Legio Patria Nostra
Author's Note/Disclaimer: I do not own the X-men Evolution franchise or Metallica's song Unforgiven. Legio Patria Nostra means, "the Legion is our country" in French.
~ ~ ~ ~
Prologue:
The Colonial Legion, a special corps within the United Systems Military composed of men of all walks of life. Like the old French Foreign Legion from which it derives many of its ways, it is often the last resort of many unsavory types. This corps of men is known for austerity as well as their loyalty to one another. Their motto, Legio Patria Nostra, underscores this…
~ ~ ~ ~
Conrad Hart sat at the table with his friends at Pizza Hut. His friends were wishing him well for his last night as a civilian. The next morning he would journey to Aubagne, France where he would endeavor to join the Colonial Legion. At least a few of them were.
"You're crazy, Conrad, crazy." Kurt Wagner said.
"The Colonial Legion? Don't you know about their march or die motto?" Jean asked, "If you fall behind on the march they'll leave you there to rot."
"Five years of your life? Are you like totally fried?" Kitty asked.
In all truth, Conrad expected them not to understand at all. He was joining up for very personal reasons. He wanted to get the hell out of Bayville and the Legion was the best way to go about it. Those people at the Institute had been his friends for nearly two years, and to leave them was a very difficult choice, but it was something he had to do.
The DC-2 Dakota dropship flying through the atmosphere of the desert planet of Lacerta jarred him out of his reverie. That had been six months ago, when his friends at the Xavier Institute had tried to talk him out of what to them sounded like an ill-concealed suicide. And it might well be just such a thing; he was a newly designated Colonial Legion paratrooper with the 2nd REP (Regiment Etrangere Parachutists, or the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment) about to drop into the unknown after contact had been lost with the United Systems colony on Lacerta.
The jumpmaster began to hook the paras up to the static line assembly and as the aircraft flew over the town of Wayland, the cargo door opened like the mouth of a great whale. The jumpmaster waved the first section out of the aircraft and then it was Conrad's turn. He quickly zipped a folded and creased photograph back into his pocket as the jumpmaster pushed him out of the aircraft. His parachute opened broadly. He could already see the advance scouts, the Deep Reconnaissance troops and the first section beginning to secure the landing zone.
As he got closer to the ground, Conrad bent his knees, and rolled as he landed on the sandy earth. As he freed himself from his parachute, he quickly turned the safety off of his electric gun and checked if his magazine pouch was in place. It was working properly as Conrad's squad advanced into the village.
On the march Conrad saw nothing but deserted streets, street lamps still on in broad daylight, and an eerie silence. The legionnaires reconnoitered the town, finding no townspeople alive in this port community normally teeming with life. At least not until a resident came staggering drunkenly from a tavern, arms outstretched.
"Alright, that's far enough, freeze." A legionnaire ordered, leveling his Wraith cannon.
"Didn't you hear me!" the legionnaire shouted with a tension laced and nasal Southern accent, Wraith cannon leveled. The woman closed with the legionnaire, the stench of rot emanating in thick waves from her, her hair ratty and her flesh decayed, and chomped down on the legionnaire's forearm.
"Agh!" The legionnaire shouted, firing two rounds into the woman, killing her outright. As the medic ran back to the legionnaire, another newcomer named Lyle Freemont, he heard Freemont say, "That bitch bit me."
Adjutant Montague, a warrant officer with a grim countenance shaped by over fifteen years of service, shouted, "Stay in formation."
More townsfolk came shambling towards them, a stench emanating from them, the stench of the grave. "Freeze!" Lieutenant Rousseau shouted, "Or we open fire."
The zombified townsfolk kept coming, and Conrad tensed his finger on the trigger, the solid-state contact on the end of the electric gun glowing as he prepared to release a storm of voltage into the zombies. "Fire!" Rousseau shouted.
The legionnaire ranks opened fire with well-aimed shots that struck their targets, causing the line of zombies to fall dead. Another group of zombies came bursting from the alleys and buildings at the exposed legionnaires who gunned them down without mercy, unaware that other foes were watching them.
They became aware, when from behind several brutally muscled green skinned humanoids burst from the buildings with crude bladed weapons. "Kill them! Kill them all!" Rousseau shouted.
The legionnaires opened fire again, but these ogres were tough, it took many shots to bring them down and they closed with the close packed legionnaire ranks, slashing down several legionnaires while more zombies closed with the thirty-man section.
Rousseau shot down two zombies with his 9mm Springfield Armory XD pistol just as a short bladed sword slashed across the arteries of his neck, spraying several legionnaires near him with a shower of gore. "To that building, there!" Adjutant Montague shouted, pointing at a hospital building about a block away.
The legionnaires needed no encouragement and began to run, shooting wildly as they fled. In the surprising lull of the fighting, Adjutant Montague began to order the legionnaires to erect barricades around windows and doors on the ground floor. Using tables, chairs, boards and nails the legionnaires fortified the abandoned hospital as best they could, taking up firing positions in various rooms.
They could hear screams of legionnaire patrols being ambushed in the warren of empty streets, as they stayed holed up in the building. Conrad pulled the folded picture from his pocket again.
