Fanfiction Archive

Madripoor was drowsy with heat in the sultry summer afternoon, heavy thunderheads hanging low over the island city as if holding hostage the rain’s relief of the choking humidity. Mystique’s office, where she currently reigned supreme over it all at the top floor of the towering building that overlooked the center of high town, all glass and steel, was blissfully air conditioned.

Or rather, it was supposed to be. It seemed that even the ruler of Madripoor had to deal with setbacks now and then. The A/C was out in the whole building, and neither threats nor promises, nor a truck full of cash were enough yet to get someone capable of fixing the problem.

It was one of those tricky problems to have. The sort of problem where shapeshifting didn’t offer an easy solution to the sticky heat that permeated the office and weighed heavily on her shoulders as she tapped her pen against a half-finished ‘request’ for some irritating upstart’s ‘termination’ down in Low town.

It’d been half finished for an hour. It wasn’t even a particularly complex document, but here it stood, unfinished as Mystique fanned herself with flattened fingers and an irritated frown upon her cerulean face.

“I hate this.” she murmured, her brow furrowed. “My empire for a decent repair man.”

The office door slammed open. It was an automatic sliding door. It wasn’t supposed to slam. How did someone even manage to slam it?

“Its fucking HOT, Raven,” Victor growled miserably, slumping in the doorframe, his big, clawed hand holding down the door in the slot where it was miserably trying to close itself. “Why’s it so fucking hot?”

The enormous catlike man was shirtless, sweat glowing on his arms and beading on his hairy chest. His long, wild hair was pinned up in a ‘man bun’– perhaps in an effort to at least get it off his neck.

“Yes, Victor. It’s hot. Is there anything else obvious that you’d like to point out?” The heat always did make her irritable. If the location wasn’t prime material for her dream of a mutant utopia, she’d much rather have been somewhere much further north…but…

Such is life.

She shifted, letting her long hair shift and crowl until it was a far shorter, wavy hairstyle that didn’t quite reach her neck. She only hoped it’d help the sticky, unpleasant feeling of her skin in this oppressive heat. She was half tempted to turn her outer body into metal like that damnable X-man Piotr Rasputin…not that it’d really help.

“I feel like I’m going to melt into a damned puddle at this rate.”

Victor slunk over, and collapsed himself face down right on top of her desk, pushing aside paperwork and desk toys. His eyes rolled up to look at her, with his face down, his chin cradled in his crossed arms.

“Ya could,” he grumbled. “Sounds sticky though. Heh. Could lick you right up.”

Raven looked down at him with narrowed eyes, her mouth twisted in an incredulous half smirk as she sat framed by the massive portrait of her and her late wife, Irene.

“Victor. I want you to think about what just came out of your mouth.” She drawled “and tell me why that’s an  fucking odd thing to say.”

He rolled over onto his back in a single, lurching and feline motion, looking up at her. “Odd ‘cause most people can’t turn into fuckin’ puddles, Mysty?” he offered with a bleary looking smirk One of his fangs poked out over his lip.

“Neither can I for very long,” she countered. “Liquifying your organs takes a fucking toll on the body that I’m not too keen on repeating anytime soon.”

She ran her hand through her already sweaty hair, blinking away the beads that had fallen near her eyes in the oppressive heat. “Harder still when someone’s gone and decided to try the Cannibal’s Liquid Diet on what is probably my liquified heart or spine.”

She groaned “and you know what? This whole conversation’s just stupid . This is what Madripoor’s heat DOES to people.”

Victor thought about that for a moment, and finally nodded with a grunt.

“You ain’t wrong about that,” he said. “So hot I feel like I been drugged. And not exactly the fun kinda drugged. It’s hotter’n blood in here, Myst. Could bathe in it to cool the fuck off.”

Mystique glanced up at him with a thin smirk. “If you’re thinking of cutting loose on the new ‘employees’, don’t. I need them for a job coming up…there’s some upstart down Low who thinks he can encroach on our territory. I need them to take him out.”

He growled, and it turned into a groan as he bonked the back of his head against her desk in frustration. “I gotta do somethin’ to cool off,” he grumbled. “You wanna take out this upstart shit ourselves? Maybe the fucker has A/C.”

She reached out and rustled his slightly sweat-damped hair like one would pet the family cat, her eyes lidded in thought “…it has been a while since we got to do anything ourselves.” she mused .

“And there is a certain charm in doing a job with your own two hands.”

He wrapped his big, definitely sweaty arms around her shoulders, his claws digging just slightly into her back as he looked up at her. “You’re so damned sexy when you got blood on your hands, babe.”

Mystique looked up at him with lidded eyes. It was too hot. It was heavy and oppressive and the big, hairy bastard’s draping arms only made the heat all the more present around them.

But still, it brought a sly smile to her face as he spoke. She leaned in, nose to nose with him “I know you and blood, Victor.”

