Tales of the Kudoverse #8

This one is the big, loud conclusion of the Secret Origin of Kitten Mundae, also featuring two characters you've already met in previous stories, and introducing a behind the scenes character that I love to death. When I was first writing this one I described it to a friend of mine as being "obscenely violent", and I think I lived up to the hype. It's the first big team up of the three characters we've met so far, and it really shows what they're capable of. The new character, Gigi, is the only principal character not based on one of the NHG's, but is instead based (somewhat) on one of their friends from Alabama. Unfortunately, this is the last of the Secret Origins cycle that I wrote, so even though I know where Wilhemina X and the Black Rabbit come from and how they came to be, those stories aren't yet written.

'Yet' being the key word there.

*****
Although many in the Chitauri Empire considered the story to be something of an urban legend, there is no doubt that the attack on the Children of Azoth Orphanage did in fact occur, carried out by three young women who walked in during the middle of the night. Skrull operatives stationed on the planet Earth at the time still tell the story in vivid detail to young skrull-lings, who listen in wide-eyed wonder. Officially, the incident never happened, and those in high command discourage the spread of the legend, and many go so far as to deny such a thing ever took place.

But it is a true story.

January 1998. St. Aureillius, France.

The attack was sudden, and brutal in its efficiency. The Skrull kept numerous guards posted around the perimeter of the Orphanage, and most of them never saw what killed them. Those on the watchtower were killed by sniper fire, fired from a single gun. Others in the woods were cut down by something ferocious and fast moving, carrying two blades that flashed quickly in the moonlight. Bodies would be found the next day slashed, dismembered, and decapitated. In other areas of those same woods, the bodies of other sentries were found with their necks broken, their spines shattered, and others were killed through the use of weaponry that Chitauri scientists could not identify. All of this was done within minutes. There was no call of alarm. When the three woman blew the front gate off of it's hinges and entered the orphanage, the aliens in residence were caught sleeping.

The explosion woke the complex. Skrull from every corner of the building grabbed weapons to meet the threat. The scientists in charge, fearing the worst--an attack by the Kree, rushed to their labs to protect their data and their experiments. The three women split-up on the first floor. The dark-haired one disappeared almost immediately. The other two made no attempt to hide. The Skrull, in full going-to-war mode, didn't bother to disguise their appearance. Their orders were simple: kill any invader and protect the laboratories at all costs. The cost was higher than they could have anticipated.

In the south corridor, Jillyana Von Zemo met the charge full on. The first contingent of six Skrull warriors was taken by surprise rounding a corner. The young blonde-haired girl only smiled, said something in German, and leapt into them, swords drawn, with a shriekish war cry that chilled each of the aliens to the bone. They didn't have a chance to fire a single shot. The next contingent found the girl pulling one of her swords from the face of the last kill. Behind her, green Skrull blood splattered the walls, and severed limbs littered the walkway. These new skrulls tried to fight the sick feeling in their stomachs as they raised their weapons.

Jillyana smiled, said something in German.

Amelie Anne Marie Auf Der Maur traveled the north corridor. Each hand carried an automatic weapon. Other firearms were holstered on her belt, and another rifle was strapped to her back, just in case. It's unknown if any of the Skrull who encountered her in those hallways knew her origins and could appreciate the irony of the living weapon they helped create coming home to kill them all. If any of them knew who she was, they only had brief seconds to register the information before a spray of bullets cut them down. Her telepathy and feline-spiked DNA kept her ahead of the Skrull firepower. They could not pin her down. Amelie moved in a fluid motion through the corridor. She met the enemy, dodged the attacks before a trigger was even pressed, fired back, and did not miss. She killed, and moved on. In her wake the corridors filled with dead bodies.

The bodies of dead Chitauri stared to pile up. Many of the soldiers stationed within the orphanage decided to desert their posts, and abandoned the orphanage. They left individually and in small groups. The Black Guard, a squadron of the Red Skull’s finest killers, who had made a perimeter around not only the Children of Azoth Orphanage, but the town of St. Aureillis as well met all of them in the woods. They were under strict orders from Elspeth Von Zemo to kill anything that approached. In the early hours of the morning, the forest erupted in the sound of sudden gunfire.

Deep in the basement of the Orphanage the scientists and highest-ranking officials gathered inside a small bunker where their most valued genetic data was stored. The bunker was their fallback area, designed to protect them from attack from the Kree, SHIELD, or whatever else came along. From there, the twelve men, and their six guards, watched the massacre on several monitors. They watched the young blond woman cut apart soldier after soldier. They watched the other young woman, the one they identified as their lost sheep, gun down their soldiers with ease. The scientists calculated their most likely destinations within the installation, ordered more troops to intercept, and wondered where the third young woman had disappeared.

