I think my fic is PG-13 but I don't really believe in rating anything so I might not be very good at it.
I certainly don't own any of the proper names in my story, be they names or titles, but since I'm not making any money, maybe no one will make any waves either.
Short of that,
Enjoy.
The Repin Raikov Project: An X-Men Fan/Fiction Crossover
By Remedy=Chill
Remedy_Chill@yahoo.com
---
The Mysterious red-haired woman sat in the high-backed leather chair. "They say that all life on Earth began with primordial lightning. But what if you were to discover with the next flash of lightning that your life had begun anew in an equally strange and frightening manner?
Come gather round me as I speak my children and I shall tell you a tale, unlike any fanfic you've ever heard.
It began with a flash of lightning."
---
For a moment the lightning hurt me. I stopped to rub away the green sparkles from my now closed eyes. Was it supposed to rain tonight? I couldn't recall. Where was I anyway? This didn't look like... Like anyplace I know really. So... What was I doing here?
I was suddenly gripped by an intense desire to leave. But how does one go about leaving a place when one doesn't know where one is or consequently, which way one should go?
I looked about the scene again, sure there would be that one thing I had overlooked before that would now be obvious and explain what I was doing here.
Then the lighting flashed again. And again I had the desire to run, to flee and never look back.
But I didn't.
I was in the woods. Tall pines stood around me. There was a gentle carpet of needles underfoot. The air was cool and smelled sweet, like it was full of water. The lightning had been in the distance still. The thunder was low and distant. It was an otherwise quiet night.
I felt like I could just stand there all night.
A few soft raindrops managed to find me through the branches above and then the wind changed. I could smell my own scent coming from behind me. It made sense, I supposed, I must have come from that way.
Slowly I retraced my steps through the trees and up a slight hill that blocked my view. Beyond that was the deepest black of a forest night.
And then, in the next flash of lightning, I saw the great stone building.
It was a castle, or at the least, as close a thing to a castle that I had ever seen. I'm an American and my neck of the woods doesn't have many castles.
I took a few steps in to the darkness and let my eyes adjust. There was a great building, just a few acres away. I crossed the distance, feeling quite out of place. Still unsure. I had been leaving his place, hadn't I? Was returning the best choice?
Of course, weather I was welcome or not someone there might know what I was doing here.
The breeze blew again and I noticed the cold. Florida only had that kind of cold once or twice a year. My bet was I wasn't at home anymore. The castle was actually larger than I thought. What I had suspected was three stories had turned out to be five.
Up close, I could see the broken windows and the boarded up door.
The thunder crashed again, closer to the lightning and the wind was picking up. The storm was coming this way. Surely inside would be better than outside, all things considered.
I trotted up to the door, intent on prying off the boards when I looked down to find a hammer at my feet. A nice, new hammer. Not the kind that sat in a storm or two like the one that was coming. A hammer like you would find on a well cared for tool bench. I picked it up and caught a whiff of it.
It smelled like me! I lifted it to my face and inhaled deeply. And very faintly I could detect it. I had done this!
I looked the door over again and selected a place to start.
Once inside the door I found a box of nails. A nice, new box of nails. The house itself however, looked like it should be condemned. There were holes in the floor and in the floor above. A broken elevator sat obviously cockeyed in it's shaft across the room. A fireplace on the far wall had collapsed down it's own chimney and spewed bricks out across the hearth, on to the floor and in some cases, through holes in to the basement.
For a moment I considered going back outside. But the storm would hit in less than an hour. Perhaps one of the inner rooms was better protected from the elements?
So I found a solid beam in the floor and traced it across the room to the far wall. I tried to hang close to the wall and edge toward the door, half panicked the whole time that I was too heavy, and destined to fall through the floor.
But I made it to a restaurant style double door. Which I finally persuaded open with the aide of my trusty hammer.
To say that the inside was protected from the elements was an understatement. I had to look back in to the room before to make sure I wasn't going mad.
Sure enough, one room was a death trap, and the other was exquisite.
