Thanks to the KFFL for helping me with this story (and the rest of the mental over-flow from the past few months).

Cover: Meggan, with a black eye and split lip, cowering into a corner of some room. Her hands are raised as if to shield herself from further injury. Unindentifiable shards of glass are scattered on the floor around her. The shadow of a familiar muscle-bound figure looms over her.

Meggan: Amanda! We'll be late for the recap. What are you doing?

Amanda: Cutting out pictures for my mirror frame.

Meggan: But we'll be LATE! The writer will be UPSET! *pause*

Those aren't Rachel's magazines are they?

Amanda: No, these are from some alternate time-line. Excalibur

issues #46 and #65.

Meggan: Ooo! Lemmee see... These are all pictures of Kurt in his

underwear.

Amanda: No, that one's a towel, see?

Meggan: Don't you see enough of this as it is?

Amanda: No. And these aren't in our continuity, so I won't get to

see these in person. Besides, they're totally inaccurate. Kurt

wears black briefs, not white. I think it makes a nice change.

Meggan: So what about the recap?

Amanda: Oh, let them read the last story.

Meggan: That's not nice. I'll just do it myself. Ahem... in the

last issue um... there was a lot of fighting... and I'm pretty

sure someone died, but he wasn't important at all. Deadpool

showed up to bother Kitty after killing a lot of people that

Courtney Ross (really that hussy Sat-yr-9) knew... um... and Kurt

found out that he had a mother. There! That was my first recap!

Did I do it just right? Was it OK?

Amanda: Um... sure, Meggan. That was just perfect. Now, are you

going to pass me #98 or not?

Keesha: I've got it over here. ManoMAN! Talk about growth over time!

Amanda: Give me that! Anyway, how would you know?

Keesha: The man goes around in skin-tight spandex seventy percent of his waking hours, Mandy. How could I not know?

Meggan: Someone, please just start the story...

sigh Y'just can't find good help these days. OK, ladies and germs, here's a slightly more cohesive recap of what has gone before... er, not that you didn't do a good job, Meg!

In one plot thread, we find that Kitty Pryde, our darling Shadowcat, and Pete Wisdom have a strong mutual attraction to each other. The idea of those two eventually winding up together doesn't seem to be going over very well with any of the males in the lighthouse.

In another thread, we have Sinister mucking around underneath an abandoned orphanage on some secret project. That has little or no bearing on this issue.

On a more important note, Meggan has been quietly suffering physical abuse at the hands of one Brian Braddock for some time now. In spite of the close living quarters, none of the other members of Excalibur (excepting Keesha) seem to have noticed this. Also centering around Braddock is the story involving "Courtney Ross", who is really the sadistic Otherworld tyrant Sat-yr-9. She's smitten with the great big lump and has designs on him.

I think that covers everything relevant, so on with the show...

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tensions in the Excalibur lighthouse were stretched wire

thin. Nightcrawler had brought the wrath of Kitty Pryde down on

his head

two days earlier by suggesting that she find some one more

"companionable" than Wisdom to become friends with. Amanda was

upset with Kurt for trying to drag her into the resulting

argument that broke out between him and Kitty and at Widget for

eating half of one of her books on the occult. Keesha was pissed

at Kitty again for assigning her a book of philosophy to read and

then telling her to come up with a defensible argument for

anti-mutant sentiments. Rachel, fed up after two days of weeding

negative emotions out of her consciousness, was ready to raze the

entire lighthouse down to sea-level just to get a little peace.

And absolutely everyone, Lockheed and Bertha included, wanted

Brian Braddock's head on a pike.

Perhaps the only one not actually angry was Meggan, and that

was of no comfort to her. She rarely saw her team-mates any

longer, as her fear of her lover kept her more or less confined

to their room. Brian almost never spent nights in the lighthouse

anymore but tended to be an absolute beast if Meggan wasn't

waiting for him when he did. But everyone was so wrapped up in

their own worries that no one noticed her quiet suffering. Even

the telepathic Rachel didn't notice, for Meggan had unconsciously

been repressing her thoughts, a reflection of the subdued,

obedient little drudge that Brian was trying to mold her into. It

would have pleased the lord of the manor if he'd realized how

well he was succeeding.

"Are you sure this is what you want?" Amanda Sefton jerked

her head back as the bus-sized dragon before her, one Bertha by

name, snorted an affirmative, momentarily hiding the sorceress'

form behind a dense cloud of steam. "I'll take that as a very

strong 'yes,'" grumbled the human, running her hands through her

recently cut hair, which was already starting to frizz up from

the sudden influx of moisture into the surrounding air. "The

things I'll do for a dragon."

Despite her moaning, Amanda didn't mind doing the huge

creature (what she hoped was) a favor. Even if her background in

magic hadn't taught her a healthy respect for the various species

of dragons, she would have done it anyway. Amanda just liked them. A (comparatively) gentle nudge from Bertha snapped

Amanda back into the present and sent her stumbling forward a few

feet.

"Ok, Ok. We'll get started." Amanda walked up to the dragon

once more and placed a hand on the creature's mid-section. "Let

me know if this hurts at all." With small quivers of trepidation making spasming her stomach every few seconds, Amanda started her spell.

'I hope this works,' she thought. 'Not only will this make

Bertha happy, but it'll prove once and for all that there is

NOTHING wrong with me.' Though she hadn't voiced her concerns to

anyone, not even to Kurt, Amanda had definitely been having some

odd feelings since her "accident" at Braddock Manor a few days

back. Most of these misgivings seemed to be centered around her

magical abilities, and that made her far more uneasy than anything

physical could have.

She had run herself through her usual paces: teleporting,

shape-changing, and illusions. Not one of those spells had

churned up any adverse effects as far as she could tell, but

then, all of those spells were routine for her and took

fairly low amounts of energy. Something bigger and a little less

familiar would be needed for any significant deviations in her

magic to show up. Which was why Amanda was currently reducing

Bertha's stature by several meters and giving her a weight-loss

treatment that would have put Jenny Craig to shame.

Once more, the sorceress was shaken out of her thoughts by a

sudden movement on Bertha's part. Startled, she grabbed for the

dragon again, increasing the spell's energy output to compensate

as she lost her hold on the dragon's hide for a split second.

There was a muffled explosion...

The next thing Amanda knew, Bertha was siting on her

stomach, anxiously puffing steam into the human's face.

"Ugh... dragon breath. Get up, will you?" Bertha, now

roughly two times the size of Kitty's "pet" dragon, Lockheed,

scrambled off of Amanda and tore up the basement stairs. "Yeah,

guess I'd be happy to finally get out of this basement too." The

sorceress sat up, took a deep breath, and got a good look at the

rest of her handiwork.

"Oh, gods..." Amanda slumped back down, thudding her head

against the floor. A good half of the basement was in shambles

and Amanda's head felt as if someone had tried to squeeze her

brains down into her neck. "This is not good. This is so not

good." Yes, there should have been some backlash from trying to

do such a sloppy job of boosting the spell, but not this kind of

wreck! Amanda knew that she would have, should have, had a hard

time doing this much damage on purpose with a single blast. "That

cinches it. I got more than just ten extra pounds of hair last

week."

The door to the basement swung open, and Keesha Scott's

voice floated down at the same time. "Yo, Sefton! Are you alive

down there? What the unholy hell did you do?"

"Huh?"

The red-skinned, raven-tressed Morlock descended the steps

two and three at a time. "You just knocked everyone in the

lighthouse flat on their ass," she crowed, as if being floored by

a mystic shock-wave was the most fun that she'd had in ages. "You

even knocked Rachel for a loop!"

"Sorry," Amanda muttered. "Spell went wrong."

"Even Kitty's room doesn't look like this big a disaster

area." Keesha marveled over the damage caused by the blast.

"Hell, the tunnels were neat compared to this."

Amanda sighed and sprinted up the stairs to check on her

friends. Hopefully there would be few questions. Not only did

Amanda not feel like talking, she hadn't the faintest idea what

was happening to her.

In spite of the mid-morning rattling of the lighthouse (or

maybe because of it) Kurt and Amanda went ahead with their

double-date with Rachel and Tom. Kurt was hoping that an outing

would improve Amanda's mood, as well as his own.

Kitty, still refusing to talk to Nightcrawler, pretended not

to hear his invitation to join them. She wouldn't have minded

accompanying her friends, but no one else thought to offer so she

wasn't going.

'As if leaving me behind is going to make me talk to him,'

she huffed. 'It's not fair! It's worse than unfair, it's

narrow-minded.'

Kitty uncurled from the sulky ball she'd made of herself and

got up from the couch. 'I mean, how long did I chase after Peter

without anyone saying a word about how inappropriate it was? And

then he dumped for that alien healer whose name sounds like one

of Lockheed's sneezes.

'Cripes, he was nineteen and I was fourteen! I was a kid!

But no one, not Storm, not the Professor, not Fuzzy, came down on

either of us over our relationship. Why? Because Colossus was the

pure-hearted, simple-minded, farmer and I was the

innocent-Jew-genius-kid. Everyone probably thought it was just a

crush and went around thinking how cute it was that Peter went

along with it. Then when everything came crashing down around me,

everyone was oh so concerned about my feelings!' She sighed and

flicked a lock of brown hair from in front of her face. 'Stop

being such a brat, Pryde. That's not totally fair or true and you

know it.

'Dammit, I know Kurt cares! I know he just doesn't want me

to get hurt again, but why does he have to treat me like I'm

blind to that possibility? I know Pete could do a dance-number on

my heart if we ever get that close, but I wouldn't even be

thinking about a relationship with Pete if I thought he weren't worth the risk.'

Kitty stepped out through the lighthouse wall and watched

Lockheed fly circles around the more massive, but earthbound,

Bertha on the shore. Kitty smiled. Maybe now that Lockheed had

more active company in Bertha, he'd stop acting so jealous of

Pete.

'Great. I only just got Fuzzy out of the habit of thinking

of Lockheed as some pet that needs to be entertained, now I'M

doing it!' As if reading her mind, Lockheed blew a few

smoke-rings her way and glided over to perch on her shoulder.

Bertha, determined not to be ignored, lumbered over and put her

snout in Kitty's palm, making a sound like a poorly maintained motorcycle.

'Or maybe I'll just have twice the trouble keeping Pete from

winding up as dragon chow,' Kitty thought, with no little flash

of amusement.

Kitty heaved out another deep sigh. She had made herself

lonely by thinking of Pete. Brian wasn't around (surprise,

surprise), Meggan had turned into a hermit, and Keesha was being

a pain. Kitty wanted to talk to Pete, to see what he thought

about this whole miserable situation... and maybe to thank him

again for the new computer equipment (*see the Pete Wisdom One-Shot) now lining the wall along her side of the room she shared with Rachel. She grinned. Her last show of gratitude had involved prolonged mouth-to-mouth contact and... as embarrassing as it was to recall... some

squealing and jumping up and down on her part. Maybe she could

just stick to the former this time, though. She was certain Pete

wouldn't mind that at all.

Kitty got to her feet, brushed the sand from her sweatpants,

and phased back into the lighthouse. She had a goal. Now all she

had to do was catch up with Pete.

Pete Wisdom's consciousness painfully and reluctantly shoved

its way up through five different layers of natural and induced

sleep. Pete Wisdom's ears registered the ringing of the phone, the

click of the answering machine, the machine's pre-recorded

message, and the caller's reply.

"Oh, dang. Look, you horrible English bum, I called W.H.O.

and you weren't there and it looks like you're not home either so

whenever you DO decide to return to your pit, give me a call,

OK?"

Pete Wisdom's eyes sprang open as Pete Wisdom's legs nearly

disjointed themselves trying to make it to the phone ahead of the

rest of Pete Wisdom. Ignoring his brain's reminders that this was

supposed to be a cooperative effort on the part of the mind and

body, most of Pete Wisdom got tangled up in his bed-sheets,

struggled into the living room, tripped, and collided with the

table on which the phone and derelict answering machine were

kept. The phone bounced off of said table and landed upon Pete

Wisdom's head with a loud clang.

"Pete?" The voice from the answering machine was now worried

and somewhat suspicious. "What's going on?"

After heavy negotiations with his nervous system, Pete

Wisdom managed to convince one of his hands that grasping the

receiver and bringing it to his dry, coated lips was a good

thing. Getting his lips and tongue to form coherent words was

another ball of wax, however.

"Uggnnhh..."

On the other end of the line, Kitty Pryde held the receiver away from her ear for a moment. She was fairly sure that the person on the phone was Pete, but the sound that had registered was reminiscent of a dying baboon.

