Alex & the X-Men by Kitty Rasputin
Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men or Jareth or Sarah. Alex, Delia, West, and Devon are mine so leave them alone.
Chapter 6-Spell
"Snowflake, is that you?" Piotr's voice was wobbly. His face had gone so pale that Alex thought he might faint. She stepped aside and led him into one of their overstuffed armchairs. She'd known this would come as a shock.
"It's her, all right," Logan snorted. "This must be the year for people coming back from the dead. First you, Pete, then Betsy and now the kid here." He was taking it in stride, though. He'd recognized her scent from nearly half a mile from the house.
"It comes with the territory, I guess," Illyana laughed. "You can't really call yourself an X-Man unless you've either died or gone crazy a couple of times. Hey, Delia, I hear this is all your fault. You've really got to watch what you wish for." Her eyes twinkled as she pulled the other girl into a hug.
"How…how is this even possible? You died from the Legacy Virus years ago, but you had reverted in age. Now, you're all grown up again and, well, alive." Kitty couldn't help but stutter when staring at the girl who had been her best friend for years.
"It wasn't me," she said quickly. "If I had to guess, I'd say it was the Illyana from an alternate time-line, you know, the one where everybody but me died. All I know is that the last thing I could remember was New York being filled with a bunch of demons. The next thing I knew I was here in the Underground without any memory of who I was. The best thing I can figure out is that whatever spell I was trying to do got screwed up and sent me here."
"How long ago did you regain your memory," Nightcrawler asked quietly. It was obvious that she knew who she was now. He knew that sooner or later everyone would be wondering why she hadn't come back as soon as she had remembered her identity.
"It was a few months ago," she admitted. "I learned that Piotr was dead and Kitty was off to college so I figured there would be no point in coming back right away. Besides, I had something taken away from me that I won't leave the Underground without." Her voice brooked no argument.
"You won't have to," Alex replied firmly. "I took care of that little matter just this morning." She picked up the scrap of rubber that was left of her wetsuit and pulled something shiny out of the pocket. She tossed it to Illyana who stared at it in wonder. It was the Bloodstone Amulet that she'd been in possession of ever since she'd been captured by Belasco.
"Well, this explains why your back looked like somebody tried to skin you. You found the razor wire when you were trying to break into Devon's fortress." Suddenly, she got very angry. "You're such an idiot. You could have gotten yourself killed sneaking in there! Have you completely lost your mind?"
To everyone's surprise, Alex just grinned. "It was my choice to go after your amulet and my risk too. Don't get your knickers in a twist. I've had this all planned out for months. The only thing that went wrong was a few scratches. I'm fine and now you can leave here without anything holding you back."
"Except for that other important factor keeping us here," she shot back hotly. This got everyone else's attention quicker than if somebody had blown a whistle. There was an uncomfortable silence that stretched for a few long minutes.
"All right, somebody had better start explaining right now before I lose my temper. What's going on and why are you both so angry about it?" Logan practically growled at them.
The girls glared at each other a moment longer before they turned away. Neither of them wanted to break the news that the X-Men had stumbled into a war zone. "Don't worry about it. I'm getting ready to take care of it anyway. Spell, er, Illyana, get them to the castle as easily as you can. Then teleport everyone, including yourself, out of here." She stalked toward a nearby closet and began systematically removing weapons that had been hidden in coat pockets and secret compartments.
This time, it was West who got fed up with her. "Why don't you just tell them that you think something has happened to your precious Goblin King? I'm sure nobody else will be too concerned that we may all be stuck here forever!" This sent a gasp from several of the others.
"I'm never telling you anything again," Alex told him tightly, without even looking at any of them. Then, she whirled around with an expression of absolute fury. She lifted the small crossbow that she had and fired in his direction. He hit the floor and her bolt crashed through the window behind him. Alex paid him no heed, though, and vaulted over his body on her way out the door.
"Get up, you dork. She just saved your life." Delia gestured to the spear that had fallen through the open window. It was embedded in the floor only a few inches away from where he had been standing. The loud crack of a gunshot filled the air and caused everybody to flinch. Before anybody could even move toward the door, Alex came rushing back in. She slammed the door behind her and latched it.
"We're in big trouble," she gasped. "I managed to take him out, but there were others out of range. I hate troll minions," she declared vehemently. She started grabbing more weapons out of the closet and throwing them to whoever could catch. "It's time we get out of here before they come back. They're not very nice."
Illyana had already started emptying another closet and was grabbing some of her favorite daggers along with the sword that looked like the Soul Sword. "Shouldn't we split up so they don't catch up with all of us? I don't even know how Devon found us all here. Nobody's supposed to see through that barrier except for the ones we want to."
"That's why he's got the trolls," Alex muttered as she pressed her hands to the front door. "They could probably smell us from miles away. Plus, I must have led them right here. Stupid fool for forgetting something like that," she berated herself. Her hands were starting to glow blue, though, and within a few moments the door itself was glowing. "That should at least slow them down for a little bit."
