TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2409
			       10:32 PM
		  INTERNATIONAL POLICE HEADQUARTERS
			NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI

	The fifteenth floor of the IPO headquarters building was
apparently a relaxation level.  The elevator let Geoff Depew out in a
large open area where a game of ping-pong was going on between a huge
man and a petite blonde.  The blonde was apparently winning.  As Geoff
watched, one of them missed a return, and their observer was startled
by a brilliant flash.
	It took him a moment to realize that the flash was a normally
invisible forcefield, briefly made visible by the impact of the ball.
There - there it was again, a cube of force around the ping-pong
table, protecting the rest of the room from the game.  Geoff
automatically calculated the force it would take to make an average
security field visibly pulse like that on impact, then raised his
eyebrows and wondered what kind of ball they were playing with.
	Just beyond the game, a middle-aged Asian man - wait, that's
Jackie Chan! - chatted with a man in his late thirties who was wearing
a battered leather jacket, the two of them doing so while playing a
game of darts with immense ease.  They were throwing the darts over a
spectacularly Afroed man in a horribly colored ensemble who was
stretched out napping on a couch under the dartboard.
	Geoff's head whirled.  Whoever these people were, they were
not what he was expecting.
	"Excuse me, mein Herr," came a Niogian-accented voice from
above him, "but are you looking for someone?"
	He looked up and met a pair of blank yellow eyes.  "... uh."
	The inverted face of a blue-skinned man grinned at him with
fanged teeth.  The fact he was standing on the ceiling was merely
secondary.  Geoff was so surprised he forgot completely to do a
tactical analysis.
	"I'm...  I... um... Gryphon sent me here to find someone named
Kurt Wagner?"  Focus, dammit! he told himself.
	The grin widened.  "Well, then you have found him!"  With a
flip, he landed on his feet in a bow, the tail coming up as he stood
straight to sketch off a salute.  "Kurt Wagner, Expert of Justice,
codename Nightcrawler, at your service, young sir.  Are you a new
recruit that the Chief has been hiding from us?"
	"I... I don't know.  He said I should give you this, and that
I should tell you that I'm in custody."  He handed over the chip, and
then realized that he was technically in the presence of a superior
officer, and drew himself up in a respectful manner.  Wagner glanced
at him.
	"Well, I'd best read this to find out what's going on, and
perhaps call my roommate and see if he's home and tell him to make up
the couch. Do you mind the couch, or are you the kind that wants me to
run up my expense account over at the Doubletree Suites?"
	The floor would be fine, as long as I had my guns, he didn't
say.  "The couch would be enough, sir."
	Wagner's eyes shifted in a way that, if he had irises, would
probably have been rolling them.  "Come on, let's see what we've got
here."
	It had to be said: for a jaunty Expert of Justice, Kurt Wagner
did know when to be serious.  He scanned the chip's contents quickly,
his face growing grim.  Finally, he ejected the chip and shut off the
reader. "Well, Herr Depew.  You've had an exciting life for a man of
twenty-five."
	"... I'm twenty-five?  Wait, Gryphon mentioned that.  What's
my birthday?"
	Wagner's jaw dropped.  "You don't know?"
	"In Big Fire, you celebrated the day you joined, not the day
of your birth.  It never was important to me before.  And since... I
haven't paid any attention to days, unless it was moving to stop a Big
Fire operation and I had limited time."
	Shaking his head, Kurt sighed.  "Unglaublich.  What madness.
All right.  First and foremost, we need to get you some clothes."
	Geoff looked down at himself, wearing the jeans, sneakers, and
New Avalon Knights T-shirt he'd been wearing when he was taken in,
returned to him after leaving the questioning area.  "What's wrong
with my clothes?"
	Wagner grinned, and despite himself, Geoff found himself
warming to the man.  "Just that you need more of them!  Oh, and we
need to stop on two so I can pick a couple of things up.  So, let's
go!"


		I have a message from another time...

/*  Johnny Rivers  "Secret Agent Man"  _And I Know You Wanna Dance_  */

		     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
			       presents

		UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT

			     Rediscovery

			     Geoff Depew
			 Benjamin D. Hutchins
				 with
			    Janice Barlow

		(c) 2004 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


	They went back out into the lobby, where the two men playing
darts were gone, the girl was putting the sleeping man's hand into a
bucket of water, and the large man was smirking as he whispered
taunts.  The elevator took them down to the second floor, where Wagner
picked up a strongbox, a folder, and a credit chip.
	"These are for you," he said, flourishing the strongbox and
folder into Geoff's hands.  "And this is also for you, but you don't
get to hold it, I do," he added, indicating the credchip.  Geoff
opened the folder, to find within it a set of identification papers,
including a New Avalon passport, a New Avalon County weapons
possession and carry-concealed permit, and a set of documents to claim
the contents of a locker on Zardon that contained 'various and sundry
items held until your majority by the Judiciary'.  He pocketed them,
and then started to open the strongbox.
	"Nein, wait until we get to the lobby."  And in the lobby,
Wagner pressed his thumb to the lock, popping the box open to reveal
Geoff's guns in their tech-holsters (he noted that trigger locks had
been fitted), and a note.
	He picked up the note first, and read it curiously.

	    Trust Kurt and Peter.  They can show you what
	    it means to learn to be yourself, and to be
	    more than you are, and perhaps show you how
	    to relax.
		--G.

	Wagner glanced into the box, studiously ignoring the note.
"Ach du lieber.  Those aren't pistols, they're artillery.  Well, I
suppose you'll need a coat to go with them, as well.  Come on, I know
a place with an excellent tailor!"
	Head spinning and confused, Geoff marched along behind Kurt
Wagner, wondering what would happen next.
	He did feel more comfortable with his guns, he had to admit.
More relaxed, now that he wasn't so vulnerable.
	Indeed, the jaunty Lensman took him shopping at a nearby
tailor's.  A sign on the front window advertised "Open 24 Hours For
Your Emergency Sartorial Needs", which explained why it was open at
ten in the evening.  Geoff wondered idly how many sartorial
emergencies this city got that it could support such a business.
	There they arranged a number of sets of clothes for him -
casual, semi-casual, and one suit, with a jacket and a topcoat that
were both tailored to allow him to carry his pistols without problems.
The tailor was completely unsurprised by having to plan for a pair of
shoulder-holsters, which made Geoff wonder how many IPO officers
shopped there.
	Following that, Wagner called a cab, and the both of them
ended up in front of a pleasant brownstone walk-up.  The bell read,
"K. Wagner, P.  Rasputin, V. Arious", and Wagner unlocked the door and
strode in with a cry of,
	"Cheez it!  It's the cops!"
	"I surrender!" came a deep, Russian-accented voice from the
back of the house.  Also from that area came a scent of cooking food
that made Geoff's mouth water, to the point he nearly dropped the bags
and boxes that he had lugged in.  The owner of the voice came from
that direction a few moments later.
	He was an immense man, not unnaturally huge like the guy who'd
been playing ping-pong back at Headquarters, but very big indeed by
regular human standards.  He wore jeans and a polo shirt, and didn't
seem to have an ounce of fat on his body, but he wasn't lumbering or
musclebound like so many big, powerful men.  He moved like an athlete,
and though his face was open and friendly, there was something
intangible about him that made Geoff mentally tag him as a very
dangerous character if you got him roused.
	"Ah, this is our couch-surfer?  Greetings!  I am Piotr
Nikolievich Rasputin, but please, call me Pete."
	Geoff shifted and looked sheepish.  "Sorry, sir, but I don't
have a free hand to offer.  I apologize."
	Pete chuckled.  "You have had an interesting afternoon,
especially letting Kurt help you shop.  Between you and me," he said
in a confidental tone, despite Kurt standing right there, "sometimes I
worry that he will never find a good woman because he is too
effeminete and enjoys shopping too much."
	"I will have you know that Liza is extremely good.  In fact,
she is excellent, and at times magnificent."  Kurt let that hang in
the air with a smirk, and then vaulted up the stairs.  "I feel the
need to change into something more comfortable!"
	"We have a recliner already," Pete called up the stairs, then
turned to Geoff.  "Let me help you.  I know Kurt said something about
the couch, but after the friends we've had pass through, we
redecorated part of the basement into a bedroom."  Taking the lion's
share of the bags despite protests, he led Geoff down the stairs next
to the stairs up into the basement, and opened a door that led into a
small but pleasant room with a bed, desk, dresser, and entertainment
center.
	"There is a lavatory with shower next door; if you feel the
need for a full bath, go upstairs.  I work at home and Kurt, as you
know, is an Expert, so his hours can be strange.  Do not worry about
disturbing us."
	Geoff paused.  "I think I already disturb Kurt."  Then he put
the stongbox down on the desk, turned, and drew himself up in front of
Pete.  "Thank you for your assistance, sir."  Pete offered his hand,
and they shook.  The big Russian had a strong grip - no surprise - but
not a competitive one.
	"Dinner will be ready in an hour.  Please, relax, I will call
you.  If you feel like eating alone, I will understand."  He withdrew,
then paused, and laid something on the desk.  "This is the key to the
door, if you wish to lock it.  I hope you appreciate my belgad stew."
And he was gone, walking up the stairs.
	Geoff sat down on the bed, and then realized suddenly he was
shaking.  In his head, he was trying to figure out what their game
was, what they wanted from him, why they were being nice and what it
would cost him... and wondering if, maybe, this was all true.
	And if it was, what did mean for his future?  Wasn't he going
to be punished?
	He got up, opened the strongbox, removed his guns, and started
to clean them.  That always relaxed him, focusing on the guns.

	Pete Rasputin felt himself a fairly good judge of character,
and as he reached the kitchen, he was worried about the new guest.
There was a bamf of outrushing air, and in a cloud of smoke, Kurt
Wagner appeared.
	"So," Kurt said.
	"So," Peter replied.  Then Kurt gave him the basic briefing on
the guest.
	"And our job is?  Keep an eye on him to see if he is a plant?"
	"No.  Keep an eye on him to see if he can stop being a
machine."  Kurt sighed.  "I will let you read the reports later,
but... Raven, Gil Grissom, the Chief, the forensic psychologist in
CSI... all agree that he doesn't know what to do without a purpose, or
even how to deviate from that purpose at all.  Big Fire gave him
missions.  The Ignatines gave him training, and he picked his next
mission.  But he's completely ignorant of the concept of 'down-time'.
Gryphon wants me to bring him in tomorrow for a full physical, just to
see how bad a shape he's really in."
	"He seems physically fine to me.  But then, as you said, he
has his unusual implant, and you and I both know what it is to push
oneself beyond one's limits.  An X-Man knows how to go on no matter
how exhausted you are."
	"An X-Man also knows how to enjoy life, mein Freund.  I do
not think that young man comprehends the idea of enjoyment."  Kurt
shook his head.  "I can argue theology with him, and hopefully you can
share some of your Russian pragmatism with him."
	 Peter stirred a pot, slowly, and then turned.  "Perhaps he
needs to talk to someone who understands being the humorless outsider
with a mission better than anyone we know?"
	"Wolverine has a sense of humor."
	"I was not talking about Logan, initially.  I was thinking
that I might call Dave Menard and ask if he can finish this issue
alone - it is just some coloring - and then take our friend to Jeraddo
in a few days."
	Kurt grinned.  "An excellent idea, my friend.  Most
excellent."

	Dinner was strained.  Geoff ate quickly and quietly,
complimented the food softly, washed the plates, and excused himself.
	"He is polite enough," Pete noted.  "I have already taken care
of planning the trip."
	"Ah?  What sort of an trip shall it be?"
	"Firstly, to Zardon, where that locker in the records is.  We
will pick that up.  Then to Jeraddo, for some time with the Professor;
he is pleased I am coming, and wants me to assist with art therapy.  I
had thought to take him to B6, as well."
	"I don't think he's ready for Derek Bacon yet."
	"Actually, it turns out that there's someone who'll be in the
area about the same time, someone that I think he'd to well to talk
to."  Peter smiled.  "Brother Neo."
	"Well!  They can have an Ignatine-to-Ignatine talk, then.
Where after that?"
	"Oh, if all else fails, to Tomodachi and Logan.  Then, finally,
back here.  I'm hoping that, after all of that, he might be to a place
where he can start to relax.  We'll be leaving the day after tomorrow.
Gryphon gave me tentative permission, but wants some tests on him, as
well as a run-through of everything he knows about Big Fire."
	"Very well.  Oh... do you think we should mention to him our
own talents, or leave them for surprises?"
	"I feel he needs to know, Kurt.  He thinks in many ways that
he is alone.  If he were from our dimension, he would have been
perhaps another Punisher.  We are still X-Men, and it is our duty to
show him that he isn't ever as alone as he thinks he is."  The big
Russian got up and went to the freezer, and started dishing ice cream
into bowls. "I hope he does not mind heavenly hash."
	"Does anyone mind heavenly hash?  Let me go get a book."  He
bamfed away, the cloud of smoke not fazing Peter after so long.  Three
bowls were placed on the table, and Peter called down the stairs, "If
you wish some dessert, it is out for you."
	Geoff came up the stairs after a trip into the bathroom, and
Peter noticed his nails were still blackened underneath.  "Is
something wrong with your hands?"
	"I was doing maintenance.  Proper procedure to keep weapons in
order."  The tone was like something he was so used to saying he
didn't notice anymore.  He sat down at the table in the place he'd had
before, and waited.
	"You have impressive discipline, my friend," Peter chuckled.
"Most people I know would have dug into that bowl."
	"Discipline is the key to a successful mission.  Impulse is
the key to failure."  Again, it came out by rote.
	With a bamf, Kurt appeared in his trademark cloud of smoke and
landed in his chair, raising one eyebrow as Geoff had thrown himself
out of his chair in the opposite direction, and was in a crouch, back
to a wall, and a spoon in one hand held like a throwing knife.
	"Jumpy?" the German asked conversationally, then began to eat
his ice cream.  "Ah, heavenly hash.  Is there a more perfect form of
ice cream?  Chocolate, marshmallow, almonds, all mixed together?"
	Geoff had an odd look on his face as he returned to his seat,
and began eating.  It was good, but he had already decided not to eat
it all.  He still was vaguely uneasy about Kurt's appearance from
nowhere - teleporters with the kind of skill that let them appear in a
chair were a threat, and he found years of habit running through him
as he came up with a counter for the attack.
	He had been so single-minded in his purpose that he was nearly
as surprised when a cold metal hand landed on his shoulder, and he
turned to see Pete, transformed into a metal statue.  "Is something
wrong with the ice cream?"
	Geoff dropped the spoon and slid down, out of the grip and
under the table, then popped up again.  Both the X-Men could see his
expression - fear, uncertainty - as he put his back against the wall
again.
	"I think, Kurt, we should have been less smart-ass about the
entire situation."
	"True, true.  Please, Geoff, come back to the table.  We don't
have any intentions against you that are malicious."
	"For myself," Pete said, "I apologize for surprising you."
His body seemed to shrink and soften back into flesh.  "We just wanted
you to see that we, too, understand some of what you have gone
through."
	"Indeed, where we came from, people used to try to burn me as
a demon!  Such an urbane and witty fellow as myself!  Can you believe
it?  Utter madness."  He sighed.  "And then we fell between dimensions
and came here."
	Geoff was, slowly, calming down, and the last line hit him
just at the right time.  "Fell between dimensions?  What does that
mean?"
	So they told him the story of the X-Men, as well as any two
men could in a single sitting; including their own inductions, some of
their triumphs, and some of their tragedies, and one story having to
do with miniature versions of Kurt that, for the first time in a very
long time, actually made him laugh.
	Suddenly, both Kurt and Pete realized he was crying now.
	"What's wrong, Geoff?" Pete asked, openly concerned.
	"I... don't know.  I don't.  I... I just... "
	Pete and Kurt both laid their hands on his shoulder.
	"Go to sleep," Rasputin said.  "Tomorrow you have a doctor's
appointment and some other tests and discussions, so we can see what
sort of shape your body is in, and then the day after you have a trip
to take."
	Geoff looked into Pete's face.
	"Trip?  The trial's over that fast?"
	"Trial?  No, no.  No trial.  No, you and I are going to visit
our mentor, Professor Xavier.  I think you and he could use the time
to talk.  On the way, we will have a stopover on Zardon so you can
pick up your legacy."
	"I can't afford to pay for this, Pete."
	"Tcha.  It is on the International Police, and they can afford
it.  The Chief already has arranged for me to be your guardian instead
of Kurt, so he can go chasing women."
	Geoff went and lay down on the bed in the basement, then
remembered to undress and slid between the sheets, and stayed up
longer, thinking.  Then he went and got the Jackal, and went to sleep
with it in his hand.

