House of L

Author's note: Here, in the spirit of the 1992 swimsuit edition, is a Wakanda Wild Side of a Marvel universe female who's who...so for the comic fans and curious about the multiple characters of this chapter... hopefully ye olde comicvine . com name search is the ticket for more in depth enjoyment... or just sit back and read Logan's approaching train wreck...

Chapter 4 – Poison and Hepzibah – Hot Sects Effects

"Stone walls do not a prison make," Logan muttered darkly to himself as he squinted his eyes, and, almost like an adolescent Peeping Tom pervert doing his utmost not to get caught, cautiously peered into the Jean Grey Academy's basement cafeteria. Luckily for him the door opened out into the hall instead of inward so he could remain unseen. He shifted his head a little as his eyes widened in suspicious, frowning concern and he beheld the large room's interior scene through the small crack between the partially open door and its door jamb. Yep. Ava'Dara was up to something all right, and he didn't need an old spastic robot waving its cheesy articulated arms and shouting "Danger Will Robinson! Danger!" to know that something mighty screwy was going on in there. Or to be more accurate, would go on if he simply barged inside as if he was a mindless and/or totally crazed nutburger like Deadpool. One quick accidental glimpse of the usually very modest, chaste, and conservative Avenger witch Clea Strange through the crack in the door had stopped an unsuspecting Logan in his tracks before he had walked mindlessly into the cafeteria. His natural wild animal instinct and caution had then made him hug the concrete walls of the basement hallway behind the door and eyeball the cafeteria's current situation a lot more closely.

"Nor iron bars a cage," Logan continued softly to himself while scowling in deeper suspicion, hiding in the hall behind the door, and feeling the hackles rise on the back of his neck that something really weird and maybe wild would hit him if he walked inside, "but with apologies to Richard Lovelace, I'm pretty sure a bunch of females in high heels, sexy bras, and thong underwear probably do. Or make one helluva inescapable trap. Sure ain't looking innocent or quiet in there either. Now why in the hell?"

Logan began cataloging the scantily clad and idly chatting young females standing around the tables set for what was supposed to be a routine Mexican cuisine dinner. Ava'Dara had said she was using dinner tonight for her alien meal melding Shi'ar ritual, but just what did that really mean? Wasn't it just supposed to be some kind of friend making activity, like maybe an esprit de corps gig? But THIS? Hey, recruiting some extra female fighting personal to defend a fictional nest to satisfy some alien instinct and then those gals doubling up as prison security guards was one thing, but was some psychic dinner ritual while all of them were almost naked really necessary for them to become gal pals? With him as the ONLY male in there? If so, how did anybody use beef enchiladas topped with cheese sauce, guacamole, and sour cream for something like that anyway, let alone the sides of refried beans and Mexican rice? And several big bowls of strawberry jello? And what was with all the floral scented candles and incense? With several bottles of tequila, already salted glasses, and four or five large pitchers of what looked like Margarita mix? He scowled deeply in suspicion again as he continued scanning the room's occupants trying to get a clue as to what Ava'Dara was really up to.

Logan could easily see Colleen Wing, Silver Sable, Misty Knight, and Maria Vasquez, aka Tarantula, the four of them the veritable heart of Heroes for Hire, and all wearing black high heels and matching black sport bras and French cut panties. Damn. Every one was a damn fine, muscle toned, and highly fit fox in their identical scanty outfits which weren't doing much to hide their varied skin colors, or anything else. On the other hand they were wearing a lot more cloth than the black thong and demi bra silk underwear being worn by the amiably chatting Black Lotus and her three identically clad Asian female companions.

The tall and very shapely Lotus, a former Femizon team member, was talking to a mutant warrior Logan thought might be Brittany Chen, aka Shuriken, as well as one deadly female ninja he had fought to a draw in the past, Ana Ishikawa, aka Shi, or Death in Japanese. All three of them were smiling at some comment from another mutant female sword fighter he had fought along side in Tokyo years ago named Shirohana, aka Pale Flower. All eight female ninjas who he remembered as applying for prison security jobs were long haired and simply stacked beauties with their clothes on, but now they looked like a swimsuit line up waiting to parade on a Miss Universe pageant stage proudly sponsored by the Asian porn industry. And all looking happy and even eager to eat a simple enchilada dinner while near nude? Way too WEIRD.

Logan also recognized two other Japanese females that had fought together against Daredevil in the past as part of The Nail team. The fetching duo standing apart from the others and silently watching were pink haired, slim, and yet curvaceous Cherry Blossom wearing a much too short and revealing Japanese schoolgirl outfit, and the taller, very voluptuous, and long black haired Yuki wearing a white kabuki mask, high heel shoes, a barely covering, semi see-through, white thong panty and its matching gauzy bra. There was hardly enough tensile strength in the tiny bra to give any support, not that she needed any. Logan swallowed hard. Both of them he knew to be functionally insane, but Damn! Instant wood! What in the Billy HELL was Ava'Dara doing?

He tore his eyes away from Yuki's very impressive and mostly exposed chest and shifted his head to peek further around the room. There was Elektra in her usual red, French high rise outfit and looking almost demure in this crowd. Beside her stood the lavender haired, oddball newcomer Miya Asama looking down right puritanical in her dark, long sleeved mini dress and black thigh high boots. Miya's face was blushing a furious red as she stared silently at the too scantily clad young female ninjas about her in open mouth shock, and especially at the older, way too exposed Poison, Ava'Dara, Clea Strange, Wanda Maximoff, and Jessica Jones Cage. Logan began shaking his head and seriously began thinking about edging noiselessly back down the hall towards the kitchen's back door. He was hungry, but not enough to brave whatever in the hell was obviously waiting to ambush him in the cafeteria from that group of seventeen females.

Hey, Logan silently counseled his hardening and brainless manhood, Ava'Dara wearing thong panties, a demi bra, and heels to dine with friends, okay. He was slowly getting used to her maybe borderline too possessive and quirky Shi'ar habits while exposing broad expanses of her skin and assets around him in social and domestic situations. Elektra in her usual sexy scarlet fighting togs, not a problem really, fetching as always, but after all the years they had known each other, he was used to her mostly undressed look all the time too.

His cook though, Cecillia Cardinale, was wearing her Poison fishnet stockings, half bra, panties, and heels outfit while doing her best Betty Page impression. This outfit along with the way the stunning, tall, mutant Cuban beauty with huge masses of auburn colored hair was impressively floating around while telekinetically arranging the table settings, uhhh, damn, it was just a total mind blowing sight. But since she was a regular at Thursday night stud poker with the B.A.D. Girls and Verre, he could also deal with that sight almost calmly, maybe. But what were two Avenger witches doing at Ava'Dara's Mexican dinner that he thought was supposed to be some kind of camaraderie and team spirit building for the House of L security personnel? A casual pre-hiring get together with a couple of his Avenger teammates just dropping by for a meal, right? In bikinis? With a lot of booze and table candles for soft lighting? All this he MIGHT be able to accept as very odd but very warily bearable.

On the other hand, a buff and built Jessica Jones Cage was wearing dark blue, high heeled boots and her bosom enhancing, gray spandex outfit that was trimmed in aquamarine with a matching, hip hugging sash. This was her Jewel battle uniform from when she was with the Avengers years ago. Jessica was also done up with makeup, a primped hairdo, and obviously going out of her way to look smoking hot. THAT from a gal always wearing baggy shirts and jeans was NOT a usual sight, nor casual, way beyond odd, and giving off vibes of being somewhere in some mating cougar on the prowl territory. As was the buxom and wanton looking Wanda Maximoff in a thin strap Scarlet Witch uniform that was barely covering anything and very closely rivaling Yuki's skin exposure. But the day a basically shy Clea Strange showed up to a simple enchilada, beans, and rice dinner wearing nothing but high heels and a dark purple Brazilian bikini that proved she was hair waxed removed from the neck down, Logan groused to himself, now THAT was way beyond the pale, her pale skin actually, and damned dangerous to his status as a bachelor.

Man, that entire group in the cafeteria, every one an exotic beauty in their own right, didn't need any salsa for their chips either. They WERE salsa, extra hot and spicy too. And what in the hell was with five huge bowls of strawberry jello and four, large, plastic covered gym mats along the far cafeteria wall? Along with "psychic meal melding" and plenty of booze too? This setup was definitely not a casual anything, and his innate animal sixth sense of impending danger and self preservation was raising the hair all over his body as if Sabertooth was near and ready to attack.

Logan craned his neck, shifted his head back and forth, and even moved the door a little wider to eyeball the cafeteria's entrance to the kitchen. No sign of the B.A.D. Girls or Verre. Now what the hell? Poison was making and serving this dinner alone without any of her usual kitchen help? The first three Girls, Black Mamba, Asp, and Diamondback were ex-members of the old Serpent Society that had worked as a mercenary team before the wars. Didn't do to well at it either and almost starved during and after the wars until he had hired them as cleaning maids and menial kitchen help for Poison. It wasn't like the three snake handling beauties not to be around at meal time, either helping to serve, joining in, clearing the tables afterward, and doing the dishes. They never missed a meal either. Something really screwy here with them not around too.

Verre was a different story. She had been a damn fine assassin, one very skilled with her unique weapon called an Indian Urumi Whip, a very flexible sword that pretty much looked like a wide band-saw blade with a handle that could do double duty as Verre's belt yet be ready for instant action. She had worked for the Sublime Corporation until her boss had lost his head and was shoved into a fusion generator by the High Council after the wars ended. Now why wasn't she in the cafeteria with Poison? The B.A.D. Girls couldn't butter burnt toast or boil an egg, yet Verre was a pretty damn good French chef and loved cooking. She could become visibly and telepathically invisible, even in direct sunlight, but she had to be naked to disappear. It was a helluva power for an experienced assassin on a mission of paid murder, but serving an enchilada dinner? Why disappear? Nah. Something way WRONG with her not being here.

Verre had been a Raft prison chef, and, during a routine parole board meeting after the wars ended, had made and served the best damn Pot-au-feu Logan had ever tasted. She was also a red-blonde sultry bitch with fire in her hazel eyes, which had maybe swayed his interest in paroling and hiring her as an Academy cook a wee teeny tad as well as her tasty beef and veggie stew. It had been Verre's idea to start the Thursday night stud poker parties with Poison, the B.A.D. Girls, and Logan about a month after he had gotten her paroled from prison and placed into his protective custody. They only played with poker chips, but the one with the biggest pile by the stroke of midnight won the lake cabin's main bed for the night, with or without Logan in it, their choice. Logan usually played to sleep alone, but lately he was beginning to think all five women were better cheaters at poker than he was. Since this was a Tuesday night, Verre should have been in the kitchen with Poison for any dinner with this many people attending, not off somewhere stacking a few sneaky cold decks. Where were Poison's four kitchen helpers? Especially the one that really loved to cook?

Logan frowned again and gave the room's intimidating interior one last peek. Nope. Screw this. It was time to sneak a couple of raw steaks out of the kitchen and beat a hasty retreat to grill them in the fire-pit among the trees near his lakeside cabin. Take a six pack of cold beer and a bag of wavy potato chips too. Fourteen warrior women and two visiting witches wearing less cloth together than the one odd newcomer Miya Asama? Ava'Dara insisting on having some kind of ritualistic psychic meal melding, and her "Lord" Logan as the only male eating in the middle of them all? Candlelight? Gym mats? Margaritas in pitchers? Jello? Uh Uh, No Way, and just what in the hell was a psychic meal meld anyway? In bikinis? This fiasco had all the earmarks of an all night Roman orgy of epic magnitude way beyond his personal and maybe old time conservative comfort zone. Ava'Dara's "ritual kill sharing" or "psychic meal melding" or whatever it was, had classic future, multiple emo female TROUBLE, competing unhappiness, big time henpecking control, and ongoing insane meddling in his life written all over it, and far beyond his loony ex-wife Viper's evil manipulations in the past.

Still, Yuki's massive hooters WERE a giant temptation to …. nope. One female at a time Canucklehead, Logan shook his head. Besides, Yuki was Deadpool type insane, as was Cherry Blossom, and Logan was beginning to suspect Ava'Dara's grip on reality. To misquote Lovelace again, if he had freedom from love and in his soul stayed free, then he could soar like angels above, and enjoy his liberty. Or, hell, a camp fire meal by himself was a very small price to pay for his own sanity and keeping all those hot looking gals a safe distance away from his short future. He would just content himself with Ava'Dara's considerable charms as long as he was here, no more.

This last silent self declaration of non involvement intent with any more females lasted almost forty five seconds after he had sneaked into the kitchen from the hall door and verified that it was indeed empty of Verre and the B.A.D. Girls Inc. Hurriedly snagging three large rib-eye steaks from the kitchen's walk in cooler, two six packs of canned Molson beer, a bag of potato chips, and three long handled hot dog skewers, Logan turned to beat a hasty retreat to his cabin when Poison, his auburn haired Cuban cook named Cecillia Cardinale, came into the other end of the kitchen via the cafeteria door.

CeeCee had at one time been an innocent university student with questionable common sense, slightly below average I.Q., and marginal scholastic ability. During her school days, she had been very badly abused, impregnated, and eventually imprisoned in extremely unsanitary conditions by a powerful and married military man in Cuba whose career was threatened by her extramarital pregnancy. The man then proclaimed CeeCee was nothing more than a lying prostitute trying to blackmail him. A short time after she gave birth, CeeCee became terminally ill as a result of her time in prison but luckily escaped to Florida with her baby. There she had met a powerful, psychic, but bodiless alien from another dimension named Ylandris that had accidentally traveled to Earth 616; probably due to her also being a little I.Q. challenged as dimension hopping aliens go.

