"We Are The Law" A Dredd AU inspired be Elsian
Below you will find my entry for the X-Men Reverse Big Bang.
Inspired by the artwork of the lovely, crazy talented elsian. LOOK AT THIS ART GUYS!
It’s all crumbling. The earth is scorched; a desolate, acrid wasteland stretches out for miles. It’s like standing on the edge of the horizon; weeping death and wilted promise as far as the eye can see.
The world is a ruined canvas, an irradiated hell hole. There is nothing left here. Nothing but miles of concrete jungle. Miles of carbon-copy city blocks. Miles of filth and poverty.
Outside the walls, outside the protection they afford, is death incarnate. But inside the walls, inside the safe haven of Mega City One… Well, that’s really no better.
***
“Judge Lehnsherr. Report to my office. At once.”
The voice of the Chief Judge rasps over his comm. Her tone is always stern, always business. There is no time for anything else here. They are justice. They are what separate the good from the bad.
Lehnsherr strides with purpose down the crowded corridor. Around him countless other Judges push through the press of bodies, call over the din. The Hall of Justice is a circus. Punishment gets doled out in all three rings. It can be exhausting and even as it wears on your last nerve, you solider on. Because this is all there is.
Judge MacTaggert leans against her desk. Her mousy brown hair is swept back in a tight bun. The harsh angles of her face seem more pronounced, her cheekbones sharper in the yellowed light. Long, slender fingers drum impatiently against a stack of papers. Her delicate pink bow of a mouth is twisted into something close to a scowl. It makes the corners of her eyes turn down. Her whole expression screams of a weariness that is bone deep. It speaks of a fatigue unwilling to lessen with rest or time. Moira MacTagget has seen things that she cannot unsee. She has done things that will stain her deceptively girlish hands for the remainder of her days.
They all have.
Lehnsherr’s movements are exact, even in the confines of the small office. Like MacTaggert, he lives this. He breathes it in, filling both lungs to bursting. This is who he is and all he knows, because beyond the walls of Mega City, there is literally nothing.
MacTagget meets his eyes and smiles a smile that is devoid of any fondness, humor, or glee. It is the robotic strain of lips sliding over saliva slicked teeth. It is an antiquated greeting that once meant something. It is an automatic response that will soon fade away into the darkness of time and bleakness of change. Smiles are the new appendix. We’ve no use for them.
“You wanted to see me?”
“Lehnsherr. Take a seat,” she motions to a chair, but he doesn’t budge. Neither does she. They stand facing each other in the cramped gray space. “I’ve got something for you.”
MacTaggert moves from her station beside the heavy aluminum desk. Her hips sway minutely as she traverses the distance separating her from the two-way mirror that comprises the entirety of the far wall.
She stands off to the right side, arm bent slightly, as if presenting a caged animal for perusal.
Lehnsherr can see, even from this distance, a man tucked in one corner of the room. His posture is tentative, but there is a confidence pulsing just under the surface. The man in the glass box is clad in the hard leather shell of a Judge’s uniform. But he wears no helmet. Lehnsherr never removes his headgear. He is a slave to protocol, to procedure. To anonymity. The helmet offers protection in every sense of the word. And here this boy sits without it. Lehnsherr doesn’t like him already.
“What’s this?”
“This is your new partner.”
Lehnsherr stiffens. He will not question his superior, but he will not hide his displeasure. “Why are you handing me this rookie?” he says without malice or bite. He simply wants to know why MacTaggert would conjure up this plan and present it as a viable course of action.
Lehnsherr works alone.
MacTaggert lets a sigh escape her constricted throat. It is tight and controlled in its resigned frustration, but, knowing what he does about Moira, Lehnsherr is sure she is displeased that even a small indicator of weakness has been allowed to slip through the cracks. MacTaggert is wound tight. Lehsnherr is wound tighter.
Lehnsherr is a ticking time bomb that may never go off. His composed volatility is disconcerting. It is part of the reason he works alone.
“This rookie, Lehnsherr, is something of a special case.”
Lehnsherr’s face is obscured by the helmet, but his mouth turns down. He has no interest in “special cases.”
The boy-and he is a boy, because the person nervously twining his fingers together, chewing on his lower lip, appears to be barely out of his teens-glances up. His sharp, icy eyes seem to find Lehnsherr, even through the glass. On the fresh-faced rookie’s side, there is only a frigid reflective surface, yet the precision of his gaze is unmistakable.
