Nimrod

[x-cyclops.livejournal.com]

The Blackbird arrives in Hungary and is greeted by Istvan Barath, the Minister of Mutant Affairs and an old friend of Charles. He has some less-than-good news for Scott and Ororo about how the police are handling their cornered serial killer.


They had been directed to land the Blackbird at a military airfield just outside the city, and Scott wasn't surprised to see a couple of police vans waiting. Minister Barath had promised to look after transportation to the incident site, and given how substantially aggravated he'd been sounding when Charles had been speaking to him - hurray for speaker phones - Scott hadn't doubted he'd come through.

Scott gave a couple of quick orders to Sam, then smiled briefly at Ororo. "Let our XOs get everyone moving and go greet the man?" he asked, inclining his head in the direct of the clearly armored SUV and the familiar figure in a suit, flanked by a couple of nervous-looking security personnel.

Ororo simply nodded slightly, looking back - and spotting Kurt, just waved her hand at him, tilting her head to the side. A nod of confirmation was all she needed, though it was twinned with a whisper through her comm a few moments later, as she turned to face Scott. "Well. At least in coming here, whether he realizes it or not, he's actually as safe as can be for the moment..." She trailed off, a slightly sympathetic look piercing through in her eyes as she looked at the minister's security personel.

"Ororo. Scott." Istvan Barath greeted them as they approached, strain and worry both obvious on his handsome face. "Transportation," he said, gesturing at the police vans. "As promised, although you truly don't want to know what I had to do to acquire them. We have a rather significant problem."

Scott frowned. "Something new since we checked in last?"

Frustration blazed in the older man's eyes. "An hour ago, I was very tempted to physically assault our city's police commissioner. They have tracked Veres down to one apartment building in a complex on the west side of the city. Good news, I thought, but the irresponsible faszfej has ordered the building sealed off. With the tenants still inside."

Ororo stared at him, stunned. "What? Why in the world would he do that?" Her normally even voice rose at that, though it didn't carry too far away, Ororo checking herself in mid sentence to keep the volume down. A slight breeze seemed to waft about them for a moment, echoing her words, whirling about their feet before falling quiet.

"If I had to guess, I would say that it is because he is a coward," Barath growled, an acid edge entering his voice as he went on. "He's a mutant himself. Several days ago I overheard him at a meeting demanding extra security for himself, since Veres seems to be targetting our most prominent mutant citizens..."

One of the security detail muttered something in Hungarian, and Barath glared at him. "Let him come," he snapped. "We've had this discussion before, Markos! I have not spent twenty years doing the work I have to hide from a mentally disturbed man now." Visibly composing himself, he turned back to Ororo and Scott. "The president and the minister of civil defense are out of the country," he said, "and I can't overrule him. The best I can do is get your people to the site quickly and attempt to put pressure on the officers in charge. Hopefully they will see sense."

Thin lipped, Ororo nodded, taking a slow breath though there was nothing calming about it. That made sense, in an ironic sort of way, and explained a lot. If the people out of the country were anything even close to this particular man, she suspected current actions might not go over so well. "I can't believe all of the police force would go along with this," she sighed, mostly to herself. "Scott? The faster we get there..."

Scott nodded sharply. ~Cannonball, Nightcrawler... get everyone in the vans,~ he subvocalized, then looked back at Barath. "We'll ride with you, if you've got room."

"I was hoping you'd say that," Barath said, turning as one of the security detail opened the door of the SUV. "I have some additional details that may be helpful."


At the apartment building where Veres/Nimrod has been cornered, the X-Men begin to search as the police finally begin to evacuate the tenants. Kurt perhaps wishes for an image inducer.


His powers were invaluable in a situation like this, Kurt decided. It saved time, when he could just 'port back out into the corridor each time, after checking an apartment. The last set of tenants had been a family, who'd looked terrified at his appearance, to his resignation. Though the evacuation was beginning, it had not yet reached this floor. The police, far from making up for their earlier decision to seal the tenants in for fear of letting Nimrod escape by proceeding with haste now that someone had apparently seen sense, were being extremely cautious, taking out the civilians in small groups and checking them meticulously.

#Cable to Nightcrawler. Could you try to stop scaring the tenants quite that badly?# There was a definite edge of strain in Nathan's mental 'voice'. #Trying to scan for this bastard and the flare-ups of panicked thoughts are not helping...#

#How do you suggest I avoid scaring them?#, Kurt responded, more irritably than usual. #Without an inducer, it seems inevitable. I am knocking, since I cannot port in blind.#

#I'd give you 'I am not a demon' in Hungarian but it's one of those languages I don't speak at all.# Nathan's presence faded out a little, then back in, oddly like a radio signal.

#Romany is not so far off, I suppose. I could try that and German.# He knocked on the door of another apartment, trying to appear unthreatening, and tried the phrase in both languages when it was opened. The old woman standing there crossed herself at him.

