webnovel

37

Ah, the Tuileries Palace... The Second French Empire STILL won't fall, despite everything Prussia and its Confederation has taken from it, just down yonder in the Rhine Valley...

In the bed of the royal chambers, a gorgeous blonde shares it with...somebody's Emperor. One lady part at a time, she rises.

Her hair is blonde. Her eyes are blue. Her lips are big. Her hooters are huge. She wears revealing white fluff, white lace, or white silk to cover up little of it...

With his back turned to her, Napoleon III lies, enjoying the last wee moments of his good night's sleep. Funny; he's an Emperor. His grandfather would probably reprimand him for that. A nap, after all, is probably how his grandfather lost Waterloo, about fifty years ago...

With a gentle feminine hand, Ms. Frost turns his Imperial Majesty's body over, onto its back. His skin is pale. He's got knife wounds all over him; diamond knives, to be more specific. His eyes are fixed. Soon, the flies will start coming for him...

Alas, Ms. Frost doesn't want to be around when that happens. So she rises, and starts dressing for her exit...

A half-full bottle of Napoleonic cognac, from Corsica, sits on an end table nearby. Ms. Frost crabbily collects it, on her way out...

She opens the door, and begins to make her exit. In slow-mo, she makes her way down the hall. She holds a bloody diamond knife in her hand.

The guards see her, reach for their arms, and tell her to freeze. With her psionic powers, she either forces them to shoot themselves, or hits them in the back with one of her diamond boomerangs. As soon as they open fire, she starts guiding their rifles' bullets to where they hit their shooters, rather than her.

Down a brief flight of stairs, she wanders. She'd look like an angel, if not for the war, in slow-mo, going on around her. In this trance, she's a pure goddess.

Up ahead, there's a dining table. She uses its seats like a stepladder, and climbs up atop it.

Aloft, the chandelier is diamond. Perfect!

Up here, she starts dancing. Telepathically, she performs a song, at random, in her head. The song sounds very much like Ellie Goulding's "Burn."

Against a nearby mantelpiece, a coat of arms rests. Its main feature is a phoenix...

Atop this table, Ms. Frost dances the entire song. During the first verse, the palace guard attacks her...and dies doing so. In the second verse, the republican army attacks her. Squads upon squads die via their own weaponry/Ms. Frost's diamond boomerangs. During the bridge, a lot of Prussian-affiliated German mercs try to attack her. They all die the same way as their predecessors...in the arena of trying to kill Ms. Frost, that is.

Ms. Frost can't quite comprehend why so many men would want to kill such a gorgeous British-accented blonde babe such as herself... But then, it's probably not so much what she looks like as it is her status as a mutant, as well as in which building she happens to be dancing.

It turns out there are so many men to slaughter, that Ms. Frost ends up switching to Cage the Elephant's "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked," while table-dancing. Droves and droves of French republicans and German mercs she slaughters...as well as a few of Napoleon III's supporters, who've come to avenge their fallen master.

Ms. Frost admits that it's a bit bloodier than what raised her... Alas, this is what the Hellfire Club is. And she NEVER expects that to change...no matter how many times Excalibur stops them.

At one point, a cannonball shatters a window, and flies right towards Ms. Frost. With her psionic powers, Ms. Frost causes the cannonball to do a perfect orbit around herself...and to shatter another window, and destroy the very battery that tried to kill her with it. It must've been a French republican battery; as good as the Prussians are, their artillery isn't THAT fast... Panzers won't come to being for another six decades...although Ms. Frost knows that Black King would LOVE to get his hands on the first few that Professor Moriarty proliferates...

At last, Ms. Frost finishes a whole damn playlist. She opens her eyes. The palace ballroom is full of corpses; French imperialist, French republican, Paris Commune, and Prussian merc. Now, Ms. Frost must get out of here before this palace starts to stink to high heaven.

In bare feet, she steps on the corpses, as she makes her way to the front doors. She cleans her diamond boomerangs on their still-dry clothes, as she makes her way through the corpse pile...

At last, she's past the facade. She's relieved. At least the facade isn't flooded with corpses...

In bare feet, she makes her way across the cement, and down a flight of steps. And, she has to pause...for another threat to her has finally arrived.

