Disclaimer:
I don't own X-Men Evolution, though I wish I did.
Summary:
Rogue finds herself in a world where mutants and humans are locked in a terrible war. A world without the X-Men. Rated R, for extreme violence and strong language, as well as graphic scenes and some sensuality. Not for the little kiddies. Expect the unexpected, no character will be spared, and none will be as you remembered and loved them. Action, adventure, romance, drama, and a little humor. And plenty of 'em! This story however, methinks, a bit more on the angst and action. Sequel to 'Infection' and just about every other story I've written, and a prequel to 'Redemption.' A word of warning, this promises to be one of the most complicated stories I have ever written. Please forgive any plot or character errors on my part. And with reviews... be gentle.
Rogue rolled out of the way as Juggernaut's fist slammed down hard onto the pavement behind her, shattering the concrete ground and sending cracks in every direction. At least it wasn't her, she thought, as she pushed herself up with her hands and flipped, landing gracefully on her feet some distance away from the raging behemoth.
It was supposed to have been a simple night. A quiet night. It was "Girl's Night Out". Not "Girl's do battle with the Juggernaut Night!" At least they had their spare uniforms stashed away in Jean's SUV.
Jean and Sarah ducked down out of sight, Sarah sliding her adamantium claws back between her knuckles, after quickly learning that the Unbreakable material apparently couldn't penetrated the armor of the Unstoppable warrior. Wanda lay unconscious nearby. They hadn't really expected to see her, they'd just run into her on the way. Always eager to bond with the Brotherhood (some of them more than others, at least) Jean and Rogue had invited her to join them.
It'd been good at first, the four girls just hanging out. Jean was the odd one out, being the most preppy among the two Goths and the girl with no childhood. But she made up for it by putting her oh so valuable credit card at their disposal. And of course that meant a shopping spree up at the mall. Rogue had even managed to get the perfect earrings she had her eyes on for the past few weeks. Jean had held contribute to her personal funds enough to make it possible. And so it was an hour later the four were driving down the streets towards the Brotherhood house to drop off Wanda. They were exchanging stories and jokes, and laughing as their purchases jumped and bounced inside the car around their legs in brightly colored bags.
Then of course Juggernaut had shown up, smashed through a police car and nearly destroy the SUV before Sarah had grabbed the wheel and swerved it out of the way. So they'd pulled over and grabbed their uniforms. An invaluable first lesson at the Xavier Institute was how to change quickly (and discreetly) in as short a time as possible. Thus it was that the four girls had decided to take down the Professor's half-brother.
"You can't stop the Unstoppable!" roared the Juggernaut, lashing out at Rogue, who gracefully leapt out of his way again.
"Guy sounds like an idiot," grumbled Sarah, rubbing her knuckles. "What's the plan?"
"Juggernaut needs that protective helmet on. Its got four latches on the sides of his neck. Flip those and get it off... I'll handle the rest," replied Jean, steadying her breathing and preparing to launch her psi-attack. Sarah nodded.
"I'm gonna smash your skull in!" he roared, going after Rogue. Sarah took advantage of his attention and launched herself onto the Juggernaut's back, grabbing and snapping off the two latches there. Juggernaut lashed about, trying to grab her, but Sarah flipped over and out of the way, avoiding his slower, clumsy arms.
Rogue watched the two battling mutants as she landed down alongside Wanda, checking her pulse. She was fine, she'd be conscious in a few. But her powers were needed now. Sighing, Rogue slipped off one of her brown uniform gloves, brushing her finger lightly against Wanda's cheek. The dark-haired girl barely gave a murmur as a short-term dosage of her powers filled Rogue's body, as well as a smattering of memories which she pushed into the back of her subconscious. Long practice had made it easier.
Rogue growled, launching a hex-bolt, 'causing the Juggernaut to stumble. Again his fatal attention was diverted from Sarah back to Rogue, and he charged her. Rogue gasped, unprepared for the ferocity of Juggernaut's attack, and stumbled backwards over an overturned street sign, falling flat on her ass. The Juggernaut reached her, rearing back his fist and preparing to again smash Rogue into pulp.
