QUINACRIDONE QUEENS AND THE TYRANNOSAURUS REGINA
By Quillon42
SOMETIME IN 1990 NEAR TO AND AT THE EXCALIBUR LIGHTHOUSE IN ENGLAND
"Now this sort of carriage is certainly an upgrade," remarked Kwannon in the passenger's seat of Braddock Manor's twentieth extant luxury sedan as its driver—Kwann's interhemispheric soulmate Elisabeth, from the aforementioned upscale Braddock stock—nodded blithely in assent. With a curious wonder and permission to allow herself to drop the guard she almost always carried, the visiting ninja gazed with astonishment at her English surroundings, from the bustling cityscape near to the airport at which she arrived, to the bucolic countryside that hosted her best friend's lighthouse abode.
Even though the distance from the arrival gate to her homestead doorstep was a couple hundred kilometers, to the two ladies of Tyrian tresses the ride felt little more than a matter of minutes, so absorbed was each in what the other had to say and otherwise emote. Really it was the year of waiting for Kwannon to settle enough accounts in her homeland that had seemed to take forever. Now that her comely, caring confidante was finally here, Betsy felt that she could breathe much more easily—especially now that she had a break from all the tension going on with her brother Brian.
Through the carriage comment above, by the way, Kwannon was alluding to the inadvertent solo adventure which her bestie Betsy had undertaken, a year ago in Kwannon's neck of the world—although the events transpired on an island near China, and not the Japan from which the ninja had hailed. As opposed to what had occurred in the workings of the mainstream Machine, in this reality Elisabeth, also known by her X-Lady alias Psylocke, had embarked on her first Asian excursion with senses fully intact; moreover, she had in fact come across a Kwannon who herself was all-systems-go, and not the victim of a frightening fall which brought about brain damage to her youthful form (as was the case in the mainstream 616-Earth).
Because these two maidens of the mulberry mane had here encountered one another fully intact, and not in an incapacitated state as was the case in the reader's realm, they were able to team up against the interdimensional traipser known as Spiral and her beautiful but base, breakdancing wiles. Yea, after Elisabeth had hitched a ride on a cruder carriage, to catch up with her friend in fuchsia who had run ahead of her, together the two succeeded in defeating the dastardly dancer, even as Spiral Backspun and Robotted in her ruthless yet futile efforts to spell doom for those prevailing partners-in-purple. As such, while the "real" Machine world saw a mixing of minds between the bodies of Betsy and Kwannon, here each psionic emerged with psyche fully intact, and the fact that the twain never met too closely in terms of their minds only solidified the strength of their soul-siblinghood even more.
Where Elisabeth had really glimmered most radiantly in that entire ordeal was a moment of the tensest truth, whereupon she was tempted by the white-maned rugcutting warrior to swap minds voluntarily with Kwannon, whom the dancer held swooning at swordpoint. Spiral promised Psylocke that she would sustain an immeasurable increase in recognition and reputation, had the heroine accepted the temptress's tender. Betsy, the ivory evil swore, would ascend from second-string seer to front-line fighting defender of humankind, and the fame of her exploits would increase exponentially, to the point that not only would her name become household in her world…her legend would be pervasively standard in the minds and multimedia of those in infinite other realities as well, including, most importantly, that which lay beyond the fourth wall (a boundary of which the beautiful telepath was well aware).
Resolutely this Psylocke in her original, Caucasian iteration had refused the temptation, and instead routed the cream-coiffed coryphee with the assistance of the Asian assassin whom she came to know and love. By the end, again, each lady was one hundred percent herself, in brain and in body, and as Kwannon escorted Betsy to a boat leading back eventually to England—and to Excalibur, the superteam she wished to join alongside her twin Brian—the ladies vowed each to the other that their paths would cross again, soon, and hopefully in a much more peaceful, enjoyable context.
And said context had come to fruition at last as, after so many intimate mental messages broadcast across the planet, as well as flowery letters for gravitas (the two pen pals, despite their psionic expedients…the emotional epistles cementing further the splendor of their friendship)…Kwannon was finally all flown in for a visit.