Behind them an air vent grating dropped to the floor. Everyone in the room turned in response to the sound, the guards drew their weapons, and Elspeth Von Zemo jumped down to the floor, landing on the grate. Seven different guns, most of alien origin, pointed at her head, she only smiled. In her hand a small sphere was activated with the press of a thumb. It started to glow with a light blue energy as it left her hand to levitate at a spot in the center of the room, just below the ceiling.

"Time to go, boys," she said. The sphere pinpointed it's targets and discharged sixteen beams of electrical blue energy, leaving behind piles of ash where creatures pretending to be men had stood only seconds before. Only Elspeth and two guards remained.

"Where do I get those wonderful toys?" she said, casting a glance towards the two men across the room.

Upstairs, in the south corridor a dozen more Skrull met the blond warrior head on. She slashed, and they dropped one by one. In such close quarters, the soldiers didn't have time to line up their shots on the fast moving target, and fired wildly. One blaster shot grazed Jillyana's arm, but she hardly seemed to notice it. Her sword severed the skrull's hand before he could try again. Another soldier grabbed her from behind, but couldn't keep hold due to the blade that punctured his lung. Everywhere around her, skrulls were attacking, trying to pull her down. Adrenaline mixed with the super soldier serum that coursed through her veins, and Jillyana Von Zemo flew into a berserker fury. The small wounds inflicted upon her didn't register. A skrull head bounced off the wall, and then rolled down the hallway. Another was cut in half across the chest. Her swords did not stop moving for a second until all of the skrull were flayed.

The north corridor. Amelie continued to move through the installation, killing everything she met. The hallways echoed with all of the horrors they had seen over the years, and Amelie could feel that. She remembered everything the Chitauri had done to her. Now it was her turn. Amelie turned a corner, heading northeast. Her goal was right at the end of the hallway, and soon she would be done with her pursuers forever. A junction in the hallway to her right, less than ten feet away, hid eight skrulls. They were laying in wait for her, but her telepathy picked them up as soon as she turned the corner. A gun in both hands, she didn't even slow down when they attacked. Four of them fell immediately, courtesy of bullets to their brains. The other four swarmed around her.

One of them changed itself into a snake and circled her legs. Another turned into some form of furry carnivore from another galaxy. The other two just tried to grab her arms. Amelie threw her elbow back into one of them, destroying its nose, and then cracking it's skull as it was driven backwards into the wall. She shot three times into the carnivore with the other hand, but it absorbed the bullets. The other skrull grabbed her right arm. She shot him through the eye with the gun in her left. She slipped one leg free of the snake-formed skrull, caught its head underneath her foot, and then shot it dead. The carnivore thing swiped at her, but Amelie ducked the blow. It's claws cut her leg on a second swipe. She backed against the wall, as the beast charged at her with a mouth full of sharp teeth. When it was close enough, she thrust both hands inside its mouth, pulled two triggers, and blew its head off.

The basement. The two remaining guards could hardly hold their weapons steady, not to mention their bowels. Terrified, they could do nothing as the dark-haired woman approached them. They couldn't pull the triggers on their weapons literally to save their own lives.

"Human, is it? I wasn't expecting that," she said. "Not that anyone working for this scum of the universe can really call themselves human, can they?"

"Please," the first guard said. "I have...have two dau--"

His last words were cut off by the three fingers Elspeth used to collapse his throat. He fell at her feet. The second guard dropped his weapon and tried to run for the door. He only made it halfway there. Elspeth leapt at him. Her foot caught him in the lower back, shattering his spine. The guard never had a chance to beg for his life before she snapped his neck.

Elspeth checked the door to make sure it was secure, and then pulled a headset and a small handheld laptop from a pouch on her belt. She walked over to the mainframe, watched the path of destruction caused by Jillyana and Amelie upstairs for a few seconds, and then hotwired herself into the Chitauri system.

"Gigi, I'm in. Take everything."

A voice younger by several years than Elspeth crackled over the headset.

"Loading up. How are the girls?"

"They're fine." Elspeth cast an eye at the monitors. "They should be finished up before too long."

"You remember the way out, right? From the map?"

"Yes, G. The second tunnel leads right outside. I already checked it. Don't worry."

A large clatter outside the door startled Elspeth. Several voices shouting something in Chitauri were clearly audible over the new sound of something heavy trying to break the door down. Elspeth estimated there had to be twenty of them out there. At least.

"G, we're going to need to finish this up in a hurry. I have a situation."

"I'm trying, El. Everything is encrypted in alien, and the encryptions have encryptions, and there are firewalls behind that. Plus, their system sent about eighty viruses, which are now trying to eat my computer."

Outside the door, the banging increased in intensity. Elspeth watched as dents started to form in the steel plating. She looked at the spent sphere, which had dropped to the floor and rolled into the corner. One use per sphere the AIM technicians had told her. She wished she had a second sphere with her. Another loud thump against the door rattled its hinges. Elspeth took out a silver disk roughly the size of a quarter and placed it on the mainframe. As she pressed it down, four small arms extended from the top of it and clamped the disk tightly to the computer. The door rattled even harder against its hinges.

