The Appendix: An Introduction

	by Benway

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DISCLAIMER: The characters of Kitty Pryde, Peter Wisdom, and  the
various X-Men are the property of Marvel Comics. This work of fiction
is not intended for profit, and is provided for the free enjoyment of
all. The story and everything that is not copyrighted to Marvel is 
copyrighted to me.

WARNING: This story contains material which may offend sensitive
readers. If you are easily offended, read something else.

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If the story which follows is to make any sense at all, you must be
prepared to accept a number of things, some of which violate the continuity as
given in the issues of Excalibur between Dream Nails and now.

First, you must accept that a young Jewish-American woman by the name
of Katherine Pryde became a member of the X-men at the age of 13, and
thereafter saved the galaxy from the terrible menace of the
Brood. That she continued to fight nobly and well, developing her
considerable intellect and her mutant abilities towards the end of
making the dream of mutant/human coexistence into a reality. That she
was gravely wounded in a battle, and thereafter came to be with the
British group Excalibur, with whom she stayed after her recovery. That
she continued the fight with them, until the terrible day a week
before her 17th birthday when Excalibur was all but destroyed by a
group of decadents, who sought to make themselves the ruling class of
a strong and powerful, perhaps even great, Britain. That her
companions Moira MacTaggert, Amanda Sefton, Peter Rasputin, and
Alistaire Stuart, Lockheed, and Brian Braddock were brutally killed in
battle, after the betrayal of the  team by its newest member.  

Second, you must accept that a 28 year old Englishman named Peter Wisdom, who
started life as an ordinary middle-class policeman's son, had become
something different as he worked for a shadowy group of British
intelligence operatives known as Black Air. That he learned many
interesting refinements of the art of killing in a windowless classroom at
Fort Benning in Georgia where the training manuals that he read were
printed in the morning and destroyed by incineration at sunset. That
he willingly accepted his place as a thrall of the decadents, so that
he could gain absolute control over tiny corners of his world. That he
would willingly infiltrate Excalibur in order to destroy it and 
to deliver its members to his masters for their exclusive use.

Thirdly, you must accept that the survivors of the battle were
captured and divided among the soldiers of the decadents as
spoils. That Kurt Wagner, Rhane Sinclair, and Meggan were given to
others, but that Pryde was given to Wisdom for his pleasure. That she
fought him bravely, even though the power to phase was denied to her by an
inhibitor collar. That she was so unprepared, never having 
experienced the caress of a lover, never having to face real human
hatred in such close quarters, that Wisdom could penetrate her very
soul with his body and his tools, and tear it apart. That within 5
weeks, she was living in the ruins of herself, her world collapsed to
a battle for existence at the whim of a single human being. 

Can you imagine it? Someone so much smarter than you are, so much more
beautiful than you are, with a spirit that shone with the purest light,
reduced to an appliance, a tool, a thing that exists only to serve
your every wish? You could do anything to her. Stroke her hair, tell her that
she is beautiful and have her believe every word of it, beat her
senseless when the world did not unfold as you expected it to, rape
her every time you felt the least bit small. Can you imagine the
satisfaction at achieving this reduction, given what you started with,
using only the most basic of tools that we all have at our disposal? 

Finally, you must accept that perhaps Wisdom was not entirely lost,
so that when the order came down for him to dispose of his little
toy, he hesitated, and then allowed her to escape. That she returned
for him, rescuing him from his enraged overlords, so that she could be with
her master forever. That they somehow made their way to the
Continent with the hundreds of thousands of other refugees fleeing the
chaos in England, perhaps arriving in the Holland on a late summer day
in 1996.

Their flight through Europe is the subject of The Appendix.

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Acknowledgments:

This story was inspired by Luba Kmetyk's fiction DARK REFLECTIONS,
which can also be found on Lori MacDonald's fan-fic page, at

http://web2.spydernet.com/lori/x-men-various.htm

The form of this story was heavily influenced by the novels of
Heinrich Boll, especially Group Portrait With Lady and The Lost Honour
of Katerina Blum.