Back to Gatefold#12 - "A Lobster's Story"
|
His name is Bill. He is a mutant. And a cyborg.He is also a lobster.
For the last several years, he has lived with a small grouping of young mutants called the Beat Street Gang. They are the only family this lobster has. Once, he had a brother named Don, but Don was trampled years ago by an alien dinosaur.
No, don't ask... that's a really long story.
Suffice to say that Bill, never very even-tempered, has been pissed off ever since. Now he lives in Genosha, a tiny island nation ruled by a mutant biped of tremendous power named Magneto. Bill did not come here because he agrees with Magneto's ideologies, or because he has a particular affection for the Indian Ocean -- both piss him off, truth to tell. No, he came because his family came.
His family -- a trio of bipeds named Ariel, Chance, and Gomi -- were involved in some biped silliness in a faraway land, and Ariel didn't return from said silliness. The remainder of his family, as well as the rest of the young mutants currently known as Fallen Angels, have been notably subdued ever since.
This, unsurprisingly, pisses Bill off.
It is with this familiar mindset that he approaches another day in Magneto's Genosha.
Avalon Tower pierced the sky high above the capitol city of Hammer Bay. The building, chosen as Magneto's seat of office and center of operations back when he'd been ceded control of the island, was at least twice as tall as the grandest of its neighbors.
"Looks like a big silver dick," Chance observed, standing alone atop the building's viewing deck and looking down its length. She took another drag on her cigarette, realized sourly that she'd smoked it down to the filter, and pitched the butt over the railing.
She was barely 16 -- her friends knew this about her even if they didn't know her real name. Her lineage was Asian, though she claimed to have moved to the US when she was an infant, and her hair was cropped raggedly short -- probably she'd cut it herself. Faded blue jeans and a black leather jacket completed her look. All of this together, combined with the fact that she'd failed to develop any but the tiniest nubs of breasts, made her look more like a boy than a girl. And that was fine with her.
"Wanna talk about it?"
Chance wheeled around, startled by the new voice, and found Tabitha Smith standing at the door to the stairwell, her left arm in a sling. Tabby pushed the door closed and moved toward her.
"If I did, I would've come looking for you, Boom Boom." Chance fished a pack of Marlboros out of her jacket and tapped out a new cancer stick.
Tabitha moved up beside her and leaned against the bars on the platform's edge. "I'm sorry about Ariel."
"Yeah? Good for you."
Tabby's eyes narrowed. Then they relaxed again and she ran a hand through her blonde hair. "Why do you do this? I'm not trying to hurt you in any way, but you won't stop jabbing at me."
Chance peered at her through the smoke without replying.
"You want to know what I think?" Tabitha ventured.
"No, but I got a feeling you're gonna tell me anyway."
"I think you and Ari had a thing." Tabby spread the first two fingers of each hand and banged the webbings between them together. "You know. Bumping scissors."
Chance flicked her cigarette at her. It bounced off her shirt and, as Tabitha hurriedly brushed the burning coal away, Chance stepped forward and laid her on her ass with one punch.
"Fuck you," she hissed. "Fuck you and fuck this entire fucked-up country. You told us we'd be fighting for something worthwhile here, but what did we do in China? We trashed an abortion clinic. The clinic's just going to get rebuilt and keep right on killing mutants. And Ariel had to die for that shit?"
"We didn't know the Collective Man would--"
"Don't give me that shit, Boom Boom!" She straightened, shaking her head. "DaCosta fucked up big time. A ten year-old could have put together a more effective mission plan than he did. Hell... even the Vanisher could have. And now Ari's dead for no good reason, because he was sloppy."
Tabitha put a finger to her lips, found she wasn't bleeding, then grabbed the railing with her good hand and pulled herself to her feet. "Well," she sighed, straightening her clothes. "At least I got you to talk about it."
Chance bared her teeth, seemed ready to go at her again... then she deflated. She sagged back against the bars and hung her head, shuddering, and Tabitha thought she might be crying. But when the girl lifted her face she was chuckling.
"Bitch," Chance said.
"You the pot or the kettle?" Tabby leaned on the railing. "Bum a cigarette?"
"Didn't know you smoked."
"I don't... not much anyway."
Chance produced two more cigarettes, lit her own, and held the lighter while Tabby lit hers.
"So are you gonna leave?"
"Where would I go?" Chance turned and looked out over Hammer Bay again. "Back to Beat Street? Even if I could get Gomi and Bill to come with me... no, that shit was played out long ago, we just didn't realize it. And I don't want to go back to being a thief."
"You'd rather be a terrorist?"
"Is that what we are?"
"I think so... yeah."
Chance shrugged. "Why the hell not? Change of pace."
The girls continued to smoke in silence. Behind them, a bored Bill skittered out of the shadows and toward the stairwell.
"Bobby!"
