Author's Note: A Retroactive Continuity, or Retcon if you will, is the altering of previously known facts in order for the universe to conform to new story lines. This is mine. This is a retcon of Hellboy in the Dark Horse Comics Universe. Mike Mignola and Dark Horse owns the character and all rights associated with him/her/it. Elements of the Witchblade series will be mentioned in later chapters. Witchblade is published by Top Cow Comics. Picture Credit: JPRart

Chapter 5

Sitting with a tail sticking out the bottom of my spine was problematic, so I took position at the back of the truck watching the lone surviving sewer fairy while everyone else was watching me. It's not every day that that a fellow teammate turns into the feminine version of Satan, except without the barb on the end of her tail and a big stone hand where a normal one should be.

I tried to revert back to the way I was. It was possible, I knew. If it wasn't then, the hand wouldn't have disappeared in the first place back at headquarters. However the only thing I'd managed to accomplish was to shrink my horns to two inch, sawed off stubs on my forehead. I still had the red skin, the tail and a giant right hand that David Haye, current Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the world, would envy.

The fairy was eyeing the Hand with annoyance and me with anger. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it was pissed about me screwing up its race's plans for world domination, or city domination, or rice drier domination, or whatever.

I squatted down and smiled at it. "Going to save us some time and tell us where all your buddies are that were going to do all the body-snatching?"

Even though it had its hands tied behind its back, it still leaned forward and snapped at me with its dagger-like teeth. I brought up the stone hand and thumped its forehead with my middle finger. My eyes widened a little when his head slammed off the back of the truck.

"Huh." I'd have to take it easy for a while until I learned the limits of my new strength.

Abe leaned in. "We can't interrogate him if he's got a concussion, Gemma."

I spread my hands, innocently. "What?"

Abe rolled his eyes and shook his head. "So," he glanced back at my tail hanging there. "Feel any different?"

Standing up I slipped my hands in my pockets, well, one hand anyway, the other wouldn't fit. "Top-notch actually. You saw what I did to that door, right?"

He nodded. "Your strength is back in spades. Does that mean you're activating yourself again?"

He was referring to my agent status. "Probably. You can't deny having a heavyweight to open doors would be advantageous."

It was one of the most dangerous portions of the job, the person who went into a dangerous situation first. Plus there was the added benefit of seeing Satan's feminine side enter the fray would have on the bad guys, or bad things out there.

"True." He paused and stared at me for a few moment. "What about your adoptive parents?"

I pressed my lips together. Issues. Issues.

After the fairy was taken to containment for interrogation. I started feeling normal again. My skin receded to a normal color and the horn-stubs disappeared. The last to go was the Hand, when it revered to the bracelet again.

My clothes were a little looser, liked they were stretched out by someone else wearing them, not to mention the new draft I had coming out where my tail had tore my pants. Liz was with me in the debrief room where we were writing up our reports.

"Hey, I'm back to normal!"

She looked over her shoulder at me. "You look rumpled."

I shrugged my shoulders. "I was in a fight. What do you expect."

Liz shook her head. "No, you destroyed a door and captured one fairy, otherwise they didn't touch you."

She stood and motioned for me to stand as well. Then she checked the slack I had at my waist and pinched a bit of low grade leather at my thigh. "It looks like you bulked out and then went back to normal after. You're going to need clothes that will adapt to your change." She looked behind me at the four inch wide hole in my pants. "Not to mention what you're going to have to wear to accommodate your tail."

I didn't get what she was talking about. "What do you mean?"

She shrugged. "You've got a couple of options. Either high waist skirts, which are back in now, so good timing there. Or ultra-lowrise pants. I mean the butt crack displaying type, and those went out of style two years ago."

Neither option sounded ideal. Granted, I had the hips to pull off the low-rise pants so they wouldn't fall down in the middle of a fight, which would lead to all sorts of embarrassing scenes. However, fighting in a skirt sounded like it was right outside of a comic book, no matter what all those so-called superheroes out there in the world today manage to pull off. And there was no way I was dressing up in a spandex swimsuit with my butt hanging out.