MacTaggert continues even as the eyes beyond the mirror bore into his own. “This is Charles Xavier. He failed out of The Academy.” She pauses allowing Lehnsherr to acknowledge the information in the form of a displeased grunt.
“So what’s he doing here?”
“It was only by three points,” she offers in lieu of an actual explanation.
“Failure is failure. No matter what the degree.” With eyes still trained on the pale figure sequestered in the harshly lit room, Lehsnherr asks the obvious question.
“What makes this a special case?”
“Xavier is a mutant.” Lehnsherr doesn’t flinch. “In fact, he’s the most powerful telepath we’ve ever seen. He scores off the charts and exhibits a control and strength rarely, if ever, seen in a mutation of this type.” MacTaggert pauses, but the man beside her remains silent. “In short, he’s special. And we want him.”
“But his final Academy score was failing.”
“By three points,” she corrects.
“Incompetence and inability isn’t measured in points.”
Another sigh threatens to shoot out from between MacTaggert’s thinned lips, but she holds it in, shoves in back down her throat, pushes it into her gut, and leaves it to roil and churn with the rest of the day’s stresses. “You know full well scores and exams don’t necessarily translate to real world situations. And this isn’t a discussion, Lehnsherr. I’m not asking you to take the rookie out-I’m telling you to meet your new partner.”
***
Emma Frost’s heels click across the dirty concrete floor. It is streaked with mud and metallic-brown blood. It makes the white of her shoes, of her skin tight leather pants, gleam even brighter. She is pristine snowfall on a desolate landscape. She is a white-hot blast in a filthy world. Emma Frost is clean.
She leans over the railing and stares down at the 200 floors below her. Snow Valley is her castle and here she sits, regally, at its highest point. Her reign is a stolen one. It was taken by brute force. She has the crusted DNA of more than one poor soul trapped under her fingernails to prove it. Emma Frost is calculating and cunning. She wants to rule the roost. Not just this block, not just the doppelganger structures that rise in the distance, but the whole sector. And she will.
It is easy to underestimate the flaxen haired goddess in the creamy painted-on ensemble, tits pushed up to her chin and sex coming off her in waves. Many do.
Most do.
And now, most are dead and she is here. Tits still straining in her corset top, lips a frigid, cadaverous shade of hypothermic blue. She is here, looming and plotting, baring her sharp claws without apology.
Emma Frost is queen of this rubble, this wreckage. Her kingdom may be a slum, but at least she is the one on top.
***
“I’m Charles Xavier.” The man thrusts his hand toward Lehnsherr. He is again exuding that same odd mix of overwhelming trepidation and complete control.
Lehnsherr ignores the handshake and pauses for a brief moment to study the peculiar man in front of him. Xavier’s hair is perfectly parted, the chestnut strands pushed to the right dance lightly on the breeze. The air outside is stifling and dusty. The concrete traps the heat and reflects it back onto itself. The city is a kiln. But even as the high sun turns the world around them a sickly pale orange, Xavier’s flesh seems almost opalescent. His eyes shine a preternatural blue that is both startling and engrossing. And his presence, his presence is the most unusual part. The mix of fear and total confidence is striking. It makes Lehnsherr’s skin prickle even as his brain struggles to reconcile the stark contrast.
He suddenly wonders if Xavier read any of those thoughts. But the man just looks at Lehsnherr with a mask of impassivity. Xavier still has yet to put on his helmet, and with an unobstructed view of his eyes, it seems to Lehnsherr that Xavier is, once again, able to meet his gaze even through the heavily tinted visor of his own helmet.
This man, his mutation, is trouble.
The two walk side by side nary a word passing between them. Lehnsherr has nothing to say until he effortlessly swings his leg over the motorbike, straddling it with ease.
Xavier does the same, although with slightly less grace. He is significantly shorter, and his calf muscles strain as he pushes himself on tip-toe, the bike’s firm leather seat solid beneath him.
“Put on your helmet.” Lehnsherr’s attention remains on the bike’s console. He scans the never-ending surge of violations that pour into Control. They flood in like salty sea water through a broken damn. Lehnsherr tries not to imagine a world not drowning in filth and decay. He puts the thoughts out of his mind as soon as they rear their pointless heads. There is no use conjuring images of a reality that will never exist. They are all being smothered, and soon they will all die. Best to just embrace that fact, let the poisonous truth of it race through your veins.