"Pete, are you OK?"

"Ana bleedin' g'mornin' t'you too, Pryde. No, I ain't 'kay,

neither. Awfeel bloody 'orrible." Kitty's brow wrinkled. Pete's

normally growled or muttered speech was hard enough to decipher

without the slurring. "Feels like some sawdistic wanker walked

through me ear an' beat tha' eva-lovin' shit outta me from the

inside. Come over and take care of me, will ya?"

Shadowcat blinked at that forthright invitation. Pete MUST

have been sick if he actually wanted someone to come over and

nurse him. Feeling suddenly unsettled, she hung up.

And, back in his pit, Pete Wisdom's consciousness decided

that this wasn't worth hanging around for and burrowed back into

its nice, warm, dark void.

We should have taken the Blackbird...

Don't start with me, Fuzzy! Rachel sent her irritated

thoughts winging Kurt's way. I like Tom and I'm not going to

some demented fighter-pilot. The silent conversation didn't

interrupt the fiery telepath's dialogue with her date for an

instant.

But the subway? Isn't this taking things just a tad too

far? Nightcrawler had been trying to humor Rachel ever since she

had insisted that they act as normal as possible, but he was

starting to feel very put-upon, even if wearing his supposedly low-profile trenchcoat and fedora had been his idea. Rachel had insisted on using her psi-abilities to disguise the blue fur covering his face as well, and that reminded him uncomfortably of the image inducer he'd hidden his features behind in Westchester. He noticed that the unusually alert lap-dog that had been eyeing the agitated flick of Kurt's tail under his trenchcoat for several minutes was now standing rigidly in its mistress' lap as if preparing for attack. Kurt quickly willed his twitching appendage into stillness.

Amanda noted her boyfriend's discomfort. "Oh, what a little darling!" she crooned to the elderly woman holding onto the yapping little beast. "May I hold him?" Amanda had not been thrilled about Rachel's mind-illusions or Kurt's attempts to hide his unique features, but had held her tongue about it. She usually kept an eye open for more devious ways of expressing her displeasure.

The woman was either near-sighted or perhaps she had simply

not noticed the reason for her doggie's agitation. She placed the

ill-tempered canine on Amanda's lap with a smile and a cheery "Of

course, miss."

The wriggling, snarling, animated mop kept trying his

dead-level best to pounce onto Kurt's lap and sink teeth into

fur-smelling flesh, but Amanda kept it gently restrained. Plans of

mutant-mauling thwarted, the dog burst into another torrent of

sharp barks.

"Oh, my!" gushed the owner, "He must like you! Isn't he a

love?"

Amanda beamed winningly. "Oh, he's darling. I wish I had

one JUST like him." If looks could kill, Kurt would have

seriously considered putting his lover in an intensive care unit.

"Here's our stop," called Tom. "All ashore that's going

ashore." He smiled timidly, as if unsure about the actual level

of humor in his own joke. Rachel grinned back at Tom, assuring

him that he hadn't made an utter fool of himself, and he breathed

an inward sigh of relief. Though Kurt and Amanda joining their expedition on such short notice had put Tom a little off balance, that wasn't what made the slightly built young man so unsure. It was Rachel. He certainly liked her, but he didn't understand why she liked him.

Tom was a very well-grounded, shy person and quite honest

with himself. He was aware that, while not ugly, he certainly

wasn't what one could consider a "catch". Nor was he prestigious

in any way. It couldn't possibly be money attracting Rachel to him, either; his part-time job and a partial scholarship paid for his

schooling at the local college, but other than that, he and his

Mum were just getting by. He was just an average guy, and he

couldn't understand why this stunning woman was at all

interested in him. Thoughts for another time. For now he was

content just to keep company with this beautiful, wonderfully

alive creature and ask about the why's and how's later.

Amanda handed the lady her dog and stood. "Thank you so

much," she said with another smile. Then she brushed past Kurt

and followed Tom and Rachel.

With a frustrated sigh, Kurt hurried after her. Once at

Amanda's side, he decided to give her a piece of his mind.

"You are acting like a child."

"And you're being a jerk!"

"Amanda, I know you don't approve of this, but it's not because I'm ashamed. Rachel..."

"It's not that!"

"Then what?" Amanda opened her mouth, but Kurt cut her

off quickly. "And don't tell me I know what I did, because I

don't!"

"I don't appreciate being dragged into an argument that I

have nothing to do with," Amanda hissed.

"But that was days ago! And I apologized."

"And you still don't understand why I'm so upset!"

"I do so!"

"Do not!"

'That's the problem with growing up with the person you fall

in love with,' thought Nightcrawler. 'Getting into childish

arguments actually induces nostalgia.' The two of them walked

in sullen silence for almost a block. Kurt broke it.

"Amanda," he sighed, "I don't want to fight with you. I'm

sorry if you're still upset with me, but I'm not going to beg

forgiveness."

"I don't expect you to. That's the bit you're going to have

to pull on Kitty."

"I'll settle with Katzchen when she's in a more reasonable

mood." The four of them crossed another street, Rachel and Tom

still walking ahead, Kurt and Amanda still hanging back and

trying to look as if they really weren't arguing.

"Newsflash, Blue. This isn't something that'll just blow

over. She's as reasonable as she's going to get as far as this is

concerned and I don't blame her."

"Was? But you've seen what a boor this Wisdom is! He's..."

"The first man to show serious interest in Kitty as a woman

since Peter dumped her, and that's what matters to her right now.

I hardly know the guy and neither do you. We're in no position to

render judgement on him. Kitty is. She's been around him more than the rest of us, and even worked with him. Ergo, she must see something in him or she wouldn't be bothered with all of this hassle.

"Anyway," Amanda continued, "if you try keeping her away

from Pete, she'll just try that much harder to meet with him.

Just trust her in this."

Kurt was unconvinced. "And if she gets hurt?"

"She got over Peter, didn't she?"

Though Kurt still did not look convinced, he did concede the

point to her. "All right, all right. I will try to ease up on

Kitty's... infatuation. You have my word as a gentleman."

"Good."

"Still angry with me?"

"Well..." Amanda considered. "No. At least, not as much."

"Oh, that's comforting."

"Finally! Peace!"

"How's that?"

Rachel blinked. She hadn't realized that she'd spoken aloud.

"Oh, Kurt and Amanda were squabbling like a couple of nasty kids.

Didn't you hear them?" Ok, so it wasn't entirely true. It wasn't

a lie, though and she wasn't about to tell Tom that she'd been

eavesdropping on the surface thoughts of her friends.

"I'm afraid I didn't. I was wondering how we're going to get

into the gallery before it closes for the day."

While Rachel had been monitoring Kurt and Amanda, she

hadn't noticed that they'd reached their destination.

It was the first day that the art gallery was open to the

public, and the public had shown up in droves. The line that

their little group found themselves at the end of stretched back

a good fifty yards from the building's main entrance.

"Joy," Rachel muttered. She didn't mind waiting a quarter as

much as she minded having to screen out the impatient thoughts of

the crowd around her. After two days of that sort of frustration,

even the steps that she normally took to ensure that she didn't

accidentally stumble into some total stranger's thoughts were

really getting to be a pain in the neck. "Come on guys, time to

throw our weight around."

Rachel took Tom's hand and started towards the front of the

line, half-dragging her confused date behind her. Amanda and Kurt

traded uneasy looks as Rachel projected Trust me. into their

minds, but did the less sensible thing and trailed along behind.

"But..." Tom protested, "...they're guards at the front. I

don't think they'll like us butting ahead."

"We're special people," Rachel assured him. "They won't

mind."

"Ummmm..."

"Have a little faith, will you?" All it took was a tiny

little push of her telepathic powers for Rachel to convince the

guards that she and her party were perfectly all right to let

into the gallery ahead of the others in the crowd.

"V.I.P are we?" Tom asked, as they walked down a short

passageway into the gallery itself.

Realizing how close she had come to blowing her self-imposed

cover in a moment of impatience, Ray simply muttered, "Something

like that."

"V.I.M." Kurt's playfully malicious thought popped into

Rachel's mind as he whispered the same to Amanda. The telepath

was immensely gratified when the sorceress elbowed her boyfriend in

the ribs a second later.

"Not all of us are, Fuzzy." Amanda's response was in an

equally hushed tone.

It was obvious that Rachel had her reasons for not wanting

Tom to know that she was a mutant and though neither Amanda nor Kurt understood the need for deception, they respected their friend's

wishes.

"I really appreciate this, Alistaire." Kitty was seated in

the passenger seat of Dr. Stuart's car as they drove away on the

road beside the lighthouse. "I know Pete's just awful to you most

of the time, and it's just really sweet of you to come so far out

of

your way to pick me up."

"Well, I'm not at all fond of the man," admitted Alistaire.

"But if he's as sick as you make him out to be, we should at

least see to it that he's comfortable."

As the car continued towards London, Kitty marveled at how

easy it was to talk to Alistaire now that her crush on him had

died down. He still had the annoying tendency to talk down to

her, but at least now she didn't feel as if killing him over it

was a perfectly acceptable solution. And after a couple of days

of stopping in mid-sentence whenever Kurt entered the room, it

was nice to have an uninterrupted conversation with someone. And

when the conversation lagged, Kitty didn't take it as a sign that

Alistaire found her terminally uninteresting, she just realized

that there wasn't much to say and reached for the radio. All in

all, it was a pleasant trip.

"This is the place, isn't it?"

Kitty looked at the building they had pulled up to and

phased out of the car. "Yep. Let's go."

'I hope Pete's OK...' she thought, entering the building and

dashing up the stairs. Behind her, Alistaire tried to keep pace,

but found himself being left in Kitty's proverbial dust.

Shadowcat paused at the top of the stairs and counted down

the doors to Pete's dwelling. Remembering the apartment number

didn't help much, as they'd been worn off of most of the doors,

along with most of the cheap paint.

"Fourth door on the... left?" she asked herself, walking up

to said apartment. Just to be sure, Kitty stuck her head through

the closed door. She knew right off that she'd chosen wrong. The

place was too clean.

Alistaire finally made his way to the landing just as Kitty

phased into Pete's apartment and opened the door from the inside.

His first glimpse... and whiff... of Pete's apartment left him

appalled.

"My God!" gasped the WHO scientist. "The poor chap must have

been ill for a week to let his home fall into such a state! It's

a good thing that we're here, Kitty, because this looks serious!"

Kitty bit her lip hard to suppress a giggle. "It always looks

like this, Alistaire," she finally managed.

Alistaire looked on with some worry as Kitty lifted a phone

from on top of what appeared to be a pile of dirty laundry and

prodded it with her toe. The rumpled clothing groaned and in

another second, the expression in Kitty's eyes had gone from one

of mild concern to one of major annoyance.

"All right, Wisdom! On your feet!" Without further ado, she

grabbed the collar of a trenchcoat and somehow managed to make a

form that could pass for human emerge from the mess. Mouthing

phrases that Alistaire couldn't quite catch, she guided a

rumpled, slack-jawed Pete Wisdom over to the kitchen counter and

dropped him into a chair.

"Kitty, maybe you should let me examine him..."

"Don't bother!" Kitty snapped, walking over to a cabinet and

rummaging around until she found a canister of instant coffee. "I

can smell the alcohol on him. He's hung-over." At Alistaire's

almost shocked look, Kitty simply said, "I know what a hang-over

looks like," and started boiling water.

Kitty was more sensitive about the effects of alcohol than

most people her age. Most of the adults in the X-Men had indulged

in the occasional drink in the time that Kitty had been with the

team, but only Logan had ever really gone on a drinking binge,

and never where Kitty could see him. Even then his healing factor

had neutralized most of the alcohol in his system.

So when Kitty had joined with Rachel, Meggan, Kurt, and

Brian to form Excalibur, she'd been hit rather hard by Brian's

constant intoxication. She'd also seen how Brian treated Meggan

in his drunken state and, though she didn't know the whole of it,

felt she knew enough to equate alcohol abuse to basically

insecure, emotionally immature individuals. And the thought that

she'd been considering a relationship with someone who would

probably turn out to be no better or worse than Brian made her

angry at herself and the world.

Once the water was hot enough to make a really strong cup of

coffee, Kitty halfway filled a mug with the instant stuff, added water, gave it all a quick stir, and poured the lot down Pete's throat. The

effect was really quite interesting.

"BLOODY HELL!!"

