Case File: A Better Mole Trap - Ambush
Dec. 8th, 2015 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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xp_logsAt the penthouse suite at the top of the condo under construction, X-Factor look for evidence related to the mutant deaths. What they find almost kills them.
"Excuse me. I got this." Lorna whispered as she moved to the front of the door. Lorna held out her hand in front of the doorknob and a few seconds later the sounds of the door becoming unlocked broke the silence. Gentle she waved her hand as the door opened slowly as she peaked in. "And we are in..." Her voice trailed off as she entered the penthouse first.
Warren tiptoed behind her, peeking around before relaxing. "Just you, me, and all these weirdos," he responded, still glancing into the penthouse. "Bobbi, why don't you be a man and make sure the coast is clear?"
"Already on it," she replied, batons drawn and extended in each hand as she moved from room to room, surveying each to ensure they were empty. After Bobbi checked out each room she returned to her teammates. "All clear." she reported.
Sue followed behind Bobbi, she knew the ex-detective was better at scanning a room for evidence than her, it was part of her training after all. But it never hurt to have a second pair of eyes looking over the scene, especially ones with a different basis. Like now, the blonde's eyes spotted a wire trailing off under a pile of paper, a wire that looked a lot like...it was. Sue pulled a phone from under the paper triumphantly flicking the screen on and paging through the phone's memory. "Well that's a letdown," she commented, "I found a phone but it looks like it's just a burner."
Quentin remained near the door while the rest of the group did the detective thing. With their experience, they were more likely to find anything than he was, so he hung back and did the one thing he knew he was good for, and psychically scanned the penthouse. There was an air of focus and purpose and . . . something else he could not quite put his finger on. Hunger? Predation? Bloodlust. "Alex . . ."
Alex had slid past Quentin and was looking around, frowning. He stopped to look back at Quentin, noting the look on the young man's face. "What's up?"
There was a slow, tortured tearing sound on the other side of the door, as if someone had gouged it with a metal hook. It startled them all for a moment and then stopped, as abruptly as it had begun.
Warren looked around the room and sighed. "Don't all jump at once. " Cracking his knuckles, he strode forward. He put his ear to the door -- nothing. He slightly knocked, and still nothing. He even went so far as to touch the doorknob. Nothing.
Giving everyone a shrug, he nonchalantly opened the door, thinking to himself that this was a minor act that would build staff confidence in them.
This was immediately followed by burning, coughing, sneezing. Thank god he hadn't eaten or there'd be vomiting too.
Quentin howled in pain as he blindly ran to the other side of the room to try to escape the cloud of tear gas clawing its way into the room. He had been right next to Warren when he triggered the trap and got a full dose. His eyes burned, his mouth watered, his lungs cried for breaths he could not take.
Lorna quickly covered her mouth with her jacket and took a couple of steps back, her eyes were already burning from the smoke. "Shit. Someone knows we are here." They were so careful, how could someone know? Turning towards a balcony window to allow outside air in.
The man that dropped onto the balcony in front of her was stocky; thickly built on an average frame, making him looking bigger than he was. She only had the briefest moment to register him when he smashed his shoulder through the glass. The shards exploded in her face, tearing the skin and leaving her scrambling. Had they lodged in her eyes? Oh God! She couldn't feel glass with her powers and was suddenly blind.
"Down, frail." He said, pushing past her. His first target was his closest; a blonde kid with unfortunate hair. He moved quickly, abnormally quickly and lashed out, tearing the muscles of his target's arm, aiding the confusion.
Alex let out a yell of surprise and pain staggering back. He clutched his bleeding arm and tried desperately to aim and fire. But that wasn't something he perfected quite yet - instead the blast of energy took out a wall.
Lorna opened her eyes only to have the feeling of something lodged in the corner of it. DAMNIT! She was pissed. Hearing the sounds of the attacker behind her now, Lorna turned and forced her undamaged eye open to pinpoint where the man was. Concentrating on his natural irons running in his blood, which would knock his arm off course from taking another swipe at Alex.
Creed growled lowly at the interruption. He hadn't missed intentionally, which meant mutants. And now all bets were off. He grabbed Alex by the shirt front and tossed him back, slamming into Lorna and knocking them both through the broken patio glass to the balcony, rolling over the razor sharp shards. The feral pushed past Bobbi, knocking her to one side as he grabbed a hold of the drawer of the hutch by the door. He ripped it out and flipped it over, snatching a USB stick that had been taped there and transferring it to his pocket.
