Across the vast Atlantic Ocean, who's waves glittered with the sunlight and glowed with moonlight, over the lands of Russia and into mountainous regions of Mongolia… a people which had once declared war on China, or so Tora was taught. In China their destination was, within the frigid Shalulishan mountain rage was their lands, and the hallowed mountain was their exact landing position. Days putting up with an idiot more arrogant than Logan and a man bent on having to stroke her hair as if he would die otherwise but a great strain on Tora… it would seem as if nothing happened in the past days, and she just woke up like this… staring at the mountain, brushing trembling finger tips over huge steel doors.
The key was to open these massive doors and unlock the truth to her past, everything she did, and didn't want to know. She wondered why they bothered to make such monster doors into the mountain side… they wanted her creation to be a secret, stashing the laboratory and scientists into the hallowed thing… she'd think they'd make the entrance a little less… obvious…
"Something wrong…?" Magnus curled his fingers over her right shoulder, which was covered by a thick black jumper. It hugged her body, including looping her neck, her chest was dotted with a red pattern in the shape of a triangle.
Tora swung her tied hair from the shoulder, not wanting his fingers to tug on it, "…I… I can not get in."
"Not a problem."
His palm flew past her face, the wind from it flicking some strands of her bangs somewhat. The pause between the moment when he pulled his hand out and the creaking of opening steel doors was very short, but it was enough time for Tora to realize that when the path opened to her creation, she'd find more than she wanted.
The other two bumbling morons stayed put within the craft, knowing better than to show their asses out at this point. Kicking heels to the control desk, Pyro leaned back within the pilot chair with folded arms and a smug look, "Gunna watch yo'r toy all day, aren'cha?"
Creed stood eagerly at one of the windows, just staring down at Magnus rip the doors open and lead Tora into musty darkness, "Shut up, ass…"
She soon was to vanish into the shadows of the passage and wander through a thin strip of time. It wasn't too hard for the feline to see in darkness, and as the light from crooked steel doors was being swallowed by black, Tora lead Magnus through unseen thickness.
The walls grew narrow, Magus found this out as his shoulder scraped onto a razor rock, the smell of blood instantly hitting Tora's nose, "Watch out… it get narrow…"
Well obviously, two words were uttered only in his mind as a gloved palm flattened over the wound.
Little by little the pathway began to arch downward, their trail leading into the mountain filled with twists and turns, the echoes silencing deeper they went… a sign the cavern trail was thin. It was a this point, when Magnus again bumped into another corner, He questioned himself, why he went with her and if she knew where in hell she was going, "Tora… do you know were we are…?"
"I believe so, this is correct tunnel… I see broken lights above…" She could hear him stumbling around in darkness, trying not to trip. The only way he got this far was to follow the sound of Tora's steps.
Nonetheless, as they traveled deeper, Tora's eyes came closer to something so black not even her eyes could distinguish what it was. It was a round shape carved from the walls, hazed into the other darkness. A step before she would either run into or pass through this unknown darkness, her body stopped completely. Magus, of course not being able to see, barged into her with a grunt. She didn't seem to mind, as all attention was forced on this darkness. Tora would normally jump at something she couldn't understand, very curious as she was, always interested in the world around her… but this blackness dove under her skin and crawled around with sick intent.
Something in the air didn't smell right, at all. She couldn't remember one damn thing about how she escaped… it was anger, killing spree, a blur, and finally her life in the mountains. Interesting, her own mind was blocking her from something, and it was that exact thing the darkness revolted her for.
"What's wrong now?" Magnus was on his last threat of putting on a 'kindness and trust' show for her.
"Something not right."
"What? We can't go back now, we came this far for you."
"I don't know. It not does feel right."
Without an answer, Magnus held his hand out until they felt the cold rocks of the wall side. He felt his way to the edge where Tora had stopped herself. If she wasn't going to walk in, he sure as hell was… he wasn't going to let his cold shoulder, stiff with blood, be put in vain. There… a switch… secret hideouts like this had come to be expected with light switches such as these.
"What you doing…?"
Finger pushing the switch until it flicked up with a tiny click, Magus turned to Tora, finally able to see her as lights blasted on, "Giving light."
She had to shade her eyes for a moment, squinting beneath a shielding arm. It was fuzzy, her lashes blocking clear view, but the darkness had been torn from her body with the promise of light… that feel of horror was still anchored to her heart… but it became less heavy as she saw what this blackness was.
This large black circle was actually a unlit room, huge, and sphere-like. There was dust and frost everywhere, broken computer and their wires scattered all over ebony laboratory tables. The pale titles of the flooring were slippery and freezing, some broken and shattered, glass scattered all over creation… rotting bodies…
"You kill these people?" Magneto kicked the torso of some random chemist, his flesh a mixture of white and blacks… either way, it meant he was dead.