Liz saw the look on my face and chuckled. "We'll figure out something. Maybe a breakaway flap or something to let it through."

I nodded at that idea. "Thanks. I'd appreciate not looking like the super-floozies out there."

Her lips twisted to the side in amusement. "I thought you liked looking at Jade and that Giant-girl."

"Giganta."

"Whatever."

"Yeah, well. I'd rather not have the bad guys checking me out or copping a feel when the occasion presents itself. You saw what American Dream did to the guy that let his little head do the thinking during a take down."

That video went viral in one day. The world found out that afternoon that it was completely possible to insert a baseball bat into a very uncomfortable place.

"Better get used to it. Some guys don't know the meaning of the word no." She looked at me expectantly. "You should know all about that."

"What? Me?" I was seriously affronted by the accusation. "When have I ever touched you in a way that you didn't or wouldn't approve of."

She smirked at me. "You haven't, or else you'd have charred nubs where your hands used to be. Face it, Gemma, as Red you didn't have the equipment that I was interested in."

I cocked my head to the side and smiled seductively. At least I hoped it was seductive. I hadn't really taken the time to practice that particular gesture in front of a mirror. "And now?"

Her eyes widened a little and she started laughing. "Now, you're jailbait. No thanks."

My shoulders sunk, defeated. Now that I'm a lesbian, I was too young for her. "I'll be eighteen in two months."

Liz sat back down at her desk and turned to the computer to finish her report, laughing harder at my misfortune.

I grabbed the keys to the Jeep Rubicon I'd owned as Red from the motor pool office, where they'd stored my vehicle while they decided what to do with it, me being dead and all. At least I was mobile again, and speaking of being mobile, I had a cell phone, finally.

Granted, it was Red's and not Gemma's. I checked the screen and it hadn't been updated as of yet like most of my security profiles inside the BPRD proper. It was easy to do it inside since everything was computerized, but switching out the title for the Jeep, and arranging for the cell to be under my new persona was going to take a couple of days.

I pulled up to the curb in front of the house, seeing as Mom and Dad only had a two car garage, and grabbed my overnight bag before hopping out. Taking a moment to check out the area before proceeding to the front door wasn't because I was now female, although that's always a good idea for anyone, regardless of gender. It was because we still didn't know whether or not we'd gotten the majority of the sewer fairies with the night's takedown, or why it was specifically me they were after.

Needless to say, my left hand never strayed far from the .45 until I was relatively safe.

I let myself in to find Mom sitting on the couch watching TV, and Dad coming in from the hallway that led to our bedrooms.

Mom looked relieved to see me. "Hi sweetie."

I smiled at her. "Hey Mom."

"Everything go okay at... work?" She seemed uncomfortable talking about what I did. It was understandable. Not everyone is good with the fact that the monster under the bed is actually real.

"Yeah, fine." I secured the door and turned back around. "We found out what the bracelet does."

Dad got more interested in the conversation at that point. "Really?"

I nodded and sat down in one of the armchair's while he sat beside Mom, closer to me, on the couch. Setting the bag on the floor, I bent over and unzipped the top to pull out a Polaroid that Liz took of me in Satan-mode.

"Don't freak or anything. I look entirely different, but it's still me underneath, alright."

Dad gave me a lifted eyebrow and held out his hand. Then his eyes nearly fell out of the sockets, he'd opened them so far. Mom sucked in a breath of air. When they'd come down off the shock, both of them looked at me and I tried to look innocent.

"Kind of scary, huh?"

Mom nodded.

"There's a good side though," I said, trying to find the silver lining. "I'm like super strong and tough. I'm going to be really hard to hurt when I'm like that."

Dad swallowed and asked, "How tough?"

