X-Men: Special Threats, Issue Three

X-Men: Special Threats
Issue Three

“But that’s just so stupid! Why would anyone just run out there like that!” Sarah’s face was red and her forehead was very tight as she sat on her cot.

“He took out two people that were shooting at him.” Illyana shrugged. “He’d trained for years to handle fighting—”

“None of that makes it okay to run unto bullets.”

Illyana sighed. “Look, I’m just trying to explain why—”

“We’re out in the middle of nowhere with—parachuting assassins coming after us. And why did Wolverine leave! Now we have, what? Three X-Men?”

Illyana looked off to the side, frowning. “Who are you counting in that?”

“We’re screwed!” She hugged her knees, her mouth pressed against her arm. Her voice was muffled. “We’re screwed.”

Illyana looked at her, then at the faces of the two younger mutants sharing the small room with Sarah, sitting on a bunk bed. One was the lizard girl, absently brushing her thick, moss-colored hair, the other was a de-powered blond girl who Illyana didn’t know the original power of yet, staring at the wall with her mouth cracked open.

Illyana stood up. “We’re not screwed.”

* * *

Dark brown feet stepped, one slowly after the other, as Ororo paced in front of the cluster of people, her arms folded. Illyana watched her from behind, with Kurt and Takahashi standing on either side of her. Takahashi was still wearing his sunglasses.

They were on the second floor of the above-ground section of the facility. A space heater plugged in over in the corner was humming away, doing all it could to keep it from being freezing in here. It was a sparring hall, the floor made of tatami mats. There was a disheveled pile of shoes over by the door.

Ororo took in a slow breath, looking down. “The situation has changed.”

Illyana looked out at the sea of faces. Forty-one in all. Some looked worried, some looked frightened. They all looked tired. Or weary, despite the fact that in the last two days since the number of X-Men present had decreased by two, no one had done anything.

That wasn’t completely true. They’d buried Scott Summers out between a pair of trees on the grounds around the facility. Xavier had said a few words, holding back tears. Kurt gave a moving prayer, talking about hope and rest. Something about God’s peace.

Takahashi had his wife and the guards cremated, then their ashes flown back to her families so they could bury them at their family gravesites.

Ororo lifted up her eyes. “We know that someone knows we’re here. Our numbers are smaller. But that doesn’t make us weak.”

Kurt stepped forward. “We’re going to need everyone’s help. You’ve all been—enlisted, of sorts.”

“Into what?” It was Sarah, off to the side of the cluster of people. “An army? I didn’t come here to be a soldier.”

“Then why did you come here!” Takahashi’s deep voice filled the entire room. Illyana saw Sarah step back a bit. Takahashi cleared his throat and his voice got even louder. “The house of Xavier is the house of the X-Men! You came to him, you came to be one.”

“I didn’t come to join the X-Men.” Sarah said it weakly, but there was a hint of surprise in her voice. “I couldn’t join even if I wanted to. I don’t have any powers.”

Takahashi smiled. He stepped forward in front of Ororo and took the sunglasses off. He gestured to Kurt to come over.

He turned just his head to the group. “Nightcrawler is one of the most flawless of martial artists. He can move, even without moving. And he does it very well.”

Takahashi lifted up his hands in tight fists and nodded at Kurt.

Kurt frowned. “OK. Do you want me to go light, or—”

Takahashi threw a fast, straight jab right at Kurt’s blue forehead. Kurt swatted it away and his dark eyes went wide. “Alright then.”

Takahashi threw another jab, but Kurt stepped back. Takahashi threw a kick. Kurt lifted his knee, stopping the kick with his shin. Kurt then drew back a leg and brought it up to throw a wide round kick at Takahashi.

But Takahashi had pulled the kicking foot back, just enough to snap it back out at Kurt’s head.

Kurt seemed to suddenly go into full-speed. He gave up on his kick and swept Takahashi’s foot away, spun around, and threw a round kick at high speed toward Takahashi’s shoulder.

Takahashi stopped it with his forearm and then slammed both open hands out right at Kurt’s chest.

The air snapped. Kurt vanished and appeared right behind Takahashi. Without turning, Takahashi threw an elbow backward into Kurt’s nose.

“Oh!” Kurt stumbled back, touching his nose. Takahashi turned, smiling, then bowed to Kurt. Kurt, still surprised, returned the bow. “That was pretty good.”

