Land of Blood and Honey: Parts 4-5

by Dyce

This part of Blood and Honey is dedicated to three people who I don't appreciate often enough. :)

For J. Lynn, who made a whole page just for my stories at http://communities.msn.com/DycesCorner/_whatsnew.msnw. Thank you. I don't tell you often enough how much I love the page. :)

For Acetal, who is always kind, always considerate, and does wonderful feedback - thanks, Acie. You always know just what to say.

And for Icewing, who I only got to know recently, but who has done more to encourage my writing than many people I've known for longer. Thanks to you too, Icie, for showing me the window of opportunity and then pushing me through it.

Part 4

"DAD, COME QUICK!"

Logan was nearly trampled as Creed - not weighed down with adamantium, and therefore faster - made a dash for the dormitories. Logan was right behind him.

The girl's dormitory was empty. They ran into each other in the doorway to the boy's dormitory, struggling for a long moment as they took in the scene.

Meggan was whimpering, huddled in Clarice's arms as they stood by the door. Geordi was standing to one side, looking helpless. The other four were in the middle of the floor. Jonny was on the floor, looking small and scrawny in t-shirt and boxers - but his body didn't draw more than a glance. The light coming out of his mouth as he screamed soundlessly was the real attention getter. Kyle was holding his friend's head, trying to keep his skull from banging on the floor as he thrashed helplessly. Marie and Annie were kneeling beside them, Marie holding Jonny's hand, Annie resting her hands on his chest. "Something's happening inside him," Annie reported tersely. "I don't know what it is... there's energy building up, and his heart's fluttering..."

Oh, hell. Oh, hell. Logan knew he and Sabretooth were both standing there as helplessly as Geordi. He didn't know what to do. Xavier had mentioned that sometimes when a mutant power manifested fully, there were dangerous side-effects. Sometimes the kids even died. What was he supposed to do? Helping Marie had been easy, but this...

Marie could feel Logan's anguished uncertainty from across the room, but she didn't have time to reassure him. They couldn't hold Jonny down, it would just panic him further, and it was lucky she'd still had her gloves on when Kyle had yelled, or she wouldn't be able to help at all.

Annie's odd eyes were focused on Jonny, one hand inside the neck of his shirt. "The energy's really building up now," she said, expression distant. "If it doesn't stop soon, he's going to burn out... uh-oh... shit... Marie, gloves off!"

Marie blinked. "Annie, I can't, he doesn't have a heal-"

"With this much energy pouring out of him, he's not going to need one!" Annie grabbed onto Marie's bare arm and hauled it down into contact with Jonny's neck.

Unadulterated power poured through her skin, untainted by even the slightest trace of personality or memory. After a moment, she could feel some of it going off sideways, and realized Annie must have duplicated her powers. But there was still so much of it, and she had an odd feeling that she was filling up, somehow, she couldn't hold on for much longer...

Then a shattering scream that made no sound at all filled all their minds.

Then a blinding yellow-white light burst into the dim room, so that they all closed or covered their eyes.

Then, while they were still blinking and rubbing their ears, someone said 'Ow'.

It was Annie, Marie saw when her eyes started to clear. She was lying flat on the floor, as if she'd been thrown back from her position kneeling over Jonny.

Jonny was half-curled on his side, facing towards the wall. Towards where the wall had been. Now there was only a gaping hole. It matched the hole in Jonny's chest, that looked big enough to fit both her hands inside. It glowed an eery yellowish-white, no sign of blood or anything...

Anyway, he looked unconscious, and Kyle was already fussing over him. Marie crawled over to the otheri injured party. "Annie? You okay?"

"'s," Annie managed breathlessly. Surprisingly, she didn't look burned, just very bruised. "H'l'ng f'n...hi' me h'rd..."

She'd just had the breath knocked out of her. Marie nodded, patted the closest clothed bit of Annie, which was her knee, and looked around at the others. Meggan and Clarice were hiding behind Sabretooth, who was still growling and scrubbing at his eyes. So was Logan. They both had much better eyesight than she did, and the light had obviously hurt their eyes more than hers. Kyle was still rubbing his eyes, too, but had his other hand resting gently on Jonny's hair. Jonny still looked unconscious.

Marie shook her head a little, lips curving into an unconscious smile. She'd never felt so... alive, so vibrant with life and energy. And she'd only siphoned off a little part of what Jonny had been generating. God, no wonder he hadn't been eating lately... she wouldn't bother to eat either, if she had a regular supply of *this*.

She hadn't gotten even the slightest trace of memory from him. Even better. "Is everyone else okay? Jonny's unconscious, but..." She touched the side of his neck. She didn't feel a pulse, but the skin was warm, and Jonny moaned a little. "But he's alive. With a hole in him, but alive."

"Is he bleeding?" Logan asked, still blinking.

"Nope. Well, not blood." She held her still-bare arm over the hole, a whisper away from touching the yellowish glow. The hairs on her forearm stood up. "He's still bleedin' some energy, but that's probably a good thing. I mean, since the build-up inside him did what it did. I guess the hole is as good a way as any to siphon it off."

"I wanna see!" Annie, who had obviously gotten her breath back, crawled up beside Marie. "Hey, cool! I wonder if it-"

"Don't touch!" Marie said sternly, grabbing the little clawed hand as it reached out. "It might hurt him!"

"Okay," Annie grumbled, reaching out to pat Jonny's forehead instead. "He looks okay, though. Except for the hole."