Ylandris was also dying from her incorporeal form being dispersed into the atmosphere and needed a solid body to contain her life force. At the time, new single mother and latent mutant CeeCee was desperate to live for her baby son. She agreed to share her diseased mutant body with Ylandris in return for the alien's healing. Together they formed a combined psychic powerhouse; a single symbiotic entity that had very strong multiple powers of levitation, telekinesis, teleportation, shape shifting, super strength, super healing, and even the ability to attack others psionically by altering their body chemistry and making them sick, injured, and diseased. However, their mutagenic symbiosis did NOT mean that the resulting Poison/Ylandris symbiont would be all that additive intelligent, and, she/they weren't, nor too comfortable with the English language.

"Ahhh, Senor Logan!" Poison hissed in obvious disappointment with a very hurt expression on her face. Damn! She had spotted him trying to balance everything he was carrying and scoot out the rear door. Her facial expression said it all to him as he jerked his head around to look at her. He was sneaking out of Ava'Dara's very important bonding dinner? One that she, Cecillia Cardinale, had worked so hard alone for hours to carefully prepare to perfection for him and wanted so much to join after Ava'Dara had explained its purpose?

"A donde vas?"

This was delivered in a very demanding, petulant tone with overtones of instant anger, disappointment, projected guilt of the naughty naughty, shame shame variety, and a highly wounded female ego. Telling her where he was going was NOT going to go over big, but what the hell. Be a man, Logan advised himself. Stand up for a man's right to flee like a total coward from an impending and overwhelming hormonal barrage, or forever be a prisoner of female powers and volatile emotions.

"I'm going to grill these steaks over a camp fire down by the lake, CeeCee," Logan returned with a sigh at having not moved fast enough. "I've decided I need to eat alone tonight and think some things over. Okay?"

"No, No, NO! Ay Chihuahua! Ees NO Okay!" Cecillia exclaimed as she levitated herself in a blur through the air towards him and at the same time locked his lower body down in a strong telekinetic grip worthy of Jean Grey on her best day. After slamming into him and ramming him into the still closed rear door that had to be pulled to open, she reached for him, let herself fall to her knees, wrapped her super strong arms around his knees, and began weeping against his muscular thighs. Pitifully. Dammit.

"Mi amante! Mi alma! Mi vida! Por favor! No te vayas! Mi todo! Me estas matando aqui!"

"CeeCee, babe, I'm just leaving to think things over, not trying to kill you here," Logan sighed again. Damn! He had always been a sucker for crying females. And red heads. Particularly the pitiful ones. With long legs, sexy rear ends, and big tits and, and... Nope. Nope. Get a grip here, bub.

"Look, your lover, your soul, your life, and your everything is NOT gonna be the only guy eating enchiladas and drinking tequila in a room full of almost naked female ninjas, warriors, and witches. It's too damn dangerous!"

"Es peligroso?" She looked up at him with her tear filled eyes suddenly full of anxious concern. "Uhhh, you, uhhh, may bees gets hurt? Muy peligroso? Verdaderamente?"

"That's right, truly, muy dangerous," Logan nodded while trying to show a semi pleading facial expression of reasonableness, calm, and common sense. "Way too many senoritas and only one senor. And booze. What are they up to anyway? I got a giant hunch it's a life long multiple sex trap I'll never get out of and don't want. Did I mention too much booze in there? You know I only have room for one passenger on the back of my bike, right? Same way with my bed. Just like our poker and popcorn Thursdays. One gal, one guy only, no more. It's the best that way for me. And for the gal. Otherwise there's too much confusion and no real satisfaction. One on one, more time together is best. Understand?"

"Si," Cecillia's facial expression instantly took on a more calculating look since it was obvious Logan would never cooperate with meddling Ava'Dara's multiple female melding scheme. Time for every mind and body melding horny female to do her own meddling. And solo melding. "Una mujer, un hombre, Si! Mas tiempo juntos es mejor!"

Although Poison, a former male hating vigilante and part time assassin, had never been intellectually feared, she could add one gal and one guy to equal more quality and quantity "melding" time together alone instead of one gal bucking much slimmer odds of seventeen to one. It also didn't take a feral genius on his part to see that she was also figuring the odds and methods whereupon Logan's one psychic and body melded partner tonight would be her and only her. And she must have reached the conclusion that her odds for that were a lot higher with the pitifully weeping female wrapped around her soft touch lover's knees method.

Logan caught Poison's intent even if he didn't quite catch all the ensuing rapid fire Spanish amidst her renewed crying and begging jag, especially when the volume of her voice began slowly to rise; which as any fool male and past poker buddy trying to quietly sneak out of a kitchen adjoining a loose gang of horny looking female fighters knew, was blackmail. Poison's rising decibel ploy was simply raw, unmitigated, snitch threatening blackmail of the basest and most childish sort, but it was highly effective. Damn.

"Okay, okay," Logan capitulated quickly while mentally shrugging. So to avoid the cafeteria "melding" with seventeen drunk and potentially way too possessive females, he wouldn't sleep alone tonight as he had wanted. He'd just have to deal with CeeCee's too emotional and self inflicted romantic attachments to him later, if he could, and hopefully without hurting her too much when the shit hit the High Council fans. Good luck with that, he sighed again while rolling his eyes upward.

On the other hand Poison was probably one of the most tender, attentive, and caring females he had ever known, right in there with Itsu and Mariko, if maybe a little too vocal in the bedroom, yet always willing and eager for anything once there. And she had warm soft lips, long legs, hot supple hips, sexy thighs, bubble buttocks, and big sensitive tetas that for some unknown reason she had chosen all to be exclusively his not too long after the night he had hired her.

Logan hadn't remembered too much about Poison months earlier when she had arrived half starved and pitifully begging for a job at the rear door of the Jean Grey Academy. She had also been heartbroken over her grown son dying one of those all too common, rear echelon soldier's death where he had simply been at the wrong place at the wrong time. A small Shadowbox Empire bomb drone's guidance system had malfunctioned, and it veered off course to wipe out the mess tent in which he was simply cooking a company meal, not the nearby fusion generator supplying the base's automatic defensive weaponry. Instantly feeling sorry for her loss and lamentable condition in the current lousy I.D.P. economy, and although he didn't research her past too carefully, Logan sensed she was totally honest, and he discovered she was one helluva cook that had worked extensively as a hotel banquet chef before the wars with her now dead son.

Logan did remember years before the Shadowbox Wars, during a HYDRA versus S.H.I.E.L.D gang fight and on opposing sides, he had jammed his right claws into Poison's magnificent chest during the melee. Afterward he had taken her to the air carrier's sickbay and given her a blood transfusion to help her recover while she had feverishly called for someone named Ylandris. Aside from taking her in after the wars ended when she was jobless, broke, lonely, and homeless, CeeCee's present one sided and escalating devotion must have come from some kind of leftover "you killed me, then revived me, and now you own me" thing augmented by her healing and psychic symbiotic relationship with the similarly amorous and mentally challenged alien female Ylandris. And maybe a few too many beers and night hijinks together on the nights she was the big winner at stud poker. Even though he wasn't "in love" with Poison/Ylandris, or both of them as it were, the result in the sack together had always been mutually pleasing when time, opportunity, and horniness had permitted.

"CeeCee, Honey, you stay here and serve Ava'Dara's dinner, okay? If, no, wait, WHEN Ava asks, tell her I had to go to an emergency planning meeting and to just go ahead and do her meal melding thing in there tonight without me. I'm not answering my phone except for my emergency number, so if anyone simply calls down here looking for me, tell them I'm busy eating. When you're done with your dinner, come down to my cabin, don't just teleport in and risk a stabbing, but knock three times on the back door just like its stud poker night, okay?"

"SI! SI! Es MUY Okay!" Cecillia began rising upwards while planting soft kisses along the way until her tear shining eyes were even with his. "I helps Ava'Dara! Ava'Dara helps me! Entonces, I comes to you for ooo la la! To ehh, ehhh, umm, voy a ser tu esclava sexual y usted va a ser mi maestro! Siglos de los siglos mi amor!"

After French kissing him for several long seconds in a silent promise of much more to be had later, the bikini clad, symbiotic Cuban/alien cook in fishnet stockings whirled happily away to serve her Mexican dinner to a mixed international crowd of Japanese, Greek, and American females along with one Wundagorian witch, one alien Shi'ar, one also alien Sekirei from unknown planet Kouten, and a half alien Faltine, half human witch from Dormanu's Dark Dimension where most folks probably liked their beef enchiladas smothered in ultra hot jalapenos. Probably loved their tequila swilling and jello wrestling orgies there too. Relieved he hadn't been ratted out and forced to float into the Academy's cafeteria behind her like a trussed and helpless group mating sacrifice, Logan watched the telekinetic and psychic powerhouse Poison go while thinking whatever made her and Ava'Dara happy as long as he wasn't in the middle of it.

Wait. Esclava sexual? Maestro? Siglos de los siglos? Poison was going to be his sex slave, and he her master? Forever and ever? When in the name of Hugh Hefner's ghost had that happened? Damn! Man, he had to get that nonsense taken care of fast! As well as Ava'Dara's weird ancestral nest building thing too. Even as things stood, and especially if it continued to escalate, this frigging House of L caper was going to smother him to death! He had been right earlier. Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage, but skimpy bikinis, sexy stockings, hot bodies, high heels, and a way too romantic, "melding" female's tears sure as hell did.

*scene break*

As prisons went, Hepzibah sighed in boredom, the ultra high security Raft, housing the most dangerous and powerful enemies of the Protectorate's High Council, was probably pretty decent in its way. Although, she grimaced slightly, it WAS still a prison and highly problematic for the emotional well being of a freedom loving feral alien such as she. She hated being locked up with every fiber of her being, not quite but almost as much as she hated all Shi'ar aliens in general, and one bird bitch in particular. Hepzibah had spent a good portion of her adult life in boring stir on one planet or another, but this time, this time had really pissed her off. First, she was innocent of any crime, as was most every inmate ever locked up throughout history. Second, the Raft really sucked for entertainment.

Perhaps Logan's new House of L with all the latest Shi'ar amenities and strictly built for females would be better than her current Raft cell, perhaps not, and in any case, the House would STILL be a prison. And Logan, the poor sexy bastard, Hepzibah shook her long silver tresses in half amused wonder, never could catch a break when it came to female trouble. Nor would he when the Raft's wildly mixed menagerie of the High Council's biggest female headaches across the I.D.P. ruled dimensions and galaxies got transferred into their new Westchester, New York home.

Face it. Any prison wasn't "housing" despite what the Protectorate called it, nor a collection of friendly high end condos for the Nob Hill crowd. Jail was a damn jail. A "secure" place to separate the truly bad ass threats to societal peace from the "peaceful" societies they had come from. The House of L, no matter how "inmate friendly" it might turn out to be, was still a damn jail, and as such, the same mutually distrusting and largely mutually loathing criminal cliques of humans, aliens, mutants, ferals, vampires, and witches now confined in the Raft would also transfer all their mistrust, hatred, and if the truth be exposed, natural female comparison jealousy to the new House. Except, the House would get even more truly bad ass females from all across the dimensions, all of them hating confinement as much as Hepzibah.

And, Hepzibah snickered as she unconsciously ran a grooming hand down her long, silver haired tail, oh joy, oh joy. For that real domestic harmony and homey touch, the High Council was adding in a few highly disgruntled, "innocent" female Immortals, Inhumans, and Eternals, super powered and totally pissed off at being deemed extreme security threats, just like Hepzibah and her neighbor. The goddess type prison newbies had also been forced to wear power robbing and ion beam cutting neck bands after being lulled, tricked, drugged, and/or simply knocked out from ambush. All that was NOT a prescription for happy patty-cakes and similar sweet games for Logan to deal with, let alone any socially restrained and amicable chats over afternoon tea and crumpets in the day room of a community center. As it was now, the current gals of the Raft mostly hated each others guts for various past reasons, or they at least had nominally divided into self supporting and self protecting sects with absolutely no love lost between each other. These divisions, with a few inmates playing dangerous dual loyalty roles as spies and snitches between groups, were mostly but not only, Earth 616's human mutant criminals, shape shifters, ferals, vampires, witches, and aliens. There were also a few inmates from other dimensions already, including the disgruntled yet still captive goddess types, but it was going to be a real riot when all the mixed newbies from the other dimensional Earths arrived.

Of course, there were a few loners and outcasts in the prison now, there always were. Hepzibah, a slim, curvaceous, silver skinned, silver haired, white eyed, long tailed, alien feral beauty was not accepted nor trusted by the human mutant ferals nor the other imprisoned aliens, mostly Shi'ar. That was quite understandable since she was a Mephitisoid from the planet Tryl'sart. Hers was a feline race whose interstellar empire had been defeated by the Shi'ar over a millenia ago and then brutally quarantined for their natural ability to produce powerful, thought influencing pheromones that could virtually enslave the minds of other sentient beings. Although the Mephitisoid females normally only used their natural talents for mating, the fear of them motivated the Shi'ar into forbidding both sexes of their former foes from ever leaving their home worlds and possibly leading a revolution against the Shi'ar Imperium. This was, naturally, the insecure I.D.P. High Council's current fear also now that the subjugated Shi'ar Imperium had been folded into the Protectorate.

