Marvel, Rebirth:

IC: "Fine. Your choice."She took a nervous breath."I didn't leave for just any reason. I left because I had just met you, and I didn't want to be abandoned again. I left because I care- cared about you, a lot, and I didn't want to screw up your life. I left..." Another deep breath.Suddenly a small bundle materialized in her arms, just as Triston began to stir from his nap. A tiny, light tan arm stretched up from the blanket."Because of him."Brianne held Triston tightly, protectively, and watched Dallas' reaction warily.

IC:

Dallas and Alex exchanged quick glances at the arm, and then leaned forward as one to examine it a little closer. Then leaned back quickly onto their feet. Glanced at each other again.

"The heII is that supposed to be?" he asked, brow furrowed warily.

-Tyler

IC: Alec stared cross-eyed at the frog on his nose.

"I shall call him Ribbit and he shall be mine, and he shall be my Ribbit."

He gently levered the papery creation off with a finger, careful not to break or crease it, "See this is why you're so great. Got nothing to fear from Drizzt Da'Allas out there."

IC:"...""I'm out of witty remarks. Well, not entirely, but they wouldn't be appropriate at this point in time."

IC Peter"... Huh?" The shock of hitting the table had woken Peter somewhat. Realizing that his eclairs were floating in the air, he turned to grab them, but suddenly just dropped them on the ground. "Never liked eclairs," he muttered. "Oh, that your kid?" Peter asked as he walked back into the institute, recognizing the girl (Brianne) from earlier.The sight of paper frogs jolted Peter completrly awake. "Fr-frog," he stammered, staring at Ashley and Alec.

John Harken- Middle of nowhere Nebraska

IC: John held up his hands defensively.

"It wasn't me. If I had to guess, I would say she got a concussion when you two slammed into that tree. Also, she seem to have lost a lot of blood. I have an emergency medical kit in my car. If it's alright with you, I would like to take her to a doctor. Wounds like that have a tendency to be very nasty if left untreated."

IC: "His name is Triston." Brianne paused."Triston Green."

IC: Ashley

Ashley giggled at Alec's remark before turning to see Peter. "Oh hi again!" She noticed the teacher's apparent fear of the frogs and pondered this for a moment, before her eyes lit up with an idea.

"Quick, Mr. Teacher! This frog wants to kiss you!" She held one of her origami frogs and started walking toward Peter.

IC: Aella

"D-Doctor!?" I exclaimed, the only kind of doctor I knew were the ones that worked for HYDRA. "N-No....I don't wanna see a doctor..." I fell onto my rump as I stumbled backwards. I looked at Trinity. "Don't like doctors..."

IC:

"Or, it would be, if that baby weren't an obvious illusion. Look, how can it look like me? I have blue eyes and my hair's dirty blonde. My genes don't exactly have the forcefulness of Conan the Barbarian or anything."

-Tyler

IC PeterDid this girl have some kind of disorder or something? Peter had never seen a bigger cloudcuckoolander in his life. The girl got up and slowly advanced towards him with the origami frog-Peter suddenly remembered why he was afraid of frogs.May 14, 2098, Alchemax genetics labs"It's on the loose!" a scientist yelled, one of many running down the hallway screaming. Peter, the new intern, turned to see what all the kufuffle was about, and saw a giant bipedal frog mutate charging towards him, its tongue grabbing everything in sight and sucking it into its mouth...Present day..."No, no no!!!" Peter turned tail and ran in the opposite dorection!, back towards the garden. "You really need to see the psychologist!" Peter yelled at Ashley.

IC: "He's not an illusion. You can hold him and I'll walk away, and he'll still be there. And I don't know, Dallas. Maybe my genes are even weaker than yours- I haven't met many other mutants that look like this. But trust me, he's real. And he's yours. You know I wouldn't lie about something like this."

IC: "She needs to see the psychologist?" Alec shared an incredulous double-take with Ribbit, still perched on his finger, "You're the one freaking out over folded paper." He turned back to Ribbit, "First a counsellor who can't blame the right people, now an actual nutty professor. They need to buck up the standards for hiring in this place."

IC:

"I definitely made sure something like this would never happen," Dallas said, surprisingly confident even as he stared at the baby.

-Tyler

IC:

"As much as I'd love a good fight, I'd rather avoid tangling with The Hand after seeing how they train." John said as he followed Julia. He then stopped at the edge of the next building. A massive airport was visible in the distance. Parked jets sat on the runway while a large complex was seen in the distance.

"Glad the adamantium is off my bones. That always made getting through security a ****. Not sure how I'll convince them to let my swords on the plane though. Maybe I'll have to sneak on the jet after all."

John the began to walk briskly towards the edge of the airport. He then jumped upwards and climbed over the large metal fence. Some of the barbed wire at the top scraped his thigh but John didn't care. It would heal in a few minutes.

IC:

Nicole glanced at Ashley.

