Previously, in Astonishing X-Men...
Dr. Kavita Rao, a world-renowned geneticist, has claimed to have developed a cure to the mutant 'disease'. The mutant community is up in arms, but even among the X-Men, opinions are divided. Some, Hank McCoy included, are seriously considering taking this cure. But when Beast obtains a sample from Dr Rao, he discovers the DNA of one of their own imbedded in its chemical structure.
The X-Men decide that it's time to pay a visit to Benetech Labs.
Outside of Benetech Labs, those lining up for the cure would have barely heard the sound of the sleek, black aircraft that soared overhead. It was only just visible against the gradually darkening sky and the tiny flecks of the light from the stars that were slowly coming out of hiding. It's uncanny speed and design gave it away easily enough for those who knew it, the Blackbird X-Jet belonging to no other than the X-Men themselves. It was dead set on its destination, soaring over New York and crowds of protestors waving all sorts of demeaning and disrespectful signs at those lined up at the gates.
Inside the jet, Cyclops was in the pilot seat with Emma Frost at his left in the spot of the co-pilot. Huddled close behind them were Wolverine, Beast, and Shadowcat.
"Okay," Cyclops started, flipping a number of switches on the jet's controls to activate the advanced cloaking system as the aircraft began to slow. They were nearing their destination, and quickly at that. "Remember what I told you before we left. Our intel tells us these people might be using mutants for tissue samples. We're not here to engage anyone, this is a recon mission only. We're scoping it out and getting the hell back home."
The jet came to a full stop, using the light cloud cover to idle over the compound's main building, which was still glowing with yellow light from the multitude of windows that covered it, despite the hour. Scott smacked the button on his chest that unfastened his harness from around him and withdrew the straps back into his seat. He turned to look at his team, "Beast?"
The blue, furry X-Men gave a nod with his grunt of acknowledgement before he spoke, "From what I've found, the security mainframe should be located in the basement. Shadowcat, do you think you can get down there and shut it down without setting anything off? That will give the rest of us a chance to explore."
"I can try," the brunette nodded, determined.
Kitty could feel the molecules in the floor squeezing between the ones that made up her own physiology, pushing past them like that one too-eager child in the school hallways who bumped into everyone, disrupting conversations and knocking books out of hands on their way. It was not a feeling she was used to when she phased. Somehow, this felt more effortful, the molecules of the floor more resistant, as if they did not want to let her past without a struggle. Even more troubling was the fact that there didn't seem to be an end to the strange metal.
She just kept going down and down and down, using up the air in her lungs and wondering how long she could push on before she would have to give up and go back up, wondering if maybe she should change directions, wondering if there could even be anything useful below so much metal.
She was just about at her limit when her feet fell through into mercifully empty space. She withdraw them quickly and twisted her body around to poke her head out first instead. She did a quick survey of the area, not daring to breathe yet. Only once she had guaranteed that it was free of guards did she let herself gently down.
She was in a hallway bathed in red light, and though her body tingled all over in such a way that made her worry if the metal had done any permanent damage, she forced herself to pick a direction and start walking.
The place was a maze of weirdly sloping walls and footsteps and muffled voices that seemed to echo endlessly. She moved towards what she thought was the source of those voices, stopped before she could round the corner, and listened.
"Alpha team reports hostiles upstairs. They have them contained and there is no sign of a breach, but we're on alert just in case."
'That would explain the lights,' Kitty nodded to herself, biting her lip to see if the soldiers would say anymore about her teammates upstairs. She wasn't so much worried for them as she was for this "Alpha team", though whether the threat came more from Logan's claws or Emma's tongue, she could not say.
"No one gets near the subject."
'So Hank was right. They are using mutant samples. And from only one mutant, by the sound it.'
She hadn't felt Emma's presence in her mind since she had entered the lower levels, and Kitty guessed that her telepathy could not breach the metal she had phased through. That meant she had no way to call in what she had heard. She was acting alone.
Steeling herself, Kitty took a deep breath and struck across the hall, straight past the junction where the guards had stopped to chat. A sturdy-looking door met her almost immediately. She phased her hand through the lock, fiddled with the mechanism until she felt it click into place, then eased the sides apart.
