(Author’s Note: Mooseheart is a real orphanage near Chicago—the only one, in fact. Since I like to base locations in reality when appropriate—after all, orphanages are getting fewer and fewer in number—I chose to use a real one around Lance and Kitty’s home city as opposed to a made-up one. However, the negative environment at the school was needed for story purposes, and doesn’t reflect any personal experiences with Mooseheart or anything like that, so no offense is intended if anyone involved with Mooseheart is, by chance, reading this. Also, I’m not 100% on how exactly orphanages are run, so if some of the title/chain of command details are wrong, my apologies.)
 

Omega Red unbolted the door and opened it up as Magneto and the rest of the Acolytes-- ever-increasing in number-- stepped out into the day, the sun piercing down through the thin clouds of a receding storm front.

"What a surprise," a female purple-skinned Mutant in green clothing responded as she looked out on the partially-ruined metallic spires. "Destroyed again."

"How do you expect us to build an empire if we can't even maintain a small city?" asked five identical blonde-haired teenage girls, all at the same time.

"Jinx," smirked Legion, currently in his Lucas persona.

"We grow tired of that joke," the five girls replied simultaneously, their glowing white eyes now narrowed.

"I had assumed that my knowledge and control of metal would have allowed us to sculpt buildings and spires that could withstand even the mightiest typhoon," Magneto sighed, looking up at his ruined buildings that had been in perfect condition just two days earlier. "Sadly, it would appear that the forces of the Pacific are too great for even my craftsmanship."

"So what do we do?" Mastermind asked hesitantly. "Your vision of Genosha is never going to get off the ground if we can't get our buildings to stay erect!"

"I agree," Magneto said, "Which is why we need someone who can help us out in this manner."

Turning towards his relatively new recruits, he continued, "Blink, Synch, Five-in-One... as you know, beyond our similar philosophies, I have recruited you for particular purposes that can aid in building my fledgling empire. Five-in-One, you can use the bunker's Cerebro Mark II room to find any Mutant on the globe. Blink, you can bring us to their position in an instant. And Synch, under the right circumstances you can help in our efforts with any Mutant ability we need. I think you all know what needs to be done. Plan Epsilon. Plan Theta if it goes south."

Everyone nodded, the five quintuplets stepping back down into the bunker they had just gotten out of.

"Oh, I really hope it goes south," replied Synch, a tall, slender black teenager with large circular goggles on and a rather impish grin.

"Until the Five-in-One girls find something, however, I believe we should start with our rebuilding efforts," Magneto said.

Blink and Legion groaned, but followed Magneto and the other Acolytes to the ruined buildings to begin repairs... again.

“So… you gonna gimme my homework or not?”

“Uh, it’s not your homework, Lance. It’s mine.”

Lance grinned, cocking his head to one side. “You’d think as often as we do this, you’d have gotten the idea by now. You’re rather slow there on the uptake, Santo.”

“Look who’s talking…” Santo mumbled under his breath, adjusting his thick glasses absentmindedly.

“I HEARD that, Four-Eyes,” Lance snarled, picking up the considerably shorter black-haired boy by the shirt collar and pinning him against the alley hall, raising Santo so that they were both eye-level.

The two boys flanking Lance on either side chuckled as Santo struggled in vain to get Lance to release him.

“Now here’s what’s going to happen, dweeb,” Lance continued. “You’re gonna give me YOUR homework, name erased. And I’m gonna get credit for it. And because you’re giving me lip, tomorrow your science homework is going to Bill over there, too. Got it?”

“Hey, I get something outta this? Awesome!”

“Shut up, Bill!” said the other boy by Lance’s side, smacking Bill across the back of the head. “You keep blurtin’ out stuff that loudly and one of our instructors is bound to look back here.”

“And if I don’t give you it, I assume you’re gonna beat me up, is that it?” Santo said to Lance, rolling his eyes.

“That’s kinda the idea,” Bill said, which earned him another elbow in the stomach.

“Don’t you dumb-dumbs ever think?” Santo said, his tone surprisingly forceful given the situation he was in. “You beat me up, I’ll just go tell the headmaster and anyone else in charge here at the orphanage and they’ll be on all of you before you even have time to turn the homework in.”

“Nice bluff,” Lance said, curling his free hand into a ball, “But I know how well the adults around here pay attention.”

Before Santo could utter another word in retort, Lance and his friends gleefully began to pound on the smaller kid until their fists hurt.

Lance’s fists hurt.

His alarm clock had awoken him from a nice, peaceful sleep—and at 5:30 in the morning, he might add—and now he couldn’t get the darn thing to shut up. Usually a swift pound from the side of the bed was enough to put it back into sleep mode, but for some reason the sleep button wasn’t working—and that annoyingly grating sound was starting to drive him out of his mind.

Lance sighed as he slammed on the clock for the twentieth time.

He understood alarm clocks were made to wake people up, but couldn’t they do it with a sound that was less incredibly aggravating?!

Lance was about to kick the clock off the stand when he heard a knock on the door to his room.

“What!?” Lance yelled angrily, not turning away from the clock.

Wanda opened the door slightly, looking in on Lance in his undershirt and boxer shorts. “What are you still doing in here? Mystique said she wanted us all assembled in the meeting room by now.”

“This stupid alarm clock won’t shut the heck up! None of the buttons are working! You didn’t hex this thing, did you!?”

“Why would I do that?” Wanda said, walking in a few steps and giving the alarm clock a brief once-over. Lance didn’t notice the slight smirk on her face.

“…Did you unplug it?”

Lance didn’t know who he wanted to smack more—Wanda or himself.

“Right,” was all Lance growled before yanking the clock’s cord out of the wall.

“Mystique wants you out here, pronto,” Wanda said before backing out of the room.

“I KNOW!” Lance yelled as Wanda closed the door.

“Pour the gas, light the match, burn! Pour the gas, light the match, burn! Buuurrrn! Buuurrrn! Buurr-“

Pyro was interrupted as Mystique yanked the headphones and iPod from him.

“What did I say about music in the meeting room, Pyro?” Mystique said angrily.

“B-but… we’re just waitin’ for Avalanche! What else am I supposed t’ do? You already broke Toad’s PSP!”

“Nothin’ beat playing Daxter hangin’ from the ceiling,” Toad interjected from the other end of the room.

Ignoring Toad, Mystique responded, “You might want to, I don’t know, talk to your teammates.”

“Pyro already talks enough for my liking,” Toad interjected again—which earned him an iPod to the head.

“…Ow.”

“You tend to get lost when listening to trash like this and when it IS time to focus, you don’t,” Mystique finished before exiting the room in a huff.

Fred let out a whistle after the door closed behind the blue-skinned Mutant. “Man… something’s buggin’ the boss lady today. She’s kinda tense even for being… y’know… her.”

Pyro slunk down into the chair he was sitting in, his face slightly red after the verbal pounding his boss had given him. He glanced over at Noriko, who had a smirk on her face.

“…What? What’re you all gleeful about?”

“What song was that you were listening to?”

