August 17, 2017 - Experiments (BtVS/X-Men)
Title: Experiments
Author: GlitterAngelEm
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and X-Men (movieverse)
Characters: Kitty Pryde, Doug Ramsey, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Buffy Summers
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,619
Author's Notes: I've had this plot bunny in my head for awhile. Still deciding where I want to go with it. Takes places after the first X-Men movies and ignores everything from there.
The place looked abandoned.
Snowflakes fell silently onto the metal doors in front of them, doors that creaked quietly on broken hinges. Anyone stumbling across such a place would assume it had been abandoned decades ago, left to the environment to reclaim.
They knew better.
With a nod from Mr. Summers - Cyclops, she was supposed to call him Cyclops - Kitty Pryde moved forward, her footsteps not leaving a trace on the snow as she put a hand to the metal door and passed through them, as easily as one would walk through an open door frame. She tensed automatically, waiting for someone to be waiting on the other side to raise the alarm.
The entry room was empty.
Pushing her goggles onto her eyes, she slowly took a glance around the room, making sure to allow Doug a full view, to see if he noticed anything amiss. Amiss equaling cameras, movement-sensitive scanners, or other such surveillance equipment. The few pieces of furniture of the sparsely decorated room amounted to two partially decayed chairs, one on its side, a leg having rotted away, the other leaning heavily against the single table near the left edge of the room. She scanned them with the goggles before turning to the bare walls. In her gut, Kitty thought there was a better chance of the walls having the answer they needed.
“There,” Doug’s voice crackled through her earpiece. She focused on the last spot she looked, a slightly tiled wall on the right side of the room, one that did not quite match the paint of the other panels. “That’s a false wall. The entire panel is computer-controlled, but I can’t tell if there’s anyone behind it.”
“We’re right here if there is,” Cyclops said, the confidence in his tone easing Kitty’s fears slightly. While she was starting to join the X-Men on missions, she had yet to be part of a real fight, her missions usually being less dangerous than this. But she was the only one who could get them into this facility without harm.
And she was doing it for Bobby. And that’s really what mattered.
“I’m going in,” she whispered, pulling all of her courage together. This facility was the last lead they had for the people that had stolen Bobby, keeping him sedated for months until he could work up the strength to escape, his mind barely functioning, his body working on only adrenaline and his mutation. They needed to get in here to find the answers for what happened to him and why he was even taken in the first place.
This needed to be done, to give him the answers. And Kitty was willing to do anything to help a friend in need. Especially if that friend was Bobby.
Silently, Kitty took a deep breath and stepped towards the false wall. Taking a quick step forward, she phased through it, body automatically tensing for whatever she found on the other side.
She couldn’t hold back the shocked gasp as stepped through a body, blood pooled beneath it. Without a conscious thought she passed through the rest of the wall - and the body fallen against it - quickly and stared for a moment before saying in a shaky voice, “There’s a casualty in here. I can’t tell how long he’s been dead, but he’s um…really dead.”
Her hands shook slightly as she forced herself to look away from the dead man and take appraisal of the room. The sight of a computer gave her an excuse to ignore the body and she automatically moved forward, her fingertips becoming tangible as she left the rest of her able to stayed phased - just in case. A few seconds at the keyboard had her smiling as she said, “Cypher, I think I can get into this system. If I can, is there a way to download the data?”
“The goggles can interpret most of the data, but just in case, I added thumbdrives in small pockets near your ears,” Doug - Cypher - explained, and Kitty almost smiled as she heard the familiar typing behind his words. He would probably have most of the coding translated before she even hacked into the system. As if to mirror her thoughts he continued, “I’ve already worked through a good portion of the coding. Ours is better.”
Kitty couldn’t help but giggle at that, even as she worked through the code herself and admitted yeah, theirs was significantly better. Mutations for the win.
