Disclaimer: I own nothing. This fic has a rating. R&R.
.:The Bayville Bone-Claw Massacre:.
Part One
Walking alone down a street where raindrops skip off cement; struck to pallid luminosity under its liquid sheen in the scant light. There is no small amount of rain. This is a storm; the kind that's built up for days and threatens to last as long itself. Clouds cast a certain shadow that makes dusk seem like night, and a cold wind howls between buildings in the narrow street as it sweeps the rain along with it in lashing arcs.
It's hard to believe in good weather during a storm like this one. It's easy to forget, to acclimatize, to not move forward, and neither to regress but simply be, in state, neither accepting nor tolerant, yet at once both without thinking. It is easiest to deal with but not to dwell on a condition; to commit yourself to matters of prevention so as to create a static means of coping and by way of this to eliminate it as a factor. For those so equipped then any condition - however intransient - ceases to be in the waking mind. Through such slothful short-sightedness much is left ill-considered where heavy thought is due and much is not dealt with in any ongoing manner, nor dwelt on. So ran one's internal monologue, albeit, in terms far removed. In a simplified and inarticulate fashion whereby only a notion in its heated self is born; made of no words or thoughts which can be traded at the second hand. It is in its most basic state a feeling or an intuition that while calamity and hatred can quickly be forgotten that they, when coming from the past, can easily inject a reminder into those who have grown accustomed to their absence, and thereby give rise to old habits.
There was a definite odour left untainted by the rain, and it ran its presence cursively over the nerves like a bow. X-23 was understandably afraid. Her already timid gait slowed and then stopped. Eyes flickered toward the unwholesome and uninviting bleakness of a shadowy alleyway which ran perpendicular to her path. Roberto, Jamie, all the others; they were nowhere in sight. She could not pick up their scent, and the young mutant took faltering steps backwards as a sudden, irrational panic took possession of her. She smelled something bad. It was only sensible to now avoid such a pitfall as this. The alley seemed to brood with an intent of its own by way of the imagination conforming to certain fear-driven expectations.
Her mind dashed, contemplating the figurative at pace, her heartbeat rising to a sprint. There was a startling jump in the state of her panic, and transcendent relief following. Someone lurched out of the uninviting maw, a vagrant of some ragged description who appeared not to mirror the earlier smells or portents in any fashion save by way of a certain unpleasant reek, not wholly taken care of by the still pelting rain. He loped off with a damp newspaper blanketing his head impotently against the storm and swore, spitting as he made off toward some better sheltered haven. The young mutant then took a calm breath without thinking and this was a good sign of tension passing. Five steps carried her half-way across the no-longer fearsome mouth of that same alley where curiosity made her head turn. All this won her was the right to a sudden, unbelievable jolt of consummate shock. The sight came first; a roaring, lunging shadow of some unnameable hulk. Then a jolt, and all her body felt as though it had been lightly struck as everything tensed and the heart leapt with such sudden potency of condition that it was overwhelming. An involuntary shudder would dismiss the sudden freezing of motion, but in those circumstances survival was, perhaps, an all-too lofty goal.
Dizziness and the disorientating swirl of ground and sky filled her vision in the tumbling press of violent contact. Something pushed insistently against the skin of her shoulder and arms and popped its surface in dashes suddenly bereft of feeling. She knew the ugly smell of another person's hot breath as pain lanced through her arms in spite of her body's need to cheat it. Something wet struck her face, hard, or her skull had slammed into something. In the confusing press it was impossible to tell. Whatever it was gave way. Her assailant had - in one great motion - carried the lunge from the sidewalk to a parked car, and her head went through its window. It cracked and it shattered; leaving only the knowledge of an impossibly painful sense of force against the skull having been survived, and she only understood the occurrence after she beat the falling glass to the pavement and it fell about her with the rain.