“On m’ iPod? Oh, an awesome song, mate. ‘Burn the Earth’ by Dethklok.”

Noriko shook her head slightly, still smirking.

“…What? What!?”

“What would you have done if your powers were, I dunno, anything BUT fire-based?”

“Oh, you’re one to talk, Blue Hair.”

Pietro winced as he heard the door slide open. He knew those footsteps…

Mystique entered his field of vision and leaned on the bars keeping Pietro inside his cell.

Pietro grinned half-heartedly in response, and immediately regretted it due to his swollen jaw.

“We’re running out of time, Pietro,” Mystique growled. “If you don’t want me to finally end your miserable life here and now, you WILL tell me all you know about what Magneto’s plans are. He’s been far too quiet of late.”

"For the last time, he comes to me, I don't come to him! I have no idea where he is right now!"

Mystique stared at Pietro for a few moments, her expression unchanging, before she took her hands off of the bars and stood up to her full height again.

"I've spent years of my life undercover, Pietro. You'd be hard pressed to find someone who's more apt at detecting a lie than I am. And I can tell that on the surface, you're telling the truth.... on the surface. You're purposely dodging the subjects you do know about. You weren't just running an underground racing circuit here in Bayville for no reason. You wouldn't come back here, right where we were, without a good reason."

"Yeah, I wanted to make a lot of money. What's so wrong about that?"

"Money for what?"

Pietro's eyes fell to the floor, unable to meet Mystique's gaze directly. "Um... I wanted a pretty cool, um... house."

"Right," Mystique replied before turning and yelling, "WANDA!"

"Nononononono!" Pietro said, his voice taking on an even more desperate look as he heard the door slide open again. "I swear, I just wanted boatloads of cash! Selfish reasons, you know me, only thinking of myself! I'm just a worthless...."

Pietro trailed off as he saw Mystique walk out of the room, leaving only his sister on the other side of the bars, one hand on her hip as a hex field started to form around one of her hands.

"Let me finish that sentence for you, Pietro..."

"But that's not fair!"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Vaccarro, but without any proof of your complaints we can't exactly take action on Mr. Alvers and his friends," the headmaster replied, looking down her glasses at the small flustered boy sitting in her office.

"Proof? Proof!? Are the bruises and broken arm not proof enough!?"

"Legally, no," the headmaster replied, as emotionlessly as ever ."No one else saw the act. For all we know, you may have an inherent dislike of Alvers because you both share a room here at the orphanage and given how different your interests are. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case, of course, but--"

"WHO CARES ABOUT THE LEGAL DEFINITION!?" Santo screamed in outrage. Pausing to reign in his anger slightly, he continued, "Look, this isn't the first time this has happened! Those guys ALWAYS beat me up, give me swirlies, take my homework, food, and money--anything short of killing me, these guys have done it! And do you see one scratch on them? One bruise?"

"Well, three months ago, Mr. Alvers had a bruise, though he said it was from falling down the stairs--"

"How dense can you be!?" Santo said, practically shaking with rage as he stood up in his chair, his fists clenched. "This is a classic bully situation! You'd think as the headmaster of an orphanage, you'd be pretty experienced when it comes to dealing with these kinds of things! Instead, this ridiculous policy you have of not punishing anyone unless there is indisputable evidence that they've done something wrong has led this place to become a nightmare for people like me! ESPECIALLY for people like me, since I'm the only one of us 'nerds' who doesn't take their bull! I don't cower, I don't do what they want me to do! And you'd think at least I'd be vindicated in the end for that, but noooo! You won't even punish them and keep me safe, which is what your whole job is!"

"Mr. Vaccarro," the headmaster responded indignantly, "That is QUITE enough. You are a member here at the Mooseheart orphanage, not the headmaster. Until you acquire a headmaster position yourself, I think it quite ill-informed of you to pass judgement on how good of a job I am doing."

"That logic is the most ridic--"

"--FURTHERMORE, any more outbursts in this manner will NOT be tolerated. If you can find indisputable evidence that Mr. Alvers have been bullying you, I will be more than happy to punish them as per our posted codes of conduct. Until then... leave my office and do not discuss this with me again."

After the headmaster watched a furious Santo Vaccarro stomp out of her office and slam the door behind him, she sighed, shook her head, and turned on the small TV on one side of her desk, leaning back in her chair and flipping through channels with the remote as she struggled to find something good on.

Latoya winced as the sound of rock scraping against metal sounded again.

It had been an interesting few hours, to say the least. Nothing had HAPPENED, mind you, but the six-year-old girl had never seen a real, live Mutant in person before.

At least she thought the thing on the other side of the railcar she and her mom were riding in was a Mutant. Most Mutants she had seen on TV looked human-- they could just do neat stuff like fly or shoot laser beams or teleport.

This Mutant, though… this Mutant looked like he was made of pure rock. What kind, Latoya wasn’t sure—some white-and-black kind, it looked sort of like marble mixed with some other rocks. Although his body was certainly humanoid, all of the features were made of rock—except for the eyes, which instead were just circular cracks in the Mutant’s face that emitted dull white rays of light.

Being made of rock wasn’t the only thing that was different about the person opposite Latoya and her mother, however—he was also gargantuan for a human being, nearly nine feet tall and certainly weighing far more than the average human. His upper body—particularly his arms—were also a little over-sized proportionally, to the point where he almost had a gorilla-like stature.

The rock-man wore an enormous jersey and set of shorts over his body—as large as they were, though, they were still somewhat tight on his bulky form. Latoya was sure even clothes that big had been hard to come by.

Most of the people in the railcar had moved to other areas of the train as soon as the rock-man had taken his seat. Latoya’s mother had tried to move into another section as well, but she had been a little too late, as all the available spots on the other cars had been taken moments earlier.

So now the few remaining passengers in the railcar all sat, completely silent, all of their eyes fixed on the giant stone-man sitting among them. Latoya could tell everyone else, including her mother, stared at the stone-man with fear on their faces, but Latoya didn’t quite understand why. She thought he looked pretty cool. She had even attempted to go up to the rock-man to talk to him, but her mother had quickly yanked her back and whispered to her vehemently not to say a word to the Mutant.

That didn’t stop her from staring at the rock-man curiously, though.

And it wasn’t like the rock-man was doing anything dangerous. Sure, he looked a little uncomfortable—maybe even a little mad, it was hard to read the rock-man’s facial expressions— and every time he moved even slightly, the sound of rock moving against rock or the steel of the railcar was rather annoying-- but he wasn’t doing anything wrong, as far as Latoya could tell.

Just then, the conductor’s voice came on over the train’s intercom. *Next stop: Bayville. Thirty minutes.*

“Thirty minutes, eh?” said the rock-man, speaking for the first time since Latoya had seen him enter the railcar. His deep booming voice was rather unpleasant to listen to, as overtones of rock grinding together could be heard with each word.

Slowly standing up as far as he could—the railcar wasn’t quite as tall as he was—the stone-man nodded to each of the other passengers who shrinked away in fear.

“Sorry, folks,” the rock-man said. “But this is my stop.”