The air was fresh, with that air-conditioned 'ozone' smell.
"Hello?" I called out, and a shadow moved down the hall. "Hey, wait!"
I tore off down the hall, but there was no one there. Maybe my mind was playing tricks. Did I smell lilac?
But before I could finish my thought something familiar did catch my attention. It was a room number.
"Room 105" I said out loud. I was almost certain that this was 'my' room.
I opened the door and flipped on the switch. It wasn't what I suspected. It was a small, sterile room, with a metal bed and a closet-turned bathroom. The walls were lined with steel mesh and rebar.
I pulled back from the door and eyed the hall.
There were four other rooms, each individually strange as the one before it. One room was lined in black rubber, and another room's walls were covered in mostly broken mirror tile.
I wandered further down the hall and came to an almost identical restaurant door at the other end of the hall. It opened back out to the death trap room, which seemed to surround the inner sanctum.
Something about the pattern of doors in the hall began to bother me. One was obviously missing.
"Hello?" I cried out. "Is anybody here?"
Nothing happened. So I put my hammer to the wall, where I suspected the other door should be. In a moment I had beaten a decent size hole in the wall, but before I could investigate further I heard someone scream.
I doubled back down the hall and out the way I came, through the restaurant doors. The storm had hit and water was flowing down through the holes in the roof. The scream came again, from below. I turned my gaze downward and saw the girl. She had missed the beam in trying to cross the floor. Now she was hanging by a slippery wooden ledge.
I braced myself on my knees and dropped down to offer her my hand. She stretched for it and took it. She was drenched to the bone and hard to hang on to, but I pulled her up, and in to the safety of the air-conditioned hallway.
She lay back with her eyes closed. "Than you" She said. "I saw your house, I was caught in the storm."
"It's not my place. I found it just like you." I told her.
She sat up and looked at me. "Do you know you name?" She asked.
"I..." I didn't. "I guess... not." I thought for a moment and added, "I was trying to figure out where I was."
"And?" She prompted.
"And, again, I guess not." I smiled at her before adding "Although I think I started here, left, and found my way back."
She looked around. "What is this place?"
"Bizarre." I answered. I showed her the odd rooms and explained about making my hole in the wall.
I eyed the hole for a moment, before taking the hammer to it to let the light in.
"What the?" She asked, hugging herself to ward off the chill.
It was cooler inside. Eventually I found the light switch and the florescent tubes threw their swimmy light on to the room.
One wall held a set of monitors that when activated, each displayed one of the odd rooms in the hall. One cabinet in the corner held a few lab coats and a small pair of leather boots. The girl grabbed one of the lab coats and pulled it tight around her.
A door led out the opposite side of the room. It opened to a storage closet.
On one of the shelves sat a green bag with white striping. "This is mine!" She said.
She pulled it off the shelf and opened it. Inside were clothes, comic books, some jewelry and shampoo.
I looked over the shelf. It held another two bags. One was silver and sparkly and not my style. The other was a drab green bag, maybe army surplus. I opened it and found some papers, a few photos, some condoms, and clothes.
"What do you think?" She asked, after having changed in to 'her' clothes. And they certainly did fit her. She wore tight jeans with laces up the sides, and a baggy white shirt that clung to her dark, damp flesh. Her eyes were wide and clear and brown.
"I think it looks good." I said appreciatively. She smiled and tried to dry her hair with another shirt. Outside the rain had ceased to threaten and assault, instead turning to a steady downpour.
"Should we open this one too?" I motioned to the silver bag.
She shrugged, still enjoying the clean sensation that comes form being almost dry after a rainstorm.
I pulled the bag down and opened it. It reeked of perfume and leather. If I thought my condoms meant I was ready for action I sure would have like to have met the owner of this bag. While it did contain some jeans and shirt, it was primarily women's undergarments and private wear.
In the bottom were a few magazines.
The girl in the laced jeans bent over to let her hair hang so she could finish drying it.
