Bronte had traveled to the savage lands following a lead. To find his sister. Laura Kinney. He'd found her— joined by his family. Gabbie, Junior, and his girlfriend and mutant-demon Queen, Ilyana Rasputin.
He'd found Laura. That alone should've reshaped the world.
But she wasn't alone. She was thriving with a team of her own in all its chaotic dysfunction. A team of relatives.
One of which being Bronte's biological father. James Howlett. Logan. The X-Man. The Wolverine. Call him whatever you want, stop him? Never. Unless you were his new sabertooth cat riding wife with a voice worth its pitch in gold.
Or his newest daughter.
Bronte's sister.
More like him than any of the others.
As he stood in the cave across from her— Rien, he felt like he was looking into a mirror. Like he was fifteen again, catching the reflection of his magical transformation.
She was young. But a life lived in the wild shaped her with brutal precision. With a tool not used on any of the others except maybe Laura. They had that same hardness in their eyes. But nothing else was. She looked unique. Beyond the fiery black and gold flowing hair that rose with a smoldering smoke-burst. Or the wild eyes and claws. The way the her tattoos glimmered and began moving over her suntanned skin.
She was pure magical power.
When Ilyana touched him— his hairs stood on end. He felt cold.
As he faced Rien, he sweat. He wanted out. Away. But also reached on in curiosity. Beneath the hot arcane waves, he felt familiarity.
"…..dope." He muttered.
Rien held a hand out to him.
Brontë moved to touch again and watched as sparks and fissures of energy bounced from their fingers like the glass balls of electrical plasma. Arcane sigils and echoes of her tattoos burst from the connecting lines, creating visuals and new element strains inside the cave.
"Another one with magic. This isn't fair!" Gabbie muttered.
"You can literally heal from anything…" Junior said.
"How is this possible?" Bronte asked.
"Which part?" Laura said as she stood behind him with her arms crossed.
"All of it?"
Laura sighed, "Well, as you know, communicating with people who only grunt and roar or speak a language with no roots in Latin is difficult. So I haven't learned much. But I do know, Riens mom is….. different."
Rien's mom watched them as she cooed silently to Logan in his hammock. Her sabertooth cooed the same tune and it's eyes sparkled the same color as hers.
"Yea, I see that." Gabbie said matter of factly.
"I have to sift through all the bullshit that spews from Savagepools mouth to learn anything about this place— so I might be wrong, but I think people here call her Shana. Shana the She-Devil." Laura explained.
"Leave it to our dad to impregnate someone named a she-devil in a magic jungle full of dinosaurs." Gabbie rolled her eyes.
Laura continued, "Shana is some sort of wyld-witch…. or savage-shaman. She has magic. But it's not like anything I've seen."
"That's saying something…" Bronte said as he began playing catch with a ball of lighting surrounded by Rien's black-gold molten essence.
Rien smiled as she caught the sparking ball.
"Everything here is saying something in a language I don't understand. It's crazy out here, Bronte."
"Sounds like home." Gabbie said.
"Which one?" Bronte asked as he caught Rien's toss of magic and began dribbling it like a basketball.
In the distance thunder rumbled.
"All of them." Gabbie said.
They all shared a laugh. A needed laugh that didn't match the joke. It showed their urge to release the tension inside the cave. The day was nothing short of overwhelming. And the real weight of it wasn't even felt yet.
For the next hour— or three, none could really tell, they talked. They questioned and caught up. They cried and hugged— and hugged again.
It was like a family reunion with a caveman aesthetic slapped over it.
But it was more than that. It was a job beyond any of them.
And Brontë had been clocked in since he stepped foot inside the jet to Antarctica.
"Laura…" Bronte said.
They all sat around a campfire as the sun set. Pterodactyls and winged behemoths soared across the orange rays splitting the canopy beyond.
It was peaceful in a terrifying encroaching dark kind of way.
"Yea?" Laura said as Gabbie slept with her head in Laura's lap.
"You know we're not here for no reason." Bronte said. Ilyana grabbed his hand as she sat beside him.
"I wanted to semi-enjoy life a while longer." Laura said with a shrug. "Vamanos. Let me hear it."
"Human mutant relations are fried."
"How fried?" Laura asked.
"Kentucky." Bronte spit a fireball into the weakening campfire blaze and it rekindled with an elemental explosiveness.
"….damn." Laura sighed.
"What was Genosha like?" Bronte asked suddenly.
"Where did you?"
"You and…. Daken have mentioned it in passing."
"Daken…." Laura mumbled.
"Another time." Bronte said quickly.
Behind them Logan snorted and growled in his sleep.
"Genosha, Laura." Bronte said again.
"It was….. a dream…pero, it was real. I don't remember much. I was a kid. But it was the first time I saw people like me that didn't know how to fight. I saw people with the dumbest powers you've ever seen. I saw things I still can't explain."
Brontë turned and rested his head on Ilyana's shoulder. "Heavy lies the head that wears the crown." She whispered.
Then she turned to Laura, "It sounds like Krakoa."
"What?"
Brontë sat up, "Mutant-…X-kind is banding together under one banner. As one nation… again. And this time, I call the shots."
Laura's eyebrows climbed up her head.
"I'm king of X-kind… well, more like president. Anyway, we live on an island that's… alive— a mutant like us, and it's given us access to things centuries ahead of modern technology. One of which is called a gateway flower. Floral transportation on endless photosynthesized energy. We're setting them up at any point of significance and they are only usable by mutants."
"You want to set one up here…" Laura realized.
"We want to set one up anywhere there may be mutants." Bronte said, "We're moving them to a place they can sleep at in peace. It's like you said. It's a dream. There's a kid back on Krakoa and his mutation is the ability to vomit ice cream."
"How will you find the mutants? You can't effectively run search parties across entire cities or THE savage lands." Laura said.
"We have a machine. Old upgraded stark tech. Back when he was on his merchant of death timing." Bronte said.
"You stole that?"
"Emma did."
"Emma…. Like…. essa perra blanc!—"
"Laura. Times have changed. She's saved my life… on a few occasions." Bronte explained.
Laura side eyed him, "Did you have sex with her?"
"He would die slow." Ilyana explained in simple terms.
"I know better." Bronte said before getting back on track. "We have the means to get it by any means."
"And you want to start here..?." Laura said.
"We're starting all over." Bronte said, "I need you with me, though. I can't do this king shit. When it was just us, when did I ever lead?"
"A lot of times." Laura said casually.
"You know what I mean." Bronte said.
"Nunca. This is what I know."
Brontë shook his head and laughed, "Right."
"So, what's the plan here, king?"
"Help me find the safest place to plant a gateway flower. This place should be in an area we can make a hub. A mutant access point that has potential to evolve into something more. Something solid. Would you know where that is? Do you know how it gets out here?"
Laura smiled, "You really want me to take point again, don't you?"
"Been that."
"Alright. Well form a plan at sunrise. For now, I'm exhausted. And happy. It feels like heroin." Laura said. "But I do want to say, finding a ... safe space, is not happening. There's a reason Shana is called the She-Devil."
"Why?" Bronte asked.
"Because we're in hell."
"Then this is manageable land." Ilyana said and winked at Bronte.