Grinning, the rock-man effortlessly punched one of his two-foot-wide arms through the floor of the railcar and into the track below.

“Ah, Lance,” Mystique said, scowling. “I see you’ve finally joined us. Do make sure to be on time next time. Particularly when I said to be out here twenty minutes ago.”

Lance’s initial reaction was to just sock Mystique in the face, but he knew her well enough to know what that would be followed up by. Instead he just replied back, “Sorry. Had some alarm clock problems.”

“Yes, well. Make sure they don’t happen again.”

“So what have we been waitin’ around here for?” Blob asked. “What’s going on?”

One of Pietro’s muffled screams echoed through the Brotherhood’s underground base just then, though all of the members assembled in the meeting room thought nothing of it. They had gotten used to them quite a while ago—now they were just background noise.

“As you all may or may not be aware,” Mystique replied, “It’s been exactly two weeks since we captured Pietro and locked him away here. Despite Wanda’s most… coercive… efforts, Pietro has not been cooperative. I’ve been unable to get anything out of him other than that he wanted money, and for something Magneto’s been planning. Given Pietro’s utter cowardice, I can only assume that whatever Magneto’s been doing these past couple of months since the Sentinel attack, it’s big. VERY big. So big that his attention has been devoted utterly to his new ‘grand scheme’, at the expense of everything else. I have eyes and ears stationed on all the inhabited continents, and I haven’t heard a peep from any of them regarding anything suspicious that could be attributed to Magneto or any of his Acolytes. I’ve even talked to Destiny, and all she can tell me is that everything’s going to go south in a major way soon—for all the good that does me…

“So, here’s where we stand,” Mystique sighed. “We have relatively little time before something huge happens that will presumably affect all of us. We have no idea where Magneto is or what he’s doing. The X-Men have toughened up security even more due to recent break-ins at their Institute, so there’s no infiltrating their ranks at the moment to find out if they know anything about this—and I doubt they do, anyways. Their focus is obviously elsewhere right now. And Quicksilver isn’t talking. So I’m apparently going to train all of you in information-gathering and stealth techniques, since I’m going to have to resort to my last line of defense—relying on—“

*rrruuummmmmmbble*

A group of faint, irregular tremors through the earth interrupted Mystique’s speech as they reverberated through the Brotherhood’s underground base.

“Lance, what are you—“ Blob began.

“Hey, this isn’t me!” Lance protested.

“Everyone, stay here,” Mystique said. “I’m going topside to check what’s going on. I’ll be back shortly.”

Quickly morphing into an owl, Mystique flew out of the room, leaving most of the rest of the Brotherhood members sitting around the meeting room, confusion evident on their faces.

“Hey.”

Santo looked up at the considerably taller Lance, who was sitting on the bed in his own side of the room, sneering.

“Hey,” Santo replied back angrily, his brows furrowed. He hoped Lance didn’t…

“So, I heard you toooollld on me,” Lance grinned. “What’d they do?”

Santo cursed inwardly. “You obviously know the answer.”

“That’s right, nothing.”

“Right. Like they always do,” Santo sighed angrily, plopping down on his own bed next to the room’s only window and rummaging through his bookshelf. “…Hey, where’s my chemistry textbook?”

Lance, grin still on his face, held up Santo’s book briefly in one hand before putting it down on his bed again.

“Give. It. To. Me,” Santo gritted, his face starting to get red.

“Hey, I will,” Lance replied, pretending to suddenly look hurt. “But first I think we oughta, y’know… talk. Since you’re a guy of words, not fists.”

Santo started to curse Lance out, but he just stood there grinning as four-letter-word after four-letter-word was thrown at him. Once Santo finally stopped for a breath, Lance continued, “There, see? You just gave me the best you got, and what’d it do? Nothin’. Meanwhile, you’re gonna be feeling those bruises for quite a while, man. See, you gotta go with what’s effective.”

“I’m surprised you even know what ‘effective’ means.”

“Oh, ha. According to your homework--“ –at this point Lance pulled out the homework he had taken from Santo that morning— “I know words a lot longer than that.”

Santo fumed, but managed to reply in a regular tone, “So, then. What did you want to…. talk… about?”

“Well, first off, good news for both of us—I just got adopted. So neither of us are going to have to put up with each other for much longer—I’m outta this dump Saturday. Some foster parents outside of town, I dunno, I forgot to look at what their names were. House looks pretty sweet, though. My new foster dad makes a six-figure income. And they both’re pretty busy, so it looks like I’ll have free reign to do almost whatever the heck I want to. Don’t know why they’re adopting—maybe they feel guilty for having all that money and not a kid of their own to share it with, who knows, who cares. Point is, I struck gold.”

Santo didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “You got picked. Out of all the kids here. YOU.”

“Well, yeah,” Lance grinned sheepishly. “I mean, I have been getting the best grades. Top in my class, thanks to you! And these foster parents, why, they want a genius kid to nurture, I guess. They’ll be sending me to a top-ranked school!”

By now, Santo looked about ready to explode.

And Lance was loving every minute of it.

“So, hey, just wanted to thank you. You know, for all your hard work.”

Santo stood up slowly, making his way over to Lance’s side of the room until he was right in his tormentor’s face. Poking a finger right at Lance’s face, Santo started talking, his voice tinged with just enough calm-yet-angry craziness to make Lance slightly uncomfortable. “So this is how you get off, huh? Taking down anyone who’s better than you, pushing up in the seesaw so quickly that instead they end up smacking hard into the ground while you take credit for all their hard work.

“And hey, I’ve gotta hand it to you, buddy. It worked. You got a family. The family I SHOULD HAVE GOTTEN. But you know what? It’s cool. Right now, to you, it may sure look like you screwed me, but I’ve got other… things… going on right now that might eventually help me out. But you--- oh, with this attitude, buddy, it is you who are screwed. Eternally, perpetually screwed, for-FREAKING-ever and ever. Because as long as you have this attitude—this SADISTIC attitude—you will never have a truly happy existence.

“You know my background, I know yours. You came from a supremely dysfunctional family, dumb-dumb, oh, I know. My condolences. Drunken father, beat your mother quite often. Often over issues concerning you, which is why they hated you. Oh, how they both HATED you. Eventually a neighbor phoned the police and you were carted over here for your own safety.”

“Shut up,” Lance said softly but firmly, knowing where this was going.

Santo paused as an odd, fairly soft rumble passed through the floors, but continued unabated. “But me, see, the reason I’m here is ‘cause my parents died in a car crash. And since my only other living relatives were grandparents that were too old to take care of me, the state decided to put me here. But believe you me, Lance, my parents loved me. Oh, I was the center of their life until they died four years ago. And I have no doubt they would’ve continued to love me if they had lived.

“Shut. Up.” Lance said, more sternly.

“So go ahead, treat as many families, as many people as trash as you want. Care only about their money. Act towards them just like your parents did towards you. And watch as you go through your life, devoid of anyone who really, truly cares about you. And though I may have missed my chance this time, sooner or later I’ll get my family. And I’ll be sure to LOVE and APPRECIATE them, just as my parents loved and appreciated me.”

