Pete Wisdom watched as they lowered the coffin in to the ground, as the chill of the October air got to him. He stood apart from the other mourners watching their reactions. Members of the X-Men, members of SHIELD, family and friends all gathered at this solemn time. All the while he stood there thinking how the mission could have gone so badly wrong, how he could have failed to see this coming, how he could have prevented it.

Except his ego had gotten in the way and he was angry with himself, angry with those who had killed her. He watched her father's face and wondered how long it had been since they had spoken, what their last words were and what he was feeling now. It shouldn't have happened, they all knew that, and he wondered if they blamed him for it. He knew he did and that at the end of the day this was his fault.

The clergyman, or whatever he was titled, was speaking but Wisdom couldn't hear the words, all he could see was the dirt being thrown on the mahogany finish, scattering in little pebbles across the lid, the thud of the earth resounding in his ears as if it were a shot from a gun. A shot from the gun. For all the super powers and for all the villains they had thought who would have supposed a simple piece of lead would end the life of one so young?

Her SHIELD uniform had been powerless to stop the specially crafted bullet and it had shredded flesh, entering her chest and exploding between her shoulder blades, leaving a large exit wound and they had all known she was finished. She had been his team mate, and long ago she had been his lover. He had been her first and the enmity between them at the break up had poisoned any friendship they might have had later. They had been professionals, but they had let personal feelings get in the way and it had cost them her life.

The service ended and the people left, but Pete stood there watching the grave as the box was covered with the earth. He felt a hand on his shoulder.

"Pete," said the voice the tone unmistakable, even though they had only known each other a relatively short time. "We're leaving now, heading back to the manor. Do you need a lift anywhere?" Pete shook his head and Brian Braddock turned to his wife Meggan, who was standing waiting for her husband. "Okay. You've got our number, if you want to talk." Pete nodded, his eyes not moving from what was the hole in the ground, and now her final resting place. The hand left his shoulder, and Wisdom stood there a while longer, until it started to get dark.

He sighed and walked over to the earth. There was no headstone, for that would arrive later, but he knew what he needed to know. He knelt by the grave, his head bowed, in shame, in defeat, in loss.

"Oh, Kitty," he said. "What have I done?"

Theresa Rourke awoke and felt the bonds around her. She could not move her arms, she could barely stand but she didn't mind. Her life had been that way for so long now. She had failed in her role and her mind had snapped when she had lost her voice and her powers for the second time. She remembered the flash of the claws, streaking through the darkness, tearing open her throat. She could still feel the telekinetic pressure around her exposed larynx, holding in the blood, forcing the air in to her lungs as her friends went after the creature that had done this.

In that moment, the darkness had given way to light and the world had taken on a whole new meaning. God didn't want her to have her powers, to have abused the voice He had given her in such a way that caused harm to others and He had taken it away. In the great scheme of things she was a penguin, a creature with no purpose but to look pretty and to be admired. Yes, she was a penguin. Yet penguins were creatures of evil and had to be exterminated, wiped off the face of the planet. From her hospital bed she had walked to the window and thrown herself out of it as all penguins must and she fell, floated, fell, floated, fell, floated and then she was back in on the ceiling again.

The thoughts disturbed her and she began to hit her head against the wall, again and again and again and again and again and again and again...

"She's no better," sighed Sean as he turned away from the monitor. He couldn't bear to see his daughter like this.

"Her mind shattered under the strain of her injuries and her guilt," explained Jean.

"What about Logan?" he asked, feeling a small shred of pity for the man, but not too much.

"Still comatose. His healing factor is only just keeping him alive. Jubilee has hope, but..." she trailed off not wanting to face that. At the end of the day she loved Logan and to think of him dead and gone... She couldn't do that.

"Best place for him."

"He was under the thrall of the Shadow King," she said, trying to rationalise it, but she knew Sean wasn't listening. To him, Logan would be the man who almost killed his daughter a second time, and if not for X-Force he would have succeeded as well. Now X-Force had taken the fight to HYDRA, with the full resources of SHIELD and the X-Men behind them.

It would be a long battle. He was here looking after the Massachusetts Academy and Jean was here because she was heavily pregnant and could not be involved in the battle.

"I'll buy you a coffee. It may be an asylum, but it does have great food," she said with a weak smile and they turned away from the screen. Inside the padded cell, Terry just kept hitting her head against the wall.

"Incredible," said Bloodstrike as he looked at the various members of the X-Force striketeam, fastened to the walls of the palace, their SHIELD uniforms illuminated in a green glow, while the darkforce energies of the Dragon Lord covered their skins, entering their bodies and invaded their minds.

"I say we just kill them and be done with it," said Silk Fever, the heat radiating from her body as she hovered before them. "We don't need them."

"Really?" said Midnight's Fire. "Or is it you're just annoyed at how efficently they took us down?"*

* (Last issue - David)

"Why don't you..." snarled Fever but before she could react, the room visibly darkened as the Dragon Lord appeared, angered at the scene before him..

"Silence," he commanded. "Breaking them is an arduous enough task without you're infighting. Fever, go out there and patrol, make sure that there are none of their allies out there. And see if you can find Smiling Tiger, I believe he's gone hunting."

