“He’s almost made it to the exit! Would someone grab him, already?!,” came Cyclops’ exasperated voice booming through all the X-Men’s communicators.
“Ahm on it, boss!” Rogue’s eager, southern voice came out immediately after.


He knew he was running faster than his legs were capable of, but if they caught him there was no way he had a chance. Unless he made it out of there and completed the device he would never bring the X-Men down. And they were the only thing standing in his way of finally controlling the world he was destined to. He turned his chaotic thoughts back to the lump of metal nestled under his arm. With this he would be able to bring all those pathetic morons to their knees.

He rounded the next corner, becoming more excited now that he could see light. Until the imposing form of one of the X-Men blocked and shattered his dreams of escape.

“You goin’ somewhere, sugah?” She stood there with one hip stuck out; her hand laid on it and smirked at him. He swallowed nervously. There was only one, but he wasn’t strong enough to handle her. He wasn’t strong enough to handle any of them, but he’d seen her throw a bus before and he unconsciously began twitching.

Noticing the little, scrawny man all but convulsing a few feet away from her made her smile widen all the more. “You alright?” She taunted him, “You look nervous as a long tail’d cat in a room full of rockin’ chairs.”

“Move aside, peon, and when I bring about the new world order perhaps I’ll let you die quickly,” his high-pitched voice cracking and shaking did nothing to improve his intimidation factor, but he had hope the words made up for it.

“You’re awful snitty f’r someone up a creek without a parachute. How about this, you drop those nice Scientist lil’ gadget thingy and ah won’t beat ya to a bloody pulp?” The smile never left her face and her sweet thick voice sounded like she should be been telling him words of love instead of threatening to kill him.

He glanced behind him real quick but that was obviously not an option. First of there was no way he’d outrun her. Second, there was probably just more X-Men waiting for him in that direction. She seemed to catch his dilemma and winked at him, which only aggravated him more.

“Come on, Brainwave, ah promise ta get ya a real nice cell. One wit a window n’ everthin’. D’you like blondes or brunettes?”

He wanted to spit on the insolent woman and cursed to himself. There was no way he could let someone of her limited intelligence defeat him and began brainstorming various scenarios to get past her. When he decided against plan D he remembered the object under his arm. It was a posatronic nuclear wave emitter to be used as a power source for his invention. He quickly weighed the prose and cons. Surely it would bring her down for at least long enough for him to get past her, if not much longer, not matter how ‘invincible’ she was. But if he used it now it would take over a week for it to recharge enough to power his invention. Could one wait that long when they were so close to multi-world domination?

“Rogue, do you have him?” the voice coming off her jacket dragged him away from his deliberation.

“Yeah, Scott. He can’t wait ta say ‘hi’ to ya.” She smiled at the him as she answered him.

“Good, we’re on our way.”

“Gotcha,” She removed the hand from her hip and opened it to him. “Alrighty, Brainy, hand me tha toy.”

He pulled the device out from under his arm and watched her for a few seconds, trying to keep the smile from coming up on his face.

“As you wish, my dear.” With his thumb he pushed the small switch on the back on it before quickly throwing it to her.

She easily caught it and he let the smile loose when the electricity began arching on it.

“What tha fuck-,” she managed it get out before it really began attacking her. The small arches of electricity grew as wrapped completely around her body. It felt like tiny wipes continuously striking her all over her body and she couldn’t help herself from screaming from the pain.

It only took mere seconds before she collapsed onto the ground; a small amount of smoke slowly rose from her, although it wasn’t apparent if it was from her uniform or her body. The wave emitter laid smoking beside her as well.

When it didn’t seem like she was going to jump up and knock him through the thick, cement walls he made his way over. He knelt down and carefully pressed the switch again, keeping his attention of her. He took a moment to study her face. It was still contorted the same as when she can been screaming. He could only imagine the damage that much nuclear energy would do to a normal person. But then again, not too many of them were dealing with ‘normal people’ these days.

“You really should learn to recognize your superiors, girl,” he sneered at her before picking up the smoking hunk of metal. He stepped over her and pushed the door open. There was no sound of danger outside, the only noise coming from far down the hall. He stepped out and smiled as he closed the door behind him.