“Last chance. SHUT UP,” Lance yelled, standing up.

Santo was so absorbed in the moment he didn’t even notice the more severe tremor that passed underneath their feet, knocking a few pictures off the wall and sending them crashing down to the floor. “No one will ever. Ever. Love you.”

“I said SHUT UP!” Lance roared.

Lance suddenly started growling, eyes rolling back into his head. A massive, room-bending tremor blasted out from his body, bowling a surprised Santo over and carrying him to the far side of the room. To both Santo’s and Lance’s surprise, the entire rear wall crumbled from the shockwave, and the outward force emanating from Lance bowled Santo right out the side of the crumbling wall.

Their room was on the seventh floor of the building.

By the time Lance’s pupils focused forward again and his involuntary growling stopped, he just stared at the spot where Santo’s half of the room had been just seconds ago. Now all that was left was a crumbling slope leading to a steep drop out of the building.

The next few hours went by rather fast for Lance. Just seconds later, other attendants had come in, asking if he was okay, half of the building is starting to crumble, we’ve got to get you out of here, is Santo okay, where is Santo, oh my god he fell out the side, call the paramedics, everyone stay away from where he fell, evacuate out the other side of the building.

Lance followed his instructor’s orders, but like a zombie. He still couldn’t believe that what had just happened… had actually happened.

Had he REALLY just caused that to happen? Did he just blow Santo out of the room with a wave of force, an earthquake? Or was it just an incredibly unlikely coincidence? It was a very odd earthquake if it was just a coincidence… more damage was actually done to their floor than the building’s first floor and foundation…

As the days followed and he moved in with his foster parents, Lance slowly but surely snapped out of his reverie. It was surely just a coincidence, surely just a coincidence. He knew how often “coincidences” happened that seemed like they were something more, but really weren’t. Sure, that must’ve been it.

And yet, as he sat dressed up in a black suit and tie, sitting next to his foster parents and nearly the entire staff of the Mooseheart orphanage as they attended Santo’s funeral, his body housed in a large marble casket, he increasingly began to question whether he had, in fact, caused it. HAD he killed Santo, albeit inadvertently? He had to know.

After the funeral service had ended and everyone had left for their cars, Lance told his foster parents that he’d catch up with them shortly—he had just wanted to bid Santo a final goodbye.

As soon as they were out of sight and he was sure he was alone, Lance stared at the ground and concentrated.

Minutes passed, and nothing happened. He didn’t have long before his foster parents were going to come back, calling for him.

And then he felt it—a small shake, in the ground. Not big, certainly not large enough to do any damage, just enough to be felt.

Lance stepped back, almost entering into shock again. Instead, he cleared his mind again and thrust his hands outwards towards the spot of earth in front of him.

Sure enough, it rumbled, and fairly strongly this time, as well.

Lance pulled back his hands, the rumbling stopped.

It… it was him. He had done it. He had killed Santo.

Lance looked around, near-panicked, triple-checking to make sure no one had seen him. No one could know about this, that was for sure. But then again, who would believe him? Surely if he told anyone they’d just think it was delirious rambling and he’d have to go through a bunch of psycho-examinations. Screw that.

Still, Lance figured, having these… powers… presented some possibilities, so long as he kept their use fairly low-key… some very attractive possibilities…

The stone-man glanced around as he fidgeted, clearly starting to lose patience.

The sight—and the horrible sound the train made as it derailed-- should have acted like a signal beacon.

The wreckage behind him sent a plume of fire and smoke into the sky above. What few people had emerged unharmed were currently helping—or at least trying to help—the people stuck in or underneath the flaming metal debris.

The rock-man paid them no heed. Given the distance from any town, firefighters and policeman weren’t due for another few minutes. He still had a short window of opportunity left before he had to leave.

Come on, come on, where are you and your little pathetic team! I didn’t come all this way just to---

His thoughts were interrupted as he noticed a lone owl in the sky above, circling once and only once before it headed in a straight path towards a ruined barnyard a couple of fields of abandoned farmland away.

Ah. Finally. That must be the shapeshifter. Definitely not an owl, they wouldn’t be attracted to something like this…

As soon as he was sure the owl wasn’t looking back, the rock-man slowly started to shuffle forwards in the same direction as the avian.

“Well?” Surge asked as the owl flew back into the Brotherhood’s underground bunker and morphed into Mystique. The rest of the Brotherhood, including the Scarlet Witch, had all suited up while Mystique was out scouting and now stood in the entry room.

“We’ve got a Mutant coming our way,” Mystique said. “He started following me when he thought I wasn’t looking, but I gave a quick glance back before I entered the base. He’s coming right for our position.”

“Why?” Avalanche asked.

“I don’t know,” Mystique asked, “And before any of you ask, no, it’s not a Mutant I recognize. Think-- do any of you know a Mutant who looks like a humanoid pile of rock?”

All of the Brotherhood members looked between each other, asking each other the same question with their expressions. All of them shook their heads at Mystique.

“Hey, wait—humanoid, made’a rock—it’s YOU! Your stone form’s come back to kill you to take revenge on it… being…killed?” Toad said, trailing off as he noticed everyone was glaring at him. Continuing, he whispered to himself, “How’d you survive after that was shattered, anyway?”

“This is no time for your inane jokes, you fool,” Mystique growled. “Whoever that Mutant is, he derailed a whole train near here, apparently just to get our attention. Whatever he wants with us, he’s clearly going to stop at nothing until he gets it.”

“So we get to fight ‘im, then?” Pyro laughed, brief puffs of fire coming out of the ends of his flamethrower-tubes. “Works for me.”

“Wanda, did you find out anything from Pietro?” Mystique asked hurriedly.

“Nothing of note,” Wanda growled. “Whatever he’s keeping secret, no amount of torture is going to pry it out of him. He slipped up and mentioned something about them needing the money to ‘build’ something, but that could mean almost anything.”

Mystique growled, clearly out of options. “Alright. Everyone, topside, now,” she continued, ushering her subordinates up the stairs and into the run-down farmhouse above that served as a cover for the bunker’s entryway. “If we’re going to have to fight him, best to do it above ground and not down here where all this could come crashing down around us.”

The rock-man grinned as he saw the Brotherhood members exit an old decrepit barn and start to run towards him, both of them less than a field away from each other now.

“Ah, finally,” the rock-man chuckled, a noise that mixed a very deep voice with the sound of grinding rocks behind his stumpy teeth. “There you are. Reduced to living in ruins, eh? Fitting. But business first—got to clear out the riff-raff.”

With that said, the rock-man suddenly dove into the soil, disappearing out of sight.

“What just happened?” Wanda said. “Did it just run out on us after all this!?”

“I really, really doubt it,” Mystique replied. “Everyone, keep aler—“

Mystique didn’t even have time to complete her sentence before the rock-man burst out of the ground right underneath her feet, a giant hand made out of stone catching her right in the jaw and sending her flying back to the ground as the debris settled around the rock-man, now standing in the midst of the other Brotherhood members.