Of course, they grated against the ground and instantly alerted the guards to her presence.
"We have a hostile!"
"Drop her! Drop her!"
Shadowcat was intangible before they could begin firing. She twisted towards them, ready to fight, when a sudden flare of blue in the otherwise pitch black space she had revealed caught her eye.
Her heart hammering in her chest for reasons other than being shot at, she turned. Standing in front of her, bathed in the red light from the hallway while only darkness loomed behind her, was a very familiar and supposed-to-be-dead blonde, towering at least half a foot taller than her and looking straight ahead. Kitty would know that face anywhere—Illyana Rasputin, or someone who looked disturbingly just like her.
Though Kitty's own eyes had gone wide in shock, it was almost as though Illyana was staring right through her, like the bright blue glow radiating from her eyes was somehow hindering her from seeing Kitty standing right there. The shock on the brunette's face didn't go away when Illyana ran throughher, her silver Eldritch armor forming over her left arm as she raised it to her face to protect herself from the barrage of bullets flying at her.
The men didn't budge even as she gained on them, standing their ground and firing their weapons like it was their only hope. With the cold, merciless expression etched into Illyana's young features, it very well might have been.
She grabbed the first man by his gun, deftly twisting it from his grip and disarming him. She slammed the butt of it against his head as the man next to him opened fire on her. The bullets deflected off some sort of mystical shield, invisible until it was hit by the pellets of hot lead which caused it to light up in a show of little runes of various shapes. Illyana grabbed the man by his face, her armored fingers digging into his skin and making him cry out in pain while she slammed the side of her other hand into another one of the guards' throats.
"Illyana!" Kitty cried out, watching as the sorceress slammed the man she was holding against the wall so hard that he slid down it and crumpled about her bare feet in a heaped, unconscious mass. Unconcerned for his condition, the blonde then turned on her next, and last, victim. The other man had already dropped his gun and run for it, abandoning his teammates without a second thought.
"Illyana, stop! Stop it!" she shouted again, her legs carrying her towards her long lost friend, prepared to rip her away from the remaining man.
Fortunately, Illyana seemed to come to her senses before she could do any permanent damage. The man dropped to the floor and hastily scuttled backwards on his hands and knees, staring up at the woman who had almost ended his life with wide, terrified eyes.
Kitty was a little scared herself.
"Yana?" she started, warily reaching out to put her hand on the other woman's shoulder. The glow in Illyana's eyes dissipated, leaving her with her normal, sky blue eyes that hid away years worth of pain and suffering, years of innocence lost after trying so hard to hold on to it, years of hoping that maybe, just maybe, holding on to what was left of it wasn't a lost cause. As she turned, the armor seemed to fold into itself as it retracted down her arm so that by the time she was facing Kitty, it was gone.
"Katya? I—" Illyana spoke softly, her disbelief giving way to sadness, and that sadness gave way to...relief? A strangled breath escaped her lips as she dropped to her knees, head bowed, "By the Dark Lords..."
She raised her gaze again, eyes full of tears—full of hope. Illyana reached up, fingers hesitantly touching Kitty's sides as if to check if she were real, if she was actually there. A relieved huff of breath later she was wrapping her arms around the brunette and burying her face against her abdomen, "Is it...is it over, Katya? Am I finally dead?"
"You're alive," Kitty breathed, more to herself at first than to reassure the blonde. Tentatively, she let her arms come to rest on the top of Magik's head, then let her fingers slide down into those familiar, golden locks. She could feel Illyana's mostly naked chest quivering against her legs, could feel her hands convulsing where they rested on her waist, and hot tears welling in her own eyes.
"You're alive," she said again, louder this time and with a brief, astonished laugh. "Oh my God, Yana. You're alive."
"I never died," Illyana's voice was quiet, a clear sadness hanging off her words as she leaned into the comfort of Kitty's touch. She tightened her arms around the other mutant's waist, forehead pressing against her mid-section as the long-held tears finally fell down her cheeks.
