"Right? Our contracts only lasted three months at a time, and half of us didn't live long enough to see our first renewal." Venus laughs, and it's a wry sound. Maybe they're lucky, the X-Statix. They embraced mortality, instead of spending their lives fearing an afterlife that was more dull than anything else.

"I like to think I lasted a while. That's why we were going to quit. Got the death-seeking bug out of our system."