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Crimson Claws 6.

3 September 1995

I stood in the open doorway to our room. No one was to be seen. Apart from Fred's deep, loud snoring (something that sounded a lot like a cat purring in the finish but which I would never let him know - however), everything was quiet. Too quiet for me to think this was an oversight. The same mistake. I turned again, looked at Fred, who was stretched out and sleeping blissfully, his mouth so wide open you could have thrown a tennis ball into it, then at the camera in the corner. I stared at it for a few moments, indecisively ... and then less indecisively. I had never been much of an adventurer. And certainly not someone who broke rules. But ... Fred had been out all night and hadn't even been rapped on the knuckles.

I really believed by now that Sevarius wanted us to " escape" for some reason. What he wanted us to do or not do, I had no idea. But as little trouble as I had staying in a confined space for weeks on end... the thought of walking more than 20 steps - with this new body that was made to move a lot - still became more inviting with each passing day. I did NOT have a cabin fever. But ... maybe the wildlife DNA made me a little more open to roaming. It still didn't quite override my need for familiarity and shelter. I didn't want to take it as far as Fred. I had no desire to go anywhere where I would meet people and traumatize them. No.

When I closed the door to our room behind me, I walked down the hall, around two corners, to the stairwell and elevator. Even the door to the stairwell was ajar, even though it had an electronic combination lock. The door to the rooftop was also open - all unspoken invitations, prompts. I didn't know what to make of it. Except ... that I liked it as soon as I was outside ... on the roof. My feet, with their soft yet hard-wearing pads, made no sound on the gravel. As soon as I stepped out of the lee of the stairwell, the breath of the nocturnal metropolis embraced me. This was an industrial district - not very busy at this hour, but the buzz around me that made my cat ears twitch back and forth and the multitude of smells was overwhelming for a few moments. Plus, my new eyes had no problem with the darkness, the streetlights between the buildings gave off so much stray light it was like each one was a dirty little sun. My heart was beating loudly in my chest... but less with fear than with excitement. A good kind of excitement.

I stood on the roof leaning into the wind. It had never felt so good to be outside, to have the sky above me and enough space around me.

I stretched my wings so that several new joints cracked.

Oh that felt good- I shivered as the air brushed around the leathery edges of the wings, knowing they weren't fully developed and wouldn't be able to carry me yet (not that I wanted to fly, simply that I had made it to the roof- unrestrained by external but even more by internal inhibitions was astonishing and, like these new sensations, something I would have to think about for a long time. My neuroses were not gone but ... perhaps my multiple near-death experiences and the new traumas had simply made the old ones fade a little - made them lose some of their intangible horror. How could I still perceive wire mesh outside the windows and the dictation of fixed structures by the authorities as the best measure of security when I knew that there was no security in that either? Who could be afraid of their own hunger, of death, especially when it had happened to you for the second time, when you had been forced to do what you had done for the second time in your life? What else could frighten me ... when I knew what much more violent horrors were around me? When you had become one of those horrors yourself and this was the new normal?

I had no desire to push the spatial and temporal boundaries of my new freedom, to lead the staff of the Institute here on an hour-long hunt through the city. Where was I supposed to go? That hadn't changed. I had no place and no one I wanted to go to - especially not in this body. I just wanted to watch the sky slowly get brighter, take in the air and sounds with my new senses, and think. And that's exactly what I did. Just before the sun crept over the horizon, I heard the footsteps of several people. They were so loud, the rustling of their clothes, their breaths, whispered comments, their shoes crunching the gravel in an almost brutal way. It was ... laughable somehow. If I'd wanted to get away from them, I'd have been gone long before anyone saw me sitting on the edge of the roof. Yeah - a monster ... but superior in many ways - so the doctor had achieved that goal.

"Don't move, pal," someone said gruffly and I grinned at this because someone told me to get up immediately afterwards. I stood up slowly and smirked at the doctor who was standing with the four security guys, this time with a walking stick. A walking stick he hadn't used before - strange. When he had first picked me up, he had seemed fitter, more agile, younger. People don't age that quickly. But I didn't want to think about it, I just felt too relaxed and at peace.

"You didn't get far, Klaus? Has that been your neurosis?"

