Scarlet Starlight | By : DarthMeow504 Category: zMisplaced Stories [ADMIN use only] > Spiderman Views: 35790 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 3 |
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[Author's Note: The alternate Warbird first (and last) appeared in Ms Marvel v2 #'s 9-10. I liked the concept of a second Carol under the no-longer used Warbird identity, but instead of exploring that potential they made her bugfuck insane instead and she was last seen being carted off to wherever they're imprisoning super-criminals these days. I thought that was a waste, and thus here is my story to salvage the character --along with some other things including putting a final nail into the whole longstanding Rogue-Carol thing that dates all the way back to Rogue's first appearance in 1981. "Feral" is my new version of X-23, with a better powerset and none of the stupid prostitution crap in her background. Plus, there's two of her now. Meow! The new dual incarnation of Archangel / Nighthawk is my idea, and there is a previously existing Nighthawk in the Marvel Universe but he sucks and he either doesn't exist in my world or he doesn't dare take his name back from Apocalypse's deadly creation. X-Men, X-Factor, and all associated characters in Marvel's mutant-oriented line of titles are copyright Marvel]
[Temporary Note: For those of you who read Part 14 within the first day or two it was posted, I have expanded the last portion with a new and extended sex scene that was not present in the initial posting.]
Chapter 6: Going Rogue
"You're not going alone and that's final."
Carol Danvers, aka Ms Marvel, sighed and relented. She wasn't going to win this one. Then again she didn't really want to, but she couldn't exactly admit that. Even to someone like Jessica Drew, who she loved and trusted more than anyone else in the world, it was hard to show vulnerability or admit there was anything she couldn't handle with ease. In the military, showing weakness was a surefire hazing magnet, and for a woman in the military it was worse still. Old habits die hard, and it was Carol's long habit to project an image of being as tough and unflappable as anything built by Cyberdyne Systems. Jessica wasn't fooled for a moment, and Carol loved her for it.
Jessica smiled. "Besides, they're my friends too you know. Hopefully we'll get a chance to make it a friendly visit after we take care of business."
Carol nodded, and it was settled. They'd be doing this together, and Carol was secretly glad. Not because she expected trouble, but because she could use the emotional support. Storm had been specific that whatever it was she was asking her there for, it involved Rogue. And as anyone who knew Carol knew, she and Rogue had history. Serious history. Back when Rogue was working for the Brotherhood under her adoptive mother Mystique, she'd been involved in an attack on the Avengers and Carol had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. A sneak attack by Rogue, using her ability to drain the powers and memories from a target, had left Carol a virtually soulless husk, bereft of everything that made her a person. Eventually, her powers and then her memories had been restored, but for too long after the attack Carol was barely more than an empty shell of a woman. Even now, not all she had lost was returned to her, she had gotten a copy of her memories back eventually but the emotional connections to them were lost... they were copies, not her real memories. Her whole life to that point was like a movie she'd watched or book she'd read, not something she'd lived. They were second hand, empty recordings, not true experiences. Friends, family, everything she'd known and loved were essentially gone, and she'd had to start completely over. That empty part of her still hurt, and though she'd moved on and built a new life for herself, it was still easy to feel like only half a person if she let herself dwell on the past she didn't really have. In some ways, she felt like her own clone. Rogue still had vital parts of her very soul still locked away inside her, and Carol never had gotten them back. As long as that debt remained unpaid, forgiving her was out of the question.
Of course, not everything to come out of the situation had been bad. Soon after the incident, still shellshocked and broken from the trauma, she had thrown herself from the Golden Gate Bridge seeking refuge in oblivion. Her life had been saved by Spider-Woman, the very same Jessica Drew who was still by her side to this day. Jessica was in many ways still lost in the world herself at that point, and the two women found much in common. They quickly became a two-person support group for one another, which deepened over time into true friendship and eventually further still into love. To this day, there was no one in Carol's life who came close to what she felt for Jessica. And while she would certainly wish they'd met under better circumstances, she felt that if her trauma were the price of the love she'd found, it was worth paying. Nothing, not even that half of her soul she was still missing, was worth more to her than Jessica.
