1 The 'Afterlife' and A New Life

[Good Luck!]

I'd been looking at this white text in front of me for...I don't know how long. But it felt like I'd been doing it for hours. No blinking. No looking away. Just looking.

I'd just died. So, is this the afterlife? Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? I doubt it. Hell would be much more tortuous than this. Heaven was supposed to be paradise and this...this just wasn't what I thought paradise would be. Purgatory...maybe? Wasn't that supposed to be a place you went until you paid back whatever sin or bad thing you'd done until you could enter Heaven? Basically where bad people who aren't bad enough to go to Hell go, isn't it?

But even that didn't seem right.

This was too...weird. It just felt off. I don't know what about it felt off but I just knew this wasn't THE afterlife. This was something someone else had made. Well, that's what it felt like to me, anyway. I didn't have any other proof than my instincts...which wasn't the best source of evidence, really.

Despite all this thinking, I continued to stare at the [Good luck!] in front of me. Not like I had much else to do anyway. And as I looked at it, time seemed to lose all meaning to me.

It could've been minutes or it could've been days, but suddenly, the message disappeared.

I was shocked out of whatever state I was in. My only constant - the screen with the text on it - having disappeared was something that didn't seem too big of a deal, right? But when you only have one thing in front of you, one thing that never changed no matter the time or what you were thinking...and then it just disappears...it's bound to cause some level of worry to build up in your heart.

Part of this worry was just irrational...but the other part of the worry was from a single thought: If the [Good luck!] is what it says it is, then it disappearing...isn't that a sign that I'm about to go wherever it was saying 'good luck' about?

I was worried I was about to get dropped into Hell or Purgatory. Terribly worried. Who'd want to go to either of those places? One of them is where you're tortured for all of eternity and the other is a place where you walk and wonder about for as long as it takes for you to work off whatever minor sins you've committed. Neither of them are good places.

But my worry amounted to nothing.

I began to...feel. I could feel my fingers again. But it felt different. They felt...stronger. Harder. I was unsure if that was the case until I began to have feeling in my hands and arms again. They definitely felt stronger. Better. More muscled.

Along with this feeling of strength, came new memories. A new set of memories that detailed another life...my life. Another life another me had lived.

I was born...in London to a wealthy aristocratic family. I was the middle child of five children. Which meant I could do whatever I wanted due to a lack of parental attention - I was a real little shit. I spent my days spending money on whatever toy I wanted and all I needed to do was attend a few meetings between noble children and act properly and with etiquette, and that was it. I had what was considered a perfect life. Until I turned 13.

On my 13th birthday, I threw a tantrum because my two older siblings didn't turn up to my birthday party. I know - it seems pretty normal for a spoiled rotten and bratty kid to have a tantrum over something so small, right?

But that's not the point. This tantrum--the massive influx of anger and other emotions awakened something in me.

I became a sort of beast, with white fur, yellow eyes and a superhuman body. Whatever I became was driven by bloodthirst and animalistic instincts and I killed everyone at my party. My mother, my younger siblings, the guards, my friends--everyone. I was distraught. Terrified, even, at what I'd done. So I ran away.

I was a scared 13-year-old who just killed most of his family and friends. I didn't know what else to do. I was so confused with what was happening to my body. How my senses were so sensitive. Loud noises that never bothered me before were now deafening and painful. Bad smells that wouldn't harm me before now had me bending over and retching. Even outside of that monstrous form, I was strong. Strong enough to crush metal in my hand and with a body hard enough that not even a knife could cut or stab me.

Everything was confusing. My whole body was changing. I didn't know what was happening.

But then I met someone who explained it to me.

I was a Mutant. A powered human. Like a Superhero. But I hadn't felt like one. I was still so confused and upset over what happened at my party. The person who explained it all to me told me they knew others like me, that they'd be able to take me to them. I remember hurriedly agreeing to it out of a desperation for answers and for help.

It should be of no surprise to anyone then, if I said that this person wasn't a nice person, and instead sold me out to a bunch of people in Germany who hosted fights between Mutants.

I was kept under constantly, barely allowed anytime to be conscious when they discovered my superhuman physical prowess. They shipped me to Germany, smuggling me aboard a cargo container with other mutants. I only remember this because I briefly woke up toward the end of the trip before the container was flooded with more gas that knocked all of us out.

The next time I woke up I was in a cage, opposite a man with rock-like skin. He was tall and well-muscled. I remember being scared. I remember wanting to go back to my family, to my previous life. I remember the rock-like person hitting me...and I remember it not hurting at all.

I remember the screaming and yelling from the crowd hurting my ears more than that man's punch did. We were both confused by the lacking effect his punch had.

I remember becoming mad after he punched me again, my fear fleeting and replaced with an animalistic rage.

I remember ripping him apart with my claws.

At the age of 13, I killed for the first time.