* * *

After breakfast the next morning - which was late, because for once even Creed and Logan slept in - Logan took Jonny off into the woods to practice with this new manifestation of his telepathy.

"I don't think anyone's ever done this before," Annie chattered, bouncing over obstacles like a blonde monkey. "Concussive Attack Telepathy, I mean. Or maybe it's telekinetics? Jean has both. Maybe it's like that. Only a LOT more powerful because I've never seen Jean blow a hole in a wall without meaning to, let alone a hole in herself, although it doesn't seem to be doing you any harm, and-"

Logan gritted his teeth. "Tell me again why you're here," he growled.

"Because I've learned to use eight different mutant powers, only one of them really mine, although it's seven if you don't count Marie's power which more or less works itself although I'm still trying to figure out how to control it," Annie explained. "I therefore know more about learning to use new powers than anyone in the whole world, so I'm going to help.

Jonny roused out of his funk a bit to give her an inquiring look. "Only eight? Thought you could mimic any mutant power, like Rogue."

"I can, but I don't get memories with it, so I don't know how to use them." She shrugged, swinging from a low branch. "My healing factor works itself so it doesn't count, but the other six are pretty much use-in-emergencies-only. I mean, I can make red beams come out of my eyes. But I can't control how strong they are, or see where I'm pointing them while they're turned on. And I can fiddle with the weather if I want, but I don't because I might flood the Sahara or dry out the Nile by accident. Most powers are prone to a LOT of mistakes."

Logan gave Jonny a rather worried look, but the boy seemed to have brightened up a bit at the idea that *his* powers weren't the only ones that could majorly screw up. "Yeah?" Logan prompted, since Annie's chatter seemed to be helping.

"Uh-huh. Only I can't do telepathy, for some reason." Annie frowned, clearly annoyed by this. "I asked Jean why, and she made a scan of my brain, and she said I don't have the right kind of brain for it. There's some kinda node or something that enlarges in telepaths, and mine is smaller and in a different part of my brain, 'cause I'm physically variated from the human norm, or something. I can do empathy, that's easy, but no spoken thoughts or anything like that." She eyes Jonny with some interest. "I bet you have a really BIG brain-node."

Jonny grinned lopsidedly, the first time he'd smiled since he'd woken up and found out what had happened to him. "Big brain-parts, huh? First time anyone's ever accused me o' that."

Annie giggled. "Maybe. But don't let it go to your head."

Jonny groaned. "My... Annie, that's TERRIBLE."

Logan concealed his own smile. The boy was relaxing. Good. He didn't know a whole lot about mutant powers, but he *did* know that the more distressed or frightened the person using them was, the more likely things were to go wrong.

After a while, they reached a particularly large, shapeless rock that snuggled into the mountainside a nice long way from anywhere else. This, he and Creed had decided, would be a good place to practice the more concussive aspects of the boy's powers. "Okay. We're here."

Annie plopped herself down on a small rock, and gave him an inquiring look. Jonny did the same.

Logan chewed on his lower lip a little nervously. "Okay... uh... try to blast the rock."

Jonny wrinkled his nose and clenched his fists. Nothing else happened. "I can't do it," he said after a minute, shoulders slumping. Logan was torn between concern and a sigh of relief.

Annie rolled her eyes. "Lemme try this. Now... uh... okay, close your eyes." Jonny closed them. "Now, sort of feel around inside your body. Check on how your feet feel... and your legs... and your arms... and your stomach... and your shoulders... and where the hole is..." Jonny frowned a little, and she nodded approvingly. "Can you feel it?"

"Sort of. It... tingles." Jonny's cockney accent got stronger, the way it often did when he was nervous.

"That's good. That's where all that psi-energy you're generating is dissipating out of you." Annie rested her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists. "Can you kind of grab hold of the energy with your mind? Think of it like a third hand. You can flex it, or clench it up, just as if it was your hand." She looked over at Logan and stage-whispered rather loudly. "It helps to have reference points when you're using a new power for the first time. Comparing it to something familiar often works."

"I'll remember that," Logan stage-whispered back, hearing Jonny let out a tiny, tension-relieving giggle. Annie probably had the right idea. Keeping the boy amused would help stop him from panicking too much.

Jonny seemed slightly more relaxed, his eyes still closed as he felt around inside himself for his power. "I think I've got it," he said after about five minutes. "I can feel it, anyway. It's still a part of *me*, isn't it?"

"I don't know who else it would be a part of," Annie pointed out reasonably. "Okay, now that you've got it, why don't you open your eyes and try to hit the rock with it?"

"Why do I have to open my eyes?" Jonny asked a little nervously.

"Because you don't have an eidetic memory, and you've had your eyes shut for the last five minutes," Annie said firmly. "You don't want to go blasting trees or mountainside or me by mistake. If you're going to go around smiting stuff, it's probably a good idea to be looking at it."

Jonny nodded reluctantly, and opened his eyes. Then he squinted at the rock, face furrowed with concentration. The glowing hole in his chest - showing through a hole cut in a t-shirt - did seem to swell and brighten for a moment, but nothing else happened. "It's not working!" he hissed in frustration.

"I bet your hands didn't do what you wanted the first time you ever tried to grab something, either," Annie said placidly. "It takes time."

"I did it fine last night!"

"That was an accident." Annie shrugged. "Ask any infant. Grabbing or hitting something accidentally is a lot easier than doing it on purpose, at least at first. You need to train up your brain-muscles."

