“AIAIAIAIAIAIAIAIAAAAAA!” Zek kept screaming as he bolted down the hall. He could practically feel the hot breath of one of the dogs gaining on him. Wait, that wasn’t hot breath, that was!

“AIAIAIA!!!!” Zek shrieked as he whipped his read around behind him to see a liquid dog belch a fireball straight at him. Zek panicked and flicked a scarlet ball over his shoulder. It exploded into a flash of light that quickly turned into a security guy. The fireball struck him instead and Zek started sprinting faster.

But as fast as Zek was, demons were a little faster. Another fireball and Zek barely dodged it. He threw another ball over his shoulder and the mantis girl ended up colliding with the dog. Zek kept running. A person appeared in a doorway right as Zek reached it and Zek just smashed a golden light into the person’s stomach. No more person.

Then the floor fell.

Zek stared down at the missing floor for a moment. Did he…? No, it wasn’t him. He still had two empty pockets.

Then the Zek fell.

“AAAAIIII!!!!”

Another crimson orb appeared and vanished as the smallish inflatable bouncy house manifested around him. Zek hit the overstuff thing instead of a hard floor and various chunks of masonry and such rebounded off the the top. “UUMPH!” he moaned eloquently as the effort still knocked the wind from him.

He blearily looked around. Who had the nerve to steal his shtick? He was the only one who was supposed to make things vanish! “That….does it…” Zek wheezed, a lot of dust going up his nose. “Someone is losing all their stuff.”

Several flashes later, and Zek emerged from the disappeared bounce house, the settling dust briefly illuminated by a silent firework show. But now he had his custom made murderbucket helmet on, that crusted painter’s bucket that Juniper had personally made for him, complete with nails sticking out through the top and an interior drink system with straws that led to his mouth. He sipped on a straw and tasted the lemonade and root beer. He cocked the shotgun he’d taken from his duffle bag and strutted out of the dust, stalking back down the fallen corridor. He’d taken the time to strip off his pants and shirt, too, leaving him in his red and white striped long underwear beneath his trenchcoat and combat boots. The black ski mask completed the look.

“Hell’s about to freeze over - Long John Shivers is comin’ out to play!”

”No, you’re fights with me. I told you I’d kill you if you harmed anyone again.” he said remembering the gist of what he said to her but not the exact wording. It was sad, Sam thought she had been improving. The second and third chances he had given her wasted. Even if she wasn’t in control she was too dangerous to be kept like this. He’d expect someone would do the same for him. In fact he hoped someone would kill him if he was being controlled like this.

Stepping backwards out of his ice armor who took most of the attacks he iced himself over again and leapt over the clone that was getting slashed at and drilled. The first attack was blocked but the second two landed on the frozen likeness of Sam as he slashed in the air downwards at the woman trying to get behind her. Surround her. His ice clones weren’t much of a fight for someone as skilled as her but they were always meant more for distracting anyways.

”Aura! Focus! Fight it not us!” he slashed again knowing she’d be protected by her armor as Sam shot a beam behind him trying to close off the possibility for reinforcements for her and the other mages.

Thermal vision of one of the dogs vanished behind him as Lenna went to work. Thankfully it wasn’t a really dog or Sam would have been more upset. The way the creature vanished told him it was a construct of magic or something else entirely. Sam was starting to hate magic.

The ground rumbled. Where was Zek!?!? He didn’t know what to expect but kept pressing his attack slashing and hacking at the woman trying to keep her focused on him while trying to pin anyone who wasn’t with him to the ground for the other two. That was when the ground gave out from under them. He jumped upward shedding his armor again until it was under him. He leapt off of it’s back to the ceiling as the floor crashed out from under everyone and he kicked off the ceiling as two of his golems now tried to distract Aura.

A flash or red appeared out of his limited peripheral view and a.... bouncy house appeared. Why did he bring Zek!?!? ”Aura!” Sam fell from above one hand shooting a beam of blue while the other held the sword ready to slash at the color cladded woman.

She was bare of foot. In hindsight, this move had been incredibly silly. Although she was not aware of it currently, one of those shoes had been stabbed by an Aura spike and would not be useful any longer. Very silly.

Her opponent also seemed silly, singing the rock and roll, of all things. And punching the floor. The punch actually did something.

The floor began to shake, and the shaking spread until it encompassed the entire corridor. And suddenly, Lenna was concerned less with her opponent, and more with not falling to her death.

