Cloning Evolution —Bone White Butterfly
Magneto won. Years later, the last bit of X-resistance brings back the old team (& others) through cloning. The DNA's identical, but that's about it. A "playah" Rogue, a Wolverine w/o claws…a walking Xavier w/ hair! & they're all teenagers...God help the bad guys
Erm, hi. This isn't the first time me and X: Evo have crossed paths, though it's the first fiction you'll see from me. A 250 character summary doesn't suit my stories well, doesn't do them justice at all, so here's a second crack at it: The last time we saw the X-Men, they were happy, alive, and united—had a big family photo to prove it—but soon that all changed. Magneto came back (St. John was ticked, I know), restarted his war, and eventually won. By the end of this period, the X-Men have been torn apart, quite a few are dead, and (as you'll notice) are rather depressed. The most unlikely mutants ended up on Magneto's side, and the rest…turned up dead. Or so they think. Two have actually survived, and they're pulling a desperate recruitment gamble by cloning the most powerful mutants from the past. It works. Round Two is about to begin.
And, question: Is this fic really rated T, or have I finally crossed the threshold of "maturity" into M? I don't know. This new rating thing confuses me…and I can't remember what I was okay with reading when I was 13. So what is it? T or M?
(Insert witty disclaimer stating "BWB didn't create X-Men, etc. / won't accept money for it…unless they insist" here)
X X X
Cloning Evolution
Step 1: Take away the Mystique
X X X
Jean leaned forward, her folded arms propped up on the balcony rail as she stared out at the bay. The mansion on the wooded cliff by the sea had been her home and refuge for most of her life. The world changed—she changed—but the old mansion and the waves crashing in below remained the same. She would come here, sometimes, when it felt like the changes were too hard to bear, and watch the waves roll in, each the same as the one before.
She found herself moping on that balcony far too often lately.
The wind picked up, tugging uselessly at the strands of hair in her tight bun. The lenses of her glasses shivered in their frames, and she closed her eyes. Bit by bit, she shut her mind to the outside world, silencing the voices, until she could only hear the tumult of the waves against the rocks below. How long? she asked no one but herself. How long?
Kurt would pray. The Cajun placed his faith in Lady Luck and then calculated the odds anyway. Scott would say 'Let it come' in his stoic way. Though more rebelliously, Logan would say the same. The two were much alike, though they would kill each other before they admitted it.
Jean herself was a believer in inevitability. A wave started somewhere in the middle of the ocean, and once it got started it wouldn't stop until it touched the shore. So she never asked if, only when. How long?
The war had been the won—and lost; Magneto's wave had crashed in. Now they were in a relative state of peace as the water quietly flowed in and out, but how long? How long until the next wave hit and the world changed again? And would she change? Would she switch sides and stay afloat by riding the next wave, as she had abandoned Xavier's dying cause for Magneto's victory? Or would the inevitable catch up with her and drag her down in the undertow? It was bound to happen eventually, but when?
How long did she have? She sighed and swept her gaze across the water. For years now she had been plagued by the feeling that her fate was somehow tied up in those waves. Why? One day she would learn the answer, she knew.
But hopefully not today.
X X X
The sun shone down on the sea, and the wind breathed upon it, and together they made it seem a rippling sheet of gold. Beneath the flowing surface, the water glowed the same cerulean blue as the sky, only so much more vibrantly. And then, descending through the depths, darkness crept in bit by bit. Invisible to any onlooker from above, a small, remote control sub chugged through the murky gloom, illuminating the world about it with a beam of light.
It wound around the cliff slowly, searching among the rocks for some thing, a treasure that had long since been forgotten. The light swept over a crevice, passing right by. Then it paused and swung back to the forbidding dark fissure in the cliff wall. Narrowing, the beam lanced into the crevice, starting at the top and working down. There, a tad higher than the light's source, something was illuminated. Wedged into the crack was a marble white arm, broken off from some exquisite statue. Time and less than perfect conditions had eroded it away some, but the more prominent creases in the outstretched hand were still visible.
A thousand miles away, a woman stared at a video recording of the same hand as it reaching out desperately for her. She averted her eyes. "That's it," she sighed. "Have tha mini-sub bring it back here so we can get this over with." She turned to leave, but a large clawed hand caught at her sleeve.