“Mystique!” Surge yelled in concern, swiftly running over to where Mystique was and pressing her finger underneath the prone Mutant’s chin. “She’s unconscious, and her jaw is probably broken!”

“Dang, he’s huge!” Toad exclaimed. “Even makes Freddy look small! Can’t we negotiate or somethin’?!”

“What do you want with us?” Wanda yelled.

“With you? Nothing,” the rock-man chuckled, plunging his hand into the soil. A couple of groaning sounds were heard a few feet under the earth, and a mere second later, an incredibly large hand of stone mixed with soil—almost as large as the rock-man himself—exploded out of the ground right behind Wanda. Before she could so much as turn around, the huge fist closed in on her, pulling her back underneath the ground.

“Wanda!” Toad yelled. “Alright, you big fat piece a’ asphalt, you goin’ down.”

The rock-man extracted his fist from the ground as Toad hopped up to him, the hand now normal-sized again.

“Oh, please,” the rock-man said, taking a casual swing at Toad, though the at-times nimble Mutant quickly dodged it and spit a large glob of slime into the Mutant’s face.

The stone-man made some grinding noises that sounded vaguely like groans, trying in vain to wipe the slime off his eyes.

“Avalanche, tear ‘im apart!” Toad yelled, hopping away.

Avalanche merely nodded and stomped, sending out a tremendous ripple through the soil, focused directly on the rock Mutant. The ripple tore the Mutant into several parts as it passed through him.

The conscious Brotherhood members stood there for a second as the rock-man rained down in chunks around the spot where he had been. After a few seconds of quiet, all of them erupted in cheers.

“Way to go, mate!” Pyro said. “You got ‘im good!”

“A rock elemental’s one weakness—rock,” Surge grinned. “Who knew?”

Toad shrieked all of a sudden, pointing back towards the parts of the rock-man, which were quickly reassembling.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” Blob said.

“Now…” the rock-man paused, cracking his lower jaw back into alignment, “…you’ve ticked me off.”

Reassembling in mere seconds, the stone Mutant dove back into the ground and out of sight for a second time. Other than a few grinding rock noises coming from somewhere below the surface, there was no clue as to where he was located.

“Oh, this ain’t good,” Toad said nervously.

The new Mutant’s entire body suddenly flew out of the ground in a split second, almost as if he were a flying fish and had leaped out of the earth like it was water. His trajectory made him cross paths with a surprised Pyro, who took the stone-man’s head right in the face and went down, his face bruised and bleeding, his nose smashed.

Just as quickly as he had jumped out of the ground, the stone Mutant re-entered the earth, again disappearing amidst a few groaning and grinding rock noises.

“Lance, man, do something!” Blob said, clearly starting to freak out. “We’re droppin’ like flies here!”

“What the heck can I do?!” Avalanche replied back. “You saw how quickly that thing recovered from my attack!”

“Well, keep doing it!” Blob said. “It’s the only thing that’s done anything to him!”

Avalanche reluctantly acknowledged, sending wave after wave outwards towards the general area he thought the rock Mutant would be in, but it didn’t seem to have any effect any more—like the rock Mutant was moving with the earth as it rolled and pitched. Within another ten seconds, both Toad and Surge (who was unable to move quickly due to the constant roiling of the earth) had been taken out in a near-identical manner to Pyro, the rock Mutant plunging back into the ground and out of sight after each head-on collision.

Avalanche reluctantly stopped as he and Blob retreated slightly, facing back-to-back. “This is getting us nowhere, Freddy—in fact, I think it let Noriko get taken down a lot earlier than she would have otherwise! I think your brute force is our best chance right now.”

Blob merely steadied his jaw and breathed out slowly, nodding, before yelling out into the field, “Alright, you big block ‘a dirt! Why don’t you quit hiding and fight like a man… er, rock-person… Just come out and let’s fight, the old-fashioned way!”

After a few seconds of silence, the rock-man emerged slowly out of the ground about ten feet in front of Blob.

Standing there with a stone eyebrow quirked, he commented, “So you, a Mutant who has superhuman strength and endurance, want me to fight ‘the old-fashioned’ way. Interesting. And why should I—“

The rock Mutant was interrupted as Blob threw himself at him. The rock-man was surprised, but sidestepped just enough that Blob missed his torso and instead smashed through his right arm and leg. Both of them fell to the ground simultaneously, one missing a third of his body as the other fell flat on his stomach, expecting to encounter more resistance than he did.

“That was rude,” the rock Mutant replied calmly, as the ground underneath him began to rumble slightly.

“You talk too much,” Blob growled, slowly starting to get up again.

“Oh, there’ll be none of that,” the rock Mutant said, bedrock coming out of the ground seemingly of its own volition and merging with the rock-man to give him a new right arm and leg. It was distinctly darker and less marble-like than the rock in the rest of his body, but it apparently functioned just fine as the huge Mutant stood back up and plunged his older arm into the soil again.

Before Blob could finish hoisting himself off the ground, a large mass of rock burst out of the ground to the left of him and arched over his lower half, quickly plowing back into the ground on the right. Blob pounded a fist at the rock, cracking it somewhat, but no sooner had he landed two punches on it than another rock mass came out of the ground, tightly arching over his upper body in the same manner. Blob let out a muffled yell from behind the rock and the shuddering of his pounding continued to sound from inside the rock cocoon, but the rock Mutant continued his manipulation of the earth. Another mass of rock arched over the cocoon, then another, and another, and another. Soon so many sheets or rock encased Blob that the pounding could no longer be heard.

“There, he should be stuck in there for quite a while even with his strength,” the rock-man said, lifting his hand up out of the ground and turning towards Avalanche. “…If he doesn’t run out of air first, of course.”

“Not if I get him out of there!” Avalanche growled, raising his hands as the earth began to tremble slightly.

“That’s really growing tiring. Stop it,” the rock-man sighed, plunging his hand into the soil again. This time a stone pillar erupted out of the ground right underneath Lance, but instead of launching Avalanche into the air, it flowed around him like it was made of liquid. Within seconds, Avalanche was encased within a solid block of shale, only his head poking out.

Keeping his arm still entrenched in the earth, the rock Mutant said, “Alright, you’ve been checkmated, now. I hear so much as another shudder come out of the ground that isn’t from me, I constrict that rock tomb you’re in until it crushes you. Got it?”

The trembling of the soil immediately stopped.

“Good. Now, Lance, I think that as much as you don’t want to hear it, we’re done with the punching for now. We’ve got some talking to do.”

Avalanche just stared at the rock Mutant quizzically, trying and failing to hide the fear evident on his face. “Who… who are you? And how the heck do you know my name?!”

The rock Mutant just looked blankly at Lance for a few moments before bursting out with a deep laugh. “Heheh, I don’t suppose you would recognize me, would you? I’ve changed quite a bit since our last encounter. Heck, technically you haven’t even seen me. Here, let me show you.”

