Wish I had a good excuse but ... I don't. I'll try to explain everything when we get to the end of this. Regardless, I got 9000 words on this ending and tired of making you all wait as I figure it out so ... gonna send it out as it comes to me.
Least I can do is make it great.
Thanks to all for sticking with me. It means more than you think.
Part 1: What Ever Happened to Sergei Kravinoff?
Kraven had crawled his way out of the rubble, bleeding and broken, but couldn't find the strength to do anything more.
His hunt had failed.
First the Spider ... now the Panther ... he was disgraced.
The weight of his failure felt like drowning to Kraven. The worst of it being not only that he had failed ... but that he'd been left alive. Shown mercy by the tigress. By his prey. Left to languish in his failure. The beast - no the girl - wanted him to suffer.
The girl that had been given the greatest of gifts. Blessed to evolve beyond humanity. And she had scorned it ... corrupted the Panther with her weakness. Corrupted him.
Kraven still had his machete clutched in his hand. It would be so easy ... anything - anything to end this pain. This failure.
"Hmmm?" Kraven grunted as he picked up the sound of heavy steps coming from the east. Eight ... no - ten men. Heavily armed. Kraven let out a sigh of defeat.
So his benefactors had come to clean up their mess. He would make it easy for them. He had failed. His hunt lost. He deserved no better.
'Coward.' A growl from within lashed out at Kraven and he turned his head away from it. But that inner voice persisted, 'the Hunt is NOT over. They have left you alive. The tigress must pay. The Hunt must continue. You - you would let these spoiled, decadent mutants put Kraven the Hunter down? Like a beast? No ... no you will show them what a true hunter is. You will show them the true apex predator.'
"They will all pay." Kraven whispered to himself.
The cleanup team would sweep the area for close to an hour. But they'd never find anything but ruble.
Part 2: Losing Control of a Situation
"Ms. Emory ... report." Elizabeth took a breath to center herself before addressing her employers. As usual she could tell they were well dressed but stayed seated in shadow, their features unseen. Three men and a woman. She thought. With a click, a number of images appeared four screens, each one set in front of a member of the notorious Hellfire Club.
"The beast ... Apex - has not been an issue for the last few months. As our routine survielence of the X-Men noted, the unexpected appearance of another female feral, codename 'K', at the institute has seemingly caused a significant distraction. It hasn't pursued our assets or Weapon X with the same ferocity ... if at all. If I would suggest informing our Weapon X assets about the woman we might -"
"No," a strong male voice called out from the first chair, "Weapon X's work is too valuable to let them be distracted by a lost project. Stryker and the rest have been obssisive when it comes to their ferals. Continue to monitor the situation. So long as the animals keep away ... that's enough."
"For now." The softer, but still authorative - almost aristocratic, voice of the lone female added. A few looks might have been shared ... Elizabeth had no way to tell.
"Any other news?" The deeper voice of an older man who liked to indulge asked, clearly growing bored with the proceedings.
"Nothing worth noting ... we have yet to locate Kraven the Hunter. His failure to complete his contract opened him for termination. We have another team pursuing him in Indonesia."
"Another team?" The first male voice asked.
"Yes," Elizabeth nodded, "it would appear he killed our first team. He sent McCormick's head back to us." Ms. Emory's well schooled tone was the same neutral as always.
"Send another team," the woman said, "We want this matter done with. If the panther has moved on ... let's keep it that way. Now's not the time to invite the X-Men into our plans."
"Of course ma'am. Sirs." And with that Elizabeth gave a curt nod and left with her designer heels echoing down the hall towards the two men that always brought her to see these particular clients. But she ignored the inconvenience ... she had her orders. And she never disappointed her clients.
...
"How could you lose control of the situation?" Elizabeth had traveled half way across the globe. She had other clients. Good paying clients. But Sebastian Shaw, the Black King, wasn't one you ignored. It had taken Elizabeth over two years to figure out who he was ... but that mystery didn't seem to bother Shaw anymore. "First the beast ... now we have the hunter interfering in our plans?!"
"We're working on it, sir. Kraven hit one of our research facilities last night. Most of the staff and research were lost ... but the doctor made it out and we have backups on the vital data. He's already been relocated. Expected delay was contained to two weeks."
