A Taste of Vengeance

Third Person
Many Years Previous

Ashlynn Charlie Bane sat in a hard, wooden chair. The chair was uncomfortable, grinding into her back painfully. But she wouldn’t let the man in front of her see how uncomfortable she was. She expected he wanted her to feel that way while he was scolding her. She knew that he didn’t like her- his voice in her head had told her as much. Ash had been hearing the voices around her for months now. She knew she was crazy, but she kept it to herself.

Once again, the young girl of age eleven found herself sitting in the principal’s office. It was not the first time she had a physical altercation with a student; in fact, they were becoming far more frequent and dangerous, the latest resulting in the other child a report to the hospital.
So what if I broke her arm, Ash thought to herself bitterly. She called my mother and father freaks.

On the contrary, Michael and Wendy Bane were not freaks. They were both graduates from MIT, her father majoring in quantum physics and her mother majoring in astrophysics. They were two of the smartest people on the planet, and although Ash didn’t understand at the time, they were very important, very powerful people.

Until they were murdered.

The Bane’s worked for Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, a most prestigious and secret organization that kept the world in tact when super powers came into play. They were the top of their division, and were involved in the study of an object called the tesseract, and object that had been discovered years ago.

“Ashlynn,” the principle began, folding his hands on his desk. He looked at her as if she were a simple-minded child, a brute. She was anything but. Her mind was sharp and she was beyond her age. “Do you have any idea what you have done to Melanie Duran? You shattered her arm.”
“She told me my parents were freaks!” She said defensively. No one ever believed her, especially when it came to Melanie, Miss Priss of her class. “She always picks on me.”
He frowned. “Miss Duran was under the impression that you pulled her hair before pushing her and causing her to fall. With your past discrepancies, I must admit I see a correlation of violence in you, and not in Miss Duran.”
“You never believe me!” the girl finally screamed, causing the man to flinch back verbally.

The little girl clenched the sides of the chair, shaking with rage. The man widened his eyes as the pens, perfectly aligned on his desk, began to tremble, rolling out of their place. The cold, untouched coffee in his mug began to tremble, bringing back memories of one of the most famous scenes in Jurassic Park. And the man, thought, looking at the girl who was red with rage, and blue eyes sparkling with hatred, that her fury was just as intimidating as a Tyrannosaur.

That was the first time Ashlynn Bane ever destroyed something with her rage.

*
“Calm your mind, Ashlynn Charlie.” Ash’s uncle’s voice was a calm reproach. She frowned, eyes closed, trying to quiet the fire that had lit up her mind- quite literally. Pyro and Ash had never gotten along, perhaps because they were very alike with their brash personalities and tough exterior.

The two pupils had been in genetics glass, learning how mutations worked and how their mutations made them special, when he decided to show exactly how his mutation made him special. Her hair still smelled of fire and the tips were fringed and burned. On the bright side of things, Pyro was in the hospital wing with the school nurse, Stitch, heeling his shattered collarbone. Needless to say, Ash used her super human strength to her advantage.

“Now calmly, would you like to tell me how to came to break John’s collarbone?” Charle’s asked her. His cool blue eyes were the essence of peace and tranquility, and although his niece shared their color, hers were lit with a dark, dangerous fire.
“He set my hair on fire, so I shoved him,” she stated in a simple manner of a teenager. “He’s a bully and I don’t like bullies.”
“Just because someone acts out against you, doesn’t mean you can use your gifts against them, Ashlynn. They should be used for protection and salvation, not for beating up high school boys.”
She was undeterred. “It was self-defense.”
“It was an example.”
“Isn’t that was self-defense is?”
He closed his eyes. Even his niece’s fiery personality and firecracker retorts tried his patience. “No. You didn’t do it to defend yourself. You did it to embarrass him, Ash.”
“Sounds the same to me.”
He sighed. “How do you hope to ever accomplish helping others if you refuse to let go of pride?”

Ash got up from the couch in her uncle’s office, walking to his vast bookshelf. Countless tomes and novels covered his shelves, some so old and yellow with oxidation, that she wondered why he still kept them. The girl ran her hands along the middle shelf until her hand came across a black, leather-bound book. It was old, but the absence of dust symbolized its constant use.

