Disclaimer: None of the League here are mine, and Eilidh and Fiona belong
to themselves and their names are used here with their permission.
Feedback: Much appreciated
Lady Moon3: Hyde is connected in that man's story, but WHAT he is will have to wait a while...
AN: For those of you wondering what I mean by the 'Dracula' class of vampire, Angel will be explaining it to Clark in this chapter.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2004
"So, where's our next member to be found?" Angel asked, as the League drove through the busy streets of Los Angeles.
"Well, according to all reports, somewhere on the outskirts of this city," Bond replied, as he glanced back towards the entertainment room, where most of the League was currently catching a quick break.
From what he could see, it appeared that Harry had managed to find a copy of 'The Matrix Revolutions' among the DVD collection in the room, and was currently watching it along with Elektra, Fiona, and Clark. The Doctor was still driving the League-mobile, while Bond was in the meeting room filling Angel in on the situation they'd be dealing with.
Getting himself back on track, Bond turned to face Angel again. "She's mostly a solo operative, but she has worked in a team on occasion. In fact, that's part of the reason we waited until we'd recruited you to find her; she's someone you know."
*****
"Who?" Angel asked, looking up at Bond. "Bethany? Jheira? Kate?" His expression suddenly lowered, as another option occurred to him. "Please don't say you're after Drusilla."
"No to all of them," Bond replied. "Bethany was considered, but we found someone else who's just as good. We'll be tracking her down last. Right now, we're after someone you met fairly recently; only a couple of moths ago, I believe."
"Wait a minute..." Angel asked, as he briefly sat and thought. Then, inspiration struck him. "Gwen?" he asked, half hoping he was right, and at the same time hoping he wasn't.
"Exactly," Bond said, as he pulled out a file and handed it to Angel. "Miss Raiden's been fairly busy since you last saw her. Take a look."
Angel took the file and glanced over it, curious as to what had happened to the thief since her acquisition of LISA. It wasn't quite what he'd expected, but that was all right; secretly, he'd feared she'd start going on a major thieving spree.
According to the file, while she hadn't completely stopped her career as a thief, she was trying to diversify a bit these days, and was tracking down criminals sometimes, as well as occasionally thwarting the plans of a couple of occult groups she discovered attempting to raise demons. Overall, she'd come a long way from the thief who had tried to steal the Axis of Pythia.
The only question was, would she want to work in a team?
Angel looked up at Bond. "So, do we know where she lives?"
"No," Bond replied. "She's mostly homeless, but signs of her activities have been found in the area we're heading for right now. We're sending you and Clark in after her; in the event of her turning hostile, you two have the best chance of taking her on."
"Right," Angel said, indicating the recreation room, where the League appeared to have reached the part in the movie where Neo fought the Smith- possessed Bane. "Does he know about that?"
"I filled him in on it earlier, yes," Bond replied. "He's fine with it."
"Good," Angel said, as he sat back in chair and stared up at the ceiling. He might as well catch a quick rest before he began the hunt...
*****
"Can I ask you something?"
Angel looked over at Clark, as the two of them walked through one of L.A.'s seedier alleyways. "Sure, go ahead."
"What are you and Buffy?" Clark asked, as they continued walking. "I mean, not meaning to be rude or anything, but, all that stuff the Doctor mentioned you two were capable of... how can you do that?"
Angel sighed. "It's a complicated story, but I'll try to make it quick," he said, as they turned a corner and walked down a second alley. "It starts several thousand years ago, when vampires and demons first came into the world. To stop their spread, a group of sorcerers cast a spell that gave a young woman the strength, speed, and reflexes to go up against them in a fight. They called their creation 'the Slayer', and she proved very effective at her job." Clark nodded, to show that he was following Angel. "Anyway, after she was killed by a demon, a new girl acquired her abilities, and the same thing happened when she was killed, and so on, and so on."
"And Buffy's the current Slayer?" Clark asked. Angel nodded, and the young man continued. "So, what about you?"
"My story's a bit more complex," Angel replied. "I WAS a perfectly ordinary vampire, but in 1898, I killed the favoured daughter of a gypsy clan, and they cursed me with a soul."
"Huh?" Clark asked. "What difference would that make?"