		     WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2409
			       7:04 AM

	The day dawned a cool early December day, and Kurt and Geoff
left the townhouse around 7.  Kurt suggested they walk to the subway,
and then to the IPO headquarters, and Geoff didn't reject it outright.
As they walked, they came to the Cathedral of Saint Michael the
Archangel.
	"Do you want to go in?" Kurt asked, as Geoff stared awestruck
at the spires.
	"Will it disturb anyone?"
	Kurt made a dismissive noise.  "Father O'Halloran is used to
it."  They ascended the steps, and entered.  Both of them made the
proper obeisances on entering the church, and then took to a pew.
Kurt bowed his head and prayed silently.  He heard Geoff whisper:
	"Pater noster qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum,
adveniat regnum... "
	Latin, the German noted, was the way that the Ignatines
recited the prayer.  After a few minutes of silent contemplation from
the both of them, they rose after Kurt noted quietly they had an
appointment.
	They caught the N from Claremont to the IPO HQ stop, and
entered the building with a flash of Kurt's Lens to the receptionist.
To Geoff's practiced eye, the man at the desk very obviously released
his grips on both a gun and an alert button at the sign of that.
	The medical examination took about an hour, and included a
number of tests, scans, and some blood.

	"Physically, he's in perfect condition.  His biology's
optimized perfectly.  If it wasn't the fact that his body is being
slowly replaced under the skin with a Zardon black-project symbiotic
bioenhancement, he'd probably be considered just someone in
Olympic-class athletic condition.  Physically.
	"His brain, though, is in a much different state.  The Daodan
can rebuild his muscles, enhance his speed, but it doesn't seem to
affect his brain.  His brain chemistry is far off what we consider
'standard' for a human male of his age.  Based on what else we've got,
I'd almost consider classifying him as psychotic and locking him up
for a few years, except for one thing."
	Benjamin D. Hutchins, the chief of the International Police
Organization, leaned back in his chair.  He was listening to the words
of B.J. Hunicutt XIII, MD, one of the IPO's cadre of top medical
officers.
	"So what's the one thing, BJ?" he asked.
	"The thing is that there's actually another condition that
could make him look exactly the same."  BJ dropped two profiles on the
desk.  "Both of those look the same, right?"
	Gryphon examined them.  "Fairly close."
	"The one in your left hand is a psychotic.  The one in your
right is someone who's been deprived of regular sleep for five weeks."
	"So this guy could be insane, or just really tired, is what
you're telling me."
	"Get him some good sleep, and bring him back to me, and I'll
be able to tell you.  My gut instinct is that he's really messed up,
but so mentally stressed that most of that will go away once he gets
some rest in him.  Which reminds me, when was the last time you got a
good night's sleep?"
	Gryphon burst out laughing.  "What is it with doctors and
ignoring protocol, Beej?  Do you learn that in medical school, that
you ignore ranks and just go for the jugular?"
	"You've had a massive, life-changing shock - "
	"Which I dealt with quite well with three months on Ishiyama."
	" - and that tends to disrupt the normal sleep patterns.  I
prefer prevention to cure - cheaper, easier, and less painful in the
long run.  Most of the time."
	Gryphon grinned.  "Well, let me put your mind at ease,
Dr. Hunnicut," he said.  "I slept quite well last night, as a matter
of fact, knowing we had this guy off the streets, and I expect to
sleep even better tonight.  You'll find that very little gets between
me and sleep."  He glanced at his watch, then got to his feet.
	"Now, if you'll excuse me," he went on with a smile, "I've got
to get a bunch of this crap done.  I'm ditching work early today."
	Hunnicut blinked, then laughed.  "Well, that's a reassuring
sign," he said.

	"We know what your training means, Geoff," Kurt told him as
Geoff changed into a set of sweatpants and a t-shirt, "but the
question of just what you can do is still a bit uncertain.  The
higher-ups would like to get a test of your gun skills."  In the
locker room on the fourth sublevel, both of the men were changing into
sweats.
	They walked down the corridor and through a door marked
"RANGE".  Within, the range quartermaster set up a set of tests with a
set of gun simulators.  Single pistol, double-pistol, off-hand, rifle,
off-hand rifle, sniper rifle, all of them both beam and projectile...
he scored almost perfectly.  He also, Kurt noted, treated the
simulator devices as if they were real guns, checking them, holding
them carefully  His weapon discipline was deep and instinctive.
	"Major Boothroyd wants to see if you can use a plasma ejector,
but I told him that it was for another time."  Kurt waggled his
eyebrows.
	"I'm qualified on them," Geoff noted idly.  "I'm not as good
with one of them as I am with guns, but I can use them."
	"Why, for the love of God, would you qualify with something
like that?  You're not a -commando-, for heaven's sake."
	Geoff shrugged.  "You never knew when you might need to erase
someone with a plasma charge."
	Kurt shuddered inwardly at the calm, emotionless phrasing of
that statement, but said only,
	"Come on.  Let us stop for some water and the lavatory, and
then your next activity."
	"Fine with me.  I'll be right out."
	"No, wait, not that - "
	Geoff had ignored the signs, and walked right through a door
marked "Women".  Half a second later, a feminine voice screamed out,
"PERVERT!!"
	The door swung both in and out, which was good for Geoff as he
flew out the door and nearly cratered the wall behind him.
	Kurt finished, " - door, it's the ladies' locker room."
	A pretty girl with straight brown hair except for a sprig
coming from her bangs top leaned out, with a towel around her.  "And
don't do that again, you sicko!"
	Geoff picked himself up.  "Who was SHE?"
	"An intern - Naru Narusegawa."  He shakes her head.  "She's
interning here, both as a college credit and as time at the School for
Non- Conventional Conflict to work with her superhuman strength."
	"Impressive," Geoff said, working his jaw to find it not
actually broken.  "I'm glad I rolled with that punch."

	"Last test of the day, mein Freund," Kurt said.  "They want to
get you into a simulated combat situation."
	"Simulations are not reasonable training, due to the lack of
danger.  Only live-fire drills are acceptable training methods."
Again, reeled off like rote.
	"Oh," said another voice, as Gryphon entered the room, "did we
say it wasn't going to be live-fire?  No, every opponent you face is
going to be armed, dangerous, and specifically programmed to kill
you."  The Chief tilted his head a few degrees.  "Does that scare
you?"
	Geoff finished tying his shoe.  "The mission parameters do not
include fear."

	     /* Alan Parsons Project  "Games People Play"
		  _The Turn of a Friendly Card_  */

	"This is only a test," the speaker blatted, and things started
moving.
	The covers on the droids were near perfect, and he found
himself quickly slipping into an Ignatine battle fugue as he dodged
their fire, running partly up a wall, tagging them out with the guns
he held - not his guns, but good enough for this.  Well-worn snippets
of Gregorian chants slipped through his mind, providing a timing
framework for the gun kata.
	Droids - simulacra of a Black Hood, the occasional Q-Boss, and
even one Shockwave Alberto along the way - passed through his field of
vision, and he knocked them down.  He dodged and weaved, his coat
getting holed twice and his left arm shot through once.  The wound
almost immediately sealed itself.  He spun as he picked up someone
behind him with the strange senses that you got through gun kata, and
spun...
	...to see a woman with dishwater blonde hair, wearing a
waitress's uniform, standing there, hands half-raised and a terrified
expression on his face.
	He froze for a half-second, half-caught in a flashback.  And
in that half-second, the waitress was able to drop the stun grenade
out of her skirt and blast him unconscious.

	When he awoke, his first action was to throw himself at
Gryphon and grab the lapels of his brown drover coat.
	"WHY?" was the only thing he said, howling it into the man's
face.
	Geoff wasn't quite sure what happened next - only that one
moment, he was on his feet and clutching the Chief by the lapels, and
the next, he was flat on his back on the gurney again.  His wrists
stung and his hands were numb and slack at his sides.
	Gryphon leaned over him and answered the question casually, as
though the physical part of the altercation hadn't happened:
	"To see if you can learn from your mistakes."  Then he
straightened his coat and turned to Pete.  "Approved.  Better get him
up to 14 - the team there is just waiting to talk to him."  The IPO
chief turned on his heel and walked out of the room.
	Geoff sat up, looked at Pete, then at Kurt, and then dropped
back, rubbing at his wrists as feeling started to come back into his
hands.
	"Mission status: failed," he muttered to himself.

	The 14th floor was the conference room area.  One of the rooms
had been set aside specifically as the "Big Fire Operations Analysis
Center", and a piece of paper to that effect was proudly taped to the
door.
	Geoff knocked, and the door opened to reveal a sleepy-looking
man in a rumpled suit.
	"Can I help you?"
	"Kurt Wagner, SA1, escorting Geoffrey Depew.  We're here to
speak to Kiichi Goto concerning Big Fire."
	"Ah, yes.  Come in."  The room had obviously been retasked,
and one day someone was going to ask the occupants to move into a real
office; but right now it was still obviously a conference room being
squatted in.  It contained the sleepy man, two women, and a long table
heavily laden with documents and folders.
	"Ladies, let me introduce you to our newest source.  Geoff
Depew, renegade Big Fire agent, meet my associates Kanuka Clancy and
Lebia Maverick."
	Geoff nodded.  "Good afternoon."
	"We were just about to order lunch.  Do you want something?"
	"No, Mr. Goto.  I'm - "  A noise caused him to pause.  "Perhaps
I should reconsider your offer."
	"Gentlemen, ladies, today your lunch is on the Chief."  Kurt
flourished his credchip and bowed.
	Menus were consulted, banter was exchanged, and eventually an
order was placed to a nearby Burritoville.  Kurt said he had somewhere
else to go, and departed with a bow and a kiss on the hand for each of
the women.
	Until the food arrived, and then after it, the three officers
gave Geoff the most intense debriefing of his life.  He dredged things
out of his memory that he hadn't realized he'd known so well, bringing
up operational specifications, the identities of some agents, the
location of two safehouses - what were going to be his next two
targets, until he was caught - and the code name of the New Avalon
Head of Operations.
	"Agent A?" Clancy rolled her eyes.  "Well, at least now we
have a name for her."  She punched a button, and a blurry picture
appeared on a screen.  The monochrome image of a woman in a tight
black jumpsuit and Zorro-esque head-cover appeared, surrounded by data
indicating this had come from a droid's memory.
/--
	"It's about this!" she yelled to someone offscreen, gesturing
to the cityscape behind her.  "New Avalon is burning tonight - and
this is only the beginning!"  She gave a familiar stiff-armed salute
and added in a gleeful shout,
	"TOGETHER!  ALLEGIANCE or DEATH - BIG FIRE!"
--/
	"You can release your gun now, Mr. Depew," Goto's sleepy voice
floated across the table.  Geoff hadn't even realized when his hand
went for the gun and sheepishly removed it.  Goto gave a small smile -
no harm, no foul, all friends here, right? - and continued, "You have
no other information on her?"
	"None.  Codename, gender - she and Q-Boss New Avalon insulated
themselves well.  Information passed through the standard distributed
cell process - through the personal ads."
	He hadn't gotten to that part yet.  Lebia Maverick sat up
straight at hearing that.
	"PERSONAL ads?  How does THAT work?"
	"Each cell has a set of code phrases to watch for in certain
ads.  Usually, they have some kind of reference to their area, but
tend to be obscure.  If you checked the Cornet-Scientifer's ads
today, you might have a meeting of the Manticore Appreciation and
Grooming Society somewhere, and the time and location of it is the
time of the cell meeting."  He shrugged.  "Once you break the local
key, it gets fairly easy.  Changing it becomes hard, because they get
the key at a large-scale meeting, and how do you call one if the key
is broken?  They also use encrypted email and steganography, but those
can be noticed.  Who'd notice a simple personal ad?"
	Lebia's eyes had gone distant while he spoke, then came back.
"No Manticore, but... is the key for New Avalon creatures of mythology?"
	He nodded.  "Yes.  Gryphon, you see.  Shokatsu Komei's idea of
a joke."
	"There's a meeting of the Harpies of New Avalon tomorrow night
at 10 PM in a small meeting hall in the warehouse district.  This
should put a kink in their plans."
	"Don't count on it though," Geoff warned.  "and send a lot of
people if you do.  This one might be a trap.  The code is fairly
layered when you get deep into it, and I don't have a perfectly
reliable key.  Members keep that in their heads. They pride themselves
on operational security."
	"You have THAT right," Kanuka grumbled.  "We've been working
on this forEVER, and you just handed us more about their operations
than we've gotten in the past three months."  She glanced over.  "And
they don't usually allow rogues to go for very long, but you told us
most of your information might be five years old.  How'd you stay
alive?"
	"Three ways: two years out of their eyes, leaving the facility
I left from in utter chaos, and Cervantes dying two months later.  He
was a big fan of not letting the thumb know what the other fingers
were doing, so I don't think the rest of Big Fire knows that he had
an agent go rogue on him."
	"Aaah," Kiichi Goto said.  "This explains much."  He refused
to explain what he meant by that, which resulted in him being pelted
with tortilla chips by his two co-workers.
	They continued for a few hours, until the door cracked open
and a blue head popped in.  "Is he done sweating under the light
bulb?"
	"Ah, Kurt," Kiichi said, smiling his sleepy smile, "we've been
quite good to him.  He's been a marvelous help to us, really."  He
stretched.  "In fact, Lebia's just been distilling things down to
their essence."  The blonde woman was, in fact, simply sitting there,
face slightly slack.  Then the animation came back into it.
	"There.  The report is off to the Chief and the Captain."  It
had come up in conversation - the four had gotten into a small
diversion of conversation that ended up with Geoff finding out that
Lebia had a wireless net link in her head - and Geoff had lost his
surprise at the semi-random pattern of blank expressions she
developed.
	"Excellent!  Pete called me to ask when we were coming home
for dinner."  Kurt bowed.  "With your indulgence, then, I shall collect
my guest and take him with me."
	Goto bade them go, and they returned to the brownstone in
Claremont for the first meal of borscht Geoff had ever had.  (It was,
he noted, odd, but not bad.)

