---

"Time to die, Brimstone," said Tim, anger and grief staining his voice at the death of Krystal and Victor at the hands of the nemesis that had plagued them.

"I think not, Fitzgerald," said the patriarch of the Theatre of Pain, but he was worried. This was not the same Fitzgerald he had faced twice before.

The first time he had dealt with him swiftly and the second time he had been forced to flee as his fellow X-Men arrived. They were gnats, but it was Xi'an who had bested him then, his own creation turned on him. Fitzgerald was now different, he was a primal force, something similar to Brimstone himself and he knew if anyone could defeat him now, it would be Fitzgerald, but their conflict would lay waste the city in the process.

He did not know why his captors had unleashed him on the city, but it was time to put an end to this uprising of X-Men once and for all, and he unleashed his power, throwing whatever he could at Fitzgerald, but he simply became intangible and the geo-thermal energies he commanded were to no avail and Brimstone began to realise that Fitzgerald was as above him as he was above normal mutants. He couldn't teleport and the energy attacks were only affecting him slightly, but if Fitzgerald tapped in to the full potential of the energies of the South Pole then he would be in trouble and though the energies that kept the Savage Land would sustain him, he followed though the logical conclusion that Fitzgerald would eventually kill him.

That was not what he wanted so Brimstone did the only thing he could do. He fought on and hoped that his father had planned for this kind of eventuality when he had birthed him.

---

"So where do we find Kaine?" asked Morphine as he and Essex wandered the halls of Stark/Fujikawa. "You've worked here, I've not." Nathaniel smiled and nodded.

"Follow me," said the man called Sinister as he shifted his body and felt pain in doing so for the first time in many years. Apparently Morphine's touch had done more to him than he had at first suspected and he wondered if he had truly escaped the powers of the only mutant he had ever met that was capable of hurting him properly, well besides Nate Grey, that was and he was as dead and buried as the rest of the X-Men, and Sinister knew - he had ensured that they were truly gone as the mistake had been made with them before. He had made the mistake before and he rarely made the same error twice.

"Nice body," said Morphine as he looked at him, ensuring he knew exactly who he was working with and that he didn't make a mistake and accidentally kill him before it was time. "The Nathan Milbury look?"

"Yes," said Sinister. "I worked here for years as Milbury, forming the Shapers Guild from here, all the while keeping myself to myself. There are still may people out there who would like to ensure I was dead, seeing as I am the last scion of Apocalypse." Then he stopped in his tracks. "Hold," he said, his eyes surveying the place, thinking there was something he had missed or only just become aware of./ Then he smiled. "Good."

"What?" said Morphine, looking around himself but not seeing anything.

"Nothing you need concern yourself with, Morphine," said Sinister, thinking that there might yet be a way to thwart Kaine and revenge himself against Somers.

"As long as it doesn't get in the way of my getting to Kaine. I want to see him turn to dust and blow away."

"Then we'll blow the complex and bury Stark/Fujikawa forever," said Essex. He had know the forefather of the company's creator and he would see this dream die as well. The age of the mega-corporation was over and mankind was heading towards a better, manifest destiny and he hoped he would see at least some of it before he died. Morphine, on the other hand, would not make it out of the complex.

---

Shakti lay on the floor, her mind reeling. While she no longer had her psionic powers, while the baby was inside her feeding off her psionic energy, and she had thought that they were totally gone, but when Victor and Krystal died she had felt it. They had been there and then they weren't and she hadn't even realised they had an impression on her and it had hurt her badly.

She could feel the pressure building and she knew she was in trouble, serious trouble. Her gut was on fire and she instinctively knew that the baby was coming.

"Help me," she called but the city was mostly empty, with all but the most essential personnel evacuated when the Theatre attacked. Nobody was coming, and her next instinct was to call to Xi'an, but he was on the streets, sorting the crisis and there was nothing she could do to contact him or any of the X-Men as she started to drag herself to the infirmary and hoped that she would be able to deal with this herself. Hopefully there would be some medics about to help her and it gave her a cause to smile that in the midst of the chaos and destruction, something new and pure would be born.