At that, Kitty slid her hands around to her jaw instead, cupping it gently in her hands and guiding the blonde to tilt her head up to meet her gaze. She brushed her disheveled, overgrown bangs out of her eyes, "No... Yana, y-you died when Limbo invaded New York. You were fighting in the city and you just... disappeared. Piotr found your armor and... I got your Soulsword. You were dead."
Kitty's voice broke on the last word, and she quickly averted her eyes, dashing away the tears that had gathered there with the back of her hand. Abruptly, she dropped her hand from Illyana's cheek and stepped back, breaking out of her hold. "It's been years!" she cried, almost accusingly, as if Illyana could truly be to blame for everything that had transpired since then. One of Kitty's hands slapped over her mouth while the other wrapped around her midsection as if she needed it to hold herself together.
Illyana slowly sat back onto her haunches, her arms out in front of her with her fingers splayed, looking at them like she'd lost a part of herself when the brunette left her grasp. She swallowed hard, shaking her head, "No, I...I didn't die, Katya."
She never broke eye contact with the other mutant even as she racked through her weak, tired mind for the best way to explain what had really happened. She pushed one of her hands through her hair, holding it to her head as she took a deep breath, "I saved New York. I got rid of those stupid demons, but I had to use everything to do it and there was nothing left after I closed the portal behind me when I went back to Limbo. Most of it's fuzzy after that, but I know I wasn't dead. I was just...I was weak, I couldn't even use my powers to get myself back. I had to pull myself back together even when I didn't know what that even meant anymore."
Illyana dropped her hand from her head, instead folding both of them in her lap and dropping her gaze to look at them, "I spent so long just wandering in Limbo, trying to find my way but...every time I thought I'd found it, it was just another illusion or a trick my mind was playing on me. I didn't think I was ever going to get out."
She finished her explanation, confusing as it was, with Kitty still standing, staring down at her with tears swimming in her eyes. "It's been years, Yana," she choked out, "I thought you were dead. We all thought you were dead. There was a funeral! And the whole time you were just... How did you get here? How do I know you're even my Illyana? That you're not just some clone with a crazy story about how you miraculously survived? I knew you! When you were six years old I used to read you bedtime stories and braid your hair. I would have known if you were alive!"
"Katya," Illyana tried, unable to decide what she was more distressed over. The fact that she couldn't prove to her best friend that she was her Illyana, or the fact that she had been gone so long that she had to. She swallowed hard, her fingernails anxiously scratching at her cold, bare legs, "Do you remember the Bermuda Triangle? The place where I was first taken to Limbo as a child?"
Kitty shook her head, "That doesn't prove anything. Everyone knows that. It's in your file."
"Stop," the blonde pleaded, her voice cracking and forcing her to stop talking for a moment. She took in a shaky breath and let it out just the same, "Please...just listen."
Illyana closed her eyes, collecting herself before she lifted her gaze again to meet Kitty's. She'd always been told that wandering and shifty eyes meant dishonesty, and this time she was being anything but, "The dimensional wall between Limbo and Earth is still very thin there. When I was travelling, lost in Limbo, I...I don't know if I stumbled through or if I fell into one of Limbo's stepping discs, but I ended up back there. Right where I went in the first time, Katya. The same place you pulled me out."
Magik couldn't help it then, bowing her head and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. She grit her teeth tightly, fighting back the anxiety attack that threatened to rattle her. The image of what had happened to her was still very vivid, flashing by her mind's eye like it was taunting her and no matter how often she saw it or how intense it was, it never got easier to handle. Tears in her eyes, she looked back up at Kitty, who was still shaking her head and staring at her like she could not believe a thing she was saying.
"Only this time, you...you weren't there," her voice cracked again, "They found me. They found me and they brought me here."
"Yana," Kitty started, only to bite her lip to cut herself off again. Part of her wanted to continue arguing the point, to keep insisting that the person before her was not her Illyana Rasputin, just some evil copy created to torment them all. Maybe she thought it would have been easier to take out a clone than stand there and listen to a tale where her best friend was tortured again.