For a moment Xavier just holds the helmet in his hands, as if considering it. Through the near-constant clamber of his troubled mind, and the equally persistent scroll of violations, Lehnsherr feels the man’s wariness. It almost enrages him.
“Put the fucking thing on.”
Xavier tucks his bottom lip between his teeth and shoots a sideways glance at Lehnsherr. He mumbles a haphazardly articulated “Yes, sir,” and yanks the arduous headgear on.
Lehsnsherr peruses the console’s data for a moment longer, weighing the benefits of throwing this rookie in the deep end, or being “responsible” and introducing him to a minor infraction first. “Homicide or traffic collision?” He will let Xavier decide.
Easing himself down onto the sun-warmed seat, Xavier’s mouth forms the reply before Lehnsherr is even done asking: “Homicide.”
Maybe the kid isn’t so bad after all, Lehnsherr thinks with smug amusement.
***
“No. No, I think it’s you that doesn’t understand. I make the motherfucking rules around here. And your kids broke them.”
Emma Frost doesn’t yell. She doesn’t scream. Her voice is melodious and the words tinkle like little silver bells. Her tone is sharp and has the clarity of a razor edged gemstone. She doesn’t need to increase her volume to evoke fear. They tremble at her control, at the maniacal shimmer of her crystalline eyes.
Emma cracks her knuckles. There is nothing threatening in the action; it doesn’t hold the promise of breaking bones. The elegant fingers simply ring out the release of so much pent up tension. But the pop and creak fills the sprawling concrete space with sickening echoes that seem to bounce around endlessly.
“But Emma-”
“I’m sorry, Sebastian. I’ve no patience for ‘buts.’ Your children fucked up. Plain and simple.”
Emma moves like a jungle cat, the soft clicking of her heels belying the tension in her coiled muscles. She paces, arms folded, head tilted back in a caricature of sublime frustration.
“Emma, I know. I know that. But it wasn’t me. I had no idea what Husk and Quentin were doing.” Sebastian Shaw is stuttering, stammering, rushing to explain away his involvement before Emma can lower the axe.
“I believe you, Sebastian. You’re a good, stupid boy. You would not betray me. Or Hellfire.”
Her words are the brand of matter-of-fact that are more than statements. They are challenges, and Shaw knows this. Emma’s glossy lips say “I know you wouldn’t betray me,” but her wild eyes and scalpel sharp inflection says “I will gut you like a gasping mackerel if you betray me.”
Emma Frost knows her words are weighted with the promise of absolute destruction. She reveals in it. She bathes in it as though it were a vat of virgin blood. Ponce de León had it wrong. Fear is the real Fountain of Youth.
“But, and I trust you understand this, dear Sebastian, they had to be punished.”
“I know, Emma. I do. But this seems… um…” Sebastian trails off, eyes finding a particularly engaging crack in the floor to stare it. He doesn’t even try to re-articulate his thoughts. He simply stands with hunched shoulders, waiting for the whip crack of Emma’s retort.
“Extreme? You were going to call it extreme, am I right? They stole from me, Sebastian. They stole from their Mother. They reached into the pocket of the White Queen and emerged with handfuls of my property.” Her voice is lilting and sweet. It is the honey to trap the fly.
Sebastian’s gaze flickers up and finds Emma hovering even closer than he’d thought. Her presence fills the room. She is all at once everywhere. She seeps into the pores of the concrete. She permeates the linen. She is the building; she is its soul.
Sebastian’s posture seems to somehow collapse further, as though he is attempting to fold into himself. He mumbles to his chest, and Emma leans in dramatically, a flamboyant attempt to catch the words.
“Hmm? What was that? Please, speak up. I’d love to hear your acquiescence. Or your defense… if that happens to be the clumsy little road you want to stumble down.”
“I just-I was going to say… They were stupid. I know. They were scared and stupid.”
“And you wanted to know why I had to rip the skin from their writhing bodies? Why I had to feel the blood-slicked flesh peel from their muscles while they still wriggled? While their putrid hearts still beat? Hm?”
