Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?: Parts 1 & 2
by Persephone
Disclaimer: Most of the characters belong to Marvel Comics, but these versions have been somewhat modified. The Shadowlands universe is Alicia's variant. For that matter, the more specific setting is from her story "Oasis," and the Cable, Domino, and Franklin are the ones that appear there. Not only do I have Alicia's permission to write this, she helped me. :) Other variants, I believe, are ones I introduced. Amy is an original. Hatshupet, has been graciously lent to me by her creator, Redhawk.
Times and universes flickered madly and slid recklessly into one another along knife-ripped seams all around, but within Franklin's sphere of influence was an island of relative peace, or at least stability.
They called it the oasis.
A lone figure walked quietly out of the chaos, striding within it as if unconcerned by the shifts -- but faltering a little and pausing to look around in ever-so-faintly-surprised relief as he entered the zone of safety. After that first moment, he continued, glancing about him curiously enough it was clear he was a newcomer, but without the level of incredulous anxiety that was the norm.
Few really gave him a second look, almost no one a third. More outlandish folk to look at were available in plenty. He was of little more than medium height, though he stood proudly enough most people thought at first he was tall. The hood he pulled up over long, windblown black hair sheltered gray skin with a blue tinge, and blue eyes and lips, and odd blue marks around his mouth.
Few gave him a second look, at least, until after he observed and followed a straggling lot of people into one of the common buildings, and Cable saw him.
Cable found him a puzzle. All he could see at first was a hood-shadowed face, and a few escaping locks of hair, and skin a little lighter than the desert robes the man wore usually covered. If they'd been long enough in the appropriate climate to fade the cloth, most people at least got a tan. Then again, he hadn't necessarily been the one to wear it to fading.
None of that was really what bothered Nathan, though. There was a weird feeling he got every time he looked at the stranger. As if the stranger shouldn't BE a stranger. As if there were some blatantly, blindingly obvious familiarity he ought to be picking up on. It was a suspicious feeling, with a suspicious resemblance to the suspicions of the shifts that kept being dismissed as paranoia.
Sure, parts of them probably were paranoia, given the tendency he had to accumulate deranging chronal energy whenever he went out anywhere, but he still didn't think that was all of it.
Actually, maybe there wasn't really anything alarming about the newcomer. Maybe he was just fresh from the shifts and trailing bad energy or bad air or something. It was almost a comforting thought.
Cable still felt he should recognize the man. Didn't look like he ought to be one of the Twelve, certainly -- though it'd be nice to have one just amble in peaceably like that, maybe, instead of getting dragged or driven, raving and kicking and screaming.
He mulled this over for a while, fiddling with different possibilities while he chewed one bite of his food for two minutes without making much headway.
Some exceedingly foolhardy mid-level chronovariant who reminded him for no readily apparent reason of the Askani had traipsed out into the shifts to go hunting. To his great surprise, she had come back, covered in foul-smelling ink and with what looked like a large squid dangling ridiculously off her spear. He still didn't know where she'd gotten the spear, either.
The meat had been, after much careful analysis by methods of varying reliability, pronounced edible. There was debate as to the accuracy of this diagnosis, as it was by this time clearly either not poisonous or extremely slow of action, and digestible, but had the consistency of squishy rubber.
Those with much perseverance and strength of jaw, however, found it both nourishing and of a sufficiently delicious flavor to keep chewing on it from getting too boring. Cable, being possessed of both a half-metal jaw and great obstinacy, was making a leisurely meal (there being no other kind to make) of a portion of the creature while waiting for Domino to finish whatever she was doing. She had declined to tell him.
He chewed a little while longer, swallowed, stretched his jaw, and turned his attention briefly from the mysterious stranger to starting another bite, which he'd had the foresight to sever from its neighboring tissues during the session with its predecessor.
Then he looked back up and watched as the newcomer sat down nearby and turned his head, and the hood slid back from his face.
Cable saw the oddly-colored skin in the light, and the distinctive blue marks around the lips and chin.
Apocalypse.
He promptly inhaled his bite of squid.
It was possible to extract food from the airways via telekinesis. Even peanut butter. It was, however, much easier to do this to someone *else* than to summon the concentration to apply a mental power in a novel fashion while unable to breathe, even without the added distraction of having just realized Apocalypse was sitting at the next table.
The newcomer looked over at Cable's first strangled, abortive gasp, blinked with his own shock of recognition, and immediately took decisive action.
He omitted the inquiry as to whether Cable were choking, as the open mouth and peculiar, quiet sounds emanating there from made it fairly obvious. And he moved with remarkable speed and agility, making his way rapidly behind Cable as the erstwhile time-traveler desperately tried to rally his thoughts, not to mention acquire oxygen.
The next thing Cable knew, powerful arms squeezed sharply beneath his rib cage, and the rubbery morsel was dislodged and expelled onto the table. It bounced.
So did the table, when he lunged forward in an attempt to get away. The fact that the arms released him just as he started his escape attempt caused his motion to be somewhat more precipitous than he had initially expected.
Cable rolled, looked up to see En Sabah Nur leaning slightly toward him and looking mildly surprised. "Are you quite all right?"
"DON'T TOUCH ME!"
By this time they were gathering quite an audience, though while its attention moved toward the two the audience itself was exhibiting a marked proclivity to move spatially away. Cable staggered to his feet, wild and bright of eye, and threw a chair at the Egyptian, who caught it and set it down with infuriating calm and a slight pat.
"Really, if I hadn't had five thousand years to develop control of my temper, I would probably be formulating some comment as to how I should have simply allowed you to asphyxiate."
"DIE," Cable snarled, and flung the table as well.
The table was fielded a bit less gracefully and with an expression redolent of aggrieved resignation. "Really, this is a little excessive, not to mention potentially rather wasteful of the furniture."
Franklin rushed into the room as Cable emitted an inarticulate howl rather reminiscent of an enraged Logan, and -- having exhausted the furniture within his immediate reach -- snatched up and threw the remains of his dinner. His target missed the plate but snagged the meat out of the air and eyed it dubiously. "What is this?"
"Cable! WHAT is going on?" Franklin shouted, taking in the scene with its frenzied Nathan and his calm -- if mystified -- opponent.
"It's Apocalypse! Here! Help me kill him!"
Franklin looked at "Apocalypse," who appeared slightly exasperated but if anything less hostile than would normally be expected of someone having furniture and half-eaten food hurled at him, and raised an eyebrow at Cable.
"Have you been outside the shields today without telling me? You're acting like you've picked up a month's worth of temporal residue --" he asked. "It's a squid," he added, as an afterthought, in response to the newcomer's mild question. "A piece of one, anyway. It's a lot like eating a very tasty eraser."
Cable gaped at Franklin, temporarily speechless, then sputtered weakly, "But it's Apocalypse!"
"Must you keep calling me that?" the topic of discussion asked with the most irritation he'd shown yet.
Franklin glanced to him. "You prefer something else?"
"My name is En Sabah Nur. Apocalypse is..." he paused and continued with distaste, "a *Greek* name."
