Chapter Text
Chapter 1
Inside the Body Bag
The back alley was cold and dark, and smelled faintly of urine and vomit. Countless lives had been forever altered in alleys just like it all across New York City, and just a month prior, two women had been assaulted in that very same alley.
It was the perfect place for a predator lying in wait, and tonight, it was home to the most dangerous predator of all.
The wolf in sheep's clothing had put on a front of being an inebriated young woman, stumbling out of a club and cutting through a dark alley to get home and out of the cold quicker, but in reality, she had killed enough people to fill a cemetery the size of a small country.
She leaned against a graffitied brick wall, playing on her phone, wishing her victim would hurry up already. Like every New Yorker, she could tolerate the smell of urine and vomit. It was the cold however that made her regret ever agreeing to give up a perfectly warm bed to play judge, jury, and executioner instead.
Thankfully she only had to wait another minute or two before she heard footsteps not-so-stealthily sneaking up behind her, and a man reeking even worse than the alley coming around the corner.
"Rape, murder, or robbery?" Laura asked, not bothering to look up from her phone.
The man was startled if only for a moment, but seeing the shapely young woman in tight black clothing, he stepped forward and laughed. "Why not all three?"
"Robbery only gets you sent to the hospital. The other two get you killed."
"Is that a fact?" The man withdrew a handgun from his waistband and pointed it at her. "Take your clothes off. No screaming."
"Not much of a screamer," she said, finally putting the phone away. She grimaced at the greasy sight of him, and seeing where he was staring, zipped up her jacket and crossed her arms over her chest. "I'll be keeping my clothes on, thank you very much."
The man shrugged. "Living or dead makes no difference to me, Sweetheart. So long as-" He took another step forward but found that she was already standing directly in front of him, and was surprised by a sudden warmth in his chest followed by considerable pain as if he were suddenly having a heart attack.
"So long as I'm what?" she asked innocently. "Still warm?"
He looked down and saw a pair of sharpened knives sticking out of his chest, protruding between her knuckles, when the world suddenly darkened around him and he found himself falling into the abyss.
Laura stood over his body and the pool of blood forming around him with the same detached curiosity of the scientists that raised her, and that she now mimicked without realizing. The man was pushing forty, overweight and balding, unattractive by all conventional standards, and smelled of booze and much worse. He matched two of the descriptions given to police, and this obviously hadn't been his first attempted assault. It had been his last however, and the subsequent detective work could wait until morning.
She retracted her adamantium claws, wincing slightly due to the cold metal rather than actual pain, and meticulously went to work cleaning the blood off her hands, more bothered by her own than his.
A pair of boots landed behind her from the rooftop. "The day is saved once again by the heroic efforts of X-23 and Honey Badger!"
Laura turned to her sister. It sounded as though one of her legs might've broken upon landing, but as usual Gabby didn't seem to notice, and wouldn't have cared even if she had. "I told you not to call me that, and killing isn't something to be celebrated."
Gabby rolled her eyes and hopped around the dead body on one leg as if it were a game. "Oh come on! Hell's Kitchen has had more rapes and murders in the past month than the last six combined! When I suggested we take matters into our own hands, you practically jumped at the idea!"
"I didn't jump, and it's not your hands that are getting blood on them."
"Only because you won't let me help!"
Laura bent down and grabbed the dead man under his armpits. "You can help by lifting his feet."
Gabby did as instructed, and the two helped Laura's would-be rapist into an awaiting body bag. It would've been easier and less conspicuous to cut the man into smaller pieces and transport him that way, but this was faster, and more importantly, far less messy. Carrying a body bag in the middle of the night in Hell's Kitchen certainly wouldn't be the strangest sight the residents had ever seen, and truth be told, most would just be happy that somebody was cleaning up their mess for once.
As an ex-assassin and part-time vigilante, Laura knew how to clean up a crime scene with the best of them, but she very much doubted the police would care about a back alley killing anyway. They were already swamped with last year's unsolved cases, much less those of the past month, and if for some reason she was questioned, she could honestly say it'd been in self-defense. Had it not been for her adamantium claws, Laura Kinney would've been just another victim among thousands of others.
She also had friends in both high and low places, and if Laura asked any one of them for help getting rid of a dead body, they would've been all too willing to meet her in Central Park with a shovel.
Before the body bag could be zipped up and the man say farewell to the jungle that raised him, Gabby patted him down and came away with a handful of personal items, none of which Laura had any interest in except for his wallet.
"Who brings their wallet with them when they're going out assaulting women?" Gabby asked. "Isn't that like, a bad idea?"
"If he'd been smart he would've picked a better hobby. ID?"
Gabby handed over the man's driver's license but kept the money for herself. He wouldn't be needing it anymore, and once she and Laura did a bit of detective work and figured out who all his victims had been, and who the money might've belonged to, either the victims or their families would be receiving reparations for all their heartache, as well as knowledge that the attacker had been found, killed, and buried at sea.
Once again that'd been Gabby's idea, but it hadn't taken more than five minutes to talk her sister into it. Laura had very little love for people that took advantage of others, or hurt others for the simple pleasure it brought them, and she would've been willing to crawl over broken glass if it meant helping another victim move on with their life.
"I think that's enough playing rape bait for one night," Laura said, throwing the bag over her shoulder as if carrying nothing more than tennis rackets. Surprisingly or perhaps unsurprisingly, body bags were cheaper to buy in New York City than sports equipment bags. "Let's dump this guy and get something to eat."
Gabby finished dumping kitty litter on the spilled blood and chased after her sister, who despite being weighed down by a fully grown man's dead weight, she practically had to run to keep up with. It was perhaps a ten minute walk to the pier, and the few people wandering the dangerous streets late at night gave the pair a wide berth despite seeing even stranger sights just earlier that evening.
