Author's Note:
StarStar16: Yes, well...I answered for Jamie as best I could. I don't keep your characters in my head. And how'd I do in this one? Answer me! All of your situations will be put in later. I hope. No promises, but semi promises are okay. Okay? Okay. Good! Good.
Turtle: How was it informative? But sorry this update took so long. I spent the night with my best friend. And random other stuff happened.
Dani was in slight shock as she walked into the room containing Wisteria. She looked over her friend. Never had she seen Wisteria look so...frail. There was a deep gash above her eye and half of her face was off color. Several ribs had been taped and her head had been bandanged. Wisteria had suffered two concusions, a broken arm, two broken ribs, and various bruises.
According to the police, they could only draw this conclusion based on the what came of the wreck. The car was tottalled, and the driver of the pickup had been seriously injured in the collision. He was just down the hall, and in no position to talk of what had happened. Wisteria hadn't been conscience since impact. They thought that Wisteria had fallen asleep while driving, causing her to drive the car to faster speeds and float into the wrong lane at the same time traffic flowed over the hill and a head on collision occured. The car had been smashed in on the front, hit at an angle, and fishtailed into a ditch, where the steering wheel plus the air bag had cut into Wisteria's face and caused her to become unconscience and suffer head injuries. They had her on heart monitor, slow IV drip, and nurse check every half hour. But there was nothing else they could do until she woke up. It wasn't like she was in Intensive Care or anything.
But still.
Dani stepped closer to the bed and surveyed her friends face, calm and impassive. She shook her head slowly in disgust. "Why do you always, always, always...do these things?"
No answer. For once no witty comeback, no roll of the eyes and angry sigh, no muttering something about going off to the dangeroom. Just...silence.
She had seen Wisteria knocked out before. She couldn't count how many times Wisteria had shown up in the medical level of the Institute by force, with various cuts or bruises or breakages...but this was the first actual hospital trip. This was the one time that it hadn't been an at home treatment...and for some reason, it felt like Dani's fault, because less than an hour and a half ago Wisteria had been complaining about a faulty lightbulb. Now she was in a hospital, and Dani could do nothing to help her.
She had already called Rowan and Bain. They were supposed to get over there as soon as Ben picked Rowan up and Ben got off from work. The Proffessor was talking with the doctors and policemen. Dani sighed, wishing she didn't have to be alone with this...this...silence.
This thing that wasn't Wisteria.
Wisteria woke up again in what looked to be a broken down apartment building room. The carpet had weird spots on it from what looked like discolored stains in shades of reds or browns. The blinds and windows were broken or none existant. And in the corner of the room sat a girl with long black hair and black sunglasses, pale skin, a black trench coat over a black tee and jeans, and combat boots. She twiddled her thumbs and whistled, then looked over at Wisteria as she sat up slowly, painfully.
" 'Ello, mate. Welcome to the world o' the livin'." Her accent sounded British, Cockney almost. The girl swung her feet up to atop her desk and continued looking at Wisteria. "Yeh were in a tigh' spot back there. Them Xmen ain' the ones yeh wanna trus', an' they like bloody hounds, or sommat. Gonna find yeh for long, I 'magine, if they're aimin'."
Wisteria blinked slowly at the girl and shook her head, wondering what she was talking about. Xmen? What were the Xmen? Who was this girl and what was she blabbering about? Wisteria slowly and painfully rose to her feet, clutching at her ribs for a second and feeling sick to her stomach, as if she needed to throw up and didn't have anything to throw up. The girl just smirked.
"Shake it off, mate. Yeh're doin' better than sommat the others weh've found." She grinned. "In fac', yeh're the firs' weh've found with that bloody burn mark, or what the hell it is. Figure it's the same blokes, though. Mutant haters bea' yeh up? They been jumpin' random muties on the streets."
Wisteria still shook her head slowly. "Jumped...I...I wasn't jumped off the streets."
