AN UNEXPECTED GUEST

                                  PART SEVEN

                             By Davide Briganti

DISCLAIMER: All the X-Men, and their likenesses, depicted in this story are
property of Marvel. No profits are made by posting this story, which is writ-
ten only for entertainment purposes. Sid "Renegade" Mayer, Seyla of Arborea
and Songmaster Thax are copyrights of me, so if you wanna use them, please
ask me first.

                                   * * *

A deafening, crashing sound shaked the woods near the now abandoned base of
the mutant genetist known as Mr.Sinister to their very foundations as the
young martial artist Sid "Renegade" Mayer landed shoulder-first on a great
rock, nearly blowing it into little pieces with the flaming, concussive energy
that was shrouding him as he charged forward.
His archenemy, the mysterious Songmaster Thax, looked at him with laughing
eyes as he got up and turned to face him with renewed rage.

"Poor boy." Thax whispered to his opponent "How can you think of victory when 
it takes me this little to dodge your clumsy attack?" and with that he made
a little dancelike step back and disappeared from sight.

"Damn you and your teleporting!" he snarled in response.

Psylocke's eyes widened as she saw the mad dancer reappear at Sid's back: poin
ting over the young fighter's shoulder she opened her mouth to yell a warning,
but Iceman acted more quickly: pointing a palm at Sid's enemy, he shot a blast
of ice that striked him full in the face.

Taking advantage of Thax's momentary confusion and now fully aware of the
attempted sneak attack, Sid spinned and delivered a devastating back kick:
screaming with rage and pain, the Chaos Bishop was sent flying through the air
and fell crashing to the ground as Sid's flames on his chest extinguished.

Raising a fist as he got up, Songmaster Thax looked at the five assembled X-Men
with hatred.

"How dare you interfere in our duel! This is none of you business!!" he screa
med.

"Wrong, homme." Gambit answered, pulling three cards out of his coat. "If y'
mess wid one of us, y' mess wid all of us. An' Sid IS one of us. Compris?"
The cards begun glowing brighter and brighter as more and more kinetic energy
was channeled into them. Storm took the air, summoning forth powerful winds
and black clouds, and looked down at the mad magician with an icy expression.

He sustained her gaze, and smiled wickedly in response. Throwing back his
cape, he raised a hand. "Come forth, mistress of the elements" he screamed
"I shall soak the earth with your blood!!"

She raised an eyebrow and smiled mockingly. "We shall see."

Rogue darted in the skies at full speed, stopping near Storm, and the rest of
the X-Men postioned themselves near Sid, ready to strike.
An unnatural silence shrouded the clearing and the surrounding woods, while
both the X-Men and the monk stood like frozen, waiting for the opposite faction 
to make the first move.

Suddenly, like a single entity, the X-Men made their move: Renegade and Psylo 
cke charged forward with a savage scream while Rogue, throwing herself into
the fray from the air, acted as a diversion. Storm, Gambit and Iceman attacked
from other directions with blasts of ice, charged cards and lightning bolts.

Eyes widening, Songmaster Thax laughed at the incoming attacks and begun to 
spin around in one of his mad dance. The unintelligible words of his songs
filled the air, bringing with them the power of raw chaos.
Rogue screamed as the kinetic-charged cards that were meant for their enemy
curved in an impossible 90-degrees turn towards her and exploded, blasting her
out of the skies and to the ground. Gambit's expression turned into a shocked 
mask as he realized what he had done. "NO!!" he yelled, running towards her, 
but a stony, warped parody of a human hand popped out of the ground and grab
bed his leg, pulling him deeper and deeper into the soil.

Meanwhile, Iceman was trying to attack Thax with his ice blast: as he pointed
his hands towards him, the chaos magician stood on one foot and jumped up,
teleporting at the mutant's left side. Before he could even realize what was
happening, Thax lightly touched his forearm and his ice armor begun to shrink.
Frantically, he tried to use his powers to remove it, but to no avail: he fell
helpless to the floor and remained still as his body screamed in pain for the
pressure and the lack of air. Teleporting away, the Songmaster laughed insane
ly and turned to face the three survivors.

Sid, Storm and Psylocke looked into each other's eyes, and prepared for the
final assault. As Betsy drawed out her psychic knife, Thax smiled.

"Pretty, pretty power. But you shouldn't play with such things, my lady. They
are extremely dangerous." he whispered, the made a quick gesture with the hand
and rolled to the ground, teleporting away.

In that instant, Betsy's power manifestation exploded into tiny shards, sending
a telepathic shockwawe to Sid and Storm's brain, still linked to her own.
The three people screamed in pain, as their worst fears dragged out from the
bottom of their own mind came out to haunt them once more, and slumped to the 
floor.

The mad dancer smiled, standing amidst the circle of broken bodies that were
once their enemies. "Like I told you, you had no chance" he proclaimed.

"Oh yeah, really?" Sid's voice called out as the young fighter slowly pulled
himself up. Seeing the surprise in his enemy's eyes, he grinned.

"Good trick, junkbag. But you didn't count that it's years that I live with my
own fears, thanks to _your_ ritual and _your_ training. You've hurt my family,
and now.....you pay, once and for all."

Energy erupted from his body as he regained his fighting stance and prepared
himself to strike: screaming high his battlecry, he made three threatening 
steps forward.

"Oh, I'm so scared!" Thax sneered "I've defeated creatures a lot more powerful
than you! Your body will lay crushed under my feet before I count five!"

