NW1

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There was a succession of silence in the plush, rather roomy office Henry McCoy called his own within Xavier's School for Higher Learning. Henry stared at Cheyenne over wire rimmed specticals, waiting tensely for some notion that she was ready to begin the session, the sound of the spatter-drop down pour outside beating against his eardrums, making his ears ring.

Remy LeBeau, the Cajun mutant known as Gambit's demon eyed gaze shifted from the doctor to his daughter and back. He looked like hell, really - his black silk boxers and white cotton wife beater crumpled from deep sleep and an early morning awakening, his hair equally as frazzled. He was tense, irritable, moving from raking his hand through a mop of auburn hair to scratching at a grey-speckled goatee.

Remy quite blatantly hated Sabretooth - loathed the man. They'd been enemies for years- had tried to kill each other on more then one occassion. Victor Creed was deffinately not his most favorable line of conversation, yet, here that line was, right up there blaring and bright red in the air for everyone to see. Even worse was Remy's underlying suspicions of just how 'close' Creed and his daughter had gotten during their time together. The prospect made him livid. This was not going to be an easy session to even attempt to stay calm through.

Cheyenne LeBeau, 'Kayo' as she was otherwise called, sat completely still, pajama clad, arms crossed over her chest and stone faced as she peered through the water-streamed window panes just behind Henry with her own set of red-on-black demon eyes. She was a small young woman, discreetly pretty in a dangerous, Feral sort of way. At the moment, even despite her claw-tipped fingers, dagger sharp canine teeth and wicked glowing eyes, danger was not the aura she was projecting. She seemed smaller then usual in the big over stuffed chair where she sat, slumped down but rigid, and sort of curled into herself against the world amoungst her incredibley long blood red hair. She was the picture of angst.

Remy took another groggy sip of his coffee, coughing briskly as a good lot of it went down the wrong pipe, "Damn." He clapped himself on the chest. Kayo jumped, the sudden noise startling her, breaking her moping revere, her heart nearlly lurching out of her chest. Remy looked up, clearing his throat, his face a bit reddened from the choke, "Sorry, Keeb. Didn't mean t' make you jump."

He was awake now, at any rate.

Kayo finally heaved a sigh, looking off at a nowhere spot on the floor, "I saw her die."

Remy and Hank both looked up at that, their ears and attention snagged, and both looking somewhat placidly deer-in-the-headlights at the statement just whispered.

Kayo's voice broke at random as she spoke, "I saw the bastard put the gun to her head, pull the trigger. I saw the bullet go in here," she put a shakey claw tipped finger dead-center on her forehead, "I heard her scream, and I saw the back of her head come out with the bullet, I..." Kayo's gaze averted to the cieling, "I saw her die... I saw them kill her."

      "God... Alexandra," Remy sounded winded.

"Your mother?" Hank asked Cheyenne. He felt sick at the thought, and watched as Cheyenne nodded in complience.

            "They did the same to Jamar the second momma hit the ground. I can still remember - still hear the sound it made," Kayo winced, the death of the man she had thought for years to be her father playing across the her line of sight, watching him fall in a bloodied, mangled heap beside her mother. "I felt like I'd been gutted. Hallow, you know? Surreal... I remember the guard dogs had picked up on my scent by then. I was the only one who hadn't ran - hadn't wanted to leave momma."

"Nexus were gone, had been on the run for long enough that they were gone for good, so I'd lost them too, lost everything... But I ran anyway, " Kayo's face broke up in tears for only a moment before she brought it back into check, ableit teary eyed, "I just left them there to rot because I was too afraid to die with them. Fucking coward. I was too afraid of everything... But the guard dogs let me by. Said they wanted out just as bad - wouldn't keep me there because they knew how much it hurt," Kayo grunts, "Their own bastard owners were hunting me down, ready to brain me, and they let me slip by. Man's Best Friend my ass, they knew better."