"Contained? You call losing over a year of research, two of our most lucrative business holdings, and almost a dozen of our pawns contained?" There it was ... the look that only someone as powerful as Shaw was able to pull off. Elizabeth barely flinched.
"We're working on containing the situation sir." Elizabeth kept her voice calm, neutral ... as she trained herself to do. Nevermind that Kraven had broken into her home in London. Then her safehouse in Prague. He never was there when she was ... he just left tokens of him being there. The last time it was the head of the security firm she'd hired to bring Kraven in. Kraven clearly didn't care about her ... he was just using her to send a message. After all ... that was her job.
...
"Does any of this really call for a full meeting?" Selene asked lazily. All four members of the Hellfire Club were together again. These last few months had found them together more than usual.
"Tell them." Shaw was standing by the window looking out over the Eurpean city. He forgot which one ... he'd been traveling so much lately. XXX looked around the room and took a breath.
"You all received the intel that Kraven -"
"Kraven the Hunter ... still? How could this possibly be worth our time? He's been your problem Shaw not mine. He should have been taken care of months ago. If you'd just -" The White Rook grumbled
"Let her finish!" Shaw barked, but didn't turn around.
"Kraven reengaged Apex a little over a week ago. He killed a mutant gargoyle Apex had been training - our profiler suggests felt protective over - and the two have been hunting each other since. At first we took this as good news ... a chance for both situations to be resolved."
"And then?" Selene asked, still sounding bored.
"Kraven ... he took the tigress." Elizabeth tried to read the room quickly, "and made it appear that you were ultimately responsible."
All the Hellfire Club members paused to look at each other ... even Selene. She was immortal and almost nothing on Earth gave her pause. Or even interested her that much. But if the rumors were true ... if the panther could indeed kill anyone ...
"What are we going to do?" The Black Rook asked out loud, looking to Shaw.
"We're going to find Kraven ... and send the beast after him. Let them kill each other."
"How will you convince the beast to listen?" Selene asked curiously. Shaw looked at Elizabeth and seemed torn between a grin ... and a grimace.
"Get me Emma Frost."
Part 3: Divide and Conquer
It hadn't taken long for Apex and Scott to figure out that the intel Emma Frost had delivered was good ... honestly it was too good. Kraven was holed up in what the Hellfire Club claimed was one of his main estates on the heavily forested Russian border. The exact location was slightly more difficult to figure out but that wouldn't take them long to figure out.
"So what ... Kraven decided to hide in a place that he knew the people he was fighting could find him? This intel could only be this good if they'd been there before," Scott gestured at a fairly detailed layout of the main floor and grounds, "What kinda place is that to hide?"
"Not hiding." Scott glanced over at Colton's rumble as the panther had his head bowed studying the layout of the estate. Logan was standing across from the panther and Scott couldn't help but see the similarities.
"So it's a trap then." Logan finally glanced up and addressed Scott but again it was Apex that answered.
"An invitation."
Scott and Logan shared a look and nodded, the two having spent enough years together to know what the other was thinking when it came to situations like this.
"Colton," Scott waited for Apex to meet his eye, "you, Wolverine, K, and Gambit will infiltrate the compound and find Tigra and Vanyss. When you have them you'll contact the rest of the team and we'll engage whatever defenses Kraven has in place. When we have his attention you'll get the two out of there and back to the jet and we'll get the hell out."
"What about Kraven?" Apex's growl was subdued but the point wasn't lost on Scott. He knew Apex had left him alive before and this is what had come out of it.
"The priority is recovering our missing teammates," Scott put a hand up as Apex turned to glower back at the map, "but if all this is really about Kraven wanting a shot at you ... well I won't get in the way of an idiot's life choices." Logan smirked at Scott's comment and Apex at least lost the glower in exchange for a huff of approval.
...
"Somethin' is still botherin' me," Logan scratched his chin as he thought out loud, "how'd Kraven think he'd know Apex would come alone?"
