X-FORCE ISSUE #4

" Mhmm, Good... Morning?" Noriko woke up to see that Ian had been missing from his bed, and on the nightstand to her side was a note. Noriko reached for the note and sat up in her bed.

The note read.

" Nori, I'm sorry to disappear on you. But I want you to know that everything will be okay. I got a call from Scott, late at night. Says he needs to speak to me about something going on. I'm heading to meet him in the savage lands. It'll take me a few days to reach him. The savage lands have a way of messing with people's powers, so I may be gone for a few days, at most a week. But don't worry, I promise you everything's alright. I love you, Noriko."

" Great, he just leaves me in the middle of the night and goes to play with Summers." Noriko was understandably upset by Ian leaving, but there wasn't much she could do about it. Noriko sighed and placed the note down on the bed and got up. " Guess, I'll get ready for the day alone! Oh, when I see him again, I swear I am going to fry his ass. Everything's going to be alright? Heh, we'll see. we'll see about that."

.......

The Colorado Rocky Mountains, Angel's Aerie.

" What the fuck was that, Laura? What is the matter with you? Risman took Rahne! Do you have any idea what he's going to do to her?! And did you forget to mention you had the place wired with explosives?" Ian asked the woman. " You, Logan and I, may be able to walk it off, but James and Rahne can't!" Ian was beyond angry with Laura. " You! Oooh!" Ian clenched his fists together and shook them in anger.

" My mission was not to save Wolfsbane." Laura told the man.

" What the hell does that mean?" Logan asked the girl.

" Exactly what she said. Her mission was to eliminate Matthew Risman, not perform a search and rescue. The situation with Rahne is your doing Logan." Scott told the men.

" Is that so?" Logan asked.

Logan and Ian both took offense to Scott's declaration.

" Damn right it is. If you'd let Rahne explain what she was after, you'd know how determined she was to get inside. Anything that happens to her now, is your fault." Scott exclaimed.

" Scott." Scott turned to Ian as the man called out to him and Ian lunged at him. He grabbed Scott by his arms and tossed him over the side of the house's. railing, sending him falling down the mountain cliffs.

" Slim!"

" Scott!"

Logan and James both yelled in terror, while Laura simply stared at Ian, in shock.

Then they heard it, the sound of beating wings and a moment later, Angel arrived, carrying Scott in his arms.

" Of course, he lived." Ian groaned.

" What the hell is going on?" Warren asked. " Did you throw him off the side?"

" Yeah, I told him I'd kill him if he tried talking to me like that again. Didn't I scott?" Ian asked the man. " It's our fault? It's not a priority? To hell with you. I'm getting Rahne back and I swear to god, Scott on everything, I will destroy your life." Ian told the man.

" How will you do that?" Scott asked. He wasn't shaken up any bit about being tossed like a child.

" Does Emma, know about all this?" Ian asked. " What about the others? I'm guessing none of them will be too happy about your little death squad. You cross me if you want to. I will go to everyone we know, I will go to Emma, the X-men, hell I'll even go to the avengers and every news station in New York, and I'll tell them all about X-Force. And then, at the end when everyone has turned against us, I will kill you." Ian spoke directly to Scott, getting in his face and staring him down through his vizor. " Make no mistake, I do not work for you. i am not one of your soldiers, I am not a slave you get to order around. You give us the information and we act on it; do you understand? And we will find Rahne, before anything else. She is our top priority. Do you understand that? X-23." Ian turned and faced Laura. He chose to use the name her creators gave her, instead of the one her mother had. Signifying that as of this moment, he only saw her as a weapon.

" Okay, this is all crazy. What the hell is going on? What happened to Rahne?" Warren asked. He was just as confused as anyone could be in this situation.

" Ask, Cyclops." Ian told the man. He then stormed away from the group. He had, had enough of the people around him. All he cared about now was getting Rahne back.

..........

The game had changed for Ian. The stakes were higher now than ever, but like X-Force had to up their game, the Purifiers were already getting stronger themselves.

At an unknown location, The Purifiers were currently torturing Rahne, using a combination of drugs and hypnotic subliminal messaging. Yes, Risman had an idea that would certainly shake the X-men to the core.

But not everyone shared Risman's views. No, not everyone.

Risman continued to watch as Reverend Craig disciplined and tortured his daughter. But as he did, he found himself under the scrutiny of a certain revived machine.

" Matthew Risman... What do you think you are doing?"

" Bastion..." Risman replied.

Yes, the Purifiers had managed to find and revive the original Bastion.

" Reverend Stryker left specific instructions for Rahne Sinclair." Risman was explaining.

" Kill the mutant." Bastion ordered.

" What? I can't." Risman replied. " Please let me explain. There is a plan."

" No. We have analyzed your plan. It has a ninety-nine-point four percent chance of failing. Its failure has already begun." bastion explained to the man. " The X-men have sent their best trackers and killers after you, Risman. Wolverine, Warpath, Onslaught, and X-23/ They are raiding your purifier bases as we speak. They will kill and torture every single purifier they find until they recover their teammate. And eventually Risman, they will kill you."

.......

Tulsa Oklahoma.

" Let me explain something to you. Did you know that the brain receives this electrical impulse from the body, telling it to feel pain? In a more surgical sense, it is an energy that fuels the sensory nerve fibers in your body. See these fibers transmit this pain signal from the periphery to the brain. Where the sense of pain is ultimately received." Ian explained to a purifier he had captured.

" Go to hell, Mutant freak!" The man cursed Ian and then spit on him.

" See, I found out that I can control those nerve fibers and the energy they send out." Ian continued explaining. He grabbed a knife from his belt and raised to the man's face. " So, I can make something like this..." He placed the knife on the man's arm and slowly began to drag it down his arm, but without actually cutting him.

" AGHHHHHH!" The Purifier started screaming, hollering, tossing in pain as the knife slowly made its way down his skin.

" Feel like a thousand knives digging into your skin." Ian pulled back and looked at the man. " Now, you're gonna tell me where Risman is holding Rahne Sinclair. And I'll let you go. But if you don't, I'm gonna start cutting for real." After a few moments of hearing nothing, Ian exploded. " I wasn't kidding. I wasn't kidding!" Ian jammed the knife into the man's hand and then grabbed him by his face and started using his energy to burn the man's flesh. " YOU WILL TELL ME! OR I WILL BURN YOU TO ASHES!" Ian's energy burned the man's flesh.

He started writhing and convulsing in the chair that was holding him down.

Warpath, while wanting to find Rahne as well, felt unease at the sight and smell of the burning flesh.

" Is he really gonna do it?" Warpath asked Laura.

" Yes. He is." She replied.

Warpath looked back to Ian and his face fell back into place.

After a few moments, Ian stopped burning the man, and the purifier's sobs began to quiet.

He was a bloody mess, the flames from Ian's hands had burned the flesh off of the side of the man's head. his ears had been burned black and the side of his cheek had been charred.

" WHERE IS HE?!" Ian yelled.

" East of Missoula.... Montana." The man cried. " On old Apache land."

" I know where it is." Warpath spoke up.

Ian looked back at Warpath for confirmation and when the man nodded, he placed his hand on the purifiers mouth and sent a torrent of burning hot fire into his mouth, cooking the man on the inside and killing him slowly and violently. Once he was done, Ian got up and turned." Let's go."

........