DIFFERENT FACES

By Yannick Lamarre

New York, the city that never sleeps. People, day and night, roamed its streets, living their lives as best as they could. Although the city never really slept, some parts of it got quieter, and those were the areas to watch out for when you went out for a stroll at night. Or on patrol.

Kitty snorted. Patrol. Such a weird concept. She stood on a metal staircase overlooking a quiet street. There wasn’t all that much going on, though. No muggings, no petty thievery, no extortion…

“This is boring,” she told Lockheed, who flew above her head in large arcs, trying to find something or someone that would need their attention.

Lockheed growled in reply, and Kitty smiled. She could always count on Lockheed to agree with her… most of the time. She still couldn’t get over the fact that he had revealed himself to Melissa. Kitty would have gotten around to it, she was pretty sure, but she would’ve preferred to choose the right moment to do so.

“You know, maybe the whole superhero thing is a bad idea. I mean, wasn’t moving here all about leaving that life behind?”

Lockheed seemed to almost laugh at the idea. Like she would ever leave it all behind… she’d been a part of it for too long. Now it was within her.

“I guess you’re right,” she whispered more to herself than to him.

She moved a strand of hair from her face and looked around again. Maybe she should just go home…

And sure enough, a brilliant flash of light illuminated the street, and a man came running out of the alleyway, dashing away from something. Kitty smiled. She phased through the stairway, landing on the floor below in record time. She positioned herself right in the middle of the man’s path.

“Stop!” she commanded out loud.

The man continued running towards her, and she noticed the weapon in his hand. Nothing she’d ever seen before. The whole thing suddenly seemed very strange to her. The man rose the gun or whatever it was and aimed it at her, still running towards her. Kitty smiled. She was phasing. This guy would be in for a surprise when that bullet went right through her.

But Lockheed wasn’t ready to take that chance. He flew down from the sky and, fire coming out of his nostrils, he aimed at the guy’s face. His claws extended, and he slashed the man’s face viciously. The man cried out and tried to hit Lockheed, but he was there and gone, flying off again.

Shadowcat ran for the guy. She kicked the weapon from his hand and tried to bring him down. She got one good look at his face and suddenly recoiled in surprise. The wound was healing. And green blood was oozing from it.

“You’re not human!” she said in shock.

The man backhanded her hard, and she fell back. He jumped for his weapon and fired at her. No bullets came out, instead a strong energy ray came out and Kitty, still stunned, didn’t have time to concentrate. Still, the blast went right through her, leaving a strong pain, but no real injury. She shouted out and collapsed… through the street, and into the sewers below.

Up above, Lockheed screeched and let out a bolt of fire, but the man had resumed his run away from the scene. Lockheed flew down and looked for a manhole or something to go through and try to find Kitty, but he didn’t see anything. But something caught his attention. Smoke, coming out of the alley where the man had come running out of. Lockheed landed there, and what he saw disgusted him. A smoking skeleton waited there, all skin and organs burned off completely. Nothing remained but the bones. A sudden chill went through him. What if this had happened to Kitty? He let out a wail of dispair and turned around.

“Don’t worry, I’m here,” Kitty said, phasing out of the ground and bending down to pick him up. “I was down about thirty feet before I got control enough to let me get back up here.”

Lockheed growled in response. Kitty stared at the corpse in the alley. She’d been standing above the opposite rooftop and never saw a thing until it was too late. What kind of superhero was she?

Shadowcat looked away and walked out of the alleyway. She saw nothing down the way where the man had disapeared to. Although she didn’t think ‘man’ was the way to define him anymore. She would have to be more careful now. And she was in for a long night. No way she was resting until she found whoever had done this…

Sam’s Electronics, the next morning.

“Kitty, you look horrible!” Michael Ramsey told her, handing her a much -appreciated coffee. She hadn’t slept all night, and had been out until the morning sun had first shown up in the sky, trying in vain to find the guy with the death ray or whatever it was.

“Thanks for the compliment,” she replied evenly, and Michael smiled.