Arachne shrugged. "Well, no matter. Yeh got the build of a figh'er. I can tell. Always ha' been able teh." She looked at Wisteria. "Yeh got a job, love? Weh've got good money for markers. Yeh dish ou' the bodies, we dish out the cash. Jus' no charlie smiles, alrigh'? Slicin' throats is too obvious."
She didn't exactly understand all of what was going on, but money is what she needed. She couldn't think exactly straight yet, but whatever her plans were going to be, she was going to need money. She had killed before, and it didn't matter any more to her.
There was a flash of blood in her mind, a gun shot and those piercing blue eyes glaring at her. She looked up at the girl. "What's your name?"
"Arachne. Yeh?"
"Wisteria." She paused. "I'll take some jobs. But two conditions."
Arachne's eyebrows appeared above her sunglasses. "I don' normally take conditions from rookies, bu' I'm curious. Wha' yeh got, Wist?"
"One, I want all human marks. No mutants. Two, I want you to tell me where I can find physcisian that won't ask many questions."
Arachne's pale lips stretched into a smirk. "Tha' I can make yeh a deal for. An' I got jus' the place."
Nearly two weeks had passed in her healing slowly, taking each day to do rigorous exercises to build up strength and some small exercises to try and train her strange powers. That last part had been the hardest...she hadn't hardly made any progress. But it was coming. It would happen in good time.
Most of Wisteria's wounds had finally disappeared or turned into scars. Wisteria was gaining some weight little at a time, but Arachne still shook her head at how little she slept and ate. "We may be thievin' lot, Wist," Arachne would always begin. "Bu' we look ou' for each other. No need teh starve."
Wisteria did it only because if she ate more than she had back in that cell, she felt sick, and if she slept she had nightmares, or she couldn't tolerate the cot and had to move to the floor. All the space was strange, but this marked a monumental day. Arachne had finally declared her healthy enough to hunt. After days of not being allowed any combat, she felt like the machine she knew she was. She knew they had trained her to kill and not think about it, but not causing pain or not feeling it made her feel...dead. Useless.
Today's mark was a rapist who had pissed off his victim's father. His victim's father was Damien Vaughn, and his daughter, even though she didn't know she was related to him, was not to be touched. So the guy had to die. Wisteria was surprised she had gotten such a high profiled kill, but when Vaughn had seen her looking up files on the kid, trying to find out every angle of his life and a way to actually hunt him, not just kill him, he had smiled.
"Arachne, take note." He pointed to Wisteria. "This girl is a true killer."
And she was.
Eric Miller would die before sundown, but he would feel terror before he did. Wisteria slipped a gun into the pocket of some old jeans she had ripped off a thrift store the other day while stealing from several stores in order to build a wardrobe. Arachne had had to help her. She had never stolen before, only killed.
She tied her black highlighted into a bun and let a couple of strands hang down. Looking out of the window, she stepped out to ledge and looked below her two stories. It would be best to climb down the fire escape, never attempt to jump off it.
Wisteria flipped over the bar, catching it in one hand to slow her fall for a second and then landing cat like in the street below. She did stunts like that just to build reflexes. She began walking slowly through the city of New York and glared at anyone who gave her odd looks for her skin. It was important she keep her mind on what she was doing. Eric Miller lived on the outskirts of town, near Bayville. He was quaterback of the football team of Bayville High. He feared closed in spaces and dark areas. His girlfriend was head of the cheerleading squad. His victim had been Keiara Fields, who had gone missing as a result, unknown as to whether she was dead or alive. He lived with a suicidal mother and a father who suffered from alchohol adiction. His hangout was the local bar where they never checked for IDs...Jeff's rival.
Yes, she had seen Jeff from a distance since that night she had escaped him. Jeff ran a bar on the line between New York and Bayville, and competed with The Closet, a bar that stocked many strippers, unhealthy living quarters for the poor traveler, and didn't care what age you were to drink as long as you had the money.
The walk to The Closet would be too far, but Wisteria wasn't planning on walking all the way to the bar. She stopped by a red convertable and smirked, crawling into the car and hotwiring it, driving off as she heard someone yelling behind her, "Hell no, that's my car! Get the hell back here, you bitch. HEY!" But Wisteria just floored it. For a moment she thought the car was out of gas because it felt like it was being tugged back, but then it sped on, and she went on to The Closet.
