The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
The Cabbala.
"When you were young and your heart was an open book
You used to say live and let live
(You know you did, you know you did, you know you did)
But if this ever-changing world in which we're livin'
Makes you give in and cry, say live and let die
Live and let die, live and let die, live and let die
What does it matter to ya
When you've got a job to do, you gotta do it well
You gotta give the other fella hell. (…) – The Wings "Live and Let Die"
Warning: Violence, explicit language, possibly gore.
Timing: 2015, for particular timing of the characters original universes, see footnote of their respective chapters.
Rating: M, possibly MA.
Pairings: Wilhelmina and Allan (past). Wilhelmina and Orlando (friends with benefits).
Disclaimer: The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen original comic books © Allan Moore and Kevin O'Neill. Neverwhere (in character of Lady Door) © Neil Gaiman. Atomic Robo © Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegner. Stargate Atlantis (in character of Spike the Wraith) © MGM Studios. Hellboy (in character of Karl Ruprecht Kroenen) © Michael Mignola. Slenderman © Eric Knudsen (as Victor Surge).
The story © Czarna Archer 2015.
Dracula (in character of Wilhelmina Murray) by Bram Stoker. Allan Quatermain by sir Henry Rider Haggard. Orlando (or his/hers alike) by Virgina Woolf.
We Exist.
"(…) Down on your knees
Begging us please
Praying that we don't exist
You're down on your knees
Begging us please
Praying that we don't exist
We exist!
We exist! (…) – Arcade Fire "We Exist".
?
London. MI6 headquarters. 2015.
Wilhelmina Murray sat silently in the waiting room in MI6 HQ waiting for what the future would bring. She didn't know how they managed to find her. She did her absolute best to stay hidden safe for simply not coming back to United Kingdom which, in hindsight, would probably be the wisest thing to do. But then again, how could she not return? Orlando left all her belongings here and Mina didn't want to allow her last friend off her sight. She had bad feelings and so they have returned together. They managed to stay hidden for six years… Six years. Mina changed her looks at first, going blonde but that in turn brought back memories of Allan and how they stole the Black Dossier so she returned back to her natural hair colour. Perhaps she should go brunette, but then Orlando was brunette and Mina wasn't sure if she wouldn't feel awkward in certain situations.
Mina sighed, the time passed and her mind was getting her even more anxious about what was to happen. The paranoia was getting to her with every passing minute. With all her past exploits anything could happen to her now. But the way she was taken from the street and just brought here it probably wasn't anything pleasant. Orlando didn't even know… and what she didn't know she could not defend herself against. Mina's heart froze. She has already lost Allan. If she lost Orlando she would stay alone, though probably she'd follow them soon.
The door opened and she almost jumped. A secretary emerged and she rose to her feet trying not to show her nervousness. Luckily she had plenty of experience with that.
"Mr 'M' will see you now Miss Murray." The secretary said and allowed Mina in.
She walked into the office and the secretary closed the doors behind her. A good 30 minutes later Miss Wilhelmina Murray left the office pale as a sheet of paper, with blank face and slightly trembling. She was holding two yellow folders, grey envelope and thick white binder. She was looking as if she was about to either burst into tears or throw up, or perhaps even both.
"Do you like a carrier bag for that Miss Murray?" The secretary asked with audible worry in her voice.
"Yes, please." Mina uttered in strained voice. She seemed to be in state of mild shock.
"Of course, and would you like me to call you a taxicab?" The secretary asked handing Mina a large plastic bag with name of popular supermarket printed in red and blue.
"Thank you, and no, I think I will manage to catch one by myself." Mina said while placing the items in the bag. "I think I will go now."
"Goodbye to you then Miss Murray, and see you tomorrow." The secretary said with warm smile.
"Yes, goodbye Miss Moneypenny." Mina walked away with slightly unstable steps.
?
Elsewhere, later.
When Orlando walked into her flat she noticed Mina sitting on the bed staring blankly at a carrier bag at her feet. She instantly knew that something was wrong. Mina was always calm person unless deeply angered but she never was near catatonic on her own.
Orlando quickly left her grocery bag and approached her friend. "Mina, darling, what happened, what's wrong?"
"Lando…" Mina seemed to wake from her stupor. "This is terrible, they have found me."
"Who?"
"The MI6! They have found me somehow, and they just snatched me from the street like some common goon!"
"Oh Christ!" Orlando sat next to Mina and wrapped her arms around the other woman. "How did you manage to get away?"
"They've let me go!"
"What?"
"They knew who I am, who I really am, and they said that they will not arrest me, they have use of me." Mina hid her face in her hands. "The 'M' that I spoke to said that he has a proposition for me. And I have agreed!"
"You did what?" Orlando stood up abruptly.
"I didn't have a choice, Lando! The 'M' said that if I would refuse he would put me back into the madhouse!"
"Oh, darling!" Orlando sat heavily back on the bed embracing Mina again. "Fuck it all, we'll pack and leave, we will be far away by tomorrow."
"No, I have to do this. I have to!" Mina shook her head. "This is terrible but I have to do this!"
"Ok, let's start from the beginning. What do they want from you and why? And what is so terrible that you have to do it?"
"Terrorists! Terrorists from the Islamic State!" Mina reached for the bag and took out everything.
"Slowly and from the beginning, darling."
"I am to become the new 'M'. Everything has been already arranged, I have all the documents here." Mina gave Orlando the grey envelope.
"Did he say why he wants you to replace him?" Orlando asked while looking through the documents. They looked legit, but then again they were made in the same place as the real ones.
