Chapter 64

It took a few days for everything to get settled, particularly calling Vee off of school for a few days, since the semester had started, but soon enough Luz and her friends and family were transported to New York City, by one of Magick's stepping disks, landing on the sidewalk before the X-Mansion.

"...Those buildings off in the distance are huge," Hunter said. "They're... They're taller than the Emperor's castle, and there's so many of them."

"I've read about these," Gus added. "They're called skyskimmers."

"Close enough," Luz quipped with a laugh.

"With a little luck, you might just get to see them up close while you're here," Magik said. "The view from the top of Avengers Tower at sunset is... Well, I was gonna say magical but," she then gestured to herself, then most of the group. "Anyway, let's get you all..." Magik was interrupted by a phone ringing. She withdrew a cell phone from somewhere, checked the number, and then held up a finger as she answered it. "Eric, hey, I'm kind of in the middle of... Oh, shoot, really? Really really? Oh, wow, that's not good... Wait, Elsa said what? Well, sh—shoot. Okay, I'm in the middle of something but I'll be free in a minute." She then hung up. "Okay, kiddos and minder of the kiddos, I need to hand you off to Logan asap becuase I'm needed with the Midnight Suns."

"Should I ask what's wrong?" Luz asked hesitantly.

"I probably shouldn't tell you this," Magik said, "but I've heard from a little birdy that your girlfriend thinks you're just like me," Luz immediately blushed, "And I'd want to know, so... That was everyone's favorite Black-British vampire hunter, Blade."

"...I always forget he's British," Luz mused.

"Lots of people do," Magic replied "Anyway he was tracking Bloodstorm One who is um... A literal clone of Dracula with all the same powers except he's uglier. He stole a copy of the Darkhold, Blade called Doctor Strange about it the other day and Strange sent Wong to go help him since he was busy with um... Rescuing you kids. Well, they found him in a museum in an abandoned graveyard in Rhode Island, already staked, with the Darkhold lying there, notes on how to mix the blood of every major strain of vampirism together with the spells that created vampires in the first place to make a super vampire serum... But no serum, despite evidence that he'd made it."

"...So I was going to ask the other day but didn't get a chance," Hunter began. "Human realm vampires are a lot more dangerous than demon realm vampires, aren't they?"

"That depends," Luz began while turning back to him, "I don't know what demon realm vampires are like."

"It's a genetic condition in witches that results in pronounced canine fangs and a predisposition to hemophilia that can be managed with monthly potions," Hunter began.

"...Luz, you've met a vampire," Amity interrupted. "Katya? Mx. Whipers apprentice, with the BATTs? The one who taught us that trick with the whistling. We had that whole debate about her latest story a few weeks ago."

"I still think Kale should have chosen Cauliflower over Broccoli," Luz muttered. "Anyway, I... Noticed her fangs but I didn't want to assume anything."

"Vampires here are horrible undead abominations reanimated by ancient dark magic and cursed with an insatiable appetite for the blood and life force of the living," Magik lectured. "Some of them retain their humanity, a lot of my friends are vampires, but most of them are literally or figuratively soulless, and if you can't cure them right away then... Well, nine times out of ten the best thing you can do is a mercy kill."

"So this is bad then?" Hunter asked.

"Very," Luz confirmed.

"Also someone had turned some of the corpses in the cemetery into Raimis only to immediately dismember them and apparently harvest their teeth, which is also concerning," Magik continued as she led them up to the mansion.

"What are Raimis?" Gus asked.

"They're a type of zombie," Magik said. "The flesh-eating kind, fully sentient, have the memories of the body they're made out of, but they distinctly aren't that person anymore. Spread by a supernatural plague created by a spell in the Darkhold. They can normally survive being dismembered and can do all sorts of body horror stuff so you can image what stated they would have been in for Blade to find them dead."

"I regret asking," Gus said cheerfully.

"Why are they called Raimis?" Hunter asked.

"Partly because they resemble the monsters in a trilogy of movies made by a man named Sam Raimi," Magik finished, "and partly because they prefer to call themselves The Gospel of Hunger which is both too cool for them and also too similar to The Hunger Gospel which is a differentmuch worse zombie virus."

"All of this talk is reminding me," Luz's Mom began, "we're going to need to get you all vaccinated just in case."

"...The human realm has a vaccine for mystical plagues that turn you into a hungry corpse?" Willow asked.

"Yes," Mom replied bluntly. "But also I meant in general."

"...I think I'm behind on my zombieism shot," Luz said. "I think I was supposed to get a booster this summer."

