Disclaimer: I Do Not Own The X-Men Or Anything Related To The X-Men.
Thank you to everyone who looked at the previous chapters and this one. I appreciate you guys and gals taking time out of your busy lives to look at this chapter. This one seems a bit rambley, but hopefully it will be an okay read for you guys and gals.
One thing Raven wholeheartedly believed was no matter how bleak the situation, she could always find a part to mold and foster into something that worked for her plans. It was a rather useful skill when you'd spent the majority of your life living as a second-class citizen under the strict thumb of an egomaniac. No matter what bizarre, life-threatening situation Sunil and Griffin threw her way, she'd been able to leap over the hurdles and make it to the other side relatively unscathed.
Which is exactly why escaping through the back hallways of the governor's heavily guarded mansion was a piece of cake for the talented woman. Though her heart ached at the news of Anna's sudden power display and subsequent disappearance from the infirmary, it didn't threaten to break her task in the slightest. There were much bigger plans in the works and she could be of far greater use to her daughter if she stuck to her own ideas. The main thing was getting Kurt and Anna out of Lenox by any means necessary.
"You're late." A tall man, busily fidgeting with his eye patch hissed to her as she slithered past the small opening to their underground meeting place. "We can't afford these delays."
"Do you realize who you're talking to?" A shorter, and far younger, member of the group whispered into his ear, "She's you-know-who's great-granddaughter."
"How can you be scared of a ghost?" The old man countered and shoved the youngster away, "We all know he lost to a little lost princess."
The words barely exited his wrinkled mouth, before a rock whizzed past his face and forced him to stiffen instinctively. The clink of the stone against the wall echoed through the dark tunnel, leaving each member of the group to slowly let out a collectively held breath. Raven, clutching a second rock if the crowd lost its focus again, stood straighter as the entire group slowly started to study her face.
It was a rag tag team, if the namer was being generous, but it was filled to the brim with specialists in a wide variety of fields. No one survived growing up during the heyday of the revolution without acquiring a few talents. It was fight or fail for most of the fortunate Morphs. Those born without any familial claim to fame, were generally left to wallow in the streets until they met their untimely end or clawed tooth and nail into a basic grunt soldier role.
If Raven could give her family credit for anything, it was that they demanded anyone judged acceptable should be given a task to perform to help the greater good. When the revolution fizzled out, and Anna made her rash decision to empty the Morphs' land straightaway, it left quite a few talented people waltzing around the Lenox dimension just itching for a new cause to support. And Mystique, knowing the inner workings of their minds to almost telepathic levels, had a cause they could definitely get behind.
"If you are done with your idiotic arguments," She started her speech coldly, reminding some of the eldest group members of her grandfather, "We have much bigger tasks at hand and far too little time."
When the group's last mumbling members quieted down, Raven finally delved into the real reasons behind the secret gathering, "Our ancestors' great cause will finally be realized; the Lenox reign will end. They have led and encouraged the destruction of our people for far too long, and it is time we strike back."
The crowd cheered in hushed tones that seemed to echo all around the barren sewer line, as if the voices of their past were cheering alongside them.
"The strength of their people rests on the shoulders of a naïve and untrained kid." Raven forced her voice to drop into a disgusted tone, "Are you willing to leave the future of your homeland to her?"
The general positive mutterings through the crowd and offered suggestions of death to Lenoxians, alerted her to the fact the crowd was indeed playing right into her hand. She honestly didn't care what they did to the land or the people of Lenox, as long as she got what she wanted.
Most of those brave enough to join her team were holdovers from the rebellion that would show little, if any, pity for Mystique's connection to the princess. She held no false hope that her grandfather and great-grandfather's refusal to talk about her personal revolt against their plans to the people was out of concern for her safety. They knew, as well as she did, how furious everyone would be if they heard of such dishonor in the ranks.
Still, she couldn't help finding an ironic dose of humor in the fact their refusal to talk and risk hurting family pride had given her open room to make up whatever story worked best for her. A few twisted lines and these uninformed Morphs were eating right out of her hand. As long as she let them believe she was making a sacrifice by taking on the princess, everything would work out smoothly.
"We all know getting rid of her would leave you free to finally retake the dimension. So, my friends, I offer you a plan that will not only rid you of this pest but also ensure no one else will ever attempt to invade the land you deserve."
The way the crowd swayed in her favor with nothing more than a few attractive proclamations and a long forgotten family connection shoved in their face, amused her to no end. People were fickle creatures and sometimes she could hardly believe just how easy it was to derail their views on certain matters. With the crowd fully entranced in her Morph supportive speech, Mystique set out the basic guidelines for how they could approach the plan.