"En Sabah Nur then." Franklin glanced at Cable, who -- perhaps fortunately -- appeared to have been struck dumb again. "What's wrong with Greek though?"
Nur shook his head. "An old prejudice, I suppose. Nothing as long as they aren't insinuating themselves into control of my country."
Franklin thought this over for several long seconds, eyeing Nathan carefully and surreptitiously plotting to lock his mouth closed somehow if he opened it again. "Well -- everyone's welcome here as long as they behave reasonably well, essentially." Which he sincerely hoped Nur would do. This version seemed perfectly rational and not at all inclined to assault anyone, which was in fact more than could be said for the Askani'Son at the moment.
At this auspicious moment, Domino finally pushed the door open and was greeted with rearranged furniture, what appeared to be a modified version of Apocalypse, Nathan looking severely agitated, and Franklin standing poised almost between the two in the attitude of a determined, if rather anxious, peacemaker.
She opened her mouth. Franklin noticed her and plunged breathlessly into an introduction. "Domino, this is En Sabah Nur. Nur, this is Domino. Do not try to kill each other."
Domino looked at Franklin. Looked at 'En Sabah Nur'. Then smiled, very carefully, and went over to Nathan, keeping her posture relaxed and unthreatening. "Hey, babe," she said cheerfully, and kissed him on the cheek.
Nathan made a sound resembling the bleat of a thwarted goat. Domino gave him a worried look. Nur also gave him a worried look, which gave Domino quite a turn when she realized it. After this session of giving, Nur sighed deeply, turned away, and solemnly crossed the room to search for and retrieve Nathan's plate, which had wedged itself into someone's clay sculpture and made it look rather as if the half-formed unicorn were being menaced by a flying saucer.
He returned, quite gravely, bearing both plate and -- still -- the remaining portion of Nathan's squid, which he flopped onto the plate before setting both objects back on the table, now restored to its proper orientation, and returning to his own table. There he sat down, thanked Franklin for his welcome, and assured him that he had no plans to kill any of the inhabitants of wherever they were.
Nathan opened his mouth, and Domino patted him, rather firmly, on the arm. "Let's sit down," she suggested.
"But --"
"Sit. Down."
"But that's --"
"I know. Sit DOWN."
He gave her the single most aggrieved look she'd ever seen on his face, and then complied, with a surprising amount of meekness.
Then he proceeded to stare disconsolately at his squid for the next five minutes, after which point he was distracted as the same chronovariant huntress marched in the door with another, even larger specimen dangling from her spearhead and trailing tentacles in all directions.
People in her path vacated it hurriedly, due not so much to her imposing demeanor as to an aversion to being slapped in the face by a writhing squid. Nathan started wondering whether the creature was perhaps not altogether dead yet. Either that, or it was having a reaction analogous to that of a beheaded chicken.
Nur looked up from his conversation with Franklin, stopped speaking, and stared. This was an understandable reaction. The huntress was dressed in what appeared to be iridescent fish skins, and had smudges of purple goo all over her and ink in her hair. The smudge on her nose looked incongruously endearing.
She had also located Franklin and come to present her catch to him, which put Nur well within range of an energetically flopping squid carcass.
Cable found himself idly debating whether the fact that the man didn't dodge was a tribute to his nerves or his stupidity. Franklin didn't dodge either, though he did look a bit startled.
"I brought you another piece of meat," she stated, a little superfluously. "Where would you like me to put it?"
Franklin regarded her for a moment, then chuckled a bit tentatively. "Why don't you take it back outdoors and, uh, finish killing it?"
She looked affronted. "I *did* finish killing it." A tentacle waved gently and draped itself over Nur's left ear. He removed it, looking faintly repulsed.
"Well, go make it *act* dead," Franklin suggested patiently. "If you put it in the kitchen that way it'll knock everything out of the cabinets onto the floor or something."
The huntress dragged her prey out the door for a few minutes. The buzz of conversation had just resumed when she walked back in, this time bedaubed with more ink and purple goo, and the tentacles separated from the squid's body and draped over her shoulders. The effect vaguely resembled either Sinister's cape or a demented aloe plant. Cable wasn't quite sure which.
Franklin grinned at her. "Thanks, Amy. You can finish your butchery somewhere more comfortable now." Amy grinned back and disappeared into a back room.
Nathan turned his attention with some difficulty back to his squid steak and his very attractive dinner companion. It was very rudely reclaimed when Franklin leaned over in their direction and said brightly, "Cable? Domino? I've explained what we're trying to do, collecting a new Twelve, and Nur here says he'd be glad to help gather people for it."
Nathan stared at Franklin. Franklin smiled back at him. Nathan continued to stare at Franklin, whose expression grew ever so slightly worried.
"Nathan? Think about this tactically, please --"
Nathan nodded slowly, and picked up his knife and fork, staring down at the squid. The squid was less interesting than the knife, and he shifted his grip on it, looking up very carefully at Nur. "He's going to help us collect another Twelve," he said, very calmly. "That's nice."
Nur watched Cable with equal care. Being neither foolish nor unfamiliar with hand-to-hand combat, he had reached the reasonable conclusion that Cable was considering an introduction between him and the knife. "I am reasonably well suited to it," he pointed out. "I adapt readily to different shifts. But I would need someone to show me where these people are."
"That's where you come in, Nathan," Franklin said, very carefully.
"Oh? You want me to introduce him to the Twelve. Isn't that nice."
"Nathan," Franklin said, trying very hard not to laugh. This wasn't funny. It really wasn't. "I don't think I've ever heard you use the word nice so often within the space of a minute."
"Oh, but it is nice. It's nice that we have a new friend, who wants to help." Nathan started to saw at his squid, very calmly.
"But?" Franklin asked, hearing a definite 'but' coming.
"But if you think I'm going out into the shifts with Apocalypse at my back, boy, I am NOT the chronically unstable one, here."
"My name is not Apocalypse," Nur inserted firmly.
Everyone looked at him.
"Come on, Nathan, think about it. He's powerful, being out there apparently doesn't drive him mad the way it does members of the Twelve, but he's got more sense of them than anybody else except maybe some of the chronovariants. And he's hard to kill."
"Oh, perfect sense. Except you're not the one who's going to be out there in the shifts with him, Franklin."
"You clearly distrust me," Nur observed unnecessarily, then turned to Franklin with what might have been a twinkle in his eye. "He wouldn't expect me to hold a grudge because he threw a piece of squid at me, would he?"
"And a sense of humor, too." Nathan stared across at Nur, balefully. "I'd say the world was coming to an end, but that would be rather redundant, wouldn't it?"
Nur looked around. "I wouldn't call it an end," he replied seriously. "A bit of a tangle, perhaps, but not an end."
Nathan threw down his eating utensils, glaring. "You wouldn't call it the end of the world. You have NO idea how much better that makes me feel, you --"
"Nathan!" Franklin said, sternly.
"I *have* been insulted before," Nur told Franklin gently. "I won't break." He fixed Cable with a piercing stare, dark-blue eyes steady and looking out of place under the black hair. "I was expressing an opinion, not attempting to comfort you."