Where ever she was it was too damn bright. She wanted to lift her hand to cover her lids and block the light but it didn’t move. She tested various other parts of her body and all were too heavy and lethargic to obey her commands. Her only choice was to tell whoever was making all that noise to turn the lights off, but the only sound that her mouth could make was a less than angelic sounding, “Ugh…”

“Well, good morning, Rogue.”

She recognized Beast’s comforting voice and instantly relaxed. She tried her mouth again, since at the moment it seemed to be the most talented.

She managed a “fucking lights...”, although it sounded a lot more like her previous ‘ugh’.

Beast chuckled at her and turned off half the overhead lights in the med lab. That was one thing she loved about Beast. She never had to explain herself or her actions to him, he always understood. He was like the teddy bear version of Logan.

“I’m glad you’re awake, you had us all extremely worried,” He was standing beside the bed now, patting her arm through the sheet covering her. With the lights off she found opening her eyes tolerable and looked up at the good doctor. The image of the big, furry blue man in a pristine white lab coat and glasses always cracked her up. “Do you want me to go get the others? I know they desperately want to come see you.”

“Did we get ‘em?”

He shook his head and frowned, “No, I’m sorry. When we got to you, you were already on the ground and there was no sign of him in site. Gambit, Storm, and Marrow looked all over.”

For as weak as her body felt she had no problem creating enough anger to tightly clench her fist under the sheet.

“I’ll go get Scott,” Beast nodded and made his way out of the electronic med lab door. She groaned and braced herself for the ‘what the hell happened, why’d you let him get away’ speech from the fearless leader. Not to mention the embarrassment of have that annoying little slip of a mutant beat her.

She was slowly convincing her body to sit up when the team filed into the room. All of them. Scott led the way, of course, followed by Logan, Hank, Jubilee, Pete, Kitty, Gambit, Bobby, Storm, and the new member of the team, Marrow. She gave Hank a polite smile when he stood beside her and again patted her arm. She figured he was apologizing for bring in the army. Scott made his way to the other side of her bed and she couldn’t help the smile on her face when Logan growled then pushed him out of the way. Scott relinquished the prime bed position and stood at the foot instead.

“How are you feeling, Rogue?” Scott asked her, although he was glaring at Logan.

“Oh ahm just peachy. Someone wanna tell me what exactly that lil’ twerp did to me?”

The group looked around to each other and she followed their glaze, wondering why no one was saying anything. Beast was the one to finally speak up, “Well, Rogue, basically he electrocuted you. You’ve been out for a little over a day.”

Confusion spread across her face as she turned her attention to her best friend. “You didn’t heal me?” She was completely and utterly shocked. It wasn’t that she wanted him to heal her, in fact she hated that he did it so often, it was just usually he never gave anybody a say in it.

“Not for trying, darlin’. They fuckin’ had you locked away before I could get to you.”

Her head wiped around to Hank again, her eyebrows narrowed at the doctor. “Locked away?”

“There was no possible way he could touch you. You had to be quarantined up to just a few hours ago because of the nuclear radiation pouring off of you. You were highly radioactive,” he explained.

Rogue growled. She couldn’t help it; the sound escaped her throat before she even knew it was there. The little fucker had tried to kill her. She didn’t know a lot about science but she just figure that being radioactive probably wasn’t good for most people’s health. And there was nothing she hated more than people trying to kill her. Taking over and enslaving the world was one thing but when someone made a blatant attempt at her life it became personal.

“Oh he is deader then a snowman in July. An’ ah mean TV movie of the week, CNN all-day coverage kinda dead!!”

Jubilee and Kitty giggled at her outburst, all too aware of their friend’s hot streak. Marrow, however, rolled her eyes, both at the girl in the bed and the other two laughing like they were still pre-teens.

“You mean after we find him again,” Bobby reminded everyone.

“Gambit, Storm, did you hook up the surveillance equipment in all the technological research facilities? Scott turned his back to Rogue to address the rest of the group. She was slightly annoyed that they were going to have a missions meeting here in the med lab, but figured she could just lay back down on go to sleep. It was unlikely that she would be included in any immediate plans.