As the system flashed open, she frowned as she reached for one of the aforementioned thumbdrives and put it into the computer, quickly setting it up to download files. As the files downloaded, she said slowly, “I think there’s another door behind here. One that was a secret to even other people who worked here. I think the…dead guy was guarding it.”
At that, she guilty looked back to the body, wincing as she glanced at the unseeing eyes for the corpse before looking away again. For a minute, she had forgotten about it. Forgotten about him. She couldn’t do that, think of a body as an it, or else she’d start losing her own humanity. Even though the people they fought against, the people that kidnapped their fellow students to use for experiments, were terrible individuals who did despicable things, she could not let herself think of them as things.
They were people, horrible, awful people, but people nonetheless. They deserved to be judged by their actions, to be reminded of their awfulness. And making them into things negated that awfulness of humanity.
“Jean, I think I’ll need your help with this,” Kitty said nervously, biting her lip. “I could be reading this wrong, but if not, I think there’s a girl behind this wall. One who has ‘gone back to basic instincts.’”
For a moment, silence greeted her word. After a long pause, she heard Cyclops say unhappily, “We’re on our way in.”
To herself, Kitty rolled her eyes at Cyclops, thinking he was too overprotected of his girlfriend, though she would never say that to him. Sure, she gossiped about it with the others, but none of them would dare to tell Mr. Summers such a thing. And Ms. Grey never complained, so they never said a thing to her. But with her being a somewhat telepath, who really knew what the older woman knew.
Still, that was neither here nor there, and Kitty waited nervously for the others to break through the wall. It wasn’t long before she saw the familiar red glow of Cyclops’ mutation, and with little fanfare, the false door was dispatched. The others grimaced at the dead body, and Jean Grey walked towards Kitty.
“It’s back here,” she explained, reaching her hand out towards her former teacher. With a glance and nod at Cyclops, Jean took Kitty’s hand and allowed the younger woman to pull her through the wall.
Both gasped at the sight in front of them. When Kitty had read the files, she had expected to see a little girl walking on all fours, somewhat akin to an animal. It made the most sense to her, with the description from the computer, and while it would have been awful to see, at least they could have been prepared. What they found was not at all what they expected.
A girl - more teenager, around her age her older - growled at them, her clothes torn, her blond hair wild, as she clutched a barely six-month old infant protectively in her arms. The battle-honed part of Kitty could detect the defensive stance the teen stood in, the way she shifted the infant away from the potential threats.
“It’s okay,” Jean said soothing, her voice calm, as she made no move towards the two. “We’re here to get you out of this place. To save you…”
Her voice trailed off as she turned to Kitty, hoping for a name. The younger woman shrugged helplessly and finished the sentence for Jean, with the only name given in the files, “Slayer.”
At the name, the teen stiffened, looking back and forth between the two. Jean started again, “We’re here to free you. Find a safe place for you and the baby.”
Both Kitty and Jean held their breath as the unknown girl looked back and forth between them, tilting her head slightly as if to judge their intentions. Finally, she nodded and said in a halting tone. “Safe. Protect her.”
She gestured towards the infant still held protectively in her arms - her child, Kitty realized, horror filling her as she hoped beyond hoped the child had not been born in this den of immoral experimentation. If she had…she pushed that thought away.
One horror at a time.
Kitty reached her empty hand forward, towards the teen and her baby. “If you hold onto me, I can get you through the wall. Both you and the baby.”
“Yes. Protect,” the teen said again as she took Kitty’s hand. The mutant gasped as the stranger gripped her hand in a tight of a handhold as a vice. Her eyes traveled up to those of the captive teen, and she paled at the intensity of the gaze. “Don’t hurt. Or else.”
She nodded her agreement and led Jean and the strange teen - and the baby - out of the room. She nodded her head towards the computer as they headed out, indicating for Jean to grab the thumbdrive out of the machine. With a quick movement, the thumbdrive was easily grabbed and stuffed back into the pocket in Kitty’s goggles. With that, the group headed out of the facility.
