AMENDS IN THE ABYSS: THE INFERNAL ATONEMENT OF SCOTT SUMMERS
CIRCLE SEVEN, VIOLENCE: BOUNTIES AND BARBARITIES
Expecting to traverse a hallway of a mansion, Scott found himself in the next instant crossing the threshold of a hangar. Where in the literal blazes was he now?
Nathan Christopher?
Chris?...
Neither the image nor the ever-attendant voice of Cyke's surly son materialized. All Scott could hear, could feel now, in place of that sturdy, steadying inflection, was
[IHH IHH IHH IHH IHH IHH]
the sound of very light, shallow breathing.
Almost the kind of sound the breaths of a baby would make.
Scott walked hurriedly on ahead, the man worried as to his uncertainty regarding his present position…then tripped into a morass of disconcert when he caught sight of a very familiar bundle cooped atop a crate about thirty meters away.
The man quickened in his step as he approached what he was sure was his son Nathan as an infant again, the boy swaddled in a diaper and a sky blue blanket. Cyclops reflected as he got closer that he could not remember ever setting the child of such a strange metallic plate as that which lay underneath the baby as of now.
He discovered the disc's purpose a moment later as, upon his getting within ten feet
[WHHHISSSHHH]
the little whippersnapper on a platter was thrust away from him by some energy superhuman. The circular metal support underneath Nathan quivered eerily as the boy floated through the air; then rested as Scott's face tightened at the source of the foreign force.
"Why're you in such a rush, Scotty?
"It's the afterlife…"
And then the man could do nothing as the floor at his feet—which he realized just now was made from a most metalloid alloy—coughed up all around him and hugged him close.
"…you've got all the time in the underworld."
It was not the 'Men's most magnetic foe, but rather his daughter.
No. It wasn't her, either. Not really.
Scott recalled faintly from the sheeny smile and the peaked peridot hairstyle that this was not in fact Lorna Dane, not in fact Polaris pumping towards him, with his child on a tray levitating before her, but in fact the twisted counterpart to the lady.
Malice.
And said twisting was nothing due to the woman's own orchestrations—Lorna, in fact, was just as innocent before her possession as Summers was at the moment. The fact of the matter now, however, was that the lady standing before him was wicked. Just as wicked, in fact…
…as the compatriots falling in to flank on either side of her.
"Nothing really personal, Scotty," Malice continued, her cruel white smile as bleeding bulbs of corrupt light across her lips, "you've just been traveling all this time with something our employer wants. He sends his thanks for your safely taking him over here…and now you're gonna get your payment, in full."
Before Scott could say anything in reply, the psychically-invaded Dame Dane twitched the fingers of her left hand, and the man felt his metallic coat tighten all the more. The agony was so extreme in this embrace that it almost made Scott wish for another, much softer (and infinitely sexier) hug five Circles up in its place. Almost.
The hero might have traded his position for the one previous, in actuality, if not for the fact that Nathan Christopher was on his cranium, and Madelyne was on his mind. And he was going to get to them no matter what. This was all just a bit of a bump in the road, that was all.
And a hook to the face.
And a preternaturally rough hand to the chest that wrested him most cogently from his metal mooring, and chucked him most abruptly to the ground. The second bastardliest baldy next to Xavier himself, the Marauder known as Blockbuster, shook most violently in glee at his grabbing Summers and wiping the floor with the hero at will.
He would have executed even more mauling maneuvers, in fact, were it not for a sudden, stoic hand that stayed him. Scott instantly reached for his glasses at the first moment possible and flicked them off, ready to belt out with his blasts.
Nothing whatsoever, no scarlet stream, no beryl beam at all, had emanated from the eyes.
Scott did manage to get a great, full-color glance at Harpoon, however, as the man reared back his aforementioned stoic hand, with eponymous weapon at the ready, and let fly.
One, two, ten such harpoons found their home within the chest of Scott Summers, the man's body being electrified with pain and defeat. Seconds later he slumped full-supine to the floor.
The man did not dream, down here in Hell…at least, not at this substratum of it. He could only writhe in his limitless discomfort, his hands reaching out subconsciously at the air, begging to be brought out of this multitiered marathon of mutilation…
He awakened. Gathering himself up quickly in an upright position, Scott found himself in a hospital bed, the time about twilight. He found he actually had to squint, probably for one of the only times in his life, as his glasses were still off his face, nestled snugly on the corner of the endtable accompanying his cot.
Cyke stretched for the shades…
…then recoiled as he reckoned the slaughtered doctor sitting aside the bed, underneath another window, staring straight out in the stillness of death. Scott looked around frantically to find a nurse in the same condition, she shot several times too just like the physician, her body hunkered down as if the woman were just depressed. In fact, of course, she was as dead as the doctor as a doornail.
The doorknob to the room then turned. Scott thought in his horror to hide, as he dimly remembered that attempting to fight what felt like an instant ago proved utterly futile.
