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Standard Boring Disclaimer: All "recognizable" characters belong to Marvel; all other characters (including some equally recognizable ones, in certain circles) belong to Tapestry (malfam@inlink.com). No money is being made and no harm is meant. Do not archive without my permission. There's a bit of bad language and a nasty injury or two, but nothing TOO bad I don't think. At always, e-mail is highly appreciated (and squirreled away for future gleeful re-reading) at kielle@aol.com. More Personal Disclaimer & Explanation: This...is an odd piece. It is a crossover between "It's Always Darkest..." (story #3 of the Dawn Arc by Tapestry) and "Fading Embers," an alternate to "First Contact" also written by Tapestry. I know that sounds involved, but honestly, it isn't. People who love the Dawn stories should get a kick out of this, I hope; anyone who doesn't should still be able to get the gist. I explain a lot. ;) To sum up: Dawn Embers is a very unlucky mutant teenager who's not your typical "fangirl who joins GenX." Unpleasant things happen to her. Lots of them. And it's even worse for her alternate self Ember, who had the misfortune to fall into Sinister's clutches... The original "Fading Embers" is still a work in progress, and I have no idea what will actually happen to Ember and her version of GenX. This is merely my own twisted idea, and has no bearing on the actual outcome of Tapestry's tale. Call it a "what if," written as a belated Christmas present after sufficient mass badgering in the #fictalk room late one Friday night. And people say that nothing ever gets accomplished at those chats. ;) Other Notes: The fact that some characters that I'm notoriously known to be fond of happen to be involved in this mess is sheer coincidence, I honestly swear. But I won't deny that it was fun to write them again! Beware: thick accents ahead... .-=K=-. |
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Breaking Through.An
Alternate Tale Of The Dawn Arc by Kielle |
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PROLOGUE Running. And running. And running. She shouldn't have been running at all. She should have stayed to fight, to protect the people who have taken her in when they could have locked her up and thrown away the key. She should have stayed. After all, it was her fault that THEY were here in the first place...her fault that her friends, her only friends in the world, were dying... She shook her head sharply at that, almost stumbling. Her arms tightened convulsively on the blanket-wrapped package, hugging it closer to her body. No. No, she refused to believe that. They wouldn't have been so stupid as to stay and fight. They had to be retreating in the other direction -- they had to leave! That was the whole reason for her running away in the first place! To lead the enemy away... Of its own accord, her mind flashed back to the events of a few moments before. The school had been unexpectedly plunged into darkness -- all of the students had been gathered in twos and threes in the main lobby, some in pajamas and yawning, some halfway into their uniforms and staring about warily in the pulsing glow from Chamber's unwrapped chest. Ms. Frost had arrived in a rush, barking something about getting to the garage... Then every window had crashed inward and all hell had broken loose. She remembered screaming, half in surprised fear and half in disbelieving rage as she came face to face with the fate she'd been avoiding for so many months. She'd tried to jump for the throat of the nearest enemy as he knocked Paige to the ground. She hadn't made it. As she ran through the midnight forest now, she closed her eyes briefly, swallowing down her rising gorge. Once again, she forced the following memory away: the sudden tremendous jerk which had nearly pulled her off of her feet, the horrible tearing wrenching PAIN-- She blocked that off, and kept running through the darkness, her bare feet torn and bruised but barely felt. The bundle was warm in her arms. The next thing she could remember from before, after the blast of sheeting agony -- and how much later had that been? she couldn't recall, couldn't have been more than a few seconds -- was Angelo pulling her away by her wrist as Penance tore into her attacker to buy her a few more seconds. For what? "This!" Angelo had shouted hoarsely into her ear over the splintering pulsing crunching battle which raged around them, spilling out onto the front porch as Generation X desperately attempted to regroup and escape. The fliers were in the air but they couldn't carry everyone... She remembered Angelo thrusting the bundle into her arms. She must have dropped it when-- She mentally shied away from the pain again. It was a miracle that Skin had caught the little knot of blankets before it had hit the floor. "Take it! Get away from here! You know what they want, chica! Go!" And she'd clutched the bundle tight, and she'd run away. It occurred to her now, through her haze, that Angelo would not have sent her away like a Judas goat, to die alone in the woods. He simply must have not noticed her injuries. He must have thought that all she had to do was dash out into the open, spread her wings, and fly away to safety. She would have. If she'd still had two wings to spread. The feathered stump throbbed with every step, shrieking agony through her back which was echoed by a dull counterpoint pulse of pain between her thighs, making it almost impossible for her to breathe. She kept telling herself that it wasn't real, it wasn't real, IT WASN'T REAL -- her wings were merely an extension of her mind, a psionic wish pulled into solid reality by the power of her thoughts alone. They weren't real. She should have been able to retract them, make them go away, make the pain go away...but for some reason she couldn't. The good wing fluttered uselessly behind her, catching on every branch, leaving a trail of bloody feathers that even a child could follow...a trail that THEY couldn't possibly miss. She skidded to a halt in a clearing, struggling to catch her breath, to quiet her gasps so that she could listen intently to the still forest around her. If she'd been hoping against hope that she'd out-distanced her pursuit, she would have been disappointed. As it was, she'd held no such hope; she merely nodded resignedly to herself as twigs snapped in the near distance. She had no time left -- nowhere to run -- and no strength to run even if there had been a sanctuary open to accept her. There was only one thing left to do, really. Struggling for a moment of calm and focus, she reached down into herself, for that core of power she'd never completely understood. Reached...and reached...and felt herself falling short, her figurative fingers scrabbling hopelessly for purchase... Her heart lurched with shock as the ghostly touch of another psion -- that had to be it, but who? so familiar, but not any of her friends from the school -- fell lightly but surely upon her own failing grasp, guiding her that extra inch to-- Contact! Her power surged within her like a freed lioness, snaking out and catching...something. A momentary glimpse of a stranger rose behind her eyelids, a beautiful girl her own age with the straight blonde hair of an angel and the eyes of a demon. The girl seemed about to say something... Shivering, she blinked her own eyes open and the image was gone, but the power remained. As leaves rustled at the edge of the clearing on all four sides, she made a dramatic gesture with her free arm without knowing exactly why or what she was doing, only that the glowing disc which was now flowering open before her at her summons would save her. Save them both. She looked briefly down into the blanket-wrapped bundle, into the infant's wide blue eyes. The reason for her current lack of strength, the reason for the attack upon the school. No matter. It was not the baby's fault. She would give anything to save her newborn daughter. As the disc reached full size within two heartbeats, she threw herself forward, into the light-- A strong hand closed around her throat, crushing her windpipe and jerking her to a halt only inches from sanctuary. Without hesitation, she released her death grip on the child, letting her tumble through the shining portal. An instant later it winked out, severing the baby's terrified wail and plunging the clearing into a leafy midnight gloom once more. The hand gripping her by the neck, the same hand which had torn off her left wing bare minutes before, now yanked her clear off of her feet and gave her a hard, furious shake. Arclight's harsh voice tore into the darkness like a hacksaw: "What have you DONE, you little bitch?!" Unable to breathe, blood running down her back and legs, Dawn Embers merely smiled weakly and passed out.
Several alternate realities away, another Dawn Embers lay on her stomach on a quiet hillside overlooking the Norwegian Ocean, absently chewing on a tart clover stalk with her hands tucked under her chin. Her blue hair pooled over one shoulder and spilled into the grass; the wide white splash which topped her sapphire mane gleamed in the sun. It was bright and clear but not warm -- the girl was bundled up in a loose nondescript maroon turtleneck sweater which covered not one but two shirts. She'd reluctantly agreed to wear longjohns under her jeans, and her feet were snug inside an awkward but comfy pair of ankle-high wool-lined boots borrowed from one of her hosts. All in all, she felt rather overstuffed...but it was worth it to get out of the facility for a few peaceful hours. The weather was remarkably clear for early October on the cold northern Muir Island, and she planned to enjoy it while it lasted. Especially considering what particular day it was... She pushed that thought away and concentrated on looking for shapes in the clouds on the distant horizon. Thinking was not on her agenda for the day. Over the last few months she'd had FAR too much to think about: her transformation from ordinary brown-haired girl to blue-haired telepathic mutant, the frantic flight (literally) from a fate worse than death at Sinister's Oklahoma "boarding school," joining Generation X, nightmarish journeys to other dimensions and alternate realities, and death -- far too much death. In particular, Will's death. Dawn frowned as she nibbled on the remaining scrap of clover stuck between her teeth. As she'd come to understand the most unusual facet of her mental powers -- her ability to literally call up ghosts and borrow their mutant abilities -- the more she'd gotten to see Will. More so than when he'd been alive, practically. So, as far as she was concerned, her favorite cousin hadn't died. Not truly. It had been an odd situation but not an unpleasant one, and one she had almost started to take for granted. If she really allowed herself to think about her "power," however... It was a moot point. Her power as "medium" was gone, burned out in the tremendous psionic strike she'd been driven to summon up in order to destroy D'Spayre...less than a minute after he'd disintegrated Glenn Keaton, her best friend in the world. The loss was a hollow ache in her heart that would never heal. It was strange, therefore, that Dawn was thinking about Will instead of Glenn. Perhaps it was because she was trying to STOP dwelling on the subject of Glenn's death. Oddly, it was easier that she'd thought. He'd only been dead a week, yet she had already realized that his memory wasn't as painful as it could have been. Before she'd scrambled her ability to call up "ghosts," he'd been able to reach from beyond to say goodbye one last time. Again, in a weird way it was like he wasn't really dead; just waiting for her, somewhere very close. She felt in her heart that she would see him again...soon. Very soon. Absently, she slipped one hand under the turtleneck collar of her sweater and rubbed the side of her neck. At this late stage in her illness, the bruise-like lesions had now spread over most of her torso and thighs; this morning she'd found the first mark on her throat, like a dark parody of a hickey. Thirteen years old, and she was dying of Legacy. Fourteen, she amended mentally, because it was October fifth. In a morbid way, she'd made it her private joke over the past week to tell herself, "Well, at least you can't say that you won't live to see your next birthday..." Well, there's no point to THAT joke any more. Happy birthday, Miss Embers. Sorry about Christmas, but, well, that's the way it goes. Dawn sighed and briskly tugged her thoughts back on topic as the ocean breeze shifted directions restlessly, whistling through the heather and fluttering blue locks into her ears. A loose bandage snapped in the wind like a pennant, streaming from the highest point of her left wing; the crippled pinions nestled snugly against her, the main reason why she wasn't sprawled more comfortably on her back. What HAD she been thinking about before...? Oh. Her cousin, Will. That was what was nagging at her train of thought. She just wanted