Roberto DaCosta looked around at the sound of his name, and felt his heart sink when he saw Julio Esteban Richter approaching from across the crowded cafeteria. Roberto was in no mood to deal with any of his teammates after what had happened in China--though he'd never admit as much to himself, he'd been unconsciously dodging them for the last several days, and had very nearly managed to pass another meal without having to confront any of them.
Now here came Rictor, and Roberto knew there were only two things he could possibly want to talk about, neither of which Bobby particularly felt like discussing.
"Shatterstar," Rictor said simply when he got within earshot. "When are we going to look for him?"
Roberto sighed. Well, that answered that question. He turned and pushed through the cafeteria's swinging doors, out into the corridor beyond. Rictor stayed on his heels. "You've seen all the fighting going on in the streets, right?"
"Of course I have!" Rictor said. "And it's all the more reason we--"
There was a snap from the floor, and Roberto hopped back in surprise. Bill the Lobster was on the floor directly in front of them, his claws poised perilously close to Roberto's feet. "Bill! Shit, you almost severed my toes, you little bastard!"
Rictor acknowledged Bill with a glance and went right on talking. "It's all the more reason we should be out there looking for 'Star."
Roberto sighed, looked at Bill longingly--as if he'd hoped the lobster would provide more distraction from his teammate's train of thought--and then returned his eyes to Rictor. "We don't even know where to start looking."
"Well, we need to fucking try, Roberto! Shatterstar would do it for us! He's been missing for two weeks now, and nobody's so much as blinked!"
Roberto nodded. "You're right, you're right. I was so caught up in this China thing, and then when we got back... look, we'll go--you and me--and we'll look for him. But I can guarantee nobody else is going to want to come out with us, not if I'm there."
"Meltdown will."
"Meltdown blames me for what happened to Ariel just as much as the others do. Shit, Magneto's probably going to take leadership away from me. What I'm saying is, I'm the wrong guy to come to if you want to round up a posse. I don't have any--"
"Hey, look. A couple of Angels."
The two turned and found themselves facing three fellow mutants across the corridor. Carmella Unuscione, Senyaka, and Virgil Burnside, otherwise known as Chrome. Unuscione had been the one who'd spoken.
"What the hell do you want?" Rictor demanded. There was no love lost between the mutants who had once been Magneto's Acolytes and those who seemed to be the current object of his favor--the Fallen Angels.
"Angels?" Burnside asked. "Like Charlie's Angels?"
"No, more like little boys with fairy wings on their backs. Faggots in other words. What say, boys? Are you fucking each other?"
Roberto had to increase the pressure on Rictor's shoulder to keep him from leaping into Unuscione's face.
"You may not be screwing each other, but I heard you screwed the pooch royally in China, boy. Heard you and your Angels may not be Magneto's best boys anymore."
Roberto scowled. "What is this?" His eyes darted across the trio of faces that had somehow boxed him and his friend in. "What's with you people? You call us faggots, you gang up on us -- this isn't fifth grade, Carmella. Grow up or go back to the schoolyard. We weren't bothering you."
Unuscione sneered and looked from Roberto to Rictor. "How are you doing, Julio? Found your boyfriend Shatterstar yet?"
"Fuck you, you raging cu--"
Rictor shook free of Roberto, and got exactly one step toward Unuscione, his clenched fists radiating the vibratory power that was his namesake, before an ear-splitting CRACKfilled the hallway and cut off his words at the throat. Senyaka, eternally silent Senyaka whose feelings remained his own beneath the swaddled wrappings he wore over his face, had wrapped his energy whip around the boy's throat. Rictor's eyes bulged, his hands started to go up to the choking whip, and then they reversed, pointing out toward Senyaka.
"Ric! No!" Roberto saw his friend's intention a moment before Rictor would have blasted the Acolyte with his powers, probably breaking his own neck in the process. Roberto's own hands snaked out and turned Rictor's wrists, forcing him to drop them with a breathless little squeak of pain. Rictor fell to his knees, clutching at his closed throat.
"Let him go, Senyaka!" Roberto's skin slicked over with the black Sunspot energy effect, and his heart sank when he saw this wasn't going to intimidate the Acolytes. Senyaka maintained his grip on Rictor's new leash, and Unuscione's emerald psionic armor shimmered into view around her.
He and Rictor had played right into their hands. And even though they had started to draw an audience, no one was moving to break up the fight.
Well, almost no one...
There was a feline howl of rage and Feral appeared out of nowhere, launching herself over the heads of the crowd, bounding once, and dropping neatly onto Senyaka's shoulders. Once there, she began tearing at the man's facial wrappings with her claws. Chrome snatched her by the arm and, before she could turn her claws on him, turned her into an immovable silver statue. She dropped off Senyaka's shoulders and hit the floor with a thunk.