"God, I ran for hours through those woods. Thought I was going mad because the forest wouldn't end and the gun shots and screaming was still pounding my head... Ran till my feet bled. It had been raining, so I couldn't track anyone. Not Nexus, not Keith, even though he was last to leave... once I gave up on that I took to grappling from tree branch to branch. Figured they'd get in scent hounds who weren't from the camp on me pretty soon - didn't want to make it easy for them to find and kill me."

"I didn't have a clue where I was going," Kayo squints at her nowhere-spot on the floor, "Not a fucking iota. It was just like all that fear, all that pent up energy, and that raw fucking anger I'd kept boggled up for so long just exploded in this urge to get me as far away from the Camp as I could. I didn't even matter if they did catch me and kill me, really. I'd already lost everything else- just as long as I was as far outta dodge as I could get."

"We'd had these... these things imbedded in the back of our necks at the Camp - they nulled every bit of your mutant powers... Shay had had to literally gouge them out of the base of our skulls before we made the break that night, and I was bleeding like hell because of it. Anyway, I finally had my powers back so that I could use them. I shifted that night," Kayo's eyes flashed red instantaneaously at the memory, "Shifted for the first time. It was incredible... I was the Wolf, and I could just run like hell, man, ten times stronger, twice as fast. Thats what got me out of dodge. I'd finally been allowed to... to become Feral, you know? To become the Wolf. The instincts just hit me - all of them - like a ton of bricks and I could feel, sense everything."

Henry was scribbling notes like mad. He looked up again from over his glasses, "The Ferality... it started to take over then? You'd mentioned it before..."

Kayo nodded, biting at a clawed finger, "There and then... I'd always had the empathetic abilities with canines, that was just normal - something the power nulling implants could never take away, I don't know why... but god, the second I was hit with what I was--"

"A Feral," Hank interjected.

"One and the same... The second it hit me, I felt consumed. I *knew* it was beginning to take over right off. Instinct told me that. I was just too fucking caught up in the rush of it, and with running... with losing Mom... so caught up with all of it that I just didn't care."

Hank took more notes. Kayo ignored it. Remy was trying to look like the lot of what his daughter was saying dind't hurt like hell.

"I hitch hiked an 18 wheeler through Mexico Customs," Kayo grunted again, a faraway look in her eyes as she remembered, "The drug sniffer dog found me lodged in the spare tire storage rack underneath the truck... She was a Laborador. Gorgeous black thing.... I think I scared the hell out of her. She asked me what I was doing there, and I didn't know exactly how to reply. I mean, what do you say?" Kayo looks perplexed, "And she asked me if I was running from my master. I said yes, I supposed that made sense... yeah, I was running from my master. He was hurting me too much for too long... and she let me go, pretended I wasn't there, lied to her master for me- thats one of the most outraguos things a domesticate could do for you. A gift of sorts.... Thanks to her, I was driven straight into the States."

Kayo clammed up for a minute, jolted from her memories by a parched throat. Remy caught on and forked over his half-empty mug of java, and stood as she downed it, stretching gruffly, "Gotta hit de head. I'll be right back."

Hank nodded, and Remy left the office. Kayo topped off the coffee.

Henry studdied for his notes a minute - long enough to give Kayo time to regain her train of thoughts- and leaned foward, his fingers lacing his hands together on the desk in front of him, "If you would, Chey, I'd like to try and focus in on a few things here, because there's a few topics we need to cover to--" He shook his head. Get to the point, McCoy, "When did the instincts - being Feral - start to consume you? When did they really start to take over? What caused it?"

Kayo scratched her cheekbone, watching her father swagger back into the office and retake his seat, "They - the instincts, I mean - felt natural as long as I was out in rural areas. In the wilderness. That was probably what did it - I literally completely gave into them, sort of became them, because they felt so natural and so comfortable out there, and I just didn't know any better... but when I hit the city... holy shit," her eyes grew wide, "What a shock. I'd never seen anything like it. It was completely alien, completely unnatural. Terrifying. Everything concrete, steel, lights, bad odors, horrible noise. Masses of humans. Swarms of them."