She winked “so let’s go spill a little and see if this bastard’s got an AC unit and a decent bed, hm?”

“I’ll take the A/C over the bed anyway,” he growled. “Floor’ll be cooler.”

000

It was, ironically enough, very slightly cooler outside the building on the streets of Madripoor, even with the throngs of bodies and the stench of car exhaust. Maybe it was just because they were moving enough for there to be some air flow.

Victor hadn’t bothered to put on a shirt, shouldering his way through the street like the half-naked barbarian he often seemed like, necklace of teeth bouncing on his bare chest. He sniffed the air, looking up at the storm clouds that still loomed, heavy, and withholding.

Mystique had shapeshifted for the occasion covering up her deep blue skin and crimson hair with the form and shape of a dark haired woman with deeply tanned skin and keen grey eyes. She wore loose, flowing clothes from the filmy white blouse to the checker patterned skirt around her otherwise bare legs.

She walked close to him, large round sunglasses with a look to them two decades out of date, balanced on her nose and glinted in the light from under a large white sunhat.

All of which, as always…was just more Mystique, shifted into the proper form and shape.

She stood as a sharp contrast to her partner and his…eye catching appearance.

“Kinda jealous how you can go naked anywhere ya please,” Victor chuckled in a low voice. “I try that I’ll spend more time gettin’ stared at than gettin’ where I’m going.”

“One of the many perks of being a metamorph, darling.” Mystique purred, brushing her dark hair off her shoulder. “I’d say try it anyway but I fear you’d be a distraction to even me.”

“Might get goin’ right here in the street,” he snickered, leering at her, and bumping her shoulder with his arm. “And forget all about mercing the bastard you got us after.”

Mystique snorted, bumping him back with a shake of her head. “Really, Victor.” She purred “as if you’d ever forget the thrill of a hunt.”

“Ahhhh, you might be able to wear me out enough– eventually.” He grinned rather nastily. “But I’d rather we stick to the foreplay. A good killing really loosens me up. Gets me all hot and bothered– not that we really need hot right now…”

With a shake of her head , she looked out over the crowded streets beyond. “No, if anything we could use some cooling off. If we didn’t have work to do, I’d be tempted to say ‘let’s hit the beach’.”

“Gonna have to wash the blood off eventually.”

Mystique’s smile turned just the slightest bit cruel as her eyes narrowed “and with one less…pretender for the throne…running about, we won’t have to worry about taking a little down time to take a dip. Yes. I think I like this plan.”

The Low Town thug who was getting too big for his britches was holed up in a big, ugly block of an apartment complex, around which a rough perimeter of plank wall and barbed wire had been erected. The streets were quiet for nearly a block away– the locals who hadn’t already fallen in with the delusional little crime boss knew a dead man when they saw one.

Sabretooth sniffed the air as they came into view of the building, and smirked.

“Goin’ for that post-apocalyptic look, ain’t he?”

“That he is.” Mystique snorted, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared up at the barbed wire with a sort of amusement. “You think he’s one of those types who thinks you can be a crime boss with only leather, spikes and bad attitude?”

“If he is, he’s in for an even ruder surprise than I was thinking,” Sabretooth sneered. “Bet you his thugs are gonna come after us any second.” His expression took on a cast of eager cruelty, and his claws grew slightly longer as he extended them the rest of the way.

Mystique opened the small pocket she’d hidden in her left forearm, and used it to slide a long knife into her hands with a thin smile.

“He’s getting a rude surprise anyway.”

“Uhuh,” Sabretooth grinned. He watched as figures in a mishmash of body armor and biker leathers swarmed out the door of the apartment complex and came toward the gate. Some of them had automatic weapons, some of them chains and tire irons. Clearly, a class was being run.

“You’d think they’d have a little self respect and properly arm up.” Mystique spun the knife in her hand, and took off her wide brimmed hat with a smile. “But, clearly we’re dealing with beginners here.”

“Ain’t gonna live to be an old hand,” Victor chuckled meanly as the wannabe forces assembled. “Think he’s gonna shoot first or–”

“Hey listen up! This territory belongs to Nitro Blaster! So get the hell out or you’re gonna get outed!”

“Nitro Blaster?” Raven drawled, looking the punk firmly in the eyes. “Really? Is that the best your boss can do? Do you idiots have any idea who we are?”

Sabretooth burst out laughing. “Oh this is gonna be good.”

Neither of them could see the speaker’s expression beneath the body armor mask he wore, but his body language said everything. Not the reaction he was hoping for.

The gate opened, and the violence began.

The guys with guns stayed behind the fence, one crouched low, and one standing high on a couple of boxes, as they started to take pot shots at Mystique and Sabretooth. Their aim was terrible; at least for the moment. They were probably trying not to hit their own men as the melee attackers leapt into the fray, coming at them.