#Scarlet Witch is two floors below you. Not having any luck either. And I can not find this bastard at all. There have still got to be hundreds of people in the building and most of them are terrified.#

Kurt moved past the old woman gently, hating to see her so scared of him, but needing to check for the killer. He was tense, focused on his task, not letting himself be afraid. #I wish there was a quicker way to do this.#

#Police have the building surrounded. If he tries to make a run for it through a window or something, either they'll get him or I will.#

#That is good to know. But I would rather find him, as soon as possible.#

#You and me both. Cable out.# Nathan's presence faded back out, although enough remained to tell Kurt that he was still connected to the mindnet. #Yell if you need backup,# came the reminder, almost too faint to 'hear'.

Kurt sent a wordless affirmative, leaving the old woman's apartment to carry on to the end of the row, greeted by reactions ranging from fear to sullenness and even one or two of relief. Finally, he finished checking the last apartment, and emerged to contact Scott, via Nathan. #This floor is clear.#

#Proceed down one, Nightcrawler,# came Scott's reply. #Stay in touch.#

Kurt obeyed, continuing down the stairs and on his patrol. A few minutes passed, enough time to check one apartment and move on to knock at the next.

The faint, yet steady sense of Nathan's presence suddenly exploded. Pain and shock and a sudden void as the mindnet abruptly flew apart.

Kurt staggered, and all but collapsed against the wall. #Nathan?#

Nothing. And nothing from his teammates for an alarming sequence of seconds until Scott's voice finally came over the coms, interrupted by static. ~Cable's out - Iceman's manning the coms. Attack came from the ninth floor, he says... Scarlet Witch, you're closest. Get to the stairs on the west side, block them off...~ The rest of Scott's orders were unintelligible.

Kurt pushed himself up off the wall, focused again, and ran to join Wanda and do what needed doing.


On another floor, Wanda finds herself in perfect position to react when Veres finally reveals himself. Not all the tenants on that floor have been evacuated, and Wanda has to resort to some risky tactics to protect the innocent.


#Scarlet Witch, report,# Scott's voice came across the telepathic switchboard. #Anything on that side of the eighth floor?#

Peering around another door as she crept through the hallways, Wanda waved a stricken looking old man back into his apartment. #Nothing so far but I just got up here, so he might be at the end or something. I hope.# Not as many tenants up here. Coming up from the seventh floor, she had passed police officers in tactical gear, leading a group of terrified civilians down to ground level.

#Just be careful.# Even with his voice being telepathically transmitted by Nathan across the mind-net, the tension Scott was feeling was obvious. #Yell for backup if you need it.#

#I have no intentions of doing otherwise,# she said, mental voice trying to be as soothing as possible. Keeping as low as possible, Wanda checked out corridors and empty apartments efficiently, moving onto the next. Where WAS he?

Scott's voice was gone, leaving only the faint sense of Nathan's presence, maintaining the telepathic switchboard. Wanda was moving to the next apartment when, with no warning, that faint, steadying presence suddenly exploded in an instant of shock and pain. And then vanished.

"Ah!" It felt as if someone has snapped a thousand rubber bands at her...in her mind. #CABLE?!# No response, what on earth had happened?

There was a burst of static over the coms - the coms they hadn't been using because the Soviet-era architecture of the building was producing all kinds of interference for some reason. ~Cable's out... manning the coms,~ Scott's voice came, interrupted by static. ~Attack came... the ninth floor, he said... Scarlet Witch... stairs... block...~

Turning, Wanda bolted out of the emptied apartment and headed down the hallway, power flickering here and there, just in case. Less than five feet from the stairs, she skidded to a halt when she heard noises in the stairwell. Someone running and was about to leave from the sounds of it.

Less than a second was what it took for her vision to see past the dimly corridor and into the strings that connected everything. There. That one, glowing softly red. Reaching out, she tweaked it just so.

And in the stair well, as a man running away stepped down, the railing gave way under his hand, sending him tumbling into the hallway with Wanda.

Nimrod recovered quickly, the fall barely affecting him. He came back to his feet and launched himself at Wanda, his fist burying itself to the wrist in the wall beside her head as she dodged. A woman, he thought; one of the foreign hunters was a woman. Amusing.

God, he was fast and she was barely able to recover, sending a vicious kick to his stomach that he dodged just as easily. 'Back, get back, don't let him touch you.' Snarling in what little Hungarian she knew, Wanda played with the strings quickly as he missed her again and buried his arm in the wall--again but this time lodging it there for just a second as she danced away from him. She needed to get him out of here.

His hand was caught. What was this woman doing? Nimrod flung himself against the wall, pushing through it as if it were made of paper. In the apartment on the other side, a screaming woman darted towards a toddler sitting peacefully on the floor - and then stopped as Nimrod moved towards her. Her hands flew to her mouth in horror. Nimrod looked at her, and then at the child. Not prey, he thought, but perhaps, distraction...

"~NO~!" Wanda yelled as he started for the child. She was too far behind, she'd never reach the now crying child or the screaming mother in time. Throwing out her arms as her world melted into strings and shades of red again, she pushed, tapping into the well...yes, that was it. Down. He had to go down.