She would have gotten up now had something not then struck her face. This time it was no frenzied motion, but she realised a smoothness and sense of measured ferocity in the two massive hands rushing toward her, and then her vision was blacked out. She knew pressure and harm as something filthy pressed harshly against her eyes, piercing them, and bearing inward in an incised fashion that chilled her spine.
Thumbs, ending in claws, buried themselves deeply now within the soggy warmth of tissue beyond her eye-sockets, and howling its victorious exhalations her attacker began to lift and rail her head with numbing speed and force against the concrete. Consistent in pace, metered like the beat of a song, rising and falling over and over again until the skin on the back of her head was paste in her hair, and she felt the grating of her bare skull against the jagged concrete. Blood pissed down over her cheeks. Her arms flailed weakly, and in vain. Now hot breath filled her face - her only indication of proximity - and she felt wetness beyond that of the pouring rain. Several things like pointed, conical glass, dull at the edges, piercing her skin at angles from two opposing points; driven by crushing weight and force. She was sure she would survive. It was very hard for her to die, after all. But she did not think beyond that. This was an experience that was, at its core, unbearable and intolerable, but inescapable and so it forced one into abject acceptance. A rag-doll state where submission might equate to survival; where survival was the only consideration, and condition was no longer a concern.
She felt it had been longer than it had been, and though her eyes were useless - her lids unspoken for save by their dictations of pain - she made to squeeze them shut. She could not see to understand; there was no 'shut' and there was no 'open' for two things so utterly ruined. It gave her some comfort though. The pressure became more and she was aware of a gross sense of disorientation and above all, a complete, unalterable sense of wrongness. She kicked her legs in frenzied resistance now, and her arms spun wildly. Claws raked with abandon and her legs flailed further with such panicked intent that her heels hurt from drumming so harshly against the floor. Twisting and fighting wildly but unable to rid herself of this knowledge, this sense of being broken in condition, she was chilled over a thought: something she could no longer feel had been ruined. She knew it was; that many things were. These things no longer a part of her in their current state; having become only flaccid, hanging pieces attached by some neutral and unfeeling strand.
The assailant reared back from her, and she knew this only from the reduction of weight bearing her back. She heard, or in the blurred thing which for her now passed for hearing - drowned out by the chorus of her heart pounding on resolutely like a steam-hammer in her ears - a spit, and the splatter of something slapping the wet ground.
Her struggles ceased to be but continued in a fitful sense, and they could only be called convulsions now. Her entire body in spasms; as if trying to rid her desperately coiled muscles of their last strength before giving up. Piercing screams became a throaty noise - a wet, gurgling sound - and at last a whimpering of sorts, something which echoed a certain dampness, loss, pain, and a sense of relief. Everything slowed down with this sound.
Now the epigone had ceased to be, and she lay still on the sidewalk. Her limbs were splayed in an awkward fashion, and she no longer had a face to speak of save for the shreds of blood-sodden flesh and muscle which hung hinged and flapping timidly with each indelicate twitch of her body. There was a cavity of sorts there, in her skull, where her jaw hung askew; and her lips were torn, dangling, shredded, pulled and twisted into a macabre, permanently inhuman expression; a gaping hole in her palette where gums were thrust back and teeth shorn from their place. Something like scarlet jelly was being washed clean of blood; draped on the lips of this jagged maw and pelted by the rain as it sat now, quivering as each drop struck it where it lay on the pavement. The scene was eerily bloodless; as this was washed efficaciously from her body and fled along the gutter now, down a drain. X-23 was not regenerating.
'"The sin of pride!"' Words echoed from the stereo in the rec-room. It was late and Logan did not sit well with CDs, but through boredom and worry he had put on the radio in an attempt to displace his thoughts. 'The devil cried, "is what will do you in,"'
'Huh,' he intoned in a gruff manner which allowed him to seem both angry, amused and insulted all at once. The radio didn't seem to mind. 'Johnny did you ever know that time keeps marching on, the coldest hour is the one-' Logan turned it off. He thought to get a drink, but the idea receded. To tell the truth; Logan was fuming. Typically, he'd stewed with worry over some of the students heading out to the movies so late, and the resulting issues had turned that worry into a sort of outraged paternal wrath. They'd all come back swearing she'd been with them the whole time. Nobody could account for X-23's absence, despite his furious attempts to grill the information out of the returning students. Jean, Scott and Ororo had each gone out looking for her, but Xavier had discouraged going out on his bike in such filthy weather when there were so many other volunteers. He'd been fine with that then, then it had been different. Then Cerebro, Xavier's telepathy, even Jeannie, they all had their means. Then was good. Open and shut. It was different now.
