The Warrior with No Name
By The Odd Little Turtle Named Froggie
(This is but a work of fan fiction. Marvel owns the characters. I'm just dabbling.
Many thanks to everyone who has been keeping up with this thing. You guys really make this worth it!
Input welcomed.
Chronological order?
Oh, I think not.)
David, what's happened to you?
David Brogan sucked in a quick, sharp gasp of air, nearly choking from the thick black smoke from the crash several floors below where he currently stood as it made its way through the translucent white plastic of the construction zone. He gazed around, eyed the sleeping brunette that dangled precariously from a rope.
Amelia?
David's mind's eye poured forth, creeping over the sawdust on the floor, surging over Kitty, looking into her dreams (a fairy?), and moving on. His consciousness swept onward and down, down to the firemen, getting a peek at their thoughts before continuing its search for the one mind that –
She was—she was Here! "Amelia."
Pushing his way through the limited mental barriers that he'd taught her how to erect, the joy in his heart abruptly turned to horror. The Kingpin's men had hurt her, violated her. Anger sliced through him, and he clenched his teeth. They would pay with their lives, he vowed.
David sifted through her memories. Illyana had saved her. But…That wasn't…Who?
Aged?
How?
Amelia was looking at the tattooed blonde woman, but when he tried to access the woman's mind, it felt like someone back-handed his brain. He shook his head to clear it and tried once again to gain entry only to be rebuffed more severely. David yelled out in pain and quickly withdrew going once more back to his wife, his physical body feeling the wetness of a nosebleed on his mouth.
Amelia was enjoying Peter's arm around her. It made her feel safe.
Jealousy, bitter and black, reared its wicked head, a great anathema of sadistic power, consuming reason and any remaining will to think respectably within David Brogan, and David forgot about the throbbing in his head and bleeding nose.
Amelia was his wife! He knew what Peter was capable of using his charisma. Peter was poisoning her mind with his false kindness, turning her against him, seducing her. Well, fuck him. David toyed briefly at just letting Kitty plunge to her death. She wouldn't be awakening any time soon. And she wouldn't be using her powers without a telepath more powerful than he was to remove the suggestions he planted in her subconscious. If she got of this alive, which he was doubtful she would, her powers would never function properly, if at all.
He rubbed his hands together, thinking of the excruciating pain her mind would make her think she felt if she activated her ability to become intangible. And if the pain didn't make her black out or if she got past it, he'd given her a subconscious need to merge with a wall.
Her consciousness had eluded him for a few minutes, but he'd found it shortly after she'd awakened from his second suggested sleep. David had been mildly surprised that she was in REM sleep dreaming of her late fiancé and a gothic-looking fairy with a bazooka. The dream wasn't all that strange, he found himself thinking as he remembered her memories of the alien Brood. And she'd only been a teenager when she'd faced them with her teammates and then by herself.
He respected her bravery enough to be wary of her mutation and her will power. She was dangerous to him if she awoke. If she phased, she wouldn't be affected by his telekinesis. Kitty had a strong barrier against intrusion in her mind from years of practice. At lunch, he had managed to only catch glimpses of her emotions after she had panicked at the mention of Illyana's foster father, the man David had only known as Logan. Fragments of her life had filtered through the barrier, giving him only pieces of a much larger puzzle. Images of a little boy had surfaced more than once.
David had assumed that it was her son but until he'd gotten a good look at her memories, did he realize just how lucky he'd gotten when he chose that particular image to ricochet off her mind's eye and give her an illusion of the child standing in the street and why she had reacted so strongly to the image his telepathy made her brain see. Hindsight: He shouldn't have hit the kid with a speeding taxi. Overkill as it were.
#
Peter Parker was mildly frantic by the time he realized that none of the others were responding to anything they were trying. It was like their higher brain functions had been moved elsewhere, and he was looking at their bodies with only the basic bodily functions working.
Not good.
He found himself not wanting to have to tell the others when they awoke that they'd soiled their costumes while they were out. Thankfully, no one had done anything of the sort. It was only a matter of time before one of them did though. He prayed it wasn't The Thing.
I'm not changing Ben Grimm's drawers. That's too many levels of sick and wrong to even begin counting.
Wrong-sick.
The redhead seemed to only be in a deep sleep, though. Her eyes were closed. But she didn't seem to want to wake up anytime soon. He wondered if she had been at the Chrysler Building when the crash had happened. She had bruises and—were those finger bruises around her neck? He felt like someone had kicked him in the chest. The ring on her finger proclaimed her somebody's wife. Spiderman was seriously going to kick his ass. Beating a woman out of anger was never an option. Not even if she was a super villain. She looked so frail laying there, her chest rising and falling at regular intervals. Her eyelids twitched. Rapid Eye Movement. Sleeping beauty. She jerked in her sleep every so often.
