This is for Luba and everyone else who encouraged/cornered me into writing more in this series.
This takes place in an alterverse where the Shadow King croaks Xavier during the Muir Island Saga. Boo-hoo. But you're not likely to see all that much evidence of this, 'cuz I'm working with Excalibur, not the main branch of the X-Teams. Just thought you'd like to know.
COVER: Close-up face shot of Rachel and Scalphunter, head to head. Scalphunter's holding the barrel of some sort of compact pistol against Ray's forehead. Both are glaring at each other like wolves over a carcass and the 'fire' from the Phoenix effect is outlining both of them. Scalphunter's foaming a bit at the corners of his mouth.
Author's notes: OK, last ish some of the former inhabitants of Muir Island showed up at Excalibur's lighthouse, and had to explain themselves to Brigadier Alysdane Stuart. In plot B, Sinister's cloned lackeys the Marauders were sent on some mission, the purpose of which hasn't been made clear quite yet. Obviously it has something to do with Excalibur, because they've just had their living-room wall implode on them. You'd think that the Marauders'd know how to use a door. Maybe it has something to do with being cloned a few dozen times. They've probably got six-fingers too...
It would have been nice if everything had frozen for an instant once the Marauders blew in the wall on the first above-ground level of the lighthouse. Some of the occupants less experienced in battle would have had a chance to at least think about making some sort of semi-intelligent move. No such luck. The Marauders came in shooting (well, OK, only Scalphunter was actually shooting, but you get the gist).
As bullets, throwing stars, acid, and fissures in the earth started to tear apart the room and furniture (to say nothing of severely unsettling Excalibur and Co.) the team sprang into action. The Morlock healer dove for cover and shoved the children down with him. Alysdane flattened herself against the floor behind the couch, making several mental notes to have a long, loud talk with Miss Sefton about her having teleported the Brigadier's gun into the damned ocean. Rachel wielded the power of the Phoenix almost effortlessly, intending to take care of the intruders without breaking a sweat. Scalphunter leveled his gun at her and fired. Ray reached out with only part of her attention, intending to pluck the bullet from the air. It slipped through her telekinetic grasp without so much as slowing and plowed into the wall inches from her thigh.
"The Boss had these made up special for you, Legs." grinned the lead Marauder. Rachel struck out with enough force to level a small house, deciding that Scalphunter was more of a threat than she had warranted. At the last second, she thought maybe it had been an over-kill. She didn't particularly care if she killed Scalphunter or not, but the idea that she might not be able to control her powers reliably... The thought never got finished, for Rachel's own energy boomeranged back from Scalphunter at an angle and slammed her straight up through several floors of the lighthouse.
"Now I'll have to go get the little perp." grumbled Scalphunter, ignoring the melee around him and charging towards the stairs. No one was in any position to stop him.
"I remember you." Kitty stated flatly, dodging Harpoon's weapon. The energy harpoon fizzed and disappeared as it missed it's mark again and again. There was no way in hell that she was going to get hit by that thing again, but she wasn't backing away either. She had a score to settle.
"That makes one of us." stated Harpoon, making another futile cast at Shadowcat, who dodged easily. He didn't like the way this kid was sizing him up and decided to take her out before he turned his attention to wiping out the others. Across the room, still pinned under the Healer, the three younger Morlocks came to a decision.
"Stay down." Keesha advised the elder as the kids shoved him off and headed into the fray. His shout of protest fell on conveniently deaf ears as the children began to utilize their powers to aid Excalibur. Wishing that he had a more defensive power, Icarus started floating chunks of rubble over the heads of the Marauders and braining them. Scrambler took a step towards him, intending to use his power to disrupt mutant abilities (and the nerve-disrupter in his hand) to put Icarus out of the fight. That one step was all he took. When his foot next hit the carpet, his entire body fell through the floor with a odd slurping sound. For a second, Kim Sung found his body falling through a jelly-like substance... then he was dangling above the lighthouse's basement.
"What the HELL?!" Scrambler grabbed up onto the still-solid edge of the hole he had fallen through and watched in disgust as amorphous blobs of greyish-blue gel oozed down from the sagging patch of ceiling directly over his head. Then it began to harden back to its normal consistancy. Scrambler found himself dangling in the air with his hands partially encased in the ceiling and his fingers sticking up through the floor above. Jimmy Terry grinned and set up another booby trap, by partially liquefying the floor in a random spot.