On the other hand, Hepzibah wasn't chummy with anyone in the Raft because, well, from an early age she had always been a rebellious criminal with a very big and incurable yen for star travel, other folks valuables, wealthy alien males, married or otherwise, smuggling, weapons running, assassination, and a few other minor foibles. As a consequence, Hepzibah had seen a few prisons along the way. She was quite the experienced inmate, despite being virtually shunned and/or hated by her fellow prisoners, especially the feral alien female in the cell next door who had her own very, VERY sordid, treacherous, and bloody history.

Waiting for blue skinned alien female named Moondancer who was assigned to the cell directly across the block to return from her dinner, Hepzibah absently wandered down the past years in her mind to when she had first met her ill-natured and mutually hating Shi'ar next door neighbor. Let's see, Hepzibah squinted slightly, hadn't it all started when she had been imprisoned on the planet Alsibar ruled by the Shi'ar Emperor D'ken, brother to the later constantly warring sisters Deathbird and Lilandra, both trying to rule as the Shi'ar Majestrix after his death? Caught up in the sisters' wars, first with the Starjammers then with the X-Men, Hepzibah had managed to remain one step away from having her very shapely rear end with its lovely tail shipped back to Tryl'sart.

With the aid of a few now dead, former lovers like Corsair, Warpath, and even Namor, she had made it to Earth 616 and settled in for a long stay until the Shi'ar had made a big stink about her. Ironically, it had been the humorless and totally uninterested Scott Summers who had let her stay on Utopia instead of being forcefully deported off world. That had its small but totally interesting price that Hepzibah had paid by joining Earth 616 mutants' fight for survival on their very bigoted planet, so she had joined the X-Men. Eventually, once the devastating potential of her skills were realized, she had been recruited into Logan's secret, enemy killing X-Force, but her past heroics with them had not impressed the I.D.P. at all after the Shadowbox Wars had ended.

Nor had Hepzibah ever had any real pull/love interest with feral human mutant Logan, bless his big muscles and surprisingly soft heart anyway. Jean Grey's death had ripped all the lovey dovey romance right out of him, and he hadn't really recovered much since, but he had been friendly to Hepzibah as well as a deadly fighting companion and an incredibly skilled kill squad leader. Then the Wars had begun and ended to return him more morose, closed off, and oddly cold to all females, even his closest friends. His current Hero of the Protectorate status wasn't doing Hepzibah any good either, and since the cash strapped I.D.P. was too cheap to pay her deporting space fare to Tryl'sart, back to dull, boring prison quarantine she had went. Hepzibah was under no childish illusions of the Protectorate's good will, however, neither of their ways to save money, nor of their paranoia. Soon it would most probably mean a very cheap execution and new meaning to terminal boredom for all the Raft's inmates. Even transferring to Logan's new prison wasn't ultimately going to change that, unless they caught a big break, and now, they just might have if exploited properly.

To that end was the happy/hated coincidence of twice former Majestrix and feral Shi'ar named Deathbird now incarcerated in the Raft cell adjacent to Hepzibah. Cal'syee of the Neramani Royal House had survived that old back and forth imperial struggle with her sister, led yet another rebellion and this time was captured by an I.D.P. star cruiser to land her feral ass and wings in the Raft awaiting further "evaluation". For a few weeks afterward, Hepzibah had spent her days and nights taunting Deathbird. When not doing that, boredom in stir had been kept at bay by Hepzibah dreaming of ways to exact her personal vengeance upon her ancient foes, Deathbird in particular, and at the same time win her freedom from the Protectorate's lethal grip. Hepzibah really had only one weapon besides her very sharp intellect and feral super senses, her Mephitisoid pheromone power. That trait just might be able to get Hepzibah free and away from any I.D.P. future execution if the gossip she had heard at dinner about Logan getting a new female Shi'ar bed-mate was true. It might really back stab Deathbird at the same time if handled right. Heh. The things one could learn with super hearing even clear across a large cafeteria in a prison. It did make eating the very plain prison fare more interesting.

Oh, good, Hepzibah bared her fangs in an anticipatory grin, the alien female Moondancer across from her had just been returned from her dinner shift. Waiting several minutes for the accompanying guards to leave and apparently looking nonchalantly left and right to make sure the cell block hall was empty, Hepzibah stood before her cell's transparent front force screen rubbing her forehead with her right hand as if in sorrowful remorse for her many past criminal deeds or just in headache pain. The gesture was in fact The Raft female prisoners' silent hand code for wanting to communicate on the sneak without alerting prison guards or sound sensitive cameras. Finally her movements caught the suddenly interested yellow eyes of the blue skinned and purple haired alien beauty named Moondancer Myla in the cell directly across the block.

Myla, although not a Shi'ar, was a former trusted and long time member of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard and had the unique natural ability to pinpoint the location of any object in the vast expanse of space. The fact that the I.D.P. had recently discovered Moondancer Myla could also track the paranoid High Council's movements across different dimensions had landed her shapely rear end and impressive breasts in the Raft cell across from Hepzibah. After unzipping her drab green prison jumpsuit's too tight bodice, Myla's quick nonchalant rub of her forehead advised that she was ready to receive a clandestine message.

Hepzibah closed her eyes as if in pain and tapped her forehead twice as if frustrated at her headache and then swiped her fingers to the left towards Deathbird's cell. Myla slowly half winked her left eye in understanding, and started repeating the two tap, fingers left swipe signal at Deathbird until the former Majestrix finally looked up from watching a 3D video game show and saw Myla's hand movement. Frowning slightly in annoyance and distaste, the feral throwback Shi'ar nevertheless shoved her bunk up against the wall adjoining Hepzibah's. Deathbird and Hepzibah then casually laid face down on their cell bunks as if taking a joint after dinner snooze. Their feral ears with super hearing were then pressed against their not quite so soundproofed adjoining cell wall. Hidden by their legs and hips, and in Deathbird's case her folded, dark magenta colored wings, both alien female enemies got their claws ready for old Morse code tapping at super speed. Hepzibah began without abbreviations so as to leave nothing to misinterpretation. After all, she still hated and distrusted all the Shi'ar prisoners as much as they did her. Now to dangle the bait with just the right amount of ritual insults for sounding truthful.

"... old deathbitch… is cute galaxy you ruling now days... tens of thousands of planets reduced to looking same size as my current raft cell empire... is miracle... must make you biggest loser in history... oh wait... you lost your throne twice... and failed in third coup attempt... you special biggest triple loser of universe...and ugly too..."

"... on your best day you not fit to lick bottoms of my feet... cat shit... this minor setback... you got nowhere to run... no history of anything but being a small turd in huge planet sized sand box... and your tail been in more jail cells than feathers of my beautiful wings... cut chit chat... what you want... stink butt..."

"...want to make trade … big news now … for small favor later... leading to mutual benefits..."

"... what is favor … cat scum..."

"... need diversion... riot helpful... when we transfer to new prison... all your birds and other aliens help get me few minutes alone with logan… for smell bonding him to me... make royal pledge for same … witnessed..."

"… lmao … fuck off..."

"... your stinking bird ass stay locked up until idp kill you then... fuck you very much..."

A very long pause greeted this last round of Hepzibah's rapid fire tapping before Deathbird resumed with interest. The bait had just been nibbled at. And they said curiosity killed the cat, Hepzibah snarled in gloating triumph. It could be fatal for birds too.

"...tell me who news is about..."

"... your pal wolverine … my pal logan..."

"... logan long time enemy... no pal... worse than Storm... Shadowcat... Psylocke... Rogue... Jubilee... nasty Polaris... and as bad as the worst... Rachel piece of Phoenix shit Grey... not interested..."

"... really … that funny... he about to make you very little history footnote in your imperium... which may be moot if you think any of us got even slim chance of living... my big news might up our odds a lot..."

A space of several silent minutes went by as the ever ambitious and totally vainglorious Deathbird thought this over.

"... ok … maybe hasty … for any favor... your big news have to be very big… what guarantees you give..."

"... after my smell bonding with logan... then you get my smells help to bond you and logan too..."

"... logan bonding to me is big joke... he not even mate for fun with human mutant females he like... and not bond either... what else you got..."

"... will give moondancer link to dimension outside idp control.. after smell bonding... escape to there..."

"... type of link..."

"... fuck off deathbitch … witnessed royal pledge first... that only small part of big news anyway..."

"... cat shit … why you and me need smell bonding with logan... is permanent mating... only broken by death..."

"... bird turd … think... link to new dimension involve logan... this cat not get left behind … must work together with you for possible escape from idp... our mating logan more than worth freedom … his big feral dick for both of us is bonus..."

"... you need bird help to get logan alone … and bird need your help for bonding logan … both needed for our possible freedom through logan connection... is this correct..."

"... yes..."

"... what about other birds here..."

"... not sure … maybe not up to us … you might know after you get big news..."

"... okay … how you know logan leaving idp control..."

"... is also part of big news … pledge first … heard logan has very sexy tongue too … make birds and cats sing loud and long in bedroom..."

"... must think this over … consult others … be back soon..."

Hepzibah half smiled to herself while turning over on her cell bunk and swiveling her head up to keep a pleased eye on Myla. Dangling the bait before the former but still too snooty Shi'ar ruler had been rather fun. Bonding to Logan for her freedom out of prison and away from I.D.P. control was an absolute no brainer for Hepzibah to start with simply because she already liked and trusted the guy. Fought alongside him a lot too, and even if the male lover pickings were really slim since the Shadowbox Wars had killed so many, Logan was by far the best male fighter and lover out there. His skills would be crucial to any escape plan too.

If X-Women rumors and gossip were true, especially Domino and Dazzler's rather graphic and enthusiastic reminiscing of his totally satisfying prowess in their old bedroom trysts with him in the past, then hell yes, Hepzibah was more than ready to crouch naked before him on a long term basis. The way too proud, ambitious, and haughty Deathbird however was a bird with different feathers, but she was also a feral throwback even amongst the highly volatile Shi'ar. Deathbird knew she would never pass any I.D.P. phony "security evaluation" in the future any more than would Hepzibah and the other aliens and ferals in this prison, let alone the witches, vampires, most of the mutants, and especially the captured immortal gals with super powers that could still be killed in spite of their goddess talents.

It took over thirty minutes as Deathbird got on the prison's secret, visual hand signaling grapevine and asked for advice from her fellow female Shi'ar inmates. Hepzibah smiled outright when Myla, also Deathbird's relay for across the block work, finally gave a slight nod and then began idly making crosswise rubbing gestures over her heart as if her large left boob ached. The Royal cross her heart pledge would be given. Then Myla gave another hand signal to resume tapping conference. Deathbird was already on the wall.

"... answer up cat shit … answer up cat shit..."

"... am here now..."

"... on condition accept your terms … moondancer witnessed … as has... astra … glitter … cerise... manta … magique … gamora … spirit … tana nile … hypernova … stellaris... delphos … they all want in on deal... but only if news big enough … you not trusted cat scum... but we know idp want to kill us all soon... evaluations only phony ploy to keep logan happy... you betray plan... we kill you first... with extreme pain..."

Hepzibah snorted in amusement at all the aliens' caution before playing her ace and setting the big hook. Now all she had to do was skillfully reel her foes in.

"... hey deathbitch... here it is... royal warbird deathbringer class has recently battle heat bonded to logan … without you and others sharing... is that big enough... there is much more..."

"... wait … wait...wait..."

Hepzibah chuckled softly at this. Old Deathbird was probably really rattled clear down to her toe claws now and in the throes of a near panic attack. Royal Warbirds, Deathbringer Class only mated with their Imperial Lord, a super male ruling over her Royal House and her Empire. Since Deathbird and her daughter Deathcry were the only two House of Neramani females left, and the current Shi'ar Majestor with no royal house had been purposely put in as a very weak Protectorate puppet, that meant a new Shi'ar royal house was forming without Neramani genes, approval, and ancestral power.

"... quit stalling shit bird… we both know what this means... power and influence of neramani house will be broken forever... you want to deal for big news or not... give unconditional pledge now..."

"... yes... yes... will deal... repeat will deal... royal warbird invoking old rite from antiquity... considers current royal house too weak... forming new ancestral nest... new royal house... new empire... am hereby making royal neramani pledge per earlier terms to you… share all big news now..."

Got her! Hepzibah hissed in triumph. Okay, now to net her captured enemy Shi'ar bird.

"... deathbird... my super hearing caught photon and songbird laughing and talking at dinner... during job interviews today... royal warbird deathbringer class avadara nanganandini said she recently battle heat bonded to logan … warbird also announced today she and her lord are starting new ancestral nest of new mixed race … looking for viable new warbird recruits among ultra humans and ageless healing human mutants for new mixed and near immortal interstellar race with logan healing powers... she has met and trying to recruit unknown goddess named miya asama with powers similar to exalted warbird of antiquity …"

"...what … what … what …. wait … wait … goddess … you sure about this … is more than new race …. is whole new world..."

"... is what photon said … miya asama is new unknown goddess … warbird statement of fact … has powers like exalted warbird of antiquity..."

"... this huge news … unbelievable... did goddess show exalted powers to warbird..."

"... yes... photon also joked about carol danvers crashing new prison perimeter defenses... causing system alarms event in Raft... new house security head named elektra called to advise problem with danvers handled... miya asama easily kicked danvers ass in seconds... scarlet witch and clea strange arrive to cart knocked out and bleeding danvers back to avenger mansion..."