		      THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2409
			     8:44 AM GST

	Interstellar travel was something Geoff was used to.  When he
was with Big Fire, it was small luxury runabouts; afterwards, cargo
bays rigged with sleeping netting.  A starliner, however, wasn't
something he was used to.
	"At least," Pete said, "we are going business class.  If it
was coach, I think we'd be much more uncomfortable."
	"This is better than cargo," Geoff noted, and Pete found
himself having to agree with that.
	Geoff watched metaspace go by, losing himself in the whorls
and patterns. The docking at the Chiisai Zardon wheelworld was
painless, and they passed through customs.  Geoff was a bit worried
about Customs, but the IPO was far better than that, and the Judge at
Customs was abnormally pleasant at welcoming to Zardon.
	The remainder of the trip to the hotel was equally painless,
and they checked in at the Justice Plaza Sheraton without incident.

			      12:03 ZM1T

	"Excuse me, Judge?"
	Judge Quimbly Herzog glanced up from his paper.  He'd just
reached the comics, and wanted to know what Dredd would do today. (It
was, after all, one of the few comics in the paper based on Zardon.)
	Two men were in front of him, both tall, one heavyset and the
other broad and muscular.  The heavyset one was the one that had
spoken.
	"What do you want?"  Herzog was not one of the better-liked
judges, and had barely passed the academy.  But he was absolutely
honest, resulting in his posting to the impound department -
relatively important but with no duties that would put him in contact
with people often.
	"We're here to pick up... um... the contents of locker
2384-3343-2901."  He fumbled with the paper, and seemed nervous - not
uncommon in the depths of the Justice Department, Herzog mused.
	"Well, that's in the back, somewhere.  It'll take me a
half-hour to dig out, and I have lunch in fifteen minutes.  Maybe come
back after lunch."
	"Actually," Pete said, sliding back his sleeve to reveal a red
gem underneath his watch, "If you would like to supervise, we can do
the digging for you, and then, if it takes a while, pay for your lunch
to apologize."
	Herzog frowned.  "Bribing a Judge is a felony," he said
firmly.  "However, as you're a Lensman, I don't see why we can't work
together on this."  He hit a button, buzzing them in.  The three then
wandered through a maze of lockers and storage compartments.

	The locker was smaller than either Pete or Geoff expected, and
the two of them were able to carry the contents - a pair of Zardon
standard sealed evidence boxes - without any issue.
	The first box revealed little, except some random household
items, nothing of great import, and a set of what had once been
photos, half-burned and now faded to white with age.
	When he opened the second box, Geoff paused.  Peter watched
closely as he reached into it, and pulled out a scuffed, burned, and
bright orange stuffed bear.  His fingers trembled as he traced its
face, running to the ear, and then held it out at arm's length with
both hands.
	His face was completely blank, but Peter Rasputin could see
tears welling up.  He knew, he thought, what was going on here.  "I
will... take a walk.  Perhaps two hours."  And he left, closing the
door quietly and thanking the Justice Department that Geoff's guns
were in security on the Wheelworld.
	For most of those two hours, Geoff Depew lay curled up on the
bed in the hotel room, clutching his old teddy bear and crying for
what little he could remember of his childhood.

		       FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2049

	He spent most of the next day in silence, and Peter let him.
Geoff found himself appreciating that deeply, in an way he found
unsettling.  He trusted the big Russian.
	But he'd trusted Cervantes.  And Cervantes had be part of the
machine that had forged him into a killer.  What did that trust mean,
really?
	The concepts chased themselves around his head all the way to
Babylon 6, and their disembarkation there, and the shuttle to Jeraddo.
From there, an antique Rolls-Royce driven by a blue-suited Tac Div
trooper picked them up at the spaceport, and took them across rolling
hills, past a pleasant-looking campus (with a castle high on a hill
overlooking it!), and thence to another, smaller school.  As they
passed through the gate, Geoff read the sign:

			   XAVIER INSTITUTE
			    FOR THE GIFTED

	Interesting.
	The car drove up a long driveway, and came around a circle to
pull up in front of the large manor house.  An imposing bald man in a
hoverchair waited there, flanked by a black woman of exceptional
beauty, not counting her unusual white dreadlocks and blue eyes.
Peter emerged from the car first.
	"Professor!  It is good to see you.  And Ororo, you are of
course well?"
	The black woman smiled.  "Hello, Peter.  Where is your
traveling companion?"
	Geoff had pulled himself out the other side of the car, and
was waiting for the trunk to open.  Peter gestured for him to come
over.  "The driver will get those.  Professor, Ororo, this is Geoff
Depew, a man who has many troubles weighing down his brow."  Geoff had
noticed, and been confused by, the thickening of Pete's Russian accent
since arriving.
	The bald man raised one hand.  "Welcome to the Institute,
Geoffrey.  I am, as you may have ascertained, Professor Charles
Xavier.  This is my capable assistant, Ororo Munroe, also called Storm
by some.  I have a few hours right now while other classes go on, and
Peter seemed to think you and I could spend some time talking."  Geoff
nodded, then went to get his weapon strongbox out of the car.
	"There's no need to be nervous.  There's nothing here that
will hurt you.  And you don't need your guns.  I'd prefer you keep
them locked up, if possible - some of the other students have even
greater levels of post traumatic stress disorder than you do, and guns
may panic them unduly."
	Geoff spun, confused.
	"Did Peter neglect to mention that I am a telepath?  I
apologize; you radiate so strongly right now that I barely realized I
was 'listening' to you.  I meant no offense, and I will endeavor to
not listen to your thoughts.  Storm, why don't you show him into my
study, and make him some tea?  I need to speak with Peter for a few
moments," Xavier said.  The last part was said in a very familiar tone
to his students - the one that said, 'Permit me to explain how badly
you screwed this up.'
	Geoff allowed himself to be led as Ororo pointed out
decorations around and inside the house.  As they passed out of
immediate view, Charles sighed.
	"Peter, I wish you'd told him."
	"Yes, sir.  But we'd discussed the X-Men with him, and your
name had come up, and so did your powers.  We expected he'd have
remembered."
	"His mind is awhirl with confusion, doubt, and underlying it
all a pit of anger and loathing.  I read the report you sent me,
viewed his statement, and quite honestly, I'm unsure what, if
anything, I can do for him.  He may be ...unreachable by methods I
would consider ethical."  Xavier sighed again.  "Have you considered
taking him to Wolverine?"
	"Da.  That would be my next choice, but I thought, perhaps,
you could at least see if there was anything that you could do.
You've done so much in the past, Professor, that if anyone could point
us in a direction to help him, I felt it would be you.  Besides, to
most of the people in the galaxy, raising someone to be an assassin is
a horrific travesty; to an X-Man, it's an occupational hazard."
	Xavier shook his head, a small wry smile crossing his face.
"You have a point there, appealing to my ego."

	   /*  Michael Kamen  "Mutant School"  _X-Men_  */

	Ororo led Geoff into the main hall of the mansion, which was
lined with paintings.  Geoff detected Peter's hand in many of the
paintings, which showed a number of scenes.  Four young people in
garish black and yellow uniforms, and a man-form covered in snow.  A
group of people on a baseball field, with a red-headed woman winding
up for a pitch, and the back of a brunette girl in the field of
vision, the whole thing from the catcher's point of view.
	Just to the side of the door at the end of the hallway,
between the twin staircases going upwards, was another panting, this
one of two men, one Amerind and athletic, the other slender,
brown-haired, wearing odd red-lensed glasses.  A small brass plate
underneath read, in simple letters, "The Ultimate Sacrifice".
	"Who are they?" Geoff asked.
	Ororo paused, and looked at that painting, a little sadly.
"John Proudstar and Scott Summers.  Thunderbird and Cyclops.  Friends
we've lost.  Two of so many... "  She shook her head.  "John was the
first to die.  Scott was the first of the X-Men."
	Geoff paused in his walking.  "You're an X-Man, too?"
	"You're aware of us?"
	"I'm staying with Peter and Kurt.  They've told me a few
stories.  Belief in them, however, is a bit random for me.  Some of
them seem a bit... over the top."
	"They may exaggerate, but I assure you, they rarely lie."
Geoff considered this as Ororo led him into a large study, currently
occupied by two children.
	The two kids were, to Geoff's eye, about twelve or thirteen.
One of them wore heavy, nearly opaque sunglasses.  The other had angry
red skin and large, bright yellow eyes.  He was of no nonhuman race
Geoff knew - looked a bit like a Bith, maybe, but the color was wrong
and the mouth too humanoid.
	"Basil, Arthur, why are you in here?" Ororo asked sharply.
Geoff thought she sounded like a schoolteacher.
	The boy with the sunglasses answered with a slight English
accent.  "Artie and I were having some fun, and it scared Letitia.  It
wasn't that much - we were just trading images and Artie showed a
picture of something he saw in a book on Ragol!  So Ms. Hennings sent
us here to talk to the Professor about 'responsible use of powers'."
	The red boy's eyes glowed, and in the air in front of him
appeared a picture of a huge beast, all claws and fangs and armor.
	"Yeah, just like that.  We weren't even being that bad!"
	"Arthur, stop projecting."  The image disappeared.  "Basil,
did either of you try to project directly into someone else's mind?"
	"No... but you know Letitia's so sensitive?  I mean, maybe she
kinda caught the edge of something.  But it wasn't intentional!"
	Arthur's eyes glowed again, showing a simple dot diagram.  Two
dots near each other, and then a cone radiated out from one of the
two.  A third dot, nearby, just brushed the cone.
	"See!  What Artie's saying."  Basil sighed.  "So I guess we'll
just wait for the Professor."  He sat back in the chair, then looked
up at Geoff.  "He's a bit old for a new student, and he doesn't seem
the teacher type."
	Arthur projected a bright red question mark.  Geoff felt a
strange, just-past-remembering sensation inside his head, and had to
very strongly suppress the urge to draw both guns.  Something about it
started to gnaw at him, and he felt his pulse speed up, his muscles
tense, and he was, very suddenly, unsure of his ability to properly
control himself.
	Basil suddenly took his sunglasses off, and Geoff found
himself looking into the child's unusually green eyes, unable to look
away, unable to move...
	Until his body started to move on its own, hand reaching for a
gun that wasn't there.  He fought himself as the eyes bored into his.
Then the sunglasses were replaced, and with a lurch of suspended
motion now released, Geoff threw himself backwards, into a small
table, letting out a grunt of pain.
	The Professor was framed in the doorway, with Peter behind
him.  Xavier's face - always suited to looking severe, with its
planes, edges, and the bald pate - was looking even more severe than
usual.
	"Basil.  You have been warned multiple times about using your
talents in that manner."
	Basil had, at least, the sense to look like he regretted it.
"I'm sorry, sir.  But it was just that I could almost hear him, and I
tried to listen better, and then he had two different thoughts at once
and one was obviously bad, so I stopped him from doing anything at
all."
	"Perhaps, in the future, you will consider that some things
are best not listened to.  We will discuss this later," Xavier said in
a tone that brooked no argument.  "But this is a guest, who has come
to me at the behest of Peter, and I will not have him thinking that
the Xavier Institute is full of young telepathic hoodlums."
	Geoff had extricated himself from the table, and was getting
to his feet.  A hand reached out for his, and unthinkingly, he took
it.  Artie helped him up, and smiled up at him.  An image swam into
being above the red-skinned boy's head: Basil's head and a pair of
human buttocks, merged together.  Despite what had just happened,
Geoff found himself chuckling.
	"Arthur, return to class.  Basil, go to your room until I send
for you."  If anyone else had seen the image, they either didn't
respond to it or decided to ignore it.  Arthur nodded, then projected
another image at Geoff, this of the two of them next to each other at
a table with food on it, and a question mark.
	"That depends on the Professor, Arthur," Geoff said, "But if
he allows me, I'm sure I'll see you at dinner."
	Basil walked over, looking uncomfortable.  "I'm sorry I
started poking inside your head.  I didn't mean anything bad by it."
	Geoff nodded.  "Just don't do it again.  I'm sure that the
Professor will have a lot more to say about it."
	The two young men headed out the door, going in opposite
directions after leaving the door.  "Well," the Professor said, "it's
easier now that I don't have to teach combat skills, but some of the
children are a bit rambunctious.  Those two," he noted to Peter and to
Geoff, "are thick as thieves.  Artie's actually the balancing factor -
he is only a P4, except for his projection talent - and much better
behaved.  Basil is from New Utah, which has been becoming more and
more anti-telepath in the past few years.  Very sad."
	"Professor," Geoff advanced, "what did Basil do to me?  I
could -not- look away from him, and I was nearly paralyzed."
	"Basil is a P8, but has an interesting side talent - meeting
his eyes induces a form of telepathic hypnosis that compels you to
continue to look, and effectively paralyzes you.  I can resist it - my
powers allow me to ignore the effect.  You, on the other hand, were
moving despite moving his power.  I understand what he was saying,
though - there was a second mental current, and that was taking over.
It's quite interesting - I've encountered similar situations in the
past."  Despite his academic tone, Geoff caught that there was some
kind of background information he wasn't getting.
	"Now, sit down, Geoffrey.  I am going to perform a telepathic
probe on you, in order to see what may have been done to you.  I will
make it as easy as possible on you."
	Geoff realized his heart was pounding again.  The thought of
the probe was, deep inside, absolutely terrifying to him.  And he had
no idea why.  There was no reason, other than the basic fear of
someone romping through his brain, that would cause his system to
react like this.  Nausea seized him, and he sat down hard on a chair,
biting his lip and clenching both fists to keep from letting the urges
to take him over.
	Then there was a soft, soothing sensation in his brain, like
the taste of mint after biting into a hot pepper, and it all slid
away.
	Professor Charles Xavier was possibly the most powerful
telepath currently alive in the galaxy, perhaps even the most powerful
ever to live.  He slid through the sudden veil that covered the big
man's brain in a curtain of fear and violent impulses with some slight
effort, and found himself in a stylized control room.
	[[What an interesting representation of the decision processes
this man has,]] Xavier thought to himself, checking carefully.  There
were two control stations, one of which was manned by a nearly
featureless figure that, with some difficulty, could be made out to be
Geoff Depew.  The other had a large box in place of a pilot and seat.
The Professor 'walked' to the other station and began to examine the
object.
	[[This is... a puppeting psi-form,]] Xavier thought.
[[Similar to what I've heard the Psi Corps can do, or the psionic
image I received the one time I touched Proteus, or even the strange
memory implants I barely can see inside the mind of Logan.]]
	He moved closer, to see that the 'box' was marked with twin
symbols: one the logo of Big Fire, the other some lettering, vaguely
like Arabic.  He reached out again to touch it -
	- and it flared to life, shifting fluidly to become a man
whose face bore resemblances to both Castillian and Arab nobility,
dressed in a cream-colored suit with a white kaffiyeh, a pair of red
goggles, all enshrouded in a long white cloak.
	[[Who invades my residence?]] it said in a commanding voice.
	Xavier took a step backwards.  [[Who are you?]] he demanded,
his psychic armor forming around him.
	[[Alas,]] the figure replied, [[I am all that remains of the
dazzling Miguel Cervantes.  Just a ghost haunting a mind, biding his
time until the moment is right.]]  Cervantes smiled.  [[And now, you
must die, my friend, so that no one is left to tell anyone that I
bring a serpent into their midst.]]  He drew a sword from under his
cloak.