"God another one of Dallas' exes. I thought I had taken out most of them." she said jokingly to Ashley.

IC: Ashley

Ashley pursed her lips. "But, you're gonna hurt Mr. Frog's feelings..." She ran up to the teacher and closed the distance between him and the paper frog. "Kissy kissy!"

John Harken- Middle of nowhere Nebraska

IC: "Alright then, we wont see a doctor. But we should at least get that head of yours bandaged up. As I said before, I have a medkit in my car. My partner can patch you up while I drive us all some where safe and explain what I can. Next to a crashed vehicle in the middle of the woods is hardly my idea of a secure location."

IC: "Well, it did. He's nearly a year old now. If it wasn't you I would have told whoever else- he's yours. Look at him," she held him out a little.Well this isn't the reaction I expected.

IC:"Well, I'm out of here. Babies hate me."

IC: As Alex said this, Triston made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a coo, and smiled widely up at Dallas.

IC PeterPeter continued to run for the garden...Only for him to hit the door jamb and collapse."... Big frog mutate... Trying to eat me... Had to kill it... you Miguel..." Peter then fell unconscious.

IC: Ashley

Ashley ran up to the teacher and knelt down. "Mr. Teacher!? Hey!? You okay!?" She shook him a bit, but he didn't move.

"OH MY GOD HE'S DEAD." She shrieked for a moment, then stopped abruptly.

"Oh wait..." She put her ears on his chest, "I can hear him breathing, never mind sorry!"

IC:

"Alex, why's it looking at me like that."

"It's deciding whether or not to kill you. I saw "Cabin in the Woods"."

"Really? Is it worth the time to watch it?"

IC:

"You know, I grow weary of saying ###### like this doesn't happen in Murmansk, but you know...###### like this just doesn't happen in Murmansk."

"###### like this happens all the time."

"How you sustain life in an environment like this is something I'll never know," Aleks muttered to Matt and Christine, taking a drink of Matt's chocolate milk shamelessly.

-Tyler

IC: Aella

I just nodded slowly. "Yeah...okay...getting the out of here sounds great..."

IC: "You seem awfully calm about this," said Brianne, a little annoyed.Of course. He won't be able to handle it so he's forcing himself not to believe it.

IC:"Not even close, unless you're looking for a popcorn flick. Now seriously," The technopath turned to make a beeline for the door. "I'm getting out of here. Baby me hated me babies hate me so much."

IC: Julia

Julia bit her tongue. Those scarred, pitted areas in-between her knuckles were itching now more than ever. Considering what lie beneath them...

"Actually, that might not be a bad idea," she decided.

IC: "Wow."Brianne could have screamed, but didn't for Triston's sake. Instead she sat down on the closest bench.Well. What now?

IC:Abruptly, Brianne's phone beeped, even as the duo was taking off rapidly.Yo. Regardless of how much snarkery occurred just now, I'll talk to him. Frankly, he's freaked, and I don't blame him. I wouldn't expect much, but I might be able to at least convince him that your kid exists. I am not, however, going near him. I wasn't kidding when I said babies hate me.

IC: She replied after a few minutes.And after I went to all the trouble of changing this number- kidding. Thank you Alex. I appreciate it. Good to see you again.OOC: I found your use of the word snarkery more amusing than it warranted.

IC: Lynae Lynae admired herself in the mirror, the black dress suiting her nicely. What bull that vampires can't be seen in mirrors. But that didn't matter, the black queen smiled and returned to her desk. Black had always suited her better anyway.

IC: As he put his suit back on in the quiet darkness of the limo, Black called Mrs. Khan again."It's done. They won't be an issue any longer, and I made sure word would spread."

IC:

One night earlier...

On his first night in the Hellfire Mansion at New York City with his sister in his arms, Alaric James Carlisle had reached out with two fingers and pantomimed plucking a star from the sky and dragging it down to earth. A year later, the star was getting heavier and heavier to pull, and he could feel it burning him alive with every tug.

He held a cigarette between two fingers, and for once the end was lit. He'd never used to smoke, but after a while the temptation, the pure desire for a vice to call his own, grew too great. On most nights, he kept the tip unlit, and his breaths were deep and clean; tonight was special, and with quivering fingers and surprisingly cheap matches he'd found it in him to light a cigarette in his cupped palms and smoke. He lifted it to his thin mouth again, took a long drag. Smoke filled his lungs; in front of him, before the stars, the smoke burned orange against the inky backdrop of midnight. It reminded him of Vegas. It cooked alive like Jeremy Wagner did, from the inside out, with no control. It scratched at his throat and pricked at his lungs, like the curious feeling of his own death. Most of all, it felt like her. The very sensation of it all felt just like her.

The burning. The smoke. The impending, cessant, eternal death. It was all so very Ashlynn.