"Reason for joining?" an English voice behind him said.
Conrad tucked the photo back into his pocket, chagrined that others knew his secret now.
"Don't be worried, at least you're not here because you're a bloody disgrace to your family's good name."
Conrad turned to see an Englishman with a grown in shaved head in his late twenties with the jaundiced look of a veteran soldier. "That's right. I remember the day it happened too. Being paraded in front of my men, some of whom I served with for nine years, then being stripped of rank and cashiered right before their eyes. But most damning was the look on the Colonel's face on my discharge, when they broke my officer's sword and removed my rank device. I'm a gambler, it's my weakness, I made one gamble too many, which made a board of my superiors decide to strip me of rank. I decided I'd rather die than face the disappointment back home. So I joined the bloody legion. What about you, joined because of failed love?"
"Love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong." A voice not belonging to Conrad replied. It belonged to slender Italian lad who introduced himself as Alfredo Tella, "My Anna loves that saying."
"Young man in love, what are you doing in the Legion?" the Englishman, the ex-officer who introduced himself as Robert Osborne.
"I wanted to have one final adventure before I go settle down." The Italian said, "So who is she?"
He spied the picture and said, "She's beautiful."
"They're coming." Conrad said, stuffing the photo into the webbing of his small black helmet.
"How do you know?" Osborne said.
"Trust me, I do." Conrad said, readying his electric gun. Almost a few seconds later a wave of zombies began to rush the legionnaires' positions at the hospital. The fusillade of shots from the legionnaire ranks tore the attacking horde apart. As soon as this occurred several energy spheres landed near their position, causing the legionnaires to take cover. The unclaimed corpses of several zombies lay near the hospital's approaches.
As the shelling ceased, Conrad allowed his mind to briefly wander, removing his helmet and exposing his own grown in shaved head. He stared at the photograph of the smiling young woman in his helmet. Despite all he had endured throughout his life, she made everything melt away with that beautiful smile, kind words. Staring at that picture, into those azure blue eyes, gazing at that lovely face brought him into a fantasy world of memories where he wasn't holed up in the wrecked remains of a hospital being either shelled or rushed by waves of zombies and ogres.
Faintly he could barely hear Adjutant Montague and Sergeant Schultz, Deep Reconnaissance, arguing about something. Something about whether to hole up in the building until help arrived as Montague advocated, or retreating to a nearby LZ as Schultz advocated.
~ ~ ~ ~
New blood joins this earth, and quickly he's subdued. Through constant pained disgrace, the young boy learns their rules. With time the child draws in, this whipping boy done wrong. Deprived of all his thoughts the young man struggles on. And on. He's known, a vow unto his own, that never from this day, his will they'll take away:
Before his adoption by the X-men, Conrad spent much of his life in a foster home in the care of a Miss Lowanda Dumore. She was a wealthy Southern woman, outwardly ladylike, who kept her age well. For whatever reason, Conrad wasn't the favorite child of that foster family and she made no effort to conceal it. Of course she kept up appearances that all the five children in the foster home were equally cared for, but she privately she played her favorites. He remembered when his powers manifested at the age of sixteen.
"I should be impressed," Lowanda said, "your teacher said you got the highest grade on your essay out of the entire class. Do you honestly think you could be even half of what the other kids are?"
"Whatever! Those kids don't work half as hard as I do, but nothing I do seems to matter. Helen gets a C+ and she's a perfect angel. I work hard for an A and I get nothing but criticism. Nine years of this is getting pretty tiresome!" Conrad replied.
"Don't you talk to your mother like that." Lowanda said dangerously.
"My mother." Conrad laughed derisively, "My mother died nine years ago. You are not she."
Somehow Conrad's sensed the blow before it came and thus dodged being backhanded. He had the grim satisfaction of seeing Lowanda's hand strike the wooden wall. She hissed angrily, "Get out!"
"Fine!" Conrad replied, grabbing his beat up brown leather jacket, throwing it over his spindly frame, and walking out the door. He had encountered the X-men later that day and left the town of Cold River, South Carolina.
What I've felt. What I've known. Never shined through in what I've shown. Never be.
Never see. Won't see what might have been. What I've felt. What I've known. Never shined through in what I've shown. Never free. Never me. So I dub thee Unforgiven:
Until Conrad had fallen in love, the Institute was like the family he had never had. From when he had arrived at the Institute, she had befriended him. By his second year at the Institute he had fallen in love with her.
However, Conrad wasn't out of the woods just yet. At Xavier's urging he tried to make peace with his foster mother. She came up a few weeks later and things seemed to have improved.
Kitty Pryde walked towards them just then, "Hey Conrad, is this your family?"
"Foster family." Conrad said, uncomfortably for more reasons than the fact he was with his foster family.
"Hi, I'm Kitty Pryde, a friend of Conrad's." she said, shaking Ms. Dumore's hand.
The two foster kids that had accompanied Lowanda, Lyle Freemont and Helen Campbell, also introduced themselves. "Where are you from?" Lowanda asked, smiling. Conrad inwardly felt this was Lowanda putting on her social face, the very different one from the face she showed him in private.
"Northbrook, Illinois." Kitty replied, "How long have you raised Conrad?"
