ReGenesis 1.5

xXx

Not for the first time, I wished that I had Magneto's subtle control over metal. He didn't need to brute force his way through problems where finesse was needed, sadly I did not have that particular luxury. That crowd could have been dispersed with smaller shards if I had his control a multi-directional torrent would have been much more effective than the clusters I had used.

I could have neutralized the armed protesters without drawing as much attention to Mutant Town as I had.

As things stood, New York wouldn't hide me long enough for me to gain the control I so desperately needed. The world would come for me before then. That was a weight that I wasn't sure that I could wholly bare.

Speaking of weight, that didn't mean that I was weighed down by my coat, I had enough control over my new powers that I could keep the weight off me as I ran. The ambulance was a couple of blocks ahead of me, but there was only so fast you can go in New York traffic, and as such, I could still see their flashing lights. I could still feel the guns teetering at the edge of my range, and they felt like fairly standard assault gear. Rifles, knives, pistols, strange body armor that had metal weaved into the very fabric, and enough ammo to clear out half the district before a proper defense could be mounted.

They weren't part of the U-Men. I couldn't feel the inhumane modifications that made my stomach churn, or the Tinker tech weapons that were so easily crushed by my power, but that didn't slow me down in the slightest. It didn't matter that they were a completely unknown paramilitary group. It didn't matter that they hadn't targeted me personally, or even if they had already passed my source of income, what mattered was that they were dangerous.

Anyone who was willing to start a riot near a park wasn't about to care about mowing through crowds to get things done. They would rip this city apart if they thought, not if they had, but if they thought they could get away with it.

So, I ran as these dancer's legs of mine would allow after the ambulance knowing that I wasn't going be able to reach them in time. The ambulance after a series of turns started making its way to the poorer part of Mutant Town. District X had divided itself into four quarters: entertainment, where Wannabee's, the Freak Show Cinema, and Guignol Theater; mercantile, where the Jumbo Carnation's X-Factory, a myriad of smaller stores that had been in the district long before the city planner drew an X in this part of Manhattan, and Xavier's X-Factor building that towered over the district like a black skyscraper with a colossal neon yellow X on all four of its sides; housing, which was a cluster of buildings put together like a labyrinth, that being said people lived in every section it's just that there wasn't anything else there except housing, basketball court, and a small baseball field; and finally the Red, the equal and opposite to the entertainment sections of the district.

Now, overall Mutant Town was a rundown, beaten part of the city that gave Brockton Bay a run for its money with its cracked sidewalks, split roads, rusted chain-link fences, litter on the street, gang violence, drugs, poverty and illiteracy, and overall unpleasantness but the Red was absolutely the worst part of the whole sordid affair. The 'Brotherhood' was the largest but with the least power behind it. The gang was comprised entirely of Mutants, but they weren't the strongest nor the smartest of the population and were held together by a ghost and the memory of Genosha. There was no clear leadership, as most of the acolytes died were nothing more than particles of ash on the shores of the fallen paradise.

…

The other me- the false memories- wanted to go thereafter… after she confronted Wanda, to learn from the man that had sired her mother and was known the world over as the "Master of Magnetism," but that was as much of an illusion as she was.

…

Anyway, the Red had a number of other gangs competing for power, infamy, and the hard-earned money that rarely trickled into the District. Chief among them were Daniel "Shaky" Kaufman, who ran a nameless outfit out of his numerous clubs mainly Daniel's Inferno, and the WildKat Klub, and 'Filthy' Frank Zapruder, who ran Vision's and pushed the newest designer drug in District X, Toad Juice, a psychotropic drug whose effects were, from my limited understanding of the subject, similar to Newter's own sweat. The key difference was that I never heard of anyone becoming addicted to the Case 53, but Juicers were becoming a common sight. Kids snuck into the club all the time in little paper packets with a cartoon frog stamp.

I ran past the WildKat Klub which wasn't even a club more like a low-class strip joint that didn't want to pretend to be anything else, XXX posters were framed like movie posters with flashing light bulbs and all. A woman with long flowing pink hair in a corset and not much else was having a cigarette, she eyed me with something akin to familiarity, but I blew right past her without so much as a second thought.

