Secret Wars blergh
Tried to write on The Warrior with No Name without much luck. What a completely awful place to get stuck at. Oy. So this little thing came to embed itself in my brain as I was trying to get to sleep, and it just won't go away.
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Katherine Pryde ran as fast as she could without falling down the basement stairs wondering, as she fled in terror, why her brain refused to cooperate and take a route that would actually lead outside the two story suburban home. Although she was a petite nineteen year old--only five foot three and one hundred five pounds--the basement only had a tiny window, and she was positive there would be no escape. But it wasn't like she could turn back around. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents were pouring into the only home she'd known. Her mother--or the woman she thought was her mother--had told her to run for it only to be mercilessly gunned down.
The young woman who called herself Kitty had found out only a few moments before S.H.I.E.L.D. busted down her door that she had been adopted as an infant and put into a top secret government program. Kitty's DNA had been tampered with to excellerate higher psychic functions and then she had been "adopted out" to an African American agent named Ororo Munroe. Ororo's primary objective was to observe Kitty and report her findings to her superiors. Heaving great gulps of air, Kitty grabbed onto the metal support at the end of the basement stairs and slid around it, using her inertia to propel herself in a different direction, her long brown curls fanning out as she did.
She tucked her lithe legs and somersaulted into an easy combat stance, searching the room under her house for an easy escape.
Apparently things were not kosher with the higher ups and Ororo, not being the trusting sort, had told Kitty everything, including Ororo knowing about Kitty's ability to walk through objects--something someone found very intriguing. Ororo had told her that her superiors were on their way to collect the nineteen year old college senior Kitty and take her back to one of the many laboratories the government of Genoshia had tucked away around the globe. Kitty had always wondered why Ororo had pushed combat training--including several different types of kung fu and weaponry--on her. She had been in training since she was a little girl, no older than five with asperations of becoming a famous ballet dancer. Kitty's chocolate brown eyes grew wide in horror as a metal cannister made its way down the stairs, a metalic rattle bouncing like a slinky never could. The metal device billowed yellow-green fog Kitty knew to be tear gas.
And then there were the Others. They had arrived just as Ororo was finishing her tale. There were seven in all-eight if you included the dragon. A dragon, Kitty thought as she backed herself into the far corner of the room, just below the window. There were two women, one looked a little younger than Kitty with a white stripe through the center of her red-brown locks; the other had the same face and name as her Ororo but different colored eyes and decidedly different hair. The newcomer, calling herself Storm, had blue eyes and her hair was styled into a white Mohawk. Kitty’s Ororo had brown eyes and springing tight black curls. There were two young men Kitty’s age, one only a bit taller than Kitty with blond hair and a pencil thin mustache answering to the name of Nightcrawler and the other well over six foot tall with dark black-blue curls and the bluest eyes Kitty had ever seen answering to the name of Colossus. She had been in the process of meeting the others, a bald older gent, a short hairy guy with weird hair, and tall lean fellow with ruby red shades.
A shadow crossed above her at the window and Kitty rolled out of the way just in time to avoid shards of glass from falling on her. On her feet again, the acrid tear gas began to choke her. She held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut.
I can’t do this forever. Think, Kitty, think.
“Kitty!” a strong masculine thickly accented voice yelled from the stairs. Kitty opened her brown eyes long enough to see a giant of man rushing towards her. His skin was-metal? Oh, my God. She opened her mouth to gasp to scream in fright, but gagged on the gas that filled the air. The metal man-oh, my God, she thought again-picked her up easily and punched through the low ceiling near the window.
Finally able to breathe again, Kitty’s eyes and nose were running. She ignored everything but the problem at hand. She couldn’t see, her eyes burned so badly. She gagged again and was violently ill. The metal man put her down immediately, shielding her small body with his own as several of the agents sprayed bullets at them from their guns.
“Hurry,” he told her, his thick accent wrapping itself around her brain, “we must get out of here.” Kitty would have gave him a swift round house kick to the chin, but she was a bit indisposed as it were.