"Nine years." Lowanda replied, "Since his mother died when he was seven, poor thing."
'Yeah right.' Conrad thought, 'The only time you said poor thing regarding my mother was when you said I was her biggest mistake.'
"Nice meeting you, Kitty." Lowanda said, taking note of both Conrad's discomfort and his shy grin at Kitty.
Later in the hotel, the other two kids, Lyle and Helen talked to Conrad, as he was about to leave. "What makes you think you have any chance?" Lyle asked.
"What do you mean?" Conrad asked, already sure that they knew. The ass kissing preppie and the cheerleader both knew his deepest secret.
"That girl we met, Kitty, that's what we mean. What makes you think she'd waste her time with you." Helen said.
"You leave her out of this, you high dollar whore." Conrad growled, "I'm not a small child anymore. All you do is slander people, screw them over, but no one cares, you're the favorite."
"That is so typical of you that you resent me." Helen said, "I'm only telling the truth."
"Yeah, why would Kitty waste the time on you? We weren't slandering your precious Kitty." Lyle replied.
"Get off your high horse you illiterate hick." Conrad said coldly, "I should have known this was going to end in disaster, you just proved me right."
Helen retorted just then as Conrad stormed from the room, "Get angry and leave if you want, but time will prove us right."
"Kitty has everything going for her, beauty, brains, why would she waste that on you?" Lyle shouted.
Lowanda had heard the exchange and stepped into Conrad's path. "Now I suppose you plan on leaving early." She said.
"You are right." Conrad said, "Your Golden Boy and Golden Girl respectively have convinced me that attempting forgiveness and mending the fence is a whole lot of tripe."
"Alright then, leave." Lowanda said, "Go back to your Institute. But you should know, I noticed that nice young lady you have a crush on. That's right, Kitty Pryde. She's got everything going for her. I echo their sentiment, why would she waste her time with you?"
Conrad walked back to the Institute almost all the way across town with a hard look on his face. Xavier waited in the foyer, "How did it go?" he asked.
"There is no hope of reconcile." Conrad replied.
Xavier felt that crushing wave of emotion under the boy's calm façade. "What did they say?"
"None your concern." Conrad replied.
They dedicate their lives. To running all of his. He tries to please them all, this bitter man he is. Throughout his life the same, he's battled constantly, this fight he cannot win, a tired man they see no longer cares. The old man then prepares, to die regretfully, that old man here is me:
Outwardly, Conrad gave the impression that he didn't care what Helen and Lyle had told him six months ago in that hotel room, but inwardly it was affecting him. It was Valentine's Day; his eighteenth birthday was in a couple of months. He had resolved to tell Kitty just how he felt about her.
He had a bouquet of flowers and a card hidden in the folds of his leather jacket. He planned to take them out when the time was right and give them to her as soon as she got off the phone. He was there just in time to hear the devastating news.
"Yeah Lance, I'll be ready by seven." Kitty said, "Thanks, you're such a sweetheart."
Conrad knew that love was in the air and he walked, dejected, toward the main door. Jean Gray was standing in the foyer, not wanting to be out in the rain, waiting for Duncan. Conrad shoved past her, seemingly not caring about the rain as he walked out in it.
"Conrad?" Jean asked.
"Back off!" he shouted.
A bridge at the outskirts of Bayville, near the ocean front boardwalk had very little traffic save for the occasional car or passionate couple trying to find someplace to duck out of the rain. A solitary figure leaned on the bridge railing, a soaked bouquet and card in one hand as he stared out at the night and the flowing river below.
He looked back, and saw a poster inside a lit cubicle, shielded from the rain. It had the words Legio Patria Nostra written underneath and showed a picture of a man in the khaki parade uniform of the Colonial Legion wearing the traditional kepi blanc, or white kepi, that was the trademark of the Colonial Legion, as it was for their French Foreign Legion predecessors. The prominent gold letters of Legio Patria Nostra had a smaller but no less gripping translation, The Legion is Our Country.
"Yeah, Lowanda and the others were right. Why would she waste her time on me? After all, she's politically correct, I'm not. She's a social butterfly; I'm a social outcast. Why did I even have hopes that she'd care? I must be delusional." Conrad said to himself as he threw the bouquet into the river, watching it flow out to sea, not expecting any answers to his questions but getting them anyway.
"You aren't any of those things Conrad." Scott Summers replied.
"Conrad? Where have you been? We've been looking all over for you?" Jean asked.
Scott and Jean both saw the flower bouquet drop from the dejected lad's hand and fall into the river. "I take it those flowers were for someone who doesn't exactly feel the same way."
"State the obvious Summers. State the obvious why don't you!" Conrad replied.
"He was just trying to…" Jean said.
"Help. I know. The damned like myself are eternally beyond help, however." Conrad replied, turning around, his dark eyes burning with intensity, framed by his rain soaked face.
"Conrad, we've all been worrying about you for hours, where have you been?" Jean asked.
"Worried for hours, huh? I doubt that any one of you noticed. Why aren't you out enjoying your perfect lives with Taryn and Duncan respectively, eh?" Conrad replied.
"We were looking for you." Scott replied, "So you wouldn't destroy your life."