Bobby was moving forward, ready to match his strength against the blocking Unuscione if he had to, running over possible ways to get at Senyaka first as he went, when the whip-wielder suddenly howled in wordless agony. He dropped the energy lash and fell to his knees, hands clasped to his head as Rictor weakly tore the other end of the whip from his throat.
Sitting on Rictor's shoulder, heavy blue claws clacking rhythmically in irritation was Bill. Senyaka's energy whip lay in two pieces on the waxed tile, severed neatly by Bill's claws.
Roberto didn't hesitate. He faked to the left, and when Unuscione moved to intercept him, he ducked around her and clocked the still-wailing Senyaka hard enough to send him skating on his back down the hallway. Unuscione whirled, but Bobby already had her, hitting her in the side with a full-tilt solar blast that would have cut her in half if she hadn't been wearing her energy armor. As it was, it smashed her off-balance and threw her sideways through the adjacent wall.
"Berto," Rictor was hissing, hands still at his burned throat. "Watch it..."
Bobby spun around, and just managed to fall back in time to avoid the lunging reach of Chrome. He grabbed the Acolyte by the forearm, and squeezed.
Chrome's mutant gift gave him a sort of Midas touch, only instead of gold he turned his victims into a silvery substance. But his gift needed flesh-to-flesh contact to work, and this meant he couldn't do a damn thing about it as Roberto squeezed through his sleeve and crushed the ulna and radius of his right arm together.
Chrome's scream echoed down the corridor and into the commissary. Several of the mutants standing around gawping took a step back at the sound. Others looked like they might finally be willing to step forward and break the fight up. Roberto paid them no mind, maintaining the pressure on Chrome's shattered arm.
"Change her back," he hissed. "Do it now or I start working my way up."
Somehow Chrome heard and understood this through his own agonized screams. With the arm that wasn't currently being ruined (and it was impossible not to note the sickening way the arm was swelling with blood on either side of Sunspot's grip), Chrome reached out and gently touched Feral's silver foot. She immediately became flesh and blood again.
"Feral, you okay?"
She seemed dazed, but she managed to nod, and the look she gave Chrome was pure murder.
Roberto released Chrome and turned away, disinterested, as he crumpled to the tile floor. Unuscione was coming back through the hole she'd punched in the wall. Barely looking at her, Roberto hit her with another blast that knocked her back again.
Rictor was still gasping for breath, and there were ugly burns all around his throat and neck. "Shit..." Bobby breathed, crouching down next to him. "We gotta get you to the hospital, man." Then he remembered that there wasn't a hospital anymore, not after it had been mysteriously leveled a week prior. There was, however, a makeshift MASH unit near the old site, and that would have to do for now.
Feral had moved uncertainly to Rictor's side, and now she put a tentative hand on his shoulder. Rictor paused in his hacking and coughing just long enough to shrug out from beneath her hand, and Feral's expression went from poorly-veiled concern to something similar to the way she'd looked at Chrome moments earlier. She spun around and vanished into the crowd with a flick of her tail, threading between the legs of the rubberneckers and making her way to wherever it was she went when she was like this.
Bobby didn't know what was going on with these two, but he couldn't exactly afford to care at the moment. Deactivating his powers, he helped Rictor to his feet and moved him slowly away from the site of the melee. None of the Acolytes were in any condition to follow.
Bill tarried a moment longer, watching a couple of community-minded bipeds finally move to help the downed Acolytes. Then he very quickly skittered away.
"How are you adjusting, Siena?"
The white-haired girl stood at the window of the small, wood-paneled office, looking out over the ocean, one hand absently toying with the petals of a potted hibiscus. At the question, she turned and fixed her doctor with an impatient stare.
"Adjusting? Pfft... next you're going to ask me about my parents, right?"
The black woman leaning against the desk bent her long neck in a nod. "If that's what you wish to talk about."
Siena Blaze rolled her eyes and looked back out the window. "No thanks. If you must know, I'm getting along fabulously. The nightlife in Hammer Bay is bee-yond compare, and the local cuisine is simply to die for."
The black woman--Nyota Chaisiku--tapped her finger against the hollow of her throat. "Sarcasm isn't going to help us make any progress, Siena."
"You wouldn't like me to be straight with you, lady."
"Try me."
Siena turned, crossed her arms, and leaned back against the window sill. "Ever since I woke up from my coma with that... thing's dick in me--you know, I'm not even very sorry that I leveled that hospital. Because at least I got that sick bastard. Got him good."
Nyota's eyes went up. "You feel no remorse?"
"None." Siena's eyes narrowed as she regarded her doctor. "You're not manipulating me, are you?"
A thin, humorless smile creased the black woman's flawless face. "No, Siena. My powers extend only to physiological functions. I suppose I could keep you from feeling remorse if I really tried, by controlling the output of your glands and the electrical current through your brain, but I certainly couldn't do so and maintain a conversation with you at the same time. I don't use my gift on others unless it is absolutely necessary, I've told you that."
