Wolverine/Energizer; "When The Bough Breaks"

[Syaoran]

Title of Personal Story Arc:
Wolverine/Energizer - "When The Bough Breaks"

Character(s) Involved:
Main Characters: Wolverine (Logan), Energizer (Kate Power)
Supporting/NPCs: Franklin Richards, the Boogeyman (Douglas Carmody), Friends of Humanity, the Smartship Friday, Tom Reddenfield

Setting:
Occurs inside the continuity of UX, roughly a month before Welcome to New York (which links Katie to the current A&C story that Wolverine is also involved in).

Plot Synopsis:
Someone is cleaning up the streets of New York through the ritualistic slayings of mutant children and teenagers. The slayings are dismissed as gang violence inside of the ubiquitous 'District-X' by police, ignoring the reality that most of the killings have occured outside the accepted boundaries of Mutant Town. Strangely enough, the neighborhoods afflected by the violence are the same as were impacted by the Inferno spell cast by the Goblin Queen. For the former child superheroine known as Energizer, a dream relayed to her by Franklin Richards puts Katie Power on the streets of New York in pursuit of a sadistic child killer from Power Pack's past. With help from her friend, Wolverine, Katie manages to face her demons... only to discover that this rabbit hole runs deeper, and darker, than anyone could imagine.

What is your motivation behind doing this story?
To deliver awesome. With a side of fries.

Have You Read the PSA Rules and Guidelines?
Yes

Rough Draft:
Katie's Journal, August 27th.

I'm taking care of Miss Susan's plants while the Fantastic Four are in space. It's not hard work and it's given me the opportunity to see Franklin again. He's being taken care of by Miss Alicia while the Richards are gone. Both of them are fern-killers according to Miss Susan and Mister Reed's robots don't talk to the plants. Franklin's been going to the Xavier school to help him learn how to control his mutation. He's told me that he's seen Mister Logan there. I should ask him if Kitty is there as well. Maybe Alex would go with me to visit the Xavier school. It would be great to see the X-Men again. There was another story on the news about a mutant kid being murdered in New York. I only see those kinds of stories when I'm visiting Alex. Mom and Dad change the channel if I'm watching when the news shows something like that.
Its been a month since I got a letter from April. The news said all the murders were in Mutant Town. April lives with some of the Morlocks underneath the Bronx, but I'm still worried about her. We always write each other each week.

I'm thinking of visiting the Morlocks. Mom and Dad wouldn't like that. I don't think Alex would either. After what happened with the Marauders, and now all this violence toward mutant kids, I'm worried about April though.

"Now arriving at Four Freedoms Plaza, located in beautiful New York City, New York. Your weather is sunny and forty-three, with a low tonight of twenty-one at a time which would be past a certain young lady's bedtime."

The pig-tailed child glanced up from her seat at the sound of the artificial intelligence's synthetic voice. Closing the cover of the diary that lay on her lap, the girl capped the pink gel pen she'd been marking in the book with before putting the journal away in the green tote bag she had with her. "Thanks, Friday," Katie chirped sweetly, speaking back to the alien computer that controlled the fully-automated Kymellian spaceship, or smartship to be more accurate. Friday wasn't really Katie's, or anyone else's for that matter. Friday had belonged to Whitey, though it was hard now to imagine the sentient ship as a possession belonging to anyone. Friday was... Friday.

"You're welcome, baby."

The pejorative at the end of the ship's last statement was quickly reversing Katie's impression of the ship. "I am not a baby," Katie asserted in a sullen tone. Yeah, she got handed that a lot. It had been cute when she was little but she was eight years old now. And eight years old was like, hello, almost teenager! Definitely not a baby.

"You're right of course," the smartship conceeded quickly, before turning the phrase back at the girl. "You're not a baby, you're my baby. And now that we've cleared that up, would you go play with your friends?"

The ship's maternal concern was rewarded by a rude gesture, as Katie stuck her tongue out in a perceived direction of the omnipresent computer's attention. Slinging the tote across her body, the youngest heroine of yesterday emerged from out of the alien starship to step down onto the rooftop landing pad of the Fantastic Four's headquarters. She paused as the wind running across the top of the building whipped her hair back, admiring the expansive view of New York's coastline and cityscape. There was nothing about the girl that would have assumed her to have been the same child who had saved the Earth from threats such as Galactus. Just an Old Navy green hoodie and a pair of jeans that had flowers embroidered on the pocket of the right thigh. The flashiest thing about her was the small, heart-shaped pendant she wore on a thin gold necklace. Throwing her arms out, Katie closed her eyes as she tilted her head back and enjoyed the sensation of being on top of the world.

There were times she regretted being Energizer, the Power sibling gifted with the Kymellian energy power. When she had been Counterweight and, even more so, Starstreak... Katie had experienced what it was to fly. As much as she was comfortable with the range of her abilities with the energy power, it was hard to return to being a purely terrestrial being after having soared. That feeling of regret beckoned back to the words of many of the poems from Julie's books. Was it better to have known what it was to fly and lose that power... or to never have experienced it and live dreaming of what it might be like? A question with no answer, other than that Katie was the sum of her experiences and viewed it with a healthy belief that the grass really was greener on the other side.

Behind her, the Smartship Friday was lifting off on its own to tend to its own errands. Which wasn't odd in the least to Katie, being that Friday was as much of a person as a living being in her eyes. Katie had her life and her friends. Friday was no different, though Katie would have admitted being curious just what kind of friends and adventures that Friday had without her or Power Pack. Even with that being the case, Katie could continue the connection to the smartship through the use of a Kymellian communicator, such as the one integrated into her Energizer costume. It was all rather Star Trek. If she hadn't lived through the experience of mutants, aliens, and other dimensional existences then she probably wouldn't have believed any of it.