Behind him Cybelle/Malice flew through the air and crashed against... nothing. Amanda's mystic blast had pitched the Marauder back towards the hole that her team had blown in the lighthouse, but Widget zipped in front of her and set up an arch. Malice was swallowed up by it's dimensional gate, which promptly irised out of existence once she passed through. Widget's little sphere of a form disconnected itself from the arch and bleeped in Amanda's direction. The sorceress grinned shakily at the goggle-eyed construct and turned to her arm. It had been glanced by one of Riptide's throwing stars had penetrated the shield that she had woven around herself, Tom, and Sharon. The wound across her upper arm made her think of a mass of low-grade hamburger. Cursing her magic's ineffectiveness against metal, Amanda tried to cast a healing spell, but found that she couldn't without dropping the shield. It turned out that she didn't need the spell after all. Sharon took charge of things as only a nurse too used to emergencies could.
"Lie down and keep still!" she ordered in a tone that let a patient know that they might wind up worse off than before if they didn't listen. Sharon produced a length of gauze from one of her pockets and had a tight bandage encircling Amanda's arm within a minute.
"Always carry around bandages in your clothes, Sharon?" Amanda asked, wincing as a chunk of morter shattered against the shield.
"After hanging around the X-teams for a while, you learn to be prepared. There. Let the healer take a look at it when this is over." Sharon turned to say something to Tom... who wasn't behind her any longer. Corsi was inching his way over to Icarus. As soon as the boy was within arm's reach, Tom snagged his ankle and all but dragged him back to cover.
"Ic, next time someone tells you to get down, HIT THE FLOOR AND STAY THERE!" Thomas shouted. The ex-cop glance about the room for the other kids. He could see Meggan lying motionless against a wall, with her back to the fighting. There were streaks of red in her golden hair. Vertigo was in a crumpled heap not too far from a set of fingers (fingers?) that were sticking up through the floor. The healer stretched out next to Meggan. Uninjured, he had made his way across the fighting and was using his gift of healing to aid the injured woman. Everyone else (excepting Alysdane, who was still behind the couch, swearing to go to church every Sunday for at least a year if someone up above would just drop a sidearm of some sort on her lap so she could be of some use) was mixed up into the fray in some way. A shriek of the purest horror drew Tom's attention to Keesha. She stood perfectly still in front of Blockbuster, who was staring at the slender girl with undisguised panic. His eyes were bulging so far out of his head that his round face resembled Widget. His mouth worked around syllables that he couldn't quite choke out. As she stepped towards the Marauder, Keesha's face was calm, but her eyes burned with hatred. She drew a six-inch blade from the folds of her shirt and hamstrung the mountain of muscle. His injured legs unable to support him, Blockbuster sank to the ground, this time yelling in pain.
"Just thank your luck that it wasn't your fucking throat, murderer." she hissed under her breath as she brushed a lock of raven-dark hair out of her face with a bloody hand.
Kitty heard the soft BAMF! of imploding air behind her and hoped that Nightcrawler was doing better than she was against Harpoon. So far, it was a stalemate. Not a second later, Kitty got what she wanted... an opening. Before she could dart in and start to grapple with Harpoon in earnest, Brian imposed himself between the two of them.
"Hold it right... ARRRRRGGH!" Captain Britain cut off his own words with an agonized screech as Harpoon's energy spear connected with his body.
"Damn it, Cap!" Kitty grabbed Harpoon's arm and phased him. The spear passed through Brian's body, no longer effective. Harpoon turned, ready to do the same to Kitty. She leapt away beyond his aim. As she did, Harpoon felt that there was something numbly wrong with his body. As if something had been displaced. Then the pain hit. It was as if his entire leg was in a powerful vise, being crushed to a fine paste. Kitty had phased his foot into the floor. Knowing that Harpoon was in no shape to hurt anyone, she dragged Brian away.
"Now we're even." she said simply, meeting the agonized Eskimo's eyes and glaring at him steadily. Then she turned away. It almost made her sick that she had done something like that, even to someone who had nearly crippled her for life. Almost. Another part was glad to have repaid him in kind and to have at least partially avenged Annalee and the murdered children. Kitty turned and looked around for Arclight. She heard an impressive string of swearing... right above her head. Shadowcat glanced up and saw Arclight hovering in mid-air, her ability to create earth-tremors nullified by having her lose contact with solid ground.
"I swear, I'll catch which ever one of you little shits is doing this and fix it so you can piss out your...*GLUMPH*" James Terry walked up and plastered a handful of some type of goo across Arclight's mouth. When it left contact with his hand, it hardened, like ultra-quick drying cement.
