HOLDING OUT FOR A HERO

Part III: Categorical Imperative

By Bren Hunter

AUTHOR’s NOTE: This issue takes place a few months prior to the events in Giant-Sized New Mutants.

“Release Rahne.”

Brian Braddock’s commanding voice filled the crimson convertible BMW, which was retrofitted into a hypersonic hovercraft. There was a slight digital distortion to Bri’s voice, because it was being filtered in through Rachel Summers’ smart-phone. Ray piloted the hovercraft out of Malden, England — spinning the turbofans as fast as mechanically possible. Her destination was Scotland’s Isle of Skye, which was the location of Brian Braddock, his own smart-phone, the pheromone-manipulating mutant Spoor, and Spoor’s hostages, Moira MacTaggert, Rahne Sinclair and Scott Wright.

From several paces away from Brian, the phone picked up Spoor’s cold response, “Without my mutant shield, you will feel free to maul me, Hero. …Now, why would I want that?”

“Because before this day is done, you will be too slow. Too slow for only for a moment, mind you, but that moment will belong to me,” Brian said matter-of-factly, rather than threateningly.

“Your moment to drop-kick me, to take away my agency, to use me as a means to expel your bloodlust, or assert your morals, or merely make an example of me? Is that what your moment is for?” Spoor desperately inquired, the clarity of his words lost by his thick Scottish accent.

“Yes, most likely,” Brian glibly replied — in such a way that Ray assumed he had shrugged.

“Then, how are you better than me, Hero? Her daughter injured her; not I. I do admit that I am taking away Moira’s agency. I am ruining her scientific career as a means of releasing my frustrations about my time incarcerated at her Muir Island prison facility. But how is that worse than your pending abuse of me?” Spoor demanded of Brian.

“Because I want to help Rahne and Moira. You want to hurt them,” Brian answered simply, assuredly.

Spoor scoffed, “Intentions are ephemeral. Consequences are all that–”

Seated in the co-pilot’s chair of the hovercraft, Amara Aquilla groaned, in disgust. Knowing that the microphone in Rachel’s phone was muted, she asked, “Why do they continue to converse?”

From the back seat, Whitman Knapp supposed, “Brian doesn”t want collateral damage in an attempt to incapacitate Spoor. He’s goading him into leaving the hostage behind for a one-on-one fight.”

Rachel added, ‘spoor wasn”t expecting any resistance. He’s stalling until he’s inspired by an escape plan.” With a huff, she deactivated the turbofans, and sped up the hovercraft’s locomotion, solely with her mutant telekinesis.

Fascinated and curious and uneasy, Spoor’s voice continued over the phone, “You resist me, and yet you struck your friend. Why?” Hearing the words, Rachel’s determined expression crumpled into a worried frown. She had heard the sound of Scott Wright being knocked unconscious, but hadn”t known for certain what had happened.

Since they both considered themselves too intelligent to be lied to, Brian admitted, “He was angry because of your pheromones. I couldn”t let him hurt one of your hostages, or himself.”

“I hid in the ventilation ducts for two days. This place, it’s saturated in my pheromones. Coming in from out there, they should have made you angry enough to kill me, regardless of my shield girl,” Spoor accused, still confused. “In the time I have spoken with you in this room, you should have become docile enough to take a nap. Somehow, you remain lucid, despite the pheromones I project.”

“I”m not quite human,” Brian said defiantly.

“Neither is this,” Spoor retorted, likely referring to Wolfsbane.

“I”m not a mutant.”

“What are you?”

“I”m just a man.”

“The man who is going to stop me?”

“I”m just a man.”

“Then allow me to discredit Moira’s career, or she will watch her child die because of you.”

“I guess I am the man who’s going to stop you.”

Sinking her hand into the gauntlet, it felt more natural than her own skin. Locked into the bathroom of a traveller hostel on Earth 309, Alysande Stuart experienced a pleasure unlike any other as she slowly uniformed herself in her Captain Britain amplification armour. It was only upon donning her headdress that she truly felt like Caledonia, once more.

“On behalf of Her Whyness, we apologise for the delay,” Geoff said perfunctorily, and handed a small wooden box over to Alysande. Geoff was the leader of Saturnyne’s Avant Guard, all of whom dressed identically. He wore a black bowler hat, a sleek black blazer with nothing underneath, form-fitting black trousers, and comfortable black boots. Still without emotion, he said, “Congratulations, you are now a registered super-powered vigilante on this world. …Frankly, an easy accomplishment compared to the difficulties in establishing most of the other new Captains, post-massacre. I don”t rightly understand how you failed to achieve this yourself.”