"My Lord," she said, visibly cowed at his presence and made her leave.

"My Lord," said Midnight's Fire, who was doubtful to the honour of this action, "I must agree with Min. Why do we need them?"

"What better way to defeat our enemies than to convert them? Our ally in SHIELD informed me that the fabled Magneto once did the same thing to the X-Men until they broke the conditioning.* A failed process but mine is a little more... invasive."

* (In X-Men #3 - David)

"I see," said Fire, though not totally.

"Don't sweat it," said Bloodstrike, his wounds recovering though still visible after his bout with Maverick."Besides, I want to see this for myself." The Dragon Lord smiled.

"Then enjoy," he said and faded away in to the background once more focusing himself for one of these agents was causing him a problem.

David North lay on his bed, waiting to die. The cure developed for the Legacy Virus during the Apocalypse crisis had failed, for it was not a cure but a repressor and it seemed that excessive use of the mutant ability caused the dormant virus to become active once more. He had been with SHIELD for eighteen months now and the virus had caught him bad. He was dying, and this time there was nothing that could be done.

"Damn," said Wisdom, outside the containment zone. It was sealed, so that the virus could not get out and ensure that the X-Force division did not become infected. He and his X-Force Alpha team had already been screened to determine if they had been infected or not and were routinely checked once a month. It was the only way for them to ensure the division survived, now that they were a vital part of the SHIELD operation.

"You can't smoke in here," said the nurse as she wandered by.

"Yeah, alright," said Pete and put the cigarettes back in his pocket and when she was gone he took it right back out again. "Ah, Davey, you look like hell."

"Good to see you too, Wisdom" muttered Maverick, though he was glad of the company and Wisdom wasn't one for telling people how well they looked which was a change from the usual crowd. "How's Lydia?"

"She's good, we're fine, thanks for askin'," he answered with a half scowl.

"You too haven't been fighting again," said North with a slow smile.

"Wasn't a fight, it was more of a 'I see you again I'll throw you off the Helicarrier', kind of thing," said Pete pulling up a chair. "We miss you though. The just isn't the same without you. I know, you're on my list."

"Gonna have to get used to it though," said Maverick. "Christ, Pete, even through the damned morphine it hurts." There was a tear rolling down the left cheek of his deformed face, the blisters and boils altering his looks even more dramatically than the first time he had the virus.

"I figured that. I hear you're still crying out in your sleep."

"That's the dreams. The Weapon X project large as life. I keep thinking if they'd done their jobs a little better I'd be fine."

"If they'd done it any better you wouldn't have been the man you are. We're grateful for that. All of us, and though goes double for the Bradley kid."*

* (Chris Bradely, better known as Bolt of the New Warriors. Go check it out after you've read this - David)

"Not seen Chris in ages," muttered Maverick, his eyes closing.

"Still in Paraguay, sorting out the Xavier LMD problem. Why they chose to go to Paraguay I don't know. The X-Men are still pissed at us for that."

"Miss... him..." said Maverick as he fell asleep.

Lydia Del Ruiz was being held in a detention block in Genosha, awaiting sentencing for her crimes against mutantkind. She was the last survivor of the X-Force team who had been inserted in to Genosha to stop Magneto's so called Fallen Angels, the last of the original X-Force. Their methods had become brutal, almost terroristic in nature and they had been striking out over the border, making strikes with in Wakandan territory.

X-Force had gone in after them, to sort them out and it had been a long and bloody battle between the two sides. They had bested the Fallen Angels but at a great cost. Her team mates were dead, Siryn had died first, drowning in her own blood and that had enraged Maverick and Wisdom who started firing everything they had, taking out half the team in moments, before Sunspot nailed Wisdom with a blast of energy. Wisdom's final act was to fire a hot knife through the young warrior's mouth and through the back of his head, searing a hole through his teeth, the heat melting the enamel and sealing the teeth shut, ensuring that the grin he died with would be hideously deformed.

The rest of the battle went just as badly and by sheer chance it was that Lydia survived when the others did not. She was the last person standing on the battlefield, in shock at the loss of her friends and the wounds she had taken, when Magneto himself arrived. His fury was unbridled and he vowed that she would be punished to the highest extent he was capable of. She was Genoshan and she was tried for treason against her people and if found guilty her family would pay the price as well. Such was the law, the justice of Magneto.

Her trial had been long, her wounds untreated and she had lost her left leg in the process. Telepaths stole the secrets from her mind, taking her darkest and most private thoughts and giving them to the world, building a case that she had been like this from the moment she was born.

The first time she had wet her panties in public, the times she had injured herself, the first time she had been kissed, her first sexual experiences with a man, her fantasies about being with a woman, the feelings she had about her mutant birthright, the times she had been raped by magistrates who wanted to boast to their friends about being with a mutie and how they were no better than their wives or girlfriends and the whole genetically superior deal was a crock. By the end of it she did not know which memories were real and which of them had been planted and she no longer cared. She just wanted it to be over.