"Is that any language to use around a lady?" he asked. Kitty noticed that the boy had a slight Irish lilt to his speech.
Nightcrawler's face-off against Riptide wasn't nearly so simple. A malicious grin was on the Marauder's face.
"Look here! And I thought that I'd finished you off in the Morlock tunnels. Ah, well. Second time's the charm, I'll bet." He tossed a handful of throwing stars at Kurt in an almost casual motion. Nightcrawler teleported away before the first one left his hand. He reappeared behind Riptide and delivered a punch that should have decked the Marauder. Riptide didn't even stagger.
"You'll not find me so easy a victim this time." snarled Nightcrawler. At the moment, Kurt was in direct conflict with his beliefs and the dictates of his heart. His Christianity would not allow him to kill Riptide... but that was all he wanted to do. But Riptide had not been the first enemy that he had encountered which had come close to killing him. Why should he feel such hate towards this man, when he did not for, say... Wendigo? With a movement almost too fast for Nightcrawler to see, Riptide hurled another batch of stars. Nightcrawler teleported again. As he reappeared, one star glanced off of a chunk of rubble and lodged in the flesh of his upper thigh. He didn't feel it. Kurt caught a glimpse of Meggan's still form... and knew where his hate came from. Not just from the damage that had been wrought on him personally, but what Riptide and the Marauders had done to Kitty and to the Morlocks. While Riptide looked around for his target, Kurt's hand wrapped around a short length of steel rod sticking out of the wreck of the wall. It'd be a strain, but he could teleport this into Riptide's chest. Didn't the swine deserve it? For all the pain and suffering that he had caused, was it not a fitting punishment? Nightcrawler's hand clenched on the metal... B A M F !
Riptide turned face-first into the length of steel that Nightcrawler was swinging at him. Had the rod been a bat and Riptide's head a baseball, it would have been an easy home-run. As it was, Riptide went down spraying blood from a broken nose and swallowing several teeth that been knocked loose. Kurt tossed the rod aside. It wasn't his place to pass judgment, not by man's law or God's. He took in the general chaos. It looked as if the fight was over.
'Sehr gut...' he thought wearily. Out loud, he called to his team-mates. "Was that all of them?" Kitty, standing with Keesha and James, shook her head.
"We can't find Scrambler, Scalphunter, or Creed." Keesha took a step back and felt something crack under her foot. A stream of screamed profanity broke the sudden eerie silence of the lighthouse. She looked down and saw that she was standing on someone's fingers. Odd thing was, the fingers seemed to be growing out of the floor.
"Well, I just found one of the bastards." the red-skinned girl grinned. "This your work, Jimmy?" The freckle-faced boy just smiled.
"Who d'ya think?"
"He couldn't have gotten very far." stated Kurt. "Kitty, you and I will look for Creed and Scalphunter. Keesha, I want you and the others to stay here. Tend to the wounded... that includes the Marauders. Just make sure they're neutralized first." Keesha tested the edge of her knife against one finger and considered a little more in the way of revenge. The Marauders were just as helpless now as the Morlocks had been. The idea of kicking the bastards while they were down appealed to her.
"No problem." she growled, giving the whipped mutants a pointed glare.
'Mein Gott... she's a female, adolescent version of Wolverine!' thought Nightcrawler. The notion was not appealing. "Leave that to Tom and Sharon. You and Brigadier Stuart contact WHO and let them know what's going on. Kitty, let's go. We can start..."
"Wait a sec!" Kitty interrupted him. "Where's Rachel?"
"Probably making mince of Scalphunter. Let's go."
Several flights up, in Kitty and Rachel's somewhat mangled room, Rachel's eye's were taking a long while to come into focus. The last time she recalled being belted that hard was when she'd been up against Galactus... Then the figure stepped into her range of vision. With another surge of power, Ray slammed Scalphunter against the wall. There was a satisfying crunch as the energy deflector strapped to his wrist was smashed before he could bring it into play against Rachel again.
"Bitch!"
"Oooo! How original!" Before her opponent could aim the gun in his hands, Rachel shoved him through the wall, out over open air. "See that drop?" she asked, trying to get a TK hold on the gun in Scalphunter's hands and failing. Damn thing probably had a psi-shield built in or something. "Drop the pea-shooter or I let you go splat." Scalphunter raised the weapon and shoved the muzzle against Rachel's temple.