Sliding open the top of the wooden box, Alysande found an identification smart-card inside. She clutched it to her chest protectively, but winced at Geoff’s words. “Post-massacre.” She disdainfully sniffed, “Everyone speaks o” th” Captain Britain Corps massacre as if they were the heroes. I take it yeh were on Otherworld as well?”

“Gods no,” Geoff breathed out, with a silvery shiver. “We were on were on Earth 722 when Sat-yr-9’s forces arrived. We jaunted off-world and hid, barely escaping with nothing more than our lives. Our dignity was surely left behind.”

Caledonia nodded in respect for the truth, and then retrieved the ID card from the box. After kissing the back of it, she vowed, “I will do the Captain Britain Corps proud!”

“Yeah…” Geoff skeptically murmured. “Let’s start with not being an embarrassment. Worry about making Otherworld proud later.”

Back on Earth 616, Rachel Summers roughly halted the telekinetic flight of the hovercraft, once it was directly above the shoreline to Skye Isle. Amara’s hands slapped out against the dashboard, and she growled, “Have you lost your mind? Rahne and Moira are still threatened!” She violently swung her hands around to gesture at MacTaggert’s research centre, which was visible to the naked eye through the hovercraft’s windshield.

“We can”t go in there,” Rachel declared, very suddenly incredulous at her own plan. “Moira’s entire property is steeped in Spoor’s rage-inducing pheromones, as well as a sort of psionic pollution. I can feel it. The moment we step foot in the facility, we”ll be confused and enraged enough to kill everyone in there, including ourselves.”

“I crave the taste of rage,” Amara said flatly, but her eyes revealed her desire.

“I crave haloperidol,” Whitman chimed in, and then followed up with an explanation. “If we take Amara’s tranquiliser, we”ll be less susceptible to the emotional manipulation.”

Frustrated that they were disagreeing with her, but missing the point –even if she hadn”t yet made the point– Rachel spat out, “It’s not just that. There’s a telepathic presence in the pollution. It’s too faint and too distant to trace, or to attack us, but it’s close enough to detect me and warn Spoor of an incoming psionic-blast. He could–”

Ray was cut off by Amara backhanding her across the mouth. Magma steely insisted, “You are not a mutant ‘super-hero”. You are a cosmic avatar. Act like it. Be it.”

Any expression on Rachel’s face was obscured by a pillar of heatless cosmic flame that coalesced around her form. The fire burned bright, burned a hole in the roof of the hovercraft, and then it was gone. As was Rachel.

Blinking away the flares blinding his vision, Whitman dryly asked, “Did she just immolate herself?”

The shaggy fur –and the kevlar/nomex bodysuit– covering his skin did little to hide the mutantly-muscular form of Spoor’s body. Positioned in the corner of one of Moira’s research labs, he held one hand over Rahne Sinclair’s mouth, and his other arm was wrapped around her neck. The tenseness of the muscles in his forearms revealed how perfectly ready he was to break the young red-haired woman’s neck. Rahne appeared to be unafraid, her eyes flat and staring at the floor.

To Spoor’s left, the bespectacled Moira MacTaggert was seated on a stool, working a tablet computer that was on her lap. Her eyes were unfocused, due to an overdose of pheromones and psionic pollution, and a loss of blood. Her brown hair was dark and sticky with sweat and blood. The source of the blood, a fresh laceration across the throat of her neck, had been amateurishly sutured shut by Spoor. He had saved her life to let her continue typing the lengthy document she had begun writing since before Brian Braddock had arrived. Spoor had told Brian that it was a treatise on how mutants are an abomination that god demands be eliminated. Rahne only ever spoke to offer out-of-context bible quotes for the manifesto that Moira was preparing to e-mail to every scientific contact she knew.

Standing over Scott Wright’s unconscious body, Brian Braddock palms were steadily held up in a defenseless fashion. He suspected that Spoor was not strong enough to harm him, but he also suspected that he wasn”t fast enough to save Rahne if Spoor really wanted to break her neck. Brian was wearing a telepathy-inhibiting cerebro helmet, which somewhat clashed with his earth-tone slacks and button-down shirt.

“If you let Rahne go, I will let you kill Moira,” Brian offered, a blatant non sequitur. Blandly, he said, “Moira’s life is meaningless both to me and to herself.”

