"Spyke Jam"
by Beastbot
Evan Daniels leaned against the side of the large drainage pipe, scanning the dark tunnels ahead for anything. He was currently on guard duty—when was he not?—but his mind was otherwise occupied.
It had now been over a year since he had left the X-Men and taken residence with the Morlocks. From the reports he had gotten during his monthly visits with Storm, things were always going on at the Xavier Mansion, as they always were. And, though his aunt didn't like to admit it, things seemed to be getting steadily worse.
Evan was convinced he had gotten out of the Mansion just in time. Between the new recruits, an increasing number of training sessions, the whole Apocalypse ordeal, a reformed Brotherhood and a new team of Acolytes to deal with… things just seemed to be getting crazier and crazier up there. Sure, he had helped during the battle against Apocalypse… but to be honest, that was more because of Auntie O than anything else. Although he wasn't proud of his feelings, he was really starting to hate humanity. Not just the individuals who directly harassed Mutants, but the whole species. Those who didn't outright attack them hated them, and those who didn't hate them did little to ease the hatred, as far as Evan was concerned. Evan knew he would have lost it eventually if he had stayed at the X-Mansion much longer, with its hectic schedules and increasingly high expectations of its students, and he was convinced he would have taken out that built-up stress on someone who didn't deserve it. Internally, he envied most of the X-Men—somehow, they were able to blot out all this ill will towards them and, overall, stand with their head held high, their chin up, and a smile on their faces.
He never did understand that, could never understand that. But he wished he had the strength to.
Down here, there were practically no humans—just the occasional sewer workers that the Morlocks had to hide from—and nothing much changed from day to day, week to week, month to month. And that was a pace Evan was much happier to be a part of. No scheduled training sessions, no school, no missions to be taken care of around the globe, no supervillain teams to take care of. All he had to do was guard their home during the day, and guard Morlocks that went topside at night to steal food and supplies, and that was it. It gave him something to do without overwhelming him.
Still, Evan wasn't delusional. Living in a sewer, eating garbage, dealing with the eternal stench of rotting waste? It certainly wasn't an ideal living situation. At times he didn't mind it so much, but at times it could be hell.
"Spyke, you're needed in the central area. The fire has gone out again."
Spyke snapped out of his thoughts and sighed, turning back towards Lucid, who was looking at him expectantly.
This was one of those times.
"Alright Lucid, let's go. I'll get a hot one ready," Evan said.
It was mid-February, and winters were miserable down here. There was no heating, of course, no way to block out the cold that often got unbearable during the night. There were always at least a few Morlocks who were sick during this time of the year, and occasionally one would die from a particularly severe bout. It was torture, watching a Mutant he saw every day die in agony, without any real medical attention—Façade knew the most about medical care out of all the Morlocks, and he didn't know much. Occasionally they were able to steal a bottle of medicine, but it didn't always work, as often they had to just guess what the sickness was from the symptoms—and they didn't exactly have a great track record of being correct.
Still, Evan considered himself lucky. The bone plates covering his skin helped insulate him a bit, and when that wasn't enough he could pop out a few red-hot spikes, which would quickly heat up the air around him. And, being the closest thing the Morlocks had to a fire-based Mutant, Spyke was often called on to help start fires in the winter and keep them going, as they often went out due to the damp conditions of their living environment.
Spyke and Lucid were almost to the main living area when they heard a loud explosion sound from the direction they were heading. Looking at each other, they quickly bolted down the tunnel, running as fast as they possibly could.
By the time both of them had reached the main Morlock living area, the place was a mess. It was apparent that an entire wall on the east side had exploded, as shattered bricks and debris lay strewn around that area with a huge gaping hole in the center of said wall. Some of the Morlocks were helping out an unfortunate few who had obviously been in the vicinity of the wall when it exploded, but there was no fighting going on that Spyke could see—whoever had attacked them, they were gone now.
"Callisto!" Spyke yelled out, running up to his leader who was tending to a Morlock who had a small shard of brick lodged in his lower left arm. "What the heck's going on?!"
"It all happened so suddenly, Evan—that wall just burst outwards, without any warning at all. I think I saw—" Callisto suddenly stopped, blinked, and rubbed her eyes. "I'm pretty sure I didn't see anyone there, and Caliban says he didn't sense any non-Morlock Mutant in the vicinity, either. You have as much of an idea of what's going on as I do."
