I am back!

Like you guys, no doubt noticed I am one week behind schedule. I will explain why in the afterword for those who are curious but for now, with no further ado chapter 5.

"What the hell was that Chuck," Logan growled at Xavier as soon as they left the city limits, "since when do you go rummaging inside other people's heads without a good reason."

The X-Men were currently driving back to Salem, where Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters was located, in a black sedan.

Logan was driving, and Ororo was sitting next to him in the passenger's seat, deep in contemplation.

Which she came out from when she heard Logan's question.

In the backseat of said car, Xavier was leaning back in his seat and looking out the window. A closer look, however, showed his eyes to be blank, blind to the scenery speeding by.

Ever since they got in the car, Xavier had been checking to see if he could figure out what Damien had done in his mind and whether he had damaged his mind in any way when he did whatever he did.

"I normally don't," Xavier answered, his mind returning to the physical world, "I must have been curious about something I read from his surface thoughts and send a mind probe to figure out more."

No matter what some people thought or how tempting it was to do so, he usually didn't go for a full scan of someone's life without a really good reason.

"I know that it isn't an excuse, but it is the only thing I can think it could have been."

Logan's thoughts were, however, on more than just that little tidbit of information. The girl, Laura, had smelled like him, moved like him, hell she even had claws like him.

There was no way that all that was just a coincidence.

If she wasn't a clue to his missing memories, he didn't know what else could be.

He had kept his cool today, trying not to scare them off prematurely, but they were going to answer his questions one way or another.

"You don't remember?" Ororo asked Xavier worriedly.

"No, whatever Mr. Shade did when he went inside my body, it erased everything I had seen, heard, and thought about since we were invited inside the house," when Xavier came too, he was in the middle of the living room, feeling weak in both body and mind without knowing why or what had happened to him.

But for some reason, the thought that Damien was to blame wouldn't leave his mind.

"I have no way to retrieve those memories, not even with my telepathy. And believe me, I have tried."

"You want to tell me that a newly awakened Mutant just bested the world's strongest telepath in a psychic battle to retrieve something you saw in his mind," Logan paused to let that sink in, "and we have no clue what it is?"

"Yes," Xavier replied simply.

And wasn't that a scary thought?

(Damien)

After the whole spectacle following Xavier's violation of my privacy and mind, I gave the X-Men a chance to introduce and preach about their school and why Laura and I should consider going to it.

I have to give it to them. They had a good recruitment spiel prepared, all the benefits of becoming a student at their school were laid out clearly from the beginning.

A place to live rent-free, A place I could train my powers without the fear of someone seeing me, and most importantly, a get out of school free card.

I was seriously considering going to Xavier's school just for that last part.

It also didn't help that what I was currently doing was highly illegal.

I was an underage kid living alone, without an adult or state supervision.

I was one phone call away from being evicted and sent back to live with my uncle or to the orphanage. If they don't figure out where the money I was paying my rent with came from first, that is.

If they do figure it out, well, they don't send 16-year-olds with multiple B&E's under their belts to juvie unless you're a rich kid that was just 'acting out'.

Which means either doing some hard time in prison or using my powers to escape and become a fugitive.

Fuck that!

It is better for everybody if I switch some things up for the better while my slate was still squeaky clean.

They also didn't forget to mention all the dangers that two mutants like us could encounter in the big bad world without the protection of their school.

Government agencies trying to use us, Mutant hating groups trying to kill us, and last but not least evil Mutants trying to recruit us to their side.

I almost snorted out loud at that, if there is one thing everyone knew about the X-Men it is that their school gets attacked constantly and even destroyed every few months or so.

There is no way we are safer at the school than outside of it. It's a good thing then that we aren't doing this for safety.

I mentioned Laura's current identity problem and whether Xavier could do anything about it and was immediately reassured that if we were students of his boarding school, Xavier, as the headmaster, could pull some strings to get her an official American identity.

I didn't miss the part where he implied that he could only do that if we were his students.

I'm beginning to think that Xavier can't live without trying to manipulate everything around him. He was an honest to God control freak.

The X-Men leave after we promise to visit the school on Sunday to see if it would be a good fit for us.

I have no plans of becoming an X-Men member or anything, but a place where I could train and experiment with my powers in a controlled setting was too good to pass up, not to mention the other benefits.

It also gave Laura a chance to get to know Wolverine and spent some time with him if that was something she wanted to do. I am pretty sure that she already knows who he is, considering her initial reaction to his presence and how quiet she had been ever since.