       /*  Toshihiko Sahashi  "Stand A Chance"  _The Big O_  */

	Xavier's psi-sword flickered into existence, and the two began
to duel.  The control room wavered, then expanded, to give the
combatants room to maneuver.  Both of them seemed equally skilled as
the swords clanged together.  Xavier could feel the perspiration
running down his face, and wondered what his students were doing out
there.  Geoff, he knew, was in a fugue state - Xavier had placed him
there specifically to keep the possibility of violent action to a
minimum - but he hadn't expected this.
	The unformed figure, unseen by both, continued to regard its
panel impassively.  As the fight continued, however, it slowly became
more and more detailed, resembling the person outside, until it was a
perfect simulacrum, down to the clothing.  It blinked, slowly, and
turned around in its chair to watch the duel, eyes dull.
	Xavier was rapidly running out of tricks - as a resident of
the brain, Cervantes could call upon more of its resources, and Xavier
couldn't resort to a more direct method without possibly causing brain
damage to the man whose mind they were fighting in.
	[[What do you get from this, Cervantes?  You're dead; your
tool is marked for death.  Even if you manage to kill someone in the
International Police, you cannot hope to escape.]]
	[[Escape is not my plan, my friend,]] Cervantes said, parrying
a desperate thrust by Xavier.  [[No, no.  If my assassin had not
broken faith with me, I would just have used him to kill Komei when
the time came.  But now... Once I gain full control, it will be a
grand revenge.
	[[First, the death of... Gryphon, I think.  Yes; he is a
broken man, though he fights against it.  He leaves himself open to a
clever attacker.  Then, I shall kill that fool Komei, for his plotting
against me that brought my assassin to the place where he rebelled and
broke faith with Big Fire.  And then, as Komei dies, the Magnificent
Ten will kill this shell I use, and my revenges will be complete.]]
Cervantes smiled.
	[[And so I shall pay back my enemies for their treacheries
against me!]]  He brought his blade up in a complex riposte and disarm
that left Xavier out of position for any defense.
	[[Now, my friend,]] Cervantes smiled, [[die.]]
	A third voice echoed in the room: [[YOU FIRST, YOU SON OF A
BITCH!!]]  Six gunshots shattered the air.  The first took Cervantes'
sword-arm off at the elbow, the next four went through his chest, and
the final shot blew his head completely off.  The corpse stood for a
moment, then dissolved into a grey mist.
	Xavier turned his head and saw Geoff Depew, holding the
massive revolver that was really in the lockbox in the office, in a
perfect shooting position.  The big man exhaled slowly and lowered
the gun.  Then his face returned to that glassy state, and he sat down
at the controls again.
	The room changed again, returning to its original size, but
this time with only one set of controls.  Xavier took a deep breath
and checked the controls carefully.  They were all indicating that the
fugue state was intact.
	[[Run intruder detection protocols,]] Xavier ordered.  The
icon acted, then reported:
	[[One visitor on bridge.  Previous intruder has been
removed.]]
	Xavier made a quick scan of his surroundings and found no more
strange psionic constructs.  He nodded to himself, then slipped out of
Geoff's mind.
	He wiped the perspiration from his head with a towel handed
him by Ororo, and leaned back in his chair.  "That was remarkably
difficult."
	"What happened, Charles?  You look as if you'd run a marathon
sitting in your chair."
	"He had... a second personality implanted in him.  Miguel
Cervantes planned for his own betrayal and placed a fragment of
himself in this man's mind.  We fought, and... "
	"You destroyed him, Professor?"  Peter looked anxious.
	"No," said Xavier.  He looked at Geoff, who was still in a
trance state.  "He did.  In the fugue state he was in, he heard what
was going on, managed to completely manifest himself, and destroyed
the Cervantes image in his mind."  Xavier shook his head.  "I can't
remember ever seeing anything like it.  I should awaken him."  Xavier
snapped his fingers - a useful cue he'd come to use for such times,
allowing him to be, say, out of reach of Logan after one of the man's
occasional fits.
	Geoff's eyes snapped open, and he sat up from his deep slouch
with such force he nearly pitched himself onto the floor.  "I had this
weird dream... " he said, softly.  "There was a man in golden armor
dueling with Cervantes, and Cervantes was talking about how he'd
primed me as a weapon.  And suddenly all I could think of was killing
Cervantes before he killed the man in the armor."  He blinked a few
times, then looked at Xavier.  "You were the man in the armor."
	Xavier smiled, just a little.  "Indeed.  And you saved me from
being killed by the psychic entity that was inside you.  Cervantes
had left something in you.  How do you feel?"
	Geoff consulted himself for a moment.  "Better.  I feel...
better.  Like someone just washed the windows and let some more light
in."  He paused.  "If there was something from Cervantes in my mind,
why did I go killing Big Fire goons by the gross?"  Peter came back,
handing the Professor and Geoff cups of tea.
	"The IPO analysts would be more likely to tell you, but I
would think that once someone works through the evidence, they'll see
that you only went against groups that were influenced by Komei.
There are some indications that the Magnificent Ten aren't perfectly
aligned with each other, although that's only speculation."
	"Shokatsu Komei isn't one of the Magnificent Ten, just the
Chief Strategist of Big Fire," Geoff noted.  "Cervantes frequently
disagreed with his decisions, but was never able to sway more than a
few others of the Ten to his side.  Never enough to take action
against Komei."
	Xavier filed this away in his memory.  "However, to get back
to our true subject: You yourself took the action that broke you out
from his subconcious control.  I merely was the conduit that allowed
you to do so.  You should be proud of yourself."
	"I don't know about proud," Geoff said, slowly.  "But I feel
cleaner, somehow."  He sipped his tea, then blinked.  "What kind of
tea is this?"
	"Darjeeling," Xavier said, taking a sip himself.  "You're not
familiar?"
	"No.  Usually, it's whatever Lipton puts in their bags.  This
is... really good."  He took another sip.  "Even without cream and
sugar."
	The momentary chuckle was interrupted suddenly by a tremendous
explosion that shook the entire house, followed by a high-pitched
whooping sound.
	"What now?" Peter groaned as the Professor pressed a button on
a nearby phone, causing one of the bookcases to unfold into a computer
terminal.  One of the wings of the building was flashing bright red,
and the sound of blast doors slamming shut could be heard.
	"Explosion in the tactical division residence wing," Xavier
noted.  "The wing has been sealed off from the remainder of the school
containing the fire.  Ororo, perhaps you could give them some
assistance?"
	Another alarm decided to go off right about then.  "Professor!
Incoming craft!"  Peter was at another console.  "Three of them,
Pelican troop transports... landing out front!"
	"How did they get so close?" Xavier wondered.  "The automated
systems must have detected them sooner than this!"
	"They changed their IFF transponders.  Until ten seconds ago,
they had perfectly valid IPO pings.  And then they changed to... "
Peter's face stilled - a terrible cold expression.
	"Big Fire."

	The Big Fire operation had already gotten at least two of its
goals taken care of - the barracks wing for the tac div troopers was
in flames and cut off from the rest of the school, and the third
dropship that had landed in the circle (crushing the antique Rolls,
depressingly) had extended a set of antennae that were emitting a
visible pulse of energy.  The Black Hoods were busy setting up a
secure area, blowing the building's automatic defensive systems clear
from where they had unfolded from their hidden repositories.

	"They are using psionic dampeners of an unknown design,"
Xavier said, "and I am weary after my work with Mr. Depew.  I cannot
access their minds through their shields."  He had his fingers at his
temples.  "However... yes.  Warren?  Can you hear me?  Good.  I am
implanting what I need you to do.  Do you have it?  Excellent.  I will
maintain a light contact."  His eyes opened.  "One of our students,
taking classes at the Mandeville Institute.  He is calling in a
priority alert to the IPO."
	"I contacted Cain, Paige and Logan through my Lens.  Should we
drop back to the secure room and wait, then?"  Ororo glanced towards
the screen.  "Their commander's arrived.  I don't recognize him."
	Geoff looked up and paled.  A satisfied-looking red-haired man
wearing a polyester leisure suit was at the top of the ramp.  "Oh, no.
Fitzcarrald.  This changes everything."
	Peter glanced at the ex-Big Fire assassin.  "Who is
Fitzcarrald?"
	Geoff's voice got that flat tone he used when giving straight
data on a mission or target.  "Alexander Fitzcarrald.  Esper.  Direct
report to Cervantes.  Esper power manifests as power to generate and
use blasts of hard vacuum to slice through nearly anything when he
snaps his fingers."  He returned to normal voice.  "If he gets in,
he'll cut through damn near anything you have to stop him."
	He didn't say: Fitzcarrald will kill anyone who gets in his
way.  They're going to kill people who seem to care about me,
including someone that might really be a friend.
	He didn't say: They're here to take the kids away.  Bring them
to Big Fire.  Bring them into Big Fire slavery.
	He didn't say: Like they did to me.
	Xavier watched him carefully.  The telepath could hear Geoff's
thoughts, and both Ororo and Peter watched them run across his face,
then suddenly harden into resolve.
	"Professor, I'll do what I can to hold them off."
	"Wait a moment.  Warren has contacted the IPO.  There is a
transporter block around this area, and it will take eight minutes to
get a land strike team into position.  Every available Expert has been
notified, and will be incoming to Babylon 6, and thence to here."
	Geoff set the timer inside his head.  "Eight minutes to hold
them off.  If Peter is willing to let me use my guns, I'll do what I
can."
	"Nyet, Geoff, not alone.  Ororo and I will assist you.
Professor, you should go to the secure area."  The big Russian's body
seemed to expand as it transformed - skin, hair, even his eyes - into
metal.  He reached into a pocket, pulled out what looked like a pen,
and clicked it.  The lockbox popped open, revealing Geoff's two
pistols in their holsters.
	Geoff stripped off his jacket, swung the holsters on with the
ease of years of practice, and slid the jacket back on.
	"OK," he said.  "Ororo, what do you do?"
	The tall black woman smiled as her blue eyes faded to
whiteness.  "Let me show you whey they call me Storm."
	Outside, the sky began to cloud over.
	"Nice.  Let's go to work."  He drew the guns and flipped off
the Jackal's safety.

	"Woohoo, boys, looks like the weather's gettin' bad,"
Fitzcarrald chuckled in his languid Southern accent.  "We can take off
through it, right?"
	"Yes, sir," said the operation's Q-Boss.  "These Pelicans can
take us through almost anything."
	The doors to the school burst open, revealing three figures.
	"Huh!" Fitzcarrald observed.  "Looks like they're sending out
negotiators.  Hey, boys," he said as he switched to the Big Fire tac
frequency, "kill 'em."
	The Black Hoods raised their guns, and then things got very
confused.