"Well, good," Nathan said violently, getting up so rapidly that he knocked his chair over backwards. "Because I don't want anything from you. If there was one blessing of this whole flonqing mess, it was that I didn't have to deal with you, just the mess several dozen other yous made!"
Nur rose as well, somewhat more gracefully. Or at least more quietly. "So I am told. I am offering to do what I can to help... clean up that same 'mess.' Will you deny me that, and yourself what aid I can give, because of what less responsible versions of me have done?"
"LESS RESPONSIBLE!"
Nur raised an eyebrow. He had eyebrows, too. This was ridiculous. "Perhaps that was a poor choice of words. Less concerned with the larger effect of their actions, shall we say, in order to avoid the interpretation of less complicity."
Domino stared at him. "You sound like Hank."
"I sound like whom?"
"Hank. Beast. Henry McCoy. Oh, forget it, for all I know you don't have one."
"There's one or so here," Franklin cut in. "I'll introduce you later. Nathan, listen, I really do think he could be a lot of help."
Nathan laughed wildly, running a shaking hand through his close-cropped hair. "You do, do you. That's nice."
Domino rolled her eyes. "Nate, quit doing that," she said sternly.
"Yes, stop doing that." Franklin was looking decidedly Unimpressed. "I know how hard it is to accept this, but he's FRIENDLY."
"How do you know?" Nathan demanded suddenly. "He might just be a very good actor." He blinked at Nur and then started laughing wildly. "I... just had a image of you doing Hamlet. 'Alas, poor Cyclops, I knew you well'...."
Nur looked somewhat disturbed. "I don't usually consort with monsters of Greek mythology, as it happens," he rumbled dryly. "Or are you referring to someone who uses the name?"
Domino rose smoothly out of her chair and slammed a fist into Nathan's jaw as he lunged forward. The blow was strong enough to knock him on his rear, where he sat for a moment, rubbing his jaw and looking up at Domino balefully.
There was silence for a moment. "Apparently," Nur said into the silence, which whimpered faintly and fled, "I have missed something."
Nathan, for once in the course of the conversation, was paying no attention to him at all. "You hit me," he muttered at Domino, sounding hurt.
"You noticed."
Franklin muttered something under his breath that Susan Richards would definitely not have approved, and got out of his chair, kneeling down beside Nathan. "You have got to be the most hard-headed you I've ever met," he said levelly. "And I've met a few."
Domino rubbed her hand. "You can say that again," she muttered. Franklin didn't.
Nathan folded his arms on top of his knees and laid his head down on them with a sigh. "I give up," he said weakly. "Put him on the Christmas card list, I don't give a flying flonq..."
"Nathan, look --" Franklin started. "Do you honestly think I'd try to send you out there with an enemy? I know it's hard to get used to the idea. But *think* about it. It's not like there aren't *advantages* to having him at your back. Shoot, maybe we need him, have you thought about that? For all we know, it's not twelve people we need at all, it could be thirteen."
Nathan's head jerked upright, his expression almost frightened. "Thirteen?" he said unevenly.
Domino knelt down beside him, putting an arm around his shoulders. "You can't rule out the possibility," she said gently.
His eyes narrowed, and he glared at her and Franklin both. "Stab your eyes," he said lifelessly. "You knew that if you suggested that, I couldn't -- that I wouldn't --"
A chair scraped on the floor, and Cable blinked in shock as Nur folded down to sit cross-legged on the floor with them. "Trust is oft something of a scarce commodity. I don't make a habit of demanding it out of hand from those who have had reason to consider me an enemy." He cocked an eyebrow. "Of course, I might note that hostilities between us have to date been somewhat one-sided. Still -- your rescue mission, if that is what I should call it, seems a worthwhile undertaking, and if there is a way by which I could win your confidence, I should like to hear it."
Nathan stared at him for a moment. "I'm a telepath," he said, very quietly.
"That's nice," Nur replied. Domino gave a choked giggle, earning herself a wry look from the Egyptian. "I assume you mean to imply that you wish to read my mind. Very well."
Nathan swallowed, not quite able to believe what he was hearing. *Do it before he changes his mind,* a tiny voice urged him, and he reached out tentatively -- and stopped dead, cold fear washing over him. "No," he muttered, his hands clenching so tightly into fists that the muscles in his flesh-and-blood hand started to cramp. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead as he stared into Nur's eyes. "I can't, I --"
"I will not attempt to resist you," Nur said calmly. He looked entirely relaxed. Cable did not think this was fair at all. It was in fact a deceptive appearance; the offer was a calculated risk on Nur's part, given that the telepath had spent a fair proportion of their acquaintance casting furniture and aspersions at him.
Nothing, as far as Nur could tell, happened for the next few minutes. As a rule, he could perceive when a telepath attempted to reach his mind, whether he permitted them to succeed or not. He determined that Cable did not appear calm enough for subtlety at the moment, and ventured a gentle reminder. "Nathan. You may begin any time now."
"I --" He was actually trembling, Nur saw. "I -- no, I won't. It's not -- I can't --"
"I'm *not* a telepath," Nur saw fit to point out. "I could probably keep you out if I tried, but I'm hardly likely to launch an effective counterattack in the realm of the mind. If you prefer to forego the process, I have no objection. You did bring it up; it seemed a convenient way to reassure you as to my intentions."
Nathan shook his head slowly, pulling away from Domino and getting to his feet. "I won't," he muttered. "I look at you, and I -- I just can't." He took a deep, shaky breath, squaring his shoulders. "I can't trust my judgment here." He looked down at Franklin. "So I suppose I have to trust yours."
As it seemed the thing to do, the other three stood as well. Domino patted Nathan's calf first. "Mine," Franklin replied quietly, "is that he's sincere, and could do us a lot of good. And I'm going to count on you to treat him like a partner, not an enemy, because otherwise sending him with you really would do more harm than good."
Nathan gave a hollow laugh. "I really, really need to meditate."
Franklin looked sympathetic. "Go on then. I wasn't planning to throw you back out there yet anyway, you know; you practically just got back."
Nathan gave Nur an oddly hunted look, and then turned and strode out of the bar, not looking back. Domino watched him go with a sigh, and then stuck a hand towards Nur.
He shook it, gravely. "Thank you."
"He's set in his ways," she said. "I can't blame him, but I'll talk to him. Anyway, you're sort of refreshing," she said, her mouth quirking upwards in a smile.
Nur raised an eyebrow. "Refreshing?"
"You know. Proof that nothing's impossible." She winked at him, and left.
Nur chuckled softly and turned to Franklin. "To be honest, civil conversation is refreshing as well, for me. I am rarely precisely *surprised* to be attacked on sight, but the incidence of it has been rather higher than usual of late."
Franklin smiled a little sadly. "There are some yous running around that *I* would attack on sight, if they happened to wander in here."
"Understandable, from your description," was the quiet reply.
