19

In retrospect, he wasn't that surprised Kitty came after him. Although even she wondered if her power was "super useless", she'd been out in the field enough to realize that being intangible had some real advantages. He for one was grateful of that now.

But cuing her into his plan without Arba overhearing was nearly impossible. Okay, he probably couldn't hear him over the wall punching, but what if he did? He couldn't risk it. He just had to hope she trusted him.

As soon as Arba was through, they started running again, through walls and any demons that tried to stop them. They looked rather foolish trying to grab or hit air. After the first handful humiliated themselves, no one else bothered.

Kitty ran them into the cliff, and then, in the darkness of all that rock, he had a distinct floating sensation. This was confirmed when they came up through the cliff and were now suddenly on top of it. He was so glad she had mastered her powers this way. He whistled sharply, looking down at Arba, and yelled, "Hey fucko, you miss us?"

"Is taunting the zombie Hulk actually a good thing to do?" Kitty asked nervously.

"Trust me, kiddo. I know what I'm doing." He paused briefly. "Kinda."

"Kinda?"

Arba was on his way up, so he turned and grabbed Kitty's hand, and started running down the tunnel. They could hear him cursing and blustering behind them, every angry step like a small temblor, shaking the rocks beneath their feet. Kitty kept shooting nervous looks over her shoulder, but Logan wasn't that concerned. After all, she was intangible - what could he do about that? Kitty really wanted to turn on the gas, but he held her back. Arba had to be so focused on catching them he'd lose track of his surroundings. He also hoped he was as big a moron as he seemed. So far, so good.

Halfway down the tunnel, when the noise of the dimensional rift started to get loud, he stopped and shouted, "Come on you half-breed asshole! You ain't god enough to kill me, you fucking piece of shit!"

"Again with the taunting," Kitty complained, grabbing his arm. "Storm was right; you do have a death wish."

That made him pause and look at her. "She said I had a death wish?"

The thumping of Arba's footsteps and his cursing got louder, so they had to start moving again. But goddamn it, that wasn't fair. Storm was probably just repeating Jean's thoughts, as Jean had accused him of that before, but … hell, what if he did have a death wish? It wasn't a real one anyways. If there was a great possibility you'd recover after being dragged a few miles by a train, why wouldn't you jump in front of it if it would help someone else? He could take the hits; it was well established he could. He was still spitting up bits of pulped lung. If you could take it, then you should, especially if it spared someone else. It wasn't a death wish, it was common sense.

Arba was telling him everything he was going to do to him, and they were rather depressingly pedestrian - rip him in half, stomp his skull flat, yada yada yada. He winced as they passed through the dimensional rift - the noise had ramped up to physically painful - but he stopped just beyond its invisible periphery and faced Arba, popping his claws and yelling, "C'mon, fuckhead, come get me if you're man enough!"

Arba roared and charged him. Kitty grabbed his arm, but he shook her off, hissing out the corner of his mouth, "It's gonna be fine, just stand back." In case Bob was wrong, he didn't want her getting hurt while Arba tossed him around like a rag doll.

But as soon as Arba was through, in the subway tunnel, he stopped dead - or at least his lower half did, and his upper half almost went lunging towards the ground; he wasn't prepared for the stop. It looked like there was a growing greyness, starting from his feet and moving rapidly up his legs. Arba looked up at the ceiling, and screamed, "No!"

It was his last word. The greyness swamped him, covering him head to foot, and then a gust of wind reduced him to a swirling cloud of ash that sifted across the floor of tunnel like a dumped ashtray. "Yeah, motherfucker!" Logan shouted in triumph, kicking up a bit of the ash that used to be Arba. "Ain't so tough on my world, are ya?"

"What the hell just happened?" Kitty asked.

"Bob told me the gods had banned the nephilim from the Earth realm. Some guy conned Arba into thinking it could be reversed, but Bob said it was impossible. This proves it."

"Ah." Kitty obviously didn't know he was a nephilim, or what the hell that was or what that meant, or when he had talked to Bob, but she played along, because she was good like that. "So what do we do about this dimensional … hole, or whatever it is?"

"Nothing. It'll collapse in on itself now that the guy who made the dimension is dead. The whole dimension will cease to exist."