"You honestly think I'd kill myself? That's what Lowanda and the others would have wanted. Well to bad bitch, I didn't! You hear me! I'm still here!" Conrad shouted defiantly at the horizon.
"I talked to Kitty before you left. She's just as worried about you." Jean replied.
"Oh, you think you've helped me by telling her." Conrad replied.
"Those flowers were for her, weren't they?" Jean asked. Conrad didn't reply, he just stared at them with the look of the deposed monarch looking out before crowd, seconds before his execution.
"Look, Kitty may not share your feelings but she cares nonetheless. She was really worried that you were leaving for the last time." Jean replied.
Conrad replied, "I'll come back. I just needed to vent for a few hours, that's all."
Inwardly, Conrad knew the Legion was where he had to go. As soon as he was able he packed a small travel kit to journey to Aubagne, France, to start the selection process.
What I've felt. What I've known. Never shined through in what I've shown. Never be.
Never see. Won't see what might have been. What I've felt. What I've known. Never shined through in what I've shown. Never free. Never me. So I dub thee Unforgiven. Never free. Never me. So I dub thee Unforgiven. You label me. I'll label you. So I dub thee Unforgiven.
As the airliner lifted off from JFK airport, Conrad looked down at the terminal where the others had come to see him off. He did feel a twinge of regret, maybe he should try to work things out, talk to Kitty and see what would happen. But that quickly faded as he remembered a having accidentally walked in on a particularly passionate kiss that Lance and Kitty had snuck in the back of the school. Conrad felt that twinge of regret disappear swiftly, he knew the Foreign Legion was where he had to go.
~ ~ ~ ~
Another shelling brought Conrad out of his reverie. He ducked for cover behind the lobby's front desk, where a machinegun was set up. He could see legionnaires scurrying about, erecting barricades, checking weapons, and gathering ammunition from casualties. He saw Lyle Freemont, his heavily bandaged forearm sporting red patches. He didn't particularly want to talk to him, because of the past.
"So, you joined the Colonial Legion over Kitty?" Lyle said, despite himself, he gave a mean spirited laugh, "You crazy fool. Helen and me were right, and look at you now. Is this a picture of her you've got in your helmet? You've got it bad."
"You point that Wraith cannon anywhere in my general direction." Conrad said in a low and dangerous tone, "And I will burn a hole through your guts and let you die slowly."
"Touchy, touchy" Lyle Freemont smirked, walking right into Conrad's face. Conrad squeezed his injured forearm as hard as he could.
"AAAGGH! God! That hurt!" Lyle shouted, reaching for his bayonet but feeling an iron hard grip on his wrist.
"Let's keep things sporting, shall we." Osborne said, "Get that checked out."
While Osborne and Lyle were of same rank there was no denying the commanding tone of Osborne's voice. Lyle stalked off, muttering threats.
"Incoming!" shouted a legionnaire.
Two more energy orbs from the mesa outside the town exploded outside the hospital, throwing dust and shrapnel about. Then more zombies came on and the legionnaires found themselves fighting for their lives yet again.
"Radioman." Montague shouted, "Call in the skimmers, we need evacuation."
"They can't fly in mon adjutant, we've already lost two of them outside the village perimeter to ground fire. Command says we're to hold our positions until they assemble a convoy to evacuate us." The radioman replied.
Conrad blasted down two more zombies with a burst of energy from his electric gun. There seemed to be a pattern in these zombie assaults, they would attack in large numbers to try and overwhelm the legionnaire's firepower after artillery bombardments. The legionnaires kept beating them back, but each attack lowered their ammunition stocks. Lacerta was home to at least ten thousand colonists and at least three times as many transients from the trading vessels that would make stopovers there. The small force of legionnaires in the hospital, as well as the detachment of two thousand legionnaires outside the town of Terminus where their small group was holed up inside a tiny hospital was easily outnumbered, even excluding any infected transients.
~ ~ ~ ~
The Xavier Institute was going about its normal routines when the news broadcast of the Lacerta plague hit home. "This just in, as many as twenty- five to thirty men of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment remain trapped in the town of Terminus, under siege by a superior hostile force."
Kitty stopped dead in her tracks, "Don't change the channel Kurt."
"Isn't the 2nd REP Conrad's unit?" Kurt asked.
Kitty nodded, eyes glued to the television. The town of Terminus, seen from the air, had no signs of life, save for the town hospital where mobs of onrushing zombies rushed the legionnaires holed up inside.
"What's with the long face half pint?" Logan asked.
Kitty silently gestured to the TV, indicating the besieged legionnaires from the Lacerta garrison holed up inside. Logan watched the horror for a few minutes, seeing the legionnaire gunfire mow down the attacking zombies who succeeded in dragging two living legionnaires from their position and consuming them.
He went to Xavier sitting in Cerebro. "Yes Logan, I am aware of the crisis on Lacerta."
"Charles, I'm no psychic but I think that this disaster on Lacerta was no accident." Logan said.
"Yes, I have a feeling the hand of an old foe is in this." Xavier said.
"Magneto?" Logan asked.
"Probably. Prep the Blackbird. I have a feeling we are going to need help in this matter." Xavier said.
