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Issue #27 |
"Upping the Ante" Written By Doug Bookey and Tom Moses |
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She fought against her restraints, but it wasn't of any use. The steel handcuffs that bound her to the chair were hinged and without chains they offered no play or range of motion that might somehow aid her release. The same was for the cuffs that kept both her ankles firmly in place. For the moment she wasn't going to be moving, and with the chair bolted to the ground there was very little thought as to what they intended to do to her.
She still tried to fight against the restraints, even after three men walked inside wearing little more than black leather and hoods. At least they were black, they had enough sense not to produce some sort of lawsuit action by the Klan, and so these fools were not completely stupid.
With her best face forward, staring at the clenched fists of the three men she took her deep breath, "What do you want to know?"
The man in the lead stopped and asked: "What?"
"Look I'm no X-Man or whatever they're called. They're trained for this kinda shit, I might hang out with them but I haven't done this my entire life, I'm not some delta force wet dream here. So let's be serious here, what do you want to know?"
He turned to look to his other two cohorts and one of them brought a chair to sit in front of her. "You muties don't know the definition of loyalty do you?"
"Who says I wasn't using this for a free trip to LA?"
"I do." The man said, "From what we know of you, we know Iceman saved you life and in your strange structure of beliefs, you owe him the same. Until that debt is paid, you'll continue to follow him to the ends of the earth."
"Oh, hey how the hell do you people find out all this about even bit players in this stupid little super hero game?"
The three men laughed, rather uncontrollably for a moment while they watched Stacy struggle against her restraints. "It's no use you know, they're hardened steel, from everything we know of you, you can't break free and we're immune to your "charms" for lack of better words."
"Hmm. So you're going to beat on me until you get what you want to know out of me then?"
The man stood up, "Yup, this is how these things are done."
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she took in the sight of the man that kept to the rear. The first fist bounded into her face and she felt the skin tear even under the hologram that hid her real appearance from the rest of the world. She screamed, not holding back from letting her torturer know the pain he caused her. But the next succession of blows rendered her nearly numb on the left side of her face by the seventh strike.
She couldn't see past a couple feet out of her right eye, her left was swollen shut. Spitting blood onto the shoes of the man that pummeled her face, she once again took a glance at the man that kept to the rear of the room. The second man came up this time and took her neck into his hand and squeezed tightly. Stacy gasped for air, "You'll tell us sooner or later, but the fun continues so long as you fight us."
Even through her difficulty breathing, she spit blood into the eye holes of the hooded man that choked her. "Dirty mutie freak!" He yelled and started slapping the side of her face that still had feeling inside it. But still the beating did not break her.
"Number three," the lead man spoke. "She won't give away her friends, so we must increase the pain."
The third man walked a little closer this time and the cattle prod that he held in his hand came to life instantly, throwing sparks and crackling in the still air that smelled of blood and sweat. Stacy looked on with horror and with one eye she squinted and stared at the man and uttered, "I love you, baby. Please, I'm sorry, don't hit many anymore."
"What the...what was that about?"
Two of the men looked at each other and started laughing and third man soon joined their laughter and swung the live cattle prod across the lead man's face and sent him flying through the air unconscious before stabbing the other with the electricity on full stun, sending several hundred thousand volts coursing through his body. The two men fell limp and 'Number Three' bent down and simply unfastened the ties that kept Stacy down.
He helped the injured mutant to her feet and she touched him, unable to really see much further than an arm’s length away, "Do me a favor baby, I think it would exciting if you did that to yourself."
She twisted a bloodstained smile to help the illusion and then 'Number Three' turned the cattle prod on himself. Falling to the floor with the device still clutched to his chest until the smell of burning flesh made her vomit out the expensive lunch Warren Worthington bought for her and her new comrades. "Men, no matter what they believe in they're nothing but tools."
And with that, she strolled out the door that was her former prison. Pushing her injured body against the wall, she searched for the communicator that she brought in with her, but no dice. Footsteps were running in her direction and there were very little options left available to her.
Her legs didn't want to do as they were commanded, but she took off in a hurried sprint regardless. Running as hard as she could in the opposite direction of the footsteps coming her way, she only hoped that Kurt and Kitty were watching the building when she leapt through the glass of the third story window.
Glass exploded from out of nowhere and Kurt Wagner bolted to the end of the building to see Stacy falling to her demise. "Mein Gott!"
