Subject: [OTL]: The Chosen Ones [11/12][Repost]
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 13:45:54 -0700 (PDT)
From: D Benway <d_benway@yahoo.com>

The Chosen Ones: Part 11 of 12
Things Fall Apart
Benway did this.

*******************************************************************

This story is not intended for children of any age. It contains
descriptions of human behaviour which many might find distressing.
You have been warned.

The characters belong to Marvel. The story is my own, and copyright
to me. Many thanks for the editorial assistance of Luba K and
Tina S. Other stories are archived at the website of Luba.

********************************************************************

She woke up with a terrible headache in an unfamiliar room. She was
lying on a bed with her wrists and ankles bound and immobilized. She
tried to phase, but nothing happened. There was something heavy and
metallic around her neck.

"Inhibitor collar."

Wilson was staring down at her. The look of desperation in his eyes
was still there, more so than before. She didn't understand.

"Collar?"

"Genoshan inhibitor collar. Stops your powers dead, and if you find
some way out of your bonds, I can use it to blow your head off."

He still looked desperate. Why didn't he run?

"I can fix your car.Help you get away."

"Bugger the car. There's nothing wrong with the car."

"Why-"

"Shut up."

He looked ill, uncertain, not fully in control. Somebody had to be
in control, though of what she did not know.

"Let me go," she requested, in a firm voice.

"Can't do that."

"Frost will be on you in a second if you do anything to hurt me."

"See this?" He pointed at a small black box sitting on a table.
"Blocks out all thoughts beyond a twenty foot radius, and outside of
that anyone who might be looking in will see me asleep in my bed,
all by myself."

"Illyana watches out for me. You don't want her after you."

"Do you think we hadn't thought of that? We have our allies, too. We
can take out a tyro like her, no problem."

"What do you want?"

He looked as if he wanted to vomit.

"I want to put you out of your misery, but I'm not allowed to do
that."

She went cold. She tried to think of a means of escape from what he
was allowed to do.

"Who are you?"

"I'm what they pull out of the stone when someone threatens
Camelot."

"Who are you working for? The government?"

"Not yours. Sort of deniable freelance on this one."

"I want to surrender. All of us. You don't have to do anything. You
can let me go."

He was weeping now, looking sicker than ever. He turned away from
her and opened a small black case. She watched as he extracted a
a set of surgical instruments.

"What-"

She understood.

"Why?" she asked, in a very small voice.

"I'm going to tell you a story, since you're a very little girl. It
helps to use stories with little girls who are too damn fucking
stupid and ignorant to understand anything else."

She tried to say something, but had no voice. She tried not to be
afraid. He was pacing now, much too fast.

"There's this place on the other side of the world, see? Bunch of
people were chosen by God to make a happy little kingdom there,
after they almost were exterminated for no reason at all.
Some people lived there already, and they didn't want to move,
so the people chosen by God ran them off the land where they lived
for centuries, because it was the holy land of the people chosen by
God to be their eternal refuge. Problem was, the people they ran off
thought exactly the same thing, and they got pissed that the new
chosen people burned their farms and their schools and their places
of worship and uprooted their orange groves and expected them to be
happy cleaning toilets. They fought back, but they didn't have rich
powerful friends like the chosen people did, so they died and
died and died and they went a little crazy. They threw stones and
they stopped cleaning toilets and they blew up the chosen people
with car bombs to show that they were the real chosen people, but
their God wasn't listening. So one day, one of the really crazy ones
went to see an old friend in Russia and brought home to the little
cesspit where they made him live some very special stones and some
very special instructions. Because he was chosen by God to save his
people, he didn't have to follow the instructions, so it all went
wrong."

"But what-"

"Shut it. There's more."

He was pacing so fast he was almost bouncing of the walls. A sweep
of his brought a shelf of books down across his desk.