"He is retiring for some health issues and he leaves soon. He said that he picked me because my expertise is what the Agency needs now." Mina took a deep breath to calm down. "This is terrible." She handed Orlando two yellow folders. "These two men worked in the MI6 archives before they somehow became recruited by the IS and became Jihadists."
"Oh fuck!" Orlando quickly skimmed through both folders. "This is bad. Imagine what kind of information they had access to!"
"Nothing recent. They worked in one of the historical sections of the archives, the one containing files from before 1914."
"Our own sentiments aside, I take that this is bad news?" Orlando gave Mina suspicious look. In most cases such old documents could be only fascinating to historians or history enthusiasts, but Mina's tone of voice suggested that there was more.
"Before they have escaped, they managed to steal some documents. No one really knows what exactly was in them because that was part of the archive no one really took interest in any more. They were able to tell that some of these documents were not created in England and that the oldest could date back to before the Industrial Revolution."
"There could be anything in there."
"Yes." Mina nodded. "After they have escape they laid low for few weeks. 'M' assumes that they were studying the documents they have stolen. And last week they have re-surfaced, they are travelling across Europe, probably searching for something."
"If they're crossing Europe then how it is our problem. Let European governments to deal with them." Orlando shrugged.
"Our government considers them traitors and agreed to deal with them by our own means." Mina clenched her fists.
"Not to mention our big wigs would hate for other countries to learn just what kind of documents we're having in our archives." Orlando added. "So, this is basically a man hunt?"
"I am to assemble a new League and send them after these two Jihadists and then oversee complete and throughout clearing of the archives. Any historical document I will find hazardous I am to lock in special sub-section that only 'M' will have access to."
"That doesn't seem like much of a challenge, but knowing life you will have your hands full. And on top of that you will have to perform all the regular duties of an 'M'. That's a lot."
"Yes. But don't you see?" Mina's eyes sparkled. "I will have complete and legal access to the archives! That includes our files! I can remove us from these files! I can erase us from official documents and we will be finally completely free! We won't be 'unpersons' or 'question marks' anymore because there will be no us!"
"That is risky. You know you just can't erase the League from existence without anyone noticing. There must be mentions of us in different agencies' archives." Orlando's eyebrows furrowed in thought. "Tricky but perhaps worth the try?"
"I will just make sure that the documents are straightened so that we were just typical agents that were merely delegated to some extraordinary tasks. I will remove completely results of Campion Bond's medical tests on Hyde. I will remove any descriptions of us, any photographs so no one ever will know how we really looked like." Mina gestured to her scarf. "And all that while stopping the Jihadists!"
"Hmm. Don't destroy the files about us, bring them home. We will give them to Prospero next time we will have the chance to. He was the one to assemble the League for the first time; I think he'd appreciate having them." Orlando decided. "Now, having this settled, back to the Jihadists and the team."
"I was given this." Mina presented the fat, white binder. "This is called 'White Dossier'. It contains profiles of numerous 'Extraordinary Gentlemen and Gentlewomen' as 'M' has put it. I am to pick a team from them."
"A team." Orlando opened the binder. "Let's see what we have here. Nice menagerie." She began to leaf through the contents. "That looks like a puzzle box, not a person."
"Let me see…" Mina took a closer look at the page. It did have a picture of a richly ornamented cube. "Lemarchand Box." She read. "A means to summon Cenobites, a fraternity of demonic entities that once were humans. In order to summon them you require to achieve a Configuration with use of the puzzle box. It is dangerous, for Cenobites claim the prize in form of the one who solves the puzzle yet it is possible to avoid being taken by means of striking a deal or presenting circumstances of greater matter that the Cenobites will consider imperative enough to require their immediate attention and thus justify summoning them." Mina quickly gulped, that sounded dangerous. "Upon opening a box a single Cenobite or group of them called 'Gash' will arrive. On following page is instruction of achieving so called 'Lament Configuration' that most often summons 'Vasa Inquitatis', there in their ranks are two Cenobites that are possible candidates, their names are: Xipe Totec1) and Mictlantecutli2)."
"I think not." Orlando glanced at the page, turned it and then studied drawings of the two aforementioned Cenobites. "That seems too much of BDSM to me."
"Well, look at this guy, Peloquin3), that one looks more than just Extraordinary." Mina showed a blurry photograph of a man with what seemed like flagellums on his head and large mouth filled with sharp teeth.
"Yeah, and look at those teeth. How about someone less prone to bite?"
"Ghostrider… Yauja4)… Deadpool… Foolkiller… Witchblade… Snake Eyes…" Mina read few names from random pages.
"Most of these names mean nothing to me." Orlando slammed the binder shut. "This requires some throughout lecture. Let's eat a dinner first and then sit down and see what we have there."
"Sounds like good idea." Mina agreed. "This looks like time consuming lecture and I'm famished."
1) Xipe Totec is a name that younger Cenobites gave to one that is commonly known as Pinhead. In life he was known as Captain Elliott Spenser, though it would seem that he is far older entity than that. Call it a paradox.
2) Also known as the Chatterer (the first and original one). He was killed in the movies but he was supposedly resurrected since then by the same means that Frank Cotton was resurrected in the first Hellraiser movie.
3) Nightbreed. Clive Barker again.
4) Commonly known as the Predator.
Since while LoEG fic, the LoEG is in itself a crossover, so do not worry if you won't be familiar with any of the characters, if the need will arise it will be explain and if you will have any additional questions or something won't be clear, you can also contact me and ask and I will answer you to the best of my abilities.