"Get her, I got this!" Kitty screamed in response and Kurt vanished into thin air, leaving nothing but a trail of smoke and the reeking smell of sulfur behind him. Within the speed of light he reappeared just under Stacy and grabbed hold and forced his body to jaunt through back to the building that he and Kitty were staged.
"You are safe now." He said as he switched off the image inducer. "Oh Lord."
Her battered face was unavoidable, even through the snake skin that kept most of her features hidden though a camouflage like a diamondback. Blood everywhere, seeping from her mouth, nose and left eye; her face was entirely swollen so that it was almost unrecognizable.
"Kitty, I need help!"
"What the hell happened to her!"
Her good eye peeked open as best it could and she whispered, "Took one for the team, car bomb set to go off at press conference, get me some painkillers please."
"Drake! Drake!" Kitty's frantic voice came over the phone, "answer me god damn it!"
"I'm here, jeeze, what's going on?"
She paused a moment while she helped Kurt apply the gauze from the first aid kit. "They're onto us, Stacy's hurt bad and we're sitting ducks. But they have a bomb staged! You need to get to Warren!"
"What about you three."
"We'll be fine; Warren won't answer his damn phone!"
Bobby Drake's heart was pumping a mile a minute, decisions that poured out of the mind of Scott Summers were not the sort of thing he was ever truly good at and he hesitated for a moment. Who did he need to help, he needed to help all of them, but which one was more prudent? "Drake!" Kitty's voice reminded him of the trouble Stacy was in, "Get a move on!"
The air around him dropped forty degrees too quickly for most people to perceive it as anymore slower than an instant. His body flash froze and it cracked with each movement he made until the temperature regulated itself. His wrists were encircled by a ring of frozen oxygen and he took to the air on a column of ice that climbed to the height of many of the buildings within the span of a thought.
His hands jutted out forward and he created a structure of ice that flowed from building to building. Climbing and falling, his body followed motion as the friction fell to almost nothing. He moved faster and faster with each successive climb and valley he created and destroyed behind him. Ice would rain down on the public but evaporate before it ever came close to the ground.
Years ago he moved beyond created ice out of water vapor, with practice he began to create most of the ice he used out of the gasses in the air. It was safer to use when there were people in his vicinity. It was reflex by now, as he hadn't the time to think of the safety of the public below him, Kurt and Kitty would attend to Stacy but it would be likely that most of Kitty's equipment would be lost in her "scorched earth" tactic.
These were the thoughts that ran through his head, and he once wondered if Scott ever bothered himself with things like that. Anything to keep his mind off the crazy inevitability that lay before him. Iceman still had miles to cover and his mind still ran at a marathon pace, continuous factors and scenarios ran through his head and they all went to hell on the decisions he made.
Crossing the LA skyline for the first time in years, Iceman made his presence known to the public in the setting sun as he skidded up and down the row of skyscrapers. As Kitty's voice called into his ear, they found them. She kept screamed, "Blue van, Blue! No markings! Find it Drake!"
The connection died while he could hear the fighting in the background. Wolverine trained her, he kept telling himself, and she can handle herself. Kurt is a seasoned X-Man he's taken on more villains on his own that most X-Men took on through the help of the rest of the team. Kurt lived for this kind of excitement sometimes, but even his teleportation couldn't get him across town, it was solely up to Iceman to save Warren Worthington's day!
The purity soldiers cleared the streets with their very presence. Hooded men in black leather and various weapons in hand kept the two mutants pinned down on the roof while their friends ran up to meet them through the stairs and the fire escape. While tending to their injured teammate, Kurt looked over to Kitty Pryde. "I need to get her away from here."
"Will she survive another?"
"I'm not for certain, but she won't survive if these zealots get to us."
Kitty traced the wires to her laptop, "Go, I'll take care of these guys, no sweat."
"I'll come back for you."
"No, get her to safety I'll be fine. Get out of here!"
Kurt Wagner clutched Stacy in his arms and with a silent prayer vanished in a puff of purple smoke. Kitty Pryde on the other hand watched as his vanished and swallowed trying to wet her dry throat. Taking the remote control in her hand, she tucked it into the rear of her pants and turned to the duffel bag just right of her computer equipment. The sword she pulled out shimmered in the setting sun, and she backed against the one escape that she had available
and prepared for the foot soldiers to overtake her.