	   /*  Manfred Mann's Earth Band  "Demolition Man"
		      _Somewhere In Afrika_  */

	Colossus rushed the Black Hoods as Storm reached out with her
mind and one hand and slagged a Pelican with a lightning bolt that
went straight through the engines.  The Black Hoods nearest Colossus
tried an old-fashioned dog-pile that worked as planned - if the dogs
in question were newborn Chihuahua puppies.
	Geoff went to work.  The Jackal spoke loudly and often,
plugging Hoods with the rubber bullets he'd been issued.  The Hoods
kept just barely missing him or just grazing him, despite their
automatic weapons, and shortly his coat was is tatters, and his
clothing showed numerous tears.  As he slid through the fight on the
edge of his skills, he took a half-moment to snag a fallen Black
Hood's personal medkit from his armband and slip it up his own sleeve.
	Fitzcarrald, his goofy disco-punk appearance notwithstanding,
was no fool.  He smiled, because he knew exactly what was going on.
"Well, well, well, looks like we got us a traitor!  Boys," he said,
addressing the troops, "break off from him?  He's mine."  He adjusted
the lapels of his suit, and stepped down the ramp of the Pelican into
the fray.
	The horde of Hoods parted like the Red Sea, leaving a path
between the two men.  The rain began to pour down.
	"Geoffrey."
	"Fitz."
	"It's been so very long."  Then Fitzcarrald snapped his
fingers.  The blast of hard vacuum flew towards Geoff, who merely slid
out of its way, leaving it to go on and slice a gouge in one of the
front walls of the school.  A spray of bullets returned to Fitzcarrald,
and he danced and let them slide around him.
	"You've improved, old buddy."
	"You're still the same flashy asshole you always were."
	"Cervantes had such plans for you.  But then you got weak and
ran away.  Too bad."
	"Shut up and fight."
	Fitzcarrald smirked.  "Let's dance."
	Geoff clenched his fist, tightening first index and pinky
fingers, then ring and middle.  The medkit, programmed to respond to
that particular motion, shoved a tailored cocktail of stimulants,
nanosurgeons, and regenerative accelerators into his bloodstream.
That brew hit his system hard and fast (as it was designed to do).
	If he had been injured, it would have done for him exactly
what it was designed to do to a normal humanoid - namely, accelerated
his healing process, very briefly giving him regenerative powers to
rival those of Detians.  Since he wasn't injured, the Daodan used it
for something else entirely.  The implant absorbed it, distilled it,
and flipped a biochemical switch.
	To Geoff, it was as if his adrenalin glands had just decided
to dump an entire life's worth of fight-or-flight hormone into his
blood.  Gratified that the standard medical kit for Big Fire hadn't
changed, he felt his body go into the state that had been referred to
time and again as "overdrive".  His body started to glow with a
dangerous-looking blue-purple light that made onlookers think of
unshielded radiation.
	They charged each other, Fitzcarrald snapping his fingers a
dozen times.  Two Black Hoods with bad luck died, sliced apart by the
vacuum blades.  Geoff concentrated on dodging; he leapt off the
ground, twisting, and lost more of his coat to the cutting arcs.
	I'm better than he is now, Geoff thought.  He's the same as he
was before - he just relies on his power.  I've trained and practiced
and been in real fights, while he's sat on his ass.  Sure, he's kept
in good shape, but... he hasn't been in a real fight.  And the Daodan
is stronger too, and that's another piece of my edge on him, even
beyond overdrive.
	With an impossibly long leap, he came down with the Jackal,
locked open on an empty magazine, in Fitzcarrald's teeth.  The impact
took the Big Fire field leader to the ground.  Both rolled and came
up mere feet from each other.
	"You're even better than I thought you were," Fitzcarrald
admitted, blood flowing freely from his mouth.  "But you're too
close."  He snapped his fingers, aiming right at Depew's neck,
grinning despite the two broken teeth at the front of his mouth.
	Somehow, Geoff seemed to dodge them, moving faster than
Fitzcarrald expected, sliding down and around and out of the esper's
line of sight, a slight spray of blood and a trail of violet light all
that was seen of him.
	Until Fitzcarrald heard the voice in his ear say, "Good night,
Fitz.  Say hello to Cervantes in Hell."  A sledgehammer blow caught the
Big Fire super-agent in the back, and for him it all went black.
	Geoff let the unconscious body fall.  Agents above Q-Boss all
used a special body armor of Big Fire creation, so that bullet almost
certainly hadn't killed Fitzcarrald; but a .50-caliber rubber bullet
at point-blank range will still shatter ribs, even through top-class
body armor.
	Blood dripped down the side of his head - one of the vacuum
blades had just grazed him in the slightest, and still had cut nearly
to the bone, just above his ear.  With their leader down, the Black
Hoods now had nothing to keep them from shooting him.  They made to
open fire, and Geoff prepared to dodge, feeling the Daodan beat like a
second heart inside him.
	Geoff wouldn't have bet who was more surprised by what
happened next, him or the Black Hoods.  Over at the Hoods' end of the
battlefield, it suddenly started raining blasterfire.  Black Hoods
went down amid cries of confusion and pain as the scarlet bolts of
energy slashed through their formation.  It took them several critical
seconds to recover and figure out where the attack was coming from.
	There was a man standing on top of the antenna-festooned
Pelican.  He was dressed in an armored suit with a visored helmet that
completely hid his face, and he was blazing away at the Hoods with a
pair of heavy blaster pistols.  Geoff couldn't make out what type they
were at that distance, but judging by their deep, almost percussive
voices and the brilliant red color of their bolts, they were serious
hotrods.
	Inside Geoff's head, the automatic threat assessment that was
as natural and automatic to him as breathing sized up this new player.
He wore the armor of a Mandalorian Death Watchman, but he didn't match
the profile of any of the three known Mandalorian survivors on whom
Big Fire had possessed files five years ago.  His armor was battered,
scuffed, and generally unpresentable, but it looked like it all
worked, and the guy certainly knew how to handle a blaster, whoever he
was.
	All that was the work of only a half-second or so for Geoff's
well-trained brain.  He watched as the Hoods began returning fire; the
Mandalorian, if that's what he was, ignored them at first, knowing it
would take them a few seconds to get to really shooting at him as
opposed to just shooting.
	Then he holstered one of his blaster pistols, palmed a small
object from a cargo pocket on his armor, dropped it to the roof of the
Pelican at his feet, and hit his thrusterpack, rocketing away from the
dropship.  A couple of rounds from the Black Hoods' weapons sparked
against his armor as he cleared their fire zone.
	A second later, the demolition charge he'd left behind went
off, reducing the jammer Pelican to smoking rubble.
	Off to one side, another group of Black Hoods saw this all go
down and moved to intercept the Mandalorian when he landed.
	Before they could get very far, they were suddenly engulfed by
a cloud of thick grey smoke that seemed to erupt from nowhere around
them.
	Geoff shook off his surprised immobility, mentally chiding
himself for the lapse (though in reality it had only been a couple of
seconds).  He charged into the nearest knot of troopers, the survivors
of the Mandalorian's first assault, and knocked down a few in
hand-to-hand combat before they really got into the mood to start
shooting again.
	As he fought, Geoff took moments whenever he could spare them
to glance at the cloud of smoke.  No Black Hoods were emerging, and
through the din of his own battle he could dimly hear shouts, cries of
pain, and the occasional gunshot from within it.
	He laid out the last of the Hoods in his group and whirled to
see the Mandalorian just finishing up some nicely done hand-to-hand
with another cluster.  The two men caught sight of each other at the
same moment.  The Mandalorian nodded acknowledgement, then spotted
something off behind Geoff and quickdrew his blasters.
	Damn, he's fast, Geoff thought even as he spun to see why the
man had drawn.  The turn meant he ended up facing the spot where
Fitzcarrald had fallen.
	The agent was still sprawled on the ground, unconscious or
dead, Geoff couldn't really tell.  On one knee next to him was a
man in a white linen suit with an emerald shirt and matching long
hair.
	"Genya!" Geoff spat.  He brought his revolver around, trying
to get it to bear in time -
	- but he was too late, and had been out of position completely
to get the last shot in the pistol off at Genya's forehead.  A green
glow surrounded the two Big Fire agents, deflecting a flurry of
blasterfire from the Mandalorian.  Geoff didn't bother to fire.
	Genya, the Magnificent Ten's Illusory Knight, smirked and said
in a low voice that Geoff still could hear: "Big Fire remembers its
traitors."
	Then the green glow flashed bright and took him and Fitzcarrald
away, leaving a circular divot in the lawn.
	With that threat gone, Geoff automatically scanned the rest of
the battlefield.  Black Hoods lay sprawled everywhere, many unconscious,
some dead.  Colossus and Storm stood near the school doors, surrounded
by fallen enemies.  The groups Geoff and the mysterious Mandalorian
had taken on were all down and silent.  The only activity left on the
field was the strange cloud of smoke.
	As Geoff turned toward it, the noises from within the cloud
ceased.  Dim outlines of people became visible through the smoke; as it
began to dissipate, Geoff could make out a couple dozen Black Hoods
standing in a ragged crossfire formation around a single half-crouched
humanoid figure.
	Then a breeze came up and blew the remaining wisps of the
fast-thinning smoke away, and he saw that the figure in the center was
a teenage girl.  She was dressed in a dark bodysuit with mesh panels
and a few bits of armor, and there was a little smile on her face as
she finished sliding a short, straight sword into a scabbard on her
back.
	As the blade clicked home, the Black Hoods all around her
wobbled and collapsed to the ground as one.
	Things got reasonably quiet after that, at least until all the
belated backup started beaming in.

	The IPO turned out in force.  A dozen Lensmen including the
Chief showed up, and they brought with them something like two
imperial arseloads of bluesuiters.  They fanned out instantly upon
their arrival, some dealing with the enemy troops scattered all over
the lawn, others establishing a defensive perimeter.  The initial
defenders retired to the mansion's palatial sitting room for
debriefing.
	Geoff lay on the floor between the couch and the wall, curled
up, shuddering, feeling the waves flowing through him.  As it finally
passed, he exhaled, realizing just how tired he really was.  He
touched the side of his head to find the cut sealed up, without
leaving even a scar.
	He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes to find someone
leaning against the wall and watching him.
	The man was short, broad, and his hair came up in an owlish
sort of peak on either side of his head.  He was smoking a thin cigar
and had a beer in one hand.
	He reached down to Geoff.  "Y'look pretty tired.  Chuck told
me to come here, get you to a guest room."  Geoff reached up and took
the hand, and was pulled to his feet.  A brief patter of applause was
heard, and he looked around to find that most of the people who had
come to the school's rescue were there.
	The first person he saw was the guy in the Mandalorian armor.
He had his helmet off and was talking with Gryphon, and Geoff was
surprised to see how young he was.  He couldn't be out of high school
yet, any more than could the redheaded girl in the dark battle suit
who stood next to him.
	Gryphon saw that Geoff was up and smiled.
	"Well, Mr. Depew," he said.  "It seems you have at least one
quality that we tend to find in our higher-level agents."
	Geoff looked a bit confused.  "What's that, sir?"
	"Trouble follows you," the black-haired youth in the armor
said.  He extended a gauntleted hand.  "Boba Fett, Satori Mandeville
Institute Duelists' Society."
	"Fett," Geoff said in his 'information on file' voice as he
shook the hand.  Then a look of comprehension came onto his face and
he said in a more natural voice, "You're Jango Fett's son."
	Fett smiled.  "You've heard of us, then."
	Geoff nodded.  "Big Fire considers your father a Class B
threat," he said.  "I didn't know you had your own armor.  My
information's a few years out of date."
	Fett chuckled.  "Neither did Dad until recently," he said.
Then he raised an eyebrow and said, "Class B, did you say?  Hmph.
He'll be crushed."
	"He travels with Alita Ironheart," Geoff pointed out.  "It's
all relative."
	Fett laughed.  "I suppose so."
	Having waited patiently for an opening into the conversation,
the redhead now bowed to Geoff and said pleasantly,
	"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Depew.  I'm Sakura Byakuro."
	Geoff's eyebrows went up.  "As in the Byakuro Ichiban Shadow
Society?"
	"You're a well-informed guy," she said with a grin.  "The
same.  I'm also an Institute Duelist.  When Warren came to the Castle
to call the attack in to the IPO, Boba and I knew we had to rush over
and help.  The others will be sorry they missed it - they were all in
class."
	Seeing that Geoff was having a hard time following the
conversation - after the battle and the usual fun with the Daodan
afterward, he was crashing hard - Peter Rasputin pulled himself out of
his chair and handed the ex-assassin a glass of water, which was drunk
in a single pull.
	The short man with the peaked hair nodded to the big Russian,
then looked to the Chief and said, "I'm gonna take the kid upstairs."
	Gryphon nodded.  "Enjoy your nap, Mr. Depew," the First
Lensman said with a slight smile.
	The short man guided Geoff to the side of the stairs, and then
showed him into a elevator which took them both upstairs.  Geoff was
not quite as tired as the short man seemed to think he was, but he
allowed this without question - he'd already recognized the man's
skills and wasn't going to take any chances.
	The room was similar to what you'd see in a fairly upscale
hotel. He noticed his bags were already there - Peter had said they'd
be staying here overnight anyway, so this was probably going to be his
room for the night.  He opened the duffel and pulled out a pair of
shorts and a t-shirt that had a highly stylized picture of a Zardon
street judge on it ("Judge Dredd: I AM THE LAW!").  A quick trip into
the bathroom, and he dumped the now-ruined coat in a trashcan, then
rolled up what he'd been wearing before and stuffed it into a plastic
bag.
	When he emerged, the short man was still there.
	"Name's Logan," the short man finally said.  "Back when, they
called me Wolverine.  Chuck said he wanted me to talk to ya.  You and
me got something in common, after all."
	"What's that, sir?"  He sat on the bed, unable to retain a
proper at-ease stance now.  Something about Logan gave Geoff a strange
vibe - this was someone who would understand just what had happened.
	"Some people took us and turned us into killers."  With the
sound of metal against metal, three claws extended from the back of
his hand.  "But you know what I learned?  It's not what they did to
you, or what you did for them, or any of that crap that matters."  The
claws retracted, and "It's what you do now that counts.  You got a
chance here, bub."
	Logan took a drag from his cigar. "So what did they do to you?
I saw ya glowin' behind the couch."
	"Glowing?  I didn't know that."
	"How can ya not know?  Hell, I think half the room saw it, but
they wouldn't say anything about it."
	Geoff took a deep breath.  "I close my eyes while it's going
on, and...  I've never had anyone else around when it happened.  But
what Big Fire put in me - this stolen Zardon enhancement symbiote
called a Daodan - after a mission, when I exert myself, it... I guess
you'd say it 'fixes' things.  After every one, I'm faster, stronger,
tougher.  It just feels strange.  I used to make sure I was holed up,
alone, and had the time to deal with it afterwards."
	Logan took another drag.  "Right.  Another bunch of damn
science geeks tryin' ta make the perfect killer.  Some days I'd swear
that's gotta be the galaxy's leadin' growth industry."  Wolverine
grabbed the desk chair and sat backwards in it, forearms resting on
the back.  "Like I said, you've got a chance here.  Chuck gave me
mine, the chance to be somethin' more than just a stone killer.
Gryphon's giving you yours."
	Geoff lay down on the bed.  "I don't know what I'm doing
anymore," he admitted in a small voice.  "I just knew that I wasn't
going to let myself allow Big Fire to take the kids from this school
and turn them into weapons.  I would have gone out there alone, and I
didn't really care what happened afterwards, just as long as the kids
here weren't taken."  He took a deep breath and said, very quietly,
"maybe I was thinking I'd have been better off dying that way."
	"Ain't no such thing as a hero's death.  There's just dyin'.
What matters - what the whole point is... hell, I dunno.  But what I
figure?"  Logan blew a cloud of smoke into the air.  "Dyin' is easy.
Livin'?  That's the hard part.  You got a lot of stuff messed up in
your head - trust the ol' Canucklehead.  They did it to me, too.
Instead of a Day-whatever, they plated my bones with metal and gave me
these claws.
	"I been there, kid.  I been places darker than where you are
right now.  Where bein' dead seemed the best.  But two things got me
through it, and now you're gonna hear my sage wisdom.  So don't fall
asleep."
	Geoff, on the edge of just that, dragged himself back.  "OK?"
	"The two things that got me through the worst of my life were
this: first, I had some people that cared about me."
	"You're ahead of me," Geoff said, bleakly.
	"You might be surprised.  Pete was worried as hell about you -
spent two hours on the phone with me asking me questions and gettin'
me to rearrange my schedule so I'd have some time with you when he
brought you to Tomodachi to meet me.  We're still goin', so don't think
you get out of it.  And Kurt called in to find out how things were
goin', and 'Roro... well, she likes people anyway.  And, hell, you got
me talkin' philosophy, which I don't do a whole lot.  'Cept you need
it, from someone who's been where you are.
	"Anyway, number two on the list is: find something to live for
that's not related at ALL to the people that screwed up your life.
Forget Big Fire, forget revenge, forget it all, and find one beautiful
thing to live for."
	"Would it be too wrong for me to ask you what your beautiful
thing is?"
	"It's nosy as hell, kid.  But ya know what?  You got me at the
right time.  Lemme tell you a story about a woman named Mariko
Yoshida... "
	Geoff listened as best he could, until he found himself barely
able to keep awake.  Finally, Logan said, "Listen, kid, crash.  There's
tomorrow."  Geoff rotated on the bed as Logan closed the door behind
him.  He reached for the nighttable to pick up the Jackal.
	Then he paused, reached beyond it, picked up the orange teddy
bear that sat there instead, and went to sleep.
				   
