verynaughtymutant | Oh mother tell your children, not to do what I have done.

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Oh mother tell your children, not to do what I have done.

Cable could be called a great deal of things but he wasn't a coward. He wasn't scared of physical pain, or death, or of what people thought of him or of making the hard choices. He wasn't afraid of anything, really.

So when he opened his eyes to find that the trees and sun of Tabula Rasa had turned into stone dark tunnels and the birdsong replaced by the familiar march of pounding feat, he reacted more with annoyance then fear. This was another trick by his hosts, presumably, and he intended to treat this one just like he treated any other. He would sit patiently in a comfortable seat and wait for it to be over with as little fuss as possible. He'd long since grown tired of other people trying to make him dance on their strings and didn't like to give them the satisfaction of reacting.

It wasn't until he heard the voices that he knew that something was wrong. Around him were soldiers, which wasn't unusual and they were looking at him expectantly, which also wasn't unusual but, in this case, he recognized them. They all wore faces and voices that should have been forgotten over the years but somehow never had been.

"Dayspring," he heard himself being addressed by a name he'd long discarded and realized, vaguely, how much younger he must be, "do you think the Autosystems are still on line?"

And that was when he knew which day it was. And for the first time in a very long time, he was afraid of what came next.

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It only took a moment for Rahne to have Stryfe on the ground, her teeth sunk into his throat, and Cable felt the crushing pressure on him suddenly disappear.

He slowly rose to his feet and tried to make out what was happening in the chaos around him. It wasn't going great for the ghosts of Clan Chosen. Tetherblood was still passed out on the ground, Hope was also down and bleeding and Dawnslik was dead, if he was any judge. The problem was, even with Stryfe neutralized, the enemy still had the numerical advantage and were keeping Zell and his three bodyguards pinned down. Four of the bolder ones were even advancing, guns drawn, on where Rahne was grappling with their leader. It was clear the only reason they weren't shooting was they weren't sure Stryfe wouldn't survive this and so they wanted to be sure they wouldn't hit him.

Best not to let them get any closer then, Cable thought, as he charged forward, shooting one of them down, before throwing himself to the floor to dodge any reply. The other three should have turned their attention back to him at that point but they didn't, they kept heedlessly advancing on Rahne. Puzzled, Cable rose back to his feet to take another shot, when suddenly he felt the distinctive stab of pain of a telepathic assault. Of course. He'd forgotten about Frisco.

The real Frisco had died years ago, of course. It hadn't been a pleasant death. One would have though that would be the end of it: it was foolish to hate a dead man.

But when he looked up to see him there, mad and naked, the familiar hate over took him and for a moment he forget himself and pushed at him with all the force of his telekineses, so that he flew up into the air before landing back on the floor, bleeding but still giggling. Cable on the other hand, felt worse than ever. He'd forgotten how weak he'd been at this point, when the virus was at its strongest and he had to use most of his powers just to hold himself together.

The result was when the blow came from behind, Cable wasn't ready for it. He fell to the ground and rolled over long enough to see the face of his son and the barrel of his rifle. And then there was a shot and he saw nothing at all.

The advances hadn't gone entirely unnoticed to Rahne, but the adrenaline of a fight after so long left her unafraid of all of it, certain that once she'd taken out this bastard, she could take care of the rest of them, too. Theirs may have been the weaker force, but that didn't have to determine the outcome. She wouldn't let it.

Watching the action, aware all the while of what was happening around her, she smiled to herself as the man landed on the ground, only to have that smile instantly fade when Cable fell. She'd been wrong, she knew in that instant — not about what they had to do, because this had been their most successful attempt thus far, but about this being the one that would get them out of this trap and back to the island. Her stomach turning, she spit out blood, not her own, and shouted, "Cable!"

It was all she had time for before the world changed around them once more.

Zell and the small group of soldiers he was with had been giving ground to the advancing enemy. There were still just too many. He had seen Cable go down and knew Rahne couldn't have been doing real great either. They were directly under one of the blasted defense platforms when a few stray blasts sent the broken mechanism and a lot of debris downward.

Unlike the soldiers he was with, Zell was able to run and leap out of the way, to prevent getting crushed. However, he found himself pinned face-down under a large piece of rock. That's when he felt the barrel of the gun at his temple.

He froze, shaking in terror. It was just like it had been in the Galbadian prison! And no Squall to save him this time. The fact that time would most likely reset was no consolation whatsoever as Zell faced that moment before death. He was dead before he could shout out.

But, time did reset. Zell had a very disturbed look on his face as he flung the gun in his hands far back down the cavern. He leaned with both hands against the wall and shut his eyes tight. He told himself that no matter how real it had felt, it had NOT been real.

