X-Man
by Babs Yerunkle
From the "X-Men Evolution" universe, beginning
after the end of the first season.
Chapter 34: Rogue gain
I sat in the back of the squat black six-wheeled "X-van."
The last time I'd been in the strangely lethal vehicle, we'd been performing
another rescue. I'd thought we were going in to rescue Rogue, not realizing
that I was already here. Instead, we'd rescued the aged and battered body of
Gerard Trautwein. He'd had his last moments of coherence in this exact seat,
before slipping into a coma and eventually death.
Now I sat in his place, wearing his skin, as we raced to the
rescue of another 'Rogue,' while the real one was already here. In fact, I
could feel her memories percolating away in the recesses of my skull. There
was a sense of motion and activity, but I dared not look at it too closely. I
was afraid that glancing at those thoughts would let them swallow me. Rogue,
the real one, might return in one fell swoop. And I might vanish forever.
Except, of course, that I wouldn't. I would still be me, more than I was now.
"Hey Slim, what's the word from the Prof?"
"He's still got them on Cerebro and they haven't
moved. We should turn onto 138."
"I'm taking a shortcut. But you might want to hold
on. Last time I used this route, I was on my bike."
I felt the acceleration as Logan floored it. In back, we
all held on for dear life. It was a bit on the cozy side, with the entire crew
plus Jack Dugan crammed in. As Logan took a sharp turn, Kitty almost ended up
in my lap.
"Whoa! Sorry, old professor guy!"
She was kidding, of course, but it wasn't very funny. The
Hellfire Club had demanded that 'Professor Trautwein' show up and use his
machine to remove the 'block' on Rogue's powers. For my part, I didn't want
them to know that Rogue had permanently acquired shapeshifting powers. Both
points meant that I had to be disguised as the geriatric Professor Trautwein.
It should have been easy. My memories insisted that I *was*
Gerard Trautwein. But a person is more than just memories. I knew that now better
than anyone. If identity was nothing more than memories, I would have become
Cody. I would be Scott, and Mystique, and Logan, and a pile of other people,
maybe all battling it out in my skull. But instead, it turns out that memories
were just… memories. Like book learning, or maybe a bad habit or two. If you
didn't know any better, you might follow those memories and act the way that
person would have acted. Sort of like a car that keeps coasting, even after
you cut the engine. I'd been like that when I'd drained a murderer named Bo.
I'd been like that for quite a while, after I absorbed my current memories.
But the girl inside me, she wasn't ready to be pushed aside
I suppose. All the time I was trying so hard to be Gerard Trautwein, she was
in there too, pushing to get her own way. And now that I knew who she really
was, who *I* really was, I didn't want to be a fake any more. I wanted to be
the real me, not the old man who matched my memories. Now that I was forced to
wear this body, I was coming to resent it. Maybe it sounds strange, but I
really missed my breasts. Okay, they weren't all that big, but they were
*me*. Having them gone, having a male chest, it was just wrong somehow. My
nipples were too tiny. It was creepy. And my waist was way too fat. And what
is the deal with tiny hips? Tiny hips put your legs too close together, so
your thighs are always rubbing.
Oddly enough, the bits missing from my crotch didn't bother
me too much. I was still having my period. I'd gotten a crash course in stone-faced
expressions, and how to conceal the evidence of cramps. With that going on
inside me, temporarily missing a few folds and openings was no great trauma.
What did bother me was the extra junk. You can barely walk without squeezing
some weird part between your legs. The underwear is all wrong and doesn't even
fit, not snugly.
Not that I was even partially ready to consider the
implications of being a girl. Despite many beautiful opportunities, my body
flatly refused to be properly attracted to females and insisted on exhibiting
odd reactions around males. The me that was Gerard was having difficulties
coping with that. While I liked to think I had an open mind about human
sexuality, I couldn't accept the thought that I, myself, might have homosexual
tendencies or be interested in other men. Strangely enough I thought I could
adapt to living in the body of a teenaged girl. Being a girl was okay, but being
attracted to other men was too much. My strategy for dealing with it was solid
denial. If I ever had to really deal with those impulses – I wasn't sure if I
could cope with it.
