Um, I started writing this chapter a long time ago, stopped, and am now trying again. It is part of my new initiative to develop a writing routine. Do me a favor: "Yell at me if I don't update soon."
(Wrote these a long time ago, but am too lazy to delete.)
Anna Marie Raven: Yeah…sigh. I got all excited about this fic and posted the first chapter…then realized my planned plot was crap. I've been rewriting that for some time now. You see, I depend on plots. The framework keeps my story from going insane and branching off in a million different ways at once. I'm pretty sure I can get back to the writing part now.
GothikStrawberry: Huh. You're right; Logan does have bone claws. And his birth name is James Howlett, he started out his MARVEL career in "The Incredible Hulk," and Sabertooth just won't stop trying to kill him—ever. Jesus, I love They tell you frickin' everything.
Alliriyan: I fixed the mistakes, so you can stop pestering me. Say, why don't you post something for a change? God knows you have enough plotbunnies. And what happened to calling me on my birthday? (For anyone else reading this, I'm 17 now. I wish I were 1 year younger, for weird reasons. I've got the same B-Day as Hitler. If I were exactly one year younger, I'd have been born exactly 100 years after him. Creepy. …And to think he was a painter before he tried the world domination gig. Silly mustache man, it's the writers who will take over the world! …Um, Alliriyan, why are other people reading this?)
XXX
Cloning Evolution
Step 2: Nurture the Nature
XXX
McCoy sat alone in the conference room, poring over a list of names. One black line had been drawn through the word Mystique.
"There are four obvious choices," said the doctor into a handheld tape recorder, absently pointing to four names. "Powerful. Useful. The problem is that they're all located in Genosha."
By Genosha, he meant the nation's new capitol city, built right on top of the bones of Bayville. The old town was completely destroyed. Only the Mansion had remained the same, though it must have been rebuilt dozens of times over the last two decades.
"Phoenix is living in the Mansion now," McCoy went on, "and Shadowcat is buried on the grounds in the old Xavier family cemetery. As always, the Mansion's security is unbelievably tight." He pointed to one of the names, his long nail tapping the paper. "Nightcrawler keeps to the Cathedral—or the University, for his religion lectures. Both places are monitored night and day. Why the Cathedral has cameras, I don't know. Perhaps there are valuable religious relics stored there. And of course, Magneto keeps himself under heavy guard constantly." He shrugged. "In short, we need someone who can get close to these people and look like she belongs there. Rogue and myself are out of the question, seeing as we're both dead and our bodies buried."
He smiled, baring a bit of fang. "Ah the wonders of science. …Hiring someone else is also out of the question. Thanks to LeBeau, every professional thief in the country works for Magneto's government. And, unfortunately, Mystique's physical training is progressing slower than I had predicted. Rogue's latest estimate is that she'll be ready after a year, possibly later. My plan is to send in her in eight months from now, at the latest. I'm pushing for six."
"McCoy!"
He growled and stopped the tape, rewinding it back a bit so he could later record over Rogue's shout. Livid, she burst into the conference room and screeched his name again, even louder than she had in the hall. People talked about red-hot fury, especially when mentioning certain redheads, but Rogue was different. She went white, even her lips, especially her eyes. White flame burned hotter than red, almost as hot as blue. She seemed capable of turning that murderous blue, her skin had gone so white.
It made the odd, red splotch on her neck stand out all the more. The stain hovered over her right carotid artery. McCoy studied it curiously as she fumed at him. It wasn't blood; a slice that size in the artery would have bled her out long before she managed to stalk into the conference room. A food substance, perhaps. Sauce? But that made no sense. Rogue was a meticulously clean eater and careful about her appearance besides.
He gaze slid down to the dinner knife trapped in her clenched fist. More of the thick, red sauce covered the shining metal's serrated edge. The knuckles in her hand twitched, a small warning before she slammed the knife onto the table in front of him. Flecks of red struck the list, his recorder, and his glasses.