But that same best friend was sitting on the floor, looking even more fragile and vulnerable than she had when Kitty had first met her bright and bubbly six-year-old self. As if controlled by some outside force, Shadowcat sunk to her knees and drew the blonde into her chest. Illyana didn't hesitate to return the embrace, wrapping her arms around the X-Man's waist.
"If... If you're just some stupid shapeshifter or some kind of mind trick, I will kill you. And I will make it hurt," she told her firmly, despite the wobble in her lower lip. She pressed her face against the top of Magik's head, her body rocking back and forth ever so slightly as she whispered, "What did they do to you?"
"Tests, I guess. Injections, cutting me open," Illyana told her, voice muffled against Kitty's uniform, "They kept me drugged so I couldn't use my powers to escape. Nothing worse than I've already been through, but...I just...I just want to go home, Katya."
"Okay, okay," Kitty nodded, her cheek rubbing against her best friend's hair as she did so. She pursed her lips slightly, pressed them against the top of the other girl's head, and tightened her arms around her. "I'll take you home."
But neither of them made any effort to get up. Instead, they remained on the ground just as they were, comfortable in each other's long overdue and much needed embrace. Silence had taken over around them, leaving them alone in their own private world until Illyana finally broke the illusion a few minutes later with a soft and sincere, "I've missed you so much."
"Me too," Kitty murmured, resting her chin on top of Magik's head for a while longer until, finally, she pushed herself to her feet, pulling the blonde up with her.
Reluctantly, she stepped away from her, holding up her finger in a silent signal that she should wait. Kitty closed her eyes, her fingers twitching ever so sightly as furrows formed in her brow. After a few moments, Illyana's Soulsword materialized in her grasp.
She opened her eyes, a light blush on her cheeks as she held the weapon out towards it's rightful owner, "Think you can magick yourself up some clothes?"
The grin that grew across Illyana's lips was probably the first one in a very, very long time. She nodded at the brunette as her fingers wrapped around the hilt of the weapon forged from a piece of her own soul, her body feeling strangely re-energized by having it back in her grasp, "Give me a second?"
Magik closed her eyes, muttering something under her breath in a language that was definitely not from Earth and barely coherent at that. As the last uttering left her lips, a swirling cloud of light blue smoke that smelled faintly of burning pine wrapped around her body. It started with her left arm and traveled upwards to her torso where it split. One part went to her right arm while the other twirled around the rest of her body. Then, when it had covered her entirely, it dispersed into nothing more than a light fog and she was left in the same yellow and black uniform she'd worn during her time with the New Mutants.
She held out her arms, Soulsword gripped tightly in her hand still, and examined her work. Illyana looked back to Kitty and grinned, "Yeah?"
"Much better," Kitty grinned back at her, though that smile quickly faded from her face as she glanced back in the direction she had come. "I don't suppose you know another way out of here? My trip down here wasn't very... pleasant."
"I can find a way," Illyana told her as her free hand reached out and grabbed Kitty's, pulling her in closer, "Where are we going?"
"The others are upstairs, uhh, somewhere. I think they got caught. I haven't heard anything from Emma since I got down here," the brunette explained, giving her friend's hand a brief squeeze.
"Emma? I don't remember an Emma. How much has changed since I've been gone?" Illyana asked, scrunching up her nose as the realization dawned on her that she had a lot of catching up to do.
For a second, Kitty just stared at her. Then she laughed. "I'll fill you in later," she promised, "Can you find them?"
"Yup!" Illyana assured her with a nod, "Let's go."
A circle of blue light opened up beneath the girls' feet, glowing eerily in the red-washed hallways. Hands firmly clasped together, Kitty and Illyana sank slowly down into the stepping disc. In a matter of seconds, it had swallowed them completely and left the hallway empty save for the unconscious bodies of the guards.
A few moments later, heavy footfalls revealed a second team of guards before they rounded the corner, weapons up and ready. They halt quickly at the sight of the wide open doorway to the "subject's" room. One of the guards angrily threw his gun at the wall, knowing in that instant that they were too late.
"Dammit! They're gone!"