She was received very readily and favorably by four of the other five who comprised Excalibur. Kurt was his usual gallivanting-gentleman, hand-kissing cavalier self; Rachel was a pleasant, proper Phoenix, and confident enough not to feel threatened by this Eastern astonishment of a beauty who appeared before her; Kitty was a tiny bit testy, on the other hand…though this cattiness yielded in no time to her generally cheery Shadowcat self (and thus she was not nearly the brow-knitting bother that she would become, decades later under the pen of a pustular, pallid-pated poetaster named Brian Michael…ahem).
Otherwise, the elven Meggan, she of the follicles of the finest-spun flax…she was more or less serene…although it didn't take a telepath to understand that an undercurrent of anxiety had kicked in upon Kwannon's alighting. The nexus of this nervousness lay in the lady's overemotional attachment to her beau, the abovenamed Brian—and the tendency that her champion had, whether as a chap named Braddock or as her alter ego Captain Britain, to allow his heart and certain other organs underneath to wander at will.
And as the brash Brian himself bowed most slowly to Kwannon, the man drinking in, devouring visually every curve of the kunoichi lady…both Kwann and Betsy felt Meggan's own ticker tripping uncontrollably—and both knew that a potential incident here would have to be contained, posthaste, before another catastrophe of philandering would come about on the part of Brother Britain.
It would be a week into Kwannon's monthlong stay, in fact—seven days of prolonged stares upon the ninja's figure, as well as forlorn tears emanating from the golden elven mistress Meggan—that Betsy and Kwannon would decide that Cad-Prig Britain had indeed gone too far, even just in terms of his very thoughts towards she who journeyed over from Japan, and that his unfaithful tendencies would need to be tamped down before he progressed from ideas to action.
So it was, then, one day, when Brian was surveying the skyline idly while on the top, horizon-beholding level of the lighthouse, that that most alluring Asian seductress had snuck in most stealthily as well. To date, it had been only in the company of the entire ensemble that Sir Braddock had dared to dally with his eyes upon the amethyst enchantress that was Kwannon; how would he react when the man would find himself all alone with her, for the very first time?
(And to make matters here a trifle more interesting, with the kunoichi all-there in physique…but not necessarily so in psyche?)
After a few beats of silence, the Captain calculating his next campaign for his compatriots…
…Brian.
He spun around, the hero in his hallowed Union Jack uniform and suddenly sensing a certain arrest in the nether sections of his spandex. There, before him, was that most suave of Asian emissaries, she clad as of now in a lovely summer dress…but in his mind the apparel was not debonairly upon her shoulders, but rather disheveled around her slippers.
Brian…I can hear…
…I can feel…every figment frothing forth from you.
The overblown uberhero almost staggered back at the forward press of this exotic adventuress who seemed here and now to supersede every faroff fantasy he ever heretofore conceived. Not Meggan with her faerie flirtations…not any other fling he'd ever flung himself into…none of that could begin to broach the inescapable, enticing enchantment that was this kunoichi named Kwannon. The ferocious sensuousness of her flawless, auriferous flesh…the striking violet in her tresses and irises, so much deeper and lusher than those of his twin…and…
…
…
…BRIAN…
…so speaking of said twin—quite literally—
…the inexplicable oddity that, somehow…Kwannon had sounded off exactly in Brian's brain so that her voice possessed not the silky sleek of the ninja he'd known a couple nights…
…but rather the same, prim inflection of British as his own, slightly higher in pitch, though, just like…just like…
Brian, the lady said, her impeccable Eastern figure arching ahead with her long, lithe legs, you want this ever-so-svelte self…don't you…
But you have to understand…this body…and mind…
…they've meshed so well with that of a particular, other purple person…
…that we're really one and the same, now.
This randiest of redcoat-descendants now reared back in utter discomfort, his mind unable to wrap itself around the royal fuck that it was taking at the moment.
You see, Brian, continued the lady in that too-sisterly British accent, as she flipped two forefingers up to a temple, up here…I can be Kwannon…but I can also be Betsy…
…or I can even…be bloody both at once!