“Sho ‘enuf. All be takin’ care of. Dey never even knew we been der.” Remy was shuffling his cards again, unable to keep his hands still for any longer than a few seconds.

"If he goes shopping again, we'll know about it," Storm added.

"Good. Bobby, let's get a complete list of everything he has so far. Hank, Marrow, let's take a look at it and figure out what the hell this guy is up to." Scott began assigning missions to everyone and they answered him with a quick nod and left the room once they were given a job.

"What about us, Scott?" Kitty linked her arm with Jubilee’s.

"You two are on background duty. I want to know who this guy is, where he's from, and he's blood type. Anything you can dig up about him."

"Aye aye, Captain, my Captain," Jubilee saluted him before dragging Kitty out of the room behind her. Kitty managed a salute too just before she jerked out of sight.

Scott turned his attention back to the only two people he left in the room. "Rogue, you're sitting this mission out so you can rest."

She blinked at him then looked from Logan to Scott again, "You're kidding me, right?"

"No," Scott's voice became very deep and stern, "There is no telling what affect the radiation had on you or your mutation. It's not safe."

"Oh, please, that's totally bogus! Logan, tell him where he can stick it!" She turned to him for backup.

"I don't know, kid. Maybe you should just take a coupla days---"

"What?! You're wimping out on me too?"

"Fuck no. I just--"

"Save it, Logan," Scott interrupted him. "You're out this mission, Rogue. There's no discussion. I'm not going to let you just run face first into a brick wall. We are going to take the proper safety precautions. And when we're sure you are full strength and there are no side effects you can suit up again." To solidify the fact that the discussion was over he turned and left the med lab.

Silence settled between the two of them after he left. Rogue shook her head, then grumbled something incoherent, and repeated the process. Logan picked at the corner of the sheet, refusing to look at her.

"I'm sorry I couldn't heal you," he stated quietly, his voice completely flat. He could have been described as meek in that moment except for the fact that it was physical impossible for the Wolverine to appear meek.

"Yeah, well, ahm sorry ya lost your balls."

Whatever traces of meekness that had been in his body instantly disappeared and the Wolverine roared into life, "Damnit, kid, you were fuckin' glowin'! So why don't you just thank Scooter for not riding your ass for being too damn cocky and fucking up majorly and stop giving me shit!"

Rogue bite her lip, then sighed. There was nothing like getting yelled at to make you feel about six. That didn't mean she was any less pissed about being benched, though. "Ah'm not sitting out, sugah. And ya can't make me. That little shit's mine."

"Nah, darlin', he's mine." He placed a quick kiss on the top of her head and left he lab.

She laid back down and stretched. The chances of her missing out of the mission were about as good as Scott taking all the kids out drinking. But there was no point in pissing both him and Logan off. It was just scary when the two of them worked together on something. Jubilee would fill her in on everything going on and she could just tag along last minute. They'd all yell, tell her how reckless she was, be in a hurry, and then have no choice but to let her tag along. It was a system Kitty had perfected, but most of them had used it at one time or another. Her thoughts then turned to what Logan had said. She was glowing? Was she like a fucking night light now or something? Oh, well. Lack of sleep would only make her grumpier when it was Brain draining time.

"Alright, tell me what we've got," Scott addressed the group standing around the holographic table. "Kitty."

"Um, yeah," she pulled up the profile on the screen in front of them. "Thomas Struthers, 38. Born in Topeka, Kansas. ValeDICK--," her and Jubilee giggled, "–torian of his high school class. Quantum physics degree from Princeton. He’s evidently a mutant but the only mutation I can dig up is that he’s really smart or something. Taught for a while, did some research, and overall totally lame. Oh! And blood type," She winked at Scott, "B negative."

"Why are so many bad guys B negative?" Bobby wondered out loud.

"It's really interesting actually. Several renowned researchers argue that the gene associated with blood type is closely linked to the gene controlling personalities traits such as--"

"Hank," Logan interrupted the doctor, "stuff it."