Pete catapulted from the chair, stumbled over to the sink,

threw aside a few dishes to get at the tap, and filled his mouth

with water. Instead of swallowing to cool his near-scalded

throat, he rinsed out his

mouth again and again.

"Christ, Pryde! What're you doing here and what the bloody

fuck are you playing at?" Alistaire's presence had gone and

passed

right through Pete's realm of attention without leaving much of

an impression.

"You asked me over, you stupid English bum!" Kitty responded

angrily. "Or did you get so deep in your bottle that you totally

forgot?"

"Bottle? What the ever-lovin' hell are you talking about?

I've been here sick with a cold since last night!"

"So now you're lying to me? Just how naive do you think I

am, Pete? You smell like a brewery!"

Pete lapsed into a muttered tirade against all things

female, brunette, and under five-foot-five feet in height as he tried to

collect his thoughts. "I had a few hot toddies and 'bout a bucket

o' that bleedin' cold medicine, a'right? I think that stuff's

hundred proof in itself, so a'course I smell like a soddin' gin

joint."

Kitty frowned, set her jaw, and started to head into Pete's

room. Alistaire emerged first, startling her. She hadn't even

noticed that he'd left the kitchen. The lanky scientist was

holding a coffee mug at arm's length, the handle grasped gingerly

between his thumb and forefinger. The smell of alcohol and

souring milk preceeded him.

"I think he's telling the truth, Kitty."

Kitty turned back around and really took a good look at

Pete. It was really hard to tell if he was truly under the

weather, for Pete always had rumpled clothes, unruly hair, and

several day's worth of stubble. What finally made her decide that

Pete wasn't shoveling BS at her was the fact that he wasn't

gloating about being innocent of her accusations. In fact, he was

sitting at the table with his head resting on his folded arms.

Ashamed of her suspicions, Kitty blushed clear down to her navel.

"Pete..." she said hesitantly, laying a hand on his head.

"I'm sorry."

Pete responded with a non-committal grunt.

"Really, I am."

A surly snarl.

Kitty sighed. "This is like carrying on a conversation with

Lockheed."

Pete finally lifted his head and blinked at her. "Oh, I see.

Ya come up with a clever plan t'kill me over the phone, bring Urkel

there into me home, and compare me to that bald purple rat o'

yers. Whyn't ya just shoot me in the head an' put an end to it?"

"BeCAUSE you asked me to come over here and take care of

you. And I'm going to. Not because I feel guilty about what I

said, but because I like you!"

"Oh. Well, that's all right then. So, ya gonna undress me

an' tuck me into bed?"

Alistaire choked. Kitty didn't smile. Not on the outside

anyway.

"You wish, Wisdom."

"Katherine, I must protest." Alistaire spoke up. "I can't,

in good conscience, leave you here alone with him."

"I can take care of myself, Alistaire."

"Be that as it may, I won't allow it. We've determined that

Mr. Wisdom isn't in any real danger, so there's no need for you

to stay cooped up in this dreary hole all day."

Kitty started to say something impolite about Alistaire's

parentage, when an idea struck her. "You're absolutely right."

"I am?"

"He is?"

"Yep. What Pete needs is fresh air and TLC."

Pete was looking uncomfortable by this point. "Wait one

damned second. What was that first part again?"

Kitty grabbed Pete's hands and helped him to his feet. "Oh,

don't be so silly. Don't the English consider sea-air the

universal remedy?"

"How the bloody hell should I know? I hate fresh air. An'

what are you plannin' t'do anyway? Toss me in the drink?"

Comprehension. Pete pulled away from Kitty, landed on his butt,

and folded his arms over his chest. "Oh, no. No bloody fuckin'

way! I ain't venturin' into that pit o' fascists again an' you

can't make me!"

"Alistaire, grab his feet."

A short time later, Pete's neighbors were greeted to a royal

ruckus out in the hall.

"Dammit, Stuart! I'll get even with you for this an' just

see if I don't!"

"He's only following orders, Pete."

"An' when did you become a bleedin' psi, Pryde? He's

enjoyin' this! An' don't you look so smug, either! As soon as I

get out of this, you're both gonna need police protection!"

"I didn't know you could use your power like this, Kitty."

"Well, necessity is the mother of invention. Pete, if you

don't stop wiggling, you're going to wind up with your hands

phased into your knees."

"That'll give me somethin' t'add t'the kidnappin' charges,

then! Someone get out here! I'm bein' shangheid!"

Most listened until the tirade ended with the sound of a car

door slamming shut, smiled, and went on about their business. The

remainder got to work on thank-you cards, presuming that the

landlord had finally taken action against the source of their

complaints.

The morning had dawned as a foggy, drizzly depressing thing

in County Sligo, Ireland. The sun had sulked behind a cloak of

gray clouds, refusing to peek through and spare the derelict

monastery below a single direct ray of his light. The pale young

man hovering above the stone floor of his room had thought

nothing of it. Mornings were often gray here.

Now, a few hours later, the sun's mood had grown a bit more

charitable and rays of light were starting to break up the fog.

The warmth and light broke the depressing blanket into a thin

mist, draping the land in a dreamy haze instead of blotting it out.

It was usually during times like these that the latest Feron in a

long line of Ferons grew restless.

It was at times like these that the outside called to him,

promising a different peace from the usual musty near-silence

that dominated the inside of the monastery. But these longings

were always held in place by a discipline learned early in life

and a heritage that had been his before he'd ever been born. The

young mystic could never set his bare feet upon the ground, not

until he was prepared to call upon the Phoenix force and bind it

to himself. To protect against accidents of that nature, Feron's

feet were kept bound in the skin of the mystic black boar, as

they had been all of his life.

Feron denied that this heritage imprisoned and isolated him.

To be trained to become a host of the Phoenix, a force of the

cosmos and of life itself, was a glorious destiny. Bu no matter

what words he used to describe his purpose in life, a wisp of

bitterness would invariably curl into his mind. Those thoughts

and feelings made him uneasy, and Feron would seek to bury his

denied discontent in meditation or study or just counting and

committing to memory the tiny imperfections in the stone that

made up the ceiling. Anything to keep his mind occupied.

Today, he hovered above the floor, immersed in a tome. There

had been no discontent today, such were the demands made upon his

mind just to keep pace with and comprehend the hectic, disjointed

creation of this writer. Brother Francis had suggested-- never

commanded, for no one ever issued a command to Feron, who could

one day be host of the Phoenix-- that he read this, simply for a

change of pace.

"Interesting," he muttered, marking his place with his thumb

and flipping the book over to read the author and title again.

"'Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass.' Both by Lewis

Carroll. This man must have been hovering on the very brink of

insanity... yet something compels me to read more." The poetry

seemed to snake up from the page and run itself across the

mystic's field of vision.

''Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought--

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffush thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! one, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

He chortled in his joy.

''Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"It seems rather pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it seems rather hard to understand!"(You see she didn't like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all...)'

"Well, that does make two of us Alice," admitted the reader

with a grin.

Before Feron could decide if he should read further or spend

his time in a more worthwhile pursuit, chaos broke out in the

monastery. Voices normally kept in low, pleasant tones, droning

prayer, or awed whispers were raised in screams of surprise or

sheer terror.

"What?" Concentration shattered, both the book and Feron

fell to the floor. The young mystic leapt up and rushed towards

the source of the disturbance. He arrived in the main hall in

time to see a green, eight-foot-tall chitinous creature swallow

Brother Jeffery.

'Jabberwock... no, don't be a fool! That's a story. Don't just

stand there like a post! Do something!'

"Whatever you are, you shall pay for this intrusion!" Feron

raised his hands, made a quick gesture and tossed a ball of

light-force at the creature. It missed and struck a squat,

muscular frog-faced creature that had been hidden behind the

monster's thorax. The frog-face in skin-tight red and black

clothing was bowled over and slammed into a wall. The creature

blinked once and shook off the blow as if it were nothing.

"Yup, Bodybag, that's the one Gatecrasher sent us here for.

Hope ya saved room." The taller creature hissed and advanced.

Feron steeled himself for battle, conjuring more powerful

missiles... when suddenly his mind expanded, kaleidoscoped,

encompassed more than it was ever intended to, and

disintegrated.

Thug watched as Scatterbrain brought down the Technet's

intended target. The vacant-looking female with the long, spindly

legs formed of psychedelic light floated away from

the inert, green-clad form and went after the monks. She fed on

emotions, the more intense the emotions, the better she "ate."

And the terrified monks were a virtual smorgasbord for the mute

alien. Thug, used to the oddities of his fellow bounty hunters,

simply pointed out Feron to Bodybag.

"Then go to it."

The huge insectiod stepped forward, only to be blocked by a

balding, bearded monk.

"Begone foul creatures!" The man was clearly terrified of

the beast towering over him, but brandished his staff in defiance

of

it and its cohorts. "You shall not have the boy without besting

me!"

Thug sighed. He knew Gatecrasher had other things to be

doing, but he wished the leader of their band had come along on

this assignment. Her size and muscle were enough to dissuade most

hecklers. Pound for pound, Thug was stronger than she, but he was

also smaller and less imposing.

"We ain't be having time for this. 'Im too, 'Bag."

Bodybag dipped its head and bit once. The staff the monk had

been wielding dropped to the ground in two pieces. Then the huge

alien gripped the struggling man, pinning his arms to his sides,

and opened his chitin-ridged mouth wide, engulfing the top half

of its prey's head. A slight tremor went through the creature's

body as a viscous pale-green liquid spewed from Bodybag's jaws

and coursed over the monk, soaking him in a matter of seconds.

The

combination of natural narcotic and anesthetic took the fight

out of the prey and made it easier to get down as Bodybag

swallowed it whole. A second later, the monk was visible as yet

another membrane-encased bulge on the alien's back.

Without having to be told again, the alien picked up the

unconscious target and gave him the same treatment.

"Great job. Now, let's get out of here before sommat else

happens." Nothing happened. "Lizard, teleport us now 'fore I

crush your noggin like a nut." And as quickly... quicker

actually... as they had entered the monastery, the Technet

vacated it, leaving confused monks and utter chaos in their wake.

While Thomas and Rachel were busy examining the sculpture

garden Kurt and Amanda paced their way through the canvas-lined

walls of the gallery. Aside from

ridiculing the modern art ("Two lines and a handprint on a

twelve-foot background? That's art?"), Amanda didn't seem to have

much interest in being there. Kurt had to admit, the theatre and

the art gallery within a few days of each other had him a bit

burned out on culture as well. But things had been so tense at

the lighthouse lately that just about anyplace else was a welcome

change. He got so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn't

notice when Amanda stopped short and glued her eyes to a picture.

"Kurt, look at this."

He gave it a quick look. The painting was entitled "Lovers

Interrupted". It showed a distant view of a couple kissing by a

lake in the moonlight. In the foreground, moonlight gleamed off of

what appeared to be a bald head. The impression given was that of

two young people having been caught at something

not-quite-approved-of by a parental figure.

"Very nice," Kurt commented with a grin. "Reminds me of when

we were younger."

"Speak for yourself, Father Time."

"I'm laughing on the inside. Really. A rather unusual palette, don't you think?"

Amanda got the most peculiar look on her face. "Kurt, that

head is purple. And that black-haired guy kissing the blonde has

blue skin." Her face went slack in total surprise. She blinked.

"Oh, gods... Kurt, do you know what this is a painting of?"

"I assume you mean something other than the obvious."

"Exactly. Look at it. I mean, really look."

More to humor her than anything else, he did. "It does

remind me of that night when..." He trailed off. If he stopped

looking at the unusual skin-tones of the people on the canvas as

a creative use of color and perceived it as reality, the picture

did take on a new meaning.

"That night when we were attacked by Sentinels," Amanda

finished for him.

"But that's impossible. You and I were the only ones there.

Who else could know about it?"

"Another X-Man. How many super-heroes-turned-artists do you

know, Blue?"

Kurt's eyes trailed down to the signature in the lower right corner of the canvas, blinked, and smacked his forehead. "Dummkoff! This is one of Piotr's paintings!" He couldn't help but smile. "Wunderbar."

"A second ago it was just nice." Amanda's voice held playful

reproach.

"That was before I knew I was in it."

Amanda was reading the card on the stand in front of the

picture. Some of the other works by up-and-coming artists

had similar cards.

"He's here."

"Piotr?"

She nodded. "Until noon. Giving his art European exposure, I

guess."

"I think we should put in an appearance. Just to see how

Colossus is adapting to life outside of the X-Men."

