CORDIALLY VINDICTIVE

By Rob Ballard

Geiger glanced over her shoulder as they sprinted down the dark hallway, hoping like hell they’d finally lost their pursuer.

“Your luck has run out, X-Factor!” Soundwave called, instantly eradicating her unspoken wish. “You’re all mine, now!”

“That freak gives me the royal heebie-jeebies,” Geiger said to Forge between breaths. “What the hell is his problem, anyway?”

“No time to explain – we’ll talk later!” Forge yelled at full sprint. He was thankful his cybernetic leg was in perfect working order.

Soundwave’s ultimate expression of his mutant power – to create a sonic pressure wave from stored sound energy – easily contained enough force to kill a normal human being. Even with her near-invulnerability, Forge had said, DeeDee would have to keep her profile as low as she could. So when she felt her ears pop and the infinitesimal rush of air going by her, she acted on instinct alone, tackling Forge, knocking him to the ground and covering him as best she could. She gritted her teeth, and waited for the pressure wave to hit.

Like an earthquake, there was no way to completely be ready for it – it felt like a Mack truck came out of the shadows and smashed into her back. The sound was deafening – the floor shook as though an F-16 pilot had decided to use the hall as a runway for takeoff. But as suddenly as it had begun, it was over and the hall was quiet again. Even though she’d plugged them with her fingers, DeeDee’s ears were ringing so bad she had to take a moment to clear her head.

“We have to keep moving!” Forge shouted, pulling her up.

“Unnngggghhh – I can’t take a lot more of that kind of punishment.” Geiger struggled to her feet, thankful that nothing was broken.

“With any luck, you won’t have to. I suspect it will take him a several moments to recharge. So we don’t have a second to lose. Let’s go!” Together, they resumed their run.

Shard prepped herself for a photon blast, and as she attempted to fire, the bolt fizzled. “What the-?”

“You don’t look like you’re doing so hot, honey. Instead of simply blowing us away, why don’t you tell us what happened,” Mystique smirked, “as if I can’t guess.”

Shard had half a mind to knock the blue-skinned woman flat, but she was in no condition for a fight. Her holomatrix was unstable, and if she pushed it too far now, she’d zap herself right out of existence.

“Why should I tell you anything?” She pointed a finger at Mystique, then to Stone, “…and YOU! You traitor! You set us up!”

“I did no such thing.”

“What?! How dare you!” Even though it was a pointless gesture in her weakened condition, Shard raised her fists angrily.

“Calm down! Aside from your propensity for knee-jerk reactions, one of the problems you government types have is that you’re way too sensitive. Listen up for a second and maybe you just might learn something.” Stone told her.

“Now whether you like it or not, this is not the same Bowser we roughed up six months ago! I don’t know what happened, but wherever Trevor sent him to, he came back ten times worse. And now he’s holding some kind of grudge against mutants. He wants to kill all of you, and Val, and who knows where he’ll stop.”

“So. He’s not the first person to hold a grudge against mutants,” Shard snorted defiantly.

“True as that may be, child, that doesn’t mean I want to see mutantkind eradicated from the planet. And I think he’s got the will and the means to at least get a pretty damn good head start. But I’ll tell you right now – I don’t agree with X-Factor’s weak-spined methods, and I Not Bowser’s nor X-Factor’s.”

“Save the philosophy for another time,” Stone told them impatiently. “We need to know where we stand. What’s your status?”

“My holomatrix took a bad shake back there. I’m not sure how long I’ll stay coherent without Forge’s ‘tender loving care’.”

“Where is Forge?”

“I don’t know. Soundwave blasted me good back there, and I dropped out for a few minutes. When I came back online, they were gone. It’s anyone’s guess as to if they are even alive.”

Stone glanced at Mystique, then back to Shard. “Who else is left in there?”

“I don’t know. We split into two teams. Fixx was supposed to maintain contact between us. Polaris, Guido, and Fixx were on one team. Geiger, Forge and I were on the other.”

“Guido? Geiger?”