"Perhaps it was a group of humans, trying to kill some of us by planting a time bomb near our headquarters?" Lucid speculated.
"That's the only thing that makes sense," Spyke growled. "Somehow, some of them know we're living here."
"Perhaps we should move again to another part of the sewers?" Lucid asked.
"No. We're staying here," Callisto said.
"What? Why?" Lucid asked.
"If they know we're here, they'll be able to search the sewers until they find us again anyway," Spyke interjected, picking up on Callisto's logic. "We'd better just keep an extra close watch around the perimeter of this area—to make sure we catch these scumbags if they try anything like this again."
"Right," Callisto said. "Spyke, after we get everything cleaned up here, get Caliban and Facade. Lucid, I want you as well—all four of you are to patrol the area as often as possible. I want whoever is doing this caught and brought to justice."
"Understood," Lucid nodded. "I'll keep my eyes open."
It happened again two days later.
Spyke was patrolling his assigned section of the sewer drains again when he heard a loud explosion sound from nearby. Following the direction of the sound, Spyke ran around a few turns until he came to the site of the explosion, where the dust was just now starting to settle. It was in the heart of the Morlock's living quarters, yet again—this time on the wall adjoining the one that had been blown up earlier, causing the entire ceiling in that corner of the area to come crashing down on the couple of unfortunate Morlocks that were under it at the time. Scaleface was currently in her monsterish reptile form, taking large boulders from the collapsed pile and hurling them away in a desperate attempt to get at the crushed Morlocks inside.
"Who was it?!" Spyke asked frantically as he ran up to Scaleface and the quickly-gathering crowd of Morlocks who were beginning to dig into the debris in search of the few who were buried in it.
"I didn't see anyone!" Callisto said in exasperation, and Scaleface shook her gargantuan head in agreement.
"I'm going to see if I can catch up with them!" Spyke said, running and climbing over the edge of the rock pile and into the gaping hole in the wall left behind by the explosion.
"Spyke, no, wait!" Callisto protested, but Spyke was already out of sight by the time she finished.
Spyke ran down the dark sewer tunnel as fast as his arms and legs could carry him. To avoid alerting whomever he was tracking that he was following them, Spyke was running along the wall of the sewer tunnel, small bone spikes poking out of the bottom of his sneakers and palms to anchor him to the wall as he ran along on all fours, making sure not to slip and make a telltale splash in the sewage that was covering the floor of the tunnel.
Living in the sewers for over a year had allowed his eyes to grow accustomed to the dark rather well, and he was able to make out the slightest red glow from a small light source somewhere ahead and around a few corners of the twisting passageway. Whoever was holding that odd red light source was definitely still running away, as Spyke heard telltale splashes in the sewage coming from up ahead. Spyke was gaining on the aggressor, and he was certain he would be within sight of whomever it was momentarily.
A few seconds later, Spyke turned out to be right—as he turned the next corner, he saw the red light source a few dozen yards ahead, retreating. It was only one person, dressed in some kind of cloak or coat by the faint red outline Spyke could make out, and his body was in between the red light source and Spyke's point of view, so Spyke couldn't quite make out who it was.
Making sure to be as noiseless and possible, Spyke chased the individual for about another minute, until he was close enough that he was sure he could hit the person by popping off a shot. Quickly growing a few piping hot bone spikes from his lower right arm, Spyke leapt down to the floor with a splash and stood up.
"Hey!" Spyke yelled to get the fleeing person's attention. "Where the heck do you think you're—augh!"
Spyke had to roll to one side as a flaming card came sailing out from inside of the individual's trenchcoat as the person turned towards him. The card sailed downwards a few more yards before exploding, and Spyke had to shield himself to keep the explosion from doing anything more than singeing some of the bone armor on his back.
Spyke then quickly stood back up and aimed his bone spikes at the figure, but he had since retreated much farther down the tunnel. Spyke glimpsed a pair of glowing red eyes stare back at him for a second before fleeing around the far corner of the tunnel.
"Who's Gambit?" Façade asked.
"He used to be a member of Magneto's team," Spyke explained to Façade and the other Morlocks gathered around him. "He went rogue several months ago after Magneto was thought to have been killed by Apocalypse, but last I heard he was living in New Orleans."