Sue's first reaction had been to wrap a force field around herself, it only took a little extra push for her to bend the light around herself fading away from view. She saw the man who had dropped into their midst charge for a drawer upending it to pull out the USB hidden there and pocketed it. The blonde to a slow step towards him, one and then another using all her skill to keep herself slow and quiet. After years of practice she knew that no-one could spot her now, he might be throwing the team around like ragdolls but if she could just get close to him and get the USB then it would all be worthwhile.
As her fingers slipped into his pocket, a clawed hand came down to clamp on her wrist.
"Not so fast, girlie." She had no idea how he sensed her, as he hit her in the head with a tremendous blow with the claws from a swipe with his other hand. Her forcefield fed back hard as the strike came close to break through her forcefield. With a snarl, feeling his claws slip off something smooth as opposed to flesh, he grabbed her by the opposite shoulder. He wrenched her up off of her feet and pivoted, smashing her into the wall. Sue's head and torso went through the drywall and woodwork with a terrific impact. The rest of her dropped into the room, piled stunned on the carpet.
When their attacker first pushed past Bobbi she spun around herself, thinking that her enhanced agility coupled with the fact she'd already drawn her batons guaranteed two direct hits. As she swung down, however, all she struck was empty air. Before she could prepare herself to mount another attack, Creed smashed her in the side of the head with a wicked backhand, knocking her out and backwards several feet into the air before she collapsed motionless on the ground.
The Astral Plane was bright red, reflecting the terrible anguish that this beast man was causing. Between that and the searing agony of the tear gas, Quentin could not formulate more than the simplest coherent thought, which was simply "Leave us alone!" Though months had passed since his last disastrous attempt at deterring an attacker with a psi-blast, he did not fare much better this time. To his credit, this time the buildup of psychic energy did not snap and maim him, it simply fizzled out, as Quentin could not muster the concentration to keep it together. Moaning in pain, he collapsed to the ground, clutching his head.
Creed stepped over Bobbi's unconscious body and yanked Warren up by his head from where he was retching in front of the door. "Got no time to waste on some SHIELD wannabes." He reached down and ripped his claws easily through the flesh on Warren's leg, just below his groin. A jet of bright red blood spurted from the wound almost instantly. Creed tossed him aside and stepped through the door. "Unless you want chicken for dinner, he should keep you busy."
With the final quip, he disappeared down the hall and into the stairwell.
Warren howled in immediate pain. His eyesight was still blurry, and even though he felt the excruciating pain, he had no idea what had happened to his leg or his team. He tried to sit up but found that he couldn't even move. "What the hell just happened?," he managed to cough out, reaching down to his leg. Squinting, he brought his hand to his face and his eyes immediately widened at the sight of the blood coating his hand. An artery must have been cut, he though as a wave of dizziness came over him. "At least I didn't shit myself," he mumbled, closing his eyes.
"Warren? Oh god," Sue staggered over to the fallen man falling to her knees next to him and reaching over gingerly to move his hands, her eyes wide at the sight of the pulsing blood. The blonde wrapped her hands around Warren's thigh, a force-field flickering to life over the wound, tendrils of invisible force pushing through the blood to secure the loose blood vessels severed by their assailant. "No, don't you do this to me!" she sobbed at him as she tried desperately to apply pressure to the wound.
"Shit..." Alex mumbled, trying to reorient himself. "God damn it." He rolled off Lorna, looking down at her, pure fear flashing through his eyes. "Lorna? Lorna, come on, can you move?" To the others he called, "We need to get the hell out of here. Now."
A small groan escaped her lips as pain pulsed everywhere in her body. "I can't see, I have glass in them." She was pretty sure glass wasn't just in her eye but in other parts of her limbs as well. "Ow..." She moved to sit up slowly. "Is there an exit? What is everyone's situation?" They did just have everyone's ass handed to them.
"Everyone's hurt," Alex mumbled, taking one of Lorna's arms and dragging it over his shoulder. "Come on, we need to get out of here." He helped her up, limping over to the others, keeping his injured arm close to his chest.
His vision still blurry from tears and lungs still burning from the lingering gas, Quentin slowly stood back up, using the wall as support, and made his way to where he saw vaguely Alex- and Lorna-shaped bodies. Each breath he took wracked his body with wheezing coughs, and he slammed his fist against the wall when he finally caught his breath again. "Fuck. Fuck. What the fuck was that . . . Am I dead?"
