Ezekiel walked over to the tiki bar and pulled out a washcloth and a bottle of water. He walked back over to Logan and set the bottle and washcloth on the table next to Logan as he sat down on one of the chairs next to him. He left Logan's eye hanging out of the socket because he wanted to see if it would heal by itself or would need to be put back in place to heal properly.
A portal opened up a few minutes later as Steve walked through it and looked over at Ezekiel and Logan. His eyes widened slightly as he took in Logan's state and asked, "I know you said he can heal from anything. I remember him getting badly hurt a few times and healing quickly from it, but he looks dead. Are you sure he is gonna come back from that?"
Ezekiel nodded his head as he pointed to the metal tray and said, "I could see the bone regrowing in his skull about ten minutes ago, he should be up soon enough. Apparently the man who shot him unloaded the gun into his head."
Steve walked closer and sat down on the chair next to Ezekiel before he said, "I guess we wait then."
Ezekiel nodded and started to talk with Steve while they watched Logan for any change. It took another twenty minutes before Logan took in a deep gasping breath, his claws slowly retracted and after a minute he slowly sat up as he looked towards Steve and Ezekiel. He reached up to his right eye and pushed it back into his eye socket as he said, "Who the hell are both of you?"
Ezekiel frowned a little and asked, "What is the last thing you remember, Logan?"
"Logan? Is that my name? I don't remember anything."
Ezekiel looked down for a few moments before he looked remorseful at Logan and said, "I am sorry Logan, it looks like when the bullets were removed they ruined your already messed up memories. It was a possibility, but I thought it would only make you lose a handful of memories, not everything you had."
Logan chuckled a little and said, "Actually Ezekiel, the last thing I remember is that guy saying I had five bullets in my skull."
Ezekiel let out a breath and smiled lightly as he said, "While I appreciate a good joke, maybe not right after we did brain surgery on you."
Logan looked at the metal tin with the bullets and bone fragments in it before he looked at the water bottle and washcloth next to it. As Ezekiel said, "Those are so you can clean up, you have blood on your face, chin and chest."
Logan looked down and saw the blood on his chest and shirt, he reached over to the bottle. As he opened the bottle, poured some water on the washcloth and then proceeded to wipe down his face with it, he said, "That is what you call surgery? I would hate to see what you call first aid."
Steve chuckled at that and said, "It's good to see your humor hasn't changed much, James."
Logan finished wiping his face down and as he set the now bloody washcloth down he said, "I am actually surprised to see you alive Cap. Alive and you look like you haven’t aged a day."
Both Ezekiel and Steve looked at Logan in shock before Steve asked, "You remember me?"
Logan shook his head and said, "Not one bit, but after Ezekiel said my full name. Hank helped me look into it and found out about my military service. Then he found a bunch of pictures of me and you together with some other soldiers. I was hoping to chat with one or two of them, but when we looked all of them up, they were already dead."
Steve shook his head and said, "Not everyone is dead, you can talk to me and Peggy for now. Bucky is still..."
"Steve!" Ezekiel said with a frown. Ezekiel let out a sigh and said, "Sorry, but you need to remember he is not part of our group yet. The only reason he is meeting you is because we have this island. Otherwise you wouldn't meet unless he joins us or you become public knowledge."
Logan raised an eyebrow at that, before he said, "He's right, unless I join you, keep your secrets."
Ezekiel looked over at Logan and said, "Speaking of secrets, I would appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone who you met today. Xavier will probably help you with your newly healed mind, let him know to not say anything also."
Logan nodded his head before he said, "I understand and also thank the guy who pulled those bullets out of my head."
Ezekiel nodded in reply before he stood up and said, "Now I will leave you both alone to talk." He looked back at Steve as a portal opened and as he walked through it he said, "Ask Master Kaecilius to send him back when you guys are done, I will be busy."
Before Steve could reply, the portal closed behind him and Logan asked, "Does he do that often?"
Steve shook his head and said, "No he just started to do that because of someone else we know."
-------------------------------------------------------
Ezekiel waited a moment as Tao stepped out of a portal next to him before he started to walk towards the door. He opened it up and held it open for Tao before they started walking towards Ezekiel's 'learning center', it was the room Ezekiel was using for all of his clones. But it also acted as the school room for the kids and also for the adults who were learning magic. Tao spoke first and asked, “So do you think that they will join us?”
“I am not completely sure, Magneto and his people would be the ones I am most worried about. But the others will probably join us.”