---

Dust raged against the confines of his own mind.

The mystery force that had taken Rosa was a mystery to him no longer, it was a force he had faced before and it had waited for him and it had beaten him back, again. The last time he had fought it he had been backed by the rest of X-Force, and Excalibur and it had still taken all he had to stop it.

"You were never a match for me, telepath," the voice had told him before it had bypassed his defences but he had heard enough. He knew the voice, he knew the enemy. Kulan Gath had somehow returned from his exile outside reality and he was continuing whatever play had been thwarted a little under 100 years ago. The sorcerer had been trying to manipulate the planet after his defeat at the hands of the Undying and bring his own version of reality to power. Marcus had transported the SHIELD teams to the higher plane that Gath occupied and they had beaten him back but it had been a dear price to pay for the battle and they had lost so much in the process, but Kulan Gath had been exiled, pushed outside of time itself and he had been lost, supposedly forever.

After the battle with Garokk and the rise of Doom as Sorcerer Supreme, Dust had hoped that mystical threats were done with, because he had never liked magic. It wasn't something he was comfortable dealing with because it operated in a realm outside the one he knew... Magic.

Something came to him, made sense. He was trapped within his own mind, true, his body was of no use to him but his powers themselves... He remembered when Doom had contacted him about the Messiah, had told him that he needed to draw out the Phalanx and it needed to be set up and he'd agreed, using it as a release at his own feelings of guilt for having survived so long when all his friends and family were gone. Doom had found him, not the other way around and that meant Doom had been looking. He knew Doom was looking now for a threat and Marcus broadcast a signal as hard as he could hoping that something got past the confines that Kulan Gath had set up.

He needed Doom's help if he were to beat this wizard and lay aside old ghosts.

---

Xi'an and the other X-Men arrived with the Stark/Fujikawa Special Operations and stood around in awe as Brimstone Love and Skullfire traded energy blows. Electromagnetic pulses struck the horned mutant, who fired his own geothermal powers towards Tim, trying to find someway of ensnaring the energy form that Fitzgerald had become.

"Give him a hand!" called Xi'an to the people as the S/F took position and unleashed their weapons at Brimstone Love, much as they had done to the Hulk clone moments before, but their energy weapons were ineffective against the hide of Brimstone Love who smiled and the ground erupted in to several columns of lava, decimating the special operations people. Brimstone love did not know what game was being played here by Stark/Fujikawa, but he was nobody's pawn and he would show Kaine why using the Theatre of Pain for his own ends was a foolish thing to do, however the X-Men had other ideas and they struck as one against him, joining Tim.

Metalhead punched and struck, but Brimstone had taken on the Juggernaut and bested him, so he was no threat by himself, but added to that were the repeated attacks of Meanstreak and the continued threat of Fitzgerald and on the sidelines he could see Xi'an, watching and waiting for the moment to join the fray and with his concentration so divided, there was little Brimstone Love could do against this. He had fought the X-Men off before, but this was different and there was nobody to back him up and he couldn't escape and he reached in to the depths of his being, searching for something he could use, some power reserves he could call upon and end this once and for all.

Then it happened.

---

Reno Kaine watched as his cameras recorded the event. It was interesting to see how much he had miscalculated the power of Brimstone Love, however the loss of his special operations people was not that bad - they could be replaced and of course the sympathy would be with his people over the deaths. Exactly who had the X-Men lost in this battle?

Now that was an interesting question and one he didn't know but there were key figures missing from the fight. La Lunatica, Krystaline Porter, Victor Ten-Eagles, Morphine Somers. Where were they? He knew that Shakti Haddad was pregnant and would be staying oput of it but half their number were missing and that was intriguing to him. It was a wild card in his plan because it meant they were doing something he couldn't predict, unless...

What if they weren't all in the city? Yes, that would make a certain amount of sense - the X-Men were not fools and if they realised what was going on here, then they might have infiltrated Stark/Fujikawa. It would be hard, but not impossible, and if they were here then it might also be feasible that they were past security as well, as they would not be expecting an attack. As far as kaine was aware they had no teleportational equipment, but they might know somebody who did and as he reached for the console to alert secutrity to a possible intrusion he felt a hand on him.