And so, with that issue settled, all that was left was to get ready and go. Storm was expecting her. She still dreaded dealing with Rogue, but with Jessica at her side she felt like she could face anything.
-----
Fortunately, including Jessica had turned out to not be a problem. Carol would have insisted regardless, but it turned out not to be an issue as Storm had greeted them both warmly and said she was pleased to see Jessica again. From there, after some small talk and such, they got to business. One of their members, Jean Grey, had had a recent experience with the Phoenix entity returning to her briefly, and aside from enabling her to take care of some unfinished business in Westchester it also had left a "gift" for her and Rogue. Storm hadn't known what that "gift" might be, Jean hadn't said, but Storm trusted her implicitly and encouraged Carol to do the same. After a short private talk with Jessica to think it over, she had agreed. She wasn't the type to back out of things once she'd committed herself, and Jessica was inclined to trust them. And so now they were taking an elevator ride to a sublevel of X-Factor's hidden base, which was the remains of their former starship base. That spacecraft, which they'd liberated from Apocalypse, had been apparently destroyed in some convoluted incident with a techno-organic baby or some such that Carol hadn't really paid attention to when it was related to her. It really hadn't made much sense anyway, and the important part was that they later discovered that the bulk of the ship had crashed into a California ridgeline. It would never fly again, but it was largely functional and served as an excellent self-contained base of operations for the team. To Carol, it looked rather like the Autobot base from the old Transformers cartoon, the rear section of the craft with it's massive thrusters sticking out with the rest of the craft buried deep in the rock and earth.
When the doors opened, she cried out in angry shock and flared up, coming up off the floor in ready to fight mode at what she saw there. No, not at Rogue, she expected to see her. Instead, what had gotten her ready to attack was the sight of a woman who looked exactly like her, but wearing a version of her old white armored Warbird costume. She recognized her as an alternate who had come from another Earth where she'd failed to save her world and had been propelled into their dimension as a result. The woman had proven to be unstable at best and insane at worst, attempting to kill Rogue and then turning on Carol herself when she intervened. The last Carol had seen her, she was being taken away by the authorities as Carol debated whether it would be safer to kill her. Now, seeing her again here and free, she wondered if maybe she should have.
Before either could act, though, they were separated by thick glowing red walls of force projected by Jean, who was going by the name Guardian now. And a hand on her shoulder and soft words from Storm bid her to calm down and listen, that there was no danger.
Carol growled. "There had better be a good explanation for this."
The other Carol, Warbird, simply sighed instead of engaging Carol's threatening posture. "You have every right to be angry... they tell me you had a run-in with Carol, and what she's responsible for. I couldn't possibly be more sorry."
Carol blinked. "Run-in with... aren't you Carol?"
Warbird shook her head. "No... I'm Jane. Carol is... my dark side. I thought she was gone forever. Apparently I was wrong."
Carol frowned. "Alright spill it, because right now I don't have any idea what the hell you're talking about."
Warbird, or Jane as she seemed to call herself, nodded. "Alright... I was confused at first too, but Psylocke helped me sort it all out. You see... as you know I was attacked by Rogue too, but for me it was a little different. I lost my powers and memories too, just like you did, and I jumped off the Golden Gate just like you did, but I didn't get saved by Jessica like you did. I didn't meet her until way later, when we were both Avengers again. Instead, I was pulled out of the water near dead by a fishing boat and woke up quite a bit later with no memories at all. I was a total amnesiac, and of course they called me Jane Doe and assigned me a number. I was unpowered, and needed physical therapy to regain muscle tone and mobility. I had fragments of memories slowly return throughout that time, flashes and dreams, but nothing solid. I went through my therapy, got out of the hospital and started a new life over as Jane. But Carol wasn't gone... eventually she came back."
Carol frowned and absorbed this. "So you, and Carol, are separate identities and separate personae?"