"Some of the his friends, they stopped being crazy, see? They
wanted an accommodation with the chosen people, so no one had
to die anymore. They found about the device and they tried to stop
it before the chosen people found out. They had a mutual friend
in another land where there were many banks and who lived in a
castle and who hid money for people. This old man used to wear a
black uniform during the big war when almost all the chosen people
got killed, and he was an old Orientalist, and they thought they
could trust him. He almost had them all talking when some ex-stasi
types came by to ask about some other money the old man was
hiding for someone else. Get it now?"

"Oh."

He was the only thing in the room. She could feel the panic rising.

"I'll tell you straight. Frost killed the Kraut in Switzerland by
accident. The negotiations fell apart. The man with the bomb put it
on a truck and crashed it through a house and a police barricade and
it didn't blow up right. We didn't expect them to move so fast. We
stopped Cairo and Amman and Damascus and Riyadh and thrity million
people from being bombed to nothing by minutes. We made a deal. We
come through, all the bombs go back to Dimona and the world can get
on with burying the dead."

"Deal. What sort of deal? I told you, I'll surrender. I'll tell you
everything."

"We make an example of those responsible. An example that will
not be forgotten."

"An example."

"Yes."

"But I'm going to surrender."

"For what? A trial? A nice little secret tribunal that ends up with
employed by the US government and working in some secret lab for
the rest of your life?""

She focused on the bitterness and pain in his voice. It was all she
could do to keep her mind from racing away completely.

"You crossed a line, you stupid girl. When you told Frost to do
anything, you went from the world of law to the world of things that
don't get seen or talked about. The things that keep the wealthy
safe and happy and the poor in their hovels. You thought you were
there when you were with Xavier, but he kept you from the reality of
it. They want to make an example of you. You have nothing left but
your life to bargain with, and the terms of that bargain were sealed
with your words. Nothing but the sacrifice of your blood will make
the world safe again. It's the way of the world."

"It can't be true," she screamed. "You're lying."

"If I am, it makes no difference to you."

He picked up a handkerchief and wiped his eyes clear.

"You don't have to do this," she said, leveling her voice.

"I do."

"You don't want to do this."

"No."

"You don't have to. Leave them. Run away with us. We could protect
you."

"I am protection, little girl. I'm what keeps the punters sleeping
quietly at night."

He took a flask out of his pocket and took a long draw on it.

"You _don't_ have to do this."

She told herself the panic in her voice was deliberate, not real.

"I never did want to do this. I wanted to be a soldier, fighting to
keep the world safe from the badduns. I got my wish, and now I'm
just as bad as any of them, only I fight on the side of the angels,
like your old friend Logan. It wasn't worth it."

"Are you going to hurt my friends?"

"Frost is to be taken care of. I imagine your government will take
care of the rest of them. Probably recruit them, or throw them in
jail. Can't have you running around making messes everywhere."

"Please, " she said. "It doesn't have to be this way. I could give
you things that no-one else could."

"Little girl, you have nothing to give me."

He put a strip of adhesive tape over her mouth. He turned aside,
vomited briefly into a garbage can, and then he set to work.

******************************************************************

She watched it all in her pool, transfixed. It was so beautiful.
The drunken Englishman was going to make it so that they looked
alike. She watched, with tears of fiery joy burning black furrows
across what was left of the pale skin of her face.

*******************************************************************

She awakened, perhaps. She wasn't sure if she had ever been asleep.
If she had not met Logan and learned from him, the rest of her very
short life would have only consisted of more and more pain, but she
pushed past it until she could sense things again. She was in a
room, on a bed. Hands and legs free, no collar. Smells. Every smell
that could come from a human body, every smell that could have come
from her body save one.