Siena snorted. Nyota pressed on.
"Your attitude concerns me. Nearly 200 people were killed when you destroyed the hospital, and yet you say you feel no regret. I understand that while you were with the Exiles, you caused similar destruction, and the guilt very nearly destroyed you."
Siena made a face. "Ground Zero. Made the World Trade Center look like a pop bottle rocket."
"So what has changed, Siena? Is it just the fact that this time you meant to do it?"
"I was... confused when I was with the Exiles. Hell, me and Marko and Reaper... we almost convinced ourselves we were superheroes or somethin'." Siena shook her head. "I'm not a superhero. I enjoy seeing things blow up too much to be a superhero. So I guess that makes me a super-villain."
"You haven't answered my question."
"I was fucked up when I was with the Exiles, all right? That's the only way I can explain it. Whatever was going on in my head at the time, I'm sure it ended with me wandering around Buenos Aires thinking I was Maria Campo. I'm glad to be done with the whole thing."
"But Maria Campo and the person you were when you were with the Exiles aren't really separate entities, Siena. They're pieces of you. Pieces that I believe you're now trying to repress in favor of--"
Siena had taken to toying with the leaves of the hibiscus again, and now her hand clamped down on the plant. There was a sizzling flash, and a smell of ozone in the air, and the flower was no more.
"Don't you get it? I don't care about any of that shit! I like who I am. I like being able to kill people and not lose any fucking sleep over it!"
"I can help y--"
Siena's eyes flashed. "You can help me by giving me a clean bill of health so Mags can put me in the field. Anything else is bullshit."
Nyota's eyes went up in mild surprise. "You don't understand. I have no interest in unleashing an MPD with your power level on the world. You either work with me to correct your problems, Siena, or you don't work for Magneto." She nodded at the ashen hibiscus. "And you owe me another plant."
"I owe you a foot in the ass, you smug cunt." Siena stepped forward, electromagnetic power bleeding out of her eyes. Both of them knew she could level this tower and most of the surrounding countryside, but Nyota Chaisiku--codenamed Pacemaker, psychiatric consultant to Erik Lehnsherr--looked not at all concerned. When Siena Blaze raised a threatening hand toward her, Nyota merely reached out with her gift and increased the production of adenosine in the younger woman's brain. The influx of the chemical made Siena Blaze go suddenly and absolutely to sleep.
Siena thumped to the floor at Nyota's feet, and the doctor looked at her patient with a sigh. "Now we must start all over." She looked around. "Hello, Bill."
Across the room, Bill the Lobster emerged from behind another potted plant. He approached Nyota cautiously and the doctor tugged her robes up slightly and squatted down to meet him.
"How have you been, friend? It's fortunate that you weren't behind that other pot, isn't it?"
Bill made no reply, just looked up at the woman with something other than the animosity he usually had for bipeds. Nyota Chaisiku was one of only two people Bill actually enjoyed being around. Her mutant gift caressed his antennules, passing along the nearly-forgotten scent of the New England shore. His lobster eyes, which usually only saw in indistinct blobs of color, snapped into sharp focus in the woman's presence, and he used all of this visual acuity to study her.
"I'm afraid you've caught me at a bad time," Nyota was saying, running a hand over Bill's shell and sending electric waves of pleasure through him. "I must be ready to deal with Ms. Blaze when she awakens. Come see me tomorrow and we'll go for a stroll in the Gardens."
Bill was disappointed, but knew there was little he could do about it. Clapping his crusher claw together once, he scuttled backward, out from under the woman's hand, and made for the door.
"Assuming we all live to see it," Nyota added softly, giving the unconscious woman on her floor a rueful look.
Gomi was all alone in his quarters when Bill found him, stretched across his bed with his arms under his head and his eyes pointed out the two-way glass and into the Genoshan sky. His heavy glasses were off, lying on the nightstand, and his spiky, bleached hair looked almost radioactive in the bright light of midday.
Gomi had been Bill's best friend since Gomi's older brother and an unscrupulous friend--both of whom fancied themselves scientists--had subjected both the boy and the lobster to cybernetic surgery. Since then, they'd lived together, stolen together, fought together. Bill didn't think much of bipeds in general, but Gomi was practically lobster-like in his nobility and charisma.
Bill climbed up onto the bed, and from there onto his friend's chest, where he stopped and rested. Without looking at him, Gomi put a hand on his blue shell.
"I miss her Bill," he sighed.
Bill thumped his front claws on Gomi's chest in a way the boy knew was an offering of comfort. Gomi smiled.