To be continued…
Author's Note/Disclaimer: I do not own the X-men Evolution franchise or Metallica's song Unforgiven. Legio Patria Nostra means, "the Legion is our country" in French.
~ ~ ~ ~
Prologue:
The Colonial Legion, a special corps within the United Systems Military composed of men of all walks of life. Like the old French Foreign Legion from which it derives many of its ways, it is often the last resort of many unsavory types. This corps of men is known for austerity as well as their loyalty to one another. Their motto, Legio Patria Nostra, underscores this…
~ ~ ~ ~
Conrad Hart sat at the table with his friends at Pizza Hut. His friends were wishing him well for his last night as a civilian. The next morning he would journey to Aubagne, France where he would endeavor to join the Colonial Legion. At least a few of them were.
"You're crazy, Conrad, crazy." Kurt Wagner said.
"The Colonial Legion? Don't you know about their march or die motto?" Jean asked, "If you fall behind on the march they'll leave you there to rot."
"Five years of your life? Are you like totally fried?" Kitty asked.
In all truth, Conrad expected them not to understand at all. He was joining up for very personal reasons. He wanted to get the hell out of Bayville and the Legion was the best way to go about it. Those people at the Institute had been his friends for nearly two years, and to leave them was a very difficult choice, but it was something he had to do.
The DC-2 Dakota dropship flying through the atmosphere of the desert planet of Lacerta jarred him out of his reverie. That had been six months ago, when his friends at the Xavier Institute had tried to talk him out of what to them sounded like an ill-concealed suicide. And it might well be just such a thing; he was a newly designated Colonial Legion paratrooper with the 2nd REP (Regiment Etrangere Parachutists, or the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment) about to drop into the unknown after contact had been lost with the United Systems colony on Lacerta.
The jumpmaster began to hook the paras up to the static line assembly and as the aircraft flew over the town of Wayland, the cargo door opened like the mouth of a great whale. The jumpmaster waved the first section out of the aircraft and then it was Conrad's turn. He quickly zipped a folded and creased photograph back into his pocket as the jumpmaster pushed him out of the aircraft. His parachute opened broadly. He could already see the advance scouts, the Deep Reconnaissance troops and the first section beginning to secure the landing zone.
As he got closer to the ground, Conrad bent his knees, and rolled as he landed on the sandy earth. As he freed himself from his parachute, he quickly turned the safety off of his electric gun and checked if his magazine pouch was in place. It was working properly as Conrad's squad advanced into the village.
On the march Conrad saw nothing but deserted streets, street lamps still on in broad daylight, and an eerie silence. The legionnaires reconnoitered the town, finding no townspeople alive in this port community normally teeming with life. At least not until a resident came staggering drunkenly from a tavern, arms outstretched.
"Alright, that's far enough, freeze." A legionnaire ordered, leveling his Wraith cannon.
"Didn't you hear me!" the legionnaire shouted with a tension laced and nasal Southern accent, Wraith cannon leveled. The woman closed with the legionnaire, the stench of rot emanating in thick waves from her, her hair ratty and her flesh decayed, and chomped down on the legionnaire's forearm.
"Agh!" The legionnaire shouted, firing two rounds into the woman, killing her outright. As the medic ran back to the legionnaire, another newcomer named Lyle Freemont, he heard Freemont say, "That bitch bit me."
Adjutant Montague, a warrant officer with a grim countenance shaped by over fifteen years of service, shouted, "Stay in formation."
More townsfolk came shambling towards them, a stench emanating from them, the stench of the grave. "Freeze!" Lieutenant Rousseau shouted, "Or we open fire."
The zombified townsfolk kept coming, and Conrad tensed his finger on the trigger, the solid-state contact on the end of the electric gun glowing as he prepared to release a storm of voltage into the zombies. "Fire!" Rousseau shouted.
The legionnaire ranks opened fire with well-aimed shots that struck their targets, causing the line of zombies to fall dead. Another group of zombies came bursting from the alleys and buildings at the exposed legionnaires who gunned them down without mercy, unaware that other foes were watching them.
They became aware, when from behind several brutally muscled green skinned humanoids burst from the buildings with crude bladed weapons. "Kill them! Kill them all!" Rousseau shouted.
The legionnaires opened fire again, but these ogres were tough, it took many shots to bring them down and they closed with the close packed legionnaire ranks, slashing down several legionnaires while more zombies closed with the thirty-man section.
Rousseau shot down two zombies with his 9mm Springfield Armory XD pistol just as a short bladed sword slashed across the arteries of his neck, spraying several legionnaires near him with a shower of gore. "To that building, there!" Adjutant Montague shouted, pointing at a hospital building about a block away.
The legionnaires needed no encouragement and began to run, shooting wildly as they fled. In the surprising lull of the fighting, Adjutant Montague began to order the legionnaires to erect barricades around windows and doors on the ground floor. Using tables, chairs, boards and nails the legionnaires fortified the abandoned hospital as best they could, taking up firing positions in various rooms.
They could hear screams of legionnaire patrols being ambushed in the warren of empty streets, as they stayed holed up in the building. Conrad pulled the folded picture from his pocket again.
"Reason for joining?" an English voice behind him said.