"No. You are alive. However, you may be in hell." Lorna turned her head towards the sounds of Quentin's voice. "Damnit." She tried to open one of her eyes but was welcomed with blinding tears. "I don't think we can exit out the front. We'll have to find another way out...metal....I can make us a ramp and fly us down. But I need eyes. Sue? Warren? Bobbi?"
"Over here, Warren's not doing so well" Came the reply from the focused blonde, "We need to get him out of here and to a hospital." She wasn't quite sure what they'd tell the staff there, but frankly she didn't care right now. She hooked an arm under Warren's shoulder dragging him towards Lorna, her other hand clamped firmly over Warren's thigh where the force-field she'd thrown into place had turned slick with blood but was still holding.
"I'll be your eyes babe," Alex mumbled, kissing the side of her head and looking around. "Quentin, bring Bobbi over here. Um...." He looked around, finding a slab of metal. "Hang on, don't move," he told Lorna, leaving her for a minute and going to try and drag the metal over. Nope, that wasn't working with one arm. "Shit. Quentin can you get this?"
Quentin was already halfway to the felled ex-cop when Alex asked for help with the metal. "Do you want me to help her or help you?" he snapped, as if it were unthinkable to do one and then the other. Simultaneously, even, which took him a couple of seconds to remember. He held out a hand to direct his telekinesis to the slab Alex was having problems with, while he wrapped his free arm under Bobbi's shoulders to try to pull her to her feet and drag her to the rest of the team.
"We need to keep our cool." Lorna said as stood there in the middle of the room, not even sure what her surroundings looked like. Holding her side and winced as she felt a small piece of glass lodged there. Feeling the metal nearby, she got on her knees and held out her bloody hand until she touched the metal. Right away she knew roughly how big it was and started to manipulate it to accommodate more people. "Put them on here."
Alex helped Lorna onto the metal first, grimacing as he examined their beat up little team. There wasn't much he could with one arm, unfortunately. Everyone who couldn't walk on their own needed to be carried.
Not exactly a rousing success.
"Alright. Sue. Quentin. Hold onto Bobbi and Warren, it might be a little bumpy. Alex...don't fall. Also I think someone should let Med Lab know they are getting some visitors." Lorna made the sides curve up so no one would be slipping and sliding. With the continuously glowing green aura, the metal lifted off and Lorna headed towards the balcony, following Alex's instruction so she didn't bump anything on their way to safety.
"Excuse me. I got this." Lorna whispered as she moved to the front of the door. Lorna held out her hand in front of the doorknob and a few seconds later the sounds of the door becoming unlocked broke the silence. Gentle she waved her hand as the door opened slowly as she peaked in. "And we are in..." Her voice trailed off as she entered the penthouse first.
Warren tiptoed behind her, peeking around before relaxing. "Just you, me, and all these weirdos," he responded, still glancing into the penthouse. "Bobbi, why don't you be a man and make sure the coast is clear?"
"Already on it," she replied, batons drawn and extended in each hand as she moved from room to room, surveying each to ensure they were empty. After Bobbi checked out each room she returned to her teammates. "All clear." she reported.
Sue followed behind Bobbi, she knew the ex-detective was better at scanning a room for evidence than her, it was part of her training after all. But it never hurt to have a second pair of eyes looking over the scene, especially ones with a different basis. Like now, the blonde's eyes spotted a wire trailing off under a pile of paper, a wire that looked a lot like...it was. Sue pulled a phone from under the paper triumphantly flicking the screen on and paging through the phone's memory. "Well that's a letdown," she commented, "I found a phone but it looks like it's just a burner."
Quentin remained near the door while the rest of the group did the detective thing. With their experience, they were more likely to find anything than he was, so he hung back and did the one thing he knew he was good for, and psychically scanned the penthouse. There was an air of focus and purpose and . . . something else he could not quite put his finger on. Hunger? Predation? Bloodlust. "Alex . . ."
Alex had slid past Quentin and was looking around, frowning. He stopped to look back at Quentin, noting the look on the young man's face. "What's up?"
There was a slow, tortured tearing sound on the other side of the door, as if someone had gouged it with a metal hook. It startled them all for a moment and then stopped, as abruptly as it had begun.
Warren looked around the room and sighed. "Don't all jump at once. " Cracking his knuckles, he strode forward. He put his ear to the door -- nothing. He slightly knocked, and still nothing. He even went so far as to touch the doorknob. Nothing.
Giving everyone a shrug, he nonchalantly opened the door, thinking to himself that this was a minor act that would build staff confidence in them.