He reset his junctions and slammed a combat-gloved fist into the wall, and made a surprisingly large, hot, smoldering hole in the rock.

That had been hardly been the first time Cable had thought he'd died and turned out to be wrong. But he had been hoping to wake up in a different place, this time. He'd convinced himself this was a trap you could only escape by losing. Another tack, then.

""Dayspring, do you think the Autosystems are still on line?"

Cable ignored both Tetherblood and Zell and focused on Rahne. She was the one who was doing the best at keeping her head in the game.

"Too many casualties. I've created training programs like this before, we haven't just got to win but win well."

He'd created them for Rahne and the other New Mutants, as a matter of fact.

"That time we lost four or five before I died. In real life we lost one soldier and Stryfe's brain washed hostage. I would bet that we need to do this with no casualties. It's just cruel enough to be plausible."

The message was clear. They were telling him that he hadn't done a good enough job here. That he could have saved Tyler if he'd just been smart enough. Once they were out of here, he'd allow himself to get angry about that. Right now he couldn't afford to think of it.

"So this is how we do it. I'll get my men to stay behind us. Zell can clear the autosystems with his magic. Then we'll do what we did last time only, instead of hitting Stryfe, once he's distracted you grab his hostage and bring him back here. He's the big blond one who shot me last time. Then we can all bodyslide out. That work?"

As composed as she'd been before, Rahne found it far more difficult to maintain now, her hands balling into fists at her sides to keep them from shaking. What she had done had been for the greater good, but she hadn't even known she'd still had it in her, only to have those impulses come back entirely natural, not requiring any deal of thought at all. Perhaps that was the point, that she wasn't thinking. Either way, it was too reminiscent of what had happened before she arrived, her stomach turning though there was no visible aftermath.

She would keep it together anyway.

"Attack like before, but steer clear of Stryfe," she repeated, nodding once to show she understood, expression flat, emotionless. "Go for the one who killed you, but — ye want me to keep him alive?" Whatever Cable's reason for it, she was sure it had to be a good one, the use of the word hostage too deliberate for anything else. Still, she had to be sure, knowing that her own instinct would have been completely different. She exhaled heavily, maintaining eye contact. "I'd say this sounds worth a try, aye."

"Yeah, fine. I can do that. Just have your men stay back for a bit so we don't accidentally fry anyone on our side."

'We' meaning himself and Ifrit, but he didn't explain that part. Zell was pissed off at this whole experience now and was very glad to have a part where he could go destroy something without any innocents in the way. He hadn't lost his head, though. He had a plan and would prepare himself.

He stepped out in front of the entire group and cast.

"Protect!"

A fine blue line formed in front of him and rotated into a hemisphere in front of him. This would help him avoid direct hits by the platforms. He dashed forward towards his targets and let the others close in behind him.

The platforms opened fire, and he dodged as he started reaching out across to his most familiar junction. Zell and Ifrit were closely bonded, and the summoning would only take a short time. His words were drowned out by the platforms blasting at him except for the final one.

"Hellfire! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttR_peMz2D0)"

Zell disappeared and a long-horned fire spirit appeared amidst a column of flames. Ifrit rose up on a massive meteor that he pulled from the earth. With a roar, Ifrit slammed the meteor hard into the area of the platforms. The platforms were all destroyed.

Ifrit, the meteor, and flames all disappeared as Zell rematerialized.

"Oh yeah, baby! That felt good."

"Alive, yes," Cable told Rahne, in as gentle a voice as he could muster. "Stryfe deserved to die but that one is brainwashed. Which means he's not responsible for his actions. I believe I've discussed that with you, before."

Cable wasn't a sensitive man at the best of time but he could put two and two together if he put the effort into thinking about it.

"Which reminds me, Zell," he told the other man as he stood in the rubble of the autosystems. "Try and hit Frisco with a spell if you can. He's the one who's bald and naked. You take him down, you'll break the telepathic control and make Rahne's task easier."

Stryfe had always been able to shield him and his men from Cable's telepathy but he figured Zell's spell was destructive enough that they had a little while before Stryfe's men would charge forward.

"Okay, men. The Chaos Bringer is just ahead and I believe he has my son with him," he told his troops and waited for that to sink in. "Tetherblood, take those three men and stay here and guard my rear. Hope, come with me and Rahne here will bring you nephew to you. The moment you get him, you bodyslide us all out, understood?"

Dawnslik was the youngest of his men and the most eager to prove herself. That was why, when this really happened, she had got ahead of the group and got captured. He had to prevent that from happening this time.