Logan got up with these thoughts stewing over: he wasn't going to fuck around, sitting here, scratching his balls all night just because someone had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth and nobody could find her. He started off.
He planned to avoid Hank and Chuck; who believed there had been some malfunction in Cerebro; a technical error which explained X-23's apparent disappearance during what had been such an innocent and harmless sojourn. They were too busy to notice him and wouldn't have noticed him anyway even if he palmed their keys and left 'claw me' signs on their backs. Or so he thought as he made his way toward the foyer and, absorbed in thought as he was, almost head-first into another.
'Th' fuck!' and a screwed up look was all Logan came out with upon almost walking into Ororo. The stocky feral took a disconcerted step back as he regarded the tall woman. She looked worried.
'Charming,' she remarked, in an almost off-hand style.
'S'-' Logan started.
'I was just looking for you,' she explained, her voice running over his in a haughty fashion. She spoke with that composed tone he'd come to understand, but at a pace which inferred that she was after him for more than just a friendly chat. 'Charles is-' the woman paused here to find the correct words; as if wishing she could go back on the last two. Logan took it as an invitation.
'Sorry there, 'Ro. Was I interuptin' ya?' he grunted; his ironic tones as subtle as nuclear war. 'Fu-'
'Logan! This is very important!' she ran over his comment. Logan exhaled and squared his shoulders at this. 'The Professor...' she went on, but Logan wasn't listening. He opened his mouth to voice certain unpleasant terms about frustrating things when Charles rolled in behind Ororo, who faded back from the doorway as the Professor regarded them both.
'There really isn't time for this,' he said; his expression one of concern - even fear - and intent. The man communicated so much of his position through himself, not with his powers, but with precise tones and certain looks. Through this and the few words he'd already intoned Logan was made better aware of the gravity of the situation. 'Right,' he grunted; prepared to consent to any request.
'Come with me.' Xavier turned with this. Logan was aware of Storm's eyes following him out of the foyer as he went on at Xavier's side. 'I'll explain as we go.' Logan looked back on hearing this to see Ororo's gaze following Xavier and he out the door until she gently pushed it closed behind them. After turning, slowly, she leant back against the now closed doors and took a few deep breaths. It was going to be a long night, there was no doubt about that. The storm outside had been a long time coming and it was, at last, hurling its collective force at everything beneath it. Sheets of rain, howling wind, thunder so vivid you could feel it, streaks of lighting lashing downward like burning strands of phosphorous; turning night to day. All this as Xavier and Logan pulled out of the institute. It was certainly a fitting atmosphere.
In the rec-room, passing the time, Storm's gaze fixed on the television, but she paid little mind and watched with only half-hearted interest as some character took to repose. The only light in the room was the screen pulsing intermittently from within the shadows. 'When will the clouds be weary of fleeting?' the character mused. Storm stood up and turned to leave. 'When will the heart be weary of beating...' she did not stop to listen.
She'd checked every room, and all the students were there. Avidly she wished Hank would quicken his pace. He and Xavier had, in their attempts to repair something which worked fine, effected certain changes to Cerebro. Hank was still ardently working on reordering the device so that it would work normally again. There was absolutely no point in trying to sleep, she knew this much. Even if she could have slept it was- Storm's head turned a few times in search of the hour before she realised there was no clock in her loft. Just greenery. It could have been a pleasant night here; with the rain drumming heavily and soothingly against the panelled glass. The intermittent bursts of lighting bathing the grounds in evanescent light.