“Never mind. Two recruits,” Shard knew it was an incomplete explanation – but one she hoped she’d be able to fill in the blanks of later, if they were lucky. “Anyway, we should have heard from Fixx at least fifteen minutes ago. Something’s definitely wrong.”

Shard looked like she wanted to split back to the lab, and Stone seemed to read her expression. “It would do no good for us to go in there now. There’s five of them, and three of us,” As Shard faded, momentarily, Stone corrected himself. “More like two and a half. Not to mention the enhanced hound.”

“The what?”

Mystique clarified. “The genetically enhanced hound that Lorna wrote about in her mission report awhile back – don’t you rem…Oh! You probably don’t remember! I think you were still offline then!”

Shard prayed Mystique was right, that it was simply a matter of not being there, instead of a matrix memory failure that caused her to forget that event. But, at the moment, there was no way to tell. “Um, yea. Okay. So what about it?”

“Well, it’s stronger than ever before. Bowser blackmailed me into stealing a couple of radioactive isotopes to strengthen the hounds power systems and exoskeleton. I don’t think Greeny would be much of a match for it, now. Certainly not by herself. I don’t know that we’ve got much of a shot at it together, either. We’re going to have to call in reinforcements.”

“We don’t have that long. You do what you have to, but I’m going in!”

Shard had already taken several strides when Mystique called out to her. “If you really think a full frontal attack is your best move, by all means, go right ahead! You can do it by yourself. Then you’ll end up just as dead as they’ll be! In the meantime, me and ‘piece-of-the-rock’ here are gonna go get help.”

Shard turned, eyes narrow with fury. “You’re just making excuses! That’s all the family I have in there! I can’t just wait while they-”

“And we have no intentions of losing them,” a calm but breathless voice called out from behind the treeline.

“Forge! Geiger!” Shard rushed over to Forge and hugged him, in an uncharacteristic show of emotion.

“I’m fine, Shard! You, on the other hand, look like you’ve seen better days.” Shard was trying with all her might to maintain coherence, but was still randomly drifting in and out of focus.

“Yeah? I was hoping you might be able to do something about it, big guy.” Shard smiled as Forge set to work on repairing the damaged holomatrix inducer.

“I see you’ve brought friends,” Forge jutted his chin toward Mystique and Stone. “Have I ever told you you keep interesting company?”

When Polaris came to, her first thought was that she wished someone would answer the freakin’ telephone. After a moment she realized that it wasn’t the telephone ringing…it was her head.

The right side of her face was on fire, from behind her ear on down to her jaw. She brought a hand up to her cheek, and although it stung painfully, she was relieved to find it in one piece and not bleeding. She knew she was going to have a hell of a bruise, no doubt about it. By some miracle, nothing seemed to be broken.

How had she gotten here? The last thing she’d remembered was…was…oh – it hurt just to think – that chair, whacking her in the head. She glanced around her tiny prison, surprised at how much it hurt just to do that. And to her horror, she realized that it had been Fixx who had turned on her.

“Wake up, my emerald-topped beauty.”

Polaris turned sharply to the snide voice calling to her from between the bars embedded in a hole cut in the wooden door. When she saw who it was, her eyes sparkled with fury. “What the hell did you do to Fixx?”

Bowser chuckled lightly. “Oh, let me assure you, my dear, she’ll be fine.” Bowser looked around in her cell. “Just fine,” he repeated as he gestured around the cell. “You, on the other hand, don’t seem to be doing too well. Nope. Not good at all.” He shook his head in feigned sadness and tapped the bars on the door. Lorna was trying to decide what she found more annoying, being chained up, or having to deal with the sarcasm king. Neither was very appealing.

She took a moment to examine her surroundings. Her wrists and ankles were shackled to the wall leaving her very little room for movement. But they were fools if they thought they could hold her in any sort of a prison bound by metallic chains…that was an advantage she’d use as soon as she had the chance.

“Let Fixx and Jamie go – then maybe we can work out a deal.”

