Mipp's fanfic

[Mississippienne]

I'll start off with a story inspired by the Crack Pairing Generator (http://freepages.misc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~byzantium/crack.html). If you'd like some mood music for this fic, may I suggest Coleman Hawkins' Body and Soul (http://youtube.com/watch?v=0Q7J4PgrRsY), or Frank Sinatra's Fools Rush In (http://youtube.com/watch?v=lBC-ajKT2PA).

Title: Body and Soul
Word Count: 500
Pairing: Jim Hammond (Human Torch I)/Raven Darkholme (Mystique)

"German forces have occupied Luxembourg," said the tinny voice on the radio. "Sources report that the Luftwaffe has--"

A young woman in a red dress turned the radio's knob. The radio crackled, and then Jim listened to a tinkling piano followed by a gentle saxophone. Jim Hammond brushed a hand through his hair and sipped his drink. He must have looked uncomfortable, because the young woman in the red dress smiled at him and said, "Coleman Hawkins. Do you listen to jazz?"

"I love music," he told her. A breeze blew through the corner cafe, cooling the skins of his fellow patrons. The young woman in red sat down at the table across from him. She wore a smart jacket with a cinched waist. Soft curls dripped down her shoulders; he wondered if they were natural. She couldn't be much more than eighteen, but she had the knowing eyes of a much older woman.

"I'm more of a Benny Carter fan myself," she said. She had a faint and unidentifiable accent. Pursing her lips, she asked, "You're a bull, aren't you?"

Jim frowned, then said, "Why yes, miss, I am a policeman." He was off-duty, in plainclothes, but this neighborhood was known as a haven for hopheads and hookers -- recognizing police was probably a survival skill around here. Unfazed, the girl took out a cigarette and Jim struck a match for her, ignoring a ridiculous impulse to use his finger. She leaned across the table to light the cigarette, cupping her hands over his.

"Your touch is so warm," she murmured. Her hands lingered on his for a moment.

You have no idea. "What's your name?" Jim flushed. His words were too eager, he sounded like a cake-eater, trying to make time with a pretty lady.

"Raven."

He blinked twice at the unusual name but made no comment. "Jim."

"Jim," Raven repeated. Smoke curled from between her lips. "A solid name, a dependable name. Good old Jim."

Dusk, and the city fell into shadows and inky corners. Jim overheard two children excitedly telling their father about a talkie they'd seen called Pinocchio, about a puppet who dreamed of becoming a real boy. Across the ocean, Europe was becoming a nightmare.

Raven exhaled deeply and leaned back, watched him watching her. The curve of her neck fascinated him. Raven seemed like a work of art, an imagined being. Another song crackled onto the radio, Sinatra singing Fools Rush In. "I love this song," Raven breathed.

"Me, too," said Jim, and he drank down the rest of his drink.

The room was dark and bare, the only light slitting through the window curtains. She wrapped her arms around his neck, kissed him deeply. Her lips left him breathless. Jim had never done anything like this before. She led him to the bedroom by his tie, casually tossing his coat over a chair. Jim sat on the edge of her bed, and said, "I'm... I'm not what you think I am."

The tip of Raven's cigarette glowed bright red. "Neither am I, stranger," she told him.

[Mississippienne]

Title: Dark Horse Bet
Fandom: Marvel Comics
Rating: G for General
Note: Set in an AU developed by myself and remix17, branching off somewhere around Thunderbolts #100


The bar was too dark, too stuffy, and too loud. Max Dillon hiccupped, downed a double shot that Kraven had bought for everyone at the table, and grumbled something under his breath. "What was that?" asked Adrian Toomes, peering down his very prominent nose at Max.

"I said, I could have totally kicked Luke Cage's ass. If I'd felt like it." Max scratched his head, sending little jolts of static into the air. He'd shaved his hair off, but was letting it grow back, and the itching drove him crazy.

"Right," snorted Alyosha Kravinoff, his dark eyes shining. "I heard you fainted dead away when the New Avengers showed up."

