The Warrior with No Name

By The Odd Little Turtle Named Froggie

(Marvel owns Lockheed, Kitty, Peter and Illyana. I'm just borrowing them. Mikhail the black cat is mine.

Sorry for the wait on these. Writer's block, life, work and an injured hubby took up my time. Second posting - corrected Illyana's roommate.)

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And he brought his cat. Lockheed would love to get his little claws on her. I should have warned Peter, or something, but how do you tell someone you barely know you found a dragon in space just after losing your virginity because you thought you were going to die? I still miss him. Doug.

I miss Pete too. Hell, I miss everyone who died. Even Jean. But Jean got to come back. Why can't anyone else?

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Illyana had been wandering the strange forest for hours. She had seen this forest from the distance whenever she teleported through the land for which she had no name, but had never been brave enough to venture away from her disks at any given time. The disks would normally manifest near a lake at the base of some white-topped mountains. Illyana didn't think moving them would be a good idea so she never experimented.

Yet, here she was traversing through the underbrush of the forest, noting the red and brown and violet hues and not green. The underbrush must not have green chlorophyll, she thought to herself, then admonished herself for being a nerd. Still, she had found Dr. McCoy's marine biology course entertaining—field trips meant excursions in the Blackbird to exotic locals to study the microorganisms and local fish and plant life.

The wind overhead brushed the strange poufs of leaves on the towering striped trees. The trees were bare of branches save the very tops where the light green reed-like leaves grew. They reminded her of brown and green striped cotton swabs sticking out of the red, brown and violet underbrush.

"'Curious-er and Curious-er,'" Illyana quoted from one of her favorite books. She looked back over her shoulder, her blue eyes darting around, not able to see the lake or the mountains or the white spiraled castle on the far bank. Something told her to stay as far away from that castle as possible.

The three suns of this strange place were high overhead, casting shadows as the breeze slung around the strange trees branches, and Illyana wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. The thin leather gauntlets she wore scratched her and she took her hand away, looking at the strange crest on the top of her hand. It was pentagram with space for jewels at each of the points. Both gloves she wore had them as well as a pendant on one of the many necklaces that adorned her neck.

Not for the first time, she wondered where her pajamas were. She wasn't naked—pretty damn close, she thought irritably. But what she was wearing wasn't something in which she'd like to be seen in public. The whole ensemble reminded her of "Maureen Birnbaum: Barbarian Swordsperson", or at the very least, He-Man- and She-Ra-esque. Having never worn chainmail before, Illyana had no clue as to how heavy the stuff was until appearing in the realm she had yet to name.

"Who would have thought a chainmail bikini with fuzzy underwear would be so heavy?" she remarked wryly. And a sword! There was a broadsword strapped to her back. This was as they say, 'Far out!' she thought. A few necklaces adorned her slender neck with strange shaped pendants and crystals, and she was wearing a bulky headdress encrusted with jewels and short horns sprouting from the front. The soles of the soft leather boots were thin and she felt everything she on which she walked.

Feet aching and feeling so thirsty, Illyana wished she were back at the lake. At least then it would not have been so bad. The unicorns were usually there, though she hadn't seen them this time. She wondered how she got in the forest when she was sure she had been with Piotr at his new girlfriend's apartment. And try as he might to deny it, Illyana knew that Piotr would make Katya his girlfriend. One didn't take up a whole book just trying to draw a friend.

Soon, Illyana came upon a definite fork in the path. There was a weathered road sign, but she couldn't read it. The letters appeared to be jumbled. There were numbers, Cyrillic and Roman letters in no pattern that she could discern.

"Dreaming?" she wondered for the first time. She tried to recall the final moments before she had fallen asleep but found the only memory was that of the woman in the fire the night before and her child. Illyana had to pause in the place that was nameless to get her bearings straight before calling another disk. The woman and child had seen the unicorns. "You can't read in dreams," Illyana mused and blinked.

The scenery shifted immediately. The ground shook and Illyana lost her footing, plummeting to her hands and knees. The putrid stench of smoke accosted her.

No!

She looked up to see the peaceful forest was suddenly a raging inferno. Everything blazed. The heat was nearly unbearable. Unicorns and small round fuzzy creatures ran past her, fleeing for their lives.

"White Wolf!" she cried…

…and woke up.

Illyana bolted upright as a scream pierced her like flying shrapnel. Not knowing whose it was, hers or an outsider's, she took stock of her strange surroundings. She wasn't in her room that she shared with Laura at the mansion. Nor was she in her room at her brother's place. A purple dragon gazed at her, its eerie yellow eyes blinking at her with its second set of eyelids.

Illyana shoved the too-bright yellow covers off her, ran a hand through her tresses. Mikhail hopped in her lap, bumping against her belly, and she shoved the cat to the floor to inspect herself. She was pleased she was back in her violet Lila Cheney pajamas, but her hands shook with the strangeness of the dream. Mikhail hissed and took a swipe with her claws at the dragon, and then sped down the short hallway towards Piotr, Lockheed in pursuit. There was screaming and splashing and her brother rushed into the open bathroom. He came out momentarily looking very flustered with a towel and very soaked Mikhail.

