Chapter Text
After the Hellfire Club successfully baited all major human nations into going to war each other, and then took over the ashes ‘for mutantkind’, times were tough, and not only for humans. Of course ‘traitors and troublemakers’ were systematically weeded out from amongst the population by force and stratagem, people kept impotently angry and separated from each other by insane ideologies, terror sown into minds carefully and over long years by propaganda, force, and an atmosphere of fright. Morals decayed, following the example of the new rulers, who really were no different to the old ones. Life for mutants temporarily improved, before stagnating, then sinking to the level of other humans. An equality of despair and empty decadence grew to old age. Decades passed, members of the Hellfire Club betrayed their comrades, new members joined, their rule faded to be part of the tapestry of life and the world forgot better times, and what it used to be like. Shaw still rules, accompanied by his even more powerful right and left hand, the beautiful Emma Frost and the immortal Azazel, but new foes arise constantly.
In one of the lands decimated in the war arranged by the Hellfire Club, a young girl goes flitting back and forth across a moonlit landscape still mostly empty of people since it was abandoned after losing so many men during World War III. With butterfly wings of rainbow hue she flies across a green and quiet land, careful to stay as hidden as possible, choosing woods and copses for cover as much as possible, the reason being that she is engaged in delivering aid to those in need, not only mutants, but humans too, people who can't move so quickly or so far as she can.
The even greater reason being that the powers that be regularly search for and hunt down ‘rogue’ mutants, those not chipped and registered in their great databases, those trying to live free, those that could be either a problem, as the Hellfire Club once was, or useful. Travelling by moonlight is dangerous, but she doesn't have night vision, and using a torch is even more dangerous. Teleporting would be quicker, but you never know what you might find on the other side. Technically she shouldn't be out by herself at all, but after the last raid by Hellfire forces, there is no one to tell her no.
Hills and glens and fields and trees float by underneath, her shadow fluttering over grass and leaves, her passing disturbing bird's birdy little dreams. The pack she's carrying makes her arms ache, and soon she's going to have to stop to give them a rest. Whoops, did not think this one out too well, Megan.
The moon moves along its semi circular route, casting itself past the midpoint when Megan finally approaches the last known location of her target. She has had to stop to rest multiple times by now, and it's cold, very cold, which does nothing to ease the ache in her muscles, especially in her back. In fact, the shivering makes the pain far worse.
It might be the fatigue, it might be her inexperience, it's probably both that causes her to fly right into a Hellfire patrol immediately upon crossing the borders of a decayed former town. Only at the last moment, thanks to the brash voice of one of the mutant soldiers, is Megan able to dodge behind a squat old building, pressing herself flat against the stone wall, now weeping with moisture, but not without slamming her shoulder into it first and dropping her package.
“What was that?” barks another man, the leader of the gang.
With her heart pounding in her ears, Megan can barely hear the back and forth that takes place between the members of the patrol.
“Too big to be a bird. A bat, perhaps?”
“There's a lot of birds that are bigger than bats, dingus.”
“Could have been an owl.”
“Let's check. I don't want the boss kicking my ass because it turns out a candidate was spotted nearby.”
Candidate. Yes, Megan is a candidate, if only because one of the greatest crimes perpetrated by the Hellfire Government is how they have viable female mutants collected for…population…reasons. Even with mutants ruling the world, mutants are still a tiny minority.
Teleporting is going to make a sound, but if the men spot her, there will be no other choice, not when she doesn't know how to fight and they possess unknown powers, along with capture devices. But they might not conduct anything but a lacklustre search, that is often how it goes, and laziness and bribes is what allows rogues in the first place. Trying to will herself silent, Megan carefully moves away from the road the men are walking up, listening to their footsteps on the gravel.
“See anything?”
“No. Just trash. And a whole bunch of weeds.”
“Sense anything?” asks a different voice.
