[OP: Skillet "Beyond Incredible" ]

The bridge looked like it ended in nothing.

"Uh...now what?" Alt Rogue asked.

"I don't understand this. I still sense them," Emma said.

She put out her hand.

Shine yanked her back just before she could reach over the edge of the bridge.

"What was that for?" Emma demanded.

"I don't know, I just felt like you shouldn't do that," Shine said.

"And what do you propose?" Emma asked.

Shine looked at the others, calculating.

"Jubilee, you can shoot things without touching them. You try."

"Uh...sure." Jubilee came to the front.

"I can shoot too," Domino said.

"But she shoots light." Shine gestured nonchalantly.

Jubilee shot some energy off the bridge.

Instead of disappearing into nothing, it hit something like a glass or clear, crystalline shell and exploded against it like a splattered egg.

"I'm not sure what that is," Shine said, "but what do you want to bet it's partly why the telepaths cannot reach us directly with ease?"

"Perhaps, but how do they reach out at all," Emma said.

"And what is it?" Forge wondered. "I don't recognize that."

"Looks like some kind of membrane," Kitty said. "Like a big egg white or a cocoon."

"That's gross," Ryan said.

"Sounds like Sinister," Shine mused. "I'm sure it opens also, then...like his costume. So how do we open it?"

The problem solved itself, sort of, by the wall actually opening on its own, like an alien bug egg in a movie might have.

"And we have to go in that?" Kitty made a face.

No one bothered to state the obvious.

Wally carefully stepped inside, Logan right on his heels, and the others followed.

The egg closed behind them.

Inside, it was almost more chaotic than outside.

There was an elaborate looking machine taking up most of the--room? Pocket? Orb?

It was as delicate and long limbed as a spider, but on each limb was a pod with someone in it, all connected by hundreds of wires and bars, to each other, and to the centroid of the mechanism.

There there was a small control deck.

Standing on this was a small man in a waistcoat and trousers.

"Broker!" Morph hissed.

The Time Broker looked up.

"Oh, hello," he said. "Greetings to all of you. I was beginning to think you wouldn't show up.... Care to have a seat?"

A table appeared out of nowhere, with chairs.

Keven yelped and jumped away from it like it was a snake.

"I can't believe it." Morph stepped forward. "All this time, you were really behind this? What is this? Were you just playing us the whole time?"

"Playing is such a banal term," Time Broker said. "One has to look at the bigger picture, Morph."

"Bigger picture!!!?" Morph erupted. He tried to dash forward.

Mystique grabbed him from behind, and Wally got in front of him and grabbed him--Morph was way stronger than he looked.

"Don't do something reckless, man," Wally hissed.

"Stop it!" Mystique said.

"After what we've been through in the last 48 hours and before, you want me to stop?" Morph said. "This is why we're here!"

"Wow," Domino muttered. "The weird guy has a temper."

"Oh, yeah..." Scott said. "Come to think of it, Morph always had more of a temper when it came to people hurting each other for stupid reasons."

He put a hand to his visor warily.

"Did you really think you could attack me anyway?" Time Broker said, amused. "Am I real?"

"Apparently," Morph said.

"Perhaps I misled you slightly about the nature of my existence," Time Broker said. "It was more useful for my experiment."

"Slightly?" Morph said.

Shine waved at him to chill.

She stepped a little forward. "This is interesting. I haven't met a being like you before. But I've heard that you know what we are. Was all this to lure us here?"

"Very observant," Time Broker said. "To be truthful, I wasn't sure if you'd make it here. But you passed all the tests along the way. Even recovered most of your group. All of you are to be congratulated."

"Tests?" Morph growled.

"All that was a test?" Emma spoke. "Why did you kidnap me?"

"Oh, I didn't, I just helped Sinister to," Time Broker said. "But he was so persistent. Once I suggested the benefit of crossing dimensions for being untraceable, he saw the plan as foolproof. But I know you shook off their control, which is quite impressive. It's so interesting when elements do things you wouldn't expect them to."