Jane nodded, and continued. "Right... she was in there, and driven mad with rage and psychic trauma. Her memories were scrambled, and she was alive inside my subconscious in a sort of psychic maelstrom of nightmares and reliving of past memories. Most especially, Rogue's attack... she relived it hundreds, probably thousands of times. When she managed to regain control of our body, she immediately sought out Rogue and looked to take revenge. What's worse, she had her powers even though I don't. She was able to access them, I still can't. So she damned near killed Rogue, the X-Men stopped her, and Professor X sorted us out. He wasn't able to give me back our memories, or even unscramble Carol's broken personality, but he was able to lock her away inside my mind and put her at peace. Somewhere inside my head, Carol was reliving the better parts of her life without knowing she wasn't real... kinda like she was put on a happy holodeck loop and locked away. It stayed like that for years, and I was able to get on with my life."
Carol nodded, absorbing this. It was hard to accept, another her becoming a psychotic shard identity, but she supposed it was better than her just becoming a revenge-fueled dysfunctional drunk despite years to get over it, like it had seemed at first. "And then she came back?"
Jane nodded. "Yeah... an asshole named Traveller attacked me and as part of his bid to destroy me, unleashed Carol again. By that time, I'd rejoined the Avengers using Starktech armor to revive my lost abilities and give me the chance to be a hero. And I was a good one... I worked hard... until Carol took control and went on a bender, making us not there to respond to a distress call." She sighed deeply. "And well... you know the rest."
Carol nodded, and offered. "Jane is my second middle name, you know."
Jane nodded with a soft smile. "Yeah, I know. It's kinda neat how that worked out. Anyhow, she's locked away again. She won't be a threat again. If she tries again, I'll stop her even if it kills us both."
At that point, Jean spoke. "You won't have to worry about that anymore. The Phoenix power left me the means to fix that forever."
Jane blinked. "Is that possible? I thought it couldn't be done..."
Jean smiled. "Professor Xavier was an amazing telepath, as good as this world has ever seen, but even he had limits to what he could accomplish. The Phoenix has no limits. The entity has the raw power to make short work of things we consider impossible."
Jane nodded in soft wonder, and Rogue just frowned. "That's great an' all, but what am Ah here for, ta play cheerleadah?"
Jean smiled. "This gift is for you and Carol, too. Things will finally be set right, for all three of you."
Carol nodded. "That sounds great, let's get on with it then."
The others agreed, and Jean nodded softly. "Just relax, it will be done before you know it."
And then a red glow suffused the room, growing in intensity along with a hum that grew with the light until the light was a blinding white flash and the sound had become a hawklike cry --the cry of the Phoenix.
When it was over, Carol felt Jessica take her hand, and softly ask if she was ok, what had happened and how she felt. At first she was too stunned to speak, but when she found her voice it was soft with awe and choked with emotion, her face streaked with tears. "They're back... all of them... my real memories. All of me... I'm all of me again... I'm whole..."
Jessica gasped, and then pulled Carol into a fierce embrace and passionate kiss. She knew well how much Carol still hurt over what had been taken from her, and now it was restored. She quickly realized that Carol's tears of joy were matched by her own, but she didn't break the kiss to wipe them away.
Jane was in a similar state of awe, but rather than joy she was more overcome with relief. "She's gone... all of it. I remember her now, all her memories, but they don't control me. She lived them, I didn't, I'm not bound by her past. I'm free. I'm free..."
Carol was distracted from her reverie and passionate celebration with her lover by these words, a little shocked by them. The exact problem she had suffered with for so long, having her memories but no true connection to them, had been her problem now solved. It was amazing that her curse could be another's blessing, and yet it was. Jane was as happy to be free of her past as Carol was to have it back. Quite the fair trade then, by any measure.
That raised the question, what had Rogue gained? All eyes turned to the southern woman as everyone else began wondering that very thing at roughly the same time. Jean was closest to her, and she reached out a hand. After a bit of hesitation, Rogue took it. She gasped softly when nothing happened.