And then in slinked that insidiously sexy Asian inflection, as she reached the circling window border of the lighthouse top floor, she forcing Brian into a squirming backpedal all the more.
Yesss, Brian…I know now…all about what your sister did to you…when you both were in your early teens. With her telepathy, Elisabeth easily detected, that one lazy weekend afternoon, that you stole her share of the pudding…so when she knew you were vulnerable…she LOCKED you out in the rain, with you in your Union-Jack-jammies…
You sobbed so much that your tears outnumbered what came down from the clouds!
By now Brian was so flush in the face that he could change his alias to Captain Beeten.
And beaten was he ever, as the apparent human duet that was a dually-inflected Kwannon kept on coming at him, slowly but surefootedly. Again the voice from the East:
I know…we both know, Brian, what you're thinking…what you're VISUALIZING, when you look at me…
…you know, though, that's nothing compared to what Betsy's actually shown me, regarding you. Underneath all the bravado…and the BVDs otherwise…
…you're so SMALL…in so many ways…
He was cowering, crouching down now, the man unable to look into the orchid eyes excoriating his very being.
Kwannon from within, once more:
Although this is my first time in an Anglo nation…I've sampled many offerings from your culture.
You know that film The Graduate, from across your little Atlantic pond? The lead role, Ben…I'm sure you're aware, his full name's Ben BRADDOCK.
Do you want to be like Ben, Brian? Do you want me to…confront you, all in the altogether?
Do you really want all that to happen…with Betsy very much on board while you bare all?
She/they came upon the Captain ever closer, the latter reduced from super- to semi-man as he was hunched as tightly as he could, cringing and cowed and confounded in a cornerless room.
Then Kwannon and Betsy's voices together, as archly as can be imagined:
WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO SEDUCE YOU, BRIAN?
"GAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Overborne by shame, the super made as if to bound up and burst through a top-floor window…
…but
[SKKKRRRRRAAAAASSSSSSHHHHH]
the swarm of self-consciousness that swallowed the hero had caused him to misjudge his trajectory majorly, and instead he exploded through the ceiling, his form arcing up only so many inches into the air, then down again so that a few seconds later
[SKABOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM]
his magnificently massive frame was thrust into the mess of moss, grass, and sand below, to rest for quite a spell.
Above, Kwannon pored down with a look of genuine concern. From the ground floor entrance
"BRIIIIIAAAAANNNNN!"
the Captain's sister in thistle screamed in consternation, and ran over to his side, she so fearful for her brother that she forgot momentarily that she could scan a body for vital signs from a distance.
Fueled more by standard adrenalin than from any X-Gene oomph, Elisabeth turned her brother over, and listened at his chest for a heartbeat. The steady cardiac cadence was there, thank goodness. In the ensuing minutes, as Betsy sifted through soil nearby to give Brian a softer place to put his presently-oblivious head, Kwannon as the only other lighthouse occupant right now jogged out to join the other maiden in mauve.
He'll be alright, began the Eastern Psi. I'm sure you can pick it up psionically, just as I can from reading his emotions…
Yes, yes, I know, Kwann, cut in the other, a bit sharply. Hmph…maybe we both of us overdid it a bit, with the whole JezeBetsy thing. I feel awful now.
I understand. …He will come around, Elisabeth. His breathing's steadied, and he's stabilized otherwise. Just please attempt to relax a mite bit…
…I'm sorry, Kwannon, but it's my brother here. It's part of my ingrained…noblesse oblige to care and worry for my poor, poor stupid sibling, on occasion.
The canny ninja nodded absently at this. She noticed something about Brian that really bothered her; carefully, she stretched a hand to indicate her concern.
Look there, Betsy. You see that, at the nape of his neck?
…Yes…a lump as plum as the purple birthmarks Spiral gave me last year, or the violet moles she gave unto you. What d'you suppose it might be?
Ever cautiously, Elisabeth extended her own arm towards the growth, her delicate digits inching closer…closer…
…then
[SHHHRRRRRKKKKK]
of a sudden the blemish of Byzantium hue had receded into the skin, as if it never were.
