XCave.NET

Summary: Why? How? When?

“They never last”

“What took you so long?” Mystique barked at the short statured man standing before her.
“What?” Mortimer *Toad* Toynbee, shrugged his shoulders. “I told you half an hour. Its just been a couple of minutes over that. What’s the hurry? Its not as if he is going anywhere.”
“He’s not,” Mystique stepped upto him, transforming into the Cheyenne Indian mutant. “But Forge has to return to the mansion, back to the x-men.”

“Whoa,” Toad jumped back. “Freakkkyy.”
“Get him out of here,” Mystique shifted back into her raven hair, pale-skinned form. “I’ll go and settle at the front desk. Take care, not to leave any fingers prints, or any of your drool.”
“Hey, I don’t drool,” Toynbee quipped defensively. “Well….not always.”
“Take care not to do it here,” Mystique warned him. “I don’t want to leave any evidence. You leave anything, it will be your sorry ass on the line.”

“Bitch,” Toad grumbled as she walked away, leaving him alone to remove Forge and the two carry bags containing all possible evidences, including the bed-sheet and pillows.

------

“Remember the first time we met,” Ororo was lying next to an unconscious Wolverine. “You were an ex-secret agent turned cage fighter and I was a gangly small time thief with a *don’t give a shit* attitude, and had finally run out of luck, by stealing from the wrong kind of people.”

“I snuck into your camper to hide from them, finally falling asleep from exhaustion,” she reminisced as she lovingly caressed his two-day-old facial hair growth. “I woke up to find you beating the living daylights out of two of the pursuers, the third one already out cold. I watched in horror as one of them took out a gun and aimed it at you. I tried to yell out to warn you, but found myself stuck stupid to that place.”

“Then he shot you,” Ororo moved her hand to the right side of his chest, the non-existent scar still clear in her mind. “I thought you were gone for sure. I thought that he hit you through the heart. I expected you to topple over like a log, killed defending me.”

“How stupid I was then,” she smiled ruefully. “You weren’t defending me. You were defending your camper. My being there was just a hassle to you as it was to them. You wanted me out and away from it. The only reason you were fighting them was because they tried pushing over you to get to the camper.”

“But you know what?” she asked him a question as if she expected him to answer. “I still like to think that you were defending me, even though you didn’t know me. It was as if we were meant to be. That’s why the Goddess led me to your camper….to you.”

Tears had started to flow down her cerulean blue eyes, going sideways along her face.

“Wake up Logan, please…..wake up,” she pleaded. “There is so much I have to tell you. There is so many things we still haven’t done. We still haven’t gone to your mountain cabin. You promised that you would take me there. You promised…..”

-----

“Henry, are you sure this idea of yours will work?” Jean looked away from the glass partition.
“The credit for the idea goes to young Katherine and Kurt,” Beast looked up from microscope, where he was examining the latest sample of Wolverine’s blood. “However, I have conducted simulations and have refined it further to incorporate certain changes which have been occurring with each pass hour.”

“So, will it work?” Jean once again glanced at the window.
“I cannot be sure,” Henry started, his eyes following Jean’s gaze. “Although I must say that probability for success are good.”

“I hope it works,” Jean turned around towards him, her head resting on the glass wall behind her. “For Wolverine’s sake….and Ororo’s.”

------

“Scott, have you been able to reach Forge?” Xavier entered the control room.
“No Professor,” Cyclops shook his head. “His communicator is still turned off.”
“Hmm,” Xavier rested his jaw against his fisted hand, his elbow on the chair’s armrest.

“Do you think that something has happened to him?” Scott asked worriedly. “Maybe he was attacked like Wolverine.”
“I don’t think so,” Xavier answered. “Forge works with the military sometimes. They require all kinds of electronic instruments, specially those used for communication purposes.”

Scott nodded his head. “Maybe that’s the reason. Its just that he has never been like this before. The only time he was incommunicado was when he was sent to some secret military facility by his seniors at the Pentagon. Well, lets hope he returns by tonight. Hank wants to discuss the proposed plan with him before doing anything that might harm, rather then help Wolverine.”

“Yes,” Charles agreed. “Lets hope that everything works out.”

-----

“Done,” Mystique walked into the room, her eyes roving for any remaining evidence.
“Uhn…huhn,” Toad nodded his head. “Got everything in the van.”
“Good,” Mystique turned back into the Indian. Reaching into her ‘Forge’s’ bag, she withdrew her car keys and tossed them to her accomplice. “I have everything I need in his car. We separate here.”

