My Brother's Child.
Well done everybody most of you guessed right, and yes Clarice was a member of Generation X but they killed her off. (They did bring her back for the Age of Apocalypse though!) And those of you who haven't watched both movies, do cause they're the best comic adaptation since the great turtle movies, not as good but hey! Any who I don't own the X-men, Clarice, or any other characters I may use from the marvel-verse, Stan Lee owns those and we all should know that Eastman and Laird own the Turtles, however I do own a few characters, e.g. Kimieko. Enjoy!
Chapter 2: Slave Labor.
Four weeks. They hadn't been there all that long but to the four kids in the last holding cell it seemed like an eternity. Every day was the same, they would all be collected in the morning to be taken to their designated workplace for the day, depending on age, strength and such. Each night they would come back too exhausted to talk and would fall asleep almost instantly only to wake up the next morning to the air raid siren that served as their alarm clock to start the cycle all over again. Three people had been executed whilst they'd been there and they'd been forced to watch, one was a mother who'd only been trying to protect her teenage daughter from being raped. Another a young boy for simply slipping and knocking a guard over. The third was a another woman, they'd been told she'd been an assassin before she'd been caught, a good one and she'd tried to use her skills to kill a guard who'd 'taken advantage of her predicament', as she'd put it. Many more had been punished, which to most involved being tied to a post in the middle of a clearing and being flogged in front of everybody, others would be beaten for something as little as looking at a guard in the wrong way and some would be put in solitude and starved for three days in a tin cell out in the sunlight with the occasional sip of water. The only thing the humans did here for the prisoners was to provide a few doctors, after all, they didn't want their work force running out on them.
Leo looked over at the aforementioned doctors' latest patient, Kimieko had been tied up outside three nights before and left all night in the cold and wet of the rainy season. He and Clarice had a nasty feeling that something else had happened to her other than just the ridicule of the guards. When she'd been brought back to the cell she'd had a fresh set of clothes on and she was bruised all over. Right now she was tossing and turning whilst her body tried to fight the fever raging through her body, Clarice begged the guards every morning to let one of them to stay to take care of her but each time she would almost get hit then Leo would stop them only to get punched himself.
That morning the same happened and after they had been trough the little ritual they silently followed the guards and the other mutants to their jobs. Leonardo was in reasonable shape so he was usually helping to haul the stone around to wherever the guards told him and the others in his group to take them. Clarice told him that she and Kim would be taken to the far side of the camp into some sort of mine. Little Toby would never say where he was taken and he was even less reluctant to now as he was the reason Kim was ill and he didn't want her to die and leave him anymore than he wanted Clarice and now Leo to leave him either. It was during the day Leo was able to ask the other prisoners about this place they'd been brought to and what he'd found out wasn't exactly encouraging. Genosha was an island off the coast of Africa, it was an island that pulled in a lot of tourists but apparently it didn't have much in the way of facilities or money, to start with. He'd been told that a very rich and powerful man had visited the island and told the leaders of Genosha about a lucrative slave market that cold be created and with his help they started to find mutants from all over the world and bring them to the island. The slaves would be treated so abysmally that after a while they would need to find more and more slaves to do their bidding. For the leaders of Genosha it meant that the people of their fair island wouldn't have to get their hands dirty doing menial tasks, instead they worked in the numerous hotels around Genosha whilst the creators of the resort were hidden away from the rest of the world, one man had said to him "out of sight out of mind". It was true, the only people who knew they were there were the guards and the men who'd brought them here.
Leo was pushing a large cart with another guy from Russia when a the lunch bell went and they headed over to the lunch hall, the healthier of the prisoners allowing the less so and the young first in line to get the better food, which left Leo near the back and he was soon joined by Clarice.
"How are you keeping up Leo?" She whispered brushing a filthy strand of hair out of her face.
"I don't know how much more I can stand of this," he whispered back keeping an eye on the guards to make sure they didn't see them talking in line, if they did they'd both be in trouble, "we have to figure a way out of here!"
"But how, if we're caught then we'd be," she paused and glanced over to a guard looking their way, when she was satisfied he was looking at someone else, "you know what they'd do Leo."
