History Before The X-Men
By Time And Life 21
"It's waiting, always trying.
Feel the hands of fate, they're suffocating!
Tell me, what's the reason,
is it all inside my head,
can't take it no more!"
Renegade.
Fate.
Hanna.
She thought she could manipulate the fate lines as best she could to avoid certain futures. When she received a vision of the future that her team would fail to get Essex, she knew that someone had notified him of her team's coming.
She thought she had managed to get her team to separate when they hit the cold Alaskan outdoors and ran for their lives. But it was too late. Essex had caught them and there was no way out. She knew that Spade and Blaze were under stasis, Essex would return to work on them when the need suited him. But he worked on her the most.
Essex thought her to be a simple pre cog and shadow manipulater. He was wrong. She was lucky that he didn't know the full extent of her abilities. Her umbrekenisis was what he really wanted, the power to manipulate the dark matter, shadows, the night, and such.
It was a good thing she manipulated the lines of fate just enough to get him on the radar of the Military. But that was all she could do.
The last thirteen years she had been under. The last thirteen years, she had slowly but surely manipulated the fate lines enough to have Blaze's mental screaming hit Xavier.
In her mind, she was trapped behind a constant supply of drugs to keep her under. When she awoke, if she awoke, there was most likely physical therapy in mind.
She was just floating there in the darkness of her mind, seeing visions of the future, the present, and the past. Not just any visions mind you. She could see the possibilities and alternate realities of every mutant and human in the world. When she was younger, before she was kicked out of her own home in Mississippi, she would have these intense migraines in her head that her parents would be worried that it was cancer or tumor. The doctors couldn't find anything. What they didn't know is that she could see everyone's possible futures.
Every outcome, every death, every birth. New fate lines were created everyday.
Now here she is. If she could she would turn back the clock and stop all this from happening. But it was no use. She had no idea who had turned on them. But she had a feeling that it was someone who didn't want The Elite to return alive.
She wanted to know why…but until then, she had to focus on manipulating the lines. She was drugged of course. So it took longer for her subconscious self to lift her hands and see all the different colored strings that emitted from it.
Various shades of silvers, golds, reds, greens…all the colors of the spectrum she had manipulated them into who would die, who would live, who would have a happy ending, who would go through a bitter divorce, who would suffer being paralyzed from the hips down, and so forth.
Suddenly, she felt the drug cut off from her body. She knows this because of the constant cold in her arms. It suddenly became warm. Her heart started beating faster and faster.
Adrenaline.
How long has it been since she had adrenaline run through her system? Months? Years? She was going to wake up. And when she does…there will be hell to pay.
"Um…guys?" Kitty said as she felt her stomach fall to the ground.
She had turned pale. Just as she hit the button to send adrenaline through Renegade's body, she realized that something was wrong. She quickly started hacking into the system trying to shut down the problem. But it was no use…
"What is it, Shadowcat?" Storm asked.
"There was…a self destruct code…when I hit the program to inject adrenaline into Renegade's body…it turned on. We only have 10 minutes!" Kitty panicked.
She was trying to stop the self-destruct and turn it off, but it was too late.
"Figures that Essex didn't want us alive." Spade said frowning.
"We only have ten minutes?" Rouge said as she clenched her fists.
"I don't think that's our only problem." Collosus said as he turned his skin to metal.
They looked behind them and saw Ghouls. They did not look happy. They bared their teeth and growled.
"We're dead." Kurt whimpered.
If Spade's eyes were not sewed shut, she would have rolled her eyes. She walked past Gambit, but not before sneakily reaching her hand into his coat and taking out his staff. Gambit didn't notice this until she was in front of the group, extending the staff and rested it on her shoulders.
"Hey!" Gambit said in shock.
"I'll give it back to you, garcon. But right now, this isn't the time for you to tell me of your status as master thief." Spade said as she twirled it around her fingers.
She was smiling. A blood red glow crackled and surrounded the metal staff.