		      SATURDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2409
			       9:15 AM

	The next morning, Geoff was woken up by a shaft of sunlight
reaching his face. He sat up, and a glance at the clock told him he'd
slept for... FIFTEEN hours?
	He shook his head at his slovenliness, made the bed, then took
a shower.  Sitting on the credenza when he came out was a shirt he
hadn't noticed before.  He picked it up and found it to be a "Property
of Xavier Institute Athletic Department" t-shirt.  He took off the
Knights t-shirt he'd just donned and put it on instead, finding an odd
sense of pleasure at wearing it.
	Out the door and down the stairs, and he found himself in a
dark-paneled wood hall.  He wandered down it, following the scent of
bacon in the air, which brought him to a swinging door that he passed
through.
	Within, Logan and Peter were working hard at the act of
cooking (his mind nearly shattered at the image of the gruff Logan
wearing a "Kiss Me, I'm A Mutant" apron).  The shorter man gestured
with a claw at another door.  "Breakfast's buffet style, get yer stuff
and eat up," then went back to cutting slices of sausage with that
claw and flipping them onto a hot pan.
	The door that he'd been directed through led into a dining
room.  Every Expert that had shown up yesterday was there, chowing
down and chattering away.  One full plate later (scrambled eggs,
bacon, sausage, Salusian bacon, corned beef hash and a pair of
biscuits), he found a chair halfway down the table, between an Asian
girl and a brown-haired man wearing a leather jacket with a
now-familiar X motif on the shoulders.
	"Hey," the man said, "Bobby Drake.  You're Geoff Depew, right?
You're, like, the hero of the day."
	Geoff felt his face get hot.  "I just did what I had to do to
stop Big Fire."
	Bobby grinned.  "Hey, don't sweat it, man.  We know what
you're talkin' about."  Geoff started eating, and was not even fazed
now as a woman walked through the table like a ghost, filling juice
glasses.
	At the head of the table, Geoff noticed Professor Xavier and
Gryphon, with a man who looked like a black-haired, taller Gryphon
directly across the table from Gryphon, the three conferring deeply.
The woman with the juice slid between the Professor and the
black-haired man, giving the latter a kiss on the cheek.
	Other than that, it just seemed like a boisterous breakfast.
A truly enormous redheaded man - the guy who'd been playing ping-pong
on the rec level at IPO HQ - had what looked like a dinner platter in
front of him, stacked with food, and was telling a joke to the woman
(black hair, black spot over one eye) across from him.  The joke was
so filthy and rude and hilarious that Geoff nearly spat juice across
the table at the red-haired woman when he caught the punchline.
	Bobby and the Asian girl (whose name, Geoff caught in passing
as the jokes flew over his head in the literal sense, was Jubilee)
ended up getting up and heading out about ten minutes later.  "Hey,"
Bobby said, "Come out to the living room when you're done, we'll
introduce you to people.  You were pretty fried last night, so I don't
think you remember anyone."
	"I remember Logan."
	Jubilee and Bobby shared a look.  "Yeah," Jubilee said,
cracking her gum, "he's pretty memorable."  The two of them headed
out, and slowly the rest slipped out of the room.  Eventually, it was
down to Geoff, the Professor, Gryphon, and the man with the black hair.
	"Geoffrey," the Professor called, "would you come here, please?"
	"Sir," Geoff said.  He picked up his plate, glass and silver
and moved up toward the head of the table.
	"You know Gryphon, of course," the Professor noted, indicating
the aforementioned worthy, "and this is Don Griffin, a former student
of mine.  We had a few questions for you about yesterday."
	The next half-hour was an intense debriefing, with all three
men asking questions rapid-fire, Geoff answering them as best as he
can.  Information on tactics, long-term strategy, technology, what he
knew and what he intuited, Fitzcarrald and Genya, all of it came out
of him.  When it was over, he felt drained, but the other three men
looked pleased.
	"Were you aware," Gryphon said casusally, stirring a cup of
tea, "that Fitzcarrald had been elevated to the Magnificent Ten?"
	Geoff sighed, leaning back.  "Lowered entrance requirements.
If it wasn't for the fact that I hate them all, I'd feel sorry for
them.  Fitz was always more flash than skill.  If I'd killed him, it
would probably have been a benefit for them."
	"You're certain he's not dead?" Xavier queried, one eyebrow
raised.
	"Rubber bullet, standard kevlex-spidersilk armor for the
Magnificent Ten... no, not unless I got very lucky.  Punctured lung
from a broken rib, possibly; dead, no.  Genya almost certainly got him
out fast enough."
	"Well!" Don said, flipping closed his notepad.  "I've got some
stuff to work with here.  I wish we'd caught that jammer, but Boba
made the right call - knocking it out was more important right then.
Skuld and I are going to be burning the midnight oil piecing the
wreckage together to figure out the countermeasures."  He tucked it
away into his coat, and stood.  "Professor, if you're all set here,
I'll be on my way.  Lot of things to do."
	"Hold on a minute, Don."  Gryphon held up a forstalling
hand. "Can you wait maybe a half-hour?"
	"Sure.  What's up?"
	"Well, there's someone I want Geoff here to meet, and
Tomodachi was his destination anyway, so once they're done, you could
give him a ride."
	Geoff controlled his face, wondering who was waiting.
	"No problem.  Kitty will probably be happy to have the time to
chat with Ororo, anyway."
	Gryphon led Geoff down one of the wood-panelled halls.
"Congratulations, Mr. Depew. You've done well for yourself.  I'm quite
impressed so far.  But right now, there's someone else who has a claim
on your time for a bit."  He opened the door to the library.

       /*  Duke Ellington  "I'm Beginning To See the Light"  */

	Standing within was a tall, slender man in the black habit of
a Grammaton Cleric.  Geoff recognized him immediately and bowed
instinctively.
	"Brother Neo," he said.
	Brother Thomas "Neo" Anderson, Grammaton Cleric of the Order
of Saint Ignatius the Defender, strode forward.  "Brother Geoffrey.
Brother Ghost asked me to come and see you at my first opportunity."
Which, in Ignatine speak, meant that Neo had dropped everything
non-immediate and hied himself hence.  When one of the Tetragrammaton
asked a serving Cleric for a favor, it carried the weight of command.
	"I place myself at your service, Brother Neo."  Geoff had not
yet straightened, a fact that Gryphon noted.
	"I'll be going now. Mr. Depew," the First Lensman said.  "I'm
sure I'll see you again, soon enough.  Neo," he added with a nod to
the Cleric as he retreated from the room.
	"Brother Geoffrey, please, stand up," said Neo.  Then,
cracking a little smile, he said, "That can't be comfortable."  Geoff
straightened up, leaving his head bowed.  "Father Talesio sends his
greetings, as does Brother Partridge.  They're, uh, less than pleased
with the manner of your crusade, although they agree with it in
spirit."
	The Cleric smiled again.  "I've come to talk to you about the
dangers of a one-man crusade," he added with wry self-deprecation.
	Having lived among the Ignatines and studied the ways of the
Cleric, Geoff knew what this meant.  Neo was special even for a Cleric
of the Grammaton; he believed himself to be God's instrument against
the vicious, xenophobic human cult calling itself the Church of Man,
and his passion to destroy this false church had been known to cloud
his judgment.
	"I knew no other way, Brother Neo," Geoff said.  "I have come
to understand that I let my zeal control me, instead of finding peace
within me."
	"Then you are finding your way to the right path," Neo said,
nodding judiciously.  "Gryphon has chosen to take your case for
himself.... but I feel you have a need to unburden yourself."  Neo sat
down in a chair, then gestured to the couch next to the chair.
	Geoff sat, closed his eyes, and began to speak.  "When I left
the monastery at Abbot Talesio's advising, I thought about what I
should do.  I couldn't reconcile my doubts at all.  After all, I'd
succumbed to the worst kind of blasphemous behavior.  I'd killed in
cold blood.  How could I escape the damnation I'd earned?  Around and
around it went in my head, what to do.  Finally, one night after not
enough sleep, it clicked for me."
	"Aha," said Neo, grinning wryly.  "That's your problem.  You
made the decision without enough sleep!  And then spent three years
that way."
	Geoff opened his eyes and turned to stare at Neo.  "You make
it sound like this was a whim."
	Neo became serious.  "I'm sorry.  I don't mean to offend you,
or belittle your crusade - but I think that a great deal of your
problem was that you simply had no sense of balance.  I, for example,
have the example of the training of the order from as long as I could
remember, and even I sometimes falter.  You... I think that in some
ways, Father Talesio regrets his decision to ask you to leave us.  I
know - and please, don't mention this - that Brother Partridge and he
had some very tense words about it."
	Geoff imagined the two men - icons of calm, in his mind -
having what anyone would consider 'tense words'.  "Presumably over
tea, knowing Brother Partridge."
	Neo chuckled.  "Of course.  But there was disagreement there.
Brother Ghost kept his own counsel, as always, and I understand that
he was called in by Gryphon for a discussion during the investigation
that led to your arrest by the International Police."
	Geoff winced.  "I suppose that, having transgressed so
handily, I'm going to be up before a canon court?"
	"No, actually.  Gryphon has taken responsibility for you on
behalf of the International Police.  I'm here to deliver to you one
very important message: Father Talesio hopes that you will take your
next chance at salvation as seriously as you took the first one."
	The tall Cleric smiled a bit wider.  "Listen, Geoff.  You may
not be a true Cleric of St. Ignatius," he said warmly, "but we know
that Gryphon and the International Police are honorable men and women,
and if you find yourself among them, you will be serving the same sort
of purpose as you would among us."  Neo reached out his hand.  "And
for myself, I would still count you among the brothers of the Order
if you called for help.  I think that Brother Partridge would do the
same."
	Geoff took the hand and chuckled.  "I thought that Brother
Partridge didn't like me, actually.  He certainly acted like I was
hopeless."
	Neo laughed.  "Oh," he said with a confidential air, "he does
that to everyone.  The first day he ran me through the standard
training center after so long in my private training room, he said I
had gone from being top of the class to having the accuracy and
control of a she-ox in heat."
	Geoff chuckled.  "He told me that, too.  I wonder if he has a
set of rote training admonitions."
	"I... wouldn't be all that surprised.  So, perhaps you might
tell me a bit more about your travels?  I'm going to record this, and
take it back to the monastery - both the Abbot and Brother Partridge
had asked me to bring word if I encountered you, and now that I have,
I should take advantage of it as best I can."
	"Certainly.  After we left the monastery, Brother Ghost
dropped me off on Ord Mandell... "

	Don Griffin checked his watch.  The TARDIS was parked outside
the mansion - funny how his mind still substituted 'the mansion' for
the school, even after all these years.  He'd let another fifteen
minutes go by past the half-hour, and his passengers were getting a
little antsy.
	Logan stuck his head out of the TARDIS.  "Any news?  If not, I
wanna come out and smoke."
	"Sure, go ahead.  If he doesn't show up soon, we're heading
out - call it when you're done with your cigar."  The Canadian leaned
against the machine next to Don, lighing up his cheroot.
	Geoff emerged from the school, his bag slung over his
shoulder, and walked to Don and Logan.  "I apologize for my tardiness.
I had many things to discuss with Brother Neo."
	Logan grumbled, and took another puff.  "You got the worst
flamin' timing, kid."  With a deep inhale and an equally deep exhale
of bluish smoke, the short man walked into the TARDIS.
	Geoff appeared to take this in stride.  "Your ship is a Pepsi
machine, Dr. Griffin?"
	"It's a lot more complicated than that," Griffin said.  "Look,
I'll level with you - knowing what I know about you, I'm not sure I'd
give you this ride if Pete and Logan hadn't both asked me."  Geoff's
calm face dissolved to frank astonishment.  "Anyway, hop on it.  I'd
say time's wasting, but you'll find out that's not as important as
you'd think."
	The former assassin reached his hand into the space within the
soda machine's door, then pulled it back, noted its lack of harm, and
walked in.
	He found himself in the control room of the TARDIS, with its
control panel, its silver "UFO landing legs" leading up to a skylight
in the domed ceiling, and its odd walls.  White leather furniture was
scattered here and there, and there was an antique car in one corner.
A number of the people he'd seen at breakfast were sitting on couches,
and Jubilee was lying in the back of the car reading something.
	Griffin followed him in, then did something fiendishly complex
(to the untrained eye) to the controls.
	"OK!" he announced.  "Half an hour to Nekomikoka.  Have we all
been introduced?"
	"Cripes, Don," Logan said, sourly regarding his no-longer-
burning cigar, "he barely got any intros 'cept to me, Frosty and the
brat."
	"Love you lots too, Wolvie," Jubilee called from the car.
	"Well, then let me be the proper host here.  You know Logan,
of course, and Bobby Drake, and Jubilation Lee, and Peter's your
keeper for now.  This lovely creature here - " he gestured to the
woman who'd been serving juice, now wearing glasses and working on a
datapad - "is, was, and will forever be my wife Katherine, Kitty to
her friends."
	"Hi," she said, then went back to writing.
	"The blue cat-guy next to her napping is - "
	"I am not napping, Donald, merely verifying the physical
integrity of my eyelids," the blue-furred, somewhat-Kilrathi-looking
fellow said, opening his eyes.  "A pleasure, sir.  I am Dr. Henry
McCoy, although I have in the past gone by the apropos apellation 'The
Beast'.  Donald, may I continue the introductions?"
	"Hopefully you'll be done by the time we get to Tomodachi,"
Griffin replied, causing Kitty to snicker.
	"I shall endeavor to do so, mon capitaine.  Where did we leave
off, then?"
	"With you, furbrain," Jubilee called out again.
	"Ah, thank you, Jubilation.  Your expanding erudition never
ceases to surprise me."  He paused.  "However, you do not maintain a
residence on Tomodachi, so what has brought you to travel with us?"
	"Belldandy's making her chicken stew en masse tonight, invited
pretty much all of us over.  I figured, hey, I can take the express
route back."
	Geoff, by this time, had settled onto a couch - they were
remarkably comfortable - and leaned back, only to have the back of the
couch emit a disconcerted and angry noise.  A small, winged, purple
reptilian flew out from behind the upright cushion.  The dragon -
well, what else could it be? - released a stream of noise that sounded
remarkably like nasty cursing.
	"Lockheed!" Kitty said chidingly.  "Geez, the mouth on you."
The dragon flew to her and settled in her lap, continuing to glare at
Geoff with indignation.
	"Ah, and there we have Lockheed," McCoy continued, as if none
of that had happened to break his concentration.  "He is of little-
known origin, lesser-known abilities, and there is open debate as to
if he is Kitty's pet, or she is his."
	"I have no doubts," Don noted.  "But then I'm her pet, so I
guess I don't get a vote."