But the fist slammed into something solid just before it shattered Rogue's skull, and as she looked up in relief she saw Jean was there, holding out her hand. Her psi shield had encased Rogue in a protective sphere. Rogue smiled. It never failed to amaze her, how the two of them absolutely, positively hated one another at times, yet still managed to work together as a team.
But then Juggernaut's fist slammed down again, harder, and Jean's face contorted in pain. Her shield was buckling. Thinking quickly, Rogue thrust out her hands, forefinger and pinkie extended, using her hex-powers to reinforce the psi-shield.
"Rogue!" shouted Wanda. Rogue glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, the rival Goth from the Brotherhood was on her feet again, extending her own hands in a similar manner. She was also trying to reinforce Jean's psi-shield.
And that's when things got weird.
The shield shimmered, glowing blue from the clashing hex-bolts. Then it pulsated. Juggernaut stepped back in astonishment, even as Jean, Wanda, and Rogue simultaneously tried to cut their powers. But they were feeding on one another, as the previous dome of mental energy shielding Rogue encased her completely into a sphere, a sphere that pulsated the colors of the rainbow. Red, yellow, green, blue. Then black, and it shimmered, and Rogue screamed inside.
There was a brilliant flash of light, so bright and sudden everyone shielded their eyes, even the bystanders in the nearby homes, who'd watched the mutants do battle. When it had passed, Jean blinked her eyes, clearing away the bright spots behind them. Then they opened wide in shock. Wanda was there, so was Sarah, also blinking away the bright light. Even Cain seemed stunned for a moment. But then Jean's vision cleared... and she saw...
"Oh my god... ROGUE!!" she cried out.
Where Rogue had sat, a perfect hole had formed in the ground, as if the entire psi sphere, and everything in it... had been utterly annihilated.
"ROGUE!!!"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Senses were lost in this... this chaotic haze of colors and sounds. It was pure chaos. It was utter limbo. She could see sounds, she could taste color, and she was absolutely positive she wasn't on any sort of hallucinogenic drugs. All this was real. And it made absolutely no sense. Rogue was falling. Or she was floating. She couldn't tell which way was up, or even if up and down existed. She felt hot, she felt cold. She felt like she was going to burst into flame, or shatter like ice, at any moment. She closed her eyes and screamed, but no sound came out.
But she screamed anyway.
Then she was falling... or being hurled in a particular direction. The colors shifted, forming a tunnel of sorts. Images flashed past through the swirling colors. Mystique. Irene. Scott. Bayville High. Principle Darkholme. A study date. Gambit's charged card. It all blurred past her closed eyelids and into her brain, as she kept falling. Then she saw new images. People rioting. Toad. Professor X. War... modern war. The sky scorched red. Magneto.
She was being hurled down a long, swirling vortex of colors. But then the tunnel split. Rogue felt an almost instinctive urge filling her, and she veered to the left, but again a shockwave rippled through the air (or whatever it was) and she was hurled to the opposite tunnel, screaming all the way down.
Finally, mercifully, it ended. Or Rogue blacked out. But at that point... she welcomed oblivion.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Her senses returned slowly. The first unfortunately was feeling, and she could feel the pain. Her entire body ached. Like she'd been in a blender for over an hour and reduced to mush. Thankfully, it was a faded ache and, she thought in relief, barely hurt anymore at all. It was more like remembered pain than anything else.
Her second was smell... and she coughed, choking on the thick clouds of dust, sitting up to cover her mouth as she hacked a few moments, clearing her lungs of the stuff. Her aches burned her as she moved, but they were fading, and a cursory glance down at herself to her she was unharmed, if covered in reddish dust.
"Wha...?" she asked, brushing away some of the dust. Then her gaze lifted... slowly...
The streets were cracked and broken, but not from Juggernaut's attacks. From years of neglect. Then her gaze lifted higher... huge, gutted out stone buildings. A city's tall skyscrapers... reduced to rubble. They were skeletons of their former glory. And all around was debris. Rogue lay next to an overturned car that'd long since been vandalized. And even further above, a crimson sky, filled with dark clouds tinted purple from the sun's rays. Was it sunset? It'd been early evening when the Juggernaut had decided to go on a rampage. Everything was so... so strange.