Today was Friday, which means that we only have today and tomorrow to find the Hand's base. I had promised Laura that I would help her, and I was planning to keep that promise before we leave New York for Salem.

From what I remember from watching the tv show Daredevil, the Hand was currently working with the Kingpin, the Japanese, and the Russians. Of those three groups, the Russians were the easiest to find and get answers from.

They were also the ones distributing Madame Gao's synthetic heroin around the city and would, as a result, know the most about the Hand's operations, outside of the Kingpin and Nobu that is.

Which means that they're our targets for tonight.

Having nothing to do till tonight, Laura and I tidied up the living room before going to my room and snuggling up in bed watching movies on my laptop.

Not having watched anything other than educational films when she was in the Facility, every movie was new and fascinating to watch for Laura.

When it was dinner time, we ordered two pizzas and a few side dishes from a local pizzeria whose flyer I had lying around in my room. When it came time to choose our drinks, I put my foot down and told Laura that she had to order something other than a chocolate milkshake.

She had become completely addicted to it.

And while I was an advocate for people doing whatever made them happy as long as they kept it away from me, that was only for people I don't give a shit about.

"Look at me," I told a scowling Laura.

Laura reluctantly looked away from the laptop screen to meet my eyes.

"Drinking chocolate milkshakes for every meal is unhealthy," Laura opened her mouth to reply, but I cut her off, already knowing what she was about to say, "even for someone with your healing factor."

"And worse, if you keep drinking them one after another like that, sooner or later, you will get sick of them," I paused to let her absorb my words before continuing, "Is that what you want?"

"No," Laura answered quietly, hanging her head dejectedly.

"There are plenty of other delicious drinks that you can try out," I offered, trying to cheer her up, "and it isn't like you can't drink it ever again. You just have to pace yourself."

Laura cheered up slightly after hearing that.

The pizza arrived 15 minutes later, together with Laura's Fanta.

I smirked as she perked up after taking her first sip.

That is how we spent our time waiting till night. We sat on the bed and munched on our food while laughing at the bad martial arts movies we were watching.

(Hell's Kitchen)

The clock's hand continued ticking, each movement of the hands bringing the time closer and closer to midnight.

Hell's Kitchen, the home of the poor and the more criminally inclined members of New York City, was once upon a time a decent place to live.

That is until all the major gangs moved in and began setting up fake businesses as fronts for their criminal enterprises.

One such fake business was the Veles Taxi company.

At first sight, it looked just like any other Taxi company, if a bit more rundown than the other Taxi companies around. Yellow taxis were lined up in the front of the garage, ready for the next day's work. Employees wandered around the garage, talking distractedly with each other while cleaning and checking the taxis for any problems that needed repairing.

It would have been a completely normal scene if all those employees weren't armed, that is.

After noticing that little tidbit, I'm pretty sure that we were in the right place.

The only thing I remembered about the Russians before Fisk killed them for ruining his date or some other shit is that they used a taxi company as the cover for their criminal dealings, which is pretty smart if most of your business is moving heroin around the city.

Knowing that, it wasn't too hard to search for a taxi company located in Hell's Kitchen with a Russian name that employs mostly Russian employees.

Laura and I were sitting on a nearby rooftop. Close enough that we could keep an eye on the hubbub going on in the garage but far enough to avoid anyone spotting us and the repercussions that would result because of it.

I was already in my ghost form, decked completely in black clothes to help blend into the darkness. A hoodie hid my shockingly white hair, and a cloth mask covered the underside of my face, leaving only my bright toxic green eyes to be seen.

Instead of transforming with my clothes on and reversing their colors, I transformed while in my boxers before putting my clothes on. The only downside is that this way, my clothes aren't made out of Ectoplasm and thus wouldn't transform with me or reform when damaged like they normally would.

I looked to my right where Laura was sitting. She was also wearing black clothes, a cloth mask that covered the bottom part of her face, and black leather gloves with holes in them for her claws.

The employees start clocking out and closing up as the clock strikes midnight. But instead of leaving and going home as you would expect, they all went inside the garage.

A few minutes later, a black car pulled up to the garage. The car doors opened, and 4 people got out, 2 of which I recognized as the people we were here for.

The leaders of the Russian Mafia, Vladimir Ranskahow and Anatoly Ranskahow.

Seeing that the last person had gone inside before closing up, I waited a few more minutes before lifting Laura up in a princess carry. I turn us invisible and intangible before flying into the garage.

Putting Laura down, I look around at the front room of the garage.

The room was empty, with just one door leading further into the building.

Taking hold of the door handle, I turned to Laura, "remember, fight like a normal human."