"Azazel, Blaze, lets see if we can take them on." She said smiling widely.
Azazel was already by her side with his swords out. Blaze looked at Renegade in the coffin and noticed that it was cracking faster and louder. Renegade would be up in no time. He quickly stood by Spade, with fireballs at the ready.
Storm and Wolverine were behind them as back up.
"Hey! We can help!" Rouge said.
"You'll just get in the way." Blaze said coldly.
Rouge felt anger boil up in her. She felt like a little tag along whose powers are to just suck the life out of everything.
"Look, I don't doubt your abilities, but these things are stronger than you imagine." Blaze said as he looked back at her.
"Trust me." He said as he let the fire travel up his arms.
She didn't want to. But she had no choice. The coffin cracked and the surrounding glass cylinders in the room were cracking and breaking under an unknown pressure. The ghouls growled at the threat in front of them. Blaze chuckled.
"Spade…will you do the honors?" He said as his emerald eyes glinted dangerously.
More glass cracking.
Spade grinned wickedly.
"Aw, I would love to." She said as she stopped spinning the staff and focused all her kinetic energy to the bottom of the staff.
"Venez á nous!" She shouted as she slammed the staff down.
All Kinetic energy that she had accumulated spread out towards the ghouls and everything exploded in sight; glass, metal, paper, everything. Some of the kinetic energy hit a ghoul and it roared in pain before it's body bulged with energy and exploded. Blood and guts everywhere.
Just as that had happened, the coffin broke and water went everywhere. Shadows blew open and that was the entire signal for Spade, Azazel, and Blaze to attack. The shadows from the coffin formed a woman and as it started to dissipate, the shadow clad woman took off running towards the Ghouls. Her brown and white hair flowed dangerously as she landed the first blow onto a ghoul's head and pinned it to the concrete floor with a shadow spike. Her blue eyes were morphing between gold and blue.
"Blaze!" She shouted as she slammed her foot into the ground, sending two solid black guns up from the ground and Blaze caught them with a smile and aimed the guns as the nearest ghoul and pulled the triggers.
Bang bang!
Down went a ghoul.
Alarms went off everywhere in the base. Red warning lights glared loudly in the room.
"Self Destruct in…3 minutes."
The X-Men were in awe of the Elite together and fighting the ghouls. A few of them were suddenly glad that they were on their side rather than against them. Their fighting skills and powers…were terrifying.
Spade was grinning wickedly as she spun her staff around and using it as a lift and summersaulted her body, throwing all her weight onto the staff itself, slamming it into an unfortunate ghoul.
Its head was gone and the body suffered multiple muscles being blown out of commission. After she had done that, she grabbed a beaker full of chemicals, charged it and tossed it into the face of the next oncoming ghoul.
Azazel teleported around the room, confusing the ghouls into attacking one another and slicing the tendons of the necks in others while in mid-air, he teleported another time without his swords and hit the ground with a feral snarl.
With his metamorphic capabilities returning to him, he grew bigger and his arms became legs and giant paws. Black horns grew out of his forehead and curled upward in a menacing way. He looked like a Hound from Hell. A ghoul went straight at him and he growled and head butted it, and then bit into its soft flesh as it was dazed and ripped out its neck. After taking care of that, he couldn't hold that form for long and shifted back into his humanoid form.
Another ghoul was about to attack him while he was off guard, but Renegade ran in front of him, with a battle cry, shadows had formed around her fist and she punched into it's forehead, sending it flying backwards.
Blaze was shooting ghouls left and right, but was caught off guard as a ghoul sneaked up on him and lifted it paw and slammed right into him, sending him flying back to the X-Men. He tumbled a bit before skidding onto his feet and looking up with a look of hard determination on his face. His face had claw marks that were bleeding profusely. He chuckled as it started to knit back together.
"Azazel! Spade! Fall back!" Renegade shouted as she ran behind Blaze.
"Think you can handle the rest?" She said as she smiled from the rush.