Takahashi addressed the now engaged and attentive students. “I possess no mutant abilities! No super strength or speed, yet I was able to counter Nightcrawler’s teleportation ability. Why?”

He looked out over the crowd. Not even Sarah offered an answer.

He sucked in a deep breath through his nose. “Your greatest strength is also your greatest weakness. But, in Nightcrawler’s defense, I am quite sure he would have eventually beaten me. Because he is a quick learner, and would learn from his mistake. The mistake of trusting too deeply in his greatest ability.”

“Still,” Sarah piped up. “Most of us are just kids. My greatest ability is surfing.”

Ororo sighed, stepping up in front of Takahashi. “Listen. You all look up to Kurt and me. And Logan. We all looked up to Scott. We all seem incredible, fantastic. But when Xavier found us, most of us were just children. Frustrated, angry.”

“I don’t want to be a soldier.” Sarah looked over at Illyana as she said that. Her face was losing color. “I don’t want to kill people.”

* * *

Six thrust a palm heel strike forward, her fingers flat and straight up. She turned her eyes to the side, pulled her other hand up over the opposite shoulder, then swung it out in a knife-hand strike in the direction she was looking.

She turned the hand slightly, the palm facing the side, then slammed her opposite elbow into it.

She was taken back by how loud the crack was. Usually the slap of her elbow hitting her palm was loud, but this was different. She needed to practice her old forms more often to get used to her new strength.

She continued with the form, striking and kicking to one side in complex combinations, then turning to do the same in the opposite direction. The form ended with a twist and a double-knife-hand block and a thundering yell.

She didn’t need to catch her breath, but she was breathing deeply, hot air washing out her mouth. The small chamber, her room, filled with its sound. She had her mask off while doing her personal training, but immediately after finishing the form she went over to the bench and put it back on.

“Six.”

She turned around to see Fox walk in. “Sir.”

He had his hands behind his back. “I need you to talk to someone. About this abnormal mutant the Valkyries ran into.”

She frowned. “Who, sir?”

“Our own resident expert on unusual mutants and—unexpected changes in mutants.”

Six was looking for her boots. “I’m not following, sir.”

Fox laughed as she found them and began tying them on.

“We have him locked up underground at Fort Meade. It’s convenient he doesn’t need to eat, because he isn’t easy to keep—stationary.” He folded his arms as she finished tying the boots and turned to face him.

Six squinted one eye as her mouth hung open a moment. “I’m not really an interrogator. I’m probably not the person for the job.”

He shrugged. “You may not think so, but you are. Because he wants to see you. I doubt he’ll talk to anyone else.”

Six felt her skin go cold. “Who is it?”

* * *

“Illyana.”

Her head lifted up off her hand and her eyes opened as the voice roused her awake. She’d fallen asleep with paperwork piled up on the desk in front of her. Frowning, she turned around to see Xavier coming up behind her.

“Professor.” She rubbed her forehead, looking at the physicals and profiles they’d put together on all the students. Eight—no, ten hours of having them run around and do pushups and take personality tests and then have ten minute interviews that all turned into more like forty-five. Each student had five to eight pieces of paper with notes on both sides about everything from their height and weight to their hopes and dreams. “I am so tired.”

He laughed as he rolled up beside her and looked over her shoulder. “Reminds me of the old days. Trying to figure out how to supervise kids that could move things with their minds, walk through walls, and read the answers to tests right out of the mind of the teachers. Absolutely exhausting.”

Illyana nodded. Her eyes were closed again.

“Scott was always so angry those first few years, though he tried to hide it. Even then, always trying so hard. Didn’t matter how—”

Illyana swiveled around in the chair to face the professor, feeling the silence as he paused. She looked at his face, the hard lines on his forehead. He looked very old.

“Well.” She raised the volume of her voice a little, trying to change the atmosphere. “We have twenty-three de-powered mutants, ten people who aren’t mutants at all, and eight people with powers. Four of those don’t really know how to use them. Of the other four, there’s a boy who can read books that are sitting in bookshelves, a woman in her thirties who can create light from her skin, a middle-aged man who can change the opacity of gasses—”

“Opacity of gasses?” Xavier’s eyes narrowed as his mouth smiled.

“Yeah, like, making the air hazy or foggy. The last one is the lizard girl, who can move very, very fast if she’s warm. Except that it’s really, really cold here.”

Xavier laughed. “Well, at first Bobby thought his ability to freeze things was pretty useless. Not anymore.”