Amanda nodded. "I haven't seen Peter in ages. It'll be nice

to see how he's doing." Amanda's face clouded for an instant, and

Kurt knew she was thinking about Betsy Wilford, who'd been

Piotr's girlfriend for a short while. Kurt had never been able to

convince his lady-love that she wasn't responsible for the deaths

of Betsy and her roommate, Wendy. He decided that bringing up the

topic now could only make things worse and simply put an arm

around her waist by way of comfort.

"It's eleven thirty now and this place is crowded," he said

quietly. "Shall we?"

"If I say no, will it matter?" Her manner and voice were

light, but the playfulness from a moment before was dulled down

to almost nothing.

"Well, of course I wouldn't drag you along, but the urge to

play Kitty's Jimmy Buffet albums at top volume might strike me

once we return home."

"You'd suffer too."

Kurt said nothing, but began to hum "Cheeseburger in

Paradise."

"OK, enough!" Amanda laughed. "You win! Let's go find him

already."

Peter Nicholas, formerly Colossus of the X-Men, was on the

verge of passing out from sheer relief. His paintings had drawn

nothing but praise the entire morning and this settled an old

fear that had recently taken on a new dimension. The young

Russian had always feared that his work was simply not good

enough to be called art. His success in America had toned down

those misgivings somewhat, but had not erased them. After all,

even some Americans agreed that their contributions to western culture was severely lacking in good taste. The chance to show his work in Europe had been met with outward enthusiasm and inner panic. Suppose they considered his painting to be little more than degenerate

American pop-art? What if the critics liked it, but the viewing

public laughed him out of the country?

But it had not happened that way. With the exception of a

critic who claimed that there had not been an artist worthy of

the title since Renoir, his work had been considered a major

success by all. Peter could not have been happier if he'd just

witnessed the birth of his first child. Today, he was an artist.

"Careful, mein freund," a familiar voice at his shoulder

cautioned. "If that smile gets any wider, your face will pull

apart at the seams."

"Who is-?" He turned, recognized the face under the

low-brimmed hat, and crushed the breath out of his former

teammate

with a bearhug. "Kurt! Tovarish, it is wonderful to see you!"

"Likewise, Pio... Peter."

"Male bonding, the stuff fraternities are made of," remarked

the woman who had just avoided being caught up in the massive

young Russian's hug.

"Amanda!" Kurt managed to land on his feet as Peter dropped

him and treated Amanda to the same enthusiastic greeting. "I did

not know that you had joined Excalibur!"

"It's a long story," she managed.

"One I will insist upon hearing. Tell me, is Katya here as

well?"

Kurt shook his head. "Kitty is back at the lighthouse, as is

Meggan."

"I insist on seeing them both before I leave for the next

show. My time here is almost out, so it will be no

inconvenience."

'For you maybe,' thought the sorceress, as Kurt spewed his

views on how wonderful it would be to have Peter visit. 'But I

don't know about Kitty.' Amanda gave herself a mental shake 'Oh,

come on, Sefton. You said so yourself, she got over him. And if

Kitty doesn't want Kurt looking out for her, I doubt she'll

welcome you poking your nose into things.'

Kurt gave Rachel a mental page, letting her know that they

were going to be leaving and wanting to know if she and Tom cared

to join them.

Rachel wasn't much interested. She barely remembered Colossus, and didn't know squat about Peter Nicholas except that he had once been an X-Man.

But tell him I said hi. That level of cloying sweetness in

a mental response from Rachel was just too nice to be genuine.

Kurt got the impression that she didn't welcome the interruption

of her conversation with Tom in the least.

"Rachel won't be joining us," he relayed to the others.

"Think you can handle the transportation, liebchen?"

"I'd rather not, with all of these people around. Can we

find a place where a big ball of magical energy won't be quite so

conspicuous?"

"There is an unoccupied storeroom to the back," offered

Peter. "It contains nothing except some rejected sculpture. It

should be empty."

"Sounds perfect," said Amanda. "Let's go."

Pete Wisdom was not happy, but that was just about normal

for him. What was not normal in the least was Pete being bundled

up in blankets on the sofa in Excalibur's living room with a

hot-water bottle precariously balanced on his forehead and a

thermometer under his tongue.

"Ruhddy murphle rhats," he muttered at the dragons perched

on the back of the sofa. Neither one looked particularly glad to

see him, though Bertha was at least being civil.

"That's not a nice thing to say about anything that can

slow-roast you, Petey." Keesha slipped the glass instrument from

between Pete's lips and looked at it. "One-hundred degrees even."

"Check the other side, ya daft..." Pete interrupted himself with a loud sneeze.

"Oh, sorry." Keesha turned the thermometer over and squinted at the Celsius scale. "Thirty seven point sevent-eeeee... Heck with it. Thirty eight. I think you'll live."

"Tell that t'Pryde. An' while yer at it, tell her I ain't

drinkin' no more damned tea 'less she caves in and puts some

scotch in it."

"That's what you said two mugs ago."

"I bloody well mean it this time!"

"Oh, chill. She's not even making tea right now."

"Good."

"That's chicken soup if ever I smelt it."

Pete snorted. "At least someone's nose is workin'."

Keesha reached down and brought up a box of Kleenex from one

of the many heaped around the couch. "Here. Make sure that all

the trees that sacrificed themselves to make this tissue did not

die in vain."

Pete blew his nose and then gave the red-skinned girl a sour

look. "You're one o' those tree huggin' eco-terrorists, then?"

"Actually, I picked some of that up from Kitty. She's so

socially conscious that I could just choke her for it. Listen to

this, she wants me to write a paper justifying things like the

FOH and SLAM. Can you think of anything dumber?"

Pete ignored the last question. "So how far along have you

gotten?"

"I'm not doing it."

"Oh, now that's bloody smart."

Keesha glared at Kitty's patient. "Why write a paper when I

can sum it up in two words?"

"Those words bein'?

"'They're assholes.'"

"Why's that, you think?" Pete asked.

"They either learned it or they were born that way! How

should I know?"

Kitty walked into the room, bearing a tray with a steaming

bowl of soup on it. Lockheed immediately tried to land on the

edge, but his friend shooed him away. "Scat, dragon. What are you

two talking about?"

If it had been anyone else, either Keesha or Pete would have

answered "Assholes" without a second thought. But, whether or not

Pete and Kitty would admit it just yet, Kitty was Pete's

girlfriend, meaning that Pete wouldn't say it and Keesha knew

better than to say it when she was outnumbered by people with

missiles near at hand.

"Just Scott's paper," answered Pete. "An' I'm not eatin'

that."

"Oh, yes you are."

"Ever seen the inside of a chicken processin' plant, luv?"

"Well, no..."

"If you had, you'd be pourin' that liquid shit down the

sink."

Kitty didn't give in. "Oh, so suddenly the devourer of

kidney pie and scotch eggs is concerned about what goes into his

mouth. Besides, this stuff was boiling less than five minutes

ago. It's fine. Eat."

Pete mumbled vague threats as he picked up the spoon, but

obeyed Kitty's commands. To keep his consumption of unidentified

chicken bits down to a minimum, he used Keesha's homework as a conversation topic and excuse to keep his tongue wagging as much as possible. He explained to his reluctant class of one that the average worker tended to be leery of mutants once the neighbor's kid accidentally blew his house to matchwood, or maybe just resentful because some barmy costumed git caused five-million dollars worth of damage to public property in the county seat, and the repair bill for that would eventually come out of the rate-payer's pocket in some form or other.

Keesha digested this for about five seconds and was

formulating a rebuttal when the lighthouse door swung open.

"Uh-oh," she grinned, flopping onto her back. "It's the enemy,

blue fur and all. Better button those lips, 'Cat."

Kitty tossed a cushion at her friend and called over to her

team-mates in the next room. "Did everything turn out OK, guys?

How was the gallery?"

"I think," answered a familiar voice, "that they enjoyed it

very much, Katya." Kitty's eyes snapped open as Peter, followed

by Kurt and Amanda, entered the room. They'd expected her

surprise, but Keesha's reaction caught everyone off guard. She

snatched the bowl of soup out of Pete's hands and flung it full

force at the muscular Russian. Amanda managed to erect a shield

before bowl or broth could land on any of them. Without a word to

anyone, Keesha turned and fled down the basement stairs as the

bowl shattered.

"Do I know that girl?" Peter asked, as Amanda lowered the

shield and went after the Morlock. "She seems familiar somehow."

"I doubt it," Kitty responded automatically. "Peter, what

are you doing here?"

"Wisdom," Kurt asked as he noticed the rumpled specimen on the couch, "what are you doing here?"

"Don't look at me, mate. Wasn't my idea."

"I asked him over, Kurt."

"'Asked?' You bloody well did not! You phased me arms though

me legs and dragged me out into the street!"

"You what?" The question came from both Wagner and Nicholas

at the same time.

Kitty split her attention between welcoming her former

team-mate and chastising Pete. "Nothing, Piotr. It's so good to

see you!" She turned back to Pete. "You were being stubborn! And

it was the only way to keep Alistaire from bundling me back over

here and barring the door, so stop complaining."

"I ain't complainin', Pryde, I was just givin' yer champion

'ere the full story so I can leave here with me bollocks intact."

"How did you know Peter and I--?"

"HIM?! I was talkin' about Wagner!"

Kurt tried to make some sense of the situation and failed

miserably. "Could ONE person please try to explain?"

"I called Pete and it sounded like he was on his

deathbed..."

"...so she went an' picked up the lost Stooge an' invaded me

flat..."

"...and he really didn't look as if he should be left alone

without a baby gate over the stairs..."

"...an' next thing I know I'm bein' tossed in the back of a

car..."

"...and he really is behaving himself, Kurt, so is it OK if

he stays for a while?" Until the words left her mouth, Kitty

hadn't realized that having her former boyfriend and her current

crush under the same roof would be a problem. Then she began to

wonder if having Pete stay a while was such a good idea.

'Well, it's not like I knew Colossus... excuse me... Peter

Nicholas was coming over. I guess I'll manage. How bad could

things turn out?'

"Alysande! You come out from under there right this instant, young

lady!"

"She doesn't care for this much."

"That obvious, is it?" Alysdane Stuart crouched down by her

living-room couch and took a look at her godchild. The Alsatian

was neither snarling nor cowering, she was simply refusing to

cooperate. If dogs could sulk, she was doing it.

Across from the couch, on one of three armchairs, Rachel

Summers watched the activity with a mixture of amusement and

annoyance. She'd agreed to try and coax Alysande out of her shell

(or fur) some time before she'd made her date with Tom, and

hadn't expected any conflict between the two activities. But she

also hadn't anticipated how much she'd enjoy actually spending

time with young Mr. Jones. Even walking around a garden filled

with sculptures of nude decapitated people or chunks of welded

metal that looked like rejects from the scrapheap became

interesting when Tom took time to tell her his opinion of them or

share in her own.

'Of course, I don't HAVE to ask him for his opinion,' Rachel

thought for the dozenth time. But she'd taken to using her

telepathy-- save for the illusions she used to cover her facial

scars-- only when she wasn't around Tom or his mother. It

was a mixture of being able to pretend that she hadn't lived

through hell and watched everyone she loved die, that she was just

another girl out on a date, and an instinctive reaction to hide

the fact that she was a mutant, something that carried a stigma

of varying degrees, no matter where you went.

With minor effort, Rachel brought herself back to the

situation at hand. Alysande was still under the couch, competing

with the dust bunnies for valuable space.

Brigadier Stuart gave a disgusted sigh and rose to a

kneeling position. "I don't suppose you can just do what you have

to with her under there?"

Rachel shook her head. "I've explained things to her as best

I can. She has to agree to this. We can't force her to submit to

having me in her mind or take a lack of resistance as assent."

Alysdane looked back at the couch. There was a black tail-tip

sticking out from under it and she was having to squelch the urge

to grab it and haul her godchild out to face her humanity again.

"Think of it, Brigadier," Rachel went on. "Under Hellfire Club

telepaths, Alysande probably went through at least ten instances

of mental rape. Probably more. Do you think a near-stranger doing

the same thing will improve the situation?"

The dark-haired woman's shoulders slumped. "No, of course it

won't." The Brigadier took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

"It's just hard to know what she was like before... and find that

she might not even want to go back to it. That she might not be

able to. I lose patience with her for that, and then I feel

guilty for it because she's the one suffering though this, not

me."

"Yes, you are. Just in a different way." Rachel eavesdropped

on the young mutant's thoughts for a moment. "She's thinking

it over. How's she adjusting to staying home by herself?"