"Dawnslik, you watch my back. I don't want Tyler coming back an orphan."

They nodded their understanding and Cable charged on quickly through the rubble.

He even shouted "I'm coming for you Stryfe!" as loud as he could on the basis that there was no need for subtlety.

And he was rewarded by the sight of familiar figures emerging from the tunnel ahead of him and he threw everything he had at them. He fired his gun and reached out with his power until Stryfe stepped in and brought him crashing down to his knees again.

Rahne, for her part, began just as she'd started before, trying not to let herself be shaken by Cable's explanation and the way it struck a chord. She wasn't one to often attribute solid reasoning to anything the island did, but just the way he said it made her think that perhaps there was some sense to her being here, some purpose that she was meant to fulfill. Of course, that she had to get there through fighting likely defeated the purpose, making it not worth dwelling on, no matter how much easier said than done.

Barely noticing but still on guard as Cable fell to his knees, she tore ahead as a wolf once more, not even bothering to try shooting. She was far more effective this way, and they'd come so close to getting it right before that she didn't want to risk having to start all over again. Between her claws and Zell's magic, she didn't foresee this much being a difficult task to follow through on, but that was assuming that everything else went according to plan.

Zell waited a bit for the right time to press forward. He wasn't going to charge forward too quickly, or he'd get neurolinked again. But, he wasn't going to hang back and be useless again, either.

As the initial barrage of blasts came, he held back and cured a couple of Cable's soldiers before dashing forward into the fray. He needed to find this Frisco guy.

Whack-bam! He sent an enemy flying.

He dodged a few blasts before charging another soldier head on. A solid punch to the gut was all he needed to down him.

The he saw a bald naked guy. He could only imagine, and hope, that there was only one bald naked guy. Zell liked fighting hand-to-hand, but.... bald naked guy?? Ewww. A spell would do fine. He was done screwing around, so he let loose a very powerful lightning spell.

"Thundaga!"

There was a brief flicker of yellow power around his target before the ground below him cracked open and he was bathed in electric radiance. The whole area was illuminated as the magical lightning crackled.

His target was neutralized. With his task completed, Zell made his way back towards the main group and concentrated on not getting himself blasted.

Cable, for his part, was still crushed down by the power of Stryfe's mind, try as he might to save himself. But, despite that, a smile appeared on his face.

And his clone, who had been taunting him in his head, noticed.

"Check mate," he thought as hard as he could and in a second Frisco fell and Tyler, suddenly a puppet without anyone holding his strings, collapsed right where Rahne was ready to grab him.

All she needed to do was get him away from Stryfe's group and Hope would bodyslide them all out.

Catching the body was no trouble at all for Rahne; only slightly more difficult was reminding herself that she was meant to be careful with him, that he wasn't a part of it, not letting her physical instincts override what she retained of her mental ones. She knew his situation, though, had been there herself, and that reminder wasn't one she could easily shake. Nearly a year had passed, but she hadn't lost sight of what she'd done, and hand in hand with it went why she'd done it in the first place. He could be helped, stopped from doing something he would regret, the chance she hadn't gotten.

Without a word, she pulled him close, pure adrenaline keeping her upright and pressing forward when they'd been through this so many times, now. Not having the luxury of time to be able to stay and fight anyone necessary, she moved as quickly as she could to the others, jaw set. They were on a short schedule, and she'd be damned if she were going to have to start all over again.

It only took a second for Rahne to get Tyler back to Hope and then they all bodyslided out of the tunnel, Stryfe raging behind them, and reappeared back in the Clan Chosen camp.

"Good job," Cable told Rahne and Zell, as he rose back to his feet, before switching languages to address the beaming soldiers around him. "Good Job."

Hope had reached forward to grab her nephew as he began to wake up and Cable took the opportunity to turn away. With any luck the loop would end before he had to speak to him.

Only he could hear Hope shouting his name and he knew that, illusion or not, he couldn't ignore his son for long.

So he turned back as Tyler got to his feet.

"Dad," he said hesitantly, "I thought you'd given up on me."

"No," Cable managed to make it sound sincere even though he knew he was lying. "No, Tyler, I never did."

And then, though he wasn't quite sure how, he was holding his son in his arms and there were tears on his cheek and how he hated, hated the fact that he had to go through this when his real son was long dead. That he couldn't afford to just ignore this illusion in case that meant the loop would repeat again.

"You're my son," he said, slipping into English without quite realizing it. "You're my son. I would never give up on you."

And then the world shifted one last time and Cable was back on the Island.

(OOC: Zell's post skipped with permission so I could do the wrap up.)

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Oh mother tell your children, not to do what I have done.

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