"I'm here to get you dead or alive, Summers. Either way, the DNA is still good. Try to drop me or pry into my mind and I can blow your brains out before I hit the ground. One of my team gets your bod, turns it in, and I wind up regrown in a vat. But you'll still be dead." Rachel set her jaw stubbornly and started to release her mental grip on Scalphunter's body. He felt it and tightened his finger on the trigger...
Lockheed, his body half-buried under the debris cluttering the room, snapped up his head up from where he had been laying slightly stunned and shot a strong jet of flame from his mouth. It hit Scalphunter's crotch dead-center. The Marauder screamed at a pitch that would have normally been unattainable and dropped the gun. Rachel gave him a mind-blast to get him out of her hair while she gently scooped the rubble off of Lockheed. He looked so pleased with himself that she couldn't resist humming a familiar line to him.
"'Chestnuts roasting on an open fire...'" She broke off and gave Lockheed a wry look. "You play dirty, you know that?"
"Yah! Heh-heh-heh!" snickered the dragon, flying down through the hole that Rachel's body had made earlier. Rachel telekinetically bunched Scalphunter's body into a fetal position and followed Lockheed, dragging the Marauder after her.
"Shouldn't we find a way of getting him down before my people get here?" Alysdane asked Keesha soon after she got off the line with WHO. The two of them were down in the basement looking up at Scrambler, who was still hanging from the ceiling. The huge female dragon that Excalibur had liberated from their Nazi counterparts was positioned directly under him on her hind legs, looking like nothing so much as a cat that has found a new plaything. Every now and again she gave him a nudge that swung him about like a bell-clapper. Scrambler was yelling like a moron and trying to run in mid-air. Keesha smirked.
"Why? He's not going nowhere."
"Nightcrawler, this is totally useless." Kitty sighed, kicking at sand. She'd been on an emotional roller coaster that day and her physical and mental weariness was making her moody. Besides that, it was fully dark out and cold wind was starting to blow off of the ocean. "We've been through the lighthouse top-to-bottom with no sign of Sabretooth. There's no possible way that he could be hiding out here. Maybe he just didn't come along with 'em this time."
"I hope you're right Katzchen." Nightcrawler said, guardedly poking his head around the curve of the lighthouse's outer wall. "But we don't know enough about how the MO of the Marauders to presume. Keep looking. We might want to re-check the upper levels."
"I'll make a deal with you, Fuzzy." offered Kitty, knowing that she could finish things up quicker doing a solo search. "I'll finish the search myself if you go inside and let Sharon or someone take a look at that leg." Nightcrawler looked down at his right thigh. Riptide's throwing star was still sticking halfway out of his leg. He was surprised to see very little blood soaked into the costume surrounding the wound. He decided it must not have hit anything major.
"Good advice, but I'm not crazy about letting you go after a known killer alone." Shadowcat grimaced and started air-walking up towards the railed off topmost level of the lighthouse.
"What do I look like, an X-baby?" she asked. "I know what I'm doing."
"Kitty..."
"Kurt, trust me on this."
"I trust you, Kitty, but my trust in you has nothing to do with it. Can I trust Herr Creed not to attack you the moment you become solid? I think not. Let me know when to teleport in." Kitty continued to move upward until she was barely touching the wall. She nodded down to Nightcrawler and passed through. The brimstone smell as she entered the room let her know that Kurt had made it there just before her.
"No lights?" questioned Shadowcat. Kurt shook his head, though Kitty couldn't see the gesture.
"They don't appear to be working now. Rather suspicious, don't you think?"
"Naw..." snarled a deep voice. "Just the way I want it." For an insane second, both members of Excalibur thought that the voice belonged to Wolverine. Then they knew who was in the room with them and went fully alert. Kitty phased just as five hooked claws swept through her torso. Nightcrawler took a chance by teleporting to the other side of the darkened room. Luckily for him, the disturbance on the lower levels hadn't moved anything up here more than marginally. He still breathed a prayer of thanks that he hadn't materialized inside of anything. Sabretooth threw aside whatever piece of furniture that he had been hiding behind and charged. The only sight that Shadowcat had to go on was the occasional flash of moon-light on fangs or hair. Kurt had excellent night vision, but Creed moved so fast that Nightcrawler couldn't get a good enough fix on his position to form a plan of attack. Suddenly recalling all of the training sessions in the woods that he had lost against Wolverine was not much of a confidence builder either. There was a scraping sound off to Kurt's left. The agile mutant dodged to the right, not trusting the layout of the room enough for another teleport. A rough hand closed around his throat before he had taken two steps. Claws dug into the sides of Nightcrawler's neck as and Sabretooth dragged him to the floor. The tight grip cut off Kurt's air and held him immobile.
