Hey, I'm back! I need to explain a few things I forgot in the first
disclaimer. This takes place just after the first season, so Mystique is
gone. Also, this is very out of cannon. Also, I have a retraction. I
forgot that in the cartoons and the comics, the towns are different. Now
that I think of it, Westchester isn't right for the comics either (Isn't
that a town in England?) Please ignore it.
Thanks to Lost Angel, Person, Miracle Chick, and Incrediblecuznz for the reviews. Miracle Chick, I'm going to get to the part about his powers in this chapter. If I had had him use them before, it wouldn't have been a surprise! (
Nothing is mine, it's all Marvel's.
Dear Santa,
I have not been very good this year, but
the only things I want are a clock and a calendar.
Thanks
Your pal,
Lance Alvers.
'Wow, I really am going insane,' Lance thought. He sat propped up against the wall furthest from the door staring at the chrome walls. Chrome. He was sick to death of staring at the color chrome, a color so monotonous it almost seemed to suck the sanity right from his brain. As of this moment he wanted nothing more than to know the time, the date, and perhaps to see a color or two.
Thus far, the whole group spent the time in silence, stewing in their fear. In this place, it was impossible to tell time, but at least a fairly large chuck of time had passed, and no one had come to see them or ask them any questions. The only breaks in the non- existent routine were the two times they had been fed; trays slid though a slot in the door. Lance had thought his food tasted kind of funny, but he didn't think a complaint to the chef would be taken all that seriously here, and besides he was hungry, so he ate it anyway.
There was something else that bothered him as well. 'How can they possibly know about our diets?' he thought, running a hand through his brown hair. 'How can they know that Pietro needs more vitamins because of his metabolism? How do they know that Toad and Blob eat mostly protein? Well, I guess Blob wasn't much of a stretch, anyone with muscles like that would need lots of protein, but what about me? They haven't even seen me use my power, and they know I have to eat a lot of iron to fuel it. Do they have telepaths? Psychics?' Lance shook his head. 'You're being held against your will, and your biggest concern is how the enemy knows what to feed you?'
Lance sat against the wall, drumming his fingers and contemplating all of this when the door swung open. Four sets of eyes shot toward the sound and watched as six gaurds marched in, toting stun guns, and in the case of one guard, a semi-automatic. Lance's breath caught in his throat. "Oh shit," he moaned.
"AGAINST THE WALL!" the guard with the gun hollered. The gunman then swung his weapon around and pointed it at Fred. "And I don't want any trouble from you, fat boy, or I'll pump your ass full of bullets. Understand?"
While the gunman's attention was occupied, Lance closed his eyes and sent a shockwave through his feet into the floor. A soft vibration rattled through the metal room, and then stopped. 'What the.' Lance tried again, harder this time, but all he got was a mild shake.
"Hey, knock it off!" one guard shouted, and drove the stun gun against Lance's stomach, sending a sharp jolt of pain through his body. His legs kept their integrity for a moment before buckling, sending him to the floor. "Serves you right, you damn freak," the stun gun man said. "All that rattling hurts my fillings. Come on," he said, turning to his fellow gaurds. "Just grab one." The man reached out a gloved hand and grabbed Pietro's arm roughly. "He'll do."
Pietro panicked. His first instinct was to run away fast enough to break the sound barrier, but the men had too hard a grip on him, and the second he tried, the stun gun hit home, making contact with the center of the lower spine. The shriek was awful.
The gaurds dragged him to the other side of the room, and without a moment's hesitation, they drew out their nightsticks and began to beat the hell out of Pietro. He had cowered on the ground and was using his hands to cover his head. Blood spurted out of his nose as one caught him on the side of his face.
"Oh God, Pietro!" Lance yelled to his friend. Climbing to his feet, he charged at the gaurds, only to be met with another stun gun to the stomach. Once again, he fell to his side, landing beside Toad, who Lance had failed to notice trying the exact same thing just moments before. Together they lay on the ground, watching their friend take hit after hit.
"Thwack!" with a final blow to the head, Pietro passed out and the gaurds left as quickly as they'd come.