Maybe it was more serious because I now had Rogue's real
memories floating around in my head somewhere. Maybe it was finally accepting
what I was. But either way, I was coming to loathe the old, male body that I
was currently forced to wear. My memories told me I was Gerard Trautwein, but
right then I hated that body. I wanted to be a fifteen-year-old girl. Not a
super-model or beauty queen, and especially not a man. It didn't even matter
that I was doomed to be an ugly skunk-headed Goth outcast.
I just wanted to be me.
Unfortunately, if the Hellfire Club figured out that they
were holding Jackie Gavin, disguised in the shape of Rogue, they would probably
just kill her. So until she was rescued, I was trapped in the body of stupid
old Professor Trautwein.
But thinking about those early days, just after the 'incident'
when I still thought I was Gerard Trautwein, I remembered something. Even
thought I could use my new powers to create my own wardrobe through pure
thought, the girl inside me had insisted on putting soft and silky lingerie
next to our skin. It had made her feel much better. Looking back on it, I
realized that it had made *me* feel much better. Even back then, part of me
had known.
So if I couldn't wear my proper body right now, maybe at
least I could manage to wear something nice. I lay my head back against the
padded headrest, closed my eyes, and concentrated on my clothes. First, I gave
myself a satin bra. It was sized to fit my current (ugg) body, with underwire
(or in my case, whalebone). As a man, I obviously didn't need the support. In
this case, the underwire gave me the illusion of support. It gave me the
feeling that there was something there, being supported.
On top of that, I created a half-slip. Something satiny and
slippery, that covered me from almost the neck down to my waist. After
thinking for a moment, I changed it from satin to the coarser weave of my
favorite gauze over-shirt. Combined with the soft protection of my bra, I
could close my eyes and almost imagine that I was dressed normally.
I needed panties. Nothing high-cut – this stupid male body
didn't have the hip-bones to hold them up. Just a simple pair of cotton bikini
bottoms. Strangely enough, I didn't feel quite right until I created a thick
maxi pad, down between my legs. I didn't even have an opening down there right
now, but my body knew it was filling up with disgusting fluids, and I knew it.
I felt it, squeezing and percolating inside me. I hadn't been doing the whole
period thing for very long, but it didn't take much to make a girl appreciate
the importance of 'feminine protection.' And, at the moment, I didn't have any
place to put a tampon. The maxi pad wasn't really doing anything; it wasn't
catching those disgusting fluids. But somehow, I felt much better with it in
place. Who would have guessed it? The ads that talked so vaguely about 'confidence'
and 'security' really knew what they were talking about.
The last step was accessories. I've always liked big,
clunky boots. They didn't fit the image of Professor Trautwein, but I could
add weight to my dress shoes so that they *felt* clunky. A little adjustment
to the sleeves of my dress shirt, and it felt more like my gauzy overshirt and
wrist bands. The last thing I did was to adjust the band inside the collar of
my dress shirt – so that it felt like a leather choker. The shirt concealed
it, but I'd never tried to wear a choker as a man. I'd forgotten about a man's
adam's apple, so I quickly eliminated the choker. The last thing I wanted was
a constant reminder of the masculinity of this body.
It was cheating in the worst way.
No, actually, cheating in the worst way would be to make
even more changes. With a thought, the adam's apple pulled in. My voicebox
was still a man's, just moved in a bit to make for a more attractive neck.
And since no one would be looking *inside* my clothes, I
fixed those irritating bits down in my shorts.
And having done all that, I couldn't hold back. I allowed
the barest hint of breasts to form. The double-A-cup breasts and training bra
that I had once had as "Jerry".
Now, on the outside, I still looked and acted like Professor
Trautwein, but on the inside, I was far more comfortable.
Except…
It wasn't right. I had to play this role completely
correctly. A lapse or error might mean Jackie's life. Maybe no one else would
notice the changes, but maybe they would. And I'd noticed speech and
mannerisms changing to match my form. How would that change with my
half-and-half form?
