ALL CHARACTERS AND SETTINGS ARE PROPERTY OF MARVEL INC. AND THEIR RESPECTIVE AFFILIATES 
 

 Morgan looked down the hall shyly as the man that stormed by approached them. Hank held her close behind him, and stayed by the wall. She watched the man as he walked with a smooth, graceful gait. He was tall, his dark hair slicked back, his blue eyes burning with a fire that seemed to come from deep inside him. Though he was slim, every inch of him was covered in sculpted muscle. But the ears, the eyes, and the tiny wings on his ankles, feathered like hers, told Morgan who this intimidating man was.

She gasped lightly, and but the man hardly seemed to notice. Dr. McCoy pushed her along gently, and she looked back at him as he urged her on.

“Dr. McCoy, is that --”

“Yes, indeed he is. Namor, the Sub-Mariner.”

And then the shouting began. Though Morgan was terribly interested in what was going on in that room, the doctor decided she needed no part of it. For if she thought that Emma's reaction to her was bad, then Namor's would be even worse.

They stopped at the elevator, and Dr. McCoy pressed the button. “I don't understand what's wrong with me,” said Morgan. Hank's head whipped around to see that Morgan, rather than a sad, morose expression, had one hand on her hip, one holding her chin, and her weight on her right foot, tapping her left toes. “Hmm. . . am I fat? Or perhaps too short?”

“Are you really thinking like that?” demanded Hank incredulously. He couldn't believe it! This girl was actually taking the time to think, very seriously, about why her own parents didn't like her.

“Well of course! I waited my whole life to meet them, I was sort of hoping that there would be more. . . oh, I don't know, enthusiasm? No, that's not the right word either. . .”

After a few seconds, she sighed and gave up. “I guess my point is. . .” she murmured, in her soft-as-a-sigh voice. “I don't understand why they hate me.”

“Well, Morgan,” began Hank awkwardly as the elevator opened. “Oh, hullo Logan,” he paused, as the two stepped inside along with the hairy, short man. He looked up and nodded to Dr. McCoy.

“Hank,” he regarded him. His sharp hazel eyes aimed straight for Morgan, who was close enough to Beast as to almost be behind him. She ducked behind the furry blue scientist as Logan began talking to him.

“So, how is she?” he asked in a gruff voice. Though he was probably trying to sound nice, he still sounded irritated.

“She can speak for herself. She's quite brilliant, really. Morgan, you recall Logan?”

“Yes, I do. . . hullo, Mr. Logan,” she said shyly. Something about him made her want to run away in fear, but stay by him for safety. He half-smiled and said, “Mr. Logan. . . haven't heard that one in a while. Just call me Logan, kid. Don't worry about the 'mr.' thing.”

“Yes sir, erm, Logan.”

“So. . . you meet your folks yet?”

“Uh. . . well, yes and no. . .”

“Naturally she had to be sired by Utopia's stubbornest man – second to you, of course.”

Logan chuckled at the jest, then nodded. “So she ain't talked to him yet?”

“No.”

“I have a feeling she's about to.”

The elevator stopped suddenly, and Hank pushed Morgan behind him. “Namor! Stop, I insist, and think of what you're doing!” he implored out loud.

The doors were forced open, and the same man as before landed on the floor, his thin boots making a dull thud against the carpeted floor.

His piercing blue eyes narrowed right at Morgan, who took a sharp breath and hid behind Dr. McCoy's arm. This time, he allowed it, and even pushed her further behind his back. “Namor, calm yourself. You're scaring her --”

“Let me see her!” bellowed the enraged king.

Morgan looked over as she heard a loud snikt sound, and she looked to see that the man named Logan had shiny metal claws coming out of the back of his hands, and he had crouched low to the ground, completely on guard.

“This ain't her fault, Namor, now you had best back off before I show you how she's feelin'.”

The man named Namor straightened out, putting his shoulders back and raising his chin. He grabbed Logan by the back of his jacket and threw him down the hall they had stopped at. Morgan screamed as the gruff man hit the wall with a crunch, then landed on the ground, unmoving.