"All right, Shadow-kitty." came that same low bestial voice. "Either get over here..." Here Sabretooth paused and yanked the throwing star out of Kurt's leg, making sure to jerk down and out to lengthen the wound. Nightcrawler gritted his teeth but made no sound. "... or I tear the livin' guts outta the elf." The sharp bloody edge of the projectile was pressed against Kurt's neck in another second. Nightcrawler fixed a destination in his mind but did not teleport. Abandoning Kitty was not something that he would do... and beyond that, he wanted to see how Kitty was going react to the situation.
Shadowcat went solid and walked towards him, wondering if she could pull the same stunt of phasing an enemy to distract him from a team-mate twice in one battle. She decided against it. Sabretooth probably had quicker reflexes than Harpoon. She didn't have a plan. Creed spoke again when she was less than a yard away.
"Stop right there." Kitty stopped.
"Smart move. What..." Kurt kicked at Creed's sternum as hard as he could. Caught off guard for a second, Sabretooth got ready to turn Nightcrawler's body into a bloody mess. Kitty grabbed Kurt's arm and phased both of them through Creed.
"Quick thinking." Nightcrawler congratulated her, rubbing his sore neck. "Now, what are we going to do about..." They turned back to Sabretooth, who was lying on the floor, twitching like a half-crushed insect. "...him?" finished Kurt, sounding stunned. Kitty understood his confusion. People didn't react that way to her power unless...
"Watch yourself, Fuzzy." she said, releasing her hold on Kurt's arm and going back to Creed in a phased state. She reached into Creed's head and ran her hand downwards until a familiar tingle prickled through her fingers. "There's some sort of electrical device implanted in his head." she informed Kurt. Her hand continued to move downward. "And next to his spinal column. And in his abdomen."
"Can you tell what they are?"
"I just walk through things, remember? But I think I can remove one..." Kitty cautiously closed her hand around the implant in Sabretooth's stomach and withdrew her hand. "No sweat." she grinned. "I guess the two of us phasing through that one in his head fu..." Nightcrawler cleared his throat a little too loudly. Kitty's mouth stretched into a sheepish grin . 'Almost got away with it.' she thought. "...screwed up the electrical impulses going through his brain." she finished.
"I wonder," murmured Kurt. "if the other Marauder's have similar implants."
"Only one way to find out..."
"Ja. Let's get Rachel to collect this mess and check out the others."
"No idea what it could be." sighed Alistaire, looking askance at the small cube in Kitty's palm. "I'll give you a hand with it in the morning, if possible. Alysdane's got me working on some sort of matter/energy gizmo that WHO appropriated." People from WHO (Weird Happenings Organization) were all over the lighthouse, securing Marauders and hauling them off to waiting transports. Excalibur's wounded had been tended to by Sharon and the Morlock healer, Orlin, long before any of WHO had shown up. Any help that they'd had to offer in that nature was superfluous. The team all but sighed in relief when the last of WHO's jets took off. Rachel ignored just about everyone as she used the Phoenix force to repair the damage to the lighthouse, grumbling about not having anyone to help her.
"Really, Miss Summers, I'd take over for you, but cosmic avatars aren't all that easy to come by." pointed out Tom Corsi, giving the rest of the team a hand with the clean-up detail.
"Rassa-frazza fricking lighthouse." grumbled Ray, shoring up the last of the supports before shutting off her power. She saw Amanda giving Icarus a hand with moving furniture and clenched her hands into fists for a second.
'Why, oh why, do I have to be the resident telepath?' thought Rachel, dreading what she was going to have to tell the sorceress.
"Has anyone seen Brian?" asked Meggan for the dozenth time since she had woken up on the living room couch. And for the dozenth time since she had woken come too, no one answered. No one wanted to tell her that the man who supposedly loved her had taken off for the residence of Courtney Ross the instant they found out that she wasn't mortally wounded.
"It's nearly dawn." Nightcrawler yawned, looking at the pinkish glow on the horizon. "I think some shut-eye would do us all good. I'm afraid we'll have to hear your story tomorrow, mein freunds. Until then, I suggest that we get everyone situated for the... day."
"Absolutely right, Fuzzy." agreed Kitty, heading up to her room while the others made sleeping arrangements. Let them snooze. She had a puzzle to put together.
It was agreed that the Islanders and Morlocks could sleep in the passenger train down in the basement for the night. It was far from the worst of accommodations and besides, everyone was too tired to think of any objections.