"What happened?" Illyana asked, scooted away from the edge of the bed.

Mikhail's claws tore deeply into his skin as he tried to dry the wailing cat. He swore loudly in English. Illyana blinked. She had never heard her brother use that word before.

Piotr gave up and put Mikhail into her cage. "Go check on Kitty for me. She fell out of the bathtub."

"Why didn't you—"

"I caught her before she hit the floor," he told her, looked at his hands. "I have already made things awkward between us. Please go check on her, Snowflake."

He continued to stare at his hands in awestruck wonderment eliciting a grumble from Illyana as she wondered how he caught Kitty before she hit the floor.

#

One minute, Kitty was contemplating the finer art of skinning a man alive, the next minute she was swimming with a terrified cat. How and why the damn animal joined her bubble bath eluded her as Kitty surged up out of the bubbles with a startled yell, Mikhail's claws raking deeply into her shoulders, chest and belly.

"Ouch!" She promptly lost whatever rocky balance she had, and, with a squeak of flesh against porcelain and surprised cry, a very naked Kitty Pryde tumbled headfirst out of the bathtub. She didn't even think to phase (a good thing too—the downstairs neighbors would have gotten quite the show!), but a pair of strong arms and hands engulfed her lithe body before she could hit the tile… very hard.

As soon as Piotr grabbed her—his right arm encircling her ribs, coming beneath her breasts, his left hand clutching her indented waist—he lowered her hurriedly to the wet tile as if she'd burned him. He seized his yowling cat from what remained of the bath water and wrapped the poor animal in a towel before dropping another fluffy white towel over Kitty's nude form. Piotr made a beeline for the door mumbling an apology and rounded the corner before Kitty could so much as curse at him or his drenched cat.

So much for a relaxing bubble bath. My boob hurts.

She heaved a sigh and took stock of her injuries. First there was her pride. She just fell out of the stupid bathtub in front of man—albeit a very gorgeous man—after he charged in without knocking. As she lay there on the cold bathroom floor she felt her face heat up. Second Mikhail had scratched her from her shoulder to her collarbone and on the outside of her right breast. The cat had also got her ribs and belly with her hind claws. Third Kitty's knee hurt from where she had banged it on her way out of the tub. Porcelain tubs and knees were not meant to collide.

Her hip and undersides of her breasts still burned from the skin to skin contact with her houseguest. Piotr managed to rescue both "kitties" in mere seconds, but the feel of him on her bare flesh gave her goosebumps. She wondered if it were possible to spontaneously combust from his touch. The man put out a serious amount of body heat. Well, it was that, and she'd rather phase through the floor than face him so embarrassed was she.

Kitty brushed the mass of tangled, wet curls from her face and wrapped the towel around her frame, gasping in pain as she cinched the towel too tightly. Staring in the mirror, she realized that Piotr's cat had done more damage than she realized. Three four inch gashes at her shoulder trickled blood. Opening the towel revealed more, longer scrapes and more blood. An especially wicked and bloody scratch was embedded on the side of her right breast and continued over her ribs five or six inches.

"Damn cat."

"She doesn't like your dragon," Illyana supplied from the door. Kitty jumped involuntarily. Don't Russians knock? Or maybe it was just Rasputins? Her eyes danced across the girl's face. Piotr's sister looked so much younger without all her black makeup.

"Lockheed chased her in here," Illyana continued. "Do you have bandages? Piotr is scratched too."

"Yeah," Kitty said, readjusting the towel with a wince. She located the small first aid kit in a small duffle bag under the sink. "Is the cat alright?"

"She is in her cage." Illyana accepted a box of band-aids and some antiseptic ointment and left. Kitty pulled her hair into a bun on the back of her head and secured it with a scrunchie. It was messy but it got her hair out of the way.

"Katya?" Piotr's big hand came around the corner and knocked, but he didn't show his face. "Are you decent?"

Kitty looked at herself in the mirror. She stood there, still wet from her interrupted bubble bath, wrapped in a large white towel bleeding all over the place. She looked like she had just faced off against some super villain. For the first time in over a year she felt normal. It was as though a huge weight had lifted from her shoulders, and she laughed.

"Kitty?"

Still laughing, Kitty told him, "I'm as decent as I'm gonna get right now, Peter."

Piotr entered the bathroom, his gaze wondering over her protectively. "That is a nasty scratch."

"Yours don't look so good either." She pointed at several oozing scrapes on his arms where Mikhail's hind claws had punctured him.

Piotr couldn't help himself. He grinned and raised an eyebrow playfully. "Want to play doctor?"

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(Desperately seeking input. Again, apologies for my tardiness on getting this out. Hope that was enough animal antics. I don't think either of the heroes can take much more.)