Chapter 14: Redemption

Sprinting down the hall in my admantium form was taxing, the metal made my footfalls heavy, and made mobility nearly impossible. Wolverine caught up with me quickly, slowing his pace as he came up beside me. I reverted back to my normal form, picking up speed with my outer layer lacking the weight of the metal.

"It still sends shivers up and down my spine when you do that, kid." Wolverine said with a smirk. He stopped dead in his tracks, and, with my adrenaline at max, reacted a split second later, skidding to a stop a half a foot in front of him. Suddenly, he dove at me, and tackled me into a nearby room, narrowly avoiding being seen by whoever owned the three sets of boots that suddenly came into view of the doorway.

"Where is she?!" I heard Pyro's voice. He was here looking for someone?

"I dunno, boss," A voice I didn't recognize piped in. "But all the kids that we've interrogated have never heard of her."

"You didn't kill any of them, did you?" Pyro growled. I could picture his fists clenching and un-clenching, even though I couldn't see it from our hiding spot under the bed. I was tempted to rush them now, take them by surprise, but a glance at Wolverine quashed that as he put a finger to his lips and nodded back out into the hallway, as if to tell me to listen.

"No, boss, I didn't kill anyone." The voice replied. I watched one set of boots, Pyro's probably, turn toward the so far silent pair. They backed away a step, Pyro's advanced.

"She called me an ugly jerk!" I recognized Juggernaut's voice, he sounded frightened. An orange glow lit up the tiles of the floor.

"Which one," Pyro whispered, advancing forward. The larger boots stumbled backward, silently. "WHICH ONE?!" The fire starter roared.

"I dunno what," I heard him gulp loudly "Her name was, she just kept throwing these annoying little explosives at my head, so I put her head through a wall." He finished.

"Jubilee," I whispered. I could feel anger welling up inside me, and it was all I could do not to dart out of my hiding place and try to kill all three of them, Wolverine put a hand on my shoulder, as though reading my mind.

"You idiot." He said, advancing on Juggernaut, "You FOOL! You... WASTE OF A MUTANT!" He screamed. The glow grew brighter, and Juggernaut screamed in terror, I could smell smoldering flesh almost immediately, and when Juggernauts cries for mercy finally stopped, the flames went out. Silence so thick it could have been cut with a knife followed. Then Pyro spoke. "Leave him. Keep searching, but let that be an example to you, if you harm a hair on one of these kids heads, so help me, I'll grill you to a crisp." He said. The other pair of boots took off down the hall silently. A single tear slipped down my cheek, and I tore out from under the bed, just as Pyro slunk down the hall in the opposite direction.

After a couple of seconds, I realized that I was clenching my teeth and holding my breath. I relaxed, my jaw aching for a moment, and my chest heaved as I caught my breath. I felt Wolverine's hand on my shoulder, but I was too enraged to be comforted. Shrugging his hand off of my shoulder, I turned to face him.

"I think I know who they are looking for." I said quietly, staring at his boots.

It only took the two of us a few minutes to get to the labs downstairs, where we found Xavier and Kailynn, both looking very somber, Kailynn's sleeve was still rolled up to her shoulder. Before I could explain, the professor stopped me.

"I know, Pyro and his men are here." He said quietly. "Juggernaut has killed Jubilee and they are looking for Kailynn."

"Me?" Kailynn said, her voice quavering with panic, "Why are they looking for me?!" She asked.

"For the same reason I wanted to take a blood test." Xavier said, thumbing through the results on his clipboard. He sighed heavily and cleared his throat before continuing. "Kailynn, your DNA is an exact match of Jean Grey's."

"So, what does that mean? I'm her daughter." She asked, her brow furrowed in confusion.

"No, not even children have exact DNA matches to their parents. You're...well... a clone."

"A clone? How? What?!" Kailynn said, I looked at her slowly, taking in all her features, and though she resembled Jean, she didn't look exactly like her. How could a clone not look like the clonee?

"I'm, not sure..." Xavier said, "And I don't have equipment sophisticated enough to figure that out. It would involve more computer power than I and the whole east coast has combined, and more cells than you have in your body."

"Woah, that's heavy, kid. But what would Pyro do with her once he got her?" Wolverine said, bringing the subject back to the matter at hand.