Amanda was just getting ready to turn in when Rachel knocked on the door of her compartment.
"Hi." smiled Amanda drowsily. She'd known Rachel in passing before, but wasn't quite sure why the young woman would be calling on her at this hour. "Can I help you with something?"
"No..." Rachel wondered why she hadn't just gotten Kurt to do this. "Amanda, earlier...during the fight... I learned something from Scalphunter that you really have to be told." Amanda had gone very quiet and still. Rachel wanted this to be over with but just blurting it out would be insensitive, even for her. Rachel wished that she could just shove the information into Amanda's mind and be done with it. She felt like a fool standing and groping for words that just weren't going to be enough. "Before the Marauders came here, they stopped by your apartment in New York. They... Elizibeth and Wendy were there..."
"They're dead, aren't they." Amanda's voice was the softest of strained whispers. Rachel could feel the torrent of emotions barely held in check.
"Yes..." What else could she say? Amanda didn't say anything, but turned her face away from the younger woman. "If you need to talk..." 'then please don't ask me!' Rachel pleaded inwardly. 'I can't do this!'
"No, I don't need anyone. How... Did they suffer?"
"No, not for long." Rachel lied. Why upset her anymore than she already was? "It was relatively quick."
"Have you told anyone else?" asked Amanda in that same strained voice.
"No... but I thought that you had a right to know about it."
"Thank you... could you please leave now?"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes! Go!" Amanda's control slipped and she nearly yelled. Rachel left, feeling for Amanda, but uncertain of what to do. Alone, and grateful for the dark and the loneliness, Amanda Sefton turned to the wall and sobbed.
Almost five hours later, a surly, bag-eyed Kitty was settled at her workstation still staring at the implant that she had removed from Creed. A perfect cube with a dull finish on all sides, save one, which was painfully bright. No seams, impenetrable to X-rays, and no access portals. The rest of the Marauders had similar devices attached to various places within them, but Alysdane had thought it a better idea to leave them put until they had a better idea of what they were. Kitty was getting ready to toss the entire thing into the trash and start fresh sometime after she woke up... sometime next week maybe. She dropped the cube on her desk and got ready to retreat to bed, where Lockheed was giving her dirty looks from the headboard.
"Just because you already got your forty winks." she grumbled. Then she noticed that the shining surface of the cube was no longer blank... it had a two minute countdown on it. Now fully wide awake, Kitty mentally yelled for Rachel.
"What?!" Rachel asked, throwing open the door to Kitty's room. Ray had finally had it with Kitty's tinkering and gone downstairs to sleep on the couch, being tolerant because she knew that this type of thing was food and breath to her roommate. But Rachel had easily pressed limits. She'd been about to drag Kitty to bed and demand that she get some sleep. It was nice to have an excuse to barge in.
"That's what!" The counter now read one minute and twenty-six seconds.
"Oh shit..." Within seconds, Rachel had activated the Phoenix again, grabbed the cube in her 'claws' and exited the lighthouse with record speed. Some three miles over the ocean, the cube detonated. It didn't push Rachel anywhere near her power's limits, but it packed enough punch to have been able to take out Kitty's room and maybe the one next to it as well.
"I can feel it in the air." groaned Rachel to herself. "This is going to be one of those mornings..."
"By all the Sainted Devils..." Brian Braddock, who had returned home around 11 o' clock that morning, watched the detonation from the shore outside of the lighthouse. He felt not the least bit awkward about staying the night at Courtney's after the fight. The lighthouse had been an utter wreck and beyond that, he'd wanted female a companion that would actually talk instead of trembling, clinging to him and "Oh, Brian"-ing more the blasted Irish phone book. The rest of Excalibur, in equal awe, stood with him. "And you say that there were several of those implanted inside of each of those Marauders?"
In the wreckage and craters of what had been the temporary holding cells of WHO, Brigadier Alysdane Stuart, Dai Thomas, and a slew and half of WHO and police personnel were going over the damage (not to mention passingly recognizable bits and chunks of the Marauders) with typical efficiency and a large measure of disgust. Dai sighed in exasperation and took a deep drag from his cigarette.
"Anyone got a mop?" he muttered.
NEXT ISSUE: Are you a fan of Pete Wisdom? I sure hope not, because next ish I'm taking a crack at writing him and you'll probably wind up thinking ill of me should you happen to like the chain-smoking sod. Also, Excalibur assists in finding Alysdane's godchild and Amanda and Nightcrawler have a little tete a' tete.