With potentially more questions than answers.
Author: GlitterAngelEm
Fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and X-Men (movieverse)
Characters: Kitty Pryde, Doug Ramsey, Jean Grey, Scott Summers, Buffy Summers
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,619
Author's Notes: I've had this plot bunny in my head for awhile. Still deciding where I want to go with it. Takes places after the first X-Men movies and ignores everything from there.
The place looked abandoned.
Snowflakes fell silently onto the metal doors in front of them, doors that creaked quietly on broken hinges. Anyone stumbling across such a place would assume it had been abandoned decades ago, left to the environment to reclaim.
They knew better.
With a nod from Mr. Summers - Cyclops, she was supposed to call him Cyclops - Kitty Pryde moved forward, her footsteps not leaving a trace on the snow as she put a hand to the metal door and passed through them, as easily as one would walk through an open door frame. She tensed automatically, waiting for someone to be waiting on the other side to raise the alarm.
The entry room was empty.
Pushing her goggles onto her eyes, she slowly took a glance around the room, making sure to allow Doug a full view, to see if he noticed anything amiss. Amiss equaling cameras, movement-sensitive scanners, or other such surveillance equipment. The few pieces of furniture of the sparsely decorated room amounted to two partially decayed chairs, one on its side, a leg having rotted away, the other leaning heavily against the single table near the left edge of the room. She scanned them with the goggles before turning to the bare walls. In her gut, Kitty thought there was a better chance of the walls having the answer they needed.
“There,” Doug’s voice crackled through her earpiece. She focused on the last spot she looked, a slightly tiled wall on the right side of the room, one that did not quite match the paint of the other panels. “That’s a false wall. The entire panel is computer-controlled, but I can’t tell if there’s anyone behind it.”
“We’re right here if there is,” Cyclops said, the confidence in his tone easing Kitty’s fears slightly. While she was starting to join the X-Men on missions, she had yet to be part of a real fight, her missions usually being less dangerous than this. But she was the only one who could get them into this facility without harm.
And she was doing it for Bobby. And that’s really what mattered.
“I’m going in,” she whispered, pulling all of her courage together. This facility was the last lead they had for the people that had stolen Bobby, keeping him sedated for months until he could work up the strength to escape, his mind barely functioning, his body working on only adrenaline and his mutation. They needed to get in here to find the answers for what happened to him and why he was even taken in the first place.
This needed to be done, to give him the answers. And Kitty was willing to do anything to help a friend in need. Especially if that friend was Bobby.
Silently, Kitty took a deep breath and stepped towards the false wall. Taking a quick step forward, she phased through it, body automatically tensing for whatever she found on the other side.
She couldn’t hold back the shocked gasp as stepped through a body, blood pooled beneath it. Without a conscious thought she passed through the rest of the wall - and the body fallen against it - quickly and stared for a moment before saying in a shaky voice, “There’s a casualty in here. I can’t tell how long he’s been dead, but he’s um…really dead.”
Her hands shook slightly as she forced herself to look away from the dead man and take appraisal of the room. The sight of a computer gave her an excuse to ignore the body and she automatically moved forward, her fingertips becoming tangible as she left the rest of her able to stayed phased - just in case. A few seconds at the keyboard had her smiling as she said, “Cypher, I think I can get into this system. If I can, is there a way to download the data?”
“The goggles can interpret most of the data, but just in case, I added thumbdrives in small pockets near your ears,” Doug - Cypher - explained, and Kitty almost smiled as she heard the familiar typing behind his words. He would probably have most of the coding translated before she even hacked into the system. As if to mirror her thoughts he continued, “I’ve already worked through a good portion of the coding. Ours is better.”
Kitty couldn’t help but giggle at that, even as she worked through the code herself and admitted yeah, theirs was significantly better. Mutations for the win.