There were hundreds of thousands of stories in the green and pleasant land of Genosha, some of which were about to become very important to the continued survival of that land. But those stories, to coin a phrase, piss Bill the Lobster off. He's not interested. To his mind, there is only one story that matters in the greater scheme of things, and it is the story we have just witnessed. It is
A LOBSTER'S STORY
For the last several years, he has lived with a small grouping of young mutants called the Beat Street Gang. They are the only family this lobster has. Once, he had a brother named Don, but Don was trampled years ago by an alien dinosaur.
No, don't ask... that's a really long story.
Suffice to say that Bill, never very even-tempered, has been pissed off ever since. Now he lives in Genosha, a tiny island nation ruled by a mutant biped of tremendous power named Magneto. Bill did not come here because he agrees with Magneto's ideologies, or because he has a particular affection for the Indian Ocean -- both piss him off, truth to tell. No, he came because his family came.
His family -- a trio of bipeds named Ariel, Chance, and Gomi -- were involved in some biped silliness in a faraway land, and Ariel didn't return from said silliness. The remainder of his family, as well as the rest of the young mutants currently known as Fallen Angels, have been notably subdued ever since.
This, unsurprisingly, pisses Bill off.
It is with this familiar mindset that he approaches another day in Magneto's Genosha.
Avalon Tower pierced the sky high above the capitol city of Hammer Bay. The building, chosen as Magneto's seat of office and center of operations back when he'd been ceded control of the island, was at least twice as tall as the grandest of its neighbors.
"Looks like a big silver dick," Chance observed, standing alone atop the building's viewing deck and looking down its length. She took another drag on her cigarette, realized sourly that she'd smoked it down to the filter, and pitched the butt over the railing.
She was barely 16 -- her friends knew this about her even if they didn't know her real name. Her lineage was Asian, though she claimed to have moved to the US when she was an infant, and her hair was cropped raggedly short -- probably she'd cut it herself. Faded blue jeans and a black leather jacket completed her look. All of this together, combined with the fact that she'd failed to develop any but the tiniest nubs of breasts, made her look more like a boy than a girl. And that was fine with her.
"Wanna talk about it?"
Chance wheeled around, startled by the new voice, and found Tabitha Smith standing at the door to the stairwell, her left arm in a sling. Tabby pushed the door closed and moved toward her.
"If I did, I would've come looking for you, Boom Boom." Chance fished a pack of Marlboros out of her jacket and tapped out a new cancer stick.
Tabitha moved up beside her and leaned against the bars on the platform's edge. "I'm sorry about Ariel."
"Yeah? Good for you."
Tabby's eyes narrowed. Then they relaxed again and she ran a hand through her blonde hair. "Why do you do this? I'm not trying to hurt you in any way, but you won't stop jabbing at me."
Chance peered at her through the smoke without replying.
"You want to know what I think?" Tabitha ventured.
"No, but I got a feeling you're gonna tell me anyway."
"I think you and Ari had a thing." Tabby spread the first two fingers of each hand and banged the webbings between them together. "You know. Bumping scissors."
Chance flicked her cigarette at her. It bounced off her shirt and, as Tabitha hurriedly brushed the burning coal away, Chance stepped forward and laid her on her ass with one punch.
"Fuck you," she hissed. "Fuck you and fuck this entire fucked-up country. You told us we'd be fighting for something worthwhile here, but what did we do in China? We trashed an abortion clinic. The clinic's just going to get rebuilt and keep right on killing mutants. And Ariel had to die for that shit?"
"We didn't know the Collective Man would--"
"Don't give me that shit, Boom Boom!" She straightened, shaking her head. "DaCosta fucked up big time. A ten year-old could have put together a more effective mission plan than he did. Hell... even the Vanisher could have. And now Ari's dead for no good reason, because he was sloppy."
Tabitha put a finger to her lips, found she wasn't bleeding, then grabbed the railing with her good hand and pulled herself to her feet. "Well," she sighed, straightening her clothes. "At least I got you to talk about it."
Chance bared her teeth, seemed ready to go at her again... then she deflated. She sagged back against the bars and hung her head, shuddering, and Tabitha thought she might be crying. But when the girl lifted her face she was chuckling.
"Bitch," Chance said.
"You the pot or the kettle?" Tabby leaned on the railing. "Bum a cigarette?"
"Didn't know you smoked."
"I don't... not much anyway."
Chance produced two more cigarettes, lit her own, and held the lighter while Tabby lit hers.
"So are you gonna leave?"
"Where would I go?" Chance turned and looked out over Hammer Bay again. "Back to Beat Street? Even if I could get Gomi and Bill to come with me... no, that shit was played out long ago, we just didn't realize it. And I don't want to go back to being a thief."
"You'd rather be a terrorist?"
"Is that what we are?"
"I think so... yeah."
Chance shrugged. "Why the hell not? Change of pace."
The girls continued to smoke in silence. Behind them, a bored Bill skittered out of the shadows and toward the stairwell.
"Bobby!"