"It was a -- tactical manuever!" Max yelled, slurring his words a little. He probably shouldn't have had that last beer. Alcohol did something funny to his system. The others at the table just chuckled to themselves. Adrian gave Max a friendly slap on the back. They'd be at each other's throats tomorrow, competing for heists and turf, but tonight, in this bar, they were just masks with a connection. Everyone at this table was "one of Spider-man's"; most of them had belonged to one incarnation or another of the Sinister Six, and a couple of them had tangled with the Avengers in their glory days.

Behind the bar, the barkeeper glared each patron down. He wasn't a man to be trifled with; he'd once been Doctor Doom's head-of-security, and he still had a malfunctioning Doombot that got trotted out for a laugh every once in a while. As a joke, Max had once looked up Doombots on eBay, and found so many listing for "refitted Doombots" with "erotic modifications" that he'd needed a stiff vodka to make him forget. At the next table over Max could see the Matador -- damned if he could remember the schlub's real name -- slumped over with his hand in the peanut jar. The Eel just kept right on talking to him, not even noticing his buddy had passed out. A couple of tables down, the pretty blonde waitress, the one Alyosha always flirted with, was taking an order from Stilt-Man and the Answer.

The door swung open, and a couple of familiar faces entered. "What's shaking, Shultzie?" Max called out, trying to sound cool but just coming off as a drunken lout.

"Not much, not much," Hermann Shultz said, taking a seat next to Alyosha. "You remember Jim?"

"Whizzer, oh yeah," Max said, and Adrian elbowed him in the ribs.

"It's Speed Demon now," Jim said as he pulled up a chair.

Max blinked at him in confusion for a minute before blurting out, "Ain't you a super hero now?"

"Nah," Jim said, "tried it for a while, didn't take. Got kicked off the team, can you believe that? Mel's got some nerve, I remember when she was just the village bicycle." He waved to the waitress, who blew him a kiss.

"Speaking of that," Hermann leaned across the table, "do you guys remember the Mimi Bet?"

The table went silent. Finally, Alyosha said, "The Mimi Bet? You mean..."

"Yep," Jim popped a peanut into his mouth, "she's got a bun in the oven. And hell no, it's not mine. Let's just say I still got contacts in the Thunderbolts."

Alyosha stood up and said, "Attention, everyone! Exciting news on the Mimi Bet! Jim and Hermann here have some new developments!" In an instant, the table was surrounded by masks, goons, henchmen, and general hoodlums. Each and every one of them knew the Mimi Bet. Most had good money riding on it. From behind the bar a ledger-book was produced.

"I can't believe it, I can't fucking believe it," Adrian muttered to himself.

"Tell me about it," Max said. "I thought for sure she had her tubes tied..."

"No!" moaned Adrian, clawing the air. "I always thought I'd be the one --"

Alyosha started laughing. "Right, Adrian! Even with Mel you never had a chance."

"It's Abner, isn't it?" asked Stiltman. "I knew it!"

Jim smirked. "It's not Abner."

Gasps from everyone, and moans from a few, most notably Stiltman. "He was such a sure bet!" Wilbur wailed. "A sure bet!"

Adrian plucked at Jim's sleeve and said, "Then it's Erik, right? Got to be Erik."

Jim shook his head. Murmurs and whisperings flew around the bar. If not Atlas or MACH-IV, then who?

"Oh dear God," cried Alyosha, "don't tell me it's Fixer!" Max felt something rise in his throat, but whether it was too much alcohol or disgust at the thought of Fixer getting some, he wasn't sure.

Jim laughed. "It's not Fixer, either," he assured Alyosha. Finally, getting bored of the joke, he said, "It's Zemo."

The bar fell dead silent. Even the barkeeper looked askance at Jim. Adrian burst out laughing. "No really, Jim, who is it?" he asked, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.

"No really," Jim said, nodding, "it's Zemo."

More silence, followed by gasps of shock and gnashing of teeth by the losers. Max slammed his fist on the table, cursing loudly. Why had he bet on himself, anyway? Never bet on a loser, he told himself. There were several shouts of "Holy shit!" and Stiltman ran to the bathroom to puke. From above the din was heard a maniacal cackling.