It was his room. She had to leave it. Now. Survival required leaving
the room. He might still be in it. Somehow she found her way to a
sitting position at the edge of the mattress. There was someone else
in the room. She stood up. The other person stood up. She tried to
blink in order to get the crustiness out of her eyes but she
couldn't. The other person was wearing a red t-shirt and had a smile
that was all too large. It wasn't him, because the person was a girl
with hair like her own and a skull mask on. She tried to close her
eyes, but that didn't work, so she turned her head. She banished the
concept of a mirror from her mind, using everything that Logan had
taught her. To think any more in that direction would be fatal,
except to remember that she was half-naked and that this would
attract the wrong type of attention. Her blouse was on the bed,
reduced to shreds. Only his clothes remained, but she wouldn't touch
them. She wrapped a sheet from the bed around her. She would go back
to the house and shower, be clean. Then, she would be all right.

She would be alright, because before, when the bad things were
happening, the Professor had come to her in some sort of
prerecorded message that was to play only under the most
catastrophic of circumstances and had taken her away to somewhere
pleasant where there wasn't any pain. There, he had given her the
instructions on how to use a lever big enough to move the
world. It was what she had always wanted. She would be able to
make everything right again.

******************************************************************

He was looking at the processed wood in his hand when the hammering
on his door started. He tensed, and prepared to blast the first
person through.

No-one entered. Instead, a thud and a moan.

He went to the door and opened it. Dani was leaning against the
frame, soaking, staring. Her t-shirt was clinging to her body,
obscuring nothing. He became exited, then enraged. He looked up into
her face. He smelled the alcohol and the rage boiled over.

"You're drunk."

"Sam. Oh, Sam, come."

She could barely stand. She was tugging on his sleeve.

"What the fuck did you do?"

"Kitty."

Rage vanished. Panic.

"Where?"

She pointed towards the bathroom. He dragged her to it. He burst
through the door into an empty room.

"So where is she?"

"Went into the wall."

"Fuck girl, what is this?"

"Sheet. There was a sheet, all that blood."

"There's no blood. It's clean."

"Worst thing in the world. Standing there, under the water."

He stepped into the shower stall that she was pointing at. It was
completely clean and dry. No blood, no even remotely human odours.

"How much did you have to drink?"

"Her eyes. Oh, her eyes."

He slapped her, hard.

"Go lie down. Get back down there and lie down."

"I'm not drunk! James threw up in my lap! She's going to die!"

"Fine."

He stormed from the room and went to Kitty's door. He knocked on it
hard.

"Kitty. We have something to discuss."

No response. Big surprise.

"Kitty, open the door if you're in there. Dani says you've been
hurt."

"Go away," came a faint, tired voice from within. "I need to sleep."

Definitely Kitty. He turned to Dani, who was staring at the door,
dumbfounded.

"There was nothing left of her tongue," she whispered.

"Go back down and drink yourself to death for all I care."

Dani drew away, wearing the same look of horror she had possessed
when he had opened the door. He turned away from her and retreated
to his room.

He had laid down on his bed and smashed his fist into his pillow for
the better part of five minutes. Five minutes after that, he decided
that something was seriously wrong, but what? He went back out into
the corridor, then into the bathroom. Empty and clean. He went back
into the stall. Clean. He turned to leave, then went back in. Clean.
Too clean. The showerhead in that stall had always leaked, and there
was always standing water at the drain. It was always slimy and
encrusted with filth, even after the staff had been at it. It was
shining in the light from the ceiling fixture as if new. The tiles
shone as if installed that very morning. He went back into the
corridor. Wet footprints from his door to the bathroom. Wet
footprints from his door back towards the bathroom, but stopping. He
bent down and looked carefully. at the prints. They led towards his
door, but started from a perfectly straight line across the carpet.
On one side of the line, the carpet had footprints and had the odd
cigarette burn on it. On the other side of the line, no footprints
and no imperfections at all. He rubbed his hand across the clean
part. His fingertips smelled vaguely of sulphur. He ran to Kitty's
door and started hammering on it.

"Go away."

"Open this fucking door or I'll blast it down."

There was a scurrying behind the door, and it opened only a crack.
He could barely see Kitty in the light from the hall.

"Tell me what happened."

"Nothing happened."