Losing sight of the ambulance would have been crushing if not for my new power, the shape of its outline was firmly in place as I followed through the maze of back alleys and main streets, but I was able to catch up to it. The ambulance was parked within the confines of a construction zone behind a poster covered fence with the face of my- Magneto printed in white against a red background. The building under construction looked like an abandoned project if the rust on the broken chain was anything to go by.

There were about a dozen, or so, projects scattered throughout Mutant Town that were just like this one, abandoned either because the funding was pulled by the interested parties or because the man pushing for them turned out to be the head of the strongest criminal organization in the city. It multiplied with the aesthetic effect, the one that made a person think that the city they were living was dying and that it was just a matter of time before it all comes crashing down.

I was pulled away from my thoughts by the familiar sound of small arms fire and the feeling of a torrent of bullets ripping through the air faster than I could track them. Comfortable knowing that they had reached their target, I reached out with my power, against the metal headgear, probably some kind of night vision goggle or Tinker tech HUD and squeezed.

I squeezed softly, just enough so that the glass within the machines cracked and splinted. It should have blinded, and it did, but I knew that this wouldn't stop the firing. When in pain, the human body tenses, which meant that if these people had any level of combat training that they wouldn't drop their guns. I could feel them stagger, but none of them lowered their weapons though a few of them fell to their knees in rapid succession. Pieces seemed to fall off of them just before their bodies hit the floor as six knives, four of them that were about eleven inches long and two that were about six, seemed to glide thought the around them just before they fell.

Puzzled, I entered the building, and I was thankful for my previous experience dealing with the aftermath of the Slaughterhouse Nine. The barely illuminated hallway was something akin to Pollock painting, with four uniformed corpses cut to pieces, most likely part of the special ops unit, and a thin girl no older than fifteen torn apart by bullets. A quick examination showed no discernable markings that would identify them… not even dog tags… which meant that they were either mercenary or a governmental body didn't want them to be traced back if they died or failed their mission.

The girl… couldn't have been older than fifteen. Even slumped against the wall, I could tell that she was tall for her age, and the baggy, worn, and bloodied clothes did nothing to disguise her thin as a reed figure. She had dyed blonde hair, and vacant blue eyes, between them, was a single bullet hole that probably ended her life. There was a passing resemblance to the woman with the predatory smile that I had once called fried and was now less than a memory, closer to a dream.

There was no solace or comfort in knowing that this girl died quickly. There was anger bubbling beneath the monotonous numbness, the furious fires of righteousness that I had thought extinguished. It started slowly, but as I moved deeper into the hollow building, that feeling grew exponentially.

There was a corpse of another girl with light skin and cattish features releasing her dying breath. She was able to take down two more soldiers before she succumbed to a hail of bullets. The bullets were tightly grouped around her upper body. Beneath her was a large African American man holding a much smaller child, probably five or six years old. Both of them were bound with black bags over their heads and plastic zip ties around their wrists.

I should have flipped the ambulance when I had the chance, but that wouldn't have stopped the slaughter that happened here. There were more mercenaries scattered about than were in the ambulance, three times the number, but most weren't moving. This entire operation was probably meant to deal with the six floating knives, capture most likely, but the deaths led me to think that there was another purpose that I wasn't seeing…

The answer as to why had to be deeper in the building.

There were ten monitors surrounding a woman bound to a dentist chair. Each of the monitors showed a girl though the different stages of her life. The girl had long, straight black hair, with green eyes, and pale skin reminiscent of someone who'd never seen the sun.

The video with the girl at her youngest showed the girl in some kind of martial artist get up training with an old martial artist about the same size as her. It showed moments of happiness between the two, small hidden smiles caught on camera the monitor next to it showed the same girl tearing him apart with metal claws not so dissimilar as the ones floating about, dealing with the mercenaries. The next showed a birthday party, with children around the same age as the girl. She interacted with them, played with them, and smiled a fake smile. The next monitor showed a bloodbath. The next monitor showed the girl in a cell as a woman that could only be her mother if her feature were any indication, sat next to her, and read Pinocchio. The girl looked at the woman with broken eyes that made her cry.

The next showed the woman, her pristine white lab coat now red, bleeding out in the snow.