The large blue man huffed and puffed but kept silent.

Scott decided it was best to just ignore his comrades’ behavior. Given the chance, the X-Men were easily distracted. “Marrow, did you get a chance to look over the parts list?”

“Yep.” the boney girl nodded. Pushing Kitty and Jubilee out of the way she moved to the keyboard, quickly typing various commands and several objects appeared to be floating above the table.

“So what are they?” Peter asked.

“A magnetic field gage, a FI675 hard drive, a Neely adapter, a slipstream rod, and now a posatronic nuclear wave emitter,” Bobby pointed to each object.

“Alright, so, do we have any clue what he’s doing with them?” Storm turned to Marrow.

She shrugged her shoulders and honestly answered, “Nope.”

The weather Goddess sighed then noticed Jubilee hadn’t made a smart remark yet the entire meeting. When she looked at the younger girl she discovered her furiously writing away at a yellow notepad. “What are you doing, Jubilee?”

The meeting stopped and everyone turned their attention to her. She, however, was too caught up in her work to notice and continued writing, which made the others even more suspicious. Kitty cleared her throat and elbowed her in the arm.

“Ow! Hey!” Jubilee whined and looked up to find nine pairs of eyes boring into her, “What?” Kitty glared at her and pointed a finger at Storm.

When Storm was sure she actually had her attention she repeated “What are you doing,” more forcefully.

“Um,” she looked down at the paper in front of her, “I, um…” Unable to come up with anything she looked at Kitty, who despite as bad as she felt for her friend, had to shake her head because she too had nothing.

“I, um…um,” the Asian girl’s eyes darted across the room to all the other ones that were staring at her. “I’m taking notes? Notes! Yeah, I’m taking notes!” She supplied.

“Notes?” Scott repeated her, obviously very skeptical. She answered him by nodding furiously and after being elbowed in the side Kitty joined in.

“Why are you taking notes?” Bobby asked, to say it was out of character for her was an understatement. Hell, even Scott didn’t take notes.

“Because I wanna, um, you know, get all the science stuff right. You know, for the witty banter with the bad guy. There’s NOTHING worse than trying to be all impressive and smart and then, you know, you SAY something wrong, like, you know, mispronouncing it or something. It’s just, like, totally horrible.” Jubilee gave a little nervous laugh.

Kitty nodded to help her out when nobody said anything and added, “It’s really embarrassing.”

Silence settled over the room as confused eyes settled on both girls and they looked at each other nervously.

“Someone please tell me why the hell I’m here, “Logan growled, successfully breaking the tension in the room.

“Because you’re part of the team, Logan, now zip it,” Scott chided him. A middle claw popped in his face, but that was the end of their brief argument.

“Well, actually, I have a theory,” Hank slowly removed the glasses from his face and began cleaning them with his pocket rag, not giving much of his attention to the group.

Gambit raised an eyebrow at the quiet doctor, “You gonna share it wit us?”

“Indeed. There is a running hypothesis that the time space continuum is made up of several quantum magnetic fields that overlap each other. But that there is no connection between these layers because such would be a hole. And obviously there’s no hole,” Hank laughed the last part, making it apparent that everyone should know the ridiculousness of such a notion.

“Uh, anyone else get that?” Bobby looked around to the other members of the team.

Logan rolled his eyes, “You wanna translate that into dumbass for us?”

“Beast thinks he’s building an inter-dimensional traveling device,” Marrow answered bluntly, her arms crossed over her chest.

"A time machine?" Peter huffed in disbelief.

"No, my dear boy," Hank sat up in his chair, his voice now very excited. "Not a time machine. A machine that would create a door way between other worlds that are coexisting with our own. Although, now that you mention it, time itself is merely a cycle of the movement of the fields within Earth's core. Therefore anything powerful enough to rip an opening in the continuum can surely peel back pervious cycles."

The muscular Russian boy blinked a few times, "I'm pretty sure I didn't mention any of that..."

"Wait," Jubilee looked up from her notebook, stopping the discussion, "could you spell 'continuum' for me? C-o-n-t-"

"I-n--u-u-m," Hank eagerly finished for her. She mumbled thanks and scribbled in her notebook.