This was immediately followed by burning, coughing, sneezing. Thank god he hadn't eaten or there'd be vomiting too.
Quentin howled in pain as he blindly ran to the other side of the room to try to escape the cloud of tear gas clawing its way into the room. He had been right next to Warren when he triggered the trap and got a full dose. His eyes burned, his mouth watered, his lungs cried for breaths he could not take.
Lorna quickly covered her mouth with her jacket and took a couple of steps back, her eyes were already burning from the smoke. "Shit. Someone knows we are here." They were so careful, how could someone know? Turning towards a balcony window to allow outside air in.
The man that dropped onto the balcony in front of her was stocky; thickly built on an average frame, making him looking bigger than he was. She only had the briefest moment to register him when he smashed his shoulder through the glass. The shards exploded in her face, tearing the skin and leaving her scrambling. Had they lodged in her eyes? Oh God! She couldn't feel glass with her powers and was suddenly blind.
"Down, frail." He said, pushing past her. His first target was his closest; a blonde kid with unfortunate hair. He moved quickly, abnormally quickly and lashed out, tearing the muscles of his target's arm, aiding the confusion.
Alex let out a yell of surprise and pain staggering back. He clutched his bleeding arm and tried desperately to aim and fire. But that wasn't something he perfected quite yet - instead the blast of energy took out a wall.
Lorna opened her eyes only to have the feeling of something lodged in the corner of it. DAMNIT! She was pissed. Hearing the sounds of the attacker behind her now, Lorna turned and forced her undamaged eye open to pinpoint where the man was. Concentrating on his natural irons running in his blood, which would knock his arm off course from taking another swipe at Alex.
Creed growled lowly at the interruption. He hadn't missed intentionally, which meant mutants. And now all bets were off. He grabbed Alex by the shirt front and tossed him back, slamming into Lorna and knocking them both through the broken patio glass to the balcony, rolling over the razor sharp shards. The feral pushed past Bobbi, knocking her to one side as he grabbed a hold of the drawer of the hutch by the door. He ripped it out and flipped it over, snatching a USB stick that had been taped there and transferring it to his pocket.
Sue's first reaction had been to wrap a force field around herself, it only took a little extra push for her to bend the light around herself fading away from view. She saw the man who had dropped into their midst charge for a drawer upending it to pull out the USB hidden there and pocketed it. The blonde to a slow step towards him, one and then another using all her skill to keep herself slow and quiet. After years of practice she knew that no-one could spot her now, he might be throwing the team around like ragdolls but if she could just get close to him and get the USB then it would all be worthwhile.
As her fingers slipped into his pocket, a clawed hand came down to clamp on her wrist.
"Not so fast, girlie." She had no idea how he sensed her, as he hit her in the head with a tremendous blow with the claws from a swipe with his other hand. Her forcefield fed back hard as the strike came close to break through her forcefield. With a snarl, feeling his claws slip off something smooth as opposed to flesh, he grabbed her by the opposite shoulder. He wrenched her up off of her feet and pivoted, smashing her into the wall. Sue's head and torso went through the drywall and woodwork with a terrific impact. The rest of her dropped into the room, piled stunned on the carpet.
When their attacker first pushed past Bobbi she spun around herself, thinking that her enhanced agility coupled with the fact she'd already drawn her batons guaranteed two direct hits. As she swung down, however, all she struck was empty air. Before she could prepare herself to mount another attack, Creed smashed her in the side of the head with a wicked backhand, knocking her out and backwards several feet into the air before she collapsed motionless on the ground.
The Astral Plane was bright red, reflecting the terrible anguish that this beast man was causing. Between that and the searing agony of the tear gas, Quentin could not formulate more than the simplest coherent thought, which was simply "Leave us alone!" Though months had passed since his last disastrous attempt at deterring an attacker with a psi-blast, he did not fare much better this time. To his credit, this time the buildup of psychic energy did not snap and maim him, it simply fizzled out, as Quentin could not muster the concentration to keep it together. Moaning in pain, he collapsed to the ground, clutching his head.
Creed stepped over Bobbi's unconscious body and yanked Warren up by his head from where he was retching in front of the door. "Got no time to waste on some SHIELD wannabes." He reached down and ripped his claws easily through the flesh on Warren's leg, just below his groin. A jet of bright red blood spurted from the wound almost instantly. Creed tossed him aside and stepped through the door. "Unless you want chicken for dinner, he should keep you busy."