Her head hurt, there was still a bit of pain around her mid-section where the blast had hit, and she was tired. This would not be a good day. Kitty painfully made her way to her station and sat down, fully intending not to stand up again. She knew she would have to, though. She had counter duty since Melissa was at school today.

School. How she wished she could be there, too… but it seemed a distant dream to her. A faraway neverland she could almost see but never reach. And Melissa. She had freaked a little after Kitty had told her about the X-Men, alien dragons and Shadowcats. So far she was the only one who knew, but at least this way Meli would have some inkling of what went on if she ever disapeared again.

“What happened anyway? Couldn’t sleep?” Michael asked, staring at her with a grin that just screamed Doug Ramsey.

She looked away and back into her computer screen, which was asking her the password.

“That, and a bad fall,” she replied, thinking of her phasing through thirty feet of tunnels, sewers, and granite.

“Some people are trying to work here!” Jonathan Niles said irritably from his seat, not even bothering to look back.

“Good morning to you too, Niles,” Michael responded.

“Just shut up,” Jonathan said.

Kitty looked at him. He seemed thinner than ever. So lost in his work his body seemed to be degrading around him and Jonathan just didn’t care. Maybe she should do something about him. Talk with him or something. Michael seemed about to say something, but decided better and made his way to his small workshop in the back. He had a few machines to take apart and put back together before the day was done, and he had better get to work if he wanted to be done.

Sam came out of his office and took his morning coffee. He smiled at Kitty and went back in, leaving the door open as always. The following silence was broken only by the clicks and clacks of keyboards, and the sound of Michael’s work in the back.

“We need some music in here,” Kitty finally said.

“No, we don’t.”

Kitty turned her chair around to look at Jonathan. He was still working, his eyes fixed on the screen before him.

“What IS wrong with you?” Kitty asked.

She was tired, had a whole day to go through ahead of her, and just didn’t feel like putting up to this guy anymore. Jonathan finally stopped working and looked back. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin pale and his face sunken. He looked like he hadn’t had anything to eat for weeks.

“Maybe, for you, this is a temporary gig to you and thus unimportant! But for me, this is MY life, everything I’VE EVER done leads me here, and RIGHT NOW, I’d really like to work without YOU, or that NEANDERTHAL back there, butting in and SLOWING. MY. WORK.”

Kitty blinked, surprised at the outburst. Jonathan turned back around and started working again. She wasn’t sure how to respond. This work was important to her, too, in a way. It was her step into the real world. But would she give her whole life away for it? She was pretty sure even Sam wouldn’t want anyone to give himself all the way like that…

“Jonathan!” Sam, as if on cue, said from his office doorway.

“What?” Jonathan asked, turning around and staring at him.

Kitty could see the anger in his eyes, but there was something else there as well. Something she couldn’t really read without being a telepath. Disapointment?

“What’s happening?” Michael asked, walking back into their section of the shop.

“Nothing that matters to you, Ramsey,” Jonathan said, walking to Sam’s office.

“I’ll deal with this,” Sam said to them both before closing the door.

Kitty and Michael looked at each other. Michael shrugged.

“I have a feeling that guy doesn’t like me much…”

Kitty looked back at the closed door, but didn’t say anything. It really was going to be a LONG day…

Melissa hurried on her way to her next class, dodging students and teachers and walls as she made her way through the flow of people, backpack well settled on her back. Her legs slightly hurt from the bullet wound whenever she strained them like this, but she didn’t have much choice. She was late. But a small pamphlet hanging on the wall caught her attention and she stopped dead, staring at it. It was a notice for a meeting. For people fed up with hate groups and who wanted to do something about it. ‘Unity’.

“Well, speaking as a victim, about freaking time!” she said, and she grabbed the address and phone number they gave. Putting her backpack back on, she was about to go on for her class, when a tall, blond, well-muscled, nicely-shaped man stopped beside her.

Melissa looked at him. He smiled and looked back at her.

“You, um, planning on showing up for this thing?” he asked.

Melissa placed him then. He was in her psychology class. They’d worked together on an assignment on her first semester.

“Er, I don’t know, probably…”

What was his name? Why couldn’t she remember his name?

“I’m going. It’s a good cause. Have you heard about the attack at the dance club a few weeks ago? It has to stop!” the guy said.