"I… suppose so… I can not remember…" What a lie. The back of her mind threw memories to her of herself as a massive tiger, ripping at human bodies and letting their innards splatter to the floor. She tried to justify it in her on mind on why she created a bloodbath… they would never leave her alone… always testing her without her consent… never respecting the power they gave her… and she snapped, taking those guilty… and those innocent. Each fragment of that moment came to her like lightning, it played in her mind, first the attempted rape… then her unchained spirit snapping, body enraged and transforming into a monstrous feline who destroyed the entire laboratory before she was even sent to North Korea…
"They didn't care about me… they… they figured I bow to them for giving me life…" slowly she trekked to the center, where the lights shown the most, and where her body would be kept in a suspended animation until they beckoned for testing one more.
"They…?" Ah, finally, the whole reason behind his actions, the intent to turn her from Xavier's ideas and look to his, had finally shown itself… it was about time.
"My creators. Chemists. Biologists, whatever…" finger traced down lines of Chinese script, and though there was perhaps one or two characters she could not understand… she understood her creation… she finally realized what her purpose was, and what would happen to her after, "I can even read it…"
"What, my dear?"
Paper rustled as Tora blew off dust and shook the sheets from cold stiff-ness, and, clenching a first to her neck, she read to him all the information on her creation…
"Experiment number 137, day 45. Code name 'Tora Kagayaki Akarui'. This experiment was assigned by Chief of Defense, to create bio-weapon and kill off North Korean Government. After China has won the war, dispose of 'Tora Kagayaki Akarui' and laboratory. All scientists have been sworn into secrecy, and to speak of this experiment shall be met with death.
"They planned to kill me, that is what…"
He scoffed and twitched the top of his lip slightly, acting as if he had disgust, "Normal humans are such ass holes… even in other countries…"
"They created me for one purpose… I knew that, and… though, I did not know of the killing, I sure as hell fixed their asses over it," as if she caught drift to his plans, she tossed the papers to the iced floor and moved on to.
She hadn't caught to his scheme, but with that statement and followed action, it sure as hell seemed like it. With a pale brow raised high, Magnus began to wonder if there was something to her past he could use against her, "Come now Tora… everyone forgets things… perhaps you're missing something?"
"So interested in my past, yes?" Gentle fingers traced lines into frost upon glass, cracks from both the ice and her rampage both lined the it… glass, what a stupid element to use in holding a wild beast.
"I… am… simply saying… maybe you're forgetting something."
No retort was made to this, for indeed there was a blurred part to her memories. She could remember hearing bones crack as her body curled into that of a dangerous tiger, paws slashing into any human in her way and teeth gripping into necks, the red liquid of essence dripping like flowing water to tainted white tiles. In her frenzy she prowled all over the large room, leaving no one alive, having no room uncharted to kill off life… and yet, there was something blocked. A separate room, a bodiless corridor previously uncharted due to the fear boiling as she read through it. It was coming, the fog was disintegrating…
In the deep back corner, past all the computers, tables, charts, models, and DNA containers, hidden by a shroud of darkness now, a thin door was plastered into the wall. Slowly her legs took her, against her will, across the grand room, beside Magus, tail brushing on his leg, and into the shadow curtain. The Chinese characters written on it had been scratched out due to Tora's blood-soiled claws ripping into it… but two words could be made out, very clearly, bodily extra.
What the hell did that mean? Extra? Body? Tora had always been under the thought her body was grown within another woman's womb, a woman willing to hold a mutant child who would bring the fall of a government and end a war… in disgrace.
She had always believed she had a mother who died for her, watching from the sunshine and feeling from the breezes. Her mind had erased this image of a non-walked room, and replaced it with the ideal of a woman willing to sacrifice her life for a senseless war… or at least she thought she had thought this. Did these people replace memories… perhaps to hide a secret, of course?
By now both the adventurous side of her urging to regain memories, and the shell of her sanity knowing better than to venture into the unknown were both so sparked with curiosity that she couldn't help but to bust the rickety old door down with her powerful foot.
Very little dust flared into the air, and thus Tora stormed right in, eyes wandering each and every aspect with care and great concern. It was so long, lights flickering above them, door lining the walls of this corridor. Each had a small, rectangular label near the top of the door, more oriental script was written neatly upon it, each one worn, but every door different. Brain, heart, left lung, bodily nerves, skin, hair, eyes… parts of the body? Rooms for human limbs, rooms for feline limbs, rooms lining this extended hallway, all of bodily parts most likely stored in a tube hooked to wires which kept these parts in yet another state of suspended animation. Not any more… her fury made sure of that.
The brightest part of this very eerie hallway was the extreme end, in which a overhead light dangled above a bolted shut door, a steel door no less. Of course, such a door with a dead-bolt obviously held some sort of undisclosed suspicion.
The wind seemed to part for just for her as she took to the end of the corridor with speed. Her body began to change, she would need the help of an animal to unlock the blot and reveal her true past… the one she had been told lies of.
Paws trusted on the shimmering steel, power of an eager tiger behind them. She pushed with all her being. She had found something hidden beneath piles of lies and betrayal, and she would rather let her innards rot within her than go back on the stalking of truth.
To be concluded…