With the final quip, he disappeared down the hall and into the stairwell.
Warren howled in immediate pain. His eyesight was still blurry, and even though he felt the excruciating pain, he had no idea what had happened to his leg or his team. He tried to sit up but found that he couldn't even move. "What the hell just happened?," he managed to cough out, reaching down to his leg. Squinting, he brought his hand to his face and his eyes immediately widened at the sight of the blood coating his hand. An artery must have been cut, he though as a wave of dizziness came over him. "At least I didn't shit myself," he mumbled, closing his eyes.
"Warren? Oh god," Sue staggered over to the fallen man falling to her knees next to him and reaching over gingerly to move his hands, her eyes wide at the sight of the pulsing blood. The blonde wrapped her hands around Warren's thigh, a force-field flickering to life over the wound, tendrils of invisible force pushing through the blood to secure the loose blood vessels severed by their assailant. "No, don't you do this to me!" she sobbed at him as she tried desperately to apply pressure to the wound.
"Shit..." Alex mumbled, trying to reorient himself. "God damn it." He rolled off Lorna, looking down at her, pure fear flashing through his eyes. "Lorna? Lorna, come on, can you move?" To the others he called, "We need to get the hell out of here. Now."
A small groan escaped her lips as pain pulsed everywhere in her body. "I can't see, I have glass in them." She was pretty sure glass wasn't just in her eye but in other parts of her limbs as well. "Ow..." She moved to sit up slowly. "Is there an exit? What is everyone's situation?" They did just have everyone's ass handed to them.
"Everyone's hurt," Alex mumbled, taking one of Lorna's arms and dragging it over his shoulder. "Come on, we need to get out of here." He helped her up, limping over to the others, keeping his injured arm close to his chest.
His vision still blurry from tears and lungs still burning from the lingering gas, Quentin slowly stood back up, using the wall as support, and made his way to where he saw vaguely Alex- and Lorna-shaped bodies. Each breath he took wracked his body with wheezing coughs, and he slammed his fist against the wall when he finally caught his breath again. "Fuck. Fuck. What the fuck was that . . . Am I dead?"
"No. You are alive. However, you may be in hell." Lorna turned her head towards the sounds of Quentin's voice. "Damnit." She tried to open one of her eyes but was welcomed with blinding tears. "I don't think we can exit out the front. We'll have to find another way out...metal....I can make us a ramp and fly us down. But I need eyes. Sue? Warren? Bobbi?"
"Over here, Warren's not doing so well" Came the reply from the focused blonde, "We need to get him out of here and to a hospital." She wasn't quite sure what they'd tell the staff there, but frankly she didn't care right now. She hooked an arm under Warren's shoulder dragging him towards Lorna, her other hand clamped firmly over Warren's thigh where the force-field she'd thrown into place had turned slick with blood but was still holding.
"I'll be your eyes babe," Alex mumbled, kissing the side of her head and looking around. "Quentin, bring Bobbi over here. Um...." He looked around, finding a slab of metal. "Hang on, don't move," he told Lorna, leaving her for a minute and going to try and drag the metal over. Nope, that wasn't working with one arm. "Shit. Quentin can you get this?"
Quentin was already halfway to the felled ex-cop when Alex asked for help with the metal. "Do you want me to help her or help you?" he snapped, as if it were unthinkable to do one and then the other. Simultaneously, even, which took him a couple of seconds to remember. He held out a hand to direct his telekinesis to the slab Alex was having problems with, while he wrapped his free arm under Bobbi's shoulders to try to pull her to her feet and drag her to the rest of the team.
"We need to keep our cool." Lorna said as stood there in the middle of the room, not even sure what her surroundings looked like. Holding her side and winced as she felt a small piece of glass lodged there. Feeling the metal nearby, she got on her knees and held out her bloody hand until she touched the metal. Right away she knew roughly how big it was and started to manipulate it to accommodate more people. "Put them on here."
Alex helped Lorna onto the metal first, grimacing as he examined their beat up little team. There wasn't much he could with one arm, unfortunately. Everyone who couldn't walk on their own needed to be carried.
Not exactly a rousing success.
"Alright. Sue. Quentin. Hold onto Bobbi and Warren, it might be a little bumpy. Alex...don't fall. Also I think someone should let Med Lab know they are getting some visitors." Lorna made the sides curve up so no one would be slipping and sliding. With the continuously glowing green aura, the metal lifted off and Lorna headed towards the balcony, following Alex's instruction so she didn't bump anything on their way to safety.