Rachel purposefully strode up the beach on the western shore of Skye Isle, but her boots didn”t touch the sand. She tightly cinched her long white duster, and raised the hood over her head. In the same way, she used all of her mutant telepathic abilities –fortified by the Phoenix Force– to mask herself from being seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt or telepathically detected. She retreated into herself, making herself a nothing, a ghost with a physical form that could telekinetically hover without leaving a mark in the world. All the while, she opened herself up to every sensory input around her.

She felt James Madrox’s horror, upon stepping off his boat, and finding the burned and blistered corpse of one of his duplicates.

“Moira’s destiny is over. Her one chance at immortality was the cure for the Legacy Virus, and she put her foot in that one,” Brian told Spoor, only flip for a moment, before becoming dead serious. “She devoted years of her life to the Legacy Virus. Hell, her own body was ravaged by the virus, and she never solved it. Someone else had to save her.”

Approaching the rubble of one of Moira’s research silos, Rachel could feel the violence left behind in the ether after the battle. She could feel the throbbing bruises and broken bones in the Black Knight’s unconscious body, even if he couldn”t feel it yet. The same pain radiated off of Neal Shaara, where he was left sleeping on the ground by Strong Guy. She knew well the self-hatred that had been heightened in Guido Carosella, could see his twisted and distorted self-image.

“Moira’s destiny is over,” Brian repeated, growing anguished. “It has been wasted, and now she is only taking up precious space in an over-populated world. Without a destiny, she is rotting on the inside. She isn’t supposed to be here, so would you just kill her? Kill her!”

Passing by the Mutant X chamber, Rachel grew nearer to he who had inflicted all of this pain. She drew strength from the unconscious agony of Bridgit Shane and Douglock, because at least they still lived.

Spoor leered as Brian unhinged and said, “I notice that you’ve been referencing Kant with all of your speak of agency. I suppose Kant really did say it best. …What… what was it that he said?”

For a blink, Brian thought he saw Rachel floating into the room, but then he saw nothing where she was. “Now I remember,” Brian began to answer his own question. “In the immortal words of Kant: shut your fucking mouth.”

Rachel kissed the back of Spoor’s head, and his mind exploded with every feeling of harm and pain and hate that he forced upon each member of the extended MacTaggert clan. His claws dug into the side of Rahne’s neck in his first overwhelming moments of panic, but the pure empathy that sliced into him stole all of his strength away. Comprehending the pain he inflicted for the first time, his arms went slack, and he slumped back against the wall.

With Rachel telepathically forcing clarity upon her, Rahne shrieked at the sight of Moira collapsing forward, falling onto her tablet, on the floor. Rahne breathed out a “Moh– Moh–” sound repeatedly, but couldn”t find words to express her fear. She glared down at her own hands, and couldn”t find words to express her shame.

Whitman burst into the room, pushing a gurney, and immediately determined patient priority. Scott Wright had regained consciousness, Spoor was only just being knocked unconscious by Brian, and Moira MacTaggert was laying face-down on the floor, bleeding. Hearing Whit’s thoughts, and taking care not to jar Moira’s neck, Rachel telekinetically positioned the unconscious woman atop the gurney.

As Rahne followed Moira, Whitman asked of her, “Where is the medical bay?”

Rahne could still only sputter out, “Moh… moh…”

“I will save her life,” Whitman Knapp promised at a shout, “If you take me to the medical bay.”

Narrowing her eyes at Doctor Knapp, Rahne showed a spark of understanding, and led the way out of the lab, taking on the lupine features that would give her speed and strength.

Evaluating his patient as he pushed her gurney out the door, Knapp muttered, “Christ, she’s gone into septic shock.”

Watching Moira go with growing concern, Rachel steadied Scott as he attempted to get to his feet. To Brian, who was binding Spoor’s hands and ankles, she teased, “Y”know, I read Kant in university. …I don’t recall that passage you quoted.”

Brian shrugged, “I paraphrased.”

With Scott being supported on each of their shoulders, Brian and Rachel slowly made their way down a darkened corridor, towards an exit that lead outside. His steps even more tentative than theirs, Scott asked, “Did you find the source of the psionic pollution?” His diffident expression was a constant apology for his earlier short-tempered rants.

“No, it’s gone. Utterly. It could have been anyone,” Rachel replied, while making the mistake of shrugging with Scott’s arm around her shoulders. “What little gossip I picked up back at the X-Mansion would suggest that it was probably Emma Frost. She might have been cleaning up the mess she made of Moira in the first place, or eliminating one of the X-Men’s support systems.”