"Hey I'm still surprised Fuzz isn't coming alone ... guess whatever Jeannie said actually got through for once." K's tone telling she was still unsure how exactly that happened. But Logan still shook his head as the pair finished suiting up. But no sooner had K slipped her last clip into place that Kitty ... then Peter ... then Rogue went rushing by their door. The two ferals shared a look right as Amara was running by.
"Hey - Laval Lamp!" K barked out and Amara came up short though the change from surprised to confused to agitated at the nickname was fast.
"Did you just ..." Amara looked ready to snark something but Logan cut her off.
"What's goin' on? We headin' to the jet already?" Logan swore Scott had given them another half-hour as they refueled and went over last details.
"How do you two not - never mind. I'd turn on a TV." Amara pushed off the doorframe and headed down the hall.
"What channel!?" Logan yelled after her.
"Any of 'em!" Amara's voice echoed back and with a growl Logan reached for the remote and turned on the TV.
"Shit." Both Logan and K had the same reaction.
It wasn't pretty.
Almost every channel had images of what looked like some apartment complex in Phoenix in flames and every few minutes they showed what looked like a mutant in flames running and screaming into the complex and a few moments later the entire place exploding. And if that wasn't enough riots were already breaking out targeting the small mutant community.
"Guess we know how Kraven knew he'd come alone." K growled to herself as she cursed and headed out the door to find out what the hell they were going to do. Logan meanwhile kept his eyes on the screen and realized they had once again underestimated Kraven. He was a hunter ... he knew how to pick off an alpha ... and the first move was to separate it from it's pack.
"Shit." Logan cursed again and throwing the remote at the TV with an angry crack he followed K out.
Whether it was Kraven's handiwork, a random act, or some other mutant hate group or bad guy just trying to mess with them, the trouble in Phoenix wasn't the only trouble bombarding the X-Men. In a matter of hours Logan got calls from the Avengers and Alpha Flight asking for help on problems that either required his specialized skills or might have some tie to his background. Beast was being asked to come help on some mutant disease outbreak in Brussels. The Thief Guild was messaging Remy seemly every minute with some trouble dealing with two of their leaders having gone missing and both factions claiming the other responsible.
"You've got to be kidding me." Kurt rubbed his temples as he got a message from Excalibur that rumors of his father popping up in Britain had surfaced.
Most of the calls for help were just that ... rumors. Just enough information to make it possible a crisis was about to happen and without someones help who knows what would happen?
All of this was going on as Apex watched the X-Men scramble to head off crisis after crisis. Dr. McCoy was already on his way to Brussels. Gambit and Rogue were headed south. Warren, Betsy, and Kitty had needed to take some of the older students with them to handle the situation in Phoenix. Scott was huddled with the remaining X-Men trying to figure out if there were any more fires to put out ... and that didn't include Kraven.
"Kraven." Apex growled to himself, his tail lashing behind him as he stood looking out over the grounds, up on the roof where he'd kept guard for all those early months. When he'd thought he'd protect this place. The students. Greer. He thought he'd be able to protect all of them. And what good had he really done?
Apex had barely hit the ground before Piotr kicked off the bit of deck he'd been leaning against.
"Colton, did Scott give the word? Do we have a location?" Peter's tone sounded earnest but Apex, despite himself, quickly sized up that Peter was between him and the forest. Instead of answering, Apex moved to walk around the larger Russian but Peter raised his arms as he took a slight step to his left, an almost apologetic smile on his face.
"You can't do this alone, comrade. We all care about Greer and the gorul'ya. We wait for Scott ... ya? Come, sit ... or if you need to blow off some steam we can -" Peter almost was able to metal up in time, but Apex knew exactly how long that took and what got covered last, the hit just left of the solarplexes throwing the Russian far enough that the landing knocked him out cold, the sudden lack of oxygen doing the trick.
"Vanyss." Apex growled without realizing it and headed for the forest. Enough people had gotten hurt because of him.
"So Hank's headed to the city and from there going with WHO to Brussels," Scott hated to see Hank go but there really wasn't much of a choice with that one. Logan had busy in the garage talking to Sam Wilson about what exactly the Avengers needed from him.
"He's gonna leave Scott. With or without us." Jean warned from the briefing room where she and Scott had been trying to figure out what to do.