"Oh, yeah. I got a notification while I thought you were at camp. We'll have to get that taken care of," her Mom noted.

"Have I mentioned lately that the human realm terrifies me?" Amity deadpanned. Luz immediately took Amity's hand as the witch continued. "Not just that stuff like this happens but that you're so casual about this."

Luz pulled Amity into a hug. "Don't worry, Hermosa. This all sounds a lot worse than it is. Like, most people never have to deal with this sort of thing."

"Anyway, Blade starts calling other monster hunters becuase this is weird even for them," Magik continued, "and when he gets to Elsa Bloodstone it turns out the same thing happened to some sort of super werewolf she's been tracking: She found the poor son of a... gun, gutted and with his teeth and salivary glands missing. And that's concerning," Magik finished, "becuase that's high-quality samples of three infectious, cursed diseases all tracing back to the Elder God Cthon all gone missing in identical circumstances within a week, two in one go. That can't possibly be good, so yeah. Getting the Midnight Suns together to figure out what's going on and nip it in the bud. Not that that's for any of you to worry about."

At this point, they were at the door to the mansion. Magik reached out to open it only for it to burst open from the other side and a man in a red and black full-body ninja suit to spill out on all fours, crawling about and making grunting noises while Wolverine chased him with a broom. The ninja vocalized a hissing sound and scrambled off.

Luz immediately felt a longing for King.

"What did he do this time?" Magik asked exasperatedly.

"I caught Wade trying to teach a class. Again," Wolverine replied. "When I confronted him he said something about a cameo."

"Huh. That Deadpool. Anyway, here are the kids, I got a call and need to go so... Wait, before I leave," Magik said while turning back to them. "Do any of you need anything else of me?"

"Um, yeah," Luz said. "Um, Ms. Rasputina, ma'am, I thought about it and... I think it would be a good idea if I joined that support group you invited me to. If, if you can get it going, that is."

Magik smiled. "Alright then. I'll make sure there's a seat for you."

Magik then walked away, stepping onto one of her disks as it formed and vanished.

"Alright kids," Wolverine said. "We've got three rooms prepared for you to use while you're here. A two-person room in the boys' dorm, a two-person in the girls, and a three-person right next to it. I'll show you to your rooms, ladies you can decide who is bunking with who, and then we'll start the tour."

After that, they were led into the mansion and it became readily apparent that it was bigger on th inside than it was on the outside.

"Alien technology and magic spells mean we have as much room as we need," Wolverine had said. "Comes in handy. After we merged with Avengers Academy a few years back the student body... Didn't actually increase as much as you'd expect, but it did set off a chain reaction that got us recruiting certain types of mutates in big numbers. Combined with the exchange students from Atlantis and Atillan, being able to expand the school to accommodate everyone staying here was a godsend. Especially since some students live here year round."

As they stepped out of the elevator onto the floor with the dorms, a door to their left burst open, and a redheaded girl who couldn't be older than ten burst out, flipped off the far wall, and started crawling across the ceiling.

A girl about Luz's age, with darker hair came out of the room after her. "Get back here with my diary, Annie!"

"I don't have it, Mayday!" The redhead shouted back.

"If you don't give it back I swear to God I'm going to tell all your little friends that you have a crush on Bailey!"

The redhead looked offended for a moment. "I do not!" she then scrambled down the hall and around a corner, the older girl jumping on a wall and following after.

"Like the Parker kids," Wolverine said in a long-suffering tone. "Whose enrollment and sheltering here is a condition of their father's employment contract. I swear to god if he wasn't the best damn biophysics teacher we could afford..."

"I thought he taught ethics?" Luz noted.

"You can teach more than one subject," Wolverine dismissed.

They were then escorted to their respective rooms and, after a brief discussion, it was decided that Vee would bunk with Mom in the two-person room while Luz, Amity, and Willow would take the three-person room. That settled, and the boys settled in their room, they were then given the grand tour.

"The institute was first founded longer ago than I care to think about and, well, that's saying something, in Westchester County by Charles Xavier, under the name 'The Xavier School For Gifted Youngsters,'" Wolverine started. "The original campus, or 'X-Mansion' as it's causally called, was converted from his family's estate. This building, or at least its outer shell, is a mockup of the original mansion. We moved here a while back, partly because NYC is a more centralized location and partly becuase we got to a point where it was more effective to build from scratch than to renovate the building we had. The original is now the main base of operations for the active duty members of the X-Men while this campus is a full-time school. After mutants became more well known, and Chuck came out as a mutant himself, the school was renamed the Xavier Institute for Mutant Education and Outreach. Then," he continued, "after all the ugliness passed, Chuck decided to retire, Left the X-Men in the hands of Summers, and I took over the school: Now, Chuck's a great guy, but he's made his share of mistakes and has some skeletons in his closet. In the interest of having a fresh start, we decided to rename the school after a dear departed friend."

