Shatterstar reflected on the nature of coincidence as he watched Gomi, the young cyborg and mechanical genius who was once of the Fallen Angels - along with his former X-Force teammates, Siryn and Meltdown.

Gomi had come to Boston, having garnered a full scholarship to Boston University. He met Shatterstar at a club, when the young mutant had first begun tracking the movements of Carlos Esteban*.

[* The drug dealer Shatterstar captured last issue. -Don't-tell-me-you-missed-it-Shawn]

It was an odd moment for them both, but the two young men got to know one another better... and fell in love.

Shatterstar had had reason to question his sexuality in the past, mind... his friendship with Richter was platonic, but... there was more than a friendship there. But for Gomi, it came as a shock. He'd had crushes before - most notably on Tabitha Smith, the young woman now called Meltdown and Shatterstar's formet X-Force teammate - but never really been in love. Certainly not with a /man/. He likened it to the lead character in the movie In & Out, who suddenly realizes he's gay - and is happier for it.

It is always pleasant for a young person to find true love, and these two had. It was, indeed, the reason Shatterstar was so ardent about "cleaning up" Boston - to provide a better place for Gomi to live.

Young love is a beautiful thing, no?

Meltdown, on the other hand, was not having such luck in love. She was in Axis, on Landsdowne Street, one of the premiere dance clubs in Boston. Two men had she loved, and they were both gone. She hadn't seen Sam or Bobby* in months. She missed them, a little.

[*Sam Guthrie, aka Cannonball, and Roberto DaCosta, aka Sunspot -Secret-ID Shawn]

Just a little.

Not that it mattered now. She was in a club, there were lots of hot guys around, and she was a little more than half-drunk. Maybe she'd find someone tonight. Or at least get laid.

Sometimes she wondered what her life had come to. She used to be someone. But now...

When she was in X-Force, she didn't always have a good time, but... she made a difference. Even if it was just a small difference, even if she didn't save the world or anything, she still made a hell of a difference.

These days, the only difference she was making was her BAC.*

[*Blood Alcohol Content -Acronym-Shawn]

Tab sighed. /What the hell, right?/ She'd been a mutant soldier long enough. Right now, she was just going to have a good time.

Theresa Rourke wasn't doing so well either. Her own love life had been phenomenally twisted, between her unresolved feelings for James Proudstar* and her bizarre quasi-attraction to the mercenary Deadpool. Add in the fact that her father was in a coma** and that vague, unfulfilled feeling gnawing at her... and she was in a bad way.

[*aka Warpath, erstwhile member of X-Force and current member of the New Warriors -plug-Randy's-title-Shawn **Sean Cassidy, aka Banshee, is comatose following events in recent issues of X-Men -reminder-note-Shawn]

She sighed, and leaned against a wall, trying to get ahold of herself. After wandering around Boston in an emotional haze, she was feeling a little burnt out. Her attention was slowly drawn to the only other person near her - a tall, lovely Goth girl walking down the sidewalk to her. The tall woman smiled, and took a drag on her clove cigarette. She walked past Terry to a bouncer, standing in a nearby club entrance, and told the man, "The redhead's with me."

Terry looked over to the girl, who just smiled at her. "Trust me, Siryn. Come on in." And she entered the club.

/How did she know...?/

Terry sighed. She was Siryn, erstwhile leader of X-Force, and she wasn't doing anything else, these days.

She walked into the club, barely noticing the big sign reading "Axis."

Axis had one more patron of note, this evening. A large, powerfully built black man, with foot-long dredlocks and the devil's own smile. He wore polished, steel-toed combat boots, from which he got his name. Boots, they called him. He was a drug lord, and he had a mad on for a certain man.

A man who'd gotten Carlos Esteban

He had a friend to get in touch with. Someone who owed him a big favor.

It was time to call in that marker.

Boots pulled out his cellular, and made a phone call.

The goth - whose name was Serendipity, though Terry didn't know that - walked straight up to the bar. Terry followed - and was stopped short.

"Tab?"

Tabitha Smith, aka Meltdown, turned at the sound of the familiar Irish brogue. "'Lo, Terry!" Her words were a little slurred, but Terry - a recovering alcoholic herself - could smell her breath, even from a distance.

"Oh, lass, y'went an' got yuirself smashed, didn't ye?" Terry sighed. "Din't expect t'be seein ye here."

Meltdown nodded, a little blearily. "Came Boston... see m'friend Gomi. Prolly see 'im 'morrow. Wha 're you doin' here?"

Before Terry could reply, Serendipity spoke up again, interrupting the reunion. "There is another."