As soon as the room was vacated, the three boys ran to Pietro's side. "Hey, Pietro, wake up man!" Fred yelled at him.
"Shut up, Blob," Lance said shortly. He was looking over Pietro's wounded frame, trying to access the damage. Already bruises were showing up on his pale skin, and his eye was starting to swell. Lance took off his own shirt and held it to Pietro's nose to stop the bleeding.
"Is he bleeding out his ears?" Toad asked.
Lance checked. "No."
"Then he must be Ok," Toad responded.
Lance gave him an odd look. "How do you know?"
"I saw it on 'King of the Hill'."
"Just help me move him," Lance muttered. He grabbed Pietro under the arms and proceeded to drag him over to his sleeping mat. Halfway there, Pietro's good eye cracked open. "Lance? Are they gone?" he croaked.
"Yeah," Lance answered him. "Yeah, they're gone." He laid Pietro back on the mat. "Try and stay awake, Ok man?"
Toad sat back looking worried. "Yo Avalanche.how we gonna get out of here?"
"Yeah," Fred chimed in. "What are we gonna do? Come on Lance, you're the leader."
Lance continued to clean the blood off Pietro's face. He was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, "I don't know."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Lance was dreaming.
Well, not so much dreaming as remembering. Remembering a long time ago, before he joined the Brotherhood, before his parents died and he had to go live with Joe the Asshole and his Stepford wife, Amy. Before he had any real problems.
He remembered being only seven years old and sitting in the back of his dad's old Volvo. His family was going on a trip to go see his grandparents, and they had been driving for six and a half hours now. Six hours and forty-two minutes to be exact, and Lance had felt every single minute. A horrible pounding headache was starting to make his stomach turn, but maybe if he sat very still the feeling would go away.
His mother, like all mothers, knew instinctively that something was wrong. She turned backwards in her seat to face him. "Lance, honey? Are you alright?"
Lance answered her by throwing up Cheerio's and grape juice all over the back seat.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Lance awoke with a start. 'What a weird dream', he thought, before he realized that it was not just a dream, but also a warning that history was about to repeat itself. Scrambling to his feet, Lance raced across the room and made it to the bucket just in time to empty the contents of his stomach.
For the past few days, or at least what he figured was the last few days, Lance had been feeling absolutely terrible. It started with a mild nauseous churning in the pit of his stomach, and before he knew it, he was throwing up every time he ate and.well, to put it as politely as possible, let's just say that he was using the bucket more frequently than the rest of the group. He was frequently dizzy and weak as well, and when the gaurds came in to beat him or his friends, he offered little resistance.
Just about finishing up, Lance spit into the bucket and leaned back against the wall to catch his breath. The others weren't awake yet, but they would be soon. None of them could sleep very long in this harsh light. He began drumming his fingernails on the floor again, and was surprised when they made no noise. In his agitated state, he had bitten them down to nubs. With nothing else to do, he chose to pass the time by looking for patterns in the guard's schedule.
So far, he had deciphered that they were probably being fed twice a day. They didn't have enough food to ever feel full, but none of them were exactly starving either. Eleven meals had been pushed through the two-inch slot in the door, calculating to about five and a half days of captivity. The problem with the pattern was the complete lack of one when it came to the beatings. Sometimes they didn't come for three meals worth of time, sometimes they came twice between meals (time for Lance had stopped existing in days or hours; it was only measured in units known as 'the time between meals').
As for the beatings themselves, no pattern existed there either. The guards had come 14 times now. They never went after Fred (obviously they could see the pointlessness), but twice now they had beaten Lance, and four times they had beaten Pietro. Todd, however, was clearly their favorite target, the victim of eight beatings. Each time, the gaurds would laugh their asses off at the way Todd would shriek and try to jump out of the way of the nightsticks. "Ha, ha! Listen to him scream. Like a girl! Ha, ha, look at him jump! Stupid mutie," they would taunt the fourteen-year-old frog boy. Lance shuddered at the memory.