"Huston was the first big city that I hit, and I was completely lost there. Stuck there, really, had no idea how to get out. If I took wolfen form - just as a simple wolf - the chaos of the city was just too much, too overwhelming. It racked my senses so badly I thought everything in me was going to explode. If I took human form, I was Prey."

"I was stuck in the inner city, had no idea what the hell was going on. I had this overwhelming complete urge just to lash out. To turn the fear into blood. To kill everything that was scaring the hell out of me- absolutely everything. It was the only means of defense I could think of... but at the same time, I was too scared to Kill, knew somehow that the instict was telling me something that was natural out in the woods, but totally unnatural there in the city... That was the problem, though. How do you debate with instinct? Tell it its wrong? Like it knew any better? Yet I had to sit there and squelch out what my entire body felt was the right thing - the natural thing to do."

"Thats when the Ferality became to much- When I had to reject the instincts. It was painful, man. It literally hurt... It got to the point where I had to force myself to keep from shifting, because the Wolf was so driven for Blood Rage. She wanted what instinct was telling me, wanted me to become her because when I was her, she was stronger, the instincts were stronger, and then I knew I wouldn't be able to stop from tearing the shit out of everything I saw. I had to force myself not to shift, ever, And let me tell you, It was so.." Kayo clenched her fists in emphasis, "So completely agonizing. My instincts were trying to force me to shift, and I was trying to force my body to ignore what my instincts were telling me. It was like warfare of flesh and bone, of my mind too."

"You said one time," Remy spoke up, watching his daughter as she figited in her seat, her pointed ears perking his way when he spoke, "Dat you did actually kill someone when you were on your own outta de Rage. I mean, what- when did dat happen?"

Kayo's eyes finally met Remy's, and they pierced his sharply, almost angrily for a moment, before she shifted them away. This hadn't been a question she'd wanted to remember the answer to. All the same, she could feel herself wanting to find the strength to relive it. To get it off of her chest. To release the demons.... to confess.

She breathed in deep, closing her eyes as she started, "I'd gotten to the point where I was trying to... where I needed to hide. To try to escape from the city even though I was dead smack in the middle of it. In the time span of probably," She thinks for a moment, "Probably two and a half weeks, three maybe, I'd had five men try and pick me up, two of the like were blatantly the type ready to whore me out. I'd had one bastard try to get in my pants... I honestly don't remember what happened to him, though I do vaguely recall a severed arm," there was no humor in Kayo's voice, "They were the predetors. They were looking for the weak, and I was weak in that element. I was lost... I was the Prey. So I needed to hide. To escape them. To escape the reasons my instincts were telling me to kill.... lessen the pain of denying them at least a little because the more it hurt, the more I wanted to give into it."

"One afternoon I just up and got onto a city bus. Crawled into the very back seat, curled up, and didn't budge- wouldn't budge. I sort of went numb there, let myself shut down a bit. Let my senses be lax... I'd needed some form of escape from everything outside, and I'd decided that that was as much... as good of a hiding place and any..."

        ~`*`~

The bus lurched to screeching hault for the two dozenth time. Some people piled off while more people got on, shuffling about with their grogeries and their children and their more-foam-then-coffee lattes. None of the like made their way to the back of the bus, even though the front was becoming uncomfortabley, almost dangerously cramped.

Cheyenne watched the lot of them over the top of her knees where her legs were pulled up to meet her chest as the skittish humans continued to pretend that she wasn't there - that they weren't really avoiding being near her as they huddled all the way up front . Her red-on-black demon eyes seemed hallow, but warning, where they lay above dark, well-earned circles, glaring at them coldly, not understanding - not wanting to understand the sense of rejection that she was feeling. It certainly wasn't a natural feeling.

She was sick of unnatural. Fuck unnatural.

