X-Men Fan Fiction ❯ Corrupted Intentions ❯ True Blue Hero ( Chapter 2 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

Comment to the reader: Hello again! For the record, I've been super busy lately – thus the extremely slow updating rate. Also the fact that I've gotten no comments on this, aside from Mali's. Anyone out there? Please? I love comments! I thrive on them. Really, just leaving any comment on it at all – even a totally negative one – brightens my day. It means that someone is actually reading this drivel, and is interested enough to let me know how they feel.

Oh, and I don't own the either the X-Men or Buffy universes. They belong to Marvel and Joss Whedon respectively.


Kurt stiffened, the scream bringing up old fears and memories that he had tried to shove into the back of his mind for good. A dirty cage, people gaping at him in horror as he lay in a drug-induced daze; the red glare of fire from torches, the blood thirsty faces of the crowd...Humans! Hateful humans! Why had God forsaken him so? Kurt gritted his teeth as an anger long dead and cold flared up once more, and he whirled on the two women standing in the doorway of his room.
“Get AWAY from me, human!” he snarled, full of equal parts anger and fear. He saw in the two women everything that had hurt him in his life, associating every hurt and pain that trying to live in a human's world had inflicted on him with the totally innocent pair in front of him. What are you doing, you idiot? Cut it out! Kurt fought against the strange anger, but found that somehow he could not shove it away. And it became harder to resist.
“Um, well you see, that's the misunderstanding here. Technically, I'm more than human.” Buffy quipped, pulling a wooden stake, her weapon of choice, from out of her purse. “I'm the Slayer!” she yelled, lunging forward to attack the demon before her, only to stumble off-balance as her stake connected with nothing but a cloud of sulfurous smoke. She coughed and squinted her now burning eyes, scanning the room for the demon's presence. “Nice parlor trick.” She commented conversationally, unconsciously moving closer to her little sister for protection. “Learn it from the circus?”
“As a matter of fact, I did.” Hissed a voice from the ceiling. Buffy barely had time to register the direction of his voice before her stake was snatched from her grip by a long, dexterous tail. She looked up and saw that – much to her horror – the demon's grinning face was mere feet away from her. Grinning wickedly, he transfered the stake from tail to hand with disconcerting ease. She was just considering her option of attack when the demon suddenly and without warning fell from the ceiling into a confused heap upon the floor.
With a supreme force of will, Kurt shoved the irrational anger and hatred away, fighting to regain his self-control. As he came back to himself, he felt a jolt of vertigo as he was suddenly crashing downwards, when he had been standing upright not a moment before. He felt a white-hot flash of pain as something pierced his skin, bringing him fully to his senses. “Was?” He blinked, rolling onto his back and looking down at the wooden stake that now protruded from his abdomen.
“Well...” Buffy began, feeling more than a little confused about where she currently stood with the demon. He certainly didn't look hostile anymore. “That's what you get for playing with other people's things.”
Kurt jerked in surprise, turning to look at the woman. Where had she come from? He wondered idly, before realizing that she was standing in a defensive pose, as if expecting him to attack her. He felt the blood drain from his face, and a sick kind of dread fill him as he reflected on all the things he could have done while he was drowning in that anger...
Buffy and the young teenager watched the confusion and pain cross the demonic-looking man's face, “Should we, like, help him or something?” the teen whispered in Buffy's ear.
Buffy shook her head, not in disagreement, but confusion. “I'm not sure, Dawn. He could be faking or something...” She murmured back, but her voice held no conviction. The man – When did I start thinking of him as a man and not a demon? Buffy wondered – was obviously in pain and very confused. All of her heroine instincts were urging her to go to his aid, while all of her Slayer instincts warned her of treachery and told her to stay back.
”E-es tut mir leid...Was...?” he began, before he shook his head, vaguely remembering that this was the wrong language to be speaking in. He felt so confused...what had just happened to him? “I'm sorry.” he began again, silently begging her to understand that he had no idea what was going on. “What..did I...? Are you...?” He choked on the words, his breath coming in short gasps as the pain in his stomach flared up again, as the shock of his injury wore off. His tail thrashed erratically, in time with the spasms of pain that came in ever increasing frequency.
At his confused inquiry, Buffy felt her heroine instincts take over, telling her cautious Slayer instincts just where they could shove their advice. “How deep is it?” she asked the man, as she trotted over to help him.
Kurt gazed at her through eyes bleary with pain. “Did I.....I didn't...hurt you, did I?” he gasped, a roughness to his voice that sounded more like shame than anything else to Buffy. She rolled her eyes at him. Looks like I'll be alone in this one. she thought.