Logan pushed up from his chair against the back wall, "Okay, so, let's go take care of this asshole before he goes 'ripping' anything."

Marrow shrugged her shoulders, disinterest still plastered all over her face, "It doesn't really matter. Anything he does in an alternate reality would pose no impact on ours. Basically, he would just be getting rid of himself for us."

"Okay, just checking here, but this 'alternate reality' is the same 'other worlds' dimension things Beast was talking about, right?" Jubilee asked, at Marrow's nod, she went back to her notebook.

"No," Scott finally spoke up, "He's our problem. We're handling it."

The group, although mumbling about doing more work than necessary, agreed.

"And I suppose it be Remy's job to find him," Gambit pretended like he was closely studying one of his cards.

"Yeah it is. And if we don't make it in time I'm using you to plug the hole." Scott sneered at him. He hated whiners.

"Come on, people, move it. Everyone in the jet!" Scott screamed as he made his way up the platform. The command was completely unnecessary, the others were less then two feet behind him and piling in the X-Jet, adrenaline beginning to build up in their veins.

Gently shoving everyone out of the way, including Scott, Storm made her way to her seat. The pilot's chair. "Gambit found him?" She asked, already starting up the jet.

"Yeah. Just outside of the city." He gave his seat belt one last security tug and gave a quick glance behind him, "Everyone buckled?"

A general mumbling consensus of 'yeah's and 'uh huh's, along with a 'just fucking go' from Logan, floated to the front of the plane. Satisfied, he gave Storm the 'all clear' nod and the school began to gently tremble with the opening of the hidden hatch and them quickly taking off.

"Roster check. Bobby." Scott began calling names of the top of his head while he fiddled with controls on the console in front of him.

"Here."

"Hank's staying back in case of medical emergency," he reminded himself. Storm flashed him a quick smirk he didn't notice at the fact that he had memorized everyone's name in alphabetical order. Something only Scott would do.

"Jubilee." he continued.

"Present."

"Kitty."

"Ditto."

"Logan."

"Fuck you, One-Eye."

Scott shook his head and fought the all too familiar urge to blast Logan clean through. He settled for clearing the bile out of his throat. "Marrow."

"I'm here."

"Ororo," he said a lot quieter and the two nodded at each other. Very professional.

"Pete stayed back at the mansion for guard duty and Rogue's still on the DL," rounding off the mental list in his head he relaxed in his chair, evidently finished with his unknown button pressing.

"Um, not exactly, sugah."

Scott's head jerked around at the sound of the voice he was not, under any circumstance, suppose to hear. Sure enough, in her full field uniform, sat Rogue. She was in the back, right beside Logan, who was rolling his shoulders inside his uniform, completely nonchalantly. Kitty, however, who was sitting across the aisle way from her, was desperately trying not to look guilty. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Rogue?!"

"Well, ah was under the impression we were savin' tha world."

"WE'RE saving the world. You're supposed to be recovering!" It was hard to give her the stern look he wanted to, being strapped to the seat in all. But he turned the best he could, his hand holding the arm of Storm's chair in a white-knuckle death grip.

"And nothin' makes me feel betta than kick some ass," she argued back, a defiant smile firmly plastered on her face.

"You can not just disobey ORDERS!" everyone else visibly flinched as Scott's raised voice reverberated off the metal walls of the jet.

Another loud noise followed it, that of a large bubble of gum being popped, "Uh, duh. Chica's name is Rogue. Isn't the text book definition like 'doesn't follow orders worth shit' or something like that?"

"No. It's 'playfully mischievous'. I'm pretty sure 'doesn't follow orders worth shit' is Logan's definition," Bobby corrected her. Jubilee practically snorted and high-fived him while everyone else laughed, with the exception of Scott and Logan.

Scott's outburst of, "That's it. Storm, turn this plane around!" released the chorus of groaning, 'oh man's, and 'come on's.

"No, Scott," Storm tried to give her voice flat and level, fighting the additional chuckles from coming out, "Gambit needs back up and we only have one chance or we will loose this guy."