"And you're sure that it was him?" Callisto asked.
"Completely," Spyke replied. "No one else carried around a pack of playing cards that could explode. Gambit's Mutant power is basically that he can lay his hands on any object and make it explode seconds later, which would explain what happened to our walls. What I don't get is why he was attacking us… I don't exactly trust the guy, but this doesn't seem like something he'd decide to do out of the blue. And it's not like we've done anything that could have made him angry."
"This does not make any sense," Lucid said. "If it was indeed Gambit, would not have Caliban detected him before he got close enough to do any damage?"
"Iiii cannot explaiiin that eiiither," Caliban said. "All I knooow is that I did not detect any Muuuutants in the vicinity before the wall implooooded."
"Alright, here's what's going to happen," Callisto ordered. "Scaleface, you and myself are going to join in on the constant patrols of the area. Lucid, see if you can take some two-way radios from a shop topside tonight, after all the stores have closed. One of our fellow Morlocks was killed in the cave-in today, people, and a rumble that big would no doubt have alerted someone above—we need to move our living quarters to another section of the sewers tomorrow, as well. Once we get settled in at a spot I've picked out several blocks from here, we'll all be stepping up our patrols of the perimeter of our living area even further, to make sure we catch this 'Gambit' before he harms any more of us. Now, let's get going."
Four days later, Spyke was patrolling another corridor of the sewers when he heard the radio mounted on his waist begin to crackle.
"Evan! Evan, can you read me?" a voice called out of the radio.
"Scaleface, what's going on?" Evan questioned.
"Spyke, you need to come, quickly!" Scaleface said anxiously through the radio. "Callisto and Façade have managed to capture Gambit!"
"What? How'd they manage that?!" Spyke said.
"There's no time to explain now, they've only got him temporarily restrained!" Scaleface replied. "I'll tell you where we are, but you've got to come, quickly!"
"We're just around this corner!" Scaleface said through the radio as Spyke came near the end of a long sewer passage that veered to the left a few meters ahead.
"Man, this is kinda far from our normal patrol paths," Spyke huffed as he continued splashing down the passage. He had been running full-pace for over fifteen minutes now. "You sure you haven't gotten me lost?"
"Positive!" Scaleface said in person as he rounded the corner.
Looking ahead, Spyke saw Callisto, as Scaleface said, but…
"Hey, where's Façade?!" Spyke said, stopping in front of Callisto. "And Gambit? Scaleface told me you guys had him pinned down!"
"So I did," Scaleface said insidiously from behind Spyke as she morphed into her giant reptilian form. Before Spyke could react, she swatted Spyke with the back of her massive hand, smashing him into the wall of the passageway and knocking him out before his mind could even comprehend what was happening.
Evan stirred as a bucket of cold water was thrown on his face—at least, he hoped it was cold water. Considering that from the smell of things he was still in the sewer, you never could be certain…
Sputtering, Evan tried to wipe the liquid from his eyes but found that he was bound at the arms and legs. Shaking his head, Evan then opened his eyes to find that he was in a dark chamber of the sewers off of one of the main corridors, the only light coming from a few lit candles on the opposite side of the fairly small room. Standing before him in a semi-circle were Callisto (who was holding the empty bucket of water), Façade, Gambit, and a cloaked figure at the far side of the room.
"Callisto, Façade…. Why?" Spyke said, anger more apparent in his voice than sorrow. "After all I've done for you guys, you go and set up some trap for me?! Who's goading you into this!?"
"I am… though I suppose 'goading' isn't the correct choice of words, Spyke," the cloaked figure from the back of the room said, stepping forward and folding back the hood from his head. Spyke recognized the voice even before the figure had fully revealed his very unique-looking face.
"Mesmero," Spyke growled. "What are you doing here?"
"Why, 'recruiting' for my cause," Mesmero smirked. "You and the rest of the accursed X-Men may have foiled Apocalypse's plans last time, but I have a new plan, a plan to bring him back from his time limbo and into the present, where he can resume his destiny."
"'Destiny' as in ignoring you and doing whatever he wants?" Spyke said sarcastically. "Nice to see you've learned from your experiences, Mesmero."