“Moira hasn’t been particularly supportive of the X-Men. Not since Cassandra,” Brian said, picking at Rachel’s guessed motive.

“It’s only a temporary rift. The X-Men are one of Moira’s last links to Xavier; she wouldn’t give that up for good. Unless… did you mean everything you said to Spoor?” Rachel pointedly asked of Brian. “About a person’s insides rotting once his destiny is over?”

“No,” Brian replied, almost too quickly.

“…You said it because he was going to kill Rahne?” Rachel posited.

“Exactly. It was a distraction.”

“…Yeah… I thought so too,” Ray said unconvincingly.

Stepping out into the sunlight, Ray’s eyes were drawn to the portion of the facility that Strong Guy had reduced to rubble. It had since been set on fire. Scott’s eyes were drawn to the cockpit of the Midnight Runner, which had been melted. Brian’s eyes were drawn to his BMW hovercraft, which had also been partially melted.

The source of the heat — Magma, fully encased in her mutant lava form — whooped a warrior’s cry of victory, and danced with her arms above her head.

“Hunh,” Brian muttered, unable to process it all.

“Looks like angry pheromones and psionic pollution are actually good for post traumatic stress disorder,” Rachel remarked. “They led Amara back to her powers. I guess it’s a good thing I trusted Jane with Ananym and brought Amara here.” Seemingly finding something quixotical about that word, she repeated, “Here?”

“What do you mean by good thing you trusted Jane with Ananym?” Brian queried in subdued alarm. “Why wouldn”t you trust Ananym?”

“Here?” Rachel repeated, not having heard Brian’s question. Then she accused Scott, “You came here to plan a surprise birthday party for me?”

“Uhm, Surprise?”

In the sensory depravation of the Mutant X chamber, Spoor’s thoughts became exceedingly vivid. His mind’s eye could see with such clarity that he knew his thoughts were not exclusively his own. He pictured himself alone on a small island that was being eaten by a choppy sea. He recognised the place as Muir Island, although as the sea moved in, the island began to take on the shape of Moira MacTaggert’s face. With less and less control over this fantasy, Spoor screamed up at the sky, “I did what you paid me for! At least… I did the things I enjoyed doing, anyway. You should”ve let me do this my way! Moira would have been dead by now, if I hadn”t wasted time on undermining her career. I did what you asked! Why didn”t you help me?”

“I don”t engage super-heroes, luv,” a cloud named Astrid disdainfully retorted.

“What was the point of this? …Beside the fun I mean. What did you want?” Spoor demanded to know.

“I don”t know,” the cloud named Astrid replied apologetically, in a cocky sort of way. “He never told me.”

As the sea rolled over the screaming Spoor and the crying Moira-shaped island, all memories from the past week were burned out of Spoor’s mind.

Sitting on the edge of her bed, Rachel Summers fiddled with the hem of the black evening gown that was clinging to her form. Her bedroom had, mercifully, survived the fire in Braddock Manor. One wing of their home was under extreme renovations, but the rest of the Manor was safe to occupy. From what she could telepathically sense, the Manor was more than occupied. Everyone was already downstairs; they were mingling mildly, but they were waiting for her.

She hadn’t chosen to be fashionably late. She had promised herself that she wouldn”t do this, because it was tacky and self-indulgent. She had simply lost track of the time in selecting an outfit, since half of her clothes were smoke-damaged.

With a final adjustment to the gem she wore around her neck, Rachel padded out of her room, and rand her hand down the banister, as she descended the stairs. Pausing at the set of closed doors, she felt at her hair with her fingertips, and found that it was still pulled back into a unique braid. After taking a final deep breath, she walked the rest of the way into the parlour, where all of the guests were also wearing black. No one paid much notice to Rachel’s entrance, as most eyes were drawn reverently to the framed photograph of the deceased, Moira MacTaggert. Complications in surgery had claimed Moira’s life. Brian had immediately welcomed the MacTaggert clan into his home, but most were only staying for the wake.

Rachel wept for Moira.

NEXT: Follow the aftermath of Moira MacTaggert’s death into New Mutants with Rahne Sinclair, Amara Aquilla, Bridgit Shane, and Neal Shaara. And then in Captain Britain Annual, Brian Braddock’s very first foe returns for the one-year anniversary of Meggan Braddock’s death.