It's the Prussian infantry. They've come to request Napoleon III's surrender. France has just lost the Franco-Prussian War.

Ms. Frost scoffs, and uses her powers one more time. She forces them to stick their rifle bores into their mouths, and...

Spontaneously, they all fall over, before they can get a chance to blow their own brains out. Ms. Frost's confused. SHE sure as hell didn't cause them to fall...

Above, storm clouds gather. Slowly, Ms. Frost looks up...and beholds a specter that approaches.

He hovers. He's in a tattered purple robe. A pair of phoenix wings are attached to his upper back...although he doesn't flap them. He keeps them spread.

His eyes shine with bright orange light. He seems to stammer, while containing it. When he opens his mouth, the same orange light comes from it.

"White Queen," he says, telepathically.

"Dr. Doom," she responds telepathically. "First of all, I don't do that anymore. Second of all, I don't recall requesting an appointment."

"You've earned it," he says. "Or rather, I need you."

In his arms, Doom holds a very large egg. It looks like a very big citrine gem. Although the clouds shield a lot of the sunlight, the stone still glimmers, a bit...

Doom hovers closer to her. Still, he cradles the egg.

"I'm helping a friend cleanse the world of Turkish influence," he tells Ms. Frost. "For that, I will need a very special squad. Congrats."

From the egg, glowing orange fumes radiate. The ensnare Ms. Frost, and start charging her up with Phoenix energy.

"You, Ms. Frost, are the first recruit of my Phoenix Five..."

Helplessly, Ms. Frost is levitated a little, off the cement, as the Phoenix press-gangs her into its army. She's grateful, that at least it leaves her attire white and her hair blonde. Alas, those are among the very few things the Phoenix doesn't augment...for they were already augmented to perfection long before the Turkey from Space came along.

During the process, Ms. Frost's blue eyes shine with the same orange light. Don't worry; the light will darken, by the time the Phoenix is through with her...

Around her, a mild whirlwind blows. Behind Dr. Doom, the Prussian infantry stays dead. Not a single soul emerges from the palace. Good; not a single soul in the palace is still alive to do so...not even Napoleon III's Frenchie. (As much as Ms. Frost hated to, she DID attack her, as she was butchering the Emperor...)

At last, the egg vanishes, from Dr. Doom's arms. The last of the Phoenix's power, earmarked for Ms. Frost, enters her body.

When Ms. Frost blinks, the orange light in her eyes dies. Her irises are now brown.

As she lands, she changes into her diamond form. Funny; it's a CITRINE form, now...

"Orange and white," Dr. Doom muses. "Just like a clownfish..."

"Master," Ms. Frost says, more ominously than she would've before. "I owe you..."

She still levitates; Dr. Doom's still got her.

Dr. Doom levitates lower, and caresses her bare midriff with his Grim Reaper-like fingers. It seems the Phoenix has augmented her abs, her hooters, her lips, and everything else loveable about her. She's pure ásynja perfection...and to think that she's only English.

The English shouldn't be so disgusted. The Vikings are some of their ancestors, after all...

Between her two ripe hooters, he drags his finger. He plucks the middle of her bra. It's VERY snug, around her chest...

Now, her chest rises and falls more than ever. But then, that's expected. Her strength DID just get augmented...

"We have business upstairs," Dr. Doom says, "in the late Emperor's chambers. When we conclude...and I don't expect us to for a VERY long time...there are a few more recruits I need to snatch up. One of them, I do believe, is an ex of your previous self."

"Alex," Ms. Frost moans, referring to the mutant hero known as Havok.

"Yes. He will be the gunship of my Phoenix Five. Once I've scooped him and the rest up, it's onward, to Istanbul." His expression darkens, as does his tone. "I know a very fat Turkish sultan, who could use some butchering. And his nation, sadly, is too weak to do it themselves. Crying shame. The Khazakhs, Uzbeks, Yakuts, and Chuvashians are kin to them...and those are just their Great Powers..." He blinks. "Not so great they are, now...as the Tsar now rules them, with his ruthlessly Aryan influence..."

"What's," Ms. Frost asks, while under the Phoenix's influence, "wrong with that?"