I smirked my cat smile without teeth and just shrugged my shoulders and let myself be escorted back to my room, not caring that the doctor seemed disappointed that I hadn't been anything which had gone bump in the night - for whatever reason.

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"Man, I feel like a pin cushion here. At least if I donated blood, I'd get a sandwich and some cookies afterwards."

I rolled my eyes. Oh, what would a day be without some whining from Fred?

After the assistant who had taken my blood pressed the swab onto the crook of my arm, I knew it was safe to look again. I still wasn't good with blood. Not with mine and no longer with anyone else's. It reminded me too much of my old and new traumas. My own breakout had not been commented on with any negative or positive words, as was to be expected. Fred had been a little pissed off at breakfast that I hadn't woken him up so he could frolic around again, but that had quickly faded. Sevarius wasn't around today. He was working on a side project for the same sponsor who wanted us. But the assistants were used enough to Fred and me by now and there were still the tried and tested guards. Only two this time. Scaling down security was good, I thought. Maybe our staged jailbreaks had served to show that we weren't wantonly dangerous in the wild. Not even Fred, who was a jerk and an egomaniac but not a beast.

Said non-beast curled his chaps into a disgusted snarl as the humans turned away and labeled and stowed our blood.

"Man, it stinks in here. And what's that sound?" He muttered, looking around. He stood up, scratched his stomach and wandered around. I let out a questioning coo where one of the security guards warned Fred to behave and Sykes waved him off.

"Yeah yeah, don't piss yourself," he said to me. I was sometimes a little taken aback by how well my fellow sufferer understood me even though I no longer used words. But I didn't want to explore this too much. The thought of being caught up in this affair with someone like him was bad enough. That we might have had some inner link through our mutation would be upsetting.

Fred had stopped in front of the heavy curtain at the other end of the room. I stood up - curious myself, a quick glance at the security guards to reassure myself - and stood behind him as he pulled the curtain open with a powerful motion.

Three seconds of stunned silence followed:

"Cool, look at that! Jackpot!"

Distraught, I took a step back where Sykes took a step forward. To the silver stretcher on which a mutant was lying. A female mutant! Hence the smell and hence the sound - her quiet but greatly accelerated shallow breathing was the sound Fred's cat ears had picked up. She had survived. As we had done. No blood on her not yet covering shaggy blond fur that was not tiger, not cougar but ... probably lioness?- the doctor had obviously perfected the procedure. Apparently Sevarius had no limits or scruples. He had turned a girl into such a creature. And Fred had goaded him into it!

I grimaced in agony and pity at the sight of her. Doing that to men ... was somehow different from doing it to women. I wasn't quite sure why, but it seemed so much worse. More violent. More nefarious. I didn't believe she had volunteered to be mutated. She was deep in her feverish swoon, sweat sticking to her fur and her face with the developing snout looked so tortured and so much older than she probably really was. And she was lying here tied up on a cold metal table, people working in the room as if she wasn't even there, as if she wasn't a being with feelings and now shattered dreams and ... God, she would be so scared if she woke up in a completely abused body. She was a prisoner and at the mercy of the Doctor - or rather his employer - like me and Fred, except that Fred didn't yet want to realize that he was just an experiment.

And I hated Fred for looking up at me and smirking!

"They've got - okay, she's mutating right now and stinks of cell death and sweat but this little gal's kinda hot already, huh?" He turned to the people in the room, always assuming he was being watched, just like me. Everything here was a test, everything was recorded by artificial and real eyes. Since we two (now three!) were the first of our kind, it was only logical.

"Hey, is this one for Silent Bob or for me?" Fred asked the assistants with a hungry, teeth-baring look over the young woman's body. She would have a fragile brittleness about her even when the mutation was complete, would not be a super-soldier. Her wings - somewhat squashed beneath her lean body were more brown than black or gray like mine and Fred's - seemed downright parchment-thin and frilly like part of a cheap Halloween costume. Except this was something she couldn't put on and take off so easily,

"If she's not for me - do I get one? For ... the research and stuff and I've been an extremely good boy here," he mumbled, lost in thought, reaching out for the thin sheet that was spread over her.