Roberto DaCosta looked around at the sound of his name, and felt his heart sink when he saw Julio Esteban Richter approaching from across the crowded cafeteria. Roberto was in no mood to deal with any of his teammates after what had happened in China--though he'd never admit as much to himself, he'd been unconsciously dodging them for the last several days, and had very nearly managed to pass another meal without having to confront any of them.
Now here came Rictor, and Roberto knew there were only two things he could possibly want to talk about, neither of which Bobby particularly felt like discussing.
"Shatterstar," Rictor said simply when he got within earshot. "When are we going to look for him?"
Roberto sighed. Well, that answered that question. He turned and pushed through the cafeteria's swinging doors, out into the corridor beyond. Rictor stayed on his heels. "You've seen all the fighting going on in the streets, right?"
"Of course I have!" Rictor said. "And it's all the more reason we--"
There was a snap from the floor, and Roberto hopped back in surprise. Bill the Lobster was on the floor directly in front of them, his claws poised perilously close to Roberto's feet. "Bill! Shit, you almost severed my toes, you little bastard!"
Rictor acknowledged Bill with a glance and went right on talking. "It's all the more reason we should be out there looking for 'Star."
Roberto sighed, looked at Bill longingly--as if he'd hoped the lobster would provide more distraction from his teammate's train of thought--and then returned his eyes to Rictor. "We don't even know where to start looking."
"Well, we need to fucking try, Roberto! Shatterstar would do it for us! He's been missing for two weeks now, and nobody's so much as blinked!"
Roberto nodded. "You're right, you're right. I was so caught up in this China thing, and then when we got back... look, we'll go--you and me--and we'll look for him. But I can guarantee nobody else is going to want to come out with us, not if I'm there."
"Meltdown will."
"Meltdown blames me for what happened to Ariel just as much as the others do. Shit, Magneto's probably going to take leadership away from me. What I'm saying is, I'm the wrong guy to come to if you want to round up a posse. I don't have any--"
"Hey, look. A couple of Angels."
The two turned and found themselves facing three fellow mutants across the corridor. Carmella Unuscione, Senyaka, and Virgil Burnside, otherwise known as Chrome. Unuscione had been the one who'd spoken.
"What the hell do you want?" Rictor demanded. There was no love lost between the mutants who had once been Magneto's Acolytes and those who seemed to be the current object of his favor--the Fallen Angels.
"Angels?" Burnside asked. "Like Charlie's Angels?"
"No, more like little boys with fairy wings on their backs. Faggots in other words. What say, boys? Are you fucking each other?"
Roberto had to increase the pressure on Rictor's shoulder to keep him from leaping into Unuscione's face.
"You may not be screwing each other, but I heard you screwed the pooch royally in China, boy. Heard you and your Angels may not be Magneto's best boys anymore."
Roberto scowled. "What is this?" His eyes darted across the trio of faces that had somehow boxed him and his friend in. "What's with you people? You call us faggots, you gang up on us -- this isn't fifth grade, Carmella. Grow up or go back to the schoolyard. We weren't bothering you."
Unuscione sneered and looked from Roberto to Rictor. "How are you doing, Julio? Found your boyfriend Shatterstar yet?"
"Fuck you, you raging cu--"
Rictor shook free of Roberto, and got exactly one step toward Unuscione, his clenched fists radiating the vibratory power that was his namesake, before an ear-splitting CRACKfilled the hallway and cut off his words at the throat. Senyaka, eternally silent Senyaka whose feelings remained his own beneath the swaddled wrappings he wore over his face, had wrapped his energy whip around the boy's throat. Rictor's eyes bulged, his hands started to go up to the choking whip, and then they reversed, pointing out toward Senyaka.
"Ric! No!" Roberto saw his friend's intention a moment before Rictor would have blasted the Acolyte with his powers, probably breaking his own neck in the process. Roberto's own hands snaked out and turned Rictor's wrists, forcing him to drop them with a breathless little squeak of pain. Rictor fell to his knees, clutching at his closed throat.
"Let him go, Senyaka!" Roberto's skin slicked over with the black Sunspot energy effect, and his heart sank when he saw this wasn't going to intimidate the Acolytes. Senyaka maintained his grip on Rictor's new leash, and Unuscione's emerald psionic armor shimmered into view around her.
He and Rictor had played right into their hands. And even though they had started to draw an audience, no one was moving to break up the fight.
Well, almost no one...
There was a feline howl of rage and Feral appeared out of nowhere, launching herself over the heads of the crowd, bounding once, and dropping neatly onto Senyaka's shoulders. Once there, she began tearing at the man's facial wrappings with her claws. Chrome snatched her by the arm and, before she could turn her claws on him, turned her into an immovable silver statue. She dropped off Senyaka's shoulders and hit the floor with a thunk.