Emma moves closer to Shaw. She stares into him even though he will not meet her atomic gaze. He shifts nervously, appearing to shrink as she delivers each word. They are released into the room and stalk around like predatory ghouls. They have Sebastian cowering.
“Sebastian? Who runs this house?” She affects an almost child-like demeanor, cocking her head and placing a delicate fingertip to her curled lips. “Who runs Snow Valley?”
“You do, Emma.” Shaw breathes out.
“Yes. That’s right. I do.” She turns on her heel and walks away from where Shaw has practically sunk to his knees. “So when,” she says with her back turned, “when one of your recruits takes my things, I have every right to punish them. Husk and Quentin died with their own screams ringing in their ears. And your other children? Those same screams filled the hallways and burrowed into their stupid little brains. They won’t soon make the same mistake.”
“But Emma,” Shaw’s shaky words creep slowly across the space. “Did you have to throw them off the balcony?”
“Was that too much?” Emma cocks her head again, this time in exaggerated contemplation. She is play acting human emotion.
Emma Frost likes to pretend.
She shrugs deeply, her milk-white shoulders almost touching her ears. “Maybe so… Maybe so… It did make an awful mess in the atrium.”
***
The bikes glide to a clean stop. Lehnsherr dismounts in a single, fluid motion. Xavier trails behind, the hesitation from earlier again thickening the air.
Lehnsherr can hear the harried scrape of the other’s boots, a child trying to keep up with daddy. He stops short, turning to face Xavier. The graying facade of Snow Valley hangs just over Lehnsherr’s shoulder. The ominous form fills the sky. Illuminated letters trickle down its face like neon tears. They twinkle even in the waning daylight. They are dieing stars spelling out a final resting place.
“Tell me what you know about Snow Valley,” Lehnsherr says plainly, pinning Xavier in place.
“Well, sir, like most of the Mega Blocks, it’s basically a slum, home to over 70,000 individuals.”
“Criminals.”
Xavier scoffs, removing the helmet which seems to tighten around his skull the longer he wears it. “I’m sorry, sir, but I must disagree. I’ve studied these residences extensively. I’ve lived in one. There is certainly an undeniable gang presence. There is crime, poverty. But there are families, both human and mutant. Good families just trying to survive. To write off 70,000 people as criminals, is well… With all due respect, sir, it’s ignorant. And wholly irresponsible.”
The corner of Lehnsherr’s mouth quirks up in a challenging grin, but he doesn’t engage. He silently turns, approaching the towering structure with a brazen lack of concern. Xavier scurries behind.
“Tell me about your power.”
Xavier’s breath quickens and he takes a gulp of air. “What would you like to know, sir?”
“Whatever you want to tell me.”
“Um… well… I’m a bit of an obsessive with it comes to the origins and emergence of these mutations. So, I suppose I could drone on for a bit.” Xavier’s eyes sparkle as they catch the last rays of sunlight. It’s as though the murky brightness is straining to spend its last precious moments playing on the man’s face. He seems lighter now, even younger as he falls into the clearly comforting subject. “It’s now a widely held belief, one that I also subscribe to, that the zones closest to the wall, the ones that received the highest doses of radiation, seem to yield the most ‘mutations.’”
Xavier steals a quick glance a Lehnsherr, but the man’s face carries a wooden expression. So he goes on. “At first, most seemed to be physical. That is to say, most of the abnormalities appeared to be manifesting in rather undesirable bodily malformations: missing limbs, extra limbs, random protuberances. The recipients of these,” he clears his throat, “deformities also appeared to be owners of significantly shorter life spans, many not living past infancy.”
Lehnsherr slows considerably, the building’s entrance now gapping at them with a toothless smile. “And now?”
Xavier falters slightly, his helmet causing an audible thud as it makes contact with Lensherr’s armored thigh. “Now what, sir?”
“Well, rookie, it seems to me that you have the right amount of limbs. And your face doesn’t seem fucked up in the least. So, these deformities? Is this what they’ve evolved into?”
“’This’ is referring to my telepathy, correct?”
Lehnsherr nods almost imperceptibly.
“I believe so. I believe this is the next step. I just happen to be one of the first.”
The sea of residents and gawkers part soundlessly as the pair enter Snow Valley. There is a semicircle of weary, yet only slightly horrified, faces leering at the macabre scene. Viscous crimson fluid makes pools in the divots and cracks of the floor. The two bodies are covered by a stiff black tarp, but even enshrouded, they are clearly destroyed. Limbs jut out and the covering accentuates impossible angles. The two have been reduced to broken sacks of meat. Shiny tendons, sinuous muscle, penny-slick blood, all on display in the most vulgar manner.