Laura nodded.

Opening the door, we walked into a corridor and were immediately spotted by a Russian man coming out of one of the side rooms connected to the corridor.

We stared at him while he stared at us. His hands were at his crotch next to his gun, currently pulling his fly up.

He reached for his gun with his right hand and opened his mouth to scream. Before he could do either of those things, I appeared in front of him in a flash of movement and decked him in the face, remembering at the last moment to hold back my strength.

His nose crunched under my fist, and his eyes rolled back until only the whites were visible as he dropped to the floor, unconscious.

"You said to fight like a normal human," Laura noted, lifting an eyebrow as she caught up to me.

"I doubt he saw anything he shouldn't have before he went down," I defended myself quickly.

Laura hummed in disagreement, amusement dripping from her voice.

I cracked open the door the Russian came from and sneaked a peek inside. It was the bathroom. Grabbing the Russian at the back of his neck, I lifted him and sat him down on the toilet seat.

"That should buy us some time before someone finds him," I commented, closing the bathroom door.

I turned to Laura as she tapped me on the shoulder. Having gotten my attention, she pointed to the other side of the corridor. Following her finger, I saw another Russian gangster standing there staring at us.

"Intruders!" He shouted.

Fuck me.

I was originally planning to kill only the bosses and leave the underlings alive. We could get away with the death of the brothers, their deaths wouldn't be all that weird and could be credited to someone trying to take over the Russian Mafia.

But if we were to kill all the underlings, everyone would be investigating it. We would have cops, Heroes, and maybe even Shield on our asses.

This is also why I wanted to do this without the obvious use of powers. There is no way that I am letting bad guys that know my powers alive, even if they are mere underlings.

I was trying to do this without killing, but fuck it. I will just have to burn all their bodies to ash after we are done.

It's like they say, no body, no crime.

"Forgot what I said," I huffed to Laura, "go crazy."

'Snikt!'

Laura released her claws and shot off like a cannonball, zig-zagging around the narrow corridor, never staying in one place long enough to let the gangster get a lock on her position with his gun.

The Russian gangster managed to get one wide shot off before she was upon him, cutting through his throat with her claws like a hot knife through butter.

Dropping his gun, the gangster croaks pitifully through his sliced voicebox. His hands were around his throat, futilely trying to stop the bleeding.

7 seconds later, he drops to his knees before falling over, dead.

Footsteps and yelling begin to sound from behind the door at the end of the corridor in response to the gunshots.

Opening the bathroom door, I shoot the unconscious gangster with a Ghost Ray.

Poor bastard, he almost made it.

The door to the side room the gangster came from was still open, showcasing a room-length table with dozens of little packets on it. A closer look shows that there are two different sorts of packets on each side of the table, one with a red dragon on it and one without.

That must be Madame Gao's heroin, the Steel Serpent.

Hearing the footsteps get closer, I strolled up to the door and waited. The moment the door handle started moving, I cocked my feet back and slammed it into the steel door as hard as I could.

The door exploded off its hinges and flew back with such speed and force that it slammed the gangsters standing in front of it against the wall before getting embedded in the wall itself.

The last gangster standing a few steps lower on the staircase than the other two got lucky and lost only a few hairs and his lunch as he got sprayed with the pureed remains of his buddies.

A Ghost Ray to the face relieved him from his sufferings.

Stepping over the now headless gangster, we continued down the stairs into another corridor with another steel door at the end(you gotta be kidding me).

4 gangsters were on their way to the stairs as we arrived at the bottom.

Seeing us, the foremost gangster lifted his AK-47, ready to open fire. Unfortunately for him, I was the quicker draw. My eyes glowed green before releasing two green blasts at the gangster's gun.

"Aaaah!" The gangster screamed in agony as the melted remains of his AK-47 covered and burned his hands.

Laura rushed past me with inhuman speed before lunging at the still screaming gangster with her claws outstretched. She impaled him in the chest and lifted him off his feet, advancing to the other gangsters while using his body as a human shield.

I had noticed it earlier when she fought against the Hand ninjas, but now that she wasn't bone-tired, it was even more obvious that Laura was inhumanly fast and strong.

Was she just naturally stronger than normal humans, or was she somehow removing her body's limiters and using all her muscle strength, not caring that it was tearing her muscles apart?

It would normally be a crazy and borderline stupid way to fight, but with Laura's healing factor and pain resistance, I can see how it would be something the Facility would teach her, not caring how much it hurt her every time she used it.

She finished the other three Russian gangsters just as fast, killing them with simple and clean strikes.