"Mah power?" she asked in wonder.
Jean answered her question. "Gone... completely removed. You always wanted this... to be normal. You're close, now... you won't register on a mutant scan, but you've had a superhuman physique for years now and that had some permanent effects on your body. You won't fly or juggle chevys again, but you'll be strong enough to flip one over or survive being hit by one. No one will know if you don't tell them, though."
Rogue, awed by this, nodded. "Ah'm free too then... Ah can go home."
Jean nodded and smiled. "Whenever you're ready. You still have the place in New Orleans, right?"
Rogue nodded. "Yeah... let me pack a bag, and we can go."
Storm was stunned. "So quickly? Let us at least hold a going away party for you?"
Rogue shook her head. "Don't take this the wrong way, but... Ah've been waitin' for this so long, Ah feel like a caged animal in this underground rat maze and Ah want out. Besides... The Danvers girls cain't stand me, Jessica there feels tha same, Alison don't like me neither and never has, and I don't hardly know most of the others. So it's what, you and 'Locke Ah'm close to, maybe Wolvie? Don't seem much like a party to me. How 'bout you come visit me down in N'awlins, instead? Spend a week if you cahn spare it. Ya'll always be welcome in mah house."
Storm sighed, and relented. "As you wish. You don't seem like I can talk you out of it."
Rogue nodded, and came up to kiss her cheek. "Yeah, I really am itchin' to get outta this place, and start livin' a normal life. I nevah wanted this, and Ah put in my tours a' duty. Ah'm ready to retire. Been ready a long time."
Storm nodded, and returned Rogue's embrace when the woman hugged her. "Ah mean it 'bout visitin'. Ah got ya'lls phone number, Ah'll pester ya till ya come. Ah'll have tha iced tea ready for ya when ya get there."
Storm nodded. "You do that."
Rogue smiled. "It's a plan! Ah'll see ya soon." And then with a nod to Jean to follow, she rushed out of there with an expression like a kid on the last day of school. Ready to get on with vacation. Storm was simultaneously a bit angry at her open eagerness to leave and a little jealous at her getting the opportunity to. Storm was tired as well, and there had certainly times where she'd wished to leave it all behind, but she was a warrior and there were battles left to be fought. She might take a break now and again, and she would take Rogue up on her offer to visit, but she'd never give up the fight. It wasn't in her to abandon what she'd come to see as her duty and life's mission.
She was interrupted from these thoughts by Jane, the woman known as Warbird, who approached her as Storm was watching the doorway Rogue had left through. Storm couldn't help but notice how much calmer and more relaxed she seemed, how her whole demeanor had changed for the better. Even the woman's appearance had marked her change, as her formerly golden hair had lightened to a silvery, angelic white as if stripping the Carol personality from her had taken the blonde pigment from her as well. All told, she looked like a new woman.
"Storm...? I couldn't help but notice you're down a member, and I still don't have a team to call home yet. The Avengers already have their Danvers quota filled, so... is there room for me?"
Storm blinked, and then slowly smiled. Maybe it was true that the Goddess provides, and when one door closes another opens. It certainly seemed so today.
She put her hand on the woman's shoulder, and smiled brightly to her. "As it so happens, we do have an opening effective immediately. I'll need your application papers, proof of citizenship and lack of criminal record, a credit report, a 500 word essay, and references. In triplicate, please. I have to send one to Magneto and the other to the franchise administrator in Westchester."
Warbird blinked. "Are you serious...???" It sounded insane, but Storm delivered it with a completely deadpan expression and no trace that she was anything but dead serious.
After leaving her hanging for a few long seconds, Storm smiled. "Not at all. Welcome to X-Factor, Warbird..."
All of them joined in as they delivered what was obviously a traditional greeting. "HOPE YOU SURVIVE THE EXPERIENCE!"