With great reluctance, I returned to the form of Dr. Gerard
Trautwin. Body parts, clothes, everything. If I was going to do the job
right, then I was going to do it all the way. No matter how I felt personally.
That decided, I opened my eyes and began paying attention
again.
"Hey Slim," Logan's voice came from the driver's
seat, "can the Prof get an ID on these guys we're following?"
"I'll check." Scott muttered quietly into his
headset, then turned halfway around in his seat to address us all. "According
to Cerebro, Rogue has been kidnapped by a team of five mutants, going by the
names LongArm, JellyBones, Night Hag, Joust, and Cordon."
Jean leaned forward from the opposite side of the van. "We've
trained against some of them. What do the others do?"
Scott listened to his headset for a moment. "Pretty
ugly. Night Hag shouldn't be much of a threat. Despite the name, she's
actually just a twelve-year-old. According to the Professor, she can take
control of dreams, force you to have a nightmare, and then step inside. They
were probably planning to use her for interrogation.
"JellyBones is a lot worse. He can instantly soften
his bones to the consistency of water. This lets him pass through very small
openings. He can also re-harden his bones in new positions."
"Another bone man?" Evan asked. "Freaky.
Still, it doesn't sound all that frightening. You gotta admit, he's no Spyke."
"Maybe not," Scott replied, "but the power
isn't limited to his own bones. He can do it to anyone he touches."
"Sounds pretty sick," Logan agreed. "I think
the adamantium that's bonded to my bones should probably protect me. Everyone
else – you'd better stay away from the guy."
"Ugg! Count on it!" Kitty stuck her tongue out
in disgust.
Scott continued. "The last one might be the toughest,
physically. 'Joust' can project a spear of energy from either hand. The lance
is powerful enough to knock over a truck, and can be made wide enough to provide
a wide push, or sharp enough to punch a hole in an armored car. His main
limitation is that he can only make one lance at a time, and that is has to
shrink back into the palm of his hand before he throws another."
"Sounds like yer top target," Logan said. "Any
plans?"
Scott tipped his head back and thought for a moment. "Two
of them won't be much in a fight, provided you stay out of JellyBone's reach.
Cordon's mostly defensive, but he's used a gun in the past. LongArm and Joust
are primarily offensive, with little defense. If we can focus on them and take
them out quickly, we'll have plenty of time to round up the rest. Hmmm."
He looked at us huddled in back. "Spyke, how confident do you feel about
maneuverability? Think you can keep a step ahead of Joust?"
"Piece of cake, red-eye."
"Don't call me that. Kurt? You should keep track of
things as we drive in. I want you to pick a spot that's a half-mile away or
more. Your target is Cordon – his power can't block you. Pop in, grab him,
and pop out somewhere far away. That way, he's out of the fight and the big
guns have no protection."
Kurt nodded. "Ja, sounds reasonable."
"Jean, if Joust and LongArm are together, you should
sometimes bump Joust's arm to spoil his aim. But your main target should be
LongArm. I'm betting that you're stronger than he is. Kitty – you and Logan
should work together. He should be able to track Jackie's scent, and cut
through anything in your way. Anything he can't cut, you can go through."
And with the main details fleshed out, we moved into the
discussion of details, strategies, contingencies, backups…
*****
Our battle plans lasted less than ten seconds.
The van arrived at the rendezvous point: A concrete bunker
created for civil defense decades ago. The dirt road leading to it looked like
it hadn't been used for at least a dozen years. Lord only knows how the
Hellfire club knew about this place. It was two miles off the main road.
Cyclops and Wolverine got out, then let me out the side
door. The rest of the team stayed in the van, not revealing themselves yet.
"Shit," Wolverine announced, nostrils flaring.
A moment later, a dozen thugs appeared. Some stepped out
from behind trees, others dropped thirty or forty feet from branches overhead.