Lehnsherr is aware of the tight line of Xavier’s pinched lips. This scene, brutal and disgusting as it is, doesn’t phase the seasoned Judge. Perhaps it never did. These empty bodies are just that: bodies. But Xavier is trembling ever so slightly, gloved hands clenched into fists. Lehnsherr moves toward the corpses and Snow Valley’s med team only to gently nudge Xavier’s helmet, discarded on the ground, with the tip of his boot.
“You really need to start wearing that.”
“But it-”
“It’s not a suggestion, rookie. It’s a command. It’s part of the uniform. You don’t get to choose which rules you follow.”
Lehnsherr steps without caution. The blood is thick, in the early stages of coagulation. He leaves footprints in the liquid. Xavier is struck by the violence of it. He is set on fire by the rage that hangs in the air. The smell of filth and human suffering is stifling, and when he tries to avert his gaze, to look away from the life seeping out of these misshapen souls, all he sees is indifference.
No one cares here.
“Who are they?” Xavier hears Lehnsherr ask as he painstakingly avoids splashing through the river of blood and gray matter.
“Kids from the Block,” the man answers, eyes flickering down to the illuminated screen clutched in his hand.
“Kids?” Xavier asks, having soundlessly sidled up next to the medic.
The man casts a doubtful glance at Lehnsherr. “This one with you?”
“Yes, I’m Judge Lehnsherr’s partner. Charles Xavier.” Xavier offers his hand, but the man doesn’t take it.
“Muñoz,” he grits out, not making eye contact. “And yea, kids. Idiot kids.”
“You mean to tell me children were thrown off a balcony to fall 200 stories to their deaths?” Xavier asks with more disgust than actual inquisitiveness.
“That’s what I’m tellin’ you.”
“I thought you knew all about these Mega Blocks, rookie. Full of good people, right?” Lehnsherr is already moving away from their little group, surveying the carnage for himself.
“There are good people here. I can feel it,” he offers simply.
“Yea, you keep believing that.” Muñoz flicks his finger over the screen. “This one’s Quentin Quire,” he motions to the first crumpled mass. “They call him Kid Omega. Cocky little sonovabitch…”
Xavier eyes Muñoz with a bit of disdain, but it seems the medic either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care.
“This lovely lady over here,” he lifts his finger from the computer screen to point at the other sloppy mess, “is ‘Husk.’ I should have a full name in an hour or two. She ain’t from Snow Valley. Lives her now though. Both are Hellfire.”
“Pardon?” Xavier pulls his attention from the crowd. He can feel their muddled thoughts on the edge of his awareness. He can sense that someone out there knows. What exactly they know, he isn’t sure.
“Hellfire Club. They run this Block.” Muñoz shrugs as he says it, tone playing at amusement. Xavier gets the impression he enjoys knowing more than the two Judges sent down from the great Hall of Justice.
“Tell me about them,” Lehnsherr grunts, lifting from his crouched position over the male’s body.
“Frost took over a few months back. Went floor by floor. Recruited everyone, or killed them.”
“Even children?” Xavier tries to hide the pain in his voice, tries to keep his words steady even as the bile rises in his throat.
“They ain’t innocent kids. You start thinking like that, they’ll rip you apart.”
“Frost runs this house. So this is his handy work? You know this for sure?”
“Her handy work, yea. No one else skinning kids alive and tossing ‘em out like sacks of garbage. Her word is law, gentleman.”
“Is there a bigger picture here, something you aren’t telling us?” Lehnsherr asks, nodding toward Xavier who seems to have his attention trained elsewhere, in the crowd.
“Naw,” he hesitates. “She’s a tyrant. Plain and simple. This was her doing. But you ain’t gunna pin it on her. That’s not how things work here.”
“That’s how the law works. And the law is the same in here as it is out there.” Lehnsherr looks over at Xavier again, anticipating an incredulous comment or question. Instead he finds the man still staring off into the dwindling crowd, eyes narrowed in concentration.
Lehnsherr’s first instinct is fury, to chastise Xavier for his complete lack of focus. But there’s something about the intensity splashed across his furrowed brow that ignites curiosity rather than anger.
