Somewhere to Belong Ch. 46 (DC/Multi) (Patreon)

(Every character depicted in the story below is a consenting legal adult over the age of 18)

A/N: Bonding moment~

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Silence reigns between them both for a moment before Raven’s frown turns into an apologetic smile.

“Too brutal?”

Eve swallows hard at that… because Raven has hit the nail right on the head. To be fair, Eve has seen a lot of blood, violence, and gore in her life. She’s witnessed some truly awful things and having become a hero when she was just a preteen, Eve had been doing this all for a long, long time.

In that regard, Raven’s brutality wasn’t the worst she’d ever seen, but it was definitely the worst she’d ever seen from someone she’d thought to be a hero. Even Mark’s father, Omni-Man… well, he’d done a lot worse than Raven just did, but Eve had only witnessed the aftermath of some of it, thankfully.

Yet… she knew full well how dangerous those two were. Thula’s last stand had made that clear. For all that Raven had made their deaths look easy, either one of those two could have killed Eve in a second, before she even had a chance to use her powers. She would have likely died before she knew she was dead.

And that was with her having superpowers. The rest of Earth would have been outright screwed if not for Raven and Myk’s presence. The two of them were all that was standing between Earth and either complete subjugation or total annihilation.

“You did what you had to do, Raven.”

Raven perks up a little bit at that, even as Eve steels herself. Sure, it had been unquestionably brutal… but Mark and his father had worked their way through half of Earth’s governments in a single day. Letting these Viltrumites have any time whatsoever to enact their vision upon Earth was never a possibility.

“That said, we need to police those remains and probably call in the GDA so they can contain them. We really don’t want anyone finding a Viltrumite corpse… not to mention whatever the hell the female one’s braid blade was made of.”

After all, Thula’s knife had literally cut through her own flesh… for it to be strong enough to penetrate a Viltrumite’s skin meant it might be stronger than most metals on Earth.

Raven blinks and looks down at the ground for a moment, frowning.

“Hm. But can we trust the GDA with their remains?”

Eve furrows her brow, caught off guard by the question.

“What do you mean?”

Tilting her head to the side, Raven scowls as if remembering something.

“You said it yourself. We don’t want anyone finding a Viltrumite corpse, presumably because we don’t know what they might be able to do with such remains. Is your Global Defense Agency above such concerns? Are there not scientists within the organization who will seek to research these Viltrumite bodies and endeavor to use those discoveries for their own purposes?”

That was… on the one hand, Eve couldn’t deny that Raven’s concerns were very real. On the other hand…

“Donald and Debbie wouldn’t allow anything to go too far. They’d keep it all ethical and… and contained. I believe that with every fiber of my being.”

Raven watches her for a moment longer and Eve briefly thinks the blonde might shut her down. If she says she doesn’t want to give the bodies to the GDA, if she says she wants to keep them locked away in her ship or something… Eve doesn’t know what she’ll do. She’ll probably have to go along with it…

“Very well.”

Eve doesn’t quite breathe a sigh of relief as Raven instead goes along with her suggestion, but it’s a near thing. Fortunately, with Raven’s advanced senses, locating the… pieces of the Viltrumites is relatively easy. Meanwhile, calling in the GDA proves to barely even be necessary… they’d been tracking the Viltrumites from the moment they passed by Mars and had been trying to contact Myk-Zod so he could help.

They’d failed to get ahold of him but in the end it hadn’t mattered. Eve and Raven had taken care of it, ultimately.

After all is said and done, with Conquest and Thula’s corpses collected and carted off, Eve finds herself working with Raven to destroy any remaining Viltrumite DNA left behind in the forest. Between her powers and Raven’s senses, they’re able to erase the blood that had splattered across a hundred treetops.

By the time they’re done, the sun is just beginning to set… and Eve has to admit, the day has worn on her more than she was expecting it to. Then again, it’s not like she thought today would result in fighting more Viltrumites or anything like that.

They weren’t going to stop coming though, were they? Earth would probably have a slight reprieve while the Empire waited to hear back, but once it became obvious that their latest operatives had gone radio silent, they would almost certainly send more, wouldn’t they?

… Tch, and they definitely wouldn’t send another pair either. There was no doubt in Eve’s mind that the Empire hadn’t taken Nolan’s warning seriously, if he’d even warned them properly to begin with. But once they realized that Conquest and Thula were incapacitated in some way, they would probably send a fleet… hundreds if not thousands of Viltrumites.

The thought makes Eve’s mouth go dry. It leaves her trembling, just a bit. She-

“Hey.”

Raven’s soft voice cuts through and Eve looks to the other woman as she gazes at her in concern. Looking uncertain, Raven bites her lower lip.

“There’s… something I want to trust you with. Something I feel you’ve earned, especially after today. Please, follow me.”

Eve doesn’t even get the chance to reply before Raven begins to rise in the air, forcing her to fly up in order to keep up with the powerful alien woman. They make their way above the cloud layer, and eventually Raven stops.

Opening her mouth, Eve is just about to ask what’s going on… when Raven’s flesh ripples and she transforms right before her eyes. Gone is the beautiful blue-eyed blonde. In her place is a red haired, blue-skinned, yellow-eyed… alien for lack of a better word.