"But..." He gave her a pitiful look.

"But nothing. Try again," she said firmly. "Practice makes... better at it."

* * *

"He'll come back," Marie assured Meggan, as Logan disappeared into the woods. "They've just got to train for a while."

Meggan nodded, clinging to Marie's gloved hand. It might be Marie's imagination, but the little hands look less pawlike this morning.

"Come on," she said kindly, giving Meggan's hand a little squeeze. "Logan went and got some new crayons yesterday. Wanna try them out?" Meggan nodded again, brightening a little, and Marie beamed. They figured she was probably around Clarice's age, from her size and her interest in toys and crayons and so on. Of course, with someone who'd grown up in a locked room, that wasn't necessarily an indication of age, but it was what they had to work with.

She set Meggan up with the new crayons and a pile of blank paper, and started cleaning the kitchen. All the trainees got one morning out of six off training to take care of things in the cabin, because Creed and Logan didn't mind cooking but objected strenuously to cleaning. Marie didn't mind. It was easy work, compared to training, and because there usually wasn't anyone else around, except possibly Meggan, it was usually nice and peaceful.

Marie hummed quietly, stacking the dishes for washing. This... this was a good life. Physically hard, a little nerve-wracking at times, but good. Plenty to eat, a warm place to sleep, Logan to take care of her and friends to spend time with. Even Creed wasn't so bad. Once they'd gotten here, away from other people and civilisation in general, he'd relaxed a lot. He was even starting to show signs of a sense of humour, beyond chuckling at them as they collapsed from exhaustion.

She started on the dishes, and glanced over her shoulder at Meggan. Clarice couldn't be separated for love nor money from Miss Pinky, but she'd given one of her other toys to Meggan - a large, floppy brown rabbit called, of all things, Horatio. It was now sitting on Meggan's lap, held close even as she drew laboriously with an orange crayon. She seemed to be ambidextrous, they'd noticed, sometimes using one hand, sometimes the other. Whichever hand she drew or ate with, the other was usually holding firmly onto Horatio, Logan, or Jonny, in case they disappeared.

She was kind of cute, now that she was clean. Her fur was thick and fluffy, and her monkeylike little face had definite charm. Marie absently pushed a cookie at her. The poor little thing was so skinny... she needed to eat more.

"Can I have a cookie too?" a plaintive voice asked from the doorway. It was Geordi, sweaty and already covered in sawdust. He and Kyle were helping Creed to patch the wall. Clarice was 'helping', mostly by acting as a gofer, although she'd been allowed to pound a few of the easier nails in.

"Sure." Marie offered him one, and he downed it in two bites. Then he headed for the fridge. She really shouldn't let him drink from the milk-carton like that, but... well... he'd taken his shirt off to work, and he had a *very* pretty back. He was hardly hairy at all, unlike the others, and he rippled a lot. Mmmrrr.

She managed to be paying attention to Meggan when he turned around, instead of staring, but she still felt a little flushed. He didn't seem to notice. "I never thought I'd say construction work was easy, but at least I don't have to keep looking over my shoulder in case someone's trying to sneak up on me," he said, taking another cookie and eating it more slowly this time.

"Easier than training, huh?" Marie absently rescued a crayon that was rolling down the table, and headed back to the sink. It was easier to have a conversation with Geordi when you couldn't A) see the look on his face, and B) see how the rest of him looked. It was unfair for someone so immature and annoying to be so *gorgeous*.

"WAY easier than training." Geordi opened the fridge again, hopefully to put the milk away. "I know some carpentry, so I'm doing okay. He's mostly yelling at Kyle."

"Poor Kyle," Marie murmured sympathetically. There was a long pause, and she looked around to see if Geordi was still there.

He was, leaning back against the counter, looking down at his hands. "My dad was a carpenter," he said very softly.

Marie blinked. Geordi *never* talked about Logan's past, and Logan had never quite been able to bring himself to ask, even though Marie knew the curiosity must be gnawing viciously at him. To finally know something about himself, to know who he was, or at least who he'd been... "Really?" she asked, somewhat on Logan's behalf but mostly because Geordi looked so sad.

"Uh-huh. He made handmade furniture and stuff, mostly." Geordi's voice was distant, and his eyes were focused somewhere past the floor. "And chess-sets. He liked chess."

Marie blinked. "Chess?" That... actually, that did sound a lot like Logan. He liked strategy, he liked knowing everything that was going on, and control appealed to him. "I can see that, I guess..."

Geordi nodded, still lost somewhere in the distant corridors of memory. "I don't remember him, really. He vanished when I was very small. But Mom still had a lot of stuff he made for her... this little box with a secret compartment and stuff. And a Noah's Ark set he made for me, with all the animals two by two. My aunt and uncle still have it. And there was this one chess-set, right, where two of the white pieces aren't quite the same shade of pine as the others. I chewed the originals up when I was teething, and Dad had to make new ones. They were the last pieces he made before he... went away."

"Oh." Marie was almost entirely sure that she was going to be pushed away, but she put a gentle arm around his shoulders anyway. He looked so sad and lost and confused, not really knowing his father, resenting his absence but not able to blame the man for it anymore...

Geordi let out a little sigh that might have been a muffled sob, and hugged her tightly, burying his face in her shoulder.