Conrad tucked the photo back into his pocket, chagrined that others knew his secret now.
"Don't be worried, at least you're not here because you're a bloody disgrace to your family's good name."
Conrad turned to see an Englishman with a grown in shaved head in his late twenties with the jaundiced look of a veteran soldier. "That's right. I remember the day it happened too. Being paraded in front of my men, some of whom I served with for nine years, then being stripped of rank and cashiered right before their eyes. But most damning was the look on the Colonel's face on my discharge, when they broke my officer's sword and removed my rank device. I'm a gambler, it's my weakness, I made one gamble too many, which made a board of my superiors decide to strip me of rank. I decided I'd rather die than face the disappointment back home. So I joined the bloody legion. What about you, joined because of failed love?"
"Love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong." A voice not belonging to Conrad replied. It belonged to slender Italian lad who introduced himself as Alfredo Tella, "My Anna loves that saying."
"Young man in love, what are you doing in the Legion?" the Englishman, the ex-officer who introduced himself as Robert Osborne.
"I wanted to have one final adventure before I go settle down." The Italian said, "So who is she?"
He spied the picture and said, "She's beautiful."
"They're coming." Conrad said, stuffing the photo into the webbing of his small black helmet.
"How do you know?" Osborne said.
"Trust me, I do." Conrad said, readying his electric gun. Almost a few seconds later a wave of zombies began to rush the legionnaires' positions at the hospital. The fusillade of shots from the legionnaire ranks tore the attacking horde apart. As soon as this occurred several energy spheres landed near their position, causing the legionnaires to take cover. The unclaimed corpses of several zombies lay near the hospital's approaches.
As the shelling ceased, Conrad allowed his mind to briefly wander, removing his helmet and exposing his own grown in shaved head. He stared at the photograph of the smiling young woman in his helmet. Despite all he had endured throughout his life, she made everything melt away with that beautiful smile, kind words. Staring at that picture, into those azure blue eyes, gazing at that lovely face brought him into a fantasy world of memories where he wasn't holed up in the wrecked remains of a hospital being either shelled or rushed by waves of zombies and ogres.
Faintly he could barely hear Adjutant Montague and Sergeant Schultz, Deep Reconnaissance, arguing about something. Something about whether to hole up in the building until help arrived as Montague advocated, or retreating to a nearby LZ as Schultz advocated.
~ ~ ~ ~
New blood joins this earth, and quickly he's subdued. Through constant pained disgrace, the young boy learns their rules. With time the child draws in, this whipping boy done wrong. Deprived of all his thoughts the young man struggles on. And on. He's known, a vow unto his own, that never from this day, his will they'll take away:
Before his adoption by the X-men, Conrad spent much of his life in a foster home in the care of a Miss Lowanda Dumore. She was a wealthy Southern woman, outwardly ladylike, who kept her age well. For whatever reason, Conrad wasn't the favorite child of that foster family and she made no effort to conceal it. Of course she kept up appearances that all the five children in the foster home were equally cared for, but she privately she played her favorites. He remembered when his powers manifested at the age of sixteen.
"I should be impressed," Lowanda said, "your teacher said you got the highest grade on your essay out of the entire class. Do you honestly think you could be even half of what the other kids are?"
"Whatever! Those kids don't work half as hard as I do, but nothing I do seems to matter. Helen gets a C+ and she's a perfect angel. I work hard for an A and I get nothing but criticism. Nine years of this is getting pretty tiresome!" Conrad replied.
"Don't you talk to your mother like that." Lowanda said dangerously.
"My mother." Conrad laughed derisively, "My mother died nine years ago. You are not she."
Somehow Conrad's sensed the blow before it came and thus dodged being backhanded. He had the grim satisfaction of seeing Lowanda's hand strike the wooden wall. She hissed angrily, "Get out!"
"Fine!" Conrad replied, grabbing his beat up brown leather jacket, throwing it over his spindly frame, and walking out the door. He had encountered the X-men later that day and left the town of Cold River, South Carolina.
What I've felt. What I've known. Never shined through in what I've shown. Never be.
Never see. Won't see what might have been. What I've felt. What I've known. Never shined through in what I've shown. Never free. Never me. So I dub thee Unforgiven:
Until Conrad had fallen in love, the Institute was like the family he had never had. From when he had arrived at the Institute, she had befriended him. By his second year at the Institute he had fallen in love with her.
However, Conrad wasn't out of the woods just yet. At Xavier's urging he tried to make peace with his foster mother. She came up a few weeks later and things seemed to have improved.
Kitty Pryde walked towards them just then, "Hey Conrad, is this your family?"
"Foster family." Conrad said, uncomfortably for more reasons than the fact he was with his foster family.
"Hi, I'm Kitty Pryde, a friend of Conrad's." she said, shaking Ms. Dumore's hand.
The two foster kids that had accompanied Lowanda, Lyle Freemont and Helen Campbell, also introduced themselves. "Where are you from?" Lowanda asked, smiling. Conrad inwardly felt this was Lowanda putting on her social face, the very different one from the face she showed him in private.
"Northbrook, Illinois." Kitty replied, "How long have you raised Conrad?"