"Well. Yeah. I'd probably better explain everything we've figured out so far, or think we have, about the shifts before you and Nathan go anywhere in them together...."
"I *have* been traveling within them for some time now, with comparative success," Nur pointed out. "I am not without experience."
Franklin couldn't help grinning. "I believe you," he said emphatically. "And believe me, I want to hear anything you can tell us about them too. But there're still some things you probably haven't run across."
"I'm certain there are," Nur replied equably. "And I would welcome such information."
"Especially, uh..." Franklin looked a little embarrassed. "The members of the Twelve -- whether there *was* a Twelve in their timeline or not -- attract the energy as they go through shifts. And, the more of it they accumulate, the more powerful they get, and, well, they also go crazy." He paused. "So having Nathan out there too long at a time is a bad thing."
There was a long pause while they looked at each other. Franklin realized somewhat belatedly that he was slightly taller than this Nur -- which seemed decidedly odd, as he was used to a seven-foot-or-so-tall Apocalypse.
"Just to clarify matters," Nur said finally, and very blandly, "are you telling me that you wish me to go on a search-and-rescue mission in partnership with a lunatic?" He didn't sound terribly perturbed, but there was an odd note in his voice that might possibly have been laughter.
Franklin shuffled. "Not exactly," he hedged. "But if you stay out there too long you might come back with one." The note must have been laughter, as Nur proceeded to throw back his head and give vent to it.
"I shall endeavor to avert such an eventuality," he rumbled afterwards, with a remarkable return to gravity. "If the effect is cumulative only while outside this place, should I assume it is reversed somehow upon return to your sphere of influence?"
"I can purge the energy. I'm not quite sure if I get all of it; I think I do, and they all get a lot saner -- some of them I'm not sure were quite sane to start out -- but they seem to keep a little of the power and somewhat more of the skill every time. I think."
"Interesting."
"This is based on their descriptions, though -- I can't leave and still hold this place together. And they mostly don't talk a lot about what goes on. Nathan's closemouthed in most universes, actually, but sometimes I think this one takes the cake...."
Nur gave Franklin a thoughtful look. "You seem distracted, suddenly." Actually, Franklin seemed babbling, suddenly, but that didn't seem tactful to say.
Franklin grimaced. "It's -- I don't even know whether it's worth mentioning. Nathan swears there's some sort of awareness behind the shifts. He's been dead-set on it for years, and I don't think it's related to whatever level of temporal energy's in his system at the time." Franklin smiled weakly. "Although he tends to rant about it more when he's been out in the shifts too long --"
"An awareness," Nur repeated thoughtfully. "This is not something I have noticed, but then, I have never even attempted modifying my powers to include telepathy or chronovariance. Has he speculated on the nature of this 'awareness'?" A sudden smile. "Or should I ask him?"
Franklin sighed. "He says it's hostile. Which makes me wonder if it's not just paranoia...." His expression grew a little grim. "I don't like to consider that as an option."
"Paranoia is underrated," Nur replied lightly. "I've seen more definitions of sanity come and go, and roam past again.... Truthfully, I have not found the shifts particularly hostile as far as I was concerned, but then, I have more opportunity to adapt than most."
"True, but he's the sanest of the Cables I've met," Franklin said with a sigh. "They tend to fall apart, even without the added bonus of the residue. It's that overdeveloped sense of responsibility most of them have --"
Nur noted that the others in the immediate vicinity were either ignoring them or appeared to be trying to, though they'd spoken quietly. "I have encountered some previously. All of whom attacked me, come to think of it, except for one who was in no condition to move. At least one of them, though, seemed well enough otherwise.... I will do my best to preserve this one," he finished gently, with a half-smile.
Franklin found, a little to his surprise, that he couldn't help but smile back. "You do that. I'll let you know when it seems about time to start looking some more -- if you'll be ready?"
"My preparation should not be a problem. I believe I could find this place again, and presumably I will have time to become acquainted with the list of people you are seeking before such time as I would be searching for them."
Franklin nodded. "I can tell you... and maybe," he added thoughtfully, "you should go over them with Nathan."
*****
Nur did take Franklin at his word and seek out Cable to discuss members of the Twelve. First, however, he spent some time getting acquainted with Oasis, partly in hopes of giving Nathan a little more time to get used to the idea.
The vast majority of the inhabitants completely failed to recognize him. Only a very small fraction of this majority seemed perturbed by his unusual appearance. Those who did recognize him tended toward fight or flight, except for one or two who seemed completely paralyzed and simply froze in one spot like frightened rabbits.
This last reaction was quite alien to Nur, who could see it making some contribution to the probability of survival under certain circumstances, but thought those circumstances really could not be said to exist when there was neither cover nor an inability of his to see objects not in motion.
"If you are trying to turn invisible," he said in passing to one of these individuals, "it isn't working."
The individual gulped, rolled his eyes, and folded onto the floor. Then he promptly turned invisible.
"Very well, I take it back," Nur conceded to the floor, and took a circuitous route toward Franklin and the piano in order to avoid stepping on the erstwhile rabbit impersonator.
As of his second day at Oasis, Nur had demonstrated an unexpected skill: playing the bagpipes. He played in a style which seemed to owe nothing whatsoever to Scotland, even though as Egyptian bagpipes did not seem to be available he was forced to use a set of more northern origin.
The entire thing would probably have been less unnerving had Franklin managed, when someone asked if Nur could play any more contemporary songs, to locate first some sheet music other than that to "Daydream Believer." And then again, perhaps it wouldn't.
His first day at Oasis had been less than conducive to musical pursuits, as his activities had consisted largely of meeting attacks from frantic former X-Men and associates thereof with what was, to them, vastly exasperating calm and imperviousness.
Bishop had taken one look at him and guns had blazed. "Die, monster, DIE!"
Nur had braced himself against the blasts, refrained from returning them after the spillover from an energy beam of his own that melted one of the guns was returned with interest, and waited for Bishop to quiet down. Franklin and Cable, dashing into the room at the sound of the disturbance, had been greeted with a booming, "I am curious, Franklin. Are these two related?" as Nur gestured toward Cable and spoke over the racket.
Franklin had quipped back that Bishop was one of the few people Cable was NOT related to, but as Cable and his family were either nonexistent or far less prominent in Nur's timeline, the joke had gone rather over his head.
On a separate occasion, Warren had emitted a wordless scream of fury that he seemed to have stolen from a roc, and spread metallic wings both to fire and to swoop at close range. Nur had ducked, then calmly taken hold of Warren, sat him forcibly in a chair, and wrapped him up in his wings, as there seemed some likelihood of a beheading otherwise.
Nur currently possessed a large collection of poisoned metal feathers with small amounts of blood on them, but no remaining wounds. Warren had, somewhat to his surprise, calmed down and apologized after Nur explained and Franklin vouched for him.
Franklin had eventually resorted to summoning everyone he could think of as likely to start anything into one room and explaining that this particular En Sabah Nur had been welcomed here under *his* auspices and that he (Franklin) was getting really tired of having him attacked all the time.