Tao glanced at Ezekiel as they walked and asked, "So if Magneto and his Brotherhood don't join, what do you plan to do?"
"Nothing as long as they don't fight against us. But I will remove them if they become an enemy."
Tao turned to look at Ezekiel and asked, "What about the opinions of me and the others, what if we didn't want to harm them?"
Ezekiel slowed his pace a little as he looked back at Tao and asked in return, "Even if they became our enemy and fought against us at every turn?"
"Yes."
Ezekiel smiled and said, "I would say you are weak minded, but if you gave me a better solution to deal with the problem I would use it. If that still doesn’t work, I will handle it my way.”
“Mmmm, From what you told me about yourself, I wouldn’t expect you to be so straightforward with your use of violence.”
Ezekiel nodded slightly as he said, “The old me? He wouldn’t have even thought about the use of force. But I know the type of universe I am living in and how bad it can be. I plan to survive, to thrive in this new life and I won’t let anyone stand in my way.”
“Talking like that makes me question if I should be working with you or trying to stop you.”
Ezekiel laughed as he said, “I think as long as I have people like you and Steve around me to temper me, I won’t turn into a villain. My main purpose is to help people, but I am not naive enough to think I can do it without hurting people.” Nothing else was said as they walked to the learning center. When they arrived, Ezekiel went to an empty computer and began to work on his coding project, while most of his other clones were reading college textbooks and a few others were doing experiments in the lab area.
Tao walked to the room next door, inside was everyone who was learning the mystic arts. She smiled a little as she saw her newest and brightest pupil Ava studying. Out of everyone, Ava was the quickest learner and just understood magic almost like it was instinct. Maybe it was because of her accident or maybe she was just gifted towards the mystic arts like Strange was. She looked at the other people in the room and her eyes rested on Phil, the man was also gifted, not like Ava. But he was well ahead of the others, it was a pity he was busy with his work and couldn’t devote himself to studying more.
She stepped into the room and said, “I am glad everyone is here, it looks like we can start on today's lesson. Ava and Phil, you can continue with your studies for now since you have already completed this. I will work with you both later, going over the next part.”
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“I am sorry professor, any more power and it could damage cerebro.” Hank let out a sigh as he adjusted the power back down to safe levels and then looked back at Xavier.
Xavier smiled slightly as he said, “It’s fine Hank, I was just hoping we might have been able to track Logan. We still know next to nothing about Ezekiel and it’s bugging me. Every time it's just another dead end, it's like he is a ghost."
"He is not a ghost, he is just extremely skilled with covering his tracks."
Hank walked over to Xavier and started to push him in his wheelchair out of the room as he asked, "Have you figured out what you plan to do?"
"I think I will take whatever offer he gives me, after going over everything with Raven for the past few weeks… I… I see no other choice than to join him. From what we have seen him do so far, maybe he really can see the future. If even one of those is our real future, I will do anything to stop it from happening.”
Hank reached over and patted Xavier's shoulder and said, “We are all behind you professor, we will trust whatever decision you make.”
Xavier reached up and rubbed Hank's hand on his shoulder and said, “Thank you, Hank. I just wish Erik felt the same way.”
Hank shook his head and said, “He has always been stubborn and Ezekiel made him look like a fool in their first meeting. Hopefully he will give Ezekiel a chance.”
“At least Erik respects strong people and even though we know next to nothing about him. He doesn’t seem weak at all.”
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Theo was sitting on the floor with his dad next to him, his mother was across from them with Milly. They both had a color board in front of them, Theo’s was red and Milly’s was blue. Each had little plastic pieces with pictures of cartoon people on it. Milly was looking at her board, while she had her tongue slightly sticking out of her mouth. After a few moments she asked, “Do they have glasses, Te-o?”
“No.”
Milly looked at her mom and smiled, before she started to flip down every person who was wearing glasses. Then she looked up at Theo who was looking at his board again, before he asked, “Does your person have red hair?”
Milly looked at her card then looked at her mom who nodded her head. Milly looked back at Theo and said, “Yes.”
Theo flipped down most of his pieces and was left with three people on his board. He looked at Milly who frowned a little before she turned to her mom with her puppy dog eyes. Her mom smiled and pointed to one of the people and whispered something into Milly’s ear. Milly looked at the person she was pointing at and started to nod her head a few times, before she smiled and asked, “Does your person have blue eyes, Te-o?”