-----
Some time later, the aborted going-away party for Rogue was in swing anyway, as a welcoming party for Warbird as well as a celebration for Carol's long-awaited cure. Things had been going for a few hours by this point, and good food and good company had been enjoyed in abundance. Good drinks had flowed as well, and as the night progressed and Jessica had drank more, her pheremones flowed as well. She wasn't even quite aware of it, and it wasn't a large amount so as to rob free will from the partygoers, but as they drank and relaxed as well it certainly helped push the mood in a certain direction. Also, though neither of them had realized it, her and Psylocke had ended up in a form of feedback loop, Jessica's pheremones exciting Psylocke and causing her to subconsciously project her desire telepathically, increasing Jessica's mood and corresponding pheremone output, and so on in an ever-increasing cycle. Thus, by the time she was in Carol's lap kissing her deeply, the deepest part of her hungry for more, they weren't the only couple in such embrace and the mood of the party was deeply sexual.
It was quite an attractive assemblage, too, with both Storm and Kat's branches of the team in attendance. Though both used the name X-Factor, the two groups were separate in both membership and core mission. While Storm's group shouldered the traditional X-Men role of underground heroes fighting both rogue mutants and threats against mutants, Kat's group retained their wartime mission of finding, assisting, and rescuing troubled mutants. They continued to utilize the original Blackbird plane, with Kat acting as pilot, relying on the Blackbird's speed and stealth to avoid detection while Illyana Rasputin used her teleportation abilities to send and pick up an "extraction team" consisting of Rachel Grey and two twin girls who both oddly enough seemed to answer to the name Feral. As Kat explained, the two were products of a project to create mass-produced assassins using genetic samples from Wolverine and the cybernetic technologies that had transformed Lady Deathstrike. Unlike Wolverine, their muscles and organs were armored and at least partly mechanical and they had other cybernetic enhancements to the point they were something akin to tiny Terminators, though also unlike Wolverine their metal parts were not made of Adamantium but instead a form of organic titanium similar to but lighter than the organic steel of Storm's former teammate Colossus. Perhaps most unusually, they maintained a constant and comprehensive wireless link that had they'd had all their lives and this rendered them effectively two halves of the same person. As Jessica watched them, she could tell that this was indeed the case as there was nothing the pair did that wasn't coordinated together, using their two bodies as one the same way a single person might use two hands. Jessica found them both fascinating and unnerving to watch, but she also couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to have them.
Storm's group was far more familiar to her, having been close to them from the very beginning of her superhero career. It had been they who set her up in San Francisco, where they were temporarily located at the time, and got her started as a private detective. Carol's history with them was almost as long and strong. Storm, Jean, and Wolverine were very well known to them both, dating back to the very beginnings of their friendship with the group, while Psylocke and Dazzler had been with the group nearly as long and were well known to Carol and Jessica as well. That left the redheaded mutant Firestar, who was an Avenger at one point and thus known to them as well, Jane Danvers aka Warbird whom Jessica was very much looking forward to making a play on --who wouldn't want two of their lover at once?-- and an unknown man with light blue skin and long braided blue-black hair. He was topless, and it quickly became apparent why when Jessica saw his back and the blue-black metal pods folded there that seemed to be attached directly to his shoulder blades.
He was quite attractive despite his inhuman appearance, with perfect, almost feline features and piercing blue eyes, and a trim athletic build with tightly packed muscles on a long, lean frame. He looked almost like a Na'vi, in fact, and Carol agreed that though he was no Thor he wasn't at all unwantable, and Jessica curiously asked about him only to be surprised by the revelation that he was "part of" Warren Worthington, the founding X-Men member Angel.
"I can explain that one", Illyana had said, and the story began.
