Part I Standard disclaimers apply. The character do belong to Marvel Comics and I am just borrowing them. Hope people are enjoying things so far. The dessicated body lay wrapped in an ice coating but that didn't keep it from reeking of an almost palpable evil. The head was merely a human skull jutting forth from some sort of slagged battle armor. The empty sockets where eyes should have been stared into the inky darkness. The figure might have been mistaken for a corpse expect the sensors that were studying it detected waves of energy coursing through it. Despite the decision of the station commander that it's discovery had been a divinely revealed sign, it had been a mistake to bring it on to the station before truly understanding it. At least that is what Milan thought. But he was only a simple technician following the orders of his master. He had followed others before this one. The first had claimed to be the chosen successor of a great man who had fought the good fight trying to end the oppression of Milan's kind. But had been a fraud who had sought to be the assassin of this good man. The second had been that man himself, briefly raised from certain death to lead his people for a short time. They had followed this man with an almost religious belief (complete with the language loaded with religious symbolism) but this man had been feared by others. They had sought to destroy him and he had fallen in battle with his followers unable to help. Now he was hidden from their eyes and lay as if he were a living corpse. Like the one embedded in the ice. Milan shuddered. Their current leader was certainly powerful, but his sanity was becoming more and more questionable. Here, deep in space with nowhere to run, that was a very bad sign. But he was not consulted on matters like the body. His fellows barely tolerated his presence because his gifts were not as obvious as their gifts. Fools! Did they not realize that information was the key to controlling the world and that he was perfectly adapted to deal with it in it's current electronic form. With his powers he could talk to a computer as if it were a part of him and achieved a flexibility that keyboard programmers could only dream of. But his fellows had bought into the cult of raw power and only cared about raw force. Subtlety was something that they simply did not understand! So he was stuck here late at night trying to figure out the mystery of the man found floating in space while the others slept. Typical -- when brute force wasn't required they called on him but still regarded him as beneath them. Of course, to be fair, it was as much a punishment for questioning the master as any other reason that he had been assigned this duty. That he would be good at it was simply a secondary concern. The master simply wasn't bright enough to have thought this far in advance. He noticed a flicker on a sensor and glanced down at his control panel. His eyes widened in alarm as he realized that the body in the ice was now showing neural activity and that the remaining ice was rapidly melting away. He turned to flee when he felt an odd sensation strike him on the ankle. With a growing sense of horror and alarm he felt his physcial form melt away. He tried to scream but it was to late. For a tiny instant he felt what it was like to exist only as pure energy before he was devoured and felt no more of anything. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The man could feel the alarms spreading throughout the station on which he stood. It was easy for him -- structures of metal were almost part of him. This one had once belonged to another, but he had built it into its current form and he understand what it meant for it to feel wrong. He turned and looked at the chair he had vacated. Thousands of strings had supported him in a grim mockery of a seated deity. He flexed atrophied muscles and wondered. Who was aboard this place now? Was it his followers or had they be supplanted by his mortal foes? He sighed, a grim sound from a throat long unused to vocalizations of any kind. He looked one last time out at the stars as the station shook from yet another shock. There was a battle going on and perhaps it was time for him to join in once again. It seemed to him that his entire adult life had been about war, to one extent or another. He was tired of it, but it held no fear for him. He had seen all of the horrors that it could provide and he was ready for them. He headed down to meet his foe, never dreaming of the danger he was in. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Scott fired an optic blast into the glowing skeletal creature as it absorbed another one of the Acolytes -- a big man named Javitz who had foolishly tried to distract it from it's attack on Exodus. A group of bigots and murderers who worshipped his oldest enemy, Mangeto, as if he were a god, Scott had no time for the Acolytes. But he had spent his life fighting against murder and the creature was slaughtering people like flies in a pretty indiscriminate manner -- including a young man that Scott had once befriended back in another group. But that had been some time ago before his illusions were shattered. Beside him was his wife, Jean Summers, a powerful telepath and potent telekinetic. She was shielding them from the battle raging around them -- as both sides saw them as potential