Subject: [OTL]: HellsX 27 Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2004 17:26:29 -0700 (PDT) From: D Benway HellsX [27:45] School Night Produced by Benway. See notes for disclaimer. _______________________________________________________________________________ At the end of every day, they still gave her a bag of blood. At the end of every day, she still flushed it down the toilet. From the changes in the tiling in the bathroom shower, she had some idea of where the camera was. She expected every day to be called to account for her actions. No-one ever mentioned it. She decided that they would mention it when the time came for her destruction. She saw nothing of Ororo during most of the next few weeks. There were rumours, mostly conveyed by Doug, about how she was in the care of The Beast, as they affectionately referred to the team doctor. Doug would sign things from time to time, but she was getting tired of the warnings and paid little attention to him. One she didn't need to see, because she knew it already: stay away from Castle. Three weeks later, Ororo returned to the team. Their treatment had achieved their goals. In Kitty's judgment, Ororo would be lucky to be in the 19s. Kitty almost felt happy. After all, 15.9 beat 19-something, any day of the week. The next day, Summers held the briefing for the next op. She was on the team, as were Drake and Rasputin and Summers himself. Ororo, Worthington, and Logan were not. No explanations were given. It seemed that the operation was a sting, designed to lure a group of freelance vampire hunters out into the open. This time, Kitty wasn't going to be on the sidelines. This time, she was the bait. They flew in from Vandenberg in a Club chopper, landing at dusk in the field that had prepared by the CIA the day before. Her would-be hunters had spent the day in the high school. "It's simple," said Summers. "You play vampire, we play victim. Any human that comes up to them, think dinner, and show them your fangs, and wrinkle your nose up like this." He wrinkled his nose. "Why the nose?" she said. He shrugged. "Seems it's what they're expecting," said Summers. "Let's see you do it." She imagined that she had been allowed to think of him as dinner. She showed him her fangs and wrinkled her nose. "Holy crap," said Summers. "That's, uh, just fine, Kitty." "No problem," said Kitty. It wasn't like the place in Kansas. California had hills and dales and old trees and old mineshafts. She'd barely been out wandering for an hour when she heard Summers' scream over her headset. "Colossus to Cyke," said Rasputin. "Come in, Cyke." "Scott?" said Bobby. "Maintain protocol," said Rasputin. Summers groaned. "Cyke, where are you?" said Bobby. "Fell," said Summers. "Down a well or something." "You OK?" said Rasputin. "No," said Summers. "Broke my fuckin' leg." "Any contacts?" said Rasputin. "No," said Kitty. "None here neither," said Bobby. "Can't get a lock on your position, Cyke," said Rasputin. "Think I landed on my GPS," said Summers. "Need your approximate location," said Rasputin. "On the ridge, about a quarter mile from where we split up," said Summers. "Colossus to Tonya," said Rasputin. "We need a fix on Cyke's location." Kitty leapt up into the trees and snagged a high branch. She spotted Rasputin and Drake easily. Focusing her mind on the particular richness of Summer's blood, she scented it, drifting from a small dark patch on the ridge above where the other two were standing. "Up the hill," said Kitty. "Head south. Can't miss it." "How'll we find it?" said Bobby. "If we use our lights, the targets'll spot us." A bolt of red light, just like the one she'd seen that night running from Health Services, shot straight into the sky, about twenty yards up the ridge from where Rasputin had been standing. "Did you see that?" said a plummy voice at the top of the valley. "Idiot," muttered Rasputin. She scanned the ridge. Bogeys. Four of them. "Iceman," said Kitty. "Scream." "Huh?" said Bobby. "Scream," said Kitty. "Loud. Now." He did. It was higher-pitched than the screams of the girls in Kansas. "You hear that?" said a guy. "We split up," said a girl. "You and Will go down the hill. Me and Giles'll check out the light." "Two heading your way," said Kitty. "Take care of the other two," said Rasputin. "That alright with you, fearless leader?" said Bobby. "Just get me the fuck out of this hole," said Summers. Kitty jumped back down to the ground, making very little noise at all. She watched as