Warning!!: This story contains a wee bit of harsh
language, and some violence in a few forms, including the aftermath of sexual
violence!(Ayeyey!)
Disclaimer: All of those wonderful characters we’ve seen in various comic books presented by Stan Lee, belong to that exceedingly delightful company, MARVEL COMICS, I don’t get any money for writing these, so be kind. Oh, all the other characters are mine!! Mine! You can’t have them!!(Unless you ask reaaaallly nicely!
“This is too wrong!” Raven said under her breath. She and Storm had been separated from the Cajun, who she seemed to rub the wrong way some how. It was odd, he had the beginnings of the Raven clan in his eyes, could he be some descendant of the ancients that became lost on this world? Wolverine was stuck with him as well. The object of both their cares was standing beside herself. Storm didn’t quite know what to make of Raven yet, even though they had been fighting together for three weeks now. How had they gotten stuck in the rift without Raven’s knowing about it was a mystery, but here they were, stuck in a semi-permanent pocket of the ethereal plane. Not even her dark powers were going to be able to get them out of this.
“How exactly did this happen Raven?” Storm asked, her even voice washing over the ghostly plane like a soothing rain.
“Well, In layman’s terms, we took a wrong turn at Broadway and 157th.”
“A wrong turn into what appears to be the psychic plane?” She asked after looking around her. A few translucent birds flew past them.
“No, not the psychic plane, an Ethereal plane. Wew! Watch out for dragons and such.” She broke of as a winged serpent came down from the sky above them. It had glorious glittering scales, and it glittered a rainbow of colours, though its underlying colour was black. Black? Weren’t they usually supposed to be in swamps?
“Ahh, I see you have arrived safely!” It spoke in tremulous tones.
“An elemental and one of the Raven-Kin. Do not be frightened young ones, you are not where you think you are though!”
“Who’re you calling young? I’ll have you know I’m over three hundred!” Raven said stubbornly, her pointed chin raising in challenge to the dragon. Ororo looked over at her companion, would have been worried, but she was too much in awe of the almost celestial creature.
“So I am mistaken. You are old beyond your years young Raven. If that is the name you choose to go by these days.” It seemed to enjoy getting some sort of reaction out of the tall humanoid. She sensed this, and clammed up.
“If we are not on the Ethereal plane, where are we? And what is your name?”
“I am ...” He mad a series of huffs and finally a puff of glittering fire came from his mouth. “But since humanoids generally find it hard to pronounce, you may call me Hank.” Ororo couldn’t help but let out a gentle chuckle at the production.
“Well, Hank, what made you come to see us?”
“It is my job to allow newcomers become used to their new surroundings.”
“And these surroundings would be?” Ororo couldn’t help but hold her breath while they all started to walk in anticipation of his answer.
“Arboreum, the seventh level of Heaven.” It stared at the darker of the two as at this point Raven fell to the ‘ground’ in a dead faint. Ororo didn’t notice this occurrence right away however, she was too busy staring slack jawed at their new companion.
“So...you...mean...we-are-dead?” Ororo seemed to have trouble forming coherent words. The beautiful dragon-Hank, seemed to nod.
“I would suppose that you were. Raven! Get up girl. This is no time for a fit of the vapours.” The dragon said, seeming to smirk. Ororo leaned over her companion, who seemed to be conscious, as evidenced by a single red eye poking up from her dark face.
“I’m dead? After all that, all the things I saw? I don’t get to experience-um, well, ok, I guess we deal with it. If we’re dead, how did I get here?” She looked down, to the forests that were quickly becoming visible in the translucent fog. She recognized that pattern, she had seen it in a thousand dreams.
“Tala!”
“Tala?” Ororo asked, puzzled at the until now, grim companion. She was most animated.
“The home of my dreams! Didn’t you ever dream of a place such as this? Trees as far as the eye can see, each one their own being! In our clan’s history, the first Raven-kin wrote of this place in her diary. It is this exact picture everyone in our family dreams of in their youth.” Ororo found her joy infectious, and grinned at the woman. “Indeed. I believe all I have ever wanted was to roam free in these lands. Though I do feel that something is missing...” She said, as she noticed her friend jump up in the air, and come down, swiftly changing into a rather large raven. Her cries of joy were turned to a series of squaks.
“Hank. I can feel the great Goddess all around us. Did you know her in past times?”
“Raven? No. Though I have seen her kind here. Not usually with her histories, please go play! You’ve both earned it!”
It was not for some time that Raven turned back to her humanoid form, she and Ororo had been swirling around the skies for hours, when finally, exhausted, they found a rather strong tree to perch on. Raven’s brow was furrowed. “Well, since we’re...dead, I guess I can tell you something. I’m not always Raven, Storm. I hope you can trust me enough to understand that I have-had-responsibilities that didn’t allow me to always act on the up and up.” Her form changed to that of Laura Hunter. Ororo smiled at her.