I shrugged. "Well tonight, I smashed a steel door in a steel frame across about twenty or thirty feet of floor space and took out six fairies, all with one shot of the Hand, and I didn't feel a thing."

Mom covered her mouth with her the palm of her hand. "You were out fighting tonight?"

A guilty feeling crept along my face. "Uh, sort of. I was just going along as back up," I quickly divulged. "But it wound up being a trap and I had to help out. I didn't actually do any fighting."

Dubious looks were coming from both of them.

"Really!" I stressed. "We took out... I mean they took out a really large nest of sewer fairies, so this might all be over with."

My face was getting redder by the second and it wasn't from anything the bracelet was doing. "Guys... you know what I do for a living now. This can't be a surprise."

The silence I was getting from them was making me extremely nervous. That was until Dad finally broke it. "Gemma, we know what you do, but that doesn't mean we want you doing it or aren't going to worry what you're up to or if you're safe when we aren't there."

I looked down at the carpet and nodded. Desperate to change the subject I saw something else in the bag that might do the trick. reaching down I pulled out two picture frames.

"I thought you might want to see what I looked like before... well, before all of this."

The first picture I had was with Father and I in his library. I was about ten years younger. It was right before he died from lung cancer. The thing was, he never smoked a day in his life. Go figure.

"That's an old one with Father."

Dad blinked at it while Mom looked over his shoulder. She stared at it oddly for a second before Dad handed it off to her and I passed the newer one to him.

"That one was taken about three months ago. You already know Abe and Liz."

It was the three of us soon after we'd returned from DC, officially being thanked by the President for thwarting an Ice Entity from going on a rampage in Alaska. Anwar wasn't closed for oil drilling to save the environment or to let mooses mate, or anything stupid like that. It was the home to deadly carnivores that like to eat entire populations of small towns for making too much noise while the Entities are trying to hibernate.

When I looked back at Mom, her face was white and she was staring intently at the older picture of Father and me.

"Mom?"

She looked up at me and her eyes were all glassy, like she was about to cry. "Where... where did Red go to High School?"

I leaned back. That wasn't a question I ever thought she'd ask. "Uh, Fairfield, Connecticut, Ludlowe High School, class of ninety-five."

She swallowed painfully and breathed for a few seconds. "Did you used to be known as Alfie Broom?"

How in the world? Nobody had called me Alfie since High School. "Yeah. Red's real name was Alfred."

Mom looked up at the ceiling and laughed the laugh of insanity for a moment, and then dropped backward on the couch.

"Julie?" Dad said with concern in his voice.

I stood up and rounded the coffee table to check out if Mom had just gone over the deep end. Maybe it was just too much for her and she'd finally broke.

Her eyes found me and she started laughing again except this time it seemed like she was on the verge of crying.

"Mom, what's wrong? How did you know my real name?"

She stopped laughing and tried to compose herself. Dad was watching the two of us and it looked like he really wanted to know the answer to that question as much as I did.

"Gemma," she barked out a single laugh, but held it in after. "Does the name Julianne Edwards mean anything to you?"

I formed the word no with my lips, but something stopped me and the image of an eighteen year old brunette came to mind, not to mention the loss of my virginity, as a boy, eighteen years ago. Julianne was my first, an upperclassman that I'd swooned one night after her boyfriend dumped her the day before the homecoming dance. I was the back up running back for the team and the girl I was taking had developed strep throat.

We'd hooked up through a mutual friend and after a rather intense evening wound up in bed. She'd avoided me after that. It wasn't really seemly for a senior to be dating or having sex with a sophomore boy. I remember after about three months she transferred out of the school and I'd hadn't seen her since.

All of that returned to me, along with the picture of her face, which was being superimposed over the features of the woman with tears running down her face, sitting on the couch in front of me.

I knew then exactly why Gemma had been the person who's soul had been destroyed by the fairy dust, at that particular moment when I'd shot myself in the head to avoid capture by the sewer fairies.