"Nine years." Lowanda replied, "Since his mother died when he was seven, poor thing."
'Yeah right.' Conrad thought, 'The only time you said poor thing regarding my mother was when you said I was her biggest mistake.'
"Nice meeting you, Kitty." Lowanda said, taking note of both Conrad's discomfort and his shy grin at Kitty.
Later in the hotel, the other two kids, Lyle and Helen talked to Conrad, as he was about to leave. "What makes you think you have any chance?" Lyle asked.
"What do you mean?" Conrad asked, already sure that they knew. The ass kissing preppie and the cheerleader both knew his deepest secret.
"That girl we met, Kitty, that's what we mean. What makes you think she'd waste her time with you." Helen said.
"You leave her out of this, you high dollar whore." Conrad growled, "I'm not a small child anymore. All you do is slander people, screw them over, but no one cares, you're the favorite."
"That is so typical of you that you resent me." Helen said, "I'm only telling the truth."
"Yeah, why would Kitty waste the time on you? We weren't slandering your precious Kitty." Lyle replied.
"Get off your high horse you illiterate hick." Conrad said coldly, "I should have known this was going to end in disaster, you just proved me right."
Helen retorted just then as Conrad stormed from the room, "Get angry and leave if you want, but time will prove us right."
"Kitty has everything going for her, beauty, brains, why would she waste that on you?" Lyle shouted.
Lowanda had heard the exchange and stepped into Conrad's path. "Now I suppose you plan on leaving early." She said.
"You are right." Conrad said, "Your Golden Boy and Golden Girl respectively have convinced me that attempting forgiveness and mending the fence is a whole lot of tripe."
"Alright then, leave." Lowanda said, "Go back to your Institute. But you should know, I noticed that nice young lady you have a crush on. That's right, Kitty Pryde. She's got everything going for her. I echo their sentiment, why would she waste her time with you?"
Conrad walked back to the Institute almost all the way across town with a hard look on his face. Xavier waited in the foyer, "How did it go?" he asked.
"There is no hope of reconcile." Conrad replied.
Xavier felt that crushing wave of emotion under the boy's calm façade. "What did they say?"
"None your concern." Conrad replied.
They dedicate their lives. To running all of his. He tries to please them all, this bitter man he is. Throughout his life the same, he's battled constantly, this fight he cannot win, a tired man they see no longer cares. The old man then prepares, to die regretfully, that old man here is me:
Outwardly, Conrad gave the impression that he didn't care what Helen and Lyle had told him six months ago in that hotel room, but inwardly it was affecting him. It was Valentine's Day; his eighteenth birthday was in a couple of months. He had resolved to tell Kitty just how he felt about her.
He had a bouquet of flowers and a card hidden in the folds of his leather jacket. He planned to take them out when the time was right and give them to her as soon as she got off the phone. He was there just in time to hear the devastating news.
"Yeah Lance, I'll be ready by seven." Kitty said, "Thanks, you're such a sweetheart."
Conrad knew that love was in the air and he walked, dejected, toward the main door. Jean Gray was standing in the foyer, not wanting to be out in the rain, waiting for Duncan. Conrad shoved past her, seemingly not caring about the rain as he walked out in it.
"Conrad?" Jean asked.
"Back off!" he shouted.
A bridge at the outskirts of Bayville, near the ocean front boardwalk had very little traffic save for the occasional car or passionate couple trying to find someplace to duck out of the rain. A solitary figure leaned on the bridge railing, a soaked bouquet and card in one hand as he stared out at the night and the flowing river below.
He looked back, and saw a poster inside a lit cubicle, shielded from the rain. It had the words Legio Patria Nostra written underneath and showed a picture of a man in the khaki parade uniform of the Colonial Legion wearing the traditional kepi blanc, or white kepi, that was the trademark of the Colonial Legion, as it was for their French Foreign Legion predecessors. The prominent gold letters of Legio Patria Nostra had a smaller but no less gripping translation, The Legion is Our Country.
"Yeah, Lowanda and the others were right. Why would she waste her time on me? After all, she's politically correct, I'm not. She's a social butterfly; I'm a social outcast. Why did I even have hopes that she'd care? I must be delusional." Conrad said to himself as he threw the bouquet into the river, watching it flow out to sea, not expecting any answers to his questions but getting them anyway.
"You aren't any of those things Conrad." Scott Summers replied.
"Conrad? Where have you been? We've been looking all over for you?" Jean asked.
Scott and Jean both saw the flower bouquet drop from the dejected lad's hand and fall into the river. "I take it those flowers were for someone who doesn't exactly feel the same way."
"State the obvious Summers. State the obvious why don't you!" Conrad replied.
"He was just trying to…" Jean said.
"Help. I know. The damned like myself are eternally beyond help, however." Conrad replied, turning around, his dark eyes burning with intensity, framed by his rain soaked face.
"Conrad, we've all been worrying about you for hours, where have you been?" Jean asked.
"Worried for hours, huh? I doubt that any one of you noticed. Why aren't you out enjoying your perfect lives with Taryn and Duncan respectively, eh?" Conrad replied.
"We were looking for you." Scott replied, "So you wouldn't destroy your life."