The old mutant let it hang there for a moment, then quipped "Of course, She ain't so departed anymore. You'd think by now we'd all be used to dead friends coming back right as rain but somehow it's always a surprise. Anyway, after we merged with Avengers Academy we became the Jean Grey Institute for the Genetically Divergant, since non-mutant students were enough of the body that we had to make sure things were accurate. Then last year we got a baseline human Sorcerer transferring in after the ugliness that happened at Strange Academy and Danny Rand called in a favor since his kid kept getting in trouble at the fancy private school he had her enrolled in and, well, he's one of our biggest financial backers so we tacked 'Or Otherwise Gifted' on the end."

As he spoke, they were led back downstairs to an increasingly sciencey-looking wing of the manor, even stopping to look in on a few classes, chemistry and physics and stuff, before walking into some kind of lab of some kind with a giant medical scanner thingy. It honestly looked a little intimidating.

Also in the room was a fuzzy blue man in a lab coat. Dr. McCoy, the Beast. "Hello again children. It's nice to meet you all under less dire circumstances."

"Word from the grapevine is that there's a bit of concern about what is and isn't safe for the witch kids to eat," Wolverine noted. "Since mutation's a crapshoot, we've got this here biometric doohickey. Gets all sorts of data and uses it to figure out food intolerances and allergies, or if having the wrong number of hearts is gonna cause problems that have to be headed off. Figured if you wanted, while we're here, some of the kids could hop in here and get a better idea of safe food."

All of Luz's friends looked at the scanner with concern. "Is it safe?" Gus asked.

"Perfectly," Beast insisted. "The scans are totally non-invasive and, if privacy is a concern the machine doesn't save the acquired data. Once the pertinent information is printed off it's wiped from the computer's memory."

When her friends still seemed hesitant, Luz stepped forward. "How about I try it out? I already know all the weird stuff about my body so we can check if it's accurate and... Oh, wow... I've just been sort of taking it on faith that I can still eat human food," Luz noted. "After I adapted to handle demon food I... Okay either way I wanna scan. I'd really hate it if I ended up throwing up Mamá's empanadas because we didn't know better."

"Be my guest," Beast said. "Just step onto the platform and I'll run the test."

Luz walked under the scanner and a few moments later a big ring made of tech was slowly floating down around her and then back up as it neared the floor. After about thirty seconds the machine returned to its orignal position and a sheet was printed off from a nearby computer.

"As you can all see, the machine is perfectly safe," Beast said. "And, as for accuracy," he said taking the print off. "Now normally I wouldn't read this off out loud but as... Luz, is it?"

"Yeah."

"Has volunteered... You are aware that you are severely lactose intolerant?" Luz confirmed this and Beast continued. "Do you have any other food allergies or sensitivities that you know of?" Luz shook her head. "The... symbiote bio-matter saturating your body, seemingly originating at the generic level, that's something you're fully aware of?"

" Yep!"

"You have a... Pulsing sack of some kind of exotic bile, which itself seems to be radiating some type of energy, attached directly to your heart, which is itself slightly of center from the human norm? And your lungs are slightly reshaped and shrunk but much more efficient?"

"Yep," Luz said. "It's how come I can do magic like my friends have."

"...There are traces of unidentified exotic elements in your bloodstream and bone marrow, which are themselves admitting energies similar to but distinct from the energy of the... bile sack?" Beast asked.

"Yeah."

"Additionally your bones and muscular structures are denser and the internals of your bones are built somewhat differently, allowing you to theoretically support a considerable amount of mass?" Beast continued.

"Umhmm," Luz confirmed.

"And that you possess a negligible rate of cellular degradation combined with perfect cellular replication and regeneration?"

"I don't know what that means," Luz said.

"That your cells are repairing and rejuvenating themselves faster than they're breaking down," Beast continued. "Or, in layman's terms, that you're maturing but not aging." When Luz blinked, Beast continued. "In clinical terms, Luz, you're immortal."

"...That's actually... Not something I knew," Luz admitted with an awkward laugh. She couldn't help but glance at her friends and family, especially Amity, as it sank in that unless something killed her first she was going to outlive all of them. That, that... She thought of how The Bat Queen couldn't remember her partner, the giant whose staff she'd been part of, and that was only after a few thousand years. How long until Luz couldn't remember the people she loves now? "Cool."