"... danvers has mutant kree invulnerability... kree super powers … new goddess extremely powerful then... more than ever seen by me... what else..."

"... photon called back later... tried to talk to logan but got cook named poison … cook advised logan and warbird sharing ritual kill and melding meal for forming new ancestral nest... guests included clea strange... scarlet witch... jewel... elektra... maybe dozen other mutant and human ninjas... cook poison... and goddess miya asama..."

"... royal warbird got guts… sharing kill ritual with goddess... if go wrong... whole nest dies... and warbird... am shocked... and... jealous... house of neramani... four times removed from our imperium founding goddess... we must make friend and share kill with new goddess to live now... where she from..."

"... photon and songbird then speculated goddess miya asama is from dimensional Earth outside idp control... idp has zero records of her anywhere... goddess Asama claimed she was simply teleported here but event did not trigger idp alarm... only few known asgard goddess like sersi... sif … amora... able to do that... odds very high miya goddess from unknown earth... with similar powers... I can smell bond us to her and logan and warbird... if you help... now you scratch me … me scratch you... need riot diversion on transfer to new prison and pushed close to logan for smell bond... decide..."

That ought to fluff the old bitch's feathers too, Hepzibah thought smugly. One, all Deathbird had to do now was put Logan, Ava'Dara, and an unknown super powered female from another I.D.P. free dimension together with two super mystics Clea Strange and Scarlet Witch who were each more than capable of finding and taking people to said dimension. Two, it followed that all this was happening already without Deathbird and her alien prison gang, gals who would certainly be refused to be made nest mates by the surly Logan who had fought against them all in Deathbird's long war with Lilandra, Professor Xavier's sweetheart. Nor would the Royal Warbird Ava'Dara be all that keen to add Logan's old enemies into her new nest without some Mephitisoid mind altering pheromones working on her and Logan. Now how long would old Bird Bitch have to think this through and...

"... is very big news... royal house of neramani will certainly honor pledge... will help you smell bond logan and then you smell bond us all into new ancestral nest with warbird and new goddess for escape... make us all nest mates... what else you know about new founding goddess..."

"... nothing except songbird comment... goddess has lavender hair and eyes... never seen before…. young alien beauty that made mystique and emma frost look second rate... two other news item for you... songbird worried logan maybe falling out of favor with High Council although still seems hero to most people... unknown old government agency named seventh sign has sent witch hunter to new prison... she has authority to kill any witch … vampire … werewolf … and demon spawn she deem high security risk … without evaluations..."

"... that very bad news for … mystic crowd … not us … but is still good reason for us birds and smelly cat to shag butts away from idp soonest... logan and new nest will need powerful army asap too … idp will try to track... follow and kill... we need hide until strong enough to defeat idp … maybe even come back and overthrow … take control..."

"... is reason we having this little chat … finally agree on something … however... be warned... know logan well... he will kill to protect warbird lover … he is very feral … loyal... do not try to become alpha female in new prison or his new nest... will mean war with new goddess and warbird... and screw us all up... remember your three defeats... and old failed ambitions... scarlet witch and clea strange very powerful too... keep beak out of trouble... and butt in the air for mating... deathbird..."

"... will do … am thinking council of elders good place for me... still fertile too … butt in air sounds pretty good... been too long without... keep us posted for more news... will relay and plot strategy... question... how you use smell powers wearing neck inhibitor..."

"...bird... logan has super nose... me got super smells … get me close... not to worry... he get the message..."

"... keep this all quiet... cat... no trust other cons... idp still kill all vampires despite revival treatment … new procedure regenerate all cells on molecular level.. vampires come alive but keep all their super powers … idp scared they and jubilee join mutants... lead rebellion... logan find out... he may force issue … hothead... move too soon... we need to keep him safe with goddess and royal warbird... witches be real useful in nest for additional bonding... act as council of seers... you keep tail low and mouth shut..."

"... understood … keep distance … you act same as usual... bird bitch..."

"... easy to do... cat shit …"

Hepzibah rolled over and watched Deathbird's message get relayed down the block by Moondancer slightly turning away from her cell's camera and surreptitiously code tapping her now hidden right fingers on her left elbow. In the cell beside her, Astra was doing the exact same thing going the other way. Within minutes all twelve alien prisoners wanting in on the escape plot to a new dimension were totally informed.

What the last two Shi'ar prisoners didn't know was that Bloodwitch, a vampire from Earth 6706 having feral super sight and unaffected by sunlight, was on hall mirror duty for both the vampires and witches on the open floor above. The undead red head's sharp eyes caught all of Deathbird's hand signaled message to her cohorts below and began relaying it to her friend Topaz, a beautiful, dark skinned witch with long, black curly hair across the block. She in turn relayed it to her witchy woman pal Jennifer Kale, over to Santana, then Nekra Sinclair, on to the Witch of the Winding Way Margali Szardos, over to the witches' leader, former X-Woman Magik, who then passed it down the line of other imprisoned witches and signed it to the three Siren Sect vampires from Earth 616, their leader Alyssa, back to Baroness Blood, and so on to other imprisoned vampires and mystics from across the Protectorate. Just like that, Hepzibah and Deathbird's secret plot to form a life bonded harem around Logan and gain their mutual freedom from I.D.P. control, mushroomed into, well, actually became a rapidly expanding field of multiple giant shitaki.

What neither Bloodwitch, Hepzibah, and Deathbird also didn't think about was that all prison walls have ears. In this case the ears were in the prison cell one floor directly below Hepzibah that held the shape shifters, ferals, and general run of the mill, criminally mutant, and bad ass females. A pair of these super hearing ears belonged to a nosy and alert, feral shape shifter named Maria de Guadalupe Santiago, an ex-Avenger also known as Silverclaw. Her super hearing heard the faint rapid fire tapping above, recognized it as code, slapped her wall for her neighbor's attention. Lupa, the feral human mutant next door directly under Deathbird also placed her ear on the same adjoining wall. After just a few seconds of listening, Lupa began a finger tapping on her arm relay to feral Catseye from Earth 295 across the block who also passed it all along the lower cell block and to the ferine sect's leader, Logan's former redhead lover, Remus. When finished, Lupa bared her fangs in a savage yet pleased grin. Her pheromone powers and control were ever bit as good as Hepzibah's. And sexy Logan had always intrigued both Lupa and Silverclaw.

Other mutant prisoners, some solo outcasts, some just small unaligned teams sharing common interests, fears, past relationships, and/or origins, intercepted and relayed the news up and down and across the other cell blocks on every floor. Within an hour after Hepzibah and Deathbird had exchanged their last ritual insults and the vampires had all come awake for the night, every different sect, team, outcast, and clique within the Raft's female prison wing had gotten Hepzibah's news.

Unaware of the now possibly out of control informational bomb ready to detonate upon their entrance to the House of L, Hepzibah went to sleep carefully reviewing exactly how she was going to vengefully use her Mephitisoid powers to reduce Deathbird and her Shi'ar cohorts into little more than Logan's mewling and mindless sex slaves. It would be a permanent mental prison without bars within each Shi'ar bitch's mind and a truly fitting fate for Hepzibah's ruthless Shi'ar enemies. Naturally, Deathbird went to sleep trying to plot the best precise moment she and her cohorts could defensively rip Hepzibah's guts out while yet using the hated cat's smell powers on Logan to gain their freedom.

The next hour before lights out were spent by all the Raft's various sects, cliques, and even the odd loners in making their separate plans for when they transferred to the almost finished House of L; a new prison which in a little over an hour had already become something most prisons weren't before it held a single occupant, a place of hope as well as a place of lethal hatred, fear, distrust, revenge, competing plots, and vicious female jealousy.

*scene break*

In The Raft prison, the curfew locked down Jean Grey Academy dormitory, the Academy's basement, and also the curfew locked Avengers Mansion, the fallout from Ava'Dara's seemingly innocent and hastily put together "melding" dinner spread exponentially to effect other female groups, cliques, and individuals. Driven by the total spectrum of quirks, foibles, and desires found in all their feminine natures, past experiences, and emotional differences, each handled the news of the prolonged dinner still happening in their own way.

Some, mostly younger mutant X-Women and Avengers, were totally indifferent, others, vaguely happy for Ava'Dara but unaware of how it might eventually impact them all, and some thought, "hey, cool, let's have a sexy group dinner with Logan ourselves sometime, or just join the next one, b.y.o.t., bring your own tequila." Of course there were those a little pissed and ego bruised at not being a part of Ava'Dara's dinner, either from intentionally not being invited and/or simply not even being thought of for an invitation.

Others, notably the senior X-Women and Avengers with little or no love lost for Clea Strange and the Scarlet Witch, were totally pissed off that Ava'Dara and a group of loose, low life, and mostly outsider hussies even had the AUDACITY to have such a "ritual meal melding" and booze flowing dinner with THEIR Logan in the first place. Or in more lady like language, "who in the hell did that feather brained tramp and her bunch of second rate bitches think they were anyway?" The senior X-Women and female Avengers immediately decided, independently and NOT inclusively of each other, that Ava'Dara and her first dinner melding group needed to be tossed out, maybe severely punished, and definitely replaced. Of course some mutant females were simply angry for not being able to attend because they were locked up and/or angry at their inability to help Logan avoid a possible deadly entrapment, or both.

Jubilation Lee's red eyes glowed in totally frustrated wrath as she paced back and forth in her Raft prison cell. Damn the tyrannical and bigoted I.D.P. and its criminally paranoid High Council all to Hell! She had done NOTHING to deserve this! And now her Wolvie was in very grave danger while she was helpless to warn him! Let alone have his back as she had done since she was fourteen years old! Then he had gone off to the dimensional wars and left her behind because he thought it would be safer for her! Only for her and every other mystical being to be tracked down and jailed and/or executed while he was gone! She had only survived because Storm had vouched for her as a member of the X-Men, and, and Logan was HERS, not some Shi'ar alien outcast female's sex toy! Damn! Damn! Damn!

Jubilee was no longer the skinny, gangly, bubble gum chewing, mall crawling, thieving, wise cracking, and barely pubescent mutant teenager that had first saved Wolverine's life in the Australian Outback decades ago. She was also no longer her dear Wolvie's sidekick, trainee, understudy, little sis, best chum, or even ex-teammate, nor he her brotherly mentor. She was now a full grown, full breasted, and full figured female, experienced, trained, honed by individual danger, attacks, and even galactic crises, still in love with HER Wolvie as much and maybe even more than ever, even if she was now an undead vampire, condemned to death in prison, and still a virgin. The only male that had ever been between her legs had been Logan when she had habitually rode him piggy back while popping bubblegum next to his sensitive ears for fun. She had NEVER betrayed him, NEVER really wanted another, and was NEVER going to let some alien bitch or a GROUP of alien bitches steal him from her or use him to gain THEIR freedom, let alone put him in danger of being killed by the I.D.P. High Council!

Nina Price, the blonde and white skinned, combo werewolf and vampire named Vampire by Night directly across the block from Jubilee, waved frantically at her literally fuming prison friend for almost a half an hour before getting Jubilee's attention. Then it took another couple of minutes for Jubilee to calm down enough to use super speed, universal deaf sign language to communicate.

"Jubes … calm down... think... plan... other vamps not trust us since you are Logan's best bud... and you now mine too… I am both vamp and werewolf... never liked or trusted by either group … they hiding their plans for transfer day … but you can bet our fangs they up to no good... what we do?"

"Nina... we got to find a way to talk to Logan... warn him... he will take care of everything... trust him... always been there for me... building new House bankrupted him to save me... cannot lose hope now... I know him... he has a plan to escape IDP... trust me... trust him... Deathbird says Shi'ar medics bring us vamps back to life... with keeping our powers... maybe even get my paff back.. if true... I'll kill every alien bitch trying to use him.. worried about Hepzibah though... her smell powers deadly..."

"I will help you Jubes... my gaze control powers very strong too... strong as her smells... would want to escape IDP with you and Logan... if you will let me... and we both immortal like him..."

Jubilee stared at her extremely beautiful, blond, and white skinned prison friend for several long seconds.

"Nina... are you asking me to share Logan with you... as his bed mate... if our escape successful?"

"Jubes... we have never hidden anything from each other... always heard great things about him.. see his loyalty and devotion to you... know he has reputation as great lover... I would be interested in sharing if you say okay... know you always have first place with him... but I am a virgin... never really had a boyfriend... Logan is an old guy with a lot of experience... he may not want me... but if he agrees... then yes... want to try... we both got nowhere else to turn... no one else to trust... and we will have to fight for him... and maybe keep on fighting if we going to be hunted by IDP... maybe for many, many years... right?"

Jubilee frowned slightly as she thought quickly. Yes, there would be fighting, soon and later, maybe a lot. And knowing Logan had a grand plan for their freedom did not necessarily mean he was only going to, or even intended to, escape with just Jubilee. After all, he had bonded to a Shi'ar Warbird, one helluva fighter, and Logan would never do anything like that without including the alien female in his sense of loyalty. Or leave her behind to be killed. Therefore he was prepared for being with at least two females after escaping the High Council's control. The Warbird and Jubilee. Why not a third? And who better than her best friend that had very strong multiple super powers from being both a feral werewolf and a super strong, super fast, trained to fight by Nick Fury vampire? Matter of fact, maybe they both ought to think about inviting a few more close friends they trusted to share Logan and fight with them?