She grabbed his bare hand and he could feel a memory forced into his mind. A patch of land outside the bunker a few miles out. The meet up point should they ever get separated. He nodded, as the skin-to-skin contact was broken. Renegade stumbled a little from the after effects but otherwise fine. She looked up at the X-men and smiled.
"Get ready to hold onto your stomachs and get ready for a little shadow traveling." She smiled as Spade and Azazel ran past them and stood protectively in from of the young X-Men. She raised her arms and the shadows form out of the ground and latched onto the X-Men. Swallowing them up into oblivion.
"See you outside, Thomas." She said as the shadows swallowed her up.
Blaze rolled his eyes and looked at the remaining ghouls. He smiled as he felt the blue and white fire engulfed his body.
"Let's go then." He smiled.
The ghouls ran at him. Teeth bared and snarling.
Three…two…one…
A small white rabbit was outside in the snow looking for food to eat. It was hopping around apprehensively, until it came upon a flower. It was about to chomp down on it when it turned and hopped away in fear.
The shadows of the surrounding trees were morphing and out popped the X-Men and three of the Elite. Kurt was up in a tree hanging on a branch on his stomach, Kitty was spat out onto the cold hard ground, and barely escaped Colossus from falling on top of her; She phased right through him. Jean crashed into a tree, albeit painfully, Scott fell face first into the snow. Gambit was on his back and Rouge fell on top of him, and hitting his face in the process. Storm and Wolverine simply walked out of the shadows and was on their feet.
Spade was spat out and was just barely able to keep her balance, and Azazel was falling from the tops of the branches until he teleported himself onto the ground.
The shadows around the area moved away from the trees and formed a woman figure and went back to its rightful places. Renegade sighed heavily and fell onto her rear. She was tired, her muscles aches and she wanted nothing more than to just lay in the snow. There were sounds of groans everywhere and Renegade chuckled.
"Sorry, maybe I should have warned you before I got you guys out." She chuckled.
"Yeah…next time." Rouge muttered as she hit Gambit's chest for trying to sneak his arm around her waist.
"Man! I don't think that kind of teleportation works with me." Kurt said as he tried to stand up on the tree branch, but he slipped and fell into a pile of snow, thus making more snow fall on him.
"Bien joué, Madame Ombre. At least you are awake and alive." Spade said as she kneeled by her best friend.
Renegade's face turned into one of concern.
"Your eyes…" She said. Spade shrugged.
"Eh, C'est la vié. I'm pretty sure that we'll get these stiches off soon." Spade smiled.
Storm went up to the two woman and kneeled.
"Hanna…" She said hardly believing that her mentor was in front of her. The woman turned towards her. Her had a heart shaped face and her wavy dark brown and white striped hair was still damp. Her eyes kept changing between light blue and gold, for a few more moments before it settled into a dark blue color. She smiled widely.
"Well, look at you 'Ro. You grew." She smiled.
Storm smiled back and hugged the woman tightly.
"I've missed you." She said tearing up.
"I know." Renegade hugged her back.
"Hey…where's Blaze?" Rouge asked looking around.
"He'll be here. He just had to take care of something." Renegade smiled as she stood up unsteadily.
"You left him back there…are you crazy?" Azazel deadpanned.
Renegade rolled her eyes.
"You know as well as I do that Blaze doesn't die easily. Remember New Orleans?" Renegade chuckled.
"I remember it well! Didn't he jump off a burning oil tanker into the waters to save you?" Spade said as she stood up and smiled. Renegade sighed at he memory.
"Yup. So, these are the new X-Men?" She asked as she turned towards them.
She observed them. She recalled a vision meeting them after she was submerged into the waters and put under. She was glad to have that vision after so much fate manipulating.
"Not bad…not bad at all. Can they fight decently?" She said smiling.
"I taught them." Wolverine said with a slight hint of pride.
Renegade turned and saw the blue and orange clad feral mutant.
"If it isn't the Wolverine. I knew you would be a good teacher." She laughed.
