by Gouki
Chapter Three
Tourists from Apocalypse
Three refugees from a parallel timeline landed in New York City's Central Park, apparently from out of nowhere. Clarice Ferguson, or Blink to her friends, was the first to land, falling onto her butt next to a bench and scaring a bunch of pigeons that were looking for bread crumbs underneath it. Kyle Gibney, the Wild Child, landed in front of the bench, almost on top of one of the pigeons.
"Ooofff!" Mr. Creed grunted as he landed heavily onto the bench surrounded by the disgruntled pigeons. He shook back his long, unwashed blond hair and scratched his unshaven chin thoughtfully. The pigeons scattered off, squawking angrily at the newcomers before they flew off.
"Yeah, same to you, pal," he said as one of the pigeons pooped on his shoulder as it flew off. He wiped the waste off his shoulder and helped the two younger refugees to their feet.
"Eww, Mister Creed!" Blink whined as she was helped to her feet by a pigeon poop-smeared hand. "That's gross!"
Mr. Creed sniffed his soiled hand experimentally. "Hmm," he muttered thoughtfully, "no toxins, no genetic accelerating' agents, no techno-organic salts, lil' bit o' smog, some digested bread." He turned to Blink. "Aside from smelling' bad, that bird's pretty healthy."
Blink folded her arms across her chest. "Since when do you care about pigeons?"
Mr. Creed tousled her purple hair with his clean hand. "I care since now. 'Sides, if that bird ain't got any genetic toxins or any other garbage in 'im, it's a safe bet to say we're in a good place."
Wild Child looked about the park curiously. He had never seen a park before, and scampered about, wanting to explore.
Blink had also never seen a place like this. The air was cleaner than she was used to. Clearer, too. She could see clouds swirling around in the afternoon sky, fading into and out of the pale blue sky. She looked at the grass beneath her feet in the park, much greener than it should have been. Wasn't grass supposed to be more of a brownish, grayish color? And the air, oh, how sweet the air was! She could actually breathe it without coughing.
Mr. Creed sniffed the air experimentally, using his heightened senses to determine what else was in it.
He sneezed.
"Daffodils," he said with amusement. "They actually have something' here that I'm allergic to that ain't extinct!"
"Daffodils?" echoed Blink. "Where? I don't see any-"
Mr. Creed pointed to a little old lady, about 80 or so, sitting in a bench about ten yards from the one they had landed next to. She was carrying a bouquet of daffodils, humming to her self, and staring off daydreamingly into space. Wild Child looked at the old woman curiously. He had never seen a person that old; on his world, people were lucky to live to be forty-five. He looked from the woman to Mr. Creed, his perplexed features indicating to his master that he was confused.
Mr. Creed laughed. To Blink and Wild Child or anyone else who saw him, Victor Creed looked to be not a day above twenty-five. In truth, he was considerably older. Probably not as old as that lady sitting on the bench ten yards away from them, but certainly older than he appeared. In his late fifties, most likely.
Memory implants and telepathic tamperings with his mind, along with a healing factor that slowed his physical aging to a crawl, made it difficult to say how old Mr. Creed was. He didn't know when he was born, because he could remember at least two different birthday parties during his childhood, one in the summer, and one in autumn, both no doubt the result of implanted memories courtesy of the Weapon X project.
It didn't matter, though. That life was past him.
"Confused, kid?" Mr. Creed asked, as Wild Child scratched behind his right ear. "People must live a lot longer here without an Apocalypse culling out everybody that he deemed 'weak,' huh?"
Blink sat down on the bench and took a deep breath. She was a bit overwhelmed by the city. She had seen Apocalypse Island one time, before she had joined Magneto's X-Men. It was a little bit like this "New York City" that the portal had taken them to, as per Mr. Creed's request, in some ways. It had tall skyscrapers all over it, just like the ones that she could see from the park she was now in, but they were all shattered, burnt out, knocked down, or just plain squashed beneath En Sabah Nur's monstrous citadel. The citadel was absent from this city, but had it been there, the very center of it would have taken place of the park.
A flimsy book rested next to Blink on the bench, its cover just as thin as the pages inside it. Mister Creed had told her about such books once. Magazines, he called them. She picked up the magazine and glanced at it. It had a picture of a green statue on its cover.
Mr. Creed looked over Blink's shoulder at the picture. The statue in it was that of a woman in robes, carrying a book in one hand and holding a burning torch aloft in the other. Blink looked at the picture with wonder.
"Ya know where the Statue of Apocalypse was on Apocalypse Island?" Mr. Creed asked her softly.
Blink turned to Mr. Creed with a sour look on her face. "Yeah," she answered, "I know where it was. It was so ugly, though. Why did you bring up something so horrible?"
Mr. Creed pointed at the picture of the statue on the cover of the magazine Blink was holding.
"That statue of the lady is what's in its place here in this world," he told her.
Wild Child couldn't speak, but he could understand English. He listened as intently, as did Blink, while Mr. Creed explained about the statue. The Statue of Liberty, Mr. Creed had explained, was torn down by Apocalypse in their world when he took over America. Liberty went against all of En Sabah Nur's beliefs, and he replaced the beautiful statue with another one in his likeness. Of course, Blink had heard of the Statue of Liberty before. She had just never actually seen what it looked like.
"Well," Mr. Creed said, "enough about the Statue of Liberty. We better find someplace ta stay, get some chow, an' clean ourselves up a bit."
Wild Child nodded his agreement.
Blink spoke up. "How are we going do that? I mean, we don't have any money, we aren't dressed like anyone else, and we don't even know how people are going to react to us. And we STINK."
She was right, they DID smell pretty ripe, Mr. Creed had decided. The Age of Apocalypse was an era that didn't give people much time to think about soap everyday. All it left time for was to let people fight for their lives. As X-Men, Blink, Wild Child, and Mr. Creed got baths maybe once every few weeks. Even that was more than most got in that hellish world. But it wasn't they never showered, just that the past few days for them gave them other more important things to worry about, like keeping Apocalypse from destroying other realities.
Mr. Creed shook his head. "I dunno, pup," he answered, "but we'd better figure something' out, 'fore we starve."
Before Blink could respond, Mr. Creed was attacked from up above.