“What do you have, rookie?”
Without looking away he responds, “Someone out there knows. Someone out there knows she did this. She massacred these children.” His voice is hard, but it sounds far away, as if he is murmuring a half remembered dream.
“Which one?” Lehnsherr’s voice is like steel, cold and unyielding.
“I can’t… It’s not as simple as that.”
“Yes it is. This is what you do, isn’t it? Focus, Xavier. Tell me which one knows.”
An even deeper crease forms between Xavier’s dark brows. He licks his lips in an act of concentration. But there is wild-eyed defiance there too. Determination and single-minded anger fueled by Lehnsherr’s prodding.
“Him.” Xavier clenches his eyes shut, tight lines crawling from the corners aging him years in a matter of seconds. “That man. The one in the waistcoat. The one staring right at me.”
Lehnsherr moves like a panther even under the weight of his armor. The crowd seems to glide away from the dapper yet unmistakably unsavory character. He stands alone, eyes unblinking, making no attempt to flee.
“This one?” Lehnsherr calls over his shoulder, hand clamped on the man’s forearm.
“Yes, that one.” Xavier replies. Lehnsherr is pleased to hear the hard edge to his voice. The tone of a Judge.
***
“There are two Judges downstairs.”
Emma Frost doesn’t rise. She barely flinches. She is seated primly on the edge of an out of place, snow-white sofa. The lines are hard and clean, and the stark, colorless upholstery bleeds into the frigid vacancy of the woman herself. She taps a perfectly manicured nail against her pillowy bottom lip.
“Emma? You heard me, right? Judges. Downstairs.”
Emma slides her right leg against her left, feeling the glide of tight, body-warmed leather slick against itself. She is listening. But she is silent, and the eerie quiet washes over the space as she vibrates with the fury and thrill of the uninvited guests. “I heard you, Sean,” she mews.
“Oh good.” The boy pushes ginger fringe out of his eyes, hand trembling as it brushes across his forehead. “I’m glad you’re OK with this.” His tone is clipped and halting. There is fear there, dancing with the sarcasm. “I hope you’re cool with the fact they got Shaw, too.”
“What do you mean ‘got,’ Sean?” This catches her interest, and she stands in a single fluid motion, as if expending no effort at all.
“The Judges. They grabbed him from the crowd.” Emma glares at him with a disapproval that makes Sean’s skin flush a painful shade of red.
“Why?”
“I don’t know, Emma.” He shifts nervously from foot to foot.
“Tell me, Banshee, why do I keep you here?”
“Um… T-t-t t-to,” he fights a stutter, hands raising in an involuntary show of defense.
“Use your words, boy. Why do I keep you around?”
He steels himself, takes a deep, gasping breath. “To be your eyes, ma’am. To watch the cameras.”
“And? And are you being my eyes, Sean?”
“Yes, ma’am, I am.” He can see her growing impatience. Her fingers are flexing, curling and extending like talons. “But I can’t hear what happened, just see. They just grabbed him.” Sean’s voice catches, his tongue twists on the rushing syllables. “I-I-I’m s-s-s-ure someone, someone, w-i-i-i-ll be up s-s-soon…”
“Darling, tell me again why I keep you around?” She is practically purring at him, her face inches from his own. Her breath smells of mint and decay as the humid air meets his cheek.
“To… watch the cameras?” It’s a question now, because Sean isn’t sure he knows what she wants to hear.
“You’re right. Ideally that’s what you do for your queen, Banshee. But you didn’t do a very good job today.” Emma’s voice twinkles with the put-on innocence she so enjoys making a mockery of. “So, since you weren’t able to perform your duty to my liking, I must make use of you in other ways.”
Emma grabs Sean’s arm and wrenches it behind his back. He winces quietly, clenching his teeth. A teasing finger runs down his pale ivory cheek, the nail scratching hard enough to leave a puffy red line to blossom in its wake.
With one swift tug, something in Sean’s shoulder, or maybe his chest, pops. He can hear his teeth crack together, holding back the roar.
“Scream for me, Banshee,” she hums.
***
It comes over the sound system like the crack of thunder. The voice twines itself mercilessly around the listener’s consciousness. It is poison disguised as milk and honey. It’s warm and welcoming, like a mother’s embrace. But it is a lie.
