Shiva - Midnight Shadow

[x-maverick.livejournal.com]

In the wee hours of Saturday morning, an old friend comes for Maverick, with murderous intent.




The Chevy Malibu pulled off the side of Greymalkin Lane, slowing to a stop on the shoulder of the road, headlights going dark. The engine pinged in the cold night air, and the driver exited the stolen car, settling his black Stetson on his head. A mile and a half distant lay his target, and the phone call three days prior had given him a name and the command to awaken from a fifteen-year sleep.

"Ashes to ashes, funk to funky. We know Major Tom's a junkie..."

John Wraith looked up from under the brim of his hat, smiled brightly in the moonlight, and vanished.

Under the Xavier Institute, a security program triggered at the presence of an abandoned vehicle after two minutes, beginning a routine full security sweep. An intruder, three hundred yards from the perimeter, moving --

Same intruder, two hundred fifty yards. Simultaneously, same signal, two hundred ten yards.

Another subroutine triggered, a diagnostic program to recalibrate the sensors and recheck the data to correct the seeming impossibility of a man moving so fast as to appear in multiple places at once. The diagnostic took all of a second - but by that time, John Wraith was inside and moving.

**

Nathan stopped at the end of the darkened hallway, staring hard into the dimness. There'd been no alarm, but the mansion was so quiet that it was hard not to miss the flickering mental pattern that seemed to be coming in fits and starts - in entirely different locations. That was not any of the kids, unless one of them had manifested some sort of new psionic secondary mutation.

It had been a long time since John Wraith had had the opportunity to properly exercise. As he slipped near-imperceptibly through the shadows, he thanked his father (or whoever had named him) for his most apt surname. He slid down the corridor like his namesake and rounded a corner. A rather large man stood in his way. Wraith sighed silently. Just another disposable obstacle.

Well, that didn't belong here. Nathan didn't move, didn't even raise his hand from his side, but telekinetic force pressed in on Wraith from every direction. Not crushing, but forceful enough to have held most people precisely where they stood, like a fly caught in amber.

Wraith just smiled, his pearly white teeth shining in contrast to his dark face, and soundlessly disappeared as the invisible walls caged him. The obstacle was a psi, he instantly recognized as he wrapped his own mind in the shadows that surrounded him. To all but the best trained and most alert, Wraith was no more than a momentary hallucination.

"Son of a-" #INTRUDER,# Nathan projected, finding Charles, Scott, and Ororo's minds without difficulty. #Teleporter - he just blinked out of the lower west hallway.#

**

Deep in the throes of REM sleep, David North's mind wandered. Memories flooded his brain, and he turned restlessly in the guest bed that had been provided for him. A thought not his own forced its way into his dream, complete with images of a black man in a cowboy hat, appearing and disappearing like a ghost, and Cable's voice in his brain - INTRUDER.

Maverick's eyes snapped open and in a split second he was out of his bed and moving before a flicker appeared over the now-empty bed, the barest outline of a man's form limned against the moonlit window, then gone again in silence.

**

In Jean-Paul's mind, there were only so many ways to respond to strangers teleporting into your kitchen after midnight, particularly when they made their appearance less than a foot in front of your nose. Calm greeting was very far down on the list. The choice was made in a split second; the speedster dropped the book in his hands and threw a punch at the teleporter's throat.

A slower man would have had to go to the hospital after that greeting. Wraith, however, was not that slower man even relative to his attacker's heightened reflexes. He disappeared and instantly reappeared right behind Jean-Paul. He grabbed a fistful of the other man's hair and moved to slam his face into the counter. While this had the potential to be fun, Wraith had other things to do.

Jean-Paul's reflexes gave him the extra moment of reaction time he needed to tear himself loose, leaving a tangle of dark hair snarled around Wraith's fist, which hit with enough force to rattle the countertop. The man's reaction times were fast enough that taking him alone was going to be an uncertain proposition at best. Jean-Paul took off for reinforcements.