Bowser’s brow furrowed in disbelief. “You must be joking. Fixx? I wouldn’t dream of releasing my new trophy. She and Daydreamer have become good friends, you know. After all, they’re cut from the same cloth. As for Jamie, well, what can I say? I enjoy watching him squirm. They’re just a couple more mutants that I find useful, unlike yourself.”

“And just what would you know about mutants?” She asked scornfully, arms folded.

This seemed to spark something within Bowser. His eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened threateningly, “What I know about mutants…is that they have caused me no end of trouble…” He paused, and jabbed a finger at her, as he continued, “…and you all have been at the heart of it all. You know, Lorna, there’s an old saying that goes something like, ‘Give me the strength to change what can be changed, the strength to accept what cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know one from the other,’? Well, I’ve decided that a few things need changed, and I’m betting I’ve got the strength to do it.”

“That ‘saying’ is called the Serenity Prayer. And I hardly think that’s what Niebuhr intended when he wrote it!” Polaris eyed him with total defiance. She tried to tell herself that he was just trying to ruffle her feathers, and no matter what, she was not going to let him get under her skin

“Whatever. Anyway,” he said, waving the subject off carelessly, “the point is, I’ve decided to make some demographic alterations. Like slicing the mutant population considerably. And, the best thing is, now I have the means to do it.” Bowser couldn’t resist showing off his new toy to her. “Feast your eyes on this!”

Despite her reluctance, her curiosity was piqued. She watched as a familiar figure appeared in the narrow perspective the door offered. Behind Bowser, the hound she viciously battled several months ago appeared. It had taken everything she had just to keep him at bay. “Your friend here wants to tell you hello.”

“Target Designate: Polaris. Mutant Power to manipulate magnetic f-” the e-hound recited dryly.

“Yeah, I know. Spare me the 411, okay?” Polaris growled.

Bowser gave one of his deep belly chuckles, then made a show of checking his watch. “Oh, it’s getting late. We must be going. We need to be meeting up with a certain doctor friend of yours, but you can rest assured, we’ll be back as soon as we can. Your next few hours would probably be best spent alone with your deity.” Unceremoniously, Bowser left her alone in her cell.

“Valerie doesn’t stand a chance if we don’t get our butts out of here.” She focused on the chains binding her to the wall, squinted her eyes, and nothing happened. “I can’t alter the magnetic field! I can’t even see it! That hit on the head must’ve screwed me up worse than I thought.”

Something in the back of her mind made her think back to that fiasco in Antarctica, with Zaladane, when her magnetic powers had been stolen from her by her pseudo-sister. She figured it was a long shot, but she’d give it a try, anyway. She pulled, as hard as she could, hoping that without her magnetic abilities she might be left with powerhouse strength. Instead, she was punished with a sharp electric shock which pulsed through the chains.

“Owwww! Damn it!” She clenched her teeth and leaned back against the cold stone wall once again.

“What do you mean, they escaped? How could they escape?” Bowser spat. “That’s utterly ridiculous! You have the power to crumble six inches of reinforced concrete! A couple of measly mutants shouldn’t slow you down in the least!”

“But, boss, I got one of them!” Soundwave pleaded.

“And where might they be?” Bowser looked around, mocking him. “I certainly don’t see any dead X-Factor members lying about!”

“I dunno, boss, she disappeared or something. But I think I got her. Besides, I was afraid of bringing the whole house down on top of-,” Bowser interrupted Soundwave with a sharp slap.

“Never mind what you were afraid of! I sent you out to apprehend them, not send them scurrying like rabbits! I do not see what could be so difficult about that!” Bowser regarded Soundwave with disgust, then turned to Saw-arm, Furnace, and Daydreamer. Every word he spoke was with measured authority, and his fury became more apparent with each one. “When we return, you see to it that you all incapacitate the remaining members of X-Factor. I really don’t care how you do it, because that’s what you’ve been trained for. Just get it done!”

“Yes, sir,” they all chimed with fear trembling in their voices.

“And you,” he turned to the enhanced hound, “…you’ll go with them to make sure they don’t screw things up!” Bowser ordered the enhanced hound.

“Acknowledged.”