I paused to further appreciate the view and she caught me, laughing. "Any of this your size?" I asked, showing her the underwear.
"You wish." She smiled again. "Is this yours?" She asked, looking through the army surplus bag. "Oh, here you are." She pulled up one of the pictures. "Aren't you?"
The picture appeared to be me, but I was heavy, not lean and strong like I appeared in the mirrored room.
"You look good." She eyed me, then the picture, and then me again. "You've been working out."
"Hey," She said, looking in the underwear bag "I haven't read this one." She pulled out one of the magazines and I got a look at it for the first time.
'That's an X-Men movie mag, isn't it? A comic they made from scenes in the movie, with pictures instead of drawings?"
"Yeah." She said, holding it as though she may have to drop it if I say something disturbing.
"And you had two comic books in your bag, right?"
"Yeah, Generation X and X-men Unlimited." She looked hesitant.
"And in this picture of me?" I pointed to the books on the table in the photo.
"That's X-Factor on top!" She saw the connection. "The X-Men?"
"We, whoever we all are, all seem to have the X-men in common. We're fans." I finished.
"So?" She asked, and I was at a loss.
I began to look through the first hidden room more carefully. There was no sign of the person who used to wear the lab coats, but in one of the pockets I did find an e-mail address.
It was for an Internet group that discussed X-Men fan fiction.
"I was a member of this group." I told her. "I used to write my own stories."
Her eyes grew wide with recognition when she saw the address. "I may have read your stuff." She licked her lips nervously and the wind outside began to howl.
Suddenly a noise sounded from out in the hallway. We rushed out to see what it might have been. For a brief moment, I saw the silhouette of a woman in the hall, and then she was gone, leaving only the smell of lilacs.
"You see her?" She asked.
"Yeah." I tried to sound nonchalant. "Saw her earlier too."
"What do you think it's about?" She asked.
"I don't, yet." I replied honestly.
"Hey, this wasn't here a second ago, was it?" She pointed at the opened book on the floor in the hall.
I picked it up. It was called Psychic Discoveries, by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. (A compendium actually of an abridged book called Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain and another book called The Iron Curtain Lifted. Everyone should read it.)
It was opened to page 120, entitled Artificial Reincarnation.
The chapter was about a master hypnotist named Raikov. He would hypnotize art students and make them believe that they were famous artists of the past. Under the influence of his hypnosis they would produce art that exceeded their normal, waking consciousness, ability.
"By the tenth session", it read "the new talent is stabilized and a part of the conscious equipment of the student. What they've acquired stays with them."
It claimed that through this process, learning could be accelerated. Encapsulating "Days in to hours, years in to months."
And a cold chill ran through me. I could see it. The truth. The terrible truth. The perfect, horrible, truth.
I took one of the bent nails out of my pocket. She wasn't looking as I poked it in to the meat of my hand. It hurt, bad. I was briefly afraid of infection. I pulled the nail out and watched the small trickle of blood flow down in to my palm. Then, prematurely, the blood stopped. I could feel a tightness I never knew before, and the wound squeezed out a small, last drop of blood.
I wiped at it with my thumb. No more blood, and the wound had pinched itself closed. By the feel of the burn, it was working double time to heal.
"Wolverine." I whispered.
"What?" She asked, puzzled. As the wind whistled outside.
I had a thought. "Boo!" I yelled, jumping towards her and startling her.
Her breath caught in her throat and thunder crashed overhead, shaking the house.
"What was that for?" She held one had to the chest as though trying to slow her heart.
"I'm sorry, I was..." My mind recoiled from telling her the truth. "Kidding. You know, spooky old house, thunderstorm."
"I don't know what scared me more, you or the thunder. It's like you were working together."
"Yeah," I thought to myself "That's what it was like."
"I think something bad happened here." I told her. "And I think we should leave."
And suddenly her whole demeanor changed. She threw her hair back and wind began to whistle through the room, surrounding us. It seemed to me that she was hovering now, above the floor, and she spoke with a royal inflection.