"Well, the first three days she simply hid under my bed

until I got home and nearly knocked me over when I did. Then she

started trying to barricade the door by pushing the living-room

furniture around at night. Lately, she's taken to giving me the

silent treatment for about half an hour after I get back. I

really think..." She paused as Alysande shifted her position

under the couch, but didn't emerge. "I really think that she

enjoys coming up with new ways to make it difficult for me to

leave home." There was a thud from the couch as the healthy young

dog managed to shove it away from her godmother. The Brigadier

spoke louder. "Much as I love her, she can be a pest!"

Rachel grinned and scanned Alysande's thoughts again.

"She's coming out." And so she was, albeit very slowly. It was

obvious that any attempt to rush her progress would send the

furry mutant back under the furniture. It took almost a minute

before the black-and-tan Alsatian stood fully clear of her hiding

place. "Made up your mind?" Rachel could have sent the question

straight to the dog, but opted to keep things out in the open.

Minutes ticked by with no response.

The Brigadier finally spoke up. "Well?"

"She doesn't like the idea, but she's afraid you'll be...

upset if she doesn't go through with it." Actually, the concept

in Alysande's mind had been the fear that she'd be turned out, but

Rachel didn't think Alysdane needed to hear that.

"Oh, you silly little..." Alysdane reached over and hugged

her visibly nervous godchild. "No, I won't be angry," she murmured. "I

just want you to be helped."

Rachel wasn't paying much attention to the scene before her,

really. She was trying to keep track of the younger girl's

thoughts and having a frustrating time doing so. The first time

she'd tried to get into the girl's mind, it had been like

slamming into the mental equivalent of a brick wall. At the time,

Rachel had thought that the younger mutant's mind was naturally

shielded, but that had turned out to be a premature assessment.

She wondered if maybe this was another aspect of Alysande's

powers, but it seemed more likely that Alysande's constant exposure

to powerful telepaths had simply allowed her to build stronger

mental defenses than most. That would have been a good thing if

those barriers hadn't kept popping up while Rachel was trying to

hold a telepathic conversation with her.

Alysande lifted her head and looked over at Rachel. Their

eyes met, and Rachel felt the mental blocks lower one by one. The

first clear, directed thought she'd ever heard from Alysande

floated across the thin link she'd managed to forge between them.

'I'm waiting.'

'This could have been worse,' Kitty reflected as she gazed

out over the placid stretch of water between the lighthouse and

the shore. 'This could have been so much worse.' She turned her

gaze to the man sitting beside her on the lighthouse's beach.

The visit had gone as well as could be expected thus far.

Keesha had refused to emerge from the basement or give Amanda a

reason for her assault with a deadly food item. Pete hadn't been

very cordial after realizing that the tall, dark-haired, handsome

stranger in the room was Kitty's former beau, but his muttered

remarks had been ignored for the most part. Lockheed had

apparently remembered the man formerly known as Colossus, and had

been reasonably friendly, while Bertha had simply made sure all

was well before dropping off into a light doze.

As for Kitty, Kurt, Amanda, and Peter, they had spent

several enjoyable hours reminiscing over old stories and filling

each other in on what had happened since they'd last met. It had

been almost like old times. Movement from her companion brought

Kitty back to the present.

Even sitting, Peter Nicholas towered above the slender

Shadowcat. His blue eyes lingered on the view for several more

seconds before turning to gaze down on her. His lips curved into

a smile, the almost-boyish smile that Kitty remembered falling in

love with. For a second, she considered kissing him, but memories

of that same love being struck down sobered her romantic notions

quickly. Maybe a part of her... a part stronger than she'd like

to admit... still had those sorts of feelings for this man but

even if she'd been willing to succumb to them, she just didn't

feel that it would be worth pursuing. Her recently dissolved crush on Alistaire demonstrated that such feelings were hardly as permanant as they seemed. It made her realize it was time to stop daydreaming about her connection with Peter.

"So, what's up?" she asked, breaking the silence. "You said

you had something we needed to talk about...?"

"Da." But his gaze turned towards the horizon again. "This

is a beautiful place, Katya."

"It has its charms," she agreed.

"A beautiful place," he repeated, "but it seems so lonely,

so isolated. Do you find it so?"

"It's not bad, really. Ray or Amanda can take any of us to the

mainland without much trouble. Or if they're busy, there's always

the aircraft..."

"Are YOU lonely, Katya?" he interrupted her.

Kitty frowned. Lonely? As crowded as the lighthouse was?

"No, of course not."

"I am." The admission was mostly neutral, but a slight tone

of genuine longing tinged it. "I am very lonely. I cannot return home, so I am isolated from my family. I have no one to share my life with

me back in America."

'So he never found Callisto,' Kitty thought sadly.

"I'm sorry to hear that," she said softly. "I wish there was

something I could do."

"There is. Come back with me."

Kitty blinked. It was too ridiculous to be right. She must have misheard. "What?"

"You hold American citizenship, it would be no trouble for

you to return."

"Wait a minute, Peter... is there trouble?" His mention of

her citizenship made her think that maybe there was a problem

with his own. Maybe his green card had expired or something...

He smiled again and took one of her hands in his. "Only the

troubles of the heart. Listen to me, Katya. I know that I treated

you badly at the Professor's funeral, but you must understand...

my mind..." He fumbled and Kitty found herself providing words

for him.

"The mental shock," she prompted, wondering why Peter wouldn't meet her eyes.

"Yes. The mental shock that came from being the Shadow

King's pawn, the loss of Callisto, the Professor's death... it

was too much. I could not let myself feel, for fear of breaking

down. But it is past. I have come to terms with it and taken time

to re-examine my life."

He slipped his free hand under her chin and tilted her head

upward so that their eyes met, if only for an instant before his gaze slid away again. "The worst mistake I ever made was letting you slip away from me. I would be a fool to let it happen again. Come back to me, my Katya."

Kitty found herself all but holding her breath... but

something was wrong. For months after their break-up, she'd

dreamt of a moment like this, but now that it was here, she

didn't know if she wanted it. For one thing, she had a strong suspicion that Peter was just telling her what he thought she wanted to hear. For another, Pete Wisdom, not a totally unwelcome presence, kept coming into her thoughts.

"Peter... I don't know what to say."

"Say yes."

She phased her hands out of his. "It's not that easy. I have

a life here. I have a responsibility to Excalibur. Even if I wanted to leave the team, I'd want to go to college or maybe go right to a job. You can't just show up out of the blue, expect me to drop it all, move back to the States with you."

"I know this is sudden, Katya, but there will never be a

better opportunity. I know that you have helped found a new team

here, and I could not be prouder of you, but surely they will not

stand in the way of our happiness."

Kitty found herself becoming slightly annoyed and not just at Peter's assumption that he was the best thing for her. Everything that he had said so far had been too smooth, as if it had been rehearsed. She wondered if maybe it had been. "Until a few weeks before the funeral, I had no idea you... or any of the X-Men... were even alive. Not one of you made any effort to dissuade us of that notion either."

Peter eyes widened slightly. "It was not my decision to

make," he sputtered defensively, "Ororo..."

"Let me finish. I don't blame you... not much anyway. But

there's still some resentment in me, Peter, and not just from

that. I can't even think of building a life with you until I can

trust you again. Let's just keep in touch, OK? We'll see how

things go from there."

Kitty was feeling rather pleased with herself for not

letting her emotions get the upper hand. Surely Peter would see

the reason behind her words and be as understanding...

"Katya, what can time accomplish? Either we love each other

or we do not." A desperate tone crept began to ooze into his

voice. "I will give you anything within my reach, Katya. You do

not need to stay here because of Braddock's money, I have my own. I

will write my parents and ask them to send Illyana to America. I know I can convince them to do this. She can be as your daughter if you wish. Anything you ask, if you will only say yes!"

Kitty felt a flash of anger surge through her. How DARE he use Illyana as a bribe to try and coerce her into agreeing to some half-baked marriage proposal? It had been his own faked death that had finally caused his sister to give in to the darkness in her soul. That submission had driven the girl mad, eventually resulting in her being youthened back into a child... and had cost Kitty her best friend. Now he was trying to use her as a bargaining chip! How dare he play with her emotions like this?

"I said no, Peter!" She took a deep breath and exhaled, over

and over, trying to calm herself. She barely succeeded. "Let's go

back inside. The others will wonder what happened to us." Shadowcat turned and began walking back towards the lighthouse.

"Please wait..."

Kitty sighed deeply. "Peter, why are you doing this? Why can't you just move on? It must have been hard losing Callisto like you did, but there are other women in the world."

"Because they are not you. They do not have your beauty. When I went to Callisto in the old tunnels she was not the same. She was scarred, ugly..."

"That has got to be the... the most awful thing I've ever heard in my life!" Kitty's face flushed, not in embarrassment, but in outrage. "You don't love her because she's not some super-model?"

Peter crossed his arms over his chest defensively. "I am an artist. It is my nature to see the beauty in life."

Kitty sighed in disgust and continued walking towards the lighthouse. 'The beauty in life to the exclusion of everything else, you jerk! What kind of "artist" only sees what's on the surface anyway?'

"It is that Wisdom, isn't it?"

Kitty turned. "What?!" Her surprise would have been plain to anyone paying attention, but Nicholas was too deeply sunk in his own desires to notice.

"Thanks to him, you have all but forgotten me! Do not be coy with me, Katya. We are friends, are we not? Let's be truthful with each other." The sudden mocking in his voice kept Kitty silent. No matter what she said, she knew that he wouldn't listen. It was obvious that her refusal hadn't been in the script Peter had come up with. Her rejection had hurt him, and now he wanted to hurt her just as deeply.

"No answers, Katya? No protests? It is true, then. You have abandoned me for that slovenly Englishman!"

That was the final straw. "I abandoned YOU?! You left me, Peter, and you didn't give me any indication that you'd be coming back. You moved on with your life, I went on with mine. Deal with it. As to Pete being 'slovenly' at least *I* didn't run off with someone who tried to kill the X-Men the first time we met her!"

The two former X-Men faced each other, unconsciously going into battle stances. Kitty noticed only when she realized that she was trying to find the proper balance to deliver a good fighting kick on the sandy ground. Once again, she fought down her anger, this time wondering if it was worth the effort.

"Callisto was a woman," Peter responded. "She understood me and did not hold the mistakes of my past over my head."

"Maybe, but that wasn't enough for you, was it? She couldn't just love and understand you, she had to be perfect on the outside as well. And when she wasn't, you decided I would make a good substitute! I don't think you know how to love, Peter. Not in any way that isn't totally self-centered." Kitty supposed that she'd have felt awful for saying such things ordinarily, but this conversation had opened an old wound that she'd thought had healed over. Surprise, surprise, once the wound re-opened a small, infected core of anger and bitterness was revealed to light. To hell with bottling things up, it really wasn't worth the effort after all. "Just leave me alone, Colossus. Do you hear me? Just leave me the hell alone and stop jerking me around! I'm going inside now. You can come in and finish your visit with Kurt and Amanda or you can go for a walk on the ocean floor, I don't care."

Kitty didn't catch Peter's muttered words until she was halfway back to the door. "Suka. Faithless bitch..."

Scoop. Leap. Phase. Three actions that took less than two seconds to complete. The end of it found her with half of her arm, a fist-sized rock in her grip, phased through Nicolas' lower chest. "Well, isn't that the original pot blackening the kettle? You've already made me mad, Piotr Nickolaievich. Don't make me a murderer."

Realizing what she'd just said and what she'd come close to doing, Kitty slowly withdrew her hand (and the rock) from her former team-mate. Shaken, but covering it well, she set the rock carefully on the beach and finally made her way back into the lighthouse, not caring if she was followed or not.

//Alysande?//

Rachel didn't know how long she had been standing on the roof of this ugly, midieval style castle with just the snarling stone gargoyles for company. It could have been seconds. Or hours. Or days. It wasn't real. It was a construction of Alysande's mind.

//Alysande? It's Rachel.//

//So what?//

//I'm here to help.//

Rachel noted an eyeblink of motion at the limits of her peripheral vision. Standing there was a slender girl in a plain, gray uniform that might have belonged to a very strict private school... or an orphanage. The girl had an Alsatian's head perched on her shoulders. There was no lip movement, but the mental "voice" was obviously hers.