"Vampires- well, my kind of vampire- are demons in a human corpse," Angel explained. "The demon has no conscience by itself, and commits terrible murders to survive. However, in my case, my human soul experiences the guilt of all the crimes my body committed while it was controlled by the demon- and, since my demon was active for almost a hundred a fifty years, that's a lot to feel guilty for."
"Yikes," Clark said, staring at Angel with a new sense of respect. Coping with that much grief... He wasn't sure he could deal with that. "Hey, wait a minute..." he said, as he noticed Angel walk through a beam of sunlight with no ill effect. "Aren't vampires hurt by the sun?"
Angel glanced down, and saw the sun shining on him. He smiled. "Normally, yes, you'd be right- at least, for my lot." He noticed Clark's bemused expression, and mentally checked himself; he shouldn't talk to the kid like he knew everything Angel knew.
"Basically, there are several different kinds of vampires, besides my kind," he explained. "Each race has different strengths and weaknesses, and a couple have remarkably different abilities. The kind that we've been hired to track down, for example, is known as the Dracula class, after the most famous member of their species, while my kind is known as 'the Soulless'- for obvious reasons. We burn up in the sun, have no reflections and are hurt by holy artefacts, but in most other regards we're just enhanced humans; no bats or anything. There's another lot known as 'the Warriors', since they've been at war with a group of werewolves for centuries, who are vulnerable to sunlight but don't have any of the weaknesses of the Soulless, and a fourth group that nobody's given an official classification. Me, I call them 'the Kingdom', since they're ruled by Princes. They have strict rules of honour, and can move at incredible speeds, and aren't hurt by holy artefacts. However, in general they're more like enhanced humans than anything else; guns can kill them, for one thing."
(A.N.- Just to clear things up, the Warrior vampires are the vampires from 'Underworld', and the Kingdom are the vampires from the Sage of Darren Shan, just in case anyone was wondering.)
Clark nodded, obviously intrigued by this new information. However, Angel sensed he was still curious about his immunity to the sun, so decided to continue. "Anyway, recently a spell was cast that banished my demon from my body- before, I've always been keeping it trapped under my soul. As a result, I'm no longer a subject to my kind's normal weaknesses."
"Cool," Clark nodded, before looking around the alley. "So, who are we looking for here? Bond told me you know them, but that's about it."
"I ran into her a couple of times. Her name's Gwen, and she's a thief with the power to generate electricity."
Clark looked up in surprise at that. "How?"
Angel shrugged. "As far as I know, she was born with it. Don't worry; she's never been to Smallville in her life, so she isn't one of your 'Freaks of the Week' that the Doctor told me about."
Clark sighed in relief. "That's good," he said. "I've dealt with enough of them in my time. Besides, who knows what she could do if her powers were created via kryptonite; I'd rather not get hit by THAT kind of lightning."
Angel was about to ask what he meant by that, but then he heard something off to one side that he recognised.
The crackle of electricity.
And, with there being a notable lack anywhere near them of a short- circuiting electrical appliance, the two of them could only come to one conclusion.
Gwen.
"Her?" Clark said, as he glanced over at Angel for confirmation.
Angel nodded. "You go on ahead; I'll catch up."
Clark gave him the thumbs up, and then vanished.
Angel blinked, and then remembered that he'd read in the files that Clark was capable of moving at superhuman speeds, faster even than he ever could.
Sniffing a little, Angel picked up the distinctive scent of Clark's alien blood, and ran after him.
*****
As he ran off, Clark suddenly found himself wondering if this was a good idea. After all, Angel did have more experience with Gwen, and, vampire or not, Clark was still faster than Angel could ever hope to be.
But, on the other hand, they had to catch her before she got away from her current location, and he was the fastest member. Angel's experience wouldn't do them any good if Gwen just vanished.
He rounded a corner, and there she was.
At least, Clark assumed it was Gwen. The woman in question appeared to be a couple of years older than Clark, with long curly brown hair, wearing a skin-tight black outfit that left a long thin line down the centre of her chest exposed. Her hands were both crackling with brilliant blue electricity, and she was standing over a man dressed in some rather odd- looking robes.
