John Hunter Hospital
A nurse let out a shriek and dropped the clipboard he was carrying as a cloud of pink smoke appeared in the middle of the emergency ward, and three figures stepped from it. Every set of eyes in the ward turned to the new arrivals and froze upon them; superheroes popping into places was a common thing in a place like New York, but it was rare anywhere in Australia let alone the smaller city of Newcastle.
Amira took a slow breath as she gingerly rose from her seat and moved slowly towards the three of them, unable to greet their eyes with her own. Her hand clutched the empty water bottle in her hand so tightly that she had crushed it halfway, even with the lid still firmly attached. She had tried to fill that hollow pit in her stomach with the drink, but only found it made her want to vomit even more.
"What happened?"
It took Amira a moment to realize that it wasn't Darktruth who had asked, like she expected him to, but instead it was Pixie's voice that questioned her. A voice that trembled in the air. She felt the pit grow even deeper at the strain in the normally cheerful mutant's voice.
"We-we went out and..." She did her best to find the right words to explain it, even as she did her best to not replay it in her mind. She swallowed and gritted herself. "A White Eagle stabbed him. Then fled. I called an ambulance."
"A what?" Finally a question from Darktruth, his voice unusually flat.
"They're..." Amira started softly, only to stop as her face scrunched up in concentration. "I don't know. A group? A cult? Assassins, I guess. They kill and manipulate to try and 'save the world', at least their twisted version of it." Amira swallowed. "I was with them once. You were attacked by them, and me, in Sydney."*
*Back in issues 12-14 of 'Darktruth and Pixie' - darktruth
Megan's hand rose to her mouth. "I remember that. Why? Why did you help them?"
Amira gave a weak shrug. "I was told you were dangerous. I'd like to say I was tricked into it, manipulated or controlled. Truth is I... I was a bit of a mess and he told me I could help people."
"He?" Seren finally interjected into the conversation.
"Mathew," Amira said softly as she blinked at the young woman. "Who are you?"
"That's just our daughter from another reality or future or something," Darktruth dismissed quickly. "Whose Mathew?"
"The 'Grey Eagle'. He leads them. I used to think he cared about me."
"So why did they do this? Why attack Cody?"
"To get to me. Mathew wasn't exactly... pleased that I left him." She wiped at her eyes. "This isn't the first time he's gone after people close to me."
Pixie suddenly moved forward and wrapped her arms around Amira tightly. "That's awful."
Darktruth took off his hat and ran a hand across his shaven scalp. "We need to deal with this." He pointed a finger towards Amira. "And I don't care what you say, you're not leaving. We'll lock you down if we have to. We don't care how dangerous it is for us, we aren't letting you face this alone."
Amira blinked at him. "Why would I go anywhere?"
Darktruth rubbed the brim of his hat. "Well, I mean, that's what you're supposed to do, right? An enemy from your past puts those you love at risk so you run off by yourself to try and keep them safe, even though just means you're all now separated and more vulnerable. I mean, that's what I do. It's just... what you do. Right?"
Megan exhaled as she turned to him and planted her hands on her hips. "Do you see how stupid you've always been now?
"A little. Yeah. Maybe."
"It's very stupid," Amira said. She glanced towards the double doors that led from the ER. "So... I might have a lead on where to find them. It's old, but it's something. But we really shouldn't leave Cody alone. They might come to finish him off."
Darktruth nodded. "Good point. Pixie, you take Amira to her lead. Seren-"
"I'm not taking orders from you, dad," Seren replied, the word 'dad' so heavily coated in venom it dropped from the air.
"I was just going to suggest that you tag along with them. Just in case. If you want."
"Mam doesn't need my protection," Seren replied as she moved over to the other two girls. "But I'd rather be with her than you."
"That's fair. I'll keep watch over Cody."
Megan studied him with her eyes. "You sure?"
He nodded slowly. "I kidnapped him, the least I can do is make sure he doesn't get killed by crazy assassin guys while he's stuck in a hospital bed."