You know, exactly the way that normal humans *don't*. They didn't have the
supernaturally fluid motion that you'd expect from a bad ninja movie. They
tended to drop like, well, like rocks. They landed hard, too. You could feel
the thump through the ground. Initially I thought they might be some sort of
robot. My minor brushes with SHIELD had widened my horizons considerably. And
these figures didn't have faces so much as flesh-toned oval face-plates with
rectangular eye slits. Finally, their motion wasn't exactly normal. I wasn't
sure how to describe it. It was *almost* human, but not quite.
"Have the Doctor move forward," the lead thug
ordered. The voice sounded perfectly human, muffled slightly by the oval face-plate.
"I'm going with him," Wolverine stated, with no
room for argument.
"That wasn't the deal."
"Neither was the reception committee."
"The *deal* hairy-boy, was that you hand over the Doc
here and your little friend wouldn't get her throat slit. Nothing else."
I held my hands up. "Whoever goes with me," I
said in my best calming tones, "someone is going to have to carry my
equipment. Priceless, irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind mutant-altering equipment."
It was laying it on a bit thick, but I wanted one of *them* burdened with the
box, not one of *us*.
Thug One gestured and Thug Two stepped forward. I led the
way to the back of the van, opened the door, and tried to grab the case. I was
moving quickly so that he wouldn't see everyone else inside, but to my
surprise, the van was empty. Nothing left but a stench of brimstone. Opening
the door wide (hoping to let the air clear), I dragged the padded trunk closer
to the back bumper.
One of my few regrets at my true gender is the lack of upper
body strength. We'd made the trunk heavy on purpose. Now we'd see if that
part of the plan paid off. Fortunately, no one expected an elderly professor
to have much arm strength, either.
Obligingly, Thug Two took the two handles and lifted the
box. He didn't heft it or grunt or strain, he lifted it the way I might lift a
light cardboard box. He was strong.
More goons surrounded us, poking their heads into the empty
van.
"What's that smell?" Obviously he was noticing
Nightcrawler's sulfer-and-brimstone residue. Since I'd never heard of a robot
with a sense of smell, I decided they must be regular people behind those
smooth face-plates. What gave them the odd movement then? Some sort of
powered exoskeleton? And how good was their sense of smell, buried behind a
plastic mask?
"I'm afraid the aroma is mine," I apologized. "You'll
notice, as you reach my age, that you'll have similar problems digesting
cabbage."
"Right." Thug One, I think. "You: stay with
the van. You: watch the road. Cyclops here is going to have a pair of guards,
and is going to stay right here with his car. I want three people on
Wolverine: two beside, one behind. I'll watch the prof. And you three: back
to patrol."
*You there, Rogue?* I felt Jean's telepathy brush my mind.
I'd been deliberately leaving myself open.
In moments she sketched out the situation. Apparently the
thugs were actually cyborgs, with arms, legs, and other parts replaced with
more powerful mechanics. I found myself revolted – both by an organization
that would perform such mutilation, and by the people who would seek it out.
Jean continued to brief me on tactical options (relayed from Scott), but none
of us could move until we had Jackie secured.
As we approached the concrete bunker, I saw walls of
shimmering distortion in the air. The bunker was surrounded by a maze of
solidified air, created by Cordon. And standing on the bunker's flat concrete
roof was the trio of top goons: Cordon, LongArm, and a third figure in what
looked to be a high-tech upgrade of medieval armor. I assumed he was Joust.
Following the trunk-toter carrying my equipment, we made
multiple turns through the air-maze. According to the details we had on
Cordon, the solidified air would last for an hour after he was removed, so even
if Nightcrawler followed the original plan, we'd still have to wind our way out
of this maze. Of course, Nightcrawler could teleport us out. I wondered
whether Shadowcat could phase through it.
The inside of the bunker was a bare concrete box, with
patches of yellow and black mold on the walls and ceiling. It smelled musty.
There was a bare electric bulb dangling from the ceiling, a metal table, four
metal chairs, and a cot. Jackie, or rather, 'Rogue' was tied up in a chair,
unconscious.