Nodding slightly, Jubilee's eyes went to the cell next to Nina. There stood the tall, blonde, muscled, and super powered Kree warrior Dantella holding a small mirror to watch Nina's hand movements and now mutely looking at Jubilee with a pleading, hopeful expression. They had met on the Kree home world during an assassination attempt on the then ruling Deathbird and later became friends before they had both landed in The Raft prison during the Shadowbox Wars. No love lost for the feral Shi'ar ex-Majestrix or her alien prison gang there, and a lot of experienced super powered help in a fight. Dantella was a prison outcast pretty much like Jubilee and Nina also. Slowly, the Kree signed at Jubilee.

"Will fight for you and Logan... and I am a virgin too... will not try to steal Logan or his heart from you... but interested if you all will have me... know other super strong and experienced fighters also loners in here that could make us a very strong and feared fighting team... and probably very interested in joining Logan too..."

"Who?"

"You already know most… Yi Yang... she is super strong... Titania and Lascivious are the same... Argent and her sister Kay Cera... Sabra and Jackpot... these all have almost goddess powers... vampire Spitfire has super speed and fire blasts... Spiral has very strong teleport, time travel, and dimension warp powers … Ecstasy very powerful in dark dimension, teleporter, and big blasting powers... Indries Moomji has big smell control powers … Cerise is Shi'ar warrior and deserter from Imperial Guard... no pal of Deathbird gang... might help convince Warbird to include the rest of us... if you help us be accepted by Logan..."

Jubilee's eyes narrowed in suspicion. Dantella must have been very busy on the prison grapevine in the few minutes Jubilee had been pacing in barely controlled fury.

"You have already talked to all of them... right?"

"Yes … and Red She Hulk… biggest hitter of us all... we all want on your team... you lead..."

Jubilee exchanged speculating looks with her wide eyed, werewolf/vampire friend Nina Price. Damn! That was one potentially very formidable fighting team! But not unbeatable by a massive force of I.D.P. battle cruisers and their latest Sentinel models. Nor a few negabombs. But what if they could add a few coordinating telepaths and defensive force field generators? Hepzibah's communication with Deathbird had hinted at some captured immortals, maybe even goddesses, as well as some heavy hitting mutant criminals from other dimensional Earths. A few outcast Jean Greys and Sue Storms would be ideal. Interesting. Hell, with that kind of firepower and with Logan in command, it wouldn't take much or many more to just kick the High Council's ass out of power and get some friendlier and more reasonable people running the whole damn Protectorate. And what if she and Logan could use Deathbird and her cuties as front line fodder while fighting? Who really cared if they survived or not? Even if they did, they could be killed later if they tried to hurt her Wolvie. Jubilee nodded at both Nina and Dantella before signing to them.

"Am open to sharing and team idea... but need to think about all of this carefully... you guys too... Logan is not a harem kind of guy at all... old time family type... very loyal to one he loves... one... he will fight to help us gain freedom... but most likely he say you all find another guy afterward... just so you know... if cured in House of L... I want him to marry me..."

"We are willing to take our chances..." Dantella signed back in return with Nina Price agreeing.

Jubilee shrugged and nodded again, still furious inside at Deathbird and Hepzibah's highhanded conspiracy, but now with a lot more to think about as she resumed pacing her cell.

At the same time their ex-teammate Jubilee was wearing out her cell floor tile, the dinner had ended on a "HIGH" note, and the Jean Grey Academy game and leisure room was now abuzz with X-Women activity, concern, and consternation. Sensitive telepaths Rachel Grey, Psylocke, Sage, Monet St. Croix, Hope Summers, Blindfold, Karma, and the three Stepford Cuckoos were all still attempting to calm down from Ava'Dara's dinner finishing, crude, yet very powerful psychic broadcast of reliving her initial battle heat bonding with Logan. The reason that "HIGH" note had hit all the X-Women telepaths so hard was because a half tequila looped Poison had tuned in and unconsciously added her considerable psionic power to Ava'Dara's. It had been quite disconcerting when all ten X-Women telepaths had dropped weak kneed wherever they were in the building and began shuddering in surrendering, ongoing, and muscle locked orgasmic waves of keening ecstasy. Which was exactly how Ava'Dara had bonded to Logan. Other mutant females who weren't telepathic but were psychically strong also experienced Ava'Dara's psionic broadcast with lessened, but nevertheless very effective intensity and blushing pleasure. Among these were Storm, Cecillia Reyes, Domino, Dagger, Armor, Boom Boom, and Cluster.

Afterward, all seventeen female mutants, literally floored by what they had felt, either made it to the game room under their own power or were carried/teleported in by Pixie, Blink 295, and Blink 616. Once on the room's couches and overstuffed chairs, the afterglow stricken females were tended with cool wet towels, cold drinks, and even ice compresses to reduce their sudden and still fevered heat. Kitty Pryde, Dazzler, Polaris, and Rogue organized the impromptu nursing effort aided by the group's three teleporters, Wolfsbane, Surge, Magma, Lifeguard, Cipher, Skids, X-23, Dani Moonstar, and Amp.

Recovery by those orgasmic stricken was a study in diverse reactions to their previous vocal, physical, and vaginally secreted responses to Ava'Dara's dinner melding broadcast. A few were simply mortified and red face embarrassed, a few nonplussed as hell while trying to understand what had happened, but most just stared up at the room's ceiling in a mind numbed, eye crossed afterglow of panting bliss. Their frowning nurses moved among them with concern, and, after a few quick panted explanations, envy.

All this led to a later meeting of the now angry senior X-Women, Storm, Kitty, Rachel, Rogue, and Psylocke, discussing ways to handle Ava'Dara and her new group of total outsiders trying to hijack their Academy's Headmaster and martial arts instructor. The immediate result was they were going to confront Logan and his Shi'ar Warbird tomorrow in their scheduled afternoon meeting and demand that he stop his I.D.P. assassin and Avenger duties to concentrate solely on his care of the Academy and teaching while letting his House of L administrators simply do their damn jobs. Individually, the five long time friends each privately began doing a little scheming for replacing the Warbird in Logan's favors on their own.

A similar meeting was being held at the same time in the New York Avengers Mansion after a half Margarita blitzed Wanda Maximoff and Clea Strange had returned with beatific, sultry, droop lidded smiles and immediately taken long hot showers. Upon Spider Woman Jessica Drew's eyebrow raised demand as to just what in the hell had the two witches been up to, Wanda psionically projected a small replay of Ava'Dara's ecstasy that literally enthralled Jessica, Black Widow, Mockingbird, the feral Tigra, She Hulk, her other dimensional relative, Savage She Hulk, Firestar, Hellcat, Sersi the Asgard goddess, Valkyrie, Firebird, spell caster Sister Grimm, the Black Cat, Scorpion, and the still drunk Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers.

Janet Van Dyne, the Wasp and current leader of the eighteen New York based Avenger females, was not too impressed since she had never been a big fan nor close friend of Wolverine. However, he was still a very powerful teammate and vital stabilizing force among the now mostly female Avengers. She gave Clea and Wanda a very sour look after seeing the various reactions to Wanda's rebroadcast of Ava'Dara's bonding to Logan with basically the same results and concerns that had been experienced in the Jean Grey Academy's mutant females. Janet convened a meeting whose ultimate decision basically mirrored the demands of the X-Women. It was time for Logan to take his rightful place as an Avenger leader, let his administrative staffs in the Academy and House of L do their jobs, and keep his I.D.P. assassination work to a bare minimum so that he could assemble with his Avenger team when needed, not just visit on Saturdays. And just like their X-Women competitors, a few of the older Avenger females that had a past close knit history with Logan began their individual private scheming for Logan's favors too, most notably the Black Widow, Spider Woman, Black Cat, and Carol Danvers along with newly interested Tigra, She Hulk, Clea, and Wanda.

Other reactions to Ava'Dara's broadcast came on a more disorganized and/or solely individual basis. Most of the tequila and now "melding" addled warrior females who had attended and later participated in Ava'Dara's dinner each shakily retired to their Academy dormitory rooms for individual hot showers, sensual self relief, and a night of lurid dreaming about a near future and solo hot bonding encounter with Logan of their own.

Elektra paced her room in the nude like an agitated tigress in heat, trying to decide how and how soon she could waylay Logan without interference from or confronting Ava'Dara and the too powerful Poison. Not only did Elektra now have a REALLY giant itch Logan needed to scratch, the two of them did need to discuss ways to handle the I.D.P. incarceration of Wild Thing Rina Logan, the daughter of their dead counterparts from another dimension. Maybe, she grabbed her long handled hair brush as she thought about taking another prolonged hot bath, she could visit his cabin at dawn and sneak in for a big piece of morning wood? Better than being cooped up here, and Poison and Ava'Dara had to sleep sometime, didn't they?

A booze buzzed Jessica Jones Cage simply snuggled under the bed covers after her long, and quite frankly, sensuous shower session. She had just enough wits left about her to sleepily answer little Danielle's question. Was Unca Logan going to become her new daddy like she and the Green Lady wanted? Shuddering and dreamily smiling, Jessica simply murmured "maybe" before sinking into a dreamless, tension free, and restful sleep for the first time since she had learned of her former husband's death.

Emma Frost, one of the world's most powerful telepaths, was sleeping badly in her modified cell just down the hall from the cafeteria and experiencing intense psionic visions despite the ability inhibitor around her neck. It had taken a couple of years for her mind reading and controlling powers to return after her former lover Scott Summers had blasted her with his eyes to steal her share of the Phoenix powers. That act had royally pissed her off at the time. Even so she had missed him badly since his death in the wars and regularly dreamed about their past love life. Only on very rare occasions had she been awakened from dark, heart pounding, and decidedly kinky nightmares that included a snarling, beast enraged Logan, his long claws, and positions that had her forcibly pinned and/or simply submitting to mating with him in wild abandon. Tonight was one of those nights, on a dream roof top, clothes cut away by Logan's claws, pinned, and pounded into ongoing keening and screaming waves of sexual pleasure. The strange kinky nightmares finally subsided into an almost golden yet subconsciously disturbing glow that still left her tossing and turning, muttering in her sleep with the memory feel of her hands leisurely rubbing the massive muscles on Logan's shoulders, chest, and arms, and then later, her own body.

In the modified cell next door, Raven Darkholme was having even more troubles sleeping. She kept dreaming about the many ways she had exacted bloody revenge on Logan for almost a century, except he never died. And each murderous attempt by her dissolved back into the dust filled, hot, and sweaty hayloft of a horse stable in Juarez Mexico in the early 1900's, the place where Logan had first made love to her while insisting that she be in her own blue skinned, red haired, and yellow eyed shape. She had never done it like that before, too embarrassed, too wary, and too scared of being rejected. He had made love to her as if, as if, well, as if they were simply normal human beings.

Mystique had never been vocal in lovemaking, ever, but that first time, that first sweet time, Logan had made her cry, groan, and moan loudly. He had caressed her like no other lover had ever done before, and none since, especially after they had climaxed hard together that first time. Then he had made love to her again. Same sweetness, and continued to be that way for all the months that they had traveled and made love together. That had made his eventual betrayal of her bank robbery scheme in Kansas City the most bitter and heartbreaking thing that had ever happened to her and had fueled a murderous hell hath no fury rage ever since that had become an almost Jack the Ripper type killing of Logan insanity. Except, lately, especially since Logan had saved her from execution, she had been dreaming about their first days in that hot, sleepy little village in long ago Mexico again, that dusty, sweltering, sweaty, sweet time on a smelly horse blanket up in the stable hayloft. Tonight, she was back there again, trying to kill him with a pitchfork but somehow winding up joined to him as his blue skinned mutant lover, over and over and over in a dreaming roller coaster of passion that she couldn't escape or wake up from no matter how hard she tried, moaned, and cried.

Up in Ava'Dara's dormitory room, Miya Asama was also now suffering the absolute worse effects of anyone from Ava'Dara's psychic broadcast. One of two non drinking and sober females who had left the melding dinner early, the "already reacting to Logan" goddess from the Sekirei planet of Kouten was not sleeping badly, having bad dreams, or kinky nightmares. Still fully clothed, Miya was simply moaning and writhing weakly under a stream of very cold water in intense and fevered pain on the floor of Ava'Dara's bathroom shower. When the combined strength of Ava'Dara and Poison's psionic bomb had exploded in her brain and caused intense heat to engulf her body, Miya had almost went catatonic with her avian instinctive desire for Logan to wing her. In sheer mindless desperation for self preservation, she had stumbled then crawled from the bedroom into the shower and turned on the cold water before collapsing. She now neither had the strength nor the lucidity to call the Shi'ar Warbird for help, or anyone else for that matter. In a very real sense, Miya was now a helpless prisoner of her body's exponentially increasing reactive instincts to either bond immediately with her Ashikabi, or die.

*scene break*

The copse of red oak and shag bark hickory trees that three quarters enclosed Logan's fire-pit didn't make him feel caged up at all. There was a nice, wide expanse of the estate's large lake and its small sandy beach in front of him. The lake's distant, tree lined far shore shadowed against the night sky also gave him a needed natural sense of freedom, or at least an escape route if somehow surprised from behind, especially by a sneaky and amorous Cuban teleporter.

Totally unaware of the gathering maelstrom of female trouble headed squarely for him, Logan smiled in relaxing serenity as he used a long hickory stick to poke the glowing red coals below the three propped up hot dog skewers that had his steaks sizzling on them. The skewers rested on forked branches jammed into the soft ground set back from the pit. Dripping fat hissed and caught flame here and there on the hickory wood coals as the meat grilled above them. Sparks and smoke swirled about in the light lake breeze. It was a feral loner's wilderness camping scene from heaven.