Fixx cocked her head to one side, almost as if she wanted to say something, and Bowser answered her questioning look. “You, my dear? For the duration, you’ll stay with me. I’d feel much safer if you’d keep me company.”

“Yes,” was all Fixx could muster, as they walked past Jamie, lost in his suspended animation.

Buzzing.

It was becoming gradually more audible. At first she hadn’t noticed it at all, but after forty-five minutes, it was really beginning to get on her nerves. Polaris thought it sounded like some sort of saw. She swore she’d heard it before. Every few seconds, it sounded like a low, dull saw was pulling from behind the wall. “Maybe someone is trying to saw their way through,” she smirked humorlessly.

She cocked her head to one side and suddenly realized what it was. “Guido! He’s snoring! I’ve heard that sound echoing through the Brownstone a million times! He must be in the next cell!” She laughed excitedly. “How can that guy sleep at a time like this?”

“Guido! Guido! Wake up!” But the rhythmic sawing just continued on. She tried banging on the stone wall, but with her wrists chained, she couldn’t get much momentum to make a lot of noise unless she wanted to get zapped again.

Then she paused. “Something’s not right. If Bowser hates mutants so much, why are we still here? He could have done away with us a hundred times by now. Why go after Valerie first? Why hasn’t he killed us and been on his way?”

In her horror, she realized that Bowser had to have been lying – he had found a use for them. Their role just hadn’t been revealed yet. Of course, she knew that she and Guido, or any of the others, for that matter, would never willingly take part in his plan. But Bowser had already demonstrated his power for persuasion with Fixx. And where Daydreamer’s propensity for mental manipulation wasn’t so effective, there were three other henchmen who would be able to find more physical – and probably more painful ways to coerce.

She had no intentions of letting it come to that. She just didn’t know how yet, and time was running out.

Forge had retreated back into the forest a little ways, partly to avoid being detected and mainly because the thick canopy of leaves was helping keep them dry from the drizzly rain. The glow of a small campfire flickered on their faces.

“Stone, I want to go over the team specs again.”

“We’ve been over all this before. I don’t see where this is getting us.”

“We need an advantage. They have to have a weak point – we must key in on that.”

“Our advantage,” Mystique said impatiently, “is that we call the X-Men and put a stop to this right now!”

“No! We don’t want to start an all-out war if we can possibly avoid it. Tensions are high enough without a lot of commotion and media hype. If we can use our brains here, instead of our brawn, we might be able to take care of this ourselves.”

“So you’d rather sacrifice your team members in order to preserve the human-mutant status quo?”

Forge looked as though he was ready to leap over the his former X-Factor teammate. “How dare you speak to me about my priorities on this team! You have no right!” This erupted into a shouting match among the four of them. Geiger stuffed her fingers in her ears to drown out the noise, and finally got fed up.

“Calm down, you guys!” she screamed, bringing the argument to an abrupt halt. “Listen, I may not know much about priorities, but I do know Lorna well enough to know that she surely wouldn’t want to risk losing what little ground we have for some crazy war. None of us would. Even if the rescue was successful, what would that solve? We’d just have a price on our heads, that none of us could afford.”

Forge was ashamed of himself for letting Mystique get to him. He’d swore he’d never let her do that, so long as she was associated with this team, and up until now he’d lived up to his own promise. He was thankful Val or Alex weren’t around to see this. He took a deep breath and tried to get ahold of himself, and Mystique slowly followed suit. Geiger continued, trying to keep the conversation as light as she could. “Stone, everyone has a weakness. Mine’s chocolate. Yours is probably alligator wrestling, or something like that. Now, is there anything that Bowser’s said or done that might help us?”

Stone thought for a moment. The sight of his enormous rock fingers rubbing his chin was almost enough to make Shard giggle, but she knew better, and swallowed her laugh. “Well, he’s a hothead. As Doctor Cooper has probably told you, he hates waiting for anything. He wants results right away. Not unlike some of us, I might add,” Stone told them, shooting a glance at Shard. “He also wants things his way. All the time. If he doesn’t get what he wants, he can become quite – unpleasant.” Stone’s tone indicated that he’d preferred not to expound on the details.