He'd had a cup of wine, too, to ease his thoughts from the long day. Mr. Black and Mr. White were out and about, running errands. Romulus was off doing God-knows-what. Anberlyn was managing some sort of personal affair in the African subcontinent. His sweet sister. They grew more alike each day, Annie and Ric, at least personality wise; every morning when he dragged himself out of bed Alaric Carlisle either felt more vivacious and fresh than he had his entire life, or he felt defeated and dead, lost to the world, a soulless husk waiting for something insolvent to quench something unspecified inside him. The satisfied feeling came the more and more Alaric wore his ring, so eventually he had taken the advice of Warren Worthington - not his father, just Warren Worthington - and never taken it off. It had helped a bit. But on nights like tonight, what did he need? Certainly not some mystical old family ring.

Certainly not more cigarettes, or more wine. Or Ashlynn. Or Taralynn.

Taralynn. Another lost cause. He hated to give her up for dead, but there was nothing else a boy could do at a certain point - with no word from Zack Summers to clarify otherwise he was forced to work under the assumption that if she was alive, she didn't want to be found, and if she wasn't Zack was a ticking time bomb.to be dealt with at some future point. He knew, at least, that that little delinquent was still intact. Bounty huntings that had matched his old MO cropped up in the area west of Chicago starting sometime over the summer and had gradually spread west. He had people searching the Midwest now, as well as the West Coast and a couple states bordering it. One way or another, he'd find answers.

Then he'd use them against...against...who? What would he use them for, again?

Revenge, he remembered finally, the word echoing through his frayed mind in Anberlyn's coarse, dreamy tones. We'll use the answers for revenge.

Alaric Carlisle wasn't sure exactly which part scared him more: the fact that it had taken him so long to remember that, for some reason, or the fact that when he'd finally remembered what it was, he started to convince himself it was the right thing to do.

-Tyler

IC: Lynae"It's a nice night, isn't it?" A sultry voice commented, breaking the silence that Alaric had been standing in. Lynae was leaning against the balcony doorway, a suspiciously sweet smile on her slightly glossed lips. "I hope you don't mind if I come and join you?"

IC: "Just to be in touch if you need anything else done. Thank you ma'am."He hung up just as he pulled his tie tight."So, that went well," said Mr. White, running a hand through his short dark hair as the limo entered the outskirts of D.C.Black nodded wordlessly, staring at his phone. White notices."Expecting a call?" He asked, eyebrows raising behind his sunglasses."It's been a while since I spoke with Alaric.""Ah, the man with all the answers. Just keep your head down and do what you're told. He'll get to you. He doesn't forget much, that one."Black nodded again, turning the phone over and over in his black, crystalline hands.

IC:

Alaric turned, ultramarine blue eyes examining her for a second before he gestured slightly with one hand for her to step out onto the balcony; his smile was a ghost, intangible but still there in its own, alluring way. He hadn't truly smiled in weeks. The energy for it was gone.

"There's another wine glass, if you would like some," he offered casually. "I keep it handy for my sister, in the event she ever shows."

-Tyler

IC Marianne"The last one for tonight." Grasping the glass jar in her left hand, Marianne placed her right over the opening, concentrating hard. Slowly, Terrigen mist began to flow from hand into the jar, filling up the glass container. At first, the mist whisped around, like a snake lithering in mid-air. But soon, it became concentrated enough to take the appearance of murky water. At that point, Marianne lifted her hand off the jar and quickly put the lid back on. With that done, Marianne collapsed into her chair. The production of Terrigen was a strenous task, and she could only produce and control one litre at a time, adding to the difficulty. But Alaric had ordered Terrigen, and who was she to deny the Black King? Getting up, she picked up the jar, walked over to a cupboard, opened it up, and placed the jar inside, next to a dozen similar jars, all filled with the mutagen. "My quota for tonight is done," the Inhuman thought as she exited the lab.Walking through the halls of the Hellfire mansion, Marianne checked her cell phone, flipping through a to-do list. "I'm going to have to ask Borte to return the sulfur I loaned her," she mused. Heading up to the balcony, she intended to take a breath of fresh air, but upon seeing Alaric and Lynae there, she decided to let them have some time to themselves.

John Harken- Middle of nowhere Nebraska

IC: With a nod,John moved forward and helped Aella up, with one arm over his shoulder as they moved out of the forest and back to his rented car. It was a short walk, even at the pace they were going. Once there, he opened the rear right door and settled the other Mutant into the seat. Moving quickly, he opened the trunk and got out the plain white case from which he collected several vials and a roll of bandages.

It did not take long to apply the necessary medical materials and Aella soon had a large adhesive bandage on her forehead, the bleeding cleaned, stopped and a painkiller administered. Moving to the side, he let her companion see that Aella was perfectly fine.

IC: Lynae"Thank you," she replied, graciously taking the spare wine glass into her hands. She held it up, swirling the wine around in it's glass before gently placing her nose close to the rim. "Oh, a Cabernet Sauvignon! You have impeccable taste, my dear." The vampire took a gentle sip, savouring the rich flavor. "Impeccable indeed."