X-Force: X-Force Only Comm

Just before I head off with Nico, something that came up yesterday. I got a ping on that tracking system Doug put in for the bank accounts the Mosley Initiative were using, that group that set up our fake "MP Bennett" before he kicked the bucket. I dug into things a bit overnight - looks like they're looking at property rentals. In Louisiana, not far out of New Orleans.

I don't have the time to dig further, but yeah, something to look into. I'll see what I can turn up when I'm down that way - Nico and I are visiting Tante for a few days.

Just as a general FYI, I'm back in the office. I needed a serious recharge after Wyoming, so I've been in London for the past few days. Yes, in London. No going balmy this time, I avoided the crazy-making spots.

I've written up everything I've got on what happened with Nico and her insane family curse. It's on the database in the "Weird Magical Shite" section. I'm not sure what my next move should be - from what was said, I'm considered a player in this whole business now - so I'm going to focus on Nico for the moment. She's going to need more help than I can give here, that much is obvious.

Fuck, I wish Angie were here. She's better with this magical prophecy bollocks.

We need to step up work on finding the Minorus. They came after Nico at the mall yesterday. We drove them off, but Nico overloaded herself doing it, so I've been down in the medlab helping the docs deal with her. They took off with the usual "this isn't over" threat and I am not going to sit around waiting for them to take another shot, especially when they know way too much about me and my history and my powers to be comfortable.

If you need me, I'm at the mansion, upgrading the wards and checking up on Nico.

So I've kind of taken on a project for Amara and I figured I'd let you know what I was doing and ask for help at the same time.

Since Selene's out of the picture, all of her magicks are starting to unravel. That includes the experiments she did in Nova Roma. Amara came to me with some info, mostly dreams and half-memories, about another life. I've already established Nova Roma was created by Selene about 20 years ago - it looks like the memory tampering she did is reversing itself.

Which leads me to the asking for help bit. Amara wants to know who she was before Nova Roma. I've done some preliminary research, missing persons and the like, and I've got a few possibilities, but I need to narrow things down and get as much proof as I can before I take it to Amara.

Jake, I see you've been lurking around the office. Want to help me out here?

So, fun and excitement. I certainly wasn't expecting to deal with attempted kidnapping today.

Val's safe - Manuel and I got her back to the mansion. The snatchers looked like Black Court - I recognised one of them as one of Selene's goons back when I was Black Knight. I wasn't able to inflict any damage with Val to look out for, but I got the licence plate of the car and I've passed that onto Bishop. I don't expect any actual results and it's probably in a vacant lot on fire somewhere. Still, I'll see if I can't get Adrienne to read something off it.

Manuel's decided the best thing to do is to leave Xavier's and take Val back to Spain and vanish for a while. If it is a Hellfire move, he needs to get her out of view. If it's not, then it might be an idea to up security on the mansion for a while.

Just got back after debriefing with the X geezer and all. My wards at the school got triggered today by some kid falling through the ceiling of the rec room. I got Kurt to bamf me over - turns out this kid's the daughter of some dark wizard types and wound up with some staff bonded to her. I'm going to be going through the books, seeing what I can turn up on this thing and if the kid's a long-term risk at all. The Prof did his brain thing and is satisfied she's not about to eat the kids' souls or anything, but we definitely have another magic user on the books.

And um, I might have wound up offering to work with her. Sort of keeping an eye up close and personal.

Yeah, Strange is going to laugh himself stupid.

Anyone hear from him yet?

It turned out Wanda and I had a good reason to go off after Farouk - he'd gotten himself mixed up with Ian McNee, a sort of middle-man magical wanna-be. McNee's great on theory, shoddy on practice and tends to use other people's power to boost his own and make deals. Oh, and he's cursed to always tell the truth. Somehow, he managed to get around Farouk and nearly fed him to Shagrath, some kind of extra-dimensional demon. One of those Cuthulu type jobs, this dimension can't handle the true form, needs a host, blah blah. We managed to take it down, thanks to the Paris Metro.

Now comes the part that's going to make Pete's head explode. Wanda and I are going to go around the network, see where things are recovery-wise from the Shadow King mess. The dimensional walls are still iffy, if McNee was able to raise this thing, and they need checking. But we're taking Farouk with us - it's the best way to keep him out of trouble, since he's determined to find out about the whole magic thing, and we'll be able to give him an education without risking him dropping into bad company.

I know we don't have to teach him anything, but I think it's a bad idea to let him wander off unsupervised. He can't do magic, so there's no risk there - he doesn't have what it takes. And maybe we'll bore him out of his fascination with cold hard facts. Either way, this is my call.

Got this email from Kurt. That fucking bitch of a mother of his set him up, she had to have. What contacts do we have in Mexico? I'd say we'd be looking for some kind of private clinic rather than a public hospital. The X geezer is using Cerebro to try and pinpoint him, but there's interference, of course. Probably the same reason I can't use the location spell to get anything more than a vague ping.

What the fuck? Stuck in traffic and I just heard on the news radio that India got nuked. This can't mean anything good for us over here.