Terrors of Night
Disclaimer: Same as before.
Author's Note: Many thanks to Red Witch for creating the Ronin Toad series of fanfiction that inspired myself and other authors on . May her muse remain ever blessed.
Somnia is the Roman god of dreams, called Morpheus by the Greeks.
The Pit, Officer's Quarters
Todd Tolanksy
16 February 2002, 0032
Sleep for Todd Tolansky would be anything but peaceful. Memories coming in the night. Of beatings of the past. It didn't matter who was inflicting them. It could be his father, bullies and jocks that tormented him through school, Magneto, Mystique.
The physical blows, or rather memories of them came in waves. Staccato sequences of memories of abuses both long past and relatively recent.
The words were even more cruel than the beatings. A long list of tirades.
"You were the one who wanted the worthless rugrat! I didn't." The long dead and unmourned Mr. Tolansky said.
Todd's mother held the sniffling and sobbing boy protectively to her. "He needs medicine, that's more important than your booze."
A backhanded slap to the woman's face was the only response.
"Damn it, Steve!" the woman said, "We might not get along, but the least we can do is provide a better life for Todd."
"Like I said, you wanted the rugrat! Not me!"
"Steve! That's it! I...If you don't start taking care of our son...helping me take care of our son...I'll leave."
"Oh, so go ahead! You and the little brat..." Mr. Tolansky said, as a prelude to yet another beating that Todd's mother was to endure.
The cruel words of his long dead and abusive father faded away, only to be replaced with events of a far more recent vintage in Todd's mind.
"Useless...utterly useless. Mystique, what were you thinking allowing this...weakling into the Brotherhood?" Magneto's words had stopped the last of Todd's beatings.
"He was all I could find at the time." Mystique replied, "Before the others, remember. It's not my fault the idiot can't do the simplest tasks."
"In the future, Mystique," Magento warned, menacingly, "You will find me more useful mutants."
Mystique's response was punctuated with a snarl and a savage kick to Todd's midsection, "That won't be too hard. Hard to imagine any mutant as useless as this one."
The kick had resulted in Todd spitting a mixture of blood and slime involuntarily onto the floor of the jet.
"I'm sorry..." Todd begged, tears in his eyes.
Lying on his side on the floor of the jet, seeing the other three boys of the Brotherhood. Regarding them with tearful eyes. Looking from Lance, to Pietro, to Fred.
Lance looked away in contempt. "Wimp," he said simply.
Pietro's face bore a stony expression.
Fred looked scared. An expression Todd had never seen in the big mutant.
"Weak." Magneto said, "The weak are useless. Therefore..."
Todd could feel the rushing of air as a hatch on the jet was opened by Mystique. And Magneto picked Todd up by the scruff of the neck.
"No! No! Please! Really! You'll see! Please!" Todd begged as Magneto dragged him to the hatch of the jet.
"What I see is a worthless cretin who had better not show his ugly face around Bayville if he know's what's good for him!" Mystique sneered, "That is provided you manage to survive."
"No! Please! Don't leave me alone out there!" Todd begged, trying to plant his feet, but Magneto's pull was a lot stronger.
"Guys, help me!" Todd begged, looking from Lance, to Pietro, to Fred. None of the three boys had said a word. Whether it was through actual disgust at his poor performance or fear of Magneto or Mystique Todd didn't know.
"Please! I'll die out there! Please!" Todd begged as Magneto neared the hatch.
"Perhaps it is better for Mutantkind if you do." Magneto replied, before throwing the helpless teen from the aircraft...
Todd awoke, screaming a scream of fear and pain that woke not only Roadblock but their neighbors in the other apartment.
The Pit, Officer's Quarters
Conrad Hart
16 February 2002, 0030
Kate's last words to him before they got into the apartment echoed in Conrad's mind, "And why are you taking this so hard?"
As he allowed sleep to claim him earlier he found himself being the host of one of Somnia's visits...
The patrol, a mixed formation of three Legionnaires and fifteen of the militia that Commando Depuis had been training, approached the small farmstead on the outskirts of the war ravaged village.
As they had come to a brief halt Conrad took a sip from his water bottle before going to speak with one of the four medical missionaries that had created this mission a few months earlier to help the children affected by the war.
As the patrol leader it was his job to get information from the missionaries, any information, that would keep the COBRA backed faction out of the area. He stepped inside the small house, into one of the larger rooms that formed a sort of clinic to talk to one of the missionaries.
