Disclaimer: I don't own X-Men, and I wont ever... Unless one day copyright laws extend to dreams and fangirl fancy. Right now I have no such luck.

A/N: Welcome to Chapter 5, or as I'd like to call it 'Chapter 4 Continued'. I realise the last chapter was incredibly short and I cut it off right before anything could actually happen. It largely had to do with the impending holiday which delayed this release as well. I'd also like to apologise for any confusion in the X-Men Evolution time line. I started writing this not having seen the show in a good three years, but now I've refreshed myself up to the end of Season 3 and I feel a lot more comfortable in continuing. I don't think I screwed anything up that vitally, so three hips and a hearty hurray for that!

Onward with the story!

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Sabertooth got as far as the tree line before Bishop caught up. He threw himself at him and they both fell in an undignified heap. Bishop reached for the gun he dropped but had to dodge Sabertooth's wide sweeping claws. They grappled across the lawn, exchanging blows, drawing further and further from the Brotherhood's house and his discarded firearm.

Bishop lifted weights during his down time back at their base, and out of all their X-Men (with an exception to Cannonball) he packed the hardest punch, but Bishop's mutant ability didn't involve his strength, and Sabertooth's did. He felt the battle waning toward his opponent. He needed his gun or a good charge if he was going to do this right, and neither was forthcoming.

He took a heavy blow to his side, and used it to throw his weight against Sabertooth and knock him off balance. It worked, and he was able to roll out from under the mutant and deliver a good kick to the man's face. It felt great to hit the bastard.

Sabertooth didn't share the same opinion. With a snarl he was back on his feet. Bishop readied for the next onslaught, circling until he placed himself between the older mutant and the house. "Come on furball, what are you waiting for?"

His opponent looked hesitant, and almost thoughtful.

Bishop took a step toward his gun, keeping his gaze steady on his target. If Sabertooth was distracted, it was the best chance he had.

Still no change in his enemy's behaviour.

Bishop threw himself to his gun. The momentum rolled him onto his back and he brought the gun up to fire. The blast hit a tree beyond the spot Sabertooth had been, singeing its bark.

The bastard was gone.

Bishop tugged his night vision goggles free of his jacket and scanned the trees flanking the Brotherhood's estate. Nothing.

Then he remembered Pietro far behind him. Had Sabertooth somehow gotten past him?

He had no more than taken two steps when Katherine appeared out of the darkness ahead of him.

"He's fine." She told him, gesturing back at the house. "Where's Sabertooth?"

Bishop's face burned red from humiliation. "He got away again."

Disappointment flashed in her eyes, but it was replaced by her concern for him. She reached out and touched the torn cloth covering his side. "You're not hurt, are you?"

Something that wasn't just adrenaline sent his heart racing and he quickly pulled away from her to regain composure. "It's just a job for the tailor."

Katherine nodded, deciding it was better not to push the topic, and turned her attention to the Brotherhood's Boarding House. "What happened?"

Bishop shrugged, but realised the effort was wasted on her back. "Sabertooth took a stab at it again. Went straight through the roof." He laughed. "Nothing like the direct approach."

"Nothing like it for Sabertooth, anyway."

Katherine's comment caught Bishop's attention. What had she meant by that?

"Since when does Sabertooth sneak around with Shock Darts?"

Bishop frowned at the back of her head. "What do you mean?"

Katherine sighed and turned back to him. Every inch of her said she was exhausted. Bishop felt guilty for having dragged her out into the night when she obviously needed sleep. "It's just a feeling. I don't have anything to back it up with."

"You should go back to base and get some rest. I'll finish my surveillance here and return to get you later."

Katherine nodded again. "Okay. But be careful."

A thought suddenly occurred to him. He eyed her suspiciously. "How did you get here so fast?"

She blushed and smiled guiltily. "I hotwired a car."

Bishop chuckled at the image her admission drew in his mind.

"Don't start with me." She warned with a wag of her finger. "I already feel guilty enough, you don't have to make it worst."

He made a zipping motion across his lips with his fingers. "Wont say a word about it."

"Good." She said, and with a flip of her hair Katherine beat a slow retreat to the main road, leaving Bishop alone to the task once again.

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"Logan." Xavier greeted warmly from his seat behind his desk. "Come in."