As Nimrod stepped towards the child, the spot that the woman had complained about for years shuddered under his weight. It had been cracked and giving away but the landlord, lacking money for repairs of that nature and simply not caring, had let it grow worse.

But it wouldn't give just under his weight and Wanda was moving again, slamming into his back as the floor suddenly gave way, sending him tumbling to the next apartment--empty, she thought, remember the location--and her desperately reaching for something to hold onto as she fell.

The woman grabbed her child and got him out of the way, and then lunged forward, grabbing at Wanda's arms, just as Wanda was losing her grip on the broken edge of the floor. "~Hold on!~" she gasped out in Hungarian, struggling for purchase as she tried to pull Wanda back up to safety.

After a few rather nerve wracking seconds--at least on Wanda's end--she finally lay gasping on the floor. 'Well, that could have ended in tears,' she thought dryly, getting up to peer over the edge of the hole in the poor woman's apartment. No sign of Nimrod.

~Scarlet Witch to team. On the seventh floor and moving. I repeat on the seventh floor and moving, probably heading east.~

Turning, she saw the woman scoop her son back up in her arms and she smiled at her. "~Thank you,~" Wanda said softly, knowing that the fall could have been potentially dangerous, especially considering that Nimrod would not have been pleased with her.

"~Thank you,~" the woman said shakily, her arms tightening around her son as she gave Wanda a somewhat tremulous smile.

The two women, through Wanda's broken Hungarian and the woman's gestures, eventually made their way out of the apartment, skirting the hole. Seeing her safely into the hands of another pair of police officers gathering more evacuees, Wanda then heard Scott ordering them to start helping with the evacuation of these floors. Forcing herself to relax as the adrenaline wore off, she headed to Storm's position to help coordinate.


So what did happen to knock out the X-Men's telepathic switchboard? Also, Bobby and Shiro, along as trainee observers, get a chance to step in and perform under pressure.


Fuck. This was nearly impossible. Standing at the edge of the roof, staring hard at the building across the way, Nathan held onto the minds of his teammates, transferring their words to each other across the mindnet even as he struggled to find a single mind that should stand out, even in the midst of so many others. Eight hundred tenants in the immediate vicinity, even if a good portion of them were being evacuated as he watched, and most of them were terrified. To find a single mind, even a schizophrenic one?

Nimrod ripped through the interior wall into another dark apartment, this one with a decadent floor-to-ceiling window looking out over the city. It was a full moon tonight - a hunter's moon. As he looked out the window, his enhanced senses caught a blackness where no blackness should be. Ah. One of the foreign worms, come to ensnare the hunter in their nets. They couldn't stop the hunt. Not now, not ever. Smiling thinly, he moved over to pick up a solid oaken coatrack. A nice piece of furniture, but he still had to take care not to crush it into toothpicks in his grip.

Nathan was only peripherally aware of Bobby and Shiro on the roof with him, not to mention the two snipers from the Hungarian version of the SWAT team. The two trainees were helping spot, and the snipers... well, he knew what the snipers were there to do, if it came down to that. He didn't dwell much on it. All but a fraction of his attention was locked on the mindnet or taken up by his scanning efforts. The level of concentration needed on top of all this mental noise was giving him a screaming headache. But he needed to find the bastard, or the rest of the team would be in there all night...

Nimrod hefted the coatrack, testing its weight and balance. A poor weapon, but it amused him to crush these foreign dogs with good Soviet furniture. He winced, then, as his enhanced vision swam. Flickering images appeared at the corners of his vision, visions of impossible things, unreal things. He didn't have time for this right now, and an effort of will brought him back to this place, to this reality. Nimrod the Hunter was on the prowl. Face expressionless, he looked over to the distant spot of blackness, and with nearly perfect form hurled the coatrack through the open window and at the spot of blackness. Then he darted through the apartment's front door to find another position.

Nimrod was on the hunt again.

Nathan let his eyes slide half-closed. Focus. Think past the increasing pain, filter through the noise. Pop the evil blue pills after the job was done. He could almost feel himself sinking into a partial meditative state, and the individual minds in the building in front of him started to become clearer. That's it... He started to sort through them, one at a time, methodically.

Until something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. No fucking way. he thought to himself, and just had enough time to attempt to erect a partial force-bubble around himself before the wooden coatrack slammed into his chest at near-ballistic speeds.

Just an attempt.

The impact drove the air from his lungs instantly, and sent him crashing through the maintenance shed behind him, old, rotted wood giving way. He was unconscious before he toppled over the edge of the roof.

All the honor and responsibility and general goodness that Shiro felt at being asked to join this mission, even as just an observer, was offset by his leather uniform. It chafed. He was going to get very well acquainted with Gold Bond upon his return to Westchester. Adjusting his pants yet again, Shiro didn't see the coat rack flying through the air from the building they were watching, aimed square at Dayspring's chest.

But he snapped back to reality when it hit. Shiro's first instinct was to fly out and find the guy who attacked them. It was neatly squashed when he realized that Dayspring had been hit with so much force that he was thrown off the roof.