“Yeah.” Illyana shuffled the stack of paper, looked at it, then dropped it back on the desk. “Now he’s, what, one of the most powerful mutants alive? Not that that means as much anymore. Especially since he’s not here.”

“How about you? Have you worked out the reach of your new ability yet?”

She slowly swiveled back toward the desk and folded her hands on the desk. She watched her thumb as it rubbed against the opposite hand. “Not really. It’s still partly involuntary.”

“Now.” Xavier paused. “You can only manipulate the metal when it comes in contact with your skin, correct?”

She nodded.

“I’ve been wanting to try out a theory. Can you meet me up at the sparring ring?”

Illyana frowned. “I thought you couldn’t get up there. The building isn’t exactly ADA approved.”

He waved off her comment with his hand. “I’ll have someone carry me up. This is important. I want you to get warmed up first while you wait for me to get up there.”

She frowned. “Professor, I’m really tired. I’m pretty sure it can wait until tomorrow.”

One side of his mouth creped up the side of his face. “I bet you have another hour or so left in you.”

* * *

“You look exhausted.”

Illyana looked up to see Kurt walking into the sparring hall. She nodded. “Somehow I ended up in charge of sorting through all the physicals and profiles.”

He nodded. “I wonder if—”

He paused and the two of them turned as Xavier and Takahashi entered the hall. Xavier smiled at Illyana. “Ready?”

He nodded to Takahashi, who was carrying, of all things, a plastic bag full of pennies.

Kurt frowned. “Where’d you get those?”

Xavier shrugged. “They were in a compartment in the Blackbird.” He nodded at Takahashi.

Takahashi took out a penny. He flipped it into the air, caught it, and looked at Illyana. “How involuntary are your abilities?”

She shrugged. “Depends. It just comes naturally.”

He threw a penny at her. She caught it and held it up. “It—doesn’t work that way.”

He threw another one, harder. It hit her in the shoulder and fell to the ground. “I told you, it doesn’t work that way.”

Xavier nodded. “How does it work?”

She opened her mouth and looked at Kurt, then back at Xavier. “It just does. Throwing pennies at me isn’t a threat.”

“You can’t just do it at will?” Kurt asked. “Only if it’s a threat?”

She frowned. “Well, I don’t know.”

Xavier squinted an eye, looking at Takahashi as he spoke. “What if the pennies were a threat?”

Takahashi wound up and threw one hard. Illyana caught it, and it stung her hand badly. “This is kind of stupid, guys.”

“Did it—” Xavier started, but Illyana sighed as she held up the coin, unchanged.

“Professor.” It was Kurt. “It IS very late.”

Xavier looked at him and nodded. He looked at Illyana. “I’m sorry. I had a hunch. We can work on it later. Good work today.”

Xavier and Takahashi left. Illyana sighed and walked over to where her shoes were waiting. “Treating me like some new toy to experiment on.”

Kurt frowned. “You know that’s not why he’s doing it.”

“I know. And he probably wants a break from being stuck in that lab all day.” She picked up one of her shoes with her toes and tossed it to the side. “It just sucks. Starting from zero again.”

Kurt laughed behind her. She turned, almost smiling a little at seeing the look on his face. “What?”

He kept smiling. “I know what you mean! With the way Takahashi banged my nose this morning. Made me feel like an amateur!”

She rolled her eyes. “He just got lucky. And your teleports are a terrible telegraph to someone who isn’t surprised by them.”

“Oh really!” One of his dark eyes narrowed. “You make it sound like you could out-fight me as easily as Takahashi did.”

“No.” she said. “I could do it easier. Even with how tired I am right now.”

Kurt squinted one eye. “You’re serious!”

“Of course I am.” Her voice was steady and calm.

“Now,” he said, rolling his arms in his shoulders. “I can’t let you leave here saying something like that!”

“You want to spar?”

One corner of his mouth rose up as his eyes narrowed. “Unless you’re all talk, Miss Illyana Rasputin.”

She turned away from her shoes and walked toward Kurt. He held up his hands loosely in front of him. Then he charged.

He threw a punch, but vanished in a puff of blue smoke before it got close. He re-appeared right behind her, but she knew what he was doing and spun to the side, her head moving out of the way of his fist.

Keeping the momentum of the spin, she threw out a kick at his torso. He vanished again, appearing a couple paces away this time.

She ran at him, threw two punches that were blocked and then two kicks that were blocked and then a wide knife-hand strike to his neck.

