[2009 – October – Friday]
It was a few hours after I had picked up Jean from her class on the main grounds of the school. By now, we had taken a shower together, followed by a wet-haired tussle, where I had made sure to lick even the last drop of water from her lovely little navel.
And after having eaten dinner and reading a few chapters of 'Romeo and Juliet' to each other, Jean had fallen asleep. I, though, wasn't quite ready to go to bed since I sensed that Laura was in trouble, not the fatal kind but trouble nonetheless.
The gorgeous she-wolf had been sleeping more and more often with Jean and me during the last few weeks but naturally, she didn't do so every night, at least not yet.
In fact, ever since I had killed Kimura and destroyed the Facility's main base, the dark-haired girl had taken to wandering the streets of New York at night, looking to find trouble and violence.
She was restless after having lost the target of her vengeance. And since she knew no other way to deal with it, she had begun to hunt down violent drug dealers and pimps because she harboured a special kind of hatred for them.
Though she wasn't too picky on her 'hunts' and had no problems breaking the backs of muggers and potential rapists alike. Not to mention the bloodbath that she had left behind just a few days ago after finding an underground prostitution ring that had used trafficked girls from Europe by chance.
I personally cared little for the 'victims' of Laura's forays but I also knew that she was going down a dark path that would eventually cause her to lose herself in her violent tendencies and that I had to help her find a new path that wouldn't end in self-destruction.
For that reason, I had planned to give her Malcolm Colcord, so that she could hopefully find some sort of closure but I hadn't had the chance to do so yet.
And while I didn't usually spread my perception to spy on others, I had this feeling that Laura might need me, though it was nothing more than a faint tug in the back of my mind really.
Still, my instincts and senses as a higher being were universally superior to those of a normal human, so much so that premonitions were not something absurd but something very real and within reach, so I trusted what I sensed.
Slipping out of the bed while trying not to wake up Jean who lay next to me curled up into a little ball, I grabbed some clothes. But just as I was about to step through the Darkforce Dimension to get to New York, I heard a soft voice behind me.
"Don't get hurt, okay?" Looking over my shoulder, I saw that Jean had opened her eyes and looked at me, a mixture of love, trust, and worry clear in them.
"I won't.", I assured her as I walked up to her and left a tender kiss on her lips.
"You will bring her home, won't you?", she whispered while caressing my cheek, "She should be with people who love her."
"I will. And she will.", I promised before vanishing into a cloud of darkness.
…
Laura was without a doubt the most adept fighter amongst the younger generation of mutants and even most of the adults would be strained to defeat her in close-quarters combat, with or without weapons.
She was sure of this but that didn't mean that she didn't have weaknesses nor did that mean that she was infallible.
In reality, her overall strength as a mutant was only passable in comparison to the truly powerful members of her kind. Her incredible healing factor included, her overall abilities could only be ranked as those of a Beta-level mutant, even if her regenerative ability by itself was ranked as an Alpha-level power.
The special nature of her healing ability, which only worked on herself, limited her combat abilities to close quarters, even if her Adamantium-coated claws gave an edge over most opponents.
As deadly as a combatant as she was, a true mature Alpha-level mutant with abilities leaning towards combat was several times more dangerous than her.
As a matter of fact, a team of well-trained, well-equipped humans could easily subdue her given the right approach, which had been proven to her this very night.
Laura wasn't sure how hunting down a few scumbags and cutting the throats of some human traffickers could lead to being lured into an elaborate trap by a troop of highly skilled men with specialized high-tech gear to restrain and capture her but that was what had happened.
Using one of the pimps that she had been after as bait, she had been lured into an abandoned warehouse where some men in nondescript black tactical gear had used some kind of high-tech mix of a bolt gun and speargun to fire some sort of alloy bolts at her, which were connected to high-tensile metal strings in an attempt to restrain her.
Unfortunately for her, it had worked astonishingly well, especially after her attackers had released some sort of aerosolized designer sedatives that had significantly slowed her reflexes and disturbed her coordination, even though it didn't knock her out thanks to her rather high drug resistance and healing factor.
Stubbornly gritting her teeth as she blocked out the pain over more than three dozen bolts piercing her body while miniature winches kept the alloy ropes tightened, her own healing factor ironically assisting the bolts to stay hooked into her flesh, Laura glared at the mask-wearing men around her as she knelt on the dirty warehouse floor while drops of blood continued to taint her clothes and the ground with even the slightest of moves from her.
Her killing intent soared to a near-maddening state as the realization of possible capture became clearer with every moment and she tried to exert as much strength as she could to just tear one of her arms free, uncaring of possible injuries, but the constant inhalation of the tranquilizing agent made that almost impossibly hard.
Now, she almost regretted having told Elijah to limit the shield that he had placed around her to simply protect her mind, instead of just protecting her from any harm.
Still, she also had the ability to teleport through the Darkforce Dimension that Elijah had gifted her, which should have allowed her to escape easily.
And while she hadn't actually mastered it to a degree that would allow her to use it during real combat yet, especially not when drugged and injured to this degree, Laura was dangerously stubborn and simply didn't want to flee without at least finding out who had set her up.
"You should give up struggling, X-23.", the leader of her attackers stated, his facial mask hiding the lower part of the man's face and filtering the air he breathed. He pulled out a syringe from his belt as he slowly approached: "The less you resist, the less we will hurt you and the better you get treated."
"My name is Laura!", Laura spat out hatefully, her eyes narrowing with malice while she inquired with murderous calm, "Who are you?"
"We are HYDRA, and there is no use in pretending to be human in front of us. You are but a weapo-"
The man's sentence was abruptly cut short as two arms appeared through the darkness behind him, and with a sickening sound of flesh tearing and bones breaking, his head was torn from his body, blood spraying everywhere.
And with two 'thuds', the headless corpse and the head itself hit the ground, revealing a young man with an ice-cold expression, blood splashed across one side of his face and wetting part of his hair.
A demonic pair of eyes met Laura's shocked gaze for a moment before Elijah looked over the rest of the black-clothed man, malevolence radiating off him in waves as shadows danced in the depth of his rich green eyes, his sclera having turned into a lightless black.
"I will enjoy what I will do to you.", he voiced out calmly and Laura could almost smell the fear that spread like wildfire in the abandoned warehouse.
[A/N: Yes, there is a deeper reason for Laura being attacked by these HYDRA Agents, for all those that wondered. Nothing major but I just wanted to clarify that it isn't a baseless attack.]