"She stabbed me with that," she snarled, accusation in her voice. There was little doubt of who she felt was to blame. She rubbed her neck, making a face at the sauce that smeared onto her palm. "If my skin weren't tougher than nails, I'd be dead."
He shrugged. "Mystique's nature is a very ruthless one." He took out a handkerchief and started to wipe the bits of sauce off his spectacles.
She swiped at the glasses, sending them flying from his hands into a wall. "Ruthless don't teach how to kill with a knife," she snarled. "That's what humans are for, and God knows I ain't the one that did it. I've been too busy tryin' to teach her how to cut her food." Her eyes darted everywhere in the room except at him. "I don't want to know why; I wouldn' understand even if you told me. But when? When did you find the time to teach her to kill?"
"When she was growing."
Rogue visibly recoiled at the calm response. "The womb—you taught her in the womb!"
"It was not a wom—"
"Shut up!" she shouted. "I can't believe you. You slipped combat training into Forge's learnin' program, didn't you? Right in there with the ABCs and the names of body parts. You taught her to be a killer!"
"Mystique was already a killer, Rogue," he growled, starting to lose his patience with the hysterical woman. "It's in her character."
"How would you know? You've only seen her for checkups. You don't know what she's like. She's a sweet girl who—"
"She's a killer!" he roared, shocking her to silence. Tersely, he continued, "Mystique was and is a ruthless killer, my dear. That fact is hardwired into her. It's written in her DNA."
Rogue was shaking her head repetitively, never a good sign. "This isn't a Nature-Nurture debate, McCoy. She's a little girl."
"Biologically, she's sixteen years old, just entering the critical period for developing her mutant abilities. Do not open your mouth, my dear. The biological is everything. It determines sexuality, ability, mutancy, personality—"
"Her personality—"
"—Is genetically predisposed," he finished for her. "It's in her nature. So there's no point in trying to change it. Why do you insist on trying?"
She folded her arms. "Just guess I'm "genetically predisposed" to believe human beings are more than DNA. So there's no point in tryin' to change mah mind about it."
He stifled a groan. Stubbornness was certainly in her nature. Because of that, their argument, already going nowhere, was also bound to go on forever. "So what do you suppose we do?" he demanded, trying to be practical. "Throw away the months of work we've put into this clone and start over with another?"
"We?" she asked, placing both hands on the edge of the conference table. "You an' me? You are not doing anythin'. Ah think you've done enough."
"So we just end this and go our separate ways? If you will recall, my dear, this whole plan was your idea."
"I don't need you."
"Which of the two people in this room is a geneticist?"
The two of them ended up in a deadlock, glaring into each other's faces. Rogue looked away first. "So what do we do?" she asked.
"Indeed, what?" He paused a moment. "We stick with the original plan. We can't win by numbers—Forge's cloning machine wasn't made for mass production, anyway. We need the psychological shock, pitting them against their fallen friends and lovers, against themselves."
He was going to go on, to point out that Magneto won the war because he was able to pull some of the X-Men to his side, making it seem like all mutants were one united front. The majority of mutants and their sympathizers had switched to his side because of that. With the X-Men back and fighting against Magneto, the rift would reappear and divide the two sides again, weakening him and possibly strengthening their side enough to throw a coup d'etat. Rogue knew the plan. It was her idea. But she wasn't going to let McCoy applaud her brainchild, pat her on the head, and tell her to run along like a good little girl.
"We change the plan," she stated. "You will not touch these children. They are children, not experiments. You'll have nothin' t'do with them."
"Has it occurred to you, Rogue, that now that I have Mystique's DNA and a successful clone, I don't need you anymore?"
"Has it occurred to you, McCoy, that all I have to do is strangle you with mah bare hands?"
That ended the argument.
XXX
Rogue leaned across the table and pulled the list of names towards her. She studied it for a while, considering. "Tell you what, Hank," she sighed. You leave the children to me, an' I'll get you DNA samples of four of the strongest Old X-Men in less than two weeks.