He vanished, appearing right behind her. She threw a back kick straight into his solar plexus.

He lost his footing, flying back. He vanished half-way to the ground, re-appearing up in the air in front of her and throwing an elbow backward at her face.

She looped her arm around it, twisted around, and let Kurt fall face-first into the floor. She pinned him there, her arm still wrapped around his and her knee in the small of his back.

She leaned down by his ear. “Well, I guess I didn’t lose all my old abilities.”

He vanished, appearing beside her, swinging a leg for a roundhouse kick to her head. She turned into it, wrapping an arm around the leg and pushing him off balance. She slammed his back right into one of the pillars along the wall, at the same time slamming an elbow against his solar plexus. Not too hard, though.

It stunned him enough. She reached the striking arm around his torso, lifted up on the leg her arm was still wrapped around and stood up. He went up into the air, then down as Illyana pinned her elbow against his neck in mid air and brought him down to the ground on his back with a loud thud.

She sat right on his stomach in a front mount, the point of her elbow pressed against his neck and her other fist raised and ready to drive into his face. He was grinning, sort of, as he wheezed out each breath.

She brought her face down by his. “Guess I hit you a little harder in the solar plexus that I thought.”

He nodded, forcing himself to breathe more slowly. They remained there for a moment, breathing deeply, looking at each other, smiling. The moment lasted for a while.

She moved in and kissed him, drawing in breath through her nose and relaxing her body down onto his. He reached up and rested his hands against each side of her head.

Then his body went tense. He sat up. He was frowning.

Illyana moved off of him. “What?”

“I’m not.” His forehead was full of wrinkles.

“We can go back to my room.” Illyana’s breathing was getting restless. “Or your room. I don’t care. If you—”

“No, I’m—” He stood up. He started walking slowly in a small circle. “I’m sorry. I need to go.”

He left her there in the sparring hall, sitting on the floor alone.

* * *

Illyana paced in the hall outside her room, unable to bring herself to go inside.

She wanted to talk to Kurt. She didn’t want to go near him.

She stopped and leaned her forehead on the metal door of her room. The coldness of the metal calmed her a little. She remained there and breathed, trying not to think.

“Are you alright?”

She turned toward the source of the deep voice. It was Takahashi. He took steps toward her.

She shrugged. “I’m fine.”

“You do not look fine. You look distraught.” He frowned. “It is because of the test Xavier and I prepared for you. I apologize. It was too sloppy and aggressive.”

“No.” She looked at the floor. “I said I’m fine.”

He reached a hand forward and wiped a very cold tear from her cheek. “You’ve been crying. Has someone hurt you?”

Illyana looked at the drop of moisture on his hand, her mouth opened and the skin between her eyebrows wrinkled up tightly. “No.”

He nodded. “You are very strong. You do not let people hurt you very often.”

She stared back at him. He received the stare and wasn’t taken back by it. He moved a little closer to her. “Whoever hurt you did so unknowingly, I think. I do not think you should hold it against them.”

“How do you know that? Were you spying on us?”

He shook his head. “I can see it in your eyes. You hold onto pain, because in the past you experienced real pain. Incredible pain. All of it is the same now.”

The scars on her neck itched as he looked down at them. Again, like before up on the roof before the attack, before his now late wife had come up to join them, he brushed the back of his hand against the scars.

He brought the hand up and brushed back some hair from her face. He straightened it all out, carefully. Slowly.

Their eyes were locked on. She closed them.

She visualized striking this man in the throat and going into her room. She could talk to Kurt in the morning. They could work it out, figure out what went wrong.

It’s all she had to do. Move more slowly. Kurt was probably looking out for her. All she had to do was go inside and get away from this man with the deep voice. She would be laughing about all this with Kurt in the morning as she leaned on his shoulder while they sat on the roof looking out at the mountains.

Everything was fine. It was all in her head.

Takahashi moved in and kissed the scar softly. His voice thundered in her chest: “Would you come with me to my room tonight?”

“Okay.”

* * *

“Do you require an escort?

Six looked at the visored face of the guard, wearing the S.H.E.I.L.D. issue “cape-killer” armor and carrying a ridiculous looking, plastic weapon. Like something a kid would get for their birthday and shoot foam darts and their friends with. All designed to try and make him a threat to all the super-charged humans out there.

She shook her head. “No.”

“You sure? He’s tricky. Can mess with your head.”