I grabbed his wrist so that he hissed and pulled him towards me, staring at him and growling loudly at the innuendo of the question. Then I let go of him and he backed away, rubbing his wrist.

"Okay, okay, be cool bro. I'm not that kind of guy anyway. I can wait until she succumbs to the Fred Sykes charm."

He turned and trudged up the three steps to the glass-fronted showroom from where he'd come into our actual bedroom.

I grumbled unhappily and was just about to sit down on the chair at their table when the door opened again and the doctor came in, a clipboard in his hands.

"Ah, I see you two have already acquainted yourselves with our new arrival," he said, adding with so much actorly exaggerated arrogance that I imagined it was dripping off him:

"Miss Reed's mutation rate has been so stable that she hasn't even come close to overheating or organ failure. I think with her we will soon be ready to present the results to our sponsor. And more than on schedule - as I anticipated."

"Man, as long as you undo the freak show and I get the fat allowance, we're cool. What about Kitty Cat?" Fred licked his teeth and then looked warily at me. "She gets her own room I suppose."

"Of course, Mr. Sykes. Miss Reed is a lady. We'll treat her accordingly. But of course you may act with each other when she is more stable."

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Even when the girl entered her more stable phase, making contact didn't really go well.

Two days later (much quicker than with me) the guards tried to pull a totally agitated lion bat girl out of a showroom. That one was positioned right next to that of Fred and mine - clearly to present us all to the sponsor at some point - theatrical and over-the-top like a lot of what Sevarius did.

Margaret- Maggie - as the Doctor called her to make her compliant resisted being dragged out of her safe-space ( with half developed claws but basically helpless) as if her life depended on it. Whatever was left of her life. She looked manic and panicked, screaming with a scratchy voice and hissing, and when she was finally released, she huddled in a corner of her anteroom, watching everything from tear-blurred golden eyes. She wore only a half-tattered green dress (obviously part of her old wardrobe as she refused to put on whatever had been laid out for her). The humans gave up trying to force her after a short time.

Where Fred just mumbled something about melodramatic broads and walked to the treadmill, I put my hand on the glass wall, which had been raised again, and looked at Maggie. I tried to put as much comfort and compassion into this gesture and my gaze as I could. Maggie eyed me for more than a few long seconds - fear and shock flickering across her face as she studied my more than massive and certainly frightening form. Then she sniffled - not audibly but visibly through the wrinkling of her feline nose - and gave me a more than broken shadowy and fleeting half smile before dropping her head to her knees to hide from the eyes of our little world.

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Whereas the previous weeks had virtually crawled by at a paralyzing snail's pace, events came thick and fast from the following night onwards. This time there was an audible alarm. I jumped off my cot when I heard loud clattering from outside. Someone was shouting. Someone was hissing like a big cat. Fred and I both ran to the small bulletproof glass peephole in the door, saw red lights flashing and the alarm howling in our ears. Three security guards ran past shouting. It all looked very real.

"The doctor's really trying hard with the new girl and the fake escape. But no wonder ... she's so messed up, a half ajar door wouldn't make her leave," Sykes muttered before moving back to his cot and I could only grumble in agreement and hope that nothing happened to her out there.

.

The next day there was no check-up. When our food came, I wanted to ask if Maggie was okay, if she had been picked up again, but no one understood me - except Fred.

"Don't get worked up, Supernanny. She won't have been run over. No need to eat yourself up before you know for sure."

As much as I grumbled at his flippant tone and his 'fuck it' attitude, he was right about the latter. Still, that didn't stop me from pacing back and forth in our dorm room all day. The explanation as to why there had been no examination followed in the evening. The doctor's cheerful voice rang through the intercom as the wall to our smaller showroom lifted and Fred and I went through.

"Good news, Gentlecats and ladies! Our sponsor, the organizer of our show if we want to be generous, is joining us. So be ready to show your best side when I raise the screen. Soon our journey will be over."

Where Fred looked happy, Sevarius' words made me feel deeply anxious. Something I couldn't hold on to because I could see Maggie crouching through the side glass wall that overlooked the other anteroom. I tapped the glass wall and she looked up. If that was possible, she looked even more miserable than before. Whatever she had experienced out there last night couldn't have been pleasant. Still - in response to my cat smile, my hand on the glass and the questioning nod of my head, she gave me a watery smile back. Okay ... we'd sort it out somehow. Somehow. And maybe soon. Because a short time later, the opaque wall slowly slid up, leaving only the glass barrier between us and the doctor and his visitor. Visitors.

