The leaded door swung open with a dim rattle, a burst of rain and icy air accompanying the man who walked inside. Wisps of smoke drifted across the floor of the pub, highlighted now and again by blotches of dim, yellow lights sputtering from the ceiling. Stinking of sweat and booze with a cage-fighting arena to boot, the Cornucopia was hardly the epitome of a respectable drinking den.
Logan felt right at home already.
Making his way over to the bar, he ordered his favourite beer absentmindedly, one eye on the two heavily tattooed men battling it out in the cage. To his great surprise, the wrinkled man who eventually returned with his drink was an alarming shade of green.
"This a mutant bar?" asked Wolverine, snatching up his half-pint.
"Is tha' an issue?" replied the man, raising his eyebrows.
In response, Logan extended a single claw. The old man simply nodded his response, smiling slightly.
"I can't imagine there are many places like this," said Logan. "Our kind... I mean, we ain't exactly number one on folks lists to spend time with."
The old man snorted loudly.
"As long as they pay for their drinks, I don't care what comes into this place. I don't discriminate."
Gazing around the bar, it wasn't difficult to see the truth of this.
"Fair enough," replied Logan, clamping a cigarette between his teeth and heading for the nearest table, beer firmly locked into one of his fists. He closed his eyes, taking a deep draught of smoke and losing himself in the scent of violence and freedom that haunted the place. It was times like this he missed travelling alone. Yukio was hardly difficult to live with, but sometimes he just needed to be able to go where he liked, when he liked.
That's why he'd been over the moon when she told him she needed a weekend of meditation. Something about mental serenity and inner harmony in order to control the constant onslaught of visions that had been haunting her consciousness recently. She'd politely advised Logan to join her.
He'd politely told her he'd rather take a bath in hydrofluoric acid.
They were planning to meet late that night, on the outskirts of the city. But until then, Logan's time was his own, and he'd be damned if he spent it any other way than in the company of tobacco, alcohol and his own thoughts.
He should have known better than to expect such peace and quiet.
After downing his first drink of the night, Logan went over to inspect one of the faded pool tables, wondering if he could convince someone to play. It was then that he heard the whimpering, his sensitive hearing picking up the sound from through the walls.
"We warned you, bitch, to get it done or I'd have to make some... alterations to you."
The gentle clang of metal leaving its sheathe hissed through the thick, wooden walls.
"P-please, no! I tried, but I couldn't!"
Stay out of it, Logan, he told himself. Not your problem. You don't need any more trouble.
"You can make illusions, cant you? Or did you lie to us?"
"No, no - I didn't lie!"
"Then you could have done it."
"But he was just an old man! He was kind to me and -"
"He owed us a lot of money. That's all you should need to know, kid."
"I know.. I'm sorry! I'll do better next time, I promise I'll - No! Please don't -"
That's when the screaming started.
Logan glanced around the room to see if anyone else had noticed, but they were quietly going about their business, murmuring and drinking together.
"Ah, shit," he muttered, unable to stop himself from jogging towards the muffled screams, passing into the private rooms. The prickling pain in his knuckles spiked as his claws emerged and he kicked down the door, jagged splinters of wood flying in all directions.
Inside, the screaming became more pronounced, and to his horror, a teenaged girl had a hand on the table in a pool of blood, one of the men pressing down a knife, slowly, on one of her fingers. Instinctively he lunged at the knife-wielder, but seconds later found himself slammed onto the wooden table in the centre of the room, unable to move.
"Who the hell is this?!" asked one of the small group surrounding the girl.
"No idea," came a deep, slow voice. "But I've got him under control. I don't know how long I can hold the both of them with my head though."
"Just leave the girl for now," came third voice, a woman's. "I think she better understands the... standards we have for our employees now. You may go."
The girl rose, shaking, from her seat, clutching her half-severed finger to her chest and moaning in agony. She stumbled out of the room as fast as she could.
"John, release his head. He needs to be able to speak to tell us what the hell he's doing here!"
If he was able to, Logan would have been shaking with rage.
"What the hell do you think you were doing to that girl?" growled Logan, his face involuntarily being pressed into the wood. "She was just a kid."
"Our employee incentives are no concern of yours, Logan," replied the fourth and final man, positioning himself in order to look into the Wolverine's eyes.
"How do you know my name?!" spat Logan. "Let me go!"
The man only smiled widely and tapped his temple, his overcrowded teeth glinting in the pale light.
"Oh, we can use this one," he said, "it will just be a matter of breaking him first. He's regenerative, so there's no need to worry about killing him."
"Excellent," purred the woman. "John? Pin him up against the wall."