"Lance, you already awake, yo?" Todd said from his corner, yawning and stretching. He rubbed sleep from his eyes and noticed that his friend was huddled up on the floor next to the bucket. "You been getting sick again, huh?" he said.
"Yeah. I'll be Ok."
Todd shook his head. "Man, we gotta get you outa here."
Lance was about to point out that with a broken finger, more bruises than could be counted, and most likely a concussion from that last beating, Todd was more in need of rescue than anyone else, but at that moment, a group of gaurds burst into their cell.
Todd instantly huddled into a ball in the corner, a gleam of absolute panic in his eyes, but the gaurds didn't look his way once. Instead they crossed the floor and kicked Fred in the gut. "WAKE UP, FAT BOY!" one shouted.
"Hey, what is this?!" Fred growled, just before the automatic was shoved directly under his nose.
"You can come with us peacefully, or you can come with us dead, it's your call," the guard ordered.
Fred was indignant. "I ain't going nowhere with no one!"
"Alright," the guard said, a hint of a sinister grin touching his lips. He swung the gun around and pointed it at Todd. "Then we'll kill all of your buddies here, starting with this guy." Todd cringed and shut his eyes, on the verge of a breakdown.
From his corner of the cell, Lance could see that Fred was becoming enraged. If he went Incredible Hulk on the situation, one of them might get shot. In fact, one of them was almost bound to. Quickly, he caught Fred's eye and shook his head. Fighting back at this point was suicide.
The problem was, now Fred didn't know what to do. Taking orders from Mystique or Lance was one thing, but coming up with plans of his own was not exactly Fred's strong suite.
"Well? What's it gonna be Fat boy?" The gunman pressed the barrel of the automatic against Todd's head, coxing a whimper out of the frog boy.
"Don't hurt him. I'll go." Fred allowed them to place chains on his wrists and lead him at gunpoint from the room.
Lance watched the whole scene play out in front of him. As the door slammed shut, he quickly yelled out, "Blob, I'm sorry," and then winced. 'Could have at least had the decency to use his real name.' "I'm sorry, Fred," he added, but by then it was too late, Fred was gone, and there was no telling when or if he was coming back. Lance put his head in his hands, unable to stop shaking.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
That's chapter 2. See that button down there? It's for reviews. (I'm such a review whore.)
Thanks to Lost Angel, Person, Miracle Chick, and Incrediblecuznz for the reviews. Miracle Chick, I'm going to get to the part about his powers in this chapter. If I had had him use them before, it wouldn't have been a surprise! (
Nothing is mine, it's all Marvel's.
Dear Santa,
I have not been very good this year, but
the only things I want are a clock and a calendar.
Thanks
Your pal,
Lance Alvers.
'Wow, I really am going insane,' Lance thought. He sat propped up against the wall furthest from the door staring at the chrome walls. Chrome. He was sick to death of staring at the color chrome, a color so monotonous it almost seemed to suck the sanity right from his brain. As of this moment he wanted nothing more than to know the time, the date, and perhaps to see a color or two.
Thus far, the whole group spent the time in silence, stewing in their fear. In this place, it was impossible to tell time, but at least a fairly large chuck of time had passed, and no one had come to see them or ask them any questions. The only breaks in the non- existent routine were the two times they had been fed; trays slid though a slot in the door. Lance had thought his food tasted kind of funny, but he didn't think a complaint to the chef would be taken all that seriously here, and besides he was hungry, so he ate it anyway.
There was something else that bothered him as well. 'How can they possibly know about our diets?' he thought, running a hand through his brown hair. 'How can they know that Pietro needs more vitamins because of his metabolism? How do they know that Toad and Blob eat mostly protein? Well, I guess Blob wasn't much of a stretch, anyone with muscles like that would need lots of protein, but what about me? They haven't even seen me use my power, and they know I have to eat a lot of iron to fuel it. Do they have telepaths? Psychics?' Lance shook his head. 'You're being held against your will, and your biggest concern is how the enemy knows what to feed you?'
Lance sat against the wall, drumming his fingers and contemplating all of this when the door swung open. Four sets of eyes shot toward the sound and watched as six gaurds marched in, toting stun guns, and in the case of one guard, a semi-automatic. Lance's breath caught in his throat. "Oh shit," he moaned.
