Age of Apocalypse: Down the Rabbit Hole - Weakening of the Resistance

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Those chosen to follow Rachel back are immediately psionically ripped out to join her in a sudden transition into her world. As they do, a summary of events of Rachel’s world are shoved into Angelo's mind.



It had been a normal work day up and till that point – sans the fact that it was actually the weekend. With his office door closed and phone calls diverted to the answering machine, Angelo was determined to finish the stack of paperwork on his desk before he even thought of heading home. At one point he had thrown off his jacket and loosened his tie, shoulders slouched as he chipped steadily away at his allotted workload.

So when the document before him wavered and fell away, followed swiftly by his pen and chair, Angelo started violently and lurched to his feet with a short, impolite exclamation – only to find that he was already standing. Or upright, at least, and falling fast. The sensation of freefalling left as abruptly as it had descended, but something weighed heavily in his mind like a creeping sense of darkness. Balance took a moment to be regained even where there was no need for any, and when he was next able to take in his surroundings, the mutant could only shudder and shake his head in disbelief at the implausibility of what he was seeing.

__________



Flashback: Frank and Angelo share a heart to heart as Betsy struggles to save them.



"Come on, Frankie", Angelo urged weakly from his own cot. "Stay with me, here. Keep your eyes open."

"I have a better idea," muttered Frank, feeling his words slur. "Why don't we talk about War's awful life choices? And her halitosis. You'd think the subjugator of the human race could maybe brush her teeth in a while, wouldn't you?" One wooden hand gripped onto Angelo's, suddenly. Frank opened his eyes and glared at him.

"The fuck didn't you run?" he hissed, struggling for clarity. "I had her."

"War was - one of us, once", Angelo said, voice halting and breath coming hard. "Don't think she chose it. No man left behind, it's my thing."

"Then your thing is fucking retarded," Frank growled. But he let go, and fell back into his cot, still glaring at Angelo. "Christ, Skin. I'm a foot soldier. I'm fucking expendable. Stop trying to steal my heroic sacrifice and go and get your own." The joke hung weakly in the air. Frank couldn't feel his legs. He was pretty sure he'd be dead the instant he dropped out of wood form.

Angelo pushed himself up by an inch or so to return the glare, suddenly deadly serious. "Nobody's ex...pendable. Not on our side." He dropped back down, even the small effort too much to maintain. "Too many already gone."

"'S war, Ange. Deal with it." Frank turned back to stare at the ceiling, struggling to keep his eyes open. "You... you remember back when I just joined up?" he asked, suddenly. "First mission was... where was it, the war wall?" Please talk to me Angelo. Please keep me awake.

"I remember." Angelo was still looking at him, head turned on his thin pillow, and nodded fractionally. "Sent to reinforce it. Feels forever ago."

"Yeah. I put... roots down. First time I ever grew anything. Grew... grew the whole length of the wall." Frank's voice was quiet, dreamlike. "I could feel... everything, Ange. I could feel all of it. Always thought it was worth it, to feel that. Never thanked you for it."

All of a sudden, sleep felt good.

"Never... never thanked you for it."

"Hey. Hey, Frankie." Angelo tried to force himself up and fell off his cot instead, shuffling across the floor to where he could grip Frank's hand with both of his. "Ow. Don't you - drift off on me. Tell me about the roots."

Wooden fingers squeezed feebly back, barely moving under Angelo's hands. "...were... were good roots. I thought... I felt like it was just me. Whole wall... whole world... was just me. It was nice." He pulled in a breath, and tried to pull himself back to wakefullness. "Found out I was chestnut, that day. I ever tell you that? Thought I was oak. No. Chestnut."

"You knew all what was happening?" He leaned back against the nearest solid surface, probably the base of Frank's bed. "You're always the same tree? 's a strong tree, chestnut."

"Knew... knew everything." He smiled, suddenly, eyes bright. "Was everything. Wasn't just reinforcing the war wall. Was the war wall." He stared at Angelo, his grin taking on a hint of its old wickedness. "Knew who was fucking who, too, you dirty old man. Chestnut knows. Chestnut knows."

Angelo eyed him, lips quirking a little at the corners. "Who you calling old? Got less than ten years on you. Could've got... extra rations... out of people for that."

"Dirty old man," Frank repeated, implacably. "Chestnut knows." With an impossible effort, he pushed himself up on the pillows with his arms, just about sitting up a bit further. A spike of pain cut up through his back as he did, sending him into paroxysms of agony. He gritted his teeth until they passed. "He wasn't even that good looking."

Angelo's face had twisted in sympathetic pain as Frank's did, but as the younger man relaxed, he forced himself back to lightness, returning the teasing. "Jealous, Frankie? Shoulda said something."

