If Ever - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Painted Eyes
Last updated: 01/02/2007 02:01:11 AM

Chapter 2

There was one whose life's work was dying on the vine simply because a vital piece of his property was being withheld from him. He had arranged for and anticipated its return, and been thwarted, and now the broken mind and body he should have been able to sweep up easily was mending and growing ever more distant from his legitimate uses. Sharp teeth ground together momentarily as he bent over the disassembled apparatus. No one comprehended the breadth and scope of his genius, it no longer surprised him that so few had the intellect and foresight to shape the future rather than be subject to its whims.

Behind him, he felt the accusatory emptiness of his darkened laboratory, his own breathing loud in the company of silent machinery, vacant tanks that should be gestating his children. There was so much to do for which he required LeBeau's unique raw materials and he would not be gainsaid. It was not his nature to waste resources on anxiety or anger, Nathaniel Essex had long ago mastered the art of expedient solutions. A sharkish grin glinted in the darkness, almost warm. Soon, my children yet to be. Time was short and he began the last series of adjustments to the damping mechanism the X-Men had learned to counter. Perhaps it would not affect their powers any longer, but there were many things in both mutant and human psyches that could be suppressed, including humanity itself, as he had already proven. It was a pleasant logic in the continually evolving war to turn that influence to enhancing the very ignobilities these X-fools so vehemently denied they possessed. It would be a lesson they would never forget.

He would need to be close to achieve this victory.

Moments later the tesseract opened and winked Sinister and his instrument away.