She was still unpracticed at levitation. She could occasionally levitate objects, but it took effort to push and pull. To manipulate dexterously. In a perfect world. She would have it fully under control. Every aspect of her power, actually. But these things take time, and she went back and forth. So, levitation was not her first reaction.

Her first reaction was to grab her knives and leap at the wall. A split seconds attempt at stabbing them told her they weren’t drywall. The compound was likely made of something tougher, like wood or concrete.

She scrabbled at the wall for a moment, contemplated hopping from piece to piece of debris, and then just— took a calming breath and tried to focus her mind on stopping her descent… with telekinesis.

Lenna focused on her entire being. On surrounding herself in a bubble of telekinesis. And— she managed it, at the last moment. As the dust settled, she touched down and dismissed the bubble. Then, she looked to the guy she had been fighting. It looked like he’d hurt his arm on the way down, but he’d managed to shield his head. He was still conscious. She walked up to him and hit him on the back of his head, and that put an end to that. Now he was unconscious. From her limited battlefield medic knowledge, aside from a broken arm and a headache when he woke up, he would live. Maybe not be fine. But. Live. And that was enough. That settled, Lenna turned to assess the situation for the rest of everyone.

The rubble hurt her feet.

The impact with the ground was felt on her aura. Between the earlier fights and this Aura knew she was quickly running out of options to win this fight. SHe could win though or at least delay until help arrived, which it had to be. In teuth Aura knew the mages had not brought the force they needed to the fight but her opinion had not been asked and so she had, had no reason to help them at all.

Aura took a few breaths as she confronted the Golums, she ducked under a slash from the first, her hand formed a hammer and struck the golums head sending the frozen head flying at Zek's bounce house. The other' struck her Aura on her back shoulder as she brought the hammer around on the follow through striking the second Golums head, aiming this one for Lenna. She glanced around for the real CS, when she felt a ping of pain in her head, as the wizard died. He had been helping to fuel the spell and well the spell did not fail it weakened it.

Fight the Spell not us. The words rang in Aura's mind and she threw her mental force against the walls of the spell as it weakened. Her mental fortitude on attacks on her mind had always been extremely weak but she tried. The purple color in her aura vanished entirely. Aura looked up as Sam shouted and she formed a from her drill and rose to meet the frozen man's attack. Her aura blade would fade just as it was about to strike Sam's reforming after it, the swing aimed at Sam's head, as Aura prepared to take Sam's strike on her forehead where the control tiara was. The Beam of ice was harder to deal with and Aura took that on her aura at her shoulder, it sapped away at her aura making it thinner overall even as she started to feel numbness sin her shoulder, it might of been an issue had she planned to survive the next few moments.

Aura mentally grabbed enough control of herself to weakened her aura blade as well as the aura armor over where Sam was about to strike until both had to substance their color fading to barely noticeably pink in those areas. She was unsure how long she could obtain the control and their were worse fates then dieing to Sam. SHe needed to be free and stopped, even if that meant her head being split in two. She was unsure when the other mages would reach them as well, she knew more had to be on the way by now with the noise of the falling hallway and all.

Zek didn’t have a problem finding the action, not when purple lights up ahead signified the presence of the Purple People Eater. He flinched way to the side as a head made of ice went sailing by. “Oi! Watch it! You could hurt someone with that!” he yelled into the din and gloom and chaos. There was a ton of dust and bits of masonry still floating down! It made the light shows even more spectacular!

There was a growling and then a hacking cough off to the left. A burst of flame belched forth and Zek flung himself to the side in time to dodge the attack. A demon dog appeared out of the dust clouds and fixed it’s beady little eye stalks on him. “AAHHHHH!” Zek yelled, swung the shotgun in the dog’s direction, and pulled the trigger.

At ten feet away, all that was left was a mass of…goo. Which then vanished. Now that was convenient! Self-cleaning demons! “Now that’s convenient! Self-cleaning demons!” he crowed with vicious glee. “Who’s next?!”

He stalked through the bulldozed hallway, making his way back from when he’d come. He pulled a headlamp out of his trenchcoat and slapped it around his head, flicking the switch so he could see better. He saw a pile of rock and ceiling start to rise up. A mass of tentacles appeared as a vaguely dog-like figure began pulling itself from the rubble. “Well, we can’t have that now, can we?”