Marie stiffened in surprise, and then she hugged back, thankful she was wearing long sleeves, and that she'd put her gloves back on to play with Meggan. He held onto her tightly, almost *too* tightly, and she wondered how long it had been since anyone hugged him. Months, certainly. Possibly much longer, depending... "It's okay," she whispered. "It's gonna be okay."

He held on tighter.

She murmured soothing nonsense, rubbing his back gently. Over his shoulder, she could see Meggan watching them, an oddly peaceful look on her face as she hugged Horatio.

Then Meggan squealed, dropped Horatio, and raced to dive between Marie and Geordi, who had jerked apart at the sound of either Armageddon or the continent splitting.

* * *

"Woo!" Annie crowed exultantly. "You sure showed THAT rock who's boss!"

Logan crawled out from under a fallen branch, muttering a bit. Jonny was wobbling up onto his knees, staring dazedly at the rubble that had once been quite a large boulder. "Did I do 'at?" he asked dazedly, rubbing his chest.

"Yup." Logan reached up to feel his scalp. Ow. Some of those flying splinters of rock had been very sharp.

Annie, who'd dived behind her seat-rock and thus only had minor abrasions, was admiring the mess. "That's good blasting, that is," she said with the sort of judicious approval that might have come from a munitions-expert evaluating a particularly nice disaster-area. Coming out of a round, pink and white face hemmed in by pigtail, it sounded rather odd. "Focused. It's good focusing you did there, Jonny, you can see by the pattern of the debris. You didn't blast right through the rock, just about two thirds of the way, so the concussive force did for the rest of it but the trees that were behind it are almost all still standing, which is good, because rocks are still rocks no matter how small you break them down, but broken-up trees stop being oxygen-producing biomass and start being firewood."

The flow of chatter had at least given the other two a chance to get their breath back. "You said to aim at the rock," Jonny said, still on his knees and wobbling a bit. Last time he'd been on the floor. This time he'd been standing up, not properly braced, and the recoil from his own blast had thrown him quite a long way.

Logan ambled over to him and checked for any visible injuries. "You didn't hit your head, didja?" he asked. Surely the kid's thatch of brown curls must have padded his skull at least a LITTLE.

"No," Jonny said, shaking his head a little. "I just... feel a bit off is all. Drained."

"Not surprising. You expended an awful lot of energy in that blast." Annie trotted over and hoisted him effortlessly to his feet. She pulled one arm over her sturdy shoulders. Logan noted with the mild interest of the severely rattled that Annie was never going to be a pretty, sylph-like girl like Marie was, and Clarice would someday be. Annie was going to be the sort of tall, effortlessly muscular girl who had a bright future in pro wrestling.

Thinking about that was much easier on the nerves than thinking about what Jonny had just done to a boulder significantly taller than Logan himself. Jonny had, over the last twenty-four hours, gone from being a quiet, well-behaved appendage of Kyle to coming up strongly behind Annie as A Danger To Society As A Whole Especially The Relatively Easily Detached Parts, like people and large buildings.

When they got back to the house, Creed was still nailing a patch of fresh, pale yellow boards up among the grey, weathered ones that formed the outside of the damaged wall. Kyle was holding the board, looking a little wild-eyed. As soon as Jonny came into view, Kyle let go of the board and dashed over to him, making concerned mama-hen noises. Jonny graciously submitted to the fussing and was tenderly led into the house. Annie wandered over to do some replacement-board-holding, and Logan had a little sit down on a tree-stump. His heart was still thumping.

"Jonny got it to work on command, Dad," Annie informed him, as if they hadn't probably heard the blast back in the US. "He mushed a boulder. It was very impressive. I think he'd be very good at The Business, especially the parts with blowing doors open and knocking down buildings and Hiding the Evidence."

"Yeah?" Creed banged another nail in with two strokes, and eyed the board critically. "That'll be handy."

"Oh, yes," Annie agreed, sliding the next board into position. "Daddy, when are we starting practical training? Do we get to go on a Job?"

"Soon." Creed hefted his hammer again and reached for another nail. "I thought a nice easy heist, for starters. Jewels, maybe, they're small 'n easy to carry."

Annie nodded gravely. "That sounds like a good idea," she agreed. "We don't want to start out on the hard stuff like assassinations and bodyguarding. I don't think the guys are up to snuff yet."

"They'll get there." Creed positioned the nail carefully. "Once you get started on the merc trade, it gets easier and easier the more you do. They'll be knifing folks in their beds before you know it."

Part 5

Jonny stirred his soup aimlessly, listening to the cheerful noises of a number of people devouring a good meal. It smelled kind of good, but he didn't want any. Ever since his powers had fully emerged - literally emerged, in his case - eating didn't really appeal to him. Marie had called Doctors Grey and McCoy the day afterwards, and they'd concocted and sent over the thin, nutrient-rich soup he was eating now. It tasted blandly sweet, and was supposed to supply what his own internal energies couldn't. He still drank, sometimes, but he didn't seem to need much of that, either.

It was still nice to sit at the table and watch everyone else do it, though. He smiled fondly at Kyle, who was happily inhaling about half a cow.

Kyle looked up as he sensed his friend's gaze, and smiled back. "Finish your soup," he said firmly. "It's good for you."

"I don't really need it," Jonny said, because he really didn't seem to, but he started eating again anyway.

"Is there any more news about Jubilee?" Annie asked Logan, who'd spent the morning in the village and made that week's check-in call to the school.

"Nope. They haven't found hide nor hair of her." Logan chewed reflectively on a mouthful of steak. "Storm said they've put out a missing persons on her, but they ain't hopeful. She hasn't contacted them again, so it seems like she's decided she wants to strike out on her own."

