X-Men Issue #8

Ian woke up early in the morning, in bed. After spending all night, the night before and the night before that working on his project, he had wanted to sleep in his bed, and Noriko had as well.

But when duty calls, Ian had to answer.

A knock came at Ian and Noriko's door, waking the two of them from their slumber.

" Oh, great. I finally get some time with my boyfriend after days, and now some one's knocking at our door. That doesn't sound good." Noriko groaned. She sat up in bed and used the bed sheets to cover herself.

Ian groaned himself, doing the same as Noriko, before getting out of bed to get dressed. " Let me see who it is, first." Ian walked over to the door, still feeling very sleepy, and opened it just enough to see who it was.

Standing on the other side was Logan, standing there with his arms crossed and gruff expression on his face.

" What is it, Logan?"

" Come on, kid. We some business to take care of." Logan told Ian.

" Logan, I've only been back for a few days. What happened to taking time off?" Ian asked the man.

" Sorry, kid. This is more important." Logan told the man. He then leaned in close and whispered. " Bishop's back in the present. That means something's going on with Cable and the baby."

Ian looked at Logan and groaned. " Okay, give me a minute."

" Right."

Ian closed the door and sighed.

Noriko knew that noise, it was the sound of frustration and it meant that Ian had to tell her something she wasn't gonna like.

" You have to go?"

Ian looked at Noriko and nodded. " Yeah. I gotta go."

" Be careful, I guess." Noriko rolled back over and laid down.

Ian felt bad. He knew she had waited patiently for Ian to come home, and when he did, he hardly spent any time with her.

" Hey, I'm sorry Nori. I promise, I'll make it up to you soon." Ian leaned over and kissed Noriko on the side of her head, before going over to his closet to grab his gear.

............

X-Force were to respond to Scott's summons. Their mission was simple. Get to the Military base in Missoula, Montana, an old nuclear site used to test military weapons, and apprehend the recently returned Bishop.

An easy mission, since Bishop hadn't even bothered to try and conceal himself.

As Bishop stood there, staring at the warning poster of the old base, X-Force snuck up behind him.

" Psssst." Logan muttered. Bishop turned his head and saw the four of them, Logan, James, Laura, and Ian standing right behind him. " Lookin for something?"

" We don't have to do this, Logan. I don't have beef with you." Bishop told Logan.

" Good. So, you won't take this personal."

" Goodbye." Bishop tried to jump back into the timestream.

" Oh no you don't." Logan lunged at Bishop and cut him across his cybernetic arm, disabling his ability to enter the time stream.

Bishop returned fire, by blasting Logan in his face with the kinetic energy he received from Logan's attack.

" Son of a bitch." Logan cursed.

Ian, Laura, and James grabbed Bishop and pinned him to the ground, while Logan healed.

" Were it up to me, Lucas, I'd gut you right now and stuff that metal arm up somewhere nice and cozy. But Scott wants you brought back alive."

" So, let's get to it then traitor. And don't even think about using your power. Or you'll feel what it's like when all that power has nowhere to go." Ian told Bishop.

Bishop was not happy, but not much could be done. Not with this one.

" Should have snapped your little neck when I had the chance." Bishop muttered.

" Yeah." Ian punched, Bishop in the side of his head knocking him out.

..................

The flight back to Graymalkin was a quiet one. Once there, Scott had Ian and Logan bring, Bishop down to the lower levels of the building, where he had prepared a special cell just for Bishop. Once he was settled in, Scott ordered Logan and the rest of X-Force to stay on call while he interrogated Bishop.

And when the time came, after hours of long and hard interrogation methods, Scott finally came back to the team with news of a total of six weapons on mass destruction. Six weapons that used together would destroy nearly every major continent in the world.

So, X-Force was tasked with finding the weapons first and destroying them.

First up was in Death Valley, California.

" You know, there's probably a reason Bishop wanted us a few hours from home." Logan told Scott.

" Fully aware of that, Logan. But we're not exactly defenseless here." Scott told the man.

" Just sayin." Logan replied. " All right, everyone, stay back. If this is a trap, I'm the best one to find out." Logan stated.

He grabbed the small laptop that Bishop had left behind and opened it.

..........

Back at Gray Malkin.