They were on top of a twenty-story high building.

Instinct number two sent Shiro running across the roof to the other side, jumping off the end as neatly as an Olympic diver. Muttering curses, he superheated the air behind him, matching and exceeding the speed of Dayspring's descent. It wasn't a neat catch, though, as Dayspring weighed a lot more than Shiro had thought, so he faltered, nearly dropping the man again.

He swore again, and then pushed himself upwards. He struggled to get back up, hauling two hundred pounds of dead weight. Dumping Dayspring not-so-ceremoniously down on the rooftop once he got up there, Shiro landed and fell to his knees, panting.

"What the hell was that?" he asked nobody in particular as one of the Hungarian men rushed over to take a look at the fallen X-Man.

Bobby wasn't sure where to look. All hell broke loose on the rooftop, all at once. Something big flew through the air from a window across the street, Nathan went over the edge of the building, Shiro leapt after him, and Scott was yelling over the coms. Well, as there was nothing he could really do to help Nathan, Bobby switched the mic open on his com and started shouting over the static, as he ran toward the edge of the building--and then stopped. Shiro and Nathan were reappearing even as Bobby told Scott "N--Cable was hit by a ballistic, uh..." He glanced over, and couldn't see anything more than a pile of debris from the shed's demise. "Something. Unidentified ballistic. It sent him off the edge of the roof! Kamikaze has retrieved him, and they're checking--" He winced as a loud crackle of static broke over the connection. "They're checking for injuries!" he finished, as loudly as he could, glancing at Nathan worriedly on his way to Shiro's side. "You okay?"

Before Shiro could answer, the Hungarian sniper looked up at both him and Bobby, frowning. "He's breathing," he said, his English only lightly accented. "Looks like his vest caught most of the impact. I'll get a medic up here to look at him." He placed a hand to his headset, muttering something in Hungarian before he moved back to his post.

~Iceman... switchboard is DOWN and coms are fritzing,~ Scott's voice came over the coms, interrupted by static and sounding every bit as agitated. "~... spot for us, or... eyes outside the building...~

"Yeah, we got that," Shiro replied sarcastically into his com. "Repeat: Cable was attacked. He's out. He's being checked for injuries as we speak." Getting back to his feet, Shiro turned to Bobby. "Now what?"

"Now we do as the CO ordered," Bobby snapped at him, eyes moving to the apartments across from them, scanning it as he dropped to a half-crouch and headed toward the edge of the building facing them. "Ballistic appears to have originated from..." He counted floors rapidly. "Window, ninth floor, west side." He frowned, searching for any sign of movement in the vicinity. "No sign of Veres, or any large weaponry..." And it would have to have been a small cannon, to send something as big as what he'd seen that fast.

Shiro joined Bobby, leaving unspoken the retort he so desperately wanted to utter. "How much do we know of this psychopath's powers? 'Physical endowments' does not explain very much. I do not suppose that includes telekinesis." He blinked, pondering. "You do not suppose that he threw that at Cable, do you?"

"God, I hope not," Bobby muttered. They were dealing with a whole new level of suck if he was that 'endowed'. Still, it was best to say something. "Advise, Cyclops. Veres may have thrown the ballistic by hand. No other explanation is visible." He scanned the building desperately, wishing he had enhanced something. The medic arrived noisily behind him, and without turning to Shiro, he jerked his head in that direction and said, "Kamikaze, tell the medic to keep us posted on Cable's status."

In any other situation, Shiro would have told off Bobby right there. But Drake had seniority and this was no time to argue. Keeping silent yet another retort, Shiro relayed the message to the medic, taking a quick look at Dayspring before rejoining his teammate. "Cable's injuries do not appear to be serious, at least not physically. He was shocked out of a telepathic state, so his mind might be down while his body is up. Do you see anything yet?"

"Not a damn thing. You?" There was movement in a window suddenly, and Bobby tensed--then realized it was a cat. He sighed and relaxed again, moving on with the visual scan.

"Nothing," replied Shiro slowly, eyes fixed ahead. "He knows that we are out here. I do not expect to see him near the windows any time soon. Why did we not bring along a backup telepath?"

Bobby slowly turned his head to look at Shiro. He would not laugh. He would not laugh. He 'coughed' softly and shrugged, looking back to the windows. "If he does appear, I want to be able to tell Cyclops. Keep looking."

Shiro smirked at Bobby, but kept his attention on the matter at hand. Nothing. Shiro tried to look harder, like he was trying to force manifestation of super-sight, but he still couldn't see anything. He remained silent, and ignored the sounds of the medic shuffling to help Dayspring, the snipers beside them getting antsy, the usual noises of an Eastern European city, and his own heart, beating hard and anxiously in his chest.

Something smashed through the wall of the building on the seventh floor. It was, quite discernibly, a man - a man who began to climb up the wall to the next floor up. An unmistakable crimson flash of energy suddenly exploded around the climbing figure, but the man held on, swinging himself over to an undamaged portion of wall and continuing to climb.

