To save a Rogue
By: C.D. Lamarr
May 24, 2008
Chapter VII
"She'd done it!"
Storm stares into the View Screen through the maelstrom as the blue skinned Mutant hurled Wolverine into Rogue and triggered the Imprinting. Storm grimaced in concert with her friend—with Wolverine as he gasped from the shock of physical contact. As the shockwave rolls across him like a Mack truck he groaned and convulsed, his big brown eyes rolling up in his like window shades as the Imprint latched onto his system like a lamprey and begins sucking power!
Whenever a person accidentally touches live wires the instinctive reaction is to instantly break contact by pulling away. Which merely amplifies the process—the wave of electric current latching on tighter, sticking its victim fast like metal to magnet.
With Rogue and Logan the result was pretty much the same.
When Marie tried pushing him away the wave spiked, surged, and accelerated so much so that it began to hack into the Feral's Central Nervous System!
Logan's power flows out in wave on wave!
And Rogue's mouth forms an 'O' of astonishment as thoughts and memories that not even Logan could recall—memories that had been locked away even from him in a part of his brain he'd been unable to access for years—now began to flow into Rogue!
Flashes—imagery too awful—memories too horrible for words began to flood in, in torrents!
"Oh good god!"
From outside Xavier mentally shuddered at the imagery that flowed both ways!
Flashes: Bright lights, oxygen mask, stasis fluid—a teenage boy submerged!
More Imagery: Doctors, doctor's aides, dressed in surgical gowns—gloved and masked!
"………..but we must be careful William! We don't want to infect him!"
"Why not? The whole world's been infected with this scum!"
"Wait! Aren't we going to sedate him?"
"For what?"
"William…..you can'……….
"Let's proceed gentlemen!"
"But surely you don't want him…….
"To feel it?"
A dry chuckle.
"Actually—I do."
More horror: Surgical needles longer than any she'd ever seen! Bone saws, hack saws, drills for boring through cartilage and bone! A container filled with a molten, silvery liquid that Rogue instantly recognized from the information that flooded inside her and made her want to die in that instant!
Her own bones ached and burned in the aftermath as the sensation of molten liquid burned into her consciousness in the manner it had burned its way through Logan's entire skeletal system! The boy's consciousness during the whole of it made the process all the more terrible!
The smell of metal!
The feel of it inside of her—through her entire body—like the foreign object that her body attempted repeatedly to reject but, gradually accepted and the horrible feelings and sensations that went with it! The fever, the nausea, the suffering as her body tried again and again to expel the leaden adamantium now apart of her! The months of struggle and discomfort before her body finally accepted the foreign substance, when finally it had bonded with and imprinted itself onto her DNA—all of which is compressed into the minutes that it takes for the absorption to complete so that she swayed and nearly feinted dead away when the Imprinting was completed!
Its uncontrollable nature notwithstanding, this effect in particular was one of the main reasons why Rogue hated her power! Any experience had by an Imprintee—no matter how brutal—whenever she touched another person those experiences came alive inside of her and it was as though she'd lived it herself!
And that man—Stryker?
Yeah that was it—William Stryker!
The smug look on his face during the whole of the process—oh how she wanted to wipe it off in a way he'd never forget! The monster had not allowed any anesthetics to be used during the operation—hadn't even allowed for any neural suppressors to deaden the pain! He'd wanted Logan to feel every ache, to feel the fire that had burned through every nerve in his body and made him wish he were dead!
The sadistic little man had enjoyed every scream, every plea for mercy, the look of hurt, the look of helplessness in the young boy's eyes, the sense of betrayal the boy felt that had degraded, demoralized, and desensitized him and changed him into the mindless creature of rage he'd become and was until he'd met Charles Xavier! The monster had derived a horrible enjoyment from it all and had actually been surprised when Logan—when he could move again—had retaliated! Had actually been enraged and insulted when he had escaped!
All this Rogue saw in an instant in the flashes of memory that swept in rapid succession across her thoughts! Fortunately she realizes as Wolverine's power bonds with and stores itself within her DNA that the rage and helplessness welling up inside her was merely a reflection of what Logan had felt on the day he became the Wolverine!