“My actual name is Mystique. Raven was just a cover, in case we needed my… more subversive capabilities at any point. I’m a natural shapeshifter, able to turn into anyone at any time.”

She proves it by shifting through a multitude of faces and bodies, including Debbie, Donald, and Eve herself. Then, she reverts back to her blue form… her true form if Eve isn’t mistaken.

“This is what I really look like.”

Licking her lips, Eve slowly nods.

“I… I see. And Myk-Zod? He’s also… like you?”

But to her surprise, Mystique shakes her head.

“No. That is part of what I wanted to tell you. Myk-Zod and I… he truly is an alien from another world. But me? I was born on Earth… or rather, an Earth.”

Eve’s eyes widen at that. Was Mystique saying she was from a different dimension?! Immediately, Eve finds herself comparing the blue-skinned alien to the only other experience she’s had with extradimensional entities. But to be fair to her, she’s nothing like the Flaxans…

“Myk-Zod found me on my Earth and saved me from a mad scientist who had, at one point, imprisoned him as well. Said scientist experimented on me using Myk-Zod’s blood to make a hybrid creature. My unique biology meant I was the only one to survive that mad man’s experiments… and it allowed me to become like I am now.”

Oh. That was… well, that was certainly heavy. Crossing her arms over her chest, Eve nods.

“I suppose I see now why you were leery of giving the Viltrumite remains to the GDA. Just so you know, I can relate… my entire existence is the result of unethical scientific experimentation.”

Its Mystique’s turn to look surprised. Eve just offers a shrug in response.

“It’s not a happy story… in fact, it ultimately ended in tragedy and I wound up erasing a bunch of government officials’ memories. I’m still not sure how I got away with that… or if I really did. Either way, I escaped just like you and Myk-Zod did and so here I am, free to do my own thing.”

She really did trust Donald and Debbie to do the right thing though, even with her own bad experiences. Donald was no Erickson; Eve had to believe that. If Cecil were still around she might worry about what sort of unethical bullshit the bastard would get up to… but he was gone now. That said…

“I appreciate you telling me about yourself, Mystique. I’m glad we have that trust between us… especially considering you were just trying to seduce me a few hours ago.”

Mystique chuckles at the mild reproach in Eve’s tone. It’s not like Eve is actually angry or anything, but she’s perhaps a little annoyed that Mystique doesn’t even look sheepish. As Raven, she’d seemed entirely willing to drag Eve into their bed while continuing the subterfuge. Then again, maybe this was something Eve would have only learned once she was in their bed, at least under normal circumstances.

“Let’s be honest, I doubt you truly need to be seduced… it’s more just a matter of whether you’re willing to fight for your own happiness or not.”

That draws a sharp gaze from Eve, her eyes narrowing.

“Excuse me?”

Mystique just shrugs.

“You’re just one woman, Eve. You can’t protect this world from itself forever… and frankly, I think we both know that you only continue to do so out of a sense of obligation and responsibility, not because you actually love this Earth. Take it from me… you’re not truly free until you’ve left behind the chains binding you in place and stepped forth into the wider multiverse.”

Well… she certainly knew how to paint a pretty picture, didn’t she? At the same time though, Eve purses her lips together and gazes upwards.

“… But what about the Viltrumites? They’re going to come back again. These two aren’t going to be the last ones they send after us. If I left with you, Sarah, and Myk-Zod… I’d be leaving this entire planet to its death.”

And then, because they’re being so honest with each other anyways, Eve lets her true vulnerability show.

“At the same time, what happens if we stay? They won’t send just two next time… they’ll come in force. They have an Empire of thousands of planets according to Mark’s dad. If they send a fleet to Earth, what can we even do? You and Myk-Zod can’t be everywhere at once. If there’s a hundred Viltrumites, could you protect the Earth from them? What about a thousand?”

Mystique takes the questioning seriously, to her credit. Slowly nodding, she frowns deeply.

“That is a fair concern. Perhaps we need to take the fight to them somehow… but I wouldn’t know the first thing about finding them or traveling away from this planet. After all, we came here from another universe entirely.”

That certainly explained why Omni-Man had been so surprised by Myk-Zod’s strength. The older Viltrumite had reacted with utter shock to the fact that he’d been so thoroughly outclassed and outgunned by the other alien man.

“For now… we’re not going anywhere, Eve. And neither are you, I imagine. So in the end, rather than worry too much about the future… it’s best if we focus on the present. We can do what needs to be done to prepare of course, but ultimately… the world has its own problems, doesn’t it?”

Eve huffs and lets a slightly wan smile spread across her face.

“You’re not wrong about that, I suppose. Back to it then?”

Mystique inclines her head in agreement and shifts back into her Raven Darkholme disguise. Still, now that Eve has seen Mystique’s true form she can’t help but notice a bit of a pattern forming from Mystique to Sarah… to her.

She doesn’t comment on it though. Even with the sun setting, they still have a few more hours before they can really justify calling it a day. So… best to get back to saving the damn planet.

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A/N: Throw me a comment if you can but please leave a Like if you don’t want to, it’s the main metric I use to track whether a story is doing well or not!

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Google Doc Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D4H1-QeaRzm8okouvgS8KHABEuVeAKa6fE1gI22unIg/edit?tab=t.0