The incoming of Arclight rendered all this academic anyway as she sprinted into the room, then immediately thrust down with her hands at the floor to bring the entire facility down.
About a couple of minutes and several collapsing tons of concrete and other construction materials later, Scott came to once more to find himself trapped between red beams that were, sure as Surge or Sunfire's home was the Land of the Rising Sun, not optic blasts.
Once more, the man could not move a mite bit. He could only register it ruefully as Arclight's arch lover Scalphunter sauntered on in, with souped-up rifle in each hand, and unloaded all his ordnance into the corporeality of the Clops. As each shell agonizingly found home inside Scott's enfeebled frame, a small part of him actually sparked and remembered why this was all so at least vicariously reminiscent of something he once knew.
It was Jean who had told him about it. While the two of them were changing Christopher one time on Ship, during their salad seasons as X-Factor. She recalled Madelyne's past, memories that moseyed into her mind at the close of the Infernal atrocities, and how the put-upon pilot had undertaken what she thought was a flight assignment for a fair assessment, prodigious pay for a simple fling over to San Francisco. Madelyne took the baby with her when she went—as by this juncture Scott had abandoned her home as if Anchorage were a place worse than his orphanage in childhood—and she flew all the way out there, eager for her bundle of booty when she got there.
She was in fact paid, but in bullets to the body instead to the commission for which she had flown. Madelyne was hunted down by the murderous mofos known as the Marauders, with Scalphunter serving the most personal of payments upon her. Once she was shot down, said ruthless ruffians dispersed, believing her for dead and nabbing the baby from the lady.
When she turned up alive again, in a hospital in Frisco, the Man behind the Marauders—the one known most saliently as Sinister—tasked them once more to finish the fiasco they initiated. Madelyne was again tracked by the tumultuous terrors, but this time she was rescued in the clutch by the Pre-Outback Punk-Storm-Shepherded X-Men.
In the depths of the wretched wreckage in which Scott was situated at the moment, the man had absolutely no doubt that such a search party was not on its way to him.
But someone did come for Scott.
"Hey there, Captain Summers."
Cyke looked up suddenly, perked up at the appearance of a young woman who brightened his life for a certain time, very soon after the death of Jean Grey. She was a babe and a looker with her blonde locks, but known much more for her resourcefulness and resolve. The lady was there for him, so soon after the expiration of that reigning redhead, and the good golden lady helped him heal ever so thoroughly from that tragedy.
Scott looked into her wondrous blue eyes as she alighted, and said her brief yet brilliant name.
"…
"…Lee?"
"Yes, Scott."
The lady known as Lee Forrester set herself down next to the still-running remains of the man known as Scott Summers. Her alluring auric follicles were a fair comfort to the hero as he lay struggling and suffering.
She looked pertly at the man when he opened his mouth to speak again, silenced him simply with the item she came to bring him. "I'm here to help you, Scott."
In the woman's hand was a revolver, something very slight and ineffective in comparison to the cannons that Scalphunter was schlepping around. Lee started to give the gun over handle first to the hero.
He looked at the lady sheepishly. "Thanks," he said, just dumbly staring at the weapon's short stock, thinking most Freudianically of its relative meekness in light of the circumstances. "I don't know if this alone would be enough to match the might of the Marau…"
"No, it's not for them."
Scott then looked again at her, his unfiring brown eyes glaring at the unoffending blue irises of Aletys Forrester.
"Who better to bring over such a…solution, for you, Scott. It's easy. Quick. Worked for my father, Jock, when he was down and out of it. This little last resort's been the proverbial bitter pill for a lot of men in my family, in fact.
"Hell, I almost resorted to it myself. My last beau, though—Jim Scully, or Skull, you might know of him—he convinced me to act otherwise. Funny, 'cause it was almost always me propping him up when he was down.
"I was just in a really low moment that one time because Shanna the She Devil was trash-talking me so excessively back then for stealing her costume.
"Anyways…Scott…"
She nodded down again to the gun that was now in the man's hand.
Given the pain that was pulsating all through him, Scott honestly almost gave in. He knew he was seven Circles deep by now, with only a couple more to go…but if this Tough Mudder of traumatic murder was what he was dealing with now…what would it be like in the last two levels?
He kept gaping at it, thinking of the real cyclopean incision that the bullet might make in his forehead if he forewent his quest at this point…thought of how dangerous guns could be after all…
…thought of a dangerous moment in which he found one day little Christopher only feet away from a flare gun, a fucking flare gun, which he left unattended while he was listening on the radio to news about potential Sentinel production in Seattle. Only so far from his home in Alaska…but not nearly as much in proximity as that virtual weapon was from his flesh and blood.
There was no way he could ever leave them. And this easy way out was the quickest way away from said family.
"I'm sorry, Lee," was all the man could say, as he handed the revolver back the lady's way.