"And you wanted us to find her," Morph said. 

"So that was your idea, or Sinister's?" Shine asked. "Using Emma as a spy."

"Oh, I let him think it was his," Time Broker said. "I was interested to see what would come of it if you all were trying to stop them. I never thought you'd figure out the bit about them being in the future, but you ended up being more clever than I thought. Truly, even my teams of Exiles and Weapon X couldn't compare."

"Thanks for the compliment," Morph said.

"Don't mind him," Shine said. "If you all had access to the kind of information we did, you might easily have figured it out, but he never gave you enough. A poor teacher blames a hardworking student for not understanding."

"Well, part of the fun is the mystery," Time Broker said.

"But why?" Morph said. "Why would you do all this?"

"If I had to guess," Shine said, "it's because you want to see what would come of it?"

"Well, that's an oversimplification," The Time Broker said. "If you'll look around, you'll see--I keep track of all kinds of time anomalies."

The walls of the orb became like movie screens, showing all kinds of scenes, some with people they recognized.

"Time is such a complex organism," Time Broker went on, like it was a class lesson. "So easily disrupted by people who travel dimensions. A few changes here and there are hardly noticeable, but I began to wonder what the possibilities were, if one pushed it further. After all, taking people out of their times to fix errors in other ones was already a huge change."

"Some might say, more of a change than just letting things play out different was," Shine said. "And some might also say, that it was not our right to interfere with such things, unless Divinely Guided to do so."

"That's a narrow way to look at it," Time Broker said. "If you have the power to intervene and to predict outcomes, then it's your job to pick the correct outcome...but I began to wonder, what was the point of it all? It doesn't really change anything, does it? Nothing new in it--you never run out of errors and solutions, is all, and people get tired of playing clean up to the universe. Then I got this brainwave: What if there was more one could do? What if you could clear up the errors in time by combining the timelines... And these two, almost parallel timelines, they were the perfect experiment. The test...no more errors, no more problems could exist if there were no discrepancies."

"Mad scientist, called it," Shine whispered to Wally.

"Called it a little too well, Babe." Wally was looking weirded out. "I'm getting Owlman vibes from this guy."

"So...he's crazy, right?" Scott muttered.

"Shh." Emma was trying to follow this. "Are you saying that your solution to some errors in time was just to eliminate alternative timelines, period? But we're only two."

"One can begin with two," Time Broker said. "At first I just wanted to see if it would work, but I've begun to wonder if I could take this even further...how many worlds would it work with? Some say that all reality began from one union anyway. Why not restore it that way?"

"In the Ultimate Reality, they are restored," Shine spoke, sounding disgusted by him and also vaguely concerned. "But in our own human efforts, they cannot be. These divergences show us the value of choice, because not all outcomes are the same. They show us the value of character, because not all things are predetermined. If you take that away, there is no longer any reason to choose good or evil."

"Yes," Time Broker said. "Such a tiresome question, isn't it? Why not just do what is necessary, not bother about good or evil? That is my motto."

Morph almost choked. "That explains so much..." he said.

Mystique frowned. "So...you don't care about heroes and villains, because you think it doesn't matter."

"Well, frankly, my dear, if it did, I wouldn't have used you," Time Broker said.

Mystique looked like she'd been slapped.

"For all her mistakes," Shine said tightly, "she is more good than you are."

"I don't really care," Time Broker said. "I'm a little beyond good and evil."

"Apocalypse said that too," Logan growled. "And look at the world he created."

"A bit totalitarian, perhaps, but the principle of power being used is surely the most rational grounds for our society," Time Broker said.

"Rational?" Kitty said.

"Have you seen what it's like out there?" Ryan cried. "It's horrible."

"To you small minded humans, everything that happens to you personally that you don't like seems horrible," Time Broker said. "You were always such a selfish, cowardly race."