“Veni, vidi, vici,” she intoned the Latin phrase with flawless expertise. Ash was fluent in many languages, even the dead ones. She flipped the pages over. “I like to think that I’m doing exactly what Caesar did: I came into class, I saw Pyro light my hair on fire, and I conquered.”
“Caesar also had a slave stand next to him at all times of the day so that even when the crowds of Rome yelled ‘Hail Caesar,’ his slave would whisper in his ear ‘you are only a man.’”
She rolled her eyes and snapped the book shut. “I am no man. I am a mutant. And what if I don’t see to help others? What if I see to be an assassin?”
Charles stared at her, trying to hide is indignation. “Why would you ever hope to become such?”
Ash strolled over to the window, looking at her fellow classmates in the yard. “So that I am never at the mercy of others again, so that I will never be snuck upon like my parents and killed without so much as a sound.” I turned around to face my uncle. “I will not share their fate or their weakness.”
*

The night was silent and the only source of light was that of the full silver moon, hanging in the sky like a suspended silver coin. The buildings were painted in liquid silver, the abandoned warehouses looking daunting and suspicious. No movement could be seen outside, which is the very reason the two guards on duty began to doze off, sitting in chairs pressed up against the walls. Their mob boss was safer than any one else on the planet while he was inside of these buildings.

Although they looked worthless on the outside, inside was wired and secured with countless amounts of technology and security systems. It would take a miracle for anyone to get past the second layer of guards and machinery. A miracle, or in one girl’s case, a mutant.

A lone figure moved through the dark, the sound of heels clicking loudly on the pavement. It was strange, to see a female figured walking through an ally, especially alone in the middle of the night. The sounds of the city were ways off, and if something had happened to her, no one would hear her scream.

The two guards stood at attention then, gripping their guns, watching the lone figure approach in the darkness. The woman they saw was petite, and she was dressed to the nines. She wore an evening gown that was black as the night, with a single shoulder, showing her tan and slender shoulder structure. The slit in the dress ran up high on her thigh, so every time she took a languid step, a strong, beautiful leg was revealed. Her hair was up in an elegant twist, and they couldn’t help but stare at her.

Her face was absolutely flawless. It was clear that she was young, with her round face, large, smoky blue eyes and full lips, but there was a lust in her eyes and a smile playing at her lips that turned cute into undeniably sexy. The two men did not stand a chance against her godly beauty.
“Who might yous’ be?” The taller man asked, stepping towards the girl who had paused to look at them.
She smiled at his accent. “Sie italiano?”
Her smooth Italian made her all the more appealing. “Certo che lo sono. Vedo che sono pure.” He confirmed that he was indeed Italian, also commenting that she must be. She spoke it with the accent and she spoke it like she was raised with it.
She smiled and step towards him, batting her eyelashes. She could smell the whiskey on him. “Il tuo capo deve trovare difficile, per mantenere un uomo bello come voi da attrarre gli stranieri.” Your boss must find it difficult, to keep a handsome man like you from attracting strangers.
He laughed. “Il mio capo mi mette fuori qui per saperne di bellezze, come te, amore mio.”
“Vinnie,” the other man finally spoke, breaking the conversation. “You shouldn’t be talking to strangers, especially a woman that looks like that.”

The girl flicked her blue eyes to the other man, who was tense and unfriendly. She smiled slow and seductive at him, and he watched as her iris’s expanded slightly. He went rigid all over before his face glazed over, as if he was love stricken or in a drunken haze. He smiled suddenly and bowed his head saying, “Forgive me, bella. You must be Daniella Paziali, Rego’s daughter, yes?”
“This is his daughter?” the first man asked, incredulous. But of course it was, his partner had met Daniella Paziali multiple times, so when his friend shook his head yes, they bowed and let her walk by, following her in.

The woman followed them through four levels of security. The first was a series of sharp shooters and gunman. The second was a combination of the first, and a door with a code lock. The third was proof of ID by tattoos and interrogation, the fourth a finger print sample.

The girl watched with acute eyes at the password to the door, remembering it easily. She could have picked it out of their minds, but she wanted the hurt to be painful when she reached her target, she wanted him to know she had done it without extracting every amount of information from their minds.

When she walked through the ironclad door, she found herself in a sitting room with a fireplace and a poker table. Every man at the table looked up at her, pausing their game to take in the beauty of a fellow mobs daughter. She was stunning, and they all greeted her like an old friend. In truth, most of them hadn’t seen her since she was five, but they always knew she would be a looker.

The girl was asked to approach one man, and although there were guns trained on her, she knew it was simply business and policy. She slid her leg out of the slit in her dress, revealing a tanned and toned leg. On the side of her thigh, a black tattoo could be seen: a lion with a crown on its head, the Paziali’s family symbol. If any of them had slipped from her control, they would have seen that her leg was truly bare.

