Template:Featured Articles/35-2008
 A meal out turns to disaster when Kyle Gibney, Jennie Stavros, Marius Laverne and Crystal Amaquelin are ambushed by a bunch of hired mutant mercenaries. They attack the kids, who are able to fend them off with their powers, until one of the mercenaries steals their powers. Marius is able to flip it back on the mercs, rendering them powerless as well. However, without powers the kids are no match for trained mercenaries. All of the teens are fixed with a tracking device which allows for teleportation, but Crystal's is not securely fixed, so she escapes capture. After a frantic phonecall, Pietro comes to Crystal's rescue and the school receives the panic signals from the kids's phones and springs into action to find the missing teens. Meanwhile, the captured kids meet their abductor, one Rory Campbell. Former employee of Moira MacTaggart, Rory is seriously unhinged, and hints ominously at his plans for them. Days go by and both the school and Snow Valley hunt for leads. They come in the form of notes Rory has sent to Moira to taunt them, now calling himself "Ahab." Because Rory's nuts like that. Nathan recognizes the handwriting and siccs Snow Valley on it, who very quickly dig up a broker that Rory has used to hire mercenaries. After Nathan and Ororo "persuade" the broker to fork over the information, Pete Wisdom contacts one of the mercs, "Gorgeous" George Blair. George wants out, and rats on his fellow mercs and on Rory, adding a warning about what's happened to the kids. And it ain't pretty. Using George's information, a team consisting of Storm, Cable, Nightcrawler, Siryn, Sunfire and Rogue go to Rory's lair, an abandoned hospital in New Jersey. What they find horrifies them, as Rory has played at being Mr. Mad Scientist and spliced specific mutant traits between the three teens before telepathically brainwashing them, creating his "Hounds." All three have Kyle's claws, fangs and enhanced senses, Marius's yellow eyes and mutant sense, and Jennie's ability to read probability. They attack on Rory's command, but Jennie causes a lucksnap during the melee, which gifts her, Marius and Kyle with a moment of temporary clarity, and they turn on their captors and shred them. They are then tranqed, and the mercs and Rory taken into custody. However, what Rory's done to the teens is slowly killing them. Thinking they have no other recourse, Forge turns to Pete Wisdom and they contact Nathaniel Essex in the hopes that Essex can undo the damage Rory has done with a bastardized version of his work. Essex is able to reverse the process, and shortly thereafter Charles Xavier is able to undo the telepathic brainwashing on both Marius and Kyle, with David Haller assisting to repair Jennie's mind. A week later, their physical changes fade as well, returning the teens to normal.
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