	Half an hour later, they emerged from the TARDIS into a
pleasantly cluttered living room.  "Home, home again," Don sang
(slightly off key), "I like to be here when I can."
	Kitty whapped him.  "You can do integral calculus in your
head, but you still can't sing Pink Floyd on key."
	"Oh, well, I -could-, but I choose not to because they're an
overrated bloody band."
	"Awright, you two," Logan interrupted.  "I'm takin' the kid
and heading back to my place."  He went to light his cigar, and was
dissuated by an annoyed glance from Kitty.  They had that argument
about once a year, and it always ended with Logan agreeing not to
smoke in their house.
	Outside the house was a motorcycle, and a cab.  "Pete, got
room for you at the Bonaventure.  We'll catch you there for dinner."
	The big Russian nodded.  "Logan will take care of you for a
bit . I will see you at dinner, then?"  Geoff and Peter shook hands;
then the big Russian boarded the cab and it moved off.  Logan got on
the motorcycle.
	"How do I get there, sir?" Geoff asked.
	"First, you don't call me sir.  I work for a livin'.  Second,"
said Logan with a nasty little grin, "you run."  He reeled of a set of
directions, then gunned the bike's engine and took off.
	Geoff reviewed the directions, undid the straps on his bag and
resettled them into a backpack, and took off as fast as he could.

  /*  Manfred Mann's Earth Band  "Runner"  _Somewhere in Afrika_  */

	He ran as fast and hard as he could, following the directions
given.  They took him into a park on the residential neighborhood's
outskirts, then right out of the city into the woods.  As he jumped
the creek at the park's periphery, he felt the Daodan waking up, felt
it sensing him and what he was doing.  He concentrated on getting
there, moving, running, the feeling of the motion, and put the fact
that the Daodan was there out of his mind.
	Then he started to run into the traps.  First a simple
deadfall, but one that would have broken his shoulder if he hadn't
dodged it.  Then a snare.  Then a log bridge that collapsed under him,
barely cleared with a sudden leap.
	They got harder and harder to evade, until finally he was
caught by the third in a series of four snares.  He let himself go up,
then kicked out to break the wood.  He dropped to the ground past the
fourth one, and started running, ignoring the pain in his ankle from
the sudden jerk.  He had a mission: follow these directions.  He was
going to accomplish it.
	He broke through a copse of trees to see a log cabin there in
front of him, the motorcycle in front of it.  He burst into a sprint -
	- and suddenly Logan came out of absolutely nowhere, landing
on Geoff's back, growling like an animal.
	Geoff tried to roll, but Logan followed, grabbing him, then
picking him up off the ground.  Geoff's tac eval kicked in instantly,
and he knew there was only one chance he had.
	His body worked entirely on autpilot, no thought to get in the
way, as he kicked up and back, catching the shorter man in the groin.
Logan howled; he also let go.  Geoff took the opportunity to roll
away, turning the roll into a spring up, hand sliding into his coat to
grab the Canon.
	Against someone like Logan, he saw no use in even pulling the
Jackal - the big automatic held more ammunition, but it was less
powerful and less accurate.  (He had momentarily forgotten that it was
also empty.)  To deal with this, he'd need the precision of the
Order's penultimate weapon, a weapon so authoritative they'd named it
after the body of Holy Scripture and the Rule of St. Ignatius itself.
	The Canon fired once.  The single bullet in it slammed right
into Logan's forehead, bang in the middle, at a distance of five feet.
Logan was catapulted backward, hit the ground, skidded a short
distance, and lay still.
	Geoff's brain re-engaged, and he blinked.  "Logan?  My
God... oh, God!"  He stared as the gun in his hand.  Even a rubber
bullet - of that size, at that range - would shatter a man's skull.
Geoff dropped the gun, then took a step back.
	He'd just killed a Lensman.  They'd never believe it was an
accident, or that Logan attacked first, especially when Logan hadn't
hurt him.  It had been a test, an assessment, and he'd just failed in
the most spectacular way possible.
	He'd just thrown away everything that Peter and Kurt and Logan
had given him.  Everything that the Professor had given him.  His only
chance.
	He drew the Jackal, put it on the ground next to the Canon,
then went into the cabin.  It was spartan, but clean and well
organized.  The phone was on a table near a small two-burner stove
and a large refrigerator.  He picked it up and dialed.  9; 1 - 
	A finger plonked down the switchhook.  "What the flamin' hell
are you doin', bub?"
	Geoff released the handset, dropped to a crouch, and rolled to
the side, to look up at Logan.  The short man's forehead had a massive
raw-looking bruise on it, but it was visibly fading as he watched.
	"You... you... no way you lived through that.  Even a rubber
bullet would smash your skull."
	Logan's claws slid out from his right hand.  "Entire
skeleton's covered in metal, told you that.  Just knocked me cold for
a second.  So what were you going to do, right there, anyway?"
	Geoff rose from the crouch.  "Call the police.  Turn myself in
for killing you."
	"Why?"
	Geoff found himself unable to meet Logan's eyes.  "Because I
thought I'd killed you."
	"No, why turn yourself in?  Why not run?  You did it before."
	"Because that was different."
	"HOW different?  What the flamin' hell was so different about
shootin' me in the noggin than that guy Grocer?"
	Geoff hadn't thought about the moral ramifications of killing
Grocer in... well, ever, really.  He opened his mouth, then closed it,
then opened it again.
	The claws retracted and Logan stepped forward, answering his
own question.
	"'Cause you knew you did wrong.  For the first time in a long
time, you knew, straight out, that you did somethin' wrong.  There was
no revenge, no honor, no great purpose.  You let that crap in your
head take me down and you didn't even think.  And then you felt guilty.
	"I know, kid.  I know just what was happenin' in your head
right then.  I've been there."  Logan reached out his hand.  "I'm here
now."
	Geoff took the hand, then collapsed against Logan and began
to cry.
	Well, -this- is weird, Logan thought.  Wonder what Chuck would
say if he could see me now?
	Hell, I know what he'd say.  Some flamin' wisdom about the
student becomin' the teacher.
	"I'm here, kid.  There's some people that'll be here for
you. Pete and Kurt back in New Avalon, me here, and you got people
that respect you just 'cause you helped at the school."
	Geoff found himself unable to control himself.  "I... I
can't...  stop... "
	The burly Canadian found himself easing Geoff to the bed, as
the younger man curled up and started shivering.  "Oh, God... "
	Logan watched again as Geoff's skin shivered, his body bathed
in a green glow.  When it was over this time, the young man passed out.
	Logan walked over to the table and picked the phone up off the
floor, then dialed a number.
	"Keiichi?  Logan.  Listen, you OK with me bringing a guest
with me?  Yeah, the guy that Pete's been shepherding around.  Of
course she already set a place.  Listen... can you just make sure your
big sister-in-law isn't around?  I don't think he's ready for her
yet."  A few moments' pause.  "She promises to be good?  She's claimed
to be great a couple of times, but I'll take that."

	Geoff, still feeling out-of-sorts and decidedly uncomfortable,
stood next to Logan.
	"Gotta warn ya about one thing.  Bell's got four kids, so try
and keep yourself calm.  And one of the twins likes to poke people, so
she may try to get you to react."
	"I'll keep that in mind," Geoff said dryly.  "I'm getting used
to people trying to poke me."  Logan chuckled, then put out his cigar
in a nearby basin and rang the doorbell.
	The door swung open to reveal a young blonde woman with a
bright smile on her face.  "Hi, Logan!" she said, leaping to give the
shorter man a hug, then repeated it on Geoff with a cry of "Hello,
person I don't know!" before dragging the two men in the door.
	Once their shoes were off, they entered a room filled with
people.  Some Geoff knew - he recognized Jubilee and Hank McCoy - but
most of them he didn't.  One of them, a woman with long golden-brown
hair in long, intricate braids and sprigs, a lovely face that showed
nothing but kindness, and three blue marks on her face (a narrow
diamond on the forehead and triangles on her cheekbones), looked up
from what appeared to be a lecture to two of the children (twins, they
looked like), and smiled as if long-lost relatives had just arrived.
	"Hello, Logan," she said, moving over with a gait that seemed
as if she had floated across the floor, then giving him a small peck
on the cheek.  "And this is your associate?"  She bowed to him.
"Welcome to my home.  I am Belldandy Morisato."
	Geoff bowed back.  "Geoff Depew.  I apologize for my
intrusion."
	"Nonsense!" Belldandy scolded very mildly.  "I've heard
already how heroic you were just yesterday!  You're not intruding - I
would be a poor hostess to allow someone who did that, and was a
friend of Logan and Peter's, to think they were imposing.  Please,
sit, have some tea."  She bustled and Geoff found himself sitting on
the floor, holding a cup of tea in one hand, next to a young man who
greeted him, but most of whose attention was on the large pad of paper
he was busily sketching on.
	Jubilee was busy regaling the twins and the girl who'd greeted
them - Mirai, apparently - with a tale about breaking out of a Hutt's
slave pit with nothing more than her innate skills and half a pint of
gwargu juice.  Geoff listened with half an ear and found himself
snickering at some of the things that she came up with.  Logan caught
it, and chuckled.
	"Jubes has got her a talent for tall tales.  I'll lend you one
of her books later."
	A few more people arrived, and Geoff was introduced to
Belldandy's sisters - the elder, Urd, and the younger, Skuld.  Skuld
was pleasant enough, but Urd kept watching him with devil-green eyes,
an expression on her face that he couldn't quite read.
	Dinner was good, with Geoff finding himself doing something he
rarely did - polishing off two servings, and seriously considering a
third.  Between the stew and the still-warm bread, it was the best
meal he could remember having.  Geoff was buttering another slice of
bread (how did it stay warm on the plate?), when he heard a child's
voice say from behind him,
	"Why are you carrying guns in here?"
	The room fell silent.  Geoff carefully put down the knife and
the bread, then turned around.  One of the twins was standing there,
holding his jacket, which had his guns in it.
	"Fatora!" Belldandy said.  "How many times have you been told
you to stop going guests' things?"
	"It's all right, Mrs. Morisato," Geoff said.  He could sense
Jubilee, Pete and Logan watching him closely.  He crouched so that he
could be at eye level without leaning over Fatora, then explained,
"Some very bad people once taught me how to live by using them."
	"Then why do you still carry them?"  She sounded almost bored,
like she was asking just for the purposes of being a pest.
	"Because some good people are trying to teach me how to live,
but I'm still too scared to give them up.  It's all I know how to do."
He shrugged.  "Sometimes it's hard to grow up without letting go of
what you learned as a kid."  Behind him, he could almost hear Logan's
gruff chuckle.
	"Can you show me how to shoot them?"
	This time he felt Belldandy's eyes on him, and had a sense of
some tremendous weight on him.  He reached out and ruffled Fatora's
hair.  "Not unless your parents tell me I can."  Her eyes -
unnervingly intelligent for an eight-year-old, he thought - bored into
his.  "And between you and me, I think your mother is going to be
having a long talk with you about touching guns and going through
people's jackets."
	"Again," the two of them chorused.
	Assassin and child regarded each other for a moment; then she
went for one of the guns.  Her hands, however nimble for a child's,
fumbled the draw of the heavy pistol, and the Jackal came sliding
out of her hands.  Everyone leapt - 
	- and Geoff, right there, caught the gun at about her waist
level, and spun it deftly in his hand, finishing the move with the
butt-end toward Fatora.
	"I think," he said very carefully, "you should put that back
where you found it before something else happens."  His face was
unreadable, and Fatora, this time with much more care, took the big
automatic and slid it back into its holster, then took the coat out of
the room.
	Geoff turned back to the table, where he realized that
everyone was halfway prepared for combat.
	"It's not as if they were loaded," he remarked mildly.  "She
wasn't in danger, except maybe a broken foot."
	The remainder of the meal passed quietly, except for Fatora
being sent to her room.
	Logan was pleased - Urd did, in fact, behave well except for
keeping her eyes, slightly narrowed, on Geoff the entire time.

	On the way out, Belldandy stopped them at the door.
"Mr. Depew," she said, "please, take this."  She handed him a very
carefully wrapped box.  "Don't open it until Christmas," she advised
him with a smile.
	Geoff stuttered, then paused, and finally got out, "I didn't
get you anything, ma'am."
	Belldandy looked amused.  "Yes, you did.  Even if Fatora
doesn't agree."  She winked.  "Good night.  If you're on Tomodachi
with Logan, and I'm inviting people for dinner, please consider
yourself to have a standing invitation the same as he does."
	Logan put Pete and Geoff in a cab, watching them drive off.
Urd came out and watched it drive off as the shorter man smoked his
cigar.
	"So that's him?" she asked.
	"Yup.  What do you think?"
	"He's got a strange sense to him," said a third voice, and
Skuld hopped down from the roof.  "If he died now, I don't know what
would happen to him.  As it is... Ben asked me to give him a gentle
look-over and... as we both suspected, right now, he's completely
unsuited for a Lens."
	Urd chuckled.  "You should see him from Memory's perspective,
kiddo.  There's enough anger and blood in his wake to make a few lords
of the Pit nervous if he picked them as a target.  But there's a sense
there... "
	The two of them spoke as one, a rare ocurrence:
	"He was caught just in time to keep from falling completely."
	Logan was a man who did not scare easily.  He'd faced horrors
that would make other men fall dead from sheer fright, and those were
just the ones inside his own head.  But the sheer oracular intensity
of the two Norns... well, when gods spoke, smart men tended to be at
least a little worried.
	"Thank you, ladies."  He watched the cab turn the corner and
disappear.  "I think I'll be seein' a lot o' him."  He chuckled.  "He
wouldn't be worth crap at kenjutsu, but then, he already knows how to
fight."
	Urd smiled, leaning back against the wood of the railing.  "So
what do you get to teach him?"
	"How not to fight, darlin'.  And what to do when he's not
fightin'."