“Fine with me,” Toad shrugged his shoulders. “Do whatever you want. Just keep the big guy upto date with whatever you are doing and get the work done in time. The only I am interested in is getting my money and getting as far away from here, from both of you as I can.”
“Fuck off Toynbee,” Mystique-Forge pushed his aside. “You may be in this just for the money. Me, I want something more. Something that I have been waiting for quite some time. I wan that African whore who took my daughter, my Rogue, my ultimate weapon away from me. Her and that red eyed thief brother of hers.”

“Yeah, like I said, whatever,” Toad stepped out after her. He knew the reason why Mystique had broken off with ‘Mags’ and gone her own way, finally ending up working for an even freakier, more off the deep end boss. True she was just working for the money, that was something she could never change in her.

But the fact that she would be finally be able to bring down the x-men once and for all, meaning, really *bring down*, with a capital B and D, and also get their co-leader Storm for her private play-toy was something she couldn’t resist.

The money was good, but the prospect of getting back at the one person she blamed the most for Rogue leaving the brotherhood and crossing over to the x-men. It was Storm and that Cajun Gambit who had *recruited* her, brainwashed, as Mystique would call it, and ‘forced’ her to leave her *family*…..her mother. A mother who knew all this ‘brainwashing’ quite well, because….well because she could write the book on brainwashing, having been doing for several years herself. She had found Rogue when she was just a child and had adopted her and started training and molding her as her own private weapon, even breaking of from Magneto to form her own ‘Brotherhood’, ‘Sisterhood’….whatever-hood.

-----

The reason she blamed Storm the most was because she was the one who gave Rogue the idea to touch her and Mystique and find out who was telling the truth and who was lying. That was something that struck the young woman the most, because even after living with Mystique and absorbing several other mutants on her command, Rogue always felt a little lost with her *mother*, who never even allowed the girl to touch her, even with gloves on.

Returning to the ‘brotherhood’ compound, Rogue did exactly that and came to know all the truths behind the lies her loving and caring adoptive mother had feeding her. She also came to know that Mystique had carefully planned and executed the Carol Danvers ‘accident’ by which Rogue had gained her invulnerability, flight capability and sixth sense.

She also came to know about the x-men named Nightcrawler, who was Mystique’s own biological son and whom she had *chucked*over a waterfall to save her own sorry hide from pursuing villagers. She also came to know about Graydon Creed, Mystique’s and Sabertooth’s ‘human’ son and the reason behind his growing up to hate all mutants. His non-existent *mutant* parents.

If she could do such a thing to her own flesh and blood, what would she do to her ‘adopted’ daughter?

That was the last day of Rogue of the Brotherhood and the first day of Rogue of the x-men. That was also the first day of Mystique’s crusade against the weather witch. Mystique had vowed to do the same to Storm as SHE had done to Mystique.

------

“How is Logan?” Kitty looked up as he new roommate walked in from a trip to the infirmary. After handing over her plan to the more experienced and medically trained Beast, both Kurt and her had retired to their rooms for a well deserved and much needed sleep. She had just woken up and was still stretching her cramped muscles.

“Same as before,” Jubilee answered fore lonely. Suddenly something registered in her mind causing her head to snap up towards her older roommate. “Why do you call him that?”
“What?” Kitty was at a loss at what she was talking about, the sleep-induced haze still not cleared from her mind.
“Why do you call Wolvie by his name? He doesn’t like it when strangers call him that. You should call him Wolverine.”

Kitty was surprised at the accusatory tone in the younger girl’s voice. “He said…I could call him that,” she lifted her finger in the infirmary’s direction. “Only Ororo, Kurt and I here call him that…and I think Remy too.”
“Hmph,” Jubilee huffed and blew an errant hair away from her face. Ever since she had ‘met’ Logan, she had almost full attention…well except from Heather, who didn’t come into count. But now, here, there were so many people to take him away from her, and that scared her. She had already lost her parents at and didn’t want to lose her *Wolvie* too.

‘Shouldn’t have come here,’ she lamented, silently cursing herself for wanting to come to New York and Logan for bringing her here.

------

“Here we are,” *Forge* grinned as he pulled into the side road leading to the stately x-mansion. Entering Forge’s passcode, he waited for the gates to open. ‘You are all dead. Dead and gone,’ he grinned menacingly.

No one would be able to detect her, not even the telepaths of the house. The miniature *hearing* aids behind her ears making sure of that. She had all of Forge’s actions and mannerisms, having spent the last one-year fucking and more importantly studying the unsuspecting fool. There was no way anyone could tell them apart physically, except one, their scents. Which, given the current circumstances, she was not worried out.

“Tonight is the night,” her eyes lifted towards the roof of the mansion, towards the attic.

“Tonight I finally get my revenge.”