You will now get up…and leap to full sprint, headlong to the sea…
…crashing into the waves, to submerge and never reemerge.
Betsy started with a stare at Kwannon, who returned the look readily. A certain inflection was infesting the id of each…
…but the voice in question had belonged to neither.
You will up and canter to the beacon above you…then hurl yourself down, down to join this oversized oaf here on the sod…never to arise again.
Now the pair of psionics were up and about, Betsy parting from Brian's side carefully to try and scry the source of the threatening intonations.
Just as Kwannon began to round to the opposite side of the lighthouse, the voice, significantly more strident now:
You will turn and face the other woman in wisteria…and you will duel it out to the death, each occasioning the end of the othURRRKKKKK…
Through her ninja-nanosecond-span impulsive maneuvers, Kwann had skewered with a psychic knife the source of the unctuous utterances, laying the lady flat who foisted such phrases upon her and Elisabeth.
A moment later, both Betsy and her neighbor from Nippon had discovered the identity of the one who wanted to undo them both…
…It was a prowler even pruner in color than either lady…an evil more eggplant in hue…
But each had known, in this reality at least, of this mutant's renegade resolve, and her vendetta, as premature as it was here, compared to her counterpart in Earth-616, to subvert the psyche of every living organism available…and each relished the opportunity now to mollify the villain of this mania…
…through the most compelling of methods, of course.
Now, PERSUASION…began Betsy, the lavender lady maintaining serenity as she held her cruel captive fast and taut with mere thought.
"UNNFFF!" was all the contained cad could say, underneath the psychic gag that kept her lips on lockdown.
With faux canniness the prim princess of Braddock Manor stood alongside her captive with skin of cerise, that duplicitous drupe who might have orchestrated the expiration of victims of lesser mental fortitude. Not so with Psylocke, nor with her pugilistic penpal from across the planet.
The assassin of the animus here, known as Kara Killgrave to many, but to a select number of superhumans dubbed either the Purple Girl, the Purple Woman, or Persuasion, she was once a champion of what was good and right. In her early days with Beta Flight in Canada, the lady was proficient at protecting the downtrodden and others who required such defending. Despite the fact that she was the daughter of the far more pernicious Purple Man, who the possessed skin so vividly violet that Kara herself inherited, Miss Killgrave was originally far more given to helping the world rather than harming it.
Somewhere along the way from Girl to Woman of Purple, she lost that.
And here, in this reality, Kara fell into the ways of her father far sooner.
But Betsy and Kwannon here, they were looking to lull Kara back into her kinder, older ways…through as many methods as they would require, especially to extract the information that they needed.
"Why did you commandeer the mind of my brother, Persuasion?"
Still at the side of the Purple perpetrator, Elisabeth twirled two forefingers on her right hand…
…causing the cogs to turn, ever so grindingly, on the psychic stretch rack she generated—and which her grapity guest was now enduring.
Oh, how enhanced were the abilities of Kwann and Bets, particularly since the two pooled their energies together through the course of their friendship, even doing so from across the Earth.
"NNNGGGHHH I'm never telling you!"
"Stop fiddling so, you fool…after all, I just helped you grow those few extra inches you always pined for at puberty.
"And you were always so obsessed too…with gaining a huge RACK…"
[SKRCH SKRCH SKRCH]
"AAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!"
At this Elisabeth eased off, causing Kara to start a second.
Hmph. She knew that these two lilac-follicled lily-livers wouldn't follow through too thoroughly with their threats…
[PLINK]
"Oww!"
[PLINK]
"Sss…stop it!"
…
…
…[PLINK]
"UrrrAAAgggHHH!"
"Oh, come now, Kara," said Kwannon, after flicking the drops of mental water at the girl's forehead from afar, "Surely you can withstand that tritest of 'Chinese' tortures, can you not?"
[PLINK]
Although Kwann was Japanese by descent, she had enough of an experience in China, with Elisabeth as the two doublehandledy faced down the Mandarin, for the kunoichi to cull a bit of knowledge regarding Chinese torture methods. The whole water variety was really just as much, if not moreso a European thing, such that the technique was just as Chinese as fries were actually French.