//I don't want your help.//

//Then why am I here? I'm a strong telepath, Alysande, but if you didn't want me in your mind, I wouldn't be here.//

The roof faded out. They were standing in a large windowless room with cots and small trunks taking up every spare inch of the bare wood floor. That was a good sign. She had let down her defenses a little, allowing Rachel into a deeper level of her mind. Alysande now had her own face, with her dark hair cut to shoulder length. Severely straight bangs did nothing to hide a canine's liquid brown eyes or the furry ears perched on top of her head. A bushy tail waved slowly behind her.

//You're here. So what?//

Rachel refused to be annoyed.

//So let me help.//

//Help me?! People like you did this to me!// Her mental self-image twisted to that of a dog with a human face. //I DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT I AM ANYMORE!//

Anger. Guilt. Shame. And a sense of loss that outstripped all else.

//Would you believe that I'm one of the good guys?//

Rachel projected concern and good intentions. For a moment, she tried to reach out and channel in Alysdane's thoughts, but even that slight retreat caused the entire link to waver.

//Can you trust me?// Rachel asked.

No response.

//Do you trust your godmother?//

Gratitude. Trust. Love. All of that from the simple mention of the Brigadier.

//Aunt Sandy? Yes.//

//She trusts me. Can you give me the benefit of the doubt?//

A very reluctant //Yes.//

Before Rachel could make a request, the scene changed. They were in a bleak white cube of a room. Cold air and the smell of antiseptic stung her nose.

//Watch...//

Alysande was totally canine now. She sat in the middle of the room, trembling.

"Hello, there." The memory of a thin man with wispy brown hair, crooked front teeth, and an exaggerated halo of pink energy representing telepathic talent stood over Alysande. "We're going to be friends aren't we?"

Rachel intervened, slamming the memory-image into the wall, pulping his "body" into flickers of multi-hued light. Alysande stared at her in slack-jawed amazement, a fully human head sitting on top of a misshapen dog's body.

//That's not how it's supposed to go...// she protested.

//What were you going to do?!// demanded the telepath, though she had a feeling that she already knew. Alysande's actions had been a pretty clear indication.

//You want to know what happened. I was going to show you.//

//You were going to make yourself relive everything that happened.// Rachel's frustration showed. //Torturing yourself is not going to help anyone. I need you to open up more.// The telepath reached forward, laying the tips of her fingers against the girl's cheek. //Don't dredge your memories up alone, let me find them with you.//

//Aren't we doing that already?// The remark was rather snide but, knowing the unease that her companion felt, Rachel let it pass. She'd been very much the same way when Xavier had first tried to coax the story of her past out of her. The memory was there and gone. Rachel focused her concentration on Alysande again.

//If we were, I wouldn't still be in here. You've got very complex mental shielding. You're giving me some feelings, snippets of memory, abstracts; it's not enough.// Rachel let down her own defenses and stretched her mind out towards Alysande's. She'd expected the girl to recoil, but instead she plunged forward, with an obvious "let's get this over with" attitude.

There was a flood of images before Rachel could slow down the flow to the ones she was looking for. Once she found them, there were far, far more similarities between Alysande's life experiences and her own than she wanted to see.

Grief. The death of her parents. The end of her life as she knew it. The feelings of isolation at the orphanage. It seemed that no one wanted to adopt an older child, especially not an older mutant child, but she was unable to find friendship in the ranks of the other "unadoptables" because her godmother came to see her whenever possible, but couldn't take her out of that cold environment. The barely acknowledged resentment towards Brigadier Stuart for the fact that she couldn't adopt her.

Fear. Being captured and spirited away on a simple school outing, despairing in the knowledge that she wouldn't even be missed until head-count on the bus. Having her mind ripped through and then being trapped in the once novel body of her canine form.

Rachel felt a slight jingling in the back of her mind and almost pulled out to answer it. But she couldn't... no, she wouldn't. She felt too much of a kinship with this girl to just let go now.

//I'm sorry. The Phoenix you have reached has just been disconnected.// she thought distractedly. Then Alysande had Rachel's full concentration again.

Pain. Anger. The humiliation of being mated to stud Alsatians far more frequently than any bitch would have been as her weird human/canine cycle brought her into heat once every month. The injections of fertility drugs. The collecting of the fertilized embryos.

Agony! The pain of labor.

The unexpected feelings of deep maternal pride when she looked on that litter of odd-looking pups that she'd brought into the world. The pups that she'd vainly fought for when her hated keepers came to take them away.

//I stopped fighting after that. It wasn't anything but a repeat cycle, having babies and losing them.// Alysande's "voice" seemed to be coming from very far away. //I'd always read in novels about people saying how they could distance themselves from what was happening to their bodies and make out like it was happening to someone else. I never got to where I couldn't feel anymore. Things just got to where it wasn't anything I hadn't been through before...//

A thick gray fog blotted out everything for Rachel. Alysande was shutting her out and no amount of coaxing on Rachel's part made her re-establish the link. There was nothing to do but come out of it...

Rachel blinked. The picture wasn't right. She'd been sitting across from a dog when she'd last used her eyes, but now all she saw was the off-white color of the Brigadier's ceiling.

"Alysande...?" she muttered, sitting up.

"I was wondering when you'd come around." The Brigadier was standing at her elbow, pressing a mug of hot tea on her. Rachel took the drink and sipped automatically, her attention focused more on the Brigadier than on the drink. Alysdane's face had tear tracks drying on her cheeks and a too-bright shine in her eyes.

"How is she?" Rachel's head felt hollow, as if all of her gray matter had been minimized and was just rattling around in there. The tea had far too much sugar in it. Rachel set the mug of sickly-sweet liquid on the floor.

"She's fine. Better than fine. She's sleeping now." Strong fingers squeezed the telepath's hand. "God, Phoenix, I don't know how to thank you..."

"I want to see her." Rachel was aware than she was being pushy and probably rude. She also knew that the effects of that rather unusual link would fade away in a few minutes, along with her feelings of urgency and concern. She didn't care.

Alysdane led the red-tressed woman down the hall to the guest-room and opened the door a crack. A thin sliver of amber light from the hall light fell on the face of her godchild, illuminating the features of a rather pale faced, but otherwise healthy, teen-age girl. Rachel only looked in long enough to make sure that Alysande was really and truly fine and took her gaze away from the door, turning back down the hall, and all but collapsing back down on the sofa.

"Are you all right?"

Rachel looked up. "It's dark out." Her voice held tired surprise. "What time is it?"

"Half-past ten." Rachel's eyes widened slightly. "I had a feeling that nothing was horribly wrong, and I didn't want to interrupt."

''Course not. If it was my godchild, I probably wouldn't have either.'

"It shouldn't have taken that long,' Rachel muttered. "What happened?"

"Nothing. Until Alysande changed back into a girl..." Though her voice didn't change, the Brigadier did make a quick swipe at her eyes with the back of her wrist, "you simply stayed as you were. You were on the chair, she was sitting on the floor. You'd both blink once in a while, but nothing else. Then she changed back all of a sudden, walked over, hugged me, and fell right to sleep. I went and bedded her down, then came back to see about you. You were flat on the floor, so I moved you back to the couch. You've been out for about an hour now... Lord, Rachel, how are you feeling?"

In spite of her fuzzy-minded state, Rachel had to smile. The family resemblance to the scatter-brained Dr. Stuart had flashed through for an instant. "I'm OK. M'mind's still taking stock of everything, but it should clear up in a minute."

"You're more than welcome to stay here." From the tone of the words, she might have well have been prepared to freely offer Rachel her immortal soul.

"No..." The memory of the mental call that she'd ignored earlier surged into her mind, clearing away the last traces of grogginess. "Damn! I think my team might have tried to get in contact with me. I'll keep in touch, Alysdane." With that, Rachel swung the door open with a simple push of her mind and exited quickly. She waited until she was safely out on the lawn before activating the psionic firebird that was the signature of the Phoenix force and propelling herself towards Excalibur's lighthouse.

"When did you get back?"

Amanda jumped slightly, realized that it was Kurt speaking to her, and sat back down on the beach. "Just a few minutes ago. Lingering out here seemed to be a better idea than going back into hostile territory." Her goal had been to make Kurt smile. She'd failed.

"How's Piotr? Did you have any... difficulties?"

"He was upset, Kurt, not psychotic." After Kitty had walked back through the wall and straight up to her room, Peter had stormed in a minute later, trying to lay large amounts of blame for an unclear incident at Kitty's feet. All that had been perfectly clear was the fact that Kitty had been horribly upset and that Peter had been through some sort of rejection. Then Wisdom, Lockheed, and Kurt had charged up the stairwell, each one determined to be Shadowcat's voice of comfort. Amanda had left them to fight it out and suggested to Peter in a not-so-subtle manner that she drop him off somewhere.

Amanda had intended to plunk the painter down at his hotel and get back to the lighthouse, but she'd found herself feeling sorry for an old friend and stayed to see if she could get a less disjointed account of the afternoon's events. That sympathy hadn't lasted to the end of their conversation. "From what I can tell," she sighed, "he made some sort of spur-of-the-moment marriage proposal to Kitty."

"You must be joking."

"If I was, Kurt, I'd be laughing. He fully expected her to go back to the U.S. of A with him." She patted the sand next to her in unspoken invitation. Kurt took it and settled down next to her. "Speaking of Kitty, any progress?"

"Nein. She did not wish to speak to any of us. Frankly, I'm worried. I tried to contact Rachel, but did not even receive acknowledgement from her."

That was a reason for worry. Rachel ordinarily kept a telepathic link to her team-mates open at all times. "Did you call Tom?"

"He hadn't seen her since they parted ways at the museum."

"I think Rachel can take care of herself." Amanda gave Kurt an odd look. "Aren't you even the least bit concerned about Kitty? After all the worry you went through over her dating Pete, I would have thought you'd be yowling for Piotr's blood for what he tried to do."

Kurt sighed. "I'm very worried about Kitty, but she's made it painfully clear that she welcomes neither my advice nor my company. Are you certain he asked her to... to elope with him, leibchen? Perhaps it was a misunderstanding..."

Amanda scowled at her lover. "You're absolutely right, Kurt," she said, her voice oozing sarcasm. "I misunderstood. Kitty misunderstood. We're all fluffy-headed little girls whose ravings have stained the reputation of a noble, innocent artist and you're the only one with enough wit to realize how silly we all are!"

"You don't have to talk down to me," Nightcrawler snapped back.

"Yes, I do! It's the only way I've gotten you to listen lately!" Silence sat heavy on the beach for several long minutes. Amanda calmed down, trying to find logical words now that she'd had a nice rant. "You've known Piotr longer than I have, lover, so maybe you feel obliged to defend him. And I know how much you care about Kitty, so maybe you feel that it's your job to protect her. But Piotr is not a saint, Kitty does not need a swashbuckler to defend her against all would-be suitors, and Pete Wisdom is not a total louse." 'I hope...' But she wasn't going to say that out-loud. "If you keep telling yourself that you're right about all of those things, then you're going to wreck your friendship with Kitty beyond repair." When Kurt didn't answer her, Amanda sighed, rose, and brushed sand off of her clothing. "Maybe I should try talking to Kitty. No one else seems to have had much luck."

"Veil Gluck."

"Thanks." She gave Kurt a quick peck on the cheek. She was annoyed with him, but not truly angry... yet. "If she's as upset as you say she is, I'll probably need it. Oh, by the way, has anyone else gone down to see about Keesha?"

"I honestly don't think so. And as long as she's in possession of her switchblade, I don't think anyone else will dare."

Amanda approached the lighthouse's entrance, feeling tired. And to think, the entire purpose of that morning's outing had been to calm their nerves.

From the room she shared with Brian on the top floor of the lighthouse, Meggan watched as Kurt settled back down onto the beach to watch the waves. A flurry of might-have-beens whirled around in her mind. She knew Kurt had liked her in the same way Brian had liked her when she'd first begun to look human. But Kurt had stopped liking her... or at least hadn't liked her as much... when Amanda had come to join the team.

'What if,' Meggan thought, 'I had gone to him instead of Brian? I wonder if it's too late now...' The shape-shifting elemental caught her breath in a choked sob and flung herself on the bed. 'I'm horrible! Terrible! Kurt and Amanda are happy and you'd ruin that just for yourself, you selfish cow! And Brian loves me! He gave me a home, a family, everything I have and I'm thinking of leaving him. No wonder he has to be like he is. No wonder he's never home! He can't stand to be around me!'

