Logan - Narrative
Characters: Logan NPCs: One unlucky Sentinel involved in the beating of Bobby Timeline: A couple days after this log of Bobby's Location: Mutant Town apartment building Description: Wolverine delivers a message to one of the cops that beat his buddy Rating: PG (implied violence) The air in the apartment building was hot, stifling, boiling up from the clacking radiators and hanging there, nothing but one small window to allow it to escape. It's why most people in the building left their windows open a crack, to keep themselves from coming home to a cauldron. That was probably safe enough most of the year. But this late, when darkness came early but work hours stayed the same, maybe it meant someone could creep up the fire escape unseen. Someone could slide that window open, slip inside and nearly close it again. Someone could squat in a shadow near the door and wait.
The scent of the Sentinel was all over the apartment. He'd lived here a while, spent a lot of time here. No scent of anyone else. He wasn't likely to bring anyone home with him. That was good. Logan found the best spot to wait easily. It was instinct upon instinct, knowing where to stand, how to position his body to blend with the shadow and keep his muscles from tiring. Some of those instincts were just a part of him, like the claws, the way a predator knows its prey. Some of them though, as ingrained as they were, Logan still knew they had been taught to him, the way he knew where to strike a man to keep him from crying out, the way he knew how to numb a man's arm so he'll drop his weapon. He'd been taught all that, learned it until it was instinctual. But who taught him ... that was a memory he couldn't quite grasp.
These weren't the kind of thoughts Logan liked to have, but sitting there motionless waiting for his prey he had nothing but time for thoughts to come. The cold feel of revenge was in his stomach, for what they'd done to Bobby, what they'd done to one of us. There was the knowledge that it had to be quiet and nameless, the confidence that he could do that. But after a while the worries crept in. About his past. About when another dark spell would come, if he didn't hold the animal inside in check. Logan found himself thinking about the story he'd heard, about a girl in Mutant Town with claws, they said she was rolling drunks, or rapists, or creepers, all depended on the story. But all the stories had claws coming out of her hands. Another thought Logan didn't want to spend much time on.
It was nothing but relief when the smell of the Sentinel reached Logan's nose and the time for action came. Logan wasn't built for thoughts, he knew that much, he was built for this, good or bad. The officer never reached his light switch before he was Logan's, the door closed softly behind him, and consciousness taken from not nearly so softly. He never had a chance to see or hear Logan, he wasn't meant to. His battered and unconscious form was a note, and Logan left it behind on the apartment floor for the other Sentinels to find.
There was only so much fight the mutants could dare. But Logan knew about bullies and he knew about predators. Roll over and show them your belly and they'd only turn more cruel. You had to show there was still fight in you. After all the Sentinels were only men, whatever power they had. A man wanted to be safe in his home, at the end of the day. Now they knew, turn the heat up on the mutants, on the Brotherhood, and their fingers would get burned.