And so it continued, my new memories told me, up until now. I was 16. Three whole years of fighting and killing. Looking through my memories, the old me had devolved into nothing but a wild animal.

I was aghast at the way they'd treated this other 'me'. He was a child. A 13-year-old child. He needed help--to be put into a hospital that could help him. Not thrown into some sort of fighting pit like some sort of exotic animal. But they did it all because he was different...a Mutant. Speaking of which, aren't these Mutants a lot like the Mutants from Marvel--Wait a fucking minute.

I slowly delved into the new set of memories and found new things. Howard Stark, owner of Stark Industries. Tony Stark, a child prodigy in engineering and robotics. Captain America, an American war hero who fought against the Nazis.

Weren't...weren't these little tidbits of information from the MCU? No. The new memories had seen Howard Stark on the news. Same with his son, Tony Stark. The other me had learnt about Captain America from his tutors. The other me's father had a contract with Stark Industries as well. He brought weapons off of them for the Military. This...but it's 1983...bloody hell...

Suddenly, my eyes opened and I found myself in a dark room that smelled...sterile. Cleaned with bleach and well-kept.

Looking around, I could tell the room was dark and slightly damp but I could see perfectly clear despite the darkness. I looked around and this room corresponded with my new memories information and images on where I was being kept by the people running the Mutant underground fighting pit.

I tried to move but I couldn't. My arms, legs and neck were held against the floor by straps and chains and placed on my chest were innumerable amount of gym weights. Even despite this, I was able to breath completely freely. The only thing stopping me from moving was the straps holding my arms, legs and neck down. They'd been heavily reinforced over the years, my memories told me, after I'd broken out a few times.

Though every time I broke one of the straps, a group of people would flood into the room and jab tranquilizers into me, knocking me out and leaving me unconscious long enough for the straps to be repaired. In the end they just got stronger straps and even added incredibly heavy chains to hold me down.

The gym weights placed on my chest and stomach were more for the guards sick amusement. Along the lines of ''I wonder if he'll be able to continue breathing if we add more of these weights?'' and so every day they add another weight. About 50lbs per day. I'd lost cost how many they'd added but it was surely enough to crush a normal person by now. Luckily this body was far from normal and could easily withstand it.

"Herr Löwe~" I heard one of my tormentors say in a sing-song voice as he dragged his baton against the bars of my jail cell. Back and forth. I wanted to cover my ears that were still affected by loud sounds, especially in enclosed environments like the cell I was in - the sound continuously bounced around, agitating me.

I let out a growl on instinct, my powers trying to shift me into my beast form but with the amount of anesthetic they had running through my system at the moment, I couldn't transform. If it weren't for the fact they had me hooked up to a drip that constantly topped up the anesthetic, my body would quickly clear the toxin...but alas, they did, and I was unable to fully transform.

But I could enter a partial transformation which made a tail sprout from my lower back along with fur along my arms and legs and the sides of my torso. My muscles bulged as I pulled at my restraints.

I wasn't controlled by the beast inside me like the other me. Nor did my instincts effect me as much. But I had to play it up so as to not rouse my tormentors suspicion.

He continued to speak in German at me and all I did was try and break out of my restraints.

The man laughed at my efforts, and I heard him press a button before the hiss of gas was prevalent in my ears. I knew what was happening, so I slowly stopped my struggling after stopping my transformation in a way that made it look like I was slowly passing out. It wasn't the best acting but it seemed to work as the man laughed to the guard outside my cage, seemingly joking about something as he unlocked the door to my cell.

The knock-out gas had stopped being fed into my cell and it had began to clear by the time he entered, walking toward me and beginning to unload the weights but to be safe about it, he entered with a gas mask that fit over his lower face without impeding his sight.

Seeing him enter and begin his task, I continued acting unconscious.

I wouldn't break out now. Or rather I wouldn't because I couldn't. Too many guards...and if my memories were correct this wasn't the best place or time to break out. I'd already done it before and ended up riddled with bullets and tranquilizers. Thankfully my healing factor helped me heal from it, otherwise I'd be dead, but it still stopped my escape attempt.

As they entered, I played 'dead' and let them get the weights off of me. Once they'd done that, half a dozen men walked into the room, all armed with AK-47s and ready to point them at me, telling me that I'd picked the right move in going along with what they'd done.

I'd wait until I was in the fighting cage. Then I'd break out. The voltage and current ran through the cage wasn't too bad for me...and my other memories felt that this place was incredibly similar to the place where Mystique saved Kurt Wagner...and if I was right, I could be breaking out soon. I remember there being talk about a certain blue-skinned 'devil' who they called 'Nightcrawler' winning a few fights. I couldn't understand German perfectly but three years here has allowed me to pick up bits and pieces.

...I had a bad feeling that my fight tonight would be against the very same 'Nightcrawler'.