Annie sighed a little. "I'll miss her," she said mournfully. Jonny recalled being told that Jubilee and Annie had been roommates for a while back at the school. "But self-determination is a good thing." The others all nodded, and silence fell as they went back to eating. It'd been a long day, and those without a literally boundless supply of energy were probably starving.

Jonny went back to his soup, sipping it slowly as he glanced around the table.

They'd all changed in the nearly six months since they'd come here.

Kyle was no longer quite as rail-thin as he'd been, his lean frame decently covered with long muscle. His hair had grown longer too, and he'd taken to tying it back with a strip of leather the way Creed did. More important than the physical changes, he seemed happier than Jonny had ever known him. He liked being part of a pack, or a pride, or whatever, and didn't mind taking a subordinate position to the alpha and beta males; although which was the alpha and which the beta was never quite clear at any given time. Anyway, Kyle seemed perfectly content with his position around the middle of the pecking order, lower than Creed and Logan, but higher than Jonny himself and Geordi.

Geordi, though he probably didn't know it, was on the bottom rung of the pack-ladder. He was a lot less obnoxious now that he'd once been, but he still didn't grasp the complex status-definition of the pack. Since he gave the wrong responses to the subtle cues of body-language and tone and so forth, he was firmly relegated to bottom of the heap status. Being a telepath had made it easy for Jonny to slot himself in just below Kyle, assuming appropriately submissive body-language towards the senior males, who probably weren't even aware of what was going on.

On Geordi's other side was Annie. Since there were no adult females in the group, Annie seemed to have assumed the position of alpha female. Marie was older, but Annie was physically stronger and emotionally more assertive, and Clarice and Meggan were too small even to be considered. Annie had relaxed a lot, though, in the last six months. The manic energy had faded a bit, although not much, and the constant chatter had slowed down a fraction. She was a bit taller, too.

Creed had calmed down a lot too. He knew that it was mostly being attributed to having Annie and Clarice to 'bring out his softer side', but Jonny had his own suspicions about that. By now, all of them had started picking up bits and pieces of body-language and so on from Creed and Logan, except for Geordi who was consciously resisting. Creed invariably untensed when he got the 'right' response to his unspoken cues, and tensed up again when dealing with 'normal' people. From the point of view of a feline - or a Sabretooth - human cues were weirdly aggressive and confrontational, which put him on edge. The more time he spent with the cubs, especially Annie and Kyle, the more relaxed he got.

Clarice, looking small and very pink and girly sitting between the two men, had gotten a lot less shy lately. She was surprisingly good at anything involving projectile weapons, and was equally competent with those guns small enough for her to handle, throwing knives, blow-darts, and the small but well-made bow Creed had gotten her. She was still too little to be much good with close-contact fighting, but she'd put on a lot of muscle, and knew a few good tricks to give herself time to run away. They still hadn't broken her of her tendency to wear clothes with cartoon animals on them, though, nor had her fondness for Miss Pinky the bear diminished the slightest bit. Creed tended to use this as evidence for the defense whenever one of the X-Folk started making accusations about 'robbing them of their childhood'.

Logan hadn't been as emotionally wired as Creed to start with, but he responded well to the subconscious cues too. He was having fewer nightmares as time went on, and he smiled more often than he had. He and Meggan had formed a strong bond, and he spent a lot of his time with her. It was truly bizarre... and very funny, Jonny thought... how blissfully happy even foster-fatherhood seemed to make both the men.

Meggan was still a puzzle. In the month they'd had her, she'd visibly altered. Her batwing ears had narrowed and shortened significantly, her face had subtly altered its configuration, becoming less monkey-like and more human, her fur had thickened with the arrival of winter, but also gotten shorter for some reason - and, most inexplicably of all, she'd shrunk. Oh, she'd put on weight, she wasn't skin and bones anymore, but when she'd arrived, she'd been eye to eye with Clarice. Now the top of her head barely reached Clarice's nose. Still, she was a nice kid, and she'd finally started talking. Just an isolated word or two during the last week, but it was progress.

Marie was sitting on Meggan's other side, fussing over her a little, and Jonny smiled. Marie was sweet, and fondly indulgent of her fellow cubs, especially the little ones. She seemed a lot more self-confident now, too, and much less fearful of her powers and their effects on people. There'd been a couple of times she'd accidentally touched people, and although the feeling wasn't exactly pleasant, they'd all more or less taken it in stride. They all knew she didn't mean to, and Marie had been pitifully grateful for their forgiveness of what she had always considered a heinous offense. She was much more relaxed about it now, knowing that everyone would avoid touching her skin if they could, but that they wouldn't be angry with her if another accident happened.

Now she turned away from Meggan to eye his soup-bowl. He'd almost emptied it while studying the other members of their odd little family, and she smiled approvingly. "Good for you," she said softly. "You need to-"

"Maintain physical strength as well as psionic strength. The mind is only as strong as the body that houses it. I know, I know." He gave her a small, lopsided smile. He was more comfortable with having Marie up close than anyone else except Annie... and Kyle, of course. It wasn't that he didn't trust them, it was just... he didn't like people being too close, or people touching him if he couldn't see them coming and be ready for it. But Marie didn't touch anyone if she could help it, so she felt... safer.

"That's right," she agreed. "Have you been sleeping?"

