Syreene: Hey there, fuzzums! *huggles* I'm so sorry I haven't updated or emailed you or anything for ages! Please don't hate me? ;-; Yeah, I'm very much a visual descriptions person - I just can't help myself: I get to a describing bit, and I think 'Ok - here we go' and then I end up with about a page or so of really long adjectives! Crazy, huh? *meh* I also agree heartily that the Hell Fire Club makes a good nemesis - Selene is such an excellently ambitious and ruthless character, and that just lends itself to writing an effective scenario. Anyhow, hope I'm sorry I've been a stranger for so long :( and I promise I won't pull that one on you again. Thanks for the review, m'dear *^-^*
giveGodtheglory: Interestingly disgusting villains? Wow! Nobody's ever said that to me before...*glows* thanks! *^-^* I'm sorry if I confused you - I do that to people alot. *O-o* Yah, anyhow, same applies to you: thank you so much for your review and your praise - I really appreciate it :) And I promise that I shall try my utmost best to make updates more regular from here on in (coursework and GCSE revision - what're you gonna do, eh?) Be well, peeps ;)
Disclaimer: Heh. The talent is not mine. What can I say? The X-Men belong to Stan Lee and Marvel Comics - I'm just having a bit of fun with them *^-~*
The streets had become dark long before the pinprick halos of city windows had gone out, and there was a dead silence now, only broken by the sounds of distant sirens, and of discarded cans, food wrappers and old newspaper pages scuttling along in tides before the wind.
Gabriel shivered, and gave her hood a nervous tug. She hated big cities at night. Everytime she saw someone else strolling down the opposite sidewalk, or heard a car somewhere close by - maybe in the next street - she would flinch and quicken her pace, and wish that she wasn't alone.
Passing by the entrance to a back alley, she gave out a startled cry as a stray cat hissed at her silhouette, and knocked the lid off a trash can, sending it clattering to the ground and shattering the silence.
Gabriel darted into the shadow of the wall, standing trembling as she took a moment to settle her nerves again.
"Oh Warren - I wish you were 'ere..." She moaned weakly.
Then, taking a deep breath, she crept beyond the penumbra, and tentatively started down the alleyway.
It was pitch black in the deeper shadows, and there was an unpleasant reek of vomit, sodden rubbish and urine rising up from the gutters that turned Gabriel's stomach and made her want to drop to her knees and gag.
She stumbled a few times as she went, but she didn't dare reach out a hand and use the wall to guide her, for fear of what she might feel in place of rough brickwork.
Then, very suddenly, she felt something small and hard stub the toe of her boot, and stopping for a moment to listen, she heard below her the sound of rushing water.
With a pang of mixed relief and anxiety, Gabriel crouched down to feel around by her feet, and sure enough, her fingertips touched on the cold metal of a manhole cover.
It took her several tries to shift the disk, and when she finally did, it was incredibly heavy, and cost her a great deal of effort to move in order to leave enough room for her to slip down through the opening.
After a few minutes, she had managed to get inside the hatch.
She clung to the rungs of a ladder that ran up the side, and dragged the manhole cover back over the entrance with an aching hand.
After that, she realised as she paused there in the nocturnal entrance to the city's underworld, just how much lighter it had actually been in the alleyway above.
As she began to slowly feel her way down the ladder, she had to hold onto the rungs as hard as she could, for the stench of the sewers was near strong enough to make her pass out.
So, clutching determinedly at the bars, and holding each breath for as long as she could, Gabriel continued downwards through the dark.
A few seconds later, however, she extended her foot out for the next rung, and found she couldn't feel it. So she lowered herself a little way more, and then again, until at last she met what felt like thick mud, and realised that she must have finally reached the foot of the ladder.
The smell was even stronger now, and as she dropped down from the hatchway, the liquid in the bottom of the tunnel gave out a sickening 'plop', but Gabriel was encouraged in a grim sort of way to see that the small ripples radiating from around her ankles were crested with sliver-thin reflections of light, meaning that there was some sort of lamp near her.
Squinting for an instant, Gabriel tried the determine whether the right hand end or the left hand end of the tunnel looked darker, and concluding that it was the left, turned to her right and began to wade as carefully as she could through the canal of New York's sewage.
On either side of her, she could hear the sloshing sounds of more drainage being emptied into the conduit through pipes, and Gabriel recoiled for a heartbeat as she heard the unmistakable splashing and squeaking of...
"Rats!" She hissed, shuddering a little as she pressed on, trying not to concentrate on the abominable reek that twinged her sinuses.
The darkness was beginning to fade now, light sometimes glimmering off the slimy walls and the stagnant waves that coursed through the thick waste.
Peering ahead as she walked, Gabriel saw a cold, almost greyish glow pouring out from a turning to the right, and hastened on, going as fast as she could through the knee-level sludge without risking a headlong fall.
But before she ever got anywhere near the turning, she heard a bone-chilling wail, and something stumbled out into the tunnel ahead of her and began to run clumsily on through the sewage.
"Attente! Etes-vous Calliban? Attente, s'il vous plait! Je veux vous parler!"