Behind her, with a hand on her shoulder, was JellyBones. I'd
never met him before, but he had his own unique outfit done in orange and lime
green, and he had a large oval emblem on his chest – a Jello desert. So… call
it a hunch.
The one thug gently set my trunk down on the table.
JellyBones came right up to stare me in the face. "You
the one who blocked Rogue's powers?"
"My apparatus does seem to have affected her. I remain
confident that Rogue can regain her previous powers." I preferred to
stick to the truth.
"You better, Doc. If you don't – well, then we won't
have any use for her. We might need to just do something like this to her…"
He held out his hand, and it seemed to melt. In the most
disgusting fashion possible, the fingers and the entire arm seemed to puff out
and simultaneously slump limply. I knew I was watching bones turn to water.
"And then, when things are all soggy-like," he
used his left hand to squeeze the saggy flesh of his right hand, "we
freeze it that way."
Suddenly, his right hand and arm regained its rigidity. But
it was twisted and deformed – and it stayed that way.
"Or cooperate and" he snapped his deformed hand
out and it was suddenly normal again "we can be very nice."
While I was digesting this news, JellyBones took a small
syringe and gave Jackie a shot in the upper arm. Almost immediately, I could
see her begin to rouse.
"Well, what do we have here?"
One of the thugs had begun unpacking my trunk. He'd found
the planted gun, beneath the apparatus. Following my previous practice, the
gun was booby-trapped. It would blow up in his hands if he tried to use it. It
had also been our hope that we needed to provide the appearance of a plan that
the opposition could discover and foil. That would help lower their guard. At
least, that was the theory.
"We don't need *guns* to take care of you three."
The thug took the gun in both hands and slowly bent the barrel.
Throughout all of this, Wolverine kept remarkably quiet.
His trio of guards spent some time pushing him around a bit, but they quickly
grew bored when he didn't rise to the provocation.
I slowly set up 'equipment' from the trunk. A pair of
high-voltage transformers, Bunsen burners, glass tubing and condensers, a whole
mad-scientist setup from discarded parts and sweepings from Xavier's chemistry lab.
While I worked, 'Rogue' finally came awake.
"Took you guys long enough," she complained.
"Are you alright? Have they been treating you well?"
"Ya, sure, if ya don't mind being hogtied in the back
of a truck or spending the night tied to a chair. Cain't say Ah've had the
nicest dreams, either."
"Don't worry, I'm confident that I'll be able to
restore your powers soon."
At this point, Rogue started waxing eloquent. I guess
Jackie had been getting into her role. "Ya know, Ah never really wanted 'em.
Ah was so happy when they were gone, Ah thought Ah could be like someone
normal." She gave a sigh that, in my opinion, was a bit too theatrical. "Ah
guess it wasn't meant to be. Ah should have known better than to think I could
get a break."
The trick was to jockey for position and then to launch
ourselves at the most advantageous moment. Until then, the game was to stall,
and if possible, see if we could learn anything from the enemy.
"It was your choice, kid," JellyBones said. "You
could have done things the easy way a month ago."
"Yeah, like joining up with you psychos was ever a
reasonable choice."
"Hey, the perks are good, and I can't complain about
the pay. Besides, what other job lets you actively work out your aggression
against high-school bitches?"
No one had much comment about that. Uncomfortably eager to
change the subject, I looked at JellyBones. "I don't get it. Why would
you want to restore her powers? What good does it do you?"
"You're kidding, aren't you?" He looked at me
like I was an idiot. He was dressed in armored spandex and had a Jello logo on
his chest, and he was looking contemptuously at *me*. "You are just sooo
stupid! She's stronger than the strongest telepath. Any secret, any power,
any skill – and she can have it with a touch. If she's clever, the victim won't
even know he's been sucked. Theft, espionage, sabotage – she could be the
best. But the boss has much bigger plans than that."
Hmmm, he had a point. "But if you really believe she's
so god-awful powerful, how do you plan to control her?"