Gemma Saunders was my daughter.

"No..." My throat tightened. "That can't be right."

Mom leaned forward, and I almost tripped over the coffee table trying to back away.

"Gemma?" Mom said, almost pleading with me.

"What? What's happening?" asked Dad, not understanding a thing that was going on. It still hadn't clicked in his head.

I held a hand to my stomach, feeling like I was gong to be sick. "It can't be right. No."

Turning toward the door, I unlocked it and heard Mom yell something behind me, but I was too far gone at that point, off in my own little world of self-denial. "No."

Twenty minutes, it took me to drive back to the BPRD, and during that short span of time I sorted the entire timeline out in my head.

Julianne left High School because she was three months pregnant with Gemma. She probably thought that a sixteen year old boy was ill fit to support and raise a child, and she was most likely right in that regard. However, she never told me. I deserved at least that much.

We went our separate ways, her getting married and them raising Gemma as their own. Then I pop up in Houston and Gemma gets started running with the wrong crowd, starts mainlining heroin laced with fairy dust. She was a coincidence as far as random events can be taken.

My little girl was a drug addict.

Then I went a got myself in a situation that I couldn't get out of.

At the same time as that was happening, Gemma was shooting up with her last hit, and instead of me being shot down to Hell as was right and proper for killing myself, I was drawn to her, knocking her soul free and taking her body as my own.

I killed my little girl.

I killed my little girl.

"Gemma?"

Liz saw me blow past her office and down the hall. I ignored her and headed straight for the armory. I heard her call my daughter's name again as I placed my hand on the scanner and punched in my passcode.

With the security we had at headquarters, actually reaching the armory was next to impossible. It's why nothing inside was locked down. I made my way to the specialty side of the room and eyed the choices.

Liz managed to make it to the door before it closed and soon she was right beside me.

"What happened? Why are you crying?"

I swiped at my fallen tears, angrily then decided on the Samaritan. Taking it down off of its shelf, I hitched the catch onto my belt beside the .45 and started grabbing all of the speedloaders that were available.

"Ever wonder why, Liz?"

She kept her tone nice and even as she nervously watched me make my preparations. "Why what?"

My eyes flicked to her. "Why Gemma?"

She shook her head ever so slightly. "No."

I stared long and hard at her. "Did you do a background check on the Saunders family?"

A confused look on her face prefaced her question. "Of course. On the first night. What did you find out?"

I didn't bother checking what kind of loads I picked up. I only know I took them all before turning and grabbing two more boxes of shells for the .45.

"Dig deeper, on her mom's side," was all I said before leaving the room.

Taking the elevator to S-5 I made tracks for the strategy room and picked up a thick file, the observation report from the DEA. It would have all of the names and locations that I needed to know about.

By the time I'd made it back to the elevator, there was someone waiting for me.

"Get out of my way, Abe."

He didn't move from in front of the call button. "What's the plan?"

My hand clenched on the folder. "Kill everyone that had a hand at killing my daughter."

His eyes unfocused for a moment then became clear again. "Oh shit."

Abe was always the sharp one. He made the connections a lot faster than I thought he would.

"Yeah, now, you want to move out of my way or do I get to move you?"

He sighed. "The place is in lockdown."

I folded the file in half as best as I could and jammed it in an inside pocket. "Call it off, Abe. You know what I have to do."

He shook his head. "I can't do that."

My eyes narrowed at him. "You mean you won't."

He didn't answer, so I let the rage and anguish that had been building, loose itself. Abe's eyes widened as I changed in front of him. The rush returned, cascading across my body as the Right Hand of Doom reformed itself. Before the transformation was complete I raised it and watched as Abe ducked and the Hand smashed into the elevator door. I grabbed a hold of it to pull it out of the wall, flinging it to the side.

"Jesus, Red! Stop!"

