Keep The Faith: Black Holes and Revelations

[x-forge.livejournal.com]

After calling for help, the X-Men's defensive position comes under siege




Hours later, Forge lay on his stomach on the tiled floor of the abandoned convenience store, with nearly every electronic device that had been left in the place dismantled around him. Frowning, he reconfigured the melange of parts and flipped a switch, waited, then cursed. "That's it," he exclaimed, "I got one transmission out then the whole thing blew. Transistors are fried, and the remaining capacitors won't hold enough of a charge to send another message with enough power to reach New York. I just hope we got through."

"So, we go find some busted ass car or something and steal the battery?" Kyle asked, though half his words were muffled as he pressed the heel of his hand against his jaw, making it pop loudly. "Not like that's hard or anything, someone has to have left some broken down shit somewhere around here and hoods aren't hard to pop."

Before Forge could answer, an ominous, echoing cackle bounced off the walls around the four of them. Shadows seemed to grow longer, and then in an instant, the building was clouded in darkness - but only for a second before the living shadow burst through one of the boarded windows, exposing the front of the store to the street.

With the setting sun at their backs, Kamal and Senyaka both strode towards the X-Men. "X-Men!" Senyaka singsonged from behind his red mask, "come out and play-ay-ay-ay!"

***

Forge was caught up in the shadow like the undertow of an ocean current, only vaguely feeling the bumps and slams against asphalt, concrete curbs, and finally a brick wall as the shadow receded and he saw the fading light of the sunset. Across the street, he could hear the other Brotherhood members taking the fight to his teammates, and stood up to join them.

However, before he could move, an inky black form crept away from a shadowed wall, blocking his path. In the dim light it was hard to make out any features, but Forge could have sworn it was smiling.

"Nils Styger, I presume?" he asked, surreptitously backing away and reaching for anything he could use as a weapon.

"My name is Abyss!" The figure said, the only clue to his irritation being the increased echo in his voice. The shadow stepped closer, and reached out one arm towards Forge, the hand distending unnaturally as the fingers multiplied into a dozen stretching strands of shadow. "Look at me!" he called.

Forge ducked, reaching behind him to grasp a rusted metal placard advertising "M__get Rac__g, Thur__ay Night_", thrusting it in front of him like a shield. When the tendrils of shadow crept around the edges and ripped his makeshift protection away, though, the young inventor yelped and scrambled up on top of an oil drum. "All right! All right! I'm looking!" he yelled, his hand finding a toolbox on top of a rickety shelf. "Happy now?"

Abyss crept closer, and drew up the shadows almost like a oversized cloak. Extending it out on both sizes like a manta ray, he blocked Forge's exit, nearly encircling both of them in shadow. "Happiness is an illusion. Joy is an illusion. There is only darkness, and the Abyss." From where his arms should have been, the lengths of shadow stretched out slowly, one wrapping around the oil drum, and the other creeping up towards Forge's waist. "Have you looked into the Abyss? Do you want to?"

"You are freaking me out, crazy little shadow dude," Forge exclaimed, his fingers closing around the familiar haft of a pipe wrench. Swatting at the grasping tendrils, he found his attempts at self-defense to be futile as the wrench passed through the shadow like smoke. Something was pinging in the back of his brain, however...

"The FoH hall in New York!" he blurted, a connection being made in his mind. "Four... no, scratch that, two years ago? That was you, wasn't it?"

"Yesssssss," Abyss hissed. "You came for me and left me there!" He swelled up, growing impossibly large. The shadowy limb wrapped around the oil drum tightened and the drum burst with a pop, sending Forge sprawling to the ground. "You tried to drown me, you left me to die!"

Forge tumbled onto the ground, shielding his head with his hands as debris and tools fell around him. His hand closed on something -not even remotely useful!, he thought quickly - and he scrambled away as fast as he could, crab-walking away from the shadowy form. "Okay, first off, I wasn't even there. Second, you were trying to kill dozens of people. I know you were hurt, and probably afraid -hell, I'll admit it, I'm scared shitless looking at you, I can't imagine what it was like manifesting for you."