Her voice was so faint that he could hardly hear her, but he knew
that she was lying.

"They hurt you."

She drew back inside. He reached for her, but she drew back with a
small animal's cry. The door was wrenched from his hand by a great
force, and something stepped in between them, naked. It was skeletal
and covered in coarse yellow hair, and it had a wide fixed grin that
showed a great number of pointed teeth, but the last thing he
remembered were the glowing yellow goat-eyes burning into his soul.

Sometime later, he regained consciousness. He had knocked himself
out trying to smash himself further back into his closet than he
could possibly go, using his head. After he had recited the Lord's
prayer for the hundredth time, he uncurled himself and crawled out.
He made his way to the desk, where the two bibles lay. He grasped at
them randomly and picked up the heavy one. At that moment, he knew
exactly what he had to do.

Kitty had given him the passwords for Frost's house, but he had
never used them before. His hands fumbled at the pad, but he typed
in the code without error and the door opened. He made his way up
the stairs to the door of Emma's room, where a light was still on.
She lay, slumbering, with an opium pipe still smouldering at her
side. He approached the bed quietly.

"Miss Frost?" he whispered. She didn't stir. He held the bible out
towards her and pulled on the tassel. There was a slight click, and
the book hummed in his hand. A frown passed across her sleeping
face, and she turned over onto her side without waking up. He backed
away slowly at first, then turned and ran from the room. On the way,
he threw the Infernal device into the pond in front of her house.

********************************************************************

The morning light streamed into the room. She always liked the
morning light. It was a special light, for queens and princesses.

Once upon a time, she had been a princess, but she hadn't been able
to sleep because she had to wear a straight-jacket, and-

Once upon a time, she was a princess, and she had made another
princess from the wages of sin, and-

Once upon a time, she was a princess but they had made her a queen,
and she had ruled a wonderful kingdom filled with many happy girls
and boys. She was a good queen, but the king was not a good king,
and so she had done something, and then-

Once upon a time-

Once upon a time-

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

He awakened in the common room, which was dark in spite of the
morning. The drapes were closed, and the antique furniture was
barricading the windows. The room stank of unwashed bodies, alcohol,
vomit, and shit. She had found him wandering in the quads and had
brought him back here and put him to sleep. She was still beside
him, sitting in a chair. As he watched her, she opened her eyes and
smiled.

"Welcome back."

"Rahne, I'm afraid."

"We're all afraid, but we're all still here."

He looked around the room. Dani lay sleeping in James' lap, and
Marie-Ange and Jenny were trying to feed Angelica, who was rocking
back and forth, making crooning noises.

"How is she?" he asked, pointing to Angelica.

"Her body's alive. Dani tried to calm her down, yesterday, when she
was raging. Tried to bring up an image of her heart's desire. There
was nothing to bring up."

"Last night-"

"We went up there, looking for you. Kitty and Illyana were gone, and
you didn't answer. Dani told me all about what happened. She told
you the truth."

He closed his eyes.

"Are they still gone?"

"No-one has seen them since she came back downstairs, but Kitty left
a note this morning. She's going to Manhattan to talk about
surrender."

"Kitty?"

"I know, it doesn't sit right with me, either."

"Illyana did a clean spell on the whole bathroom up there."

"I smelled the blood, about that time. I thought it was from Down
Below. It's chaos down there. No-one's in control."

"Kitty's taking a huge risk-"

"Frost has control of the assassins, I thought. Kitty dealt with
that, didn't she?"

"I-"

"Sam?"

"I hurt her. Emma Frost. I did something to hurt her. SHIELD told me
to."

"Then no one is in control."

"If we leave, they might kill my family, or yours."

"Use this."

She handed him a celphone. It was jet black and heavy. It reminded
him of the bible. He almost dropped it.

"Roberto said we could use this to contact him, if you talked some
sense into Kitty."

The phone had a single red button. He pushed it. He heard a sequence
of electronic sounds, followed by a very military voice.