He'd assumed Nur was also getting tired of it, but hadn't felt he could speak for the External, especially as he hadn't asked. Besides, that might not have carried much weight with this crowd.
Lorna had proceeded to offend Nathan deeply by swallowing hard and saying that, well, if Cable could be a good guy she guessed Apocalypse could too. Cable had turned a distressing shade of purple, opened his mouth, and closed it again with a wounded expression.
Domino had patted his arm. "She's got a point, Nate."
"Shut up."
"You know she's got a point."
"Dom, look at the steam coming out of his ears," a Rogue intervened. "Leave the poor man alone."
Nur had tactfully told Lorna that in the experience of most people present, at least, the former seemed to be more frequent, and that his name was not and never had been Apocalypse.
Cable was still brooding about this off and on when, on this third day, Nur joined him uninvited at breakfast -- after playing a duet with Franklin on bagpipes and piano -- and greeted him with, "Good morning. Do you have a Living Monolith yet, and why does he call himself that?"
At least he didn't choke this time. "No, we don't," Cable growled. "I haven't gotten but one all the way back here yet, and *he* left." It still rankled, too. For somebody just to walk out like that, preferring the shifts and the madness over even *trying* to help fix things....
So did Lorna putting him on a level with Apocalypse. He could understand hating the Marauders if anyone could, but he'd never... never....
He supposed that had sort of been her point, as apparently this Nur had never, either.
"Are you serious about all this? You really want to help? You never tried to take over the world and weed out the population you didn't think was fit?" It was a complete non sequitur and really had nothing to do with the Living Monolith at all except in the most convoluted of ways, but he had to ask.
Nur gave him a surprised look. "Let me see. I am indeed serious about my willingness to help with your search-and-rescue mission and your attempt to restore some form of order to the world. I have never done extensive 'weeding' of the population beyond that necessary to maintain some order in a nation. As for taking over the world, it was once a fairly respectable ambition, you know."
Cable gave him a suspicious look and opened his mouth, but Nur swallowed a mouthful of what appeared to be grits and continued as if oblivious to the intention. "For the record, however, my acquisition of world power was limited to ruling Egypt off and on for some millennia, and influencing it in between, plus the not inconsiderable international influence we wielded."
"You ruled Egypt for millennia?" He was fairly sure he sounded dazed.
"Off and on, since I was a bit past seventeen," Nur responded, in a tone that suggested he wasn't quite sure why it was a question at all. "I took... sabbaticals, you might say, but the assorted interim pharoahs were always to some degree or another my doing."
"You ruled Egypt since you were seventeen," Cable repeated flatly, trying to digest this. "With the exception of sabbaticals." Apocalypse *couldn't* have gotten control of Egypt in his timeline that early. Any of them. "*Seventeen?* Weren't you a little young?" Well, no, not compared to some of them....
"I was a man by then. I had passed my initiation into the Sandstormers, and survived in the caverns that killed Baal while the rest of the tribe was slaughtered." There was pain behind that, though little for the tribe. "I didn't care for Rama-Tut. I made Egypt the most powerful country in the world and made my wife its queen."
Nathan blinked, mind reeling slightly at the last part. Ruling a powerful nation wasn't a startling ambition for Apocalypse -- er, Nur -- but -- a wife? "You're married?"
"I was."
"What happened to her?"
Nur gave him a very peculiar look. "She died."
Brain still not completely back online, Cable inquired with a hint of suspicion, "Of what?"
Nur gave him an even more peculiar look. "Old age," he said, in an extremely dry tone. "This *was* a few thousand years ago, you realize."
Nathan opened his mouth and left it that way for a moment, then closed it. That, he told himself painfully, was stupid. Mindnumbingly so. How horribly embarrassing. He almost squirmed.
Nur took his gaze away shortly, perhaps in pity, perhaps merely in thought, and stared back through the centuries. "I still miss her."
There didn't seem to be a very good response to that. En Sabah Nur... in love? It was not a congruous thought. Casting about for something to say, he came up with, "What did you do after she died?"
"Went for very long walks."
"Oh." He'd been expecting something more... dramatic. "Where did you walk? Did it help?" Nothing had seemed to help after Aliya. Or Domino... even if he'd found another eventually. Only time, a little. Not that Nur had any lack of that.
"Mongolia. And not really."
"Mongolia?" That put him on the alert. "You wouldn't by any chance have run into Ship there, would you?"
Nur blinked. "How," he asked slowly, "did you know that?"
"Long story."
"I have time."
*****
"Be careful."
"You always say that, Franklin."
"I always have to," Franklin retorted. "This is you I'm talking to."
"And Nur," Cable muttered a bit rebelliously.
Nur turned his head from staring out through the boundary, a curving curtain that didn't look quite like the shiftlines. "Thank you. We will take care, Franklin."
Domino shook her head and grinned. "We're talking about me, and Nathan, and an immortal guy, and you think anybody will believe that?"
Franklin buried his face in his hands for a long moment before looking up at them again. "I want all three of you coming back, you hear me?" He sighed, eyes moving from a flippant Domino to a rather dubious Cable to Nur, who appeared to be the most reassuring presence at the moment. Even if he didn't look any older than Franklin himself. "All right, go on." His mouth quirked. "Good hunting."
The three stepped through the boundary of Oasis, hands clasped (with Nathan in the middle because his objection to Domino being next to Nur outweighed the one to being there himself) to avert the possibility of exiting into separate shifts, leaving the sanctuary's young protector to squint after them briefly and then head back to a more central location to await them.
There wasn't really any distinctive change. Occasionally there was a hostile shift or even a shiftline abutting the boundary, but for the most part there was a certain level of safety nearby. Here, the ground was flat and smooth, didn't try to swallow them, and even looked as if it might have been contemplating grass at some point or another.
"So, which way, Nate?" Domino asked him.
He let go with both hands and turned his head slowly, as if listening. "This way." He started off at an angle to the right. "There might be somebody -- I can't tell yet." Domino and Nur both kept pace. They walked through a shiftline and ended up knee-deep in water, whereupon there was much splashing.
Nathan looked over his shoulder and grinned slightly. "Nothing wrong with the bank yet. Nests in it if you go far enough along. Better footing on the streambed anyway, though." It was, really; the dry ground was spongy and tiring to walk on. Nur, who did not tire easily, opted to stay on it until Nathan told him they were approaching the nests and even if HE didn't mind stirring up the inhabitants by walking over them, nobody else wanted it happening. He never said what they were nests of.
Nathan told himself it wasn't spite, but a perfectly reasonable and efficient route choice and maybe an interest in seeing whether Nur would complain or cooperate or what, that led him to take them through swamps in the next three shifts. Nur gave him a sidelong look when they entered the third, but kept walking without comment, except for a quiet inquiry to Domino regarding which of the Twelve was a fen-dweller.
Domino replied that one never knew, and gave Nathan an annoyed glance before striking up a bit more of a conversation. A passing mention of "Egypt's western coastline" on Nur's part livened things up considerably and finished by revealing that when Nur referred to "Egypt," he meant an entity somewhat larger in area than they had thought.