In any case…Kwannon was through with such petty pestering. It was time to move on to something a bit more severe.
So, while Killgrave was still in the throes of Betsy's rack…
[Her stretch rack, that is…]
[SLAPPP]
"HEYYY!"
"You know they're very cop about doing this in East Asia, Kara…"
[SLAPPP]
"STOP IT!"
But Kwann, along with Betsy, were only aiming on getting started. With her psychic cane, Kwannon continued to administer chi, which in China involved a whipping with the woman's current weapon. Elisabeth allowed Persuasion to turn over just so much…just so the foe could feel the lash of the psychic pummeling
[SLAPPP]
along her lower back,
[SLAPPP]
across the backs of her thighs,
[SLAPPP]
and then right across her haunches of heliotrope as well.
"RrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrRRRRR!"
"TELL US WHO COMMISSIONED YOU TO ATTACK MY BRIAN!"
"Yeah," chimed in Kwannon, after Elisabeth uttered this last. "YOU CAN'T TORMENT HIM…
ONLY WE'RE ALLOWED TO!"
[SLAPPP]
…
…
Still only sullen silence from this raisin-skinned resister.
"Alright, then."
Quickly Elisabeth flipped her left hand, causing the rack upon which Killgrave was clustered to up and throw itself against a curve of the lighthouse wall, several feet back.
"It's time for me to pull out the yet-gruesomer guns."
The British bombshell approached the opposite wall proudly as Persuasion honed a defiant hyacinth glare upon her.
"You won't get but…two steps from this tower," gritted the Barney-hued bitch, she ogling with odium as Betsy in turn stared at her hands in an effort to summon her cruelest tool yet. "My superior will…"
"Ahh, there we are. You know they have a couple of names for this."
On either side of the dualistic alignment, both Kwannon and Kara cringed a bit in horror as Elisabeth lifted a psychic rod with a spiky circular ring on the end.
"In a more medieval age, they referred to this sometimes as the Iron Spider," said Psylocke, as she waved it around a bit like a flag. "How appropriate, I suppose, considering our webslinging-spokespersoned world, idn't it?
"Anyways…"
She trained the psyche-constructed thing's barbs now upon the sternum of the she-scoundrel.
"They also called it…
"…the Breast Ripper."
Then Betsy drew back with the insidious implement, she clacking the teeth of it so that pincers pulsed at the air…
"Clack clack!"
Kara dared draw another breath as Elisabeth then aimed the item directly at Killgrave's grill…
[CLEEK CLEEK]
…then at one of the perse occupants of her opponent's chest…
"Clack clack clack!"
[CLEEK CLEEK]
Suddenly a psychic portent came upon Kwann, and would have also fallen unto Betsy, had the latter not been lathered over with a yen for yanking off the sternal occupants of her guest's chest.
All the same…
"Clack…"
[BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM]
The steady stucco of the legendary lighthouse's curved wall gave way on one side as a concussive cuss tore straight through, the incoming golden bolt just grazing past the gals within. Fortunately for Elisabeth and Kwannon, the force of the blast knocked Persuasion out as cold as Captain Britain, who was still lying out in Lalaland nearby.
As for the bad news…
[WHOOOOOOSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH]
"You rutabaga-haired runts want to know who sent Miss Killgrave. Well…"
Another flourish from the speaker, an incoming floating fraulein with follicles of glimmering gold/platinum; the burst tore through the ground just between Psylocke and her Psoulmate from Nippon, and the latter two generated psychic weapons instinctively in response to prepare.
"It wasn't any Martian Manhunter…or Womanhunter, for that matter…
"Nor was it any Irredeemable Plutonian…
"Neither was it anyone special from Neptune, New Jersey…(not that there really is anyone special from there, anyway)…"
Betts and Kwann could only generate psychic WTFs among their melee constructs at these teasings.
"In all actuality," continued the figure, as she deigned to lower herself to the ground for a single instant, "You both have been set upon…by none other than a sumptuous siren who is superbly SATURNYNE!"
