xp_logs | Remix: Payback

What's causing the changes? Demons, spells, curses, toxic waste? None of the above? Marie, Pietro and Angelo know and they want to get it reversed.

"Ah'm gonna skin that little two faced son of a bitch," Marie spluttered, every movement further tearing the fabric that had once been her second best pair of jeans. "Ah oughta knock you three ways from Sunday!" Rogue yelled at the man who was just out of reach. But not for too much longer. Stretching out a little, a grin spread over Marie's face, the new longer reach serving to allow her to grab the back of Paul's shirt.

A surprised yelp escaped Paul's lips as ze struggled to escape the mad Southern man's grip. Hir shirt ripped as ze tried to pull away, but even halfway out of hir shirt, ze was still stuck. "Fuckin' A!" Paul cried, still straining to escape.

"Oh yes, please, try to run," Pietro purred, appearing out of nowhere, face inches from Paul's. His voice as a woman was high, and even sharper than usual, and his venomous expression was not at all improved by a reddening bruise on his cheek from where he'd tripped headlong into a stair railing. "If you run, I'm the one who gets to chase you down. Have you ever been kicked in the knee at Mach 2?" One hand lashed out, cracking across Paul's face. "Or you can tell us what you did. And tell us how you're going to reverse it."

The small Latina woman strolling towards them had a just as dangerous expression on her face. "See, let me tell you a bit about us. Pietro here? Like he said, you've got no chance of gettin' away from him. Em could pick you up an' drop you from the ceilin', if you were lucky. An' me... well, there's a couple things I could do, startin' with smackin' it out of you an' goin' on to hangin' you out the window from six feet away until you decide to talk. So what's it gonna be?"

"You wouldn't hit a woman," Paul said as hir body melted like wax, a typically masculine body instantly replaced by a feminine. The fear in hir face didn't disappear, though.

"Yes Ah would," Marie said as he punched Paul in the gut. He had to avoid the far more satisfying punch to the jaw as shreds were all that remained of his gloves. Then again, draining Paul wasn't sounding like such a bad idea... "Until you turn me back into a woman, Ah have absolutely no problems making you inta my personal punchin' bag."

Paul couldn't even make much of a sound as the air was violently knocked from hir lungs, and hir body shifted yet again. Back to male this time. "You're psychotic!" ze finally managed to say. Or wheeze, rather.

"You did this to us for no reason you've told us yet an' we're psychotic?" Angelo demanded incredulously, walking up to stare at hir eye-to-eye. "Try again."

"Exactly right. We're not psychotic, we're merely very angry. There's a distinct difference." Pietro's next words were cut off by a wince, and his hand shot down to press against his lower abdomen. His eyes narrowed again, looking even deadlier than before. "And if I'm feeling what I think I'm feeling, I'll be happy--I'll be positively ecstatic--to demonstrate it for you. You should change us back before I decide that's a good idea. And I decide things very quickly."

"No less than you deserve," spat Paul. Literally. On Pietro's boot, even. "Fucking cis. You are who you are. You can't change anything."

"Cis? What the hell does that even mean?" Marie asked, pushing Paul to the ground. "Ok, what's your problem with us? We never did anything to you. Give me back my damn body before Ah beat you to a pulp."

"Likewise", Angelo said coldly. "Or I really will hang you out the window until you talk to us."

Paul replied to that with a sneer as ze involuntarily shifted again. "Yeah, that's really going to get me on your side. I'm fucking tired of all this. It's the same thing all the time. So I figure it's time to shake things up a bit." A cough shifted hir back to male form.

"Fine by me," Pietro said coolly. "Threats are clearly getting nowhere." He reached out and just as coolly dislocated Paul's left index finger. "I can do that nine more times before I have to start moving on to larger joints. Or you can stop the incoherent gender-ambiguous insults and start telling us why you did this, what you hope to gain from it, and when--you will please note I do not say 'whether'--it can be undone. You have thirty seconds to decide, and then I move on to the next finger."

Marie held up a hand towards Pietro. "Quicksilver, knock it off. Ah mean, Ah'm all for judicious application of force while questioning this dirt bag, but what if he needs those fingers in order to switch us back?" He held back from saying that there was a certain line he didn't want to cross in thed, set aftwr ir encouraging of Paul to reverse whatever he'd done to them.

Paul bit down on hir tongue so hard that ze tasted blood as hir finger snapped, the sudden pain triggering yet another shift. This? Was not what ze had been expecting. Ze couldn't take much more of this. "Okay okay!" Paul cried. "Uncle, uncle! I can't change you back," ze finally admitted.

"Wrong answer", Angelo snapped, advancing on hir. "If you've got anythin' better to tell us than that, I'd do it now. An' answer Pietro's other questions."

"You've been changing yourself, therefore you can change us too. So get on with it before Ah leave you with the lovely ladies...they're not as forgiving as Ah am." Marie would never actually leave Paul to Pietro; she'd be too worried that the former Brotherhood member would take things too far. But maybe they could scare hir into getting them back to where they should be.

But the threat was more than enough for Paul. "I can't!" he asserted, holding hir broken finger close to hir chest. "I don't know how. B-but it'll wear off on its own. I swear . . . Eventually."

"Wonderful. Not only do we get attacked at random, we get attacked at random by a staggering incompetent." A glare was probably all Pietro needed by this point, and he treated Paul to a good one. "How long is 'eventually?' And why us, or do you do this to everyone who comes through the camp?"

Paul whimpered and hunched down in ze's chair, making hirself small. "It usually takes about a week. I can't control it exactly... But it's not permanent. I swear!" Ze only had hirself to practice on most of the time. Other people tended to be freaked out and it was much harder than controlling hir own body. Ze thought that it was because hir was more comfortable with the change.

"Guys...Ah mean girls, Ah think that's enough," Marie said holding up a hand. "Since we're obviously not going to be gettin' any more help here, may as well turn him over to the proper folks for dealing with." Bending down to lock eyes with Paul, Marie's eyes flashed with controlled anger. "And if you even think of doing something like that to the folks who pick you up, well, Ah don't know that Ah'll be able to stop these two from doing what they want to ya." Straightening, his spun on his heel, only then glancing down at the sandal that his now large foot was poking out of it. "That's it. Ah'm getting some clothes and then Ah'm goin' shoppin' for some better ones."