“Hmmmm.”

“What is it, Forge? Do you have an idea?”

“Well, it sounds to me like Bowser inherited a lot of Trevor’s more endearing qualities during his abduction.”

“So, you mean, Bowser is like…Trevor, now?” Shard asked.

“Not exactly. But I suspect Bowser is utilizing aspects of Trevor’s personality. Trevor is cunning, sneaky, and because of his reality warping abilities, he’s used to getting exactly what he wants. Qualities which are already evident in Bowser. But Bowser is more dangerous than Trevor – he’s got the knowledge and experience to make his dreams everyone else’s nightmare come true.”

“How is that going to help us?”

“I think we ought to give him exactly what he wants. Stone, you said you’d recently stopped checking in. Bowser’s gotta be wondering where one of his team is. How long has it been since you checked in?”

Stone shifted uncomfortably. “Not for a couple weeks. If I go waltzing in there right now, he’s liable to suspect something’s up.”

Forge brought his right fist to his lips, in thought. “I don’t think so. If he’s as shallow as you suggest, I suspect Bowser will be very glad to add all the muscle he can to his team. You just need an alibi, and not even a very good one at that.”

“I’m not sure that’ll work.” Stone was slowly shaking his head.

“Sure it will,” Forge said, a little too cheerfully. “Let us handle the details.”

The incessant snoring continued. She’d lost track of time, and it was starting to drive her crazy. “Guido, if we ever get out of this, I’m going to personally rip out your uvula!” She stuffed her fingers in her ears to drown out the racket that seemed to be getting louder and louder…and realized what she’d done.

Somehow, she’d noticed that the manacles binding her arms had stretched just enough so that she had a little more freedom to move than before. Early in the development of their powers, some mutants, including Lorna, had noticed that sometimes an inadvertent, almost subconscious thought, would manifest itself as a minor utilization of their power. She hadn’t been able to completely keep her powers under control until Xavier helped her learn to control those potentially dangerous thoughts. She wondered if this meant her powers had returned, but a tug on the chains only rewarded her with another jolt of electricity.

“Damn it – this isn’t getting me anywhere!” She rubbed her wrists, still aching from the jolt, and focused on the chains again. This time she concentrated on a specific link. After several moments, she found that if she concentrated hard enough, she could begin to deform the links. It was an arduous process – melting away the chains might take hours – hours Guido and she – and Valerie – didn’t have.

“What good is that going to do me?” she asked aloud, tossing her head back in frustration and bumping it against the wall. Suddenly she had an idea.

“Hmmmm. It may not be a hundred percent, but it’ll have to do.” With that, she began to focus on one of the smaller stones, embedded in the wall above her left shoulder.

“My sprites have detected an unauthorized presence on the grounds,” Fixx informed her captor dryly.

Bowser glanced at the e-hound. “Confirmed. Mutant designate Stone.”

“Stone? Stone! What could he be doing here?” Bowser asked nervously.

“His intentions are not known.”

“Well, are you going to wait for him to break down the door before you find out?!” Bowser bellowed at Fixx.

“No.” Fixx closed her eyes. A moment later, they opened, but were still completley devoid of her own charm. She lifelessly recited, “Stone has returned to check in.”

“He has? I don’t believe it.” Fixx just stared straight ahead. “Well then. Excellent. His timing couldn’t be better!” Bowser went to the outside door to laboratory B and yanked it open, to reveal Stone, standing there in the rain. “I’m sorry I haven’t checked in. After my fight with Sabretooth, I became disoriented and-,”

“We can discuss your tiff with Sabretooth later. Right now we have more important things to talk about,” Bowser interrupted him abruptly, leading him back to the lab. “I’ve captured a couple members of X-Factor – their leader and another – one I’m not especially familiar with. I’m hoping that we can convince them how important my cause is. And if not, well, I figure you owe them one, do you not?”

“That I do, boss.” As he passed Fixx, Stone smiled. “That I do.”

NEXT: Val Cooper’s unexpected houseguests give new meaning to the word “rude,” and does Forge know what he’s doing?