"That's our business." He then performed a rather
pathetic chortle. I think he'd been watching too many Saturday matinees. He
had accepted the stereotype of how a villain behaves, but he wasn't very good
at the role. "You'd just better hope you can fix her, and fast. That
little injection I gave her also contained a very nasty slow-acting poison.
Now, if she were to absorb old shaggy here," he hooked a thumb back at
Wolverine, "why, we'd solve two problems at once. His healing factor
would save her, and we wouldn't have to worry about his attitude problems."
I was staring at Logan, and I knew that JellyBones was about
a tenth of a second away from talking himself into an early grave. His little
grandstanding stunt had probably killed Jackie. She *couldn't* absorb Logan's
healing ability. But if there was any chance at all of saving her, we'd need
to get her back to the mansion and the medical lab as soon as possible. So I
kept to my role. I couldn't help shaking from the increase in tension, but
perhaps that helped add believability to my role.
So I bent over Jackie, connecting electrodes and other
props. Most of my design was cribbed from an old haunted house I'd done,
decades ago. I think most of my current audience had had their brain rotted
with too much TV. They didn't realize that real science didn't look like
Hollywood special effects. Unfortunately, I no longer found the joke very
funny. I was focused too much on our best opportunity: Wait until Logan was 'drained'
and unconscious, then get the drop on them.
"Hey Jello-Man," 'Rogue' said, "what's this
have to do with the Solution Option."
I'd forgotten about that, and could care less at the moment.
"Who told you about that?" There was real emotion
suddenly present in his voice. I couldn't tell whether he was angry or afraid,
but he looked very intense.
"Your pal LongArm blabbed a lot. He said stuff about
Mystique, too."
"Yeah? After we're done here, maybe we'll take you to
meet her. Ms. Frost has her walking and talking again, but she still can't
seem to change out of that shape you locked her into."
"Hey, it wasn't me, Jello. Ah'd be willing to swear on
a stack of bibles. Me an' Mystique have had our arguments, but Ah didn't do
any of that to her, Ah swear!"
"The name's JELLY-bones." He seemed distracted,
though. "Don't worry. We know pretty well who got to Mystique. And the
old can-headed geezer is about to get the surprise of his lifetime. I may not
know all the strategies or details, but I can smell it when something's going
down." He gestured around. "All this, you know what this is?"
We all stared at him stupidly.
"This is jockeying for position. A few more moves and
BAM!" He slammed a fist into his palm. "Checkmate! You understand
what I'm saying here?"
I shook my head. "I don't think you're making the
slightest bit of sense."
"It's the whole Hellfire Club. Black vs. white, you
know. Year after year and all you see is petty moves, jockeying for position,
and then something like this comes along. Something BIG. And suddenly, there's
a ton of shit going down. Xavier isn't even in the running. If you –"
He was cut off by the sound of screams from one of Wolverine's
guards. Even I was distracted for an instant, but my preparations stood me in
good stead. With one hand, I reached up for the back of JellyBone's neck. A
few seconds of contact and his body went slack. With the other hand, I formed
a claw and slit the ropes holding Jackie.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Kitty was
almost crying. At her feet, one of the cyborgs thrashed in pain. Sparks
seemed to be coming from its arms and legs, and they jerked around like they
were out of control. The other cyborg threw a punch straight into her face,
but as his arm passed through her, it began to spark, too. The third cyborg
was facing Wolverine, but before I could blink Wolverine was re-sheathing his
claws. The cyborg facing him looked down in horror as his arms dropped off,
then he toppled off his legs, which had been severed at mid-thigh.
I knew that Logan had only cut through mechanical parts, but
we're conditioned to see the *shape* of the human being as being the *person*.
Wolverine had drawn no blood, but seeing a person violated like that,
brutalized by sudden quadriplegic amputation – it was almost too much. 'Rogue'
became suddenly ill, losing whatever meal they had given her. Kitty just
fainted. I felt myself snap into that strange state of mind that you acquire
after enough combat. There was 'us' and there was 'the enemy.' The only way
to save the lives of 'us' was to defeat 'them' as soon as possible – no matter
what brutality was needed.