“Get ‘em while they’re hot, Mysty!” Sabretooth growled as he launched himself bodily into the oncoming attackers.

Mystique snorted under her breath, as she fished a pistol out from a pocket under her ribcage. Bullets pinged off of the ground beside her as she leapt gracefully to the side and stretched her arm with effort enough to plunge her knife into the shoulder of one of their many attackers.

“We’re all hot right about now, Sabie. I just want to get this over with so we can cool off. ”

She whipped her gun around and fired, the bullet sending the contents of one of Nitro Blaster’s goons’ skull splattering messily across the lowtown house’s ramshackle siding.

It glittered, crimson red and dripping as the man slumped, and one stream of heavy ammunition came to a faltering end as the gun left his twitching fingers.

“But you know what?” she purred. “Why don’t we take a bet? See who’s got the biggest….Kill count.”

She twisted out of the way of a punch, and grabbed the attacking punk’s arm.

Sabretooth laughed: a raucous,  guttural and sharp sound from his chest. He was peppered with bullets as he grabbed one of the oncoming goons by the shoulders and ripped his arms off. His claws dug into flesh even as the man sunk a knife in him. Sabretooth gripped hard and wrenched the limbs out of their sockets. Muscle stretching, and tearing as the man screamed and jerked. Fountains of blood from the stumps of his shoulders.

Sabretooth dropped the man, and turned on another, slamming the ripped off arms against the head of one of the other thugs in a blow that stunned as much from its psychotic brutality as its punishing strength.

“Body count, Raven? You wanna lose that badly?”

Mystique twisted, flipping the punk over her shoulder, and into the line of fire from one of his comrades as the man tried to get a bead on her. Bullets shredded through him as droplets of blood splattered against her tanned, grinning face…just before she let herself shift back to her natural, blue self.

She wore little more than a few strips of cloth that maintained the smallest plausible deniability of ‘decency’, and her trademark belt of skulls and devil may care grin up on her face as she flung her knife into the leg of a man before he could slam his nail-spiked bat into her side, turning to kick it deeper…all the way to the bone…with her heel.

“Oh, Sabie,” she purred. “You wound me. Remember Japan? You, me, some nerve toxin…disposable ninjas…Logan…my automatic SMGs? You aren’t the only one with a bloodthirsty streak.”

“Alright then, Mysty. Yer on!” He grinned even more horribly before, if such a thing was possible, and ran straight into the goon charging him like a bull in a game of chicken. He slammed him so hard bodily up against a nearby wall that he felt the man’s bones cracking and splintering under him as he screamed. And then someone ran into him from behind and started stabbing him, blood running down his bare back as his assailant sliced him up.

Sabretooth roared in defiance and pain, letting the pasted one between him and the wall drop as he reached back, trying to grapple the clown behind him with his sharp claws.

“Tch” Mystique tutted through her teeth as grabbed the nail bat from her opponent’s limp hand, and hurled it as hard as she could at the grappler’s back. It struck with a hollow **thunk** and a spray of crimson from several nail-induced puncture wounds as it jammed it’s way into his back.

Unfortunately, the distraction was enough for another goon to run up behind her and stab a knife through her side.

“Gah!! D-damn it.” she hissed under her breath. “Good thing my kidneys aren’t there right now or I’d be having a real problem…”

“What?” her assailant responded in genuine confusion.

Mystique’s attack had given Sabretooth an opening, and he dug his claws into his grappler, throwing him to the ground and slashing his throat and face angrily, growling and snarling as he shredded flesh into a pool of blood. Looking up like a dog snapping to attention he saw Mystique get stabbed, and barreled almost on all fours toward her, grabbing her attacker by the throat.

“Oh no ya don’t,” he snarled, breaking the man’s neck.

It was butchery and carnage around them. The last couple of goons were eying a retreat, when suddenly the door of the fortified apartment slammed open again, and a costume figure stomped out of it.

“Thank you, darling.” Mystique purred “Who says chivalry isn’t dead?”

She pulled the knife from her side, and flicked the specs of her own blood from it’s blade as she glanced up at the costumed figure. “And here comes the big man himself. Blastman, right? Something stupid like that.”

“Pretty sure it was Ass Blaster,” Sabretooth snickered. He licked some of the drying blood off of his claws and hand, as the many knife wounds on him closed, and his body pushed the bullets out of his flesh. The blood remained, slick on his bare chest and starting to mat his hair.

The figure was in a black and gold full body costume, with large gauntlets that covered everything from his shoulders down, except the bare palms of his hands which he raised toward the pair of them.

“Madripoor’s mine!” he screeched. “So why don’t you take your dog and get the fuck off the island you blue bitch!”

“Oh, he’s funny,” Sabretooth smirked.

“A real laugh a minute.” Mystique purred, tossing the knife in her hand. “This should be a real blast. ”