Melissa nodded in agreement, the memories of the attack rushing back to her. Kitty had stopped that guy before he’d done too much damage, but there were others like him everywhere… hate groups. Stupid people who hated for stupid reasons. The pain in her legs seemed almost to return with the memories.

“I hope to see you there, Melissa!” the guy said with a smile before returning to whatever he’d been doing before seeing her.

Melissa smiled. A good cause AND a nice guy to meet. She was definitely going. She continued on her way to her class, knowing she was late, but not really bothered by it anymore.

“You want me to what?” Kitty asked Sam with some surprise.

They were both standing in Kitty and Melissa’s small living room above the shop. Kitty had come up here to fix herself a quick lunch, maybe a small flash nap, but Sam had come up a few minutes later.

“You don’t have to do it, Kitty! And I’d pay you, of course! It’s just that I have this meeting with some suppliers at six, and Ray gets back around that time. She’ll be hungry, and well, she really isn’t that great a cook…”

Kitty sighed. She was planning on sleeping after work today, so she could get back on patrol and look for that freak again tonight. So much for THAT plan.

“Okay, I’ll take her out for a stroll around town. We’ll find some nice place to eat, and I’ll talk to her some. She looks like she could use a friend…” Kitty said, and Sam smiled.

“I know. I just haven’t been able to reach her recently, and I don’t think she knows all that many people at her school…” he explained, looking at Kitty.

She saw for the first time how much his daughter worried him, and she felt a pang of sympathy for him. He’d tried to help Rachel the best he could. Him talking to Kitty like this was pretty much his last hope. She was reminded of her own father for a second, and she looked away, the memories too painful to go there just yet.

“Being a teenager is hard these days. I should know, I’ve just been there…” she said, smiling.

Sam smiled back.

“I’ll see you after lunch then. I have to go back and make sure Michael and Jonathan haven’t killed each other,” the older man said, and he walked out of the apartment.

Kitty looked at Lockheed as he crawled out of under the sofa.

“Looks like we’re babysitting,” she told the small dragon.

He harumphed and heading for Kitty’s room.

“I wish I could do that…”

Rachel ran up the stairs leading to her front door and was about to enter when Kitty called her name. She stopped and turned around.

“Hey Ray!” Kitty said, waving.

“You look like you haven’t slept for days!” Rachel commented immediately.

Kitty shrugged. “So I’ve been told!”

Rachel walked back down the stairs and joined the older girl at their base. She looked around to see if her dad was with her, and when she saw that he wasn’t she almost seemed to relax a little.

“Your dad asked me…”

“Take me out to dinner. I figured as much. He told me that supplier meeting could be today,” Rachel finished.

Kitty nodded and took Rachel’s arm in her own. But the young girl instantly recoiled, and Kitty looked at her as the girl looked away, unable to face her.

“What’s wrong?” Kitty asked as gently as she could.

“I’m sorry… I… I just don’t like to be touched much…” Rachel explained, her eyes still on the ground.

“Okay, I’m the one who’s sorry, I shouldn’t have…” Kitty tried awkwardly, but Rachel looked up and smiled.

It was a beautiful smile, and a rare sight. Boys would be lining up to date her if she ever got out of that small shell she was trapped in. Kitty smiled back, and the two started walking alongside each other towards Times Square. A small climate of trust seemed to have settled in between them, if a bit shaky. Kitty decided that if she ever wanted Rachel to talk to her, she would have to ask questions. She guessed there was really one which could make her talk casually…

“So… how’s school?”

“… I just like Empire Strikes Back more than Star Wars…”

Kitty smiled and shook her head. Her and Kurt used to have this conversation all the time.

“Star Wars establishes everything, had a good mood to it, and just wowed everything out of me!”

Rachel glared at her, unbelieving. How anyone could prefer Star Wars to Empire was beyond her. There had to be an argument Kitty couldn’t refute. But as Rachel was looking for one, she bumped into a stranger, and suddenly thoughts that made no sense filled her. She screamed as the headaches returned suddenly, and felt her legs give under her. Luckily, Kitty grabbed her before she fell, but by then it all made so little sense it wouldn’t have mattered.