“Yes.”
Milly smiled and knocked down all but two pieces. Then she looked at Theo who was looking at his board again. Theo looked up and watched Milly as he said, “Looks like you could win if I pick wrong. I wonder who it could be, Frans, Alfred or Bill.” As he talked he watched Milly make a face when he said Alfred. Ezekiel laughed as he said, “You are Frans!”
Milly stuck out her tongue and said, “Milly is not Frans.” She laughed as Ezekiel flipped down one of his pieces before she looked at her mom again. Her mom smiled and pointed to another piece and whispered something in Milly’s ear again. Milly nodded before she turned to look at Ezekiel and said, “You are Peter!”
“You win again Milly.” Ezekiel picked up his card and showed it to Milly and his mom before he set it back into the deck of cards. Milly started to do this weird little wiggle dance as she sat on the floor and said, “Milly won again! Milly is the best at board games!”
Ezekiel then looked up at his father as Milly was celebrating with her mother and asked, “Can we play Uno now?”
His father looked at his mother, who nodded her head and said, “Sure, but you and Milly are a team because she still doesn’t understand it correctly.”
Ezekiel smiled at his mom as he said, “Giving me a handicap? That’s fine, we will still win.”
Milly nodded her head and said, “Te-o and Milly will win.”
Milly was picked up by her mother as she said, “We will see what happens. You can’t always be lucky and win every game you play Milly.” She looked at her husband and Theo and said, “Since Milly was the winner, she is gonna help me in the kitchen and pick out our snacks.”
“Milly wants Cookies!”
As Theo’s mother carried Milly into the kitchen, his dad patted his shoulder and asked, “You totally let her win, she has no poker face at all.”
Theo smiled and looked up at his dad as he said, “It’s just a game and she gets really happy anytime she wins.”
“But you let her win every game you guys played today.”
Ezekiel was packing up the current game as he said, “For now, once she is older I won’t go so easy on her. I will only let her win sixty percent of the games.”
Theo’s dad shook his head as he rubbed Theo’s hair and said, “You spoil her too much, you know that right?”
“Yeah, but seeing her happy makes me happy. Plus isn’t that what older brothers are supposed to do, make sure their little sisters are happy?”
Ezekiel walked over to the tiki bar and pulled out a washcloth and a bottle of water. He walked back over to Logan and set the bottle and washcloth on the table next to Logan as he sat down on one of the chairs next to him. He left Logan's eye hanging out of the socket because he wanted to see if it would heal by itself or would need to be put back in place to heal properly.
A portal opened up a few minutes later as Steve walked through it and looked over at Ezekiel and Logan. His eyes widened slightly as he took in Logan's state and asked, "I know you said he can heal from anything. I remember him getting badly hurt a few times and healing quickly from it, but he looks dead. Are you sure he is gonna come back from that?"
Ezekiel nodded his head as he pointed to the metal tray and said, "I could see the bone regrowing in his skull about ten minutes ago, he should be up soon enough. Apparently the man who shot him unloaded the gun into his head."
Steve walked closer and sat down on the chair next to Ezekiel before he said, "I guess we wait then."
Ezekiel nodded and started to talk with Steve while they watched Logan for any change. It took another twenty minutes before Logan took in a deep gasping breath, his claws slowly retracted and after a minute he slowly sat up as he looked towards Steve and Ezekiel. He reached up to his right eye and pushed it back into his eye socket as he said, "Who the hell are both of you?"
Ezekiel frowned a little and asked, "What is the last thing you remember, Logan?"
"Logan? Is that my name? I don't remember anything."
Ezekiel looked down for a few moments before he looked remorseful at Logan and said, "I am sorry Logan, it looks like when the bullets were removed they ruined your already messed up memories. It was a possibility, but I thought it would only make you lose a handful of memories, not everything you had."
Logan chuckled a little and said, "Actually Ezekiel, the last thing I remember is that guy saying I had five bullets in my skull."
Ezekiel let out a breath and smiled lightly as he said, "While I appreciate a good joke, maybe not right after we did brain surgery on you."
Logan looked at the metal tin with the bullets and bone fragments in it before he looked at the water bottle and washcloth next to it. As Ezekiel said, "Those are so you can clean up, you have blood on your face, chin and chest."
Logan looked down and saw the blood on his chest and shirt, he reached over to the bottle. As he opened the bottle, poured some water on the washcloth and then proceeded to wipe down his face with it, he said, "That is what you call surgery? I would hate to see what you call first aid."