"That's enough," she said, looking down at the man. On closer inspection, Clark realised that the man was unconscious, having suffered from a near- fatal electric shock, and it looked like Gwen was prepared to finish the job. "Your time ends now."
"Wait!" Clark yelled, dashing forward so that he was standing in between Gwen and the robed man.
Gwen looked Clark up and down with an appraising glance that looked partly like she was eyeing up for battle and partly like she was eyeing him up for bed. Then she raised her eyes to look him straight in the eye.
"You are?" she asked him, in a voice that sounded vaguely posh with a hint of a street- born accent.
"Clark Kent," Clark replied, briefly glancing back in the direction he'd come from to see if there was any sign of Angel. There wasn't, so he turned back to face Gwen. "I'm a member of a team of unique men and women set up by the British and American to thwart a team of vampire assassins. We want you to be a member."
"Really?" Gwen asked, raising one eyebrow. "And what, exactly, can you do that makes you extraordinary?"
"Well... this?" Clark asked, zipping around behind Gwen before she could even blink, and then lifting her up by her foot with one hand.
"Whoa! What the...?" Gwen said, looking down at Clark in amazement.
Clark grinned up at her. "Is that extraordinary enough for you?" he asked, as he lowered her down to the ground again.
"Well, it convinced me," a voice said from behind them both. Glancing behind him, Clark smiled with relief as he saw Angel walking towards them, looking fairly casual.
"Angel?" Gwen asked, looking at the vampire with a slightly surprised look on her face. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm one of Clark's teammates," Angel explained, smiling at Gwen casually. Evidently, either he didn't care about the robed man behind them, or hadn't noticed, or had noticed and knew that the man wouldn't die because of it. "Sorry we can't fill you in on the situation in more detail right now, Gwen, but we have to get going; if you accept, there's still one final member to recruit, and she's extremely difficult to track down."
*****
Gwen looked between the two men- well, the vampire and the alien, really- for a minute or two. Then she shrugged.
"What the hell?" she said, as she placed her arms around their shoulders. "It might be fun."
*****
Angel grinned as the three of them started to walk back towards the League- mobile. Eight down, and one to go.
Little did he know what they'd have to go through before that one would join them...
Feedback: Much appreciated
Lady Moon3: Hyde is connected in that man's story, but WHAT he is will have to wait a while...
AN: For those of you wondering what I mean by the 'Dracula' class of vampire, Angel will be explaining it to Clark in this chapter.
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen 2004
"So, where's our next member to be found?" Angel asked, as the League drove through the busy streets of Los Angeles.
"Well, according to all reports, somewhere on the outskirts of this city," Bond replied, as he glanced back towards the entertainment room, where most of the League was currently catching a quick break.
From what he could see, it appeared that Harry had managed to find a copy of 'The Matrix Revolutions' among the DVD collection in the room, and was currently watching it along with Elektra, Fiona, and Clark. The Doctor was still driving the League-mobile, while Bond was in the meeting room filling Angel in on the situation they'd be dealing with.
Getting himself back on track, Bond turned to face Angel again. "She's mostly a solo operative, but she has worked in a team on occasion. In fact, that's part of the reason we waited until we'd recruited you to find her; she's someone you know."
*****
"Who?" Angel asked, looking up at Bond. "Bethany? Jheira? Kate?" His expression suddenly lowered, as another option occurred to him. "Please don't say you're after Drusilla."
"No to all of them," Bond replied. "Bethany was considered, but we found someone else who's just as good. We'll be tracking her down last. Right now, we're after someone you met fairly recently; only a couple of moths ago, I believe."
"Wait a minute..." Angel asked, as he briefly sat and thought. Then, inspiration struck him. "Gwen?" he asked, half hoping he was right, and at the same time hoping he wasn't.
"Exactly," Bond said, as he pulled out a file and handed it to Angel. "Miss Raiden's been fairly busy since you last saw her. Take a look."
Angel took the file and glanced over it, curious as to what had happened to the thief since her acquisition of LISA. It wasn't quite what he'd expected, but that was all right; secretly, he'd feared she'd start going on a major thieving spree.