"And, yet, we are in the image of God," Shine said, with this kind of calm dignity that no one else could have imagined having at this moment. "And God has something even beyond personality. And all things are personal to God. So perhaps in that way, we are actually wise. No event is insignificant. If you focus on time anomalies, you ought to know that. There are no small events, only small impacts from them on certain people. In fact, the stronger your character is, the less you think of even big events as being more significant than small ones. That's all an illusion to us. Many old stories have tried to teach us this. The simplest tests are the ones we are most likely not to pass, because we never think of them as tests. So, what is your excuse for this?"

"You Wordlings are always on about those small events," Time Broker said. "You never look at what you could be capable of. You could change the world forever."

"I'd like to think we do," Wally said. "Just not like this. This is destroying it. I mean, that's a change, all right, it's just not a good one."

"In the words of a movie, if a man robs a house, that's work," Shine said.[Born Yesterday, great movie]. "But it's not honest work, is it? Evil takes effort, as does good, but evil takes effort only in the material sense. In the inner sense, good takes much more effort than evil. We are predisposed to do evil, and the world and the devil encourage us to give into that. Fighting off all three of those things is the hardest work of any of our lives. But throwing out the battle? That's surrendering to it without so much as a fight. A serial killer might have put up more of a moral effort than someone who is willing to do that."

"Dang," Domino muttered.

"Do not try to lecture me," Time Broker said. "You cannot grasp what I am, human, the amount of things I have to keep track of. You were born and you'll die all in Time with a limited, linear view of any of it, even as you travel worlds. I have seen it more clearly, and it's a fragile thing, as all things humans touch seem to be. So much choice and consequences for them. And what does it do for the universe? Ask Morph--there's evil versions of all of the people standing here, just about. You can't rely on them. There're versions of them who are dead. In the end, looking for any reassurance in human beings is futile. And leaving them to govern their own lives is a fool's errand."

"Who are you to argue with God's ways?" Shine said.

"God should recognize that humans are incapable of living up to His expectations," Time Broker said, "and are only fit to be used as tools--as He uses them...but I never could understand why He seems to actually care what happens to them, even as He used them. As if he'd prefer to use them for only the purpose that would make them all the most happy. What can he get out of that?"

"Screwtape Letters," Trinity said.

"I was thinking that too," Shine said. "How would you answer him, Trinity?"

"I'd say that God loves us," Trinity said. "And God is love, and that's just not something that evil can understand, so you don't get what God sees in us, but God does, and that's good enough for me."

"Whoever said Christians were stuck up snobs never met these people," Domino muttered to Forge. "If anything, this lunatic is the arrogant prick."

"I don't even know if I buy what they say, and I still want them to win this argument," Forge muttered back. "I mean, I feel like my whole reason for existence is being called into question by this guy, and I'm not sure if he can back up his words."

"Love," Time Broker said. "Just a distraction, nothing more. It changes nothing in the course of time."

"I'd say it changes everything," Wally said. "But I guess now we know why you went with this. And Apocalypse and Sinister were probably ecstatic to get your help. So...why are we here?"

"Before I answer that, I think we need all our players," Time Broker said.

Out of thin air, it seemed, though it probably was actually just hidden from them, Apocalypse and Sinister appeared in the foreground of the orb. Near The Time Broker's control deck.

All around the edge of the orb appeared the foes the heroes had been fighting this whole time.

The teleports from before, plus several other people who might have also been teleports.

Magneto was standing in one section, looking bored. Quicksilver was behind him.

Selene and their Angel, along with the Inner Circle members, were off to another side.

Empath was there also, staring straight ahead.

The machine overhead began to pulse with a faint light, like it was warming up.

Everyone got a bad feeling about it.

"And there's the trap," Logan muttered.

"This is not good," Storm murmured.

Rogue grabbed Gambit's arm like she thought he might get snatched--or maybe she was just scared.

"Now that we're all here," Time Broker said, "would you like to know why we wanted you to come to us?"

Silence. No one wanted to give him the satisfaction of asking.