But it would not be at the hands of Magneto. From her cell she could just about see to the outside world, where a special guillotine was being prepared. She could imagine her fate as the blades came down, first removing her legs, then her arms, then her lower torso and finally her head. The Death of the Dark Knives it had been called, created as the ultimate punishment to those who would betray the Lord Magneto, for he could control the speeds at which the blades fell.

So far it had never been used, however she knew she would be the second, after her father. She could not allow that. There was another way.

"How long are you going to keep trying this?" asked Marcus Raven, ignoring the images that flashed by him. "Ah may be a novice to this heroes thing but Ah'm still a telepath and Ah know what you're doing."

"Who are you talking to?" asked the mission commander. The conference room at the FBI was packed with details on how to prevent a terrorist coup in a small place called Madripoor. Apparently the United Kingdom had asked for specialist help in taking the militant activists out before the place was handed over the to Japanese.

"Not you," said Raven, who'd felt that there were things that were wrong when he'd woken up from his dream about working for SHIELD. As the day had gone on, he'd noticed small incongruities with the scenario and by now he'd realised exactly what was going on. He'd been using his psionic abilities for a long time now and he'd obviously been taken out hard for him not to have noticed it earlier. "So shut up, an' siddown." A telekinetic shove pushed the man back in to the wall, arousing the ire of the other agents standing in the room.

"Mutie bastard," whispered some, other mentioned the word 'freak' but Raven wasn't interested in them. They weren't real and didn't matter. However they weren't psionic constructs, because when a telepath entered his mind he was usually hit with a sledgehammer of a feedback from his psionic defences. It kept people from prying even when he had no actual access to his higher brain functions.

Which meant these things were something else entirely.

"Ah don't have time for this," muttered Marcus and gave them all a telekinetic push and slammed them all together and they collapsed in a heap on the floor. Marcus shook his head. "Come on out, because if you want my mind, then you'll have to meet me one on one."

"Very well," said the agents he had just slammed began to merge together, forming one being.

"Unless Ah miss my guess you are the Dragon Lord."

"Well met, Agent Raven. I'm afraid my attempts to subvert you are not going as well as my attempts to subvert the others but that won't be a problem too much longer."

"They ain't stupid, they'll figure it out."

"Possibly, but their psyche screening at SHIELD gave me an insight in to the darkest fears in their mind and I've got them on the ropes."

"This is Darkforce, isn't it?" said Marcus, looking at the way his reality appeared now that he knew what he could sense was wrong with it all. "Not the usual uses of the stuff."

"The potential of the energy has never been truly tapped. None can say what it even is. I have barely scratched the surface of my powers and yet I stopped your colleagues with ease. Submit now, join with me, and I won't make them kill you."

"They could try," said Marcus, with more confidence than he felt, but he knew he had to keep strong or the Dragon Lord would break his defences. He could feel a buzz in the back of his head that meant his powers were being tested in some way. "You'd lose them and me, if they try to fight me."

"Oh they won't have to. Watch, and learn." The argon ord motioned and the information boards of the FBI showed four different scenes.

Pete Wisdom sat in the small apartment, a more or less empty bottle of whiskey at his side, the cigarette ash dripping in to t glass and floating on the remains of the drink contained within. He was due to report to back to Fury tomorrow, but he wasn't going to go. He'd a better idea and he picked up his pistol and placed the barrel under his chin.

"Sod it."

Theresa cried and cried and she knew that she was an evil penguin and needed to die. The walls were not strong enough to hurt her, the padding meant they would only protect her... Something inside her, some aspect of the person she used to be, knew what to to and she crawled in to a corner of the room and placed her head against the wall. It would look like she was crying, instead of using the walls to block her mouth and nose, to shut off her air ways. Soon she would be dead and the evil penguin within her would be gone...

Maverick slept, the pain that coursed through his body had one on long enough, and he knew there was one release for him now. He would surrender, he would stop fighting, there was nothing left for him now, and the pain was just too much. One day he hoped he would see his friends again, but he wasn't sure as the only thing that seemed to be engulfing him was the darkness.

Lydia knew that she could save her father, for if her trial was abandoned Magnus would be forced to drop the charges. With her powers neutralised they id not consider her a threat, but Lydia had been well trained. She managed to cobble together enough of her clothing in to a makeshift noose and had tied it to the grill in the ceiling. She knew it was strong and sturdy for she had tried to open it and failed. Now she would save herself in a different way. She stood on her bed and the clothing was still tight around her larynx. She wondered how much it would hurt and then she kicked out with her good leg and pushed the bed away from her, out of the way should she change her mind in her fright. She fell about half an inch as the clothing drew tight and she could not breathe anymore. She had hoped the jerk would snap her neck but it was not to be, so she closed her eyes and waited for the moments of life to tick away.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" cried Marcus as he watched as Pete pulled the trigger and blow off the back of his head; as he watched the medics try and make Siryn live without success; as he watched the monitors at Maverick's side become straight lines; as he watched Lydia's body go limp and gently sway from the momentum of her body relaxing.

His psionic resistance failed and the Dragon Lord seized the moment and engulfed the very core of Marcus Raven, and he restored his consciousness to the real world.

"Five blank canvasses," he chuckled as he examined the vacant looks in the eyes of X-Force, "ready for the repainting!"