From his seat on a rough log bench a few steps from the fire, Logan reached out occasionally and gave the skewers a quarter turn before settling back, taking the half smoked, Ashton Heritage Puro Sol Belicoso No. 2 cigar out of his mouth, sipping on a Molson beer, and snacking on ruffled, sea salted potato chips. Once in a while he'd simply take out his smoke and look at it in pleased satisfaction after a puff or two. The fragrant cigar had a very pleasing balance of flavors with tangs of coffee, leather, and chocolate sweetness. Alone with the comforting and isolated wilderness type smells of the surrounding oak and hickory trees, their drying autumn leaves on the ground, a nice brisk, lake scented breeze, his fire's thin hickory smoke, grilling meat, beer, chips, and a good smoke, what more could a fella want?

Well, Logan cocked his head and looked out over the peaceful lake as he squinted his eyes, a fella might want to know how that pretty, lavender haired Miya Asama gal teleported here without registering on the Shi'ar perimeter defense scans. Exactly where she came from and why without simply having to take her suspect word for any of it. And why her appearance coincided with such a volatile time and situation where his ass was being hustled by the High Council all over the planet too much. Too many required meetings while also tracking and killing hard core mutant criminals, too many time consuming yet required reports, and now another unknown, unregistered, distracting, and potentially trouble making alien female all of a sudden cropping up? All way too coincidental in his mind.

A fella might also want to know how could a lousy little sonic boom from Carol Danver's drunken fly-by knock the whole damn security system offline so easily; a latest state of the art system with every known bell and whistle that had cost a fortune to install. Also, why had the autonomous and too damn expensive Sentinels and their independent systems supposedly set for intruder alert and automatic repelling not react at all in either case?

Then a fella might also question how a big gang of Moloids just happened to surface on Jessica and Danielle Cage's little section of New York the day before he had got there and might have killed them both if Jessica hadn't luckily went home early that day. Moloid activity had only been reported further north in Boston and farther south and west in Philadelphia and D.C., not in the Rotten Apple. So where had those subterranean cannibals come from?

Another thing an inquiring, and hadn't been consulted at all, type of guy might like to ask is why had the I.D.P. High Council unilaterally assigned a Witch Hunter to the House of L security team from the clandestine and largely unknown Seventh Sign organization? Especially since A, the House of L was a PRIVATE institution owned and operated by private funds over which the High Council supposedly had no jurisdiction or connection and wanted none, and B, said Witch Hunter was supposedly given discretionary termination powers over inmates while bypassing the entire "security risk evaluation" process. The High Council HAD to know Logan wasn't going to sit still for their blatantly intrusive move and very clumsy power grab as well as any total denial of basic inmate rights to life and due process of law. Unless they were trying to provoke him into doing something hasty and rebellious to get a publicly justified ion beam cutter around his own neck and a short trip down a fusion generator chute.

Or maybe with the imprisoned witches, vampires, and werewolves understandably incensed at the Witch Hunter's blatantly hostile assignment to guard/terminate them, the High Council was trying to provoke a riot and uprising among the House of L inmates. Maybe even one that couldn't be handled by Elektra's barely formed security team, say, ummm, like on the very first damn day of the inmates being transferred from the Raft Prison in San Francisco? Then the I.D.P. would be publicly justified in taking over, declaring all the mystic inmates to be "too high" security risks, and killing them on the spot. Maybe along with a few other trouble making aliens and potential rebels? All these questions taken together led up to a mighty interesting series of what ifs.

What if the security systems of the new House of L were being deliberately sabotaged or at least manipulated and weakened for the High Council's benefit? What if the High Council was keeping their ace assassin Logan too busy hunting down their enemies to do much about it? To keep the extra load off Logan, what was wrong with hiring Wade Wilson who would literally kill anyone or anything for peanuts, even elephants? Why hadn't they? Or had the High Council maybe actually hired Wilson to assassinate Logan while using the need for a job to get close? Wouldn't be the first time Deadpool Wade had turned on him like a wounded dog for a little money. Or for just being a total whacked out nut that was too far out there to ever truly be understood. But never, ever underestimated, especially with a potentially sabotaged security defense system.

Speaking of way out there, here was a thought. What if the Moloids, last known to be grouped up in Boston, weren't just surfacing out of their subterranean haunts willy nilly, but were being herded about with a purpose? Say, down towards New York, and maybe even eventually south to Westchester where sabotaged defenses wouldn't stop them from attacking in massive waves of flesh devouring hordes? And might those same flawed defenses also be easily breached by anonymous airborne assault teams of mutant hating humans bent on killing as many "high security threat" mutants and aliens as possible, Logan included, without a publicly "denying all knowledge" High Council being implicated?

Failing any of those nominally clandestine moves, what if the paranoid High Council just said screw it and sent in their own massive Sentinel robot army to wipe out as many potential mutant/alien/rebel headaches as they could in one fell swoop and deal with the possible public relations backlash later? Or for that matter, what if the boys just dropped a small negabomb and wiped out New York and a couple of other states around Westchester and later simply claim it had been the work of some desperate Shadowbox Empire holdouts? Or make it look like an unfortunate and accidental orbital launch and then just cry "Oops, my bad" like the Shi'ar had done to the Kree home-world capital decades earlier after the peace treaty had been signed?

Logan reached out and turned his steaks again, then sat back to take another puff on his cigar. Now a fella that trusted the High Council might think all that suspicious speculation was highly unlikely to happen, but a wolverine who knew the four slimy little political bastards and the seven out of twelve military leaders keeping them in power wouldn't. Nope. A very wary wolverine would get proactive and start hunting, for answers and even heads if need be. Where to start?

First, he'd dig into this oddball Miya Asama's background and story. Who and what she was really, and why in the hell had she come to him to help her in some unknown dimension when he had all the troubles he could handle right here. A hired High Council plant to foment trouble maybe? Saboteur? Spy? At least a paid distraction? Or another clumsy attempt to sidetrack him and his public popularity with another sexy and attractive gal so that he couldn't anticipate and organize a fight against an outright I.D.P. mass murder attempt here?

Well, Miya Asama wasn't all that much sexier or more attractive than any other of the dozens of females he had around him now and with even more coming. And there was something wrong in that lavender haired alien gal's head too. A cold hardness that couldn't be penetrated, only sensed. And why in the hell would someone with enough strength and power to kick Danver's world class ass want to work as a prep chef with Poison? Let alone eat a ritualistic "mind melding" enchilada with Ava'Dara? Was she trying to weasel into his Shi'ar lover's good graces for some unknown reason? Maybe? Or was this Miya in some kind of Logan assassination partnership with Wade Wilson? A fella ought to investigate all this unknown and self proclaimed Sekirei trouble stuff too, hadn't he? What if there were more of them lurking about and ready to join their leader to attack him and/or everyone he cared about?

Second, a wary guy would get his best computer mind in Sage hacking into the guts of the House of L security systems to find out what was wrong inside it, and doing it without alerting the High Council. Maybe the computer genius should also go after whatever she could glean out of the High Council's home data banks at the same time, particularly when it came to any kind of subversive, paramilitary, or even outright military plans to move against the good folk here in Westchester.

Third, getting a hold of, and on, that damn deadbeat Deadpool and kicking his ass again seemed like a good idea, even for just a little stress relief and general principles, but more for either getting the truth about Wade's relationship with the High Council out of the nut case, or just for the old saying of keeping your friends close and enemies closer to keep an eyeball on 'em.

Fourth, it might be a good idea to keep a few scouts out in the surrounding area, super ferals like his female clone X-23 and Wolfsbane that could sniff out from long distance any Moloid activity coming south from New York or north from Philadelphia and Baltimore. No reason they couldn't set up a paid informant network to keep an eye on any unusual I.D.P. military activity within fifty miles or so either. He needed help, and he had a lot of it sitting around the Jean Grey Academy not doing much; experienced former X-Force assassins needing a break from their boredom. It wouldn't be the first time Logan had formed a small undercover team of not too squeamish killers for his own use, backup, and insurance that was kept completely off everyone's snooping radar.

Also couldn't hurt to get Hank McCoy to pump his S.W.O.R.D. commander girlfriend Abigail Brand for any loose gossip amongst the higher up military types about plans to move against him, or at least patch his new X-Force into an orbital eye in the sky over Westchester without the High Council aware of it. They could purchase that equipment off the black market and even deploy small, recon flying drones of their own too.

Who else could he get to help Wolfsbane and X-23 in a secret new X-Force? But, ummm, they would have to be low profile, not a too well known and watched too closely like Storm, or Polaris, or Psylocke, but Karma the telepath had worked well with him years ago. Need some firepower. M? Maybe Boom-Boom, shape shifting E.V.A. for even more firepower and flight, and Cluster, dead Fantomex's clone for leadership. Could use a few more ninja, spy, stealth types for outlying scouts. Maybe Dani Moonstar, feral Iron Maiden, and one or two more. Wait, they'd especially need a few teleporters. Ones who didn't hate his guts. Ariel? Amanda Sefton? Okay, have to work on that.

Fifth, this Witch Hunter, whoever she was, needed to be dealt with somehow. That might be a little tricky. He wasn't ready to force an open and public confrontation with the High Council, yet he couldn't allow them to get their authoritative noses inside the House of L door any more than they already had. He needed more time, dammit. Time to force the High Council to conform to their own damn laws about mutant rights. He also needed more information about this Witch Hunter and her shadowy and relatively unknown Seventh Sign organization. Seraph and her investigative gals, especially ex-news reporter Melita Garner might...

A faint whiff of Mexican spices, aloe shampoo and hair conditioner, antibacterial soap, floral scented underarm deodorant, enchilada breath, and menstrual blood came to him. From upwind? No, from his left and behind through the trees. A young female that must have recently been in the Academy cafeteria and/or kitchen was coming toward him diagonally along the lake's rounded shoreline and trying to keep downwind, but she had made a mistake.

A few seconds later his ears picked up her slow and stealthy advance from his left rear quarter and almost to the inside edge of trees around his fire-pit's small clearing. There she stopped, waiting, watching. After seeming to glance down and behind him at his spare six pack of beer, then grab it and pull it forward, Logan idly turned his steaks again, settled back, and took a puff on his cigar before speaking without turning his head to look in her direction. His quick peek had spotted her body heat's infrared glow behind a large red oak about twenty paces away. Hadn't been a bad effort in stealth, just inadequate on an experienced feral mutant with super senses.

"If you're still hungry," he said softly, still without looking directly at her, "these steaks are almost done. Bag of ruffled potato chips here too. Or maybe you'd like a beer? With conversation?"

"How'd you know I was here?" Her low voice was more curious than anything, but was tinged with tones of hostility as well as professional admiration. It wasn't a voice he remembered. Slight Japanese accent to her English though.

"Wind through trees will swirl, eddy. Makes a downwind approach on a feral with super senses of smell and hearing pretty tricky. Smelled you first, Kid, then heard you, and you didn't hide your body heat either. Other than still being on your period, is there anything else you're unhappy about in general, or with me in particular?"

"Kid?" The young female gave a quick involuntary chuckle while moving, circling warily to his left front to see him better while keeping to the trees' shadows. "I don't think I've ever been one. A beer sounds good."

"Got a tough life story, huh?" Logan grunted neutrally as he flipped an unopened can slightly behind and above her to watch her snag it with ease. Excellent hands, good eyes, and quick coordination. Her dark outline had a sword handle sticking up diagonally over her right shoulder. Right handed sword fighter then.

"Seems to be a lot of them sad tales now days. Name's Logan if you didn't know. I got a little time here before I get company. What makes your sad story cross mine tonight? You got a reason for looking me up, right?"

"Uhhh, yeah?" Her response sounded a little nonplussed, but then hardened a little as she popped her beer can's tab and continued. "Not much of one though. Saw you leave out the back when I came late down the cafeteria hallway. Ate quick and left before dessert was served. Just wasn't going for that weird team building crap your feathered alien screw seemed to be pitching, neither was that strange looking lavender haired gal in the dark mini dress who left at the same time I did. We both weren't showing enough skin, I guess. Only came down here because I'm curious."

"Okay, I'm game. About what?" So, she had came late to dinner. Logan quickly went through the day's list of job security applicants and matched them up with who he had seen in the cafeteria. There had been two that hadn't been in there; Elsa Bloodstone, the immortal monster hunting daughter of Ulysses Bloodstone. She had been raised in England, and Logan had run into her a few years ago during the Dreaming Maiden caper. Huh. She was also a good possibility for his new X-Force now that he thought bout it. Damn deadly with a shotgun. The other missing applicant had been named Lady Bullseye, a Japanese assassin that had worked for the Hand under now deceased Wilson Fisk and an old enemy of Daredevil. All that really didn't count against her much in Logan's mind.

"Curious about what you got that throws Typhoid Mary into such a loop every time your name was mentioned?"

"You know Mary Walker, huh?" Logan returned casually. That did it. Lady Bullseye for sure. The very powerful mutant Typhoid Mary had also worked for Fisk against her former lover Daredevil, but she was now cooling her insane, male murdering heels in The Raft and awaiting all four of her multiple persona's internal madness in one body to be transferred to the House of L; her four personalities being the emotionless Walker, innocent and loving Mary, amorous slut Typhoid Mary, and the serial killing, male hating, violent Bloody Mary. Logan and she had both come out of the same Weapon X facility and shared a few adventures here and there a long time ago, sort of, as well as an occasional mattress.