Upon entering the establishment, she immeadiately sighted Eric. He was completely smashed, flirting with one of the strippers, his curly brown hair falling into his eyes. Wisteria sat right by him and lowered her lashes immeadiately, laughing at some incoherent drunken joke he had said. All that happened was he turned toward her and grinned a lopsided grin. If he was to survive till morning, he would remember anything that had happened the night before. But he wouldn't survive.
"Hey..." He began, the drunken slur obvious. "Buy ya a drink?"
Wisteria nodded, adopting a falsely high, flirty and stupid voice. "Sure, that would, like be great!" As the whiskey shot in front of her she didn't take a sip. Even if she didn't expect being drugged, she didn't want to be drunk during this. As he emptied his drink, she smiled and tapped him. "Like, how about I, like, return the favor?" She hated using this voice. It was retarded. But if fit the part. She waved over the bartender, got him to pour a whiskey, and as she palmed a white powder quickly into the whiskey as she slid it toward him, he drank deeply. She watched for a few moments, and waited for the effects to kick in.
It was only a few seconds until he asked her to come upstairs where the boarders were. She accepted. It was all part of the plan. Completely. When he got up there she allowed him to throw her against the bed, even though her back screamed in pain from where some of the whip weals still were. As soon as he had her pinned, he started gagging, and she smirked, throwing him off with ease. She stood over him for a moment and spoke in a calm tone.
"The agent that your experiencing right now comes from a nice little plant in south Africa. It causes the throat to contrict and mind to hallucinate, especially in dark or closed in enviroments." She turned off the lights and he began to gasp. "It continued until within the hour the throat has swollen completely and your supply of air is cut off, causing you to suffocate."
With that, she walked out of the room and closed the door, making sure that she had his wallet, and class ring still attached to his finger. That had been easy enough, since he was thrashing around on the floor and she could cut off a finger without leaving prints on the body or the room. They wouldn't find her prints on anything. Only her drink downstairs.
Besides, Vaughn owned the police. They wouldn't turn her in.
Wisteria exited the bar and ducked only just in time as a fist swung in her direction. An angry redhead, the same one that had been leaning out the window the other night and had spoken in her mind, glared at her, fist raised ready to swing again. "Give. Me. Back. My. Car!"
Wisteria held up the keys to the car. "Fine, take 'em." She tossed them to the girl and started walking off.
"Woah, woah, woah, bitch, I'm not done with you. What the hell gives you the right to take my ride anyways? Just because it's not easy being green doesn't mean you get to take people's CHERRY RED MUSTANG!" The girl started shouting as Wisteria was moving farther away.
"I take what I want." Wisteria said in an even tone over her shoulder. Suddenly she couldn't walk anymore and the redhead was storming up to her, looking absolutely furious, like she wanted to deck her, but stopping when she examined her face.
"Hey...wait...you're that...that girl!"
"That's a new one. 'That girl'. Catchy." Wisteria said sarcastically, still wondering why she couldn't move her feet.
"Oh, I stopped you with telekinesis." Jamie said offhandedly, as if answering her thought, and then suddenly Wisteria could move again. "I can do that and...hey, where are you going?" Wisteria had moved right past her.
"Get out of my head, and stay out." Wisteria said angrily as she moved into the darkness.
"She looks like Jamie did." Ben was blubbering, close to tears. "After that accident. In that car. Remember? She got hurt to. Same car. She loved that car." He had been blabbering like this for a while, but Dani, Bain, and Rowan had just let him. "She wrecked the car. She wrecked the car. She wrecked the car..."
"SHE WRECKED HERSELF!" Dani yelled, turning on Ben. "Forget about the stupid car!"
"All of you SHUT UP!" Rowan was on his feet before he could stop himself. He felt a fury coursing through him and didn't understand why. They all turned in surprise as they heard a groan from the bed.
"Seriously...you're giving me a headache."