"Milbury?" asked Kaine, looking at the scientist in disbelief. "Surely you're dead?"

"I wonder where you got that idea from," mused Sinister. "I am very much alive, Mr Kaine, and I am very disappointed in you."

"I'll cut you in on the deal," said Kaine, backtracking. "We can come to some kind of arrangement..."

"What about my cut?" said Morphine Somers and Reno Kaine's eyes opened wide, thinking he'd been right, but wondering why Somers and Milbury were working together. "I asked a question."

"So you're assassins," said Kaine, thinking that the advantage may have shifted in to his favour. "Interesting."

"You used my work," said Milbury. "My tools and created abominations, flawed and imperfect."

"So we skimped on a few details, your processes were beyond anything we'd been able to copy, even using the genetic modifier we acquired form Alchemax."

"Interesting, the device used to create a Spider-Man," mused Milbury. "Intricate technology..."

"Much like this," said Kaine and an electro-static discharge, sending Milbury flying back. "You think you're the first to try and kill me?" then he looked at Milbury who seemed to be turning very pale, and he changed completely in to another man. "I have no idea who you are," he said, "but you made a very big mistake."

"Interesting," said Morphine. "Modified nanites in your bloodstream..."

"Oh yes, you used to run with Doom," said Kaine. "So you know all about what we can and cannot do with the technology at our disposal, a system of mini Iron Men protecting me in much the same way the original Iron Man did for Tony Stark a century ago."

"You'll not get a chance to try that trick on me though," said Morphine. "The gloves are off, sunshine."

"I don't have to," said Kaine, pressing a button. "In ten second there'll be enough security here to take down the X-Men themselves. You'll be no trouble at all. Sunshine."

Morphine looked to Sinister who was only just able to stand. "Tesseract time, Essex," he said.

"For me, yes," he said. "Goodbye, Morphi-eeeennnnnn!" He doubled in pain as the tesseract generator sent a feedback discharge in to him. Somers and Kaine between them had damaged the system and it would take time to get it back online - time they didn't have.

"Something wrong?" asked Kaine, with a smirk as five guardsmen entered, all with high energy weapons. "Guess you're the first prisoners of war..."

"Guess again," said a voice and the guards were thrown to the floor.

"La Lunatica," said Kaine, without much surprise for two of Xavier City's defenders was never much of a strike-force. "You'll never escape here alive."

"Alive's no fun," said Luna and she leapt for him and Kaine moved, showing the video screen which showed rubble and debris surrounding a battlefield and Brimstone Love simply standing there in the middle of a giant crater, charred remains surrounding him and Love simply laughing

"No," whispered Kaine, his dreams of conquest and take-over destroyed with Xavier City.

"TIM!" cried Luna, looking in vain for some sign of her lover unsure if he could survive a geothermal explosion.

"Exceptional," said Sinister, in awe of what they had just witnessed his creation do. "It will be interesting to see how much of Xavier City remains."

"My city..." said Morphine. "Your walking waste just devastated my city."

"He survived," whispered Sinister, taking no notice of Morphine. "My theories were right, this is that which survives. I have created perfection, perfect evolution, a doomsday..."

"Great work, Dad," said Luna. "You just gave my brother ultimate power."

"He's not your brother," said Morphine. "He was a failed experiment, the results of tampering with Summers DNA and splicing it with alternate versions of the Summers line."

"What?" asked Luna. "I don't understand."

"Rachel, Nate Grey, Hyperstorm, Cable, all variants of the same lineage," said Sinister. "Their DNA was the one spawned by the combination of Summers-Grey DNA, and they produced godlings. I extracted DNA from each and combined it to see if I could find the secret of the Fifth Force, to see if there was something key that I had missed."

"As interesting as this all is," said Kaine, who had been forgotten by the others, "you have all outlived your usefulness to me. Your usefulness as prisoners is over, but we'll see if the body shop can find a use for you all."

He pressed a button and across the Stark/Fujikawa complex, alarms sounded.