And the blonde gypsy chick wasn't helping. She just sat there beside Rasputin doing some kind of wacky sign language. Who the hell was she? That was a really cool tattoo. Well, that's not helping either, damn it.
"Can we get a few things clear," he asked a question, but it came out a statement as he hurried into his next inquiry. "How about your name?"
"Illyana Nikolievna Rasputina, Sorceress Supreme," she stated, but didn't look up from Rasputin. Illyana frowned as she made symbols in the air with her nimble fingers. "Gah!" she growled in irritation. She threw up her hands in disgust, bringing her fingers to her head and yanking on her short spikes. "Make that Illyana Nikolievna Rasputina, magic-less Sorceress Supreme. My more powerful spells seem only to work in Limbo."
His brows drew together in an agonized expression. "'Limbo?'" he repeated, horrified. "The Limbo?"
"'The Limbo?'" A delicate flaxen eyebrow tilted questioningly, ice blue eyes made contact with his brown ones through his mask.
"Ah, it's a Catholic thing," he told her finally, not really wanting to go into it, "Purgatory." He nodded to Rasputin. "You related?"
She nodded, her jaw tensing, betraying her deep frustrations. The quiver made the tip of her tattoo jump like real lightning. "I'm Piotr's little sister. He calls me Snowflake. You and I met last night. I was fifteen then."
Time travel? Not another Cable.
"So you're from the future? What happened to the young you?"
She wagged her head in the negative. "There's only me."
He scratched his head, Peter Parker the physicist coming out to play. "How'd you age then?"
"Limbo."
"Yana, quit bein' difficult," Logan admonished gruffly. She opened her mouth to speak again, but was silenced by the small hirsute man's dark, angry expression. His silver eyes cut to Spiderman's masked face. "She got trapped in the Limbo dimension for ten years, but the place don't match up with our universe's time. So here she is, all grown up an' fuckin' up the time continuum."
Oh, that made so much more sense, he thought happily. I should have just asked Wolverine everything.
"I haven't—" she began to protest angrily, body tense, face livid.
Logan cut her off at the knees, his voice uncompromising. "Ya shouldn't have dicked around with the time continuum, Yana. Who knows what the hell ya did ta our futures."
She scowled at him, her full lips turned down.
"Should we alert the Avengers?" Spiderman asked finally, looking first to Illyana then to Wolverine. He hated to do it. They didn't need any more catatonic and drooling heroes. A real help there. And S.H.I.E.L.D. was bound to get involved if he called them in. Tony was his friend, but he had a tendency to be an ass, especially when he thought he was right. This happened to be all the time.
"No," Logan said brusquely. "This is X-men business. We take care of our own."
Yeah.
Sure.
Like you took care of Kitty.
The X-men took such great care of her that she left.
But Spiderman kept his mouth shut despite his opinions and dipped his head in a nod, glad for the nth time he wore a mask. Not only did it conceal his identity, it kept anyone from deciphering his facial expressions, and right now his face was livid. He kept his body relaxed so Logan wouldn't call him out on anything.
"I get to help, right?" he asked just to ask. No way was he sitting this one out. Kitty was his friend. She took care of him while he was injured. The Four were his friends too. They'd been through a lot of crap through the years and he wasn't about to let the rogue telepath get off with only the wrath of Wolverine to face. Spiderman got a piece of him too. Although, knowing Logan, he'd probably only get an ear.
"I don't think that's a good idea," Illyana told him. That set his teeth on edge. It angered him that she thought he couldn't handle himself just because she looked through a crystal ball and saw his death. The future wasn't set in stone, and he wasn't about to let someone direct his destiny. He told her as much.
Her eyes blazed with sudden anger as she glowered at him, the blue irises going from icy blue to blue-black sapphire. "'Crystal ball?' Listen, Web-head, I scryed for an alternate future based on predetermined factors that I put into the spell. Of course the future isn't set in stone! I—"
"Yana, why didn't the other times work?" Wolverine interrupted her tirade. Spidey didn't know if he should be grateful to him or upset. She was kind of cute when she was mad.
Her face fell immediately, her eyes averting theirs. "Other factors." She played with the pentagram talisman about her neck absently. Peter Parker was an artist by trade and a scientist by nature. He wanted to know the other factors. If they could somehow duplicate them, there might be a chance to get out of this mess. He may be dead in one of the alternate timelines, but damn her for messing around with the continuum. Wolverine was right. For all they knew, something worse might be on the horizon. He felt like she was keeping something important from them. He really hated it when people only told half the truth. It was the same as lying.
Calling the caldron black, Parker, he reminded himself, reigning in his anger before he lost his temper. Wolverine would probably punch him if he started a yelling match with her.
"What were the factors that interfered with the timeline, Illyana?" he asked, was pleased that he sounded normal.