Logan did as instructed, shutting the door behind him. He hadn't thought to take his jacket off, and still held his motorcycle helmet between his arm and waist. "I went to the aquarium like you told me to."

"And," Xavier pressed the tips of his fingers together and gave him a look of interest over the top of them. "You found something?"

"Not just something." Logan said with a low growl. "Sabertooth."

Xavier's eyebrows rose in surprise. Out of all the explanations for the day's events, he had not even considered young Maximoff's attacker to be one of Magneto's men. "Are you certain?"

Logan's face twisted, just talking about his enemy left a foul taste in his mouth. Xavier, of course couldn't blame him. He and Victor weren't on the best of terms.

"Yeah, I'm sure alright. His scent was all over the rooftop Kitty described. But..."

Xavier didn't miss his friend's obvious hesitation. "But?"

"There were two other scents. I didn't recognise the first, but I'm pretty damn sure the second was Half-pint."

"Well, that would match up with the story Kitty told us today."

"Except for the fact I smelled her all over the roof across from where Sabertooth was."

"Hm."

"Yeah," Logan said with a dissatisfied grunt. "That's what I said."

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Pietro lay on the sofa in the Brotherhood's living room, having opted to vacate the scene of his second attack that day. He'd recovered his backpack unharmed and drudged several of his blankets from the rubble of his bed with only minor tears in them, but dealing with the entire mess was too cumbersome for the night. Somehow he'd managed to regain his composure and blame the roof's collapse on all of Lance's seismic activity. Lance wasn't happy, but Pietro was certain he wouldn't be bothered with any more questions. In the morning, he'd have the others clean it up while he was in school.

Pietro sighed and tapped his foot on the arm rest. He was pretty sure Kitty Pryde wasn't to blame for the water incident now that he knew he was on Victor's hit list, but he couldn't fathom why that would be. It was possible his father was testing him, but the extent of the implication was more than startling. He could have died in either incident!

He held his cell phone up in the dark and stared at it. Finding out would be as simple as calling his dad and asking. But if it was a test, would Magneto really admit it? Or to the point, if it wasn't a test, would Magneto want him to know?

But how could he even consider that? Pietro was still leading the Brotherhood, with Gambit overseeing of course. That gave him some sort of immunity to assassination plots by his father, didn't it?

That left the possibility that Sabertooth was flying solo and had some vendetta against Magneto. It made sense to go after his only son in order to enact some sort of revenge.

Disgusted with his thoughts Pietro dropped the phone on the floor and turned over to stare at the back of the couch. There was no way he was going to get any amount of sleep. He had too many thoughts firing through his head.

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Unsurprisingly, Bishop found Katherine wide awake when he returned from his guard detail the next morning. She had their small camp stove heating a can of baked beans.

"That looks healthy." He commented with little amusement in his voice. He sat beside her and rolled his shoulders. The fight he had with Sabertooth had left him sore, and his position on a tree branch all night long made him even more stiff.

Katherine didn't look up from stirring the can's contents. "I've been thinking."

"You're always thinking, Kath." He replied with a heavy sigh.

She frowned at the ladle in her hand before wagging it in his direction. "We're going to need help watching Pie's back so that one of us can hunt down

Sabertooth."

Bishop's brow furrowed in confusion. "You mean going back to our time and bringing in some reinforcements?"

"No!" Katherine surprised him with her outburst. "We can't do that. The future may be changed when we get back - changed for the worst. If we try to go to the past again, it could be an alternate past."

He hadn't understood a word she'd said, other than the initial 'no'. "You know what, I'll just take your word for it. You're the computer geek."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "I'm not a geek. I'm a very cool computer programmer, okay?"

Bishop chose to ignore her last comment. He was already thinking of the problem her original idea posed. "If we can't go back to get help, what are you suggesting?"

"Getting me to help." She said, "Or well, little me anyway."

"What?" Bishop couldn't believe she'd even suggested such a stupid idea. "You can't do that!"

"Why not?" She asked, raising her head in defiance. "Don't you think I'd trust myself enough to help out the cause?"

"That's not the point! Even if little you was willing to help, wouldn't you be screwing up the timeline somehow by telling her about the future?"