So, Lady Bullseye, what had been her brief bio on the hiring list? Real name Maki Matsumoto, a teenage sex slave of the Japanese mafia called the Yakuza. Escaped her cage by killing a mob soldier and later recruited and trained to be a Hand assassin by Lord Hirochi. Transferred allegiance to Fisk upon his ascension to Hand leader. Long list of paid kills, all males. Out of work ever since Logan had killed her boss, but still a serial killing man hater that had somehow managed to stay off the High Council's "to be arrested and evaluated" list. She and Typhoid Mary must have had a lot in common and shared a lot of their past grievances against men, or in Logan's case, what Mary knew about him in the biblical sense. After a long pause, the female finally spoke.

"Yeah, I know her. The first time your name came up was when Typhoid was looking for ice cream in our apartment's refrigerator. All of a sudden she said she wanted strawberry which was Logan's favorite. Immediately she became Walker and started crying. I never saw that before. Then she turned into Bloody Mary and started swearing, but she was actually backing into a corner and sounded as if she really feared you. After a few seconds she turned into Typhoid and actually began masturbating and cooing to herself as if I wasn't even in the kitchen. That all repeated itself several times afterward until she was arrested just before the Shadowbox Wars started, and I've never seen her since. By the way, I've decided to take a pass on being a prison security guard for you, too confining, but I've always been curious. So, before I leave in the morning, tell me what you did to Typhoid Mary."

"Always treated her like a decent person, I guess," Logan shrugged while letting his eyes take in Lady Bullseye's shadowed visible and infrared outline. "Helped her out a few times. And always shared what I could with her, even my ice cream."

He surreptitiously punched a button on his 3D phone that had a few extra analytical goodies added to it by Hank McCoy's half alien girl friend. An app started to give him a quick electronic/magnetic field scan around the female in the trees. Nothing. Not wearing any electrical device or wire. He didn't feel any psychic vibes out of her, so not a telepath. Here on her own then. Okay. This gal was tall, slim, an experienced killer and stalker, good reflexes, trained sword fighter, and looked athletic. She had moved well in the woods and wasn't interested in being a prison guard or being on Ava'Dara's new nest protecting team, but still needed a place to stay out of the High Council's notice. Hello, another new X-Force recruit?

"Kid, since you obviously still need a job and a place to stay, but you don't want to be cooped up guarding prisoners, nor do you want to attract a lot of High Council attention as Lady Bullseye, would you be interested in joining a small team of scouts and outlying pickets here in Westchester to warn me of any impending attacks, organized or otherwise?"

"Attacks from who?"

"Mutant hating mobs, migrating or herded Moloids, I.D.P. paid infiltrators, hired para military mercenaries, maybe even an eventual, clandestine ground action from a High Council assault team."

"Can we kill them?" The interest in her voice was palpable.

"Ummm, I'm not choosy as long as none of you are endangered or caught, the bodies all disappear, and your team leader calls the play. Not going to sweat any cash you take from attackers either, but steal nothing that can be traced back here."

"Team leader? Other members?"

"Haven't set it up yet, but thinking about Cluster probably leading, Karma, Wolfsbane, X-23, Boom Boom, Moonstar, E.V.A., Iron Maiden, maybe Domino, you, possibly Elsa Bloodstone, and at least one or more teleporters like Ariel, Amanda Sefton, or even Earth 616 Blink. I just need results and enough warning time to organize a defense with our big hitters like Storm, Rogue, and Rachel Grey. Gonna give Cluster plenty of leeway for who she wants and how she wants to operate."

"Uhhh, good, heard of all of them, experienced, a few really good killers, especially X-23." Her voice tone now had a pleased, almost low feral growl. "Cluster's a great thief too. I like it. What's the pay beyond what we steal and plunder?"

"Free room and board," Logan smiled slightly, almost wishing he could join the team like in the good old days. "100 credits a week listed as an Academy prep cook under your given name. I'll get the ball rolling in the morning. Just go through the motions of a security recruit for now, but no ritualistic meal bonding with me or anyone else will be needed. I can understand your hatred and distrust of males from your past, which quite frankly wasn't as bad as Typhoid Mary's troubles. But keep in mind that maybe all guys aren't rotten bastards, and don't sell Ava'Dara short as far as remaining on good terms with her as my lover. She's a Royal Warbird, Deathbringer Class from the Shi'ar Imperium. You might want to look into what that really means before you call her my feathered alien screw to her face. Or watch her in action. Just a friendly warning. Steaks done if you want one."

A long silence followed as Logan nonchalantly pulled two steaks back from the smoking red coals yet kept them close enough to stay warm. After chucking his now small cigar stub into the hot coals and taking a swig of beer, he began eating the third, seemingly ignoring the female Japanese assassin in the trees as she thought his last comment over. Suddenly, there was the sound of a body thumping hard into a solid object accompanied by an OOF! as the breath was knocked out of Lady Bullseye.

"Senor Logan! Mi maestro!" Poison's angry shout came from somewhere above the tree tops. "Ees thees puta try to harm mi amor? Why she hide, eh? I pull out the eyes an' chop off su puta feengers and tongue! I take her very, very high an' drops..."

"Hey! CeeCee! No!" Logan stood up in alarm. "We're just talking! Come down here dammit! And don't hurt her!"

"Hokay," Poison's somewhat mollified return was accompanied by Lady Bullseye being drug out of the trees while floating helplessly in the air, arms and legs locked rigidly in place by telekinesis. The Japanese ninja hovered before Logan with her dark eyes flashing in extreme anger past her black face mask that featured two outer rings and an inner black dot target in the middle of her forehead. The rest of her stiff athletic body was sheathed in a full, black spandex body suit. Seconds later, wearing a full length, dark red cloak that wafted about her still scantily clad body from the breeze coming off the lake, Poison descended.

"CeeCee," Logan began soothingly as he sat back down. He tried to appear calm by using his teeth to rip a small bite of grilled meat and then talking while chewing. "This is Lady Bullseye, uhhh, Miss Maki Matsumoto. She is going to be working for me as part of a scouting team to warn us before trouble hits. She's also going to be listed on the payroll as one of your prep cooks, so take care of her for me, please?"

"Porque? She no like mi cocina, ehhh, mi cooking!" Poison sneered in female contempt. "Eat and run like un cerdito, uh, uh, a piglet! No jello too! Then sneaks around mi hombre? I say NO!"

"Baby," Logan tried again with a low guttural growl of warning, "calm down or no nookie for you tonight, got it? Now set her down! And be nice!"

"Awww uh," Poison instantly pouted as she moved quickly to sit beside him and possessively wrap her arms around his massive chest. However, she turned her head back to give the now freed and standing Lady Bullseye a look of pure venom. "Hey, you! You ever try hurt mi maestro, I squish you like a very bad tomato, eh? Or I make your insides very, very seeck, seeck, seeck!"

With that threat and from ribs being telekinetically squeezed hard, a loud and long groan/gargle came from the Japanese assassin as Poison emphasized her ability to easily do as threatened. That ceased before Logan could react, to leave Lady Bullseye panting weakly on the ground, turned away from the fire, and then suddenly barfing up her hastily eaten enchilada dinner and half finished beer.

"Come on CeeCee, ease up will ya?" Logan pleaded this time. Damn! Sometimes dealing with his too temperamental cook with her incredible psychic powers was worse than dealing with his too aggressive and socially challenged Warbird!

"Hokay, just so this one know, she no can hurt mi maestro. Ummm, besame, mi amor, besame mucho."

"Hey, I'm still hungry. Eat now, kisses later," Logan leaned away to take another bite of his steak in self defense. She settled for nibbling on and licking his left ear. "Enjoy the fire and the night with me, Babe. Have a beer. We'll head for the cabin after I finish and smoke another cigar."

"Throw me another can of beer," Lady Bullseye demanded while glaring warily at her tormentor. "I need to rinse my mouth out! And what the hell? I wasn't threatening your damn boyfriend! Nor do I want to screw him! Sex is DIRTY!"

"Oh! Si! Si! Very dirty cuando se hace bien, ehh, umm, when done right!" Poison agreed happily, amorously rubbing her hands over Logan's chest and back which were still covered in his black and red leather fighting suit. "Y mi Logan, mi alma gamela, he does it right todo la noche! Yo soy su esclava sexual!"

"With powers like yours, you're his sex slave? And he's your soul mate? And Ava'Dara's too?" Lady Bullseye frowned in puzzled disbelief and then turned her eyes to stare at Logan briefly before taking a big gulp of beer, swishing it around in her mouth, and then spitting it carefully sideways so as not to anger Poison in any fashion. There was no future in provoking a very powerful and definitely touchy Queen Bee that sported a huge set of proven lethal stingers and was instantly willing to use them. And Poison had very definitely demonstrated she was a top Queen among Queen Bees.

"Si, Ava'Dara tambien," Poison shrugged her shoulders philosophically at having to share the man in her life. "Mi maestro no able to love us now, ummm, heartbreaks y muy triste, ummm, very sad, but one day, un dia glorioso, la Dama Verde heal him for us."

"The Green Lady?" Logan gave Poison a skeptical, raised eyebrow look as he finished his first steak, laid down the empty hotdog skewer, and reached for another. "You been talking to Dani Cage again?"

"Un poco," Poison nodded, smiling back in half lidded and semi, self aroused anticipation. She began humming an old classic Spanish song entitled "Besame Mucho" as she resumed her amorous caressing, nibbling, and smooching on her new master.

"Great," Logan sighed in resignation while shaking his head. The insanity just kept on coming. "Did anyone try to call me? Is Ava upset?"

"Oh Si! Ava MUY upset!" Poison smiled in total unconcern, leaning her head on his left shoulder and shifting a little for more cuddling comfort, "but I tells her, ehhh, ehhh, whats you say. She say hokay. Una Raft chica phones you. I tells her you busy with Ava's meal. She calls you mañana."

"Good enough," Logan grunted in relief. Maybe he could get a little peace and quiet later. He took a big breath and relaxed, letting the natural tranquility of the lake, trees, and fire seep into his tired muscles and worried mind. One thing still niggled at him though.

"Where is Verre and the gang? How come they weren't helping you with dinner?"

"No lo se," Poison shrugged expressively. "I no sees dem chicas todo el dia. I thinks dey sneaks into your bed, eh? Ifs dey do, den I makes dem seeck, seeck..."

"No, no, hold off on the ptomaine treatment," Logan winced in future sympathy for the four missing kitchen helpers. "I haven't see them all day either. And starting to get a little worried about them, that's all."

"Grupo de barrachos y putas sin valor," Poison muttered disdainfully while thinking the four deadbeats were probably sleeping off another all night bender like the bunch of worthless drunks and party hardy sluts they were.

Logan shrugged too. He wasn't anybody's nursemaid, nor their babysitters, still, it wasn't like Tanya Sealy aka Black Mamba to ever miss a free meal. She had grown up in the Chicago slums where food had been hard to come by, and she had made it a point to keep a few extra groceries on hand even when she had started making money as a teenaged call girl. After she had been surgically altered with a cerebral implant to become a pretty potent telepath and dark force manipulator on the Serpent Squad, she had still kept a full pantry.

Her best pal Rachel Leighton had run away from Texas and been a teen member of the New York street gang the Savage Crims led by a young Crossbones before she had become Diamondback. Her hard times living hand to mouth then and the subsequent up and downs of being a small time criminal had made her very appreciative of her soft landing at the Jean Grey Academy. Her missing all day was pretty strange.

Cleopatra Nefertiti had been born a true mutant in Tanta, Egypt, a gal who could generate paralyzing and even fatal bio-energy blasts when her mutation developed during puberty. Life in a country that didn't tolerate mutants at all had left her a fleeing teen fugitive that had almost starved before reaching Canada. She too loved regular meals, especially since she needed fuel to vigorously belly dance and work up enough internal energy to throw her venom bolts. Although Logan didn't know it and her real secret be known, Asp had fallen hard for Logan after one particularly energetic Thursday night from her winning/cheating BIG at five card stud. He had just thought those ongoing energy surges during multiple climaxes from Cleo in the bedroom later had simply been a new twist to the kinky and interesting term of "electric sex."

Verre was an enigma as always, but Logan couldn't see her violating her terms of parole and risk being tossed back into prison. Neither could he fathom the other three B.A.D. Girls putting their cushy jobs and unspoken protection from the High Council at risk, let alone getting on Poison's bad side and risk being made gut wrenching sick for who knew how long. Logan shrugged again and let his semi "worried about them" mind relax. They'd probably turn up soon, after all they had never missed a Thursday night since the stud poker, popcorn, and beer parties had begun many months ago.

A few minutes later, a half snarling Ava'Dara came leaping over the peaceful trees to land in front of him, still bikini clad, wearing two swords strapped to her back, and her white eyes flashing in accusatory anger. Before she could utter a word Logan held up his right hand in a stop motion and gave her a hard feral growl with his fangs bared. She flinched backward slightly and began frowning in silent, wounded disappointment.

"Next time you want to plan something like that screwy dinner, we talk more first, and I understand EXACTLY what you're doing. No more spur of the moment shit Ava. No ritual kill, mind melding, or whatever. Otherwise you and me are going to tangle. I don't like surprises. And I'm a one gal, one guy type at night. Got it? We've got too much trouble and too little time to prepare for it without dumping more crap on ourselves. You're a helluva fighter Ava, and I'd rather have you fighting with me, not at cross purposes, but I can fight alone if you need something I can't give you right now."