to talk to him -- about Glenn, about death, about everything. Heck, she'd even be willing to put up with him calling her "Dawnie." However, her wish was in vain: he was gone along with her power. In a way, to her, he really WAS dead at last. With her cousin's convenient control over the elements thus snatched out of her reach and her wings a mangled mess thanks to Emplate's vindictive attack, she couldn't go for a nice distracting flight. And the only other person available for a heart-to-heart was the submerged personality of her alternate-self, Threnody...who, strangely, grown fainter and more distant as Legacy had increased Dawn's telepathic abilities. Threnody hadn't "spoken" for three days. All in all, Dawn was in distinct danger of getting very, very depressed. No. I will NOT spend my last few non-bedridden days in a slump. The whole reason for coming out here was to cheer up! Scolding herself, Dawn pushed herself to her hands and knees and awkwardly rose to her feet, careful not to overbalance and fall onto her well-wrapped wings. As she brushed bits of heath and gravel out of her knitted sweater, she looked out over the ocean. It was more gray than blue this time of year, and the sky hung low over the horizon, nearly obscuring the smoky humped blur which indicated the Scottish mainland. Even at that distance, if she concentrated, she could feel mental "static" from the mainland throbbing in the back of her mind. It was a crying shame that her uncontrollably expanding telepathy would have transformed even a casual stroll through a small portside town into an agonizing ordeal, because she really would have liked to poke around civilization one last time before-- Something glinted bright overhead, like a camera flash glancing off of burnished silver. Startled, Dawn glanced up just in time to see a very familiar disk of light wink out -- familiar, because only a week before she'd used her then-ability to tap into dead mutant powers to summon an identical disk herself, in order to escape from the demonic otherworld known only as Limbo. Dawn had no time to follow this split-second realization to a conclusion, for something had emerged from the momentary spacewarp. Something small and shapeless which let out a wail of pure terror as it plummeted earthwards. Surprised and with only an instant to spare, she might have missed catching it had the disk not conveniently dumped its cargo directly over her head. She barely had to move: her belated grab was enough. The little knot of blankets plumped squarely into her arms. She didn't have to look to know what she held -- somewhere inside the bundle a baby was screaming hysterically at the top of its lungs, obviously terrified. Dawn had seen some fairly amazing things over the course of her brief yet busy jaunt through the world of mutants and spandex, but this--! A baby, dropping out of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere! The very idea was astonishing. Her first suspicion, of course, was that the child came from demon-infested Limbo, which made her back hastily away from the cliff's edge even though she was already a reasonably safe distance from the sheer drop to the rocks far below. If anything came after the infant, which suddenly seemed quite likely, the edge of a precipice was NOT a good place to make a stand! As she tried to get a better grip on the cloth-muffled baby, she remembered Darkoth's description of the child-turned-woman-turned-demon who had once controlled Limbo's stepping disks, and she recalled the empathic sensation of her brief brush with the mind of the child that woman had once more become before she'd died. Could the baby somehow be her? It was a stretch, but what else was she supposed to think? Setting out double-time across the chilly countryside for the Muir Island Research Center, Dawn searched for an opening in the rumpled blanket, all the while casting nervous glances and repeated telepathic scans over the surrounding area, braced for anything. One end of the swaddling finally came loose, and she found herself looking down into a screwed-up bawling little face topped with a fuzz of brown hair. The demon teleporter -- Illyana, that was her name -- had been blonde. Not her, then. Worried, Dawn paused to make a quick inspection of her desperately wriggling little burden. Though the child was still screaming as if it had been burned, it seemed unharmed. "Shhhh, c'mon, shhh...you're okay now, I'm not going to hurt you...please don't cry, shhh," she cooed at the sobbing infant, trying to remember what you did in a situation like this. She'd never had any little brothers or sisters, very few younger cousins, and no real babysitting jobs. She'd gotten along splendidly with Artie and Leech, but they were children. A baby was another story entirely... Dawn briefly considered using her telepathy to calm the child down, but immediately discarded that plan with a shudder. NOT a good idea. She had no idea what would happen if she messed with a baby's mind, even on a good day...let alone now, when she could barely trust her failing psionics to safely mindspeak with full-fledged fully-shielded adult telepaths. Instead, therefore, she persisted with more conventional methods, rocking the baby in her arms and chattered pleadingly to it as she picked her way across the rocky terrain as fast as she dared in to her illness-weakened state. Her efforts paid off: the baby finally paused between wails long enough to hear her voice, and for a moment its howls subsided into great teary hiccups as it stared up at her with round blue eyes. Encouraged, Dawn stroked the baby's velvety cheek with one finger. The child instinctively nuzzled towards her hand, and its wild struggles faded into trembling. Dawn smiled with relief. A moment later, however, her smile froze and crashed in slow motion like an iceberg crunching into the hull of an unsinkable ship. She stopped dead and stared down at the baby, who was now only heaving the occasional shuddery wracking snuffle as it sucked quietly on one of her fingertips. Only now did it belatedly occur to her that the entire time she'd been holding the mysterious little creature, not a single scrap of its obviously mind-shattering terror had so much as scraped the fringe of her tattered psi-shields. She took a closer look at her whimpering armful now, with senses other than her vision, and was in for a real shock. Despite the fact that the baby couldn't have been more than a few hours old, it was coccooned in more than just a snuggly blanket. Its mind was enfolded in a seamless mental shield which seemed quite passive until Dawn unthinkingly attempted to "touch" it. The backlash blast almost knocked her out cold. "God--!" Staggering, she managed to shove away the grasp of unconsciousness and to tug her own comparatively pitiful shields back up around her mind like a beggar's cloak. She opened her eyes to find that the baby was looking right at her, still nursing anxiously on her finger. There was no malice in its unfocused blue gaze. She allowed herself to relax a little at that...but her brain was still spinning. Felt like she'd been kicked in the cortex... Only now, as she gingerly repositioned the baby in the crook of her arm and shook her head into a sapphire flurry to clear it, did she realize that her feet had automatically carried her up over a slight rise to bring the Facility into view. It was an odd sprawling top-heavy structure, all metal and angles and shining glass, nestled into the lowland center of the small rocky island. Beyond it, the grey sunlight glimmered on the wind-ruffled surface of the strange symmetrical bay which practically bisected Muir into two tip-connected crescents. There was no sign of the often highly visible members of Excalibur, but that was to be expected: something had come up on the mainland. Somewhere in southern England, to be precise. The entire lot of them had snatched up their superhero gear and charged off in the Midnight Runner before their young blue-haired guest had even considered padding out of bed in search of breakfast. Heroes. They're never around when you really need then. Then again, I doubt they'd have any more luck with this than I would -- they're not the most in-touch-with-reality people I've ever met. Probably worse with babies than I am. Moira's the one to ask. Her small passenger chose that moment to make a disgruntled smacking sound with its occupied mouth. Dawn glanced down at her and almost laughed -- she could practically see the annoyance on the baby's face as it came to the conclusion that sucking on her finger was not putting anything into its stomach. "Poor thing...you're probably hungry, aren't you? I'm sure Moira can whip up something for you. Though that isn't necessarily a good thing, mind you..." The brief moment of humor didn't do much for her lingering sense of foreboding. With a heavy sigh, Dawn started off again, her pace picking up on the smoother green slope which led down towards the genetics research complex.
Most mortals would have been squirming and stammering under Moira MacTaggert's blistering interrogation by this point. This one didn't. He was a lanky, angular specimen with an unruly shock of blond hair and a broad cocky grin which was not currently in evidence. It had been replaced by dark circles under his eyes and a wry twist at the corner of his mouth. He stood perfectly at ease before the scowling Scottish researcher in flannel, shirt, and jeans; his arms were folded loosely across his narrow chest, and a battered dufflebag resting next to his sneakered feet. "T'tell the roight truth, Docta' MacTagguht," he replied in an accent which had been born as far to the southern reaches of the globe as hers was to the north, "it wa'n't exactly X-Facta'. Not ALLA them. See, Raven's the one who got me offa me bum an' bundled me out this wai. Said she wa'n't in the mood t'see me dead in a gutta', or blown awai on a dead-end merc-job." He had the good sense to look a touch sheepish at this admission. "Sooooo...here I am." Moira merely eyed him, one brow raised suspiciously. "Ye do realize that I know exactly who you are an' what ye've done wi' yuir life, Mr..." Her unwanted visitor smiled warmly. "Call me St. John. John is fine too." "...MR. Allerdyce," Moira said relentlessly. "Ye show oop on me doorstep wi' nae but a smile an' a promise ta behave, an' A'm s'pposed tae be chuffed? You thought A'd just welcome you in wi' open arms? A should call the police." "Police? In the middle'a the bloody ocean?" "Out here the 'police' wear spandex an' have flashy codenames an' won't hesitate to lay you out flat six ways t'Sunday." "Eh...I was tryin' to fu'get that deetyl." His smile became forced, and his eyes were suddenly weary. "Look, MacTagguht, I came here unarmed an' outta costume. I'm a dyin' man. If you need a guinea-pig for any experimental treatments..." His comment faded off suggestively. Moira sighed. "A'm nae runnin' an experimental clinic--" "At least let me stay the night before ya throw me out on me arse." Whether Moira was going to allow this invasion of her private headquarters or, indeed, kick her unwanted visitor out into his bony rump abruptly became a mystery to be explored later. Clumping uneven footsteps announced the arrival of her assistant even before he stuck his head around the corner of the doorless "reception area," as Excalibur had ironically dubbed the entryway which hardly ever actually saw visitors. Friends entered the complex via the hanger or the more private rearward doors; enemies, of course, usually made their own entrances. Dr. Rodrick "Rory" Campbell was a decent-looking man in Moira's opinion, tall and spare with serious brown eyes and the white streak which highlighted his shoved-back bangs. Despite this marking which had graced many a mutant head, in truth Dr. Campbell was as human as Moira herself. He hadn't said anything about it yet, but she was willing to lay money on the theory that the small stripe was either genetic -- it ran in families, sometimes -- or marked the place where a childhood injury lay hidden beyond his hairline. Right now, she wasn't sure if she was happy to see him for temporarily putting an end to the awkward "interview," or annoyed that he'd interrupted her while she was still evaluating the ballsy Australian who'd simply walked right in and announced himself as if he was in some low-class public clinic on the mainland rather than the high-tech HQ of Britain's greatest superteam. An' Britain's greatest geneticist, doan f'rget THA', she told herself with an attempt at good humor. Aloud, she asked, "Aye, Rory?" before he could even frame his question. He seemed serious but not overtly concerned. Perhaps...puzzled. A strange combination. "Sorry to bother you, Doctor, but it seems tha' we've got another visitor." Moira's eyes narrowed and she glared at St. John, who was already spreading his hands in the universal "who, me?" gesture. "Don't look at me. I'm heah alone." Dr. Campbell cleared his throat politely. "Actually...Dawn found a baby out on the cliffs."