"Yes."

"This is Samuel Guthrie at the Massachusetts Academy. I need to
speak to the patron, Roberto da Costa."

"Senhor da Costa is unavailable."

"I want to speak to his son, Roberto."

"Senhor Da Costa is unavailable. Do nothing. Remain where you are.
Matters have been resolved."

"But Kitty-"

"Matters have been resolved. Do not attempt to leave the school
under any circumstances. That is all."

The connection was broken.

"They said that matters were resolved," he said.

"Do you think that Kitty's all right?"

"I don't know," he said. "I have no idea at all."

They stared at the now-inoperative phone for some time after that.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

It was a vault like many others, designed more to impress than to
provide any degree of protection. She phased down into it from
Emma's limousine, through the pipes and the wires and the cables.
She phased through a stack of boxes and emerged from them when she
was sure the room in front of the vault was clear. The door was
still locked, and was unlikely to be opened. The bank branch above
it had been turned into a disco, and the owners had never been able
to obtain planning permission to use the vault for anything
profitable, so they had locked it and built a wall across the door.
Since the place didn't open for another six hours, she had a lot of
time to get into the vault and get out without being seen.

She needed every moment of it. Recovering from That Which Was Not To
Be Remembered had almost killed Illyana, and she had no idea how
much of the damage Illyana had repaired. She knew the safety deposit
box that salvation was in, but she didn't know what it was. She
couldn't risk phasing through its locked door, as it might be a tape.
Instead, she had to work at it with her picks. Thinking about picking
the lock made her think of secret things and secret agents and her
hands began to shake so badly that she couldn't work the lock. It
took her four hours of work and meditation to get both locks open,
when it should not have taken her more than 10 minutes. In the dying
glow of her flashlight, she could just make out the leather satchel
in the box that would deliver them all from evil.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

The day passed slowly, without word from anyone. By noon, all were
awake. Dani stayed out of his way, which was just as well since his
shame had robbed him of any words that he could use to apologize to
her. She remained in a corner with James, talking in whispers, not
in English. James at times appeared to be praying to whatever gods
he worshipped, but then he also was starting in on a bottle. Jenny
huddled in a corner, not moving very much, but he had nothing to say
to her. Everything else was Angelica.

Angelica had to be fed, and Angelica had to be changed. Both tasks
were made more  difficult by her resistance to any form of
intervention. They had her chained, down below, and the red marks
remained on her wrists and ankles. Up here, they had to hold her
down while she struggled like an animal, insensate. After each bout,
they had little to say to each other. Those responsible had been
punished, but that didn't seem to matter.

He knew what they were thinking of. She hadn't been very bright, and
she had been inclined towards the Hellions because they `were
nicer', but she had a way of diffusing the ugly fights that
sometimes started in the training rooms Down Under. He tried
not to think of her smile, because it was obvious that her slack,
drooling lips would never bear another smile again.

Instead, he thought of his family. They would be getting ready for a
trip to the WalMart and the Swap Meet now, as they always did on a
Saturday morning. He thought of the chaos as Josh and Paige got the
little ones organized and packed into the truck for the trip. He had
bought the truck for them, with the money that Xavier had given him.
He wondered if it had a bomb in it.

"Sam," said Rahne.

"Yeah?"

"Do you think that they're safe?"

"No. I'm not sure at all. We should call."

"Someone's going to be listening."

"We only have to know that they are safe."

Rahne looked genuinely frightened.

"You first," he said.

She went to the wall phone dialed the long international code. She
waited, and he could see the sweat beading on her forehead as the
call went through. Her face brightened as she got through, and had a
small, inconsequential chat with Lady Moira. She rang off and handed
the phone to him.

He dialed the number that he knew off by heart. It rang four times
before someone picked up. There was an angry sound in the
background.

"Guthrie's", yelled Josh.

"Hi kid," he said.

"Sam. Hey Mom, it's Sam. You coming down for Easter?"