Steve chuckled at that and said, "It's good to see your humor hasn't changed much, James."
Logan finished wiping his face down and as he set the now bloody washcloth down he said, "I am actually surprised to see you alive Cap. Alive and you look like you haven’t aged a day."
Both Ezekiel and Steve looked at Logan in shock before Steve asked, "You remember me?"
Logan shook his head and said, "Not one bit, but after Ezekiel said my full name. Hank helped me look into it and found out about my military service. Then he found a bunch of pictures of me and you together with some other soldiers. I was hoping to chat with one or two of them, but when we looked all of them up, they were already dead."
Steve shook his head and said, "Not everyone is dead, you can talk to me and Peggy for now. Bucky is still..."
"Steve!" Ezekiel said with a frown. Ezekiel let out a sigh and said, "Sorry, but you need to remember he is not part of our group yet. The only reason he is meeting you is because we have this island. Otherwise you wouldn't meet unless he joins us or you become public knowledge."
Logan raised an eyebrow at that, before he said, "He's right, unless I join you, keep your secrets."
Ezekiel looked over at Logan and said, "Speaking of secrets, I would appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone who you met today. Xavier will probably help you with your newly healed mind, let him know to not say anything also."
Logan nodded his head before he said, "I understand and also thank the guy who pulled those bullets out of my head."
Ezekiel nodded in reply before he stood up and said, "Now I will leave you both alone to talk." He looked back at Steve as a portal opened and as he walked through it he said, "Ask Master Kaecilius to send him back when you guys are done, I will be busy."
Before Steve could reply, the portal closed behind him and Logan asked, "Does he do that often?"
Steve shook his head and said, "No he just started to do that because of someone else we know."
-------------------------------------------------------
Ezekiel waited a moment as Tao stepped out of a portal next to him before he started to walk towards the door. He opened it up and held it open for Tao before they started walking towards Ezekiel's 'learning center', it was the room Ezekiel was using for all of his clones. But it also acted as the school room for the kids and also for the adults who were learning magic. Tao spoke first and asked, “So do you think that they will join us?”
“I am not completely sure, Magneto and his people would be the ones I am most worried about. But the others will probably join us.”
Tao glanced at Ezekiel as they walked and asked, "So if Magneto and his Brotherhood don't join, what do you plan to do?"
"Nothing as long as they don't fight against us. But I will remove them if they become an enemy."
Tao turned to look at Ezekiel and asked, "What about the opinions of me and the others, what if we didn't want to harm them?"
Ezekiel slowed his pace a little as he looked back at Tao and asked in return, "Even if they became our enemy and fought against us at every turn?"
"Yes."
Ezekiel smiled and said, "I would say you are weak minded, but if you gave me a better solution to deal with the problem I would use it. If that still doesn’t work, I will handle it my way.”
“Mmmm, From what you told me about yourself, I wouldn’t expect you to be so straightforward with your use of violence.”
Ezekiel nodded slightly as he said, “The old me? He wouldn’t have even thought about the use of force. But I know the type of universe I am living in and how bad it can be. I plan to survive, to thrive in this new life and I won’t let anyone stand in my way.”
“Talking like that makes me question if I should be working with you or trying to stop you.”
Ezekiel laughed as he said, “I think as long as I have people like you and Steve around me to temper me, I won’t turn into a villain. My main purpose is to help people, but I am not naive enough to think I can do it without hurting people.” Nothing else was said as they walked to the learning center. When they arrived, Ezekiel went to an empty computer and began to work on his coding project, while most of his other clones were reading college textbooks and a few others were doing experiments in the lab area.
Tao walked to the room next door, inside was everyone who was learning the mystic arts. She smiled a little as she saw her newest and brightest pupil Ava studying. Out of everyone, Ava was the quickest learner and just understood magic almost like it was instinct. Maybe it was because of her accident or maybe she was just gifted towards the mystic arts like Strange was. She looked at the other people in the room and her eyes rested on Phil, the man was also gifted, not like Ava. But he was well ahead of the others, it was a pity he was busy with his work and couldn’t devote himself to studying more.
She stepped into the room and said, “I am glad everyone is here, it looks like we can start on today's lesson. Ava and Phil, you can continue with your studies for now since you have already completed this. I will work with you both later, going over the next part.”