Coming out from behind Hank, she tried to run by Namor, who hovered about a foot off the ground, but he snatched her arm.

“Let me go!” she squealed, fighting against his iron grip. She hovered slightly, trying to twist away, but Namor shook her slightly with a flick of his wrist, and she stopped, looking him right in the eyes.

She could see herself in his shining eyes, and she could see himself in her face. She could see her delicately arched eyebrows and her thick lashes, her pale coloring and the curve of her lips.

“You cannot be my child,” he snarled, tossing her to the ground. “You are small, weak, and spineless.”

“The only spineless one here is you!” she barked back. “How could you throw him like that!?”

Logan watched as he got up. Snapping his shoulder back into place, he hissed, then raised his eyebrows as he listened to Morgan tell Namor off. He wasn't going to like that, but who cared? He needed to hear it anyway. Not that he would.

Morgan gasped and then gritted her teeth as Namor tightened his grip on her arm. “You are not my child. My child would not be so foolish as to challenge me.”

Tears threatened to spill from her close eyes as she dropped herself, Namor's grip the only thing stopping her from falling to the floor. “Just let me go!” she sobbed. “Leave me alone!”

Namor dropped her with a disgusted look on his face. He flew back up the elevator shaft. Hank knelt down and touched Morgan lightly on the back, and Morgan sat back, smearing tears away with the heel of her palm.

“So I don't think that went so well,” she said quickly, trying to calm down. And though she chuckled, Beast didn't even smile. He looked up at Logan, who nodded once.

Winn rubbed the side of his head as he stumbled out of his ship. The Kree homeworld had more landing area than the rocky New England coast. He sat on a driftwood log and held his head in his hands, trying to sort out why all communications on the ship had suddenly died right before he landed.

A loud, long whooshing sound filled the air, along with the sound of the waves crashing on the water. A strange human in red and gold armor adorned with lights neared the ground, boosted by rockets in his feet. Another two humans, one an enormous man with yellow hair, a red cape, and a hammer, and a human in blue and white with a shield joined him. A tiny human woman joined them, dressed in blue with a long, thin spear that gleamed silver in the moonlight.

“Who are you and why have you come here!?” demanded the human in the armor.

“Oh, you're the human Avengers!” cried Winn, standing up and pulling his Codexer out of his back pocket. He turned it on, and started to recite his carefully planned speech slowly, clearly, and enunciating every word. Occasionally as he read, he would pause and scroll down on the Codexer, but for the most part he read carefully, holding the tiny white square in his hands and tried to look non-threatening.

“Hello, my name is Helerin Winn-Vell. I am a scholar and researcher with the Science division of the Kree Navy. Please do not attack me. I have come to your planet on a mission to research a genetic anomaly commonly known as the 'X-gene'. Please do not attack me. I am alone and have brought no others with me. It is my hope that my research will lead to peace between our two races. Please do not attack me.”

They all stared at him, and then the tiny woman spoke. “Is this guy for real?” she asked.

“I assure you, I am not a hologram.”

“You are a Kree soldier, do you expect us to believe that you pose no threat to us?” asked the massive human, who wasn't a human at all, rather he was an Asgardian, an alien from another dimension, not unlike Winn himself.

“I do not expect you to believe anything. I ask you to believe that I pose no threat.”

The human stepped forward and pulled her scarf off, shaking out her curly black hair and opening it up, tossing it over Winn's shoulders. “It's freezing. We aren't going to get anything down keeping him out in the cold,” she pointed out to the three men. She didn't seem scared of them at all, which was impressive since they were all much bigger, older, and more experienced than she was. “Winn-Vell, my name is Asguardian. Welcome to Earth, I guess.”

Winn grinned widely and looked her in the eyes gratefully. “Thank you,” he gasped, and Asguardian smiled. He was kinda cute, for a soldier from a militant alien race.