It was only when Hank returned that Ororo realised, after a fifteen minute spell sitting in the rec-room without a single word exchanged, that sharing misery could only compound it. They each felt it after their own fashion, and they each knew the others at the second hand, incommunicable, but translated into despondent hints by proximity alone.
Hank eventually broke this morose silence.
'Sunrise,' he remarked. Nodding toward the window.
'I see,' Storm said.
'They'll be getting up soon. I think it wont be so bad when everyone knows-' she raised an eyebrow at this. 'I mean, the waiting. It's hardly pleasant.' he finished quickly.
'I don't think they'll take it well,'
'I don't think anyone could-' Hank looked up to see Kitty and paused with this remark. She was all blear and only half-awake; shambling in a sleepy fashion through the rec-room. The young girl eyed her two instructors with unveiled curiosity. Hank did not continue speaking, and Ororo did not seem to mind. They both watched the young girl make her way into the kitchen. Both seemed to restrain disappointment as the distraction left. Spirits lifted a little as the girl came back, a glass of water in one hand. 'What's up?' she asked the two. Her voice had an almost too cheerful quality for such a filthy hour.
'Nothing,' Ororo seemed to choke on this word. If it were possibly for her to do something so inelegant.
'Well,' Hank added.
'Yes, not nothing. Just,' Kitty quirked an eyebrow as Storm reached for the words, it was certainly unusual behaviour. 'I think it would be best if you waited until morning.'
'All right,' Kitty replied with a sense of bemusement, and set to wondering what could have transpired to put such a mood on her instructors as she made her way back to her room. Ororo and Hank exchanged glances with each other through the recrudescent silence. Not long now.
The sun came up, which was hardly surprising. The admissions and revelations had run their course and now the early morning saw a disheartened group assembled in the large meeting room. Everyone currently at the institute and they were all possessed by some separate languid urge. They were, in state, sprawled or reclining, sporting various negative expressions after having taken so poorly to the news. 'You all understand there will be a strict curfew put in place, as we're not sure whether this is an isolated incident or a part of something larger.' this was Ororo. She addressed the assembled students with a sense of spirit improved since twilight, but perhaps only put on for their benefit. 'Only until Xavier and Logan return,'
'And they shouldn't be long.' Hank added.
'Yes,' Storm agreed. They voiced more through hope than knowledge however. 'The police who found her have taken her somewhere, the professor isn't sure where but he believes Logan may be able to help through certain contacts...' Ororo went on explaining the situation as Hank addressed the looks of those around him. Several of the newer students, Roberto, Jamie, Rahne, they seemed especially downcast. He realised with suddenness it was by way of the other days trip that this situation came about.
'You shouldn't feel responsible,' he said to them as Ororo's monologue drew to a close. It was met by a chorus of half-hearted nods. Both Ororo and Hank seemed to feel the weight of the situation redoubled in that not one person felt self-concerned enough to voice a protest over the new curfew.
'I still can't see how,' Scott voiced. 'It doesn't make allot of sense. I thought she had Logan's healing factor?' Hank wasn't sure how to respond to this question, nor was his fellow instructor. Neither felt the a blunt admission of details would be fitting.
'It's-' Ororo started.
'-They said,' Hank began at the same time. 'Sorry,' he gestured for her to continue.
'In the way it was done, the person seemed to have some understanding of this. They did it in such a way as to override it,' Ororo finished. Less poignant questions were voiced then and met with answers. The conversation fell to morbidities and details. In time it stopped and the assembled students left Ororo and Hank to their respective devices. Breaking into groups; each seeking to tick away the day in some fashion. With some students more inclined to bounce in the face of tragedy looking to make the most of their scant hours in the face of this new curfew. All talk turned to the future, and these colloquies were concerned with what was to come, and the foreboding atmosphere and present sense of adolescent theatrics pervaded almost everything. Outside it was still raining.
End of Part One.