Meggan stopped her self-deprecation in surprise when she found that her nose wasn't touching the bed-spread anymore. Her entire upper torso was being lifted up off of the linen by the sudden ballooning of her breasts. Drawing breath became difficult for a minute as her mid-section narrowed by a fourth. Then her chest reformed slightly, giving her lungs more room and everything was all right... physically anyway.

'Brian's coming home.' Yes, she could just see him; he was only a speck in the night at this point. She should have been happy. The idea of her beloved returning to her should have filled her with joy. But the only thing she felt was afraid, which only deepened her certainty that she was a hideous creature in both body and mind. 'I should go meet him.' But she couldn't bring herself to face her lover any sooner than she had to. Instead, she curled herself into a little ball in the center of the bed and thought quiet, terrified, invisible thoughts.

"Miss me?"

The two figures jumped to their feet in alarm, realized that the huge fireball that had just spoken to them was Rachel, and calmed down.

"Hi, Phoenix." Amanda waved briefly.

"Where have you been?" demanded Kurt. "We were worried sick!"

"Don't exaggerate, lover."

"I'm sorry, Fuzzy."

Kurt apparently thought that her expression said otherwise. "Mm-hmm."

"Really I am." The fire went out and Rachel landed gracefully on the shoreline, sending up a little splash of water. "I was working with Alysande and I was so deep in the link that coming out would have wrecked everything."

Kurt had to press his point. "It might have been important."

"But it wasn't..." Rachel realized that she still didn't know what the message was. "Was it?"

"Kitty's upset," Amanda explained. "The rest of us have had no luck talking to her, and we were hoping she'd open up to you."

Rachel was all business in a second. "What happened?"

Kurt started to let Amanda explain the situation, but Rachel was impatient. She got quick agreement from both of them to do a mind-scan and pieced together what had happened for herself. The instant she reached her conclusion, the Phoenix firebird popped into existence around her body and the telepath careened into the lighthouse.

The two lovers on the beach looked at each other, shrugged, and sat back down. Neither one being in the mood for talk, Kurt kept council with his own thoughts and Amanda with hers.

"I don't like you." Pete Wisdom and Lockheed were sitting at opposite sides of the hall, glaring at each other. "I'd staple you t'the nearest damn train tracks if I could get away with it."

"I doubt you would," commented Rachel, from the stairwell. "Is she in there?" Before Pete could respond, Rachel rapped on the door to Kitty's room.

"Go AWAY!"

"Kitty, it's Rachel." Nothing. "We're all worried about you out here, kiddo. Can I come in for just a second?" Nada. "Kitty this is my room too!" Of course that didn't work. Rachel seriously considered just setting up camp with Pete and Lockheed, but finally decided against it. "I need to talk to you, Kitty. It's about Alysande."

There was a long wait, but Kitty finally opened the door a crack. "What?" The fact that someone wanted to talk to her about something other than what had gone on with Peter surprised her enough for a response. Pete and Lockheed both started towards the door, but a glare from Phoenix stopped them. Kitty needed more than a purple shoulder to sob on and having her romantic interest in the same room certainly wasn't going to help matters. Rachel didn't know if she could get Kitty to talk about her feelings for Peter, but at least she could get her to talk.

Lockheed crouched back down on the carpet outside of Shadowcat's room, worried. Sure, Kitty was upset, but the empathic little dragon could feel her mood lightening. But there was something wrong further upstairs. For weeks now, Lockheed had gotten flashes of emotion from Meggan, which covered themselves up almost as soon as they got through.

But now, Lockheed could feel them. They were still repressed, but now they were leaking through on the most basic level, creating patterns of sick, brackish-green feeling in the back of his mind. It was a subliminal cry for help, and it confused him. Meggan wanted help, but yet she didn't. How was he supposed to react to that dilemma? He waited for Rachel to react from within the room, but her attention was focused solely on Kitty.

The dragon snarled. Brian's emotions were coming through loud and clear... and repulsive. Drunken anger, the need to bend others to his will, and barely hidden irritation. That was another reason to stay away from the problem. If Brian could get that angry at his mate, he probably wouldn't hesitate to hurt a small purple alien.

A lightening bolt of red fear and pain lashed through Lockheed's thoughts and pushed caution out of the dragon's mind. With a battle-roar, the dragon took to the air and headed for Meggan.

"Meggan, you can be so stupid sometimes." Brian, in his shirt and trousers, looked down at the half-naked woman on the floor, disgusted by her incompetence and her hysterics. He hadn't hit her that hard, dammit. He'd been hurt much worse and not let out a peep. And here she was whining on the floor because he refused to coddle her.

"Brian... I'm sorry. I'm sorry!" she gasped between sobs. "I don't know what I did but I'm sorry!"

"What is there to know? Look at this?" He kicked a small scrap of paper out of the way. "Filth! Garbage! Are you so backwards that you can't even pick up after yourself?" He knocked a small vase off of a dresser. The thin glass shattered as it hit the floor. "There, see? More garbage. Clean it up!" The speed at which she crawled over to pick up the shards took the barest tip off of his anger. The jagged edges of the glass cut her fingers, but that was OK. The pain would help her remember to keep the damn loft clean. "Stupid cow," he muttered, making sure that she got every bit of glass off of the floor. It'd be just like her to forget... maybe deliberately forget... to pick up some sliver so that he'd cut himself. Never mind that he was the invulnerable one, she'd probably still do it. Christ, why did he even bother coming back here? Courtney was the only one who understood him, who let him have a simple drink-- or two, or three-- without turning into a blasted AA harpy... Meggan. It was all Meggan. She kept him tied to this super-hero silliness, to this absurd lighthouse in the middle of nowhere. It was Meggan who kept him from being with Courtney with no guilt. Meggan. Meggan...

"MEGGAN!" She was before him in a second, which kept him calm enough to rethink things. He liked Meggan well enough to keep her around. "Meggan, pack up. We're leaving this mad-house."

"B-but why...?"

He turned, eyes slitted, voice calm and dangerous. "Did you just question me? You. Ungrateful. Little. Gypsy tramp!" He swung his hand back and smacked her, sending her stumbling against a wall. "You can't even think for yourself, and you're going to question ME?" He lifted his hand again, this time to give her something to really think about, when he noticed that the room seemed to be getting cloudy.

Rachel's conversation with Kitty cut off abruptly as several loud English oaths reached her ears.

"That wasn't Pete, was it?" the telepath asked Kitty."Brian must be home."

Shadowcat shook her head and got off of her bed. Before she could reply, Pete Wisdom's voice was heard. "Christ! Pryde! Summers! Get out here! The bleedin' hallway's fulla smoke!"

Kitty was out of the door before Rachel, ready to let Pete have it for smoking in the lighthouse, when she realized the thin pall of smoke floating along the ceiling wasn't coming from a cigarette. "That's coming from upstairs!" She was phasing through the ceiling a second later.

When Kitty's head broke carpet, the first thing she did was reach up and snag her dragon away from the burning door leading into Brian Braddock's bedroom. "Lockheed! What's gotten into you?" The dragon snarled and struggled in her grip, apparently unconvinced that the door was dead. The floor rippled and parted to admit the Phoenix and closed behind her as her mind dropped its molecules back into place.

"What got into our resident trenchcoat-hater?" she asked, snuffing the flames down into nothing with a TK shield.

"I don't know." Amanda and Kurt materialized beside them via one of Sefton's teleport spells. Pete brought up the rear as he finally appeared at the top of the stairs. Between his hurried dash up the stairs and the smoke spreading through the building, Wisdom was slightly winded.

Kurt seemed surprised to see Kitty out of her room, but said nothing about it and rapped on the charred door. It fell open. "Brian? Meggan? Are you- mein Gott..."

Rachel took a quick glimpse through Kurt's eyes and pushed her way into the room. A single look at the scene told her all she needed to know. The full ire of the Phoenix surged into the eyes that lit upon Brian Braddock. "You son of a bitch!"

"Amanda," Nightcrawler snapped, "get Wisdom out of here now."

"Kurt, what-?

"Just a friggin'-!"

"NOW!"

Amanda obeyed that tone and that look, acting as a taxi along the ley lines of the earth for the third or fourth time that day. Kitty phased her way through Kurt into the room. Meggan was curled up against the wall nearest the door, blood from her lacerated fingers staining her skin and clothes where she gripped herself and dripping to the floor. Bruises stood out against her pale skin, for she was too miserable and scared to think about hiding the injuries at the moment.

"Ohmygod..." Kitty knelt down next to her friend and touched her shoulder gently. The blonde shape-shifter simply curled tighter into herself.

Brian, in the meantime, was trying to draw up some kind of drunken dignity. "What... the hell do you people think you're doing? This is my bedroom."

Rachel's voice was low and furious. "Braddock, if you aren't out of this building in three seconds I am going to twist your head off!" The fire-bird flared into being. "Slowly." Kitty half-expected Kurt to try and stop Rachel from doing violence to the team leader. But no, Kurt was on Meggan's other side and not even the dim light was enough to hide the furious expression on his face. If Rachel didn't finish Brian off, Kurt would.

"You damned American tart! This is MY lighthouse. I'll do what I please. In fact, you get out! All of you! You're sacked!" Angry and beyond reason, Brian stumbled forward and tried to throw a punch at Rachel.

Then the shit really hit the fan.

The logical part of Meggan's mind knew that Brian couldn't hurt Rachel, no matter what he tried. But that area was tiny when compared with the section that had been frightened and manipulated into believing that Brian Braddock was the crown of creation, capable of doing anything he wanted. And the crown of creation was trying to hurt one of her team-mates.

"NO!"

A horribly bright flash of light flooded the room, causing all within it to shield their eyes. When Kurt finally managed to open his tearing eyes, he fully expected to see the cremated remains of Captain Britain at Rachel's feet.

But what he saw was Meggan, who had imposed herself between Brian and Rachel and not in her lover's defense either. The shape-shifter's features were more elven than ever, her skin as pale as an eggshell, and she was still radiating white light. Her hair floated around her in a white-gold halo, but her body was slowly gaining muscle mass. "Leave her alone!" Meggan's normally shy tone of voice had been replaced by rich, rolling tones that literally echoed off the walls. "Don't you touch my friends!"

Brian growled wordlessly, too furious, too drunk, or too fool-hardy to see what a stupid move he was about to make, and tried to shove Meggan out of his way. She caught his wrist and shoved him back. "GET AWAY!" The force of her repulsion sent Brian out of one of the observation windows acting as walls to the room. Fortunately, Braddock wasn't so drunk that he'd forgotten his ability to fly.

For a second, he just hovered there, stunned and obviously considering flying back in to teach his rebellious lady some manners. The sight of Phoenix, Shadowcat, and Nightcrawler moving to Meggan's side changed his mind.

"Right," he snarled, "you think you're so smart? Just remember, that's my house you're living in and my money that's been keeping you. We'll see how smug you all are when you're out on the stoop." With that threat, Brian turned tail and flew off.

As soon as he was gone, all of Meggan's strength seemed to flow out of her. The light was snuffed and she crumpled to the floor in a shuddering heap. Excalibur crowded around her, trying to offer her some support in the midst of their guilt and confusion.

Sat-yr-9 lounged on the cream colored leather sofa in her dead counterpart's apartment and hummed to herself. "'...put 'im in the longboat 'til he's sober early in the mornin'.'" She laughed at the appropriateness of the song. Brian had left her apartment on the borderline between pleasantly tipsy and raving drunk. And with all the drinks he'd put away, he'd consumed enough of the mood-altering drugs she'd been lacing his brandy with to assure that it would be an unpleasant night for all members of Excalibur. Brian's considerable temper was easy enough to arouse under normal circumstances; now it would be put on edge by the least little disturbance.

The icy blonde, "Courtney Ross" to the people of this Earth, balanced a vial of the clear liquid making her conquest possible on the ends of her fingers. It had been an odd trade, live cells from the Phoenix host in exchange for some chemicals that were extremely hard to find in this dimension, but it had been more than worth it. Sat-yr-9 swirled the liquid around in its tiny container. It was just perfect, really. The drug was quick to act, made a person more susceptible to suggestions they wouldn't even entertain normally, and it was slow to leave the system. Very slow. A smile crept across Sat-yr-9's features. Odds were that the first dose she'd administered some time ago was just leaving Brian Braddock's cells...

A loud thump on her door caused her to sit up with a start. In a second, the vial was tucked into the side-pocket of the business suit she wore. Utterly composed, "Courtney" flowed to her feet and went to answer the summons. She received a surprise. "Brian! What's wrong, love? I thought you went home for the night."

"I did. And I won't be going back until those traitors have vacated it."

