She flew over several snowdrifts before spotting him. He was walking away from her, his back turned. Good, she thought. He wouldn't see or hear her coming. Without thinking, she swooped in behind him, and lifted him off the ground.
"Hi there, Remy. Ya miss me, sugah?" There was a bitterness in her voice he had no mistake recognizing.
"Rogue, chere! Ol Remy had no idea you were such a charmer."
"Stuff it, Gambit." She gave him a once-over. "Ah see ya got frostbit, Cajun." She grabbed his hand. "Would it hurt if Ah just squeezed?!"
"Now, c'mon, chere!" Gambit remarked, his voice becoming soft and persuasive. "Ya don' mean Gambit any harm."
"Think again, LeBeau." She squeezed, popping his frostbitten hand off the wrist. He screamed in agony. "Ah, so ya did feel that. Good. Ah'd hate to have yer death be painless... especially after what ya put me through."
"What....?"
"Ya hurt me, Gambit," she hissed. "Teased me, led me on, claimin' to love me, when all along all Ya loved was yasself." She squeezed, and popped off the other hand.
"Please," he moaned. "Let me go."
"Okay," she said, smiling. She dropped him, and he fell.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooo!"
She caught him by the legs. "Had enough, Cajun?"
"Please," he moaned, blood dripping from his wrists. "Don't hurt me."
"Why not?" she asked, venom slipping into her voice. "Mystique raised me this way. 'An eye for an eye,' she always said. Ya've killed me more than you know, Remy. Payback is hell." She ripped off one foot, then the other. All the while, Gambit screamed in intense pain. The screams were music to Rogue's ears. Blood splattered her face and clothes.
Gambit braved the pain, and craned his neck to look up at her. What he saw chilled him even more than the frozen landscape around them. This was not the sweet girl he'd known. There was a look in her face that was alien to him. It was a look of pure madness, and it scared him. That, and the pain from where she'd mutilated him, told him that today was the day he was going to die.
"If ya gon' kill Gambit," he moaned as they landed, "den do it now."
"No," she told him. "Ah want ya to suffer." With this, she ripped her hand into his back, and pulled out a vertebra. He screamed. "Oh, no," she claimed. "That doesn't hurt nearly as much as THIS does." Once again, she plunged her hand into his back. This time, she pulled out his heart. She dropped his limp body.
"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. A heart for a heart." Grasping the still-beating pump with both hands, she ripped it in half.
She waited, as the life slipped from Remy LeBeau's body. Then she reached down, closed his eyes, and kissed his corpse on the still-warm, dead lips.
"Good-bye, muh luv," she whispered softly, a single tear falling from her eye. Frowning, she shook her head, her expression becoming hard. She picked up his body, charged it with energy, and threw it across the landscape.
The resultant explosion was a distant memory as she flew away to the north.
There was a loud crash from downstairs. Slipping on an extremely short, purple silk robe, she used her newly acquired shadow teleportation to head down there.
Rogue was laying on the floor, near a broken window. Her hair was in disarray, and there was a bruise on her cheek that looked fresh.
"Betsy," she groaned. "Help me."
"What is it?" Betts asked, her long purple hair flowing behind her. "Marauders? Sentinels? Mojo?"
"Worse," Rogue stated, sitting up. "Me." Moving like lightning, she tossed a number of throwing knives at Betsy. While Betsy was able to avoid the knives with ease, she was not expecting the knives to explode behind her.
The force of the explosions tossed Betsy across the room, and into Rogue's waiting hands.
"Why are you doing this?" Betsy asked, struggling against Rogue's superior strength.
"Why?" Rogue asked, laughing insanely. "Because Ah want the X-Men dead. Because they promised me something ages ago, and never kept that promise. And mostly, cause Ah hate y'all." She pulled, and ripped Betsy's arm out of the socket.
Betsy formed her psychic knife, and plunged it into Rogue's head. The feedback was immediate. Betsy's face took on several shocked expressions all at once, as the multitude of mental impressions from Rogue's subconscious flooded into her head. Rogue dropped Betsy's arm, and reached for her victim's throat.