As the system flashed open, she frowned as she reached for one of the aforementioned thumbdrives and put it into the computer, quickly setting it up to download files. As the files downloaded, she said slowly, “I think there’s another door behind here. One that was a secret to even other people who worked here. I think the…dead guy was guarding it.”
At that, she guilty looked back to the body, wincing as she glanced at the unseeing eyes for the corpse before looking away again. For a minute, she had forgotten about it. Forgotten about him. She couldn’t do that, think of a body as an it, or else she’d start losing her own humanity. Even though the people they fought against, the people that kidnapped their fellow students to use for experiments, were terrible individuals who did despicable things, she could not let herself think of them as things.
They were people, horrible, awful people, but people nonetheless. They deserved to be judged by their actions, to be reminded of their awfulness. And making them into things negated that awfulness of humanity.
“Jean, I think I’ll need your help with this,” Kitty said nervously, biting her lip. “I could be reading this wrong, but if not, I think there’s a girl behind this wall. One who has ‘gone back to basic instincts.’”
For a moment, silence greeted her word. After a long pause, she heard Cyclops say unhappily, “We’re on our way in.”
To herself, Kitty rolled her eyes at Cyclops, thinking he was too overprotected of his girlfriend, though she would never say that to him. Sure, she gossiped about it with the others, but none of them would dare to tell Mr. Summers such a thing. And Ms. Grey never complained, so they never said a thing to her. But with her being a somewhat telepath, who really knew what the older woman knew.
Still, that was neither here nor there, and Kitty waited nervously for the others to break through the wall. It wasn’t long before she saw the familiar red glow of Cyclops’ mutation, and with little fanfare, the false door was dispatched. The others grimaced at the dead body, and Jean Grey walked towards Kitty.
“It’s back here,” she explained, reaching her hand out towards her former teacher. With a glance and nod at Cyclops, Jean took Kitty’s hand and allowed the younger woman to pull her through the wall.
Both gasped at the sight in front of them. When Kitty had read the files, she had expected to see a little girl walking on all fours, somewhat akin to an animal. It made the most sense to her, with the description from the computer, and while it would have been awful to see, at least they could have been prepared. What they found was not at all what they expected.
A girl - more teenager, around her age her older - growled at them, her clothes torn, her blond hair wild, as she clutched a barely six-month old infant protectively in her arms. The battle-honed part of Kitty could detect the defensive stance the teen stood in, the way she shifted the infant away from the potential threats.
“It’s okay,” Jean said soothing, her voice calm, as she made no move towards the two. “We’re here to get you out of this place. To save you…”
Her voice trailed off as she turned to Kitty, hoping for a name. The younger woman shrugged helplessly and finished the sentence for Jean, with the only name given in the files, “Slayer.”
At the name, the teen stiffened, looking back and forth between the two. Jean started again, “We’re here to free you. Find a safe place for you and the baby.”
Both Kitty and Jean held their breath as the unknown girl looked back and forth between them, tilting her head slightly as if to judge their intentions. Finally, she nodded and said in a halting tone. “Safe. Protect her.”
She gestured towards the infant still held protectively in her arms - her child, Kitty realized, horror filling her as she hoped beyond hoped the child had not been born in this den of immoral experimentation. If she had…she pushed that thought away.
One horror at a time.
Kitty reached her empty hand forward, towards the teen and her baby. “If you hold onto me, I can get you through the wall. Both you and the baby.”
“Yes. Protect,” the teen said again as she took Kitty’s hand. The mutant gasped as the stranger gripped her hand in a tight of a handhold as a vice. Her eyes traveled up to those of the captive teen, and she paled at the intensity of the gaze. “Don’t hurt. Or else.”
She nodded her agreement and led Jean and the strange teen - and the baby - out of the room. She nodded her head towards the computer as they headed out, indicating for Jean to grab the thumbdrive out of the machine. With a quick movement, the thumbdrive was easily grabbed and stuffed back into the pocket in Kitty’s goggles. With that, the group headed out of the facility.
With potentially more questions than answers.