	The next few weeks passed for Geoff in an odd, pleasant sort
of haze.  Whether puttering around the brownstone (and meeting Pete's
co-artist, Dave Menard), catching up on five years of popular culture,
or leaving New Avalon on a Friday evening to spend the weekends with
Logan on Tomodachi (the way there was a HELL of a rush, and dinner at
the Morisato household was something to be treasured), he found
himself doing something he didn't remember himself ever doing before:
	Enjoying his life.  It was, he realized, the best time he'd
ever had, and in years to come would realize just how profound a gift
he'd received from all the people he'd met since he'd been caught by
the IPO.
	(He also started getting mail, a new experience for him, and
one he decided to savor, even though he was getting nothing but junk.)

	During his time on Tomodachi with Logan, he'd also become more
acquainted with some of Logan's friends.  Don Griffin, for example,
invited Logan and Geoff over for Chanukah dinner one Friday night.
(Don wasn't Jewish, but his wife Kitty was.  Geoff also got to meet
The Other Kitty, which was a bit of a mental scramble until Geoff got
them both indexed properly.)
	He'd gotten into a conversation with Don's Wife Kitty (as he'd
mentally labeled her), when the conversation turned to music.
	"So we don't play that often, but it's fun when we do.  What
about you?  Do you play any instruments?"
	"Saxophone, rock drums, and the viola."
	"...That is the STRANGEST set of musical skills I've ever
heard of," Don commented as he tinkered with something that resembled
a mechanical caterpillar mating with a PDA.
	"Infiltration skills, really.  You can get into ninety percent
of social functions with music if you can play those three instruments."
Geoff shrugged.  "I haven't actually played anything in five years, so
I'm not just rusty, I may have lost them completely."
	Logan got out of his chair.  "Let's find out, bub."
	The four of them went down to the basement, where there were
two guitars, a bass guitar, and a drum kit.  "Kurt's our drummer," Don
explained as he tuned up, "but I don't think he'll object too much."
	Geoff adjusted the stool and the heights of the snare and
cymbals, then settled in, running a few patterns.  "Yeah, rusty."  He
sighed.  "I hope I don't embarass myself too much."
	Logan finished tuning the guitar he was using - he hadn't
brought his own with him, but Bobby Drake's would do just as well for
this purpose - and chuckled.  "Don't sweat it.  We're all out of
practice with these things."  Then he set his fingers.  "You guys
ready?"
	Kitty finished setting herself up for rhythm and gave a thumbs
up.  "What to try first?"
	Logan started a simple riff with his effects box off, and
Geoff recognized it right away.  Kitty brought in rhythm behind it,
and then Geoff and Don brought their instruments to bear, as Don
started to sing:

	Now if you're feeling kinda low about the dues you've been paying
	Future's coming much too slow
	And you want to run but somehow you just keep on staying
	Can't decide on which way to go

	Yeah, yeah, yeah
	I understand about indecision
	But I don't care if I get behind
	People living in competition
	All I want is just to have my peace of mind

	Now you're climbing to the top of the company ladder
	Hope it doesn't take too long
	Can't you you see there'll come a day when it won't matter?
	Come a day when you'll be gone

	I understand about indecision
	But I don't care if I get behind
	People living in competition
	All I want is to have my peace of mind

	Take a look ahead
	Take a look ahead
	Yeah yeah yeah yeah

	 Logan and Kitty dueled on the guitar solo, switching back and
forth, as Geoff and Don just kept the beat going, ending with Logan
seizing the lead back just in time for Don to start singing again.

	Now everybody's got advice they just keep on giving
	Doesn't mean too much to me
	Lots of people out to make believe they're living
	Can't decide who they should be

	I understand about indecision
	But I don't care if I get behind
	People living in competition
	All I want is to have my peace of mind

	Take a look ahead
	Take a look ahead
	Look ahead

	 They brought it on home; Logan grinned.  "Well, we ain't
gonna win a Grammy," he observed, "but that wasn't -too- rotten."  He
glanced at Geoff.  "Still feel rusty?"
	 "Yeah," the big man replied, "but if anyone feels like it,
I'm up for shaking some more rust off."
	 They did the old Cobra Twisters song "Back Alley Space Boy"
next, then a few more; then it got late and they decided to knock off
before the neighbors complained.
	 "How'd it feel, pal?" Logan asked as they walked back through
the chill Tomodachi night to Logan's cabin.
	 "Good.  That felt really good.  Playing music without any
other reason... never did that before.  Thanks, Logan.  I needed
that."
	 Logan just smiled and lit his cigar.

	It was a little less than three weeks from the fight at
Xavier's until Christmas, and Geoff rose Christmas morning with an odd
sense of peace.  He showered, shaved, and got dressed, hoping someone
would be awake to take him over to the IPO headquarters so he could
get in some target practice.
	He made his way upstairs to find that the tree he'd helped
Peter and Kurt put up had, overnight, developed a second foundation of
presents.
	It surprised him more to find out that some of the presents
were for him.  (Big Fire orphanages did not, as a rule, celebrate
Christmas.)  Despite his protests of not having anything to give them,
Peter just handed him things until he started opening them.  Kurt
was, Peter informed Geoff with a wink, otherwise engaged for the day.
	Peter gave him a music player and some crystals of music.  (He
didn't quite remember who the Art of Noise were, but suspected he'd
enjoy finding out.)  From Logan was a heavy book, the Hagakure.  The
gruff man had brought it up from time to him in their time together,
as part of his guiding philosophy.
	A package from Jeraddo proved to contain a few T-shirts and an
X-shaped belt buckle similar to Peter's, and a note in the Professor's
exceedingly precise handwriting stating that Geoff was welcome to
return to the Institute when he wished.
	Kurt had left a card, and within was a set of gift cards for
eyebrow-raising amounts at Kurt's favorite tailor, haberdasher, and
the New Avalon Knights pro shop.  (Kurt had noted that Geoff had some
kind of odd affection for the Knights, and had found out that the pro
shop was due to get in a new shipment of their very popular 'This Is
Our Year!' t-shirt.  These would probably be stocked right next to the
"It's a rebuilding year!" and "Next Year For Sure!" shirts.)
	Geoff was both surprised and touched to find cards from Kiichi
Goto and Kanuka Clancy, both wishing him best regards of the season.
	"Once I find a job I can do, and get some money, I'm going to
have to buy and write a lot of thank-you notes," Geoff said, standing
at the stove and making pain perdu.  One of his cover jobs during his
one-man crusade against Big Fire had been short-order cook, and Peter
had let Geoff take over breakfast fairly regularly.
	The egg-soaked cooked bread slid from the pan onto a plate,
and then onto the table in front of Pete, who chuckled and reached for
the syrup.
	"There's always short-order cook again," the big Russian
noted.  "Or... "
	"Or?"
	"Well, there are always possibilities."
	"Yeah," Geoff said, with a smile that Peter wouldn't have
thought he'd ever see, even just three weeks ago.  "Always
possibilities."

	The front door swung open as Kurt sang out, "Angels we have
heard on high, telling us to go and buy!"  Then he paused, sniffing
the air.
	The woman - tall, blonde, lithe, lovely - following him in
gave him a shove, getting him out of the way of the door.
	"Good grief, Blue," Liza Shustal said, "have you no manners?
No shame, I know, but I thought you had - what is that -luscious- smell?"
	The tree was lit, bathing the living room in a soft white
light, and the media center was playing music (amusing Kurt and Liza
with the melodic "la la lala la" of Kaitlyn singing "Around the
World").  Banging and clanking could be heard coming from the kitchen,
and a thick scent, redolent with cloves and bay, filled the air.
Peter came into the living room with a smile on his face and a plate
of cheeses and crackers in his hands.
	"Our guest," he informed the two, "is making Christmas dinner
for us."  He took their coats, sat them down, brought them drinks, and
returned to the kitchen.
	"Kurt and Liza have arrived," Pete informed Geoff as he
returned.
	"Great," Geoff said, "the dumplings are nearly done.  Thank
you for helping me with this, Peter - I wanted to try to do something
nice for you two, what with putting me up and all."
	And, Peter didn't reply, it was something that kept your mind
far away from thoughts of violence or of Big Fire.
	When the sauerbraten, dumplings, sauerkraut and red cabbage
were served, Kurt was nearly slavering.  "It smells like home," he
said happily, tucking into it.
	"They didn't have a large enough piece of beef," Geoff noted,
"But I understand that belgad's close enough."
	"It is," Kurt assured him, "quite close enough.  Unglaublich!
The red cabbage is even seasoned correctly!"
	Liza smiled, regarding Geoff.  "So you cook well enough to
make Kurt ignore me.  Perhaps I should steal you for myself.  My ship
could use a cook who can make decent food for humans."  She sighed.
"T'skrang cuisine is nice, but sometimes a girl just craves a
hamburger."
	Peter, caught in the middle of a sip of water, paused.  "Thank
you, Liza.  I'd expected to have to choke to save myself from a spit
take."
	Liza waved her hand airly.  "Oh, no, no, Peter.  I'd never
make someone spit-take across a meal like this."
	Geoff just looked pleased.

	After dinner, sitting around and reading, Peter looked up from
his book.  "Geoff?  Did you open Belldandy's present?"
	Geoff paused, then sighed.  "No, I didn't.  I had best go do
that."  Peter watched bemusedly from his chair, and Kurt and Liza from
the couch, as Geoff went down to the basement, coming back up with the
box.  It was long, flat, and wrapped in a light silvery paper. With
tremendous care, he opened it as Peter, Kurt and Liza watched.  The
box itself was a creamy white, and opened to reveal a slender silver
chain with an embossed pendant on the end.
	"Beautiful," Liza breathed.  Geoff had no words, not having
expected something like this.  "What's the symbol on it?"
	The embossment resembled the letter B, but was made of
straight lines and sharp points.  Geoff related this, and then showed
it to them.  "Put it on," Peter urged, and Geoff did so, then went to
the bookcase and pulled down a book.
	"What book is that?" Kurt asked for all of them.
	Geoff showed the title: 'Norse Runes and their Meanings'.
	"Ah," said Kurt, enlightened.
	"Huh," Geoff said.  "It's the rune Beorc.  It stands for...
rebirth."  He looked up from the book, clearly puzzled.  "It's like
she knew what was going on..."
	Liza, still sprawled on the sofa, smiled.  "You'll find that
happens a great deal around here."  Then she sat up.  "Well, I have an
idea, now that we're past the post-prandial pottering-about.  Let's
see a movie!"
	"Did you have an idea?" Kurt said, his tone indicating the
answer he expected was yes.  He was not disappointed.
	"Indeed.  The re-release of 'The Crimson Lizard vs. The World
Crime League' is showing at the Westmont Uberplex in a special
Christmas showing, and I want to go."
	"Re-release," Geoff said, starting to smile.  "Is it better
than the bootleg?"
	"Oh, vastly better," Liza assured him.
	 When it was over, Geoff had to agree.  It -was- vastly better
than the bootleg.  (Knowing that it was the Chief's daughter - or was
it a body double?  If so, it was a damn good match - in the hot tub
did make him blush a little.)

	 Deep in the night, Geoff Depew lay in the bed in the
basement, the pendant around his neck, holding onto the old orange
teddy bear, and slept a peaceful night's sleep.
	 And as he slept, he dreamt of possibilities and redemption.


                 /* Pet Shop Boys "It's A Sin" */

Eyrie Productions                 When I look back upon my life
Presents                          It's always with a sense of
                                    shame
REDISCOVERY                       I've always been the one to
                                    blame
Starring                          For everything I long to do
Geoff Depew                       No matter when or where or who
Paige Guthrie                     There's one thing in common too
Cain Marko                        It's a
Jackie Chan                       It's a
Indiana Jones                     It's a
Kurt Wagner                       It's a sin
Peter Rasputin
Benjamin J. Hunicutt XIII         Everything I've ever done
Naru Narusegawa                   Everything I ever do
Kiichi Goto                       Everywhere that I have been
Kanuka Clancy                     Anywhere I'm going to
Lebia Maverick                    It's a sin
Quimbly Herzog
Charles Xavier			  At school they taught me how to be
Ororo Munroe                      So pure in thought and word and deed
Basil Elks                        They didn't quite succeed
Arthur Maddicks                   For everything I long to do
Alexander Fitzcarrald             No matter when or where or who
Boba Fett			  There's one thing in common too
Genya                             It's a
Sakura Byakuro			  It's a
Logan                             It's a
Bobby Drake                       It's a sin
Jubilation Lee                    
Katherine Griffin                 Everything I've ever done
Beatrice Watanabe                 Everything I ever do
Don Griffin                       Everywhere that I have been
Thomas Anderson                   Anywhere I'm going to
Henry P. McCoy			  It's a sin
Lockheed                          
Mirai Morisato                    Father forgive me 
Belldandy Morisato                I tried not to do it
Urd Snowmane                      Turned over a new leaf
Skuld Ravenhair                   Then tore right through it
Keiichi Morisato		  Whatever you taught me
Fatora Morisato                   I didn't believe it
Elisabeth R'tas Shustal           Father you fought me
                                  'Cause I didn't care
Still in the Game                 And I still don't understand
Geoff Depew                       
                                  So I look back upon my life
Eye in the Sky                    Forever with a sense of shame
Benjamin D. Hutchins              I've always been the one to blame
                                  For everything I long to do
Fallen Angel			  No matter where or when or who
Janice Barlow                     There's one thing in common too
                                  It's a 
Band on the Run                   It's a 
The Usual Suspects                It's a 
                                  It's a sin
X-Men Created by                  
Stan Lee                          Everything I've ever done
(Excelsior!)                      Everything I ever do
                                  Everywhere that I have been
Special thank-you to              Anywhere I'm going to
Forum member 'julzz'              It's a sin
for reminding Geoff
about the pending showdown        

			 E P U (colour) 2004