He snorted in reluctant defeated. "Fine." Now completely annoyed his anger needed some kind of outlet, and trashed the inside of a billion dollar jet was not an option. That left one thing.

"You're telling me you didn't fucking see her get on?!" he yelled at Logan.

Rogue looked away, trying to keep from making eye contact with the fuming leader. Logan, however, was starring at the freshly ripped holes in his gloves, appearing to be avoiding him. Monotonic he answered, "I saw her."

"You didn't say anything?!" Scott realized he made the mistake of thinking that Logan was on his side this time. Thinking back on it now he could never believe he was foolish enough to think that the other man had agreed with him instead of Rogue.

Logan gave another lackluster reply, "Nope."

"That's not true," Kitty interjected, "I believe your exact words were 'hey, darlin'."

Jubilee tried to muffle her giggles with her yellow-gloved hand, but they easily made it to Scott's ear. He snapped his head to her, the nostrils now violently flaring, which only made her giggles increase. Finally, Marrow kicked her foot and she was able to stop.

She bit her lip and mumbled, "Sorry."

Scott gave them all one last warning look over before sitting back in his seat, facing the front of the plane. “When we get back you’re on kitchen duty for a month, Rogue,” he called out over his shoulder.

The sweet southern groan he heard instantly raised his spirits. After a few seconds of deliberation he added, “A week for you too, Jubilee.”

“WHAT?! What for?”

“Assisting in insubordination.”

“Insub...what the hell did I do?!”

“The notes.”

Bobby starting laughing again, he knew there had to be some other reason behind her extra initiative. Even Marrow couldn’t help the slowly creeping smile.

“Aw, come on!” Jubilee continued whining, “Those really were for the witty banter! Here check this out: ‘Is that a slipstream rod or you just happy to see me?’ No? No good? Okay, how about: ‘you’re about to be quantum time continuumly beat down, sucka!’”

Storm couldn’t help herself from snorting at the last one. And getting a goddess to snort wasn’t an easy thing to do. Scott, however, still didn’t seem very impressed.

“Two weeks,” he added. “You got another for me?”

“What’s the point, you’re going to be a loser in any dimension?” Kitty suggested. Rogue groaned and slapped her forehead.

“A week for Shadowcat. Anyone else want to make jokes?” Scott turned half way in his chair again.

“How effective will that wave emitter be after I shove it up your ass?” Everyone once again busted out laughing because it was Logan who said it, so therefore it was safe from punishment.

“Real mature, Logan,” Scott hissed.

Rogue patted his knee and smiled brightly at him, which made it worth whatever shit Scooter would give him for it.

“Hey! How come he doesn’t get kitchen duty?” Jubilee whined.

The group seemed too large for the tiny compound they were now occupying. It consisted of three small, one level buildings all covered in white-painted wood slants. The ground beneath their feet was gravel but it didn't so much as crunch but quietly wail as they walked on it. Scott led them between two of the buildings, obviously already having some clue about where they were going. Sure enough, in the shadows against the back wall crouched Gambit who rose into the light when he saw them approaching.

"Hallo, ami. I see when Remy say hurry you take da scenic route, no?"

“No. We had some disturbances,” Scott answered him and everyone turned their heads to face Rogue.

Remy nodded and smirked, all too familiar with the trick himself, “Ah, Remy understands. Glad you could make it, chere.”

“What’s the deal Cajun?”

“No formalities for die Wolf-man,” Gambit smirked when Logan growled at him. “Brainwave is up to somethin.”

“What?” Storm asked.

“Remy not sure, but da monsieur keeps cackling ‘time at last, time at last’.”

Jubilee snorted, “Yeah, I’d call that a clue.”

“So what’re we waitin’ for? Let’s go get the sucker!”

“Don’t push me, Rogue, you’re already on thin ice,” Scott chided the eager southern girl. She ‘humpf’ed and crossed her arms over her chest in defiance but she remained silent.

“What’s the game plan, Mr. Summers?” Kitty politely asked. Jubilee rolled her eyes at the insanely thick sweetness of her friend’s voice.