Emma Frost speaks in hush that is as melodious as it is monotone. And the crowd, the crowd undulates and seethes as her husky requests reverberate through the lobby.
“Snow Valley, Mother is angry. There are intruders here. There are outsiders. They wish to upset the delicate balance we have worked so tirelessly to create.” She sounds so sweet, so unassuming. But there is a violence that lives within those carefully crafted words. Xavier can hear it as clear as the tolling of a church bell on Sunday. And Lehnsherr’s body seems to twitch, a posthumous jerk, a death rattle.
But the crowd, they sway minutely, the words seeping into their bloodstreams.
“Snow Valley, I want you to find these pests, these Judges, and I want you to kill them. For me. Kill them for your Mother.”
Then there is static. Then there is silence.
Without a word Lehnsherr tightens his hold on Shaw and reaches for Xavier with his unoccupied hand.
“We need to get the hell out of here,” he rasps as iron shutters shiver down the building’s facade.
“Good luck,” Shaw nearly giggles. He grins at his own reflection shown back at him in the dark pool of Lehnsherr’s visor. “You made her mad.”
***
Charles Xavier crouches behind a concrete column. Sebastian Shaw is on his knees, hands shackled behind his back. His fitted teal coat strains at the shoulders. The buttons pull helplessly at the overextension of his chest muscles. He is breathing through his nose, loud and hard. And he is smiling. He is looking directly at Xavier, smiling the smile of a madman.
For the first time, Xavier wishes he had his helmet.
Judge Erik Lehnsherr paces the dead end they have holed up in. His mind works with the buzzing precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. They will get out of this 200 story asylum. He is sure of it. He just needs a moment to think.
But the constant slapping of boots through hollow metal stairwells and the frenzied calls of a thousand frothing residents makes it difficult for him to concentrate. These “good people,” these fathers and wives, they stalk the floors like dead-eyed zombies. They are possessed, and not just by a single-minded desire to see the Judges dead. They are being controlled.
“You’re right,” Xavier whispers, focus on the surrounding corridors.
Lehnsherr stops mid stride to stare at the telepath’s hunched form. “What?”
“You’re right. About this Emma Frost woman. She’s controlling them. All of them. This one included.” Xavier elbows Shaw, hard, in the chest. He sputters a bit, but his wide, toothy grin never slips.
“But how?”
“She’s like me.”
“Can you do this?” Lehnsherr asks, no attempt to mask the incredulous wonder playing at the edges of his query.
“Simultaneously control tens of thousands of people? I’ve never tried…” Xavier’s gaze gets faraway for a moment. Lehnsherr’s hard frown brings him back. “But no, I doubt I could demonstrate this level of control for this extended of a period.” He bows his head, tucking it to his chest. “But I’d certainly like to learn how,” he mumbles.
“Well how do you think she does it?”
“I’d guess she emits low level waves of subliminal suggestion at all times. But the stew came to a boil after her announcement. It’s her voice.”
“Why not us then? We both heard it. You’re the expert, rookie.” Lehnsherr’s acquiescence is total. His trust is complete. And Xavier knows that when he says “rookie,” he is actually saying “partner.” The silence hangs for a beat too long.
Xavier sucks in a breath, worrying his cracked lower lip feverishly. “Well, I’m me…”
“Thank you, professor,” Lehnsherr grumbles sarcastically, and Xavier can’t help but answer with a wry smile.
“What I mean to say is, my telepathy. I must be shielding myself from her. And you, well…” he rakes his eyes over Lehnsherr’s completely covered form. “It has to be the helmet.”
Lehnsherr’s chin tightens with an emotion somewhere between disbelief and relief.
“And, if I am correct about the constant low level manipulation, which I believe I am, these people’s minds are like swinging barn doors. Yours is a brick wall.” Xavier is earnest and the words come out with the air of a confession. “It’s not just your helmet that is blocking your thoughts. You’re guarded. More so than anyone I’ve ever met.” Lehnsherr shifts his body almost imperceptibly, but Xavier hurriedly adds, “it’s fantastic.”
There is uncharacteristic self consciousness in the senior Judge’s stance. There is a gelatinous quality to his typically solid posture. “Then how did you hear me. Just now. You answered me before I asked.”
“You wanted me to hear you.” Xavier’s face lights up like a schoolboy. “Your control is rather magnificent. Sir.”