Seren pointed a finger at him. "And when we get back you're taking me to the AI. I'm finishing my job and bouncing."
Pixie hesitated a second as she glanced towards her apparent daughter, then she spoke the spell. "Sihal Novarum Chinoth!"
Darktruth exhaled as he watched the three young women disappear in a swirl of pink smoke. There was a pang in his gut, a stab of concern that perhaps he shouldn't have let them go off hunting down super assassins. He had to remind himself that each of them was far more capable of looking after themself than he had ever been, that there was little he could do to help them anyway. He shouldn't think of any of them as needing help, his help especially.
He turned to the nurse who worked on paperwork, even as they kept a cautious eye upon the man in the cowboy hat. "Hey, can you tell me where Cody... Olsen's room is?"
The nurse cocked an eyebrow at him. "Family? We can only really let family in there."
"Well, kinda the only family he has," Darktruth replied with a bow of his head. "Poor bastard."
The nurse sighed. "Fine. Just don't cause trouble."
Darktruth let out a singular laugh. "Me? I never cause trouble."
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Excerpt from the personal notes of Dr Michael Sutherland
I would never have expected it, but leaving AIM may be the single greatest move of my entire life. AIM did much to further my experiments in the realm of cosmic radiation, particularly in weaponization, but after a time it felt like they did not appreciate my genius as they should have. Not like this new group who have shown a keen interest in my work. And they certainly pay well for it.
Though truth be told, I do not know quite as much about my new employers as I would like, and for once in my life I find myself not asking questions. They tend to leave me to work in peace, albeit with at least men in hooded white robes (are they some kind of cult?) to keep watch over me. I do not blame them for the caution, though it would be nice if they were at least a little more forthright about what they intend to do with my work. Also, I wouldn't mind it if my guards were a little more talkative.
Doesn't matter though. I have free reign to do my work as I please, and enough money that I will never want for anything for the rest of my life. All I have to do is make sure my work is valuable to them and I doubt I'll be going anywhere soon.
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Rostock, Germany
The three young women stepped from the pink smoke into what appeared to be an old, and long-abandoned, office building. Desks mounted with computers sat about in well-ordered regiments. A fine layer of dust lay across every surface, as if all of the equipment waited patiently for the workers to return.
"How did you find this place?" asked Pixie as she moved to a desk and made a streak in the dust with her finger.
"Sure it's the right place?" asked Seren dubiously.
"I... I used to do 'work' for Mathew," Amira replied softly. "He didn't tell me a lot, but enough to get an idea of their operations, though that word is perhaps too quaint for what they do. They're involved in everything they could be. I know Mathew visited this city quite a few times, one of the few things he let slip. Plus... this is an old Maven Pharmaceuticals building. Back when they were trying to make a push into European markets."
"Maven...?" Pixie repeated slowly. "Aren't they...?"
"Yep," Amira nodded. "They hired Darktruth to steal flowers from Krakoa. I mean that's pretty standard operations for Mr. Coral, he always had dubious ethics, but the more I started looking into White Eagle leads... I think they have Maven in their pocket. I also think they're the ones who wanted Darktruth to steal the flowers."
Seren eyed the girl over with her arms crossed upon her chest. "This is personal."
Amira connected with her gaze as she bit her lip. "I mean... of course it is. Mathew manipulated me. Used me."
The mutant from the future shook her head slowly. "Not just that. I mean, I don't doubt that that's not part of it, but this is something else."
Amira took a slow breath as her gaze dropped to her feet. "He killed someone I... someone I was close to. I got stupid and let her die. I need to do something, make up for it somehow. I need to make him see justice for what he did."
"Justice or revenge?"
"And the retribution for an evil act is an evil one like it, but whoever pardons and makes reconciliation - his reward is from Allah. Indeed, He does not like wrongdoers. Revenge does nobody any good, it just adds more pain and violence into the world. I forgot that when it happened, and if I hadn't I may have been able to save her."
Pixie nodded slowly. "We should make things better, not worse."
"Well you two ain't no fun," muttered Seren with a roll of her eyes. She then caught sight of the way Megan smiled at her softly. "What?"