Cheyenne looked back out the wide bus window as downtown Huston poured by her yet again. Her ears perked here and there as she saw something of interest before they slipped away, out of site. She has been on the bus for hours - same seat, same position, gaining the same reaction from every individual that boarded and exited the bus. Weird looks. Funny chatters. The occassional distainful comment to the bus driver on the way out - A bus driver of whom now, after hours of complaints and agitation and the occassional irked sideglance at the feral girl in the back seat in the mirror up above him, was glaring at her full force, hardly even bothering to watch the road as he drove.

Chey hadn't a clue the awful mess she came across as. Her already tiny frame was now, as it always had been, scrawny to the point of looking quite anerexic, her skin ashen from mal nutrition. Her hair was filthy, her clothes ratty and soiled as well. She smelled something strangely close to that of a wet dog. Then again, beyond obvious signs of mistreatent, her devil eyes, pointed ears and dangley, unkept claws no doubt made her the most unmistakabley frightening fourteen year old girl any one of the bus's constantly changing set of occupants had seen in recent times... if ever.

Cheyenne was unaware of it all. The ugly thrum noise of the bus engine at her back, the horrid scents the deisel emmited, the putrid likes of the contemporary music that blared on the radio speakers overhead and the constant, swarmimg presence of foreign boddies in front her - the lot of these things were, after so many hours of it, becoming numbing, despite the wired feeling that ruled her innards and instincts. The constant blur of motion outside of her window began to mesh and fade as, for the first time in days, Cheyenne nodded off into a rigid, wary sleep.

She was so utterly exhausted, so completely void of rest before this rare slumber escape, that the nap, abliet a short one, was dreamless and deep. She notice first the sharp jabs in the ribs that she was recieving, only slightly aware when they grew in number and likelyness of bruising her side. She felt swimmingly ill when she finally, abruptly, snapped awake. The haze of sleep torn away, Cheyenne paniced, her eyes wide as she realized the jabs were coming from a hand which was part of a burly, tatooed arm and the arm attached to the towering, piss faced busdriver. Chey learched, one part scared, one part poised to run like hell.

"You hear me girl? I said we're at the end of the route. Now pay me my fucking money, and get the hell out," He rasped.

Cheyenne looked around, wide eyed - a bit confused. The bus was empty. The bus had stopped. The engine at her back grown cold. She looked out the window- saw concrete walls, lit yellow from the dusk sun outside of windows - and knew instinctively that the bus was now indoors in a garage of some sort.

"You hear me? HEY!" The bus driver suddenly kicked the metal base board of Chey's seat with a steel toed boot.

Kayo shrieked, her innards wreathed and constricted in complete panic at the unexpected massive noise the kick had made and at the blatant show of violence that had brought it about.

"G-going! I'm going!" She shot bolt upright to her feet, her head spinning, her limbs jittery, and she moved for the door. The bus driver snatched her by the arm with one big hand. Cheyenne looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes.

     "Sixty bucks," the bus driver bellowed.

"W-what?" Kayo's voice went weak.

"I've been haulin' your mangey ass around town all day, girl, you think I'm going to just let you off here without paying me?!" The man shook her with his tightening grip on her arm, "You own me sixty bucks kid, now pay up!"

"I-I don't have--," Chey gulped, "Let me go... I just want to go, you want me to leave, let me go..."

"You don't have it?!" The bus driver's voice boomed, his grip on Cheyenne's arm growing painful, his shaking more violent, "What the flying fuck are you doing campin' on a city fare bus without any money?! Are you some kind of mongaloid jackass idio--!"

"LET ME GO!" Instict told her to lash out, to defend herself. Cheyenne was so completely scared, so utterly terrified, that it was the only thing she could think to do. With one livid swipe, Cheyenne racked her claws over the hand that was bruising her tiny arm. Tendons snapped, muscles spliced, skin tore as the man's fingers were severed from his hand.

His scream was agonizing. Blood curtling. Blood spurt as the offending appendages hit the floor in a sickening plop. Chey looked with wide-eyed horror at what she'd done, at the man she's maimed as he grappled his mutilated hand, screaming bloody murder... and the blood. God, the blood. The scent of it. The sight of it was intoxicating to her. Her instincts insisted it... insisted she give in.