According to the file, while she hadn't completely stopped her career as a thief, she was trying to diversify a bit these days, and was tracking down criminals sometimes, as well as occasionally thwarting the plans of a couple of occult groups she discovered attempting to raise demons. Overall, she'd come a long way from the thief who had tried to steal the Axis of Pythia.
The only question was, would she want to work in a team?
Angel looked up at Bond. "So, do we know where she lives?"
"No," Bond replied. "She's mostly homeless, but signs of her activities have been found in the area we're heading for right now. We're sending you and Clark in after her; in the event of her turning hostile, you two have the best chance of taking her on."
"Right," Angel said, indicating the recreation room, where the League appeared to have reached the part in the movie where Neo fought the Smith- possessed Bane. "Does he know about that?"
"I filled him in on it earlier, yes," Bond replied. "He's fine with it."
"Good," Angel said, as he sat back in chair and stared up at the ceiling. He might as well catch a quick rest before he began the hunt...
*****
"Can I ask you something?"
Angel looked over at Clark, as the two of them walked through one of L.A.'s seedier alleyways. "Sure, go ahead."
"What are you and Buffy?" Clark asked, as they continued walking. "I mean, not meaning to be rude or anything, but, all that stuff the Doctor mentioned you two were capable of... how can you do that?"
Angel sighed. "It's a complicated story, but I'll try to make it quick," he said, as they turned a corner and walked down a second alley. "It starts several thousand years ago, when vampires and demons first came into the world. To stop their spread, a group of sorcerers cast a spell that gave a young woman the strength, speed, and reflexes to go up against them in a fight. They called their creation 'the Slayer', and she proved very effective at her job." Clark nodded, to show that he was following Angel. "Anyway, after she was killed by a demon, a new girl acquired her abilities, and the same thing happened when she was killed, and so on, and so on."
"And Buffy's the current Slayer?" Clark asked. Angel nodded, and the young man continued. "So, what about you?"
"My story's a bit more complex," Angel replied. "I WAS a perfectly ordinary vampire, but in 1898, I killed the favoured daughter of a gypsy clan, and they cursed me with a soul."
"Huh?" Clark asked. "What difference would that make?"
"Vampires- well, my kind of vampire- are demons in a human corpse," Angel explained. "The demon has no conscience by itself, and commits terrible murders to survive. However, in my case, my human soul experiences the guilt of all the crimes my body committed while it was controlled by the demon- and, since my demon was active for almost a hundred a fifty years, that's a lot to feel guilty for."
"Yikes," Clark said, staring at Angel with a new sense of respect. Coping with that much grief... He wasn't sure he could deal with that. "Hey, wait a minute..." he said, as he noticed Angel walk through a beam of sunlight with no ill effect. "Aren't vampires hurt by the sun?"
Angel glanced down, and saw the sun shining on him. He smiled. "Normally, yes, you'd be right- at least, for my lot." He noticed Clark's bemused expression, and mentally checked himself; he shouldn't talk to the kid like he knew everything Angel knew.
"Basically, there are several different kinds of vampires, besides my kind," he explained. "Each race has different strengths and weaknesses, and a couple have remarkably different abilities. The kind that we've been hired to track down, for example, is known as the Dracula class, after the most famous member of their species, while my kind is known as 'the Soulless'- for obvious reasons. We burn up in the sun, have no reflections and are hurt by holy artefacts, but in most other regards we're just enhanced humans; no bats or anything. There's another lot known as 'the Warriors', since they've been at war with a group of werewolves for centuries, who are vulnerable to sunlight but don't have any of the weaknesses of the Soulless, and a fourth group that nobody's given an official classification. Me, I call them 'the Kingdom', since they're ruled by Princes. They have strict rules of honour, and can move at incredible speeds, and aren't hurt by holy artefacts. However, in general they're more like enhanced humans than anything else; guns can kill them, for one thing."
(A.N.- Just to clear things up, the Warrior vampires are the vampires from 'Underworld', and the Kingdom are the vampires from the Sage of Darren Shan, just in case anyone was wondering.)
Clark nodded, obviously intrigued by this new information. However, Angel sensed he was still curious about his immunity to the sun, so decided to continue. "Anyway, recently a spell was cast that banished my demon from my body- before, I've always been keeping it trapped under my soul. As a result, I'm no longer a subject to my kind's normal weaknesses."
