psinex@yahoo.com Reverse Polarity 0: Fountain of Youth by Phil Hartman DISCLAIMER: Everyone here is Marvel's. Please don't sue. NOTES: Yep, I'm back :) (Not as if I ever really departed ...) This is the first in a new story arc which will result in, God forbid, another team of future New Mutants (AARGH, they scream! >). This "chapter" is set during UXM 104 ... -------------------------------------------------------- Muir Island Research Station: 3/12/1989: 08:00 hrs: -------------------------------------------------------- "GET YUIR BLUIDY HANDS OFF HIM !!" Davan Shakari was not particularly amused by any interference; as an agent of the Shi'ar Empirium, he was used to getting his way. #But then,# he thought before turning to glare at Moira MacTaggart, #I would be in bed with a Mephisitoid slave girl at this moment ...# "Erik the Red" looked at Moira with the disdain one might give a bug and growled, "Take her away." "Yes, m'lord," Havok and Polaris mumbled. Their glazed-over eyes gave Moira little if any hope of reaching her once-friendly guests. "Alex - Lorna - ye cannae let that bodach harm wee Erik !" Moira pleaded. She looked at her foster son in Shakari's arms and tried to give the baby some kind of hopeful sign. Erik squalled, white locks hanging down in his eyes, as Davan placed him between two electrodes of some sort of device. "Now, little one, you will serve as a distraction -" Shakari began. "YOU will serve as an OBJECT LESSON IN AGONY !" Moira looked up in shock as a wheelchair dropped from the sky and Shakari screamed in agony. The X-Men stepped between Moira and the Shi'ar agent, with the strangest-looking woman Moira had ever seen standing beside Charles with a fearful look writ large on her face. #Are those ... feathers on her head ?# Moira marveled. She gasped when Alex and Lorna screamed under a psi-blast from Phoenix, but they looked at Jean with relief. "Th-thanks," Alex stammered. "No problem," Jean said, her voice shifting to that of a tigress when she glared at Shakari. "RELEASE THE BABY OR DIE, LITTLE MAN," Jean snarled, her voice booming. The others looked at her in shock, especially when the machinery rose up and began to throttle the alien. "Jean - !?" Scott gasped. Erik bawled until he vanished in a sulfur cloud, rematerializing with a look of surprise in Nightcrawler's arms. "Guten tag, mein freund," Kurt smiled at the baby. "This is definitely a surprise - I never expected to play babysitter to the master of magnetism." Logan sniffed the air as Jean finished slamming Shakari into walls and grunted, "He's th' master o' somethin' else, too. Pee-YUU." "Logan ...!" Xavier muttered, rolling his eyes. The woman beside him looked at him with a faint smile and said something in a language Moira couldn't follow. Xavier replied with a laugh and more of that strange language, and the X-Men gathered around him. "Moira, if you'd keep an eye on young Magnus, we'll be on our way," Xavier asked. "O'course, Charles," Moira said. Her eyes fell on Sean, and he winked as the X-Men began to vanish in a glowing light with the unconscious Shakari. "We'll be back -" "I hope so," Alex sighed. "We need help cleaning this place up." "Well, I think tha's enough excitement fuir one day f'r ye, little one," Moira cooed at Erik. The baby giggled and burbled as they headed back to the residential wing, and Lorna arched an eyebrow. "Why would she call Magnus 'Erik' ?" she asked ... -------------------------------------------------------- end ... for now ... _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com