“Not my head. Open the door.” Six’s patience was pretty thin right now. She’d lost track of how many security checkpoints she’d had to go through. This door should be the last one.

“You don’t have a weapon. It’s SOP to be armed when going in.”

She smiled, though he wouldn’t see it behind her mask. “I’ll be fine.”

He shrugged and typed a code into a panel by the door. The circular, safe-like door rolled into the wall very loudly. There was faint, gray light leaking out. Six stepped in, hearing a last worried, incoherent mumble from the guard before the door closed to lock her in.

After two steps, the lights overhead came on brightly, hurting her eyes a moment. She shaded them and as they adjusted they went wide. The room was a mess of curves of metal. And there was the sound of something turning, clicking. Like the second hand of a huge clock. Her eyes followed a line of light going from where she stood to a large, round dais at the other end of the room. The dais was a stack of rings, light bleeding out between each of them, every other one clicking off the seconds.

On top of the rings was a chair, slanted forward. Sitting on the chair, strapped to it by bands of metal at least eight inches thick, was a man. Gray skinned, incredibly powerful physique. His arms were held out at his sides in the bands, huge beams of metal going up from them to the ceiling. On the ceiling was another stack of rings, every other ticking in sync with the ones on the floor.

“Nathaniel Essex.”

“My name.” The man lifted up his red eyes to look at her, smiling as he did. He had a strong, crystal-clear voice with a hint of a British accent. “Is Mr. Sinister.”

“That’s what I’m supposed to call you? Do you tell your mom to call you that?”

He just kept smiling. “Good to finally meet the enigmatic Six.”

She nodded. “Fox told me you wanted to meet me. He wants me to get some information off you.”

He frowned. “You’re not doing a very good job at it, telling me that’s why you’re here.”

“I’m not a good interrogator. I told him that.”

“Looks like we have something in common, then.” He resumed smiling. “We’re both vastly misunderstood by that Machiavellian opportunist.”

She ignored the comment. “We have—a puzzle.”

“I like puzzles.”

She took a step closer and folded her arms. “You know about the mutant Magik?”

He nodded. He waited for her to continue.

“She apparently has had her powers change significantly. We don’t know why.”

“Change how?”

She turned to the side and began pacing slowly, her eyes taking in the strange architecture of the complex prison cell. “Before she had a repertoire of seemingly magical skills, as well as a very versatile teleportation ability. She could—”

“Yes, yes, I know about what she could do. Tell me what she does now.”

She turned and paced the other way. “The data we have suggests she can involuntarily manipulate metal. Change its shape, consistency, hardness. She might be able to blend metals together and form alloys. The limitation is that she has to be in contact with the metal.”

“You said involuntarily. How does it manifest involuntarily?”

She looked back at him. He was entirely engaged, genuinely curious. She took in a breath. “When metal strikes her, it reforms into armor, similar in shape and function to her previous ability to summon some sort of otherworldly armor over her entire body. Something she learned while in a parallel dimension, so the story goes.”

“While in Limbo.”

Six nodded. “We’re trying to—Fox wants to know how this could have happened. It appears that she can no longer use her original mutant abilities or her sorcery.”

Mr. Essex was looking at the floor, not moving. His eyes shifted left and right slightly as he remained still for a long while. Six felt her entire body beginning to itch beneath all the clothes covering every inch of her. She hardly breathed and didn’t take her eyes off him as she waited.

The rings on the floor and ceiling ticked off the seconds.

Finally he took in a breath. “Take off your mask and show me your face and I’ll tell you what happened.”

She unfolded her arms, put them at her side, then folded them again. “No.”

He laughed. “What do you have to lose? Who will I tell? The idiots they have guarding me? Who washing me off with a hose every couple of days so that I don’t start to smell? Who give me a solution of protein and vitamins in a squeeze-bottle a couple times a day?”

“I thought you didn’t need to eat.”

He tilted his head down, raising an eyebrow, eyes locked on her. “They telling you scary stories about the monster buried in the basement? Show me your face or you get nothing.”

She took in a deep breath. She came up close to him, just an arm’s distance from his face. This close, she could see the lines on his face, the chafing on his arms where the bands held him tightly. He looked tired and worn down, but still very angry.

She lifted up her hands and undid the strap holding the cream-colored mask to her face. She pulled it away slowly.

Essex smiled slowly, his skin wrinkling slightly as he looked on skin of the same color. But not the same consistency.