As it turned out, this wasn't the first time he'd looked like that, having been transformed into the Horseman of Apocalypse called Death following a severe injury at the hands of the Marauders and a subsequent attempted suicide. Some time later his powers became unstable, molting through various forms and manifestations of his powerset seemingly at random, expressing a variety of unused genetic coding that Apocalypse had experimented with before settling on the final blue-skinned, razor winged form that he kept for so long. Those other templates had remained in Warren's genome though, unexpressed but still there like hidden code "remmed out" of a computer program. This situation had come to a head during a mission to rescue Illyana from Limbo, where she had been imprisoned for a long time while presumed dead on Earth. During the final battle of that mission, Warren had managed to claim the Soulsword which carried with it the power and mantle of Sorcerer Supreme of the Limbo dimension and near omnipotent power there. Among the things he did with that power before relinquishing it to return them home was to restore and rebalance Wolverine's abilities which had been damaged in a battle with Magneto, and also to address his own unstable powerset. It turned out to be more than his body that had conflicting aspects, though, as ultimately Warren had chosen to split himself into two beings. The main incarnation was an idealized self which eventually took the name Gabriel and possessed a perfect and superhumanly enhanced physique and the ability to manifest wings and weapons from solid flame. This incarnation was beautiful, blonde, highly cultured and sociable, and also very very gay. The other incarnation retained the name Warren and was largely similar to Apocalypse's creation, though with a few enhancements that Apocalypse had been unable to finish in time including a more stealth-appropriate color scheme in shades of blue and a subcutaneous armor weave consisting of the same organic metal as his wings. This incarnation was quiet, brooding, and introspective, and also served as a repository for the main incarnation's unwanted orientation towards women. Since the Gabriel half had kept the name Archangel for himself, Warren chose the new name Nighthawk for himself. He had used an empty penthouse in the LA area as his "aerie" and terrorized the criminal element of his city as a deadly vigilante until Storm contacted to be a part of her new X-Factor group, and he responded to her invitation with gratitude for being wanted.
And to Jessica's mild surprise, he was indeed wanted by her though she rationalized this as newly positive experiences with men of late and the highly sexually-charged atmosphere of the room. She was unaware that Psylocke's subconscious mental projection of her own lust had Jessica feeling not only Psylocke's attraction for the blue mutant but also that of others in the room. Psylocke was picking up feelings from around her and rebroadcasting them, a rather sloppy thing for a telepath to do but then she was at least half drunk and under the influence of Jessica's pheremone emissions that the raven-haired lovely was putting out in her own alcohol-lubricated state of loosened inhibitions. Between the two of them, the stage was set for the party to take a turn for the decidedly intimate.
Among them all, it was Storm who noticed this and raised an objection to it. She suggested they might be well advised to break off into partner groups to "handle private business in private, lest things get out of hand here and lead to later regrets". Jean, to everyone's surprise, had a different suggestion, proposing instead that those who wished to go could go, and those wished to stay and play could do so as well. After all, it wasn't as if the space they were using was a vital one that would be missed if a group of them decided to use it for an "intimate encounter party" as she put it. Storm agreed, and then asked if anyone wished to leave, standing up. It was at that point that Kat chose to ask a question.
"Umm, what about me and Logan? If we both stay, what happens between us? We're mentor and student..."
Logan simply shrugged, and replied. "What about us, kiddo? Yer legal now, a full grown woman, so you tell me what happens between us. If ya want me, say the word and ya won't have to ask me twice. If you want me to stay on the other side of the room from ya, you got that too and I won't even look at ya wrong. It's up to you. Ta me, it ain't up to the man to make the decision on if he will or won't touch a woman. That's her decision and hers alone."
Jessica smiled hearing this, admiring Logan's words as he displayed his honorable side, and Kat replied. "Alright... then how about you give me some space while I think it over? If I decide I'm ready and willing for you, I'll let you know."
He agreed without hesitation, and then Storm nodded and asked again. "Anyone else with questions or objections?" No one said anything. "Anyone want to go, before this begins?" Again, none replied or made to move.
"Very well, then, it's settled." she said with a smile, and sat back down.
Jessica smiled brightly, and glanced to Carol whose grin of eager anticipation was a clear indication of her feelings on the matter. This was going to be one hell of a night.
-----
Next: Putting the X in Sex
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