Taking out the Samaritan, I released the front half that fell forward into the loading position and held the barrel with the Hand while I found the explosive rounds. There was only room for four, but that would be more than enough. Snapping it closed, I shoved it back in its holster.

"You've got thirty seconds to tell everyone to clear the way. I'm not fucking around, Abe. I think you realize that, right?"

He nodded his head and stared at me like he didn't know me at all. "You think Gemma would have wanted you to do this?"

I scowled at him. "I think Gemma would have liked to have been raised with her real father in her life. I think she would have liked not to have him kill her. I think she was never given the choice either way. And I think the people responsible for her demise need to have their existence wiped off the face of the Earth in a greasy smear."

"So you're the judge, jury, and executioner?"

"Damn right. Who better?" I knew he was stalling me, and decided to end the discussion right there. I leaped up into the elevator shaft and grabbed a hold of the cables inside with the Hand. My tail seemed to have a mind of its own, keeping my balance and preventing me from swinging from side to side as I pulled myself up at a pretty alarming rate of speed.

I didn't stop at the ground floor but went one level higher and exited on top of the elevator shaft. Before leaving I pulled the beacon off my belt and tossed it inside.

Abe took my warning to heart. Nobody tried to stop me. He knew I would plow through them easily. No, Abe had different plans for me and if knew him as well as I thought I did, they involved setting a trap at one of the targets.

After I jumped into the Jeep and left the area, I reverted back to my human self. The rage was still there, but I was directing it toward the more tactical area of my brain. The first ones to pay the price were the ones that were responsible for the drugs. The first one that gave her the needle and encouraged her to inject that living death into her arm. Then I'd work my way up from there.

I parked under the I-10/Highway 59 interchange downtown. It wasn't the roughest part of town, but I definitely wouldn't want to be down there without some means of defense. Taking my time to ease back on the anger, I double checked the clip for the .45, while I studied the layout for the single story house I was about to invade.

I wouldn't exactly call the area it was in, residential, but the house wasn't alone on the street. The windows were boarded up and the only visible access were the front and back doors, both of which usually had a single guard that ambled around to alert the people inside if the cops showed.

I didn't care about making a bust, I didn't care about evidence, I didn't care about anything other than the people inside not making it away before I had the chance to have a nice chat with them.

A couple of gunshots rang out in the air, off in the distance. I stilled for a moment and then stuffed the .45 back in its holster.

A vagrant pushing a shopping cart passed on the other side of the street and I could smell his stench from where I stood. Reaching down, I took off the rosary and set it on the seat before I closed the drivers side door. It wasn't God's work I'd be doing that night, and I wasn't going to pretend that it was.

I stashed the .45 in the left hand pocket of my coat and buttoned the front up so the Samaritan didn't show. The lowlifes inside would know Gemma. She'd get a free pass for some money or maybe even for her body, just so she could score another hit.

My little girl.

I felt my face heat up and the bracelet almost begging to be released from its confines, but knowing that it needed to stay hidden for just a few moments longer as I blatantly crossed the street to the front of the house.

The guy in the dirty white tee shirt ticked his head up and flashed the weapon that he had in his hand. A Glock, one of the more recent models. Then he smirked, knowingly.

"Gem Gem. Whatchoo doin' out this late on a school night, girl?"

"It's Saturday," I said as I made my way up the walk. "My parents found my stash and I need something to take the edge off."

I didn't know if I was pulling it off, but he seemed to buy the act. When I reached the porch I quick-stepped to the landing with the guard. He nodded his head up and looked at me expectantly.

"You know the drill, sweet tits. I got to see the goods before you can go in."

Taking my hands out of my pockets I held them wide. "All yours."

He smirked again and stuck his Glock down the front of his pants --dumbass. When he finished popping the last button on my coat he opened it up and saw the Samaritan.

"Holy shit! What the hell, Gemma?"

The Right Hand of Doom grabbed him by the neck while I completed my transformation and I made sure to include the horns and all.