~Iceman... see him?~ Scott's voice crackled over the coms.

It'd be hard not to see the man climbing the wall, punching holes as he went. "Eighth floor, east side...between the third and fourth window in!" he replied promptly, his stomach sinking. He didn't like the look of this. "He just went back inside, Cyclops." He leaned forward, as if another few inches would make any difference in visibility.

There was something unintelligible from Cyclops, then a burst of static followed by dead air. Before Bobby or Shiro could react, the medic was calling out to them, and they turned to see Nathan stirring, clearly still stunned even though his eyes were opening.

Nathan was, to put it mildly, not precisely sure where he was at the moment, let alone what had happened. Or really, much of anything except the fact that his chest hurt like hell and it was damnably hard to breathe.

A swear escaped Shiro's lips. He was torn. He could either fly closer to the other building and try to get a closer look at what was going on, or he could help the medics with Dayspring and get him up to speed on what had happened.

"God dammit," he said finally, leaving Bobby's side and dashing over to Dayspring. As much as he'd like to get more involved, he knew that such actions were prohibited for him. And anyway, if Dayspring could get himself back together, he could do more for the X-Men in the building than Shiro could. "How many fingers am I holding up, Cable?"

Bobby edged closer to Nathan, although he'd be damned if he was leaving the building completely unwatched. He glanced over at Nathan, then looked back at the building, dividing his attention between the hole he'd watched Veres disappear into and Nathan's answer to Shiro.

Nathan blinked up at... Shiro, right. Only Shiro would be waving a hand in his face. He opened his mouth to answer, but that involved taking a deep breath, or trying to, and he abruptly discovered that yes, it was possible to cough and groan at the same time.

There were periodic bursts of static over the coms, until Scott's voice came through again clearly, shouting for back-up. Nathan, hearing the voices dimly in his ear, reached out, only half-aware of what he was doing, and found both Haroun and Scott, directing the former to the latter.

#Help Cyclops!#

The message over the coms pulled Shiro's attention away from Dayspring, his head snapping around so he could see the other building. "What is goi . . ." He was interrupted by the sight of Jetstream flying out the hole in the wall and up through a window on a
higher floor. "Oh."


Final confrontation-time. Things do not go well for Scott, who's the first to find Veres after he gets away from Wanda, but with the addition of Haroun and Kylun to the equation, the balance shifts. Still, Veres doesn't go down easily.


The fool, the one with the thing on his face, was walking right into Nimrod's ambush. Which as it should be for he was Nimrod and his prey never escaped. Fighting off the spike of dizziness, he reached into the wall to pull out a nice fist-sized chunk of masronry. And just as the black-clad agent of terror turned the corner, he let it fly with all that his perfect body could give him.

Scott, covering the east side of the now-empty seventh floor, heard a noise and spun towards it, hand coming up to his visor. Before he could complete the motion, something slammed hard into his shoulder, extending the spin in a way he hadn't intended as he stumbled back against the wall, his vision going briefly dark around the edges from the pain of impact, even through his leathers.

The visor-clad man was good prey, Nimrod noted with amusement. He managed to turn a killing blow into an injuring one. Those costumes must also double as body-armor. Smiling, he grabbed the makeshift spear he'd created from a closet's bar and moved in for the kill.

His one arm was numb from the shoulder down, and he'd had to catch himself with the other. Scott was, therefore, not really in a position to reach for his visor again as someone - Veres, had to be - blurred at him out of the darkened hallway with unbelievable speed. He dodged desperately, making a grab at the spear as the man jabbed at him with it.

Nimrod sunk the makeshift spear halfway into the wall with his attempt to skewer the black-clad invader. Letting it go, he snapped a fast elbow into the other man's ribcage, underneath the arms that were grabbing ineffectually for Nimrod's spear.

Scott took the hit - not much option on that, and managed not to double over. Quite. He got his hand up to his visor and a short blast off. It caught Veres in the upper chest, driving him a few steps back.

Nimrod shook off the effects of the blast, and then grinned his grim hunter's smile at the interloper. So he had power - that was good. Made the hunt, and the kill far more interesting. But at the end, only Nimrod would remain. He dove off to the side, through the wall between the living room and the nearest bedroom of the apartment they happened to be in.

~Floor seven,~ Scott subvocalized desperately, pushing himself off the wall and following. Please let that get through. ~East side of the building, I could use some help here!~

Nimrod ripped another chunk of masonry from the wall, and threw it where he heard the interloper's breathing and heartbeat. Then, as they were close to an outside wall, he tore through the wall and climbed through and began to climb, using superior strength to gouge himself hand and toe-holds in the concrete and brick.

Something smashed into the wall above his head as Scott ducked, seeing it coming this time. He saw Veres' feet disappearing through a hole in the outer wall and gritted his teeth, angling his next optic blast just so.

The only thing that saved Nimrod from a seven-story fall to the street below was the
perfection of his body. He clung to the outer wall quite literally by two fingertips, the rest of his holds blown out from the inside by the interloper. He'd been foolish and underestimated him, he noted. A hunter did not do such things! Swinging over to an undamaged section of wall, he climbed quickly, punching his way into the apartment one suite over and one floor up.