“...No. Call it in to the boss.” answers a man who has not yet spoken. Something in that soft, careful tone alarms Megan, and she partially takes off while getting ready to teleport, disturbing a small cairn of stones at her feet. A man shaped like a snake lunges around the shadowed side of the building, his multiple eyes glowing white, all focusing upon her. With a small shriek, the girl teleports, again dropping her bag of supplies in the process.
She reappears in a nearby wood, slamming into the side of a tree, scraping her cheek on the bark before bouncing off and landing in the bracken, which at least acts as a cover. Dazed and terrified, she gets up and takes off running, meaning to head for the heart of the wood, not daring to fly when the trees are standing so close. Only it's difficult to know where exactly she is, so when the silver glow intensifies and the trees thin abruptly, she realises she's running for the edge of the forest, and swings back around, hoping to come across, what? A burrow, a nook under some tree roots she can crawl and hide in till the evil men leave. Till the sun comes out and things no longer look as grim.
Megan doesn't find any such refuge and the woods remain free of men, but she does encounter a bear, a descendant of some zoo escapee from years ago. It stands amongst the ferns, making low huffs, its eyes reflecting the low light. Skidding to a stop, Megan stares at it, frozen stiff. People she knew while growing up liked to say that bears aren't aggressive, and they're super afraid and would rather run away from humans rather than eat them, but every bear she's encountered has attacked. This one does too, rearing on its hind legs and roaring, before breaking into a charge. But Megan possesses more powers than just flight and teleportation, and she flings a hot pink and glittery wave of pixie dust at it, stopping it dead.
‘Hurmpf?’ growls the bear, as dancing acorns appear before its eyes.
Taking her chance, the fairy girl runs away, stopping only when she encounters an ancient oak tree, which she flutters up into the boughs of, smacking her head on a branch in the process - but that's what her helmet is for. Up there, shrouded by thick foliage, she hugs the trunk, and closes her eyes, the sounds of the night immediately intensifying. Rustling interrupts the quiet of nature, along with hooting. Small rustling, not that of men (or bears) breaking through the undergrowth.
Tired now, beyond tired, she loses the battle with her eyelids, and falls asleep.
😈🧚♀️
“This is a cute helmet,” a devilish Russian voice says, knocking her out of a dream which immediately crumples up into a ball, which her brain then throws away. Knuckles rap on her helmet. “Cute but childish. Have the rogues really fallen so far that their youth can no longer even fly straight?”
In springing awake Megan also springs off the tree, but the world's greatest teleporter cannot be evaded so easily, and he wraps his tail around her ankle before she teleports, flinging them both into the air above the half ruined cottage she calls home.
“No!” she whispers, her voice raspy and failing. Without thinking, she wasted time glancing back at the nightmare who has a hold on her, a nightmare who cannot fly. In the split second before he plummets to earth, Azazel looks up and grins whitely in the dark, and just as she’s flinging pixie dust at him, he disappears into a whirl of fire and black vapour, ripping her away with him.
The Brimstone Dimension and the hell wrapping it in a fiery embrace, open before her frightened gaze, burning yellows, blistering oranges, and flame reds dancing across an endless horizon of fire and smoke, making her feel like she's about to be incinerated. Faceless figures charred black by the light, close in rapidly. The trip lasts only a moment, but the demon’s cackling lasts forever.
Azazel laughs like his subordinates, his savage visage perfectly normal here. “Hahaha! You’re a pretty little bug aren’t you? I think I might put you in a jar to spruce up my place a bit.”
Another portal spits them out in an entirely different location still recognisable as Wales. Azazel transfers his grip, swapping a tail around Megan’s ankle for hands around her upper arms, proceeding to teleport many more times in quick succession until she’s thoroughly disorientated and nauseous enough to throw up, but not on him, because he protects his swanky suit by keeping her facing away. For almost ten minutes the pair throw themselves or are thrown back and forth through deep red dimensions and dark blue air, until inertia causes the young woman to faint in the arms of the devil.