Zek blasted into the center of that tentacular horror and there was an awful keening sound that was music to his ears, before it abruptly cut off and the rocks suddenly collapsed into empty space. There was a shout of pain and a mantis-like head and upper body emerged from a rock. Zek swung the butt of the shotgun into the head and it stopped moving. He chucked the shotgun away and with alternating flashes of golden, red, then gold again lights, a new shotgun appeared in his hands.

The lights up ahead changed from purple to pink. “Oh hey, I think I found Whazzername--” he cut off mid-shout as a cloud of dust settled and he saw what was happening. “Dang, Sam! You found her first! OKay, you just let me know when I’m balling her so we can get this show on the road. Whenever you’re done playing patty cake!”

Then Zek plopped down on a chunk of rubble, laid his shotgun in his lap, aimed the headlamp at the dueling duo, and pulled a snack cake out of a pocket. He quickly removed the wrapper, tossed it to the floor, and began nibbling away.

Drill and sword rose up to meet his blade as it came down, the purple sword faded and he reacted in kind focusing on the drill and Aura as the sword blinked back into existence past his defenses. ”****” was all the icemancer could muster as his sword was already blocking the drill.

Sam leaned into to the attack so she couldn’t get the force behind her strike that she was going for, ice had already started to reform on body where the sword was going to impact. It seemed Aura had become more unpredictable while being controlled by these magic users.

The purple blade caught his ice and Sam rolled breaking free from the exchange best he could while feeling for everyone else now that the dust was starting to settle. There were people standing around still trying to figure out what had happened and then there was Zek... no one else would be eating now except for him. Sam had been called ‘liability’ before when it came to his lack of safety during missions.

Zek took his ‘problem’ to a whole other level. ”Zek! Stop eating and capture her!” Sam shouted taking an iced overhand and pushing away from the purple cladded warrior. Avoiding a strike to her head with his frozen sword.

They were there to rescue, not kill. Well.. X-Men didn’t kill, this however wasn’t a mission. This was off the books, where Sam excelled, however with Shin flying the jet and Lenna being a student he knew he had to restrain himself. Lenna wanted her alive and was willing to come here by herself to do it. If the kid was X-Men material, he wanted to see it happen. Maybe he found a new recruit?

There was shouting from above, Sam took a second and glanced upwards with his one eye and then shout a beam of blue upwards causing a sheet of ice to form where the cave in happened. There weren’t going to be reinforcements!

Aaand, she had landed. Lenna took a quick moment to reassess the situation… a moment which felt like about two months long, in subjective time… then, promptly used an invisible telekinetic bubble to shift the incoming ice golem’s head out of the way. It flew past her and skidded across the rubble, as her whole mental world shifted from living color, back to orange. Heh. For a brief second, that ice golems head had appeared the only orange thing in the world to her.

… do not eat the yellow snow, they said. But orange snow? Someone has health problems…

Lenna looked towards Aura, the source of the head, just in time to see her scream and attack Sam.

The move the woman executed was good, almost flawless, Lenna categorized as she watched. She had been in many fights, seen many moves meant to slip beyond a fighters guard, but this one. This one was beautiful.

Sam responded by bolstering his defenses. Good move. If he couldn’t block it. Then he rolled to lessen the impact. Then, he aimed a strike and purposely missed what could have been a lethal blow. Iced over the hole in the ceiling.

He was being all sorts of useful. And she really was not. Okay. Okay.

She rushed forward and lined up the shot. Took a deep breath, and— while Sam was fighting Aura, distracting her, Lenna fired off one more crashing wave of force.

The wave of telekinetic energy crashed forward at the speed of a rushing tackle. This wave was meant to hit with the equivalent force of a rushing tackle from a 300 lb professional football player, and hit everything within a 10 ft x 10 ft square directly in front of her. The area Aura AND Sam were currently occupying.

Lenna did not shout a heads up beforehand. A warning would just have forewarned Aura as well. Hopefully, this knocked them over so Zek could do his thing. Because Lenna was all out of gas.

To illustrate that she was out of fuel, Lenna promptly sat down on the floor. Exhausted. With a headache coming on like a raging storm.

Aura mentally reached for more of her aura, but her powers had little left to offer. It had been a long time since she felt the emptiness of it and mentally she caressed the last piece. It should have prevented this entire thing from happening and yet it had not. Aura felt relived and sad, weather she broke through the spell now or not this would soon be over she would die either by these three or by her own final bit of aura. She welcomed the end, everyone she knew or cared about with few exceptions were in most cases dead, some presumed dead and others who she did not have even a clue. She needed Allison she needed.....Alex.