It didn't take a mind-reader to realize what must have happened. There must have been a confrontation at the lighthouse. Brian had lost his temper and told the lot of them to pack their bags and get out. Behind her, Brian thumped down onto the sofa and put his head in his hands.

"I-- I was just so angry... God, Courtney, what have I done?" The effects of the alcohol were starting to wear off and he was fighting against his amplified id with his conscience. The poor dear was confused and particularly vulnerable at the moment. Excellent.

"Brian, Brian." "Courtney" walked back into the living room and went on one knee before the muscular man. "Brian, look at me." The tousled blonde head lifted slowly. "Brian, you've done nothing wrong." If Sat-yr-9 had been a more compassionate and less calculating person, the look of surprised confusion would have touched her heart. Being the cunning creature that she was, she simply saw his uncertainty as another control.

"I... haven't?"

"Brian, they're all against you, didn't you know that? I was so worried that you wouldn't realize it in time. That blue-furred usurper is trying to take the leadership of Excalibur from you. The entire team knows it. But did any of them, even Meggan, warn you or confide in you?"

"Courtney," he returned, as simply as a child, "they're my friends."

"They're bad friends, dearest." She patted his knee. "I'll get you a drink and we can talk over this some more. The usual?" He nodded wordlessly, too busy wrestling with statements that were supposed to be wrong, but sounded so correct.

"Courtney" got to her feet and made her way over to the well-stocked mini bar in the adjoining room, her own mind racing. She'd suspected that Brian had been physically and mentally abusive to Meggan for a while now, but that didn't worry her much. Meggan was a sweet-tempered, uncomplaining doormat. The odds of her confiding to someone else on the team was miniscule. Since nothing indicating such had come from a sober, drunk, or pillow-talking Brian, she had to assume that it had gone unnoticed.

No, the problem now was that a major confrontation of some sort had taken place, something that would not be easily dismissed or forgotten by the rest of Excalibur. Intervention on their part could make things very difficult for her and throw her ultimate plan severely off course. A decision had to be made and it had to be made now.

She slipped the vial from her pocket and poured the contents into the generously sized tumbler of brandy she had prepared. Giving him two doses in one night was going to be the mental equivalent of packing his brain in cotton wool for several days, but Sat-yr-9 didn't particularly care if her men had working minds or not. They were either what she wanted when she was done molding them, or they were dead.

"Oh, damn," she muttered under her breath, making sure the exclamation was just loud enough to be heard. Brian looked up, surprised to hear such language from the refined woman he spent so much time with. "Sorry," she apologized. "It's these high-heels. I'm about to break an ankle." She walked back over and handed Brian his drink. "I'm going to change into something that's not plotting to do away with me."

With a smile, she strode down the passage to her bedroom, closed the door, and all but ripped her clothing off. Now that she had decided to take action, she felt flushed and excited, though she was far too controlled to let it show. She dressed in sensible gray slacks and a white long-sleeved blouse. The more stable she looked, the more poor perplexed Brian would look to her for answers. Then she picked up what looked to be a compact from her dresser.

"Ladies, we have had," she muttered into the communicator, "a change of plans. We leave tonight."

"Tonight, Mastrex?" The voice was that of Brigette, Sat-yr-9's most trusted Amazonian guard. "But... what of Kitty Pryde?"

"Do not question, just do as I command. Have you got Hauptmann Englande prepared?" There was silence on the other end. "Report!"

"He's... alive, Mastrex, but that's all I can attest to. His capture was less than gentle, as you know."

"That's fine, Brigette. He won't need to be kept as such for much longer. Stand by." She slipped the communicator into a breast pocket and went back to Brian, who was staring off into space with glazed eyes. She could tell as soon as she sat next to him that the drug had taken effect. He wasn't even thinking anymore really. If he had two thoughts in his head, they were chasing each other around like kittens and getting nothing done.

"Poor, poor Brian. It's been rough on you, hasn't it? Having to restrain yourself, having to adjust to those thoughtless people."

He jumped slightly as he noticed her, but only a bit. "Oh, it's you, Courtney... yes. It's been rough on me... having to restrain myself... having to adjust..."

"Finish your drink, my love." The remaining liquid in the crystal tumbler vanished down Brian's throat. "Good. Now, do you think you should have to be around people who obviously don't want you there? Of course not."

"Of course not," he echoed muzzily.

"So why don't you come away with me?" Her lips curled into a sadistic grin. Brian never noticed. "The time alone together will make a new man out of you."

"A new man out of me... yes. That... getting away might be the best thing." A thought was struggling to get out, and eventually forced its way through the booze and drugs. "I'd have to come back of course... eventually."

No reason to make him suspicious by arguing. Besides, she would not even be lying. "Yes, certainly." She removed the com and spoke into it. "Now."

If the sudden flare of light and static filling the room bothered Braddock, he didn't show it. It was as if he saw visored six-foot tall women in form-fitting body armor leveling guns at him every day. The sight of his own SS-garbed double battered senseless and in chains didn't faze him either. He regarded both sights for a few minutes, looked to "Courtney" and then back at the invasion, and slowly shook his head.

"I do believe I've had too much to drink, Courtney." Sat-yr-9's elite looked at each other for a millisecond, then snapped their attention forward again.

"Possibly. Ladies, help Mr. Braddock to his room. Brigette, Tina, you stay." The understandably cautious guards led an unprotesting Captain Britain back through the sparking teleport portal, which snapped shut behind them. The two remaining guards of the Mastrex Opal Lun Sat-yr-9 stood stiffly, ready to do whatever their mistress might ask of them.

"Brigette, go into the bedroom, pile all the personal effects of 'Courtney Ross' in the center of the room, and vaporize them. Do this room by room until this place is nothing but furniture and bare walls."

"Yes, Mistress." The guard marched off to do her duty.

"Tina, your task is to make it appear as if there were a tremendous struggle here. Break mirrors, scuff floors, and dent walls. Put a bullet or two in the ceiling. Just make it seem that Captain Britain lost his life in a valiant attempt to save Courtney Ross. And give me your blade."

Tina handed over her long-bladed dagger to the Mastrex and went about her work.

"And I," Sat-yr-9 said to herself as she stood over the unconscious form of Brian Braddock (Earth 597), "shall get in some much needed practice. It would be a crime to let the old skills atrophy." She traced the dagger along Hauptmann Englande's muscular body, trying to decide how to make the first cut the least painful and how to make him linger for as long as possible before making the killing motion. As she'd found out through long experience, it was poor form to make death anything but anticipated.

"How could you?! How could you know about something like that and not tell any of us?!"

Seated on her bed in the basement, Keesha didn't flinch under Kurt's questions or give any sign that she regretted having admitted to her knowledge of the abuse. "Meggan wouldn't have accepted any help you had to offer; she wouldn't have listened to a thing you'd have to say. She didn't want to listen then and she doesn't want to listen now."

"What gave you the right..."

"Come off it, Kurt," the Morlock responded sharply. "If that girl had an ounce of self-esteem, she'd be down on her knees giving thanks to the Lord that Braddock's gone instead of in the kitchen, busy pining away for the big blond dickhead. Nothing I would have let you know would have helped anything. Besides," she challenged, "would you have even believed me?"

Now Rachel spoke up, her own voice none too gentle. "Keesh, I'd agree with you if you were right, but you're not. Maybe it would have been hard for us to accept that Brian would actually hit Meggan, but you've forgotten who you're dealing with. All it would have taken was a hint from you and I'd have done a quick mind-scan on both of them to see what was going on."

Keesha bristled, suddenly feeling as if she was under attack. "Scan this," she spat back, "I admit it, I should have said something, but I'm not the only one wrong here. This place has good walls, but the rooms aren't isolation units. If you all cared so much about this girl, you'd have noticed that something was up long before now. But you all had your heads so far up your asses in your own little worlds that you didn't even notice anything wrong or explained away what you did notice because you just didn't want to be bothered." She crossed her arms over her chest and waited for the three mutants around her to try and refute what she'd just said. They couldn't.

In the kitchen, Amanda Sefton was doing her best to comfort Meggan, and not doing a terribly good job of it. The younger woman refused to be consoled. The idea that Brian was gone for the third day running had caused her to break down in tears, but Amanda's attempt to alleviate her spirits by suggesting that he'd probably come back just made Meggan crumble to bits.

'Damned it you do and damned if you don't', Amanda thought, giving up on consolation and just bringing Meggan another cup of hot breakfast tea, the only thing that she seemed willing to touch. After a few minutes of watching Meggan alternately sob and lift the mug to her lips with trembling hands, Amanda tried again.

"Meg-"

"Be quiet! Just be quiet!" The bathrobe-clad shape-changer wailed. "Oh, I can't believe I did that to Brian..."

'Damn. I set her off again,' Amanda moved the cup away before Meggan could overturn it.

Amanda felt as if it wouldn't take much to set her off either. Kurt had apologized to her and to Kitty on Pete's behalf for ordering Amanda and Pete out of the room when Brian's abuse of Meggan had come to light. Amanda, allowing for the shock that the scene must have caused everyone, was willing to forgive, but not until her lover offered Pete a sincere face-to-face apology. To Kurt's credit, he'd agreed to it without reservation. He had yet to carry through on his promise, however. Not because he was unwilling to, but because they hadn't been able to get ahold of Pete anymore than they'd been able to locate Brian. Messages on Wisdom's machine went unanswerd, as did pages sent through W.H.O's offices. Natuarally, Shadowcat was more upset about this lack of communication than anyone else, but it still made for a slight undercurrent of tension between Amanda and Nightcrawler.

'Poor Kitty. No matter how you look at it, it seems like we're wrecking her relationship before..." Amanda's attention went back to Meggan as her voice went up in pitch.

"...he's going to come back, and he's going to give all of you what for..."

'I can't believe none of us noticed anything,' Amanda thought guiltily. The idea that she didn't know Meggan well enough to know what would have been abnormal behavior for her teammate hadn't occurred to the sorceress.

Meggan went from near hysterics to broken sobs in a split second. "What was wrong with me?" she whispered pleadingly, as if Amanda should somehow have the answer. "Why didn't he love me anymore?"

There was a knock at the door, but Amanda was extremely reluctant to leave Meggan alone. The off-sides sound of a "BAMF!" solved that dilemma for her.

Kurt Wagner's self-loathing had hit an all time high. He cared deeply for Meggan and seeing her reduced to her present state made him want to punish someone for it and his inability to do that brought up feelings of helplessness. Keesha was right of course, and now he was doubly ashamed for looking to her as a scapegoat to take the blame for their own deliberate blindness. He hoped whoever it was at the door would be someone who could be easily gotten rid of. Of course, someone who made a trip all the way out to a remote lighthouse was probably not someone who would be put off with a polite request.

The door opened on a balding, middle-aged man with a queasy look on his face. His expression didn't improve upon seeing Kurt. Everything, from his briefcase to his tie, sent off danger signals. Not the easy-to-spot generic villain type of danger, this reeked of things far more subtle, sinister, and tenacious; things like bureacracy and miles of red tape. On the shore behind him was an older, more robust man operating a small motor boat, obviously the first man's transport out to the lighthouse.

"Are you Mr. Wagner?" the first man asked, his nasal voice jumpy and nervous.

"Ja. I do not suppose you could come back later or make this brief...?"

"Oh, it's quite brief, let me assure you." He slapped around the pockets of his overcoat for a moment and withdrew a sheaf of papers. "I'm one of Mr. Braddock's lawyers," he continued, "and with his death..."

"WAS?!" Under his fur, Kurt's face went pale.

"His death. Surely you've seen the news reports, sir."

"It's been a rough few days," Kurt responded automatically. This felt like an awful nightmare. In a moment he'd wake up. Meggan would not be a beaten, traumatized mess and some little snot in a suit would not be informing him of Captain Britain's death.

"Then I'm afraid I'm the harbinger of bad tidings. Mister Braddock was found dead late last night." He handed the papers over to Kurt.

"What is this?"

"In a nutshell, sir, with Brian Braddock no longer among the living, any persons living in this structure are now trespassers." He looked past the stunned Nightcrawler to Kitty, Rachel, and Keesha, who had come up after Rachel had picked up Kurt's sudden shock. "You are all are required to vacate the premises as soon as possible."

Next issue: Where will Excalibur go now? What does the Technet want with Feron? Why did Keesha try to brain Colossus with a bowl of soup? And who invited the extra Phoenix? Also, Sinister's little hobby gets a wee bit out of hand. See ya for GXP #49!