VIXEN BLUE
Written by Vale
ISSUE 2
"The
Chase"
Cover
to follow.
This
story features Vixen Blue and related characters, which are characters
of Angela Peak;
This story also features characters belonging to Cark Owens.
X-men are trademarks of Marvel comics. This work is © of Angela Peak
2006.
Please do not archive without permission of creator.
Somewhere in Canada, about twenty years ago
Anna had never known such comfort and cosy warmth as she did at that moment. It wasn’t until a loud snapping sound awoke her with a start. Alarmed by the strange surroundings, she pulled the blanket that was draped over her little body to her face.
“You’re awake. Good.” Came a soft, deep voice from the door. Anna looked up to see a large man with a big dark grey beard and a heavy black coat standing there carrying a bundle of firewood. He smiled warmly at her before walking to the fire and chucking a few logs onto it. The flames happily consumed them and there came that snapping noise once again. It wasn’t so scary sounding the second time.
The man looked up at her, “Don’t be afraid, little one. My name is Carter. I was on my way home when I found you under a tree. You looked like you needed some help so I brought you here. Thought it might warm you up some.” He poked at the fire with a metal rod. Anna still said nothing.
“Would you like some soup? I was about to make some.” He asked. She nodded slowly from behind the blanket. He chuckled, “Ok, then I’ll get two bowls.”
Anna stayed with the man known as Carter until he died. She was now twelve years old and had learned much from him including basic survival and hunting skills. She’d never had a surname before and so she adopted his to become Anna Marie Carter. Her ‘father’ was now dead. It was time to move on.
* * * * *
Now
Vixen Blue woke with a pain in her neck. She’d fallen asleep in the car she had stolen while haphazardly parked outside of a rest stop and clearly not in the most comfortable of positions. She rubbed her neck where it hurt and yawned loudly while blinking her eyes to help bring her vision into focus. It was dark outside and she had no idea what time it was but she didn’t feel like sleeping anymore and ventured out into the cool night air.
A couple more cars pulled up outside the little isolated diner but neither looked suspicious or worth investigating. She stepped into the bright lights of the coffee scented room and sat down in an empty booth, ordering a tea and some French toast.
She’d been driving for what seemed like a solid 24 hours, although it was probably only half that time, before she’d needed to rest. With her recent skirmish with both Switch and Slick, she wondered what else this journey would throw at her. Would she even get as far as the Canadian border? She sighed. Why couldn’t Mystique just leave her the hell alone? What did she really want from her? She couldn’t really care about her, not now suddenly after all these years. Maybe she was just trying to stop her from meeting her father, Sabretooth?
“Tea and French toast, ma’am.” announced the sprightly young woman in the gingham apron. Anna just smiled slightly and finally got to eat something.
* * * * *
Some hours earlier
“Finally.” Spoke the gravely male voice. It looked as if the Police were actually leaving the vicinity. Richard Rutner, the operative more commonly known as Ravager sat watching the motel from the roof of the building opposite. It wasn’t until the coast was completely clear that he dared venture forward. He pulled on his mask and arranged his goggles before shimmying down the side of the building by way of a drainpipe.
He quickly scurried across the street, keeping to the shadows and finally reached the desired room. He pulled the police tape away from the door and stepped inside. The smell of tomato soup was still quite strong, although it had long since gone cold. It had made quite an interesting pattern on the curtains. Ravager observed the room closely. The array of bullet holes in the walls over by the bed was a puzzler since there was no evidence of blood stains. Nobody could be that bad a shot, especially considering the range had to be very close judging by which direction the weapon must have been fired.
Ravager knelt down by the bed and looked under it to see some black marks smeared across the carpet. He knew that stain, clearly some kind of gun oil. He got up and inspected the small bathroom right behind him. It was a bit of a mess in there. It was obvious to him that there had been something of a struggle here and then his eye caught some movement on the toilet seat. He leaned in to take a closer look and he had seen something. At first he thought it was another spot of gun oil, but as he watched more closely, it definitely moved by itself, as if it were alive, although it didn’t look terribly healthy. This was too weird. Ravager scratched his head as he watched it inch towards the edge of the seat.