As a gesture of respect Conrad removed his helmet, tucking it under his arm as he entered the room, finding a woman in her early forties, with dark brown hair bundled up in a messy bun behind her head. She wore a stained white labcoat and had a stethoscope worn on her neck.
She was taking the temperature of a boy, maybe seven or eight years old, reclining on a small hospital bed. Even with the blanket Conrad noticed the ragged stump below the knee where the boy's left leg should've been.
"What happened?" Conrad asked.
The woman looked up at him, and in the woman's grey-blue eyes he saw a bit of surprise as she registered his distinctly American accented English before replying, "You're American?"
"Yes. My name is Conrad Hart, and I'm with the French Foreign Legion." Conrad replied, "That explains the French military uniform."
The woman replied, "Doctor Julia Keller."
Conrad wiped his right hand on the sleeve of his uniform before shaking hands with the woman. He noticed a fairly neutral tone to her accent, but if he had to guess she was from anywhere in the country he would have figured somewhere in New England.
"Dr. Keller, what happened to the kid?" Conrad asked again.
"He stepped on a landmine." Keller replied, sadly, "There are so many of them around here."
Conrad's trained eye told him that the boy had likely stepped on a PMN-3 anti-personnel mine. The small, disc-shaped mine was a quite popular anti-personnel mine of Soviet origin, one that was designed to amuptate the foot or leg of the unfortunate soldier who stepped on it. This would force his comrades to have to expend resources and time to get him to safety.
Before Conrad could reply Dr. Keller continued, "His older brother wasn't so lucky. They were playing in a clearing near here and he stepped on another mine. The villagers said he was practically torn in half."
Conrad's mind registered that the lad had to have triggered an OZM type mine. The OZM was designed to fly a half meter into the air before exploding into hundreds of razor edged fragments.
"I'm sorry." Conrad said, before taking a map from one of the cargo pockets on his pants, along with a pencil.
Motioning the doctor towards a near empty table nearby he asked, "Do you think you can point it out here on the map?"
"Sure." Keller replied, as the two of them looked over the map, and she indicated the field on the map.
Conrad promptly marked it with his pencil, "I'll see if I can't do some demining here."
True to his word, Conrad and members of Commando Depuis returned a fortnight later with a squad of combat engineers from a nearby French Army unit that removed 33 mines of various kinds from the field.
From that moment on the small international medical mission had built a rapid rapport with the men of Commando Depuis. This did not go unnoticed, nor unpunished, by the COBRA backed faction.
Conrad's patrol had returned a few weeks later to find everyone at the mission dead, and even more ghastly acts having been done.
"Bastards. I'll kill them." Conrad grumbled.
"Not one of us doesn't feel the same way, Hart." Sergent Ian Laposte, an Englishman with eleven years of service in the French Foreign Legion, replied.
"These people were doctors and nurses. They did nothing but provide medical treatment to anyone who would ask. Even some of the COBRA wounded that came through here." Conrad replied.
As he spoke he covered Dr. Keller's body with a tarp, after closing her open eyes. Crossing himself with his free hand he whispered, "We will make them pay for this, Doctor..."
Laposte added, "You can guarantee that."
Conrad looked over his shoulder to see Ian covering the dead body of the boy who had run afoul of the landmine some weeks earlier. He didn't have to guess that Ian was thinking of his own estranged children back in the United Kingdom.
"The devil take order now! I'll to the throng! Let life be short else shame will be too long!" - from William Shakespeare's Henry V.
Thanks to aggressive efforts and intelligence gathering Commando Depuis was able to locate the group that had masterminded the attack on the mission. The decision was made to eliminate them.
Quietly patrolling through the jungle ravine towards the abandoned farm that the COBRA backed militants occupied, six Legionnaires and twenty of the militia they trained approached the farmstead.
Conrad stepped over the dead body of one of the enemy sentries, shot dead by hidden snipers as the assault team neared the compound.
Three buildings, the house, the barn, and an outbuilding was where reconaissance had located the militants that COBRA had been training and supplying.
Moving quietly towards the main house, Ian behind him, Conrad opened the front door with a free hand, moving into the hallway and into a side room. Three bundles on the floor, where three slumbering militants lay. Conrad aimed down the sights of the FAMAS rifle at the one on the left, Ian the one on the right and both men squeezed off short bursts of gunfire into their respective bundles.
The third militant awoke with the sound of gunfire, reaching for his Kalashnikov next to his sleeping mat as bullets from both Ian and Conrad ripped into his body. All around the compound bursts of gunfire and the occasional grenade explosion could be heard as Commando Depuis wrecked their vengeance.
A few militants managed to grab weapons, awakened as they were by the sounds of shooting, trying to fight back.