"I knew it, I knew it!" cried the Eel, brandishing handfuls of dollar bills. The other super villains turned away in disgust.

"I can't believe it," Alyosha muttered. "Someone actually bet that Zemo would be the one to knock up Screaming Mimi?"

Jim munched a handful of peanuts. "Dark horse bet, friend."

[Mississippienne]

Four Times Namor Showed Jim He Cared, or Random Jim/Namor Drabbles.

1. "You're pulling your punches!" Jim blazed white-hot. Bad enough that Namor provoked him into a fight, but those love-taps, as though Jim couldn't take whatever Namor could dish out, were beyond the pale.

Namor arched one of those imperius brows. "Yes."

Jim squared his jaw. "Don't."

2. Jim's eyes followed Jackie everywhere she went, hungry. Yearning. Namor, who knew exactly what kind of woman Jackie was, who knew that Jim would never catch her, never keep her, not in this lifetime nor in ten lifetimes, sighed and rolled his eyes. "If you would have her," he told Jim, "go and tell her."

That was as much as he would ever say. Namor would go no further in pleading the cause of a rival.

3. They were very young, and the sky was very blue, and belonged only to them. When they weren't fighting one another they were flying together, racing across that endless blue, the wind licking at them like jealous lovers. Namor's mouth would get so parched that he could just beg for water, and the sun burned hot, hot as Jim's flames, but he could always chase the android for one more hour.

4. He hadn't seen Namor in almost four months. So when he saw Namor sitting resplendent on his throne, flanked by imposing blue-skinned Atlantean guards, he wanted to make a good impression. Jim walked up and kissed Namor full on the lips.

When he pulled away and saw the aghast looks on the faces of Namor's courtiers, Jim blinked several times and said, "You told me that was an ancient Atlantean custom."

Namor shot a ferocious glare at the onlookers. "Why, yes," he said, "it is. An ancient Atlantean custom."

One of Namor's guards coughed, then quickly gave another guard a peck on the cheek. Quickly, the other Atlanteans followed suite, kissing each other with varying degrees of enthusiasm. "Quite right, my liege," said Namor's wizened seneschal, his voice a bit too earnest. "Very ancient. Of the utmost antiquity!"

[Mississippienne]

Title: Ode to Ligeia (Poe in the Theme of Green)
Note: This is for terana
Rating: M for Mature

Norman Osborn sits on the edge of his bed, contemplating the world in his hands. With these hands, he can give. He can take away. He can strangle, and hurt, and kill. Pain pierces his brain, a thundercrack before the rumbling headache.

The girl laying beside him in the bed moans. He hears Emily's voice echoing across the years, her easy smile. "Come lay with me," she says, taking his hands, luring him away from his work. "Stay with me tonight."

He lingers over her dark hair, the curves of her body, tastes her kisses. Dry like dust, dust to dust, moldering in the grave. Her belly swelling with life, the promise of her death. "Emily," says Norman, and he feels the weight of her wedding band on his left hand, ghost weight nigh on nineteen years old.

The girl moans again. He glances over at her, making out the sheen of blonde hair in the darkness. "Emily," he says, and leans down to kiss her. "I've been gone so long. My work -- it's very important, you see. Forgive me, love."

His lips touch hers, and she shivers, and writhes in the sheets. Vertigo disturbs her slumber. Norman brushes his hand against her forehead, then her cheek, then gently cups her neck. His fingers tense until he can feel her pulse. Her eyes flutter open, then close again. His grip loosens.

Emily thrashes in her final feverish days, he remembers, straining with the last of her strength against her inescapable fate. "Norman," she whispers, her eyes sunken, her skin's pallor green and yellow. "Please don't let me die." Her fingers swelled in her pregnancy so that she had to have her wedding ring cut off. By the end of her illness, she'd shrunken to a pale remnant of her former self, her fingers little more than skin over bone, so that he could slip her ring on and off easily. He laid Emily in her grave -- but she did not leave -- she did not die!