"Ya are so pathetic, Betts," Rogue growled. "Ya were a failure as a hero, a poor excuse for Brian's replacement Captain Britain, and, from what Warren's been saying at the mansion, a lousy lay."
A single, audible POP later, and Betsy's head hit the ceiling.
Taking off her glove, Rogue held Betsy's limp arm in her bare hand.
"Thanks foh getting' rid of those voices in mah head, Betts. Ah owe you one, when Ah see ya in Hell."
"Betts?" he called out.
In the den, honey, came the telepathic reply. He wandered down the stairs, and stopped short at the sight in front of him.
"Betsy?"
Her broken, headless, one-armed body lay in front of him. The missing arm had been thrown across the room, and her head, still in its shocked expression, sat like a trophy on top of the den's fireplace mantle.
He gasped, then screamed in terror as a pair of fireplace pokers skewered him from behind; not through the heart, but through the wings. The force of the pokers tossed him across the room and pin him against the wall.
"NOOOOOOOoooooooooooo!" he screamed. "Not again!"
"What's the matter, sugah," he heard from behind him. "Remembering what happened the last time ya were in this situation?"
"Rogue?" he gasped. "Why?"
"Betsy asked me the same thing, Warren. Let me give you the reply." He felt a sharp pain in the back of his head, and his world went nuts.
"Ah... just what I needed," she muttered. She spread his wings out, took a pair of her knives, and pinned his wings open against the wall. Then she grabbed a handful of feathers, and ripped them off. Warren screamed in pain.
"Rogue, when the X-Men learn of this, you'll die," he told her through clenched teeth.
"I don't think so, sugah," she commented, ripping and tearing at his wings. Then she took a knife, pulled his head back by the hair, and scalped him.
Grabbing hold of the two pokers, she charged them with energy.
"What... next... butcher?"
"Oh, just a little... death." She charged a knife, and tossed it at him. The knife impacted in the square of his back, between the shoulder blades. The resultant explosion set off the two pokers, spreading what remaining feathers he had left all over the room.
Taking off the glove, she grabbed hold of one of his arms. Without warning, there was a sharp pain in her back, as two white wings grew to full size within a minute.
"That's three."
"What is it, Jean?"
"Scott, Betsy's dead. And yet...."
"Jean, what is it?"
"Scott, I can't reach any of the other X-Men telepathically. It's like someone's blocking me."
"Let me make a few calls," he stated, walking across the bedroom of their Alaskan home to the phone. "The phone's dead. Someone doesn't want us calling for help."
Jean cried out in pain, as a green and black gloved hand appeared out of the wall behind her, and plunged a glowing psychic knife into the base of her brain.
"JEAN!" He felt a tug at the base of his head, and found himself unable to close his eyes. A green glove ripped his ruby-quartz glasses away from his face. The results were immediate, bloody, and deadly.
A crimson beam erupted from Scott's eyes, and impacted Jean's skull, right above her eyes. Finding himself able to close his eyes again, he reached for his spare glasses. Placing them on his face, he crawled over to Jean's limp body. Her skull had been caved in, and she oozed blood from her mouth, nose, eyes, and ears.
"JEAN! Speak to me, Jean. Gimme a sign. You're the Phoenix, remember? Come on Jean! LIVE! LIVE, GODAMMIT! LIVE! NO! It can't end this way. NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
This was the last thing he ever said, as a pair of hands gripped his head, and twisted it around beyond what the human frame is capable of, snapping the spinal column.
He turned to see Rogue standing there, wearing only a halter top, shorts, and sneakers. The wings she'd taken from Warren were clearly visible.
"Hi, Bobby."
"Rogue?" He noticed the wings. "What's with the wings?"
"Oh, Hank was working on a procedure to help me control my powers better. And guess what? It worked!"
"It did?"