"Not much. Don't seem to need it." Jonny shrugged. "I nap whenever I get tired, though."

"Good." She ruffled his hair lightly, then turned back to Meggan, who was having trouble with her fork.

Jonny felt the tight knots inside him loosen a little more. After what had happened in the Facility, he'd never thought he'd be able to trust anyone again, except Kyle. And he still didn't, in some ways. But it was getting better. Easier. And Kyle was always there, to keep him safe.

* * *

Fist.

Foot.

Arm.

Bend.

Turn.

Fist.

Fist.

Duck.

Ward.

Geordi lost himself in the flow of the movements, barely even feeling the cold anymore. All that mattered was the opponent, the fight itself, the light taps of carefully contained blows, the way his muscles answered to his will and his body responded faster and faster.

He was grateful for his healing factor, though. It kept the cold from biting too deep. Even though it was only the beginning of winter here in the mountains, still fall... autumn... in the low country, it was fairly cold. The snow was wet and mushy, but it stayed on the ground, and the wind chilled bare skin fast.

And he had a lot of bare skin right now. They still hadn't worked their way down to full nudity, but for two weeks now most of the hand to hand fighting had been conducted in nothing but a loincloth... for both genders. Geordi had gotten his butt kicked a dozen times a day for a straight week through gawking at Marie (who was doing staff-fighting rather than hand-to-hand, for obvious reasons), but now he was pretty much used to her. For once, the guys had sat them down and explained why, exactly, this terribly embarrassing thing had to be done NOW; because it *would* happen later, at some point, and it'd probably be fairly emotionally scarring if they weren't prepared. That made sense, Geordi had had to concede. If he was going to have to get used to walking around and fighting naked, *he'd* certainly prefer getting used to it in the company of a lot of other embarrassed, naked people who he at least knew personally, if not well.

Surprisingly, although he'd figured Marie would be the most bothered by the idea, it had been Jonny who'd made the biggest fuss. He'd flatly refused at first. It had taken a lot of arguing - a discussion which Geordi had not been privy to - to get him to give it a try, and Creed and Logan had been ostentatious about never pairing Jonny with anyone but Kyle or Annie, who were less threatening or something.

Geordi didn't know why the kid had reacted the way he did, but he probably had his reasons. Geordi was confident enough in his own self-image that he didn't mind *too* much. What *he'd* objected to was doing the naked training outside, with only a thin mat between his bare feet and the snow.

It wasn't so bad, though. He was partnering Kyle today, who was a bit faster but a bit less strong, so they were fairly evenly matched.

Geordi let himself get lost in the bout again.

Fist.

Dodge.

Swing.

Miss.

Strike.

Fail to duck, pain, gouges in the skin from the claws, blood on the muddy snow, red rising before the eyes, angry seething fighting NOW-

Something hit him very hard on the side of the head, knocking him sprawling in the snow. As his head fogged up, filling with grey mist this time instead of red, he vaguely heard someone muttering about 'hereditary berserker tendencies', and asking Kyle if he was all right.

* * *

"It's always the quiet ones," Logan grumbled that night. He and Creed had fallen into a habit of sitting in the kitchen for a while after the kids had been sent to bed, talking over the day's training and planning tomorrow. As long as all they talked about were neutral things like kids and training, they got along surprisingly well.

Creed shrugged. "Annie got it from me. Stands to reason the brat'd get it from you." He picked at a knothole in the table's surface with the tip of one claw. "It's instinct, I guess."

"Yeah, I guess." Logan sighed. "I just... I dunno... hoped he hadn't got it."

"You think it's a curse," Creed said, looking up from the table with those cold black eyes that even Logan still couldn't read. "It scares ya, being out of control like that."

"Hell yeah, it scares me," Logan admitted, shaken enough by the sudden, snarling rage he'd seen in Geordi's face to be honest. Did his face look like that, when he was lost in the bloodlust? "I never know what I might do... who I might hurt... Don't it worry you, knowing you might hurt Annie? Or Clarice?"

"I won't." Creed sounded utterly sure of the fact. "See, I'm not like you. I don't fight it. I trust my instincts." He hiked up one massive shoulder in a shrug. "Thinkin' ain't all it's cracked up to be. Nine times outta ten, instinct is all ya need to get ya through."

"And the tenth time?" Logan asked, meeting the cool black gaze without flinching.

"The tenth time you back instinct up with explosives," Creed said, baring yellowing fangs in an unpleasant grin.

Logan snorted, but he hadn't really expected anything more profound than that. "That's your answer to everything."

"Usually." Creed shrugged. "We're animals, you and me. We fight, we hunt, we mate, we take care o' the cubs. What else matters?"

"It's not that simple."

Creed shook his head slowly. "It's always that simple." Logan looked away.

* * *

It was an hour before dawn, on the north side of the cabin.

Creed stood in the snow, turned to watch the first hints of pale blue touching the horizon.

Feet slushed through the snow behind him, and Annie's scent drifted by. "Hey, kid," he said, without turning around.

"Hi, Dad," she returned, tucking herself companionably against his side so that she leaned against his hip, with his hand on her shoulder. "Are you and Logan done arguing? I could hear you all night."

"We don't got much in common, and what we do have, he tries to pretend ain't there," Creed growled moodily. He petted her ruffled curls absently, scritching gently down the back of her skull. She purred a little, and some of the black mood that was on him lifted. "He thinks he's human."