She looked sadly back at him, then sniffed quietly. "I understand. I only hope you have the same strength to finish this flight downward, as you did to soldier on just now."
Scott stared at the starkly-sanded ground as he spoke. "As you probably know with Scully…it's the love of someone who truly cares that get you thr…"
And just then as Cyke picked up his head to address Lee with eye contact, he noticed that her form was no longer there.
All remained silent for about another few seconds. Then:
"Oh…go on, Scott. Please."
Ragged, jagged claws tore at the man of a sudden as Scott was most unceremoniously wrenched out of the beam tomb in which he was previously situated.
"We were hanging on your every word just now! But soon…
"There'll be pieces of you hangin' offa' EVERY GIRDER!"
Scott found that he could not fight back at all as the claws of Sabretooth—the second-worst natural nails to which he'd ever been subject—had rent at him all over, tearing up his torso here and there. Once Victor Creed had crudely rendered upon Summers's chest a replica of the map of all the permutations of the metro train station route of any major city in the world, he effortlessly flipped the man back to the ground, grunting carelessly as he went.
"He's all yours, Janos…I guess it's really the Quester and the Quested, now."
Scott tried incredibly to stand after the awful assault on his person, so that he could face whoever would come next…
…but was in for yet another shock as what arrived in the following instant was not a person, but rather the projectiles that would precede him. Scott next experienced the sensation of shurikens striking into all of his orifices at once as Janos Quested, alias Riptide, spun onto the scene.
"Perfect score," the purple-and-white weirdo commented as he twirled along. "Even that lanky-ass Longshot couldn't get that lucky."
Cyke was expecting more from this last lout, but as soon as he gathered the impossible strength to look up once more, there was again only empty space.
A moment later he found himself finagled to his feet one more time. Something…someone…was causing the motor impulses in the mechanisms in his body to force themselves into functionality. As soon as Scott could stand, however…
…he felt his balance bound on away from him, and he started once more to trip and slip.
"You are just completely hung over with hurt, aren't you, Mister Summers."
He could make out a green and white swirl of a person this time, of a girl, who was waving her arms in very deliberate oblong patterns. As battered and beleaguered as the man was, no way was Vertigo going to give him an easy time of it.
"Well, let's help him on out of it," the inflection behind Cyke said, very snarkily. "I mean, it can't be nice, to be down here, all alone at least for his side of it, down here in the bowels of this prison, with Prism, and you, and me!
"But Scotty and I, we're about to have a real…blast...of a bonding experience…"
Cyclops noticed in the next split second that Vertigo sidestepped out of the way just as her teammate Scrambler settled his hand atop Scott's head. The villain who had moments ago used his ability productively to get Scott to his feet was now of course corrupting it all and utilizing it most destructively to awaken Cyke's heretofore, in this Circle, stubborn visual lasers. Said redness burst forth most recklessly as it pounded ahead and right into the aforesaid Prism. Both Scrambler and Vertigo hit the floor as the ensuing optic blast bounced off the last Marauder and careened every which way, the energy beam finally pulsing its path back into its source as Scott received a full blast of his own mutant missile.
Ordinarily, such a shock from an optic emission would not begin to shake the man, given the immunity he had to his own energy. Down here in this literal Alcatraz of the afterlife, however, the beam felt ever so brutal as the blast burst through him. Scott remained senseless on the ground for another several minutes, the man unable to move for the longest time…
…till minutes later, he heard another, all-too-familiar sound. Crawling with all the energy he had at this point, the man inched his way over to the lip of a chasm underneath this distorted rendition of the most infamous prison in American history. Scott recalled from Jean's accounts too that Madelyne had considered jumping from a cliff on Alcatraz…the woman ever so distraught disconsolate and desperate to end it all. Miss Grey had related the way in which Madelyne had looked at length upon her wedding ring in that moment…
…a ring that looked very much like the gleaming item in front of Scott's eyes right…
It was the ring.
The man grabbed for it…and it inched away from him, slightly. Cyke darted for it again, with all that he had…
…and then it eluded him by centimeters again, this time the jewel of the ring facing him as if to taunt. He could notice a strange, navy blue speck or two in the diamond that he could not recall noting before.
Scott paused, recovered his breath.
Lunged for the ring one more time, grabbed it…
…and placed it upon his left ring finger automatically, as if by command, at the exact moment the Cliffside upon which he was cooped had crumbled, sending his beaten body down.
It was the fall from the Mosquito all over again. He recalled the way in which he held his brother Alex tight, as he looked back up to his parents' plane just as it exploded, as the debris rained down on his parachute…
…a parachute that looked a little bit like the strong cloth that shot out of the ring right now, that broke the man's fall in this moment and helped him flutter most featherly to a new floor.
One last detail that Scott acknowledged, before he completed his tumble on down, was that the present parachute was not only darker, bluer…it was tattered at the edges. This sight of shredded sapphire was all too familiar to the man, he realized, as he struck the ground.
TO BE CONTINUED