AnnouncementSpoilerSo the new drive is here and working fine, but work and waiting till the new drive arrived has me with only 1 new chapter written/rewritten after this. If i get 4+ written and edited i will post an additional chapter a week. but i want to focus on them being good, rather than them being done.

  [colpse]Chapter 60- Returns

  Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters – Backyard Basketball Court- Oct 28, 2008 (18:30)

  James 'Logan' Howlett- (Wolverine)

  Logan took a long pull on his cigar as he watched over the busy court as mutant boys pyed a pickup game. He held the smoke in his lungs for a bit, as someone walked up behind him and asked. "Why don't you join them?"

  He had known who it was once their scent got close enough, so he wasn't surprised when he looked over his shoulder at New Mutant member Armor, aka Hisako Ichiki. He let out the smoke over his other shoulder before answering her. "Because csses are over, and I get enough exercise training, sparring, and fighting, Ichiki-chan."

  "You know honorifics, " she mutters, surprised. As she does, he takes another pull on his cigar. Then she adds, "I can't believe I have been here almost a year and didn't know that."

  He exhales again, before muttering. "It was another life, in another time. But that doesn't mean I can't be respectful." He was about to go for another pull, when his nose picked up an utterly foul smell, and a second ter his eyes picked out a pin-prick of purple light.

  Logan unsheathed his cws, to get their attention, before he ordered. "Clear the court, now!" This stunned the boys and Hisako, but then they saw the now expanding wave of purple energy on the far side of the basketball court.

  Then the boys moved to comply, but one was frozen in fear, so Pieter who had been painting a scene of their game, activated his powers turning his skin and muscles to metal, and ran through the fence before he shielded the younger boy with his back and body.

  The short feral looked back at the young Japanese teenager and ordered. "Go! Find one of the other teachers." Then facing whoever was making a magic portal into their backyard, he charged in against the flood of boys exiting the court.

  For a second he saw a strange world in the heart of the portal, all isnds connected with purple vines, before it fshed and showed him a metal room with half a dozen people on the other side.

  The first one to cross through was Sprite, not dressed in her New Mutants costume, but rather white, possibly oriental cut, robes. Her Star of David neckce bouncing as she jumped in excitement once through on their side.

  Seeing her, he rexed, but still kept his cws out. Still being cautious he orders the metal teen. "Colossus get him inside," The Russian looked at him when he said his name and nodded, as the rger boy passed him he added. "Then come back if you would?"

  Magneto was the next to step through, fully dressed in his cape, helmet, and armor. He frowned when he spotted Logan, but said nothing as he stepped aside to let Prestige follow out behind him. She was in her New Mutant's costume, but he could smell that it had been washed since they left them behind in the Savage Lands, but really bothered him about it, that was he couldn't pce the soap scent he was smelling off of it.

  "Ah, Mr. Logan, um, well Magneto was hoping to speak with you, Storm, and the Professor for a bit, and we kind of agreed on your behalf." The sexy redhead stated as soon as she spotted him.

  "What if you had opened that thing on a student out here shooting some hops?" Logan growled and gestured to the portal behind them. The short feral's eyes could make out that Alucard was talking with what looked like the mage, but even with his senses, he couldn't hear what they were saying.

  "We had hoped given that it is close to supper time. That everyone would be inside, eating." The leader of the Brotherhood admitted before he gestured towards Logan's hands and asked. "Are you going to put those away?"

  "Once you leave or I feel the kids are safe." The sub-leader of the X-men admitted.

  Magneto smirked, before firing back at him. "I am just here to talk. Like you all were earlier in the week, but now you know what we were feeling when we woke up to you all circling the Citadel."

  Logan squinted but understood where the other man was coming from, so he slowly let his cws slide back into his arms. Then Alucard stepped through the portal. He was wearing his shoddy attempt at a new costume, which Logan had st seen him in, a loose pair of bck scks. Yet immediately the feral could see that his brawler brother was back to being his only semi-broody self from before he was cursed.

  Still, the X-man frowned when he saw that the other man was also carrying a wooden box.

  As Alucard joined him, Logan could hear the fpping of wings, and feel the shifting breezes. From that alone he could tell that both Morph and Storm nded between the basketball court and the mansion behind him.

  "Woo, slow down guys, Nath just figured he would save us some time and you guys the rocket fuel and make a portal to get us home." Alucard said with his winning smile.