"I fights with you, mi amor," Poison whispered softly in his ear before Ava'Dara could answer. She emphasized her statement with a suggestive wiggle of her large mammary assets against him to indicate she would rather snuggle than struggle though.

"I am YOURS, my Lord!" The Warbird exclaimed in shuddering horror. "I fight when you fight! I protect you! I SERVE you! I, I want to learn how to LOVE you! And I don't even know how to kiss you!"

"Ha!" Poison looked over the fire with pity at the nearly naked yet armed Shi'ar. "Ees muy fácil! Ehhh, easy! You gives! And I weel teaches you the kisses!"

"Ava, dammit," Logan relented and sighed at the total hurt in her eyes. He reached out his right hand, beckoning her closer and finally pulling her onto his lap when she moved to him. He looked at Lady Bullseye with raised eyebrows.

"Kid, could you maybe give us a few minutes to chat here? But don't leave because I want to talk to you some more."

"Sure." The pretty Japanese ninja nodded while standing up to go for a little promenade on the nearby beach. She looked back over her shoulder to see if he was watching her spandex revealing, nicely rounded, and more than usual swaying backside as she strolled away. He wasn't.

"Ava," Logan began calmly after the sexy black clad ninja had moved out of hearing. "I'm happy with you. I don't want and don't need some damn harem of female ninjas and witches crawling all over my mattress. Don't have the time nor the inclination. I ain't sure what your ancestral nest gig is all about, but for now we got bigger problems. I'm pretty sure the High Council is making a move against us, or at least I want to make sure and be prepared."

"Will you," Ava'Dara paused to give Poison a pleading look to back her up, "will you let Cecillia be part of our nest, for now? I NEED a strong partner to, to help me serve and protect you better!"

"Ummm," Poison nodded amorously while nuzzling against Logan anew, "Si! I serves mi maestro! Toda la noche!"

"Okay, okay," Logan sighed again while shaking his head in defeat. There was no way he was not going to keep his promise to Poison, or else he'd wind up rotten tomato crushed and seeck, seeck, seeck, and he sure didn't have time for that. Besides, she was already a regular Thursday poker night poke. And earlier he HAD told Ava she could call his lake cabin a nest. Dammit.

"Look, Ava, what I need right now is a new X-Force, a computer genius, and Melita Garner. In the morning I want you to talk to Cluster and Sage, separately and in private. Say nothing to anyone else in the Academy. I want Cluster to lead an outlying perimeter defensive and scouting team with maybe Domino, Laura, Rahne, Monet, Boom Boom, Dani Moonstar, E.V.A., Elsa Bloodstone, Iron Maiden, Lady Bullseye over there, and a couple of teleporters like Ariel and Sefton. Blindfold's precognitive powers would be a great help too."

"I teleports for you, mi amante," Poison nibbled on his neck. "Make tacos, teleports out and back, eats tacos. Ees no lo problemo."

Logan leaned away to look at her while frowning. Now why hadn't he even thought of her as part of his new force? One of the more powerful teleporting mutants he knew? On cue Poison could make a battalion of attacking troops continuously barf their guts out and become too sick to fight too. And she made damn good tacos. Man, he must be more tired than he felt.

"Yeah, thanks, CeeCee, I appreciate that," he leaned back in and hugged her with his left arm around her waist giving a downward peek at her very interesting and warm bosom. Huh. The assets a fella could find right under his nose if he just had the brains to look.

"Ava, tell Sage I need her to look for I.D.P. back doors and sabotage in our new security system's computers. She needs to do it on the sneak without involving anyone else, especially Kitty Pryde. I don't want Kitty or the Academy staff involved because they're too high profile and already under heavy I.D.P. scrutiny. Also see if Tessa can hack the High Council data bases without getting caught. I'm looking for anything that might indicate troop or asset movements or any other kind of black ops against us here. Then find and talk to Melita Garner as soon as you can. Ask her to research the Seventh Sign organization and their Witch Hunter. I want as much background on both as she can give me. And on this newcomer Miya Asama right away as well. There's something about her that feels weird."

"My Lord!" The Warbird rustled her head feathers by vigorously shaking her head. "Miya is like an Exalted Warbird of Antiquity! VERY Powerful! We NEED her in our nest too!"

"Uh uh. Not until I know more about her," Logan replied firmly. "And maybe not even then if she keeps that weird feel in her head. Also, in the morning I want you to cancel that afternoon meeting and draft a formal resignation letter to Headmistress Kitty Pryde and Leader Janet Van Dyne for both the Avengers and the Jean Grey Academy. Something with due to mounting extra duties for the I.D.P. and the House of L, resignation effective immediately, all current financial and legal support will remain in place, and my personal belongings in both the Academy and Avenger's Mansion to be moved here to my cabin. Keep it short and to the point because I want a formal legal copy in case the High Council demands one. The idea is I want to put and sustain as much space between me and the Academy staff and Avengers as I can get to keep them out of my High Council troubles. Otherwise they'll get hurt badly later. Understand?"

"Affirmative," Ava nodded while frowning slightly. "But I'm don't think that letter is going to be received too well in either place. Nor canceling that Academy staff meeting."

"Can't be helped," Logan grimaced while shrugging. He couldn't worry about hurting the feelings of a bunch of already pissed off Avenger and X-Women females that more or less had treated him almost like a pariah since he'd returned from the wars. They could just curse him and/or comfort each other if his resignation would really bother them that much, which he didn't believe it really would. He hadn't been around much lately anyhow, nor had they acted like they had wanted him to be.

"The Academy doesn't need me to teach classes or hold their hands while they sit around and bitch about the way the I.D.P. is doing things. And comfort each other. Neither do the Avengers since the I.D.P. rarely calls them to do anything. I got better uses for my time, and those gals can just comfort each other too. Anyway, since I've promised tonight to CeeCee, I've got a most important Royal Warbird that needs more kisses tomorrow afternoon, not another damn meeting."

"My Lord," Ava'Dara's normally impassive face went instantly soft. Her tensed body seemed to just melt against him as he simply held her for a brief time and then returned to eating his steak and potato chips. Poison just shifted a little to accommodate her new nest mate's position without releasing her snuggling and amorous hold on Logan. Later, moving to sit on his free side after some long nuzzling on Logan's neck, Ava'Dara imitated the Cuban mutant. For the next few minutes the two endowed and bikini clad females then took turns holding his beer and the bag of chips while he finished his meat. Sweet domestic peace had returned to the tree and lake lined fire site.

Surprisingly with no further interruptions, the next hour or so was spent just drinking beer and amiably chatting and enjoying the fire once Logan had tossed on a few bigger pieces of firewood. Lady Bullseye finally returned on her own and squatted comfortably on the other side of the fire, eating the third steak to fill her now empty and settled stomach, sharing Logan's potato chips, and quizzing him for more details about his relationship with the serial killer Typhoid Mary. Then once learning about Poison's past hatred of all males, the Japanese ninja very adeptly encouraged Poison to share her rather lurid and man hating history and what Logan had done to change it. Then she inquired into Ava'Dara's alien past and current relationship to him. Logan sat puffing away on another cigar, sipping several beers and simply relaxing while the three females talked. Lost in his own thoughts, he totally ignored Lady Bullseye's occasional contemplative glances at him as the fragrant fire peacefully popped and crackled and sent glowing sparks and swirling smoke upward.

Logan's uninterested behavior wasn't because he found the beautiful Japanese ninja unattractive. What she and his other two companions didn't know was that Logan had been mentally reviewing the possible positive outcomes if he were to simply assassinate the High Council and their supporting military leaders. True, even if successful, there would be an immediate and lethal public backlash against him that no amount of his current hero status would abate. History was full of similar incidents and results. The assassins almost always died themselves, yet societal change had been made, sometimes even positive. So if he was going to die soon anyway, maybe it was worth doing a little feasibility study for better inter dimensional rule. As things stood, he was already mostly convinced that he had a gigantic looming fight with the High Council and their mutant hating troops in the near future. For those reasons alone he just didn't have the time nor inclination to now pursue a new amorous relationship with any female, let alone multiples from some damn meal melding dinner.

Naturally, Logan had no idea that the effects of Ava'Dara's hot dinner had already generated several mutually hating, competitive, and distrustful sects to toss any potential societal changing assassination attacks into the shitter before he had even started to implement any of them. The Raft prison now had new, mutually exclusive, and substantial competing plots to win their freedom by the imprisoned witches led by Logan's ex mutant teammate Magik, the ferals led by Remus, Hepzibah and Deathbird's alien group, vampires led by Alyssa, and Jubilee's newly forming unit of prison outcasts and loners. There was also a small freedom plotting cadre of criminally insane yet functional mutant inmates in the nut wing that included Aurora, White Rabbit, Vertigo, Viper, Shriek, Bouncing Betty, Fer de Lance, Miss Sinister, Nuwa, Unuscione, Forget-Me-Not, Callisto, the Hood revived Letha, Chimera, both telepathic Wyngarde sisters, Poundcakes, and their nominal leader, Logan's ex-lover, Typhoid Mary.

The Avengers were rapidly becoming two groups now arguing on the best way to save Logan from himself; those led by the Scarlet Witch and Clea who simply wanted to join Ava'Dara's Ancestral Nest, and those following the Wasp that wanted to just demand Logan separate himself from all distractions outside of his Avenger duties. Their arguing got pretty nasty and heated due to old jealousies, dislikes, and ongoing depression fueled by the deaths of Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and their other dead male Avenger teammates. Likewise the still grieving X-Women at the Jean Grey Academy were dividing along lines of the older versus younger groups. The older wanted Logan to exclusively be the school's headmaster and combat instructor, and the younger advocated to just let Logan be Logan and do his own thing. He always had in the past and it had more or less worked out, right? If he wanted Ava'Dara and whoever for his full time lovers and maybe even a few of them too if he desired, then it was all good, except, well, the older mutants didn't like their too laid back attitude at all.

Logan also had no idea his plans for a secret new X-Force might form another competing sect to disrupt his planning. Even the one disruption he knew about, the singular Witch Hunter from the Seventh Sign, well, he had NO idea just how distracting she could potentially be either, nor of other inter dimensional distractions he didn't know about that already had him targeted. And last but probably the most problematic in the near future, Ava'Dara had NOT given up forming their new Ancestral Nest, and she already had one confirmed nest mate in Poison. Now she was gunning full out for another. She was VERY determined to add the avian goddess Miya Asama to his nest too, but now was not the time to press her Lord. Better to wait until she could maybe get more help to serve him like he deserved. But who could she get that he might at least grudgingly if not readily accept as a new nest mate with her and Poison? Poison of course was her own unique problemo, one simply gauging his immediate mood to time her abduction of him for some immediate love making, and setting the precedent in the back of her mind to snatch her master away for making big nookie and cookies any time she needed a few.

Sinking into a comfortable four way silence of their own separate thoughts, it wasn't long before the last beer was finished, the coals in the fire-pit were barely glowing a very dull red, and the damp night breeze off the lake began feeling chillier. Poison suddenly announced that she had politely waited long enough, promptly teleported herself and Logan into his lake cabin's bedroom, and got down to some hot, naked, and not to be denied nookie making. Ava'Dara gave a sigh of resignation and told Lady Bullseye that she would accompany her back to the now darkened and locked down Academy, use a security key for both of them to gain entrance, and retire to their separate dorm rooms. Hopefully, Ava thought to herself, Miya Asama might still be awake and willing to chat about how she could reduce whatever was within her mind that was making their Lord Logan so wary of her.

Lady Bullseye kept wondering about her new boss as she strode back up the hill towards her fourth floor bed. What was Logan's ability to influence in a positive fashion the emotional outlook of such powerful psychic mutants and insane man haters like Typhoid Mary and his cook Cecillia Cardinale? And especially the very emotionally stunted alien Ava'Dara? Naturally, that led to another internal question of "would he be able to do something positive for the festering dark hatred of men in Lady Bullseye's soul?"

Admitting to herself that she was actually envious of Poison's obvious happiness and romantic contentedness, Lady Bullseye also wondered about Poison's last reply to the question why, with the way she had been so badly mistreated in the past, had she now wanted to become any man's willing prisoner of love in her heart and then also throw away the key? In response, the powerful Cuban mutant had tried to quote an old saying for how one goes about choosing the way one wants to live, but couldn't find the right English words to express herself clearly.

Muttering about another choice for living while staring morosely up at the night sky and still unaware of the female firestorm headed for him, Logan had then softly quoted another old saying that had left Lady Bullseye frowning in self introspection, something about everyone is serving a life sentence in the dungeon of self.

As she and Ava'Dara approached the patio entrance door of the Academy's library, both female warriors were unaware of a third sword carrying, long haired female wearing a long dark cloak and curiously watching them while kneeling on the roof above.

Lady Bullseye turned to look back over her shoulder while being unwittingly scrutinized. Logan's cabin was dark and mostly hidden by the trees, but at the far end of the lake the almost completed House of L was lit up with bright construction lights for third shift workers. Those lights cast long reflections on the lake waters as if they were some giant's reaching fingers that were beckoning for her to become his House's willing prisoner. She shook her head. Logan seemed to be a pretty good guy after all, but there was no way she would ever willingly work in his damn jail. It unhappily looked like an eerie and futuristic caricature of some old, cold, stone walled, iron barred prison from centuries past, with apologies to some old dead bard of course.