Bobby was moving forward, ready to match his strength against the blocking Unuscione if he had to, running over possible ways to get at Senyaka first as he went, when the whip-wielder suddenly howled in wordless agony. He dropped the energy lash and fell to his knees, hands clasped to his head as Rictor weakly tore the other end of the whip from his throat.
Sitting on Rictor's shoulder, heavy blue claws clacking rhythmically in irritation was Bill. Senyaka's energy whip lay in two pieces on the waxed tile, severed neatly by Bill's claws.
Roberto didn't hesitate. He faked to the left, and when Unuscione moved to intercept him, he ducked around her and clocked the still-wailing Senyaka hard enough to send him skating on his back down the hallway. Unuscione whirled, but Bobby already had her, hitting her in the side with a full-tilt solar blast that would have cut her in half if she hadn't been wearing her energy armor. As it was, it smashed her off-balance and threw her sideways through the adjacent wall.
"Berto," Rictor was hissing, hands still at his burned throat. "Watch it..."
Bobby spun around, and just managed to fall back in time to avoid the lunging reach of Chrome. He grabbed the Acolyte by the forearm, and squeezed.
Chrome's mutant gift gave him a sort of Midas touch, only instead of gold he turned his victims into a silvery substance. But his gift needed flesh-to-flesh contact to work, and this meant he couldn't do a damn thing about it as Roberto squeezed through his sleeve and crushed the ulna and radius of his right arm together.
Chrome's scream echoed down the corridor and into the commissary. Several of the mutants standing around gawping took a step back at the sound. Others looked like they might finally be willing to step forward and break the fight up. Roberto paid them no mind, maintaining the pressure on Chrome's shattered arm.
"Change her back," he hissed. "Do it now or I start working my way up."
Somehow Chrome heard and understood this through his own agonized screams. With the arm that wasn't currently being ruined (and it was impossible not to note the sickening way the arm was swelling with blood on either side of Sunspot's grip), Chrome reached out and gently touched Feral's silver foot. She immediately became flesh and blood again.
"Feral, you okay?"
She seemed dazed, but she managed to nod, and the look she gave Chrome was pure murder.
Roberto released Chrome and turned away, disinterested, as he crumpled to the tile floor. Unuscione was coming back through the hole she'd punched in the wall. Barely looking at her, Roberto hit her with another blast that knocked her back again.
Rictor was still gasping for breath, and there were ugly burns all around his throat and neck. "Shit..." Bobby breathed, crouching down next to him. "We gotta get you to the hospital, man." Then he remembered that there wasn't a hospital anymore, not after it had been mysteriously leveled a week prior. There was, however, a makeshift MASH unit near the old site, and that would have to do for now.
Feral had moved uncertainly to Rictor's side, and now she put a tentative hand on his shoulder. Rictor paused in his hacking and coughing just long enough to shrug out from beneath her hand, and Feral's expression went from poorly-veiled concern to something similar to the way she'd looked at Chrome moments earlier. She spun around and vanished into the crowd with a flick of her tail, threading between the legs of the rubberneckers and making her way to wherever it was she went when she was like this.
Bobby didn't know what was going on with these two, but he couldn't exactly afford to care at the moment. Deactivating his powers, he helped Rictor to his feet and moved him slowly away from the site of the melee. None of the Acolytes were in any condition to follow.
Bill tarried a moment longer, watching a couple of community-minded bipeds finally move to help the downed Acolytes. Then he very quickly skittered away.
"How are you adjusting, Siena?"
The white-haired girl stood at the window of the small, wood-paneled office, looking out over the ocean, one hand absently toying with the petals of a potted hibiscus. At the question, she turned and fixed her doctor with an impatient stare.
"Adjusting? Pfft... next you're going to ask me about my parents, right?"
The black woman leaning against the desk bent her long neck in a nod. "If that's what you wish to talk about."
Siena Blaze rolled her eyes and looked back out the window. "No thanks. If you must know, I'm getting along fabulously. The nightlife in Hammer Bay is bee-yond compare, and the local cuisine is simply to die for."
The black woman--Nyota Chaisiku--tapped her finger against the hollow of her throat. "Sarcasm isn't going to help us make any progress, Siena."
"You wouldn't like me to be straight with you, lady."
"Try me."
Siena turned, crossed her arms, and leaned back against the window sill. "Ever since I woke up from my coma with that... thing's dick in me--you know, I'm not even very sorry that I leveled that hospital. Because at least I got that sick bastard. Got him good."
Nyota's eyes went up. "You feel no remorse?"
"None." Siena's eyes narrowed as she regarded her doctor. "You're not manipulating me, are you?"
A thin, humorless smile creased the black woman's flawless face. "No, Siena. My powers extend only to physiological functions. I suppose I could keep you from feeling remorse if I really tried, by controlling the output of your glands and the electrical current through your brain, but I certainly couldn't do so and maintain a conversation with you at the same time. I don't use my gift on others unless it is absolutely necessary, I've told you that."