It had taken several hours for the little bead of black goo to slither across the carpet of the next room and ooze up the outside of the toilet bowl. It was following it’s instinct to reform with the rest of it’s master’s body but before it could swim down into the toilet bowl, Ravager quickly teased it into a small container he had on his person and sealed it up for the guys at the lab. He didn’t know what it was, but it certainly looked interesting enough to earn him some brownie points with the Agents.
There wasn’t much else here to see, so he made his way outside to check out the car park. The obvious getaway for his target being a car. Luckily for him, there wasn’t a great deal of cars parked there that night and so he was able to get a good view of a set of black tyre marks belonging to a car that was in a real hurry to get away from there. He whipped out an impressive looking piece of technology and used it to scan the tyre pattern.
He quickly stood up. He thought he heard a noise. His attention was quickly alerted to the shape of a figure on the roof he’d just come from, but it vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.
“Son of a bitch” Ravager cursed under his breath. Did the Agents not trust him to get the job done after all? It made sense. Who else would be stalking him in this manner, except for a shadow? Someone to follow the job through should he fail. He was getting angry now, he knew he was capable, but this was beginning to eat at his confidence. He scaled the building to reach his shuttle but there was no one there. He began to hope that he had been seeing things, but he didn’t really believe that at all.
He scanned the tyre tread into his onboard computer and was now able to pick out a faint trail of the car on the road below. He strapped himself in, put some Tchaikovsky on his stereo and took off.
* * * * *
Now
Anna was back on the road again. She felt better now she’d eaten, but she still had a long way to drive before she reached the Canadian border. She really wished she’d taken Jack Spark’s friend’s aircraft that they’d used the last time they’d flown into the States. Then again, it shouldn’t have been a problem for her since she wasn’t even planning on coming into America at all. Stupid flight... Stupid weather! Her usual good fortunes seemed to be deserting her, perhaps this was the law of averages coming into play. That’s all she was going to have now for the next five years…bad luck.
Vixen was catapulted from her thoughts by a severe bang to the back of her car. Great, whiplash, just what she needed. She checked out her rear view mirror expecting to see another car but instead was shocked to see instead a vaguely familiar looking shuttle. It took a couple of seconds but the grey and black rounded bubble like shape was a bit of a give away.
“Oh God! Haven’t I got enough crap on my plate without the god damned Agents sending one of their goons after me?” She shouted out loud.
She slammed her foot down on the accelerator, but the shuttle was still gaining and continued to bash into her car, trying to force her to pull over. Fat chance!
For a moment, she thought she’d outran it until she realised it had only backed off just to get a better run up. This time the shuttle rammed the car so hard that Vixen lost control and the car flipped over a few times before landing on it’s back and skidding to the side of the road.
Ravager jogged over to the overturned car and crouched down by the window.
“You’d better not be dead.” Came a muffled voice.
Anna was completely dazed and wasn’t even sure where she was. She blinked at the brown coloured blur in front of her, desperately trying to focus but then blacked out.
* * * * *
About 10 years ago
Anna Marie had not long moved to the city of New York. She’d been travelling around now ever since she’d left the comfort of Carter’s lodge, the only place that had ever felt like home to her. By then she had already discovered that she was different. She got by using her powers of persuasion, which were particularly effective on the opposite sex, to get free food, clothing, shelter and anything else she might need whenever she needed it. It certainly made life a lot easier for her.
She’d been in New York City for two days when she was snatched away and had a new life thrust upon her. The use of her powers had been detected by an organisation that seemed to think she’d be a useful addition to their ranks. And so while she was having fun in a popular Night Club called Purgatory, that’s exactly what they did. The club was so tightly packed that nobody noticed when a man in a suit discreetly injected her into unconsciousness. She was then carried out of the club and unconscious women being carried out clubs on a Saturday night wasn’t a wholly unfamiliar sight.
After that, Anna was pushed to the limits, physically and mentally. She was training in many forms of combat, both hand to hand and with various weapons. They discovered that she also had the power to manipulate the colour of her skin and camouflage herself which was another ability that would come of great use in her future job description.
The problem was that she hated every second of it, and badly wanted to escape, although that wasn’t going to happen for another 3 years.