the two figures made their way slowly down the valley, one behind the other. She glanced up at the ridge, and caught sight of Rasputin making his way along it. She couldn't see the other two targets. When she looked back, she could only see one of the ones coming towards her. She scanned the hill for the other one, and saw a thin figure slip down a bit of loose slope with a strangled shriek. When she looked for the nearer one again, she could smell him but she couldn't see him. He was somewhere behind the fallen trees right in front of her. "Will?" he whispered. "Will?" The breeze was blowing from behind her, and she guessed that he would emerge from the left side of the fallen tree. Instead, he appeared from the right, almost at her elbow. "Hi," he said. "You shouldn't be out here by yourself." "Huh?" she said. His heart was beating so fast, with excitement. "There's things out here you wouldn't want to meet," he said, giving her a smug little boy-meets-girl grin. "Oh," she said. Kitty did the nose-wrinkling thing. "HOLY SHIT!" he screamed. She felt the impact, and glanced down to see a wooden stake rammed six inches into where her heart had once beaten. The boy was looking at her, as if he had expected something to happen, and it hadn't. The stake was uncomfortable, and annoying. She took it out, flipped it over, and planted it in his chest. "See how you like it," she said. "Hkkkkkk," he said, keeling over face-first. "Xander?" whispered someone in the brush. "This is getting very Friday the 13th." Kitty glanced up. There was a girl there, holding a crossbow and glowing. Kitty didn't have to be able to see in the dark to tell that it was the witch. The girl was glowing so much that she lit the clearing as if it was daylight. The witch looked at her. Kitty started to drool. The witch looked at the boy. Kitty watched the witch's eyes turn black. The witch opened her mouth. Kitty felt the power of earth and sun and air and fire pouring into the witch's body. "Magna mater-," said the witch. The witch, Willow Rosenberg. The witch who was Jewish. Kosher. Kitty lunged. The impact smashed Willow's skull four inches into the trunk of the tree, but already her throat had been torn open and the blood on fire with all the elements poured into Kitty's throat in a redsilver fountain, heat and light and light and light AND LIGHT- Kitty was giggling as she staggered through the woods in little circles. Until now, nothing had been better than that chocolate cake. She wondered if this was what it was like to be drunk. She stopped giggling as she remembered that alcohol was fattening, but started again as she realized that it wasn't any more. She punched a tree. It split in half, from trunk to crown. As one side fell, it dislodged Willow's corpse from the trunk. Kitty stopped giggling. She remembered the orders. Leave no-one alive but the witch. She would be punished. As always, it was a comforting thought. She heard a squawking from a bush nearby. She found her headset. "Iceman to Cyke," said Bobby. "Iceman to Cyke. Shit, man, he's toast. The witch-guy is toast." "Not toast, dead meat," said Kitty, breaking down into giggles again. She though that she heard Summers sigh, but he was almost immediately drowned out by the rescue chopper. The CIA came for her and the bodies an hour later. The Beast was on board, in a special compartment at the back. She caught sight of him in scrubs as Rasputin and Bobby dragged all the remains they could find back into his lair. The ride back to New York took over six hours, including an aerial refueling over Nebraska. The scene at New York was chaotic. They had landed at the club instead of at White Plains, and McCoy had run straight out across the hangar with his specimens without telling anyone what to do next. Bobby and Rasputin had hauled Summers off to the hospital, and the pilots had gone off to make their report. No-one had told her what she was supposed to be doing, and so she sat around in the hanger, waiting. After an hour, Doug showed up pushing a big plastic waste bin on casters. "Heard it went OK," said Doug. "We made it back," said Kitty. "Stiffs still here?" said Doug. "Think so," said Kitty. She took a quick look inside. There were 4 corpses, all cut open and sewn back together with black thread. "I'm here to take them away," said Doug. "You?" she said. "One of my many duties," he said, scrambling into the hatch and making for the nearest corpse. In spite of his best efforts, he barely seemed able