Scott stopped, eyes widening behind his visor as he did not see a body fall. ~Iceman, do you see him?~ he snapped and got back a reply that made him go ashen. ~Eighth floor, right above my position!~ he snapped out, whirling and running for the stairs.

Scott took the stairs two at a time, heading for the apartment that corresponded to where he thought Veres had re-entered the building. The door was locked and he kicked it down. Hole in the wall, he thought, his head moving back and forth as he scanned the apartment. No sign of Veres, though. Damn it!

Nimrod smiled as he held the heavy pan in his right hand. The one who hunted him, the visored one - he knew something of hunting, but not enough. He heard him enter the apartment where he had come back into the building, but Nimrod was, of course, no longer there. Instead, he was three doors down, in the apartment's kitchen. In his other hand he held a loosely-coiled extension cord. Electrical cords made wonderful weapons.

Where the hell was everyone? Scott came back out into the hall, heading down towards the other side of the building. ~Report,~ he subvocalized sharply. But all he was getting was static. Scott gritted his teeth and started to check the adjoining apartments, one by one.

Ah, the hunter approached! Nimrod gripped his pot full of boiling water tightly, and as soon as the door opened, he flung its contents at whoever entered.

Scott wasn't in the doorway when the water came through, having a certain amount of common sense when it came to checking dark apartments for psychopathic serial killers. Judging the angle in an instantaneous, barely conscious calculation, he shifted just enough to get a shot through the door.

Nimrod laughed as the blast shot through the doorway. His speed saved him, as it usually did, ducking under the blast entirely. He could hear where his prey stood, smell the stink of exertion, excitement, and fear upon him. He knew just where to strike. Reaching through the wall between them, Nimrod grabbed at Cyclops.

Scott reached up instinctively for his visor again but there was a hand grabbing the front of his leathers, yanking him forward. He managed to hit the wall shoulder-first, rather than head-first. It wasn't all that much improvement, because the hand was pulling him through the wall, as if it was made of tissue paper. Which it very decidedly wasn't.

Nimrod pulled the other man through the wreckage of the wall, and smiled at him before spinning on his perfect heel to toss the man into the kitchen cabinetry. He would enjoy breaking this one slowly.

Scott slammed into the cabinets, wood shattering under his weight. Stunned, he crumpled to the floor, struggling to catch his breath. His vision was going dark at the edges, but he saw a shape moving towards him. Managing to get a hand up to his visor again, he tried to blast at it - and missed.

The visored man was really starting to annoy the mighty Nimrod. So instead of advancing again to get blasted, he spun his electrical cord to get angular momentum going, and then lashed out to try to loop it around the other man's throat.

Scott got an arm in the way, sensing more than seeing the cord. ~Backup!~ he managed to subvocalize, grabbing at the cupboards behind him and trying to haul himself back to his feet, his injured shoulder screaming in protest at him.

Backup arrived through the window, as Jetstream rocketed in and bodychecked Nimrod before he could close the distance and begin strangling Cyclops for good. Unfortunately, for Haroun, he miscalculated how hard to come in to actually budge Nimrod, and thus was only successful in knocking him against the kitchen wall, as opposed to through it.

Scott got the rest of his way to his feet, trying to see a clear shot. But Haroun was tangled up with Veres, and if he let off a blast he'd get them both. Not that he wasn't thinking at this point that it might be a decent trade-off.

Haroun was having a slight bit of trouble with Veres. Veres had got his feet underneath him, and was actually fighting Haroun's attempt to put him through the wall. Until, out of nowhere, Veres shifted his weight, threw it to one side suddenly, and twisted to give Haroun a push in the direction that he was headed anyway.

Which, in this case, was face-first into the wall.

It was an opening. Scott took it, the blast catching the man full in the chest as Veres whirled towards him. Go DOWN, damn it! He could see Haroun stirring, but slowly.

Nimrod had lost his cord, lost his hot water, and his prospects were looking bad indeed. Retreat, regroup, and come at this again another way. And this time, there would be no underestimation, no quarter asked or given. He ducked through the opening he'd ripped in the wall by grabbing at Cyclops and was gone in a flash.

"Fuck!" Scott staggered over to Haroun, reaching down with the good hand to haul the other man to his feet. Adrenalin was a marvelous thing. "Come on, we can't lose him again. Son of a bitch is too damned good with the ambushes," he wheezed.

Haroun was still watching the tweety birds do landing approaches onto aircraft carriers in foul weather when Scott reached through their formation and yanked him to his feet. His entire face was bruised, and by the looks of things he'd lost at least two teeth. "Right." Haroun said, trying to pull it together.

~If anyone's reading me, help the police clear out the rest of the civilians from floors six through ten,~ Scott snapped out over the coms as he pulled Haroun towards the door. ~Get them downstairs at least, even if the police won't let them out yet...~

Haroun shook his head, trying to disrupt the Tweeties that were getting in the way of him fire-bombing Dresden. "Damn, he hits hard." he grumbled as he blinked hard to try to clear his head.