It goes without saying, really, but perhaps it should be said anyway: Ember was terrified. She was familiar with terror, of course. She'd spent the last few years of her brief life in a near-constant state of fear; after one spends more than a few weeks under that kind of stress, it becomes one single numbing accepted fact of existence punctuated only by peaks of pain and blessed stretches of unconsciousness. Her last five months with Generation X were starting to feel like a mere dream, too good to be true... But she knew it hadn't been a dream, because her baby was gone, and Sinister was going to use her to send the Marauders after it. She'd woken up flat on her back on a familiar cold metal table in a darkened room -- her small area was the only part illuminated, and dimly at that, lending a cavernous threatening aura to the rest of what was surely a laboratory. She remembered the attack on the Academy, and Arclight, and her wings-- Her wings! The white-hot pain in her back had subsided to a dull ache centered in not one but two palm-sized spots over her shoulderblades, a fact which had almost wrenched an involuntary sob from her as she realized what had happened: Sinister had removed both the stump AND her remaining good wing. She closed her eyes to hold in tears. Even in the depths of her absolute black hatred for him, she understood dimly that he had actually done the only thing possible. A bird with one wing was worse than one without wings at all. She'd spent a few moments testing her restraints, but only half-heartedly. It was ridiculous to think that Sinister had left her alone with any possible way to escape. He'd probably just stepped out for a-- "They have your baby, you know." Ember jerked violently at the unexpected voice. It was low, matter-of-fact, a touch smug, female-- And hers. Despite her bindings, she was still able to turn her head. She twisted to the left just in time to see a ghostly form walk...no, coalesce out of the shadows. Herself. She was looking at herself. Ember blinked rapidly to clear her head and realized that she was, indeed, staring into a reflection in the five-foot-high glass door of a carelessly ajar containment chamber...but this reflection was standing, unrestrained, not strapped to a table. She was physically identical to Ember in every way, but instead of a thin cotton nightshirt she was dressed in a version of Ember's old Marauder uniform, negative gray-and-black rather than blue-and-white. There was also the fact that the neckline plunged cleavage-low and a large panel had been cut from the stomach to make it daring rather than utilitarian. And her eyes...the look in her eyes... Ember shivered and closed her own for a moment. She was promptly astonished to find that she could still see the apparition against the insides of her lids, clear as day. And it spoke. "Perhaps I exaggerated." Her own voice echoed inside her head as the vision folded its arms, staring down at her. "They don't have your baby yet. But they will. You only teleported her a few hundred miles away from the school. He's located her and is sending THEM after her even as we speak. It's only a matter of hours...maybe minutes, by now." Ember tried to probe outward with her mind, to investigate this strangeness -- and winced as she banged up against the figurative "inside" of a damping field. Only now did she notice the electrodes stuck to her forehead. She decided, for the moment, to pretend that she really was speaking to her own mirror image, and not to some experiment-induced hallucination. "Why are you telling me this?" "Because I'm you." The mirror-Ember stepped closer, her expression dead serious. "I'm the part of you that wants vengeance at any cost." Somehow Ember realized then that her twin wasn't referring to what had been done to her...or what would be done to her child, the child he had genetically engineered and placed within her body with Sinister's own two hands. Before she'd escaped. Before she'd been taken in by... "Generation X...?" she asked faintly, her voice cracking. "Wiped out. All dead. Or worse." "How do you know?" "I'm you. I'm what you're hiding from yourself. I know what you know. In your heart, you know they couldn't have stood up to the Marauders. You knew it was coming, and yet you stayed with them all those months..." Ember whimpered piteously in the back of her throat. "No... They could still be alive. Sinister could have them. Oh god -- why am I just lying here?! It IS my fault! I have to--" Her image stepped closer still, her eyes icy slits. "Get free?" "Yes! If he's hurt them...if he's laid a HAND on my daughter..." Mindlessly, like an animal, Ember began to fight her restraints, blocking out the surge of pain which rippled through her as she resumed her struggles. "What he did to me was bad enough...not my friends, not my baby! I'll kill him! I swear I'll kill him, that f..." What followed was a stream of language which would have shocked her parents and impressed Scalphunter. Galvanized by the twin needs for revenge and freedom, Ember worked herself up into a tremendous screaming fury in the space of seconds -- at the height of her efforts, the electrodes on her forehead suddenly crackled and fell away in wisps of smoke, but it wasn't enough. The restraints held. She collapsed back against the cold metal, gasping and fighting tears of pain and frustration. "I hate him. Oh god, I hate him so much." "You would do anything be free right now, wouldn't you?" "You're me. You KNOW I would. I. Want. Him. DEAD!" The mirror-Ember smiled a terrible smile, which normally would have set off alarms in Ember's sensible head except for the fact that at the moment she was herself wearing a similar expression. The laboratory suddenly lit up in a blinding blue-white flare-- When the harsh glare cleared Ember was alone, on her back, on the table, as before. Except for two small differences. For one, the restraints were gone. She sat up on the edge of the medical table, carefully, sparing a moment to rub circulation back into her wrists... "I trust all went well, my dear?" The steel-silk voice from the shadows instantly captured her full attention. Dropping her hands to brace herself on the table's edge, Ember leaned forward to peer into the shadows, trying to see where her erstwhile master stood. For a girl who'd only mere moments before been screaming for his blood, she was remarkably calm. Almost...satisfied. "Sure, Nate. Everything is just perfect. You can come in now." A sigh and a rustle of cloak. A click and the overhead lights flooded on, illuminating the entire gleaming lab and its master: Sinister. Ember merely watched impassively, kicking her bare feet in the air as the genetic mastermind strode across the room. With one precise touch, he closed the glass door which had been "accidentally" left open at exactly the right angle for Dawn Embers to glimpse her own reflection. A reflection which was now peering out from behind the girl's sapphire-blue eyes. Sinister gazed down into those eyes now, gauging her with great care. "I do believe that I have asked you at least a dozen times to call me 'Sinister.' Not 'Nate,' nor 'Nathan,' nor 'Essex.'" "Whatever you say, S--" "And most especially not 'Sinny.'" "Ohhh...all right, boss. So what now?" "You know perfectly well 'what now.' Find out where she sent the baby and find out how to get there. I have no time for games and I do not wish to for this mission to become another one of your little dominance struggles with Scalphunter. Do. Not. Push. Me. Am I making myself perfectly clear...?" His tone was at its sternest and most frigidly unforgiving. As she nodded, chastised for the moment, her hand idly wandered across the second difference: the skull-faced choker looped snugly around her throat. A decoration which had not been there before. "Crystal, sir," Malice/Ember replied with a cruel little smile.
Back on Muir Island, Earth 616: Dawn resisted the urge to drum her heels against the legs of her chair and suppressed the temptation to start tearing up her napkin into very, very small pieces. It had been an hour since Moira MacTaggert had swooped down upon her (showing remarkable restraint by NOT using the phrase "och, the puir wee bairn" at the single most appropriate moment of her entire life) and borne the baby off into the depths of her medical wing. Dawn knew that the baby was in good hands; Moira was a mother herself, a good one if her sweet adopted daughter Rahne was any example. The baby -- whom Dawn now knew to be a "she" -- was being fussed over, fed, cleaned, and checked from head to toe for injuries or anomalies. In other words, she was in better hands than if she'd stayed with Dawn. Still, though, Dawn was feeling a little bereft. Which was odd, because she'd only known the kid for about five minutes before relinquishing her to the adults, and most of those five minutes had involved a LOT of screaming, struggling, and a hefty psionic jolt which had nearly laid her out flat in the heather. She couldn't explain it, really. Something in her was raising a protective head... Dawn toyed with the remains of her sandwich a little longer then let it fall flat upon her plate. The kitchen was messy but not horribly so, fragrant with a lingering odor of burnt bacon (just the way Dawn and Kitty liked it, much to the horror of the team's native Brits) and traces of an extremely dangerous concoction which vaguely resembled coffee. Someone -- probably Meggan -- had once taken the time to put up some bright frilly curtains as if attempting to compensate for the leaden grey sky which, this far north, was more often than not the team's only view. As Dawn set her fork and cup upon her plate and stood up intending to place the whole precarious pile in the sink, a stranger slouched into the kitchen. The lanky blond man give her a brief smile, a half-hearted salute, and a greeting of "G'day -- wheh's the bread?" "In the fridge," Dawn said cautiously, standing stock still, her dish still clutched in her hand. Her wings suddenly ached within their bandages as if straining to extend defensively... "Ta, luv." As if not noticing the girl's wary gaze following his every move, the stranger made a beeline for the communal refrigerator and started rooting around in its murky depths. He emerged unscathed bearing an armload of lettuce, mayo, mustard, leftover chicken, and a bag containing two venerable bread butts. As he proceeded to slap together a meal on the counter by the stove, Dawn considered simply leaving as she'd originally intended. No such luck. Without looking back he asked, "So, you ah...?" "Dawn," she said, suddenly ashamed that she'd had to make an effort to be civil. Something had her on edge, and running into a stranger in the kitchen hadn't helped! "Dawn Embers." She sensed his next obvious question and quickly added, "Yes, that's my real name." "Huh. Gotta codename?" "No." He glanced back at