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“I am sorry professor, any more power and it could damage cerebro.” Hank let out a sigh as he adjusted the power back down to safe levels and then looked back at Xavier.
Xavier smiled slightly as he said, “It’s fine Hank, I was just hoping we might have been able to track Logan. We still know next to nothing about Ezekiel and it’s bugging me. Every time it's just another dead end, it's like he is a ghost."
"He is not a ghost, he is just extremely skilled with covering his tracks."
Hank walked over to Xavier and started to push him in his wheelchair out of the room as he asked, "Have you figured out what you plan to do?"
"I think I will take whatever offer he gives me, after going over everything with Raven for the past few weeks… I… I see no other choice than to join him. From what we have seen him do so far, maybe he really can see the future. If even one of those is our real future, I will do anything to stop it from happening.”
Hank reached over and patted Xavier's shoulder and said, “We are all behind you professor, we will trust whatever decision you make.”
Xavier reached up and rubbed Hank's hand on his shoulder and said, “Thank you, Hank. I just wish Erik felt the same way.”
Hank shook his head and said, “He has always been stubborn and Ezekiel made him look like a fool in their first meeting. Hopefully he will give Ezekiel a chance.”
“At least Erik respects strong people and even though we know next to nothing about him. He doesn’t seem weak at all.”
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Theo was sitting on the floor with his dad next to him, his mother was across from them with Milly. They both had a color board in front of them, Theo’s was red and Milly’s was blue. Each had little plastic pieces with pictures of cartoon people on it. Milly was looking at her board, while she had her tongue slightly sticking out of her mouth. After a few moments she asked, “Do they have glasses, Te-o?”
“No.”
Milly looked at her mom and smiled, before she started to flip down every person who was wearing glasses. Then she looked up at Theo who was looking at his board again, before he asked, “Does your person have red hair?”
Milly looked at her card then looked at her mom who nodded her head. Milly looked back at Theo and said, “Yes.”
Theo flipped down most of his pieces and was left with three people on his board. He looked at Milly who frowned a little before she turned to her mom with her puppy dog eyes. Her mom smiled and pointed to one of the people and whispered something into Milly’s ear. Milly looked at the person she was pointing at and started to nod her head a few times, before she smiled and asked, “Does your person have blue eyes, Te-o?”
“Yes.”
Milly smiled and knocked down all but two pieces. Then she looked at Theo who was looking at his board again. Theo looked up and watched Milly as he said, “Looks like you could win if I pick wrong. I wonder who it could be, Frans, Alfred or Bill.” As he talked he watched Milly make a face when he said Alfred. Ezekiel laughed as he said, “You are Frans!”
Milly stuck out her tongue and said, “Milly is not Frans.” She laughed as Ezekiel flipped down one of his pieces before she looked at her mom again. Her mom smiled and pointed to another piece and whispered something in Milly’s ear again. Milly nodded before she turned to look at Ezekiel and said, “You are Peter!”
“You win again Milly.” Ezekiel picked up his card and showed it to Milly and his mom before he set it back into the deck of cards. Milly started to do this weird little wiggle dance as she sat on the floor and said, “Milly won again! Milly is the best at board games!”
Ezekiel then looked up at his father as Milly was celebrating with her mother and asked, “Can we play Uno now?”
His father looked at his mother, who nodded her head and said, “Sure, but you and Milly are a team because she still doesn’t understand it correctly.”
Ezekiel smiled at his mom as he said, “Giving me a handicap? That’s fine, we will still win.”
Milly nodded her head and said, “Te-o and Milly will win.”
Milly was picked up by her mother as she said, “We will see what happens. You can’t always be lucky and win every game you play Milly.” She looked at her husband and Theo and said, “Since Milly was the winner, she is gonna help me in the kitchen and pick out our snacks.”
“Milly wants Cookies!”
As Theo’s mother carried Milly into the kitchen, his dad patted his shoulder and asked, “You totally let her win, she has no poker face at all.”
Theo smiled and looked up at his dad as he said, “It’s just a game and she gets really happy anytime she wins.”
“But you let her win every game you guys played today.”
Ezekiel was packing up the current game as he said, “For now, once she is older I won’t go so easy on her. I will only let her win sixty percent of the games.”
Theo’s dad shook his head as he rubbed Theo’s hair and said, “You spoil her too much, you know that right?”
“Yeah, but seeing her happy makes me happy. Plus isn’t that what older brothers are supposed to do, make sure their little sisters are happy?”