The girl was escorted into an elevator, and she smiled to herself as it took her up and opened to reveal a cozy library, filled with cigar smoke. She followed the two gunmen out of the room, and pushed herself into their thoughts as they walked across the crimson, plush carpet to stand behind the fat man at the desk. She confirmed from their minds that this was in fact their boss.

The elevator shut behind her and she waited for a moment as she heard it descend.

“Daniella,” the man greeted her, blowing out white smoke. The clouds in the room burned her eyes. “You look very different, diletto. How long as it been, three years?”
I smiled at him. “No, you have not seen me in a very long time, but I see you all the time.”
He frowned then. “What is the meaning of that?”

She pursed her lips and moved forward, sitting in one of the plush seats, crossing her legs at the ankle. “Did you know that most of your men didn’t even need me to get inside of their heads to get here?” He stared at her, realization slowly dawning on his face. “I’d like to send Frank Provenzano's personal apologies and quote ‘Ours is the fury that may never be scorned’ end quote.”

The two men fired at her then, but their bullets hit an invisible wall before they could come anywhere near her. The girl jumped from the chair, putting her hands on the desk and cart wheeling over it, kicking the mob boss straight in the chest and sending his chair flying with him in it. She removed two blades from her bra lightning quick, throwing one into the throat of one man and the other between the other mans eyes. They hit the floor with a sickening thud, and she laughed as the man in front of her scrambled away from her, fear causing him to tremble all over.

“You’re pathetic,” she snapped at him, leaning over and catching his ankle, dragging him back to her. “You run from something you can escape and you tremble at the sight of a mere girl. Where is your manhood? You could have at least tried to stand and fight.”
“I’ll double what they’re paying you!” he shouted at her as she placed a heel roughly on his chest, shoving him down painfully.
She scoffed. “Oh you’ll pay me once I’m done with you. Don’t think I don’t know where the safe is.”

She removed a gun from a thigh holster and pulled the silencer from behind the other thigh, screwing it together, pressing even harder with her foot as the man tried to struggle away from her. Unlucky for him, his office was to many floors up for the gunshots to have been heard in the lobby. She didn’t need the silencer at all really, but loved the look of the man’s eyes rolling into the back of his head with fear.

She pointed the gun at him finally, watching as he closed his eyes for the truth. She sneered at him. If it were she, she would have looked at the barrel straight on, challenging death.
“Sei un uomo morto,” she muttered, calling him a dead man. She squeezed the trigger once, planting a bullet directly into his heart without any effort. He coughed and sputtered and she watched as the light faded from his eyes. She watched as his soul was revealed to her before he died.

Before leaving, she found a permanent marker, ripping open his jacket and signing the man’s fat, meaty chest with an elegant X. Every man who saw the mark would know exactly who had killed the low and sloppy mob boss. Everyone would know, that the Black Bane was untouchable.

*
First Person

Whoever said “build it and they will come,” was wrong. In many cases, I decide that if you tear it down, they will come running. This was the case after Jean Grey, a long time mentor and mother figure, tore apart the efforts and hard work of Charles Xavier. He had spent his entire life time, dedicating himself to his work as a teacher and a mentor, and the moment someone who I had thought dead, and who I held in the highest esteem tore that down, I came running like a bat out of hell to keep his dream going, no matter how unfit for the job I was.

Sitting alone in my room, I found myself tortured by all the memories of my past. It was like a plague I couldn’t escape, or a bad movie that played all the time on my own personal TV set. Sometimes I tried to think of other people’s memories that I had seen and felt, trying to take my mind off of my own, or trying to convince myself it could be worse. They say the best of us find happiness in misery… well I must not be one of the best.

I would be lying if I said Loki hadn’t gotten to me. I had spent the last hour mulling over what I was, what I used to be, and what I could become. The possibilities were, and are endless. I had gone from a polite child, to a raging teenager, to a teacher trying to block out and make up for past deeds. Now? Now I was expected to be a super hero and savior, a symbol for salvation; something I did not think that I could live up too.

I tried countless times, to figure out why Fury would ever sign me up for something like this, how he could give me such an impossible task. He knew how damaging I was, he knew how many bad decisions I had made. But maybe he was judging me on all the good ones, or hoping that my uncle’s faith in me was rightfully placed. Whatever it was, there was one thing I knew for sure: The Black Bane had never been a good person.