It seemed that within several decades, Egypt under Nur had covered much of Northern Africa, extended past the Reed Sea, and included portions of what they considered Italy. Later on it had acquired much of the rest of Africa as well, and spread slightly farther north and east.
Cable was half expecting Nur to say he'd created his own dynasty in China, but if he had, he didn't mention it. The Roman and British Empires had arisen in something approximating their respective eras, though Rome had found it necessary to work around Egypt.
Domino finally shook her head over the vagaries of history and empire, and changed the subject. "Nate tells me you got married. Who was it, Cleopatra?"
"...Who?" Nur blinked at her and then shook his head, concluding this was some joke based on events in timelines he was unfamiliar with. "Her name was Hatshupet."
Domino waited a few moments. When elaboration did not appear to be forthcoming, she tried a verbal nudge. "Well, what was she like?"
"Kind. Very kind, very strong, and very determined... lovely, too."
"Kind." Domino blinked at that. It didn't seem like the sort of thing she'd have expected Apocalypse to look for in a woman. Then again, this Nur was a lot... nicer... than she generally expected of Apocalypse. Not that that was saying a lot, in itself, but he seemed fairly nice. Nice. She was starting to sound like Nathan when Franklin proposed sending Nur along on missions.
"She hated to watch people suffer, as a rule. She was, I might add, born into a singularly inappropriate tribe. Yes, she was kind." He turned his head and pushed back his hood to look at her. "This comes as a surprise to you?"
Domino laughed shortly. "Makes as much sense as anything else. Your timeline's really weird by comparison to most of the ones you seem to exist in, you know."
"It obviously split off further back," Cable cut in pointedly. It was the first thing he'd said in the past few miles. He tramped over a footbridge whose users seemed to have a taste for garish pink. Then again, maybe it had been supposed to blend in with the foliage.
Unfortunately, indulging in conversation must have broken his concentration. A twinge warned him barely in time to look up as a shiftline formed in front of them, and he had no chance to push at it before they were through. If it turned out hostile they could all three be dead --
It was quite anticlimactic when they found themselves somewhere with no initially obvious difference except plants that were a normal color of green, instead of pink or luminescent.
"Lovely," Nur remarked. Cable listened very hard for a trace of sarcasm. There wasn't one.
Furthermore... there didn't seem to be any hidden hostility either. Oh, the transition itself had been as cringe worthy as ever, but there didn't seem to be anything poisonous or explosive or hungry in the immediate vicinity.
It was entirely too pleasant. Something was wrong. None of the worst sort of shifts had come after them at all yet. It was only a matter of time -- but time had broken down so it was a matter of the shifts -- but that was right where he'd started.
Nathan dropped the train of thought in some disgust and turned to Domino and Nur -- or rather to Domino. Nur, he saw, had stepped off to investigate the flora, and picked a few berries to chew as Cable watched. "Look, I know poison isn't likely to do you in, but what do you think you're doing?"
Nur turned, an odd smile playing on the blue lips. "I'm told," he rumbled amusedly, "that you have a certain fondness for products of this tree." He held out a handful of red berries, picking a glossy green leaf out and tossing it away. "It won't poison you, I can assure you."
Cable looked at the tree suspiciously as the wind shifted. It was warm, and the blooming tree smelled like... jasmine.
It finally clicked. Coffee. Coffee? They'd found a *coffee* tree?! He finally accepted the berries and started chewing. Oath, he'd missed coffee. Franklin managed to generate it occasionally out of thin air but it just wasn't the same. Well, it probably was technically, but it still wasn't.
Not that this was the same either, but still....
"There seems to be something resembling wintergreen growing on its branches. I never saw an aerophytic wintergreen before, much less a tropical one...." Nur mused from under a branch.
"Oh, you're a botanist now?" Cable quipped. All right, the coffee berries were having *much* too good an effect on his mood.
"Not much of one, but I *have* had time to develop a number of hobbies," Nur replied calmly. "And this is rather exotic."
"We had glowing pink ferns in the last shift and you call it exotic when wintergreen starts climbing trees?"
"Completely alien isn't exotic. Familiar with unexpected alterations or juxtapositions is exotic," Nur replied, still absorbed in botanical investigations. "Here, look at this; I'm informed you have an unusual sense of the properties and conditions of different shifts."
Nathan stared at him, then succumbed and ducked under the branches to examine the little plants perched on them and mingling in places with the leaves of the tree itself. "Seems like wintergreen to me... obviously adapted differently, but it's wintergreen." He ducked back out and then looked back wistfully. "We should go. But I wonder if we couldn't take a tree with us...."
It wasn't as if they'd be hurting anything. There were several trees in a grove, and thinning it out just a little wouldn't hurt, and there was no way it was a tended planting -- not anymore, if it ever had been. A nice little coffee tree would be good to have around, even if having wintergreen in the branches was a little on the strange side. He picked another berry and chewed on it, the bean inside bitter but delicious.
Domino, he noted, was giggling at him.
Nur emerged and gave Nathan an intent look, then walked around the grove to inspect the trees. "They require a great deal of water," he pointed out dubiously. "If that can be provided and you consider transportation feasible, I see no reason why not -- barring, of course, the possibility that the trees are sentient and might take issue, I suppose."
Cable shook his head. "I don't sense anything from them." He no longer sensed a member of the Twelve in anything approaching the vicinity, either. This damped his mood, especially since this was supposed to be a short mission. Maybe they should just go back. With a coffee tree so it wouldn't be a total loss. He said as much.
Hence, Nathan Summers, Domino, and En Sabah Nur came to be proceeding determinedly through shifts with two intermediately-sized coffee trees (decked in an unfamiliar yet attractive form of wintergreen) in tow, when a familiar mind registered on Cable's. It was not a hostile mind, but nevertheless he ducked.
There was a reason for this. It was approaching at a high velocity and seemed to be experiencing some lack of control regarding such things as how to turn and stop. A hasty warning to Domino and Nur came just in time for them to jump aside as a blond projectile zoomed past, narrowly missing them.
#SAM!# he sent in astonishment. #Come back here!#
He did. And flew past almost as quickly, dipping toward them and then veering away with a sense of frustration.
"Hey!" Nathan blurted. Cannonball made a wide turn and started another approach, with little apparent hope of success. He still hadn't slackened his speed.
"I'm not sure he can stop," Nur observed. "The atmosphere we are passing through is somewhat peculiar in texture; it may affect his powers. We could try to catch him."
Nathan stopped to think. It was strange air. No excessive toxins, plenty of oxygen -- an unusually high amount, in fact, enough that it was probably the most dangerous thing in the air -- but very high humidity and a strange slippery feeling when he breathed and moved. #Sam, see if you can slow down, we're going to try to catch you -- your blast field won't shut down at that speed in this air, I don't think.#
On the young man's next pass he grabbed hold telekinetically and applied brakes. Not fast enough; Sam was still going to overshoot -- or so he thought until Nur *grew* tall and massive enough to reach up and snatch the slowing boy out of the air. As he didn't give himself time to brace properly, the collision knocked both of them sprawling on the ground.