"You are wrong!" Mesmero said, pointing his ancient staff directly at Evan for emphasis. "Apocalypse had other plans which took priority, plans that involved the turning of the entire population of this world into Mutants! After he had accomplished that, he surely would have rewarded me for my efforts, but YOU and your annoying X-MEN had to GET IN THE WAY!"
"It was kind of hard for us not to, considering you 'recruited' us yourself in the beginning. I have a blank spot in my memory from that day, Mesmero. I don't LIKE it," Spyke growled, popping out a few gnarled flaming spikes for emphasis.
"Now, now," Mesmero cautioned, mentally commanding his subordinates to take a battle-ready stance. "You can clearly see that you're outnumbered here, Spyke. Your power is above-average for a Mutant, but even you cannot beat these odds. Plus, I have the one you call Scaleface patrolling the immediate area to ensure no other Morlocks can intervene, so don't expect any rescue. Her and all of the others here are under my complete mental control, as you may have surmised, and they have been for some time. Gambit's repeated attacks on your home, Callisto's recommendation that the patrols be sped up—it was all my doing."
"Why?" Spyke asked. "Just to capture me? Why not just take control of my mind like you did before, if you need me for something so badly?"
"I have been… unable to do so since your mutation has evolved further," Mesmero admitted. "I can only surmise that the much denser bone plating that surrounds your skull interferes with my mind control capabilities."
"Okay, so what do you want with me, then?" Spyke said. "How can I bring your 'mighty Apocalypse' back from limbo? Because you can forget it, whatever it is. I'd rather die than bring that monster back into this world."
"Ah, quite the brave one today, are we?" Mesmero chuckled. "No, I have no intention of harming you, Spyke, that would be counter-intuitive to my goals. Gambit, bring in the… 'reward' for Spyke here."
Gambit silently obeyed, walking out of the room. About a minute later he came back in, carrying an unconscious and bound Rogue.
"Rogue!" Spyke cried out.
"She has a soft spot for Gambit, as I'm sure you're aware," Mesmero grinned. "It was far too easy to lure her into a similar trap."
"If you hurt one hair on her head, I swear I'll—"
"You'll what?" Mesmero laughed. "I have quite the advantage over you now, Spyke. I'm afraid you'll just have to listen to me as I tell you what you need to do."
Spyke said nothing, and just glared daggers at Mesmero in response.
"Good, good, we're making progress then. Now, here's what I need from you; apparently, since our little run-in at the Himalayas, Xavier has installed mental blocks in every last one of the X-Men, preventing me from using them ever again. Stuck in the X-Mansion's holding cell for months on end, I was growing restless and could do nothing about it. That is, until I sensed another Mutant presence approaching the Mansion, just at the limits of the physical range of my mind-controlling powers. It turned out to be our friend Gambit, here. It was simple enough to take control of his mind again, sneak him into the X-Mansion, free me, and then kidnap Rogue while everyone was asleep. Originally, I was going to use her as a bargaining chip in case I was discovered by the security systems on my way out, but after a brief scan of her mind I found out something rather intriguing—namely, that one of your fellow X-Men—Kurt, I believe is his name—had recently had an experience involving a time machine. Unfortunately, as my mind reading capability is limited—mind controlling is what I do best—I was unable to discern anything more than the faintest details about Kurt's recent excursion."
"And so now you're using Rogue as a bargaining chip against me, to get me to tell you you who exactly built the time machine you're talking about," Spyke finished.
"Ah, now you're getting it," Mesmero chuckled. "Yes, I need to know who this ingenious individual is, so that I can use their time machine to enter temporal limbo and try to locate En Sabah Nur."
"Nice try, but the time machine was destroyed in the process, from what I've been told," Spyke smirked.
"A pity," Mesmero said, frowning. "Still, all it will require is a bit more time as I force that person to rebuild their time machine again. And you WILL tell me who this individual is—before I have my minions here kill Rogue AND you in the most painful way possible."
"Well, you can forget it," Spyke growled. "Whatever you do to me or Rogue is still a thousand times better than unleashing that sicko into the world again."
"Brave words," Mesmero said, growing visibly frustrated, "But we'll see how brave you remain as you see your dear friend here destroyed, piece by piece! Gambit, if you will…"
Wordlessly, Gambit's glowing red pupils fixed on Rogue and her arm started to glow with red, heatless flames.