"That's right, Bobby." She placed her arms around his neck. "See? I can touch you without stealing your powers. I can steal powers without knocking the other person out for the count. I know, cause I just tested this with Warren." She leaned in closer to him. "I know what you want, Bobby." She kissed him lightly on the lips. "And I know what I want." Another kiss. "So how about it?"
"My parents are upstairs," he muttered. "What if they...."
"Grow up, Bobby! You're an adult. Physically, at least. Act like one for a change!" Seconds later, the two were locked in a passionate embrace. She guided him to the couch, and fell on top of him.
An hour later, the two laid underneath a blanket on the couch, cuddling.
"Thank you, Bobby. That was wonderful."
"Anytime, Rogue." She started standing up, when Bobby reached up and grabbed her around the waist, pulling her back down. "Where ya goin'? The night's still young."
"I know," she purred in his ear.
When his parents found him the next morning, Robert Drake's head had been smashed in, his chest caved in, and several body parts in various places of the room. What disturbed them most, however, were the feathers stuffed in his mouth.
"Hank?" he heard a female voice ask. He turned to the door.
"Yes, Rogue?" His eyes went wide, as she entered the room, and stopped him in a block of ice. She then stopped him cold with a mental blast.
"Why... are... you...?" he asked.
"Of all the X-Men who could possibly help muh condition, Hank," she growled, "you was the one who could. AND YA DIDN'T! Ah had to go to Psylocke and Jean, of all people, to fix me. Ah killed them, of course. Lahk Ah'm agonna do you. And don't bother calling for help, either, Beast. Ah killed the intercom. Not that y'all could reach it, being frozen as y'all are." She glared at him.
"But Ah wanna watch ya suffer first, sugah." Telekinetically, she reached out, and started plucking his fur out by it's roots, one clump at a time. Hank screamed in pain.
"Scream all ya want, sugah. Music to muh ears."
When she finished fifteen minutes later, manually plucking the last blue hair off his face, blue fur covered the test tubes, computer consoles, bunsen burners, and other assorted lab equipment. A scarred and naked (except for the Speedos he always wore) Beast stood in the center of the room. Rogue leaned in, and planted a small peck on his cheek.
"Maybe Ah'll let ya live, Hank," she stated sweetly. "A lesson to the others." She turned her back. As she opened the door, she heard him sigh. Idiot.
Hank didn't see the table of hypodermic needles coming at him, each filled with a different type of drug. The needles plunged into his back, and injected their contents into him. His death was nearly instantaneous, as the varied toxins, drugs, and chemicals mixed with his mutant physiology.
When the rest of the X-Men found him the next morning, his face had been twisted, his cheek muscled contracted, leaving him with a psychotic-looking grin, and a ghastly pale complexion.
"Multiple injections," Cece muttered, kneeling next to the body and running a hand along Hank's back. "Whoever did the hair-pulling did it while he was alive, though." She set her hand on the floor, then lifted it up again. "Water?"
"Ice," Kurt told her. "Whoever it was, froze him in ice to hold him still."
"Bobby?" Ororo asked. "He wouldn't."
"Not Bobby, darlin'," Logan stated, walking into the room. "He's dead as well. Just got a call from his folks' place. He's been viciously murdered." Logan stopped, and sniffed the air. "I been dreading this," he muttered. "That's Rogue's scent."
Cecelia stood up, brushing herself off. "Rogue did this?"
"Yup. I figger she killed Bobby when she stole his powers, and used them to kill Hank."
"We have to stop her," Ororo stated. "I pray we are not too late."
As the X-Men filed out of the room, Logan hesitated. He turned to face Hank's body, popping his claws.
"We're already too late, 'Roro," he muttered. "Whatever it takes, Rogue's goin' down."
He glanced up, as a shadow passed over him. Rogue landed behind him, grabbed him by the shoulder, and spun him around, planting a kiss on him. For a brief second, her left eye glowed with an unearthly light as he slumped in her arms. "That's for loving Allison, and not me," she growled. Glancing down, she took his bandolier of throwing blades. "Hrrm... these'll come in handy." Two swift punches later, Longshot's brain and hearts splattered across the highway.