Though teleporting straight into the kitchen instead of opening the doors and walking through had led to this confrontation and cost Wraith precious seconds, it did offer him one advantage: his opponent had to slow briefly in order to open the doors. A fraction of a second after he slammed the counter, he was in front of the doors with one arm extended just at the enemy's neck height. Jean-Paul crashed into the clothesline, and Wraith spared him a chuckle before ghosting out of the kitchen, back on track for his target.

**

Barefoot and clad in a borrowed pair of Xavier Institute sweatpants, Maverick pivoted around the corner, silenced pistol held in two hands, covering the entirety of the TV room in one sweep. Zero targets. Move on.

If they'd sent who he feared, then everyone in this mansion was at risk because of him, and that was something he couldn't allow.

No matter who he had to kill to set it right.

**

In horror movies, bathrooms were often not the safest place to be. Something that wasn't really there could appear in a mirror, or maybe it really would be in the room with you, after all. Murders took place in bathrooms, while the unsuspecting victim was caught unawares. Sometimes, even the water itself was where the horror began. This was not a horror movie, and while Crystal had certainly not been expecting the sudden appearance of an unknown man carrying a weapon, she was quite familiar with the idea of kidnapping and assassination and a myriad of ways that someone, mutant or otherwise, could suddenly appear without any prior indication of danger. So it was that when John Wraith teleported into the bathroom of the suite shared by Crystal Amaquelin and John Henry Forge only moments after Crystal stepped out of the shower he found himself hit by a massive gust of wind. The young Attilani royal didn't know why the man had teleported into her bathroom, but even at age seven she had learned that there were certain situations in which it was a perfectly proper course of action to defenestrate first and ask questions later.

Such defensive actions, of course, relied on a viable target, and it had been years since Wraith could be defined as a target of any kind. The ever so slight change in air pressure that heralded this lovely young thing's charge would go unnoticed by most, but to one like Wraith it was louder than a battlecry and offered him ample time to evade. He reappeared beside her, gallantly doffing his hat with a ghoulish laugh. "Finally," he rasped, "Someone who knows how to welcome a guest."

The instant Wraith was by her side, the air pressure in the room dropped drastically. Had he attempted to touch her, he would have found solidifed air in his way. Crystal now stood inside the rather small space she had surrounded herself with, keeping the air pressure inside her invisible "room" at a normal level so that she was not affected by the change in the rest of the room. Guests were invited. This man had not been invited into her suite.

And that was his cue. Without further adieu, Wraith disappeared once again and psychically hid his mind. After three confrontations, he knew he didn't have much time left.

But then again, neither did Maverick.

**

Almost as soon as Wraith had vanished, North kicked in the door, gun sweeping the room. He looked past Crystal as he moved, glancing from corner to corner.

"He was here," he said harshly, assessing the situation. "Are you hurt?"

"Yes, he was here," Crystal replied, quickly surrounding her body with a thick blanket of fog, "and no, I am uninjured." She'd been on her way to contact Forge, realizing that mansion security needed to know what had just happened. She hadn't bothered to grab a towel on her way out of the bathroom, not that she ever needed a towel to dry off, and she certainly hadn't been expecting any more unannounced visitors.

North nodded, then looked to the ground by Crystal's feet. Kneeling, he picked up the black Stetson that Wraith had left behind after his last teleport. "Et tu, John?" he breathed quietly.

Standing up, he tucked the pistol into the waistband of his sweatpants and surveyed the room once more. "If I could impose," he said quickly, "please inform the Professor that I'll be leaving immediately. If John Wraith makes a second attempt on my life, I don't believe he'll be as careful to avoid collateral damage. I won't risk anyone else by remaining here."

Crystal nodded. "Is there a way for Professor Xavier to contact you, in case he asks for one?" Now she had three people to contact; Forge, Kyle, and the Professor. The suite was in desperate need of a new door.

North stopped at the door, then looked over his shoulder. "Care of the Snow Valley thinktank."

I'm going to need backup for this, Maverick thought to himself. Time to end this.