Backing himself against a wall, Forge braced himself and stood up, extending his open hand towards Abyss. "Whatever you've got going on, trust me, Magneto and the Brotherhood aren't the way. Help me and my friends get out of here, and we can help you."

The shadowy form covering Abyss faded, revealing the slight dark-haired teenager they had met the day before. "How can you help me? How?" he asked, the echo to his voice now gone. "You can't even look at me! You're afraid of me, just like everyone else!" He shook his head, bangs falling in his eyes and looked up at Forge. "Magneto found me when your X-Men left me to die. He isn't afraid of me. But you should be." As he spoke, the shadows crept back around him, coating him in darkness, and then spread, blocking out the sky.

I am darkness. I am made of fear. He echoed, and shadows crawled over the ground with hundreds of tiny fingers to reach for Forge. "In the beginning, there was Darkness and Void. That's in the Bible..

Forge struggled as the shadow crept over him, and the blank void inside Abyss' body began to envelop him. "Yeah?" he asked, as his hand closed over the road flare that he'd grasped from the toolbox. "Then let there be light."

Popping the pull-ring on the flare with his thumb, he thrust the cylinder into Abyss' chest as it erupted into searing incandescence. "Fiat lux, motherfucker."

The echoing voice turned into a high pitched shriek as Abyss' body elongated and stretched inhumanly, bright light streaming from his eyes and mouth. With a soundless explosion, he expanded and discorporated into shreds of darkness, flowing off into the shadows and leaving Forge kneeling alone, with the last embers of the burning flare clutched in his hand.

***

The advantage of working and training as a team was that Terry needed to do nothing more than shout once and the other X-Men scattered to meet the oncoming Brotherhood. The small redhead eyed the man advancing on her, remembering the snow and ice and exhaustion of being chased across the Russian tundra. Not that she held a grudge. "Sure you're looking in good health," she chirped, mock cheerfully. She circled him slowly, moving to put the setting sun behind her.

Kamal narrowed his eyes, bellowing a challenge as he matched Terry's movements. The Irishwoman wasn't the little insect girl - who he swore would meet her gruesome and dismembering death by his hands soon after he disposed of this one - but she would do. He reached down to pick up a length of metal re-bar from the pavement, concentrating his focus on his power.

As Terry watched, Kamal's skin darkened, taking on the color and texture of the iron. He opened his eyes and laughed, bending the metal bar into a knot and throwing it at her casually. "Come then," he taunted, "Let me kill you and get this over with quickly."

"Did you really just..." Terry gaped at him, sidestepping the knotted metal. "Mother of God, you really did. I can't believe this." She started to giggle, probably not the most professional of reactions but she honestly couldn't believe he'd just done that. Didn't the Brotherhood brief their members at all "How about this," she managed over her snickering, accent heavy with her amusement, "yeh can try that again. First mistake's free."

Not that she was going to get within his range. She wasn't stupid.

"You mock me!" Kamal bellowed, voice ringing like a bell as he ripped up a section of pavement and held it over his head. "That will be your last mistake, little girl!"

Terry rolled her eyes. "I did offer," she pointed out to no one in particular then drew in a breath and sang out a pure, clean, extremely directed tone. A human would have shivered to be caught in its path. A glass would have shattered. But Kamal, composed of dull grey steel rang out with the vibrations, like a tuning fork struck against the table, his body humming back a harmony to her original tone.

"What is... what are you... no!" Kamal's voice sounded like guitar feedback as every molecule in his body began vibrating to the pitch of Terry's voice. Below his feet, the pavement began to crack and separate as his steel muscles began twitching painfully. "This cannot be! I am inviiiiiiincibllllle...." he buzzed out, seconds before the mass of concrete above his head cracked in two, dropping on him like a five-ton fist and smashing him down into the ground.

"Impossible, aye. Incorrigible, sure. Invincible?" She shrugged at the unconscious metal mutant then looked around to get a handle how their situation had developed in the last few moments.