"If he's a primate, then I'm a horse," Annie sniffed a little disapprovingly. "I mean, he's not like *us*, but he's still higher on the food chain than *monkeys*."

"Yeah, well... he doesn't wanna think about that. Keeps going on about being a man, not an animal." He snorted, lifting his head to sniff the sweet, clear morning air. "Like bein' a man is so damn special. Lookit me, I can stand on my hind legs and build a nuclear weapon with my damn opposable thumbs. Big achievement."

"Clarice is a monkey," Annie pointed out a little anxiously. She was young. She still thought humans were cute and funny, not evil-minded dealers of uncaring death. Still, she had a point about Clarice.

"Yeah, but we got Clarrie early. We can train it out of her," he decided. "If wolves can do it, I guess we can."

"The wolves didn't. Romulus killed Remus," Annie pointed out, snuggling against his side with a resigned little sigh. "But they're not all bad."

"Enough of them are." He looked down at her, the still unaccustomed tug of affection pulling at him. She was his cub, and he loved her, although not in the way a human parent might. "You can't trust them, Annie. Even the nice ones, like Cyke and Storm. Their minds don't work like ours."

"But I like Scott," Annie said a little plaintively. "He's nice to me and he gives me fun toys, like my telescope."

"It's fine to like 'em. Like 'em all you want. Just don't *trust* 'em." He gave her shoulder a little shake to emphasize his words. "I ain't saying they're likely to ever turn against you... but they might. F'r all they've got powers, they're as human as any other naked ape. They ain't like you and me."

"Is that why you left Magneto?" Annie asked, rubbing her head against his side and yawning a little.

He hadn't thought about it that way before, so he pondered his reply for a minute. "Kinda, yeah. I was all for fightin' the good fight and stuff, but after what happened on the statue... I dunno. Guess he's like all the others." He sighed, rubbing Annie's head gently. "He was gonna kill a whole bunch o' people who he never met, who never woulda known what happened to 'em, just to get what he wanted. That's human thinkin'."

"You kill people all the time," Annie pointed out.

He looked down at her again and nodded. "Yeah... but it ain't the same." He sighed. "I better explain it to alla you, huh? Got too many human brains here to let 'em start thinkin' the wrong way about killing."

Ten minutes later, Creed had herded the whole sleepy pride into the kitchen. "Okay. There's something we gotta get cleared up," he said flatly. "Right now. I want you all listenin' up good, and that includes you, Logan."

Logan scowled. "I've been listening to you all night, Creed, and so far you ain't said diddly-squat worth hearing."

"Yeah, but now I figured out what I was trying to say before." Creed lifted one claw-tipped finger for attention. "It's about killing people. You all know that someday, you're gonna have to, right?" They all nodded, a little reluctantly, but they nodded. Good. At least he'd finally pounded some sense into the little brats. "Okay. And some of you... 'specially Annie... might wind up making a pretty good living out of it. I've been an assassin f'r years, the pay's good and it's easy work. But..." He held up the finger again to silence their startled noisemaking. "But if you do that, or even if you stick to emergencies only, there's something you gotta understand."

They were all watching him now, and he was glad he'd sorted it all out in his head while he was talking to Annie. Otherwise he'd have gotten all confused and it would have come out all wrong. "Killing is a big thing," he said slowly, trying to keep it all straight in his mind. "Yer takin' a life, snuffing out something that'll never exist quite the same way again. And it's about the most personal thing you can do to someone. More so'n sex. More'n love. That's why I usually do it with these." He held up his hands. "Look, what I'm tryin' to say is... sometimes you have to kill someone. Sometimes you just want to do it. Sometimes it's just for the money. But whatever you do it for, you gotta understand that it's you doing it. You gotta take responsibility." He looked around. Some faces were puzzled. Some wore expressions of dawning understanding. "So if you're gonna kill someone, do it personal. Let 'em see you, and if you got time, make sure they know why you're doing it. Tell them who hired you, tell them why you need them dead, whatever. But kill 'em honest, and accept the blood on yer hands as your due." This was hard work, and he frowned as he tried to put the thoughts that were so clear to him in clumsy human words. "Killing from ambush, from hiding... that cheats your prey. Killing without knowing who you're killing, usin' bombs or explosives and gettin' a whole bunch of people you're never gonna know... that cheats *you*. If you're gonna kill, you need to know who the target is. See their face. Feel their breath on your face, their blood on your skin. It's fun, 'least I think it is, but what matters is that it's a *real* kill." He shrugged, with a little sigh of relief for having gotten to the end of it. "The other way is just murder. It makes the kill meaningless, for you and for the victims. And death should always mean something to you, even if it's just for fun."

There was a long, contemplative silence.

"That's either morally profound or very, very weird," Geordi said, frowning. "Or both. I think both."

"If you're gonna kill someone, it should mean something to you. You should acknowledge that you did it, even if you don't feel the tiniest bit guilty about it," Annie said, giving her father an admiring look. "I like it."

Most of the others looked a bit shell-shocked, but Creed didn't really care whether or not they approved of him. Just as long as he'd made it clear he wasn't going to put up with any untidy random killings.

It was nice that Annie approved, though.

* * *

That afternoon, in the middle of another round of hand to hand combat (clothed, this time, in deference to the intermittent sleet), a soft whine filled the air.

As all of them looked up in surprise as the Blackbird skimmed into sight over the trees, lowering almost daintily into the clearing in front of the cabin. All of them hurried around the side of the cabin as the engines powered down.