Evan inwardly cursed. Even though he was tied up, he was still capable of firing off flaming spikes—yet he had hesitated to do so until he had found out Mesmero's true intentions behind his actions. Now that Evan knew what all of this was about, he had planned to fire off a few at Gambit and cause the red-eyed Mutant to drop Rogue in pain. Obviously, if he did that now, Rogue's arm would still explode a few seconds after she was dropped. He kicked himself for essentially challenging Mesmero to do whatever he dared—Evan should have kept his temper in check until a millisecond before he was ready to pounce.
Still, maybe he had one last chance… but he had to act fast.
"Last chance, Spyke," Mesmero said. "Tell me who it was that invented that time machine, or Rogue's arm will be blown off, and the rest of her will shortly follow."
"Fine, fine!" Spyke said, slowly popping out a bone spike from his upper leg, underneath his jeans so that it wasn't obvious unless someone was looking closely. "I'll tell you! Just please, don't hurt—"
Spyke interrupted himself as he fired off the bone spike from his upper leg, straight into the side of Mesmero's thigh. Grunting in pain, Mesmero released his mental hold on the others, if only for a second—but a second was all that was needed.
Having already slowly worked his bonds free by rubbing them against his permanently-protruding arm spikes while Mesmero had been talking, Spyke burst into action, leaping up and popping out a few flaming bone spikes, taking a battle-ready stance.
Gambit, meanwhile, had come out of his mind-controlled state and dropped Rogue, the flames on Rogue's arm dissolving as she fell out of his hands.
Mesmero, seeing what Spyke's intentions had been, quickly got over the initial shock and reasserted his control over the three others present.
"Gambit, Callisto, Façade!" Mesmero spat. "Kill him, now!"
The three immediately advanced on Spyke. Gambit charged one of his cards and threw it at Spyke, who ducked just in time as it flew past him, exploding harmlessly against the wall. Callisto swung at Spyke, who did a back flip, smacking Callisto's arm with his spiked leg as he did so. Callisto instinctively retracted her arm slightly from the pain, but Mesmero's mental command had her advancing again within a second.
Spyke backed up and prepared to fire a salvo of projectiles at Callisto and Gambit, when suddenly he felt himself back up against something solid. Seemingly materializing out of thin air, Spyke saw that Façade had snuck up behind him and now had him pinned. As Gambit took out another card and charged it, Spyke realized he had only a split second to make a move.
Façade, forgive me for this, but…
Spyke popped a flaming spike out of his elbow and drove it into Façade's shoulder. Façade, even under Mesmero's control, yowled in pain and clutched his shoulder, which was now seeping blood rapidly. Freed from Façade's grip, Spyke popped small bone spikes out of his palms and feet, leapt onto the ceiling just as Callisto lunged for him and Gambit's charged card flew past where he had just been, instead impacting Callisto's left arm and causing a rather severe burn, to the point where even a burnt bit of Callisto's muscle underneath her skin was showing. Spyke then let go of the ceiling, landing behind Callisto, and then run and leapt at Mesmero before he could react, pinning the tattooed Mutant to the ground and popping a fairly large spike from his lower arm, pointed right at Mesmero's throat.
"Release them from your control, Mesmero!" Spyke yelled. "NOW!"
"You can't—fine," Mesmero growled. Closing his eyes, he reopened them a second later. "It's done."
"What… where am I?" Spyke heard Callisto say from behind him. "And… ouch… what happened to my arm?! …Spyke?"
"You and the others have been under the control of Mesmero here for the past few days," Spyke said, still keeping his lower-arm spike trained on Mesmero's throat. "He's used you to lure me here, and you, Façade, and Gambit were helping him keep me captive, as well as Rogue over there, who's unconscious."
"Alright, I've had just about enough of this," Gambit said, his tone of voice uncharacteristically furious as he walked over to Mesmero and picked up the shorter Mutant by the shoulders. "I don't take kindly to having my mind controlled by someone else. Especially someone like you. And especially more than once. So let's make sure it doesn't happen again, what do you say?"
By the time Spyke realized what Gambit was doing, it was too late. Before Spyke could cry out in protest, Gambit charged Mesmero up and threw the screaming tattooed Mutant out of the room. A second later a sickening explosion sounded from the outside tunnel.
"That takes care of that," Gambit said, dusting his hands.