"I'm not Gemma anymore," I growled.

We both made a play for his Glock, but I was quicker and he was choking to death. Before taking it out I pulled the trigger twice then turned toward the door using his body to open it up, the hard way.

The front room was relatively small and there was only one guy that was armed, standing only three feet away. I leaped forward at him and he screamed like the devil had come to claim his soul personally.

Apt.

I crushed his gun with the Hand. The minor fact that his fingers were still wrapped around the grip, was only gravy to fuel my anger. Shooting him once in both knees made sure he didn't go anywhere soon. Five kids and a middle-aged loser were stoned out of their minds on who knows what, were probably having a hell of a hallucination due to my appearance. Those that could, stumbled out of the front door. The others just trembled.

Two guys made it from the back, with the heavy weapons. By this time I, was already by the entrance to the hallway, and slammed my regular fist into his face. I'd forgot I still had the Glock in that hand and it would up making a mess of his jaw. The second guy wasn't as lucky. He whipped his Uzi at me. Uzi's were old and reliable, not to mention cheap.

The Hand grabbed the barrel and squeezed as a number of rounds decided that they didn't want to be fired anymore and exploded the housing in his hands.

I snapped my left hand out and pistol whipped him unconscious.

Four? That was it? I expected the last guy, the other guard, around back to get away but that wasn't my concern at the moment. I'd track him down later. Double checking to make sure I didn't miss anyone, I swept the two bedrooms, one of which held some of what I'd been looking for.

Little packets of brown power were stacked on the table. The last room was the kitchen which was empty. I grabbed a hold of the gas stove and jerked it from the wall, tossing it to the side.

When I returned to the front room, the guard that was at the front door was whimpering into his cell phone.

"No, we can't have that," I said. Squatting down next to him, I smiled. It wasn't genuine. "Tell them."

Tears were escaping his eyes, and if there wasn't a chance that this was one of the guys that had defiled my little girl then I would have felt bad for shooting his dick off. As it was, I wanted everyone to know who was coming for them.

Maybe it was the blood loss; he dropped the phone. I picked it up and growled into the phone. "Who is this?"

The voice on the other end didn't say anything at first. "You're dead. Nobody fucks around in our neighborhood."

I laughed. "I'm sitting right here, buddy. All I see are a lot of guys grabbing themselves and crying. Judgment's come for them, and they've been found lacking. Why don't you come on over. Bring your friends. I'm throwing a party, and the roof, the roof, the roof is on fire."

Flipping the phone closed, I tossed it to the side so I could concentrate on the guy about to pass out from blood loss, with maybe a little shock thrown in. Smacking him a little on the face, focused his eyes on mine.

"Who was the one that got Gemma involved in this shit? Tell me and I'll kill you nice and easy, don't tell me and I start removing more body parts until I get tired of you screaming, and right now, I'm kind of enjoying the sound."

He didn't waste any time. "Mar'in... Mar'in..."

I didn't recognize the name. "Mar'in? Who the... oh, Martin. Sorry I couldn't understand with all the blubbering."

Looking back at the other three. "Which one of you is Martin?"

They didn't answer, but maybe that had to do with two of them being unconscious. I grabbed dickless and hauled him up by the scruff of the neck with the Hand. "Point him out and I'll end the pain."

He shook his head, or tried to anyway. "Your boyfriend," he mumbled.

"My..." My teeth ground together. Gemma's boyfriend started it all. "Fine. You get your prize."

I dropped him and then turned to the two remaining teens that were stoned out of their gourd, to drag them from the house. They wound up on the sidewalk by the street. Giving the area a glance, I was sorely disappointed in the response time of the local police department.

Pulling out the Samaritan, I aimed for the open doorway and fired off a single round. I was kind of surprised at the lack of kick. It wasn't much.

The resulting explosion, on the other hand... that was a sight to see.

TBC...