Oooh... her head hurt. Felt like she had it in a vice.
"Where... where am ah?" she asked. Sitting up, slowly shifting to her feet, was still painful but she pushed it down with little effort. Then she remembered. Wanda's powers. Her own. Jean's. They'd... they'd clashed somehow. Something had gone wrong. She glanced around, looking for the others. Wanda's powers had faded from her body... sometime during the... God, she didn't even know what to think about what had happened. That... place... had been totally surreal.
"Jean? Sarah? Wanda?" she called, cupping her hands against her mouth to amplify her voice. She got no reply, save her own echoes off the empty buildings of the dead city. "Juggernaut?" she added, desperate for someone, anyone, to explain what had happened. Her mind couldn't comprehend everything that was going on. No human's, mutant or otherwise, could.
"Anyone?!"
The call echoed as the wind picked up, blowing more reddish dust and dirt into the air. But no reply came. No one showed up. No one.
Rogue pawed frantically at her uniform, grabbing her hand-held communicator from her belt. She needed to contact someone, anyone. Right now she'd be quite content if Mystique showed up. Anyone. She tapped her communicator.
"Rogue to anyone. Can you hear me? Hello?" she asked, clicking it off and listening. Only static filled the reply. Rogue tried again. And again. And again. Her voice shook with hysteria as she realized she was utterly cut off from everyone. In some strange dead city, gods only knew where. She could've been flung all the way to the other side of the planet for all she knew.
The truth of her situation would've shocked her even more deeply, but for now her mind was wrapped around one awful reality.
She was all alone.
Rogue shivered at that, hugging herself. It was cold out, the sun was nowhere to be seen, and the winds were blowing throughout the entire area, sending shivers down her spine. But what chilled her more was being alone. Rogue wasn't the most sociable of people. Hell, she usually was the first to leave a party or dance if she wasn't having fun. But she craved human contact. Even if it was just sitting in the corner and watching. She'd been improving considerably since her childhood, when her 'skin condition' had prevented her from making many friends. Now, the X-Men were both friend and family. And they were gone. Even the voices in her head were surprisingly quiet, as if they'd all fallen into stunned silence simultaneously. Her own thoughts echoed inside of her head.
She was all alone.
All alone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[New Mutant Signature Detected]
[Matched to Archived File]
"Archived File?" asked the young boy seated in the command center of Cerebro. Boy was perhaps an understatement. The fellow was in his late teens, tall and muscular, but touched by an innocence upon his handsome features that made him seem younger. Features that were now drawn into a thoughtful frown as he furrowed his brow and leaned in, examining the screen. He tapped a few buttons, calling up some results on the newly discovered mutant.
[Name: Marie Darkholme]
[Powers: Absorption of Memories, Skills, and in the case of Mutants, Powers]
[Current Location: ...]
He shut off the machine. He knew well enough where she was and what she was capable of. But she was... no, it couldn't be her. She couldn't be back.
"I should get Calliban to confirm this," he said, slipping off the metal semi-helmet that covered his head and brushing back his blonde locks. "There's... just no way it can be Rogue."
Author's Notes:
And so it has begun. My most spectacular story to date. Behold the power of an Alternate Universe. And our favorite Evo Rogue stuck in it. Sarah is, in case anyone didn't recognize her, X23. Refer to 'Weapon X24.' Oh, speaking of which: [text] means that it's a computer screen. Or data stream, or something. Italics is thought-speech. "text" is standard speech, "text" is speech in a foreign language. I leave a few unnecessary words un-translated. Besides, longtime Evo ff.net readers probably know what 'liebchen' means.
As always, reviews and requests welcome. Though if you have a request or suggestion for an AU character, better make it known quick before I set the plot in stone. Flames will be used to keep myself warm on cold nights. Anyone who sues me for using Evo characters will not walk away with more than my entire life savings. Which is a measly six piestas. Oh, and on a side note, Happy April Fools.