  Logan shifted his head just enough to see what py Storm wanted to do. When she rexed, he understood that he wasn't going to get the rematch that he owed Magneto, still, he followed her lead.

  "And why are you here Magneto?" The X-men leader asked.

  "As I was telling…" the Brotherhood leader started to say, but stopped and looked up into the sky. Then he muttered. "Ah, um, maybe you had better let me handle this."

  "Handle what?" Logan muttered, before needing to cover his ears from an intense and loud whine, that judging from all of his friends and students' reactions only he could hear. The noise increased in strength and felt like a knife in his brain, almost as bad as what Department H had put him through, and it was increasing. And when it reached the point that the feral pounder just cutting off his ears to save himself, it stopped.

  "Ah, Him. May I introduce you to the X-men? This is Storm their leader, Morph is next to her, and the man on the ground is Wolverine. Like me, they are all mutants." Magneto introduced them to something.

  Logan couldn't pce what it was, not quite as bad as a demon, but definitely worse than the few aliens that he had smelt. Still, the feral got back up onto his feet and looked for whoever had made him look like such a weakling.

  And there floating in the air above them, he was a golden-skinned and haired man, wearing a bck and red costume, with an odd red sash fpping in the wind. The golden man looked them all over. As he did Logan felt an itch in his brain, warning him that someone had just read his mind.

  "Hello, I am Him." The golden man's voice was calming and soothing, almost like a post-nut moment, but not quite that good. "I can increase that power's magnitude if you would like." Him told Logan.

  "Nah, I am good." The feral said in refusal.

  "Him, are you here to visit them, or just in the area?" Magneto asked the floating man.

  In a blink, the golden man rotated his body to face the Brotherhood leader, before answering. "I am, passing through. I was exploring the isnds between the two western nd masses, when I felt your helmet and figured it would be rude not to say 'hi'."

  "Maybe not so fast this time, the shockwave you make when traveling that fast hurt Wolverine's ears," Magneto suggested to the odd thing.

  Then Morph did what Morph does, and asked a stupid question. "How fast were you going?"

  "I don't know, other than not my fastest." Him said, and then in another blink, the golden man was just gone.

  "Where did you find that whack-job?" Logan honestly wondered aloud.

  He didn't get he hear the answer right away, as the Professor telepathically told him, and from the smell of it a couple others. "Please lead Eric to my study?"

  Someone behind Logan must have gestured, because the terrorist smiled, before muttering. "In an alien ship's genetics b." Then he floated up a few inches before following Storm into the mansion's rear door.

  Yet before he could follow, Alucard jogged over and handed him the box. "These are for the Professor." Logan had to take it, as the other brawler continued on into the mansion.

  The feral frowned after the younger man, but it was Prestige that filled him in. "He is so excited to taste real food again. They limited him what he could eat in the Citadel until he recovered." He then stared at her face for a moment, before she reminded him. "The Professor is waiting for you."

  Logan sighed and then asked. "You have any idea on what it is he wants to talk to us about." Jean shook her head, before wrapping herself in a telekinetic field and flew up towards the main hallway of the female dorm wing of the school.

  And with her phasing, Logan didn't even notice when Sprite had also taken off. So he sighed one more time, before making his way inside. He did pause by where he had dropped his cigar, but the cherry had broken off, and the thing had nded in a muddy puddle, so he just pressed on.

  Once outside the Professor's study, Logan could smell that Beast, or Dr. McCoy was also waiting for him inside. He knew that most, well half, of the occupants would feel him coming, so he didn't bother to knock and just opened the door and stepped inside.

  As he did he heard a part of their ongoing conversation. "So he was grown from the remains of five aliens? Why?" Dc. McCoy asked for crification.

  "Yes, and we are operating under the theory that the High Evolutionary is a mutant that can see connections when it comes to topics of DNA and genetics. As to why, his logs indicate that he was trying to force the race to evolve in some way." Magneto expined as he floated by windows overlooking the mansion's garden.

  "Fascinating, I wonder what kind of progress I could make while working with him?" The blue-furred scientist wondered aloud.

  "I wouldn't want to work with him, regardless of his insight. The man is a monster and an extremist. And that's coming from me." The Brotherhood leader stated.

  Then the Professor piped up. "Ah thank you, Logan, would you put that on the coffee table there. Apparently, that's a gift from Nath'aniel, a sampling of some exotic teas."