"Emily," he says, his voice low and serious. "There's something I'm forgetting -- someone I'm forgetting. You must help me remember." Her eyes open again, dark and unseeing. In her pupils Norman glimpses his face, reflected double, twisted and laughing, no mirth, no mercy. Death and green. He shakes himself, unsettled.

"Mmmmm," she mumbles, her eyes flicking back and forth. He slides his hand under her shirt, to touch her soft belly, imagining the first sparks of life already enkindled there. Death blooming in her belly. He kills what he touches, everything he loves.

Foolish girl! You're already dead! I've already killed you! "Go back to sleep, love," Norman tells her.

Her eyes slide shut, and she rolls over, his fingers tracing along the soft curve of her hip. Gwen sighs, and sleeps, and dreams. Hot green death already pulses within her.

***

Notes: When I received the prompt for this story, I had just read Edgar Allan Poe's Ligeia. The theme seemed appropriate for Norman Osborn, a man haunted by so many dead women. To achieve Poe's moody atmosphere, I tried emphasizing the "L" sound, as Poe does in his poems such as Lenore and Annabel Lee. The reader may decide for himself whether I suceeded.

[Mississippienne]

A handful of Runaways drabbles, each featuring a different character.

Title: Herald
Character: Karolina
Word Count: 100

A thousand, thousand light years from Earth, far beyond the most ancient nebulas, nurtured by the knell of dying stars, a great and terrible hunger grows. The Devourer stirs, and his voice cracks across eternity. "Herald," says Galactus. "To me, my Herald. I hunger."

Karolina Dean bows her head obediantly, her rainbows swirling about her. Her eyes are knowing, heartbroken. She sets a course for her master, choosing between the world of her people, or the world of her birth. Whichever is chosen, a world is doomed to destruction, a culture to extinction. "Yes, my lord. I know what to do."


Title: Remembering the Names
Character: Chase
Word Count: 500

Once Chase got the portico working again, he set out immediately, ignoring Nico's advice. Everyone told him how dangerous time-travelling and dimension-hopping was -- but he had to find her. Some version of her, somewhere in the multiverse, had to be out there, waiting for him.

The first world he landed on was a nightmare ruled by an evil mutant. Chase had barely arrived before the Infinites, Apocalypse's footsoldiers, locked on to his genetic signature and attacked him. He was forced to flee back into the timestream, forced also to accept that the Gert of that wretched world had probably fallen prey to the same miserable fate as the other "flatscans".

He hopped again and again. On one world, Gert was a boy named Gerry. On another, she had never been conceived. She had been strangled by her own umbilical cord during birth, and had been stillborn. A car crash killed her at age nine. On yet another world, she had died in childbirth at the age of twenty-three -- Chase was shocked to find that women still could, did die giving birth. He tried a dozen worlds, a dozen realities. No matter how much he sought, he could not find his Gert, his Arsenic.

This world was quiet and pleasant, a nice change from yet another universe ruled by sentient lobsters or techno-organic monstrosities. Easy enough to track down the Gertrude Yorkes of this reality, even easier to find some fake I.D. When he visited the hospital, the nurse smiled at him warmly and told him they didn't get many visitors.

"It's so hard for families," the nurse told him. "Alzheimer's is such a terrible disease." She escorted Chase down the hall. The hospital smelled of antiseptic and white sheets. "The patient forgets little things at first, then more and more, until they can't remember the names and faces around them. Sometimes, if they're not cared for, they will forget to eat and starve to death."

She sat in a little chair by the window, warming her wrinkled face in the sun. Her glasses were perched on the edge of her nose. Chase knelt down in front of her and said, "Hi, Gertrude. Do you know who I am?"

She smiled at him and said, in a voice dry and cracked like baked earth, "Such a nice boy. So handsome." She reached out and took his hands in hers, holding them as though they were very precious things. "My friends, they don't visit -- anymore. They..." Her words trailed off as she peered at him. "Oh. Oh."

Dropping his hands, she covered her face with her palms. "My friends... I promised them that I would never forget them... they were all I had in the whole world." Gertrude's voice quavered. "I promised them I would never forget them!"