"You honestly think I'd kill myself? That's what Lowanda and the others would have wanted. Well to bad bitch, I didn't! You hear me! I'm still here!" Conrad shouted defiantly at the horizon.
"I talked to Kitty before you left. She's just as worried about you." Jean replied.
"Oh, you think you've helped me by telling her." Conrad replied.
"Those flowers were for her, weren't they?" Jean asked. Conrad didn't reply, he just stared at them with the look of the deposed monarch looking out before crowd, seconds before his execution.
"Look, Kitty may not share your feelings but she cares nonetheless. She was really worried that you were leaving for the last time." Jean replied.
Conrad replied, "I'll come back. I just needed to vent for a few hours, that's all."
Inwardly, Conrad knew the Legion was where he had to go. As soon as he was able he packed a small travel kit to journey to Aubagne, France, to start the selection process.
What I've felt. What I've known. Never shined through in what I've shown. Never be.
Never see. Won't see what might have been. What I've felt. What I've known. Never shined through in what I've shown. Never free. Never me. So I dub thee Unforgiven. Never free. Never me. So I dub thee Unforgiven. You label me. I'll label you. So I dub thee Unforgiven.
As the airliner lifted off from JFK airport, Conrad looked down at the terminal where the others had come to see him off. He did feel a twinge of regret, maybe he should try to work things out, talk to Kitty and see what would happen. But that quickly faded as he remembered a having accidentally walked in on a particularly passionate kiss that Lance and Kitty had snuck in the back of the school. Conrad felt that twinge of regret disappear swiftly, he knew the Foreign Legion was where he had to go.
~ ~ ~ ~
Another shelling brought Conrad out of his reverie. He ducked for cover behind the lobby's front desk, where a machinegun was set up. He could see legionnaires scurrying about, erecting barricades, checking weapons, and gathering ammunition from casualties. He saw Lyle Freemont, his heavily bandaged forearm sporting red patches. He didn't particularly want to talk to him, because of the past.
"So, you joined the Colonial Legion over Kitty?" Lyle said, despite himself, he gave a mean spirited laugh, "You crazy fool. Helen and me were right, and look at you now. Is this a picture of her you've got in your helmet? You've got it bad."
"You point that Wraith cannon anywhere in my general direction." Conrad said in a low and dangerous tone, "And I will burn a hole through your guts and let you die slowly."
"Touchy, touchy" Lyle Freemont smirked, walking right into Conrad's face. Conrad squeezed his injured forearm as hard as he could.
"AAAGGH! God! That hurt!" Lyle shouted, reaching for his bayonet but feeling an iron hard grip on his wrist.
"Let's keep things sporting, shall we." Osborne said, "Get that checked out."
While Osborne and Lyle were of same rank there was no denying the commanding tone of Osborne's voice. Lyle stalked off, muttering threats.
"Incoming!" shouted a legionnaire.
Two more energy orbs from the mesa outside the town exploded outside the hospital, throwing dust and shrapnel about. Then more zombies came on and the legionnaires found themselves fighting for their lives yet again.
"Radioman." Montague shouted, "Call in the skimmers, we need evacuation."
"They can't fly in mon adjutant, we've already lost two of them outside the village perimeter to ground fire. Command says we're to hold our positions until they assemble a convoy to evacuate us." The radioman replied.
Conrad blasted down two more zombies with a burst of energy from his electric gun. There seemed to be a pattern in these zombie assaults, they would attack in large numbers to try and overwhelm the legionnaire's firepower after artillery bombardments. The legionnaires kept beating them back, but each attack lowered their ammunition stocks. Lacerta was home to at least ten thousand colonists and at least three times as many transients from the trading vessels that would make stopovers there. The small force of legionnaires in the hospital, as well as the detachment of two thousand legionnaires outside the town of Terminus where their small group was holed up inside a tiny hospital was easily outnumbered, even excluding any infected transients.
~ ~ ~ ~
The Xavier Institute was going about its normal routines when the news broadcast of the Lacerta plague hit home. "This just in, as many as twenty- five to thirty men of the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment remain trapped in the town of Terminus, under siege by a superior hostile force."
Kitty stopped dead in her tracks, "Don't change the channel Kurt."
"Isn't the 2nd REP Conrad's unit?" Kurt asked.
Kitty nodded, eyes glued to the television. The town of Terminus, seen from the air, had no signs of life, save for the town hospital where mobs of onrushing zombies rushed the legionnaires holed up inside.
"What's with the long face half pint?" Logan asked.
Kitty silently gestured to the TV, indicating the besieged legionnaires from the Lacerta garrison holed up inside. Logan watched the horror for a few minutes, seeing the legionnaire gunfire mow down the attacking zombies who succeeded in dragging two living legionnaires from their position and consuming them.
He went to Xavier sitting in Cerebro. "Yes Logan, I am aware of the crisis on Lacerta."
"Charles, I'm no psychic but I think that this disaster on Lacerta was no accident." Logan said.
"Yes, I have a feeling the hand of an old foe is in this." Xavier said.
"Magneto?" Logan asked.
"Probably. Prep the Blackbird. I have a feeling we are going to need help in this matter." Xavier said.
To be continued…