"We regarded you as insignificant ants," Apocalypse spoke. "Not worthy of our time to try to stop. But The Broker insisted that if there was one thing that could stop our plan, it would be you."

"But if we played our cards right," Sinister said, "you would help us, by gathering all our foes together and bringing them here, where we could finish them off easily. Somehow, you evaded us in our world in the natural realm. But we had a fallback plan. Here, we can make the rules. And we have infinite resources, and you have only a handful of fighters."

"You spoke of God?" Time Broker said. "But God cannot touch us here. We have made our own realm, our own world! And we can make an entire new one, in reality also. Now that we have all the pieces."

The X-men stared at him in horror.

Trinity clenched her fists.

Wally frowned at them.

Shine?

She laughed.

The sound rang out sharp and scornful against the triumphant look of the enemy, and they all stared at her like she'd lost her mind.

"Sorry, you just reminded me of something," Shine said. "It's from Isaiah 14. Do you mind?"

Without waiting for a response, she began to quote rather loftily:

"How you are fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning!
How you are cut down to the ground,
You who weakened the nations!
 For you have said in your heart:
'I will ascend into heaven,
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God;
I will also sit on the mount of the congregation
On the farthest sides of the north;
 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds,
I will be like the Most High.'
Yet you shall be brought down to Sheol,
To the lowest depths of the Pit.

 "Those who see you will gaze at you,
And consider you, saying:
'Is this the man who made the earth tremble,
Who shook kingdoms,
Who made the world as a wilderness
And destroyed its cities,
Who did not open the house of his prisoners?'

"All the kings of the nations,
All of them, sleep in glory,
Everyone in his own house;
But you are cast out of your grave
Like an abominable branch,
Like the garment of those who are slain,
Thrust through with a sword,
Who go down to the stones of the pit,
Like a corpse trodden underfoot.
You will not be joined with them in burial,
Because you have destroyed your land
And slain your people.
The brood of evildoers shall never be named." [verses 12-20]

The bad guys grew more angry the longer she spoke, and, by the end, they all looked like they wanted to skewer her.

Shine, not much daunted, gestured impudently at them.

"You want to play God?" she said. "I think you'll find it's not a game. You don't get to pick and choose reality like a canvas of paint, you fools. But if you want to play this game, then by all means, take your best shot at us. But if you thought you would win just because we did as you wanted us to, then you have sorely misunderstood how God plays the wicked by letting them think they've won, and then yanks victory right out from under their arrogant eyes. Did you think we would be scared of you just because of all this? Did you imagine that we're intimidated by your horrendous acts against nature and against the laws of heaven? Do you think God is surprised by what you've done? Do you think He is worried about it? Surrender now, you miserable wretches, and perhaps you may escape with your lives. I'll give you 10 seconds to decide if you want to bail. After that, it's all on your own head. After all, quitting a battle you know you can't win is the wisest thing to do sometimes, isn't it?"

How she had the gall to face an array of criminals and lunatics like that, and threaten them, was beyond most of the group.

Logan smirked though.

"I told you we should have cut her tongue out," Apocalypse said. "Impudent, immovable, and proud, little human."

"She sent you running, didn't she?" Sinister said.

"And you as well," Apocalypse said. "I didn't run anyway. I thought she'd never get out of that pocket."

"I guess you don't know everything after all," Sinister said.

"And your plan to use teleports failed," Apocalypse said.

"Gentlemen, please," Time Broker said. "We have miscalculated, that's all, but against these odds, even she cannot win. So, let the games begin!"

Everyone took a defensive stance.

* * *

"Shine, what is our plan?" Storm asked, in the few seconds they had.

"Plan?" Shine said.

"Ya better have one," Logan said. "After that."

"Fight, win, stop this," Shine said.

"Just pointing out, we still don't know where all the Alternate X-men are," Wally said.

"Yeah, what about our team?" Alt Rogue asked.

"I'm sure they are in this realm somewhere," Shine said.

The bad guys were coming.