What happened next almost caused Lance to vomit in spite of himself. Standing as straight as he could with one arm still in the ground, the rock Mutant’s eyes dimmed to black and the rock on his torso slowly started to peel back in layers. After a few layers had peeled back, a small, stark-white body was revealed housed within the rock Mutant’s torso. It was still covered in flesh for the most part, and remarkably preserved after all this time, but it was sunken in somewhat around the bones. The corpse still had clothes—some very familiar clothes-- on, though, as well as a broken, bent pair of glasses and a fair amount of black hair still on its head. In fact, except for the slight decay, the corpse looked exactly as Lance had remembered him—back when they were both twelve years old.

“Oh… oh my god…” Lance said, trying in vain to turn away from the gruesome sight. “…Santo?!”

The rock layers quickly closed back up around the corpse, and the rock Mutant’s eyes lit back up again. “Aw, got it in one! I’m impressed!”

“But how—what the heck are you!?”

“Oh, I’m a Mutant,” the rock-man said in an inappropriately cheerful manner. “I’m still Santo, Santo am I. I am the rock elemental you see before you—that corpse, inside of me? It is actually a corpse. So technically I am dead, if you want to consider ‘death’ when the body’s heart stops.”

Santo crouched over so that he was looking Lance right in the eyes. “Hope you’re comfortable there, ‘cause it’s story time, buddy.”

Leaning back, he continued, “Y’see, you weren’t the only one who became a full-fledged Mutant seven years ago. For weeks before you pushed me out of that window—“

“Santo, look—you have to know, that was an accident,” Lance interrupted. “I didn’t know before then that I could—iiiickk…”

“Excuse me, talking here,” Santo said, his hand in the ground shifting slightly as Lance felt the rock against his chest press in with an uncomfortable amount of force for a few seconds before giving way again, leaving Lance to gasp as the room was freed up again for normal breathing.

“Now, as I was saying,” Santo continued, annoyed, “I had been noticing something odd going on for weeks before you killed me. And yes, Lance, I know it was truly an accident, and I’ll get to why later. Events tend to work better when told chronologically—and in case you don’t know what that is, it means ‘in the same order that they occurred in’. See how helpful I can be even to a dumb-dumb like you when you’re not pounding my freaking face in?

“Now, I noticed one time during lunch when I was daydreaming that I actually saw myself—like I was looking at me from across the table. I didn’t realize it at first—because I was daydreaming, you see—but as soon as I did, I started freaking out. And then suddenly I was ‘sucked’ back into my own body and everything was fine.

“But then it happened again about a week later. And this time, after I was ‘sucked’ back into my body after panicking for a second time, I decided maybe I should try to do this on purpose. I certainly wasn’t going to tell anyone else about these weird ‘out-of-body’ experiences—I mean, this was before Mutants were public knowledge. Who would believe me?

“So that night, I snuck out to the playground and tried to re-create that feeling on purpose. And after about thirty minutes of concentrating on eliminating all thought from my mind—pretty tough, I have to say, you probably could have accomplished it much easier—I did it. I was seeing myself—it was sort of like my soul had left my body, if you get my meaning. With this ‘second body’ I wandered all around the place—through the playground, through the streets, through the alleys. What weirded me out the most was that if I wanted a door before me to open, I actually saw the latch unbolt and the door unlock itself and then open for me. Like I did it, by some weird extension becoming the door that I wanted to open. Eventually, I was yanked back into my body when some kid passed by and shook me, scared why I wasn’t moving or anything. I told him I was fine, made up some excuse, and that was that.

“And then of course, came the day that you send me sailing out a seventh-story window. Oh, I did die that day, Lance. My body hit the concrete hard, I remember the intense pain—and then I was seeing myself again. Only this time, I couldn’t re-enter my body—it had nothing to do with my concentration or lack thereof. At the time I thought maybe my soul had left my body but hadn’t ascended to Heaven or whatever, but in light of the discovery of Mutants, I think this is actually my power of sorts, and it’s what allowed me to keep living. I can—mentally, spiritually, whatever you want to call it—exit my own body and create some sort of avatar, made up of whatever I feel like possessing, so long as it’s not something very complicated or ‘occupied’, like oh, say, a human body.

“So there I was, invisible to everyone else—and myself, as well—watching as my dead body got loaded into an ambulance, trying in vain to suck myself back into it. I eventually gave up and slowly wandered around the Mooseheart grounds, and eventually found you. I tried to see if I could possess you—maybe put you through some good ol’ fashioned pain—but alas, I couldn’t. I did see that you were in a mild form of shock, though, which is why I can now say that I truly do believe it was an accident.

“For the next few days, I basically just followed random people around, not really sure what to do. I didn’t know I was a Mutant, didn’t know what was going on—I almost thought I was a ghost, but no matter how much I tried to yell, no one could hear me, so it’s not like I’d have been a good ghost as I couldn’t even haunt anyone.

“I eventually followed all of you to my funeral, and tried in vain to get back into my own shattered body one more time. After the funeral, I noticed you, standing there by yourself after everyone else had left—and your own attempt to bend your powers to your will.

“And I do have to thank you there, Lance, because you gave me the idea. Instead of just interacting with little piddly things like doors, why not try to interact with something new, something large, malleable and material, something I could make into my new body—why not the rock itself?

“After you had left, making sure no one else was around, I tried to ‘possess’ the ground beneath my non-existent feet. It was hard, it was painful in a way I’ll never be able to describe, but eventually the ground started to break apart, to conform to the shape I wanted it to. I became, more or less, what you see before you now. I briefly considered leaving my old body behind, but I thought better of it—it’s never felt ‘right’ to be able to see myself, and I never wanted to forget my old life before Mooseheart, to lose the only connection I had left to my parents, to the way things used to be. So after a few more days, I came back to my gravesite after it had been freshly buried, reached in, and basically absorbed my tomb and its contents into my body.

“Over the years, I grew increasingly adept at hiding—afterall, a giant rock-man could easily draw unwanted attention. I needed no food, no sleep—if needed to, I could stay underground and out of sight for quite a long time. I found out that the rock, far more than just being a new body for me, became easier to control. Even while staying in my own body, I found I could control it to an increasingly fine extent by just sticking an arm in it and ‘merging’ with the earth, as it were. By diving into it with my entire body, I basically became any soil within the surrounding area—I could ‘see’ whatever it ‘saw’, move through it like water.

“But I also notice this came at a price. After so long being in my current form, I found that no matter how much I concentrated, I couldn’t force myself into any more ‘out-of-body’ experiences. My powers had bonded with the earth so much that the soil had become my clay to shape, and shape very extensively—but at the exclusion of anything else.

“Anyways, after the whole Mutant thing went public, I decided to ‘out’ myself of sorts, by making myself apparent in a small little town. No matter how much I tried to explain I wouldn’t hurt them, how much I just wanted to live as normal of a life as I could instead of constantly being on the run, hiding from everyone in the ground all the time—the arguments went through one ear and out the other. So I blew them off and tried another town. And another. And another. And I saw, Lance, that far from being the exception to the rule, you are the rule. There are a few diamonds in the rough, a few genuinely good people in the world, but the vast, vast majority? Not worth a second thought. Can’t see past their noses, only care about themselves—scum, basically. Again, like you.