her curiously. "You're gonna need one if you're plannin' on bein' one'a these X-types." Dawn shook her head, suddenly feeling very, very tired. "Hardly. I'm not going to be around in a few weeks." She'd intended that to be a throwaway comment, meaning to follow it up with a quick subject change, but the strange man stopped dead at that as if he'd read something in her tone despite her effort to keep her voice neutral. Carefully, he set down the mayo-coated butterknife and turned to look at her, really *look* at her for the first time. "You got it too, don't you?" he said quietly. "That's a right bitch. Yer too young." Before she could think of a suitable reply, he stuck out his hand for her to shake. After a brief hesitation, she complied gingerly. "St. John Allerdyce. Betta' known as Pyro. I'd show ya why, but the last time I tried t'show off to a gul I burnt down me apa'tment. Legacy's a real bugga', isn't it?" "I...didn't know that Dr. MacTaggert had any other patients." Pyro spared her a wry smile. "Not yet. I just dropped in outta the blue, really. She got stroppy 'bout it, so I figga'd lyin' low for a spot might be me best option. Wait -- you're the one who found the ankle-bita', right?" "Um?" "Baby. The baby." "Oh. Yes." Dawn belatedly set her dishes in the sink and dusted the crumbs off of her hands. "Have you heard anything...?" "Not me. I'm just havin' lunch." Still standing at the counter, Pyro cheerfully chomped into his sloppy chicken sandwich as if demonstrating his complete innocence -- and it was the honest truth. How the hell was he supposed to know what the mad scientist was doing down in her bloody laboratory? When this cock-up was straightened out and over, Mystique was going to get an earful-- Dr. Campbell chose that moment to enter the kitchen himself in search of something to drink. Dawn perked up at his appearance. "Doctor? What happening? Is she all right?" Rory knew, of course, that she was referring to the baby. As he took a bottle of mineral water off of the four-pack on top of the fridge, he replied cheerfully, "Oh yes, she's fine. A bit hungry an' wet, of course, but fine. Moira's running a gene scan right noo -- there's sommat on her back, little bumps. Could be the start of wings--" "Wings?!" Dawn goggled at him for a moment. "On a BABY?!" "Well, not yet, and we arena sure. After the tests are complete, maybe--" "Can I see her?" "Moira or the baby?" Dawn wrinkled her nose in mock exasperation. "The baby. I know better than to interrupt Dr. MacTaggert in the middle of her work." "Oh sure, I don't see any problem with tha'. She could probably use some extra kindness after whatever she's been through. Go right ahead." "Thank you! We'll, uh, talk later, Mr. Allerdyce." "Hey, call me St. Jo--" Pyro trailed off and shook his head as the girl tore out of the room, showing more energy that he would have thought possible for someone in her condition. Which, the instant she'd mentioned it, had seemed suddenly obvious to his eyes. After all, he saw it himself in every mirror and every glass storefront. "How long does the kid have?" he asked aside. Rory sighed and plopped into a seat at the kitchen table, water bottle in one hand. "Two, three weeks a'most. Moira says she'll probably be too weak to get out of bed by the end of the week." "Shame." Pyro shook his head, his expression unreadable. "I'm not thrilled about dyin' meself, mind you, but at least in the end I can sye that I had some good mates an' a few bonza' decades of it." "Of what? Being a supervillain?" Rory's tone was acidic; he'd obviously been talking to Moira. Pyro just chuckled. "Don't knock it till ya try it, Doc." Pyro hadn't meant to hit a nerve -- however, it appeared that was precisely what he had done. The researcher's expression didn't change but his grip tightened convulsively hard on the as-yet-unopened water bottle. The top popped free and a jet of rather expensive water fountained across the table before Rory got himself back under control. He shot to his feet, grabbed the nearest floral-print kitchen towel, and hastily swabbed the worst of the puddle off of the table, avoiding Pyro's curious gaze. "I...have work t'do. Excuse me--" The wet tea-towel went into the sink and Rory went out the door in practically the same instant. Pyro bemusedly scratched his head, re-considered what he had said, then shrugged and went back to his chicken sandwich.
"Wow! Lookin' good, babe!" Malice grinned as she entered the room; pausing just inside the doorway, she raised her hands to the nape of her neck and performed an exaggeratedly sexy fashion-runway twirl, her sapphire-blue hair fanning prettily around her shoulders. Her new black-and-gray uniform, high on "skintight" and low on actual material, rippled tantalizingly as if glued to her body. "Thanks. But you're still not getting any, Kim." A coarse chuckle rippled through the assembled assassins as Scrambler threw the back of his hand to his forehead and pretended to swoon like a rebuffed fop. "I am shocked -- nay, insulted! Where on earth would you get the impression that I would have any designs upon your innocent, virginal self, my dear young lady?" "You seem to forget," she shot back, "that I haven't forgotten all of those I-wonder-if-she's-blue-down-there-too looks you used to give me back when--" "She IS blue down there," Riptide interjected with artful innocence. Then he buckled over clutching his head with a howl of pain as Malice glared at him. "Enough, children." Scalphunter's tone was stern, but there was a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth as he finished cleaning his last weapon. Sliding it home into the last empty holster slung about his sinewy body, he rose to his full height and took two steps forward. Unbidden, Malice dropped her playful pose and moved forward as well, meeting him in the dead center of the room. The two were an odd contrast; one tall and powerful with the stern look of a career killer, the other a slender wisp of a teenaged girl wearing an leather-and-spandex outfit which would have looked immodest on a Spice Girl. But the unreadable look they exchanged for a long silent moment was a measured exchange between equals. "Good to see that you've finally come around, Ember," Scalphunter said finally, approvingly. Malice smiled up at him. "Sorry it took me so long." It would have been a strange conversation to anyone else, but Scalphunter knew Malice better than most. The girl standing before him WAS Malice, a spiteful psionic entity "possessing" the young telepath's body like a vengeful ghost. Yet at the same time she was still Ember...at least, all of the dark repressed parts of Ember which had responded to Malice's seductive siren song like a mesmerized Lucy opening the door for the vampire count. This Ember LIKED being under the sway of Malice. That was how Malice worked. It was extremely effective. Too effective, sometimes, Scalphunter thought sourly, sensing another challenge for command of the Marauders in his future. He carefully hid his annoyance and clapped Malice warmly on the shoulder. "Well! Enough talk. Let's get after your kid, eh? Where'd you send it?" "I'm not exactly sure -- I was a bit rushed at the time. Let me see..." Malice/Ember concentrated, harnessing Ember's latent powers far better than the girl had ever been able to on her own. With an adult "hand" experienced in wielding others' powers to guide her steps, activating her latent ability to use the powers of the dead was a snap. Her eyes gleamed red and her posture altered subtly as she tapped into the same semi-demonic wellspring which had almost saved her, back at the Academy. "Hmmmm. Now if I recall rightly, it felt like...this." A brilliant white disc flared abruptly into existence before her, casting the Marauders' flickering shadows into the ceiling as it defied physics to hover a foot off of the ground. Malice frowned; seh could sense that the teleport disc was the "right" one, but it only spanned a foot in diameter -- and, even as she watched, it was shrinking. With a grunt of effort, she closed her eyes and hooked her fingers and spread her hands as if forcing the magic field wider with a pantomime gesture. It grew. Reluctantly. An inch at a time, until her arms trembled with the strain. "Problem?" Arclight asked tauntingly from behind her. Malice spared a poisonous glance aside, unable to turn to face her teammate for fear of losing control completely. "Nah, no problem at all. Let's see YOU open a portal to hell," she shot back cockily. In truth, she was worried. She'd thought that wielding these new abilities would be easier with her new perceptions of the world and of her own potential. But something wasn't right. Something was fighting her-- That's it! Of course! she realized with a silent snarl of frustration. There's still a personality attached to this weird power, and...it's...RESISTING...me! Dammit! It didn't matter. The portal was wide enough now, and she only had to hold it for a few more seconds. With every ounce of willpower she possessed, she smoothed her features and stilled her exhausted quivering to present the illusion of complete control. She hated showing weakness -- absolutely hated it. "Better hop on through fast, guys, this thing's temporary," she announced nonchalantly, and she breathed a mental sigh of relief as the team took her at her word. Last through was Scalphunter, whose casual yet lingering sidelong glance in her direction spoke volumes. He knew that she was having trouble commanding the dead teleporter. And he wanted to make sure that SHE knew that he knew. Malice scowled as she stepped forward into the light herself. Great. First round to him, and he didn't even have to lift a finger. I do NOT need this. As the disc's light closed over the brooding telepath, whisking her from one reality to another, something...happened. Something else came through, riding on her refusal to relinquish control of the stepping discs. Something which ran an cold finger of unease down Malice's spine even as it whispered a word of comfort to Ember...
Back on Muir Island, Earth 616: Somewhere-- --and then he was elsewhere. He knew where he'd been before, and this definitely wasn't it. Automatically, he pushed a hank of hair out of his eyes and stared at his surroundings. It looked like a laboratory, and his first thought was of the medlab at the Academy. But this wasn't it. Where was he? He didn't know. Why was he there? Someone had called him. "Um, hello? Who's here?" His voice echoed faintly throughout the empty shining lab. No one else seemed to be there-- Something sniffled piteously at about waist height. He looked down, and his expression softened. "Well, hello there, little guy." He reached down cautiously, and allowed a tiny pink hand to fasten around his offered finger. "So maybe you can explain what I'm doing here?" he asked jokingly To his jaw-dropped astonishment, the baby told him.
