Chapter 23: Slaughter

It had begun....

Romulus had sent his specialized attack squad of Mutant Successors. And they had come at the worst of times, just when Bronte was learning his powers-- just when he was beginning to call his fellow feral-blooded brothers and sisters just that. Brothers.... Sisters. Each with their own lessons, origins and history. Things he could add to and build upon while unveiling the mystery of himself. A semblance of balance was coming to his life. And then, they came.

Victor Creed and his low-class Mutant packmates. They came and shattered Bronte's balance. They came-- seemingly to cause chaos and disarray. Where the Lupines back at Midtown High came to capture Bronte, these three Mutants seemed to only thirst for his death.

And that's why WildChild was left as nothing more than a charred husk. He wanted death. He wanted slaughter. Bronte gave him all he had. He gave him everything baked into his dna and learned from someone who was once their own leading attack dog. Daken.

But that wasn't their biggest problem. That wasn't the mountain Bronte needed to climb. Even when the wiry limbed throatless hooting mutant was choking the life out of him. His greatest danger laid ahead, fighting off Daken and Laura with a strength he couldn't imagine anyone overcoming, and a level of sadism he only imagined in the Demonic things roaming inside Illyana's other dimensional home.

Victor Creed. Jimmy Hudson's attacker-- and now learned killer, Sabretooth....

"WHERE ARE YOU, BRONTE!!??... Show me you're your fathers' son!" Sabretooth's voice rumbled through the forest like an ominous earthquake. In each word, Bronte could hear snarls, changes in pitch, effort, as he fought off the others.

Bronte pushed himself to move faster, to join them, to reach Sabretooth before her.

As he ran, the storm raged, each falling bolt of lightning illuminating and igniting his trail in the forest. More of his clothing was burned away as the lightning danced on his skin and the rainwater cleaned his healing wounds. His heart boomed like a drum in his ears and the lump in his throat only swelled with the rising smell of blood and sounds of snarls.

He was horrified in every sense.

Even so.

"Come onnnn, Bronte! Wolverine was a runt, BUT HE WAS NO COWARD! Show yourself!"

Bronte dropped to all fours and began bounding through the mudded forest in a blur. The others were just over a hill. A hill he leapt to the top of with an explosive wind gusting bound. In his adrenaline flooded state, he surveyed the field briefly.

An arena had been made out of the forest. Tree's smashed to dust and wooden splinters, the ground pounded and stomped so many times that the wet muddy earth had been made into a crater full of water. Sabretooth stood at the center covered in Laura and Daken's blood. He was missing an eye and half his face, leaving only a sabertoothed partial skull to appear in flashes as lightning continued to fall around them.

Daken and Laura stood at his left and right, claws raised, and teeth bared. Their physical states just as nightmarish.

He was ripping them to shreds. He wouldn't stop. It wasn't capture; it wasn't murder. It was torture. Even worse than what happened at Midtown. All the student deaths.... just like Laura said.

Another howl came, only a few dozen feet away.

"Rahne."

"BRONTE! Maybe you aren't a coward afterall huh, kid?" Sabertooth sneered.

Bronte growled.

Sabretooth mocked him and threw up a half chewed- yet healing, middle finger to show his claws extending.

Laura moved from the left. Everyone followed as if their minds were connected by a thread.

Her speed was otherworldly. Shown in the way she disappeared from where she stood in an explosion of mud and rainwater, and appeared at Sabretooth's location, ducking under one of his swooping massive arms to open two lines of red in his hamstring.

"AHAHAH!" He let out a snarling cackle.

Bronte jumped from atop the hill, letting the winds push him higher from below before rocketing him towards the ground from above. The Lightning followed his descent and he crashed into the crater in a blast of electricity, wind and vortexing water.

Sabertooth dodged, only to be partially vaporized by the lightning that ran through the water sloshing around them both.

He stood stunned, burning and locked in place, but still smiling menacingly as he towered over Bronte.

Bronte wasted no time and ripped into his stomach with a myriad of slashes and heavy stabs within the electrified mini hurricane surrounding them. Any average Lupine would've been wolf-paste already. But Sabretooth had so much muscle and skin tissue, it felt like armor, even the electricity burning his skin and hair had trouble overcoming his healing factor.

"HAAAAHAHAHRRRRR!!!.... C-COMe on BRoNTE!!! MOooRE!"

Bronte gave in. Each hit growing more powerful, the weather around them changing like the seasons.

That was a mistake.

One second the water was cold, the next it was so hot, Sabretooths skin was melting away, and then they were in an ice globe.

Ice was not a conductor of electricity. Did Sabretooth do that on purpose.

Bronte didn't have the time to consider as a massive hairy hand gripped his own. It's strength like molded iron, the claws grazing his skin as if to tease, to intimidate. Was the temperature rising?

He looked up and found feline amber eyes looking down at him with an emotion-- an expression he couldn't comprehend.

"....My turn."