And there was, indeed. Shatterstar wasn't a big fan of Axis, but Gomi had wanted to come. So he followed his lover. 'Star grumbled. They had to get up pretty early so they could meet Meltdown.

Meltdown... there was one he had not thought of for a while. But she knew Gomi from his time in the Fallen Angels, the group of superpowered thieves that had been collected by the Vanisher.* And she knew 'Star from their days in X- Force, the team that had ceased to be.

[*see the Fallen Angels LS -Gotta-love-continuity-Shawn]

X-Force... after the Phalanx's attack had been repulsed, the majority of the captured mutants had scattered to the four winds. Some had joined other teams - Warpath was now a New Warrior, for instance. Some had simply vanished. But none of the mutants trained by the time-displaced Cable had been able to accept joining the three new teams of X-Men, and none had felt the need to enter training again with the younger mutants of Generation X. So they simply... left.

It had been nice, though, to be a part of a team... 'Star wished they had stayed together. But such was not to be. And so he found himself in Axis, at the behest of his young lover.

Gomi, for his part, quickly excused himself to go to the men's room. The man some called Ben Russell sighed and went to buy a drink.

"Wha' mean, 'nother?" Meltdown's intoxication was making her a little difficult to understand, but Serendipity seemed to have no problem.

"Here, tonight, there will be an event. It will change all three of you, though Theresa Rourke will not stay. But you, Tabitha Smith, will meet your friend Gomi much sooner than you had anticipated... and you will not walk away unscathed."

"So who was it, trash?"

Boots knew his informant knew more than he was letting on. The young man must know who had captured Esteban. If he hadn't, he wouldn't be protesting so... violently.

The leader of Boston's only Jamaican Drug Posse grinned, a slice of white in a pitch black face. "You owe me, trash. You gon' tell."

Serendipity sighed to herself. Behind the pale makeup, under the black mascara and affected drawl of an accent, she really was just a scared girl. How to explain to these two the visions, the certainty? How to tell them about what was going to happen without breaking the fragile web of the timeline, as she'd done once before?

How to avoid another Jackal?

The Irish one, Terry, didn't matter as much as Tabitha did. Terry wouldn't stay. Serendipity knew it. Her part was important, but temporary. Meltdown, though... she was incredibly important. The woman was a nexus. Her fate would concern all of Boston.

If only Serendipity could just tell them!

But she couldn't. Not without damaging everything.

"Where is he?" Ben Russell held two drinks - an amaretto sour for Gomi, a Coke for himself. But Gomi was still in the restroom.

A single shot. Even in a crowded dance club, where the music is so loud it makes your teeth vibrate, you can hear a gunshot. For most people, it was a signal to get the hell out of Dodge. For three of the patrons, it was a clarion call to action.

Siryn, Meltdown, and Shatterstar had all been trained by Cable. They knew their cue. As one, they ran towards the restrooms, from whence the shot had come - fighting against the tide of people who wisely chose to flee. None of them understood. They soon would.

There was a shriek, almost too high to be heard, as Theresa Rourke drew upon her power of the sonic scream - the power she had inherited from her now- comatose father. She took to the air, though the relatively low ceiling and the chaotic, multicolored flashing lights kept her from registering fully what was happening.

Meltdown, for her part, decided not to follow her instincts and just toss time bombs into the crowd until she had a path. She waded through the crush of humanity for a few moments before noticing that the odd Goth girl was unerringly finding gaps and spaces between people, and making much better time than she. Meltdown followed her, not understanding, not really caring. It was amazing how a gunshot and a good dose of adrenaline could sober you right up.

For all Tabitha's luck, however, Shatterstar got there first.

What he saw ripped his heart from his chest. Figuratively, that is. Blood pounding in his ears, he fell to his knees in shock.

Meltdown and Siryn barely had time to register what was happening. They saw Shatterstar - their former comrade-in-arms, who none of them had even guessed were in Boston - cradling a dead body, tears streaming down his cheeks - none of them had ever seen him cry.

The body was recognizable to the two women, even though neither had seen him since leaving the group of superpowered thieves called the Fallen Angels.

His name was Gomi, and he had a large hole where his forehead used to be.

The source of that hole was, no doubt, the gun held by Boots, who walked out of the Men's Room and smiled.

"You must be Shatterstar, eh, mano? Trash* here tol' me all 'bout you. You ain' gon' be away from him long."

[*"Gomi" is a Japanese word meaning "junk" or "trash". -Linguistic-Shawn]

And he aimed the gun at Ben Russell's head.

Don't dare miss it! Or... or I'll cry. Or something.

-Shawn-