Aura's body however moved with all the knowledge she had did what she would have, starting pulling the aura from her back defenses to the front, storing a what little she could, she simply had to keep the snowman from getting behind her. She took a step forward, but before the foot hit ground to begin her assault, something struck her in the back and threw her forward toward Sam, her aura almost went entirely out as the breath ran from her lungs.

Mentally Aura had begun pounding at the gates of her own mind with tired vigor. She felt herself begin to pull free, but it was like being in deep mud. "Alex...." she thought she said, though she was unsure if she said it aloud or mentally. the gem in the tiara began to glow as it fought her for control.

Even with Alex part of her hoped Sam would take the step of slicing her in two, she was mostly certain that would not happen. Though she had felt for quite some time the Mansion was better for Alex then she ever could be. She needed Alex perhaps more then they needed her. Her mind felt like it was a flame, memories more so then they had been, flooded into her mind while other faded like they had never existed at all.

Zek was mid-bite when Samelina Jolie yelled at him. Zek stuck his very blue tongue out at Cold Shoulder (proudly displaying half-chewed snack cake) and then swallowed. “Sorry! Can’t right now! My mouth is full! Gimme a minute,” he hollered back. He proceeded to eat the cake as he watched the action.

The Amethyst Amazon and the Glacial Gladiator kept sparring, making Zek really wish he had a camera crew to catch it all. Then it was all brought to an end quickly as Lenna brought the house down.

“Have yourself a snack cake,” Zek said as he finished his and chucked a similar one as the girl. “You did good, slugger.”

Then Zek tossed a golden ball at the former Pink Lady. It flashed and vanished along with her, trapping her in time and motion.

“So, I’m thinking pizza. Who’s in?” Zek said as he slung his shotgun back and rested the barrel on his shoulder like all the cool kids were doing these days.

Mind control. It was a touchy subject for Sam. Something he and Aura had in common no doubt given their past experiences being living weapons. It was all about breaking control. If it was a knock to the head so be it. Unfrotantly before he could do it Sam was blinded sided by a force that had no heat signature. Damn. Even with his ice armor he felt the wind leave his lung as he followed the direction of the blow kicking his feet up and moving with the strike to soften the attack where ever it came from separating Sam from Aura. Did she have a new ability?

Lenna slumped to the ground behind him, was she the one who had separated them with that force? It would make sense but now wasn’t the time to be sitting. Speaking of where was Zek with his pocket dimension?

Aura fell forward towards him and Sam braced for the next exchange hoping he’d get a little back up soon. If not from Lenna or Zek he’d possibly have to call Shin in knowing that Kealey wouldn’t let him hear the end of it.

It was over in a flash. Or rather his fight with Aura was over... for now. In a ball of red she vanished leaving Sam catching his breath and exhaling loudly. ”*****ing kidding me.” was he this out of shape? Maybe he needed to volunteer for more missions. ”Get up.” he reached down to Lenna as he made his way over to her. ”We can relax when we get back to the jet.” Sam said grunting as he helped her up already sore from the fight.

”I always forget how skilled she is.” Sam sighed again then looking to Zek. ”Nice catch.” Sam said not wanting to compliment the... whatever Zek was.

”Shin, got the package. Heading topside. Meet you at the Evac point.” lettign go of his earpeice he looked back to Zek. ”I’ll buy the pizza.”

After that big psychic assault, her view of the world slid to a scope of only a few feet around her, and various scattered sounds. The sound of collision, a name… there was an impact against her chest, and as she bent to examine it, Lenna realized that it was a snack cake. Someone had thrown a snack cake at her while she zoned out.

As Zek captured Aura, Lenna ate the snack cake. It did not taste as orange as it looked to her. She chewed it thoughtfully and let the next few minutes blur by. Sam lifted her up. She smeared leftover crème filling in him by mistake. Words were said. They left.

…

Some time later, the group was stationed around a round table, eating pizza. There were some absences. Shin, for instance, had opted to stay elevated above the pizza restaurant, cloaked in V-tol mode. Hovering. He said said something about diets, and the movie Up. And Aura… Aura was still in a pocket dimension. Unaware of what she was missing.

”I know you said “Pizzas is for winners, Sam. Always be closing. Whatever you said,” Lenna mumbled around a slice of meat-lovers pizza. They had purchased two separate pizzas. One, for lovers of meat, and one… that was wildly unique and original, which she wholly blamed upon Zek. ”Thank you for helping to save her but we have enough pizza. Maybe she can have some even if she did not win? I do not care about dumb made up excuses like ‘last time I was mind-controlled nobody got me any pizza,’ and yes I did just imitate your deep, brooding voice. Be flattered.”