"I have to be a killjoy, but how are we going to get out of here now?" Rachel's voice held more than a hint of sarcasm. All of these unwarranted attacks were bringing out her inner-Phoenix. "You just bolted the only door and obviously set it to explode if anybody opens it."
"There's obviously some other way out. She wouldn't just lock us inside of an explosive house," Kitty stated clearly. "Besides, if all else fails, I can just phase us out of here." Still, everyone was beginning to realize what kind of mess they had gotten into.
"There's a secret passageway," Alex said quietly. She pulled on the bookcase until it shifted away from the wall. "Get going to the castle. Once you're there, you should be able to teleport out of here. Don't get involved in any fights if you don't have to."
Alex would have ducked into the tunnel if it hadn't been for the set of adamantium claws that embedded themselves in the frame not an inch from her face. "What's going on?" Logan didn't even try to hide his anger this time. He truly looked as if he would skin her alive if she didn't start talking. Nobody dared to make a move.
Alex didn't even flinch. She had figured it would come to this sooner or later. "Devon's trying to take over the country. You guys are going home. I'm on my way to stop him," she said, lifting the crossbow once more, "anyway I have to."
"Like hell you are," Delia yelled. "You are not doing anything without my help. I owe Devon as much of a beating as you do for my time in those slave camps."
"Me too," Illyana said quietly. "Besides, who's going to keep you from getting into trouble?" She managed to smile tightly, though it didn't quite reach her eyes. They both knew that this wasn't going to be as easy as the last time they had fought against Devon and his goons. Truly, neither one of them cared.
"What did you mean by slave camps?" Piotr had gotten over his shock of finding his sister and was glancing between the three girls for another explanation. Delia, Alex, and Illyana exchanged looks of dread. None of them liked saying anything at all about the reason they knew each other.
Alex suddenly spoke up without warning. When she started talking, it was fast, almost as if she wanted to get the experience over as quick as possible. "I bet you're all wondering how a rock star's daughter ended up in a place like this for years on end." She glanced at Logan, who retracted his claws. "I was kidnapped, believe it or not, from the hospital where I'd been put after my mother was murdered. I was taken to a place very similar to this, except Devon was the ruler and he expected humans to be his slaves. I worked in the iron mines for about three or four years before some of us staged a revolution and got the hell out of Dodge." She paused in her story and glanced at her two friends. "That's how we know each other. We all worked in the mines together."
"Show them," Logan ordered. He could see that not all of the X-Men were convinced she was telling the truth. Physical proof was the only thing that could convince them otherwise.
Delia started to protest, but Alex shook her head sharply. She lifted the back of her loose white shirt until it touched the bottom of her shoulder blades, then turned around so everyone could see. The scars from countless beatings with a whip were highly visible to all of them. After a moment, she let the shirt drop back down and proceeded into the tunnel. She glared back at the X-Men, almost daring them to make a comment, then turned around and kept walking.
"So that's why she has such an attitude towards this Devon guy. Except for the marrying thing, I mean." Rachel shook her head in disgust. "Here I thought she just had an attitude problem in general."
"Suffice it to say, that's the short story. Less gory details that way. Well, are you guys going to help out or not?" Illyana grinned. "I guess you'll have to if you want me to teleport you back." She cocked a shotgun and tossed it to Delia, who was already waiting at the mouth of the tunnel. "Shoot anything you don't recognize as being friendly."
The other girl nodded her agreement and disappeared into the shadows. "They're not too optimistic about this, are they?" Nightcrawler's question went unanswered as everybody dealt with the sudden revelation from the girls in their own way.
Rachel reflected on her own time as a slave and suddenly felt a kinship with the girls that had fought the system and tried to escape. She had also lost most of her family and friends in a similar situation before she had found the X-Men of this time-line to call her family. Vaguely, she wondered if her own life had been sheltered from the physical pain she had just seen marked all over Alex's back.
Piotr mourned for the sister that had never had the chance to be a child, on Earth, in Limbo, and now here. Between being kidnapped by Arcade, living half of her life in hell with a bunch of demons, and trying to reconnect with people her own age while trying to suppress her own demonic abilities, she had never really had a chance to just relax and have some fun. Then, she'd thought her brother was dead and had gone up against an entire city swarming with demons almost by herself. That alone would have been enough to drive any sane person to the edge. But, to have her memory stolen and be forced to work as a slave to some tyrant was beyond what a normal human could handle.