"Who the fuck are you supposed to be?" A cocky voice said from the shadows. Its owner was a woman, she had dark skin and full lips that certainly made her beautiful, but it was the eyes that truly gripped me. They reminded me of Sophia, but it was not because of their shape or color. It was the glimmer in her eyes. A predator looking down at its helpless prey because it knows that it would never fight back. "X made some strange friends in the past, but I never thought the bride of Dracula would be one of them. Hopefully, you'll hold out longer than that old bitch." She mocked as she gestured at the bound corpse with her crossbow.

There were no discernable features on that one, there was too much swelling and too many bruises to describe more than that. There wasn't an inch of her that wasn't marred by injury. There were burn spots on exposed skin, open gashes that no longer bled, welts where they stuck needles in her, her nails were gone, and her all of her teeth were missing. Some of the injuries looked older while others were still relatively fresh, there was no rhyme or reason for the brutality other than the for the sake of brutality.

No, that wasn't quite right.

It was a message.

All of this was a message for the girl.

Not that it mattered now. This woman, no, this creature would be dead before she arrived. There was one promise that never reneged, no matter how far down the path I walked, as either this false self or me. I'd promised myself I wouldn't let the bullies win again, that I wouldn't let the monster's win.

My muscles strained as seven metal beams shot through the wall behind me towards my unfortunate foe, but I stood stark still.

"I don't like bullies." My words were drowned out by the sound of steel colliding with marble. The woman staggered back six feet; a savagely manic grin was firmly in place under wild brown eyes. Because life couldn't be simple, my first powered opponent would, of course, be a Brute.

"Good shot, but I'm indestructible, bitch." She mocked as she lifted her crossbow and aimed at center mass. The bolt released with a hiss. So, I had to deal with her as I had dealt with one of my childhood heroes. The bolts were fast, but they were easy to spot and even easier to stop in midair. I could have dismantled the crossbow there, and I probably should have, but I wanted to avoid this becoming a fistfight for as long as I could.

So began the dance with me battering her body with steel beams and her ducking, weaving, and shooting bolts that hung in midair in an effort to close the distance.

She was not successful.

When she dodged one, there were six more striking her. She jumped and I slammed her down; when she rolled, I would send her flying. All the while, I was breaking down the bolts into pieces maneuverable enough to shove down her throat. It would have been simpler to bury her under the rubble. It took genuine effort, an exercise in control, while multitasking. In the past, I flourished under the weight of adversity, and that seemed to be true in this world as well. Just as I was making headway was when the girl arrived.

She was older than the last video, maybe around fifteen, and she was the picture of rage. It was so unlike the thoughtless animal that slaughtered all those people, there was a mind guiding the animal. She was fast and flexible, using the beams as steppingstones to jump up into the air. Her arms were spread wide as knives protruded from her knuckles and boot covered feet.

"KIMURA!"

"Ah, I missed you too, X." The now named Kimura caught her by the neck. The girls slashed at her, but it did little else except create sparks. "What are you mad about now, X?" The monster pulled her close, shifting her arms around the girl's neck in what looked like an effort to snap her neck. She wasn't even dodging the beams anymore because she was so absorbed in hurting the girl that she could brush off each and every blow. So, she absorbed that she didn't notice the pieces of her weapon slowly floating above her head. "I told you I'd kill everyone you ever cared about. In fact- "

Kimura never had the chance to finish the thought because the moment she opened her mouth wide enough, bolt pieces were being forced down her throat. The larger pieces held her mouth open while the smaller ones traveled down her windpipe. Kimura looked at me with scared eyes, her smirk no longer present as the smaller pieces reached her lungs.

I expected that they would rattle there as they were met with indestructible lungs, but they didn't. A twitch of my index finger later revealed that she was less like Alexandria than I thought. Alexandria was indestructible all the way through; Kimura, on the other hand, didn't have those kinds of protections in place.

In fact, chocking Kimura out was too good of a death for a monster like her.

xXx

A/N: Hi, hope you're all keeping safe!

Hmm, I'm not sure that I should have killed Kimura this early on, but I knew if there was someone that could get a rise out of Taylor in Marvel, it would have been her. Kimura was X-23's handler. Indestructible skin that her adamantium claws made her arrogant, and because she viewed Laura to be weaker, she tormented her with mutilations and humiliation. She was also responsible for Laura killing her martial arts teacher with the trigger scent because he embarrassed her in front of Laura.

By all accounts, Kimura was Laura's Sabertooth.