Sins of the Father

Chapter 2: Family Drama at the Holidays

It was well after midnight when the scanners on the outside of the mansion recorded Kitty's handprints, and Mystique slipped into the mansion quietly, with Azazel close behind her looking smug.

"And here I was expecting more from the famed X-Men," he chuckled quietly as the two of them made their way upstairs in the darkened mansion, moving quietly and in tandem — and most importantly, away from the island where Azazel was supposed to be banished.

Of course, the mansion was far different than the last time Mystique had infiltrated it, and when the silent, secondary DNA scan didn't match the handprint that she had tried to pass off as Kitty's, it sent a silent alarm straight to Scott — with a backup alert to Noh in case Scott was out of contact for any reason. It was a good system.

The alert woke Scott, and as soon as he checked the comm, he sent another alert, this time to Logan — to let them know they had some kind of shape shifting problem. The benefits of having a Skrull hunter design their security system were starting to show through.

Still, for the time being, both Azazel and Raven thought their infiltration had gone unnoticed, as they made their way upstairs toward the bedrooms. Both of them moved silently, but with a specific purpose: Azazel planned to get rid of Wolverine, still mad at him for stopping his previous escape attempts and believing that putting him out of the way would make his plans to use Kurt to his advantage that much easier. And Raven... well, she was absolutely on board with getting rid of him.

But while Raven's knowledge of the mansion's security was extensive, she didn't know which of the rooms was Logan's, and they peered into a few empty rooms along the way until they found one that was occupied — though not by who they'd expected to find.

Kate and Kurt were sound asleep, Kate sleeping with her head on Kurt's chest and her arm over his middle, with his arm around her shoulders. Raven looked surprised to see that Kate was still alive, considering how she had come to be stranded on an island with Azazel and subsequently forced to work with him, but Azazel looked simply delighted, especially when he noticed the sparkling diamond on Kate's ring finger.

As Azazel stepped into the room, chuckling to himself at his good fortune, and closed the door behind himself and Raven, the noise woke one of the bamfs, who startled and let out a squeak, and in a second, the rest of the little guys had simply scattered, hiding under the bed or behind furniture. They knew better than to teleport — and risk giving Azazel a "path" to the other side — but they found other ways to hide, with a couple of them even going for the window or hiding in the bathroom.

Of course, since some of the bamfs had been curled up asleep on the bed with Kate and Kurt before they woke up, their scattering stirred the sleeping couple. Kate picked up her head for just a moment, and Kurt stirred to look around. His gaze fell on Raven first, and he positively stiffened, but Kate had seen Azazel by the door and let out a soft soft of gasp that, thankfully, alerted Kurt to his father's position before he would have teleported over to get in his mother's face for coming into their home.

Azazel still looked delighted as he looked over at Mystique for a moment. "And here I thought you said she was dead, my dear. You must be getting sloppy."

"This is what happens when I allow someone to live out their own little revenge tales," Raven said coldly.

"Don't just stare, boy — tell dear old Mom and Dad about the nuptials we missed," Azazel said with a toothy grin.

Kurt was glaring hard between the both of them and flat ignored the question. "How did you get off the island?" he demanded, his arm around Kate in a clearly protective gesture, though his tail was straight and still behind him.