'What am I saying?!' She thought to herself as she watched the gangly figure loping away from her. 'C'est Amérique, n'est pas France!'
"Wait! Calliban!" She shouted, her voice slightly breathy as she ran to catch up with him. "Please! I mean you no 'arm! I need your 'elp!"
"No! No Topsiders! We don't trust Topsiders!" Came the frightened reply. The mutant's voice was unlike anything Gabriel had ever heard before - a sound reminiscent of gravel being swirled in a metal sieve.
"Please!" Gabriel shouted even louder, and stopping in her tracks, stretched her hands out toward the running Morlock.
There was no noise as her lavender eyes flooded green, nor as up through the stagnant filth curled tiny, delicate shoots of ivy, that were growing in girth and height at a remarkable speed. Up they reared like snakes about their mistress, lifting their leafy heads and all the time, still increasing in size.
Then, as if launching into a sudden strike, the vines shot forward through the reeking air, streaking toward the stumbling and horrified Calliban, who had no hope of outpacing them. With a piteous moan, he sank to his knees and covered his hairless head with his spindle-fingered hands as the tendrils bound themselves about his arms and his torso and his legs.
Gabriel then upturned her palms, and first raised her fingers, and then curled them into her palms, gently drawing Calliban back to her, the vines gliding above the surface of the sewage with him hanging in their firm grasp like some forlorn marionette with its strings cut.
The Morlock didn't lift his head to look at Gabriel as she stopped him about a metre before her, but merely whimpered incoherently, his entire gangly frame trembling.
"Calliban, I don't want to 'urt you, I just need your 'elp." Gabriel assured him in a sympathetic voice. "I swear, I mean you no 'arm. I will let you go, if you like, but I must speak wiz you."
Very slowly, the young woman lowered her captive to ground as the ivy retracted from around his body, leaving him to collapse in a pathetic, quivering heap at her feet.
Gabriel studied him for a moment, and it began to occur to her that something was quite obviously wrong - no matter what the reputation of the Morlocks was for disliking 'Topsiders', it didn't strike her as right that one should be so hopelessly terrified of her.
Stooping down, she gently lifted Calliban's chin with her fingertips. His grey-skinned, gaunt face was frozen with fear, and his large, liquid dark eyes were wide as they stared up into her lavender ones.
And it was then that she noticed the whelps and flay-marks, like thick, black threads criss-crossing the Morlock's skin this way and that, and Gabriel felt as though she was going to scream.
"Merde! 'Oo did zis to you?" She asked, feeling both hateful rage and deepest, heart-wrenching pity swelling inside her. "'Oo 'as done zis?!"
Calliban's head slowly drooped, and his long hand went back over his shoulder to protectively cover a large gash on his shoulder blade.
"Ss...ss...Selene..." He whimpered.
-~*~-
"Checkmate."
Bobby Drake glanced up at his blue friend, and then bowed his head, shaking it. Reaching out, he resignedly flicked his King over onto its side.
"You know, should seriously consider going round wearing a sign that says "I am Hank McCoy - never challenge me to a game of Chess if you're not a rocket scientist because I'll kick your ass at it"."
Beast chuckled.
"Another game, perhaps?" He asked, starting to replace the taken pieces.
"No thanks." Bobby smiled, getting to his feet. "I think I'll save whatever dignity I've got left, and go drown my humiliation in soda."
"Suit yourself." Came the reply, as Hank continued to reset the board.
Dr Henry McCoy was well suited to his nom de plume, which, thanks to his incredible agility and simian appearance, was The Beast.
Bobby stood and watched him for a moment as he sat crouched on the chair, the thick ultramarine fur that covered his hugely muscled body gleaming silkily in the bright sunlight that streamed through the tall windows. Much like Nightcrawler, his ears tapered to fine points, and his smile showcased a fearsome set of long fangs. Also, much like his German team-mate, appearances accounted for almost nothing of the personality. His fellow X-Men knew Hank to be an inveterate prankster, a great wit, and of superior genius and voluminous vocabulary, and not the seemingly monstrous, violent, wild animal that many people mistook him for at first glance.
Bobby watched his ape-like friend for a little longer, and then turned to leave the room, when the chime of the doorbell echoed through the foyer.
He went to answer it, but was beaten there by Nightcrawler, who appeared in a billow of purple smoke and a burst of imploding air, and stepped forward to open the door.
Outside on the doorstep stood a tall, handsome young man with blonde hair and blue eyes, and a huge pair of white-feathered wings crossed neatly behind his back.
He smiled as Nightcrawler blinked at him in surprise, and then shook him heartily by the hand as a huge grin lit his headlamp eyes.
"Warren! Long time, no see, mein freund!"
"You're not kidding!" Warren laughed. "How've you been?"
"Very well, and yourself?"
"Good - very good."
"Hey buddy!" Bobby grinned, joining the melee.
"How's it going, kiddo?" Warren beamed, shaking Iceman's outstretched hand.
"Oh, you know...I discovered I was a mutant, I joined the X-Men, I saved the world, I grew up..."
"Point taken." Archangel nodded sheepishly.
"Aw, no sweat, bud." Bobby grinned, clapping him on the shoulder. "We can be mature adults together."