Passing through the various robotic safeguards and sensor protocols, Katie made her way inside of the Fantastic Four's upper headquarters inside of the Four Freedoms Plaza. The expansive suite of the first family of adventures was pretty unbelievable in its own right, separate from all the freaky things that went hand-in-hoof with the whole superhero gig. In only a few moments, the girl was delivered by the tower's special elevator to the main floor of the Fantastic Four's grand apartment, essentially depositing her inside of the team's living room. Almost immediately Katie's sapphire eyes caught on the familiar figures who were seated on the sofa. Sadly, only one of the two could see her in return. "Hi Miss Alicia! Hi Franklin!" the girl chirped, adopting an exhuberently sunny disposition the very instant that she began talking.Slinging the tote from off her shoulder, the pig-tailed child tossed the satchel down onto a vacant chair and continued her salutations. "It's a pretty day outside. You want to go to..."

It was only then that Katie caught wind of the dark cloud that boded over the room, permeated by a tension that was very nearly palpable. Alicia Masters was next to Franklin, rubbing his back with one hand as though consoling him. For his part, Franklin looked like a train wreck that had been run over by Galactus. He'd been crying. Or maybe he still was, it was a little hard for Katie to tell. In either case, obviously their playdate was experiencing a bit of a raincheck. The girl fidgeted for a moment, uncertain of whether to continue the outreach toward her friend or just back away slowly and let him be. Concern overwhelmed anxiety however, Katie lowering her voice to a quieter tone as she merely asked, "What's wrong?"

Amid the sound of Franklin sniffling and choking on an answer, the blind woman spoke for the boy. "Franklin had a bad dream," Alicia informed Katie simply, turning her head slightly as she spoke but not in Katie's direction. No matter how many times Katie met Miss Masters, it was always slightly uncomfortable interacting around the woman, partially because Katie hated to think of Alicia as handicapped or disabled. Alicia had a challenge to overcome. That seemed a better way to think of it without diminishing the adult in any way. Still, it was... awkward.

One thing Alicia did do, however, was pat the seat cushion beside her. Taking the offered seat, Katie tried to foster a wan smile as though hoping to illicit the same from Franklin as she looked over at the boy and gently inquired, "Was it a really bad nightmare?" Katie could understand how Franklin would feel if it were. Katie had a nightmare once about Maraud killing a bunch of ponies at a time when Katie had been powerless, and thus unable to stop the carnage. The nightmare had been even more poignant at the time because Katie had really been rendered powerless, thanks to Alex.

It wasn't something they talked about it. She wondered if perhaps they should but... honestly she didn't think she wanted to. That seemed like a nightmare of a family discussion that was likely to end with Alex and Katie on the Jerry Springer show. "I've had those before," Katie stated in a soothing tone, forcing her own thoughts back to Franklin's problem and away from her own unresolved sibling issues. "They're not fun," the girl stated in a matter-of-fact tone.

The lighthearted and genial nature of Katie Power was, despite all the best (or worst) efforts of Galactus, Apocalypse, Jakal, or even Typhoid Mary, completely unprepared for what Franklin was about to say. "There was... all this blood..." the boy managed between a bout of renewed sobs. It was clearly an experience that had been real to him. But nightmares often were to children their age, so it was easy to dismiss it as a dream at first. As disturbing as the imagery thus far had been, it was Franklin's next words that set Katie's hair on end. "There was this... this girl with crystal hair... and the Boogeyman, he..."

In the blink of an eye, the girl's heart froze. Her breath a captive of chains which wrapped themselves tightly around her chest and squeezed the joy out of her. It was as though Franklin had reached out and seized all of her hopes and her fears... and thrown them into the blender. Memories of a crystalline Morlock with hair like aquamarine gems played through her mind. Crawling through sewars, living in filth and condemnation as a mutant on the streets of New York. It was a crime how people treated mutants... Katie only hoped that criminal intent hadn't caught up to her friend.

But the Boogeyman...

Alicia spoke up, adopting the softly admonishing tone of an adult who sought to instruct a child in the separation between fiction and reality. "Franklin, there's no such thing as the boogeyman."

"Yes. There is," Katie remarked, her own voice choked as a swell of emotion in her throat robbed her of the ability to speak. Turning her face away, the girl found herself confronted by memories of a much more violent and unwanted variety. A man so cruel that he'd taken a gun to her brother, Jack, when he'd been no older than she was now. So evil that, when his attempts at hurting the Pack had failed, he'd given his soul to the demons of Limbo so that he could become a demon himself in order to have greater power with which to seek his revenge. Revenge on mutants, because he believed that was what Power Pack's heroes were. It made sense. Too much sense. A horrible weight slammed down on the girl as the notion appeared in her mind... what if April... what if those mutant kids were dead because of Power Pack? It definitely fit the bill of Douglas Carmody whose soul, if he still had one, was blacker than the deep of space. "He's a... he used to be my dad's boss. He changed though..."

Katie trailed off, finally looking up at Franklin with a pain expression. There was a question she desperately wanted to ask and even more so was afraid of what the answer would be. "Franklin, what color was the girl's crystal hair?"

Maybe it wasn't April. Maybe it had just been a nightmare. Maybe she was just lying to herself, because false hope was better than dreams which were dead. Katie and April had promised to be veterinarians together, to take care of ponies and horses... It broke Katie's heart to think that promise might have ended in a filthy tunnel underneath New York. She was Katie Power. She was Energizer. She was supposed to be a hero.

Heroes saved people.

What was Whitey's gift to her worth... if she couldn't save her friend?