“Yeah, I can’t imagine why people would be uncomfortable around a nine-foot-tall rock monster with the corpse of a kid inside of his chest. Nothing creepy about that at all.”

“And then I had a stranger come up to me—some purple-skinned woman,” Santo continued, unfazed. “She told me her name, but that’s not important—what IS important is that she told me exactly where to find you. She also told me pretty much everything I knew about myself, which certainly freaked me out a bit but also told me she had connections. I asked her why she was giving me all this info, what she wanted in return, and she said nothing. I was suspicious, but she insisted it was nothing. She just wanted to help me get my revenge.”

“Revenge, huh?” Lance said. “So that’s all this is, then, revenge? You’re not an Acolyte here for Quicksilver, you’re not a vigilante Mutant wanting to take us to the police, you’re just… here to kill me?”

“Sorry to disappoint,” Santo replied, shrugging his gargantuan shoulders. “But yeah, I’m basically just here to kill you for ruining my life. Taking for yourself the family I should have had, constantly tormenting me during my time at Mooseheart, killing any chance I had at a normal life by killing me—yup, that’s it.”

“Then get it over already,” Avalanche said. “I’m not sure why you had to give me your long backstory—why the heck would I care? Just kill me and then get back to hiding in the ground your whole life.”

Santo narrowed his eyes, his mouth snarling, but he suddenly calmed himself, quickly appearing normal, even slightly cheery, again. “Well, see, that’s sort of the point. I want you to suffer first, so I’m gonna make it slow.”

“Your loss. I’ll just use my powers to bust out of here and then level you before you get too far.”

“Oh, clever retort. You actually seem to have gotten marginally smarter since we last met. But no, see, if you’ll notice I made it a point to not actually kill any of your teammates, just incapacitate them—and now I can use them as leverage! Struggle, and I’ll kill them as well as you. See how well planning ahead works?”

“Fine,” Lance said, gritting his teeth. “Then just do it already and quit it with the sob story.”

“You’re the boss,” Santo shrugged. Lance grunted as he felt the rock around him start to ever-so-slowly press in on him more and more.. “Oh, and while we’re waiting for you to get squished, let’s talk about that stupid codename of yours, shall we? See, Avalanche doesn’t really work all that well. Don’t get me wrong, it still kinda fits, but avalanches tend to be more associated with snow, not rock. If you weren’t such a dumb-dumb, you would’ve come up with a more fitting name like…. hrrm… Rockslide. See how much better that works? And I came up with it in just two seconds! In fact, since you’ll be dead pretty shortly, I think that’ll be my ‘codename’. Kinda fitting for me too, don’t you th—“

Santo was interrupted as a red force blast suddenly impacted with the side of his head, swiftly decapitating him and sending his body crashing down onto its side as the remains of his head went sailing several dozen feet away.

Temporarily distracted, Rockslide’s control over the rock holding Lance slipped and the stone pillar holding him in place crumbled. Lance covered his head as a few of the larger chunks fell off of him, then looked over to where the beam had come from.

“Summers? What the heck are you doing here?”

“There’s a derailed train a couple of fields over, Alvers,” Cyclops sneered. “Why would the X-Men not show up? Question is, what are you and the rest of the Brotherhood doing here?”

“This rock-guy here just attacked us for no reason! And he’s the one who ruined that train, too!”

“Why do I have a hard time believing that?” Cyclops said, shaking his head as Rogue and Nightcrawler fanned out slightly, flanking him. In the distance, Lance could make out Iceman, Storm, Colossus, and Shadowcat either putting out the fires or helping the victims trapped in the wreckage.

Avalanche then noticed two rumbles at once—first, from a now-audible pounding near the top of the large rock mound Blob had been encased in, and second, from the ground right next to them as some of the rock that had crumbled around Lance started to migrate up Rockslide’s body of its own volition.

“Summers, fire at that big mound of rock to the left of me!” Avalanche said, jumping over the rock chunks that had mere moments ago been crushing him to death. “Blob’s under that, he could help us out!”

Hesitating for a moment, Cyclops fired a steady optic blast at the mound, within seconds blowing the top off it. As soon as Cyclops let go of the button on the side of his visor and the beam stopped, Blob hoisted himself up over the top of the mound, gulping for air.

“Th…th…thanks,” Blob gasped.

Rockslide roared in fury as the stones rolling up onto his shoulders finally formed a new head. Pounding the ground with his fists, he leveled a rocky index finger at Cyclops and yelled, “This… is none… of your… BUSINESS!!! SCRAM!”

“I don’t know who you are, but by derailing that train and killing dozens of innocent people, you made it our business,” Cyclops said, hand still right next to his visor’s button.

“Innocent,” Rockslide spat. “Right. Innocent. I’ve seen first hand just how innocent people can be. And this Avalanche guy you folks know so well? Oh, me and him, we’ve had just a marvelous past together.”

“I can only imagine,” Cyclops said sadly. “But whatever he did to you-- by killing all those people? You just made yourself worse than Lance, pal. Far worse.”

“YOU DARE CALL ME WORSE THAN HIM?!” Rockslide roared, plunging his hand into the ground. Before anything could happen, though, Cyclops quickly shot another optic blast at Rockslide’s arm, severing it at the elbow.
“You do that again,” Rockslide seethed, more rock quickly flowing up into his elbow to make his arm whole again, “And you sign your own death warrant.”

“Avalanche may be a complete loser—“

“---Hey!”

“—but he’d never kill this many people in cold blood—certainly not just to get a train to stop when he wanted it to,” Cyclops continued. “In fact, if I recall correctly, he actually saved hundreds of people several months ago by stopping a tanker train from creating another disaster.”

“And he’s my FRIEND!” roared Blob, having quietly come up behind Santo while the conversation had been taking place. With a sweep of his arm, Blob crumbled one of Rockslide’s shoulders, the rock Mutant’s arm dropping on the ground. Rockslide turned to face Blob, only to face a laser blast in the hip, severing his right leg from his body.

“A friend—now there’s something you’ll never have,” Avalanche said, leaning over so that only he and Santo could hear.

Rockslide, roaring with fury as he struggled to stay up, was helpless as Avalanche let loose with a seismic wave, the blast blowing apart Rockslide’s remaining two appendages.

Wiggling on the ground, now only a broad body and a head, Rockslide glowered, then grinned again as nearby rocks started to tumble back towards him and attach to his shoulders and hips.

“You can do this all day if you want,” Rockslide grinned manically. “But sooner or later, I’ll wear you down. I’ll wear you ALL down!”

“Not quite,” said Rogue, as she and Nightcrawler suddenly teleported right on top of Rockslide’s chest. “See, once we saw the news helicopter reports and saw what you were doing to the Brotherhood, we knew we’d need some help to deal with you.

“So I went to see a friend. And although this… friend… stubbornly insisted on staying out of ‘business that wasn’t his’, as a favor to me he let me take his powers for a short while. Let’s see if you know who my friend is.”