The one remaining cyborg guard stared at 'Rogue' and then at
me. He was debating whether to step forward and try to do his job, or to run
like hell.
"Rogue, snap out of it," I ordered. "You
have to use the power you absorbed from JellyBones. This guy may be a cyborg,
but that won't do him any good if you turn his spine to mush."
"Yeah, you're right," she mumbled. She reached
toward him and… he bolted.
"Good riddance," Jackie muttered. "What's
the plan?"
"Dump the trunk. We can lock this scum inside."
I pointed at the unconscious JellyBones.
"He won't fit."
"He will after his own powers have softened him up.
And while we're doing that, Wolverine gets to smash equipment, so they can't
ever recreate the mutation-blocker." Or figure out that it was just cheap
props.
Handling JellyBones was a trick and a half. Without bones,
a human body acts more like a goo-filled water balloon than a stiff carcass.
But between freezing his bones and relaxing them, the two of us got him piled
into the trunk, and the trunk locked. Wolverine even gave him a nice set of
breathing holes.
"Alright!" Kitty squealed. "So far so good.
Now we're supposed to sneak out the back way, as soon as the distraction starts
up front."
"Katherine," I said, in a pedantic professor
voice, "there *is* no back way."
"Um… hello?" Kitty waved her arm through the
solid wall.
"Give me a second," I said. "Let me see if
Jelly-boy knew of any other surprises."
I'd been holding off his memories by force of will. Now I
let myself sink into them a bit, while I skimmed, looking for surprises. Not
surprisingly, he wasn't too well respected by his fellow scum. Everyone was
suitably impressed (or rather, revolted) by his power, but no one particularly
respected him. They *had* been expecting a bit of resistance from Wolverine,
but that would be dealt with through…
"Just a minute," I told them. I unlocked the
trunk again and took both collars and keys from the unconscious Jellybones,
then re-locked the trunk. "Power suppression collars. They *wanted*
Wolverine unconscious. It's also how they planned to control Rogue."
"Wow, I didn't know they could DO that!"
I searched the memories for other details. My mind happened
to catch on the topic of Mystique, who had been recently mentioned.
JellyBones, or Ralph Thompson to use his real name, wasn't particularly
well-connected to observe the negotiations and goings-on. He had heard some
rumors about the Asteroid M incident, and Mystique's break with Magneto. Although
Magneto was a club member, he wasn't part of the inner circle, far less a major
player, such as the Black King… Sebastian Shaw. There was more, much more,
about the membership and workings of their inner politics. I skimmed a bit,
trying to commit it to memory. The key elements for Mystique were that she had
been given an initiation test: to either recruit of forcibly obtain the
services of Rogue. And she had failed. Her body had been found, comatose,
unable to shapeshift, and lacking any vestige of higher intelligence.
Telepathic therapy with the White Queen, Emma Frost, had seemed to help, but
plainly Mystique still wasn't her old self.
The interesting thing was that while she was undergoing
initiation, she didn't even know as much about the inner circle's plans as
JellyBones. She didn't even know that Rogue was needed for some part in the 'Solution
Option', the plan that would ultimately –
"Oh my God!"
I was vaguely aware that there were shots being fired
outside, and shouts and screams.
"Professor, *come on*!" Kitty was tugging at my
arm.
Unresisting, I allowed her to pull me through the back wall,
then stumbled forward after the rest of the group. Ahead of us, Wolverine was
facing off a pair of cyborgs. I barely noticed as he took them down.
A glance back at the top of the building showed a war zone.
Joust was projecting shimmering white spears of energy out of his hand, and
LongArm was struggling against an unseen opponent. The disks of solid air were
evident, having been outlined by swarms of bone darts that stuck in them.
Beams of crimson energy blasted around the edges of the disks, seeking to blast
Joust, and occasionally sweeping away cyborgs.
I did my best to make a stumbling run through the bushes
back to the van. At one point, I was tackled by Kitty of all people, who
knocked me to the ground just before a lance of energy speared through where my
heart would have been.