"I hope-"

There came the sound of the phone switching hands.

"Sam, we were just going shopping."

His mother was tired, but all right. They were all right. He almost
broke down. Rahne put her hand on his.

"Sam, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. Nothing's wrong."

"Look, I have to go now, we've a ton of things to do today. Is there
something real important that you need to talk about, or can you
call back later?"

"No. Nothing important. Just wanted to make sure you were OK."

"Sure we're OK. Joelle had a cold last week, but she's all better
now. Sam, I think there's something you're not telling me."

He felt a rising tide of panic.

"I've got something to talk to you about, Momma. I've found a girl."

There was a silence on the other end of the phone.

"Momma?"

"That's wonderful, Sam. Just a bit of a surprise, is all."

His mother didn't believe him. He knew that from her tone, but
anyone listening wouldn't know that. They would think that she was
just happy to hear of it.

"I'll call you tomorrow after church and tell you all about it."

"Fine. Take care, Sam."

"You too, Momma. You too."

He rang off and looked at Rahne.

"She's just fine. They're all fine."

Behind him, Marie-Ange cursed and Angelica shrieked. In the
darkness, they set to work again.

********************************************************************

She had her laptop open in her lap, its modem connecting her to the
Club network. She entered the codes that Emma had taught her, and
sent the kill orders for the chauffeur and the wife that he had
phoned during the trip back to Massachusetts from the vault. She
checked the phone records from the house and found that both Sam
and Rahne had phoned home. Two more kill orders went out. Nothing,
absolutely nothing, could be allowed to interfere with her plan.

It was all necessary and inevitable, but it didn't bother her at
all. She opened the leather satchel and perused the papers inside of
it for the fifth time. All of the Richards' private phone numbers
were there, as well as a list of the code words that would start the
chain reaction. Each phrase was unnatural but carefully chosen, and
if one of them heard it, they would repeat it to the rest of the
group, and then they would wait. She would phone again and say more
words, and they would put together documents that would make Emma
the guardian of Franklin, then go off on a mission from which they
would never return. When Franklin arrived, there were more codewords
that would annihilate his self and leave him a programmable husk
with the power to remake the world. She smiled at the thought, and
almost wept.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&

She found the man who had hurt Kitty on a plane, flying back to
England. She did things to him that the other passengers would not
have believed possible, and then just for fun she did the same
things to them, starting with the children. Her dark lords sang out
gleefully and capered while her power grew exponentially. Even so,
there was something deep inside that was unsatisfied, the same thing
that had made her undertake this little atrocity in the first place.
She ported to limbo and dove into a pillar of fire. As it burned her
away she remade herself, over and over. The ocean of pain isolated
her from the dread lords, and in a secret place deep within herself,
she thought hard of the stars that shone more brightly that anything
else in the sky, then collapsed into themselves. Kitty had always
liked those stars. In her secret place, she knew that she could not
do as her dread lords asked. If Kitty was just like everyone else,
then everyone would have to be saved. She conceived of a plan. The
only thing that she needed to complete it was a single bloodstone.

*******************************************************************

He had been surprised by the phone call from Kitty, as he was sure
that they would have put her under care. Rahne had insisted on
accompanying him, and he wasn't sure that was a good idea. He didn't
like the idea of meeting in the conservatory, but the housekeeping
systems that Kitty had shown him how to access assured him that the
house was entirely empty. He used the codes to open the door from
the garden and they entered the room.

The smell made him choke. Almost all of the plants were dead or
dying, and their putrefaction made the air almost unbreathable. They
were about to turn back and leave when he heard the door close behind
him and the lights went on. Rahne turned to half-wolf form.

"Stay there. Don't change. Don't move."

It was Kitty, from somewhere behind them.

"Turn around, slowly."

They did. She was standing near the door, with a pistol in her
hands. There was a leather satchel at her feet. The gun was aimed at
them.