She opened the eye she had closed as part of the act of mimicry. It actually had not been a bad imitation, in her opinion. Perhaps she needed to take his voice more often. Could be useful, for getting out of things. Or into them.

Had they even spoken to aura since she had been trapped? Lenna could not recall. She knew they had mentioned freeing others. Or was it others had been freed? In the chaos, had capture mutants been released. Released themselves, overrun the base? Set it on fire, let it burn? Or had the trio taken their captive and ran…. Leaving the mutant fight club whole, sans one member? She could not recall. The logistics of their exit were like a skipped scene in a movie. She would have to take it on faith that all loose ends were sorted, or would by movies’ end. Probably in a succinct line of exposition. Maybe it was even her line.

Lenna tried it. Confidently, Lenna stated : ”All the other kidnapped mutants escaped the facility safely. Obviously.” she made eye-contact with Sam.

Sammy-Poo complimented him. Him! And offered to buy him pizza! Zek grinned the grinniest grin he could imagine and he blew Chillzone a big ol’ kiss.

It was entirely possible he tried doing other things too.

All things considered, it had been a pretty good trip. He’d gotten some decent snacks and had even managed to leave with one of the cotton candy machines safely tucked away in a pocket dimension. He’d also been able to effectively exorcise all of the demon dogs. Which meant he’d need to get some more shotguns, but that was a simple enough endeavor. Lastly, he’d been responsible for the freeing of so many delicious confectionary delights. Nobody would ever get them while they were in his stomach.

They had been enough to occupy him on the trip back and he couldn’t be bothered to remember what anybody else had done. He’d even gotten in a nice nap in his hammock during the ride! He’d even dreamed of eating a two-pound marshmallow and when he’d woken up, he didn’t have a pillow! Not that he had a pillow before he’d napped.

And now he was sitting with Lenna and Snowcone and eating his own custom pizza. He’d offered some to the others as a show of camaraderie, but nobody had taken him up. Which was fine. That just meant there were more pineapples and fudge for him.

Zek licked his lips with his very blue tongue and matched Lenna’s tone. “And all the demon dogs escaped this mortal coil very dangerously. By the way, before I forget, here’s Mauve.”

Zek shoved a slice of his pizza in his mouth and then flicked a scarlet ball at an empty chair. The ball flashed away and the chair wasn’t empty any more.

Aura appeared in the seat and Zeks placement saved Aura's life, as the chair rocked back from her sudden appearince, a pink dagger appeared from her just over her nose. The Tiara clattered to either side of her a long with a thin cut where the gem had been. The Dagger sputtered and died after and while to an outsider it may have looked deliberate, Aura had been aiming for her own brain. A women screamed and Aura lost the grip on reality a moment.

Her mind spun, memories faded away only barely recalled as if from another life time, others appeared and grew brighter and clearer, while others shifted. Aura had long been distrustful of her pre new york memories, some things she recalled vividly several different ways. She had largely chosen her past from what made the most sense to her at the time, research and some guess work. She shook her head and blinked trying to clear her mind and sunk back into the murk. She fell deep into some of her earliest memories.

She could smell the pine, the blood and the dead all around her. She glanced around, half her squad was dead, she was running on fumes, but Miracle would kill them if they failed, so the hill had to be taken. She glanced up as she heard the mortar fire. Kestral fought for air madly flapping those gorgous wings of hers to get above the firing arc, the beaked face of hers unable to express the horror Aura knew she felt as Kestral realized she would not make it. She threw her hand pver her eyes and screamed "KESTRAL!" Aura stared in horror at the ceiling watching the vicera of her friend coat the area in blood on bone frgment moment before shaking her head."No....she died...long ago. " she said shakily. Mentally she gathered her self, she just had to find where it hurt her soul the most, that was always reality.

Reality slammed back into place and Aura rubbed her temple. She looked around again and sighed in disappointment, her eyes finnaly resting on those she was seated with. "Really? Lady Rho's halls of the damned are a pizza place and you three. I get why I'm here i failed to bring our people their utopia...Zek i get but what did you do my frosty friend? freeze your own pee and sell it as a snow cone? and my pretty friend, you really should call girls back after you dance like that, i almost.... she blushed as a reality set in on her though the look in her eyes showed the fear in her. Surely their was no way Her Frosted friend would be here.... "I am dead right? I have done enough for our people already." she said entirely trying to assure herself she was in fact dead. She had not seen or felt death but who could say for sure what death really felt like? Or if you recalled the exact moment and with three opponents their was every chance she never saw the blow. Her eyes had taken on a haunted look to them, surely the Gods would demand no more of her!