"I know that Jean ... fact Colton hasn't taken off already is a miracle." Scott sounded tired.
"About that ..." Peter shuffled into the room, rubbing a rough looking purple bruise showing from a large rip in his shirt across his chest.
"Jesus - Peter are you OK?" Jean rushed around the table but Peter put a hand up.
"Just a bruise ... if the pantera had wished to hurt me, I'd still be in the dirt."
"He's gone then?" Jean sounded concerned but took a breath at Peter's nod as she looked back to Scott who let out a breath of his own.
"Let's get ready."
"You really think it's smart to let him go on his own?" Jean sounded determined, hundreds of missions settling her, but still strained.
"I've been dealing with ferals for long enough to know we were never gonna stop him from heading off and I knew Colton figured out those coordinates hours ago ... he just wasn't going to tell us," Scott almost chuckled, "besides ... I got a tracker on him." Scott gave Jean a bit of a smirk as they headed to the dressing rooms.
Apex rode in silence on the jet he'd borrowed from Fury. The man kept jets, cars, bikes ... hell everything all over the world. You just had to know where to look. He hadn't bothered with the jet X-Force had been using or an X-Men craft ... too easy to track.
He tried focusing on Kraven ... on Greer ... on Vanyss ... but it was Jean's voice that kept coming back to him. About him pushing everyone away. Looking back he realized she was right but - that didn't mean he was wrong. What good had come from anyone being close to him?
It was hours before Apex landed the jet a few miles from the coordinates where he'd find Kraven. The panther shut the jet down, turned on its cloaking, and stalked out the ramp towards the quickly darkening forest treeline. It was a few minutes after that when K dropped down from her hiding spot and took a few second to work on her kinks. Ever since the adamantium she'd lost some of her flexibility but damn ... that space was tight. She thanked the tech Forge had loaned her, his attempt to figure out what other groups were using to hide their scent from the ferals had resulted in a prototype of his own. Guess the thing worked.
The lithe feral had barely poked her head out of the jet when a bang rang out and K's left leg collapsed with an even louder stream of curses.
"Asshole!" K spat out as Apex dropped from the branch he'd been waiting on, the M4 slid to his back, as he evaded K's thrashing claws and taking advantage of her immobility cuffed her to the wheel of the jet. He'd blew most of her knee structure clean off ... at least 10 minutes of healing time.
"Fury was too easy an ask," Apex answered K's unasked question. That alone had put his hackles up and made him assume Logan wouldn't be far behind ... assuming whatever he'd told Wilson had been about himself and not some emergency. He'd assumed it'd be Logan waiting for him on the jet ... he'd been close.
"So what," K's breathing was evening out as her healing kicked in, "you just gonna ignore every good piece of advice you've gotten and go play Kraven's game?"
Apex took a deep breath, turning to look towards the forest, "No one else."
"Yea ... you're the first one to get a protective complex. None of us can take care of ourselves. Don't make our own decisions. Not me ... Not Scott ... Not Greer. We're all helpless idiots." K eyed the cuffs, looked like some kind of SHIELD tech ... but not unbeatable.
"I was wrong about you K." K looked up just in time to see the fist collide with her temple and she was out, Apex catching her so she didn't hit the ground. Laying the smaller feral down, Apex checked to make sure no one would be able to see her beneath the jets cloaking. Satisfied, the panther tossed the rifle and headed for the forest.
It didn't take the panther long to pick up a scent and once he did he broke into a run. Kraven wasn't trying to hide ... this was an invitation. A challenge. A hunt ... Kraven might have been dangerous but he was also an megalomaniac. And most importantly ... a human. So many ways to die.
But Apex slowed and slowly pulled himself back into a standing position ... his ears swiveling as he tilted his head and took in the air. He didn't hear anything. Scent anything out of place. But his hackles rose and dropping as he spun the tree in front of him practically exploded as the bang from a rifle echoed through the forest.
Apex didn't wait and scaled the closest tree, the shot coming from the canopy and what sounded like less than a hundred yards. The panther fought the urge to roar ... to announce his acceptance of the challenge. Instead he had to be content with a rumble.
The hunt was on.