"Cool," Clark nodded, before looking around the alley. "So, who are we looking for here? Bond told me you know them, but that's about it."
"I ran into her a couple of times. Her name's Gwen, and she's a thief with the power to generate electricity."
Clark looked up in surprise at that. "How?"
Angel shrugged. "As far as I know, she was born with it. Don't worry; she's never been to Smallville in her life, so she isn't one of your 'Freaks of the Week' that the Doctor told me about."
Clark sighed in relief. "That's good," he said. "I've dealt with enough of them in my time. Besides, who knows what she could do if her powers were created via kryptonite; I'd rather not get hit by THAT kind of lightning."
Angel was about to ask what he meant by that, but then he heard something off to one side that he recognised.
The crackle of electricity.
And, with there being a notable lack anywhere near them of a short- circuiting electrical appliance, the two of them could only come to one conclusion.
Gwen.
"Her?" Clark said, as he glanced over at Angel for confirmation.
Angel nodded. "You go on ahead; I'll catch up."
Clark gave him the thumbs up, and then vanished.
Angel blinked, and then remembered that he'd read in the files that Clark was capable of moving at superhuman speeds, faster even than he ever could.
Sniffing a little, Angel picked up the distinctive scent of Clark's alien blood, and ran after him.
*****
As he ran off, Clark suddenly found himself wondering if this was a good idea. After all, Angel did have more experience with Gwen, and, vampire or not, Clark was still faster than Angel could ever hope to be.
But, on the other hand, they had to catch her before she got away from her current location, and he was the fastest member. Angel's experience wouldn't do them any good if Gwen just vanished.
He rounded a corner, and there she was.
At least, Clark assumed it was Gwen. The woman in question appeared to be a couple of years older than Clark, with long curly brown hair, wearing a skin-tight black outfit that left a long thin line down the centre of her chest exposed. Her hands were both crackling with brilliant blue electricity, and she was standing over a man dressed in some rather odd- looking robes.
"That's enough," she said, looking down at the man. On closer inspection, Clark realised that the man was unconscious, having suffered from a near- fatal electric shock, and it looked like Gwen was prepared to finish the job. "Your time ends now."
"Wait!" Clark yelled, dashing forward so that he was standing in between Gwen and the robed man.
Gwen looked Clark up and down with an appraising glance that looked partly like she was eyeing up for battle and partly like she was eyeing him up for bed. Then she raised her eyes to look him straight in the eye.
"You are?" she asked him, in a voice that sounded vaguely posh with a hint of a street- born accent.
"Clark Kent," Clark replied, briefly glancing back in the direction he'd come from to see if there was any sign of Angel. There wasn't, so he turned back to face Gwen. "I'm a member of a team of unique men and women set up by the British and American to thwart a team of vampire assassins. We want you to be a member."
"Really?" Gwen asked, raising one eyebrow. "And what, exactly, can you do that makes you extraordinary?"
"Well... this?" Clark asked, zipping around behind Gwen before she could even blink, and then lifting her up by her foot with one hand.
"Whoa! What the...?" Gwen said, looking down at Clark in amazement.
Clark grinned up at her. "Is that extraordinary enough for you?" he asked, as he lowered her down to the ground again.
"Well, it convinced me," a voice said from behind them both. Glancing behind him, Clark smiled with relief as he saw Angel walking towards them, looking fairly casual.
"Angel?" Gwen asked, looking at the vampire with a slightly surprised look on her face. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm one of Clark's teammates," Angel explained, smiling at Gwen casually. Evidently, either he didn't care about the robed man behind them, or hadn't noticed, or had noticed and knew that the man wouldn't die because of it. "Sorry we can't fill you in on the situation in more detail right now, Gwen, but we have to get going; if you accept, there's still one final member to recruit, and she's extremely difficult to track down."
*****
Gwen looked between the two men- well, the vampire and the alien, really- for a minute or two. Then she shrugged.
"What the hell?" she said, as she placed her arms around their shoulders. "It might be fun."
*****
Angel grinned as the three of them started to walk back towards the League- mobile. Eight down, and one to go.
Little did he know what they'd have to go through before that one would join them...