Keeping that in mind, Dawn quietly let herself in and padded through the outer examining area, into the inner sanctum. Within were several medical beds nested amidst great webs and towers of complicated-looking monitoring equipment; none of them were suitable for holding an unsupervised baby, and thus none of them did. Thoughtfully, she tapped her chin and gazed about the maze of technology, trying to figure out where the geneticist would have been most likely to rig up a safe crib for the newest guest on Muir Island, the infant which had simply appeared out on the Muir cliffs under VERY strange circumstances. Unable to see every wall and every corner from where she stood, Dawn conceded reluctantly that she would have to snoop around on foot-- Her quest was completed before it began thanks to a burbling un-Lockheed-like coo somewhere off to her right, past the row of support beds. She found herself smiling as she set off in that direction. Dr. MacTaggert MUST have been good with babies to get the child calmed down to the point of making happy noises like that! She rounded the last bed at a relaxed clip, walked past a huge opaque tube more than twice her size, and slammed to a halt when she found someone else leaning over the crib. Someone male, by the look of his back, and familiar, but not tall enough to be Dr. Campbell... And not substantial enough to be alive. She could see the side of the bassinet right through him. Her heart caught in her throat, blocking everything but a small "erk?!" Startled, the boy shot upright at the sound and whirled to face her, defensively, tossing his head to fling a shock of loose brown hair out of his face. His eyes went wide. "Dawn...?! I--" Then Glenn Keaton faded away. Before she was even aware of moving, Dawn had covered the few meters to the crib and skidded to a halt right before where the apparition had stood a moment before. Almost unable to breathe, she tentatively waved her hand through the vacated spot in mid air even as she dropped her shields to search as far as she dared. Nothing. Nothing at all. At least, nothing that she was looking for, nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly no sign of her best friend in the world...her best friend who'd been dead for a week. Tears welled up abruptly at the corners of her eyes and she dashed them away with the back of her hand. She'd managed to hold herself together fairly well over the past handspan of days, and then THIS had to rip open the wounds all over again! It wasn't fair! Was hallucinating part of her downward spiral? Had Dr. MacTaggert known...? Oh God...it's bad enough that I'm dying. Do I have to lose my mind, too...? Hardly noticing, she'd sunk to the ground next to the cradle, her legs folding sideways underneath her body, one set of fingers still locked around the wooden edge of the bassinet above her head. Fighting off an oncoming case of hysterical sniffles and scrubbing at the rising tears with her other hand -- Get a grip on yourself, Embers! What if someone walks in? -- she became slowly aware of something unusual on the edge of her mind. Something new. Not static, like the faraway mass of humanity on Scotland's shore. This was closer, much closer, and instead of grating on her nerves like every other unwanted emotional emission it soothed and anxiously cajoled, like a tiny soft hand patting her cheek. Dawn glanced up, eyes damp but unfocused. Slowly, she turned to look up over her shoulder at the crib. With a distant frown as she tried to focus on the oddly non-intrusive intrusion against her empathic senses, she pushed herself back to her feet. The baby...? It seemed impossible, but the only option. Dr. Campbell had said that she was growing wings...and where there were wings, there could be more. After all, she should know. Tucking an errant blue lock behind her ear, Dawn leaned over the crib in curiosity. The baby was wide awake and wide-eyed; when she saw the big person leaning over her she giggled and kicked vigorously, her tiny feet dancing in the air. Dawn reached down and traced the outline of the child's tiny ear with one fingertip and was rewarded by a burst of warm feelings -- and not just the warmth of a happy child, either. These feelings were focused and direct and clear, at least to an empath. This wasn't just the emotional equivalent of "Hello nice lady, cuddle me please." The baby was absolutely, joyously positive that Dawn was her Mommy. Without thinking, Dawn scooped up the light little ball of blankets and held the baby close, losing herself in that innocent blue gaze. "Silly thing, I'm not your mother," she murmured with a laugh, though it was a nice sensation to be so unconditionally wrapped in love. "I'm fourteen. I'm not even old enough to--" She trailed off uncertainly as a wavering, misty image rose to flicker briefly behind her eyes like a broken filmstrip: an image of herself, almost. Older, with different clothes and a different haircut... Then the image was doused in darkness -- breaking glass, screams, flashes of multicolored light (Jubilee?) -- PAIN, branches tearing, running, fear, fear, fear, LOSS-- Dawn gasped in shock and the images shattered, leaving her alone in the quietly humming lab, cradling a softly whimpering infant. Her composure was a bit shaken, but she was no stranger to such things; during her brief stint as part of the spandex brigade, she'd actually been dragged to alternate dimensions and visited other times. Which did the child represent? Had she just been gifted with a glimpse of what would be...or what could be? Was this her future daughter? Which raised another obvious question: who was the baby's father? With a stab of emotion, Dawn remembered her hallucination of Glenn leaning over the cradle; tears threatened again, but she willed them down. On one hand, the child's presence was heartening; if the little one was indeed her own daughter from the future, then maybe, just maybe it meant that Dr. MacTaggert would find a cure for Legacy in time. That she would live. It was a hope to cling to. On the other hand, what good would life be without Glenn to share it with her...? She didn't get a chance to complete that train of thought. Without warning, all of the lights in the lab flickered and died. The myriad small sounds of equipment on perpetual standby also faded out, leaving her standing alone in a thick darkness marked only by the eerie floating glow of the occasional phosporescent label stuck to a vital control for just such an contingency. Dawn blinked and held perfectly still, allowing her eyes to adjust to the blackout. Still holding the now snuffling baby, she edged carefully forward by touch, around the big tube and the last of the medical beds. When she was fairly certain that she could make out the pale-green glimmer of the glowing sticker on the light switch, she set off in that direction one cautious step at a time. It occurred to her when she was halfway there that surely Muir Island had an emergency generator -- it would be crazy not to. So why hadn't it kicked in yet--? The baby wriggled suddenly, bumping against her ribs. She was starting to tremble again, though aside from the occasional piteous sniffle she stayed as quiet as a church mouse this time. 'This time?' Dawn halted abruptly, a chill sliding down her spine as she belatedly realized that a handful of new presences -- cold, hostile, focused, deadly -- were brushing the edges of her psi-shields, creeping around the fringes of her mental senses like stalking panthers. Killers. On Muir Island. Seemingly out of mid-air. Just like the baby. She'd wondered initially if anyone or anything dangerous had been on the trail of the misplaced child. She'd been starting to think that perhaps she'd merely been being paranoid. Somehow, the fact that she'd been right wasn't reassuring in the least...
"Don't move. Set it down." Moira went cold all over, her hand clenching tight on the flashlight. She'd been on her way to check the emergency generator; she'd had that creeping feeling that something was wrong, because she'd been around the superhero block enough times to know damn well that a complete black-out at HQ was NEVER a mere coincidence. However, with Excalibur gone there'd been nothing she could do but try to get the power (and thus the internal defenses) back online herself. She'd been about to slip out of her lab through a back access passage, praying frantically that she'd make to the lower levels in time before matters got too far out of hand. Apparently, she'd failed. Her grip closed around the flashlight just a wee bit tighter. It was a potential weapon, if they mistook her for harmless. Projecting a plaintive "A'm just a weak puny stupid civilian, Mr. Bad Guy sir" plea into her voice, she protested as loudly as she dared, "I-it's just a torch--" Cold metal pressed into her scalp behind her ear, almost shoving the earpiece of her glasses loose. "Put. It. DOWN." Swallowing hard, Moira regretfully complied, setting the heavy flashlight on the nearest counter without turning it off so that its beam of light refracted wildly around the gleaming laboratory. At the edge of her vision she caught a distorted reflection on a computer screen; the man behind her was taller by about a foot, and heavily armed. There seemed to be someone else in the room, too, though she could see no more than a flash of something human-sized which shouldn't have been there next to the door. Standing guard, most likely. "We have a problem you can solve for us," the voice drawled again, behind her, close enough to ruffle her hair. "We seem to have...lost something on your island here." Moira hardly batted an eye, barely surprised. The baby. A'course. A had a bad feelin' aboot the puir wee thing. "We really didn't want to get messy, but our telepath is having trouble finding it for some reason. I think you know what I'm talking about. Where is it, MacTaggert? Tell me, and we might leave you alive." She gritted her teeth as a slow fury began to rise in the pit of her stomach. How dare they?! Forcibly keeping her voice level, she answered in a reasonably steady voice, "Oh! You must mean the wee baby girl muh patient found this mornin'. She's in muh private quarters. If ye promise ta leave the others alone, A'll--" In mid-sentence she dropped and twisted, ramming her elbow back into the assassin's crotch. To his credit he reacted swiftly -- her blow glanced off of his thigh instead, but this brought one of his guns into reach. Moira snatched the pistol from its holster and threw herself sideways, rolling, aiming to reach the cover of her workbench. Her eyes had adjusted to the gloom, and she was fairly sure that she could make it-- She heard two sounds simultaneously: a dull thud and a grunt from the doorway, and the k-KLICK of a very large and very close weapon being activated and aimed in her direction. Two feet short of shelter, her roll brought her back around for a flash glimpse of the scene behind her, and time suddenly screeched to a horrified halt. The big mustachioed merc had his hefty rifle centered right on her. He could have killed her three times over already. His smile told her plain as day that he'd just been waiting to see the look on her face before he pulled the trigger. Not gaunnae make it -- Rahne, A'm so sorry... Something struck the merc from behind. He grunted and staggered, the gunbarrel drooping to the floor as he stared stupidly down at the hands-breadth of shining steel protruding from between his ribs. For an instant he stood frozen; for a heartbeat, time held its breath. Then his eyes rolled back into his head and dark blood gouted from between his lips. He made one last tremendous effort to sight on Moira again even as he sank to his knees, struggling to complete his final objective, but to no avail; he was dead even before the side of his head struck the tiled floor with an echoing crack. Moira was no longer looking at him. Her attention was riveted on the shadowy door to the lab. When she fumbled for the flashlight and trained it upon the entrance, she was greeted by the very welcome sight of Dr. Rory Campbell. Dishevelled and panting as if out of breath, he was standing squarely over the crumpled body of a stout man who lay amidst a spray of spears fallen from a quiver slung over his back. "It's...it's okay, Moira, come on out. I handled et." Moira was already rummaging through a nearby cupboard. "Just a minute, A know A left it here... Is he dead too?" "This guy? Na, I just brained him with my laptop." "A always wondered when tha' little Macintosh toy of yours would come in handy," Moira said drily into her cupboard. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Rory spluttered in righteous indignation; she smiled slightly and continued searching, reaching back as far into the storage compartment as she could. "Now where-- Ah hah!" She emerged with a loaded rifle resting comfortably -- and familiarly -- over her arm. "NOW A'm ready tae take on thae bastards." Tearing his astonished gaze away from his mentor's new armament, Rory stammered, "B-but we got them already." "Na hardly." Moira nudged the dead one with one toe and then hooked it under his shoulder and shoved hard, rolling him onto his back. His entire chest was dark with his own blood; the spear (for that was what had killed him, she now noticed) had been shoved back through his body by the impact with the ground. Or at least it would have been, if it hadn't been barbed. Not a spear, then. That fit the rest of the evidence she'd already gathered. "A recognise him noo. This is Scalphunter, an' yon laddie -- hit him ag'in, wouldye? och, nice one, tha's a good man -- must be Harpoon. They're Marauders. An' Marauders aye travel in packs. They're after the baby, A'se warrant." Rory paled. "Good God, I sent Dawn down to see her." "Lord... A'right. C'mon. Luckily f'r us most Marauders arena bulletproof." She strode out the back access door, tossing Rory the assassin's pistol on the way through. "By the by, nice throw. A owe ye muh life." Rory shrugged self-consciously as he automatically checked the gun for ammo and followed close on Moira's heels, up the dark staircase which led to the more public areas above -- including the medical bay where they'd both last seen the child. "Well, tha' big Scalpwhatever guy was about to kill you, an' the one I'd knocked down had all these spears--" "Harpoons." "--strapped to his back, and I just didna think, I just grabbed one and... Did you say 'harpoons'?" Moira nodded and shushed him as they neared the top of the stairs. Rory didn't need to be shushed. He was suddenly feeling sick to his stomach, worse even than when Pyro had made his throwaway comment about "being a super-villain" that morning. What Pyro didn't know, couldn't possibly know, was that thanks to a tale told by a time-travelling friend, Rory knew what his future held: the possibility of becoming one of the cruellest, most evil oppressors of mutantkind that the world would ever know. The harder he struggled to avoid his destiny, the closer the coils looped around him, pulling tighter, tighter... The harpoon HAD felt right in his hand. Perfectly right. The good-natured mutant researcher who lived in fear of one day becoming Ahab, torturer and enslaver of mutant children, suddenly found it very difficult to breathe past a hysterical tightness in his chest. Biting down on his rising nausea, he forced himself to stay calm as he bravely followed Dr. MacTaggert into the darkness.