Sid didn't answer: staying close to the ground, he ran at full speed towards
his enemy, the orange flames of his rage raising further and further at every
pace. Songmaster smiled, and returned to dance and sing, warping the space in
front of his opponent to change the direction of his movement but much to his
anger and surprise Sid continued to charge towards him, unaffected by the
spell he weaved. As he got close to his enemy, he jumped up with all the stren
gth he got in his legs and delivered a powerful knee smash in Thax's chest.
The crazed mage flied off in a wide arc, landing on a nearby rock with a caver
nous sound, and slumped to the floor as the last syllable of his insane litany
died on his lips.

"Tactical mistake number two, you idiot: my powers descend from yours, thus 
they have similar natures. This means that I can harmonize with the reality 
you create without suffering any ill effects, if I keep concentrating long 
enough." Sid said, clenching his fists and preparing to land the final blow.

As Thax slowly and painfully got up, Sid stepped closely and begun to throw
a lightning-fast series of punches and elbow smashes directed at his face and 
torso: after a few seconds, he finished him with a roundhouse kick aimed at
the head, and with a last scream, the mad dancer fell down unconscious.

As Songmaster departed for the Dream Lands, the reality alterations he created
along with their physical effects ceased to exist, and all the fallen X-Men
begun to open their eyes, shaking at the occasional waves of pain still rippling 
in their bodies. Bobby was almost purple for the lack of oxhygen, and Remy's 
coat and hair were dirty from the soil in which he was drowning.
Sid carefully picked up Storm and gave her a feeble slap on the cheek to make
her come back into her senses. After a while, she opened her eyes.

"Hello, darling. You all right?" he asked, smiling.

She put a hand on her head. "Ow. I feel like a dozen hammers are mistaking my 
poor head for an anvil."

"Not to worry, it'll go away."

"I hope so."

Slowly, all the team members got up, one by one, and regrouped around their
fallen enemy: as Sid picked him up, Betsy thrusted her psi-blade right into
Thax's mind, and smiled.

"That 'll make him sleep for a long, long time." she said.

"Oui. At least de time we need t' bring him t' de portal!" Gambit added with
a wry smile.

"Well, what are we waiting for, Christmas? Let's go!" Bobby called out from
the heights of the ice bridge he was just creating: with a smile, the rest of
the X-Men followed him towards the Blackbird.

                                     ***

As the bubble of telekinetic force projected by Jean Grey carried Songmaster
Thax through the shimmering portal set amidst the menhir circle, all the
X-Men and Strange sighed with relief.

Seyla of Arborea, who was standing in the shadows of a nearby tree, stepped
forward as the last glimpse of the force field disappeared and faced Sid with
tears in her emerald eyes.

"So, I have to bid you farewell, my love." she whispered in her mother tongue,
keeping her gaze down.

Sid took a long, deep breath before answering, carefully choosing the words he
had to use as his gaze wandered over her delicate features.

"It had to end this way." he replied  in a plain tone "We were simply not meant
to be. When we met, I didn't know what love was...."

She looked at him right in the eyes, desperately trying to understand, and as
he noticed the intensity and passion of her gaze, he slightly turned away, 
thoughtfully staring at the late evening sky.

After a moment, he continued "Now I understand, and I'm sorry for having made
you suffer so. But I have a life to live, exactly as you do....And I'm bound
to another woman. My life...my destiny...is with her, not with you."

"I understand." she said with broken voice after a moment of silence "Just...
remember me. If not as a loved one, at least as a friend. Will you?"

"I will. Promised."

With that, she turned away and begun walking towards the portal: as the last
glimpse of her figure disappeared, the blue radiance of the planar gate faded,
and with a last, low-pitched hum it turned into the dull gray of a menhir sto
ne.

                                   * * *

                                  EPILOGUE

"I must say, you are behaving too quietly since yesterday, my friend. Are there
any problems?" Beast asked to Renegade as he entered the recreation room of
the Institute "No jokes. No training. No ground-shaking heavy metal. It must
be serious business."

Sid smiled. "Oh, thanks to thee, Doctor McCoy, for this almost perfect analy
sis of my most deeper feelings and inner mysteries. How could a simpleton such
as me survive without eminences such as youself shedding light on my dumb, mi
serably cultureless life?" he said, kneeling with a hand on his heart.

Hank laughed. "Oh. That's better. I was almost concerned."

Sid returned serious and waved distractely his hand. "No need to be concerned.
Just thinking about a thing or two."

"Such as?"

Sid sighed, and smiled with evident embarrassment. "Well.....I'm afraid that,
despite my braggin' about being a fighter and all, I was just fleeing."

"Fleeing?" Hank looked a bit perplexed. "From what?"

Sid made an all-encompassing gesture and them pointed at himself. "From all:
people, relationships, my life, even myself. When I was a boy and life became
too rough for me, I simply moved out, not caring about the family I left: my
mother and father, my brothers, my sisters. And I did the same thing in Japan
when I was beaten by those thugs, and in Arborea, and in every other damned
situation I couldn't handle...including Songmaster Thax, and now they catched
me up, no matter how far I've gone from' em. Not bad, huh?"

Beast leaned against a wall, smiling like a father or grandfather does. "Every
one makes mistakes. Sometimes, you spend your whole life doing the wrong thing
without even noticing it. Admitting a fault is rarely easy: pride is difficult 
to overcome, and sometimes it's easier to go along without questions. But I
trust you, and I firmly believe that from now on, you'll face the problems and 
obstacles in your life without fleeing, as you did with Thax and Princess Seyla 
in the past days."

Sid looked outside, and forced a deep sigh out of his lungs as he thinked about
the dark beast dwelling inside his soul...the source of his powers.....his un
ending curse....and much, much more; first of all, a part of himself which he 
couldn't deny, whether he liked it or not.
But, if Hank was right, he might had some hope to strike a balance between his 
conflicting natures, one day.

Could it be....?

                                  THE END
                                
                                   * * *