Scott, however, didn’t see her additional batting eyelashes; nevertheless he called behind him, “You’re still doing dishes.”

Kitty replied by stomping her foot hard on the ground and Jubilee stuck her tongue out at her.

“I'm sorry; I was under the assumption that we flew all the way here to stop a criminal mastermind from causing multi-dimensional havoc. Had I known we were simply relocating our useless squabbling I'd have worn jeans instead of skin-tight leather." Marrow was standing back, away from the group, leaning against on of the walls, her voice heavy with cynicism.

Rogue cocked an eyebrow at her, one of Logan's classic traits she hadn't yet figured out how to get rid of. "Damn, sugah, pull that stick out a lil' bit an' get yaself some wiggle room."

Marrow pushed up of the wall and glare at her, "Don't call me 'sugar'."

"Actually its 'sugah' not 'sugar', its all about the twang," Jubilee corrected her and winked at Rogue.

"Um, guys, I think that's our man over there," Bobby's observation pulled all their attention to the middle of the fenced in property where Brainwave came out of one of the wooden buildings. Scott backed them all up further into the shadows to watch him as he stepped further out into the sunlit opening.

"Ack," Jubilee whispered, "What the hell is he wearing?" She appeared to actually flinch at the attire of him. He wore what could only be described as a greenish-green hazmat suit, the pants of which were tightly tucked into blue rubber boots. The sleeves of his ensemble were also covered by matching gloves. They all recognized the mix and combination of technology that was securely attached to his chest.

"Let's go," Scott nodded and let them out of the alley way.

It was actually a very impressive image. The nine superheroes walked almost perfectly instep toward him, clad in their individual uniforms, made one cohesive unit of people who could kill you in unimaginable ways. And look damn good doing it. Storm even provided just the right amount of ambiance wind for their various capes and trench coasts’ flapping. Not to mention the all important hair whooshing.

"Freeze, Brainwave," Scott instructed. Kitty could be heard behind him giggling something about brain freezes, but beside that the others stood their ground in silence.

Brainwave's head jerked around to face them. He looked much like a scared Chihuahua with the latex head cover pulled down to his brow line and a large pair of goggles resting firmly on top of it.

“X-Men,’ he greeted them with a sneer, “you’re about to be three bridge cycles too late.”

Jubilee stepped forward, shoving both the snarling and glaring Wolverine and Cyclops out of the way. “I don’t think so, buddy! You’re about to be quantum time continuumly beat down, sucka!”

She nodded at Scott, but was forcefully shoved back behind the two men by Logan before she could make good on her ‘threat’.

“Give it up, bub. The chances of you gettin’ out of here ain’t good,” Logan warned the man in front of them. He almost felt bad about having to rip this guy to pieces, it wasn’t even close to a fair fight. Hell, he figured one good ‘up in your face’ growl and he’d probably have a heart attack right after he wet himself.

“On the contrary, they’re quite good.” Brainwave’s hand went to his chest to flip a tiny switch at the bottom of the rather heavy looking device on his chest. Bright silver-blue electrical arches began slowly widen out from it. The X-Men stood more than a little amazed at the sight in front of them. The energy didn’t surround him, like it had previously done to Rogue, but instead moved out into the open space were a small vortex began opening.

“I’m guessing that’s the hole Hank was talking about?” Bobby asked breathlessly. Several of them nodded to affirm that was their guess as well.

The vortex was now huge, especially compared to the dwarf buildings and the meager landscape which it was set in. The bleak blue of it’s outer shell was similar to the coloring of the arches emitting from Brainwave’s device, although the center was a unnatural coloring, the light coming from it was far too bright to try and look to see what was on the other side.

“Well,” he began, taking a step toward his creation, “I’m off to a place where you cretins will hopefully not exist.”

“Stop him before he goes through!” Scott commanded. They took it as a battle cry and they all charged the slight man.

“No!” he managed to scream before he was hit with the large force. They were not able to tackle the genius to the ground as they hoped because he was standing too close to the crackling vortex. Their collective momentum and an unknown pull of either gravity or magnetism sent them all flying through.