Rogue had imprinted Wolverine's power only once before and it was about as ungovernable now as it was back whenever she'd accidentally touched him the first time! The Professor had been mentally monitoring the process and with good reason!
Logan was a Level 5 Mutant.
Rogue now had his powers and mind minus his control (or what might pass for him as control). The feeling that he could whip the whole world and dare them to do anything about it, which generally characterized many of Wolverine's actions might not be the best mindset to have right now in view of the fact that she also possessed Lance's powers, Pietro's, and Blob's!
She just might try to do that!
Charles was an expert at multi-tasking.
Mentally holding the entire police force at bay, shooting a suggestion now and then to Mystique who was just vain enough to believe herself completely impervious to his power, bolstering the talents of some of his students—mentally showing them new ways of using their powers in order to defeat the brotherhood of Mutants, casting a thought wave to Jean that resulted in subduing Wanda's and taking her out of the contest, were just a few examples of the man's extraordinary talents—all this while trying to come to the aid of a young girl on the cusp of Acceleration (a dangerous process for Mutants) and that for a mutant potentially more powerful than he was (probably a Level 7 by the time this was over)!
Erik—suspicious and jealous of anyone he considered a threat or a rival (Von Doom for example)—and who'd had the vanity to proclaim himself the most powerful of all the Mutants—would probably have stood back and done nothing to aid Rogue but would have left her to her fate. He would pronounce Charles the greatest fool on earth for trying to save her! But save her he would!
In view of the provocation she was under, the Frontal Lobe—responsible for impulse control—had to be stimulated beyond its normal capacity producing a calming effect that would protect her—at least for the present—and everyone else from any explosions of temper that might result in the unleashing of all those powers!
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Her timing could not have been better!
With a sudden twist and surge of her power the Shape Shifter morphed out of Wolverine's powerful grasp and steps back away from him! Wolverine's left hand whips out with astonishing speed in a chop that would have snapped a steel pipe in half, but Mystique was infuriatingly agile—almost as agile as he was! With one fluid movement she side steps the chop! And with a strength that belies her slender frame and build, she lifts him from the ground twisting around in a one handed jujitsu and flips him through the air end over end—right into Rogue!
Rogue, had just withdrawn her hand from off Blob—who goes down with a gasps and crash that shakes the ground—when she senses the sudden stirring in the air behind her! Mistaking it for Toad she whirls to intercept him—palm extended outward!
When her vision became suddenly filled with the hulking form of Wolverine!
His eyes wide and so did Rogues!
With a gasp she tried to warn him off!
Wolverine tried while still in the air to pivot away from her!
He might as well have reached out and hugged the girl himself for all the good it did!
He plows into Rogue hard!
Wolverine—tall, powerfully built—weighing in at 300 lbs of sheer muscle without an ounce of fat! Under ordinary circumstances Rogue might have had the life crushed out of her on the spot. But she had just imprinted Blob's immoveable inertia!
That in itself might not have done the mischief if Rogue had had time to react, but the several seconds needed for her to respond properly to the situation were seconds she simply didn't have. Her body required several moments to assimilate the powers she borrowed—particularly if she pulled a long term dose!
But she'd ripped enough of it off of Blob so that when Wolverine crashed into her the impact was damaging only to him! Rogues molecular structure instantly began to rearrange itself solidifying her frame and making it immoveable as stone!
The absorption kicked in the instant they came together!
Rogue in her haste to break contact inadvertently accelerated the process so that in about three quick flashes Wolverine with a gasp and a groan lay stretched insensible on the ground!
Mystique smirked with a good deal of pleasure at what was undoubtedly a brutal exchange! She watched the Transference enjoying every agony with sardonic glee! But she couldn't enjoy herself too much! Jean was present. Although her morphing ability shielded her from most forms of telepathy there were still times when her mental shields failed. She couldn't risk Jean accidentally picking up on something that might give her away!
Never would she let it be known that she'd actually helped the X-Men!
She had a reputation to maintain!