Maybe this was why he was so out of shape? The food called to him like a siren. His stomach roared and wailed until the food finally arrived smothered in cheese, grease and meat. His eye fell from the pies and onto Lenna who was petitioning to have Aura released so she could get some food. Looking around he wasn’t sure if it was best to let her out given the circumstances. She was mind controlled less than an hour ago.

Sam wasn’t flattered. Did he brood all the time? Probably more than most. ”If they haven’t they will be. I called in a favor and the Candian and US are sending a crew in to clean the place out. They didn’t know it the island was being used to house a magic controlled fight club. You say any of those words with ‘fight club’ and it got them all worked up.” maybe that was why they didn’t talk about it in the first place.

”Nice try, keep practicing.” he said to Lenna as the room got brighter till Aura was sitting next to them. Sam’s hand fingered a small metal knife and held it turning his gaze to Aura before he started glaring at Zek for letting her out before they were in a less populated area. There were kids around. Two of them ran by to their family while chanting ‘pizza!’ over and over again. The scream didn’t help. Neither did Aura’s response.

”No one is dead, though this is on par with hell.” he looked down at the pizza. It wasn’t a New York Pizza but it was good enough. Sam had gotten used to ignoring some of the stuff people said when talking about death or religion. He had a great stance on it, ‘None of my Business’ it kept people from trying to explain why he was evil or how to convert. Both topics usually just pissed him off.

”No. You aren’t dead. You can thank her.” he nodded to Lenna then to the food. ”Eat. If I see any of your powers here now I’ll take it as a threat. Only warning.” the table around them got colder for a second then went back to normal as he slowly let go of the knife and picked up a slice of meat lovers making sure to avoid whatever Zek got.

”You were being controlled and right now I’m debating what I should do with you.” she deserved to be locked up. Most of his team would kill him if they knew he was eating pizza with her. The threat of the magic wielders however made him weigh his options. Dangerous times made for dangerous friends.

Sam wanted a drink. ”Your safe for now.” he said to Aura squinting ”Lenna, want to fill her in?”

And then, Aura was there. A flash. A knife. A clash. A broken tiara clattered to the floor. Twice. Two pieces. Bisected by the flash and the knife. Lenna had felt too sluggish to react. Probably for the best. She looked to Aura’s forehead, source of the flash and the lost tiara. A cut had appeared. Hrm. She had cut herself? But the tiara was gone, and—

Someone screamed. Greeeat. Then Aura screamed. Also great.

Who was Kestral? Someone who had died long ago. Oh. Okay. Lenna lazily readied herself for another potential battle. But it turned out, she had not needed to.

Aura spoke. And a lot of it made little sense, without context. Lenna figured she was simply trying to get her head under control after… that… and that the dance partner she referred to was… her, before she became her current self. Older her? Yes.

Lenna shrugged.

>> "I am dead right? I have done enough for our people already." Aura said.

Sam spoke before Lenna could. He said Lenna had helped save Aura, and Lenna raised a slice in a mock salute.

Sam spoke more, then turned the floor over to Lenna. Lenna took a deep breath.

”Okay. So. After the train debacle, you were captured. I searched. With their help, we came to rescue you. I vowed I would save you. I did. As for the rest of the mutants who were captured (and their rescued status), and I quote from Sam:” She did the deep voice, one-eye routine again. Try and try again, until you get your trick right.

“If they have not, they will be. I called in a favor and the Canadian and US are sending a crew in to clean the place out. They did not know it the island was being used to house a magic controlled fight club. You say any of those words with ‘fight club’ and it got them all worked up.”

”So, you are safe. Things are being done for the rest of the mutants you were trying to help. And— you have pizza.”

She scooped up two slices, one in each hand. One was Zek’s fudge and pineapple monstrosity. One was meat lovers. She placed the Zek slice on a paper plate, and the other on another. Then, Lenna set the Zek pizza plate and the other one directly in front of Aura and let her make the decision. Lenna would have opted for both. If she had to make the decision. Especially if Aura wanted to off herself. Chocolate pineapple pizza would be a fine choice, for that.