Kitty stared into the dark mouth of the tunnel and suddenly felt the urge to follow the girls into whatever mess they were headed for, if only because the loyalty they had for each other was the only thing that kept them from falling apart. They had been through hell and back and could only trust one another to help them. Those girls had something that Kitty hadn't been able to keep since before she'd become an X-Man. They weren't going to abandon the others at the first sign of trouble. Their faithfulness to each other was something that Kitty's parents had never had, something the X-Men claimed to have, but never really gave completely to, and something Kitty herself had a hard time giving. It had started when her parents had divorced. Then, Piotr had broken her heart. The X-Men faked their own deaths, leaving her and Nightcrawler by themselves to mourn. Apparently, Alex, Illyana, and Delia, even when they had been apart, had kept a very strict code of silence, telling only those who needed to know about what had happened. They were looking out for each other, especially when the others didn't want them to. Impulsively, Kitty snatched up a katana and raced after them.
Logan watched the others react in silence. Alex had told him several years ago about what had happened. He'd recognized the girl the minute she walked through the door of the Princess Bar. After all, he'd been a bodyguard for her mother for a year or two and had been off duty on the night she had been murdered and Alex had nearly died. She remembered him too and they struck up a light conversation. He'd known something terrible had happened to her just from looking at her face. There were bruises the color of three-week old cheese and one fresh scratch that had stretched from her eyebrow to her jawbone. He'd plied her with free drinks for over five hours before she'd finally broken down and told him. It hadn't been the few sentences she'd told the others, either. It was the whole terrifying experience, complete with vivid and disturbing details. He wasn't going to push the others into fighting, though. It wasn't their fight and, if they chose to do it, it would have to be for their own reasons. He particularly kept his eye on West. There was something between the boy and Alex, although both of them were trying hard to ignore it. In that aspect, they were exactly like Piotr and Kitty. He growled under his breathe, wondering if he would be playing matchmaker for the rest of the trip.
West swept his sandy brown hair away from his face with one hand. He truly was an idiot. When he'd seen Alex pointing that crossbow at him, he'd actually thought she was trying to shoot him. He had never expected her to wander back into his life, especially after hearing that she had died from a fight she'd had in the Underground. Now, he wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. He'd immediately said all of the wrong things to her and gotten her angry. To make things worse, he actually felt jealous of this mysterious Goblin King that she seemed so concerned with. Then, to hear an inference about Alex, Devon, and marriage had nearly made him physically ill. He'd seen the scars on his own sister's back from the monster, but Alex's scars had been ten times worse. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered her saying something about protecting the others by always taking responsibility for things that weren't even her fault. It was the only comment she had ever made about being a slave. Unconsciously, he walked toward the passageway and, when he finally regained his senses, he was surrounded in almost pitch black shadows.
"Oh damn," he said out loud. "Now how do I find anybody?" Instantly, a small, but strong hand clamped over top of his mouth and its owner pulled him back against the stone wall.
"Be quiet," a familiar voice whispered against his ear. "I have no idea who's going to be down here and whether they'll be friendly or not." Belatedly, they both realized that the rest of the X-Men had filed into the passage and had closed the entrance behind them. That was the reason for the inky darkness they were enveloped in.
"How can we get to the castle if we can't even see to move?" Nightcrawler was attempting to joke, but nobody was in the mood for it. Instead, Alex activated her fae powers and her hands gave enough blue light to allow them to see a little. Before West could even take another breath, she had put several feet between them.
"I've been meaning to ask you about that, Alex. Just when did you inherit your fae powers?" illyana was genuinely curious. Normally, a fae wouldn't get their powers until their twenty-third birthday. That's why so many bachelors were anxious to find a girl that had not come into her power yet. Once they had power, it was hard to get them to be submissive and controllable. Alex had gotten her powers just over two years before they were scheduled to appear.
"They just showed up a few hours ago. I sent some of Devon's human mercenaries into the Bog of Eternal Stench." She stopped in her tracks as a sudden realization hit her. "Ai-yah, tien-ah! I'm the one responsible for Devon attacking Jareth. He probably thought Jareth was doing it to spite him and here I'm the one that did it. I really blew it this time."
"I'm sure this Jareth understands and probably applauds you for doing what you had to. It did end up saving your life, if I recall it right." Piotr attempted to give her a smile, feeling closer to the girl after discovering that she had befriended and helped his sister for years.
"He'll probably just be annoyed that he didn't get to play his sarcastic villain part," Illyana chimed in. "Besides, Devon has been here almost a full thirteen hours. You never know, though. Since he stopped being able to see Sarah, Jareth has been rather moody. I suppose that's why he sent you to look for her."
By now, they had neared the light of another tunnel. Alex let her blue light fade away. They turned the corner to find a dozen trolls rushing toward them. They hurled spears in the direction of the humans with great force. Most of them came up short or flew harmlessly over their heads. One of them hit the mark though.
Okay, another chapter finally done. If you can't tell, this is going to be an X-Men/Labyrinth crossover, at least for the last few chapters. I may have up to five chapters after this, but no more. I truly want to trash the whole story since it seems nobody is reading it, but that almost seems a waste of my creative time. Anyway, if you are reading this, let me know so I don't throw out something you are reading.
Ai-yah tien-ah!- Merciless hell (It's Mandarin Chinese)