She had a cocky smile when we sat up, but something in my
face must have scared her because the grin vanished almost immediately. She
helped me up and we scrambled into the back of the van.
Jack Dugan was at the wheel. A cyborg rushed up to grab him
through the open window. With a movement that looked almost slow and relaxed,
Jack lifted a strange-looking pistol and fired an orange beam of energy into
the cyborg's chest, blasting it backwards a dozen yards until it slammed into a
tree and collapsed.
His eyes searched out Jackie. "You okay, sweetheart?"
"Never better, Jackrabbit."
"Hmph. Then hang on."
The van barreled backward at what had to be at least forty
miles an hour, running over at least one cyborg. As we screeched to a halt,
Kitty popped open the back doors. Before I could catch my breath, Scott, Jean,
and Evan were diving inside.
We tore off again, only screeching to a halt briefly, after
rounding the corner. Kurt 'ported into the front seat.
"Alright! Shotgun seat!"
"If you're going to ride shotgun, you'd better have the
firepower. Hold my gun."
By now my tears were flowing freely. I couldn't hold it any
longer, and shifted back into my normal shape. I had my green-gauze shirt on,
not even minding that Jackie had borrowed one of my other outfits.
"I'm so sorry!" I started, "Try not to move
too much! There must be something we can do back at the Professor's lab!
Maybe a transfusion from Logan –"
"Naw, don't sweat it. Just give me a couple of more
minutes to concentrate."
Logan and I both stared at her. Of course, until now, no
one else had known she was poisoned.
"But he said he'd injected…"
"I told you," she said smugly, "there are
advantages to my type of shapeshifting. I may not be as fast, but I have
conscious control over every single cell in my body. With a couple of minutes
concentration, there isn't a toxin in this world that I can't control."
"Oh."
I think Logan and I had similar expressions. We were both
completely dumbfounded.
Dugan upshifted as we left the dirt road and skidded onto
138. He weaved skillfully between the sparse traffic, then picked up to
highway speeds.
"Folks," Scott announced, "I believe we've
done it. Mission accomplished."
Logan nodded. "Yeah, it didn't go half bad." He
pulled out an old half-smoked cigar. "Hope no one minds if I light up."
"No!" "Don't you dare!" "You
better not!"
He flicked his thumb to light an old wooden match, but the
flame withered almost instantly under Jean's glare.
"On second thought, maybe I'll wait 'till we get back
home."
"Yeah, not bad," Jack called from the driver's
seat. "Not quite the way SHIELD would have done it, but pretty good, all
the same."
Kitty patted my arm, apparently not bothered by the fact
that she had a Rogue on either side of her. "So like, what's with the
frowny face? Everything's good again."
I turned and looked at her, trying to keep my horror under
control.
"Everything's good again? Not even close. Mystique is
up and active again, I'm not sure how. Magneto's involved in all of this, somehow,
and I finally got some clue about the 'Solution Option' that LongArm was
talking about. It's Shaw's big plan. The whole Hellfire Club is working on
it. They weren't talking about chemicals or dissolving anything."
Something in the tone of my voice must have reached them,
because everyone other than the driver was staring at me.
"Don't you get it? It wasn't a chemical solution.
They got the name from Hitler. It was named after his 'Final Solution.'"
Kitty, Logan, and Scott went very pale. The others, even
Kurt, seemed puzzled.
"Don't you people know ANY history?" I
practically screeched the words. "It was Hitler's answer to the 'problem'
of the Jews. Just kill them. Kill them all. But Shaw doesn't have anything
against Jews. He's a mutant. His problem is with homo sapiens. And he has
some sort of plan that he thinks will 'solve' that problem. Permanently."
Now they got it.
"And there's only one piece that's still missing from
his plan. He's already got his fortune, his organization, and teams of mutants
and cyborgs hard at work. The last piece was supposed to be in place a month
ago. It was Mystique's job to get the last piece they needed:"
"Me."
Continued in Chapter 35, " Rogue's Ex " appearing NEXT Week!
since 12/22/03