"Why don't you come in?" Kurt suggested, standing back to let them in through the door.
"What a fantastic idea - we always seem to underestimate you, Nightcrawler." Angel said with a sardonic smile as they stepped inside the foyer.
"It's all that praying." Bobby replied wryly. "It's hard to take a man seriously when he's praying all the time."
"Heathen." Kurt murmured under his breath.
-~*~-
"So, what's up?"
Bobby, Warren and Kurt had joined Beast back in the lounge, and were now all reclining in deep leather seats around a small table, clutching mugs of steaming coffee in their hands. All eyes turned to Warren as Bobby asked the inevitable question.
"You guessed this wasn't merely a social visit, then?"
"You've got that look in your eyes that says 'There be sleeping dragons somewhere that are beginning to wake up, and I just tripped over one's tail'."
Warren blinked.
"I'll have to get my eyes tested." He muttered. Then he gave a grim sort of smile. "But yes, you're right - I am here on specific business."
"Profitable?" Kurt asked, looking up at Warren from the rim of his coffee cup with a raised eyebrow as he took a sip.
"Unfortunately not. I've caught wind of some movements going on in the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club - Selene's been plotting again, I'm afraid."
"What about?"
"I'm sorry?"
"What's she been plotting about?"
Warren paused as he took a draught of coffee.
"That's why I came to you." He replied, lowering the mug again. "I need your help to find out. In the meantime, I do have some information that might be of use to us: does the name Jaques-Antoine Delierre mean anything to any of you?"
A blank silence.
"He's the father of a close friend of mine." Warren explained. "Gabriel Delierre. It was she that told me that something was afoot in the first place. Apparently, the Black Queen has struck up an alliance with Jaques-Antoine, and she also offered Gabriel a place in her Inner Circle. The interesting thing, though, is that she's only accepting Black royalty - she seems to have dissolved the White side."
"Well, whatever Selene's planning, it would seem that she's not prepared to lay herself open to contrasting ideas." Hank mused.
"It could quite possibly be just that." Warren agreed.
"You said that the Black Queen offered your lady friend an invitation to join her Inner Circle, nicht war?" Kurt said after a pause.
Warren flushed slightly at Kurt's phraseology.
"Yes, I did."
"Did she accept? Because if she did, we could well play that to our advantage."
"No, she didn't accept." Warren replied. "And I can see your point about how we could use that to our advantage, but I'd be more than a little dubious about putting Gabriel in that position."
"Warren's right - it would be an dangerous gamble to take on her safety." Hank told his German comrade.
Kurt nodded in compliance.
"What are we going to do, then?" Bobby asked, breaking the pensive silence.
"For the moment, we'll think." Warren said at length. "But thinking's not a thing to do without the proper observances - how about another round of coffee?"
-~*~-
Calliban shivered and whispered to himself in his gravelly voice as they walked, his large, long hands poised out to the sides and slightly infront of him, and his dark, liquid eyes darting this way and that.
Gabriel, despite her sympathy for the mutant, found his whole demeanour quite disturbing, and was glad when they at last reached another passage turning off from the main tunnel, and she could better see about them in the cold, grey light cast by the lamp on the wall.
Squatting down on his haunches like a dog, Calliban peered out into the darkness beyond the penumbra of the baleful halo, and hissed in his rasping voice
"Callisto! Callisto!I am here - I bring the Topsider!"
There was moment's silence, before Gabriel strained to make out the sound of soft, almost inaudible footfalls coming towards them.
"Welcome, pretty one." Came a woman's voice from the shadows. "It is not often we have visitors from the surface world - why have you come here?"
But Gabriel had not had time to reply, before the hair on the back of her neck stood on end, and she turned to see that the exit into the main tunnel was blocked by three other Morlocks, who stared at her with hard eyes.
"Please, do not take offence." Callisto said, stepping into the light. "It is merely a precaution...if you are who you say you are..."
The woman standing before Gabriel was tall and lean-built, her black hair sweeping back from her forehead like spines, and a dull eye patch over her right eye. She looked as though she may have been in her late twenties, and very attractive, too, but the running, and hiding in the dark had hardened and aged her appearance, and Gabriel suddenly felt terribly young and naive when Callisto addressed her as 'Pretty One'.
"I am 'oo I am." Gabriel answered evenly. "I came because I needed zee 'elp of your friend Calliban to find my farzer, Jaques-Antoine Delierre."
At this, Calliban, who had meanwhile been crouching quietly at her side like some huge hound, gave out a fearful whimper and scuttled to Callisto's side.
"I know 'e is in league wiz zee Black Queen, and zat 'e is 'elping 'er to achieve 'er ends." Gabriel continued, looking up from Calliban to fix Callisto's black eyes with her lavender ones. "I mean to stop 'im, and to break zee alliance, if I can."
"And why should your troubles concern us?" Callisto asked unblinkingly.
Gabriel's eyes flickered to Calliban, who wilted beneath her gaze, and covered his wretched face with trembling, long-fingered hands.
"My farzer is a powerful politician." She offered. "And so am I. Would you be willing to make a deal?"
-~*~-