"You sounded just like him then."
"Don't ruin my life for me," Seren replied as she moved to a desk and casually opened an empty drawer. She glanced back at her mother. "What do you see in him? You two are the absolute worst match."
Megan shrugged. "That's not what I see." She moved across the room as she glanced over the desks as she passed. "So... what do you do? Like, for fun. Oh, And your mutant power! I never asked."
"I can enter dreams," Seren replied somewhat softly as she examined the stained ceiling. "Use them to get around and stuff."
"So how did you get here?" Amira asked quizzically.
"Dreams," the young woman replied bluntly. "Turns out they're connected to the multiverse or some crap, honestly never cared too much about the details. Sounds more like magic to me, but they said 'mutation' so I just accept it."
"Who did?"
"As for fun, mostly blowing stuff up," Seren said as she ignored Amira's question. "Also, big fan of getting down and dirty with people. If that isn't too much information for me mam." She turned to find Pixie lost in thought. "Everything alright?"
Pixie snapped to. "Huh? Oh, yeah. All good. And don't be gross."
"Sex ain't gross. Hell, you live on Orgy Island. I mean, I assume you and dad did it, otherwise there wouldn't be a me to be here to talk about it. But you getting all icky about sex don't surprise me none."
"I'm not a prude!"
Seren's eyebrows slid up her forehead. "So you've been getting freaky? Exclusively with dad, or you been going full Krakoan?"
Megan shook her head in exasperation, then bit her lip. "So does it work? Krakoa? I mean, does everything work out for us?"
Seren whistled. "That is a far bigger question than you realize. Honestly? Shit never works out for mutants. We try to integrate, they hate us. We make ourselves independent, they hate us. Same bullshit no matter the situation. There's a reason I decided jumping around the multiverse was more fun. Honestly? The only places I've seen where everything is sweet for mutants are the ones they go 'fuck it' and just wipe the humans out."
"So you-"
"Nah," Seren cut her off quickly. "I don't go in for that superiority bullshit. We're all the same kind of trash, should be able to figure out a way to just be trash together." She sighed. "Wish he'd figured that out."
Megan's mouth opened as a million questions raced around her head, but before she could voice any of them Amira cut her off.
"Um, guys?"
They turned to find her in a doorway that led off the main office, her body trembled as she stared into the adjoining room. Pixie barely made it to the door before the smell hit her nose and she was forced to turn away as she gagged violently. Seren pushed past it, or perhaps it didn't bother her, and looked through to the room of horrors that awaited.
Bodies littered the room, which appeared to have been some kind of lab. The bodies were likely once human, but now they were largely just decomposing masses of pustules and dense growths. Amira backed off as Seren entered the room and swiftly booted one in the side.
"Dead," she reported with a tilt of her head. "Not a fun death either from the look of it."
"Must be recent," Amira gagged. "Mathew must have figured out I knew about the place and cleaned up."
Seren shook her head as she glanced about the room. "Nah, not unless this big manipulative man of yours is a complete amateur. They left the equipment, computers are in one piece. Pretty sure there's a journal or something over there. I think something went wrong, and a while ago."
"But the bodies are..." Amira started, but wasn't able to finish her thought.
So Seren finished it for her. "Still decomposing, early stages too. Yeah. But there's water damage in here, broken pipe or something," she nodded to the far corner. "Lot of mold. Pretty sure they wouldn't want a lab in that condition, and the decomp is so early that the damage shouldn't be that bad. I think... whatever happened is slowing it down."
"You are far too comfortable with this," Megan commented between gags.
Seren smiled. "Believe me, I've done worse to people. My guess is something went wrong with what they were doing, and your White Eagles just cut their losses. Abandoned everything. So, what do we do?"
Amira swallowed as she stepped into the room behind Seren. "We take whatever looks like it might be useful."
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John Hunter Hospital, Newcastle, Australia
Darktruth exhaled as he leaned back in the small plastic seat that had been afforded to him, something he was certain the staff were less than pleased to do. He was fairly sure that the only reason they tolerated him being there at all was that it meant he was quiet and in one place, perfect for when the police would inevitably arrive.