"I love how you say these things like any idiot should know it," Storm said, walking down the tunnel with Paloma trailing behind. Thanks to a small ball of hovering fire, he could see Pyro was trailing way behind. Why? Looked like he didn't want to get too close to Paloma. She gave him a scrutinizing look. "Didn't you start off wearing a shirt? You're like Captain Kirk, always losing your shirt."

He shrugged. "Considerin' the beatin' I took, you're probably lucky I still have my pants." This made Pyro snort a laugh.

Storm briefly shot him a scowl - she didn't find it funny - and then shot Kitty a scolding look. "And you, running off without telling me."

"I wanted to act before I got too scared to do anything," she admitted. "I'm sorry."

"Don't ever apologize for savin' anyone's ass," Logan told her. He almost gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder, but then he realized his hands were covered in blood. She probably wouldn't appreciate it.

Storm shot him a "Don't encourage her" sort of look, but how could he not? He was the last person in the world to chide anyone for not abiding by the rules. That's why he was a shitty teacher. Only after he paused to lean aside and spit up a bit of blood and a knocked out tooth did Storm think to ask, "Are you still healing?"

"We had ta make a quick exit."

"That guy was punching walls down," Kitty told her. "Rock walls! Really thick. Believe me, I went through them, and those suckers were huge."

"What about Giles? John said he disappeared."

"I sent Bob after him. He'll be fine." If he was still alive, but he decided not to add that. See, you didn't have to tell Giles that sometimes you had to take one for the team - he already knew. Of course it would have been nice if he mentioned it beforehand, but Logan wasn't sure he would have either.

Storm's expression seemed to indicate that she thought he might have a serious head injury. "How did you send Bob after him?"

"Not in front of the kids. Later." He didn't want to say he'd died, as he might have to explain to Paloma why that didn't bother him.

Storm got it, and grimaced. She wasn't used to him taking his own death so casually. But hey, if it only lasted a couple seconds, did it even count? "Why don't we get out of here before emergency teams enter the subway? We can question Paloma back at the school."

"Why we questionin' her?"

"John thinks she's been lying to us."

Logan worked the kinks out of his neck, and shrugged. Really, after today, it wouldn't surprise him. "I'll question her. Nobody can lie to me."

Paloma looked horrified at that statement. And if she was a liar, she probably oughta be.

By the time they got back to the mansion, Paloma was spilling her guts, apparently not wanting to face off against him. Considering he was covered in the blood of three or four different species, he couldn't blame her.

She got involved with these assholes who contacted a demon - well, half demon; Arba was a half-breed - and were convinced they could gain ultimate power through a deal. The problem was, Paloma figured out that it was a set up and she was being singled out for sacrifice, so she took off, and once she ended up in New York she decided on a whim to pretend to be a mutant to gain protection from her old group. It didn't work. She attempted to throw herself on Storm's mercy while Logan went to get cleaned up. Teenagers fucked up, especially scared teenagers, but by inadvertently getting them involved in the fight against Arba and Raijin, she could have led to a lot of death. So Logan wasn't sure he was inclined to be merciful, but that was Storm's call.

They'd put Oz in one of the garages, which wasn't necessarily comfortable, but would let him transform back into his Human form in privacy. As for Whoomp, Logan just pointed him to the nearest IHOP and figured he could be their problem from now on.

There were two phone messages waiting for them. Oz's witchy girlfriend, Veronique, had called, and reported that the entire coven, minus Ate, had been returned to Earth, presumably by Raijin. But they had no idea where Ate was. He told her she could come by and pick up Oz, but he couldn't help her with Ate.

The second call was from Angel. They had Giles, and while he was really tired, he was okay. Apparently Giles had teleported himself and Raijin to the Senior Partner's dimensional nexus in the Wolfram and Hart building, so Bob got them to help rescue him. So Giles's big plan was to pit a god against another god? Smart. Especially the Senior Partners, who were really pissy bastards.

Logan was exhausted himself, and figured he could catch a nap and regain some of his strength, so he laid down, and didn't wake up for sixteen hours. It was pretty embarrassing when he woke up and knew almost instantaneously that he had been asleep far longer than he had ever intended. Getting the shit beaten out of him had a tendency to do that to him; his healing factor liked to take an extended time out and repair everything. It had, as far as he could tell.