Fred nudged me to push out my chest and show the muscles in my upper arms like he did. As broken as Maggie looked, he and I had to look stronger and more stable. Because if the sponsor was unhappy ... I didn't know what the consequences would be, but it couldn't be good. WHAT was not good, however, was that the sponsor - a man Fred strangely awestruck referred to as "Wow, David Xanatos", with a leader's posture and a beard and mediterranean glow as well as his dark-skinned companion in a blue bomber jacket looked MORE than shocked and displeased at the sight of us.

I resisted the urge to make myself self-consciously smaller and hide behind my wings. If we weren't what this man had wanted, what would become of us? Fred and I watched spellbound - although we couldn't hear anything - as Mr. Xanatos and Sevarius and the young man began to argue, even quarrel, and the argument became more and more heated. Until Sevarius pulled out one of the stun guns and shot at Xanatos. The young man threw himself over him and the dart hit him in the shoulder. But instead of collapsing, he tackled Sevarius, who tried to hit him with his stick. Within seconds, the doctor was on the ground, saying something with a shiteating grin and both the young man and Xanatos looked at us in shock.

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September 10th

While the young man had slowly mutated - but much less bloodily and faster than any of us before - Maggie and we had been shooed back to our rooms. I hadn't wanted to watch something like that anyway - the suffering and loss of an entire human life in a few hours. We spent the whole day in our room - again - no examination and now Fred was pacing the room as well as me and we were both getting on each other's nerves because we didn't know if the sponsor wanted to help us or not. That's why we missed the big fight and Maggie's kidnapping (or catnapping- thanks Fred!). By ... creatures ... GARGOYLES, who had also approached her the night before. We missed how these monsters killed the doctor and thus our best chance of a cure.

It was only when a blond man with the posture and speech pattern of a steel pipe opened our door and told us that from now on we would all be guests of Mr. Xanatos at his castle until another geneticist would take care of our problem that things literally started to move. I left the institution for the first time in months. Single file behind Fred because he was the only constant I knew and I would follow him for now. We were led to the open back door of a van.

Where Maggie was already sitting with a blanket around her shoulders. She must have escaped the gargoyles and snuck back to the institution because she knew she would only get help there. There also sat a man with a black panther face - still a little shaggy but clearly the young man who had been the doctor's last victim. Even his wings were more developed than mine or Maggie's had been after days. Before Fred could sit down next to Maggie to say anything inappropriate, I slid in next to her, smiled at her and nodded in encouragement. Which made her relax a little. She took a deep breath, sliding back and forth on the narrow bench even though she was buckled in. Our tails and wings made the journey quite cramped. And awkward.

And even if I could have spoken, I wouldn't have known what to say. Maggie was still wound up about her mutation, the new man just looked infinitely angry, and I wasn't surprised that it was Fred who slapped his thighs and started babbling.

"Sooooo, that makes four of us. Uhm, we agree that everything here is pretty shitty and crazy. But hey, let's look on the bright side, Sevarius is dead, someone who continues his work and is probably 80% less crazy will turn us back and until then we'll live in the cloud castle with the guilt-ridden Mr. Moneysack. Could have been worse, huh?"

"How could it be worse?" the new guy barked, baring his fangs and struggling to control the electricity dancing over his arms as he closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Sevarius really was our best chance," Maggie whispered and buried her face in her hands. I wanted so much to comfort her. I felt completely unfoundedly responsible for her. Maybe because I had been there when Fred had given the doctor the idea for female mutants. Maybe because I was a caretaker by nature and had done it hundreds of times at the Asylum. But I didn't know if she would have tolerated a touch, no matter how platonic and comforting.

"Wow, this vibe is really killing the mood," Fred grunted, rolling his eyes. At that moment, the van made a sharp turn and although we were all strapped in, we slid against each other on the benches.

"Shit, man, you've got valuable cargo back here! Did you win your license in the lottery or what!" Fred shouted at the driver and hit the metal of the car, leaving a small dent.