Cheyenne could feel something dark, something terrifying welling up in her chest, in the base of her skull... could feel the smell of the blood invade her nostrils, inducing a high like the most potent of narcotics.

Then it overcame her for the first time, but not the last. In one split second skyrocketing pitch, her adrenalyne peaked, her fury and fear soared, her drive to kill finally took over. She saw sheet red, sheer hate.... In her first wave of the Blood Rage, with one wicked pounce, intermingled with the transformation into a claw and fang laiden werewolf beast, Cheyenne Lebeau attacked the bus driver, reveling in his screams, in his blood, tearing him limb from limb.

             ~`*`~

"In de basket, Keebler! De basket! Dere you go, take it easy," Remy LeBeau grappled to pull back his daughter's bloodred hair, rubbing her back comfortingly where she sat haunched over, heaving into the nearest waste bin amidst deep, profound tears, "Shhh-shh. I gotcha, petite, I'm right here."

The Cajun felt far less confident. Pale as a sheet, sweating through his shirt and shaking like mad at the horror story he'd just been leant, he looked up at an equally disturbed Henry with tragic eyes.

His daughter... his own baby girl. What the hell had she done?

"Perhaps we should call it an early end," Hank choked down the baseball sized lump in his throat, "I'm not sure its a good idea to persue matters further at this point if--"

Chey coughed, "Just," she held up a shaking, claw tipped index finger, spitting into the waste paper basket and mopping off her forehead with her free arm, "G-give me a minute, would you? Please?"

Henry sat back down in his chair, having been leant foward, the palms of his hands at rest on the top of his desk. He eyeballed the girl for a moment, not entirely convince she was fit to continue, but found himself emmiting a resigned sigh, regardless, "All right, Miss LeBeau, fair enough. Here, Remy," Hank opened the bottom right door of his desk, brandished a water bottle and tossing it to the clearlly shaken Cajun.

Kayo had pulled herself back up into her chair by then, pale, blearly eyed, her entire small frame caught up in tremors. She sniffled, taking the waterbottle from her father, downing the lot of it as Remy reached over and cleared her bangs out of her face, "All right, petite?"

"No," Kayo shook her head, and then winced, "Yeah. I mean, we can keep going."

"You're sure?"

Chey gave a quick bit of nods at her father that made her head spin, looking up to catch McCoy's gaze, right in the eyes. She sunk back into her seat, still clenching the empty bottle, and sighed deeply, "That was the night I got the hell outta Inner City. I... I didn't even know just what the hell had happened. I mean, I had a damned good idea - you don't come to completely soaked in blood feeling so completely drained, hurting like hell with these weird fleshy bits stuck under your nails and not have at least some idea of what you did in the Rage," Kayo sniffs, whiping her forehead with her sleeve again, "I only found out later on that its natural to recall everything - to remember exactly what you did after the Rage. Shit, it usually plays itsself on repeat just to ebb away at your head... I don't have a clue why I can't remember that first time. Probably blocked it from memory soon as I came to. I was just so scared, so discusted I didn't even want to think - just wanted to run again. So I made myself forget it... Anyway..."

"I ended on the far outskirts of Huston. Not even Huston really. Just sort of a small boardering hick town," Kayo stayed quiet and eerily placid for a moment, having picked her line of sight back up on her nowhere spot on the floor. Then she smirked. Grinned a small, odd, almost sardonic little grin, "You talk about a double fuckin' wammy, let alone fate in the works. That same night -the very same night, not but hours after I'd managed to wash off most the caked blood in the levy, I ended spot on, wrong place, right time. Ran straight into Vic."

"Victor Creed?" Henry peered up from over his notes at Cheyenne, who nodded. His gaze shot over to Remy, who's continence had suddenly taken on a far less relaxed decourum.

"Sabretooth," Remy glowered under his breath. He turned away from Henry's studious glare, his demon eyes instead vouching to trace the dark shadows amoungst the book case on the far wall. Kayo watched her father for a moment, them sighed sharply, turning back to the doctor.