Here was a harlot, not too removed from the similarly auric-tressed Andrea Strucker, or somewhat like the at-least-faux grain-mane that was Emma Frost…a fiend with fair hair who delved in the destruction of those who were in her path. In this reality, at least, Saturnyne was a fierce figure who, whether in her most ascendant Opal Luna iteration, or in her bellicose banker form of Courtney Ross, or even as the Neo-Nazi nymphette known as Sat-yr-9…she was always hard-nosed and hellbent on achieving her aims, no matter how much blood had to be shed.
As such, she was more than ready for these puny purpleheads when they came calling with arms at the ready. Kwannon lashed out first with a psychic kusarigama, consisting of a sickle and chain…but when she wrapped this around the woman who was her target, the latter simply shrugged off the blade and chains, she pulsing powerful concussive energy from her core and shattering the fatal snare that held her fast. With the breaking of the weapon, a psionic backlash resulted which floored the famously shrewd and sexy ninja lady.
Just as Opal Luna laughed over the unconscious shape of the Rising Sun siren, there reported
[SLABASSSSSHHHHHH]
the sounding of a vicious mental-construct mace against the back of her blonde head.
Completely unperturbed by this, Saturnyne whipped around and grabbed Betsy's psychic weapon with one hand, and her throat with the other, the latter lifting the lady off the ground.
"Hmm," said Miss Luna, surveying the fuchsia fabrication in the hand that was not pinching Psylocke's larynx, "I believe…this European mace…they call it…a shestopyor?
"Well, Elisabeth, it looks like this cosmic countess…she sure stopped your mace melee assault right well. So I suppose the weapon's name is fitting…in a weird, backwards sort of way."
With a flourish, Saturnyne then chucked the crushing object to the ground, extinguishing its psychic power abruptly. With her other hand, she tossed Betsy ten feet into the air—an feat made a bit easier by the fact that Captain Britain's sister was knocked out of commission by the breaking of the mace.
Audaciously, Opal then turned to the out-for-some-time form that was Persuasion. Glancing fleetingly at Brian lying not far away as well, still in his own dreamland too: "Ahh, Kara, Kara... Your mission on my behalf was nothing too daunting. All I wanted you to do was…convince Captain Britain…to chase the exotic Kwannon around for long enough to drive away both the love of her paramour Meggan as well as the support of his sister Elisabeth. Then the man would have been all mine to play with.
"I say…why couldn't you hack such an easy, easy mark? …No matter. If I can't delegate what I want done, then I suppose I will have to just take it upon myself to claim it for my own…"
It was then, while Saturnyne strolled across the expanse of the lighthouse field, passing by the pooped-out purple people that were Persuasion, Psylocke, and Kwannon, so that she could scoop up Brian Braddock and fly him back to her own lair…
…that
[SCCCCCRRRRRAMMMMMPPPPP]
suddenly the cootie who would claim the man was herself clamped down upon from behind—and upon the behind to boot—by another blonde who was all but exasperated with the dallyings of the douche to whom she committed herself wholly.
The one slight detail that put the Saturny sorceress at a disadvantage? Said incoming blonde happened, at the moment, to be about a hundred heads taller than herself.
And now, as this intervener flipped the other, inferior lady over in her giant hand, that smooth palm began a scaly paw…
…as Opal Luna looked upon the eyes of a Tyrannosaurus-Regina-transformed Meggan.
"I can…" Saturnyne started, but
[FLLLOMMMPPPPP]
the elven entity had already tossed the tosseress into her savage saurus maw and swallowed her whole.
Just as the Saturny shrew slid down the maiden-monster's esophagus and into her giant stomach, the silky mistress surfacing now with all kinds of digestive dino-acids surrounding her:
"YOUR INTERFERENCES IN MY RELATIONSHIP WITH BRIAN HAVE GONE ON FAR TOO LONG, YOU PLATINUM-MANED PIPSQUEAK.