"You idiot!" Spyke yelled, getting right up in Gambit's face. "Why'd you do that!? We didn't have to kill him, we could have gotten more information from him!"
"Oh, really?" Gambit smirked, back to his usual demeanor.
"Yes, really!" Spyke said. "Knowledge about other possible artifacts that he might have used to bring Apocalypse back, about how exactly the ancient Egyptians had this advanced technology, that sort of stuff!"
"Well, let's agree to disagree then, Bones—I doubt he'd tell us much. You'll pardon me if I think he's better off dead."
Spyke was about to retort when he heard Façade emit a grunt of pain from behind him. Cursing himself inwardly for forgetting about his friends, Spyke turned back to Façade and helped the Morlock to his feet.
"Façade, Callisto—I'm so sorry about attacking you," Spyke said. "But you were going to kill me-- I had no choice."
"That's--ergh--alright," Façade said. "I--understand."
"I've got some bandages in my back pocket," Callisto said, reaching for them as she talked. Although her injuries were far less serious than Façade's, Callisto was still in visible pain. "Spyke, help me clean the wound and apply these."
"Yeah…yeah, no problem," Spyke said, catching the bandages Callisto tossed to him.
"Well, I see you three have business to attend to," Gambit said, hoisting up Rogue over his shoulder. "Don't let me keep you."
"Hold on a minute," Spyke said. "Façade, I need you to check out Rogue, see if she's okay."
"Oh, she's fine," Gambit said, waving Spyke's concern away. "She just seems drugged up to me, she'll be out of it soon enough."
"Well, you'll pardon ME if I don't take your word for it," Spyke said, helping Façade walk over to where Gambit was standing.
Façade looked Rogue over carefully, as well as lifting up her eyelids, checking her pupils for dilation, and taking her pulse.
"She seems to have just been given a—large dose of a mild tranquilizer," Façade said. "She'll wake up with a splitting headache in—a few hours, but otherwise will be fine."
"Told you," Gambit said. "If there's one thing I've picked up growing up in the Big Easy, it's how people look when they've had too much. And Rogue here has had way too much. Such a naughty thing to do too, she's underage. At least the time I drugged her I used plain old knockout gas."
Spyke just glared at Gambit for a moment before replying. "So why are you back here, anyway? Last thing I heard you had decided to stay away from here and keep to yourself in New Orleans."
Gambit chuckled, as if Spyke had just told a joke. After seeing that Spyke's question was serious, his demeanor changed and he looked back and forth between Spyke and the other two Morlocks, confused.
"You've gotta be kidding me. I mean, I know you fools don't get the best reception down here, but… you really don't know?"
"What are you talking about?" Evan said, growing more impatient. "What happened?"
"Hurricane Katrina happened, fool," Gambit said. "Oh, they've rebuilt a fair amount, but New Orleans ain't never gonna be the same. My father's house, the other thieves' guilds in the city—all wiped out. Many haven't bothered rebuilding and moved onto other cities to target, ones with less… competition, I guess you could say. There ain't nothing for me there anymore, so I decided to come back here, where all the fun is. And I was going to pay Rogue here a visit when Mesmero used his mind control powers on me… again."
"Oh," Spyke said, his demeanor awkward. "I'm… sorry."
"Ah, don't be," Gambit said, waving it away. "The past is past, what matters is I'm back up here now. And hey, don't worry—I'll get Rogue here back to the Mansion, safe and sound."
Spyke looked at Gambit suspiciously, his eyebrow cocked.
"You DO worry too much, Bones," Gambit smirked. "I'm a man of my word. Hey, you can even get that Caliban fella to track me all the way back there if you want. I won't mind."
"I was already going to do that," Spyke growled. "And I don't need your permission to track you, thanks."
"Hey, just making sure everything's alright between us," Gambit said.
"It isn't."
"Suit yourself, Bones. I'm off to deliver a package… uff, a package that's a little heavier than I thought she'd be."
As Gambit took his leave of the room and vanished out of sight down the drainage pipe, a few sickening "squish" sounds were heard, which caused Spyke and the other two Morlocks' insides to squirm a bit.
"And hey," Gambit called back, "I'd apologize for the mess, but you fellas live in the sewer anyway, right? I'd imagine you're used to messes."
The End