Hank nodded, "Go ahead."

Kayo nodded, but sat in silence for a moment, her eyes moving about her field of vision as she thought as if she were reading a book. Finding the words for memories she'd sheltered for so long was proving to be incredibley hard. She could see them all so clearlly- hear them, smell them, feel them - but describing them? Giving them a name in hallow, ridged air? It put a pit of beraggled nerves in her stomach - made her tense, trembling, sweating ice.

She rarely gave a damn about what anyone else thought of her, but this... This was different. Far, far different. People could think the worst of her, as she was there in front of them, but their defamation towards the skeletons in the closet was an entirely different matter. That sort of defamation could hurt.

That was the problem. Her memories carried waves of sin, of terror, of taboo. No reaction she would gain from the ears these memories fell upon could possibley be positive.... that in itsself - not the pain, not the exstacy, not the chaos of them all - it was the reaction of others that scared her.

Before Cheyenne could get caught up in her own lurid fears, however, something clicked in the back of her head. Like a murky, thick as tar, billowing fog, memories she knew perfectly well of but had hidden for so long began to creep and crawl back into her immediate line of thought. The memories were inticingly real. The sights, scents, sounds and gluttoral waves of fear she'd felt the very same night she'd killed the bus driver suddenly hit her in a full-fledged re-enactment within her mind... if she was going to ever get the lot of it off of her chest, now would have to be the time.

"After I'd killed that man," Cheyenne began in a small, shakily weak voice, avoiding eye contact with both the doctor and her father, "I'd tried to kill myself."

"Mon deu," Remy muttered, looking winded, "Cheyenne, you--"

Kayo held up a hand, cutting him off a bit coldly, rushing to keep up with describing the memories as they came back to her, "Allot of most of that evening was a complete blur. Allot of fear. Allot of panic. Allot of that horrible sick feeling you get when you're scared, lost and guilty as hell all at the same time. Things didn't come into focus until I was in that allyway bleeding like hell," She pulled back pajama shirt sleeves to reveal scarred wrists. Remy turned his head away, closing his eyes. Kayo didn't seem to notice him as she sat back again, "Never give a suicidal kid claws. She'll make use of them, you know?"

"Don't know how long I just sat there staring at the rainwater, watching it slip down the brickwall in that ally way just waiting to be dead. Hoping it would come faster, even though I could feel it creeping in," Kayo could suddenly feel Remy's glare boring through her. Her temper flared in her chest because of it, but she refused to look back at him, "I just didn't want to do it any more, ok? Didn't want the damned confusion, the pain, the deprivation of my instincts it was just too damned much. Hurt too bad, the lot of it..." There was a pause, and she could feel her father avert his icey stare. With that, she went on, "I can remember my whole body starting to hurt, to feel drained of energy, my eyes beginning to blur... that scared me. Sacred the absolute hell out of me - I felt like everything was becoming a cottony staticed fuzz... I... Somehow the notion of losing control of the function in my head was more disturbing to me then sitting in a pool of my own blood... Fuck the blood, you know? I was too dead feeling inside to give a damn about anymore blood. I didn't even want to think about that part."

Remy looked completely at a loss, propping his head up with one hand and again looking at Cheyenne with a perplexed glare. Henry watched his charge as she subconciously gave the air a bit of a sniff, remembering with far-away wicked eyes was was to follow, "The scent... Thats when I caught the scent. Who'd have ever thought Vic's stinkin' hide would ever actually save someones life from just bein' there," Chey grunted in cold levity, biting at a claw tip, "Fuckin' ludicrous."

"Er..." Henry looked from Chey to sharing suddenly confused looks with Remy and back, "Y-you... You lost me on that one, Miss LeBeau," he squints, "Scent?"

Kayo looked sly for a moment, wriggling her eyebrows at the doctor, "Chemistry, baby," She could have swore she saw the furry blue man blush. She smirked, then switched back to murose, "Its a pheromone thing, I guess - you know what those are, I'm guessing?"