It was well past midnight when she walked into the bar, dark coat cinched tightly around her waist. She fought hard to keep her expression nonchalant, uncaring. If anyone around here recognised her... it would all be over.
So, setting her mouth in a firm, hard line and pulling back her sloping shoulders, she walked through the bar. Ducking into an alcove, she closed her eyes and began to concentrate, feeling the familiar cool of her mutation wash over her. Before long she was nothing, invisible, silent. Sighing in relief, she pulled her bow out from under her coat and began to walk, shivering as she passed through one person or another. In less than thirty seconds she was only a wall away from the room she needed, where the information was kept...
Ruby, she thought, I'm so close, I'm almost there, for you.. and with a deep breath, she stepped through the wall.
On the other side, only her iron training kept her from screaming out loud. She'd thought the room would be deserted by now, but it was filled with them. Four of them. And what was worse, there was a man pinned against the far wall, his body mutilated and face brutalised. He was moaning softly under his breath.
"I think we're beginning to wear down his capabilities," said one of the men, with almost clinical interest. His familiar voice pierced her like a shard of ice, and instinctively she drew her bow, aiming the arrow at the back of his head.
Davis, she thought, icy rage settling over her. She could smell the death on him, it's aroma almost consuming her with its loveliness. It took every ounce of her self-control not to fire on them all, then and there.
If they die, they'll all move again, she told herself, and I need this information. Current information.
Silently sighing, she lightly padded away from Davis to the desk in the corner of the room. Assuring herself they were all facing the other way, she swung her bow over her back and solidified her hand, making it visible again. Gently, she opened the desk drawer and prised out the false bottom she had been told would be there, and pulled out the files from within. As soon as they were safely within her jacket pocket, she became fully invisible again and prepared to leave.
The anguished cry of the man against the wall stopped her in her tracks.
Not my problem, she tried to tell herself. But he cried out again, and she turned to look at him. With the damage done to him by what she could only assume was Erica's knife and John's mind, he barely looked human anymore.
Walk away, walk away from him, she told herself. If you try to help him, they might instigate emergency protocol and move again...
But if she left him, he'd die. Slowly, painfully, shamefully. And she had never been one for allowing drawn-out suffering, stranger or not. Sending up an atheist's prayer that he wasn't going to turn around and stab her in the back the next morning, she sighed and lightly ran across the room. Closing her eyes and channeling her mutation, she gripped one of his legs and transferred her power, dematerialising him.
Shit, he's heavy... she thought to herself as she began to drag him through the walls and out of the room, amidst the bewildered and angry cries of the small group left behind. After all, she had just allowed him to literally vanish into thin air.
She managed to pull the half-conscious man a couple of blocks away before she felt safe enough to materialise again. Swearing under her breath, she pulled his leather jacket off from his battered skin and re-positioned it, covering the worst of his injuries. It must have been the light, but somehow he already seemed to have improved. Quickly, she hailed the next taxi that passed, yanking the man into the back seat and directing the driver to her apartment.
"Had a few too many?" asked the driver, indicating the collapsed man next to her.
"Yes," she replied with as much as a smile as she could muster, glad beyond words that it was dark. As they begun to drive the familiar route back to her home, a sinking disappointment began to build in her stomach.
You had better be worth it.
Logan awoke with a start on a strange couch, drawing his claws in a fluid, aggressive motion. The events of the night washed over him like a wave, the agony, the futility of regeneration. Was this some sort of sadistic reprieve too? To keep him here, and give him hope before starting up again?
Growling under his breath, he stood up from the couch and searched the living room in the soft light. Behind the sweeping glass that covered an entire wall, the city lights burnt, unmoving and unchanging. Unsure if he was alone, Logan begun to search for a door, using all his senses to search for another sign of life.
Before long, he had found a bedroom and crept inside as quietly as his bare feet would allow. Lying on the queen-sized bed was a brown-haired woman, her eyelids forming soft curves in sleep.
A woman.
He had remembered a woman, from earlier that night. Slowly, he bent over the bed, moving his claws towards the hollow at the base of her neck.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," she whispered, her eyes fluttering open. "I was the one who saved your life."
"Oh yeah? And who are you to tell me that, bub?"
And with that she was gone, vanished from under his claws.
"My name," came her voice from behind him a few seconds later, "is Insidia."
A/N : Thankyou for reading, I hope you liked my first chapter :D
Please let me know if any of it was confusing, I'm not sure if I'm being too mysterious with my character here... you don't even find out her real name :P
Why don't you write me a review and tell me what you thought? I would be eternally grateful!