He was still a little surprised that McTaggart had left him to his own devices, considering his long and illustrious career as an, ahem, freedom fighter (or terrorist or mercenary or royal-pain-in-the-ass, depending on who you asked and what mood they were in at the time). As first it had seemed terribly strange to him that after she'd put him through the wringer upon his arrival, the good doctor had simply wandered off as if giving him the run of the place. It had become rapidly apparent, however, that nine out of ten doors were security-locked to him, restricting him to the lobby area, a few corridors, and, luckily for his stomach, the kitchen. Now, however, he couldn't FIND anyone to point out and open another rather necessary door. Where had they all gone...? He had been seriously considering giving up and wandering outside to brave the elements for a quick wiss when the lights died. That made his task considerably more difficult. Pyro grumbled under his breath as he started fishing about in his jeans pockets. Bloody Moira bloody MacTagguht! Design the best genetic facility in the wo'ld an' fu'get ta put in a bloody loo-- Ah! His full-body search had been rewarded by a matchbook, which was no less than he'd expected; St. John was, after all, the only non-smoker on the face of the planet who wouldn't have been caught dead without a packet or two of matches. The first match lit on the first strike. Without thinking twice, Pyro stuffed the matchbook back into his hip pocket and waved the little flame into the palm of his hand, where it pooled and grew into a respectable-sized ball of fire. The hallway danced with shadows in the firelight as he raised his hand like a torch; at the motion, however, the tidy little fireball broke like a soap bubble. Flames engulfed his entire hand. Anyone else would have shrieked and batted frantically at the blaze, but Pyro merely groaned aloud at what was to him an embarrassing loss of control. After a moment's hesitation he decided to let the flames burn on undisturbed, licking merrily around and between his fingers. It wasn't as if they could harm him. They still provided a suitable amount of light, and at least he'd managed to contain them above the wrist this time. His bladder, however, was rapidly becoming a different story... He froze as he heard a muffled thud somewhere behind him. He considered the layout and came to the conclusion that the sound could only have come from the lobby -- and seeing as there really wasn't anything IN the so-called lobby which could have made that kind of sound, that probably meant the the doors had just been kicked open. Or down. Hrm. Knowin' this place, that plus this blackout means eitha' a) bad guys who won't want ta listen t'me explanations about how I'm NOT Excaliba's latest recruit, or b) good guys who'll be more'n happy ta knock me 7through a wall for old times' sake. An' this hallway's a dead end. Blast. Well, may as well staht by not bein' a tahget... With a showy flourish (old habits died hard) Pyro extinguished his impromptu "torch." At least, that's what he meant to do. In reality, it refused to go out. In fact, the flames blazed up even brighter, engulfing his arm to the elbow. The jaunty Australian wilted as the potentially protective shadows withdrew yet farther and his ego dropped another notch. Not that he had all that many notches left, mind you. Aw beaut. Just what I needed. This is NOT goin' t'be a good day, izit? Well, Johnnie boy, the question is, d'you let whoeva'-they-ah come to you, or...? Stupid question, mate. Onward, then!
The baby was surprisingly light in the crook of her arm, like a puff of down. Almost as if she wasn't even there. Nonetheless, Dawn was constantly aware of the little one's presence. It was a comforting contrast to the prickling paranoid sensation at the back of her neck which was screaming THEY'RE GOING TO GET YOU...even though, thanks to her fluctuating but still-powerful telepathy, she was perfectly aware of where "they" all were. Which, thankfully, wasn't anywhere near her. Whoever they were, they weren't very bright; taking out the power had effectively clamped down the heavy electronic security doors and locked them out of the complex. Blowing a way inside would slow them down immensely, and by the time they tracked her down -- IF they tracked her down -- she planned to have a VERY annoyed Excalibur down around their ears. The hair on the back of her neck prickled again. Someone WAS in the hall with them, she was sure of it! She turned to place her back to one wall and froze for a moment, barely breathing, listening. Nothing. She heard nothing, sensed nothing. But there was still something at the very edge of her mind, as if someone was ALMOST there... The baby suddenly let out a small trilling coo. Dawn almost jumped out of her skin and started to shush her, but then caught herself in mid-shush. Come to think of it, the child seemed to have an uncanny knack of knowing when they were in danger; she hadn't made a single peep during the long, pitch-black tiptoe from the medical bay to the inner corridors, even the one time Dawn had stubbed her toe under her foot and nearly flung her fragile armful forward into the darkness. If she was calm enough now to make normal (if oddly timed) baby noises, then surely Dawn was imagining things. She hoped. She didn't have much else to go on at the moment. I'm not sure who's after you, she thought at the baby, but they won't get you. I promise.
Something else that wasn't there, something which hated being USED, merely shifted its grip on its weapon and waited with great patience for the right moment to strike.
"This officially sucks." "Shut up, Rip." "I mean, not only have we lost contact with Scalp FIVE minutes into this little escapade--" "Shut UP, Rip." "--not only that, but I'm freezing my ass off here. If someone had MENTIONED that we'd wind up in the freakin' Arctic Circle, I've have brought a sweater or someth--" "SHUT *UP*, RIP!" Arclight glared venomously back over her shoulder. The beam from the flashlight her fellow Marauder was clutching gleamed off of her silver bodysuit and powerfully muscled arms...especially the one which had briefly paused in its door-bashing task to brandish a threatening fist at him. Riptide could take a hint -- eventually. He sighed but shut up, shivering. The thin bodysuit he favored on missions (to maximize his aerodynamics and, frankly, to minimize his weekly load of laundry) was not holding up well against the chill of the Scottish autumn evening. He'd already tried spinning in place at his accustomed superhuman speeds in hopes that the action would warm him up, but he had only succeeded in creating a miniature cold whirlwind which had left him even more miserable than before. He stamped his feet to wake them up as Arclight finally succeeded in wrenching the guts of the door's magnetic-electronic lock out of the wall. With a push and a grunt, she managed to shove aside the now inert slab of metal. Beyond was inpenetrable darkness. Riptide quietly moved forward on his toes, casting the beam of light into the hallway beyond. It looked short and empty. There was another security door a few yards ahead, but nothing that Arclight couldn't handle-- "What the FUCK?!?" Arclight's bark of surprise bounced sharp and loud between the narrow walls. Riptide turned in time to see her yank something from her exposed shoulder. Riptide hastily trained the flashlight across it, swinging the beam of light across his partner's face en route and elicting another burst of startled obscenities from the momentarily blinded woman. He almost laughed when he saw that the thing in her hand was a red-fletched plastic-barrelled dart, just like the ones in the wildlife specials on PBS. Amend that to "a now empty red-fletched plastic-barrelled dart." Even as the pure incongruity of the attack struck Riptide as humorous, he'd already doused the flashlight and moved silently sideways to ensure that the next dart -- if there was a next dart, which he didn't doubt -- couldn't come anywhere near him except by blind luck. And "blind" was right. Without the flashlight's beam, the windowless interior corridor was as black as pitch. Something clanged in the darkness as Arclight collapsed, knocked out cold by whatever rhino-tranking concoction had been delivered into her bloodstream by the dart. Riptide had no time for her. He was already moving, already shifting up into murder mode. His mutant power kicked in with a hiss of rising wind as he shot down the corridor, planning to hit the unseen sniper hard and fast. Instead, he hit solid metal hard and fast. Momentarily stunned, Riptide stumbled back two steps and fell flat on his rump. For a moment he simply lay there dazed. Then, when the stars circling his head faded enough to once more allow him to string more than two thoughts together at a time, he dragged himself back to his feet and groped gingerly forward in the darkness. His fingers encountered hard steel. The door at the other one of the corridor -- the one which had been open when they'd found it. It was closed now. He shoved as hard as he could, nearly giving himself a hernia. Not even the slightest shift marred the blast door's ponderous repose. With a heartfelt groan, Riptide turned to prop his back against it and slid down to the ground to wait it out. He wasn't even vaguely in the running for "team brawn" -- there was no way he could possibly pry the damn thing open, and he'd already determined that there was an identical door at the other end of the hall. He hated to admit it, but he was most effectively boxed in. All he could do was wait, fidgeting and grumbling, for Blockbuster to show up or for Arclight to come around... And dammit, he was still cold.
"A'course A got her. Ye think I dinnae ken how t'use this thing?" Moira patted the weapon lovingly. "Family heirloom. Belonged t'muh da." "Your da had a safari-quality dart gun? In Scotland?" Rory looked dubious. Moira chuckled and motioned him away from the door. "It was a compromise wi' muh mother. Long story, A'll tell it another day. Come on." "But what about--" "Not a worry. When th'power's back on, we can pump tha corridor full'a anesthetic." "Which means," Rory said as he rejoined her, "that we'd better get moving to get the power back on before tha Amazon wakes up." "Exactly." They set off again in mutual silence, straining their senses for any sign of danger in the darkness -- Moira had opted to leave the flashlight she'd brought from the lab turned off and clipped to Rory's belt, arguing that its light would merely make them into perfect targets. It was an eerie, skin-crawling experience to tiptoe through the echoing hallways, aware every second that they shared the dark with a pack of brutal killers. What unnerved Moira even more than the possibility of her own death, however, was the constant nagging awareness that, somewhere out there, the killers were stalking a dying girl and an innocent baby. Setting her mouth into a grim line, she stepped up her cautious pace as much as she dared. Not much further now...