"Why didn't you leave when you had the chance Logan?" She asked me.
"Storm." I said, calling her by name.
"Why did you return?" she demanded.
"Why did you?" I growled before thinking, and it surprised me.
"The doc got what she was after, in spades. And it seems as though she's penitent." I told her, hearing it for the first time as I said it.
"Or trying to continue her work." She corrected. "Trying to get the children to resume it for her."
"What is it 'Ro?" I growled again, feeling less and less critical of my other voice, more and more content to just listen to the sounds and not analyze the words. "Are you afraid you came back for the same reason I did?"
Wolverine stalked up to Storm who attempted to look insulted or shocked at the insinuation.
Wolverine reached out and grabbed Storm by the shoulders. "We have to leave! The kids wont be safe unless we leave, and never come back! We have to stop this, Ororo, I'm Sorry!"
And the shock and insult left her face. Instead she was concerned. Logan was right about the children. And if he was truly, sorry...
"Does this mean what I think Logan?" She laid one hand tentatively on his chest.
"Yes 'Ro." Logan pulled her close. "We can leave together."
And the rain outside, spattered, smattered, and stopped all together.
As they were leaving, the figure of a hypnotist shimmered at them, long enough to expose a smile, and she was gone.
"Do you think she knew what she was doing, asking for Kitty's power? Do you think she'll ever manage to pull herself together?" Storm asked quietly.
"Why don't you ask the real question?" Logan returned. "If we stay together, wont we run the risk of completing the experiment?"
She hugged his arm, and laid her head on his shoulder. "His experiment was to breed us Logan."
It seemed like splitting hairs. "So maybe the children breed us instead?" He offered.
"It wont be us anymore Logan, it will be the children, the people who OWN these bodies."
"But they've learned from us 'Ro. They can do things now. And remember, they were a part of this willingly, if not completely knowingly, at least at first." Logan sounded worried.
"And it changed them too. They didn't even remember their old names Logan." She tried to be positive about this, but her voice broke.
"No point in bickering about it any more 'Ro. we're here." And Wolverine looked up to the new days rising sun. He turned her to look directly at him. "I love you." He said.
"And I love you too." She said, wrapping her arms around his neck.
She kissed him.
"Wow." I said to her.
"Yeah. Wow." She said back.
And I kissed her again, and she didn't let go.
"Did we ever figure out our names?" She asked after.
"I think so, isn't this us?" I held out the piece of paper with the hastily scribbled names on it.
"Oh, yeah, that me." She was excited. "That's my name!"
I smiled. "It's got my address on it too, I guess we can go there first." I told her.
"But when did we write it? And what's this it's written on? It looks like a page of a book." She flipped the page over and over again.
I snatched it away from her. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I know last night was crazy. We must have gotten a hold of some bad wine or something."
"I don't think I drink." She volunteered, so I kissed her and slid my hands down her back.
---
"And the two of them left together my children, never thinking, never suspecting.
But you know the truth, don't you? That five rooms meant five mutants, and with the Doctor safely overdosing on Kitty's powers and Logan and Storm off protecting their host bodies by forgetting all but their love, that leaves two unaccounted for, doesn't it my children?
And who could have meddled in all of their minds to create the doctors 'overdose' condition my babies? Who could have made the lovers run as they did, and forget so thoroughly?
Only your mother of course. Heaven knows how unfair it was to offer your mother a body in the real world and then take it away again. To USE your mother as a template, to give some idiot girl your mommy's powers.
And who else but your mother could have enslaved your daddy's mind so that he would be a part of all of this? So that you could be born? And grow up, and rule this world?"
How was a hapless hypnotist to know that the vessel she chose to be Jean Grey had been reading the x-books while an evil twin was impersonating Jean? How was she to know that all 'Jean' really knew of Jean was how to impersonate her?
Madeline Pryor sat back in her comfortable new body, with a baby in each arm, mentally listening to Scott Summers as he cried out in mental agony from his trapped body in the next room, and she smiled at her children, laughing with his every shriek.