Bullets flew into the tin walled room, narrowly missing Conrad, who hurled a grenade back out the window in response. Running back outside, he could see the militant he had hit with the grenade's explosion lying on his side, fingers holding his midsection and trying to hold in severely lascerated viscera. The man, no, boy, Conrad realized as he approached, was screaming bloody murder...
Conrad sat up in bed with a start. But sitting awake hadn't lessened the screaming at all. As he sat up, blinking his eyes he realized the screaming wasn't coming from his nightmare. It was coming from the neighboring apartment.
The Pit, Officer's Quarters
Caitlin Todd
16 February 2002, 0033
The scream was especially loud in Kate's room, given her room was the one closest to the apartment shared by Roadblock and Todd. And from the position of the scream Kate could tell her room was the one that was just through the wall from Todd's.
She headed out of her bedroom to find Conrad had clearly also been awakened. He stood at the window of the apartment, a can of beer open in one hand.
"Having a nightcap?" Kate said.
"You could say that." Conrad replied.
Kate asked, "Last night you said that children suffered the worst in war. And you also mentioned child soldiers..."
Conrad turned to face her as she spoke, "And you said that cryptic phrase about no soldier wanting a dead kid on their conscience."
"I did say that, yes." Conrad replied, "What's your point?"
Conrad could see Kate was ruminating on things and wasn't surprised when the Secret Service agent's features showed recognition.
"You killed one of them, didn't you?" Kate said, softly.
Conrad nodded and added, "So you see, that's why the kid's story resonates for me. He was recruited by Magneto to be part of his Brotherhood of Mutants, only to nearly wind up dead at his hands."
He proceded to tell Kate everything he had seen. The missionaries and their kindness. The COBRA backed faction that had overrun the mission. Of Commando Depuis' vengeance.
"The damndest thing," Conrad concluded, "I have mixed emotions about that. On one hand I thought the bastards who attacked the mission got exactly what they deserved. We sent them to the Gates of Saint Peter to face justice. Vae Victis."
"Suffering to the conquered." Kate translated, recognizing the Latin Conrad had spoken. She saw the ex-Legionnaire faintly nod.
"On the other among their number were quite a few youths they had trained to be fighters. I know I will have to answer for having killed." Conrad replied, "Perhaps my punishment was already been bestowed. I'll never forget that teenaged fighter, killed by my hand in Africa."
Kate, seeming to change the topic, asked, "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
"I do, in fact. They're five and eight years younger than me respectively." Conrad smiled ruefully, "We were close for a long time...and we're starting to get closer again, since I started writing home again after my first two years in the Legion."
He looked towards Kate and asked, "What about you, do you have other siblings other than the 'psychotic' older brothers?"
"An older sister, named Rachel, who lives in Miami." Kate replied, "She's still younger than my brothers."
"Ah, and how many brothers do you have?" Conrad asked.
"Three. All psychotic as I said." Kate replied.
"So you are the baby of the family." Conrad said, with a faint smile.
Kate shot him a half serious dirty look, "And you seem to have the older brother vibe to you."
"Touche, mademoiselle." Conrad replied.
A brief, but comfortable silence followed as Conrad asked, "I take it the same scream that woke me up woke you as well?"
Kate nodded, "Poor kid. He might've worked for Magneto, and was kicked out for being the least competent of his bunch, but he still didn't deserve..."
"So now you see why I would personally put a knife through Mystique's gut if I ever ran across her." Conrad replied.
"I understand it, yes. But I don't agree with it, Conrad." Kate replied.
"However, in some strange sort of way Todd was fortunate." Conrad said.
"He survived being thrown out of the jet and Roadblock found him." Kate replied, then with a small smile said, "He's good with Todd, isn't he?"
"Exactly." Conrad replied, "If anyone could show the world that mutants and humans are capable of getting along its those two. Roadblock took the kid in, adopting him as his own son."
"My reports back to Washington have been saying as much." Kate replied.
"Oh the scourge of the field agent. Reports to headquarters." Conrad joked.
"Especially if your boss asks you to clarify things." Kate added, with mirth in her voice.
"You said it. My boss can't believe the story about the gingerbread scorpion." Conrad replied.
"Mine's going nuts about Mr. Toad's Wild Ride." Kate replied.
"Huh?" Conrad asked.
"That's what I've taken to calling Todd's joyride in the tank that we witnessed when we first got here." Kate replied.
"I like how you think." Conrad replied.
The pair talked until the sunlight from the sunrise outside their window shined into the living room...
To Be Continued...