  "There are some there that even I haven't had a chance to taste, but of those that I have, I have enjoyed them all," Magneto said from the sidelines. Logan did as requested, and as he was turning around about ready to push them to start, the terrorist did without urging. "It's good that you're here Hank, something I learned while living with Nath an answer to a question we three have had for several years now."

  "Oh and which question is that?" Beast asked politely.

  The Brotherhood leader rubbed his chin with his thumb for a moment before answering. "Why are Charles and I so healthy? The Magi learned ages ago that Alpha and Omega level mutants aren't only more powerful than other mutants, but they also have an extended lifespan, by fifty and three hundred percent respectively." Yet while he answered he pushed through and didn't let any of them ask anything until he was done.

  Even so, Logan could see surprise and disbelief on the faces of his teammates. Ororo was literally opening and closing her mouth in disbelief. Beast was the first to recover. "He has proof of this statement?"

  Magneto shrugged before saying. "Centuries of recorded observations by his people. Mutants were not a new thing. We have been around since before the Egyptian Empire, we just were not as well documented, well by humans anyway."

  "You mean…" Ororo starts to ask.

  But the other man quickly understood what she wanted crified. "You will live to three hundred, easy, if not killed in battle or assassinated in some Wakandan plot."

  Hearing that she looked back at Logan, who just smiled back at her before winking, and then he mouthed the words 'offer stands'. She stuck her tongue out at him, before she crossed her arms and looked away.

  Then the feral asked. "That all you wanted to talk about? Bragging about how you will all live longer than most of the kids here." He left out that he still wouldn't outlive him, but that didn't need to be said.

  The Brotherhood's leader lost any of the little mirth that it had, before he said. "No… Mystique and Exodus will be quite displeased with what I am about to share with you. But while I know it will impact my future, I also know you are in spitting distance if things remain so I wanted to warn you too Charles.'

  "War is coming."

  The Professor smmed his fist into his desk, before he said. "We have been over this Eric, I will not wage war on six billion…"

  "Not that war. Not a war between humans and mutants, but a war nonetheless." Magneto cut off his friend sternly saying. Then he took a breath before adding. "In less than five years an invasion will hit New York. The battle will be over an experimental device capable of replicating the portal techniques of magic users. History will record it as 'the Battle for New York'."

  "My stars and garters," Beast muttered immediately, then he started to pace in his corner of the room.

  Then he went silent and for a moment no one said anything as they processed what he had just said. The Ororo asked. "How do you know this?"

  Instead of answering he asked. "Your tip from the Oracle pay off?"

  Logan noticed a flinch in the other man, and thought. 'It's not the same, he is still hiding something.' Then he looked to Charles to see if he had read that, but the other man was muttering 'my god', to himself a couple of times.

  So the feral soldiered on. "It did, it led us to a training camp for some group calling themselves the 'Friends of Humanity'. Two of their members, and their supposed leader died during our fight, but the other sixty or so members were captured and handed over to local and federal authorities."

  His team leader then added. "And we securing their files lead to other arrests on the West Coast too. So yes, I would say her tip paid off well." Storm was still nervous though as she ran her hand through her hair to calm herself.

  Logan then asked Magneto to crify something that he had said before telling them. "Why would Mystique and Exodus be upset with you sharing this?"

  "Mystique and Exodus believe that if only we, the Brotherhood, were to show up and save the city, we could be shown as saviors and may turn around the public's opinion of Brotherhood." The leader of said group admitted. Then he added. "This does bring up another topic, that Nath'aniel believes that we need to keep this private.'

  "If we start telling people, they may act differently. These differences in our behaviors may change where the attack will happen. We know that a key device is stolen, by a rogue group at some point, and we know that the finished thing surfaces again in Manhattan. And as much as I don't want to say it, but New York may be the best pce for this battle to happen."

  That made everyone wake up a bit, but it was Logan who never really zoned out who asked. "How do you figure?"

  "Local defenders," Magneto muttered and waved his hand. A water jug rose into the air, and poured its contents into a gss. The gss had an engraved ring at the top, which allowed him to pull it towards him. He took a sip before expining further. "Vigintes and criminal groups are aplenty in New York, SHEILD western division HQ as well. Not that I expect they want to out themselves, but some members of their group may let their love of their city override their reason."