I hummed an apology to Maggie, whom I had almost crushed and who rubbed her upper arm a little distraught.

"It's okay," she said uncertainly, looking up at me. "You don't talk much, do you?"

I took a deep breath while Fred spoke for me.

"Good luck getting an answer out of him. He's lost a few marbles since the mutation. It's just not quite clear whether here-" he tapped his larynx "- or here- " he touched his head. I growled at him taking my muteness for a joke, but had I expected better?

"Oh, that... that's... um." Maggie was clearly searching for a suitable word. Terrible would be both appropriate and inappropriate because compared to our whole mutation, being mute was a minor inconvenience. Instead, she dared to put her little hand on mine and pat it. I purred as I put my hand on hers. My paw looked so much bigger than hers, and my claws were extended again. Where everything with the mutation and the control of our bodies seemed to come easily to Fred, I had more problems. My claws kept popping out every now and then.

"What's your name? What's his name?" Maggie asked me and then Fred over the rumble of the car.

My former roommate smirked, his eyes darting from me to Maggie, then to my paw with the extended claws and I didn't like his cheeky grin because it always signaled mischief.

"What do you think, Magmag, his name is Claw. Mine is Fang." He bared his impressive teeth and growled in a way that was probably meant to be playful. I wanted to slap my forehead. Were we in kindergarten?

The young man - still in the tatters of his bomber jacket - huffed a mirthless laugh.

"Sure - we're monsters ... then we can give ourselves the names of monsters."

"How about Fluffyscruff for you," suggested Fred ... now Fang, I guess - and when no one laughed but himself, he shrugged. "My sister's better with nicknames," he grumbled at his lousy audience.

"I don't want a new name, I'm becoming human again, our names define us," Maggie said quietly, pulling the blanket tighter around her.

I lowered my head. I didn't really agree with her. My name was nothing great. Klaus was hard for many Americans to pronounce and very hard on the tongue. And my last name... bad juju, the doctor had called it. Maybe ... I looked at my claws, flicking my wrist so that they disappeared back into the soft fur-covered fingertips. Claw wasn't sooo bad. Until I was human again. If I became human again.

"My name was Derek Maza. But now... I want a name that shows those damn gargoyles who smashed the antidote and killed the doctor what to expect when I find them. Worse still, these freaks have my sister completely wrapped around their finger. If one of them ever gets under my claws... Especially that Goliath."

"They ... they're not - maybe they thought they were helping me when they took me out of the research facility and ... " Maggie said quietly, ducking under Derek's gaze. Which wasn't really hateful ... but rather sad.

"Talon," he said somberly. "Call me Talon from now on."

.

SO ... did that seem rushed now?

I can fill 10 more chapters this way, can cover all the episodes with the Labyrinth Clan from Claw's point of view - how Talon makes Maggie choose love over a potential cure, how Claw finally grows balls and ends up helping to overthrow Fang when he tries to take over the Labyrinth, how the Clones arrive in the Labyrinth and settle in.

How Benny (Roly Poly Bug) and Erin (Turtle Girl) and Thug (the crocodile guy) (God, I need to give him another name!) join their clan after Sevarius mutates them and then leaves them behind. How Thailog in the new Dynamite comics with Shari's help (I REALLY don't need HER!- what is her game? Fucking Iluminati immortal scum) kidnaps Maggie and forces her to give birth in captivity to her and Talon's first child Michael because Sevarius wants to know if he'll be a mutant too and then lets them all go annoyed because little Pupa appears 100 percent human in the blood work ... HAHAhahaha Idiot!

. But honestly... I don't need anything of that, it would often be redundant. For the rest of my story you don't even need to know the comics you just need to know that Thug (- bwähhh stop now, I call him Thomas after my father), Erin and Benny are part of the team Labyrinth Clan (Fun Fact- that's the name of Greg Weisman's kids and he let them decide what kind of mutants the kids in the comic should become).

And tomorrow ... before I fly to New York I'll give you a 2009 chapter with Nashville! That's when the real story starts and if I crash and die you'll be the most miserable because you'll want to know what happens next and you'll never know! Wuhahaha

Thanks for reading Q.T.