to drag it along. "Can you give me a hand?" he said. "Sure," she said. She picked up the corpse and tossed it 25 feet into the bin outside. It landed with a nasty crack. "Tenderized," said Doug, licking his lips. "They make you do this?" she said. "Didn't say it was easy," he muttered. She took care of the other three. "Thanks," he said. "Where you taking them?" she said. "Downstairs," he said. "How come?" she said. "Disposal," he said. "Huh," she said, following him out through the door. "Um, Kitty," he said. "What?" she said. "I don't think you really want to-" he said. "Why not?" she said. "Dunno," he said. "Come on, then." He lead her to a service elevator. This one had buttons, but they could only be operated if someone had a key. Doug had one. He hit the button for the lowest level. "All the way down, huh?" she said. "And they blame us for the smell when it rises," said Doug. He brought the bin to a stop in front of the entrance to the ghoul's chamber. "Guess you'll have to meet the gang at some point," said Doug. She had an intellectual awareness of the stench and was aware that, had she been human, it would have knocked her senseless. Since it had nothing to do with eating, she ignored it. Inside, a shallow ramp sloped downwards. The concrete walls at the sides were smeared with discharges and tissues of things that had once been alive. At the bottom, someone had spelled out the phrase 'God = Dog' entirely in dead rats, nailed into the concrete with fragments of bone. "I don't spend a lot of time down here," said Doug. "Huh," said Kitty. At the bottom of the ramp, six pairs of eyes stared up at them, glowing green in the murk. The only other light came from TV sitting upended on its side, playing MTV at high volume. "Dinnertime," said Doug. The ghouls fell upon the bin, hurling themselves in headfirst. "No manners," said Doug. "Fuck you," said someone, from inside. One by one, each of them extricated themselves from the bin bearing some piece of flesh that they tore into as they wandered off to various dark corners. "See the guy over there with the leg?" said Doug. "That's Sam. He flies. That guy over there with the arm, that's Angelo. He's can do all kinds of weird stuff with his skin." "Huh," said Kitty. "See the girl over there, the one eating the kidney?" said Doug. "That's Shan. She possesses people. She's the one who got you back inside after you went wandering. That one eating the liver, she fires plasma bolts from her fingertips. Everyone calls her Jubilee." "Which one is the kidney?" said Kitty. "The blobby thing," said Doug. "The floppy thing is the liver." "Who's that?" said Kitty. "Where?" said Doug. "The one eating the foot," said Kitty. "That's Paige," said Doug. "Sam's sister. She also does freaky things with her skin. The one next to her, eating the lung? That's Tabitha. She's Sam's girlfriend." "Huh," said Kitty. "So what parts do you like?" "Ah," said Doug. "I have a certain acquired taste." He went to the bin and rooted around in it, then fell in. Sam, coming back for seconds, yanked him out. Doug was holding the head of a middle-aged man. "Like in school," said Kitty. "Those disgusting sandwiches." "Always loved head cheese," said Doug, bringing the head down hard on the edge of a gore-splattered table. "It's what's inside that's best." Doug clawed off the top of the skull as her father used to break open his soft boiled egg at breakfast, and then scooped out the brain. "Yum," he said. Doug's mouth opened, much wider than it should have been able to. He swallowed the brain, without chewing. "Logan made you," said Kitty. "Sure did," said Doug. "My master," said Kitty. "He's a fuckin' asshole," said Tabitha, reaching into the bin for a hand. "Guess that makes a piece of shit like you the asshole's thrall." "Didn't ask for it," said Kitty. "You think I did?" said Tabitha. "At least you get to walk around in the sunlight." "No big deal," said Kitty. "Like shit," said Tabitha. "I didn't get the healing factor, I don't get the strength, I rot away to slime if any sunlight hits me, and all they use me for is garbage disposal." "Word," said Jubilee, popping an eye into her mouth, and chewing slowly. "What I don't get is why he changed you and drained us," said Tabitha. She looked at them. Tabitha: 18. Jubilee: 19 to 20. Paige: 20. Shan: 21 plus. "Maybe he thought I was pretty," said Kitty. She couldn't understand why they all fell about the floor, laughing. She decided it had to be jealousy. [Next: Xander Harris]