“I'm fine. But what was all that about earlier? I mean, first you attack me, and then you're all..whatever this is?” she said out loud, talking as much to distract the man from his steadily bleeding wound as to figure out just what was going on. The demon cried out as she touched the stake, his breath coming in even shorter bursts.
“I – - don't - – know -– what -– happened. “ He forced out, closing his eyes from the pain. “Suddenly - I – was -...so -....angry...” Kurt tried to force himself to remember what had happened to him, but it was as if someone or something was blocking his access to that memory. All he remembered was walking into his room and finally shedding that hateful illusion...A fresh burst of pain from Buffy's probing tore a screech from his lips, and his whole body stiffened. Logan would be ashamed of me if he saw this! he thought wryly. A wound like this would hardly phase HI M. His lips twitched briefly into a semblance of a smile. I'm acting like a baby. I've had worse than this before.
“Buffy?” Dawn asked, kneeling beside her sister. Buffy glaced quickly at Dawn and then returned to staring at the man's wound. I will have to stop the bleeding, that much is sure. But should I risk removing the stake...?
“What is it, Dawn?”
“Do you want me to call Giles, or anyone else? Maybe they could help?”
Buffy pulled herself out of her revere, grinning at Dawn with relief. “I'm glad someone is thinking straight.” She said with obvious relief.
“That's me!” Dawn replied cheerfully, returning the grin. She looked around the room, scanning for a phone. “Um...where's the phone, uh...?”
“Kurt.” Kurt gasped out, struggling to open his eyes and look at her. So cold...got to stay awake... “”Wagner. Nightcrawler. X-man...” He closed his eyes briefly as another spasm of pain shot through him. “There is - a cellphone - in my...here.” With shaking hands, he extracted a small black phone emblazoned with a red X in a circle, the symbol of a student of Professor Xavier, from his jacket pocket, trying to ignore the spreading feeling of cold and numbness radiating from his wound.
Dawn stared at the strange and deformed hands a moment before hesitantly taking the phone from Kurt and stepping into the bathroom to call up the Scoobies for help. Kurt watched her go, noting her reaction to having to come into contact with his hands with more than a little sorrow. Would no one ever learn to look past his appearance? closed his eyes. To sleep would be so good right now...To rest...
Buffy noticed Kurt's attention slipping, which she was pretty sure was a bad sign. “So, an X-men? Wouldn't that mean that you're a mutant?”
Kurt opened his eyes, and a smile spread slowly across his face. “that obvious - is it?” he laughed breathlessly, grimacing at the pain in his stomach as he did so.
Buffy had to smile at that. “to tell you the truth, I thought you were a demon of some kind.” she admitted, feeling stupid for her mistake. Not everyone with a weird appearance is a demon. reminded herself. Just because you're deep into occult world doesn't mean you can't come into contact with something as normal as a mutant from time to time.
“Most people do.” His laugh this time carried very little humor.
“Sorry.” Buffy apologized, grimacing a bit at her stupid choice for a topic of conversation. He must get so sick of hearing that. “I'm afraid that I tend to think everything that attacks me is some kind of demon or witch. Comes with the Slayer territory, you see.”
“Slayer....I heard - tales of the Slayer - back when I was a child. 'One girl - in all the world. She alone - s-stands against - the vampires, demons - and the forces of darkness', huh?” Kurt grinned, remembering a happier time, when his foster family used to tell him that if he wasn't good, they would call the Slayer....
Buffy blinked in surprise. Wow, someone actually knew about me for once? That's new.However, she never got a chance to ask him about where he had learned that, as two men - one bookish looking and middle-aged, the other twenty-something and slightly dorky - followed closely by a red haired woman, burst into the hotel room and hurried towards Buffy.
“Is that the demon-of-the-week Slayer special?” The younger one asked, grinning broadly. The grin faded as he saw the growing puddle of blood on the floor from the demon's wound. Dawn didn't say it was THAT bad...glanced over at the teen in question, who gave him an innocent look from across the room.
“A Neyaphem demon?” the bookish-looking man exclaimed in surprise as he got a good look at Kurt. “But I thought they were -”
“Not a demon, he's a mutant.” Buffy corrected him distractedly. “True blue mutant superhero, actually. But I'm more concerned about how is than what he is at the moment.”
“A-actually...H-half...” Kurt gasped, struggling to stay conscious. Gott, it hurts...”Az- Azazel...father.” His tail had long since slowed its thrashing, its movements now barely more than an slight infrequent twitching.
“He's getting worse, Giles...” Buffy mumbled, and gave the steadily growing pool of blood a concerned look. This couldn't go on much longer. She gave Giles an inquiring look, and he removed his glasses, nervously rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“The stake will have to come out.” He told her impassively.
Buffy nodded and looked down at the quickly fading Kurt. “This is going to hurt...a lot.” she warned him as she wrapped her hands around the wooden stake and prepared to pull. Kurt nodded slowly, preparing himself for the worst. He howled at the excruciating pain as Buffy ripped the stake from him and gratefully gave himself over to the warm darkness of unconsciousness.