“Get a room, assholes,” Shaw spits out from the cold floor. Xavier elbows him again.
“I’m right about her, aren’t I?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sebastian Shaw’s eyes gleam like a snarling hyena’s.
“Of course you do. And now I’m going to reach into your mind and pull it all out.” Xavier leans down, placing his rose petal lips right to the shell of Shaw’s ear. “And I will not be gentle. I am going to tear your mind apart like tissue paper.” He bears his teeth, his grin ferocious.
***
Shaw is gone. The Judges have him in some darkened corner of the sprawling complex. Sean is bleeding on the floor. That other one, what’s her name? Angel? She’s out hunting. She might be dead.
She is most likely dead.
Emma Frost can feel them being mowed down indiscriminately. She nearly experiences pity until she remembers she doesn’t give a single shit about anyone in this rancid domicile.
These Judges, there’s only two of them, and one is so small. He looks as brittle as a chicken bone, as delicate as an etched glass figurine. But he wears no helmet, and she can’t seem get a read on him. He is something of a mystery.
Emma Frost fucking hates mysteries.
A lifetime of knowing what’s going to be said before the words are ever given a voice has made her reliant and spoiled. The only thing Emma hates more than mystery is effort. And these two are making things far too difficult for her liking.
They move through the halls, ascend the floors, like forces of nature. Two men, one not even wearing a helmet, are threatening her whole empire. They are shaking the foundation. They are coming for her.
And there is blood all over the floor again.
Emma Frost sighs deeply and picks up her nail file.
***
“I’m beginning to tire of dragging this one around.” Xavier nudges Shaw with the tip of his boot. The man’s hair is matted with sweat and drying blood. His eyes still hold the gleam of a feral animal, but their sharpness is fading.
“We can’t just leave him, rookie.”
“Can’t we though?” Xavier’s tone is pitch black, but there is a cheeky playfulness behind his hardened features. He wants to deal with Shaw. He wants it badly.
“You want to cuff him somewhere? Leave him in a closet or a stairwell?”
“I want to shoot him in the face. Sir.” There is no heat to his words. Xavier is simply speaking a truth that few people are ever able to articulate.
Lehnsherr stiffens, waits for Xavier to go on. Because he knows, as they crouch down in the tight joint where the two sets of stairs connect, that this is what the other man wants. And he will explain, with a calculated pride, why he wants it.
And Lehnsherr knows, even before the words are spoken, that he will let it happen. He will take pleasure in the drowning gasps of a man with a punctured lung.
“His mind is a hive of filth. The awful things he’s done…” Xavier’s voice gets smaller, more concentrated. “The things he’s done to children. It’s vile, inhuman. And it’s not just because she told him to. He wasn’t just following orders. He enjoyed it.” The words are sharp accusations, sour and biting on Xavier’s tongue. “And the things he thought about me? The ways he wanted to hurt me. Make me his?”
The rookie’s words pitch higher with each pause. Each punctuation its own gunshot. Each word is a gavel falling. “You’re a sick fuck, Sebastian,” Xavier literally spits out, saliva stringy and wet splashes across the man’s dirt streaked face.
The single shot echoes through the halls. It rings out like an alarm.
The walls of Snow Valley are being painted red. Emma Frost is up to bat.
***
It seems to happen in slow motion. Worlds colliding. A Big Bang. Emma Frost stands in the middle of the cavernous space, spine rigid, body angled in the posture of defiance. She will not budge. This is the last stand at the O.K. Corral.
Lehnsherr and Xavier enter the room like they own it, Emma Frost’s merely paying rent. The heavy footfalls land like punches. Xavier’s hips swing, his chin points upwards, blue eyes ablaze. Lehnsherr stands beside him, a step back. He looms at Xavier’s side, hovering like a force field. Between the lobby and floor 200, they became partners. They became a unit.
They will kill Emma Frost. Judge. Jury. And executioners.
In this world, life inside the wall is only a slight improvement. Hope is something to be bought and sold. This land is dead and its inhabitants are crushed. But justice stands for something. It has to. There are people that protect those who are unable to do so themselves. There are good people here, just as Xavier said. Lehnsherr can’t help but believe him.
Emma Frost’s Hellfire Club is a scourge on Snow Valley. They will wipe the slate clean.