"Fuck no, man. Just appalled at your taste." He plastered on his old smirk, suddenly. "It's a matter of aesthetics. We have a lot of fine ass on that wall."

"Most mutants are pretty hot, you ever - noticed that?" Angelo shot him a crooked grin. "Side benefit of the genes."

"Well fuck. We deserve something for killing the world, don't we?" Frank's smirk turned bitter. "Has to be fucking something."

"Tried to save it, too", Angelo pointed out more quietly. "We tried. I was gonna be a lawyer. Change the world the right way."

"Yeah? Couldn't imagine you in a suit and tie." Frank went quiet for a minute. "I wanted to be a journalist."

"Yeah? What kind, investigative?"

"Nah." Frank smiled again, a little wicked, a little wistful. "Gonzo. Like... like Hunter S., you know?"

"Oh right, yeah, I know." He smiled back and squeezed Frank's hand, then was racked by painful wet coughs as the plane started to descend. "Sounds like it - would've been fun. In another life."

Frank's fingers clenched in sympathy, then in pain as the nerves in his spine gave an agonizing swan song. "Better... better then a fucking lawyer," he replied, smirking, but his eyes had started to glaze.

"See if I bail you out - Frankie, focus." Angelo pushed himself over onto his knees with an effort, leaning into Frank's personal space. "Nearly there now. Get you fixed right up."

When they seemed to have their first patch of air without enemy combatants, Elisabeth turned on the autopilot and exited the cockpit to check in on the injured pair. She hadn't wasted a moment before going to the emergency medkit, removed two very large syringes from inside a secured puch, pulled off the syringe caps with her teeth, kneeled beside the cot, and slammed one needle into the thigh of her cargo. "We're not much farther. I need you both to hold just until we get can get you proper care. Can you do that for me?"

"Doing our best, Ms Braddock", Angelo said with a pained smile. "Doing our best. You hear her, junior? Hold on."

"The fuck you calling junior?" Frank ground out, still smirking but shot through with pain. After a moment, it faded. "I.. I can't feel my legs, Ms. Braddock."

Despite the adrenaline in their system it wouldn't work. Their bodies were giving up, she had to do something drastic to keep them tethered to this world. "All right," Betsy said, voice firm. "I promise you, this is better than the alternative." She closed her eyes, placed both hands on each man's shoulder. When she opened her eyes again, an aura of purple surrounded the trio. The telepath's arms were encased in bright psychic aura, harnessed into blades at the base of her fists.

"I'm sorry, but this will hurt." She said, bringing her fists upward and just under their jawline, jamming the psionic blades into both men's skulls.

Angelo screamed before he could stop himself, his whole body arching for a moment and his hand clenching on Frank's in a mutual agonised death grip before he slumped back against the cot, eyes closed but still breathing.

Frank didn't fare much better- he made a sound of impossible agony through teeth gritted so hard they almost cracked. He blacked out for a few moments, before his eyes fluttered open again, and a litany of curses so foul they could have curdled milk rattled out of his mouth.

"The fuck did you do to me, Braddock?" he spat out through still-gritted teeth.

Betsy screamed, forcing herself to pull back. She withdrew both hands from them, shakily wiping at her face, sweat on her brow. "Something I never want to do ever again." Sitting back on her heels, she took big gaping breaths, winded and a little scared. "I have to land the plane before things get real harried. Five minutes. Can you hold on that long for me?"

Angelo didn't open his eyes or speak, but proved his consciousness with a weak and shaky thumbs up.
Frank nodded, still growling curses. "Bedside manner..." he muttered, dropping back down into the bed, "...of an... autistic... vulture." After a moment, he managed something resembling a grin. "Still breathing though. Go fly."

"Just hang on," she said, rising. Betsy took one furtive look at the pair and turned away. The telepath walked the rest of the way to the cabin, a knowing dread in the pit of her stomach. "Please hang on."

"Creative insults, Frankie", Angelo offered after a moment, cracking his eyes open to look at his friend. "Good to know... you're still you."

Frank turned his head to look back at Angelo. He managed a rough smile. "Fuck, man," he replied. "Who else am I gonna be?" He closed his eyes again and sank his head into the pillow. "...She does though," he added.

"Yeah, she does." He chuckled faintly. "Can't really argue if it works. Since we lost Wiccan..."

"Didn't lose him, Ange," replied Frank. "He was taken from us. Not... not the same thing."

"Yeah. Taken from us. But he was - one of our - best healers. Since Day Zero anyway."

"As I recall, his bedside manner wasn't much better," Frank muttered. This was really not a conversation he wanted to have.

"Overwork." Angelo cracked a faint wry grin that quickly faded away. "Frankie? My fingers're going numb."