"G, time's running out. I'm going to be stir-fry in a minute if you don't hurry up."

"I got in. The transfer is gonna take a bit."

Inhuman voices howled on the other side of the door, which was near to collapse.

"Gigi."

"Give me two minutes."

Upstairs. The door of the nursery splinters and falls when the body of a skrull soldier is kicked through it. Jillyana steps over the body. She sheathes her swords on her back. The three nurses inside back away from her. All three are taken out with a shuriken to the face. Twenty small cribs line the walls. Jillyana walks from one to the next. Most of the infants appear to be human, but some are skrull, and a portion are a hybrid of the two. Jillyana makes a disgusted face, draws her swords. The half-breed creature opens its eyes. Its cry is hideous. Its blood splatters the wall when the sword comes down. Jillyana is half done with her work before she's interrupted.

"Stop right there," a female voice says. "You monster."

Three young women, roughly her age, have entered the nursery from the far door. The one in the middle is holding an automatic rifle. The other two are holding an axe and a pair of nunchaka, respectively. Jillyana was told to expect them--the other genetically enhanced children made at the same time as Amelie. The one in the middle has her gun trained on Jillyana. She is in the process of ordering her to surrender when a thrown sword impales her through the chest. The other two are momentarily surprised, enough for Jillyana to spring at them in attack. She blocks an axe thrust with her sword, and then kicks the girl down. The other swings for Jillyana's head with her chucks, and misses only by inches. Jillyana swings around and makes a deep cut across her throat. The last one attacks again, chopping with the axe, only nearly missing. Her last thrust makes a shallow cut across Jillyana's midsection, and knocking the sword from her hand. Jillyana punches the girl in the face, takes her axe, and then splits her down the middle.

Jillyana picks up her one sword from the floor, and pulls the other from the dead girl. No one interrupts her as she finishes her work. She walks from crib to crib, whistling a happy tune.

Across the building, Amelie enters the dormitory she lived in for several years. Inside, the twelve young girls who make up the new batch for the Chitauri to experiment with sit huddled in the corner, having heard the approaching gunfire. Amelie lowers her guns as she approaches them. She remembers what it was like to feel the fear she sees in their eyes. That's how it was for her everyday before her escape.

"Those bastards won't touch you again," Amelie says. "I promise."

She opens her mind and goes inside theirs. From girl to girl, it's all the same. The damage has already been done. The Chitauri have begun the experiments. It's too late. Amelie feels their pain, and knows it will never end for any of them.

"I wish I could help you." Her voice is weary. "All I can show you now is mercy."

Amelie Anne Marie Auf Der Maur closes her eyes for the last time. Her guns fire twelve times. Kitten Mundae opens her eyes. She doesn't look back as she leaves the dormitory.

Downstairs. The Skrull have finally broken the door. They pour into the bunker looking to kill the intruder, but only find two dead guards and several piles of ash. The skrull captain walks over to the mainframe, and sees the silver disk attached. He recognizes it as an explosive device and quickly burns it's circuits out with an electrical surge from his weapon.

"Find the human. Search the whole building, the town, the forest. Everywhere."

"Captain....."

"Just find..." The captain's voice trails off when he sees what his lieutenant was trying to indicate. Thirty more silver disks have been placed all over the room. The captain curses something in Chitauri.

The explosions ripped through the building. Within minutes, the entire structure was aflame. Any skrulls that escaped the conflagration were met in the forest by the Black Guard and gunned down. The orphanage fire could be clearly seen from the town of St. Aureillis. After decades of living in fear of the Others, the townspeople gathered in the streets to watch the installation burn down. They were there to meet the three women, their saviors, who walked into town. The young woman in the lead, her hair in two long braids, carrying a high-powered rifle, stepped forward. The other two, the blond and the dark-haired one, hung back. An elderly gentleman stepped forward to offer thanks. Kitten Mundae said nothing, and barely looked at him as she stepped inside his mind, and then the minds of several others.

"You knew," she said. "You all knew what was happening there. You always knew."

A single shot drops the old man at her feet.

"You all let it happen."

Panic broke out almost immediately. Kitten began systematically gunning down everyone in her sights. The other townspeople ran in every direction. Jillyana cut down dozens of them. Elspeth joined them. Anyone who made it as far as the woods was gunned down. The slaughter of St. Aureillis took only forty-five minutes. The three women left after every man, woman, and child in the town was exterminated. When SHIELD arrived within the hour, there was nothing for them to do but remove the bodies. The explosion and fire left little for them to discover as far as the real truth of the Children of Azoth Orphanage was concerned.

But for the Chitauri, that day has become a legend.