeed he was.Oh,right,she didn't like his mind very much.

He slashed out with his claws,but somehow he missed her completely,and as she spun away from him,she gave him a sharp elbow to the back of the head that sent him stumbling.Before he could completely recover,one of those backwards bending legs kicked him in the back of the knee and sent him crashing to the stone."Idiot,"she hissed, kicking him in the side of the head.

From this vantage point,he could see the Sisters were taking care of the mind controlled Helga,and he hoped they knew not to kill her.

It was awful to think this ugly mother was right,but she was:he was an idiot.She-it-was telepathic,and he wasn't going to catch her short unless she completely fucked up,or he stopped thinking about it.Well,Bob seemed to think he could do it,so now it was time to find out if he really could fight a telepath.

She tried to kick him again;a mistake.He tried to clear his mind,focus on nothing but his rage,and let reflex take over.

He caught her foot before it connected,and,still prone on the ground,shot out his own foot and took her lone remaining leg out from beneath her with a sweeping kick.He felt like he was almost watching from outside his own body as she hit the stone floor with a startled yelp and he rolled up to his own feet,spinning into a back heel kick that caught her just above the point of her blade sharp jaw.

"What the fuck are you doing?"She snapped,rolling away and up to her own feet,putting distance between them."What the fuck are you supposed to be?"