“What’s wrong?” Kitty asked the fallen girl.

Kitty pushed the red hair away from Rachel’s face. This was getting too weird. Kitty could recognize the fact that Rachel was probably a mutant, and a telepath at that. No, what was really weird was the red hair, and the girl’s name. Rachel. Never before now had she made the connection, but now it was blatant. She looked at the girl’s face, and almost thought that she could see some ressemblance… but that couldn’t be. It made no sense. She shook the thoughts from her head. Kitty had enough trouble separating Michael from Doug without having to keep apart Rachel and… well, Rachel.

“Images… so alien. They made no sense…”

Tears were welling up in Rachel’s eyes, and Kitty helped her back to her feet.

“Does this happen often?” Kitty asked.

“KITTY!” Rachel insisted. “You don’t understand! These thoughts weren’t human!!”

Comprehension dawned in Kitty’s face. She looked back to the guy who had bumped into Rachel. She saw him easily enough, a few feet farther away, but he was moving fast.

“Rachel, can you go home on your own all right?”

Rachel seemed to hesitate, then nodded. Kitty nodded in turn and walked away. Rachel waited a minute, then followed.

“Damn it!” Kitty swore as she phased through people.

She tried hiding her face whenever she could, but she missed her mask, resting in a bag under the bed, very dearly. And Lockheed. It felt wrong doing this without Lockheed. But the man was walking casually, not yet aware he was being chased, and Kitty made good pace. She rejoined him in minutes, and unphased just in time to tackle him. He never realized what was going on until she was on top of him, fist raised.

“Move and I smash your face in!” she threatened.

But the man only smiled, and, with his strength alone, threw her off him. He got up, and smiled maliciously.

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with, human!” the guy said.

He took the weapon hidden in his trenchcoat. And turned green. Kitty gasped and slowed for a second. She was standing in a crowd. If he fired that weapon, she couldn’t let it pass through her and hit some innocent person. But there was no way to get to him before he fired.

“You’re a SKRULL?” she asked in disbelief, trying to grab the alien’s attention.

People were starting to look their way. Screams were about to start, and then chaos would ensue, that much was certain.

“Die!” the Skrull said, and he pressed the trigger.

Almost. Because that’s exactly the moment a screech split the air and a purple blur crashed into the weapon and took it with him, flying off high above, until it reached a wall. Lockheed released the weapon straight into the brick at full speed, and it blew with a small bright light.

But the Skrull had started running again. Kitty started after it, and Lockheed flew down to be by her side. He followed her, she guessed. Just in case. Good old loyal Lockheed.

“Oh no you don’t!” Shadowcat screamed at the running Skrull.

She phased through the people around her and floated eerily after the green alien, who made a hard right for an opened doorway. Kitty followed suit, phasing once she was free of the crowd. Not many people had time to see Lockheed. The whole thing had lasted barely ten seconds, and he’d been in constant motion. She entered the darkened entrance.

Rachel gasped for air as she finally reached the spot where Kitty had turned right. What was going on? That flash of light and that weird thing flying around her. And had she imagined it, or had Kitty ran THROUGH people? Something definitely weird was going on…

“Kitty?” she called out when she reached an opened doorway.

There seemed to be nothing around. Only silence and shadows welcomed her.

“Kitty?” she whispered softly this time.

There was panic in the air, and…

A strange contraption suddenly burst through the roof of the building, sending bits of wood and debris everywhere. It didn’t bother Rachel much. She just stared up at the – was it a ship? – getting higher and higher. Was Kitty in there? She had to be. She’d vanished this way.

“What’s going on?” Rachel asked the sky, which gave no answer.

And suddenly, the ship exploded. A giant explosion, with flames and a shockwave that made her fall back hard on her back. Melted metal crashed all around her. Rachel looked up, gazing at the night sky.

“KITTY!!!” she called out.

No one answered her.

NEXT ISSUE: What exactly just happened? Was Kitty aboard that ship? What was a Skrull doing in New York vaporizing people anyway? All this, plus the usual fun with our cast next issue!