Chase hugged her, as tightly as her fragile old bones would allow. "I love you," he told her. Then she looked at him again, and there was no recognition in her eyes.

"Such a nice boy," she said. "So handsome."


Title: Keep Driving
Character: Molly
Word Count: 200

When she put her son into the car, Molly thought they were just going to the store for groceries. As she drove along, glancing in the rear-view mirror from time-to-time to see Jamie playing with his dinosaur toys, she thought over Logan's words. Join the X-Men again, he'd said. Go back on active duty.

I've been fighting since I was eleven years old, she'd told him. I'm not sure there's any fight left in me. Molly stared at the red light, seeing in her mind's eye the red glare of a Sentinel's blast. After her marriage to Julian had disintegrated, she'd taken a break for a year. She could rejoin the X-Men, fight the good fight, but that would mean facing her ex-husband every day. That's not what she wanted.

She could bench-press tanks and rend steel to shreds. Why did she feel so helpless?

When the light turned green, Molly hit the gas, and kept driving. She drove down unfamiliar streets, taking turns at random, until lost past dusk. In the back seat, Jamie yawned and asked, "Mommy, aren't we going home?"

Tears rolled down her cheeks and fell from her chin. "I've been looking for home for twenty years, baby," she said.


Title: Revenant
Character: Victor
Word Count: 200

"Get down!" screamed Nico, diving out of the way of a falling piece of machinery. Karolina swooped down, firing blasts wildly, diverting Victorious' attentions from their wounded teammates. The day they'd all dreaded had come. Nico could hear Molly moaning in pain. Gritting her teeth, she summoned everything she had for one last spell.

Victorious yelled over the din. [I will rend the flesh from your bones! You will kneel at my father's feet! I will --]

***

[Oh God, help me, I can't stop myself!] Victor screamed when they brought him out of the coma. [Nico, I love you, please save me!] He thrashed against his restraints until his vision cleared and he could see that he was in a white room, a sterile hospital room surrounded by worried scientists.

Once they had him calmed down, a counselor came in to speak with him. Her voice was low and soothing as she explained how they'd found him buried at the bottom of the ocean, his systems frozen, seemingly derelict. A miracle of science had resurrected him. A modern-day Frankenstein.

Victor's shoulders shook with soundless sobs. What was the point of crying over friends who'd been dead for two hundred years?


Title: Emperor
Character: Xavin
Word Count: 300

They bowed before them, their eyes reverently drinking the sight of him. Super-Skrull, all-mightly emperor of the Skrull diaspora, walked amongst them. "The girl has been taken alive?" he asked the captain.

The man saluted smartly. "Yes, my lord. The others escaped, but the girl stayed and fought us. A truly worthy adversary--" his words were cut off as the Super-Skrull pushed past him, into the brig. In his haste, he did not even bother with restraints, with a scan for weapons. His love had returned to him.

Karolina sat in a corner of the brig, a special collar designed to cancel Majesdanian powers around her neck. She sat with her knees pulled to her chest, her blonde hair covering her face. When he entered, she did not even glance at him. Pain cut him to the core.

"Karolina," he said, removing his helmet. "It's me, Xavin." His voice softened, became feminine. "My love, I always knew we would be together again."

Karolina cast sad eyes upon Xavin. He could drown in their blue depths. "What have you done?" she asked. "So many deaths. Sorrow, hunger, murder. All this bloodshed, this war..."

"I did it for you," Xavin said, kneeling in front of her, touching Karolina's cheek. So soft, her skin silky. No other woman in the galaxy could bring Super-Skrull to his knees. "You shall rule by my side. I give you the gift of all my worlds, all my conquests. No woman ever had so grand a dowry."

Karolina caressed Xavin's neck and whispered into his ear, "There is something I must tell you."

"Do not be afraid, tell me." He pressed her close to him, allowing her to feel his heart pound in his chest. "There are no secrets between us, my love."

"I'm not Karolina," her breath was warm against his ear. "I'm [I]Hulkling."