"No shit." ~Someone... Colossus, Kylun, get up here and back us up!~ Okay, there was something a little inconsistent about the two orders, but his head was spinning and he'd be damned if he could sort it out just now.

For some reason, Haroun was tasting copper with every breath he took. The reason for that, once the Tweeties retreated back to Okinawa, became apparent. "Fucker knocked out my teeth!" Haroun said, exploring his mouth with one glove-clad finger. "Sonofabitch!"

"Charge him for the dentist bill later." He was getting a couple of acknowledgements back, team members helping with the evac. Nothing from Piotr or Kylun yet, though.

"I plan to. Alison is going to kill me, you know this, right?" he said with a shake of his head and a disgusting spit into the carpet of the hallway. "All right. Let's go find this clown and take him out before he kills someone." ~Namely, us.~

Scott staggered a little as they headed out into the hall, then made the mistake of trying to catch himself with the bad arm. "Fuck," he muttered without thinking. "Can't split up. Which way, though..." There was a scream from down the hall. "Okay. That way."

"On it. I'll take point." he said, and then proceeded to walk very carefully down the hallway, ready for anything.

Cyclops's evacuation order had come through loud and clear, but whatever he had said next had been disrupted by a feedback squeal so jarring that Kylun had temporarily muted his com. He would try it again from a different position, but now was no time to be distracted, not when the order he had heard put him squarely in the middle of their quarry's territory. When the scream rang out from a few rooms over, he listened carefully--but it was followed only by the slam of a door and quick, fading footsteps, not another scream. He would still be hunting, then, their enemy.

Kylun hated this building. Squat, cramped, crumbling, dreary--it was everything he disliked about the modern world, and he would never in a century have picked it for a battlefield. But whether in a building or on a mountaintop, an insane mutant or a demon-ridden lynx, the rules for hunting predators did not change.

Find cover, but do not hinder your own ability to move. Mask your scent, if you can. There was a pile of garbage in one corner, soiled cloth and torn paper and broken bottles and other, less savory waste, its acrid smell pricking his nostrils. He burrowed underneath, settling into a poised crouch and rearranging the garbage over him, then froze in place, breathing shallowly, even slowing his heartbeat.

Control your ground. There were only two existing entrances to this room; a roll to his left would send him past the first, low enough to hamstring, and a quick forward spring would take him through the second, chest-high, his swords sweeping up to blind.

Surprise is your ally, but it is your quarry's as well. Never forget that while you hunt, you are also hunted. A floorboard sighed just outside the room, the sound a big man might make, prowling through a rickety old building.

Nimrod moved silently down the hallway, but cursed mentally as one of the old floorboards squeaked under his tread. Instead of making the rookie mistake of freezing, instead he pushed off with his good foot, clinging to the ceiling by sure brute force. It was an extremely bad position to be in as far as an ambush went, as his arms and legs were occupied in holding him in position.

It did, however, give him the advantage of avoiding the rotting floorboards and their incriminating noise. And it gave him a vantage point with which to study his surroundings. With his ears, he listened. With his nose, he smelled. With his skin, he felt. With his eyes, he concentrated and slowly shifted his vision into the near infrared. The lights were cold, which helped. There were a myriad of everyday heat sources - pilot lights, refridgerators, stereos, computers. Rats, in some places. But nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that alerted the senses of the Hunter. Still, he felt uneasy, wary. Scuttling forward across the ceiling, he went for a full five meters before lowering himself to the floor.

Kylun watched from beneath the trash, holding his breath easily, body and mind in a state of perfect calm, and made mental notes: the quarry was stronger than he was, to be able to hold himself to the ceiling like that. The way he stood and moved spoke of speed and agility--and his obvious unease, when Kylun knew very well that his presence was as undetectable as he could manage, spoke to the instincts and senses of a true predator.

So be it. Kylun himself was not entirely without such things; and he had skill, and at least a split-second of surprise, and he needed only to hold until reinforcements arrived.

There-- It was only an instant, as Nimrod unwittingly shifted his weight toward Kylun's hiding place, turned his head toward the opposite door, but it was an instant in which he was ready for an attack from some other direction, and that was enough. Kylun launched himself from under the garbage, a silent blur low to the floor, aiming a powerful stroke at Nimrod's achilles tendon.

Nimrod felt the rush of air a split-second before Kylun's sword could take his foot off at the ankle. He jumped into the air to avoid the strike, but his angle was bad and this new prey was fast and he couldn't avoid taking a glancing cut across his support leg before he leapt into the air. Were it not for his perfect physiology, he would be down a foot right now, he suspected.

The new prey's lunge was quick and deadly, but left him dangerously overbalanced. A situation Nimrod was going to take lethal advantage of, were it not for the pressure slamming into place behind his eyes, his vision swimming from near-infrared to visible light and back again. Instead of the nicely lethal axe kick to the back of the new prey's skull, he clumsily managed a hard blow between the shoulder blades instead.