He had a sense of déjà vu. "That's what you said last time." He said gruffly.
She chuckled and turned back to look at the kids. She was impressed. Cyclops, Jean Grey, Colossus, Gambit, Kurt, Kitty, and Rouge. Everyone was here.
"Thank you." She said softly.
The X-men were taken aback.
"It's not all us, really. Like, the professor heard you guys, so he sent us." Kitty babbled.
"Well, that's good. At least you got us now rather than later." She smiled.
The peace was short lived as they heard an explosion far off in the distance.
"Hey…wasn't that…?" Kurt trailed off.
"The bunker…why would someone rig a bunker to explode?" Jean asked.
"Essex knew that he couldn't keep us underground for long. So if we all managed to get out somehow, we would still be a bit weakened when we woke up. We wouldn't have a chance to get out. Thanks to you, we got out safe and sound." Spade said as she started to pick at the stiches in her eyes.
A twig snapped behind everyone and was instantly on guard, but they saw Blaze step out of the shadows. His eyes were a bright blue before they started to go back to their original color of green.
"What?" He said as he raise his shoulder.
Renegade ran over to him and hugged him tightly.
"Good to know you are still alive." She said as she snuggled into his chest. Blaze hugged her tightly back.
"What? You actually doubted me? You know I can't die that easily." He said smiling slightly.
"I know." She chuckled.
"All right, let's get out of here before the authorities come and look at the mess." Wolverine growled as stalked off to head back to the Blackbird.
The Elite followed closely after and the X-men were behind them. Rouge noticed Storm walking by the side of Renegade and speaking with her. Why the hell did Renegade look so familiar? Has she met her before somewhere?
"Penny for y' thoughts, chérie?" Gambit asked.
Rouge shook her head. Not wanting to answer him. She'll figure it out eventually. For now, they needed to get back home. From here on out…everything will change for the X-men.
For better, and for worse.
TAL21: I hoped you guys liked this chapter! I honestly am not so sure about it, but i hope you guys are satisfied! :D It took a lot of thinking to introduce you to Renegade in a badass and simple way. Remember, 13 years had past and they are stuck in their ages. So, their personalities are quite the same as they were 13 years ago. And i hope the fight scene was decent enough. I haven't written fighting scenes for a long time. So it was a challenge. NOW FOR THE SHOUT OUTS!:
Scarletnightcrawler: My time zone is Idaho. And i wasn't able to post the last chapter the way is should have been posted the day before saturday, so i was a bit late on that. :) And nice choice of powers by the way. :)
snowflakeofdoom: Yes, teleportation would definitely save of bus and car fare. That's an awesome power. :) Thanks for enjoying the chapter! :D
Jay Eddon: Thank you SOOOO much for the review. I knew it was a unique idea to work with (Then again, i have alway tried to go with awesome ideas that hopefully people would enjoy the change) and i wanted to be different. :) I mean, we've heard about adoption, abandonment and the like, but the question is: WHY? Why did they do it? That will be explained in other chapters. ;)
ZellaStormz: I hope you enjoyed this chapter! :D and it's nice to know that i have a few faithful followers to watch this story, nothing keeps me writing more than ti know and hear from my watchers and reviewers! Shadow manipulation for the win! :D
Everon Prime: You are close! So very close! ;)
allybabe747: I'm glad you are annoying the story so far, and don't worry, Spade will have her stitches out soon. ;)
TAL21: That's it for the shout outs! I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter and things are finally going to get rolling on the ball! We will be going a week later from Alaska and we get to see how The Elite acts around a new decade and seeing more mutants at the Institute! Surprises for all! :D PLEASE LEAVE REVIEWS AND OPINIONS! I would LOVE to hear from you guys!
Question Time!: If you were to make a new animated series of X-Men, what would you do to it? A different storyline? More Romance? More Drama? Or would you rather stick with what there is now?
REMEMBER TO KEEP ON READING AND WRITING! :D