"Kitty, please put the gun down," said Rahne.

"How could you?" said Kitty. "How could you do that to her?"

"Kitty, they said-" he began.

"She's no better than Angelica now, you miserable fuck," said Kitty.
"You've fucked it all up. It's going to be so much harder to get
into his head now."

Rahne tensed, preparing to leap. Kitty fired. The bullet passed
between their heads.

"No," he said to Rahne.

"Damn right," snarled Kitty. "I'm sorry you had to come, but it's
going to hurt me more than you."

"What do you mean?" said Rahne.

"I sent a squad to do the others," said Kitty. "You're the last
loose end to wrap up."

"Do?" asked Rahne.

"Kitty, it's over," he said. "There isn't going to be any school
here to run. We've got to surrender."

"To what?" said Kitty. "How can you trust them? Do you know what
they did to me?"

She was starting to weep, but the gun didn't waver.

"Kitty, you can't fight them," he said. "They have soldiers, and
they'll use them. They'll all be against you."

Kitty smiled a smile that was almost as frightening as Illyana's.

"You don't think I can fight? I have the power. The power to fix
everything. To make it all better."

"Kitty, you don't have that sort of power," said Rahne. "No one
has."

"I have the power to remake the world," whispered Kitty.

"It's unholy to even think of doing that," said Rahne, quietly.

"Unholy?" Kitty shrieked. "Do you think God gives a flaming fuck
about any of us? Is it unholy to want to change a world like this?"

Kitty blinked the tears from her eyes, but didn't shift her aim.

"Do you know what some of God's creatures did to me? I'll make it so
you never will know pain like that or what it took to heal it. I'll
make it so that there'll never be another man like that. I'll make a
world where no-one hurts kids and makes them into killers, and
breaks their necks or fucks them or sends them off to hell for no
reason at all. I'll do it. I'll fix the world."

"How can you make it that way for us if you're going to kill us?"
asked Rahne, quietly.

"You'll only be dead for a little while," Kitty said. "And then I'll
bring you and all of your families back. Even your real Mother,
Rahne. Won't you like that?"

He closed his eyes and started to pray. He opened them when he heard
a soft thump.

Something that might have once been Illyana was standing behind
Kitty, who wasn't holding the gun anymore. Instead, the gun lay on
the ground, with Kitty's severed hands still clutching the grip.
Kitty staggered back a step as Illyana raised the Soulsword again.
There was a vicious slash across Kitty's side, and what appeared to
be her liver and intestines were starting to ooze out of the gap.
Kitty collapsed to her knees. Her mouth worked, but she didn't say
anything. Instead she stared, hypnotized by the twin fountains of
blood from her truncated wrists.

The thing that was Illyana stood behind her, grinning. It had
Illyana's hair, but it had the eyes and legs of a goat and
at least ten sets of breasts, partly covered by matted white hair.
Forked tongues tasted the air from between both sets of teeth, above
and below.

"Too close to me," the thing croaked, in a voice that wasn't human
anymore.

The thing raised her sword again. Kitty looked up, with an
expression that he knew from when Joelle was two, and cowering under
the bed from the thunder. He had held Joelle's hand and told her that
it was just the angels bowling. He gripped Rahne's hand as tightly as
he could. She squeezed back, her claws tearing into his hand.

The sword swept down, but Kitty flinched from it at the last moment,
and he saw it slice into her skull and through her face. Her body
collapsed. The thing raised its sword, and plunged the blade through
the medallion and its own heart, if it still had one. It threw its
head back and made a sound louder than thunder that was the last
thing that he or Rahne ever heard. Blue hellfire swirled around
them, and he felt himself lose control of his bowels. He clasped
Rahne to him, and tried to pray, but there were no words. Where
Illyana had been, there was a column of swirling red fire that
consumed nothing. The blue flames in the room rushed to it as if
returning home and it vanished in a flash, leaving them alone, in
silence, alive.

[Next: On the Eighth Day]

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