Hank leaned back in his chair. Without the combat education during the developmental stage, the clones' training would be slowed, but getting four samples a year ahead of schedule more than made up for it. He nodded to Rogue. "Two weeks."
XXX
"…Darlin'?"
The girl looked up at Rogue, a shy smile lighting her face. "Hi, Rogue." Her eyes fell on the woman's neck, and she grew pensive. "Was I bad?"
Rogue tried not to make a face. She had no idea how to explain this. "No, darlin'," she began, getting the easy part over with first. She walked into the room and knelt by the clone, who sat hunched on the floor. "When you were growin', you were taught things…"
"The voice-pictures," the girl supplied, giving her word for the education program.
Rogue nodded. "Yes. I don't know how to say this, hon, but some of the voice-pictures were—bad. You were taught wrong things." She reached out and stroked the long red hair. "Don't worry about it. I'll make sure you get taught right." The woman smiled and changed topics. "I have a present for you, Darlin'."
She pulled it out from where it had been tucked into the back of her jeans and handed it to the girl. The little blue beauty smiled as it slid in her hands. She pointed it at Rogue and squeezed the trigger.
Rogue face fell, and the clone's did the same. She looked down at the toy gun in her hands. "This is another bad thing," she said.
"Yes."
"Why?"
The woman closed her eyes. That question, the bane of her existence. Surely the parents of children felt the same way, but their charges normally didn't ask why guns were bad. Why, why couldn't the clone have asked why the sky was blue? "Darlin', pinch your arm," she told the girl at last.
A moment later: "Ai!"
She had to pause and stifle a laugh. The girl had made up her own word for 'Ow.' "That hurt, didn't it?" she asked rhetorically once she regained her composure. "You didn't like it."
The clone shook her head, proof that she at least had picked up a few nonverbal cues from Rogue.
"What you did with the knife, and…well, guns in general—they hurt people. Really bad."
Now the girl looked at her quizzically. "You weren't hurt."
"That gun's not real," she explained. "You can fill it with water an' get folks wet. And the knife…my skin's different. It doesn't get cut like normal folks', so I was okay. But someone else would have got hurt."
There was an odd silence for a moment. Then: "I was wondering why your skin wasn't blue like everybody else's."
Rogue couldn't help it. She started laughing. Of course the girl knew nothing about the real world. In her experience, the blue people outnumbered the peachy one two to one. Then she sobered quickly for a variety of reasons. For one, McCoy was one of those blue people and she didn't want to think about him. Then she was also trying to explain something very serious.
She tried to get back on topic. "Nobody wants to get hurt. Knives and real guns hurt people. You don't wanta hurt people. That's bad." Rogue smiled comfortingly. "It's okay; you didn't know. Just don't do it anymore, an' we'll call it even."
Now the girl looked worried. "How do I know if something's bad?"
Rogue sighed, blowing a bit of white hair out of her face. Then she blinked. Finally, an easy question. Sagely, she advised, "There's this rule. It says: 'Don't do anything you don't want other folks ta do to you.' You understand?"
The clone still seemed to be turning the idea over in her head, but she nodded.
They were silent for a time. Who knew what the blue one was thinking, but Rogue was fretting about one last reason why she had stopped laughing so abruptly before. The girl knew absolutely nothing about the real world, and that was "bad." One: if she was supposed to go out and pretend to be the enemy—not any time soon—she'd stick out like a sore thumb and get herself captured or killed. Two: she had almost literally grown up in a petri dish, and that was just wrong. Drastic measures had to be taken.
Rogue found herself smiling at the girl. "Darlin', d'you know what a mall is?"
She cut off the girl's encyclopedia definition mid-word, declaring, "We're going on a fieldtrip, hon."
XXX
Reviews are appreciated, but I can kinda tell if people are reading my story because of the Stats feature. It is nice to get feedback, though. If you have something to tell me, shoot. I tend to reply to reviews.
WILL UPDATE IN JUST A FEW DAYS, PROMISE.
