Amongst The Ashes Of God

Disclaimer: Anything you could sue me for isn't mine

This is an AU story


Logan lay across his bed, fully dressed. It was 4.40 am and he was just lying there, watching the time drag past. After an over hasty good night from the two they had both retired into their separate rooms. It seemed almost that he was counting down the time until he could go and talk to her. Everything was ready for their speedy departure and hopefully effortless slip out of the city and to the burning embers of Max's memories. He had to wait the next 14 minutes until he could go in an acceptable 5 minutes early, and since he last looked only a minute had pasted.

Max was pacing up and down the guest room she had been in since 1am, when they both went to 'bed'. She quickly said "Goodnight" and rushed in, not sure if she wanted to see the bed she was in not long ago, with him. She could cope with seeing it, it was the feeling of wanting to get back in it that she couldn't, or maybe she would just laugh at him, but after their time together tonight, sober and in a contemplating but friendly atmosphere she couldn't see her self laughing at him. She hadn't been to sleep, but had instead just thrown herself around the room, lying on the floor, the bed, the chair, pretty much everywhere. She wasn't sure why, "Must be home coming nerves" she jested, trying not to think about the exquisite dinner she had, and how he had remembered her lip balm. The more she thought about it the more he seemed to good to be true, which is why she still didn't believe he was. But he did a damned good impression.


Rumandello looked over to the cloud of smoke to his right, the blackened cloud of Manticore was ascending to the heavens seemingly trying to blight them as it had done him. He tightened the scarf around his lower head, throwing the ragged end over his left shoulder before sitting up from the downed tree he had be perched upon. He didn't like what he picked up with his enhanced hearing from the slaughter site.

Footsteps.

His memories flickered in his mind like a dim candle in the night wind, the flame showing him the room, the room they kept him in for all those years. He was only a boy, a boy who cried for his parents, a boy who screamed to god when they opened him up, but he had learned that those 5 steps down into the basement laboratory where 5 steps too far for God's hearing, or as he had later came to realise, he had been forsaken.

The scientists worked on him for hours at a time, removing things most people needed to live, but this boy lived with only the fiery pain that came from having your nerve endings scratched away for research purposes. Repeatedly he blacked out, but they brought him around, that bitch insisting that he be awake during the procedures. Years passed and the boy's sanity took its leave of him, and soon the scientists were mutilating a man, one whom had broken loose a total of 8 times and disembowelled his torturers with his bare hands, often sating his appetite on their remains. He had not been fed since the injection they gave him, the injection he was given in the room of at least 50 kidnapped children, 56 to be precise. It was that injection and the following scan with some sort of device that made them remove him from the others and isolate him.

After so very long he had been imprisoned within a tank of water and left in there for a week or so, until a certain formula had been concocted. This he knew by the visits from Lydecker, the only one who seemed to talk to him, the only one who didn't treat him like a test subject. As to why Lydecker didn't break him out he had a strong belief it was because he would have killed him, being most feral at the time. Upon this formula being inserted into the dilution chamber next to his tank, Rumandello remembered screaming at her, screaming that he would kill her, kill her if she pressed that switch.

She pushed the switch and the formula was administered into the water, and his skin began to burn, blood blisters formed across his body and burst, his crimson liquid leaking from him like water in a sieve. That is what they wanted, she wanted. They had kick started what was already only partially active in his body as a child. It had taken them years upon years but they had finally unlocked his hidden potential, little did they know they had also sealed their own doom.

His eyes ignited with a furious light, the flames licking at his brow, emitting an animalistic growl as he sped back through the forest to see who dared live through his torrent of destruction.


"Erm, Max" he said to the guest bedroom's door, "It's time".

He had almost finished when the door flew open and she strolled out, "What are we waiting for then?"


After they had infused his body with the formula via his water tank, there was no more surgery. It seemed that no matter what device the people in white coats used, they couldn't even draw blood. His body wasn't entirely human anymore; small pieces of him had been replaced with some kind of organic metal, which seemed to be growing inside of him, from him. They kept him locked up for a few months after that, until Rumandello realised that by kick starting the multiplication of the living metal in his body that they had not allowed him a human body with metallic aspects, but a metal body with no other aspects. In other words his 'hidden potential' was eating him alive, slowly but surely turning him into a solid chunk of metal. Upon his realisation of this he went berserk, breaking free of his tank with his now iron fist and destroying all in his way as he broke free of his home for years, and ascended up the 5 stairs and into the daylight, which blinded him, it was the first time in his memory he had seen the sun. The rays on his eyes set off a kind of reaction, a flickering light glowing around his pupils, resembling a flame of sorts.

After breaking free he lived in various places, slowly regaining his sanity by reading books and observing the innocent people that surrounded him. Occasionally he lost it and killed a family or two, but that mattered not to him, because every time a Manticore recovery team showed up, he took great please in annihilating them, and sometimes even going looking for them. Once he even went back to Manticore to look for the missing gland that Lydecker told him about, the one which allowed him control over the metal which was destroying him, but apparently Manticore hadn't found it, which was typical of them he thought, the useless bastards.


Having bypassed the sector checks and emergency traffic heading to the site of the burning war zone Max and Logan had a good half hour on the rest of Seattle racing to Manticore, an almost insane thought for Max. Speeding down the outer roads Logan kept his eyes on the road, but Max let hers wonder.

She knew that if Manticore had truly just moved to another base of operations then the fire wouldn't have been so sloppy, it seemed to be the work of an outside force. He does look cute when he is concentrating. The outside force must me insanely powerful though, in order to take down a whole army of genetically superior soldiers, which made Max nervous. His arms are tensed too, I remember them being nice. What the hell could have done this?

Max was looking out of Logan's window occasionally drifting into thoughts of him as he moved slightly in her way and back again, and then looking forwards she saw the plume of smoke hanging ominously in the air ahead, and she and Logan braced themselves for the unsure as his Aztec braked and screeched onto the dirt track Max had told him to look out for. There hadn't been any conversation on this trip, and the silence was thick with apprehension, but the wait was almost over as they neared the final bend before a direct line of sight with Manticore's flaming remains.


Reaching the edge of the clearing he could see a figure running from the building, their movement jagged at best. He knew who it was, and drawing his blade he watched. He wasn't sure why he wasn't upon the survivor taking enjoyment in finishing them again, but he just stood there and watched. His attention was suddenly diverted as he saw a vehicle speed into the clearing and stop 20 feet away from the nearest corpse. He stepped back into the shadows and stood watching.


Max and Logan stepped with caution from his car. True it was a rash entrance but Max had pretty much convinced him that who ever had done this would be well gone by now. Looking across the field the grass and concrete was littered with parts and pieces of things Max barely remembered, blood flicked around like a painting by Jackson Pollack. Staring at the carnage Logan felt uneasy, like they weren't alone.

"Max, I don't like this" he said, his eyes darting around the tree line, "I don't think we are alone"

Before she could give him a reply she saw somebody just inside en-shadowed tree line at the opposite end of the clearing and she blurred off after the mystery figure.

Logan however pressed his hand to his head, which was throbbing, and as he grimaced he saw a glint of metal in the smoke dimmed sunlight a few feet from Max as she raced towards it, but she was too far gone to hear his warning.