Siena snorted. Nyota pressed on.
"Your attitude concerns me. Nearly 200 people were killed when you destroyed the hospital, and yet you say you feel no regret. I understand that while you were with the Exiles, you caused similar destruction, and the guilt very nearly destroyed you."
Siena made a face. "Ground Zero. Made the World Trade Center look like a pop bottle rocket."
"So what has changed, Siena? Is it just the fact that this time you meant to do it?"
"I was... confused when I was with the Exiles. Hell, me and Marko and Reaper... we almost convinced ourselves we were superheroes or somethin'." Siena shook her head. "I'm not a superhero. I enjoy seeing things blow up too much to be a superhero. So I guess that makes me a super-villain."
"You haven't answered my question."
"I was fucked up when I was with the Exiles, all right? That's the only way I can explain it. Whatever was going on in my head at the time, I'm sure it ended with me wandering around Buenos Aires thinking I was Maria Campo. I'm glad to be done with the whole thing."
"But Maria Campo and the person you were when you were with the Exiles aren't really separate entities, Siena. They're pieces of you. Pieces that I believe you're now trying to repress in favor of--"
Siena had taken to toying with the leaves of the hibiscus again, and now her hand clamped down on the plant. There was a sizzling flash, and a smell of ozone in the air, and the flower was no more.
"Don't you get it? I don't care about any of that shit! I like who I am. I like being able to kill people and not lose any fucking sleep over it!"
"I can help y--"
Siena's eyes flashed. "You can help me by giving me a clean bill of health so Mags can put me in the field. Anything else is bullshit."
Nyota's eyes went up in mild surprise. "You don't understand. I have no interest in unleashing an MPD with your power level on the world. You either work with me to correct your problems, Siena, or you don't work for Magneto." She nodded at the ashen hibiscus. "And you owe me another plant."
"I owe you a foot in the ass, you smug cunt." Siena stepped forward, electromagnetic power bleeding out of her eyes. Both of them knew she could level this tower and most of the surrounding countryside, but Nyota Chaisiku--codenamed Pacemaker, psychiatric consultant to Erik Lehnsherr--looked not at all concerned. When Siena Blaze raised a threatening hand toward her, Nyota merely reached out with her gift and increased the production of adenosine in the younger woman's brain. The influx of the chemical made Siena Blaze go suddenly and absolutely to sleep.
Siena thumped to the floor at Nyota's feet, and the doctor looked at her patient with a sigh. "Now we must start all over." She looked around. "Hello, Bill."
Across the room, Bill the Lobster emerged from behind another potted plant. He approached Nyota cautiously and the doctor tugged her robes up slightly and squatted down to meet him.
"How have you been, friend? It's fortunate that you weren't behind that other pot, isn't it?"
Bill made no reply, just looked up at the woman with something other than the animosity he usually had for bipeds. Nyota Chaisiku was one of only two people Bill actually enjoyed being around. Her mutant gift caressed his antennules, passing along the nearly-forgotten scent of the New England shore. His lobster eyes, which usually only saw in indistinct blobs of color, snapped into sharp focus in the woman's presence, and he used all of this visual acuity to study her.
"I'm afraid you've caught me at a bad time," Nyota was saying, running a hand over Bill's shell and sending electric waves of pleasure through him. "I must be ready to deal with Ms. Blaze when she awakens. Come see me tomorrow and we'll go for a stroll in the Gardens."
Bill was disappointed, but knew there was little he could do about it. Clapping his crusher claw together once, he scuttled backward, out from under the woman's hand, and made for the door.
"Assuming we all live to see it," Nyota added softly, giving the unconscious woman on her floor a rueful look.
Gomi was all alone in his quarters when Bill found him, stretched across his bed with his arms under his head and his eyes pointed out the two-way glass and into the Genoshan sky. His heavy glasses were off, lying on the nightstand, and his spiky, bleached hair looked almost radioactive in the bright light of midday.
Gomi had been Bill's best friend since Gomi's older brother and an unscrupulous friend--both of whom fancied themselves scientists--had subjected both the boy and the lobster to cybernetic surgery. Since then, they'd lived together, stolen together, fought together. Bill didn't think much of bipeds in general, but Gomi was practically lobster-like in his nobility and charisma.
Bill climbed up onto the bed, and from there onto his friend's chest, where he stopped and rested. Without looking at him, Gomi put a hand on his blue shell.
"I miss her Bill," he sighed.
Bill thumped his front claws on Gomi's chest in a way the boy knew was an offering of comfort. Gomi smiled.
There were hundreds of thousands of stories in the green and pleasant land of Genosha, some of which were about to become very important to the continued survival of that land. But those stories, to coin a phrase, piss Bill the Lobster off. He's not interested. To his mind, there is only one story that matters in the greater scheme of things, and it is the story we have just witnessed. It is
A LOBSTER'S STORY