Template:Featured Articles/20-2009
 A meal out turned to disaster when Kyle Gibney, Jennie Stavros, Marius Laverne and Crystal Amaquelin were ambushed by a bunch of hired mutant mercenaries. After a brief battle, during which their powers were removed by Wipeout, teleportation devices were fixed to the teens ready for them to be taken elsewhere. Crystal's device failed and she was left behind to raise the alarm. As the search continued, with both X-Men and X-Force trying to find any clue to the kidnappers, Moira was sent a number of letters from someone calling himself "Ahab", taunting her with hints of what was happening to the students. Collecting the mail for the boathouse, Nathan finally opened the letters and recognised the handwriting as belonging to Moira's missing former colleague Rory Campbell. The trail lead to a mercenary broker responsible for hiring the Nasty Boys, one of whom "Gorgeous George" was an old acquaintance of Pete's: unhappy with what was done to the kids, George betrayed his employer and gave the team the location of the missing students. Not all was well, however, when the three were discovered. Subjected to a bastardised version of Essex's Project Tearaway, the students had each other's specific mutant traits spliced onto their DNA, becoming Campbell's anti-mutant trackers known as Hounds. However, Campbell had not counted on the vagaries of Jennie's powers, and a lucksnap broke their conditioning and caused them to turn on their "master". Faced with slow genetic degradation and death, Essex was called in by a desperate Forge and the process was reversed. Telepathic therapy from Charles Xavier and David Haller helped repair the damage done to their minds, although reminders still linger even now. |