They untangled themselves and stood up, Nur returning to his normal size and brushing at scorch marks on his garments. Sam climbed slowly to his feet as Nathan walked over to him, fighting down a mixture of emotions almost as intense as those when he first met this Domino. She came up and squeezed his hand, then patted Sam on the arm. "You all right?"
Sam nodded. "Ah'm fine now Ah've stopped," he assured her a little breathlessly. "Good to see you again. And you too, sir -- and thanks." He turned to Nur. "Thank you too -- um, do I know you?"
His eyes widened as Nur pushed back the hood of his cloak, brushed hair out of his face, and smiled. "Under the circumstances, I wouldn't care to venture a guess. I am En Sabah Nur, and I know *a* you, or knew him, as a very fine young man."
Sam blinked, three times, very slowly, and tried to evaluate the situation. Cable. Apocalypse. Cable and Apocalypse conspiring to check his involuntarily careering flight. Cable and Apocalypse NOT trying to kill each other. Cable seeming a lot calmer than most of the Cables Sam had encountered recently. Domino not seeming at all concerned about any of this. Apocalypse claiming politely to know and respect another Samuel Guthrie.
"Ah think," he said carefully, "that you're preferable to the version of you Ah'm most familiar with."
Nur laughed quietly, in a bass that sounded as if it should have shook the ground even at the low volume. "Thank you. You've provided one among the calmest greetings I have yet received from people who are familiar with versions of me to whom I might be considered preferable."
Sam grinned, a twinkle of mischief lighting his face. "Come on. Ah blasted into you and you call it calm?"
"You should have seen the introductions I experienced to Nathan and certain of his compatriots."
"Ah can imagine." He could, too.
"We're on our way back to Oasis," Nathan inserted. At Sam's slightly blank look, he continued. "It's a place Franklin Richards stabilized so it doesn’t get torn apart by the shifts. We're trying to do something about them, too. You're welcome to come if you want." He hesitated. "Please do."
He truly hoped Sam would -- he didn't think he could bear to leave the boy out here. A spark of hope dawned in weary blue eyes. "That sounds good," Sam answered quietly.
They had been walking in companionable or nigh-companionable silence ever since Sam nearly laughed himself sick at the explanation of why they were being accompanied by floating trees. Actually, Domino had never gotten farther than, "They're coffee trees." This information was sufficient in itself. Anything more might have caused the young man to rupture something.
Cable was trying to pretend to sulk, and not fooling anyone. At all. Not even a smidgen. He finally gave up on it and pricked up his ears when Nur inquired of Sam in the most ordinary of tones, "I have been wondering. You have almost surely become aware by some means or another that you are an External -- have you ever died?"
"Uh -- yes," Sam replied cautiously. "Why?"
"I was curious. Your alternate in my timeline had not yet, as of the last time I spoke with him. There seems to be some variation in the experience each time an External comes back to life for the first time, and I would be interested in knowing yours. I, for instance, saw a vision of Isis, rose into the air, glowed brightly -- or so I'm told -- and passed out shortly afterwards," he admitted.
Sam looked slightly dazed. "Ah don't think Ah did anything nearly that dramatic. Mostly it was just confusing. Ah got up and asked what had happened." This had occasioned considerable amusement along with the relief from his friends, too. Nur had seen... Isis? Somehow he'd never thought of Apocalypse as the type to have a religious experience, if you could call it that. Sam wondered suddenly whether Norse Externals, if there were any, had ever seen Thor or Loki. Having met both, he found the image a little odd. "It was a boring death, Ah guess." He hesitated. "If you don't mind my asking, how do you know my alternate? Ah've never really been on polite speaking terms with yours."
"Why," Nur asked rhetorically, "does this fail to surprise me?" He shook his head. A wind picked up suddenly, tossing Domino's hair wildly until she squelched it into a ponytail. Nur's flew as well, but never into his face. "I know Samuel Guthrie in my timeline because I have made it a point to find ways of seeking out other Externals, especially new ones. He's probably the most honorable as well as the most interesting one I've encountered so far; a number of the others rather disdain or -- alternatively -- fear the thought of associating extensively with people who will die in only a few decades, but frankly, he's one of very few immortals I've met whom I wouldn't expect to pall well within a normal human lifespan." He smiled faintly. "You can imagine restricting myself to their company would prove somewhat wearisome."
"You prove wearisome in most timelines a LOT faster than that," Cable muttered. Domino swatted him.
*****
"Franklin? Franklin!" Nathan shouted. He paused and contemplated the probability of Franklin having heard him at all over the extraordinary volume being emitted from the piano and what he could only assume was supposed to be a sing-along. It was low.
"FRANKLIN," Nur bellowed conversationally (a useful skill, so far apparently unique to him, as the majority of those adept at bellowing could not do so without incorporating any tone of command, warning, or hostility). The windows rattled. The voices stopped as most of the singers gasped, and the piano stopped as Franklin clapped his hands over his ears. "We have returned," Nur continued, at a far more moderate decibel level.
"Good," the reality-warper managed into the sudden silence, tapping lightly on one of his ears to see if it was still working. "How'd it go?" He spun around and hopped off the piano stool.
"We didn't get any of the Twelve, but we have a Sam and two coffee trees," Nathan began.
Franklin snickered.
"Oath, not you too."
"Come on, Nate, you can't *not* have expected this kind of a reaction," Domino pointed out, laughing again herself.
"It was HIS idea," Cable muttered, with a baleful glance at Nur.
"Mine? I merely drew your attention to them, Nathan. Transplanting them was your own suggestion."
Franklin reached up to Nathan's forehead for a moment, not in the least put off when Nathan ducked (which, from his height, was ineffective anyway), and then stepped past the three he'd sent out to shake the new arrival's hand. "Good to have you here, Sam. Welcome to Oasis."
"Thanks." Sam looked around. "Anything Ah can do to help? Plant trees, for instance?"
Franklin grinned. "Now there's a nice spirit to have around. You want to help out and you haven't lost your sense of humor yet. Man, we do have to find a spot for those trees, don't we?"
"Somewhere warm, where they can be well-watered," Nur specified. "They are tropical plants."
The trees were duly planted in reasonably moist ground near the vent from the main laundry room. Examination of the aerophytic wintergreen set a recently-arrived botanist to wandering around muttering anxiously to himself for several hours. Eventually, everyone else stopped paying attention.
Well, almost everyone. He got on Domino's nerves to such an extent that she first threatened to clout him over the head with a branch, and subsequently dragged him indoors and poured warm milk down his throat until he settled down.
*****
Nathan woke up, somewhat reluctantly, and felt a thought puff up inside his brain. Coffee, it said plaintively. There wasn't coffee, he told it. Shut up. Coffee berries? It sounded hopeful. It took him a few minutes to make sense of this.
Coffee berries for breakfast. That sounded good. A little strange, maybe, but good. "Hey, Dom," he began.
"I heard you thinking," she informed him from the depths of a pillow. "Has somebody been nagging you about how you should eat more fruit again?"