Shine held her sword in front of her. "Okay, makeshift plan: Emma, Scott, Younger Rogue, Forge, and Domino, all of you try to find the rest of the people from your group. If they're here, Emma can probably sense them somewhere. Keep the bad guys off her as long as possible. All you older X-men, help Wally keep the bad guys busy here and their attention on us for as long as possible. Quicksilver, get around them and try to get a close look at those pods. We have to free the telepaths if we can. I want you to find Jean and Xavier if you can. They'll be the biggest problem. Without them this will be much weaker, and we need to stall it."

The bad guys were almost to them now.

"Kids, back up wherever you can and help me get around them to The Time Broker. If anyone can fight him, it'll be one of us Reality Travelers. Morph, either you back me up, or back up the others--be as big a distraction as you can. Raven, same to you, or see if you can sneak up on some of them. No one leave the orb. No telling what's waiting outside. Got it?"

"No time to argue with it." Wally took his running stance again. "Better than no plan, right?"

"And, Kurt, try to keep the teleports off us as long as possible," Shine added as the enemy reached them.

The way everything broke into action was very sudden to the younger members who'd not experienced it often.

All the older fighters leapt into action with comprehension of what Shine had said.

Trinity, not able to do much here, just tried to follow what was happening.

Leland, Shaw, and Angel all attacked the older X-men team with gusto.

Angel was the biggest problem--he was faster and had more range than them.

Storm wasn't even sure her powers would work here, when it wasn't a natural place.

And they didn't work perfectly. She couldn't make any clouds, not enough moisture in the atmosphere.

Btu she was able to make wind and generate electricity by doing so.

She drove Angel back.

Gambit threw some cards at him, and he went down for a moment.

Leland slammed them down.

Kitty phased through him and kicked him from behind. He turned to grab her, and Kevin formed a huge hand out of the air and knocked him flat.

Selene motioned, and Kevin went flying like by telekinetic force, and she lifted up also and flew after him, ready to drain his energy.

Wally knocked her off him and ran really fast to snatch Mimic, who was closing in on Older Rogue and some of the other kids.

Wally yanked him and spun him off to the side.

Meanwhile, the newer X-group slipped around the action as much as they could.

Emma was scanning frantically for any sign of their old teammates.

In all the voices, it was hard to pick anything out.

Magneto blocked their path. "Where are you trying to go?" he asked.

Forge blasted him, and he flew back.

Everyone turned to look at Forge, who rubbed his head sheepishly. "Uh...no one else thought to do that? 'Cause honestly I didn't think it would work."

"I guess that's not metal," Domino said.

"Magneto didn't think to take our weapons first?" Emma said. "How overconfident."

"He'll kill us when he gets up." Scott shot at him. "Not a lot of time."

Then Alt Quicksilver appeared behind Forge. "Hey, I gotta take this." He grabbed his gun--and then realized it was attached. "Oh...huh."

Forge turned the gun at him.

"You can't really think I won't dodge that," Alt Quicksilver said.

Domino clocked him in the head with one of her guns.

"No, but I do think you're a moron," she said, kicking him down for good measure.

"This is too easy," Emma said.

Metal rose up from around them and surrounded them, like blades of shrapnel.

"You were saying," Scott said.

Emma turned into diamond.

"What about us?" Forge said.

Alt Rogue bent down and drained some of Quicksilver's energy. "Just brace yourself," she said.

She grabbed them one at a time and dashed them out of the area, dodging the shards with some difficulty.

Magneto, realizing what happened, adjusted them and turned to them.

"Get his helmet off," Emma hissed at Rogue.

Scott blasted at Magneto to distract him.

Alt Rogue rushed up behind him and yanked at the helmet.

He caught her arms. "Careful," he said. "Speed doesn't mean I can't feel that."

Alt Rogue's eyes widened.

Domino raised her gun and shot Magneto's wrist.

He dropped Rogue and just looked amazed that she'd actually hit him.