Katherine shook her head. "We need help, period. And I know I can trust myself to keep a secret. Besides, she can keep an eye on Pietro from the inside of school. It'll limit the number of unknown variables."

"The answer is still no." Bishop said with a growl. "We can do this fine on our own."

Katherine threw the ladle at him and stood up, not even bothering to look at him. "Fine. Serve yourself. I'm going to watch Pietro now."

Bishop watched her stalk away with some amount of trepidation. "No means no, Kath!"

She waved him off and exited the warehouse.

Certainly she wouldn't be stupid enough to ignore his orders...

Bishop groaned at the thought. He sure hoped she wouldn't. But there was no knowing with Katherine Pryde.

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"Kitty, may I speak with you for a moment?"

Kitty had grown used to having the Professor's voice in her head, but after getting off easy only a day earlier for causing a mess, she found herself very worried by his sudden need to see her before school.

She sighed and pushed away from the dining table where the rest of her friends and team members were happily chowing down their breakfasts.

Rogue noticed her depart, and turned to Kurt who sat beside her. "Hey, what's up with Kit-kat? Is she in some kinda trouble?"

Her furry half-brother didn't respond fast enough (he quite nearly had his face in a bowl of cereal) so she nudged him non-too-gently in the side.

"Ow!" He looked up with a pained expression and scowled when he found Rogue looking at him. "I don't know, okay? It has something to do vith her field trip yesterday."

Rogue sat back in her seat and poked her toast ineffectually. For some reason she'd remembered the strange lady she'd met the day before. There probably was no reason to worry over it, but the expression Kitty had left the table with was nearly identical to that woman's who she'd nearly run over with a cart.

'It's all in mah head.' She told herself, sighing inwardly. 'Ah mean, what else could it be?'

Still, she looked after the retreating form of her friend and thought of the woman leaving in a very similar manner.

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School was a welcome breath of fresh air after the reaming she'd received from Logan. She couldn't believe the nerve he had, accusing her of lying when she'd been straight forward on everything that'd happened!

Kitty glared her chemistry book, wishing she could chuck it out one of the lab's closed windows. Why would she lie in the first place? She had nothing to gain by it. And on the roof? As if. Obviously Logan had something stuck up his nose, because he was wrong wrong wrong!

"Kitty?"

She glanced up, snapped from her angry thoughts by the inquiring voice of her teacher. Everyone, she realised, was looking at her expectantly. Her cheeks burned red from embarrassment. "Could you like, repeat the question?"

A few of the female students giggled.

"The PA just paged you, dear." Mrs. Burk said with practiced patience. "You need to go to the office."

Kitty wanted so much to sink into the floor and disappear. First the professor and now what? Was Principle Kelley going to question her to? Did he think she was getting off too easily after what happened? He'd been looking for a reason to expel her and all the X-Men since they'd come public with their powers.

Was this reason enough to boot her out of Bayville High?

With a heavy sigh Kitty gathered her books in her school bag, and made her way toward the office.

When she reached it, a sympathetic receptionist was waiting behind the front desk.

Kitty approached her with a forced smile. "I was paged over the PA."

"Katherine Pryde?"

She grimaced at the use of her full name, and nodded at the old lady.

"Your mother is here to see you."

Kitty stood up straight, overcome by shock. Why would her mother come all the way to Bayville and see her?

"Don't worry dear," The woman said, evidently reading her reaction to be 'worry' over her family's well-being. "She said it's nothing bad."

She lightened considerably at the receptionist's admission and looked around the busy office. "Where is she?"

"Your mother asked to meet you in the outdoor cafeteria."

"Okay, thanks." Heartened by the notion that she wasn't going to get reamed by her family as well, Kitty hurried out of the school building, anxious to find out what her mother was up to.

When she reached the outdoor eating area, she found it empty, save for one woman sitting on a bench. As Kitty approached, she found that though it wasn't her mother, the woman was eerily familiar and vaguely resembled Mrs. Pryde.

Kitty glanced around the empty quad and then back to the woman who was watching her. "Like, I'm supposed to meet my mom out here... have you seen anyone else?"

The lady smiled fondly at her and flipped her hair in a fashion identical to Kitty's. "Well, I'm not exactly your mother." She smiled playfully. "But you could say we're related."