"AGAINST THE WALL!" the guard with the gun hollered. The gunman then swung his weapon around and pointed it at Fred. "And I don't want any trouble from you, fat boy, or I'll pump your ass full of bullets. Understand?"
While the gunman's attention was occupied, Lance closed his eyes and sent a shockwave through his feet into the floor. A soft vibration rattled through the metal room, and then stopped. 'What the.' Lance tried again, harder this time, but all he got was a mild shake.
"Hey, knock it off!" one guard shouted, and drove the stun gun against Lance's stomach, sending a sharp jolt of pain through his body. His legs kept their integrity for a moment before buckling, sending him to the floor. "Serves you right, you damn freak," the stun gun man said. "All that rattling hurts my fillings. Come on," he said, turning to his fellow gaurds. "Just grab one." The man reached out a gloved hand and grabbed Pietro's arm roughly. "He'll do."
Pietro panicked. His first instinct was to run away fast enough to break the sound barrier, but the men had too hard a grip on him, and the second he tried, the stun gun hit home, making contact with the center of the lower spine. The shriek was awful.
The gaurds dragged him to the other side of the room, and without a moment's hesitation, they drew out their nightsticks and began to beat the hell out of Pietro. He had cowered on the ground and was using his hands to cover his head. Blood spurted out of his nose as one caught him on the side of his face.
"Oh God, Pietro!" Lance yelled to his friend. Climbing to his feet, he charged at the gaurds, only to be met with another stun gun to the stomach. Once again, he fell to his side, landing beside Toad, who Lance had failed to notice trying the exact same thing just moments before. Together they lay on the ground, watching their friend take hit after hit.
"Thwack!" with a final blow to the head, Pietro passed out and the gaurds left as quickly as they'd come.
As soon as the room was vacated, the three boys ran to Pietro's side. "Hey, Pietro, wake up man!" Fred yelled at him.
"Shut up, Blob," Lance said shortly. He was looking over Pietro's wounded frame, trying to access the damage. Already bruises were showing up on his pale skin, and his eye was starting to swell. Lance took off his own shirt and held it to Pietro's nose to stop the bleeding.
"Is he bleeding out his ears?" Toad asked.
Lance checked. "No."
"Then he must be Ok," Toad responded.
Lance gave him an odd look. "How do you know?"
"I saw it on 'King of the Hill'."
"Just help me move him," Lance muttered. He grabbed Pietro under the arms and proceeded to drag him over to his sleeping mat. Halfway there, Pietro's good eye cracked open. "Lance? Are they gone?" he croaked.
"Yeah," Lance answered him. "Yeah, they're gone." He laid Pietro back on the mat. "Try and stay awake, Ok man?"
Toad sat back looking worried. "Yo Avalanche.how we gonna get out of here?"
"Yeah," Fred chimed in. "What are we gonna do? Come on Lance, you're the leader."
Lance continued to clean the blood off Pietro's face. He was silent for a long time. Finally, he said, "I don't know."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Lance was dreaming.
Well, not so much dreaming as remembering. Remembering a long time ago, before he joined the Brotherhood, before his parents died and he had to go live with Joe the Asshole and his Stepford wife, Amy. Before he had any real problems.
He remembered being only seven years old and sitting in the back of his dad's old Volvo. His family was going on a trip to go see his grandparents, and they had been driving for six and a half hours now. Six hours and forty-two minutes to be exact, and Lance had felt every single minute. A horrible pounding headache was starting to make his stomach turn, but maybe if he sat very still the feeling would go away.
His mother, like all mothers, knew instinctively that something was wrong. She turned backwards in her seat to face him. "Lance, honey? Are you alright?"
Lance answered her by throwing up Cheerio's and grape juice all over the back seat.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Lance awoke with a start. 'What a weird dream', he thought, before he realized that it was not just a dream, but also a warning that history was about to repeat itself. Scrambling to his feet, Lance raced across the room and made it to the bucket just in time to empty the contents of his stomach.