* * * * *
Now
Vixen regained consciousness to the faint sounds of orchestral music that she was unfamiliar with. At first glance at her surroundings she immediately knew that she was in the back of the goon’s transport shuttle. She’d been in one of these before, although it did look a little bit more swish than she remembered. Everything was silvery with a dark blue coloured light that drowned out any other colours there might have been. The craft was pretty small with only one interior room. From what she could make out, she was right where the exit was although there was no emergency escape handle that she could see. There wasn’t much chance of a successful escape anyway since from the roar of the engines behind her head she could tell that they were airborne.
She looked down. At least the swine had had the common decency to cover her with a blanket while she was naked and unconscious. She looked over to the small one man cockpit and saw the back of her assailant’s head bobbing along to the sound of the music. It was difficult to tell if she knew him from just the back of his head but even if that weren’t the case, the mask kind of obscured his face anyway. He was wearing a brown and blue outfit and had a couple of swords strapped to his back. She chuckled to herself thinking of Hatchet and how he’d probably try and sue for copyright infringement.
She had been bound by some form of cuffs, although if her memory served her well, there was a mechanism she could twist to release herself. Standard issue binders, they weren’t the best but unless you knew there was a manufacturing fault, you wouldn’t bother trying to find it. And with a barely audible click, she was free.
Anna smirked and with a mere thought, she made her skin become a very dark tone to be less easily spotted in one’s fringe vision. She wrapped the blanket around tightly, so that it was now suitable for strangulation. She quickly looped it around Ravager’s neck, pulling tightly behind him, placing her knee on the back of his seat for leverage. He grabbed at his neck for some relief and in the process caught the stereo system with his knee which turned the volume up way louder than was comfortable. As they struggled to the booming sounds of the Nutcracker Suite, he managed to squeeze his hand between the blanket and his neck, twist his body out of harm and snatch the blanket from her. He coughed for a second and tried to pull one of his golden swords free from the scabbard on his back. Unfortunately, being inside the cramped vehicle stopped him from freeing it completely as the unsheathing was halted as he banged the handle on the roof.
Vixen Blue took this moment to take a dive at his middle knocking him back into the front of the shuttle, landing on the control panel and cracking his head on the windscreen.
“Oww!” he yelped.
“You think that hurt? Are you ready for this?” Anna’s face contorted into a snarling fanged feral and as she reached back with her bony clawed hand, threatening to gut him, Ravager reached over to his right and with a quick hand movement turned off the autopilot and sent the shuttle in a downward spiral. The sudden shift in control knocked Vixen to the back of the transport damaging her already bruised brain even further.
It had been Ravagers plan to do this and then jump into the pilot seat to regain control. Unfortunately his belt had become twisted around one of the foot controls and he was unable to free himself in time before the shuttle crashed down.
Two crashes in one day. Vixen Blue was lucky to be alive. Anna was very
cold. She looked up and discovered that she had fallen from the shuttle
which was still lodged in between two tall trees about twelve feet above
her. She thought it best to move out of the way. After all it wouldn’t
be a very good way to end this glorious adventure by being squashed under
Ravager’s shuttle. No, definitely best to keep moving. It was still
dark but the moonlight reflecting off the snow made it very easy to see.
She’d only ambled a few feet before she noticed a small wooden cabin. A feeling of warmth and safety filled her up. It reminded her so much of Carter’s lodge from when she was a child. She walked in the open door and was greeted by warmth from the log fire and the smell of hot soup.
“Carter!” she shouted with a huge smile on her face as she entered the small dwelling. She was concussed and confused, but even in her state of delirium she was stunned by what she saw when she looked around at the elderly couple sitting on the couch. They didn’t look like they were sleeping; they looked more like they were dead. And that was when Anna noticed the markings on their necks. Little puncture wounds with trickles of blood seeping from them.
“Agent Fox I presume?” came a female voice from the next room. Anna tried to focus on where the voice was coming from and then she appeared in the adjoining room doorway. There stood a tall woman with pale skin and long dark hair. She was dressed in maroon velvet and had bloodstains around her mouth. Vixen said nothing as the woman walked right up to her.
“My name is Vivica Leon,” she grabbed Anna by the hair, “but you can call me Nocturne.” She smiled and punched Vixen Blue square in the face sending her crashing to the floor.
To be continued…
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