Hank nodded, "Chemical substance - a bit like wild canid and feline cologne. Serves as a stimulus to other individuals of the same species... incites one or more behavioral responses, I do believe," Henry had to grin. Cheyenne had always loved to pick his brain just as much as he had loved to pick hers.

"Exactly... and I repeat- chemistry baby. I caught a scent - This sort of bizarre, musky sort of... I dunno. A non-Feral'd never catch it... Its a sort of," she waved her hand in the air, searching for a lead of some sort, "Its like trying to describe the scent of a rose. Its impossible. It is what it is, and you'll never confuse it for anything else. Uncomparable, you know? Though, I'll tell you, its no bloody rose scent - not male Feral pheromone. No bloody way... Musk, man, pure--"

"Cheyenne..." Remy gave his daughter a side-long glance.

"I'm rambling, aren't I?"

"To de hilt."

"Right," Chey sighed. She was nervous - she always rambled when she was nervous, was it that hard for him to comprehend? Kayo bit back a lump of indinant frustration and kept on talking, "I caught that scent, through the rain, through the tinge of the blood - god, the blood smell was everywere. Making me sick... Anyway, I caught it, and I remember going rigid. Halucinating, a bit, I guess. The last time I'd ever caught a scent similar to that was," Kayo's continance grew sad, "Around momma. And Jamar.. I didn't know what a Feral was then, I didn't know.. what I was. But I knew that they were like me - I was one of them. Hell, I thought We were the only ones like us... I thought for a split second that... that somehow that scent was mom... I hoped it was so bad it ached."

Gambit snatched up one of Chey's trembling hands and held it. That seemed to calm her down a bit. The tears, though, came regardless, "And then I totally freaked... I could barely move, I was so weak from losing all that blood, and I could think was that there I was, sitting there dying like an idiot, when my mom was out there somewhere, alive... and I couldn't get to her, because I was so frickin' stupid, I'd.... I'd cut..."

"It wasn' Lexi, Keeb," Remy said in his trademark Cajun purr... Almost having to remind his daughter of reality to keep her from believing her fears. He gave her hand a squeeze and snatched up some Kleenex from the box McCoy slid acrossed his desk.

"No, it wasn't," Cheyenne whiped red eyes, "But I sure's hell was lucky I was so delusional, thinkin' it must be. The scent sort of jarred me awake, even though I felt so bone-weary... snapped me out of it as soon as it hit me. I remembering standing up as if nothing were going on - as if I hadn't been sitting there waiting to die, as if every inch of me didn't hurt like hell or feel like the marrow had been sucked straight out of my bones... I made a really slow, real wobbley beeline for whatever it was I was smelling. God, I was determined as hell... even bleeding as I went, dizzy as all get up, borderline black out. It was so incredibley bizzarre... I was dieing, bleeding like mad, but totally unaware of it. The instincts were in control again, and their priority was bent on finding that scent, whatever... wherever the hell it was."

"I turned the corner and sort of squeeked, just because I was too weak to work up an acutal scream... and he almost fell on me - just popped out of nowhere, hobbling down the alleyway, absolutely mad drunk. Its amazing I'd caught the pheromones over that damned hard liquor stench... but, it was just... there he was," Kayo squinted at her field of vision, caught up in the memory. First time glances into the deeply blackened eyes of Victor Creed, the first pinpricks of his claws, the first graze of his skin to hers, the first wave of utter danger and dominance the man projected crossed her just as he had that night, bumbling away from the bar down the alley way, so drunken that his healing factor was temporarially shot to hell, "There he was."

                                                Nightmare Whispers
                                                By Melissa M. Miller
                                                          Chapter 1

This story features Nexus character Kayo and related original characters, which are characters of Melissa Miller. It also spotlights Sabretooth, Gambit, Toad and X-men, which are trademarks of Marvel comics. This is an unauthorized work and no profit is being made on this work. This work is � of Melissa Miller 2002. Please do not archive without permission of creator. (NOTE: story has not yet been spell checked. Ignore the mistakes.)