Sabretooth chuckled as he lifted Bronte in a flash and began slamming him around the ice globe they stood in. Its thickness caused every slam and swing into the walls and ceiling to feel like what he could only imagine as a car crash. A violent and bone crushing car crash.

His world became a twisting flash of ice shards, his own blood and the rain as it became more apparent with the destruction of their shared domain.

After only a few seconds, there was nothing left of the ice globe, and Bronte was bleeding from seemingly everywhere at all once.

"Bronte??" Laura's voice cut through the ringing in his ears and woke him up. Everything was a blur aside from a pair of yellow eyes in the distance.

He reached up from where he was held upside down by the leg and slashed at his own ankle, removing three of Sabretooths fingers in a flash with a wet tearing sound.

Sabretooth let out little more than a grunt as Bronte fell.

"Looks like you've still got some fight in you, kid. That's good. Real goo--" His words were cut short as Daken and Laura attacked. Something snarled and took off towards them in the distance.

He threw off them both, before being caught by a reddish, brown-furred Wolf the size of a small horse. It latched it's massive jaws onto Sabretooths throat and used it's claws to rip open his stomach, groin and chest.

The assault was vicious, animalistic-- leading Bronte to believe it truly was a Wolf in his dazed and recovering state.

Then Sabretooth snarled and wrapped his massive arms around the beast, using his only hand with fingers to to dig in and snap apart the Wolfs spine.

"AARP!" It let out a pained yelp following the snap before Sabretooth threw the creature at a tree in the distance.

Once the Wolf hit the ground, it's shape shifted and shrunk, shedding away the fur and losing the fangs until the only possible person was left. Laying. Lifeless, as the rain shined on her pale freckled skin.

"Rahne..."

Just like Laura said. Just as Hank told the story not so long ago.

He never took his eyes off her, but his ears suddenly picked up on doors in the distance bursting open.

"Charles will watch the battle through us, and if things go sideways he has a safety protocol. Until then, we go as planned. If we want a cohesive and uninterrupted battle with our opponent, we need to locate Bronte Conners and secure him if he is enraged, the same goes for his siblings." Cyclops voice, as stern as always. Even as hell broke loose just outside the Institute's grounds.

"AYE! The fuck does that mean, eyebeams?" Raze spat.

"Bronte is learning control. I'm sure he's himself out there...." Gabbie didn't sound confident.

"I can secure him. I will calm him." Illyana's voice cut in.

"Alright. Me and Havoc will give you cover fire, Gambit, keep the attackers on their toes and coordinate with Jean. It's a forest. Let's turn those leaves into bombs and give the Lupines hell." Cyclops ordered.

The sound of a dozen agreeing grunts followed as their footsteps grew closer.

Bronte rose up, alert. His pulse raising to deadly levels.

"No..... no no no no....."

Sabretooth laughed as he fought Laura and Daken, "Looks like more fun's arriving!"

Bronte tried to speak but his windpipe had been smashed and was still healing. He tried to tell them to go, even as he could see the beginnings of Cyclops' glowing visor, Gambit's hellish eyes and Cannonballs blast shield in the distance.

It was just like Laura said. Exactly why she left. History was bound to repeat itself in this rainy forest. Bronte suddenly felt like a slave to fate. Like there was no way around it. The X-Men would come, they would fight...

Even when Sabretooth showcased a level of power and ferocity, he couldn't imagine anyone overcoming. They were going to die, trying to help Bronte.

All in vain.

As if everything up to this point wasn't enough....

The X-Men entered the forest.

Daken and Laura were on their last leg. Healing, but mentally staggered.

Sabretooth held out his hands, "Welcome to the party, boys!"

It seemed the others didn't feel like speaking. All hell broke loose once they saw Rahne. Bronte's vision flickered in and out of red. He was finally able to stand, witnessing the beginning of a war as Cyclops fired eyebeams into Sabretooth, knocking him off his feet and through two trees. Havoc followed up with a series of crescent shaped icy blue energy blasts.

Before the Monster of a Mutant could get to his feet, Jean caused all the leaves to swell around Gambit where they suddenly gained a blinding purple glow. Then she tossed the glowing debris at where Sabretooth laid, and carpet bombed him. Literally.

Hope filled him in those moments. The red faded. The lump in his throat suddenly didn't feel so gigantic. Sabretooth was being overwhe--

"RAGHSHSH!"

Out of the smoke and purple mist left after the bombing, Sabretooth exploded. Suit torn and nothing but his muscle tissue remaining.

"Fall back!" Cyclops yelled as Sabretooth landed on Havoc with a wet crunch and ripped his arm off.

"AAAACKK!!"

Reality set in with a crushing intensity.

Before Bronte could see anymore, Illyana grabbed him and brought him into a hug.

He could hear her whisper one thing before she opened up a portal behind him and took the both of them into The Limbo Dimension. Just as the rage returned in excess.

"I'm sorry, Bronte."