“Well, we all have our little secrets. I was a thief at one point of my life. But that is not the reason you were so surprised to end up-here.”
“I, well, its hard to explain really. You see, my family, we come from a world, that has been swept up in wars for more centuries than your civilization has existed. Not just the odd war, or even several one after the other. Its basically been one war.” She bowed her head.
“Raven-Kin, that is our clan name. We rule one third of the planet. At one point, it was believed that my parents had been killed. As the oldest of my brothers and sisters, it fell upon me to rule. But I did not do it fairly. I-I was cursed with a bloodlust for those who I thought were my parent’s killers. We had all seen so much bloodshed already, I suppose I had become innured to it. I made it my personal mission to go out and slaughter as many of the Drakin, that was the name of our primary enemies, as I could find. There was one time...the last one-I-.” She stopped, shuddering. Ororo put her hand over the woman’s shoulder, trying to comfort her.
“Ororo! I killed a child!” A gasp was Ororo’s only comment.
“I was despicable. I know. We were sacking a village, it was near the Drakin capitol, and some of the guards had made it to us, we were fighting our way through it, my horse reared up, and I heard this horrible crunching sound, to which I immediately jumped down, because I feared it was my horse being run through, there was after all a group of guards around us. It was then that I saw a broken body by one of the Drakin. He must have been pushed into my horse while he was fleeing the village. And I killed him. I new that I couldn’t be around them. I used my dark powers to crush the life from their bodies, and led my forces back to our palaces.” Laura Hunter started crying softly. Hank flew up beside them.
“What she has forgotten to mention that after that day, she put her self into exile, though she had one of the best military minds on the planet. She came to earth a short while ago. And has been fighting crimes ever since.”
“Laura, you are not the only one to kill. I myself have killed. More than once in fact. Though one of the times I didn’t succeed all the way, I thought I had killed her. A young girl, a Morlock, was threatening the city with a bomb that she had strapped to her heart. So-I-pulled it out!” Ororo’s eyes fluttered closed, and she shuddered. Laura suddenly looked up at Hank, and started laughing.
“Look at us! We must have done something right. Right? I mean we’re in the place of our dreams.” Ororo looked at her companion, her blue eyes shining.
“I suppose that is true!” And they started giggling.
“Self-pity definitely doesn’t suit us!”
They went on through the days playing and relating tales of their youth, though their memories were strangely absent when connecting the last two years of their lives. They both brought it up at one point, but then discarded the vague feelings of unease they found. Hank seemed to meld into the background, they didn’t seem to need him after the first hour or so. It was after, Ororo seemed to think they had been there a week, though both had lost count, that they both started wondering how they’d met, and how they’d died.
“Ororo, how did we meet? There doesn’t seem to be anyone else around here!” Laura asked suddenly.
“More importantly Laura, how did we die?” The landscape started to shift a little, the trees swaying as if programming were incorrect.
“Programming?? Ororo! Could this be-,”
“A trap!!” Storm cried out, changing into her battle uniform. She kept the X insignia on it still, because Raven had told them all that Section 13 was not something she wanted advertised. Laura turned back into her Raven form, complete with black clothing. The surroundings became black for a moment and flared back to light. A strange white room, with beds, obviously ones that the two women had been sleeping in, crumpled sideways on the floor. A few bolts of energy entered the room, blazing a path for a huge white being, crackling with what both women could sense was electrical energy. It came screeching to a halt, as Storm’s eyes became flashing pools of colourless fire. Raven could see, through the special spectrum she was able to see all forms of energy through, her teammate sucking the electrical energy into herself, leaving a wan figure, still ready to fight through any means necessary. Raven could sense the bloom of energy a split second before Storm, and she jumped towards the being, allowing her dark powers move before her, enveloping the being so that all but its head was encased in a frightening blackness. The strange woman would have engulfed them all in flame if Raven had allowed her to use her arms.
“We make a pretty good team Windrider.” Raven said quietly. Storm heard her, and replied
“Not only that, we seem be able to bond quickly.” Ororo spoke of the unspoken trust that had materialized instantly between the two women immediately after coming out of the dream world.
“Now the only questions can be answered by this lone person. You. What is your name?” Raven asked. After a few moments of silence, the woman glared even more fiercely at the two. Raven decided to apply some of her interrogative knowledge to the situation, and applied more pressure with her dark powers to the woman’s neck. Her pale yellow eyes seemed to bulge slightly. “Speak!” Raven commanded, in a quiet, yet forceful voice. After a few moments of pressure, she loosened her hold on the mutant, and allowed her to breath.