"You, for starters," she replied bluntly. Her tone was neutral, her face devoid of emotion. She was merely stating a fact. "Another was that Kitty woke up and tried to free herself. David used some kind of—" She faltered, trying to find the words—"I don't know. Some kind of telepathic hypnotic suggestion. She can phase, but not for long periods of time and only through great pain. Other factors include David's desperation. I didn't find out until I went up and confronted him myself just how desperate he really is. He wants to free Amelia from the Kingpin but there's another problem."
Wolverine growled. "And what's that?" he demanded.
"I don't know. Kitty woke up then." She shut her eyes against the memory, chewing her lip.
Spiderman's body stiffened in shock as he came to a realization. "David's psychic powers don't affect you," he accused.
"I—No, they don't," she admitted, turned her head to look at him. "I've had years to build up blocks against snoopers. Anyone who tries gets the equivalent of a back handed bitch slap."
#
David Brogan reached out and snagged the minds of the heroes he saw from Amelia's point of view. He planted notions of sleep, poking in each of their psyches for elements to keep them asleep until he took care of Peter.
Then he did the same to Peter, Amelia and Wolverine (Logan! Illyana's foster father!). He would have Peter bring Amelia to him and then David could do something cruel to him, but Peter's mind resisted his suggestion, insisting stubbornly that the building was not safe for Amelia.
Gritting his teeth, David gave up and pushed Peter into REM sleep. He gave each of the Fantastic Four roles to play and stuck their consciousnesses into Peter's suggested dream. On a whim, he snagged Kitty's sleeping consciousness and put her into his dream too. At that, Peter began to awaken, resisting sleep. Damn him. Kitty was still sleeping. David took all the heroes' consciousnesses and shoved them in her dreaming mind.
Wolverine's mind was fragmented and difficult to wade through. David had trouble keeping him asleep, but put the feral man's consciousness into Kitty's anyway. He was only out for another ten minutes before he awoke again. Then his consciousness disappeared.
David blinked, reached out for Wolverine, but the mutant was gone. He wondered if someone had found his body and loaded him into an ambulance. Damn it! Wolverine's mind was out of range. He reached for Amelia's mind. Gone! No, no, no! He searched the area frantically with his mind's eye, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. He wanted to comfort her, tell her that he could be brave and strong for her, that he had been planning to rescue her.
And Peter would pay for that. For trying to seduce her.
David grinned as he manipulated the illusion of Peter's dead daughter in Kitty's mind. Kitty and Peter resisted, but the Fantastic Four didn't question the fact that they were farmers on a collective farm in Soviet Russia as long as he kept them happy at what they were doing. His frustration with Peter and Kitty turned to dismay as he realized how attracted they were to one another. Feeling dirty for no good reason, he extracted his mind from the dream sequence. If he disrupted them, he might wake them up. And if Wolverine was out of range, it was a good idea to assume Peter's body was out of range too.
He wrapped his mind around Kitty, literally as he used his telekinesis to bring her sleeping body out of the rain. David knew what Wolverine's mind felt like now; he was certain he could stop him if Wolverine got too close. He lay Kitty gently down in the center of the room by a scaffold.
He smelled cherry blossoms for some reason, turned to see the blonde he'd seen from Amelia's point of view. He gasped, reaching out to attack, but getting another mind to mind bitch smack. Illyana grinned a wicked, baleful smile, her white teeth gleaming as lightning struck overhead and thunder rolled as if on cue. Her pupils dilated, expanding like smog to take over the entirety of her eyes. They were enveloped in an aura of gold. David closed his eyes momentarily.
When he opened his eyes again, he was no longer in the Chrysler Building. They were standing by the edge of a lake, triple suns setting on the horizon. Three suns? He didn't think he was on Earth anymore! He directed his gaze at Illyana, was taken aback at her rapid transformation into something terrifying.
A wind he didn't feel whipped around her as her blonde spiky hair grew into a platinum mane that swirled and danced with a life of its own. Her clothing disintegrated before his eyes, her top and chains about her neck melting away, leaving only a heavily jeweled chainmail bikini top and her skirt reshaping into a bejeweled leather loin cloth covered with chainmail. Twin horns sprouted above her eyebrows and curled out and upward. Her feet metamorphosed into cloven hooves and her calves reshaped and grew flaxen fur. Her exposed alabaster skin was riddled with black lightning. She drew a broadsword from the sheath on her back and silver plating raced like mercury up her left arm.
"Welcome to Limbo, David," she hissed, her forked tongue darting out to test the air like a snake. She pointed the large sword's tip at him. "Hope you survive the experience!"
David screamed, not caring that his shriek was high-pitched and feminine.
#
(Hope you enjoyed. Let me know what you thought of Illyana's darker side.)