"We have to wait for Kim to get better to start with anyway and we'll have to think of a way to get Toby out safely as well."
"Shh!" Clarice silenced him as a guard approached them.
"You'd better not have been talking freaks!" The guard walked up to them and pushed Clarice over. Leo went to help her up but the guard back handed him across the face and he started to see stars. "Cause if you were I would have to get rough," he leant down and took Clarice's face in his hands and spoke to her from a few centimeters away, "got it freak?" It was all Clarice could do to nod, she was scared stiff of confrontation and she'd told her friends that it was because her dead beat father had been a drunk and hit her for fun most nights. Leo shook his head and found himself being helped up by one of the other prisoners called Jack he kept his eye on the guard, ready to pounce if and when Clarice needed him but didn't need to. The guard threw her back to the ground, "Back to you're cells freaks you don't get any more meals for the day." He threw at them and he and Clarice were escorted back.
"Are you okay?" Clarice asked from the corner of the cell five minutes later.
"I've been better Clarice."
"Blink."
"Huh?"
"It's Blink." Clarice repeated herself and looked up at him them to the now still sleeping form on the bed in the opposite corner.
"I don't get it."
"It was my nick name at school, Toby, Kim and me went a special school for mutants to learn how to control our abilities, most of us were runaways," Clarice said staring off into space, "Kim's a lucky one her mom took care of her regardless and it was her that found out about the institute, but at school they called me Blink because of my powers and Kim was Shadow."
"Why?" Leo asked as he stared out of the window at the merciless sun.
"Well I can open portals and be some where else in an instant because of it, Kim can use the shadows to do a similar thing."
"What else can you do?"
"I can create these shards in my hands which I can use to kind of displace things," she looked over to her companion and noticed his baffled look, "um you know when you see a shattered mirror?" he nodded, "well when I use my powers the target I aiming for looks like that and the shards I can sort of charge with my energy and throw them at things to cause a similar effect to differing degrees. Kim can imagine a shape and create a shadow version of it that can be just as deadly if not more so, her favorite is the katana, her mom was a master of martial arts."
"How are we going to get out of here guys?" Leo and Clarice looked over to the bed where Kim was now sitting up and hugging her knees to her chest and looking at the opposite wall.
"Well it's about time you woke up!" Clarice smiled at her friend.
"How are you feeling?" Leo asked his voice giving away the concern he felt for his new found friend.
"Better, I just wanna get out of here and go home before we all rot here, or die." neither of her friends seemed to want to mention what had or hadn't happened to her and she was relieved.
"My brothers and I were prisoners once before and we managed to swipe a key, maybe we could do that this time around too." Leo watched Kim out of the corner of his eye just to make sure she was okay.
"Then we could get out under cover of darkness and head for the tourist district." Clarice added, "We'll have to get a key to these collars from the control center I keep hearing about though, it's on the edge of town, but it's where the president of Genosha lives so it'll be heavily guarded."
"I could get in there." Kim added still staring at the wall.
"I'll go with you, you've been really ill and you shouldn't be on you're own for something like this." Kim shrugged at Leo's suggestion but didn't protest, "Clari. . . Blink, you can take care of Toby while we do that and then we'll find a boat to stow away on, we'll work out the rest once we get to the mainland." They all nodded in agreement and agreed they would do it the next night. Leo looked out the window again and an image flashed through his mind of he and his brothers laughing and having fun at the lair with their sensie their human friends with them and he couldn't help but feel a feeling of anticipation of seeing his family again and surprised himself with how much he'd missed them all, even Nikki. They must be going insane looking for him. But soon he'd be home and he was positive that Kim and Clarice would be welcome members to their little family just as the other humans had been. He closed his eyes and smiled despite himself, "I'll be home soon guys." He thought to himself.
Well there ya go, more to come soon but just to warn ya I just bought a four year old, unbroken horse so if I'm a little slow to update he's either put me in hospital or I'm being too stubborn to know when to quit!! I hope you enjoyed this chappy till next time. Toodles Angel!