Secretverse Clippings
(Excuse the mess, I haven’t decided, yet, on whether to call Colossus Peter or Piotr…)
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“Oh. Mah. Gawd.”
Peter Rasputin, the young man known as Colossus of the outlaw group, the X-men, turned sharply and gazed at the striped white-on-brown hair of his teammate, the young woman known only as Rogue. Though Rogue had only been his teammate for a short amount of time, he knew her well enough to know that the Southern Belle was not one to speak quietly. Her thick Southern drawl usually rang loudly throughout Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, whether it to be to discuss the weather, her latest romance novel finds or a moral issue with one of her teammates. It was her softly spoken statement utterance phrase that sent chills down his spine. He opened his mouth to speak, to urge her to tell them what was wrong, but another teammate beat him to it.
“What is it, Rogue?” Cyclops asked as he strode over to her, also not accustomed to her quietude. She was staring down at the time device clutched in her green gloved hands. It alarmed him to see the exposed skin of her delicately carved face appearing so pale. When she looked up at him, the stark and vivid fear in her jade eyes stabbed violently at his heart.
“Th-the talisman doo-hickey,” she breathed in a small, frightened voice. “It ain’t-it’s…Cyke, there’s somethin’ wrong with it!”
There was a collective, sharp intake of air as icy fear settled over the X-men.
Rogue was all too relieved to be rid of her burden as Cyclops snatched the strange device away from her. The tension was palpable on his chiseled face, his brow furrowed in concentration as he studied the object in his yellow-gloved hand. A muscle quivered in his jaw and his Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed.
“What have you done?” Rogue, who was well-nigh indestructible in body, flinched at the tone of his voice as her bravado finally collapsed and gave way to despair.
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The staccato of weapons fire made Piotr antsy. Though he was protected in his armored form, the others were not. He did not know what he would do should a bullet hit one of his friends or an innocent, or should a bullet ricochet off his armored form and hit one of his friends or an innocent. But he couldn’t hurry the woman along.
This Kitty, who looked so much like his young girlfriend, was so different from his Katya back home. She was older, possibly his age of nineteen or older. She was taller, more curvaceous and feminine. And she was vomiting on his boots.
He was intensely grateful that his sense of smell was dulled while armored.
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“Monster! Release me!”
Peter armored up and pounded the transparent wall with all his might. To his awestruck horror, the tall, sickly pale man only smiled benignly, as though dealing with a temperamental child. For all his strength, Peter Rasputin, the mighty Colossus of the X-men, was trapped in an indestructible cage. He hadn't so much scratched the surface of the material holding him captive.
“You will be released when I have your cooperation,” the pale man told him, his cold smile turning into something much more sinister as another man in a lab coat wheeled in Kitty, who was strapped naked to a gurney.
“What have you done? Katya! Katya, wake up!” Peter glared at both the men, willing death to both of them. “If you’ve harmed her-“
The sickly pale man cut off Peter’s threat with a wave of his slender fingers and calmly replied, “Mr. Rasputin, I promise you safe release after I finish with the both of you. I will even let you leave together…with an armed guard, of course, but only to ensure the integrity of my lab, you understand.”
“And should I refuse?”
The sinister man frowned slightly, walked slowly toward the unconscious young woman on the table. “Then I’m afraid that you will have to witness SC1’s death.”
“SC1?”
“Hmm… oh, her laboratory designation.” He seemed nonplussed but continued the conversation. “You know her best as Katherine Pryde. OM1 gave her the affectionate name of Kitty.” At this he frowned deeply as he slipped his long fingers into latex gloves and stood over Kitty’s prone body. “OM1 didn’t follow my instructions and has been dealt with properly, thankfully.”
Peter relaxed his muscles and his form shifted from his organic steel changeform back to flesh and blood. Again he was assaulted with the chill of the room as he had been before he had armored himself. Anxiety spurned him on as he watched helplessly from his transparent cell as this scientist, this mad man, ran a hand down Kitty’s face in an almost loving fashion. “What would you have me do?”
Dr. Robert Windsor, who was affectionately known by all of his experiments as Mr. Sinister, looked over at the young Russian and smiled satanically.
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