He had no clue what he would tell them, and he knew they'd have plenty of questions. It would become even worse when they looked him up only to find out he wasn't a citizen himself, and he imagined there would also be a sizable criminal record sitting there for them to peruse. What would he do if they tried to arrest him? He had to stay and look over Cody, but he also wasn't too keen on an unnecessary fight. Particularly not when he wasn't in the slightest bit bulletproof, and he certainly did not savour the idea of having to return to Krakoa for a new body after he'd caused yet another international incident.
He glanced at the nurse who moved over to check Cody's life-support, a multitude of machines that Darktruth didn't have the foggiest clue what any of them were called or did outside of keeping the young man alive. The nurse was an older woman, her reddish hair clearly from a bottle. He'd overheard her earlier, talking with a younger nurse as they moved about. She'd most certainly used the words 'Krakoan' and 'mutie' as she looked over to him darkly.
For a moment he'd expected her to have him removed, have Cody kicked from the hospital. Yet that moment passed as he reali\zed that no matter her thoughts, no matter how she felt about him or mutant-kind, she was still a nurse. She had a job to help people, all people, and so that was what she did. Still, her job didn't change the fact that she clearly didn't like mutants one bit.
He'd become used to hate, if he was honest. He'd been filled with it once, so it wasn't hard for him to accept it in other people. But he was used to a different hate, the kind of hate that came with bullets and giant death machines. The kind of hate that was loud and brash and violent, that came at you head-on in a march followed by fire and death. He was used to the kind of hate he'd once had.
Truth was there was a lot of hate in the world, but most of it was nowhere near as obvious or easy to confront. Most of it was in little things; in the way people changed their tone, in the way they didn't offer a helping hand, the way they stood by and let the louder hate take control. The kind of hate that stirs in the background, festers and stews until it becomes something potently foul; perhaps it doesn't lead to violence but it cries in support of that violence all the same.
Then there was the thing even more dangerous than hate, apathy. Hate, even the subtle hate, can be confronted. Apathy, particularly that born of privilege, is far more sinister. It functions the same as hate, it fuels the same systems that leave people to scramble through the muck by themselves, but is so much harder to fight as it has no outwardly antagonistic face. You cannot confront apathy directly and point out the harm it does, the apathetic see that only as an attack upon them and their desire to not be involved. They just want to watch their shows and buy their clothes and keep everything running, so long as they don't feel the burn of the status quo then they assume it is functioning fine and any against it are purely acting out of greed or some desire to be 'special'.
Apathy lets hate grow, it helps to feed it whether it knows it or not. Sometimes apathy is happy to help hatred grow and other times it is oblivious to it, but the end result is the same. People are downtrodden, people are neglected, people die. Those that point it out become the enemy, and the hateful are given the freedom to do as they will.
He didn't know if the woman before him was hateful or apathetic, and he didn't particularly care. All he did know was that either way she helped, in her own way no matter how small, to make things worse for mutants and no telling how many other groups of people. He had learnt during his days as a mutant hater that people rarely let their hate end with the 'muties', it was only the hate they let fly most prominently.
So he gave her a small, polite smile. It was quite possible she did in fact want him dead, but even if she did it didn't matter much in that moment. She was there to look after Cody and he was there to watch over him, for at least that one task they were in cooperation.
As she gave him a slightly uneasy look she moved away, and left him to mull over his thoughts. It occurred to him, in that moment as it never had before, that he had never actually been much the victim of the hate that was slung at mutants. Sure he had seen it before, and had been a victim of it as well as perpetrator, but he'd never faced it as most had and still did. Most people would never know he was, and the only times he'd been targeted had been when he'd decided to wave that particular flag quite loudly. For the rest he was just sort of there.
He'd faced plenty of people who hated him for being a mutant, it was true. But that wasn't the only reason why. He'd done a lot of bad things to a lot of people since he was a dumb teenager. They may have hated him for being a mutant, but that hated him for being himself more. He'd never dealt with it in strangers so much, not like those who couldn't hide it as he did.