" I counted, five Bishop. What's the sixth?" Scott asked Bishop.

" Sixth, what?"

" I thought we were past all these games?"

" Nothing you can do about it, anyway." Bishop told scott.

Scott blasted Bishop in his injured arm, knocking him off of his feet.

" The sixth weapon, the one you planted in North America. This is your last chance." Scott told the man.

" You'll know in about thirty seconds."

At the same time, the message that appeared when Logan opened the laptop started playing.

" My beloved X-men. There is one thing you have to know above all else, I didn't betray you. I'm doing this because I love you. All of you."

An explosion suddenly went off in Beast's lab.

Bishop's arm had exploded and from within a noxious gas.

" You have to trust that I would never do anything to hurt you. The sixth weapon is a nanite virus I concealed in a compartment on my arm. It was triggered when my Death Valley package was opened. When it is over the nanobots will dissolve into nothing, and your systems and biological functions will return to normal. I came back to try to explain. But you've also got something I need right here in X-men headquarters. Namely the seventh weapon."

" SHIT!" Logan cursed. He and X-Force turned around and started rushing back to GrayMalkin as fast as they could, but they were hours away. And most likely, they would not make it.

Bishop freed himself from his prison, as Scott and Many of the other X-Men passed out from the nanites passing into their bodies.

He left the interrogation room, and the first thing he did was head straight to retrieve his arm. He picked it up off the table and started the process to reattach it.

" I know you can hear me, Bishop. I knew what you were going to do about two seconds before it happened. I know what you're trying to do now. And... Tss. Tsk. I wouldn't put those two together." Emma telepathically spoke to the man. " Ah. I thought I heard you in here."

Emma walked into Hank's lab, as Bishop was putting his arm together.

Bishop turned around and fired at Emma, but the bullets bounced off of her diamond skin.

" Nanites can be good at disrupting machinery and human nervous systems, Lucas. But they don't do a thing to diamonds." Emma grabbed Bishop's arm. " Now, can we have a conversation like rational adults, Lucas?"

" Oh, really Emma? Now you want to be... Rational?" Bishop turned around and blasted Emma in her face with a wave of kinetic energy.

The moment, Bishop's attack hit Emma, her diamond form dropped, and Bishop activated a switch that wrapped multiple wires around the woman's throat.

" Let's see how you like grasping for air."

" You've severed a vital artery. You attached the wrong wire, and your arm is going to explode in two seconds. These tendrils are wrapped around your neck. You're already dead but you are too stubborn to know it. There's blood gushing down your body." Emma started using her powers to try and convince Bishop that there was something wrong with him.

" I know what you are trying to do. Shut up!" Bishop told the woman.

" The arm is out of power. Ian's right behind you."

" Shut up and get out of my head!" Bishop told the woman.

" No... Really. Ian's behind you."

A strong hand grabbed Bishop's shoulder and slung him hard into a nearby wall.

" Enough!" Ian shouted. He rushed Bishop before he could get back up and pummeled him, slamming his fists into his face over and over again. " Did you really think, we would simply leave our home undefended? I warned you what would happen if you acted out of line."

Bishop raised his hands and tried firing a blast of kinetic energy at Ian.

Ian caught the blast and drove the exploding energy back into Bishop's face.

The blast gave Bishop the separation he needed. He pressed his time shifter and started slipping into a different time stream.

" No, you don't." Ian shouted. He fired a blast of energy at Bishop hitting him in his chest just before he vanished from the timeline. " Damnit!"

.............

Earlier that year, in what would eventually be the X-men's new headquarters.

" Damn.... He... He got me." Bishop clutched his bleeding chest and then passed out onto the floor, bleeding.

..........

Back in the present.

" Are you alright, Emma?" Ian asked the woman as he helped her to her feet.

" I'm fine. Thank you darling. You have very strong hands. Strong and warm."

" I get that a lot." Ian chuckled.

" Kid! Emma! Did you get him?!" Logan asked.

He and X-Force came running into the base. But they were too late.

" No, we didn't get him." Emma told the man. " But I know where he's going."

" You do? Where?" Logan asked the woman.

" Westchester, just a couple thousand years in the future. and when Hank finishes shaking off the cobwebs, I'm sure he'll get right to getting us a way to go after him." Emma explained.

...