He wasn't terribly surprised Storm called him to her office. He expected a chewing out, but he didn't get it, which made him suspicious. She caught him up on Paloma's situation, which involved Storm sending Paloma off to Los Angeles - she figured Angel and his crew were more adept at dealing with the problems of sorcerers and demons than they were. That was actually a really good decision.

Storm had this serious look on her face, that led him to guess she was about to fire his ass (if you could actually be fired from something as loose and half-assed as the X-Men, but why not?) but she surprised him again. Settled behind her desk, hands folded in front of her, she said, "I have a proposal for you, Logan."

"We haven't even gotten to first base yet."

She raised an eyebrow at his joke, but didn't laugh. "I've been thinking that there are some situations - this current one, for example - where tackling it in a traditional way won't be effective. I was thinking that perhaps we could try out a different type of team, one under your purview."

She used about ten words she didn't need to use. "A strike team?"

"In a manner of speaking. This isn't giving you a license to kill, that is still a very last resort and only used in the most dire of circumstances, but a smaller, more covert team might be called for in some circumstances."

"Do I get to choose my people?"

She nodded. "You do, except for one: Pyro. Please take him."

He snorted a derisive laugh. "The kids ain't happy with him, huh?"

"Bobby's reaction seemed to have been representative for the majority. We know that Bob changed his mind for him and he won't switch back, but they don't. They assume he's a traitor."

"He was a traitor. Can't blame 'em for thinking he's still a weasel."

"No, but if it keeps up, we're going to have a firestorm on our hands one of these days." She reached into an upper desk drawer, and pulled out a file, which she handed to him. "These are some potential members."

"I got some in mind already."

"Name them."

"Kitty."

"Hell no."

"C'mon, she's perfect."

"She's a girl, Logan! She's not a fighter."

"Yeah, she is, she just doesn't know it yet. And a good strike team isn't just brute force; you need intelligence, stealth, defense, and offence. You gotta cover the bases. Kitty could do a lot. She's my evasion and infiltration in one package."

She stared at him, her blue eyes frosty. "Why do I get the sick feeling you've done this type of thing before?"

He shrugged. "'Cause I probably have. Let's ask Kitty, huh? She's old enough to decide for herself."

She considered that a moment. "Fine. But I'll do the asking."

"Why? Don't trust me?"

"No. It's just that most of the kids want to impress you. Did you have someone else in mind?"

Why would the kids want to impress him? He decided to just leave it. "Piotr."

She nodded. "Done."

"The Doc, what's her name … Khoury."

"Shaheen?" She seemed surprised. "She's really not a fighter."

"No, but she increases other mutant's powers, which is instantly useful. Not to mention being probably immortal and not feeling pain. And what team can't use a Doctor?"

"You like her, don't you?"

"Beside the point."

Storm smiled knowingly. "Done."

Logan started flipping through the folder, just scanning the files. "Oh, what about Alchemy?"

"Nariko?" She both sounded and looked confused. "Why her?"

"She can touch something and turn it into something else: cement into water, glass into cellophane. You can't tell me that isn't useful."

She conceded the point with a nod. "Done."

He flipped through the files, not terribly impressed with anything he saw, until he came to what seemed like a needlessly thick file. "Zehra Bayar, codenamed Impulse. Bit of a troublemaker, is she?"

Storm let out a groan of disappointment. "That's an understatement. She's a mid-range telekinetic with pre-cognitive flashes, and an attitude that could curdle milk. She gets along with no one, the chip on her shoulder could sink the Titanic, and then she has medical issues, which just makes her more bitter."

"What medical issues?"

"She's epileptic. If she over-exerts herself, strains her powers, it triggers a seizure."

Logan considered that a moment, staring at her picture. She was a sullen looking girl with dark hair and dark eyes, her face seemingly full of sharp angles that could cut you like razors. She was trying to look as prickly as possible, and she had succeeded. "Well, I'll have to watch that, won't I? I'll take her."

Storm looked at him curiously. "She's hard to work with, Logan."

"In that case, she's like me. So if I can't make her into something akin to a grudging team player, no one can."

"Now that I agree with. Good luck, and thank you for taking my two most troublesome kids."

"Hey, if they're total pains in the asses, you're gettin' 'em back."

He wasn't about to admit it, but this sounded like it could almost be fun. Which he knew were famous last words, so he wasn't about to say it out loud.

The End