Severing Ties
Summary: Things are looking up for Peter. It had been a few months since Doctor Octavius passed away, and Peter was getting his life on track except for a few things that wouldn't let him be. That's all about to change as someone, somewhere, needs Peter, and he's going to be in for a wild ride.
Chapter 18: The Greatest Plan Ever Concocted
Jackie was downright amazed. She settled down remarkably quick in the three-hundred population town. The people even took to her swiftly. She felt like she'd been there from the very beginning. It was her third day, and she'd already been invited to meals four times; two dinners and two lunches. She couldn't shake the feeling that someone, or something, wanted her to stay there.
She was out grocery shopping when she noticed a girl her own age that was very odd-looking. Jackie, who could never be called shy when she was being herself, said, "I like your hair!" to the girl.
It almost looked pale blonde, but in the light it gave off an iridescence that normal hair just didn't do. It glowed with the pearlescent colors; green, purple, red, orange, blue and yellow. Jackie liked it very much.
The girl came over to talk to her. She had a sweet smile on her face. "I'm Candace," she introduced in a soft, cultured voice.
"I'm Jackie."
"Welcome to Iceberg," Candace said.
"Thanks. Everyone around here is so inviting. How'd you get your hair like that? It's obviously not natural."
Then Candace's voice changed, and it now had a Brooklyn accent. "I knew a bit about chemicals, ya know? So I found the right junk to make my hair look different from everybody else's."
"Fascinating. How'd you think it'd look on me?" Jackie inquired, grinning.
Candace shook her head. "It only works wiz light hair. It would make your hair look really greasy." Now her voice had a French accent.
"Why do you keep changing your voice?"
"Habit." It was back to soft and cultured.
"What's your normal accent?"
The two girls continued talking while Jackie got the rest of her groceries. Jackie invited Candace back to her home.
"You're renting out the old Bilge place?" Candace asked.
"I guess… I didn't know it was called that…Where do you go to school, again?" It was a complete change of subject, yes, because Jackie didn't like thinking about who was in the house before she was. It felt like it was hers, and no one else's.
"I don't. I graduated college, already," Candace replied, sounding bored.
"How old are you?"
"Nineteen. You?"
"I'm almost nineteen…" Candace didn't look a bit astonished. Jackie, on the other hand, couldn't even think of finishing college before her nineteenth birthday. Soon, the girls were in each other's confidences.
"Yeah…you know all the mutant stuff going on, right?" Candace asked. "It's all a bunch of bull. They should just leave u--them alone. They're people, too."
"I know. It's ridiculous. It's like, what did w--they ever do to them?" Jackie responded vehemently.
Candace, being amazingly intelligent, caught that Jackie almost made the same mistake she did. "Mutant?"
Jackie looked at her for a moment. Unless she was mistaken, Candace was about to let the same thing slip as Jackie was. "Yeah. You?"
Candace nodded. "I've got three powers, but some people say my intellect is a fourth. I don't think so."
"Me neither. You're not born with intelligence." An old wound burned. Jackie's parents weren't very smart. She closed her eyes and willed the memory away.
"Exactly. Except, maybe I wouldn't be so boring if it was my fourth power," Candace admitted.
"You? Boring? Never," Jackie contradicted. She looked at Candace's baggy, black pants that had fiber-optic straps hanging off them, and then looked at her homemade shirt. It was really dense fishnet except for around her chest, there it was black fabric, exclaiming 'It's All about Power, and Taking Control.' On the back, it read, 'Breaking the Will, and Raping the Soul. They Suck Us Dry Til There's Nothin' Left. We Are Responsible!' as the entire back was fabric, not fishnet. When she got to her eyes, Jackie admitted that they were the most unusual part about the girl sitting before her. Her eyes were golden yellow, and looked a lot like a cat's.
"My looks are exceptionally strange because of everything else that's boring. Eyes; contacts. Hair; special formula.
"My powers are what everyone else has. Invisibility, flight, and teleportation. They're so normal it's tedious," Candace snapped. "That's where they got my mutant name, you know? Triotrite. Trio, for three, Trite because my powers are boring."
"Triotrite. I like it, though. It sounds cool. Definitely not normal," Jackie comforted.
Candace snorted. "Oh, well. After my family's mission is finished, I don't have to be a mutant anymore."
"What?"
Candace looked around and bit her lip. "Wanna join us? After we're done, I've created this serum that'll take away mutation."
"What are you doing?" Jackie asked, and wished she had Peter's spider-sense. Suddenly she felt a tingling in the back of her neck.
"Well, first, we're trying to get all the powerful mutants out of New York. Spider-Man, Black Cat, Daredevil, those guys, too, even though they're not mutants. But we found out who is who, and we don't want to kill them. So we had to find indirect ways to get them out of there. Black Cat was easy. Daredevil is being taken care of. But the hardest has been Spider-Man."
"Why do you need to get them out of there?"
"Because we're doing something that they would be able to stop, if they were there. They can't stop it, or it'll all be ruined. You see, if I tell you everything, you've got to swear that you're going to help us. Because, once you know, you're going to want my serum to take away your powers." Candace kept looking around to make sure no one was listening.
"All right," Jackie agreed.
"A mutant died a year or two ago. I can't remember when. Her name was Jean Grey, and she was telekinetic. There are legends about a telekinetic rising from the dead, and whoever raises her will be able to control her. My family is trying to resurrect her, and then cause great destruction in New York," she explained.
Jackie remembered Jean Grey. She was her personal mentor on her powers until that day at the second Cerebro. She sharply inhaled. "Why?"
"To let the world know that mutants are horrible. And almost all of them are. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
Jackie could only nod. Then everything slid into place. "And once everything's done, you can take your serum and say you had nothing to do with it, and live out the rest of your life, while you gave the rest of the mutants in the world hell."
"Exactly."
Jackie's head spun, but she hid her feelings of disgust. "Why has Spider-Man been the hardest to get out of New York?"
"Because he has so many ties to sever. My family knows he can't completely stay away because of all the people he cares for, among them, his aunt, and his fiancé. If we sever those ties for him, he'd get over his heartache and stay with the X-Men. We tried making his fiancé hate him, but that didn't work, he still came back. We figured then that we had to do things the hard way."
Jackie nodded slowly, and then tried to see where MJ was, now, with her mind. She almost retched when she saw her dead body in a box, six feet under. They killed MJ. Jackie couldn't believe it. She was suddenly terrified of the weird girl sitting before her. Who wouldn't be if they found out that this girl was killing, and looking smug about it?
"Isn't it the greatest plan ever concocted?" Candace asked, a sick smile on her face and an evil glint in her eyes.
(A/N: Almost finished! :'(
DiabloDude1: Did you just figure out that I was strange? Lol! I do have yahoo I/M but I rarely go on it. libraliz -at- sbcglobal. net(that's my ID…I kno it looks like an email address, but my parents set it up and they don't kno the first thing about computers…:-p) I think that's really cool that u have a twin sister! I want a twin! Would you mind if I asked to see what you come up with with the 'what if's'? Cuz that seems really interesting. I love listening to rambling! It's the best! Thanks bunches for reviewing, and here's the next chapter! Only one more left!!!
You should review. Why? Because I'm going to ask nicely. Can you pretty please review my story?)