foes. Stronger than any except the two titans battling at the center of the chamber, she was able to free Scott up to us his formidable mutant powers to selectively target foes. They worked well as a team, having forged a band between them that had withstood an amazing array of obstacles ranging from his marriage to another women to her being replaced by an energy being. Yet, despite it all, they were still the best of friends and intimate lovers. They had been brought here to this doomed station in the sky by the Acolyte Amelia Voght -- a former lover of their mentor and teacher, Charles Xavier, who had forsaken the path of the righteous to stand with the forces of darkness (at least this was how Scott saw it, she would have told a different story). She had teleported them into the middle of a battle between the powerful lord of this station, Exodus, and some sort of skeletal horror. The horror had mistaken Scott for an ally and seemed almost amused by his actions -- as if it had expected all it's allies to become foes sooner or later. Now they fought for their lives as two of the most powerful mutants either had seen battled for supremacy. The fight was wrecking the station and Scott realized that it would ahve to be ended shortly or they would all be killed as the fortress disintegrated under the impact of the battle. The horror wanted to know where the original lord of this fortress, Mangeto, was. It seemed that he bore him a grudge. Scott would have gladly let the old bastard reap the fruit of his past crimes but there were a few innocents aboard. Peter, who had betrayed them but would recover his senses sooner or later. Rusty, who had died trying to scream. Skids, who was a child and had been kidnapped by the old monster. Jean, who he would die to save. Scott was determined to get them off of the station. If he could save others than so be it. Jean winced from a telepathic assault. The long haired fanatic Exodus had won a temporary respite from his battle with the skeletal horror and had used this opportunity to eject her from his mind. She had been trying to learn more of what was happening, but clearly that wasn't going to happen. It didn't matter, Scott figured, they would save who they could and escape. Magneto, Exodus and this Holocaust could burn for all that he cared! Scott fired a blast into the Acolyte named Unuscione and looked for an escape route. Damn that woman, why did she have to bring them here? And, more importantly, where had see gone? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - In days past Peter Rasputin had been a gentle soul. A sturdy Russian peasant and a passionate artist, he had looked at the world with an innocence that enabled him to survive the toughest of times. That was before the world suddenly turned dark and terrible. He had seen a slaughter where a team of hired killers had murdered woman and children for no better reason than money and sport at the behest of a game playing madman. He had been so enraged that he had been driven to murder. After that, nothing had gone right. He had watched the world degenerate into madness. The woman he loved had been crippled during the slaughter and survived as a living ghost. His parents had been mercilessly murdered by the Russian government on a whim. His sister had died from a horrible plague and he had not been present for the end -- called away on a mission with his team. In response to a world like this, who would cling to dreams? So he abandoned the path that he had been on so long and chose to follow the dreams of another who talked about meeting force with force. He had betrayed his new master to spare his old team and them been betrayed by the woman he loved at the behest of his old mentor. It had taught him a lesson -- the world was shallow and dirty. Only the strong survived and the only thing that anybody respected was the force to make them listen. Which did little to explain why he was hurrying to save the crippled shell of a man. Perhaps there was a part of him that was still the innocent artist. Or perhaps he had had enough of betrayal and sought a better path. Who knew for sure. What we do know is that he cursed loudly when he saw an empty throne with strings that had once supported a living corpse. In his heart, Peter Rasputin feared that once more he had failed to protect that which he cared for. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Charles Xavier looked up in surprise as a woman formed in front of him. She seemed to soldify out of mist and them fell spawling in front of him. He recognized her from long ago. "Amelia?" "I tried," she said in a vocie wracked with tears, "I tried to go back for them. But I was injured and I couldn't go that far. I didn't mean to send them there. It was an accident." "Send who where?" Charles asked and used his powers to reach into her mind. He was the most powerful mind on the planet and he quickly found what he wanted in the midst of the pain and sorrow in Amelia's mind. "I'm sorry, Charles," Amelia said in a plantitive tone, "I'm so sorry." Then, slowly, she began to cry. Charles simply watched -- not knowing if he should comfort this women despite the accident or damn her for sending his two favorite students to certain doom. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/magneto Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com