In the early days of the revolution, the Morphs had worked diligently on a machine to replicate the abilities of a mimic. The device itself proved to be a failure of sorts, since the transferred abilities and thoughts of the giver only remained for short durations of time in the receiver. The real triumph of the machine, which Raven's shortsighted relatives never realized, was its connection to the Lenox dimension's power source. In order to support a machine so formidable, Sunil tapped into one of the strongest power sources in the land.
Deep below the Lenox family's main castle resided a mysterious energy. Little was actually known about the giant glowing crystal, but various inquiries and expeditions by Lenox scholars had uncovered a few basic pieces of information. Both the scholars and Morph revolutionaries knew it powered the teleportation stones, but only Raven and other select few were aware this crystal also played a vital role in the health of the land, water, and even the air in the dimension.
Years before Raven was even a thought, the Morphs began their drilling program to create a direct line through the Morph underground to the base of the crystal. It took countless years and lives to reach the gem, and even more time to create a hook up sturdy enough to allow the flow of energy between the sources. The unbridled strength in the crystal worked perfectly as a power source for Sunil's machine. And now she could only hope a reverse charge, as large as Anna could provide, would upset the entire structure until it collapsed.
"If we shock the crystal with enough power," Raven informed her eager listeners with the most basic of descriptions, "The whole thing will shatter and Lenox will be left free for the taking."
"Aren't you forgetting something?" The eye-patch man grumbled, "A simple loss of their power source isn't going to keep that brat from trying to use her mimic abilities to stop us."
"What exactly do you think is going to cause the power surge?" Raven hissed at him, not willing to give any ground away, "I lure her into the machine and in one zap her powers charge the crystal past its breaking point."
The man, still unimpressed by the young Raven's boldness, dared to question her further, "You expect us to believe she would just follow you into the machine? How could someone like you even expect to get her attention?"
In a flash of movement, Raven shot forward and knocked the man to the floor with one sweeping kick. A rough cough escaped the man's lips as his back slammed onto the stone floor and Raven's knee stabbed his chest. She held the base of her right palm against his throat and applied just enough pressure to leave the man fearful of suffocation. The crowd, accustomed to such physical methods of gaining attention and leadership status, took a few steps away from the pair and watched in curious silence.
"That," Raven, eerily whispered as her face dangled only inches above the man's own, "Is not your concern. I will get her there even if I have to drag her by the roots of her hair." She pressed his throat harder and the older man started to panic, "All you have to do is keep everyone in that mansion busy. Got it?"
"Yes…" He barely rasped out the response, but Raven refused to yield until she received the answer that assured her of her dominance.
"I think we can do better than that." Her yellow eyes glowed intimidatingly as she leaned so close her loose red locks tickled his face.
"My Mirza." As he whispered out the words that destroyed the last remnants of his pride, the man's vision began to blur.
Pleased, possibly too much so, by the term of utmost respect in the Morph world, Raven let go of his throat and stood back up.
She knew the crowd was watching her with profound respect, despite the animalistic way she showed her dominance. It was the only form of communication they truly seemed to understand. Despite how easily it worked in her favor, as well as how humorous she occasionally found their simplicity to be, a small part of her brain pitied these people. A generation lost to the whims of a crazed dictator she long ago saw for the weak-minded villain he truly was.
"You all know exactly where to start your rumors and disruptions. The people are pleading for someone to whip them up into a frenzy. And you are just the ones to do it."
Raven turned her back to the group; fully confident she'd snuck in a bluff so powerful no one would dare challenge her. After taking a small pause to let the words fully sink into their heads, Raven turned on her heel and demanded in a terrifyingly guttural voice that they set out for their pre-assigned places.
The flurry of bodies rushing out various makeshift exits to enact her plan was slightly thrilling. There was something about people following her commands that gave Mystique a sense of contentment. Generally, she found no real pleasure in dealing with stubborn people who insisted on having their way no matter how correct they may or may not be. Of course the irony that half of her main goal was capturing a world-class stubborn mutant, wasn't lost on the woman either.
Raven slipped out a side exit and forced her form to alter into a far less noticeable hue. The boldest, though most unintelligent of her group, was already standing in Merdian's centrally located park. Between his shouts to the people about the Lenox family's abuses of power and the desperate need for immediate action, the gathered crowd of straggling Morphs' faces began to shift from the downtrodden norm to a fearfully hopeful expression.
Just as she predicted, it only took a small surge of courage to entirely change the playing field. The board was set and Queen Lydia's players would soon feel the full force of angering the most cutthroat Morph in all of Lenox.
"Game on," She declared with a definite ominous curl of her crimson lips.
The term the Morphs used for a sign of respect, according to Wikipedia, "is a historical title of Persian origin, denoting the rank of a high nobleman or Prince. It is usually defined in English as a royal or imperial Prince of the Blood." Bloodlines are very important to the Morphs, so I figured it could show great respect to be considered, "Prince of the Blood".