Megan had spoken to him about it before, not often since it wasn't a favourite topic of hers but it had come up from time-to-time. She had been physically assaulted for it before, beaten and left near-dead. Yet what she spoke of most wasn't the physical violence, but the more sinister sort involving words and the flexing of power.
He'd seen it himself before; people that would sneer and snarl, throw out threats of harm and death whether veiled or not. She'd once told him that those were the easiest ones for her to brush off, to simply be mad about and then let it pass. She'd become used to violence, or at least as much as she would like, as any of the X-Men or any other super-powered individual would. No, she'd told him that the ones that scared her most weren't those telling her to burn in a fire or drink bleach, but instead the ones that were far more crass and intimate in nature. The ones that took things that should be acts of love, and filled them with such hate and darkness that the threats would linger in their foul stench.
"I already had to put up with that kind of thing anyway," she'd told him as she gestured to her body. "Since I was a girl. Hard enough to deal with when it's just creepy men, even worse when they say it because they hate what you are."
He hated himself. He hated himself forever being a part of something that caused so much fear in people. He hated himself for not doing more to make everyone feel safer, especially her. He even hated himself because he hadn't ever truly faced that hatred first-hand.
It was a foolish thought, to want to be hated and discriminated against, and yet he couldn't push it away. Perhaps if he had he'd understand exactly why the rest of the mutants wanted Krakoa, needed it. He'd be able to see why they did a lot of the things they did, so willing to make mistakes so long as they had a home to themselves. Then he would have known so much earlier why Pixie was so much happier there than he thought he'd ever seen her, and why she was so eager for him to join them. It only made sense that they'd want to live somewhere free of that hate.
Not to say he wasn't still suspicious of the place, it was in his nature to do so, but he could be suspicious and still want to believe in the hope that Krakoa preached. Even if it was only for her. Especially if it was for her.
_Ah, Mr. Darktruth? Sir?_
The voice was so soft and cautious it was barely enough to shake him from his thoughts. His eyes moved to the scrubs of the nurse that checked over some files at the main station.
"What is it?" he asked as his hand moved towards the energy pistol hidden beneath his jacket.
_Thought you'd, um, like to know that the lights in the hallway are screaming. I think something bad is, well, coming._
"Good to know," Darktruth replied as he stood up, ignoring the concerned look from the nurse who was definitely unenthused by his conversation with her clothing.
He started towards the corridor, his fingers clasped around the handle of his weapon. He was at least smart enough not to draw it until he saw the enemy, no point in causing a panic until it was necessary. It was quite possible that the lights in this hospital were just overly dramatic, which, of course, meant he had made them that way but it wasn't exactly his fault he didn't know exactly how to use his powers.
He chewed the inside of his lip as he scanned the area for any sign of danger, tried to hear past the constant noise of medical professionals trying to save lives. Surely they could do all their medicine stuff a little bit quieter for him. It would be at least the tiniest bit courteous for them to-
_Look out!_
He spun at the warning just in time to see the figure robed in white that descended upon him, two sets of three long, curved blades protruded from both sleeves.
He immediately knew he was too slow, too clumsy. They would slice him open before he'd even pulled his gun free from the holster.
Another sight caught his eyes just behind the robed figure; a blur of red and black, and a flash of light upon steel.
The man in white seized up as the long blade protruded from their chest, before it suddenly slid back out and he fell to the floor in a heap.
Darktruth blinked as he stared at the young woman that stood before him, dressed in a red combat skirt accentuated by black with large sleeves and a popped collar. In her hand she held a thin rapier, the handle ornate with twisting vines of metal that entwined each other to form the shape of a skull. Her free hand brushed her long reddish-brown hair from her light brown face as she studied him with brown eyes.
"Y-you are?" he finally managed to force out.
"My name is Gavriella," the young woman replied with a poise that made Darktruth feel shamefully weak and unskilled. "I am here to prevent your untimely death."
To be Continued