Rockslide struggled to throw Rogue and Nightcrawler off of his body, but he still only had stumps for appendages. Quickly leaning over, Rogue pressed a palm against Rockslide’s chest, and a pink, unstable energy suddenly spread throughout his body, leaving a glowing aura around his entire form.

“Hit the deck!” Nightcrawler yelled, teleporting Rogue back to Cyclops. Avalanche and Blob immediately obeyed and started to run away from Rockslide’s form.

“No…” Rockslide started to gasp, as it felt like every part of his body suddenly felt overly full, hyperactive—like it all wanted to explode. “No no no no NOOOOOOOOO---“

Rockslide’s final scream was cut short as his entire form exploded outwards in a million infinitesimal fragments, showering the X-Men and Brotherhood members with tiny specks of rock.

After watching the scene for a few moments as everything settled down, Blob cheered. “We did it, man! We finally beat ‘im! I’d like to see him reassemble from THAT!”

“Uh, that was almost all us, actually,” Rogue said.

“Huh,” Avalanche said. “Never thought you, of all people, would be sticking up for me, Summers.”

“Don’t get used to it,” Cyclops said. “The question still remains what you were doing out here. I want answers.”

“Or what?” Avalanche said, his eyebrows narrowing. “You’ll take us in?”

A rumble spread throughout the earth and a grinning Blob punched his fist into his open palm for emphasis.

“Good idea,” Rogue sneered, taking off one of her gloves and taking a step forward towards the remaining two Brotherhood members.

“Hold on,” Cyclops said, putting a hand on Rogue’s shoulder to stop her.

“What?! Scott, you can’t be serious! There’s only two of them, and the rest are unconscious! This is a golden opportunity to get them all behind bars!”

“Neither Avalanche nor Blob will go quietly, though, and we don’t need a battleground right next to a train wreck. I think in the interest of helping out the victims, we should let them go… this time.”

“Wise move,” Avalanche said. “Blob, I’m going to grab Toad and Surge. Wanda’s probably unconscious, but still reachable in that small underground pit Rockslide made for her if you can pound away at the dirt ‘fingers’ covering her. Other than that, see if you can lug the rest outta here.”

“Um…” Blob looked back at the slowly retreating trio of X-Men, then turned back to Lance and leaned in close before whispering, “What are you talking about, man? Our base is right here! All we need to do is carry ‘em into the old barn!”

“Freddy, c’mon, think. The X-Men are right over there, and with the train wreck rescue efforts the place is going to be swarming with police, firefighters, and reporters for the rest of the day. They’re going to keep an eye on us-- if we just go into the barn and never come out, they’ll figure out pretty quickly something’s up, and they’ll find our base within no time. It’s better if we act like we’re leaving the area, hide in some cave or behind some hill for the next day and see if we can’t get everybody conscious again, and then come back here later after all the X-Men and news cameras have gone away.”

“Ooooh… okay. Gotcha. But uh… what about Pietro?”

“What about him? He’s stuck in the cell down there, he ain’t gettin’ out. A day or two without water or food will do him good.”

Taking multiple glances back at the X-Men as they scooped up their fallen comrades, Avalanche and Blob slowly but surely made their way off into the horizon.

BLINK!

“So this is where he’s supposed to be, eh? I don’t see anything.”

“That’s because he’s dispersed, Synch. According to the quints, his Mutant energy signature is faint, but still here, which means he’s alive. The X-Men and the Brotherhood must’ve somehow done so much damage to him that he couldn’t reform by himself.”

“So, what do we care? Guy took on the freaking Brotherhood and died. Doesn’t sound like he’ll be of any use to us.”

“He can shape rock, Synch. That’s exactly the kind of ability we need to rebuild Genosha. Once we pick up him and our ‘demolition expert’, Genosha will finally be able to withstand anything nature can throw at us.”

“Ah. So this is where I come in, then.”

“Yup.”

“Alright, stand back. Let me synch up with his powers.”

Closing his eyes, Synch breathed in calmly and held it, his eyebrows narrowing. Within moments, a kaleidoscope of colors erupted around him, bathing the surrounding area and contrasting greatly with the blacks and dark blues of the night.

As soon as the multitude of colors began, they stopped, and Synch opened his eyes again, letting out the breath.

“Yep, he’s still around, alright, or I wouldn’t have been able to synch with him. Let’s get you back together, big guy.”

Synch reached out with his hands towards the ground, concentrating with all of his might. Slowly but surely, miniscule pebbles and flakes of rock started to roll into a big pile a few feet away from Synch. They started to link together to form feet, than a torso, than a chest, than hands, and finally a head.

Santo Vaccarro blinked again, the pale white light from his eyes dimly lighting up the area in front of him.

“Thanks,” Santo nodded to the tall black teenager, who merely nodded back.

“No prob.”

Santo brushed past Synch and, before either could react, took a hold of the purple-skinned young adult female and lifted her in the air by the neck.

“YOU, though—I have a problem with.”

“Ack… what!? We just saved your---ack—life!” Blink said, starting to choke.

“You forget the extent of my powers. Even when I’m not in my rock form, I can still hear and see what’s around me. I heard your little conversation before you pulled me back together. You played me from day one—you knew this was going to happen, but you pointed me in the right direction and let me loose anyway. Because you knew I’d fail and then I’d turn to you for help in taking down Lance Alvers, and you’d have your little ‘expert builder’, or whatever it is you want with my rock-manipulating powers. It was never about me getting the revenge I so desperately wanted, was it?”

Blink continued to cough furiously.

“WAS IT!?”

“Hey, man, ya might wanna—“

“Stay outta this, Synch, or you’ll be on the receiving end as well!” Rockslide said. “WAS IT, BLINK!?”

“N-no,” Blink finally gasped out. “No, it wasn’t.”

“That’s what I thought,” Rockslide said, dropping Blink to the ground, letting her breathe in much-needed gulps of air. “So, tell me something, then. Why should I follow you two back to Genosha—wherever that is? Particularly after you almost killed me and cost me the only physical connection to my former life—the body of my twelve-year-old self, which is now just dust in the wind?”

“Well,” Blink said, coughing a few final times and standing up before continuing, “For the same reason all of us are going to Genosha, Santo. We’re building a country. A Mutant country. You’re right, we could use your powers. I admit that. But more than just helping us, you’d be a participant in a grand idea that, soon enough, will give all of us Mutants our rightful place at the top of the figurative food chain.”

Santo just stood there for a minute, pondering, before he finally spoke up again. “…Alright. I’ll give it a chance. But I even get the slightest whiff of some kind of betrayal from you or anyone else on Genosha, or if you aren’t telling me everything I need to know about it—consider your little project demolished. Got it?”

“Got it,” Blink said, outwardly keeping her face serious while inwardly smirking. I do have a gift, and it doesn’t just have to do with my teleporting ability… with my way with words, no wonder Magneto saw fit to make me his new ambassador… “Shall we go, then?”

Rockslide glanced at Synch, who nodded.

As both of them laid hands on Blink, Rockslide rumbled, “We shall.”

And with a quiet BLINK! and a purple flash of light, the three of them faded from the night.

The End

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