"You should know. It was you."
"Oh yeah."
Going outside confirmed that the coffee trees were, in fact, real. He did, however, doubt the evidence of his eyes on this point at first, because they were also telling him there was a camel browsing from them.
It turned its head toward him and moaned.
Nathan decided that he was not yet up to coping with a camel.
Especially a moaning one.
Accordingly, he went in search of Franklin to report it. Franklin turned out to be deep in literary conversation with En Sabah Nur, who either was an early riser or didn't need to sleep. "You don't like Poe, I gather," Franklin was saying.
"I fairly emphatically dislike his stories. I never actually met the man."
"What's wrong with them?"
"The characters disturb me," Nur explained. "They are all insane, helpless, deathly ill, or some combination of the three. I am aware that an author does wield ultimate power over his creations, but really, must he flaunt it so?"
Franklin laughed. "You forgot dead. Some of them are dead."
"That too."
Nathan decided this was as good a time as any to jump in. "Franklin, there's a dromedary out by the coffee trees making unearthly noises."
Franklin and Nur both turned and gave him a long look.
"Go over that again?" Franklin suggested carefully.
"There's a dromedary out by the coffee trees making unearthly noises."
"That's what I thought you said. Did I forget to -- no, I didn't, because you tried to duck."
Nathan glowered. Franklin appeared unimpressed. Nur also appeared unimpressed, but that was normal.
"There's no real reason to assume he is hallucinating, Franklin," Nur pointed out. "A camel could wander into Oasis as readily as any other organism, correct?"
"I guess so. More easily than some.... At least it's not the eye of a needle, right?"
By the time they made it out to investigate, the camel had gathered a substantial but wary audience, which it was keeping at bay with evil looks. It turned its gaze toward the three latest arrivals and emitted another plaintive and bizarre noise.
Nur shook his head, muttered under his breath in Egyptian, and strode forward to make an inspection, shoving the camel's head aside with impeccable timing as it tried to spit on him. "A container would be appreciated," he announced. "She should be milked." Franklin, wordlessly, materialized one.
Nur adjusted it and proceeded to fulfill his pronouncement, commenting in tones audible to the crowd -- albeit ostensibly directed to the camel -- about "city-dwellers who can't even tell when a camel needs milking, much less remedy the situation." This did not precisely endear him to anyone, except possibly the camel.
*****
"A camel?" Sam asked, just to make sure his ears had not deceived him.
Nur confirmed that they had not.
Sam grinned. "Can ya milk a cow, too?"
Nur grimaced. "Not as reliably. While most of them I have encountered seem to be more cooperative than the majority of camels, their objections tend to involve the tail and be somewhat less hygienic."
"Camel spit is hygienic?"
"It seems so by comparison. Then again, I have more experience with camels."
"Any other talents in husbandry we ought to be aware of?" the younger External inquired, still amused.
"I can also milk mares," Nur deadpanned, then smiled. "If it's a camel or a horse, I should be able to manage; they're my specialties among livestock."
"Gotcha." Sam took another careful sip of the camel's milk he had gamely agreed to try. Nur was quite fond of it, but had warned him that it seemed to be something of an acquired taste, based on previous observations of those more accustomed to cattle. It was, Sam thought, growing on him. He hadn't decided yet whether this was a good thing. "What did you do with her anyway? The camel," he added, in case that had been unclear.
"She's tethered by the kudzu patch."
Sam laughed. "You know what they say about kudzu -- you might not ever see that camel again."
"She'll be fine. She was quite hungry; I believe it's actually good for the kudzu -- it appeared to be smothering itself."
The kudzu had been planted some time back, with great caution. Franklin had constrained it to grow only within narrowly specified bounds, wherein it proceeded to do so with enthusiasm disproportionate to the amount of space it had to fill. It had a habit of piling up on top of itself and nearly choking to death despite periodic harvests. The camel had taken one look at the green mass and deemed it lunch.
"Have you named her yet?"
"I have not. Why, do you have a suggestion?"
He thought. "Ah didn't, but... um... how about 'Nelly'?"
Nur shrugged. "Why not?"
Sam looked taken aback. "You're really gonna use that?"
"I might as well. Nelly it is. I suppose I should mention, however, that there is no guarantee of her answering to it. Camels are like that."
As it happened, however, Nur was a sufficiently determined trainer and Nelly a sufficiently docile -- or perhaps grateful -- camel that she did learn her name. Sam turned out, after some days of practice, to be one of the few people whose voice she would attend to, though this result might be better attributed to the amount of time he spent in the vicinity than to any sort of personal affinity. Then again, his willingness to learn about the proper care of a camel had contributed to the time he spent where Nelly could hear his voice.
Nelly would also respond to Cable's voice, but only if he snarled at her immediately prior to issuing a command. Nur could offer no explanation for this phenomenon except that orneriness was an inherent trait of most camels, though Nelly, he assured the curious (if skeptical) was relatively sweet-tempered.
The first time Cable had snarled in Nelly's hearing had in fact had nothing to do with her at all. She had been following Nur around, perhaps under the impression that he ought to be going somewhere significant and that it would not do to mislay him, while Nathan tried to recount the origin of the present state of affairs. As this undertaking involved summarizing events that spanned approximately seven thousand years, with key ones frequently occurring out of chronological order, it was perhaps fortunate that Nur was a patient man. What was not fortunate was that his alternates had played the roles they had in so many timelines, a situation that tended to shorten Cable's temper. Hence, of course, the snarling.
Nur had listened very attentively. One of the early points on which he wanted clarification regarded what, exactly, Apocalypse had wanted with someone else's body in the first place, whether the person was a Summers or not.
"I don't believe I quite follow the entire line of events," he had rumbled thoughtfully. "Trying to take... a host? Are you quite certain you are not confounding me with Farouk?"
Cable had turned purple around the gills and gold around the eye, and breathed rather heavily for some minutes while attempting to master his temper. Nelly had pricked up her ears at the initial huff, and when the snarl escaped him, she wandered over to investigate. This took the form of smelling him inquisitively, which surprised Nathan very much. He did calm down. Domino had been kidding him about the therapeutic properties of camels ever since. Conversations such as the below were... typical.
"Cool down, babe. Do I have to go get Nelly to snuffle you again? Bet she'd do tricks."
"Shut up, Dom."
"Her tendency to respond to him so readily -- and apparently fearlessly -- only after noises one might ordinarily consider threatening really does perplex me. I've entertained the hypothesis that she was previously in service to one or more classic feral-type mutants, and the form of vocalization --"
"You shut up too, Apocalypse."
"My name is not Apocalypse, Nate. The form of vocalization," Nur continued imperturbably, "might resemble their command signal. She does, however, obey others -- within limits -- without that preface, so --"
"I said shut up! And don't call me Nate."
"(I heard you the first time, Nathan; I simply am not finished. In that case, do not call me Apocalypse.) --The evidence could aptly be termed scant."
"Oath," Cable groaned, and considered burying his face in the squid.