"Again, I have no clue, and we couldn't know until he has her." Xavier expressed solemnly, lowering the clipboard onto the table. A deafening silence filled the room, the three of us looking at our shoes, all of us trying to figure out what the next step would be.

"Okay, I'll do it." Kailynn said.

"Do wha-"

"Absolutely not!" Xavier cut Wolverine off.

"I think that's a decision she has to make herself, professor." I said, knowing what Kailynn was thinking, because it was exactly what I was thinking. Not only would it give us a spy in the brotherhood, but it would allow her to find out more about her past, but it would also put her in mortal danger but, I could go with her. This was something that I expressed almost immediately, even as she stood from the table and rolled down her sleeve.

"Oh, and how are you going to do that, hotshot?" Kailynn mocked.

"Like this," I said, dissolving into my liquid form and rolling slowly up her leg and scrunching myself into her back pocket. Just don't sit on me too hard. I thought. Xavier chuckled nervously.

"Alright, but we have to make it look good." Wolverine said, his voice muffled through the denim, "We can't just give her away without a fight, they'll think it was too easy."

"Then lets go get 'em, we'll play it by ear once we find them." Kailynn said. I felt her move forward, and could hear the sound of Wolverine's boots as they made their way into the mansion proper.

As we rode the lift back toward the mansion, I left her pocket. I thought it might look better if it appeared as though I had been splattered into oblivion, and then entered her pocket, suspicions would be down, and I might get through undetected. As the lift stopped, I drew in a deep breath, ready for the battle, no matter how staged. The three of us moved slowly out of the elevator, and made our way down the hall. It wasn't long before we nearly bumped into Pyro and the two cronies he had left as we rounded a corner. The six of us stared each other down for a moment before anything was said.

Pyro was accompanied by two mutants I had never seen before, the one to his right was rather scrawny, blonde hair topping his head, which only stood about a foot above mine, a pair of glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose. The left hand one stood several heads taller than me and was built much the same as the late Juggernaut. His nose was flattened as though it had been broken, and recently, and scars decorated his face, and not artistically.

"Kailynn, I've been looking all over for you." Pyro said, wearing an award-winning smile that caused his face to look more as though he were in pain than anything else. His two body guards smirked. The one on the right had a nervous look about him, I picked him out first.

"Well, you can't have her," I said, looking directly at the spectacle sporting mutant. "And if you think that the Michilen Man and Dr. Nerd over here can get through us, you have a lot of learning to do."

Pyro chuckled, "Oh don't worry, you two will be no problem for them. Scepter, Raedon, get the girl, bring her home. Its supper time, I'm gonna head on back." He said, turning as the two next to him advanced forward. A look at Wolverine, and a look at Kailynn and a wink told me that we were ready. That of course, was before Raedon, or the one I assumed was Raedon, fired some kind of plasma bolt from his hands. It hit me square in the chest, and sent me flying down the hallway, skidding across the floor. I stood, exhaling to drive away the pain, and charged forward in time to throw a flying side kick at the head of the scrawny mutant. He stumbled into a wall, blood trickling from an open wound on the side of his face. I glanced to the right, seeing Wolverine dealing with the larger mutant. The muttonchopped man continued to amaze me as he carefully dodged and counterattacked the larger man, without yet unsheathing his claws.

"Careful, Kailynn, stay back, you're no match for these two." I said, though I know she could have dispatched them as easily as I could have, I wanted to play into their cocky attitudes a little further. Two more plasma bolts caught my peripheral vision, and I was barely able to dodge them, as one whizzed by my ear, singeing the hair on it. I was barely able to regain my balance before Wolverine gave an unannounced cue, by allowing himself to be thrown down the hallway and crash into the wall at the end of it. Two more plasma bolts came my way, now able to recognize them by the smell of burning flesh that the scrawny mutant emitted every time he fired them. I turned to face them, with plenty of time to dodge, but allowing them to hit me. The first caught my head, which at the last minute was liquid admantium, the second hit my chest, which had also dissolved just before impact. Upon impact, my liquid form was splatter across the wall behind me. The effect left me dazed for a moment, but before the larger man could rush Kailynn, and throw her over his shoulder, and before either of them could notice, I had pulled myself together, quite literally, and was tucked safely in her back pocket.

X-Men: 1, Brotherhood: 0