With a grunt, Pyro let himself fall sidelong to the chill ground and rolled bonelessly over to look back; to study the mess he'd made of Excalibur's HQ. It was an impressive little disaster, to say the least. Christ. How embarrassin'. McTagguht's gonna flay me alive f'this. For a moment he considered simply walking away from it all. Then he remembered that he was a) on an island in the middle of nowhere, and b) unlikely to be able to find a good place to hide that Excalibur wouldn't be able to locate and drag him out of when they returned. Not to mention the fact that he really did need to stay on the good side of the one person who might be able to find a cure for him. Standing up was an obvious effort. In the shower of debris which had been triggered by his blasting out a main support strut in his ill-fated attempt to fire-cage the three intruders standing in the lobby, he'd taken several exceedingly hard bricks to the shoulders and back, and he was NOT feeling completely up to specs. I'd betta' get some serious pampering outta this when it's all over, he thought wryly as he bravely, nay, boldly staggered back into the flames. And promptly tripped over something which grunted when his foot struck it. Well, whaddya know -- a survivor. Correction: survivors. He'd seen the glass guy shatter, he was sure of it, but thanks to a well-placed chunk of sheltering drywall the other two still looked alive. As the crackling fire spread hungrily around him, Pyro held his sleeve over his mouth and crouched under the smoke to check pulses. Yup, alive, though the male needed a quick thump on the back of the head to keep him quiet. The pyrokinetic straightened up with a genuine grin sneaking across his face for the first time in weeks. Prisonas. Huh. I could come outta this a hero yet. "Count yer chickens AFTA' ya've put out the fiah," he reminded himself aloud. Hope I can do a betta' job'a this'n with me 'torch.' With that thought firmly in mind, he raised his free hand and concentrated as hard as he could, drawing his fingers into a slow hard fist as if he could drag the blaze from the air by sheer willpower-- And to his relief, he succeeded. It was a shaky grip, to be sure, but all he had to do was douse every lick of fire that he could pull into range of his power. It wasn't easy. By the time the night was black and cool once more Pyro was wheezing on his hands and knees, forehead almost touching the ground, his stomach twisting into one single massive knot and his skull pounding dizzily with the strain. Regardless, it felt good to have control again. Even if only for one final hurrah. Even if it had technically been his fault in the first place. Pyro spared a sidelong glance at his two unconscious captives, the smallish Oriental bloke and the green-haired sheila. They weren't too badly burned -- they'd survive. First, he decided, he had to find somewhere to secure them, whoever they were; they looked familiar enough for him to know that they weren't on the side of the angels, but beyond that he was drawing a blank. Then his next order of business would be to find someone else on this benighted island who WASN'T trying to break into the place, and find out what the heck was going on...
"Right. The secondary generator looks a'right. The master power redirector should be right aboot here -- A haven't needed tae use it since the last really big storm, which must've been two years ago A think..." Rory Campbell shifted nervously from foot to foot as he listened to Dr. MacTaggert ramble, his eyes darting from shadow to shifting shadow as if he was trying to watch them all at once. He didn't like the look of this. He didn't like it at ALL. After their near run-in with Riptide and Arclight, the two research scientists had made it down to the emergency generator without any further incident. However, the stairwell door on that level had been wrenched off of its hinges, which meant that SOMEBODY had been down here, and something had to be wrong. Moira was calm and collected, however. As the flashlight's beam grew fainter she was squinting into the fusebox by its fading amber beam, occasionally muttering a piquant curse about superheroes and grocery lists and the need to pick up batteries on the mainland now and then. "Och, what a mess. Still, though, A think they missed the important one. Shade yuir eyes, Rory, A've got it noo--" There was a buzz and she let out a strangled squawk. The flashlight clattered to the concrete floor and broke, dousing what little illumination remained. Rory's heart rammed straight into his throat. "Dr. MacTaggert? What happened? Are you hurt? Moira!" "A'm...A'm fine. Just got a hefty shock, tha's all." Her voice came from about ground level; Rory dropped to his haunches and reached out until he found her shoulder. She was sitting up, and she gave his hand a shaky pat. "Someone's bashed up the inside of the box a bit -- A must'a touched a live wire. A'm okay." "You're lucky you're na dead!" Rory shuddered at the thought of how much voltage had to be running through the junctions connected by the array of switches. "Come on, let's see if we can find another torch. We should have done tha' in the first place..." "Hang on, it's okay, A've got the torch. A think it jus' popped open...amazing! The batteries are still in it. A can just screw it back together." Rory groaned. "Doctor, it didn't help you much before! Please, before you kill yourself, let me find a better one--" It was then that he sensed more than heard something move in the darkness behind him. Something heavy. Moira felt it too -- she threw herself aside even as Rory dropped flat to the ground next to her. Something hammered into the wall about where his head had been just an instant before, spraying them both with chips of concrete. As Rory's eyes strove to adjust to the darkness on pure adrenaline, he found himself staring up at what might have been the largest man he'd ever seen. Either that, or it was a random rhino and he wasn't quite as adjusted to the darkness as he'd thought. Either way, it seemed intent upon flattening them both! Of one mind without a word spoken, Moira scampered towards where she'd set her rifle against the generator while Rory clattered noisily off in the other direction. He had some vague idea about to distracting the thing until Moira could pump a dart or two into it. He was probably just going to end up dead, because the thing was already practically on top of him. Huge fingers grazed the back of his neck, callouses snagging his sweater-- Then the hand jerked away as its owner bellowed and staggered back, swatting madly behind its head. As Rory stared in amazement, trying to see more than a flash of bulk in the thick darkness, it spun around several times, banged into at least three walls, and then grunted and toppled with three tranquilizer darts adorning its arm, stomach, and thigh. The room was utterly silent for a few long seconds. Then Moira said quietly, "Thank you, Verney." "You are most welcome." Moira set down her rifle and flicked on her rescued flashlight just as the Muir Island Facility's other patient climbed down from the behemoth's shoulders, dropping the length of cable with which he'd been grimly choking the giant Marauder. In the weak diffuse beam of light Rory could barely make out the horribly deformed man who looked more like a nightmare than the mutant he'd just helped to defeat. Two weeks before, he HAD been more of a nightmare than any of the Marauders could have possibly aspired to be. However, his vampiric days were over. With the help of an experimental genetic suppliment and Moira's medical assistance, he was striving to be just plain Verney once more. Of course, there were those over in the 'States who would have liked nothing more than to leave him isolated on Muir Island for the rest of his life -- who would never believe that a voracious *thing* like Emplate could ever truly be reformed. Right now, Rory was damn happy to have him around. "Nice move, lad. Sitting through 'The Princess Bride' with Meggan and Mr. Wagner came in handy after all, I see..." Moira was already examining the generator controls once more. She sighed and ran a hand through her bangs in a defeated manner, her glasses hanging askew. "A don't think A can get this workin' again, na without killin' muhself. A shoulda been more careful -- A c'n see the exposed wires now. This is a complete hash. Dammit! An' they knew we've come doon here too, leavin' THA brute hangin' 'round th' place." "I'm for just getting out of here," Rory said quietly. "We can take the dinghy to sea and wait et out." Moira set her mouth into a stubborn line. "We find Dawn an' the baby first." "Of course." Verney eloquently raised one brow. "Baby...?" "A'll explain on the way. A just hope we're na too late."
Light flared abruptly around her feet and the floor vanished. With an involuntary shriek of surprise she flung out her free arm and thrust her wings back as far as they could stretch within the bandages. They caught on something, halting her fall with a painful jolt. Whatever had opened up under her was only a couple of feet across and so she was able to cling to the edge, scrabbling for purchase on the slick metal floor. Light -- a portal! Like the one the baby had appeared through, the one she herself had harnessed to leave Limbo. But Illyana was dead... "Let's cut right through the traditional defiant-hero/evil-villain banter, shall we? You have what I want." Dawn's head snapped up. That voice! I know that voice! The portal's eldrich light shone straight up into her eyes, surrounding her in a pulsing white haze and nearly blinding her, so at first she couldn't see anything. Then the portal abruptly contracted, closing snugly but not painfully around her ribcage. She blinked frantically to readjust to the darkness; as her nightsight slowly returned, a pale blur in the darkness coalesced into the last person she'd ever expected to see. Then again, no one ever expects to come face-to-face with oneself. The hair was longer and the costume was a risque get-up that Dawn herself would never have worn even on a double-dog dare from Jubilee, but she wasn't stupid. She knew what she was seeing. She knew WHO she was seeing. The problem was, something didn't match the image the child had projected into her mind earlier. There was something chilling in her doppleganger's eyes. Something intangible, something wrong. The baby whimpered piteously against Dawn's chest, and Dawn's arm closed convulsively tight to protect her. "You're her mother, aren't you?" she asked evenly. "Are you from my future?" Her other self smiled. She seemed to be probing, searching, prying -- Dawn bolstered her shields defensively, but there were holes big enough to drive a truck through. "Yes to the first, no to the second. You don't seem to HAVE a future, do you? Look, I'm really not in a killing mood, but either you hand my baby back peacefully or that portal closes the rest of the way and you won't have to worry about Legacy any more. You have three seconds." The slimy mental fingers which were still slithering over Dawn's psi-shields certainly didn't feel right -- it suddenly became blazingly obvious to her that whoever or whatever she was facing wasn't 100% Dawn Embers. That made things easier. A possession, perhaps? THAT she understood perfectly...her palms suddenly ached to the bone at the memory of what Emplate had done to her... She shoved the thought away (forgiven him, I've forgiven him, he's Verney now, let it go!) and stared up into her mirror image's eyes with as much meek fear as she could muster up plastered across her expression. "A-all right then. Just don't hurt me, please! I can't move -- you'll have to come over here and get her..." Her Oscar-winning performance and the time it took for her opponent to step cautiously forward was all the time she needed. All of her mental restraints, all of her hard-earned defenses, all of her carefully wound shields and baffles and psionic wraps came loose with one hard tug. Ember (that was her name, she knew now, she couldn't help but know as her Legacy-enhanced psionics burst their dams) staggered back as the shockwave brunt of Dawn's freed telepathy slammed into her like an icy flashflood, driving mercilessly through her mind and beyond in an empathic blast which momentarily shook every mind on Muir Island. Dawn had been working on a blind hunch, and it had been the right one. Something screamed shrill rage on the astral plane as it was ripped loose from the girl's mind by the telepathic collision. Ember's eyes rolled up into her head and she collapsed like a marionette with cut strings. That was where Dawn's split-second plan fell apart. Ember was free, but unconscious...and something (Malice, her over-extended mind whispered, it calls itself Malice) was loose. And it was pissed off. Frantically, Dawn kicked and struggled and shoved in a