“Shockwave. I’m called Shockwave!” She said, as if out of breath.
“Where are we, and how did we get here?” This time Raven didn’t have to apply any pressure to get Shockwave to answer.
“A man, with powers much like yours, brought you here to the lab. He, said for me to keep you as were until he returned. I don’t know where he went, or what his name was, but I do know that he’s involved somehow with this new pack of the FOH, that doesn’t mind working with a select few of mutants to further their goals. He left a few hours ago to go into the west end of the city.”
“City? What city are we in??” Raven ground out, a strange look, akin to panic entered her alien red eyes. Storm strained her energy sensing abilities to see if the same vague power signature that Raven had was anywhere near.
“We’re in Port Columbia. Down below the city morgue.” A plan was forming in Raven’s head, Storm certainly could see that.
“You will be transported to a holding cell in the Target headquarters. Explain it all to them.” With that sentence, the woman was gone.
“Storm, I know that you are claustrophobic, but please, if I use my powers to gate us to the west end, we can maybe stop what I think is going to happen.”
“Lets do it!” Storm said after a moment’s hesitation. A slight hiss was the only response Raven could hear from Storm after they were swept up into a pool of darkness, that opened up onto what Storm could only speculate was a street on the tip of the west end of the city.
“We’re looking for a young woman, about seventeen, with long dark red hair and dark purple eyes. Her name is Selina. Please, I think we may be too late!” Raven cried out into the dark night. They began flying, both their eagle eyes surveying poor end of town. Finally they both heard a small whimper, and recognized the source. Flying down to see a tall, if not young woman, lying in her own blood, a tall sandy haired man trying to staunch the flow. Her pants had been torn down the center, and more than blood was oozing out of that area. She recognized the man as the head of Target’s Alien Affairs division. “Sam! Selina!” Was all Raven could say She knelt down to her young friend, who was teetering on the brink of consciousness. She was covered in holes and scratches and cuts. Storm tried to allow a cushion of air raise her off of the cold tarmac and made the air warm so as to take any chill off her bones, at the same time trying to alternate between freezing temperatures to stop the blood flow of her major wounds. Raven raised the girl’s head and set it gently on her lap, brushing a few strands of hair away from Selina’s face.
“Selina, you’ll be ok! Just hang in there until the meds get here! Who did this to you? Was it a normal??” She asked quietly, her face contorted with rage.
“They...were all normals...Please, I’m eighteen last week, I want to join...”
“Hush now.” Raven started crying, and Storm could tell the girl had sent her a telepathic message.
“We’ll bring the culprits to justice! I swear it little one!” A few moments later, a large black armoured truck loomed down the road, and several strangely dressed men and women, holding a rather high-tech looking stretcher, with several panels made of what looked like metal, with various screens built into them. They, with the aid of the two women’s powers, set her gently into the thing, and carried her off to the truck. Storm didn’t have time to ask her next question before it was answered.
“They’ll be bringing her to the protected Target hospital. She’ll be safe there. Storm, whoever had us, set a bunch of normals on her. They beat her, all of them, and they raped her! The Bastards all raped her!” Raven’s voice was full of anguish, she knew Storm had narrowly avoided the pain of such an experience.
“I assume that she is the telepath we’ll be gaining?”
“Yes. She’s very talented, but not as skilled yet as Professor Xavier was, nor as much as Jean Grey-Summers is.”
“There will be plenty of time to train her through this ordeal, I fear. Apparently we’ve been gone for just under five days.”
“Boy, time really flies when your having fun doesn’t it?”
“Indeed. The X-Men have reached me via Cerebro, and I told Jean to contact Gambit and Wolverine and tell them where we were.” Storm looked up at the star-lit night sky. This area of town was so dark, that they were all clearly visible to the naked eye. How beautiful it all was. The air in what she had seen so far as a beautiful city, was rife with unease. But all seemed quiet tonight. Only the lone predators were out tonight, as everyone in this area of the country had been fighting intensively while they had been ‘out’.
“One more trip and we can be at the X-Men’s headquarters, and out for a few hours.” Raven said, her voice suddenly weary and aged. Storm nodded and glanced at the sky once more, before they found themselves in the warm sitting room, where all the present X-Men, and Gambit and Wolverine stood waiting for them.
“Where you been filles?” Was Gambit’s greeting. Silence was the name of the game between Wolverine and Storm, they just stood in a long embrace, ignoring the wonder-filled expressions on all the other’s faces save Raven, who was smirking strangely.
“Remy, have you been dead lately...?” She started out as the other two team mates broke off the embrace.
End of Storm and the Raven
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