For the past few days, or at least what he figured was the last few days, Lance had been feeling absolutely terrible. It started with a mild nauseous churning in the pit of his stomach, and before he knew it, he was throwing up every time he ate and.well, to put it as politely as possible, let's just say that he was using the bucket more frequently than the rest of the group. He was frequently dizzy and weak as well, and when the gaurds came in to beat him or his friends, he offered little resistance.
Just about finishing up, Lance spit into the bucket and leaned back against the wall to catch his breath. The others weren't awake yet, but they would be soon. None of them could sleep very long in this harsh light. He began drumming his fingernails on the floor again, and was surprised when they made no noise. In his agitated state, he had bitten them down to nubs. With nothing else to do, he chose to pass the time by looking for patterns in the guard's schedule.
So far, he had deciphered that they were probably being fed twice a day. They didn't have enough food to ever feel full, but none of them were exactly starving either. Eleven meals had been pushed through the two-inch slot in the door, calculating to about five and a half days of captivity. The problem with the pattern was the complete lack of one when it came to the beatings. Sometimes they didn't come for three meals worth of time, sometimes they came twice between meals (time for Lance had stopped existing in days or hours; it was only measured in units known as 'the time between meals').
As for the beatings themselves, no pattern existed there either. The guards had come 14 times now. They never went after Fred (obviously they could see the pointlessness), but twice now they had beaten Lance, and four times they had beaten Pietro. Todd, however, was clearly their favorite target, the victim of eight beatings. Each time, the gaurds would laugh their asses off at the way Todd would shriek and try to jump out of the way of the nightsticks. "Ha, ha! Listen to him scream. Like a girl! Ha, ha, look at him jump! Stupid mutie," they would taunt the fourteen-year-old frog boy. Lance shuddered at the memory.
"Lance, you already awake, yo?" Todd said from his corner, yawning and stretching. He rubbed sleep from his eyes and noticed that his friend was huddled up on the floor next to the bucket. "You been getting sick again, huh?" he said.
"Yeah. I'll be Ok."
Todd shook his head. "Man, we gotta get you outa here."
Lance was about to point out that with a broken finger, more bruises than could be counted, and most likely a concussion from that last beating, Todd was more in need of rescue than anyone else, but at that moment, a group of gaurds burst into their cell.
Todd instantly huddled into a ball in the corner, a gleam of absolute panic in his eyes, but the gaurds didn't look his way once. Instead they crossed the floor and kicked Fred in the gut. "WAKE UP, FAT BOY!" one shouted.
"Hey, what is this?!" Fred growled, just before the automatic was shoved directly under his nose.
"You can come with us peacefully, or you can come with us dead, it's your call," the guard ordered.
Fred was indignant. "I ain't going nowhere with no one!"
"Alright," the guard said, a hint of a sinister grin touching his lips. He swung the gun around and pointed it at Todd. "Then we'll kill all of your buddies here, starting with this guy." Todd cringed and shut his eyes, on the verge of a breakdown.
From his corner of the cell, Lance could see that Fred was becoming enraged. If he went Incredible Hulk on the situation, one of them might get shot. In fact, one of them was almost bound to. Quickly, he caught Fred's eye and shook his head. Fighting back at this point was suicide.
The problem was, now Fred didn't know what to do. Taking orders from Mystique or Lance was one thing, but coming up with plans of his own was not exactly Fred's strong suite.
"Well? What's it gonna be Fat boy?" The gunman pressed the barrel of the automatic against Todd's head, coxing a whimper out of the frog boy.
"Don't hurt him. I'll go." Fred allowed them to place chains on his wrists and lead him at gunpoint from the room.
Lance watched the whole scene play out in front of him. As the door slammed shut, he quickly yelled out, "Blob, I'm sorry," and then winced. 'Could have at least had the decency to use his real name.' "I'm sorry, Fred," he added, but by then it was too late, Fred was gone, and there was no telling when or if he was coming back. Lance put his head in his hands, unable to stop shaking.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
That's chapter 2. See that button down there? It's for reviews. (I'm such a review whore.)