vain attempt to free herself from the portal which still held her, vise-like, half-in and half-out of the floor. She didn't even want to know where the other end of it went, didn't want to know where her legs were hanging even as she tried to get loose, but at the moment anywhere was better than being trapped in the dark with a hateful vengeful presence whistling around her head, hissing through her hair, clawing futilely at the gates of her mind. It didn't seem to be able to harm her, but it was creepy, and unpredictable, and she wanted to get herself and the baby as far away from it as possible... The baby! Malice seemed to have realized the danger (in its case, the potential) at the same instant. The chill presence shifted its attentions downward, swirling around the bundle in the crook of Dawn's arm. She frantically tried to bat it away but there was nothing there, nothing tangible. She understood how the creature worked, now, for when her unfocused telepathic thrust had driven straight through Ember and crashed into the psionic parasitic she hadn't been able to avoid osmotically picking up a basic grasp of how it worked. It had to be consciously invited into a victim's mind, true, but it could be very subtle and sneaky. Powerful or not, the baby was a mere innocent. How could she hope to outwit Malice's wiles for long? Dawn tried to sum up her strength for another uncontrolled blast, but her head was suddenly throbbing like it had been hit with a mallet, and all at once everything lurched wildly around her. She'd done exactly what she was NOT supposed to do in her condition: she'd over-extended, and now she was paying the price. She was terribly lucky that she was still conscious, let alone coherent. She had nothing left. But the baby...she had to help the baby... The child was terrified, wailing and thrashing against its ghostly tormentor, and this time Dawn could FEEL her fear too. Her eyes went saucer-wide as she realized that the infant wasn't merely panicking; wave after wave, her terror was building inexorably towards something powerful...something big. Malice hesitated in its determined efforts, suddenly aware that it hadn't accounted for-- Too late. The baby's rising storm of emotion abruptly exploded loose in one single over-whelming feeling/emotion/need/want/cry which translated roughly as ~=* !!!!!!DADDY!!!!!! *=~ Dawn was abruptly aware of the overwhelming sense of GLENN as Something Which Wasn't There suddenly Was There, thrusting itself courageously between Malice and the baby. The astral plane twanged like a plucked string as the newly summoned presence blared angry defiance at the possessor, who jerked back in astonishment. Dawn shivered with joy as the familiar presence of her murdered best friend enveloped her and the child like a feather-light blanket. Glenn -- it WAS Glenn -- she HADN'T been hallucinating at the crib earlier after all, it made sense now, somehow the baby had inherited her own lost medium power-- Whoa. Back up. 'Daddy'...?!? It would have to wait. For a moment Dawn could actually see Malice, an incomplete androgenous spectral outline wavering against the darkness, as it regrouped to deal with this new threat. Wordlessly, Dawn braced herself in an aching familiar interlock with Glenn's invisible presence, ready to ward off the inevitable next attack, absolutely certain that she didn't KNOW how to ward it off... Then something ELSE coalesced behind Malice and tapped it on the "shoulder" with one barely visible finger. Something slender and blonde which carried a very large spectral sword in its other hand. *Borrow MY powers for a cross-dimensional sneak-attack on a sick girl and a helpless baby, will you?* The faint but clear astral voice was female, young, dry, and exTREMEly annoyed. *And to think that they called ME a demon! I think it's about time we had a little talk about taking things which don't belong to you.* The portal which was still clamped around Dawn's waist suddenly loosened. Ignoring her pounding headache, she hastily hoisted herself up out of it and scrambled aside as it widened still further, illuminating the dark corridor once more in harsh, unforgiving white light, flooding across Ember's crumpled body and forcing Dawn to fling an arm over her eyes. Something shrieked despairingly on a high mental wavelength as it was roughly jerked through the portal to Limbo-- Then the darkness returned, complete and silent and absolute. The shade of Glenn Keaton brushed tenderly against Dawn's bruised mind and then he, too, was gone. She was left alone in the dark with an exhausted (and thus abruptly asleep) infant, an insensate alternate version of herself, and a skull-splitting headache which threatened to dump her into a coma if she even THOUGHT about moving or using her remaining powers to scope out the rest of the situation. Utterly exhausted, Dawn wanted nothing more than to curl up next to Ember and wait for the cavalry to arrive. Then she remembered that she was the one who was supposed to call the cavalry. ...but...'Daddy'...? Does that mean what I think it means...?! Later. Not now. Later. With every last scrap of willpower left in her drooping body, she pulled herself to her feet, hauled open the door override, and trudged off in the direction of Kitty's computer room to recall Excalibur.
Two days later... For the first time in a long time, the mutant containment cells on the third underground level of the Muir Island Research Facility were in use. Frankly, Moira would be more than happy when S.H.I.E.L.D. showed up to take the murdering bastards off of her hands. It didn't matter if they came from another dimension, they were still who they were. She still remembered what they'd done to the Morlocks -- to Kurt and Kitty. Excalibur had arrived back on base right as she, Rory, Allerdyce, and Verney had finished locking down the surviving assassins. Somehow two humans, one "villain," two dying Legacy patients, a baby, and a pair of annoyed ghosts had done what no superhero team had even managed before: with the exception of Scalphunter and Prism, they'd taken the Marauders alive. The story was making the rounds of the X-teams even now, and Pyro was already cheerfully embellishing his part in the rout. Pyro, who of course wasn't going anywhere after his "heroics." Frankly, Excalibur was stuck with him for the time being. That wasn't what was on Moira MacTaggert's mind at the moment, however. She was more interested in the rack of test tubes before her. Specifically, one particular test tube. What had started out as an idle series of genetic tests to determine identities and examine the effects of repeated cloning had turned into an all-night obsession when she'd noticed something unbelievable in one of the samples on that rack. She'd checked and double-checked and triple-checked her results, then run them past McCoy. Twice. She was not imagining things. There were Legacy antibodies in Scrambler's blood sample. It had to have something to do with his power to alter mutant abilities: to alter, null, and increase the effects of the x-factor in a mutant's DNA. Legacy killed by destroying a mutant with their own power, cranking it up to beyond "maximum" and burning out the unfortunate victim like a supernova. Scrambler must have had Legacy -- perhaps still had it, even -- but somehow his own power had interacted in an unusual manner with the disease's genetic onslaught. The stronger the effect of Legacy on his power, the stronger his power's capability to nullify any dangerous surges of his own mutant abilities. Effectively, within his own body, he'd managed to cancel out the most serious symptom of Legacy. This must have allowed him to live far beyond the natural lifespan of an infected mutant...and given his immune system enough time to finally concoct a defense. It wasn't a cure, but the antibodies were a bright new start. A step in the right direction, after all of the fruitless dead-ends and wasted nights. If this worked...oh, lord, if this worked, Dawn Embers didn't have to die. Things were finally looking up. Moira decided that she couldn't get anyone's hopes up yet, but at very least she could get started with some blood work-ups on Dawn and Pyro, to see if she could trigger a similar effect in her two patients. She tapped the intercom to the main living area, where she knew her assistant was currently kicking back to a few videotaped episodes of "Blackadder." "Rory? Can ye round oop Allerdyce an' Dawn an' send 'em doon here? A need some more samples -- it's urgent." "St. John's here with me. He'll be right there, won't y'lad?" Moira heard Australian-accented grumbling (something about "bloody vampire") in the background. Both Moira and Rory blithely ignored him. "Last I saw a'Dawn, though, she was walking out to the cliffs with Ember. I'll go get her. I could use the fresh air."
Dawn could have kicked herself for using such a stupid line, but Ember merely smiled shyly and nodded. "Yeah. I guess so." The two girls stood facing each other a mere foot apart on the cliffs above the Muir Island landing, in the exact spot where Dawn had caught the baby almost three days earlier. A chilly morning breeze ruffled their nigh-identical blue manes, streaming like banners in the direction of the Facility. The baby -- whom Dawn now knew was named Skye -- was fast asleep in her mother's arms, safe at last. Her mother. Dawn still couldn't get over the fact that she was looking at herself, only three years older and already a parent. Still, from what she could tell, it hadn't exactly been a voluntary conception.. Ember had captured and broken like a wild colt to serve as a Marauder...and, when she was old enough to survive the experience, Sinister had coldly upgraded her status from "filly" to "broodmare." It frightened Dawn to think how close she'd come to suffering the same fate. If it hadn't been for Glenn... Glenn. He was the difference. Ember didn't know Glenn Keaton, had never known him. So he hadn't been there for her when she'd needed to escape from the Oklahoma boarding school which served as Sinister's secret culling pool for potentially useful mutants. Sinister had found Ember useful, all right -- useful enough to artifically impregnate her when she was only sixteen, useful enough to force her to continue serving him as an assassin even as her child grew within her belly. She'd been lucky beyond words to escape, however she'd managed it. Now he wanted both mother and daughter back. Badly. And yet Ember was voluntarily going back to her own dimension...to risk recapture. It didn't make any sense. "You can stay here, you know." Dawn had tried to convince her before, to no avail. Ember wouldn't say why she had to go back, but she'd been single-mindedly determined to head home the instant Moira let her out of the observation ward. Dawn didn't honestly think that she'd get a better answer out of her now. She was therefore surprised when Ember replied quietly, "Do you know about Generation X?" "Of course I do! They were my best friends, for a while, until...well, you know." Dawn unconsciously rubbed at the now obviously Legacy lesion under her jaw. "What are you saying?" Ember glanced almost guiltily down at Skye's blissful sleeping face. "When the Marauders captured me, I'd...I was staying with them. My own dimension's version of Generation X, I mean. They took me in, took care of me, and..." Dawn stared at her in horror, making the jump of logic quite easily. "So you're saying that Sinister might have them?!?" "I don't know. I have to know. I can't hide here, knowing that they might be...his." Dawn chewed thoughtfully on her lip for a few long moments, turning slightly aside to gaze out to sea. The sun was rising, the dawn defiantly breaking through a bank of grey stormclouds to stream pink light over the Muir cliffs. The new sunlight felt warm on Dawn's cheeks, and she couldn't help but see some symbolism in it. I must be out of my mind. With a sigh and a determined set to her jaw she turned back to Ember. "All right then. I'm coming with you." "What? Now hold on, you can't..." "I'm dying anyway," Dawn said simply. "And soon; it's getting harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning. If I can help you free Generation X before I go, or at least reunite you with them if we're wrong about Sinister, then...heck, it sounds like a good deal to me. They're technically my friends too, you know." Ember considered this. Then she smiled, shifted Skye to her shoulder, and stuck out her free hand so Dawn could briskly shake it. "Deal. Need anything from your room?" "Nope. I'm ready." "Good, because I can't stand waiting a minute longer. Hey, Rasputin? You still hanging around? It's time to go home. And, uh, Dawn?" "Mmmm?" "How about you tell me about this 'Glenn' guy along the way?"
Rory Campbell arrived thirty seconds too late.
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