Her face was encased in metal tiles, similar to the Valkyries, but with infinite more precision and artistry. She had full range of expression and movement, as if the metal was simply glued on to a perfect and beautiful face below, yet still remained seamless and closed no matter what that face did.

Her eyes looked almost human, aside from the impossibly deep-green irises, unless one looked very closely.

“So.” Essex said, laughing softly. “You’re a monster they let roam out of the cage. What leash do they keep on you?”

The ceiling and floor ticked. And ticked. And ticked. Six took in a shuttered breath and let it out. Her voice was little more than a whisper. “What would I do with freedom from them anyway?”

He leaned back, the smile fading. “I apologize. You’ve done your part of the deal, at great cost. I will fulfill mine.”

She nodded, putting the mask back on. Essex’s face looked slightly more pained once she had. Looking to the side, he spoke, “This is no mere shift in her abilities. A mutant’s powers are intimately tied to their genetics, as well as several other factors I’ve barely scratched the surface of even formulating theories on. It is heresy.”

“Heresy?”

“Yes. To have a mutant change like this. It is like tearing out a part of their soul and replacing it with something else. I know, because I’ve tried. I’ve tampered with abilities, swapped them with other mutants and myself, but never anything like what you’re describing. There’s only one person I know who could do it.”

Six frowned. “Scarlet Witch was able to change everything, even take away the powers away from almost all mutants.”

His head shook very slowly. “No. I’m not talking about stacking the deck, re-envisioning time and space through subtly twisting a few knobs of fate and chance. The level of precision in this new ability Magik is displaying could not be done by accident or via the madness of a stupid, spoiled brat like Magneto’s daughter. The fact that the power is manifesting as involuntary and being assimilated by memories of her previous abilities shows that this is not merely an advent of latent abilities either.”

Six waited, looking at his face. He just looked angry now, his brow heavy over his red eyes. He was waiting for her to ask: “So, what does that mean?”

The corner of his mouth on one side of his face rose up. “Piece by piece, facet by facet, this ability was designed.”

* * *

Nausea and dizziness overwhelmed Illyana as she woke up next to a snoring Takahashi. And she was shivering.

Her stomach hit with a feeling of wanting to throw up, she got out of the bed and out into the hall, nothing but a sheet around her. She shutting the door behind her and looked around, but the hall was unfamiliar. And it was very dark. And she was very incoherent. She didn’t know where she was or where the restroom was.

The entire surface of her body was tingling and somewhat numb. She pressed her head against his door. This one wasn’t cold enough to cool down her head this time. Memories of emotions and exuberant sensations flooded her mind. She saw Kurt’s face in her mind and clenched her teeth. She slammed her head on the door, it hardly making a noise, as she felt tears start up.

She gripped the door tightly, and the metal deformed into her hand like clay, noiselessly. She heard something humming. She held her breath.

A cell phone was vibrating. Inside Takahashi’s room. Barely breathing, she listened intently. The sound was coming through the hole in the door made by her hand.

“Yes.” Takahashi had answered the phone. “I don’t know—No, he’s gone. I can’t—yes—Yes, she’s fine.”

Illyana fought the urge to breathe during a moment of silence that seemed it would stretch on forever.

She took in a slow breath as Takahashi began talking again. “That was one good thing that came out of it. The loss is pushing him deeper into his research. Give them a month, and he should be frustrated enough to be ready for your intervention—Perhaps this new goal he’s adopted, to help the girl with her abilities, will increase the frustration, make him more desperate—Yes, I can see that—No, I didn’t think so either. Change her handle to ‘Alchemy.’”

Illyana, not taking in one breath, backed away from the door. She moved backward down the hall as if in slow motion, her heart pounding loudly in her head and her lungs burning from being denied fresh air. Once she got around a corner, she ran as fast as she could while keeping the sheet around her.

Give them a month.

Heaving and sweating and shivering, she locked herself in her room and sat on her bed. Her eyes wide, she kept the chunk from Takahashi’s door clutched in her hand the rest of the sleepless night.

I lost interest in X-books years ago, but your take on the characters shows a lot of love for them and has drawn some new interest from me. Your take on Mr. Sinister is especially good.

Dang, that's some high praise. Thanks so much! This issue was very difficult and even more emotionally straining to write, so it's good to hear it's paying off in the characters.

In my day, the X-Men drama was real, the characters were real and, in spite of their godlike powers, they were as mortal as you or I. Congratulations, Doc Brown, you've invented a time machine.