"See, thanks to the modifications, I'm not just shooting metal," Domino said. "Should have gone for the gun, not the bullets."

"Thanks for the tip!" Magneto was livid. He turned, and the guns flew out of her hands.

Rogue just backed up and tackled him. Then she just touched his skin instead.

Magneto fell back to the ground, and the guns dropped.

"Never should have let me get that close," Alt Rogue huffed.

She let go and stood back.

"I think I can make this a little easier for Good Quicksilver," she said.

She raised her hands at the machine.

"Careful!" Emma warned her. "We want to get them out, but if you just break that, it could kill them also."

"It ain't movin' as much as I thought..." Rogue said.

"That's because it's not made just of metal," Sinister, who was watching this and doing nothing, informed her. "We didn't care for a repeat of Magneto's little betrayal to set us back, so we made sure to construct this out of multiple kinds of material. Even if you break one, it'll still stand. Have fun trying."

"I hate it when the bad guys are smart," Forge said.

"Why are they not doing anything?" Domino wondered.

"They usually don't." Rogue shrugged. "I don't even know if Sinister can fight."

"He can't, huh?" Domino said.

"But he also heals from any injury," Scott warned.

"Guys," Rogue said suddenly, "I think I know where our friends are... It was in Magneto's memory."

She dashed around the machine to the other end of the orb.

They followed her, without anyone else trying to stop them--the rest of the team had them pretty well occupied.

This end of the orb had almost a forest of Sinister's demon plants growing over it...proof those things didn't need regular plant food to grow...gross.

"Ew," Domino said.

"I don't seen anyone," Scott said.

"Nothing here has been like it seemed." Emma resumed her usual form. "But I sense them."

"It's...kind of an illusion," Rogue said.

She put her gloves on and yanked at one of the plant tendrils, tearing it away.

The other plants started moving, snaking towards her.

Domino shot them, and so did Forge.

Scott lasered a few more.

Emma turned one hand into diamond and sliced through more, peering closer. Then she hit something else that was like glass.

Hitting it hard, she cracked it.

"Scott, here." She pointed.

Scott blasted it, and a whole wall came shattering down, bringing the plants with it like some really disturbing greenhouse.

And all of them now saw a row of incubators, all holding different members of the X-men, as if they were preparing them for Synergizing.

Sinister looked. "Apocalypse, they found them! How?"

"Perhaps the little one absorbed Magneto's memories." Apocalypse really didn't care.

"Well, stop them!" Sinister snapped.

"Why would I stop them? This does not concern me," Apocalypse said. "You were the one who wanted to make the X-men your slaves."

"I can't fight them all at once," Sinister argued.

"I fail to see how that is my problem," Apocalypse said.

"Gentlemen, please, we all work together," Time Broker said. "But never fear. I had anticipated that we might have too little manpower here for them. But I have backup. There's a funny thing about time..."

One of the walls opened and, suddenly, three huge lizard creatures came through it.

Dinosaurs.

"What in the--?" Domino looked up as what looked like a T-Rex charged at her.

A pterodactyl dove at Rogue who just barely dodged it.

Scott shot at it, and it spun off.

The third one, which looked like a stegosaurus, swung its tail at him with more speed than one would expect.

"Get down, Scott!" Emma jumped and shoved him, then turned into diamond, and the tail hit her instead.

The impact alone sent her sprawling, but she wasn't hurt.

"Dinosaur? Really?" Forge said. "I mean, you'd think he'd have something more future-y."

"I stick with the classics!" Time Broker called at him cheerfully. "Oh, and the fun part is, since I summoned them, they obey me. Ha!"

"That's just not fair," Domino said. "This is some Jurassic park s--- here."

She shot at one, not expecting it to do much--and it didn't.

"Go for the eye," Forge suggested.

The T-Rex reared around and almost crushed them as it ran at them.

Domino had to run for it.

"Nothin' is ever that easy." Alt Rogue pushed herself up and ducked behind one of the plants, trying to get cover.

[Nope.]