"Shut up," said Frank, fiercely. "You're gonna be fine. We're gonna be fine. We're gonna wake up in a week and a half, and spend months fuckin' around on Muir in wheelchairs, and then we're gonna be back on the fuckin' warwall bitching about how cushy we had it. That's what's gonna happen."

"Right. They'll unload us off here any minute and fix everything", he agreed, but his heart wasn't in it the way it had been when he'd been the one trying to convince Frank.

"They will! Now shut up!" Frank tried to push himself upright again, but his arms gave way. "Tell me who you're fucking these days," he said abruptly. It lacked anything resembling tact, but it'd distract Angelo from his numbness and Frank from his own weakness.

Angelo blinked at him, but understood the intent behind it. "Whoever's around and willing", he said with a faint grin. "Guerrilla thing, it's - hard to be - consistent. Warren a couple times, you know the - guy with the big white wings?"

The speakers crackled as Betsy's voice echoed within the walls of the plane. "Prepare for landing." The plane began its descent, landing gently on the runway as if the pilot took extra care. After the plane made a full stop, the back bay doors opened.

Maybe it was the landing that did it. Maybe it was the stress of trying to stay awake. Or maybe, when you got right down to it, Frank just wanted to die at home. In the end, it didn't matter. Frank saw the doors open. He turned to look at Angelo, and gave him a smile that was almost apologetic. He lay down on the pillow.

He dropped out of wood form.

After a moment, his eyes rolled back into his head.

"No no no no no - " Angelo tried to drag himself upright to go for help, but his legs refused to hold him. He tried to shout for Betsy, but suddenly found he didn't have the breath. He slumped back to the floor, gasping.

Betsy saw the medics approaching the plane from the cockpit window, she smiled, turned to call out to the boys when she felt Frank. Her smile dropped and then heard Angelo. "Oh god." She rushed out of her straps and ran out. "ANGELO!!"

He looked up at her, a trickle of blood at the corners of his mouth, and actually tried to smile. Wheezing, barely a whisper, he managed, "Sorry, Ms B..."

Time slowed. Betsy ran as fast as she could back to the pair but as she rounded the corner, she caught sight of Fred and Angelo lying there. She froze, heart stuck in her throat. Her entire body vibrated with the strain of these past few years. Surely, this is what breaking your soul into pieces felt like, the slow disintegration of a past held together by patchwork memories and foggy recollection. "Please don't go, Angie."

He tried to speak again, but his throat was thick and the words wouldn't come. And then he slumped back against the bed, his eyes clouding.

The medics whisked in and placed both men on stretchers. Betsy watched them yell out orders, as they exited the plane. She stood there, watching after them for a moment, then her legs gave out. Too much. It was all too much. The telepath collapsed, holding her sides and rocking in place, a strangled cry escaping her lips.

__________



Flashback: As Mother’s emissionary to Apocalypse, Jennie kills Tabitha.



Tabitha Smith, once a runaway thief, now a thief on the run. She winced at the phrase, quite aware that her internal sense of humor was distinctly off. What else could it be, when she sat in a long-abandoned town-house, eating pears out of a can that had expired longer ago than she cared to think.

Her stomach didn't care.

She held her breath at every sound, waiting for the ones that meant it was time to drop everything and run.

Those sounds were innocent, quiet little creaks and pops. a sudden small hiss, and a drip that became a longer stream.

Innocuous little noises that suddenly began to add up. A click and a creak, that became a crack as wood splintered. A small nudge and a chain reaction followed.

And then the world exploded.

She stifled a scream as she dove under the kitchen table for cover. Wood and plaster rained down. She held her bag over her head for protection and curled into as small a Target as possible.

From her hiding place, she risked peaks and glances, trying to map out an escape route.

From her vantage point a pair of boots came into view. Sturdy, travel-worn and caked with mud and plaster as water leaked from broken pipes, making small rivers on the floor. The boots went one way, then the other, and then stood, tapping impatiently. There was also a soft whistle. The tune an old nursery rhyme...

"mairzy dotes and dozy dotes and liddle lamzy divey...

Then the figure crouched. Dark hair curled around a sweet face, and a smirk played across her mouth. Eyes that Tabitha remembered as blue were now the color of sour milk, jagged black lines exploding out of the pupil.

"Ollie Ollie oxen free, Tabby," Jennifer Stavros grinned

Oh, like that was reassuring. She hadn't seen Jennie in more time than she'd care to admit, but she could smell the Not Right. She swallowed hard. "Hey, Jennie. Long time no see." She tried not to creep backwards, saving her movement. "How ya been?"

"I've been fine," Jennie settled back on her heels, her posture nothing but relaxed. "Better than fine. How ya been, Tabby?" Her smile was made even creepier by the emptiness in her eyes.