"We must be sure, my dear. It would be most unfortunate if that turned out only to be a broken piece of some garden statue the Xavier family threw into the sea."
She looked back at the image of the arm. "Do you see how tha joints in tha hand are a little knobby, the nails long and pointed?" she asked. "Looks like it belongs tah a monster." She tucked a lock of white hair behind her ear. "Believe me, Hank. It's hers."
He released her. "Thank you Rogue." As she exited the dim room, he took hold of a control panel with his own bestial hands, carefully bringing out a few mechanical arms and removing the arm from the crevice it had been jammed in for years. The priceless treasure was soon tucked away within the miniature sub. Obeying the command to return home, the little machine activated its small engines and sped away from the lonely cliff.
He smiled, baring an impressive set of fangs to no one in particular. What little light there was in the room reflected off his round bifocals. Chuckling, he mused, "I do believe I feel a change in the wind."
X X X
Jean glanced down at the waves sharply, sensing something was amiss.
"Pr…Professor?"
She turned towards the source of the shaky voice. A girl stood by the entrance to the balcony, clinging to the doorframe. She was a young thing, young enough that she might still turn out to be a mutant, though the odds were stacked against her on that. She was also young enough to stare at a mutant with respect. It wasn't so long ago that children were raised to hate the Homo superior. Things had changed since then.
"Yes?" Jean asked of the girl.
"Something hap…it's…it's Mr. Grey, Professor!" the girl blurted, frightened.
Frowning, Jean opened her mind and reached for her husband. Her eyes widened, as her vision was suddenly flooded with red –too much red. She could see splashes of crimson mixed in with the ruby.
"Call the medics," she heard herself saying as she rushed back into the mansion with the girl at her heels. "Tell them Cyclops had another episode. Then run back to the library with some towels. Go!" They went in separate directions. She stalked through the library's glass door and took the scrapbook from her husband's lap. It was the source of the problem. She didn't pause to look at the picture it was open to. She didn't need to. It was always the same one.
The X-Men had gathered before the steps of the mansion, even pulling former teammates and allies in for the snapshot. She and Scott had stood directly behind Xavier, smiling in each other's arms. They had all been so happy to be alive then, and it had showed. Hands had reached out and clasped throughout the picture, shoulders mingled. They were one cohesive whole, and nothing could pull them apart.
Or so they had thought.
She knelt and cradled Scott's head in her hands, letting her mind stop the blood flow. He sat on the floor, slumped against a bookcase. He shivered as her skin glowed, growing hot, and his wounds suddenly cauterized. She stared into his eyes: two orbs of ruby red behind sorrow twisted eyelids. As always, there were no tears.
She didn't break eye contact with him for a minute, not when the girl stumbled in with a mountain of towels in her arms, not when a medic arrived with the right drugs and an IV blood pack. B-. She girl she asked to start cleaning up if her stomach could take it. The medic knew what to do, and they moved Scott into the bedroom together as she stared into his eyes.
As he lay in bed, she held his hand waiting for the drugs to take hold of him, thinking about inevitability. When? How long? How long could she hold it off? His eyes seemed to say one thing: 'Let it come.'
After a time, she left him to his slumber with a part of her mind firmly lodged in his thoughts. A precaution she should have used earlier that day. Back in the library, she told the girl to go home and ignored the mess as she picked up the scrapbook and found a seat in an armchair. In the group shot, she studied the smiling face of Professor Charles Xavier. It was one of the few pictures left of him. In fact, all traces of her teacher and second father were slowly disappearing, bit by bit. The mansion wouldn't be torn down. It was her home; she would let it. But it seemed that in a few years, the mansion and this picture of an old man lost in a crowd of young faces would be the only proof that he had ever existed.
Besides the memories.
She sighed. That was why Scott hoarded away the picture: to remember a time when Scott Summers and Jean Gray had stood arm in arm behind Charles Xavier, each with a hand resting firmly on one of his noble shoulders. She shut the book with a decisive snap, and then stared out the window at the waves.
X X X
The arm lay on a sterile tray in the lab. Sighing, Rogue stood at a sink, scrubbing her hands, as Dr. McCoy readied his instruments. As she worked, she stared down at the suds on her hands, wondering if what they had planned for months was really a good idea.
Hank, picking up on her distress, assured her, "It will work fine, my dear. It's not like I haven't done this before." He had picked up on her distress, but his diagnose of the cause was completely off.