We strolled over to the hopefully last door, checking the only other door in the corridor for more gangsters and finding nothing except for bundles of cash. There must have been at least a hundred grand in cash lying around, which was now mine.

Having seen a shit load of series and movies, instead of opening the door with no doubt a gun pointed at it, I made Laura and myself intangible and phased through the door.

Noticing us phasing through the door, a shocked and terrified Anatoly, who was pointing his gun at the door(told ya), opened fire and emptied his whole clip into the door behind us.

His brother Vladimir jumped up from where he was lounging with a glass of vodka in hand, it seems like someone was a little too confident in his men, and reached for his own gun.

"This doesn't have to get ugly," I told them, still intangible, "as you have seen, guns don't work on us. We just want to ask you guys some questions, and then we will be on our way."

"We are telling a freak like you nothing!" Anatoly spat out angrily.

Making a finger pistol, I dialed the power of my Ghost Ray way down before shooting Anatoly in the leg, "that was rude."

Anatoly cried out in pain before falling to the carpeted floor. His right tibia snapped cleanly in two.

Screaming in rage, Vladimir rushed at me and tried to pistol whip me in the face. Ineffectively, of course. Turning just my right arm tangible, I backhanded him to the other side of the room.

"As I was saying, I have some questions for you," I continued casually as Vladimir shakily got back to his feet, wiping blood from his mouth, "You work with a woman going by the name of Madame Gao. I want to know where her base is."

"I don't know any Madame Gao." Vladimir hissed out, his voice thick with his Russian accent.

"Come on now. You can come up with a better lie than that," Making a finger pistol, I dialed the power up a level and shot his brother in his other leg, "you have an entire room full of her heroin, upstairs."

Anatoly screamed in agony as a hole got scorched in his left thigh.

"Okay, Okay!" Vladimir yelled, "don't hurt him."

"I will tell you where we pick up the heroin," Vladimir offered as he limped to his brother's side.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" I asked, "I know that you aren't dumb enough to do business with someone without investigating them. I want to know everything!"

"By the way," I asked casually when Vladimir stayed quiet, "does Madame Guo know that you have been skimming from her heroin and selling it as your own?"

Vladimir's face changed to shock before grimacing.

We both knew that if Madame Guo knew that he was stealing from her, he and his brother would already be dead. It must have been something they had just started doing if Guo hadn't figured it out yet.

"Tell me where she is, and we will take care of her. That way, neither you nor your brother would have to die." I lied.

"Don't tell him anything!" Anatoly yelled.

I sighed before making another finger pistol, this time aiming at Anatoly's head.

"Wait, Wait. I will tell you everything!" Vladimir said quickly before I could shoot.

And he did. He told us everything he had found out about Madame Gao, where the warehouse she made her heroin in was, the heroin drop spot, and more importantly where her current base was.

"You can't fight her. She isn't normal. She is a witch!" Anatoly spat out.

"Well, we aren't exactly normal ourselves," I answered.

Gathering ecto-energy in my hands, I disintegrated Anatoly.

Vladimir looked on in shock as his little brother got blasted into ash, "you said that you wouldn't kill us!"

"I lied," I replied before blasting him too.

Rand Enterprises, why does that name sound so familiar.

First of all, thanks for all the happy wishes, you guys.

Now for the explanation for why there was no chapter last week.

Unfortunately, the year started off on a bad start for me when my newly repaired laptop just gave up on me. According to the store, repairing it is a waste of money, something that would have been nice to know before I spent almost 300 bucks repairing it the first time but whatever.

Being the smart cookie that I am, I forgot to bring the usb where I store the backups of my files on and figured it wouldn't hurt to leave them on my laptop for a few days.

Long story short, I lost all the chapters and ideas for future chapters I had been working on and am now scurrying to rewrite them on my phone until I buy a new laptop(I'm broke).

To be honest, this happening just as the new year kicked off has sapped all of my motivation. That I'm currently dealing with IRL problems with this whole lockdown situation also isn't helping. But I figure when I get through the chapters I have already written, I will get hit with a new wind.

For those willing to help you can help by either becoming a patron or donating whatever you can miss to my pay-pal to help me buy a new laptop. But only if you can truly miss it, with the lockdown I know that a lot of people are having money troubles, so am I.

My pay-pal is: www- pay-pal-me/HeavensMonarch

I also have a Pat-reon, so if you want to read an extra chapter or two faster than the public release or just want to support me by leaving a dollar in the tip jar, you can do so at www - Pat-reon - com - heavensMonarch