"Do you think I'll ever get any taller?" Gabby asked a little too loudly for Laura's liking. "Mutants normally unlock their powers during puberty, but I've had mine for almost two years now and I've barely grown an inch. Is it because I'm a clone? Is it because of my healing factor? When did you start going through puberty? Can we pick up some soda on the way home?"
"Gabby," Laura sighed, "can we cut the chit-chat until after we dump the body?"
Her sister snorted. "Afraid you'll have to stuff a few more bodies in that bag?"
"As a matter of fact I am. I'm also cold, hungry, and to answer your question, puberty started when I was about fourteen. Be thankful that you've still got another year left of being a kid, and that you're not living on the streets like I was."
"Growing pains and adamantium bones were a bitch, weren't they?"
"You could say that, and stop saying bitch."
"Is that why you're so cranky all the time?"
Laura gave a noncommittal grunt. Most of the time she didn't mind the adamantium claws in her hands and feet. From time to time they'd ache, especially in cold weather, but for about two years they'd been accompanied by almost nonstop agony as her bones finished growing around them, as well as the strategically placed adamantium in the rest of her body. If she hadn't already killed Dr. Rice six years ago, she would've happily killed him again.
"Can I get adamantium claws when I grow up?" Gabby asked. "You were only seven when you got yours. I'm nearly twice your age, and it's not like I'd feel anything."
"We'll talk about it when you're eighteen, and it'll just be your claws, not your entire skeleton. Adamantium poisoning took centuries off Logan's life, and your healing factor is stressed enough as it is. Until then, it's not up for debate."
Gabby whined about five years being practically an eternity, but Laura ignored her and continued toward the pier where they'd dump the body in the Hudson. She very much doubted it'd be the first body dumped into the river that night, or the last, and thanks to Gabby practically forcing her into buying biodegradable body bags in bulk, it was also environmentally friendly.
She stopped in her tracks however when she heard the whine of a motorcycle approaching. Gabby stopped as well, and looked as though she were trying to place the familiar sound.
"Good guy or bad guy?" she asked.
"Good guy, but good guys usually don't bring good news this late at night."
"Technically it's morning."
"And technically it's past your bedtime."
When the motorcycle and its rider came into view speeding toward them, Laura dropped the body bag and stood with her arms crossed. If the rider were smart, which they usually weren't, they'd take the hint and keep riding past.
"UNCLE REMY!" Gabby cried, waving excitedly at the card throwing Cajun.
"Please stop shouting in the ghetto," Laura said.
The mutant better known as Gambit came to a halt, smiling as Gabby threw her arms around him, and grinning even wider when he saw Laura's cold indifference.
"And how's my favorite little hell raiser doing?" he asked, tussling Gabby's hair. "Not causing trouble for your sister, I hope?"
"Great! Laura just kil-"
"What do you want, Remy?" Laura interrupted. Although he was admittedly one of her closest allies, and perhaps the closest thing she had to a father figure since Logan died, Laura didn't like surprises, and she also didn't like standing out in the cold making small talk in a bad neighborhood. If she wanted help burying a body, she would've asked for it.
Gambit bowed and opened his mouth to speak, but frowned when he spied the black canvas bag at her feet. "What's in the body bag?"
"A body."
"A dead body," Gabby clarified.
He looked horrified for a moment before grinning and shaking his head. "Right, my mistake for asking. I probably don't want to know."
"I just said it's-"
"How did you find me and what do you want?" Laura interrupted again.
His grin widened even more. "Conversational as ever, Chère. I tried your cellphones but neither of you were answering, so I asked Jean to find Gabby, figuring you'd be together. You are a difficult woman to find when you don't want to be found, even for Cerebro."
"No offense, but the last time an X-Man came to me with something important this late at night-"
"-early in the morning."
"-it was to tell me that Logan was dead. The time before that, that there was an opening in X-Force. Before that-"
Gambit raised his hands in surrender, though she suspected he had a card up his sleeve just in case. "I get your point, and I too would be wary of news at this hour, but for once the X-Men come bearing good tidings of great joy."
Laura raised her brow, and Gambit produced a manila envelope from his jacket. He handed it over, and with some reluctance, Laura opened it, revealing a couple dozen government documents of detailed schematics, lists of names, and medical records.
"Is it a late Christmas present?" Gabby asked, standing on her tiptoes to try and sneak a peek.
"Even better," Laura said. "It's the location of another Weapon X facility. Just like the ones you and I were raised in..."
(A/N: Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed. Laura and Gabby have very quickly over the past year become one of my favorite comic book duos. Laura's stoicism combined with Gabby's chaotic energy is a great combination in my opinion, especially since being a clone, you occasionally get to see shades of the other in each other's personalities. We'll be seeing some of that in the coming chapters, but for now, I really liked this introduction. I'm not much a fan of Laura being "All-New Wolverine", or a superhero for that matter. I tend to view her as an actual vigilante, doing good for personal reasons rather than entirely selfless altruism. If the X-Men need her help she'll answer the call, but until then, she'd prefer doing her own thing, and at the moment, doing her own thing involves killing rapists and murderers in Hell's Kitchen, and assisting their victims. As morally gray as she may be sometimes, Laura also has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and that combined with her willingness to kill bad guys but take zero pleasure in doing so just makes for a really interesting character in my opinion.
If you enjoyed my portrayal of Laura and Gabby and would like to read more, check out my one-shot titled "Skeletons in the Closet", wherein the sisters have a heart-to-heart after a fight, and Laura finally reveals to Gabby their birthday, how their mom died, and why Laura acts the way she acts.
All credit goes to my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who has blessed me with this story and all of you wonderful readers. God bless)