"There's a difference between replicatin' dead bodies'n'dogs, and remakin' a person who can hop off tha examining table an' bitch slap yah," she sighed. It was what he thought she'd say, not what was bothering her. She glanced at the lily-white arm. Blindly, it reached out for someone in desperation and hope, for someone who had walked away a long time ago.
"There's less difference between a bloodhound and a human being then you think," he responded pulling on surgical gloves. She would kill for a pair of those. "And besides, we chose her to be the first for a reason. If some goes wrong, her cells will adjust to fix the problem." He gestured to the arm, saying, "I'm ready."
She wasn't, but she dried her hands and shuffled up to the tray. Hesitantly, she reached out and paused, her fingertips hovering above the petrified forearm. She sighed and flinched back, curling her hand into a fist.
"Goddamn it, Rogue!" Hank growled and grabbed her, plunging her hand down onto the arm. She gasped and fell limp against his broad chest. Spreading from the point of contact, the arm turned from white marble to soft, blue flesh. It spasmed, and the monstrous hand lashed out, latching onto Rogue's wrist. A half gasp, half scream escaped from the woman's throat as Hank, with some effort, reached forward and pried the arm off her. Once detached, the arm fell completely limp in his grasp. He laid it back down on the tray. Blood, fresh as the day it was made, oozed from the end of the limb.
"Thank you, Rogue," he said genially. The sarcasm in his voice was incredibly subtle, but as hurtful as jamming a tiny needle through her eye.
Resolutely, she grabbed up a surgical glove, donned it, and slapped him across his hairy face. He fell to the floor. Stalking away, she tore off the glove and threw it in a container marked "hazardous waste." She slammed the door to the lab behind her and looked left and right down the long hallway, thinking where the closest sink was. When she found it, she was going to scour her hands with anti-bacterial, straight up to the elbow, straight down to the bone.
X X X
Months later, Rogue found herself peering through the observation glass at a sleeping child. What muscle the girl had was stringy and wrapped up in thin, rubbery blue limbs. She curled into herself, surrounded by an array of tubes and stainless steel machinery suspended in a golden liquid. Her red hair, long as all hell, floated around her face. It was an angel's face, made up in the colors of a demon.
Slowly, the child opened a golden eye and stared at her visitor. Curiosity emblazoned itself on her face, and she shifted forward. Her hand reached out towards Rogue. The joints were slightly knobby, the fingernails long. Rogue looked away, but she couldn't help but glance back.
The child's eyes flitted rapidly between her own arms and Rogue's folded ones. Her eyes narrowed to slits, and, unsteadily, her forearms changed color up to the wrist, fuzzily replicating the woman's green sweater. Her hands changed, turning from blue to black, pretending to be gloves. She awkwardly folded her arms as well. An anxious, unpracticed smile lit upon her face as she looked to Rogue for approval.
Rogue smiled and nodded slightly.
The child's face was ecstatic, then the expression fell away as dark liquid flowed through the tubes impaling her midriff. Her arms changed back to midnight blue. Rogue frowned. Hank was putting her though another growth spurt. She was still too thin from the last one.
She watched as the girl's eyes rolled skywards, her neck craning, before the drugs took hold and her body went completely slack. Does it hurt? she wondered, as she watched. Does she blame us for it, or does she think this is a normal life?" Sighing, she turned and walked away.
X X X
Later, the girl woke later to the sounds of classical music and a woman's voice patiently running through a list of vocabulary. A television screen had come down, and on it, images flashed by. Weak, but hungry to learn, she stared into the screen as the watery voice named them in a soothing tone. 'Duck. Flower. Baby. Knife. Gun. Bomb. Poison.'
She blinked at one certain picture. That woman with blue skin and red hair was in it, her face contorted and cruel. She held a smoking gun in one hand. Various weapons lay scattered at her feet.
When this image came up, the voice in the water called it, 'You. Mystique.'
She understood that concept. When the voice said 'you,' it was talking about her. She stared at the picture, at that dangerous, terrifying monster of a woman and thought, 'Mystique. Me.'
oookay… Yes, I'm deranged, dying of heat exhaustion in Wisconsin of all places, and very bored. You read this thing; what's your excuse? Anyway, that's the 1st chapter. If you feel like reviewing, tell me if this fiction should be rated T or M. I really have no clue.
Bye-bye!