"I WILL GIVE YOU…OR RATHER, MY TERRIBLE-LIZARD TUMMY WILL PROBABLY GIVE YOU ABOUT FIFTEEN SECONDS TO FORGO YOUR PURSUIT OF CAPTAIN BRITAIN.
"IT'S UP TO YOU," boomed the Mega-Meggan further, "MAKE THE VOW NOW, AND GET
VOMITED OUT…OR REFUSE, AND COME OUT MY OTHER SIDE…SHIT-OUT, SHIT-UPON, AND PARTIALLY DIGESTIVELY-DISSOLVED. BY A FUCKING TYRANNOSAUR."
"I promise! I promise!" peeped the conqueror of the cosmos that was Saturnyne, her ordinarily-pristine locks and face smothered in stomach-sewage. "Please! Just…"
"ALRIGHT."
[UNNNNNGGGGGHHHHH
SPPPPPEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW]
the lithe form of Opal Luna then rocketed out between the teeth of the T-Regina, the duplicitous dame shunting against the grass and mud full-force to knock her out. Despite the fact that Meggan knew that Saturnyne was as unconscious as the others all around were coming to, nonetheless the elven lady, still terribly transformed:
"DON'T YOU EVER COME NEAR HIM AGAIN…
"OR ELSE, NEXT TIME YOU WON'T EVEN GET SWALLOWED WHOLE."
Another minute or ten and Elisabeth found herself standing sturdily once again near to her favorite lady and gentleman in the world, who were Kwannon and Brian, respectively. Betsy hugged first her friend, and then embraced her brother, both so heartily at the knowledge that they were alive.
"Ever since I began my own little superheroine career," Miss Braddock whispered into her sibling's ear, "…ever since I dyed my hair red, white, and blue, representing the Union Jack but really making myself look like one of those rocket popsicles someone can buy from an American ice cream truck…ever since that time, I've known how dangerous all our adventuring could be.
"But nearly losing you, Brian, because of our stupid little stunt…it gave me quite the scare."
She held her brother tight once more. "I don't know what I'd do if I lost you, Brian."
Overwhelmed by his sister's familial love, and still freaked out of course by her and Kwannon's ruse an hour or so ago, the Captain crumbled in Elisabeth's arms. "Nor would I…if I lost you, Betsy. I'm sorry if I ever acted like an idiot, to you…
"Or to your friend." He went over to Kwannon and bowed gallantly. "Ma'am, I apologize for ever acting…in any untoward manner, during your stay here. Please…allow us to make it up to you…"
"I'll make it up to her, Bri," said Betsy, as she went over and stood alongside Kwannon. "She still has basically just gotten here…still has to check out some of the more intriguing areas of London and what not…"
"…And besides…baby…" said suddenly another dainty presence…but with a palm firmly entrenched around the back of the neck of Mister Braddock, "you have a bit of making it up…to me, you know."
Brian barely had time to smile sheepishly at Elisabeth or Kwannon as Meggan then led him a bit forcibly by the hand towards the convertible in which she arrived a bit ago, just in the nick of time. (During the course of the past minutes, as well, Saturnyne had slinked off in a quick, queasy getaway, but Meggan applied a secondary mutation involving altering the shapes of others to push down on Persuasion's head and restore her to her normal height. "Threaten us again," she said while ministering to Killgrave, "and I'll stretch you far further than Betsy ever did with her rack…to the point you'll snap.")
Now it was time for the queens in Quinacridone (a purplish sort of dye) to retreat to their own steel steed for a nice night on the town. Elisabeth linked a sisterly arm around Kwannon's shoulders as they sashayed off together towards the car.
"Wait'll you see King's Cross," the off-duty Psylocke said to the nightlife-seeking ninja. "The pubs and clubs there are rather hunky-dory, if you ask me."
Before Kwann sound say anything in reply:
"Hey, wait up, you two!"
The pair was put upon once again by Kara Killgrave, alias the Purplest Person Possible.
"Could I, er…get a ride into town with ye's?"
Pityingly the other two ladies looked at one another and shrugged.
That night it became a trio of Phoenician-dyed damsels who painted the town purple.