Tabs shrugged in a piss-poor imitation of nonchalance. "Y'know how it goes. Same ol', same ol'." She shifted her weight to one foot as unobtrusively as she could manage, with legs going numb. It was hard to tell when Jennie's attention might possibly wander. Tabitha swallowed as her heart stuttered with uncertainty.

"Hiding out in the sketchiest of places, eating..." Jennie nudged the can with her foot. "Beans, Tabby?" She smiled again, sweet as sunshine. "Didn't we train you better than that?"

"Why y'gotta knock the musical fruit?" Her hand tightened on the can, before her mind could make a decision, her body did. The can flew toward Jennie, Tabs' foot dug into the broken linoleum.

Her hand moved quicker than Tabitha could blink, and the can flew harmlessly across the room. Her other hand went for Tabitha's throat. In the space of a heartbeat she was pinned against the wall.

"Naughty," Jennie tsked.

Tabitha clawed at her arm, pushing for just a little room. "Never outgrew the delinquency," she gasped.

Self-preservation, so long held as her number one value, flew straight out the window in favor of witless one-liners.

Jennie's hand tightened. Her grip was inhumanly strong, far stronger than it should have been with her own mutation.

"Just a widdle more fun? No? Pfft." Jennie tilted her head sharply, almost insect-like. "That blue bitch put up a much better fight. but in the end we learned she bleeds as red as the rest of us." Jennie's smile turned feral. "Sorry honey, no hard feelings, yeah? Mama gets what Mama wants." Her grip grew even tighter.

Had she any thoughts beyond her lack of air, there might have been snide comments about the whole "mama" thing.

But Tabitha didn't think about that. She remembered how great breathing felt. She knew that if she could just get Jennie's hands off of her throat she could breathe again. But her muscles were weak from disuse and hunger. Jennie was absurdly stronger than Tabitha remembered. And a red mist hazed her vision, right before it went black.

Jennie watched as Tabitha's struggles became weaker, before they ceased altogether. Then she dropped her to the floor, the body collapsing with a meaty thud.

"All for you, Mother," Jennie said, her face devoid of emotion. "Always for you."

__________

Flashback: War kills North in his defence of the seawall.



Everything was on schedule, and North had grown very adept at selectively ignoring bureaucratic nonsense and filtering out orders that he knew he was better off ignoring. It helped him focus on things that actually needed to be done – like ensuring that the sea wall defense was locked in, up and operational before he retreated back to the relative safety of his London office.

So he stood right by the main power controls, dry-swallowing two pills from a bottle which he tossed aside as he unholstered the firearms strapped to his Kevlar suit. He had dismissed his non-mutant military backup – unnecessary contributions to body counts – and now all he needed to do was wait. If his luck held, the intel would be wrong. Unfortunately, intel almost always trumped luck.

The core of the building shook faintly, as if on cue, feeling nothing but like the low groan of release. There was a pause and the door to his right swung open, revealing the final scattered shots of a battle ending and a woman, with her hand still resting on the handle. Blood splattered an impressive design across her torso, legs, a smear over one eye that matched on ones on her hand from where she'd pushed her blonde hair away from her face.

"Hello," War said, wearing Paige's face but for red, red eyes. "You must be the line of defense."

North blinked at the familiar face, raised his gun and fired off three consecutive shots directly into a creepily red orb. As the sound of bullet casings hitting concrete echoed off the walls, the man pulled back a sleeve to consult his watch – out of habit, mostly. He knew they had exactly four minutes and seventeen seconds left before the wall was fully engaged. Just as he knew she had completely exterminated the men he had stationed outside.

“Ja. Lieutenant Colonel North at your service,” he replied casually, emptying the rest of the round into her head before War could recover completely from the knockback. “Miss Guthrie.”

Gurgling laughter settled at the ankles of the room, coming from the half of the face War still had left. "So many titles," she managed, gripping tight on the remainder of her hair.

There was a tearing noise, muffled by the emergence of several of North's own squads, all now trained on him. "Think of it this way," War said, smoothing down her restored, pale jaw. "You'll get to die for your cause! That's what all good soldiers want."

“Nien,” came the bland disagreement as the German man dared remove his gaze from the grotesque sight of a face he had previously recalled with warmth. 4.35 seconds passed them by as he reloaded his handguns, dropped them into their holsters, and unhooked the pair of automatic rifles strapped to his back. He twirled one – almost idly – as he studied the blank and mangled faces of his men.

“What all good soldiers want is for War to end so that they may return home to their loved ones.” The twirling gun smacked firmly into his callused palm, and North cocked it at the Horseman. “Dying for a chosen cause – that is just the backup plan. And propagandic bullshit.”

Three minutes and fifty seconds

War smiled and a roar split the relative quiet of the room, battle cries, as a dozen or so soldiers rushed North at once.