Unsurprisingly, it was Cyclops who stepped out of the plane. What was surprising was how ill-at-ease he looked. Usually, even when he was one-on-one with mass murderers, Scott Summers could put up a good appearance of calm. Now he looked tense and unhappy, even the visor and uniform not hiding it. "Hi," he said almost tentatively.

"Whaddya want?" Creed asked, not even noticing that he'd put a protective hand on Clarice's shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Logan pick up a whimpering Meggan and balance her absently on his hip. Meggan hid her face in his neck.

Scott sighed. "I need your help," he admitted. "I'll pause for hysterical laughter."

Creed raised a shaggy eyebrow. "Our help," he said, growling a little. Boy had nerve, at least. Outnumbered, outmuscled, and outgunned, he was still making his play.

"Yeah." Summers scrubbed a hand through his model-boy hair. "There's a friend of the Professor's who lives in Scotland - Doctor Moira McTaggert. She's some kind of expert on mutation, or something, I don't know exactly what. The only science subject I ever took was physics." His lips quirked in a wry smile. "Look, the thing is, Moira has an adopted daughter. Her name's Rahne." His eyes flicked to Annie and Clarice. "She's disappeared. You guys are good at finding people."

Hah. He might not quite be the loner he'd been before, but just because he had his own cubs, it didn't mean he cared what happened to some scottish kid he'd never met. "Yeah? So?"

The kid wasn't great yet, but he was good. His expression barely flickered as he played his hole card. "Rahne is like you. Like Annie and Kyle and Geordi and Wolverine, a feral-type mutation. Hers goes further than yours - she's a partial shapeshifter, too. She goes from appearing fully human, to an inbetween state much like your permanent one, to being an apparently normal wolf." He jerked his chin at Annie, the visor meeting Creed's eyes steadily. "Rahne isn't the bravest kid in the world, and Moira's the only family she has. She wouldn't have gone off on her own. She and her mutation are well known in the area, though, and anyone looking for certain things could easily have found out about her. The odds are, Creed, that someone out there just kidnapped one of only two identified shapeshifting ferals." The boy's voice was level. "Think of this as me giving you an opportunity to track whoever it is down now, before they decide that Annie would complete their set."

The kid had a point, and he knew very well that Creed's self-interest was the best part to reason with. Creed glanced over at Logan, who was still holding Meggan, murmuring soothingly to her. He looked over her head, and nodded ever so slightly. Creed nodded too. Better safe than sorry. "Been meanin' to take the kids on a proper hunt anyways," he decided magnanimously. "All right! We now have our first official job - a standard hunt and snatch. You all know the drill, you got three minutes to grab the stuff you need and be on the plane! Marie, you get Meggan's stuff, and don't forget the damn bunny or she'll be howlin' for hours." He looked back at Scott, and grinned toothily. "They're inexperienced, so we won't charge full price for the rescue."

"Full price?" The boy grinned in startled amusement. "What... never mind. I get it." He turned to go back up the ramp, then turned back, holding up an admonitory finger. "We better get at least forty percent off. They're rank beginners."

Two and a half minutes later, all seven kids, plus three adults, had squeezed into the Blackbird. Meggan was sitting in Logan's lap, still sniffling a little and clutching her bunny. She'd probably never seen a plane before, let alone been inside one. The others had packed light, like they'd been taught, bringing nothing but their cold-weather gear, the few weapons they were cleared to use, and the bags around their necks. And Miss Pinky. He almost wished he'd never bought that stupid pink bear, except that it kinda made him feel good that she liked it more than any toy someone else had got for her. "You're gonna have to leave that with Meggan with the X-Geeks," he reminded her, ruffling her purplish-pink hair gently.

"I know." Clarice hugged the toy. "I didn't wanna leave her behind."

"Yeah, yeah." He tried to lean back in the seat and sighed. Damn things were still too narrow for his shoulders. He felt like a damned hunchback. "If anyone forgot to pee, I don't care, it's too late now. Summers, we still sitting here for a reason?"

Summers shook his head and started flipping toggles and pushing buttons. "It's not going to take long for us to get there," he said, sounding tense and worried again. "Uh... listen, there's something I didn't tell you."

Creed frowned. Anything they waited to tell you until you were already in the plane couldn't be good. "What?" he growled. He saw the little hairs on the back of the kid's neck rise in reaction, and grinned evilly. That growl had harmonics that reached right down into the hindbrain and woke up ancestral memories of huddling close to the fire while predatory eyes glowed from the undergrowth all around, and he knew it.

"I... uh... I didn't tell the X-Men or the Professor I was coming to get you," he confessed slowly, voice still calm but knuckles white on the controls. Boy was scared. Good. Creed liked keeping them a little scared. "They don't trust you. I don't trust you either. But I think you can find her, and someone has to. We... the X-Men... aren't so good."

"Really?" Creed let the growl stay in his voice. "Since you ain't got two cents to rub together, kid, I'm wonderin' how you're planning to pay for our services without Xavier's help."

"I'm not going to. Moira is. She's the one who's hiring you, not me. I'm just... a go-between. You know me, you don't know her."

Creed relaxed. Well and good, then. That was sound business practice. "Fine. So what's the deal?"

The kid still looked guilty. He'd probably been the one who suggested the idea to Moira. He was probably going to run to Charlie and confess as soon as they got there. "Well, Moira found out that Rahne was missing two days ago, when she didn't show up for breakfast..."

(end part five)