They appeared within minutes, storming over the building wall where it attached to the fire escape. She stared their way and waved the sword over her body just before they opened fire. The bullets passed through her intangible body and she lunged into the air becoming solid for only a second to roll against the ground and get totally out of the way of the group storming up the stairs to attempt and overtake her. "Keep it coming boys," she smiled and sliced the one man that dared to come near hear, cutting into his abdomen and sending him to his knees with a flesh wound.
"I don't have all day."
The second group of soldiers kicked the door off its hinges and poured out of the roof entrance as though it were a water spout outside a dam. Still solid, she smiled and reached behind her slender body and touched the button. The computer chimed with a millisecond delay and the roof engulfed in flame that crossed over the landscape with no chance to escape.
Kitty Pryde however ran across thin air, totally intangible without a single hair singed while the soldiers of purity burned to their collective deaths.
Warren Worthington walked to his podium to make his fateful announcement. His assistant kept close to his side, the boy prodigy as Warren called looked into the sky, "Problem Mister Worthington."
"I'm sorry, David?"
He pointed with a twitch of his eyes in order to not get the attention of the media to the skyline being disrupted by the man of ice sliding through the air. "Oh no, something's terribly wrong."
"I thought you said Drake was prone to showboating?"
Warren nodded, "When he was younger, yes, but this is different. Just using his powers in public is against the SHIELD sanction, something is very wrong."
The air dipped in temperature as Iceman neared the huddled group of reporters. It was no use hiding his presence from the media any longer, but they didn't disperse as Warren though they might. Instead he watched as Iceman moved overhead and down to the ground.
His ice form froze the air around him and everyone nearby showed the temperature drop with their visible breath in the middle of an LA Summer. "Blue van!" Iceman said to himself, "Where the hell is it?"
His eyes darted to the left and right, near and far, and found the parking garage that was the most obvious hiding place for a large fertilizer bomb. He stood still as the reporters clipped their pictures and others captured the entire event on film. Meanwhile he switched his vision to the infrared spectrum and saw the parking garage as almost cold with exception to several vehicles on several floors, and a very large blob of heat centered on the roof. "There you are."
He took off once again and the temperature slowly returned to normal, as one reporter fell to his knees with breathing problems. Bobby used his columns and bridges to ferry himself to the parking garage across the eight lane busy street and to the rooftop. Once there he saw exactly what he was looking for, with several men in black hoods and leather guarding the vehicle and prepared to give their lives in defense of it.
He hadn't the sort of time that would take, these men were obviously well trained and could probably take a good beating, but instead he reached out with a few thoughts and froze the flow of blood in their bodies for a split second and they all fell unconscious. Their bodies confused if they were or not hypothermic.
The heat given off by the fertilizer and other chemicals in the back of the van were easy to miss by anyone other than him. Raising his arms he lifted the van far into the air, while the reporters recorded the entire event from afar.
The explosion was brilliant, shaking the ground even though the height of the bomb took it several miles into the sky. Windows shattered across the city block as the shockwave flew across the city and ice rained down on the mass of reporters, "Bobby!" Warren shouted just as David had enough sense to shut the microphone down. "Oh Jesus Christ what the hell did you do!"
His wings unfurled and in perfect view of the public he took to the sky and onto the roof of the parking garage to find Bobby's body tattered clothing and all laying unconscious on the garage floor. Though he was certain nothing was broken, he took care picking his friend off the boiling pavement and ferried him to a safer place, out of view of the cameras and anyone that happened to be watching.
All eyes and cameras pointed to David, Warren's assistant. "I'm sorry folks; it looks like due to circumstances beyond our control that we'll have to delay our little press conference."
Cameras clicked with every sentence the light skinned black man spoke and then they rose to the sky to see Warren Worthington float down with the body of his friend draped in his arms. Touching the ground, he handed the sleeping form of Bobby Drake over to his body guards with orders to take him to the office upstairs.
Then turning to the media, Warren tossed down a tattered leather hood, the eye holes stared upward like the empty soul that once wore the abomination. "I will not tolerate this sort of terrorist action; in light of these events I should reconsider this announcement, but here and now. Know this. I, Warren Worthington the Third, unapologetic mutant and man of the community hereby announce my candidacy for United States Senate!"
The cameras came alive once again and Warren turned his back to the men and women of the media, giving them a wonderful view of his wings for their newspapers and television programs. "Ladies and Gentlemen, more information will be forthcoming. I bid you good day."