Kylun's breath whooshed out as he was flattened into the floor by the misaimed kick; he rolled hard to the side as soon as the pressure eased, then turned a backward somersault into a powerful lunge, his swords a steel whirlwind as he pressed his attack.

Scott saw Veres and Kylun in the same instant that Haroun did. He left Haroun to engage as he chose and shifted sideways, sizing up and taking the shot all in a split-second as Kylun was briefly driven backwards, giving him an opening. Veres reeled as the optic blast hit him - but didn't go down. Damn it!

Haroun roared into action, flicking from a walking pace to a hundred miles an hour in a matter of seconds. Just before the point of impact, he flipped along his axis to use one of his artificial legs to slam a foot into Veres's chest, blending into Kylun's attack routine and knocking the Hungarian mutant backwards and embedding him into the wall. Keeping a close eye on him, Haroun circled warily towards Kylun. "Sorry we're late." he quipped.

Nimrod, on the other hand, was furious. His head was pounding, his vision swimming, and he could feel the hot sting of the half-dozen shallow cuts he'd endured from the blades of the newest hunter. Now he had all three hunters before him, and he had to do something now or risk losing all.

The dog-man, first. He hurt Nimrod, and nobody had hurt Nimrod in years. Snarling, he abandoned finesse and technique to trust in his perfect mutant physiology. A faster-than-the-eye-could-track grab for one of the dog-man's wrists, then a nearly perfect pivot and throw marred only by a slight weakening of the pivot leg due to injury.

Cursing himself for misjudging the man's speed, Kylun tucked in, turning his headlong flight into a controlled aerial somersault. He hit the wall hard, but was able to springboard off of it into an ungraceful landing atop a half-ruined dresser, then drop lightly to the floor. He'd managed to keep both swords in hand, but his left wrist was aching from Nimrod's grip. "Late is fine," he answered Haroun. "Late is still an arrival. Shall we?"

Haroun just grinned a feral grin and set to it. The two of them together were like a well-oiled machine, blades and kicks flying in a constant stream of death-dealing. Wrists, elbows, eyes, throat, knees, solar plexus - all were valid targets. Veres had to go down and he had to go down soon. Incredibly, though, the man blocked and dodged and took what he couldn't avoid like a professional. But his mask was slipping, and instead of the cold gaze of the hunter he was slowly making the face of a man in pain, a man who couldn't quite focus correctly, couldn't marshal the awesome might of his body to full effect.

But what he had was plenty.

No shot. No shot still, and although something was clearly going on in their target's head, something that was slowing him down at least a little, Haroun couldn't go toe to toe with someone with those edges indefinitely. Scott gritted his teeth and moved in closer, knowing that he risked both throwing Haroun off and getting put through another wall. But his optic blast was just about the only thing the three of them had that might be able to end this quickly. If he could just...

Cyclops needed an opening, Kylun thought. And he needed one soon--for all that he and Haroun fought well together, for all that their enemy was slowing, there was a limit to how long they could stand this pace.

As if they had choreographed the moment, Kylun drove Nimrod back a step with a series of furious cuts, then ducked cleanly under Haroun's follow-up kick. He danced forward again, inside their opponent's reach, calling on his reserves to strike fast and hard at the pressure point at the front of the shoulder joint . . .

Connection. Nimrod's arm fell limp to his side, but the other one came across too fast to see, sending Kylun skidding into the pile of trash he'd used as cover. He struggled back to his feet, the fire of glass shards stinging in a dozen new cuts along his back and side, hoping he'd given Cyclops the instant he needed.

And Scott wasn't about to pass it up. An opening, finally. He hit Nimrod with an optic blast, strong enough to force the other mutant into a stumble, and then lunged with as much speed as his battered body was capable of moving with, planning to follow it up with a blow to the jaw and then another optic blast to the body. Enough to knock him out and end this.

Nimrod was far from down and out. The blast hurt him, but given his preternatural speed he was able to get his good hand up to catch Scott's fist in his own, and squeeze. A few seconds worth of pressure, and every bone in visor-face's hand would be powder.

Haroun left Kylun to recover on his own, and launched a devestating low crescent kick to Nimrod's leading knee. He put all the force his artificial legs could muster into the kick, pivoting perfectly on his support leg. The crunch of cartilage shredding and bone breaking was music to Haroun's ears.

Ignoring the pain of his wounds, Kylun lunged forward again, leading with the blade in his good hand, slicing across the back of Nimrod's other knee. Fall, zhethra. You must fall.

Veres finally started to crumple, his grip on Scott's hand slackening an instant before the noise of pain halfway to tearing itself free from Scott's throat escaped. Gritting his teeth, Scott raised his other hand to the visor, and blasted the man in the head. At close range, with a wide-beam. It would have killed an unenhanced person instantly, but Veres, as he had so amply proven in the last fifteen minutes, was too enhanced for his own damned good.

So the blast didn't kill him. It merely knocked the madman out - finally, and quite conclusively.